#10 "AMAZE! AMAZE! AMAZE!" BIG RASCALS discuss PROJECT HAIL MARY!

In Episode 10 of Big Rascals, we discuss our TOP 5 Aliens, Geoff's Tropical HOT TAKE, and the book and movie PROJECT HAIL MARY by Andy Weir. We have also continued our new segment BIG RASCALS WRITING CHALLENGE where we all write a short story about an Alien Encounter. Check it out on YouTube. There will be SPOILERS!!! So go read the book and watch the movie, then make your way back here and give us a listen!

Project Hail Mary is a 2021 hard sci-fi novel by Andy Weir (adapted into a 2026 film) about Ryland Grace, a science teacher who wakes from a coma with amnesia on a spaceship. He discovers he is on a last-ditch mission to save Earth from "Astrophage," a microorganism eating the sun.

We want Big Rascals to be a community or a "CLUB." So don't hesitate to Subscribe, Like, and leave a Comment or suggestion on what next book you would like us to discuss and we will do out best to accommodate. Find us on Social Media for extra content. We are also looking for Sponsors or Donors. We can be reached at bigrascals.podcast@gmail.com. We are extremely grateful for any and all support! Thank you!

For our next book to read as a club, Geoff has decided on "Red Wall" by Brian Jacques.

Keep READING, keep WRITING, and stay RASCALLY my friends!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Thank you, boys. Thank you, boys. I got it. I figured it out.

SPEAKER_01 0:15

I figured it out.

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Okay. Ready? Ready, ready. Get set. Go. Welcome to Big Rascals, where we may be grown-ups, but we will never stop being rascals. We are a boys' book club, not just for the boys, but all those who enjoy reading, writing, comedy, and entertainment. Our purpose is to have fun, discovering new worlds, making friends, and finding a cure for dyslexia. Oh yeah. What's up, boys? Hey boys.

SPEAKER_04 0:49

Doing good.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Yeah. Welcome back. Um, let's introduce ourselves once again. For those that are new to the to the podcast, I am Greg. I'm Jeff. And I'm the only one who doesn't start with a G. I'm Derek. Yeah. For those of you don't know, Jeff's name is spelled with a G. Joff. He's the weird Jeff. Joffrey. Jeff. Joffrey.

SPEAKER_01 1:17

Joffrey.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

Joff.

SPEAKER_04 1:19

Yes. English.

SPEAKER_03 1:23

Oh yeah. Proper. I'm a proper boy. Yeah, a proper knotty boy. Proper knotty boy. Okay, we're getting out of here.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

You guys haven't even seen that movie.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

Yeah, okay. Let's not gentlemen. Let's not get to. We're just starting. We need to digress.

SPEAKER_00 1:42

Wait, do you digress or we digress? Oh man, I do say the digital. Oh there, you want to shut that door? Oh yeah, we gotta shut the lights. Oh man.

SPEAKER_01 1:55

This is our first day here at Big Rascals HQ.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

I lost my shoe. Wait, I'll be back.

SPEAKER_01 2:03

Okay, do we need to start over? Should we start over? Keep it rolling. Keep it live. Yeah, we'll do it live.

unknown 2:16

We'll do it live.

SPEAKER_01 2:19

Yeah, should we start over? No, I can edit it. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 2:26

Which I probably won't.

SPEAKER_04 2:27

It's gonna edit in it.

SPEAKER_00 2:29

Wait, did you did anybody pause it? I didn't recording? Nobody touched it.

SPEAKER_02 2:36

Isn't it recording?

SPEAKER_00 2:37

Yeah. No, I don't think so.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

The timer's still gone.

SPEAKER_00 2:42

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 2:42

Yeah. Sorry first.

SPEAKER_00 2:45

First day, first day then. Bear with us. Mm-hmm. Alright, well, let's get back on topic. Let's do our top five. Yep.

SPEAKER_03 2:55

This episode's top five is top five aliens from movies and shows. Yeah. Yeah. Would you guys like me to start this off?

SPEAKER_00 3:04

Yeah. Since uh top five, why don't you start us off, man?

SPEAKER_03 3:09

Yep. The only criteria for this was that for it to be an alien had to either come originate from outer space or be from another planet. It could not be from Earth. So, my top five, I want to start with the honorable mention. I got two of them. It's Boga, the parrot iguana that Obi-Wan rides on Utapa. Okay. That you heard at work.

SPEAKER_00 3:32

See, now you're already bringing up a topic of debate, Derek.

SPEAKER_03 3:37

Oh, what's that? Art. It's an alien species.

SPEAKER_00 3:42

Alright.

SPEAKER_03 3:43

I'm not gonna get into all the Star Wars. That's why it's an honorable mention because it's not as intelligent as we are.

SPEAKER_00 3:50

Yeah. No, I'm talking about like Star Wars. Do they count as aliens? Like everyone from Star Wars?

SPEAKER_03 3:56

No, well, I no. There's a galaxy far away. All the humans are from different planets as well, but no, this is why it's an honorable mention. Okay. Yeah, well. So chill. Well, this one's not too bad, then it doesn't break as many molds. My second honorable mention is Lieutenant uh Kirk. Oh, shoot, what's his name? Zach Branagan's lieutenant. Oh, it's like Kip. Kip. That's right. Kip Croaker. I don't know what it is about that green little alien.

SPEAKER_04 4:32

Chmarmu.

SPEAKER_03 4:33

I I love his just self-loathing, gloomy countenance.

SPEAKER_04 4:38

Yeah, just if we do that, the ship will crash. No, your ship will crash.

SPEAKER_03 4:47

Your ship will crash. So those are my honorable mentions, but number five, get ready to roll your eyes, gentlemen. It's Drago from Dragonheart 3, The Sorcerer's Curse. Why? Because the dragon comes from a meteorite in outer space. Therefore, making him an alien. There's a third dragonheart? Dude, there's like, I think five. None of them are as good as the first one. Yeah. Just watch the first one. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:15

But Drago. A dragon. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 5:19

Of course. Space dragon.

SPEAKER_03 5:21

A space dragon.

SPEAKER_00 5:22

If there's a dragon alien, it's gotta be in Dirk's top five. Yep.

SPEAKER_03 5:26

Oh, yeah. And number four, Deoxys from the Pokemon franchise. Came from outer space. His first debut for me was in his movie Destiny Deoxys. Probably, I probably liked him because it really showed how beast of Pokemon Rayquaza was. Also a dragon. We get a beautiful scene of the point blank Hyper B where Rayquaza just did not give a crap and just blasted Deoxys. But Deoxys kind of got him back at the end of the film. But you should digress. Yeah, but I digress there. Number three, the Xenomorph from the Alien franchise. Now we're getting into the classics. Oh, dang. I love the Xenomorph, just what a design and what a movie that movie is and how horrifying it is. Oh my gosh. Oh, I love the xenomorph. The xenomorph is awesome.

SPEAKER_04 6:24

Pretty wild. Yeah. Definitely would not want to be in a dark room with one of those. Oh no. I would not want to be in a lit room with one of those.

SPEAKER_03 6:35

Yeah, the claustrophobic spaceship galley. Oh man. And number two for me is The Predator from Predator. I can't remember the actual name of the race, but by golly, it is such a cool area.

SPEAKER_04 6:52

I can't remember it either. Yeah, AVP. Fun movie. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:57

I never saw that actually. Terrible movie, but actually, oh yeah. Side note that features both Predator and Alien. Have you ever seen the fan-made film on YouTube? It's seven minutes, Batman Dead End.

SPEAKER_04 7:08

No.

SPEAKER_03 7:09

Where you get to see Batman fight at a xenomorph and the predator in a dark alley. It is fantastic for a fan-made film. I suggest you look it up. I love it. Alright. The guy who's playing Batman is definitely out of shape. So don't expect too much. And then number one, once again. He's more like Batman and Piderman. Kind of, yeah. Yeah, kind of. Okay, my number one, get ready to roll your eyes again, gentlemen. But hailing from the planet Cybertron. It is Megatron from Beast Wars.

SPEAKER_00 7:44

Megatron.

SPEAKER_03 7:45

Yeah, Megatron from Beast Wars. T-Rex. T-Rex, and then becomes a dragon by season three. Voiced by the wonderful David Kane and having the best one-liners of such a he's my favorite megalomaniac. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 8:02

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_04 8:04

Awesome disses. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 8:07

But that's my top five aliens. Righteous.

SPEAKER_00 8:12

You miss some, Derek.

SPEAKER_03 8:13

Oh wait a second. Wait a second. Take off. Let's take off my let's take off my number two and replace him with Rocky.

unknown 8:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:24

Yeah, there you go. Yeah. Gotta put Rocky on there.

SPEAKER_03 8:27

Yeah, you gotta put Rocky on there. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:30

He's a true bro. Jeff, why don't you go because you got the hot take? Wait, what about your top five aliens? No, no, no. You go top five. Because then we'll give them a break of talking. Oh, oh, yeah. I'll be last on the top five.

SPEAKER_04 8:44

So you know how many I had in my list for scores, right? Well, this is my list of aliens that I was struggling to do. You can only get from two honorable mentions. I'm just gonna list, I'm doing it, list a general group. Okay, aliens from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Just I mean, the books specifically, but the movie, of course, has some fantastic ones like Martin, the Marvin the robot. Um I think robots count as aliens? He's somewhat sentient. Or is he a piece of alien technology? Yeah. As um oh gosh, now I can't remember his name. Um Zafob Beetle Brocks. Yep. Love Zayfob. Just fantastic. So that whole that whole series just has the best aliens. But um I'm gonna go, of course, with um the Invader Zim from the Invader Zim series. Have either of you watched that? No, no, it it's one of those that is annoying just because it involves a lot of screaming and yelling. So like Dragon Ball?

SPEAKER_03 9:53

Like anime. More just out of like Peter. I might have to change my list. Vegeta's an alien, dude. Darn it. So it's not think hard enough for this. I just thought dragons. How can I fit dragons in this list? How can I talk more about dragons?

SPEAKER_04 10:11

Invader Zim is uh it's fantastically funny. He's he's a uh so there's this species of alien um that Zim is from, and and they're all short aliens, they're like little shorties, and their leaders they refer to as the tallest because they are the tallest aliens. And they are they assign each alien a planet to invade, and Zim is known as like the worst of them, as the failure who's ruined everything. And so they're like, oh, we gotta get rid of this guy, and so they give him a fake mission, and he happens to cla crash land on Earth, thinking this is his mission, and so he begins to try and take over Earth, of course, failing at every step. Um, and he pretty much ends up destroying his entire like fleet's species or his species fleet of ships that are like taking over planets. It's just this fantastic, ridiculous, dark humor. Like there's one episode where he steals a bunch of, and this is a kid's show, mind you, he steals a bunch of organs from children to form his own human body because humans have organs, and if he wants to blend in, he needs organs. And so there's literally one part where he's so stuffed full of organs, he burps and intestines come out. This is a kid's show? This is a kid's show. Jeez, it was on uh Nickelodeon, I think, or uh maybe Cartoon Network, but yeah, oh yeah, back when cartoons were very bold with their imaginations. Invader Zim, just fantastic. Uh, Derek, I'm kind of shocked you didn't mention this one. King Kidora from Godzilla. He is an alien. Oh my gosh. Yes. The three-headed monster from outer space.

SPEAKER_03 11:56

I gotta redo my whole list. I gotta redo it all, man. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 12:01

You can't get better than just a giant three-headed dragon, dude. There's a reason he's the king.

SPEAKER_03 12:06

Oh, yes. And that he's the the ultimate foe for Godzilla. Oh king of the monsters.

SPEAKER_04 12:12

Oh, it's as ridiculous as the human parts in that are, it's made up for them fantastic monster facts.

SPEAKER_03 12:18

Absolutely. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_04 12:19

Just when, yeah, I I I digress. Yeah, you should like that. All right, that's two. Uh, number three, I'm gonna say Stitch from Lulu and Stitch. Ooh, great pick. That movie is such a feel-good movie. So fantastic. Stitch, one of the best characters ever.

SPEAKER_00 12:39

Stitch is just a cool alien. Oh, he's a very good thing. Oh, you know, he's got super strength, and he can think faster than what, like 10,000. Supercomputer, yeah, supercomputer. And he's virtually indestructible. Virtually indestructible. Oh man. Such a cool little alien.

SPEAKER_04 12:53

I love his fight with Jumba. Blue Patch Buggy! Or Captain Gantu. Yeah, Captain Gantu. He's a cool alien.

SPEAKER_00 13:08

This giant alien. Yeah, he's a cool alien.

SPEAKER_03 13:11

Oh yeah, great pick. Yeah, Lilo and Stitch, one of Disney's 10 out of 10 masterpieces. Yeah. Oh yes.

SPEAKER_04 13:18

That they just had it going ruin.

SPEAKER_03 13:21

Absolutely. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_04 13:23

I'm not watching the live action. No, yeah, I never gave that. Just hurt its horrible day.

SPEAKER_00 13:27

Yeah, it's not.

SPEAKER_04 13:28

And they're making a second one. I don't know how they can make a second one. She already left Lilo, right?

SPEAKER_00 13:33

Dude, they just they make so much freaking money from those. It doesn't matter how bad they are. Yeah, they're kind of high on their own supply.

SPEAKER_03 13:40

They just think we can make whatever we want and people will keep coming to it. Yeah. They think they're too big to fail.

SPEAKER_00 13:45

Unfortunately, there's too many people where their personality is just I love everything Disney.

