Guess what mango's that will. So when you were growing up, was your dad just full of dad jokes? Ah, so many dad jokes, Like he made a lot of puns. But he also did this thing where he would just repeat, like Dana Carvey catchphrases like he loved a SNL so so he'd like do his George Bush in an Indian accent,
and it would just make us grown. I love the idea of your dad in an Indian accent doing an impression of Dana Carvey doing an impression of George Bush or whatever it was, the church lady, whatever it was, church lady, Well, my dad was right there with him, and he is still full of these dad jokes. And in fact, I think part of the fun of having my kids grow up around my parents is actually getting to see them react to the dad is of dad jokes.
And if you would have asked them, like which one sticks out the most to them, it would probably be when we see my parents on New Year's Day and they know this is coming. As soon as we pull up in the driveway, he's gonna be waiting right there to say, I haven't seen you all year. And of course you know they roll their eyes, but they love every second of it. I know. So I I remember my dad making some horrible joke knowingly like about um.
I think it was about mc Hammer's pala being called mc screwdriver or something, you know, I knowingly mess up lyrics or like do the floss dance wrong or whatever, you know, just to get a reaction like that, ad Dad from my kids because it's the best. Do you think that if you did the floss dance correctly that it would be any less embarrassing for them? I'm pretty sure doesn't matter. But you know what, Mango, there's actually
good news for all of us dads. It actually turns out there appears to be benefits of these corny jokes. So there really fun article from the Telegraph in the UK a couple of years ago, and it was looking at a few different studies on this. But the author of the piece, his name was Rob Kimp. He put it this way. He says, by playing with words, dads engage their kids and the flexibility of language, encouraging them
to think about words too. And this other research showed that the jokes actually helped build these stronger relationships and and in some ways may even help fathers cope with their kids growing up. Huh. Well, whether the science behind all this is sound or not, I'm in full support of this theory me too. As you know, it's Father's Day this weekend, so we thought we'd share some other fun facts in honor of all the great dads in our lives and all the other dads out there. So
let's dive in. Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and is always I'm joined by my good friend Mangues Ticketer, although today Mango is joining me from the always Friendly Mouth Media Studios in New York City. We always is love recording there whenever
we're in the city. So Mango, I hate that you're missing this here because the man on the other side of the soundproof glass with a sharpie and a drawing pad holding up one dad joke after another to the glass. That's our friends and producer Tristan McNeil. So what's the latest one? It says, Uh, he's holding one up that says, what's brown and sticky? A stick? I mean, it doesn't get any more. Well, don't think I'm missing out on this, because he just texted me spring is here. I got
so excited I wet my plants. That's terrible. You know, the guy doesn't even have kids, but he's actually better at dad jokes than we are. But jokes, I'm not that surprised, to be honest with you. All Right, Well, let's keep the dad thing going. So what's your first factor the day, Mango? So I think you can probably predict for I'm gonna go with the first fact here. It's gonna be an animal fact, isn't it. Yeah. So,
so here's the thing. I feel like we've all heard about how incredible like those emperor penguins are just like protecting the eggs and keeping them warm. And then you've got this fact about seahorses because the males are actually the ones who get pregnant. But I actually want to talk about a different creature, and that's the clown fish. Yeah, it's because their paternal instincts are so strong they'll even
look after eggs that aren't their's. And and this happens to be because of a hormone similar to oxytocin, which is, you know, that love hormone that makes humans want to be loving dad's And what they found in clownfish. Is that their paternal instincts are so intense that you could actually take a male seahorse and just drop a bunch of their eggs from another nest near the clownfish, and he'd actually protect them. He'd protect them, You've cleaned them,
fan them, all of that, just like they were his own. Wow. I would assume this would just apply to fish eggs, like if you drop some chicken eggs underwater. But but but let's think about other fish. Like other fish wouldn't do this, No, I mean most of the fish species would just eat the eggs. Well, I knew you would start with an animal fact, but that is a good one. I feel like we have to at least acknowledge the inspiration for Father's Day, and that's manned by the name
of William Jackson Smart. Smart was a Union soldier in the Civil War, and several years after the war, Smart's wife died, leaving him with his daughter, Sonora, who was sixteen at the time, and her five younger brothers. Well. Sonora was so inspired by her father's dedication to them that, after attending a Mother's Day celebration at her church back in nineteen o nine, she decided if there's a day to recognize mothers, there should be one to recognize fathers.
