Zombie Book Club
Fallout Season 1: Ghouls Just Wanna Have Fun | Zombie Book Club Podcast Ep 49
Join us as we dive into the Amazon Prime series "Fallout". We delve into the ethical dilemmas, societal changes, and rich lore of the "Fallout" universe and navigate the experimental vaults, retro-futuristic corporations, and the striking parallels between "Fallout's" world and our own.
In this episode, we journey through the Brotherhood of Steel's technocentric quests, explore gray morality, and ponder the future of beauty standards if ghoulification became common. We also examine intricate societies within the series, including the Brotherhood's fascination with mundane technology and the potential for cyborg-based groups in future seasons.
Laugh along as we recount entertaining scenes, such as a Brotherhood member's naive misunderstanding about male arousal, and delve into deeper themes of military indoctrination, corporate morality, and privilege. We critique potential plot inconsistencies and retcons, reflecting on our own experiences and societal narratives.
Follow our linktree for social media links, and links to all the places you can find our podcast!
https://linktr.ee/zombiebookclub
ZBC Discord Server
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Zombie Book Club Voicemail
(614) 699-0006
Zombie Book Club Email
ZombieBookClubPodcast@gmail.com
Our Secret Website That Isn't Finished
https://zombiebookclub.io
Our Merchandise Store (Where you can find our Evil Magic Chicken Zombie Shirts)
https://zombie-book-club.myspreadshop.com
Join us as we dive into the Amazon Prime series "Fallout". We delve into the ethical dilemmas, societal changes, and rich lore of the "Fallout" universe and navigate the experimental vaults, retro-futuristic corporations, and the striking parallels between "Fallout's" world and our own.
In this episode, we journey through the Brotherhood of Steel's technocentric quests, explore gray morality, and ponder the future of beauty standards if ghoulification became common. We also examine intricate societies within the series, including the Brotherhood's fascination with mundane technology and the potential for cyborg-based groups in future seasons.
Laugh along as we recount entertaining scenes, such as a Brotherhood member's naive misunderstanding about male arousal, and delve into deeper themes of military indoctrination, corporate morality, and privilege. We critique potential plot inconsistencies and retcons, reflecting on our own experiences and societal narratives.
Follow our linktree for social media links, and links to all the places you can find our podcast!
https://linktr.ee/zombiebookclub
ZBC Discord Server
https://discord.com/invite/8hCSb4eg
Zombie Book Club Voicemail
(614) 699-0006
Zombie Book Club Email
ZombieBookClubPodcast@gmail.com
Our Secret Website That Isn't Finished
https://zombiebookclub.io
Our Merchandise Store (Where you can find our Evil Magic Chicken Zombie Shirts)
https://zombie-book-club.myspreadshop.com
Welcome to the Zombie Book Club, the only book club where the book is a show on Amazon Prime and there's robots and mech suits and a zombie is one of the main characters and there are people who live in underground bunkers and they don't know that life has returned to the surface because of corporate interests that want to keep them under control. The episode's done. We just did it. We're all done. I'm Dan, and when I'm not hiding inside of my own underground bunker that we're in right now, right now, y'all, I'm writing a book about a dystopian wasteland of our own making, where the interests of the wealthy elite allow the perfect conditions for a zombie outbreak to cripple our national defense and send us all back to the Stone Age. Sounds familiar.
Speaker 2:This is why I really will just repeatedly say on this podcast I prefer fake apocalypses. They're more fun. And I'm Leah, and a fun fact you don't know about me yet is that my great uncle, graham, was a theoretical nuclear physicist in Chalk River, canada, and he is actually the person who encouraged me to complete my graduate degree, because it was important to him that women could go as far in education and their career as they wanted to. Why am I telling you my uncle graham won? Because he was sweet and he was cool yeah, I like him and he was ahead of his time in many ways but also because we're talking about fallout. Oh, is that what we're talking about? It is. Oh, I had no idea. I prepared this like four weeks ago and we're recording it now. Uh, he would have loved fallout. I actually really wish I could have watched fallout with my uncle graham, because, first of all, he would have been correcting, yeah, everything constantly.
Speaker 1:Actually, that's not how.
Speaker 2:Radiation sickness yeah we would have to pause it and then we'd have an hour-long dissertation or dissertation, but like, out of nowhere.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you'd have chalk all over his pants already he actually did a lot yes, my uncle was the kind of uncle that, like when he retired from being a nuclear physicist, he was doing things like studying how um you know curling rocks. If anybody knows the sport of curling, they're called rocks. Why they spin the way they spin? Because apparently it like defies physics really yeah, I don't know the details, but there was a time where he sat and explained this to me for like two hours, basically in middle english, and I had no idea what he was saying try to.
Speaker 1:Uh, didn't he have like a formula for how you could row a boat with a shotgun? Yeah, that's my uncle graham. Yeah, he sounds like a fun guy and I wish I met him he was really great.
Speaker 2:He was a great guy long gone now, but I think he passed away in 2020. Yeah, not from covid, he was just really old. Yeah, just to be clear. Um, but yeah, I, I thought about him a lot and probably all the junk science he would have probably ruined fallout for me, but in a fun way. So, uh, we release episodes every sunday. I don't always talk about my uncle graham, but in this one I'm going to yeah, happy sunday.
Speaker 1:Everyone happy sunday. Um, yeah, we're talking about fallout. Tell us about fallout, leah, what is it about? Yeah, have you seen this?
Speaker 2:fallout. We have watched it twice now, oh, and I would watch it a third time, yeah, and the thumbnail for this episode was one I really enjoyed doing, so I hope you all like it too. What is fallout? It is a highly anticipated tv series that's set in the aftermath of the great war of 2077, I remember that war yes, uh, we, we are here reminiscing in our own little bunker from that war.
Speaker 2:It was a cataclysmic nuclear exchange between the united states and china in an alternate history of earth. Uh, and advances in nuclear technology after world war ii led to this like retro, futuristic version of our society that uh feels like you're in the 1950s but is very progressive around things like sex. It's confusing, yeah, to me, uh, but it's donned, unsurprisingly and very much like our own society, by corporations, and those corporations create conditions for resource wars that culminate in this nuclear apocalypse, basically because the wealthy people think they'll get wealthier if everybody dies from radiation so unrealistic, right away calling, calling a bluff and fallout.
Speaker 2:That's not how the world works yeah, and their ultimate weapon and fallout is time, because these people who think that everybody else is going to be exterminated have pre-purchased their fallout bunkers known as vaults um, and each of the vaults from this company called vault tech have sociological and psychological experiments. Because a bunch of rich people don't agree on how to make the world a better place. They each have their own version they're also just like.
Speaker 1:Wouldn't it be cool if we did this like? They're just like spitballing being like. I think it'd be really cool to do these experiments on people yeah, that's basically it.
Speaker 2:I think it'd be, hilarious. Also, there's good vaults and bad vaults, which we'll get into later, because depends on how much money you have. Uh, the series actually picks up 200 years after 2077. Um, in 2296. I want to just take a moment before I describe the rest and think about how dusty our bones will be by 2296 that's like my bones will be the dust on other people's that's like 10 generations. In the future, people will not remember us unless we're like, unless we do I something terrible, I guess, unfortunately, people will remember who Elon Musk is, you know?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think those will be the people. Maybe not, maybe not.
Speaker 1:Maybe Elon Musk will just have like an old timey photograph in a textbook somewhere where it's like can you believe how much of an idiot this guy was? And everybody thought he was super smart.
Speaker 2:I hope so. So, but in this fallout reality, elon musk is definitely in a vault.
Speaker 2:Oh, he's in a uh, in a yeah, and he's sleeping he runs a vault or he's been sleeping in one for a long time, waiting to let the radiation to go away. But anyways, it's 22 96. Uh, there is no actual elon musk, though there are characters sort of like him, and we are following a young woman named Lucy, who is very naive and very sweet and has very large blue eyes, and she leaves her home Vault 33, to navigate the perilous wasteland of a devastated Los Angeles in search for her kidnapped father, poor dad, poor dad.
Speaker 1:Taken by. He didn't do anything to deserve being kidnapped.
Speaker 2:No, and you know what do they call the people that come out from outside of the vault.
Speaker 1:Vaulters.
Speaker 2:No, the people that came in and kidnapped their dad. Oh um Her dad.
Speaker 1:Uh raiders.
Speaker 2:Raiders yeah, so the raiders that were living on the outside, on the surface, which was supposed to be basically impossible, according to the people who started this.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Inside we're not going to do spoilers today, but just the basic arc is. Along her journey, lucy encounters the Brotherhood of Steel, which is like a weird technological religion which also not that far off from our Courage Society, which loves technology and thinks it will fix everything. And there's a squire and they're like an army sort of.
Speaker 1:They're an army and a religion yeah, an army and a religion, and they're obsessed with technology because they have squires, they have knights and at the very top, they have acolytes yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2:Are those the old dudes? Yeah, okay, they're the old dudes in robes. You can picture it if you haven't watched this. And then, why are we talking about a zombie book club? Because there's a ghoul, there's a ghoul. Ghouls a ghoul Ghouls basically become zombies. Yeah, so we'll talk about zombie type in a minute. But there's this ghoul bounty hunter, who we know as the ghoul, and they have very mysterious pasts, personal agendas. We start to get glimpses of their history throughout the first season. I'm really hopeful that we get more in future seasons. I mean, how could we not? We have to Because there's so much backstory. The ghoul is very jaded character and overall, the show of course explores themes of survival, greed, morality, hope the usual in a zombie apocalypse yeah, those are some pretty common threads yeah, but it's not.
Speaker 2:it's not a zombie centric show in the typical way of what we usually talk about on it, but we on the podcast, but we decided to talk about it because it's close enough. There are these things called ghouls, which Dan's going to tell you about now, so it's, it's a.
