372 Mini - 280 Mysteries We'll Never Get Back Ep 1 - The Case of the Glass of Ginger Ale
Added 2023-06-15 21:38:43 +0000 UTCConor reads to Mike a thrilling chapter of the classic 80s (well, 60s, I think) child detective anthology Encyclopedia Brown and challenges him to solve it! Will he? You'll have to listen.
Comments
HOW ON EARTH DID HE REMOVE THE ICE SITTING THERE AT ROOM TEMPERATURE FOR AN HOUR WITHOUT ME KNOWING IT? Gingerale aside, that aspect was beyond stupid. The cases that stuck out to me as cheap are ones that require very specific outside knowledge, some of it even your average adult wouldn't know, let alone kids. Stuff like proper horseback riding procedures and EMT first aid.
Fahbs
2024-03-31 05:48:31 +0000 UTCI would disagree with a comment made during the podcast about readers of Hardy Boys books trying to solve the mysteries as one is reading them: that’s impossible! I reread the first 87 books of the series a few years ago as an adult and every single mystery is absolutely impenetrable.
Edward Lankford
2023-07-01 04:30:51 +0000 UTCI also did not solve that one, back in my youth. It bothered me for a long time, and I even developed a thing for touching car hoods to determine whether someone drove recently. Ofc, that wouldn't work today for electric cars! 😅
Elizabeth Meredith
2023-06-27 17:19:16 +0000 UTCLove it!
Thomas
2023-06-26 01:14:47 +0000 UTCJumping in late with this comment BUT By a wild coincidence, in what I can only describe as clear evidence for the inscrutable providence of the Divine, my wife has been haunted, all of her life, by the exact same Encyclopedia Brown story that has always bothered Mike!
George Allen
2023-06-24 21:20:57 +0000 UTCI enjoyed the first session and hope it continues!
Kristopher
2023-06-23 20:01:06 +0000 UTCI'm just here to register my interest and hopes in that this series will continue. This was great. More please.
Grant
2023-06-22 19:07:25 +0000 UTCDonald J. Sobol also wrote a novel called THE AMAZING POWER OF ASHUR FINE in which a young man receives from an African elephant (at a zoo) the power to gain the talents and abilities of any other person for fifteen minutes, but only once per person. So he can become as smart as Einstein for a quarter hour, then never play that particular trick again. I think Sobol also wrote a series of books about young inventors who, among other things, build their own submarine.
A. D. Jameson
2023-06-21 03:55:12 +0000 UTCI remember the Casefiles, I adored them as a kid. The very first book in the series *opens* with Joe's girlfriend, Iola Morton (Chet's sister) getting killed by a car bomb that was set by "the Assassin," a ruthless Middle Eastern terrorist. This made a very big impression on my ten-year-old self!
A. D. Jameson
2023-06-21 03:52:15 +0000 UTCThe Three Investigators were my favorite, too! I've been rereading some of them, they're so quirky and offbeat. THE MYSTERY OF THE INVISIBLE DOG is really worth revisiting; it's a scream. And I have a suspicion that THE MYSTERY OF THE BLAZING CLIFFS partially inspired Jordan Peele's recent movie NOPE (which among other things features a character named Jupiter who was a child actor).
A. D. Jameson
2023-06-21 03:50:20 +0000 UTCWife and I loved listening to this extra. I remember reading this encyclopedia brown mystery when I was kid. Hoping the forthcoming Nick Nolte book is done in a similar format.
Josh Flowers
2023-06-20 17:43:06 +0000 UTCSee also: "the great brain"
[REDACTED]
2023-06-20 00:15:59 +0000 UTCI'm a little embarrassed at how proud of myself I was for solving the case. Please do more of these!
Joshua Begley
2023-06-19 21:42:16 +0000 UTCOh, I remember those!
Gina Dalfonzo
2023-06-19 01:50:34 +0000 UTCI just dug out my old Encyclopedia Brown books to see if they're all this ridiculous and I found a real doozy. If you continue these, I recommend "The Case of the Growling Dog" from Book 9, Encyclopedia Brown Shows the Way.
