2025.09.04: Insnails

Well, I can't dunk.

No, but you can cook.

Hey!

We're recording the podcast!

Gut up!

Good!

Good morning to you, wherever you are, because it is morning somewhere for October 4th, 2025.

My name is Bertie Burns.

It's September, everybody.

I'm living in September.

Where she living, we don't know.

It's actually burns, hi-dash, everybody.

I was hoping the spooky season had come early.

I got the kids when we were in Isla Sky.

I'm very careful about getting

gifts when I go away because one of my

early childhood memories, Ashley, I'm going to process a little bit of trauma here.

Go ahead.

Come on this journey with me, won't you?

Was my mom would do a lot of trips for like conventions and stuff and things like that.

And she would come back and she'd always bring us a gift.

And I remember I ran up to her when I saw her and said, where's my gift?

And she got very sad and disappointed that I asked where her gift, where my gift was, as opposed to, you know, my mom, I missed you.

You're glad that she's back because you get a gift, not because, you know, your mom's back.

And everything kids do is pretty much Pavlovian, you know.

But I've always, I just, I just remember doing that, you know, and thinking what a jerk I am.

So I did what every parent does.

I punish my kids for that.

Like, how much of our parenting is overcompensating for something that we experienced as a kid that likely we didn't have the full context for?

It is just an endless thing that you try to do.

It's like, I think that's a big thing I see in parents who have their kids in sports.

There are some parents who like they never did sports and those seem to be the most like into sports of all the parents for some reason.

I don't know why.

I get it.

I get it.

It's one of those things like, you know, when a lot of people who join religions end up far more

invested in that religion and in practicing that religion properly than people who were raised in the religion.

You know, that reminds me, there's an an actual character in a show that we loved, Marvelous Miss Maisel.

Yeah.

And then she's now Lois Lane in Superman.

That's how most people, I think, would know her these days.

That's what she did after her comedy career, yes.

Yeah, yeah, right.

The character, Miss Maisel.

That's what she did.

But there's a character who converts to Judaism in that.

It's her sister-in-law.

And yes, she's much more.

Yeah, she is way more devout.

And that's a pretty common thing that happens.

Did we finish watching that series?

We didn't.

There's a whole season just sitting there waiting for us.

The whole last season.

But if we watch it, Bernie, it'll be over.

So I like that when we talk about entertainment now on the podcast, it's all the stuff we don't watch or haven't watched or

like you keep meaning to get to.

Like, for example, the latest episode of Alien Earth.

I was just about to bring that up.

Everyone is, I like, I can't read anything about it.

I haven't read anything beyond the headlines, but all the headlines are like,

The newest episode of Alien Earth is the best alien movie in decades.

And I'm like, why would you say that?

Now I want to read the article, but I can't read the article because the article is going to talk about the episode.

So now I have homework to do.

Look at you growing up.

Look at you, not reading the marketing materials.

Look at you.

Not ruining it for yourself or anyone else.

Did you know that Alien Earth is

in the unbreakable universe?

They have,

I've seen the headlines that say that the latest episode, I believe it's episode five, I wouldn't know.

Because I haven't seen any of it yet and I want to, that the latest episode is the best alien movie in 39 years that's a lot of years fancy way of saying since i guess probably what like the first one yeah whatever uh but you know bernie there are some times where doing your homework can actually be like beneficial actually reading the marketing materials instead of just scanning them so this by the way kids doing your homework is always beneficial just so you know this uh this series that i've been really excited about thursday murder club it's out

And I'm devastated to learn because I didn't pay close enough attention to the marketing materials because I saw it and went, yep, I'm absolutely going to watch that series.

It's not a series, it's a movie.

So instead of like eight hours of fun, I get two.

But why would you be taking

them by that?

Because it's only two hours of fun instead of eight hours of fun.

We just got through talking about your backlog.

We have a huge backlog.

This is like

that stopped me from being judgy.

This is the two-foot tap putt for par.

Take it, man.

Take it.

But by the way, still a very fun movie.

And it's got like all the British people that Americans would know are in in it.

Like the guy who plays Lucifer in Lucifer.

David Tennant is in it.

And by the way, he's fantastic.

I love seeing David Tennant as a bad guy because I saw him as a good guy for so long that whenever I see him as a bad guy, I'm like, yeah, excepting when he's in Jessica Jones.

