2025.07.31: Dong Radar

My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever.

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Morning to you, wherever you are, because it is Twilight Subway!

For July 31st, 2025, my name is Bertie Burns.

I did not let the extra syllable in that date fuck me up.

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Dashie Burns, hey, Dashie, everybody.

Be right back and eat a bathroom break.

I love when somebody makes a just colossal fuck up and just walks it off.

Like, nobody even knows.

Like, nobody cares.

That's fine.

Like,

Reagan telling his weekly radio audience, hey, we're going to bomb the Russians in about five minutes.

As a funny ha-ha.

We were talking about that.

There was a lot of comments in the subreddit about, we were talking about the

Hawaiian false alert that went out out to everyone's phones telling them that the ballistic missiles were on their way.

What was that?

What year was that?

That was 2018.

2018.

And people were talking about that.

Someone reminded me of something.

They had a personal experience where they were in Hawaii and they talked about the hotel bringing them down to the lobby and then just, or the dining room and facing them away from the windows and the ocean.

And they all just waited.

there.

Because you just

think we're going to fucking die.

You can't do anything about it at this point.

It's too late.

And then somebody else like filled in as well and said what they remembered from it.

That was,

good lord, get better names.

P-K-M-N Trainer Diamond.

What the fuck does that mean?

Is that a Pokemon thing?

Did I say a Pokemon thing?

You might have.

They fucking snuck a Pokemon thing by me.

Fuck you.

And then somebody else,

Unicron Gundam, guys,

can we get some fucking sports names on your usernames?

In the subreddit, for Christ's sake.

They reminded me that there was footage of parents who were putting their kids down into the the sewers, into manholes, like as a desperate attempt to protect their kids because they thought the nukes were on their fucking way.

Easy for us to like laugh it off now, but my God, what a terrifying day.

No, that's actually, honestly, I think that shows quick thinking.

Honestly, it does.

I mean, it's like, it's, it's like a brilliant, desperate measure, right?

And thank God they were all okay.

And I hope all those kids got back out of the manhole covers.

Oh, that's the way you look at it.

I was saying, it's like, I want to throw my kids in the sewer every day.

I suddenly have an excuse to do it.

let me chuck him in yeah so that had to be a scary few minutes man scary minutes it did but i can't imagine that and then also the same thing i don't really remember i remember the reagan thing happening where he said that but i don't remember it going anywhere but i was a kid you know what i mean i probably heard about it like two years later, you know, right.

That's the way information went back then.

This is one of those things I'm sure where it's like I was probably sat down in grade school or something.

I remember, I remember very specifically being sat down in a class to to watch some major thing.

I think we interrupted making

paper plate turkeys for Thanksgiving or something like that.

And I could not tell you what the event was.

It might have had something to do with a moon.

Was it Challenger?

Maybe.

Challenger, probably.

Was that around Thanksgiving?

Nope, that was in January.

Okay.

Well, maybe we were making, maybe I was making a paper plate snowflake.

You grew up in Utah, though.

You might have had like Mormon Thanksgiving.

That might be in January.

We're making whole holidays now.

Well, we were talking the other day, too, about

the War of the Worlds broadcast.

Did you know there's a War of the Worlds that's coming out soon with Ice Cube?

And it's kind of based on the original radio broadcast.

It's meant to pay homage to that, I think.

I haven't looked too much into it.

I believe it's, yeah, I think it's an Amazon series that's coming out.

And I've seen sort of the banner advertisements for it, but that's the extent of what I I think.

It's an Amazon series.

Okay, cool.

Isn't everything now an Amazon series?

Just about.

Even when people talk about Twitch, they talk about like Twitch, like creators and these independent streamers.

They're basically Amazon subcontractors, right?

It's like you have Amazon delivery drivers and then Twitch streamers.

Somehow they're in the same organization with each other.

I wonder if you were to look at all the subsidiaries of Amazon, like all the things that Amazon owns, how many people work for Amazon?

We might be an Amazon series for all I know.

