September 3, 2025 • 17 mins
The Puzzler team is taking a short break, and in the meantime we're bringing you some of our favorite episodes from the archives. We'll be back with brand new episodes next week!
Hello, Puzzlers! Puzzling with us today: author of The Fault in Our Stars, Paper Towns, the recent Everything is Tuberculosis, and more, John Green!
Join host A.J. Jacobs and his guests as they puzzle–and laugh–their way through new spins on old favorites, like anagrams and palindromes, as well as quirky originals such as “Ask AI” and audio rebuses.
Subscribe to The Puzzler podcast wherever you get your podcasts!
"The Puzzler with A.J. Jacobs" is distributed by iHeartPodcasts and is a co-production with Neuhaus Ideas.
Our executive producers are Neely Lohmann and Adam Neuhaus of Neuhaus Ideas, and Lindsay Hoffman of iHeart Podcasts.
The show is produced by Jody Avirgan and Brittani Brown of Roulette Productions.
Our Chief Puzzle Officer is Greg Pliska. Our associate producer is Andrea Schoenberg.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello puzzlers. This week, the week of Labor Day, the
Puzzler team will be busy in the Puzzler Laboratory. We
are coming up with new ways to bemuse and amuse
our wonderful listeners, which gives us the chance to play
you some of our favorite episodes from the Puzzler vault,
(00:20):
So please enjoy today's selection. Hello puzzlers, Let's start with
a quick puzzle. This mini puzzle is inspired by our
guest John Green, author of the mega bestseller The Fault
in Our Stars. The title of that book comes from Shakespeare,
who had a line in his play Julius Caesar, the
faultier Brutus is not in our stars, but in ourselves.
(00:43):
So my question to listeners is and to Greg, what
other books or movies have titles inspired by Shakespeare lines.
I'll give you an example. Infinite Jest by David Foster
Wallace was from Hamlet. The Answers to Others and more
puzzling puzzles after the break, Hello puzzlers, Welcome back to
(01:09):
the Puzzler podcast. The Laudanum in your Puzzle pat Medicine,
I am your host.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Hey, we've gone back to a nineteen.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
You know it's the topic of John's book, so I
thought it was appropriate. I am your host, AJ Jacobson.
I'm here with Chief Puzzle Officer Greg Clisk. Greg. Before
the break, we asked you and listeners to come up
with books or movies with titles that come from Shakespeare lines,
such as our Guest today, John Green's The Fault in
Our Stars? Didst thou come up with anything?
Speaker 3 (01:40):
I did?
Speaker 4 (01:41):
Is?
Speaker 2 (01:42):
The one that I always think of is the Tomorrow
and Tomorrow speech from Macbeth, because there are a bunch
of titles in there. The probably most notable one is
sound in the Sound and the Fury Right, which is
right at the end of that speech. An Alistair MacLean
book called The Way to Dusty Death, which is in
the middle of that, And I think there are several others.
(02:04):
I thought of Agatha Christie because by the pricking of
my thumbs is an Agatha Christie book. I think it's
a Miss Marple mystery, and the rest of that line,
something wicked this way comes is a Ray Bradbury that's amazed.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
First of all, very impressed with your Shakespeare title knowledge.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
I did it.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Secondly, I love I mean, can you imagine being a
writer where you write a sentence where the first part
it becomes a famous silence and the second part like
one sentence. There are a couple more. We've got Band
of Brothers, the TV show What Dreams May Come, All
the World's a Stooge, a three Stooges episode, of course,
(02:44):
and the above mentioned The Fault in Our Stars, which
brings us to our wonderful guest, the author of many books,
Turtles All the Way Down and the new nonfiction bestseller
Everything Is Tuberculosis. Welcome back, John Green.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
It's great to be with you as always.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Ah, I love it. And we were just talking about
the line the fault in our Stars from Julius Segar,
and I thought about that line a lot when reading
your new book, because that line is all about how, oh,
the fault, dear brutus is not in our stars but
in ourselves. The meaning it wasn't luck, it wasn't fair.
