Speaker 1: Guess what, mango, what's that will? It's November, and you
Speaker 1: know what that means?
Speaker 2: National Saxophone Day is coming off.
Speaker 1: That is true, I've seen all the fun holidays coming up,
Speaker 1: but that's not actually what I'm thinking. The percentage of
Speaker 1: people sporting mustaches is about to rise significantly. That's your clue.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, it's November.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was looking at some of the history of November
Speaker 1: and I thought the origin story from Adam Garone. He's
Speaker 1: the chief mo bro as he's listed and the co
Speaker 1: founder of the November Foundation. I thought it was pretty
Speaker 1: funny as he talked about how the idea started. This
Speaker 1: was back in two thousand and four. It all came
Speaker 1: up over a few beers. And I don't know if
Speaker 1: you've ever seen his Ted talk from twenty eleven, but
Speaker 1: he explains it this way. He says, it was my brother,
Speaker 1: me and a maid having a few and the conversation
Speaker 1: turned to seventies fashion, how everything seems to be coming
Speaker 1: back in style. And after a few more beers, we said,
Speaker 1: what about the mustache? Why hasn't that comeback? Then one
Speaker 1: more beer and it was whatever happened to the mustache?
Speaker 1: And so The day ended with the challenge to bring
Speaker 1: the mustache back. A year or so later, they decided
Speaker 1: to let the Mustache Movement raise some money specifically for
Speaker 1: men's health. This includes prostate and testicular cancer research, and
Speaker 1: they've now raised more than half a billion dollars since then.
Speaker 1: Half a billion dollars? Is that not incredible?
Speaker 2: That is crazy? So is this the year you're gonna
Speaker 2: rock like Freddie mercury mustache?
Speaker 1: You know, I'm thinking more of it like a William
Speaker 1: Howard taft handlebar? Is gonna be my style this year?
Speaker 1: Either way, Today feels like the right day to share
Speaker 1: some of our favorite facts about mustaches. So let's get started. Hey,
Speaker 1: their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will
Speaker 1: Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend
Speaker 1: Man Guesh hot ticketter, and on the other side of
Speaker 1: the soundproof glass, somehow miraculously sporting the most incredible Wilford
Speaker 1: Brimley wall Stash is our friend and producer Tristan McNeil.
Speaker 1: How in the world do we not notice that you
Speaker 1: grow in a mustache so impressive? And we're also joined
Speaker 1: by two of our friends here in the house. Stuffworks family.
Speaker 1: We've got Eves Jeff Coote. You guys recognize hers as
Speaker 1: the one we acknowledge in the credits being responsible for
Speaker 1: getting the show to your ears. She knows the magic
Speaker 1: codes to make the show appear wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your podcast. So welcome Eves. Yeah, something like that, Thanks,
Speaker 1: something like that. We've also got Alex Williams. He's on
Speaker 1: the audio engineering team with Tristan, so I'm guessing he's
Speaker 1: just as surprised as we are at that massive mustache.
Speaker 1: But welcome Alex.
Speaker 3: I am always surprised and impressed by Tristan mcneail.
Speaker 1: The legend. All right, well let's get started. So now
Speaker 1: neither of our guests have mustaches, but both claim to
Speaker 1: know a ton about them, so we thought we would
Speaker 1: give them a shot. You ready to kick us off?
Speaker 1: Eves y, you get fact number one? Go for it.
Speaker 4: So, mustaches surprisingly have protective health benefit.
Speaker 3: Really, yeah, they do.
Speaker 4: So they block some of the effect of ultra violet
Speaker 4: radiation from getting to your skin, lowering the risk for
Speaker 4: skin cancer. So usually you know U v radiation that
Speaker 4: gets to your skin can cause skin cancer because it
Speaker 4: damages the DNA and your skin cells. And mustaches can
Speaker 4: help a lot with that because they reduced the radiation
Speaker 4: exposure to a mirror one third.
Speaker 1: Wow. So if you could just have a mustache all
Speaker 1: over your face, which is kind of like a beard,
Speaker 1: I guess.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was gonna say, I don't think that's called
Speaker 4: a mustache at that point, but.
Speaker 1: That three inches you are super protected. That's that's impressive,
Speaker 1: all right, Fact number one, good job Eaves. All right, Alex,
Speaker 1: what you got for us?
Speaker 3: Grab show? Marx?
Speaker 1: Okay, what do you think of?
Speaker 3: What do you think of for gratcho Mars?
Speaker 5: I think it was like the glasses with the attached nose, yes,
Speaker 5: and the attached mustache that you can just kind of
Speaker 5: put on as a totally like for Halloween for instance,
Speaker 5: Well didn't really have a mustache. Well what he sometimes
Speaker 5: had a mustache, but that mustache is iconic.
Speaker 3: One was crease paint. No, it's a big smear of
Speaker 3: grease paint. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Sometimes he would grow like a little thin mustache, but
Speaker 5: then he would paint grease paint over it for his
Speaker 5: when he was in character, when he was doing a performance.
