Speaker 1: Welcome to Part Time Genius, the production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Guess What, Mango?
Speaker 3: What's that? Will?
Speaker 4: So?
Speaker 2: I know, these days it feels like we can't start
Speaker 2: any conversation without talking about the quarantine and without coronavirus unfortunately.
Speaker 2: But one of the things I've noticed right now in
Speaker 2: terms of how people cope with the quarantine, I find
Speaker 2: this interesting is that they watch a bunch of virus
Speaker 2: based content like this is a real thing. Like tons
Speaker 2: of people have been watching that new pandemic documentary series
Speaker 2: on Netflix, and Contagion is one of the most watched
Speaker 2: streaming titles right now. Have you noticed this?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it is such a strange phenomena to me,
Speaker 1: because that is not my idea of escapism. I turn
Speaker 1: to things like the Muppets movie in times like this,
Speaker 1: And I know you're.
Speaker 2: Not lying about that that's actually true, you know.
Speaker 1: I guess if our stuff does make sense, if you're
Speaker 1: looking for a way to remind yourself that it could
Speaker 1: be worse.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I guess I get that feeling like it's
Speaker 2: good to keep our discomfort in perspective. But if you're
Speaker 2: like me, viral disaster movies probably hit a little too
Speaker 2: close to home. But thankfully I have come up with
Speaker 2: a far less upsetting option, and that's to just watch
Speaker 2: a giant monster movie instead. Like, throw one of those
Speaker 2: on and you'll be thinking, Sure, things are tough right now,
Speaker 2: but at least there's no Godzilla, you know.
Speaker 3: So does that really give you any peace of mind?
Speaker 2: Oh, it totally does. I mean, it's probably the last
Speaker 2: genuine source of comfort that we have left Mango. I mean,
Speaker 2: I think you'll agree a Godzilla attack definitely would not
Speaker 2: improve our situation. And that's not just because of the
Speaker 2: smashed up buildings and rolling blackouts either, Like there would
Speaker 2: be way worse things to consider if Godzilla came to town.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, smashed up buildings sound pretty awful, and
Speaker 1: so to blackouts.
Speaker 3: But what else are you thinking about?
Speaker 4: All right?
Speaker 2: Well, think about it this way. At the end of
Speaker 2: the day, Godzilla is a giant animal, right Like. He
Speaker 2: started out at around a hundred and sixty feet tall
Speaker 2: during his first appearance. This was back in nineteen fifty four,
Speaker 2: and over the years he's been scaled up in order
Speaker 2: to keep pace with the increasing size of skyscrapers. So nowaday,
Speaker 2: the modern Godzilla is three times as tall as the
Speaker 2: original almost five hundred feet. So, not to be gross,
Speaker 2: but can you imagine how much waste an animal that
Speaker 2: large would produce? Can you imagine this, Mago, stop and
Speaker 2: think about it just for a second. So forget being
Speaker 2: crushed like the cities would be flooded, and get this.
Speaker 2: I looked this up. There's actually some science behind this. So,
Speaker 2: according to a marine researcher named doctor Craig McLain, an
Speaker 2: animal of Godzilla's height and weight would produce a truly
Speaker 2: monstrous amount of europe nearly thirteen million gallons per day.
Speaker 2: That's like a quarter of an oil tanker raining down
Speaker 2: for every day of Godzilla's rampage. So this is what
Speaker 2: I now have to think about Mango and my quarantine.
Speaker 1: That is so gross, And you're right, things would be
Speaker 1: way worse with Godzillar around.
Speaker 2: It is true. I'm glad you finally understand this, so
Speaker 2: it really puts things in perspective. And that's just the
Speaker 2: first of nine godzill effects we've got on tap today.