And then I'm like, oh, you're actually scared of the guy.

Yeah.

Let me ask you a question.

What's a bad David Tennant performance?

Is there one?

No, no.

You mean like evil or do you mean like a poor performance?

Poor performance.

Never seen one.

Never seen one evil.

Doesn't exist.

Like, ah, that wasn't a good fit.

You know, that didn't work out.

I can see where they're going, but yeah, I didn't quite get there.

Nothing like that.

David Tennant is great, whatever he's in.

He's also, it's like, I'm like, oh, every time I'm like, oh, there's David Tennant, but it doesn't take me out of it or anything like that.

No, he's always absolutely spectacular in everything that he does.

But he doesn't play himself either.

Like, it's like,

he's threading a lot of needles at one time.

He does.

Yeah, he's, I, I love David Tennant.

I will always say good things about David Tennant.

Can I ask you a question?

As a Hoovian, are you a, would you call yourself a whovian?

Sort of.

I'm um, let's say I'm an out-of-practice whovian, okay?

I, I wasn't born to the religion.

I did practice it for a short period of time, uh, but you know, now I'm fiddling around with other religions.

If you could convert me, then I would be a much more devout whovian than you would be, right?

So it's weird, though, too, because when you first started dating,

did you kind of misrepresent your Doctor Hoodom or did I overplay it and you were just like, I guess this guy thinks I really like Doctor Who?

No, no, no.

At the time, I think I, I think that was in my main Doctor Who era.

But then, you know, I went through Eccleston, I went through Tenyon, I went through Matt Smith.

Brag about it.

Yeah, that's right.

That's right.

I just was like, it was a little train.

Hot girl.

Hot girl millennia.

You know, so it was a really, I enjoyed that era.

And then I just got busy with other stuff.

And when I came back to it, it was like, it was still good.

But you know, when you come back to something, even if it's something that you liked and you're like, yeah, it's fine.

but like the like what you were super duper crazy into is like, it's just

you've moved on.

You're just not in the same place anymore.

That's also because it changes so much, too.

It's like that is Doctor Who is the ship of Theseus, right?

They replace things.

What I was getting at with this is I don't know anything about Doctor Who really.

I should know more.

I have a kind of a staunch thing that I'm like, hmm, about it because RVB was the longest continuous running sci-fi series in America.

And then people said, it's not worldwide because of Doctor Who but Doctor Who took a fucking 30-year break or whatever you know I'm just gonna make an episode of Red vs.

Blue like 30 years from now and go still going pat everybody we're still going how you doing how you doing over there doctor apparently you can stop for years at a time and that doesn't somehow like break your streak but something i've never understood about doctor who okay what the hell is the sonic screwdriver what is it a macuffin Does it actually have a function?

Like, what is it?

It's kind of like a, like, oh, we need to to do a thing the sonic screwdriver is going to do the thing but it's specifically a non-weapon tool right

that's why it's a screwdriver it's not like a sonic gun or whatever he's like very anti-weapon but a screwdriver a screwdriver is a utility right like that's something that can fix stuff uh and so it's like it does all these things except apparently i guess it doesn't work on wood go figure uh but there's like those weird things that get built into the canon on based on like throwaway lines or something from one episode and for the next 30 years you're like fucking great doesn't work on wood.

They could update the firmware on that thing.

I guess so.

Well, and every doctor also gets like a new sonic screwdriver.

They like fiddle with it and do new things with it.

But yeah, it's basically like, we need to do a thing.

Here, skin you.

There's an alien worm inside you.

I can tell because the sonic screwdriver just told me so.

Also, what's that sonic screwdriver?

He's in a well.

It talks to them?

No, it doesn't.

Oh, okay.

God.

It sounds like it's just like an exposition device.

It is.

Kind of like in Star Trek, they have the tricorder or whatever it is.

and they just wave it over someone and go, he's got Venusian worms or whatever.

Okay, okay, good, okay.

Makes sense to me now.

No,

it's a tool.

But Bernie, speaking of long-running franchises, they're also kind of ships of Theseus because they're always changing.

Tomb Raider is, this is a series that is in the works and has been in the works at Amazon.

And they have now officially, I think this was long rumored, but they've now officially cast Sophie Turner in the role of Laura Croft.

