The Glass Cannon Podcast - Glass Cannon Radio #3 – The Expanse, Media Ownership, Twin Peaks

Episode Date: February 6, 2025

The guys invite GCN Co-Founder Skid Maher to the show to discuss The Expanse book and television series, the new age of media ownership, and the next installment in our David Lynch tribute series: Twin Peaks. Plus, a caller faces off against McD in trivia, and we choose the first book for the GCR Book Club! Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/6dVk_J_TP1s Access exclusive podcasts, ad-free episodes, and livestreams with a 30-day free trial with code "GCN30" at jointhenaish.com. For more podcasts and livestreams, visit glasscannonnetwork.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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The new tour, Glass Cannon Live 2025 Ascension. Those tickets are on sale, we already said for Dallas and Austin, we're coming to Dallas on February 21st, Austin on February 22nd, but now tickets are on sale from Milwaukee on March 21st and St. Paul on March 22nd. Those tickets are on sale as well

and you can get all of those tickets and or VIGCP packages at glasscannonnetwork.com slash tour. In addition, Glass Cannon Network retreat number two in Las Vegas to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the launch of the Glass Cannon podcast. Those packages went on sale just a couple of weeks ago. We've already sold a ton of them, but there are still some left I had said on the state of the nation that prices would start around three thousand dollars, which is obviously crazy high This is a luxury item, but this is a very special and super expensive event Well, we went back in we crunched some numbers in the budget threw some stuff out put some stuff back in we now have packages Low as twenty one ninety nine if you're sharing a room with somebody else If you've got a friend you're going with and you've already paired up, you're all set.

If you don't have a friend but you want to keep prices low, you can go to our subscription discord. We have a channel called Roommate Finder Vegas. People from the nation are already pairing up because they do not want to miss this once-in-a-lifetime event where I'm going to try and get every single person from the Glass Cannon Network out there to just play games and hang out all weekend long. Those packages include a hotel stay from Thursday to Sunday, that's June 12th to 15th, 15th is the anniversary of course, breakfast buffets, cocktail party, open bar at night. It is going to be a very very special weekend that I know everyone involved will not soon

forget. If you're interested in purchasing packages, just head to glasscannonetwork.com slash retreat and get them while they are still available. There are payment installment plans available as well if you want to break up your payments over time. I hope you're able to come to the Glass Cannon Network Party of the Century. Either way, we hope to see you on tour this year. We're gonna be all around the country once more.

Me, Joe, Skin, Kate, Cindy, and all Maddie Caps. Glass Cannon Live Ascension and The Retreat. Best year ever? We'll see. This is Glass Cannon Radio with your hosts Jared Logan and Joe O'Brien. Oh, welcome back to Glass Cannon Radio. We are deep in the end zone scoring a touchdown for our team. Yeah, there he goes. Look at him like an old pro, like an old sports ball pro.

It's draft day and Costner has the number seven pick buddy. I'm Jared Logan. This is Joe O'Brien beside me in the other little box. And this is the show where you get to call in and give your opinions on all things nerdy. And that includes the sport of American football. Yeah, Super Bowl week, baby. Super Bowl week. It's Super Bowl week. So if you want to call in and talk to us about all the topics, they're all lined up there

on the, I don't know. They're all lined up there on the screen for you. If you want to talk to us, please come hang out and get, get on the discord, raise your hand and we will call you to talk to us. Um, and, uh, and then if you're not a subscriber yet, if you're not a subscriber, you're at going to join the nation.com become a subscriber. You can talk in today's show. You can become a subscriber that quickly and be part of the conversation. And boy, do we have a lot of great conversation to talk to you about today. And boy do we have a lot of great conversation to talk to you about today

But first Joe, Brian, you're so excited because your team the Come on, buddy. It's on the tip of my tongue The Philadelphia Eagles the Philadelphia Eagles are in the Super Bowl Yes, a very rare and precious thing Jared in in my my 40-some years of being alive, they've been here three times. I mean four technically if you count the year I was not even one years old, but three times ever has this happened, and so I'm very, very, very excited. It's a rare and precious thing to make it this far. You got to be good and you got to get lucky. And here we are all the way at the end. A championship. I just, I'm

curious why it baffles me that people cannot be into sports. I simply don't understand. I'm not. I know. So like how do you miss out on the drama, the intensity, the, the passion? There's nothing like it in entertainment. Football is unbelievably boring. Oh, my God. Oh my, that's fine. Chuck, all sports, except for maybe basketball, nothing happens for a long time. And then someone scores and then everybody stops everything.

Like even trying to watch a basketball game, like toward the end of the basketball day, they stop it. It feels like 10 times and it keeps going to commercial. My memories are just of like waiting to watch a program I wanted to watch on Sunday night and waiting for the goddamn game to be over so I could watch some kind of sci-fi program or something.

Yeah. That's amazing. That makes sense. That makes sense. Uh, well, I was born into an area, into a place where it's just, it's ingrained in you from a young age. My whole family, uh, are huge Eagles fans. And yeah, this weekend is Superbowl 59 and, uh, we'll see if we

can stop the Kansas city chiefs and, uh, Taylor Swift's boyfriend from winning three straight super bowl Taylor Swift's boyfriends in the super bowl Taylor, well, it's, it's amazing that you don't know that cause that's just straight up pop culture and you're way more into that than I am. So I'm not into Taylor Swift. My God, what do I look like some sort of but, but, but it's not as if you can avoid it. My tastes don't fall so pedestrian Joe.

I mean like truly, truly, if you want me to care less, add Taylor Swift to football. Well, I think you're a real outlier here. I think you're a real outlier here. I think you're a real outlier in terms of American popularity. Taylor Swift only added to the juice for the rest of America. One thing we can be sure of is that American high schools need to put all their money into football instead of their theater programs. Let's make sure that the money is funneled into football. You know what?

You know what? As soon as more people start paying more money for theater tickets than football tickets, they will, but that's on the audience. That's not the school's fault. Right. Uh, sure. Um, yeah, I mean, sports is great. audience. That's not the school's fault. Right. Sure. Yeah. I mean, sports is great. You know, you, you don't really need to, to, it's a low, it's a low bar for entry. You know, like,

anyone can watch an athlete and be like, okay, I, I, I get that that was impressive, you know? Right. But people can't watch, you know, not everyone can watch, say an incredible standup comedian, and really immediately understand what's happened and immediately get the understanding of the nuance. Like they'll be like, my sense of humor is more like, you know, Kevin Hart. Why is this guy talking about, you know,

Kevin Hart who without a doubt will be at the Super Bowl. I guarantee you, Kevin Hart is a really, he's a big Eagles fan and also a big, big NFL ad guy and stuff, or at least betting apps. Anyway, we're getting off topic here. Just I'm excited for them Eagles. I hope everybody has fun Super Bowl pants. Call in if you want to talk Super Bowl, but otherwise we've got a list of great, great

nerdy topics to talk about today, which I'm really excited about. If you want to talk about Super Bowl and you call in, I'm going to give you the business. Just be ready. Just be ready. I'm going to be joshing you. All right. Well, uh, let, let, let us do get into it. So, um, the situation, uh, is that, uh, one of the biggest sci-fi shows I'd say

in the last 10 years, uh, the expanse based on the incredible novels by James S a Corey, otherwise known as Ty Frank and Daniel Abraham. The expanse will be leaving throught. It's so weird. Three seasons of it will be leaving prime video. I think today at 4 PM, it may have been yesterday, but the three seasons, the seasons that were created on the sci-fi show channel will be leaving this. The seasons that were created on Amazon will stay.

Um, and this is a saga. Channel will be leaving this the seasons that were created on Amazon will stay and This is a saga. I think a lot of people have watched the show a lot of people have read the novels This is a saga that is beloved by fans. I think it's really cool I must admit I have only read the first novel and watched like the first Season and maybe a half of the second season of the show, but I was really loving it and enjoying it. I just got into a car accident and was in a coma for several years and did not get to watch the rest of the show.

And now I was like, I got to hurry and watch two seasons like before it disappears, but I w I wasn't able to do that to be honest, I was like, I gotta hurry and watch two seasons like before it disappears. But I w I wasn't able to do that, um, to be honest, but I do love it. And today we'd really love to talk about the expanse to kick us off. And then we'll kind of talk about those streaming issues that are, that are kicking our favorite shows off of streaming platforms. We see them on that are making them move there that are hiding them, keeping us from getting to them.

Or maybe you think that streaming is the best thing that's ever happened, which you know, you can make an argument that it is incredible in many ways. So we're going to talk about that in a little bit, but first let's get into the expanse. Joe, any thoughts in the expanse before I give my thoughts at length with an air of expertise that I probably don't actually possess? Absolutely. Because I can keep it short. I don't have too, too much to say on this because I, like you, have not absorbed all

that much of it. I'm excited to talk to callers and an exciting guest we're going to have here in a few minutes. We're going to have Skid Mawr from the Glass Cannon Network come on and talk expanse as well. Somebody who's a little bit more knowledgeable about the whole topic. We're going to have Skid Mahr from the Glass Cannon Network come on and talk Expanse as well, somebody who's a little bit more knowledgeable about the whole topic. But I read the first book when it was getting all the buzz. I read the first book, and I really, really enjoyed it.

I thought it was fantastic. And I love a setting. I love a sci-fi setting that is contained within the solar system. I find that to be so interesting. And I also love the certain limits, the physics limits that are put on it that make it feel like real sci-fi. I really enjoy that aspect of it and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Then I went to watch the show. I think it's a slightly unpopular opinion, but I thought it was terrible. It ruined the book for me, so much so that I didn't read the second book because I hated the show so much. Primarily, it all came down to acting. I thought the effects were good. I didn't think the writing was terrible. I thought the woman who,

I can't remember the actress's name who plays Christian, I can't remember her last name exactly, but she was terrific. But I felt like every other main actor was unbearably bad in my opinion. I just sort of fell off of it. Then after I gave up on the show after a couple years I read the second book of the series when I was really in a sci fi mood and it was fantastic. So yeah, the books are good. I can't wait to like continue reading more of them, but I am a little bit inexperienced in the whole series and I'd love to hear, uh, everybody's, everybody's takes on it today. Um, I, I do get your,

I do get your problems with the show after reading the first book, starting the show, it took me a little bit to get with the actors. And that's because the sci-fi channel has, um, uh, a pretty face problem. Yes. Sci-fi channel, the sci-fi channel has to hire actors that are a tier or two below, like the person you really want. And that means like, for some reason, everybody becomes more beautiful. For some reason, like everybody is like extremely hot.

And you're like, these are like, aren't these like space miners? Like, what is happening to him, happening to these people that they are so beautiful. Have they taken genetic modifications? And so, yeah, it takes me a second to get over how hot they are. But I really, I encourage you to try to dive back

into the show, to give it some time, because they really, really grew on me. Okay, cool, cool. I'll try them, because the scenes I've seen of it, the clips I've seen of it, it looks like there's a lot of love put into making the show. Like the special effects, the look of everything feels very

immersive. And I appreciate when a sci-fi show goes out and does that. And I don't mean the sci-fi channel. I mean, science fiction in general. It's hard to make a good science fiction show. You really, you don't get a lot of support, right, from general media and stuff like that. And it's great when they can be made. And so I am happy they made it. I was just disappointed with some of those choices. I'm gonna say something real quick before we get to our guest today, which is you brought it up.

You said the pretty factor escalates for some reason on sci-fi while the acting ability like slowly decreases. And the perfect example to me is Holden, the main character of the series, who is, in my opinion, terrible, at least in that first season. And it ruined the character for me because I thought he was gritty and I thought he was

cool and I thought that he was, I don't know, I could just level like he was on my level as a character. I felt like I understood him. He was, he had a good regular guy kind of vibe. And this guy was just bad. Now he, the actor who I don't know his name was in a, a fantastic movie that I don't know if you've ever seen. Have you ever seen city Island?

