Fourth Favorite Hat – Trailer

Three Montana Dinosaur Center paleontologists – Andy, Bret, and Bryce – introduce themselves, their research specialties, and the running gag that inspired the podcast’s title: asking people for their fourth favorite hat. Each host shares their own answer, establishing the blend of science and unserious banter that frames the show.

The team explains that the podcast grew out of repeated guest requests to bottle the odd, meandering conversations that occur during long hours at the dig site. They describe themselves as “deranged,” “feral,” or otherwise unhinged in a way that emerges when slow, meticulous work sparks off-topic discussions. A story about a guest couple arguing over their “fourth favorite hat” illustrates how the bit took on a life of its own.

The hosts outline the museum’s mission of citizen science, emphasizing public participation in real paleontological fieldwork. They describe the Two Medicine Formation, its fossil richness, and the museum’s long history with the region, including the discovery of the first baby dinosaur fossils. A brief digression about “Rusty,” the museum’s oversized roadside daspletosaurus mascot, further reinforces their playful tone.

They solicit listener input on future topics: ongoing (but confidential) research, upcoming exhibits, paleo news, or entirely tangential debates such as why “Rats Tyrell,” is the best Star Wars character. True to form, the call for suggestions almost immediately devolves into stories about 4D movie theaters, Spongebob motion rides, and childhood bathroom emergencies.

The episode closes by promoting the museum’s dig programs. They describe full-day and half-day options, how to sign up, and how to donate to support research. A final comedic exchange – including a ruined cow joke and a plea for “#JusticeforAndy” – demonstrates exactly the brand of chaotic field chatter the podcast intends to deliver.

Read more: Fourth Favorite Hat – Trailer

[Andy]: Hello! We are some of the paleontologists at the Montana Dinosaur Center, and at the request of guests, we’ve decided to try to capture our banter at the dig site that we commonly have.

[Andy]: The most seemingly impactful one of our famous question, what’s your fourth favorite hat?

[Andy]: So hello everyone, my name is Andy, I am one of our paleontologists at the Montana Dinosaur Center.

[Andy]: I come from originally northern Illinois, moved around a lot.

[Andy]: I study vertebrate taphonomy, the study of what happens to a bone-bearing body after death.

[Andy]: I’m one of the staff paleontologists, as well as the social media manager.

[Andy]: And my fourth favorite hat is a dad cap, a type of baseball hat I got from the Badlands of South Dakota.

[Bret]: Hi everyone, my name is Brett, I’m also one of the paleontologists on staff here.

[Bret]: I’m from originally Los Angeles, but I went to school in upstate New York.

[Bret]: I’m a geologist.

[Bret]: And my fourth favorite hat is a Lake Champlain.

[Bret]: Lake Monsters hat from their baseball team there.

[Andy]: Now you guys might not know, but there is a minor league baseball team out next to Lake Champlain called the Lake Monsters

[Andy]: after the lake monster that supposedly lives in Lake Champlain that they call Champ.

[Bryce]: Hello, I’m another one of the paleontologists here at the Montana Dinosaur Center.

[Bryce]: My name is Bryce.

[Bryce]: I’m from down in Colorado originally, but I went to school down there as well.

[Bryce]: Got my undergraduate in biology at the University of Colorado at Denver,

[Bryce]: and my master’s in applied geography in the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs.

[Bryce]: I research hadrosaurs, those big old duck billed

[Bryce]: kind of dinosaurs or specifically research their phylogeny or almost kind of like the tree of life for those kind of guys.

[Bryce]: I am kind of like one of the main researchers at the museum.

[Bryce]: And my fourth favorite hat would probably be this one wide brimmed, almost kind of like cowboy ask hat from the Denver Zoo has like their logo on it.

[Bryce]: And you can kind of pin up the side.

[Bryce]: So for, you know, varying looks and varying like levels of light, pretty good.

[Andy]: Now, dear listeners, Bryce has already buried the lead.

[Andy]: What he meant to say is he researches duck.

