The Morning Stream - TMS 2820: Shakespeare Spoiler Alert

Episode Date: May 12, 2025

Welcome to Sonic, can you go to McDonalds please? Shakespeare in the Park---ing Lot. Kim likes the footlong. Let's test the ship's sprinklers. Sexy Snot with Dunaway! Cry Havoc and Unleash the Olyphants of War. Going the Full Howie. 80s TV was all imaginary. Crazy Neighbor Edging. I don't like weed Teeeeeeea. Yo Mama's Day. Adequatulent. Vegas Crud Level is ZERO. Two Girls and a Dude. Be a Dry Turd with Bobby and more on this episode of The Morning Stream. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Larry the cable guy accidentally rewired his entire house to play country music every time he opened the fridge and he liked it that way. No shade on Larry, but maybe he could have spent some of that money to support this show at patreon.com slash TMS. Coming up on the morning stream, welcome to Sonic. Can you go to McDonald's please? Shakespeare in the parking lot. Kim likes the footlong. Let's test the ship sprinklers. Sexy snot with Dunaway. Try havoc and unleash the onerance of war. Going the full Howie.

80s TV was all imaginary. Crazy neighbor edging. I don't like weed tea. Yo mama day. At Equatulent. Vegas crud level zero. Two girls and a dude. Be a dry turd with Bobby and more on this episode of the morning stream.

I'm over at the gym pumping iron or driving my black Porsche with the wind blowing through my hair. We didn't come this far to lose the cobra biggies to underwater weirdos. The morning stream. We're not toys. We're action figures. Hello, everybody. Welcome to TMS. It's the morning stream for Monday, May 12th, 2025. I'm Scott Johnson. That's Brian Abbott. Hi, Brian. Hi, Scott. Hey, man. Hey, man. Hey. I'd say I'm, uh, you know, we didn't talk about this in the pre-show, but I'd say, uh, you know, we didn't talk about this in the pre-show, but I'd say, back up to 100%. I'm a little, you know,

still a little tired, but I think today I'm tired just because of the weekend I had, not because of any leftover cold, flu, whatever business I... That makes me very happy to hear that at least someone from Vegas is feeling a lot better. It feels like everybody else is still...

Everyone's still a little off, you know? Just a little, I hear here and there, someone will go, yeah, go out a little late, or, you know, Tom Merritt, of course, caught whatever he caught a day and a half later or whatever but I think for the most part everybody's healing well and you know we'll see how Amy's

doing tomorrow I think Amy had a real rough run of this whole thing it was pretty bad yeah she did oh for sure I think she my guess with Amy is that she showed up with the flu left with with COVID I think that's that's my take on it my medical

degree that I got from watching ER the pit and whatever else Quincy M.E there you go I don't know what other What other She could be Chicago Chicago Hope

You could do scrubs I never watched Chicago Hope I never watched It was all right It tried to be It was like It was trying to fight with

ER It was like the rival thing But it was okay It wasn't the worst It was an ER-like Yeah I mean

But I'm I'll go all the You know what Let's go We'll go full Howie Mandel And go all the way back To St.

Elsewhere How about that Sure Never watched that Either I did watch The final episode To see

What All the Hubub Was about I don't remember what happened to that. It was weird, right? It was a weird ending. Yeah, the whole thing was in the mind of an autistic child with a snow globe. Is that what it was?

I can't remember. I've blocked it out because I think it ruined it if I remember right. He's just ruined the series. Yeah, I mean, basically, you know, all these great characters he cared about were just just in the mind of an autistic child. It's like everybody had to do the Bob Newhart thing or whatever.

Yes, right, right. It's like, Calm down TV of the 70s and 80s. Just make a normal show and end at normal. You don't have to be so freaking weird about it. Exactly, yeah. I mean, you know, give us some closure on any lingering plot lines. Give us something that lets us know, all right, these characters are going to be all right, or, oh, these characters are going to be dead, like Breaking Bad.

You know, you give us one or the other. Yeah. Don't cut right in the middle of your journey song and make us all wonder for the next 20 years. Yeah, and you can do things like, well, where did Jesse go in his El Camino? and why is he upset and what happens after that? Like, those are fine questions to answer. I have no problem with that. But when you say it, you sum the whole thing up,

you invested in six, seven seasons of something. And, you know, your narrator is so unreliable at the end. He says, oh, it's just an autistic kid's dream or whatever. Right. F that. That sucks. I do, I mean, I will allow it for, not just allow it, but I'll appreciate it for the Bob Newhart,

or for Newhart, them doing the, the whole Bob Newhart waking up next to Suzanne Plachette. That, by the way, was Bob Newhart's wife's idea, I believe. Oh, really? That's great. Yeah, yeah. That's awesome. She said, you know what you ought to do? That's pretty good.

I mean, yes, they, in fact, so in a way kind of invented it, that dumb twist. It was also a comedy, so it works better with a comedy, I think. It's more fun. And then everybody else just said, you know what, we could do one of those. What if seven years of hospital time was just a big job. Exactly. Like, why would I have, now I go back and think, well, I invested in all your little stories. Right, exactly.

They're all just BS, like they're all nothing. I don't like it. Old man yells a cloud. I'm yelling at that cloud, baby. That's right. That's right. Hey, tell me about your Sonic experience. You went to Sonic?

I did. Not to be confused with the video game character, just for anyone out there. I'm wondering. But I went to a Sonic drive-in. And the reason we did this is we said, man, doesn't a hot dog sound good right now? now. And Kim said, you know what it does? We're going to go. Let's go have a hot dog cheat morning or afternoon, whatever it was. And let's go get a hot dog. And I said, okay, that sounds great. Where do you want to go? And we did a little quick search for

decent hot dogs around. And really, there was nothing that was close enough that was any good or that good. And Sonic was about as good as good as good. And they have that good old dressed sort of Chicago style dog thing. Yeah. Yeah. So I was thinking that'd be cool. And Kim likes the footlong, um, Kim likes the footlong with the chili on there, the chili dog. there. Yeah. Oh yeah. How do you not like,

I love, I love a good chili dog. Yeah, so we figure that was cool. So we go in there, or we pull up to one of the stalls, you know, the order stalls.

And first thing we notice is the board that you push all your buttons and make your order from is, I don't know if it's from weather or somebody sabotage the thing or what, but it was really, really, like encrusted in a very hard to see kind of film. Yeah.

Like the plastic had gotten like moisture inside. side or something that made it all cloudy. It was horrible, dude. You couldn't read it. Just really couldn't read it. But we're just like,

well, they all look like this. So I guess we're eating. It's fine. But they're going to call you on the radio. We know what we want. We'll just tell them what we want. Girl calls or a girl will go, hello, welcome to Sonic.

What can I get for you? And we tell her. And she goes, um, can you change stalls? Me went. Okay. She didn't tell us why.

She just said, can you change stalls? I'm like, literally, it's just, right next to us like what's the difference so we were like but we're whatever we're compliant human beings we pull out and we pull into the stall next to us and she goes new person new lady um can you back out and i go uh sure and we start to back out and then she goes no no no stay there stay there i'm like this is the weirdest we're already having the weirdest interaction we've ever had at a sonic it was like very strange and you didn't place in order yet i've been I'm waiting for somebody to say,

could you go to McDonald's? Well, you're not far from how this ends, Brian. Oh, no. You're not far from how this ends. So she goes, no, no, no, stay there. So we stay there. Then a long period of nothing. And we're just waiting.

We're patient people. We're not weird. We're not going to get mad. We're just chilling. And finally a guy comes on. And he goes, hi, thanks for hanging in there. If you could just hold for just a bit longer. We're like, all right.

That's two girls and a dude so far that we've got going here. and a pizza place or a hot dog place. Anyway, so then that's all going on. Then we get a third girl who says, yeah, so our system is frozen, and we can't seem to input anything. So we're going to have to come out there and manually take your order. I'm like, okay, come on out like you used to. That's how people have done it for centuries.

