Alexander Winn and Lacey Hannan are back discussing chapters 17 through 19 of Andy Weir’s The Martian! This episode, they’re probably gonna fight. IDK yet, I haven’t finished listening to it, but man things get heated. The book is also present.
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ep. 8.mp3
[00:00:04] Hey, folks, this is Alexander Winn
[00:00:06] and I am Lacey Hannan, and we
[00:00:08] are here for the latest episode of The Synthesis. And right now we’re reading our way through The Martian by Andy Weir.
[00:00:15] And I’m just going to put this out there. You guys. You guys, I’m so sorry. I’m still so congested and so disgusting. So bear with me. There’s nothing I can do about it.
[00:00:27] Well, this there this week we’re talking about chapters 17 through 19. And let’s dove right in. Let’s do it. So Chapter 17 starts and Mark has been told that the Hermes is coming back for him, which
[00:00:45] on its own, it is a very sweet moment, really. This chapter we start with a really this this sweet the sweet little couple sentences and then we get into some boring shit for a couple of pages
[00:00:58] and then things get worse.
[00:01:00] Yes.
[00:01:01] This is a very this whole episode has a very sort of downward trajectory. Yes, it does. Yeah. And, you know, the funny thing is I hadn’t really clocked this the first time I read The Martian, but there’s this funny sense that the Hermes is coming back and now all of a sudden he has to hurry. You know, the whole problem in this entire story is that he’s stuck there. He has all the time in the world. And all of a sudden he doesn’t he has to get going, which is a funny little inversion of the of the norm there. It says it. He has two hundred and fifty seven souls before he has to leave for a 100 soul journey. And just for those out there who aren’t familiar with the jargon, a soul is the word for a day on Mars, which is twenty four hours and about 40 minutes long. So it’s not the same length as an Earth Day. So they distinguish between days and souls.
[00:01:51] Yes.
[00:01:52] So twenty four and a half hours. Yeah, approximately. That’s what he
[00:01:55] says. So we’re just going to
[00:01:56] leave it there. He has a lot of stuff to carry to the rover. Yep. And he makes a Granny Clampett reference about the Pathfinder Pathfinder writing on the roof. And I don’t understand. I’ve heard that name, but I don’t understand that reference. So I feel like that is a reference for the Gen-X and older crowd. Sorry, I’m not there.
[00:02:22] I’m pretty sure that show was in there like the 70s.
[00:02:24] I think so, too. But I feel like people that are even. Yeah. Five to ten years older than us are going to understand that. And I just want them. So, um. And then at what point. Yeah, I don’t remember why I have this in my notes, but I write that this is the part of the book where you get to imagine Venkat Kapoor as one of the prices. Right. Models and I don’t remember why, but reading that note gives me a lot of joy and I
[00:02:59] write, I don’t know, I’ve no idea what you’re referring to.
[00:03:03] I think this might be a fever dream or fantasy.
[00:03:05] I’m going to figure it out.
[00:03:06] He’s got a crush on Venkat Kapoor, apparently. But that’s fine.
[00:03:10] Yeah, I’m
[00:03:12] fine. Don’t we all have crushes on shortly before?
[00:03:14] I mean.
[00:03:15] Yes, absolutely.
[00:03:16] Um, so we do also get introduced to a very important and potentially horrible piece of equipment, which is the drill. Yes. Mark has to drill his way through the rover to make some extra room and do some modifications. And so NASA has told him to basically drill a whole bunch of tiny holes. We’re talking over a thousand holes. So he wires it up to have power so he doesn’t have to recharge it constantly. And that is a decision that is going to be consequential.
[00:03:53] That was. Yes, yes. Foreshadowing. I mean, OK, so I’m not I’m not finding it fast enough, but there’s something in here because when goes on to explain how he’s going to use the rock sampling drill for the construction and they need to step down the voltage and the rover so it can act as a battery charger for the drill. And it’s yet another way that Mark could very easily kill himself.
[00:04:17] Yeah, the quote that I had to just write down in its entirety is I’ll be playing with high voltage power tomorrow. Can’t imagine anything going wrong with that.
[00:04:25] He yes.
[00:04:26] Because, I mean, come on.
[00:04:28] Yeah, yeah.
[00:04:30] Well, um, I don’t I would like someone to tally up how many times Mark has been in a situation where he could get killed. And then I would like. You mean aside
[00:04:45] from just the constant danger?
[00:04:47] I mean, yes. Just just take out the constant danger because like in a lot, because for me, it’s about a comparison. I want to know
[00:04:55] who is
[00:04:56] consistently the most likely to die, just in general. Is it Mark Watney or is there somebody on Earth? Like I get it, I hear that he’s on Mars and that super sucks, but my job puts me in danger multiple times, you know, like I want to know because he
[00:05:15] does, Mark, have the most dangerous job in all of humanity. Exactly.
[00:05:20] Because in the world. Right. But like being on Mars, you might compare to a war zone every single day. You could die, you know. So I mean, yeah.
[00:05:30] I mean, I imagine soldiers have it worse than Mark Watney because there are people actively trying to kill him instead of just an environment that is passively trying to kill him.
[00:05:38] Right.
[00:05:39] So so for longtime viewers of the Synthesis, you will have picked up on a tradition, which is Alexander talking about how this is just one of the things that makes this book great. And here’s your latest episode of this is just one of those things that makes this book great, which is how boring the drill is. I really appreciate I mean, like, it’s boring and it’s kind of boring to read.
[00:06:02] But I like I like I like the word choice because it bores.
[00:06:07] Yes, because it bores. That was intentional. That’s not something that I stumbled into sideways.
[00:06:14] That was a good pun. And those are hard to come by.
