Old Hats, New Hats, and WonderWorks

 In episode 93 of I Hate Talking, the hosts tackle a listener‑requested phrase: “old hat.” They unpack its meaning as something outdated, overused, or overly familiar, often carrying a slightly negative sense of being boring or unstylish. Drawing on early 20th‑century usage, they note how “old hat” shifted from literal fashion—when last season’s hat quickly became passé—to a broader metaphor for ideas or practices that feel stale, even quoting author Sir Arthur Quiller‑Couch’s description of certain religious doctrines as “old hat” to show how the phrase can imply mild disgust rather than cozy familiarity.

From there, the conversation shifts into their ongoing mini‑series reviewing family outings, this time focusing on the WonderWorks “upside‑down” museum. They describe the disorienting spinning tunnel entrance, an indoor ropes course suspended above the food court, giant bubble stations, animal‑design projections onto a digital savanna, and an interactive augmented‑reality sand table that morphs into hills, plains, and water as you shape it. With stories about kids bravely navigating the ropes course (and calling staff for help when needed), a hurricane simulator, laser tag, and even the delight of finding chocolate milk in the vending machines, they conclude that WonderWorks is a fun, hands‑on choice for families—especially with children—while joking that the experience is anything but “old hat.”

Keywords: old hat meaning, idiom origins, outdated expressions, Sir Arthur Quiller‑Couch, WonderWorks review, upside‑down museum, ropes course, family attractions, interactive exhibits, I Hate Talking podcast.

