2025.06.30: Project Prevent Defense

the day we end the podcast.

Shut up, you

in a world

of pure imagination.

Hey!

We're recording the podcast!

Gut up!

Good

morning to you, wherever you are, because it is Morning Somewhere!

For June 30th, 2025,

my name is Bernie Burns.

Sitting right over there, she had a wonderful weekend.

Ashley Burns, say hi to Ashley, everybody.

Thank you.

I did have a wonderful weekend.

But not a smoke-free weekend.

No, no, no.

It's been very smoky in our area.

This is, there's,

in the, vaguely in the vicinity, far to the south, there's, uh, there's been a wildfire happening.

And this is actually, I think, the closest I've ever lived.

Wildfire, wildfire.

To a wildfire as it's occurring.

I've lived like hundreds of miles from wildfires as they're occurring, but this is definitely the closest.

And so, God.

We talked about this yesterday.

You're hundreds of miles from this one, I think.

Is it hundreds?

Yeah,

it's a small area up here.

It's many miles.

But the smoke spread all over the place.

So it's been clearing, which is good.

But as a result, Bernie sounds like he's been smoking for 20 years.

It's not a joke.

I was like breathing smoke all weekend.

And then somebody got me, clearly sabotaged me for Father's Day and got me an AC,

which sucks in outdoor air and puts it into my bedroom.

I was breathing smoke all night.

My voice is just, look, I have a delicate voice ever since I screamed it out.

My vocal cords are just like, they are not robust.

They cannot recover easily.

No, see, and it's something that I wonder about, right?

Because there are, there are musicians, right, right?

Like, there's like metal rockers and stuff who scream

gutterally for a living.

I know what you're saying.

This is their career.

This is their entire life.

How bad are you at like screaming?

I was in a horror movie one time.

I said, look, if you want me to scream at this thing, like yell a lot, do that at the end, at the very end.

And they were like, Man, you were not kidding.

It's like, yeah, my voice just goes out.

That's your version of the, like, I need four days' notice, and then I'll take off my shirt.

That's your version of that is like, I will scream for you exactly once and do it at the end because I will get it.

But I'll take my shirt off right now.

Let's go.

Let's go.

You want me to take my shirt off and scream?

I need some time.

So I'm excited.

Today,

I'm excited, but I have a conundrum.

And this is a conundrum I think a lot of people can relate with these days.

Today, Ashley, today, today, the 30th of June, 2025, the

first

Project Hail Mary trailer is coming out online.

Yes.

And it's a trailer.

Here's how much I know about this.

Two minutes, 38 seconds.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You've got all the details.

I'm in.

Ashley, I've been pouring over the poster.

The poster.

You've been like going over the details, being like, hmm.

That's a gorgeous poster.

it is i do love it i love when people get creative with posters and don't just do the floaty heads floaty heads have their place but i love it it's one dude as a result i guess that's true

it's just his face like five times yeah

i i do love it when they get artistic and they like have like a really cool design for the posters that sells me on movies when nothing else does sometimes so now the big question is for a movie that's coming out according to the poster,

March 20th, 2026.

Right.

So we've got nine months.

Yes.

Do I want to watch the trailer?

I mean, it's right now, it lives in my head.

You've got the pictures in your head already.

Imagine the book.

I love the book.

I love the source material.

By the way, stay out of the project.

Hail Mary, subreddit.

Everyone there self-acknowledges that we're gatekeeping, all the people who love the book, and

we can't stay away from the habit of gatekeeping.

So, if you're like, yeah, I mean, I've read it, but I don't really understand the hype, downvoted.

No, no, Leshie, they're like

what should or should not be included in the trailer and how I'm out if this is like if they include this.

Oh, right.

No, look, I'm going to be honest with you, Bertie.

No one who's posting in the Project Hail Mary trailer about what they can and can't show in the trailer is going to be out.

No, no one's going to be out.

But so here's the thing.

You're so in.

You're so in.

You have, whether you like it or not.

You're just like me.

But it's, here's the, I understand the conundrum, right?

Because, like me, you get to a point where you go, I know I'm going to see this film.

I don't need to see the trailers.

