June 12, 2026 • 31 mins
On the kickoff to the weekend edition of the Fifth Hour, Ben Maller pulls back the curtain and shares more tales from behind the microphone. The hype machine for the 2026 World Cup has reached Animaniacs-level absurdity, and Ben is here to separate fact from propaganda. Plus, a shocking discovery at the Maller Mansion: the sudden appearance of “Lake Maller,” the newest Great Lake in North America. Ben launches a full-scale Maller Investigation to uncover the mysterious origins of the indoor waterfront property. Along the way, there are lessons learned from dishwashers, unexpected household chaos, and a healthy dose of “The More You Know.” Subscribe, listen, follow, and support the Fifth Hour podcast for all the fun!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Kubbooms.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
If you thought four hours a day, twelve hundred minutes
a week was enough, think again. He's the last remnants
of the old republic, a sol fashion of fairness. He
treats crackheads in the ghetto gutter the same as the
rich pill poppers in the penthouse.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
It's a clearinghouse of hot takes. Break free for something special.
The Fifth Hour with Ben Maller starts right now.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
In the air everywhere. The Fifth Hour with me, Ben
Mahler and you. We are together on a random Friday
here the beginning of the World Cup. I technically it
began yesterday, but we are wrapping ourselves in the flag
here tonight, tonight what at nine o'clock Eastern, six o'clock
(00:52):
here in the West where we are originating the Fifth
Hour podcast from the remote studio team USA versus Paraguay
at Sofi Stadium in the Hood in Inglewood, in the
Group D of the World Cup. On this edition of
(01:13):
The Fifth Hour, we have lukewarm, unseasoned chicken, Lake Mallor
and footy fun. And we'll also have in addition to
that that was not enough likely enough content, we will
add a special feature time permitting, where we will give
you an amazing tale never told before. It's actually just
(01:38):
a rip off of something else. Believe it's called The
More You Know, The More You Know. But we begin
on this twelfth day of June, this Friday, with two
hundred and two days left in the year, with the Hopper,
hop on, hop off the Hopper. It returned to the
(01:59):
Ben Malors s y oh No. We had mentioned in
a previous episode of the Fifth Hour podcast that we
were looking for ways to use the hopper. People seem
to really enjoy the bit that we did a little
while back. The NFL book them got really nice reviews
from the fans of the show, and we're like, well,
(02:21):
how do we mess around with the hopper? And we
dragged it out of the closet, the storage closet that
it was in like an old carnival game, dusted off
for one more spin and unexpected spin. Now, if you
like this bit, we will take full credit. If not,
send your complaints to the Late Night Drug Tester. This,
(02:43):
after all, was his idea. This was his idea. So
forty eight numbered lottery balls or bingo balls, one for
each nation in this bloated twenty twenty six World Cup,
and they were rattling around like it was Bingo night
at the Senior Center, hollering. James was our hour number
(03:07):
one caller for the bit the World Cup Pick them.
Mike the Leprechaun was in there at the at the
hour three. Marks Scott from the Commonwealth was also part
of the bit. The last hour we had two percent
chance from Alabama. So the teams were the callers me, Ben, High,
(03:29):
Coop and Lorena and we all gathered around the contraption
of course to the audio of or through the magic audio,
and we did that and you know, we just like
we really were into it. Like a lot depended on
which ping pong ball bounced out first and fifus. You
(03:51):
do this if you listen, though, here's the thing, if
you listen to the soccer propaganda machine, the twenty two
twenty six World Cup isn't merely a football tournament. It
is a coronation, a global marketing blitz disguised as sport.
FIFA executives speak of billions of viewers, billions of spectators,
(04:18):
nine billion in revenue, and enough exposure to make Madison
Avenue blush. All of those things. They expanded this year,
from thirty two teams to forty eight, from sixty four
games to one hundred and four, turning the World Cup
into the sporting equivalent of an all you can eat
(04:38):
buffet where nobody asks for any trays. It's just I'm good.
I don't need it anymore because everything is lukewarm, unseasoned
chicken for most of us. Right, most of us we
look at that like, you know, we wrap yourself in
the flag with Team USA. Your bloodline might be from
(05:01):
Italy or Germany or wherever it might be, and you
pull for that country. The sales pitch, though, never changes.
The sales pitch never ever changes. I've been doing this
job long enough that I remember when the Women's World
Cup had their moment in the sun at the Rose Bowl,
and the soccer crowd was like, Oh, this is it.
(05:24):
This is the moment, the point of demarcation. We've crossed over.
This is big, And the sales pitch is again this year,
that the twenty twenty six World Cup, that soccer is
now taking over America like the pandemic did. It's the
future that soccer will pass basketball and baseball and all
(05:49):
these other sports. It's inevitable, which brings to mind the
old animaniac's routine from Pinky saying, g brain, what are
we going to do tonight? And then the brain response
the same thing we do every night, try to take
over the world. That's essentially FIFA in a nutshell. Every
four years they arrive like this group of traveling evangelists,
(06:12):
armed with all kinds of charts and grafts and dow
hickeyes and studies from this group and promises of worldwide
harmony through corner kicks. Now the World Cup is presented
as a cultural moon landing, a month long infomercial wrapped
(06:34):
in national flags and corporate sponsorships. Thus lies the problem
that many people fall into it for the patriotism of
your native land or where your family's from, and that's
who you pull for the national flag, and it just
(06:55):
happens to be that you're doing it through football. It's
no different than like a singing contest and you pull
for somebody from your neck of the woods or whatever
it might be. The goal is not merely to host
a tournament. The goal is global domination and credit where
it's due. They they're very persistent, these soccer people are
(07:18):
very persistent, very stubborn. It's like a timeshare salesman who
follows you from the airport to the hotel buffet. FIFA
never stops pitching. Meanwhile, on our show back at the Hopper,
Hop on, hop off the Hopper, everyone seems to be
having a good time. And which is good? Which which
(07:41):
is what we want? And that's ironically the most honest
thing about the whole enterprise. All right, Moving on from that,
So one are the benefits of home ownership? And I
say home ownership. The bank owns the home. I pay
the bank, which is my landlord. We'd like to pretend
that it's home ownership. It is not. Even when you
(08:02):
pay off a home and I haven't paid off my home.
