81: The Last Splash with Karina Longworth

We got a lot of requests for the blob, certainly did. But we'll read a night email from Josh that says, Hi, this may be too soon following the worm with eyes on its butt. But the para Sue has a blob that has no mouth, no stomach, and no eyes, but it can detect food and digest it. It also has seven hundred and twenty sexes, can move without legs or wings, and heals itself when cut in half. Oh, and it apparently learns to sleep well. Josh, I will sleep well

because I love this blob. I'm obsessed with it. It looks kind of like yellow lace. It kind of has a coral like appearance. It's sort of cloudy and sort of brain like, and it's it's structure, but it's well, it's hard to tell when you look at the pictures because I at first thought that it was that the log that it's on was part of the blob. But I think it's just the kind of fungus looking thing. Well, they don't know if it's a fungus or an animal.

When you click on the link, it doesn't get less scary. Is it's a collection of unice, cellular or ganisms, slime mold. Yeah, I don't know if this is a time lapse or not, but that kind of branching thing that it does as it moves around, it does look like the um ribbon worms. You guys ever seen these videos? Oh, it's really upsetting. Um there are these sea worms that live really like

at the bottom of the ocean. There are some viral videos that went around where and if you bring them up to sea level, they're not really built to withstand the pressure or the lack of pressure I guess at sea level and um, so they kind of become really red and inflamed, and then they throw up their digestive system and it looks like that it looks like this sort of lacy thing that kind of just shoots out, um, but it's actually uh basically killing itself to try to

find food. Uh. Sad, But it's also kind of like awesome, not in the sense it's yeah, it's like something Russian deep sea fishermen would have. Yeah, I think he might have maybe had one of those. I can't remember. It definitely looks like a c sponge or something. It looks very much like an underwater feature. Well that's like that kind of stuff like coral and sponges, which is like really in this like weird gray area between being an animal and being a plant or like a mold or

something like. It can learn, right that they didn't give enough information about the learning, because yeah, they say that you can you can mush two of them together and what one has learned will be transmitted to the newly formed blob, and that you can cut it up and it will come back together. But like, what does it learn? What does it? What did you teach? The one thing I feel like it should be a master of Isa

has seven sexes? What does that mean? Okay, so that means the seven sexes are really mating types as explained there was a thread one of my favorite Twitter accounts, NYC Southpaw. I was like, what is this and then had a clip from an article from j Store where they were like, basically it is. It's so hard to wrap your brain around. They're so cool about sources of mitochondrial DNA available to the blob, any of which can

combine with another to produce a zygote. I think I read it like four times, and I think that's when it was yeah, I can I can wrap my head around that, versus when I thought it was someone genders. I was like, yeah, tell me all of them. I want to know them. All that rules it does. I love things that are in between species and we don't know what they are. It seems like it must have been um like very like it's one of these things

that must be like super ancient. It's just one of these very rudimentary life forms that also feels like hyper advanced. When you start thinking for people are very like, oh why, because they were like it's going to take over like the blob Well yeah, I mean they did name it after I. The way, it was so weird because I just recorded the blob that blob for a minute. The Horror movie. I love that movie. It's so scary. It's really scary. It takes a long time to get into

its freakiness. A face yeah, um, I like movies like that, and the remake also scary, pretty gross. I've always scartting the Blob to be one of the scariest monsters of all the monsters because you can't get through to it because it has no face. It has no face. It like isn't a thing that we recognize as being like an animal that we know, but it's totally blievable, as like space goo would be some sentient space goo. Well, it's like the kind of scary aspects of the Terminator,

but without a human body exactly identify with. It's just the metal coming together. That's the scary part is that you can't destroy it. It will and in a way it becomes like more invincible, or it heals itself because it can learn, because each new Blob becomes a big blob again because but all so because it can learn from the experience of having been cut in half, presumably, and it can learn new tactics to avoid being cut in half. So essentially like by being able to continually

merge with other blobs. It could be completely omniscient, a giant organism made up of a billion tiny little omniscient organism. That's what we're going to be one day. Can't wait a borg my hive. But for good Um, guys, is the blob our animal of the month? Oh for sure. We don't know if it's an animal. It's just start our friend. Yeah, it can be the Night Call mascot. Very close. We might be the mascot. Yeah. Should we

take another science icebreaker? I think so. Um. This one is also from Live Science, our favorite source of science news, vetted, vetted, and forget it um. This story is by Stephanie Poppas. It's a scientist implant false memories into bird brains. This one blew my mind even more than the blob thing because it's impossible, presented very matter of fact. It's a scientists of taught little birds to memorize a tune without ever learning it, and they did so by implanting memories

of the songs in the bird's brains. Okay, so basically what this really is though, So zebra finches learned to sing from their father's like baby zebra finches are taught by their fathers. They're so cute, adorable. There are some of the cutest birds. So scientists used um some optogenics, which is basically kind of pulsing light to control the bird's brain cells. And I think there's a there's a

quote from Live Science. By pulsing light in a rhythm, the researchers were able to encode memories in the finches brains such that the bird's notes would match the duration of the light pulses. It was as if a father figure were making these instructions for the bird to memorize,