Are you an Amazon series?

i could be yeah they even had this thing this article that was depressing for a few different reasons they have invested in what they're calling the netflix of ai content it's generative ai content and it bugs me because a it's generative ai content but also it's like amazon's gonna do it and people will gripe about it but they'll still do it I feel like whenever there's a new technology, up until this point, when a new technology came out, it created opportunities for people to go against the norm, do something different, break the mold, and make their mark in an industry, whether it's entertainment or whatever.

Let me give you an example.

Close to home.

So, we were independent filmmakers, and we were making movies for 10 years and trying to go to film festivals and everything like that.

The way I was able to start my career after 10 years was by identifying a technology like putting video online, which was a technology that very few people understood, understood, and that it seemed like even fewer people were interested in learning about.

We were able to put video online and do something completely disruptive that built our entire careers, you know, and that's what young people were doing.

That traditionally is what new technology would do, it was enable young people to do that.

But now, because we're all on the same like level with social media, if anyone tries anything like that, everyone at their level like shouts them down, like the crab bucket, right?

And pulls them down.

And I'm not trying to defend generative AI, but it is weird now that another huge company is just going to use this new technology and they're going to do the upstart thing and no one's going to be able to do anything about it.

They can.

They could cancel their Amazon subscription.

They could not decide to do business with Amazon.

They just won't.

But they will shout down the person like who puts something up on Twitter that's generative AI.

Well, when you're looking at a company, the scale of Amazon, you look at it and you go, well, what can I do?

Right.

Like nothing that, like, they're not going to listen to what I have to say.

And I can cancel my Prime account.

They're not even going to care.

Like, that's, they care so little about that that I can make no difference.

I can make a difference in the individual that I'm talking to.

People go after something where they feel like they can make an impact.

Yeah.

And it's like, I think that's a natural thing to do, right?

You go where you feel like you can make an impact.

What fucking impact are you going to make against Amazon?

Right.

Right.

You can cancel a Twitch streamer who says the wrong thing.

You can't cancel Alex Jones.

You can't cancel Tucker Carlson, right?

Can't happen.

Yeah, you can't cancel him if they don't cancel it.

You can't make any headway there.

He's still on there going.

I'm kind of a dumb guy.

Also, when I look at it, I've noticed a shift, if I may, as an older person.

New technologies used to be the stomping ground of young people, you know?

And it's like, when I look at it now, like things like cryptocurrency and AI and all the tools that are out there, that would historically be something that younger people would be using nonstop, would understand from start to finish and be telling older people they need to get on board with this thing.

And I feel like somehow that's completely shifted.

Like I feel like I'm talking to people about the impact of cryptocurrency and the impact of AI and what's coming.

And it's like, I'm talking to young people about it.

And the attitude of them is like, eh.

Like they're just like, they're not even interested in it in any way whatsoever or it's like they're almost like old people used to act where they're like i'm not i'm not going near that stuff you know they don't even want to learn about it there's the i i feel like there is a certain ennui to being young though right you either feel like you can't do anything or you're not in a place to do anything so why care yeah but older generations weren't like hey you need to check out this tv thing you need to watch this or when are you going to get a smartphone come here you got to get in you're like i don't want to learn how to use one of those smartphones

you know, or computers.

That was stuff we did on our own.

Like, check out this new thing I learned about it.

It's called TiVo.

Right.

Exactly.

That wasn't being pushed on us by older people.

We were like going to our parents and going, like, my parents had an HD TV.

They never turned on the HD in like three years.

What?

Yeah.

And I had to go over and go, you know, you can you can do that.

You can just not turn on the HD.

Back in the early days, I guess there was maybe like it was an incompatibility with a signal and it came default to like standard definition.

I was like, what are you watching it like this for?

You have this high-def TV here.

And I pushed a button, and my mom goes, Oh, cool.

And my dad goes, I don't see a difference.

That sounds about right.

My dad is Alex Jones, apparently.

But Bernie, speaking of things.

I don't like it.