SPEAKER_04 13:52

Oh yeah. Disney adults.

SPEAKER_00 13:54

Yeah. Fighting words, Greg. Someone might have to give you. I'm not in our hot tank yet.

SPEAKER_04 14:02

We're getting there. Get through with it. Alrighty. And then the next one. Oh my gosh, this is so tart. I don't have a specific one because I can't remember the names, but the triceratons from TMT. Oh. There is a it's like Draximus or something like that. He's like the leader of the uh gladiators in the arena, and eventually with the turtles' helps, uh overthrows the Emperor of the Triceratons and brings him back into a democracy. That is an awesome place. Yes. I mean, what's cooler than literal dinosaurs that are space aliens? Somehow. Well, not only are there humans out there in the galaxy, but dinosaurs that evolved into aliens. Yeah. Interstellar dinosaurs, man. How cool is that? So fun. Yeah, gotta love it. Too many on my list. Alright, and then I'm gonna say number one, and this is a little bit of a cheat because technically in the Stargate universe, almost every alien is from the humans. The gold are pretty much like the only original aliens, I guess in the rates. But uh this is definitely making me a nerd here. Tealk from Stargate. SG1. He is probably one of the coolest bros out there. Uh-huh. Just uh Jaffa, I guess that's his alien species. They're uh humans who were genetically changed to uh be incubators for gold.

SPEAKER_00 15:39

And is he the one that has like the gold head to it on his forehead?

SPEAKER_04 15:43

Yeah, the the a symbol of uh Anubis, I think. Um were slaves to the gold, these worm parasite creatures that burrow into your spine and take over your body. Um but he of course uh rose above his are we talking about aliens too much, guys?

SPEAKER_01 16:06

Are you hearing that? What was that? I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 16:11

Hello? Yes, uh Tealke from SG1 is just stop talking about Tilk. And the best line uh of course you get from Teal is indeed. I have no idea what you guys are talking about. All right, Derek, you gotta watch SG1. It is fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 16:38

Okay, is that your five? Yep, that's my five. Okay, sweet. I'm surprised. Well, you were you were arguing about robots, but transformers are robots.

SPEAKER_03 16:49

But they're from a different planet, and they have a spark which makes them have a soul.

SPEAKER_04 16:54

So it is but they were made by a bigger robot. Cybertron.

SPEAKER_03 17:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 17:02

What's your point? So is Cybertron the alien and the transformers are just robots of that alien. Shut up, dude.

SPEAKER_05 17:11

Just let me have this.

SPEAKER_00 17:14

Well, if you have that, then I get this. Um man, this is gonna be hard. I'm just gonna name all mine. Oh. Um you only get two honorable nations. I only I only have seven. So I'm not gonna put them in any order. Rocky, obviously, he's such a cool guy. I love Rocky. Um, I also have The Thing from John Carpenter's The Thing. One of the coolest is a great thing. Scariest aliens out there. That's a great shape-shifting alien that can take pretty much any form and disguise themselves as well.

SPEAKER_04 17:54

That's another fantastic reference in Futurama when they're doing the company getaway to become better coworkers. Oh, yeah. The guy who arranges it basically is a fake hitchhiker who is basically the thing eating it all. Dang.

SPEAKER_00 18:12

Futurama's got everything. Yeah, so love the thing. Um, Stitch. Yep, he's uh he's up there for me. I do love Optimus Prime as well. He's pick, okay. So noble.

SPEAKER_01 18:26

Good pick. So noble. Noble.

SPEAKER_00 18:32

And then I got oh wait, what's that for? That's from Hercules. That's Hades.

SPEAKER_01 18:39

They gotta go off Noble. No, noble.

SPEAKER_00 18:46

Oh then I got the Xenomorph. Excellent, excellent. So cool. I was debating on Predator, but Xenomorph, I feel like it's just cooler.

SPEAKER_03 18:58

Well, he's like just when you hear alien, like you think of the movie Alien. Yeah. Exactly.

SPEAKER_04 19:06

Well, I feel like the Predator's kind of like the Mandalorian. As soon as he took off his mask, he got a little less cool.

SPEAKER_00 19:13

Yeah, he was one ugly mother ever. Um then I got Zafod Beetle Brock's Beeble Brock. He's uh he's a great character. And then this is my one where I'm like robot, iron giant. You know, yeah. He's a cool cool alien as well. Um, and then my last one is have you guys seen Annihilation?

SPEAKER_02 19:44

Uh oh Analytic. Yeah. I never saw it, but I've seen both on the list a lot of clips.

SPEAKER_00 19:52

Yeah. Dude, the alien from that is just is so like disturbing to me. So that one's up there just for scare factor.

SPEAKER_04 20:02

Yeah, uh I've heard that one's pretty intense.

SPEAKER_00 20:05

You guys should watch it. Yeah. It's one of my one of my favorite scary movies about aliens. So yeah, that's me. That's mine.

SPEAKER_04 20:15

Portman's in it, so yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:18

Natalie Portman and Oscar Isaac. Yeah, that's right. Isn't Oscar Isaac like her husband or something? And he comes back not knowing what to say. Comes out of the bubble.

SPEAKER_00 20:28

Yeah. No. Wow, that's a good one. Or whatever they call it. Not the bubble, they call it like the the shimmer. Oh yeah, the shimmer. Oh man, there's there's a part in that with with a bear. Oh, I've seen that one.

SPEAKER_03 20:42

That just like where it can mimic a human scream. Yeah. See, that made me think of skinwalkers, dude. I've seen that clip, and I'm like, okay, that's that's absolutely creepy and terrifies me.

SPEAKER_00 20:52

Dude, so I watched it by myself. Because I didn't know it was like actually scary. I did the same thing with the shining, and oh, that freaked me out too.

SPEAKER_03 21:02

But so what you're saying is you you were feeling lonely, so you decided to watch a scary movie and you didn't feel alone anymore.

SPEAKER_00 21:08

I didn't feel alone again. Oh, but that bear part, I'm like sitting there by myself in a dark room and and just like my blood. You know, when they describe your blood goes cold, that was like the perfect description of what happened. It's just like my blood just dropped at that part. Freaked me out, but all right. That was our top five, folks. Let us know who's your favorite alien? Who did we miss? Yeah, leave it in the comments below. Why is Tilk the coolest? Yeah, and uh why didn't we um what is it Lur? Zur? Lur from Planet Omicron, Persei 8, ruler of the Omicronians. We missed out on him and the two from Simpsons. Those those two are good.

SPEAKER_04 21:59

There's a lot of aliens. And then one of them's Kling or something like that. Yeah. The best part though.

SPEAKER_00 22:04

From the giant list. The best part with those aliens and The Simpsons. Do you guys remember this? I think it was a tree house Tree House of Horrors where they knock on Homer's door and he answers it. He's like, oh, more.

SPEAKER_04 22:20

Yeah, that'll be. Yeah. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:24

But yeah, but leave leave in the comments your favorite alien. Maybe explain one we missed, or maybe back me up on why the Cybertronians count as aliens, or get mad at one of us for one of our picks.

SPEAKER_00 22:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:38

Or maybe, hey, maybe you think the Mormons are aliens. Let's uh let's hear.

SPEAKER_00 22:43

Yeah, we'll debate you on that too. Yeah, we'll debate you. But, anyways, um, also like, comment, and subscribe, folks. We gotta ask. Oh, yeah. It goes a long way. Yep. So those who have subscribed, thank you. Those that continually listen, thank you. We really appreciate it. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:03

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 23:04

We appreciate you being there. All right, Jeff. Hit us with a hot take. Sweet.

SPEAKER_04 23:12

Alright, you guys ready? Boil it. It's gonna be a big one.

SPEAKER_03 23:15

Yeah, make me go Super Saiyan.

SPEAKER_04 23:17

Let's do this. Pineapple on pizza. Yuck.

SPEAKER_00 23:22

Really?

SPEAKER_04 23:23

Yeah. That's not ideal. I don't think cooked pineapple is very good, anyways. Like it, I I'll enjoy the rotisserie pineapple they'll bring around at Brazilian grill. Brazilian grill. I would rather have it raw though. Like a fresh pineapple. Oh, so fantastic. Cooking it just kind of degrades it. And same with pineapple and pizza. It is nah, not very good.

SPEAKER_03 23:51

Yeah. You're gonna have to do all the fighting on this, Greg, because I would 100% in agreeance. I I hate pineapple on pizza. It's something that should never have happened. And oh, oh man, the cheese and the juices, the sweet juices of the pineapple just do not blend. I do not bite into a pizza wanting tropical flavor. I want cheesy, doughy, saucy, meaty, goodness. I want a delicious triangle, not a fruity one.

SPEAKER_00 24:20

Oh man. See, I think uh I think pineapple on a barbecue pizza is where it's at. I mean, I do like Hawaiian, just straight up regular Hawaiian, but my my ideal pizza with pineapple would be barbecue, bacon, and jalapenos. That is so good.

SPEAKER_04 24:44

That's a great pizza. Stamped in ranch. Except for without the pineapple.

SPEAKER_00 24:48

Yeah. No, no, no, no. Because you it works with it works so much better with barbecue because the barbecue is sweet. The pineapple goes so good also with the the spicy of the jalapeno and the saltiness from the bacon. It's delicious.

SPEAKER_04 25:03

I I get the sweetness. For me, though, it is a lot of the texture that the pineapple, like like Derek was saying, they get that that slimy, yeah, grainy, or not grainy, uh fibrous pineapple. Fibrous on the on the pizza. And then it is just it's a it's a a conflict of texture for sure.

SPEAKER_00 25:24

Yeah, absolutely. Well, it doesn't help that you both are autistic.

SPEAKER_04 25:28

So are you saying Down syndrome people like pineapple and pizza more?

SPEAKER_00 25:36

Yeah, I bet they do. Yep. I I wouldn't know, right? No. That's right. I mean, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna like die on the hill about pineapple and pizza, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_01 25:56

What is it with you always retreating off the hill?

SPEAKER_00 26:00

I mean, it's just not my it wouldn't be my first choice for a topping, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_02 26:06

Because it's a topping that doesn't belong there.

SPEAKER_00 26:09

Yeah. I mean it has its moments. Oh, it's like putting pepperoni in a fruit cocktail. It's something you don't do. It's like putting pepperoni in like a pasta salad.

SPEAKER_01 26:24

Which is really what makes a pasta salad bearable. I'm not a fan of pasta salad to begin with.

SPEAKER_03 26:32

I want my pasta warm and cooked with sauce, not vinaigrette. But I guess it's another hot take. Yeah. My wife loves pasta salad. She wants to make it for all the family gatherings. I do, Derek.

SPEAKER_04 26:44

I do.

SPEAKER_03 26:47

I did not know how to get so contentious about this one.

SPEAKER_01 26:50

And I'm in favor of the hot take.

SPEAKER_00 26:53

Yeah. Is it more of a hot take to like pineapple on pizza nowadays?

SPEAKER_03 26:58

I don't know. I see so many memes about how it doesn't belong on pizza, but at the same time, that's an algorithm.

SPEAKER_00 27:03

I got a question for you too. Would you rather have arugula on your pizza or pineapple? Gazundai. What the heck is a arugula?

SPEAKER_04 27:10

Arugula all the way.

SPEAKER_00 27:12

It's like it's like a like spinach.

SPEAKER_03 27:17

But it's got the little spiny looking leaves. Oh, well, it's hard to say because I've never tasted it.

SPEAKER_04 27:24

You have arugula with some um basalmic vinegarette.

SPEAKER_03 27:28

Oh my gosh, so good. Wait, why why are you describing a salad when we're talking about pizza?

SPEAKER_04 27:32

No, no, no. Basalmic, it's like sauce. It's like a it's like a drizzle, like on a margarita pizza.

SPEAKER_01 27:40

Why'd you become like part gangster there?

SPEAKER_03 27:42

Like a margarita pizza.

SPEAKER_04 27:43

Like a margarita pizza. I thought it was gay. Okay, let me rephrase that.

SPEAKER_01 27:50

Wannabe gangster.

SPEAKER_04 27:54

Is that what gay people are? They're just wannabe gangsters.

SPEAKER_00 27:57

I have no idea. We're coming to be gangster. Gay people are people that like arugula and balsamic vinegar. Arugula on the pizza.

SPEAKER_04 28:06

Bitter. So bitter goes well on a pizza, especially when you got like a margarita pizza. Fantastic.

SPEAKER_03 28:13

Hey, it's hard for me to make a choice since I've never even tried arugula, but I have tried pineapple on pizza, and I know that sucks. So yeah, I'll take the arugula.

SPEAKER_00 28:22

I might be pleasantly surprised. See, I think your issue with pineapple on pizza is mostly because it's paired with ham. So ham is horrible.

SPEAKER_04 28:33

Pineapple gets good ham stays.

SPEAKER_00 28:36

Bacon, pineapple, jalapenos on a barbecue pizza. Try that and then come back with this stupid hot take.

SPEAKER_03 28:50

I'm not gonna die on this though. Yeah, yeah. You you reinforce yourself, and you died on the hill. I'll rephrase it.

SPEAKER_04 28:58

Pineapple on a barbecue pizza is terrible.

SPEAKER_00 29:03

Pineapple on a barbecue sauce with bacon and with jalapenos is one of the best pizzas out there.

SPEAKER_04 29:11

Nope. Nope. Can't be.

SPEAKER_00 29:14

I'll make it for you.