Even if you pay off your home, you still have
property taxes, so you still got to pay anyway. Get
to the point. So when you think of yourself as
a homeowner, every so often the house decides to surprise you.
And it's not with anything good. Mind you. Your house
(08:23):
never says, hey, guess what, I just found twenty bucks
behind the refrigerator and I would like to give that
to you. And tomorrow I'm going to go through the sofa.
I believe there's one hundred and thirty seven dollars in
the sofa and some change. No, your house is a
practical joker. A leak here, a crack over there. There's
(08:44):
this mysterious smell. Where did that come from? When's it
going away? A sound that wasn't there yesterday, and your
hope doesn't come back today. A puddle where puddles have
no business being. Which brings me to the Great Lakes.
Now you've heard of the Big Ones. Lake Superior, the largest,
(09:05):
the deepest of the Great Lakes, bordered by Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan,
and Ontario. All right, so you got that. You got
Lake Michigan, the only great lake entirely within the United States,
bordered by Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin. And then you
have all the others. Now should we add another great lake?
(09:29):
Because it is believed that we have uncovered we have
uncovered Lake Malor. What is Lake Malor? Population me? Now,
let me explain. So it was just another regular day
at the Malor mansion, although on this day it was
(09:49):
a little different because my wife was out working overtime
doing some nine to one to one dispatching at the
police station, dealing with Hoodlum's lunatics and AshEL genuine emergencies. Now,
I was at home handling my usual mundane responsibilities, which
mostly consists of watching sports, random sports on the magic box,
(10:15):
while convincing myself I was also accomplishing household chores. It's
a delicate balance. You talk about threading a needle. Now,
there are people that meditate, there's some people that do yoga.
In fact, right next to the Fox Sports Radio studios's
a hot yoga place. What I do is I watch
random baseball games between two teams I don't care about,
(10:39):
and call it productivity. Like you can put on a
Washington Nationals game against you know, good down the Nationals
taking on the Diamondbacks, and it's like, okay, and I'll
watch and I'll have it on anyway. At some point
I wandered into the kitchen and I stopped because there
(11:04):
spread across the floor was water. Not a little water,
not a oop somebody spilled the glass. Amount of water. No, no, no, no,
I am talking a water front piece of property, a
beach front bungalow, or in this case, a lake front.
(11:27):
The kind of water when you see it that makes
you briefly wonder in my mind is is the California Aqueduct?
Has it been compromised? Has it been rerooted or routed
through our little breakfast nook? And the light hit the
water perfectly, and I say light, the light from the
(11:50):
the lights. The surface sparkled, It looked peaceful. I even
thought about taking a swim. It was beautiful. And for
halcond half a second, I was like, wow, you know
that's kind of pretty. And then I remembered a rather
important detail. The Malar Mansion does not have a lake.
(12:12):
I know that's shocking to you. You probably think, well,
you know, you must have your own lake. And no, no,
And now every mystery begins with suspects, right, every mystery.
And you don't have to be Sherlock Holmes or Colombo
or inspector Gadget. You have suspects. And I had Moxie,
our beloved the English bulldog, because whenever something strange happens
(12:36):
around the house, Moxie gets investigated. Now that's not fair, however,
neither is life. And so my first move I looked
around for evidence. Had Moxie somehow produced enough liquid to
qualify for its own ZIP code? Was this a modern
(12:58):
day canine? Miracle had she become in agricultural irrigation project
all of a sudden, so I grabbed a white towel.
We have some towels around for accidents, and this is
what passes for forensic science in the Malor mansion. The
(13:18):
test was simple, it's a yellow, we've got a doggy problem.
It's clear, and it's something else. So I dabbed the
towel down, clear, crystal clear, as clear as a politician's
promise before election day. And so Moxie at this point
had an airtight alibi, a really really good alibi for Moxy.
(13:46):
She was innocent, which somehow made things actually worse, believe
it or not, so the mystery remained unsolved. The water
continued migrating across the floor like they were on the
Oregon Trail heading west, like settlers just heading down the
Oregon Trail. Now I threw towels at it, not literally,
(14:09):
not literally, although after enough time there were a few
minutes that had gone by, I was tempted to stand
at mid court and launch them into the flood, like
halftime souvenirs instead of T shirts, where you can give
you old towels shop towels. So at moments like this, right,
this is where if you're a homeowner, or at least
(14:32):
paying the government the right to have your home, this
is where you become an amateur engineer. You don't know
what you're doing. You know, you don't know what you're doing. However,
you keep doing it anyway. We all do it. Eventually
we located the culprit of Lake malor the dishwasher. The
(14:55):
dishwasher had apparently decided to pursue a second career as
a found it was transitioning into a fountain. Now here's
the thing about modern life. Nobody knows how anything works.
