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Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Podcast
Ever had something you love dismissed because it’s “just” pop culture? What others might deem stupid shit, you know matters. You know it’s worth talking and thinking about. So do we. We're Tracie and Emily, two sisters who think a lot about a lot of things. From Twilight to Ghostbusters, Harry Potter to the Muppets, and wherever pop culture takes us, come overthink with us as we delve into our deep thoughts about stupid shit.
Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Podcast
Encyclopedia Brown with Adam Gwon: Deep Thoughts About Potatoes, Problem Plays, and Pop Culture Expectations for Detective Stories
25 cents per day, plus expenses. No case too small!
Adam Gwon, Emily's childhood friend and award-winning musical theater writer, joins the Guy sisters today to share how Donald Sobol's Encyclopedia Brown had an outsize influence on his understanding of storytelling. The delightful format of each short Encyclopedia Brown mystery--which gave the reader all the same information the boy detective had and invited you to test your wits against that of the sleuth before checking the answer in the back of the book--taught Adam how to curate information when telling a story. These mystery stories also gave children a needed sense of order and rules for the world. But when the boy detective grows up, can pop culture grapple with the mysteries that have no answers?
If you're ready to test your observational skills against the boy detective, throw on your headphones, turn to page 119, and take a listen!
Learn more about Adam at his website
Follow Adam on Instagram
Mentioned in this episode
The Boy Detective Fails by Joe Meno
The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex
This episode was edited by Resonate Recordings.
Our theme music is "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Learn more about Tracie and Emily (including our other projects), join the Guy Girls' family, secure exclusive access to bonus episodes, video versions, and early access to Deep Thoughts by visiting us on Patreon or find us on ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/guygirls
We are Tracie Guy-Decker and Emily Guy Birken, known to our family as the Guy Girls.
We have super-serious day jobs. For the bona fides, visit our individual websites: tracieguydecker.com and emilyguybirken.com
We're hella smart and completely unashamed of our overthinking prowess. We love movies and tv, science fiction, comedy, and murder mysteries, good storytelling with lots of dramatic irony, and analyzing pop culture for gender dynamics, psychology, sociology, and whatever else we find.
The whole mystery genre is rooted in this idea of, like there is an answer, there's right and wrong, there's black and white, it's certain. And even in trying to sort of upend the genre and talk about that idea in a different way, it jolts people's understanding of what mysteries do and what mysteries are for, in such a way that, like they can't actually process the message that, like, life is full of mysteries that don't have an answer have you ever had something you love dismissed because it's just pop culture, what others might deem stupid shit?
Speaker 2:you know matters, you know what's worth talking and thinking about, and so do we. So come overthink with us as we delve into our deep thoughts about stupid shit.
Speaker 3:I'm Emily Guy-Burken and you're listening to Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, because pop culture is still culture, and shouldn't you know what's in your head? On today's episode, my friend Adam Guan will be sharing his deep thoughts about Encyclopedia Brown with me, my sister Tracy Guy-Decker and you.
Speaker 3:Let's dive in. This week I'm really excited to welcome my childhood friend, adam Guan, who is an award-winning musical theater writer. His most recent show, all the World's a Stage, just had its world premiere with Keen Company in New York, where it was nominated for both Drama Desk and Off-Broadway Alliance Awards. His other musicals include Ordinary Days, which premiered at Roundabout Theatre Company and has since been produced on six continents in 10 languages, and Scotland PA, adapted from the cult film which also premiered at Roundabout and was nominated for a Drama Desk Award and named a New York Times Critics' Pick. So, adam, welcome. Am like kind of intimidated, even though we grew up together.
Speaker 1:It's that beautiful point of connection. We were just. You know, we were just talking about our other friend who grew up to become an MMA fighter. So it's like the paths that lead out of Fernwood Heights are varied and storied. Who knew and storied?
Speaker 3:So welcome. Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 1:Oh, thanks for having me.
Speaker 3:So Tracy and I were talking a little bit before this about like what we know and remember about Encyclopedia Brown. I know this is something that you and I shared. I feel like Mr Hallett, our librarian at Hernwood Heights, read Encyclopedia Brown aloud to us because there was at least one where it was talking about someone came in from the cold and his glasses fogged up and like that was the inconsistency that Encyclopedia Brown pointed out and Mr Hallett's like. I wear glasses and that's not how it works.
Speaker 1:The physics test of Encyclopedia Brown.
Speaker 3:So like there was that, and then there was another one and I kind of mix up, because there was also the two minute stories or two minute mysteries. That was also Donald Sobel who wrote the Encyclopedia Brown, so I'm not sure which were which but there was another one where someone said it's a narrow flight away, meaning like a narrow flight of stairs, but he was actually saying an arrow flight away meaning someone shot it, and so it was, it was how you heard it and that, for whatever reason, stuck in my head so like those kinds of like linguistic puns and things like that really stuck with me.