Speaker 2: So let's dive in. Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to
Speaker 2: Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm
Speaker 2: joined by my good friend mangesh Hot ticketter and on
Speaker 2: the other side of our Zoom conference wiping his mouth
Speaker 2: and punching at the air for some reason. That's our
Speaker 2: good friend and producer Lowell. So I'm not sure what
Speaker 2: all the wiping and punching is about. But luckily Gave
Speaker 2: Lucier is back with us today. He's our resident Kaiju
Speaker 2: or strange creature fan, so hopefully he can shed some
Speaker 2: light on this. And what is little doing over there?
Speaker 2: Does it have anything to do with Godzilla?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so that's actually a deep cut Godzilla reference, so
Speaker 4: nicely done.
Speaker 1: Loll.
Speaker 4: There was a point in Godzilla's career. I think he
Speaker 4: was about eleven movies deep at the time. It's kind
Speaker 4: of hard to keep track. And anyway, at some point,
Speaker 4: the powers that be decided that Godzilla should have his
Speaker 4: own signature move, and I guess the idea was that,
Speaker 4: you know, he would taunt his opponents by making this
Speaker 4: like insulting menacing gesture and for whatever reason, wiping his
Speaker 4: mouth with his right hand and then jabbing at the air.
Speaker 4: That's what they came up with.
Speaker 1: It's great for video games, I feel like, but why
Speaker 1: do that? Like, is there some cultural significance for it.
Speaker 3: Not that I know of.
Speaker 4: Like my guess is the actor in the suit was
Speaker 4: just like pretty limited mobility wise, so like a mouth
Speaker 4: wipe and a punch was the best he could must
Speaker 4: sure either way, I mean the move. They only like
Speaker 4: stuck with this for a couple movies and then they
Speaker 4: phased it out, So I mean it did leave an
Speaker 4: impression though obviously at least Lowell and there are some
Speaker 4: fans out there they refer to the movies where Godzilla
Speaker 4: does this as the wipe your mouth and punch the
Speaker 4: air trilogy.
Speaker 2: You know, it's fun as we do these things, learning
Speaker 2: things about each of us that I never knew you
Speaker 2: and Lowell were such big Godzilla fans. That's pretty awesome.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I mean this is kind of a new
Speaker 4: thing for me. Like I had seen a few of
Speaker 4: the old ones, you know, when I was a kid,
Speaker 4: and I thought they were cheesy and you know, good
Speaker 4: time or whatever, but I hadn't watched one in a
Speaker 4: really long time. And then last year, I guess it
Speaker 4: was actually Godzilla's the sixty fifth anniversary of Godzilla, so
Speaker 4: he's technically a senior citizen now, and a bunch of
Speaker 4: movies were coming back to little independent theaters around here,
Speaker 4: so Aaron and I got a chance to watch a
Speaker 4: few on the big screen, and we just kind of
Speaker 4: fell in love with how silly and over the top
Speaker 4: they were. I mean, it's weird to say, but Godzilla
Speaker 4: is an oddly endearing character if you really watch some
Speaker 4: of his movies, Like, I mean, he wipes his mouth,
Speaker 4: he punches air, herec stuff, he dances like what more
Speaker 4: do you want?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 4: But I'm curious maybe that's just me. What about you guys?
Speaker 4: Any fond memories of the King of the Monsters.
Speaker 1: It's funny whenever like monster movies would come on on
Speaker 1: like Saturday mornings.
Speaker 3: That was our que to go outside. Like so that's
Speaker 3: what I think of them, Like mm hmmm. Will.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you remember this, but we went
Speaker 1: to toy fair like years and years ago, and the
Speaker 1: company that we were doing a board game with was
Speaker 1: also doing King Kong.
Speaker 3: And this was like two thousands and so big deal.
Speaker 1: They had the King Kong board game behind this like
Speaker 1: curtain and there were like guards there because they didn't
Speaker 1: want to show anyone what the monster looked like. And
Speaker 1: I thought, you know, I'm a part of this company,
Speaker 1: I can like go back and sneak in, and they
Speaker 1: would not.