It was our bad decision to blame. And I feel
(03:25):
that may be true sometimes, but a lot of times
it's not true. For life, the stars really are, and
with tuberculosis and disease, a luck plays a huge part.
Speaker 4 (03:37):
Yeah, it's a birth lottery in a lot of ways.
I mean, if you're born in the United States, you
have like one ten thousandth the chance of contracting tuberculosis
as you do if you're born in Sierra Leone. And
so that's just a birth lottery that doesn't reflect anything
about human choice or anything. What it does reflect a
little bit, though, is human built systems of resource allocation,
(04:00):
of resource distribution, and so those are things that we
can change. So it's an interesting place with tuberculosis. It
lies in between these worlds where the fault is in
the stars in the sense that you know, you don't
pick whether you get tuberculosis. Anybody who breathes can get tuberculosis.
But the fault is also with ourselves in the sense
(04:21):
that we need to build better systems that distribute the
cure for tuberculosis to more people.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Oh man, that's lovely, absolutely true. The book is really
inspiring a call for action, But since it's the John
Green book, it is also filled with delightful information, as
are your novels. And I hope you take this as
a compliment, John, but I think your novels could be
the best most trivia filled novels ever.
Speaker 4 (04:50):
I think that's because we both have a past with
Mental Floss magazine AJ and when I was writing my
first couple books, I was working full time for Mental Flaws,
and so I was constantly writing trivia alongside writing novels.
And so I love, I love including some trivia in
my novels, it's for sure.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
Oh yeah, it is great. And by the way, that's
how I met you is Mental Flaws. So I'm grateful
to Mentlaw and Neelie Lowman was the editor of Mental
Flaws and she is a producer now on The Puzzler.
Speaker 4 (05:18):
So it's a small world when when it comes to
Mental Floss, we're all still interconnected.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
And Will and Mango were just guests on the buzzles.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Yes, and I was an avid reader of Mental Floor. Really,
so I just received all the you know, greatness.
Speaker 4 (05:33):
You're part of the the first people ever to pay
me to write, is that right?
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Yeah, that is great to know.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Well, I know that you wrote you wrote a book
for them all about cocktail party banter. How to survive
at a cocktail party. Uh do you remember any of
the are any of the banter that you need to survive?
Speaker 3 (05:53):
Well, very very little.
Speaker 4 (05:55):
And indeed I struggle at cocktail party so I probably
should reread that book.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
You should, you should you read It's good. Yeah. I
often get asked what's my favorite fact, and I always struggle.
I came up with one just moments ago. For this, Michaelangelo,
when he was painting the Sistine Chapel, wrote these letters
saying how much he knew the Sistine Chapel sucked and
it was his worst thing ever. And that always makes
(06:19):
me feel a little better about that.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
That he's encouraging.
Speaker 4 (06:22):
It's always it's always nice to know that even the
greatest artists feel like they're complete frauds.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Exactly, exactly.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
One other memory I have of Mental Plus, which he
wrote about in the intro to Your Mental Fluss book,
was that we celebrated Genghis khan Is dead day. Do
you remember that?
Speaker 3 (06:41):
I do? I do remember that.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Yeah. It was because we had a diverse staff. We
didn't want to commit to one religion for the December holidays.
But everyone can agree Genghis Khan kind of a jerk.
Speaker 4 (06:53):
At least that he's dead, right, I mean, the one
thing that we're absolutely sure about is that Genghis Khani
is dead. You're artist if you're position on Genghis Khan's
leadership style. We can agree that he is deceased, and
that is something that we will acknowledge at our holiday party.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
That in this world of misinformation, I feel we can
agree on that. Although there are Genghis Khan apologists who
say he increased trade routes and all that, but I'm
not a huge fan. Anyway, back to mental floss. We
have a puzzle today that pays tribute to mental flows.