Sophie Turner played one of the stars, Sansa stark?

She was, yeah, she was Sansa.

So that's how most people I think would know her in Game of Thrones.

She's, yeah, she's been in a couple of things since then as well, but that's by far, like, I think her biggest note internationally.

Tall, svelte, I would say, red hair, British accent.

One box has been checked for Lara Croft here.

British accent.

I got to say, I would never in a million years think about casting Sophie Turner as Lara Croft.

At this point, we're doing so many goddamn reboots and sequels.

Why not, right?

Why not just turn things on their ear and just cast against the grain?

Why not?

Sure.

Well, and also, we don't really know what this series is going to be like.

It's

Phoebe Waller Bridge.

So she, you know, the lady from the show with the hot priest.

Anyway, moving on.

Go ahead.

I want to hear about it.

Fleabag.

She was in.

She was in.

And then she got this.

She wasn't the hot priest.

She was dating the hot priest.

She was crushing on the hot priest.

Hot priest doesn't date.

That's a fun show.

I like flea bag.

But so she, and then she got this big development deal at Amazon, and this is, I think, one of the first projects that's actually making it into production.

Oh, right.

They thought she was going to be Laura Croft.

That was the speculation because she was the

developing it.

Yeah, and because she was in Indiana Jones and all this sort of stuff.

But no, she, so Sophie Turner has been cast in the role, but I don't know what kind of Laura Croft series Phoebe Waller Bridge is going to make.

Right.

I don't know.

Is it going to be Indiana Jonesy?

Is she going to use her time working on that to then translate it into this series?

I don't really know.

But I guess they're going all in on Sophie Turner for Laura Croft.

And they're moving ahead on production with that next year.

This is like from our era of gaming when you and I played like lots of games, the Tomb Raider era.

Are you a Tomb Raider fan?

Did you play a ton of Tomb Raider?

I never really did.

That's a franchise that I want to like, and I've always heard really good things about it, but somehow always passed me by.

Right, me too.

It's like my knowledge of Tomb Raider is she fights a

tiger.

That's it.

She fights a lot of things.

A Polygon Tiger.

That's what I picture when I picture Tomb Raider.

My experience.

That's the third thing I picture when I picture Tomb Raider is the Polygon Tiger.

No, my main experience with Tomb Raider is like that it had.

I'm going to date myself a little bit here, as if I haven't done that before.

Bragg about it.

It had a weird-shaped box.

Wait, go ahead.

The PC game of Tomb Raider had a weird-shaped box, and no, it wasn't shaped the way you're thinking of.

Well, everything else was weirdly shaped.

Why wouldn't the box

limited polygons back then?

Yeah, you were a box collector back then.

I was.

I kept all, I kept the boxes for all my games.

I loved the boxes.

Yeah, when I was younger, I was not a box collector.

Already speaking of box collectors,

I've got to tell you about this

sinistral snail.

What?

So there's a snail that's been found in New Zealand.

This lady found this snail in her garden, and it's a very, very rare snail.

It has a left.

curling shell, which makes it like a one in 40,000, right?

What does that mean?

Left curling?

The other 39,000,

their shell curves to the right.

Oh, it's just like when you flush a toilet in New Zealand, it goes backwards, that kind of thing.

Just like that.

And so because this snail is left-shelled,

its sex organs don't line up with right-shelled snails.

Well, so unless this snail is able to find another 1 in 40,000 snail, this is going to be...

He's not going to collect any boxes.

If you know what I mean.

I know what you mean, Nashley.

I get the metaphors.

Fully entrenched at this point and so uh they've launched this public interest campaign uh to try to find another left-shelled snail and the thing is he can't um he can't just like go into his tinder settings right and set it to like international

interest left oriented ladies

because it's in new zealand with these really strict uh policies as far as wildlife goes they can't just import a girlfriend or something right uh so he's got to find one in new zealand And funny enough, this isn't the first time this has happened.

Why is everyone going crazy for this single snail?

Why do they want a left-oriented snail?

You know, what would be the thing?

They just want the snail to find love, man.

Let me test your

Latin and Greek elements of English.

If it is a left-handed-oriented snail, what would be the term for that?

I already called him a sinistral snail.

Oh, sinistral is how you start it, God.

Sinister as well.

As a left-handed person, you think I don't know that.

