Speaker 1: Welcome to Nightcall, a production of My Heart Radio. It's
Speaker 1: PM on Main Street, USA, and you're listening to Night Call. Hello,
Speaker 1: and welcome to night Call, a podcast for your strange
Speaker 1: days and lonely nights. I'm in Los Angeles and I'm
Speaker 1: Tess Lynch. With me as always are Molly Lambert and
Speaker 1: Emily Oshda. Guys, we have a special guest coming later on.
Speaker 1: But before we have our special guest, we have another
Speaker 1: special guest. This is my favorite science news of the year.
Speaker 1: We got a lot of requests for the blob, certainly did.
Speaker 1: But we'll read a night email from Josh that says, Hi,
Speaker 1: this may be too soon following the worm with eyes
Speaker 1: on its butt. But the para Sue has a blob
Speaker 1: that has no mouth, no stomach, and no eyes, but
Speaker 1: it can detect food and digest it. It also has
Speaker 1: seven hundred and twenty sexes, can move without legs or wings,
Speaker 1: and heals itself when cut in half. Oh, and it
Speaker 1: apparently learns to sleep well. Josh, I will sleep well
Speaker 1: because I love this blob. I'm obsessed with it. It
Speaker 1: looks kind of like yellow lace. It kind of has
Speaker 1: a coral like appearance. It's sort of cloudy and sort
Speaker 1: of brain like, and it's it's structure, but it's well,
Speaker 1: it's hard to tell when you look at the pictures
Speaker 1: because I at first thought that it was that the
Speaker 1: log that it's on was part of the blob. But
Speaker 1: I think it's just the kind of fungus looking thing. Well,
Speaker 1: they don't know if it's a fungus or an animal.
Speaker 1: When you click on the link, it doesn't get less scary.
Speaker 1: Is it's a collection of unice, cellular or ganisms, slime mold. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know if this is a time lapse or not,
Speaker 1: but that kind of branching thing that it does as
Speaker 1: it moves around, it does look like the um ribbon worms.
Speaker 1: You guys ever seen these videos? Oh, it's really upsetting.
Speaker 1: Um there are these sea worms that live really like
Speaker 1: at the bottom of the ocean. There are some viral
Speaker 1: videos that went around where and if you bring them
Speaker 1: up to sea level, they're not really built to withstand
Speaker 1: the pressure or the lack of pressure I guess at
Speaker 1: sea level and um, so they kind of become really
Speaker 1: red and inflamed, and then they throw up their digestive
Speaker 1: system and it looks like that it looks like this
Speaker 1: sort of lacy thing that kind of just shoots out, um,
Speaker 1: but it's actually uh basically killing itself to try to
Speaker 1: find food. Uh. Sad, But it's also kind of like awesome,
Speaker 1: not in the sense it's yeah, it's like something Russian
Speaker 1: deep sea fishermen would have. Yeah, I think he might
Speaker 1: have maybe had one of those. I can't remember. It
Speaker 1: definitely looks like a c sponge or something. It looks
Speaker 1: very much like an underwater feature. Well that's like that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff like coral and sponges, which is like
Speaker 1: really in this like weird gray area between being an
Speaker 1: animal and being a plant or like a mold or
Speaker 1: something like. It can learn, right that they didn't give
Speaker 1: enough information about the learning, because yeah, they say that
Speaker 1: you can you can mush two of them together and
Speaker 1: what one has learned will be transmitted to the newly
Speaker 1: formed blob, and that you can cut it up and
Speaker 1: it will come back together. But like, what does it learn?
Speaker 1: What does it? What did you teach? The one thing
Speaker 1: I feel like it should be a master of Isa
Speaker 1: has seven sexes? What does that mean? Okay, so that
Speaker 1: means the seven sexes are really mating types as explained
Speaker 1: there was a thread one of my favorite Twitter accounts,
Speaker 1: NYC Southpaw. I was like, what is this and then
Speaker 1: had a clip from an article from j Store where
Speaker 1: they were like, basically it is. It's so hard to
Speaker 1: wrap your brain around. They're so cool about sources of
Speaker 1: mitochondrial DNA available to the blob, any of which can
Speaker 1: combine with another to produce a zygote. I think I
Speaker 1: read it like four times, and I think that's when
Speaker 1: it was yeah, I can I can wrap my head
Speaker 1: around that, versus when I thought it was someone genders.
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, tell me all of them. I
Speaker 1: want to know them. All that rules it does. I
Speaker 1: love things that are in between species and we don't
Speaker 1: know what they are. It seems like it must have
Speaker 1: been um like very like it's one of these things
Speaker 1: that must be like super ancient. It's just one of
Speaker 1: these very rudimentary life forms that also feels like hyper advanced.
Speaker 1: When you start thinking for people are very like, oh why,
Speaker 1: because they were like it's going to take over like
Speaker 1: the blob Well yeah, I mean they did name it
Speaker 1: after I. The way, it was so weird because I
Speaker 1: just recorded the blob that blob for a minute. The
Speaker 1: Horror movie. I love that movie. It's so scary. It's
Speaker 1: really scary. It takes a long time to get into
Speaker 1: its freakiness. A face yeah, um, I like movies like that,
Speaker 1: and the remake also scary, pretty gross. I've always scartting
Speaker 1: the Blob to be one of the scariest monsters of
Speaker 1: all the monsters because you can't get through to it
Speaker 1: because it has no face. It has no face. It
Speaker 1: like isn't a thing that we recognize as being like
Speaker 1: an animal that we know, but it's totally blievable, as
Speaker 1: like space goo would be some sentient space goo. Well,
Speaker 1: it's like the kind of scary aspects of the Terminator,
Speaker 1: but without a human body exactly identify with. It's just
Speaker 1: the metal coming together. That's the scary part is that
Speaker 1: you can't destroy it. It will and in a way
Speaker 1: it becomes like more invincible, or it heals itself because
Speaker 1: it can learn, because each new Blob becomes a big
Speaker 1: blob again because but all so because it can learn
Speaker 1: from the experience of having been cut in half, presumably,
Speaker 1: and it can learn new tactics to avoid being cut
Speaker 1: in half. So essentially like by being able to continually
Speaker 1: merge with other blobs. It could be completely omniscient, a
Speaker 1: giant organism made up of a billion tiny little omniscient organism.
Speaker 1: That's what we're going to be one day. Can't wait
Speaker 1: a borg my hive. But for good Um, guys, is
Speaker 1: the blob our animal of the month? Oh for sure.
Speaker 1: We don't know if it's an animal. It's just start
Speaker 1: our friend. Yeah, it can be the Night Call mascot.
Speaker 1: Very close. We might be the mascot. Yeah. Should we
Speaker 1: take another science icebreaker? I think so. Um. This one
Speaker 1: is also from Live Science, our favorite source of science news, vetted, vetted,
Speaker 1: and forget it um. This story is by Stephanie Poppas.