[Andy]: 

[Andy]: Butts, the vast majority of the hadrosaurs he researches only their hindquarters preserve a fun bit combining taphonomy and his hadrosaurs.

[Andy]: So, so Bryce is the master of duck butts at our museum.

[Andy]: He, he didn’t say his proper title for some reason.

[Bryce]: That’s true.

[Bryce]: You got to keep a little bit of mystery out here.

[Andy]: but yeah, we’re just some of the people trying to make this museum a phenomenal stop for people.

[Andy]: We’ve gone through.

[Andy]: Some name changes.

[Andy]: We’re currently The Montana Dinosaur Center and our big priority is focused on citizen science, getting people involved at every stage of the science, no matter, you know, what their background might be.

[Andy]: Our biggest way to do this is through our participant digs, taking the public out and giving them educational lessons on how to do field science.

[Andy]: And that’s what kind of prompted people asking us to try this out.

[Andy]: Us as.

[Andy]: People are, uh, would you say we’re more so feral or unhinged?

[Bret]: I would say we’re just kind of deranged in, in general.

[Bret]: I mean, oftentimes we’re at the dig site, you know, we’re, we’re just out there working.

[Bret]: It’s, it can be sometimes a slow process, you know, it’s a little bit painstaking.

[Bret]: And so we just, oftentimes we’ll just start talking about, you know, whatever random thing is on our mind.

[Bret]: And, uh, we’ll just start going off on, you know, crazy, you know, conversations about who knows what, you know, one time I asked Andy, of course, uh, what is top five favorite hats were, uh, and he gave me his list of top five favorite hats, but then like.

[Bret]: Three.

[Bryce]: Three weeks later, we’re at the dig site and, uh, there was a, a couple there and they mentioned something about like a hat and his hat.

[Bryce]: And I was like, oh yeah, guys, like you should be careful with that.

[Bryce]: That’s Andy’s fourth favorite hat.

[Bryce]: And they looked like so stunned that I knew that.

[Bret]: And they immediately asked each other, they said, wait, like, honey, do you know my fourth favorite hat?

[Bret]: And neither of them actually knew each other’s fourth favorite hat.

[Bret]: So it caused a little bit of a stir.

[Bret]: They got into a little bit of an argument.

[Bret]: It was quite a funny story.

[Bret]: Talk about all kinds of crazy things at the dig site.

[Andy]: Exactly.

[Andy]: Uh, besides taking people out on digs, we are a museum.

[Andy]: Located in Bynum, Montana.

[Andy]: I wouldn’t be shocked if most of you haven’t heard about it.

[Andy]: It’s a bustling metropolis of under 40 people, but we are on the way to Glacier National Park.

[Andy]: If you see a big kind of foam dinosaur on the side of the road, that’s our mascot, Rusty, the daspletesaurus

[Andy]: You can come on in and see our exhibits.

[Andy]: Uh, we’ve got plenty of things focused on the fossils of Montana and we work specifically in what’s called the two medicine formation.

[Andy]: Uh, Bryce, why don’t you tell us a bit?

[Andy]: About that?

[Bryce]: Oh, the two medicine formation.

[Bryce]: Um, it’s a pretty large formation.

[Bryce]: You can kind of, it kind of like runs from up towards the Canadian border all the way down towards a little bit past great falls being very thick as well.

[Bryce]: Very high rate of deposition, sometimes being over a thousand feet in certain places.

[Bryce]: Now, one of the reasons why it’s such a special formation is just because there are so many different dinosaurs that have been found out there.

[Bryce]: Most dinosaur bearing formations.

[Bryce]: You’re only going to find one, two, maybe up to like five different species that have been found out like around there, but our information’s closer to.

[Bryce]: Being, uh, in the twenties, so very, very fossiliferous.

[Bryce]: You can also find guys from a whole wide variety of different dinosaur groupings with, uh, the duck bills.

[Bryce]: There are quite a few of those from the ones that are more well known, such as Maya Sora to ones that are lesser known, such as maybe a Christophis.

[Bryce]: We also got some, a lot of ceratopsians, ones like Triceratops.