And anything I do see might

color my hype going in, or might color my opinion, or give me weird expectations that then maybe don't pay off in quite the way that I want them to, or it's going to affect your experience, right?

Speaking of color, the spacesuit is red.

Exactly.

So I would normally say no, right?

You don't want to see this trailer.

I'm also going to be realistic and say you really have no choice.

Remember how I didn't want to watch the Superman trailer?

Because I was like, I don't care.

I don't need to see it.

I know I'm going to see the movie.

So why watch the trailer and like spoil parts of the movie?

And then I had no choice because guess what?

If you go to a movie, there's going to be trailers before the movie.

And I saw the Superman trailer.

Suppose I was told by somebody in the subreddit

or on the Patreon, because we talked about this a little bit last night on the weekend episode of the,

what is it like the weekend chat with the patrons uh they said that it was before uh f1 so if you want to see it on a big screen it's before f1 right but yeah i i'm with you it's like this is now

the last day that this is going to be purely as i envisioned it in my head this is it because it'll get all mixed up with all the other like artists and all the realizations and visualizations and everything so right so here's what you do go in um get yourself uh get your brain scanned right do like a brain dump uh and then go ahead and and watch the trailer and then just reload your earlier brain.

The other thing, too, is like people are like, What is the moment that they're showing on the poster, even though it's almost identical to me to the cover of the book?

I hated to say this, but it's like it's a movie that's an hour and a half or whatever.

There's they're gonna change or combine or remove something,

right?

That's the thing with a lot of books: some things have to be streamlined, some things they have to like cut or combine.

It's just a thing that's going to happen.

The Project Hail Mary movie is not going to be like a page-for-page adaptation of the book.

Nothing has ever been a page-for-page adaptation of the book.

Nothing.

Nothing has.

And so the other thing, though,

this is a real concern that might prevent me from seeing it or like hanging back and watching comments.

It is the first trailer.

It's nine months.

That's the point I was making with the release date earlier.

Nine months between now and when this movie comes out.

How am I going to avoid seeing any images between now and then?

Realistically, there's no fucking way.

But today,

this is the first trailer.

So it's going to be that early CG stuff, you know, that always happens with trailers.

Yeah, sort of like unfinished sort of CG that they hope that you won't pay too much attention to because it is a bunch of jump cuts for over the course of two minutes.

Right.

Like I was saying in our chat last night, I don't want to have the little teeth Sonic the hedgehog in my head.

You know, I don't want that because you can't get that out once it's in your head you can't get it out right but you can affect change right that's that's the that's the upside is perhaps the project hell mary subreddit uh pulls a sonic campaign and then gets like their perfect cg because they got this early version or let me pitch this at you you hang back let other people do the handy lifting and then you get to come in and enjoy the final product that's kind of what i do with sonic i remember when the sonic hubbub was going on i said ah who cares come on come on and then you saw the new one it It was like, oh yeah, that's way better.

That's so much better.

And that was way better.

So you see the old one and it looks like an abandoned puppet that belongs in like an 80s Chuck E.

Cheese or something.

It looked rough.

Whenever there's like a bandwagon, that Sonic had been through something.

Or a dog pile or like a mob thing going on.

I just, my knee-jerk reaction is to go against it almost every time on the internet.

Almost every time.

The very least thing you're going to do is step away.

Right.

Yeah, like even the Sonic thing, I was like, leave them alone.

Yeah, you're going to step away or you're going gonna go counterculture.

Right.

You have to.

But then, you know, but I know you.

Sonic, you bent the knee.

And then guess what?

It paid off for you.

You got to live.

And now we've got a trilogy with what?

There's a fourth on the way.

No, it's arguably probably the biggest video game franchise thus far, right?

They have four.

I mean, in terms of like total ticket sales and all that, I'm sure.

Yeah.

I don't think Minecraft as a single movie eclipsed all of them, but maybe it did.

No, I mean, it did amazing at the box office, but did it do three Sonics at the the box office.

The point is, it's done well, and there's a timeline in which people are like, you know, Sonic.

It came out, and then it made $5 at the box office because Bernie went to see it when no one else would.

And then that was it.

He just really wanted to catch the Project Hail Mary trailer.

