June 19, 2026 • 16 mins
Happy Father’s Day! Will and Mango are celebrating with nine facts about dads, from the origin of the term “founding fathers” to the oldest dad on record.
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This episode originally aired on June 16, 2018.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Guess what mango was that will.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
So, when you were growing up, was your dad just
full of dad jokes?
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (00:06):
So many dad jokes? Like he made a lot of puns.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
But he also did this.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
Thing where he would just repeat, like Dana Carvey catchphrases
like he loved Hell. So he'd like, do is George
Bush in an Indian accent? And it would just make
us grown.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
I love the idea of your dad and an Indian
accent doing an impression of Dana Carvey doing an impression
of George Bush.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Or whatever it was, the church lady, whatever it was, church.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Lady, Well, my dad was right there with him, and
he is still full of these dad jokes. 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 dadist.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Of dad jokes.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
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.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
I know. So I remember my dad making some horrible
joke knowingly, like about 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, add Dad for my kids, because it's
the best.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Do you think that if you did the floss dance
correctly that it would be any less embarrassing for them?
Speaker 1 (01:31):
I'm pretty sure no.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Embarrassed doesn't matter.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
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 the 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 Kemp. He put it this way.
He says, by playing with words, dads engage their kids
(01:56):
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 in some ways
may even help fathers cope with their kids growing up.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Huh.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Well, whether the science behind all this is sound or not,
I'm in full support of this theory me too.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
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
(02:48):
podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson
and as always I'm joined by my good friend mangesh
Hot Ticketer, although today Mango is joining me from the
always friendly Mouth Media Studios in New York City. We
always love recording there whenever we're in the city. So Mengo,
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
(03:11):
after another to the glass. That's our friends and producer
Tristan McNeil. So what's the latest one?
Speaker 1 (03:16):
It says?
Speaker 2 (03:17):
He's holding one up that says, what's brown and sticky?
Speaker 1 (03:21):
A stick? I mean, it doesn't get any.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
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.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
You know, the guy doesn't even have kids, but he's
actually better at dad jokes than we are.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
But so much better at dad jokes, I'm not.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
That surprised, to be honest with you. All Right, well,
let's keep the dad thing going. So what's your first
factor of the day, Mango?
Speaker 3 (03:45):
So I think you can probably predict where I'm going
to go with the first fact here.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
It's gonna be an animal fact, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Mm hmmm. Yeah. 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 clownfish. Yeah, it's because their paternal instincts are so
(04:11):
strong they'll even look after eggs that aren't theirs. 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 dads. 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,
(04:31):
and he'd actually protect them. He'd protect them, you'd clean them,
fan them, all of that, just like they were his own.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
I would assume this would just apply to fish eggs,
like if you drop some chicken eggs underwater.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
I guess.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
But let's think about other fish. Like other fish wouldn't
do this.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
No, I mean most of the fish species would just
eat the eggs.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Well, I knew you would start with an animal fact,
but that is a good one.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
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Speaker 2 (07:39):
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 Now 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.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Well.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
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 oh 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.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
So I'm also going to talk about a dad from
way back, and actually I'm going to go way way
back to a father who is 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.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Oh wow.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
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
(08:56):
didn't sit well with Pepin and he and a few
others conspired to assassine charle Man. 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.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
Wow, such a forgiving dad. That is wild.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
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's 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
(09:36):
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 Taylor. 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.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
You remember this, right.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
Yeah, of course. Every time I think about it, it makes
me want to whistle.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Right.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Well, you probably also remember the part where Opie picked
ex 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
(10:19):
fell short of the water. So what they did was
they had a prop man hide behind a bush, and
when Opie threw 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.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
Splash in the water.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
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 the splash.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
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 this was back in
the Eddie Murphy days.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
I actually already know exactly where you're gone with this.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
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.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Yeah, and then he proceeded to try and get the
studio audience to chant Opie Cunningham Opie Conning.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
So great, all right, So what do you have next?
Speaker 3 (11:20):
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.
There 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 Rumji Throgov, who had
(11:42):
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 one hundred and two ish.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
That is incredible. Wow.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
Yeah, and he's kind of the poster boy or poster
old man for vegetarianism because that's actually what he credits
for quote, stamina and virility.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Wow. You remember how you were a vegetarian for so long?
