Another Brother

#009 The Blundered Bulgarian Bounty

This Week on Another Brother:
In episode #009, The Blundered Bulgarian Bounty, find out what music really moves the brothers. Spoiler, Alex keeps it real with Jimmy Eat World. Classic. And what's that, is Josh crying? No you're crying!! Actually, all the brothers are crying! We told you the music was moving. As far as Jacob... we'll let him do his own thing. BUT he's got a real doozy of a Paranormal Hour, so prepare yourself for what he has unearthed.
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Episode Links (***Spoiler Alert***):
Alex's pick of song is an oldie but a goodie, Jimmy Eat World - The Middle
You asked for it and Jimmy Eat World delivered! Get a load of Lucky Denver Mint!
See for yourself why Josh's pick can't be topped for him, Scots Wha Hae as performed by Scocha
And Jacob's pick has his wife a little worried, The Maine - Loved you a Little
Check out where Tsarichina, Bulgaria is located, this is where it all went down
Part 1 of the article summarizing Colonel Kanyev's book
Part 2 of the article summarizing Colonel Kanyev's book
Part 3 of the article summarizing Colonel Kanyev's book
Part 4 of the article summarizing Colonel Kanyev's book
One of Dimitar Statkov's articles about Tsarichina. Statkov is the journalist who broke the story
 
Transcript:
The following transcript was created using the OpenAI Whisper API: [00:00:00] This Week on Another Brother [00:00:38] Another Brother Theme Song [00:00:59] Stewnerds Segment Alex: okay we're gonna- Jacob: i don't know how to- Alex: we're gonna we're gonna count down and then we're all gonna say the name of our favorite song or a really good option for what a favorite song because this is a really stupid hard question to answer what is your favorite song. Josh: the best song in my life? Jacob: we can clarify why we chose it as our favorite song. Alex: true true. okay. All: three two one sacvkajdflwkefho. Alex: okay I couldn't hear anything. I just heard me. Josh: I think Jacob said "blogalivle". Jacob: that was close actually. Alex: did you say Scotsdale? Josh: something like that. Alex: okay so who's gonna start with what there's- Jacob: well the oldest is the usual order. Josh: yeah what did you actually say? Alex: I said Middle. Jimmy Eat World. All: ohhhhhh. Middle, by Jimmy Eat World Jacob: do everything you can. Alex: yeah I mean good message that some people really need to hear. sounds like it was probably a heartfelt message to somebody. Jacob: oh no, alex has like good and happy reasons for liking his song. mine's gonna be terrible. Alex: well it was it was the first time that I fell in love with music that I didn't play in band so like a more pop type of music that you would just listen to Jacob: yeah Alex: it's the first time like I listened to Metallica before this and- Jacob: I actually thought you were gonna pick a Metallica song. Alex: yeah I know I know as much as I do love Metallica looking back on when I first started listening to Metallica which is what I thought about when like trying to pick a favorite song that came from a darker part of my life a darker memory and not because it was Metallica because as I said I still love Metallica but the people that it's associated with the people that got me into Metallica it's kind of abusive and not not not always really fun memories but Jimmy Eat World comes from a newer group of friends that were like- Josh: would you say a better group of friends? Alex: yeah did I not? what what did I say? Josh: you just said a newer. I was just wondering. Alex: okay yeah no a better group of friends that were like the core of my youth the the best part of so much of my youth were these friends and Jimmy Eat World is kind of at the at the heart of that memory. Josh: would you say it's in the middle of that memory? Alex: yeah yeah I would say that Josh. Josh: yesss! Alex: it's in the middle. Josh: nailed it! Jacob: boooooo. Alex: but like whenever I go back to Jimmy Eat World it used to be like the only band I listened to and then Anberlin got added to that mix. I don't really listen to them a whole lot anymore but when I do I'm always just surprised by how much their lyrics just connect with me like I just get what that band talks about. what seems to be important to them. important enough to put into music anyway. Josh: they're like down-to-earth for our style of person I guess. Jacob: they they were I my music taste was built initially off of what you guys listened to and they were a formative band for me too, I think for all of us? Josh: yeah I love Jimmy Jacob: and every time I go back like for some reason I do forget about them. every time I go back it's just like, oh this makes me happy! how do I forget you guys? Alex: yeah it's it's just it's happy music. Jacob: yeah! it is! Alex: which I can't say the same of for Anberlin all the time, like the- Josh: Anberlin hits heavy. Alex: it does it's yeah it's heavy and- Josh: yeah, really heavy topics. Alex: and that can be really great. they're amazing musicians. they okay I've made this comparison before but if if Jimmy Eat World is like easy listening, Anberlin is more art is how is how I kind of look at the difference between those two bands. not that those are absolute terms concrete terms to describe them but to get a relative idea of how I feel about those two bands that's kind of more like yeah how I place them. Josh: yeah that's that's fair but also Jimmy Eat World has a lot of heavy topics too- Alex: that is true. Jacob: yeah. Josh: -but the music just feels lighter. they handle it a little bit more with levity. Alex: they have more of a punk rock route to begin with Jacob: rather than alt Alex: their first album was more punk rock. I think it was straight up punk rock and then they kind of changed their their tune a little bit for that Bleed America or Bleed American, I can never remember. Jacob: it's so good. Alex: such a great album like geeze louise. there's some really good songs in the album before that, clarity, but Bleed American is just- Josh: remember their song "Lucky Denver Mint"? Alex: oh yeah are you kidding me? Jacob: yep. Josh: have you seen the music video? Jacob: oh see, that is just a happy tune. Josh: the music video is these guys in like like the tight cotton basketball shorts and like sports jerseys and sweatbands and they're playing ultimate frisbee. they're playing frisbee. it has no connection to the lyrics at all but it's just the best, like- Alex: that's how you make art out of your music video, you can't make it connect with the music. but I just remembered like Jacob I think you made like a video of some kind and used an Anberlin song in it or or used, not sorry, Jimmy Eat World, ah something about angels. "let angels bring you in" Josh: oh. that's what I'm saying that was one of the heavy topic songs I was thinking of. Alex: that's true, yeah. Josh: you made a music video? Alex: I don't know if it was a music video- Jacob: yeah, what was that? Alex: -but it was something related to your mission something related to Russia or- Josh: "Here I leave my friends. On sleepless nights the sleepless go, may angels lead you in." Alex: -or someone you knew in Russia maybe a missionary or I'm not sure. great song. so many great songs! Jacob: that is that is one of those deep ones. Alex: yeah it is I don't I honestly don't remember any details about it. Jacob: I can't I mean you're right I just don't remember what it was. Alex: I mean I could talk about J.E.W. for ages. Josh: that is such a good song. Alex: and they're still going like still making music. Josh: yeah, they're on tour right now I think. Alex: I think they are yeah. great concert they put on a great concert. Josh: okay so my garbled song is "Scots Wha Hae". Alex: oh my gosh, great choice! Jacob: oh no, should I- Alex: I never would have thought outside of rock and roll! Josh: I know hence the theming to our entire podcast. Jacob: oh is it a Scottish song? Josh: it's so it's written by Robert Burns, the lyrics, so it's a poem. Jacob: ah, no way, dang it, why- Josh: Written by Robert Burns in like 1790 something, but uh- Alex: you gotta play it. Jacob: yeah. I don't know this song. Josh: well okay I'll say this so this is, so specifically, so I love the poem obviously, but the band that I love their rendition, the traditional Scottish arrangement they picked, is Scocha. SCOCHA. Alex: it sounds like I may need to- Josh: it's named after the two founding guys. last names Scott and Chapman. so SCO-CHA, Scocha. Jacob: I like that. Josh: this this is the this is the best version: Scots Wha Hae by Robert Burns, arranged and performed by Scocha: Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled, Scots, wham Bruce has aften led; Welcome to your gory bed, Or to victory!Now's the day, and now's the hour; See the front o' battle lour; See approach proud Edward's power— Chains and slavery!Wha will be a traitor knave? Wha can fill a coward's grave! Wha sae base as be a slave? Let him turn and flee!Wha for Scotland's king and law Freedom's sword will strongly draw, Freeman stand, or freeman fa', Let him follow me!By oppression's woes and pains! By your sons in servile chains! We will drain our dearest veins, But they shall be free!Lay the proud usurpers low! Tyrants fall in every foe! Liberty's in every blow!— Let us do or die! Josh: This one's heavy. Alex: That's a good one. That's a good version of the song. Josh: It's the best one. There's like some punk rock arrangements of it that just don't get the feel of it quite right. Yeah, it's just a great song. Yeah, so it was like written as a Robert The Bruce speech. So it's written from the perspective of the Bruce to the Scottish troops before, like as they're marching to the Battle of Bannockburn. Jacob: Yeah. Josh: It's just great. Yeah. Alex: So good. It's so good. There's a really good version of it in the Spotify Scottish folk music playlist. That I listened to that playlist a lot. Josh: Like the pipe and drums? Alex: It's not too dissimilar from that version as far as instrumentation goes. They do the vocal harmony a little differently. The guy that breaks from the melody, his harmony is higher, a lot higher pitch than what they do here. But I like this one too. Josh: Yeah. I like this harmony. Anyway, so it's like obviously, so it's Robert The Bruce addressing his troops before marching to Bannockburn to fight against the British, Prince Edward. And it's just like meant to be his rallying speech. And it's based on some truth of what he actually said too. So there's some historicity to the lyrics from Robert Burns. And he obviously, like, you know, he's like, you guys fought with Sir William Wallace. You bled with him. You've fought under me before. Like, here's kind of our final stand, which if I remember right, the Battle of Bannockburn was one of the last huge battles of the War for Independence. Like middle to late 1300s in Scotland. But yeah, it's a powerful song for me. That was one of the songs that plus like the Clan slogan of "courage grows stronger at the wound". Those two things were just really powerful, really powerful, in some of my experiences. And yeah, it hits different when you're able to observe oppressed peoples just willingly, you know, sacrifice everything to defend their own people. So yeah. Plus the, you know, trying to get back to some Scottish roots and trying to understand some of the pain felt and endured through, you know, historical generations in the past and stuff. I think it's important. And yeah. So, when we decided we were going to do Favorite Songs, that's the only song that ever comes to my mind. I'd have to like really think to get anything to jump off the top rope and body slam that one away--to make a WWE reference. Jacob: you'll have to, yeah, send that song to me and I'm going to need to look up the lyrics. Josh: so good. Jacob: and just read the poem, not the lyrics, but look up the poem and just read the poem text itself as I listen to it. Alex: What I find really cool about this, it's called a setting when someone takes a poem and puts it to music. There are a lot of poems out there that have been set to music by a number of different composers that are obviously completely different songs, even though they share the same lyrics because it's the poem. What I find really cool about this setting, which I think is the only setting of Scots Wha Hae, could be wrong. I don't really know, but it's the only one I've ever heard. But what I find really cool about it is a lot of people, when they feel like they are in power, they try to downplay their enemies by calling them brutes and savages, which is something that was done to the Celts and the Scottish by the British and Romans too. Josh: Yeah. Barbarians. Jacob: They're dehumanized. It's easier if they're not humans. Alex: And so you hear a poem like that, that's about going off to battle, and you'd expect different music than that. But the way that this song has a rolling cadence that just brings on like this quiet fortitude, like we're doing this, we're doing it for the right reasons. Josh: Clear mind. Alex: Yeah. Clear mind. Josh: Clear willpower. Jacob: I mean, this was the first time I've heard it. And the one thing that stood out to me was, I mean, it feels like a hymn, like a liturgical hymn where they understand the reverence. Josh: Well, we know... Jacob: Geez, we're all babies. Josh: I know. Alex: Thanks a lot, mom and dad! Jacob: Yeah. The reverence of, "they", Robert Burns understands the reverence and the composers, the reverence of that subject matter and of what those men did willingly, like Josh was saying, it was a sacrifice, but yeah. Josh: Well, we know what the final chapter was and how that all ended as did Robert Burns when he wrote it. Alex: True. Josh: But after he wrote that, it actually kind of became a sort of unofficial national anthem for Scotland for a number of years, which leads me to believe as an entire people, they all understood, or at least the folksy part understands the impact and the importance of it. So anyway, great song. If you want a more upbeat version, The Real McKenzie's. And or just don't be born a Stewart and you probably won't get morose and somber like us. So anyway. Jacob: No for you to cry over it. Josh: You're not going to cry over The Real McKenzie's version. I'll tell you that. It's just, yeah, they protect you. All right, Jacob, you're up. Jacob: Okay. Ah, geez. Dang it, Josh. Josh: I know. Jacob: Following that, this just feels almost... Alex: You could have gone first. Jacob: I know. I made the mistake. That was my bad. Josh: I was about to say something, but I didn't want to like tip my hand. Alex: "Are you sure you want to go after me?" Josh: I've been thinking about this song all day and I'm like, I know it's going to be heavy. Jacob: Yeah, it almost feels irreverent going after Josh, but... Josh: It always does! Jacob: The song I picked is Loved You A Little. Alex: By? Jacob: By The Maine featuring Taking Back Sunday and Charlotte Sands. Josh: Oh, you just shared this with us. Jacob: I did actually. Josh: A couple of weeks ago. Loved You A Little, by The Maine, featuring Taking Back Sunday and Charlotte Sands Josh: Yeah, that's a killer song. Alex: Yeah, that sounds like something that you'd be into. I mean that sounded really- Jacob: Yeah, no no no. Yeah, that's true. It's true. Alex: It sounded like your sound. That's all I'm saying. Jacob: So, I mean, first off, maybe I should say, I rarely listened to The Maine. They'd pop up on Pandora for me every once in a while, but they weren't... Josh: M-A-I-N-E, right? Jacob: Yeah. M-A-I-N-E. Alex: Like the state. Jacob: Yeah, that's what you said. Yeah, so I knew about The Maine, but they certainly never were a go-to band for me. Taking Back Sunday, that's different. I listened to a lot of Taking Back Sunday through high school. And I don't even know... Charlotte Sands, was that her name? I haven't heard of her before. So this just popped up recently as a suggested song for me in YouTube Music. So YouTube Music is getting to know me really well. So, yeah, picking a favorite song is so dang hard. So this is like, in this snapshot of time, like right now, this is kind of the song that I'm frequently going back to. Like if I'm just... I listen to music while I work. And when I'm going through some songs every once in a while, I'll just go back and hit this one again. I'm probably a little different. I like messages in the lyrics of songs and stuff. But when I listen to music, it's mostly the music that sticks out to me. Alex: Yeah, no, me too. It takes me ages to learn lyrics. Jacob: Yeah, so it's the beat and it's the... I don't even know how to describe that. The... Alex: The color. It just has a color, right? Jacob: And in the way that they sing it, in the vocal performance almost, I suppose, and the rhythm of the vocals as well. Josh: It's like dramatized music. Jacob: Yeah, so I am the emo listener in the family. Liz has followed me some as well, but I'm not like this, I'm not a poor tortured soul where it's like emo music just speaks to me. I mean, sometimes it does, the lyrics that is, but the music speaks to me. I just... Josh: Yeah, it's emotional. It's emotive. Jacob: And it gets... Alex: I have theories about that, but go on. Jacob: It gets me moving. It gets me pumping. I want to listen to either alt rock or like emo while I'm like running and doing stuff like that. It's just got the energy for me. Josh: If it's Matt Cutshall doing it, I'll watch that all day long. Because Emo Is Not Dead! But I agree. And like, yeah, like My Chemical Romance, Helena. Black Parade. Alex: Black Parade. Josh: I'm like, I don't really get what you're saying, but these music videos and the music is pretty happening. And this song's awesome. Alex: I think a lot of people could say this about their favorite style or genre of music, but I think it's particularly true of rock and roll. And one of the reasons why we gravitate towards rock and roll so frequently and have so much over the course of our lives is because I think rock and roll more than any other genre of music... Oh boy, here we go. More than any other genre of music.- Josh: Oh! I wasn't expecting this. Alex: Well, you know, once you start making like ultimate statements like that, people are going to be like, oh, what did you say?! Josh: Wait a minute! Alex: I think more than any other genre of music... Josh: Defund the podcast. Defund the podcast! Alex: It helps you to let go of emotion. Jacob: Catharsis. Alex: Because one of the hardest things about learning to be a human being and an adult human being is how to regulate your emotions and just let things go. Just let an emotion go. Like if there's no way to work out the emotion, you just have to let it go. And rock and roll, that is a music that's going to help you do that. Alex: Yeah, I was going to say emo. Emo as well. Emo and rock. Alex: Well, I kind of... Jacob: Yeah, it's a branch of subgenre. Josh: Yeah. So especially in like the younger years, like the middle school, high school... Jacob: Angsty years. Josh: Anxiety addled years. Like I have to prove myself years. Yeah, it kind of took... It helped to convert the unuseful emotions into useful energy and useful actions and useful behaviors. Jacob: Yeah. Josh: That's what it's always done for me. Jacob: I mean, I can admit I do have a few like very specific memories. Going back again to specifically emo music and the way that they can emote so well in the vocal performance itself, the emotion they pull into the actual singing. You know, I've turned on specific songs at times intentionally just to get a good cry out when I've just... Alex: Yeah, release that emotion. It's good. It's so good. Like... Josh: Secondhand Serenade. Alex: How can you teach a kid the importance of that? You can't. I don't know how you use words to teach a kid the importance of that, but you give them the right music. Josh: I'm not saying you guys are wrong, but this is where we diverge. I will do anything I can- Jacob: To not cry? Josh: -to not have to cry. Jacob: Oh, Josh will bottle it up- Josh: It happens a bunch, but I don't watch rom-coms. I will sometimes, but I just... Jacob: Oh, well, I'm talking like- Josh: it's dangerous for me. Alex: So, usually the emotions I'm trying... I can regulate those kinds of emotions more easily, but when I'm angry about something, I have a hard time just letting that kind of emotion go. When I feel like I've been wronged or whatever, and that's when I turn to rock and roll. Not to get a good cry on, but like there are so many emotions that I can release through just listening to rock and roll. Jacob: And so, what I was referring to is when there are very genuinely troubling, difficult, worrisome times that you're going through, sometimes just those... I mean I don't want to call them negative emotions, but the emotions that you hold on to at those times just make it that much harder to get through the problem, to seek solutions. So, if you can just get it... I mean, so that's what I'm saying where I guess you said, turning that... Josh: Yeah, into useful- Jacob: Yeah, use... I don't want to call it useless emotions, but turning it into something positive and an energy that you can actually work and build off of. That's where I've had to use it there a couple of times. Josh: So, it's kind of like when I have food poisoning and I know it's going to be a rough night and I just... I'm like, well, let's get it over with. And I just force myself to get it all up immediately and then I have a good night. Alex: Yes. Josh: And if I don't do that, it's miserable. Alex: Exactly. Jacob: Sure... One other note about that specific song, Loved You Little. I love rock ballads. There are not enough where you have the perfect harmonies between male and female vocals. When they nail it, like to me, that song nails it. And it's just like, it's a whole nother thing. I've got a couple other songs, A Day To Remember, you guys probably don't know them, it's a band. Silverstein. Josh: I know, Silverstein yeah. Alex: I've heard of them. Jacob: They've each got another one where it's just... There are these heavy emo songs that man, boy, do they pick me up and make me happy. Just because the harmonies are so good. Josh: Yeah, the male-female duet. Jacob: Yes. Alex: Like, Let Angels Lead You In. Jacob: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Josh: Oh, yeah. Alex: Jimmy Eat World song. Jacob: Yeah, good call. [00:25:21] Stewnerds! [00:25:29] Paranormal Hour Segment Soundbyte: Dude, did you turn on the radio? No. What are those lights flickering? Para... Normal... Hour. Jacob: Okay, so this is a story that comes to us from Bulgaria. Yeah, I doubt many people have heard of this. It happened at the very end of 1990 to late 1992. Josh: So, yeah, not real internet going on. Jacob: No, definitely not. Josh: Probably not much widespread knowledge of it. Alex: World News Coverage. Jacob: Yeah. Especially keep in mind that the Berlin Wall has come down. Right. The Soviet Union is collapsing. So there's just a lot going on. And yeah, Bulgaria's probably not used to publicizing. Well, this was something they were trying to not publicize at that. So there wasn't a lot of press. We only have this thanks to a Bulgarian journalist, Svetko Kanyev. He had kind of- Josh: Contemporary journalist? Or is this after the fact? Jacob: Yeah, contemporary. So it was at the time he broke the story as it was happening. He was kind of friends with some big wig in the government. And he'd sometimes just ask him for stories like, Hey, what can I report on? Josh: I'll give you some cigarettes! Jacob: And so he ran across him one day as he was in a transition, like getting into a van to go drive off somewhere or something like that. He's like, give me a story. It's like, I've got nothing for you, but go down to Tsarichina and see what's going on there. And so he did. And he broke this whole story. He wrote some big articles. He even at one point was able to take a photographer with him down to this village of Tsarichina. So that's where this is set. Tsarichina, Bulgaria. It's a really small village. Like there might be a dozen homes in this place. Josh: Yeah. Real village. Jacob: Yeah. It's like, this is the kind of, it's the size where, you know, Bulgarians don't know about Tsarichina. It's nestled in some rolling mountainous hills, nice and forested. I mean, it's not super far from Sofia. Josh: Oh, okay. Jacob: But again, it's just people don't know about this good. So small. So this guy, Dmitar Khikimanov, he lived in Tsarichina. So first of all, his family had this oral tradition that this king, well, Tsar, Tsar Samuel, who was like this great king or tsar in Bulgarian history from like 900 AD, that he had buried a treasure in Tsarichina. And it's this long lost treasure that no one knows about. So he has a dream this one night where four really important Bulgarian historical figures come to him. And they tell him, Dmitar, you have the blood of Tsar Samuel in your veins. And he did leave a treasure- Alex: It's yours! Jacob: -and it's up to you to find it. Bulgarian needs this treasure to be found. Alex: Okay. Josh: Oh, so you don't even get to keep it. Alex: It's not for you! Josh: It's the country's! Jacob: No, this is like, this is like national significance and import. Josh: Interesting. Jacob: Okay. So a couple of weeks before he had this dream, Bulgaria had just founded the Paranormal Research Association. Josh: How long prior? Jacob: A couple of weeks. Like two weeks, I think. So this is a brand new association. I think it's part of the Department of Defense. Josh: Oh, oh, this is like a government body. Jacob: Oh yeah. Yeah. It's official. Like this is a state run association. Is the word I have. Alex: Sign me up, I'll work for them. Jacob: I know, right? So, you know, he has this massive dream, it's family tradition. So he's got these two things lining up. He's like, oh man, there must be something here. This must be real. So he goes to this Paranormal Research Association, of course. Tells him about the oral tradition, tells him about this dream. And they're like, yeah, okay. Okay, let's go check this out. Let's do it. Josh: "Dude, I just got here. Let me get some coffee." Alex: Did they tell him where it was in the dream? Josh: No. Jacob: Other than in the village? yes. Alex: Okay. Jacob: Yeah, but the specific location, no. Alex: So they say, "okay, let's go get it". What do they do? Jacob: Right. I'll get there soon. Josh: "Mount up! Suit up! " Jacob: So one of these big wigs in this, I'm just going to call an agency, Paranormal Research Agency. One of the big wigs in this agency, his daughter is a psychic. Let me back up. There's another guy who's actually in the agency who's sometimes has psychic moments as well. So that guy, when he heard this story, he's like, oh yeah, yeah, I had that dream too. We don't know if he had a dream of these guys coming to Dimitar, or if he had a dream where the four figures came to him. Either way, there's a second person now who's had a same dream that yes, there's the treasure of Tsar Samuel is in Sarichina. Josh: And this guy's kicking himself like, "ah, why didn't I tell the boss? I had that weeks ago." Jacob: So Dimitar, he goes back home. He goes back home to Tsarichina. And this small crew of like six officials- Josh: All part of this Paranormal- I'm shocked there's more than like two people in this. Jacob: So I think a couple of them might've been just like normal military guys. Then you had a couple of actual people from this new agency. Josh: The civilians. Jacob: And then the one guy's daughter as well, because she's a psychic. They head out to Tsarichina. Again, no one knows where it is. Like they take a wrong turn and this woman, Ellie Luginova, she's the psychic. She's like, "whoa, hold on guys. No, we're going the wrong way. Turn around, get back to that fork and take a right." Alex: Oh, she's a good psychic. Jacob: She's a good psychic. And from that moment on, she leads them exactly to Tsarichina. She's never been there. She doesn't know where the village is. Josh: No internet! Jacob: No. Yeah. No Google maps. Alex: No GPS. Well, it's up there, but they don't have access to it. Josh: Outdated Atlas because the Soviet Union is no longer a thing. Jacob: And yeah, turn for turn, she gets them. Alex: No sneaky magic's gonna fool her. Josh: Oh man. Jacob: We'll see. Josh: Okay, hold on. So that right there is kind of crazy, right? Jacob: Like this is a big story, man. Josh: When my wife tells me to go to CVS, I'm like, uhhhhh, if I just start driving, I'm not making it. Alex: Well, that's because you live today. Things were different back then. You had to get around a little bit. Jacob: So another footnote I wanted to add in here, these like Eastern block countries, from my experience, at least from things I've read online, you know, they're more accepting of like psychics and mysticism, all that kind of stuff than would be here. You know, I mean, the Soviet Union was investing in and testing remote viewers and things like that, you know. Alex: Remote viewers? Are you talking about like that, Those LSD fueled experiments that Stranger Things are based on? Josh: Like CIA, Staring at Goats and things. Jacob: Yeah Stranger Things does remote viewing. CIA started their own program once they found out Soviet Union was. Alex: That movie with George Clooney about the goats. Josh: It's a similar program. Jacob: I don't know what that is. Josh: Funding came from a different source, a slightly different chain of command, but yeah, pretty much the same. Alex: Men that Stare at Goats. That's what it's called. The movie. Josh: You haven't seen it? Jacob: No I haven't- Alex: It's about a real thing that we did. The 60s or 70s. Jacob: All right. So, Laginova, the main psychic on this, she gets them to Tsarichina. The next day they start digging. I don't remember how they determined where to start digging, but they started digging somewhere. They dug like a 50 foot wide trench. Pretty large. They got in there eight feet deep, no signs, no indications of like leading to something, you know, a treasure. So, they go back to Laginova, like, "hey, like, what's up? Are we in the right spot? Should we be expecting something yet?" "Oh no, actually, you guys are in the wrong spot. It's actually a hundred meters over this way." So, they fill that back in and they start digging at this other place. Classic psychic. And they've got this nice, big, brand new excavator that they brought with them. Alex: Brand new? Good for them. Josh: Probably from Greece. It's not Yugoslavian for sure. If it's nice. Alex: Ah-hah! Political history. I get it. Jacob: So, they start digging and like this thing breaks down. Pretty soon. And so, they asked Laginova about it again and it's funny, like he's not in the story past this point. Like there's no even mention about Demeter. Josh: They bumped the guy out. Jacob: Poor Kikimenov. Josh: It's his freaking treasure, man. Jacob: So, they ask her like, what's going on? And she says, those above blocked the work of the excavator so that it would not break anything. Josh: Oh my gosh! Alex: Yeah, you got to get some archaeologists in there. Jacob: And then she says, "this is a game of chess. It's a dangerous game of chess that you can checkmate. So, the last move is the most important. This is your move. This is the place and sign of digging and opening. This will be the salvation of great Bulgaria. This will save your country from destruction, from the doom of disintegration, from its crystalline fragility. It will become steel strong." Josh: She's like floating in the air with her head back and just like- Alex: glowing eyes. Jacob: Probably. Josh: The wind. That Lord of the Rings voice. Alex: "You shall have a queen!" Josh: And like she, this is the reporter reporting this? Is he down there with them as this is happening? Jacob: Yeah, thanks. So, this is Colonel Kanyev. He's one of the guys very involved. He's like, he's in there digging. He's one of the guys seeing this whole thing through. He wrote a book about this whole experience. And so, there's a Bulgarian website with four very large articles summarizing this entire book. So, this is all Google Translate of those articles that I'm getting all this info from. Yeah. So, all the quotes, it's just Google Translate translating this website. Alex: Okay. Josh: Sounds legit to me. Jacob: Yeah, not too bad. So, yeah, we can thank Kanyev for his book as well as a journalist. Oh, wait, no, it's Svetko Kanyev is the colonel, the journalist. Well, it had a different name. Shoot. Anyway, this like takes off really quick. This has been like a day of digging, a single day of digging. Alex: Right. Josh: After the trench. Alex: Well, I mean, when you have a psychic working for you, like what do you expect? Jacob: And so, the next day they find out, oh, Laginova and this other psychic guy are talking to unseen entities. So, we have these two figures. Yeah. Roro and Kiki. So, they've named themselves. Laginova is speaking with Roro and this other guy is speaking with Kiki. Josh: According to Google Translate. Jacob: Well, I mean, I can read Bulgarian script. The names are Roro and Kiki. Yeah. An interesting side note, Kikimora is, have you heard of Kikimora? Josh: Yeah, Polish creature. Jacob: Yeah, all of Eastern Europe has Kikimora in their folklore and everything. Josh: Oh, mythos. It's also in The Witcher. One of the major monsters in The Witcher. Jacob: It's terrifying looking in The Witcher. That's not what the lore is. Alex: Well, the Witcher comes from Poland, so. Jacob: So, yeah, that was just an interesting connection to me, Kiki, Kikimora. Josh: Okay. Which would lead me to think this is like an evil being. Jacob: So, Kiki and Roro don't see eye to eye. They're kind of at odds with each other. So, you have these two psychics speaking to these two different entities who are trying to guide this crew on where to go, how to dig, what to expect. Alex: and each psychic is always talking to the same individual. Jacob: Yeah. So, pretty quickly, they just decided, all right, we're just going to go with Laginova and Roro. Josh: She's been the most helpful so far. She's the daughter of the Colonel. Jacob: Yeah, exactly. That's probably what it was, right? Josh: Salute and move forward. Jacob: And the other guy just kind of left and then we don't ever hear from Kiki again. Josh: Oh, I would love to know what Kiki was saying. Jacob: Yeah, I know. And I don't have any of that. But so, like, they jump in full bore, enthusiastically following Laginova and Roro. Okay? And at some point, they had kind of, they were speaking with Roro. I mean, it sounds like every day they're speaking with Roro. Regular contact, regular communication. And I also got the impression that sometimes she would just write it down. Laginova would just write it down. And other times she would speak it and other people would write it down as she's speaking. Josh: Like simultaneous interpretation. Yeah. Alex: Very prophet-like. Jacob: So, they got this, some message that made them understand, okay, we're going to be finding a door pretty soon. And I think it wasn't super deep, like maybe 10 meters deep. They should be finding a door. Josh: That's pretty deep to be digging by hand! Alex: 10 meters? Jacob: Okay, 10 meters. Yeah, no, sorry. That's over 30 feet. I mean, they get down there. Yeah. They get deep. But yeah, maybe it was like five meters at this point. And they found some weird things, like a mirror and this triangle of like an unknown material. Alex: Unknown material? Jacob: Yeah. And so, they finally find what they think is the door though. And they make this 43-step plan. 43 steps of how they're going to open this door and what they're going to do, like as soon as they get inside. It includes things like spraying a disinfectant, wearing hazmat suits and face masks, installing a degasser, checking for poisonous gas. Josh: Yeah, so maybe like booby trapped. Jacob: Getting oxygen down there. Putting a veil over the entrance so things can't come in and out. Josh: Worried about biological contamination, chemical contamination. Jacob: Yes, absolutely. Josh: Kind of like when they're excavating certain parts of the Egyptian pyramids and things, very similar things. Jacob: And so, they got their plan. They're suited up. They're ready to go. And they try to open it and it doesn't work. And so, they eventually realized like they were supposed to like reflect sun at the exact right time. Sunbeam was going to come down. They're supposed to reflect and hit something in a certain way and that would open the door. Alex: What? No. Jacob: So, they missed it. Alex: No. Jacob: Chance gone. Alex: No. Josh: Wait for the next month. Alex: No, no! This isn't how the real world works! Josh: Don't question the Colonel! Jacob: So, Roro gives them alternate instructions on how to get in. Josh: Oh, no! Alex: Oh, so they chose the wrong person. Kiki would have gotten them in. Jacob: And they start all this other digging, but it includes like new hazards and they have to like dispose of a biological defense plate. Josh: Expose of? Jacob: Dispose of. Josh: I mean, dispose of a biological defense plate? Alex: What's this door look like? Jacob: I don't know, man. I don't know. I would love to be able to read the book. Because there are so many details. Alex: Okay, I'm calling it. I'm calling it right now. Roro's an alien and this is an alien treasure. Go on. Jacob: Okay. So, they do like they destroy this plate covered in no one knows what kind of bacteria and diseases and stuff. Alex: I don't even understand what this plate is. Jacob: I don't know. Man, there's just so much mystery around this. Josh: It's like three quarter inch steel or something. I'm thinking, think of Bulgaria in the early 90s. They don't, this is not sophisticated equipment. Jacob: So, they keep finding materials and substances that they cannot explain. And like they sent it off, they shipped it off to scientists and- Alex: Bulgarian scientists? Just kidding! I'm sure you're great Bulgaria! Josh: Sorry you guys, you know, it's the time period. That's all we're saying. Jacob: And like no one knows. They're finding like pink and yellow soils and stuff and soils that become soft when you apply pressure to it. Like just all kinds of weird things. They're finding blocks, intentionally placed blocks and structures like that as they continue digging deeper and deeper. Alex: I'm not saying it's aliens but... Jacob: Okay, so. Josh: How is this not on Ancient Aliens? Jacob: That's a great question. Roro eventually says, it's not so easy to enter my home. You have to enter the hall first, then the kitchen, and then the living room. Josh: What the crap? I don't like this. Alex: I do, this is awesome! Josh: I mean, it's awesome, but I think this guy is like, he's trying to get out. He's projecting he's like trapped entity and he's trying to get this guy to let him out. Alex: Astral projection... Jacob: So, even man, at this point, they're like meters and meters deep and it's a full blown tunnel completely underground. It's not just a straight hole shaft that they've dug down. Yeah, so there are some pictures online you can find. This is a full blown tunnel. Alex: Okay, the hallway. Jacob: And again, they've gotten instructions and directions from Roro this whole time about how to get past and dig through different difficult materials, but they finally get to this, let's see, yeah, it's a pretty large stone. 160 centimeters by 50 centimeters by 120 centimeters. Meter and a half by meter and a half by half meter, right? So, three by three by one and a half feet. No, wait, sorry. No, that's like five by five by one and a half feet. That they just, no matter what they did, they could not get through it. So, they finally decided, well, it's time to bring in a pyrotechnician. Josh: No. Don't blow up Roro's kitchen! Alex: Roro's going to be so mad. Jacob: So, Roro said, referring to that stone, you will fight with it like an ant with a bean. Oh, and then that's- Alex: Roro's clearly been down there too long. Josh: He's hungry? Alex: Nothing but ants and beans to watch. Jacob: That's when they decided to bring in a pyrotechnician and then Roro said, "once you've decided to use gunpowder, use it. I can't tell you how to do it. Call in a specialist. He may not be military, but he'll be smart and a specialist." That's it. Alex: Could you be a little less enigmatic? Jacob: I know. Yeah, these messages are, they're just so weird. And again, you know, Google Translate is helping add to the oddness of the messages. But yeah, from that point on, they're basically blowing this tunnel out. And the really surprising thing is like, it is continuously a nicely shaped square tunnel. And even the journalist, when he- Alex: I'm sorry, just to make sure I understood that. As they blow up more and more and more, it remains square. Is that what you're saying? Jacob: Yes. Alex: Weird. Josh: So, nothing else is blowing out. Jacob: Yeah. And so, that's what like, every time Roro talks about where they're going, he always mentions like, it's a specific path. Like, there's this one way you're supposed to be going. Josh: Okay, I'm sorry- Jacob: So, almost like this tunnel was put in place in this specific material that will be easily, more easily removed. Josh: But yeah, so it was filled in. If the top of this tunnel is intact and is stronger than TNT, I'm assuming they're using TNT and they're throwing a cigarette on it. They're blowing it- they toss it- Alex: So Soviet. Jacob: You're terrible. Josh: But I'm assuming, but the ceiling stays intact to create this completely square. That means it was filled in on the way out. Someone was backfilling this thing. That's insane. Jacob: So, like from here on out is where it gets, it stays largely the same as what I've described, right? They're excavating, getting instruction from Roro. They come to impasses, they have to do different things. But, you know, all this while they've slowly learned new things. They've consulted other psychics, one of which is Baba Vanga. Alex: Cool name. Jacob: Yes. Baba means, you know, grandmother. Her name is Vangelina. So, Baba Vanga was like a world known psychic when she was alive. Alex: Well, with a name like that, how could you not be? Jacob: Some report- Josh: "I'm Baba Vanga. I don't know... I'm Baba Vanga!" Jacob: Some report that she had an 80% accuracy rate on her predictions. So, Laginova is the one who reached out to Baba Vanga. Josh: Why? Alex: Wait, who did? I'm sorry, who did? Jacob: Laginova. Like the lady who's been the main psychic. Josh: Roro's mouthpiece. Jacob: Uh-huh. So, here's what Baba Vanga said. That "when they reach a tunnel length of 100 meters, steps will be revealed two by two. And from there, we will enter a room where we will find the first person. But what kind of person? This is not a person. It's a monkey. Yellow, hairy, and withered, she says. This line astounds me." Oh, sorry. So, this is actually the colonel's words. Baba Vanga's words. "The question is, have you found a human head? Someone replied, not yet. Then she asks, have you found the obelisk? And the reply is, yes, we're finding obelisks. And then Baba Vanga says, are you finding symbols? To which someone else replies, yes, geometric symbols, triangles, circles, and crosses. Then Baba Vanga says, this is a big secret. Who will unravel the secret? You will reach a capsule. The content canned." That's good Google Translate. "You do not know if the capsule is pressurized. What are you going to do with that monkey?" Alex: Oh, yeah, and there was a monkey! What are you going to do with that monkey? Josh: You guys got to think ahead! Plan a little bit here! Jacob: "Neither man nor woman. If the airtight lid is open, the creature can be revived from the air. What are you going to do, I ask, when it wakes up and speaks?" Josh: I, what? Jacob: That's Baba Vanga for you. Alex: My mind is- Josh: "I Baba Vanga! I, uh, just tell you whatever I say!" Alex: She's not Italian. "Baba Vanga, Baba Vanga!" Jacob: So by this point, they do know Roro is an alien. Alex: I got it! Jacob: And Roro has been communicating to them biologically. Josh: He lied to Demeter! Jacob: Yeah, so- Josh: He could project? like- Jacob: Did he project those, that dream to Demeter? Josh: But okay, okay, wait- Alex: This sounds a lot like a choose your own adventure story that I've read. Not kidding. Go on, Josh. Josh: I, um, multiple obelisks. Apparently, thanks for that one, Colonel. They've been finding this all along and now we're just hearing about it. What's up with that? And then, um, okay, various symbols- Alex: "This is a big secret." Josh: And they, so it's like a cryptography/cryptology-type problem. And, uh, presumably the obelisks aren't being blown to bits as they're- Jacob: Yeah, presumably. Josh: -made out of the same material that the walls and floor and ceiling are. Jacob: So meanwhile, all this time, Laginova is also being, I'm going to use the term, downloaded. This insane script, some language, like linguists have supposedly looked at it. It has no relation to any earthly language that is known. Josh: She wrote it down? Jacob: She wrote it down. Josh: She wrote an alphabet? Jacob: And supposedly linguists have also determined, however, that it is indeed a language. It is showing expected types of patterns. And- Alex: Did they find any punctuation? Because it always bothers me when alien languages- Jacob: Cambodian, Thai, for the most part, they don't have punctuation. Alex: Oh, I didn't know that. So there are some of our languages that don't either. Josh: Traditional Chinese don't use punctuation. Alex: Well, clearly they're aliens. Josh: Classical Chinese. Alex: Oh, really? Oh yeah. Josh: Oh my gosh. It sounds like a problem for AI! Alex: Ahhh... Baba Vanga! We need to make an AI and call it Baba Vanga! Jacob: I would love that. Josh: Noted. Jacob: Okay. But like the things, the communications with these aliens, like just keeps getting crazier. All right. Alex: I believe it. Jacob: Let's see, like at one point, Laginova asks, "who are you? Who am I speaking with?" This had been a while in. The response is, "the higher mind speaks." So this is a new entity that we don't know yet. "Today, I will speak to you. In the meantime, Roro has been replaced as your guide by Sorrel." Josh: What the crap?! Jacob: "And now for business." They're very matter of factly in the way that they communicate. Josh: Okay, logical, they've been trapped for who knows, millennia. Jacob: "You have two options. To continue straight to the front entrance of the pyramid temple." Josh: What the! She's like, "oh, OK." Jacob: But it will be very difficult for you or to change direction to the right, where it will be easier for you. Josh: Where does that one go?? Jacob: I don't know, but they chose the right. So this wasn't the first instance where they've actually been presented a couple of options where they could choose for themselves. Josh: They're playing with them, yo! Alex: Like I said, choose your own adventure. Jacob: And so that's another thing that Colonel Kaniyia pointed out a couple of times. A lot of the crap they say is just never came to fruition, was completely pointless. Just fluff. Josh: Like the head? Jacob: That was Baba Vanga. That wasn't the aliens. Alex: Baba Vanga being a psychic, not Baba Vanga getting a download. Jacob: Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, Baba Vanga hadn't been communicating directly with. It's all Luganova. Josh: Oh, so they chose that... name? Jacob: But the aliens have still, they have impressed upon them that there is something that they will find of immense significance. Josh: Yeah, a block of cheese! Alex: Yeah, the world's greatest cheese! Josh: It's a rat race and they're just testing us. "Are we going to go the hard way or easy way?" "I'm going to go the easy way." Alex: "Oh, noted." Josh: "Okay, interesting. Okay, humans like easy things." "I swear there's going to be something at the end. Just keep going." Jacob: They start kind of poking fun and joking with them. Josh: The aliens? Jacob: Yeah, so like Sorrel at one point, Sorrel says, "so now time is flying fast and you're getting used to being underground life, and you don't want our contact anymore, but you are moving quickly towards the goal. There's only one direction. There is no dividing stones. There are no two directions. It is one and it walks its marked path. There can be no mistake. This is it." Alex: Hahah! Sorrel, what a jokester. Jacob: I'm sure you're getting used to underground life now! Josh: He's been practicing that one for a while. He's like, "I can't wait until they're down here that I can tell them that they're getting used to it." Alex: "I finally got to use that line!" So this is why we don't get downloads. Jacob: This higher mind entity, it would only speak with them on the first day of each month. And it's like at one point, like they had this whole Q&A thing, I'm sure every month they did. Josh: An AMA. Jacob: "Ask me anything with the higher mind!" So there was recently, recently meaning at that time, they had seen an article published by Soviet scientists that they had discovered hell 14 kilometers underneath the earth's surface. So they asked- Josh: Stranger Things... Jacob: They asked them about this. And the response was, "there is no hell under the earth. Hell is now here on the very surface of the earth." Alex: Ohhhh! Jacob: "it's such a mess." Alex: Burnnnn. Jacob: "And incoherent now. There's no hell greater than this. So they have not arrived at any hell, only scientific and technological conclusions, but not that biblical hell. There is no real hell." So like there are a couple of these instances where they're dropping like, like seriously deep stuff. Josh: Just playing with them. Jacob: Yeah. Like they asked them about science one time, like what should we do to improve our science or something like that? Or, and like, it's not so much the science as much as it is the human perception and understanding of how you can communicate and things like that. Josh: "But I am limited. I can only communicate the first of each month. So... Are you there? Can you hear me? You there?" Alex: Is that their way of warning us against all the meetings that we have at work? Josh: Yeah. Can you put it in an email? Just put it in an email! We don't got to be here. Just zap that thing over here! Jacob: Okay. Last, last fun quote. Again, they were asking who they were talking to at a different point in time. They got the response. "It is spoken in a collective name. You will now be governed by the United Galactic-" Josh: ...Federation... Jacob: No, some made up word. "Clarkforium". I should read what it says in Bulgarian. "There is no shield. There are no chiefs of staff." Alex: No shield? Jacob: I don't even know what that refers to. Alex: Like Marvel?? Jacob: And then it says "there is a shield that includes all the leaders in the galaxy. And they make up the Clarkforium led by the higher mind. It also includes Sorrel and Roro and others, which do not concern you by name now. Aggregated impulse information is obtained, which synthesizes and provides a generalized opinion." Josh: Okay. Okay. No, it's a democratic board of governing aliens, led by the higher mind. And homeboy is like, "I'm talking to you directly now because you're in tune". Jacob: Okay. Now- Alex: Strategic Homeland Intervention... Logistics Division, SHIELD! Jacob: So at a different point- Josh: There is no shield, oh, there is a shield! Alex: Yeah. Josh: Oh, snap. Alex: They're the shield. Jacob: At another point, they ask the higher minds. It's like, who else are you talking with? Are you talking with anyone else around the earth? The response- Josh: "The American president." Jacob: No. Here we go. "We communicate through the old Bulgarian language. It is an intergalactic language. Therefore, our contacts are limited to people who know this language." Josh: All right Higher Mind... Alex: Communicating with Humans 101: make them feel special! Josh: Yeah. Oh, human intelligence, ego up. "You're the, we tried! But the rest of them are all idiots. You're the only one we can talk to!" Alex: Bulgaria! Jacob: So like that- Josh: "I'm the Higher Mind, man. Like, I just can't!" Jacob: That wasn't the first time where they spoke about kind of, hey, you know what? I'm going to use that American term, Bulgarian exceptionalism. I'll put it that way. And about how Bulgaria needs to return to its great strength. Things in that vein. Alex: Vein is the right word. Yeah. Vein. Jacob: I wish I had a different spelling of vein. I wish I had a better climax, but after two years of digging and not really finding anything real, by that point, all of like the top brass in the defense ministry had changed out. So you have the new people who are like, you spent how much money on this? And you have nothing of it for us? They shut it down. Alex: But what about those materials that they'd never seen before? Jacob: I don't know. Josh: The obelisks! The language! Jacob: They shut it down, but they also thought it'd be best to try to conserve it, which I guess the only, I'd say the only did it to a certain degree. Alex: Yeah. Governments are not great at that. Jacob: So like they took some precautions to secure some walls, you know, to prevent collapse. Um, and they sealed off some other kind of like doorways and entryways and stuff. But then after that, they dumped two trucks worth, like two concrete trucks worth of concrete to seal off with a big old plug, like the very entrance. And it's since then now grown over and it's covered up. Alex: Dynamite, baby! Jacob: People don't really even know for sure where the entrance, I mean, by nowadays, you know, LIDAR would easily find it, but it's- Alex: No, not LIDAR, but ground penetrating radar. Jacob: Yeah. Sorry. Thank you. Not LIDAR. Okay. So- Josh: I hate you Bulgarian government! Jacob: So I don't know if you want to give me your reactions or I've got verifiable actual results from this and then my own conclusions. Josh: What? I'm just angry. I don't know what you want from me. Alex: You need some rock and roll, right? Some Master of Puppets. Jacob: Here we go. The things that we at least know are like verifiably true for the most part. I think I can say that safely. They did, they did spend two years digging a tunnel that went about 68 meters deep. Alex: Whoa. Jacob: So yeah, that's 230 feet or so, probably. Alex: A tunnel, not a shaft. Vertical. Jacob: This is where it gets kind of frustrating. As I read Kanyev's stuff, he talks about all these turns and these different things they had to get past. And it makes it sound like a very, more like a system of tunnels. But then when you read the journalist's report, it's a spiral down. Josh: Down, but maybe the obstacles are when you're going horizontal. Jacob: Maybe. Josh: That's what it- Jacob: Yeah, so it's a spiral down that reached up to 150 meters long. So 68 meters deep, 150 meters total in that spiral. Josh: Who did that math? That's a weird thing to calculate. Jacob: I forgot to mention this. The, the aliens only allowed seven specific people, one of which was Lagunova. So it was six men who spent two years. Oh, and then I guess, I mean, they did eventually bring in those pyrotechnicians. Alex: Sure. Experts. Jacob: So that's, and it's like that- Josh: "They won't be military, but they will be experts. And once they're here, you got to keep using them and you got to keep blowing things up. " Alex: Because we want you to get to the center of this place. Josh: You're taking a little too long and we know your government isn't going to let you finish. Jacob: I forgot to mention, at one point they came across a force field that they couldn't get past. I mean, the whole thing was just, it's so wild. Anyway, they actually took the journalist down with his photographer. So we know that tunnel was dug. It is gone. You can no longer find it. So we know it has been cemented in. Alex: Go study that force field! Jacob: Yep. We do know that dozens of pages of an unknown language were written and analyzed. Alex: And lost. Jacob: There are at least a couple of pictures online that you can see of this language. Alex: Okay. Cool. Jacob: And actually a really interesting thing- Alex: I'm going to get an AI on that. Josh: Yeah yeah yeah! If you're listening to me AI, get a- Alex: Yeah, if you're a listener, AI- Josh: Please let us know first! Jacob: Heather and I- Heather and I took a Russian handwriting class. It was not to learn to write pretty, but to read Russian handwriting. And we- And our professor gave us a couple of documents from like, man, 15th, 14th century Russian monks handwriting. Alex: Originals or copies? Jacob: Copies. Alex: Okay. Good. Josh: *blowing noise* "Alright, it's a little dusty, but uh, here ya go!" Jacob: They used shorthand. And they used a lot like dots and hash lines in very specific places to denote different things. Josh: Mom would do that. Alex: Interesting. Josh: Her English shorthand class. Jacob: Yeah. And so when I saw the image of this unknown language, it actually reminded me a lot of that. So- Alex: well, if ancient Bulgarian is an intergalactic language. Jacob: Let's see. All the government files are classified still or lost. And that includes a couple thousand journal pages that Kanyev wrote. All of his journals, all of Luginova's journals were confiscated as well. Josh: That's verified? Jacob: Yeah. Josh: Okay. Jacob: There were multiple suicides and or deaths of people who were involved. And $9 million US dollars were spent on the two years of this project with only seven people involved in the digging. Alex: Valuated at $9 million American dollars in the 90s or today? Jacob: I think at that time. Alex: Oh my gosh! Jacob: So it has an even higher value than now. So here's where I'm at. And I don't love this conclusion. Josh: We'll fix it for you, go ahead. Totally solved mystery! Jacob: I think it was a scam. First and foremost by Luginova, who was the psychic speaking as and for Roro and Sorrel and the Higher Mind, she was the one giving them every single message. Now, sure, there's Baba Vanga and some other psychics who corroborate, but who says she wasn't paying them? ...........
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#008 The Drill Down Deadlock

