Brain Soda Podcast - Episode 1 - Harry Potter and the Wizards of Artemis

Episode Date: February 5, 2023

Join us for our inaugural episode of The Brainsoda Podcast! This time we'll be introducing the hosts, talking about a possible Harry Potter reboot, Magic the Gathering, the Artemis space program, and more! New episodes posted every Saturday

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Brain Soda Podcast. I will be your host during your time here, and I am with my friends, Brad and Frog. Before we start the festivities today, I want to tell you guys a little bit about us, about what we plan on doing, and why it is we want to do it. So I am Kyle Moore. I'm into pop culture, geek culture, and I decided long ago that I would gather great minds and good friends to discuss those things and much, much more. And you'll find that here on the Brain Soda Podcast.

Why don't you tell them a little bit more about that, Frog? Hey, how's it going? I'm Frog, and I'm here to do a little transition work, as well as bring awareness to different historical figures, situations, things that brought us to where we are today. And I'll also be referencing some pop culture along the way, because I like to get into a few topics like MTG, Harry Potter, things of that nature. Other than that, yeah, I'm just here to have fun, talk about some history, and hang out with the crew.

We'll leave it over to Brad. How's it going? Yeah, I'm going to cover some science and history, probably. I feel like I can bring some good knowledge to the table with some science topics and some things I'm passionate about in historical figures or subjects. So yeah, I just can't wait to share some knowledge with you guys. Years and years and years ago, I remember sitting there and having conversations where I would compare the socioeconomic climate to the change in professional wrestling.

And it honestly was one of the things that inspired me to come up with this conceptually and start working on it with you guys. And honestly, it's so much different than I ever imagined it to be, but I definitely want to thank you guys for coming here, molding and shaping this, and I really look forward to a great time. And with that, let's jump into episode one. Alright ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our inaugural episode. I am here with Brad.

How you doing? And I am here with Frog. What's up? And boys, today we have a little bit of an interesting episode for our first episode, but let's start off. We're going to talk about something pretty interesting. I brought it up to you guys off air and you guys instantly called blasphemy on it. And I get it, but for me, it's kind of a foregone conclusion.

What we're talking about is there's several different sites that are reporting. Now this is speculation, but they want to reboot the Harry Potter franchise somewhere down the line. One of the phrases that have been used to describe the studio's outlook on this, Warner Brothers as a whole outlook on this is you can make two to three times the money by rebooting this. So when I brought this up, it instantly hit you guys is just completely disgusting. I mean, so tell me a little bit about how you feel about that.

So I, as a diehard fan, I think the idea of the characters changing, the plot changing, different things like that frightens me as a fan that is going to kill the franchise in a sense. Well, if you were to just look up what JK Rowling in recent years has said on Twitter as far as what she originally air quote intended for those characters in terms of race, looks, nationalities and sexual orientation, things like that, like she already proposes that that would be extremely different and characters would indeed be changed. And no matter what your feelings on JK Rowling are understandable on, I guess, both sides

of the spectrum, to a certain extent, I feel like you could justify rebooting these movies simply on that. Hey, look, JK Rowling has said for years, she intended for this character to be African American for this character to be homosexual. Yes, she did say that, but like, I don't know, I've read things. I don't believe that, by the way, I've read all the books, but I was young when I read all the books. I don't exactly remember.

But from what I've read, that's not how she portrayed them in the books. So she's kind of like backdating, you know, well, right, right, but to be fair, editorial influence real quick, editorial influence would make you change those things wholesale. Sure. Yeah. To appeal to an audience. Right. Yes.

But my issue with it is not so much, you know, I do, I am a fan of Harry Potter. Well, I do think it's a great franchise and I think what she wrote is like, it's, it's a great book or book series. I just feel that it's just another, like it's too soon, you know, like even, I mean, I understand reboots and reboots can be good, you know, there's, there's definitely good reboots out there, but it's been, what, 10 years? I think it's something like that. When was the last, definitely I was two, came on.

