Episode 154: Terminator vs Astro Boy vs Bender [ROBOT FIGHT]
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On this episode of Absurd Hypotheticals, Marcus Lehner, Chris Yee, and Ben Storms pit some famous robots against each other!
Time Stamps
00:00:00 - Intro
00:02:08 - Ben’s Answer - Terminator
00:11:51 - Chris’s Answer - Astro Boy
00:23:36 - Marcus’s Answer - Bender
00:29:06 - The Fight
00:47:00 - Would you rather: never use a knife OR never use a spoon?
00:52:40 - Outro
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TRANSCRIPTION
Marcus Lehner:
Hello everybody and welcome to Absurd Hypotheticals, the show where we overthink dumb questions so you don't have to. I'm your host, Marcus Lehner and I'm joined here today by Chris Yee and Ben Storms. Say hi, guys.
Chris Yee:
Hey, I'm Chris.
Ben Storms:
Hey, I'm Ben.
Marcus Lehner:
Guys, ring that... What do they call the thing you ring before fights? Does it have a specific name, that bell.
Ben Storms:
Is it a bell?
Marcus Lehner:
The fighting bell?
Ben Storms:
I think it's just a bell.
Marcus Lehner:
Ring the bell, ding, ding, ding. It's time for a fight. So today we are determining once and for all, without a shadow of a doubt, which robot would win in a fight. So I'll explain how we do these. So we each have selected our robot fighter from among fictional robots among, I don't know, all of media-
Chris Yee:
Pop culture.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah, all of pop culture and media. We have each picked a fighter, we'll introduce our fighter, kind of give a rundown of their fighting abilities, and then we're going to kind of hypothetical it out and try to figure out who would win from there. And after we have our discussions, we'll basically establish what percentage, how likely things will happen, and through a series of Excel spreadsheet nonsense, we'll determine an overall win percentage chance for each of these robot fighters. And then we will spin the Wheel of Final Determination and that will determine our actual robot winner, the unequivocal best robot fighter in all the land.
Chris Yee:
The definitive answer that no one can dispute, because we spun a wheel.
Ben Storms:
Wheels can't lie. It's facts.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah, they don't call up the wheel of lying, it's the Wheel of Fortune. And you're fortunate to know which robot's going to be the best in just 30, 40 minutes or so.
Chris Yee:
Is our wheel called the Wheel of Fortune?
Ben Storms:
I think Marcus had the Wheel of Final Determination, which isn't quite as catchy, but you know what? We can roll with it.
Chris Yee:
We won't get sued.
Marcus Lehner:
Ben, why don't you start us off with your fighter before I start naming more things?
Ben Storms:
Yeah, that's a good call. So I went with The Terminator. I want to point out that we are going with The Terminator. Terminator can be kind of a generic. In The Terminator films, basically all of the hunter/killer robots built by Skynet are Terminators, which includes tanks and aircrafts and stuff as well. Because technically they all have little tiny robot brains and they're doing stuff. If you're not familiar with the Terminator franchise, the idea is there is this military AI called Skynet that boots up, decides that humans are a lost cause, reasonably, and basically starts nuclear war to kill off everyone. And then it's basically just robot apocalypse with small pockets of human resistance.
Ben Storms:
But we're not talking about any of those generic Terminators, we were talking about The Terminator, the Arnold Schwarzenegger one, which is technically a Series 800 Model 101 Infiltrator. Let's sort of break that down a little bit. Series 800, that means it is a T-800, which was Skynet's first cyborg. So it had both organic and artificial systems. About 6'2", 640 pounds or so, made out of hyper alloy, which is not a real thing. It's a real strong metal and they don't go into any more details than that. It's powered by a very small nuclear power cell that, for whatever reason they put where a human heart would be. Skynet has made some design decisions we're going to go through because I have some questions. But anyway, little nuclear power cell provides all the power.
Ben Storms:
Infiltrator, what that means, some of the Terminators that Skynet made were designed to infiltrate human resistance cells. So they would take this terrifying metal robot's endoskeleton and put a living tissue skin sheath on it, so it looked like a human. They would also frequently... they could either have their CPU be set to just read, or be read/write. If they were read/write, they could actually learn and sort of adapt better to human society, which I think is how they justified having a random Terminator they had just been living as a human for like 30 years in one of the newer Terminator movies.
Chris Yee:
Once Arnold Schwarzenegger got older?
Ben Storms:
Exactly, yeah, that one. Yeah. Precisely.
Marcus Lehner:
That's got to be a relic from the past, when CDs could only be CD write or CD read/write.
Ben Storms:
Yeah, there is a lot of stuff where you can tell that Terminator 1 and 2 came out in the mid-'80s and early '90s, respectively, which is pretty fun.
Ben Storms:
And the Model 101 means that looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Specifically, actually, in universe it does not look like Arnold Schwarzenegger. It looks like Dieter von Rossbach, who was a former CIA agent, who is conveniently an Austrian, naturalized U.S. citizen, much like Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Chris Yee:
They should totally make a separate spinoff movie just based on that guy before Terminator.
Ben Storms:
No. Okay, so this is the thing that I find hilarious. Apparently in, I believe it's in the newest one, in, what was it? Dark Fate?
Chris Yee:
Dark Fate, yeah.
Ben Storms:
It was either in Dark Fate or Sarah Connor Chronicles, one of the two of them. They actually meet the dude. He just shows up. He's just in there. He lives in the town that Sarah Connor is hiding in.
Chris Yee:
It's Arnold Schwarzenegger?
Ben Storms:
Yes. Wait, no, is it actually Arnold Schwarzenegger? I can't remember. I don't know.
Marcus Lehner:
Nom, it's the other guy, whatever Ben [crosstalk 00:05:21]-
Ben Storms:
Oh no, it's Dieter von Rossbach. Yeah.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah, it's Dieter.
Ben Storms:
It's Dieter, come on. Keep up Chris.
Chris Yee:
If it was Sarah Connor Chronicles, it probably wasn't Arnold Schwarzenegger, because I think that was a pretty low budget show.
Ben Storms:
I couldn't figure out when Dieter actually showed up, but I was just going through the Terminator Wiki, and there's a whole page about it.
Marcus Lehner:
How many Terminator movies were there? Because in my head there's three.
Ben Storms:
There have been six, I think.
Chris Yee:
Yeah, there's six movies and a show, a TV show.
Ben Storms:
Yeah, The Terminator, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Terminator Salvation, Terminator Genesis, and Terminator: Dark Fate. And then, yes, the Sarah Connor Chronicles. I know there were comics, it could have been in one of the comics as well, where Dieter von Rossbach showed up. Ah, he's under novel-only characters. So he clearly was in a book. There we go.
Chris Yee:
When did they introduce that character? Was he in the original Terminator movie?
Ben Storms:
No, no, he definitely was not. Actually, in fact, I'm pretty sure it was a different guy they say that the Model 101 skin was based on in Terminator 3.
Chris Yee:
Oh, okay. And then they retconned it?