Exactly. Put on those roller skates. Let's do it the old-fashioned way. Get out here and take our order. exactly so this girl comes out or that and then a long period of nothing like they didn't come right out it was like really long and we're only maybe there's maybe two people installs including us as like two total cars so it's not like busy or anything it was a weird time of day third girl comes out uh the i assume it was her that we talked to her that we talk to to take the manual order and she goes okay what do we want we reiterate the order again sure that we mentioned that we talked about like 20 minutes ago on the speaker we have we tell this lady what to do And as she's taking it, she's halfway down writing. She's looking back at the store. I assume looking at somebody in there.

Looks back at her hand. She goes, I can't do it. And I went, you can't do what? She goes, I can't take your order. It turns out they'll only do cash. I said, well, we can do cash. We have like a 20 in the thing. We can give you a 20.

And she says, oh, all right. well then let's go ahead and she takes it down leaves comes back with another yeah the only thing that works is online orders i don't know if you want to so really you have two choices you could do an online order from your car right now and then we would get the online order or you could just go somewhere else so all here's so my first i mean it was we're i was somewhat annoyed but also I felt for these guys if your system's down and if it's that catastrophic you can't do anything without it that's bad you need a better backup plan but that's not these employees fault that's managers that's other people so I said you know what no worries we're gonna we'll just go

find you know we'll go somewhere else it's not a problem we even tipped to this girl we gave her five bucks you did that yeah yeah I gave her five bucks is good I gave her five bucks yeah because all I could think of is you guys are in for a rotten rest of your day you know Maybe they need to start with, hey, our whole system is down. We can't, all we can do is online orders. If you want to place an online order, that's great. We'll do that. But if not, then, then sorry, you know, we can't help you.

And that, that feels like, it feels like they just don't want to take the time to calculate what your, what your order is going to cost. Yeah, there was a feeling there where I was like, I know you guys are all just, you know, you get out a fifth period early to get this job and you're all going back to high school in the morning. And I know that none of you were really that into it or that invested. but at the end of the day your messaging is just kind of bad

what it tells me is they don't know what to do when their system goes down so what do they do they kind of just fumble around and they don't know what to do but I felt bad because I remember being

a young person in you know retail style environments and when shit goes south that you can't control it's like the worst because you're going to have way meaner people in us

who pull up and expect food and so I was just like you know what here's a five go and there were no other cars there like you guys just one other one one other car i couldn't tell what they were doing i couldn't tell they were in their car at the thing and i couldn't tell if they were waiting to get the bad news or what the deal was there but yeah it's so dumb dude the whole thing and we never could get a hot dog because nothing else yeah sounded good so we went

got ranch burgers at this place we don't even like that much ranch burgers yeah they just made with ranch dressing or are they like no burgers you get on the ranch more like that the second. It's more like that, which exactly, it means nothing. It means nothing. Yeah, yeah. It's like, come on down to get a ranch burger like the old cow poaks used to get. It's like, no, that's just a flat-ass, ugly burger

with too much mayo. Wes brings up a good point. Freddy's has hot dogs. You could have found to Freddy's. Yeah, but that Freddy's was so far. And the new one that hasn't opened yet, we got one like two blocks away that's still being built. Absolutely, we would have gone to Freddy's. Yeah. Hot dogs are not.

You know, I'd go there. Give me half a concrete. Anyway, hey, Brian, how was your Mother's Day? What'd you do on Mother's Day? You know, it's very nice. Went and visited my mom on Saturday night. Went out for, went to a place. It wasn't even going to plan.

I wasn't even planning to talking about this, but I think I'm going to talk about it because we went to a place, a brand new, all you can eat sushi place that's opened up. And this place, the enticement over, We have a couple other kind of all you can eat sushi places. The enticement of this place is that it's $35 for dinner, which is a great price, and you can do sashimi.

You're not stuck with nigeri. You don't have to get rice with everything. So I can do a new rudo roll, which is the cucumber wrapped. I can avoid rice completely, or I can limit the amount of rice I get, do just sashimi pieces, do a new rudo roll. I still got one of their chef's special deep fried. rules but um uh this place was kind of wacky like first off they seed us in front of um a ginormous i mean this thing is was easily i don't know 100 inches 120 inch tv screen showing mhm a fights so people like pumbling each other while i'm trying to eat raw fish is a weird

it's a weird that's a little weird For a sushi place, I guess I've seen TVs in those places, but that price is good for if it's good, it's good sushi and you're a good judge of that. It is good sushi. Yeah, it is like the pieces were, you know, sometimes you go to these all you can eat places and you can hold up the piece of salmon and see through it. Like I could watch the MMA fight through the piece of salmon. But these were, these were nice, thick pieces of sushi. Things took a really long time, though. It was, you know, we were waiting and looking at the menu beforehand.

And they, you know, seeing what the all you can eat deal was, Tina wasn't going to do it. She was just going to get a couple rolls. But I noticed it said, you know, limit your order to five pairs of nigeria sashimi per ordering round. Yeah. And one roll per ordering round. All right. And so I'm like, okay, yeah, you got to think about what I want and kind of get that. And also said 90 minute limit.

So you can't just park your butt. there all day long and just keep eating oh 90 minutes of 90 minutes interesting never heard of that before now we pushed that limit actually I think we even exceeded the limit and not because of us but because

of how long it took between orders and and knowing what I know now I would I would order things a lot a lot more differently or a lot differently just basically like every time the dude comes

by. Even if we're waiting, he's like, all right, can I get anything else going? I'd say, oh, no, we've got two rolls and some sashimi coming. He's like, all right, cool, I'll be back. And the do was really nice, guy named Jason. And then he'd come back a little bit later. Have you got those rules yet? Nope, just still waiting on that. All right, cool. Can I get you anything while you're waiting or getting orders going for you? And at every point that he came by, I should have said, yeah, put me down for another roll and put me down for these other pieces of sashimi, because basically it was a situation get the order he comes by two or three times we finally get the food then he comes back by again we put in another order then he comes by a couple more times while we're waiting and that's you know we could have we could have had a much better experience if i would have known to you know every time the dude comes by need to uh need to place so when they have that limit though the 90 minute limit and they're also having such a hard time with speed of delivery it feels like he did not even he did not even bring up the fact that we'd been there for 90 minutes because he knew things were going

slow they had eight sushi they had uh eight guys working behind the um the sushi counter like and they were hopping all that they were you could see them over on the side and they were cutting everything fresh there was nothing like pre-made pre-cut any of that stuff they were doing that all fresh um the place also really needs more sound baffling because any child screaming in this family style restaurant you could hear whether they were at the table name or to you or the table 12 down, it was like they were right next to your face and screaming at you. Also, if you notice that, well, I shouldn't say this. It sounds like I'm, I'm not trying to stereotype it, but every time I go to a sushi place or a Thai place or a Korean place, they all

smell like the rags they use on the tables have not been bleached. Do you know what I'm saying? You know that smell I'm talking about, that dirty dish rag thing? I don't know if it's just like a They just haven't figured it out Or I don't know what's going on there Always bad Thank goodness this place Did not have that problem

It smelled good You know there's that There is that kind of You don't want a fishy smell But they have that kind of like We have a deep friar Somewhere in this restaurant Smell

Yeah Yeah Old oil A little bit Sure Yeah a little bit But anyway So that was Saturday night

Yesterday We decide Hey it's Mother's Day Let's turn on the sprinklers and we start testing things and one of our zones doesn't turn off and we're like, oh crap, what's this going to be?

And so I crack open the box and open up the rainbird, whatever it is, and there's some junk on the diaphragm, wash it off, fix that. Still causing a problem, so I'm able to go and get one of those. But then I also, yeah, Lois, you did call it

is sprinkler stuff. But then, out in the backyard, the damn bird feeder, Scott. I mean, you've watched this whole story of the evolution of this great bird buddy thing that Tina got me, right? It's a cool little bird feeder with a camera in it. And every time a bird shows up, it records video, and I can watch the birds, and I'm old. Sure, I'm an old man who likes looking at birds, whatever. I'll own up to it.