I want to say, I was going to say at least 10 years. Exactly. So 11 years. So almost 12. Well, really quick, when you were talking about this off air, when you were talking about this off air with me, you had said something about doing it animated, like an anime style. Do you think that if that were simply their intent, they looked at the Spider-Man films and go, we, like, if I armchair quarterbacked it, I would go, let's do something like that.

Like you were saying. I wouldn't even go to the extent of being like a TV series or something like that to hash out because TV series could definitely, exactly, a TV series is essentially multiple films over a long course of time. So you could hash out the story way better in a series, even if they made it, it doesn't have to be animated, I guess. If it wasn't, if it was a TV series, it could be, it could be live action. My question was, though, is if it were to be presented in a different form than a recast,

would that entice you more? Would you understand that motive a little bit? Not the motive, but would you be more enticed by that? What do you mean? Like a re, what? Almost like Fantastic Bees, right now. If right now you hear, we're going to reboot it, you're completely disgusted. Was that change in three months, if they, if you hear, hey, we're moving forward with

it as a CGI film, would I wouldn't be mad if they did something like a Star Wars version? What do you mean by that? Like how they kind of backdated. They used their original films as a backstory and then, well, they almost created a backstory off the newer films, to be honest. They led into the stories that are established in the original trilogy. I wouldn't be mad about something like that. I wouldn't be mad about the first Voldemort War in the original next set of films.

I would agree with that. I always looked at it in the future tense of, I wanted to see Harry as an auror. I want to see thirty-two heroes, Harry. You know, that would be cool. But the thing is, she would either have to write books or, I don't know. Because that's new material. It would suffer, it would suffer to the Game of Thrones. You know, it would just be like the ending of the Game of Thrones, where there's not

the original source material. True. No, there's not original source material, but she has already been in her own universe in a different capacity than writing books about Harry Potter throughout this time of Hogwarts. Okay, so now we're talking about a different thing, though. We're talking about a completely different thing. We're not talking about a reboot.

We're talking about extension, which I'm not against, you know. So I think that if they do it right, like what I was saying, if they had a TV show, I would probably watch it. Especially if it was done on HBO or something, where it was on a good platform that cares about the quality of the film. Good production quality. Exactly. A respect for the material, because it's owned in-house, absolutely.

It kind of feels like, to me, that there's just becoming a few, you know, like, it's conglomerating to like, three or four main things. Like your Burger King or McDonald's, your Taco Bell, that's all there is. You can find a Chick-fil-A, you can five into five guys, you can five a little Caesars. I mean, there's variety. Right now, realistically, you have Disney, you have Peacock, and then you got the Hulu Netflix. NBC Universal.

Disney. Right. Yeah, well. Hulus owned in Majority Snake by Disney. And Amazon. And they own 21st Century Fox or whatever, and I would say in part for property rights and for Hulu. Right.

And then Warner Brothers discovers HBO Max. But HBO, yeah, exactly. HBO, like, they just had to discover and HBO merge. So now it's different now. At this point, if you look at, because I've already been experiencing the whisper campaigns that kind of happen on internet speculative sites, like, to be fair, this is reported by fan sites. This is largely speculative, what we're discussing.

But what my point is here is this. I've already seen a little bit of this when it comes to not only the ousting of Zack Snyder, but now the erasure, it seems, of his universe for the DC Comics element in Warner Brothers Discovery. Now with Harry Potter, and they haven't been producing films for about 10 years besides the last three that have not performed as well, much alike DC. And when you look at the way people react with James Gunn and with different elements of the universe that have been taken over by other filmmakers like Todd Phillips as

Joker, while a lot of people really enjoyed it, it does contradict the Snyderverse. There was a lot of people online, bots or not, whatever they may be, that really, really had a problem with that film, almost simply because it was not Zack Snyder's vision. Now when you take a new part that Harry Potter is something that they've seen a lot of return with probably almost always, they know that they have a guarantee for a certain amount of this money. Even in the older films, people will be buying copies of those films once they start to reboot. People will be buying those books again once this starts to reboot.

People are always buying those things, but I think even right now, with the fact that we're talking about things like this in a fandom public square, it's going to start rising up the sales of those products no matter what. So it is kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Like you said, reboots are success, typically, absolutely. It depends how they do it. If it comes out good, or like, you know, if they do it right, I think that it can be a good series.

