Megan's a little bit scary and she yells at Adolfo and I am quivering. The zombie cannibal vampire monster. Yes, a bunch of chuckleheads. I hope you don't have plans to spend time with literally anyone else. Text Me Back! Text Me Back! Text Me Back! Text Me Back at once. Why won't you text me back? Text. Text Me Back! Text Me Back! Megan! Welcome to Text Me Back! A podcast about and here's a new tagline suggestion from our Instagram comments. Stifling Men's Joy!
I'm Lindy West and I'm Megan Hatcher-Mays. Today on the show we're going to be talking about our problematic faves. We heard a rumor that podcasts become really popular if you share controversial, cancelable opinions. So we're going to weigh the pros and cons of some celebs turned religious fanatics that we unfortunately love for their current or previously showcased talent and you're going to cancel us over it unless we get scared and back down immediately.
And after that it's snake of the week! New snake just dropped. In the Amazon it's a huge deal and it's a huge snake and I'm going to tell you all the huge news. But first, tidings! Do you have them? tidings! First of all, sad news. Lindy and I are no longer in the same room together. And yet we have found ways to form community, 3000 miles away because we're gamers now, man. Lindy and Megan, couple of gamer girls. You're not new to this video game lifestyle. You're like a gamer girl.
That's true. You love video games. You love a little quest. Generally, I do not. I just want to play Rummy against a computer program named Alice or something. That's correct. Megan, although I also like to play Rummy against a computer program named Alice or something. But yeah, so I love video games. I've been trying to bully you into being into video games because I really love for us to make us start a Valley Farm together. Because what I like is to roam around and talk to my friends.
I like to meet a guy and see what he's up to. And I like to deliver a letter from his dead wife that I found in a burned hut. You know? I like that kind of stuff. There's like, truly nothing you want more than for me to like go in and ask a shopkeeper for a map to start our quest and to hand him the magic ruby in exchange for like three riddles that will save my life or whatever. Okay. You say that with a tone of voice that I don't love. Generally, I'm not trying to be judgmental.
I'm just like, I don't know what the... What does the shopkeeper want from me? I don't know how that wouldn't appeal what you just described. And if you're concerned that you're not going to know what the shopkeeper wants, they tell you. They billboard it. They put a little box. These modern video games, you cannot fail. They put a little box up in the corner that says, give the shopkeeper the carrot. Oh my God. That's right. Okay. Okay. You give your little map. There's a glowing dot.
You hover over the dot. It says bring carrot here. You walk there. You give him the carrot. He gives you the map. Sorry. Anyway, I'm just saying I want you to... I would love for you to broaden your mind at some point. But that brings us to kind of what we're talking about today because my mind has opened a little or reopened perhaps because you and I... accidentally got hooked on a quest game from the past. That's right. It's called Oregon Trail. They brought back Oregon Trail.
And I've been playing it and it's fun and it's so questy. It's so many shopkeepers. You know what I mean? So many riddles and rubies and gems or something. When people say that people like you say that they don't want to get into modern video games because there are two hard games from our childhood were hard to sell. So hard. A billion times harder than video games now.
Well, and the problem with Oregon Trail at the time and actually now is that like it was so arbitrary whether or not you made it to Oregon. It was like, oh, Bernadette tripped over a rock and died. Like, what? How did you not see that? By the way, growing up, I'd never made it to Oregon. Not once have I ever made it to Oregon. So I was like, I don't know. I want to replay it for the nostalgia, but it's, I know it's going to piss me off because I'm never going to make it to Oregon.
As many of you probably know, Oregon Trail is a very popular game, I think. I don't know among people who were 10 in 1992. They made us play it in school on antique computers in the library. The big old like eight by 10 floppy disc that you had to bust out and like jam it into the ancient computer. And it was fun as hell. Well, so it's not exactly the same as the Oregon Trail of our childhood. Like it has full color graphics and they, you know, all of the characters are fully rendered.