Sure. But between the problems that I had, first the squirrels were eating all the food, and then I had to put a baffle on underneath it so the squirrels couldn't get to it. well then the raccoons were pulling the baffle down and climbing up and eating everything and pulling stuff apart and went through that whole ordeal and I finally got a pole and put it in the backyard and put the bird feeder on top of that with the squirrel baffle and no problems whatsoever since then until we turned on the sprinkler and a nice little fountain came up from the bottom of that pole and this was far away from every sprinkler like I put in the sprinkler system the front yard i didn't do the one in the backyard but i know it'll like think all right well this you know these are all controlled in the same zone sure so you kind of draw a mental line between those those sprinklers and figure out where things are going well i did not count on oh my gosh that went right through basically where i where i uh drilled this uh for listeners at home brian is holding up a a pipe that is not

not a joiner or what is that thing part of the pipe this is a chunk of one inch uh one inch black uh sprinkler pipe that i i couldn't have gone i mean i'm barely missed just going right through the dead center of the pipe but it is you know that's crazy two birds of the pipe has been uh cut away by this uh by this thing damn so and but here's kind of the cool thing i ripped open all the sod started at 8.30 in the morning, ripped open all the sod in that section, and realized, oh, there's this other part that I never... So there are actually two lines overlapping in that spot,

and I almost went through both of them. But I went through one and kind of grazed the other one to the point where, you know what? I'm going to replace it. Even though I didn't cut into it, if there's enough of a scratch that it creates a weak point, I'm just going to replace it right now while I've got everything opened.

Better than doing that in three years when you don't feel, you know, when suddenly something pops. Yeah. Exactly. I've got the sod ripped up. I can do it right now all both at the same time. The right next to it is a T-joiner that goes back towards one of the sprinklers that I was thinking was a straight line as opposed to like a star token ring network. Sure. And at that T, which was not a T that I put in, the clamps around the all three parts of the T were garbage. They put them in really too close to the joint of the tea. So there was nothing really for the clamp to sink in on.

It was all just gripping the widest part of the tea. And it explains why every once in a while we'd get this kind of mushy ground in that area. But all the sprinklers were working, so we're like, I think everything's okay. We're probably just getting mushy ground because the sprinklers are watering that area. But, yeah, it, you know, it's, it created this kind of mushy, mushy ground. Well, good thing, you know, good thing I did drill a hole through one of the pipes, because it did. Because then you found it. Yeah.

Yeah. So, four hours later, after two trips, sorry, three trips to the ACE hardware, because the crimping clamps I was using were garbage and I had to go to another Ace hardware to get the screw clamps to make things a lot tired. finally got everything working and I am like sore as hell from being hunched over this thing and digging holes and putting holes back and stuff like that. I hate sprinkler shit. I get

anxiety here in this story because we're in the middle of doing this too. We have a leak. We can't quite narrow down but I hate it. And you know what it is? I mean in this case you drilled through a thing but in other cases like the T-joint you're talking about and other stuff. You and I live in climates where in the

winter dark shit happens down We don't have it on, but we don't see where the cold got or where the break happened or something shifted or whatever. When things were too close to the freeze and that sort of thing. And then spring rolls around and we're like, all right, turn them on. And there's 14 leaks in wet and mushy ground. We're like, shit. Right. Every year there's something, man.

Every year. And I was amazing. This is actually the first year where we didn't have any other breaks in the lines because of freezing. so it's you know kind of amazed about that that this might be the only repair I have to do there's one

our next door neighbor crazy neighbor was nice enough while we were in Vegas to edge our lawn he went around and did like like you know all the neighbors around him while he had his edger out

he's like I'll just edge everybody's lawn and he kind of edged a little too close to one of the sprinklers and cut a little hole where it's kind of got another little belize Fountain going, but, um, no good deed goes unpunished, right? Exactly. Exactly. You know what? I'm not going to complain. He did, uh, he was very, very nice to do that. And, um, and then we've got one area that has a couple little

sprinkler issues, but we're taking, we're zero escaping a whole section of our, um, of our lawn to take, uh, um, to put in some more water resistant plants. Man, if I could go full, if I could go full zero escaping, I'd do it. Yeah. Yeah. Our HOA doesn't like it, but I'd do it. Really? Oh, yeah. They don't want you to go, well, you can. You just have to have so much floral stuff or something to kind of offset it. But like these people in Arizona can't have grass and they just do these cool zero-scape things,

I just get stoked when I see it and go, we should do that. And the Kim says, yeah, but they won't let you do that. You have to have a lot of fauna here or some amount. I don't know. Also, Carr has been doing something weird. She's been harvesting the yellow pre-fuzzy form of dandelions. So she can make some kind of. harvesting. Yeah, she's making some weird tea out of it. Oh, really? I've heard about that.

Like, uh, yeah, like a dandelion tea. When, when they're yellow leaves before they, like you said, turn into the, the puffy white things that get all over the place and spread their, their nonsense. Yeah. That's a good way of putting it. Yeah. But it's, but it's, but it's from the stems too, right? Like from the milk in the stem or something with the whole, I think it's like, yeah, I think you're right. It's from stock all the way up to, to the flower. And I don't exactly know. I'm, I mean, I'm going to try it when they. make it because I'll I'm willing to try it but it sounds stupid to me because my whole life these may as well have been dog turds they were the worst weed everybody hated them

you do you yeah yes um spray your lawn all the time growing up trying to get rid of dandelions and then suddenly I'm being told you can drink it like what do you what do you what kind of nonsense is that no way anyway yeah no thanks I get my tea from Phoenix pearl tea and I'm happy with with what we get from there I don't need any dandelion I don't need weed tea no I don't need weed tea, unless we're talking about, you know, weed tea. Weed tea, yes. So how was your mystery date? How'd that go?

Oh, it was good. Yeah, so that was right after a film sack on Saturday. Tina surprised me with Shakespeare in the parking lot. Oh. Yes. Not to be confused with Shakespeare in the park. I did a nice little pause there. Shakespeare in the parking lot is just what it sounds like.

They find a large parking lot. This time it was at the Stanley Lake Library, which is really close to us. And they put on a 45 to 50-minute version of Romeo and Juliet. But keeping the, keeping, you know, Will's original iambic pentameter and all that, but not, but kind of modernizing the look of everything. So not dressing in the true Verona style, but like in leather jackets with chains and a crowbar for the Montague versus Capulet fights.

And a white pickup truck that was basically every, every piece of upper stage that they needed. Oh, so they used it as like the platform to be up on, like, she's on the balcony, she's up on the truck bed? The balcony, the Romeo, Romeo, was up on the bed of the truck. They, they, I don't know whose truck this was, but hey, good for you donating this thing to be

jumped on and climbed around and you know, like basically on the hood. on the roof, running around the back end, the bed up against the, like you're fighting, and they're hitting the side. That's great. I would not allow my Ford F-150

to be treated like that, but good for them. That's cool, though. What a great, what a fun little idea, and they do it like, like you said, all modern. No guns, though, the way that Baz Luhrman did his thing, right? Not like that. No guns. So not that, yeah, but they did have knives, and they were real metal, unsharpened

knives. And we were thinking, about that list. Okay, because there's a point where Mercutio gets stabbed. Spoiler alert. Yeah. Yeah. Been way past the two weeks, everybody. You guys should have caught up by now. Yeah, we'll past the two weeks. And he drops his knife, and if it was a little plastic thing,

you hear, you'd be like, well, I was a cheap-ass knife. Sure. But it made it, like, brim, like, you know, the sound of a big, heavy metal knife. Nice. So, yeah, they explained. They did a little Q&A afterwards. Six actors playing all the different roles of, um,

all the different parts oh this sounds awesome i would go to this really cool yeah yeah totally do they tour are they just a local thing or what's the deal they look they tour locally it's part of the um part of the Denver Center for the performing arts and they um that's they and and night by night these uh these actors all like they have to learn every part because today you know maria is playing um julia tomorrow so-and-so is going to be playing it and maria's going to play it Marie is going to play the nurse or whatever. And they bounce around between all the different

roles and have to know all the lines for every potential role. That's wild. What a cool one. I like that a lot. Well, no pressure. It's very cool. It's a lot of fun. No pressure top in that next month or this month. No. No, there will be pressure, but I have a really good idea for June. I have like a

great idea for June. Well, I'm excited to hear about it. Always fun to catch those. You guys at home should be doing this with your significant others. Have fun little dates. Keep the spark alive, man. Keep the spark alive. That's right.