Stemming off of the rebooting from Harry Potter, which we all feel might be too fast, too much, too quick. Wizards of the Coast, they're doing something I hope the Harry Potter thing doesn't do. They're trying to push product out once a month, and just over-flood the world with magic. I would say the easiest way to say it is exploiting their market. Yeah, yeah, they realized what they have. It's like McDonald's with the Big Mac.

Okay, we realized we can sell this. Let's make it smaller, jump up the price, and see where we get there. You know, I feel like it's something similar to that. They're increasing the price, too. No, no, just as far as they realize what they have, so they might diminish some things, but they're just going to push it. Okay, so like... A core set should not be released once a month.

That's like a Call of Duty game game release once a month. Yeah, well, that's... I feel like it's more, it is almost like the card game equivalent of like... Pay to win. Yeah, because you would have to buy the newest thing every time, but I don't know if it even works like that. I haven't played Magic in years, but again... So, for transparency's sake, we have all played Magic to varying degrees throughout our time

knowing each other, and I'll say this, I dropped off maybe around the same time you did, Brad. But, Frog, I know you've kept up and been more involved with it, and when we were discussing talking about this on the air, I looked up, kind of run down on what I'm able to tell the real problems a lot of people have found in Magic, and what it's done for the market of the cards overall and in general. So like a couple years ago, they came out with these sets called Secret Layer. And Frog, if I'm messing anything up, let me know, jump in, absolutely. But the Secret Layer is like crossover between not only Magic, but various properties.

One of them was the Walking Dead, and fans were really kind of like taking them back and upset by the seemingly kind of cash grab that's flooding the market with a bunch of new players because they see the Walking Dead labeled on something, people will buy it. So they had like walking dead sponsored cards? Walking Dead crossover cards. Almost like D&D, because they did the same thing with D&D. But D&D, I'd give a little bit more leeway because it's very much in the wheelhouse. Yeah, exactly.

It's very much in the wheelhouse of Magic, and it's under the same umbrella like we were talking about before. It isn't in-house property. Wizards of the Coast runs both those games. I'm not a Walking Dead fan. There's been campaigns in Dungeons & Dragons, right, but it is different to take a television show based on a comic book and push that into your medieval, magic, and mysticism, sword and sorcery card game.

Exactly. That's why. I wouldn't buy any of the Walking Dead series. It's not for me. Exactly. Well, it is for... I did like the Walking Dead series. I remember Kyle.

I've enjoyed both things. Exactly. I've read the books, your books, up for a long time, and then of course the show, I watched for a long time. Right. Now, a little bit after that. I don't understand why it doesn't seem like, and magic does not seem like the type... It doesn't match to me.

It doesn't seem fitting. So we'll go a little bit further along in the timeline, and Hasbro has been getting more and more fire for things like that, but then the real big alarm in the sky that caught my attention was their stock got downgraded, Hasbro's did, the parent company of Wizards of the Coast, and then around that same time, they came out with these 30th anniversary random packs of delisted cards like Black Lotus and things like that, so you couldn't play them tournament legal or anything like that, and they wanted $1,000 for these. Now they...

Dude, they're expensive online. They're expensive online. Wait, what? $1,000? For these special sets? What? Like, what? How many...

What are we... Because they were going to do a Christmas set. They always do that, and they'd be here for other reasons for a thousand dollars. Oh yeah. A deck or two? Like a couple decks? Hold on one moment. We're going to look it up right now.

I don't believe it's decks. It's like random pulls, probably like a booster box. Okay, so this is the TCG player ad I'm clicking on right now. This is for $1,000. Yeah. 49. Okay. This one I'm looking at right now is $1,405, so somebody already bought and is reselling,

I'm sure. But as far as I know, they are just re-listed cards that were no longer available. Here's a boost for like $400, it looks like. Yeah, these aren't the same. Yeah. So if you guys just want to look at some of those. Well, okay. We're going to pass the point.

A big, okay, so the main topic here is wallet fatigue. Players are getting wallet fatigue. This is, all right, I don't, from what I remember, they would come out with a couple of year if I'm not mistaken, correct? Yeah, like once a quarter, once every three months. Yeah. Yeah. Like come out every month that like, I mean.