[00:06:16] They’re not. Lacey loves ponds. Don’t believe her. I don’t there’s. But the thing about the drilling that I really appreciated is, you know, he’s under constant threat of death. They’re all these big, crazy, exciting things happening, like the hand blowing up and all these crazy storms. And, you know, like there’s so many big, scary things. The have is filled with hydrogen and it’s a bomb. I really appreciate that. You know what? Sometimes you just have to spend like two weeks drilling tiny holes. And that’s part of this. It’s not a nonstop adventure. He’s not Indiana Jones. Sometimes he just has to drill a whole bunch of really tiny holes. Yeah. And it’s just it adds to that sense of realism. It makes everything else more powerful because you recognize that he’s not a superhero. He’s living a dangerous situation and this is his life. And I just so appreciate how that is rendered
[00:07:09] so that I don’t seem like a total crazy person being where
[00:07:12] you are
[00:07:14] or
[00:07:16] so because I. I put that image of Venkat Kapoor in a
[00:07:23] cocktail dress and. Yeah.
[00:07:25] And a beautiful gown on prices. Right. Yeah. Doing the arms. Yeah. Yeah. Now that I’m throwing thanks. Because it’s at one point they’re talking about how is he going to eat. Marc says how is he going to make this whole and the rover or a.k.a. the trailer. And he says I’ll let my lovely assistant Venkat Kapoor explain further. And that’s where I started. And then when it does. Yeah. And, you know, it’s it’s actually a lot more interesting. So how do I put this? I Mark must feel really good about not having to be the only person to problem solve. Like there must be a huge weight off his shoulders to not have to do that. But as an audience member, I can feel that way for him and also recognize it’s not as interesting. Mm. And I feel like that that is seen. Yeah. This the beginning of this chapter. So yeah. Anyway I, I imagine he’s relieved I as an audience member I’m not.
[00:08:37] So before we started filming this episode today, Lacey warned me that she was going to ask me a question but aha. I Schoop to you, what’s your theme song.
[00:08:46] RWD We’re not even there yet. I’m there yet. OK, but like go ahead, you just skip to the end of the chapter
[00:08:52] and this is the middle of the chapter.
[00:08:54] This is listen I write so many more notes than he did. I was obviously a better student, which she’s not wrong.
[00:09:02] It’s not wrong.
[00:09:03] I’m an overachiever. Yes. OK, fine. We can jump there, but we’re going back at some point.
[00:09:10] You think do your thing, take it away.
[00:09:12] OK, OK. But I want to hear what everybody else is. Theme songs are too. So just. Yes, just consider for
[00:09:19] those who maybe haven’t read the Martian who have only seen The Martian. By the way, we are referencing a scene in which Marquart may take some time to decide what his theme song is from the huge library of disco music. He goes through options such as Life on Mars, Rocket Man alone again, naturally, but ultimately he settles on staying alive. So what do you want to talk about? What did I pass over? What interesting thing did I not notice?
[00:09:48] OK, so to me, dazzle us. Oh, my God, we’re going to fight first of all, I have a reminder note to myself, yeah, duct tape is magic and should be worshiped, so says Mark Watney. And I need to stop procrastinating and putting duct tape in my car because it should always be in your survival kit.
[00:10:13] It’s just not even your car, not like you. You don’t have a thing to repair. You just need to have access to.
[00:10:18] Now, I might have told you that. Yeah. If I had gotten into an accident, but I thought I could repair duct. There’s another thing he makes a that’s what she said joke. And I got really mad at them
[00:10:33] because they’re like Mark
[00:10:38] clutching their pearls and
[00:10:40] sitting here going, listen, dudes, as stressful as your lives are right now. Yeah. This man needs an outlet and you’re the only people he has. You can go home and you can make off color jokes to your significant others are your roommates or whoever. And and you get to do that. This man has you.
[00:11:01] So you deal with whatever jokes
[00:11:03] and whatever he wants to say. You deal with it even if it’s going to be public, because this man needs an outlet and defense mechanisms are important. Yes, actually,
[00:11:12] that’s an interesting point that I had never considered before. I all of a sudden, I’m kind of wishing that Andy Weir had gone into this a little bit, because we are told specifically that NASA is a public agency, which means that everything that they find has to be turned over within 24 hours and that all of their conversations with Mark are being broadcast all over the world. But I’m suddenly realizing that if this were real, if this had actually happened, they would have passed some like exemption or some executive order from the president or something. That guy needs the ability to make private statements, Mark. What he needs to be able to send messages that are not broadcast all over the world, some message to his mom or like, you know, something that is personal. That’s a that’s a that’s a need,
[00:12:00] except for, you know, the the things that the rest of the crew talk with their SOS with, those probably are private, you know. So I’m I’m guessing that there’s probably a certain amount of privacy depending on what the topic is.
[00:12:14] I would imagine so. But we are specifically told that all of Marquart in these conversations are public, which is why they keep critiquing him when he draws boobs.
[00:12:24] Yeah, I like it. By the way,
[00:12:27] we’ve got a question from everyone’s favorite EMON economist. Is Lacey the note taker in your days and games? No, Lacey likes hitting things with axes.
[00:12:38] I mean, that is mostly what I do. But once she’s there, I also never remember the storyline, not not for the life of me, actually, not for the OK, whatever
[00:12:49] the the note taker in our DNA games is the wife of our game master.
[00:12:54] Yeah. Because even he doesn’t take notes half the time as pretty funny. But yes I, I get too into my character.
[00:13:03] She would like to rage.
[00:13:05] Yes she would like to rage most of the
[00:13:06] time except for this character is not a barbarian, which is maybe why I’m not in love with her. There’s a moment in here where he says, oh yeah that’s right, I’m either getting rescued on Sol five hundred and forty nine or I’m dying. That means I have thirty five souls of extra food I can indulge once in a while.
[00:13:27] Mm.
[00:13:28] And I was like, that is the brightest silver lining I can imagine. And in what is one of the most terrifying lines in the book.
[00:13:37] Yeah. That’s some Ted Lassos style like optimism. That’s really, that’s, that’s candid right there.
[00:13:43] Oh I was
[00:13:44] just my, I just, I had a whole heart and gut clench when that happened because I was like, you only have thirty five days. That’s worth it. Yeah.