They're not just a green dot. And they're like sexy. Like the women are sexy. And it's, you know, it's a lot more complex like you have to sort of bargain with the game. And the thing that got me back into it is because Megan texts me and she's like, dude, I'm playing Oregon Trail, but I think I did it wrong because everyone in my party is dimwitted. And I was like, what on earth are you talking about?
Like I started that game a couple of months ago and it was boring, but everyone in my party wasn't dimwitted. Like how, yeah, you did mess it up. I don't know how I did it. It's okay. So here's what's different about the game. You can go into the store and you can pick your party and you, I guess I didn't know this at the time, but you can like swap out some of their characteristics.
So sometimes they're athletic, sometimes, sometimes they have hygiene issues, sometimes they're messy, which means they get stinky really fast on the trail. And then you're constantly having to change their clothes so they don't like stink to death. And also that their stinkiness can affect the morale of your party. Some of them are dimwitted. And that's the word that they use. And so while you're walking on the trail, it'll be like, Samuel parentheses dimwitted.
So I think the first time I did it, I accidentally had four dimwits in my party. And so one of them, Cheeto, I was like, she went to try to pick Harvest Some Berries to for like medicinal purposes. And she found a box of bullets underneath the bush and was like, I shall plant these bullets that will one day grow into a beautiful bullet tree. And the game was like Cheeto, parentheses dimwitted, thought she could grow a bullet tree. And then she found one word to be easy.
But out of it, it's up to you. It's so embarrassing. What if you had to hear the Oregon Trail narration of your own life? It would be like, Megan and Lindy, dimwether. No, no. The only thing I do want to say about the game just really quick is one of the big differences is when you first start the game, it says, there's almost like, there's like an acknowledgement at the top that's basically like, we want to acknowledge that the actual Oregon Trail was not an adventure. It was an invasion.
And for the first time, you can play as indigenous characters, except it's just like, why would this indigenous character be following the book of Manifest Destiny? Or I mean, the whole thing is just sort of weird. It's like, it's both nice and weird at the same time. And I just don't, I don't know. I think it's just mean to call anybody dimwitted in the game. Call them something else. Call them like inexperienced.
To high, I'm simply not sure that it is writing the wrongs of history to allow people to create a dim-witted indigenous woman who, who deserts the party because she is clinically forlorn from being too stinky. And then she drowns in the snake river. Okay. I want to stop you right there because I think the listeners are going to be like, ha, good joke, Lindy. It's not a joke. I was walking from Independence, Missouri to Oregon City, Oregon.
One of my players got clinically forlorn, like so forlorn that she could not continue. And that's what they call it. They don't call it a depressive episode. They call it forlorn. She got so forlorn that she left and she deserted the party and disappeared for the rest of the game. And then, and then, no, she, actually, that's not true. She came back when we were about to cross the snake river, but she was also a dimwit. So she was dim-witted and forlorn.
She was dim-witted and forlorn and couldn't figure out how to get the wagon across the snake river. And so it sank and she drowned. And I was like, well, I'm glad you made her way back to the party. Now you're gone. You dim-wit. My favorite thing in the game is that there's a cure for being forlorn. And it's that you have to buy a harmonica. And then when you play the harmonica for your forlorn party members, they cease to be forlorn. But then also the harmonica disappears.
It's a single use harmonica. And I'm like, I'm sorry. Was Chi-chu so dim-witted that she ate the harmonica? Thinking that that's how the harmonica would cure her? Did she think that the har- if she buried the harmonica, it would grow into a harmonica tree? That would actually be really helpful because there are not enough harmonicas in this game for how often people get forlorn. So I was having that thought. I was like, Chi-chu is getting clinically forlorn. I have to do something about this.
I'm looking everywhere for a harmonica. I didn't have one in my wagon. We were stopping at different outposts. And I was like, does anyone have a harmonica? I was like, I was like willing to trade dozens of pounds of fish that I had spent hours catching with my own bait. Peltz, a wagon, an axle. I was going to trade it all for a single harmonica. Just to keep Chi-chu happy. And nobody had one. Nobody had a harmonica from chimney rock to Oregon City. I was like, where are the harmonica?