Speaker 3:And then I looked up Encyclopedia Round this morning and I was just like, oh yeah, sally Kimball she was awesome was the cooler sidekick problem that often happens. So those are the main things that I remember about those. I do remember really liking those books and swapping them in like the elementary school.
Speaker 2:Like.
Speaker 3:Oh, have you read this one and stuff like that. But, tracy, I feel like they missed you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think maybe they did, Because when Adam said that he wanted to do Encyclopedia Brown, I was like yeah, right on, and in my head was this like this pair of detectives, these black kids in a cartoon show. And I looked it up and that's not Encyclopedia Brown. So what was in my head is actually Billy Joe Jive and Smart Susie Sunset, which was a cartoon that was on Sesame Street in the 70s and early 80s. So it was like similar time.
Speaker 2:I think that you guys were reading Encyclopedia Brown and I have a feeling that Billy Joe Jive was based on Encyclopedia Brown but was a black kid. So I don't have anything in my head except for what I read on Wikipedia this morning about Encyclopedia Brown. I certainly have child detectives in my head. There's Billy Joe Jive and Smart Susie Sunset from Sesame Street, but there's also obviously Nancy Drew and the Bloodhound Gang from 321 Contact. So like kid detectives are in my head, but I actually don't have Encyclopedia Brown in my head. So I'm really interested to hear sort of what has stuck for you guys and Adam. I'd love to hear like, why are you bringing us Encyclopedia Brown, Like what's at stake for you, in kind of looking back at this property?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, it's fascinating to me that you had a different kid detective in your brain from your childhood, because part of what fascinates me about this is just how this idea of child detectives has permeated childhood from generation to generation. The Encyclopedia Brown books were first written in the 60s, and then Emily and I, of course, were reading them in the 80s, and then emily and I, of course, were reading them in the 80s, and to this day I feel like when you say kid detective, boy detective, girl detective, child detective, like everyone just knows what that is and has some kind of association with it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah so that's fascinating to me. But why I think I still think about these kid detectives as an adult is, I think, my perspective on what those stories meant for me and did for me as a kid. And then looking back at them as an adult and rethinking about them as an adult and the tropes and the genre of it. I think about it very differently now and I have a very specific reason why, which I'm sure I'll get into as we start the conversation. But I think what's at stake for me with this is the shift that happened between childhood and adulthood and how I view these stories, which they feel very different to me now in a fascinating way, and so I'm excited just to ramble on about it for a little while with you.
Speaker 3:There's something really cool about how the art doesn't change, but you do.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I recently experienced that, watching Stand by Me again, for the first time since childhood, and I know the movie really, really well because I watched it so many times as a kid. But it was a completely different experience seeing it as an adult. So yeah, I definitely understand there. The story hasn't changed at all, but oh my goodness, it's a different experience.
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally. So I guess just set up to talk about Encyclopedia Brown a little bit. I feel the reason why I think I specifically went to Encyclopedia Brown is because, Emily, like you were saying, I feel like those books were kind of the gateway drug into not only the like child detective genre but the mystery genre in general. I was just obsessed with mysteries when I was a kid. When we were emailing about this, Emily, you said that you still had a book of the Miss Marple mysteries that I gave you when we were in middle school, which is sort of evidence, tangible evidence, that I was obsessed with these mysteries, Like Agatha Christie. There's this series called the Cat who Books. It was like the cat who did this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we read those.
Speaker 1:About these like Siamese cats who helped this guy with a mustache solve mysteries. Yes, yeah, we read those. And something that sets the Encyclopedia Brown books apart from other kid detectives like Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew or Cam Jansen which was another big one for me as a kid is the Encyclopedia Brown books are short, individual mysteries. So each book has 10 really short chapters and each chapter is like a standalone mystery and they're about this kid named Leroy Brown, who's a 10-year-old kid in Idaville, usa, which is sort of like generic American suburb land, and he uses logic and observation to solve mysteries. Hence he has this nickname, encyclopedia Brown. Everyone calls him Encyclopedia and his father is the chief of police in Idaville.
Speaker 1:And I think that most of the books start out. The first chapter, the first mystery in each book is Encyclopedia at dinner with his parents at the dinner table and Chief Brown has a case that he can't solve like a real adult case and Encyclopedia Brown helps him solve the case over dinner by observing some sort of misstep or logical observation that Chief Brown missed. And then the rest of the mysteries in the book are encyclopedia solving cases for the kids in the town. So it's all very low stakes, relatively low stakes in the adult world. Of course it feels very high stakes for the kids, but he's not solving murders or embezzlement the way that the Hardy Boys were doing. He is helping the kids in the town deal with their own issues and there are some.
Speaker 1:Even though each mystery is sort of self-contained, there are some recurring characters in this world. He has a sort of best friend, slash sidekick, slash muscle, sally Kimball, who is almost his bodyguard. She is the one that sort of like will beat people up and who the bullies are afraid of because he is more of the intellectual kind of child. She's the muscle. And then there's sort of a main bad guy, this bully named Bugs Meany, who is part of he's a little on the nose in terms of the naming there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, meany, and what I didn't remember until I look back at this is that he actually is the leader of a gang called the Tigers, but again, it's not really a super violent.