Speaker 1: It's a scientist implant false memories into bird brains. This
Speaker 1: one blew my mind even more than the blob thing
Speaker 1: because it's impossible, presented very matter of fact. It's a
Speaker 1: scientists of taught little birds to memorize a tune without
Speaker 1: ever learning it, and they did so by implanting memories
Speaker 1: of the songs in the bird's brains. Okay, so basically
Speaker 1: what this really is though, So zebra finches learned to
Speaker 1: sing from their father's like baby zebra finches are taught
Speaker 1: by their fathers. They're so cute, adorable. There are some
Speaker 1: of the cutest birds. So scientists used um some optogenics,
Speaker 1: which is basically kind of pulsing light to control the
Speaker 1: bird's brain cells. And I think there's a there's a
Speaker 1: quote from Live Science. By pulsing light in a rhythm,
Speaker 1: the researchers were able to encode memories in the finches
Speaker 1: brains such that the bird's notes would match the duration
Speaker 1: of the light pulses. It was as if a father
Speaker 1: figure were making these instructions for the bird to memorize,
Speaker 1: but no father finch was present. God, it's terrifying. What's
Speaker 1: really interesting about it is so I guess scientists were
Speaker 1: doing this kind of to see if they could teach
Speaker 1: nonverbal humans to speak by kind of bypassing any therapy
Speaker 1: and going directly into the brain, which I suppose could
Speaker 1: be good and useful, But we're kind of cynical. It
Speaker 1: seems like maybe not did we I don't know if
Speaker 1: we talked about it on the show, But there was
Speaker 1: another article about some experimental military technology that was about
Speaker 1: like beaming sound messages to people from far away, so
Speaker 1: that it's like you can hear it inside your brain.
Speaker 1: I think I remember that stuff like that, just real
Speaker 1: man Charian candidate. I think we'll be texting each other
Speaker 1: with our brains within the next thirty years. This was
Speaker 1: something about people getting chips and planted no thanks, oh
Speaker 1: oh yeah, like the people are starting to do the
Speaker 1: credit card stuff and personal information. Don't do that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was already against Apple watches, like using Apple watches
Speaker 1: to like have your your your credit card and you're
Speaker 1: getting texted, getting a vibration on your body. I hate
Speaker 1: Apple watches so much. I'm still shocked that I I'm
Speaker 1: friends with people who have Apple watching. Oh I'm not
Speaker 1: friends with any of your friends with them. So you
Speaker 1: can push them over so that their watch will hit
Speaker 1: the ground and chatter, you're doing them a favor. I
Speaker 1: feel like, um, what what was the thing? I'm trying
Speaker 1: to remember what you're talking about though? With the the
Speaker 1: sound waves like uh, like triggering a memory or something
Speaker 1: or like transmitting information. I mean, I know, I don't
Speaker 1: know if you've been watching country music still, but there
Speaker 1: was a radio station that this guy, this crazy guy
Speaker 1: started just on the other side of the Mexican border
Speaker 1: that was like a super transmitter station that was like
Speaker 1: the signal was the strongest, Like I don't think it's
Speaker 1: even legal to make a signal this strong anymore, but
Speaker 1: it was like so strong that in nearby farms, if
Speaker 1: you had a fence, like a metal fence, you could
Speaker 1: you could touch it and you would hear the radio
Speaker 1: like it would transmit through your body. I used to
Speaker 1: get this will be foreshadowing for our guests, but I
Speaker 1: got Radio Disney through my phone line always. I remember
Speaker 1: that because we live near a radio transmitter that was
Speaker 1: at the time Radio Disney, and so anytime I was
Speaker 1: on a landline phone, it would here faintly like Britney Spears.
Speaker 1: Because it was in the late nineties, early um, which
Speaker 1: explains a lot about me. Obviously. I had an acquaintance
Speaker 1: Onan's who received a radio station through his I think
Speaker 1: I think it was his landline and he lost his
Speaker 1: mind and covered his house in tinfoil. Who yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it would do something that's inescapable like that, that just
Speaker 1: feels like it's in the air that's being transmitted either
Speaker 1: through your phone line or through like you know, the
Speaker 1: footage in your house or something. I mean, that would
Speaker 1: make you go crazy. Yeah, that's very disruptive. Then what
Speaker 1: if it trained you to sing a song? Right? Right? Like?
Speaker 1: How do that's how? That's how. That's how. When you
Speaker 1: know a pop song for the first time, you're like,
Speaker 1: I feel like I know it already. It's because it's
Speaker 1: been a plant in your brain already. It sounds like
Speaker 1: a good ginge Eeto story. Right, I'm gonna go work
Speaker 1: on this or flash research and confirm it. Speaking of
Speaker 1: things listening to you and you listening to things, should
Speaker 1: we take a night call? Yes? Okay, this one comes
Speaker 1: from April. Hi. Friends, I've been a big fan since
Speaker 1: the Girls in Hoodies days. I've been going through your
Speaker 1: archive and wanted to share my personal My phone is
Speaker 1: a spy experience. I was listening to another podcast where
Speaker 1: they made a joke about Swedish fish, the candy. They
Speaker 1: maybe said the brand four times. I laughed a lot
Speaker 1: for several minutes. I never said the word Swedish fish
Speaker 1: nor retold the joke to anyone, Yet one day later,
Speaker 1: there were ads for Swedish fish on my Facebook account.
Speaker 1: This was terrifying. Have any of you received ads for
Speaker 1: something you never googled nor said, but heard through your
Speaker 1: phone via a podcast or other audio Thanks night call, April.
Speaker 1: I mean I'm almost positive I have. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I guess it makes It depends maybe if you're listening
Speaker 1: to it on speaker phone, which I'm half the time.
Speaker 1: If I listened to a podcast, I'm just listening to
Speaker 1: it on speaker phone or like in my car, so
Speaker 1: my phone would be hearing it. Uh, But I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's also but it's also kind of hard to tell
Speaker 1: something like Swedish Fish, where it's obviously you're not listening
Speaker 1: to a podcast. It's like the Swedish Fish podcast. But
Speaker 1: like a lot of times I'll get stuff like you know,
Speaker 1: uh like blank check recently or they're still in the
Speaker 1: middle of like doing a mini series on me Azaki,
Speaker 1: so I like get a ton of mi Azaki ads
Speaker 1: and stuff. But it's also like that's just the content
Speaker 1: that I crave anyway, So I don't know, I can't
Speaker 1: really differentiate it, but I feel like I feel like
Speaker 1: there have been I've definitely like to keep mind confused
Speaker 1: by what just talking about nonsense, listening to nonsense, just
Speaker 1: by my own media consumption habits that are probably weird
Speaker 1: and confusing. Like I got concerned because I got there
Speaker 1: was like a d WP rebait where you could get
Speaker 1: a Nest thermostat for free. No no no, no, no
Speaker 1: no no no I did it. No no no no
Speaker 1: no no no no. Well my reasoning was, I was
Speaker 1: just like, my DWP bills really high. Maybe this will help.
Speaker 1: But then I just saw today about how the Nest
Speaker 1: is just always listening to you, always kind to recording
Speaker 1: what you're saying, listens. It has an audio function. Well,
Speaker 1: it lights up, it lights up in front of it.
Speaker 1: There was the thing that came out. I came out
Speaker 1: that the people do Nest and Ring whoever that is,
Speaker 1: well Nest is Google or its Google, that they were
Speaker 1: trying to like make partnerships with police service people, being like,
Speaker 1: we will give you whatever we hear. Okay, but theoretically
Speaker 1: Ring has issued a statement claiming that they don't. It's
Speaker 1: up to you to believe it or not. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure, but I ended up getting the ring
Speaker 1: just because someone rang my doorbell a ton of times
Speaker 1: when I was in the shower and it made me
Speaker 1: absolut Maybe they were doing it to try and get
Speaker 1: you to buy a ring. I know now I'm under
Speaker 1: the silver Lake about it. But well the next thing,
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel less anti nest just because it
Speaker 1: like will supposedly reduce your energy. That's good thing I felt.