Ben Storms:
Yeah. William Candy was some us air force guy. There's a hilarious picture of him I'm going to share in our chat, which isn't helpful for the listeners, but just Google William Candy, and you'll finally find it. It's a very broadly smiling Arnold Schwarzenegger, it looks very funny.
Marcus Lehner:
It's not as funny as Ben's saying.
Ben Storms:
Okay, I found it very funny. Anyway, point being-
Chris Yee:
It's just Arnold Schwarzenegger smiling.
Ben Storms:
I found it very funny that they talked about how, on the Wiki page for Dieter von Rossbach, there's a direct quote that's like, "He bore a strong resemblance to the Model 101 Terminator, but was never suspected or accused of its crimes during its rampage because superiors always knew that he was located somewhere else when that was happening." Because, yes, he was just a dude who looked exactly like the killing machine that I'm sure was in the news all the time, twice in the '80s and '90s, which is a very fun thing to think about.
Ben Storms:
And yeah, the reason that he looks like Dieter von Rossbach is that Skynet... this is the, at least, justification, had databases of government agents and things, that they were able to use to reconstruct physical appearance for the Infiltrators. But it's an important thing to note that there's not just one Terminator that looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger, there were many Model 101s that all looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger, which is also very funny to me, and we'll come back to, because it's an interesting design decision, as well.
Ben Storms:
But first let's talk about the strengths of the T-800. One, it's incredibly durable. As I mentioned, it is made out of this weird, not actually real hyper alloy that is basically impervious to small arms fire. Pretty much anything smaller like a 50 caliber bullet just doesn't really do anything. A 50 caliber bullet will penetrate the endoskeleton and a really well placed one could destroy the power unit, but that's about. It does not feel pain, but is aware of his injuries and can do some minor self-repair. There were times where it would be in a car accident and could reset its arm if it got damaged and things like that. Even if it's broken to pieces, they can be blown in half and still keep crawling effectively, away from its legs. That happens in Terminator 1, they jam a pipe bomb into its chest and it blows in half and keeps crawling after him. The only way, in Terminator 1, they actually kill it, is just by basically catching it in a hydraulic press and just hydraulic pressing it until it gets crushed.
Ben Storms:
It's very durable. They were designed for infiltration. So they actually are stealthier than you might expect for a Arnold Schwarzenegger... They look like a human, can emulate a human voice after hearing a sample, and aside from, apparently there were some dogs the resistance could use that could smell, I guess, the metal, I don't know, they're basically indistinguishable from humans.
Ben Storms:
And then just very skilled with all conventional weaponry and also were usually deployed with a Westinghouse M-25 40-watt phased plasma pulse-gun, which is a plasma rifle. I don't know, they don't go into too many details. It's a plasma gun, you get the idea. It's like a laser gun, but cooler, because there's plasma.
Ben Storms:
In terms of weaknesses, the biggest one is that the machines are kind of stupid a lot of the time. Which, let's bring up the Arnold Schwarzenegger look alike thing. So you're designing these to infiltrate humanity, right? And learn about what they're doing and kill them. Why would you make a bunch of them all look exactly the same?
Chris Yee:
Yeah, Linda Hamilton or Sarah Connor, immediately recognizes him as a Terminator.
Ben Storms:
Right, exactly. It's like, "Oh hey, you look like Arnold Schwarzenegger," who by the way, not exactly the most nondescript person.
Marcus Lehner:
Well, maybe they thought there were a lot of him because there was just a lot of Arnold Schwarzenegger posters floating around at that time.
Ben Storms:
Apparently.
Marcus Lehner:
This guy's everywhere, it's perfect.
Ben Storms:
The other thing in terms of Skynet/the machines being kind of stupid, their first attempt at Infiltrators was not using living tissue. They basically just put a rubber suit on an endoskeleton, which unsurprisingly did not work at all. Yeah, don't really have much to say about that aside from that was a really stupid idea, Skynet, you should be ashamed of yourself.
Marcus Lehner:
I prefer the term skin sheath, that you used before.
Ben Storms:
Yeah, skin sheath is a good one. And then also in terms of when they were hunting down Sarah Connor, so they send him down, he knows her name and that she's somewhere in LA. So he literally just grabs a phone book and starts going through the phone book, killing anyone named Sarah Connor, including I'm pretty sure a young girl. They had no information aside from, "Sarah Connor is somewhere in this city at this time, so just get killing," which isn't exactly the most-
Marcus Lehner:
I mean, that's a good plan. There can only be so many.
Ben Storms:
This is what we refer to as a breadth first search, which is eventually effective, but maybe the most effective way to go about things. But just generally, it is a robot and it is very much robotic. It has a task and it tries to do that task in a methodical fashion. Eventually because they had that read/write mode, if it were around for long enough, if we were saying this was like an established Terminator who had been living in society, it will be a little more intelligent, but they just have a task and they try to do that task in a relatively straightforward manner. Which is easy because they're a 6'2", 640 pound killing robot. So it's not a bad strategy, it's just not the smartest strategy. But that's the Terminator, right? It's a killing robot. It kills.
Chris Yee:
That's good for a fight.
Ben Storms:
It's not a bad thing for a fight.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah. It is definitely a good baseline to try not to cross.
Ben Storms:
Yeah. Oh, I forgot who we said was going to go next.
Chris Yee:
I was going to go next.
Ben Storms:
Chris, what'd you do?
Chris Yee:
So my robot fighter is Astro Boy. If you don't know who Astro Boy is, it's a little robot boy that's... he's been in mangas and animes and stuff. He's a pretty classic character. But Astro Boy was created by Osamu Tezuka in 1952, and he was actually originally called Mighty Atom. And it started as a manga and eventually it turned into an anime, and it got so popular that they sold the rights to the U.S., to air episodes in the U.S. They didn't sell the rights to the U.S. government.
Ben Storms:
Right, I figured.
Chris Yee:
The way I worded it-
Marcus Lehner:
The U.S. government owns Astro Boy now.
Chris Yee:
But in the process of selling the rights to air in the U.S., they changed the name to Astro Boy.
Ben Storms:
Mighty Atom is a much better name in my opinion, personally.
Chris Yee:
Yeah. Mighty Atom is a pretty good name, but it didn't stick. Astro Boy became way more popular. And in researching Astro Boy, I actually... I had a lot of difficult time doing it, because there's so much different stuff to watch and consume. There's the original manga, which is 23 volumes. There is a 1963 anime, which is 193 episodes, which actually considered the first official anime ever. It basically established what anime is, which I thought was pretty cool. In 1964, they had a tie-in movie to that show. In 1980, they had another anime that was 52 episodes. In 1987, there was a 20 issue American comic book series. In 2003, there was a 50 episode anime. And then in 2009 there was a 3D made a movie. So I did not watch all of that, because that is a lot.
Marcus Lehner:
What? Come on?
Chris Yee:
I watched seven or eight episodes of various... the three shows, random episodes of those.
Marcus Lehner:
But Chris, you had all week.
Chris Yee:
I had like two days.
Ben Storms:
Yeah, we had two days for this one.
Ben Storms:
Kind of a big ask.
Marcus Lehner:
You had two whole days, why didn't you watch it all?