Not really. You might think you know, you do. No,
(15:16):
you know how your phone works? No, you know how
your WiFi works? Eh? No, you know how your dishwasher works?
Absolutely not. Paper plate baby, And thanks to YouTube, in
these modern days, we all believe that we're one eight
(15:37):
minute video away from becoming a licensed handyman. All right,
get in the trade, good solid job there as a handyman.
So naturally we decided to fix it ourselves. And this
never ever ends well other than providing content for the podcast,
(15:58):
which is clearly my hair brain scheme to hop on
the pod manwagon. Say well, what can I do to
get some content? Oh, I know what I'm gonna do.
This is the thing right here with this is we're
gonna go on YouTube and we're gonna get a video
on how to fix the machine in the kitchen, and
we're good to go. The dishwasher. Well, it never ends. Well,
(16:21):
every do it yourself project DIY begins with great optimism
in your head. This will be easy, thirty forty minutes
at the most and everything will be fixed. I got
the parts, I know what to do. I'm watching the video,
and it ends. These stories end with, Hey, why don't
we call a guy? We need a guide to come
(16:44):
in here. And so we watched videos, We bought cleaning products,
We listened to cheerful internet experts speaking with the confidence
of people who don't have to clean up your mess,
and then we ran a test cycle on the aforementioned dishwasher.
(17:05):
The dishwasher responded by flooding the kitchen yet again a
strong rebuttal. The appliance had made its position clear it
did not respect the person in the house who's the
authority figure. So my wife stopped the cycle. She mentioned
that there wasn't any water remaining at the bottom of
(17:25):
the dishwasher. This seemed problematic now. She mentioned this in passing. Now,
there are two types of people in the world. People
who hear that statement from my wife saying, hey, there's
no water at the bottom of the dishwasher, and there's
supposed to be. Of course, the water all ended up
on the floor, and so you're like, okay, and what's
(17:49):
going on and all that stuff. So I mentioned there's
two types of people in the world. There's people that
hear that and move on with their day, and then
people who immediately stick their finger into the dishwasher to
verify that the wife's reporting was accurate, that there was
(18:09):
indeed some kind of spill of water, and there was
a lot of a lot of stuff going on here,
except there was no water. Guess which group I belonged to,
Ding Ding, Ding ding Ding. Yes. I reached down, touched
the bottom without even thinking about it, and instantly discovered
that while there was no water at the bottom of
(18:32):
the dishwasher, there was enough heat to launch one of
Elon Musk's SpaceX rockets to the moon. Good grief. So
I jerked my hand back too late. The damage had
been done. My right index finger literally roasted. Now, to
(18:53):
be fair, this was not like, hey, third degree burn
was not that, it wasn't too severe. It hurts, and
for my purposes I didn't need to do it. The
finger turned red, swollen, blistered, all of those things. It
looked like it had developed its own personality. At one
(19:15):
point I considered introducing my finger to people separately, like, Hello,
this is my friend. Yes, I know it's rather odd
to have a finger as a friend, but it's my friend,
and he's going through some things. And pain has a
funny way of making you philosophical, like the whole pain thing.
(19:38):
For example, let me get on my soapbox here, why
do humans insist on touching things we already know might
be bad, bad, bad, bad, bad bad? You said, Well,
you're playing the idiot card from the bottom of the deck.
You're not playing with a full deck, and that's it.
But why does every household the plants eventually rebel? And
(20:00):
why does an injury on one finger somehow affect your
entire frickin life? So suddenly every task required negotiation, right,
everything everything involved here, opening jars, buttoning shirts, not that
I do that often, holding utensils, typing all because I
(20:23):
decided to put my hand in the dishwasher, and it
was very very warm, obviously, and so just like everything typing,
I felt like a baseball player listed is day to
day questionable with finger issues. Meanwhile, because the dishwasher remained broken,
(20:46):
we then entered a week long experiment in historial reenactment
hand washing distance dishes, every plate, every plate, every bowl,
every fork, every coffee mug by. I don't drink coffee,
my wife does. Pioneers crossed mountains to cover wagons on
the Oregon Trail. I washed, I watched a bunch of
(21:09):
YouTube videos by dishwashers. Couldn't fix it. So now I'm
washing six cereal bowls all by hand, and I nearly
filed agreements. Now I don't know who to file agreements with.
I am the dishwasher. I always rinse everything and then
put it in the dishwasher. That's my move. I pretty
much clean it by hand anyway. Just the fact that
(21:31):
I didn't have my crutch the dishwasher that bothered me
a little bit. That bothered me a little bit, And
so you quickly learn how much modern civilization depends on
these appliances. The dishwasher breaks and you're living in nineteen
forty six. All of a sudden, Now the upside, there's
(21:52):
always a professional, and every neighbor and every every neighborhood
you go to they have one. They have one, a
mysterious wizard who drives around carrying tools and possesses actual knowledge,
not YouTube knowledge, actual knowledge. And eventually we called ours.
(22:16):
The repair man arrived with that calm confidence of a
veteran relief picture. He took one look at the dishwasher
and listened, examined, adjusted, coddled, massaged, replaced some mechanical object
whose name I immediately forgot, and fixed seemingly everything. Just
(22:39):
like that, the lake malor unfortunately vanished, The dishwasher returned
to duty, civilization was restored, My fingers started healing, Moxie
avoided wrongful conviction, and life resumed. Hellllelujah, hallelujah. Which got
me thinking on this the fifth hour podcast with no
(23:02):
cry babies, no cry babies place, knock it off. So
back to the point, So what's going on with this? Right?
