The Glass Cannon Podcast - Glass Cannon Radio #25 – Seth Skorkowsky/Project Hail Mary/D&D's Dark History

Episode Date: July 17, 2025

Jared and Joe welcome friend of the Network Seth Skorkowsky to discuss Andy Weir's Project Hail Mary, the birth of RPGs, and our philosophical stances on spoilers. 0:00 Intro 7:20 Project Hail Mary 1:03:00 Spoilers 1:26:00 RPG History 1:52:30 Obscure Obsession 2:07:00 Listener Award Watch the video here: ⁠⁠⁠https://youtu.be/y99hHUx6P6c Access exclusive podcasts, ad-free episodes, and livestreams with a 30-day free trial with code "GCN30" at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠jointhenaish.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Join Troy Lavallee, Joe O'Brien, Skid Maher, Matthew Capodicasa, Sydney Amanuel, and Kate Stamas as they tour the country. Get your tickets today at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://hubs.li/Q03cn8wr0⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. For more podcasts and livestreams, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://hubs.li/Q03cmY380⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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The Naked Gun. Tickets on sale now. August 1st. Listen closely. That's not just paint rolling on a wall. It's artistry. A master painter carefully applying Benjamin Moore Regal Select Eggshell with deftly executed strokes. The roller, lightly cradled in his hands, applying just the right amount of paint. It's like hearing poetry in motion. Benjamin Moore,

see the love. You are listening to the Glass Cannon Network. This is Glass Cannon Radio with your hosts, Jared Logan and Joe O'Brien. Hey, better late than never. Sorry we're a little late today. It's Jared's fault. It's Jared's fault. Traffic.

Traffic. Oh man. Oh, the traffic out of doors today. It's Jared's fault. Traffic. Traffic, oh man. Oh, the traffic out of doors today. This is Glass Cana Radio, where we talk about all things geeky, nerdy, dorky, spazzy, all of those things. I'm Jared Logan, this is Joe O'Brien.

This is the show where you can call in and make your opinion heard. And today's a big day because today is book club day on Glass Cannon Radio. Yeah, love book club day. We all read a whole book. An entire book, all of the words in it. We read it.

Good for us. We are doing very impressive. I think we are doing better than 80% of the population with one book in our name, at least. Joe, how's it going? By the way, I'm not in a hotel. I'm in someone's house. I'm in their room. I apologize. I'm traveling in a hotel. I'm in someone's house. I'm in their room. I apologize.

I'm traveling right now. I'm on the East coast. It's a pain in my ass. And I don't know why. Why are you apologizing for traveling? There's nothing wrong with traveling. I hate traveling. I want to be home with my shit in my house.

I am at this much stress, not this much, but this much stress the entire time I'm on any vacation. That's so funny. Vacation's just and are only bringing you anxiety. Yeah. Well, I'm glad that you're able to connect and still do glass can radio, which you will not be doing next week You're actually off next week. So it's a fun little tidbit for everybody I'm going to be co-hosting with the greatest our greatest co-host back up for glass can radio Mary Lou is gonna be here next week. So yeah, you'll see Mary Lou hosting another whole show with me next week It's gonna be a blast. We'll have lots of fun nerdy stuff to talk about. But yeah, I'm great man. I'm going to be in the show with Gary Loo hosting another whole show with me next week. It's going to be a blast. We'll have lots of fun nerdy stuff to talk about. But yeah, I'm great, man.

I'm great. I, yesterday I was, I was under anesthesia yesterday. Oh, that's right. You got the colonoscopy. I did my, my 45 year old colonoscopy and I'm just here to say, go out there and get it. Don't, don't run away from it just cause it's horrible. It seems gross. It's really not that bad and it's super super smart to do and you know

You want to if you have anything wrong you want to catch it early, but I'll Joe Brian clean bill of health Clean bill of health right so yeah, I was very excited despite Squeaky clean asshole. That's right I got an a-plus on the old chef's kiss on that butthole Came home with the whole printout with all the information. There's pictures I said to my wife why would do you want to see the rectum my Photo that away from they ever send you photos. I mean it's of the inside of your rectum, but like I'm not a doctor I don't know what these photos show me. It is a very strange thing to do. Yeah. It's very odd.

Do you think some people like kind of put them away in the drawer and then one day they dig them out and they just feel nostalgic for the time that they had a tube up their asshole for an hour. Look at that. Look at that polyplus organ wall. I'm so excited. Uh, no, but I'm feeling much better today. And uh, yeah, ready to get into it. We got a great show on tap. Like you said, it's a book day. We love book clubs. It's a book club day. So we're gonna dive into Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. Then we're going to look at spoilers as a philosophical topic. Let's talk spoilers as a philosophy and then

we're gonna talk a little RPG history with our special guest who we're going to introduce in a moment, an obscure obsession or two, maybe from the niche, maybe from our special guest, which we didn't get to last week. So we're bumping into this week. And then of course, a listener award for a great con. I got a great award. Actually, I'm going to tell the award right now. And then we'll get into the question later as well as our special guest. The award this week that we'm going to tell the award right now and then we'll get into the question later as well as our special guest. The award this week that we're going to give away, I'm super excited, going to give away an entire three-book adventure path for Pathfinder second edition, hardcover, well not hardcover,

softcover, hardcopy that I think is just going to be a sick adventure. Triumph of the Tusk. Yeah, I want to play that one. All three books, an awesome orc adventure that we'll talk a little bit more about during the show. And so yeah, why don't we, Jared, why don't you introduce our guest for today? Absolutely. So I am such a giant fan of this guy

and all the stuff he does. He is the best tabletop RPG reviewer on YouTube. He is a fiction writer and he's just an awesome dude. So we're so happy to have him on here. And by the way, he told me he's read our book club book twice. Wow. So he should know of which he speaks. Please welcome Seth Skorkowski, everybody. Seth.

Hello. Hey buddy. Oh, it's good to, it's good to see you again. Good to hang with you again. We have not had a chance to play for quite some time, but we've, we've gamed together before and I'm so excited. You're finally on glass Ken radio. I know. to play for quite some time, but we've, we've gamed together before and I'm so excited you're finally on Glass Can Radio.

I know. Well, that's the last time we had technical issues and I couldn't because they shopped my fiber line. So I'm back. We had done all this. We had done all this prep for a show with Seth. I don't know, three weeks ago or so. And it was like the night before, right?

Seth, you were like some construction crew, like it was like the night before, right, Seth? You were like, some construction crew, like it was a mistake, right? Like they just like cut into the fiber line to your house, right? Yeah. Well, so they were replacing the sewage line and they've cut it twice in the past two months. And then this time it was the fiber company was replacing the box because with the last time the guy came out, he's like, you know, the box of the fiber goes in, we need to get a bigger one. I'm like, okay.

And they ripped it out and then they broke it. And then they drove away. They broke it. And then they broke away. They shut it off because they were working on it. I'm like, okay, that's fine. I wish you guys had warned me. And then they drove away before it ever came back on.

And then I'm going through all the AI automated system. Could you turn your router on and off? It's like, guys, I know what's wrong. You chopped my fiber line and drove off. You're dicks. And they're like, we'll get it fixed. Around the time you're supposed to stop the show tomorrow. Like, yeah. So I don't have good times.

I'm glad you're here. I'm glad that you're on board. I mean, so one of the primary reasons that we wanted to bring Seth on was to talk about the history of RPGs, which we're going to get to in a little bit. A fun little topic that Seth is into and has some knowledge of. But we said, hey, listen, you could just come on later in the show, or if you'd like to join our discussion, our book club hang for Project Hail Mary. I don't know if you've ever read that by any where. And then he says, I've read it twice.

Yep. Wow, very impressive. All right, awesome. I owe a lot of my author success to Andy Weir. So I check out all this stuff. The audio book for The Martian, it was a self-published book originally. So he needed an audio narrator on the cheap because he was paying for it himself.

So he got this guy who nobody had really heard of that much named RC Bray and he killed it. He is audio book of the year. It was absolutely, it blew up all of a sudden Andy Weir is famous and so much of it's because of this amazing audio book. So everybody loved RC BrC. Bray. And so they're like, what else has he done? Well, you know, fast forward to I am an up and coming author on the cheap and I need

an inexpensive audiobook narrator. So I get this guy called R.C. Bray who just slates me as the book immediately after The Martian. So I got all of Andy Weir's spillover. Awesome. Wow, that's amazing. That's good. Just pure luck.

So I had to check it out because everybody was talking about this other book and most of my reviews started with like, I love Darcy Bray and The Martians, so I picked up this book and it was great too. So I was like, I need to check this out. So that's how I discovered him. Okay.

And wasn't a big fan of his second book, The One on the Moon. Artemis. Artemis didn't care for Artemis as much, but loved Roger Kilmary. So okay. Okay, great. So let's get into it.

We're gonna have a debate here today. We're gonna have a debate, but before we get into it, we should do our contest question, great. So let's get into it. We're going to have a debate here today. We're going to have a debate, but before we get into it, we should do our contest question show. Yes, yes, yes. Let's set the stage with the contest question. For those of you that call into the show during the day, remember, you're going to raise your hand on Discord if you want to join the conversation about Project Hail Mary or anything we're talking about today. And at the end of your call, I'm going to give you a question. We need a quick and good answer. And the best answer by the end of the show is going to win the triumph of the Tusk adventure path. The question for today going off of the fact that, you know, this, this is, this book is back in the news now because of the release of the trailer for a project, Hail Mary, the

film, and Ryan Gosling has been cast in the role of Ryland grace. And so we ask you today all time, television and movies, what was the best casting choice? What was the best casting choice? And I think to guide it a little bit, I do want to say I'm probably going to vote for something that was either a real life person or an adaptation of some kind where the character was known to people before the actor played them. So that we're not just looking for like what was a great performance. We're looking for like who nailed or casting for a certain person that would have right that people knew either in real life or

in fiction ahead of time. So that's the question. You know what? In fact, Jared, why don't you give us an example answer? Do you have an idea in mind? Yeah, I have one. I'm going to take one off the board. I'm going to take a big one. I think it's a big one. I don't know if you think it's a big one or Seth does. I would take off the board, Chris Pine as Captain Kirk. I loved the Chris Pine, Captain Kirk. I love Chris Pine in general and just about everything. He's my favorite, Chris. I think he's the best Chris. He is the best Chris. I'm with you on that.

Yeah. So I'm going to go Captain Kirk with Chris Pine. OK, great. I am going to go. Well, what do you want? Actually, let me kick it to Seth. Let me kick it to our guest here. Seth, do you have an idea for this? OK, my problem is I cannot pronounce it properly. OK, it properly. Okay. It is Shoray Agdilashu, who played Christian Avasarla in The Expanse. It is pretty much the character from The Expanse is exactly like she is in the show. It's flawless. It It's like the Gruher and a Vat to be this character.

It is so perfect. And the actress is amazing. She absolutely owns the camera when she's on it. You feel sorry for anybody that has to share the camera with her, because she's the boss. But her casting in that role was just amazing. That's awesome, Seth. I think that that is a spectacular answer.

It's right in line with what we're looking for. And funnily enough, the character Christian Avassarala Avassarala. Avassarala. Christian Avassarala was a winner of one of these contests this year. It was like best. Oh, that's right. What this year. It was like best, what was it?

It was best, it wasn't best president. You know, they took that actress, they moved her over to the Wheel of Time, but it was too late to save that show. Yeah. Yeah, but she came in in the last season there. That's awesome. I am gonna go a little bit more deep cut on this one.

This one just jumped out at me years ago. I can't believe Game of Thrones is about to be 15 years old from when it started. Wow. 15 years old next year from its launch. And from the jump, this casting really stood out to me and shocked me because it wasn't what I was expecting, but it made the character so much better than what I expected or what I had interpreted from the novels. So I'm not also not sure how to pronounce this,

but I'm going to say it's Ian or Ian Glenn, who played Ser Jorah Mormont in Game of Thrones. I loved that casting because I considered that character to be just sort of a, like a foppish loser whiner, sort of pathetic guy. And this guy comes in and he plays both sides so well. He's tough, he's respectable, but he also, you can see, has this sort of sad, pathetic adoration of this child that's almost bordering on romantic. And it's just sort of weird. He played it, I felt so well. So I can tell it's 15 years old because I have no memory of,

of what, which more Mont is it? So I mean, he's in the whole thing. Like he's, you thought Jora wasn't Jora more month, the grizzled guy that runs the wall. No, no, no. Jora more. That was his father. Jerry's. He's the guy who's with Danny, her like side No, no, no. Jorah Morm... That was his father, Jared. Come on. That was his dad. He's the guy who's with Danny, her, like, side bodyguard guy. He gets the gray scale, and Sam has to, like, shave it all off later.