Speaking of getting things in super high definition, there's a theater chain in our area that is getting ready.

They're already getting ready for the Odyssey movie by re-releasing eight of Christopher Nolan's movies in IMAX.

So the highest of the deaths, right?

They're going to go and they're going to push that button and you're going to be sitting in the center going, ah, it looks the same way.

The highest of the deaths so far.

So far.

Yeah.

So they're doing like an eight-film re-release over the next, what, a couple of weeks or something to just really, I guess, get people hyped for Odyssey.

Yeah, if you're based in northern Scotland like we are, then you want to see

cineworld.co.uk.

They're having a festival of of Nolan movies like

next month, right?

To celebrate.

Yeah, in August.

Interstellar, Inception, Oppenheimer, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises, Dunkirk, and Tenet.

And

those are all at the end of August getting like

an IMAX re-release.

Here's the thing.

They're missing one.

What?

Which one?

They're missing Memento.

Is Memento Nolan?

Yeah, it's Christopher Nolan.

Early Christopher Nolan.

Interesting, too, because they forgot Memento.

Maybe it's like an Easter one.

That's like the secret ninth film.

Maybe you've already,

after you complete all the other movies, they'll be like, do you remember you also saw Memento?

And you'll be like, I don't remember that.

And they'll be like, ah.

Or you go watch Oppenheimer and they show you Memento instead and you're like, I remember this entirely different.

I saw one time too, somebody tried to cut Memento where it was in sequential.

correct order.

Oh, that would be weird to see.

Also, purposeless.

I mean, it totally destroys the purpose of the movie.

No, it it does, but the idea, you're not going to watch that as your first viewing of memento, right?

That's something where this someone has gone back and put the pieces together and been like, this is what the narrative was.

You've already put it together because you've seen it, right?

And you've already got the experience.

Now see it in sequential order.

And I think that's fascinating in a way.

Did you ever hear about the cut

somebody did of the trilogy where they cut the trilogy together called the Phantom Edit?

Yes.

Sorry, the prequel trilogy.

Toe for Grace.

It was Toe for Gracie.

And he never actually put that out, right?

He just talked about it, and people have seen it and said that it's really good, but it's not released anywhere.

It was one of those things where it just was leaked online, quote unquote, leaked.

And people, you can go find a version of it, I'm sure.

And people really enjoyed it.

And he did it to

just, it was a practice of learning to edit, you know, and wanted to do it and had this source material and thought, oh, I'll just edit this and see if I can do something different with it.

And people really liked it.

I was thinking the other day, bring this back around to the generative AI.

I'm tired of saying generative.

I'm I'm going to say gen AI.

Like I'm trying to think, what would be a watershed moment for AI stuff where people like, okay, well, this is cool.

I like this.

Like if somebody completely redid season eight of Game of Thrones, because we were talking the other day about how Game of Thrones was everywhere all the time.

It was, it was, you couldn't get away from Game of Thrones as a brand.

It was like wines, it's like apparel, it's cookbooks, it's all these things.

And it was all flesh-like.

Everyone thought it was fantastic and really excited about it and then after season eight came out you couldn't give that wine away have you seen anything no one came out of the zeitgeist as fast as that did like not really as fast but as completely like after that last episode aired i just nobody talked about it ever again like we had people would have parties and events i think we we all agreed to just

forget about but if somebody made like a season eight of

game of thrones and they just went through all the different threads of game of thrones and had different endings for literally almost every thread in that storyline.

I could see people getting on board with that, honestly.

Like, it's it's because you're taking like what is a corporate IP at that point in time and doing something with that, right?

And no one, no one cares about that.

No one cares about that.

No one cares about that.

So, that, yeah, that could be something.

I think that could be a watershed moment for AI stuff.

They could.

But, but coming back to this, this Nolan thing, I, I wonder if the reason they're doing it, I know they're getting ready for Odyssey, but Odyssey is kind of a big deal in our area of Scotland.

I think because they're filming a lot of it here.