It's just fun to surprise your partner with stuff like that. And I get, for Tina's birthday, I got, or I'm for Tina's birthday, for Mother's Day. You know, happy birthday, mother. For Mother's Day, I got Tina, she loves jigsaw puzzles. I got her a jigsaw puzzle featuring a hundred, a photos of a hundred dogs pooping. Fantastic. What? But that's the gift that really just keeps giving.

It really is. That's wonderful. We always laugh when we're driving by somebody that are walking their dog and the dog is pooping. We always laugh because dogs can't not look awkward. It looks so stupid. If they only knew, they would probably go hide around a corner or something, but they'd have no idea. All right, you guys, time for this. This should be fun.

That music means it's time for Brian Dunaway to join us from South Carolina in a little game we called the Monday morning half asses. Hey, Brian, what are you doing? Oh, hi Scott and Brian, trying to get the image of 100 dogs pooping out of my head. So is it all at one time or is it like individual pictures? Yeah, what's that like, Brian? There are individual pictures that have been Photoshop to look like they're all in the same field and that they all decided they were all going to poop simultaneously.

And there's a tree. Is there a fine wall to element to it at all or is it? Probably. Like you could say, all right, let's, well, it will be when she does the jigsaw puzzle. going to be like, all right, where's the poodle? All right, where's the, where's the, where's the Pomeranian? There's a boxer up in the tree pooping.

So like they, you know, decided number 101 is going to be a boxer in the tree. In the tree, up in a tree. All right. Up in a tree, yes. Go, go, dog, go. Pretty awesome. All right, well, Dono way, it's good to have you here. Of course.

We're going to play this game. Looks like the thing reset. I need to reload. Yeah, I need to, yep, reloading. There it is. Look at us. We're both. Oops, there it is.

Jeff is a geek says that they always honk when they see a pooping dog along the road. Jeez. Does that the dog to help the dog really just get out that last few inches of? Does the dog respond when you honk at them? I guess if they hear a sound and that's all they hear, I don't know. I imagine you get a lot of these from the dog's owner. Yeah. Yeah, that sounds about right.

All right, well, let's play this. Just know before we start casting aspersions at dogs for pooping. outside for looking stupid. Guess what? Humans? Oh, we would look so stupid. We look dumb. That's why he closed the door. Stupid. Yeah. This is what separates us from them, is that we know, and so we close the door and turn on the fan. We know what's up. Brian, explain this game, and who will win what? Sure. Welcome to the morning, half asses. A trivia game where I'm actually going to be giving the two of you the answers. I'm going to give Scott and Brian a category and six possible answers, three of which are correct, and three are incorrect. Oh, I didn't give

thing. Three, like not being able to take an order at the sonic is incorrect. Depending on how confident you feel, the category you can provide one, two, or three guesses, but if any of those guesses are wrong, you get zero points for that one. It doesn't matter how many other ones you get right. Zero. I am counting you as a zero, D&F.

Get one right, gets you a point. Two right gets you three points, and three right gets you five points. Player with the most points after three rounds. When's the prize for their contestant? And who might these contestants be, you ask? Well, I'm glad you asked. Here, Scott, you're going to be playing for Santa Ray Bradshaw in Denton, Texas, and that's got to be the greatest name I've ever heard.

That's great. Santa Ray Bradshaw. Santer Ray Bradshaw. Need to be an author, write some books or something. No kidding. Yeah. Brian, you're going to be playing for Eric Valdez in Mountain View, California. Nice.

Very nice as well. Yeah, these two states don't like each other much, but these two guys like each other just fine, you know? Yeah, exactly. All right. All right, let's get to it. I actually wrote one of these. because I didn't like the delayed timing on the one that they gave us. I'll explain what I mean.

Which of these six are among the top 10 most popular boy names in France as of 2021? Not like 2011 like the card I've got. Yeah. But which of these are more currently the top of popular boy names? I just reached deep into my understanding of French culture. That's right. Your choices are. Boy names.

Your choices are jewels. Adam, Raphael, Pierre, Jean, and Mohamed. Which one of these are la? And which one's Allah? It'll be la, because the law is feminine, right? I think. At least that's the way it is in Spanish. Trying to get this a little something.

You're not going to get anything out of me. No. Dang it. No, that's how it works. I've already locked in. What's your excuse? Wow. Oh, excuse me.

Oh, I'm sorry. Let me, uh, let me see. And here's some. Here's a stab in the dark. Slow mother, all right. Let's see how we did. All right.

Between the two of you each picked two, and you each picked two different ones. Scott, you had Jules and Jean. Brian, you had Pierre and Mohamed. Pierre and Mohammed, both among the top ten. Yeah, Pierre. I'm sorry, no, no, no. I'm sorry, wrong way around.

The three correct ones, sorry, see, I screwed. No, that's hilarious. you because I wrote this myself. Sorry, Jules, Adam, and Raphael are you're among the top ten. Pierre, Jean, and Mohamed, not currently among the top ten. Was one of our old... Yeah, the left side, all left side or all right side. It's been a while since we've had one of those.

Exactly, yeah. So this is why I can't write my own questions because I screw myself up when I look at the card. Hey, let's go with one that the fine folks did write for me. Thanks, Ken Jennings. Cool. Question number two, which of these are musicians who recorded for more than 20 years before they had their first number one single? Musicians are recorded for more than 20 years before their first number one single. Your choices are Santana, L.L. Cool J., Bob Seeger, Meatloaf, Sammy Davis Jr., and Tina Turner.

Mm-hmm. Why you say it like that? Tina. Turner. All right. I'm going to pick the- Scott like, Scott like when I was playing around, they're not thinking about another.

Click, click, click. You know, just sometimes, sometimes you've got to go with your gut, and then sometimes you're not right, and your gut is all wrong. So who cares? Like,

like, like Ibb it, I'm still recovering. I think I'm a little further behind nibbing. So my brain's not, yeah, that's right. My brain's not exactly free flowing here.

Me talking ain't helping ain't. Let me see. Yeah, you sound sexy, though, dude. You sound like, yeah, if you find,

if you find snot sexy. Yeah. Then, then bring it on. Yeah, um, Um, I'm going to go with those two for no reason at all. Okay.

Okay. All right. Sounds good. Well, you guys both settled on meatloaf. Meatloaf did. He recorded for 22 years before, um, before I would do anything for love, but I won't do that, which was his first number one single. Uh, sorry, Paradise by the dashboard light. Two out of three ain't bad.

Nope, didn't cut it. It was until, um, until later on for him. He was a very particular taste for meatloaf up until one. Ah, yeah. Very nice. to fully baked before he was ready. Now, as far as your other two, each of you chose one other one. Brian, you chose Santana.

Scott, you chose... Not everybody's jam, right? Bob Segar. Yeah. Bob Seeger, on the other hand, is everybody's jam. Yeah, yeah. Ding, ding, ding, do, do, do, do. That was, I think, Bob Seeger's first number one.

But he came 18 years after he started... She's less than 20. Santana with a dude from Matchbox 20 and Smooth was more than 20 years after. It was 30 years after Santana started performing. So Santana Meatloaf and Tina Turner was our other one. I don't know if it was Private Dancer. I think it was something from that album. What else?