They also, by the way, while we're talking about trailers, they put out the final Fantastic Four trailer.

They're calling it the final trailer.

It comes out in like a month, a little bit less, actually.

I got to admit, I'm excited.

I'm letting myself get excited about a Fantastic Four movie.

I'm all in, baby.

I don't, it's hard to, I think the vibes is why I'm excited about this one when I wasn't super excited about the previous Fantastic Four.

It's not that I had anything against Fantastic Four.

I just, I guess I didn't have like an anchor to super duper care about them.

Like the early, like, you know, there was the, what, the Jessica Alba one, and then there was the, who was the, the cast in the 20s?

Miles Teller, Michael B.

Jordan, and other people.

Amazing cast, but I don't know why I didn't get super excited about them, but I am excited about this one because of the retrofuturism.

And it just seems like, you know, like a fun, honestly, hopefully kind of campy story.

It's kind of cool, too, because it seems like there was a point in time where the Fantastic Four was like the only superhero team.

And this is a world where they're the only superhero team.

You know, this is it.

Right.

This is that time.

So they kind of captured what actually happened in like the silver age of comics, you know?

And I'm just curious what they can do.

All the stuff I've seen so far, we won't spoil anything if you're avoiding that one.

Everything I've seen so far, I really like.

The last character that I was sold on was Human Torch, and this trailer nailed Human Torch, I thought.

I felt really good about it after watching the trailer.

They finally spent some time developing like him as a character, like what like what makes him hit?

Yeah, and I gotta admit, I'm super invested.

I want to see the individual.

He was great in Stranger Things.

So I like, I'm, I've got faith just based on that.

Like that character in Stranger Things didn't need to be nearly as good as it was.

No, I agree.

I agree.

It's always tricky, right?

So some of the powers that they have like the they they showed a little bit more of the stretching, but as you noted, it's not it's they're not showing him stretching.

They're showing him unstretching.

That seems to be their methodology.

They're not showing Mr.

Fantastic stretching.

They're showing him returning from a stretch.

Right.

Unstretching.

But then after that, you sent me a link to like some of the

comics where he's like being a ball and a parachute and a wheel.

And God, like

you said, I will absolutely make that the thumbnail for the episode today.

And it's just so hammy that I want that for them.

I'm so dying to see a Pedro Pascal parachute.

Like him talking to them while he's parachuting them down.

Oh my God.

His head on top eating a cracker.

That would be amazing.

It would be amazing.

So I'm looking forward to that.

Today, my dilemma is: do I watch the Project Halo Mailer trailer or not?

I'm going to say you don't need to go out of your way to do so, but please know that you are going to see the trailer regardless of whether you intentionally try to see the trailer.

Spoiler alert.

I'm going to watch it.

You're not going to be able to stop yourself watching it.

Watch it all.

Well, Ashley, it's my job.

I have to report on these things.

That's true.

That's true.

You have to be all up on the current events.

Hey, speaking of reporting, I asked you, can you please explain this?

Over the weekend, I actually gave Ashley homework to do.

I didn't want to read this myself.

So they announced a quest headset for the Xbox.

Yes, they did.

So I went and I read up a little bit more on this because my understanding of it was that the way they were marketing it almost seemed like it's like a TV screen for your Xbox, right?

If you don't have an Xbox.

But what it actually is, so it sounds now after I've done some reading, that it is actually,

it's a MetaQuest, which I mean, it sounds like it can play the MetaQuest games, but it also has an Xbox app on it, and it will play the cloud streamable games from Game Pass or from your games library, like games that you own, if they're streamable.

Okay.

Right.

So if they play the quest games.

Well, this is a release from Microsoft, so they don't exactly elaborate on that, but they are saying that it's like in the middle of the game.

I mean they don't elaborate on that.

How can they?

Because they don't care.

Xbox doesn't care if you can play the MetaQuest games on the MetaQuest.

They're trying to sell you an Xbox VR headset.

Why are these all these announcements so confusing?

Pretty soon they're just going to sell a box with a question mark on it.

And that's what you're going to buy your best buy.

So I'm going to assume it's going to play metagames in addition, right?

Yeah, I mean, it has to.

It would be stupid not to.

It's still a MetaQuest.

