Strapped to a couch barreling through space. Honestly, what could POSSIBLY go wrong? We dissect the nuance of The Martian and look back at 18 months of living on Mars…
𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝕊𝕪𝕟𝕥𝕙𝕖𝕤𝕚𝕤 is a live talk show that aims to find the relationship between science and fiction in pop culture. We’ll discuss a book, movie, or show each week that’s science-focused and talk about just how realistic it is, where reality is cooler than fiction, and exactly where certain liberties were taken.
00:03
Hey folks, this is Alexander Winn I’m Lacey Hannan and we are here for the synthesis where we examine real science and real history and entertainment. This week we are talking about chapter 26. The final chapter of The Martian.
00:22
This is this is how you know are married because we can finish each other’s pie sandwiches. It was supposed to be a Brooklyn nine, nine reference and you totally missed it.
00:33
I made it a community reference. Oh, our right. So this week, we are talking about the end of the Martian, which is very exciting. We’ve been doing this for a number of weeks. Now.
00:45
We we have and yeah, we’re wrapping it up. Okay. So next week, we’re going to talk about the movie. So get on renting it, watching it, buy it, whatever you have to do.
00:55
Yeah, so we’re not quite done with the Martian. We’re going to finish the book next week, we do the movie. And yeah,
01:02
compare different media’s takes on it.
01:05
Yes, indeed. So jumping into the book, we pick up where we left off with the last chapter, which is Mark, sitting in the nav waiting to take off. And he’s pretty much done with Mars, which is a big deal for a book called The Martian. And yeah, it’s kind of all out of his hands. There’s nothing left for Mark to do,
01:29
which I would think would totally suck after, after, like a year and a half of everything being on your shoulders. And yes, NASA is like, both the angel and the demon sitting on your shoulder chatting with you. For some of the time, like, everything’s on your shoulders, and you have all of the control, and even thing, even when things go awry, like it’s up to you to fix it. Right. And now he’s just helpless. Yeah. And I think that, that even more than the way NASA is feeling helpless in this moment, which we’ll get to in a minute. I think it’s gonna be significantly worse.
02:06
Yeah, I’m kind of, you know, one of the nice things about this book is that we’re sort of keeps it light. He keeps Mark Watney upbeat and keeps us morale high, they could, you know, anywhere could have taken this book in a much darker direction, where we’re wanting starts dealing with like, symptoms of depression, maybe even symptoms of like psychosis, because he’s been alone for so long. And, you know, obviously, some serious trauma responses and all that kind of stuff. And this is definitely one of those moments where if this was that kind of story, there would be a little bit of a freakout, because he can’t control anything anymore. There’s nothing to do, and he’s so wound up in the need to sort of fix problems that he can very much like, get wound up.
02:52
Well, that’s what I mean. It’s like, we don’t have a character that’s going there. This isn’t the story that’s going to go there. But, you know, for example, in the expanse, they deal with the fact that Martians, people who live on Mars are sort of categorically agoraphobic when they, when they visit Earth, they can’t handle the giant open spaces, because they’ve never experienced them. They’ve lived in tunnels their whole lives. And there was an opportunity to do that here with Mark Watney. And I’m glad they didn’t. Yeah, opportunity.
03:20
He has perseverance. Yes, he does.
03:25
And so yeah, we actually, the first two things that happened in this chapter, I thought was sort of interesting, we get kind of a one two punch of things that they didn’t really comment on, which I was surprised that that I didn’t
03:40
I didn’t write any write any notes for the very beginning of this. So tell me what you’re talking about.
03:44
So we pick up with effectively a montage like this is very clearly taken from movies. It’s, it’s called, they gathered, and it’s all about people in like, Times Square and in bars and living rooms, and they’re all watching this. And it really sets the stage for this sort of global, you know, viewership of what is about to happen. And one of the things that we get is this couple in Chicago. Yeah. Which is clearly Mark’s family.
04:11
Okay. I thought you were just talking about Mark I.
04:14
Okay. So, so I thought that was interesting that we are finally getting Mark’s family and it kind of made me look back and go, Yeah, why have we heard from Mark’s family in any of this? Like,
04:24
what are they going to say? What are they going to do? What what newness? Can they add to the story?
04:28
I mean, we all put ourselves in those shoes. I agree with that. But what I’m saying is that like nobody talked about it, like nobody. We didn’t, you know, for example, they established that Mark’s family is sitting with a representative from NASA, who was specifically there to answer their questions. This is something that as I understand it happens in in situations like this sort of national security importance, they will often give the parents a representative from like the Army or whatever to tell them how this is going. And we don’t know who that is like Unlike for another writer that would have been, you know, Bruce, or somebody that we know. And it’s just interesting that, you know, this whole, this whole story is about rescuing this one guy, and we finally get to see his family. And that’s not like he didn’t do a thing with I
05:16
feel like, I feel like that’s how it would go though like it. I think that is realism of this world, because it’s not like, Oh,
05:25
I totally agree.
05:26
If you have a kid in the military, they’re not going to send his CEO to go sit with you. They’re going to send someone who is who knows how to do this. Yeah. And so you don’t want Bruce there. You don’t want that cat you want. You want the the type of rep who knows how to handle your breakdowns or handle your questions?
05:44
trained?
05:45
Yeah. And who can talk in layman’s terms and all of that stuff?
05:48
Yeah, I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. I just thought it was interesting that I mean, as much as anything. It’s interesting that I didn’t notice that we haven’t met his family yet. Like, we haven’t heard from them. He even wrote even talked about sending Martinez to go talk to them. But the parents were absent. Yeah. It’s, it’s sort of for me, it’s sort of like, Sal, Ron and Lord of the Rings. It’s just sort of notable that this very important character.
06:12
Okay, as I say, I totally disagree with you. Because, for me, I filled in those gaps. Yeah, you know, quite a few of these episodes I have talked about like, oh, what would his parents be feeling or like, you can empathize with this or that or with the other thing, and for me, I’ve already filled that in. So I don’t need the story to tell me because it’s easy to fill in where I can’t fill in for venca. I can’t fill on for man, Mindy, or Annie or any of these other people. So to me, it’s that would have just been padding between the storylines that I really care about. Because as much as I would empathize with his parents, it’s not that I don’t care about their storyline, it’s just that their storyline cannot possibly be as interesting. As Annie or Lewis or Martinez, you know, like, it just it can’t be okay.