What was the big song from Private Dancer besides the hit single? We don't need another heroes from that or not? Is that from something else? And that was later. Oh, what's love got to do with? Thank you, Bramble, Bright. Ah, yes. Classic stuff.

That was it right there. All right, let's get to your final question with Brian going into round three with three points. Scott's still at zero, but he can turn this around right now with this one right here. You know how I love my collective names for animals? You know, like a murder of crows if they're on the ground. Sure. something that they're in the air. How about whales?

Which of these, three of these, are part of the accepted collective nouns for whales. Your choices are, drift, blow, pod, flotilla, school, and gam. Three of these are accepted collective nouns for whales. Oh, man, are not. You see that gam out there? Oh, yeah. There's a whole gam of whales out there. A blow of whales?

Geez. It sounds right, doesn't it? I'm just not sure. I'm going with these. I've got to try my hardest here. Okay. Oh, and Brian just went with one playing it safe, hoping that Scott doesn't go for brook.

Scott did go for broke. You guys both chose Pod. Pod is, of course, probably the most common name for a group of whales is a pod of whales. And, of course, that's one of the accepted ones. Your other two, neither of you even touched. uh school and and gam it really was a gam of whales

oh that is crazy kind of like a school of fish i guess you can say a school of whales but i love a flotilla of whales that makes me laugh the head makes me laugh so a school that's interesting why they haven't settled on one why they have all three fish school it makes sense yeah but why why three yeah they're mammals they're not really fish but why are why are they're three and like why aren't they're like i never know and they're just one except a collective noun for whales and maybe there are maybe fish have others maybe there's like swarm or something else i don't know about but that's crazy maybe anytime you have a group of something in the in the water is a school is it maybe i don't know what if you're in there naked school of brian school a school no a school

of humans i can do it by myself has to be a collective a bunch of naked men yeah more naked men Well, the good news is, Brian, you've won prizes for Eric Valdez in Mountain View, California. He's going to get a copy of Call of Juarez Gunslinger and Monster Prom to Monster Camp. Both are good games. Those are both great. Very good. Dirtbox fingers, yeah. Brian, I'm sorry, Scott, you won for Sanderay Bradshaw. He's going to get a copy of Black Book, also from DirtBuck. I don't know what Black Book is, but I'll bet it's good.

That sounds good. Dirtbox brings us no bad codes. I know that. Really, exactly. You know, all of our contributors. And we love our game code contributors. Please keep it up. We love it.

Yep. Thanks to everybody who contributes those codes. And if there's anyone out there's got a bunch of these from your humble bundle leftovers or whatever, and you're just not sure what to do with them, that's literally what these are. So you can get in touch with either Brian or I via Discord and we'll plug them into our sheet and we'll have your codes. If you so desire, okay?

Yeah, it's up to you. All your codes belong to us. All your codes are belong to us. Now, here's the other thing I wanted to mention. Today, at 4 p.m. Mountain Time, Brian Dunaway and I get together. And what do we do? We do play retro.

Brian, tell the fine folks at home what we're covering. Absolutely. We're mostly covering Castle of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse. I love Mickey Mouse in Japan, I think is what it's called. But we're going to cover most of the Disney Illusion games, and it's going to be a lot of fun, especially.

me trying to consume all that while running 101 degree fever. We'll find out if Goofy showed up anywhere in my... How much of the game is real and how much of it is just a fever dream, right? Yeah, you think AI hallucinates. Way to hear what I got to say. Yeah, no kidding. I would have loved to. Did you stream any of that while you had your thing?

I streamed it the first night. The first night I streamed. I kind of did like a little sampling. I got my master system out. These are all Sega Genesis and Master System and game games. year games and it was a lot of fun. I had a blast. Yeah, they're great games. We're going to talk all about them and why they were great, why they hold up and why there's a new one coming, which is great timing, by the way. So check all that. It's actually already out on

Switch 1, but it's coming to everything else, I think, this month. Anyway, that's going to do it for us. Brian, I'll see you at 4 p.m. Go to play retro wherever you get your podcast or watch us live at frogpants.tv and also to Brian Dono way, I would say the following. Kiss our butts. Got him. I felt like I gave him fair warning. Like lots of lead up and he still didn't, he still didn't be me. So take that jerk.

All right. We're going to take a break. When we come back, we will have our friend Bobby here. Stephen is out. It's got some business going on there at the school where he teaches, not able to be here today. But Bobby will be here with some more science. So that'll be fun. It's also got a big announcement.

Something happening big this week for him. So I'm very excited about that. Hey, Brian, before we do any of that, can we please have a little bit of that? Can we please have a little musical break between things here? Yes, and I got to tell you, this is an album that I have enjoyed listening to from start to finish. This is awesome. So this is an Italian soul funk band. I'll let that just wash over you, an Italian soul funk band.

These guys are called West Riviera, and this is their self-titled debut album. This is, for the most part, this is all instrumental. There's the occasional, like, word here. and there, like, you know, kind of like the tequila, you know, folks through tequila and stuff like that, or do the hustle. But for the most part, it's 90%. And there's a great cover, oddly enough,

coincidentally enough, a great cover of a song that we're playing later on in the show, but I'm not playing their version of it. But this thing has got these guys, a five-piece ensemble, and they've got an incredible keyboardist that really knows how to make it funky, make it dirty and funky.

Again, the band is called West Riviera. The brand new album is called West Riviera. Here is the song Italian Traffic. You know, I'm going to be able to be. I'm sorry. I'm going to be the I'm going to be

I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to I'm a new the I'm We're going to be.

...toe ...and... ...their... ...that... ...and... ...the... I don't know. I'm going to be a lot of the

I'm going to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to come. I don't know. Oh! Oh! Ah!

Ah! I'm going to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to be. Oh. Welcome to the rosy lion, friend. Welcome to the rosy lion, friend. Have a seat, and I'll pour you a mug of something strong.

Suffer and sushi, what were those? And we're back. Who is that one more time? Sure, that is the band, West Riviera, and their brand new song, Italian Traffic, from their self-titled debut album. If you like that, I guarantee you're going to like the rest of the album. It was so, so good.

Excellent. recommendations. All right. Bobby incoming. Yeah. Bobby Franks. That's short for Frankenberger. Bobby the Franks.

It's a Frankenburger. We talked about this. Is that a hot dog and a burger? What is that? It would be the combo. Yeah, it seems like the combo. Is it a burger on a hot dog or a hot dog on a burger? Is a burger a sandwich?

Anyway. Hey, I hear ourselves echoing. This is fantastic. Hey, look who it is. Oh, I know we don't. We don't hear it at all. It's our old pal. Bobby, I've got to play this, though.

Where's this? Science. There we go. Bob is hungry, and the soup looks good. It sure does. It's Bobby Frankenberger, joining us also from South Carolina, talking science, which will be very, very fun. But Bobby, for real, what's the origin of Frankenberger? Because everyone, like Johnson, I'm John's son.

I bit is Ib's butt. I don't know. But do you know what I mean? A lot of times they're derived from, like, something common. like uh... Smith comes from when there was when blacksmiths and you know exactly

Joe Smith sure in the relative of a Peters if I remember correctly and I could be wrong about this because I don't really get into name meanings and genealogy too much

but my dad is I think that it's it's something about like Lords of the Mountain or something like that. Berg is a German for Mountain and Lord of the Mountain or the

the head of the mountainers or mountain climbers, something like that has to do with mountains, I know. Lord of the Science Mountain, Bobby. A mountain of science supports this. A bunch of geologists. Now, that's great. Well, cool. So we learned a little something there already. But now we're going to learn something even more from Bobby, who has his own science podcast and some big news coming up here in a minute.

We'll tease that for a second and then wait to reveal it to everybody. But before that, and some of you already know, but still, it's fun to, It's fun to tease. Anyway, before all that, Bobby's brought some science with him. What do you got this week? So it's more, it's less, well, it's science, of course, but it's more about some initiatives that are happening in the world of science, but not here, over there, across the ocean. All right.