Oh, right on. Jorah. Yeah. Anyway, Ian Glenn. And he's in a ton of stuff, anyway. He's also... I thought that was a great casting choice. Yeah, there's the picture. Jim with two ends threw it up on Discord so that's our contest question Give us the best answer by the end of the show is gonna win the triumph of the tusk adventure path Jared Kick us off with project tell Mary here seems like you're going on the other side from from Seth here right out of the gate Well make it enemies

well, I just want to say I respect our guests Seth Skorkowsky so much and he loved the book enough to read it two times. So before I start, well, yeah, that's reading. I think audio books are reading. So before I start in with my negativity, maybe we should kick it to Seth just to tell us what you loved about it. Mm hmm. Okay. One, I enjoyed the kind of return to Andy Weir's strength of we're going to science the shit out of this,

which is really, really fun. I enjoyed that kind of nonlinear storytelling as his memories are returning to him. So you kind of start off in the, this weird situation, he wakes up on a spaceship. It has no idea what's going on. And we have these flashbacks throughout it and the flashbacks are not like this kind of contrived to catch the audience up. It is this as the memories are actually returning to them and that's worked into the story.

So there's no case where the character is aware of information that the audience is being held from them or the audience isn't aware of information that the character doesn't have or kind of discovering this with them. So I did enjoy that. I loved his entire relationship with Rocky at the concepts that were involved of what an alien species would be like if it evolved in this completely separate environment.

So I enjoyed all that stuff. You know, you move on. You're monsters all the time. I wanna ask you a quick question question because something jumped out to me about the structure of the continual flashbacks as sort of the memory is returning. And I was curious if you ever thought as a novelist yourself, like, why he structured it that way? You know, did you think like, could this book have been written as a story about finding, you know, first finding what is happening to the Sun and then resolving that mystery and then thinking about what to do about it, then building a ship,

then sending them on a journey, you know, like, could it have been structured that way? It could have, except for, so with the way they did it, instead of this kind of slow lead up of discovery, that we get him on the ship and he gets there and we can cut out the whole abuser thing, he's there, he just wakes up and the rest of the crew is dead. It doesn't have that same punch or that feeling of what the hell is going on that the character has of, I'm on a, okay, I'm in a room, and it takes me a bit to like, I'm on a spaceship, okay. Then kind of going forward,

and then we have that discovery, but there's also that feeling with the audience of, okay, how the hell did we get here? Trying to figure all that out with him, and I think that that adds a lot more hook to it because the audience now has two hooks going on. What's he doing now and how the hell did we get here? And we're flipping back and forth versus a lot of stories when they'll do the flashback.

A lot of times I'm like, can we just get back to the good part? Like, is there an easier way we just get back to the good part? Is there an easier way we could have done all this exposition yet? So he does the hooks because now we're trying to figure out why is the sun dimming, okay? What's up with these little black dots, blah, blah, blah? So he's basically got two hook fronts going.

So it's a really good way to keep the audience engaged and you don't just have that part where it's flashback time and you're like, oh, let me just skip paragraphs as I'm reading. Let me just get the, can you give me the Cliff Notes? I don't care. So I think that that was actually a much more successful way of doing it. I think that overall, and you know, we'll come back to more specifics, but overall I'll probably fall somewhere in between the two of you. I think that there was a lot I liked about it and a decent amount that I didn't and I felt overall the science, while some of it is so beyond me that I don't even enjoy reading it that much, Some of it isn't and I thought it was really well done. I always really love the sciency parts of it, the hard sci-fi parts of it and that was

really cool and really well thought out. I liked the narrative and the overall structure of doomsday sort of scenario. How do you fix it and then meeting an alien and that whole relationship? sort of The idea of how that hold the story went from there. I really liked in general I just had a few execution critiques that I'd make but we can get into that as we get more specific Jared what did you not like about the well? Well, let me do my positives. Yes. I think it's an easy read and I don't mean that in a derogatory way. It flows.

You know what I mean? You're able to really kind of get through it. It has momentum. It has good pace. I really, and I thought the prose was fine. It was good. I also think it has a very compelling hook off the jump on page one or two. I was like, wow, I've gotta find out what's going on here.

I'm in, totally in. And as Seth said, two hook fronts, I agree. The flashing back, you get another hook in that whole plot, you know? So that really worked for me. The flashing back really worked for me. I thought that that was a great way to tell the story. I think that idea of the flashbacks coming to him in the present at the same time, that's something I haven't even really seen before.

So I think that was a very cool idea too. All right, so those are my posits. Now, can we talk about the fact that this book has a very corny sense of humor? And to me, an incredible golly gee whiz kind of tone to it that I was like, am I reading Brandon Sanderson here? The golly gee whiz-ness of it, I think the author's aware of it. Cause you know, like for example, the decision- Self-aware.

The character is even says it. The author's aware of it. He's not accidentally using that tone. And for example, the refusal at curse within the book, you know, that shows the author is, that's a decision that, that we are made. So I don't think he's unaware of it. I just really don't like it. Are we adults here or not? Like, and I, it's not that I need to see the F word. I felt like the

whole thing had this sort of just like, golly gee, we can do it. And I'm like, no, you can't. That's not life. That's not life. That's not life. Except the other characters cuss. Yeah. Okay, so there you go. The other characters do cuss. But again, it's not about specifically the cussing.

I think Stratt drops a few F bombs here and there. Yeah. Right, it's not, I just want people to know it's not about the cussing for me. It's the whole tone of the thing. And the just very like, we can do it. Optimism of it. I was, that turned me off. That didn't feel like life to me or a real point of view.

And I feel like it's the author's point of view. The science of it. Again, I find the science as interesting as you guys. Okay. I find the science interesting. What I don't appreciate are long passages that read as a list of procedures. I felt like I was reading an instruction manual or something, like, for like three pages at a time sometimes. And I really don't need to hear step one, step two,

step three, step four, like, and it kept. He kept doing that. Yeah, I was curious on that. I was curious on that. And by the way, we're gonna bring in a special, another special guest here, and a second surprise guest who read this book that has hopped into the Discord. I don't, I'm always wondering who exactly that's for,

that stuff. Yeah. You know, I'm always like, they're like hardcore scientists out there that are like, finally, a fiction light book for me? You know, it's like, they're really, the way that he builds out the scientific procedure and the step by step, you know,

eliminating incorrect leads until you get to the right answer and explaining everything. To me, I'm like, wouldn't the common reader find this extremely boring and annoying? Sometimes, Joe, just to piggyback on that, sometimes the experiments or the procedures he go through end up being completely meaningless a page or two later. It's like a failed avenue he went down. Well, that's science, right? That's how science works.

Yeah, but why didn't I get like, I tried this, it didn't work and then move on to the thing that worked. I'm reading an instruction manual of things. I don't really need all that. That hope and then that dash of, you know, we're trying everything. There was a thing I was watching recently, it was about the Martian. It was an interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson, who Andy Weir told him that when he was writing the book,

he was writing it for the point of view, if he didn't want Neil deGrasse Tyson to get on Twitter and correct him. So if you wanna know who he's writing it for, that's who he's writing it for. Okay, perfect, perfect. All right, let's bring in a guest here. A core member of the Glass Cannon Network and star of the main show, Kate Stamos Red.

Oh, wow. Hey. Project Hail Mary and wants to weigh in. Kate, can you hear us? Yeah. Can you hear me? Yeah, we got you. We got you.

How dare you make me wait with the rest of the peanut gallery and raise my hand? Listening to you, Jared, talk about how you hate science. I'm screaming. I'm screaming over here. I don't hate science. I hate lists of procedures. You hate listening to the scientific process. Uh, guilty.

So it's the most male, I don't like reading the instructions thing ever is what you're doing. You're toxic masculinity is seeping out, Jared. It always comes out on the show. Kate, what were your thoughts on Project Hemorrhoid? This is a recent read for you that was coincidental. You were reading it just as we decided to make it a book club book. Yeah, like I had just finished it when you guys were talking about it in the studio one day.

I actually, I listened to the audio book also, which was awesome. Like the narrator was so good. It made it so enjoyable to listen to. As much as I mean fun of Jared, I do agree that if I read him thinking about the science, I probably would have like zoned out because when I was listening to it, I was listening but not that hard. So it was like nice to have someone narrate it but I think I would have had trouble reading it. I think a great audiobook narrator changes a whole book like I think I probably like things better

sometimes when I hear them for sure. Oh yeah but yeah so when um what is it my favorite part was listen I'm kind of a dumb dumb when the the ship pulled up, I was like, no fucking way. There's aliens in this book. Like I had no idea there'd be aliens. Neither did I. So I got super excited. And then when they met and it was like this weird rock bug spider, I was like, of course it's not something recognizable

and like bipedal. And then like later in the book when the alien's like, you're so squishy and wet and gross. I'm like, oh my God, he probably saw Grace and was like, ooh, a weird blob. I don't know. Just all of that stuff was just really fun to listen to. Yeah. I thought that it was really... So, Kate, I was right with you. From the moment the ship pulled off, I mean, I have for such a long time, I have been under the scientific, I believe the scientific principle that there is almost no chance there's no other intelligent life out there, but there's almost no chance we would ever contact it in our lifetimes, right? Like that sort of idea. And so this is going to be a hard sci-fi book. And when another ship

pulls up, my first thought is like, this can't be an alien. Like my first thought was like, it must be like a human ship from the future that found out something about astrophage, wormhole travel or something. And then when it was actually an alien with the same problem from a neighboring system, I was like, this is really cool. And then what I liked about the science was how he crossed over into the biology there and went into detail about the structure of Rocky's world and how why life evolved like that was all because of the world. The ammonia atmosphere, the no eye sight, just hearing everything kind of by radar, whatever. You know, it was all about where what their planet was. And that was that was a really cool concept.

And I also think it's really cool how Rocky is such a good builder. He and even though he can't survive in Ryland's environment, he's able to build a series of tubes into Ryland's ship in a matter of days that keep him alive. I totally bought that. I'm being sarcastic. So wait, Joe and Jared, you read it. How did you find reading Rocky's character as he learned English? Because the audiobook was awesome, how they handled it. Did the reader do a voice? It was an effect.

They did post-product, I did both. By the end, I was not gonna finish the book by today. And I was like, I'm gonna have to audio book it during chores and long drives. And so near the end, I did the audio book. And so I read and heard both. I really liked reading it. When you're reading it in the book in the beginning,

it's literally music notes in quotes are what he says. And so you're reading it in the book in the beginning, it's literally music notes, in quotes, are what he says. And so you're just free to imagine that how you want. And I had my own imagination of it, which was cool. And then when I heard what they did in the book, it was the post-production effect that they put on his voice, which was it. Yeah, it was like just musical tones. Let's not forget that Rylan Grace

learned how to translate those musical tones over a series of almost five days using an Excel spreadsheet. I think that's a really big achievement. He is an impressive hero, Jared. He can do everything. He can do science, he can do translation, he can do space walks. There's literally nothing Rylan Grace can do everything. He can do science, he can do translation, he can do space walks.

There's literally nothing Ryland Grayson can't do. He's every man. I'll tell you what, here's my- Listen, he's just a teacher with every skill imaginable. Yeah, here's my big critique. That really came up at the end. It was towards the end where he really got real, I mean, he really had to

lay it on thick that he was not the man for the job over and over and over. And I was like, dude, stop like this ship has sailed. You are a superhuman with the amount of stuff that you were able to pull off. And first contact, by the way, with striking success across the board. Ably handled. Ably handled. With, by the way, no reservations or hesitation. Like, time to solve this problem, let me get out a spreadsheet and interpret every musical note this rock creature makes. Dude, good for you, man. Yeah, I was like, don't run yourself down, man. Stratt was right. You are definitely the man for the job.

Wait, so for the trailer for the movie, I haven't watched it yet, because fuck movies, right? But in the trailer, don't they spoil Rocky? Because that's what I also loved about the book, is that it was such a surprise. You're jumping into this, and you're like, oh, it's going to be like a little mystery sci-fi thing. And then I just, I miss the days where when you watch them,

like a show or like a movie or whatever, and it's like, it is something else than you expected, or there was something in there that you didn't expect, and it's not spoiled for you. Yeah, 100%. We're actually gonna talk about that today, Kate. That's like our next subject. And it's inspired by this debate over the trailer for Project Hail Mary. We're going

to do a whole philosophy of spoilers thing. We were like, why do you do this? Or do people not care? Or do you think that's the only way to get viewers? It's interesting. Yeah, it's definitely an interesting topic to delve into. Kate, do you like the casting of Ryan Gosling as Grace? Honestly, yeah, I think so. Listen, I saw the Barbie movie. He was great with that. I saw the notebook. I think that's all the movies I've seen with him in it. But I feel like it'll be good with him. Yeah, I don't know if there'd be a better one. I'm not like well versed in different actors. When you guys talk about actors on the show, like, oh yeah, wasn't,

wasn't this person in that? I just sit there and smile and nod. Like I don't know who these people are. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I think it's, I think it's good. I think it's good, but uh, yeah, we'll, we'll talk more about that later. I think Gosling is too Hollywood. He's chiseled. He's pretty. I mean, like, I wanted more of a schlub. Like, I think you should have had more of a kind of a high school teacher or elementary school teacher sort of physique. Not Ryan freaking Gosling. I play Ken with my abs. Yeah. Yeah. It is, it is interesting not to go too far down the casting line, but the whole, I, I like Gosling because I feel like his prettiness is, uh, it belies a little bit. I think his.

