Dr. Vellasic’s Pickle Jar Of Doom
| Dr. Vellasic’s Pickle Jar Of Doom | |
| Number | 31 |
| Broadcast Date | February 25, 2011 |
| Episode Length | 1:25:33 |
| Hosts | Andrew Mayne, Brian Brushwood, Justin Robert Young |
The gang debuts the brand new Podcastr webapp for listening to the show. Brian debates the thought process of Ronald Reagan as he confesses his alien invasion fears to Mikhail Gorbachev. Adventure scientists Dr. Herb Vellasic and Viederman try to crack the case of the frog plague. Andrew, for one, welcomes our new robot overlords in the wake of Watson pwning the Jeopardy! champions.
Contents
Podcastr
Justin, Andrew and the Dark Wizard, Dan Dirks, created a cloud based podcast client that will sync your podcasts between your desktop and iOS devices. Go to Podcastr.com/WeirdThings to check it out.
Space is NOT Cancelled
On the day of recording, the Space Shuttle Discovery took its last planned flight into space. While we are nearing the end of an era in space travel, Justin points out that obviously we are still going to be going into space after this. They then go into a long discussion on what they want the future of space travel to be like. Andrew argues that having governments in charge of space travel makes things very inefficient, in some cases spending billions of dollars on the Orion capsules that won’t even be used.
Ronald Reagan: UFO Hunter
When Reagan was still the governor of California, he was in a plane and saw a mysterious object in the air somewhere around Bakersfield which lead him to believe that aliens had visited Earth. Years later when he was President, in a meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev, Reagan asked if he would come to the United States’ defence if they were attacked by alien invaders, to which Gorbachev responded “Absolutely”. This single moment is believed to have bridged the gap between the two superpowers and ended the Cold War.
It is worth noting that if Brian were in Reagan’s position, he would have downplayed what he thought he saw and wouldn’t have made a big deal about it. If he had been President, the Cold War may still being going on to this day.
Dr. Vellasic’s Pickle Jar Of Doom
There’s another great mystery that needs to be solve, but unfortunately, Spiro and The Fudge can’t make it. Luckily Dr. Herb Vellasic (not like the pickle, don’t ask) and his sidekick, Viederman are on the case.
So Andrew calls Herb and Viederman into his office to tell them that the frog population is declining all around the world and they are not sure why. They head out to the Appalachian mountains to do some tests on their habitat. There isn’t much out of the ordinary, but when they get back to the lab there are some traces of pollutants in the water. They go to South America and Europe to do the same tests and they find the same toxins in the water.
They get back to Andrew’s office to discuss this mystery. Many people see the pollutants in the water and immediately believe that humans are to blame, however there is another theory out there. In the past 50 years, the number of scientists studying frogs has gone way up. Some believe that the scientists (specifically one guy named Steve who doesn’t shower as often as he should) are accidentally spreading a fungus to all of the frog populations that they study.
Watson Destroys Humanity
Unless you are a total idiot, you know that IBM’s supercomputer, Watson, went on Jeopardy recently and absolutely dominated. This is a huge leap in that finally we have made a computer that can understand the context of a query and spit out the correct answer.
While all of this is amazing, Brian still isn’t satisfied since Watson has a huge advantage in reaction time, making it nearly impossible for humans to buzz in first. This leads to a pretty large argument between Brian and Andrew.
Book Club
Justin
- Judas Unchained
Brian
- The Hunger Games
Andrew
- The Right Stuff
Great Quotes
Sponsors
Links
| Preceded by: "Dead Shwood, Live Hitler" |
Dr. Vellasic’s Pickle Jar Of Doom |
Followed by: "Weird Things All Together" |