I mean, make it honestly. Honestly, it's amazing because the 1980s Oregon Trail did not include the great harmonica famine of 1860 in the game. And that was actually a historical oversight. Yeah, it's really important to be true to history as we've talked about on this show. Chuck Grassley would be alarmed at the oversight in the original game. But here's the good news.
As I was mentioning, I don't think I ever made it to Oregon as a child one because that game took forever and two because it would just be like, you died. Don't worry about it. You're just dead now. Which I guess is, I don't know, probably how it actually was on the trail. Does out of nowhere you would die? They were trying to teach you about what it would really be like. It was like dare, you know? If you might think it's cool to walk from independence to Oregon City, but think again.
I don't think so. There's a little dose of real life. In trail to keep kids off the Oregon trail. Don't worry, I'm very lazy. I'm not going out there. I'm good. But guess what? This time I finally not with not with my dimwits, but I played it again and I made it. Oh my god. Two. A Willamette Valley. It was so exciting. And it was only three out of four because I did have a clinically four-learned member of my party in the second round who left.
By the way, sometimes the four-learned people leave and then they come back. They meet back up with you at a different fort or something and they'll be like, yeah, they'll be like, did you like my joke? Or I deserted you in the middle of the woods? I'm back now and I was like, it's not funny. It's not a good joke. Not funny. Not a good joke. So I had three out of four party members make it to Willamette Valley. In this case, it wasn't a deserter that took out one of my four.
It was one clean punch to the face by a trail robber. Oh, no. Was she frail? It was a heat. But yes, that's one of the characteristics that you can get stuck with. Either you're like your dimwitted or your frail or sometimes you can be too egotistical and then you become suspicious or something. Oh, yeah. I feel like that one hasn't really, I always picked that one. I feel like that has not harmed that much.
I did have one person who became too paranoid, she was so egotistical that she became paranoid. Yeah. Anyways, this guy was a missionary who's, who's stunk. He was a missionary with bad hygiene and a trail robber was like, give me all your money. And I was like, no. And then he punched Lawrence, the stinky missionary in the face and he died from one punch. And I was like, okay, well, rest easy, man. Wow. I'm going to carry your memory with us to the Willamette Valley. And we did. It was great.
Yeah. And then 200 years later, your descendants were killed by Antifa. Yeah. That's what's happening in the Willamette Valley, right? I think we've explained why this game is good. Here's why it's bad. Yeah, go on. And I know this is dear to your heart. You can't change people's names. Yeah. Which was the main entertainment value in the original Oregon Trail because that's kind of as far as you would get, they'd be like, okay, you have 20 minutes, play Oregon Trail.
And then you would get through, you know, you would name your characters, you would load your wagon and then the bell would ring. He had to do that in the new game. I know. There's no more asses dead. Ass has died of cholera. RIP. But fart. Died of dysentery. And apt and to a beautiful life. Next up, we heard that getting canceled is the best way to score a hit podcast. So we've come up with the worst possible opinions just for you.
We're weighing the pros and cons of some of our problematic faves. Megan, guess what? We are doing the show live. That's right. I won't have a fun fancy jacket from Sacks Off Fifth. But we will have games and laughter and some secret special friends maybe. So get your butts over to town hall Seattle for any March 15th at 730 to 930 PM. Get your tickets at KOW.org slash events or look for the link in our show notes today.
Looking to dive into even more fascinating stories, then check out Missing Pages. The award-winning podcast praised as a must listen by New York magazine and The Washington Post. In the brand new season, hosted by me, NPR Books Critic, Beth Ann Patrick, we uncover the biggest and sometimes messiest tales from the book world, with the help of special guests like best-selling author Jody Paco. Hear about litigious We're Wolf fan fiction, The Rise of Book Bands, and so much more. Don't miss it.
And listen to Missing Pages wherever you get podcasts. Megan and I have been very clear that we both support cancel culture. Indeed I love it. Yes. I love it. So it doesn't love a good calling of the cancelables, you know what I mean? Yeah, also it's fake. Okay, they're fine. They're all fine. No one in the history of cancel culture has been successfully canceled. So I don't think so. However, we also love bad people. Yes, very much so. Maybe they're talented.