07:02
What else have you got about the parents? They gathered? And then we’ll get to the other thing that surprised me. I
07:07
will say that with the parents. I might have gotten very congested while reading that part, coincidental allergic reaction or reading. But the the moment that we’re talking about the crowd, crowds that have gathered in different areas of the world, right. And there was a, I think they they say, like a minor cheer for hearing Mark’s voice. Yeah. And I love. It’s just it’s really great reminder for how much the public hasn’t heard from Mark. They have seen Trent, like transcripts, they have heard from Annie, and you know, Bruce, like they’ve they’ve heard from other people. This is what Mark had to say, or whatever, and they might play clips. But they’re not actually the public isn’t hearing that much from him specifically. So getting to hear his voice has to feel like how much closer like we’re on that last step. And I think that there’s like this precipice moment that you don’t really get in the book, because you’re seeing it from the people who it’s either your hearing mark, or you’re hearing from the people who are hearing from Mark, right? You’re not, you know, you’re not getting the outside point of view. So I had kind of forgotten how much these people don’t know Mark, like, we know the audience do.
08:37
Well, that’s actually the perfect segue to the other thing that surprised me, which is, we after the after they gathered, we get mark, sitting in the nav talking to Louis on the Hermes. And they’re talking through, you know, the launch and getting ready and all that kind of stuff. And I realized, when Mark got to the mhv, he could do voice communication for the first time. There was a there was a what, what would have been a very powerful moment for Mark Watney that we just completely skipped, which is hearing another person for the first time in like two years. Oh, and because he’s been typing this whole time, he’s been communicating through the rover and sending it through Pathfinder. He’s been writing emails and texts effectively. And when he got to the nav he would have talked last time. And you imagine how did we not get that moment? Like That is such a powerful moment that I’m really surprised.
09:33
So milk, now that you say that? Yeah, you know, there’s a book called The room or room that they turned into a movie with Dakota Johnson. And it’s about a woman who gets kidnapped and she’s putting this tiny, tiny, tiny shed, and the kidnapper also rapes her and she gets pregnant, and this child is like, five years old before he ever leaves and when he leaves he Can’t see properly. And so because if if your eyes never developed the need for long distance vision, because he
10:10
never had access to that, right? I wonder if there’s any anything along the lines of like auditory changes that would happen if you’re not hearing anything outside of a hab because you’re not hearing anything outside of it. You hear stuff from your suit. Or if you were to lose if you were, if something were to happen to your suit, you’re not hearing anything outside because it’s like,
10:35
yeah, the air is so thin. That doesn’t carry sound. He did still have his disco music and his 70s
10:41
it’s all still so like, Yeah, but yeah,
10:45
I guess I don’t think his if he would have experienced any kind of deterioration. I mean, if he hadn’t had that, I would be curious to talk to physiologist about what that would do. But, you know, those don’t talk back. Like that’s not communication. You’re just passively listening. And so, yeah, the opportunity to actually talk to Louis and have a conversation back and forth, is really huge. Yeah, that’s huge.
11:07
Okay, so
11:08
those two things really jumped out at me is like, oh, wow, these are these are big developments.
11:13
So then we head back to the math. Mark Watney is almost last words are. He’s he’s talking to commander Louis. And he’s talking about Martinez. When he says, tell the asshole no barrel rolls, because Martinez is the one who’s piloting the map. Yeah, right.
11:37
Yeah. So gwatney has literally removed the control panels. He’s sitting in an empty room just in a chair.
11:43
Exactly. So and I that cracks me up, because at the time when I’m reading it, I thought those were his last words. And I was like, those are hysterical last words. Like,
11:53
if this doesn’t go, well. That will be the last thing that Mark Watney ever said. And tell that as well. No barrel rolls.
11:59
And that’s just pretty funny. So my question, one of my questions for this episode is, what would you want your last words on Mars to be the last thing you say there? Because you know, they’re gonna put it in the history books. And so feel free to be as Mark Watney about it as possible. By which I mean, be profane. Be whatever, I don’t care. But I want to know what your last words would be. I don’t. I’ve been thinking about it all week, and I can’t figure it out. Because I’m such a sentimental pers on, that there’s a part of me that would probably say something super lame, and like sentiment, sappy, and yeah. But simultaneously,
12:41
there’s something to be said for just being like, Fuck you.
12:43
Oh, wait, he then which he later says there’s, you know, another thing that that makes me think of is, you know, and this is less surprising, but we didn’t really get any information on areas one or two in this book, which makes sense. We’re focused on areas three. But this is a world in which someone has already said the first words on Mars. We’ve already gotten our one small step for Mars. Yeah. And there’s a there’s a TV show that I very much enjoyed that I think I might be the only one that is called defying gravity. It’s very soapy. But it’s about a mission through the solar system. And there is something that always sort of makes me chuckle, which is in this show. They have already landed on Mars. And so somebody already had that one small step moment, and every character on the show agrees that that guy blew it. He had really dumb first words on Mars. His first words on Mars were the Red Planet conquered. Oh, stupid. Exactly. And everybody’s just like, that is the worst.
13:47
Take him to come up with
13:48
exactly. And it just makes him sound like a muscle head. And you know, it just, it sort of makes me wonder all of a sudden, I wonder what the first words of the area’s one crew on Mars. This is you know, as Mark Watney is leaving, he gets a quote, but somebody else had a quote before this. Yes.
14:02
So well. And speaking of firsts, this is the first crew who that has ever been back to me. Yeah. And they have that they have that little moment.
14:12
Yeah. Look voegelin back are talking about
14:15
and not even Mark can say that. Yeah, Mark will have been there once and will have never gone back
14:21
to the first to revisit Mars.
14:23
So that’s interesting. Yeah. Yep. Okay,
14:27
so in that conversation, Vogel and back are talking about the procedure for getting Mark Watney. And this is sort of an echo of the resupply mission when they were back at Earth where they had to launch the rocket and then Beck’s job was to go out and actually like, grab the thing like with his hands, and guide it in and so again, they’re launching Mark into orbit. And he’s you know, the the Hermes is traveling and the map is going to come up and their hope is that their paths will intersect and then back can actually to go out and get him, but of course back is connected to the Hermes by effectively a rope. And that rope is only so long. Yeah. And we have this interesting conversation where he tells Vogel, if I can’t reach him, I want you to detach me, because he has one of those things that you see, like Apollo astronauts. And that looks sort of like chairs that have. We saw
15:24
George George Clooney had one. Yeah. And grout and gravity.
15:28
Yeah. And so he could theoretically detach and go get mark and then come back, which is what he wants to do. And Vogel seems to say no, mostly.
15:39
So. Okay, I’m gonna put a little pause on here. We’re gonna we’re gonna put a little pin in this conversation, because we’re coming back to it. Yeah, but I have to say, slow trash. Panda. There response to what they want to say for their last words is, How the fuck do I have a rock in my booth already? And I? If I if
16:06
I were choked? I think trash panda wins.
16:08
Yes.
16:10
So I am here for that. That’s really funny.