[00:13:54] Like oh boy.
[00:13:56] Well and like maybe keep your margin. We don’t want to cut this one too close just in case something happens.
[00:14:04] Hard labor is hard labor. You got to you got to take care of yourself. Yeah. Which he does in chapter eighteen in a way that I super enjoy. But OK, we are now up to the theme
[00:14:14] song Mark theme song is Stayin Alive.
[00:14:17] But did he or did he pick the right one.
[00:14:19] Yeah. Yeah.
[00:14:21] Stayin Alive by the Bee Gees just annoys the hell out of.
[00:14:23] I’m not a fan of the song, but what I’m saying is life on Mars, Rocket Man alone again. Naturally, these are all songs that are relevant, but staying alive is both relevant and aspirational. That is what he’s working toward.
[00:14:36] But OK, so I feel like this man is enough of a hero that he should at least get a soundtrack like he. His life currently warrants a soundtrack and not just a theme song.
[00:14:45] He has a soundtrack. It was written by Harry Gregson Williams. But, you know. Oh, my God.
[00:14:50] Oh.
[00:14:52] Sorry, excuse me, I have something stuck in my throat.
[00:14:55] It was a husband.
[00:14:57] Uh oh. Let’s ended it. Sorry about that, guys.
[00:15:02] That was a cannibalism reference and nothing else.
[00:15:06] Oh, my God. Oh, you make everything worse.
[00:15:10] How do you do that? Oh, I’m going to be terrified.
[00:15:15] It’s going to be our tombstone’s Alexander Wynn and Lacey Hohnen. Oh, my God. Somehow you make everything worse.
[00:15:22] It’s, uh.
[00:15:25] All right. So what’s your theme song?
[00:15:27] I actually referenced it earlier for anybody who’s a a Broadway musical fan. Yeah, it’s called Not for the Life of Me from Thoroughly Modern Millie. It’s when she gets to New York and she knows it, she’s like, it’s one block north to Macy’s and it’s two brothers, Brooks. And she she has figured it out. And she comes from this tiny town where nothing’s over. Three stories high at which this is my life. You guys, South Dakota to L.A., this is. But she has a one way ticket back home and she pulls it out of her pocket and she goes,
[00:16:04] no, no.
[00:16:06] And it’s just like, yeah, I’m going to figure it out. And that’s nice.
[00:16:09] Nice. Yeah. Well, I only had like forty five
[00:16:12] misleaders students, so just sorry guys,
[00:16:17] I only had about forty five minutes to think about it and I mostly listened to movie soundtracks. So it’s ultimately what I settled on is a Jonathan Coulton song called Code Monkey. Do you think it’s about a developer, no shit. Yeah, totally.
[00:16:33] Yep, I can’t believe it.
[00:16:35] Yep, that’s boring. I know you are so much more interesting than that.
[00:16:40] I know.
[00:16:42] I thought about I thought about going showtunes as well and saying that my theme song was anything you can do, I can do better. But I decided I didn’t want to get punched on Twitch.
[00:16:53] So you would have I
[00:16:57] would have thrown myself at you and wrestled you.
[00:17:00] Yeah. And not enough on way. So some of the bacteria in the soil survived.
[00:17:04] My God. Oh.
[00:17:12] So we one of the one of the interesting moments that I really appreciate in this chapter is Mark Watney is talking about how just to pass the time he did some soil tests because he’s a nerd and he noticed that some bacteria in the soil survived, which is kind of cool. I loved that. I know, right? Just like resilient. He actually even says life is amazingly tenacious. They don’t want to die any more than I do, which is. Yeah, it’s a great little
[00:17:40] fun, you know.
[00:17:43] And then
[00:17:44] I have.
[00:17:45] Oh, my God, Pathfinder now.
[00:17:48] Yeah, I have sold one. This is the beginning of the section. So one ninety six. I fucked up, I fucked up big time and you’re just like oh no. Like my blood pressure. Just shut up. Oh man. What happened.
[00:18:03] It was a gut punch. So what happens is now. Yes. I don’t totally you know, so, so.
[00:18:12] So it starts with a small observation. As he says, the worst moments in life are heralded by small observations. And the small observation is that the breakers have tripped on the drill, which is odd. And so he just replaces the breakers and moves on. But that’s weird.
[00:18:31] Yeah, I, I found the ending of this chapter so so we won’t go into exactly what happened. But the Pathfinder is no longer transmitting. Yeah. So he can’t, he can’t deny not just say we weren’t going to go into what happened.
[00:18:51] No more concerned about spoilers.
[00:18:53] Hey you don’t know. We’ve never gotten an answer from them. I know who’s reading with us and who’s not very helpful.
[00:19:01] So really I guess what he’s saying is that this is on, you
[00:19:05] know, that wasn’t it at all.
[00:19:09] Anyway, I’m sticking by it.
[00:19:11] OK, whatever. So Pathfinder is no longer communicating, so he has no way to communicate with Earth and while he can communicate with Earth through Morse code, that’s the thing that they had decided to set up.
[00:19:25] You send messages by putting blocks on the ground,
[00:19:26] but he can not hear back from them. Um, so I, I, I found this to be one of those moments of like, do you just collapse in a heap and just cry and curse the universe? Like the way I feel like an animal there would be like a whole bunch of this streaking lines.
[00:19:46] Yes. Yeah. I’m on my own is the end of that chapter.
[00:19:52] And you just got so excited for him because he didn’t have to problem solve all by himself.
[00:19:57] Oh yeah.
[00:19:58] And so then Chapter 18 starts and I felt entirely like this was my own fault for jinxing it, as if this wasn’t written years ago
[00:20:08] because I was like,
[00:20:09] it makes you feel any better. I blame you too.
[00:20:11] You are in what is you you were. Oh, my
[00:20:17] God. I’m an economist and I’m not going to be able to pronounce solice. They have both read the book so well.
[00:20:25] We’ve got to.
[00:20:26] Yes, yes. Yeah.