but no father finch was present. God, it's terrifying. What's really interesting about it is so I guess scientists were doing this kind of to see if they could teach nonverbal humans to speak by kind of bypassing any therapy and going directly into the brain, which I suppose could

be good and useful, But we're kind of cynical. It seems like maybe not did we I don't know if we talked about it on the show, But there was another article about some experimental military technology that was about like beaming sound messages to people from far away, so that it's like you can hear it inside your brain. I think I remember that stuff like that, just real man Charian candidate. I think we'll be texting each other

with our brains within the next thirty years. This was something about people getting chips and planted no thanks, oh oh yeah, like the people are starting to do the credit card stuff and personal information. Don't do that. Yeah. I was already against Apple watches, like using Apple watches to like have your your your credit card and you're getting texted, getting a vibration on your body. I hate Apple watches so much. I'm still shocked that I I'm

friends with people who have Apple watching. Oh I'm not friends with any of your friends with them. So you can push them over so that their watch will hit the ground and chatter, you're doing them a favor. I feel like, um, what what was the thing? I'm trying to remember what you're talking about though? With the the sound waves like uh, like triggering a memory or something

or like transmitting information. I mean, I know, I don't know if you've been watching country music still, but there was a radio station that this guy, this crazy guy started just on the other side of the Mexican border that was like a super transmitter station that was like the signal was the strongest, Like I don't think it's even legal to make a signal this strong anymore, but it was like so strong that in nearby farms, if you had a fence, like a metal fence, you could

you could touch it and you would hear the radio like it would transmit through your body. I used to get this will be foreshadowing for our guests, but I got Radio Disney through my phone line always. I remember that because we live near a radio transmitter that was at the time Radio Disney, and so anytime I was on a landline phone, it would here faintly like Britney Spears. Because it was in the late nineties, early um, which

explains a lot about me. Obviously. I had an acquaintance Onan's who received a radio station through his I think I think it was his landline and he lost his mind and covered his house in tinfoil. Who yeah, I mean, it would do something that's inescapable like that, that just feels like it's in the air that's being transmitted either through your phone line or through like you know, the footage in your house or something. I mean, that would

make you go crazy. Yeah, that's very disruptive. Then what if it trained you to sing a song? Right? Right? Like? How do that's how? That's how. That's how. When you know a pop song for the first time, you're like, I feel like I know it already. It's because it's been a plant in your brain already. It sounds like a good ginge Eeto story. Right, I'm gonna go work on this or flash research and confirm it. Speaking of things listening to you and you listening to things, should

we take a night call? Yes? Okay, this one comes from April. Hi. Friends, I've been a big fan since the Girls in Hoodies days. I've been going through your archive and wanted to share my personal My phone is a spy experience. I was listening to another podcast where they made a joke about Swedish fish, the candy. They maybe said the brand four times. I laughed a lot

for several minutes. I never said the word Swedish fish nor retold the joke to anyone, Yet one day later, there were ads for Swedish fish on my Facebook account. This was terrifying. Have any of you received ads for something you never googled nor said, but heard through your phone via a podcast or other audio Thanks night call, April. I mean I'm almost positive I have. Yeah, I mean I guess it makes It depends maybe if you're listening to it on speaker phone, which I'm half the time.

If I listened to a podcast, I'm just listening to it on speaker phone or like in my car, so my phone would be hearing it. Uh, But I don't know. It's also but it's also kind of hard to tell something like Swedish Fish, where it's obviously you're not listening to a podcast. It's like the Swedish Fish podcast. But like a lot of times I'll get stuff like you know, uh like blank check recently or they're still in the middle of like doing a mini series on me Azaki, so I like get a ton of mi Azaki ads

and stuff. But it's also like that's just the content that I crave anyway, So I don't know, I can't really differentiate it, but I feel like I feel like there have been I've definitely like to keep mind confused by what just talking about nonsense, listening to nonsense, just by my own media consumption habits that are probably weird and confusing. Like I got concerned because I got there was like a d WP rebait where you could get a Nest thermostat for free. No no no, no, no

no no no I did it. No no no no no no no no. Well my reasoning was, I was just like, my DWP bills really high. Maybe this will help. But then I just saw today about how the Nest is just always listening to you, always kind to recording what you're saying, listens. It has an audio function. Well, it lights up, it lights up in front of it.

There was the thing that came out. I came out that the people do Nest and Ring whoever that is, well Nest is Google or its Google, that they were trying to like make partnerships with police service people, being like, we will give you whatever we hear. Okay, but theoretically Ring has issued a statement claiming that they don't. It's

up to you to believe it or not. I mean, I'm not sure, but I ended up getting the ring just because someone rang my doorbell a ton of times when I was in the shower and it made me absolut Maybe they were doing it to try and get you to buy a ring. I know now I'm under the silver Lake about it. But well the next thing, I mean, I feel less anti nest just because it like will supposedly reduce your energy. That's good thing I felt.

I felt almost like I had to because I was, you know, I live in an old house with like systems, and I was like, anything to it away reduced my energy and take by moving off the grid, Okay, we'll let us know when you do that time. I think it's okay, it's okay to have enough surveillance devices out of my life, I want. I was just thinking about it today because I was like, I went for a walk without my phone and I felt so relaxed, and I was just like, what if I was never stressed out?