Chris Yee:
So I watched the seven or eight episodes and I also watched the 2009 3D animated movie, which I regret watching that because it wasn't that great. And I really didn't use that much of it. And it was the longest of all of them because it was a movie. So of the show, I tried to watch the first episode of each show, the three shows, just to see their take on his origin. For the most part they're pretty much the same, all three of them, in terms of how he was born.
Chris Yee:
So his origin story is basically, he's a boy named... I guess in the original show his Japanese name was Tobio, but in the American version they changed it to Astor Boynton. I guess they wanted the pun.
Ben Storms:
Does that even count as a pun? That's-
Chris Yee:
I don't know. It sounds like Astro Boy.
Ben Storms:
Yeah, hmm.
Chris Yee:
And then in the later shows, I think they just changed his name to Toby. But he is in a car crash and he dies, and his dad, Dr. Tenma, is like grief-ridden and he decides to... He's actually the head of the Ministry of Science and he to rebuild his son as a robot. He's successful and for some reason he gives his son a bunch of weapons. I don't really know why.
Marcus Lehner:
He never wants him to die again.
Chris Yee:
Well, in the 2009 movie, they explain it because he doesn't die in a car crash. He dies... a robot kills him. And then he says like, "Oh, I gave him all these weapons so he can defend himself and it won't happen again." But in the shows, he dies in a car crash and they just don't explain it.
Ben Storms:
I love the idea of the only way that the father could do this is with a large government grant that involved like turning it into a military application. That's my head canon, and I'm going to stick with it.
Chris Yee:
I mean, pretty much. It is government funded, I think, but they don't... I think like in the final stages of building him, they tell him to shut it down and then he defies them and builds it anyway.
Ben Storms:
Oh.
Chris Yee:
And that's how that happened. But yeah, so Astro Boy's thing is he fights evil and he protects humanity using his weapons and such. So I also watched the last episode of the first and second show. I couldn't find the last episode of the third show. But I just wanted to see how they ended. The last episode of the first show ends kind of interestingly. So I guess the theme of the episode is global warming, they're like global warming is a thing and the humans have to leave Earth. So they just take off into space in rockets and all the robots stay on Earth. And Astro actually becomes the president of Earth, dealing with all the Earth issues with global warming and stuff. And he temporarily solves it by throwing a dry ice bomb into the ocean and that temporarily solves it. But then it comes back again. And eventually at the end of the episode, he ends up solving it by flying this device into the sun and he sacrifices himself by flying into the sun. And that's how he dies.
Marcus Lehner:
Weaknesses?
Chris Yee:
The sun.
Marcus Lehner:
Sun. The sun. Not sunlight, not like a vampire, just the sun.
Chris Yee:
Yeah.
Marcus Lehner:
Nuclear fusion weakness.
Chris Yee:
The last episode of the second show is actually pretty dark, I think. I don't think they actually planned on this being the last episode, because it wasn't really that conclusive in terms of the whole series, but he basically goes on a mission to steal the plans of a prototype of a robot that has a bomb built into it. And he tries to steal the plan before they can actually build it. So he sneaks into this base, and in his mission, he finds this girl robot named Niki and become friends. And she helps him infiltrate the base. And it turns out that she is the prototype robot that has the bomb and the scientist that built her activates the bomb, so it's on a countdown. But then Astro, I guess, foils the scientist's getaway, so he's like stuck there with the bomb as well, and he convinces him to disarming the bomb. But in order to do that, he has to disassemble Niki in front of Astro, who has fallen in love with Niki, and you see this little girl robot get taken apart in front of him, and it's actually pretty creepy. So that's successful and the bomb is disarmed, but it ends with Astro, he ends up saving her legs and he replaces his own legs with hers for some reason.
Marcus Lehner:
It's also where the song lyric, "Niki, you so fine, you blow my mind," came from.
Chris Yee:
Sure. So those are just some story things about Astro. A lot of stuff happens to him, I didn't really watch a lot of it, I just saw the origin story and the end. But to get to his powers, which is the more important part for this fight, so he has rocket feet that allow him to fly, so he can fly all over the place. He has finger guns, so he can shoot lasers or bullets out of his fingers. They interchange between bullets and lasers, I think. I don't know. I guess he can fire both. He has a laser cannon arm in the 2003 show, so I don't think he has this in the first show or the second show, he only has it in the third show. So I don't know, maybe he doesn't have it in this fight, maybe he does. I don't know.
Marcus Lehner:
Pick one. Does he have his laser cannon arm or does he have-
Chris Yee:
I'm going to say no.
Marcus Lehner:
Okay.
Chris Yee:
But if he did have this laser cannon, apparently he can create a laser tornado with it.
Ben Storms:
Well, those words are confusing together.
Chris Yee:
Yeah. Which I guess he uses as a shield is what the Wiki said. He uses a laser tornado is a shield.
Ben Storms:
Well, that makes even sense.
Chris Yee:
But it doesn't really matter because I'm not going to use it. He's incredibly smart. He's fire resistant because he is been shown to fly directly into fires to rescue people from fires. He can dig really fast, which he's used in fights to... if his opponent is standing on ground, then he would dig under them and then the ground would cave in under them. So he's done that. He has hypersensitive hearing. So he can hear up to a thousand times what a normal person could hear. He has butt machine guns. He has machine gun on each of his butt cheeks.
Marcus Lehner:
Ah, a father's love.
Chris Yee:
I guess he can use it to defend against attacks from behind is the purpose of that. And that can also, I guess, shoot... it interchanges between lasers and bullets.
Marcus Lehner:
Maybe they were supposed to be like the boob machine guns from the Austin Powers. But when he was building it, he's like, "Oh wait, no, I'm building a boy robot. Dang it. All right. We'll put these back here then."
Chris Yee:
Well, this was before Austin Powers.
Marcus Lehner:
Well, no in my head canon.
Chris Yee:
And then he's really strong. That's a big thing of him, he's strong. It is the weird thing where it's in old cartoons though, they're not really consistent in showing what he can lift and what he can't and what he struggles with. But they do give a number to it. So they say that his strength is equal to 100,000 horsepower. There's one thing, I forget if it was in the manga or in a show, like an episode of the show, they upgraded to a million horsepower. But I think more consistently it is 100,000 horsepower. And to give some context to that, an average car has around 200 horsepower. And with 100,000 horsepower he would be able to lift two blue whales at the same time, 100 feet high, in one second.
Ben Storms:
That's not bad.
Marcus Lehner:
You think they did the math on the blue whale thing? Or they just made... they're just like, "This is how strong he is"?
Chris Yee:
I mean, they gave the 100,000 horsepower thing and then I looked up what horsepower is.
Marcus Lehner:
Oh, you did the math on the blue whale?
Chris Yee:
Yeah, I did the blue math thing. The blue whale thing.
Marcus Lehner:
The blue math.
Chris Yee:
So he has a good amount of fight experience. He primarily fights other robots and they're usually big robots or Kaiju size robots, but sometimes he fights smaller robots, too. And sometimes he fights monsters. And he isn't really pre-programmed to do anything, he has free will and he can basically do whatever he wants. And he's usually pretty playful, that's his personality. He has a similar personality, I would say to like Aang from The Last Airbender, where he's playful and he likes to have fun. But then if he has to fight, then he can fight, and he's not really afraid to fight.