Transcript

I Hate Talking: 0:32

Welcome to episode 93 of I Hate Talking. Hi everyone. So we have a listener requested word or phrase of the episode, this particular episode, OK, and it is a phrase, and it is the phrase old hat. Old hat. OK, So the context, yeah, when we got this in our listener requested cue, I have heard of this particular phrase and I probably would be able to at least generally understand how somebody used it, but I do not particularly use this phrase, and maybe I will use this phrase in the future if we do the research and I understand what it means and have appropriate context to use it in. But I particularly have not really, I think, used this particular phrase, old hat. I don't think I've heard it much, but I would guess, I guess, I guess. -- Guess -- you guess. Um, it means something that's repeated or very similar, like we're doing this again, kind of idea. Yeah, I suppose so. I would also categorize it as like maybe old school, like it is old hat, it's maybe something that's not quite as modern. There may be a better way of doing things, but like this is the tried and true, maybe not as like up to date method. But it is a workable solution, old hat. All right, I'm gonna look it up. I'm curious to also talk about if there's a new hat. Like if there's an old hat, is there a new hat hat. That's a very new hat. I don't know. You think you're gonna start that? I don't think that exists today, but I think we should. I think we should. I think we should say something's very old hat. That On the flip side, there could be something that's very new hat. Sort of like breaking through the old traditions. Very trendsetting. -- I don't -- think cats are very trendsetting right now. They used to be. So you're saying going hatless is new hat? Maybe, but I will say, I don't know, but I will say that you now wear hats, and you never used to. And I kind of like it on you. I think it looks good. I don't know what changed. I used to wear hats all until I was. Mid teenage years I think and then you stopped for 20 years apparently, yeah, I don't know why that is. I don't know, but I'm just saying like I noticed that you wear ball caps more. And I like it. I like the look. I was kind of surprised because the whole nearly two decades I've known you, you haven't. But, um, there we are. That's true. I'm not sure why that is, maybe the wearing of a hat was. Very old hat during my teen years and Through my twenties and now. Wearing a hat is a very new hat. You're not, you're not laughing at my old hat, new hat jokes, because I'm pretty sure that new hat is not like a thing. Do you want me, we can rewind that and I'll laugh again. -- You want -- me to intercut and laugh? No, I had to. What's it called when people, the laugh track. Yes, add the laugh track. None of our episodes have used any tracks at all. This is all us just talking. Plus cold storage. So thank you to Cold Storage for allowing us to use your music. Yeah, he was very kind and we appreciate it. Yeah, that was very exciting back in the early days of our podcast. That was before we even had recorded our very first episode, I think, nearly 2 years ago. We emailed the guy and he was like, yes, do it. Are we OK, so we're coming up on 100 years. No, no, no, 100. We're coming up on 100 episodes in 2 years. Are we gonna do anything special? Probably not. OK, well, if y'all are listening, if you have an idea of what we should do, because we need to celebrate 100, it might even line up pretty close to it, right? 100 years, 100 episodes, yes, 1 episode a year. 100 years. I messed up. Um, I think we'll hit 100 episodes before 2 years, but it's gonna be close. Yes, we will have to do something to celebrate, but Hopefully that celebration won't be old hat. Though you are a listener can always like, share, subscribe, as well as let us know perhaps what we should do in celebration for our 100th episode or our 2 years apparently coming up, I guess, soon. Or what's more important, 100 or 2 years? Uh, if you ask podcasting metrics. The episode count is more important. But I think 2 years shows more consistency, especially because we have recorded an episode every week for that time. So it's different than like if it was. You know, 2 years and you're doing like 1 episode here, 1 episode there. So like the fact that we've done 2 years of every week episodes, that's something different. So I think that's probably also why like the podcast community and like metrics probably are going to be more concerned with the episode count. That makes sense. OK. According to our AI overview. The modern meaning of old hat is outdated, cliche, boring, or unoriginal because it's too familiar, hm. And there's a whole host of different research and theories around the etymology, but the one that seems most accepted around the early 20th century is that hats were essential fashion. But these styles quickly became passe, leading to the idea that an old hat was undesirable or unstylish. And then, particularly the writer Sir Arthur Quiller Couch used old hat to describe doctrines or ideas that had become stale or uninteresting. In 1911. Interesting. So I thought of it as same old, same old, which is kind of the same idea, even maybe more extreme than that so just that's boring like that's really outdated outdated, yes. Cause even 67 is starting to. I feel like the little kids are really into it still. But the older kids are like over it. That's true. So 67 is old hat now. I suppose you're right, yes, so. Out of date, old fashioned, something worn out because of repeated use and familiarity. That seems to be the most widely accepted definition. It could also be just something familiar and well used. So there are some particular definitions. That suggests that old hat just means. Well used, so it still could be loved. And It's old, but it is something familiar versus perhaps more of the negative definitions that mean strictly out of date. OK. So if something's like more of like a comfort item. Or comfort activity, it could still be an old hat. Perhaps so. But that doesn't seem to be the way that Sir Arthur Quiller Couch used it. Is that he. Use it in a way that was negative in fashion. That it was something that is no longer. Needed or even could be disgusted. So to quote his novel Brother Copa published in 1911, it says, and the difference is not that religion has ceased to teach it, for it hasn't, but that men have grown decent and put it like the doctrines, silently aside in disgust. So it has happened with Satan and his fork. They have become old hat. Would that just mean that we've heard it so many times, it doesn't even affect us. And in this particular definition, it could even become disgusting. Side note, how do you become a sir? -- That's cool if this guy's a -- sir. You gotta be knighted by the queen. How do you do that? Well, the queen, it's a king now. In England. Well, I guess you got to get knighted by the king then. That's cool. I guess so. It'd be cool to be Sir Adam. Would I automatically be like maiden or madame? I don't know. I have no idea. I don't, I don't think it's gonna happen in our lifetime. Yeah, -- let's just move -- on. But maybe for our 100th episode, the King of England will come over and knight knight us. No, you can't knight yourself. -- It has to be done by the king or the queen -- and you knight me. No, you're not the queen and I'm not the king, but of our house we are. That's not how it works. So, how it works at the particular upside down museum is that you go through a tunnel and it almost feels like you're going upside down. Yeah, it's so bizarre. It literally feels like we knew we were walking straight, but it, with the lights and Everything around you, it feels like you are flipping and walking upside down. That's true. So that experience was certainly not old hat. So I don't actually know the name of the museum that we're reviewing because this, like we've talked about in a few episodes in the past, we are doing an unknown number of series in reviews of different venues and franchises and things that we've visited over the last year or so, and this particular episode is about the museum that I cannot remember the name of. Well, I know it was next to Ripley's. It was, I keep calling it Ripley's, believe it or not, but it's not. It's the one next to it. Yeah, we had the option to go to both or either one. We chose this one. I know they have multiple of them. I don't know its name either. We should find out cause we need to let people know, give them their credit. And