I'm thinking, Okay, this is kind of ir weird, this
is this is odd, and so I'm mind of my
own business and all that, and I'm wondering again where
(23:23):
Lake Mallar went. I'm like, well, that seemed like it
should be there, and it's not. And then you know,
obviously the plumbing having some issues and this is not working,
and that's not working. So I get that, and we're
doing our thing. And the older I get, the more
I realized that adulthood is basically a series of conversations
(23:45):
with people that repair stuff. Some come to fix appliances,
some come to fix cars, some wear white coats. All
of them eventually deliver the same message, Yeah, that's that's
not supposed to do that, And if you'd like you
like your money back, please tell us. And we'd like
that ice cream. We'd like some nice ice cream cones
(24:07):
that would help us out as well. But in the
end the story, it does have a happy ending. It
was now fixed. The dishwasher does work, yeah, I know,
I know, shocking. The kitchen is dry, my finger is
still recovering, and Moxie remains a drug free dog as
far as we know. Though, if another mystery puddle appears,
(24:30):
let's just say she's still the lead suspect and we
will do the towel test again. Is it white or
is it yellow, white or yellow. Inquiring minds would like
to know, and that's that. Now. The more you know
in honor of the dishwasher. It got me thinking my
(24:52):
entire life. I've always pretty much lived at homes that
have dishwashers, and I was like, at what point did
this become a thing? Because I don't think George Washington
or Benjamin Franklin were using the dishwasher, so I don't
think that was happening. So then I fell down this
rabbit hole, as I am known to do because I'm
(25:12):
a loser, and there's this this domino effect when one
thing happens and another. I was like, oh, that's interesting,
and then I start falling down and I'm not even talking.
I'm not running. It's not the running at the mouth
that's what I do behind these microphones. This was just me,
just in my head. I like, okay. So the first
practical dishwasher, believe it or not, was invented in eighteen
(25:36):
eighty six, with domestic application becoming widespread in the nineteen fifties.
So we are talking about almost sixty five years later,
possibly more than that, and the early inventions, the concept
of a mechanical dishwasher dates actually further back than that,
(25:56):
to eighteen fifty. There were dudes walking around that wanted
to make a dishwasher like this. So when American, this
American investor Joel Houghton received a patent for a a
hand cranked wooden box with a tire i raq, a
tire rack. I have tire iraq on the mind, a
(26:17):
wire iraq to hold dishes and all that stuff. And
it was not practical though for widespread use, we are told.
And then it was in eighteen eighty six where Josephine Cochrane,
a wealthy socialite from the great state of Illinois, was
able to patent the first practical dishwasher. Her design used
(26:38):
water pressure instead of scrubbers, right, and that's how went.
It featured racks to hold the dishes kind of secretly
and all that stuff, and was motorized to spray hot
water efficiently. So this the socialite showcased her invention at
the eighteen ninety three each Chicago World's Fair, and it
(27:02):
was initially marketed to hotels and restaurants rather than the
household due to its size and cost. So that's the
Magic Shop. And I know in the early part of
the twentieth century. Here Europe saw the first electric domestic
dishwasher in nineteen twenty nine. That's interesting, and we go
(27:29):
through all that. William Howard Livins invented a small, non
electric dishwasher in nineteen twenty four. And there's a lot
of people that have gone into the lab, their lab
and created something, at least they think they've created something anyway.
(27:49):
So the point of all this the dishwasher. Despite all
of the modern bells and whistles, all the innovations, dishwashers
remain a luxury item until the postwar boom of the
nineteen fifties, and it always been a luxury at hi
until then. And that's when standardized size, improved plumbing made
(28:10):
them more accessible. So at that point, okay, well now
we got something middle class household. By the nineteen sixties,
dishwashers became increasingly common. That's still almost seventy years ago,
increasingly common in America. European homes. By twenty twelve, or
(28:31):
over seventy five percent of homes in the United States
and Germany had dishwashers. So there is that now the
foody fun time now for the segment, as we just said,
foody fund. White Castle added new Southwest veggie Slider to
its permanent menu. So if you're jones in't for some
(28:54):
veggies like veggie slider and all that, this is your guy, right.
Overwhelming amount of people to try to get into these
ballparks most of the time, and demands for the White Castle,
they added a Southwest Was it Southwest veggie slider? I
believe is what they did. White Castle favorite non meat
(29:19):
option added to the permanent menu at participating locations. You
got our friend Windy high Windy, That's what Anthony and
Louisiana would say. Introduced new minions and monsters, adult meal,
and the new banana soft swirl. Look good for them.
(29:39):
That's not bad, all right. Meanwhile, the always popular Fifth
Hour podcast we have new episodes every single bleeping Friday,
which is today, Saturday, and Sunday. So if you're interested
in supporting this podcast, you can send a message in
(30:00):
for the mail bag which will be on Sunday, and
you can do that care of Real fifth Hour at
gmail dot com. Let me repeat that. For those of
you a little slow in the back of the room,
you can send a message in care of Real fifth
Hour at gmail dot com all letters, no numbers, all letters,
(30:22):
no numbers take a part in it, and we do
appreciate that. Now, as far as the halladay hooray for whatever,
there's a bunch of dope holidays, as there are every
single day, So there is that. Oh, by the way,
before I forget, if you would like to send a
message on whatever platform you're listening to this podcast on.