Okay. The European Union has just on May 4th, there was a speech that was given at an event that was held by the European Commission called the Choose Europe for Science Program and what it is is it's a major push to attract international scientists to work in Europe and especially the United States. It seems like they're very almost explicitly

and deliberately targeting scientists in the U.S. to join them in the U.S. And it's called, like I said, it's called the Choose Europe for Science Program. the details of this program are they're allocating 500 million euros that's a little over 500 million dollars in funding to to help attract scientists to the European to Europe European countries and that's going to be over the next two years 2025 to 2027 they're having these things that they're putting in place called super grants super grants I love it yeah they're like long term funding packages for top-tier researchers that want to stay and do longer-term projects in Europe, which is, it's not, that's not normal. That's not usual for science and science funding to be able to be, like, locked into these

long-term funding packages like this. And by long-term, you mean like, oh, this guy's making real progress on skin cancer, whatever it is, research, it doesn't have to be medical, but some kind of scientific something, something. They want them to just, like, see that all the way through. is that the idea exactly there's seven year funding packages is the specifics for for this program and yeah they want to they're recognizing that scientific research especially some that nowadays and in some that have some of the most important advances take a long time sure and take a lot

of commitment from government and it's hard not to see well i'll get to that in a minute um so they're also um they're also doubling financial support and incentives for for relocating to the European Union so a lot of institutions and a lot of countries will will help scientists come to their country to do research by by giving them money to do that right to for moving expenses for housing stuff like that they're doubling their incentives for for coming to the EU they also have um in addition to this 500 million euro um like influx or or injection of money to get to attract people they're also trying to get the European nations in the European Union a target of a target of allocating

3% of their GDP to research and development by 2030 so that's a big deal making sure sort of to to guarantee that they're going to do that there's all sorts of things that are happening infrastructure services and the

I saw the speech that the president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen Oh Lord That's scary to me Those are scary names from Germany I said it I said it specifically for you Scott

Thank you so it sounds scarier The more German accent you put into Vonder Lion Ursula She was really cool though Her speech was great And she talked a lot about A commitment

to knowing that science takes time, it takes effort, a recommitment to doubling down on science in Europe, because she acknowledged that science and many, not all, of course, but many of history, scientific advances, especially in the recent history, have all come from Europe. And so saying that they want Europe to be an epicenter for scientific strength and advancement going in the future she um see uh she she said things that were very seemed to be very pointed at the united states things like saying that uh some of the world um thinks that uh does not place an important importance on science anymore she's she was

quote as saying that that was a gigantic miscalculation um she's right that uh yeah and that uh yeah and that acknowledging that the economic stability one of the pillars of that is an investment in science and so that's good though

you know this feels like it feels like one of those not not exactly I guess but necessities the mother of invention or whatever is the old phrase it's like the minute that you one place that is usually known for perhaps championing research and development and scientific

study is suddenly cutting funds and cutting efforts and firing people that somewhere else would pick up the slack and then pick it up kind of hardcore. I mean, this shouldn't surprise anybody. Right. I think it's great though. The interesting bit is do you think

they'll end up doing a pretty massive recruitment? Oh, yeah. There are European countries that are not just doing a massive recruitment right now. Like, the European Commission is very clearly stating that they are going to do that. That's what they're trying to do is recruit scientists from around the world. But there are, like I said, there is, there's an, it's clearly aimed at things that are happening politically in the U.S. There are countries in the U.S. or countries in Europe that are, that are specifically, explicitly targeting people coming from the U.S.

Axe-Mersai University in France has this program called a Safe Place for Science that they're doing and they're allocating 15 million euros for U.S. researchers that in their words have been censored and dismissed

by policies in the United States. Good Lord. Wow. So they're saying like we're going to give you guys extra money. You want to come? We want you specifically to come over here. The Mox Planck Institute in Germany

is they've got this whole program that they're doing trying to create joint European and U.S. research centers but they have made a statement that they are going to actively offer director level role you're able to work in the United States. You're back. Sorry. You froze for a moment

but you are back now. Yeah. You're good. Okay. What was the last thing you heard me say? You went, oh. That sentence, like it was just about the... It was about the Germans and the... Yeah, the Germans are offering director, like literally, explicitly offering director-level roles to U.S. scientists who are no longer able to work in the U.S.

So that makes sense to me, but it does, boy, I sure feel like we're just repeating a thing that happened in World War II, just the opposite, where we recruited... Yeah, no, of course, that's what we did. Yeah, we literally pulled your Einstein, level of people out of Europe and over here, I guess some of them made the bomb, but whatever, you know what I mean? Like we did this one other time and it didn't go real good on the other back end of that. So maybe we ought to, I don't know, pick up a book once in a while here in the

States and look at history and see what it was. Well, it was good. All the recruiting that we did from European scientists to come here was good for us and science advancement and putting us in a position of being a strong country doing a lot of really advanced science, right? Yeah. But now they're doing that to us.

And it's probably going to be good for them. There's, I mean, scientists are having a really hard time knowing what their future is here in this country. We have

people who are not sure that they're going to be able to stay in the country. Because, you know, we get a lot of people over on research. I don't know what the specific types of visas are and stuff like that, but they're like work visas doing research at universities and students who are doing research over here. And we attract those people so that our universe, so that we can be doing science here in the United States. We want that to happen, right?

But we're not, those people are having, often aren't able to stay in the United, like, They're leaving and they're being forced out and they're not those visas aren't being protected. And then on top of that, even just the people that we have in the U.S., the proposed budget for 2026 has a, like, I've got some numbers. The National Science Foundation is being, has a 56% reduction being proposed in funding for 2026. That's a massive cut. That's huge. It's more than half. The National Institutes of Health is being proposed 40% reduction in funding.

Jeez. And that's not even to include like all the HIV research that's already been shut down, the COVID research that's already been shut down. Those are just the proposals, you know, but stuff has already happened. And so people like, we don't have any money. What are we going to do? Sure. Well, they're losing their jobs.

Let me ask you this. I don't know if this is even possible to answer. But has anyone in any of this? I realize a lot of it is politically heated and a lot of people shouting at each other and stuff like that. But has anybody actually put forward why they think a 56% cut is mandated?

Like, is there some level of waste that is documented, but we just aren't, I didn't watch the right talking head to hear the documented waste? Do you know what I'm saying? Are they even trying to show? What are the reasons that they're proposing for cutting all of that research funding? Is that what you're asking?

Yeah. Like, give us a – usually when you do a thing – all right, let me give me an example. When I clean my desk later, I'll have a reason. It will be because this has gotten cluttered and I've got too much stuff stacked here and I kind of need to go through some of these things. And I can document that reason. And it's a reasonable reason for why I'd want to clean this up. So if someone asked me, Scott, why are you doing that?

I'd say, well, here are my reasons. has anyone done that in this case just in the science stuff forget about all the other cuts because I know there's there's a million directions this goes but like just if you're going to say well we're cutting the we're doing the 56% cut you mentioned has anyone said from anywhere at the top all the way down to the bottom of who makes these decisions anybody actually said here are our reasons and they are actually like transparent valid and I don't mean like you could argue that one Because I understand that. Like you could say, well, Scott, your desk is going to get cluttered again.

Why clean it now? I understand you can have opposing points of view about why things should happen or not happen. But I feel like I haven't had anybody say or heard anybody say why other than to piss something else off. That's it. Yeah. Sure. Some of the reason is because they think that there's, you know, too much extra spending happening. And you could probably say that about anything.