SailorDonut
2023-06-18 02:38:29 +0000 UTCWhen it came to kid detectives, while I read my share of the Hardy Boys, I drifted more to another series that had been in print well before my birth, The Three Investigators, a sort of latter-day Hardy Boys that first saw the light of day in the mid-1960s, the basic premise is that three guys in their early teens, Jupiter Jones, Bob Andrews and Pete Crenshaw set up a detective agency, their secret headquarters is in a house trailer buried in a junkyard belonging to Jupiter’s uncle in the fictious town of Rocky Beach, somewhere between LA and Santa Barbara. Their HQ has secret entrances and it's own amateur crime lab, dark room, and reference library. Jones is the brains, a somewhat stocky kid and former child star who as a toddler had been on a show called the "Wee Rogues", a sort of latter-day knockoff of the Little Rascals, where he played a character named "Baby Fatso", which is a major source of embarrassment for him, especially in one novel when there's a much-publicized Wee Rogues reunion where all of the kids are scheduled to appear on a TV quiz show. Pete Crenshaw was the muscle of the group, an athlete who was also the guy for surveillance and following suspects. Bob Andrews was the scholar of the group, a research whiz. The series was conceived by mystery author and editor Robert Arthur Jr. who also penned the first nine books and the eleventh. Some have argued they were the closest kid detectives to being near bona fide P.I.s, they had business cards and a letter of recommendation from the chief of the Rocky Beach PD. These were generally well-written books with genuine mysteries at their cores, and the mysteries tended to be more bizarre, unusual, and complex than the average "kid detective" series of the day. The series didn't quite have the staying power of the Hardys but it was printed well into the 1980s, and the series was so popular in Germany that several German-language original entries were published through the 1990s, and there were two German films produced in the Aughts.
LC Brock
2023-06-17 23:39:01 +0000 UTCOddly enough I was sharpening an icicle when this episode dropped.
Terry Thompson
2023-06-17 22:08:30 +0000 UTCThis is great! Also, it reminded me that the author wrote some more solve-it-yourself stories called Two-Minute Mysteries, which I guess were theoretically for adults but had basically all the same solutions as the Encyclopedia Brown stories, just with added violence. E.g. there's a solution involving a garden hose where in Encyclopedia Brown someone breaks a vase and in Two-Minute Mysteries a guy strangles his wife...it might be interesting to see if any future stories you cover have an "adult" version. The Two-Minute Mysteries version of this one is the same except for the names (the blind violinist is now "Archer Skeat") and the violinist bets $10,000 instead of his violin.
August
2023-06-17 19:09:07 +0000 UTCWow! Looks fun! 😃
Taylor Conner
2023-06-17 18:26:50 +0000 UTCEncyclopedia suddenly felt his hand form into a fist. (I'm joking, but I feel like I remember that being a thing at least once)
Balaji S
2023-06-17 03:22:58 +0000 UTCAnybody remember the Hardy Boys Casefile series? I blitzed through these as a teenager, which went to decidedly darker places than the earlier books. The one that sticks out in my memory revolved around the disappearance of longtime character Biff after he became obsessed with survivalism, and ended up with the Hardy Boys being trapped on an island where they were (Norm MacDonald voice) LITERALLY HUNTED FOR SPORT. I believe they also killed off Joe’s girlfriend with a car bomb at some point.
Clem D
2023-06-17 02:03:38 +0000 UTCI hadn't read this one in over 25 years, but I remembered the twist ending as soon as I heard "ginger ale". I hope the next one features Sally and Bugs.
SabreMau
2023-06-17 00:17:26 +0000 UTCI shamelessly ripped off Encyclopedia Brown for my Bill the Warthog Mystery Series, from Legacy Press. https://www.amazon.com/Quest-Temple-Truth-Warthog-Mysteries/dp/1584110791/ref=sr_1_5?crid=2B5LBNNVS2IW3&keywords=bill+the+warthog+mysteries&qid=1686958583&sprefix=bill+the+wart%2Caps%2C157&sr=8-5
Dean Anderson
2023-06-16 23:38:28 +0000 UTCThis was great. I also devoured every one of these (like 30+ years ago now) and the one that stuck with me even somewhat was the fact that Paris is a city in Texas, too!