(30:49):
And when I say send a message, what I mean
by that. What I mean by that is to follow
the ben Malar account, follow the ben Malar account on
help us out. We need to get those following numbers
up even higher. And on that we will put the
baby to bed. Have a great rest your Friday. I
(31:10):
will likely watch some of the World Cup unless I
just stare at a wall oozing of nothing, oozing of nothing.
On that particular note, have a great rest of your Friday,
and we will talk to you next time. As Dick
and Dayton would say, bye bye, bye bye,
Kubbooms.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
If you thought four hours a day, twelve hundred minutes
a week was enough, think again. He's the last remnants
of the old republic, a sol fashion of fairness. He
treats crackheads in the ghetto gutter the same as the
rich pill poppers in the penthouse.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
It's a clearinghouse of hot takes. Break free for something special.
The Fifth Hour with Ben Maller starts right now.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
In the air everywhere. The Fifth Hour with me, Ben
Mahler and you. We are together on a random Friday
here the beginning of the World Cup. I technically it
began yesterday, but we are wrapping ourselves in the flag
here tonight, tonight what at nine o'clock Eastern, six o'clock
(00:52):
here in the West where we are originating the Fifth
Hour podcast from the remote studio team USA versus Paraguay
at Sofi Stadium in the Hood in Inglewood, in the
Group D of the World Cup. On this edition of
(01:13):
The Fifth Hour, we have lukewarm, unseasoned chicken, Lake Mallor
and footy fun. And we'll also have in addition to
that that was not enough likely enough content, we will
add a special feature time permitting, where we will give
you an amazing tale never told before. It's actually just
(01:38):
a rip off of something else. Believe it's called The
More You Know, The More You Know. But we begin
on this twelfth day of June, this Friday, with two
hundred and two days left in the year, with the Hopper,
hop on, hop off the Hopper. It returned to the
(01:59):
Ben Malors s y oh No. We had mentioned in
a previous episode of the Fifth Hour podcast that we
were looking for ways to use the hopper. People seem
to really enjoy the bit that we did a little
while back. The NFL book them got really nice reviews
from the fans of the show, and we're like, well,
(02:21):
how do we mess around with the hopper? And we
dragged it out of the closet, the storage closet that
it was in like an old carnival game, dusted off
for one more spin and unexpected spin. Now, if you
like this bit, we will take full credit. If not,
send your complaints to the Late Night Drug Tester. This,
(02:43):
after all, was his idea. This was his idea. So
forty eight numbered lottery balls or bingo balls, one for
each nation in this bloated twenty twenty six World Cup,
and they were rattling around like it was Bingo night
at the Senior Center, hollering. James was our hour number
(03:07):
one caller for the bit the World Cup Pick them.
Mike the Leprechaun was in there at the at the
hour three. Marks Scott from the Commonwealth was also part
of the bit. The last hour we had two percent
chance from Alabama. So the teams were the callers me, Ben, High,
(03:29):
Coop and Lorena and we all gathered around the contraption
of course to the audio of or through the magic audio,
and we did that and you know, we just like
we really were into it. Like a lot depended on
which ping pong ball bounced out first and fifus. You
(03:51):
do this if you listen, though, here's the thing, if
you listen to the soccer propaganda machine, the twenty two
twenty six World Cup isn't merely a football tournament. It
is a coronation, a global marketing blitz disguised as sport.
FIFA executives speak of billions of viewers, billions of spectators,
(04:18):
nine billion in revenue, and enough exposure to make Madison
Avenue blush. All of those things. They expanded this year,
from thirty two teams to forty eight, from sixty four
games to one hundred and four, turning the World Cup
into the sporting equivalent of an all you can eat
(04:38):
buffet where nobody asks for any trays. It's just I'm good.
I don't need it anymore because everything is lukewarm, unseasoned
chicken for most of us. Right, most of us we
look at that like, you know, we wrap yourself in
the flag with Team USA. Your bloodline might be from
(05:01):
Italy or Germany or wherever it might be, and you
pull for that country. The sales pitch, though, never changes.
The sales pitch never ever changes. I've been doing this
job long enough that I remember when the Women's World
Cup had their moment in the sun at the Rose Bowl,
and the soccer crowd was like, Oh, this is it.
(05:24):
This is the moment, the point of demarcation. We've crossed over.
This is big, And the sales pitch is again this year,
that the twenty twenty six World Cup, that soccer is
now taking over America like the pandemic did. It's the
future that soccer will pass basketball and baseball and all
(05:49):
these other sports. It's inevitable, which brings to mind the
old animaniac's routine from Pinky saying, g brain, what are
we going to do tonight? And then the brain response
the same thing we do every night, try to take
over the world. That's essentially FIFA in a nutshell. Every
four years they arrive like this group of traveling evangelists,
(06:12):
armed with all kinds of charts and grafts and dow
hickeyes and studies from this group and promises of worldwide
harmony through corner kicks. Now the World Cup is presented
as a cultural moon landing, a month long infomercial wrapped
(06:34):
in national flags and corporate sponsorships. Thus lies the problem
that many people fall into it for the patriotism of
your native land or where your family's from, and that's
who you pull for the national flag, and it just
(06:55):
happens to be that you're doing it through football. It's
no different than like a singing contest and you pull
for somebody from your neck of the woods or whatever
it might be. The goal is not merely to host
a tournament. The goal is global domination and credit where
it's due. They they're very persistent, these soccer people are
(07:18):
very persistent, very stubborn. It's like a timeshare salesman who
follows you from the airport to the hotel buffet. FIFA
never stops pitching. Meanwhile, on our show back at the Hopper,
Hop on, hop off the Hopper, everyone seems to be
having a good time. And which is good? Which which
(07:41):
is what we want? And that's ironically the most honest
thing about the whole enterprise. All right, Moving on from that,
So one are the benefits of home ownership? And I
say home ownership. The bank owns the home. I pay
the bank, which is my landlord. We'd like to pretend
that it's home ownership. It is not. Even when you
(08:02):
pay off a home and I haven't paid off my home.