16:15
I also, Charlie town, weighed in with finally no more red dust. And I immediately got a flashback to the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson, because there’s a scene where all of the when they first arrive on Mars, all of the astronauts are complaining about the Red Dust. And the She’s like a micro geologists, basically, she’s geologists, and she gets really upset because it’s not dust their fines. Okay, difference between dust and fines. So Charlie, it’s not dust there finds finds.
16:53
Whereas my brain immediately went to the problem that all women pretty much have when they go to the beach, and you’re there for too long. And suddenly, there’s sand in your underwear, or like the bottoms of your swimsuit. And so now like, you feel like a baby, who’s whose diaper is just slowly like, falling off of them, because it’s really embarrassing and awful. And our producer has her hands over her face. Did it? So anyway, that’s where my brain went, Charlie. So thank you for that. Lovely image.
17:32
So do you have anything else before lunch? Well,
17:36
I wanted to go back to the Vogel. Oh, yes. And Dr. Back, because what, so there’s something kind of peculiar here. Vogel still calls back. Dr. Beck. Yeah. After all this time together?
17:51
Well, I mean, he’s a very formal guy, you can tell in the way that Vogel is written that he’s, he’s a very formal, you can call
17:56
people by their first name, but like they have been, it’s five, six people in a tiny container for
18:07
a couple of years,
18:08
two years now, almost two years, and they’re going to be gone for at least another six months. And you can’t you can’t bring yourself to call it by the first like, these people are your family, man. And if you can’t get on board with that, what are you doing here? Why did the psychologist let you come? Like it really kind of freaks me out and I was not wild about it. Like I get it. There are people out there that, you know, I had a teacher who if anybody got it wrong and called her, Mrs. Hale, or miss Hale. She’d be like, it’s doctor. You know, like, she worked for that. That’s what you call her. Okay. I totally get it. But her friends didn’t call it Dr. Hill. You know? I don’t know. I just, I just feel like I just
18:50
kind of, uh, you know, got to stick up his butt. A little bit. Yeah, he balances out Mark Watney. You know, like Mark Mark is the fun one and vocal.
18:59
I mean, Tuesday, Tuesday, but I want to know, the other question that I have for people is, would you agree to let go of the tether?
19:08
No. Would you let back go out untethered to get mark, why
19:12
would you do it?
19:12
I honestly don’t know. I feel like Probably not. But I feel like I would probably do exactly what Vogel does, which is say no. And then when back, calls him out and says, I bet in the moment, you’ll change your mind. Vogel just doesn’t answer.
19:28
See. Okay. So my response to this is that I know that I like I have a problem with authority, but I do follow a lot of rules. And so I probably would be like, I’m really uncomfortable. Why are you asking me this? I don’t I don’t want you to say this to me. I wouldn’t know the answer is no. And then in the moment, I would absolutely do it. Are you kidding me? Like I know this about myself that I follow the rules up to and be potentially
19:58
responsible Killing two people. Yes,
20:01
I because I, that’s that’s who I am as a person, I follow the rules up to like a certain point, and then I completely completely throw them out the window.
20:10
And that’s who I am as a person. That’s whenever I get the opportunity to kill two people instead of one. I just jump at it. I you know, that’s just how
20:17
do you think I have all these freckles?
20:19
Yeah, seriously? Okay. All right. Moving. Oh, so then the launch a lot. And yeah, wow, that rocket has some power. It pretty much immediately makes Watney start to space out and kind of lose focus.
20:37
But he does notice
20:38
does notice that something in the back of his mind told him that that flapping was bad. Yeah,
20:43
he’s got the canvas over the nose of the map, because they’re launching him in a convertible. Yes.
20:49
And so you know, which is, by the way, something that I feel like Bruce is going to need to answer for, because they specifically asked if taking the nose off the ship was going to be a problem. And he said, No, because Martian atmosphere is so thin, that as soon as you get higher, as soon as you’re going fast enough for air resistance to matter, you’ll be high enough that there’s basically no air
21:13
is created so much drag. Exactly. That
21:16
ends this is a problem, man. Yeah,
21:18
they I mean, what they, what did they prepare for? For back to go out and get water. I was like,
21:26
he said he could do it as long as they’re going 10 meters per second,
21:30
right. But there was like a gap that they had to meet. Like they they had to get within a certain
21:35
distance. I don’t remember what it was. I forget what it is.
21:38
But by the time by the time Mark gets up there, they have they he is 68 kilometers away from the Hermes as 150 meters or something is like
21:51
for all
21:52
of the Americans out there, that is 42 miles away. And they have 39 minutes and 12 seconds to get there. I’m not going to have to alter their course to Anderson. Yes. Yeah. Which is obviously not a thing.
22:08
So prepare for that.
22:10
I did think it was very cool to see mark, kind of going through, you know, not enough brain blood getting to his brain and starting to get obsessed with his bolt with five sides. There’s a very interesting representation of what it feels like to be almost passing out. There is a, I realized after the fact, there’s an interesting sort of writer trick that is happening right here, which is, on the one hand, the power of this rocket, making Mark Watney blackout, really under underlines the power of what he’s going through and sort of the danger and raising the stakes of like, Oh, they almost killed him just by launching this rocket. But the other thing that it does that is genius, is it takes them out of the picture. Mark, you’re stuck in an empty room, you’re strapped to a chair, you can’t do anything. So we’re just going to make you go unconscious, while our other heroes do their thing. So that you don’t have to explain why mark is just like spending half an hour spitting out ideas on the radio and like, you know, he would not just be sitting there quietly while they worked. So let’s just knock him out.
23:18
Yeah. Well, and because then he can’t do anything like Martinez wants to know why this is happening. Yeah. And he doesn’t have any answers. And it’s because Watney is passed out.
23:30
Yeah. And so as Martinez says, it’s like flying a cow, which is hilarious. Yeah.
23:37
So they decide well, by they, I mean, Louis, and I’m totally taken with this, is they decided that they’re going to use their attitude thrusters to get to mark. And they’re going to blow the nose off of the army. But
23:55
that is not quite yet. Oh, at first, at first, they use the attitude thrusters. And so these, if you’ve seen movies, like you know, gravity, or like Apollo 13, these are the little bursts of air that come out to the different sides of the ship to turn it. They’re just gonna burn all of them in one direction, yeah, to get them moving. And that fixes the intercept range. But you still have the problem with the intercept of velocity. So the idea is, again, that back is going to go out and literally grab mark with his hands like this is they’re not doing a docking procedure here. Yeah, these two spaceships are going to fly past each other. And Beck’s just going to go out and get him. He says that he can do it. As long as it’s moving less than 10 meters per second. They hit all these thrusters to get close enough to him. But having done so they’re now going 42 meters per second. And for those of you from America, that is 94 miles an hour. So imagine that you are standing by the side of a highway and your job is to grab a hold of someone in a passing car and that car is going 95 miles an hour. It’s not gonna happen. It’s a joke. Yeah. And so they start talking about how do we slow down?