[Bryce]: So Triceratops is going to be something called a chasm.

[Bryce]: Sorry, those are gonna be the ones that, um, had that, well, Triceratops like shape the two big old brow horns, the smaller nasal horn.

[Bryce]: We have the.

[Bryce]: Sanctus serenes, which are going to be not so much in the way of brow horns, but they have a big old nasal horn oftentimes.

[Bryce]: So guys like Styracosaurus, he’s probably the most famous of those as well as like a whole host of different carnivores, like display the source, like Andy was talking about as well as a bunch of Raptors and things like that.

[Andy]: To be fair conditions.

[Andy]: I should clarify rusty.

[Andy]: The display to source is life-size, but he’s got a lot of personality in ways that they probably didn’t have in life.

[Bryce]: Now the, the green stripes are very accurate, actually.

[Bryce]: Um, that’s what Facebook.

[Bryce]: Told me from the poll.

[Bryce]: So the green stripes are very accurate.

[Andy]: Green stripes are accurate.

[Andy]: Um, the fact that he’s got two different colored eyes, uh, because one sees the future, one sees the past.

[Andy]: But yeah, so our museum has a long history with this formation, the two medicine formation.

[Andy]: Um, and in fact, the mother of our museum’s founder, she’s the one who found the first ever baby dinosaur fossils and they’re in our museum.

[Andy]: So if that’s something you guys want to see, come on down to Bynum – or I guess up.

[Andy]: It’s very.

[Andy]: North assuming you’re in, uh, the United States of America.

[Andy]: If you’re in Canada, then you are going to the South, I guess.

[Andy]: Bryce, when you said down in Colorado, I’d never thought of Colorado as a Southern state, but I guess in perspective, it kind of is for us.

[Bryce]: It really is.

[Bryce]: But I’m just really far north

[Andy]: Yeah.

[Andy]: Kind of, honestly, it’s a kind of down for you as well.

[Andy]: Like, yeah, no, it really is.

[Andy]: I just never put it like that, but yeah.

[Andy]: So this is sort of our quick introduction.

[Andy]: Testing.

[Andy]: The waters and what we need now from you guys, what do you want to hear us talk about?

[Andy]: We can talk about sort of the projects that we’re working on with a little bit of hush hush.

[Andy]: We can’t outright say what the papers are as much as Bryce would be excited to.

[Bryce]: Yeah, it could definitely be kind of hard to hold my tongue at certain times, but we can tease you guys a bit.

[Andy]: We are a active research outpost doing some research as the description entails.

[Andy]: So stuff like that.

[Andy]: The exhibits we have planned or what kind of conversations do you just want us to talk about?

[Andy]: Like paleo news or of course, why rats Tyrell is the best star Wars character stuff along those lines.

[Andy]: Anything’s fair game.

[Bryce]: Even dinosaur adventure.

[Andy]: 3d dinosaur adventure.

[Andy]: 3d is a phenomenal game.

[Andy]: And the fact that it never got a sequel is probably one of the biggest failures of us as a human species.

[Andy]: It really is.

[Bret]: Or adventure 40 is coming out any day now.

[Bret]: I’m pretty sure.

[Andy]: What would be.

[Andy]: The additional like because I remember doing like a 4d movie movie theater.

[Andy]: Yeah, I was I was young in my family was visiting Niagara Falls and my dad saw a sign for a dinosaur themed 40 movie and it was so much fun on the walk down.

[Andy]: It was a longer walk than we thought and I really had to use the bathroom, but no one would let us so he kind of had to tell the lady at the hotel.

[Andy]: If you don’t let my son use the bathroom.

[Andy]: It’s going to be on the floor.

[Andy]: Anyways, then we got to the movie and I did not like the 4d stuff because they just like poke you in the back.

[Bret]: Yeah, they like poking the back.

[Bryce]: They like have like jets of like air like blow on you sometimes it smells.

[Andy]: Yeah, it wasn’t one of the smell ones, but it did a lot of like water spritzing.