What's right-handed?

Normie.

Dextra.

Whatever.

Yeah.

Lame.

Yeah, we get the easy one.

Y'all are sinister.

I'm surrounded by left-handed people, by the way.

You are.

I look, I have.

Me and Teddy are the only people in this family that are not left-handed.

I have a theory about that.

I have a theory that this generation,

or, you know, I guess the last generation as well, but the more and more and more, we're going to see more left-handed people because we're not raising kids in an environment where they're encouraged to be right-handed.

Whether like, you know, softly encouraged, like, like, hey, we don't make scissors for you, or hardly encouraged, like, I tell you what, if I see you riding with that left-hand again, you're getting the ruler.

Right.

They would hit him with a stick.

Yeah.

That we're going to see more left-hand people.

Okay, fair enough.

But the snails.

You really think that's it?

Okay, go ahead.

I do.

But the snail doesn't, he can't adapt.

The snail can't take a ruler to the sex organs and just switch, right?

So they got to find someone for him.

So there was a snail.

This happened in the UK a while ago.

Apparently there was a snail.

They named him after Jeremy Corbyn for some reason.

Why?

Pikachu.

Why not?

That's part.

They ended up finding two matches, two girlfriends for Jeremy Corbin the snail.

Except then the two matches were more interested in each other than in him.

So he's like, come on, guys.

Well, they are on the left end of the spectrum.

So I don't think that's a possibility always.

So it took a while, but then they all worked it out, I guess.

And he ended up having like thousands of babies.

Well, I think somebody should tell the snail he's not owed women's snails' bodies.

And then just deal with it, pal.

Look, I think that this is a real, this is how the snail gets a backstory, right?

The next, like when he turns up on your doorstep to murder you, he's going to be like, it's because I never found love.

This feels like an incel dog whistle.

This entire story feels terrible.

I read some weird thing.

This is something I saw on Reddit where, and I want to read more about it, where they're working to make what they call mirror life.

And you know how DNA has a twist to it?

And in organic chemistry, there's left-handed and right-handed bonds and things like that.

There's a natural twist or orientation to organic life on Earth.

And they're trying to make the flip of that, the other twist.

Okay, stop.

Stop doing that right now.

What if you create anti-life?

Well, yeah.

So, yeah,

this article said it could be possibly more dangerous than the development of atomic weapons.

Like you could create, for instance, a bacteria that there's no natural predators for, and then it takes over all life on Earth.

And so, should we do this?

There's no explanation at all of what the upside of this could be, besides like somebody did something that they couldn't do before.

And it's like, yeah, we're just going to give this a shot and see what happens.

Don't, don't do that.

You know, what everyone says, like, we were so busy seeing if we could, we didn't ask if we should.

Ask.

Take a moment.

Take a moment and ask.

Okay.

I feel like that's a very different scale experimentation than trying to find a snail, a girlfriend.

And listen, that started to break out on a continent.

Do you think there's any ability to contain something like that?

I mean, these days, pretty tough.

Yeah.

Pretty tough.

I mean, you can, you know,

even the movies don't seem to think you can fully contain those things.

It'd be an interesting sci-fi premise if, like, we just lost like a hemisphere.

It's like we can't go there and no one's allowed to set foot there because if we bring something back, that's the left-turning hemisphere.

Exactly.

Exactly.

You go below the equator and suddenly all the DNA turns the other way.

And then what are you going to do?

And then you got to change your Tinder profile.

The toilets were a warning.

They were this whole time.

It was was right in front of us the toilet warning was always there you lived in australia yeah

did you ever notice that the water goes the other way that's no i i i never noticed i could i couldn't remember which way it was supposed to go right and also it apparently is very down to if there's just the slightest tilt in the toilet bowl or whatever it won't so it could be you know a little bit off level and I'd go, oh my God, it's a miracle.

No, it just, you know, it's one of those things.

I never noticed it.

What I noticed was the night sky.

I was going to say,

because the stars are completely different.

And the moon is upside down, or relatively to us, the moon is upside down.

Yeah, apparently.

I just went in the sky and went, Look, a moon.

Right.

It just tests what you already know.

Like, people, when we would go down to Australia for like tours and promotional events for Rucha T, they'd be like, oh, and I get to see the water go the other way.

And I go, what way does the water go now?

