Spanning Wales to bring you
a constant variety of Welsh things...
The thrill of victory.
The agony of defeat.
Welcome to The Wide World of Wales.
Brought to you by Aviation Gin, obviously...
TikTok, where you can follow any number
of middle-aged Welsh football team owners.
Ifor Williams...
The best [bleep] damn horse trailers you can get.
And Expedia,
where you can explore the world
and also book a vacation to Wales.
You probably want to fly into Manchester or Liverpool.
Once you're there, it's a quick a drive.
Possibly 30 to 40 minutes depending--
Rob, they know how to plan a trip.
Sorry.
Welcome to Wrexham.
Or, more specifically, Wales.
You might be a little confused right now.
Not just by Rob's decision
to look like a stand-in in a Guy Ritchie movie,
but because the last few episodes,
you've been watching a documentary
about an underdog football team from Wales
and two Hollywood movie stars.
Uh, I'm more of a TV star.
Oh! Aww.
Anyway...
TV's, like, way cooler than movies.
You know that, right? - Yeah, it is.
I mean, where have you been for, like, the last ten years?
You've been making movies. - Making movies.
Anyway, we left off with Ryan and I headed
to Wrexham for the first time,
and even though you might have gotten
a small sense of this amazing place,
we thought it only appropriate
to do a little deeper dive on Wales.
You know, my daughters, they love whales--
really any of God's little underwater creatures.
The country.
Wales the country.
That's what we're here talking about.
Um...
We suspect a lot of people out there don't really know
what Wales exactly is.
My partner certainly doesn't.
And I didn't before last year,
and we bought a football team there.
Holy [bleep].
So tonight we're going to immerse ourselves in Wales--
the country--
and what makes it different from England,
which is also a country.
Mm-hmm. Wales and its identity,
its traditions, and why it is the ultimate underdog story.
That's right, it's a very special episode
involving learning.
But don't worry. You won't learn much.
And I suspect you'll retain almost none of it.
First up tonight, we welcome John Green,
author of Turtles All the Way Down
and The Fault in Our Stars.
John, how about a crash course in Wales?
Hello, and welcome to Crash Course.
Today we're learning about Wales,
a land of majesty, dampness, and epic place names.
Let's begin with the first fact
Welsh people want you to know.
Wales is not England.
That's England, that's Scotland,
and this is Wales.
Now, the political situation here is exceptionally complex.
Wales is a country and has its own language, Welsh,
and its own parliament, the Senedd.
But at the same time, Wales is part
of a sovereign nation called the United Kingdom.
So, like, when competing in the World Cup,
Welsh athletes compete for Wales.
But in the Olympics,
Welsh athletes may compete for Great Britain.
And to understand this strange situation,
we're gonna need some history.
As early as 1,000 B.C.E.,
the Celts were living in what we now call Wales.
Centuries later, the Romans took over the region
before leaving in the early fifth century,
and by the sixth, the country was a patchwork
of independent tribes and kingdoms.
But around that time, touchstones
of what would become a unified Welsh culture
were starting to emerge.
Then in the eighth century, an English king built
a man-made earthwork,
which is like a fancy archeological term
for piles of soil and rock,
along what was becoming
the border between Wales and England.
But the English kept peering over
that tall, earthy fence--
by which I mean invading.
Wales resisted these invasions,
most famously under the leadership
of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd,
who was known as Llywelyn the Last
for a reason.
Following the English King Edward I's war
beginning in 1282, Wales lost its independence.
But it's one thing to control some land.
It's another to control people,
and over the centuries,
English kings and wards built
hundreds of castles in Wales
which served both as, like, medieval Airbnbs
and as symbols of England's power over the locals.
In fact, to this day,
Wales has more castles per square mile
than anywhere else in Europe.
Eventually, in 1400,
self-declared Prince of Wales Owain Glyndwr
led a nationwide mutiny against Henry IV's England.
That rebellion ultimately failed, though.
And a few English Henrys later,
Henry VIII's parliament formally united
Wales and England into a single political system.