[00:20:28] Um, so Chapter 18 is back to making his own plans. It’s sort of a return to form from our Watney. He’s got to figure this out himself. We are back to the Martian.
[00:20:39] He’s figuring it out. It is so much more interesting to me as an audience member to watch him go through the mental process of figuring out how he’s going to do things rather than just getting instructions from NASA, because we’re not seeing their thought process and their scientific process, which they get to have more fun than he does. So I was I was kind of losing interest with all the back and forth.
[00:21:06] Yeah. It became less about problem solving and more about solution implementing.
[00:21:10] And I mean, the things that kind of kept you interested were the character development, the the underhandedness that different characters had mej and, you know, like that sort of stuff still kept you interested. But I for me, the bread and butter of this is who is Mark Watney and what can he do? We know he’s not a superhero, but he’s a badass scientist. Yeah, he’s an engineer. Like what what is his brain capable of? And we’ve had a return of that, which is I don’t know. For me, that’s the most interesting. So I’m here for it.
[00:21:46] Uh, greed.
[00:21:47] Um, I don’t understand some of his plans with the regulator.
[00:21:54] OK, like what?
[00:21:56] No, I don’t know. I just I read it and then put it aside. I was like, to hell with this. It was it was all about the the regulator. And it’s making everything cold to do something and then having to heat it back, like, I don’t know how with that.
[00:22:11] So the the short version is that the the oxygen and the atmospheric regulator, uh, they each draw a lot of power and he has to reduce how much power they draw so that he doesn’t kill his batteries because as much as possible has to go toward traveling in the rover. But what he realizes is that each of them have heating functions, which are important parts of the process. So the way that they strip the carbon out of the carbon dioxide to make oxygen, they freeze it down and then they run it over a catalyst and it strips away the carbon. But once you freeze it down that cold, if you just release it back in to the air, it’s the air conditioner from hell. So you need
[00:22:52] like a model for this because I just don’t see it. But, you know, whatever
[00:22:57] I mean it just from the outside, it just looks like an air purifier. It’s bringing in air and it’s blowing out. It’s bringing in carbon dioxide. It’s blowing out oxygen. But in the in the meantime, it takes that carbon dioxide freezes it to super crazy cold, runs the super cold gas over some chemicals, some some catalysts, and that strips the carbon atoms out of the air. And then now you have O2. And so it just blows it back out. But it doesn’t just blow it back out because it’s way too cold. So it has to warm the air up, which takes a lot of electricity. So Mark realizes, hey, he’s still got the RTG, as he puts it. As with most of life’s problems, this one can be solved by a box of pure radiation,
[00:23:43] which I did find, which is very funny.
[00:23:45] Awesome. And so he’s going to use that to heat up the air by bubbling it up through hot water. Basically, you take cold air like in a fish tank with a bubbling oxygen to the fish tank, super cold air. You bubble it up through hot water. By the time it comes out of the top, it’ll be warm enough that it’s safe.
[00:24:05] I so appreciate that he’s explaining. All of this to me, but I hope someone else caught it because I stopped paying attention a long time ago, my focus is not here. And I apologize because normally I love your explanations. I really do. I am just I’m I’m incapable today. But what I hear I liked the first portion of this plan was, hey, I don’t have to have the water reclaimer and it’s justice. There is justice in this because he’s like, I’ve got enough water. I’ll just bring the water with me and I can just shit and pee on this planet that’s constantly trying to kill me. And I was like, yes, man.
[00:24:45] You tell them. Yeah, uh,
[00:24:48] I mean, you’re not going to tell the planet much, but Mother Nature. Oh, that’s an interesting question. Does Mother Nature exist on all planets or does every planet have a different
[00:25:01] character, different
[00:25:02] character?
[00:25:02] Yeah.
[00:25:03] Oh, I mean, I think probably demonstrably Earth has Gaia and Mars has Mars, Mars as
[00:25:11] like
[00:25:12] what about other planets, which, by
[00:25:14] the way, makes sense that this planet is trying to kill him, considering it’s named after the God of violence and awfulness.
[00:25:20] I really now need a short story about all of the different versions
[00:25:25] of
[00:25:26] all the different characters of the planets.
[00:25:28] Yeah, yeah.
[00:25:29] I somewhat do this for me. Listen, when I request things in here, people, people do them. I you guys, if you have not read, I’m an economist. Forty five tweet thread on her barbarian that she plays. You have to do it. I got choked up. There is, it’s so, it’s so good and I cannot thank you enough. I cannot thank you enough for sharing it.
[00:25:57] Oh that out there.
[00:25:58] By the way while we have you I’m an economist and everyone else chime in with where you are. Yeah. Because I’m an economist mentioned that she watches us on her lunch break, which is odd because for us here in L.A., it’s five thirty in the evening. So either you have a weird shift or you are somewhere else. So everybody chime in. We love to hear where everybody’s from. If you’re watching this after the fact on YouTube, comment with where you are,
[00:26:23] I want to know. Yeah, it’s
[00:26:24] just it’s just fun.
[00:26:25] The world is big and interesting. Right.
[00:26:28] Um, you know what else is big and interesting? Marc’s bathtub.
[00:26:32] Oh, and pirate and just pirate ninjas.
[00:26:37] Exactly. Mark joins a new unit of measurement, the Pirate Ninja, because of course he did,
[00:26:43] because he didn’t want to say
[00:26:44] what
[00:26:45] kilowatt hours per soul
[00:26:47] that yepp, that
[00:26:49] which is, by the way, not even a fifty percent reduction in syllable count, but whatever,
[00:26:55] you know. But it’s way more interesting. Yes. And it’s fun. Yes. And I appreciate it.
[00:26:59] Yes. Because what is the only thing that could make his situation more dire, the arrival of pirate ninjas.
[00:27:06] Yeah, but yes, he takes a bath. Yes. And I love this for him personally.
