Guess what, mango, what's that will? It's November, and you know what that means?
National Saxophone Day is coming off.
That is true, I've seen all the fun holidays coming up, but that's not actually what I'm thinking. The percentage of people sporting mustaches is about to rise significantly. That's your clue.
Yeah, that's right, it's November.
Yeah.
I was looking at some of the history of November and I thought the origin story from Adam Garone. He's the chief mo bro as he's listed and the co founder of the November Foundation. I thought it was pretty funny as he talked about how the idea started. This was back in two thousand and four. It all came up over a few beers. And I don't know if you've ever seen his Ted talk from twenty eleven, but
he explains it this way. He says, it was my brother, me and a maid having a few and the conversation turned to seventies fashion, how everything seems to be coming back in style. And after a few more beers, we said, what about the mustache? Why hasn't that comeback? Then one more beer and it was whatever happened to the mustache? And so The day ended with the challenge to bring the mustache back. A year or so later, they decided to let the Mustache Movement raise some money specifically for
men's health. This includes prostate and testicular cancer research, and they've now raised more than half a billion dollars since then. Half a billion dollars? Is that not incredible?
That is crazy? So is this the year you're gonna rock like Freddie mercury mustache?
You know, I'm thinking more of it like a William Howard taft handlebar? Is gonna be my style this year? Either way, Today feels like the right day to share some of our favorite facts about mustaches. So let's get started. Hey,
their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend Man Guesh hot ticketter, and on the other side of the soundproof glass, somehow miraculously sporting the most incredible Wilford Brimley wall Stash is our friend and producer Tristan McNeil. How in the world do we not notice that you grow in a mustache so impressive? And we're also joined by two of our friends here in the house. Stuffworks family.
We've got Eves Jeff Coote. You guys recognize hers as the one we acknowledge in the credits being responsible for getting the show to your ears. She knows the magic codes to make the show appear wherever you listen to your podcast. So welcome Eves. Yeah, something like that, Thanks, something like that. We've also got Alex Williams. He's on the audio engineering team with Tristan, so I'm guessing he's just as surprised as we are at that massive mustache. But welcome Alex.
I am always surprised and impressed by Tristan mcneail.
The legend. All right, well let's get started. So now neither of our guests have mustaches, but both claim to know a ton about them, so we thought we would give them a shot. You ready to kick us off? Eves y, you get fact number one? Go for it.
So, mustaches surprisingly have protective health benefit.
Really, yeah, they do.
So they block some of the effect of ultra violet radiation from getting to your skin, lowering the risk for skin cancer. So usually you know U v radiation that gets to your skin can cause skin cancer because it damages the DNA and your skin cells. And mustaches can help a lot with that because they reduced the radiation exposure to a mirror one third.
Wow. So if you could just have a mustache all over your face, which is kind of like a beard, I guess.
Yeah, I was gonna say, I don't think that's called a mustache at that point, but.
That three inches you are super protected. That's that's impressive, all right, Fact number one, good job Eaves. All right, Alex, what you got for us?
Grab show? Marx?
Okay, what do you think of?
What do you think of for gratcho Mars?
I think it was like the glasses with the attached nose, yes, and the attached mustache that you can just kind of put on as a totally like for Halloween for instance, Well didn't really have a mustache. Well what he sometimes had a mustache, but that mustache is iconic.
One was crease paint. No, it's a big smear of grease paint. Yeah.
Sometimes he would grow like a little thin mustache, but then he would paint grease paint over it for his when he was in character, when he was doing a performance.
Oh that's crazy.
Apparently when he was doing five vaudeville shows today, he stopped using like like what you normally think of like a little like glue on furry mustache because the glue was wearing away his upper lip. He said, quote, it was becoming progressively thinner, which is disgusting.
The upper lip. That is.
So when you say, yeah, the upper lip.
Okay, so when you say a Groucho Marx mustache, which you really mean, is like two mustaches simultaneously existing, like a real one and a grease paint one.
So I thought that was pretty interesting to remember that from my costume.
Next.
Yes, yes, all right, well done, All right, mango, you got a first fact.
Yeah, definitely. So after a show on the Guinness Book, I've been kind of obsessed with records, and you know, as are my people. We talked about this on the show, but no one seems to gain as much satisfaction out of being in the Guinness Book as Indians, and so it isn't that much of a surprise. But the person with the longest mustache ever is this guy named ram Singh Chalahan who sports a fourteen foot long mustache. Oh wow, yeah, so so here's his quote, right quote. To me, the
mustache means everything. It is priceless and so maintenance on his lipman is no small thing. He spends up to two hours a day washing, cleaning, grooming, and brushing his stash, and because it's so long, to avoid tripping on it, he actually wraps it around his neck a few times. I know, it's like a scarf.
He could protect so many people from skin cancer. That's really impressive. I was also wondering where you were going with my people. I wasn't sure what that was gonna be.
Yeah, Delawareans, it's actually Indians.