Speaker 2:But they're like 10, you said right, they are 10. Yes, so it's a gang of 10-year-olds.
Speaker 1:A gang of 10-year-olds and he is always trying to like not only like do crimes, but like pin crimes on Encyclopedia Brown and Sally Kimball, and so a lot of the stories are like Encyclopedia and Sally having to like get out of hot water because something's been pinned on them, on them. And the amazingly fun thing about the Encyclopedia Brown stories is you read the story and then you get to the end and Encyclopedia Brown is like I know who did it. And then it says like at the bottom, turn to page 119 to get the solution. And so the game of it is that whatever Encyclopedia Brown has observed you have also observed as the reader. It's in the story.
Speaker 1:You take a moment and you go back and you try to figure out what's at Encyclopedia C and then you can go in the back of the book and find the answer. That was something that I thought was always so fun and so satisfying is like all the mysteries had the answer. You would flip to the back of the book. It was almost like doing your math homework. So there was. I think as a young nerdy child, this like very much appealed to my sense of like I'm going to get the right answer, I'm going to figure it out and then see if I was right, see if I was, like, as smart as Encyclopedia Brown.
Speaker 3:There's also something as a storyteller. It's like Donald Sobel is teaching you how to write a mystery by the rules. Like cause it's saying like hey, I've given you everything. Yeah, and because they're like anytime I've read an unsatisfying mystery, it's because, like you broke the rules, you didn't give me everything. Or whatever.
Speaker 3:And so, like I had forgotten that aspect of it. I'd forgotten that. It was like, hey, can you figure it out? But now that you say that I was like, oh yeah, that's why I liked it so much. But that's part of what. Like it was like a blueprint for like this is how you provide a mystery and like why it's satisfying.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there was something too about and this is something that I think about in my own writing the idea that a satisfying experience of a piece of writing means that everything that you took in kind of means something by the end. And that's exactly what these mysteries are doing. You know, there are these clues that seem sort of inconsequential as you're reading, but once you know the answer, you go oh my gosh, that's why that person said that thing, or that's why that prop was there. It was all there for a reason. It was leading to something, which I think is a great writing lesson. Like you're saying when I was thinking about Encyclopedia Brown, there's one mystery that is the one that I always think of when I think of Encyclopedia Brown. I have no idea why, but there's this one particular one. That's the one that I went back and re-read to prepare for our conversation the light on us.
Speaker 2:What happens, what happens?
Speaker 1:This one is so indicative of the series and I think why I like the series so much and why I liked Encyclopedia Brown more than, say, hardy Boys slash Nancy Drew, because I tried to get into those and there was something about them that even when I was a kid they felt a little too scary or too real. They were about real criminals and there was something I don't know. I don't know why, but I just sort of leaned more into the world of Encyclopedia Brown, which I feel like is captured by the one story that I always think about, which is called the Case of the Secret Recipe, and it's about their friend whose name is Beauford Twitty. And Beauford Twitty is an 11-year-old who, in the words of Donald Sobel, is crazy about potatoes and he runs a potato museum out of his basement.
Speaker 2:A museum, a potato museum, an 11-year-old, with a potato museum in his basement.
Speaker 1:Yes, and so at the beginning of the story, beauford tells all of his friends that his grandfather has given him these super spuds, which are these very special potatoes, and that he has created this secret recipe made from these super spuds. And everyone has to come over and try this recipe. And also he's going to reveal the latest addition to the potato museum, which is a potato that's been signed by the New York Yankees.
Speaker 3:I'm sure Donald Sobel is no longer with us, but I would love to just like spend an hour. I know, I know.
Speaker 1:Signed by the Yankees, signed by the Yankees. So Encyclopedia and Sally and a bunch of their other friends go over to Beauford Tweedy's house Beauford's making the secret recipe. They're like how can we help you? And Beauford is like you all can help me set the table. So everyone goes to the kitchen and grabs different things to set the table. And then Beauford comes out and he reveals the secret recipe, which is simply French fries. And they're like French fries. And he's like yeah, haha, I fooled you. I thought you thought I was going to make something fancy, but I just made French fries. And so they eat the French fries. And then they're like show us the potato that's been signed by the New York Yankees. And he goes to get the potato and the potato has been stolen.
Speaker 2:Dun, dun dun.
Speaker 1:Dun, dun, dun. But then Encyclopedia Brown is like I know who stole the potato. And then it says turn to page 119 to find the answer. And so the reason that Encyclopedia knew who stole the potato was that when they were setting the table, one of their friends grabbed ketchup from the kitchen and put it on the table. And the only reason that they would have grabbed ketchup is if they had come early, seen Beauford making French fries and while he was making the French fries went into the basement and stole the New York Yankees signed potato. And that in fact was correct. That friend stole the potato for whatever reason. This is the encyclopedia proud mystery that has been stuck in my head for 30 years, but I think it's I don't know, it's just so indicative of the like he he's solving these mysteries about his 11-year-old friend's potato museum, which I am just obsessed with.