25:08
Because the whole thing is that the like he, like Alex said, the attitude adjusters rotate the ship. But they’re, they’re not. They’re not what they say in the book is they’re not made for rotating is exactly what they say. which means that it’s a misleadingly named part. Yeah. If, if they don’t adjust the ship, but whatever. The, what I like here is they’re talking about this. They tell NASA what they’re going to do. And then Annie is like, wait, what did any of that mean? And so we get what Alex and I would refer to as a tele, Donna. Yeah. For anybody who watched the West Wing and then listen to them, listen to the West Wing weekly. They came up with they coined this term, which is pretty funny. But it’s, it’s based on in the show, you’ve got this character who’s a very smart woman, but doesn’t know. She, she’s, she’s essentially like a secretary to one of the main guys is one of the assistants and her name is donnatella.
26:09
Yeah, Donna,
26:10
and she asks the questions that the audience would ask, and then someone explained it to her. And, you know, the she’s not always the person who asked, but she’s usually the person who asks,
26:23
yeah, and she’s, she’s smart. It’s not that she’s dumb. It’s just that she’s new. And so she’s the character who doesn’t know how this thing in government works. So another character can explain it to her. And in the process, the audience learns, yeah, it works.
26:35
And because her name is donnatella, that the hosts on the podcast call it Tella Donna. Yeah. So we’re getting a tele, Donna, but it’s to Annie. And it’s which, by the way,
26:46
I love we cut to we cut from the Hermes and all this stuff happened. And we cut back and the quote from Annie is, whoa, a lot of shit just happened really fast. Explain. Yeah, it’s just like, the most straightforward. What is going on?
27:01
Yeah. And essentially, everything that is happening is they’re dealing with the Hermes, which has ion engines, which are slow and steady. And so essentially, they’re trying to turn this tortoise into a hair.
27:12
Yeah. And you got to move fast with and how do you do that? so slow? Yeah. Of course, Mark comes up with his own plan, because he wakes up. He wants to be Iron Man. He wants to punch a hole in his suit and use the escaping air as a thruster, which is insane, which is totally insane. Crazy. And of course, Lewis tells him No, but it does give her an idea.
27:35
Well, in in pretty much the same breath that he says he wants to be Iron Man. He also tells Mars, Mars, fuck you. Yes. And I love that again. I’m a very sentimental person. So it would be
27:49
it’s a very sentimental person, so fuck you.
27:52
Well, it’s why it’s funny, but there’s a part of me that’s like, but dude, he lived like you want?
27:59
Yeah, Maurice did right. Like your man. Yeah.
28:02
Exactly. So I don’t know. I mean, it was really terrible and traumatizing and Oh, my, all of the awful things. But it’s just kind of it’s funny that we get this fuck you to Mars simultaneously. I’m like, that’s the last thing you’re gonna say to it. Huh?
28:16
Well, and also like, you’re not quite done, man. Yeah, well, but don’t piss off this planet. Still has one more shot not.
28:24
It’s not Mars that would be doing base. So I, I enjoyed that. And then the other thing I enjoy here is we’re watching the crew do what he’s been doing. And they’re figuring out how to handle this new problem on the fly.
28:41
Yes, creative problem solving from someone who isn’t Mark Watney, which is fun.
28:46
So now, Louis is like Wait, wait, let’s not have you puncture a hole in your suit. Let’s breach the hole in the Hermes. They’re gonna
28:58
they’re going to breach the vowel which is the vehicular airlock.
29:01
Yeah, that’s, that’s what it is. Yeah. And I absolutely as a, as a, as a person who’s afraid of space. And who’s not the world’s biggest space guard. I don’t think I understand the full consequences of of breaching this spot. So I, I felt like I did not get as worked up about it as maybe I was supposed to.
29:33
Yeah. So basically, you know, the most important thing in space is air. You know, everything else you can sort of work around, but if you run out of air, you’re gonna die. And the nice thing about physics is that it’s very predictable. And so the idea here is they have a whole ship that is full of air, and if they puncture a hole in it, all that air is going to rush out of the hole. But because of Newton, the air rushing in that direction is going to push the ship in the other direction. And so they’re going really fast. So all they need to do is point their ship in the direction that they’re moving, and then pop a hole in it in in a very specific spot. And it’s going to push the ship backwards, which effectively decelerates it, yeah, but that means that all their air is going to get sucked out. And that is just a really scary thing to do. And there’s actually a moment it’s kind of dark moment. But it’s interesting, in which Martinez asks, should we go get in our spacesuits like, just in case the door doesn’t hold and the air in our, you know, on the bridge gets sucked out to and Louis’s responses don’t bother, because if the, if the door doesn’t hold, we’re gonna get sucked out of this spaceship at the speed of sound. And we’re all dead. So just don’t even bother.
30:56
And there’s, there’s something about this moment where they’re, they are brainstorming together. And they’re figuring out this problem. And lewis is such as being such a risk taker. And I think there’s something fascinating about her as a leader, because I was frustrated with her at the beginning of the book, staying out there so long looking for Mark, when she had this whole team that she had to be taken care of. And their lives were on the line, and she wasn’t coming back. Yeah. And that was really frustrating. But then here, she’s sitting there, and then there’s all of this guilt that we’re dealing with, which is reasonable, and I wasn’t frustrated by but it’s hard to watch. But then she does this, where she’s like, Alright, Johansen, you’re going to be the one who lives you’re gonna eat us if necessary. Okay, now, we’re going to blow this hole in the Hermes. And I’m just sitting here going, big moves, lady, holy shit, like, Whoa, I wouldn’t. She’s, she’s the worst kind of person to gamble with, because she’s gonna be the person who has probably been counting cards. And maybe she doesn’t know how she actually probably hasn’t because her morality, her ethics would point her in a very specific way. And she’d be like, No, I’m not going to do that. Even though I know how. And she would just like, I think she’s so smart that you wouldn’t want to go up against her. And that’s what go all in. Yeah. And I think it’s fascinating to watch her do it because it’s not even though she did stay out there for mark for so long. I thought it was for sentimental reasons. I didn’t realize it’s because she’s such a risk taker. And it’s what makes her a good leader. Is she she balances those two things really well.
32:46
Well, I’m just the the absolute focus in a crisis like Yeah, man, you know, listen, rich personnel, maybe a steely eyed missile man. But commander lewis is the steely eyed missile woman like holy crap, that is
33:01
I want to see her.