I haven't actually. It's a very under the radar movie that I think is fantastic. And I highly recommend you check it out. Uh, it is an Andy Garcia movie with, uh, the with the woman from ER, Juliana Margulies. It's Andy Garcia and Juliana Margulies slice of life movie set in New York City. And it's got Ezra Miller. Ezra Miller? Is that his name? Yeah. Well, the Flash. Yes. At like one of his first, one of his earlier roles. He's fantastic. And this guy, the guy who Yes, at like one of his first, one of his earlier roles, he's fantastic.

And this guy, the guy who plays Holden is in it, and he plays a hot, dumb dude. And he's amazing. Like, he's a very minor character, and the thing is that he is so hot. Like, that's his thing. And he does great at that. When you put him in this role to carry a sci-fi series,

I was just like, I can't do it. I can't do it that actors name is Stephen straight and Stephen if you are listening Joe Not a fan didn't like season one didn't like season one. Let's talk about what's great about the expanse I think we should talk about a little bit about what's great about it. So you brought up it takes place in our solar system and a ton of the technology, the advancements are based on real life science, making this a hard science fiction show. So you know, hard science fiction versus soft science fiction, Joe, you know, the distinction there? Uh, I, I think so. I, I feel like the hard science fiction really seems where the writers, creators, whomever is making it really seems to lean on actual known

science and where the development we think could go and also puts the limits of known physics on their world so that you don't just hand wave things like gravity. Right? Right. Exactly. That's the perfect example from the expanse. Or like relativity. Like you're not just like hand waving those things. The gravity thing is like one of the things the expanse does with the most kind of hard science, hard science fiction approach, which is, you know, the gravity in the ships is based on their thrust and, and, uh, I don't know, the rotation of different parts of them. That's why when you see the Rosanate, it sort of has like a spinning part or whatever. But, um, uh, instead of just having like what Star Trek has, which is

just like gravity generators or like gravity plating, how does that work? No one knows. Uh, of course we also don't know how the Epstein drive in the expanse works exactly. Some parts of the expanse aren't super hard, but a lot of it is. And that makes it different, I think, because so much of the sci-fi we've gotten is pretty soft, you know?

And that's a moving line, you know? Like people argue about what's hard science fiction, what's pretty soft, you know, and that that's a, that's a moving line, you know, like, uh, it's, uh, people argue about what's hard science fiction, what's soft science fiction, but I think we can agree that like something like star wars is on the far other end where it could almost be a just pure fantasy. Like the force is kind of magic, you know, um, the creatures and situations, I mean, they use goddamn swords, you know, so, uh, you know, the fact that the expanse really tries to base its entire world, its entire setting on real science is one of the things I love the most about it. Absolutely.

I totally agree. And I, it's why, um, uh, it's why I, I think I tend to lean toward hard sci-fi in the science fiction books that I enjoy. And I could talk more about those later, but yeah, I want to stay on The Expanse for now. And I don't know that much about it, but you know who does? Our good friend and good buddy, Skid Marr, who has been an Expanse fan for a very long time. And I wanted to have him on today to talk a little bit about it. And we'll take calls while Skid is here and shit like that. So it'll be great.

If you want to come up, talk to Skid. You guys can have a little, little Expanse powwow. I'm going to invite you, Skid, to speak on Discord. So join there and unmute your mic, and then we'll add you here on video. We should get this all rolling. Skidmar! Skid! Hello! Oh, there he is. What's up, buddy? What's up? How's it going? It's going great.

Thank you for taking the time to just come over and hang out with us on Glass Cannon Radio, dude. Thank you for asking. I'm a big fan of the show. I've seen every episode. I love, I actually do love the show. I really, uh, enjoy watching it. So thank you for having me. Yeah. I appreciate it. So my first memories of you with the Expanse are when you brought the Expanse board game into the studio many, many years ago, pre-COVID.

And I think at this time, you were heavily into the show. So before we get into anything else, why don't you just talk to us about, you know, how you came into watching or reading it first and what your initial impressions were? I can't remember how I heard, I came into it through the show. I can't remember how I initially heard about the show, but it just, it sounded really interesting. I just, I must have seen some, some trailers or something and it was just like... But I was very intrigued by the hard sci-fi like aspect of it. It seemed like pretty gritty, very serious. And I knew like Shora Agnashle was in it and she is an Oscar winner. It's like, that's awesome.

And I had also heard that of course, my very good friend Jared Harris was in it. Yes, right. So, that was like, so and oh, from Beverly Hills Cop and Breaking Bad, Jonathan Banks is in the first episode. So, for me, I'm a big actor, performer junkie. And so for me, that's a green flag for me. I see someone with that sort of power over the projects that they can choose,

choosing to do, especially a sci-fi project, that to me is a pretty good sign. I'd be like, I'm in. And I absolutely fell in love with it, like immediately. And then, and I did end up reading the first book. So your first intro was the show. Then you went back and read the first book. Okay. I thought the book and the show were pretty well aligned. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong. Like I know in the show, they brought in elements that are in book two a little bit earlier just to get the politics cooking, but overall, isn't it like

pretty blow by blow, the first book and the first series? They don't seem to change too much. I think it was a good adaptation. From what I remember, yeah. I think it was pretty close. The nice thing about the book is that it fills in a lot of the anthropological details that are amazing, that I was really hungry for. My favorite little cultural thing in the expanse that's so real is basic assistance. Do you remember that? Oh yeah. Half the people on earth just are on basically super welfare and they're not allowed to have kids, but they could even go to machines to get clothes if they want, if they need clothes, they,

and they have to eat like protein paste or something like that. Yeah. And the Martians have total contempt for them for that reason. Yes. Because they weren't, they're driving themselves to like forge this new society on this planet.

And they look at the people on earth as just sitting around collecting money from the government. And the distinction there is just like, it's very fun. Would you go on basic assistance listeners? That's what I would like to know. Callers, yeah. In addition to whatever you want to say about the expanse. Yeah. I do want to talk to Skid a little bit more about the length

and depth of the series, but I want to get to callers as soon as possible, just because I want to get some of their takes on it. And we'll take you here while Skid is here. So again, if you want to talk on the show, you've got to join the Discord, the Glass Kinect Network Discord. You can go to jointhenation.com to link your Discord to your subscription.

And if you're not subscribed, you can subscribe for free using code GCN30. So hop on and join us. We're going to go right here to a friend of mine. So let's get an Eagles fan up here first. WIP caller, please come to the stage. Your mic is muted. Once you unmute that, you should be able to talk. WIP caller, you come to the stage Your mic is muted. Once you unmute that you should be able to talk WIP caller. You're on the line Yo, oh Brian Oh dear

Yes. Oh, Jesus. Say, Juan, Barclay, man. Do you know the polls are greased? The copy of inter excellence is red. We are called the grease. What the hell does that mean? You don't even know, Jared. I and you got to go. I don't want to.

The polls, baby. Grease the polls. My part. I tell you right now, baby. Grease the poles. My pole, I tell you right now, my pole is exceedingly dry. No one will be climbing it. WIP caller, do you have any thoughts on The Expanse? I know you're a big sci-fi guy. Did you read it? Do you watch it?

Or you just all about the birds? Actually, you know what? It's ironic. I read all eight books. I think there's eight, seven or eight. Read all of them. And the series sucked ass. Not the whole series, but that first TV series. The TV series. Yes. The TV series with that actor that played Holden. I could not stand him either. Something about just something about, he was just a terrible actor and the guy that played Amos, I thought was completely miscast. Like this Amos dude is supposed to be an older guy that's like squat, strong, emotionless.

And this dude played him like a crazy eyes killer kind of dude. You know, it just was just like completely different from the character. Other than that. The books are different from the movies, you know? Like that happens or from the character. Other than that. The books are different from the movies. You know, like that happens, or from the TV series that are based on them. So I think sometimes it can be jarring

when we see a TV series, because it's not exactly the way we planned it, you know? Everyone is way more fuckable, and that confuses us, because it gives us confusing sexual feelings. But did you, And that confuses us because it gives us confusing sexual feelings. But did you, did you, uh, you said you read all eight books. Yeah. And then you said only that you pointed out the first season of the TV show.

Did it grow on you? Over time? I watched, uh, I think it was one of those shows I would put on. Um, well, as I was doing other things, like I wasn't like a dial in and watch every minute type of show for me. So I already knew generally what was going to happen. Yeah, it got interesting because obviously things happen later in the series.

I won't get into spoilers, but I was curious to see what they look like on television, frankly, uh, the way they portrayed some interesting things that develop with the series. So, uh, yeah, so I did watch it. I continued. It bothered me less and less, but upfront as I was trying to get into it at first, it really was kind of jarring with it. And it was exactly what you said.

The acting was just not what I would have expected for a series like that. So anyway, it's, yeah, I did like it. I thought it was, I mean, the books were great. It gets very different. And you know, I won't, I did like it. I thought it was I mean the books were great Um, it gets very different. Uh, you know, I won't won't get into it. But uh, This is I just want to say this is classic nerd fandom. I hated that tv series. I did watch all of it I did watch all of it Exactly is the uh, are the books like done?

Are there more? It's a done series as far as I'm concerned. Hey, it's I mean, the ending is one where they could come back to this, I think. But I don't. But you're still at it. And yeah, I felt like it ended pretty clearly. And, you know, the the ending is, you know, kind of cool. I don't know. Some people may roast me for that, but I liked it. Isn't it great when things have an end to the call, dude?

I appreciate it. Love to get great when things have an end? Thanks for the call, dude. I appreciate it. Uh, love to get some more people up here too. So to talk expanse before we move on. And by the way, you can add spoilers, everybody. Like this is a go ahead and spoil conversation, you know? Yeah, it's an open convo. I feel like you had your chance. If you're not into the expanse, you're not into it.

But Skid, before we get onto somebody else, how did you feel, how do you feel about the, it being pulled off of Prime? Is this something that you like, would love to be able to rewatch? You're frustrated that this is happening? Is that, you know, the licensing thing? Yeah, I heard about it and I was definitely bummed. I mean, it definitely, I've been holding out hope

that they would be, end up making more of it. I don't know why. mean, it definitely, I've been holding out hope that they would be, end up making more of it. I don't know why. It's especially frustrating when they're willing to throw a billion dollars at fucking garbage like Rings of Power and they can't take any more seasons of The Expanse. That maybe, that just really gets my goat. So yes, that does like bother me. Take half of the Rings of Power budget, put it in the expanse.

There we go. That's all I'm asking. That's all I'm asking. Jeff Bezos is too busy ruling us. Right. Focus on the important shit. If you do it, it's like it drives me, it drives me up the wall. So, yes, I wish there were more. And yeah, it's a show that I do love rewatching. It's funny because one of the things that I do love rewatching.

It's funny because one of the things that I do that scratches my expanse itch is playing the game Terror Invictus, which I've streamed a couple of times on the channel. Very expanse sort of themed and I'll have like the expanse running on another screen while I'm playing that game. And it's like, that's great for me. Like I love being able to do that. So yeah, it's fun. I want it to be as widely available as possible

for as long as possible. And yeah, it's a bummer. Well, I mean, you can get it on physical media, which is something we should talk about when we get into our kind of licensing discussion in a minute. CorpDunk on Twitch chat says, how many expanse seasons are there?

Six. Six. Six seasons. Yeah. So that's a lot. That's a lot of TV to, like I said, I couldn't hurry and finish the seasons that are disappearing. I didn't have time. Let's take another caller. Let's get her badur to the stage.

Her badur, a frequent chat participant. Let's get her badur to the stage. Her badur a frequent chat participant. What's up her? Hey guys. How's it going? Hey, it's going good. How are you? I'm all right. Just, you know, getting a little high to get over the president threatening to annex

part of the Middle East. Yeah. Also topical. Not so much covered in this show, but you think that'll happen or do you think he was just talking at his ass? You know, he never talks out of his ass, so it's probably going to happen. He means, right? Yeah. Yeah. So you're high right now. Yeah. Cause I have a weird work schedule.