Speaker 2:I cannot tell you how delighted I am that this award-winning composer on our show is like saying the phrase repeatedly stole the potato Like.
Speaker 3:I am just so tickled by this.
Speaker 1:So Encyclopedia Brown lodged in my brain so delighted as a child. Why I feel like we're having this conversation about Encyclopedia Brown is I as an adult. This is probably around 2010, 2011, something like that. My first musical, ordinary Days, had just premiered and I was sort of looking for subject material for my next musical. I had a commission to write a musical for Signature Theater down in DC, close to our hometown, and came across this book called the Boy Detective Fails, which is written by this Chicago-based novelist and playwright named Joe Minow, and it just sort of I feel like the book just came through the Amazon recommended books algorithm back when algorithms were delightful and the title grabbed me, of course, because Boy Detective it rung the bells of.
Speaker 1:There is this Encyclopedia Brown-esque character named Billy Argo, who was a genius child detective in his hometown as a kid he would solve mysteries with his sister Caroline, his younger sister and his best friend Fenton, and just like Encyclopedia Brown, it was best friend Fenton and just like in Psycho-Libby Brown, it was like he would solve these crimes. He would help the police. That's sort of like the prologue of the book, and the book really starts when Billy, graduates from high school, leaves town to go to college and his younger sister stays behind, tries to solve a case, a sort of dark like a murder case, and while Billy is away she takes her own life. And the sort of main action of the book starts when Billy is 30, and he comes back to his hometown for the first time to try to solve the mystery of why his sister did it. And he tries to solve the mystery and basically at the end the story is him sort of coming to terms with the loss of his sister and the way that he has to do that is to come to terms with the fact that there are some mysteries in life that you can't solve.
Speaker 1:That uncertainty is actually a part of life and a part of adulthood. And this idea kind of blew my mind because, as I was saying about Encyclopedia Brown, the thing that was so comforting and wonderful and satisfying about it as a kid was that the answer was in the back and your observational skills. You could figure it out and you could flip to the back and get the right answer, which actually feels like really important as a kid right, like you need to feel a sense of security and certainty and justice and that things are going to work out things are going to be okay in the world. And then I read this novel that like totally flipped the script on that idea from the perspective of adults, which is like it's actually really important as adults to understand that like uncertainty is part of life and figuring out how you deal with uncertainty is a really crucial part of being human.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I'm thinking the title of the book you said is the Boy Detective Fails, but as you're describing it and the lesson you're taking from it, really it could have been called the Boy Detective Grows Up, yeah totally so.
Speaker 1:I read this novel, was deeply, deeply connected to it and, inspired by it, reached out to the author and said to it and, inspired by it, reached out to the author and said, hey, would you be willing to let me adapt this into a musical? And he replied it's funny, you should mention this because the novel actually started as a play. He had written a play for a theater company in Chicago that ultimately led to him writing the story in the form of a novel. So he had a version of the story that was a play and I said well, this sounds like fate, and would you like to collaborate on this musical and use your script as a starting off point and write this musical? And so we did.
Speaker 1:And what was fascinating about working on this musical? It's one of the projects sort of like dearest to my heart, just because of the subject material, because of my collaboration with Joe, which wound up being so lovely and special and we're sort of great friends now. But it also is one of the pieces that I guess, if you know how shakespeare has like problem plays that like you can't really figure it out and audiences are always kind of like what's going on with this show. I feel like this is one of those like problem plays, because the whole point is that billy is not able to solve the mystery that he sets out to solve, which causes such a visceral reaction in an audience being like what the fuck? Like? I don't know if I can curse on this the show has a curse word in the title.
Speaker 2:so you, you're good, that's true.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. But it was fascinating to me because from the beginning of telling the story, even in the title, the Boy Detective Fails. Like the whole point it set up. The whole point is like he's not going to solve this mystery, like that is the point of the show, and yet it still causes this cognitive dissonance for the audience about that idea. In a different way it jolts people's understanding of what mysteries do and what mysteries are for, in such a way that they can't actually process the message that life is full of mysteries that don't have an answer. And so it's fascinating and it's one of those shows that we've gotten to work on it in various productions over the years, and every time Joe and I show up and like try to, we work, keep working on it, because we're so passionate about this idea of humans have to wrestle with uncertainty.
Speaker 1:But storytelling in a way is like so counter to that and trying to it's this like very tricky dance that I I even don't think that we have sort of figured it out yet with the piece, but that question is like constantly alive in my mind around this story and around, and I feel like it all goes back to encyclopedia brown, because that's the thing that kind of taught us that lesson as kids, which again I think is such an important, valuable thing for kids to have growing up, to sort of feel rooted, to feel moored in a world that you feel like you can navigate.