SPEAKER_04 29:17

Okay. Uh all right. Yeah, you tell us. Are you pineapple? Let's start, you know, start a war. Start a war. Let's start.

SPEAKER_00 29:26

Start a war in that comment here. Okay, who's on my side?

SPEAKER_03 29:30

And who's who's on logic side? Which one of you had logic circuits implanted in your heads?

SPEAKER_04 29:39

And and on top of that, is cooked pineapple even worth it?

SPEAKER_03 29:43

Yep. Well, it can't really. Actually, I'll fight you on that one. Brazilian grill pineapple where they have it glazed with like brown sugar. Oh. It's it's it's like I think.

SPEAKER_04 29:55

That's probably the best way to have cooked pineapple, but it's still just it can't beat the fresh stuff.

SPEAKER_03 30:01

It depends on the situation. Well, I know freshly cut pineapple is it's pretty freaking delicious. I'm not gonna lie. Frickin' delicious. It is pretty delicious, which is a shame because it's it's delicious.

SPEAKER_00 30:16

Okay. Hot take. That is our hot take. All right. Okay, I'm gonna start us off with a book summary. We um I picked Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. Um, and I guess we'll get into it. All right, well Project Hail Mary is a sci-fi thriller about Ryland Grace, a science teacher turned into astronaut who wakes from a coma with apnesia on a desperate one-way mission to save Earth from a star-eating parasite, Astrophage. He discovers he is the sole survivor, befriends a solitary alien named Rocky, and works with him to find a scientific solution. So pretty good. Chat GPT? No, it was Google.

SPEAKER_05 31:09

Alright.

SPEAKER_01 31:11

No, no, no.

SPEAKER_00 31:15

So, yeah, first impressions.

SPEAKER_01 31:17

How could you accuse me of that?

SPEAKER_00 31:19

Why would you say that?

SPEAKER_03 31:24

We're all autistic.

SPEAKER_00 31:27

Don't give us so much credit. What's even that video called? We gotta shout them out. I've been obsessed with this YouTube video. I got these two, I got these two guys on.

SPEAKER_04 31:41

It's it's our vocal stims right now. Drew Ling Linglois. Drew Linglois.

SPEAKER_00 31:49

Something terribly offensive. You guys should watch it. It is a masterpiece. You got you know the guys that did the boobabi booby. Shoobabi bobby. This is this is uh one of their videos. So anyways, I digress. Um first impressions, guys. What what what did you what was what was your first impression?

SPEAKER_03 32:19

Yeah. My first impressions were what's a refreshing story about friendship? Like, it is you mute me?

SPEAKER_00 32:35

No, am I giving too much spoiler? I unmuted myself. Oh, I was getting a drink.

SPEAKER_03 32:45

The friendship between Ryland Grace and the alien is the core of the story, and it's what I love the most. It was a very great take on the sci-fi genre, but you know, wedded to. Never mind. You guys just give me your first impressions.

SPEAKER_01 33:01

Oh right.

SPEAKER_00 33:03

Might need to give Jeff a minute.

SPEAKER_01 33:08

Did you mute me? I thought I was saying something wrong. I was like, oh, dude, I'm getting policed here.

SPEAKER_00 33:16

Oh man.

unknown 33:18

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 33:18

No, I can't put filter on filters on you guys.

unknown 33:22

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 33:23

Probably wish you.

SPEAKER_03 33:24

Yeah, you'd like that, wouldn't you?

SPEAKER_00 33:26

I am pretty controlling, but fascist. My first impressions, man, kind of what you thought about Jurassic Park, Jeff. Is like, where has this book been my whole life? This was just like my kind of book, right up my alley. Science, sci-fi, aliens, space. Oh man, it was just so fun, so cool.

SPEAKER_04 33:55

How special around reading around the launch of the Artemis, too.

SPEAKER_00 33:59

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so true. So cool. Just oh man, I loved it. I loved it. So sorry, Derek, to just so rudely interrupt you.

SPEAKER_03 34:09

Why don't you finish your first impressions?

SPEAKER_01 34:12

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:13

I I lost my train of thought. All right. What do you think?

SPEAKER_01 34:18

My train of thought was muted, I guess you could say.

SPEAKER_04 34:23

Likely, Derek, if any anyone's gonna be muted, it's probably gonna be me, but that's true. Yes, this book. Uh I agree with uh Greg, it was fantastic. And um, what a beginning of a book. It just sucked me right in the whole. I don't know if it's gonna be considered spoiler, it's very beginning, but uh Grace waking up in the coma, not knowing Greg mentioned that in the with amnesia. So I just no spoiler that whole experience of of kind of going along with him as he's learning and discovering and regaining the memory. Oh, just so so cool, such a fun book. And um, yeah, I will say um Andy Weir, this was definitely one of the just one of the best things I've read from him, and I and it makes sense considering everything he's kind of built up to this book um with the Martian and and his uh Artemis book and all and all. But um I will say he's kind of ruined the idea of writing science sci-fi for me um just because of his technical knowledge, yeah. And how freaking smart he is. How the bar he has set is way up there. I yeah, it that's a lot of work to get to that bar.

SPEAKER_03 35:47

It really makes you admire him, you know. It's like, wow, okay, I'm reading the work of someone who has passion and uh a yearning for knowledge, which is always just fun to read. And and like you said, Jeff, with the whole amnesia part, you could argue that's like the slowest part of the book, just Ryland Grace trying to get his memory back. And the whole amnesia trope, I kind of got burned off of when I watched Captain Marvel because of her amnesia stuff, and I I hated that movie. So never this was this was such a refreshing take on the the amnesia part, and it was so much fun. Like they it's like Andy Weird knew the reason the amnesia trope. What the reason is for is like you have to have fun rediscovering this person as they re rediscover themselves.

SPEAKER_00 36:34

Yeah, also it being in first person, I think, helped fantastic.

SPEAKER_04 36:39

Yeah, and built into the story structure too. It wasn't just something kind of as a as a flaw of the character, it was literally built into us as learning part of the or reading part of the story itself, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:55

Well, also helps that the personality of Ryland Grace, he's he's actually a pretty chill guy who he's always he's making movie references to himself, he's making jokes, he's just he is a cool teacher, he's a cool teacher, and but he's got a doctorate, you know. Like he he was a really cool guy to be in the headspace of, and it's like Andy Weir knew he needed to make someone who was fun to be around in order for us to be in that headspace throughout the whole book.

SPEAKER_00 37:22

For sure. Do you guys think that there was too much science in this? Like he was too technical. Um, like me personally, I loved it. I loved that aspect of it. Um, I mean, I'm not gonna say that I understood everything. There was a lot of it that went right over my head. But I think for the most important thing. Why didn't you catch it?

SPEAKER_04 37:47

Aren't your reflexes fast enough?

SPEAKER_00 37:49

Yeah, they're not. No, they're definitely not fast enough. But um, yeah, I think for the most part, I I could kind of what? He was quoted Drax the destroyer, and I'm like, there's an alien we forgot to mention. Yeah. Um but yeah, I think I followed most of it. I don't know, what do you guys think?

SPEAKER_04 38:12

Yeah, yeah. I I um I mean I I can't say, I mean, there was maybe some things I definitely felt. Why do I say this? I don't want to sound so like arrogant, but it it just made sense, right? Like I I can't I don't want to say like I missed anything, and it it felt pretty balanced. I do think there could it it's not the b book for everyone because it's not a book for everyone. That's hence why I think the movie is pretty valuable, but um the book itself is super technical and it does really make you feel smart when you're when you when you kind of get something that's going on. And you know, that can be a little prideful, but it's like, oh yeah, I get this, I get what he tried to do. Oh, that makes sense. Oh, that's so cool. Or we or when you're thinking and and he's doing part of the experiment, and then he does exactly what you're thinking he should do, and you're like, Yeah, that's that's what you should do for that.

SPEAKER_03 39:13

Yeah, so you can't like be sitting there screaming at the page or at the audiobook being like, you idiot, that's such a dumb move. But um, I'm kind of with you, Greg. Like it was really fun, but that's probably for the same reasons why we all loved Jurassic Park so much, because like Michael Crichton, Andy Weir, he he was able to balance on that fine line of being overly smart, but also not dumbing it down, but simplifying it enough for his readers to follow along. And I don't think he simplified everything. There were like a few things I didn't quite catch my first listen, so you know I don't mind that because it makes coming back to it a lot better. Yeah, and so that's another thing. And I just really love it when a writer does this kind of research because we the reader benefit because we're actually learning something as this, and we don't even know it. We are having fun with it. Like we many readers will actually go research us, so be like, that can't be true. And it's like, oh my gosh, that is true.

SPEAKER_04 40:13

Or even though it's like, okay, that's not true, but he's yeah, he's very smart.

SPEAKER_03 40:16

It's hard to learn this way, you know. So yeah, I probably I probably loved it for the same reason as Jurassic Park. It's just like, oh yeah, wow, I'm sure that's an interesting way to think about it. Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00 40:26

Oh yeah, yeah. Which I do disagree with you a little, Jeff, that I do feel like it is closer to more for everyone than it is not. Because I do feel like even if you don't understand it, you can understand what's going on with the story. I think he he's able to do it good enough to where where you're like, oh, bad alien, need to fix. So go to this solar system, find solution to save Earth. You know, like it's pretty easy to follow the plot in a way, and the plot is so good that I can be entertained for sure.

SPEAKER_04 41:04

Yeah, so I I think when it comes to uh retention, uh the story can definitely be grasped by anyone. I I I I can see that, but when it comes to retention, uh I I think about like our mom, which she was talking about reading it, and she said she was struggling just because and for her her attention span is not gonna be there when it comes to this kind of book. She's gonna be more concerned about the relationships rather than how he figures something out or how he's doing the science, which I know a lot of people that yeah, that's not gonna be some that's not gonna be their cup of tea. That's not gonna be what they're wanna that's gonna want to read. So for them to get through the book would be a little harder. Now they they definitely could, and by the end of the book, totally, yeah, you're totally right. It's written in a way they will understand it.

SPEAKER_00 41:50

And mom was saying that she did love it by the end.

SPEAKER_03 41:54

So that's because it has a relationship at its core, yeah, that is so much fun. They just gotta get through it. Yep, power through the sci fi. I really think that even though I think this is just you know a gem that every lover of sci-fi should be reading at this point or rereading, because it's everywhere right now, it is such a huge thing in pop culture, and even those who aren't lovers of sci-fi will be pleasantly surprised with how this how good this book is. I I feel pretty safe saying that. I don't think that's too big of a praise for sure.

SPEAKER_00 42:27

So what do you guys think about the movie? If you don't know, we went to the movie together as the rascals and uh took our lovely ladies out with us as well. We did a little date night on it. Now, what was your first impression of the movie? Um, do you mind if I go first on this one, Jen?

SPEAKER_03 42:45

Yeah. Um, my first impression was they cut out a lot of that science we were talking about that I found so compelling, which I'm so glad I listened to the audiobook beforehand because there was something I was like, there's no way a general audience is gonna follow along. But mostly with movies, general audience will just accept things as it as they come here and there. But the second the second like big first impression there was they knew how to capture what the wonder of interstellar travel is like what it has in all of that. Well you imagine it, yeah. What we imagine it would feel like why we imagine why we dream of going up to the stars, of finding out what is out there, man. It like it's it's incredible. The sound, the soundtrack, the score, I thought was great for this movie. So I was really happy to see this the simple use of just the great set design and like the great use of CGI and just stimulating colors and everything. It was just it was pretty gorgeous to look at for most for the most part.

SPEAKER_00 43:55

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_04 43:58

Yeah, it's interesting because one of the Criticisms I've heard, and I would say this isn't mine because I thought it was really a beautiful movie, too. Was that people wanted more color in the movie? Uh, they felt like there wasn't enough of that like space majesty. You could say that, but uh uh even then I still felt like it.

SPEAKER_03 44:17

Well, but when they did introduce color, like it really just it was you knew it was like a great moment.

SPEAKER_00 44:24

Yeah, the Tal City, the planet at Tal City. Oh yeah, yeah, Adrian. Pretty, yeah, Adrian exactly was was gorgeous for sure. That whole part. Um yeah, I I there's a few things about the movie that bugged me a little, um, but I just I do think they did a very admirable job at at uh you know doing uh their best to make it like the book. I do feel like a lot of that science, unfortunately, that it was somewhat necessarily to take this necessary to take out because it to portray that as visual, like in a movie, I think would just be so hard. Yeah. Um it's unfortunate because I mean that's just why the book is it's just so much better in this case. Oh yeah. Well they they to me uh they rush through the science so fast.

SPEAKER_04 45:23

There's some moments where he was like, and this and this and this happened.

SPEAKER_00 45:26

And it was like or even like that was like a whole chapter in the book, the computer just like figures it out for him, you know, type thing. But um I also I had a little issue with Ryan Gosling, which I actually like Ryan Gosling a lot, but he was just not Ryland Grace to me at all. I feel like he was just a little too goofy, and like this was m probably my biggest issue, and I guess I don't want to get into it yet because we're not in spoilers, but um there was a moment in the movie where it's it's supposed to be like very serious and sad and depressing in a way, and they it I just felt like they made it a joke, and I'm just like that. So classless to try and make that part specifically into a joke, which I feel like Marvel does this all the time with their jokes.

SPEAKER_03 46:29

Oh, yeah, they're just they definitely uh like coined the whole um technique, and everyone's just been trying to copy it ever since.

SPEAKER_00 46:38

Yeah, it's it makes me think of like Fat Thor. Yeah, how they made just Thor such a joke.