He can be a very regular guy in the way that he acts. He's he's a very like he can be very down to earth in his approach to characters. He can play like regular guys pretty well. I think he kind of nails that. He really strikes that line really well. Why don't we see what some of the people in the niche think of the book so far. Let's bring up Brother Willie here.

Brother Willie, what do you think of Project Hail Mary? So I am a huge fan. I've got to say, I came to it by the audiobook as well. In the same way I came to The Martian, I do think that's the better way for people who are not very versed in science to come by these books because the narrator's such a good job laying it out. I felt like I was looking over his shoulder and part of the... And I've got to say, my nine-year-old loves the audio. And so if my nine-year-old can engage with a hard science fiction book like this, I am all of it.

Yeah. Well, now let me say, does that make a book good if a nine-year-old can understand it? Is that like a good thing for a book? Well, he also loves The Hobbit. So if you want to come at Tolkien, you can have that. Oh, snap, Jared, you have just been sucked. The Hobbit, though, specifically written for children, the Hobbit conceived as a children's book.

Project Hail Mary, I think, conceived as a book for adults. Hence the F words from Strat. I think I would argue that it's conceived for like right down the middle. I think it's like high school age reading material. And I think that's probably what he had in mind. I think you could, which is the average American. True. Yeah.

You could see this book being assigned to like a high school science class for you know Summer reading or something, you know could be fun. That's like that's like the dream of an author of like say, you know I don't want a bestseller. I want a book that's assigned to people they have to buy it Yeah, that's the idea brother Willie give us a great Casting of a person in a role enter this contest to win the Pathfinder AP Absolutely, so I was trying to think of a historical casting. I don't have a good one There's one character who could not possibly played by anyone else and that is Doc Brown is played by Christopher Lloyd and Imagine the movie with

Yep. Yep. There you go, great. So yeah, a great, somebody who brings a lot to the role, for sure, Christopher Lloyd as Doc Brown. Is that, I mean- It is not a previously existing character or a real person from history per your instructions, Joe. Yeah, so I mean, probably not a winning answer, but- First caller, missing the mark.

Well, no, all I'm saying is that they can answer whatever they want. I'm just saying what I'm gonna vote for. Like if you want to be in the mark. Well, no, all I'm saying is that they can answer whatever they want I'm just saying what I'm gonna vote for like if you want to Joe I'm gonna vote for you know where you already had an idea of the person Yes, yeah, but I think that brother with brother Willie now is certainly a An actor who stole the show as they say and really elevated a character that might have not been that special To something pretty awesome Marco. What do you what do you got to say on Project Hail Mary? Marco S. Hi. I sort of agree with everyone. Trying to be diplomatic here. I did love the

book though. I come down on that side of it. But I do agree with what Jared says about the sort of golly gee whizness. And I have to say until Rocky turned up in the book, I was getting pretty tired of it. I listened to the audio book and I agree with Kate that the audio book was awesome. But until Rocky turned up, the main guy did great on me a bit. He was a bit too sort of brilliant at everything and a bit too, you know, saying, as you said, oh, this isn't for me, I can't do this, all this sort of stuff, while he's then doing all this amazing science

and all this sort of stuff. So. Keep in mind, that's the big twist toward the end of the book is you realize that he went against his will. And so I don't buy that twist because he's like, I couldn't, I can't do this. I'm afraid. And it's like, dude, you're, as Joe put it, a superhuman. Why do you think you can't do this?

Yeah. And I would, and I would not, I do not agree with that interpretation that's like, it's trying to teach you a lesson that though you doubt yourself, when put to the, shut up. I think it was a bad writing choice. Kate, what did you think about what, I put a bad taste in my mouth about the character. At the end he has to be like, by the way, I'm a massive coward, coward. I'm a huge coward. I don't know. I kind of like, it didn't really annoy me because like, I don't know, again,

I'm kind of like a dumb listener and a dumb reader. If there's a plot hole, I'm going to miss it. I'm just here to have a good time. So I didn't really pick up on him just constantly being like, oh, I kind of suck at this. I can't do it. How I interpreted that at the end, how like he was sent against his will, was that like, yeah, even though he's so smart, whatever, it just like speaks to that primal, you're so scared to like go out into nothing on this death mission thing.

That's just kind of how I interpreted it. Yeah. That's why he was a teacher, because he was afraid of academia and getting mocked at all this. So you have a guy who's super capable and is absolutely terrified to actually go to it. It's like an armchair general, like that guy that'll tell you exactly how we should fight. Or that guy that sits around and watches like an MMA fights, it criticizes it. It's like, well, come on,

Billy, why don't you hop in the ring? They're it. It's like, well, come on, Billy. Why don't you hop with the rig? They're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I can't. Yes. Or like a guy that could never write a novel this good, but gets on his show and just like drags it down. Or every little, yeah.

A guy who couldn't even come close to the narrative or the science or anything. Marco, give us a great casting choice. Marco has been a winner before, I believe, on listener awards. Yeah, listener awards. Yeah, I have. What do you got for this one? I'm going to go for Ian McKellen as Gandalf. Great. Possible winning answer. Right out of the gate, Ian McKellen as Gandalf. Kate, do you want to, you got anything on this? A great casting? Oh god, I feel like I just forgot every single character that ever existed in my brain just like flushed itself. You've got time, think about it. I'm going to bring somebody else here. I'm going to bring up Reema.

Let's get Reema up here. Reema, good to see you again. How are you buddy? Hey guys. Hey, what's up? I gotta click another button here. Okay. I'm good and bad. I love the book. Once Rocky shows up, there was a well, once a spaceship, physical emotional reaction happened. I was all in the rest of the book.

Hmm. Yeah. But after reading Martian, but I haven't read Artemis, I... You're not missing anything. You're not missing anything. It's good, but starting in media res and doing the flashback thing, he's done it twice. He needs something new. Yeah, I mean, as I read it, I read The Martian years ago

and loved The Martian. And I didn't read Artemis because I was like, because I knew the story of The Martian roughly. Like I knew that it was like a self-published book that a guy who was just out there hustling made and it was a work of art. It was great. It was like a voice that we hadn't heard before. It was so well done. And then I, I being the cynical person that I am with this kind of stuff, I was like, he can't follow it up. Like it's going to stink no matter what it is. And then I heard that Artemis

wasn't that good. So I was just like, all right, I'm done with them. And Project Helmary didn't even open it. And then we decided to do it. I'm like, all right, I'll check it out. And right from the jump, I was just like, this is just the Martian character again. It's the same exact character. Well, no. So the Martian, the opening line from Mark Watney is like, well, I'm pretty much fucked. And that's what Jared was on board. He's like, yeah, give me cussing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is true.

It sucks. It does have a little more head to it. My Mary Sue has to cuss. So. Yeah, it's not about the cussing, but I do like it when people are fucked. No, no, that is I mean, that is a good point. I feel like there are similarities there. It's like, it's a similar structure, of course.

Um, but you know, Hey, if it works, it works. Uh, what did you, what did you think about the, um, about what we were just talking about with, you know, near the end, when it's revealed that he doesn't want to go on the mission. Did that sour anything for you, Rima? Not really. It's like, yeah, I think that's the way he's doing it. But then again, he is a dad. He goes like, I'm estranged from my kid.

I don't want him to grow up without knowing me. Obviously. He's not a dad, is he? Yeah, he is. He's divorced. No. me. Obviously, he's not a dad. Is he? Yeah, he's divorced. No, no, no, no. He's got a kid. He talks about his kids, his students. Yeah, he doesn't have children.

Who needs to be alive with them? Yeah, you need to be alive for them. Yeah, to me the argument held no water. I don't want to over criticize it, but it just it felt to me like when he was like I need to be here to make sure these kids are ready for the apocalypse. I was like, what? I just couldn't believe it. I thought he wanted to stay with his wife.

That's why I thought he wanted to stay with his wife. He loved his wife. Um, and, uh, wait, did he have, did he have a wife? No. Oh, I think I read a different book. Uh, it was very Oh. Holly, how do these- I think I read a different book. Ah. Ah. Ah. It was very weird.

Yeah. Rima, give us a great casting. Enter this contest. Well, the casting itself is a bit of a spoiler, but Sean Bean is Ned Stark. Yes. Yes, great answer. And is a bit of a spoiler.

That's hilarious. If you know, you know. All right. Let's get Brody's here. I was wondering if we were going to get Brody in here. So this is our cinematographer on the Glass Cannon podcast. Hello. Hey, buddy.

It sounds like you're in the car. Did we catch you in the car? I am in the car. I'm traveling from one shoot location to another, but hopefully you guys can hear me okay. Yeah, we got you, buddy. And you had to weigh in on this because it sounded like you were a big fan. Is that right? Yeah.

I mean, this book is... I see the criticisms that have been raised, but it's probably my favorite book. I'm not a huge reader. I don't have tons of books on my shelf that I've gone through. So forgive me for being a bit of a pleb, but like it is, it just hits all the points that I want it to.

And I was equally surprised as you guys were with the alien coming in. I figured it was gonna be a lot like the Martian, but you know, further afield. And having the alien come in just really, I think was a big selling point for me. Yeah. Yep I I enjoyed their communication Struggles, you know like early on when he didn't know that Rocky couldn't see it was really fascinating

Why did he build this whole hex wall and there's only one tiny little thing that I can see through to see him It's very weird. But yeah, you take some of those very base human things as being a given across the whole universe, right? But like, it was cool that thinking outside of the box there. Yeah, I mean, for me, I think the thing that really makes this book so much fun, and the reason The Martian is fun too too is it's storytelling through real science. I mean, not real. Of course, there's a bunch of stuff in here that's huge.

MacGuffin's like the whole super cross sectionality thing of the astrophage is like total bullshit. But like they take real science concepts and use those to drive story beats. And I find it so engaging and so interesting. You recommended rendezondevu with Rama as a book that does similar stuff. We're in the middle of right now. And yeah, I just, I really enjoy media that doesn't just bullshit and hand wave

and say, oh, I need something to happen now so I'm gonna make up some science thing to do it. It's like, no, we're gonna take real physics and that's gonna decide why this or that happens. That's going to decide how Rocky hears and how he can see through stuff because he's listening and all that kind of stuff is just, it's so interesting to me. Yeah. Yeah.

Well put, well said. I will say that I, so I read this book. One of my favorite non-fiction books I've ever read is A Short History of Nearly Everything. Have you ever read that, Seth? Bill Bryson? Bill Bryson. Oh, love it. Yeah.

Love it so hard. That book is so phenomenal and I highly recommend it. I mean, if anybody hasn't read it, pick up A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. I mean, it's just a fantastic book that you don't even have to finish in one sitting. You can just kind of like jump in on whatever you feel like. It's a a fantastic book that you don't even have to finish in one sitting. You can just kind of like jump in on it whenever you feel like. It's a great explanation. And what he does is he does a very good job of explaining how we know all the science that we know, like the basic science that we know.

We kind of take it for granted in school that like in elementary school that we're taught the circumference of the earth, how far the earth is from the sun, how many days it takes to rotate around, what's the mass of the earth, right? All this stuff we take for granted and we just tell the answers. It's like, well, how did we find out the answers? I think Project Hail Mary does an amazing scientific job of showing you how with small science evidence, you piece together a larger picture. Like very, very, very early when he is like, I can't even remember the details of it. It's so science-y, but like the way he figures out he's not looking at our sun has to do with like science-y gravity

speed things. Like, you know what I mean? If I'm moving at this rate, at this, whatever, there's no way it could be our... Yes, and how fast the sun is rotating. Yeah, how fast this thing is rotating. I know the speed of our whatever and it can't be our sun. Like, really kind of fascinating stuff. And that's how we figured all this stuff out was like, you figure out how far the sun is from the earth by measuring shadows at different angles at different places of the earth at the exact same moment on the same day. So like it, and you triangulate, it's really interesting because you can't, you know, they

couldn't get in a ship, fly out there and put out a ruler, right? So how did they figure it out? And he does so much of that in project Hail Mary, which I thought was neat. I'll tell you another thing I liked. I really liked how at the very end You don't know exactly what happened on earth You just know that he succeeded and I liked how it kind of ended with him living out his years on Rocky's planet. I thought that was kind of wistful and sad in a way that I enjoy I

Know I was really surprised by that choice. I was like, whoa, I did not see that coming. That's really fun. But I was disappointed because I really wanted to know what was happening on Earth. Well, see, but that's the hero's journey. His biggest weakness was he was a coward. At the end, he does this incredibly selfless thing. If he saves Rocky and their entire world, but knowing he's not going home, he will never see home again.

He will never be able to like give the finger to strut. Uh, so, so he sends everything off. And this, this coward sacrificed himself for this high G environment and this bubble that he can't leave because the air is like ridiculously hot and toxic. And his bones are just compressing away. Under the weight. Yeah. He's not going to live that long is, you know, it ends with like, he gave

himself a really horrible death sentence. Brody, do you have a, do you have a, yeah, then I was back into the book when he gave himself a horrible death sentence. I was like, you have a... Yeah, then I was back into the book. When he gave himself a horrible death sentence, I was like, now this is my kind of book. Oh, come on. That's how I feel, Kate, I'm sorry. I'm getting sad all over again,

thinking about Rocky being alone, thinking that he failed his mission. Oh man, that was so sad. That part of the book made me good sad when Grace sacrificed himself, went back to the planet, they made him a little dome. But I was thinking about it, the sun hasn't reached the ground there, so it's like a dome in darkness, so it's kind of weird.