Chris Yee:
Some of his weaknesses, I guess he's weak to like magnet and magnetic fields. Because in that episode with the girl robot, I guess there was a magnetic wall that he couldn't pass or something. So he's affected by magnets. He's also been shot with cartoon energy guns that weaken him and it's ambiguous what those guns actually are, but it's cartoon energy guns. He does tend to get tired sometimes if he exerts himself for a long amount of time, I guess. But that's sort of ambiguous how much time that is or how fast he gets tired. And then he is overly nice. So he tries to be friends first and then if friendship doesn't succeed, then he fights. So he probably won't be as aggressive as you guys, but he is afraid he is willing to fight and he like tries to defend people and himself. He's not afraid to defend himself. So that is Astro Boy, fighter number two. Marcus, what'd you do?
Marcus Lehner:
All right, well you guys failed to pick the self-declared absolute best robot ever, Mr. Bender Bending Rodriguez, AKA Bending Unit Number 22. For those of you who don't know Bender, first off, watch the entirety of Futurama. You'll thank me for it later, the show is the best. But if you don't have time to do that between now and the rest of this episode, Bender is basically a humanoid robot built around the year 3000, designed to work in a factory to bend steel beams into different angles specifically in Bender's case, it was beams for suicide booths that populate the city of future New New York. Personality-wise, generally he's just like a drunk, arrogant jerk, but most of that's him just trying to act cool. He has an extensive criminal rap sheet and pretty much, most every vice you can think of drugs, alcohol porn, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, is kind of his shtick.
Marcus Lehner:
But yeah, Futurama's not exactly a fighty show, but Bender does have some, some good abilities. First ability, bending. He's specifically very, very good at bending things. He even bent a giant girder specifically noted as unbendable, it had the word unbendable on it and he was able to bend that.
Chris Yee:
Ooh, that's pretty good.
Marcus Lehner:
He has shown some instances of being incredibly weak for a robot when he's doing something that's not technically bending. There was a small grate that he couldn't pull off and he's like, "Oh man, I can't get this off," but then when he realized he could bend the bars, he just demolished the whole thing. It doesn't come up that often. He does strong robot stuff, but there's one episode in particular where it was like this isn't technically bending, I can't really do much about it.
Marcus Lehner:
He's also very good at stealing. It's not a specific ability, but he's a pretty experienced pick pocket, if that ever ends up coming up. His arms and his legs do stretch, they're extendy arms and legs. I couldn't find exactly how far his maximum is, but it seemed to be pretty commonly between 10, 15 feet at most. Durability, he gets shot and dismembered and damaged quite a bit and generally seems to be able to survive just fine, similar to the Terminator. If he loses a limb or a body part, he can remote control them from his head to either reassemble or have them do something independently. If you lop his arm off, the arm can crawl around on its own or just go back and connect back to the body. He's made out of some pretty durable stuff assumedly, probably the most extreme example is that he dived into an actual lava pool to go save Fry's dog and came out of that. So he could survive being submerge lava for a bit.
Marcus Lehner:
But according to Bender himself on various occasions, he is made up of 40% zinc, 40% titanium, 30% iron, 40% dolomite, 40% horseshoe, 40% chromium, 60% storage space, 40% scrap metal, 40% wire, 40% empty, 0.04% nickel impurity, and 40% lead, if you believe a certain video game he's in. You may notice that does not add up to 100% at all, so I don't actually know what Bender's made up of. He just continuously declares, he made up of 40% of different things.
Ben Storms:
I really appreciated that that included both 60% storage space and 40% empty space.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah, I know he's really nothing.
Chris Yee:
Empty space? You can't store anything in the empty space. It's empty space.
Ben Storms:
That's true, it's empty. Yeah. If you were storing things, it would not be empty.
Marcus Lehner:
But speaking of empty, he does have a chest cavity, he has a drawer on the front of his chest. It's a bit Tardis-ish in that it seems to hold more than it should, but I'm going to chalk that up to more cartoony things, rather than give him some crazy Bag of Holding powers. It is a pretty strong cavity. He's been able to contain bomb explosions within himself, actually on multiple occasions, he does two or three times over the course of the show, where he puts a bomb inside his chest cavity and it explodes. And he doesn't come out great, but he does survive each time. His eyes can telescope out to about to zoom in on things. He can turn his feet into roller skates. He can burp fire, usually immediately after drinking a beer or something. He can shit bricks literally, and I didn't realize this was actually a recurring gag in the show, but when he's surprised he'll literally shit a physical brick and it's happened seven or eight times of it over the course of the show. So that was a straight up power, it's on my list. And of course the most important, he's got a shiny metal, as per his catchphrase.
Chris Yee:
That he would like you to bite.
Marcus Lehner:
Exactly. He has some weaknesses. Sobriety, he runs on alcohol fuel, so if he does not drink, he actually becomes drunk/hungover, so he'll get five o'clock rough shadow and act drunk if he's not drinking. But he can also get drunk, so he can just can be on either side of the scale. He's also weak to magnets. He doesn't stop functioning, but it removes his inhibitions and he starts living his desire to become a folk singer if you put magnets near his head. And he has one last weakness, that he solved, but it is still an inconvenience for him. For awhile he could not get up off his back, if he fell exactly backwards, kind of like a turtle. But then there's an episode where he fell on his back and he was about to die and a turtle that also had fallen on his back right next to him, showed him how to roll over onto his front. So he can get back up, but it does take him a minute if he falls exactly behind his back and not slightly on his side.
Chris Yee:
Futurama is great.
Ben Storms:
Futurama is great.
Marcus Lehner:
Futurama's an amazing show. Just go watch it. But his main stuff is that he's go these extendo arms and legs and that he's really, really quite strong. I don't know, not sure how many horsepowers it is, because I don't have a number for that, but he could definitely bend you up. And that is, that is bender.
Chris Yee:
So those are our three fighters.
Marcus Lehner:
Those are our three fighters. Our competition will be happening, as it always does, in Central Park of New York is our go-to battlegrounds, all things fighting. So the way I like to start this is, who do we think would end up pairing off first?
Chris Yee:
I feel like it will probably be... Well, it depends on who the Terminator... like what's his goal.
Ben Storms:
Right.
Chris Yee:
Because he needs to terminate someone.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah, you're definitely the most mission driven.
Chris Yee:
You're the most programmed.
Ben Storms:
Right.
Marcus Lehner:
The least prone to hesitancy.
Ben Storms:
Yeah, it's kind of unfortunate because, in theory, he could stay back. But also if he's assigned to kill one of you, he's just going to try to do that. So the whole hiding in plain sight thing doesn't really come into play as much as I hoped it would.
Chris Yee:
Yeah. How do we decide who he is assigned to kill?
Ben Storms:
It could be a coin flip.
Marcus Lehner:
Which one of us most like Sarah Connor?
Chris Yee:
Probably me. Probably.
Ben Storms:
Astro Boy is partially human, kind of, vaguely.