33:03
like, Whoa, I am, by the way, Jessica chasteen friggin perfect casting for next when we get to this in next week, she everybody in this movie is perfectly cast, but man, she is perfectly cast, she’s, that’s true. So they’re gonna do this, they calculate it out. And interestingly, you know, this is one of those areas where science is a little more forgiving than people often realize, it doesn’t actually matter how big a hole they blow in the towel, because if it’s a big hole, all the air is going to shoot out at once. And it’s going to be a massive kick to the chest, and then they’re done. If it’s a small hole, it will just leak out for a while. But it’ll still have the same effect. It’ll just be drawn out, you know, yeah, it’s just a nice little bit of wiggle room. But the effect is, it’s going to drop them from 42 meters per second down to 13. And back immediately says, I can work with that, I can do that. But again, just to give everybody a sense of what that means, picture yourself on that highway, that car that you’re going to try to grab somebody, you’re going to grab on to that car effectively. That car just went from going 94 miles an hour, which would kill you to 29 miles an hour. He’s jumping onto a car going 29 miles an hour. And that is I would not want to be in charge of grabbing onto a ship flying by at 29 miles an hour.
34:23
And I like it. I don’t like it at all. I I do like want nice response to this plan. It is so it is so perfectly written, which is he objects because he and he makes a joke out of it. He says he wants all the memorials to himself because he’s afraid of everybody dying for him. And that seems stupid. And so I I don’t want you to share the memorials with me I want to offer myself and I just it’s funny. And then
34:53
her was irreverent and also sweet
34:55
and then her response is even better because she’s like I I’m looking at the shoulder patch. And it turns out, I’m the commander. So like, Fuck you, I would do what I want, you know, and it’s just like, we get a little bit of her humor because she doesn’t seem to have a very big sense of humor, which is fine. Her humor
35:14
only shows up in the form of slapping him down and like, asserting her command. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Andy Weir has said in interviews that the character of Mark Watney was very easy to write because he’s the same kind of snarky as Andy Weir himself. So I think this is a little bit of Andy weird snark coming out of Louis’s mouth for once. Yeah, that is such a great exchange. And in the meantime, Annie is watching from Earth, and hears that they’re going to blow a hole in the ship, and her immediate response profane as hell because it’s Annie and we love her is, fuck me, rah, I’d better get to the press room. And she’s like, Is there anything else I need to know? And everybody’s just like, Oh, my God. Oh, my God. And she’s like, sounds good.
36:01
Yeah. And that’s one of those great moments where it’s like, Annie is not going to get down about this. She’s like, Oh, shit, okay, and then deals with it. And it’s like,
36:11
she’s the only one on earth who can do something. All the scientists are unable to act. But Annie, can this is her moment to act.
36:20
Yeah, we get to see her be at the top of her game. Same with Louis. So we’re getting to see some badass women doing badass work.
36:29
Everybody gets there Here a moment.
36:31
It’s so great. Well, not everybody. No, no. We’ll get there. Okay. So now we’re on on to how are they going to blow a hole. And
36:45
so they’re going to make a bomb. And the bomb that they’re gonna make is with sugar. Because Vogel is a chemist, and he knows how to make stuff blow up. In fact, as the book talks about, a lot of his training revolved in learning how to make things not blow up. So yeah, basically, he takes sugar, and he puts it into a pure oxygen environment, he takes an oxygen tank and fills up a particularly strong beaker. And it needs to be strong, because if you just put it in a weak beaker, it’ll just, you know, just kind of fizzle. But if you put it in a really strong one, the idea is that the explosion will build and build and build and build and build until it finally cracks the container. And then that concussive force is what’s going to blow the hole in the ship, right?
37:33
I like that. He’s talking to himself in German. And he says xeric fairly, which means very dangerous. And just like,
37:45
just sitting there making a bomb going, this is bad idea. This is a bad idea. This is bad.
37:49
And I just I just like that. There’s he walks you through how sugar makes a bomb.
37:59
So
38:00
you’re not gonna try and you want to tell us?
38:03
Okay. Oh, yeah. So the idea behind combustion just sort of in general, this is what happens to the sugar is the same thing that happens to gunpowder when you fire a gun. That is that a solid becomes a gas very quickly, that you burn a thing and that becomes a gas and all of a sudden the gas wants to expand where the solid was perfectly happy to just sit where it is. And so you burn it, it becomes a gas and then it immediately wants to expand really fast, and that creates force. And so in a gun, you use a spark to set off gunpowder. It. gasifiers, basically it becomes a gas and that pushes the bullet out of the barrel because the bullet has to get out of the way of this expanding gas. Right. Same thing happens with cannons. Interestingly, the same thing happens with Meteor impacts. When the meteor hits the ground. The Rock vaporizes, which is why fun little fact here, which is why Meteor craters are always circular. You never have a meteor crater that is like at an angle as if the meteor came in and hit you know, like if you throw a rock into the sand it’ll be sort of a an oval shape. Meteor craters never are because it’s not the rock hitting the ground that makes the hole it’s that the rock hits the ground and then the ground explodes it the rock acts like gunpowder guys,
39:26
okay, so you might sometime look up and be like wow, Alex is really the one who does all of the explanation of science on this on this here show. And it’s because he’s really good teacher, and I enjoy it. So I appreciate that. I just I just wanted to put it out there. So all of you know that I actually request this Yeah, we’ll be going on hikes and like these beautiful places where like in New Zealand I’m like okay, so explain the difference between velocity and speed. Again, and Then he explains it to me for the third time and completely different vocabulary than the last two times. So that maybe I retain all of it. So he is a he’s a great teacher. And I asked for this. Okay, so I asked for it on your behalf to sorry, if you don’t like it,
40:14
I promise I’m not a blowhard. It’s that she requested that I talk
40:17
about Sure, I really
40:18
do. But yeah, so you know, obviously, one of the important ingredients in combustion is oxygen. And so he actually talks about how the spark that burns the sugar, if it had happened on Earth, it would have like, sizzled a little bit, it wouldn’t do much. But Vogel is putting this in an all oxygen environment. And interestingly there and zero G, which means this is not a pile of sugar, like you can picture in a bowl. This is a cloud of sugar, it is filling the jar and floating in zero G, which means that there’s an incredible amount of surface area, every single grain of sugar is exposed to oxygen on all sides. And so when that fire starts, it spreads incredibly quickly through that space, and all the sugar burns up, which creates this concussive force as the gas tries to expand, but it’s contained by the beaker. And it grows and grows and grows as more of the sugar burns and burns and burns in a fraction of a second until finally, there’s enough pressure that it cracks the beaker. And now the pressure differential between the air that was outside the beaker and the gases inside the beaker are so great that it creates effectively a shockwave expanding out from the beaker and that’s what’s going to tear a hole in the wall. Yeah, fast. And so that’s Vogel’s sugar bomb.
41:42
All right. Well, that’s interesting.
41:45
They do it and they slow down.
