SPOILERS ARE ALL UP IN THIS. We mention specific things that have happened all throughout, so if you aren't caught up you should go back.

This is a recap episode that goes over episodes 21-40, sprinkled around with some questions and comments, plans for the future, and random rambling.

Welcome to Oops!

All Talk Apocalypses, a show where we discuss our normal show, which is an exploration of the collapse of society by playing fun tabletop role-playing games.

Brady's leaving.

I'm joined by my two hosts.

As Brady gets up and leaves.

Yes, Brady's gone now.

Brady was one of our cast members for the first 40 episodes, but he decided to leave in the middle of our recap episode.

Yes, just caught up and left.

This episode is going to be a recap for 21 through 40, and I'm about to get both of my co-hosts to introduce themselves.

How would you like us to introduce ourselves this time around?

It's been 40 episodes, what?

Yeah, if they don't know you at this point, why are they listening to the recap episode?

I don't know, maybe people in the future will hear that it gets really good at around episode 42, and people will just say, just listen to the recap episodes.

Yeah, just skip the rest of it.

And then skip 41, because 41's real bad.

I feel like you got really good at episode 14.

I think we've been really good since the beginning.

Thank you very much.

I don't think we're really good for it.

The best thing we've done is the trailer that I did without any assistance from you guys.

Oh yeah, that was a banger trailer.

Dude, that music is my favorite music I've made for the show.

That is such a good trailer.

And I forgot until I listened to it recently, and I was like, this is so much better than everything I've said.

That trailer was so good.

We need to use it more, the theme in that.

But I guess, I guess, I'm Jacob, I play Ocean.

It's really all I can think of.

There's nothing exciting, yeah.

I don't have any questions to fall in love with, or there's no gimmicky answer, a gimmicky explanation of who Ocean is, because it's a recap episode.

Ocean is currently, I am Jacob, I'm not Ocean right now.

I am my own being.

I am not channeling a creative entity that dwells within my soul.

I gotta separate myself from the Jacob and the Ocean persona here.

Yes, normally you just become, you really find those motivations to become Ocean, but now you need to be outside.

You need to be able to look at who you become and comment on it, which is a special skill set.

It's tough.

And who are you?

My character is Book, and I am Brady, the super stupid piece of shit idiot.

Look at Lohr.

Ooh, we got some harsh words here.

Brady's spoilering what I was gonna talk about later.

No, we have some self-esteem issues on this podcast.

Not self-esteem, just self-talk.

My self-esteem is fine, my self-talk is not great.

So do we want to start with the recap portion of it?

Last time, what we did was have Stu ramble on for like eight minutes, recapping every single thing that happened.

And it was terrible.

I think we should count up from 20 to 40, and we each take turns trying to remember what happened in the episode based on the title.

Based just on the title?

This isn't fair because I know everything that happened in every episode perfectly.

So every third one will be accurate, which will keep us in line.

I like this idea, it sounds fun.

Start us off so that we have a baseline of accuracy.

Okay, so you know how stuff goes.

Okay, so this string of episodes, just to frame it a little bit, the last episode from the first 20 groups, so episode 20 was Pompeii, which was kind of the big action episode where you guys went and assaulted, well, you got assaulted within Crandall's tower.

Yeah, that was a great episode.

Which seems like it was so long ago.

And that was followed up by episode 21, the first in our scope today, which was Korobniki, which is the Tetris song.

It's actually a Russian folk song, but it is the Tetris song.

And the episode was named that because you guys spent an inordinately large amount of time trying to figure out how to stack bodies in the back of Pompeii.

That is correct.

It also kind of fit with the collapsing tower type stuff and Ocean messing around with the breaking building and trying to get a Crandall-shaped thing into the right slot.

I felt like there were just a lot of good parallels with that song title.

But yeah, that was a kind of a cool down episode, but it really ramped back up quickly because there was that one sniper dude who was trying to track you guys down.

So you guys had to get out of there fast.

All right, what's our next title?

And Jacob will take it.

I'll take it?

Yeah.

Oh, that means Brady doesn't remember it.

Oh, Stu's gonna have to explain the music choice for the title choice for a lot of these.

No, you have to say what you think it was and then Saul will correct us.

Well, I mean, this one's really easy.

This episode's called The Spider and the Lamps.

And if I remember correctly, this is the one where when trying to escape, we navigate through the long dark and we run into a big, scary spider monster.

I really liked that one, too.

I thought that was a fun one because it was like that combat didn't go at all how I expected it to go.

And it was probably Brady's funniest moment where he, when I described the horrific spider coming down when only Book could see it, and then Book radios, or when only Ocean could see it, and then Ocean radios him to let him know.

And Book picks it up like, hey, how's it going?

And it's like, oh, there's a horrific spider above me.

We're about to die.

It was creepy enough, like with the weird babies jaegering around the mama spider.

Yeah, I love that.

That was pretty much the entire episode.

That was just that spider.

Yeah, little spoiler.

I drew the fuck out of that, and I've been working on coloring it for like a year.

Oh, yeah, you showed us the work in progress drafts of it, but I don't think we ever saw the finished product.

That's because it's not finished.

That's episode, episode 22 is an interesting one for me because it's so tonally different than I think all the rest of our episodes, because I think most of our episodes, our conflicts are, you know, with people and AI entities, and I think towards the beginning, in the beginning, we had like some more like monster fights, but Spider in the Lamps, it's kind of just a pure, scavenged through the tunnels and fight a big scary monster kind of thing.

Yeah, I think it's the most apocalyptic our podcast has ever been.

At least the most that has really knelt into like the creepy, crawly monster creatures.

Yeah, I think we should try to do that more, episodes like that.

I like them a lot, and I think I'm better at it than a lot of the other stuff, other like human combat.

I don't know anything about guns and close quarter combat maneuvers, so I'm not as good as describing that, but I can really describe how a Jaegered mama spider will ooze poison onto your shoulder or how its babies will burst out when you hit it too hard and their eyeballs will pop from the pressure differential when they bite into your blood.

Ugh, so gross.

Yeah, that stuff I got down, but like reloading a weapon, can't describe that.

We should mention The Spider and the Lamps is a Forgive Durden song from a weird pop punk concept, like rock opera album he did, that is very good, especially if you're me and you're 14.

I don't know who that is or what that song is.

It has guest vocals by Max Bemis, the lead singer of Say Anything.

Oh, interesting.

Your favorite band of all time.

Yes, my favorite band.

What's the next episode, Brady?

Episode 23.

Our next episode is Hospital Food.

I got things to say about this episode once we're done recapping it, specifically things viewers have to say about this episode.

Oh, interesting.

I'm excited.

In this episode, we are reeling from our adventure with the spider, our encounter with the spider.

I believe we make our way back into Subtropolis, and we make our way to the hospital that we were informed of by Maple.

I don't know how unlistenable this will be if I keep interrupting you, but the spider and the lambs actually ended with the real Suvius dying.

Oh, wow.

I was just going to explain that that happened.

I was wrong.

It doesn't end that way.

It ends when they knock all of you unconscious with the dart guns, and then he dies at the beginning of Hospital Food.

So you guys actually get all the way to the hospital in the Spider and the Lambs.

Well, shit, that means in Spider and the Lambs is the thing that I've been hearing about from a few of you listeners now, and also something I think we briefly talked about, and it's probably one of our biggest regrets on the podcast, and that is Razor.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Not asking Razor any more questions.

Not asking Razor shit.

I think Razor dropped some truth bombs about being the one to give deliveries to the silent.

And distinctly, I've gotten multiple people tell me that they're very frustrated when we completely ignored that, but cut them off and just changed topics completely, and we just never brought it back up, and then he fucking dies.

I don't think we thought he was going to die right away.

I also didn't hear Stu say that.

I think it was a bit of an audio...

Stu edits everything so that it happens in a nice, listenable way, but I think me interrupting Stu was kind of an input delay situation, and I didn't catch his words because I was talking when I was supposed to be listening to them.

I think you heard me, but I don't think you've listened to me.

Yeah, I didn't process it because I didn't even realize Kelsey actually pointed it out to me, and I was like, oh, oh, man.

Sounds like you're pointing a lot of fingers for somebody who missed the same piece of information.

Including myself in that, too.

And I said, well, we never brought it up because I was sitting there with you listening to the conversation, too.

It was actually the reason he lived and I didn't have the name raiser even figured out at this point.

But the reason someone who knew a lot of information about The Silent Lived is because of a previous mixed success you guys had.

That was basically determining how many people lived or died from the fight.

And also what bodies you chose to take was rolled up into one success.

We chose to take all of them.

Sorry, all of Crandall's in one.

Yeah.

But basically there was one role that made it so you guys had someone who was going to be useful for sharing information that you then didn't leverage at all.

And then it made the downside was the one body you took was just a normal human body.

At that point, you could have grabbed like a silent body that would have had like weird robot parts or could have been like one fully robot one.

Damn!