Chris Yee:
No, he's not. He's fully robot.
Ben Storms:
Oh, well, man, his dad didn't do a great job, huh? All right-
Chris Yee:
I mean, I guess he has human personality.
Marcus Lehner:
Okay, so let's start with Ben and Chris, let's say you guys are slightly more likely to square off vis a vis-
Chris Yee:
Yeah, I guess because the Terminator is more villainous and I'm more heroic and then Bender's just neutral.
Marcus Lehner:
And Bender's probably the most prone to just enjoy the show.
Chris Yee:
Yeah.
Ben Storms:
This is also very, very true.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah, all right, so let's go with that.
Chris Yee:
That does seem the most likely.
Ben Storms:
So you have like laser slash... I'm guessing the bullet stuff probably isn't going to do much. Because I'm guessing it's probably smaller-
Chris Yee:
Yeah, I don't know the laser stuff, like how strong it is against you. It's kind of hard to judge.
Ben Storms:
I know that the T-800s are supposed to be... let's see, vulnerable to most plasma weaponry, was at least partially resistant to the weaker plasma weapons used by the HK flying Mini Hunters. So there's going to be some effect definitely from the laser.
Chris Yee:
Okay. It might not destroy you, but it might do damage.
Ben Storms:
Yeah, it'll probably do damage. Definitely.
Chris Yee:
Okay. I feel like all three of us are going to have the same robot weaknesses. We're all weak to magnets.
Marcus Lehner:
I don't know about Terminator.
Ben Storms:
I don't know about Terminator either.
Chris Yee:
I mean, they've used magnets on Terminators before. It pulls them to the magnet, it doesn't really affect their brain, I guess, or their chip?
Ben Storms:
Yeah, it doesn't affect their brain, but I think they do... Hold on, I'm trying to Google on this.
Chris Yee:
But it incapacitates them. They've definitely used magnets in the movies before.
Marcus Lehner:
I mean, before we go too deep on magnets, do any of us have magnets?
Chris Yee:
I think all of us would avoid magnets.
Ben Storms:
Okay, so magnets don't matter. All right, we figured that out.
Chris Yee:
So Astro Boy can fly, so he is a lot more mobile than you, like agile.
Ben Storms:
That's definitely true. The Terminator is not... it can run in bursts of speed but that's it. It can burst up to like 22 miles per hour, this is saying.
Chris Yee:
I think your path to beating Astro Boy is tiring him out or tricking him or something. Because he'll try to be your friend first or if he overexerts himself, then he'll tire himself out.
Ben Storms:
Hmm, Tricking him is maybe not the Terminator's forte.
Chris Yee:
That's probably more a Bender thing.
Ben Storms:
Probably more a Bender thing.
Marcus Lehner:
Oh my God, yeah, Bender has one heck of advantage there, now that I think about that.
Ben Storms:
I mean, yeah, he's basically is going to walk up to him and shoot him. So I guess I'll get the first shot in. How-
Chris Yee:
He's been shown to take bullet shots. Usually when a gun weakens him, it's like an energy thing.
Ben Storms:
So my assumption is that it would have that plasma rifle, because that's what they would be deployed with.
Chris Yee:
Okay, yeah. Yeah, that would probably do some damage to him.
Ben Storms:
So the question is, is getting the first shot in, enough to give any kind of real advantage? Because I feel like in a straight up fight, Astro Boy is going to be stronger, just because of the mobility and whatnot.
Chris Yee:
And the 100,00 horsepower.
Ben Storms:
Also the 100,000 horsepower. So I guess that's the real question.
Chris Yee:
Yeah. I don't know.
Ben Storms:
Here's another question, does Astro Boy ever fight humans?
Chris Yee:
I don't think he does. He fights monsters and he fights... he's fought human-sized robots before. I don't think he's ever fought humans. I mean, I could be wrong, because there're like 295 episodes and I didn't watch a lot of them.
Ben Storms:
I'm guessing he's not able to, because I feel like that's more of a Isaac Asimov kind of thing, but...
Chris Yee:
Well, so there is, a theme in the show is that there are robot rules, and one of the robot rules is that you can't harm a human, but I think Astro Boy is supposed to be different than normal robots.
Ben Storms:
Okay.
Chris Yee:
So he actually has free will and stuff. And I actually didn't mention, but his nemesis is Atlas who is supposed to be the opposite version of... the evil version of him, basically. And Atlas doesn't like humans and doesn't have to follow that rule of not hurting humans.
Ben Storms:
Got it. Okay, so he probably would be reluctant to harm something that looks like a human, but it wouldn't-
Chris Yee:
Right. He would never try to hurt a human.
Ben Storms:
Right. But it's not like he would see the Terminator in a skin sheath and think it was a human and not be able to hurt it? I don't think that would happen.
Chris Yee:
Oh, no, I don't think that would happen.
Ben Storms:
Yeah.
Chris Yee:
He might be reluctant to hurt him if he does think it's human at first, but-
Ben Storms:
I think the question is really how long would it be until Astro Boy starts fighting back?
Chris Yee:
In the 2009 movie, he does have x-ray vision, but I don't think he has that in the animes, as far as I know. So I'm not going to give him that. So I think he would be fooled by the human thing for at least a little bit.
Ben Storms:
Got it. Okay.
Marcus Lehner:
I guess what's the straight fire fight? The straight fire fight, say the initial event... Ignore the initial event for second, straight fire fight, what do we think the odds are here?
Chris Yee:
So if both of them are all out in fight mode?
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah, the initial shots have gone by, now you guys are across the field shooting at each other with your plasma/laser/laser tornado shields going around.
Chris Yee:
I think it's pretty definitively Astro Boy then.
Ben Storms:
Yeah, I was going to say 80 to 90% Astro Boy in that situation.
Chris Yee:
Yeah. We can say like 85 Astro Boy.
Ben Storms:
85? Yeah, I think that's fair.
Marcus Lehner:
So 85 Astro Boy. And now we just skew that 85 down a bit for what we think the impact of Astro Boy's naivety on it.
Ben Storms:
Right. Maybe 65, 70?
Marcus Lehner:
70/30 probably?
Chris Yee:
I'm okay with 70, I think.
Ben Storms:
Yeah, 70?
Chris Yee:
Sure.
Ben Storms:
That's fair. Yeah. Because I don't think it's a strong chance that... It's basically can the Terminator disable Astro Boy to the point where he can't be at full strength for a fight before Astro Boy-
Marcus Lehner:
It's realistic, too, in a firefight that just whoever gets the first couple shot... whoever gets the first good shot in...
Ben Storms:
Right, yeah.
Chris Yee:
Yeah. And Terminator has a higher chance of getting the first shot in.
Ben Storms:
Yeah, exactly. And I think Terminator's chance of getting the first shot is very high. It's just that I'm not super confident in that first shot being enough to... or first salvo even, being enough to disable Astro Boy.
Chris Yee:
Yeah.
Ben Storms:
But I think 70% is, is probably pretty good for Astro Boy's chance of one-on-one versus Terminator.
