Mark and Toddcast

In 1993, TV news studios started receiving calls from kids who opened their Barbies and GI Joe dolls for Christmas only to discover Barbie shouting militaristic slogans and GI Joe talking about shopping. Later parodied on The Simpsons, this bit of "culture jamming" has its origins right here in Portland (which also involves ipecac, mashed potatoes, and vomiting at a Dan Quayle appearance). All that, and much more on this week's episode.

It's nice to find a library that has every book. But what if there's a library with every book ever printed, but also every sentence, paragraph, and page that could ever be written in the future? It's a heady concept, and it's called "The Library of Babel," which has more "books" than atoms in the entire universe. It's a lot, so join us this week as we crack the book open on this fascinating subject.

And if you thought those three things weren't enough, we also dive into sending the "essence of humanity" to the moon, Oregon's "devil comet" and Dark Sky Sanctuary, giant hybrid sheep, and Deez Nuts get arrested.

Pressed into the asphalt of Philadelphia, Boston, Richmond, Kansas City, and even Santiago and Barcelona are these mysterious tiles talking about Kubric, resurrection, and Jupiter. What are they? Where did they come from? And do they mean anything? Take a dive into the weird world of the Toynbee Tiles. Also, another successful pilot project for Universal Basic Income, violent crime in the US is dropping, measles outbreaks in Florida, and a woman has maggots rain down on her during a flight. Whee!

After an entire year of waiting, the Madonna concert finally happened! Take a ride with Mark and Todd as they travel to Seattle to catch Madonna's fantastic Celebration Tour on Part 2 of Mark and Todd's Big Adventure!

In this mostly real-time episode, Mark has a surprise adventure for Todd to celebrate both their birthdays, which ends up being quite the ride. Get to the choppa!

It was sort of the Segway before the Segway: a commuter monorail system balanced by a series of gyroscopes. While this innovation never took off, there are still modern-day companies working to revive the concept. Find out more this week, along with an apocalypse of cicadas, ungrateful fans sue Madonna, cold Tesla batteries, video proof that plants communicate with each other, Portland's biggest eyesore buildings being sold, and controversy around Bobi, the Guinness Record holder of "world's oldest dog."

Everyone has heard of the famous Stanford Prison Experiment, which purported to show that anyone could become a monster warden or beaten-down prisoner in the matter of a week. But what if that whole experiment was kind of bullshit? This week we take apart the experiment, and discuss news including the end of the beloved Fruit Stripe gum, federally rescheduling marijuana, the rich owning 90% of stocks, and the feel-good story of the week: Bill O'Reilly's books being removed from Florida schools.

This week we blow up a story about one of the most famous non-famous people in the world: Treb Heining, whose work with balloons has transformed, well, ballooning, I guess. Hear his wonderful story (the ups and the downs), as well as news stories about the new Portland waterfront skate park, a new study about the regret rate of transition surgeries, things Portland were in the top 10 for in 2023, a pastor tries to deep fry a McDonald's employee, and more. Happy new year, weirdos!

It's that time of year again - let's go back and revisit Mark's top-of-show Dad Jokes for 2023. Happy new year!

This week Todd welcomes Dave Baehler of the NotNerd Podcast to give a final news roundup up the year! Join us as we tackle news about the "holy grail" of male contraception, ChatGPT gets seasonal affective disorder, First Thursdays at the Portland Art Museum, Big Pink's new security robot, Google's top searches of 2023 (and forever), a rare pair of Nike's gets donated, and more. Happy holidays!

Looking for a fun holiday excursion or something to do with out-of-town folk? Why not take a tour of some of Portland's finest hand-made chocolatiers? Mark takes us on a first-hand journey -- with samples! -- to some of the best. All that, as well as a look at "Greedflation," retail stores lying about consumer theft, PlayStation takes your purchased movies back, Oregon's first humanoid robot company, Texas wants to leave the union (so do it already, Texas!), "rizz," a new rhino at the Oregon zoo, and someone gets assaulted by a sausage. It's a Christmas miracle!

This week Todd is joined by co-host of the NotNerd podcast Nate Heath to discuss everything from flying hamburgers, to Portland's new ice rink, "super pigs," woolly mammoth resurrection, Banksy's identity, retailers lying about theft issues, and a closer look at some of the successful Universal Basic Income experiments happening all over the United States. Be sure to subscribe to the NotNerd podcast wherever you get your podcasts!

Fonts didn't suddenly spring into existence with the word processor in the 1980s. In fact, fonts have been around since people have been writing things down, back to 8500 BC. Take a ride with us to see how we go from cuneiform to comic sans on this episode.

From tracing apps to stranded astronauts to MDMA to Lloyd Center to ABBA to Best Buy to Netflix to Twinkies to the Jantzen Beach carousel to black holes to photons to Costco selling out of gold bars, I think we pretty much cover everything in this episode.

The human body is 2.5% metal, which we need in order to produce electricity, heal our skin, and make us move and think, among other things. We're not saying we're robots, but we're sort of robots. This week we dive into the weird world of metals, and how exactly our bodies need and use them to pilot the other 97.5% of us that's an organic, goopy pile of flesh and guts.

This week we discuss both the question "What exactly is radiation?" as well as the history of the most ubiquitous word on the entire planet: "OK." Where did it come from? How did this tiny word take over the whole world? All that, plus lots of Portland news, and angry Furries fighting on beaches. Enjoy, ok?

After discussing how submarines surface and dive (in other words, "how do you store buoyancy?) and our one-of-a-kind "Just the Headlines!" segment, we take a look into the history of red food dye, and what to look out for if you want to avoid the "bad" kind of food coloring. Spoilers: You want the dye made from smashed up bugs grown on a cactus. Now go paint the town red!

This week we veer from Netflix to Amazon to Silver Falls to asking the most important question: wtf is going on with TikTok's new NPC trend? We try to make sense of it all on this week's show. Enjoy it like ice cream yum yum.

Todd recaps his recent vacation to eastern Idaho, Craters of the Moon, and Mark's old Navy training area, and recent science/Portland news. Then we take a look into the real-life Johnny Appleseed. Was he a mythical Paul Bunyan story, or was he a real person? Find out this week.