41:49
Yeah, I’m, my mind is I’m reeling at the moment. Also, I’m reeling because for the first time ever imana economist and I don’t agree on something. Well, I know, we all thought that we were just the same person. I’m over here like typing, and I’m pretending I live in Australia. I’d rather live in Australia anyway. Because she says, hell no. And astronaut and the Hermes is worth two in the vacuum of space. I hear you. I hear you, girl. I hear you. I also wouldn’t stop me. Yeah. But she also says that it, it’s hard because, yeah, she sees where he’s coming from. So anyway, back to Okay, we’ve done the sugar bomb. And he keeps talking about how dangerous it is. And at one point back says, this has been kind of a weird day.
42:39
And I was like, Dude, that is
42:42
the most that’s the biggest understatement of this entire book
42:45
that like if this had really happened, and this was all on sort of the news feeds that would be the memorable moment. Yeah, it would be the moment that everybody turns into stuff on kind of a weird day.
42:55
And then we find out that they have 28 seconds to intercept. They’re cutting it so close. It’s like as much as like, yeah. To to cut it that close. And have the juxtaposition. Ben be it’s been kind of a weird day. Yeah, it’s like it all happens on the same page. And it’s just like, you’re reeling from it, which is just I don’t know, I liked that.
43:23
That, that that happened so know what I like, I like soflo trash panda is take on the synthesis, which is he explains the science, and you explain the humanity and the Snark. Which Yeah, yeah. Oh my god, it’s
43:35
our relationship.
43:39
Oh, it’s it’s science and entertainment. It’s It’s It’s the the nerd in the snarky one
43:45
yellow fo gets it. Yeah, exactly. But I love that name. I can’t get over it slip up.
43:52
So yeah, they they’re able to slow down and then back goes out to get Watney. He goes to jump on that 30 mile an hour car.
44:00
Okay. But before we even get there, you guys, I don’t know why I have this written down. Something must have happened in Oh, they go they we go back to earth, where they’re all just sitting there and like Mission Control, and everybody is helpless. There is literally nothing they can do. And even if they had an idea of like, Oh, don’t blow the thing, do this instead that they can’t because because of that, that time difference. The light delay, the light delay.
44:34
So I mean, really, at this point, it’s over, but they’re still hearing about it. But the events have already.
44:39
This is where I wrote the note, Alex, okay, this is what we’re talking about. Okay. So let’s say the whole world has to feel like this. And can you imagine the whole world feeling the same emotion like seriously, take a moment to think of the billions of people we have on this planet, right? And not everybody has stopped for this. That’s just not the way the gets to work. There are too many people who still have a Starbucks shift, or something else.
45:06
Don’t care about the guy stuck on Mars because they have no soul,
45:09
or they have bigger problems to deal with. Okay? No, we’re going with the humanity here. Listen, I just can’t imagine having that many humans, at the same time, having pretty much the exact same reactions, because you’ve got the helplessness, you’ve got the anticipation, you’ve got fear that’s mingled in there, you’ve got this stress, because like, I imagine that a lot of people The first thing, like when they find out whether or not Mark gets saved or not, they’re going to cry, because they have all of this pent up emotion, right? So one way or the other, there’s going to be crying and cheering or crying and dropping to the floor, cuz you’re sad, like whatever it is, but you’ve got all of this built up, and it’s gonna look the exact same for almost everybody. And I can’t, I literally can’t think of a time in history where that would have happened. Because we’re in a, we’re in a time where communication is so much more accessible.
46:12
There are a few candidates when we landed on the moon was definitely a global event. Yes, I but I think this would be even more so. because like you said, more people have like, televisions at this, you know, in the 30s when this is set, and of course, they’re just more people. But yeah, I think there are a few candidates landing on the moon, the end of World War Two, I think was probably celebrated pretty much in every corner of the world. Yeah.
46:35
But for people getting that that information at the same time.
46:39
Yeah. I mean, by radio, like a lot of people would have, but there were still plenty of towns that were, you know, in the middle of nowhere, Australia that didn’t have a radio. Yeah,
46:48
I guess. I guess that’s just what it kind of keeps coming back to for me is, and we’ve just got so many more people in the world. Yeah, that
46:56
is, this definitely would be an unprecedented event.
46:59
And I just like I don’t know, I, I tend to, like, what are aliens gonna think of us when they encounter us? Right? And can you imagine encountering humans in this moment being like,
47:11
oh, like they’re a hive mind?
47:14
Exactly. I don’t know. So this is where my brain goes. I it’s a little weird. But anyway, I I was I had I had a really big moments of like, I can’t imagine that many people feeling that many that that one emotion together. So that was really cool. So now we have back going out. And Vogel is fascinating because he is pulling on or he’s, he’s breaking on the tether. And he has to do gut feel physics, quote, unquote, which is terrifying. So
47:51
bet goes out to get Mark Watney and then they come back. But the thing that is that you have to keep in mind here is they’re still not like Mark Watney, his ship is still moving relative to the Hermes. So there is a version of this where Beck could get to Mark Watney touch Mark Watney and then get yanked away like a fish on a line. Because the Hermes is just going by, and he didn’t have time to actually grab one. And so Beck has to work fast, get him self attached to Mark Watney. But then even when they exit Mark ship, and he’s got him on the line, there is still the risk that if they do if they if they stay out there so long that the line snaps taut, it could rip the line out, it could they could break the line. And now Watney and back are stranded in space as the Hermes goes sailing off into the distance. And so Vogel has to reel them in, he has to start accelerating them back up to the Hermes of speed, but not so fast that he will break the tether, but also not so slowly that they will run out of tether before he gets them up to speed. Because
49:02
if they if, if there’s too much force on the tether, then the that it would break free from back suit, but if there’s too little pressure on or force on the tether, then they jerk to a stop, and it rips from a suit. So the same thing happens essentially either way, which is,
49:23
but not good. But it’s the needle because anytime he pulls him with his gut feel physics with his gut feel physics terrifying.
49:30
Yeah. And they pull him in, and they’ve got mark, and Wow, what a moment when she radios back to earth and says six crew members safely aboard. Ah, that is such a great
49:45
and then we jump straight into the NASA rep getting a hug at the Watney household. Yeah, and I was just like, yeah, the
49:52
parents pulled him in for Uh huh.
49:53
I was just like, oh my god, how often do you think that the reps get like to be there for the good news? Yeah.
50:01
This big of good news like this is this is a career like highlight,
50:07
you know, and story to tell later for sure. Yeah.