But you could just do that too, like you can just like, but maybe how hard it would be? Because I was like, I have a computer, all the computers or microphones now and cameras, Like what would it take to actually get back to a because it is crazy just to think about, like in the Watergate era when people were taping things, how much more you need to do to make that happen. Now it's like everyone is carrying a free surveillance device on them all the time.

I think that there's something to be said for trying to like have a lot of time away from those things but still having them because you kind of need them to be part of society and you really don't want to be catering to topple. This was posting about a phone that's supposed to be for kids, but she was like, it's really for parents. It's like a throwback phone. It's like a Jitterbug. It's which is the phone for old people that I would also interested in Jitterbug. They

only advertise it in like Parade magazine. It's so good. It's like phones too hard, too small and hard to read, and you too many functions, and you don't want all these apps and things. It's just a phone that's got like two buttons, and the buttons are like call emergency, so you can't text from it. I don't think you can text from it. I think it's just like a brick phone. This is the problem with those phones is

that I feel like it's not that uncommon. My perspective on it is that I wish phones only texted and you could not speak with someone on the phone. I want to do away with. I also don't want the internet on it. I don't want the Internet. I want it to be a texting phone and camera phone. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think that's what the baby phone might be, Like, give it to me, jitterbug, jitterbug and or baby phone

whatever it's called. Sponsor nightcall, please sponsor nightcall. I think I just want the jitterbug because I I like, as you guys, now, I like to talk on the phone. Still, Oh yeah, it's like, hey, do you still like to talk on the phone. But the numbers and letters need to be really big for you to see they're dialing. And one of the buttons is like life alert. Probably well, I mean you never know, Like I'm never gonna say no, like never to having a life alert phone. You can't

get up, you need a jitterbug. Yeah yeah, falling and not being able to get up as U does not discriminate. That's the reason to have a phone. I mean, honestly, that's yeah. That's like I'm not saying there are no times when it's good to have a phone. Can I tell a quick story? The other day I went to the dentist. I've already told Molly and I only like so much about my trip to the dentist. But one thing I don't think I told them yet was I went with my husband to the dentist because we hadn't

been to the dentist in a really long time. We wanted to do more moral support, so we went and then he got a call that he had to be at work in like half an hour, and I was still getting dentist did so I was like, okay, you go and all like get a ride share and then I realized my phone was dead and it took we've Eventually I was like, I'll walk home and he was like, but it's like two and a half miles, and I was like, I can do it. But then I was kind of like, but without my phone see things like

that I want. That's what else. It's like, what if the power did go out for some reason, what if theres an what if there's yeah, what if the big one happens or whatever? And we're all like, I don't have our phones and then your phone won't work because in a huge emergency like that, then the cell everything's overloaded, so your phone's like like everyone's so unprepared for their

phones not to work. We had an event where we tried to do a meet up recently that was thwarted, in part by the fact that our phone and work on top of the mountain and Griffith Park. It's the mountain's right to take away. I prefer not having service stuff. That was also humbling to me because I was like, we are no better than Caroline callawe. We you know, sometimes things go wrong on the day of an event and there's nothing you can do because it's out of

your control. Whenever Mason Jars are just piling up to do whenever like the power goes out, You're just like, oh right. The one thing that I kind of try to pride myself on, especially now that I'm driving again in Los Angeles, is like I can get around without maps, like and I know, yeah, but you know what's crazy is that David recently tried to get a map, like a paper map, just to like have out so that he could kind of get a lay of the land

of Los Angeles. You cannot buy one anywhere, really, yeah, I mean you have to like order one online, but you can't just go to like seven eleven or like any random like news stand or whatever you want. But you could get one drug store triple a for sure. Still maybe and I bet you could get one maybe on Hollywood Boulevard, but probably a star map right might be limited. How maybe the DMV I face you can just swing by easily and take anything a number for

your map. David might enjoy a star map, which is different from like an observatory. Star maps are terrible. I'm very really outdated. Most of them are like like Johnny Carson's house, right, some of them are not. I feel like star maps are like I have a real vogaboo about star maps, and I wish I didn't exist. But there should be a restaurant's map that's just like cool,

like historic restaurant. I just like a map, like I like a Thompson guy that has like every single street you know, alle maps I really like, or those novelty maps they have on the walls places sometimes where things are drawn in a cartoon fashion on it. I had one of those of my neighborhood where I'm just like looking at my house. Some cartoon is like, there's one at the Laurel can in a county store country store that is really good. Um is it just a Laurel