So maybe a small percentage of this could be for efficiency and maybe even legitimate. But I don't want to give that too much credit because all the other things that have been stated are a little bit ridiculous. Like just to start all the DEI reasons for cutting funding from things like the National Institutes of Health, anything that is related to um gender affirming care or or uh and then you've got things like just all this stuff like HIV that's why that got shut down you know that's too closely related to to uh like like sexuality and all that kind of stuff right to be LGBTQ that makes me want to flip off everybody at once with my two giant fat freaking flip off fingers eff off all you bunch of dicks but there's other yeah yeah for sure yeah you're right to be

really angry about it and many people are um the uh the other reasons are like i didn't even mention there's something like a 55 percent cut to the uh to the environmental protection agency that's because you know climate change the the the current administration doesn't really think it's real so um that that's a problem so a lot of funding gets cut to that and then also this is forgetting the fact that i think the budget talks about something like a 20 or 23% increase in in spend like defense spending so that money has to come from somewhere I don't know or it's not an increase it's a 23% cut in spending that isn't defense related let's that's what it is oh yeah the defense budget's

going up they're gonna they're getting yeah I don't know if it's going up but I know that it's not being cut the same way that everything else is very explicitly When they were proposing, what I last writer, they were proposing somewhere in the range of a trillion dollars for defense spending, which I think is the highest it's ever been. I could be wrong on that. Somebody could clear me up. Maybe it's an inflation thing or that's just a number adjusted over. I don't know. But it seems like I heard read something about a trillion bucks. That's a lot of money. there's so much so many reasons that they're using to justify science cuts and and like like the EPA just by itself for example that's um it's it's involved with a bunch of regulations that are going to get in the way of industry right so making it harder for companies to make money um because they're they're trying to regulate the these you know factories and companies in in their impact on the environment That's a problem. So there's lobbying that's going on that that's involved in that. And it's easier to make the bottom line of our GDP look better if you are able to just go ahead and start making money now. A lot of these are just very political, economic reasons for doing it. And also just a short-sightedness of how scientific research works. A lot of, I've seen politicians pointing out that, oh, well, there's so much research that's going on that doesn't really have any direct benefit to the citizens, right? Like, and this is, we're talking about like basic science research, uh, which basic science

is just kind of the science community's way of talking about research that, that is just exploring how nature and the world works, right? It's not, it's not doing something for the explicit purpose of like, like a lot of medical research, for example, is you're looking to develop a procedure or a cure or a medication or something like that that is going to have to direct uses, right? But basic science is just like, well, we don't really know how this thing works. Let's just learn about how it works.

Or I wonder if, we used to decades ago, you'd hear people talking about how, oh, we're spending so much money on just like figuring out something, studying some little caterpillar that does a, that does, you know we don't know what and we're just like looking at what happens when we when caterpillars try to breed on this plant versus this plant or something like that right it's basic science research we're just trying to understand how the world works and that has a lot of benefits that we will never know maybe for decades because we stop and then also the question you're not getting answers now then it's wasting you know what that's like that's like saying all right when nick is five Nick was five. I was his dad, right? I still am, but you know what I mean?

Still are, yeah. He's five years old, and I'm like, well, we could send him to school, which is really an investment in his future and the future of society because he'll be a part of society. Or I can put him to work in the fields digging up horseshit because that has an immediate impact on today's horseshit quota. Oh, my gosh, it makes me want to pop a zip into my own face. I hate this. I hate it. But also, I think the analogy can be stretched even further because I think it's worse than that because I don't think that the, the benefit of of him going to school

has to necessarily be because he'll have a great job down the road. Maybe the benefit is just because he will have a fulfilling life learning something. Yeah. And that's that's a noble goal. That's the thing you want. And so to me, yes, we always want to

point, like if you have to try to put a dollar amount to the research, you have to look further in the future than this political cycle. You know, you have to look really far in the future. It could have downsh, but some of the research may never have any monetary gain that comes from it. Some of it will just be, this is cool, we know more about how the world works.

Sure. And that's great. I might be a little biased. I have a science podcast. But I think that's great. We know more about how the world works. You know, knowing how a blood works. black hole forms and knowing what what gets shot out of a supernova doesn't always maybe benefit

the economy but isn't it cool that we know that you know no it is cool because you build knowledge upon knowledge it's like let me let me tell you something this mouse right here here's my mouse everybody I love metaphors this mouth you love bringing it taking it to global down to local I do I do I think it's good for people to have something to relate to so I look at this mouse And I think, oh, that's a fairly simple device. But unlike a rock I used to tear leather apart, this thing took perhaps thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of individuals, time, technological advancements, group effort, group think, group advancement and iteration to make this do what it does. And if I wanted to go in the garage right now and go make me one of these, I can't. Well, why?

It's because all these increments come together to make a thing that is useful. and needful. That doesn't mean that every single aspect that led to this was a profitable freaking venture that patted the pockets of some billionaire dickhole. You know what I mean? So there's, there you go. Another little metaphor for you, my mouse.

You know? Let's put that right there. Yeah, and Ursula von der Leyen, she in her, right at the top of her speech, she talked about the history of science and that particular thing, in fact, invoked

Marie Curie and a lot of the research that she did, which has gone on to completely revolutionize medicine and energy technology, what we know about radiation, physics, medicine, everything was just revolutionized by this basic research that she was doing. She was just curious about radioactive materials. It's just that curiosity that led to that, right? Yeah. So they want to in Europe, like they should double down on investing in that and they're very specifically targeting the U.S. I mean, we don't have as many. They know that people, scientists can't work here as easily as they used to be able to. They know that applications to work in labs in the U.S. are way down from the past. And so they're saying, let's open our doors and all these

scientists who want to do science. Let's welcome them here. And I think that's great for the scientists. That's awesome because the instability that they had and the uncertainty that they had, now they have a place to look to, to go to continue doing the work that they want to do. Yeah. And it's good for humanity in the long run. All right. Like the idea that it can only work if we somehow have a leadership position, just straight up isn't true. So let someone else take leadership. Let somebody else do the thing. We can all look like sad, sack pieces of shit over here. But at the same time, they will take up the ropes, fill the void, fill the vacuum, do the work so that 50 years from now people will benefit from continued, you know, human understanding and not all become freaking wet turds like us. Right.

Right. All right. So quit being a wet turd and do some science. That's the lesson. Be a dry turd. Be a dry turd. Exactly, Brian. Those are so much easier to men.

Oh, so much easier to manage dry turds. Diaper dry turds are easier. Old lady at the home who poops their little briefs there. That's what you want a dry turd. Yeah. I just, you know, I'm thinking dry turds all around. That's what I'm thinking. Thank you.

Thank you for you. So won't somebody think of the dry turds? Exactly, won't they? Bobby, this is all interesting stuff. Of course, we will keep an eye on how things go across the pond, but we should really keep an eye on what happens tomorrow. You want to tell people about the big announcement? Yeah, so I mentioned this new podcast of mine last week, and I got some people going on and subscribing.

So we were just talking about the sad state of science here in the U.S., and it's science communicators that are trying very hard to push back and swim upstream and say, like, look, science is awesome, love science. and so this is good timing for a new podcast that I'm launching and it launches tomorrow as you're listening to this live or if you download it later today on Monday the 12th tomorrow Tuesday May 13th is the launch day for daily science brief so anybody's listening right now take out your phone if you haven't done this already and if you have done it already go get another podcast app get another phone get another phone And do it again. Get on there and look up daily science brief. Subscribe to the podcast. What that's going to do is it's going to, tomorrow when the first episode launches, it's going to download.

There is a sample episode out there so you can hear what it's like. It's a 10-minute science podcast that is just designed to get you updated on science quickly on what happened in the day. It's a daily show. We're going to start with two days a week at first, but over the summer I'm going to be ramping it up to five days all five days a week

and it's just going to be four science news stories in 10 minutes and it's up there right now show the world that science is important and I'll help by keeping you up to date on what's going on. You may hear more and more stories

about science coming from Europe in China. I like the sample episode sounds fascinating. Lower your brain sorry, your blood pressure might save your brain. Ooh, I could be using a little of that business right there. That's pretty good.

Yeah, go check it out. Get sub to now. To lower your blood pressure. Exactly. With Bobby Frankenberger, which means Lord of the Mountain, we figure. Well, that's fantastic, Bobby. Nothing but good luck in this front. Happy to hear more about it as time goes on.