This Week on Another Brother:
In episode #008, The Drill Down Deadlock, the brothers introduce their second GHOST, the podcast's biggest fan and Jacob's firstborn. What superhero name would you give Josh, is Jacob ripping off DC's Flash, and what does Henry think of the brothers' chosen super powers? Plus, stay with us to hear about one of Alex's greatest marching band moments!
Visit our website for merch and other brother goodness.
And don't miss this episode's Alternate Reality...
 
Episode Links (***Spoiler Alert***):
According to DC Comics, the Flash is pretty rad. He has the superpowers of not only super speed, but also: intangibility, superhuman agility, time travel, creates and controls lightning, multiversal knowledge
Is Henry a mere [insert measure word here] science away from being able to achieve invisibility?! Let's get educated together from this Ted Ed talk by Joy Lin!
I never new comicbook superheros could be so cool. Seriously, look at the superpower of Electromagnetism Manipulation (seriously the best superpower).
Alex might just want to fly, but come on, superhero flight via jet pack? Astral projection?? And power rings???
Drum Corp International (DCI). What some people have surely been quoted as calling "the Olympics for musicians: a chance for them to flex their muscles and show off, while the rest of us wonder if we'll ever be that coordinated even just walking down the street."
A pretty cool 12-year old YouTube video by Jeffrey Roy showing McNary's marching band competing at the University of Oregon.
 
Transcript:
The following transcript was created using the OpenAI Whisper API: [00:00:00] This Week on Another Brother [00:00:37] Another Brother Theme Song [00:00:57] Stewnerds Segment Jacob: We have our second ghost on the show. I want to introduce the show, my oldest child, Henry! All: Yay! Woo! Jacob: Today, the day of recording, is actually Henry's birthday, so I figured what better way to surprise him than to bring him on the podcast? He's been asking since day one to be on the podcast, and here he is. Josh: Should we sing happy birthday in our three different languages? all: Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Henry, happy birthday to you. Jacob: Not impressed. Alex: Not a great review. Jacob: On a score of 1 to 10, what do you give us, Henry? Henry: Uh. I don't know. Jacob: Okay, that's a 2, I'd say. Solid 2. Henry: I'd say a 5. Jacob: Oh, dang. Alex: We should have you rate all of the superpowers we've chosen for today, too. Josh: Oh, mine is gonna blow you guys away. Jacob: He didn't know what we were doing. Josh: Oh, spoiler! Jacob: Oh, no, you're good. We're picking what superpower you would personally want to have. Should we start with Henry, since he'll then rate ours? Alex: Sure, yeah. Jacob: Okay, Henry, what superpower would you pick? Henry: Invisibleness. Alex: You'd want to be invisible? You creep. Jacob: Yeah, go ahead, Henry. Tell them why. What's your reasoning there? Henry: That I could sneak and look at stuff. Without getting seen! Josh: So, okay, as a superpower, what things would you sneak and look at? Henry: Uh, presents. Josh: Okay, okay. Jacob: Henry. Alex: You'll just watch them hide the presents and you'll know where they are. Jacob: What else did you tell me and Mom today? Henry: That I could steal stuff. Jacob: Steal stuff. Josh: You're talking like bad guys' stuff, though, right? Henry: No I'm not. Jacob: This sounds more like a... Alex: Super villain. Jacob: Yeah, you're going to be a villain, Henry. That's not what superheroes do. Henry: No I'm not. Alex: What are you going to steal as a superhero? Henry: Money from bad guys. Jacob: Oh, he just flipped the tables on us. Josh: Like Robin Hood. Alex: So once they rob the bank, you steal the money back? Jacob: There we go. Josh: Okay, so then what would you do with the money? Henry: Give it to the bank. Josh: Oh, give it to the bank. Oh, so you're a capitalist superhero. Alex: Well, it did belong to people already, so... Josh: It's insured. It's FDIC insured. Alex: He's not robbing from the rich to give it to the poor. He's robbing from the people that stole it from other people. To give it back to the people. Jacob: Yeah, yeah. That's justice. Josh: All right. Jacob: What other good things can you do with it? Alex: I give that superpower a 7 out of 10. Henry: Eh. Eh. Alex: It's pretty cool. Josh: It's pretty cool. Who has invisibleness, Wonder Woman? Jacob: Well, her jet does. Alex: But there is the invisible one from Fantastic Four. Josh: Have you seen Teen Titans? Henry: No. Josh: I wonder if any... Oh, X-Men. Doesn't the monkey dude go invisible? Alex: Monkey dude? There's two monkey-ish dudes. Josh: Oh my goodness. Jacob: Nightcrawler? Alex: Nightcrawler is one of them. No, he just blinks. He like teleports. Josh: Oh. Bummer. So he couldn't sneak and watch invisibly. He'd have to poof and poof and poof. Alex: Yeah, I mean, but he could poof himself into the shadows. Poof. Jacob: There's gotta be a few that we're just missing. But I don't think there are many who haven't. That's true. So, it'd be pretty unique. Alex: It's creepy. Jacob: Would you scare people like Mom? Henry: Yeah. Jacob: Sneak up on her and pop out at her? Henry: Yeah. Josh: Man, adolescent superheroes are the worst. Alex: Okay, who's next? Josh: I'll go. Okay. I thought long and hard about this one, and it's not a traditional superhero power that I'm aware of. Henry: I think I know what it is. Okay. Henry: Chokes. Josh: Chokes? Henry: Jokes. Josh: Oh, jokes? To tell good jokes? Alex: Super jokes. Henry: You're talking about jokes. Josh: Stitch. Get people locked up in like stitches like, and then you tie them up? No. My superpower is the power over electromagnetic waves. So, the ability to create, beam form, beam steer, and modulate electromagnetic emissions. So, think about it. I could directionally communicate. If you had a radio, I could talk to you through your cell phone. I could, you know, modulate anything. So, I could basically communicate with any sort of radio-based system, to include like nuclear triad stuff, you know? Henry: Like walkie-talkies? Josh: Like walkie-talkies. And because of the magnetic properties of electromagnetism, I could have like magneto-type powers too. Alex: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Produce light? Josh: I could produce light, infrared. Alex: So, you could also be sort of like Cyclops? Laser eyes? Josh: Potentially. But my ability to like beam steer is more like just in the radio realm. Alex: Oh, okay. So, not all of the electromagnetism? Josh: All of it, but I can only like really, if I create light, it'll just be like pew, everywhere. Like an omni-directional just pew, point light source. Alex: Oh, got it. Josh: So, I mean, pretty dope. Pretty cool. Alex: There is a Marvel superhero with those powers. Josh: Get out. Alex: So far, we haven't seen much of her at all in the MCU. I think we've only seen her in WandaVision. Josh: Is it Wanda? Alex: No, it's not Wanda. Jacob: Hold on. Alex: It's the daughter of the friend of Captain Marvel from the movie Captain Marvel. Jacob: Oh, really? Josh: The little girl? Alex: Yeah, but she grows up, you know? Jacob: She didn't have powers in WandaVision, did she? Alex: Yeah. Jacob: She did? Alex: Yeah. But we only start to see them towards the end and she never really gets to fully use them, but like going through that barrier does something to her. Jacob: Okay, see. Josh: Well, fine. Alex: I don't know what her superhero name is. Josh: She sounds like a pretty cool kid, though. Henry: I'll give that a 10 out of 8. Josh: Yeah! Alex: 10 out of 8. Josh: Yay! I beat the scale. Jacob: Wow. Alex: Man. Jacob: That is not gonna be easy. Josh: Boom. Alex: Dang. Okay. I would choose something that some people are gonna think is pretty boring, but I would choose flight. I just wanna fly. I just wanna fly anywhere I want, whenever I want. That's freedom. Josh: That is freedom. Yeah. Shana, when I was talking to Shana, she was like, why don't you pick something like Ascend from Tears of the Kingdom? I was like, well, why don't I just fly? Then I don't need to wait for something to be above me. Alex: Yeah, I would much rather just fly, for sure. Jacob: Yeah. Josh: I was thinking about those two too. Jacob: We were just listening to episode 5. Josh: Oh, it just dropped. Jacob: Mm-hmm. Talking about aliens, right? And the semantics of flying versus controlling gravity. Josh: Right. What kind of flight are we talking about? Alex: No, I'd rather just fly. Jacob: Okay. I mean, sensation-wise, it would be a very different feeling of actually flying versus manipulating gravity. So, I get that. Josh: Here's my question about superhero flight, though. What is it about whatever mechanism they're doing to make themselves fly that they have to go horizontal? Alex: I mean, they don't have to go horizontal. Josh: But when they're going fast, they all go horizontal, right? Jacob: Pretty much. Alex: Oh, like their body? Josh: Yeah. Alex: Oh, okay. Like their orientation. Like their directional flight, right? Yeah, but like, it's just aerodynamics. Help them go faster? Josh: I guess. Alex: Present a smaller target? Jacob: Yeah, I buy it to a degree. Alex: Smaller cross-section? Jacob: Okay, yeah, that's fair. For Iron Man, I mean, that's his propulsion. He has propulsion. But Superman, we don't know what's propelling him. Yeah. Alex: Oh, boy. I mean, we could get into all kinds of stuff. Josh: I'm just curious. How would you be propelled? Alex: I don't know. However Goku is propelled. Josh: Pure anger. Jacob: No, Goku's the good one. Josh: Righteous anger. Jacob: Oh, okay. Deal. Alex: Righteous indignation. Jacob: Yeah. So, Henry? Henry: I'll give that 10 out of 9. Alex: Ah, ha, ha! Woo! So close. That was a good score. Well, I said 10 out of 8 for you. Yeah, you did. Say that again. Henry: I said 10 out of 9. Jacob: Henry, do you mean 8 out of 10 for Josh and 9 out of 10 for Alex? Alex: Oh! Josh: Sad face. Alex: I win for now. Jacob: For those listeners at home, Henry nodded his head yes. That is what he meant. Josh: Yeah, he did it in a very, very punkish way. Alex: Ha, ha, ha! Jacob: Okay, I mean, mine's a little bit of a cop out as well. Alex: Super speed? Jacob: Of course, man. Come on. Josh: I don't get it. Jacob: What? What's not to get? Alex: Do you want super speed or do you want a harnessing of the speed force like the Flash? Jacob: I want to be the Flash. I don't care so much about like the arm tornadoes. Alex: Those are pretty cool. Jacob: You know, vibrating your atoms molecules so fast that you can phase through other matter. Like, oh, yeah. Josh: He moves on a molecular level? Jacob: He does. He can excite his molecules to that point where he can pass through other solid objects. Alex: To really get it, you probably need to read the comics or watch the show because this is all about this weird force of nature that's also intelligent called the speed force. Josh: Oh, my gosh. Jacob: Yeah, it's true. Josh: Wait, and he harnesses? It's an entity? Jacob: Kind of sort of, yeah. Alex: It has intelligence. Jacob: But he also kind of might have created it. Alex: Oh, boy. Yeah. That sounds like a season I haven't watched yet. Jacob: Well, that's in the comics as well. And I still don't. Not necessarily that he created. I don't know. I don't understand it. Alex: Yeah. There are a lot of people that… It's kind of like the force in that lots of people are sensitive to it and can utilize it. And thus have different powers from each other also at the same time. But, yeah. Actually, it's a lot like the force. Josh: And if you think about each of our individual powers, if that's the only super power we have, it's pretty funny. Because like, I mean, Henry can sneak and stuff, but he got no muscles. So, how are you going to… He's going to take a lot of trips to get that money back to the bank. Jacob: And he can't phase. Alex: Are you going to take that laying down there? He just called you a weakling. Jacob: You've got to defend yourself Henry. Josh: So, then Alex is going to be flying around. But then what are you going to do? Alex: Fly for the fun of it. I don't want to be a superhero. Josh: You're a superhero! Alex: I don't want to be a superhero. That's just the power I would choose. If I could choose a power, I would choose that. Josh: Fair. I'll be running around on my feet super slow, talking to people on my mind radio. Also not super hot. I'll be like a really slow mobile command station. Henry: What is your's again, I forgot. Josh: Basically, I can just create radio. Henry: Oh, yeah. Josh: Like, I could broadcast this podcast wherever I want. Jacob: Through his brain. Josh: By my brain. Alex: Could you, though? Or could you just do your part of the podcast? Josh: I'd have to like listen to it and modulate it over my radio. Alex: That sounds difficult. Jacob: Maybe you should focus on the magneto-like qualities of it. Josh: Dang it. You got to wear a helmet and everything. Alex: Under the right circumstances, you could levitate with that power. Josh: If I was above metal plates. Jacob: Hey, we were just talking about Link. Link does it. Alex: Like if you were in New York City. All those steel structures. Kind of like you'd be a little bit like Spider-Man. Jacob: Heck, manhole covers. Josh: But they'd also be resonating off all those radio waves. It'd just be bouncing and reflecting and like, oof, that might hurt my antenna. But Jacob can be super fast. And so as long as he doesn't just run headlong, like really, really fast into something, he can still knock people out. Jacob: Heck, yeah, I can. Josh: He can do damage with super speed. Alex: With enough tachyons, he can travel through time. Jacob: Mm-hmm. Also, I heal super quick. Speed read. Alex: Can't get drunk. Jacob: Can't. Your metabolism's so high, which is probably actually, honestly, his downfall. They never focus on it. Alex: How can you eat that much. Jacob: Exactly. He would never be able to fuel himself. If his metabolism is that fast acting, he'd run out of calories and die of starvation. But we'll ignore that. Josh: Let's go back to that. Jacob: Super speed, Henry. What's that rating? Henry: Ten out of ten. Jacob: Yes. Josh: Oh, come on. He didn't even think about that. Jacob: I knew it. Alex: I'm keeping those Legos for myself. Henry: No you aren't. Josh: Wait, what did you give your own superpower? Jacob: Alex rated it. Josh: Oh, Alex rated him? Alex: Seven out of ten. I guess that's what I get. Josh: He low-balled you. Jacob: Angry face. Josh: Yeah, he low-balled you. And you still give me an eight? All right. All right. Fair. Jacob: Although, if I weren't to do a cop-out power, I think, actually, after talking with Alex now, manipulating gravity, that would be a crazy superpower. Yeah, you could bring anything to you. You could crush whatever you wanted. Josh: Well, gravity doesn't go this way. I guess it does. Jacob: Sure. I increase my own personal gravity. Alex: But that's the thing. As far as I know, gravity is a wave that is emitted non-directionally, but omnidirectionally. Jacob: Well, but all this UAP stuff we talk about, if they travel by... Alex: You can beam form any kind of wave, I suppose. Jacob: Josh concurs. Alex: I think that's a property of wave mechanics, but I'm not totally sure about that. Josh: But there's certain waves that are also, say, photons, for example, that also are like matter, like they're quasi-wave, quasi-matter. What's gravity wave? I don't know. Alex: I don't think we even know that yet. We're still figuring that out. Jacob: We certainly don't. Some physicist out there might have a better... Alex: Maybe. I honestly don't think anyone's figured that one out yet, which is weird. It's like how many apples has to fall on people's heads before someone figures it out? Josh: Okay, so now we have five minutes to add a secondary superpower. That complements your original superpower. Alex: I was not prepared for this. Jacob: I'm just going to go with my gravity manipulation. Could you imagine that punch coming at you? Super speed and gravity. Wham! Josh: All of a sudden, you're super heavy, so they're coming towards you, too. Alex: Oh, boy. Yeah. You'd really be able to control time with speed and gravity. Josh: Oh, snap. Oh, yeah. Acceleration plus... Yeah. That's pretty... That's an epic combo. Jacob: All right, Henry. Number two power. What you got? Alex: You would be able to turn invisible and... Henry: Strength like hammer. Like hammer? Josh: Captain Hammer? Henry: No. Jacob: The Hulk? Henry: Thor. Alex: Like Thor. Thor's? Thor-like strength? So you sneak up behind someone, then pick them up and throw them away? They fly like a mile away? Henry: And I can get the money and give it to the bank! Alex: You really want that money. Henry: And give it to the bank! Josh: Okay, my question, Henry. Before you punch them with your super strength, would you reveal yourself to them? Or would you just stay invisible and just punch them? Henry: Stay invisible and punch them. Josh: Oh, man. Alex: Yeah this isn't a video game. Josh: I mean, that's just kind of like... Jacob: Henry, would you... sneak up on them invisibly, pull their pants down, reveal yourself and then punch them? Henry: Reveal. Alex: Okay, Josh. Josh: Crap. I'm not ready for this either. Alex: Okay. Then I would choose laser vision. Jacob: So you want to be Superman? Alex: Well, I wouldn't have the strength. I would just be flying around shooting everything. I've been playing too much Tears of the Kingdom, I guess. Those are my favorite builds that people make. Little flying machines that have lasers on them. You just fly over everybody real slow and just laser them. Josh: That's pretty awesome. Oh, crud. I would say... Isn't there like a... Because of physics, I'd say like... I also like a nuclear power plant. Alex: What? Josh: So I can create a high power energy for my radio waves. Because then I can go further. I can't communicate across the world like this. I'm pretty low power. I need to up that power, and then I can talk further. Alex: Okay. So I assumed that part of this superpower was the ability to power the superpower. Josh: Oh, no. That's crazy. I mean, that's like so many different fields of science. You can't wrap all that into one superpower. Alex: I mean, the super speed? Jacob: Yeah, that's just power over the speed force. With additional implications. Alex: All right. Sure. Whatever you say. Jacob: So... What? Josh: And then the bottom line is I can talk to aliens. Jacob: I was just going to ask, so what's the real goal and purpose here? Josh: It's to save the earth from aliens. Alex: You just send your mind out there through radio waves to find the aliens. Josh: I basically become SETI. Jacob: Well, why not harness the power of telepathy? Josh: What's the distance on telepathy? Like your traditional telepathic signals? Jacob: Well we learn from... Alex: Traditional? Josh: You know, a normal Joe with telepathy. How far can he talk? Jacob: You tell us. Josh: I think it's about the distance of a goat. From you to a goat. Cuz- Alex: What? Jacob: Okay, hold on. We just heard about Saryichna last week. Josh: Oh, yeah. Jacob: We don't know where those aliens were at. Josh: Well, that was one of their homes. Allegedly, right? Alex: I've always assumed that when you talk about a superpower, it's super. So, like, you, as part of having the superpower is over time, you just keep growing the power and keep learning how to make it bigger and bigger and bigger. Josh: Oh, cool. Alex: So, you know, telepathy, you would just eventually learn to get out there. Josh: I mean, I think that's pretty much what telepathy is then. I think it's my superpower. They've just learned how to make, like, people's brain antennae resonate. Alex: Right, yeah. Josh: Yeah. Jacob: Yeah. Josh: So I'm getting there. Alex: It's electromagnetic in nature. Josh: It is. The whole system is. The whole biological system is just electric signals and chemicals. Boom. [00:20:49] Interstitial Joke Henry: What do you call a dinosaur fart? Josh: ...Mega...? No, I don't know. Alex: I've got nothing. Henry: A blast from the past. Alex: Ahhh grossss. [00:21:10] Stewnerds! [00:21:17] Storytime Segment Soundbyte: Hey, kids, do you know what time it is? Story time! Alex: So, this is a marching band related story. Jacob: Nice. Josh: From high school? Alex: From high school, yeah. I haven't done any band outside of high school, unfortunately. So, I was drum major my senior year, but it wasn't really, I don't think, a great accomplishment on my part. There was some drama involved there, but I don't want to get into that. That's not what this story is. Josh: Yeah, Ethan. Alex: Ethan had nothing to do with it. Josh: Oh, I just assumed. Alex: I mean, he didn't try out, so. He could have been drum major, maybe, if he tried out. Jacob: Yes, probably Kurt anyway. Alex: But there were other, I think, better candidates for what a traditional McNary High School drum major was before that year. There were better choices. Josh: Like Qualifications? Like more qualified? Alex: I was not a strong conductor. Josh: Well, you're a trumpet player. That's your forte. Alex: Sure, sure, sure. But, you know, everybody that becomes drum major is an instrument player. Josh: Oh, that's right. You're not a drummer! Alex: Right. Sure. In fact- Josh: You don't have to be a drummer to be a drum major! Alex: In my four years, there was never a percussionist that became drum major. Josh: So ironic. Alex: Yeah, ironically. Josh: They really lost it somewhere. Jacob: Why is that the title? We'll have to delve into that Alex: I'm sure- Everything about American Marching Band goes back to military roots in some way. Our uniforms. Everything that we do is military. Josh: You have the actual, like, pipe and drum. Alex: Fife. Josh: Yeah, the fife. Alex: The fife and drum. Josh: And probably the guy in charge was a major. Because that was part of the signal corps. You're a drummer, you're part of the signal corps. You were signaling actions on the battlefield. Alex: And the drummer did lead. Yeah. Josh: Yeah. Very important position. Alex: So that's probably why. But, you know, drum majors nowadays stand on a big stand in front of the band when they're on the field for Field Show Marching Band. So I was drum major my senior year through some weird politics, I think, for the most part. Josh: Ethan... Alex: Not Ethan. So I needed to go to a special camp for training drum majors. And for the first time that I'm aware of, our section leaders went to the camp, too. So each instrument type had a section leader, like trumpet section leader, clarinet section leader, trombone, whatever, had a section leader. And, yeah, for the first time, I think, ever in McNary's history, the section leaders went, too. I believe our drum majors went before this. I don't know. But this camp was at U of O, University of Oregon. They had a very good DCI style marching band at their school. And their band director led this camp for high school drum majors and section leaders. Josh: That's awesome. Alex: Every day. It was a week. Every day we would be out on one of their practice fields. Every morning and afternoon and evening, lots of marching. You would practice in what we called a block, which is just simple rank and file. Everybody spaced the exact same number of steps away from each other. And someone sits there with either a big plastic block called a glock and a snare drumstick just beating out the time on that thing. Yeah. Click, click, click, click. And then would give commands. Or they would have what our school used, and I think a lot of people used, is a digital metronome called Dr. Beat. Jacob: Love it. Alex: I think it was an analog device that had different buttons on it so you could subdivide in different ways, do three-quarter time or four-four time. Josh: Was this hooked up to a loudspeaker? Alex: Yeah, it was hooked up to a loudspeaker. And I'm pretty sure we used Dr. Beat at the university. And, yeah, we did just a crap load of marching. And there were very specific drills that would be taught and then run through with us. Oh, I forgot. So eventually we weren't using Dr. Beat or any glockenspiel. We were using Dave Matthews Band. Dave Matthews Band kept time for us. Normally when you're running through drill stuff, you march in four-four time. And most pop music is four-four. So Dave Matthews. Jacob: You know, they're one of those bands, I want to like them, but then every time I go out and I listen and try, it just doesn't stick for me. Other than like their few hits here and there. Josh: All I know is the show Community is just running through my head right now. And I want to scream something that Garrett screams all the time. Alex: The butt crack bandit! Josh: The butt crack bandit! Alex: I've been cracked! So we did a lot of marching. Summer days. I think it's probably July. Josh: What kind of footwear? Alex: Just sneakers. Josh: Speaking of marching, just sneakers? Alex: Yeah, just sneakers. Jacob: No marching shoes? Alex: I mean, when you're dressed in uniform. Yeah, no, there are no shoes just for that. Maybe there are. Josh: You don't break in these uniform shoes? Alex: I wish I could say that that was the case. But for the most part, they were used shoes. Like the school had... the band had their shoes. And every year you would be issued a new shoe. Josh: They're pretty well worn by now. Alex: For the most part, yeah. I think I got a brand new pair my senior year as drum major, but I don't remember. Jacob: Perks? Alex: Yeah not so much. Because then they're not broken. Josh: I'm just thinking... Yeah. The heel blisters. Alex: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That can be a real struggle for some people, for sure. Josh: So you're basically just marching a heck of a lot of time during this UFO camp. Alex: Yeah. Yeah. U of O, by the way, not UFO. Josh: And that is UAP now, by the way! But we're talking about U of O. Alex: Yeah. I don't remember doing a lot of playing of our instruments in this camp. I don't think there was a lot of music going on. Conducting, yes. Yeah. For drum majors, there was conducting. And maybe for section leaders, when section leaders broke off and did their thing, maybe there was some music involved to teach them how to take the section through their music. And yeah, again, for all I know, I played my trumpet while I was there, too. I just don't remember it. But we all knew, doing all of this marching, that at the end of the camp, there was going to be a drill down where everybody in the camp was all in the same block, which I think we normally were. We were all in the same block, receiving the exact same commands. And as you messed up, there were people there that were, like, helping with the camp that would, like, come and tag you and get you out. And then every now and then, they would stop the block, we'd reform and continue. Jacob: Like a Mario Party mini-game. Alex: Yeah, I suppose it is, kind of. Josh: Left, A, B, X, up. Alex: There were very specific rules about some of these things. Like, if you're being told to go from this specific move and direction to this specific move and direction, you need to do it in this way. And sometimes it's not completely sensical why that is. You just have to know that's the rule. I'm trying to remember the exact rule. Josh: That's a general rule for, like, for this block, for this competition, whenever you go from forward to right, you're going to twist your torso to the left. Alex: I mean, no. Jacob: Or is it a marching band rule? Or is it a U of O rule? Alex: I'm trying to think of the exact rule that I can make this make sense of, but no, this is a rule universally. Everybody that does at least DCI-style marching, this is the rule. You just have to learn it. Everybody does it this way. Josh: Period. Alex: Yes. Josh: Oh. So there's got to be some sort of reason. Alex: Yeah. Yeah, there is. I just can't—I'm really sad that I can't remember the specific rule that's going to come into play here. So we get finally to the drill down. And there's, like, I don't know—okay, hang on, actually, before I get to this little side story. In the middle of the week, I think it's maybe Thursday, we're marching in the morning like normal, and one of Eugene's colorful residents of the streets decided to join us. Josh: Nice. Alex: This guy was absolutely crazy looking. Long black hair, a really long black beard, cut off Army Vietnam camo pant shorts. Like a green tank top. Jacob: How short were they? Alex: I mean, they were pretty normal. They weren't short shorts or anything. Josh: No thigh hair. Alex: Something like a green tank top, and he had this really thick wooden walking stick with him. And I was at the very back of the block, so I could see all of this unfolding. None of us broke form at all. We just kept marching as this guy, like, walks straight out into the middle of this group. And he's, like, he's walking with this stick, and I don't know how he's doing it, but, like, the point of the stick goes down onto the ground, and, like, he's, like, stirring with the top part of the stick as he's walking. It was crazy looking. He got right up into my junior drum major's face, and she didn't flinch. She didn't move. She didn't do anything. Well, she moved. She was marching, but she didn't stop marching for him. She just, like, ran right into him, just kept marching. Josh: She phased through him? Alex: No, she's not the Flash. That would have been neat. This was actually the first year McNary ever had a junior drum major, too. It was always two seniors before this year. So there were a lot of hurt feelings about that, too. Jacob: Wow. A lot of politics this year. Josh: Senior and junior meaning grade level? Jacob: Class. Alex: Right. Josh: Not, okay, seniority. Gotcha. Alex: Before this year, there were two seniors that were drum major, and they were both just drum majors. But this year, there was a senior drum major and a junior drum major. That way, the next year, there would be a drum major that had already had a year of experience being a drum major to hopefully make them a better drum major. Eventually, they did stop the marching and call the cops. Actually, I think they called the university security. That guy had had nine tabs of acid that day. Jacob: Oh, boy. Alex: He had already had nine tabs of acid that day. Now, we grew up in a pretty conservative place with some pretty conservative people, but my seminary teacher said that one tab of acid is usually enough to make you pretty messed up for the rest of your life. I don't know how true that is. Josh: Yeah. Acid is LSD, right? Alex: I don't know. Jacob: I have no clue. Josh: Hold on, let me look it up real quick. Yeah. Acid is LSD. PCP, LSD, any of these things, one dose, one take of that can completely rewire your brain. Alex: I would say this guy- Josh: Lasting effects for the rest of your life, like one instance of it. Alex: This guy was rewired for sure. Jacob: Well, having been on nine for that one day, it sounds like he was probably doing pretty well for himself, actually. Pretty kept together. Josh: He kind of sounds like Eugene's Moses. Just like parting- Alex: He certainly looked like it. Partying the sea of high schoolers. Josh: Parting the Band Sea. Jacob: Can you imagine the imagery in his head as he's going through? Waves! Josh: He's got the beard flowing in the air like stirring it up. Alex: He's parting the Green Sea. Josh: They're just phasing right through him. He's untouchable. Alex: Yeah. That was interesting. That was- Josh: I love Eugene. Alex: That was a Eugene experience that we needed to have. Where else would- Because we'd never left the university. How would we have even known we were in Eugene? Okay. So, drill down time. Everybody's in the block. We're going. I'm real nervous. I've got butterflies in my stomach. I feel a lot of pressure to represent our school because we've got people from all over the nation coming to this camp. I'm marching. Butterflies in my stomach like crazy. I feel a lot of pressure. There was a lot of pressure put on me by certain leaders at the school to represent the school well because McNary had a history of- We were famous for our drum majors. They were all usually very excellent. They won awards at pretty much every competition. Pretty much every competition, McNary's drum majors took the drum major excellence caption trophy. So, there was a lot of pressure on me to continue that tradition, especially since a past drum major was now our assistant band director. He made my life really challenging as a drum major. Josh: Was this Harman? Alex: No. Harman was the band director for my first two years but was then replaced by Mr. Pham. Josh: Oh. Jacob: Of course. Alex: This was- I'm not going to use his name. Josh: But we're looking at you, Ethan. Alex: I guess that's our running joke. Did I cut Ethan out of that other episode? Josh: I haven't heard it come up. Jacob: I don't remember. Alex: So, I must have cut him out. Ethan, you're great. You are an excellent friend. With all this pressure, butterflies in my stomach, I'm marching my heart out. I am laser focused on what is being said. Oh, man. Back in those days, I had crazy amounts of focus. I was a rock with my focus. Josh: Oh, you used it all up? Alex: I did, man. The other story I was thinking of telling today has an explanation for that, but we'll get to that story another time. So, everybody starts- it just starts whittling down, whittling down. I can't see everybody from McNary in the block around me, but as it starts to whittle down and then reform and whittle down and reform, I am eventually able to see we're all still in it. Jacob: Oh, so everyone. Alex: We get down to the last 12 people, and the nine of us are still freaking in it. Jacob: No way. Josh: Are you wearing anything that says like, McNary? Alex: No. Josh: Oh, that's okay. Alex: I was so proud. I was so proud. I mean, it might have been like 15 or 20 people, but regardless, down to the small number, the nine of us were still in it. I was just so proud to be part of that group. Feeling a lot of extra pressure that all nine of those other people that probably should have been drum major in place of me were still in there. But this final block, 15 to 20 people, Kurt and I are right next to each other in the block. He is euphonium section leader. Josh: What? Alex: Yeah. Jacob: You remember? Josh: No. Alex: Yeah. For those that don't know, euphonium is like a baritone. Some people call them baritones. How do I describe this? It's like a mini tuba that fits in the range somewhere like a trombone. So it's not as low as a tuba, but it has a different sound than the trombone because its pipes are more circular, whereas the trombone is really long. So that produces a different sound, different timbre. The euphonium in general is considered warmer and richer than a trombone. And yeah, he was section leader that year, his senior year. We're next to each other. We're moving. We're marching forward. And I can't remember the call. It's going to drive me crazy that I can't remember this. I really hope someone somehow that knows what this would be is listening and can tell me because I would really love to be able to unlock this memory. But we're marching forward. Josh: Assassin's Creed. Got it. Alex: "Unlock the memory." We're moving forward. They make this tricky call that they know is going to be tricky. They do it on purpose. Everybody else moves in one direction and Kurt and I move and only Kurt and I move in the exact opposite direction backwards. Jacob: No way. Only the two of you. Alex: And they come and tag us. And we're like, what? No, no, this is no. Oh, yeah, that's right. They didn't make this call thinking it was like the super tricky one. They didn't know because they thought we did it wrong. We're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is this situation. They're like, oh, my gosh, it is. So it came down to Kurt and me. Josh: Dang. Alex: Those other 18 people were all eliminated all in one go. So we're standing there. And for this part, he's using the Glock. He's using the block and the stick. He's not using Dr. Beat. Jacob: I wish it was Dave Matthews. Josh: And he's right next to you. Jacob: Right in your face. Alex: They hold us there at attention for ages. We're just standing there waiting for the call. And eventually- Jacob: Oh, no, wait, pause! Do you have your instruments with you this whole time? Are you actually playing? Alex: No instruments. No, this is just marching. Jacob: Okay, so you're not even holding them in playing position. Alex: No. Jacob: Okay. Alex: There's a position that I don't remember the name of, unfortunately, where you make a right angle with your arms, holding your right fist in your left hand in front of your face as if you were holding and playing an instrument. Jacob: Okay, cool. Alex: That's the normal position for marching in the Glock. Jacob: I just need the imagery. Alex: But we weren't in that position. We were just at attention. And actually, that's something that they do all the time, like horns up, horns down, horns up, horns down while you're marching. And they're watching for you to do it on the right beat. They might have called it on a slightly weird beat, but you have to know exactly what beat to do it in time correctly. Anyway, we're just standing at attention. Finally, after like it felt like 10 minutes, he starts beating out some time on the Glock. Forward. And Kurt flinches. Josh: His foot shoots forward? Alex: Not even his foot. His shoulders just start to move forward. He just twitches forward a little bit like he's going to start moving. Josh: False start. Alex: I didn't. They called it there. Jacob: After just holding you. For a couple of minutes. Alex: I mean, it felt really good. I don't know how Kurt felt after that. There's no reason for him to feel anything, but- Josh: Kurt, put it in the comments. Tell us how you felt. Alex: There's no reason for him to feel like he lost that, because that was like the minutest of freaking technicalities, and they just wanted it to be over. Josh: Oh, yeah, I'm sure. "These guys just won't drop!" Alex: You know, the sun was setting, you know, it's the final countdown. And I got to, I mean, I got to. This felt like a punishment to me, because I never liked being the center of attention like this, but I was supposed to at attention in front of everybody on the sidelines, call my name, my school, give a salute. But, yeah, that was finally when I felt like, okay, maybe I do bring something to the table as a drum major. I guess I'm our best marcher. I got that. Josh: Nice. And better than all those nationwide students from Idaho. Alex: True. So that was the day I really became the drum major. I was the drum minor, now I'm the drum major. Josh: Alex is... The Drum Major. Jacob: So what would that superpower be? Josh: Time. Something about time. Alex: I developed a time superpower. Jacob: Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Alex: I could always get 100 beats per minute correct. I directed one movement of our show that was at 100 beats per minute, and I always had 100 beats per minute in my head. That was my superpower. Slightly slower than counting seconds. Josh: No, faster. Alex: Slower. Jacob: 100 beats per minute? Alex: Well, you use 120 beats per minute to count seconds because it's two beats per second. Josh: Oh, "seconds". Alex: But 100 beats per minute is not going to help you count seconds. Josh: "Seconds" because there's two in one second, so "seconds". Alex: Sure, sure, whatever you say. And cut to outro. Thank you. Jacob: Thank you. Josh: Thank you! [00:42:07] Another Brother Outro