And then I was like, I think it'll be hilarious if they just get a dude.

Oh, man, just fucking gaslit our asses.

We get Darryl from Kentucky.

Yeah, I was so confused when we when we started dissecting him and then there's nothing wrong with him.

I was so confused.

But that's all I had.

I just I Kelsey pointed out and then I've had two other people pointed out to me about their frustrations with us completely ignoring Razor.

So I thought it would be a funny thing to bring up.

Everything you would have learned at that time, you will eventually learn.

It'll just be more like an episode 50 instead of an episode 22.

Maybe we can keep these guys that we just rescued alive long enough to get information.

They're another good.

They're a good option.

Yeah.

But I'll stop and I'll let you keep talking about hospital food.

Yeah, hospital food kicks off with real Vesuvius, our long lost short term friend, getting struck down because he couldn't stay the fuck still.

After that, we get captured by the hospital of folks who have a lot of vegetables, hence the name of the episode Hospital Food, which is also a song by somebody probably.

The Eels.

It's a song by the Eels.

When we're in that hospital, Book and Ocean experience UV light for the first time, I think, and as well as carrots and vegetables, and it's a pretty earth-shaking experience.

But we also have all of our items taken away from us, and it's pretty spooky.

What they were.

So they're actually a threat from the kickoff session, basically from the stuff that is baked into the setting.

They were the life cult.

Really?

They were the life cult.

Who had figured out how to cultivate.

Were they cannibals or not?

That comes into play in the next episode, Ball and Chain, which I think is, is it your turn?

It's your turn.

Oh, that's great, because I have a lot of words to speak about this one.

Oh, is this the one we've ruined to most of your plans?

Ball and Chain is first a social distortion song, super good song.

Is it titled?

Because is this the episode where I kick the guy in the nards?

Yes, that is why it is called Ball and Chain, plus all the kind of chain type references to Ocean being connected to this thing.

This is where Ocean super failed a bunch of roles to interact with the AI.

And was I got to he failed a side role, which was really fun because that doesn't come up much.

And I got to take control of him for a short period of time where he completely hacked into this reactors system.

While Book had some very out of character meanness towards one of an individual for no reason.

Yeah, we have argued about this, or at least Stu and Brady have argued about this many a times.

Book and Brady was so upset at this guy for no reason.

This guy was literally just like, hey, you're not supposed to be up here.

Let's get you back down.

Book should have...

And you're like, I'm going to kill this guy.

My canon, my head canon is that Book got really mad that a teenager didn't listen to him.

The intention of that character.

First, there's two important things from this episode.

One, I never got the payoff for a joke that was Eenie Meenie Miney Moreland, which are differently named characters.

So you guys only met Meenie and Moreland.

I don't think I would have gotten that joke.

I wouldn't have either.

That's too good of a joke for me.

Yeah, you guys didn't get to meet most of them because Ocean killed them all through the power of nanobots.

But also the intention for this episode, this one got kicked off in a fun way because you guys were already separated into clearly, thematically different situations.

So my plan coming into it was going to be Ocean is mostly probably going to stay in the reactor room and try to communicate with this AI, figure out what's going on, and make some hard decisions, maybe learn some stuff about his past.

While Book was going to do more of a sleuthy exploration, he was actually going to get some help from Meanie, who was going to guide him through the hospital so he could learn some new places and figure out if these people were cannibals or not, which my thematic grouping for that was supposed to be Ocean's in one place where this AI is telling him, these people are cannibals, these are bad people, you gotta kill them, while Book is out exploring and figuring out, ooh, this may be true, this may not be true.

That would have been so cool.

That would have been so good.

That would have been so cool.

But I failed my roles with Meanie.

We both failed.

Yeah, and Ocean failed his roles with the AI.

I did really like how it went though, because it let me be probably the most aggressive with failed moves, whereas I literally killed everyone except Crandall.

Yeah, well, you did kill Crandall and Meanie, but we just so happened to...

You just got your healing move before that.

So it was like perfect timing to be able to save everyone.

So it was very good.

I liked it a lot.

My favorite part of that episode is convincing Meanie to go inside to see if he drops dead and trying to convince him that we'd be able to help him.

Yeah, that was also, I would say, uncharacteristically risky with human life.

Yes, that is true.

Yeah, I think that episode definitely, I think, had the most painful consequences of die rolls.

Yeah, I think Book was high on carrot.

He'd never had vitamins before.

Yeah, you were on a vitamin high and acting a little crazy.

These episodes had a weird combination of music because for some reason, I decided hospitals should have elevator music in them, and I spent way too long figuring out how to make elevator music.

And then for when everything went shitty, I just took the same song and made it really creepy.

But then I didn't like it, so I made it way too quiet in the episode.

I didn't even know there was music in that episode.

I'll be 100% honest.

I've never been in an elevator with music.

I have.

That can't be true.

I have never noticed music.

I've always been in silent elevators, like hotels, hospitals.

Hospitals don't usually have a lot of music playing.

I'll be 100%.

No one wants to hear some cheering.

Hotels are silent and fucking, yeah.

Jacob knows.

They're terrible.

Terrible places.

Treadful.

I don't know if we should talk about it with this one or the next one.

So where are these musical elevators?

Everywhere.

Yeah, they're all over the place.

Have you been to a mall before?

I've never been in...

I guarantee you there was music in that elevator.

Malls have escalators.

Any kind of higher-end hotel to...

What elevator are you taking in a mall?

You've clearly never been to a nice mall.

There's millennia malls with elevators.

What the fuck are you talking about?

I think every single mall...

I have been to malls with elevators, but they were glass, and there was definitely no music.

So, next up...

Whatever.

Fucking nerd.

Higher-end hotels have a lot of music in their elevators, too, I've noticed.

That could work.

I've never been in a high-end elevator.

Usually, even if they're in a hotel, they'll have music in the elevator.

You might have me on that one.

Yeah.

You might have me on that one.

Missile silos.

I have been in a missile silo.

It's no joke, in a submarine.

It's pretty cool.

Who's talking about Deus Exit, Mock and MI.

Lee's favorite title?

Brady's Up Nice.

Good.

I think this was my idea for a title.

Yeah.

This is where we escape the hospital, and more or less, we don't get any information that's useful to us.

We don't find out if they were cannibals or not, which I just need you to tell us if they were or not, because they're all dead now, except for Meanie.

The only concrete confirmation that we got was that there was a great hunger that was experienced near where the guy died.

And Meanie said that they do have meat infrequently, usually when they trade, which trading could be Morelin's code word for killing people.

Yep, could be.

So yeah, the episode, the Ball and Chain episode ended with the hunger statement when you touched the dead body.

And then yeah, you guys did poke around in Deus Ex and Akinet trying to figure out some stuff.

You researched inside the database for the morgue.

And you guys learned a good bit.

So the truth of the cannibal situation is that they were quantum cannibals the entire time.

Quantum cannibals?

Is it going to be based on rules?

Yeah, I was going to decide if they were cannibals or not based on your investigation that basically was very compressed and didn't happen.

So as you're poking around trying to figure that out, it was going to be if it is a worse situation for you for them to be cannibals than they would be.

If it was a better situation for them to be cannibals, they also would be.

But yeah, that was how it was going to play out.

I think how stuff ended up working with your roles and things like that, it was probably more likely that they were cannibals, but no one knows for sure.

I'm really upset that we didn't get to go with your original plan because Book has never really gotten to investigate anything.

I mean, like, there's been mysteries that we've been following in the long term, but we've never had, like, a good sleuth in episode.

For that episode, we got a question if there was a nanobot fart cloud canonically.

And I think so.

I think that's how the nanobots leave to get recharged, is they load themselves up in your farts.

Yes, that's probably the most effective way.

But yeah, that was also kind of a miscommunication thing we had, where the nanobots were, you guys thought you guys, like, were injected with them at some point for a while, when really they are just everywhere in the hospital, a little swapping in and out, able to just even crawl through your skin, or an orifice to track you down.

Yeah.

So that was fun.

Which is why we couldn't go back in to investigate more after the nanobots started killing everyone.

Yes, that's, I guess I can say that.

There's no, you guys are never going back to the hospital.

The only reason you guys didn't just, like, re-die is because the AI had switched it to, like, low power mode.

So the nanobots weren't really recharging much.

So anything they would do to try to, like, kill you wasn't going to happen.

So that's why, like, Crandall was fine, and why the dude you brought in from the top after you purged that level of them.

I figured there was, like, a temporary immunity or something.

Yeah, no, there was, I figured we needed to get out of there fast the moment we figured out it was the nanomachines that killed everybody.

At that point, I knew we were fucked and we stayed, so.

Yeah, I also assumed that there was a lethal amount of nanobots that you had to reaccumulate.

So because Ocean purged our body of all of the nanobots, they had to kind of reaccumulate in our bodies before there would be enough to kill us.

Yeah, but with like a fully charged hospital, that would probably be pretty quick.