Maybe they were previously good before and then they became bad, but we want to keep the before stuff. And maybe we're only on earth one time. What do we think about that Megan? I think you nailed it, my good best friend. Here's the thing. I love the ones on not too long ago and we were like, how do we make our podcasts become more popular? Yeah, and she was like, you should have a lot of cancelable opinions and I was like, hmm, interesting, interesting.
That was literally Taylor's one and only piece of advice. We were like, Taylor, how do we make our podcasts successful? And she said, make people mad at you. You need to start drama. Wow, no. If you don't want to make shrimp in an airplane bathroom, you need to, you need to just create some bait basically. Okay. I love canceled on the app. So there you have it. Today here's what we're going to do. We're going to dig into our problematic faves.
People, men mostly, who are horrible and who, unfortunately, I can't get enough of and neither can Lindy. Are we going to win you over? No, definitely not. But it's important to live our truths with our beautiful text me back of lights and so that's what we're going to do. Let's get into it. Let's talk about our problematic faves. You know what, Megan? This segment? It's hashtag relatable. It's hashtag aspirational. It's hashtag real. That's right. Hashtag girl boss girl talk.
That's what we're doing. Letter rip. I love, I love Tom Cruise. And I don't care who knows it. I don't care who knows it. Tom Cruise is if science took all the charisma in the world and turned it into a powerful gas and then put that gas into a person and that person was Tom Cruise. You know what I mean? You're saying he's a balloon. Yes. He's unpoppable. He's a helium balloon of charisma. I am not romantically interested in Tom Cruise.
When I say I love him, I'm not trying to kiss his little mouth, not trying to hug him in the night. I don't believe you, but continue. I don't want to kiss Tom Cruise. I just want to watch 57 mission impossible in a row. This man Tom Cruise is out here doing it. He is doing his own stunts and not in the dumb way where it's like it's mostly just him hanging from a wire. No. This man is hanging from a helicopter payload with his bare hands.
Okay. This man is parachuting off a bridge, a real bridge on a motorcycle. By the way, they filmed that in Norway, your ancestral home because the Norwegians get it, man. Yeah. I was there. I was there when they filmed it. I was there. Tom Cruise is rock climbing. He's scaling the Burj Khalifa and he's doing all of that for me. He cares about my entertainment. He wants me to be happy. This man, you know what's going to happen?
One day we're going to get a headline that's like Tom Cruise dies while tap dancing on the edge of the Eiffel Tower because that's just what he's about. He's going to die making a movie and we're all going to clap. Do you know what I mean? This man is risking his life for our happiness. Okay. And that's why he's so popular. Do you know what I mean? Also, one last thing, Tom Cruise famously loves the movies.
So he's always making these PSAs that are just like him going, I'll see you at the movies. Well he like parachutes backwards out of a cargo plane into a speedboat. Do you know what I mean? I'm not going to get a use this shot. You have a very change and heavy holiday. We'll see you at the movies. That's only to try to convince people to go to the movies. Yeah. That's dedication, man. That's dedication, brother.
You know, if he really wants to get me to go to the movies, he should stop making commercials and just buy me some milk duds, man. Come on. He'll be a lot cheaper and a lot safer than hanging off the side of the world's tallest skyscraper. I saw that video. I saw that video where he goes off the ski jump on the motorcycle and then he parachutes into the ravine and straight into a movie theater actually. Yeah. And then it starts eating popcorn.
Actually he parachuted directly into the seat next to me while I was watching Mission Impossible Dead reckoning. And then you kissed and then you kissed in the dark. I know you did. No. Don't lie. I have not been preselected by Scientology to be his next wife. And I'm just saying, like the man is a charisma ball. But I think just really quickly, really critically, I feel like people kind of in some ways overestimate Tom's powers.
It's not just that he's very charismatic and that's why all of his movies are popular. Because a lot of his movies aren't popular. The thing is you have to cast Tom Cruise as a character with no emotional depth. And if you get that and you get him dangling by a single foot off the bottom of a helicopter, that's the money shot people. That's the money, that's where the money rolls in. You know what I'm saying? Anyway, your thoughts? I also think, I can't believe I'm going to say this.