Canyon offair? It's love Laurel Canyon, which is also really interesting to look at at a big Griffith Park map today also, and maybe we should all go back to maps, Carphy. I love maps. I'm so bad at reading them. You know my position on maps. I love them. I would I'd like my dad would always just be like, just look at a map, and it would be like, it means nothing to me. Landmarks. I want landmarks. Are you

good with directions? Like with like north southeast west. I need the kind of directions that are like make a left at the church, you know, like if you're like go north and then go west. I'm like, well, now all the Google navigation services are like take a left at the Starbucks. Like it's like Starbucks and other companies paid for them to be off right. Well that too. It's like, am I if I gave up the convenience

of having maps on my phone? I would have to learn how to read a map really Like I know that I'm not going to go back to the Thomas Guide, but what you know, i'd probably be better for me speaking of maps really quickly. Um, we were talking at some point about Pokemon Go collect Yeah Pokemon, Yes, this is like prime nightcall to the point where I was like, did we already talk about this? Yeah? Did we know

this already? It feels in retrospect obvious. I'm bringing it up even though we didn't have it on the agenda because all I could think about since this came on my radar was like, so, POKEMONO is developed by a company that also developed another sort of map geocashing kind of software, that is the software they use in Pokemon Go. Turns out this whole startup was funded in part by in q Tel, which is the CIA's venture capital start up. Yeah,

so that was terrified you. You played Pokemon Go, right, Emily, But did you know I played? I watched Emily play the Way to do It? Um. Yeah, so I'm they have all my data via you guys. I'm just it's called in Q tell. Yeah, it's called in dash Q dash Tell because the Q is like Q from James Bond, and it's the branch of the CIA that deals in like new technologies and new gadgets. And I'm breaking your

brain right now. Oh no, I'm just like, I hate I hate when nerd ash ship isn't like Silicon Valley Slash. I mean, they've always done stuff like that. Yeah, I know I hate it and we all hate it, but also like it feels like a thing that everyone has to talk about more and more because you know, like maybe I don't want to give up maps to have a Thomas Guide, but like I'll give up Prime to

not fund ice. Okay, so we totally knew this already, Like Ashley Feinberg actually wrote about this in Gawker, like in um, I think that this had come out at some point. Maybe it was just like something that was being discussed on on Reddit boards. Yeah, I think it was known that it was the same software as this

other thing that was clearly project. It was called Ingress Game, which is a really scary name for a game, and I don't know if anybody played it, but then as soon as you slap a cute peek atch you on it, it's like, oh, y'all gotta do it. I know people who still play Pokemon too. Uh. And you know, it's not Pokemon's fault that they're the game who became the face of this. It could have been any game. Really. I'm just saying, you can play let's go peek at you from your house and not move and no one

will track you and no one will know. I think just what we're talking about, though, is like the difficulty of becoming a person who's not being tracked. It seems like impossible to angle yourself from right now, right, which is why we all are so depressed. Well, we have a very special guest we want to bring on, Karina Longworth, Past and future guests and present guests. The past, future

and present guest. I'm one of our favorite podcasters, um to talk about her new season of You Must Remember This, which is all about the Song of the South. So we're gonna talk to her about uh weird buried Disney features and uh theme park rides and lots of Disneyland. So stay tuned for that. Welcome back to Nightcall. We are joined today by our very special guest and one of our favorite podcasters, Corina long Worth of the podcast You Must Remember This. Welcome Corina to Nightcall. Hi, thanks

for having me. I'm so happy to be here. Welcome back, Welcome. Well, actually you only were on in during our live stream, isn't that right? Now? I was on one, but it was only me and Test in the l A studio. That's right, that's right. I forgot to see. I have a weird memory now that I'm in the studio. It's like, there's so many guests that we've had that I've just been like virtually communing with that. Yeah, we've also had guests that not all of us have had in a

variety of podcast configurations, which is true. Can be like when Chris Call came in, I was like, we've done this before, and you guys are like, uh, Karina, welcome, We're so happy to have your Karina is debuting the new season. I believe it starts tomorrow. As of when this comes out of her podcast, you must remember this, and we're all very excited to hear that it is about a very contested property in the Disney Plus catalog.

Song of the South. Yeah, that's kind of the whole thing is that Bob Iger has said that this is the one film that they will not put on Disney Plus. Does that mean everything else will eventually come to Disney Plus? Because I saw people saying there were some other random catalog titles. Yeah, I mean, I think they haven't ruled anything else out entirely the way that they have this, But I also I think people are just confused about rights issues right now, Like nobody really knows exactly what

Disney owns because they acquired all of Fox. But some things like that were released by Fox don't count as Fox movies, and some things that Disney release don't count as Disney movies anymore. Yeah, I thought they were giving up the rights to the Miyazaki movies. Yeah, they already had, I think, which is somebody else is going. They gave it to HBO, which I'm like, that's to me one of the crown jewels of like if you're gonna help National Line but draw. Then I was arguing with somebody

about the Disney jobs, which I think are bad, mostly bad. Yeah, there are some good ones. We could do a whole but I was also like, think, God will never have to look at like John Lasseter's horrible face student those intros. Ever, again, that's the worst part of the Disney release. I mean, maybe that's why they gave it up. I don't know. Yeah, so why did you decide to do song in the South.

So I was just as like a a thing where I had been asked by some people to see if I could help them try to figure out a TV show idea set in basically like classical Hollywood but black people. Um. And so I was like doing some research just about the history of African Americans in Hollywood and trying to figure out different storylines, and I came to The Song of the South as being you know, surprisingly, I guess, but one of the first movies that was made by

white people starring a black person. So, um, this guy James Basket plays Uncle Remus, who's a kindly older African American gentleman on a plantation right after the Civil War who befriends a little white boy and you could say he's magical. Yeah, I mean he really is like kind of the prototypical magical Negro in X and this was a really big part for a black actor in Hollywood. Um. So I you know, that was just sort of like one of the films that I came across in this research.