[00:27:12] I love that. Like, this is one of those things that I’m I love the how in character. Andy Weir writes, because he spends a lot of time talking about his bathtub. Like this is clearly a very important project. Yeah, exactly. He goes on and on and on about his bathtub and how he made it and how much he loves it and how often he uses it. And it really feels like a guy who actually cares about this. It doesn’t feel like a novel. It feels like you’re actually this guy really loves his about
[00:27:38] listen, he deserves it because, like he said, there are no chiropractor’s on Mars. So he’s got to take care of himself and his body and he can’t just take Vicodin forever. Yeah.
[00:27:48] Which, by the way, we’ve had a running list on this on this show of the sort of alternative universes of the Martian, different ways this could have gone. What if it had been Mark and Lewis stranded on Mars or, you know, those sorts of things? And one of the interesting little versions, that sort of a nightmare to imagine. But it’s one way this could have gone is Mark Watney hurts his back and it doesn’t get better. Yeah. And like, he’s just stuck on Mars for hundreds of days and there’s no saving yourself.
[00:28:26] Well, yeah,
[00:28:27] like, yeah.
[00:28:28] Yeah. This is that is too depressing. Can we not go there. Yeah. Um, I personally I’m just very excited for him to take a bath. I don’t actually enjoy baths myself. I don’t understand. I don’t understand sitting in. In it, it just it doesn’t it doesn’t appeal to me, but I love that he got to pamper himself a lot.
[00:28:53] As Chandler Bing says, why don’t you just sit there stewing in your own filth?
[00:28:56] Yeah, kind of like no. OK, serious. You know, I’m just going to ask the question. You wash your hair and then you, like, try and rinse it off. But there’s already like you’ve had your shampoo in the water and now you’re trying to get your conditioner out and now your hair just feels like,
[00:29:13] yeah,
[00:29:14] I don’t know, baths are great for washing your hair.
[00:29:16] Like, I feel like you’re supposed to be able to do all of this. I don’t know. I just think it’s weird. I am I am outside side tracked, but I just I have questions for the ladies. I think it’s just sounds awful.
[00:29:30] OK, hey, you know what? We all wash our hair. Thank you very much. I spend so much time
[00:29:35] guys from hair,
[00:29:37] his shaved head. I have hair jokes
[00:29:41] are delightful and she can never get enough of them. Anyway, Mark Watney is smiling. A great smile, the smile of a man who fucked with his car and didn’t break it. I myself have never smiled. The smile.
[00:29:57] I’ve. I have. You have. I have had to do. You’re a
[00:30:01] car thief.
[00:30:02] A couple of things with cars that I’m just like I’m quite proud of. Listen, I came up with the El Brackett’s a couple log entries ago and obviously I’m a genius. You should be working at NASA and not in Hollywood. But yeah, I just wanted to put it out there. When he brings up the brackets, I was like, yeah, do dah. And I was quite pleased with myself. And so I think I should be Hollywood’s genius at Girl personally, but
[00:30:30] I’m here for it. He does bring up at the end of the chapter an interesting point, which is sort of upsetting. But, you know, that’s just where you are, which is that he’s not going to know how the launch, when he’s he hopes that Hermes is going to get him, but he doesn’t actually know if it’s going to work. Yeah, he might be working for the next, what was it, three hundred and fifty seven days and show up and then there’s nobody
[00:30:57] waiting for him. Yeah, because because because Pathfinder isn’t working. Yeah. He can’t, he can’t know. And he, you know, he’s concerned about the HermΓ¨s Re-supply not for himself so much but for his crew because he could die. But if his crew dies like that really upsets him. And I find that just so sweet. It’s just another way of pointing to Mark being a superb human being, superb character, just very well written in the fact that the audience never doesn’t want to root for him. Yeah. And he can have his his breakdown moments and he can make off color jokes like all of these things. But ultimately we’re always there for him and he’s always there for his crew. And it’s just so sweet.
[00:31:46] Yes.
[00:31:47] So we come to chapter nineteen and there’s an odd thing that happens. I don’t know if you if you picked up on this. We’ve had about a chapter and a half since Mark Frid Pathfinder and is no longer in contact with Earth. And now we come to Chapter nineteen and chapter nineteen has a structure where we’re jumping back and forth between the HermΓ¨s, where the crew is prepping for the supply launch and they’re all talking to their families back home. And we get this another one of these interesting tableaus where each character gets highlighted individually and you get some insight into who they are. And then it cuts to Earth as they’re preparing for the launch. But they don’t mention the fact that Mark is out of contact. We never actually get Earth’s response. We never get anybody reacting to the fact that they can’t talk to him.
[00:32:38] Oh, peculiar.
[00:32:38] Well, they just sort of like continue on with the law.
[00:32:41] And I have it’s far enough beyond when it happens. Yeah, it’s probably
[00:32:45] why it’s just interesting that we never get that moment. That scene
[00:32:49] doesn’t
[00:32:49] the closest we get to it is in chapter eighteen when he says, Oh man, I haven’t left the Hab in six days because of my back. Yeah. And they don’t know what’s happened to me, so they might be panicking essentially. So he, he kind of fills in for us with is.
[00:33:10] But I feel like it would have been interesting to get Venkat. I like realization of what’s going on and get and we
[00:33:16] weren’t going to get it for the moment because they were going to stay on Mark. Yeah. So I’m, I’m OK with it. Yeah.
[00:33:25] I think it’s the right call, but it’s a shame because I would have liked to see Annie being like, are you fucking kidding me. Right. But yes, we go back to the Hermes and Lewis is talking to her husband who has found a mint mint, you know, quality version of ABBA’s greatest hits because he’s a nerd.
[00:33:45] I have it right.
[00:33:46] He was talking to her husband, knew ABBA’s greatest hits, period nerd.
[00:33:50] It’s so cute. Oh, I love that. Like the rest of the world is probably on Mark Watney side making fun of disco. And here is Lewis and her husband being like,
[00:34:03] we still love it. Screw you guys. All right.