Speaker 1:It's a wasteland survival situation. There are zombies close enough.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but they're not the only threat. There's a lot of other threats.
Speaker 1:Yeah so zombie threats, yeah so, um, zombie type we've got. We've got some slow degeneration. This is the one thing that um immediately fans of the of fallout have like been pointing to that, like um doesn't exactly follow the lore fallout, but then some people say that it does. But anyways, we don't know. But they have these vials of life extension, the ghoul, walton Goggins. He has to take this yellow liquid and if he doesn't he runs the risk of turning into a feral ghoul. And what's a feral ghoul? Feral ghoul is a crazy zombie.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they are fast zombies, yeah, so ghouls, they're're just normal people, but their skin's rotting off. It's really gross, yeah and um, and usually they're marginalized by society. In in a lot of the games and uh, they refer to humans like us as smooth skins. But, uh, in this show, if you don't take your vial of yellow liquid, um, then you're likely to turn into a feral ghoul, which, basically, you degenerate into madness and you no longer have everything that makes you human anymore.
Speaker 2:You become a zombie, a real zombie that runs around and kills people yeah, really angry, you see, like, uh, one of the things I really liked about the show was the images of the zombies or the ghouls that were like not quite there and they were doing things like trying to repeat their name, things that they remembered about their life, to try and hold on to their humanity, but they were just slowly, slowly losing it, yeah, and like having this way Twitches, it's very, it's very much like, you know, like a like dementia or something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's, that's kind of like the. The parallel that they're making is like slipping into madness and kind of losing your own, your own humanity, yeah, which I mean honestly.
Speaker 2:A lot of people, even the ones who are smooth skinned, as you say, start to lose their humanity on the surface, that's true A little bit.
Speaker 1:As far as we know, they are not infectious, though we don't really know what happens to the people that they bite, because the only ones that we've seen attack anybody just straight up killed them and they did not get back up. But you can. Apparently there is a way to become a ghoul through some concoction of chemicals that you can get from a snake oil salesman who promises that he can regenerate your foot yeah, you can't heal, he can heal anything anything at all there is a price you don't realize.
Speaker 1:You're paying until after on top of the regular price that you'll pay him yes, he will of one uh power core yeah, nothing, no big deal just a fusion core um, yeah, so they, uh, they forget who they are, and they slowly become hungry for human flesh and and chickens, apparently.
Speaker 2:There's a chicken test.
Speaker 1:As one character said, no ghoul can I forget what he says.
Speaker 2:No feral ghoul can resist a chicken.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can't resist a chicken.
Speaker 2:I want a chicken evil. Magic chicken, zombie v ghoul. Fight out Anybody who's an animator. If you can make that happen, I would really love to see it.
Speaker 1:So we've got the Ghoul. We don't know why they call him the Ghoul. Maybe he's the original Ghoul.
Speaker 2:We don't know yet.
Speaker 1:But he is this guy named Cooper Howard who we get to experience the pre-war world through via flashbacks. He was once a famous Hollywood actor and he became a Vault-Tec ambassador before the war and then somehow we don't know he got mutated into a ghoul. We do know that he was outside when the bombs fell, so who knows what happened. Now he makes a living as a gunslinger and a bounty hunter yeah, and he's very jaded about everything. Yeah, and he's very jaded about everything. Yeah, as a human, he would like not want to do a scene where he shoots a guy in the face. He's like that's not me, he ended up doing the scene anyway. But as a ghoul he's just like I don't care, I'll kill anyone in the worst possible way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he thinks that the wasteland makes anybody a bad person over time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he thinks that the wasteland makes anybody a bad person over time. We talked about the sake oil salesman. He gives this life extension vial to a squire from the Brotherhood of Steel whose foot is completely destroyed from somebody in a mech suit stepping on it. It is disgusting.
Speaker 2:I will say the gore of this show is intense At this point. We watch so much zombie stuff that I'm not looking away as often as I used to. But this one I had to look away because I was like I don't want to see a foot dangling by a sinew from the ankle. I just don't.
Speaker 1:If we're going back to Conplan 8888, I would classify these as RZs radiation zombies. Oh yeah, because it doesn't seem like there's any virus involved. It's all just radiation baby.
Speaker 2:It's an interesting show for this podcast because the apocalypse is a nuclear apocalypse, class wars between the ultra rich and everybody else, and zombies. There's a lot of shittiness happening in this world. It's not an easy world to be in because the pot, the radiation creates all kinds of wild monsters would you say that bear was like a ghoul or do you think it was just a radiated bear?
Speaker 1:it was a radiated mutated bear. There's a lot of mutated creatures in the fallout universe. We only saw a small handful like the nematode um the bear.
Speaker 2:We saw rad roaches is the nematode, the one that has fingers for uh inside its mouth yeah, like it's, a whole tongue is covered in fingers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was disturbing. Um kind of cute, though I guess.
Speaker 2:I guess I have a question for you, dan, before we get into what we loved. Yeah, this is an existential question that I was asking myself the whole time we were watching it. If these vials would extend your life and if you kept having access to them, you would not get all ghoulie like, but knowing that that's the side effect, that you could live, uh well, we don't know how long, but we know at least hundreds of years longer. So maybe, like tripling your lifespan or quadrupling your lifespan, would you take it?
Speaker 1:um, I don't, I don't think so. Why not? Um, just because I, I think that the cost of becoming a ghoul outweighs the benefit of living for um, I think that there's like you. You immediately become a marginalized citizen like not everybody, becomes the ghoul and is like, super good at gunplay, has a lot of really cool one-liners and knows exactly where to shoot a mech to make him die.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and is a very talented gunslinger.
Speaker 1:Yeah, most of them are going to be like the guy that they come across who's losing his mind inside of a hospital filled with sand where he's yeah, I ran out of stuff, I can't buy more stuff.
Speaker 2:I'm dying yeah and then. Uh, they eat his back bacon after they kill him.
Speaker 1:They did eat his back bacon. That was gross, yeah. So, uh, oh, I'll take short life, but not becoming a decomposing corpse. What?
Speaker 2:about you, I mean as somebody who is socialized female. There's a lot of fucked up things I've done to my body to make it fit societal standards, um, and there's certainly an obsession with anti-aging.
Speaker 2:So I think I wouldn't, because so far I've said no to botox, which is also rat poison in your forehead, but um, you don't want to put rat poison in your forehead no, but I don't judge people who do, because the amount of societal pressure to have a smooth to be smooth, a smooth skin to be a smooth skin, is, uh, really high thing to be and like the worst thing you can do, as a woman especially, is to get old, according to our society, still to this day. So I do think that our society is very ageist, particularly with women, um, although I think that it's getting worse with men as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I can see the temptation and I could imagine a world where, like, if this was accessible to a lot of people, if it was, if it was marketed as a life extension thing, that as long as you have more access to it, you're just going to be fine yeah and you know a lot of people will take it we talked about this with laurie calcaterra when we were talking about, you know, zombie, zombie ladies and having sex with zombies and like if, as it becomes the norm, there might just be like a new market for, for, for, for beautification of your rotting corpse.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, put a, put a nose on there, get yourself I mean, it's true, if I can get like gel pads to put in my bra, yeah, if I want to, I'm sure, and, like you know, makeup to make my face look different, I'm sure that getting a nose couldn't be that hard yeah, and then and then at a, at a certain point, like, all of all of those standards maybe, like start becoming something that people reject and they're like no, this is my natural face.
Speaker 1:Put it in my nose cavity.
Speaker 2:Or it's not even about what's natural anymore, because lots of our beauty standards, like, are not about what's actually what bodies look like, but we've come to really enjoy them Like. Lots of people love breast implants.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Most boobs without breast implants Actually, no boobs without breast implants look like breast implant boobs, but they are there. People like them and I'm not judging if you like them or don't like them. My point is is that, like body modification, even tattoos, right like my grandma would tell me that I've defiled my body, I think it makes me more beautiful. Um, I can imagine if I was a ghoul and I had not had a steady supply of the yellow juice. I would probably like I bet you that there could be like a whole market for like really cool nose attachments, and so it's not even about your nose looking like a human nose anymore. I'd be like you know what I want? I want a sexy elephant trunk for a nose.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and maybe it's like a.
Speaker 2:Maybe it's like a prosthetic that can actually, like, do things. It becomes a third limb. I can pick stuff up with it.
Speaker 1:I can use it as a sexual tool, yeah well, I was going section.
Speaker 2:I mean like think about it connection. Think about what I could do if I had an elephant nose, dan probably could carry more than two things that's not what I was talking about. Um, I would get. Leave it to your imagination folks snoop dog's gold nose.
Speaker 1:Circa 1993 he had a gold nose. Yeah, like early on, like around the uh, the era of the chronic I don't believe this. He did not have a music videos really whenever, when all the rappers were like having gold grills, he put on a gold nose.
Speaker 2:No, he did not.
Speaker 1:I'm googling this snoop dog's gold nose was the my first experience with snoop dog okay, I am not seeing any evidence of this.
Speaker 2:I am just seeing um a 19 crimes snoop dog wine. Um, I yeah, you're gonna need to provide evidence for me to believe this is true, but I like the idea of snoop with a gold nose. But regardless, I'm just saying it could, like you're right, you could use it as like a a unique beautification. I mean, people do, all people in all cultures, do all kinds of things. You've got that one culture where they put their rings around the neck to elongate the neck, but actually what it does is it pushes the clavicle bones down. You have the um, what are they called for? Ears, where you make your earlobes bigger.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, uh yeah, that yeah.
Speaker 2:And then you have the lip discs that like extend your lower lip, like humans are known for doing all kinds of shit to modify our bodies, I think it's actually like, now that I'm thinking about it, I think it's just like a really human thing, and it's also incredibly culturally arbitrary. What is hot or not right so in this world? Yeah, I think, like an elephant, a prosthetic elephant nose, could be hot yeah, get yourself an elephant nose.