But I came across a fact that I had never known about it, which was that it was written by a white communist named Maurice Rapp, who was blacklisted immediately after. And so I was like, oh, if there's you know, this is kind of how my thought process usually works with putting together these seasons, which is like, if there's one thing that I find out about something that I had never heard of before, I just basically try to

figure out are there other things? And was Song of the South like pretty quickly like all of the sort of pearls started lining up to form a necklace. And now we have six episodes called the Six Degrees of Song of the South. Does each episode focus on like a different aspect of the Song of the South saga? Basically like the first episode is, you know, just sort of why does this movie exist and what is it

like to watch? Which I felt like I had to explain because it is not commercially available and hasn't been for how did you see it? So they did release it on laser disc in Japan I think in the nineties, and so there is a digital version of that that is sort of floating around. And I actually like, I didn't torrent it yesterday or anything like for some reason. It was on a hard drive that was in my

house and has been for a long time. So it was like on a hard drive of movies that I think we're probably like torrented or ripped from other sources like a long time ago. So I don't actually know where to tell people to go if they want to see it, even illegally, but I'm sure you could figure it out. You said that it was released four times theatrically, right, and the last one was in eighty six. Yeah, so I saw it when you saw it? Yeah, um, yeah.

I felt like I had seen it growing up, but I think it was just because they were still putting songs from it, sequences from it on sing along. Maybe I had seen it, but then I was like, I really don't know that I have. I just know like Zippity Duda, which was definitely on a Disney sing along, and I remember, like I thought it there was a clip of like the Laughing Place that was chured in something, because I definitely remember that. Well there it's obviously in

Splash Mount. What I think there was maybe like there were clips, I think because I watched a lot of like Disney Afternoon and where those things were sampled. We were talking about this a Pruter film a lot recently as being that was once really hard to find and sort of the the inability of people to watch it added to its mythos so much. The Song of the South, like is it kind of what you thought it was going to be. So I had had memories of it from saying it in the movie theater when I was

six years older. Actually it might have been five years old. I don't remember exactly what part of the year it was put out in. You remember being like, this is racist, not at all, And actually I do remember my mother saying something to me like, this is a movie about how the races can live together. It's about friendship between a black man and a white boy, which is what

people thought in the eighties. Disney thought for sure. Yeah, so um yeah, I just I hadn't really remembered it very well, and I certainly didn't remember that two thirds of the movie is live action, and that it's like this live action family drama set on this plantation where like this little boy is just basically his parents are

completely neglecting him. His parents are having some kind of separation, and his dad is in Atlanta and they're like on this rural plantation and he's sort of left to his own devices. So he becomes friends with this former slave, but then his mom is like, stopped teaching my son these like slave stories. She's like, you're a bad influence. So it's like the Secret Garden kind of. It has

kind of that kind of thing to it. And then you know, like the whole climax of the movie is that like the little boys on his deathbed, so there's just a lot of melodrama. But he tells them all the bear rabbit stories and those are those are the things that are animated, and it does the kind of like Mary Poppins asked mcmeldine of the live action, but

only a little bit. I mean, like not in this movie because like obviously also don't remember seeing it, but but I kind of think that stuff funny like that. I sometimes I like Pete's Dragon and we all we all love who framed exactly which is the best. But this was the first movie that did it on like a future film scale, and so Disney really thought that it was going to be heralded as just like this

major technological advancement. You know. He really thought like the whole industry was just going to get down on their hands and knees and like King Walt st Walt, like you have reinvented. One of the things I've really come to realize about Walt is that he was really like

the first tech bro. You know, he liked the way that he wanted everyone to live on the campus at Disney and like you should just be so happy to work here that you don't need things like a living wage or benefits because you work for a genius and you're you're exposed to magic. Yeah, And I thought one of the interesting things when you were because we we

got to listen to the first episode in advance. So what's what's the date that it drops, by the way, some October twenty seconds twenty second the day after this

is yeah, so yeah, look for that. But um, I thought it was so interesting that like the technological aspect of it, it was like Waltz sort of response because they had gone through some flops or some like less than you know, stellar box office performances, and he had this idea that like animation was only going to connect with the massas if it did have this blended in with live action thing, which feels like kind of a first version of now like Disney basically abandoning two D

animation for three D because it's like nobody will connect with something if it isn't in three dimensions and like always second guessing, like the original thing that they did and we're good at. I think it's also like whatever the newest technology is, we must adopt, sure, yeah, because it will be better than the previous thing, which is not always true. Yeah, I mean in fairness to well, like I mean he was ultimately wrong because they did

have purely animated films later that we're big hits. But snow White had been this real, like industry changing hit in nineteen thirty seven. I think I don't remember the exact here, but it was in the nineteen thirties, and then they kept putting up movies that weren't making as much money, like Pinocchio was a huge flop. Dumbo did okay, but they also made Dumbo for like half a million dollars.