Even if you pay off your home, you still have
property taxes, so you still got to pay anyway. Get
to the point. So when you think of yourself as
a homeowner, every so often the house decides to surprise you.
And it's not with anything good. Mind you. Your house
(08:23):
never says, hey, guess what, I just found twenty bucks
behind the refrigerator and I would like to give that
to you. And tomorrow I'm going to go through the sofa.
I believe there's one hundred and thirty seven dollars in
the sofa and some change. No, your house is a
practical joker. A leak here, a crack over there. There's
(08:44):
this mysterious smell. Where did that come from? When's it
going away? A sound that wasn't there yesterday, and your
hope doesn't come back today. A puddle where puddles have
no business being. Which brings me to the Great Lakes.
Now you've heard of the Big Ones. Lake Superior, the largest,
(09:05):
the deepest of the Great Lakes, bordered by Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan,
and Ontario. All right, so you got that. You got
Lake Michigan, the only great lake entirely within the United States,
bordered by Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin. And then you
have all the others. Now should we add another great lake?
(09:29):
Because it is believed that we have uncovered we have
uncovered Lake Malor. What is Lake Malor? Population me? Now,
let me explain. So it was just another regular day
at the Malor mansion, although on this day it was
(09:49):
a little different because my wife was out working overtime
doing some nine to one to one dispatching at the
police station, dealing with Hoodlum's lunatics and AshEL genuine emergencies. Now,
I was at home handling my usual mundane responsibilities, which
mostly consists of watching sports, random sports on the magic box,
(10:15):
while convincing myself I was also accomplishing household chores. It's
a delicate balance. You talk about threading a needle. Now,
there are people that meditate, there's some people that do yoga.
In fact, right next to the Fox Sports Radio studios's
a hot yoga place. What I do is I watch
random baseball games between two teams I don't care about,
(10:39):
and call it productivity. Like you can put on a
Washington Nationals game against you know, good down the Nationals
taking on the Diamondbacks, and it's like, okay, and I'll
watch and I'll have it on anyway. At some point
I wandered into the kitchen and I stopped because there
(11:04):
spread across the floor was water. Not a little water,
not a oop somebody spilled the glass. Amount of water. No, no, no, no,
I am talking a water front piece of property, a
beach front bungalow, or in this case, a lake front.
(11:27):
The kind of water when you see it that makes
you briefly wonder in my mind is is the California Aqueduct?
Has it been compromised? Has it been rerooted or routed
through our little breakfast nook? And the light hit the
water perfectly, and I say light, the light from the
(11:50):
the lights. The surface sparkled, It looked peaceful. I even
thought about taking a swim. It was beautiful. And for
halcond half a second, I was like, wow, you know
that's kind of pretty. And then I remembered a rather
important detail. The Malar Mansion does not have a lake.
(12:12):
I know that's shocking to you. You probably think, well,
you know, you must have your own lake. And no, no,
And now every mystery begins with suspects, right, every mystery.
And you don't have to be Sherlock Holmes or Colombo
or inspector Gadget. You have suspects. And I had Moxie,
our beloved the English bulldog, because whenever something strange happens
(12:36):
around the house, Moxie gets investigated. Now that's not fair, however,
neither is life. And so my first move I looked
around for evidence. Had Moxie somehow produced enough liquid to
qualify for its own ZIP code? Was this a modern
(12:58):
day canine? Miracle had she become in agricultural irrigation project
all of a sudden, so I grabbed a white towel.
We have some towels around for accidents, and this is
what passes for forensic science in the Malor mansion. The
(13:18):
test was simple, it's a yellow, we've got a doggy problem.
It's clear, and it's something else. So I dabbed the
towel down, clear, crystal clear, as clear as a politician's
promise before election day. And so Moxie at this point
had an airtight alibi, a really really good alibi for Moxy.
(13:46):
She was innocent, which somehow made things actually worse, believe
it or not, so the mystery remained unsolved. The water
continued migrating across the floor like they were on the
Oregon Trail heading west, like settlers just heading down the
Oregon Trail. Now I threw towels at it, not literally,
(14:09):
not literally, although after enough time there were a few
minutes that had gone by, I was tempted to stand
at mid court and launch them into the flood, like
halftime souvenirs instead of T shirts, where you can give
you old towels shop towels. So at moments like this, right,
this is where if you're a homeowner, or at least
(14:32):
paying the government the right to have your home, this
is where you become an amateur engineer. You don't know
what you're doing. You know, you don't know what you're doing. However,
you keep doing it anyway. We all do it. Eventually
we located the culprit of Lake malor the dishwasher. The
(14:55):
dishwasher had apparently decided to pursue a second career as
a found it was transitioning into a fountain. Now here's
the thing about modern life. Nobody knows how anything works.
Not really. You might think you know, you do. No,
(15:16):
you know how your phone works? No, you know how
your WiFi works? Eh? No, you know how your dishwasher works?
Absolutely not. Paper plate baby, And thanks to YouTube, in
these modern days, we all believe that we're one eight
(15:37):
minute video away from becoming a licensed handyman. All right,
get in the trade, good solid job there as a handyman.