SPEAKER_04 46:43

It's the movie winking at the audience, yeah. Saying, You like this? Yeah, this is funny, huh? Come on, laugh. Why aren't you laughing?

SPEAKER_00 46:53

When it comes down to it, Thor had the most tragic character arc of anybody in Marvel, and they made it a joke.

SPEAKER_04 47:03

He's supposed to it's supposed to personify how he's he's failed and he's now crushed as his spirit's crushed. He's a defeated god look at this funny fat guy.

SPEAKER_00 47:13

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah. I mean, the they didn't go quite that level in this in this movie, but it's not that ridiculous.

SPEAKER_03 47:22

But at the same time, I was thinking the same, I know what part you were talking about. I was kind of feeling a little irritated.

SPEAKER_01 47:29

I was like, what? No.

SPEAKER_03 47:31

Yeah, it's just like let's let us let the audience feel. Yeah, it's okay to let the audience feel sad. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 47:38

Or yeah, a little like uncomfortable. Yeah. I think that's something kind of lost in a lot of modern movies, is they they want they don't want the audience to kind of squirm in their chair anymore.

SPEAKER_03 47:49

Yeah. Yeah. Which is which is a real shame because the beauty of storytelling is just it is for us to experience what it is to be human in a deeper way. And that includes our negative emotions. Even if we're just having a token of it, it it can just oh it can help us learn so much about humanity. But that's a discussion for another day. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:10

And we'll get we'll get more into that, I feel like, with the non with the spoiler section. So if you guys don't have anything else, I think let's take a break. Yeah, and then we'll get in spoilers.

SPEAKER_04 48:22

I want to say what I thought about the movie. You didn't already? No, not really. I mean, I I commented on what you guys said, but okay.

SPEAKER_00 48:37

I feel like we're gonna have to replay that.

SPEAKER_04 48:42

You're welcome to, but not Derek went first, and then you went, and then I was gonna go. Okay, I might be remembering it, Ron, but you went after Derek.

SPEAKER_03 48:54

Yeah, we need that instant replay.

SPEAKER_04 48:56

I I was probably just commenting on what Derek said, but I I didn't given my official statements.

SPEAKER_03 49:03

Give us that instant replay, please.

SPEAKER_04 49:05

Because I did have a specific thing in mind. Okay, let's hear it. And it was about the characters. Like the movie was great because I I was commenting on the the color. That that's what it that's maybe what you thought was my take on it. But um I was just saying that was what I heard from people, so not my take. Okay, but um, so the characters in this movie, I was a little disappointed in a lot of them, like uh uh oh gosh, what's her name? Uh strap. Yeah, strap. Um yeah. Uh I I wanted more from most of the characters, and and and again, I feel like there was a lot of kind of going on on what you were saying, a lot of kind of some shallow things in the in the movie that didn't quite live up to the grandeur that of the book. And um they they could have just done more. And granted, I I get what they're going for, they gotta appeal to a mass audience. But I mean, come on, Hollywood, you got plenty of money, take some risks, yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't appeal to the greatest common factor, appeal to what matters, which is what the story's trying to get.

SPEAKER_00 50:15

Yeah. Appeal to like art for art's sake, and not for money's sake, you know? Yeah. I will say though, as far as I do agree, most of the characters were just did not live up to what they were in the book, but I do feel like they did Rocky pretty good. Yeah, yes, so I can agree with that.

SPEAKER_03 50:41

Rocky they did great justice for, but yeah, all the side characters that you see in flashbacks, I feel like most of their personalities were completely different. Yeah. So but I I couldn't complain too much because I'm like, that's kind of nitpicking since they're not super integral to the story. Yeah, there's not a ton of screen time.

SPEAKER_04 51:02

A lot of the the comments I heard from other people that have watched it, they said like why they really should care about any of these characters. And it's like that goes to show you really didn't do anyone justice if nobody's caring. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 51:14

If you're not, yeah, uh which which is kind of a weakness I always see in in writers. Like, because characters for me are a big reason I enjoy a story. And when uh like we've said in past episodes, or I've said in past episodes, when a writer is able to just bring in a character and say a couple lines, and they just capture your heart, and then they leave, and you're like, I want to be more with that guy or that per or that or that woman. Um, it's it's a real strength as a writer that they're able to just do that with just a either a few sentences or a paragraph, and it just makes you think of other stories that could be happening in that world. For sure.

SPEAKER_00 51:54

Yeah, oh yeah. All right, Jeff. Was that your take? Yes, that's my take.

SPEAKER_04 52:00

Thanks for letting me share.

SPEAKER_00 52:01

Let's take a quick break.

SPEAKER_03 52:03

Maybe get that instant replay.

SPEAKER_00 52:05

Yeah. Quick break and let's uh we'll meet back here in just a minute. Yep. All right, we're back at it. Now we're gonna get into our spoiler section. So you've been warned. Yep. If you don't want spoilers, go read the book, go see the movie.

SPEAKER_03 52:24

Pause this, go listen to the audio book, or go read the book and possibly watch the movie and then come back. You'll enjoy the book. Get yourself educated. Yep, yes.

SPEAKER_00 52:37

Awesome. I think we should start on characters because you know there are not that many in this book, not many that need like a ton of talking about, yeah, not very prominent. So I'd say there's like three characters tops, yeah, that are just like main characters, yeah, have a very impactful part of the book.

SPEAKER_04 53:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 53:01

So yeah, why don't we start with uh Ryland Grace, Dr. Grace, the main character?

SPEAKER_04 53:08

Yeah, yeah. Now you you guys said uh you liked his personal or I think you both said you liked his personality, right? I I definitely did. I think uh one of the comments I heard in uh one of the reviews of the book was somebody was saying how they didn't feel Grace had any depth to him, that he was just this goofy, super smart guy who kind of had all the answers to solutions, but there was no like character depth. What did you guys think about that?

SPEAKER_05 53:37

Hmm.

SPEAKER_00 53:39

Do you want to go first? Sure. I don't think that's true. I mean, I think there's a lot of depth to him. I think he the whole like point of his character arc shows his true depth, you know, like Strat really kind of nailed it on the nose of like kind of who he is as a character when you know at the the big twist or whatever, and he was a like really, you see, he's such a brilliant scientist and you know he's got a doctorate.

SPEAKER_04 54:21

He's he's got yeah, I got the quote quote right here. Uh do you think I don't know you, Dr. Gray? She yelled. You're a coward, and you always have been. You abandon a promising scientific career because people didn't like your paper you wrote. You retired to to the safety of children who worship you for being the cool teacher. You don't have a romantic partner in your life because you would that would mean you might suffer heartbreak. You avoid risk like the plague.

SPEAKER_00 54:47

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And if that's not depth, I don't know what is, you know.

SPEAKER_04 54:53

Well, I think it goes to show a a very flawed person who um, which I I that's a one thing I love about the amnesia aspect is he's his his thought when he's finally gaining his consciousness is I made a noble choice. Yes. When he's first regaining his consciousness, and he thinks of himself, he's you know, he's describing himself as muscular, as like, oh, I was prepared for this mission, I made a choice to come on this mission, and then talk about the realization at the end, right? Yeah, to basically crush all of that. So yeah, I I totally agree. I I think though, I think this particular reviewer, they they did come after in their second portion, this was like their first kind of concept of Ryland Grace, but then in the end they they kind of came to realize, oh, like yeah, there is a lot more depth to this person.

SPEAKER_03 55:43

Oh yeah. Uh I guess I would just echo what both of you said that you know you start off thinking, okay, he at some point in this story, he made the choice. Because you first see him make a smaller choice to when the kids are all asking the question, then he decides to just leave the class and dedicate himself to the research of astrophage.

SPEAKER_00 56:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 56:03

So it kind of sells the idea like, okay, this is a guy who is willing to do something bigger than himself for people he cares about. Which, you know, you're kind of buying that into that lie, he's been put into himself with the amnesia. And so the realization, because throughout the whole story, you're hearing the people who were first chosen. So you're wondering how did he end up choosing to get here to find out, oh, he didn't choose at all, he was forced under duress. Yeah. So like he was cowardly, and he went kind of like a tantrum baby, a baby throwing a tantrum. Yeah, yeah. Um, but as well, you see him use his smarts really quick too on the fly. So you know he's quick thinking, he knows his stuff, but like you said, Stratt put it there that you know you're never thinking he's a coward throughout the whole story until oh yeah, he he banded academia because of a failed paper. He doesn't have any romantic interests because, well, there's failure there.

SPEAKER_04 57:07

Yeah, and what a such a divisive analysis of him, too. I mean it that is that she could have stopped at the abandoning academia, but no, she went further.

SPEAKER_03 57:18

Yes, she she went straight for the heart. So, with that being said, I would say I'm not gonna say he's like the deepest character, he doesn't have an abyss of character, but to say he doesn't have any depth, I feel like is is so wrong. There's plenty of stuff that I get from him where I can be like, I know what he would probably do to spend his free time, what kind of stuff interests him, what kind of hobbies he would do. I have a great picture of that. This is a real human being, essentially. So yeah, he's got depth.

SPEAKER_00 57:49

Yeah, I do think he does very good in making them realistic, but also just very brilliant at the same time, like not just in science, but like adapting, like the whole story. Yeah, his problem solving adapting, problem solving, figuring things out on the fly, you know, and it it is just so fun to watch kind of uh him I wouldn't say necessarily grow, but just kind of like find himself, yeah, reform into himself, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 58:24

Yeah, that that is another cool part with the amnesia is you see how because you're right, Derek. How is he going to get into this position that he's in now? But the fascinating thing is he was prepared the entire time, right? He did the research, he was even in the water practicing with the spacesuit with all the equipment, which you know kind of uh that's another great thing Andy Weir does is he builds up to explain like how Grace was able to do all this. Grace isn't just smart, he through the book you see he was prepared that there were things there that made it so yeah, he could do spacewalks, he could do science in space.

SPEAKER_00 59:03

I also think it makes um it really shows that Strat was kind of a genius herself, you know, but having not just a backup plan, but a backup backup plan. Like I think she knew Rylan was the third choice no matter what, you know. She was ruthless. Yeah, she was.

SPEAKER_03 59:29

Well, one of one of the critics I saw is that the flash of memories were a little just too convenient for him. Like, oh, it's convenient you remember that just now kind of thing, which I don't know what to say to that, man. Like, do you want him to get his memory back or not?

SPEAKER_04 59:48

I'm just like that that is really why it is it's a more of a story thing rather than like, oh, he's just getting his memory back. Like, learn learn to suspend your disbelief, okay?

SPEAKER_00 59:58

Yeah, I I feel like okay, yes, we can agree, but it's also like a story, and like it just you have to give a little.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:10

I I feel like that's such a reach.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:12

Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure. But yeah, um, that's awesome. You're given plenty of other great science in the book, and you're caught up on the amnesia.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:22

Yeah, it's not how amnesia works. Oh, you speak from experience. How would you know? Do you even remember?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:30

Yeah, exactly. Um, what'd you guys think about Rocky? He's he's the best part of the book.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:41

Which there's so many things I can talk about that I love about Rocky and just the concept of discovering an alien race that I feel like Andy Weir gets so right in why we want a story with another, like with making contact with intelligent species out there. Because my biggest complaint with the the mainstream, like Marvel and DC films is they're all out in space. You know, there's multiple planets out there. Why is everyone speaking English? Why? And why do they all have that, they all have the same crude vulgarities that I it's so unimmersive, man. It drives me nuts. Like at least Star Wars you have subtitles because you know, they're just going to bing. See, at least George Big Doo-Doo this time. Like it just shows a lack of world building. Whereas here, like, first off, you you get the whole, well, where do I start? Just the new atmosphere that they both have, just how they communicate first off, and which I feel like with them with Rocky trying to explain why he's there with you know the little models and everything. It's done in the movie. Me watching that, I was like, if I did not read the book, I would have no idea how he came to that conclusion.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:12

Yeah. But I think kind of where you're getting at is like it is an alien creature, but he does so good that you kind of think it's possible that there could be a creature out there like that in space, you know, that has rock-like skin, lives on an environment similar to Venus, you know, just uh lives at a crazy high temperature, lives, you know, what four or five hundred years.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:45

Has a completely like different math, math uh uh what was it to like six degree or yeah a math comprehension? A six base numbering. Yes. Yeah. Which I never knew anything about that until I read this book. Yeah. So like that is really cool.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:01

That is uh here on Earth there uh cultures like the Bayant had 20 base mass, and I think uh there's some cultures that had like 12 base. So rather than base 10, it's yeah, the count up to 20 rather than one, two, three to ten. But yeah, so it it's a it's a cool uh yeah, way to use. I could read volumes of Andy Weir writing about discovering aliens like this. It's absolutely fantastic part of the book. Uh Andy Weir, please write write a version of Star Make or uh Star Maker.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:36

Star Maker.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:37

Olaf Stapledon's uh book about discovering different alien species. Andy Weir, that's your new task. Please write a book like that, just all discovering all these different aliens. I will love it and read it, please.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:49

Yeah, no, that that could be awesome for sure. But yeah, he was just such a what's the word, stalwart, just loyal, what a bro, great little friend, just you know, um man, what was I gonna say? Just you know, just reliable little guy.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:14

He he becomes such a homie, um, but as well, I love how they still bicker. And probably my favorite part is when he first talks, which a real treat with the audiobook. It's like yeah, uh a much more like more melodious synthesizer, is what the he sounds like in the book, which I never expected, which I was like, oh, fantastic. It's not just a bunch of gobbledygook that someone made up, it's it's a completely new like sound wave and a way of thinking. I was like, this is incredible.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:47