I really liked on a technical perspective, besides my music choices that I did enjoy making, even though they were dumb, I did, this is where I did the robot voice.

Oh, yeah, that was good.

Always a constant mix between, every time I listened to it, I was like, I can't tell if this is completely intelligible or not.

It was like glados from a portal.

The first time I did it, I think it was better.

I think it was a little muddy in the second one.

But if you talk to her again, it will be even better.

Episode 26, whose turn is it?

That's my turn.

Moonsickness.

Your title choice.

Yeah, the only titles that I've picked so far, I think, are Moonsickness and Pompeii.

I'm very proud of Pompeii.

I think that was a great title.

Moonsickness was good too.

This episode, sorry, it's your turn to explain.

I'm not running the show anymore.

I picked Moonsickness, mostly because I had the word moon in the title, but also the song's pretty relevant in a lot of ways.

It's about anxiety and separation and that kind of stuff.

Penelope Scott, right?

Yeah, Penelope Scott.

It's definitely our breather episode.

It's where we learned, where we came in.

We learned about how Hamlet opening is running out of power.

He's rationing it.

We learned that Hamlet opening has kind of been struggling since we left that Frida.

Did we figure this out?

Did we find this out?

You guys didn't figure it out, but the very end of the episode was Crandall walking back.

This was definitely a nothing episode.

I thought it was good still, but you guys came back.

One thing you guys haven't followed up on, not that you could probably, but just to remind you guys that it's something that happened.

On your way back, you passed that car that you had never seen before leaving Hamlet opening.

Yeah.

Do you guys remember that?

Yeah, but how would we follow up on that?

Yeah, I'm not saying you should have, but we just haven't also talked about it at all, which is pretty rare.

Yeah, I mean, I was like, oh, a car.

I'm kind of thinking it's perhaps Spade.

That's my theory.

Yeah.

Oh, you think they were coming or leaving as we were coming in that direction?

Yeah, it would line up with the stuff that happened, but I don't think we learned more about.

Did we visit Juniper here and ask him about?

No, you guys intentionally tried to stay away from everyone.

So you really didn't learn.

This whole episode was you driving to the town and visiting your own places briefly and doing some quick trade with the caravan.

This is where you got back your spider in good form.

This is where you opened, not opened your mind.

This is where you did things speak to the mirror and learned more about it and heard Book's parents talking, and this is where Book traded away the full collection of Narnia in order to get a new cane scabbard and maybe something else.

Isn't this the one where he starts finding what they glance through the telescope and we see the moon, or we see a circular bright orb?

Yeah, you fly up through the whole thing in a magical mystery land where I played flying to the moon behind it really quietly.

And then Book smashed his face into the crack and tried to breathe the fresh surface air from miles below.

Yeah, I don't think you guys have a good concept of how deep you are.

No, I don't think.

I mean, we have to be, considering you can't even see the cave roof from Havenloopening and I don't think you can even see the top of some of these skyscrapers.

Yeah.

No, Book does have a plan for how to figure out how deep we are, though.

Ooh, math?

Yeah.

Sweet.

Does it use stuff from the letter B in your encyclopedia?

Hey, we ain't got that far in the recap yet.

Yeah, we haven't got there yet.

I don't know.

I don't have any.

I don't think I have any B words, but I don't want to spoil how we were going to try to figure that out.

Episode 27, Stuck in the Mire with You.

Good title.

I think this was the one we actually talked about the most and was just mid at the end.

That was a good title.

Stu and I went back and forth a ton on this.

I think Jacob also threw some out there.

I had some really funny ones that were worse titles, I believe.

I wanted to call it, I think, Fire in the Flood.

But there wasn't much fire.

But this is where you guys first head towards the Stu.

So this is where you meet Caltools for the first time.

Oh, no, I wanted to call it Mire in the Flood.

And that's how we got stuck in the Mire with you.

Yeah, I did a ton of puns.

Yeah.

And ended up with this one.

But yeah, this is where you met Caltools.

This is where you made it to the Stu to begin with.

And we started our good, mucky journey.

I think it was a fun little arc in general.

I think it was a great arc.

I think it was a nice little self-contained arc, too.

Yeah, as we were doing it, I kept feeling like we weren't going anywhere fast enough.

But when I re-listened to it recently, I was like, actually, each episode was pretty action-packed, pretty fun.

Yeah, I think that's probably some of the most action we've had in an episode, because I know the first one, Stuck in the Mire with You, is this the one where we are falling through the caves and the spider gets stuck and then we almost drown?

Yeah, and yes, this is where Book takes the plywood and gets speared with the rusty shrapnel, and you guys start heading towards the top, where you shoot your harpoon in, and you realize that the ceiling is actually some sort of crazy amoeba creature as it squelches in, and you have to zoom away.

And it ends with you guys getting wedged in the big chasm as all of the water flows out.

So it sets you up for a very good, how do we get out of here situation?

Which is our next episode.

How much to say about that episode?

I think it's just a solid one.

Isn't that the one where you break my arm?

I think the next one.

Yeah, pull me under is when I break your arm.

So pull me under is we get stuck.

Book tries to do some, what do you call it when you, not fast roping, but...

Repelling.

Repelling, yeah.

He tries to do some repelling to figure out how we can, to help Ocean drive the spider out of the crevasse.

Instead, we draw attention to ourselves, get fired upon by a boat of raiders.

Book ditches and jumps into the water below.

Can't swim.

Book cannot swim, canonically.

So he starts to sink.

Ocean does some fancy driving and some fancy fighting, and uses the spider's new submersible features to do a whole lot of stuff, including sinking their boat.

He shoots a harpoon into the bottom of the boat, severs it into like the Titanic.

So fucking cool.

Trust.

Saves Book saving a dude with a giant metal thing in his leg.

Oh, with the harpoon that Ocean shot in his leg.

And then we come to the surface at gunpoint.

And I think that's where the episode ends.

Yeah, perfect.

No, you nailed it.

That's exactly it.

When you described it, it made it sound like you didn't do anything, but you did a lot.

I guess especially the beginning.

Oh, yeah.

You did a ton.

It did sound like you're just drowning there for a while, but there were a lot of rolls as you just did continue drowning.

I was drowning for a while.

That may have actually been the nicest I've ever been.

With it not making you like take at least damage or something during that.

Or having one of the monstrous creatures eat me.

You guys were already in a bad enough situation.

Yeah, that was a terrible situation.

It was too cool of a perspective to lose of the battle above.

Yes.

My big takeaway from this episode is that this is the most terrified I've ever been at losing the spider.

Like, that thing was fucked up by the end of this episode.

The last two episodes together just fucked up my poor baby.

I don't know what the titles are referenced to.

Did I come up with it?

You must have.

That's a student name.

That's the only thing I have.

Probably just a relevant song or something.

I mean, it's definitely appropriate.

Is that a song, though?

It has to.

It has to be a song.

Listen, ladies and gentlemen, Stu and Jacob are so obsessed with music that they will shoot down the best episode titles I've ever come up with because they're not song names.

Was it from Pull Me Under by Dream Theater?

Maybe.

I think that is one of the most popular Dream Theater songs, so I may have done that.

It is the number one Dream Theater song, so yeah.

That's the one.

But what was the episode title that you're salty about is shooting you down, Brady?

I have a list of them.

He's got receipts.

Okay, we'll bring that up, I guess, after we finish the recap.

He can roast us alive.

Snappin and Trappin, tell us about this excellently titled episode.

Snappin and Trappin takes place right after we got pulled up from the surface, right after the chaos of the last episode.

It starts off with us at gunpoint in the tense standoff.

We somehow defuse the situation by breaking Book's arm and healing it back together again.

And I guess that let me, they, using that, they trusted me enough to heal the other guy that got impaled, and we ship them on their merry way.

And then we sailed over to, we used the tunnels, right?

We climbed up, we marooned the spider somewhere, climbed up through the tunnels, and made our way to the, whatever the name of that settlement was.

Did it ever have a name?

Nope, didn't have a name.

And don't think it ever got in the...

It was just a little rocky seashore.

I think this episode, one thing, this episode's interesting to me, because we don't kill anybody.

We saved all the people that we previously probably were murdered, murdering last episode.

And then this episode, we saved them both, and we got nothing in return for it.

Nothing.

Hey, they didn't try to kill you.

That was nice of them.

That's true.

They spread the word of our feats.

Yeah, kept all the other bandits away from you.

The title's an outcast song featuring a young killa Mike killing it.

Super good verse.

The next episode is my favorite title, and Raisley's favorite, which is Trivia Levita.

Which I didn't understand, and I still don't know that I did.

Trivia Levita.

What was Trivia?

Half the episode was I was playing the trivia game.

So I just went with that.

There's that trivia.

Oh yeah, that trivia.

No joke, I think like 30 minutes of that episode was I was playing the dumb trivia game in the beginning.

That was a very fun intro.

Because I think we didn't have enough recorded for a full episode, so we were trying to make sure we had a really nice, long intro.