Speaker 2 (12:05):
I mean, I know it was you're mostly vegetarian these days,
but you'd been vegetarian for years, but your diet consisted
of I would guess i'd actually scientifically, i'd put the
estimate at sixty percent was McDonald's French fries. And then,
of course we learned that they'd been cooked in animal
fat for all of those.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Years, which is a fra effort, right, I guess.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
So 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.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Harding.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
This was, of course, the same man who won on
his inspiring campaign slogan a return to Normalcy.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
I feel like I get goosebumps just hearing that phrase.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
Yeah, me too well.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
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 Nard Umbrite
published the book it was called Founding Fathers, Men who
Shaped our tradition.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
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 fathers. Okay, well, so what's your last fact of
(13:28):
the day.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
All right, Well, you know, I was curious to look
at which cultures put a greater emphasis on father spending
time with their children. And it was really interesting to
read about the Aka pigmy people in Central Africa. And
this was for a couple of reasons. So first, a
few studies have shown that Aca fathers spend more time
with their infant children than any other society, with one
study showing that they have their infants within arm's reach
(13:51):
nearly fifty percent of their time.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Now.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
But another thing that was interesting to me just in
general about the Aka is just how interchangeable the may
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.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
That's really interesting. All right, Well, for my last fact,
as promised, I'm going to go back to pop culture,
and a couple of years ago, GQ 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 Toolman,
Taylor Jay Pritchett for Modern Family, who by the way,
(14:36):
beat out himself as Al Bundy just to get there,
and then there was Homer Simpson and Uncle Phil ended
up winning. And yes, he was, of course a good dad.
But I actually think I agree with the GQ writer
John Ortved 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.
(14:56):
Even when Bart fails to make the grades, ac 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.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Oh there's no doubt about that.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
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 dads out there for Father's Day. But you know,
I gotta say, Mango, I don't know if you've been
watching Tristan these last few days over there with these
(15:35):
sea monkeys he's been raising on his desk if he
caught a glimpse of this at all.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
I have, and you can see how proud he is
of each and every sea monkey.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
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.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
Thanks again to Mouth Media for hosting me today, and
thanks to Eve's Jeffcoat for always health full research, and
we'll be back with a full enth episode on Wednesday.
Guess what mango was that will.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
So, when you were growing up, was your dad just
full of dad jokes?
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (00:06):
So many dad jokes? Like he made a lot of puns.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
But he also did this.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
Thing where he would just repeat, like Dana Carvey catchphrases
like he loved Hell. So he'd like, do is George
Bush in an Indian accent? And it would just make
us grown.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
I love the idea of your dad and an Indian
accent doing an impression of Dana Carvey doing an impression
of George Bush.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Or whatever it was, the church lady, whatever it was, church.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Lady, Well, my dad was right there with him, and
he is still full of these dad jokes. 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 dadist.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Of dad jokes.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
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.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
I know. So I remember my dad making some horrible
joke knowingly, like about 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, add Dad for my kids, because it's
the best.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Do you think that if you did the floss dance
correctly that it would be any less embarrassing for them?
Speaker 1 (01:31):
I'm pretty sure no.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Embarrassed doesn't matter.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
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 the 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 Kemp. He put it this way.
He says, by playing with words, dads engage their kids
(01:56):
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 in some ways
may even help fathers cope with their kids growing up.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Huh.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Well, whether the science behind all this is sound or not,
I'm in full support of this theory me too.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
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
(02:48):
podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson
and as always I'm joined by my good friend mangesh
Hot Ticketer, although today Mango is joining me from the
always friendly Mouth Media Studios in New York City. We
always love recording there whenever we're in the city. So Mengo,
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
(03:11):
after another to the glass. That's our friends and producer
Tristan McNeil. So what's the latest one?
Speaker 1 (03:16):
It says?
Speaker 2 (03:17):
He's holding one up that says, what's brown and sticky?
Speaker 1 (03:21):
A stick? I mean, it doesn't get any.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
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.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
You know, the guy doesn't even have kids, but he's
actually better at dad jokes than we are.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
But so much better at dad jokes, I'm not.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
That surprised, to be honest with you. All Right, well,
let's keep the dad thing going. So what's your first
factor of the day, Mango?
Speaker 3 (03:45):
So I think you can probably predict where I'm going
to go with the first fact here.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
It's gonna be an animal fact, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Mm hmmm. Yeah. 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 clownfish. Yeah, it's because their paternal instincts are so
(04:11):
strong they'll even look after eggs that aren't theirs. 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 dads. 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,
(04:31):
and he'd actually protect them. He'd protect them, you'd clean them,
fan them, all of that, just like they were his own.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
I would assume this would just apply to fish eggs,
like if you drop some chicken eggs underwater.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
I guess.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
But let's think about other fish. Like other fish wouldn't
do this.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
No, I mean most of the fish species would just
eat the eggs.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Well, I knew you would start with an animal fact,
but that is a good one.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Today's episode of Part Time Genius is brought to you
by Sale, a new esom service app by the creators
of Nord VPN. Who if you know this show, you
know I love and they have got a special deal
for you. But first, what is an eSIM? So let
me tell you what I could have used an eSIM.