I keep hearing from local friends, they'll say like they were, you know, they took their kids on a hike and

they went to this beach and there was a shipwreck there from filming the Odyssey.

And that's generated a lot of local excitement, just like there's lots of, and the interesting thing about it, too, is it's like, there's not security around these sets.

There's not like, you know, a guard.

What are you going to do?

Yeah, I know, right?

There's not like a guard guarding the shipwreck at the beach.

You just like take your kids for a hike and look, there's a shipwreck.

And people excitedly tracking like where Matt Damon's been seen or like what theater Christopher Nolan went to watch a movie at.

It's been very exciting on a local level.

And oddly, I feel like the hype for Odyssey is starting.

Maybe this is a global thing, but I'm just seeing it very locally.

It's starting very early.

When I went to a movie, I saw a teaser trailer for the Odyssey and I was like, wow, I didn't realize it it was coming out so soon that it would already have a teaser trailer.

Then there's the date stinger at the end, July 2026.

And I was like, well, that seems premature.

Bernie, with your hand up.

Did you know that the movie is a year out at this point and they have started selling tickets to opening weekend at some of the IMAX theaters and they're completely sold out?

They're already sold out?

So like they're hyping all this stuff, right?

They don't even need the hype.

Well, I mean, what's too much hype, Ashley?

Honestly, at the end of the day.

If you're sold out, if you can't sell tickets because you already sold them all,

what hype is left to build?

Well, then you get more theaters and you get more screws.

Can you imagine planning to go to a movie a year in advance, right?

Then the naked gun is coming out, right?

The new comedy.

And I really, I want it to do well because I feel like that's a genre of movie that we don't get a lot of in theaters.

these days.

And I really want it to do well.

It's coming out in what, like a couple of days, a week.

And I can't even make plans to go see it because I can't plan that far ahead.

Yeah, let me tell you something, though.

If they were pre-ordering tickets a year from now for like your K-pop gay vampires or whatever,

you would go see that.

Yeah, that's true.

I would buy tickets and I'm going to show up like in a year with my, I guess it's a big thing at K-pop concerts to have like a wand that you hold that lights up and becomes part of like a big light show.

I'm going to get one of those and I'm going to go to the theater in a year.

I would absolutely be there.

What did Taylor Swift had, though?

She had a

kind of, it was like a bracelet.

They had a bracelet they would wear.

Was it Taylor Swift?

Oh, you mean like the friendship bracelets?

No, no, no, no.

It was like a bracelet they would give out at the concerts.

I think it was for her heiress tour.

And then it would synchronize with everyone else in the stadium and they could like push like a light show.

Well, that sounds cool.

Like a distributed mesh network.

Oh, look at this.

This is from Slate.

How do the light-up bracelets on Taylor Swift's 1989 tour actually work?

Brittany, this is from 2015.

Look who knows so much.

Look at this.

Good memory.

Come at me, Swifties.

And my fucking lore.

I did get a little bit wrong, though.

See, I have like a photographic memory to about 90%.

I get just enough wrong to be interesting, basically.

That's still an A-.

Stupid fucking facts that are taking up room in my goddamn brain.

Taylor Swift bracelets.

Why do I have that?

Why can't I actively get rid of something in my own fucking head?

For God's sake.

Do you need to make room for something else, Bernie?

Anything else.

any literally anything make room for the naked gun make room for the naked gun make room for uh can i just say have you read the the gossipy stuff uh what that it's getting good reviews this is my disclaimer where i say i don't like to talk about gossip stuff right before i talk about gossip stuff

apparently pamela anderson and liam neeson now are dating and that makes i don't know why that makes me super fucking happy i love that for them also i gotta point out liam neeson is uh a bit renowned for being well endowed is he she has an incredible track record She must have some kind of like radar for dudes with big dogs.

Why was

her rocker boyfriend famously well endowed?

Yeah, Tommy Lee.

Yeah, was he famously well endowed?

Yeah.

What do you mean, famous?

They had the sex tape that was out there.