Speaker 1: I felt almost like I had to because I was,
Speaker 1: you know, I live in an old house with like systems,
Speaker 1: and I was like, anything to it away reduced my
Speaker 1: energy and take by moving off the grid, Okay, we'll
Speaker 1: let us know when you do that time. I think
Speaker 1: it's okay, it's okay to have enough surveillance devices out
Speaker 1: of my life, I want. I was just thinking about
Speaker 1: it today because I was like, I went for a
Speaker 1: walk without my phone and I felt so relaxed, and
Speaker 1: I was just like, what if I was never stressed out?
Speaker 1: But you could just do that too, like you can
Speaker 1: just like, but maybe how hard it would be? Because
Speaker 1: I was like, I have a computer, all the computers
Speaker 1: or microphones now and cameras, Like what would it take
Speaker 1: to actually get back to a because it is crazy
Speaker 1: just to think about, like in the Watergate era when
Speaker 1: people were taping things, how much more you need to
Speaker 1: do to make that happen. Now it's like everyone is
Speaker 1: carrying a free surveillance device on them all the time.
Speaker 1: I think that there's something to be said for trying
Speaker 1: to like have a lot of time away from those
Speaker 1: things but still having them because you kind of need
Speaker 1: them to be part of society and you really don't
Speaker 1: want to be catering to topple. This was posting about
Speaker 1: a phone that's supposed to be for kids, but she
Speaker 1: was like, it's really for parents. It's like a throwback phone.
Speaker 1: It's like a Jitterbug. It's which is the phone for
Speaker 1: old people that I would also interested in Jitterbug. They
Speaker 1: only advertise it in like Parade magazine. It's so good.
Speaker 1: It's like phones too hard, too small and hard to read,
Speaker 1: and you too many functions, and you don't want all
Speaker 1: these apps and things. It's just a phone that's got
Speaker 1: like two buttons, and the buttons are like call emergency,
Speaker 1: so you can't text from it. I don't think you
Speaker 1: can text from it. I think it's just like a
Speaker 1: brick phone. This is the problem with those phones is
Speaker 1: that I feel like it's not that uncommon. My perspective
Speaker 1: on it is that I wish phones only texted and
Speaker 1: you could not speak with someone on the phone. I
Speaker 1: want to do away with. I also don't want the
Speaker 1: internet on it. I don't want the Internet. I want
Speaker 1: it to be a texting phone and camera phone. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: I think that's what the baby phone might be, Like,
Speaker 1: give it to me, jitterbug, jitterbug and or baby phone
Speaker 1: whatever it's called. Sponsor nightcall, please sponsor nightcall. I think
Speaker 1: I just want the jitterbug because I I like, as
Speaker 1: you guys, now, I like to talk on the phone. Still,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's like, hey, do you still like to
Speaker 1: talk on the phone. But the numbers and letters need
Speaker 1: to be really big for you to see they're dialing.
Speaker 1: And one of the buttons is like life alert. Probably well,
Speaker 1: I mean you never know, Like I'm never gonna say no,
Speaker 1: like never to having a life alert phone. You can't
Speaker 1: get up, you need a jitterbug. Yeah yeah, falling and
Speaker 1: not being able to get up as U does not discriminate.
Speaker 1: That's the reason to have a phone. I mean, honestly,
Speaker 1: that's yeah. That's like I'm not saying there are no
Speaker 1: times when it's good to have a phone. Can I
Speaker 1: tell a quick story? The other day I went to
Speaker 1: the dentist. I've already told Molly and I only like
Speaker 1: so much about my trip to the dentist. But one
Speaker 1: thing I don't think I told them yet was I
Speaker 1: went with my husband to the dentist because we hadn't
Speaker 1: been to the dentist in a really long time. We
Speaker 1: wanted to do more moral support, so we went and
Speaker 1: then he got a call that he had to be
Speaker 1: at work in like half an hour, and I was
Speaker 1: still getting dentist did so I was like, okay, you
Speaker 1: go and all like get a ride share and then
Speaker 1: I realized my phone was dead and it took we've
Speaker 1: Eventually I was like, I'll walk home and he was like,
Speaker 1: but it's like two and a half miles, and I
Speaker 1: was like, I can do it. But then I was
Speaker 1: kind of like, but without my phone see things like
Speaker 1: that I want. That's what else. It's like, what if
Speaker 1: the power did go out for some reason, what if
Speaker 1: theres an what if there's yeah, what if the big
Speaker 1: one happens or whatever? And we're all like, I don't
Speaker 1: have our phones and then your phone won't work because
Speaker 1: in a huge emergency like that, then the cell everything's overloaded,
Speaker 1: so your phone's like like everyone's so unprepared for their
Speaker 1: phones not to work. We had an event where we
Speaker 1: tried to do a meet up recently that was thwarted,
Speaker 1: in part by the fact that our phone and work
Speaker 1: on top of the mountain and Griffith Park. It's the
Speaker 1: mountain's right to take away. I prefer not having service stuff.
Speaker 1: That was also humbling to me because I was like,
Speaker 1: we are no better than Caroline callawe. We you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes things go wrong on the day of an event
Speaker 1: and there's nothing you can do because it's out of
Speaker 1: your control. Whenever Mason Jars are just piling up to
Speaker 1: do whenever like the power goes out, You're just like,
Speaker 1: oh right. The one thing that I kind of try
Speaker 1: to pride myself on, especially now that I'm driving again
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles, is like I can get around without maps,
Speaker 1: like and I know, yeah, but you know what's crazy
Speaker 1: is that David recently tried to get a map, like
Speaker 1: a paper map, just to like have out so that
Speaker 1: he could kind of get a lay of the land
Speaker 1: of Los Angeles. You cannot buy one anywhere, really, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you have to like order one online, but
Speaker 1: you can't just go to like seven eleven or like
Speaker 1: any random like news stand or whatever you want. But
Speaker 1: you could get one drug store triple a for sure.
Speaker 1: Still maybe and I bet you could get one maybe
Speaker 1: on Hollywood Boulevard, but probably a star map right might
Speaker 1: be limited. How maybe the DMV I face you can
Speaker 1: just swing by easily and take anything a number for
Speaker 1: your map. David might enjoy a star map, which is
Speaker 1: different from like an observatory. Star maps are terrible. I'm
Speaker 1: very really outdated. Most of them are like like Johnny
Speaker 1: Carson's house, right, some of them are not. I feel
Speaker 1: like star maps are like I have a real vogaboo
Speaker 1: about star maps, and I wish I didn't exist. But
Speaker 1: there should be a restaurant's map that's just like cool,
Speaker 1: like historic restaurant. I just like a map, like I
Speaker 1: like a Thompson guy that has like every single street
Speaker 1: you know, alle maps I really like, or those novelty
Speaker 1: maps they have on the walls places sometimes where things
Speaker 1: are drawn in a cartoon fashion on it. I had
Speaker 1: one of those of my neighborhood where I'm just like
Speaker 1: looking at my house. Some cartoon is like, there's one
Speaker 1: at the Laurel can in a county store country store
Speaker 1: that is really good. Um is it just a Laurel
Speaker 1: Canyon offair? It's love Laurel Canyon, which is also really
Speaker 1: interesting to look at at a big Griffith Park map
Speaker 1: today also, and maybe we should all go back to maps, Carphy.