#007 The Foo Fighter Flummox

This Week on Another Brother:
In episode #007, The Foo Fighter Flummox, the brothers announce that they now have merch! AND a new website! Not to be outdone, Jacob shamelessly reveals that he's training for a Spartan Beast. Did the brothers really build their identities based off of a laundry color-coding scheme employed by their mother? And is it somehow related to their adoptive Scottish history?! It's in their genealogy, they've done the work to show it! All this and more, followed by their first "Totally Solved Mystery".
Visit our website for merch and other brother goodness.
And don't miss this episode's Alternate Reality...
 
Episode Links (***Spoiler Alert***):
New website and merch!
The 21 kilometer, 30-obstacle Spartan Beast.
The true Ben Lomond of Loch Lomond fame, and here, the Utah Ben Lomond of not even Jacob fame.
Why do the brothers care so much about genealogy? You can see for yourself if you'd like!
The Spirit of Elijah in the Old Testament, and a modern explanation and meaning for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints..
If you haven't heard of Scottish Highland Games, check this out!
The Payson, Utah Scottish Festival and Highland Games! Be there or be square!
Scots take their tartans so seriously. You even have to register them with the government!
The Royal Stewart tartan.
The German Foo Fighters finally solved! Don't take Josh's word for it, research it yourself! Mostly because... well... Josh forgot to record the totally above-board source of his totally-unquestionable information....                                                                      shhhhhh.... it was here....
Foo fighters! The UFOs!
Foo Fighters! The band!
 
Transcript:
The following transcript was in part created using the Deepgram API: [00:00:00] This Week on Another Brother [00:00:42] Another Brother Theme Song [00:01:01] Stewnerds Segment Josh: Oh shoot. Alex: Yeah. Josh: Whoop whoop. Alex: Announcement! Josh: Announcement! Another brother announcement! You're already a- you're already a brother, so dress like one. Beginning today, through... Alex: The- Josh: ...through June 27th! my throat hurts. From now, through June 27th, we have a special 20% discount on all Another Brother merch! Alex: 15 percent. Josh: 15 percent! It's basically pro-bono! Alex: Yeah, 15 percent discount. Jacob: Where do they find it? Josh: Get your merch at our website, which is AnotherBrotherPodcast.com Alex: It's really cool, guys. I designed it myself. Josh: I hope Alex- Jacob: You're gonna love it! Josh: -has great editing skills. Jacob: We'll be buying some discounted merch ourselves. Alex: Oh, yeah! Because the discount isn't on us. The discount is on the people running the store for us. Josh: And this is a great way to support your favorite brother because if you didn't know, we're color coded because of our mom. Alex: And that's what we're talking about this week! Josh: Yay. Segue into another segue. Alex: Like, we're smart or something. Jacob: So you guys know I'm training for a Spartan race. Alex: Oh, you are? Josh: Oh, Josh new I'm training for a Spartan race. Alex: The 2 guys that work out talk about things like this. Josh: If you haven't noticed, we don't talk about sports on this podcast. Jacob: So I'm doing the big one. It's the Beast. For the past 4 or 5 weeks, I've been taking one morning before work and heading up to the trails. So I can get an hour run-in on the trails. I just pick the steepest trail, it goes straight up the mountain. It's like it's 3 miles, but like, it's a huge butt kicker. So I did that yesterday morning. On the way down, I heard some ruffling off in the the brush next to me. Again, so, like, this is as I'm running down the mountain- Josh: What does that sound like? Is it, like, ruffle, ruffle, ruffle, ruffle. Jacob: That's how I typically hear it. Yeah. Alex: Okay. Jacob: But, you know, it was big enough that I knew it wasn't a bird. That's what you usually hear in the shrubberies. It's birds. Jacob: So as I'm running down, I take a look back, and I see pointed right at me a black tail with a white stripe. Pointed straight at me. Alex: Uh-Oh. Jacob: Yeah. So I booked it. Like, it didn't spray me, fortunately, but like, that was kind of terrifying. Josh: Stinky. Jacob: That's my first ever encounter with a skunk. So where do you think a potentially good Habitat would be for skunks? Would you think Scotland? Josh: No... Alex: Maybe... Josh: Georgia? The state Alex: Is it? Jacob: Because I thought Scotland would be... cool temperate temperatures, got lots of shrub and covering... It's not. They're not native there. But we like Scotland. Alex: That was how it leads you into... Josh: Dude... Are you kidding, me? Alex: Don't worry, it totally goes into it. Josh: Alright. So Jacob told us he's got a great segue. He wanted to tell this story and it's a great segue into our Scottish theme. Alex: He just wanted to show of that he's training for a spartan race. Jacob: No it was the skunk. Dude, that was scary. Josh: To make it worse, anyone who's familiar with terrain in Northern Utah knows that there's a peak nearby called Ben Lomond Peak, which is named after the Ben Lomond in Scotland. Oh my goodness. Jacob: See, it does tie-in. I told you. Alex: Yeah. Alright. You just had to have some help. Jacob: So we're Stewarts. As you know, Stewart is a common Scottish name. Turns out, our heritage is actually from Scotland. Which is pretty cool. We've done the family history work. I mean, it goes back, man, generations. So the first ancestor that came across was actually during the Revolutionary War, James Stewart, I've got records of him. His dad's name is James Stewart. Anyway, some cool stories there. We kind of I feel like growing up, we just kind of went with faith that we were Scottish. Like, we kinda we always, I don't know, gravitated to it and held on to it. Alex: I could feel it. Josh: Well, the strange thing- Jacob: Even Grandpa Stewart thought we were- He was Irish. Josh: Yeah. So Grandpa's so our Grandpa Stewart's father had always told him that he was Irish. And in fact, to the point where dad I don't know if he got the book from grandpa or where, but we had a a little, like, worn book, hard hardbound book in the house that was the Irish coat of arm a a book of Irish coat of arms. And there was a Stewart Crest in there and coat of arms in there. Jacob: I loved that book. Like, I would flip through the pages all the time. Alex: I don't know this book. Jacob: Mom Dad still have it. It's yeah. It's downstairs. You gotta look at it. I have a lot of memories of just really just looking at all the different coat of arms in it. Josh: Well, and it's that coat of arms that, you know, we always reproduce the yellow- Jacob: with the stripe of white Josh: and blue checkers. Alex: Oh, that's actually Irish? Josh: Yeah. Alex: Oh. Shnikeys. Josh: Yeah. So like dad grew up hearing from grandpa that we were Irish. But for whatever reason, even prior to like fleshing out the genealogy, we always just kind of preferred Scottish... I don't know. But it ended up- Jacob: Yeah. I don't know either. Josh: it ended up being the accurate genealogy. Jacob: I don't know really what- we just felt it in our bones. Josh: Well Yeah. And you hear the bags playing? Jacob: It's like calling you home. Josh: Why is that? That's so strange. And I know a lot of people have a have a similar feeling. But it's like, it's almost otherworldly. Alex: Okay. Okay. Christianity alert here. Josh: Christianity alert! Christianity alert! Jacob: I thought this was gonna come up. Josh: What? Alex: This is something this is a doctrine that I don't know about in other Christian faiths But in our church, there's a I don't wanna say phenomenon, but that's a good enough word, I suppose. Josh: Influence. Alex: Yeah. Influence, it's known as the spirit of Elijah. Jacob: And so this does come from the Old Testament. Alex: Yeah. Yeah. It's mentioned in Malachi. Jacob: Yes. Alex: I believe. Jacob: I think so. Alex: Yeah. That the hearts of the children will turn to the fathers, and the hearts of the fathers will turn to the children. It's basically talking about how your genealogy is gonna call to you. And I mean, in our in our church, we we believe that people that didn't have an opportunity to be baptized while they were alive by the proper authority will have the opportunity to accept a baptism done for them by one of us. That's alive today, that is baptized on their behalf. That's one of the things that takes place in the temples that a lot of people find really confusing and mysterious about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Yeah. It's one of the things that we do in there. Josh: Well, that creates the imperative for us to seek out our fathers, mothers, our predecessors. So we know who they are. Alex: Find their names, do their genealogy so that you can then be baptized for them. Jacob: So, Yeah, In general, we we believe that there's that inside of us that calls us to look for that lineage and that heritage and I mean, it's it really is a global phenomenon, something every- not everyone. A lot of people experience it. It's not just people who are members of our church. I mean, obviously, look at, like, almost any Asian culture. They keep records for hundreds, thousands of years of their family lineage, and they still go and they sweep their graves. So it's practiced in a different manner, but that's that's the same thing. Alex: Like, I've always felt it. Which is extra interesting in our circumstance because we're not blood Stewarts. Jacob: What? Josh: Edit that. Cut that. Jacob: They don't need to know that. Josh: They don't need to know that. that throws off our entire- grumble grumble Alex: Yeah. Grandpa Stewart was not our father's father. Jacob: He's our adopted grandfather. Yeah. Alex: But I've always felt like the Scottish Stewarts have adopted us along with Grandpa Stewart, and those are the people calling for us to look for them and do their work and we're Scottish. We're adopted Scottish. That's what I feel anyway. Josh: Okay, So now that we know that we're just kinda Scottish though, but like but Jacob: but also extremely American- Josh: But how Scottish are we? Jacob: Exactly. Alex: Well, I mean- Josh: How Scottish-American are we? Alex: So every year for I don't even know how many years now, like, I don't know, 8 years probably. I've driven all the way down to Payson, Utah. You guys have joined me on many occasion, to go to the Payson Scottish Festival and Highland Games, which is so good. Jacob: So good. Josh: It's a blast. Jacob: It is so much fun. Josh: Man, those people have become celebrities for us. The athletes- Jacob: We nicknamed some of them, yeah. Some of the athletes we gave them their own nicknames. Alex: Yeah. I what I've heard always heard is that Payson, Utah was originally settled by Scottish people who came to Utah to be part of the Church of Jesus Christ. So this festival has been a long tradition, a community event in Payson, that I think is what makes it so special. Josh: I want to I wanna contact the organizers of the Payson event and try to get money raised to get Scocha out there. Because they- Alex: Oh, that'd be amazing. Josh: they do performances outside of- Alex: That would be crazy. Jacob: They travel for it. Alex: That would be so rad. Josh: Because they are so I mean, it's good. Jacob: I wonder if they've reached out to American games and and things like this to try to like, on their own if they've if they've tried coming over. Josh: Oh yeah, I don't know. But if they haven't, I'm going to try. Jacob: There'd be so many that they could hit in a row. I'm sure. Josh: Yeah. Those events are so fun. And they'll they'll do, like, the dancing competitions. The pipe band competition. Jacob: Their vendors, they sell Scottish food. Josh: And there's there's clan representation there too, so you have- you have clan tents. Alex: That are, again, aimed at mostly helping people do their genealogy. Jacob: It's just a blast. If if you haven't been to a a Scottish highland game, just do it. Go. Alex: I mean, if you've never seen a live caber toss, the stereotypical event, It's amazing. Josh: And if after observing it, you you think to yourself, well, that looks quite fun. Then I challenge you to do what we do now, just hold your own backyard Highland Games. We try to do it twice about twice a year- Alex: We do try. Josh: -as a larger Stewart clan in Utah, our clan. And we try to hold our own little Scotch Highland game in someone's backyard, and we'll do a weight over bar. We'll do weight for distance. We'll do a diminuitive caber toss. Jacob: Yeah. It's it's pretty small. Alex: I pulled a shoulder. No. Dislocated. I dislocated the shoulder. Jacob: And I think we have decided to stop doing the hammer throw. Josh: Yeah. The the neighbors' the neighbors' fence is just too close. Jacob: We were literally just throwing a sledge hammer in Josh's backyard. Alex: It was so fun! Jacob: Spinning like maniacs! Josh: Yeah. Everyone would get up on the deck and just kinda, like, get ready to put their hands in front of their face. Yeah. And that's that's been- I feel more connected. Okay. So we all have our own kilts. That should go without saying at this point. Jacob: And we clearly perform in those kilts. Josh: Yes. So there's just nothing that feels more connected to this awesome history regardless of how contemporary the history is or how far back the history goes or how by adoption into the Scottish culture we are, there's something about putting that kilt on, putting pipe and drum music on the speakers, and throwing- Alex: A heavy thing. Josh: -a heavy thing, that just gets you it it feels great. Alex: It does. Jacob: It's weird to say- Josh: It's like holistic health. Jacob: Yeah. Alex: Yeah. So part of being in a Scottish clan is having a tartan, a tartan that goes along with your clan. A tartan is it's not just a fancy word for a plaid, but without getting into the technicalities of how it's designed and manufactured in cloth. It it's a plaid. And the Royal Stewart tartan, so the the main tartan of our family, consists first and foremost of red, then the next most color is green, then blue, yellow, and white and black. Growing up, our mom stitched a little bit of colored thread into the toes of our socks so that we could differentiate whose socks were whose. Jacob: And then she even bought little baskets to carry that clean laundry in back to our rooms that were color coded to the same stitch in our socks. Alex: That started before we were really getting into being Scottish. It turned out that the 3 colors we were given were all colors in the tartan. And so- Jacob: It was just perfect. Josh: And and Liz? Alex: Yeah. And Liz. I think Liz's was an adopted color because everybody knew what socks are- Josh: The girl's socks are girls socks. Jacob: And much smaller. Alex: But, yes, I got green. Josh got red. Jacob got blue. And Liz gets to be yellow now. So when we talk about each other, sometimes we talk about the Blue Stewarts- Josh: Well, and rather than talking about, like, "Jacob's family and their kids"- Jacob: Right. When we're talking about the small families within our family. Josh: Yeah. We'll just be like, "hey, they're at the Blue Stewarts'." "They're at the Green Stewarts'." Jacob: It just works. And, again, it's the same main colors on our tart. Alex: Yeah. It feels neat. Josh: Neato gang. Alex: But, I mean, I've personally really leaned into green as like a favorite color. And I don't know if I was gonna get there anyway. I don't know if this has influenced that at all, but green is my favorite color. Jacob: Wow. See, mine is red. Josh: Mine is blue, funnily enough. Jacob: So Josh and I are switched. I'm Jacob. I'm the Blue Stewart. But my favorite color's red. Josh: I'm Josh. I'm the Red Stewart, but my favorite color's blue. Jacob: That is funny. One other tie in again to the whole color and Scottish theme, in a full Scottish kit. Right? You've got your long hose, which are just socks. Alex: You know, the the braided knitted socks that you see that are really tall. Jacob: Did they they get folded down, But under that fold, you have these flash Yeah. They're called flashes. I don't know how to they're like little ribbons that hang out. So we each have our own color. Right? So I have blue flashes. Alex has red Excuse me. Alex has green, Josh has red. And then there's also Oh, what's the little knife? Josh: Dirk. No. Jacob: No. Was that the Sgian dubhs? Josh: Sgian dubhs. Jacob: Sgian dubhs that You slide into one of your hoes, and ours each have a little jewel on top. And, again, our colors are coordinated to those jewels too. I think we might even have socks Alex has green socks. Alex: I have bottle green socks and a bottle green hat. Josh: Oh, yeah. Alex: My beret-like- Josh: I could wear my Airborne beret. Jacob: Oh, yeah. Alex: That's right. It's a maroon. Right? Josh: It is maroon. Jacob: That would be cool. Josh: But I want a cab driver hat. Jacob: A cab driver hat? Josh: You know, like- Alex: Oh, country cap. Josh: Country cap. Yeah. Josh: Or a Payne Stewart golf cap. Alex: I do look at those every time my go to Payson. Jacob: They just look funny on me. Alex: I don't think I like the way they look on me either. Josh: Yeah. And I guess that's all the probably the color coding in our kits. Jacob: Sometimes shirts. Josh: But then you have different tartans too. So the Stewart Clan especially has almost a different official tartan for each different function. So we- Alex: You wanna go hunting? There's a hunting tartan. Josh: Yeah. There's hunting tartan. In fact, my my athletic kilt that I wear is the Stewart Black tartan. But it's still a official Stewart clan tartan. Alex: Yeah. I've got a regular kilt in dress black. But there's white dress. There's blue dress. There's black dress. There's racing. We have a racing tartan. If you didn't know, it's pretty exciting. Josh: Jacob, What are you doing? Jacob: That's what I need to be running in. Alex: It's it's predominantly blue too. Josh: Even though that'd be funny. Jacob: Well, you can just socks in it. That'd be cool. Josh: When Alex and Lara got married, it was a Scottish regalia. Yeah. Alex: We did a tartan wedding. Josh: And it looked good. Jacob: It looked good. Josh: All the kids in their kilts and everything. Alex: Yeah. Jacob: Cute. Alex: Yeah. Her family dressed up in kilts and everything too. They were game. It was fun. Jacob: So, yeah, like, we when we go to, like, the games not our own backyard games, but when we go to a a Scottish festival, like, you better believe we're we're there in our kilts. You know, with our hoes and our- Josh: Bros. We got our bros in our hoes, and we just uh- Jacob: Dangit. Alex: But if for some reason you ever have a favorite one of us, if you're able to tell the difference between us and get a favorite one- Jacob: Me! Me! Team Blue! Alex: We've got our merch available in well, unfortunately, this this service that we're using didn't have every item in every color of the 3 of us. But wherever possible, you can get it in black, white, green, red, or blue. Josh: Boom. Yeah. So I'm about to add a lot more red to my wardrobe, I guess. You know why, I'm not red though? It's because of BYU. And dad's- Jacob: I know. Josh: -utter hatred of the University of Utah. Jacob: Okay. But, you know, dad's- Josh: Red is basically a swear color. Jacob: Red is his favorite color too, though. Josh: I know. Yeah. It's it's weird. Jacob: I've I've fought that myself, but I can't deny it. Just red's my favorite color. Blue is number 2, but red is it's speed. Alex: Ohhhh, The Flash. Josh: The Flash. That's it. Jacob: It's not. it's red looks fast. It's not just The Flash. Alex: It's true. It's also Ferrari. Jacob: And it's a it's a power color. You better believe like, I put my red tie on when I've got, like, an interview or something. Yeah. Josh: Yeah. Or when you're teaching missionaries? You didn't do the red power tie on the mission? Especially in Russia. Jacob: Oh, when I'm like instructing stuff? Yeah. Alex: Like, zone conference trainings. Jacob: Yeah. Yeah. But again, let me clarify, buy blue. Josh: Don't do that. Red's great. Actually, you know what? Let's just move merch. You buy what you wanna buy. Alex: Buy all 3. Josh: Support Lizzie. Get the yellow. [00:20:01] Stewnerds! [00:20:09] Totally Solved Mystery Segment
Soundbyte: Are you curious about the world around you? Do you question why mysterious things happen? Join us, and perhaps you'll be surprised by this "Totally solved mystery". Josh: Once upon a wartime dreary, when skies were bathed in sorrow weary, Over fields of blood and fear, I saw a sight that chilled my core. Whispers 'midst the pilot's chatter spoke of specters, their heart aflutter, Ghastly fiends with radiant light, known as foo fighters, the lore did bore. Those who witnessed felt the terror, in the skies forevermore. In the depths of World War's plight, where men sought solace through the night, There existed a squadron bold, the 415th Night Fighter Corps. Their valiant souls with spirits high, took flight beneath the somber sky, Unaware of what would soon unfold, their fates to be forevermore. Foo fighters, lurking, lurking there, to plague their minds forevermore. As night fell, a shroud of gloom, darkness thick as a wretched tomb, The Black Widows took to air, with men of courage at their core. But lo! From the abyss there came, ethereal lights that danced in flame, Foo fighters, wraiths from realms unknown, unleashed their eerie encore. Glowing orbs with spectral grace, tormented souls forevermore. In the heavens they did abound, bewildering all who dared surround, Aviators locked in gaze, as orbs mimicked their swift rapport. They mocked their moves with eerie might, their presence caused a dreadful fright, Malevolence in their glow, a haunting sight forevermore. Those who faced them felt the dread, their minds enthralled forevermore. Futile was the squadron's fight, for bullets passed through orbs of light, Foo fighters, untouched, undaunted, defied the laws of our mortal lore. Their nature enigmatic, arcane, their purpose one they did retain, To vex and haunt brave men aloft, a mystery forevermore. Aerial foes, not of this realm, forever enigmatic, forevermore. Returned from missions fraught with woe, the squadron's pilots were changed, you know, Their minds plagued by nightly terrors, haunted by the orbs they saw. Conspiracy whispered in hushed tones, of otherworldly origins unknown, Foo fighters, harbingers of doom, their presence felt forevermore. In dreams they lingered, ominous, a mark imprinted forevermore. Oh, my pen could scarce convey, the chilling tale of that wartime day, When foo fighters plagued the sky, their spectral glow forevermore. In the annals of history's tome, the 415th Squadron's doom, Shall be remembered as a haunting chapter, a tale to chill forevermore. Foo fighters and their eerie plight, a spectral dance forevermore. Alex: Okay. I love the band. The Foo Fighters. Love that band. And I've known for a long time that their name comes from World War 2. But that is all I know about it. No one has ever said anything more about it in what I've read. Jacob: No. That that's all I know too. Josh: Foo fighters were unidentified flying objects in World War 2 that harassed the 415th Night Fighter Squadron, as they flew night operations over Germany German skies. Jacob: So So this is our squadron? Josh: This is a joint- Jacob: This is a US- Josh: This is a joint US-UK squadron. Yeah. Back in the days of World War 2, the 415th Night Squadron, they flew night raids, obviously. And their intent was to harass and bomb and provide cover for bombing runs. And pretty early on, a cockpit crew had identified orbs flying off in the distance, or actually static in the distance, and- Alex: Static? Josh: Static in the distance. Alex: Of what kind? Josh: No no no. Stationary. Alex: Oh, okay. The I got it. Got it. Got it. They weren't flying in the distance. They were static. Josh: Static. And with no radar returns, no no radar signatures, just a orange-ish reddish glow, and then these orbs would then accelerate and leave. And after this first encounter, there were more that were recorded. Where these orbs anywhere from 1 to 10 in in, like, a- Alex: Formation? Josh: Formation. Yeah. Anywhere from a single orb to 10 in formation would appear, and they would follow the fighters of the 415th Night Fighter squadron, and they would mimic their movements, and they would accelerate past them and they exhibited movement and ability to maneuver in excess of that of the fighters. And these men gave interviews long after just of absolute bewilderment, but all the interviews they gave for newspapers, for radio shows, and then ultimately later for video, they were very professional about it. They were very fact-of-the-matter, you know. As most World War 2 vets are of their experience no matter where or how they served. They just acknowledged these flying orbs. And to the point where they would contact- and radar at the time was pretty still kind of a primitive technology. Alex: Yeah. Josh: But even in contact with ground control stations and radar operators and onboard radar, they couldn't there was no radar return of what these things were. But we seem to have finally solved what these were. Jacob: What. Alex: I hope the Foo Fighters are listening. Jacob: This is for you, Dave Grohl. Alex: Yeah. Dave. Josh: So... Jacob: were they able to get any more visual than it just being a a glowing orbit or is that literally all that they could see. I I imagine it's middle of the night. Bright shiny object, all they're gonna see is the light. They're not gonna see any kind of... Josh: Like control surfaces or wings or anything. Alex: Well, if their bullets went right through it. Maybe that's all it was. Josh: Well, that was for that was for effect. I don't I don't think these guys actually shot at anybody. Yeah. No. So just just light. Just like orbs of light. And some people have have thought that perhaps it was like cockpit glint, like glare off of cockpits, but are you telling me these guys who are in a they're a well-honed machine now and they know where their position is within the greater formation- Alex: An entire squadron of these guys. Josh: Yeah. They're not gonna know that there should be other planes over there. And not to mention the way they they flew and was unlike the way our pilots flew. Other people have thought maybe it was, like, electric, what do you call it? Alex: Like ball lightning? Josh: Ball lightning. Jacob: Oh, yeah. Josh: The Electric- statics- you know, discharge. Alex: But a red-orange? That's not the right color. Jacob: And this is clearly being controlled in an in an intelligent manner, not just- Josh: Right. Jacob: Following and harassing them. Josh: So believe me, if you will, there has been reporting thanks in large part to an Italian author. Alex: Woot. Josh: Yeah. Mamed Renato. Is that an Italian name? Alex: Yeah. Josh: Yeah. Renato something. You can look it up. That's what we do here in- Jacob: That's his last name, "Something". Alex: Wow. That's that's not gonna be hard to look up at all. Josh: No. Alex: There's not a million of those guys. Josh: That's right. And and this is the level of reporting you can come to expect from Totally Solved Mysteries. Yeah. He uncovered Nazi UFO construction projects. And apparently, there's, like, a number of these UFO attempts to include different models called, like, the Vril v-r-i-l, vril saucers, and Haunabu saucers. And to the point where there's multiple corroborated sources who recorded German engineers discussing the Nazi Germany flying saucer engineering projects. Alex: Yeah. Jacob: Yeah. I've I've heard that that was something that they had been working on and were trying to develop. Josh: Yes. So so the first actual reference to Nazi UFOs was written down by an Italian turbine engineer named Giuseppe Beluso, and he records speaking with some German engineers who were also creating turbine, so they would make they allegedly created a flying disc that was just a turbine, like a large surface planar turbine that would give it vertical lift. 15 meters in diameter, and that was- Alex: Holy crap! Jacob: Wow! Josh: Yes. And and this German engineer gave an interview to Der Spiegel in Germany, the newspaper. Talking about it, and look, you can kinda see, here's the this was a contemporary Italian newspaper article. You can see the guy kinda wrote out a schematic of- I don't know Italian, Alex. You might have to- Alex: We'll see how technical the language is. Josh: But yeah. So there's accounts that these things were that Germany Nazi Germany was actively trying to create UFOs. Jacob: UFOs Alex: Oh. Jacob: Flying saucers. Josh: Flying saucers. Alex: Oh, This says that it was also worked on by Italians in Italy. Jacob: Oh, Mussolini. Alex: Not just the Germans. Jacob: That's right they were part of the of the axis. Josh: Yeah. It makes sense because there's like multiple Italians that are cited as also citing their German counterparts. Jacob: Ah yeah that does make a lot of sense. Josh: Yeah. And again, I mean- Alex: Flying discs. Jacob: With it being nighttime, if if they have a single bright light source on one of those things. That's all you're gonna see. Probably. Oh, I don't know. Josh: I don't know either, but but to add some add some weight to this, Totally Solved Theory... Alex: Totally. Josh: Apparently, there's declassified reports in the CIA archive that you can find online that discusses these nazi flying saucer discs and stating that these that the Nazi flying saucers could reach an altitude of 12,400 meters. Within 3 minutes. Alex and Jacob: What? Josh: And a speed of 2200 kilometers per hour. This is according to a German- Jacob: Hold- 12,000 meters. That's over- Alex: Basically 12,000 yards. It's 36,000- Jacob: It's over 36,000 feet. Alex: 40,000 feet. Josh: That's like an airliner. A low-altitude airliner. Jacob: In 3 minutes, it's just *pew* Josh: And okay. And then the speed of 2200 kilometers per hour, and then this German named Georg Klein. He says that the Germans' plans were to get these speeds up to 4,000 kilometers per hour. Jacob: What? Josh: Yeah. Alex: So that sounds like it's a speed of about 222 miles per hour straight up. Jacob: Okay. To ascend that quickly? Alex: Yeah. It would be a constant speed of 222 miles per hour straight up. Josh: Wow. Alex: To get to 40,000 feet in 3 minutes. Josh: Wow. Which is in excess of 2200 kilometers per hour. Alex: Oh, yeah. Jacob: Yeah. Definitely. Alex: Wait, 2200 kilometers per hour? Josh: Yeah. Jacob: Wait. 2- 220 or 2200? Josh: 2200 kilometers per hour. Jacob: Oh, that's fast! Alex: So they say their top speed is in excess- Josh: Was 2200 with plans to reach 4000 kilometers per month. Jacob: I thought you said top speed was 220. 2200 is- Josh: And what kind of G Force would that exhibit? But if you consider the accounts of the the men reporting the foo fighters, of, you know, a light source just hovering and then Jacob: Zipping off. Josh: Zipping off. Alex: I'm sorry. I can't believe that. Jacob: Yeah. Right. How how fast is that? A thousand- 1300- Alex: It's Mach 1.3 or 1.4. You're breaking the speed, the sound barrier. Josh: With just a typical turbine engine. Alex: I'm sorry. Let me let me say that again. It's almost Mach 2. Josh: Get out. Well, that's incredible, guys. I'm so glad we... Alex: I can't believe you've cracked the story, Josh! Josh: I know! I mean, if you look up foo fighters, people are like scratching their head. Alex: Dave Grohl? Josh: Fools. And I'll just leave on this note. Jacob: Oh, we're leaving this already? Alex: Hang on. Hold on. Okay hang on. Hold on. Josh: I mean, this this Totally Solved Mystery cannot hold up to much scrutiny. But um- Alex: But okay. I just I have a clarifying question. So as part of Operation Paperclip, I think? Josh: Yeah. Yep. Jacob: Is that a Microsoft project? Alex: No. That was- Josh: That's Clippy. Jacob: Sorry, terrible joke. Alex: That's when we brought Nazi scientists into America to help us after the war. A lot of those folks established NASA and really got us to the moon. I've seen footage of us- Jacob: Yes. Alex: -having flying saucer like craft from, I believe, these ex-Nazi scientists. Jacob: And they weren't great. Alex: Are these different than that? Because these were never great. Josh: Was it us or the Canadians? Alex: Well, the shows I've always seen have always said it was us and not the Canadians. Josh: Because interestingly, a number of these German rocket and aeronautic guys went to work for the Canadians. And there's a Canadian company called, like, Acro Canada or something that allegedly was able to create 'similar' objects. But here's the here's the critical thing to remember when we're considering, you know, okay, travel back with me in time to the end of World War 2. Soviets are already enemies. There are our frenemies throughout all of World War 2. Now they're our enemies. They're snatching up Nazi engineers and scientists. Jacob: Left and right. Josh: We're snatching up through Paperclip, and we're already planning, you know, we've got atomic energy and weapons now, they're developing theirs, and we're in this, like, race for technology at this point. And every single and this is my theory against why we haven't revealed our alien technologies yet. I'll solve that mystery for you guys tonight right now. But basically, there's a national security imperative to keep the real capabilities and science behind these Nazi Germany UFOs secret because we don't wanna play our hand. We don't want the other guy to know how successful we are. We're gonna throw up these flimsy, little, you know, things. But in reality, the Nazis are already, to quote, and this ties into my other my other thing, Hermann Oberth, the father of German rocketry, to- to quote, an English translation, he says, "it is my thesis that flying saucers are real and that they are spaceships from another solar system. I think that they possibly are manned by intelligent observers who are members of a race that may have been investigating our Earth for centuries." Totally Solved Mystery. [00:36:39] Another Brother Outro