this is not a Stranger Things episode because that would sort of be like the upside down. Oh, I guess I didn't watch that too much. That's true. It's probably a good thing because season whatever the last season was, was sort of disappointing in my mind. Did you finish it? Yeah, I even watched the documentary. Oh, -- I didn't -- know. And the documentary was like, we have no idea what we're doing. We're writing the script as we're going. Well, no kidding, because it shows. You know, one of our kids, uh, we don't let our children watch it, uh, uh, for obvious reasons. But I found out recently one of our kids watched. Commentary on it, so it was like a loophole they figured out they weren't watching the show, but they were watching someone talk about the show. So I had to circle back around and let them know that. That's still not allowed. You can't. Listen to commentary about a show that isn't allowed. That's true. Oh, so Wonder Works. Oh yeah, OK, that's the word, -- Wonder -- Works. There appears to be at least 5 locations of Wonder Works. So we went to one of them. And Yeah, like you said, the initial thing that you go through is sort of this tunnel that has rotating lights all around you in 360 degrees. And you're walking on this sort of. Bridge Over top of that, and it does have quite a bit of disorientation as you're going through this, but the particular thing that they have as a The thing that sets them apart is that the entire building is quote unquote upside down as it appears from the outside and then you go through the tunnel and like everything's right side up and it's just a fun thing that Makes it unique. Yeah, and I mean, I don't think it's a surprise to anyone that we did our research beforehand. So we knew you needed closed-toed shoes and I'm the only girl in our family, but I couldn't wear a dress because lots of activities, just so you're listening, if you go to WonderWorks, you must have closed-toed shoes for many of the activities, and if you're a girl, you can't wear a dress or skirt. Because, uh, you're above and it lifts you up. And um that could be inappropriate. Right, there's also ropes courses and a lot of different things that are at elevations, so that would also be a problem. So we'd actually did the ropes course at this particular location, unlike the very expensive. Great wolf lodge. I think this did cost extra money. It did not. We bought the ropes course was included with the passes. Yeah, you could have done it again if you guys wanted. Wow, that's amazing. It's just part of it. It's part of it. You did have to wait in line. There was a line, but it did take a while. But there, I mean, it makes sense. It's a safety thing that they have to make sure that. You're go through the safety procedures that you're clipped in appropriately and that there's like not too many people for the workers to manage. Right, because one of our kids, we got right up to the top, our, our turn and decided it wasn't for him. So I ended up staying off with him because one, I think we've already talked about my New, developed fear of heights, and so I was not eager to get on it anyways, but also I did not want to leave him alone. He was young. And that didn't seem safe, so I stayed off with him at the last minute. And then one of our kids went and did the entire thing, basically, had a great time. You stayed with our very youngest, and needed to help him a lot. And then one of her kids went halfway. And then got scared. I'm not sure what happened. They needed a worker to come retrieve them. I think they were doing like one of the balance beam rope things and had become sort of either stuck in the middle or unsure of themselves. And like you said, I was with the younger child, so I could not immediately get to them. And the workers had said that like if you're in trouble or stuck or whatever, just call them. So I think he took that upon himself too. Make that call and they were there to help him, so no issues with that. Yeah, I agree. I think he did the right thing. I'm, if I remember right, there's multiple paths you can take. And he took a path and did really well, but he got to a point where he couldn't reach with his arms, the top stuff, so he would have just been balancing. On his foot. And he did not feel comfortable doing that. And maybe if one of us was with him, we could have kind of helped him along. But because he's all by himself and couldn't reach the handles himself, he waited and got help. So I was proud of him. He did really well. That's true. So that was one of the things that we were able to do was a ropes course. There was also like the bubble station, where you could like make huge bubbles. That was the coolest thing I loved was that room with the animals. So first you could make your own animal, design your own animal, and it showed up on the screen, like in a safari. And it could be like a purple rhino with words on it or something like that. And then next to it was this 3D hologram, but it was a table full of sand. And if the sand was high. It was like a hill, and then if you use your hands and lowered the sand. And the hill disappeared and it was like a plains, and then if you kept digging, then it was like a trench with water. That's true. So that was the next thing that I was going to talk about as well was the animal creation thing where you could create your own animal and it would walk on the Serengeti and you could make a giraffe or a rhino or a hippo or whatever and color it and then deploy it to the Serengeti and it would be basically displayed through a projector system onto the wall of the museum so you could, everybody could see it. And it would walk around and do its animal thing in the Serengeti. And then the other feature that you were describing was also another one that was pretty cool where there was light projected from the ceiling and it would measure the elevation of the sand. So like you said, if it would be formed into a hill or a valley or like a lake, that it would measure the elevation of said sand and then project the related color onto the sand so that it would look like different elevations in a topography map. Yeah, it was that, I liked that the most, cause I couldn't figure it out necessarily, like I've never seen anything like that, at least. That's true. I bet it's at every Wonder Works museum. Yeah, I assume so. It certainly was at the one that we were at. Yeah, and they had other stuff, tornado or earthquake simulations. They had those. Well, I think ours was a hurricane simulation, right? I think so. Yes, it was very windy. Yeah. There's also like an astronaut suit, and then the vending machines had chocolate milk. Yeah, I don't know if I knew that our kids loved it because one of them is a very big fan of chocolate milk and they were very excited that the vending machines had chocolate milk. Yeah, you don't normally find that, so that's cool. Indeed. We were talking about the ropes course earlier. One thing you're, we got a snack at the food court. The ropes course is over the food court. So that's unsettling in a way. Everyone's strapped in, but it is weird to have people climbing and walking right over your head. That's true. Well, I guess I wasn't that unsettled because I was one of the ones doing the walking and the climbing over the people. I, yeah, I wasn't really a patron of the food court, so I did not really experience that. Open Bay got it while you were on the ropes course, I think so, yes, I, as the kids came down. I would get them snacks. That's true. And then, uh, they had a Titanic simulation thing. Um, what else did they have? A ton of stuff. We could have spent, I mean, there was a lot of things there, but I think we've hit the highlights on at least what was memorable. So I guess the other things that we did there were not memorable. Oh, they had, you didn't do it. I did it with one of our kids. They had laser tag. Room and it was all decked out. And that was really fun. Nope, I did not do that one. That sounds fun. So I don't know how I missed out on that one. So Wonder Works, would you do it again and would you recommend it? Yeah, I'm curious at what Ripley's Believe It or Not, would be, because maybe as an adult I would enjoy that more. But if you have kids and they enjoy all the variety of different things that they had at WonderWorks, then I think that would be something that I would do again. So, from your friends at I Hate Talking, until next time, remember, it is only through talking that we begin the journey to understanding.