A tonal language, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:48

A whole new tonal like I thought that's when I was just really sucked in.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:53

I was so happy. Did either of you look at the book at all and see how Rocky was written? Like his. I need to.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:01

Oh, I I didn't.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:03

Yeah, I'd be curious to see that.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:04

Yeah, I want to see, yeah, we need to see how that looks like on the page.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:07

Yeah, just the the audiobook, like Derek said, having that just was such a treat. It just helped me.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:15

The guy reading the audio book did a fantastic. Ray Porter. Yeah, he did really good. He did that. Was another hard part with Ryan Gosling, is I I just kept wanting to see Ray Porter's voice.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:25

Right. Like the self-monologue himself, even when he like gets sarcastic, where it's like, thanks, jerk. And Rocky's like, what were what last word mean? Nothing. Doesn't mean anything, not important. And um, even with his accents with other people, I thought he did a fantastic job. So kudos to Ray Porter. Which I guess side note, did you think he sounded kind of like a a happier uh Robert California? Is this the Robert California? I looked above and was like, no, that's not the same guy, but ship diagram.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:05

Oh, sweet. All right, let me find right. Oh, that's in the book. Cool. It's funny, they do have in the movie, this is the uh the diagram they have. Oh gosh, come on. Sorry. Ebook thing. Yeah, in the movie they have that diagram. This is the diagram they have on the spaceship. Oh for the spaceship in the in the presentation. Oh wow. But uh obviously the the cinematic version is very a lot more elaborate. Um, because they even show like how the ship is supposed to uh do the zero G.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:38

Which that was really cool. Oh yeah, sweet. That was super cool.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:42

Yeah, pretty wild.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:44

When when he discovered that with the centrifuge, I was like, whoa. Because I'm so used to my spaceships just going pew pew pew. So like it's just nice to get like some in-depth answers to how a spaceship would work in space. Yeah, more realistic, you mean. Yeah, yes, more realistic for sure.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:07

Oh yeah. But yeah, Rocky just was uh such a fun character. Um, like we said, we do feel like the movie did did him pretty admirably, like he was good rendition.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:22

So it comes up as uh music notes, and then the rest of when it's actually translating him, it's all italicized.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:29

Um bad, bad, bad. Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. That's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:35

Which I love the touch in the audiobook. Once they get their language figured out, you just have Rocky talking with that sound playing with it. Like it's no longer to that musical tune because you can't really match it to the words that are being read, but it still gives you the sense that okay, essentially Grace is here just he's understanding.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:58

Don't you love at the end when Grace is using the language? Yeah, he's like, oh no, it's a clock.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:05

A clock. Which that was a really cool part of the book. How you how you see where this is where it's great to have a suspension of disbelief, to where like you see how Grace is able to use his laptop to record certain notes, and they're able to find a common ground for simple words, and he was able to put it in a database and just have that just be playing off for him. So it made you really believe that, yeah, it's it's it's believable that he could learn what this alien is saying, and the alien could learn back, which I thought that was really cool. Like, yeah, it's kind of I guess you could say it's kind of a side quest because it's not helping with the astrophage until it actually does. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:50

The entire time. I'm like, I'm enjoying this, but isn't this an urgent situation? Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:55

That I guess that could be a gripe with the book. Like, sometimes you're like, this is uh an anti-apocalyptic effort here. You're just out here uh playing hacky sack with an alien.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:10

Which hacky tape measure?

SPEAKER_03 1:09:12

Yeah, hacky tape measure, which I didn't expect there to be an alien in this book when I like was reading and listening the first part, you know, I'm learning about the ashes.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:21

That's kind of why I was so bad at the trailers because I I tried not to watch them, but I'm like, I wanted to be surprised, but yeah, no, I did.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:30

I I did okay not getting too many spoilers, so it definitely was. Oh, I did I did great at no spoilers, so that's good.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:39

Yeah, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:41

Yeah, I don't know. I loved the whole side quest part with Rocky. I wouldn't want it any other way. I feel like it ultimately like they would not have succeeded without each other anyways.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:56

Oh yeah. Well, you had the the researcher and the with the bio bioresearcher and the engineer. And that was yeah, that's like the dynamic duo team, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:06

You got the big swordsman and the human the human science with the Viridian um engineering technology, metals, yeah, engineering. So Xenonite, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:22

Which that was also cool, like a noble gas being able to be turned into a metal.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:26

I I do that. But I do appreciate how Andy Weir made it the biggest flaw in the end. Yes. How you know it seemed to be what saved him from everything in the world, but also it's like it was their downfall. Yeah. So clever writing, clever writing there to take something that yeah, you're thinking, oh, is this Deus Ex Mach?

SPEAKER_03 1:10:52

Yeah, the stuff you want to like, yeah, you're just in the middle of the book, you're like, ah man, and you're weird. I'm gonna have to dock you some points because then you get to that part. Let me erase that.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:03

Okay, you got me. You got me, you got me. Ah, you got me.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:09

So yeah. Well um, what did you guys think about Strat?

unknown 1:11:12

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:13

I think she was poorly represented on film. Yeah. And I think shown a little too like shown too many different sides. I felt like they tried to give her too much depth.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:23

I appreciated in the book how she just was that her character was always ruthless. There was really no heart to like to kind of sympathize with her like they did in the movie. Like they tried to make her seem more sympathetic. Yeah, with like the karaoke bark.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:39

Yeah. Yeah, that was, dude, when that was like when he's out on the boat talking to her before she does that. I was grabbing my wife's hand, I was like, please don't tell me they're gonna get into a romantic relationship.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:51

Please don't do this. I love in the book how they're like, you're sleeping with her, right? Oh.

SPEAKER_05 1:11:58

And he's like, no.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:02

Yeah. Oh my goodness. But yeah, she yeah, the best part about her was, you know, she was, as Thanos put it, the the hardest choices require the strongest wills.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:14

Means to an end.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:15

Yeah, she saw what had to be done, knew that it was gonna be difficult. Basically, her philosophy was like one of my favorite red versus blue quote from the director where he says, It is an unequivocal quality of man that when faced with extinction, every alternative is preferable. And I'm like, Yeah, that's Shrep. Oh yeah, she's got one goal blow up the ice caps. Yeah, yeah. It doesn't, I don't care if I'm gonna blow half the world, but if I save the other half, it's still a success.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:44

Force somebody against their will to go on a suicide mission. For the benefit of billions. Yeah. Honestly, like it that's a character I think would that would be the only way they could get a project like this done. Like, I you couldn't you cannot coordinate with like uh enemies like Russia and China, like realistically United States coming together.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:16

Yeah, that's how you know this thing is really fiction. All the countries are working together way too smoothly. Oh, yeah. Even though they do mention there's some spies in some in the ill regular parts, but yeah, to have it united so quickly, I was like, yeah, that's definitely fiction.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:31

Well, that's why I think a character like Strat was so important, because I think he kind of um they he hints at like there's people trying to weaponize Astrophades, and that's why she has two uh two sets of teams, an A and a B. Yeah, backup and like they when they the Astrophade explodes, they think it was a it was spies. So I don't think necessarily the world was at peace. I think it was more of a smaller group of of government officials, and I think they just really just you kind of need that that Emperor Caesar type character that just takes over and is like, no rules for me. You do what I say, I have full power to get this done.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:27

Yeah, it's one of those rare cases where someone having all that power is kind of justified. There needed to be especially when it's like strat. Like even Grace in the book says, you know what, as much as I disliked strat, I'm glad she was in charge because things were getting done and progress was being made, and there was no, you know, for lack of a better term, there was no countries doing this dick waving contest. Sorry for the crude today. I did not know how to how to say that dick measuring contest, yes, muscle faster.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:06

That is why one thing the movie kind of missed out on was the courtroom scene from the book. That was so important to demonstrate just her ability, her authority. And one of the comments was how cheesy it seemed, but I just loved it when they're like, detain her. And she's like, You and what army? I have the US army, you cannot detain me. And she just walks out, and it was all just to show she's not gonna get arrested. And but I mean, the realization she had at the end, of course, was like, yeah, I'm probably after this all happens, they're gonna arrest me, they'll probably put me on death row or throw me in jail for for the rest of my life. But it was like, yeah, she those decisions, and granted, you know, there are very few people out there who could fill that position, and um, I think and he Andy Weir represented uh the perfect character to be in that position.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:57

Yeah, number one, they would have to be a sociopath, they would have to not have any empathy whatsoever, and just I do think she's a genius. I think she just she had everything down planned perfectly to the point where she even knew that uh Ryland Grace was her third option, you know.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:23

Which I feel like that is such a participating in all the testing, yeah, like in the the tool and underwater.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:30

Training, the training, everything being basically the lead scientist with astrophage.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:36

Thinking 20 steps ahead, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:38

Yep. For sure. Oh yeah. Yeah, well, anything about the rest of the characters that you guys have? Any any thoughts? Anything you want to say?

SPEAKER_03 1:16:50

Maybe later we can talk about our favorite Rocky and Grace moments, unless you want to talk about that right now, because it it is like the emotional heart of the film. So we could have a whole section dedicated to their friendship and how it blossoms if we want to do that later, or we can do that now.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:06

Yeah, I feel like maybe we can move on as long if we if you guys don't have anything about any of the other characters.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:13

I just I I think I kind of uh just want to say I agree with what you said earlier about the characters. There they kind of existed to give this world some substance, you know, rather than it just being a story about Grace, Rocky, and Strat. Um showed kind of some real characters in this. Like the the scene where they're all again, the movie didn't do it justice, the scene where all the the crew is talking about their methods of suicide, that is so impactful. It it really demonstrates like these people, the nobility in their in their cause and what they're trying to do and and and kind of the their acceptance with death. Um kind of despite them being so little, so few in the book, it really humanized all those characters.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:59

Yeah, it really flushed out the world and showing that this is like how if everything all the countries were working together, how it works. Because they even, you know, they go to New Zealand and get a guy who was put in a prison doing a crazy experiment, and they you know, they talk to a Frenchman environmentalist and they kinda start to look at consequence and starting to try and predict how they can get this all going, and just every person that's we meet in the memories is just solidifying that okay, this is a real thing, and these are real people trying to deal with this. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:33

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I had a thought. It might be a little dark. Um what method would you guys pick to unalive yourself if you were on the Hail Mary?

SPEAKER_03 1:18:51

That is a little dark, man.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:52

What made you want to ask that? I don't know. I'm just curious because of in the story there they all pick different methods, which is certainly interesting. Um I feel like the nitrogen method would probably be the way to go, honestly.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:09

What was it? Uh not meth andphetamines, uh heroin. Yeah. Yeah. That seems pretty intense. I honestly it would be one of those things where I honestly would I I I don't I don't know if I would pick a method. I would either want to just persist and like, you know, read the books on the ship till I die. And die of starvation. Or like maybe I go floating off into just jump into the town of space planet or whatever the game.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:41

The most knowledgeable knowledgeable man in the universe. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:46

Just have fun with it. I'm not going out. I I'm gonna I'm gonna live out the rest of what I can and just have fun with it.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:53

I think you'd go crazy being stuck on the Hill Mary.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:56

Well, it didn't mention all the games. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:59

I was gonna say, so it's like, why not enjoy what we can before we go? How many times can you play Minesweeper before you're ready to unalive yourself?

SPEAKER_03 1:20:09

Well, he mentions he has like all like the old uh what he mentions all the old Nintendo games he's got on there too. Um I don't know. The only time I've ever thought about like where I choose to die is it's what probably every man thinks of is a last stand, but in this case there's no one to fight. So this is just go floating off into the sun.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:30

I'll get you.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:32

If there was a black hole in the vicinity, that would be my pick, honestly. You would just launch me into a black hole.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:39

If you got any extra fuel, whatever you got, head to a black hole, I guess.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:44

Would that be a quick death?

SPEAKER_00 1:20:46

Just having your matter just get apparently it wouldn't, because the closer you you'd get to black hole, the slower your time would be. So if you were falling, falling, say, backwards into a black hole looking out, you would see time pass by a lot quicker than time is passing by for you.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:09

You would look frozen to everyone else. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:11

So once you hit like the event horizon, they say you would freeze and then eventually fade into like blue. It's either red or blue, and then fade out of existence, but over like you know, eons of time. Yeah. So crazy. It's just yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:32

You want to go into that library world where you can join Washington's library.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:47

But I guess, yeah, I guess I might choose the nitrogen or the or the gun.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:53

Quick painless. Quick, painless, get it over with. Yeah. Sorry to be uh a little morbid, but I just thought that was interesting. I think that was great that it they Andy Weir put that in there just saying it makes you think for sure. Yeah, you know, how would I do it? But anyways, yeah, why don't we get into you wanted to get into the BFF moments?