This is not this kind of podcast, but he's also incredible in Magnolia. Oh my god. If you can cast him just right. This man is a, here's the thing with Tom Cruise. And I'm going to get to the cons. But this man is a movie star. Okay. That's what he is. Tell me about it. He's a movie star. He's a star of movies. You know? If you put him on a TV show, the TV would melt. You can't have him. He can't be contained. He needs to be powerful. He's too powerful for that.
But okay, there are some downsides to Tom Cruise. This is a person who is not popular to love, I think. Even though it is popular to love him because he's one of the most popular. The love story. Movie stars in the world. So this segment's kind of like when people are like, oh, I'm such a nerd. I love Star Wars. Like, yeah, you mean the most popular film franchise of all time? Like, oh, okay. The trillion dollar movie franchise. Okay. Oh, yeah. I'm not like other girls. I'm a dork.
Okay. But anyway, here's something about Tom Cruise. I think the major objection is that Scientology is very scary and bad. Tom Cruise is like, he's kind of their number one. And in a very real way. Like he's like at the top. I think they called him that. I think they might call him it. It is like a secret service code name. You know? It's like a creepy stuff.
And there's just a lot of creepy stuff that you can dig up like the thing where the church of Scientology like auditions, women to be Tom Cruise's wives. And then there's also the weird thing where the wife of the head of Scientology, Shelley Miscavige, she has disappeared. And then also here's another thing. Scientology has a lot of alien content in the belief system. And I want to be skeptical. However, okay, Tito the Tom Cruise's real last name is Mopo-Thair. Yes. Mopo-Thair.
And it's also the last name of his cousin who was on lost. And he wasn't in the manifest. And the spookiest moment in all of television history. And what kind of name is that? I have never seen that name before in my life. It sounds like a name that an alien made up. And by the way, while I'm at it, so does Miscavige. Never seen that name before in my life. And I feel like there is some part of me that's like you guys are from space. And I don't have anything to back that up.
I have not done any genealogical research. But I'm sure I could Google it in one second if I know what kind of names these are. But to my ears, they don't wear any bells. Martian. Yeah, they're from, I think maybe from Mars. Yeah. So that's the cons. Yeah. You make a lot of really good points. On the other hand, he scaled the Burj Khalifa wearing nothing but rock climbing shoes. For me. You know what I mean? Yeah, he did it for you. Yeah, he did it for you. That's true. It's hard to say.
Maybe you should rewatch Mission Impossible 5. It's really good. You know what I think about all the time is Mission Impossible 1, I think. There when one of the side kicks is riding on top of the elevator and then the villain makes the elevator go up really fast and there's like a claw that comes down from the ceiling and then it goes, right in his face. I can't believe you didn't, you don't remember that that was Emilio Estevez. Not Emilio Estevez?
Yes. Next time I've in Seattle, we'll watch Mission Impossible 1 together. The genuinely Scientology is very bad. I don't want to make light of it, but... The movies are really good. And I'm really sorry. Lindy, who's your problematic faith? Okay, my problematic faith. Everyone turned on this person and I get it. I get it. I get all the reasons. I mean, I'm excited for you to list them, but like, I totally get it. I don't even need you to list them.
This is less about a thing that I love now in my present day life and more about, I don't like it when people rewrite history to act like they always knew that a person was bad. You know? Like, I don't want to say this out loud, but I don't like when they say, oh, like Kanye has never made a good album or whatever. Like that's not true. It's not true. He's very bad now. That's true. He was always way overrated. He was always way overrated. Right. Unfortunately, not a factual statement.
It's not true. It's just simply not true. Okay, however, he's not my pick. I would never pick him. Red-airing. Don't sit there on your little tuffet and look me in the eye and tell me that Chris Pratt was not funny on Parks and Recreation. Don't you dare. Shut the front door. You goobber, you little weasel. It's not factual. Yeah. Like, I get it. It's so fun to be like, never like Tim. Yeah. But you did. It's actually undislikable.