He's eating like, okay, they didn't need to include this part in the book, the me meat, but they chose to. Yeah, the me meat was an interesting choice. And the world was better for it. I could do without that. I could do without the me meat. I would totally eat me meat. I would serve my friends, like, guys,

we're gonna have tacos out of my thigh. The me meat was awesome. I love the me meat. All right. We could have used a lot more me meat. And you know what else we could have used more of? Rocky eating, just the whole. Oh yeah.

That was so funny. That was so funny. Him eating was akin to like us being like, don't watch me poop. It's like. Yeah. It was, it was cool because it also involved that. You had to like.

I think about that every time I eat your rice right now. Sorry, Brody, what was that? I think about that. You had to like. Sorry, Brody, what was that? I think about that scene almost every time I go into a restaurant now, like we're all eating in front of each other. And he watches him sleep, like the weird cultural things like that are different were just like so funny. It was very clever to think of all that basic human stuff. Brody, before we let you go We're hearing a lot of background noise on your phone. What is the it's a good casting. Give us a good casting choice

Marco stole Ian McKellen as Gandalf So I had to come up with something at the last minute here, but I think Hugh Jackman as Wolverine Oh, yeah, great answer Brody great Great answer. And kind of unexpected. Thanks for calling in, buddy. Because Hugh Jackman, if you had told me before I saw him as Wolverine, I might be like, I don't know if this guy's the guy. And then once you see him do it, you're like, yeah, dude, this guy's an amazing Wolverine. There could never be anyone else.

Yeah, and actually, a lot of people were very critical of the time. What happened, a lot of people kind of forget. Fans were so pissed with like say, who is this Australian? He's not three feet tall. He's not jacked enough. Who is this guy?

His hair doesn't do wingies. And yeah, then he proved them wrong. Well, yeah, get him in makeup and we'll see what we can do for him. Let's get Jen with two ends up here. Jen, did you read Project Hell Marion? Do you have thoughts? The book club book is at guitar.

Jared said that in that episode. What? Idiot. Yeah. Okay. So the deal is Jen with two ends is the last person that's allowed to make that joke. Chairman's so boring, team resend, come on.

Let's give you thatend. Come on. Oh dear. This, this really took a turn. Our, our book, our book club got hijacked. I did read project Hail Mary. I read it instead of the audio book, which I'm sad for. Um, I liked it. I feel like the reason I didn't like it more was because I heard so much hype about it and so many people saying it was incredible. All of these things that I feel like it didn't quite live up to that hype. So like four out of five for me, it probably didn't hit as much because I was like reading it in spurts with all the stupid parenting stuff I was doing. But overall, great book. We know I hate science fiction,

so it really was traumatic for me to get over that. The Rocky really is teaching me that aliens are not scary. There we go. Jen, well put. Give us a great casting, Jen. Oh, Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen in Twilight. Nice. You got Kate. There you go.

Oh God. Amazing. All right. I want to get as many Project Hail Mary callers as we can before we get going. Someone else, do you want to weigh in here on Project Hail Mary? Someone.

Is no one raising their hand? Someone else is. Is their handle someone? Yeah, that's their handle and someone else is not. Their handle is someone. I was so confused. I thought Joe was just like, someone raise your hand. Please, somebody.

Somebody left me. There we go. What's up, someone? Oh dear. We can't, someone? Oh dear. We can't hear you. Someone. Right now you're no one. Oh, no, you're no one. Uh, I'll troubleshoot, try to get back to us.

Jesse JC. Uh, what do you got on project? Hell Mary, Jesse, Jesse JC. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Yeah. Uh, I overall like. Good morning. Good morning. Yeah. I overall like I would agree with Jared

that there are some holes in terms of characterization stuff. But my two beasts with it are one, it's kind of just a vessel for his good ideas. I think that this is something that weird does or sort of not walking the dog. So is that he's got good ideas. I think that this is something that we're does, sorry about walking the dog, so is that he's got good ideas, he's got the science, he's done the research, but it's kind of transparent that the narrative- Everything else comes second. Yeah, exactly.

The narrative is just there to show you how smart he is. But my other critique is I think there are just authors that do that better. Adrian Tchaikovsky is a great example of someone who has good ideas and kind of explores this question of what does alien life look like in different places with different biologies? Yeah, I gotta read Tchaikovsky. I've only read like a horror story collection Tchaikovsky did. I haven't read the sci-fi.

He's really prolific. He does a lot of, I mean, he churns out several books a year. So I'd like children of time series is probably the best example. Oh, it's amazing. Adrian was this weird dude I used to play Call of Cthulhu with. And I never read his stuff. He's just this this guy. He has these eyebrows that are amazing.

And like, by the way, it is like, you know what? I'm going to read one of Adrian's books because he's a great guy. And then like the next time we had a game, it was like, oh my God, I'm like fanboying because it's real different if you meet the author and then they've got a book, you're kind of like, yeah, authors are supposed to be mysterious. I know I am one, but it is like they're supposed to be mysterious, right? You're not supposed to be a person. So yeah, I played with him for like a year of Call of Cthulhu and then like one day I

read it and all of a sudden I'm like, oh my God, you're so brilliant. I really liked the Children of Time. I only read the first book so far, but it is excellent. Excellent. Oh yeah. Suddenly you questioned everything you thought you knew about that person. Yeah, Jesse, give us a great casting.

We're doing a contest. I'm gonna go with Jamie Foxx and Ray. Okay. Oh, interesting, interesting extreme talented musician, and I thought just did a great job in that role Oh, and that was got with that Jamie Foxx's kind of first kind of dramatic thing that he did cuz he'd done a lot of comedy No, he was he did the Tom Cruise one collateral that was that was No, was it after I thought. No, was it after Ray? That's like 2000.

He was the dude jarhead, right? When he was like the, the, the sergeant or whatever. Welcome back to our next segment. The hosts refused to check IMDB. I'm checking it. I'm checking it right now. You might be right. Oh, they're the same year. They came out the same year.

Wild. I was right. It was 2004. And Ray was also 2004. That's funny. I thought Ray was more recent. I used to love sitting around Denny's with my friends, like, chain smoking cigarettes at, like, plague,

like, the Six Degrees of, you know, Kevin Bacon and all that sort of stuff before IMDB. And then, like, once somebody could pull out their phone to check it, it's like, that's the point of the game is we're like, you know, figuring out like all the roles of so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so is going to join us in a second here. Rodith mentioned in chat, I don't know if you've read this one, Seth, but The Moat in God's Eye, Rodith mentioned, and that's a book that I love. I really like The Moat in God's Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Purnell. Yeah, I really liked that. I read it a long time ago, but I really like that.

What's up, Rodith? What did you think of Project Hell Merry? It suffers from the success of the Martian. The Martian, he found his voice. He found a great way to convey a lot of really cool, big idea SF on the cusp of science development, that kind of thing. What we could do now, and then he went into Artemis and Artemis was trying to be a crime story and it did not succeed. It also suffered from second book slump where you get that first book out there and then

the publisher is like, give me the next one, give me the next one. But this third one is better certainly than Artemis but yeah, it suffers from the success of that first one as well, I think. The Moten God's Eye is just such a great first contact novel. It's mind-blowingly good, even suffering from being 51 years old now. Yeah. No, that book's awesome. The Gripping Hand, the sequel is great too. Yeah. Yeah. I never read The Gripping Hand. I'll have to go back and check those out. But I read a couple, I also, is Earthfall, is that the name of another Purnell and Niven book?

Yeah, that's with the elephant aliens in the video. Yeah, there are elephant aliens that have like assault rifles, it's so funny. Like the cover is an elephant with an assault rifle behind a rock. I'm in. But it's actually a very good book. I mean, like the ideas and the, because what's so important to those guys that I feel like comes, is less important, it seems to Andy Weir, is like, is dialogue and true character development, right? Like the problem, my problem with the coward to hero, quote unquote, journey

of grace is that it, that whole thing is comes in the last 30 pages, 50 pages because, because of the way the story was structured, you don't, he doesn't reveal his extreme cowardice until the very end of the book. And then he's not a coward right away. Like we don't see that journey of the character and same thing with Stratt. Like I don't recall Stratt ever really changing as a person or making a different choice. The characters don't, the footfall, that's what it is, not Earthfall. Thank you, psychosis. Footfall. Well, I think it was like that because Grace was, he had like amnesia and he couldn't remember like how he ended up there.

Yeah. And he was just so- It's an out trope. Yeah. An unreliable narrator, right? Yeah. He was so involved in his problem. Right.

Like I can't think of how to solve this problem. I don't have a solution because it was like, you could see the timeline was like, it stayed consistent in the flashbacks. The flashbacks were chronologically in order until the current memory, right? Like until he went into a coma basically. And so I was like, no, I don't know how to solve this, but it felt too forced.

Oh, I'm a coward, now I'm not, right at the end of the book. Yeah, and you know, one of the things that also is being talked about a lot is right now is the trailer. And you know, a movie, a film or show is going to be made by an army of people and a book is made by a small team so you're never going to get a direct translation that is yeah because a book you're in someone's mind in a book.

You're inside the author's mind. That's a completely different, much more in some ways, immersive experience. Rodith, give us a great casting. So I've got Frankie Adams as Bobby Draper from the Expanse series. She was the perfect example not only of that character, but that character is a large, powerful woman who is in the military as opposed to let's take some dainty ballerina and make her into somebody who's being able to carry all this weight and everything else like that without going through any kind of training. They constantly reveal the training that she underwent, the training that she does,

she undertakes in order to maintain her skills, which is something that nobody ever does with an action hero. So, and she was wonderfully portrayed by Frankie Adams. Just so well done. You make a good case, Rodith. And I really liked that character, Bobby. The Expanse is some of the best casting, but the further you are from the core,

the further you are from Holden, the better actor and actress they hired for that role. Holden is the least interesting actor and character in that entire series. He was a very punchable person. Oh yeah. Like, but the guy that played Marco, oh my God, the terrorist.

Also, that man was beautiful. I mean, the whole time my wife and I were watching, I'm like, that man is so damn pretty. Uh, but. That is a gorgeous terrorist. I love a pretty man. Joe, since we've. I know what you're going to say. I know what you're going to say.

Since we've touched on the trailer, it's time to go into our next segment. It is time to go. Sorry, someone. We'll come back to you in a minute. Someone seems to have fixed their mic, so we'll come back to you when we can. Yeah, if anybody has more stuff to say on Project Hail Mary, feel free when you call in to give your two cents on that. But we are going to move into our next segment. And I think that I'm also

seeing here in the Twitch chat, people are saying the trailer for Project Hail Mary gives away everything. And my reaction to that is, yeah, guys, of course, have you not seen a trailer in the last 15 years? Every single I haven't. Every single trailer. Kate actually hasn't. Every single trailer gives away everything now. It just does. I mean, it is a rare trailer that does not do that. So I think it would be great for us to kind of go around

and talk about what our strategy or reaction or general feelings are on spoilers. And I won't go first. I'll throw it to Joe first. Joe, how do you feel about spoilers? Sure, I'll start. I'm on a real extreme of this. A lot of things I'll fall in the middle ground on stuff,

as you can see even with Project Home Area. I like playing both sides. The spoilers thing, I don't watch trailers. for anything I want to see. So like, if I know something, there's something I want to see, I specifically avoid the trailer at all costs. And it's not hard for me because I'm not sitting there on my phone on social all the time, like looking for what people are saying about these things. And so it's easier for me to avoid it. I actually have to go seek it and I don't. I also, I'm a little bit ridiculous about it. I get made fun of it on some, for it on some of our shows where

during Bant, somebody will be like, Oh man, you know, I just saw the new, uh, and door episode or whatever. And I'll literally like take my headphones off if I haven't seen it yet and be like, just wait for me when you want me to come back on. And Matthew will be like, I'm not going to spoil anything. And I'm like, every single thing you say as a spoiler, everything, if you say that it's good, it's a spoiler. If you say you should check it out, it's a spoiler. If you like, literally everything you say gives me some, like a poker player. It gives me some hint as to, it gives, it makes me go into the content

with some preconceived notion. And so I do my best to avoid spoilers at all costs kind of to an excessive extreme. Seth, that's not a middle ground, Joe. That's a super anti-spoiler avoid spoilers dance. That's what I said. I said, so this time I think I could start because I am on one very extreme end of this. Oh, let me say one more thing real quick that is not an opinion. This is a fact. I was in this business for a very long time. I was in the voiceover business and I represented trailer, movie trailer guys, those big voiced

movie trailer guys in a world. I knew a bunch of those guys and they were all out in LA and we would hang out in LA in these parties and stuff like that. I also met a lot of people that made trailers because of that. And I distinctly remember being at one LA house party and just talking to a guy and being like, this is probably 15, 20 years ago, and being like, why do you guys spoil the entire movie in trailers? And he just explained the evolution of market research and focus groups and Nielsen stuff and how over time it got to a point where trailer houses make a trailer they test it with an audience and it creates this feedback

loop where if people like like it it's because they their comment is always they want to see more they want to see more. They want to see more. And they keep taking this and instead of making that like, Oh, well then they should go see the movie. They're like, Oh, they need to put more in the trailer to make it a more effective trailer or to make them want to go see it. And he's like, it just gotten out of hand to the point now where the movie is just basically

summarized in the trailer. That makes me so angry to hear. I know. It's so upset. I believe a trailer should have a hard stop at 30 seconds because I've seen so many trailers like two and a half minutes and like you're watching, I feel like I'm watching the entire movie

because like they show like you have the setback and they show all this stuff and it's like, you got 30 seconds to talk me into why I want to watch more. Would you like to learn more sort of thing? So I think that's actually one of the big problems is we've given them like, oh, you want a longer trailer? And they give us a longer trailer and it's like, this is meant to be a tease guys.