Speaker 3: Let me in. And I remember I wasn't even that insulted.
Speaker 1: I just remember thinking it was like so stupid, because
Speaker 1: how different can King Kong look like you?
Speaker 3: In the end, you basically know what he looks like.
Speaker 2: Well, I don't know, Mega. I think maybe in the
Speaker 2: end they knew like what a blabbermouth you were, and
Speaker 2: they just needed to keep you out of there. The
Speaker 2: rest of them, they would sort of whisper to us
Speaker 2: like do you want to come see it? But then
Speaker 2: when you showed up, they were like, guys, guys, we
Speaker 2: can't come back here.
Speaker 3: Wait.
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Speaker 1: I mentioned, I do not love monster movies, but I
Speaker 1: do have a fondness for facts about monster movies. So
Speaker 1: this is my first one, and it's about the guy
Speaker 1: who helped bring Godzilla to life in the early movies.
Speaker 1: So obviously today's Godzilla is computer generated, but that wasn't
Speaker 1: always the case, and while multiple actors have donned the
Speaker 1: scaley suit over the years, the first to do so
Speaker 1: was this Jepanese actor named Haruo Nakajima, and he starred
Speaker 1: in the original nineteen fifty four movie, and then he
Speaker 1: reprised the role for I Think Like eleven sequels. But
Speaker 1: when Nakajima first landed the role, he didn't know what
Speaker 1: the character would look like. All he knew was that
Speaker 1: would be some kind of ancient sea creature that would
Speaker 1: be awakened by this underwater test of the hydrogen bond, So,
Speaker 1: you know, with nothing else to go on, he actually
Speaker 1: prepared by spending ten days at the zoo. So he
Speaker 1: watched elephants, he watched gorillas, but strangely, it was the bears.
Speaker 3: That really captivated him.
Speaker 1: And this is what he told a reporter at the
Speaker 1: time quote, I used to take two lunches with me.
Speaker 1: One was mine and the rest I throw to the bears.
Speaker 1: When one of them snatched it up and shoveled it
Speaker 1: into his mouth. I'd wash the way he did it.
Speaker 1: But no amount of research could have prepared Nakajima for
Speaker 1: the reality of being stuffed inside a lizard suit. Like
Speaker 1: the original costume was notoriously difficult to move, kind of
Speaker 1: like what Gabe said, because it was made from ready
Speaker 1: mixed concrete and reportedly it weighed about two hundred and twenty.
Speaker 2: Pounds at the time. Why would they use concrete instead
Speaker 2: of something like rubber.
Speaker 1: So the later suits were rubber, but it was hard
Speaker 1: to come by in the early postwar years in Japan,
Speaker 1: so they went concrete for the first one, and that
Speaker 1: made the suit super super heavy, but it also made
Speaker 1: it suffocatingly hot. In fact, Nakajima said he sweated so
Speaker 1: much in the suit that after a day of filming,
Speaker 1: he would wring out the perspiration from his undershirt and
Speaker 1: it would actually fill half a bucket.
Speaker 4: Can't believe he did that. He kept that up for
Speaker 4: twelve movies, Like that is some serious dedication.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I guess he was a trooper and
Speaker 1: he's actually kind of a pioneer when you think about it.
Speaker 1: What he did generated this whole new type of acting.
Speaker 1: All these actors were wear giant monster costumes and reek
Speaker 1: havoc model cities. You think, like there are hundreds of
Speaker 1: movies and TV shows all made using that process, and
Speaker 1: Nakajima was actually at the forefront of all of that.
Speaker 4: All right, well, here's a bit of film history that
Speaker 4: I like. You mentioned that Nakajima wasn't sure what kind
Speaker 4: of creature Godzilla was going to be initially, but he
Speaker 4: wasn't the only one. The producers of the film also
Speaker 4: weren't sure what look they wanted for their ancient sea creature.