50:12
I also couldn’t believe that Teddy didn’t make a red folder. He only made one folder, which means that he, he gives he has one speech prepared for this moment, and it’s only if something goes right which I’m sitting here going, dude. Yeah, there wasn’t a great chance way to tempt fate, man. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
50:39
Yeah, they’re there is a great moment. So this whole sequence we’ll get into it more next week when we’re talking about the movie. But this whole sequence does have several significant changes. I haven’t done the math. But my expectation is that this sequence probably changes the most from book to film. And no spoilers. But there are some big changes. But I did have to laugh, because there’s one moment that is a little present by Andy Weir, which is he talks about how when Mark gets pulled into the airlock, it’s just having back and back immediately whisks him to the hospital, which is really just Beck’s quarters. And he mentioned that if this had been a movie, everybody would have met me in the airlock. And there would have been high fives all around and all that kind of stuff. And lo and behold, a few years later, they turn the Martian into the movie. And everybody meets him in the airlock. And there are high fives all around. And I just have to believe that the filmmakers on set that day were like, Well, I mean, he told us what to do.
51:42
Yes, yeah. Yeah.
51:44
And then, yeah, we pretty quickly move into wrapping it up mode.
51:50
Yeah, we
51:53
mark talks about why the earth, the Terran community, would put millions of dollars into saving him. And he says something he’s this, he says, they did it because every human being has a basic instinct to help each other out. It might not seem that way sometimes, but it’s true. And I was like, can you we can you be real and our mind to the world of that right now? Because, like he said, it might not seem that way. But it’s true. And I I basically am the person who I believe that I believe that people like to help. We are Lucy and I are both deep optimists. Yes. And it can be frustrating and painful when the world doesn’t live up to our standards. But I really liked that he put that in there. Especially like, it follows him saying, in space, no one can hear you scream like a little girl as he’s being pulled along.
52:52
There’s also a great moment where he’s talking about mission day versus mission soul and the different time on earth versus on Mars. And then he says, but it doesn’t matter what time it is on Mars, because I’m not there.
53:06
Yeah. And then, you know, really one of the last things that we find out is he stinks to high heaven, and no one in a long time in a long time. Which can you imagine how itchy he has probably been. And he hasn’t said a word about it. The other thing that hasn’t been said is they don’t talk about his weight. And the book and movie. Yeah, his weight. His his weight loss is very, very apparent. And I’m guessing it’s because it’s, you can communicate smelt pretty easily at a book. Yeah, but not in a movie. So it’s just, it’s it’s another indicator of how much he’s gone through. But yeah, we never we never touch on his weight loss, which is interesting.
53:54
That is interesting.
53:55
And then he like, he’s essentially like, whatever is the happiest day of my life. And the end, the end, and I was just like, like, Oh, fuck, we
54:07
couldn’t use a little more data. And
54:09
yeah, I I found this very frustrating. And I discovered that people who listen to the audio book got something that people who read the book did not. And so I’m I would now say, anybody who wants to read this book should do the audio book,
54:30
because there’s an extra chapter at the end of the audio book that has sort of like not exactly short stories, but they are moments from the world of the Martian. So for example, you get the moment that Mark Watney learned he was going to be on the Aries three crew. And you get mark and Martinez talking in a bar and like you get these moments from the from the larger world which is cool.
54:54
Yeah. And for me, we have been through so much With this guy that I wanted to rebel in his safety, we had so much of lack of safety. Yeah, that I needed to sit in that longer I needed to see more reactions, I needed to know how more people were feeling. And guess what? I can guess what those feelings are. But I want to be told because I need it as an audience member. And I didn’t get that. And so for me, there was a letdown because it was like, have you saved by? No, okay. Well, and
55:33
by the way, he’s not actually saved yet. Like, as they specifically say, in this book, space travel is actually more dangerous than being stuck on Mars. And you know, the the tagline of the movie is bring him home. And he’s not home yet. Like, you’ve still got several months of spaceflight to get through in a ship that was already deteriorating a little bit before they got back to Mars.
55:58
And like, we don’t have to go through all the details of it. But also his body has been running on multivitamins and potatoes.
56:05
Yeah, what is it? What what is happening nutritionally? And
56:08
what is the cause for this? Because we all know that, like, you come across a starving anything, and you can’t just give them the food you would normally eat. Like, that’s not how it works.
56:18
Very, very dark. But interesting stories from World War Two of feeding Holocaust survivors, and it killed them because you have to ease them back into food. You can’t go straight from starving to not
56:30
Yeah. And so like, I don’t know, there’s just all of these questions. I wanted, I wanted him to see, I wanted to see him see Earth. Yeah, if not step foot on Earth. I just, I felt like, there was something missing. I didn’t get to have the ease. We got the joy of saved, but not the ease of safety. Well, and especially, you know,
56:55
there’s also from the scientific standpoint, you know, one of the things that I was thinking in this chapter is I want more stuff in space from this author, you know, like, I want more stuff, the the space dynamics, the intercept, velocity and intercept range, and all that kind of stuff was fun. And I would be very interested to hear what was Mark’s reintroduction to Earth gravity, like he’s been in space and on Martian gravity for a couple of years. That would be an interesting retraining regimen. Like he probably had a hard time breathing when he landed.
57:31
And the other thing is like, they have a hole in the ship, and they use a lot of fuel to do this last. Yeah. nuber.
57:38
So Martinez probably had a pretty cool time, like bringing them into Earth orbit Exactly. Because they talk about
57:45
that in the chapter of like, Okay, if we do this, how much of our field do we use? And how much do we need? And now they’re going in the wrong direction? Yeah. So how do you deal with that, like, to me, there’s so much more of the story. That just I needed an epilogue. Yeah. And there wasn’t an epilogue, and I’m mad about it.
58:10
Well, aside from the lack of epilogue, I think this is the point where we sum up the Martian. What are we? What do you think of the tale of Mark Watney?
58:21
I mean, I you guys, I fucking loved it. I don’t know if you could tell. But I loved it here. Big, big fan. I think my biggest problem literally was not enough. Not enough. So I am here for it. I want more of this type of literature. But I want to see it outside of just like science fiction. I want to see it you know, Okay, I get it. I get that there’s like alternative history where you get a lot of actual real history and things like that. But I want to in like my fantasy, I want it in my mystery novels. I just want?
58:58
Well, I think I think heavy read having it in your fantasy as an example of why Lord of the Rings is so popular, because that is a fantasy story with this kind of aesthetic, where the languages and the history and the architecture and like everything has this incredible attention to realism and detail.
59:13
Yes, but the differences into it. I think I think there’s a difference there though. Okay, which is, if you don’t know much about languages, Tolkien isn’t explaining languages to you. That is true. And the Martian is explaining science and making science cool. The thing about, you know, learning the Elven language that Tolkien makes up, is that you because you are a fan have decided it’s cool. And so you’re going to go learn this.
59:39
And Tolkien curricular.
59:40
Yeah. Whereas Tolkien isn’t token didn’t make it cool. He was just like, I think this is cool. So I’m going to put this in my story. Where’s Andy? We’re made science. Cool, right. Like, you know, I think that’s the difference.