Speaker 1: I love maps. I'm so bad at reading them. You
Speaker 1: know my position on maps. I love them. I would
Speaker 1: I'd like my dad would always just be like, just
Speaker 1: look at a map, and it would be like, it
Speaker 1: means nothing to me. Landmarks. I want landmarks. Are you
Speaker 1: good with directions? Like with like north southeast west. I
Speaker 1: need the kind of directions that are like make a
Speaker 1: left at the church, you know, like if you're like
Speaker 1: go north and then go west. I'm like, well, now
Speaker 1: all the Google navigation services are like take a left
Speaker 1: at the Starbucks. Like it's like Starbucks and other companies
Speaker 1: paid for them to be off right. Well that too.
Speaker 1: It's like, am I if I gave up the convenience
Speaker 1: of having maps on my phone? I would have to
Speaker 1: learn how to read a map really Like I know
Speaker 1: that I'm not going to go back to the Thomas Guide,
Speaker 1: but what you know, i'd probably be better for me
Speaker 1: speaking of maps really quickly. Um, we were talking at
Speaker 1: some point about Pokemon Go collect Yeah Pokemon, Yes, this
Speaker 1: is like prime nightcall to the point where I was like,
Speaker 1: did we already talk about this? Yeah? Did we know
Speaker 1: this already? It feels in retrospect obvious. I'm bringing it
Speaker 1: up even though we didn't have it on the agenda
Speaker 1: because all I could think about since this came on
Speaker 1: my radar was like, so, POKEMONO is developed by a
Speaker 1: company that also developed another sort of map geocashing kind
Speaker 1: of software, that is the software they use in Pokemon Go.
Speaker 1: Turns out this whole startup was funded in part by
Speaker 1: in q Tel, which is the CIA's venture capital start up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that was terrified you. You played Pokemon Go, right, Emily,
Speaker 1: But did you know I played? I watched Emily play
Speaker 1: the Way to do It? Um. Yeah, so I'm they
Speaker 1: have all my data via you guys. I'm just it's
Speaker 1: called in Q tell. Yeah, it's called in dash Q
Speaker 1: dash Tell because the Q is like Q from James Bond,
Speaker 1: and it's the branch of the CIA that deals in
Speaker 1: like new technologies and new gadgets. And I'm breaking your
Speaker 1: brain right now. Oh no, I'm just like, I hate
Speaker 1: I hate when nerd ash ship isn't like Silicon Valley Slash.
Speaker 1: I mean, they've always done stuff like that. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: know I hate it and we all hate it, but
Speaker 1: also like it feels like a thing that everyone has
Speaker 1: to talk about more and more because you know, like
Speaker 1: maybe I don't want to give up maps to have
Speaker 1: a Thomas Guide, but like I'll give up Prime to
Speaker 1: not fund ice. Okay, so we totally knew this already,
Speaker 1: Like Ashley Feinberg actually wrote about this in Gawker, like
Speaker 1: in um, I think that this had come out at
Speaker 1: some point. Maybe it was just like something that was
Speaker 1: being discussed on on Reddit boards. Yeah, I think it
Speaker 1: was known that it was the same software as this
Speaker 1: other thing that was clearly project. It was called Ingress Game,
Speaker 1: which is a really scary name for a game, and
Speaker 1: I don't know if anybody played it, but then as
Speaker 1: soon as you slap a cute peek atch you on it,
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, y'all gotta do it. I know people
Speaker 1: who still play Pokemon too. Uh. And you know, it's
Speaker 1: not Pokemon's fault that they're the game who became the
Speaker 1: face of this. It could have been any game. Really.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, you can play let's go peek at
Speaker 1: you from your house and not move and no one
Speaker 1: will track you and no one will know. I think
Speaker 1: just what we're talking about, though, is like the difficulty
Speaker 1: of becoming a person who's not being tracked. It seems
Speaker 1: like impossible to angle yourself from right now, right, which
Speaker 1: is why we all are so depressed. Well, we have
Speaker 1: a very special guest we want to bring on, Karina Longworth,
Speaker 1: Past and future guests and present guests. The past, future
Speaker 1: and present guest. I'm one of our favorite podcasters, um
Speaker 1: to talk about her new season of You Must Remember This,
Speaker 1: which is all about the Song of the South. So
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk to her about uh weird buried Disney
Speaker 1: features and uh theme park rides and lots of Disneyland.
Speaker 1: So stay tuned for that. Welcome back to Nightcall. We
Speaker 1: are joined today by our very special guest and one
Speaker 1: of our favorite podcasters, Corina long Worth of the podcast
Speaker 1: You Must Remember This. Welcome Corina to Nightcall. Hi, thanks
Speaker 1: for having me. I'm so happy to be here. Welcome back, Welcome. Well,
Speaker 1: actually you only were on in during our live stream,
Speaker 1: isn't that right? Now? I was on one, but it
Speaker 1: was only me and Test in the l A studio.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right. I forgot to see. I have
Speaker 1: a weird memory now that I'm in the studio. It's like,
Speaker 1: there's so many guests that we've had that I've just
Speaker 1: been like virtually communing with that. Yeah, we've also had
Speaker 1: guests that not all of us have had in a
Speaker 1: variety of podcast configurations, which is true. Can be like
Speaker 1: when Chris Call came in, I was like, we've done
Speaker 1: this before, and you guys are like, uh, Karina, welcome,
Speaker 1: We're so happy to have your Karina is debuting the
Speaker 1: new season. I believe it starts tomorrow. As of when
Speaker 1: this comes out of her podcast, you must remember this,
Speaker 1: and we're all very excited to hear that it is
Speaker 1: about a very contested property in the Disney Plus catalog.
Speaker 1: Song of the South. Yeah, that's kind of the whole
Speaker 1: thing is that Bob Iger has said that this is
Speaker 1: the one film that they will not put on Disney Plus.
Speaker 1: Does that mean everything else will eventually come to Disney Plus?
Speaker 1: Because I saw people saying there were some other random
Speaker 1: catalog titles. Yeah, I mean, I think they haven't ruled
Speaker 1: anything else out entirely the way that they have this,
Speaker 1: But I also I think people are just confused about
Speaker 1: rights issues right now, Like nobody really knows exactly what
Speaker 1: Disney owns because they acquired all of Fox. But some
Speaker 1: things like that were released by Fox don't count as
Speaker 1: Fox movies, and some things that Disney release don't count
Speaker 1: as Disney movies anymore. Yeah, I thought they were giving
Speaker 1: up the rights to the Miyazaki movies. Yeah, they already had,
Speaker 1: I think, which is somebody else is going. They gave
Speaker 1: it to HBO, which I'm like, that's to me one
Speaker 1: of the crown jewels of like if you're gonna help
Speaker 1: National Line but draw. Then I was arguing with somebody
Speaker 1: about the Disney jobs, which I think are bad, mostly bad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are some good ones. We could do a whole
Speaker 1: but I was also like, think, God will never have
Speaker 1: to look at like John Lasseter's horrible face student those intros. Ever, again,
Speaker 1: that's the worst part of the Disney release. I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe that's why they gave it up. I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so why did you decide to do song in the South.
Speaker 1: So I was just as like a a thing where
Speaker 1: I had been asked by some people to see if
Speaker 1: I could help them try to figure out a TV
Speaker 1: show idea set in basically like classical Hollywood but black people. Um.
Speaker 1: And so I was like doing some research just about
Speaker 1: the history of African Americans in Hollywood and trying to
Speaker 1: figure out different storylines, and I came to The Song
Speaker 1: of the South as being you know, surprisingly, I guess,
Speaker 1: but one of the first movies that was made by
Speaker 1: white people starring a black person. So, um, this guy
Speaker 1: James Basket plays Uncle Remus, who's a kindly older African
Speaker 1: American gentleman on a plantation right after the Civil War
Speaker 1: who befriends a little white boy and you could say
Speaker 1: he's magical. Yeah, I mean he really is like kind
Speaker 1: of the prototypical magical Negro in X and this was
Speaker 1: a really big part for a black actor in Hollywood. Um.