Speaker 4: And originally he was just going to be a giant
Speaker 4: mutant octopus, which you know, would have put Nakajima out
Speaker 4: of a job since they could have just set a
Speaker 4: real octopus loose on their miniature cities. But then the
Speaker 4: creative team decided to take an even weirder approach, and
Speaker 4: it was the second approach that actually gave us the
Speaker 4: character's Japanese name. And you know, remember Godzilla, that's just
Speaker 4: something the marketers came up with for the American release.
Speaker 4: In Japan, he's actually known as Gojira, and that's because
Speaker 4: at one point during development, the plan was for the
Speaker 4: monster to be a cross between a gorilla and a whale.
Speaker 4: And you want to know that idea. It sounds weird, right,
Speaker 4: but I mean, even though that idea was eventually scrapped
Speaker 4: in favor of a more dinosaur like design. They did
Speaker 4: keep the original name, which is actually a portmanteau of
Speaker 4: the Japanese words for gorilla and whale.
Speaker 2: I've always wondered what kind of creature Godzilla is supposed
Speaker 2: to be. I mean, he's obviously some kind of reptile
Speaker 2: or maybe amphibian, I guess, and not a gorilla whale,
Speaker 2: that's for sure, But what kind of reptile is he?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: Is he an unknown species of dinosaur that secretly survived
Speaker 2: underwater or is he just a regular lizard that got
Speaker 2: you know, irradiated and grew into a giant or something else.
Speaker 2: Like these are again in addition to the things I
Speaker 2: was thinking about before with like Godzilla waste, I have
Speaker 2: to think about this.
Speaker 3: Did you figure it out?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 2: It turns out it kind of depends on who you ask,
Speaker 2: which maybe isn't a huge surprise. So the crew definitely
Speaker 2: looked at dinosaur illustrations for inspiration when designing the costume.
Speaker 2: But according to a scientist character in the original movie,
Speaker 2: Godzilla is kind of this transitional creature. So the quote
Speaker 2: was somewhere between the marine reptiles and the evolving terrestrial animal,
Speaker 2: so technically not a dinosaur, but a close descendant of them. However,
Speaker 2: the waters get a little bit muddier when you go
Speaker 2: a little bit deeper on this. So, for instance, Godzilla's creator,
Speaker 2: a producer named Tamayuki Tanaka, has gone on record saying
Speaker 2: that his original intention for Godzilla to be a quote,
Speaker 2: dinosaur sleeping in the Southern Hemisphere that had been awakened
Speaker 2: and transformed into a giant by the atomic bomb. So,
Speaker 2: I bet you didn't see that one coming. And that
Speaker 2: offscreen take on the origin was actually made explicit during
Speaker 2: the nineteen nineties run of Godzilla movies. So in one
Speaker 2: of these characters travel back in time, they go back
Speaker 2: to nineteen forty four, and there they encounter this dinosaur
Speaker 2: living alone on an island. Now it is the same
Speaker 2: dinosaur that eventually mutates into Godzilla after being hit with
Speaker 2: an h bomb.
Speaker 1: But did you actually figure out what kind of dinosaur
Speaker 1: it's supposed to be?
Speaker 2: No, I have no idea. I guess I just got
Speaker 2: tired of looking at much. More So, the dinosaur in
Speaker 2: the movie was completely fictional, and it kind of looked
Speaker 2: like this, more like a dumpy Tyrannosaurus I guess, but
Speaker 2: it was referred to in the movie as a Godzilla saurus.
Speaker 3: Sure, I mean that makes sense.
Speaker 2: It's super creative. But all right, but here's the thing.
Speaker 2: Five years later, this was in nineteen ninety seven, a
Speaker 2: paleontologist named Ken Carpenter discovered a new genus of bipedal dinosaur,
Speaker 2: and he lovingly dubbed it Gojirosaurus. So weirdly, Godzilla both
Speaker 2: is and isn't a real dinosaur.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's actually pretty great, dolus.