[00:34:07] She’s she’s going to be the most infamous disco fan in human history.
[00:34:11] She’s I will I will put this out there, you guys. All of these chats with their significant others or their family members or whatever some of them had one of them in particular had me in real tears. And I cried on the book, Sorry, honey, and I couldn’t read my notes. And so just stop taking them. But it might come up again because who it really got, it just so got me.
[00:34:34] It’s something that they do a really good job. You know, we get a few of these moments where over the course of a chapter, each character gets the spotlight. You know, there were marks, notes to each of his crew members or his crewmates. And then in this chapter, we get each of them talking to their families. And it’s interesting how anywhere does a great job of individualizing them, because they each have their own thing going. They each have their own relationships, but they each have it’s like each character is in their own genre. You know, Lewis is talking to her husband. She’s very much in love. Vogel has more of like a family medical drama thing going on. It’s like each character is has a very different tone in how they are sort of reacting to all of this. And it really helps bring them to life.
[00:35:22] Yeah, he did a very good job of not making he’s not putting them on too similar. Andy Weir is not writing them on like these parallel paths. It’s yeah. It feels very independent of each other. It doesn’t none of the conversations kind of echo one of the previous conversations or anything like that, which I’ve I found charming, that he could write so many different voices. Yeah, I
[00:35:51] agree. He’s a great writer. Yeah.
[00:35:53] As we keep talking about.
[00:35:54] But anyway but we come back to Earth and the NASA folks are heading to China. Yes. And they are arriving, they’re getting ready to launch the resupply probe on the tank and the Chinese rocket. And it’s not
[00:36:12] easy. And Venkat is being a reasonable whiner. Yeah, jet lag about jet lag and tells their guide, Mr. Su, that he loves him. And I found it, darling. He’s just so tired and so, like, doesn’t because Teddy is like, yeah, just don’t forget, man, we have to go through customs. You, Shina,
[00:36:33] you get the sense that, you know, Teddy, the director of NASA, is probably the guy who like, visits the White House periodically and he like goes to conferences and he’s done a lot of networking and all that kind of stuff. And Venkat is more of a stay in the lab kind of guy. And he’s just not used yet.
[00:36:47] No. And I just I,
[00:36:50] I find it just kind of funny. Yeah.
[00:36:53] From there we cut back to the Hermes and we get Vogel, the German astronaut, and talking to his wife about their monkeys, which we have already established, is what they call their kids, which is very sweet. And then he asks, how is my mother doing?
[00:37:08] And what we learn is he’s a he was afraid before they even left that it was the last time he was going to see his mom. And now they’re going to be on the HermΓ¨s for over five hundred more days. And his wife does tell him that, you know, they think that, you know, she’s stable. She doesn’t always recognize her daughter in law and blah, blah, blah, but nothing has changed. So hopefully nothing will change by the time he gets back. And I was just like, oh, like my mom’s one of my very favorite people. So I oh,
[00:37:43] I yeah, I was a
[00:37:45] mess. And it didn’t even come up when he was saying that we have to go back and get Marquart. Watney. Yeah. Like you retroactively realize how hard a decision that was for Vogel because he is again risking never seeing his mother. Yeah. And it’s uh.
[00:38:00] Yeah that’s.
[00:38:02] And then so we cut back and Teddy is talking to the Chinese space administrator and there’s a very darling exchange where he the the Chinese guy describes Mitch as, you know, very, very passionate or something like that. And Teddy says Mitch is a pain in the ass. And he says, You can say that. I can answer.
[00:38:26] Yes, I
[00:38:27] did really like that. The thing that I thought you were trying to say that I just truly loved was someone says love of science is universal across all cultures. And I don’t know, OK, listen, my pregnancy hormones are out of control. This entire chapter made me want to cry and that. Line, I was just like, I’m getting choked up thinking about, I don’t know, there’s something about, OK, OK, take it away.
[00:38:52] All right, if if I can just provide you with something that will harden your heart and make you stop feeling the feelings. J Group lives in California.
[00:39:03] Oh, so do we.
[00:39:04] Yeah, I know he’s so close, I need some distance from grape. Oh, please. Like I’m on economist lives in Canberra. In Australia. That’s awesome. Like, why can’t I can’t. I’m an economist b around here. We got to have Jake listen.
[00:39:20] And she says it’s the greatest city in the world and I’m just putting it out there that I have not been there yet. And it we’ve got to go to go because Australia was awesome.
[00:39:30] And we’ve also got the eastern United States. Yes. Represented. So keep them coming, folks. Post in the comments. Let us know where you are. It’s excellent to learn unless you’re age group and now you need to go away.
[00:39:43] J Grape, please excuse my husband. He is a jerk.
[00:39:48] Oh, it’s, uh,
[00:39:50] it’s not a jerk when you take shots at your nemesis,
[00:39:54] OK.
[00:39:54] Oh, Grape and Valley are locked in an epic duel.
[00:39:58] Listen, you could be like the Joker and you could love him like the Joker loves Batman.
[00:40:04] I am clearly Batman in this relationship.
[00:40:06] I mean, come on. Uh oh.
[00:40:10] Uh, clearly I am Batman in so many ways anyway,
[00:40:16] so that
[00:40:17] we need
[00:40:17] to back. Yes. We jump back to back
[00:40:19] who’s talking to his sister, who
[00:40:21] I might argue is sort of the least developed of the of the crew, I think is the one that I feel like I have the least of. Yeah, but talking to a sister and
[00:40:31] it’s kind of funny, he quite
[00:40:32] clearly a little like kind of little sister, not not like five
[00:40:36] but. No, but she’s she’s younger and but she’s worried about him. And then she has a lot of questions about Martinez.
[00:40:44] Yes. And the cute one.
[00:40:46] He’s like he’s married with kids.
[00:40:49] Yeah. Home wrecker.
[00:40:53] It’s just that got me. But then there’s a moment where she says, well, what did you know? She’s asking what everybody’s jobs are. And he tells her that everybody has to be able to do multiple things. And so she asks him, what did Mark Watney do? And he says, don’t talk about him in the past tense. Yeah, of course. I get choked up for that, too.