SPEAKER_03 1:22:16

Yeah, the BFF. Yeah, the the relationship that just makes this story like even though you're in the cold vacuum of space, it's warm. It's so nice. And probably my favorite moment is when they get the idea to send a sampler down to Adrian to harvest life to see if Astrophage has a predator. And Grace is about to go out. Rocky says, Grace, you're a friend now. And he's like basically saying, you know, be safe. I want you to come back. You're my friend. I'm gonna miss you. But you know, it's like there's the the subtext is so important here because you know, dudes don't just say everything they're feeling all at once, and they usually just keep it to one sentence like that, like Grace, your friend now. And it's like you can capture what he's feeling, all of that. Oh, yeah. I and I just love the way how innocent Rocky sounds like even though he's years, years, scores of years older than Grace in the genius himself, and a genius himself, he's still somewhat childlike in our minds because he's just using very innocent, yes, very innocent.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:25

Yeah, that's fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:27

Yeah, I do love that part. I mean, oh man, that would be that's so hard for me to narrow down. Um, I mean, I love the part where after they get the sample, there's a breach in the in one of the uh fuel bays, and so they're just spinning out of control, and Rocky, you know, sacrifices himself to save Ryland, and then vice versa. Ryland sacrifices himself to save Rocky or do what he can to save Rocky, ends up getting like third-degree burns all over his arms, blasted by the ammonia.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:04

Again, the movie just failed to have that. I know.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:08

I do feel like they did a good like version of Rocky saving Ryland, but yes, yeah, not the the opposite.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:17

I I mean that that is definitely my one of my favorite parts too, because and I was imagining this insane scene where the it was almost like uh Star Trek style with the chairs like in the middle of this big room, and you know, it's this massive metal chair and that had landed on Grace, and I'm just picturing Rocky picking up the chair, like he's chucking it across the room. It just seems so cool to me. And yeah, just such a such a beautifully intense moment, and again, such a wonderful foreshadowing to Grace's own decision in the end. Um, like where Rocky literally is sack about to sacrifice himself and potentially die for Grace. Um, and you know, in the end, Grace does the same thing, but yeah, oh, just such a beautiful moment. And of course, the the introduction with them when they're getting to know each other.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:10

No kidding. Which with how that yeah, with how Grace helps him understand why everyone on his ship is dead and he didn't understand, and like it's the watching watching him sleep. Oh yeah, I observe, I observe, yeah. Oh man. Um, and just bros gotta watch each other sleep. I know, right? Watch over your homies, fellas. Watch your homies, make sure they're safe. Watch the homies at night.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:36

Hashtag kiss the homies goodnight. Derek will see me as window.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:40

Derek, watching. I do also I do also love how they have the excuse like Meridian thing or human thing, and they're like, understand. Understand, understand. I think that that's a cool aspect. That's so great. Um, not to get too religious. I don't know, is Ant I think is an atheist, right?

SPEAKER_04 1:26:06

I'd imagine so.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:07

He seems to preach a lot about evolution in this book, or you know, at least that's a Riley Race is a big believer of evolution, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:15

Which I don't I don't want to say if he is or if he isn't, but I do feel like there was a lot of like um religious kind of things in this undertones. Just the for me, I feel like it was Rocky and Ryland talked about like, oh, like we met at this specific time for a reason. Like both our races were at this more than a coincidence. Yeah, more than a coincidence. We were we're not smart enough to figure it out on our own. We had to come here both at the same time to meet, and they wouldn't have been able to do it without each other. And it's a very divine crossroads, yeah. It's definitely more, it seems at least for me, it seems like um, yeah, like um oh, what's the word? Just more uh miraculous meant to be providence, yeah, like a miracle. Yeah, um, and I also think there's some meaning to having Dr. Grace have his name be Grace, you know, having Rocky saved by Grace type. And Rocky, the rock. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:35

Grace and the rock. Well, my one of my side note, uh one of my favorite jokes from this movie is the picture of Ryan Gosling performing in La La Land with Emma Stone, and then a picture of him with Rocky in pro in Project Hail Marion saying, just goes to show Ryan Gosling has chemistry with both a st with both a stone and a rock. That's great. That's awesome. But I I never thought about that. That's actually really cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:04

I'm glad you brought that up. I don't know if that elevates the book for you. Or if actually Andy Weir was just kind of throwing some Easter eggs in there.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:13

Yeah, I don't know his religious views, but like evolution's a big talk in this, but because they're always asking, like, how did we get to this point in evolution where you don't know about like radiation space, but you're able to do interstellar travel? And I have no idea about how to make Z tonite from Xenon. Like it's so crazy. And which that was also refreshing because it's like, oh yeah, if there is intelligent life out there, it's it's not always going to be like alien domination or anything. Like they might actually be excited to learn stuff from us, and we actually might be able to trade in knowledge, yeah. Intelligence.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:50

Yeah, interesting choice making Rocky. You know, they have relationships, yeah, they have uh lifelong relationships with their with whatever spouse you're spouse equivalent they would have, their mate. Yeah. Uh again, no, not something you typically think. If you're thinking of entirely non-human alien, you wouldn't think um, yeah, like, oh, they have relationships, they care about each other, they love each other.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:17

Yeah, like when they name the planet after Rocky's mate, I love Grace's reaction, like, that little devil, he didn't say anything. I guess Iridians don't kiss and tell. Yeah. And like, you know, he says like the notes, and so Grace being this pop culture fan, is like, well, I named him Rocky, so I guess I'll call that one Adrian. Yeah. Fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:43

I love that.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:44

And one of my favorite parts in the end is it's just a sentence from Rocky when he just says, uh, I have to go back home and watch Adrian sleep. And so it just I'm just like, oh, he made it back to us, May. Yeah, and like they did it pretty good, they did it pretty good in the movie as they're like both walking on the beach. He doesn't say the exact words, but he just basically says, I have to get back to Adrian, like letting the audience know that oh Rocky got back to Adrian did wait. Adrian, he did it.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:15

Yeah, yeah. I mean a lot of fun. So fun. Yeah, so heartwarming for sure.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:22

And can we talk about how how much of a like game changer move it was in the film? They used an actual puppet for Rocky instead of just some CGI creation makes a huge difference.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:37

Yeah, I mean there I'm guaranteed there was CGI involved, but right just watching the right moments, yeah. I don't know if you guys have ever watched Corridor Crew and their stuff. Sometimes their stuff is pretty fun. Oh yeah. They talk about having like practical things and then putting CJI CGI on top of it. Yeah, just to enhance it. Yeah, to enhance it just makes it so much better. Oh, yeah. And I just feel like that is what uh Hollywood is missing in the time range.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:09

I think it helps that the actors have something physical to react to. Because I don't know if you've heard the story when The Hobbit was being filmed and Sir Ian McClellan was, you know, he was sitting alone in a green screen creation of Bilbo's Hobbit Hole, and he broke down into tears because he wasn't with any actors. He was trying to act like he was talking to all these people, and then he cried and this is not why I became an actor. And I think that is very telling of how CGI is kind of like the overusage of CGI is kind of ruining modern day films.

SPEAKER_04 1:31:43

Yeah, well, a movie from 20 years ago can look infinitely better than a movie today. That's saying something with just the the quality. And sure, CGI has gotten amazingly better, but yeah, they're missing something when it comes to the practicality.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:59

I mean, has it though? Yeah, I I mean we're going off topic here, but I feel like it probably has been better, but the amount of effort they put into it has gone way down. Yeah. So it's like you compare Transformers to Marvel CGI, and you're like, it's nine days.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:22

It's like, oh man, they must have had like a 90-day free subscription to the latest Adobe Acrobat or something.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:30

Their subscription ran out mid-production. Yep.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:33

Had to use a different one. But yeah, like even with Pirates of the Caribbean with Davy Jones, yeah, like that was what 16, 17 years ago. Um, yeah. But yeah, Lord of the Rings did it so well where they enhanced things with CGI, they they kept it mostly to a minimum. So, once again, another reason why the Lord of the Rings trilogy is the greatest trilogy of all time. Hashtag lessons from loader that really rang more inside my head. I don't think that sounded as good out loud.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:09

That's fine. Forgive you. Well, kind of get back on topic here.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:15

Well, I think the point we were trying to get there is with Rocky being a puppet, it was incredible to see how something without a face we really bonded with and we were able to like see expression come from, which which, you know, if if we didn't bond with it, I probably would just think it's a stand-in of a a stone, a mini stone talus from Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom games, you know, the way he moves and everything. But you know, the voice and everything, the way they just went back and forth with each other. Sometimes they'd get on each other's nerves, and you know, like Grace saying, like, dude, I don't know what he wants me to do. He says, Put this here, put this there. And then I do it, and he goes, What are you doing? Or like when I can hear you, Grace. What do you mean? Yeah, what do you mean? Or like when Grace is just talking about, like, yeah, I used to have a girlfriend and or I had a mate, but now she's with Mark, and it's just like Rocky hates Mark. Which that was like unscripted and was an inside joke with the cast because there was a guy named Mark on the stage crew that like Ryan and the guy controlling Rocky would always harass and stuff. And so Ryan threw that in there, and then like the guy controlling Rocky was like, Oh, I got I know what to do. Rocky hate Mark. Because like the way Rocky moves just immediately like goes up and just like, oh, I hate this guy already. If you gave me the word, I would kill him, bro.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:38

I got you back. I got you back, bro. Oh yeah, yeah, that was pretty good. So oh, another another part I thought was pretty funny is like Rylan tries to like he referenced like a cartoon and he tries to explain the rock and rock. He's like, he's like, he's just like, save it, tell me the data. Like, you don't need to do nothing. Save it for the thing.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:06

Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

unknown 1:35:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:11

So fun, such a, such a delightful book.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:14

Yeah, yeah. It was kind of enjoyable to see them come to those little like human and Iridian things that they just you can't explain. Like, he even just is trying to be like, how do I explain sleep to this guy? Like, oh, I'm just gonna pass out. Explain television. Yeah, how do I explain television? How do I tell him like I pass out willingly and I hallucinate as I do it?

SPEAKER_00 1:35:35

Oh yeah, that would just that's why you know they're so they're both of them are so smart because I could I could only imagine just trying to like figure out yes and no. And he kind of makes a joke in the book. I was like, no, no, yes, yes, no.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:54

Is this an Abbott and Costello Rustine? Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:59

What I guess just one more part that I thought was really enjoyable, at least in the book. I don't think it was in the movie, is when Ryland Grace is uh like modifying the Beatles and he drops one of the screws. Oh yeah, and he's like, Rocky, can you make another screw? He's like, Why? I dropped one. He's like, be more careful, okay? He's like, sorry, I have to use my hands for this. He's like, then use other hand, I have to hold on to this. Then use then use third hand, I make another screw. He's like, oh yeah, you don't have you don't have five limbs coming off your body.

SPEAKER_04 1:36:35

They can each do their own thing. Oh yeah, so fun.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:42

So um just to get to move on to the next topic, um, I see some of you wrote down in our our online or outline. Yeah. Um, could there have been a better way to save Earth?

SPEAKER_04 1:36:56

That's what I wanted to bring up. Okay, yes. Good question. Yeah, you brought it up. I got some good stuff.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:01

Let's hear it.

SPEAKER_04 1:37:02

All right. So um the first thing I thought of when they were talking about the astrophage and just the the propulsion from it was in Futurama when they have global warming and the the earth is heating too too much and everything's melting and everyone's too hot and people are catching on fire, um, they realize the robots are putting out all the emissions. And so Nixon holds a robot party on an island to group all the robots in the world there to blow them up. And of course, the robots eventually realize, and you know, the the crew comes to save them and save Bender, and they're like, Robots, we we gotta push the earth away from the sun. And so they they all like release their emissions, you know, their fire burps from the drinking of alcohol, and and they're it's like it's not enough. And then Bender, he gets up and puts his high knee to the sky and released like an atomic blast, and you just see this like fireball come off of the earth, and the earth slowly moves away from the sun out of the orbit, and they're like, perfect! The temperatures drop to they're just the right amount. And so I'm just thinking, like, why don't they just hook up a bunch of rocket boosters? They have all the astrophage they need. Just move the earth a little closer to the sun. Just move baking bottom somewhere else.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:31

Exactly.

SPEAKER_04 1:38:33

No, I get the logistics, don't quite work out, probably.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:42

How did no one think of this? It's it's first grade, SpongeBob.

SPEAKER_04 1:38:47

I'd say on top of that, the the main thing would be hey, astrophage is a fuel, produces heat. Just heat the earth with astrophage. Yeah, maybe, maybe. I don't know how long the sun would actually last. I know it's dimming at an alarming rate.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:04

I don't know what like if it eventually just goes out entirely with the astrophage or I think they mention all the other stars, like no star exceeds less than 10% of dimness, and then they just stay there. So yeah, they could just keep it warm with the astrophage and still have that sunlight, so they still get the photosynthesis for all their plant life. But yeah, something like that. That's one way to think about it, but that's not a very compelling story, is it, Jeff? You miss out on Rocky. Last I checked, we're at Andy Weir and not Jeff was the author of Project Hail Mary.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:39

Yeah, you pretty much just sentenced Rocky to death.

SPEAKER_04 1:39:43

How do you feel about them? Hey, I'm not saying it was the right option for the story. I'm just saying, were there other ways they could have saved her? Were there other ways? I'm not saying it's the right way either. Obviously, Rocky was the right way.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:56

I feel like I'm not smart enough to come up with a solution. I mean, I could probably think of like a sci-fi solution, but yeah. That's that's a tough one.

SPEAKER_04 1:40:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:09

Definitely something to think about.

SPEAKER_04 1:40:11

Oh, yeah. It'd be interesting. What do you guys think? Put in the comments. Is it do you have any other options? What yeah?

SPEAKER_03 1:40:17

Let's let's get smarter brains on this, and we know you're out there.

SPEAKER_04 1:40:22

Yeah. What's do we just get like a bajillion needles fly out to the patrol line and just start stabbing on the atrophage? And again, I want to the one of my favorite lines was I penetrated the outer cell membrane with a nano syringe. You poked it with a stick. No, I said, well, yes, but it was a scientific poke with a very scientific stick. And then Strat, it took you two days to think of poking it with a stick. And then Grace, you be quiet.