Speaker 2:You could also have a beak like. You could have so many opportunities here you can have a bottle opener a bottle opener. What else could we do?
Speaker 1:uh, a coat rack that's true.
Speaker 2:You could hang something there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you could hang it in front of your mouth yeah, but you know, maybe you don't want to breathe through your mouth.
Speaker 2:I think I would like one really great one would be like a knife, or like a sword A sword coming out of your face. Yeah, yeah, like at least you're protected from the front. It's kind of like a beak, yeah. Anywhere you go, people can't get that close to you because you have like a three foot sword sticking out of your face.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, like if you want personal space, you put a sword on. You want personal space, put a sword on your face.
Speaker 2:Or you know, maybe clown nose has become hot yeah you know classic. Yeah, or like there could be different. Like you know, it could be like a cute little pink pig nose. What about? Like a little piggy nose? What if? I'm pulling up my nose right now to look like a pig.
Speaker 1:What if, with the clown nose, you also had the seltzer bottle sprayer? So when you're going around and being like, uh-oh, don't pull onto my finger, or whatever clowns do, when they're about to spray you with seltzer, and then just a jet of seltzer comes out of your nose?
Speaker 2:That would be great. Yeah, it could be just a gag.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that would be hilarious and I would laugh. Yeah, I mean, I mostly am thinking about it as like, how could it be like a sex?
Speaker 2:adjacent tool. Yeah, and I just want to spray people with seltzer. You could definitely have a nose dildo, it's true. Yeah, they already have chin strap dildos. This is not a pg episode I've also seen forehead dildos I've seen all kinds of dildos is what I'm saying, I I think I've not tried one, but if I was going, to pick.
Speaker 1:Cover your kid's ears.
Speaker 2:I think a nose dildo could be really useful for a lot of different things.
Speaker 1:It'd also help you with that personal space problem. You know, when you get a really close face talker going on, you just slap your nose dildo on. It's like I'm going to need you to back up at least 18 inches. Oh, it's a big one. I mean, if you're going to put a dildo on your face, it might as well be big.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I guess that's true. It could be a tail. You could make your nose look like a tail, some other kind of animal.
Speaker 1:There's so much potential here for like really cool art. You know what you could have a? A chain come off of your nose and hook to your wallet hot 90s style yes, okay, I want to know what other ideas like what?
Speaker 2:what nose prosthetics would you think would be hot in the fallout world?
Speaker 1:asking for a friend, let us know, yeah, um, what did we love? What did we love about this? How did we even get onto nose implants?
Speaker 2:it was my. I was thinking about alternative beauty standards.
Speaker 1:You know, the things that we loved about this show, I think are what people loved about the Fallout universe since its creation in 1997. Around the same era, maybe a few years later than when Snoop Dogg himself had a gold nose- Still needs to be fact-checked, but yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, somebody let us know when snoop dog had a gold nose and if you remember that too what if you could have a prosthetic nose that allows you to smell like a dog level of smelling? Oh, that'd be great. Do you think he'd start sniffing everybody's butt?
Speaker 1:no, especially not in the fallout universe. Um, what we loved world building. Um, so, right away, the retrofuturism. You know a lot of people say that it's the 1950s aesthetic, like the art deco, but if you look at it it's like it's kind of like a combination of everything from the 1950s to the 1980s interesting.
Speaker 2:What parts are 1980s, because it feels so. 50s to me, the monochromatic screens.
Speaker 1:Um, I mean, that's kind of it. Anything, anything that's high tech. Not like high technology, like the robots, the mech suits all of that is like very 80s, whereas like anything that's nuclear or like suburban or fashion, it's very much 1950s yeah, they do a really good job of world building, not just with the visual sets, but like full-blown societies and like multiple different kinds of societies.
Speaker 2:You have the ghouls, you have, um, the vaulters, and then you have different vault societies and every vault is different, yeah, because they have different rules, um. And then you have the communities on the outside, yeah, the brotherhood of brotherhood of steel. You want to explain that one a little bit more?
Speaker 1:I think we talked a bit about it yeah, well, you know, this is a word that I've learned recently techno centrism, which you taught me that word. I learned it also recently and told you you know like and I think that very accurately describes Brotherhood of Steel, which is the belief that technology should be focused on and is the thing that will save us from annihilation. Like putting all your eggs in the technology basket.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and what that looks like in real time is they're willing to send out. What are the soldiers called? Again, they're just soldiers, the mech suit guys, the knights, the knights. Where they have to, they send that one knight to go get a toaster. Yeah. His life is worth a toaster and he's like he's burnt out. He's burnt out about being a knight.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he's like this wasteland fucking sucks.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and like why are you sending me out here to risk my fucking life for a toaster? He's disillusioned about the religion of technocentrism, for sure, for sure but he's, he's wrapped up in it, he's stuck yeah, whereas the guy who's his squire squire thinks that he doesn't deserve to be a knight because he's disillusioned. But I would say I think that they actually had it kind of right, even though he was also a shithead, but he wasn't wrong to be questioning the tenantsets of this society.
Speaker 1:There's so many more things for this show to explore, because the lore of the games has so many more societies, including a lot of technocentric societies, the Institute, for example. They're very much like a science, knowledge, academic society, but they're all about technology and making scientific breakthroughs. Yeah, we saw a little bit of that. We saw a little bit.
Speaker 1:There's also a society that is based around cyborgs and artificial intelligence. That's cool. Hope we get to see that next season. That would be uh. So, moving on, another thing that we loved how it pays homage to the game I would not really know that.
Speaker 2:I do think I watched an x play. I don't think it was you. I think I watched somebody play fallout. When did fallout first come out as a game? Oh, 1997 okay, yeah, then I definitely watched an x play at like, maybe like late high school or early college days and I remember thinking fallout 3, because that was like around 2006 that sounds about right.
Speaker 2:I was in the middle of university in 2006 and I cannot I think it says many times on the pod I cannot play any video games. Uh, I guess I can play tetris, if that counts, uh, only 2d games and not very 2d games and not very well, can't really play.
Speaker 2:I mean, I can play mario brothers, but not well and um, so I only watched a bit of it, but the story was really good and that's what got me to stay there. And so when you told me that this tv show is coming out, I knew what you're talking about and I had a sense of the world, but I didn't know much more.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, as far as like paying homage, like the tiny details for me were what really sent it, like right at the very beginning, you see them like doing place settings on picnic tables for like their big thing in the vault and like the flowers were in tin cans and it's like those tin cans are fucking everywhere in fallout. They could have just had a pot or whatever. They could have done anything that would have saved the show, money and time. You know they could have just gone to home depot, got a bunch of flower pots, but they're like no, you put these in tin cans because that's how they do it in the game. We have to have these tin. The colors of the vault suits have to be perfect. Everything has to be this vibrant blue and vibrant yellow and everything needs to look like something from the game.
Speaker 2:I wonder if they pick blue and yellow for people who are red green colorblind, because our dogs can see blue and yellow, fun random fact. I don't think so, probably not, but I think they pick them because they're complementary colors, can see blue and yellow fun random fact I don't think so, probably not, but I just heard my brain went.
Speaker 1:I think they picked them because they're complementary colors. Well, also that, yes, um, and they needed something to like really starkly contrast the grays and browns of the wasteland that's true.
Speaker 2:Actually, it's blue and orange that are complementary colors. I feel required. Yellow and purple are complementary colors. It's pretty close, though, yeah, um, it would have been cool if they didn't purple and yellow.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I thought was like I think that this probably went over so many people's heads, but like it's just another tiny detail about how they paint homage to the game was the first thing that lucy does when she leaves the vault is she goes and she finds a person who is struggling to make water come out of a water filter oh my god, turns out he's using sand and he doesn't realize that you have to pour water into a water filter to filter water.
Speaker 1:He thinks that he can get water out of sand, but, anyways, the first thing that you see is that she's yelling over to him, asking him um, you know, not to be afraid and that she wants to talk to him, but she's pointing a gun at him and uh, he gets scared.
Speaker 2:I think this is an important detail. He is wearing whitey tighties that are very um, possibly shit stained, but he's wearing they are stained with many, many fluids.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um and uh, and that alone, like that is how. That's how you view the world. When you're playing the game, you always have a gun in your hand. It's always in front of your face, pointing at whoever you're talking. So she comes out of the vault and the first thing she does is point a gun in somebody's face to ask them directions. And then she's like oh yeah, this is kind of silly, let me put this away.
Speaker 2:She's like I'm not going to shoot you. Yeah, I wouldn't have noticed that because I had you know I wasn't paying attention to those like and if?
Speaker 1:and if you, if you didn't see that connection, you'd be like that was a weird choice. Why did? Why did she point her gun at that guy if she wasn't going to shoot him or think that he was a threat? But it was absolutely a choice for them to be like yeah, this is how. This is how your character interacts with the world.
Speaker 2:Look how ridiculous it looks your guns out all the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you always have your gun out and people don't seem to mind when you just shove a gun in their face and you're like, you're like, I need to buy a water filter.
Speaker 2:Intriguing. Well, what's really great about that moment too? I mean I didn't notice that. It's just like the stark reality of the surface. Where she offers him a bottle of water, she thinks he's gonna take a sip. Yeah, he takes the whole thing and then she's like I needed that. It's like, yeah, well, when you're offered clean water, you take it. Later on you see her drinking irradiated water. Yeah, I don't think that's a spoiler. So spoiler yeah, uh, lucy learns the hard way how rough it is up on the surface.