You say that like I watched it.

You didn't.

Well, listen, some of us do our research for the podcast, Ashley.

We put the time in.

Okay, so make it entertaining.

Some of us are leaving those links blue, okay, buddy?

But really, do you ever hear about like the lady who can smell a shirt and tell if someone's got Parkinson's?

Yes.

Pamela Anderson is like that for huge dogs.

Like she can just tell.

She's got the, we should, like, the government should hire her to go out and like be a detector.

This is a thing that we urgently need done.

It's for the census.

Can I say, God bless Pamela Anderson?

God bless her.

She's doing great.

And from what I understand, this movie is like very funny.

It's got something like a 91% on rotten tomatoes.

So it's, you know, a good, fun, naked entry, naked entry, naked gun franchise entry.

And that's awesome.

And I love to see it.

Did you see when she made an appearance?

Did we talk about this?

When she was on the Criterion closet where they go in and they like shill home video collections or friends.

Where they walk through.

I loved her.

I've seen like four of them.

I guess they've been going on for over a decade, this series.

But hers was amazing.

Like her just walking through and talking about different movies.

Just talking about movies that she loves and why she loves them.

Yeah, hers was awesome.

It's fun.

It's fun.

No, I love that.

Let's do some improvisational comedy.

But I just, I hope this movie does well at theaters because I want to see more comedies feel comfortable releasing in theaters.

I feel like they're just, there aren't a lot of them.

Yeah.

I just, I, you know, Pamela Anderson, I don't want her name like Michael Fassbender.

And

oh, who else is famous?

Willem Dafoe.

Yeah, Willem Dafoe.

Willem Defoe.

He seems like we were talking the other day about

people who who don't give a fuck.

Timothy Oliphant doesn't seem to give a fuck at all and how awesome and refreshing that is.

But Willem Dafoe is like, that's a guy also that doesn't give a fuck about it.

Also, by the way, he's got him made.

Great career.

Don't give a fuck.

Do you know that we have been saying his name wrong?

Like our whole lives?

Hold on one second.

Oh, no.

Is this going to be like

that other guy whose name is Jake Yelen Hall?

Right, right, like that.

And we're like, what?

Okay, here's a, this is a clip of Willem Dafoe saying his own name.

This is a clip from Conan O'Brien.

Okay.

This is Willem Dafoe saying his own name.

And take a look.

In the matter of the legal inquiry into the mental condition of John Kishlais, Eric Schneider, William Defoe.

His name is pronounced Eric Kishnider?

William Defoe.

William Defoe.

Interesting.

It's a

William Defoe.

But in typical Willem Defoe fashion, when Conan grilled him about saying, why didn't you correct anybody?

Guys, it just sounds nicer.

I'm not going to give a fuck.

People have been saying his name wrong this whole time.

It's like, ah, it's whatever.

Look, Dafoe does roll off the tongue, as it were, right?

Yeah.

They did a whole bit in the studio show about how to say Steve Buscemi's name.

And they went back and forth so many times.

I don't know how to say Buscemium.

You forgot how to say it.

I'm just going to say Buscemi because I assume that's right, because I can't figure it out.

There's another movie coming out too, Bernie.

I don't know if it's on your radar or not, but it seems to be reviewing very well as in it's like 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.

And it's a movie that I'm not going to see.

I know what you're talking about.

It's weapons.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's the Silver Surfer ladies in that.

Yes, yeah.

Julia Gardner.

And it's also got Josh Brolin in it and Alden Ehrenrach.

So it's a great cast, but I'm not going to see it because it looks scary.

Can I just say, by the way, this is reminding me.

I have to call it a joke you made earlier this week.

I know.

That we were going so fast.

I missed the joke until I was editing it.

You talked about Zach and Miri make a porno, I think, was the Seth Rogan.

Yeah, yeah, we're talking about Seth Rogan.

We were just talking about the studio again.

It reminded me of this.

And you called it Helen Mirren makes a porno.

I'm sorry.