What time zone are you in? Get your shit together, man. Listen, I work 12 hour day weekends. So Monday through Thursday are mine to do what I want. Wow. Okay. Right on. Thursday off.

Okay. What do you do where you only work on weekends? Uh, cloud IT engineer. Nice. Nice. Okay. Um, what do you have to say about the expanse? Tell us your thoughts. So I love the expanse, uh, read all eight books.

I think I finished book eight toward the beginning of last year. Um, talking about the hard sci-fi and like the difference between earthers and people on Mars, there's a moment from the books that like really teaches you kind of like the difference in mindset and how little they understand each other. The character Bobby is from Mars and she is this hardcore badass Marine and she visits Earth for the first time. And you know, she's she is trained through all these, like invade Earth simulations and scenarios. And she gets there and she feels the gravity and she speeds the ocean. And she's like, Oh, shit, we never had a chance. Yeah. Yeah. Is the is that in book two? Do you recall? Cause I feel like

that's it. I know Bobby was introduced in book two, but I want to say this is three or four. Oh, okay. Cause I definitely remember that character. And I thought that I remembered that, but maybe I'm just projecting that now that you say it, but the character was awesome. I really liked that character. Yeah. The character of Bobby is one of my favorite in the series. was awesome. I really liked that character. Yeah, the character of Bobby is one of my favorite in the series. Yeah, Apple Tart on Twitch chat says it is book two. Awesome. Yeah, those sort of elements are, you know, I go back to, to stranger in a strange land. I think about when I read that book many, many, many years ago, how intriguing, amazing it is for an author to be able to look at earth as someone who has never seen or been on Earth

It's really an impressive thing to do if you think about it And the way that stranger to strange land opened my eyes to so many things that you know We sort of feel are just an innate part of humanity that everyone knows and gets It's an interesting thing to explore and yeah, like the character doing that through the character Bobby is awesome Yeah, so herbed are you like the show? I actually only watched two seasons of the show. I I could tell it was a good show, but like my my mind kept like clashing with what I knew of the books.

And I just I had to stop because I was also ruining it for my wife. Cause I'm like, that doesn't happen until book four. Yeah. Just being an asshole. Well, do you think, do you think her bad or her bad or sorry, I didn't mean to mispronounce your very real name. That's how you pronounce it in Spanish.

Oh, very good. So I've also offended Spanish speaking people. Um, Herb Dyrd, do you think some of the things that happen in the expanse will happen in our actual world? Will we develop, will we settle the solar system? Will we develop these technologies? Uh, I think you're qualified to answer this. I'm ignoring the alien particle, you know, probably the part where people live out miserable

lives mining asteroids and getting mistreated by major corporations. Yeah, that that that'll probably happen. Yeah, I think you're onto something there. Thanks for calling in her but they're good to hear your voice, man. Good to hear your voice. Always see your name in chat and thank you for watching and supporting and hanging out. Yeah, so I, I want to get more colors in here before we start switching because there's always see your name in chat and thank you for watching and supporting and hanging out. Yeah, so I want to get more callers in here before we start switching because there is like, God, so much to talk about on The Expanse. Alex asked to speak. Alex?

Hello. Can you hear me? Hey, Alex. What's going on? Hi, Alex. How you doing? Hey Alex, what's going on? Hi Alex, how you doing? Um, you know, living life. Um, yeah, I was actually just rewatching The Expanse, um, because a friend is doing a research project on imprisonment in science fiction, and there's this great plot, it's more in the books than in the show, but with the character Clarissa, if you

remember her, I don't remember. She, oh, I don't know if you've, you might not have gotten to her, but she's a, she's the daughter of the insane evil billionaire. Um, does anybody skit skids got to know who I'm talking about. What we lost skid temporarily. Uh. No, you're good. Keep going, keep going. Yeah, this character basically gets these illegal

hormone implants installed to commit some terroristic crimes and gets arrested and she has to be put in like a special underground prison because the earth government doesn't believe in the death penalty and they also but they also can't legally force her to remove the implants. There's just like a great bit of like, I don't know, future politics of this, of Earth society. Yeah, I didn't know about that. That's interesting as well, like thinking about how you would deal with the whole penal system once you're so crazy overcrowded and on multiple different worlds and how the different laws interact.

What do we know about, again, and thanks for the call, Alex, what do we know about the, the, the authors of the book? Um, that's, this is a great, great thing to bring up because, uh, one of them is Daniel Abraham, who's a really accomplished sci-fi and fantasy writer. You know, it's crazy. I've seen his name attached to this as the, through the pseudonym and didn't put together until we're live on this show. Who that is. Yeah. I've just never put together that he's written fantasy series that, that I've

read. Oh yeah. Have you read the long price quartet? I definitely didn't read all four. If I did, I'm, I got to remember the first book title. I'll bring it up here, but yeah, keep going. Well, he's amazing. Fantastic.

I mean, next level, like underrated. Um, and then, uh, the other guy is Ty Frank, who I believe was George RR Martin's assistant for a while. Um, and, uh, helped him with a lot of stuff and Ty Frank based the expanse novels on his home TTRPG campaign. Really? I heard that as a rumor that he has said that in interviews or something. I am saying it now, Joe.

That's what I saw online. I am a journalist first and I did call him personally and he confirmed it to me. I think it was a traveler campaign. I don't know if that ever was confirmed, but that was, that was what I heard too. Yeah. I heard a rumor that it was a traveler campaign. Uh, it was, it was the dragon's path.

That's what I read from Daniel Abraham, the first book of, I think the dagger and coin dagger and coin. I haven't read that. I've read the long price quartet. So I read the daggers, the dragon's path and it was good. It was just very solid, really good, really good stuff. Uh, and so yeah, it's, it's very cool to see like the way that this came together. And obviously the writers were very passionate about what they're doing and in writing a hard sci-fi that's set in our solar system with the, with the limits that we have. It's also cool when there's like a duo of writers writing like a

series, um, like, uh, you know, uh, is it Niven and Pornell that writes the Moten God's Eye? Yeah. Um, I always think that's interesting and I wonder what that kind of collaboration is like, but obviously with the expanse, it was extremely successful and they, they've created something that, I mean, you know, whatever you think of the show, the expanse is now all time, like one of the greatest sci-fi series ever. Yeah. Yeah. Does anybody ever ask them about their

process? Like about how, like, did one of them write one book, another one write another book? Do one of them write a chapter or you know write another book? Do one of them write a chapter? Or you know what I mean? I think they go paragraph by paragraph. Yeah, I'm curious about that process. Because as you said, it's an extremely rare thing. Right? You take all the books, especially novels, fiction, that are out there written, it's usually one person.

You need one person's clear vision and writing style to do it. And so I'm curious how they work together on it. But I enjoyed some of those McDermott, McD turned me onto those back in the day, the living in Cornell books. I think that's one of theirs. Footfall was really good. Yeah. Having written a screenplay with my wife, I can tell you that they probably fought a lot while they were writing this. It seems like it would be a challenging thing.

That's actually funny because I followed the James S.A. Corey account on Twitter for a while early on when I first started watching the show, but I stopped because whoever was running it was really aggressive. Uh, kind of mean actually. And I was just like, this is bummed me out. I don't know what it had to like, uh, uh, wear on the relationship. I'm sure. Yeah. Um, if you're aggro on Twitter or X or, or, or discord, maybe

social media is not for you. Yeah. or X or, or, or discord. Maybe social media is not for you. Yeah. That said, there should be no negative comments about this show on the discord, uh, where you will be booted from the discord server. McD is part of the show and he will know. Your subscription is immediately revoked. I'm on it.

I'm on it. Thanks McD. You got it it. Thanks, McD. You got it. Thanks, buddy. What else did Larry Nivet and Pornell do? Did they do, Larry Nivet did Ringworld, I think. I love Ringworld. Ringworld's great.

I don't think Pornell was on that one. Yeah, great, great stuff. God, I love those old sci-fi books. That's what first got me into sci-fi, reading those things in like the 90s That's great stuff. Let's do one. Let's bring up a K Rob here K Rob I'm friend of the GCN K Rob. I've invited you There he is. What's up? Hello my friend. Hey, how's it going? It's going great. It's going great. How are you doing?

I'm great. I'm great. Just got off work. Oh Really? Are you also high? I work. No, I'm not I work at 2 2 a.m. To 10 a.m. On Wednesdays 2 a.m. To 10 a.m. Yeah, are you a security guard for a museum? No I'm gonna imagine that you are. I work at a grocery store and today is our ad day. So that's our yeah. So your ad day, what is an ad day?

Well, like the prices change for the new ad advertisements and stuff like that. Oh, wow. So you got to be in there at 2 a.m. to start that turnover. So it's already. What time is the store actually open? Seven? Six. Six. Yep. to start that turnover so it's all ready. But what time does the store actually open? 7? 6. 6. Yep, they want it done by 7. I got done at 9 a.m. today, so it was a rough day.

Oh man. Well, I'm glad you're able to join us here. That you can come and relax with us. Now, tell us your opinion of the expanse. I disagree! So I watched the show first. And it was one of those one because there's a couple of shows that were like.

I start a show and then I immediately want to continue watching it like Stranger Things was that way. Rings of Power was not that way I literally Realized I was watching a couple of episodes and Realized I had work in an hour. I was like I hadn't even slept that night. I've done that. Oh my god It's almost 2 a.m. I Gotta get going. Yeah.

Yeah. So yeah, I really enjoyed the show and didn't have, like the other people said they didn't like season one because they had read the book first. I had none of that. I like, it was immediately hooked. I didn't really notice any bad acting, uh, in that first season. I just, I thought it was a great sci-fi show.

Um, and I watched, I watched the entirety of it, but I'm currently in the middle of book eight on the book on audible. Okay. You're on the last book then. Yes. So I got, are they good on audible? Is that You're on the last book then. Yes. So I got, are they good on audible? Did they have a good narrator? The narrator is awesome. His name is Jefferson Mays and one of the coolest things was,

I think it was the book seven where a character who doesn't know who Amos is, is talking to Amos. And just by the way he acted with Amos, I was like, Oh, that's Amos. Like, he's excellent. That might be how I take in the rest of the books, because I've really gotten into audio books lately and I can especially something that's like very action packed. I feel like works very well for audio books for me. Yeah Yeah, he's he's excellent. He's an excellent narrator

Awesome well Thanks, Kara for for car. Are you gonna go on basic assistance? Are you gonna go on basic assistance? Don't we get it. I hope I hope not you could you'd be able to sleep at night though I hope not. You'd be able to sleep at night, though. Yeah. Hey! That would be nice. Yeah.

You wouldn't have to get up at 1 in the morning to go to work. Thanks for calling in, buddy, and please keep doing it. Hey, Rob. Hey, Rob. It brings up an interesting, I think we can kind of transition here based on the audiobook idea is another whole aspect, especially audible, et cetera, of this idea of streaming services, controlling the media that we are able to consume.

When this expanse news came up, Jared and I talked off air with McD about it. McD's first thing was, you know, this brings into question really the whole way that we consume media now and its ownership and its licensing and its leasing, et cetera. And I'm curious, Jared, what some of your thoughts are kind of out of the gate on this, this model that we're now all seemingly locked into like without a real choice for how we own and consume media. So streaming platforms as a way of consuming media are complete goddamn horseshit. They ruin the experience in myriad,

unconnected ways. So there's one way to hate it. And then there's a whole other way over here reason to hate it. Um, I could go on and on about it, but let me say a couple of things. First of all, when you stream something, and this could be a game on steam or it could be, um, and a movie you buy on Apple. You don't own that media. You own a license to watch the media, which is so ridiculous. I wish they would send me a card in the mail with my photo on it and everything.