[Bryce]: Do you guys have the Spongebob one?

[Andy]: No, what’s the Spongebob one?

[Bryce]: There is this one Spongebob it was at Legoland at one point, but it’s also outside like the the Denver Aquarium or at least it used to be you go in there and like you’re going to be like like an employee at the Krusty Krab and you have to like help Spongebob recover the Krabby Patty formula.

[Bryce]: You’re like in this chair that kind of like shakes you around and like moves up and down and like dude Spongebob shakes you.

[Bryce]: Yeah.

[Bryce]: Yeah.

[Bret]: Yeah.

[Bryce]: Yeah.

[Bryce]: I am surprised you haven’t done this Andy.

[Bryce]: The actually the pirate he like grabs you by your chair and throws you into the ocean.

[Bryce]: It’s kind of crazy.

[Andy]: Oh my goodness.

[Andy]: I also just want to say I love how in our call to action for advice.

[Andy]: I got distracted and we just started one of our classic dig site talks.

[Bret]: This is this is kind of how they go for people wondering.

[Bret]: Yeah, we just kind of get off topic very quickly and start talking about whatever random thing, you know?

[Andy]: Well, apparently Spongebob shaking us right now.

[Andy]: Yeah, but if that’s your sort of thing, we usually talk about something educational as well.

[Andy]: That’s usually what starts this.

[Andy]: But you know, I guess getting shaken by Spongebob is educational.

[Bryce]: Yeah, it stuck with me for my whole life.

[Bret]: Speaking of dig site talks, if you guys are interested in hearing our dig site talks at our dig site, signups are open for next year.

[Bret]: If you guys are interested in coming out and seeing what it’s like to actually be a paleontologist for a day.

[Andy]: Now, Brett, when do we do our digs?

[Bret]: Well, we do our digs from the first of June till the end of August.

[Bret]: And where can you sign up for those, Andy?

[Andy]: You can either call our museum at 406-469-2211.

[Andy]: You can call us if we are available.

[Andy]: This is if it’s during our offseason might be a little trickier, but we will happily schedule you if you give us your details or which is definitely easier for all parties involved.

[Andy]: If you go to our website at TMDinosaurCenter.org.

[Andy]: It shows you how to.

[Andy]: Book right on the home page.

[Andy]: Bryce, you say something about booking a dig now.

[Bryce]: Well, while you’re on there, if you’re interested, you can actually donate to our ongoing scientific research, either during the process while you’re booking the dig or at the donate click by clicking on the donate button on the very same web page.

[Andy]: That was actually pretty slick.

[Andy]: I’m not going to lie.

[Andy]: Now, it’s not just a full day dig expedition that we offer.

[Andy]: This is easily our most popular option where we take you out to the mountains, teach you how to dig, get your hands dirty.

[Andy]: Have your hands dirty.

[Andy]: Do what we do.

[Andy]: But there’s also a half day program, which is a guided tour of previously excavated dig sites.

[Andy]: This is where we cover a wider range of topics, but at a much shallower depth.

[Andy]: You won’t be digging, but you’ll be learning and exploring just the same.

[Bret]: It’s only three hours.

[Bret]: So if you’re on a trip, it might be a little easier to fit in.

[Andy]: True.

[Bryce]: Also, you’ll be able to see some things that you might not see on the full day, such as fossilized eggshells.

[Bryce]: That’s always a hit.

[Andy]: Yeah, or cows.

[Bret]: You can see cows on the whole day, too.

[Andy]: Yeah, I know.

[Andy]: I’m just being funny.

[Bryce]: You often do.

[Bret]: As a matter of fact, I think you see them almost every full day.

[Andy]: No, it’s okay.

[Bret]: Every single one.

[Andy]: You can ruin my joke.

[Bret]: What was a bad joke?

[Andy]: Audience, type #JusticeforAndy.

[Andy]: Anyways, we’ll see if I keep that or not.

[Bryce]: If you do, you need to keep this bit, too.

[Andy]: That’s important.

[Bret]: That’s funny.