All right, let's flash forward to the 19th century
when tolls were imposed on privately-owned roads
at the expense of Welsh workers.
Riots ensued,
most famously the Rebecca riots,
named after a line from Genesis
where Rebecca is promised
that her descendants will "possess the gates
of those who hate them,"
which is pretty metal.
But not as metal as Wales.
Please, God, forgive me for that pun.
Its mineral-rich landscape was mined and exported
to fuel the Industrial Revolution
which led to a major 19th-century transformation
in Wales from an agricultural economy
to an industrial one.
And as that happened, popular protests
for workers' rights persisted.
In other words, the people did eventually take
possession of the gates.
And those people,
many of them were speaking Welsh.
Today, Wales remains a part of the United Kingdom,
and so like Scotland and Northern Ireland,
it lacks some characteristics
of a truly independent nation-state.
But Wales endures,
as do celebrations of Welshness
such as Saint David's Day,
a holiday where you attend festivals, play music,
and pin a leek to your lapel.
Because, I don't know, traditions are weird
and beautiful everywhere you go.
And of course there are Welsh sports.
Welsh football has revived the protest song "Yma o Hyd"
that celebrates the endurance of the underdog.
And all of these historical developments led
to the most important event in the history of Wales,
which was, of course, when the fifth-tier
football club in Wrexham was purchased by Ryan Reynolds
and his friend who works out all the time
but still isn't as hot as Ryan Reynolds.
Thanks for watching Crash Course.
Back to you, Rob and Ryan.
Mm. Good God, I love history.
What's that? Where did you get that?
- What? - The glasses and the--
This is a lunch menu and these are fake.
I want something for my hands.
You know, I believe Wales may be older
than It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Rob.
Oh, or your self-aware winking to the camera, Ryan.
Good God, I love self-aware winking to the camera.
Next up, our good friend Maxine Hughes helps us
cook up something special.
Croeso nol, welcome back to Welsh or Else,
where we highlight the best of Welsh cooking.
Today, we're joined by the cochairmen
of the North Walian football club
the Wrexham Red Dragons,
Hollywood stars Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney.
How come I have to wear the apron
and you're not wearing one? - 'Cause you do
what you're [bleep] told, that's why.
Hey, boys?
I'm gonna take off the apron.
Well, I am so excited
to share some Welsh cooking with everyone.
You guys ready? - Ready.
- Yeah. - Excited.
Now, Maxine, you're not
just an amazing Welsh translator.
You're actually-- you're a journalist.
I'm a journalist, yeah. I live in D.C.
I've lived there for a few years.
I mostly do political journalism,
so it's a little bit different than dealing with you guys.
What does "DC" stand for?
Hmm. - I'm more of a Marvel guy.
Oh, I know. I know.
Now how many Welsh speakers
are there in the world right now?
So I'd say there's around a million,
which is a really good number
because we're a very small country,
about 3.8 million of us.
So it's-it's getting there.
And so today you're-- you're gonna teach us
a little Welsh cooking
with a side order of Welsh language.
So I thought we'd start by cooking
one of my favorite dishes.
It's a very traditional dish called lamb cawl.
Can you guys say cawl?
Cawl. - Cawl.
It means stew in Welsh.
So there's a lot of lambs in Wales, though,
if I'm not mistaken, right? That's, uh--a common...
- Yeah. Very common. - Animal.
Yeah, lamb farming is-is a big deal in Wales.
Hey, let's take a look.
Poor little Rob.
No, that's Ryan.
- That's Rob. - It's definitely Ryan.
I mean, it's a beautiful piece of lamb.
Mm. - It's probably Rob.
So there's this other dish called Welsh Cakes.
- Let's do that. - Let's make the Welsh Cakes.
- Welsh Cakes? - Yeah.
Okay.
Okay, so these are Welsh Cakes. Okay.
In Welsh, we call them picau ar y maen.
- Picara-mine? - Picar-mine.
Ar y maen. Ara-mine.
Ar-mine. Ar y maen.
They're very popular in Wales.
We eat them on Saint David's Day,
but we-we eat them all year round really.