This February I was in Goa. I was reporting on
a new show and I went out to the Boonies
(05:21):
to meet with this aur Vedic doctor and after the appointment,
I said, hey, can you help me call a taxi,
and he just laughed, which probably should have been my
first indication that something was wrong. And he said, just
walk half a mile down the road and you'll see
a taxi at some point, which was not comforting. So
(05:41):
I'm getting no reception, no internet. I walk a half
mile down the road, still no reception, no internet, and
I wait and I wait, and finally I see this
old rickshaw driver who is asleep in his vehicle, and
I try to make sounds, first lightly, then a little
louder to get his attention, and finally I do and
he does not want to drive me home. It took
(06:04):
me a very, very long time to convince him, and
a lot of begging. But you know what would have
helped Sale. Basically, if you've ever been lost abroad or
badly needed an Internet connection with no Wi Fi spot
in sight, you will understand what a difference a local
SIM card can make. And eSIM provides an Internet connection
(06:25):
wherever you travel, save you money on roaming fees, and
Sale makes it incredibly easy. All you have to do
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(07:33):
in the episode description.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
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 Now 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.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Well.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
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 oh 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.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
So I'm also going to talk about a dad from
way back, and actually I'm going to go way way
back to a father who is 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.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Oh wow.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
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
(08:56):
didn't sit well with Pepin and he and a few
others conspired to assassine charle Man. 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.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
Wow, such a forgiving dad. That is wild.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
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's 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
(09:36):
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 Taylor. 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.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
You remember this, right.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
Yeah, of course. Every time I think about it, it makes
me want to whistle.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Right.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Well, you probably also remember the part where Opie picked
ex 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
(10:19):
fell short of the water. So what they did was
they had a prop man hide behind a bush, and
when Opie threw 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.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
Splash in the water.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
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 the splash.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
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 this was back in
the Eddie Murphy days.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
I actually already know exactly where you're gone with this.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
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.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Yeah, and then he proceeded to try and get the
studio audience to chant Opie Cunningham Opie Conning.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
So great, all right, So what do you have next?
Speaker 3 (11:20):
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.
There 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 Rumji Throgov, who had
(11:42):
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 one hundred and two ish.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
That is incredible. Wow.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
Yeah, and he's kind of the poster boy or poster
old man for vegetarianism because that's actually what he credits
for quote, stamina and virility.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Wow. You remember how you were a vegetarian for so long?
Speaker 2 (12:05):
I mean, I know it was you're mostly vegetarian these days,
but you'd been vegetarian for years, but your diet consisted
of I would guess i'd actually scientifically, i'd put the
estimate at sixty percent was McDonald's French fries. And then,
of course we learned that they'd been cooked in animal
fat for all of those.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Years, which is a fra effort, right, I guess.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
So 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.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Harding.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
This was, of course, the same man who won on
his inspiring campaign slogan a return to Normalcy.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
I feel like I get goosebumps just hearing that phrase.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
Yeah, me too well.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
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 Nard Umbrite
published the book it was called Founding Fathers, Men who
Shaped our tradition.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
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 fathers. Okay, well, so what's your last fact of
(13:28):
the day.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
All right, Well, you know, I was curious to look
at which cultures put a greater emphasis on father spending
time with their children. And it was really interesting to
read about the Aka pigmy people in Central Africa. And
this was for a couple of reasons. So first, a
few studies have shown that Aca fathers spend more time
with their infant children than any other society, with one
study showing that they have their infants within arm's reach
(13:51):
nearly fifty percent of their time.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Now.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
But another thing that was interesting to me just in
general about the Aka is just how interchangeable the may
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.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
That's really interesting. All right, Well, for my last fact,
as promised, I'm going to go back to pop culture,
and a couple of years ago, GQ 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 Toolman,
Taylor Jay Pritchett for Modern Family, who by the way,
(14:36):
beat out himself as Al Bundy just to get there,
and then there was Homer Simpson and Uncle Phil ended
up winning. And yes, he was, of course a good dad.
But I actually think I agree with the GQ writer
John Ortved 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.
(14:56):
Even when Bart fails to make the grades, ac 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.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Oh there's no doubt about that.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
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 dads out there for Father's Day. But you know,
I gotta say, Mango, I don't know if you've been
watching Tristan these last few days over there with these
(15:35):
sea monkeys he's been raising on his desk if he
caught a glimpse of this at all.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
I have, and you can see how proud he is
of each and every sea monkey.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
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.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
Thanks again to Mouth Media for hosting me today, and
thanks to Eve's Jeffcoat for always health full research, and
we'll be back with a full enth episode on Wednesday.
Part-Time Genius News
Hosts And Creators
Will Pearson
Mangesh Hattikudur
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