And always happy to have you here. And, of course, next week, next Monday. I don't even think I've talked to Bobby about this yet. but Brian will be in Kansas City. You want to come co-host? Want to sit in the chair with me on Monday? It's been a while since I've placed my buttocks in Brian's chair. Yeah, it's warm.

It's warm. Yeah, it's warm and inviting. Yeah. Surely in the season for it to be sweaty, so that's good. It's a nice dry seat. Yeah. Oh, you don't live in South Carolina, Brian. No, we does not.

Well, anyway, we look forward to that. Bobby, have a fantastic week. all your science be funded and we'll see you next time thank you by now uh yes very cool excited for them that's awesome daily we knew a thing or two about day doing a daily show don't we brian it's a lot of work we do yeah it is a lot of work many daily shows between the two of us yeah yeah there's more uh more common these days than you think but uh yeah more on that later uh let's get to a couple of quick things uh adrian in our uh in our community wrote in or called in with this message. A stone and bone. It's Adrian 1980s wiki in the chat. You're mentioned of

the great Tony Todd on yesterday's TMS 2817 reminded me of a truly hidden gem of a recommendal from many years ago. It's called The Man from Earth, released in 2007. It's a really cerebral sci-fi film about a retiring college professor who one day claims to his colleagues that he's actually a 14,000-year-old chromagin man that never ages. He has to change his identity and relocates himself every 10 years to hide his immortality. There's no special effects, no action sequences, no flashbacks, just a group of intellectual people sitting in one room trying to simultaneously prove and disprove this man's stories. Sounds fascinating.

It does sound really cool, yeah. And I love me some Tony Todd, so, you know, he's great. What do we bring him up for? I don't remember what we were. Oh, final destination, I think. Oh, right, right, because he's, yeah, one of the recurring, at least a couple, a couple movies recurring character. Yeah, and he's in the new one.

I think briefly as that character, but it was before he died. Let's see. Yeah. It should even be a flashback. Who knows? Let me make sure I get the title right. 2007, it was, he said. The Man from Earth.

It's currently streaming on Prime. And written by Jerome Bixby, who originally introduced in Requiem from Methuselah, a Star Trek episode that originally aired in 1969. Oh, wow. And he kind of evolved it and turned it into this movie. Well, I'm curious about it now. I never even heard of it until now. It's reviewed, okay?

Yeah, it seems all right. It's got your William Cat, the greatest American hero, is in this as well. Good. I know he was looking for it. Yeah. Don't let that shy you away from it. Oh, the guy who played flocks on Enterprise, John Billingsley, is in this. Oh, cool.

More Star Trek connections than you can shake a stick out. Yeah. Yeah. Well, anyway, thanks for their recommendation. We also got a text from Andrew in Colorado. That's Brian's home state over there. It is. He has some baffle thoughts.

Here's what he says. Hello, squirrel and bunny. You're all talking about baffles to prevent squirrels and other mammals from getting to the bird feeder. And I need to pass along my favorite solution. Habanero flavored bird seed. The birds can't taste the heat due to a lack of receptors for capsaicin. But the squirrels and raccoons or any other mammals can. So not only do my feeders not get to stir, but the animals don't even try because it's actively painful for them to get into it, says Andrew.

So it doesn't bug the birds. It doesn't, yeah, birds don't care about this. I tried this before. I got some hot stuff from Amazon, hot bird seed. I don't know if it was habanero or habanero. There's no ena in habanero. I got some of this stuff did not deter the squirrels at all. They just, they kept eating.

We have Tex-Mex squirrels here. That's going to say, is it possible they gained like a like for it or a taste for it? Maybe, I don't know, from eating garbage, like people's left over spicy garbage food or something. Weird. Yeah. But yeah, no, they didn't care about it. Now, since I've switched to getting what I really, really like is called the no-mess blend from Wild Birds Unlimited, it's a little pricey, but you get a big bag and I always

wait for their sales, so I get a discount on it. But it's their no-mess blend, and it leaves way fewer, like, seed husks and all sorts of things all around the base of the bird feeder. I'll have to see if they have a spicy blend and just see if. not that I'm having any problems with it now that I've got the clear shield but uh

look into that that sounds like something we could use because we have kind of that problem a lot of husks and seed shell stuff after after the fact if you've got wild birds unlimited at in Utah there okay um you'll probably order online a little bit more

but you won't pay a whole lot more especially if you get on their on their mailing list because they have sales all the time and it makes these It makes their birdseed price is super, super cheap. Jade did the right thing and put a title in for No Enya in Habanero. Yes, I'm glad. I'm glad they did. That one's making it.

Yes, two in Utah. Let's zoom out here because it zoomed way in. There we go. What little city suburbs does it say? Looks like Valley City. No, Holiday. Holiday. Oh, that's not far.

Yeah. It's one of Post Malone Salt Lake House is in Holiday. Okay. It's a nice area over there. Murray Holiday Road. Murray Holiday Road. Big time high school era haunts for me, that whole area over there. Really?

Yeah, we were always driving around there. It's all like now hospitals and shit. But it used to be cool. I had like, I don't know, cool comic bookstores. Oh, that's cool. The area kind of got boring, but it used to be cool. Anyway, well, there you have it then. Thank you for that.

And great recommendations all around. A couple things. We got shows later today, the Monday show today at 1 p.m. Mountain Time. Carter and I, I think I'm doing the Tens Unit to simulate period pain today. Oh, really? Yeah. Excellent. She wants me to...

She wants to see how that goes for me. We were supposed to do it last week because she was sick, so I didn't do it. But I think I'm going to do it today. So that'll be fun. Tune in for. We'll be doing that live at frogpants. TV as well as play retro at 4 p.m. as discussed with Dunaway

earlier. Please check that out and let's get into some Mickey Mouse illusion series games. Nice. That is it. Frogpants.com slash TMS for all other things except for this. Well, at least for now, until Brian tells us, what song are we playing at the end? We have a request and this one's going out

to Caducey. I think she had a request last week as a dedication for for Doocy, but Carissa wrote in and said, it's my 42nd birthday. And I'd love to rock out to a really great song, so I leave my fate in your hands, covermaster. Well, sure. That's, that's it.

Well, happy birthday. Happy 42nd birthday. Life, the universe, and everything birthday. Very important one for everybody. It's a big one. Can you give her a happy Dersh day? Oh, hell yeah. Happy Dersh Day.

And when I think about 42 and Life the Universe and Everything, I go to songs that have one of those three things. Either life, you know, there's so many great life songs in there of the universe, across the universe by the Beatles being a good one and Universal Dreamer by Alphaville. But I settle on everything. And what's better than everything? Everything twice in the name of the song.

Yes, everything is everything by Lauren Hill. This version rocks. I was looking for a version that would rock for you. This one totally rocks. This came out in 2011 on Booker T. Jones album, The Road from Memphis. This is Booker T of Booker T and the MGs back in the 60s.

you know the big song Green Onions was a big hit for them. This is their cover. Again, instrumental, their cover of Lauren Hills. Everything is Everything. Here's Booker T. Jones. I'm going to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to

I'm going to I'm going to I'm a lot of I'm going to be the I'm a

and a I'm a I'm a I don't know what I'm going to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to be able to be.

I'm going to be. I'm going to be. And so. I'm a . To be the Oh my own Oh my Oh

and Ah, and I'm Oh Oh Oh and

I'm and I'm and I'm B' A B'am

So, I'm going to be able to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to be. I don't know what I'm going to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to be.

I'm going to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to be. I don't know. I don't know. I'm going to be a lot of the I'm going to be. I'm going to be.

And so I'm going to be. I'm a a ha ha ha. Oh, ah, and I, and I'm a,

and I'm a a, ha, I don't know what I'm going to be. I'm going to be. So, I'm going to be able to be. Oh! So, I'm going to be able to be.

I'm going to be. We're going to be. You know what I'm going to be. In the menu of life, make your main entree, frogpants.com. It's delicious. Delicious. I'm going to tear this guy a new hole.