They're like a-- they're kind of like a cross
between a pancake and a scone and--
you ready to make them? Let's do it, yeah.
Learn how to make them? Okay, great.
We're gonna learn a bit of Welsh now, okay, guys?
Sure. Okay.
So take your flour, your blawd.
We're gonna put the flour into the bowl.
Okay.
Sugar. Siwgr nesaf.
Sugar. Sugar next.
All right.
A little bit of sbeis. - Sbeis.
A little bit of spice, okay?
And then we're gonna put the fruit that you got--
the currants, the raisins-- Yeah.
All right, we're gonna put the menyn,
the butter and the lard in next.
So I'm gonna use my fork-- fforch.
Fforch? Fforch.
- Fforch? - It's a Disney show.
- We'll bleep it out. - Rob, there's an "R."
There's an "R" in it. It's a Disney show.
Fforch. Fforch.
- Get the fforch in there.
Get--all right.
All right, let's get the menyn in the bowl then.
You can use your spoon. Llwy.
Can you say llwy? Llwy.
How do you speak without--
I feel like I just spit all over the--
I--you know what? Let's just put your hands--
get your hands in there. Start mixing.
Cymysgu. Can you say cymysgu?
Cymysgu.
It looks very dry to me.
Ew, yours looks horrible.
Yeah. Let's see yours.
What happened to yours? What?
How do you say "the butter is not soft"
in Welsh?
Great.
So we're gonna need to roll this out now.
All right, just--you don't need to make--go too-too flat.
Okay, take your-- take your cutter.
It's a circle. Cylch.
Cylch.
Let's make a little-little circle.
We're gonna cook them. Coginio. Cook.
Let's put them on. Ooh. Nice.
There's a little sizzle going on.
Nice.
Okay.
Looks like a Welsh Cake to me.
Looks like--well, it smells like a Welsh Cake.
This bed is on fire with passionate love
Time to flip them.
How do you say Welsh cakes again?
Picau ar y maen.
Great. - That's a mouthful.
W-what would it sound like if you said it in a sentence?
Um, let me think of something.
Okay, um...
That's beautiful.
Sounds like--it's like poetry.
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
You think they're ready?
- They look pretty good.
- Barod i fwyta? - Barod.
- Ready to eat? - Take them off?
- Yeah. - Let's have a look.
All right, they look pretty good.
This one's yours, Ryan.
Just--let's keep Rob's separate.
I'm gonna put siwgr-- siwgr on the top.
Siwgr. Yeah.
How do you say "terrible" in Welsh?
Ofnadwy.
- Ofnadwy. - How do you say "idiot"
in Welsh? - Eh, twmffat.
Twmffat.
- I'm gonna try one of these. And how do you say
both terrible--let's say, what would "terrible"
and "idiot" sound like in a sentence together?
Um, okay, a sentence. Um...
You're having a mid-life crisis?
You play hockey?
This is Sports Center.
Tonight on Sports Center,
can the Wrexham Red Dragons
shake off their losing streak?
We look at a few pictures when Ryan and I played sports
and make smart remarks about them.
And we count down the top plays
of the year so far.
Welcome to the big show, everybody.
I'm Rob McElhenney,
currently fulfilling a boyhood dream
of calling an episode of Sports Center.
And I'm Ryan Reynolds, fulfilling a boyhood dream
of wearing a suit to work and sitting at a desk.
This is still Sports Center.
Welcome to...
Sports Center. - Yeah.
Since our takeover and infusion of talent,
the Red Dragons have, quite frankly, struggled.
Yeah, we sit in seventh place,
losing to teams that we should be winning against.
This isn't really going exactly the way we--
No, we're financially bleeding to death...
- Yeah. - From self-inflicted stupidity
and an unsound business plan. - Yeah.
And for those of you who are not
in the world of sports, uh, you're supposed to win.
It's helpful. We sit in seventh place,
while Stockport seems like
the team to beat in the national league.
Let's take a look at Wrexham's first match against Stockport.
We go to Edgeley Park where the place is hoppin'--
and also the players.