Yeah.

Right.

It's just an Xbox edition of the MetaQuest.

So it's going to have, which also, I'm going to be honest, I'm going to assume that most of the MetaQuests are going to get some kind of system update and also have the Xbox app.

They're just trying to sell additional MetaQuests to people

who don't have one who would like to play their Xbox games via VR headset.

Not saying that they're also like they're not VR, it's not suddenly like VR capabilities on all these games.

It's just that you can use that as a screen to play them.

You'll have your controller, it'll be, it'll look like a TV, but it's going to stream the game from the cloud.

I wonder if we're going to need the cloud, Bernie.

I'm going to walk back my comments here because

there's a possibility now

that

MetaQuest games, some of them might end up on Game Pass through this.

I mean, it could be cool.

That would be pretty cool.

I love Game Pass.

What is your favorite quest game?

Because you've played quite a lot on the MetaQuest.

The longest probably on the calendar, besides Sea of Thieves and Halo, the longest I ever played a game continuously, on and off, but continuously on the calendar is, what do you call it?

Arrow game.

Arrow game.

It's called In-Death Unchained.

It's a VR bow and arrow game game where you get to shoot people in the face.

I was having a day yesterday.

So I said, Ashley, I'm going to go on the treadmill and play Doom and shoot demons in the face.

Sometimes that's just, you know what?

That's self-care, Bernie.

Sometimes you just got to shoot the demons in the face.

That's such a good game.

Doom is a great Game Pass game.

Again, that Doom.

Dark Ages, such a fucking good game.

I love that.

Such a good game.

I love it.

And I love that for you.

There's also,

there's something else coming that's.

All of the demon hunting, none of the K-pop.

Hey!

Bring me the K-pop.

But there's something else coming as well for Xbox that's interesting.

And it's not the way they're marketing it or communicating it.

This has never been Microsoft's strength.

I feel like the communication has always been one of their downfalls.

They put out a good product, but they can't talk about it right.

To really say, it's a good point.

The Xbox One is probably the most

great console.

It's a prime example of that.

But like the way they talked about it, unsold people on that thing.

That announcement was legendary.

It was legendary.

But

they're going to be releasing a new update for the Xbox app on PC.

Right now, I believe it's rolling out to only the people who have the preview experience,

but they're going to be adding a unified games library.

So you'll be able to link your Steam account.

And it sounds like they say other leading storefronts.

So I'm going to assume that we're talking about GOG.

I'm going to assume we're talking about Epic as well.

You can basically link all of your profiles there and it will unify your game's library across all the storefronts, which sounds great to me.

People, the reason I found it was people were talking about what an amazing interface it was for Steam.

Yes.

Because like I love Steam.

Steam is a fantastic storefront.

Its library

is a list.

Oh, you mean the interface?

Yes.

Like, you know, I love the way Steam works, but it doesn't do anything to make me feel like, yeah,

about my collection.

know right the i buy a game and my list gets one line longer the best thing i could say about steam is that it never changes like they make they make updates so rare it's it's changed surprisingly little in the last 20 years right like the other day i went to go find my achievements on steam i'm like well this is kind of a different place but okay whatever but it's basically the same but like that menu across the top where like your name is one of the dropdowns it's like i just know it because i know it at this point and the rest of it i'm like it's just don't change it i'll be be fine.

Right.

So instead, if you want it to look like all really nice, and if you want to have, know what your entire PC games library is like across all the storefronts, that's what I guess the new Xbox app is going to do, which I think is great.

You know, it's one of their priorities, especially with PC stuff, has always been that they're the ecosystem.

As long as you're playing on PC, they win, right?

Then you're, this is an Xbox, basically.

So, you know, they don't care where you bought the game.

You're playing on PC, you're in Microsoft.

Right, right.

You know, and so that's something that they're trying to do more and more with.

And if they can get some sort of tracking on what you're doing via the Xbox app, then they like that even more.

I pulled up Steam on my, I have it on my laptop.

I guess to play FTL.

It's the only thing this laptop owns.

But I looked at my Bernie dropdown, which is a menu on Steam.

Here's everything under the Bernie dropdown.

Yep.

Under your profile name, drop down.

Activity.