Speaker 1: So I you know, that was just sort of like
Speaker 1: one of the films that I came across in this research.
Speaker 1: But I came across a fact that I had never
Speaker 1: known about it, which was that it was written by
Speaker 1: a white communist named Maurice Rapp, who was blacklisted immediately after.
Speaker 1: And so I was like, oh, if there's you know,
Speaker 1: this is kind of how my thought process usually works
Speaker 1: with putting together these seasons, which is like, if there's
Speaker 1: one thing that I find out about something that I
Speaker 1: had never heard of before, I just basically try to
Speaker 1: figure out are there other things? And was Song of
Speaker 1: the South like pretty quickly like all of the sort
Speaker 1: of pearls started lining up to form a necklace. And
Speaker 1: now we have six episodes called the Six Degrees of
Speaker 1: Song of the South. Does each episode focus on like
Speaker 1: a different aspect of the Song of the South saga?
Speaker 1: Basically like the first episode is, you know, just sort
Speaker 1: of why does this movie exist and what is it
Speaker 1: like to watch? Which I felt like I had to
Speaker 1: explain because it is not commercially available and hasn't been
Speaker 1: for how did you see it? So they did release
Speaker 1: it on laser disc in Japan I think in the nineties,
Speaker 1: and so there is a digital version of that that
Speaker 1: is sort of floating around. And I actually like, I
Speaker 1: didn't torrent it yesterday or anything like for some reason.
Speaker 1: It was on a hard drive that was in my
Speaker 1: house and has been for a long time. So it
Speaker 1: was like on a hard drive of movies that I
Speaker 1: think we're probably like torrented or ripped from other sources
Speaker 1: like a long time ago. So I don't actually know
Speaker 1: where to tell people to go if they want to
Speaker 1: see it, even illegally, but I'm sure you could figure
Speaker 1: it out. You said that it was released four times theatrically, right,
Speaker 1: and the last one was in eighty six. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: I saw it when you saw it? Yeah, um, yeah.
Speaker 1: I felt like I had seen it growing up, but
Speaker 1: I think it was just because they were still putting
Speaker 1: songs from it, sequences from it on sing along. Maybe
Speaker 1: I had seen it, but then I was like, I
Speaker 1: really don't know that I have. I just know like
Speaker 1: Zippity Duda, which was definitely on a Disney sing along,
Speaker 1: and I remember, like I thought it there was a
Speaker 1: clip of like the Laughing Place that was chured in something,
Speaker 1: because I definitely remember that. Well there it's obviously in
Speaker 1: Splash Mount. What I think there was maybe like there
Speaker 1: were clips, I think because I watched a lot of
Speaker 1: like Disney Afternoon and where those things were sampled. We
Speaker 1: were talking about this a Pruter film a lot recently
Speaker 1: as being that was once really hard to find and
Speaker 1: sort of the the inability of people to watch it
Speaker 1: added to its mythos so much. The Song of the South,
Speaker 1: like is it kind of what you thought it was
Speaker 1: going to be. So I had had memories of it
Speaker 1: from saying it in the movie theater when I was
Speaker 1: six years older. Actually it might have been five years old.
Speaker 1: I don't remember exactly what part of the year it
Speaker 1: was put out in. You remember being like, this is racist,
Speaker 1: not at all, And actually I do remember my mother
Speaker 1: saying something to me like, this is a movie about
Speaker 1: how the races can live together. It's about friendship between
Speaker 1: a black man and a white boy, which is what
Speaker 1: people thought in the eighties. Disney thought for sure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so um yeah, I just I hadn't really remembered it
Speaker 1: very well, and I certainly didn't remember that two thirds
Speaker 1: of the movie is live action, and that it's like
Speaker 1: this live action family drama set on this plantation where
Speaker 1: like this little boy is just basically his parents are
Speaker 1: completely neglecting him. His parents are having some kind of separation,
Speaker 1: and his dad is in Atlanta and they're like on
Speaker 1: this rural plantation and he's sort of left to his
Speaker 1: own devices. So he becomes friends with this former slave,
Speaker 1: but then his mom is like, stopped teaching my son
Speaker 1: these like slave stories. She's like, you're a bad influence.
Speaker 1: So it's like the Secret Garden kind of. It has
Speaker 1: kind of that kind of thing to it. And then
Speaker 1: you know, like the whole climax of the movie is
Speaker 1: that like the little boys on his deathbed, so there's
Speaker 1: just a lot of melodrama. But he tells them all
Speaker 1: the bear rabbit stories and those are those are the
Speaker 1: things that are animated, and it does the kind of
Speaker 1: like Mary Poppins asked mcmeldine of the live action, but
Speaker 1: only a little bit. I mean, like not in this
Speaker 1: movie because like obviously also don't remember seeing it, but
Speaker 1: but I kind of think that stuff funny like that.
Speaker 1: I sometimes I like Pete's Dragon and we all we
Speaker 1: all love who framed exactly which is the best. But
Speaker 1: this was the first movie that did it on like
Speaker 1: a future film scale, and so Disney really thought that
Speaker 1: it was going to be heralded as just like this
Speaker 1: major technological advancement. You know. He really thought like the
Speaker 1: whole industry was just going to get down on their
Speaker 1: hands and knees and like King Walt st Walt, like
Speaker 1: you have reinvented. One of the things I've really come
Speaker 1: to realize about Walt is that he was really like
Speaker 1: the first tech bro. You know, he liked the way
Speaker 1: that he wanted everyone to live on the campus at
Speaker 1: Disney and like you should just be so happy to
Speaker 1: work here that you don't need things like a living
Speaker 1: wage or benefits because you work for a genius and
Speaker 1: you're you're exposed to magic. Yeah, And I thought one
Speaker 1: of the interesting things when you were because we we
Speaker 1: got to listen to the first episode in advance. So
Speaker 1: what's what's the date that it drops, by the way,
Speaker 1: some October twenty seconds twenty second the day after this
Speaker 1: is yeah, so yeah, look for that. But um, I
Speaker 1: thought it was so interesting that like the technological aspect
Speaker 1: of it, it was like Waltz sort of response because
Speaker 1: they had gone through some flops or some like less
Speaker 1: than you know, stellar box office performances, and he had
Speaker 1: this idea that like animation was only going to connect
Speaker 1: with the massas if it did have this blended in
Speaker 1: with live action thing, which feels like kind of a
Speaker 1: first version of now like Disney basically abandoning two D
Speaker 1: animation for three D because it's like nobody will connect
Speaker 1: with something if it isn't in three dimensions and like
Speaker 1: always second guessing, like the original thing that they did
Speaker 1: and we're good at. I think it's also like whatever
Speaker 1: the newest technology is, we must adopt, sure, yeah, because
Speaker 1: it will be better than the previous thing, which is
Speaker 1: not always true. Yeah, I mean in fairness to well,
Speaker 1: like I mean he was ultimately wrong because they did
Speaker 1: have purely animated films later that we're big hits. But
Speaker 1: snow White had been this real, like industry changing hit
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty seven. I think I don't remember the
Speaker 1: exact here, but it was in the nineteen thirties, and
Speaker 1: then they kept putting up movies that weren't making as
Speaker 1: much money, like Pinocchio was a huge flop. Dumbo did okay,
Speaker 1: but they also made Dumbo for like half a million dollars.