In the first minute,
Stockport County have a throw-in
which results in a decent chance on goal
but is easily saved by Rob Lainton
who then boots it upfield to a sprinting Paul Mullin
who does exactly what Paul Mullin does--
put one in the back of the net.
The Wrexham fans who traveled to see the game
are super excited and I'm sure 100% sober.
23 minutes later, McAlinden feeds
an amazing ball to Mullin who switches feet
for a great chance on goal.
Up 1-0 at the half. God, we look great.
Got this one in the bag, right, Rob?
Wrong!
Because we [bleep] lose this one, Ryan.
Yeah, the guy goes to the corner, he throws it,
and then this [bleep] guy... Oh, got it.
hits it in with his head. They score.
[bleep] that guy. So, yeah, this is--
this is great. Yep. Yep. It's great.
Great like a mule kick to the testicles.
Also, spoiler alert, I guess--
I-I don't care. I don't care.
Because I'm the anchor and I can do
whatever I want.
And then with ten minutes left to go,
this [bleep] guy comes up the left side.
He kicks over to this guy on the right.
Oh, this is the worst!
Oh, you're [bleep] kidding me. Shoots and carries off,
like, five of our guys and they [bleep] kick it in.
Oh, it hurts so bad. And then the game's over
'cause they win. Yep. Goal.
We just keep on losing.
So [bleep] good at losing.
God, we're the best.
But just because the Dragons aren't playing
up to their full potential quite yet doesn't mean
there haven't been some fantastic plays.
Indeed. It's been a team effort.
And we've compiled our list of top ten plays
of the year so far.
Number ten, Mr. Paul Mullin lifts one up
from the top of the box.
Man, he makes it look easy.
Number nine, Cam Green with a nifty
left-footed treat.
Number eight,
Dior Angus with the quick reflexes.
Nice job, Dior.
Number seven,
Paul Mullin blasts one home from the penalty box.
He's taking his ball and going home.
Number six,
David Jones, from a million miles away,
blasts a screamer past the goalie.
Number five, Paul Mullin using that head.
Speaking of heads,
Jordan Davies' head was in the right place
at the right time and he used it as well.
In at number three,
Paul Mullin bends like a Spice Girl's husband
and then does a little trash-talking.
Number two,
just in case you thought it was the Glory Boys
that get the glory, Rob Lainton makes
the save of the season.
Then he has a couple of choice words
for his opponent.
It's a family show, Rob.
And number one,
Paul Mullin once again using that head.
You know, so often, Sports Center focuses
on professional sports.
But a lot of us stop playing sports competitively
much younger.
So with the help of Rob's dad,
I've unearthed some footage of Rob playing sports
when he was just a child.
I think you can see where this is going, Rob.
- Abject humiliation. - Absolutely.
Let's go to Philadelphia in the 1990s.
Okay, Rob's the little one in case you didn't know.
Okay, can we just address this right now?
I am not small.
It's just that you're abnormally large,
and I'm constantly standing next to you in this show.
Well, what about Humphrey?
Humphrey? Humphrey is a giant.
You can't compare me to Humphrey.
He's--okay, you know what? I look normal on the show.
You guys are the ones that look
like oversized goons.
Look at some of my other shows
where I'm standing next to normal-sized people.
You see? So it's all relative.
But enough about me, Ryan.
Let's talk about you and your past.
Because I spoke with your mom.
And I actually unearthed some photos
of your old playing days.
And I thought we would all enjoy them together.
Oh. Thank you, Mom.
Let's take a look.
And here is you playing goalie
in what looks like the worst soccer field
I have ever seen.
It wasn't so bad.
It was 80% gravel and 20% broken glass,
which made you appreciate the gravel.
Who's taking that picture, Ryan?
My dad, actually. If you zoom in,
you could see me looking for his approval.
Uh, still looking for it.
That one is so sad I'm just gonna let it go.
Tomorrow night, a hard-hitting 30 for 30
investigating whatever happened to the Wrexham Robin,
beloved mascot for decades
until it mysteriously disappeared in 2013
only to be replaced by a much more dynamic,
focus-group friendly dragon.