This is meant to be a tickle, enticement, but not a cliff notes. Yeah. meant to be a tickle and taste, but not, not a, not a, not a cliff notes. Yeah. I want to see more is good. Exactly. And that's what I said to him at the time. And he was just like, that's not how movie studios interpret it. Movie studios are just like, they want to see more. They want to see more in the trailer. They want to, you know what I mean?

And it's just like, put more in, put more in. And so there's just this like, to me, I'm with you, Seth. I think that a trailer, whether it's 30 seconds or 60 seconds, I think what it probably needs to do, because you have to assume people are completely uninitiated. You need to establish a star if you have one. If that's a draw, yes, you need to establish a star. But then you just need to, I feel like establish a hook

or an idea, right? The hook and then idea, right? The hook. And then every, literally everything else should be out of context images. Like everything else should be out of context images and big music. You know what I mean? Like why show the setback? Exactly. It's like so well put set. It's like now you're like, well, what are we doing? That's the movie. So when you're, when you're, when you're writing a book, the worst part is when you're like, what are we doing? That's the movie. So when you're writing a book, the worst part is when you're trying to pitch it to an agent or an editor and you have to do your query letter,

you have to summarize the whole book in a hook in three sentences. And you've just got to, you just finished writing a hundred thousand word saga that's got your heart and soul to it. It's like, okay, give me it in three sentences. And you've got room for one character, maybe two, if it's like

a romantic couple or something, add a little bit. That's an art form and it actually uses a different part of your brain than the part that writes the book. It's actually super annoying because you've honed one side and then it's like, okay, now everything hinges on you using a talent you haven't honed. What I would just tell people to do, when I was just explaining how to do it, is like go to a video store, you know, back when we had video stores,

look at the back of your favorite movie and see how they do that, because that's what they do. If you flip on the back of Alien, it's like seven people will come on this planet, you know, but something else is aboard. It gives you enough to go like, oh, this looks good. It gives me the mood. It gives me a key character and that's it, we're out.

But when one of their crewmates is impregnated and the alien bursts forth on the ship, who will survive? During dinner. It's like. And will they get their bonus? So. You don't have to like put out every plot point.

Right. So there is, there's this kind of art form of like, I need to tell you enough to make you want to watch it. But at the same time, you don't want to have so much that you kind of feel like you've gotten revealed. But then if you remember a few years ago, they tried to do a couple of movies where they didn't tell you a damn thing about it,

except for the star. Like remember Will Smith was in like seven and a half pounds, whatever. I never knew what it was about. They intentionally did just a picture of Will Smith. And it was like, if you want to know more, watch it. And nobody watched it. Right.

That's too far the other way. Because, man, I can go watch some Fresh Prince reruns if I want to see Will Smith. Why should I go to the movies? I just look at a photo of Will Smith. Yeah, exactly. It's like seven and a half pounds. Like what? These nuts.

And then Vanilla Sky with Tom Cruise was kind of the same thing. Their initial marketing is they only said, Tom Cruise, Van vanilla sky, opening tomorrow. I like Tom Cruise movies, but what the hell's this? Like what am I walking into? Yeah. What is Kate thing? Kate, what are your thoughts on spoilers? I mean, I know you don't watch movies,

but when you haven't yet seen an episode of, what is it you watch? What the hell? What the is it you watch? What the hell, what the stupid thing you watch? Reality TV comes with spoilers. Yeah, exactly. So like when you haven't watched an episode yet, do you actively avoid spoilers, social, et cetera, or do you not care if you see something?

See, that's the thing, like it depends what it is. If it's a movie, like I am fully, like everything Joe said is also my gospel. But like television and stuff, especially reality TV and the way that like everything is now with these reality stars having their own social media and then in between seasons they're like starting shit with each other so they can talk about it on the season. You kind of got to have that context and like the spoiler of it. And sometimes I do like going into it knowing what's going to happen because I feel too stressed watching these people fight without knowing the outcome of it.

But with movies, I agree. It's just kind of like, what's the point? Like, why are you spoon feeding me all the information? Why? Like, I don't know. I like thinking sometimes. And with, I just think it's, these product managers will be like, people are saying they want this. It doesn't matter.

You don't just give them what they ask for, because it's not actually what they want. Right. They don't know what they want. They think they want this, but what they want is to be teased. You know what I mean? You gotta, yeah. When I was learning, I was doing novels and I would be in my writing workshop and I would get feedback like, I really want to know what's going on here.

And I'd have to be like, is that a criticism or are you praising me that I hit my goal of I want you to know more? Right. Because sometimes they would give it as a criticism. It's like, that's the point. I'm not going to give you more because that would ruin it. The wanting is the goal. The point is to make you feel things.

And so, yeah, I feel like whoever's in charge of marketing, it's like, they saw the trailer. They want to know more about it. Like, that's why you're here. Like, that's like, they saw the trailer, they want to know more about it. Like, that's why you're here. Like, that's the point. Like, good job. You don't make the free samples bigger and bigger. You know, they give them a piece of a cookie and if they liked it, they can

buy a full-size cookie, you don't just be like, marketing says we just give them full-size cookies and then we wonder why nobody buys them. Marketing says we just give them full-size cookies. That's a perfect analogy. And then we wonder why nobody buys them. It would be weird, though, if they sold a piece of a cookie at the store. That would be odd. Did I miss the metaphor? I think you missed it.

I think it was a little too literal there, Jared. But why don't you weigh in real quick before we start taking calls on your thoughts on spoilers. I think the reaction to spoilers has become my problem with with the like, the world, the reaction is way too exaggerated. Now we're like, spoilers, like it's just like, calm the fuck down. My my thing on spoilers is I don't seek them out. Right. Like you, Joe, if there's a movie I want to see, I don't seek them out, right? Like you, Joe, if there's a movie I want to see, I don't go and immediately watch the trailer,

but I do go to the movies a lot. And I do see trailers. They come on before the movie and I don't close my eyes or put my fingers in my ears and go, na na na na na na na na. I do. I literally do. No, I don't make that noise, but I will, nah, nah, nah, nah. I do. I literally know I don't make that noise,

but I will just like put my close my eyes. Sometimes I can hear it and it won't bother me that much, but I'll just, I won't look if it's like a movie I really 100% I'm going to see, but otherwise I love watching the trailers for sure. Hey, listen, I've had things spoiled for me in the trailer. Then I watched the movie and I was like, oh, what I thought the movie was, that's not what it is. Like I was wrong, the trailer misled me or I wasn't really clear on what was happening. I hate misleading trailers. Like, that, man, that pisses me off more than spoilers.

If I watched the movie and I'm like, this is not what was advertised to me. I get mad. And so many times they've screwed themselves. They advertise a movie one way and it's something else. But it's like, okay, so all the people that did go see it, this isn't the movie they wanted to see. And all the people that would want to go see it didn't see it because they thought it was going to be

an action movie when it was actually this psychological drama sort of thing. So there's, there's, there's an art form. You have to tease the correct genre, but not so 30 seconds. Yeah. 30 seconds. That's a good rule. Moss. Ben wants to weigh in here. Could be on, um, Project Hail Mary or spoilers. What do you got Moss? Hey, can you hear me? Yeah, we got you. Yes. Awesome. It is in fact, most been 25 years ago as a big fan of most deaf you see. I just can't get rid of it.

I'm more in the Jared camp, like to use Seth's example of like the video store. I mean, yeah, those are good cryptic pitches if you're already in a video store. I mean, yeah, those are good cryptic pitches if you're already in a video store. But if you're looking at it on your phone and it's like, hey, you need to put down your phone and come to a movie theater instead of doing the billion other things you can do, I feel like you've got to give people a little more these days. And it's easy enough for me to avoid things that I really care about. But I didn't really know much about Project Hail Mary, so I watched the trailer. And yeah, I'll live with knowing a little bit more than I maybe ideally would have.

Yeah. I tell you, I mean, there was a movie recently... With relatively low blood pressure. There was a movie recently where I was in the theater and the trailer played and I was like, wow, I really want to see this movie. So I did do a Joe does and I kind of walked out and went to the bathroom and came back in. Then I saw the movie months later and I was like, this movie sucks.

I could have saved you at night in a ticket. Mos Ben, give us a great casting. Yeah, I'm going to go with Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man. Oh, good answer. Both, because Robert Downey Jr. had his history with drugs and alcohol, similar to Tony Stark, but then also after he started playing Tony Stark, they started writing Iron Man in the comics more like Robert Downey Jr. So it went both ways.

Yep. Yep. He definitely, I mean, he impacted everything. Great answer. That is a great answer. That's the potential winning answer right there. C Finn, what do you got for us? You want to talk Project Helmary or spoilers?

What do you got? Oh, yeah, spoilers. So I read a lot of books and I joined a horror book club and I started not looking at the book covers. And whatever is in there I did it with way of Kings. Mr. My. God. You started not knowing where the hero is.

No idea what's going on. I'm probably starting looking at the covers? The uh, like the, you know, the backwards is, oh, hero goes on quest to fight monster. Got it. That makes sense. I get that. The summary. I never read the summary of a book that I'm about to read.

Had no idea that this was going to be anything other than what was presented to me as I was reading it. Project Hail Mary or any of these other books. And it's a lot more enjoyable. Yeah. I agree with you. I do not read the summary flap jacket of any book, even books I don't know and I'm like testing them out. I always open them and I read the first couple lines. And if I'm interested, I'll take it out of the library and check it out. I never turn it over and read the back. I feel like they always give too much away They'll mention a plot point or a turning point. That's like 90 pages into the book

You know sometimes because that's really kicking it off, but it's like I wanted that little surprise You know if that's what I mean You know I even stick away like I was finishing a book the other day And I happened to look at the back and there was this plot point that came up like three-quarters of the way through the book It's on the back of the book and it kind this plot point that came up like three quarters of the way through the book is on the back of the book and it kind of ruined it when that was gonna happen. Right. Try to stay away from it as much as possible. Jen asks... You know what, I hate spoilers so much. Let me interrupt Joe to do a joke nobody wants. I hate spoilers so much that I just don't

read the book because if you read the, it'll spoil it for you. I hate you. Kate really does not like Jared in real life, personally. So I will say- That's not true, we're good friends. When like a movie based off a property or whatnot comes out, I'm actually a really big fan of, I will watch the movie first and then do the book.

Because you are always pleasantly surprised by all this cool stuff that wasn't there at the movie or the show. But if you do the book first, you will always be disappointed that it didn't live up to the book. And so like a lot of times it was like, oh, this movie's coming out, you gotta read the book?

It's like, no, but if I love it, I'll definitely read the book as well because now it's like I got the bonus features. You know, like I've got the director's cut. And it's like, yeah, this is so good versus if you go from book to movie, it's always abridged. I like that too, just because I have a trouble imagining people in my head and imagining how they talk.

They all just talk like my inner voice, which is annoying, to hear all the time. So when you have a movie or a TV show, I watched Game of Thrones before I read the books. And I'm so glad I did, because there's so many characters and I had like names to faces type of thing. And it was just so easy to like be organized in that way. And my brain.

Yeah. Uh, see fit and give us a great casting before we let you know. I did have one more thing. I don't know if you guys want to, if anybody can answer it in the chat or whatnot, but I did not under maybe Seth maybe Seth can I didn't understand how the the amoebas were able to move within his ship if they're gonna get poisoned by nitrogen when they're in his ship the atmosphere 75% nitrogen they would have died immediately and they wouldn't have been able to travel so I did not understand that when I was

reading the book and it's a big plot point and it made no sense. So I don't know if anybody wants to explain that in the chat. Well, give us a casting on your way out here. I'm all trying to answer it. Sean Connery, James Bond. Sean Connery as Bond. Great answer. That's another one that changed the character.

Yep. I can answer Seyfin's question, OK? But I'm going to need 72 different procedures. Here we go. OK, here we go. Number one, pick up a pencil. Yeah, I'm... Number two, get some scratch paper.