It's called mental to dental, and it's a puzzle all
(07:29):
about phrases where you replace the M at the start
of the first word with a D and magically transform
it into something else. So, like mental floss, you replace
the M, it becomes dental floss. So I might give
a clue such a for that one, I would have
given a clue, like a trivia magazine becomes something to
(07:49):
clean your teeth, So mental change the M to a D,
mental floss to dental floss. I'll give you another example,
just to make sure it's clear. If you change the
first M to D in this phrase, a winner of
our nation's beauty pageant becomes an insult to the United States,
So in that one, it would be miss America becomes
(08:12):
dis America. And all of these, by the way, are
not necessarily real phenomena. They might be sort of fictional,
as in our first example.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
Are you ready, I'm ready?
Speaker 2 (08:23):
All right?
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Replace the first M with a D and a Lindsey
low Hand movie magically transforms into a film about female
college advisors.
Speaker 4 (08:35):
Okay, I can think of a few Lindsay Lowhand movies,
but I have to say I'm not deeply familiar with
her ouvra. I may need to rely on my chief
puzzle officer here.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
For a hand. I'm just afraid you were going to
say that.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
I immediately thought of The love Bug, which it definitely
is not. What's the second half of the question?
Speaker 1 (08:53):
A film about female college advisors? Well, let me help
with the first part. This is a team thing.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Get in there through the second part. What are college advisors?
Are they deans? Are they counsel deans?
Speaker 3 (09:07):
Dean? And we've changed the D. I've got it.
Speaker 4 (09:09):
I've got it, engineered it way to reverse engineer it.
It is mean girls becomes dean girls.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Oh, you got it. Teamwork, nailed it nice exactly.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
Thank you Greg, Thank you John.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
It was all we.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Were just talking about teamwork before.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
Nothing is life is a collaboration.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
There you go. I have about this one. Change the
first M to a D, and Samuel Longhorm Clemmens transforms
into his evil twin M.
Speaker 4 (09:41):
Very good, very good. I think I have this one.
Mark Twain becomes Dark Twain.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
That is it Dark Twain. Now from my deep internet
googling research, I found out you wrote your college thesis
on a Mark Twain.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
Now you did do some deep resear well.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Actually Andrea did, but thank you Andrea.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
I did.
Speaker 4 (10:04):
I wrote my college thesis about Mark Twain's relationship with
Christian science. He wrote a book about Mary Baker Eddie
called Christian Science, and that's what I wrote my college
thesis about. I don't know if it holds up, haven't
reread it in almost thirty years.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
But it was fun.
Speaker 4 (10:19):
It was a fun research project for me. It was
one of the first times I really took academic seriously.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
To be perfectly honest with you.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
I'm guessing he wasn't a huge fan.
Speaker 4 (10:28):
He wasn't a huge fan. I mean and generally he
wasn't a huge fan of religion, but he particularly disliked
sort of new religions and new American religions, which he
saw as a threat to his idea of America.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Well, let's stick with a little literary action with this.
Is a George Elliott novel that becomes pickle herbs on
your dental string. So it's not two words, is a
four word frames?
Speaker 4 (11:02):
Well, the George Elliott novel that immediately comes to mind
is Middle March.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
Oh, I love it.
Speaker 4 (11:12):
Think that diddal March doesn't work podcast silence, Uh, another.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
Doesn't work.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
Well, I'll tell you that one of the last word
in both of them is a reference to where we met.
It's a callback to the dental string.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
It's a reference.
Speaker 4 (11:37):
Oh it's Oh, it's dell on the floss still on.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
The exactly mill on the because.
Speaker 4 (11:44):
I read it in college and everything, and then I
completely forgot about it.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
That poor novel.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
I've never read it, so it's even poorer in my estimation.
I will say again. Andrea up with her excellent googling skills,
found that you were inspired by George Eliot in The
Fault in Our Stars if you remember that.