Balaji S
2023-06-16 23:11:27 +0000 UTCYes, please do more of these!
Jan
2023-06-16 21:11:45 +0000 UTCI read all of those when I was a kid, it was super fun to have you guys do one as a mini episode. The one that stuck in my mind was about a wrist watch that the rotten kid in town claimed was his. Was his name actually Bugs Meany, as my brain claims?? And of course I liked Sally best. Never did get into the Hardy boys, I thought they were dumb, but I read all of Nancy Drew despite them being dumb and The Three Investigators were my very favorite. We all need a secret junkyard lair, right?
Jean Ping
2023-06-16 19:40:11 +0000 UTCNo movie, but there was a TV show, episodes of which can be found on YouTube.
Jeffrey Leonard Greek
2023-06-16 14:29:12 +0000 UTCLocked room mysteries are literally mysteries with a locked room and a dead body, where it seems impossible the person could have been killed (Wikipedia has scads of examples https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locked-room_mystery). I think Conor was thinking of a closed circle mystery, which is the typical "limited amount of suspects and they're all stuck on an island/country house/train, etc". Obviously a lot of crossover between the two! (for what it's worth, despite knowing this I did not solve the Encyclopedia Brown mystery hah! I got too hung up on the positions of the people in the story.)
Chris P
2023-06-16 13:03:22 +0000 UTCThe "Leroy Brown" thing was funny for me because when I was reading them, that song was an inescapable perennial hit.
Moviegique
2023-06-16 05:25:53 +0000 UTCI loved Encyclopedia Brown as a kid. Just introduced it to some nieces and nephews a few weeks ago then I see this in the feed. I'm excited
Israel Dell
2023-06-16 03:49:44 +0000 UTCPlease do a million of these. Pheee-nomenal Patreon extra!
Matt
2023-06-16 02:43:41 +0000 UTCDefinitely going to track this one down. I hope the solution is "The doctor was... just returning from Golden Corral" -CL
372 Pages We'll Never Get Back
2023-06-16 01:02:22 +0000 UTCDefinitely a win. I loved these books.
Seth Davison
2023-06-16 01:00:54 +0000 UTCHuge Encyclopedia Brown fan here. Surprised they never made a real movie
Terry Bennett
2023-06-16 00:57:10 +0000 UTCOh wow, I read a lot of Encyclopedia Brown as a kid. I even remembered at least the title of this one. I also remember there was one story called The Mystery of the Exploding Toilet. And no, I don’t recall the details (thankfully)!
John G
2023-06-16 00:27:41 +0000 UTCI love this! I was a Hardy Boys kid, but somehow missed Encyclopedia "Bad, Bad Leroy" Brown.
LeviSamJuno
2023-06-15 23:16:20 +0000 UTCThis was great! There are also a bunch of "5 Minute Mysteries" with the same theme but a little bit trickier (and also filled with "the doctor was a woman" type nonsense)
John Gibson
2023-06-15 22:55:05 +0000 UTCTakes me back, Itelluawhut. I remember one about a "scale model of the solar system". "Locked room mystery", for them what don't know, is when the crime (usually murder) takes place in a locked room and is therefore apparently impossible. (Murder is popular for the trope because it implies suicide and the murderer gets off scot-free.) Earliest example I know of (but probably not the earliest ever) is J. S. Le Fanu's "Uncle Silas" (1864), where the eponymous Uncle Silas is rumored to have killed someone decades ago, the locked room being his alibi.
Moviegique
2023-06-15 22:50:01 +0000 UTCVery fun! I would definitely listen again
Sara T
2023-06-15 22:43:52 +0000 UTCThis was fun! I never read these or Hardy Boys books, they didn't interest me as a kid. I would love to hear more stories Congratulations to Mike for his upcoming grandchild!
Harrison
2023-06-15 22:02:47 +0000 UTC