Speaker 2:Um, I wanted to say we had a couple of folks reach out to us on instagram about their thoughts on the fallout. The fallout I sound like an old person the facebook, the fallout, anyhow. Um, one of our fellows on my podcast on dead symphony pod reached out and said they also thought it was really authentic to the game. All he eats brains reached out and they said that, uh, it's. They've heard people get complained about it not being authentic enough, but that they really love it. And I'm I don't know. It's one of those great ones where I'm like I don't know so I'm enjoying it.
Speaker 1:You know, I think the the biggest thing that people are complaining about I mentioned previously, which is that, uh, the the lore seems to be a little bit confused about the origin of ghouls. But I've read a lot about this and I don't exactly understand all of it because I haven't played every single fallout game. But the zombie serum does actually have canon in the story of fallout oh, in a zombie that's in that's living in the basement level of a prison, in fallout 4 I think, and he is the og ghoul from like the 1800s and he's been down there since before the war in prison and he has this whole society apparently.
Speaker 1:I've never seen it so I don't know, but apparently he was working on stuff like that and this might have connections to that specific ghoul.
Speaker 2:Oh, interesting, interesting. We'll see, I won't know. Anyways, yeah, I think it's sometimes great to be ignorant of a history of any kind of show you watch, because then you don't have those expectations.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and like I didn't mind too much. Like I, I know a little bit about ghouls, um, and I know that, like most ghouls were turned into ghouls when the bombs dropped and that the ionizing radiation from the bombs directly hitting them is what changed parts of their dna so that they don't uh, their dna doesn't break down, the same as human beings.
Speaker 2:So we're assuming that's what happened to howard cooper with what we know so far. Yeah, I think it's worth saying and you told me this that none of the characters that we meet are characters from the games.
Speaker 1:Right, it's in the same world, but different characters that you know it's possible that there might be some like, some like references or crossovers, um, but the the fallout universe is so vast that you don't you don't have to reuse characters because, like they, they just every time they want to do a new game, they pick a new, a new city.
Speaker 2:So, like, I don't know where the first two took place because I didn't play the first two, but fallout 3 takes place in washington dc, fallout 4 takes place in boston what I want to know I I don't maybe somebody out there listening knows this is we know that it's set in Los Angeles, in California, but then they go to this town called Philly it's like surface village, that's pretty fucked up and you trade bottle caps for things. I don't know why they decided bottle caps were something, but I mean, what else do they have at that point? Mean, what else do they have at that point? Yeah, uh, but I don't. I'm like philly, that's really far away, that's almost the east coast, pretty damn close.
Speaker 1:It's not the same place um, but I see the confusion yeah, I was confused you know, I think that's maybe something that they should have thought about when they were they were doing the world building, because, like, people might get confused about that if they don't understand how things work in Fallout, yeah, and then Philly as in Philadelphia could be an entirely new story. We see at the end spoiler alert not really, but we see at the end of season one of this that they are going to New Vegas, which is Las Vegas. Right, that's the next stop. So season two isn't going to be in this Los Angeles area.
Speaker 2:I hope that it's still going to be following Lucy, though I think it is, and the Brotherhood of Steel guy whose name I never remember.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because I mean it left off in a big cliffhanger about, like, where all of this is going.
Speaker 2:Like they wrap up a lot of stuff but're like all right, like basically, the ghouls just like, yeah, you want to go on an adventure, all right, let's go, yeah, without ruining it. Uh, they, they help you understand why lucy's dad was kidnapped and what was at stake, but then clearly more shit's about to go down, so you want to keep watching, so you get. I feel like it was a good balance of satisfaction that you understand a little bit more about what happened and why it's happening. Uh, with like I need to see the next season if they cancel this. They're not going to cancel it. I really no way. But then I'm like am I just in this little microcosm where everybody's obsessed with it and I don't realize that outside of my bubble nobody gives a shit?
Speaker 1:I'm worried that one of those situations with fallout, but I hope not well, fallout's also backed by bethesda money, and bethesda just has all the money to do whatever they. Oh, who's bethesda? They made the games. Oh, so, um, they made the fallout games. They also made, uh, the elder scrolls games, which includes skyrim. Skyrim is also like just a huge expansive world. Um, they've made a few other ones that I can't quite recall right now because leah mixed our rum and cokes and I think she put half a bottle of rum in mine well, you say you can't never get drunk, and sometimes I like to test that uh assertion.
Speaker 2:Let's talk more what we loved, uh, the details, without telling you anything else either. You know this moment cause you've watched her. You'll be like what the fuck? I have to watch it. There is a psychopath who, after sex, literally wipes his dick on the curtains inside of one of the vault condos.
Speaker 1:He's. We don't know he's a psychopath yet, but he's, he's definitely not acting.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's how you know who's been in a vault for her life when somebody wipes their you know messy dick off after sex on your curtains. If somebody I was with did that, that would be enough for me to be like you're definitely a psychopath. Yeah, don't do that, dan, but it's like a fun little detail. I'll just keep that a secret. What about the wedding dress, dan? What did you think about that detail?
Speaker 1:Oh, that was a cool detail and I don't know how many people caught it. When lucy gets her wedding dress in the very beginning pre-dick on the curtains, um, when, when she puts it on, uh, they, they, they sign and date the wedding dress and it looks like it has like several names and dates. Like this is a hand-me-down wedding dress. That's like gone through the generations probably 200 years, yeah and each in each person signs it and dates it, so like it has this huge uh history to it yeah, that's kind of nice, it's kind of a sweet tradition yeah in the vaults I think that's a good tradition yeah, um, the person who runs Undead Symphony Pod also said that their favorite moment um was uh, when, lucy, you can tell me this is a spoiler.
Speaker 2:You know, I'm just going to say this is probably a spoiler, so fast forward two minutes if you don't want to be spoiled. When Lucy thinks that she's being sold as a sex slave, and then it's that robot yeah, uh, that is about to harvest her organs and he's like Mr Handy. Mr Handy to harvest her organs and he's like handy, mr handy, he's like what? That's absurd and horrifying thing to say.
Speaker 1:I'm just here to harvest your organs, but never this is after he repairs her finger that was cut off. He gives her a new dead one. Yeah, which works now. Um, mr handies are often a little bit insane, oh so there's mr handies in the game yeah, like mr handy. He like like it Handy. It's a product that they sold pre-war, basically like a butler in a box. You order yourself a Mr Handy. Each one comes with their own names, like Mr Cogsworth. I forget what he.
Speaker 1:I think he had a name in that, one that they used. But they're all, like the Mr Handy brand, interesting, and they kind of can do anything they have, like circular saw blades, they have flamethrowers, they can tell you a joke, but being that it's like they've been, they're about 200 years old at this point they've been highly modified.
Speaker 1:Well, it's also like that. It's kind of like a ghost in the machine sort of situation where, uh, you know they, they were designed just to be like a general ai, so like you could just ask him to wash the dishes, or you could ask him to tell you a funny joke, or you could ask him to go answer the door or make a phone call for you. Sounds very appealing. But after 200 years, like enough. Enough time has passed for that data to become corrupted. So they have this corrupted programming in such unique and interesting ways where each one of them is insane in a different way. In this case, this medical robot is just like I'm here to help people, I'm going to help you with that finger, and then he puts your finger back and it's like wow, thanks, what do I owe you for helping me? And he's like your organs, so I can help other people, which makes complete sense to this robot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he needs parts to help other people?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and he clearly wasn't trained to understand that. Maybe Lucy needs those parts.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, also, his data has been corrupted, so he's like I need to help more people. I need more parts yeah, totally fine.
Speaker 2:Uh, I think one of the things that I love the best unsurprising, considering I suggested that we have should have dildo prosthetic noses was the like contrast of 1950s style and 1950s technology to 80s, I guess she pointed out, with people being like really comfortable with talking about sex and not being like there's like no shame about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:They're very open about it. She lives in and she's so innocent and you like attribute, then you like start to assume she's gonna have a 1950s mindset and have been taught like a very at least on the surface, right, everybody?
Speaker 1:must maintain your virginity.
Speaker 2:Yeah, maintain your virginity, or at least the appearance of your virginity, even if you're not a virgin. Uh, you have to pretend, you know, to be very, uh, ladylike. I think about my granny, who would have been like an adult mom in the 50s, and how she used to like always try and pull my skirt down to make sure it didn't show any of my knees yeah, you can't see those knees. That's what you picture lucy's gonna be like, or how she was raised.
Speaker 1:Nope, she's fucking her cousins yeah and it's fine, her cousin is upset that she's being married off to somebody from vault 32 and she's like you know, it's all. It's all fun and fun and good, but like having sex with your cousin just isn't viable.
Speaker 2:We just can't do that anymore yeah, we can't do that because we can't reproduce, basically, but it was perfectly acceptable culturally they can, but they're not supposed which, like you know what. I'm not personally interested having sex with my cousin, but my general ethos around sex is to consenting adults. It's whatever, whatever you want to do, but if you're marrying off a 14-year-old to a 40-year-old man who's also her cousin, I might have a problem with that. Yeah, that sounds like a stretch too far.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I have studied so many different cultures now and I'm not even going to say some of the things I know that different cultures do sexually. Let's different cultures now, and I'm not even going to say some of the things I know that different cultures do sexually. Let's just say it's very different than our culture. Uh, I'm not one to judge, as long as there's consent involved, which is always complicated because there's power dynamics involved, there's, you know, there's all kinds of things to consider there. But I'm just saying, like cool, lucy wants to have casual sex with her cousin in a world where she doesn't really have a lot of options, that's fine.
Speaker 2:Our western view of sexuality is not no, we have, uh, we still have such a um, we're still very puritan, even though in other ways we're not. I think overall we're a pretty prudish culture, definitely, um, and I think that's why it shows up in tv and movies and music in the way that it does, but I don't think we feel like really talking about it but honestly, like I'm still prudish, I don't want to feel really talking about it.