And as she put it several years after his passing, I remember everything about him. He was both father and mother to me and my brothers and sisters. So I'm also going to talk about a dad from way back, and actually I'm gonna go way way back to a father who was willing to forgive, and that's Charlemagne, who was pretty busy doing whatever the Holy Roman emperor did during the early Middle Ages, and apparently one of those
things was having twenty children. But despite having so many children, Charlemagne was insistent that his kids be well educated, whether they were his sons or daughters, and some of his kids were born to wives and some to concubines. But his oldest son, unfortunately known as Pepin the Hunchback, was eventually passed over to be the next in line to rule, and this was likely because he was considered to be illegitimate. Well, this didn't sit well with Peppin, and he and a
few others conspired to assassinate Charlemagne. So you think that they would have all been put to death, right, But instead the emperor did something merciful, and he decided to spare him and instead sent him off to a monastery for the rest of his life. Wow, such a forgiving dad. That is wild. And twenty kids, that's just unbelievable. All right, well, I'm going to hop on over to the world of
pop culture. And as we know, ron Howard has been in the news a lot recently, both directing solo and of course he's also the executive producer and the narrator of one of the funniest shows ever arrested Development. And I'm not sure anyone has had more of an interesting career in TV and film than Ron Howard. But the world first got to know little Ronnie Howard when he was just six years old in his role as Opie
to Tailor. And if you've ever seen the show, you remember that iconic opening scene when Opie and Andy are just walking along that dirt path holding their fishing poles. You remember this, right, yeah, of course, every time I think about it makes me want to whistle. Right. Well, you probably also remember the part where Opie picks up
a rock and tosses it into the water. I'm not sure why, but apparently this was an important part of the scene to the director, because it turns out Opie wasn't quite strong enough or coordinated enough to get the rock all the way to the water, because it's not like it was that far away. So they tried a couple of times, and both times the rock fell short
of the water. So what they did was they had a prop man hide behind a bush, and when Opie through the next one, the assistant director then yelled throw it, and the prop man tossed another rock the rest of the way so that it would splash in the water. And so that's why if you're watching closely, and you may have noticed this before if you've been watching really closely, but you'll see a bit of gravity defiance in that lag from the throw to to the splash. So I'm
totally going back and watching this online now. And unrelated to this, despite all that Ron Howard is accomplished, it's hard for me not to immediately think of one of his appearances on Saturday Night Live. I mean, you know, we're both longtime SNL fans, and and this was back in the Eddie Murphy days. I actually already know exactly
where you're going with this. Yeah, when Murphy mixed up two of his most famous characters, Opie Taylor and then Richie Cunningham from Happy Days, and then called him Opie Cunningham. And then he proceeded to try and get the studio audience to chant Opie Cunningham. So great. Alright, So, so what do you have next? Well, I also have one from the world of pop culture, but I think I'm gonna save it and instead talk about the record for
the oldest person to father a child. Now, they have not surprisingly been several claims to this title, since it's often really difficult to verify the date of birth for people born a century ago. But the one that seems at least pretty close to accurate is an Indian man by the name of rum Groov who had his first child at the age of ninety four. And I say first child because he had his second and ninety six, and I believe he's still alive at the age of
a hundred two ish. That is incredible. Wow. Yeah, And he's kind of the poster boy or poster old man from vegetarianism, because that's actually what he credits for his quote, stamina and virility. You remember how you were a vegetarian for so long. I mean, you're mostly vegetarian these days, but you've been vegetarian for years, but your diet consisted of I would guess. I actually, scientifically, i'd put the
estimate at six was McDonald's French fries. And then, of course we learned that they've been cooked in animal fat for all of those years, which is a for effort, right, I guess. All right, Well back to history. So did you know that the term Founding Fathers wasn't actually coined until the twentieth century. So the term first appeared in a speech by Warren G. Harding. This was, of course, the same man who won on his inspiring campaign slogan a return to normalcy. I feel like get goose bumps
just hearing that phrase. Yeah, me too. Well, anyway, in his nineteen twenty acceptance speech, he said it was the intent of the Founding Fathers to give this republic a dependable and enduring popular government. But even after that, the term wasn't really that common until Kenneth Bernard Umbright published the book it was called Founding Fathers, Men who shaped our tradition. Okay, well, we each have one more fact to go. But before we get to that, let's take
a quick break. Welcome back to part time Genius, where we're sharing facts about father's Okay, well, so what's your last fact of the day. All right, Well, you know, I was curious to look at which culture has put a greater emphasis on father spending time with their children, and it was really interesting to read about the Acca Pygmy people in Central Africa. And this was for a
couple of reasons. So first, a few studies have shown that of fathers spend more time with their infant children than any other society, with one study showing that they have their infants within arms reach nearly fifty of their time now. But another thing that was interesting to me just in general about the Aca is just how interchangeable the male and female roles are. In fact, they almost
don't have male and female roles. So sometimes the women will hunt and the men will take care of the children. Sometimes it's the reverse, sometimes the men will prepare meals while the women are preparing the next camp, and of
course you know vice versa. That's really interesting. All right, Well, for my last fact, as promised, I'm gonna go back to pop culture and a couple of years ago, g Q had this online poll slash tournament where they were trying to determine the greatest dad in TV history, and the final four came down to Uncle Phil from the Fresh Prince Tim the to a man Taylor J. Pritchett for Modern Family, who by the way, beat out himself
as Al Bundy just to get there. And and then there was Homer Simpson and Uncle Phil ended up winning. And and yes, he was, of course a good dad. But I actually think I agree with the g Q writer John ort Ved who wrote of Homer quote, he takes a night job at the quickie Mart so he can afford a pony for Lisa. He sends Bart to summer camp, even when Bart fails to make the grades of creed upon to earn the indulgence. He gives up his dream job at a bowling alley so that he
can afford to support a third child. I mean, for as much of a goofball as Homer Simpson is, it's obvious he loves his kids. Oh there's no doubt about that. So I would wish upon all of us that may we all have the dedication of the Akka Dads and the sacrifice of Homer Simpson so you know, I was going to give the fact Off Trophy to you for that last fact it was a good one, but then you know, I thought maybe we should give it to all the dad's out there for Father's Day. But you know,
I got the same angle. I don't know, if you've been watching Tristan these last few days over there with these sea monkeys he's been raising on his desk, if you caught a glimpse of this at all, I have, and you can see how proud he is of each and every sea monkey, every single one of them, and only about half of them are dad at this point, so he's just doing a great job. So here's to Tristan, and happy Father's Day to our dads and all the
fathers and father figures out there. Thanks again to Mouth Media for hosting me today, and thanks to Eve's Jeff Coche for always helpful research. And we'll be back with a full length episode on Wednesday.