And so if you move to another country, for example, this is the biggest example. If you don't have that license in another area, then if you don't have it in Canada, for example, you just can't watch it. That's ridiculous. Another thing that's ridiculous is that you don't find the things that you want to find. The streaming platforms, the corporations that are running them are manipulating what you watch. And I read one thing that said that there was a study done that, uh, you know, the things that get the most views are the things with like the thumbnail

placed in a certain place. And sometimes, especially for genre fans like us, if we're looking for something that really appeals to us, we can't find it. Like, you know, it feels like on a lot of the streaming platforms, maybe I'm an, I'm acting like an old foggy, maybe some college will disagree. It feels like the search functions hidden feels like the browse by genre is hidden from you. They want you to watch the thing that they're pushing right now. And so they're kind of manipulating what we watch. I don't know, I mean, I could go into more stuff, but I'm interested in what you and Skid

and the collars think. Yeah, I'll comment on that one angle real quick, which I agree with you. I don't agree with you about it just being awful top to bottom, but I do agree with you that like, it does feel suspiciously like those things are kind of hidden or hard to get to. And I don't think that's just

like an old man thing at all. I feel like you are, you know, you're in a situation where you're being recommended these things. And you it's not until you sign in with someone else's profile that you'll suddenly be like, Holy shit, like I didn't even know some of this stuff was on here. And it's stuff that I would love to watch. Right? So just because I watch A, B and C, the algorithm is spitting out. Well, now you like D, E and F and don't like M. Right? Yeah.

I don't, I, that sucks. It's hard to discover things. Really. It's hard to discover things that the algorithm hasn't decided for you. Joe, have you ever gone to like, like, like an old, like an old, like right wing person's house and turn on their Netflix? It's a completely different, you're like, you're like tractor pull immigrant hunters. You're like, you're like tractor pull immigrant hunters. That's a show.

Yeah. I mean, it is completely, completely different. And, you know, I'm just amazed at how many things I really enjoy that are, that are not suggested to me by the algorithm, things I would really enjoy. Skid, do you, do you share in Jared's opinion here on streaming services in general being awful? Yeah, I think going back to like thinking when it started streaming where it's like, oh, it's possible to stream a high quality like video stream of a movie or a show over the Internet.

It's like, that's amazing. That's still to me pretty cool. But the model is fucked. I'm a big physical media guy. As a matter of fact, I just ordered this. I just got the steel book of Perfect Blue. Perfect Blue. Awesome. I'm a Blue, right? That came yesterday. So I love actually owning- You still buy in Blue Race. Yeah. H&M and like 4K. I'm a big fan of that. I do love the convenience of being able to just stream stuff on like different, you know,

screens and everything. But yeah, the interface for like a lot of the streaming services is really bad. I feel like there's too many ads when it's like you're already paying through the nose for either something you already own or like the subscription fee. So I, but I'm a, yeah, I'm a big believer. I want to try to keep physical media alive, do my part to do that. Cause I'm a big fan of that. I also will say, um, I think binging is horse shit. I don't think people should binge. I don't think you really take in a show. If you watch four or five episodes in a row, you need to slow down, watch an episode.

Think about that episode for a little while. You know what I mean? Talk to your friends about it. Yeah, talk to your friends about it. That's why most of the services are moving away from that. They're doing a week like Severance, which I wish they released all at once because I'd love to watch the entire thing in one sitting. But it's better for the show if like you could build like sort of this, especially with the mystery show like that, where it's just like you could build this sort of like theorizing and get some like sort of cultural kind of momentum going over the span of like a weekly broadcast instead of, you know, being able to jumping it all at once.

I do think it's better for like media is to do it. Not only that, but people complain. I'm not so much of a spoiler person where I hate spoilers, but people complain that people can binge the whole season in two days and then they're putting spoilers up online, you know, and ruining some of the plot twists for other people. So, um, yeah, binging is just not good. I'm just not for it. No, maybe some callers disagree.

Yeah, I'm curious to see if there's any caller out there that has anything positive to say about the convenience of streaming. Corvus Duskwalker, what do you have to say on the subject? Corvus? Are you here? Corvus? No? Try again. How about Jimmy T? Jimmy T? Hey, Corvus. There's Corvus. Hey, Corvus. What's up? Welcome. Nice to talk to you guys again. Uh, and as far as a streaming services are concerned, um, like I was talking about, about this with somebody recently and it would be idea of like nostalgia came right.

And one of the things that we, that I, that I discovered is that like people who were born around where I was have this weird relationship with nostalgia where we want modern conveniences, but we also want the things that those modern conveniences have killed. We want a Netflix and Amazon crime and all that. We also would like to hit up a movie store. I want my PS5, but I also want an arcade that doesn't suck. Things of that nature. I like all of my movies and everything. I like being able to rent stuff and stream stuff and everything. But third locations are wildly falling apart. But yeah, as far as how I feel the service is going, yeah, the interface as you guys brought up

kind of blows. I am kind of pro-binging, not to get at Jared here. What do you like about binging? Okay, so I have difficulty at sometimes like maintaining a plot thread in my head for a long period of time, especially if it's a deep mystery or political intrigue. For example, like The Expanse, which I actually haven't finished, but The Expanse or Jack Reacher, which is a big mystery show, which is really good. But things like that, like.

Where you need to tie together a lot of threads. It kind of helps to not forget. Lincoln lawyer, there's a big legal drama. And I'll feel like, wait, who the hell was, who was that again? Who was this person? I would argue though, when you watch them all back to back and then you're done, you don't retain any of it. I would say a week later you wouldn't know what

the mystery was, you know? Whereas I feel if I watch something week to week, I get that recap at the beginning of each episode and I retain the information about the plot better but you're saying no you know different strokes for different folks and all that I mean there are some shows that are just not meant to be banned like the boys for example I had a friend of mine come over every week after the boys would air we didn't watch it together because that felt weird but uh but he'd be like hey did you catch the new season the new episode of the boys and our discussion about it would be like, yep, sure did. And it's like, did you enjoy it?

Not, not even a little bit, but we still were, but, uh, but it was still a great show, uh, is not an enjoyable show. It was really good. Not wait. So not meant to be binged because it would be too traumatizing. That show gets pretty dark. Yeah, it's just too much, man. It's just too much for Jake.

Very heavy, heavy man. Yeah. Yeah, just, yes. There's a warning label. We originally thought about naming this show The Boys. Where Joe and I are the titular boys and McD are the titular boys. Well, there you go. Well, yeah, Corvus, thanks. Thanks for calling.

Yeah, it's I do think that there are positive benefits to the binging aspect. I think that, however, like you said, retaining is really important. One of my favorite traditions during the height of Game of Thrones TV, which for me was, you know, seasons one, two, three, you know, kind of, you know, in that range, you can go into four as well, was just I would watch it and have like a watch party and people over watch it and then I would Rewatch the previous week's full episode Right before the next episode and I've never done that with any other show But there was just so much detail so much going on and I found that it was more fun to watch the second time

So I would you know always have that kind of ritual. So it would be a two hour experience every night where I'd rewatch the old one from a week ago and then watch the new one as a way to try to keep on board. But I think if you were just watching them all back to back, yeah, you'd lose a lot of detail there. Yeah. I mean, I would say also like streaming platforms have led to this, this thing with TV shows where there are 12 episodes, but there are about six and a half to seven episodes of actual good story. You know?

Um, I mean, uh, the biggest perpetrator of this was when that documentary came out about the NXIVM sex cult and you pretty much had every bit of information you needed in the first two episodes. And then it just kept going for like six. And I felt like some of the Marvel Netflix shows were like that, you know, Jessica Jones or whatever. Like they just kept going and they didn't have the story that they needed. And I think sometimes these streaming platforms say, you need to make this many episodes, and it just doesn't need to be,

it just doesn't need to be that long. And that's an- How much are we sort of just like, shouting stupidly into the void here? I know- 100% of the time. We are entirely, entirely shouting stupidly into the void. Is there anything, is there anything that can be done?

You know what we can do? Is there any potential for the- Here's what we can do. Just stop subscribing to every service, which we all fucking do. We all subscribe to all of them. And then it equals what our old cable bill used to equal, maybe more.

And go back to buying some physical media, which gets harder and harder. Cause less people are selling Blu-ray players anymore. Like, but, but like get one and buy Blu-rays, you know, of things that you like and watch them that way. And then you actually own them and it won't disappear from your cabinet unless you loan it to your friend Ryan who won't give it back even though he's had it for a goddamn year.

And if you've lost it, you're buying me a new copy. I have an interesting story on that, not on that specific topic, but on a DVD player slash blu-ray player which just came up in my life within the last few days but before that I want to get another caller in here Nikki Nikki can you can you come to the stage are you there on the old discord Nikki hello hello hi hi so I was Nikki. Hello. Hello. Hi. Hi. So I was just thinking about the region locking stuff.

Yeah. That's another big aspect of this. Yeah. I lived and worked in Australia for three months and I made the mistake of starting a new show. And then time came to move back home and nowhere to be found. Yeah. And then time came to move back home and nowhere to be found. Yeah.

Or at least it wasn't on the same streaming platform. Do you ever think about maybe getting on a plane and going back to Australia, getting a hotel and just finishing the show? But then she'd have to binge Jared. And she'd have to binge. Right? This is the one case where binging would be okay. If you flew to Australia just to get a hotel room, just to binge a show that only airs there. Well, no, stay for eight weeks

and just stay at, live in the hotel. Just force yourself with the discipline to watch one episode every week. I just like to imagine Nikki, I like to imagine Nikki at the continental breakfast, bringing up the show to strangers. Well, it's funny. I found out about glass cannon while I was in Australia.

So thankfully you're glad you guys aren't agent locked. Yes. Yeah, we prefer to be international. We love our Aussie crew. I'm region expansive. I like to experiment with other regions. And continuing off with the expanse, I'm real bummed, because it was on my to watch list,

and I didn't realize it was on prime, again, with the algorithm thing. I didn't realize it, and now I can't. Yeah, it's just, well, yeah, the whole situation is brutal. And thanks for calling Nikki. It is Nikki also reminds me of like, uh, there's what's the show skid. What's the fantastic, um, Ricky Gervais show, uh, extras extras. Isn't that one like you can't get.

Yeah, it's, it's been gone for a while. It's been inaccessible for- It's not on Macs. No. Yeah. And it's just like, at least the last time I checked into it, probably a year or more ago, you couldn't get it anywhere. Like you couldn't even buy it anywhere. And I really wanted to see it because I had seen maybe a couple of highlight scenes on YouTube, but like Matthew raves about it, Skid raves about it. I really wanted to check it out. You can't get it. Which to me is just, that's a wild thing about the way the licensing works for media.

People, these people are deciding what is even available. It's on Peacock now? Yeah. It's on Peacock. That's the other thing that's so bizarre. Wasn't that an HBO show originally? Yeah. Well, I don't know if they produced it, but it was on HBO. Okay. So it was on HBO and then you're like looking for it. I mean, I know you can go, you can Google just watch and,

and that will like let you know where things are. But the weird thing where they're all selling shows to each other now is so goddamn bizarre. Like it's so odd. There's no brand identity anymore. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know, man. I don't know. But what about the aspect of just to play devil's advocate? We love devil's advocate on this show, right? What about, you know, great movie, the sheer, yeah. Where's that? Anytime you can get Keanu Reeves to do an accent, you're in good hands. I'm going to play Devil's advocate after this on my blu-ray player. Nice. Oh yeah. I wanted to tell you my, story, my Blu-ray story. Last Friday night, I was a big night, big night here in the O'Brien household. My wife had a girls weekend thing

at the mountains where she was going away for a couple nights. I had the kids solo and all week I had hyped up that Friday night was the night we were going to watch Star Wars for the first time. Oh. Star Wars A New Hope. My kids are, they're eight and six, and I have kept them completely unexposed to the Star Wars universe. We don't do Lego Star Wars, they don't do TV shows. We haven't done any of it because I was like, I want to wait first. You have to watch A New Hope and we'll go from there. And I felt like they were old enough, I felt like they're ready, and so I was very excited. So we sit down and of course, I'm like, you know what's so great?