Speaker 1:But then it feels so different as an adult and even like, especially now, like the reason I keep thinking about it is because I feel like the more I live, the more I get older, the more uncertain the world becomes. I'm sure that's true for everyone, like in certain, like just a human perspective, but sort of feels especially true at the moment. And what's interesting is Joe Minow, the novelist. His impetus for writing the story in the first place was post right after 9-11, because he felt like the world had become so upside down and all of the certainties that he had felt before 9-11 sort of went out the window, and he was using this genre of child detectives as a metaphor for that shift that he experienced at that moment in history. So yeah, that's my deep thought about sex, katie Brown.
Speaker 3:Something this is bringing up for me the way that audiences reacted to that is. Early on, tracy and I talked about Clue and how it seems that anyone who encountered Clue for the first time as a child loves it. Anyone who encountered it for the first time as an adult hated it, and it's because adults came into it expecting there to be an answer, whereas children just enjoyed themselves. They took it as it was. They didn't need there to be a clear like this is whodunit. They took it as it's a movie based on a board game, so like there is no clear whodunit, because it changes every time you play and that's why it's become a cult classic, because like, the kids had to grow up Sure and so like that to me is changes in how storytelling is accepted, kind of has to like go through these shifts and some of it is like it is unsettling when you go into something it has the word detective in it, even if it has the word fails. Right afterwards You're like but detective, everything's sewn up neatly at the end, isn't that like you gather everyone in the dining room and you twirl your mustache and you say he did it. I think it's also interesting because another thing this is bringing up for me is in my 20s especially, I felt very smug about how storytelling would be very black and white and clear, saying like pointing out hypocrisy. I remember reading some young adult novels where there were very hypocritical characters and I was like nobody's that black and white. And we talked about Jaws last year, which I love, but the first few times I saw it I was just like no mayor would be that irresponsible with his constituents for money. Because I hadn't lived through COVID yet and as I've aged I've realized like, okay, so my sense of maturity, in feeling like the world is not so black and white, was an immature look at the world and so like it's this really weird thing because I was a very black and white thinker as a kid and so realizing like oh okay, people aren't just good or bad, things don't just tie up neatly means that like seeing stories that show hypocritical characters or characters making like really bad decisions that harm people is unrealistic. To then realizing, no, actually that is realistic, that's based on like people really do do that.
Speaker 3:It's this very interesting thing about what storytelling can do and what it, what we want from it. And it's this tough thing like because what we want stories to make sense of, of the world. We want stories to reflect the world in some ways. We want stories to be better than the world in some ways. And there are some lessons we don't want from stories. Like we don't want stories to remind us that things aren't always happy at the end. You know we don't always from stories Like we don't want stories to remind us that things aren't always happy at the end. You know we don't always get the answer that you know. You turn to page 119.
Speaker 2:There's something really, really fascinating. I think you're right, adam, that you're touching on this, like with this, that's about the expectations that we bring to story and the meaning that we make. There's only the meaning that we make, there's only the meaning that we make right. But we do it so much and we're so conditioned that when it doesn't happen the way we expect, as your audiences have said, like it's disconcerting, even though it's all made up I'm putting quotes around that right. I mean, like there's so much data out there that to actually like tell a story at all is to choose what to share, which is exactly what Sobel did so that it adds up to a certain specific meaning.
Speaker 2:And I think I'm thinking now about sort of how the expectation Emily points to that when she talks about Clue and children versus adults like the expectations that we, what we bring in with us.
Speaker 2:I mean that's what we've been saying from the beginning how the actual words on the page haven't changed. It's us that have changed, but it all works together to make meaning and to create the experience of the story. And, like you have pointed out a couple of times, adam, that, like as kids, we need and want a neat meaning, a safe meaning, a meaning that allows us to like, feel safe to grow and learn and try on new ideas. But in the world of adulthood it ain't safe sometimes, but we still bring those expectations of childhood. I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but I think there's something really, really fascinating that you're pointing to that Encyclopedia Brown trained you to, delighted you with, and then the real world, 9-11 for your friend, for Joe, like upended, and Joe's trying to make sense of that, like again trying to make meaning of it. It's a really fascinating like cycle of disruption and meaning making. That I'm finding like really interesting that you're pointing to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what. I'm curious too. You know I'm not a parent so I can't speak to this, but it makes me think. You know, what is the moment when you allow a kid that you're raising, when you let the sort of uncertainty or the grayness in? I feel like we tell all kinds of stories to kids to help them make sense of the world, to understand how the world works around them, how to navigate the world, which obviously gets more and more complicated as you get older. And is it sort of one seismic moment, like Joe Minow had at 9-11? Are there gradual things that you see if you're raising a child, where you're sort of introducing a child to the complexities, the nuances of the world and the human experience? It's? I'm asking the question because I don't know, but it makes me think of what is that? What is that transition from Encyclopedia Brown to the Will Detective Fails, you know?