OK, I'm done. That's the bit. That was the bit. Yeah, I can't remember. I don't know. I'm honestly confident that it was not a plot hole. Like I'm confident that he mentioned why, and I just don't understand. I bet he had scientists read his book. Yeah, it sounds like I was one of the, you know what I'm not interested in at the end

of books? Acknowledgements. I don't, I don't need to see anybody thanking their agent. I don't care about your agent. At the end of these books- Sometimes they think they're family and stuff. Yeah. At the end of these books though- I hate it when the agent gets spoiled early and then I get it to the acknowledgements and I'm like, aw, it was Robbie Nelson? I knew that the whole time now.

But this book, I really wanted to see the acknowledgments. I wanted to be like, who is he talking to that is helping with this? And I was honestly really impressed with how few scientists he actually spoke to and like how much of this he must have like known on his own. There were five or six, but I would think you would need a dozen scientists minimum that are experts in biology, you know physiology physics, but you know, xenobiology Orbital mechanics like all this stuff. He did a he did a very impressive job with the science But he forgot to talk to an expert in

storytelling Shots. Fire. I don't know. I think he's doing pretty good off his Martian money. So yeah, I think he's just coasting right now. Someone says- Sure, he has more money than me, Seth. You don't have to rub it in. I mean, he's made more money in the course of this podcast than you have.

He's not even here. So- He made more money during this podcast. And as we all know, if you made a lot of money doing something the thing you did is good Yes Someone did you get your mic fixed? If I did can you hear me? Yeah, we got you we got you Excellent old man listener second time caller

Awesome awesome good to have you back. Hey, so in terms of trailers I will preface this by saying I'm going to watch every single trailer of every movie that I'm really excited about and then I will hate myself afterwards. It's like an addiction. Yeah. Yeah. The good is, I mean, if I'm just scrolling through like a streaming service and I want to see if I want to invest two hours, it's kind of nice to have a trailer to give me a feel for something I don't know or to get an an idea of makeup, costuming and stuff. The bad is when they show all of the funny or really meaningful parts in the trailer

and you've seen all the best parts of the movie. Yeah. Yeah. That's why I said 30 seconds. 30 seconds. Don't give them enough time to... Keep it tight. Did you have something on Project Elmeri? The length of time I make love to my wife is the only length of a trailer.

There you go. We'll take the five second spoiler snippets of the best parts. 30 seconds. Come on, someone. No, I don't have anything for the book. I actually have been in the middle of two other books. I didn't have time to read it. So I'll add it to my list after. Okay, great. Give us a great casting and an all-timer.

So unfortunately, Robert Denny Jr. was taken, Sean Connery was taken. So I'm leaving out a little bit out of left field. Robin Williams as the genie in Aladdin. Oh, yeah. That's a fun one. You know, that's a great answer because that could have gone a bunch of different ways and the Genie character obviously steals the show. Oh, absolutely.

Yeah. Well put. Let's move it on, Jared. We got to move on to our next topic here. Yeah. So we're very lucky to have Seth with us here today because Seth confided in me that he has read, this guy's a big book reader, I don't know if you've noticed, several books on the history of tabletop role-playing games and we needed a tabletop segment for today's show so we thought it would be

really cool to talk a little bit about where tabletop role-playing games came from and get a little discussion going about that. Um, okay. Um, Seth, you sound surprised. There's so many ways that this could go. Uh, one second. I forgot Kate, uh, was here as well. Kate, do you want to, uh, do you have an actor? Do you have a, did you think of your thoughts? I do have one now. Okay, great. Edward James Amos playing Adama on one of my favorite shows of all time, Biosci-Galactica. Yes.

He's just so great. That is a great answer. I actually have therapy right after this, and I've got to go eat before that and then debrief over what we just talked about here with my therapist. Yeah, you've got to tell your throats about Jared Don't spoil project Hail Mary for your therapist, okay. I'll try not to Kate thanks so much for calling in we got to have you back. This was great Thanks for having me. All right, please join us again sometime. Bye. Bye. All right. Sorry No, no, let's get into it. So tabletop

History Seth is now seeming like he doesn't, he doesn't know. No, no, I'm actually trying to look, remember a name. Well, the origin of tabletop gives you, everybody knows it was Gary Gygax, single-handedly, did it by himself, a TSR that he found it alone. He found it alone. That's what it always says in every press release. Yes, yes. So some of the books I would recommend for that topic is Shannon Apple Klein's Designers

and Dragons, which is currently a four-part series. I've got several of the physical – I do them on audio but then I like reference them later. And that is a very good series on it. So the history of role playing, there was – it was actually a college. It's always college kids that – it comes from Wargaming. They did Wargaming. And the first one really was – it was this group that did it. It was the empire of Mars and people had their different little kingdoms. And I can't remember the name of it. It had its own mail system and they would have parties where like, you know, the,

the, the Duke of whatever and the, the whatever, and they would get together and they would actually have balls. And then any disagreements, they would war game each other. And it was this weird thing and like the forties and fifties. And then, then you fast forward and you've got the sixties. So that's where, uh, the, the, the Bronstein or Bronstein, I've heard different pronunciations for it, games where, um, it was kind of the same thing. It was like the town of Bronstein.

It like people were playing the different characters, like the mayor and whatnot. And they would settle disagreements with war gaming, but they were using this game called Chainmail that TSR had made, which was an individual level war game versus doing armies. Dave Arneson was in one of those games. So he didn't create it.

He was like, just a guy. He was like, man, this is pretty sweet. And he then took it to this next level of, you know, where they're going through the dungeons of Blackmoor and all that. And then he bumped, he beats Gygax. And Arneson, who is a genius, wasn't the most organized guy. And Gygax is like, we gotta do this.

Dave pretty much gave him a shoe box of Post-It notes. And is like, here's my game. And then Gygax puts this together and that's where we got tabletop games from, the first one being D&D, which originally was like, oh, combat? Just read Chainmail. And it was really homegrown sort of deal. My current thing-

Wait, I'm sorry. So in the first, I think this is right, right? In the first, in the very, very first, like white books or whatever of D&D, it was like combat rules for combat rules, pick up chain mail, right? Like, yeah, I do, I do remember that now. Yeah. And it's, so it comes like weird little trivia's on it. Like, so the very first copy of Dungeons and Dragons sold is very reliably, and this was backed up by Gygax, very reliably ended up in the hands of

Greg Stafford, who founded Chaosium almost immediately because Greg had a buddy that was up in Wisconsin who was picking up flyers for some sort of, like he sold belt buckles or something. He's like at the printers when Gygax picks up the thousand initial boxes of Dungeons and Dragons and they get to talk and he's like, well, I got a buddy that's really into wargaming, he might like that.

So he bought one off of Gygax at the printer and then he mailed that to Greg Stafford who then founded Chaosium. So Stafford had talked about it. He's like, you know, I think I might have the first one. And then like somebody asked Gag X Lair, he's like, yeah, I did sell one at the printers that day. That's crazy that it ended up, like that ended up being

Greg's versus all the others that it could have been. Yeah. And Greg Stafford, for those who don't know, yes, created, you know, creator of Chaosium, but also praised by many as one of the best game designers, role-playing game designers that were around at the founding of this hobby. And we learned about this playing Pendragon,

that Greg Stafford always held up Pendragon as his magnum opus. This is the greatest game he ever designed. Yeah that was that was the one he was the most like proud of. I mean Runequest Gloratha was all his baby but Pendragon was like this is where I like really went above and beyond and did something amazing. So I would recommend if you're interested in like just the history of tabletop games in general, Shannon Alpil Klein's Designers in Dragon series is amazing. So how that one works is he follows the different companies by decade. So if your company came around in the 70s, he follows that

company up until the end of that company. So TSR is in it, of course, and it ends in 1996. As if you want to know more, you got to get the buck on the 90s when we get to the founding of Wizards of the Coast. So it's kind of interesting to see how many initially built and then how quickly some of them went under. Tons of stupid reasons, just like anything else, but it was such a wild West because nobody had done anything like this.

Nobody knew it was going to be big. And most of these people were not businessmen. They were dorks who somehow ended up catching a wave and they didn't really know what they were doing. ended up catching a wave and they didn't really know what they were doing. And if you want one of like just the total amazing kind of glory of the train wreck that was TSR, there's two that you should do back to back. The first one is by John Peterson, called Game Wizards. And it is just about Arness and a Gygax. And it ends with Gygax's ousting in 1984. But it goes really into the men and their relationship.

And then immediately follow that up with Ben Riggs's Slaying the Dragon, which is a really big deep dive into how TSR exploded, Cynthia Williams took over, and how TSR pretty much ran itself in the ground through some most amazing mismanagement and weirdness. It's astounding how to not run a business. I did a little research. I did not read Slaying the Dragon, but I did a little research about stuff that's in Slaying

the Dragon. I didn't know that Gary Gygax, TSR told him to move to Hollywood where he bought a mansion, had parties and did rails of coke all the time until they had to shut down his expense account because it was like way, way, way over. Gygax had a rock star face. He did. He did. That was like, I think in Slaying the Dragon, there was a guy, a gentleman named Flint Dilley, who was in the entertainment industry.

Flint from GI Joe is named after him because they were trying to talk Flint into joining the GI Joe kind of writing thing. So fun fact, Flint Dilley, his sister was Cynthia Williams, but their great-grandfather was Lorraine Williams. Lorraine Williams, sorry. Cynthia Williams' sister was Lorraine. But Lorraine. But their grandfather was the guy that created Buck Rogers. So they've kind of always been in this. But there's a section in Slaying the Dragon or Flint is basically, I was like, oh yeah, yeah, I've been there when like, although the Playboy bunnies were in the hot tub and there's cocaine everywhere, they're like peeling

out in the TSR Corvette. And it's like, one of the weird things they did did is so at Lake Geneva, like a steam ship was sank in like the 1880s or something at TSR who was just so flush with money and a lot of these guys maybe had a high school education. They've never like, they're really blue collar guys. Gygax did not graduate high school. Yeah. Gygax himself did not graduate.

Like maybe. Uh, yeah, they, so, but all so but also they've got incredible amounts of money. So they raised this steam ship from the bottom of like Geneva, and no one knows why they did it. They just did it. And like the the steam engine or like the boiler literally just sat in the front yard for like nearly a decade before finally a scrap company like was called to Hey, get this get this thing out of here. Like they would just spend money on crazy stuff.

I'm seeing, I'm hearing a game company raised a ship from the bottom of a lake and no one knows why that sounds like a call of Cthulhu scenario. Funny. You should mention that. I was just going to say this. Yep. Please. There is one written by Lukey Gygax about that ship. Which, I need to ask Luke about it some point, of like, did you used to play on the spoiler as a kid?

Because he would have been like a kid, and this was literally the play set in front of DSR, was this freaking, so yeah, he did a horror on Lake Geneva, which is about that ship. And when I saw that adventure, I immediately knew what it was going to be. And I was so happy, like, yep, it's about the weird ship that they unearthed. So if you want to know TSR, Game Wizards and Slaying the Dragon is a beautiful one-two

punch. And if you want to know more about the industry as a whole, Shannon Alpuclans Designers and Dragons is fantastic. It's currently four books. He has to kind of keep updating it, and he's now working on the fifth, because it's 70s, 80s, 90s, and aughts. And now we're far enough past the teens that he's working on, the 20 teens, because you have to have enough time to kind of get that

look back on ability. But he also then goes back and he updates like, like the last one, he came out right before fifth edition D and D came out. So of course there's going to be a little bit of like, and everything went really well. And then chaosium's story ends with, they just kickstarted this seventh edition. So hopefully they'll do well again. But it was the horror on the Orient Express that actually bankrupted them. And then Greg Stafford had to come in and basically save the company. So there's all this drama he can add to the new one. Apple Klein also did one just for Traveler that had its 50th anniversary. It's a, yeah, I think they're having their 50th, 20, 27, uh, 27, 2027.

Uh, so called free trader Beowulf that he just did. And it's just over the history of Traveler, which is also fascinating. Now on the space thing, you mentioned Buck Rogers and I just want to throw this out there. Apparently because the people running TSR had the rights to Buck Rogers, Lorraine Williams, who was running the company, kept pushing out Buck Rogers products that did not sell, but would not let go of Buck Rogers. I want to say it was Jim Ward that was quoted, might not have been, but it was one of the ginkgo. It was like, we'll keep publishing it until you buy it. Always a good business strategy.

So yes, she owned the rights to Buck Rogers. So TSR had the video games, they did their Buck Rogers role playing game that nobody bought. But you see, she was also getting the money on the back end because they had to license it from her. And nobody bought it. And then when Peter Atkinson was purchasing TS was, he was flush with magic, the gathering money at TSR was totally bankrupt.

Uh, halfway through, she called him and she was like, you do understand that, that Buck Rogers, we can't sell you that. That's not part of the deal. And it is interviews. He's like, why would the hell would I want it? But he was like, Oh, well, you know, that's going to change the price. Like he was really disappointed that he didn't get to have Buck Rogers. So he got to chip a little bit more off the price because.