Marcus Lehner:
All right. So now assuming Chris defeats then, so Terminator is out for the count, now it's Bender and Astro Boy left after
Chris Yee:
That now will Astro Boy try to befriend Bender? I do think he will because he does try to be friends with other robots usually, too, not just humans.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah. The thing is Bender's 100% absolutely going to exploit Astro Boy.
Chris Yee:
Yeah, definitely.
Marcus Lehner:
He's well practiced at taking off the naivety and getting the cheap shot in after that.
Chris Yee:
I mean, I guess your killing blow is somehow bending me?
Marcus Lehner:
Right, yeah, it is. And by somehow in half.
Chris Yee:
Yeah. I mean, I think your chances of fooling Astro Boy are actually pretty high.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah, no, I think I'm advantaged by a margin. I'm trying to figure out how much.
Ben Storms:
What does that get you though? How much does that help you actually stop Astro Boy?
Marcus Lehner:
Well, if I just grab Astro Boy and bend him in half, I mean, it's...
Chris Yee:
If your initial shot or whatever you try to do, doesn't work, then you're screwed.
Ben Storms:
Yeah.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah, once I'm an enemy to you, I'm at a severe disadvantage. There's still some tricks, like maybe if I'm in pieces, one of my arms or something could do something. But yeah, after that, once I'm done out, I mean, I just have... yeah, not a lot.
Chris Yee:
I mean, I think once Astro Boy figures you out, then you have basically like a 5% chance of winning.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah. It's not a lot. But let's just leave it as, to simplify things, what is the odds that Astro Boy figures out Bender and that Bender's... Or what's the odds that Bender's initial attack fails, is I guess the question?
Chris Yee:
So what is his usual... because he does trick people on Futurama. What's his success rate do you think?
Ben Storms:
He's pretty good at it.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah. Especially, I mean, he fools Fry all the time. He scams everybody.
Chris Yee:
Well, Fry isn't the smartest person in the world.
Marcus Lehner:
Well, is Astro Boy?
Chris Yee:
Astro Boy actually is pretty smart.
Ben Storms:
But he is naive, right? He's-
Chris Yee:
He is naive though, yeah.
Ben Storms:
I think Astro Boy is very foolable.
Chris Yee:
I would agree.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah. I want to say it's like, I think it's pretty close once Astro Boy's already been fighting, he's already in fight mode. I kind of want to do like 55, 45 for Bender after you fought Ben. But the percentage would be higher, if we're the first two to interact.
Chris Yee:
Yeah, I agree with that. I don't know how you're going to do that in the calcs, but I agree with that.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah, I got it. Don't worry.
Chris Yee:
You just going to average them or something?
Marcus Lehner:
Basically the way I do it, is I have the three paths of who fights first and then whoever wins that fight, down a bracket, and then I multiply all the numbers together so they add up to one.
Chris Yee:
Okay, so they do have two separate branches that you can input.
Marcus Lehner:
Yes. Don't worry about the math.
Ben Storms:
Yes, in our high tech simulation known as Microsoft Excel.
Marcus Lehner:
Google Sheets, my boy.
Ben Storms:
Google Sheets.
Chris Yee:
So you said 55/45 and then what's the other one?
Marcus Lehner:
In Bender's favor, after you've defeated the Terminator. And that will do, if the Terminator defeats Astro Boy. This one's pretty straightforward, I think. I think this one's like 85/15, like 90/10?
Ben Storms:
Yeah, like 90/10.
Chris Yee:
Yeah.
Ben Storms:
It's a pretty clean sweep, I think.
Chris Yee:
You're not going to fool the Terminator.
Ben Storms:
Yeah, the Terminator, I think, is pretty much incapable of being fooled. That's... yeah.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah. My ranged weapon is shitting a brick and throwing it at you. Although, he does have a laser cannon in one episode, but I left that off my list.
Ben Storms:
Yeah, that's fair.
Marcus Lehner:
All right. So that's those scenarios. Now we have Bender and Astro Boy face off.
Chris Yee:
So I think in this case you probably have, I would say like an 85% chance of fooling me.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah. And then let's take maybe five off for a chance my initial bending does fail maybe?
Chris Yee:
Yeah.
Marcus Lehner:
So it's like 80/20 maybe?
Chris Yee:
Sure.
Ben Storms:
Yeah, that seems fair.
Marcus Lehner:
So now we have me, I just bent Astro Boy in half. Than what's left... Oh, man, then what's left is me and Ben again.
Chris Yee:
I think you still lose. I don't think you have a chance of winning overall, because you always have to fight Ben and it's basically the same, I think, as before.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah. And then Chris, Ben has got to be... Well, actually I think Ben's is going to be a bit... It's probably closer to Chris's, after you see-
Chris Yee:
If Astro Boy is not the first person to fight, then he'll see that both of you are evil and...
Ben Storms:
Right, yeah.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah, this is a scenario where Astro Boy defeats Bender and then Terminator's left.
Chris Yee:
Yeah. I think that's the pretty much the same.
Ben Storms:
Yeah.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah, I'm going to leave that the same as the-
Ben Storms:
I don't think there's any real difference there. Because it's not like Astro Boy would be kill mode and just immediately...
Chris Yee:
But then in the scenario where Bender and Terminator are fighting the first time, and Astro Boy's just sitting back and watching, I think he wins in both cases. Because he'll see that both of you are evil.
Ben Storms:
So I would say that Bender could play off killing the Terminator as self-defense. I think it's Astro Boy's guard would be up a little bit more, but I think it's still-
Marcus Lehner:
That is actually a good point. Because Astro Boy is now attacking this robot. Bender could definitely play the victim.
Chris Yee:
He could play the victim or he could be like, "Oh, I'm another robot hero. We can team up."
Ben Storms:
Right, yeah, both of those are very in Bender's character, so...
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah. Not that this is a likely scenario, but if I'm able to defeat the Terminator-
Ben Storms:
Right?
Marcus Lehner:
... I have a very good chance... I'm going to give it 90/10 against Astro Boy there.
Ben Storms:
Yeah.
Marcus Lehner:
On the the 10% chance that I get there.
Ben Storms:
But Bender Bending Rodriguez defeats a T-800. Yeah.
Marcus Lehner:
God, every time you say T-800, I'm like, "Man, Texas Instruments has come a long way from calculators."
Ben Storms:
Yeah, that is a fun alternate universe Terminator timeline, isn't it? Where-
Marcus Lehner:
The TI-83.
Ben Storms:
Yeah. Skynet was actually just Texas instruments, their attempt to make like a web app.
Marcus Lehner:
All right. So now this next one's going to be after the Terminator destroys Bender, it's Astro Boy versus Terminator. So it's 30/70 in Astro Boy's favor before. It's got to be a little more-
Chris Yee:
More towards Astro Boy.
Ben Storms:
Yeah, I think it's at least... I'd say like 85/15 at that point. Because he's just full on...
Chris Yee:
I mean, that's what we said before, you were able to fool me.
Ben Storms:
Right. That's what we said for just all out kill mode, yeah.
Chris Yee:
All right, time to crunch those numbers.