Speaker 1: It was super super cheap, like sixty minutes too. It's
Speaker 1: like barely are But then they made like a decent
Speaker 1: profit off of this movie called Three Caballeros, which was
Speaker 1: like actually kind of a compilation of shorts but some
Speaker 1: of the travelogy, but some of the shorts involved basically
Speaker 1: like Donald Duck and these two like South American birds
Speaker 1: hanging out with like with real people. Like it was
Speaker 1: really the first instance of blending this live action with animation,
Speaker 1: and so you know, I mean to be fair, like
Speaker 1: he just looked at the data and he was like,
Speaker 1: we were doing cartoons and they two diminishing returns and
Speaker 1: then we kind of like perked back up when we
Speaker 1: brought in live action with the cartoons. Yeah. When I
Speaker 1: watched the Disney American Masters on PBS, which I recommend
Speaker 1: to anyone who wants to see like a critical, historically
Speaker 1: accurate biography of Walt Disney, which are very rare, which
Speaker 1: are hard to find because they're mostly put up by Disney.
Speaker 1: And when you hear the Disney Company ones are always
Speaker 1: like Disney like started it had snow White, it was
Speaker 1: the biggest hit, and then it just became more successful
Speaker 1: with each new release. People loved it more and more.
Speaker 1: And when you watch the PBS talk, it's like, no,
Speaker 1: that he almost tanked the company like a hundred times.
Speaker 1: It is again very techie where it's like, no, we
Speaker 1: have to gamble it all on the next project each time. Uh,
Speaker 1: And they almost went under a lot. That's what's so
Speaker 1: funny about Disneyland is like by the time they're in
Speaker 1: the place where they can open Disneyland, like all the
Speaker 1: movies that are featured in it, like half of them
Speaker 1: were flopped that are being like immortalized in these magical
Speaker 1: rides that are novel loved by everybody, and then they
Speaker 1: like retcon them. Is no, it was a hit and
Speaker 1: everybody loved it, and it's fine. Yeah, if you just
Speaker 1: look at like the original, you know, box office deterrence,
Speaker 1: it's absolutely insane that there's a wind in the willows, right,
Speaker 1: it's so good. But the thing is that all of
Speaker 1: these movies do end up becoming like hits or classics
Speaker 1: or whatever you want to call it because of this
Speaker 1: strategy of theatrical re release, and so they keep being
Speaker 1: exposed to new generations and then they just kind of
Speaker 1: become canonized over time. But when Saw You the South
Speaker 1: came out, the n double A c P protested it
Speaker 1: and told Walt not to put it out because they
Speaker 1: were like, this movie's racist. It's about like a condescending
Speaker 1: stereotype of black people and like the romanticized Antebellum South,
Speaker 1: and Walt was like, Nope, you're wrong. I'm just going
Speaker 1: to put it out anyway because I know what's best
Speaker 1: for everyone. He was also like conspiracy theorizing that like
Speaker 1: they had been put up to it by somebody, like
Speaker 1: probably the communies, right, right, So he basically, like one
Speaker 1: of the major cataclysmic events in Disney history is when
Speaker 1: the animators went on strike, but right before World War two,
Speaker 1: and he just felt so betrayed. And from that point
Speaker 1: on not only was obsessed with communists, but obsessed with
Speaker 1: the idea that communists were out to get him personally
Speaker 1: and so and also you know, I mean, he wanted
Speaker 1: to believe that he had made like a liberal movie
Speaker 1: about like you know, equality and tolerance between the races.
Speaker 1: But he was racist enough to believe that black people
Speaker 1: couldn't actually be activists or intellectuals unless communists were brainwashing them.
Speaker 1: I keep bringing up Art Babbitt, the Jewish hotti who
Speaker 1: invented Goofy, and that's who led the animator strike and
Speaker 1: who Walt thought was, you know, turning everyone against him.
Speaker 1: But one thing I didn't really realize that I have
Speaker 1: learned recently that thought was interesting was that even at
Speaker 1: that time that people did think that like it wasn't
Speaker 1: people naturally turning towards leftism or communism, that they were
Speaker 1: being influenced by people from abroad. Implanting ideas in their heads. Um,
Speaker 1: that seems like a reach, well totally, and especially in
Speaker 1: this case, Like, I mean, there's two there were two
Speaker 1: phases of protest against Front of the South. There was
Speaker 1: the protest as soon as people found out he was
Speaker 1: making it, in which where African American intellectuals were like, hey, Walt,
Speaker 1: like could we help you with this, Like could we
Speaker 1: you know, read the script, give you notes like something.
Speaker 1: Can we be part of the process, And he was
Speaker 1: like not. And then the movie came out and that's
Speaker 1: when the activist group started actually picketing and like trying
Speaker 1: to boycott it. And I mean, as I get into
Speaker 1: a little bit, like they the problem was that there
Speaker 1: wasn't a united front. There were some people who were like,
Speaker 1: you know what, like this movie isn't that bad because
Speaker 1: at least like it gave a couple of African American
Speaker 1: actors jobs. Just take whatever whatever you can get, which
Speaker 1: feels like like that that kind of conflict still goes
Speaker 1: on with and it's like such an interesting argument for like, yeah, okay, fine,
Speaker 1: we won't like put all of our energy towards protesting
Speaker 1: and like trying to get this one thing, you know,
Speaker 1: taken down or you know, not showed or whatever, because
Speaker 1: it's not like it's not that big of a deal.
Speaker 1: It's not like Avatar or whatever. It's not taking over
Speaker 1: the entire world. But then, like in the case of
Speaker 1: a Disney movie, it will come out again. It will
Speaker 1: come out again and again and again, like it's a zombie. Um,
Speaker 1: let's take it if we shall to Splash Mountain, which
Speaker 1: is the way that most people today probably if at all,
Speaker 1: are familiar with the Song of the South. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: do you guys think that people who ride Splash Mountain
Speaker 1: know that it refers to a movie because I don't know. No,
Speaker 1: I don't think they do, because it doesn't say a
Speaker 1: Song of the South anywhere on it. It's like the
Speaker 1: Brear Rabbit. And again it is like it doesn't have
Speaker 1: Uncle Remus in it. It's more of like a brere
Speaker 1: rabbit and brere fox and brere bear thing, which are
Speaker 1: real plantation folk tales that were collected in those books.
Speaker 1: Uh that are good, But so it's just a plantation
Speaker 1: themed plantation mythology. I don't know if I put it
Speaker 1: together for like a very long time. And also it's
Speaker 1: like they repurpose a lot of old animatronics from another
Speaker 1: show called America Sings. So it was also sort of
Speaker 1: during maybe a time when they didn't when they were like,
Speaker 1: we have to build a new ride, but we're going
Speaker 1: to like cut corners a little bit and use all
Speaker 1: these old animatronics from a stage show that killed somebody
Speaker 1: when the revolving platform crushed someone, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: like I had not heard this until we talked on
Speaker 1: the phone earlier this week about it when he was
Speaker 1: trapped beneath the revolving floor. Yeah, how did that? Do
Speaker 1: you know? It was like a revolving stage. Do you
Speaker 1: know how they have those stages that are like it's
Speaker 1: in the whatever now, like the Hall of Innovations or whatever,
Speaker 1: that that round kind of building in Tomorrowland. It wasn't there.
Speaker 1: So those animatronics were already haunted from West the West World.
Speaker 1: Isn't it strange that you go as a child or
Speaker 1: even as an adult to Splash Mountain and you never
Speaker 1: think to question what movie is this from? Until you know?