Speaker 2:Well, it's not a single step, right? I mean like you even named them. There was Miss Marple, and there was I mean, like Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys were a little too scary when you were reading Encyclopedia. Brown, but by the time you two were passing around Miss Marple books.
Speaker 3:probably it wouldn't have been too scary, because Miss Marple deals with actual death and the Cat who books were actual, like murder mysteries and then the cat who books were actual, like murder mysteries, and then by the time I got into, like I was in high school, I was reading. I think by then I was reading minette walters, which is like agatha christie's bloodless, like there's death, but you don't actually see it. There's no gore, there's no gore, whereas minette walters you, you know what happened to those people, but that is like that's an excellent question, cause like and Tracy and I have this like running joke when you're standing at the North pole, any direction you go is South. There's a similar thing with parenting, where any, any decision you make is wrong.
Speaker 2:So many more of those moments in parenting than I expected. I was not prepared.
Speaker 3:That is a consistent thing where it feels like you want to protect your child but you also want to prepare them, and so like deciding that balance between protection and preparation, and like one kid can handle things while the other kid can't, and you know those sorts of things, and it's really really tough. And then there's stuff that you just can't, and you know those sorts of things, and it's really really tough. And then there's stuff that you just can't prepare your kid for, like the things that just are just happen. So it's and that's sort of like what your friends went through with 9-11, like I mean nationally, like globally, we went through with 9-11. What we're going through right now with politically.
Speaker 3:I had a conversation with my elder son right after the election that I couldn't have with my younger son, like where I said I told him like Hitler got into office by democratic election twice and was like just so you know, having a place to deal with that in story I think is so beneficial. But having story where everything is wrapped up in a neat bow is also really beneficial. Like I know I have been running away into books a lot the past few months and I know a lot of other people do that and, like I've always loved mysteries, and partially because good guys win, at the end, bad guy gets their comeuppance. You know all of that.
Speaker 2:It's not just that, em, I don't think it's just that. I think it's sort of what Adam was talking about, about like, there are rules. And if you're paying attention you can see. I mean it's the same as the dopamine hit when you play Wordle.
Speaker 2:You know it's the same dopamine hit like oh I was right, you know it's. I think there's something to that and and there's actually that training that you received from Encyclopedia Brown, like turn to page 119, like oh, I was right. That training is important. Now you notice things. Now, adam, you're a better storyteller, you're a better writer because Sobel trained you how to make sure all the choices you made were advancing the story and not just like it's what I said about data, like there's a million things in the room around me, but I'm, if I'm telling a story, I'm only going to tell you about the things that are relevant to moving the action forward that I want to move forward. You learn that in part from reading Encyclopedia Brown and having it actually spelled out turned page 119.
Speaker 3:And I think that's one of the things that I see as an issue for modern discourse is that we don't recognize how much narrative shapes things so like. Something I think about is like I'm really good at knowing whodunit in watching mysteries on TV, reading them because I've read so many, I've been trained like, if a mystery actually surprises me, I am delighted, and it's not because I would make any kind of good detective, because if you're a detective, it could be anyone in the world. If you're reading a book, there is an economy of characters, but we have these narratives where like, okay, there's only three or four options, so like, x is good, y is bad, something is in the middle, those are the options, and so I just saw this. Recently, I wrote an article about ESG investing. Something is in the middle, those are the options, and so I just saw this.
Speaker 3:Recently I wrote an article about ESG investing which is socially responsible, investing for environmental, social and corporate governance. I'm not going to get into the weeds in this, but Philip Morris, as in the cigarette company, tobacco company, tobacco company in 2023 had an 87 out of 100 because they really focused on the governance. So they were really focusing on DEI, which, like in one way, in some ways is like okay, I mean, I guess that's good, but people want the narrative of like, oh, they have a good ESG score, so I should invest in them, rather than recognizing how huge the amount of data is and the number of variables and how, like, there is not a narrative. Creating a narrative for this means paring it down in such a way and it's not possible. Sometimes the boy detective fails.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, it's the idea that you know in storytelling and, like Donald Sobel and Encyclopedia Brown, you're writing it almost from hindsight.
Speaker 1:You know the answer and you're like curating the steps for the reader to arrive there and people do that with life also. But it is a it's incredibly curated, like you're saying, to sort of tell the story that whoever's telling the story wants to tell, and also as sort of like the readers of life, the ending hasn't been created. We don't have that benefit of hindsight and the reason I feel like we tell stories in the first place is because we're just trying as best we can to make sense of this life that's unfolding before us, that we don't know where it's headed, and our wish fulfillment is that we know where it's headed and every step was logical on the way to get there. But often it is not and often, like you're saying, people take advantage of the human impulse to try to curate logical steps in order to get there and are maybe connecting certain dots that shouldn't be connected or only sharing certain pieces of information that are telling only part of the story.