Because he knew how to do business and she did not. So like, yeah, like some of the weirdness is like, there were these books that with Dark Sun, there were these spiral bound books where you could lay them out flat and they're really cool. They lost money on every one because there were all the parts of TSR, none of them were talking to each other and they wouldn't tell the writers and the artists and anyone involved how much money they were making or how well they sold. So they, they had no idea if a book was successful, or they had no idea if, like, they worked on this book for the past several months or past year and it went out and they never knew how well it did. And just this weirdness,

they thought artists were completely replaceable. So like, how they treated their artists was incredibly bad. And they're, and they're authors because they're like, Oh, we can get another one of you. And then they would leave and go off to New York and make Buccos money because they started, but like they didn't appreciate, um, yeah, like Braum, Braum was dark. Like, like dark sun was, was Braum art to me. Like you'd see the cover of those boxes,

you're like, oh my God, Ed. They didn't really understand. Peter Atkinson talked about they never had market research on their customers. Like when he was going through all of TSR's files after he purchased it, they never really researched who their customers were. At, for a company that had been around that long and that big, they just

assumed people would buy it. Um, so it was pretty much. And, uh, after, after Magic the Gathering became big, they came out with their own collectible card game called Spellfire, but they didn't know what collectible card games were and Lorraine Williams didn't like them or understand them. So they refused to put any money into it. So multiple cards in Spellfire just had the same art.

Yeah. And they were just reusing a lot of art that they had on file, which a lot of Elmore art and all that is incredible. But people have seen it. And so they basically like, we need you to make a collectible card game to overthrow Magic the Gathering. And we're going to give you a budget of about $5. We'll throw a pizza party, overthrow magic.

And it worked about as well as can be expected. No, Ben Riggs's book is kind of delightful and you're watching the train wreck in slow motion because you're like, my God, I cannot believe how just insanely bad it was. And it's also at the same time, how the hell do these people keep failing upwards? Like they would screw up. But like, but, but, but. It's amazing they got to keep the company till 1996. It's really shocking because they were millions and millions of dollars in debt. And I don't think I could ever write a book as good as Project Hail Mary, but I do think I could have run TSR better. as Project Hail Mary, but I do think I could have run TSR better. Well, yeah, it was so weird as when you think about the perspective.

So in the 90s is when I was getting into D&D and RPGs and stuff. And I always thought of that as the golden age because I would go to my Bonds and Noble down in East Texas and there were two full book shelves of role playing stuff and the left one was just D&D because you had Ravenloft, Dark Sun, Forgotten Realms, Planescape, the complete book of, name it, you know, like complete book of dwarves, the fighter's handbook, the wizard's handbook, there's so much and it was incredible. But the problem is they put out so much product that they oversaturated their own market

and all of them were just losing money. From a customer's point of view, it was like, oh my God, they're doing so good. They got a billion, billion books. Yeah, like it was incredible. And little did I know that they were just hemorrhaging. Yeah, then on the other shelf, you had like White Wolf was like the top shelf,

like entirely. And then like the bottom ones were like everything else in the world. And now you go to Barnes and Noble, it's like you've got like half a shelf of like D&D for some reason there's always one Starfinder book, random Starfinder book. And then after that,

it's just video game walkthroughs and stuff. So I always considered that like the golden age. And then you read the history and you're like, oh, that was like the total death throes. Collectible card games are pretty much destroying the market. We had our first big industry bust going on, but to 16 year old me, it was like the most amazing time ever. Yeah, that was the good days. So I got that odd perspective. That's funny. Well, I've got these books on my list now. Designers and Dragons, Slaying the Dragon and Game Wizards?

Do those on audio because every time he does a new edition, he updates it. There's actually more in the audiobook than in the physical books. I buy the physical books as later reference to go back. Which one are you talking about? All of them or when you say he... The Designers and Dragons series. Another one though that I am really actually going I'm going through again just to get a lot of information and this is way more academic.

It's called Dangerous Games and it's the history of the moral panic. Ah, cool. Because it's written from a sociologist in religious studies, and it is very much approached from a sociological stance because I always called it the satanic panic, and that is wrong. There were two moral panics simultaneously that hit tabletop games, mostly D&D. It was just this perfect storm,

because you had the moral panic where they believed that kids would basically lose themselves and go crazy and they would be brainwashed. And there was a lot of fear about that culturally at the time of brainwashing Patty Hearst syndrome, the Manson family and sort of thing like that. And they would do horrible things because they were brilliant

but fragile children. And then simultaneously, totally unrelated, there's this satanic panic going on dealing with rock and roll music and satanic cults, and a lot of that's based off of like Rosemary's baby and this idea that you've got these elites that worship the devil. And that was going on, And then they kind of met. And then you had these two fronts of a panic. One from this psychological side based off the pop psychology at the time, and this other based off of just crazy, bad shit nonsense about how like, you know,

they're eating babies. And then they kind of blend it together. Uh, so I find this book fascinating, but it is very much an academic book put out by a university press, so it is not what I think most people would consider, um, riveting, but it really goes into a lot of the characters, uh, at the time. Um, such as, Oh, what was the name of that detective who was just William Deere who investigated the Dallas Egbert case and he blamed it on D&D when it clearly wasn't. And then Patricia Pulling about bothered about Dungeons and Dragons and all them. They're fascinating to me.

We should do a whole segment on the show about the moral panic, the satanic panic. Yeah. Because I think that's such a fascinating topic. I'd love to read more about that. That's really interesting. I'm putting this on my Amazon list. Here's a picture of William Deere. This is the detective that looked up Egbert. He's got his Tommy gun. He was like a carnival character, man. He was like a carnival character, man. He is absolutely fascinating. And then Patricia Pulling's like the devil's web for why, it's one of my favorite book covers

because it's absolutely terrifying, but is just over the evils of D&D and all that. This is, if you want to go into the thing about weird obsessions, I collect RPG Mortal Panic memorabilia. Cool. That's a good segue, Seth. That's a good segue. That's a playing with fire.

Yeah. Oh my God, you have multiple books on this. Yes, yes. Have you done any videos on it? So I am working on one. My problem is I'm trying not to turn it into my Magnum opus, like three hour video, but I have literally been assembling stuff for a couple years of like different headlines,

different stuff like that. Because a lot of people will talk about Maze is a Monstrous, the film, which was Tom Hanks' big break. It was this made for TV movie, but there was more. That's the most famous one. Its name is skipping me right now because we're recording and that's how my brain works. It's like, we'll just delete names.

There was another one that came out in 1991 starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Adam Baldwin. The not-Baldwin-Baldwin played Jane. He was in it. That one I remember being forced to watch as a kid because that's one where like these kids kill their parents for D&D and at one part, they're reading the player's handbook and they're making up what it says. It's like, if you keep stabbing the overlord after they're dead, you will keep getting experience points. Wait, what's that one called?

Oh, see, there was That's the name you couldn't remember. Crueled Out. Crueled Out. Writing it down. That's loosely based off of a true story. There were actually two films that came off of this true story of a kid that killed his parents and tried to blame it on D&D.

The D&D defense was very popular because pop psychologists and Oprah in 60 Minutes and all of them would talk about how D&D would drive you crazy. And Patricia Pulling, who ran, bothered about Dungeons and Dragons, would testify at these trials. And it would give her her clout. She's testified at 300 trials or whatever it was, because she was arguing that the person who played D&D should be given this consideration because they were insane. They were driven insane by it. So she's basically trying to get murderers off and it never worked. The DND defense never, never worked except for once.

And it was in Canada. And basically this kid, I think he was like 16 or 17, killed someone, tried the DND defense and the Canadian law was, well, when he becomes a legal adult, we actually have to let him go and we can expunge his records and whatnot. We can't give him that harsh of a sentence. But since he's trying to plead that he's insane due to D&D, we basically get to lock him in an institution

for the criminally insane, and we get to lock him in like an institution for the criminally insane and we get to keep his murdering ass there. That was the one time the D&D defense worked was when they were like, okay, let's – you want to be insane, huh? Cool. We can penalize you like truly versus basically letting him off due to how the laws worked when he became a legal adult. So it's fascinating to me. versus basically letting him off due to how the laws worked when he became a legal adult.

So it's fascinating to me, but. That is an obscure obsession. That is an obscure obsession. That is very obscure, yeah. And we definitely have to have Seth back on and just talk about that. So we will do that one day. I can geek out over moral panics all day, man.

This is. that's great. Yeah. That's great. Uh, right now let's, let's hear from the caller. What is your obscure obsession? Bonus points. If nobody has ever heard of it, if none of the three of us have ever heard of it, if nobody in the chat has ever heard of it and tell us a little bit about it, this is

your chance to kind of finally get to talk about the thing you never get to talk about. Seth's is really weird, or panic books is very odd. I want to hear from callers. Let's get somebody up here. Let's get sweet thread up here. Sweet thread. What do you got on obscure obsessions?

Yes. Can you hear me? Yeah. Okay,. Hi, Seth I don't know if you noticed in the chat, but I just I won't recommend movies a movie It's a daily online browser game where you have to do a connection from like Armageddon to Barbie And there will be a connection from the cast or staff Somewhere in there that is like a one bridge connection. It's a really fun game. Oh cool. What's it called? My strange obsession. Sorry hold on. Movie to movie.

Movie dash. Sweet Thread. Sweet Thread. Hold on. Yeah. What is it called? The game? Movie to movie. The game is called movie to movie. It's just on the browser. It has a daily refresh. It's like wordle. Got him. Sorry. I thought that your obsession. Yeah. My obsession is that I fucking detest frost giants depicted as giant Vikings. No. I can't stand it. Sweet Threats.

Stop. We're asking for an interest you have not a pet peeve Yeah Completely misunderstood I can explain. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. No your interest is in Frost Giants and what they really are. So the reason is that then it shows a like betrayal of ecological adaption of creatures like if you are in an environment that is too cold for you to inhabit, you dress up in furs. You try to add more insulation to keep

heat in. Frost giants, experientially, have never experienced cold. They are made of cold. It doesn't make sense for them to wear furs or to live in long houses to have more insulation. It upsets me to no end and I generally think that frost giants should be depicted as like huge Roman legionaries, like with huge villas in the tundra. But that's, that's like why mere my weird obsession. So, so like, like snake women that have boobs driving nuts that. Yeah. I understand. They drive peanuts in a completely different way.

They drive peanuts in a completely different way. Oh, we all, we all driven nuts in several ways. Sweet Thread, give us a great casting. I don't know if you heard this earlier, but we're looking for a song. Hardee as Bronson and Charles as Charles Bronson in Bronson. Oh, OK, I didn't see that one. Did anybody see that one as Charles Bronson in Bronson? I does he play Charles Bronson?

Doesn't he play... Does he play something else? I'm looking it up. In the meantime, I'm going to bring up infinite diversity. Infinite diversity. Do you have an obscure obsession to share with us? Oh, boy. Infinite, where are you?

Where are you? No, it's not working. Ah, technology. Ah, technology. Hey, there he is. I'm on my work machine, so I'm playing a bit of cooking. It's all good, keep your voice low. Yeah, to uh, to uh,

don't tell what sets obsession, I have an obsession with jack t check comics Those are those like, you know, those little sort of free comics you'd find on the bus sometimes and They would warn you about like the evils of practicing Wiccan or yes, it's a plane doesn't dragons They're just hilarious They're just hilarious. Those are awesome. And I was raised pretty religiously and we had a lot of those jack chick tracks laying around at my church. And I remember one was about why you shouldn't let your kids celebrate Halloween.

And it had a little girl with this maniacal look on her face going, Teacher says cats and dogs would be a great sacrifice for Halloween. Oh God, horrifying. Several years ago, I found out that, you have to order larger now, but you could buy like a thousand of the Chick Tracks for like 20 bucks.

Because like churches, and I thought about buying a bunch of Dark Dungeons and going to Gen Con with them and just passing them out. And then I realized that somebody wouldn't get the joke and I get my ass beat behind Dumpster and I totally deserve it. So I checked it out and I never did it. Dark Dungeons being the one about why you shouldn't play. Yes, the film adaptation is amazing. They did shouldn't play. Yes. The film adaptation is amazing.

They did it totally straight-faced. Is it a film adaptation? Yes. Oh my God. It is amazing. It's hilarious because they do it totally straight to show how ridiculous it is. Infinite, give us a great casting. I got to go with Christopher Reeve as Superman.

Great. Great answer. great answer. Fantastic answer. I was just saying, Charles Bronson is the name of the character in the movie Bronson, but we're not talking about playing Charles Bronson the actor, we're talking about playing Charles Bronson, I believe, a known criminal. Sorry, I had to get that out. Like a real life criminal?

I believe so. Okay. Well, I wrote it down as it was said, Tom Hardy as Charles Bronson in Bronson. Yeah, I guess we'll see. Elijah, do you have an obscure obsession? have an obscure obsession? I don't know about obscure. I do have several obsessions, one being with tabletop miniatures and trailers spoiling too much of media in general, really, be it a movie or a book. Yeah. Yeah.