#006 The Utterly Unpleasant Urination

This Week on Another Brother:
In episode #006, The Utterly Unpleasant Urination, the brothers introduce their first GHOST (that's Guest Host!), Jared! Josh isn't entirely certain if he watched the final trailer for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (we know, we know, the game is out). Alex gives Nintendo a warning about PETA... they're not happy with Pokémon, but Alex is fine with that, he doesn't care for Pokémon either! Did Jacob, an Oregonian, really just defend California?! And find out whether or not Jared was able to hold it!
Find our website on Podbean!
And don't miss this episode's Alternate Reality...
 
Episode Links (***Spoiler Alert***):
The final trailer of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, see for yourself if Ganondorf gives a "guttural scream" or a "jovial laugh".
How Pokémon was made! It's an interesting history!
Utah ski resort accumulates 900 inches of snow. That's 75 feet!
A brand new Utah neighborhood's road is washed out by flooding.
The very place where Jared found sweet, sweet relief.
 
Transcript:
The following transcript was in part created using the Deepgram API: [00:00:00] This Week on Another Brother [00:00:32] Another Brother Theme Song [00:00:52] Stewnerds Segment Alex: I really wanna talk Tears Of The Kingdom, but I don't know if Josh has seen the trailer yet. Josh: I have. So, okay, to date this episode, the last official Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom trailer dropped today. Number 3. So, yes, I did see it. I did not understand any of what I saw. I'm not really tracking the storyline very well, and it was highly stylized. I thought. Alex: What was highly stylized exactly? Josh: Just, it was very japanese-y, I think. Jared: Yeah. That's fair. Josh: Just the music and the cut scenes and, like, it was very slow- slow moving, just very cinematic. Alex: You thought that was a slow moving trailer? Did you watch the same trailer I did? Josh: The 3 minute trailer? Jacob: Yeah. It was slow. Alex: I thought it was like a super fast cut. Like, in the beginning, it was pretty slow. Josh: Yeah. Jacob: It builds up. Alex: Up in the sky. Jacob: Yeah. Josh: But it it kinda keeps that tone for a while into it. Alex: I suppose. Josh: Because it's like showing off, like, the different areas. I don't know. I loved the first I loved Breath of the Wild, so I have full expectations that this game will be awesome. Just the trailer, I was like, merrr. Alex: What??! Josh: Yeah. Jacob: Oh, really? Alex: Oh, man. It blew my freaking mind. Jared: Starting with the hot takes. Alex: Yeah. No kidding. Jared: Do you like the Ganondorf design? Jacob: That long flowing hair. Alex: I think it's alright. I think I think it's fine. The voice acting, I was more on the- I was more on the fence with the voice acting when they first revealed it in the previous trailer. But I'm liking it a lot more now. Like, there's a point in the trailer where he just kinda gives a guttural scream. And it it sounds like Ganondorf in any Smash Bros. Jared: Yeah. Jacob: In this third trailer? Alex: This is the third trailer. Jacob: Yeah. In this 1, there was a- Alex: Yeah. Jacob: Yeah. Alright. Okay. Alright. I gotta watch it again. I watched it once. I remember him laughing. Josh: It was a very jovial laugh. Jacob: Oh, I don't remember. Josh: It wasn't very intimidating. Alex: I don't remember any laughing. Are we sure we're watching the same trailer?? Jacob: Yeah. Josh: I think so. So it dropped today. Right? Alex: Mhmm. Josh: Yeah. Jared: Did you see all the, like, there were a bunch of memes and social media stuff about a super hot rehydrated Ganondorf. We were like- Jacob: Ewwww. Jared: -everyone that was imagining that, like, the zombie corpse and then they, like, get him back up to snuff, and he's suddenly, like, super attractive. Josh: Nice. Jared: So I was, like, I think I'd subconsciously had, like, pretty Ganondorf in my mind. So during the trailer, I was like, oh. And I was like, wait. Was I expecting, like, male model, Ganondorf, like kinda glad they didn't go that route. Josh: Yeah. They they didn't go Derek Zoolander. Magnum. I was more I'll say, I was more excited about the game from Lizzie's description that I got a couple days ago than from that trailer. Alex: I mean, you can build a freaking tank. Josh: That's yeah. That's awesome. Alex: And I don't know if you guys noticed, but that arm had some kind of like a spear or blade at the tip of it. But it also had the dragon head flamethrower. That's what was really attached to the end and the blade was attached on top of that sticking out past it. Yeah. Josh: I although I saw I think Liz turned me onto it as well, that or maybe it was Alex. Maybe I'm sure it was in 1 of our group chats. That Zelda, like, these last 2 games are like really pulling from really popular Japanese anime. Alex: Mhmm. Yeah. Josh: So like that arm thing- Alex: Studio Ghibli specifically. Josh: Studio Ghibli, that's what it was. Yeah. Jacob: Okay, one of the most exciting things that I thought- fighting alongside all the other heroes. Alex: Oh, yeah. Jacob: That was dope. Alex: That was surprising. Jacob: That was so cool. Have you watched this, Josh?! Josh: I don't recall anything like that. Alex: You really didn't follow it at all. Did you? Josh: Okay. Well, so in this 1 that I saw, you've got, like, the- You got the horse drawn buggy thing that you make. Jacob: Yep. That was in there. Josh: You have, like, another, like, a tractor thing with the big tall block on it and then you're rolling towards these other platforms. Right? Jared: Yep. Alex: That sounds like the robot or tank thing. Jacob: There was a rocket even. He's just strapped- Holding on to rocket. Alex: That was on his shield. He had rocket shield. Jacob: Oh, cool. Alex: Yeah. Jacob: Oh, yeah. The combining of weapons to make new weapons, that's pretty crazy. Josh: Can you still make food? Jacob: probably? Alex: Yeah. I mean, I have to assume so since you can still- we know that he had raw meat in his inventory in the gameplay demonstration. He talked about putting that onto an arrow for, like, different hunting reasons. So, like, maybe, like, bait for hunting. So Jacob: Yeah. Alex: It'd be pretty weird of Nintendo to include the slaying of animals without you getting to cook and, eat that stuff, you know, just for the heck just for the fun of hunting. Nintendo already has enough trouble with PETA and Pokemon. So. Josh: Are you serious? Alex: Yeah. PETA- PETA hates Pokemon. Jacob: They hate everything. Josh: They're not even real! Alex: Well, they're also alien invaders, but they don't seem to mind or care about that either. Jacob: But and not just invaders, but apparently they wiped out all other living animals. Alex: Right. Yeah. Josh: The Pokemon did? Jacob: Well, you see no normal animals in Pokemon, they're all Pokemon. Alex: There's no cow. There's just whatever that cow like pokemon is. Jacob: No birds just Pidgey. Alex: So people do eat Pokemon. Jacob: And Pokemon eat Pokemon. Josh: That's pretty messed up because those are definitely, like, some intelligent creatures. Jacob: Super intelligent. Alex: I mean, I don't know that they eat psyduck, but- Josh: Beijing psy-鸭. Psyduck-鸭.(This is a play on Beijing Roast Duck, which is Beijing 烤鸭) Jacob: Sichuan Mister Mime. Alex: Oh, gosh. Josh: Sichuan Spicy Mime. Alex: Oh no! Jacob: Speaking of, I haven't played Pokemon Stadium yet on Switch. Jared: Oh, yeah. Josh: Isn't that the old school- wasn't there Pokemon Stadium on- Jacob: 64. Alex: Oh, yeah. So this is the Virtual Console. Jacob: It only came out yesterday, so I don't know why I'm acting like I'm behind. Alex: For gamer cred. That's why you're acting like that. Jared: That's probably the most- that's the game I've put the most time in Pokemon-wise because my family and I, we would just play the mini games, like over and over and over and over and over again. We wouldn't even like battle. We- it's like the the point of Pokemon is to battle Pokemon. We would just play those weird little Mario party mini games. Jacob: Yeah. I genuinely didn't even remember that you could battle. In in my mind, it is the the mini games. Jared: Yeah. Alex: The most time I've put into any Pokemon game was for Pokemon Snap. On the N64. I would take that over to Russell's house for sleepovers, and we would just stay up all night. Finding- Jacob: It's so good. Alex: All 4 of us. Jared: It's so hard. I tried to revisit it recently, and it was just kicking my butt. It's like, Stop the stupid cart while I throw an apple at this Psyduck! Josh: I have not played many Pokemon games, but- Alex: You know what? We haven't done yet. We haven't explained why there's a fourth voice on the podcast this week. We're joined- Jacob: Right-O! Alex: -by our brother-in-law. Jared Poff. All: Yay. Whoohoo! Josh: "Another Brother", you might say. Alex: Another brother. Josh: Another brother, Jared Poff. And we might redact last names. I don't know. Alex: Oh, yeah. Crap. So if you hear a- if you hear a beep- Jared: Your intonation will be weird. Jared-! Josh: Beep! Yay! Yeah, so what we wanted to do was to extend our- the brothers on the podcast to our Other Brothers, and they would be our guest hosts on certain podcast episodes, and they will be familiarly known as our Ghosts. So Jared, the inaugural and hopefully, multi-time, Another Brother podcast Ghost. Alex: So back to Pokemon. Nah. I I I don't even like Pokemon. Obviously, since Pokemon Snap is the game I put the most time into. Jacob: You had one on 3DS didn't you? Alex: I did and I hated it. Jacob: Oh, okay. Well there ya go. Alex: I I got Pokemon X. Jared: That's fair. Alex: I mean, I've tried Pokemon Red before on your guys' old-school Game Boys. I just Pokemon does not do it for me. Jacob: It's just magical though. That was my first owned game. I had my own Gameboy, Pokemon Blue. It was my 8th Christmas or something like that. Alex: Well, I'm sorry for insulting such a special game. Jacob: You should be. Jared: Did you know it's the highest grossing IP of all time. Jacob: Yes. Josh: Wow. Jared: Blows my mind. Alex: IP. We're not talking about video games. Jared: Yeah. IP. Josh: Really. Jared: Yeah. Josh: So we're talking about Microsoft Windows. Jacob: Beats out Marvel. Beats out Harry Potter. Jared: Media IP. Yeah. Sorry. Not- Jacob: Hello, Kitty's up there too, actually. It cracks, like, top 10 or something. Josh: That's insane. Who who makes Pokemon? Is it Bandai? Alex: No. It's Game Freak. Jacob: Which is still has always been and is still confusing to me. The Nintendo -- Game Freak relationship. Alex: Yeah I don't get it either. Jared: It's a weird- Alex: Because they're not first party. Nintendo does not own Game Freak. I guess you'd call them second party because they're not exactly third party. Jacob: Yeah. It's weird. Josh: Highest grossing party. Alex: Apparently. That's why they can sit on their laurels and make lazy games. Ohhhhh!! Josh: I don't get it. Alex: I'm sure all you Pokemon fans get it. Wait. No. You're gonna come after me. Pokemon fans are gonna come after me for that. Jacob: Yeah they are. Alex: Well, it's just No. No. I'm not gonna get into that. I don't need anybody to go after me. Jacob: My oldest son will stop listening to this podcast if you start ragging on Pokemon. He's obsessed. Josh: I've I've successfully converted my oldest. I think we discussed it last episode. Successfully convert my oldest from Pokemon to Magic The Gathering. I feel pretty good about that. Jacob: Oh, I don't think you mentioned that last time. Jared: Are the cards cheaper? Josh: I bet they are. Jared: Then it's a win-win. Alex: It depends on the card because there are some magic cards that are worth a lot of money. Josh: True. Well, he bought a Commander starter deck for 30 bucks. Just under 30 dollars. Jacob: Oh, man. You can't get a Pokemon deck for 15! Josh: But it included a booster pack, a mythic rare foiled card. And this card is, like, twice as thick as most magic cards. Alex: It's twice as thick?! Josh: It gives you- yeah. So it gives you, like, a collector's card. And then a copy of it. Alex: Oh. So you shouldn't play with it. No. I was gonna say, like, you can know where that is in your deck. That's not fair. Josh: Yeah. Alex: That can't be legal. Josh: You can kinda figure out where the foil ones are anyway because it kinda bends slightly differently, but I'm not hating on Pokemon either. I just prefer Magic, and so it feels like a victory to bring him over. Alex: I mean I think Magic: The Gathering is the original trading card game. I think. Josh: Pre-dating Pokemon? Alex: I think it pre-dates Pokemon. I don't know, though, because Nintendo was originally a playing card company. That was their thing until the 80's and they started with video games. Josh: Okay. So my so Okay. Back to Game Freak. They own the Pokemon IP. So they originated the trading card game. Do we know? Alex: No. That's probably where the tie with that company and Nintendo comes from. Mhmm. It's that Nintendo produced the trading cards. Jacob: I think the Game Boy game was the first that they came out with. And Pokemon is not their first video game. They had other games too. Alex: Oh, snap. No way. Jacob: Yeah. I watched a video about it 1 time, but I don't remember any pacifics (sic.). So. Josh: Speaking of "Pacifics"- Jacob: That was a very intentional segue. Jared: Smooth. Josh: JK. JK. Alex is kind of our our Jacob: Our what? Jared: Maestro? Josh: Maestro. Jared: Yeah. Alex: I am? Josh: Kind of. Alex: What's that mean? Josh: I think more often than not you segue us. Alex: Oh, okay. Got it. Got it. Like the the master of ceremonies- Josh: Yes. Alex: The MC. Josh: MC. That's what I was looking for. So Alright. So we're in Utah. We're all in Northern Utah. We had a crazy winter, like the most snowfall on record since we started measuring snowfall in the state of Utah in the 1930's. Alex: Yeah. If you're if you're in the United States, you've maybe heard, probably, some, about the crazy snow that California got this winter. But doesn't hold a candle to Utah. Josh: We're talking 800 inches of snowfall in certain- Alex: certain mountainous areas, Yeah. Jacob: So just before the Californians get angry, I do believe, like, the Mount Shasta area does have more. Alex: No way. Oh, well. Jacob: Yeah. So, I mean, it it was historic pretty historic for California as well. Josh: You heard it here first, folks, a Utahn defending a Californian. Jacob: Ah! Even worse. An Oregonian defending a Californian. Josh: An Oregonian living in Utah defending a Californian. Jacob: Sad day... Alex: We can get into why that's a thing another time. Yes. Josh: So yeah. So now the weather's heating up, we had a day earlier this week that reached into the eighties. Jacob: Almost. Josh: Almost eighties, like, high seventies. So it was really heating up- Jacob: It snow some today. Go on. Josh: It did snow. It slushed really good. But we're kinda moving from, like like, avalanche alerts and avalanche warnings. Where, in fact, our some of our ski lodges went into Interlodge and Max interlodge just like 2 weekends ago. Jacob: For like a an entire week. Alex: What does that even mean? Josh: So interlodge is a state of- so there's security measures. So basically, like, the possibility of avalanches, uncontrolled avalanches, are so high that you're forced to stay in the resort. So you- Jacob: So you're literally interlodged. Alex: I got it. Okay. Josh: Typically, you can normally, like, backcountry ski between buildings in the resort area, but most of the time you're, like, stuck inside the lodge. And then Max Interlodge is you're down in the basement. Everyone is brought down into the basement. And 1 of these key resorts actually max interlodged 2 weekends ago. Or last weekend. Jacob: It's been crazy. Josh: So we go from that- Alex: So we don't we don't construct these lodges to a standard where they're, like, avalanche proof? Jacob: Not 800 inches, avalanche proof. Alex: Hmph. Josh: That's a lot of inches. Jared: Yeah. Jacob: And So much snow out there. Josh: So now, anyway, Utah's transitioning from, like, all this avalanche warning and crazy snow. Too, flood warning. And pretty close to us, 1 of the towns out in the foothills, brand new development, neighborhood- Jacob: Like, not even finished yet. Josh: Yeah. The entire this entire roadway was just like undercut by the by the water coming down out of the mountain and just collapsed half the half the road. Jacob: 15 foot deep sinkhole. Josh: Yeah. Jacob: Crazy. Alex: They're already evacuating people in Salt Lake, in a neighborhood in Salt Lake near I can't remember the name of creek. Josh: Immigration Creek? Alex: Yeah. Immigration Creek. They've already had to yeah. Get those people out because they're experiencing flooding. Not because they're worried about it, but they are actively flooded. Jacob: Ogden's gonna get it bad too, just from what I've already seen. Josh: Yeah. And they're they're- Ogden- most of Ogden is pretty close to the mountain too. So I think, you know, I can rest easy knowing that the wealthy among us that can afford to live in the foothills are the ones getting hammered by the flood. Most of us cheapos down in the valley next to the salty briny lake. We'll probably be okay. Hopefully. Unless Utah created these water diversion things to benefit the wealthy. Jacob: Now, Josh's house does back up right to a creek. So... Josh: This is true. Alex: It's already looking kinda high. Josh: It's pretty I we opened the windows to cool off the house. And, like, I can't hear because it's so loud. And, you know, my wife likes to whisper when she talks to me. I have really bad hearing from a lot of, like, percussive noises over the years. And so when there's any sort of like background noise, like any sort of background frequency, it just really washes out my ability to hear anything. So with the windows open and that creek flowing, It's like I can see this. I feel like Charlie Brown, it's like, "mrm mrmmr mrmrmr." I'm just like "whatever". Just smiling and nodding my head. Jacob: Smile and wave, boys. Smile and wave. Josh: Which okay. Going back to the Zelda trailer- Alex: Nice. Josh: The very last line of the trailer, Zelda says, "you're our last hope." Jacob: Almost. Josh: "Link, You're our last hope." Jacob: Keep going. Josh: "You're our final hope." Jacob: Keep going. Alex: No hope. Jacob: There's a line after that. Josh: What? Alex: "Link, you must find me." Jared: She says standing out in the wide open expanse of Hyrule. Josh: So she says, "Link, you are our final hope, you must find me"? Alex: I don't I don't remember that final hope as being part of the last line at all. It might be- Jacob: I think it was in the trailer though. Alex: But it is in the trailer for sure. Josh: Okay. Well, I'm getting, like, major Princess Leia vibes. From both of the lines. Because doesn't she say, "Luke, you're my only hope"? Jacob: Wait. Jared: "Help me, Obiwan Kenobi. You are my only hope." Alex: You don't- do you just not follow stories of any kind? Anywhere? Josh: I... Jared: It's like a chat GPT summary of like a story that you put into Google Translate, and then back into chat GPT. Jacob: I I also wanna know how Shana whispering brought you back to that. Josh: Um... Alex: You don't even follow your own stories! Josh: Alright. Caveat. If this makes it into the final cut, I am exhausted. I'm very tired. I prefaced this entire meeting tonight with "I need lots of caffeine." Alex: Oh, yeah. You need another can of doctor pepper? Josh: I'm not through- Jacob: Okay. I still wanna know what happened and how and when and where so that we have all these floating rock city ruins places. Alex: Well, I mean, I can I've got theories, and lots of people, you know, have plenty of theories. But- Jacob: But we don't know-know. Alex: No. Jacob: Yeah. Josh: But I thought it happened after the events of the first- the Breath of the Wild. Right? Alex: What? This game? Yeah. This is a direct sequel to Breath of the Wild. So that's the exact same Link and Zelda as breath of the wild. Josh: But we don't know where the floating islands are from? Isn't it from the previous game? Alex: Skyward sword? Josh: Skyward sword? Jared: Did you notice the shot where Zelda's become a Zonai? Alex: In- yeah. Jared: It's totally her. That's those are her eyes. That's her necklace, that's her earrings. Josh: Who's Zonai? Jared: It's we think it's gonna be, like- Alex: You don't know who the Zonai are? Jared: -A new race, that's important to the story line. They were hinted in the last game with, like, ruins and stuff. Alex: Yeah. Do you remember the barbarian set of armor where you're, like, wearing tattered skins and, like, a skull helmet that gives you what looks like Ganondorf hair. Josh: Yeah. That was Zonai? Alex: That that was Zonai. Jacob: Okay. Was this the the like, the the lady with the gray face and she had, like horn ear things. Is that what- Jared: That's what some people might think. Yeah. But- Alex: Yeah. A lot of people think that is a Zonai. And later the -- Okay. -- not actually the woman, but that man that was talking to Zelda, they think it was him. Josh: Oh, I thought it was the king of Hyrule. Alex: No. But I think it might be the same voice actor. I heard a similarity in the voice. Mhmm. So okay. So in Skyward Sword, we hear this story about how down on the surface of the planet, the earth cracks open and demons come flooding out Among them, this demon lord named demise, and he's wreaking havoc on everything. So the goddess with a small g Hylia takes her people the most human like, I guess, of all the peoples of the planet into the sky on these floating islands. And creates a barrier between the ground and the sky realm. The people up in the sky When they look down, all they see is cloud. They can't see the surface of the planet. They don't know they don't even know what's on the other side of those clouds. But when you're down on the planet, you look up, you just see sky and you don't see those islands. Jacob: Sky, not clouds. Alex: Correct. I think it's I think it's called the cloud barrier. Josh: "Sky Not Clouds". Ha! T-shirt! Another Brother podcast T-Shirt, "sky not clouds".... Alex: Cool. We'll talk about that later... Jared: It sounds like some, like, deep political statement. Like, if I saw that shirt, it'd be like, "Yeah. I I totally get that." Josh: I support this...? Alex: Wolves not sheep. Jacob: Sky not clouds. Alex: So this magical barrier that hides this sky kingdom up in the up in the air from the ground and vice versa people have been speculating since Breath of the Wild that it's always been there throughout the entire series. And that some people at the end of Skyward Sword stayed up there. Like not all of those sky islands come down. Oops spoiler alert for people that haven't played the game yet. Eventually, some of those islands come back down to the ground after you defeat this demon lord demise. Josh: I have not finished the first game. Alex: Oh, boy. Well no wonder you're not following anything! Jacob: Which game? Josh: Breath of the wild. Jacob: No. No. This is No. Alex: This is No. This is No. This is not breath of the wild. This is Skyward Sword. Josh: Yeah. I've never even played Skyward Sword. Jacob: I know who demise is. He's this big thing with teeth and, like, scale, type of- Alex: That's not his true form. His true form looks like an outrageously buff Ganondorf. Like, if you think Ganondorf looks buff, demise is like 10 times buffer. Jared: Do I get the photo? Jacob: Please do. Alex: But he's got, like, a mane of fire instead of red hair. It's just like this fiery craziness. Josh: Does he fuel Ganondorf? I know I'm taking you way off track, but- Alex: As you defeat him at the end of Skyward Sword, right before the master sword sucks him up inside of the sword, he lays out a curse. Josh: You suck him up in the Master Sword... Alex: Yeah. The Master Sword supposedly still contains demise. He lays out this curse that says, the the 1 who possesses the blood of the goddess, because we find out that Zelda is Hylia herself reincarnated. She gives up her- Jacob: Of course. Alex: immortality and becomes mortal. Josh: Okay, hold on, when do you find that out? Jacob: Skyward Sword. Alex: You find that out during the game in Skyward sword. Josh: Oh my goodness. Alex: Maybe halfway through the game, you find that out. Skyward Sword is immensely important for the lore of the series. And there's all kinds of meta stuff outside of it. Like, people at the company that are making the game and why that game is so story driven compared to previous games. But the same guy that wrote that game wrote a game before that that was also really cool story wise that people loved. Josh: Minish Cap? Alex: Minish Cap. He also wrote Breath of the Wild and he also wrote tears of the kingdom. Dang. Which is why the stories are a lot stronger, though some people say Breath of the Wild had no story. I think those people are lame. But okay. So he lays out this curse. Whoever has the spirit of the goddess. No. Sorry. The blood of the goddess, and the spirit of the hero, How did they word that exactly? Josh: One person? Alex: Basically, the the princess slash goddess and the hero will be constantly reborn, reincarnated, and have to put up with My malice forever. My malice will continue, to wreak havoc on this world and your predecessor not predecessors, successors, reincarnated versions of yourselves are gonna have to fight me for eternity. Ganondorf becomes an embodiment of the malice of demise. Josh: So Ganandorff becomes demise's reincarnation, basically. Alex: Yes. Josh: So just trapped forever. Alex: The the the lore of each game is that the big bad in pretty much every Zelda game, is some kind of incarnation of his malice. Because every demon- Jacob: Hold on. Alex: - every monster, when you kill it in Zelda, it poofs into purple. That's the malice being released as it dies. Jacob: Demise is the villain of Zelda. Alex: Demise is THE villain. He cracks open the planet. Jacob: How can that be? Alex: He comes out and leads all the minions to destroy everything. Jacob: I don't like this. Jared: He's also- Jacob: Ganandorf is. He always has been. Josh: Right? Jared: He's also in the trailer. Alex: Demise? Jared: Yeah. Well, because I- Alex: That could that could be demise, and not Ganondorf with hair and everything in front of the blood moon. Jared: Yeah. I think- Josh: The one where you don't see his face? Sorry Jared. Alex: Yeah. Jared: Have you seen the, like, cyclical theory? Alex: With the ouroboros? Jared: Like the time loop? Alex: Uh-huh. Jared: That's what I think is going down because, I think- Alex: You could say that the earth has cracked open with all these malice it's opening up everywhere. Jared: I think I think this game is gonna be a time loop that starts again with Skyward Sword. And it's like- Alex: So you could say this is the last game in the series, but you could also say it's the first game in series. But you could say that of any game in the series. Jared: Because I think Zelda's gonna turn into Hylia. And Ganandorf's gonna turn into demise. And then- Nintendo secretly hates the timeline because they they kinda got pressured into it by fans. And there's some people at Nintendo who really like it, but there's a lot who don't And so I think there's a pretty good chance this will be, like, the end of the timeline just so they can say, like, Okay. We're done addressing the timeline. Every other game is gonna be somewhere in the middle of this. That doesn't because, like, they're not gonna stop making zelda games. They make way too much money. But I think they're gonna, like, put an end to the timeline stuff with this game so that then they can just, like, okay, there you go. It's got a beginning. It's got an end. We're just gonna churn out games now because we're Nintendo and we hate stories secretly. At least Miyamoto. Alex: Specifically Myamoto, yeah. [00:27:49] Storytime Segment Soundbite: Hey, kids. Do you know what time it is? Storytime! Jared: Okay. This is a date story. So this is high school. I'm on a double date. So the reason I'm on this double date is because my friend is really into this girl. But he's too scared to just ask her out by himself. He has to have backup there, I guess. Jacob: So did he at least asked her out on the double date? He didn't make you- Jared: No. Yeah. Yeah. He at least could do that. But he was like, "Man, I wanna ask her out. Like, I can't do it. I can't do it if I'm by myself. Like, can you ask her friend, and then we can, like, go together?" I was like, "fine". So we go out and we first go to this like Italian place and we're eating. It's going good. I don't know, like, why he was so worried. I think he he was an only child. And so I feel like he thought I think he thought he was, like, terrible at holding the conversation, but he was fine. But what did he know? Like- Alex: He talked to himself all the time. Jared: And so he is doing fine and we're getting close to the end of dinner. It's probably, like, 7:00, 7:30. And I, like, I have to go to the bathroom pretty bad. Like, I drank quite a bit of water. And I kind of, like, lean over to him while the girls are talking. I'm like, "hey, man. Like, I'll I'll be back. But, like, gonna go run to the bathroom." He's like, "no. No. No. You you can't." Like, i was like, "what are you talking about?" He was like, "dude, if you leave and I say something what if it, like, completely derails." I'm, like, real like, I have to babysit you this entire time just like, "please, man." Josh: Just- wait- Is he, like, whispering this over the table- Jacob: Yeah that's what I just wanted to ask. Jared: This is a I don't know. Like- Josh: It's all eye contact. Alex: It's one of those How I Met Your Mother mental conversations. Jared: It somehow got I don't remember. It somehow got communicated that he was like, no, man stay. So I was like, fine. And so we we end the dinner, and it's, like, kinda close to a mall, so we start walking around. And, like, while we're walking around the mall, I'm, like, keeping my eyes out for a bathroom. Because it's been, like, half an hour. Suddenly, it's been 45. Suddenly, it's been an hour. Josh: This story is not gonna end well. Jared: And I'm like, oh, gosh. Like, this is getting bad. Like, this this is bad. Like, we're an hour past where I should've found something. But I can't find anything. And so I'm like, I'm just gonna have to deal with this until the end of the date, but I'm like, it's gonna be 9 o'clock soon. We can just peace out. So- Jacob: Peace- Jared: That was even unintentional. And so we finally, like, get in the car, and I'm thinking, cool. We're gonna drop him off and I can just go find a bathroom. But then he's like, "hey, it's still early. Like, why don't we go hang out somewhere?" I'm kinda, like, giving him looks like, "dude". And everyone else is like, "yeah, let's go". And so we end up going to this park. And he's, like, clearly feeling more confident now, I guess, because he, like, goes off with her and they're walking and talking and stuff. And I'm sitting and talking to my date. Who's was great, but, like, I'm not interested in her romantic- Like, well, I'm just there to, like, support him. Right? And we have to sit next to this stupid trickling fountain. And I kid you not, we're there for an additional 2 hours. Alex: Holy crap. Jacob: And he's just walking around that whole time- Jared: They're just they're just off in their own la la land, and I am, like, dying. Jacob: He couldn't have even picked a park with a- Jared: There is no bathroom in this park. It is now, like, 9:30. I am livid. I am dying. I'm trying not to like do the pee pee dance like, but like we're sitting down next to a bunch of trickling water. This is like killing me. And so finally, they come back. And they're like, oh, yeah. We should go home now. And I'm like, yeah. You think? And so, like, we we get in the car and it just so happened to be a situation where I was the 1 who got to be last And so I'm dropping off people. They all live, of course, super far away from each other. So by the time I'm finally- And this is my car. I'm like gosh, dang it like this was not. And so finally, it's 10 o'clock I am- I've had to go for, like, 3 and a half hours now. And I just dropped off the last 1 and, like, okay. I cannot make it back to my house. This isn't gonna work. I gotta find something closer. And every fast food place I drive by, their doors are shut. They've got the drive through open, but their doors are shut. Everything is just I cannot find something, but I I I cannot hold it any longer. It it's it's going down. And I'm driving, and I'm freaking out, and I'm like, I'm really gonna wet myself in my car. And then I see my high school. And I think, I can find a bathroom there. So I drive in to the parking lot by the football field. And they had been doing some construction around the baseball like areas. Okay. And so there's a porta potty. Alex: Yeah. Jared: The only thing standing in my way was like a 10 foot gate. So there I was- So there I was thinking, okay. I'm gonna have to climb this gate and get down to that porta potty. And so I start climbing. I'm really hoping that there's not a cop around or, like, there's not school security or anything. I start climbing. I get to the top, and instead of thinking like a rational person and thinking like, I should like climb down slowly. I just decided jump with a full bladder. Alex: Oh, nooooo Jared: And so I do. And as I land, my legs completely buckle under me. I just biff it, but I somehow kept it in. Jacob: Oh Josh: dang it. Jacob: I thought that on the impact Josh: Can you imagine, like, just the the dejection of- Alex: On your back. peeing all over yourself. Josh: An arms' reach from the bathroom. Jared: It's like 3 feet away. No. No. Yeah. No. I thought this 1 would be good because it looks like it's gonna go 1 way, but I somehow kept it in. Josh: Clutch. Jared: And I made it to the porta potty and finally got the relief. And I I I let my friend have it after that. Because he knew. He knew the whole time. He did not care. Josh: I hate those moments where you're just, like, breaking out in sweat. And you're just, like, oh my gosh! This is life or death right now. Alex: I'm gonna poop my pants! Josh: I'm prairie doggin' it! Alex: I thought there was gonna be a padlock on the porta potty or something? Jared: I was pretty weird too. If it it would if it had come to that, I was going to the bush, I didn't care. Alex: Yep. Public urination. Jacob: Even better, it's on school property. Josh: Yeah. On the football field. Jared: Take this high school! Josh: All my teen aingst and anxiety, hah! Yeah. We had ideas like that to, you know, pee on the football field because- Jacob: Who's we? Josh: Well.... Alex: You don't wanna implicate anybody. Jared: The undisclosed "we". Jacob: I'm certainly not part of "we" Josh: Yeah. True. Some some other of us, we'. And, you know, like ammonia on the grass and, like, just really mark it up. Jacob: Oh you need to write something Alex: "Haha! Your grass isn't green!" [00:35:46] Another Brother Outro

#005 The Debilitating Dream Dysphoria

This Week on Another Brother:
In episode #005, The Debilitating Dream Dysphoria, the brothers learn that just because they read not-yet peer-reviewed reports related to Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), they really shouldn't publish podcast episodes discussing multidimensionalism. They also wonder, "Will name-dropping Tom DeLonge, Lue Elizondo, and YouTubers like Mark Rober and Fran Blanche, lead to more listeners?" Meanwhile, Jacob discovers he may want a spinning top before he goes back to sleep...
Find our website on Podbean!
And don't miss this episode's Alternate Reality...
 