It was super super cheap, like sixty minutes too. It's like barely are But then they made like a decent profit off of this movie called Three Caballeros, which was like actually kind of a compilation of shorts but some of the travelogy, but some of the shorts involved basically like Donald Duck and these two like South American birds

hanging out with like with real people. Like it was really the first instance of blending this live action with animation, and so you know, I mean to be fair, like he just looked at the data and he was like, we were doing cartoons and they two diminishing returns and then we kind of like perked back up when we

brought in live action with the cartoons. Yeah. When I watched the Disney American Masters on PBS, which I recommend to anyone who wants to see like a critical, historically accurate biography of Walt Disney, which are very rare, which are hard to find because they're mostly put up by Disney. And when you hear the Disney Company ones are always like Disney like started it had snow White, it was the biggest hit, and then it just became more successful

with each new release. People loved it more and more. And when you watch the PBS talk, it's like, no, that he almost tanked the company like a hundred times. It is again very techie where it's like, no, we have to gamble it all on the next project each time. Uh,

And they almost went under a lot. That's what's so funny about Disneyland is like by the time they're in the place where they can open Disneyland, like all the movies that are featured in it, like half of them were flopped that are being like immortalized in these magical rides that are novel loved by everybody, and then they like retcon them. Is no, it was a hit and

everybody loved it, and it's fine. Yeah, if you just look at like the original, you know, box office deterrence, it's absolutely insane that there's a wind in the willows, right, it's so good. But the thing is that all of these movies do end up becoming like hits or classics or whatever you want to call it because of this strategy of theatrical re release, and so they keep being exposed to new generations and then they just kind of

become canonized over time. But when Saw You the South came out, the n double A c P protested it and told Walt not to put it out because they were like, this movie's racist. It's about like a condescending stereotype of black people and like the romanticized Antebellum South, and Walt was like, Nope, you're wrong. I'm just going to put it out anyway because I know what's best

for everyone. He was also like conspiracy theorizing that like they had been put up to it by somebody, like probably the communies, right, right, So he basically, like one of the major cataclysmic events in Disney history is when the animators went on strike, but right before World War two,

and he just felt so betrayed. And from that point on not only was obsessed with communists, but obsessed with the idea that communists were out to get him personally and so and also you know, I mean, he wanted to believe that he had made like a liberal movie about like you know, equality and tolerance between the races. But he was racist enough to believe that black people couldn't actually be activists or intellectuals unless communists were brainwashing them.

I keep bringing up Art Babbitt, the Jewish hotti who invented Goofy, and that's who led the animator strike and who Walt thought was, you know, turning everyone against him. But one thing I didn't really realize that I have learned recently that thought was interesting was that even at that time that people did think that like it wasn't people naturally turning towards leftism or communism, that they were

being influenced by people from abroad. Implanting ideas in their heads. Um, that seems like a reach, well totally, and especially in this case, Like, I mean, there's two there were two phases of protest against Front of the South. There was the protest as soon as people found out he was making it, in which where African American intellectuals were like, hey, Walt, like could we help you with this, Like could we you know, read the script, give you notes like something.

Can we be part of the process, And he was like not. And then the movie came out and that's when the activist group started actually picketing and like trying to boycott it. And I mean, as I get into a little bit, like they the problem was that there wasn't a united front. There were some people who were like, you know what, like this movie isn't that bad because at least like it gave a couple of African American

actors jobs. Just take whatever whatever you can get, which feels like like that that kind of conflict still goes on with and it's like such an interesting argument for like, yeah, okay, fine, we won't like put all of our energy towards protesting and like trying to get this one thing, you know, taken down or you know, not showed or whatever, because it's not like it's not that big of a deal. It's not like Avatar or whatever. It's not taking over the entire world. But then, like in the case of

a Disney movie, it will come out again. It will come out again and again and again, like it's a zombie. Um, let's take it if we shall to Splash Mountain, which is the way that most people today probably if at all, are familiar with the Song of the South. Well, okay, do you guys think that people who ride Splash Mountain know that it refers to a movie because I don't know. No, I don't think they do, because it doesn't say a Song of the South anywhere on it. It's like the

Brear Rabbit. And again it is like it doesn't have Uncle Remus in it. It's more of like a brere rabbit and brere fox and brere bear thing, which are real plantation folk tales that were collected in those books. Uh that are good, But so it's just a plantation themed plantation mythology. I don't know if I put it together for like a very long time. And also it's like they repurpose a lot of old animatronics from another

show called America Sings. So it was also sort of during maybe a time when they didn't when they were like, we have to build a new ride, but we're going to like cut corners a little bit and use all these old animatronics from a stage show that killed somebody when the revolving platform crushed someone, which, by the way, like I had not heard this until we talked on the phone earlier this week about it when he was trapped beneath the revolving floor. Yeah, how did that? Do

you know? It was like a revolving stage. Do you know how they have those stages that are like it's in the whatever now, like the Hall of Innovations or whatever, that that round kind of building in Tomorrowland. It wasn't there. So those animatronics were already haunted from West the West World. Isn't it strange that you go as a child or even as an adult to Splash Mountain and you never think to question what movie is this from? Until you know?