Speaker 1: It makes so much sense that, like a paleontologist would
Speaker 1: be a Godzilla fanatic. Right, totally, that makes a lot
Speaker 1: of sense. Here's one I definitely didn't know before this week.
Speaker 1: Did you know that Godzilla is the longest running movie
Speaker 1: franchise of all time? This year marks the sixty sixth
Speaker 1: anniversary of his first appearance and the release of his
Speaker 1: thirty six theatrical film. That puts Godzilla eight years and
Speaker 1: eleven movies ahead of his closest competition, which is the
Speaker 1: James Bond series. What's really interesting, though, is how the
Speaker 1: series has managed to stay relevant for that long. If
Speaker 1: you look at the different periods of Godzilla movies, the
Speaker 1: tone of the series, and even the characters roll in
Speaker 1: it are always changing to kind of better align with
Speaker 1: the mood and what the audience of the times wanted.
Speaker 1: The first movie isn't actually some like goofy, campy monster movie.
Speaker 1: It has action, and it does have cheesy effects, but
Speaker 1: it's actually the somber and really bleak movie, and it
Speaker 1: traced the disaster super seriously, and that isn't by accident.
Speaker 1: Like the director described Godzilla as the embodiment of the
Speaker 1: quote invisible fear that a nuclear bomb could be dropped
Speaker 1: at any moment, and that really resonated with audiences at
Speaker 1: the time, and many Japanese moviegoers left the theater and
Speaker 1: tears after seeing the movie. It wasn't until the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: when Japan's post war economy was rebounding, that Godzilla started
Speaker 1: to loosen up a little, and for a while he
Speaker 1: was portrayed as kind of a cranky public menace like
Speaker 1: this bully you had to be chased off by the
Speaker 1: army or by one of the more good natured monsters
Speaker 1: like Mathra, and then he gradually became a more heroic
Speaker 1: figure who would fight off other giant monsters on behalf
Speaker 1: of Tokyo, even if he still did trash most of
Speaker 1: the city in the process.
Speaker 2: You know, for the record, I feel like that counts
Speaker 2: as a fact and a half there because there was
Speaker 2: really a lot in there. But it is wild how
Speaker 2: much mileage they've gotten out of that concept that many movies.
Speaker 2: It's incredible.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it kind of makes me wish they would mix
Speaker 4: things up even more. Like Mego mentioned James Bond, Like,
Speaker 4: let's throw him in there. God deliversus double seventhly.
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like that fight would be over
Speaker 1: very very quickly. But we've got four facts left to go,
Speaker 1: so let's take a quick break and then we'll get
Speaker 1: back to it.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to part time. Is now we're talking about Godzilla,
Speaker 2: who is the atomic fire breathing lizard with a heart
Speaker 2: of gold. All right, Gabe, you're up again. You like
Speaker 2: that I wrote that down. I was just ready ready
Speaker 2: to come with it. All right, Gabe, So what's your
Speaker 2: next fact?
Speaker 4: Mango clute us in on just how long the Godzilla
Speaker 4: series has been around. So now I want to talk
Speaker 4: about how ahead of its time it's been. So take
Speaker 4: the Marvel movies for instance, they kicked off this big
Speaker 4: universe building trend in Hollywood, where you know, the goal
Speaker 4: is to crank out as many interconnected movies as possible.
Speaker 4: And the way that plays out for superhero movies is
Speaker 4: you do a bunch of standalone movies, a Thor movie,
Speaker 4: an iron Man movie, et cetera, and then you bring
Speaker 4: all those characters together for a big team up movie
Speaker 4: like The Avengers. It's incredibly lucrative formula and one that
Speaker 4: some studios are falling over themselves to emulate. But here's
Speaker 4: the thing. They may think they're copying from Marvel, but
Speaker 4: they're really cribbing from Godzilla. And that's because way back
Speaker 4: in the earth early nineteen sixties, the Toho Studio was
Speaker 4: working off the same two stage strategy. Alongside Godzilla movies,
Speaker 4: they were also creating other standalone kaiju movies like Rodin,
Speaker 4: who was basically a giant pterodactyl that lived in a volcano,
Speaker 4: and Mathra, who was kind of the benevolent protector of
Speaker 4: this secret island in the Pacific.