What does that mean?

Profile, friends, groups,

content.

What does content mean?

Inventory, badges, and Steam replay.

I never use any of these.

Any of these things.

I just go to library and play games.

That's it.

Yeah, that's it.

I will admit, like they've rolled out, you know, you can get like collectible cards or something when you play games or when you do certain things, or you spend a certain amount of time playing a thing.

You can unlock some sort of trading card.

I know there's a storefront where people make an ungodly amount of, I don't know, Steam bucks or real money or something by selling Counter-Strike guns.

I know there's all that stuff, but I am, I'm such a surface-level Steam user.

I buy the game and I play the game.

Yep.

And then I occasionally go, oh, so-and-so

also plays this game.

I know I'm in good hands.

So let me ask you this.

When you go to Steam, your profile, what is your level?

on Steam?

Because what you're talking about, the cards and stuff, that's one of the things that can push your level up.

What is your level?

Oh, 27.

I'm 36.

36.

Wow.

Do you have a call out badge or anything?

Bit of an age gap.

Hold on.

My badge.

Or like a marquee achievement?

I have hold on my rarest achievement showcase, Contagion, Fire in the Hole.

There you go.

I got you.

That one.

Also, Contagion Pest Control.

How do you see your rarest?

Where do you see that?

I think you can change

what you have showing in there.

Honestly, I think I've just set to rarest achievements, and then I have like a list of like I own 197 games

i

my favorite game on my profile which i pinned is sea of thieves it is 3.6 hours played because i don't play it on steam

i pinned it as my favorite game that that's what i think microsoft probably wants hopefully that might be something that they get through this unified storefront is if you're launching games through them, they might have some sort of tracking.

So they'll know like what people are actually playing on PC.

Do you remember what podcast, would it have been all the way back on the Rooster podcast When I was talking about Sea of Thieves and I said, and luckily, they don't show you how many hours you have played on the Xbox or on, you know, Xbox games on PC.

Yeah.

They don't show you that like they do on Steam because I would not want to know how many hours I played on Sea of Thieves.

And one of the producers of Sea of Thieves contacted me and go, I have that stat.

You know, I'm happy to send it to you.

And I said, please.

Don't, please don't.

Do not send me that number.

Do not send me that number.

I do not want to know.

You like when you get the, when you're looking at Steam reviews for a game or something and someone says, like, I do not recommend this, and they've got 800 hours.

I love that.

I love it.

I love it.

Yeah.

I can't stand this.

It's a horrible game.

1,000 hours.

Sometimes it's better not to know.

But that guy probably knows.

You know what I mean?

It's like, should you trust his review or not?

It's like.

Maybe, but I'm also going to assume that that guy's a really big fan of the Project Hail Mary book and the movie cannot please him no matter what.

They'll be so happy.

They'll be fine.

They're just like, they're in a tizzy right now.

They're all excited.

They've been waiting for this trailer to come out for so long.

I know.

Because

it was screened at some festival months ago now.

CinemaCon.

We've been waiting on it ever since.

Like, where's this trailer?

Is it going to come out?

Come on, guys.

Give us a trailer.

And now it's here.

Do you want me to, like, how about this?

Do you want me to watch the trailer for you and just describe what I'm seeing?

Ashley, can I just say something?

Yeah.

Do you really want to get between me and this thing?

Like, no?

I wouldn't get between you and the K-pop demon hunter thing or whatever.

Well, I would love for you to explain what's happening to me in K-pop demon hunters.

I would love it.

I wouldn't want that responsibility.

That's too much power.

Sounds fun.

So, I want to go back to something too before to wrap up here.

There's this article that I'm reading on CNN, which they're highlighting a robot, a bipedal robot that will do your dishes and make you tea and all your household duties.

Oh, shall I make me tea?

And they are trying to get this on the market for less than $15,000 US.

Oh, man.

That number is a moving target though because of the value of the dollar right now, which is a whole other discussion.

Well, that's the value of the dollar, but also the value of a cup of tea.

Am I right?

Well, we did talk.

I went back and I looked at our transcript archive.

We had an over-under bet of when there would be a bipedal robot in our house, like when that would be possible.

And I remember we got a lot of flat because my prediction was five years.