Speaker 1: Oh that's crazy.
Speaker 5: Apparently when he was doing five vaudeville shows today, he
Speaker 5: stopped using like like what you normally think of like
Speaker 5: a little like glue on furry mustache because the glue
Speaker 5: was wearing away his upper lip. He said, quote, it
Speaker 5: was becoming progressively thinner, which is disgusting.
Speaker 1: The upper lip. That is.
Speaker 3: So when you say, yeah, the upper lip.
Speaker 5: Okay, so when you say a Groucho Marx mustache, which
Speaker 5: you really mean, is like two mustaches simultaneously existing, like
Speaker 5: a real one and a grease paint one.
Speaker 2: So I thought that was pretty interesting to remember that
Speaker 2: from my costume.
Speaker 4: Next.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, all right, well done, All right, mango, you
Speaker 1: got a first fact.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely. So after a show on the Guinness Book,
Speaker 2: I've been kind of obsessed with records, and you know,
Speaker 2: as are my people. We talked about this on the show,
Speaker 2: but no one seems to gain as much satisfaction out
Speaker 2: of being in the Guinness Book as Indians, and so
Speaker 2: it isn't that much of a surprise. But the person
Speaker 2: with the longest mustache ever is this guy named ram
Speaker 2: Singh Chalahan who sports a fourteen foot long mustache. Oh wow, yeah,
Speaker 2: so so here's his quote, right quote. To me, the
Speaker 2: mustache means everything. It is priceless and so maintenance on
Speaker 2: his lipman is no small thing. He spends up to
Speaker 2: two hours a day washing, cleaning, grooming, and brushing his stash,
Speaker 2: and because it's so long, to avoid tripping on it,
Speaker 2: he actually wraps it around his neck a few times.
Speaker 2: I know, it's like a scarf.
Speaker 1: He could protect so many people from skin cancer. That's
Speaker 1: really impressive. I was also wondering where you were going
Speaker 1: with my people. I wasn't sure what that was gonna be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Delawareans, it's actually Indians.
Speaker 1: Good job. Well, you're not going to be surprised by
Speaker 1: my first fact, because, as you know, I've always been
Speaker 1: a fan of Salvador Dolly's mustache, and I thought that
Speaker 1: was a pretty funny quote. In nineteen fifty four, in
Speaker 1: an interview, when he was asked whether his mustache was
Speaker 1: intended to be a joke, Dolly actually responded by saying
Speaker 1: it was the most serious part of his personality. He
Speaker 1: even wrote a book about his mustache. It was called
Speaker 1: Appropriately Dolly's Mustache, and it contains twenty eight black and
Speaker 1: white photographs of Dolly with various phases of his mustache.
Speaker 1: So it's important if you haven't checked this out before
Speaker 1: you need you need to see it.
Speaker 2: There's a there's a crazy story from Esquire, I guess,
Speaker 2: like a few years ago in the magazine. In the
Speaker 2: editor's note, they talked about how these three editors were
Speaker 2: an elevator with a guy with a handlebar mustache, and
Speaker 2: after he got off, they decided together that the ironic
Speaker 2: mustache was over.
Speaker 1: It was just it was just a serious great Now
Speaker 1: was the moment?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 4: Wow?
Speaker 1: Nice? All right, So that's my Dolly fact. What do
Speaker 1: you got, Eves?
Speaker 4: So I have another Dolly fact?
Speaker 1: Oh you do? It's worthy of two facts.
Speaker 4: Also about his mustache Oka.
Speaker 1: Surprisingly, yeah, I should hope, so saying that this is
Speaker 1: about mustache.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So he died in eighty nine, but earlier this
Speaker 4: year a woman came forward claiming that she was his daughter. OK.
Speaker 4: So they exhumed his body to get DNA samples to
Speaker 4: do that test. And when they exhumed his body, they
Speaker 4: found that his amazing mustache was still intact.
Speaker 1: No way.
Speaker 4: I don't know if the wax was still there or not,
Speaker 4: but the hair was definitely still there. And the reason
Speaker 4: for that is the keratin in your hair is pretty tough.
Speaker 4: It can last for a lot of years, you know,
Speaker 4: once you're in the grave. Then Balmber actually said that
Speaker 4: it was a miracle, but it wasn't quite a miracle
Speaker 4: because it's actually just science.
Speaker 1: I wonder how long that will last though, how much
Speaker 1: longer it will take for hair to break down?
Speaker 4: Well, you know, the oldest corpse ever found with hair
Speaker 4: still attached on its body was nine thousand years old,
Speaker 4: So wow, I mean, I don't know if Dolly's will
Speaker 4: last that long.
Speaker 1: To digg him back up in nine thousand years and
Speaker 1: see if there's still.