Speaker 4 (12:05):
Oh yeah, I don't remember how, but I mean I
read George Elliott a lot back when I was writing
that book, So I'm not surprised.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
How was I inspired?
Speaker 1 (12:13):
You would inspired and glad you asked? You inspired because
she wrote a fictional epigraph, meaning like a quote at
the beginning of the book that was not a real quote.
And you did the same thing in the Fault in
Our Stars, and.
Speaker 4 (12:28):
I did steal that idea from her. She's angry, No,
she'll forget me.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
It happen, which is boring, as we've established. Well, yes,
it's a it's a lovely thing. It's very very delightful.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
All right.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
I've got one more for you, which is this is
a journalist who exposes corruption becomes a guy who uses
garden instruments to gather up aquatic birds. So very very
common situation.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
Very common.
Speaker 4 (13:04):
We've all been there that I think that would be
a muckraker becomes a duck raker.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
That is exactly what it is. A muckraker becomes a
duck raker. And the muckrakers were, of course, the progressive
era folks like Upton Sinclair and Ida Tarbell, who expos
They like they were great, I mean they were.
Speaker 4 (13:27):
Oh, I mean the jungle is is still a harrowing,
harrowing read.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
Yeah, I haven't read it. I'm luckily I'm a vegetarian,
so I think they could read it now.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
Yeah, you could read it now. You'd be just fine.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
You'd be like, what a great decision I made?
Speaker 1 (13:43):
Exactly? Well, well done, John, you cruised on through. And
by the way, I know that you are also in
addition to the spelling bee, you are also a crossword guide.
Right do you still do the crossword?
Speaker 4 (13:58):
I do the crossword every Sunday with my spouse. It's
a it's a third thing in our relationship. So it's
a sight of joint rapture for us.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
And you have appeared a few times. I think you
and your books, and were you ever doing the puzzle
when you appeared.
Speaker 4 (14:16):
I have done the puzzle when I appeared, and I
can confirm that it is as delightful as you would imagine.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Well, I liked your quote somewhere where you said that
you feel bad for the ninety seven percent of Americans
who have never read the fault in our Stars, but
you were quite happy to know that you had one.
I mean, think of me. I appeared in a Saturday
because I'm obscure, Like, think of the ninety nine point
nine percent of Americans who've never heard of me, Sure,
(14:45):
but I know me so even.
Speaker 4 (14:47):
It's such a fun feeling. I mean, it really is.
Were you were you doing the puzzle when you found
it out or did's Oh?
Speaker 1 (14:53):
I was someone spoiled it, but it was okay, It
was okay, and then I went to do it. Well,
there are couple. It's a little complicated because then there
was a follow up puzzle where I was also in,
and that one I was so rattled by it. That
one I was doing, and I was so rattled that
I couldn't finish the puzzle because it was just too overwhelming.
(15:15):
So it broke my streak. Well, thank you John, and
everyone pick up his book Everything is Tuberculosis, which is wonderful, fascinating, inspiring,
and filled with delightful trivia because we all grew up
on our mental floss as one of our first jobs.
In the meantime, I do have an extra credit for
(15:36):
the folks at home remember this, as he changed the
initial M in the phrase to a D and get
a whole new phrase. A demented physicist becomes someone who
studies fathers. A demented physicist becomes someone who studies fathers.
In randomized control trials.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Those don't have to be two different things.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
That is true.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
You could be a demented vision assist who studies fathers.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
You're right, but that's a different puzzle.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
That is a different puzzle. But you will get credit
nonetheless if you crack the code. And in the meantime,
if you have a minute, we would love it if
you would rate the puzzler on whatever podcast platform you
listen to it on, because it makes a huge difference
in people finding the puzzler, which we would love. And
we'll meet you here tomorrow for more puzzling puzzles. They
(16:26):
will puzzle you puzzlingly.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
Hey puzzlers. Greg Pliska here up from the puzzle ab
with the extra credit answer from our previous episode. Josh
Radner joined us once more and we did How I
Met Your Mother. Spinoffs shows whose title rhyme with how
I Met your mother, or rather rhyme with the word
met in that title, And your extra credit clue is
this this is a show about how I rue the
(16:56):
day that your mother was created, your mama. That title
is how I regret your mother sad way to end
I realized. But we are thrilled to have Joshua with us.
We're thrilled to have you with us, and we'll see
you here tomorrow
Hello puzzlers. This week, the week of Labor Day, the
Puzzler team will be busy in the Puzzler Laboratory. We
are coming up with new ways to bemuse and amuse
our wonderful listeners, which gives us the chance to play
you some of our favorite episodes from the Puzzler vault,
(00:20):
So please enjoy today's selection. Hello puzzlers, Let's start with
a quick puzzle. This mini puzzle is inspired by our
guest John Green, author of the mega bestseller The Fault
in Our Stars. The title of that book comes from Shakespeare,
who had a line in his play Julius Caesar, the
faultier Brutus is not in our stars, but in ourselves.
(00:43):
So my question to listeners is and to Greg, what
other books or movies have titles inspired by Shakespeare lines.
I'll give you an example. Infinite Jest by David Foster
Wallace was from Hamlet. The Answers to Others and more
puzzling puzzles after the break, Hello puzzlers, Welcome back to
(01:09):
the Puzzler podcast. The Laudanum in your Puzzle pat Medicine,
I am your host.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Hey, we've gone back to a nineteen.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
You know it's the topic of John's book, so I
thought it was appropriate. I am your host, AJ Jacobson.
I'm here with Chief Puzzle Officer Greg Clisk. Greg. Before
the break, we asked you and listeners to come up
with books or movies with titles that come from Shakespeare lines,
such as our Guest today, John Green's The Fault in
Our Stars? Didst thou come up with anything?
Speaker 3 (01:40):
I did?
Speaker 4 (01:41):
Is?
Speaker 2 (01:42):
The one that I always think of is the Tomorrow
and Tomorrow speech from Macbeth, because there are a bunch
of titles in there. The probably most notable one is
sound in the Sound and the Fury Right, which is
right at the end of that speech. An Alistair MacLean
book called The Way to Dusty Death, which is in
the middle of that, And I think there are several others.
(02:04):
I thought of Agatha Christie because by the pricking of
my thumbs is an Agatha Christie book. I think it's
a Miss Marple mystery, and the rest of that line,
something wicked this way comes is a Ray Bradbury that's amazed.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
First of all, very impressed with your Shakespeare title knowledge.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
I did it.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Secondly, I love I mean, can you imagine being a
writer where you write a sentence where the first part
it becomes a famous silence and the second part like
one sentence. There are a couple more. We've got Band
of Brothers, the TV show What Dreams May Come, All
the World's a Stooge, a three Stooges episode, of course,
(02:44):
and the above mentioned The Fault in Our Stars, which
brings us to our wonderful guest, the author of many books,
Turtles All the Way Down and the new nonfiction bestseller
Everything Is Tuberculosis. Welcome back, John Green.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
It's great to be with you as always.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Ah, I love it. And we were just talking about
the line the fault in our Stars from Julius Segar,
and I thought about that line a lot when reading
your new book, because that line is all about how, oh,
the fault, dear brutus is not in our stars but
in ourselves. The meaning it wasn't luck, it wasn't fair.
It was our bad decision to blame. And I feel
(03:25):
that may be true sometimes, but a lot of times
it's not true. For life, the stars really are, and
with tuberculosis and disease, a luck plays a huge part.
Speaker 4 (03:37):
Yeah, it's a birth lottery in a lot of ways.
I mean, if you're born in the United States, you
have like one ten thousandth the chance of contracting tuberculosis
as you do if you're born in Sierra Leone. And
so that's just a birth lottery that doesn't reflect anything
about human choice or anything. What it does reflect a
little bit, though, is human built systems of resource allocation,
(04:00):
of resource distribution, and so those are things that we
can change. So it's an interesting place with tuberculosis. It
lies in between these worlds where the fault is in
the stars in the sense that you know, you don't
pick whether you get tuberculosis. Anybody who breathes can get tuberculosis.
But the fault is also with ourselves in the sense
(04:21):
that we need to build better systems that distribute the
cure for tuberculosis to more people.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Oh man, that's lovely, absolutely true. The book is really
inspiring a call for action, But since it's the John
Green book, it is also filled with delightful information, as
are your novels. And I hope you take this as
a compliment, John, but I think your novels could be
the best most trivia filled novels ever.
Speaker 4 (04:50):
I think that's because we both have a past with
Mental Floss magazine AJ and when I was writing my
first couple books, I was working full time for Mental Flaws,
and so I was constantly writing trivia alongside writing novels.
And so I love, I love including some trivia in
my novels, it's for sure.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
Oh yeah, it is great. And by the way, that's
how I met you is Mental Flaws. So I'm grateful
to Mentlaw and Neelie Lowman was the editor of Mental
Flaws and she is a producer now on The Puzzler.
Speaker 4 (05:18):
So it's a small world when when it comes to
Mental Floss, we're all still interconnected.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
And Will and Mango were just guests on the buzzles.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Yes, and I was an avid reader of Mental Floor. Really,
so I just received all the you know, greatness.
Speaker 4 (05:33):
You're part of the the first people ever to pay
me to write, is that right?
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Yeah, that is great to know.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Well, I know that you wrote you wrote a book
for them all about cocktail party banter. How to survive
at a cocktail party. Uh do you remember any of
the are any of the banter that you need to survive?
Speaker 3 (05:53):
Well, very very little.
Speaker 4 (05:55):
And indeed I struggle at cocktail party so I probably
should reread that book.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
You should, you should you read It's good. Yeah. I
often get asked what's my favorite fact, and I always struggle.
I came up with one just moments ago. For this, Michaelangelo,
when he was painting the Sistine Chapel, wrote these letters
saying how much he knew the Sistine Chapel sucked and
it was his worst thing ever. And that always makes
(06:19):
me feel a little better about that.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
That he's encouraging.
Speaker 4 (06:22):
It's always it's always nice to know that even the
greatest artists feel like they're complete frauds.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Exactly, exactly.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
One other memory I have of Mental Plus, which he
wrote about in the intro to Your Mental Fluss book,
was that we celebrated Genghis khan Is dead day. Do
you remember that?
Speaker 3 (06:41):
I do? I do remember that.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Yeah. It was because we had a diverse staff. We
didn't want to commit to one religion for the December holidays.
But everyone can agree Genghis Khan kind of a jerk.
Speaker 4 (06:53):
At least that he's dead, right, I mean, the one
thing that we're absolutely sure about is that Genghis Khani
is dead. You're artist if you're position on Genghis Khan's
leadership style. We can agree that he is deceased, and
that is something that we will acknowledge at our holiday party.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
That in this world of misinformation, I feel we can
agree on that. Although there are Genghis Khan apologists who
say he increased trade routes and all that, but I'm
not a huge fan. Anyway, back to mental floss. We
have a puzzle today that pays tribute to mental flows.
It's called mental to dental, and it's a puzzle all
(07:29):
about phrases where you replace the M at the start
of the first word with a D and magically transform
it into something else. So, like mental floss, you replace
the M, it becomes dental floss. So I might give
a clue such a for that one, I would have
given a clue, like a trivia magazine becomes something to
(07:49):
clean your teeth, So mental change the M to a D,
mental floss to dental floss. I'll give you another example,
just to make sure it's clear. If you change the
first M to D in this phrase, a winner of
our nation's beauty pageant becomes an insult to the United States,
So in that one, it would be miss America becomes
(08:12):
dis America. And all of these, by the way, are
not necessarily real phenomena. They might be sort of fictional,
as in our first example.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
Are you ready, I'm ready?
Speaker 2 (08:23):
All right?
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Replace the first M with a D and a Lindsey
low Hand movie magically transforms into a film about female
college advisors.
Speaker 4 (08:35):
Okay, I can think of a few Lindsay Lowhand movies,
but I have to say I'm not deeply familiar with
her ouvra. I may need to rely on my chief
puzzle officer here.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
For a hand. I'm just afraid you were going to
say that.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
I immediately thought of The love Bug, which it definitely
is not. What's the second half of the question?
Speaker 1 (08:53):
A film about female college advisors? Well, let me help
with the first part. This is a team thing.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Get in there through the second part. What are college advisors?
Are they deans? Are they counsel deans?
Speaker 3 (09:07):
Dean? And we've changed the D. I've got it.
Speaker 4 (09:09):
I've got it, engineered it way to reverse engineer it.
It is mean girls becomes dean girls.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Oh, you got it. Teamwork, nailed it nice exactly.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
Thank you Greg, Thank you John.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
It was all we.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Were just talking about teamwork before.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
Nothing is life is a collaboration.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
There you go. I have about this one. Change the
first M to a D, and Samuel Longhorm Clemmens transforms
into his evil twin M.
Speaker 4 (09:41):
Very good, very good. I think I have this one.
Mark Twain becomes Dark Twain.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
That is it Dark Twain. Now from my deep internet
googling research, I found out you wrote your college thesis
on a Mark Twain.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
Now you did do some deep resear well.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Actually Andrea did, but thank you Andrea.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
I did.
Speaker 4 (10:04):
I wrote my college thesis about Mark Twain's relationship with
Christian science. He wrote a book about Mary Baker Eddie
called Christian Science, and that's what I wrote my college
thesis about. I don't know if it holds up, haven't
reread it in almost thirty years.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
But it was fun.
Speaker 4 (10:19):
It was a fun research project for me. It was
one of the first times I really took academic seriously.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
To be perfectly honest with you.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
I'm guessing he wasn't a huge fan.
Speaker 4 (10:28):
He wasn't a huge fan. I mean and generally he
wasn't a huge fan of religion, but he particularly disliked
sort of new religions and new American religions, which he
saw as a threat to his idea of America.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Well, let's stick with a little literary action with this.
Is a George Elliott novel that becomes pickle herbs on
your dental string. So it's not two words, is a
four word frames?
Speaker 4 (11:02):
Well, the George Elliott novel that immediately comes to mind
is Middle March.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
Oh, I love it.
Speaker 4 (11:12):
Think that diddal March doesn't work podcast silence, Uh, another.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
Doesn't work.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
Well, I'll tell you that one of the last word
in both of them is a reference to where we met.
It's a callback to the dental string.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
It's a reference.
Speaker 4 (11:37):
Oh it's Oh, it's dell on the floss still on.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
The exactly mill on the because.
Speaker 4 (11:44):
I read it in college and everything, and then I
completely forgot about it.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
That poor novel.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
I've never read it, so it's even poorer in my estimation.
I will say again. Andrea up with her excellent googling skills,
found that you were inspired by George Eliot in The
Fault in Our Stars if you remember that.
Speaker 4 (12:05):
Oh yeah, I don't remember how, but I mean I
read George Elliott a lot back when I was writing
that book, So I'm not surprised.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
How was I inspired?
Speaker 1 (12:13):
You would inspired and glad you asked? You inspired because
she wrote a fictional epigraph, meaning like a quote at
the beginning of the book that was not a real quote.
And you did the same thing in the Fault in
Our Stars, and.
Speaker 4 (12:28):
I did steal that idea from her. She's angry, No,
she'll forget me.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
It happen, which is boring, as we've established. Well, yes,
it's a it's a lovely thing. It's very very delightful.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
All right.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
I've got one more for you, which is this is
a journalist who exposes corruption becomes a guy who uses
garden instruments to gather up aquatic birds. So very very
common situation.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
Very common.
Speaker 4 (13:04):
We've all been there that I think that would be
a muckraker becomes a duck raker.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
That is exactly what it is. A muckraker becomes a
duck raker. And the muckrakers were, of course, the progressive
era folks like Upton Sinclair and Ida Tarbell, who expos
They like they were great, I mean they were.
Speaker 4 (13:27):
Oh, I mean the jungle is is still a harrowing,
harrowing read.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
Yeah, I haven't read it. I'm luckily I'm a vegetarian,
so I think they could read it now.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
Yeah, you could read it now. You'd be just fine.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
You'd be like, what a great decision I made?
Speaker 1 (13:43):
Exactly? Well, well done, John, you cruised on through. And
by the way, I know that you are also in
addition to the spelling bee, you are also a crossword guide.
Right do you still do the crossword?
Speaker 4 (13:58):
I do the crossword every Sunday with my spouse. It's
a it's a third thing in our relationship. So it's
a sight of joint rapture for us.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
And you have appeared a few times. I think you
and your books, and were you ever doing the puzzle
when you appeared.
Speaker 4 (14:16):
I have done the puzzle when I appeared, and I
can confirm that it is as delightful as you would imagine.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Well, I liked your quote somewhere where you said that
you feel bad for the ninety seven percent of Americans
who have never read the fault in our Stars, but
you were quite happy to know that you had one.
I mean, think of me. I appeared in a Saturday
because I'm obscure, Like, think of the ninety nine point
nine percent of Americans who've never heard of me, Sure,
(14:45):
but I know me so even.
Speaker 4 (14:47):
It's such a fun feeling. I mean, it really is.
Were you were you doing the puzzle when you found
it out or did's Oh?
Speaker 1 (14:53):
I was someone spoiled it, but it was okay, It
was okay, and then I went to do it. Well,
there are couple. It's a little complicated because then there
was a follow up puzzle where I was also in,
and that one I was so rattled by it. That
one I was doing, and I was so rattled that
I couldn't finish the puzzle because it was just too overwhelming.
(15:15):
So it broke my streak. Well, thank you John, and
everyone pick up his book Everything is Tuberculosis, which is wonderful, fascinating, inspiring,
and filled with delightful trivia because we all grew up
on our mental floss as one of our first jobs.
In the meantime, I do have an extra credit for
(15:36):
the folks at home remember this, as he changed the
initial M in the phrase to a D and get
a whole new phrase. A demented physicist becomes someone who
studies fathers. A demented physicist becomes someone who studies fathers.
In randomized control trials.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Those don't have to be two different things.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
That is true.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
You could be a demented vision assist who studies fathers.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
You're right, but that's a different puzzle.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
That is a different puzzle. But you will get credit
nonetheless if you crack the code. And in the meantime,
if you have a minute, we would love it if
you would rate the puzzler on whatever podcast platform you
listen to it on, because it makes a huge difference
in people finding the puzzler, which we would love. And
we'll meet you here tomorrow for more puzzling puzzles. They
(16:26):
will puzzle you puzzlingly.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
Hey puzzlers. Greg Pliska here up from the puzzle ab
with the extra credit answer from our previous episode. Josh
Radner joined us once more and we did How I
Met Your Mother. Spinoffs shows whose title rhyme with how
I Met your mother, or rather rhyme with the word
met in that title, And your extra credit clue is
this this is a show about how I rue the
(16:56):
day that your mother was created, your mama. That title
is how I regret your mother sad way to end
I realized. But we are thrilled to have Joshua with us.
We're thrilled to have you with us, and we'll see
you here tomorrow
Hosts And Creators
Greg Pliska
A.J. Jacobs
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