Like, if it's so important to you, you can for sure tell me which direction the water goes down the toilet at home now, right?

Hold on, let me google it.

Don't worry.

It's left-handed.

You have to find a matching toilet somewhere else in the world.

You might have a special toilet that goes the wrong way.

There was a really cool smarter everyday guy, Destin, he did this really cool experiment with somebody on the other side of the globe with giant kiddie pools.

And did they flush toilets at the same time?

I said giant kiddie pools, but I think that's just an above-ground pool.

They did it.

Yeah, no, no, where they like put dye in water and tried to show the

coraliolis effect at the same time and made this like collaborative video across the globe.

I don't know.

It was really cool.

I thought it was fun.

Wait, what what is that?

I said Corleolis?

What am I saying?

I said Corleolis?

Coriolis.

Coriolis.

Not Corleolis.

That's like, look what they did to my toilet.

Look what they did to my flush.

Did you ever adjust, by the way, when you lived in Australia?

You were there four years?

Did you ever adjust to,

we just hit.

The wall between summer and autumn here.

It was, it dropped like a curtain.

It did.

It was like one day it was summer.

The next day, it was autumn.

And I checked the forecast and was like, oh, and that's, that's it.

Summer's, summer's done.

And shout out to our down under listeners, but they're now coming out of winter right now.

They're heading into spring.

That is something I have trouble wrapping my mind around more than anything else.

Like moving to Scotland, we did go to Skye and it rained the whole time and it was like stereotypical Scottish weather.

But to me, people always ask about the weather.

It's not the weather.

It's the light.

And that's what I have the most trouble adjusting to here.

But I think the thing I would have the most trouble adjusting to is December being the summer did you ever adjust to that was it weird yeah i mean it's it is weird but you you do adjust uh you know you go you know what snow is the part of the the same mythical part of christmas as like santa claus right they all go together

you know like the snowman and santa claus same level of like pure fantasy and what do they have like cactuses like would you like hang ornaments on what palm trees palm trees dear lord so bizarre to me you know and i don't know why it's all contextual It's what I grew up with, but I've never lived below the equator.

And I don't know, I don't spend a significant amount of time down there either.

Or maybe it was in, I feel like I would notice, of course, like spring and autumn less, right?

But if I was there in January and it was blazing hot, I don't think I'd ever.

That would be weirded out.

That would be weird.

That would be weird.

I did one time.

One of my first visits to Australia, I flew in on New Year's Eve.

And so it was weird going from

midwinter to midsummer yeah i got the worst sunburn because i was completely unprepared like mentally it's bad down there too yeah it is yeah yeah so we're we're now on the stage i walked out this morning uh when we took finn to school uh

we i walked out this morning and i thought oh we're now i took it for granted all summer long we're gonna start to get into that period where it's like, do I have to spend an extra 15 minutes getting the car ready to drive down the road?

You know, it's like, it's an overhead you forget about.

Oh, right.

We're going to need to make sure that we have snow scrapers in the car.

Yeah, de-ice the car.

Where did those go?

I'm sure we've taken them out of the car at some point during the not frosty seasons.

Where did those go?

And there are people, and we were those people for a long period of time, that never have to deal with that.

They live in a part of the world where it's like maybe once a year, you're like got your credit card out, scraping your windshield, making a little tiny hole, you know, as opposed to the people up north who you find that in Utah they did this as well.

People police each other over that, like especially snow on your roof and things like that.

Oh, yeah, it's very rude if you're driving around with snow on your roof.

Although, when I was younger, not so much, but I think it's it's changed a lot over time.

Yeah, especially with social media where they can

get shit, you can post people with your dash cam and be like, look at them, it's snow on the roof, spreading everywhere, or like some guy gets out with a brush at like an intersection and brushes off somebody.

He brushes off someone else's car.

What a passive-aggressive way to get somebody else to do the work for you.

I love it.

Well, you should piss people off here in Scotland and see if they'll like.

All right, Ashley, who is scraping our windshield for us today?

All right, big thank you to Sam Childers and Jez for volunteering to scrape windshields this winter and for sponsoring our show at patreon.com/slash morning for more or at roosterteeth.com.

All right, well, that does it for us today, September 4th, 2025.

I will be back with a special guest tomorrow to speak with you.

I hope you will be here as well.

Bye, everybody.