95. Dungeons & Dragons, Sliced Bread, Harry Styles Re-Ranked

Every Damn Thing

Melissa B. is back to help Phil, Jake & Jason rank the tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons and sliced bread on the List of Every Damn Thing. Plus we re-rank contemporary pop superstar Harry Styles.

If you have something to add to the list, email it to [e-mail] (or get at us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook).

SHOW NOTES:

• Valley Fever, also called desert rheumatism, is a respiratory disease that's thought to be caused by shark scales. It's endemic to Central and Southern California.
• Dungeons & Dragons is a role playing game invented by Gary Gygax and many others. It's really broad and open-ended but is the most popular game in that genre. In the game, players assume the roles of characters who have fantasy-themed adventures.
• Dungeons & Dragons was also the name of a cartoon made in 1985 as a tie-in for that game. It was about a group of teens that got transported to a different world and became fantasy adventurers with magic weapons. It had a kind of Narnia vibe.
• Gary Gygax was the creator of Dungeons & Dragons, although he didn't create it alone, and it grew out of other, similar games.
• JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings & The Hobbit which are foundational works in modern fantasy. Along with Conan, these books more or less created the genre/setting for Dungeons & Dragons.
• Alcoholics Anonymous is a mutual-aid group formed in 1935 in which members work together to help themselves recover from alcoholism. Phil speculates that there are probably good AA Dungeons & Dragons games.
• Dice are polyhedral objects with numbers on the sides used to generate random numbers. The most commonly used dice are the six-sided dice you might use in a craps game or Monopoly or inside the Pop-o-Matic bubble of a Trouble game. Dungeons & Dragons requires different dice, 4-sided, 8-sided, 12-sided, 20-sided etc although now that Phil thinks about it, it's pretty unnecessary. With a few math changes, the game would work fine with 6-sided dice but people like to have that velvet dice sack. In prison, where dice are banned, Dungeons & Dragons players have to use other methods though.
• The Dungeons & Dragons movie looks like it has some pretty bad special effects, even for the time. Jeremy Irons appears to be having a fun time with it, though.
• SPOILER ALERT! Harry Styles plays Eros aka Starfox in Eternals.

ALSO DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE:
chain mail * half-orcs * improv * the Satanic Panic * E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial * role-playing games * the Golden Girls * video games * audio books * Sorry! * titties * The Matrix * Insane Clown Posse * karaoke * Bill Paxton * Spaceballs * graffiti * Star Wars * industrialization * bagels * NASCAR * Bakersfield, CA * knives * Triscuits * Top Ramen * rye bread * plastic straws * Tommy Bahamas shirts * Britney Spears * “Weird Al” Yankovic * Bill Murray * the Golden Gate Bridge * Bruce Springsteen * Shakira

Below are the Top Ten and Bottom Top items on List of Every Damn Thing as of this episode (for the complete up-to-date list, go here).

TOP TEN:

1. Dolly Parton - person
2. interspecies animal friends - idea
3. sex - idea
4. bicycles - tool
5. coffee - beverage
6. Clement Street in San Francisco - location
7. Prince - person
8. It’s-It - food
9. Doctor Doom - fictional character
10. Cher - person

BOTTOM TEN:

291. cops - people

292. British Royal Family - institution
293. Steven Seagal - person
294. McRib - food
295. Hoarders - TV show
296. death - idea
297. war - idea
298. cigarettes - drug
299. QAnon - idea
300. transphobia - idea

Theme song by Jade Puget. Graphic design by Jason Mann. This episode was produced & edited by Jake MacLachlan. Show notes by Jake MacLachlan & Phil Green.

Our website is everydamnthing.net and we're also on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

Email us at [e-mail].