Speaker 1: But it's like I went on Splash Mountains so many
Speaker 1: times and it was it never occurred to me, like
Speaker 1: what movies this? It just looks like Disney Styeah. I
Speaker 1: mean one thing I'll say about that and the last
Speaker 1: episode of the season, it's all about Splash Mountain in
Speaker 1: Disneyland found a big ride to open. I feel like
Speaker 1: in my childhood, yeah, yours like that was the new ride. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: everybody had to go. But so it like it opened,
Speaker 1: And I had been to Disneyland a few times before that,
Speaker 1: because that I was nine years old by then, um,
Speaker 1: and there were a lot of rides, especially in that
Speaker 1: part of Disneyland that didn't refer to movies, Like there
Speaker 1: was no Pirates of the Caribbean movie until recently, and
Speaker 1: no Haunted Mansion movie until recently. The other thing that
Speaker 1: I do talk about in that episode though, so I
Speaker 1: don't want to talk about too much right now, but
Speaker 1: that whole part of Disneyland is just like this very
Speaker 1: weird resurrection of the eighteen hundred South and so like,
Speaker 1: in a way, it makes perfect sense that they would
Speaker 1: put a Song of the South ride right there. Well,
Speaker 1: that's like, that's totally Walt Disney's aesthetic is like the romanticized,
Speaker 1: imaginary Antebellum South. Because he grew up in St. Louis
Speaker 1: Uh working in a factory well, that's what main Street
Speaker 1: USA is, isn't his imaginary version of what the main
Speaker 1: street of St. Louis, Missouri was like when he was
Speaker 1: a kid. It's all like his memories and his fantasies,
Speaker 1: which are apparently all very Southern and weird or like
Speaker 1: weird manifest destiny nightmare stuff. Also, yeah, I'm sure of
Speaker 1: a lot of it is just imagined and not based
Speaker 1: in reality at all, but just like it's like this
Speaker 1: collective like memory of what the South. There's also like
Speaker 1: some wildly racist stuff in Disneyland still that's not in
Speaker 1: Splash Mountain, but on the Jungle Cruise. Jungle Cruise is
Speaker 1: so racist still, I can't believe they haven't like taken
Speaker 1: out the native animatronic because they're so racist, like most
Speaker 1: of adventure Land is like a big problem, right for sure,
Speaker 1: But it seems like there's a point where you're like,
Speaker 1: we take out the human beings, and they have They're
Speaker 1: probably gonna do it soon because there's a movie coming out.
Speaker 1: They're probably going to replace them all with an animatronic
Speaker 1: the Rock. Um, I can't be like, I can't believe
Speaker 1: for making a Jungle Cruise movie. It's like of all
Speaker 1: the things you just do it just there was Wild
Speaker 1: Ride movie and you're right there. They all have their
Speaker 1: own mythology, like Big Under Mountain and the Matterhorn. All
Speaker 1: the mountains are their own sort of you know, theme
Speaker 1: park mythology. But it is also weird that they took
Speaker 1: so goddamn long to do a little Mermaid ride and
Speaker 1: there's still not really a Beauty in the Beast ride,
Speaker 1: Like they haven't invested in sort of the movies that
Speaker 1: people really do like making rides, except Star Wars, excepts
Speaker 1: and Frozen. I heard it was like a Frozen ride
Speaker 1: in Disney World that replaced like the Norway Cruise in
Speaker 1: which people loved because it was like a Viking Pirates
Speaker 1: of the Caribbean. That sounds great, but it kind of
Speaker 1: it's just now it's just frozen them and it also
Speaker 1: looks still sounds great, it's like a snow cave. But
Speaker 1: when you bring up Beauty and the Beast, like, what
Speaker 1: would that ride even be? Just a talking teapot going
Speaker 1: to a dinner party. Yeah, just a dinner party should
Speaker 1: be a restaurant. There's no Aladdin ride, you know, cat
Speaker 1: like a Lion King ride. Just all the new class
Speaker 1: during that time, like when Little Mermaid was they opened
Speaker 1: up Splash Mountain. Yeah, exactly, because I remember being like,
Speaker 1: I want a Little Mermaid ride. I was like, this
Speaker 1: is good enough because there's water. Well, I went on
Speaker 1: twenty leagues under the c and they have the big
Speaker 1: like foam Mermaid that sort of like bobs By. That
Speaker 1: ride was so great before they turned it's so it's
Speaker 1: really bad. Even my kids were really upset about that ride.
Speaker 1: They've never been on the previous one, but they were like,
Speaker 1: those aren't real. I'm just really excited for the night Call.
Speaker 1: You must remember this, uh being park Well, we were
Speaker 1: talking about before we started recording, like because they have
Speaker 1: done these rebrandings of several rides, um, like you know
Speaker 1: recently they changed the Tower of Terror into the Guardians
Speaker 1: of the County RDE Yeah thumb sound, but like there
Speaker 1: is a possibility that they might decide to rebrand Splash Mountain,
Speaker 1: like to distance themselves further from uh, this thing that
Speaker 1: they wanted to not exist. And it's like would we
Speaker 1: protest that? Also, like what if they just embraced it fully,
Speaker 1: which I don't think they will do, but what if
Speaker 1: they were like, now we'll just make a Brear Rabbit
Speaker 1: and Brear Fox movie. They're like, doesn't have this framing device,
Speaker 1: and we'll let you know, a black director and a
Speaker 1: black writer. Like what if they were like, we fucked up.
Speaker 1: We're gonna try and do something to acknowledge it. That
Speaker 1: would be interesting. That would make more sense to me
Speaker 1: than just wiping things and pretend they pretending they don't exist,
Speaker 1: which is what they do, which is Bob Iger's comments
Speaker 1: that you mentioned in the first episode of your podcast
Speaker 1: of the season was really like he has an interesting
Speaker 1: kind of frankness when he talks about like this wouldn't
Speaker 1: be appealing to shareholders, or this would this would be
Speaker 1: like detrimental to the shareholders, where you would expect someone
Speaker 1: from Disney to handle things like a little more like
Speaker 1: sensitively or like humanoid. Like it's a really weird quote
Speaker 1: because basically what he's saying is like he's like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm such a good person that I'm willing
Speaker 1: to take a financial loss here, right. He basically says like, like,
Speaker 1: even though I think we could make a profit if
Speaker 1: we released it, it might be offensive to some people now,
Speaker 1: so we won't And so it's just it could have
Speaker 1: been phrased in many different It is so strange to
Speaker 1: me because I was like, can you not just be
Speaker 1: like what a mess up? Like wow, if you cared
Speaker 1: about that, like people die in their cars that work
Speaker 1: at Disneyland, like that would also affect how the shareholders think. Um,
Speaker 1: I wonder how much you kind of came across this
Speaker 1: sort of stuff in your research where where a lot
Speaker 1: of times I think the thing that feels creepy about Disney,
Speaker 1: especially now, like in this late period of Disney, is
Speaker 1: that it does feel like a religion and that like
Speaker 1: there's all this sort of like Connie and like kind
Speaker 1: of skirting around things that don't make sense or that
Speaker 1: like over time people have realized like are you know
Speaker 1: problematic or like you know, stuff that they don't want
Speaker 1: to acknowledge as part of the history. And so it
Speaker 1: rather than just like have any kind of honest history
Speaker 1: of it, it's just sort of like nope, it didn't know,
Speaker 1: it never happened. It's great that we have your podcast, um,
Speaker 1: and also yeah, check out the PBS American Masters about
Speaker 1: what Disney. So we wanted to ask you just one
Speaker 1: night call question before we let you go. Um, do
Speaker 1: you think we landed on the moon. So, as I
Speaker 1: was about to say, before we started recording, when I
Speaker 1: was in college, I had like a there was like
Speaker 1: a visiting professor who came and showed us his documentary
Speaker 1: he had made where he was basically trying to prove
Speaker 1: that we didn't and that it was shot in a
Speaker 1: sound stage. And you know, obviously he couldn't prove that,
Speaker 1: or maybe not obviously, but he couldn't prove it, but
Speaker 1: he made like some compelling evidence that like the footage
Speaker 1: had been destroyed or whatever. Um. And I remember going
Speaker 1: home to my apartment that I shared with my boyfriend
Speaker 1: at the time, and my my boyfriend who had already
Speaker 1: been kicked out of college. But like I believe that
Speaker 1: he knew better than anything he could learn in college.