Episode Links (***Spoiler Alert***):
Harvard University's Galileo Project, headed by Professor Avi Loeb of the Harvard AstronomyCenter for Astrophysics. A somewhat controversial figure in the world of astrophysics right now, Avi co-authored the report "Physical Constraints On Unidentified Aerial Phenomena" with Sean Kirkpatrick. Sean Kirkpatrick is the Director of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO): "The mission of the AARO will be to synchronize efforts across the Department of Defense, and with other U.S. federal departments and agencies, to detect, identify and attribute objects of interest in, on or near military installations, operating areas, training areas, special use airspace and other areas of interest, and, as necessary, to mitigate any associated threats to safety of operations and national security. This includes anomalous, unidentified space, airborne, submerged and transmedium objects."
Luis "Lue" Elizondo.
Fran Blanche on YouTube. Relevant videos highlighting Fran's brilliance: "It's Official: UFOs Are Real. So What Are They???", "The Way I See Space Time".
Tom DeLonge and To The Stars.
Lara's Voice Lessons.
Alex's Etsy Store.
Sleep Paralysis is a very real problem, as is hypnopompic hallucinations, or... what did Alex call it? Cross-legged hags?
 
Transcript:
The following transcript was in part created using the Deepgram API: [00:00:00] This Week on Another Brother [00:00:37] Another Brother Theme Song [00:00:59] Stewnerds Segment Josh: Who here Oh, wait. How do we do this? Alex: Show of hands. Jacob: Just go on. Do it. Josh: Down in the show comments, you tell us, Do you believe in aliens or not? Am I alone? Are you alone in this universe? I think not. But you might think so, and that's just sad. Alex: You're sad. Josh: Anyway, recently, the head of the Galileo Project, which is a Harvard University astronomy department project to answer a lot of these UAP questions, His name is Abraham Loeb, l o e b. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Goes by Avi, And Sean M. Kirkpatrick, who is the director of the All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office at the Pentagon. So this is the new Pentagon approved formal official UAP research office. So together, these 2 guys- Alex: Sorry. Before for for those that don't know. We don't call them UFOs anymore. They're now unidentified aerial phenomena, UAP. Jacob: Kinda sad. Do we really need a rebrand UFOs? Alex: Yeah. Most people think UFOs sound like crazy talk. I don't know why this helps that any, but I mean, you can't say that you're a ufologist anymore. Yep. Josh: But part of the reasoning is, if you listen to Lou Elizondo, part of the reason for that is because are they flying? Are these trans-medium craft flying? Alex: Right. Josh: There's no sign of propulsion. There's no control surfaces. Alex: And they hover a lot. Is that really flying? Josh: Is anti-gravity flying? Alex: That's That's kinda semantic, but that's Yeah. Josh: But that's what these academic nerds do. Alex: And I mean, it is a government agency. So if you'd expect anybody to be super picky about words. Josh: Yeah. You gotta be- Jacob: The government. Josh: yeah. Choose the right words and be super bland about it too. But they they coauthored a report that at the time of this recording was still under draft review, So I understand that it hasn't been peer reviewed. Just these 2 gentlemen in their respective offices coauthored this report, and it's called "Physical Constraints On Unidentified Aerial Phenomena". And they go around and try to discuss a lot of key physics-based issues related to the UAP question. Alex: I see. So physics as we understand it. How are they breaking our understanding of physics given their behaviors that we can watch. Josh: Right. And why aren't we observing these craft through traditional physics- things that we understand through physics, through our sensors, like heat friction as they're entering the atmosphere. Like, how is there no heat signatures? Certain, like, radio wave propagation that you would expect to see, but, like, objects like oumuamua- Jacob: Yes. This is what I was gonna- Josh: -didn't exhibit. At all. Alex: It didn't- what what didn't Oumuamua exhibit? Josh: Let me find this. Well, first, before I get there, let me just read the abstract and maybe you can cut it in post. Because it's pretty long and it gets pretty technical. Okay. So the abstract for this report says, "we derive physical constraints on interpretations of highly maneuverable unidentified aerial phenomena based on standard physics and known forms of matter and radiation. In particular, in particular, we show that friction of UAP with the surrounding air or water is expected to generate a bright optical fireball, ionization shell, and tail which implies radio signatures." So they should be able to say, see these things with radar, other RF based antenna, electro optical sensors, and infrared sensors. Like, all 3 of those. Jacob: I feel like there's a "but" coming. Josh: "The fireball luminosity scales with inferred distance to the fifth power." Okay. There's some there's the technical stuff. Alex: Yeah. Josh: Okay. Anyway, "the lack all these signatures could imply inaccurate distance measurements, and hence derived velocity for single site sensors without a range gate capability." Alex: So there's even a practical reason why they're talking about this. Like, we can't get accurate readings on certain things like speed just because we can't- Josh: Presumably- Yeah. Presumably, so from single site sensors, if our sensors are not correctly picking up the right signatures, then we could be completely misinterpreting the the velocity. Right. So it's just really interesting because they take, as a matter of fact, all of these certain UAP events, and they're acknowledging this is real. This is happening. We haven't been able to sense them like we should based on our understanding of physics. So here's some potential reasons for that. So the intent is, again, to use a science-based foundation to then develop technologies equipment, new science, to help us better identify these objects, or phenomena. Alex: Well, it sounds to me like they kinda give away the solution- I mean, it there's no way it could possibly be this easy. I'm probably missing something, but it sounds like they give away the solution right there in in that last thing you read. They said single sensor. So use 2, like we have eyeballs and use the parallax to I mean, I I don't know. That sounds like that would fix it. Josh: Yeah. You can do similar things with I mean, optics is just radiation just on a different side of the electromagnetic spectrum. Right? So light is, versus radio frequency, versus like gamma and x-ray, and and whatever on and up. So, yeah. So similar techniques that you apply when you're talking about antennas or, like, space telescopes and things. But it's really interesting. The real nerdy stuff, Okay, here we go. "On March 9th, 2017, 6 months before Oumuamua's closest approach to Earth, a meter sized interstellar meteor collided with Earth." Did you catch that? Alex: Say that again... Jacob: I haven't heard this part. Josh: Okay, "6 months before Oumuamua's closest approach to earth. A meter sized interstellar meteor collided with earth." Alex: Okay. Josh: Surprisingly, so this is this has been called IM2. So interstellar meteor 2. So there's been 2 of these that have been observed. Alex: Oh, right. So interstellar meaning, this did not come from our own solar system, which is it's never been seen before? Jacob: Wait, yeah, let's see, so Oumuamua was the first one, right? Josh: Oumuamua is- let's see... Jacob: First interstellar... Alex: Like, we haven't found any samples on Earth that lead us to believe that it came from outside of our solar system ever before, except for these objects. Josh: So Oumuamua , I believe is the first known interstellar Oumuamua object observed within our solar system. Alex: But there must have been an IM1. Josh: I think that is IM1. Alex: 0h, so Oumuamua is IM1? And now this thing that's actually come in contact with the planet -- Josh: Is IM2. Jacob: I haven't heard about this second one. Josh: So this is okay. Alex: So this is the mother ship? Josh: Keep listening. Okay. Yeah. "Surprisingly, IM2 had an identical speed relative to the sun at large distances, and an identical heliocentric semi-major axis, as Oumuamua had, but the inclination of IM2's orbital plane around the sun was completely different from Oumuamua's implying that the two objects are unrelated." "Nevertheless, the coincidences between some orbital parameters of Oumuamua and IM2, inspires us to consider the possibility that an artificial interstellar object could potentially be a parent craft that releases many small probes during its close passage to earth. An operational construct not too dissimilar from NASA missions." Jacob: And I just I just want to call out again. As a reminder, everything Josh is reading is in an upcoming report that's gonna be released in joint by the Pentagon and this Harvard professor. Josh: Yeah. This Galileo Project. Jacob: So these are this is top government brass and highly educated professors saying, hey, guys. It's possible that there are mother crafts and probes out there just like we do. Alex: IM2. Did we recover that, or did we just observe it? Josh: Okay. So this is where it gets really awesome. One of the main goals of the Galileo Project right now, and they've received I believe they've received funding, and they have a date for their voyage, is to go collect whatever they can find from IM2. Alex: So we have a good idea of where it- Josh: Yes. We know exactly where it splashed down. Alex: Oh, splash down. Jacob: So where is it? In the ocean? Josh: I believe it's outside I I believe it's close to Japan. If I remember right. Jacob: Oh, crap. This is just a kaiju egg. Man. We're about to have some giant monster come out of the sea. Alex: I love Pacific Rim! Bring it on!! Jacob: Sorry. Go on. Go on. Josh: Yeah. So they're gonna go dredge this thing up. Luckily, it seems like based on where they project it would have settled down, that it's within range to pull up, and they're mostly interested in the composition of it. Alex: Of course. Josh: So I think they can tell from- Alex: How on earth are you gonna, like, it was a meter, and that was before it hit the water. Josh: Yeah. Well, here's the question. Is it ferrous? Okay. So most of these space objects are metallic. Right? So the question is, is it a ferrous metal? Is it a non ferrous metal? Can we detect it? Through, you know, typical measurement devices? Or can we not? And then is it an alloy known to man? Jacob: Right, if it's interstellar... One of these times, we're gonna have to talk about Blink 182, or should I say Tom DeLonge, and To The Stars Academy. Alex: Yeah. Jacob: Because flipping Tom DeLonge has started his own I I don't even know what you call it. Josh: It's a media group of sorts. You know, like, the marketing- Jacob: Yeah, but at the end of the day, the media is just to drive money to be able to put into research to reproduce their own- Alex: They're trying to reproduce technologies. Jacob: -UAP technologies. Josh: Tom DeLonge's stars- "To the Stars" is trying to reproduce- Jacob: That is, like, that's the goal of the media platform is to, first of all, again, make money to fund their research, and 2, to educate the populace, to to not make it this big scare thing. But- Alex: Because how are you gonna sell your technology if you keep saying it it's "it comes from alien stuff, guys, that we researched", "and we figured it out." No one's gonna like, you can't you can't turbo encapsulate your way to to to all of your sales. Jacob: So, like, if you Google "To The Stars", you know, Google has like their little immediate profile type thing of what you search if it's something known. It says, "To The Stars, Science Company." Josh: Nice. Credibility. Alex: I should start a science company. Jacob: I don't think he has Lue Elizondo with him anymore.Josh: Yeah. Which, you know, I think, initially, it was critical for Lue to do some of these, what I would call, less than credibility-building-things just to generate awareness. But I think, you know, for someone to be in the positions that he's been in, of such trust and awareness and just knowledge and control over a bunch of these you know, kind of sensitive type programs. You know somebody like that isn't gonna be really looking for the spotlight and the limelight. So I think he did what he needed to do. And now he's probably more than happy to kinda recede a bit. Maybe circulate in the more professional spheres again. Alex: Well, he got an official Pentagon- Josh: posting. Alex: -I don't know what you'd call it... task force. Josh: He's a consultant now. I think he's a contractor. So I think he- Jacob: That's right. He's not head of the UAP task force or whatever it is. Josh: I think he's specifically been hired on as an independent contractor consulting with the Pentagon's office now. Jacob: Because it's the new guy who coauthored this report- Josh: Kirkpatrick. Yeah. Alex: Nevertheless, now that there is an official thing going on in our government to study this stuff, it would be a little weird if he maintained ties to To The Stars probably. There'd be a conflict of interest, I imagine. Because if the government finds any technology, the government wants to keep that technology. Josh: Like, they already have. Alex: Yeah. What am I talking about? Josh: You mean when they found that technology? But also Okay. So we are aware of the Chinese balloon and the $10,000 ham radio club balloon. Alex: That 1 was particularly sad. Jacob: That is sad. Josh: All these things... This is just a totally different These are just 2 totally different problem sets, like a nation state's stratospheric surveillance balloon compared to these fast movers, extremely agile, transmedia craft. Like, 2 completely different issues. Jacob: With no signals that we can even measure or read. Josh: Yeah. Well, I mean, allegedly, these F-18's like the WSO (sounds like "Wizzo") or F-16's, whatever, you know, can image them and and get- you're getting radar signature in atmosphere. You're getting electro-optical and infrared signature returns. So, like, it's it's unquestionable that these things exist because you can't have that many advanced sensors just be completely wrong. Because we built these based on physics, and so they're gonna show us what we built them to show us. So there are physical objects there. They're not balloons. And it's just really exciting that these guys are trying to approach it from the scientific perspective. And while recognizing that, it could be that just our fundamental understanding of physics is wrong. It could be that the way we have built sensors isn't cutting it. And there's things that we need to do differently. Jacob: But even if that's the case, that wouldn't explain what, like, Navy pilots have observed these crafts being capable of doing, the way that they maneuver the instantaneous acceleration. Yeah. It's even hard to almost call instantaneous acceleration because acceleration is, like but just, I guess, the rate of acceleration where you know. Josh: Yeah. And then you tell me, if you're piloting a tiny craft, some of these not so tiny, but if you're piloting that, and then you're like, you go to a stop and then you just shoot off at a 90 degree angle from your last direction of movement, you're gonna just splat on the wall. Jacob: Yeah, your brain's gone. The maneuverability- Alex: In Star Trek terms, they either have inertial dampeners or these are probes with nobody inside. Jacob: Or robot pilots inside. Josh: Yeah. Could be. Jacob: I've heard that theory before. Yeah. Bam. Definitely. Alex: Or Lieutenant Data's inside. Josh: Or my favorite YouTuber- Jacob: Oh, boy. Josh: Hold on. Let me pull up the I don't wanna get this wrong, so we can cut this. Jacob: While you're pulling that up. Just another thought that occurred to me. Tom DeLonge's obsession and relationship to UAP/aliens. Gives you a different understanding of his other band Angels and Airwaves. Alex: Oh. I didn't know he was in that band. Josh: I didn't know he was in that band either. Jacob: Yeah. That's him singing. Oh, yeah. Listen to the voice. It's yeah. Josh: That makes a lot of sense. Jacob: Right. Josh: Angels and Airwaves. I love that. Jacob: Yeah. Straight up aliens. Josh: So Fran Blanche has an incredible YouTube channel called Fran Lab. [It's actually just her name, Fran Blanche.] Jacob: Fran Blanche? Josh: Blanche. Yeah. F r a n Blanche. Josh: B l a n c h e. Jacob: I have never heard of Fran. And this is your favorite YouTuber? Josh: I mean, for this sort of topic? Absolutely. Jacob: Oh, okay. I thought you were saying, like, just above all else. This is my favorite. Josh: Yeah. Jacob: She? Josh: Yeah. And I believe she worked for JPL. Alex: Like Mark Rober. Josh: Whether she did or not, she's just incredibly intelligent and did like a I mean, she was totally nerding out about that first unclassified Congressional report on UAP. She did a live stream, like, as soon as it dropped and just discussed everything, like, almost line by line of this Congressional report. And, like, again, this woman is so freaking intelligent, and she was just totally taken by all of it. So she's on board because she knows I mean, if she doesn't know these people who've done the research personally, she understands the science and the scientific method and, like, the way they're going about doing it. And so she understands the rigor that they put into these things. And so she's able to, like, see between the lines and understand, like, oh okay, if they're saying this, then that means they probably did all this, and they actually mean this, And she has fascinating concepts of time, and she has a video where she discusses the 5th dimension and stuff. She has 1 video where she discusses her concept of these aliens, probably as a probe, but basically as 5th dimensional projections into our reality. But she, like, conceptualizes and explains her opinion of the 5th dimension and how that makes sense within our current understanding of multi-dimensions. Alex: Spatial? When when- so I always have to ask this because I once got in a really big fight with Mark. Josh: Rober? Alex: A friend from working and broadcasting about the 4th dimension. We're talking about completely different things, and I feel so stupid that I didn't- I knew what he was talking about. But in that moment, I did not, and I was getting really upset about it. Are we talking about spatial dimensions or, like, how time is the 4th dimension? Like, there's 3 spatial dimensions, time is the 4th dimension, and then there's another dimension after that. Yeah. Because there are mathematicians that work on the math of 4 spatial dimensions. Josh: Right. And there's data science and there's- there are programmatic arrays that allow you to do multidimensional data sets. Like, up to an nth- to an nth dimension of data. Alex: I'm not even sure I know what that really... Jacob: N dimensions? Nth? Josh: Nth, e n t h. Jacob: Yeah. Yeah. I I got you. But I mean- Josh: N-superscript-th. Alex: Superscript. Oh, yeah. Right right. Jacob: There are. Nth dimensions. Alex: Just a limitless. Whatever. Jacob: Yeah yeah yeah, I just- I don't know what any of that means. I don't get it. I don't get it. Josh: Well, in this in in the case of of Fran's video explanation, I think it means as a separate dimension apart from spatial and time. Like, temporal, spatial, temporal, and then- Alex: Okay, so, like, the 4th dimension would be time. Josh: Presume- I don't wanna open myself up to toooooo many critics here. Alex: I still don't know why you- I just don't know why someone would start talking about the 5th dimension, specifically, without the 4th dimension being time. Josh: I'm sure it is. Alex: And the other 3 dimensions being- Josh: Because when you talk about relativity and stuff, you've got- There's a lot of time to, like, space the fabric of space and angular acceleration of velocity and, like, general relativity, how time is just a real intrinsic part of all of how all of this works. Alex: Is there even a difference? Is the 4th spatial dimension mathematically any different than time? I I don't actually know. Jacob: I have no clue. Josh: Yeah. I'm lost now. Jacob: Yeah. Alex: Cool. We did it! Josh: Where am I?[00:21:18] Interstitial Joke Jacob: So, with all of the like, creative stuff happening in the family. Heather started her started a new rainbow art Instagram. Josh: Oh, yeah. Shana told me about that. Jacob: Yeah. It makes her happy. Lara's got her voice acting up on Fiverr. Josh: No. Amazon. Alex: Fiverr. Jacob: Fiver. On Amazon, Josh- or should I say Ken, has a little book series thing. Alex: Oh, yeah. Jacob: Was it Ken? Was that your name? Josh: It- It should be Kevin. [Wrong! It's Kyle.] Jacob: Kevin. Okay. My bad. Alex is selling stuff on Etsy, like, invitation stuff that he hand created. Alex: Digitally. Jacob: Digitally. I thought I'd write a book. Alex: About what? Jacob: About Reverse Psychology. Yeah. Don't buy it. Josh: Man. Jacob: Come on. You gotta you gotta laugh closer to your microphone.[00:22:11] Storytime Segment Soundbite: Hey, kids. Do you know what time it is? Storytime! Jacob: Okay. I'm just I'm doing it. I'm gonna take a departure here. Alex: Woah, boy. Jacob: Take a nice little break from, you know, memory lane. Re-living memories with each other. Telling stories maybe we haven't heard about each other. This is a dream I had, or should I say, no, I won't. I'll let that be a secret. Alex: Secret. Josh: Wait. This is a dream I had, but it's not... It's gonna be revealed later... ? Jacob: No dot dot dot- anyway. Josh: I'm not gonna be able to stop thinking about this. Jacob: This is a dream I had a couple nights ago. K? Josh: But was it? Because I feel like it's not. Jacob: It does tie into reality. So that's why I felt a little more empowered so to speak to share it because it- Josh: To just totally doff our defined way of doing things here. Jacob: Yes. Exactly. And I'm not desperate scraping the barrel for stories. We got plenty more stories to come. This was just a first time experience for me, and so it felt significant enough to share. Given the certain interests and passions that we have. I think you guys will see why I wanted to tell it. So, like, most dreams, started out fairly normal. Normal as in understandable why you're having it, like, it the dream dream is something that could match reality. Right? You're just in a normal setting doing normal thing. At Aunt Becky's house, big family party. I'm in the bathroom. And I'm looking at- sorry. I just got done using- It's normal I promise now! Josh: Normal bowel movement, that's all. Just totally normal. Jacob: Just got done using the bathroom. Alex: Didn't spill anything. Josh: Nothing to see there. Just, don't go in for a little bit. Jacob: And I I noticed the the back of the toilet you know, you got the toilet lid sitting up and you've got the back, the inside of it, I guess, whatever. And it's oddly ornate with, like, all these inlaid carvings of, like, animals and stuff, and there's this this brand name on it. I can't remember what the brand name was that my brain had thought up of. But it's it it just I saw it and it stuck out to me. So go back during the rest of the party where we're doing stuff and things. And then this is where it gets weird because now for some reason- Josh: I think it's already weird that you dreamed about going to the bathroom. Jacob: Come on. Alex: I can honestly say that I've never gone to the bathroom in a dream before. Josh: I mean, no. Because I wake up, and I'm like, oh, I really have to go to the bathroom. I never complete it in the dream. That's a bad- that's a no no. Josh: To be fair, I don't recall if I actually used the toilet, but I at least saw the toilet. So then I see her washing machine. Alex: This is so fascinating. Jacob: I noticed the same brand name from the toilet on the washing machine. Josh: Okay. Not too Not too strange yet. Jacob: And and the washing machine is open. And on the it's it's a front loading machine. And So, you know, with the door open, you can see straight into the drum and everything. On the back of that drum, there's a panel, and there are more of these weird, like, inlaid ornate carvings or whatever you wanna call it, you know. And again, it's it's all these animals. And it's like in this jungle scene. And for some reason, everyone's all- did I mention this is where it gets weird?- Everyone's all gathered around me, like, Josh: In the laundry room. Alex: The day has finally come. It's happening. He's just he's acknowledging the animals. Jacob: I'm looking at it, and I'm noticing, like, some of the animal heads there's this weird, like, cut out around them. And, like, I go and I I I push 1. Alex: I knew it. It was a button. Jacob: And it goes in and it's a button. Alex: I knew it. Jacob: And I start finding more of these things, and I'm just I'm pushing them all. And and as I'm doing this, like, the inside of the washing machine is like, opening and expanding, and this this nature scene is is growing, and it's getting larger. And there's like this weird, like, blue light in the back of it. And so I I'm just I'm just in there pushing all these buttons. Like, I'm getting this thing to get as big as I can. I reach my hand back in there as far as I can to the blue light. I'm really straining, and I get it. And I don't know what happens, but all of a sudden- Alex: What a- Josh: And then I woke up. Jacob: And then I woke up. How's that for a transition? Josh: "I don't really know what happens from there." Jacob: All of the sudden, you know, you know, I don't know if everyone's dreams are like this or if it's just mine where, like, you can very rapidly go from like, oh, yeah. That makes sense to this extremely quick transition. Where like, now you're in this completely unrealistic thing that you could never actually ever live or experience. Anyway, we're all inside of this scene in the washing machine now. Alex: Like Jumanji. Jacob: Ooh, I like that. Like Jumanji. Only it's a washing machine. Alex: Not a board game. Josh: And no one there is fun. Jacob: And so we're all like just going through almost like escape room esque. Right? Finding all these easter eggs and pushing all these things and expanding and growing, and it's this huge, like, expansive adventurous thing. K? From here, like, it takes a really quick turn. Alex: Oh, yeah. This is a nightmare. Jacob: That was the cliffhanger. That's where I said, Josh: "no kidding there I was." Jacob: Oh, no. Not- not- Josh: in a washing machine. Jacob: That's perfect. Alex: But also in my bed. Jacob: So Okay. We're in so remember this was, like, jungle scene with animals, and it evolves. And then turned into more of this, like, Cambodian Thai type of, like, jungle temple thing. So it still matched that jungle theme and But once we were, like, in it and we're in all these things, like, it the setting changed. Now we're in this, I don't know, Early no. Not that early, like, 1800's, basic, simple, like, presbyterian type of chapel. I know. It was really weird. We're at the front of it at the entrance, we're still inside. And Josh I remember Josh specifically, he was by the doors, the front doors. And I'm looking up when I see- Alex: Gotta protect that exit. Jacob: I wish- Josh: Smart man- Oh- Alex: Way to go. Josh: I failed. I didn't know! Jacob: Up, like, above me and but but to the side, it was on the side, not at the center of the of the building, I noticed this oh, what was I calling it? An alcove. And there was light shining into it. Alex: From inside the building or outside? Jacob: From the outside. So you know how, like, in your in dreams, you have these things that, like, in the dream, like like, oh, yeah. I know what this is, but, like, there's no real way of actually knowing. Like, if you were actually there in real life, you'd never know what it was. So like seeing this weird alcove, again, at the very side of the church with the lights shining in. I was like, oh, that's the steeple. That's where the steeple tower is, and it's got windows and the light's shining in. So Josh, he's like, "oh, cool. Let me open the door and check it out and find out." He opens the door. Josh: Like ya do, another normal reaction. Don't start blaming me. Jacob: So he opens the door. But before he's even able to step outside, it slams shut with, like, tremendous force and locks. And you can't even jiggle the handle anymore. Then all of the lights in the chapel turn off, but there's still the light shining into that alcove from the steeple until there isn't. All of that light, like, it condensed down into a single red sphere in that alcove. And then that sphere of red materialized into a shadow being. Like, it was shadow. It was just it was just pure darkness. Alex: So not red anymore. Jacob: Not red anymore. But despite it being, like, shadow and just dark, I could make the outline of a being, like, a a a person. And, like, as soon as I caught its outline and its edge, it not ran because if it's a shadow, but, like, flew down the like, just descended the wall. And at this moment, like, I fell down, like, on my butt, just, like, terrified about what the heck is going on. I I try to, like, my my my legs just stop working. So I'm trying to back pedal with my arms but those eventually stop working. And then it grabs my feet and I wake up. So then, I'm in bed. Right? I'm I well, I wake up. I'm in bed. I'm trying to get Heather's attention for some reason. I don't even remember why. Josh: Oh no... Do you have sleep paralysis? Jacob: And I can't move. Josh: Oh, my gosh. Jacob: Like, I just could not move. And then I'm trying to get like, I'm trying to yell at her. And I have this very specific feeling of rope around my neck. It's simultaneously like choking the air out of me while compressing my esophagus while also, like, giving me this burning sensation in my neck. And I'm just, like, this coarse, raspy, gross voice. Just yelling. "Heather, Heather, help me." But she can't hear me. Like, I'm doing all I can. And then I finally like, I'm able to move my arm and I nudge her. It's so light that she's just, like, brushing me away, not realizing you know, just thinking it's a normal sleep movement. And then for some reason, she gets out of bed to go to the bathroom or something. And then when she gets out of bed, I realized, like, there's something on top of me. And, like, I can't move that thing that's on top of me, and that's why I can't move. Because I'm trying to kick my legs and everything and move my arms Alex: Is it a cross-legged hag? Because that's what usually what people report from sleep paralysis. Literally a hag sitting on their chest. Jacob: It wasn't. But, again, this whole time- Alex: baba yaga Jacob: She's completely oblivious. Like, she goes to the bathroom. Like, without even noticing or paying attention, And then she comes out and she decides to go check on Iris. But as she does that, she then sees me and realizes I'm stuck and there's this thing trapping me on top of me. She comes over, she grabs it and she lifts it off. And as soon as she lifts it off, I wake up for real. Josh: Yeah. Alex: Ugh Josh: Yeah. Jacob: But it was- Alex: I knew it! Jacob: But it was 1 of those dreams where, like, it was real. Like, where you wake up from it and it just it felt like you actually lived and experienced that thing. 100 percent, I didn't because- Josh: Oh, really? Alex: Are you sure you're not not still dreaming right now? Jacob: No. I mean, I was- Alex: Inception.... Jacob: This is gonna be I I shouldn't be be airing this. This is gonna sound bad. I was on the couch sleeping I I wasn't, like, even in the same room as Heather. Josh: Oh. Jacob: I wasn't even in our bed, but it it was just 1 of those moments where, like, you wake up and you actually have to think to yourself, like, did that actually happen? Did I really go through that? Or or was that really my dream. Josh: Yeah. Crazy. Alex: I don't think I've ever had an inception type dream like that where I'm like, Confusing- Jacob: Oh, see, I I have them every now and then. Where like, yeah, I wake up and, like, I just I can't tell if it had really happened or not. Yeah. So in real life, I've never had a sleep paralysis. That was the first time in a dream. Where I have. And it was again, it it felt like I actually experienced it because the dream was that Like, I was sucked in that deep and it felt that real, that It it was an awful feeling. Josh: That's crazy. What did she lift off of you? Jacob: Yeah. I didn't tell you guys what the item was because it would have completely given away that I was still asleep. It was Iris' crib. Josh: It's just laying on top of you. Jacob: It was so weird. Josh: And you're so weak you can't lift a crib off of you? Jacob: And I forgot to mention at 1 point, I did manage to get my arms up and clap, but it didn't make a sound. No matter what I did. I just I couldn't make any loud noises. It was was creepy. Alex: All you dream interpreters out there, tell us what this was about. Jacob: Oh, no. Don't. I love my baby Iris so much. I do not feel weighted down. Josh: Is that why you were sleeping on the couch? Jacob: Actually it is. Alex: When you hear this later in life, Iris, it's not about you. Josh: Yeah. It was never about you. [00:35:00] Another Brother Outro

#004 The Ferocious Fort Frenzy

About this Episode
In episode #004, The Ferocious Fort Frenzy, the brothers reminisce about earlier, simpler times when a man's worth was only as good as his ability to keep his word... and also the number of paintballs he could fit in his hopper. Is one's participation in a Paintball Arms Race a good indicator of future success in life, or a GREAT indicator of future success in life? You be the judge. (...but the answer is 'great indicator'.) Finally, Josh discusses the dire consequences of letting children study war histories...
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And don't miss this episode's Alternate Reality...
 
Episode Links
Willark Park, now known as Bob Newton Park apparently...
The paintball grounds where all the magic happened. From the long, golden strands of uncut grass fields, to the dense, food-item named terrain of the woods.
Camp Rilea, Oregon Army National Guard. Make a difference in your community. Find your recruiter and join the fight.
Jon Heder, who?
Black Path. The thick woods full of stinging nettle, Fir trees, pits, trips, and falls that used to be a child's never-ending playground of outdoor adventure, mystery, and danger, now appears to be a real blight on Keizer's landscape.
Read the first Kindle Vella episode of The Young Adventurers' Guide: Into the Woods, by pseudo Kyle Weston.
 