Speaker 2:But honestly, like I'm still prudish, I don't want to talk about sex with my family. It's 90 of the reason why I don't want them to listen to this podcast, because I'll talk about it with my friends, but like I don't want them to know about the time I talked about having a dildo nose prosthetic, I just don't because, because then that's when you get a call from your mom and she's like.
Speaker 2:I found it really interesting when you talked about the dildo yeah, and my brother has no boundaries and I have to constantly reinforce them around that. Like he wants to tell me stuff and I'm like no, jesse, like I don't want to know that you had, I don't want to know that. Like please stop, um. So I'm, I am the prude in my family, with my family, but not elsewhere. Understandable, uh, but also like I just like how casual it is where they're lucy's a lot of the times, like do you want to have sex now?
Speaker 1:yeah, she does. She does that with maximus, the uh, yeah, the, the character from the brotherhood of seal. We haven't talked about maximus, well, we kind of referred to him earlier, but uh, there's, there's a. There's a point where they're just like. They're kind of just like locked in a room and she's like, do you want to have sex? And like, and he comes from a culture that, like, they're not allowed to even talk about, or think about it think about it.
Speaker 1:They're never going to have it. You know, if you want to become a knight, you can't have sex. And he's just. And his response is like you mean, use my cock and then he's like that's dirty and disgusting.
Speaker 2:We don't do that yeah, but then.
Speaker 1:But then later, after he uh, he starts to enjoy the luxuries of vault life and he has a shower and he eats popcorn and he watches a looping video of a waterfall on TV. He's just like I had oysters and they make me feel funny. Do you want to use my cock now?
Speaker 2:Yeah, doesn't he like? He's like we want to make it big and stuff, make his stuff come out. Oh yeah, I forget how he said it.
Speaker 1:That's stuff, make his stuff come out. Oh yeah, how he said it. That's what he's afraid of is he's like, he's like, you know that thing that happens to guys, you know, like some guys not me, though where, like, it can get like really big and aggravated and then it pops, yeah, like a pimple. Yeah, he's like, yeah, that's kind of the goal.
Speaker 2:What a horrible association that I'm now gonna have with that, wow, I'm like thinking of pimples popping and yeah, okay, we're gonna change the topic because that's disgusting, um, but it's very endearing at the same time. His, his ignorance also, though I do need to point out that clearly. Uh, people in the brotherhood of steel do do that because one of the intro scenes of the brotherhood of steel some guy jacking off in the bunker that's right, not the bunker, but in the what do they call them? In the whatever, in the big building where there's a bunch of beds and people sleep together.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one of those barracks yeah, people are yeah and the people are just like walking by, sitting near the guy, whatever, and he's really going at it yeah, he's just aggressively.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so there's there's more. There's more to discover about the brotherhood of steel and their sexual practices.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I can understand. Maybe they just think of it as like a release, because it is Well. Maybe he's just popping a pimple.
Speaker 2:Now I'm starting to think about those cow hoof videos I started watching. Somebody messaged I forget who it was, but I turned somebody on Probably shouldn't have used that in this particular train of discussion, but I turned somebody that listens to us on to the hoof trimming videos that have the pus because they messaged me and I'm sorry, I forget who you were, but I'm now going to put that in your brain too. So now you can think about pimples popping and hoof pus associated with orgasm, penile orgasm. So there you go.
Speaker 1:This is the puritanical values that we're upholding. Yeah, whenever you think about sex, think about hoof trimming videos I mean that could help.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if somebody needs help to like, cool themselves off yeah, I found, maybe that's what I'll do, unless it doesn't work. I mean, I guess that could be a fetish, right? Yeah? Um, I don't, I'm not gonna fetish. Shame. If that's what you'd like, that's cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, trim those hooves Moving on.
Speaker 2:Actually, this is kind of great. The last bullet point we had around things we love was gray morality.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what about it?
Speaker 2:Which is a term you introduced me to. What is gray morality? Dan, I introduced you to it, you did. I think you didn't explain it to me. I picked it. It up via context clues yeah, so I don't know.
Speaker 1:I mean, I would consider gray morality to be when, when you're not necessarily uh, you're not, you're not necessarily concerned with being good or bad, you're not, you're not good or evil, you're neutral. So like bad things happen around you and you're just like that's, that's, that's happening to them.
Speaker 2:I think there's a lot of morally gray people on the planet. Yeah, I think most people are in the morally gray zone. Yeah, I think so too, and the reason I say that is because I think what I love this is why I like the gray morality. What I love about it is that this show really drives the point that morality and like doing quote unquote the right thing and the quote unquote moral thing is often afforded only to the very privileged people who have what they need and more to survive, are not put in positions of moral ambiguity to make these kinds of really difficult decisions. Yeah, and that's a really big theme throughout the whole show that I I just thought was really important because it makes me think about um, somebody's gonna call me a terrorist sympathizer after I say this but it makes me think about it makes me think about colonization, ongoing colonization around the world, and resistance movements and how they are often deemed terrorists and bad people, even though, quote-unquote, legitimate wars kill just as many, if not more, civilians than whoever these resistance groups kill.
Speaker 2:And again, I'm not like yay, violence here. I'm just saying that it's really easy from my comfortable position in the United States of America to be like those are terrible people. But you know, I have not had my entire family and a lot of people I know and the places I love obliterated.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, speaking of moral and maybe something that's not currently ongoing so that there aren't any direct feelings or opinions about it when I was in the Iraq war, one of the things that I had a very hard time coming to terms with after the fact was when we went in we were fighting the Iraqi Republican Guard, not Fedayeen, not Taliban name several other groups who were claimed to be there at that time. We were fighting an actual organized military, people who signed up for their military to protect their country from invaders. And you know, when we went in, we had to go in saying that's the enemy. Kill the enemy so that we can save these people from themselves.
Speaker 2:So often the narrative yes, they need saving always.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and what I realized at some point was that you know, these were just people like me. They're just doing their job, they're doing what they have to do to protect their country from me and you know like armies use moral ambiguity to kind of push people to do the things that they want them to do to achieve those military goals. And some people can just feel like they are always morally correct. They can look at things at black and white and be like those people are evil. I'm the good guy, yeah, Like Chris Kyle. If you've ever read American Sniper or seen the movie, I don't particularly care for the guy because he has that black and white mentality and I know that it's a graze and that those are people who are just doing what they think is right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's really the hard part is everybody's doing what they think is right or in a position where they feel that they don't have a choice, or literally don't have a choice if they're conscripted, or you know, I think lots of us soldiers fully opt in and lots of people who are us soldiers uh, have very few other options.
Speaker 1:Yeah, slash, no other options and then in afghanistan, uh, you know, we're fighting the taliban and al-qaeda, uh, it's the same thing. Where it's like, it's like somebody can can be like no, they're terrorists. But really, if you were standing on the other side, they're freedom fighters and they are fighting for what they believe in, and we are the invaders and the aggressors.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean unpopular opinion. To many people in the United States, the US is usually the invader and aggressor, but then we dress it up with these moral things, like in Afghanistan. The whole narrative was like we have to save women, we have to save women and they really like over, relied on the metaphor of the veil and like women are in these oppressive clothes with absolutely zero context of the culture or like why people might choose to wear those clothes or that women themselves are opting into wearing those clothes and looking at people in the West and being like wow, what an oppressed woman to be in a bikini and like have that be her value. And again, I'm not saying the Taliban was friendly to women, but it was. Let's think about. We were not. We didn't give a shit about women and their wellbeing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we didn't go in there, that's not why we went to Afghanistan. We didn't go in there to put bikinis on women.
Speaker 2:Some weirdos creepy objectifiers probably would, but like I mean if they could have put it on an enlistment poster.
Speaker 1:They would have, but that was not the stance.
Speaker 2:That was the propaganda. And in Fallout, the propaganda for the people who grow up in the vault and have never lived anywhere else is that they are the civilized ones, they have the solutions for the world and they're going to rebuild it and everybody else needs their help. Yeah, and they're going to save the world, but in reality they're the oppressive ones, slash, kind of incompetent in this world.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I love that metaphor in this show.
Speaker 1:My favorite quote and I think about this all the time, especially as I'm working with really stupid people in the hot sun, Okay Is when Lucy goes into the town Philly and she's talking to I forget her name. Is it Maude, maybe?
Speaker 2:Is it Maude? She owns a store.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and she turns to Lucy and she's like holy shit, you're a vault dweller. I thought all you fucking dipshits were dead and I've been using the word dipshit ever since. I'm like dipshit is. I'm taking that word back. That feels accurate for everyone that I'm working with.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean go back and watch or listen to the zombiecosis episode. I think we talked about this a little bit. But people in Western civilization who are doing relatively okay, I think are just really super domesticated animals and the reality is we have zero survival skills and are not resilient at all. Yeah, uh, I shouldn't say at all, that's a little bit of a reduction here, but when?
Speaker 2:it comes to actual survival, like we really have been taught. I mean, I know that I grew up watching those stupid world vision commercials where I swear they paid for that fly to go buzz in a little kid's eye, who's, of course, starving and they never shot that fly they never showed adults, it was only kids.
Speaker 2:So we're infantilizing other countries and being like for two cents a day you can save this child's life and, like I grew up on that, thinking like, oh, that's, you know, white, basically white saviorism. I didn't have a word for it but I was like, look, canadian, canadians are awesome and we can go and save everybody. Yeah, we can save them I was basically lucy, yeah, um, until I.