Yeah. The character of Andy Dwyer on Parks and Recreation is undislikable according to science. So sorry. Sorry, we asked the globes leading scientists and that's what they said. Like there's no better joke ever written, ever committed to celluloid than when Andy Dwyer is like, Leslie, I typed your symptoms into the computer. Leslie, I typed your symptoms into the thing up here and it says you could have network connectivity problems. Sorry, that is so funny.
And you might be listening to this thing into yourself. Oh yeah, well that was just the writers of Parks and Rec who I agree are very funny. No. No jerk, delicious. No way, man. That was a Chris Pratt improv original. He wrote that joke. He wrote the number one joke all time. Oh, your favorite comedian is Buster Keaton. Okay. What did he do? A house fell on him and he stood in the spot where a nerd calculated the window hole would fall. He got stuck in a clock or was that Charlie Chaplin?
I don't remember. Did he ever write anything as good? He wasn't even allowed to talk. It was a silent era. Did he ever write anything as good as I wipe and wipe and wipe and they're still poop. And I'll wipe and I'll wipe and I'll wipe 100 times still poop, still poop. Let me check that. It's like I'm wiping a marker or something. Sorry, no. Again, I got it. I got it. Look, a lot of people are like, well, he married Arnold Schwarzenegger's daughter. Yeah, you know what?
I like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Sorry. Yeah, he's cool too. I'm sorry. So popular action movie star, the history of cinema. I have to hate him as well. I mean, I'm sure people will send in lots of reasons why I'm supposed to hate all of these people and that's okay. You can. Send in all the negatives you want, all the reasons to hate these people that you want. I agree with you. I agree with you. We share an ethos. We are the same. I agree. And yet I just want to live in a place of honesty.
You know what I mean? Yeah. And absolutely. I haven't seen any of those Marvel movies. See the Marvel movies? Yeah. Well, that's the thing. I was like, oh, I never liked Chris Pratt. He would have never been cast in Guardians of the Galaxy if he was universally loathed by the public. Give me a break. I am here on my soapbox to make one point only, which is that don't come at me and tell me that he was not funny on Parks and Rec because he was. And people act like, oh, Tom Havreford is so funny.
Tom Havreford is not funny or the Andy. Mm-hmm. That's true. That's true. Not that everything has to be a contest. I hate when we pit men against each other. Oh my God. It's so true, Bestie. So true. Stop stifling the joy of men. Listen, I think I'm supposed to rebut you. Yeah. Rebut. Rebut, yeah. But my heart's not really in it if I'm being honest. Chris Pratt is really funny. Do I want to spend time with him? No. I don't. But, you know, for fairness, Sakes, I guess I'll share my cons.
Yeah. I like Tom Cruise. He attends a freaky little church that is deeply hateful. So that's not great. Anti-LGBTQ really stinky, bad church. His wife, Catherine, is a Kennedy and is sort of like if low sodium chicken broth was a person, you know? Mm-hmm. She's kind of boring. Is that a con? I don't know. I'm grasping here. He's the victim of toxic diet culture. Can I blame him for that? I don't know. Oh, yeah. So those are my cons. Yeah, I didn't like that. He was a fat icon.
He was a Pacific Northwest hometown hero. You know, now he's a rippling hunk. We don't like that. Yeah. But, yeah, I mean, like the church thing alone is like, yeah, of course. Yeah. Of course, that's cancel or the end. And that's why the only point that I'm making is don't rewrite history and act like this person was never funny. We don't have to like this person now. Anyway, please cancel us for that. That Taylor Lorenz told us it's good for the algorithm.
So. Megan, I know I talk a big tough talk, like a big boy, but I feel I don't feel that good about the segment. I was just going to say the same thing. I feel really guilty and trying to get cancer. This hurts my soul. I don't want it. You canceled Megan. They're not our problems. They're just some guys we know. We don't even know them. We don't even know them. And we will never know them. And we will never give them the time of day. That's right. We only know them from the movies.