Yeah.

Made that prediction.

April 22nd, 2024.

Okay, so we're just over a year out from that now.

I think it's coming.

I think we're going to make that five-year mark.

There'll be something there.

What's the selling point here?

Is it the tea?

Is it doing the dishes?

I think it's anything that can actually do household chores and take it, you know, like real stuff.

Like, I don't want to see a robot that fucking dances.

I want to dance.

You know, I don't want to pay a robot to fucking dance.

Right.

Like, or draw pictures.

You know, you know what I would like is a robot that can take my clothes, look at the tag, and sort the laundry appropriately based on what those little tag symbols are that I can never remember.

And then do the laundry and the ironing and stuff and fold it all nice.

Can you imagine?

Can you imagine?

Can you imagine?

I mean, seriously.

I'm imagining it right now.

How about this?

Hey, robot, can you just get all the shit out of the door wells of my car that I stuffed in there?

All that stuff.

All that stuff.

So AI squared robotics, it's a Chinese company, says that in the third quarter of 2025, its robots will be launched at airports in major Chinese cities for tasks like organizing luggage carts for passengers.

Do you think they're going to replace the hologram lady at the London airport?

Let's hope so.

That's like 1980s technology.

I love that.

That would be a great thumbnail, too.

I love hologram lady.

But so we'll see.

We could be there.

My new thing is,

just like today, it's like, there's a moment now that's going to come today.

It's going to come today where Project Hail Mary no longer,

my experience with Project Hail Mary is no longer entirely in my own head.

My experience with it.

That's happening today.

Well, and yeah, the experience in your head is going to be replaced.

Not replaced.

How dare you?

It It is.

It's going to be overwritten, Bernie.

Once you see, yeah, but once you see the visuals, you're not going to be able to go back.

Don't you put that evil on me, Ashley Bernie?

You take that back.

Take that back.

I have precious images in my head of this book.

But there is coming the point in time for all of us, and I want you guys to think about this too.

Some point

in...

probably the next few years will be the first time that you just see a robot in public.

Like you'll be at the grocery store.

I'm not talking the little like delivery bots.

No, no, I've seen a fucking robot walking down the street or shopping or whatever, like you live in a sci-fi movie.

That's kind of cool.

So I'm waiting for that day.

That day will come at some point.

And I know it's going to be weird.

It's going to be like, oh, there's a robot.

And that, you know, the craziest part is that the robot's going to drop the shopping and start doing a TikTok dance or something in the middle of the parking lot because that's how everyone shows off robots.

They'll pull a fully automatic pulse rifle out and go, da, da, da, da, da, da, fucking die humans.

Just wait, the K-pop demon hunters girl band is going to be replaced by robots.

Yeah, exactly.

That's the jobs they're going to take.

They're going to take our demon hunting jobs and leave us with the dishes.

But they're so good with the choreo.

Yeah.

Listen, I want to be the person K-popping.

I don't want the robot K-popping on my behalf.

All right, well, I want to say a big thank you to today's Choreo champs, Samuel Antonio Maurer and Pete and Jen Coomer from Pigeon Studios.

Thank you so much for sponsoring this episode of our show at patreon.com slash morning somewhere.

All right.

Well, that does it for us today, June 30th, 2025.

We will be back to talk to you tomorrow.

We hope you will be here as well.

Bye, everybody.

Hey, okay.

All right, this is an update.

So, Ashley, I had you come back to the mics.

Yes.

So.

I went to go edit the podcast.

Okay.

And because we talk so much about Steam today, I decided to get you some screenshots of some of the stuff I was talking about on Steam.

And then I find out, in addition now to the Project Hail Mary trailer that's out,

there is a 10 gigabyte update for Seven Days Today.

Well, that's a good thing.

That's a good thing.

Look, now you have at one, you can get one day of avoidance out of this, right?

If you're trying to avoid the Project Hail Mary trailer, you got one day via a 10-gigabyte update for seven days.

How many years has Seven Days Today been out?

Like 10 at this point?

Yeah.

So it said pre-release software.

Still

version 2.0.

So I get that and I get Project Hail Merit.

I'm so happy.

All right.

Bye, everybody.