Nerd Pride Radio

Aidan's back! Mike opens with Five Links, starting from a random page on Wikipedia and meandering through history to find Molotov cocktails. Then Aidan regales us with FIVE crappy Netflix horror movies. Then the two of them round out the meticulously plotted portion with some streaming TV talk, including The Good Place, Letterkenny, Travelers, and the Marvelous Mrs. Maizel. After that filling appetizer, R2 rolls out with 7 all-new, listener-submitted questions from the Pod-O-Matic, including not one, but two questions about D&D races and who can boink with who. Listen now before the FCC shuts us down. You can't miss a moment of this!

Enjoy!

Horror movies: I haven't seen Aliens: Blahblah or Tusk (and probably won't). I HAVE seen The Rift and Gehenna and think Aidan's reviews are spot on. They were fine, and somewhat clever and unique, if not predictable. I felt both suffered from having the production quality of a television movie- like something just a hair better than a SyFy movie. But still fun. I can't believe he hasn't seen Mandy. WATCH MANDY! It's truly a good movie, even though it is bananas and over the top.

Aidan should get a Shudder subscription. Best $5 a month he'll spend.

About Jews and Yiddish: Yiddish started as Jews writing German in the Hebrew alphabet, and then evolved into its own language. But it’s only spoken (traditionally) by Ashkenazi Jews (who lived in Central Europe). But other Jews—like Sephardic and Persian Jews—didn’t speak it; they had their own languages. For example, Jews in Spain developed Ladino, which is like Yiddish but with Spanish instead of German. Hebrew is read and/or spoken by Jews of all sorts, but Yiddish is not.

Traditionally, all Russians’ middle names are based on their fathers: -evich or -ovich for “son of,” and -evna or-ovna for “daughter of.”

Two huge historical mistakes that came up--First, the German decision to restart unlimited submarine warfare in 1917.They knew it would bring the U.S. into the war, and they did it anyway because they thought they could defeat France and Britain before the US could muster significant forces. Obviously they were wrong.

In 1862 when Lee invaded Maryland, Union General McClellan found a copy of Lee's secret orders that had been dropped on the ground (which sounds preposterous, but it really happened). So he knew Lee's forces, which were already significantly outnumbered, were divided. If he'd acted quickly, he could have destroyed Lee's army piecemeal and quite probably ended the Civil War a year or two early--with far fewer deaths. But he moved slowly, as he always did, and blew a golden opportunity.

Finally catching up on the episodes released this year!

Regarding dying your hair, I would take about .

I dig those.

I don't have enough hair to do them justice, but I'd take them anyway.