But it's like I went on Splash Mountains so many times and it was it never occurred to me, like what movies this? It just looks like Disney Styeah. I mean one thing I'll say about that and the last episode of the season, it's all about Splash Mountain in Disneyland found a big ride to open. I feel like in my childhood, yeah, yours like that was the new ride. Yeah, yeah,

everybody had to go. But so it like it opened, And I had been to Disneyland a few times before that, because that I was nine years old by then, um, and there were a lot of rides, especially in that part of Disneyland that didn't refer to movies, Like there was no Pirates of the Caribbean movie until recently, and

no Haunted Mansion movie until recently. The other thing that I do talk about in that episode though, so I don't want to talk about too much right now, but that whole part of Disneyland is just like this very weird resurrection of the eighteen hundred South and so like, in a way, it makes perfect sense that they would put a Song of the South ride right there. Well, that's like, that's totally Walt Disney's aesthetic is like the romanticized,

imaginary Antebellum South. Because he grew up in St. Louis Uh working in a factory well, that's what main Street USA is, isn't his imaginary version of what the main street of St. Louis, Missouri was like when he was a kid. It's all like his memories and his fantasies, which are apparently all very Southern and weird or like weird manifest destiny nightmare stuff. Also, yeah, I'm sure of a lot of it is just imagined and not based in reality at all, but just like it's like this

collective like memory of what the South. There's also like some wildly racist stuff in Disneyland still that's not in

Splash Mountain, but on the Jungle Cruise. Jungle Cruise is so racist still, I can't believe they haven't like taken out the native animatronic because they're so racist, like most of adventure Land is like a big problem, right for sure, But it seems like there's a point where you're like, we take out the human beings, and they have They're probably gonna do it soon because there's a movie coming out. They're probably going to replace them all with an animatronic

the Rock. Um, I can't be like, I can't believe for making a Jungle Cruise movie. It's like of all the things you just do it just there was Wild Ride movie and you're right there. They all have their own mythology, like Big Under Mountain and the Matterhorn. All the mountains are their own sort of you know, theme

park mythology. But it is also weird that they took so goddamn long to do a little Mermaid ride and there's still not really a Beauty in the Beast ride, Like they haven't invested in sort of the movies that people really do like making rides, except Star Wars, excepts and Frozen. I heard it was like a Frozen ride in Disney World that replaced like the Norway Cruise in which people loved because it was like a Viking Pirates

of the Caribbean. That sounds great, but it kind of it's just now it's just frozen them and it also looks still sounds great, it's like a snow cave. But when you bring up Beauty and the Beast, like, what would that ride even be? Just a talking teapot going to a dinner party. Yeah, just a dinner party should be a restaurant. There's no Aladdin ride, you know, cat like a Lion King ride. Just all the new class during that time, like when Little Mermaid was they opened

up Splash Mountain. Yeah, exactly, because I remember being like, I want a Little Mermaid ride. I was like, this is good enough because there's water. Well, I went on twenty leagues under the c and they have the big like foam Mermaid that sort of like bobs By. That ride was so great before they turned it's so it's really bad. Even my kids were really upset about that ride. They've never been on the previous one, but they were like, those aren't real. I'm just really excited for the night Call.

You must remember this, uh being park Well, we were talking about before we started recording, like because they have done these rebrandings of several rides, um, like you know recently they changed the Tower of Terror into the Guardians of the County RDE Yeah thumb sound, but like there is a possibility that they might decide to rebrand Splash Mountain, like to distance themselves further from uh, this thing that they wanted to not exist. And it's like would we

protest that? Also, like what if they just embraced it fully, which I don't think they will do, but what if they were like, now we'll just make a Brear Rabbit and Brear Fox movie. They're like, doesn't have this framing device, and we'll let you know, a black director and a black writer. Like what if they were like, we fucked up. We're gonna try and do something to acknowledge it. That

would be interesting. That would make more sense to me than just wiping things and pretend they pretending they don't exist, which is what they do, which is Bob Iger's comments that you mentioned in the first episode of your podcast of the season was really like he has an interesting kind of frankness when he talks about like this wouldn't be appealing to shareholders, or this would this would be like detrimental to the shareholders, where you would expect someone

from Disney to handle things like a little more like sensitively or like humanoid. Like it's a really weird quote because basically what he's saying is like he's like, well, you know, I'm such a good person that I'm willing

to take a financial loss here, right. He basically says like, like, even though I think we could make a profit if we released it, it might be offensive to some people now, so we won't And so it's just it could have been phrased in many different It is so strange to me because I was like, can you not just be like what a mess up? Like wow, if you cared about that, like people die in their cars that work

at Disneyland, like that would also affect how the shareholders think. Um, I wonder how much you kind of came across this sort of stuff in your research where where a lot of times I think the thing that feels creepy about Disney, especially now, like in this late period of Disney, is that it does feel like a religion and that like there's all this sort of like Connie and like kind of skirting around things that don't make sense or that like over time people have realized like are you know

problematic or like you know, stuff that they don't want to acknowledge as part of the history. And so it rather than just like have any kind of honest history of it, it's just sort of like nope, it didn't know, it never happened. It's great that we have your podcast, um, and also yeah, check out the PBS American Masters about what Disney. So we wanted to ask you just one night call question before we let you go. Um, do

you think we landed on the moon. So, as I was about to say, before we started recording, when I was in college, I had like a there was like a visiting professor who came and showed us his documentary he had made where he was basically trying to prove that we didn't and that it was shot in a sound stage. And you know, obviously he couldn't prove that, or maybe not obviously, but he couldn't prove it, but he made like some compelling evidence that like the footage

had been destroyed or whatever. Um. And I remember going home to my apartment that I shared with my boyfriend at the time, and my my boyfriend who had already been kicked out of college. But like I believe that he knew better than anything he could learn in college. Is like you're a fucking idiot, Karina, so gullible, and so I I dropped it, But I don't know, maybe there's want to learn. What was the evidence that the footage has been just do you remember what I mean?