Speaker 1: So, I know, Mathra and Rodin eventually fought against Godzilla,
Speaker 1: but you're saying they did an Avenger style team up
Speaker 1: movie too.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, Like after debuting in their own movies. The
Speaker 4: Trio Big grudgingly joined forces in nineteen sixty four, and
Speaker 4: of course that was to protect the Earth from the
Speaker 4: threat of King Godora, who I guess you could call
Speaker 4: like the Thanos of the Godzilla universe. I don't know.
Speaker 4: He's like a flying gold, three headed dragon from outer space,
Speaker 4: so there aren't a ton of parallels. But he's definitely
Speaker 4: Godzilla's arch nemesis.
Speaker 3: That's the point.
Speaker 4: And the monsters, you know, they've had the team up
Speaker 4: a few times over the years to fight him off.
Speaker 2: That is a good fact. I feel like you guys
Speaker 2: really stepped it up with the facts today to come
Speaker 2: up with some good ones. But all right, well, I
Speaker 2: feel like I had a couple here in mind. But
Speaker 2: I'm going to take us behind the scenes again for
Speaker 2: my third fact, because I want to talk about Godzilla's
Speaker 2: iconic roar and more specifically, how the sound of that
Speaker 2: roar was made. And if you've never heard the roar
Speaker 2: I'm talking about, we're going to play a few of
Speaker 2: them here for you. Now, Loy'll stop stop putting your
Speaker 2: fist up in the air and play I'm here. It's
Speaker 2: a strange sound, right, but where did it come? From.
Speaker 2: So in the nineteen fifty four original, the sound effects
Speaker 2: team tried to create Godzilla's roar using animal sounds, but
Speaker 2: none of them seemed to be like the right match.
Speaker 2: They were all too familiar and not otherworldly enough for
Speaker 2: or the monster that people were seeing on the screen.
Speaker 2: So then the film's composer, Akira Ifukube, had this great idea,
Speaker 2: why not use a musical instrument to make the roar instead?
Speaker 2: So this is what he did. He donned a pair
Speaker 2: of leather gloves, coated them in pine tar resin, and
Speaker 2: then he dragged the sticky gloves up and down the
Speaker 2: e string of a broken down double bass. Isn't this
Speaker 2: so weird when they come up with these ideas to
Speaker 2: do stuff like this, It's like, you know what I
Speaker 2: think I'm gonna do with these gloves. But anyway, this
Speaker 2: sound he got from that became the sound of Godzilla
Speaker 2: and it's been the basis of his roar ever since.
Speaker 3: That is incredible.
Speaker 1: So we've talked about how prolific Godzilla has been at
Speaker 1: the multiplex, but he's also had his share of off
Speaker 1: screen successes. For example, he's one of a handful of
Speaker 1: fictional characters to have a star on the Hollywood Walk
Speaker 1: of Fame, and in nineteen ninety six, Godzilla became the
Speaker 1: first radioactive lizard monster to win the MTV Lifetime Achievement Award.
Speaker 1: He was actually presented to him by Sir Patrick Stewart,
Speaker 1: who offered this touching tribute, saying, quote, We've all heard
Speaker 1: about his temper and about the people he stepped on
Speaker 1: on his way to the top, But in this world
Speaker 1: of stars and superstars, it would be no exaggeration to
Speaker 1: say that he is the biggest, which is I think
Speaker 1: very sweet. And he is so big, in fact, that
Speaker 1: his fame is even extended to TV roles which have
Speaker 1: been equally strange. For instance, there was a time in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five where Godzilla appeared in a string of
Speaker 1: commercials for Doctor Pepper, of all things. In the ads,
Speaker 1: he's just doing his thing, wrecking building, stopping on cars,
Speaker 1: and then he comes across a giant can of Doctor Pepper,
Speaker 1: just sitting where a water tower should be, and he
Speaker 1: takes a big sip, and the ad ends with him
Speaker 1: burping all satisfied.