But we did that with the fun crossover from the GG Level Up guys, because I went on their show, so I wanted to tell Jacob I went on their show, so we did that by playing some fun trivia.

I think it was a great, honestly, I think it was a great intro.

I loved that intro.

That was super fun.

That episode may be the, I said it before, but this may be actually the most nothing episode, where you guys show up, you start some negotiations for the weird device you found, seeing what you can trade off of it, trying to get everything repaired.

And that's really it.

It ends with Book hearing that there's a lighthouse nearby.

Yes.

So this entire episode is between you guys getting to this town and hearing that, which I feel like was one thing.

This, honestly, this whole like stew adventure feels like its own campaign a little bit.

Yeah, no, it really was kind of its own thing.

I was, I don't know if it went how I thought it was going to.

I don't even know.

Yeah, I did have the plan for the lighthouse being there.

So I knew that would definitely sidetrack you guys anyway.

So I was like, they're probably not going to spend too much time here, because I like pulling you guys back to Hamlet opening, because I think it's exciting there as much as you guys want to leave it behind forever.

So I'm always hesitant to be like, let's make a huge other adventure that leads to another one somewhere else.

And I knew that was going to happen with the lighthouse anyway.

So I was like, oh, and there'd be too many exciting things here.

I just want there to be a sandbar and stuff that's like a worse subtropical, but a society that's like more happy and safe because they are so secluded here that they have like more of a communal situation to maybe give you guys some ideas for Hamlet opening when you're a little more safe.

And we, I guess this is spoilers, but we did have a little bit of idea for that.

But I guess we'll talk about that after we get...

Do you mean the trade route stuff?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, that's in the episode.

That was this episode.

I thought it was a later episode.

Oh, that was way after.

Yeah, that's when we get back.

Yeah, that was when we got back.

You're right.

Yeah, which the next one is Hassel's Made of Sand.

Which was a great episode, I think.

Yeah, Hassel's Made of Sand is where we get covered in...

No, it's...

Oh, my God, no.

It's where we almost get ground up, right?

Yep.

Yeah, so we're trying to find...

We know that this kid who I hear about the lighthouse from...

Crinkle Fry.

Nobody believed that he went.

And so through a little bit of sleuthing...

We actually did have a little bit of sleuthing.

Book kind of put together that he took his camera and went to take a picture of the lighthouse to prove that he'd been there.

You actually had a sudden revelation while you guys were truffle hunting.

Yes.

Which was the new pig arc of Ocean for a bit there.

But while you guys were like failing at it, and all of a sudden you're like, wait, I realize what's going on.

Yeah, I realized that the camera was missing because he took it to prove that he'd been to the lighthouse, which was maybe my smartest moment in this podcast.

So we start rushing to catch up with the kid, and we don't find him, but we do find a pit made of sand, and Book, being the curious cat that he is, gets them into a tricky situation, suspended over a bunch of grinding gears with Crinkle Fry, who was swallowed up by the pit, and we're able to rescue him.

And I think the episode ends with us seeing the lighthouse at a distance for the first time.

Maybe, or it might have even been right before that, when you guys were just kind of safe.

Yeah.

But I told Crinkle Fry I would take the picture for him, so he gives me his camera.

Yes.

It's kind of for this area, these next few episodes, there's a big, big question I had.

Or I guess not a question I had.

Something I feel like you guys didn't explore, which is funny to me.

But so you eventually realized, it actually wasn't this episode, it may have been the next one or the one after that, that this room was very similar to one of Ocean's visions.

Yes.

And in that same vision, there were these like crazy, tentacle things around the outside of the walls.

And in this room, you guys never looked at the outside of the walls.

I described it as you being unable to see them as they were completely shrouded in darkness and the light was only illuminating this pile of sand in the middle.

And you guys, and then I was like, it seems safer to go around the outside.

And we went straight through the middle.

So you guys actually don't know how different the walls in this room were to his vision.

Oh, yeah.

Because when we came back, and you'll never be back.

Because yeah, when we came back through it, we didn't check the walls.

We just.

Yep, you went right through the middle again because he told you it was safest to go a little to the side to the left.

Yeah, I think the hard part about that is that we had two visions where there were things moving in shadows on the wall.

Yes.

That's true.

I'm not even necessarily sure if I necessarily put to it to agree that this was the tentacle vision, because I think there was another vision just very similar.

We put it together that the next room was the vision about the things moving in the dark.

I don't know that I put together that it was the tentacle room either.

Now you guys remember it was the sandy room.

I think you may have said it very briefly, Brady, with the tentacles on the wall, just like in one little sentence.

But yeah, it was the main part of the vision was a child's face half covered.

And that was, you found the pit in the sand.

Yeah.

Oh, shit.

So it was a future vision?

Maybe.

I don't know.

What do I look like?

I think I've said actually that exact phrase.

So it was a future vision.

I think we did have this revelation at some point.

Interesting.

I never put Tsun Tsu together there.

I guess I need to reconsider how I think about Ocean's visions, because I just have it associated with that they're my past.

They're associated with my past.

Yeah, but I will say in that original vision, the spider was with you, and I was very concrete about that.

I was like, the spider is in this vision when I gave it to you.

Which was also weird at the time, because you're like, wait, I have the spider in the vision?

Yeah.

But the spider wasn't there when you actually went, because it was fucking in a lake.

It was fucked up, I want to repair.

So it sounds like your visions can be future, but also kind of wrong, because I don't know when you'll crash the spider into a lake.

No, no, no, I tried to get the spider out of the lake.

I threw out a bunch of different options, and you were the one who shut them down, Stu.

Even though you...

I realized the spider would have made the bat thing way less fun, because it would have been the same thing as being underwater fighting tentacles, like you did before.

Although it would have been really sinister to have enough of them throwing themselves at the window that they break and fill the spider.

It was like, start cracking, yeah.

Fill the spider.

I don't want like six episodes in a row where the spider is slowly breaking.

Yeah, it was also breaking.

So stressed.

You also could have made it that the spider got stuck in the mud.

Yeah, that would have been fun.

We always could have piton ourselves out of it, but then you could have said that the lighthouse was too far to piton to.

I also would have also more trivialized the fun sand stuff.

For sure.

That is true.

And I thought it would be fun for you guys to have an on foot adventure after being in the spider for so long.

I agree.

If you guys very easily made it to that little rocky outcropping, I may have just been like, yeah, it's big enough to fit the spider in.

But I was like, nope, there's a small crack.

No way you'd fit anything in here.

You'd have forced us.

And it was broken.

So yeah, because I also didn't want it to be like, oh, let's wait around for the spider to get fixed before we do anything.

So I wanted there to be some impetus to have to go do fun things.

Like that's how the whole game works.

Crinkle Fry wasn't a character in episode freaking 29.

It wasn't a character until you decided to just randomly open your mind or read a sitch and try to mess with some stuff.

So it's not like I had planned out at all.

Oh, they're going to go to the stew.

They're going to get driven to the lighthouse.

My plan was the lighthouse is somewhere.

It's there somewhere.

Go find it.

We got to hurry up with these recaps.

Yeah, we're going way too slow on these.

It's because I don't remember whose turn it is ever.

Well, now it's Jacob's turn.

I mean, it's mine.

Is it?

Maybe you don't say anything and then we'll tell you if it's your turn.

Sounds good.

OK, so all along the slop tower, this was a rough one.

This was us getting fucking annihilated by the dark creatures.

And covered in shit.

And covered in shit and just getting absolutely slaughtered as we tried to make it through to the lighthouse.

I really liked it.

Yeah, this was most fucking brutal.

I think this is the closest ocean ever got to death was those stupid bat creatures that kept stinging his ass.

Yeah, he definitely got knocked unconscious at one point.

The entire episode was just us getting annihilated by these things and it ends with us finally getting there.

That's when it ends.

It ends with us opening it and seeing...

Yep, the entire episode was you crossing that murky thing, and I thought it was so good.

It was so brutal.

You guys traveled like 40 feet, and it took almost an hour, and I liked it.

It was so brutal.

It was gross and creepy and actiony, and you guys ended with a flaming sword and tarp, and both of you almost dead.

I was like, that was great.

It was a great episode.

Oh, man, I was so...

I was very much afraid that we were going to die.

That's another good example of like, I didn't have any planned solution for you guys getting there.

All I thought about were the monsters and how cool I would think if there's this lighthouse and that these weird things are just constantly moving because this thing that's been there for years and years and years, but they're still just following their instincts like that.

And I was like, they'll figure out some way to get across it, but I know it will be easy.

Yeah, no, I feel like we were stretching, scraping the bottom of the barrel.

We were scraping the bottom of the barrel.

That's exactly what I was going to say.

I think we were literally, every possible idea we could have came up with, we utilized there.

And we still didn't make it through all the way.

That concept was actually Brady's idea from before we even started the podcast.

We were talking about this cool stuff to be underground, and you had a picture of a lighthouse.

I don't know if you even remember that.