Yeah. Now to come out every month on top of everything that's happened within the last number of months to a year or so, I believe. But if people. So players aren't even going to know where we're at. You know what I mean? We're not going to know where we're at in, and as far as like, this doesn't. This doesn't.

Do they change the essential rules of the, because I know they come out with like different like. Mechanics. Yeah. Mechanics, exactly. So is that changing every month? Because if that's the case, then yes, it would just be, I don't even. Well, that's what I was trying to talk about.

That goes into tournaments. Now I'm just a hobby player. Do you know, how are you going to ban, how are you going to keep an accurate list of banned cards in and out of these tournaments? You know what I mean? It's going to be so confusing. You're not going to know what you're going to build. You ain't going to have the options there.

Yeah. It's just going to be so confusing in the long run. I think. Well, and I found it to be one of the things we're realistically, if I were to invest, I remember at one point, I really, really invested into one particular set for, for batch gathering. I cannot remember what it is right now, but I had a black and green Elf deck on top of a green and white, a green and black that I'd already had from older cards.

And we always played, is it, what is it called when it's, anything goes cards? It's pretty much modern or, it's either modern or standard. Right. That is how we were playing. We were playing free for all cards and 60, 60 card decks, right. And I would, I found myself gravitating towards this deck. I'd watch a build. This guy made it online and I was like, man, I would do this and that with that build.

So I use that as a template, changed out what I wanted to, got the cards that I did, kind of looked around at some other ones and flip flops and things and made my first sideboard and things like that. Actually that deck was out of date within, I think like a number of months because there's a whole other set, there's a whole another power creep that comes in. I remember like, I've been playing magic, like essentially since it started when I was a little kid and didn't even understand it, but I saw the cards and like, and I tried, but as I grew up, I learned how to play it and then, but I didn't value the cards and

I wish I did because I sold them for some like, some Marvel trading card game. I don't remember what it was called. I think I know the game. It's not Marvel icons or legends. I can't remember. Yes. But it was some trading card game, some Marvel trading card game and I had like just boxes full of magic cards.

I traded like, you know, essentially one for one, not one for one, whatever for those cards. One set for one set. Exactly. Yes. Yeah. And man, I'm sure that that was a bad, well, obviously it was a bad trade because whatever those cards are, aren't around anymore, but magic sure is.

Well, I mean, it could actually add to some of its market value because they're not producing, reproducing or I don't have those cards anymore. I don't want to have the magic cards anymore either. So from what I remember is that like, I got into it because of you guys, if you remember. So when I got in, it was, and I would say it was a fair market if I was going to keep into it. No, we got into it though, Kyle, when we got into it, Kyle, we weren't really into it into it.

We just kind of played it casually. No, but that's, but that's my play a couple of times in college, but like with people with, you know, the corner down there, but like, I wasn't in it until I got to Grand Rapids. Yeah. Like I played with you guys, but wasn't into it into it. Yeah. So like we really like, we were into it like, like when we played it, we were, it was like

years after. It was like I was playing UNO, you know, just a game. Yeah. Well, my point is simply this, if you're going to become a player of magic, if you're going to have sales as Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast want, you have to get new players in. You have to have players walking down an Iowa Walmart. It's hard to play casually. It's hard to play casually, you know, obviously.

My point is though is simply this, when I got into the game and started playing with you guys, it started the first time I ever played, somebody handed me a deck because I didn't own one because I didn't go out and buy one, but I wanted to learn how to play the game and interact and play with my friends. And when you can do that, it's great. Right. Wow. The point I'm making is, is I then walked into like Walmart after getting core concepts

of the game, found a pre-made deck that I liked and started building from there. Usually, that's what probably most people are doing. I don't believe you're walking out of a couple of hands at a friend's house and going, okay, I'm going to go out and buy it. So that's the case, what's the, what's the harm in it coming out of your month then? I think the harm is the cards that I've bought don't mean as much after so long because there's all these new mechanics, which to be fair, it's nice to wipe the sling clean for new players.