Good job. Well, you're not going to be surprised by my first fact, because, as you know, I've always been a fan of Salvador Dolly's mustache, and I thought that was a pretty funny quote. In nineteen fifty four, in an interview, when he was asked whether his mustache was intended to be a joke, Dolly actually responded by saying it was the most serious part of his personality. He
even wrote a book about his mustache. It was called Appropriately Dolly's Mustache, and it contains twenty eight black and white photographs of Dolly with various phases of his mustache. So it's important if you haven't checked this out before you need you need to see it.
There's a there's a crazy story from Esquire, I guess, like a few years ago in the magazine. In the editor's note, they talked about how these three editors were an elevator with a guy with a handlebar mustache, and after he got off, they decided together that the ironic mustache was over.
It was just it was just a serious great Now was the moment?
Oh?
Wow?
Nice? All right, So that's my Dolly fact. What do you got, Eves?
So I have another Dolly fact?
Oh you do? It's worthy of two facts.
Also about his mustache Oka.
Surprisingly, yeah, I should hope, so saying that this is about mustache.
Yeah. So he died in eighty nine, but earlier this year a woman came forward claiming that she was his daughter. OK. So they exhumed his body to get DNA samples to do that test. And when they exhumed his body, they found that his amazing mustache was still intact.
No way.
I don't know if the wax was still there or not, but the hair was definitely still there. And the reason for that is the keratin in your hair is pretty tough. It can last for a lot of years, you know, once you're in the grave. Then Balmber actually said that it was a miracle, but it wasn't quite a miracle because it's actually just science.
I wonder how long that will last though, how much longer it will take for hair to break down?
Well, you know, the oldest corpse ever found with hair still attached on its body was nine thousand years old, So wow, I mean, I don't know if Dolly's will last that long.
To digg him back up in nine thousand years and see if there's still.
And what kind of stylish mustache tod that nine thousand year old corpse, I don't know.
It probably didn't happen. An we may have to create our own name for it.
It's unbelievable. Nine thousand years. That's really impressive. All right, good job, nice fact. They're eaves, all right, Alex, what you got for your last fact?
Well, on the subject of corpses, you can kill yourself shaving. Don't really shave very often. I probably will never again after I learned this. So Henry David Threw's brother John, who that he was very close with, died on New Year's Day and he was shaving on.
New Year's Day. Maybe it was part of his resolution.
Nicked his finger on his razor, got lockshaw and ended up dying because of her illnesses related to that. So Henry David Throw showed symptoms of lockshaw shortly after that, despite being no medical reason. He didn't have a cut or anything really, and it was thought that he was just a psychosomatic reaction to his brother dying.
Of Oh wow, that's pretty crazy.
Okay, you guys ever heard of Lord Canovin. He is the first man to die of the supposed King Tut's curse.
Okay, okay.
He also died due to shaving. Yeah, so this is if you weren't scared enough already. He had a mosquito bite and he sliced it open while shaving, went septic and he died because of that.
This all just got really dark. But that's impressive, good disgusting. This is why you don't shave.
I very infrequently do, and I probably won't anymore. Yeah, yeah, all right.
Good, good second fact, Mango, what's your last fact?
So this is a little lighter than Alex's fact here, but there are, of course, like lots of types of mustache paraphernalia. Out there for the mustache enthusiast. And and you know their mustache combes, their mustache brushes, tonics, waxes. But the best mustache gear I found online and Stacey took me off on this was the mustache spoon. Now have you guys heard of?
This is not so?
The mustache spoon was apparently patented in eighteen sixty eight, and it was carried around by Dandy's. And it's pretty clever. It's basically like a spoon with a little guard on top. It's like a half cover with a little hole in it that you can sip out of. And the whole point is to protect your elegant mustache curls from coming in contact with hot souper foods. And all I know is that if I was in the mustache spoon business, I'd be marketing the heck out of it in November.
Yeah, seriously, that seems like a worthy product. It's been since before nineteen hundred mm eighteen sixty eight. Okay, Well, I feel like we can't have an episode on mustaches without talking about Burt Reynolds, right, So I wanted to find a fact about Burt Reynolds, And actually I was curious why Burt Reynolds had grown a mustache in the first place. But you might remember this from his book called But Enough about Me. I'm sure we've all read this before.
Of course I read it well, I read it for today. For today.
Yeah, in preparation. Good, you're good at prepping for this. So he actually says that he grew it to differentiate himself from Marlon Brando. So apparently, earlier in his career, without the mustache, he apparently looked like Brando and people would follow him down the street thinking that he was the Godfather. So he decided to grow a mustache, and now you can't think of him without a mustache, right, ridiculous. It is a very specific reason. So anyway, good job
on your first facts. I don't know, Mango, we have to declare a winner at some point here. Do you have any Do you have any thoughts on this?
I like that Dolly's miracle mustache should I feel like that was the fact that it was most interesting.
That hair lasts that long, plus the fact these guys both had great facts, but the fact that Eve's is responsible for getting the show to people's ears and gets her a bonus point. So Alex congratulations on second place, and Eve's congratulations on taking home the trophy today.
I'm honored to have it.
I reject you're I reject.
It's the first time he's ever gotten contentious here in the ptg room. So thank you guys for listening today. We'll be back with a full length episode tomorrow