I do.

That was forever ago.

But yeah, it ended up coming up.

I forgot that I did that, yeah.

That's why you thought it would be cool to connect it to your dad.

Yeah.

The next episode, I'm glad I got this one too, this is lining up perfectly for me.

Back when I was 104, my worst title miss of all time.

I think it was a great title.

A Jeffrey Lewis song called Back When I Was Four.

I think it's a great title.

I think it's really funny.

I wanted to name it Thanks For The Memories, but Cool Like How Fallout Boy Writes It, but I was convinced Brady would hate it.

And then when I told him that afterwards, he was like, no, that's all.

That would have been a great episode title.

That would have been so great, because it was both Ocean and I getting memories.

That was the only time I've ever been like, let me be nice to Brady, and choose one, not choose one I think he'll hate, because I think I had kind of forced through the last couple, which I really, really liked, and they were both Jimi Hendrix songs, and they were from one single recording.

So I was like, oh, that's really cool.

He split up one recording into two Jimi Hendrix songs, Hassles Made Of Sand and All Along The Slop Tower, which are both hilarious.

And then we moved to Back When I Was 104, which this entire episode is just you guys talking to the old man.

Later, I was going to ask what everyone's favorite moments are, but I'll go ahead and spoil mine here.

I think from my perspective, not from a listener enjoyment perspective, but this was my favorite episode to run, because my entire notes for this were, they're going to be an old man who met Book's parents, who can't even remember his own name, until they try to jog his memory, and nothing else.

Everything else that happened was completely came up with on the spot, which I don't know how obvious that was.

I think it was great.

Yeah, I think we learned a lot.

I thought you had the video planned at least.

No, I did not have the video planned at all.

I thought there would probably be a videotape there, but I had no idea what was going to be on the videotape, or it was going to be a Two Towers tape, or he was going to have a fake riddle that I never came up with.

I'm really upset that you guys didn't let me break the lighthouse.

Oh, I am not.

That was such a terrible idea.

That got cut out of the episode, I think, entirely.

That was so bad.

It didn't have to be a bad idea.

Stu chose to make a bad idea.

Yes, but you were going to break his lighthouse.

The plan was that Book was to help them get back.

Instead of making the slow sweeping lighthouse, he wanted to break the action so that it either got stuck pointing in the direction of their exit or just basically shatter the Fresnel lens so that it was kind of just a weaker light, but everywhere.

And everyone stopped me.

It didn't even...

The old man tried to stop you.

Stu tried to stop you.

Jacob tried to stop you.

Ocean tried to stop you.

You had at least four people on you immediately.

And I think I just ended up cutting it out because there's just a lot of back and forth.

I'm 100% sure that would have killed the old man, definitely.

He would have been fine.

He was right next to the light, but he would be blinded.

He was just sitting there.

What if it stopped his slime from going around?

Then he would have starved to death.

He was 104.

I didn't think about the slime.

No, he used to be 104.

He's even older now.

We don't actually even know.

You guys learned, which, quick recap for this episode, because it was all just talking, so a recap could easily be the length of the episode.

This guy was like, I think you learned at least 100 something, and he had been around since before the apocalypse, but he was a very small child when that happened, so he didn't have a great concept of why it happened.

His parents brought him here when he was young, and he lived in this old lighthouse by himself for many, many, many years.

But he met Book's parents when they left, and they jogged their memories enough, he thought the two people he was talking to were still Book's parents.

But you learned some important things from him.

You learned that your parents are going to the Baffles, which are where the Chaos Cult lives, the Boxcar children.

You learned that your parents were interested in two pieces of information he had, one which was this military-designed bodysuit type thing, which seemed really out of place.

That doesn't really fit anything about your parents.

And then this book on the moon cycles and when they line back up with the calendar year, which was also a concept you guys weren't very familiar with.

But for some reason, your parents were looking at when the moon cycles line up with the calendar year.

And that you have a sister, which...

Was this the reveal that we hadn't...

you had a sister?

Yeah, I think she was revealed in the video.

Which, do we want to say that that was your idea?

Or do you want me to cut that out?

It was my idea.

So that was Brady's idea.

I texted Stu at like 11.59 the night before.

No, a couple nights before we were going to record.

And I was like...

It was like two months before.

No, it was before a night that we were going to record, not this episode.

And I was like, I think Book has a sister that he doesn't know about.

And I think that that's why his parents left, was to save for life.

Yeah, and I like that.

It came across in the episodes, like I was like, ha, you can't remember shit a little bit.

Yeah.

Like I was tricking you, and I just wanted you.

No.

It was your idea, and it was a good idea.

But I think that's...

In character, it was like, oh, you don't remember shit.

So I thought that was appropriate.

But I want to say it was Juniper being mean to you, not Stu.

I was being very nice to you.

I'm all right.

I liked it.

I liked everything about how you brought that information up and how you handled it with Juniper.

Definitely my favorite episode to run.

Very good.

I just got to be an old man for an hour.

My dream.

It's a pretty good old man impersonation, too.

Not just an old man, an immortal old man, which is your dream.

My dream.

My dream is to be an old man who just eats slime and watches Miss Congeniality 2 every day.

Yeah.

So the next one is, Why'd you only call me when you're dry?

Why'd you only call me when you're dry?

Oh, which is another great episode title.

This one, we make our way back to the community of the stew, and the old man helps us escape.

We get out through the way we came.

We do find some mushrooms along the way.

Thank God.

And we do some trading.

Did I miss anything?

You guys actually head back to Hamlet opening.

You do the whole tracking down what happened with, not Kriggle Fry, what happened with Kowtools near the entrance, where there's some weird box that appeared out of nowhere.

Oh yeah, he's a fucking transformer.

You think he's a transformer.

And you guys made it, I think, all the way back to Hamlet opening before this one ended.

But the bulk of this episode was honestly like Ocean's vision of the chanting people.

I forgot about that.

Like ritualistically killing a bunch of infirmed individuals in a bath house of some sort was an actual significant chunk of this.

The rest was mostly got some new cool items.

You got an encyclopedia.

I got a camera that has a camera film, but you have to develop it in a dark room.

I figure out how to develop it.

You're in a dark room right now in live action episode 41.

And Ocean got a little hand cannon thing that shoots whatever he wants to put into it.

The garbage laundry, if he calls it.

Which he uses for worse application than my idea to break the lighthouse, but that's okay.

Whatever, whatever.

He's eating again.

Apparently, we're allowed to eat during the Talk Apocalypse episodes.

It's not like I also have to edit these and hear all of your mouth sounds.

I was trying to be good, but then you roasted me and I had to cut over before I finished up doing it.

Jacob's a cleaner eater than I am.

While Jacob's eating, I can take this next episode too.

Oh yeah, take it.

Which is Wildest Screams Parentheses Taylor's version, which is, it's named that because of the episode, the failed, full failure open your mind roll where Vesuvius screamed into your ear, which I hope you guys knew that was never going to be the full impact of a full failure on an open your mind roll.

It was just some damage and a little bit of inconvenience having to run the key.

I thought it was, I'll be honest with you.

I was definitely going to get way worse.

I've been trying to ditch Vesuvius' head for so fucking long because I knew something like this was going to happen.

But yeah, this episode was mostly you guys just getting reunioned with all of the people from back at Hamlet opening and trying to make it safely to Junipers after that problem and some mishaps with trying to shoot marbles into roofs.

It would have been a great idea.

It's a fucking terrible idea.

I took like literally two hours on this title.

I was working on it for so long.

I didn't talk to my friends here at all because the episode was late and I was trying to come up with it.

And I was stuck with the word scream and I kept trying to make it work with the dashboard confessional song Screaming Infidelities.

But that is the worst word to try to get a pun out of in the world.

I think at some point, my idea was screaming in mess entities.

It's terrible.

For dial-up sounds.

Yeah, it was really bad.

And it literally, I had something else.

I came up with like a mid one that wasn't a screaming infidelities pun either.

And as I was uploading it, I just changed the name to Wiles.

Which I think is a great title.

Wiles Screams Tailors Version, that's such a good title.

That is up there with Hurt by Nine Inch Nails, I would say.

Tell us about pool chopping, I think Brady.

Or let's go back to Jacob.

Yeah, that will set us back up in the original proper order.

This was mostly us trying to escape from the situation we were in previously, right?

We were running away from the crowd of people that were building up from the Vesuvius Scream.

Got recognized by some of Hickory's men, and then they started coming in to investigate us.

We made it to Juniper's place, because we wanted to talk to him about everything that's been going on.

Didn't meet Juniper, ran into Pistachio Jones instead.

Pistachio Jones basically had a pretty confrontational chat with him, where he kept saying he wants us to come with him, and that we need to turn ourselves in, and we kept trying to be like, no, we got stuff we got to do, and then we fucking broke a pool table over his ass.

Hence the title, the titular pool table.

Jacob should know the title reference for Pool Chop.

Is it?