This is just on Disney Plus also, and here's where that brand identity is getting ingrained into kids from a young age. As soon as I... My daughter was hemming and hawing about it a little bit. And she's like, I want to watch this other movie I already like, you know, and I was like, well, you know, I brought up Disney plus to watch it. And she was like, oh, it's Disney plus. Well, like now I'm, now I'm interested. Now I'll watch it because I enjoy that corporation. Exactly. Exactly. And so I was the same way as a kid. I was a huge NBC guy I was I was a big NBC advocate Must see TV, you know, the best thing about

The Disney Plus Star Wars is that it's the the version that Lucas fixed right because the original was so terrible And then right so put in he put in the real aliens in the real way It was supposed to look and now it's better So this was the downside right, but I feel like but I should have this fixed by Empire But for Star Wars is like this is my only option I'm just gonna go with this and I want them to see it. So we start it 25 minutes in it's connecting they're getting it. Now I have to explain very basic concepts like what an empire is and what a rebellion is, right? Like I sort of have to explain

that, but then they get it and they're, we're moving along. 25 minutes in, boom, my entire house blacks out, lose power entirely. This is not a normal happening around me. There is no storm, no wind, no snow, nothing. My whole block is just out of power. It's like, what? And I'm like, I can't believe this is happening when we're gonna watch Star Wars. We go two hours without power.

I've got flashlights out, we're playing card games and stuff, passing the time, hoping it'll come back on at some point. And it does about two hours later. So now we're getting late into the evening. Maybe I shouldn't watch it, but I'm like, screw it. We're committed to doing this tonight, we're watching it. I start watching it again,

and every five minutes my internet drops. This is also not a usual occurrence. But this, so this brings up the whole other aspect of this discussion, which is not only do you have the services, not only do you have the licensing issues, but everything is relying on your internet. Like keep that in mind too. Like if that goes down, if that gets fouled up, if some kind of companies, messing that up,

you also lose access to all the media that you've purchased or are even monthly licensing as a subscription. So all of a sudden I was just like, this is so frustrating. And I was like, wait a minute. And I literally got out a flashlight, went into my attic, I found my Star Wars DVDs that I bought in like 2004 or something like that, like the box set DVDs

and the DVD player, like all of which was in the attic. I pulled it all out, plugged it all in. I was like, we're done with this. As long as we have power, we're just going to watch this whole movie without interruption and I put in that freaking DVD and we watched the whole thing. And it was amazing. Like it was just amazing.

That's an awesome story. True nerds get physical media. That's right. Yes. If you don't own physical media, you're a false nerd and you are excommunicated. I'll tell you what, the best part was, I mean, they literally cheered when he destroyed the Death Star. I mean, it was perfect. Like it all built well and it landed well. And now they're really excited for the Empire Strikes Back. That's phenomenal. I'm excited for that too. But that's the thing about physical media too,

is like what if, God forbid, like the internet goes down for an extended period of time for everyone. In the land of no internets, the physical media guy is king. That's right. That's right. That's right. So, uh, don't get rid of your physical media. Don't throw it out. I'm telling you, it's keep at least what you have. And if you can still buy more, buy more. You know, there's one whole aspect of this we haven't talked about. We got to move on, but there's a whole aspect we haven't talked about, which is video games. We haven't talked about video games. Video games, especially through Steam,

are also largely on this model now. You have the same thing with, I love just buying and downloading games on PlayStation Network or on Xbox Live. I don't even know if they call it that anymore, but it's just, it's so convenient, right, to not have to go to the store and buy the copy anymore and wait for that thing to be in or whatever. But now

you realize like you don't really own any of that. Any of that in any moment can be taken away from you. And it's something interesting that we're going to talk about this more next week. Right Jared, we want to talk a little bit more about the video game history foundation. Yeah, that are preserving and archiving video games. Yeah. So we'll get into that next week and we'll sort of continue this discussion. Yeah, we'll continue this discussion next week. But for now, let's move on to our next topic for today, which is continuing our month of

tribute to the wonderful David Lynch. We had to put in a little time talking about Twin Peaks largely letting the callers weigh in on their thoughts on Twin Peaks. Uh, and, and, uh, seeing if skid has anything to say about it, I'm not sure where you stand. Are you a Twin Peaks fan? Yeah, I came to Twin Peaks pretty late. I only watched it for the first time, I think maybe like 10 years ago or something.

Because like a lot of things, I thought that the big fans of it were really annoying like back in the day. So I was just like, ah, that's not for me. But then I did finally watch it and I was just like, this is incredible. And especially Twin Peaks The Return, which of course our good friend Matt Lillard has a good part in, is I think is the best piece of media produced in this century so far. Whoa! Wow.

I'm absolutely blown away by it and so yeah, I'm a massive fan of it now. Even given that most of season two is very bad, it is still incredible on the whole. Yeah, no, I love it. And I watched it a couple of years ago and I did watch Twin Peaks The Return. And I think it's incredible that you're like, that's the best piece of media or one of in the last,

that many years, because a lot of twin peaks, the return is an inaccessible art film. Yeah. That is, um, I mean, like there's like episodes that are just a series of images. Yeah. With like no dialogue or, you know, a real plot to speak of, but it is sort of beautiful and odd and strange and unique. And it's cool that he was given the creative freedom to, to create that.

I mean, we forget that the original twin peaks that that was on network television at like nine o'clock at night. And it's so weird. Yeah, very, very weird. And also it's like without twin peaks, there's no, there's no X files, which I also loved. Right. That's so,

you know what I was thinking? There's no lost without Twin Peaks because lost is very much like, so Twin Peaks is a nighttime soap with weird supernatural elements. Lost is sort of a nighttime soap with weird supernatural elements. You know, um, what is the primary, and I did not watch Twin Peaks, what is the primary difference artistically between Lost and Twin Peaks? Because I watched a lot of Lost,

I liked a lot of Lost until I stopped liking it after a certain point, but like, you know, but I feel like I've watched parts of Twin Peaks and I feel like it's very different. I agree with you that like, under a larger umbrella, 100%. But like, what do you think artistically are the differences you can point out

between the two shows? Vastly different, vastly different. I was just saying that like, the idea that you could do a network show that has these very weird and largely unexplained moments and concepts sort of woven in was sort of new at the time of twin peaks, you know, even shows that had supernatural elements or sci-fi fantasy elements usually explained to you exactly what was going on. Twin Peaks, it's unclear when you finish it exactly what was going on. But it feels like it did. I feel like I understand it even if I couldn't explain it. Still very satisfying. Still very satisfying. And there is a mythology that you can kind of Still very satisfying.

And there is a mythology that you can kind of like, you know, piece together. And I feel like Lost, you know, is similar in that way. There's sort of this mythology, but you never are told it all at once. And these little unexplained things happen from episode to the episode. So that was the only comparison I was making.

But Lost, I mean, I really love Lost, but so inferior to Twin Peaks, which is actually David Lynch's artistic vision, at least for season one and then the return. So yeah, very tail end of season two. Yeah. The spirit of bringing this whole thing up is just to, to again, give tribute to, to David Lynch and his art and his creativity throughout his entire career. And I think a lot of people would say that Twin Peaks is his magnum opus. And I know that a lot of people in our community

really love it. So I'd encourage people to come up and talk about it and just talk about what you love about Twin Peaks. What are some of your favorite episodes or parts or moments that really stuck with you forever and really kind of landed with you? We have Fengus here who I think has something to say on the subject.

Fengus. Fengus. If you'd like to come on up, join us. K-Rob says, yeah, it's great. Sure. It's great. I will tell why we get our color. I will tell this very brief story from my wife. My wife was not allowed to watch TV growing up, but she still found out about Twin Peaks.

And one day when she went to the bookstore, her dad let her buy a book. And she got the diary of Laura Palmer. And she was like 13. And I don't know if you know what happens to Laura Palmer and swing peaks, but it's not for 13 year olds. And she was like reading it on a field trip and her teacher was like, what is that? And had, had been watching the show. I was like, I'll take that. But I really love that. My wife didn't actually watch the show

till she and I were together 15 years later. Her entire knowledge of Twin Peaks came from Laura Palmer's diary of being a prostitute at One Eyed Jacks. Right. She says, Fengus, try it again. Are you there? Fengus.

Hey, am I here? Yeah, you're there. What's up, Fengus trying again. Are you there? Fengus? Hey, am I here? Yeah, you're there. What's up? Or are you we're in twin peaks. It's unclear. Might be the black lodge calling in from there. That's right.

What are your thoughts on twin peaks? Oh, I love twin peaks. The first time I watched it was with my mom who hadn't seen it since 20 years when it was on TV and remembered it as a normal murder mystery soap opera. And then at the end of the first episode. It almost kind of is. It has that sort of hook of like getting normies like your mom to go, wait, okay, I could get into like a mystery soap. get into like a mystery soap. Sorry, go ahead. Just driving it to me like, Oh, who killed Laura Palmer and stuff. And then we got to like the first time it's the little person in the red room dancing. She was like, what is this? But yeah, it's, it's up there. Favorite show. Probably. I don't know. Oh wow. So, so why, why, why does it stand out to you as one of your all-time favorites?

It's kind of good. It's just got everything. It's got all these amazing actors and characters. You never know what's going on. There's like a cliffhanger. The cast is unbelievable. Yeah, the cast is crazy. And like they're all feel great. Like, I don't know, they all went on to have better careers kind of even afterwards. And yeah, it's the you can think about it and puzzle it out forever, which I love. And you're never going to get to an answer. But I can accept that, you know, and weird to me that is to me, that's the weirdest part about this entire genre, if you want to call it that, of this body of work of Lynch's is kind of famous for being like, leaving you with more

questions than you started with kind of thing. I do understand how it's fun to get with your friends and debate what was happening here, what this meant or what that meant. But I also, I guess, you know, it's just my personality. I like things tied up a little bow perfectly so that I could, you know, I don't know, Skid, do you enjoy this aspect of these kind of shows where like you're not given answers? Well, yeah, I think it's like I was saying before, it's, you're not given all the answers, which keeps you, it keeps you thinking about it. But it, like I said, it also feels like deep down you have them.

Like I feel like on some level- Yeah, it's satisfying. Yeah. Like I've said before, David Lynch was the master of replicating the experience of having a dream. With dream logic and everything, it's just like the events in a dream may not make any sense at all when described to somebody, but when you're in the dream, it's just like everything feels like they make perfect sense. And that's how it feels watching the show. So, you know, it's the same, it touches me as deeply as a dream would without me like being able to explain like every element

that was in the dream. Yeah. And I'll also say, Joe, I mean, I love an ambiguous ending or, or a sort of a mysterious sort of plot where you don't get all the answers, but I think it's hard to pull off. And I think without David Lynch's like incredible style, you know, it doesn't work, you know, there has to be something else that work, you know, it can't just be not giving answers.

It's gotta be like evoking, like skit is saying this sort of feeling of a dream. So not getting the answers still sort of makes sense on some level. Do you feel like Lynch knew the answers and danced around them in a creative way? I can tell you that he does not know all the answers that he sort of, he sort of makes things up as he goes along. I've definitely read interviews to that effect. And for example, the, the main demon in the series, Bob, the way Bob is introduced was actually an accident. They actually caught the actor, forgive me,

I don't remember his name. He was like a production guy. He wasn't even- He was a crew member, yeah. And they accidentally caught him in a shot in kind of a scary way where he was kind of over in the corner and David Lynch was like, oh, I'm gonna use that. I'm gonna weave that into the corner and David Lynch was like, Oh, I'm going to use that.

I'm going to, I'm going to weave that into the story and make it more of a thing. So, um, I kind of liked that because that's also a little bit how TTRPGs sometimes play out or you're kind of like, you kind of go with the happy accidents or what the players are feeding you. And I think that's a really pure form of like creative, a creative way to work is the way he worked where, you know, he didn't have all the answers. He didn't have it all outlined out ahead of time. Let's take another caller.