Hold on. If you're competitively playing, but like, man, the way we, we played, man, who cares? I had a sliver deck, you know, who knows what, like half those cards were like 20 years old. Right. And half those cards wiped the board every time. I know this is going to be like a complete 180 from what we've been talking about because we've been talking about culture stuff, but like something that I've been watching pretty

closely, it's the Artemis rocket. So have you guys heard about that? In passing. Right. Only in our off time have I ever heard you really discuss any of it with me. Okay. So you guys probably heard of the Apollo missions though, right? Absolutely.

Yeah. So this is, this is our Apollo mission. This is our generation's Apollo mission, essentially. Okay. So, so we're going back to the moon, guys, we're going back to the moon. Now did this already happen or is this something that's coming up? So, okay. So the Artemis rocket is this, it's, it's the largest rocket that, or the Artemis moon

missions should I say, but this Artemis rocket is the biggest rocket we've ever, we've ever launched and it is sending, we just sent a probe around the moon to, you know, essentially a proof of concept, just, just to make sure we're, we're good to go to send some people there. Yes. And we're going to be sending some people there in the next couple of years and we're going back to the moon. We're landing back down on the moon and I think if I'm not mistaken, we're, we're working

towards getting a base, a moon base set up, which will eventually lead us to be able to refuel on the moon, which gives us way more travel time because there's less gravity there so we can take off way quicker. Right. That makes sense. Right. I've always been under the belief that if you were to do anything involved in space, that was not an immediate travel to another place.

You needed to do exactly this. If you weren't going to try to go to Mars straight from the planet somehow, some way, and recently with the nuclear, is it fusion or fission they just accomplished finally? Ah, fusion. Fusion. Well, if you weren't to have the capabilities of nuclear fusion in mass to try to go to Mars or working towards that, you said we would need to go to the moon to be able to achieve fusion?

Well, no, no, I'm saying that if you weren't working on fusion propulsion jets to try to be able to go from Earth to Mars, then the only other thing you'd have to do. We're in Mars right now. We have the Mars road. Not people, but we have drones there and stuff. Right. Yeah, it takes about nine months to get to Mars. Right.

But, I mean, we can get to, that's the thing, we can probably get humans to Mars pretty easily. We need to get humans to Mars right now. We'd be at humans to Mars within a year, guaranteed. But even then, it seems like to be able to do anything in space, to be able to go to Mars even if you do it once within nine months to get from launch to landing, to be able to do it, like you said, from the moon, just seems like it does open up things. If we can somehow make fuel on the moon, if we can refuel on the moon, we can get to places

much easier because when you see these big rockets and stuff, 80% of that rocket is just the fuel to get out of our atmosphere. It's the fuel to just break free. If we can make a little pit stop at the moon and then refuel, we can get to farther places out into our atmosphere, let's say Saturn's places or stuff, or just have that refueling station out in space instead of a space station floating above Earth, essentially. Do you believe that this will be a leapfrog situation almost like I was getting at where we go to the moon now.

Will we establish a base at the moon now? We then do that to Mars, or do you believe Mars is more of, not necessarily an end goal, but we want to get colonies or to terraform Mars? I mean, yes, I would like to, like Mars colonies I think are going to happen within hopefully our lifetime. I really do hope, you know. Like breaking ground or capable movement. A person going to Mars, and I think if someone's going to Mars they're staying there.

You know, maybe they're coming back, but actually I can see them coming back. I don't see why they want to be able to come back. Really if they play it right, I can see someone in our lifetime that happening, especially if they have a moon base because they can stop there for it. The moon base would be the new ISS, essentially, is my vision, you know, and I'm sure other people would be. ISS being the International Space Station, sorry, yes. Ah, yes.

Yes. Where is that located within our orbit? Really low. So, and that's the thing, people don't realize, when people are in space, what do you think, the International Space Station? You think of space, right? You think of like way out in space, right? I mean, I would think within the orbit of the moon and the sun, but closer to which

I wouldn't know. Okay, okay. So, if you were to think of like the relative distances of that, like the International Space Station is like hugging the Earth, essentially, compared to like the moon and especially the sun, but like the moon is way, like way more distance than that, you know, compared to like- Like 10 times more or 100 times? Yeah, satellites and the space station, all that, they're really like-

They're right above the Earth, essentially. Right. They're, yeah, they're not too far, they're like above our atmosphere, essentially, getting out into space, but they're not like, the moon is actually quite far away from us. I would hope so, Brad, because we need a damn rocket ship to get there. Well, yeah, rocket ship to get to the space station, too. Yep. I would, I do, I do agree with both of you.