[00:41:14] Great. See, these are the things that, like a lesser writer, wouldn’t have thought to do that. But that is so true to who back is just that. That’s the kind of thing that wouldn’t be particularly important to the sister, but is important to back.
[00:41:30] Yes. Yeah. All right. All right.
[00:41:34] We’re going to we’re going to read you guys.
[00:41:36] So this is this is Lacey’s, I think, favorite scene in the entire book.
[00:41:40] I mean, it’s not totally
[00:41:43] because there was that other guy who kind of made the jokes about you can never tell with managers. Who’s that again?
[00:41:51] Was that Rich Purnell? No, that was not him.
[00:41:54] Yeah.
[00:41:55] So far, so good. Yeah. Uh, no. So this is one of my favorite exchanges, so I’m just going to have us read it. Of course, we’ve only got one. Thanks. Yeah. Good luck to us. Uh, do you would you like to take Mitch or Venkat.
[00:42:12] Uh, why don’t I take Venkat.
[00:42:16] OK, so you are you going to read just the line. Are you going to do the. He said, she said
[00:42:22] not just just did OK.
[00:42:24] Uh, all right. They’re a weird bunch these Chinese nerds, but they make a good booster.
[00:42:31] Good.
[00:42:32] How’s the linkage between the booster and our probe.
[00:42:34] It all checks out. JPL followed the specs perfectly. It fits like a glove.
[00:42:39] Any concerns or reservations?
[00:42:41] Yeah, I’m concerned about what I ate last night. I think it had an eyeball on it.
[00:42:46] I’m sure there wasn’t an eyeball
[00:42:48] that engineers here made it for me special.
[00:42:51] There may have been an eyeball. They hate you.
[00:42:54] Uh, why?
[00:42:55] Because you’re a dick, Mitch. A total dick to everyone.
[00:43:01] Fair enough. So long as the pro gets to Hermès, they can burn me in effigy for all I care.
[00:43:06] I just I think Lacey’s been cackling every time she thinks about that scene.
[00:43:10] I just love
[00:43:12] the idea that Venkaiah is like this. They’re you’re just saying there is an eyeball on it because in China, they eat things that we might not necessarily eat in America. Don’t worry about it. And then he’s and then Mitch says, well, the guy’s made it for me, you know, I’m special, special and homey. And then banquettes like, oh, yeah, there was definitely an eye on it.
[00:43:34] Definitely not all in it. Yeah. Because you’re a dick. Yeah.
[00:43:38] And I just there’s something so charming about that and I love it. I mean not charming, it’s, it’s horrifying but I like that Mitch is like, OK, whatever, so long as this all works out they can, they can hate me, they can, you know, do your voodoo, whatever you want. I don’t care which which then turns around and shows the dedication that Mitch has and. Do you take it back to that quote about, you know, Ted says he’s a pain in the ass and Ming says, You can say that I cannot. And the whole reason they’re saying that is because Mitch has a has like the workers the Chinese engineers have mentioned. Yeah, Mitch is a work ethic. Yeah. He’s very dedicated. And so I think it just kind of all comes together that all of the Chinese engineers are probably on Teddy’s side,
[00:44:40] like, yeah, screw this dude. I would fire him if I could.
[00:44:44] Um, so there’s I don’t know. There’s just something lovely about it to me. Um. All right. Then we go back
[00:44:50] to we come back to Martinez. And I’m glad that somebody wasn’t perfectly selfless. Martinez’s wife is pissed that he’s going back to Mars. And you can tell that it comes from a place of love. You can tell that it comes from a place of worry. You can also tell that he comes from a place of wanting to get laid, which is hilarious. Yes. But, you know, it’s it’s nice. It’s one of those human things that, yeah. Not everybody is, like, selflessly telling their their spouse, yes, you have to spend another year and a half to go back to Mars and save this guy like, no, I’m
[00:45:22] home because, you know, Martinez is not going to have his kid is not going to have any memories of him. Yeah. And he’s going to be going into kindergarten by the time Martinez comes home. So, you know,
[00:45:31] if he comes home at
[00:45:32] all. Yeah, exactly. So there’s like this you kind of understand the power of what they’re dealing with because Vogels kids are in high school. It’s not to say it’s anything that’s got its own hardships, essentially being a single mom of of teenagers. Like, I can’t I’m sorry to my mom, but, you know, Melissa’s dealing with a toddler at home. And that’s just got to be really hard, especially when you weren’t expecting to have to do all of this. So to me, the the different. I love that they’re all kind of different stages of their lives and that they have different concerns. And this was this was lovely. I love that they’re high school sweethearts.
[00:46:15] Yeah.
[00:46:16] Um, I don’t do we jump back to China or do we just go straight
[00:46:21] and I don’t have any notes from China. So if we did, it was uneventful. And so now we come to Jill Hansen Johansen, who is, you know, the the the cute girl of the crew who nobody’s allowed to hit on and, you know, posters all over, you know, college students, bedrooms and all that. And you get dark, so dark.
[00:46:47] And she’s like talking to her dad. Dad is like, where did we go wrong? You were such a good kid. And now you’re doing this and your mom is worried sick and she can’t even like this is a person who’s obviously like her anxiety or depression or whatever she’s dealing with is so bad that she can’t even come to the phone.
[00:47:07] Yeah.
[00:47:08] You know, and the father is characterized, interestingly, because, you know, you get the sense that he’s not
[00:47:14] he’s kind of a
[00:47:16] hard ass. Like he’s not necessarily the kind of dad that you would want. Like, he kind of hits her over the head with guilt over all of this.
[00:47:23] And he’s
[00:47:25] pretty rough. And she tries to reassure him in these vague terms and he’s not getting it. And she keeps trying to reassure him.