I heard kids love dragons.
You gotta love that merch. Good night, everyone.
Yeah, uh, oh--no, there's a whole other segment.
What?
There's a whole other segment, so--
Can you handle it? No!
I can't do it alone-- it's a two-person gig.
Oh, God, the whining.
You belong in Bristol, Connecticut.
Oh, lovely.
Wow. Welcome to Wales Late Night,
the only late-night talk show that counts sheep
as an important part of their demographic.
- That was terrible. - Horrible.
Tonight we are going to welcome
a very special Welsh guest,
but first we're going to walk over while music plays
because I believe that's how these things are done.
Yes, let's walk over.
Oh? - Uh--
Who gets the chair? We didn't, um--
Probably should have talked about this before we...
- Yeah. - Walked out
'cause the people are waiting--
You want to Welsh Rochambeau for it?
What's a Welsh Rochambeau?
"What's a Welsh Rochambeau?"
What an idiot.
I see you've heard of Welsh Rochambeau.
Well, I feel more well-informed.
Ryan, how about you?
I feel like I have a black belt in Wales, Rob.
No show about Wales would be complete
without some singing.
Wales is known as the land of song.
To close our show, please welcome
Welsh legend Charlotte Church.
Hello. Hello.
How are you doing? How are you? Come on.
Good to see you.
Hey. Hi, Rob. How are you?
- All right, how are you? - Ah, marvelous.
Welcome to Welcome to Wrexham.
- Thank you. - That's fun to say.
Welcome to Welcome to Wrexham.
That's what I'm supposed to say 'cause I'm the host.
Sorry, yeah, I'm the-- I'm the Ed McMahon here.
Yeah. - Thank you for flying in
for this. We are--we're so grateful.
Oh, my gosh. It is such a pleasure.
What part of Wales are you from?
I'm from Cardiff. I'm from South Wales.
When was the first time you remember
where you're like, "I-I can sing.
But not just sing. Like, I can sing..."
- "For real."
It was when I was about three.
And I'd come home from nursery and I would know
every word to every song on the radio.
I think when I realized was
when I started getting attention for it, I suppose.
- Uh-huh. - When I was about--
Ryan doesn't know anything about that.
No, no, I don't know anything--
well, my children only sing "Baby Shark."
And it's--the attention is pure negativity.
Like, it's just--I-I--yeah. It's terrible.
My wife Blake did a movie where she's--
called The Shallows where she's being attacked
by a shark. - Oh, gosh.
I was just like, "Yeah, you really like
"'Baby Shark'?
How do you like that?" Oh, no!
Oh, no, you didn't! No, you didn't.
Maybe... no, I wouldn't do that.
You got three little girls, do you?
- Yeah, yeah. - Aww, lush.
I've got two big ones, 13 and 14,
and a little one. - Whoa!
Would you do us the honor
of singing us a song?
I would absolutely love to sing for you guys.
And I want to sing for you guys as a thank you
on behalf of everybody in Wales, so--
We are having the time of our lives.
Truly. We're having--
it's been incredible, and for as much fun
as we've been having-- and we've been laughing
and doing all sorts of these kinds of things,
and it's just, like, super fun--
but the warmth that we've felt
and the embrace that we've felt from the entire nation,
let alone the town of Wrexham, has just been overwhelming.
Yeah. It seems to me
that everyone from Wrexham,
and particularly everyone from Wales,
is an ambassador of Wales.
Yeah, totally.
Like, there's a pride that is unshakeable.
Yeah, totally. And I think
it's really wonderful.
Charlotte, so what will you be singing today?
Today I'm gonna sing for you
a Welsh classic, "Men of Harlech,"
which I believe is very popular at...
Huge.
Wrexham Football Club.
So here we go.
- Yes. - "Men of Harlech."
From the rocks rebounding
Let the war cry sounding
Summon all at Cambria's call
The haughty foe surrounding
Men of Harlech, on to glory
See your banner famed in story
Wave these burning words before ye
Cymru fo am byth