He was It was like it had like a real room to vibe, like kind of cobbled together like montage e stuff. When you slow that stuff down to it starts to look real weird. The question somebody brought up to me is, um, why haven't we gone back? If we can go, why did we comment? Why did we only go during especially the Nixon years, a time known for their truthfulness about what the American government was doing? Um,

that's a two questions? Do we do we answer that here? Finally, like, doesn't it seem like if we had the capability to go to the moon, people would just be going all the goddamn the number one? But like, wouldn't we have gone In the eighties a lot like check it out were on the moon? There was the Challenger, which short of I think like dampened a lot of public enthusiasm for for NASA. I mean, I think that's the problem is that it's so it I think that that the

moon landing. Well, first of all, guys, did it happen? We're not like a convinced at night call were almost they were the nineties. We don't think it didn't happen. But we're agnostic. Let's say we did. But yeah, then the Challenger and the huge expense, I think that like the expense of that was being poured into this and as I've said, a million times about Operation paper Clip, Like the US hired a bunch of Nazi scientists uh and kept them from war crimes trials to try and

solve the space race problems. So that's even more fucked up than if we didn't go for me it is can I ask you guys a question? So obviously, like we don't fund the space program anymore other than like that thing Trump was talking about that I forgot about, but Elon Musk does. If Elon Musk was like we're going to the moon and then like he went to the moon or he showed footage of being on the moon,

would you believe him? No, absolutely not. I wouldn't believe him specifically, But I don't believe the real the car in space was that real? Wasn't Who knows? I know, you're right, who knows if anything that he does is

for real? Um. But there was something that we were going to talk about on the show that was about how U Nobel Prize winner said that we would never live on an exo planet ever, and that all the tech barons who think we're going to like move to Mars or move to the Moon or just like totally in a dream world. It's never going to happen, which I think is true. Well, so this is interesting to you.

This comes from Live Science, And so they have Nobel prizewinner Yasamine Sapola Koglu nice and it's the Nobel prizewinner is Michelle mayer Um. But they quote him as saying, we'll never go to the Moon. It just won't happen unless like everything changes about our understanding of mass and acceleration. It's never gonna happen. And then they keep quoting people

who are like, well, not never know. They're like they just can't commit to it, which I appreciate where they're like maybe in like a century or like million years. But the people like Jeff Bezos are like, we're going now because they're like, we're going to use up Earth and then we're just going to move it to another place. And this this person who sounds like they know what they're talking about, is like, absolutely not. Uh, we stand firmly on the Earth and it's unlikely to change for

a very very long time. There's also a good reason for saying that, which is that the idea being don't give up on our planet and uninhabitable. This person is also saying that we absolutely should not just give up on Earth, because that is like not the cool thing to do. Stephen Kaine, a professor planetary astrophysics at the u C riverside. So the sad reality is that at this point in human history, all stars are effectively at

a distance of infinity. We struggle very hard as a species to reach the Earth's move and do you think we're ever gonna live The humans will habitate on a planet other than or a body other than Earth, not until the technology advances to the point of where it is an ad astra where you have like fast food on the Moon and stuff like that just like freezed like like preserved food for like hundreds of years so

that you can make it make the journey. I think it's we more likely that it will be a Wally scenario where we're on giant spaceships that are like orbiting and just kind of waiting to return thanks like being able to like build a civilization on a planet that it is to like build some kind of space station thing that could that can support life for long periods. I do think the billionaires are going to blast off

from New Zealand whenever the ship gets too bad. Um, and then they're gonna get space brain and all go crazy and their brains well, Milt in space, everybody wins Korea. Thanks so much for coming on Night Call. Sure, thanks for having And where can everybody find you? And you must remember this and your Patreon and all that stuff. So find the podcast anywhere you get podcasts, except for Slate plus where it used to be, but now it's

not on Slate anyway. You can't get it there, but you can get it literally anywhere else there podcasts or at. You must remember this podcast dot com. And you can find me on Twitter at Karina Lungworth and follow me on Patreon at Karina Lungworth. And that's it. And you can listen to Molly's episode on your on your Patreon podcast, on your book club podcast. Yeah we talked about Dino by Nick Tosh's Boy, did we. I'm still talking about you know, we'll never stop talking about Dino. I mean

even on Nightcall. Let's stop talking about got infected with the Dinos. Thanks so much for coming by, Thank you, thank you for listening to Nightcall. That is it for us this week. We'll be back next week. Um. You can follow us on social media at Nightcall Pod on Twitter, Night Called Podcasts on Instagram and Facebook. You can also support us on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Nightcall.

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