Oh, it's some sweet sweet IH, right?

Yes, Illuminati Hotties.

I think second Illuminati Hotties reference to you.

It's a good band.

Go listen to them.

Do they have a song called Pool Hopping?

Pool Hopping.

That makes more sense.

I do like the Illuminati Hotties.

I should listen to them.

I love Illuminati Hotties.

This episode also went on to include you guys making it to the top of Hamlet opening, and yeah, it specifically did because I remember I did a Johnny Hertz and Crandall thing that you guys called in and listened.

I thought that was during this takeout.

The one with all the sound effects was this episode.

You guys called him back like three times during this episode.

But yeah, this was along with all the weird sound effects.

That was, I think, the funniest moment in our podcast ever.

Me talking with myself.

Yeah, those two characters talking was so great.

Yeah, you guys deciding to team them up was definitely a really good idea.

Such a good idea.

Two absolute narcissists.

Much like me trying to get rid of Vesuvius' head for a long time, I did try to throw it in the pit, the sand pit, to stop the gears.

I've been trying to get rid of Vesuvius.

Even though I like Vesuvius a lot as a character, I just feel like it's gonna bite us in the ass.

I've wanted for so long to do a stakeout from the spider, from the roof of Hamlet opening or Subtropolis.

I think this is the second time I suggested it, but I've wanted to do this for so fucking long, and I was so excited when I saw the opportunity.

And I was like, how can I convince everybody to do this?

I want to inform slash remind you guys about how Sway Someone works.

Because I feel like it comes across as me ignoring your role and being mean to you every time it happens.

So the real power behind Sway Someone, which is when you're just trying to convince someone to do something, is when they give you that compromise or that thing that they need from you, they have to go along with it, no matter what.

So you know they're not betraying you, lying to you, anything like that.

When you make that role, and I give you the, okay, if you do this thing, I'll go along with you.

Most of the time, you guys don't like that thing, which is intentional.

But I think it's important for you guys to know that I have to.

It can't be them lying to you.

I see.

Makes sense.

It makes it much more...

It's a really strong move.

But I feel like every time we've done it, you guys have just been like, oh, well, I don't want to do that thing.

Because most of the time, the options are terrible for us.

No, I think we did follow it when we initially went with Pistachio to the courthouse.

Yeah, a while ago.

Yeah.

There were just a few Swayce one-rolls in the episodes we've gone through now that ended up feeling like wastes of time.

Not like bad, like it was boring content or anything like that, but they just didn't go anywhere, which I never like.

I think if you guys knew the power of forcing me to do something, because there's very few times in the game where you know.

No, that is very, that's very good to know.

I did not know that.

Stake Me Out is the stakeout episode where we, I was, I had, we all had a lot of ideas, I think, for like how we wanted to, the stakeout to go.

And I think it was, we had a lot of really good ways of kind of combining those ideas.

I really wanted to try to lure, lure, Frida out.

Jacob, I think you wanted to talk to Frida.

I wanted to steal the tape.

I think we, we, we, this, this, the stakeout, the stakeout episode is just us watching, and Frida draws back on the giraffe smiley face and then goes back in and changes, right?

But we see them in Hickory's room anyway.

I thought it was really, I thought it was really good.

I thought it was kind of a very, a very fun, very fun stakeout energy.

I loved that we kept sending Johnny Hertz out to do stuff for us.

And I just kept picturing in my head like us watching from above as he scurries out, scurries out and then scurries back in.

So I thought that was really fun.

That was fun music.

I like, I actually made that music for our Halloween episodes that are the best thing we've done.

Oh my god, they're so fucking good.

But yeah, that song has existed for a long time.

And I was like, this is a perfect opportunity.

And Johnny Hurts having not stealth mode.

What did you call it?

Sneak mode.

Oh my god.

There's just him in a hat when he enters sneak mode.

With the giant hat.

Very good.

Very funny.

Very sharp.

Very smart.

And that one ends with us deciding, you know what?

Fuck it.

Let's go invade Hickory's place, right?

Yes.

Yes.

That was at the very end.

You're like, yep, we're going in.

Stu, now it's your turn with Personal Space Invader.

The next one is Personal Space Invader, which is an AJJ song, which is like one of my favorite bands, maybe second favorite band ever.

It was almost called, I was working really hard on something with Heist Earth.

That band, Heist Earth, that has that one good song from like 1998.

So yeah, I worked on that a lot before I just went with the same title as a song that exists.

And that's where you guys are actually doing the infiltration of the compound.

And it's mostly called that because you guys are all up in Frida stuff that entire time, both in the room in the elevator, pretty personal space invading.

And yes, you find Randall Cunningham, who you believe is to be the individual Randy Candy.

I came up with that as a fun, like a little distraction for you.

And I didn't come up with a real name for him yet.

So he's just named after one of the best Vikings players of all time.

I knew I recognized that somewhere.

But I thought that was a fun episode.

That was I like to jump in back between you guys.

I always love opportunities for that where you guys are separate, but we can keep going back and forth, which the more exciting version of that was the next episode.

This was a good start to that.

It was a nice build up, I think, to the shit that goes down in the next episode.

Yeah.

Yes.

Which is Jacob's responsibility to discuss.

Carousel, episode 39.

We essentially have Ocean conversing with Frieda, right?

That was this episode, right?

Because it ends with me meeting Frieda, essentially realizing she doesn't feel comfortable talking here, and we set up to go see, for her to meet us up later.

I get out perfectly fine.

Book infiltrates Frieda's place, finds, he thinks, the tapes, but on his way out gets caught pretty solidly by one of the hickory's men, after a very, very unsuccessful attempt to convince him that he is a maintenance worker, I think.

He gets in a fight with the guy, shoots the guy, gets everyone to come with him, and does not react to shooting him in the head.

Yeah, is that your first kill ever, too?

No.

It's not the first time you've killed a human?

In episode zero, I light two people on fire.

They lived?

Yeah.

No, I killed, I don't know if I specifically got somebody's health down to zero, but I assumed that Book had done murders before in that giant fight for Crandall's Crandallot.

I don't think you did.

I think you got hit by a missile.

He blew up the car, right?

Did you blow up a car with a grenade?

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, you probably killed some people then, but those could have just been robots.

This could have been the first human with a soul that you killed.

I think once the adrenaline wears off, we might see the consequences of that, or we might not.

That was a full failure on a Try Something Challenging role, which if you succeeded that, you were going to just be back up with Ocean, which would have vastly changed how that went.

It would have changed a lot, actually.

Yeah, that would be a significantly different episode, because this all obviously got cut out of the episode, but when we go back to Ocean, Jacob just kind of didn't know what to do.

I had no idea what the fuck to do.

I heard a gunshot, and I think I was like, I think I couldn't quite decide, because on one hand, I thought Ocean would go back to, would probably go back and investigate, but because I mean, I assume he probably thought Book would have been shot, but outside of that, I knew that was a terrible idea and didn't want to go back.

And I really wanted to use Randy Candy as a hostage and work my way to Hickory's office and hand him the tape.

That was my plan, which got immediately and irrevocably interrupted.

Yeah, because the gunshot triggered a vision from Ocean and made us realize that we were about to get fucking annihilated by the Silent.

But I only did that vision because Jacob had to think for 10 seconds, which is part of the way you kind of run the game.

One of the things that triggers the MC making a move is anytime your players look to you for anything, you're allowed to make a move against them.

So like it's mostly just reacting to situations.

So in that one, it was like Ocean didn't know what to do.

So that's a great opportunity to use all this holes I have saved up on him to kick out a vision.

So I made it a really bad one.

It was a very bad vision.

That's more fun.

I just picked a really bad vision.

But that was also partially your fault because of the options you chose.

Like you chose a place full of corpses.

If you chose a bunch of like fun light stuff, it certainly wouldn't have been that.

There are probably several ways I can make it be they're getting attacked by the wolves.

But it could have been a completely different situation where you guys maybe saw them coming from far away or they don't come till tomorrow, stuff like that.

Because the wolves definitely knew you guys were there already and wanted to deal with it.

But at that moment, I certainly didn't have a timeline laid out.

Yeah, that's what I was wondering.

Or when they're doing the heist, they're going to get screwed.

That's all based on roles and what comes up at the time.

Yeah, but I think that episode ends with us getting pinned down in the one room, us breaking free, and then leaping from the rafters.

Pressing a button, blowing everything up.

Where's Randy Candy, actually?

I just realized, I saved Randy Candy and I told him to get down, and then I led him through the courtyard with us.

He didn't jump.

No, he's not going with his hostage.

Oh, darn, I was really hoping to get information out of him.

Brady right now is heartbroken.

I don't care.

Which brings us to episode 40.

He's probably dead, like everybody else who had information.

Hey, we're already heading back into the facility.

We can just grab him.

If you don't remember episode 40...

You gotta go listen to episode 40.

That one just came out, so it doesn't have a name yet.

I'm thinking Hit the Lights is my current best idea.