Uh, I mean, let's make it three in a row for Verducai. I pretty sure Verducai has been featured on every episode of class co-host, our co-host Verducai. Verducai. I feel like you mentioned something about Twin Peaks before when we first brought up Lynch back in episode one. I can't remember though. Are you a big Twin Peaks fan?

I was saying that I had gotten about through the first season and the first half of the second season before I kind of dropped off interest-wise. I remember. And I haven't gone back yet, um, because I got distracted by other things on streaming services. So there it goes. Yeah, there you go. So are you going to watch Tiger King instead?

No, no, no, I was getting mad at, uh, Disney plus and buying things on other streaming services because they started dropping like 20,000 commercials in the shows all of a sudden. I was like, oh, great. You just have to pay them more money, Verdukai. Exactly. And then you don't have to look at this.

Right. It's a very fair model that we all agreed on. So what you dropped off interest, we've already heard from a few different people that season two struggles a little bit there. What stood out to you about season one? To me, thinking back to like media from that time period, because I grew up in that time period, it was just so different than everything else that I go back and watch from that, you know, it's nine period Like I said that one thing astounding it was on network television to me. Yes. Yeah, there's a lot of where I'm like Oh, this is on network TV. This is crazy And the funny thing is like Twin Peaks in my mind for years and years and years

I kept getting it confused with another show and I of course, I think Can't remember what it's called called now you were like our other callers mom yes I thought it was George Clooney saving lives right no it was like this guy it was like a show or their exposure I don't know it was like a they were supposed to be twins but one was really tall and was really short and they saw calling in about a show that you kind of think you might don't remember, Vertica.

I was hoping to get in on the media ownership thing. Hey, Vertica, is there anything else you don't remember you'd like to talk about? Let me tell you this story about Brent Spiner. Oh, boy. Here it comes. Here she comes. No, no, hey, if you want to talk about

something on media ownership quickly, please. No, I had trivia. Did you know what the very first thing that was streamed was? No, I do not know this fact. What is it? In 1995, it was broadcast through broadcast.com. The very first stream was the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show. I'm Mark Cuban.

Guaranteed to get viewers. GE or whoever they partnered up with. I only know that because I ended up working for a company that a bunch of Yahoo.com people worked at and they worked for broadcast.com before they got by Yahoo. I was like, oh, I had neat cheer about streaming. Interesting. broadcast.com before they got up by Yahoo. So I was like, oh, I had neat cheer about streaming, but other than the nis griping about, you know, like you said, needing to start moving everything to digital and the rising commercial frequency.

That's yeah, but Twin Peaks is great. Can I ask you a question? Yes, sir. Where can I see that Victoria's Secret Fashion Show now? I will drop a link in the Discord. I was looking it up earlier to verify the date. Thank you, Verdikay. Good fun fact.

I want to go back to Fengis for a second, not on an actual call, but Fengis got dropped before he could finish his point. I really like this. He just wrote in Discord chat and said, at the most basic level, film and television use light and sound to give you an experience. David Lynch is one of the best creators at giving an experience. But it's just that that experience isn't just the telling of a narrative. That's a really, really good way to put it. That's a perfect way to put it. Yeah, I love that.

I appreciate that. That's well said. My God, Verdikay really did just post the Victoria's Secret stream in Discord. I thought she was joking. I know, I'm watching it right now. Hubba hubba. No, I'm watching it right now. Let's bring another caller up here, another friend of the show, Toby Tolubar. Please join us. Toby. Hello, hello.

Hello, there he is. Hello, Toby. From across the pond. Do you say across the pond for all of Europe or does it have to only be UK? I think that's fair. Is that fair? Toby, you're in Germany, right? The pond is big enough.

I am. Yes. I'm close enough to the UK, Northern Germany. That's just a little leap. It's a little leap. You know, I call Germany the Rhineland in casual conversation. Thank you. Finally someone does it.

We do need to bring it back. I'm going to take this opportunity, Toby, we're going to get your thoughts for a second, whether it's ownership or Twin Peaks in a second. I just want to take a moment to highlight what's coming here in the next half hour and use Toby to kind of back that up. We have an exciting segment coming up next that you got to be here for, especially if you're in Discord. If you see it on the topic list, you see it's called Beat McD.

It's going to be a trivia contest, head to head, a caller against McD in a trivia contest. We're going to get to that in a second. But I just wanted to... And the winner, by the way, if you win, if you beat McD, you're going to walk away with a fun prize. So we'll talk about that in a minute before we get into lastly today, our book club, where we're going to talk not only about books that we might happen to be reading or finishing up right now, but we have chosen a book for the glass cannon radio book club that if you want to get and read along with us, we're going to read it and we're going to do a whole segment on it in a month.

So just like a book, we're all going to read it together. Yeah. It's going to be really fun. So stay tuned for that as well. The reason. And then when we meet again, we're going to have a lot of callers who just call in and go, you know what guys I did. I know we were supposed to but I didn't read it because that's how book clubs work. Oh, yeah, I fully intend to not finish this book and go to the book club and be like, yeah, I bring it up while Toby is here is because Toby is an amazing artist and was kind enough to whip up some art for us for Beat McD. So when that topic eventually gets here, you'll see the new artwork for the segment. And I just want to highlight the artist. It is our own Toby here who's joining the call.

So thank you so much for doing that. Yeah. Thank you, Toby. In the meantime, thoughts on Twin Peaks? Absolutely, Toby. In the meantime thoughts on Twin Peaks. Absolutely There's there's a couple of points on Twin Peaks. First of all, I'm shocked that Joe hasn't watched it whatsoever because I know I'm shocked too, Toby. Joe is super educated on a lot of things. He's scared by David Lynch. David Lynch scares him. Yeah, he says David Lynch is the devil. I'm legitimately frightened by David Lynch. When Joe watches a David Lynch movie, he runs to church.

If you are afraid of David Lynch. And asks the father to forgive him. Watch David Lynch's opinions on oppression, and you'll see he's a sweet, sweet man. He was a very sweet man. Well, the research I did for this show was so enlightening about how beloved this guy is, and not

just his art, but the man himself. Beloved. Insightful man. Very, very detailed. Yeah, which I think is really cool. Joe's more of a Michael Bay fan. He's in the Bay Area. Michael Bay area.

Michael Bay very much is the David Lynch of our generation. No, please. We keep cutting you off by all means. No, all good. All good. No, I'm just surprised because someone cutting you off by all means. No, all good. All good. Um, no, I'm just surprised because someone else mentioned it in Discord earlier as well, but, um, it's, it's expected viewing for anyone that plays, uh, Delta Green with me really, because especially if you have kind of a comedic twist on, on Delta Green because you want

to lighten the mood a little bit, um, Twin Peaks really is an excellent sort of stepping stone into the whole experience. With the dream-like sensation of impossible landscapes, which is what I'm running right now as well, you really want to get some inspiration from David Lynch. Yeah, it's literally about an FBI agent going and investigating a supernatural mystery. There's no Delta Green without Twin Peaks either. Yeah. Exactly. And, uh, something that, that Skid might know,

because Skid, uh, I think you've lived in Japan for a while, right? Or you've been there for a little bit, but Twin Peaks was huge in Japan to the point where they had a mock funeral for, for Laura Palmer in Japan. Yeah. And there's a, it's crazy that the town they filmed, it filmed Twin Peaks and it was swamped by Japanese tourists for a good few years. Oh yeah. Wow.

Well, and that makes sense because J-Horror, you know, Japanese horror definitely loves the ambiguous ending, the sort of like unexplained moments. Um, a lot of like real, really great Japanese horror kind of follows that same sort of pattern. There's actually a series of coffee ads, coffee commercials that were filmed in Canon within Twin Peaks and they are so they are they were filmed or directed by David Lynch I think they're all like 15 seconds long but they are they do happen canonically within Twin Peaks, which are pretty fun. Yeah, I've seen, I've seen clips of that.

Yeah, I would recommend them just to get the full experience, obviously. Yeah, actually, X-Files was huge in Japan too when I was there. That's where I, that's where I started watching X-Files. It was like one of the few things that was in English at the, at the video store. So I've rented those all on VHS. So. I can't even imagine how like blown away you must have been by X-Files. Oh my God, yeah.

Bought it, sat down to watch it, a skid bar. I can't even believe you just must have been like, this is like a super awesome thing I've ever seen. Talking about binging, I would literally, cause I'd go to the video store, it's like a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, it's like, uh, uh, he, he talking about it. So like, uh, you understand what I'm saying? Like I'd go in, like I'd get the two of the tapes, go home, watch four episodes like, Oh, I got to watch the rest and go back and get the next two.

You know what? Back on the streaming conversation a little bit, I miss the X-Files style of story where you get a done in one story, usually, but then every once in a while you get a mythology episode that connects to a larger story. How come nobody does that anymore? Why do I have to watch every episode? That's because you don't drop in and out anymore, right? You get all the episodes on your streaming service, so they don't have to rely on episodic

storytelling anymore. But I miss it. I do too. I do too. I do too. I agree. I miss you. I miss us. And thanks for the call. Toby. What happened to us?

For the call. That's an interesting point to bring up is the, the whole, when did this, what is your memory of this first, this first starting? The like the actual like episode to episode connected narrative, like a mini series. But the sopranos. Well, no, the sopranos is pretty episodic, like episode to episode connected narrative, like a mini series, but long. The Sopranos. Well, no, the Sopranos is pretty episodic, but that would be the beginning of like, the Sopranos would be the beginning of like,

I think Lost comes out after the Sopranos. The Sopranos to me is the beginning of what you call the prestige television, where it's all meant to kind of look like a movie, because TVs and movies looked very different at the time in the late nineties. And the Sopranos really does reward like watching every episode because it did have, uh, you know, like a season plotline that went through it.

It's still more episodic than something like maybe lost or, or definitely the stuff we have now, like a squid game. You make me think of HBO, like Oz, The Wire, right? Those were at or? The Wire is so connected, right? Is that at? But they're sort of like seasonally, they have season long arcs.

Yes, it's all kind of connected, but seasonally it was like serial, you know, each one. But I'm curious about when that kind of first came to network television, the broadcast. The first example that springs to mind for me is a show called Crime Story, which was a Michael Mann produced very stylish sort of cop show set in the early 60s with Dennis Farina in it, which I think- Oh, wow. I've got back, watched a little bit. It's actually, it's still pretty good, but it had that

continuity over the course of the show, where it's just something like, Miami Vice, which was also Michael Mann produced, was much more episodic. There were some sort of elements that would continue on throughout the show, but for the most part it was very episodic. With like Crime Story, I remember specifically like had these long sort of like arcs over multiple episodes. There is an argument to be made for the serialized story and like, you know, long arcs like that. I mean, there are great shows that do that do that, but I, I, my problem comes in when that's all you get now.

If you can do both, that's the sweet spot for me because I definitely prefer more serialized like storytelling episode. But yeah, if you can, if you can pepper in like X files did like, like so well, the monster, the weak stuff with the mythology stuff, you're getting them. Uh, it's like a peanut butter and chocolate. like so well, the monster of the week stuff with the mythology stuff, getting them. It's like peanut butter and chocolate. I'd like to I'd like to hear from our producer on this show, our good buddy, McD. I think that this would be a great time to to have McD weigh in on Twin Peaks. McD's been a long time, long time fan and proponent, I believe, of Twin Peaks.

McD, are you there? Can you hear us? I can't hear you. What's up, buddy? Hey, buddy. First time, long time. Yeah, for real. I mean, you've been in the background last two weeks on the ones and twos doing a spectacular job. There's a lot of moving parts on this show compared to other things we've done and you're doing amazing work. Do you have a minute here to talk to us? No, I got another time Good good. Did you watch Twin Peaks?

When it originally aired no Okay. No, did anybody in your family watch it when it originally aired. Do you recall? Your family was like so to give everybody a little bit of background, McD's family was like on to this like cool and weird stuff back then. So like McD's dad was into D&D when nobody's dad in the neighborhood ever heard of D&D. Right, cool. I'm curious if you, if they ever watched this stuff, your parents. Twin Peaks, not that I remember, man. My mom kind of controlled the TV at that hour of the day. You know?