Speaker 2:Right. There's also a sort of sense that we want there to be sort of one right answer, like one specific meaning of that thing Like even the stolen potato story right. Like I can imagine where, like he's making potatoes, like a lot of different potato dishes, people eat with ketchup, not just the fries Right.
Speaker 2:So even like the right answer, like I could imagine a scenario in which that kid did not steal the Yankee signed potato, he just likes ketchup on mashed potatoes or whatever you know like there's a lot of different ways that one might use ketchup on potatoes. So it's like this is that double-edged sword. That is about maturity, is about meaning making, is about the difference between storytelling and life and at the same time, like we are all telling stories all the time to ourselves about what life is. And so you and Joe were sort of trying to say to yourselves and to your audience, like sometimes the stories don't work out neatly and we have to find a way to move forward with that. And your audiences are saying like no, screw you. I want it to make sense, because it's scary when it doesn't make sense.
Speaker 2:I want it to make sense because it's scary when it doesn't make sense. But that was actually the point right. It's scary that the main character's sister died by suicide. That's terrifying and heartbreaking and it's incomprehensible, which is why it's not actually a solvable mystery. So the tension there, I think, is really really beautiful and interesting and very double-edged.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2:Well, shall I reflect back some of the highlights of our deep thoughts about Encyclopedia Brown. Adam, did you share what you wanted to share I?
Speaker 1:think so. This has been a great conversation.
Speaker 2:So let me see if I can reflect back and you two will nuance and add and interrupt and edit. So we're talking about Encyclopedia Brown in particular, but also, like the child detective, the boy detective, like as a genre. I mentioned Billy Joe Jive and Smart Susie Sunset who were on Sesame Street, but we also talked about the bloodhound gang on 321 contact and nancy drew and the hardy boys, and I can't believe we didn't mention scooby-doo oh yeah, we're not children, but like they were young teens I mean the bad guys always called them meddling kids, so that's true.
Speaker 2:so, adam, one of the reasons that you brought this to us is because was the encyclopedia brown was sort of like a gateway drug to mysteries in general, to the genre of mysteries, and from there you moved into Agatha Christie and then into Emily, moved into Minnette Walters and you both talked about the Cat who series.
Speaker 1:I don't know the author of those, lillian Jackson Braun, what she said author of those, lillian Jackson Braun, what she said.
Speaker 2:And then you told us a specific story that you went back and read, that stuck in your head, about the case of the secret recipe featuring Beauford Twitty and his potato museum.
Speaker 3:I just gotta say just chef's kiss for Donald Sobel's naming skills Like Bugs, meany, beauford, twitty.
Speaker 2:That's just, meh, just, and I have to say it's. I also noted I wrote this down while you were talking, adam, because I thought it was so dear that, like even the way you talk about it, you sort of use this like 1960s kids language. You said they have to constantly get out of hot water because big bugs pin something on them. Who says that, adam, what's the big?
Speaker 2:immersed in the world I'm naming this I'm gonna meta commentary this for a minute. The reason I wrote it down? Because I found it so delightful that you were so steeped in the language that even the way you were telling us about it, you used the language of the boy detective genre to explain to us this like recurring pattern, which I just I just found that really adorable. One of the things, though, that you named that was so delightful to child Adam and child Emily and I didn't read it was the way that Donald Sobel sort of actually didn't just include all of the details you needed, but explicitly said to see how Encyclopedia Brown solved this turn to page, and you got to sort of like go back to see where the thing that was the clue that broke the whole case open was laid out and sort of like check your math answers, which was pretty cool and also sort of taught you how to be good storytellers, like how to make sure that the data that you included, the details that you included, actually were moving the narrative forward, that you curated, in adam's word, the appropriate details, not just for detail's sake, but actually to advance the story, which was pretty great, and then, as an like looking back on it, realizing that life doesn't work like that. We can't in our lives, sort of like solve the case and turn back to page 119 to see where he said the thing that made everything like exposed the mystery. It's just not how life works. Sometimes mysteries are unsolvable when the stakes are higher than a missing potato. And like fate gave you this book by Joe Neely, the Boy Detective Fails.
Speaker 2:That had been a play that you then composed music for and have presented as like a way to take that genre and that feeling of certainty that we had as children and really problematize it and really say to the audience and to yourself, like, does life really work like this? I don't think that it does and I think there's really something interesting about human nature or at least American culture. I'm not willing to say if it's universal or cultural, but there's something about audiences now, today, in 21st century America, that say no, thank you. I don't want to ask that question, I want the answer. Give me the answer. So I think that's an important lesson that you learned. You and Joe learned about storytelling.