Transcript
The following transcript was in part created using the Deepgram API: [00:00:00] This Week on Another Brother [00:00:28] Another Brother Theme Song [00:00:51] Stewnerds Segment Josh: Yeah. How did our love affair with paintball even begin? Jacob: I assume it started with Alex. Alex: No. Josh: I would imagine it did too. Alex: No. I don't think so. Jacob: Out of the 3 of us, you weren't the first to pick it up. Was it Josh? Alex: I think it was Josh. Jacob: Really Josh: So- Alex: I think it was you and your friends- Jacob: And Max and Adam- Alex: that started the paintball. I mean, I guess- Josh: I can't imagine why we would have. Alex: You could say that maybe it started with, like, laser tag. And before that, Super Soakers. Jacob: That's true Josh: Yeah. Jacob: Yeah. That's fair. Josh: Yeah. Okay. So that probably- that probably would be us.
Jacob: So who took that step to paintball? Alex: Honestly, I'm pretty sure Josh went there first. Josh: It might have been me. I do remember because I remember getting the what do they call them? Brass Eagle. I think the brand was Brass Eagle. Alex: Yeah. Josh: The tiny little Like 10 shot pump action, 5 ounce CO2 cartridge. Alex: Yeah that little 10 gram cartridge. Josh: Yeah. 10 gram cartridge from Walmart. They were, like, 25 bucks or something. And- Jacob: 25 for a single-? Josh: Well, for the gun, so it was a gun. Plus- Alex: A tiny little 50 round hopper. Jacob: Yeah. These pump action things were so- Josh: But it was such a blast because, like, we'd play at- we'd go down to Willark Park. Alex: You'd have to lob the balls at each other. Jacob: You played at Willark Park? Alex: Yeah. Exactly. Yes. They played at Willark. Jacob: Are you kidding me? Josh: Yeah. Well, because these are so underpowered. Like, you you would you'd have to, like, arc it and try to be, like, what's the optimal pitch on this that I can to get the for this distance? Jacob: Oh my gosh. Alex: Like like someone that's just 30 yards away, you'd have to lob it at them. It was so fun. Jacob: But also account for wind. They would just go all over the place. Josh: Yeah. I remember trying to, like, trying to do, like, trick shots between, like, the branches in the trees and, like- Alex: Yes. This is how I remember the paintball starting. It was you guys at Willark. I don't know when or why I got into it because none of my friends ever did. Josh: Yeah. It was mostly my friends. Like Max, Chris, Eric. Alex: Okay. I mean -- Okay, "none of my friends" is a little much. Greg was into paintball. Sorry, Greg, if you're listening. But, like but Russell, Danny, Kurt. Josh: Oh, yeah, they didn't Alex: None of them got into paintball. Josh: I think I might not have either if we hadn't started the way we did because starting off with that super low tech- Jacob: Grassroots. Josh: Yeah. You kind of you know, you could dodge. Alex: Right. Josh: And you could you could avoid the pain pretty easily. So I think as we kept stepping it up to the next level, it was kind of a I don't know. That foundation kinda helped me, like, mentally prepare. Jacob: And this is where being the youngest brother sucked because I always stepped it up to the next level. Well, it was delayed. I would say that. Alex: Yeah. Right. Jacob: So I was then left with the pump actions once they got real guns and- Alex: But- But I felt- I felt like it was good for you. Jacob: Builds character. Alex: Yes. I I was I mean, I think I probably still feel this way about a lot of things, but especially back then when I had to learn how to draft with old school drafting machines and no computers, at all. I never got to do any computer drafting in high school. Josh: Wow. Alex: In my head, it was like this noble thing you did to, like, gain respect for the way things used to be so that you could fully respect what you had available to you. And it's like, it's paintball, dude. Get over it. But it was so fun playing out in those really tall grass fields with those pump action guns because, like, you felt like you were in the matrix like dodging bullets as they were coming at you. It was so fun. Jacob: I keep wanting to call it Alex Olsen's property, but he hadn't bought it yet. Alex: He hadn't yet. We were- That was just trespassing probably. Jacob: Yeah. But it was the perfect spot, and it was so close. Alex: Yeah. Josh: Well, I like how it offered so much different varied terrain to play in. Because you had the grass, you had the barn, Jacob: Trees.
Josh: -you had the creek, and the really dense thickets. Alex: Once you go over the farming land, once someone was had the balls to go traipsing through this person's field and farmland, to get to that thicket that grove out there. Josh: Yeah. How did that start? How did we I think was that was that the Nelson's? Did they show us that property? Alex: I don't remember. Jacob: I I wouldn't be surprised. Alex: Yeah. I wouldn't be surprised either. They are the ones that lived out there. Jacob: And and their dad now has their tractor out there. Alex: Oh, really? Jacob: Come on, let's put those pieces together. Josh: Yeah. Well, I mean because I remember in high school doing the video production class, we would- a lot of our filming was, like, based out there just because it was so cool with those overland railroad tracks. Alex: Yeah. Josh: And the old rustic barn that was falling apart. Alex: Yeah. Josh: But I think we were already paintballing out there before- Jacob: The videos? Josh: -My friends started filming out there. Yeah. I think we were maybe just kind of adventuring into this trespassed land. And then we eventually found that thicket of trees and went back there and it was just perfect. It's like it was destined for paintball. Alex: And I think I'm not sure if I had graduated high school yet by that point in time, but I think- Jacob: So It straddled, I think. Because you used your Sportsman's warehouse discount. Alex: Yeah. And I didn't have that job until I graduated. I got myself that's when the arms race between you and I, Josh, started. Josh: Because Alex and you had money to do it. I didn't. Jacob: And this is where I started getting usable guns. Yeah. That's true. He had a job. Josh: So how the heck was I even buying that stuff? Alex: I don't know. Josh: Maybe that's where my lunch money was going to. Alex: Christmas, birthday, saving up. I don't know. Jacob: That 16 inch spiraled barrel though. Alex: 14. Yeah. That was that was my coup de grace, I guess. I don't know. Josh: But again, going back to our video game episode, Alex, very much you, like, very much leaned into that, like, covert- Alex: Sniper. That archetype. Josh: Yeah. You got the what was that brand of cammo? Alex: Mossy Oak. It was specifically their Turkey hunting cammo because it was extra green. Yeah. Gloves. I had it on gloves, a long sleeve t shirt, a pair of pants, and I was really depressed this year because I had no friends. Everybody was gone to school. And I was left at home. So I was watching all kinds of crazy stuff. And 1 of the things I watched on the history channel was the history of camouflage. And so I then hand painted my mask. To be camouflage. Jacob: I forgot about that. Alex: Hand painted my hopper, to match. My gun itself was green. Josh: Yeah. Alex: And then, yeah, I got those the perforated sticker to go on to the visor that was in a like an old school army forest cammo. Jacob: And your helmet was fully encased. Right? Covered your back the back of the head too? Alex: No. That was Josh's. Josh: Mine did. Mine did. Jacob: Okay. Josh: Well, because Alex starts- Right, do we're talking about paintball arms race. So Alex starts getting like super OP equipment. Alex: The first 1 of us to get a semi automatic, I think. Josh: Yeah. Probably. Alex: And, like, a 200 round hopper. Josh: The halo? Yeah. You got a halo hopper with the force feed didn't you? Alex: No. No. The only 1 that ever had the only 1 that ever had 1 of those was Eric because he had the fully automatic. Josh: Yes he did. Josh: The fully electric trigger. I think it was a double trigger. Halo hopper. Yeah. Alex: You had an electric trigger too, but- Jacob: you did. Yeah. I remember that you had the batteries that went in the handle. Josh: Yeah. And I it had a little LED/LCD display. The only thing I remember was I programmed it to say, "C"- "Courage Grows Stronger at the Wound." So whenever I'd pick up my paintball gun and I'd and turn it on, I'd look at it and be like, Yeah! Courage does grow stronger at the wound! Just to psych myself up. It was a crazy game. Alex: Good point. A lot of stuff was going on at that point in time, like, we were we were really starting to get into the fact that our heritage was Scottish at that point in time too. Man, that was a good time. Josh: Yeah. And we were, like, really getting in, I think, our our meshing with Anberlin. Jacob: No. Not yet. That was after your freshman year of college. You brought it home from BYU. Alex: I didn't hear any until after my mission. Mhmm. Josh: What? Jacob: It came that late to us. Josh: No way. Jacob: Yeah. You discovered them on, like, Pandora or something. Josh: It was probably me and Chris because we were roommates. Alex: Right. Yeah. Josh: It was probably a combination of that. Wild. Jacob: But Linkin Park- Alex: Linkin Park for me, Jimmy Eat World- Jacob: Oh, yeah. Josh: Jimmy Eat World.
Jacob: Big. Josh: Franz Ferdinand. Alex: What? Jacob: Yeah. That was- I bought that one. That was mine. Josh: It was Jacob's. They're Scottish, I think, or British of some sort. Alex: Metallica. I listened to a lot of Metallica. Jacob: Well, slowly throughout this whole time, I was probably the biggest beneficiary. I spent no money, but eventually got a full kit out of out of the arms race. Alex: Yeah. Man, we went crazy. I had like a proper gun carrying case. Josh: Yes you did. Alex: It's like the egg carton foam in it, and I cut it so that everything fit just right, my barrel, my gun. My I think I even got my CO2 in there. Man, I miss being able to, like, know that gun inside and out, take it apart, fully redo all the the O-rings so there were no leaks, afterward. That was scary to begin with, though, figuring that out. Josh: Yeah. It's probably more probably felt more terrifying than it really needed to be- Jacob: Yeah. Josh: -in hindsight. I guess. So like, yeah, I knew my gun so well when I do get to BYU and started doing my mechanical engineering, we had to do a project where we had to build like a complex machine, and I was able to completely 3D recreate my entire gun down to the O-ring. Jacob: I remember those renders. Josh: Yeah. Alex: Sweet. Josh: I totally made up the measurements, you know. Alex: Sure. Josh: But man, I remember once we were doing this so broadly amongst us and our small group of friends and then integrating it within the young men. Alex: Yeah. That's when it got really interesting. It's like, when Dad was playing- Jacob: Oh, right right right. Alex: -as a sanctioned young men's activity. Josh: On someone else's land, that we don't even know. Alex: You know, we never Right. Right. We have no idea who owns this barn. That, I know you guys did this a few times. I can only remember playing with dad once. And I think it was probably the first time. Josh: Yeah. I think we played twice at least, but I I only remember the 1 time. Jacob: Yeah. Dad took us man, it was someone's birthday. Josh: Oh, it was- Jacob: He took us to an actual outdoor arena. Alex: And uncle Bob went too, and I didn't get to go. Josh: Yeah. It was Trevor's it was Trevor's birthday party. Alex: It sounded awesome. Oh, and Camp Rilea. Josh: Oh, yeah. Camp Rilea. Jacob: You guys you guys took them to Camp Rilea? Alex: I never went to Camp Rilea. Josh: That was just me. Oh, yeah, baby. Jacob: You took the guns? Josh: Yes. Jacob: Oh, man. Josh: Because they have they have a full on- Jacob: I mean, yeah, that's what the city's for- Josh: You've been there. Right? Jacob: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Josh: So now now having been in the Army, it's called a MOUT- MOUT city. Jacob: Mhmm. Not mock. MOUT? Josh: Or mock, but we we'd do it for MOUT- MOUT training. Still 1 of the best cities of the kind that I've been through. That was a blast too. Oh my gosh. I can't believe we got the Oregon Guard to, like, let us do that. Alex: Pretty sweet. Jacob: So cool. Alex: I think 1 of the best things about paintballing was, yes, it was really fun to play. But it was almost more fun at the end of a round of playing to just start recounting all of your war stories to everybody. I don't know why that was so fun, but it was so fun to just be talking about what you just did with everybody. Josh: Well it came, I think for us, because we were, you know, related and or friends for so long. It was like it wasn't a macho ego driven thing- Jacob: Or boasting. Josh: It was like "dude, you freaking nailed me right here, I can't believe you were you were so cool." Like, "you were good enough to do that." Jacob: That's totally what the spirit of it was. Yeah. It was no like trying to brag or show each other up. Alex: Right. We were not what some people might say are traditional paintballers, I guess, because there are some really douchey paintballers out there, man. Josh: Well, yeah, at Trevor's birthday party. Alex: Oh, yeah. Josh: Yeah. We had to deal with a bunch of drama. Dad Dad was yeah. By the end, well, because someone because we ended we were there and then they can't just close it down to 1 group because they have to make their money. So another group of like 4 or 5 teenage guys showed up. Someone was down. It might have been wasn't dad. I can't remember who it was, but someone was down, like, in, like, thick ferns. And 1 of these kids was just shooting into it, And the guy was trying to wave off, like, okay I'm hit. I'm hit. But the guy just kept unloading. And then, of course, me being a hot head, I just, like, ran up right up to his kid and, like, pushed him hard and was getting ready to, like, throw down fists, you know? Alex: Fisticuffs. Josh: And and then all the adults, Bob and dad, and everyone shows up and they're like, "what's going on?!". And then, you know, dad, "We're done. We're out of here!" This you know, "Trevor's birthday party's over!" Josh: It was big. Dad got dad got really, really mad. It might have been him that was getting shot. I don't know- I think it was dad! I think- I got so- I was, like, murderous. Like, I am going to murder this teenager right now. That was a hard one for me. Alex: I don't know how, but our group of friends, we just had this innate sense of fairness for fun. Josh: Yeah. Alex: That nobody would ever think of taking advantage of it because it wasn't fun at that point. Josh: Yeah. Alex: Fairness made it more fun and we never we never had to talk about the rules really. Yeah. Like if there were any any game has basic rules that make it the game. But like, as far as rules to make the game fair, we never had to talk about those. Like, everybody just got it. We just did it. And that's what made paintball with us so much fun. I've seen some YouTube videos from a guy who does either air soft or paintball. I can't remember which. I think probably air soft. But maybe paintball. I don't remember. Anyway, and his videos are always full of drama because people just don't want to play fair they wanna win and show that they're better than everybody, but we just wanted to have fun. Jacob: I remember- I won't name names, but I remember 1 or 2 occasions of a a certain individual who we'd have to put back in line or, like, get on their case for being stupid. Like, shooting at someone with their mask off. Any any names coming to mind? Josh: Yes. For for a minute there, I was thinking a little bit but, yeah, I definitely, a hundred percent know what you're talking about. Yeah. And you're just like, what? Jacob: He's he's Yeah. Anyway. But That's true. Overall. Josh: Like, we didn't wanna play for, like, you know, 1 hit you're out because then you're, like, Oh, man. But then that person's not having fun anymore. Jacob: Yeah. So we play for pain! Alex: So much fun! Josh: So we willingly- Yeah, "we're gonna play for pain!" And like, you can give up once you're done. Like, once that pain threshold is met, you can walk off the field. No. You know, no issues. Alex: But then, you just you just go back in somewhere else. Yeah. Jacob: Oh I don't remember that, really? Alex: Yeah. We would- we would say we would we would head out with it- usually wasn't the gas. The gas wasn't usually the limiting issue as much as the number of rounds. Jacob: The hopper. Yeah. Alex: But we would go out each person with a certain number of rounds. We'd talk about how many rounds everybody has and we'd be like, okay, let's just go play, like, maybe 500 rounds. And we would just kind of stop once someone had run out of rounds. Jacob: That brings me to another thing I remember kind of the communal feel of it. Like, you'd all throw your balls up. Throw our paint balls out there. And if someone was low and someone else was, like, loaded, like we would communally share those paint balls to make sure we could keep playing. We had enough rounds to go around the party. Alex: If everyone wanted to keep playing, then we'd Yeah. Make it happen. Yeah. Especially, since I got a discount on paint and gas at At Sportsmans. I got really good prices on paint when I was working there. Josh: That was- it was meant to be that job coalesced, perfectly. Alex: Yeah. Josh: I just remember who was the I think a lot of the genius behind a lot of this stuff is Chris, but also I think Alex too. Like, when did we start giving names to, like, the key terrain features within our wooded zone? I remember hamburger Hill Alex: And there was a- I think there was a stump somewhere that we called Corn Dog. Josh: Yeah. Corn Dog. There was medicine- or the cabinet- or- Alex: Yeah. Because there was an actual medicine cabinet. That someone had thrown out there for some reason. Oh, that's right. We weren't the first people. To be out there using it for this kind of activity. Josh: Yeah. Someone else had been there and put some, like, yeah, some furniture elements out there, cabinets and things. Alex: I think we could find old paint markings too. Josh: Yep. Alex: So it wasn't just like a homeless person had been living out there. Josh: But for all that time. Like, we never came across anybody else, which tells me there must have been, like like a generation behind us.
Jacob: Yeah. Or the Nelson's put up target practice. Right. Josh: No. Because we were like yeah. Because we had, like, stumbled on this because we were tired of just playing in the tall grass. There's trees over there. Let's hike out there and see and then as we're walking through, there's like this cabinet there and everything. You're like, what the hey. Alex: It was a perfect perfect place to play. It was iconic for our group. Just it was just the perfect size with the perfect variety of spaces. I remember what I what I considered in my mind to be, like, the front area, it was, like, gently sloped. And there were trees around the perimeter all the way around. And then a couple of trees, a few trees widely spaced out in the middle of this gentle slope that created what was kind of like a round circular area. That I considered to be kind of the main battlefield. That was usually where we were. Josh: Yep. Alex: And there were foxholes here and there. And that's where I think the medicine cabinet was. Josh: Yeah from root systems. So I think these trees that just created little hovels like- Alex: But, like, the the trees were spaced out enough that it felt really open, but you were you didn't always have perfect lines from every spot to every other spot because there were trees out there in the middle. Oh my gosh. It was so good. Josh: So good. Jacob: Do you guys remember you you glued little clickers to the side of your guns, so you could signal- Alex: Oh yeah. I absolutely remember that. Jacob: -via clicking. Alex: We got those from Earlene. At a halloween party. Jacob: Oh really? Josh: From Christmas? Or, no, not Christmas. Halloween. Alex: Yeah. They used to be little white ghosts. And we just, like, filed and shaved off all the plastic until it was just the clicker. Because that's we were we were gonna play a night game at Jon Heders' parents' house in West Salem. Yes. That Jon Heder. Jacob: Napoleon Dynamite. Josh: That's right. Name drop! Alex: We never met him or anything, but Josh: but that backyard was freaking dope. Alex: Yeah. We were gonna play a night game, and we- another thing that I think I had seen watching a lot of history channel- I was either watching History Channel, Harry Potter, or Lord of the Rings. Josh: That's all you need. Alex: I learned about D Day paratroopers that dropped in the night before from the gliders, they all had these, like, Snapple lids, and they would click at each other. 2 clicks to question, and then 1 click in response. To say "I'm a friendly". Jacob: That's right. Alex: And so I was like, oh, my gosh. These would be perfect for that. Then we hot glued them to the side of our guns. So they'd be right within reach of your thumb. Josh: Right. For your thumb. Yep. Alex: That's not all. Like, you and I, Josh, we went- the 2 of us went really crazy with our paintballing. Like, we came up with so many drills to drill each other in very specific ways to to to "increase our skills!" And it was because I had been drum major my senior year and I I had it in my head to be thinking of new ways to drill marching fundamentals into the band. And I came up with some exercises of my own that I thought were really good. But yeah. So that was just kind of in my head to be thinking that way at that point. So we didn't just play for pain all the time. Sometimes we did play, you get hit, you you're out. Yeah. Sometimes we would do that. But other times, we would play these other game modes that came from these drills that Josh and I came up with. I think we called 1 "Hunter and the Hunted". Josh: Oh my gosh. Yeah. Alex: That was my favorite drill. Josh: I totally forgot about that. Alex: Really? Oh, yeah. We played that out in the grass first. And 1 of us would have a gun, the other would have a helmet. The 1 with the gun would close their eyes, plug their ears, and count to a certain number that was determined ahead of time. Josh: You could change it, yeah. Alex: And the other person with the helmet had that much time to hide themselves. The other person once they were done counting would open their eyes and they would have 1 shot to shoot the other person. Jacob: 1 round? Alex: 1 round. Jacob: Wow. Alex: And that was only if they could see them. And we would play, I think, variations where you could move and others where you couldn't. Josh: Yeah. The Hunter would get to walk around and and yeah. Jacob: You're saying that that base mode, both stationary. Alex: Yeah. Right. Jacob: So it's like a pretty limited amount of time you're counting. Alex: Yeah. Josh: Yeah. We're talking like, 20 seconds, 30 seconds. Yeah. Alex: Yeah. Sometimes 10 or 5. I think we went all the way down to 5 seconds. Josh: I just remember I remember, like, hiding behind roots or something. Because I think we did it in the tree stands too. Alex: We did. That was the 1 we would play, like, as a full game mode with other people. Josh: Yeah. I just remember, like, hiding somewhere, like, tucking all of my limbs in and just be- closing my eyes and being like, don't breathe. Don't breathe. Alex: I can't believe I don't remember ever playing this because that's, like, absolutely the kind of game you guys would convince me to be the the Hunted on. Alex: We would trade. We'd totally trade. Josh: Yeah. Oh, that game was great. Well, and Alex in his Mossy Oak cammo and you're like, gosh, dang it. Where the heck are you? Alex: Yeah. I had I definitely had an advantage there. Josh: Remember when we- So as we're ramping up in how we were playing, we started integrating radio systems too. Alex: Yeah. Uh-huh. Josh: Push to talk radio. And I don't remember if Alex if you were the first 1 to get 1, but didn't you get a throat mic? Alex: Yes. I also got that from Sportsmans Warehouse. Josh: Yeah. So a vox- voice activated throat mic onto his little 2 way radio. Alex: Clear your voice to start the broadcast and keep talking. Josh: To turn the vox on, yeah. Jacob: No way. Josh: Yeah. Oh, dude. It was awesome. Because that's when we started, like, distributing. That's when we we had, like, identified Hotdog or Corn Dog and Hamburger Hill. And so we're like, now we're, like, dispersed across this entire area, and we're still trying to, like, totally force the other side to capitulate from just the pain. Right? Alex: Right. Josh: And so we're really trying to, like, trying to try to canalize the the entire other team into an area where both of us can just, like, lay down fire until they run away. And so you had to be able to communicate. That was awesome. Jacob: 1 closing thought. I can't wait until our kids are old enough. Not- where I'm at currently not paintball, but the new, like, the gel bead blasters they have. Josh: Oh? Jacob: Have you not seen those? Oh, man. Josh: No. Jacob: I think it would be dope. So, like I mean, we're talking a hopper the size of like a phone, 800 rounds in that bad boy. Alex: Dang. Jacob: So you know Orbeez? It's it's basically the Orbeez only really small. Right? So they're about the size of an air soft round- Alex: but it goes squish. Jacob: Yeah. But you can still feel it. They they leave little little marks from what I've seen. So you just throw on some glasses and you know, it's so it's obviously more comparable to airsoft, but it's biodegradable. It's just gel. Alex: Yes. That's the best part. Jacob: So you can go play anywhere and you're not leaving paint or these pellets or whatever. Alex: I mean, the paint was biodegradable. Jacob: That's true. It was. And some air soft rounds are, but they're cheap too. Josh: Dang.[00:26:20] Interstitial Joke Jacob: So someone asks, so what does "POC" mean? So, you know, someone says a "proof of concept". So someone else thinking they're funny, he says, yeah, it has something to do with an "MVP". So that same person who said what what a POC is, he clarified MVP means "minimum viable product". So I respond, "that really changes my understanding of the award I got back in tee ball. Alex: Because you were short. Jacob: Minimum viable to be a T Ball player. [00:27:02] Storytime SegmentSoundbite: Hey, kids. Do you know what time it is? Storytime! Josh: Okay. So back when I was in elementary school, all of my friends, minus 1, lived roughly in the same neighborhood area in Keizer. And so during the summers, you know, it wasn't uncommon to just head over to 1 of the houses over there usually Max's, and that kinda became like our base of operations for whatever fun we were gonna be having. Jacob: Shenanigans. Josh: Yeah. But this was this was probably the fundamental start of my shenanigans. Like the, yeah, the origin story of sorts. So we were, you know, Cub Scouts, and it's Oregon. So we're very interested in the outdoors, and we feel very comfortable being in, like, the forest and exploring on our own and stuff. And on the way out there, if you're heading out to that neighborhood, like hitting towards Gubser or up 14th Street. At the time, you're not gonna find it anymore, unfortunately. But as you get close to Marigold, I think it's Marigold or Meadowlark, you'd come across what we called Black Path. Because there was a black paved pathway that came off the sidewalk that went past this grassy, open grassy field, and then eventually, it sloped pretty severely down to a creek. And that entire creek area was just really heavily forested and Black Path would take you down and would wrap around this little subdivision and flow along the next to the creek. And there were a bunch of, like, wild onions and stuff down there. Yeah. We'd pick them and you'd smell them and they'd, you know, just smell good and you'd suck on them and whatever. Or we'd even, like- Alex: Mmmmm onion! Josh: I mean it's cool! Jacob: Some of us would suck on them, apparently. Josh: Come on. Come on. You're a kid, you're out, you're foraging. Like, it's a cool feeling. We were pretty young. Alex: Alright. Alright. Josh: And and we'd even, like, try to stew some, like, campfire soup stuff. Jacob: That's what I remember. Taking them back to the to the Breedlove's house and, yeah, try to cook with them. Josh: Yeah. That never tasted good because we had no concept of seasoning. But anyway, 1 summer well, so then this forested area was, like, really thickly forested the trees were so big and like old. So they're like really just good strong Fir trees. And 1 summer, we decided to really explore the Black Path area, and we'd go out there, and we noticed in 1 tree, like, really, really high up in the tree, there were some wood, like, stepping, kinda like, you know, old school kid tree forts, a ladder up in the tree. You just hammer a board in. So, like, really high up in the tree, there were maybe 4 or 5 of these. You know, like, what the heck? How do you even get there? And you'd notice some, like, scrap wood up there in some of the the tree canopies. So very clearly, we're like, Oh, this is a forest fort. This is "our" forest fort, and we started, like, renovating and improving and building our forts and stuff. And, like, we'd get up. We'd get, like, either a 5 gallon bucket or, like, I think we had a wagon at 1 point. And we'd fill it with scrap wood from whoever's house, some nails and hammer, and we would just haul these things down the neighborhoods over to Black Path. And we- Alex: How old were you at this point again? Josh: Gosh. Well, Max moved in. In fifth grade, and I think it was probably that summer. So probably the summer of my 5th grade year. Alex: So you were like 11? Josh: Yeah. [actually, Josh was 10] Jacob: 11, yeah. Josh: So we're just renovating. And then I'm pretty sure it was my idea because I'm the 1 that was, like, really into war and like like the historicity's of war and stuff. And I remember learning about Vietnam. And- Alex: Okay... Jacob: I don't remember that in my fifth grade course work. Alex: Yeah. No kidding. Josh: So I had remembered, like, the Vietcong would build, like, punji pits and stuff and booby traps, and so we'd start- So this was just a concept at this point. Right? We're just like I'm just conceptualizing like, man, this is a for. Like, we gotta defend it. Right? There's all these options we have. So anyway, as we're really developing this place out, 1 day, we start going back and we're crossing the really long grass field that leads to the tree line. And it's just like any other normal, sunny, summer day and as we were approaching the tree line, no kidding, there I was, diving for my life, as the snap of some projectile flies past my ear over and over again. There was another kid gang in town, and these guys were sling shotting nails at us. Jacob: Nails? Alex: What the freak! Josh: Nails. Like, big thick construction nails. So we hit the dirt. Jacob: Sorry, did did you say you hadn't even made it to the tree line yet? You're still in the field? Josh: No, we were completely in the open. Jacob: Are you kidding me? Josh: So they're they're in the tree line. Snapping these things- Jacob: Oh my gosh. Josh: -at us. So of course, well, and this field has like a bunch of stinging nettle in it. And the grass isn't very thick. Like, it's not the best cover or it's it's not no cover. Jacob: It's not even watered so it's yellow and sharp and pokey on its own. Josh: Yeah. So we hightailed it out. And my group of friends is not 1 to just, like, capitulate, and, like, roll over. Yeah. So we're like, you know, "are you kidding me either an hour our forest, we claimed it as our ownership" and thus started the epic battles of for Black Forest. Long story short, we did put punji pits in, And we had determined that these kids were coming from the other side of the creek, and they were crossing the creek. Jacob: What? Clearlakers? Josh: Yeah. Jacob: Coming into Gubser territory. Alex: That's so- Jacob: No way. Josh: We had found these little, like, board bridges to bridge over the creek, and we'd remove them, and they would just find a way to put them back. And so, oh, my gosh. We found barbed wire, and we strung barbed wire along the length of the bottom of the creek. Jacob: Oh my gosh. Alex: What the freak? Josh: We- this is, like, what happens when you let your kids read real history. It's like the reality of war meets this unknown reality of childhood. Jacob: Alright. But let's let's get this out there. Who all who all were you? Did you have the 2 Chris's? Obviously you and Max. Josh: Yeah. So it was mostly me, Max and Adam. Jacob: Was Adam around by now? Josh: Maybe he wasn't- Alex: Maybe he was for that. Jacob: I can't remember when they moved in. Josh: No. He must not have been. He must not have been because it was a while before he came in after Max came in. So yeah, it was probably me and Max, a lot of this we did on our own. Yeah. And at least Chris for some of it. I don't think Curry was ever there. A lot of this stuff is is me and Max, But anyway, that that was kind of like the initial foray into just so many shenanigans. Yeah. And funny, interesting to note. I'm actually writing a series of children's books loosely based on my childhood. Jacob: Yes! What? No way. Josh: Yeah. I'm putting them on Amazon Kindle because you can do these- So I'm trying this serial- There's a serial- a way to like, release stories in serial. So you can, like, release it episode at a time or, like, chapter at a time. And- Jacob: Are these audio or or text? Josh: No. It's text. Jacob: Okay. Are you gonna, like, use Midjourney or DALL-E? Josh: I use DALL-E for the- so for this platform, it's not you don't input images, like, in line with the text. Jacob: Oh, okay. Josh: So just an episode. So it's, like, just a wall of text, But you can get it on your app your phone app and everything. But then the story itself has a, like, a book cover image. And I use DALL-E for that, and it's actually pretty cool. [00:35:45] Another Brother Outro
 
 

#003 The Sickening Siberia Supper

About this Episode
In episode #003, The Sickening Siberia Supper, Josh has an ego trip about how good he was at hiding from kids in cars. Alex actually thinks "ollie, ollie, oxenfree" was a cool game to play... And countless Siberian babushki had to deep clean their fur coats because Jacob did WHAT?! You might need your wetnaps for this one.
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And don't miss this episode's Alternate Reality...
 
Episode Links
Regatta Park in Lincoln City, OR, and its epic wooden playground fort structures.
Claggett Creek Park in Keizer, OR. The scene of many a cross country practice run, as well as, interestingly enough, a high school environmental science class creek restoration project!
ROSTIC'S. According to Reuters, "Fried chicken is always good business." (or something like that.)
Ресторан Mexico. Unfortunately, perhaps too many people suffered from food poisoning here, for it seems the restaurant has since closed. Once located here, you can still see the beginning of the underground entrance beneath À La Mode. Here is a picture of the entrance, "a la" Jacob.
Maslenitsa (Мaсленица).
Marshrutka (маршру́тка). According to the Wikipedia entry, "[R]iders nearer the driver are responsible for handing up the other passengers' fares and passing back change." ...That's "passing back change" Jacob... NOT partially digested Mexican seafood...
Rough location of the now-infamous babushka throw up incident...
 