SPEAKER_03 1:40:53

See, this this is this is just another sign that we lost uh uh Steve Irwin too soon. He would have done that, no problem. Croike, let's poke with a stick.

SPEAKER_04 1:41:03

Yeah. A bajillion needles just go out there and you know, take out Smash Fred.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:10

Heck, could we uh like you know, kebab them, just get them all in a line and like a digo with those bats?

SPEAKER_05 1:41:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:41:19

I mean they collected them with the sampler, just put a big like sticky trap. Yeah, that would be probably my my guess is just have like a a collector just orbiting Venus, you know, just collecting it all and then use it for they could put it in that geostationary orbit right where the line is and intercept it all, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:42

Yeah. Maybe, maybe that would be that would be a feat. But you know, it is called Project Hail Mary for a reason. It is just it is a hail hail Mary. Hey, another religious thing right there. Oh yeah. Reference. Andy Weir, are you a Christian? If you're watching this, please comment.

unknown 1:42:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:42:04

Greg, do you know which uh move or uh play I used most in uh in the football games we played when we were younger?

SPEAKER_01 1:42:14

Oh hell Mary.

SPEAKER_04 1:42:18

Probably the only play I did when I didn't have to punt the ball. No, dude, it was it was the bomb. Well, I remember you making fun of me because I called it hell married. And you were like, Hail Mary? Really?

SPEAKER_00 1:42:38

Oh Jeff, you swore when you washed your mouth, that was so yeah. That that was probably more Madden than Blitz, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because Blitz is NCAA. Yeah, that's something to think about. Let us know. How would you save Earth if uh if Astrophage was giving our sun? If Astrophage was real. Yeah. Um one thing I wanted to talk about a little bit more was the twist and how oh man, I absolutely loved finding out that Rylan was just a pure coward and threw such a tantrum about getting forced onto the Hill Mary. Because, you know, I would like to think if I was faced with this situation that I would go nobly and sacrifice myself for humanity, but at the same time, like I don't know what I would do if I was faced with that situation.

SPEAKER_04 1:43:47

So I wanted to see Especially when when it essentially comes down to just you.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:53

Yeah, it has to be you. I wanted to see what you guys thought. Do you feel like Ryland was a hero, or do you feel like he was a coward? Or is he somehow both?

SPEAKER_04 1:44:08

Yeah. I I I think it uh it's a hero rising moment or hero rising story because um definitely uh his primary weakness was his cowardice. I I I love the the quote in the moment when he has that finally has a realization and remembers everything fully. Yeah. And he says, Oh, okay, I see how it is. I'm not some intrepid explorer who nobly sacrificed his life to save Earth. I'm a terrified man who held who had to be literally dragged, kicking and screaming, onto this mission. I'm a coward. And I mean what it's one thing to just um you know, he initially when he's when he's confronting Strat about it, and she, you know, t basically calls him out as a coward and he runs from it, right? He doesn't he doesn't face it at all. But then in this moment, he is facing it, right? This is his his his overcoming moment. Is he gonna overcome this? Or is he gonna do the same thing? And this is where he he transcends the cowardice to be the hero and and and in the end make the decision he should have back when Grace asked him to go on the ship, right? In the same way, when he's going to save Rocky, he's essentially making the same decision. He might not have enough fuel, he might not even make it to Rocky, he is sacrificing himself essentially to save his best friend.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:38

Well, he's certainly not returning home after going to save Rocky.

SPEAKER_03 1:45:44

But he's definitely making that noble choice, which you're really happy to see him make, especially after learning that he was a coward. Yeah. And um, so you're happy that he's had that growth. And it's it's kind of nice to see the main character instead of receiving Deus Ex Machina being the Deus Ex Machina for your favorite character.

SPEAKER_04 1:46:08

Should we have an Ender Shadow version of this book where it's from Rocky's perspective?

SPEAKER_03 1:46:14

It's all just music. Yeah, it's all just music, and underneath it, bad, bad, bad, what do? Wish Grace was here, bad, bad, bad, very, very bad.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:25

Yeah. No, Jeff, I think he nailed it. I think it it was awesome to see. I think deep down he he truly is a hero. He truly is brave, but you know, he kind of let his cowardice have the best of him in that moment. And through regaining his memory, he discovered who he truly is. Yeah. You know, not having kind of that um his history to taint who he is and or like kind of define who he is.

SPEAKER_04 1:47:05

Not letting the past define him.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:07

Yeah. And so I feel like that that's just such a good lesson of kind of you you need to let go of your mistakes, you need to let go of your times of cowardice or your times of cowards.

SPEAKER_04 1:47:21

You need to face them and recognize them, but then be able to let them go. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:26

And then yeah, like you said, he was extremely brave, but once he realized he was a coward, and he keeps facing it, and he's like, Okay, I see you now, I am a coward. So I can either quit right now or I can move forward and overcome this. And you know, obviously he does move forward, and he becomes a pure hero for sure, of not just the human race, but uh of the Iridian race as well.

SPEAKER_04 1:47:58

Yeah, I do I just do love absolutely how it was almost like a non-decision for him uh like to go save Rocky. Sure, there was see I think mostly it was just a daunting choice he knew he had to make, but it was like it was almost like he it was his choice he had to make. And that really goes to show the depth of their friendship that formed in the in the story.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:21

Yeah, love it. And I do love in the book how Andy Weir does make you think just for a moment that he did not go back to save Rocky.

SPEAKER_04 1:48:31

I'm sorry, Rocky.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:32

Sorry, Rocky.

SPEAKER_04 1:48:33

You won't get a dissected beetle. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:37

So good, and that is definitely one of my favorite parts, too, is when he finally makes it back to Rocky's ship and you know he's knocking on with the wrench.

SPEAKER_03 1:48:47

I know you can hear me.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:50

Rocky is just like, Grace, is that you?

SPEAKER_03 1:48:54

So like happy and excited. So happy. Uh I can you imagine being in Rocky's shoes? Which talk about a great clever way to like turn the tide with the Talmoeba and everything, showing that they used evolution to their advantage, but it goes back to that whole Jurassic Park thing. They played God and it was way too much for them. Yeah, and that that was probably one of my favorite moments, and just to be Rocky and just see this happening and realize it and be like, oh no, I'm doomed, only to have your best friend show up at you know, at the 11th hour, or it wasn't quite the 11th hour because he had plenty of fuel, but either way, just to be there and help you, despite the fact that he knew he was gonna die to save you, which he ends up not dying, which I think the whole living off a Talmeba thing was a little bit of a stretch for me. I was like, I know how I don't buy that. Yeah, I don't buy that.

SPEAKER_00 1:49:54

It's all biology when it comes down to it. I do think cells consuming cells.

SPEAKER_04 1:50:00

Substantiation for it because the you get the idea of like how can two different species be able to eat like because he can't eat Rocky's food, right? Um, but there is the idea that the astrophage and the taumiba could have potentially been what seated Earth, I think is the is the insinuation, and so uh and then you know, of course, science, science, science in our biology, which it that we essentially should be able to eat it. It still should be calories. So I but again it yeah, quite a stretch and quite a a leap to make in that law logic, and and then for it to even work out.

SPEAKER_03 1:50:38

Yeah, yeah. So I guess that's a little bit of Deus Ex Machina.

SPEAKER_04 1:50:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:44

Yeah, a little bit, but we'll let it slide.

SPEAKER_04 1:50:47

Yeah, I I feel like though the same with the astrophage, it happens to eat the sun, but also be how they get to the other stars.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:56

Means of interstellar travel. Yeah. Oh, I I like that aspect. I think that was really cool. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:51:03

Because it if something I mean, something that consumes the sun is trivial, trivial uh um what do you call them? Um disagreements with the book.

SPEAKER_00 1:51:17

Yeah, but if you think about it, like I swear we're smart viewers. If you think of an organism that consumes the sun, which is essentially pure energy, what where would that energy go?

SPEAKER_04 1:51:30

You know, and so if you're able to does a perfect conversion of mass to energy, which its ability to travel at near light speed.

SPEAKER_00 1:51:39

Is essentially what it what it they do is they figure out how to harness that energy. But that was it, that was an interesting thing. Um, I did a little math. I am by no means qualified to do any math like this. I mean, I googled one thing that I did, I loved the like the science behind it, the whole aspect of them accelerating at accelerating at 1.5 G's continuously to to go out to Tel City. Um get out of here, Google. But um, so I'm like I Googled how fast how fast would you be moving to at how fast would it be to accelerate at 1.5 Gs per second? And it um it pretty much said 33 miles per hour per second. And so I did the math basically saying the speed gain. The technology is rising. No, get it out of here. Okay, I'm not gonna say G O O G L E anymore.

SPEAKER_04 1:53:02

We got a couple inject it the second time you said it. It was in the background.

SPEAKER_00 1:53:09

We got a couple uh couple Android users here. But anyways, the so 33 miles per hour. This is this is the math I did per second. So that's an acceleration of 33 miles per hour per second. So let's just say one minute is 60 seconds. So 33 miles per hour times 60, is that right? That would be one minute, you're at 1,980 miles per hour. So then let's do an hour. So you do 1,980 times 60. So hours is 60 minutes. And then by an hour, you're at 100,000 uh 118,800 miles per hour.

SPEAKER_04 1:53:58

Miles per second.

SPEAKER_00 1:54:00

Miles per hour.

SPEAKER_03 1:54:01

Oh, yeah, he he calculated it was 33, the acceleration of 33 miles per hour per second. So then he got it up to a minute, and now this is what it is an hour.

SPEAKER_00 1:54:09

Yeah, and then okay, so that's an hour, 24 hours in a day. So then we times this by 24. So one day you will be up to 2,851,200 miles per hour. So that's one day you're at already at 2 million miles per hour. So one year times that by 365, you're at 1,440,688,000 miles per hour, which is like double the speed of light. So I don't know if my math is correct or not. I don't know if if G O G L E was correct in telling me that accelerating at 1.5 Gs equals 33 miles per hour. But if it is, I just thought that was interesting. I don't know where really where I was going with that.

SPEAKER_04 1:55:10

It it's it is, I think it's pretty accurate in representing that. Um, because the astrophage could only get up to sublight speed, which I mean still insanely fast, but how fast it can reach sublight speed. Yeah. Oh it's it's not something that you know is gonna happen.

SPEAKER_00 1:55:28

Um well part of it was I was just so curious about how fast the uh the project Project Hellmary was moving. Because I'm just like imagining accelerating because you know, like when you're at a constant speed, you don't feel the acceleration. So if you're at a constant speed in space, you would be at zero G's because you only feel the G's when you're accelerating. So that's the car start. So if you're at 1.5 G's constantly, that is accelerating so fast. Every second, yeah, increase it by 33 miles per hour. So I just really thought that was cool.

SPEAKER_03 1:56:16

That's pretty cool. Yeah, pretty cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:56:18

Like it, I like it a lot.

SPEAKER_04 1:56:23

Okay, here's my contribution to uh, you know, this intelligent conversation science, man.

SPEAKER_03 1:56:29

You guys are so smart. The coma arms.

SPEAKER_04 1:56:32

Okay, pretty cool technology. The only thing I could think of whenever those were brought up is the Futurama episode where Fry and Leela go to the getaway that's really a monkey zoo, but everything is like taken care of by these robot arms. And when Leela is going off with her ex-boyfriend to talk, Fry's like, no, I'm here alone. And then he looks at the arms, he's like, Maybe you could, and the arms are like, but besides that, they do everything, they pick their nose, they scratch their butt. And that's all I could imagine with those coma arms that are like taking care of them while they're sleeping.

SPEAKER_00 1:57:13

They're just yeah. Oh man. So those are too smart. I don't have much contribution. All right. Well, we should let's get into the ending. Um Derek sent a text out. Um, because we were all trying to read this and listen to the audiobook before we went and saw the movie. And then what'd you say exactly, Derek?

SPEAKER_03 1:57:44

I said, oh my gosh, the ending to Project Hail Mary is something I didn't know I wanted.

SPEAKER_00 1:57:49

Yeah, I think that was just the perfect description. You know, it just like even the part where he goes to save Rocky, and that's kind of where I thought it was gonna end, but then it just it takes it back to where he he he's living um with the Iridians, and uh I just thought it was so fun, just such a good ending.

SPEAKER_03 1:58:15

Yeah, when you learn that he was forced, he was put on the Project Hail Mary under duress essentially. Um, and as soon as you get the idea that oh, he now has the ability to go home, the ending I wanted was for him to show up as Earth's Savior, see Strat in her cell, and you know, say one of his snarky comments being like, surprised to see me, and the exact same thing. Yeah, that's what I wanted, but the ending we got was something I didn't fathom and I loved so much to the point where I realized that I didn't get what I want, and that is it's better for it. Yeah, which kudos to Andy Weir. That's a sign of a good writer being able to give a satisfying ending that no one expects, but they didn't realize they wanted the whole time.