That was me jumping out of a cargo jet. That was good. That was good. I'm surprised that he doesn't try to go to space where his piece from exactly where his where ancestry.com says his family's from. You have a new leaf. That's what they call it when they give you a hint. You have a new leaf. It just says Pluto. Lindy, he is going to space. He's 1,000% doing a space walk for an upcoming movie. I'm not saying I'm excited about it. I'm not saying I'm excited about it. Stay strong Megan.
I'm not going to go see it in my little cozy reclining chair at the Alamo with my little bevrajito. I won't. I won't. Anyway, sorry. Sorry, text me back a lights. Coming up, I'm serving up the sweetest little story about the best little big noodle of my week and very soon it will be yours too. It's Snake of the Week. Speaking of problematic faves, I've got one that you all know about. I've long had a problematic fave that I don't think is so problematic at all.
And that problematic fave is named Snakes. That's right Megan. It's Snake of the Week. This snake is hot and fresh. This snake just plopped. This snake just drops straight out the lab. Here comes the snake. Yep. Before I deliver the news to you, I wanted to do a little quiz. This is the headline from National Geographic. The world's heaviest snake has been hiding a big secret. First of all, that's copyrighted. The world's heaviest snake. That's my personal tagline. I'll deal with that later.
My lawyers will be in touch. But Megan, the world's heaviest snake has been hiding a big secret. What do you think is secret is? Here's one option. Stolen valor. She's actually a skinny legend. She's been weighing herself down with river rocks. Trying to get into the Guinness Book of World Records. That's one. That's a full secret. Your stupid. Is that am I right? Is that it? Nope, that's not it. Drag in. The snake is actually president of the United States, Joe Biden. Yes. No, that's wrong.
No, that's wrong. Her secret is coconut oil. Her secret is she's poly. No. Okay, you did not guess it. You freaking beefed it. None of those guesses were correct. That seems so strange. It seems like that would be right. I'm going to tell you the real answer. It's kind of boring. The answer to what the snake secret is is boring. The snake is not boring. Sure. Absolutely a contender for snake of the year 2024. We'll see. We'll find out. There's a lot of months to go.
A lot of snakes to go, but she's a contender. Listen to this. With the help from the Warani people in the Amazon, a group of scientists found our snake of the week. They were filming a Disney plus docuseries called Pull to Pull with Will Smith. Unfortunately speaking of, her secret is she's a denser. It's funny because it's called Pull to Pull. And so what if the secret is that she's a pole dancer? It doesn't mean the North Pole and the South Pole and it's a stripper pole. That's a good show.
Because a snake would be a good pole dancer. I know. I'll up, down, the clacks of its little she could tail. She could do it all. Yeah. Plop some eggs out. Okay. Shoot them across the room. Scientists came across the largest anaconda recorded to date. This anaconda is 26 feet long. It's a green anaconda and there is a video of it wiggling around in the mud on the bottom of the Amazon River in Ecuador. And it is the best video I've ever seen. That's not true. It's a really good video.
This snake is really big and of course there have been lots of, I don't even want to say rumors, like accounts of anacondas that were over 20, 25 feet. Yes. Like in the documentary from 1997 anaconda starring Jennifer Lopez. Yes. Yes, exactly. But this is the first one recorded on film by scientists.
So I don't know if you know a lot about an anaconda, but a thing about an anaconda is that on land when it's a landaconda, it is not a cute snake because you, the anaconda is like really big and you know, it's a, I believe, I believe it's a constrictor. So it, it snaps on you with its teeth and then it wraps around you like you're a little sausage and it squeezes you. Yes. Until you can't breathe. And then it eats you. So sort of like a python. But an anaconda also is like wet.
Like an anaconda skin looks like when your fingers get pruned in the bathtub. You know, I know there's something like really has like wiggly skin, like loose, loose wiggly skin. There's something gross about it, which I actually love. It makes it really relatable to me. But then seeing this anaconda swimming under the water, it was so beautiful. And you know, you just really feel like that's where it's meant to be. It was just, I was moved by this video.