That's a pretty good idea.

Or Closing Time.

That's okay.

There's a song.

It was just off the dome.

But yeah, that one, the exciting one, you should go listen to it, since it literally just came out.

But the exciting things are, you guys fight some of the silent.

You learn that at least some of them are like full-ass robots, which is weird, because you haven't seen that before.

At the very end, Ocean finds out that one of them was someone he recognizes from a pretty early vision.

That vision was the one you had with all of the clones.

I thought it was a really fun episode.

Oh yeah, I think so.

I don't know how it's edited down yet, because we haven't literally done that at the time.

I loved recording it.

Yeah, recording it, I think this was a great episode.

It was one of the more combat-heavy episodes.

It was also pretty, like, intrigue, mystery-heavy, I feel like.

I feel like parts of it were a little spooky, which I like too.

I think the combat we had this episode was actually really cool.

Yeah, I agree.

I thought it was fun and quick.

I think that's a very cinematic fight that I can easily picture in my head.

The book had a fun samurai moment, but it immediately went wrong, which I thought was perfect.

But I thought it was perfect that it went wrong and Ocean had to save him, because of course that's what would happen.

But I don't think it went comically wrong.

No, no.

It went realistically wrong.

That's what I mean.

Yeah, I liked it.

That was a good episode.

I hope it ends up good after I add some songs I haven't written yet.

I can't wait for that either.

So that took an entire hour that will probably get edited down to about an hour, because it's actually an hour and 15 minutes.

Well, we are not done.

We still got to chit chat.

I'm not saying we're done.

First order of business is I'm going to go through all of the episode titles that I thought were amazing that got shut down.

I have a list.

I'm cutting all this out, but go for it.

I'm going to go in reverse order, because that will make more sense, and it will help chit chat.

Should I let you do this in silence, or should I give just a quick three word reason why they're bad as you go along?

I don't give a fuck.

You can do whatever you want.

And we still don't realize that all of our titles are song titles or artists.

But I know.

I just don't think that they should have to be song titles if there are better options out there, like Osmosis Jones and the Bile of Destiny.

Or Quest for Crandallon.

That is a great title.

Or National Lamp Goon's Vacation.

That's funny as fuck, all right?

I would never laugh at that.

Speaking of titles, what is all you guys' favorite and least favorite titles that we've had?

And then I want to know what everyone's favorite and least favorite episode is, too.

The best just on a title basis.

Well, my favorite is Triviva Levita because it's hilarious.

It's the worst.

All Along the Slop Tower is objectively the best title.

Because it's just very accurate, continues the Jimi Hendrix duet there, and it's funny.

What's your least favorite title?

Gotta be Deus Exit Machina.

But I do think, back when I was 104, it was really bad, too, to throw shade on myself as well.

But Deus Exit Machina is fine as a descriptive title for what literally happens in the episode.

I hated it, too.

But I don't think it's clever or funny or a song title.

I hated it, too.

All right, you want to go next, Brady?

Yeah, my favorite title is Hospital Food.

That is a good title.

Really?

Yeah, because Hospital Food normally sucks, but in the episode, the Hospital Food was great.

My least favorite title, I think...

I think my least favorite was Snappin and Trappin.

Snappin and Trappin.

Because it felt the least relevant.

I like, he snapped your arm, and you guys got trapped in a giant poop cocoon.

I agree that's not a super good title, because it's not even a pun.

It's literally just the name of a song, but I really liked it, because it seems very light and breezy when you actually got your arm horrifically broken as a display of the magic powers of one of your fellows.

Real quick, before Jacob goes, we didn't talk about Carousel title at all, which is just name that, because you guys are in this constant fucking loop, and it just felt very iterative, the jumping back and forth, I really liked, and it also seemed like it was very, like you were trudging in a hopeless circle forever.

I thought that was like the feeling.

I forgot about that title.

That's actually my least favorite.

Oh, man.

My least favorite?

No, I think it's appropriate.

Yeah, I like that one a lot.

It's not like funny or anything, but it's also the first Blink-182 song on their first album, or their first real album, Cheshire Cat, and super good song.

But I liked it a lot.

I didn't think about it much.

That was pretty quick, and it was like a very exciting episode, and it's not like a super exciting title, but I liked it being simple and word-word, because that episode reminds me a lot of Pompeii, so I thought it fit that well.

And also, I think a carousel often has really creepy music and really gaudy visuals, and I kind of think that that fits.

I like it.

Okay, sorry, Jacob, for interrupting.

I was just buying you time to come up with your answer.

Oh, I know my favorites.

Okay, so I'm lame.

Unlike the rest of you guys, my favorite episode titles aren't the puns and stuff.

I think the puns are funny, but my favorite episode titles are the ones where the song ties in really well with the theme of what happens, which is lame and boring.

But funny title, my favorite is probably Wildest Screams, Taylor Swift's Taylor's version.

That's my favorite.

That's great.

Humorous title.

My favorite title, and I'm realizing now this is a different, different carousel song than what you are intending it based off of.

No, it's what Jacob says.

But there's a, there's a song.

I really like Carousel as a title.

And there's a song by Melanie Martinez called Carousel, which I think tie it.

It's very fitting for the cyclical nature of all the shit that Ocean goes through and the fact that all the fights and stuff that go into it.

So that was my favorite because I liked that and I liked the song.

I'm reading the lyrics, and I agree.

That's kind of the same feeling as...

I mean, every song that's titled Carousel probably has the exact same theme, so I suspect it's probably true, too.

It's a great song if you guys want to listen to it.

Yeah, I'll listen to that, Sam.

I may or may not listen to it.

Least favorite title.

I love Illuminati Hotties.

They're probably one of my favorite bands, but Pool Choppin I think is probably my least favorite title.

Pretty weak.

You literally did the Pool Choppin.

I did literally do that.

I don't dislike the title, but...

I really did struggle with that one.

That one took me a really long time to come up with.

Not a good title, which is common.

The best titles I come up with are like, got it right away, got it in one.

But the ones that end up being mediocre are bad.

It's like, I spent so fucking long on that, and it's not even good.

Very frustrating dichotomy there.

That one was a weird one, because you guys did two very different things, which fucks with my brain when I'm trying to come up with puns or what the title should be, because it's easy when there's one word stuck in the mire with you, even though I don't particularly like that title.

We came up with like 40 good titles.

Yeah, that was like...

Because we all had a bunch of mire puns on there, or mud puns, or stuck puns that all worked well together.

Because we knew the episode had to be about we're in a big mucky mess.

There's a bunch of shit swirling around.

We're stuck here.

Pool chopping, that's literally one single moment in that entire episode.

But the episode was really just like a tense conversation.

And then you guys climbing some walls, and then some jokey joke stuff while you guys are figuring things out.

I like Stake Me Out a lot.

Yeah, Stake Me Out is a great one.

Yeah.

You don't really ask us for input anymore.

I'm always doing it at the last moment.

Yeah, which I think is good, because you've come up with very good titles, by and large.

Mostly.

And it also keeps us from arguing, which is good.

What's your guys' favorite moment?

I already talked about mine as being the entire episode with the old man.

My favorite moment is Ocean having a vision of everyone dying and then doing exactly what that vision showed him.

Yeah, the reason in my brain, the reason why it wasn't exactly the same, is he actually went much faster in real life than the vision, because in the vision, he still would have been a little cautious.

Even hearing gunshots, he wouldn't want to alert everyone.

He wouldn't just run past a dude.

That's why I specifically asked him, you're just going all out, right?

Like, you don't care if people see you.

He's like, yeah.

So I was like, OK, he's going to be a little ahead of the curve than what he saw in his vision.

No, I didn't take issue with it happening differently.

I just thought that was funny.

Yeah, that was a really good string of events.

That was really fun to play and to edit.

Very stressful to play.

Yeah, you guys were stressed.

The most stressed you all were, though, was definitely in the stew.

Yes.

Not having a good time.

I think my, speaking of the stew, I think my favorite moment is fucking obliterating the boat with the spider.

That was so good.

That was the catharsis for all your guys' miserableness.

That was the same episode I was talking about where you guys were like struggling, and like your roles just weren't fully working.

You're just already in a bad situation.

And that was so good.

Such a good idea.

And you rolled like perfect on it.

That was some Fast and Furious shit.

That is my absolute favorite moment from like a pure, like as a player, being like fucking finally, I remember distinctly.

That's the cool thing about Powered by the Apocalypses 2, like it gives me the freedom to allow that to happen instead of like something where that boat has a hit point number, and your spear does a certain amount of hit points, and you didn't do quite enough to kill it.

So it's like, oh, that was a really cool moment, but it's not dead.

So go do your next thing, go shoot it with your gun and try to finish it off.

While that one you had a full success.

So I could have put you just in a way better situation.

You pull it down, you skyrocket to the top.

But based on all the other circumstances, everything has been going on.

That was clearly a good cinematic moment to end it, to have you guys be successful.

So I was like, let's do it.