So naturally we decided to fix it ourselves. And this
never ever ends well other than providing content for the podcast,
(15:58):
which is clearly my hair brain scheme to hop on
the pod manwagon. Say well, what can I do to
get some content? Oh, I know what I'm gonna do.
This is the thing right here with this is we're
gonna go on YouTube and we're gonna get a video
on how to fix the machine in the kitchen, and
we're good to go. The dishwasher. Well, it never ends. Well,
(16:21):
every do it yourself project DIY begins with great optimism
in your head. This will be easy, thirty forty minutes
at the most and everything will be fixed. I got
the parts, I know what to do. I'm watching the video,
and it ends. These stories end with, Hey, why don't
we call a guy? We need a guide to come
(16:44):
in here. And so we watched videos, We bought cleaning products,
We listened to cheerful internet experts speaking with the confidence
of people who don't have to clean up your mess,
and then we ran a test cycle on the aforementioned dishwasher.
(17:05):
The dishwasher responded by flooding the kitchen yet again a
strong rebuttal. The appliance had made its position clear it
did not respect the person in the house who's the
authority figure. So my wife stopped the cycle. She mentioned
that there wasn't any water remaining at the bottom of
(17:25):
the dishwasher. This seemed problematic now. She mentioned this in passing. Now,
there are two types of people in the world. People
who hear that statement from my wife saying, hey, there's
no water at the bottom of the dishwasher, and there's
supposed to be. Of course, the water all ended up
on the floor, and so you're like, okay, and what's
(17:49):
going on and all that stuff. So I mentioned there's
two types of people in the world. There's people that
hear that and move on with their day, and then
people who immediately stick their finger into the dishwasher to
verify that the wife's reporting was accurate, that there was
(18:09):
indeed some kind of spill of water, and there was
a lot of a lot of stuff going on here,
except there was no water. Guess which group I belonged to,
Ding Ding, Ding ding Ding. Yes. I reached down, touched
the bottom without even thinking about it, and instantly discovered
that while there was no water at the bottom of
(18:32):
the dishwasher, there was enough heat to launch one of
Elon Musk's SpaceX rockets to the moon. Good grief. So
I jerked my hand back too late. The damage had
been done. My right index finger literally roasted. Now, to
(18:53):
be fair, this was not like, hey, third degree burn
was not that, it wasn't too severe. It hurts, and
for my purposes I didn't need to do it. The
finger turned red, swollen, blistered, all of those things. It
looked like it had developed its own personality. At one
(19:15):
point I considered introducing my finger to people separately, like, Hello,
this is my friend. Yes, I know it's rather odd
to have a finger as a friend, but it's my friend,
and he's going through some things. And pain has a
funny way of making you philosophical, like the whole pain thing.
(19:38):
For example, let me get on my soapbox here, why
do humans insist on touching things we already know might
be bad, bad, bad, bad, bad bad? You said, Well,
you're playing the idiot card from the bottom of the deck.
You're not playing with a full deck, and that's it.
But why does every household the plants eventually rebel? And
(20:00):
why does an injury on one finger somehow affect your
entire frickin life? So suddenly every task required negotiation, right,
everything everything involved here, opening jars, buttoning shirts, not that
I do that often, holding utensils, typing all because I
(20:23):
decided to put my hand in the dishwasher, and it
was very very warm, obviously, and so just like everything typing,
I felt like a baseball player listed is day to
day questionable with finger issues. Meanwhile, because the dishwasher remained broken,
(20:46):
we then entered a week long experiment in historial reenactment
hand washing distance dishes, every plate, every plate, every bowl,
every fork, every coffee mug by. I don't drink coffee,
my wife does. Pioneers crossed mountains to cover wagons on
the Oregon Trail. I washed, I watched a bunch of
(21:09):
YouTube videos by dishwashers. Couldn't fix it. So now I'm
washing six cereal bowls all by hand, and I nearly
filed agreements. Now I don't know who to file agreements with.
I am the dishwasher. I always rinse everything and then
put it in the dishwasher. That's my move. I pretty
much clean it by hand anyway. Just the fact that
(21:31):
I didn't have my crutch the dishwasher that bothered me
a little bit. That bothered me a little bit, And
so you quickly learn how much modern civilization depends on
these appliances. The dishwasher breaks and you're living in nineteen
forty six. All of a sudden, Now the upside, there's
(21:52):
always a professional, and every neighbor and every every neighborhood
you go to they have one. They have one, a
mysterious wizard who drives around carrying tools and possesses actual knowledge,
not YouTube knowledge, actual knowledge. And eventually we called ours.
(22:16):
The repair man arrived with that calm confidence of a
veteran relief picture. He took one look at the dishwasher
and listened, examined, adjusted, coddled, massaged, replaced some mechanical object
whose name I immediately forgot, and fixed seemingly everything. Just
(22:39):
like that, the lake malor unfortunately vanished, The dishwasher returned
to duty, civilization was restored, My fingers started healing, Moxie
avoided wrongful conviction, and life resumed. Hellllelujah, hallelujah. Which got
me thinking on this the fifth hour podcast with no
(23:02):
cry babies, no cry babies place, knock it off. So
back to the point, So what's going on with this? Right?