Speaker 2:So there's a lot more that's in there that we didn't quite unpack in a lot of these cases, like Encyclopedia Brown and Billy Joe Jive that I was mistaking for Encyclopedia Brown had this female sidekick who was the muscle, which is sort of an interesting like piece of this trope that I think we could probably do a whole nother episode about the gender dynamic in that. Sure, I think your and joe's story I'd love to maybe offline we can talk about, like the fact that the sidekick was a sister and how that changes that gender dynamic as a sibling relationship and the fact that when her brother left she ended up taking her life. What is that? There's a whole bunch of questions that I've got there that we don't have time to get into, but I just think there's so much baked into this genre that we've been trained to understand the shape of that. When you poked holes in that shape and said maybe it doesn't actually work like this in the real world, audiences were confused and unhappy. What am I forgetting that we lifted up here?
Speaker 3:oh, emily, you talked about the black and white thinking and the and the desire for things to like mean one thing, yeah yeah, well and Well and kind of how curation like that's how Adam described it is like we want, like it's not just that we have these narratives and storytelling where, okay, you know, you go into a story and you're like I want it to have a tidy little bow at the end, but it's more global than that. It's that we want to very easily be able to say like I'm on the right side of history because I'm doing X. And we want to be able to say like okay, I have made the right decision. Dust off my hands, I'm done, I don't have to think about it anymore from things like Encyclopedia.
Speaker 3:Brown is that there is one correct answer and then you can be done and close the book and move on. And I think that's great for 10-year-olds, but I don't think a lot of people don't necessarily move on from that and you know they don't read that boy detective fails when they're in their 20s or older.
Speaker 2:Right. I think the other thing is that you just reminded me of is the fact that we bring our expectations to it, and Donald Sobel taught us like rewarded us for having those expectations kind of play out, you know, like if we pay close enough attention, if we do the work, then we'll get the right answer and our expectations will be and we get that dopamine spike. And so then, as adults, when what we expect to happen doesn't happen, it's disappointing.
Speaker 1:I think one other interesting thing that came up was that both of these kinds of stories have value, that there is value to the stories that give you the answer and feel satisfying in that way, and there's also value to stories that upend that expectation, and I think that's part of the messiness of life that we're getting at, that both of those ideas have value and both should coexist, and one doesn't cancel out the other, which I think is interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you for naming that, because in fact I would argue that without Encyclopedia Brown there is no Boy. Detective Fails.
Speaker 1:Sure yeah.
Speaker 2:And without Boy Detective Fails, we have an incomplete picture of Encyclopedia Brown's inhabiting or that trope's inhabiting of the real world.
Speaker 3:Yeah, my favorite professor in college who I took a creative writing class with, he talked about how the best short stories they end by closing, like they close inward, and then the best novels end by opening outward. And I'm thinking of one of the best novels I've read in the past few years was called the Lamplighters by Emma Stonex, and it's a little like the Giver in that the end of the novel it's really ambiguous, what the heck happened. So it's similar where it's just like you don't have answers and it kind of doesn't matter because that's not the point. The point of the story was not to get answers, because it's about these three lighthouse keepers who disappeared and there's no way of knowing what the heck happened to them. And that's okay because it's about the journey, the narrative of what they left behind and all of these things. That, I think, is also like considering the fact that none of these Encyclopedia Brown mysteries were a book long mystery, like they were each a two minute mystery, so they end.
Speaker 3:David Lynn said they closed in instead of opening out Well, adam.
Speaker 2:how can listeners learn more about you and your work?
Speaker 1:Oh gosh, I have a website, adamguancom, and also I'm sort of most active on Instagram as far as social media goes, and my handle on Instagram is guanster G-W-O-N-S-T-E-R, so that's probably a good place to see what I'm up to.
Speaker 2:Cool, and we will link to those in our show notes. And then next week Em right in time for 4th of July, Mm-hmm.
Speaker 3:I'm bringing my deep thoughts on Independence Day, which you had not seen until, like last year, which still blows my mind. It's more than last year now, but it has been a while. It's since covid.
Speaker 2:Ridiculous, ridiculous yeah, and as we'll get into in our next episode, it was kind of a um validation of muppets from space for me, because there's a scene where they parody independence day in muppets from space that I didn't know it was a parody until I saw Independence Day. I was like, oh, oh, muppets from Space, yes, yes, I do have a podcast about pop culture friends. Yes, I do. All right, well, I look forward to hearing your deep thoughts about Independence Day next week. We'll see you then. Adam, thank you so much for joining us. It was great to see you again.
Speaker 1:Of course you as well.
Speaker 2:This show is a labor of love, but that doesn't make it free to produce. If you enjoy it even half as much as we do, please consider helping to keep us overthinking. You can support us at our Patreon there's a link in the show notes or leave a positive review so others can find us and, of course, share the show with your people. Thanks for listening. Our theme music is Professor Umlaut by Kevin MacLeod from incompetechcom. Find full music credits in the show notes.
Speaker 3:Thank you to Resonate Recordings for editing today's episode.
Speaker 2:Until next time, remember pop culture is still culture, and shouldn't you know what's in your head?