59:53
Yeah, the educational quality, that sort of showing you how it works, not just showing you that it works,
59:59
and Not making you not making the audience feel stupid. Making it understandable. Even if you feel like speed reading it, you’re like, I probably could have understood that. I just didn’t feel like it. Right? I had moments like that. But anytime I slowed down, I was like, Oh, no, I get this. And so you’re reminding the audience that they’re smart, you’re teaching them something new, how much they’ll retain? Who knows, I now know that LCDs have water. You know, there’s water, there’s like, right in the back. Yeah, I can’t operate in a vacuum. Like, I’m not gonna retain a bunch, but I retained a little bit, I know that I can learn this, which is not something I learned at school. Like, there’s just something about bringing, like elevating your audience. And I don’t think a lot of artists do that. They talk to the people that they think are already at their level, whatever that level might be, or they play to the lowest common denominator, that’s something that people talk about a lot. And entertainment is playing to the lowest common denominator, which is ironically, a mathematical term.
1:01:10
lowest common denominator being you know, the the number that is a multiple of both of these things, the lowest number and you know, you can make a good argument that the Martian is a is a shining example of playing to the highest common denominator, which is to say, he’s not aiming it at experts. He’s aiming it at what everyone can understand. He’s just aiming it at the top of what everyone can understand this is the most
1:01:35
you can understand stuff
1:01:36
that anybody could pick up. Yeah. And I just love that doctrine. And that is just to bring it full circle, the aesthetic of the synthesis. That is what we are talking about on this show is using science using history using realism and accuracy in entertainment, not educational content, in genuine entertainment, but aiming it at the highest common denominator. And
1:02:02
you know, not everybody has to be the Marshal. Not everybody has to be like, I’m only going to do one thing that isn’t real. You can you can zoom for fantasy in this. Yeah, you can have a lot more breathing room than the Martian than Andy. We’re allowed the Martian to have. That’s okay, too. But the amount of realism that he injected into it makes it special.
1:02:24
Yeah. What about you enhances the fiction? No, I, I feel exactly the same way. I mean, I’ve said before that the Martian was a big inspiration on terrigenesis. And, I mean, you know, the Martian, along with other things helped inspire terrigenesis, the success of terrigenesis helped us found the edge works, entertainment. And now this is the doctrine.
1:02:46
Our branding is essentially what we just explained exactly
1:02:50
what this company does, yeah. And so we, I mean, that’s what I’m dedicating my life to do, you know, like this is, this is not just something I enjoy, this is something that I’m, I’m trying to emulate in everything I do to one degree or another. And I just
1:03:06
Alex, it, like Alex and I had this interesting conversation last night where I learned like, I’ve always known this, but I had never really pinpointed it. Just how passionate he is about authenticity. Like I’ve always known that this is he loves this stuff, right? But you know how you have that one thing that you would love to just bring to the world? This is this is the passion thing. for him. It’s authenticity. And I I think I didn’t understand how deep it went until we were talking about it last night. And so you know, here we are bringing Alex’s passion to the world.
1:03:46
Oh, thank you. It is and and specifically the thing that I’m the most passionate about is something that Andy, we’re just absolutely males. And the Martian is often the example that I use when I tell people about this is you know, on one end of the scale, there is educational content. There is textbooks there, you know, the things that you see in a classroom, and a step up from that is edutainment, you can hear this term edutainment where, you know, it’s meant to be kind of fun, but it’s also meant to be educational. This would be something like the History Channel, where it’s not just nonfiction. It’s not a documentary that like dramatize certain scenes, but it’s still meant to be educational. And I don’t really like edutainment. What I like, is authentic entertainment. I like things like the Martian. I like things where the entertainment is informed by the science. And it’s not about teaching you, but you learn along the way anyway. I mean, how many people have learned things about World War Two from watching movies like Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan, but nobody would ever call Saving Private Ryan, an educational film? Like, it’s probably been shown in a lot of classroom Yes, but it’s not an edgy occasional film it is entertainment. And it is filled with authenticity
1:05:05
thing. Glory was the one that we watched. Is that the name of it?
1:05:07
Yeah. Glory from serving the Civil War.
1:05:09
Yeah, I think I had three different teachers. So that to me between middle school and high school, exactly.
1:05:14
The Assassin’s Creed video games are another example. People love the historical authenticity. But nobody would ever describe Assassin’s Creed as an educational game.
1:05:23
So yeah, this leads me to, I want to make a request of everybody. Tell us what you want, like what you want to see. And don’t feel like it has to be American entertainment. Yes, you know, if if you’re not if you don’t live here, and what you’re seeing on TV, like if you’re seeing an episode of something or a movie, or you’ve got a book that you want to put out there, please let us know. Like, find us on Twitter. Find us on Instagram.
1:05:52
We are at edge works entertainment, basically everywhere. Yeah.
1:05:55
And feel free to reach out to me and Alex as well on any of these crazy social media sites.
1:06:01
I am at Alex for the win.
1:06:04
I think mine is just Lacey Hannon.
1:06:06
Yep, super boring.
1:06:07
But you know,
1:06:09
yeah, we have a we have a list of things that we want to do next next week, we’re going to be doing the Martian the feature film, but we have a list of things that we’re going to do after that. You know, things like the expanse, things like first man, things like Interstellar, we have these stories that imbue that put real science and real history into the entertainment. But we want more. So if you have a movie or book a television episode, yeah, it’s really good. And
1:06:34
the thing is, is get specific if you if there’s something that you really want people to see, like, if you know if it’s defying gravity, like tell us which episode because I don’t love defying gravity. And I only want to watch one of the episodes. If I have to. It will be one. But yeah, he’ll watch all 11 of them whenever. I think it’s 11 it’s whatever it was canceled. But you know, good
1:07:03
smug about this show being canceled,
1:07:04
oh, I don’t want anyone to
1:07:06
lose their jobs. But no, seriously, we are. We are looking for suggestions, movies, books, television shows. If you are watching us live, feel free to put it in the chat. If you’re watching this after the fact on YouTube, posted in the comments. We check them out all the time and respond. And
1:07:21
oh, last thing my mom wants everybody to know, that they need I know that they need to go watch the most I think the most recent episode of PBS, PBS is show Nova, which has been on the air for ever 1000 years, and they just did an episode on perseverance. And she said it made her cry. And you get to see. So you get to see like apparently a super multicultural, awesome group of scientists who made this happen. And she said it was super inspiring. So if you need to see something that is not meant to be as entertainment, go watch it. And it apparently if you have amazon prime, you can access it. So cool. My little tip for the week.
1:08:15
Well, that is it for the Martian by Andy Weir. Next week when we check out the feature film, yeah. And then we’ll be going on from there.