So you're talking about the earlier stuff. Do you actively avoid spoilers? Do you go out of your way to not watch stuff? Do you hate being spoiled or do you not care that much really? I try my best to avoid it, but I also understand that I live in a society where the internet is available to everyone everywhere and not everyone cares about keeping things unspoiled. So I kind of have to take it in stride and do my best to avoid it.

And if I'm in a situation where it's about something I'm interested in is going to be spoiled, I will excuse myself from said situation and come back at a later time. But I don't really get mad if the spoiler does accidentally happen. We know, I we all have our own, you know, schedules and lives. So when we're available to see something or enjoy something that we're interested

in, we may be behind the launch. So like seeing movie on opening night is not always possible. Right. The day it launches when it is not always a possibility. No, it's a good point. I think it's something that needs to be made clear for me as well. Like I try to be aware of this stuff in terms of how I approach people that spoil things for me.

It's like, I can't really be mad if I didn't watch that episode of Andor when it's been out for a month. You know, like that's on me kind of thing Yeah, you know like same yeah exactly when it's the weekend it opened I wouldn't say you know the big twist at the end of the movie to people but when it's been out for a year And you haven't seen it. It's like oh I accidentally Limitations almost yeah. Yeah, that would be a good that's kind of a good thing to nail down in the philosophy, right? Like what is the statute of limitations on a spoiler?

Elijah, before we let you go, give us a great casting. I haven't heard it yet, but Viggo Mortensen is Aragorn, Lord of the Rings. Great one. Great one. You know, I did not know Viggo Mortensen before that. Like I don't remember, I didn't know him as a performer. I hadn't seen him in anything. And I was just like, who is this guy?

And his Aragorn, and he was so good. I had only seen him in the movie Prophecy with Christopher Walken, and he played Lucifer. And he played a fantastic Lucifer. But that was literally the only thing I had ever seen him in before. Yeah. Jared, did you know him before Lord of the Rings? No, no. But that was literally the only thing I had ever seen him in before. Yeah.

Jared, did you know him before Lord of the Rings? No, no. And I had seen Prophecy, but I didn't remember that I had seen him in that. So. I just think that that's such a great, it's so crazy bold, right? To like cast a relatively unknown, not huge actor as Aragorn in a massively expensive trilogy. Well, Hugh is also a replacement actor. It was like they actually had cast Aragorn with someone else.

It just wasn't working. So they pretty much called Vigo. They're like, hey, you want the job? Like, why don't you hop on a plane from LA where we're down in New Zealand. You know, you start Thursday. Wow. So, he was kind of like this last second kind of addition, kind of like, you know, Marty McFly and Back to the Future, where it's like, yeah, you're not really working, Eric. We're going to call Michael J. Fox.

Can you imagine getting a call and they're like, we need you to start Thursday. The project will go three years. Well, you know, I guess that's the other thing is like, you need someone who's going to be available. So like, you can't necessarily have the biggest three years. Are you available for three years? Because we need you. Yeah.

I mean, except for Ian McKellen and John Rhys Davies, who's never said no to a script in his life, all of them were complete unknowns. I mean, Elijah Wood had been like a child actor in like Deep Impact or something, and like, but all of them were unknown. So they're like, oh, it's Sean Austin. I mean, he was a goony.

So like, yeah, like, stop. How is Sean Austin? Yeah, but he was also Rudy. He was pretty well known. He was like, this style. But most of the others are like, no, I guess Liv Tyler, Yeah, he was pretty well known. But most of the others are like, no, I guess Liv Tyler, but she probably could have the most of her shooting in the course of like a week. Yeah, Liv Tyler had been in Aerosmith videos.

I remember that. Yep, I remember that too. Those videos affected me the same way that Serpent Women with Breasts do. She was an Empire Records, dude. That was like one of the most Gen X movies ever. All right. We got to come to a close here soon.

Let's see if we can get one obscure obsession from the nash here that is something we don't know about. Is there any chance, Sizzle? Do you got something for us? In the obscure obsession category, I've just invited you up here. Come on up if you can. In the meantime, we kind of start compiling some of these answers here and maybe doing a quick round. So your mute, your mic is muted. There we go. What's going

on? So do you have an obscure obsession? I do. I don't know if there's a name for it, but I love looking up hex code colors and just trying to put those to memory. Wait, I don't know what that means. What is a hex code color? Okay, so... Hex code colors are like that. Oh, go ahead, Joe. So, every color, not every color, but what a million colors or hundreds of thousands of I can't and I don't know the math but colors have been assigned a system of a six digit alphanumeric hex code system.

And I found this out as you know doing this business over the course of the years having to do graphics and having to match colors on certain logos and stuff like that, you learn that there are numbers and I've never been able to figure out any pattern to them. Do you try to find patterns in the madness? So there is, I can't, so I'm a little nervous talking but off the top of my head, I know there is. So it's separated into six digits. The first two are normally alpha, and then the next two are, the last four are numbers also. Okay. But yeah, there is a method to the madness.

I couldn't tell you what it is, but I just love looking at them and trying to figure out what numbers go to what colors and where on the spectrum they lie. But to follow- That is specific. That is obscure. That's obscure. Every hex code also has an RGB number in place with it too. And yeah, I follow a lot of TikTok people and folks on Instagram that are actually able

to look at real life colors and identify what hex code color that would be too, which is amazing. It is. That sounds like great content. It's crazy. Wow. Wow. Sizzle, thank you.

Thank you for saving the segment. That was something I never thought of as a hobby. My eyesight is not that good because I've bought paint with my wife. And, you know, we've got like 19 colors, shades of green, and I can't tell the difference, you know, the thing about a lot of women will have like several million more photoreceptors that they can see colors better than most men. And it's like proven by science. So the idea of like being able to link it to a six-digit code is like

Yeah, yeah, I've bought paint. I don't I couldn't do this. That's just it's yellow. It's yellow Yeah, just yellow. Yeah, this is will give us a great casting on your way out here sure, so my first thought was Patrick Stewart sir Patrick Stewart and his legendary portrayal of Captain Jean-Luc Picard as Stewart and his legendary portrayal of Captain Jean-Luc Picard. As Captain Jean-Luc Picard. Now that character did not exist before Patrick Stewart played him, right? I don't know that he did. I don't think so.

Yeah, I don't think so. Man, that's a good one. Okay, let's do just a quick couple more with only the answer to the contest question. Then we're going to pick a winner and get out of here. Who do we got? We got, uh, night station, night station. Why don't you come up here, give us your guests and, uh, and, and we'll get as many as we can in here in the last seconds of the show night station.

What do you got? All right, guys. Um, you hear me? Yep. Yes. All right. So I'm going with sir Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter. Oh, yes. Excellent. All right. So I'm going with sir Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter. Oh Excellent excellent one. This is gonna be a hard one to choose because people are giving a lot of excellent answers

Yeah, there are a lot of excellent answers movie adaptations Sansal amps film is probably the closest ever found to the movie is exactly like the book They had to trim a little but it is so on point. I agree, I loved the movie and then I went and read the book and yeah, I was pretty surprised at how true to it it was. Another one that I think about that for is Harry Potter, the first book. If you like the first book is almost scene for scene,

like captured in the movie because it's a relatively short book and a relatively long movie They put a lot of that stuff in there and it felt pretty much boom boom boom All right couple more here, and then we're done Nate dog get in on the contest I'm already sorry to those we can't get to Nate dog Hey, what's up? Can you hear me? Yeah? Give us a great casting an all-timer All right Marlon Brando as Vito Corleone in The Godfather.

Yep. Yeah, oh man. Man, a couple late, late surprises here. Yeah, yeah. As Vito, I don't know how to spell this name, Corleone. V-I-T-O-C-O-R-L-E-O-N-E. Yeah, that's how I have it. Okay, great, and let's do one more.

Just gonna go random here, DeSiccio. DeSiccio, come on, finish us out here. Get in on the contest. Are you there? Oh man, there you are. Yes, Mandy Patinkin as an egomontoya in Princess Bride. Oh man! Oh shit, sure.

He just goes, ah shit. That's a good one. That's a really good one. Oh man. That. Sure. He just goes, ah, shit. That's a good one. That's a really good one. Oh, man. That's a good one. What was his name? His first name, not Montoya. Inigo Montoya.

Inigo. How do you spell that? I-N-I-G-O. I-N-I-G-O. Inigo Montoya. Talk about bringing a character to life. My goodness. Okay, great.

Now we will look at our answers. Let's look at the board here. If you go to the Discord chat, I'll post the answers throughout the show as they were here, and we'll pick out a winner. A lot of different fun suggestions here. A couple of late, surprising. Make this one pretty tough. We'll all weigh in on it here. To me, I feel almost like,

do we just talk it out for a second? Try to narrow it down? Do we do a secret ballot? What do we do? I'm definitely gonna go with a character that was around before someone acted as that character. I think there's a lot of big ones here, but I, you know, like very, very famous big ones, but I think that those are the best answers to. Okay.

So for example, Hannibal Lecter is a great answer. Vito Corleone is a great answer. Oh man, Hugh Jackman is a great answer. Vito Corleone's a great answer. Oh man, Hugh Jackman's a great answer. Like, these, Robert Downey Jr.'s a great answer. It's really, really tough. I would say for me, the top right now are probably Robert Downey Jr. and Hugh Jackman, but I, or Ian McKellen. And I said- Yeah, you know what? I was going to say the exact same names, Joe. Ian McKellen and Hugh Jackman, or Ian McKellen. And I said that. Yeah, you know what? I was going to say the exact same names, Joe. Ian McKellen and Hugh Jackman. And there's other answers in here

that are obviously spectacular. And I don't mean to focus on comic books, but I do feel like. I was going to go a totally different way. OK, great. What were you thinking, Seth? Jamie Foxx is Ray Charles. And Anthony Hopkins is Hannibal Lecter.

We're my two. Okay. All right. This is a tough one. Well, I'm sorry, Seth. If we have the three in common, yours get booted, but those are great suggestions. Seth, get on with us here. Why don't you pick?

Ian McKellen, Hugh Jackman, Robert Downey Jr. We'll let our guest pick the winner among those three. Cause we tied all three of, we think those are the top three. I don't have them in a particular order. Um, who do you select? And that person wins. Triumph of the Tusk, a three book adventure path. By the way, fun fact about this one.

It starts, and I think this is genius it starts at third level it goes like third to 12 Instead of typically they go first to 10th or 10th to 20th these three book ones this one goes third to 12 I think it's a great idea anyway some hit points I Know it's a tough one Pick a winner give Give us a winner. I'm going to say Hugh Jackman. Hugh Jackman as Wolverine wins. Oh, that was Brody. Oh, for God's sakes.

Has Brody ever won before? Brody is never, I mean, he's our cinematographer, but you know what? He can win. Why not? He can absolutely win. He loves to play games. I forgot that he's the cinematographer. Yeah, but you would never get this book for any other reason. It was an amazing answer. It is. It's a fantastic answer. Well done, Brody. I'll let him know he won. And bonus, I don't have to ship it. I can just bring it to the office.

That's great. Awesome answer. And yeah, everybody had a lot of great answers there. That was really fun. So one, so Jared mentioned Chris Pine earlier. Yeah. So they're going to be thinking, actually what was very nearly my answer to this one was Carl Urban as Bones. Yes. Yeah. Because at what I loved about that character is Carl Urban was not doing an impersonation of DeForest Kelly.

He was Bones. He somehow channeled the character without recreating what the previous actor did and still nailing it so hard. It was incredible. The only other actor that I've ever seen do that, Ed, I'm always blanking on names the last second, played Lando in Solo. Oh, Donald Glover. Yes, Donald Glover, his Lando was the same thing. I'd say, you are channeling the character

without impersonating the previous and still flawlessly pulling that one off. So but you brought up Star Trek, you said, Kyle Urban, man. Oh my God, his bones McCoy was unbelievably good. Yeah, that was really good. And yeah, good points all Seth. Seth, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you.

It was so awesome having you on, learning a little bit about that back history and most importantly getting the names of those books and those authors. So I've got them on my wish list and I'll be checking them out, you know, over the next year or so I'll get into it. That's awesome. Thanks everybody for hanging out, watching live. Congrats to Brody and we hope to see all of you again soon. Have a fantastic week and we'll see you next time.

Later on. Bye. week and we'll see you next time. Later on. Bye! and use code GCN30 to gain access to exclusive podcasts, add free episodes and content you can't find anywhere else. Once again it's jointhenash.com and use code GCN30 at signup to get your first 30 days for free. Tell your friends, come join yourself and see what everybody's talking about when you join the nation today. It's ticklish business anyway. You look at it. Come on, we'll stick together.

Love movies, love classic movies. So do we. Ticklish Business is the podcast where classic film is discussed in modern times. Hosted by me, film journalist, Kristen Lopez, and my cohost author, Emily Edwards, we dive into the golden age of cinema with fun Kristen Lopez, and my co-host, author Emily Edwards, we dive into the golden age of cinema with fun, heart, and serious expertise. As published film historians and lifelong classic movie buffs, we bring insider insights, deep research, and lively debates with a variety of special guests, ranging from celebrities like Holly Madison, to TCM luminaries Dave Carver and Eddie Muller, and even family members

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