What If The Andromedans Are Jerks?

	What If The Andromedans Are Jerks?
Number	23
Broadcast Date	November 19, 2010
Episode Length	1:10:53
Hosts	Andrew Mayne, Brian Brushwood, Justin Robert Young

What If The Andromedans Are Jerks? is the twenty-third episode of the Weird Things Podcast. Andrew invents a new form of binding legal document that could save your life should you be infected with a rage virus. Brian is faced with his darkest choice yet as his wife and children hang in the balance. Will he reverse the zombie apocalypse by making the most intimate sacrifice in human history? Justin is convinced the gang can get into space mining by crashing a few influential parties and charming those in the know.

This week Andrew is out on the west coast, also known as, the land of lower audio quality. While there, he was with a friend, looking out over the ocean when they spotted something that seemed to be hovering in the sky. After a few minutes the object is still there, and neither of them know what it is that they see. After a quick check on his astronomy app, Andrew determines that it is not a celestial body. After about another five minutes of watching, the object continued to get brighter and brighter. Luckily it was not an Earth destroying fireball. But finally, Andrew found out what it was, it was an air plane coming directly at them, until a few miles out, it changed direction to land at LAX. Just days later in the same area, a mysterious "missile" was spotted of unknown origin. The leading theory behind the missile is an airplane flying at an angle that made it look like it was going straight up.

While discussing more UFOs, Andrew mentions a new propulsion technology that could go Mach 15. Once Brian could pick his jaw up off the floor, Andrew corrected himself, saying that it could go Mach 20, or about 15,000 mph. This means that any point on Earth is no more than 1 hour away. This lead to a discussion about all sorts of new military weaponry like the free electron laser, which is basically your classic death ray. This all just proves that we are so screwed when WWIII comes around.

Zombie Family

Now, the hit AMC zombie survival show, "The Walking Dead", makes another appearance. Andrew has another scenario for Justin and Brian in the zombie apocalypse. The scenario goes to Justin first: What would he do if he came across his mother, who had been turned into a zombie. Would he lock her up, or kill her? After some contemplation Justin decides that he must protect the living humans from their zombified counter-parts and that he must kill his mother. Brian however, isn't man enough to shoot his mother in the face, so he would lock her up in her house to keep her safe from other humans and to keep other humans safe from her.

In a totally expected turn, the discussion turns to whether or not Brian would kill his wife, Bonnie, who was turned into a zombie. Immediately Brian says that there is no way he could put a bullet in his wife's head, however Justin makes it mush more interesting. Justin asks what Brian would do if Bonnie had turned one of their children into a zombie. Finally this is enough reason for Brian to murder his wife, however he later says that he would rather leave them "alive" and just take off with his one remaining child.

Now, just when you think things couldn't get any weirder, Andrew takes it to another level. He proposes that there is a zombie vaccine where no matter what happens you won't turn into a zombie. So the question is, with this vaccine, would Brian go back for another intimate session with his zombie wife? Brian doesn't entertain the thought for a second, stating that he is absolutely opposed to the idea of "violent, non-consensual, necrophiliac sex with a shell of what was [his] wife who is only partially decayed."

Then Andrew gets even weirder, some scientists tell Brian that they have a theory that if Brian impregnated zombie Bonnie it could cure her, and bring her back to being human. Of course, Brian being the family man that he would do anything to get his family back, and if there was even a chance of getting Bonnie back this way, he would give it a try. But then comes the twist, what if it wasn't scientists who told Brian this, what if it was Justin and Andrew? At this point Brian is so fed up, that he would just shoot Justin and Andrew in the head and walk away.

Crazy Science

Andrew brings up some recent scientific achievements that not too long ago we would have thought were impossible, like the recent story about how researchers and UC Berkeley have captured 38 antihydrogen atoms for over one tenth of a second and the story about metamaterials being able to hide things in both time and space. Also CERN says that they will have a test to try and prove the existence of extra dimensions next year.

Andrew then throws it out to the guys asking them, what amazing thing will happen next? Brian knows for sure that it will be artificial intelligence. He says that your telephone will have the personality of Alexander Graham Bell towards the end of his life. But just like an old man's hearing, the voice recognition won't be so great. Justin predicts that there will be some huge energy breakthrough (like antimatter) in the future, that would totally change everything we know.

Andrew brings up the the idea that maybe the new scientific revolutions will be things that no one person could comprehend the entire theory. They give the example of a 747 where one person may be able to comprehend how one part of the plane works, but no one person could be able to understand how every part of the plane works. Brian mentions that perhaps like teaching calculus to a dog, maybe our brains aren't wired to comprehend such complicated things like the universe. They have a long discussion about how, as primates, we like very simple easy to understand concepts that describe very complex things, however nature does not always allow things to be described very simply.

The New Space Race

The "Space Race" is back! This time, it is private companies in the United States against private companies in Russia, both are trying to be the first to launch their own space station. Space X, founded by Elon Musk of Pay Pal and Tesla, has already put capsules into space, and they plan to get humans into orbit next year and meet up with the International Space Station and they do all this for MUCH less than than NASA spends per mission. This leads to a debate over when oil companies will send probes to the moon and asteroids to see if they can mine for resources.

Tube Worlds

When people think about colonizing other worlds they usually think of going to Mars. Well Andrew proposes the idea of forming asteroids into long cylinders, which are then spun to simulate Earth's gravity and then inhabited by humans. If you took all of the asteroids in our solar system and formed them into cylinders 100km long, 20km across and 1/2 mile thick, you could make enough inhabitable cylinders to have a combined surface area 1,000,000 times that of earth. Considering this, Brian says that we don't even need leave our solar system, that is until the sun explodes in 5 billion years. Then Brian points out that the Andromeda galaxy will collide with the Milky Way in just 4.5 billion years. This upsets Andrew, despite usually being optimistic about the future, he is worried that the Andromedans will be jerks.

Great Quotes

" 'Brian, I am offering you the chance to have violent, non-consensual, necrophiliac sex, with a shell of what was your wife who is only partially decayed. The kicker: Having sex with her will not turn you into a zombie. Are you in? ARE YOU IN?' " -Brian