Speaker 1: Is like you're a fucking idiot, Karina, so gullible, and
Speaker 1: so I I dropped it, But I don't know, maybe
Speaker 1: there's want to learn. What was the evidence that the
Speaker 1: footage has been just do you remember what I mean?
Speaker 1: He was It was like it had like a real
Speaker 1: room to vibe, like kind of cobbled together like montage
Speaker 1: e stuff. When you slow that stuff down to it
Speaker 1: starts to look real weird. The question somebody brought up
Speaker 1: to me is, um, why haven't we gone back? If
Speaker 1: we can go, why did we comment? Why did we
Speaker 1: only go during especially the Nixon years, a time known
Speaker 1: for their truthfulness about what the American government was doing? Um,
Speaker 1: that's a two questions? Do we do we answer that here? Finally, like,
Speaker 1: doesn't it seem like if we had the capability to
Speaker 1: go to the moon, people would just be going all
Speaker 1: the goddamn the number one? But like, wouldn't we have
Speaker 1: gone In the eighties a lot like check it out
Speaker 1: were on the moon? There was the Challenger, which short
Speaker 1: of I think like dampened a lot of public enthusiasm
Speaker 1: for for NASA. I mean, I think that's the problem
Speaker 1: is that it's so it I think that that the
Speaker 1: moon landing. Well, first of all, guys, did it happen?
Speaker 1: We're not like a convinced at night call were almost
Speaker 1: they were the nineties. We don't think it didn't happen.
Speaker 1: But we're agnostic. Let's say we did. But yeah, then
Speaker 1: the Challenger and the huge expense, I think that like
Speaker 1: the expense of that was being poured into this and
Speaker 1: as I've said, a million times about Operation paper Clip,
Speaker 1: Like the US hired a bunch of Nazi scientists uh
Speaker 1: and kept them from war crimes trials to try and
Speaker 1: solve the space race problems. So that's even more fucked
Speaker 1: up than if we didn't go for me it is
Speaker 1: can I ask you guys a question? So obviously, like
Speaker 1: we don't fund the space program anymore other than like
Speaker 1: that thing Trump was talking about that I forgot about,
Speaker 1: but Elon Musk does. If Elon Musk was like we're
Speaker 1: going to the moon and then like he went to
Speaker 1: the moon or he showed footage of being on the moon,
Speaker 1: would you believe him? No, absolutely not. I wouldn't believe
Speaker 1: him specifically, But I don't believe the real the car
Speaker 1: in space was that real? Wasn't Who knows? I know,
Speaker 1: you're right, who knows if anything that he does is
Speaker 1: for real? Um. But there was something that we were
Speaker 1: going to talk about on the show that was about
Speaker 1: how U Nobel Prize winner said that we would never
Speaker 1: live on an exo planet ever, and that all the
Speaker 1: tech barons who think we're going to like move to
Speaker 1: Mars or move to the Moon or just like totally
Speaker 1: in a dream world. It's never going to happen, which
Speaker 1: I think is true. Well, so this is interesting to you.
Speaker 1: This comes from Live Science, And so they have Nobel
Speaker 1: prizewinner Yasamine Sapola Koglu nice and it's the Nobel prizewinner
Speaker 1: is Michelle mayer Um. But they quote him as saying,
Speaker 1: we'll never go to the Moon. It just won't happen
Speaker 1: unless like everything changes about our understanding of mass and acceleration.
Speaker 1: It's never gonna happen. And then they keep quoting people
Speaker 1: who are like, well, not never know. They're like they
Speaker 1: just can't commit to it, which I appreciate where they're
Speaker 1: like maybe in like a century or like million years.
Speaker 1: But the people like Jeff Bezos are like, we're going
Speaker 1: now because they're like, we're going to use up Earth
Speaker 1: and then we're just going to move it to another place.
Speaker 1: And this this person who sounds like they know what
Speaker 1: they're talking about, is like, absolutely not. Uh, we stand
Speaker 1: firmly on the Earth and it's unlikely to change for
Speaker 1: a very very long time. There's also a good reason
Speaker 1: for saying that, which is that the idea being don't
Speaker 1: give up on our planet and uninhabitable. This person is
Speaker 1: also saying that we absolutely should not just give up
Speaker 1: on Earth, because that is like not the cool thing
Speaker 1: to do. Stephen Kaine, a professor planetary astrophysics at the
Speaker 1: u C riverside. So the sad reality is that at
Speaker 1: this point in human history, all stars are effectively at
Speaker 1: a distance of infinity. We struggle very hard as a
Speaker 1: species to reach the Earth's move and do you think
Speaker 1: we're ever gonna live The humans will habitate on a
Speaker 1: planet other than or a body other than Earth, not
Speaker 1: until the technology advances to the point of where it
Speaker 1: is an ad astra where you have like fast food
Speaker 1: on the Moon and stuff like that just like freezed
Speaker 1: like like preserved food for like hundreds of years so
Speaker 1: that you can make it make the journey. I think
Speaker 1: it's we more likely that it will be a Wally
Speaker 1: scenario where we're on giant spaceships that are like orbiting
Speaker 1: and just kind of waiting to return thanks like being
Speaker 1: able to like build a civilization on a planet that
Speaker 1: it is to like build some kind of space station
Speaker 1: thing that could that can support life for long periods.
Speaker 1: I do think the billionaires are going to blast off
Speaker 1: from New Zealand whenever the ship gets too bad. Um,
Speaker 1: and then they're gonna get space brain and all go
Speaker 1: crazy and their brains well, Milt in space, everybody wins Korea.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for coming on Night Call. Sure, thanks
Speaker 1: for having And where can everybody find you? And you
Speaker 1: must remember this and your Patreon and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: So find the podcast anywhere you get podcasts, except for
Speaker 1: Slate plus where it used to be, but now it's
Speaker 1: not on Slate anyway. You can't get it there, but
Speaker 1: you can get it literally anywhere else there podcasts or at.
Speaker 1: You must remember this podcast dot com. And you can
Speaker 1: find me on Twitter at Karina Lungworth and follow me
Speaker 1: on Patreon at Karina Lungworth. And that's it. And you
Speaker 1: can listen to Molly's episode on your on your Patreon podcast,
Speaker 1: on your book club podcast. Yeah we talked about Dino
Speaker 1: by Nick Tosh's Boy, did we. I'm still talking about
Speaker 1: you know, we'll never stop talking about Dino. I mean
Speaker 1: even on Nightcall. Let's stop talking about got infected with
Speaker 1: the Dinos. Thanks so much for coming by, Thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you for listening to Nightcall. That is it for
Speaker 1: us this week. We'll be back next week. Um. You
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