Speaker 2:I wasn't gonna tell this till later, but I'll tell it now. I was basically lucy until I went to jamaica on a quote-unquote volunteer awareness trip when I was 18 I was still in school um, so I give myself some grace for being ignorant, but still really cringy to me, because I went and I volunteered in an orphanage for one week and I volunteered at an old age home for another week in Kingston, jamaica, and they call it an awareness trip, which I think is like one step up from like a mission trip or a volunteer trip where you you are like 100 percent told that you're there because you're saving people and helping them. It was definitely framed for us like you're going to learn about the culture of Jamaica and provide service. But I was absolutely Lucy, because I thought like here here I am, I'm doing such a good thing, I'm spending time with all these poor little orphans in jamaica, and this one 12 year old kid ricardo lives.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm gonna change their lives, you know, and also you're saved, basically not religiously, but I think like speaking of uh, it is almost like a religion the cult of quote-unquote civilization. I'm like I'm gonna make your life better, ricardo, even though I've known you for three days and I was so upset because the nuns that ran the place were like you cannot hug these kids, don't tell them you love them, like, don't do that. And I was like that's so cruel, that's so cruel. And I didn't get it till this 12 year old kid and I'm sorry, dan, that you've heard this a million times, but the listeners have it well, I have a terrible memory, so every time you tell me it's like the first time, oh great, well, uh, ricardo was throwing rocks at some other kids under a man.
Speaker 2:Hell yeah, love ricardo uh, yeah, I don't know why, because, honestly, like, even though we all spoke english english, uh, they also spoke patois and I, you know, I don't think we can understand each other very well half the time. And I was trying to get him to stop and he just looked at me and he was. I don't think he said fuck off, but he essentially said, like you have no power over me and you're just another white person like this. He did say that you're another white person who's here for a week and you're gonna tell me you love me. I mean, you're gonna write me letters, but you're gonna be gone. There'll be somebody else like you next week.
Speaker 2:So, like, fuck off, it's a 12 year old orphan, um, and I think about him all the time because he would now be in his mid-20s, probably somewhere in there mid to late, mid to late 20s, um, and I just think like, wow, it took me probably scarring some kids with my really ignorant, lucy-like presence, for me to realize how fucked up it was that I was there in the first place and, like all of the global dynamics that were created where me, my little vault dweller life, a very insulated privilege thought that I had anything to offer to these kids, which I really didn't because I didn't know shit. So, yeah, I like Fallout because I think it makes those moral quandaries clear. I don't know if everybody extends it to the rest of the world in the way that I do, but I would encourage you to think about it.
Speaker 1:I don't think that we're that far off. Vault dwellers are middle class white americans, and you know what I love about fallout is is uh to take it back to the games a bit is that like you, they? They lay out these moral quandaries for you when you're making these decisions and they allow you you to make choices, and you can make a choice that might be the correct choice or the choice that feels correct, or you can also just choose to do the evil thing. If you just want to go down a path of destruction, you have that as an option too.
Speaker 2:That's true. I was also thinking for you. You were talking about your time in the army and that I'm like Lucy from going to Jamaica as a Canadian. But you said to me once when you were talking about this that you were kind of like Maximus from the Brotherhood of Steel going into the army and like thinking that also, you're like there to save the world and you liken the army to a cult you want to say more about that oh, you know what a good book to read about?
Speaker 1:this is Uncultured by somebody. I can't remember Danielle Young, that's it. But yeah, she is now an expert on cults.
Speaker 1:She also was in the army and there's a lot of crossover between how cults control people and how the army indoctrinates recruits in order for them to be functional members of their system. I can't list them right now, they're not fresh in my brain, but yeah, the army is very cult-like. There's a lot of manipulation, both psychological and emotional and physical, that they do to make you compliant and to make you a productive soldier. Yeah, and if you don't understand why the army would do these things, ask yourself why doesn't the army just hire people, put out a job notice, be like hey, do you want to come be a soldier? If you meet these requirements, we'll give you a gun and you just go. They have to indoctrinate people from the very beginning. They have to strip away everything that you are.
Speaker 2:When you're young. You're not even really a full-fledged adult yet at 18.
Speaker 1:They have to fully strip you away Everything that makes you you and rebuild you the way that they want. Yes, and I don't think I did that well, that's probably why I wasn't a career soldier.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I knew a lot of career soldiers from my old job where I was working on that veteran suicide study, and I don't want to say they're indoctrinated. I feel bad saying that somehow, but I you have to be though. Yeah, you have to be. I mean, we're okay. Let's take it a step back. We are all culturally indoctrinated, or it's called inculturated into whatever culture that we're a part of. It's just that the army, um, I think, feels a little bit more culty and it's exclusive, like. It's like inviting, but also really exclusive, and gives you this, um, like, you get a set of privileges if you stay right. Well, I don't know, don't know, I'm thinking about that. I'm like nope, all of that's correct if you choose to continue to opt into capitalism in North America. So I don't know what makes it different, dan.
Speaker 1:The way that cults make people become a part of them and controls them are very effective tactics, and these can be reused outside of a cult to manipulate people into doing the things that you want them to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I want to read this book now, to read what the specific things are about a cult, because I think that a lot of cultures have. Mostly the one that I'm a part of has a lot of fucked up. Shit that I was indoctrinated into and only later did I realize was messed up.
Speaker 1:But anyways, yeah, I think it's an accurate thing to say that I was the Brotherhood of Steel. I was out there looking for an adventure. I wanted to climb the ranks and get my T-60 armor.
Speaker 2:Be an army of one.
Speaker 1:And I wanted to make my cock explode.
Speaker 2:But not in the bad way, where you lose it. Right, I wanted to be like the guy the pimple popping way.
Speaker 1:I wanted to be the guy in the barracks. Oh, that's just hammering away. I did not know that. I mean, that was me.
Speaker 2:You were hammering away in the barracks Just hammering away, but we also had walls In front of everybody. No, oh, okay, we had walls. Okay, I'm glad it was at least private. But you know what?
Speaker 1:again culturally could be acceptable somewhere else to do it. And also the best place was the shower at the gym in camp doha, kuwait. And uh, and when I shared this information with somebody else, a colonel that was sitting behind me turned around he said that's fucking disgusting. I'm like I probably shouldn't say that out loud probably not.
Speaker 2:Did you ever think how many, how many say it?
Speaker 1:as a joke, like I was going to like, like, make everybody's eyes wide at the table by saying something ridiculous, and then it turns out there was a colonel sitting behind me. Uh, probably never showered at the gym ever again.
Speaker 2:I was going to say like it makes me think. When I was in my college dorm first year, it was a unisex dorm so any gender could go in there, which I thought was quite progressive for 2003. But anyways, always the shower smells like pee. And now I wonder if other stuff was happening in there, and I'm really glad that I wore flip flops.
Speaker 1:Yeah, did you wear flip flops? Yeah, you have to. There is a showering uniform and it involves flip-flops.
Speaker 2:What else is there? What else do you have to wear?
Speaker 1:Oh, outside of the showers you have to wear your PT clothes, so shorts, army shirt and flip-flops.
Speaker 2:Why can't you just put on your other clothes?
Speaker 1:That's not allowed. Wow, that's not uniform. These are the questions, but the most important part is the flip-flops, because you could easily get plantar warts or ringworm or other types of fungus Because other people have this stuff Standing around in a wet shower, but also you're not dipping your toes in somebody else's pimple popping. Right, you keep your toes out of people's pimples.
Speaker 2:Oh God, you keep your toes out of people's pimples, oh god, okay, I think this is great, because I already don't love this conversation, um to talk about what we didn't love. What did you not love about fallout?
Speaker 1:oh, what I didn't love about fallout yeah god, you know I don't. I don't love that. Um, it seemed to almost retcon a little bit of the ghoul lore without explaining why. I do think that there's a connection of lore, like we talked about before, but I wish that they'd given us a little bit of clarity as to how Walton Goggins became a ghoul, how ghouls work. The biggest question that people have is what the fuck is that yellow fluid? Because that doesn't exist in the game.
Speaker 2:I didn't know that, yeah.
Speaker 1:A lot of people are like it's obviously Radaway, but Radaway comes in a bag and has to be injected, and we see it in other scenes in the show and it seems to be common enough that Maximus just has some and you can just buy it or find it some. Um, and you can just buy it or find it, but in the games, um, radiation levels are, uh, are something that does control whether or not a ghoul becomes feral or not, as I understand, because the way that ghouls work is that their cells no longer require external sustenance like food and they are able to metabolize ionizing radiation. Oh, so they can, they can, they can control the amount of ionizing radiation using radaway. Understand, interesting, and they didn't just outright call it radaway, it's this other mysterious liquid. And then there's the stuff that the snake oil salesman has that turns somebody into him yeah, fixes you.
Speaker 1:Fixes whatever is ailing you in the moment, but long-term mega side effects which will also a metaphor for a lot of our pharmaceuticals um, and you know those, those things, while they don't right away retcon things, it has the potential to, and I think that that would drive some people away because, like, the lore of fallout is something that people like hold very, can you explain retcon? Uh, retcon is when they introduce new information that negates old invasion. Oh, so, like, if you, if you're like the sky is blue because of levels of nitrogen in the atmosphere, and then somebody came along and rewrote it and they were like, actually it's blue because the sky is made of eggshells from Robbins.
Speaker 2:That's a nice, I like that, I like that, and now that's canon.
Speaker 1:And we're like well, what about all this lore that we had about nitrogen bending light in certain ways? Now that doesn't make sense anymore, because it's all eggshells now.
Speaker 2:Got it Okay in certain ways. Now that doesn't make sense anymore because it's all eggshells now got it okay. So you're not a fan of that. I know you're also not a fan of the plot hole around the armor oh, let me tell you about the armor.
Speaker 1:So there's a big fight between the ghoul, walton goggins and maximus in a titan battle suit, a t60, um, they uh. So this fight between the ghoul and maximus, they uh the ghoul shooting at him for minutes because you know he's fucking bulletproof. There's and there's a big fight and it's all about like, the ghoul's wits versus maximus's indestructibility, and maximus ends up losing that fight, which is pretty amazing. He does tell them. He does tell him. In that moment the ghoul tells him to read the fucking manual and then cuts a hydraulic line on him and goes flying off into the sky.
