Underunderstood

By Select WorksSociety & Culture

Underunderstood episodes

December 10, 201943 Years in Biscuitville
A small town fights for internet justice by boycotting biscuits.
2:23 - LulaRoe Defective Fail on Facebook

3:29 - Biscuitville page on Wikipedia

4:51 - Petition: BRING ABED HASSAN BACK on Change.org

13:53 - The First Pizzaville vs. The First Biscuitville

17:47 - Biscuitville announces a new president

18:56 - Jim Metevier (LinkedIn)

19:59 - Zaxby's (BONUS: Zaxby’s made it on My Brother My Brother and Me’s Munch Squad segment.)

21:48 - Mountain Mike's announces a new president
26 min
December 03, 2019Brave Dot Com
How a misfit polka band scored a premium spot on the World Wide Web in 1995.
0:35 - "The Verge is an ambitious multimedia effort founded in 2011 to examine how technology will change life in the future for a massive mainstream audience." (The Verge)

4:05 - More Brave Combo accolades are on their Wikipedia page

4:11 - Bob Dylan's version of Brave Combo's polka arrangement of "Must Be Santa" (YouTube)

6:53 - Domain Name Journal

8:11 - What Brave.com/bo looked like in 1998 (Wayback Machine)

11:23 - Appropos of nothing, here's a figurine of Carl Finch for sale on Etsy. He also has his own Wikipedia page

13:01 - Beer Barrel Polka by Diet Polka (Soundcloud)

13:50 - Purple Haze - The Jimi Hendrix Polka, from Brave Combo album Polkasonic

14:18 - Brave Combo performs the Chicken Dance at a live show (YouTube)
Brave Combo songs in this episode (Spotify playlist):
"Do Something Different"

"The Simpsons Theme"

"In Heaven, There Is No Beer"

"Ice Machine in the Desert"

"Crazy Serbian Butcher's Dance"

"Purple Haze (Polka Version)"

"The Chicken Dance"
29 min
November 26, 2019What Happened To the McFlurry?
McFlurries aren't what they used to be. Why did McDonald's stop stirring them?
Show notes:
2:29 - McFlurry demo (YouTube)

6:40 - Adrianne's McFlurry

8:40 - Why Is the McFlurry Machine Down Again? (WSJ)

9:07 - Ice Check

10:10 - Are McFlurry's supposed to be mixed? (Reddit)

12:08 - On the Clock: What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane

15:06 - Whatever Happened to Pizza at McDonald's?

19:55 - VitaMix VM0804A - McFlurry Ice Cream Mixer (Used)

23:51 - I Tried To Get A Flurried McFlurry And This Is What Happened (Buzzfeed)

27:51 - Log your McFlurry at The Flurry Index
31 min
October 22, 2019 Endless Thread: The Deadly Double
While we’re working on new episodes of Underunderstood, we we'd share an episode of another podcast we love: Endless Thread. It’s a show that brings Reddit to life by tracking down its strangest, most compelling stories, and talking to the folks involved in those stories.
This episode is about an old dice game called The Deadly Double. In order to find the origins of the game, Amory Sivertson and Ben Brock Johnson fall into a series of rabbit holes, including an enormous dice collection, a former FBI agent, and a Pearl Harbor conspiracy theory.
--
Endless Thread is a podcast from WBUR and Reddit. You can listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts.
Ben Brock Johnson – co-host/senior producer
Amory Sivertson – co-host/producer
Josh Swartz – producer
Mix and sound design by Paul Vaitkus
37 min
August 27, 2019What To Do With Fake Money
Adrianne buys some money online in order to track down a rumor about Chinese bank tellers.
2:06 - Photos of the $100 bills: Front / Back

3:35 - Hell money

13:18 - Reporter Jon Christian

16:35 - Wayne Homren's blog post from 2011

19:00 - Money Makers (99% Invisible)

21:30 - Fascinating ways to count money! Bank teller shows quick counting skills (YouTube)

21:40 - Chinese cashier's amazing cash counting skills (YouTube)

21:50 - Chinese bank teller counts money by ear (YouTube)

25:59 - The Knowledge
Custom art for Underunderstood is made by Phil Robibero.
Underunderstood is taking a break. We'll be back in November. Don't forget about us, and send story ideas to [email protected]. We'll be dropping some bonus material, so stay subscribed for updates.
34 min
August 20, 2019Where's My Chile?
John finds out if it is safe to eat a suitcase full of chili peppers that have been missing for three days.
5:45 - Where’s My Suitcase

8:16 - #wheresmysuitcase on Twitter is a harrowing scene

10:50 - Bags, Inc.