Yeah. My dad was Sunday morning PBS watching Doctor Who kind of viewer. Yeah. Yeah. There's something that my dad never did. Oh, god. Doctor Who. Write it down.

We got to do an episode off Doctor Who. Oh, yeah. Doctor Who. Write it down, we gotta do an episode. Oh yeah, Doctor Who app. Well what about, so then when did you watch Twin Peaks? Hmm. I probably watched Twin Peaks through video rental. I wanna say that was a me and Jusandi endeavor. So like college-ish era. You know, when I was in college in Memphis, Tennessee, there was a video store called

Black Lodge Video. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, and they, of course, they had a lot of weird cult stuff. But yeah, that's how I watched it too, was like in college on DVD. Yeah, I mean, I was, I want to say I wasn't like blown away by it when I watched it. And that was kind of how I felt about Lynch in general at that point. You know, like I felt like, like Mulholland Drive, I didn't love when I, when I first watched it, I was just, I was just not in that headspace for I

Think I was way more differently now Not really no Yeah, but it's also well you're wrong because Lynch is a genius Not disputing it totally a genius, a genius. I think the most Lynch thing we watched, we watched Dune a lot. My dad really liked Lynch's Dune. I believe we had an SLP VHS that had the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy BBC mini-series and Lynch's Dune on it. Wow.

So you could just watch one way into the other. Oh, man. I was just watching that recently too, the BBC series. It's so good. It's amazing. Yeah. Better than any other adaptation, I would say. Yeah, yeah. I like the new one, the most deaf Hitchhiker's Guide. Yeah, that was pretty good too, but I think-

Yeah, I liked that. I think that the TV show holds up better than most of the other stuff. The cool thing about the Hitchhiker's Guide stuff, just real quick, is that it was actively adapted, most of that stuff, with Douglas Adams' assistance. And they were adapted as their own standalone products. They weren't just like, this is a version of the book. It's like, we're just going to move the book into this medium. It was just like, this is a show. They'd have new material in them that like Douglas Adams would write specifically for them. It was like, it's great. It's like, there's a lot to mine in the Hitchhiker's Guide universe. There was another topic you got to write down, right?

Yeah. Right. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Yeah. It wasn't even a novel is just oh that would be A good topic the segment. I'm not you Yeah, add Raven in discord chat says pitch hikers guide episode yeah Why I mean I did you done we do a dirt gently episode as well. Oh big fan. But I read Dirk Gently when I was in high school. That was awesome. The long dark tea time in the soul might be the best book title ever.

Yeah, it's up there. Yeah. Does does did Twin Peaks inspire any of your ideas as you were Koji emming impossible landscapes? Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah. Lynch in general, you know, like he was not afraid to just be like, weird. And like weird is kind of scary when everything else is a little mundane. Yeah, yeah. Like when it's just like a little off and it's even I mean, going back to like the Twilight 2001 that we did. Yeah. You know, just like some of those notes, which is like,

oh, there's a baby crying in the distance. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So explanation, explanation, you know, let your mind figure out, you know what I mean? You paint a picture of why this is upsetting. You know, like, yeah, 100 percent that. And I mean, really, it's like Lynch, but like, it's hard to even like take that away from like X-Files because like that was, you know, like way more in my like wheelhouse, just age-wise when that came out. And X-Files was, and I mean, I don't know if you remember

the show, but I believe X-Files where we lived was on like Friday nights at nine. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And the amount- Where I lived too. on like Friday nights at night. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And the man I live to the amount of X-Files I watched as a 14 year old. Like sitting at home at nine o'clock on a Friday night. I mean, I don't know what I don't know what teenagers are like now, but when I was 14, you didn't go out on a Friday night.

You stayed in and you watched lots of TV. Oh, yeah. Yep. Indoor kids. Yep. Yep. McD and I were not in the woods with everyone else smoking weed and beer. No, we were scared of that. That was Miami Vice. Miami Vice had the exact same time slot in a different decade. Miami Vice had the exact same time slot. That's awesome. Let's take a call here because we're going to wrap up our discussion here soon because we got to get into this trivia contest, which I'm very excited about. Drogonath has had their hand raised.

Drogonath, you want to join us? Your mic is muted there. If you unmute, we should hear you. Hi there. Hey, how are you? Hi, Drogonath. I'm very good. Thoughts on Twin Peaks. If you unmute, we should hear you. Hi there. Hey, how are you? Drogonath. Drogonath, thoughts on Twin Peaks?

Yeah, I just have like one quick thing I want to say, cause I think that, um, when Peaks kind of gets an unfair, uh, I think it gets a little, uh, we can get lost in the weeds too much of like, it's just weird for the sake of being weird. And so that, I think that might turn a lot of people off of watching it. I will say that personally I you know I know a lot of people that watch the show when you end the third season of Twin Peaks I think you have a lot more answers than people I think give the show credit for. You know it's a mystery show at the end of the day and I think if everything kind of got wrapped up in a neat little bow it wouldn't really have the staying power that it has.

Um, but yeah, I just wanted to say there, there are answers to be had for sure. I think you get the, I think you get the download that you need at certain points during the show. Cool. Yeah, I agree. I think that's changed a lot in the last 30 years where it's just expected that everything is explained to you Hmm like yeah, generally works. It's like it's okay to not explain stuff. Yeah

It lost taught us anything That it's okay tonight explain stuff, but yeah, like Jogan says I I find that interesting I hadn't heard that specific take before. It's like, let's not swing the pendulum too far into saying, Twin Peaks doesn't give you any information. There are some things that are definitely wrapped up. Right. It gives you definite answers. There is another dimension called the Black Lodge, and demons can get in and out of it and take the forms of other people. Very easy to understand concepts like that. These are just facts.

There's a giant that appears to you while you're suffering from a gunshot and gives you three prophecies. Easy to understand genre tropes. Don't forget the all telling fairy frog that crawls out of your mouth when you sleep. I know. It freaks me out. Thank you, Drogadoth for putting a button on Twin Peaks. These are the kind of things that are just horrifying to me.

Well, Skid, I wanna thank you so much for being on, man. Thank you for coming by and hanging with us. Good to see you so much for being on man. Thank you for yeah I'm by and thank you with us, you know for this good to see you skidding. Thank you It was awesome. By the way, I did order the entire expanse series on blu-ray as we were sitting here There's one conversion did you order one conversion you order it on media? I yeah What sucks not only am I giving money to Jeff Bezos, but it's not going to be here for three weeks. So. Bezos, if you're, if you hear this,

or if any of the devices you use to monitor all communications, hear this. We respect you as the leader of our country and we do not wish to engage in thought crime. Thank you for your wisdom. Boy, you know, we say Lynch is a genius but we forget about Bezos. I know, people always, J.B.

That's what, you know. Yeah. Poor one. Thank you, Skid, man. It was so good to see you. Yeah, too. It was great to have you. Also, real quick, I want to shout out

one of Jared and my favorite comedians, Dana Gould, that's a new comedy special. Yes! It's fucking great. Hi, Eric. It's called Perfectly Normal, Dana Gould. Yeah, we really enjoyed that. Yeah, it's fucking awesome.

Thanks, kid. You know, and that's another thing that we should definitely get on the old topic list is like, we need to talk a little bit of comedy here too. Like let's get that in there. It's going to be a good example of a very nerdy comedian who talks about really nerdy stuff, you know? Um, so, I mean, he has whole bits about planet of the apes and stuff like that.

So we should definitely talk about Dana Gould and some other comedians who do that kind of thing. All right. On to it, Jared. Let's do it. Let's do it. All right. Okay. So welcome to a new and recurring segment here on Glass Cannon Radio,

Beat McD, where you, the caller, are going to get a chance. One caller, one caller is going to get the chance to compete with McD in a trivia contest to win an incredible prize. And let's see. Well, if you think that you'd like to be involved in this, let me tell you the topic for today's trivia questions so that you can kind of decide whether you want to raise your hand and weigh in on this and, and be considered as a potential competitor against McD today.

Um, the topic today in honor of the expanse will be solar system trivia, solar system trivia. I want to warn, I want to warn our, our viewers listeners as well. Mick D is going to defeat you. You're not going to defeat you. You're not going to get the prize. Um, this, uh, this man has been training for weeks. We haven't given him the answers. He doesn't know what we're going to ask.

I've been reading fun and wagonels. He's just been reading world book encyclopedia. He fired up his and Carter encyclopedia on his CD-ROM drive. McD is ready for you and you will be defeated by his vastly superior intellect. But if you think you know something about the solar system or you just think it would be fun to try your, try your hand at this trivia contest, please raise your hand now. Maybe say in the chat, I want to be, I want to, I want to beat McD. I feel like I can beat McD. I feel like I can beat McD. And, uh, and Joe, why don't you kind of go through what the rules will be while we find our

competitor? I will, I will, I will. Uh, you know what? I'm just going to bring somebody up here. Uh, first to respond here with Scram, uh, Scram, can you hear us? up here first to respond here with Scram. Scram, can you hear us? Howdy, folks. What's up, Scram? Are you ready to take on McD? I'm going to give you the rules here in a second, but let's do it. Awesome. Awesome. All right. So here's how we're going to set this up. We want this contest to be fair. We want it to be quick and effective and hopefully have a little fun at the same time. So it's going to get structured like this. It's going to be a time-limited question and answer period.

Jared is going to ask you questions. You will have one minute, and that includes most of the time the asking of the questions, to answer five questions, we said, right? We have five questions. We have five. And you'll see how We have five questions. We have five. You'll see how many you can get right out of five. Now, first Scram, you're going to go and McD is going to take off his headphones, not have any sound access to the show for that period. And we'll essentially go into our version of a soundproof booth. And then we'll see how many you get right Scram,

and then we'll bring in McD. Now it's gonna be very important chat that you guys gotta be helping us out with this too. And that means no writing down anything in chat about the answers or what was said. Just let us get through the segment because it's gonna be hard for McD to not see what you're writing.

McD, do your best to not look. But everybody try to stay cool on that regard. Just to repeat, do not write your answers into the chat. Do not do that. You'll ruin it. DMs are completely open. It'll be like you took a shit under the Christmas tree. That's true. You can DM. Sure. If you want to DM answers directly to me, D, feel free.

We're screened. That's fine. I'm realizing now there are many ways to foul this up. All right, so here's how it's going to work. After Jared reads the first question, I'm going to start a timer. You'll have one minute to answer as many as you can in that amount of time. If you answer, the first thing that you say is your answer, if it's obviously an attempt at the answer. You don't get multiple attempts. If you are correct, you will hear this. If you are incorrect, you will hear this. At that point, I didn't even know we had that. I just, I just did it this morning. So we're ready to go there. I just wanted

to keep it quick. You either know you're right or you know you're wrong. We move on to the next question. Jared, you will move on to the next question. We'll see who gets the most right. Whoever gets the most right. Whoever gets the most right wins. If it is you, Scram, you will win a $35 gift card to our merch store, a digital gift card that we'll send out to you immediately. If McD wins, I don't know what's gonna happen.

I guess we'll just mock you. If McD wins, he wins a $35 gift card. You have to send me 35 bucks. Scram, you have to mail McD. If he wins, Scram has to send McD $35 to send me 35 bucks. Scram, you have to mail McD. If he wins, Scram has to send McD $35 in cash. I'll send you all, yeah, I'll just give him my Venmo, but no, you're right, cash is better. I'll give you my mailing address. I'll give you my mailing address.

The classy move would be a card too, Scram. Something nice. I mean, it could be something from Walgreens, but just something that shows that you care. Yeah I'd appreciate that. Omar. Once we, if in the event of a tie we do have a tiebreaker question so don't worry we should be fine there and and yeah well we'll just go from there. So I think that that's about it at this point McD why don't you go ahead remove your headphones. Go to the soundproof booth Joe O'Brien. Plug those ears up. Yeah, Joe O'Brien, are you timing for us as well?