I would like to see some action on Mars start to pop off, you know, to really see what our options are, you know what I mean? Is that really the intended goal here, though? When NASA was in a far different place, though, we were talking about the elimination of it or the defunding of it or whatever may have you. At this point, to me, an Apollo-like mission of landing on the moon is completely superfluous unless you're doing something to mine a resource or create an installation of some sort. So you really think, wait, hold on, so you think the only thing, the only benefit to

you is to either mine a resource or to create an installation? You don't think like just the pursuit of science is good enough? Do you, do you believe that the moon has vast secrets that we haven't uncovered in the discoveries that we've made since 1960, whatever the moon landing is, for or to, I believe, I could be wrong? I mean, yeah, depending on how interested you are in the moon, yeah, definitely. If there's benefit to going there, obviously I believe that we should do things that are beneficial and knowledge of the moon is a resource as well, like on a different scale

for sure. The best, the best, I think, idea would be to set up a moon base. If we're going to go to the moon regularly, set up a moon base, that would be an installation. But the thing is that the space station is way far, you know, like I was just saying, it's a different, it's a different thing, but the moon base would be essentially something for deep space missions. You know, you could make a pit stop there, chill out for a second, refuel, if we can somehow get a way to make fuel from the moon.

Well, and we've seen so much in our lifetime of how technology grows exponentially that I feel like if you're going to go to the moon, you're going to end up doing everything on it that you possibly can. So if we're going to go there, we're going to start finding more ways to study it. We're also going to be laying down foundations to go from it to other places. Where would we move to from Mars? If we were able to send a rocket from Earth to the moon, refuel, go to Mars within our lifetime because technologically we're probably going to end up getting faster and better

and more efficient at going out into space, refueling in space, going from one place to another within it, that like at this point, where do we go from Mars once we're able to put an installation down on and transport from Mars? Watch the expanse. The term is expanse from Mars? No, watch the show, the expanse. Oh, well, can you tell me an answer that I wouldn't have to watch that show? No, it's a show based on some books about like a future where there's like kind of a

colonies on Mars and the asteroid belt and like there's moons of Saturn that might have liquid water underneath. So, okay, so is that like, I'm just saying theoretically that's say the Mara O'Brien in control. Refueling on Mars, like things like, actually you might want to because Mars has like ice caps. Like I could imagine like in the next couple hundred years having colonies on Mars. Hopefully.

So really quick, my question to you though is this, if theoretically you ran NASA by the time that you were near retirement, you're able to again theoretically launch a rocket from Earth, refuel on the moon, get to Mars, refuel at Mars, where would you believe that we would be landing next? I mean, if it was just to make another installation for us to refuel that and move out from there. The Saturn. I mean, not just for refueling, I mean, but like, I mean, I'm not saying you can't lay down for foundations for other things, but theoretically in this space, okay, I'd like

I want to go see Titan, because that's like, I think that's the ice planet for not mistaken or the ice moon moon, right, but yeah, yeah, right. Yeah. Oh, Saturn definitely is. Yes. But I'm talking about the moon, the moon of Saturn Titan is an icy moon and it has water or likely water underneath it. So, you know, I was just I was just reconfirming my belief that Saturn was a gaseous planet.

Yes. With rings. That's all with rings. Well, I know that Saturn has rings. I know that. I just didn't know that necessarily meant it was gaseous planet. Yeah. Yep.

Yep. Yep. So, all right. Well, you know what, man? This has been a good first episode. You know, man, it was good. It was good talking to you guys. Ladies and gentlemen, we really hope that you enjoyed our very first episode of this podcast.

We hope to hear from you again soon. All right. Have a good night. Bye, everybody. Bye. Brain soda.