Speaker 2: And what kind of stylish mustache tod that nine thousand
Speaker 2: year old corpse, I don't know.
Speaker 4: It probably didn't happen. An we may have to create
Speaker 4: our own name for it.
Speaker 1: It's unbelievable. Nine thousand years. That's really impressive. All right,
Speaker 1: good job, nice fact. They're eaves, all right, Alex, what
Speaker 1: you got for your last fact?
Speaker 5: Well, on the subject of corpses, you can kill yourself shaving.
Speaker 5: Don't really shave very often. I probably will never again
Speaker 5: after I learned this. So Henry David Threw's brother John,
Speaker 5: who that he was very close with, died on New
Speaker 5: Year's Day and he was shaving on.
Speaker 3: New Year's Day. Maybe it was part of his resolution.
Speaker 5: Nicked his finger on his razor, got lockshaw and ended
Speaker 5: up dying because of her illnesses related to that. So
Speaker 5: Henry David Throw showed symptoms of lockshaw shortly after that,
Speaker 5: despite being no medical reason. He didn't have a cut
Speaker 5: or anything really, and it was thought that he was
Speaker 5: just a psychosomatic reaction to his brother dying.
Speaker 1: Of Oh wow, that's pretty crazy.
Speaker 5: Okay, you guys ever heard of Lord Canovin. He is
Speaker 5: the first man to die of the supposed King Tut's curse.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay.
Speaker 5: He also died due to shaving. Yeah, so this is
Speaker 5: if you weren't scared enough already. He had a mosquito
Speaker 5: bite and he sliced it open while shaving, went septic
Speaker 5: and he died because of that.
Speaker 1: This all just got really dark. But that's impressive, good disgusting.
Speaker 1: This is why you don't shave.
Speaker 3: I very infrequently do, and I probably won't anymore. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: all right.
Speaker 1: Good, good second fact, Mango, what's your last fact?
Speaker 2: So this is a little lighter than Alex's fact here,
Speaker 2: but there are, of course, like lots of types of
Speaker 2: mustache paraphernalia. Out there for the mustache enthusiast. And and
Speaker 2: you know their mustache combes, their mustache brushes, tonics, waxes.
Speaker 2: But the best mustache gear I found online and Stacey
Speaker 2: took me off on this was the mustache spoon. Now
Speaker 2: have you guys heard of?
Speaker 3: This is not so?
Speaker 2: The mustache spoon was apparently patented in eighteen sixty eight,
Speaker 2: and it was carried around by Dandy's. And it's pretty clever.
Speaker 2: It's basically like a spoon with a little guard on top.
Speaker 2: It's like a half cover with a little hole in
Speaker 2: it that you can sip out of. And the whole
Speaker 2: point is to protect your elegant mustache curls from coming
Speaker 2: in contact with hot souper foods. And all I know
Speaker 2: is that if I was in the mustache spoon business,
Speaker 2: I'd be marketing the heck out of it in November.
Speaker 1: Yeah, seriously, that seems like a worthy product. It's been
Speaker 1: since before nineteen hundred mm eighteen sixty eight. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: I feel like we can't have an episode on mustaches
Speaker 1: without talking about Burt Reynolds, right, So I wanted to
Speaker 1: find a fact about Burt Reynolds, And actually I was
Speaker 1: curious why Burt Reynolds had grown a mustache in the
Speaker 1: first place. But you might remember this from his book
Speaker 1: called But Enough about Me. I'm sure we've all read
Speaker 1: this before.
Speaker 3: Of course I read it well, I read it for today.
Speaker 3: For today.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in preparation. Good, you're good at prepping for this.
Speaker 1: So he actually says that he grew it to differentiate
Speaker 1: himself from Marlon Brando. So apparently, earlier in his career,
Speaker 1: without the mustache, he apparently looked like Brando and people
Speaker 1: would follow him down the street thinking that he was
Speaker 1: the Godfather. So he decided to grow a mustache, and
Speaker 1: now you can't think of him without a mustache, right, ridiculous.
Speaker 1: It is a very specific reason. So anyway, good job
Speaker 1: on your first facts. I don't know, Mango, we have
Speaker 1: to declare a winner at some point here. Do you
Speaker 1: have any Do you have any thoughts on this?
Speaker 2: I like that Dolly's miracle mustache should I feel like
Speaker 2: that was the fact that it was most interesting.
Speaker 1: That hair lasts that long, plus the fact these guys
Speaker 1: both had great facts, but the fact that Eve's is
Speaker 1: responsible for getting the show to people's ears and gets
Speaker 1: her a bonus point. So Alex congratulations on second place,
Speaker 1: and Eve's congratulations on taking home the trophy today.
Speaker 4: I'm honored to have it.
Speaker 3: I reject you're I reject.
Speaker 1: It's the first time he's ever gotten contentious here in
Speaker 1: the ptg room. So thank you guys for listening today.
Speaker 1: We'll be back with a full length episode tomorrow