[00:47:33] I mean, I wouldn’t get it either. She’s been very good at being vague about why it’s going to be OK. Like, I will
[00:47:39] be not going to die. She just keeps saying I won’t die. And he’s like, what are you talking about? And she says, I won’t die. And finally he gets her to tell
[00:47:48] him, which I thought this was this was kind of telling I hear you on the hard ass thing. But he says, I have never I’ve always thought you had your privacy. Yes. And you I’ve never pushed you. And I need to know what you’re talking about.
[00:48:03] And clearly not an abusive father.
[00:48:05] No, no.
[00:48:06] But he’s calling in his his favor to know what she’s saying. And what she’s saying is that if the resupply mission goes wrong, they’re going too fast. They won’t be able to slow down and stop at Earth. They’re going to Mars one way or another, but they might not have enough food. So Lewis brought them all together and told them the plan, which is that if the resupply mission fails, everybody but Johansen will take suicide pills and then Johansen will survive and eat through the stores of food. And then when her father asks, is that going to be enough? She says, no, but the food won’t be the only sustenance available. And oh damn, that gets dark.
[00:48:59] Oh, my God. I just like I just. Sobbing Yeah, I was
[00:49:06] he didn’t notice I,
[00:49:09] I was working on other things, I
[00:49:11] was like I did collect for this was
[00:49:13] it. This wasn’t his fault. But he’s like sitting across the table from me and I’m just, like, trying not to be noticed as tears are just streaming down my face onto the as I’m just like, oh, this is horrifying. But now I have a question.
[00:49:25] Yeah.
[00:49:26] Can you eat a body that has had a suicide pill go into it?
[00:49:31] I’m sure Lewis knows what you know, something that something that expires after a little while so that it would be safe or
[00:49:40] whatever, maybe just doesn’t get into the muscle tissue or
[00:49:43] something like that, or he or she would probably need to freeze the body. So maybe it breaks down and in cold or something like that. But whatever it is, I’m sure Andy Weir has thought through every single detail of this absolute horror movie that could have been this is the darkest timeline of all the alternative universe, Martian stories.
[00:50:02] And like I, I obviously could barely handle it. Still can barely handle it. Yeah. But then we get to the launch. Yeah. And we get through the piloting, the great piloting that Martinez does.
[00:50:18] You and the masterful bringing you back from the brink of darkness. Andy Weir knowing exactly how to lead his audience where they need to be. Martinez sticks the launch. They get the supplies, they’re good to go. And he turns around to Joleen’s and says, So who would you have eaten first?
[00:50:38] Like, Oh, my God. And she doesn’t
[00:50:40] want to she she will not engage. And he starts chasing after her going, hey, I’m free range. You know, Cornfed, come on, I thought you liked Mexican.
[00:50:49] And I was just like, that’s such dark humor.
[00:50:53] It is so dark, but like smell, taste. I am so glad that we are included it because I needed.
[00:51:00] Yeah, it takes the fangs out. Yeah.
[00:51:03] And we don’t just get Johanson’s reaction to it. Yeah. We get, everybody else has you know, essentially agreed to it. Yeah. Green dish. Yeah. And this, it’s a release of the tension and a way that
[00:51:20] I
[00:51:21] did that.
[00:51:22] Yeah.
[00:51:23] Anyway the only person who could have had a worse time of this than Mark Watney is Johanna Johansen.
[00:51:30] Yeah. That Oh no I don’t do postapocalyptic. So this that is not the storyline that I can
[00:51:38] engage
[00:51:39] with. Engage with. Yeah. No, no, no, no horror, no apocalyptic anything. Which is what that would be. I mean if you’re in space. Yeah.
[00:51:47] They go God
[00:51:49] and kind of zombies.
[00:51:51] Guess the worst part of everything. Yeah. Anyway so that’s the end of chapter nineteen. So that is the end of this episode of The Synthesis. Next week we’re going to be doing chapters twenty, twenty one and twenty two. And important note, everyone make a note that starting next week we are going to be shifting venues we see and how that works where rather than streaming live on Twitch and then mirroring to YouTube on Friday morning, we are going to be doing YouTube live, same bat time, different bat channel. We are going to be doing the same five thirty time slot that we always do, except we’re going to be doing YouTube live from the Edge Works Entertainment YouTube channel, which is which is YouTube, dotcom, Edgeworks entertainment.
[00:52:38] If if that turns out to not be true and we can’t do it next week, we will let you know. We will put it on all of our socials. Yeah, but we wanted to we’re going to try and make that changeover pretty quick. Yeah. So join us, please
[00:52:52] join us on YouTube and everybody except DJ Grape DJ Grape tune in on Twitch next week.
[00:52:57] God damn. I’m just.
[00:53:00] Oh, all right. I don’t I don’t know what to say do I? I’m sorry.
[00:53:05] Lacey literally can’t even, um. So tune in next week. YouTube live and we’re going to have a dabba doo time. So in the meantime, be sure to check out our Patreon on Page Edgeworks Entertainment. You can follow us on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and YouTube and everywhere in the world really
[00:53:27] apparently, apparently Edgeworks is moving the Tic-Tac.
[00:53:31] Yeah.
[00:53:32] Lost our marketing people because. Yeah, there’s not you could not get me on there.
[00:53:37] I’m too old for that shit.
[00:53:38] Yeah.
[00:53:39] Except for the sea shanties
[00:53:41] except for the 20th centuries are amazing. They might give me that one final note for everyone to keep in mind, anybody who is a long term Edgeworks fan knows that every year the anniversary of America’s founding is February 9th. And I’m next to be not ready to tell you anything about it. But the smart money is on. There being an announcement of some kind on February 9th, so
[00:54:06] let’s
[00:54:07] be
[00:54:07] sure to check out our social pages or EdgeworksEntertainment.com, get ready.
[00:54:13] Yeah, get get your popcorn and get ready for a cool announcement. So, yeah.
[00:54:19] All right.
[00:54:19] Otherwise, we will see you next week on YouTube.
[00:54:22] Bye bye, guys. Bye.