Speaker 4: Am I alone in thinking like that ad was beneath
Speaker 4: the dignity of Godzilla?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I think you probably are game right fair.
Speaker 1: Well, if you think that sounds bad, definitely don't watch
Speaker 1: the nineteen ninety two Nike commercial where Godzilla faces off
Speaker 1: with Charles Barkley. It quit Barkley dunking on Godzilla and
Speaker 1: then consoling him by offering him a spot on the
Speaker 1: Lakers team, which you know, the Lakers were having a
Speaker 1: very rough season that year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's rough, all right.
Speaker 4: Well, to close this out, I thought I'd cover what
Speaker 4: we all really want to know, which is how the
Speaker 4: military would actually tackle the thread of Godzilla in real life.
Speaker 4: This is important stuff, right, So to figure this out,
Speaker 4: a few years ago, Air and Space Magazine reached out
Speaker 4: to a US Air Force base in Okinawa, Japan, this
Speaker 4: is real And the response they got from the personnel
Speaker 4: there was a little surprising. They basically said, yeah, we
Speaker 4: could take him, no problem. When they were pressed about,
Speaker 4: you know, how many aircraft they would need to mount
Speaker 4: a cohesive defense, the master sergeant just said seven, which
Speaker 4: seems optimistic at best.
Speaker 2: I love how you take that as such a serious answer. Me,
Speaker 2: do you think maybe he wasn't taking the question very seriously,
Speaker 2: you know, with Godzilla not being real and all.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that did occur to me.
Speaker 4: To be fair, though, the sergeant did acknowledge that Godzilla
Speaker 4: would likely be expecting an aerial attack, which shows that
Speaker 4: he was at least putting some thought into what kind
Speaker 4: of strategy, you know, might work in this situation. Right,
Speaker 4: But again, the answer he came up with was to
Speaker 4: catch Godzilla off guard using quote four thousand segues and slingshots.
Speaker 4: So yeah, he might not have been taken it too seriously.
Speaker 2: I mean, you do hate to see that kind of hubris,
Speaker 2: you know. I feel like he really should have taken
Speaker 2: that more seriously. But anyway, well, yeah, but on the
Speaker 2: bright side, it looks like Japan at least is taking
Speaker 2: the threat seriously. Back in two thousand and seven, the
Speaker 2: country's defense minister told reporters that even though Japan has
Speaker 2: a pacifist constitution, the military wouldn't have to wait for
Speaker 2: Godzilla to attack first. According to him, quote, if Godzilla attacked,
Speaker 2: that would be a natural disaster relief operation, making military
Speaker 2: action legally permissible.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I'm glad they have that all worked out just
Speaker 1: in case. It seems like they've really thought it through,
Speaker 1: and I feel like you really sued some nerves with
Speaker 1: that last fact, plus you explained what the heck Loel
Speaker 1: was doing at the top of the show. So I
Speaker 1: feel like you should take today's trophy.
Speaker 2: I feel like we even stumped it flat for you there, Gabe,
Speaker 2: So just like God's Zilla, what it feels appropriate?
Speaker 4: All right, Well it might be because I haven't left
Speaker 4: the house in four days, but that means a lot, guys,
Speaker 4: so thank you.
Speaker 2: All right, Well that's going to do it for today's
Speaker 2: Part Time Genius for myself, Mango, Gabe, and Lowell. Thank
Speaker 2: you so much for listening. Stay safe, wash your hands.
Speaker 2: We'll be back soon with another episode. Part Time Genius
Speaker 2: is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
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Speaker 2: listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm.