The Puzzler with A.J. JacobsHello, Puzzlers! Puzzling with us today: author, media pundit, and host of the "Savage Lovecast" Dan Savage!
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 Chat GPT” and audio rebuses.
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"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.
Hello puzzlers. A quick note before today's show. Our guest is the wonderful and witty Dan Savage. He is a great writer who also happens to be a sex advice columnist. So these episodes are a bit spicier than usual, a bit more adult, nothing too crazy, but you could say they are are rated. So if you have younger puzzlers in the room or in the car, just be aware and thank you. Hello puzzlers, Welcome to the Puzzler Podcast, the Dazzling Hope Diamond in your Puzzler Smithsonian Museum. I am your host, AJ Jacobs, and I think listener Becky Ranginger for that intro phrase, even though I had trouble pronouncing it. Thank you, Becky. I'm here with today's guest, the great Dan Savage, sex columnist, podcaster, author, playwright, culture commentator, so much more. Thank you Dan for coming on the Puzzler.
Thank you for having me. It's a thrilled to be here.
Well. We are having a great time. And one of the many many projects you've done is the It Gets Better project that you started with your husband, Terry, and it is an amazing for those who don't know it, it's an amazing series of videos. How many would is it? Can you even estimate how many there are now?
Tens of thousands, thousands and thousands and thousands of videos where adult LGBT people share with younger LGBT people who may be struggling what they did to make it better. They didn't just wait around for it to get better. The things they did, the things they said to their families, what they did that worked to improve their lives. And young queer kids needed that because you know, a kid who's black is growing up with black parents who can share with their kid their coping strategies. Kid who's Jewish, same thing. But queer kids are usually raised by straight parents. Sometimes queer kids are out to their straight parents and don't have support at home. And He Gets Better campaign as a way of providing that support from queer adults in a safe way and sharing that kind of generational wisdom that generations of queer people haven't been able to share. We had to relearn those lessons, each of us by ourselves, in every generation. And what it Gets Better project does is it allows gay people to put that all in a kind of archive that's easily accessible by young queer people.
Oh, it is wonderful. And if you watch those and don't get emotional, then you have a heart of stone, I tell you. And they are so great and I want to talk more about that and how it began. But first, since this is the Puzzler, I am going to throw to our chief puzzle Officer, Greg Kliska, who has and it Gets Better themed puzzle just for you.
Awesome. Well, thank you, Aj, and thanks again Dan for being here. I'm a long time I feel like I want to say, longtime fan, first time caller. I know exactly so it didn't even work out that way, but thrilled to have you here and really fun to do a puzzle about it. It gets Better, which is such an important thing out there in the world. But of course here at the Puzzler, we play with the language, right and the first thing we thought was, well, let's take a bunch of make a bunch of good things better by changing the word good to the word better. So, for example, if I gave you the clue that this is a really really awesome brand of licorice candy, the answer would be better in plenty, okay, instead of good in plenty.
Because we feel everything needs to get better. It can apply to all sorts of things.
I reject the premise of that, U though an answer, because licorice never gets better in licorice is disgusting and terrible in any form.
Oh oh, those are like fighting words in my family, although I'm mostly with you. The rest of my family, my wife, my kids, my in laws, they could fill the house with licorice.
Fighting words in my house too, because my husband loves licorice, is particularly like Swedish licorices and licorices from Norway, which taste like gasoline, and he eats them by the fistfalls and I can't bear it.
I am with Terry. I am a licorice lover and a candy corn lover, which is another much hated poor candy.
I'm a candy corn lover. I will I will go to the mattresses in defense of candy corn.
Thank God.
Okay, so my wife will now continue listening to them. She is also a candy corn lover. You both have.
Redeemed candy corn lovers. I love it all right.
So you got the premise of the puzzle, licorice or not? I promise no licorice will be included in the rest of the puzzle. Yeah, all right, here's your first one. This is a film about not one, but two Boston janitors who are math geniuses. Better Will hunting, Better Will Hunting exactly, there were.
Two janitor math geniuses. I thought it was just uh, Matt Damon's character.
That's that's in Goodwill Hunting. Oh okay, now get yeah, yeah, the clue is always gonna, you know, amp everything up to the next.
I would not turn down to Matt Damon's.
Who would really? I mean, I want to be the.
Filling in that.
That's some better going on right there. Clearly all right, the beach boys are picking up these when a woman isn't just interested, but is super attracted. Better vibrations, better vibrations. Yeah.
And I want to say, just Dan said before this recording that he was worried because he is not a game and puzzle person, and I said that we would prove him wrong. I say, Aunt, things are looking good for me.
But this is a little bit like Celebrity Jeopardy. I think I think I'm getting I think I'm getting the short bus version of a puzzle.
We're gonna get you up there. Yeah, of course, of course this this is an actor in The Bigger Lebowski and Super King Ralph. John Betterman, yes, very good Yeah, John Goodman, who's in The Big Lebowski and King Ralph becomes John Betterman in the Bigger Labousi the.
King with Ralph reference, not the Connors, not any of the others.
The trick is to make the title also go up a level. I couldn't figure out how to change Roseanne into Roseanne. Right, Yeah, you're right. We had to dig a little bit.
I think I may be the only person who can hear our voices who actually socking Ralph, though.
I did not say it, Your Emperor Ralph, right, super King, God King Ralph. All right. This is a general term for baseball, basketball, or boxing equipment, and the stores that sell this category of product include Bigger Five, Mobeta, Dell's, and of course Bigger Dix.
Okay, now I'm blanking on the question because of that last part.
No, it's a general term for what those stores sell basketball, baseball, boxing equipment.
Okay, uh, Sporting better stores.
Yes, okay, sporting betters. Yeah, I got I got a.
Sports one sports My brother is going to be so impressed.
Sporting goods becomes sporting Betters all right good, and another in this in the in the good category. She really really wants to save chimpanzees. Uh, and she got her start working with Mary and Lewis Leagier. Jane betterall yes, Jane betterall very good.
I couldn't have come up with the Leakys, but I love the leakier. I think the leakier.
I figured we had to get there somewhere. Now. Now we've been making good things better, Now we're going to spin this the other way and make bad things worse.
So I'm not gonna better won't be in the answer, then right.
Right exactly, bad worse will be right bad in the original thing will become worse, Okay, okay, all right. For example, this is the sequel TV show in which Walter White really goes off the rails, breaking worse, breaking worse exactly exactly, breaking bad becomes breaking worse. Here's another sports one, the sport in which you attempt to hit a shuttlecock with a racket and you miss every time. Worse mean worse Meanton exactly. I would say, actually that's just normal badminton where I'm concerned every time, I'm like, right.
Well, you've already said Bigger Dick, and now you've got shut I see some themes going on here, Greg in your clue.
Innocent, I'm gonna have to lay down.
We did say. We themed our puzzles to our guests there, all right. This is the national park that's in further south Dakota, co managed with the Oglala Lakota tribe, and it appeared in the movie More Dances with Wolves and is often visited alongside Mount Rushmost The Worst Lands, the Worst Lands exactly. Have you ever ever been to the Worst Lands or the bad Lands?
I have. I have. I went with my husband and son to Mount Rushmore on a cross country drive. But I also as a teenager, my parents one summer when I was troubled, shipped me off to a friends of the family who owned a ranch on the edge of the Badlands, who then I was thirteen, gave me a motorcycle and I would just ride all through the bath It was like a really weird, out of body experience for a city ca like me. I saw rattlesnakes, I rode motorcycles. Who the bad lands.
It was great's and that's how you knew the mating call of the cows, because yeah, that's what it is, what comes together.
We were in the bad Lands during the Sturgis motorcycle Rally, not intentionally. We were doing the same kind of cross country trip you guys did, and we were there with hundreds of thousands of bikers and it was actually kind of cool.
I will I will take your work with that.
They really were the They were the nicest folks. And on our way from five hundred miles away, you know, they're advertising Sturgis up ahead. We come out of our hotel somewhere in Montana and they're these aging bikers in the in the parking lot and they said, we're we're on our way to Sturgis. And they said, you know, when we were younger, we would get up in the morning and the campsite would be littered with beer cans. Now we're all just searching for our blood pressure medication.
It's all littered with Insure bottles.
Yeah, exactly, exactly, all right, a couple more of these. This is the singer known as the King of Latin Trap, who is really a rabbit gone wrong, very wrong. Worse bunny, worse bunny, exactly bad bunny.
Oh my god. The only thing I'm worse at than a sports reference is a contemporary music reference.
And you just nailed it. You just nailed it. I actually learned that that Bad Bunnies breakthrough single was soy Peyre, which means I'm worse interesting. I thought that's so appropriate for this puzzle.
Let's get him on the show.
Get him on the show, get him call him up two more. The comedian who starred as Coach Walter Oakes in a More Different World was also in the movie Jingle Beyond All the Way and Better Burger.
This is an actor.
This is an actor. It's one named uh performer, comedian and actor. He did a lot of HBO specials. Also the name of a famous sailor.
All I can think of is Popeye.
Yeah, the other one they wanted. It's in like the Arabian.
Seven seeds around the seven seeds.
Oh Sin, I'm so.
You got it? Very good? All right, we should wrap up with one more good one.
But can I say really quickly, you have bad Bunny. If you have Bad Bunny on the show, if you successfully land him, I have to be the answer to a clue that just to like.
Completletely fair, completely fair, those are rules, Dan Moore Savage puzzle. All right, this one has a double good in it. There are two goods in the original, and therefore two betters in the answer. This is a Sam Smith song about their superior skill at leaving relationships.
And by the way, Dan, I am also have a huge blind spot for contemporary music. So I did not know the answer to this one. I'm looking at it now on the script, but I would not have gotten it.
So it's a song title was good in it twice.
Yeah, So if you're if you're very capable at leaving, that means you would be good at going.
Or good at if you say.
Good bye, so better at saying better bye.
Close. It's too better at better buyes. Too good at goodbyes? Is the Sam Smith?
Okay, Yeah, I don't know any Sam Smith.
That's all right, that's all right.
You asked me about Okay, Star Frank Sinatra, Vicky Carr, Steve and Edie. I could have nailed it like Sam Smith and Bad Bunny. I couldn't pick these people out of a lineup.
Okay, next time, we'll do more old people questions.
That's true. We usually do that a fight. We have to fight the urge, so so we'll have to have you on all the time.
So yeah, we had a we had a Rolling Stones question in this same salot, and I was like, no, we're gonna I want to go more contemporary. We're gonna get Sam Smith's.
So yes that you did great as predicted, and but before we go, I just want a little more about You're wonderful it gets better project. I know the answer to this, but I'm going to pretend I don't tell us how that got started.
There was this kid growing up in Indiana who was being bullied for being gay and killed himself in the summer of twenty ten, and I was just reading about what he was going through and aching for him, and as adult I was talking to my husband, as adult gay men, what you read about something like that, and you just really want to you wish you could have spoken to that kid for ten minutes, I just said something to him, But you know, I can't say something to him, like they're not going to have someone like me and do a high school like the one he was going to, and there aren't outgay people in the community where he lives. And it just occurred to me, literally, like I still remember where I was sitting. I was sitting on the train to Chaka, and it occurred to me that I could speak to those kids, that with social media and YouTube, that adult clear people could share their stories, share their coping mechanisms, what they said to their families, that turn them around and speak to these kids for ten minutes and maybe make a difference in their lives. And that's what it Gets Better project did. It brought those voices together, and it still continues to bring those voices together. It gets Better dot org.
And yeah, you uploaded it, not knowing that it would become a phenomenon. Yeah, it crashed your emails, crushed.
It crashed everything that it came into contact with in the first two weeks. And you know, I was thinking. I rolled it out on my on the Savage Love Cast and in my column Savage Love, and I thought I would have a little archive of my own. I'd get like one hundred two hundred videos from readers and listeners that then when queer kids, young gay kids wrote to me, I'd be able to say, hey, look at that. There's I put this together for you. Here's this thing. And within the first forty eight hours, there were a thousand videos from LGBT adults all over the world and just tens of thousands by the end of the week. And within months, you know, Hillary Clinton was recording videos. Barack Obama recorded a video which was you know, at the time he opposed marriage equality, so people were a little like, what does this mean? And you know it could get better if he was going to make it better, maybe, but it was really powerful for the president of the United States at the time to say to queer kids, I'm on your side.
Well, as I said, if you watch these videos with these personal stories and don't and are not moved, then I don't know what to tell you. I'm not a particularly emotional person then, yet I guess so.
I was going to ask if so, if it's it gets better? Dot org is where both kids can go find these videos, but if someone wants to make one, that would be where they would go to share their story.
Or everything you need to know about the project accessing the videos or contributing to it is that it gets better dot org great.
Well, love it, and I also love the concept of an older you talking to a younger you like, if you what you would say to a younger version of yourself and fun fact little teaser. Tomorrow we're recording with Joseph Gordon Levitt, who starred in Looper, which I just watched with which is about his older self talking with younger self and then trying to kill him. So it's a little different.
Well, hopefully my older self won't trying to kill my younger self, although there were certainly times when my parents rightly so I would have liked to have throttled my younger So that's the easiest, nice question.
Oh and Greg, do you have an extra credit for the folks at home?
Of course I do. This is the actual southernmost point of Africa, named for the growing optimism of the European explorers who navigated it.
Okay, I like that. All right, check out tomorrow for the It looks like Dan might haven't.
I know it, but yeah, I'm picking up context clues here that I'm not supposed to blurt it out.
Very good, well picked up.
Yeah, Well, thank you Dan, and thank you for that project and everyone. If you have thirty seconds before tomorrow, I would love it if you would go and rate the Puzzler on your favorite podcast platform. Because we are ruled by algorithms, and that makes a huge difference. So thank you for listening and we'll see you here tomorrow for more puzzling puzzles that will puzzle you puzzlingly.
Hello puzzlers, this is your chief puzzle Officer, Greg Pliska here with the extra credit answer from our previous episode. We had Dan Savagehn to play a game of name that animal mating call, and this was the mating call we gave you for extra credit.
Ah ah, and that's right. That is the sound of an animal saying I wouldn't mind seeing you out of those pajamas. That's a really weird phrase. I mean, you say I wouldn't mind seeing you out of those pajamas, I wouldn't mind seeing you out of those pajamas. I wouldn't mind seeing you out of those pajamas. Or I wouldn't mind seeing you out of those pajamas. No idea how to say it, but the answer, as you figured out, is cat as in the cat's pajamas. And you know what, you, folks, are the cat's pajamas. Thanks for listening to the Ozzler