I am timing. I'm going to get my stopwatch ready here. And Scram, the timer will start. You'll get 60 seconds, and it will start as soon as Jared finishes reading the first question. Are you ready, Scram? I've been nodding my head this whole time, forgetting you can't see me. But yes, I am ready. OK. Scram, are you ready, Scram? I've been nodding my head this whole time, forgetting you can't see me, but yes,

I am ready. Okay. Scram, are you ready to take a journey into the solar system? I hope I brought my helmet. Okay. All right. I'm ready when you're ready, Joe O'Brien. I am ready whenever you go. You start. All right. We're going to start with question one and then the timer will begin. Scram, question one, what planet is furthest from the sun?

Uranus. Okay. Question two, what planet boasts the largest mountain in the solar system called Olympus Mons? Mars? Question three, what is the hottest planet in our solar system? Venus.

Question four, what planet is orbited by a moon called Titan? Jupiter. And finally, question five, what moon is believed to have a buried ocean with twice as much water as all of the earth's oceans combined? Titan? Okay, all right.

So we got two there, right? Do I have that? We got two, two out of the five. Yeah, we knew the hottest planet, right? And we knew, right. We knew Olympus Mons. We knew Olympus Mons. All right. Before anybody can start typing, let's get McD in here. Uh, let's bring them back on and we'll do the same round of questions with Mcdizzle. We'll see if he can do it. Should we tell McD what he's got to beat or no? Should we leave it a mystery? No, this is going to be a tough one. Scram, we're going to put you, just mute your mic for a second

on your end, because we want to talk to you at the end here. So hang in there for a second, and we'll come back to you. Yeah, stay there, Scram. McD, are you feeling ready, buddy? Yeah, bud. All right, I'll start the timer when Jared finishes reading the first question. You'll get 60 seconds whenever you're ready, Jared.

All right, McD, get in the mindset of Neil deGrasse Tyson. Oh, no. Because we're going to start the timer. No. We're going to start the timer with question number one, which is. Hold on one second. Hold on one second.

McD, are you muted? Did you mute yourself on stream or anything? Oh, sorry, sorry, buddy. All good. We're good. Let us know if you can hear him on Twitch, guys. Yeah, you should be good. OK, great.

OK, we're good. Whenever you're ready, Jared. All right, here we go. Question number one. What planet is furthest from the sun? Neptune. What planet boasts the largest mountain in the solar system called Olympus Mons? Mars.

Question three. What is the hottest planet in our solar system? Venus Question four what planet is orbited by a moon called Titan? Jupiter And Question five what moon is believed to have a buried ocean with twice as much water as all of the Earth's oceans combined that IO? Okay, you're right. It is your Come on McD, but Your three was enough for a three to two victory you win you win McD

Scram you can unmute yourself here. Doesn't Pluto have a larger mountain than Mars? I know Exoplanet, but I thought it was like a crazy mountain on Pluto. Yeah, I'm not sure, but it's not considered in the traditional these days planets. But hey, Scram, great work. You came on first ever beat McD guest. Your answers were snappy. You know that that one about Titan is tough. Both of you guys said Jupiter, you know, he kind of has the most to the one that's known for having a lot of moons. I don't know that I would have been able to get these. Joe, do you think you could have gotten these? I think I would have gotten Europa. And I think that I would, I would have been able to get these. Joe, do you think you could have gotten these? Uh, I think I would have gotten Europa.

And I think that I would, I would also be 50 50 on Titan. I would have been like Jupiter Saturn, Jupiter Saturn, Uranus though. Just fully didn't think it was Uranus. Well, you know, I think it could have been 50 52, like under pressure. I might've been like, duh, I knew it would be Uranus or Neptune, but I think I would have known Neptune. I would have known Uranus if I think I would have known Neptune. I would have known Uranus if I, I would have known Uranus any day.

We said any day scram. I, I, I know Uranus, you know, like it's something that I know about. Scram. Thank you so much for, uh, for participating, dude. That was awesome. Sorry that we couldn't, uh, sorry, no price. You got, you got a win. I'm going to DM scram my address. Somebody got a prize. That's right. McD got cold hard cash out of scrams wallet, which is great.

Uh, McD, we didn't know how, you know, what this was going to be like, how it was going to go, but you're one to know it's a good start. It was one to know. I, I want McD to have a run where he's like, you know, 10 and O before someone's able to topple him. Yeah. We'll see. Cinderella man story. Yes.

Yeah. We'll see. Uh, but yeah, nice job, McD. Uh, let's, let's start getting, uh, start wrapping things up here with, uh, with the book club. We have exciting news on the book club. Yes. So, um, maybe we'll talk a little bit about what we're reading right now in a second,

Joe, but I think we should announce the book that we have decided we will read for the glass cannon radio book club. And, uh, that book will need to have been read in one month. That is, that is when we were going to have the discussion. So what does that put us? Yeah. What date? I mean, it's going to be the same date, right? March dates are the same. So it would be March 5th. Right. Okay. Yeah. So, uh, that would be four weeks from now, uh, the March March show of glass cannon radio be prepared. We'll have a whole segment on this book, uh, that we will discuss. Uh, Jared, you brought this to me. You brought this to me. Like we should do this.

I don't know if this book is good or not. No. But what I do know is that it's relatively short. So it's, it's a low lift for our first book. And the reason I chose it is because it is part of what is, if I think a relatively new genre called a lit RPG. That is a, a novel with many qualities of a video game or tabletop RPG infused into it. So our first book for glass cannon book club will be dungeon crawler Carl by

Matt Deniman. And when I told you that title, Joe, you were like, that does not sound like something I would want to read. Nope. As soon as you said it, I was like, that sounds terrible. And, but it, it's a book club, right? That's what we're here for is to, you know, experience things we might not have tried otherwise. Yeah. Book club is designed for you to read books. You don't like Joe. Didn't you know that? Yeah. I think that's that, I think that's the whole purpose. It's good. I think I, I started it already.

It's good. Full of disclosure and I was enjoying it. Yeah. Okay. Good. I'm not very far in, but I got it and did not start it specifically because I wanted to have absolutely no first impressions or opinions when, you know, when we talked about it here.

Uh, but I'm looking forward to checking it out. Yeah, I mean, I'm going to start it today. I'll start it today and give up on it in about three days, and then we'll talk about it in a month. That's great. Well, it's great because there's the TTRPG aspect to it, so we can draw in those things, which our show was a lot about TTRPG.

So I really look forward to the discussion and I'm just happy that other people will have read a book that I've read. So I have someone to talk about books with. Yeah. Yeah. I have you ever done like a traditional book club, Jared? I have. In fact, over pandemic, I was in a book club where we would talk over

Zoom and it was only sci-fi and fantasy. And I ended up reading some of the worst books I've ever read. And word of the wise, stay away from V.E. Schwab. Yes, I did. I did read all of them all the way through. Yes, I did read all of them all the way through. I read a book, Joe, in that book club that was from the point of view, first person narrative from the point of view of a crow during a zombie apocalypse. Oh, right. Oh my God.

The problem with book clubs is that people are like, wouldn't it be funny if we read this? No, it wouldn't. Pick things you know are good. So I just want to let people know I have heard Dungeon Crawler Carl is super fun. I wouldn't have picked it if it, and I wanted something that was a low lift. I didn't want us to be like, let's read Lonesome Dove. It's only 1200 pages, you know?

So, um, all right. Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinaman. If you're listening to this, watching this now, pick up a copy, check it out with us. And, uh, and a month from now we'll come on and, uh, yeah, we'll take calls on it. We'll all talk about it. Uh, it'll be super. McD, you already read it, right? I already read it. It was, it's, it's still on Kindle Unlimited, right? Kindle Unlimited. It's on Kindle Unlimited as well. So yeah Unlimited? Yes, that's how I got it.

Yeah, you can get it for free kind of, sort of. I don't have Unlimited, but I bought it on Kindle. It was actually kind of hard to find, at least on Amazon, the hard copy was. Well, they don't want you to own it. Exactly. You can have a license. I only have a license to read it.

Correct. Joe, what are you reading right now? Right now, I'm actually gonna put down, in order to read this book, I'm gonna put down a historic fiction novel by, I had never heard of this author before. Have you ever heard of Con Iguldin? No. I believe that's how you pronounce his name. Khan Iguldin? I believe that's how you pronounce

his name. Khan Iguldin, who must be a pretty established historical fiction writer. I hadn't heard of him, but he has several books. This one I noticed when I was visiting London, I just happened to be in a bookstore over Christmas and I saw this book series about the Wars of the Roses, but it was historical fiction. Oh, cool. And I was like, okay, this is something that could be up my alley, you know, just a, you know, I'm a huge Game of Thrones fan,

so a kind of Game of Thronesian kind of thing, but without magic and with, you know, some fictional characters, but some real characters, et cetera, and I am thoroughly enjoying the first book, which is called Stormbird, I think it's called, but it's in a four-part Wars of the Roses series 1400s England and France Really cool characters everything from the king to like Earls to like farmers. You have really cool characters at every level You know people that are and how this war really starts

You know people that are and how this war really starts That's awesome. Really interesting. So I've been really Have you read any, have you ever read any Bernard Cornwell? Yeah, so that's why I was reading. I love Bernard Cornwell. He is one of my all time favorites and I was reading The Grail series.

I was reading the Grail series loving it and I but I just wanted to break from it and this fast forwarded time, a hundred, a couple hundred years. And so I was like, this will, this will be fun to check out. And, um, I, I really, really am enjoying it. McD, are you reading anything? Cool. Um, yeah, well, I just finished the fourth wing. That was pretty good.

Right on. And then I went, I'm now rereading. Last night I started rereading, I mentioned it to you, the Arisen series. Right on, I got the Arisen series, I just haven't cracked it yet. It's like military zombie fiction. Yeah.

Basically treats like special forces, military, kind of people as like superheroes. It's wild, it's like they're basically the Avengers in a zombie apocalypse. I'm into it. I'm into military versus zombies. That sounds like so much fun. Fantastic. It's also kid-on-limited. It's terrific. Highly recommend. Nice. What are you reading, Jared? 707 of vanity fair by William make peace. Thackeray written in 1848. Wow.

It's okay. Wow. I can't believe you can do 700 pages of it's okay. Oh, I mean, it was a lot better in the first half I felt. And then it kind of like, I'm a hundred pages kind of before it's over and it's just ending after ending after ending. It's ending so many times. Um, but you're wrapping it up at a nice time here where you can hop into a 19th century novel sometimes. Uh,

and dungeon crawler Carl will be a welcome change of pace. I'd be interested to hear in our book clubs down the line. I'd be interested to hear a, like a top three all time list from you for like 19th century novels. Oh my word. Don't get me started because no one will care. Yeah, I will. I will. Well then I'm doing it. I hold your you're making me excited I would love to do that

Great well, I think that about wraps her up buddy. That does it We'll be back next week. We'll be talking about the What is it called the video game foundation archive? Yeah, what is it McD? This is McD's idea to discuss. What's it? It's the Video Game History Foundation. Video Game History Foundation. And they were in the news last week or this, I guess, early this week by opening up their archive of basically every high res scan of basically every video game magazine ever printed.

Yeah, amazing. Everyone to use for research purposes or just read. And it's fantastic. There's design docs in there. There's promotional materials. It's a lot of like video game ephemera that would just disappear and nobody was doing the, you know, taking the trouble to archive these things. And I can finally get in there and look at the Nintendo Power that'll tell me how to

beat Ninja Gaiden 2. how to beat Ninja Gaiden 2 Don't play Ninja Gaiden 2 dude What I gotta finish it man Okay That game it's too it Yeah, it's a two-part lessons from Ninja guide and made Ninja Gaiden 2 It's real though Well, i'm very much so looking forward to getting some video game talk on this show.

Yeah, me too. We'll get that in next week, among other things. Very much so, looking forward to it. Thank you, McD. Thank you, Callers. We'll see you next week. Bye everybody. Have a good one.

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