Speaker 1:So that's a little bit related to what happens later on, where he has this big monologue with a bunch of power armor soldiers and he reveals that there is a kink in the armor Just one, and it's this place right under the main breastplate that has no armor, that if you shoot him the bullet goes right through no problem and he takes out like five or six mechs that way. And how come he didn't just shoot Maximus in that one spot and completely fuck up the entire storyline because he had plot armor on top of his power armor these are the things I wouldn't notice.
Speaker 2:This is like your uncle gramming me moment where I would have been like this is fine yeah until you're like, no, actually this should have happened here and here and here, and I'm like, damn it, dan you're in my good time.
Speaker 1:They wanted a big climax at the end where the ghoul was capable of taking down multiple power armors and completely crippling the Brotherhood of Steel all by himself. So they introduced a weakness in the armor that he knew about the entire time but didn't take advantage of in his fight versus Maximus Got it Despite being on the ropes with him.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but that was like one of very few problems I had with it. It really kept my attention span. Like my attention span test is high, I was pretty much in the whole time. Watched it twice. You know, if I watched it twice, I really loved it.
Speaker 1:If she watches it twice, it's really nice.
Speaker 2:Because there's lots of things you want me to watch more than like. No, I'm done.
Speaker 1:We watched Night of the Living Dead twice in a row, yeah.
Speaker 2:I loved it. Yeah, it was great. I'll be honest, if we were making a podcast about it, I'm not sure if I would have immediately like watch it again, but I would have been up for watching it again in the future at some point. But we had watched it and then many weeks went by and we were like we need to have an episode about this. And then I was like, uh-oh I don't remember anything that happened because that's my brain works. Uh-oh, let's talk about a couple of themes and then let's get into the racist, misogynist, sexist, um, capitalist, hegemony of the living dead, which I don't remember what the order is, but basically those things.
Speaker 2:Ableist also, um, we've talked about a lot of them already, but the one that I think is really interesting and honestly it's the one of the ones that keeps me up at night as a human being is that a lot of people in this universe think they know what the right way is and the best way is, and they're 100% convinced that nobody else is right, yeah, and is dangerous, and especially those with power, because they use the vaults as these like social experiments where everybody, some rich person, is like this is my vault and I'm going to try this kind of society. In it they're literally just experimenting with people to see what society actually succeeds. That's part of the purpose of the vaults and it feels a lot like our reality right now. Like a lot of the time I'm like, okay, I have these really strong, well-developed values and belief systems in what I think is a good world. But I know that, equally, karen in her MAGA hat also has extremely strong, deeply held values and I start to be like, oh my God, what's real, you know?
Speaker 1:the conclusion that I came to with that example at least, is that you and I think about how there's a possibility that we might be wrong. Karen in her MAGA hat does not.
Speaker 2:Do we know that she doesn't? I do Interesting you know why? Why?
Speaker 1:Because I thought so.
Speaker 2:I spent a lot of time with Karens in the South. I spent a lot of time with students who were coming from that kind of political perspective and what I found was exactly the crux of the show is that most people really do want to save the world. They want the world to be a better place. They just have radically different ideas of what that looks like, and obviously I'm still firm in mine, which is basically like don't hurt people and also we're all interconnected and that if we take care of each other, overall the world will be better. And I don't have to have everything myself for the world to be a good place.
Speaker 2:I think it should be simple, but I know that people have very different answers to how to save the world and it's like how do we get on the same page? But in this case, I think what shows us is like when people with a lot of power think they know how to save the world, which we're definitely in in our political world and with the rise of corporations as basically the real powers in the world, their morality and their sense of what the world should look like is what we are living in. So that's depressing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I recently saw a thing I think it was on the Daily Show and it was about fake corporate morality, specifically around pride and how, like you know, this pride is brought to you by Skittles and, like Skittles literally made a version of Skittles that has no colors because they're like, because they don't want it to be confused with a different kind of rainbow.
Speaker 2:You're fucking me with me right now.
Speaker 1:No, that's real. That was. That was how they're supporting. Showing their support for pride is we're making colorless Skittles.
Speaker 2:What a bizarre thought process. Yeah, and a lot of those places like I mean, I don't have a target near me, so I don't know that this is like what this looks like. But I have read recently like target used to be the kind of place where, in pride month, you'd be able to go and get like lots of really cool merchandise, and they've pulled back from that because some of their customers make a really really really big deal about it in the opposite way. And, um, you know it's fickle, they're not.
Speaker 1:They're not doing any of that because they give a shit about anybody but their bottom line yeah, and that's that's the truth of it In this world that we find ourselves in, and also in Fallout, the fake corporate morality. Maybe it's important that we cultivate the fake corporate morality, because that's the only control that we have over the world that we're in. If Pepsi has a fake morality around whether or not human beings should be treated as equals, that's the only thing that we have to make sure that the government stays in line to make sure that people remain equals, because if not, pepsi will pull out, because they're worried about the public backlash of supporting something that goes against their fake morality.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, I don't remember what the law was. I think it was an anti-trans law in Georgia and a lot of companies threatened to pull out of Georgia if the governor signed it into law. Yeah, and so that does happen. But I don't want to rely on corporations for morality, because there's a really excellent documentary. It's old now but if you've not watched it I recommend it. It's called the Corporation and its thesis is that corporations are psychopaths Because corporations gain the legal right of personhood I forget what year they did that, it was a long time ago now and when they gain the legal right of personhood, then we should perceive them as a person and they literally, if you look at the diagnostics of what it takes to be a psychopath, the corporation hits every single fucking one, and that's who's in control of our society and that's who's in control of the fallout universe as well.
Speaker 2:So I don't. I would like to say like, yes, we can use corporations, uh, to a certain degree, but I don't think that that's the real solution, I think we need to gather together as a populace with some pitchforks um and french revolution, this shit I think that's the best solution uh-huh, yeah, no, I'm with the french french revolution.
Speaker 1:Yeah, off with their heads. There's, um, there's a youtube channel. It's called the guillotine channel. Yeah, it's uh by the people who have, uh who run corridor digital. They wanted to make extra beer money to party at the end of the week, so they made a youtube channel around cutting things with a guillotine, wow, uh. So uh, check out the guillotine channel on how to make a guillotine and let's all meet up and uh find elon, we'll do the french revolution yeah, we can eat the rich.
Speaker 2:Uh, definitely check out our episode on billionaire bunkers. We talk a lot.
Speaker 1:We have actually an excellent barbecue recipe for eating um billionaire fingers yeah, let's quickly do the racist capitalist misogyny, ableism of the living dead, because I think we can just blast through these.
Speaker 2:I think we can, and it's become a part of our podcast. I think, like, at this point, most of our listeners know what these are, so I'm not going to describe them in any great detail. Race test Definitely. Diversity of race yeah, pass, yeah. Meaningful colors of different meaningful colors haha.
Speaker 1:Meaningful characters cancel Leah she's doing a Skittles on us hey, you know I'm white.
Speaker 2:I'm working on not being an asshole all the time anyways. Meaningful characters of color that are not just there to like, move the plot forward and have no depth to them. So there's that definitely passes. Fry's of color that are not just there to like, move the plot forward and have no depth to them. So there's, that definitely passes. Um fries test is the ableist test, which is like are there any? People with no it's the last name.
Speaker 2:Are there any people with disabilities that are main characters or, like you know, important characters again that don't have? Uh, aren't there just to be, like, stared at because they are disabled and it also passes yeah, a few times there's.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of dismembered people. Yeah, um and uh, ghouls. I don't know where we land on ghouls, but I'm gonna say that they are disabled humans because, um, their skin is rotting off for one.
Speaker 2:They're not treated equally in society because of their appearance yeah and also, if they don't take medication, they turn into a flesh-eating monster yeah, I think ghouls are definitely disabled, then they deserve care instead of ostracization community care. Also, there's the person with one eye who is the leader of another vault. Um, I would argue one eye is a disability. There's a person with a nose on their forehead.
Speaker 1:Well, they're a cyclops.
Speaker 2:A cyclops, but I mean, you know what I'm making an assumption Maybe being a cyclops has some benefits, I don't know about.
Speaker 1:But there's also a lot of people with noses on their forehead.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and there's people missing limbs, getting limbs replaced. Even Lucy would be disabled until she got her finger back, or a finger, yeah, she was fingerless for a while.
Speaker 1:There's also the uh, the doctor at the very beginning who gets his foot blasted off by the ghoul yep and he has to get a prosthetic put on with this really weird flesh grinding stump mechanism.
Speaker 2:Oh, that was gross so so gory uh, but yeah, I think in general like disability I think maximus is probably suffering from a long list of concussions yes, all he does is get possibly his ass kicked in that show possibly a learning disability yeah, you know his logic's a little bit.
Speaker 1:Some, some, uh some people are trying to figure out like what, um, what perks each character has, and they're like everybody's talking about how maximus has the idiot savant perk, but nobody's talking about how he has level three pain train, and pain train is a perk that you have, so that when you're running you do extra damage to people when wearing a power armor suit and while he's going bananas and in one of the vaults with a with a power armor suit, he's like hitting people who go flying like 20 30 feet in the air. That's a nice skill. So he's got level three pain train and idiot savant perks possibly.
Speaker 2:Yes, um vito russo test. This is the test about the representation of queer folks and trans folks. Solid, no, there's a cute little love story.
Speaker 1:Who's who is trans or gay in this there is queer an ambiguously gendered person in the brotherhood of steel that's true.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I forgot about them. Yeah, wow, okay, taking it back, we get a pass for that as well. At least one, yeah, there's. I mean that's that we always want to remind folks. These are basement floor tests, but they do at least give us a sense of whether or not this is being thought about. And last but not least, the Bechdel test. Were two women talking to each other at any point in this series about something other than a man? Let me think yes. What are some examples?