But the fascinating thing and the snake's big secret is that they were like, oh look, it's a green anaconda. And then they did some science and they were like, it's not a green anaconda. It's like a green anaconda 2.0. It's a different species. It's an entirely new species of green anaconda. Whoa. A new snake really did just drop. New snake literally just dropped. And that, and that's not just according to me.
That's according to wildlife biologist and University of Amsterdam professor Dr. Freak Vaank. So, oh, you know what, that's his real name. Everybody stop it. Stop it right now. Megan, who are you? Are they going to name this snake Freakaconda after the professor? I think it's they have to. I think they have to. I think that's the convention, the scientific convention for sure. Are they just going to do something boring like River Snake, Ecuadorosaurus? No, if they don't call it Freakaconda.
Yeah, come on. I lost all hope in science. I will no longer be a woman in STEM. That's right. I'll be leaving the field. I'm so sorry, but Dr. Freak Vaank sounds like a pee-funk song. I can't handle this. Oh, Dr. Vaank. Freak Vaank. We are the Freak. Okay. But this is like your Christmas man, congrats. Oh, I loved it. I loved it so much. Welcome to the world, Freakaconda. There's no way back for me. And I have to go to the Amazon. I have to get a snorkel and I have to swim with the Aconda.
That's just all there is to it. Megan, we did it again. We did. But I thought the old lady dropped the podcast into the ocean at the end. Well, babe, I set Tom Cruise down to get it for you. Man, when we said we had some bad opinions. Boy, did we break up to the show today? And I apologize to everyone. Next week, good opinions only. That's right, because next week is... ...Burburtay! This whole thing? Who me? That's right. Next week, I will be turning 42. Oh. So, I don't know about that.
I don't mind, but it's also weird, because I'm a baby. You know, there's a trend on TikTok where people make cozy grandmother content, where it'll just be a lady and an apron, and she's bustling around, and she has all kinds of little ceramic chickens. And then sometimes I watch that stuff, and I think to myself, she's 10 years older than us. You know? She's probably 10 years older than us. Damn. Ha! Wreck them.
On the other hand, Tom Cruise is 40 years older than us, and he's doing capoeira on the wing of the space shuttle. He is not to be trifled with. I am terrified of him, and we're never mentioning him again. Nope. So, tune in next week, where we're gonna do a game of the ages. We're gonna go back into the Text Me Back lore, and we're gonna do March Madness, best animals versus worst people addition. Okay? Get into it.
And we're gonna post them all on our Text Me Back Instagram at Text Me Back pod, so that you can vote in each category and fill out your brackets, and it's gonna be fun as hell. And Text the Text Club, um, what do you think is the funniest thing I've ever said? Because for my birthday, that would make me happy. Truly, that's, she's not doing a bit gang. That's what she wants for her birthday. Text your accolades to the Text Club.
206, 926, 9955. So that Lindy can finally rest in a position of joy. I will never rest, but I can't wait. See you next week. Thank you so much for listening to Text Me Back. If you like the show, please tell your best friend about us, and rate and review us. It helps people find the show. Text Me Back is a production of K-O-W-N-C-Addle, a proud member of the NPR network. Our editor is Jeannie Yandell. Our senior producer is Brandy Fullwood. Our mixer is Jason Burrows.
Diana Bowen makes our video clips. She's a great singer. She's a great singer. Diana Bowen makes our video clips. And they are, do you like full? I'm not just saying that because we're in them. Go enjoy them at Text Me Back pod on Instagram and TikTok. Our production team includes Michaela Gianotti Boyle, Amelia Peacock, Alisha Villa, Hans Twite, Brendan Swini, and Marshall Eisen. Our music is by Chief Ahab Mafelae J. Uluo, special thanks to our perfect angel, Azul D'Araftery.
I'm Lindy West, and I'm Megan Hatcher-Mays. See you next week. Black perspectives haven't always been centered in the telling of America's story. Now, we're taking center stage. Introducing NPR's Black Stories, Black Truths. A collection of Black-led stories from NPR's podcasts. Search NPR Black Stories, Black Truths, wherever you get your podcasts.