Marcus Lehner:
Yep. I'll crunch the numbers and then we'll spin the wheel, which I guess will be the next thing that happens in the episode. So tallying results everybody.
Chris Yee:
Beep, boop, bop.
Ben Storms:
Do, do, do, do, do, do.
Marcus Lehner:
Okay guys, this is a tight one. I've done up the odds here. With the least chance to win on the spinning Wheel of Final Determination, it is Bender unsurprisingly, but not by that much. Bender has a 28.3% chance of success here.
Ben Storms:
Wow.
Marcus Lehner:
Next up is the Terminator at 34.5%. And Astro Boy does have the highest chance of winning at 37.2. But really, it's anybody's game.
Ben Storms:
Man, we really just need Astro Boy to be more jaded and then it's a clean sweep, but...
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah, I really only have one fight that I'm ultimately favored against, which is against Astro Boy. But it is the most likely scenario that first off, Astro Boy and Terminator face off and that Astro Boy wins, and that puts me in the best spot.
Ben Storms:
Right, yeah. Fun little rock paper scissors we got here.
Chris Yee:
Yeah, this is the most rock paper scissors we've had.
Ben Storms:
Yeah. All right, time to pull the wheel up?
Chris Yee:
Yeah, I'll pull the wheel up. And this time, we haven't done this in the past, but I'm actually going to try recording this, and then if you want to watch the wheel spin, go to YouTube and you can watch the video version of this episode, and watch it with us.
Marcus Lehner:
If you desperately need to watch the... to go back in time and relive that suspense.
Chris Yee:
Yeah.
Marcus Lehner:
But it's also a good excuse to go to our YouTube channel and subscribe and-
Ben Storms:
Like.
Marcus Lehner:
Comment, subscribe? Like, comment, subscribe? Is that what the YouTubers say nowadays?
Ben Storms:
Ring the bell. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, do all that.
Marcus Lehner:
Smash that bell, the fight bell.
Ben Storms:
This is wonderful.
Marcus Lehner:
Oh God, there's pictures of them on there.
Chris Yee:
Okay. Here's the wheel with our fighters. We got the Terminator, Bender, and Astro Boy. I think the spinner, this little arrow on top, is where it's pointing to. So whoever's on top wins.
Ben Storms:
Oh, got it.
Chris Yee:
Okay, Here we go.
Marcus Lehner:
Oh...
Chris Yee:
Terminator.
Marcus Lehner:
It's the Terminator.
Chris Yee:
Terminator. It's almost Bender.
Ben Storms:
So close to Bender.
Chris Yee:
That was really close. Okay, Ben, how do you win?
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah, Ben, describe your ultimate victory. This is how it actually happens.
Ben Storms:
So there is a crackling in Central Park as a ball of energy forms. I never talked about the Terminator coming back in time and how they do all that, but it comes back in time you get the idea. Ball of energy forms, there's a flash of light, and then suddenly there is a naked Arnold Schwarzenegger with a plasma rifle. I'm going to say he kills a hotdog guy and takes his clothes just so we don't have naked Arnold Schwarzenegger for all of this, just to spare people that.
Chris Yee:
Good call. Good call.
Marcus Lehner:
But now I have naked hotdog guy.
Ben Storms:
He's dead. It's fine. Don't worry about it.
Chris Yee:
He killed the hot dog guy. He did not take his clothes. He just killed him.
Ben Storms:
Yeah. Just killed him. We have the fun first person shot where you see, "Target acquired, Astro Boy," a little picture of him, little vital signs. It notes his little butt cannons and things. So the Terminator is prepared. And I think there's no stealth involved really, Terminator just walks calmly forward. Astro Boy starts, "Hey friend, how's it going?" I don't know how Astro Boy sounds, but that's probably close enough. And the Terminator just walks straight up and just shoots him in the face. And Astro Boy goes, "Oh, that wasn't very nice," and then he shoots him again. I think that's kind of it. Because otherwise, if anything else happens, Terminator probably loses this fight.
Chris Yee:
Yep.
Ben Storms:
So we're going to say just that does it. And I think that Bender does... I do get to have my fun moment where Bender sees this and says, "Oh hey, fellow Terminator. It's me Bender, the T-150," and he starts humming the theme song. He's going... he's trying to really play it up, but unfortunately what Bender doesn't realize is that Terminator actually had two targets, and one of them was Bender Bending Rodriguez. And he just calmly levels his plasma rifle and just blows him away. And I don't think there's that much of a conflict on that one.
Chris Yee:
I guess that is pretty much how it would go. The Terminator's pretty straightforward with his mission.
Ben Storms:
Yeah, kind of a lot in a day's work, you know? Not the most exciting one, but what are you going to do? That's how Terminators do it, they terminate.
Marcus Lehner:
All right, and with that, the ultimate victor declared. Congratulations Terminator. We are going to move on to our would you rather question for the day. All right, Ben, since you are the winner, I'll start with you. Are you ready for, would you rather?
Ben Storms:
Sure, I am.
Marcus Lehner:
Would you rather never be able to use a knife again or never be able to use a spoon again?
Ben Storms:
Oh.
Chris Yee:
Ooh, that's interesting.
Ben Storms:
Okay, this is a very important question. Does this-
Marcus Lehner:
Yes.
Ben Storms:
Okay then. The question is, does this apply to cooking implements as well? And if that's the case, I'm assuming that all spoons, ladles, et cetera, are included in spoons?
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah. Yes. I already yes.
Ben Storms:
Yes, okay. I mean, that's the correct answer then. Oh man, that actually makes things really hard. In terms of eating, I feel like I would much rather be able to use a knife than be able to use a spoon because, other than soup, you can get by pretty well without a spoon for most things. And I'm not a huge... I like soup, but it's not a got to have it for me, so I could deal.
Chris Yee:
Yeah, I mean, I think there are less things you need a spoon for. But when you do need a spoon, there isn't really any substitute.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah, the side of a fork is a workable substitution for a knife in most cases.
Ben Storms:
And that's where, if it didn't involved cooking, I think I'd be fine with giving up knives. But cooking without knives is going to be really hard, and I think a lot harder than cooking without spoons.
Chris Yee:
That is true.
Ben Storms:
Because you can use a rubber spatula for a lot of the things you can... aside from cooking a soup or something and serving it afterwards. You can use a rubber spatula for most of the stuff you use a spoon for.
Chris Yee:
Or you can just pour without a spoon.
Ben Storms:
Right, or just pour. Yeah. So it's annoying, but I feel like there's a lot of things you need a knife for, more so than a spoon in cooking.
Chris Yee:
In cooking, I think that's true. And eating, you could use a side of a fork or you just bite it.
Ben Storms:
Yeah. There's things like steak would be hard.
Chris Yee:
Yeah.
Marcus Lehner:
Well, I've eaten a steak with my bare hands before you don't need any utensils.
Ben Storms:
I mean, yes, it's workable, but yeah, it's not ideal. This is actually pretty tough. What are you guys thinking?
Marcus Lehner:
I'm a little bit in line with what you're saying, Ben, in that the cooking aspect of it. I'm basically trying to determine if I can get away without a knife on cooking prep because you can get like those chopper things, you can have-
Ben Storms:
Oh, like the Slap Chop?