Speaker 1:Well, Lucy talks to a lot of women.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:She talks to Moldaver, who is the commander of the new republic also known as the raider yeah, well, I think she hired the raiders no, she's maldaver.
Speaker 2:Is there kidnapping her dad?
Speaker 1:no, no, I mean like she's the leader of the new california republic. I think she hired raiders to help her got it okay, take over, okay. I think I think they were outsourcing interesting. Uh, yeah, at various points she talks to uh, I forget what's her, what her name is, at the uh the shop ma's curiosities is it ma's curiosity?
Speaker 2:I thought that's the shop. The shop's name is like ma's curiosity, but I don't know what it was like some kind of sundries I don't know, um also in that shop.
Speaker 1:They didn't really flesh it out, but uh, ma, who runs the shop um also, is sharing the space with that's true, they talk to each other they seem to have like a like, a like a long-term relationship of some sort, but they could just be friends or they could be um co cohabitating partners.
Speaker 2:Yeah and what I you know, I think that's, I think that's pretty good, so do they pass all of them? Yeah, they're a four out of four.
Speaker 1:Race test four hours test and bechtel test pass we finally did it.
Speaker 2:I think there's been maybe one other. I'll have to go back and look, but that is impressive way to go fallout. Keep going. You could do better, but this is you know. Yeah, do better fall. You're gonna get an a for effort from me for this, because there seems to be some intentionality here. That's nice. Yeah, we need a little bit more in the vito russo air. Always yeah, um, but you know, if you're craving that, just go read the z word.
Speaker 1:So good, yeah read the z word.
Speaker 2:It's great uh, completely random, but just go read it. I think you know. What's interesting after talking about this for I'm guessing an hour now or so um, is that there is so much that happens in this series and we're really touching like high points and why I think it's worth watching yeah um, we didn't talk at all about lucy's brother and that plot line, which is fascinating about him well, we shouldn't get into it, because that's definitely a plot um, what's the word?
Speaker 2:we're looking for Spoiler, but there's so much happening in this world beyond the things that we talked about. If you've not watched Fallout and you're not typically somebody who would watch a lot of Fallout I highly recommend. I would say that episode one I loved. Episode two was a little campy and I wasn't sure, but I thought I'm going to give this a try and then I was hooked and so I would give it a solid five. No, are we doing 10 zeds? Now? I forget. I am Okay, I'm giving it 10 zeds, it's a 10 for me, god, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm also going to give it 10 zeds.
Speaker 2:I just am, I don't have a reason why I just really liked it. I think that's all I mean. What is the Zeds other than our arbitrary feelings about something?
Speaker 1:There was definitely a point, like right before episode three, that I was really worried that it was going to be bad. It was Maximus and Lucy's meet cute. I'm like, oh, this is corny.
Speaker 2:That was corny and the intro to the ghoul was a little corny. But then I was like, okay, this is kind of the style of the show, yeah and once I accepted that yeah, I enjoy. I couldn't. I can get into camp. There's a fine line between camp and corn. I mean, look, okay, are my zombie cartoons camp or corn? I think they're campy. I think they're camp, yeah, but see like somebody might find them corny. Everybody's taste is different. Yeah, but also I like corn. I love corn it's so delicious.
Speaker 2:Can we eat corn tonight? Um, we don't. I we could if we wanted to eat tortilla chips. Okay, we have that kind of corn. We also have frozen corn, I think, my favorite. I think we have frozen mixed vegetables. So that's about all the corn you're gonna get, um, except for my corny jokes there you go everybody you know what we're gonna eat for dinner now mixed everybody.
Speaker 1:You know what we're going to eat for dinner now Mixed vegetables. And that's what we all came to find out.
Speaker 2:I'll post about it on Facebook, so everybody knows.
Speaker 1:Everybody. You know what? Remember that this is a book club. It is a book club. This might not have been a book, but we're a book club. We read books. The book that we're reading for episode 55 that we're going to discuss is the Remaining by DJ Mole. Yeah, it's about a guy named Lee Harden. He's in the army and he's part of this program to survive any type of world-ending event and then help to rebuild society after it. Just so happens, he's down in his vault. Uh, speaking of a vault, he's in a vault, he goes into a vault, he's a vault dweller, oh, wow and uh and all connected. And when he's, when he comes out, a month later, um, zombies have completely destroyed all of civilization and he now has to rebuild society and find survivors and help them survive.
Speaker 2:I have not started reading the remaining. I did download it on audible because I was too busy reading the Z word, but I will. I will refocus on the remaining because I am excited to read it, cause I know that when you read it you were like, oh my gosh, this guy is writing like the kind of book that I want to be reading. Yeah, I very much, so I'm looking forward to like getting a little bit of a sense of what you really love from a zombie book.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and also like my, my. My feeling is that the the first book is good. The rest of the series is fucking fantastic.
Speaker 2:And there's so much more there. I think Abe is the latest book that DJ Mollies came out with Abe Daraby yeah, with abe daraby. Yeah, there's so much um into this world. It looks like it could be an endless exciting read. We already know ollie at this point has to have consumed all of it.
Speaker 1:But we don't know that whole book.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I really hope you had some hot sauce with that. Yeah, put some hot sauce let us know anybody else if you're reading it.
Speaker 2:Would love to hear from you, love to hear your thinking so far, um, if you let us know what you think, pretty soon we could potentially include it in an episode, but for now, this is episode 49,. Dan, this is this is episode 49. Whoa, which means add a one. Let's do some math One plus 49. 491? 50. 50? Our little baby's 50. What are we doing for that? It's going to be an extra fun one. We're not doing a deep retrospective because, I'll be honest, that's not my favorite kind of podcast. Like whenever there's anniversary podcasts and um, they're talking a bunch about like old episodes and like rehashing clips. Don't really love that, um, personally. So we're gonna just, um, have some fun. We're gonna have a surprise commercial, possibly some songs.
Speaker 1:We're going to do some interesting songs.
Speaker 2:Possibly, possibly, possibly. I'm not committing yet. We might talk a little bit about past episodes. We'll talk about where we're going to go next. If you want to send in something hilarious, weird, random, what you love about Zombie Book Club, you can email us at zombiebookclubpodcast club podcast at gmailcom. You can call us at 614-699-0006. You better do it quick, yeah, uh, actually you know what?
Speaker 1:scratch that it's too late because we have to record it next weekend. You're hearing this now.
Speaker 2:It's too late well, you still could. I don't mind hearing it. Um, we did get called pretentious on youtube yeah, we did it so you know, you could, you could tell us. You could tell us why we're pretentious yeah, also tell us, what pretentious means yes, I did have to look it up, which I think makes me not pretentious.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know so uh, but anyhow it's gonna be a fun one. We're gonna be doing the giveaway for the evil magic chicken zombie t-shirt, so I'm gonna put all of the phone numbers and emails into a random drawer and somebody's gonna get one in the next episode, episode 50, it's happening.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're gonna have a party y'all. Yeah, um, so come for that, it's gonna be fun. I'm extra excited about this commercial that Dan has been procrastinating finishing making a commercial. You are. I've been telling you multiple times but he keeps forgetting. Whoops, we recorded it already. You just got to rerecord your part, oh shit, oh man, remember, eric was involved.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yes, we'll see.
Speaker 2:Yeah, dan's ADHD and work took over, I think. But we're going to make that happen because it's awesome and who knows what else will be in episode 50? I had a bunch of ideas but I forget them now. Yeah, who knows, we'll record that next week, maybe tomorrow even.
Speaker 1:I don't know what's happening. That's next week's problem.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all kinds of things that could happen between now and Also. Last but not least, if you are an author or you're just somebody who really wants to talk about a particular subject about zombies, on Zombie Book Club podcast, you can call us again at 614-699-0006 and give us your elevator pitch. Tell us about your book or about what you want to talk about.
Speaker 1:Tell us about who you are too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and who you are. I always love just listening to people.
Speaker 1:You've got three minutes, so it's a long elevator.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you could do less, though we like short it's one of those off-brand elevators, not an otis elevator. It is the elevator from my college dorm.
Speaker 1:It's very slow and often breaks if it's not an otis brand elevator, I don't get it. What's otis brand? It's, it's the best brand of elevator. I did not not know that. Yeah, it is the original.
Speaker 2:We clearly need a sponsorship from Otis.
Speaker 1:Otis elevators. It's brought to you by Otis elevators.
Speaker 2:But regardless, yes, leave us a message. I'd love it Like, think of it like an elevator, keep it short, Keep it clippy, and we will. If we can, we will try and plug it into some of our future segments. It might take a while, depending on how many we get, so be patient and maybe, if we have the opportunity to, we could actually have you on the pod again. I just want to remind folks we are full time working people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, with other obligations.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so if it takes us a while to get back to you, if it takes us a while to schedule something, please know it's not you, we're just shuffling zombies. Yeah, we're slow, we're slow. I really love. I love when people reach out like it's honestly my favorite thing really great, because so happy that we're building a community yeah, otherwise like talking to the void.
Speaker 2:But then I feel really bad because I don't have the time to respond in the way that I'd like to, as quickly as I would. And let's be clear, it's not hundreds of people reaching out to us constantly, it's just that we're slow.
Speaker 1:I mean it's still a fair amount.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and we love it. Don't stop, you make my day, even if sometimes I read it I don't get a chance to respond. Just know that we really appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we love hearing. We love you. Yeah, thanks for listening. Follow us on Instagram and threads yeah, where you can also send us things and subscribe. Rate, review. That helps us. That's help for us. It is, and you know you could just buy a t-shirt if you wanted. Yeah, there's a link tree in the description. It has everything.
Speaker 2:That was in my plan. There's going to be new shirts. Dan also doesn't know this.
Speaker 1:I don't know anything. Thanks for listening everyone.
Speaker 2:Bye y'all.