Transcript
The following transcript was in part created using the Deepgram API: [00:00:00] This Week on Another Brother [00:00:24] Another Brother Theme Song [00:00:44] Stewnerds Segment Josh: I have 2 really early memories about night games that I think I think I keep bringing up like, "This was formative in my life", but this was like really formative in my life. I was thinking about as I was walking over Alex's house to record this. Jacob: In the night time. Josh: It's night. We've all got families and lives, so we do this after dark. And I was just embracing the darkness, and the night And I- The thought occurred to me as I was prepping for this episode that I feel as comfortable outside at night as I do in the daytime. And I think it's because of all the times of us just embracing being out at night. Do you guys remember our fathers-and-sons campouts with dad? Alex: Sure. Jacob: A little. I I was quite a bit younger, I think. I don't have as many memories. Josh: There was one camp that our Ward went to pretty frequently, can't remember what it's called, it had the Adirondacks out there. I just remember a couple times we'd play capture the flag at night. And so you had all the all the Adirondacks scattered around. You had some fire pits. You had a big a covered building area. It's in the middle of the Oregon forest, so there's trees everywhere. And tents because not everyone slept in an Adirondack. Alex: But When when Josh said "our Ward", he means our local congregation of churchgoers. That's yeah. That's terminology from our church for the people we actually go to church with. Jacob: Yay verily. Josh: Yeah. Yay verily. And, "so say we all". And every summer, we'd hold this father-and-sons camp out. Alex: Sometimes in the fall. But, yeah, every year. Josh: Every year, I should say, yeah, every year. And I think that is the earliest that I can remember playing these sorts of night games. As a kid. Alex: One of my earliest memories playing this kind of game, I can't tell in my memory which one of these is earlier. Grandma Robison or Grandma Stewart. Jacob: I don't know where this is going... Alex: I have memories playing. I think we just called it oxenfree. At grandma's house. Jacob: -- Which grandma? Josh: -- which grandma? Alex: Yep. Sorry. Grandma Robison at night in the summer -- . Jacob: Outside Alex: Under the orange sodium lamp streetlight glow, "ollie, ollie, ollie, oxenfree". Jacob: Oh, in the in the lot that a house still hasn't been built on across the street? Alex: No. Jacob: No? Just in her yard. Alex: I mean, maybe people were hiding over there too, but Josh: This sounds familiar... Alex: But then also at Grandma Stewart's at Devil's Lake Park [Alex meant Regatta Park, in Lincoln City]. I doubt we were supposed to be able to be in the park after dark. Most parks close at dark. But we would have one person this this park had, like, one of those giant wooden castle like play structures. And so we would have someone with a flashlight in a tower and everyone else had to get to the bottom of that tower without being spotted by the person with the flashlight. Jacob: I completely forgot about this. Alex: It was so fun. Josh: I still have no memory of this. Jacob: No? Josh: Yeah. Jacob: Okay. Sometimes, we're gonna have to talk about memories from grandma and grandpa's while they were living on the coast because Yeah. I was pretty young. I don't remember a whole lot, but, anyway, this does sound very familiar to you. Alex: Yeah. It was super fun. Like, during the day, we played follow the leader as we climbed on the outside- Jacob: Yeah. Josh: I remember that. Alex: -of the structure, like bad kids, except the adults were playing with us. So, like, not our fault. But then at night, we'd give someone a flashlight. They'd go into something like a tower and try to spot everybody as they would sneaky sneak. Josh: I I I love the park, the bark chips. I remember all that, but man. Yeah. I I must have been too young. Jacob: It- okay. I I have an image in my mind. It's the the big old fatty rectangular with, like, a flashlight with a handle that takes the, like, the big D cell batteries, like, 4 of those. Alex: Like 4 or 6 of those Jacob: Yeah. That's just what I have in my mind of someone swinging that around trying to catch people as they're running. Alex: Yeah, I think so. Josh: Awesome. Do you got one, Jacob? Jacob: Yeah. So mine actually, back to Josh, How many people do you remember actually playing? On the father and son campouts, I mean. Josh: Yeah. Jacob: Were all the dads getting in there? Was it just the sons? I don't I honestly don't remember playing capture the flag. Alex: I don't remember any night games from father and son campouts. Josh: I remember yeah. Like, the majority of dads would play Jacob: Awesome Josh: and kids. It was amazing. And it was like, kinda like we did later on at McNary for track- capture the flag. So we'd have like this middle line that went down the center of this entire camping area. And, yeah, you just sneak and just try to stay covered and and go get the the other flag on each side and bring it over to the other point, kind of like Halo capture the flag. But, oh, man. This is this is interesting. So I remember things I I have to believe that you guys did those because Alex: Probably. Yeah. Josh: I remember doing it like multiple times. But you don't remember it. Alex: I can't conjure any memory of it. Jacob: This is why I love this. We all have different gaps. In in the memories -- Josh: What had the most impact. You know? Alex: For me, though, with the night games, it really went crazy when we became "youths" and we could, like, leave the house after dark. And we were, like, playing commando throughout the entire town. Jacob: Oh baby, Yes. Alex: Or there was also my twelfth birthday. We went camping for my birthday. Yeah it was just night games. Josh: Epic. Yeah. Jacob: All of us? Or did dad just, like, take you in your friends? Josh: I was there. Alex: Yeah. Josh was there. I doubt you were there because you would have been Jacob: Yeah I don't think. Alex: 7? Jacob: 7. Yeah. Josh: Well, So I didn't camp out with you guys. Jacob: And Liz would've been a baby. Alex: Oh, you didn't? Okay. Josh: I I probably went home maybe with mom and then brought back out during the day. Alex: That was a fun party. Jacob: But Yes. Commandos was so good. That was so much fun. Josh: Who wants to describe commandos? Jacob: You can take it Alex because I'm gonna describe it. For me, there's another one that's even more- Alex: Sardines? Jacob: No. It's it's similar to Sardines, but it's even bigger and even more important for me, so you take commandos. Alex: So I didn't actually get to play a whole lot of commandos, unfortunately. I think that blew up around the time I was getting ready to leave the house. Jacob: Yeah. I only have a couple memories of you being with us. Alex: But if I remember correctly, there's, like, 1 maybe even 2 parties in their car. Josh: Uh-huh. Alex: There's a point A and a point B that everyone else has to get from and then to, without being spotted by the people in the cars. And so you've got crazy people like my brothers going through strangers' backyards. Jacob: I have a footnote there, one brother. That was Josh. I would- I did not participate in trespassing. Josh: Okay. Here's footnote number 2. I never went into anyone's backyard. Alex: Okay. Jacob: that's fair. Josh: I hid really well in front yards and under bushes and cars and things. Jacob: Okay. I I definitely would do that as well. Front yards, bushes, that's fair game. Josh: The only person going in backyards that I know of was Tyler. Probably Adam. Jacob: Definitely Adam. Josh: Yeah. Yeah. Tyler had a ghillie suit though for crying out loud. Alex: Oh Tyler. Jacob: Yeah. So it's basically tag across an entire city -- Alex: Hide and see kinda tag. Jacob: --yeah, with 2 cars. And they'd have 1 or 2 spotters within the car. Alex: Yeah. This would this would have been a perfect game for the 1957 Chevy Impala that dad says Grandpa Stewart had because it was a decommissioned cop car. So it had that spotlight in the shotgun position That would have been perfect. Josh: Yeah. Instead, you know, the- each car would bring, like, flashlights with them and the non drivers would try to spot with the flashlight, and and just drove very, very slowly. Alex: Probably freaking a lot of residents of this city out. Am I about to get shot up? Jacob: I do have a distinct memory. I think this was the time when you were playing with us, Alex. You can correct me if you don't remember this at all. I think Josh is well. I think the 3 of us, maybe 1 other, we were running through Claggett Creek Park. And let's see. We were coming from man, I don't even know where point A to B would have been for us to be crossing through Claggett Creek Park Alex: Seriously. Jacob: But- Josh: Start at Kennedy? Jacob: Maybe McNary. Alex: Oh, McNary, that would make some sense. Jacob: Or to the church? Josh: Oh, yeah. That can make sense too. Jacob: So running through the field from the direction of McNary to the church, and that northwest parking lot, 1 of the cars comes and pulls in. And we see them driving and come. We see them turning into the parking lot and we all just drop to the ground and, like, just hug it as tightly as we can. And then, like, the head beams are just rolling straight over us. Like, you can see them passing through the grass, through the the wetness on it, and and over top of us. And we're just as still as as silent as can be. They didn't see us, and they just turned around, kept on driving. Josh: I I have vague memories of this. Yeah. But I feel like those sorts of moments were so common in frequency. In that game. Yeah. You know, 1 time, I remember being under the, like, the hedge row bush, in front of this guy's front door, when he opens the front door, and he's like, Well, because the car the car was coming up. And so I'm like, I gotta hide somewhere. That was the closest obstacle with some sort of concealment. And So I had, like, slid under there, crawled up in the bark dust, and the car drives by really slow, and the guy comes out of the front door. He's all angry, you know, like you alluded to, like, "what are you kids doing?" And I thought he knew I was there, but he was yelling at the car. Full of kids. And they're like, I I think they were pretty sure that they knew I was there. But now they're getting, you know, Attention from the the homeowner. And so they just kept driving. And as soon as he went in and closed the door, I was like, you know, I split. So fun. Jacob: Yeah. That did make me think of 1 more thing. I just I'll fess up now. You guys don't know if you were ever in this situation. Would you ever you're hiding car drives by, they stop because they think they spotted you- Josh: Throw a rock. Jacob: No. No. They'll shout out, "hey, person behind this bush" or something like that. But they couldn't say your name. So I would I would always just stay. I just sit as long as I could until, like, to test okay, how sure are you that I'm here? Because you don't know who it is. You can't call me by name. And if they would eventually just drive off, I I would send it out if I could. Josh: Oh yeah. You start a game of Commandos, and you are committed. Good. You you are not removing me unless you can identify me. Alex: Yeah. I mean, I thought that was the rule. Jacob: That's true. You do that's right. You had to call names out specifically. That does ring a bell. Josh: But there's some Some of these kids that played with us would, like, be more willing to stop for whatever reason and join the car crew, you know. Jacob: Chumps. Josh: Yeah. Weak. Alex: I hope you're all listening you idiots. Josh: I had another younger memory, we were at- it was my first snipe hunt. Oh. Remember that at sun valley? Jacob: Sun River. Alex: Sun River Resort. Josh: Yeah. Sun River Resort. It was us, our family, the Currys, and the Naylors. Alex: The Naylors. Yeah. Josh: And Doug, And all the other dads, so all the dads and all the kids, went out at night because Doug promised us this really cool Snipe hunt that, like, none of us had heard of. Maybe you did Alex. Maybe Michael did. And I I gotta tell you, though. I was completely bamboozled. I thought this thing was for real. And it just it was so much fun. Alex: I smelled week-old fish coming off of this thing pretty hard. Josh: He convinced me, and I was looking in bushes and looking over at the other bushes and looking up the tree, and so I don't know if I necessarily considered that at night game. But we were- it was gamey, and it was at night, and it did- It was just 1 more positive experience at night with a bunch of friends. Having a good time. And, yeah, it's great. Yeah. Alex: But why why do we love these things so much? Jacob: Adventure. I don't know. Alex: Yeah. I think that's all I can come up with, but that just seems kinda weak. Like Jacob: No. Alex: Why why do we love adventure? You know, what? Jacob: It's such a, like, compelling thing from deep inside. I don't know. Right? Josh: Yeah. It is. Yeah. I couldn't tell you. Alex: But Like, I wanna go play right now. I I know. I am mad that I can't go play right now. Jacob: Yeah. For real. Josh: Suit up! Alex: I still have 1 piece of my Turkey hunting cammo that I used while paintballing somewhere. Josh: So I do think about this. And I'm like, man, am I just destined to sunset now. Am I too old to do all these things I enjoy doing, but We're not. Because kids are gonna get to that age pretty soon where they're gonna wanna go airsofting, paintballing. Alex: And we're gonna kick their butts! Josh: It is gonna be embarrassing. Jacob: Embarrassing for whom? Josh: For somebody. But embarrassment will be had. But, yeah, I Right. I'm still drawn to it. I love that stuff. Jacob: Well, eventually I'll get to this story of- Josh: String me along here. Jacob: Matt- no. Matt and I I mean, this is recent. Right? This was last summer. Matt and I going up the the ridge right here in town. get up to the ridge line and and not getting home until 3 AM. Like, we started at 7 PM, got home at 3 AM. It was a 100 percent night exploration adventure. Half the trail, we hadn't even- more than half. We hadn't even been on before. It's like Yeah. We're definitely not too old. Josh: Yeah. A little- maybe a little too crazy though.[00:16:15] Storytime SegmentSoundbite: Hey, kids, do you know what time it is? Storytime! Jacob: So as you guys know, I spent 2 years in Russia. Not just Russia, but- Josh: Finland.
*Russian*
Jacob: 2 years specifically in Siberia. A considerable amount of that time was in the third largest city in Russia, which believe it or not is in Siberia. Novosibirsk. it's it's technically the capital of Siberia. So that's where this story takes place. K? So for those of you out there, this was on a proselyting church mission. Alex: Yeah. Jacob: And in the on these missions, all 3 of us served 1. On these missions, we have a bunch of, like, meetings and trainings and things like that. So on this particular day, this was near the end of my mission. I'd been there for, man, 22 months already probably. Josh: Out of- 22 out of 24 months. Jacob: Right. With I suppose with the first 2 months actually in a training center in Utah. So this is really just a couple weeks before I'm coming home. It's like I've I've been here for a long time. I know the culture. I know the language pretty well. And we have 3 days of nonstop training. I'm in leadership, so I'm training other missionaries. Usually, for these trainings, we have home cooked meals. At this time, there had just been so many events and meetings and trainings and stuff going on. At the end of this particular day, Instead of getting a home cooked meal, we went to a restaurant. Now this particular restaurant is probably 1 of a kind for Siberia. I'd be hard pressed to find any other restaurant like it in the entirety of Siberia. Josh: What restaurants do they normally have in Siberia? What's what's the typical, like, food, cuisine? Jacob: Yeah. They they don't have many western chains especially now. Thanks, Putin. Josh: Oh, yeah. McDonald's just closed. Jacob: Yeah. So when I was there, I mean, they they had a couple fast food chains. They had McDonald's, Carl's Junior, KFC. Josh: Oh, KFC closed. And Starbucks. Jacob: So KFC just got bought up and rebranded as ROSTIC'S, which is actually what it was called when I was there. Oh. Anyway Josh: Is that Russian Sticks? Jacob: I actually don't know where it comes from. So they have a lot of, you know, Russian- Russian cuisine restaurants, another cuisine from other former Soviet satellite countries. Right? For some reason, we chose to go to a restaurant called "Mexico". Alex: Okay. Jacob: That's right. Mexican cuisine in Russia. Alex: But was it though? Jacob: Yeah. Yeah. It was. Alex: Yeah. Yeah. Wasn't just kind of Mexican-ish. Josh: Yeah. I Jacob: it's just so funny. Like, you can't get further away from Russia than Mexico. I I feel like if you were to look at a globe. Josh: Anyway, I'm just picturing, like, a taco with beets in it Alex: Or some dill. Dill. Absolutely. Jacob: Tortilla's made out of potato. Josh: Yeah. Potato tortilla's. Alex: I do wish I Sounds good, actually. Jacob: It does. I wish I had taken pictures of the food. I didn't. By the way, this restaurant is actually underground. It's kind of interesting. It's on 1 of the the main roads in in the city, on one of the main streets in the city. And there's just a staircase right in the middle of the sidewalk, takes you down. Weird. It's the entire thing is covered in wood timbers. Josh: Underground? Jacob: Mhmm. Josh: So is there like a sign up above? Jacob: No. Josh: The stairs? Jacob: No. Josh: So kinda so you might get the feeling that you're, like, you're going into subway or something, like an underground? Jacob: Something much like that. Yes. The entrance is just like that. Alex: And you weren't afraid that like, someone was gonna steal, like, your liver or something? Jacob: No. This was this was actually my second time going there. And then you you go down the stairs and above the door at the very bottom of the stairs is this big old neon sign? Ресторан Mexico. And then you go inside and, you know, there's a lot more wood inside, all, like, Aztec styled. Lots of bright colors, you know, sombreros, stuff like that. Josh: You know, just kinda They have a mariachi band on standby... Jacob: I wish. A Russian Mariachi band. That would have been amazing. But I'm I'm sure there was, you know, Mexican music playing and stuff. So for some reason, I decided to order a sample platter. Generally, generally, I think the food was decent. It was okay, except there was I didn't read it thoroughly enough apparently because there was a fish dish. Disclaimer, not a fan of seafood. So I took 1 bite and, yeah, I realized it was shrimp or something and and and put it down. Josh: Probably from Lake Baikal. The famous shrimp of Lake Baikal. Jacob: I'll have to look into that. Actually, there probably are shrimp in Baikal. So we eat dinner, you know, fun, decent meal. And we head off to another meeting where we're we're teaching a friend of ours. We go to the church building, have our meeting. We get, like, halfway through this meeting with him, and all of a sudden, like, my stomach just starts churning and bubbling. Josh: Okay. I think I think I might have heard this. That sounds familiar. Jacob: It's a good one. And just the more time passes on, the more uncomfortable I become, like, I start getting hot. And just, like, sweating. And I I I turned to my companion. You served together in in in pairs and companionships. And I'm like, oh, Elder oh, it was probably Elder Sperry. Like, Elder Sperry, I'm just I'm dying here. I don't know what's wrong with me. I'm feeling so sick. I I need to get home. I need to leave and get out of here. So we we wrap up the meeting as quickly as we can, and we walk to the bus station. And Novosibirsk is a pretty big city. Right? 1 and a half million people. Alex: Oh, wow. Jacob: Yeah. Yeah. In the middle of Siberia, you you'd never guess. Right? Alex: No. Jacob: It's fairly sprawling, covers a large square mileage or whatever. Josh: They do kilometers over there. Jacob: Square kilometerage. So we get to the bus stop, and we're waiting for a bus. All the while, you know, I'm just starting to feel more and more sick. Anyway, a couple of buses pass. I I don't know what was going on. This was, like, a Saturday, Friday night. Again, December, and just, like, all of these buses were just jam packed. Like, no more room to get on. Josh: Are these- you're at a bus stop? Yeah. Are these, like, American bus stops? Like, just a little tiny little covered thing or a little sign in the road? Jacob: Yeah. They- a little glass- Alex: Was Maslenitsa (Мaсленица) happening. Jacob: No. Good try. Alex: Okay. Josh: How how cold was it? If it's December, it's December. It's Siberia at, like, you're standing outside at a bus stop. Alex: You're gonna fill your pants with ice cubes. Josh: You're probably sweating buckets of ice cubes. Jacob: It's probably at least negative 25 Celsius. Negative. Negative. 25 to 30. I'm gonna guess negative 15 Fahrenheit. Alex: Pretty close. Negative 13. Josh: Snap. Jacob: Nailed it. 1 more fun fact while we're on the topic. Negative 20 Celsius is the point at which the inside of your nose starts to freeze. So that was like- Josh: Depending on the thickness of your nostril. Alex: And the humidity of the air. Josh: Your mileage might vary. Your kilometerage might vary. Jacob: That was my onboard thermometer for when we were walking out and about. Well, my nose was freezing. I knew, okay, it's negative 28. Josh: What does that even feel like? Like What does that even feel like? Jacob: I'll just let you imagine instead of describing it. Okay. So eventually, you know, we're at the at the bus stop. Finally, we have something roll up that we can get on to. And I'd say something rather than a bus because it was a Russian marshrutka (маршру́тка), which is like a Mercedes sprinter van. 1 of these big vans. They hold 12 to 15 people depending on how many you wanna jam onto the benches. Now this thing was still so full that when we got on, we were standing. There's not room for us to sit. And this is, like, a 30 to 40 minute drive to our to our apartment. Josh: Just because of all the stops or you're really that spread out? Jacob: Both. Yeah. And so, you know, we're the last ones to get on. So I'm standing, like, right in the door. Hey, you know, sprinter vans are pretty tall. I think this one was specifically a sprinter. So it was much taller than the law of the other marshrutki. But I still had, like, to hunch a little bit. I couldn't have my head. Even as sure as I am, I couldn't stand up all the way. And every time we came to a stop and someone had to get out, there I am, flinging the door open, getting off, people get on, and I'm getting back on. So we go through I don't know how many stops like this. Me getting off, Getting back on. Getting off, getting back on. Alex: And you're in, like, a shirt and tie. So did people just think you were some kind of weird transit authority person? Jacob: Well, no. So again- Josh: He's the door man. Jacob: This is December. So I've got my big old coat on, scarf, nice warm hat. Alex: Sure. Yeah. Jacob: So And I'm just feeling absolutely awful. I am as sick as sick as you can be. I'll cut to the chase. I 100 percent got food poisoning from Mexico. Mexico, the restaurant. Josh: In Siberia. Jacob: In Siberia. Since I strongly dislike seafood this whole time, I have blamed it on that fish or shrimp taco that I accidentally ate. So we get to the bus stop before our bus stop. Alright? Alex: So close. Jacob: We're, like, a 2 minute ride from home. Josh: That must've been an uncomfortable walk. Jacob: I hopped back on, shut the door, payeechley, we start driving again. So there I am on Russian transit, when I start blowing chunks. Alex: Oh No. Jacob: What's my immediate reaction? Beanie off the head, in front of the mouth to try and catch it all. In reality what happens, waterfall throw up cascading everywhere. I I I had to go back to the email I sent mom and dad the week after this happened. I threw up twice. So I threw up everywhere, and then probably a couple seconds waited, and I threw up again. This was awful. So, again, I'm at the front. There's at at the very front behind the driver and the passenger seat, there's a bench. Facing back towards the rest of the van. Alex: Oh, no. Jacob: There is a row of babushki (ба́бушки). Russian grandma's. All in their head to toe fur coats. In Russia, like fur coats are- That's how you survive the winter. And these things, you you'll save up a couple years to get a really nice 1. You like mink fur, or just really premium. They were splattered so bad. Everyone on board just starts freaking out, losing their minds. They everyone's yelling like, oh my gosh. He threw up. The driver turns, "what the heck is going on back there?" Pulls over immediately, I fling the door open and just hop out as quick as I can. Josh: This guy's about to beat you up. The babushki are about to beat you up. Jacob: So we just start walking. I don't know. We get, like, 20, 30 feet away, grab some snow and just rub it all over ourselves, and I turn back Wait. Josh: Wait. All over "yourselves"? Did you get your companion? Jacob: Of course I- like, he was standing directly in front of me. He bared the- he bared the brunt of it. And the really sad thing- He had a pretty nice it's called a a dublanka. It's this really nice soft, like, sheep leather on the outside and super warm sheep wool on the inside. They're pretty expensive. And, I mean, it was caked in my barf. Josh: Okay. So now I'm picturing you facing him and then behind him is the babushki. Jacob: Yes. Yes. Josh: And so just from the sheer velocity, hitting him in the chest, splattering out back behind him, and just spraying these poor old ladies. Jacob: Everyone. So the good news, he he he took the coat to go get cleaned. Another missionary and an older woman who was serving on a mission there with us, and she managed to get it all out. She got it completely cleaned. Alex: Wow. Jacob: Yeah. So anyway, we were rubbing snow on ourselves. Trying to get this off of us for the 3, 4 minute walk we have to get to our apartment. Josh: In negative 13 degree Fahrenheit weather. And no beanie on anymore. Jacob: No beanie on anymore. I do have it still, though. Josh: GROSSJosh and Alex: BROOOOO Jacob: I turn back and look at the marshrutka. Same thing. Everyone else on board is on the sidewalk rubbing snow all over their fur coats. The driver has this- I don't know where he got- this apparently, he stores water on onboard. He's got his big jug of water. Like, he's like, just chucking all over the entire thing trying to wash the interior down, and we just- we walked home. And- I was, like, dead for 3, 4 days after that, it was the worst food poisoning I have ever had. Alex: Jeez. Well, don't try to eat Mexican fish in Russia. [00:31:44] Another Brother Outro
 

#002 The Sinister Slenderman Saga

About this Episode
In episode #002, The Sinister Slenderman Saga, the brothers delve into the video games that made them. From Sam Fisher's iconic nightvision goggles, to the sandstorms of Desert Storm, ending up on the ice duking it out with some overly sized craniums. But wait, don't relax too far into that video game nostalgia. What was that bump in the night? Did 10-year-old-Josh discover the original Slenderman...?
Find our website on Podbean!
And don't miss this episode's Alternate Reality...
Episode Links
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell (video game) by Ubisoft (get it on Steam!)
Conflict: Desert Storm by Pivotal Games (get it on Steam!)
NHL Hitz 2002 by Black Box Games
Power On: The Story of Xbox "Xbox almost didn’t happen. Find out why in this behind-the-scenes, six-part series that takes you back to the scrappy beginnings of Microsoft's video game console. It’s the untold story of the people behind the box, glitches and all."
Bird's eye view of where it all happened...
The Marble Hornets YouTube channel, documenting the discovery of Slenderman. **WARNING: For the brave-at-heart only. And for the much-have-spare-time only.**
 
Transcript
The following transcript was in part created using the Deepgram API:[00:00:00] This Week on Another Brother [00:00:32] Another Brother Theme Song [00:00:51] Stewnerds SegmentAlex: So let's talk video games. Before anybody tunes out though- Josh: It's it's too late. Jacob: They're gone. Already. Alex: We're not just gonna talk about video games. We have a unique perspective. Like, a lot of people think a lot of bad stuff about video games and some of it's true, obviously. But, you know, video games were a part of what cemented the relationship that we have as siblings, and that's what we wanna talk about at least this time. Pretty much every other time we're just gonna be nerding out about video games, probably. So I know what I wanna talk about It's a it may not be a series of games that you guys would consider- Josh: You're not gonna say Pikmin, are you? Alex: No. You guys probably won't consider it like 1 of the most formative series of games for any of us. Jacob: It surprised me, I will say. Josh: Oh, you know already? Jacob: Yeah, he told me. Alex: But I will say it's in the upper tier, maybe even the upper echelon. The third echelon? Josh: Oh, Perfect Dark? Alex: No. Jacob: Good one. Josh: Do I get a guess? Do I get to keep guessing? Alex: Sure. Yeah. Josh: Echelon... Alex: Third echelon. Josh: Third echelon... Jacob: I feel like I wanna start miming. Josh: Gosh. Alex: Ubisoft... Josh: Oh, yes. Tom Clancy. Jacob: Uh-huh. Josh: Shoot! What's it called? Yeah. Sam Fisher. Jacob: Oh, I was working on some wood yesterday and oh, man- Josh: Splinter cell! Alex: Yes. Splinter cell. Josh: Yes. Epic gameplay. Alex: Yeah. For dad, Ubisoft is a French producer of video games that has studios in other places in the world too. Usually, places that speak French. But they produced a series of video games called Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell. And they actually have quite a few Tom Clancy series of games based on his books. But, yeah, twentieth anniversary, apparently they're remaking the original game right now. Josh: Oh, sweet. Remaking not just, like, updating the graphics, but doing, like, a full- Alex: Full remake. Yeah. Not just you know, crappy little things. They're redoing the engine entirely. They're adding ray traced global illumination to get that realistic lighting. Josh: But also, Splinter Cell, I think that was like revolutionary for me. Because of- So there's a specific munition type for his rifle. I can't- The aerofoil, is that what it's called? Do you remember? Alex: I don't remember. Josh: It's like a disc- Jacob: That sounds familiar. Josh: Yeah. And it knocks them out. Alex: A Lima Lima. Less than Lethal. Jacob: Yeah. So it's just completely silent. Josh: So silent, so less than lethal, and you just nail guys in their face with it. Yeah. I thought that was so cool. Alex: Yeah. It was just such like, I hadn't played anything like it before, like the world was so interactive. Like, you wanna be in the dark but you can't find a light switch, just shoot the light. Then you're in the dark, and now you're hiding. And you can flip on your night vision, and you can see and the bad guys can't. Josh: Just crawling along the pipes under the ceiling line, and you're just crawling, crawling, crawling, and snap someone's neck, and keep going. Alex: And my understanding is that they didn't really invent stealth gameplay. Like, there was an older series of games called Thief -- Josh: Mhmm. Alex: -- that kind of invented all of that. But I had never heard of Thief until a few years ago, and I've certainly never played those games. Josh: You're probably talking, like, first person shooter stealth? Alex: Right. Yeah. And just the whole idea that the game can be based on not killing everybody, not going in guns blazing. Jacob: Not being seen. Alex: Having to be clever and tricky and skilled and not just good at putting your crosshairs at the right place at the right time was, yeah, Super fun Jacob: It completely flips the idea of an FPS upside down on its head. Alex: Yeah. Which you do do sometimes literally. You just, like, pick those guys up and choke them out while you're hanging upside down from the pipes. Josh: Yeah. So good. All with those 3 green lenses just glowing in the dark. Jacob: It's so emblematic. Alex: It's so iconic. Jacob: Yes. So good. Alex: I mean, ridiculous. It would totally give away your position. Josh: I still have the sound effect in my mind when you've- yeah. When you flip it on, just- Alex: It's kind of like Ironman powering up one of his repulsors. Yeah. Josh: So good. Jacob: I was telling Alex, didn't we have it on 3DS? Josh: I think so. Alex: I think you guys had Chaos Theory. Jacob: Oh that's right. That's what you were saying. Alex: On the DS. Jacob: DS. Yeah. It was DS. Josh: Not the 3DS. Yeah. Jacob: And it was multiplayer though. Josh: Yeah. Jacob: So we would stay up, like, late at night. We probably got it for Christmas and, like, those 2, 3 weeks immediately following, just stayed up every night playing it. Josh: Yeah. I can't remember what they called it TeamLink, or whatever Nintendo's System to system multiplayer thing was called. Alex: Yeah. Apparently, according to this Ubisoft video on YouTube, Xbox Live was launched on the back of the multiplayer in chaos theory, because it was originally an Xbox game that they somehow ported to the DS. Josh: Wait. What? Jacob: What, hold on- Alex: The Xbox live service- This is what they made it sound like- I may have misunderstood. But- Jacob: Sorry. You said Ubisoft made it sound like this? Alex: Yes. Correct. Jacob: Okay. Go on. Alex: I wasn't super paying attention to the lower-thirds when people- new people came and said things. So this guy may have worked for Xbox. I I wasn't paying attention to who this person was who was saying this. But the the video, whoever it was in the video, the video made it sound like Yeah. Xbox Live was advertised as like an awesome service using this game. Chaos Theory- Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and the multiplayer. As like, this is why this is cool, this is why you need it. This is like the future of video games. Which I had no idea. Jacob: And we were we were obviously late to the whole Xbox party. Alex: Yeah. We were. Josh: But Still, they weren't like Bungie. Microsoft purchased Bungie to sell the Xbox. Alex: Right. Josh: And, like, on Xbox release, they were bundling it with Halo, weren't they? Alex: Yeah. But Xbox Live wasn't a thing yet. Josh: True. Alex: It was all about the LAN party. Jacob: Oh, okay. Yeah. You're right. There ya go. Alex: How can that bring your systems in person to play. Jacob: Yeah. Good good call. Alex: Or or co-op not co-op, but, like, split screen on the same couch. Josh: Mhmm. That's that's a whole 'nother- Alex: Man, that was so cool. Those were good times. Josh: That's a whole 'nother episode. Alex: Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. Like, Halo- Halo, Bungie was making Galo for Apple. It was gonna be a Macintosh game until Microsoft bought them. Jacob: Oh, thank goodness. Alex: Isn't that crazy? Jacob: Thank goodness. Josh: That's- that would- oh, man. Alex: I don't know that they were making it for Apple, but it was meant to be on Macintosh. Josh: Can you imagine if Apple had gotten into the video game space. I mean, even selling the idea to Bill Gates was apparently like super risky. And it only worked because Xbox stands for Direct X. Alex: Direct X. Josh: So they wanted to make a separate hardware box for Direct X processing. And then they just built it from there into a gaming system. Alex: We're getting real nerdy now. Josh: Okay. Great game. Alright. I'm up? Alex: Yeah. Jacob: Do it. Josh: My- what- what's the- what's the- the games that made us? Is that what this is? Alex: Yeah. I'm done for that. Jacob: Yeah. Josh: The games that made us. K. The game that I wanted to highlight that had a big impact on me. You guys are already know what I'm gonna say. Jacob: Are we gonna guess it? Josh: You already know it. Jacob: Oh, I forgot. Josh: You got it? Jacob: I already forgot you told us. Josh: But now do you remember that I told you? Do you know what it is? Jacob: Okay. Iris has had RSV for a couple days. Alex: Oh, really? Jacob: I am exhausted. I've gotten terrible sleep. I have forgotten what it is. Josh: Okay. Well, go ahead. Not really a series. There's 2 games. 2 games. Alex: Unfortunately, not a series. Josh: Yeah. Alex: Because they were good. A military shooter... Jacob: That's right. Okay. Josh: Remember it? Jacob: Yeah. Yeah. Josh: Okay. My game is Conflict: Desert Storm. By Pivotal Games. Alex: That's what it's called? Oh, man. Josh: Yeah. Alex: I thought it was Operation Desert Storm, like, the actual Not not that I think you're wrong, but yeah. Josh: Yeah. I know. Does that look familiar to you? I just remembered operation I just remembered operation Desert Storm. Right. Alex: Yeah. Josh: And I couldn't find it. I'm like, what the heck, yeah, Conflict: Desert Storm? Alex: It's Conflict: Desert Storm. Good to know. Josh: This game was so great, and it came at like, just the right time where we had our Xbox. Yeah. We were already used to these Halo LAN parties we were doing. And I don't remember when we got it or why we got it, but I remember being interested in something a little more realistic, less sci-fi shooter. Alex: Right. Josh: It's still, like, military tactical type thing, and we found this game on a whim. Probably down at our local- Jacob: Oh, it was absolutely Game Crazy. Josh: Game Crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was sweet. I think it worked for us the best because it was 4 player co-op. That was the best part. Yeah. And and the game's designed to have 4 dedicated personality types, weapons, or, I should say, specialists. Alex: Yeah. Josh: And so we each kind of I think I think it was very organic. Alex: Yeah yeah. Josh: We just kinda, like, picked a guy, and then we just stuck with it. Jacob: Naturally fell in. Josh: Yeah. So there was- so I was the rifleman. The- Alex: yeah. The Ranger? I think is what it might have been called? Yeah. Because you also had, like, the the laser rangefinder for lasing targets. Jacob: Oh, yeah. Josh: Yeah. Yep. So I was him rifleman, assault man. Alex: I don't remember. Josh: Alex, you were the sniper- Alex: Sniper and demo- and demo guy. 2 guys. It was a little disorienting sometimes. Josh: But you're providing your own sniper overwatch Alex: Yeah Josh: For your own other guy. Alex: It was pretty sweet. Josh: Yeah. And then Jacob was our heavy weapons specialist. Alex: He was our heavy. Jacob: Big guns. Big guns. Alex: Well, mini-guns technically, I think? Jacob: Yeah. I feel like I had a rocket launcher or something as well. Alex: Oh, yeah? Josh: Yes. Jacob: A boom-boom stick. Josh: Yeah. Heavy weaponry. You were like the the large- machine gunner- heavy- heavy machine gunner anti-tank guy. Jacob: Oh, I just love it. Alex: I think the demo guy that I played on occasion when necessary, I think he had like a pistol and then a bunch of remote- Josh: Claymore mines, I think. Alex: -yeah. Remote detonated explosives. C-4. A Lotta C-4. Jacob: So one of you said the second iteration is on Steam. Josh said that? Josh: Yeah. Jacob: We're we're gonna have to buy it. Alex: Absolutely. Jacob: It's it's a done deal. Josh: It might it might even be like an update. I don't know. Alex: We'll have to do a let's play -- Josh: Yes. Alex: -- of that game. Jacob: I'm already getting excited. Josh: I mean, it was so sweet because you're just going through Desert Storm as a British SAS team, specialized And, like, I remember, like, we'd be entering like a cut down into the rocks, which now after having been to Iraq multiple times, I have no idea where these guys are supposed to be. This doesn't look like anything familiar to me. But and then we start, you know, you know you're approaching where enemy positions are and you're getting, like, nervous and you're, like, okay, time to send the sniper out. And if I remember right, Alex would always push out ahead of us, stealth, sneak, get into some sort of high ground overwatch position. Jacob: Spot people. Let us know what's going on. Josh: Yeah. So we knew the best routes of approach and then and then- Alex: Do a little bit of recce. Josh: Yeah. Some recce. But this game- so the reason I chose this game was predominantly because those roles we chose kind of continued into other activities we did. Predominantly or mostly, like, paintball later. Alex: Right. Yeah. Same with Splinter Cell. For me. Like, that stealth gameplay is just like it's probably what made me wanna be the sniper. Josh: Yeah. I see that. Alex: Oh, that's another- that's a story for another time. This amazing shot, I hit Greg in. Not in the head, I think. Jacob: Somewhat unrelated, but we're gonna have to talk we're gonna have to talk about Camp Rilea at some time as well. Josh: Yeah. Jacob: Did you never get to go, Alex? Alex: I never got to go. I'm still a little bitter about it. Jacob: Oh nooo. Josh: It was great. Jacob: I would be bitter too. Alex: It sounded amazing. Jacob: Yeah. It was at blast. Yeah. I don't know- I wasn't- I was never a great paintballer. I was always the youngest out there anyway. I I don't think would have considered myself the the tank or heavy gun while we were paintballing. Josh: Maybe not, yeah. Jacob: But in all other, like- Alex: That was Eric *. Eric * was the heavy in the paintball scene. Jacob: All other video games and even, like, playable top games were applicable. Yeah. Definitely. We, like, kind of carried on and just naturally continued these roles. Even when we've done, like, D&D. Alex: Mhmm. Jacob: We we've kind of just built characters around that way as well. Josh: Yeah. Yeah. Strange because it does kinda feel natural. At this point. Alex: Yeah. We just know our roles now, apparently. Josh: And, also, probably, a story for another time, you know who the tank was, beyond Eric, dad. Remember dad? You're just going ahhhhhhhh! Jacob: Yes. Alex: You guys got to play with Dad a lot more than I did. Josh: Oh, man. He was crazy. He'd like, assault the barn. Alex: Right. Yeah. Josh: No cover in sight. Alex: He shot me in the hand. It hurt so bad. I had a scar for so long. It's gone now, but... K, Jacob. Jacob: Okay. Josh: I don't know. So Alex and I don't know yours. Alex: That's right. Jacob: So last week, when we were just chatting I had mentioned 2 games. They're pretty obvious, like, in your face. One was already alluded to. Alex: Today? Okay. Jacob: Bungie. Alex: Oh, Yeah. Totally. Jacob: I'm gonna drop these 2 though. So I'll just put it on record. My top 2 are no particular order, Smash Bros, and Halo. Those have to be my top 2. Yeah. But since you guys chose, you know, further down the list, I will too. EA Sports... Alex: NHL hits. Josh: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Jacob: Yeah. Yep. I thought that's all it would take. That was really the only sports game we probably played together anyway. Okay. So this game- Alex: I think we played a little NFL Blitz too. But mostly NHL Hits. Josh: And what about SSX Tricky? Jacob: Oh, yes. Yeah. You're right. Oh, that one was fun. But NHL Hits... This was, like, 2002. I think it was NHL Hits '02. I can't remember. Alex: That sounds familiar. Jacob: Oh, first off, before I really jump in, the soundtrack was amazing. Like, probably the best video game soundtrack out there. Limp Bizkit, Puddle of Mud. I mean, just great music. Korn. Josh: I think that was, like, being the first game we got in that generation of video gaming that we actually had, like, a soundtrack that you could set up and play and skip tracks. Alex: Tony Hawk- I think maybe started it. That was that was sweet soundtrack too. Josh: Yeah. And a good game. Alex: And a good game. Jacob: So NHL Hits was still in the area of sports games where Not that it was cartoony, but it was over the top, bigger than life. Alex: Mhmm. Very arcadey. Jacob: Yes. Yeah. Kind of like the early Madden Games were, NFL Blitz was. So it was it was 4 on 4 hockey. Oh, boy. 4 v 4 hockey. Including the goalie. So really 3 v 3. So again, it just worked perfectly. Sorry, Liz. Lizzie was still a little a little younger. Alex: She was pretty little. Jacob: So the 3 of us would just play together team up against the, you know, CPU team. And, actually, ironically enough the 3 main archetypes kind of fell into this too. Right? You've got the defender who's in the back. He's the big guy who you would want to get into the fist fights. Alex: Yep. Josh: Oh, I forgot about the fist fights. Jacob: How could you- That's why it was- so the- you would do these like, hip checks and stick checks that were just huge, like just flooring people. Josh: Break the glass. Jacob: Break- Pop them through the glass. Bring the 2 guys in the center of the ring and yeah. It it was basically like rock paper scissors where you'd have 3 buttons that you could choose- Alex: Oh, yeah. Jacob: -to you know, the different hit you did would interact differently with the hit the player- the computer does. So all kinds of fist fights. The one-timers were so good. Going on fire as a team. Alex: Oh, yeah. Cool. Yeah. Jacob: It was just so good. It was just a blast. All around so fun. Oh, and then there's just so much to it. You can make your own teams. It's like these weird character things, like Anubis, Snowmen. Just all kinds of ridiculous things. You develop your characters, you gain points, increase their stats, you know. Alex: Back when video games where still just about fun. Josh: Yeah. I totally forgot all of those things. The only thing I remembered was the big heads. Jacob: Oh, yeah. Josh: Remember that you'd just make your head like 3 times as large as your body. Jacob: Yeah! It was on the load screen going into the match. You could button smash to try to hit a certain combo of buttons, and that would give you different traits or characteristics or power ups in game. Alex: That's right. Josh: I just love I thought it was so goofy. And then you're, yeah, checking people with this massive cranium. Jacob: I have another honorable mention. Rock Band? Alex: Oh, of course. Josh: Yeah. Alex: I mean, we played that into college. Mhmm. Good times. [00:20:47] Stewnerds! [00:20:55] Storytime SegmentSoundbite: Hey, kids, do you know what time it is? Storytime! Josh: To tell my story, first, I wanna give you an idea of what it was like to grow up in Keizer, Oregon. And I need your guys' help because we all had slightly different lenses and perspective on the city. If you can call it a city. So Keizer, as a kid, and I'll I'll preface with this. This story happened around when I was about 10 years old, maybe 11, so around the year, '97, '98. So as a 10 year old, there's only a few landmarks that really stood out to me. So we lived in this home that was our parents', but our our father bought it from his dad. So our dad actually grew up partially- Alex: A little bit. A little bit, I think for middle school and high school. Jacob: What about D Street in Salem. Josh: What was that?1 Jacob: They were in Salem. When dad was in middle school I think. Josh: On D Street? Alex: Oh, really? But he went to Whiteaker. Josh: He did. Yep. Jacob: He did. Okay. Josh: So they moved. Jacob: Yeah. And he was at McNary, never mind. Josh: Yeah. So in fact, one of his teachers from from Whiteaker Middle School lived in the cul de sac, right next to our house. So anyway so so you've got our home, our street that we live on, then you have Lockhaven. And basically as a 10 year old, the only other real landmarks are the Albertsons. Because- go there shopping with mom and dad. The Game Crazy, which is right there next to Albertsons. You've got the big open field. Jacob: Mhmm. Right. Josh: Where that barn was. Alex: Yeah. The church. Josh: Yep. Then you got the church. And then you've got, I guess, Gubser, if you keep going, up 14th Street. You've got Whiteaker Middle School, and then you've got Day Spring church on the other side of Whiteaker Middle School. And then, you know, some because some of our family friends lived back past Day Spring on McCloud, some landmarks down the cloud. Mostly, the group of friends that we had that lived up in that part of the of the town. Jacob: I'd like to add 7-11. But that was right around by Albertsons. Alex: Dairy Queen. Josh: Yes. Yeah. Of course. Jacob: All the same area. Josh: Yes. Fair. And for the other direction towards the high school Taco Bell. Because we would ride our bikes to Taco Bell and fill up the unlimited soda into our bike water bottles before driving on. So I had a friend, one of my good friends, Brandon. So Brandon was my my good buddy. I think you guys both knew him. Right? Alex: Mhmm. Josh: Yeah. So he lived on Jentif Court. Alex: The one I drummed with? Josh: Yes. Alex: Yeah. Totally know him. Jacob: Oh, he was a drummer? Alex: Yeah. Jacob: Okay. He lived where? Josh: So he lived on Jentif Court. Which was just south of Zachris Court, which is where Chris and Sean, Meghan, and Erin grew up. Jacob: Oh, yeah. Okay. Josh: So Jentif and Zachary's Court both butt up against Whiteaker Middle School's field. Jacob: Mhmm. Josh: And just south of Jentif, was an open field that butted up against Day Spring Fellowship Church. So between Whiteaker Middle School and the field behind Day Spring was just a lot of field. And particularly the one behind Day Spring was, like, really tall weedy grass. Like, it would grow up to maybe 3 and a half, 4 feet tall. For as long as I remember, when I was younger. I don't know if they actually grew crop there or not. So Jentif connects directly to Zachris Court. And then Zachris is your only outlet from Jentif to McCloud. And if you keep taking McCloud north, you get towards some of our other friends' houses, particularly in particular to this story, Max's house is a few roads down and then to the left. So I was kind of I don't know how to describe myself at that age kind of interested in... a lot of things... just adventure and and pushing boundaries -- Alex: Mayhem? Josh: Mayhem. Maybe a little bit of mayhem. Just excitement. I just want, you know, we liked excitement. And I was- this particular night in the summer- Jacob: Remember this, because Caeden just turned 10. Right? Josh: Oh my gosh. Jacob: Prepare yourself. Josh: Yeah. My son, my oldest. Is the age I was when I started doing all these things. That's eye opening. Wow. That really puts it in perspective for me when I tell a story. That's ridiculous. Well, this particular summer night. I was about 10 or 11. I was having a sleepover at Brandon's house, just the 2 of us. 26:14 And they had this big room that had a sliding door, so like the back of the home, and we'd just sleep there on the floor in in sleeping bags. And no 1 would bother us like the whole night. We're basically in it would feel like we're in the home by ourselves, and we might have been, I don't actually know. But I'm getting the feeling that we were. We had noticed that someone was trying to develop the field between Day Spring Fellowship Church and Jentif Court. And we'd go back through his backyard. We'd hop his fence and there would be little surveyor stakes out in the field. It had been mowed down. Although there were surveyor stakes, different color-coded flags on them: blue, yellow, green, red. We assumed blue was like for water pipes, but they were very clearly marking out infrastructure to put in place to build something. And when I consult my maps, I haven't been there been back there. There's a full residential neighborhood there now. Alex: Oh, snap. Josh: Yeah. So it's basically just Whiteaker's field and and then homes and then the church. So we were kind of vigilantes and we viewed ourselves as vigilantes. We did not want them to put houses in there. So that night, we went out and we pulled up every single stake. And this wasn't the first time. So we had we had another sleepover earlier that summer- Jacob: Hold up. Have mom or dad ever heard about this story? Josh: I don't- I feel like that part maybe yeah. Yeah. Alex: So there's more then? Josh: Oh, yeah. Alex: Okay. Josh: No. That was just what got us out at night. That's what got us into the situation. Jacob: Oh, what got you into trouble. Josh: So this was the second time we had done this. We literally pulled up every single one of these stakes. And then, to make it even harder for these guys, like, I can't remember where we hid them, but we hid them somewhere that these guys wouldn't be able to find. So this night, we finished our goodly deeds to preserve the fields in Keizer, and we hopped back over his fence again to his home, and somehow the door's locked. Alex: Oh... Josh: And we couldn't get back in through the back. And it's like crud. We have to go around to the front, but the the only way to get around to the front of the house was to we couldn't, like, we were afraid to wake up his parents and some other things. There were still hours left in the in the evening. So, like, we'll just go walk. We'll walk around the field- Jacob: Wait so what time of night is this? Josh: This is probably 1 in the morning. Jacob: What time of the year? Josh: Summer. Jacob: Summer. Josh: Yeah. Yeah. So we head back into- over this fence into the field and we head out to McCloud. We turn left to make our way back to Zachris so we can do our button hook and then hit Jentif and hopefully find a way to get into the front of the house. As we are going, We're walking down the sidewalk. It's really dark, but we have pretty full moon illumination. And on the left hand side of the of the sidewalk, you have these really tall arbovitae stands. Super tall. Full shadows beneath these arbovitaes. We're going. And, all of the sudden, at the same time- we're on the McCloud still- Brandon and I get the exact same, terrible, creepy, spine-tingling feeling. And we both without even, like, looking at each other or saying anything, we both just stop in our tracks. And we both look across McCloud. At this street, the house that we're directly standing across. And I don't know why, there's just this extremely powerful compulsion to look at this front door of this house. And without coordinating, we're both looking at this house. When all of a sudden the door- there's no lights on in any of these homes. Like, everything is just dark. The front door opens. It's pitch black in the house. And then all of a sudden, no kidding. There I was. The Slenderman materialized from the doorway. This is 1998. We're talking, like, 6 years- 5 or 6 years before Marble Hornets. Alex: Before YouTube. Josh: Yes. Alex: YouTube's not even a thing yet. Jacob: Creepy Pasta isn't a thing. Like, tracking urban legends like this isn't- Josh: The only difference was he didn't have a white mask for a head. He was all black. This guy comes out of the doorway and his head is, like, scraping the bottom of the doorway. When he comes out, he stands up straight. And he's taller by, like, a foot than the door. And just thin, super long thin arms, super long thin legs, and just moving in straight motions, like no bend in the arms, no bend in the knees, and he follows the path way from the door straight to the sidewalk. He turns and starts going north up McCloud, like, 1 or 2 steps, like, super long like, gosh. Probably, like, 8 foot long strides. It was, like, so crazy looking. He takes 1 or 2 strides and he stops. And Brandon and I are just standing in the middle of the sidewalk with, like, moon illumination on us. And he turns and looks at us. And we're not moving. We're not breathing. We're just trying to figure out what the heck is this thing. And then he starts crossing McCloud right at us. It's like 1 in the morning. We freak out. We run. We get to Zachris, we turn left. We're running down Zachris till we get to Jentif. We turn on to Jentif. We get to Brandon's house, The front door is locked. We're ringing the doorbell. We're knocking on the doors as loud as we can. We're screaming for his parents to wake up. They are not coming to the door. We cannot get into the house. We don't know, like, we don't know what to do. We're pretty sure this thing's following us. We turn around. Alright. Okay. Like, what do we do? We determine to go to Max's house. Alex: So, you have to go back- Josh: Yeah. Past it. Jacob: And multiple blocks. That's, like, 3, 4 blocks that you're trying to book it. Josh: We had- we so we turned around and looked behind us and there's no one there. But but we can't get into the Brandon's house and his parents aren't responding for whatever reason. So we get in the shadows, and we're going from bush to bush, from shadow to shadow, shadow to shadow. We head over to the far side of Zachris, shadow to shadow, we still can't see this guy. Keep going. We turn up on McCloud, sticking in the arbovitae shadows, and we see him again. He's just a little bit down the road, back on the other side of the McCloud, just standing there under a under a streetlight. That's not on. And he's just standing there. And so we pause, we wait, we breathe, we look, he's not doing anything. So we just keep making our way down McCloud as slowly and quietly as we can. And as soon as we get even with him, He crosses the street again at us. Alex: What? Josh: And, like, I mean, I'm 10 or 11. I probably don't know- I don't know much of anything. I swear we were- it was pitch black in those shadows. I- we were- we were in full black. Like, when I pack for these sleepovers, I pack all black. This is an M.O. that we do. Because we know we're gonna go hang out at night. So we're all in black head to toe. I think make this might have been even one of those nights that we did black face paint. You know, we used to do that. Jacob: Yeah. You did. Josh: We were crazy about it. This guy comes across and he's, you know, pretty slow, but he's he's gaining pretty fast. So we hit- we jump out of the shadows, get to the sidewalk, and just start sprinting. And this guy's gaining on us. No bend in his legs just like straight scissoring. Alex: Like minecraft? Josh: Minecraft Enderman. Scissoring fast. And we're like, we can't get away from this guy. We run to Max's window. We finally get to to their street, start banging on Max's window, he opens it. He's like, what the heck's going on? And we jump. And we're climbing in, and we're, like, pulling ourselves up and- because we're short little guys. And we're like, we're like, "Close the window! Close the window!" Slams it shut. We're like, you know, close the blinds, he closes it, and we just cower in the corner of the room. And, like, just freaked out. Max's mom comes in the room. And she's like, what, you know? Like, what is going on? May be his dad I can't remember who it was. But Max is like, "oh, yeah. Josh and Brandon were having a sleepover and they thought they'd come over" sort of a thing. Like, totally covering Alex: At 1:30 in the morning. Josh: Yeah. I mean, we- again, these things aren't, like, unheard of for us. So it's just kinda, like, ugh, okay. And then we just sat there. Told everything to Max, explained it all. He's like, "What the heck? You guys should stay here." And we're like, well, now we're kinda worried. Like like, we cannot explain what we saw and what this guy was. It was so absurdly out of anything we'd ever experienced. And we were worried about his parents. We're like, Well, why is it that all of a sudden we can't get into his house? how did the backdoor lock? Like, we couldn't explain any of it. So we were like, there's some supernatural thing going on with Brandon's family and his house. And so, we were like, we have to get back to Brandon's house. And we did. Like, we did you know, we- it's probably 2:30, maybe 3, in the morning. It might have been later. I think I remember the sun. It was get- the sky was getting a little bit brighter, but we did the same. We backtracked. And never saw the thing again. We got to his front door, it was still locked. Parents still weren't responding. Went around to the back door, sliding door opened this time. Jacob: What? Josh: Yeah. Alex: I'm uncomfortable. Josh: Dude, I'm telling you, like, to this day, when I remember this, it still freaks me out because I have no explanation for it, but I absolutely know what I saw and experienced. It was crazy. Jacob: Okay. So we all love the paranormal. In general. I'm a huge skeptic. I love thinking about it, listening to stuff. I don't generally really heavily buy into things. Even though I believe people generally tell real stories. You're like the first person I know who's had, like, a legitimate, unexplainable, paranormal experience, and I don't know how to react to this right now. I genuinely I don't even know what to think about this. Josh: You know, I could chalk it up to being a kid. Jacob: Can you though? Josh: If I wanted to if I wanted to be super critical. I could say, well, I was a 10 year old. Jacob: Have you talked with Brandon about this ever since that time? Alex: Yeah, we gotta get Brandon on the show. To corroborate this. Josh: We could get Brandon. Jacob: Yeah. It- Exactly. If there's corroboration, Right? It it's different when it's well, and it's not like he wouldn't have been going along with this whole thing having not seen it as well. Josh: Oh, yeah. Alex: What if he's blocked the memory? Jacob: That happens. People do. It's traumatic. Josh: I think he'd remember. I mean, I- this has been like a vivid thing for me since that happened. Jacob: What the heck. Alex: I can't believe I've never heard this. Jacob: I know. I know. Josh: Well yeah. I don't I don't it was Max and A- Not Adam. Max and Brandon and I. Jacob: You've got to ask Brandon about it. I mean, you probably didn't have the vocabulary to talk about it until the Slenderman came. Josh: Yeah. Well, that's right. Yeah. Afterwards when I would think back to it, I'd be like, I have a way to understand what this was. Jacob: What it was now. Okay. I wanna back you up to the initial sighting of it. "Materialize"? Josh: Because it's just so black. Everything's so black. The doorway was so dark. Alex: So he was black, it was dark inside the house. It's, like, black coming out of black into the light, and now you can see a slight silhouette. Jacob: Oh that just gave me shivers. Alex: And I had chills the first time he described it. Josh: Dude, no explanation. And the thing- Jacob: Did the door shut behind him? Josh: I don't think so. Alex: Oh, you should have run into his house. Shut him out. Josh: Now that I think about I think I remember him having a bag. Because I remember thinking, like, did this guy just rob this house? Is this guy like a burglar- a purple burglar- Purple burglar. Alex: "Purple burglar alarm" Josh: Purple burglar alarm? I remember thinking, like, is this guy a burglar? And I can't remember if that's because I saw something with him or just because everything else was already black already. Jacob: And what other explanation would there be? Josh: Yeah. Yeah. Then no lights in the house even before he came out of the house. Who does that? I don't know. And and the thing that's so that I'm so heavily reminded of was just like the very strong, powerful feelings that something's wrong, and it's over- and it's over there. [00:39:45] Another Brother Outro
 