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah, you can get away with the Slap Chop.
Chris Yee:
Doesn't that have blades in it?
Ben Storms:
I mean, if we go down that road-
Marcus Lehner:
I wouldn't call it a knife.
Ben Storms:
... that gets complicated. Are we saying like scissor knives, too?
Marcus Lehner:
Oh, scissors. Actually, you can actually do a lot of prep with scissors that you wouldn't think to do with scissors.
Ben Storms:
You can, that's true. Herbs and things, you can definitely cut with scissors. You can cut probably a carrot with scissors. I don't know.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah, I was thinking a carrot. You can actually just do that with a pair of scissors. I mean, there's a lot of classics that are going to be tough, like a potato.
Ben Storms:
Right.
Marcus Lehner:
But also, you don't need that much spoon. Spoons are good for...
Ben Storms:
Spoons you serve with and taste with.
Marcus Lehner:
Spoons are good for tasting.
Ben Storms:
But otherwise, it's not-
Marcus Lehner:
Spoons are good for tasting, spoons are good for stirring. I guess you could have a spatula instead.
Ben Storms:
Yeah, spatula you can do the stirring with. So that one's fine, but...
Marcus Lehner:
Man, I feel like knife is more... I feel like once, if I was in it, I feel like I would find easier ways to get away without a knife.
Ben Storms:
What about knives in a non-food scenario? Can you use an Exacto knife for-
Marcus Lehner:
Oh, no. No, no box cutter, no knives.
Ben Storms:
Oh yeah, see that might be swaying me. I was already leaning towards keeping knives, but if that's the case, there are no non-culinary spoon uses. There are lots of non-culinary knife uses.
Marcus Lehner:
Egg races.
Ben Storms:
Okay. There's one non-culinary spoon use. Literally one.
Chris Yee:
Carving a pumpkin, you need both a knife and a spoon.
Ben Storms:
You know what? I can just give up carving pumpkins. I'll be okay with that.
Marcus Lehner:
I haven't carved a pumpkin in like 15 years.
Ben Storms:
Yeah. All right, I think I'm leaning pretty heavily towards losing the spoons, personally. Does anyone have a strong counter argument?
Chris Yee:
Well, I think both of your main reasons for that are because you cook. I don't really cook that much, so I'm looking at it purely from a food... eating food, perspective.
Marcus Lehner:
How much do you like soup though? Because that's really the question you have to ask yourself.
Chris Yee:
I mean, I could give up soup, I think. I like soup.
Marcus Lehner:
Cereal though? Do you eat cereal?
Chris Yee:
Cereal too, but I don't really eat cereal much anymore. I used to like cereal a lot.
Marcus Lehner:
Actually, you could definitely do cereal... Cereal I think you could get away with a fork because I just drink the milk out of the bowl afterwards anyway. So you could get away with that.
Chris Yee:
I mean, it is better having them together, the milk and the cereal.
Marcus Lehner:
Oh yeah, no doubt.
Ben Storms:
You could do like ramen, use chopsticks for the noodles and drink the soup from the bowl afterwards.
Chris Yee:
Yeah, that is the thing you can just drink from the bowl.
Ben Storms:
You wouldn't want to do that with a beef stew or something, that'd be a little bit weird, but technically you could.
Chris Yee:
I guess I agree with you then, I'll give up the spoon. Because you can still do things without the spoon. I think there are things that you can't still do without a knife, if you don't have a knife.
Ben Storms:
Right. Or at least, the extra complication is much higher than without having a spoon for the spoon things.
Chris Yee:
Yeah.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah, I think we've all convinced each other that... There's probably one spoon argument that we're missing, like, "You got to use spoons for this," that is just like, "Oh snap, that changes the conversation again." But from what we've thought about right now, I agree. All right, I'm voting for getting rid of spoons, no spoons.
Ben Storms:
Spoon's gone, get out spoons.
Chris Yee:
Get rid of no spoons.
Ben Storms:
Live by the spoon, die by the spoon.
Chris Yee:
There is no spoon.
Ben Storms:
Yeah, we had to make the joke.
Marcus Lehner:
There is no spoon, but there is in The Matrix, this thing called Patreon. You can go to www.patreon.com/absurdhypotheticals, and you can put your money in there. And what that does is it makes the money come to us. And with that money, we make more show, which means you have more show to put more money in to bring it to us, to make more show, to put more money in.
Chris Yee:
Or we buy spoons and knives, so we don't have to worry about it.
Ben Storms:
Yeah, we don't have to choose anymore.
Marcus Lehner:
Yes, it's a cycle. So really, ultimately your money comes back to you in theory. So it's like free money. So you might as well dump it in our Patreon on and then you'll see those returns come someday.
Ben Storms:
I want to make it very clear, we are not a pyramid scheme. I just want to put that out there for any lawyers listening. We are not a pyramid scheme. We are making no claims, whatever Marcus may be saying right now.
Marcus Lehner:
But yes, Patreon is a way to support the show with your hard earned dollars. We appreciate your support. You also get access to our monthly, behind the scenes content, our bonus content. It's no longer quite exactly behind the scenes, it's just stuff. But it's all good, it's all there.
Ben Storms:
Yeah, if you'd like to hear us be somehow less focused than this, please become a Patreon and listen to those episodes.
Marcus Lehner:
And then other things you can do, send us questions. We are very clearly running out of Would You Rather questions, so those would be awesome to get from listeners. Also just main episode topic questions. If you have a cool idea for a hypothetical, we'd love to hear it and we'd love to do it as an episode. So send it our way, best is probably via email to absurdhypotheticals@gmail.com. And if you want to support the show in a non-monetary way, leave us a review. It's a great way to help build the show via all algorithms and stats and things. And I know when I check out a new podcast, I check the reviews and hope there's many of them that are very good. And then I'm like, "Well, if other people like it I'll have to like it. It's got to be good."
Ben Storms:
Also, just tell people about us. That's a good one, too.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah, that's actually a really big one.
Ben Storms:
That's a pretty big one.
Marcus Lehner:
If you use one of the fun facts you learned on this show, like at a party to impress your friends, and they immediately counter, as they should, with, "Why the heck do you even know that?" Blame it on us. Be like, "Oh yeah, sorry, I listen to silly podcast. It's actually pretty good. It's called Absurd Hypotheticals. They do like weird sciencey things and hypotheticals and you should check it out." And then they'll also know a bunch of weird facts. And then you guys can have weird fact competitions except you'll have the same facts, you're both listening to our show. So it's going to be pretty even-
Ben Storms:
And pretty weird.
Marcus Lehner:
... and you might need the Wheel of Final Determination to establish a clear winner.
Chris Yee:
Not the Wheel of Fortune.
Ben Storms:
Not the Wheel of Fortune, also for any lawyers listening, legally distinct.
Marcus Lehner:
All right, but in any case for you lawyers listening and everybody else, you can listen to more of our legally questionable antics next week, where we answer the following question. Not only are we answering a cool question, we're one upping this episode, because it's not just a robot fight, it's a giant robot fight.