I completely missed it.

By the way, famously dated Leah Meeson, I believe.

Look, maybe she's got the radar.

Yeah.

Maybe she does.

I think she's the reason why he's known because she let it slip that

he's well endowed.

Good for you, girl.

So are you going to go see Naked Gun?

Do you want to see it?

I do.

I do.

And I want to go see it and I want to go see it in theaters.

I know that as international box office,

our,

you know, our numbers aren't as important as the domestic box office for lots of reasons, but I still want to go see it in theaters.

You know, put my money where my mouth is.

Essentially, if I want more of these comedies, I need to go see the comedy.

Yeah, it's true.

They used to have a lot more like

baudy comedies in the 90s.

Like Happy Gilmore 2 just came out on Netflix.

I don't know how well that did but it just seems like there's a lot of people who talk about like not having like the classic comedies like you know that we used to have in the 90s and the early 2000s yeah just the really silly movies yeah yeah yeah just a lot of fun you go to the theater have a great time and laugh your ass off and it's it's great and there's a lot of people trying you know to to get it done uh i think probably the person who's probably got the best shot at it right now is tom segura he's making uh his working on something el tigra i think is the name of the movie it just went into production and uh he's got a really good track record, man.

So I think he can get it done, you know?

But somebody's going to do it.

Somebody's going to bring back comedies because it's seemingly everybody wants comedies to come back.

Everyone says that.

Let's see if it happens.

Hopefully, Naked Gun makes it happen.

But I'm talking more about like, you know, the young upstart, like the things that made Adam Sandler, the things that made Chris Farley, you know, like those.

Like those, those I feel like are now, they seem so solidly in debuting on streaming.

Like Happy Gilmore 2, that's a Netflix movie.

It's a Netflix movie, yeah.

Owned by Amazon.

But it's the kind of thing that I would like to see in theaters as well.

I want to have like more avenues for distribution for that kind of stuff.

No, I agree.

I agree.

And Adam Sandler and Chris Farley, everyone knew who they were already.

They were already successful comedians at that point in time.

But it's the kind of thing that made Adam Sandler a legend.

You know, he's that guy a billionaire, for Christ's sake.

He's definitely, he's, he is to the point where he can comfortably wear really weirdly long denim shorts.

Right.

And I think you have to be, you have to be obscenely rich to be able to pull that off.

Right.

He can go from like a polo match and like just in case like a game of street hoops

breaks out, then he can go do that at a moment's notice.

Yeah, but you know what else resurfaced was the old interview that I did with him.

For, for, for, back when you were

in university.

Yeah, back in college when I interviewed him.

And I don't know how I was able to get that interview.

And then also at the time, I was like, well, it's Adam Sandler.

Let's just see what happens.

I'm going to try to fuck with him.

And it was incredible.

Like he was so cool.

And so talk about a guy who doesn't give a fuck.

He immediately picked up on what I was doing and leaned into it and gave us like so many sound bites that we could use forever.

Like he was giving me so much shit and everything.

It's just, it was great.

It was really cool for him to do that and understand what was going on.

You got to love it when you get the yes and from Adam Sandler.

That's pretty fucking cool.

That's pretty fucking cool.

Yeah.

And I actually, I have to admit, I haven't seen Happy Gilmore too.

Well, Well, it's easy because we can go upstairs and we can just tune it in.

So I would like to go see this Christopher Nolan festival.

I would like to do that.

We're going to have to find, though, we're going to have to look up because it's Cineworld and there are Cineworld theaters near us.

I don't know where a Cineworld IMAX is near us.

Yeah, I thought I'm like my dad and keeps him and stuff.

That's the same, Rez.

Yeah.

Well, you know who I do see an improvement in, Bernie?

Chase Arlene and Arsaro.

And I would like to thank them both for sponsoring this episode of our show at patreon.com/slash morning summer.

All right, well that does it for us today, July 31st, 2025.

We will be back to talk to you tomorrow.

We hope you will be here as well.

Bye, everybody.