#001 The Pavlovian Propane Predicament

About this Episode
In episode #001, The Pavlovian Propane Predicament, Italians think Alex looks Scottish, but certainly not in a Sherlock Holmes kind of way... In Star Citizen, you can be all that you can be! From a package-delivering space cowboy, to a wormhole mapping space-fairer. You can even be a pirate who loots other players’ booty! Are the brothers full of hot air, or was that just another one of Alex’s many ridiculous non-resume-making jobs?
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Transcript
The following transcript was in part created using the Deepgram API:[00:00:00] This week on Another Brother [00:00:32] Another Brother theme song [00:00:55] Stewnerds SegmentJosh: My friend, okay, my friend Travis, who is totally, like, Utahn through-and-through, very Logan, Cache Valley, Utah. He looks so Slavic. Like, just, very, I don't know, eastern European looking. And so when we were over in Europe making- it was so funny because everyone would talk to him, and he'd be like, "why is everyone talking to me?" I'm like, "Because they think you speak their language, dude, because you look like them." He'd always gets so mad. He's like, "I do not!" Alex: Man, I heard that I looked like just so many weird random things when I was in Italy. Like, you know, I talked to one missionary about how we were starting to get into being Scottish. She was from Sweden. No. Sorry, Switzerland. Josh: Swiss not Swede. Alex: Yeah. I did know an Elder from Sweden, but this sister missionary, she thought- once I said it, she was like, "Oh yeah. Sure. Yeah. You look Scottish." Like, okay. I don't actually know what that even means yet. At that point, I had no idea what it meant to look Scottish and I still am not sure I really know. I mean, the only real literary description I've ever seen of someone Scottish is Sherlock Holmes, who is tall and lanky. Jacob: And and that's not what you normally think of for a Scotsman. Josh: In um, oh, what's the story and who's the author? If I had my phone off of airplane mode, I could look. Kidnapped? Is that the story? He describes a Stewart even. Alan Breck Stewart, I think. And he describes him as a short of stature, dark haired, wild-eyed looking man with- Alex: We did it! Josh: -with, like, a pockmarked face. Which is the sign of- Jacob: Ohhh. Spoke too soon. Josh: No. No. No. So that's the sign of having lived through what is it? Cowpox or something. There's some... I can't remember. But, yeah, so these pocked cheeks on his face. But wherever he went, he always had like two swords and two silver pistols on his hip and was, like, just a crazy, crazy guy. Alex: Cool. Josh: But when I was in Germany, the Germans pegged me for German. Alex: I've heard that one too. Josh: which is weird because all the Germans that I was around were, like, pretty much pretty tall, much taller than I was. But still, you know, darker hair and everything. Darker features. [00:03:55] Citizens of the Stars SegmentAlex: Shall we be Citizens of the Stars??Josh: Before you start since you're trying to figure out what you're gonna do. Alex: I'm waffling. Josh: I saw a morphologist video today. Alex: Morphologist, yeah.... His new one today? Josh: Yeah. On three dot eighteen, or is that Python? Jacob: I don't know. Alex: It's three dot eighteen. Is the next update. Yeah. Yeah. Josh: He talks about the soft kill. Right. Yes. So newest and greatest. Alex: Yeah, I was gonna talk about that a little bit. Cool. So Star Citizen is a massively multiplayer online game that is nothing like World of Warcraft, the most commonly known massively multiplayer online game. Massively multiplayer online game just means it's played by a bunch of people all at the same time and it's online. The point of the game is to kind of just live a fantasy life out in space in the year 2952, doing something that you think would be a cool thing to do in the future. Like, if you really wanna be, if you wanna do something that some people call really boring, you can deliver packages. That's a type of job you can have. You can be a cargo hauler, which involves a lot more, it's more like wild west cargo hauling where like you gotta have somebody riding shotgun in your turret to take out the pirates that are definitely gonna come for you because the law isn't a great resource out in space. Because how do you police all of outer space? Josh: What about probably one of the most fascinating jobs you can do? Which is mapping wormholes. Alex: Yeah. There's not a lot of information on that yet, but in fact, they've kind of changed that since a little bit since they've they've first talked about it back in, I don't know, 2013 or something like that. But the ship that I bought originally was made for that purpose for mapping what they call jump points in the game. There yeah. There's gonna be some undiscovered wormholes out there that if you have the right computers on your ship as you are piloting by hand, manually piloting your ship through this thing, the computer will be recording the course that you take to get through it correctly without falling out into I don't even know where. We don't- like, spaghetti. Jacob: That's how it works? Alex: Yeah, your computer will record the course necessary. And then you can sell that data. Jacob: But I mean, you're piloting by hand. Alex: Yeah. Right. Jacob: Is this something that's already live? Can you already be doing this? Alex: No. There are no jump points that you can pilot. Jacob: So, we don't know what the visualization itself looks like so that you know you're in the wormhole? Alex: That's not true. We do know- We know- Oh, well, you're gonna know when you're in the wormhole. They've shown some pre-vis effects that are probably gonna be what we end up with. Jacob: Okay. Alright. I gotta look that up. Alex: It looks very much like you're inside of- it reminded me of what it would look like to be inside of a heart. Like, flying your ship through a heart. Through all these valves. And, like, if Like- Yep. There will be forks here and there, but I'm sure they converge again back into the same thing. And it's constantly pulsing. Jacob: Okay. So it's very clear you're approaching the edge. Alex: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Josh: Yeah. It's very close to real wormholes. Alex: Yeah. They did a really good job. Josh: It's simulated. Alex: I'm sure they talked to NASA and yeah. Josh: Elon Musk and- Jacob: Interstellar guy. Alex: Right. Jacob: Yeah. Shoot. Who was that? Alex: Some supercomputer models. Jacob and Josh: Matt Damon. Alex: And then once you have those coordinates, recorded in your computer, you can sell it to- I mean, that's that's kind of the idea. It's not very well defined right now how that's gonna work. But that's what I've been working off of. Jacob: I watched a video of a guy with a sweet little four wheel rig on a planet with a laser. Blasting minerals to mine. Alex: Yeah. That's called a... shoot. Josh: Mining. Isn't it just mining? Alex: Well, yeah, that the right career path that game. Yeah. But that piece it's a rock, an R.O.C. Is it A little four wheeler with like a laser arm? Jacob: Yeah. Alex: Yeah. ROC. I mean, I'm not sure what other people in the community call it. If they call it a "rock" or if they call call it an ROC, but I've always called it a "rock". Josh: Is it a Remotely Operated something? Alex: I don't think it's remotely operated because you're sitting in it. Jacob: Yeah you're driving it. You're controlling the arm with the laser and everything. Alex: But that's something you can do, you know. You can throw one of these into the back of, like, a pickup truck type ship and fly down to a planet, scan for minerals, go mine them, and refine them at a space station and sell that ore. You can I mean Josh: Or if I don't wanna do all the hard work, I wanna let I wanna let you do all the prospecting and mining, then I can just interdict your ship in flight and go into FPS mode. Jacob: Tractor beam. Josh: Well, there's no tractor- yeah. Eventually, you'll be able to tractor beam, but it's not implemented yet. Jacob: Oh, no ship tractor beams. Alex: No ship tractor bealms. They have little hand held ones. Josh: But but, yeah, I can just- I would have to force you to pull over and or sneakily board your ship. But then we've got, like, hand to hand weapons and first person shooter, rifles, battle rifles, lasers, percussive, like, kinetic munitions, anything from sniper rifles to battle rifles to handguns, and you can go into, like, full on FPS ship boarding mode, and then I can steal all your cargo and load it up in my ship. Alex: FPS in this instance means first person shooter. Jacob: Pew pew. Alex: And, yeah, they're actually changing that up. They're changing cargo- the way cargo works. So right now, if you blow up someone's ship- Jacob: Yes. I just saw a video about this. Alex: -a small portion of the cargo they were carrying will just be scattered around in tiny little boxes. They're changing that up so that up to 95% of it can be salvaged, reclaimed in the larger cargo containers that everybody's been wanting it to spawn as. I don't I'm I've never really cared about cargo a whole lot personally, so I'm I haven't been paying attention to the ins and outs specifically exactly how things are changing, but everybody's pretty excited. Jacob: I'm sure there's a ton of people out there who are gonna wanna be pirates though. Alex: Oh, yeah. A crap load. People that are just gonna wanna- Jacob: So they're following very closely. Alex: Big time. Yeah. It changes everything for for these people. And in 3.18- Jacob: It makes it lucrative now. If you can get that much of the- Alex: Right. Josh: The average is 45% of the cargo load will be dispersed. Alex: I think 16 to 45%. Yeah. That's what they're shooting for. Josh: It's- Yeah. That's- yeah. I mean, dang. Alex: And in the next update to the game, 3.18, ships are supposed to be able to be disabled without them exploding. Right now, you shoot a ship enough it explodes. There's no disabling a ship to, like, pirate it. It explodes, and then maybe you get some of the loose cargo. Josh: If you can find it. Alex: if you can find it because the boxes are teeny tiny. Josh: And it's, you know, you're in space, so everything's super black. Alex: Well, you're not necessarily in space. You could have taken them down in atmosphere. Josh Yeah. True. Jacob: Or they could be landed on the ground, even and you sneak up on them, flying fast, attack. Alex: That's one of the greatest things about this game is that if you it's it's like the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. If you can see the place, you can go there. You can put your feet on it. You can land there. There's no animation that takes you from outer space down to a specific landing spot down on the planet, and you can only get out there. No you can fly anywhere, all the way down to a planet, get out, do stuff, explore a cave, maybe even take a mission where you're trying to find someone who disappeared. And the last known place they went to was a cave. They were gonna go spelunking and they told someone, and you have to go find them in that cave. Which used to be the way that I made most of my money. I would take those missions and my little handheld mining laser and I'd go down into these caves, do some handheld mining while looking for bodies. It was kind of fun, you know, at the time. There wasn't a whole lot of gameplay at that point in time in the game yet, but- Josh: That that was the most mind blowing thing for me the first time I played, was starting off on a space station, getting my ship delivered to a loading point, getting on, flying out, and I didn't know how to quantum spool or quantum jump or anything. And so literally flying for, like, an hour and a half in real time. Jacob: Nooooo Josh: Because there was a planet that had been developed already, and I really wanted to get to this dang planet, but I didn't know how to quantum spool or quantum jump or whatever. And so I put a TV show on and just pointed my ship in the right direction and just- Jacob: Are you kidding me? Josh: -and just held the forward arrow key down- or the- W A S D- W- whatever. And uh- Alex: I hope you knew how to decouple your engines. Josh: This was so early- no. And still, a contention point I have is there's so many controls, to remember. So It's pretty complex. But, it's worth it. But, yeah, just flying for literally like, an hour and a half, two hours of real Earth time, but then seeing the planet on the horizon, and then you're just- your ship just enters atmosphere, and now you're flying with atmospheric physics. And then you know, all the way up until you land. It was it's just wild. Like, the whole thing just streamed in and it definitely made it feel like physicality, like, you were physically moving through this space. Alex: Yeah. Jacob: And did we mention the planets are procedurally generated? These aren't, like, developers and designers going in there and hand crafting, building out every single planet. Josh: Yeah. A lot of the a lot of the impressive things that your average two game player probably doesn't understand. Not respect, but- Alex: Or care about even, really. Josh: Or care about, is all of the effort going- and funding and resourcing going into developing the tools and the tech stack behind making this game work. There's so many technical feats, you know, to this the servers, how the servers are doing this persistent universe. And just I don't know. It's amazing. Alex: Yeah. A lot of it is stuff that just nobody has really done before. Some of it maybe has been done before, but not on this scale and because of the scale, you have to make some fundamental changes to make it work at this scale. Because like these planets they're obviously not full scale planets. One thing that I've always been interested in is how the how are they gonna reproduce Earth? What what scale are they gonna do because our system- star system, the Sol system, will be in the game at some point. Jacob: Really? Alex: Yeah. Jacob: That's interesting. Alex: Yeah. So I wanna know what what kind of scale they're gonna give Earth- Josh: For um, Foundry 42, isn't Earth gonna be- Alex: Squadron 42. Josh: Squadron 42. Oh my gosh. Foundry 42. What's Foundry 42? Alex: I can't think- I don't know. It was on my- it was on the tip of my tongue. Josh: Is that Warhammer? Foundry- there's some- that might be the guys that do Warhammer- Jacob: Okay it is sounding familiar now. Alex: I can't think of it. Josh: But yeah, Squadron 42, there's a big part on Earth. Right? Alex: I don't know. I know a a lot of the game is supposed to take place out at this mining facility. It's a really intense looking place from what they've shown with like really if if I'm not getting confused with like Star Wars or something, giant hunks of rock, with, like, red lightning shooting between them. It looks like really intense. I might I might be confusing different things. Like- Josh: Are there Stormtroopers in your memory? Alex: The next the next star system coming to stars that is in in update 4.0 is called Pyro, and there's a lot of red lightning in that system too. So I I may be confusing different visuals. But yeah. But that's a good point too. Like, Star Citizen is an online multiplayer game. But there will also be- made by the same people, a single player / multiplayer cooperative offline focused campaign experience where you're going through a story, where you play as- The original idea was that you will play as the character that you will be playing in Star Citizen, but this is your time in the United Earth Navy. Where, like, every citizen spends a couple years serving in the Navy. Kinda like in Italy, you either spend a couple years as first responder or a couple of years in the military. Every everybody does it. It's mandatory. I'm sure they have like different health things that can get you a pass. But like that, you'll be playing in this single player campaign doing your time in the Navy. And there's gonna be a war on with, I think, the Banu. It's a race of somewhat stereotypical, at least right now, we don't really know how the story is gonna play out. Stereotypical looking like space piratey, alien, bad guys with sharp pointy teeth and limbs that articulate in directions that are not quite like ours. And it's gonna be pretty freaking sweet. They've gone all out on this thing. There were, I think, 10,000 pages of dialogue or something like that that they had to shoot. And they got real, real frickin actors- Josh: Mark Hamill. Alex: Mark Hamill. Gary Oldman. Josh: Oh, did they? Alex: Oh, shoot. No. Not- shoot. What's her name? Gillian Anderson from X-Files. Oh, shoot. Andy Serkis. Jacob: Oh good one. Alex: He's he's doing MOCAP, of course. He's a MOCAP guy. Josh: Well, I mean, they MOCAP everybody. Alex: Tehcnically everybody was performance captured. Yeah. But he's doing MOCAP acting for Banu- Josh: For an alien- Alex: Yeah for someone non-human. Jacob: Of course. Of course. Alex: Because he's, like, the MOCAP king. And he is. I mean, Andy Serkis is the boss. He's he's gonna be playing, like, the leader of the the aliens we're at war with. Jacob: Okay. So is there an ETA for this? Not that it would be reliable. Alex: Absolutely not. Jacob: Dangit. Josh: They stopped they stopped even- Jacob: Promising? Josh: Yeah. Jacob: Makes sense. Alex: The last time they said it was coming out, they was gonna be coming out in 2016 I think. They might have said 2020 at one point, but- Josh: That's part of the controversy behind this game because we've been crowdfunding it for so long. Jacob: It's a big controversy. Josh: Yeah. And then- Jacob: They've reached just over half a billion dollars in crowdfunding. So people, like, want the game. Josh: I mean, it's very playable- the Star Citizen aspect of The 'Verse. It's very playable. There's still a lot of bugs and you're you're basically guinea pigs for for the development team, but gosh, it's still fun. [00:21:17] Interstitial JokeJosh: Oh, man. I love the winter. It's cold, though. Alright. I gotta get- make me some tea here. Hold on. Alright. Here's some water. Gotta- Alright, let's just put this on the stove here. Get that boiling. Oh, yeah. Oh, I'm so excited for this tea. You know what? I think really fondly of you boiling water. Gosh, you're gonna be missed/mist. [00:21:58] Storytime SegmentSoundbite: Hey, kids, do you know what time it is? Storytime! Alex: So there I was. It was the year 2009, I think, maybe 2010. I had just spent a year or two applying to two jobs a week without getting anything. No interviews, nothing. I was apparently really bad at making resumes. And I finally got a job on a hot air balloon ground crew. Jacob: Oh, yeah. Alex: I have I just have the weirdest stuff in my resume. I mean I don't put any of this on my resume anymore but I guess in my CV I've got just so much random crap. This is one of those things and it was a weird job. This the the founder and owner, one time owner of LDS Singles dot com was I'm not I'm not really sure what you call them. You don't pilot a balloon. They're not called pilots. I think they're aeronauts. Jacob: Aviators? Josh: Oh, aeronaut. Alex: I think I think you're an aeronaut when you control a balloon. But, yeah, he he he was one. He had a balloon. It was a big basket and a big envelope. He's an- Josh: What's an envelope? Alex: That's the balloon as it's technically called an envelope. And Yeah. He was able to take 8 people up, not including himself. Yeah. So total of 9 people up there. And you know, everyone's always asking me what was your insurance like that you got to do this for work. Oh, I didn't get to do that for work. I was on the ground crew. You don't hire people to go up in the balloon with you. They they're useless. Up there. Jacob: They're just taking money away. Alex: It's one person controlling the balloon. What you need is people on the ground to weigh the balloon down once it's time to land. Just you just jump onto the side of the basket as soon as it touches down to try and hold it there. But we'll get there. You know, there's a there's a lot of stuff you do. So I get a call the night before at like 10 PM, maybe even 11 PM sometimes. "Hey, I need you tomorrow morning at 04:30. Just be ready outside." Because he knew where to pick me up. Jacob: Oh yeah. This is when all 3 of us were rooming together. Alex: No. No. Jacob: It wasn't? Alex: No. No. No. Josh: I was alone at Grandma- Alex: What? Josh: -Grandma Robison's house. I feel like I was at Grandma's house when this happened. I don't know why. Alex: Uhhh... I think you were married. But maybe not. Josh: I might have been- I never lived with Grandma, but I might have been chilling with Grandma... on the weekend? Alex: Okay...? Oh, yeah. I should say this was a summer job. This was not during the school year. Jacob: Okay. Okay. That's right. Alex: And if it was during the school year then we only really flew on weekends. But yeah, I I think I got out of the job before school came back around. But over the summer, I did this 04:30 in the morning He picks me up out on the street on what was that? Canyon? Canyon Road? He'd pick me up. There would usually be someone else that he had picked up before me in the in the truck with him and we'd hop in the truck and behind the truck there'd be a trailer that had the basket and the envelope and we'd drive out to one of two parks. One was in Lehi very close to the Timpanocas temple. There was a pretty big park to the southwest of the temple. That was the place that we that we preferred to launch from because it was a really big park and there were other ballooners that would often launch from there too. And they're an important part of this story because whenever there were other ballooners that you launched with, it was tradition to go get breakfast together after you landed. The people, I guess the customers, your passengers meet you at the park, and The first thing you'd- we'd do is we lay the basket out and the envelope. We get the envelope all hooked up to the top frame of the basket and get the envelope laid out on its side nice and straight and flat. And then we get- a oh yeah, we'd make sure that the various lines that are used to control the balloon to open different flaps and stuff are all straight and whatnot, that they're- that the crown line was attached to the top of the balloon. The top of the envelope is called the crown and there's a rope that goes from the top of the balloon out away from the basket and you just pull that all the way out. It was like, I don't know, maybe 200 foot rope. And then you set up a couple of fans down at the- I'm not sure what the technical term was anymore, but like what I would call the mouth of the envelope, the part where the torches would like heat everything up. Yeah. You get you get a bunch of fans just pointed inside of that as one person holds that open and they just start blowing air in. Once there's enough air in there that it kind of starts to blow up a bit, you can start using the burners to start heating that air up. And eventually you start to get the envelope to stand up. And I was always put on the crown line. I hated it. It's the worst job. I mean, it's not supposed to be, but my boss was such a turd about doing this right. His instructor would constantly berate him for being terrible at getting his balloon up. He was way too slow. So my job was to just hold this giant balloon down as much as I could so that when it stood up, it didn't go past all the way up and then start pendulating- doing doing a pendulum thing back and forth. Josh: "Pendulating". Jacob: I love it. Alex: I'm supposed to keep it from going up too fast so that it just goes all the way straight. Jacob: Until it stands. But they had just you doing that? Alex: Yeah. Usually, it was just me. You shouldn't- because I mean, the way he was doing it, we should have had three people. Jacob: Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah we've gone to a bunch of festivals and balloonist have had me come and and jump on a rope with their crew before. Alex: Well, they were probably better at their job than this guy. Josh: They probably thought if they could get you involved, you'd pay for a ticket too. Alex: Right. There were no handles. You know, it was just a rope. So I had to like wrap the rope around my hands and it was just squeezing my hands. I it felt like my hands were gonna break. And then, you know, whenever I wasn't perfect at keeping it from "pendulating"- I swear that's a word. Jacob: It should be. Josh: I really don't think it is... Alex: You know, I'd get- Josh: Oscillating? Alex: I would get berated by my boss. I'm like, "dude, you're doing it-" even I knew he was doing it wrong, like, you're going so slow. You're you're taking all of the strength out of me. I don't have the endurance just hold this giant balloon down for forever. But anyway, you get that thing standing up. You've got extra ballast weights in the basket, you know, like sandbags or something. And you get all the passengers in. Jacob: Are those gonna come into the story at any point? Alex: No. Jacob: Can I ask you a quick question then? Yeah. You always see like on TV. They wanna go- They wanna change their their buoyancy, I suppose. And so they they cut one and they drop it. Alex: Yeah. Jacob: Do they really just cut those things? Alex: I mean, probably once upon a time they did that, but that is not a part of normal ballooning nowadays. Maybe if you're like racing or something or there's some kind of- Jacob: I just suddenly had an image in my mind- Josh: Is that a thing? Alex: Oh yeah. Jacob: -someone just getting clocked with this bag of sand that fell from the sky. Alex: Yeah. No. That's not- I mean, honestly, I don't even remember there being those weights in the basket. I'm just saying it because I've been programmed by television for my whole life. I honestly don't remember any extra weights except for us. Once the balloon was standing, other people on the crew would just be hanging on to the outside of the basket to be that extra ballast weight. Josh: Yeah. I just picture some guy's face like in a just straight dire panic just like, hurry up, get on the balloon! Alex: I mean, that's with this with this boss in particular, that's kind of the way it was. Once it was up, it was time to go. You got everybody into the basket and you kind of we we timed when he started the burners to when we jumped off the basket, you know, and then away they went. And from there, our job was basically like the movie twister. Where we're in the truck chasing the balloon, the balloon tornado, watching different signs of wind on the ground so that when it's time for him to land, we know what to tell him. "You've got ground wind going in this direction at about this speed." So you know what to expect. We're also spotting power lines and things that he might not be able to see from up there, telling him where they are. We've got radios. We're talking to him over radio. And the the way you control the balloon is by climbing or descending. And at different layers, there will be different wind directions and speeds, and you just use those to push your balloon around. That's how you fly a balloon. Jacob: Did he have any instrumentation with him though? to- that read that and and gave him that info? Or was he just- Alex: No. You just have to yeah. You go up and down, you just kind of feel it as you're going up. You've got to pay attention to what you're running into. I mean, there might be stuff like that for- more professional people. Jacob: so even Heather's dad, you know, he he paraglides. He's got stuff. To to use while he's out there flying. Alex: Well, I don't know. Maybe he had some of this stuff I don't remember it though. So, yeah, we just follow him around driving the truck. I I ended up driving the truck a lot too. Josh: But you're like, stay staying to roads and things. Alex: Yeah. Definitely. Josh: So you're trying to keep it an eye on them. Alex: Correct. Josh: Are you radioing in? Alex: Yeah. I wasn't when I was driving, I was not on the radio. I had someone else next to me. Josh: You're following like roughly parallel to their direction of flight or whatever. Alex: Right. Follow him. He'll radio down that he's gonna start his descent and he wants to land at roughly this place and we'll try to get to that place before him while the other person is watching where he's at trying to tell me he's actually gonna touch down sooner or he's gonna miss that spot and go over here probably. Josh: Sounds so absurd. Alex: It's pretty crazy. And it's super fun though. Yeah. I mean it sucked being up that early in the morning, but it was it was pretty fun. And then we would get out of the truck once it looked like, yeah, he's definitely gonna touch down here. And we get out to where we can follow the basket until it's all the way on the ground and then we just jump onto the side of it. And hopefully there's not a lot of ground wind or else the basket will tip over and everybody will fall out and it's it can be kind of violent. But most of the time we landed fine. Then it's a matter of packing it out all of that stuff up into the trailer. You throw the passengers into the trailer along with the basket and they just sit in the basket. Jacob: Really? Alex: Yeah. Jacob: Okay. That's funny. Alex: And at that point, driving is pretty intense because you don't wanna stop too suddenly. You really can't start too suddenly towing too much weight. I mean, and I mean not so much weight but, yeah, you just wanna be easy on the brakes. And then we would go back to the park, drop off the passengers to their vehicles, so they can drive back home, and then we would go refill the the the propane tanks. And as I said, if we launch from a park where there were other ballooners then it was tradition for us to go to Jim's Diner in American Fork and get breakfast together afterwards. And this boss was pretty cool. He he paid for breakfast for us whenever we went. And we did usually launch from that park and when we did there were usually other ballooners. So we had breakfast afterwards pretty frequently. And we always refilled the burners- the the propane tanks- before going to breakfast. And it got to the point where my brain forged a connection between the smell of the propane and the food I was about to eat. For 5 years afterwards. If I smelled propane, I would salivate and my stomach would growl. It was it was a very literal Pavlovian response. I would get so so hungry. Josh: I wonder if that's why your boss, he was compelled to do this because he had like created the- Alex: He had that same thing? Josh: The pavlovian requirement in himself, Alex: Right. Josh: He's like, "oh, man, you know, we we have to go get some food!" Alex: "Oh, we're about to eat breakfast? I gotta get some propane!" [00:37:30] Another Brother Outro
 

Another Brother Trailer

Get ready for a joyride of camaraderie, geeky fascination, and heartfelt moments. Unravel the mysteries of the universe – from probing the latest alien encounters to unraveling the legends of elusive cryptids. Share in gaming escapades, discover never-before told personal stories, and help determine once and for all who the BEST superhero is. With us, you’re not just a listener, you’re Another Brother.
 
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The following transcript was in part created using the Deepgram API:
 
Alex: I'm Alex. Josh: I'm Josh. Jacob: I'm Jacob. Alex: And we are... All: The brothers! Josh: We're a family with overly strong passions like aliens, Jacob: Big Foot, Alex: Or video games. Josh: These are the things we nerd out about. Jacob: Needless to say, family gatherings are bound to result in lively conversations. Whatever you do, don't insult Superman in front of our dad. Alex: My wife observed that she felt like another brother while listening to our playful banter. She enjoyed it so much she eventually said, "You guys should start a podcast." Josh: "My stomach lining!" All: *Laughter* Josh: And we thought, "Yeah, okay, sure." Jacob: Not! We thought it was a great idea! Alex: This is what it will be like with us. "Hey, Josh, I'm still not convinced aliens exist." Josh: "Are you freaking kidding me, you idiot?!" Jacob: "So there I was. In Siberia. On a bus. The driver pulls over, pulls a passenger over his seat, decks him in the face, kicks him off the bus, and keeps driving." Alex: And you never know you might just become... All: Another Brother!