SPEAKER_04 1:59:07

Oh, yeah. I and this is so funny because I I think I'm gonna continue to comment on this. The podcast I'm listening to seems so relevant to the books we're reading. Like I did last time with Princess Bride. Uh and so Jim Thayer, I was listening to his podcast on surprise endings, and I mean it fits so well to this because a an author needs to know a comp a s an ending that is a complete surprise is not a good ending. Like if the reader gets the ending and they're like, How the heck did we even get here? Like, this is completely out of nowhere. That's a bad ending. But if the ending leaves the reader, and it was funny because there was also a Brandon Sanderson there, 15-minute writer podcast. Uh, they also talked about surprise endings too. Um, if the reader gets the ending and it's like it's a somewhat of a surprise, but they they look back on the book and they're it was leading up to this the whole time. And I wasn't even expecting it. Just like you said, Derek, you know, you're thinking Grace is gonna go back home. You're he's gonna go be the hero. And then what does the ending do? But give us everything that it was leading up to. Grace was still going to sacrifice himself, he's going to be with his best friend, he's gonna live, you know, basically his best life. Going back to Earth, he has no one. Rocky's the one he he really cares about. So, and even in the end, he's still a school teacher, right? He loves. So it's it's not the ending you were expecting, but it's everything the book was leading up to.

SPEAKER_03 2:00:36

Yep, I just loved the imagery of a duh, what was it, 30 or 30 or so Iridian kids, you know, all a bunch of little mini Rockies that I've come to just adore and love. Just jumping up with excitement.

SPEAKER_02 2:00:53

Amaze, amaze, amaze!

SPEAKER_03 2:00:55

Or yes, I know, I know question. Oh my goodness. It was it was just so I it was very satisfying, a very good payoff.

SPEAKER_00 2:01:09

Yeah, yeah, I do love how shows him, you know, just falling back into who he truly is. He is a teacher at heart. Yeah, he's a cool teacher and just uh a good person. And that was one thing I forgot to mention that I uh and I feel like we need more of this in books, is the there was vulgarity in this, but it was so minimal effective.

SPEAKER_03 2:01:44

Um yeah, he only really swore when it was like he was when he realized he was facing an alien.

SPEAKER_04 2:01:50

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:01:51

Yeah, when he was just like, oh my gosh, like he even says at one point in the beginning, he's like, Oh, holy fudge. Holy fudge, really, that's what I say.

SPEAKER_00 2:02:02

Like, I must have kids or I'm deeply deeply religious. I loved that aspect because I feel like you know, I've Jim Thayer talked about this in in that podcast. That swearing, he says swearing is like not cool anymore. You know, when in books that people write, it's like people have gotten over it. And it's like Stephen King, you're you're in your own boat with this, making everybody so vulgar. You know, I just love how Andy Weir did this. Oh, yeah. And just when he sees Rocky or the spaceship and realizes it's an alien, that's a proper time to use some vulgarity. There's when you use it so often, it just loses its meaning and its effectiveness. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:02:58

He essentially uses it to emphasize the shock or yeah, the moment.

SPEAKER_04 2:03:04

Yeah, it makes the book so much more approachable to just have so many more audiences.

SPEAKER_03 2:03:09

Yeah, well, I'm I'm able to recommend this to so many more people I know because I'm like, you can survive with the one F-bomb that's in it.

SPEAKER_04 2:03:17

You got kids in astronomy, you know, that's gonna be a book they'll enjoy reading while they're learning about space. Something that, yeah, you don't feel like you're exposing them to all kinds of vulgarity. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:03:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:03:30

Definitely.

SPEAKER_00 2:03:32

Awesome. Anything else, guys, that you have? No, I'll be covered up.

SPEAKER_03 2:03:39

We'll be glad to talk more about it if you guys want to join on in the comments. Give us your thoughts, maybe things we haven't addressed, and we would love to hear your take and maybe start a conversation with you. We do read every comment we get.

SPEAKER_00 2:03:53

Yeah, which has been like zero. Yeah, so you know we're not like swimming in comments. You know your comments gonna be besides like our social media, we haven't gotten any for our podcast. So please, like we want to hear back from you. We want to know what we could do to improve. Um, so yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:04:14

Or just alternate thoughts on things, books, yeah, things we said.

SPEAKER_00 2:04:18

Give us some recommendations as well. It's great to hear perspective. For sure. Yeah, before we end this, um I forgot. We are doing a whole new segment. Um, it's not gonna be in our podcast, it's just gonna be a YouTube video that we post. Um, it's just completely um somewhat unrelated to the the book in our podcast. We are all aspiring writers. And last time with Princess Bride, we did a we did an exercise where we wrote alternate endings to the Princess Bride because the author leaves it kind of open-ended. And we had so much fun doing that, and it really helped kind of our writing, and we want to kind of continue doing that to show our chops as writers and to help improve and practice and things like that. So this time around, we're gonna do a segment where we all wrote about an alien encounter. So tune in to our video, we'll post it pretty much the same time as the podcast. Um, but yeah, if you're interested in that, go check that out.

SPEAKER_04 2:05:34

That's especially where we need feedback. Yeah, yes, we definitely need feedback.

SPEAKER_03 2:05:38

Go ahead and comment how you would write an alien encounter and what kind of tropes you would use, or what kind of methods you would use to uh design a different alien, a different life in the galaxy.

SPEAKER_00 2:05:51

Yeah, exactly. So let's have fun with this. Yeah, exactly. We're gonna have fun with this, and this is this is uh what we want. We want a community, we want this to be a club. This is why we call it a book club.

SPEAKER_04 2:06:05

Uh we just really want all of us to grow as writers, yeah. You know, increase our abilities, and I think a lot of large part of it is also just encouragement, right, from each other, from our community. You know, that's the biggest that's one of the biggest downfalls somebody can have is approaching their book alone. Um, because then motivation or or um consistency can be lost. So I think you know, having it having each other to be like, yeah, man, that's great, keep going, you've got this is so valuable.

SPEAKER_00 2:06:35

I did have a a short conversation with someone on YouTube from one of the videos I I posted on our social media. I saw that. Oh he was interested in it was just a few sentences, yeah. I used a few sentences from my actual book that I'm writing, and he was intrigued and wanted to know more about it. So I sent him to one of our episodes where we actually talk about our projects, and yeah, he gave me a little bit of feedback, which was awesome. So we want more of that.

SPEAKER_03 2:07:09

Exactly. See if I can find his name, give him a little shout out.

SPEAKER_00 2:07:13

A little shout out, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:07:14

Yeah, yeah, because I remember reading that and just being like, there is still a good abundance of just good, decent people out there.

SPEAKER_00 2:07:23

Yeah, yeah. You know, that in when you are learning and growing as a writer, it can be very vulnerable to kind of put yourself out there. So yeah, it's like exposing your soul, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 2:07:42

So the inner mechanisms of my mind.

SPEAKER_00 2:07:46

Things that um positive feedback, not even really just positive, but feedback in general is just so nice to have.

SPEAKER_03 2:07:55

Oh, yeah. Shout out to uh you Thing in the Swamp. Yeah, great name, by the way. Great name, Thing in the Swamp. You Thing in the Swamp. Keep swamping, bro. Keep swamping up, and we appreciate the feedback. You are a blessed man or woman. I don't know. Actually, I think I don't know your gym. I think it's a dude. I think so too, but I don't want to be too presumptuous. Things in the swamp usually are, but yeah. The swamp's not really a feminine place.

SPEAKER_00 2:08:27

So that's awesome. Go check it out, guys. Let us know. Thank you for joining us on this episode. We are going to give our reviews out of 10. And then next up we'll have Jeff with the book pick. So um, I can go first on the review. Um man, this is just my kind of book. It is just perfect for me. Um, it's in the nines. I'm gonna go 9.5. Sweet. There's just so much to love about it, and the rereadability is so great because I've literally read it three times over this month. Yeah. Or listened to it three times this month. So um I loved it. I thought it was so fun.

SPEAKER_04 2:09:24

Oh yeah, awesome. All right, yeah, I'll go next. Uh I halfway through, I was gonna give it an eight because uh not to say I wasn't enjoying it, eight's still great. Um haha. Um but the uh definitely deserves a nine, just by the end of the book. Fantastic, so fun, great rereadability. The science is just absolutely amazing, and just makes like I said at the beginning, it makes you feel so smart and um just again, such a wonderful dynamic duo story. So amazing. I love it. Rocky was fantastic.

SPEAKER_03 2:10:08

Yeah, nice. And I would give this one an 8.8. This definitely brought back the feelings of reading Jurassic Park again. It captured that I can elevate myself to to a higher mindset, at least for a story, and to discover new things, not just about our world, but about our but about our solar system, about our universe. And at its heart, it's a story of friendship, but it captures that wonderful interstellar travel that of going into the unknown and finding out new things. And yeah, I believe I gave Jurassic Park a 9.3. I guess the only reason I put this one lower is because dinosaurs are just cooler, man. But both of them, they're like these great science fiction novels that just really help you just elevate your way of thinking.

SPEAKER_04 2:11:02

Yeah, I will say with my ratings, it I can't really like place books against each other. It I mean, it's just so hard because like I love Jurassic Park so much, but for everything it was, it's not Project Hell Mary. So in in my mind, I get I I could totally get the comparison for sure, and I think that can be.

SPEAKER_01 2:11:20

I just obviously have a bias.

SPEAKER_04 2:11:22

I just can't uh it's so hard, it's so hard to rate them.

SPEAKER_00 2:11:25

Yeah, well, I feel like my science aspect is a good comparison because of like Michael Crichton was so good at making it seem so complicated, but not so out of reach for your believable or understandable. Exactly. And I think Andy Weird did pretty much that as well.

SPEAKER_03 2:11:46

Yeah. Which there's still some things I can't like remember. Like, for instance, how did how is Rocky able to see uh Grace from across his ship? Like, I still can't remember that, but that's something we can talk about later. And I I can Always reread it. I know I'm gonna enjoy rereading that.

SPEAKER_04 2:12:03

W Rocky was in his ship and Grace was in his own.

SPEAKER_03 2:12:05

And he's just out there just talking with the rope.

SPEAKER_04 2:12:08

So, like the laptop. Oh, yeah, that's right. And the camera where he's able to detect that. That's right.

SPEAKER_03 2:12:13

Yeah, okay, never mind.

SPEAKER_00 2:12:16

I know. I always know. You got it. It's we didn't even talk about that part where they were getting to know each other. We could cross it. Oh man.

SPEAKER_04 2:12:26

That was so fun to me. And he's like, this could go on forever. I'm gonna be done. I'm gonna be done.

SPEAKER_01 2:12:32

He's like, man, you know, it's one human gesture. Boy, is he gonna use it?

SPEAKER_00 2:12:36

Oh man. And oh, what was the part where he's like, enough of that? To Rocky. Like, oh man, I can't remember. It was so funny. But yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:12:49

I'd say the part I loved in the movie is with the measuring tape, how Rocky's just playing with it. Yeah. Can't see the numbers. He's just like, what is the toy? And then he gets all tangled in it. That was such a wonderful moment. Yeah. Great. Great with Rocky. Fantastic. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:13:07

So good.

SPEAKER_04 2:13:08

Oh man. Yeah, we could talk about it forever.

SPEAKER_00 2:13:11

But Jeff, hit us with the next book. What are we reading? What are we reading? You guys ready?

SPEAKER_04 2:13:17

Ready for this?

SPEAKER_05 2:13:18

I'm buckled in. Great.

SPEAKER_04 2:13:20

We are gonna read Mein Kampf. No, I'm jumping. That's gonna flag us. No. We are not reading that. No, I was thinking of uh we are we're we're in May and uh in entering June and May, and it's just this wonderful weather, sunny, uh just beautiful time, and I just think of the um I lost my train of thought. Yeah, you're too busy giving us a love story here. And I was just thinking of this uh happy rodent folk at Redwall, and so I want us to read Redwall.

SPEAKER_00 2:14:06

Okay I am that is yes. This is uh man, this will bring me right back to my child childhood because I have not read it since.

SPEAKER_03 2:14:19

Um I've never read them, I just watched the TV show, so I'm excited. I am really excited. That's great. This will be great. That'll be fun.

SPEAKER_04 2:14:27

The show is fantastic. That'll have to be part of the discussion too, but yeah, the book. I it was so conflicting because I was like, uh, Matameo, Red Wall, Matameo is my favorite, but Red Wall is the beginning. So I really want to get on it. I'm glad Derek hasn't read it. So better place to start.

SPEAKER_00 2:14:45

All right. Cool. Yeah, um, yeah, we were gonna do uh the outro a little different this time.

SPEAKER_03 2:14:55

Derek, I can't remember. So we each say like a line that we like, and then I say we didn't rehearse. Yeah, we didn't rehearse. We'll do it live. Yeah, we each say a line, our like our favorite line from the book and or movie. And um then I like either you or I can say until next time, I say keep reading. Jeff says keep writing, and then you can lead us in saying all together and keep staying rascally. Okay. So those watching, you didn't see any of that. We rehearsed this. Watch this great rehearsal.

SPEAKER_00 2:15:39

Oh, I just remembered. I'll say it with my favorite line, so go ahead. Want me to start? Yeah, start with your favorite line. All right, amaze, amaze, amaze. That's a good one. Um, yeah, mine the jazz hands part where they just keep doing jazz hands back and forth, and he's like, okay, that's enough. With Rocky. That's so funny.

SPEAKER_04 2:16:04

Uh, I gotta go with uh uh measuring tape moment, I guess. Had me busting up and you know, not in the book necessarily. Well, it was a little bit of the book, but yeah, so funny.

SPEAKER_03 2:16:17

Or there's piss my bum every time I have a measuring tape. Well, dear viewers, thank you for joining us, and until next time, keep reading, keep writing, and we'll we'll keep working on that.

SPEAKER_00 2:16:38

Yep. Catch y'all later. Bye.