I'm thinking, Okay, this is kind of ir weird, this
is this is odd, and so I'm mind of my
own business and all that, and I'm wondering again where
(23:23):
Lake Mallar went. I'm like, well, that seemed like it
should be there, and it's not. And then you know,
obviously the plumbing having some issues and this is not working,
and that's not working. So I get that, and we're
doing our thing. And the older I get, the more
I realized that adulthood is basically a series of conversations
(23:45):
with people that repair stuff. Some come to fix appliances,
some come to fix cars, some wear white coats. All
of them eventually deliver the same message, Yeah, that's that's
not supposed to do that, And if you'd like you
like your money back, please tell us. And we'd like
that ice cream. We'd like some nice ice cream cones
(24:07):
that would help us out as well. But in the
end the story, it does have a happy ending. It
was now fixed. The dishwasher does work, yeah, I know,
I know, shocking. The kitchen is dry, my finger is
still recovering, and Moxie remains a drug free dog as
far as we know. Though, if another mystery puddle appears,
(24:30):
let's just say she's still the lead suspect and we
will do the towel test again. Is it white or
is it yellow, white or yellow. Inquiring minds would like
to know, and that's that. Now. The more you know
in honor of the dishwasher. It got me thinking my
(24:52):
entire life. I've always pretty much lived at homes that
have dishwashers, and I was like, at what point did
this become a thing? Because I don't think George Washington
or Benjamin Franklin were using the dishwasher, so I don't
think that was happening. So then I fell down this
rabbit hole, as I am known to do because I'm
(25:12):
a loser, and there's this this domino effect when one
thing happens and another. I was like, oh, that's interesting,
and then I start falling down and I'm not even talking.
I'm not running. It's not the running at the mouth
that's what I do behind these microphones. This was just me,
just in my head. I like, okay. So the first
practical dishwasher, believe it or not, was invented in eighteen
(25:36):
eighty six, with domestic application becoming widespread in the nineteen fifties.
So we are talking about almost sixty five years later,
possibly more than that, and the early inventions, the concept
of a mechanical dishwasher dates actually further back than that,
(25:56):
to eighteen fifty. There were dudes walking around that wanted
to make a dishwasher like this. So when American, this
American investor Joel Houghton received a patent for a a
hand cranked wooden box with a tire i raq, a
tire rack. I have tire iraq on the mind, a
(26:17):
wire iraq to hold dishes and all that stuff. And
it was not practical though for widespread use, we are told.
And then it was in eighteen eighty six where Josephine Cochrane,
a wealthy socialite from the great state of Illinois, was
able to patent the first practical dishwasher. Her design used
(26:38):
water pressure instead of scrubbers, right, and that's how went.
It featured racks to hold the dishes kind of secretly
and all that stuff, and was motorized to spray hot
water efficiently. So this the socialite showcased her invention at
the eighteen ninety three each Chicago World's Fair, and it
(27:02):
was initially marketed to hotels and restaurants rather than the
household due to its size and cost. So that's the
Magic Shop. And I know in the early part of
the twentieth century. Here Europe saw the first electric domestic
dishwasher in nineteen twenty nine. That's interesting, and we go
(27:29):
through all that. William Howard Livins invented a small, non
electric dishwasher in nineteen twenty four. And there's a lot
of people that have gone into the lab, their lab
and created something, at least they think they've created something anyway.
(27:49):
So the point of all this the dishwasher. Despite all
of the modern bells and whistles, all the innovations, dishwashers
remain a luxury item until the postwar boom of the
nineteen fifties, and it always been a luxury at hi
until then. And that's when standardized size, improved plumbing made
(28:10):
them more accessible. So at that point, okay, well now
we got something middle class household. By the nineteen sixties,
dishwashers became increasingly common. That's still almost seventy years ago,
increasingly common in America. European homes. By twenty twelve, or
(28:31):
over seventy five percent of homes in the United States
and Germany had dishwashers. So there is that now the
foody fun time now for the segment, as we just said,
foody fund. White Castle added new Southwest veggie Slider to
its permanent menu. So if you're jones in't for some
(28:54):
veggies like veggie slider and all that, this is your guy, right.
Overwhelming amount of people to try to get into these
ballparks most of the time, and demands for the White Castle,
they added a Southwest Was it Southwest veggie slider? I
believe is what they did. White Castle favorite non meat
(29:19):
option added to the permanent menu at participating locations. You
got our friend Windy high Windy, That's what Anthony and
Louisiana would say. Introduced new minions and monsters, adult meal,
and the new banana soft swirl. Look good for them.
(29:39):
That's not bad, all right. Meanwhile, the always popular Fifth
Hour podcast we have new episodes every single bleeping Friday,
which is today, Saturday, and Sunday. So if you're interested
in supporting this podcast, you can send a message in
(30:00):
for the mail bag which will be on Sunday, and
you can do that care of Real fifth Hour at
gmail dot com. Let me repeat that. For those of
you a little slow in the back of the room,
you can send a message in care of Real fifth
Hour at gmail dot com all letters, no numbers, all letters,
(30:22):
no numbers take a part in it, and we do
appreciate that. Now, as far as the halladay hooray for whatever,
there's a bunch of dope holidays, as there are every
single day, So there is that. Oh, by the way,
before I forget, if you would like to send a
message on whatever platform you're listening to this podcast on.
(30:49):
And when I say send a message, what I mean
by that. What I mean by that is to follow
the ben Malar account, follow the ben Malar account on
help us out. We need to get those following numbers
up even higher. And on that we will put the
baby to bed. Have a great rest your Friday. I
(31:10):
will likely watch some of the World Cup unless I
just stare at a wall oozing of nothing, oozing of nothing.
On that particular note, have a great rest of your Friday,
and we will talk to you next time. As Dick
and Dayton would say, bye bye, bye bye,
Host
Ben Maller
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