11:11 - Bags VIP

11:50 - Bags, Inc.’s corporate video on Vimeo

14:04 - We cannot link to F-14 Baggage because they have absolutely no web presence

18:40 - The Middle Seat at the Wall Street Journal

21:00 - The weather in Albuquerque in January 2019

22:56 - The weather in New York City in January 2019

23:45 - “SP Plus Corporation Agrees to Acquire Bags”

23:52 - SP Plus’s official website

27:57 - A lot of chatter on Twitter about wheresmysuitcase.com

30:32 - Z Orange Systems

36:10 - Food Safety Talk, a podcast hosted by Don Schaffner and Ben Chapman
Custom art for this episode was created by Phil Robibero. You can see it here.
A special request: Have you ever been mad at your spouse, or anyone, for something that happened in a dream? Has anyone ever been mad at you because of something you did in their dream? Tell us about it. You can leave us a voice message on Anchor, or record a voice memo on your phone and email it to [email protected].
43 min
August 13, 2019Little Theatre Goes Dark
The surprising history behind a charming marquee in downtown Newark, New Jersey.
Show notes:
00:06 - Billy shot and edited Underunderstood's trailer video in one day.

00:24 - KCRW's 7th Annual 24-Hour Radio Race

00:58 - KCRW announced the theme on Twitter

01:09 - Wiktionary defines "where the sun don't shine" as "up or in the anus."

03:27 - Little Theatre on Cinema Treasures

03:36 - This little porn movie house learned to survive for decades -- until last week - NJ.com

04:51 - Whitney Strub blogs at strublog

05:55 - NJTV News was there as the Whole Foods opened.

06:23 - Audible's Innovation Cathedral

06:29 - The Cameo on Cinema Treasures

06:48 - Club Zanzibar - Wikipedia

07:05 - The Bears & Eagles Riverfront Stadium was actually built before Zanzibar's building was demolished, but it was removed to make room for new development and now the stadium, which was sold to a private developer for a loss, will likely be demolished as well.

07:44 - Can New Jersey's Last Porn Theater Survive Gentrification? - Vice

08:31 - The thread on AdultDVDTalk.com

10:43 - The four minute version of this story for KCRW's Radio Race
12 min
August 06, 2019Recorded for Awesomeness
Adrianne tries to order from a local sushi restaurant, but an unfamiliar voice answers, promising "awesomeness." Awesomeness for whom?
Show notes:
2:16 - “GrubHub is buying up thousands of restaurant web addresses. That means Mom and Pop can’t own their slice of the internet,” published June 28, 2019 by H. Claire Brown at The New Food Economy.
13:07 - Dark patterns
13:54 - A report about Munish Narula’s class action lawsuit from Nation’s Restaurant News
14:19 - “Restaurateurs across the country say they are waking up to a years-long, high-tech bamboozling by Grubhub involving hidden fees for orders that never happened,” reads the lede for The New York Post’s first story in a series on phony fees, May 19, 2019.
23:03 - “Grubhub repays one eatery $10K over fee protest,” published June 24, 2019 by The New York Post.
23:30 - Watch the full hearing, “The Changing Market for Food Delivery,” here.
32:17 - Grubhub and Yelp announced a “long-term partnership” in 2017
38 min
July 30, 2019The 9/11 Hoax That Wasn’t
Billy’s sister thinks a photo that repeatedly goes viral on Reddit is suspicious.
Show notes:
0:40 – All of the photos discussed in this episode are available on our website

2:02 – Snopes: “Is This a Photograph of a World Trade Center Tourist on 9/11?”

3:23 – Pinball Gallery

5:59 – The Balloon Saloon has nothing to do with this episode, but it is a place in Tribeca.

6:39 – In 2014, Austin Sansone popped up on Reddit to claim the photo.

8:05 – Former child actor Mark Lester

26:35 – r/AlternateAngles

26:45 – The photo got another boost of attention in 2018, when it showed up on Reddit again.

26:51 – Aol published an article that was also posted on Yahoo.
34 min
July 23, 2019What Happened To New Vietnam?
A Wikipedia stub about the worst Florida theme park idea ever sends John on a search for the reason it never opened.
Show notes:
0:45 - New Vietnam on Wikipedia

1:12 - Dolly Parton's Stampede (formerly Dolly Parton's Dixie Stampede)

2:16 - Carl McIntire on Wikipedia

3:52 - Wild West City

5:50 - New Vietnam in Uncle John's Ahh-Inspiring Bathroom Reader

7:25 - Portable Press

8:11 - 20th Century Reformation Hour

8:44 - Some clips of the 20th Century Reformation Hour

9:37 - Christianity Today, May 2002 (paywall)

10:41 - Dr. Randall Balmer's website

12:42 - Fred Phelps on YouTube

14:54 - The Carl McIntire Collection at Princeton Theological Seminary Library

15:55 - Faraday Cage

19:03 - "Body Counts" by Dr. Yen Espiritu

24:27 - FCC Fairness Doctrine

24:46 - Infowars on Wikipedia

24:50 - This American Life episode about Alex Jones

29:17 - History of the Present (registration required), an article about film theory published in The North American Review in 1976, led us to the Newsweek story about New Vietnam.

30:40 - Actually, Newsweek's online archives only go back to 2013

30:48 - The September 8, 1975 issue of Newsweek that John bought on eBay

37:19 - Florida Today, November 8, 1975

39:33 - Ricky Ly's food blog Tasty Chomps
45 min