That was a very good choice, Jacob.

10 out of 10.

What was your favorite, Stu?

The whole Old Man episode.

Oh, sorry, I missed that.

I didn't miss it.

I heard it, but I forgot immediately.

You heard it, but you didn't listen.

My brain does not work.

I have ADHD, you little fuck.

Let's turn the wheel around.

Let's get negative here.

What was your guys' least favorite moments?

I know mine.

You go first, then, if you're so quick on it.

It was when I decided to kick Meanie in the nards.

In the moment, I thought it was going to be really funny, and I thought that would make it worth being kind of out of character.

But I think it set up a lot of consequences that I didn't...

I don't really...

I think it kind of changed how I played book after that a little bit, and I also think that it would have been better if Book had handled that in a more in-character way.

He also chose to inflict terrible harm.

Because I thought it was going to be funny, and it was funny, but it wasn't funny enough to justify it, I don't think.

My least favorite is the fact that we completely glossed over Razor.

I still...

I was beating myself up so bad.

And again, that's not...

That was, I think, both of us, because Brady was having the conversation, but Ocean was literally right there the entire time, and he didn't say anything or do nothing, and I completely ignored it as well.

It was just the amount of information we could have gotten from him that we lost when he died.

It makes me so irritated at my past choices.

That's also a good one.

I love everything we do, so this is a hard one for me.

I may need a second.

This is dumb, like this isn't even fun to talk about, but I just feel like when you failed the role in Moonsickness, when you're getting back to Hamlet Opening, there was like no real downside at all.

What role was it?

There was loose gravel.

Oh, that's right.

I remember that.

Book got a full failure on, but like you just got superficial damage to the jeep, and there was like nothing else bad that happened, which made me feel like the whole thing was a fucking waste of time.

But it didn't like take a long time, so it wasn't like miserable, but that's my least favorite thing I did.

What's your least favorite decision that we have made?

That you guys have made?

Oh, God.

Only in the last 21 episodes, because before that, it would certainly be breaking spade, would easily be number one by 20,000 miles.

Oh, that's, yeah.

Yeah, breaking spade was...

I liked it.

I think it was funny to fuck you over.

I think the things I'll like less, like my least favorite thing is going to be more like maybe I thought the story could go in a more exciting direction in that moment.

It usually all works out anyway, because there's always more exciting things.

Every single thing doesn't have to be, oh, the fun next thing that happens.

It'll come up naturally eventually.

I think probably my least favorite thing that you guys did was spend forever figuring out what to do after you finished the underwater fight, that super exciting moment, and before you guys went in the tunnels while you were meeting cow tools.

Like, I like where it ended up, but there was just a lot of, how do we save the spider?

Can we just row it all the way back?

There's a lot of meandering and ideas that were thrown, but nothing that really would have worked.

I think it mostly, a lot of it got cut out anyway, so it wasn't bad for the podcast.

But I especially dislike it because I explicitly asked you guys before, so you're just going to leave the spider, right?

And you guys are like, yeah, it seems like we have to.

And the first 20 minutes of that episode were, how do we save the spider?

Yeah, I think that's my fault.

I mean, I wouldn't, I didn't want to lose the spider either.

Can I say though, with the spade thing, my goal with that moment wasn't to break them, it was to shift.

To gain them as an ally.

No, no, no, it was just to shift the power in balance because they had such a strong influence over everybody.

My goal was like, oh, this is something cool that would shake up the power dynamic, that would like kind of do a little bit, it would be like kind of poking the bear, but in a way that shows the bear like, I'm dangerous too.

And instead, like Stu went very nuclear with it, which I think was, you know.

I basically had to because the result of your previous roles were failures that basically said, if you don't walk away right now, that shit's gonna happen.

And then you were like, no.

And that wasn't like me being like, oh, well, you didn't listen to me.

That's just the result from the roles were saying, if you don't walk right now, it's gonna be bad, which you've already, you pushed against that like three times already.

So it was like, I can't let this be the best success for this move.

Well, the move doesn't even have a role, right?

So for whatever that move did, I had to go, this is something that's going to provide a significant threat to him.

Which I could have been weaker, could have been whatever, but I felt like it made sense for what you told them.

And what their original goals were that you still don't know.

Yeah, I agree.

No, I agree.

That is true.

We don't know much about what our goals or anything were, so we don't really know if what you told her just made her be like, shit, I'm going to go do this thing I've already been planning.

Yep.

And I'm not telling you now because you could figure out.

But if on episode 60 recap, we don't know yet.

Maybe I'll tell you.

I have a question for Stu.

Yes, I have an answer for you.

What's going to happen next?

I don't know.

We firmly established that Stu doesn't play in shit.

So I like you guys to think I plan even more than I do, because then I feel like people get the impression that.

Oh, I definitely think I do.

I definitely think you plan more than you actually do.

Good.

That's what I 100 percent people think.

I want to tease the viewer, the listeners here about our fucking banger Halloween episode.

Oh, my God.

Let me say first, I promise we will release it, but it may be before next time.

I'm sure we can think of a time something to tie in.

I had an idea to just completely re-flavor it into a Christmas episode.

Well, we missed that too.

We did.

I'm sure we can think of something to tie it into.

We should explain.

There's a Halloween episode that's very good.

It's so good.

Both Brady and Ocean play very different characters, and they do it in a very good way.

Brady and Ocean.

I think you mean Brady and Jacob, dude.

I just blend that line between Jacob and Ocean so fucking well.

Yes, Brady and Jacob both play very different characters that are both very exciting and funny, and it's good and creepy and also hilarious constantly.

And then Brady's audio got messed up for a good chunk of it.

We lost like 15 minutes of it.

We have to re-record all that audio, which has just been something that is difficult.

Yeah, because I'm working with a transcription that was AI generated, I think, that's not very accurate, so I have to listen to the episode as we're going.

And based off of what Stu and Jacob said and what the things that I said, I had to figure out what I was saying, and I think I'm five minutes in.

Man, that sucks.

That's so rough.

And also, it became a lower priority as it got further and further from Halloween.

But we will put it out.

It's very exciting, and I think we want to do more kind of one-shots with different systems, because I think that's exciting.

And it's also a good thing you can send to your friends to be like, hey, listen to these guys and see if you like them as much as I certainly do.

And then when they do, they get hooked and they have to go listen to freaking 40 episodes of this madness.

Yeah, I think it's a great entry point, because I think it's peak us.

It's us at our strongest.

Yeah, it's all of our one-shots that we've recorded that I think we've released only one of them at this point.

Half of one, actually.

We always put half of one.

From that Halloween episode, there's one moment that is my favorite moment of the entire series.

So if you asked me that question, I would have said one of the moments from that show.

Oh, yeah.

When we record one-shots, we were one, I always try and intentionally play somebody very different than book, but also we're just not taking it nearly as seriously.

So you get to it's a little bit more fun, more loosey goosey, more us chatting and shitting on, just shooting the shit.

Do we want to talk about like season two at all?

Of Game of Thrones?

No, of this.

Sure, I didn't even know that was season two.

Like after an arc ends or like?

Yeah.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

We'll still follow Book and Ocean for season two.

Lay it on me.

I don't know.

I don't know anything about season two.

It's just ideas.

Yeah, we don't do all of our planning live while recording.

We shouldn't.

So I want it to be a new hard zone basically, in a different apocalypse.

And I think there's a billion ways we could get there.

So I'm not worried about that part at all.

So don't think about that in any way.

Are we going to reset our character sheets?

You can like change playbooks and stuff like that.

What I meant is are we going to lose our improvements?

No, you'll have anything that you earned that makes sense for your character.

So the way Powered by the Apocalypse works is you basically have a sanctity of your character to your character sheet.

So any move or item or thing you have that makes sense to still have available, you would have when you switch playbooks.

So like the spider is technically a move for Ocean.

And when he switches playbooks, he's not going to just lose his spider.

He still has his spider.

Oh, that's cool.

So it's all good.

Do you keep your stats, though?

Or do you change stats?

Your stats.

No, stats stay the same.

Oh, interesting.

The weird thing about Apocalypse World is it works fine if all of your stats are fucking plus three still.

You just succeed more, but you still fail a bunch.

You still get mixed successes, which can be just as bad as failing, if I want them to be.

You'll still fail on a one, two, and three, which is six of 36 rolls.

It's a small chance of failing, but it's not one that won't come up multiple times in probably an episode.

And then you're still very likely to get mixed successes, just under 50%.

But yeah, what if you guys, we obviously aren't going to be beholden to this forever, but if you guys could choose another hard zone to be in, what do you think would be interesting for season two?

The other ones are Drowned City, which is Ocean, Fallen City, which is a giant city that's dilapidated basically, like super urbanization, kind of like Subterrable.

I think if we picked a second one, it would be very much, should be the opposite of what we have right now.

Yeah.

Oh, there's a Frozen one, which I've actually played that.

I don't know.

I forgot that.

That could be interesting.

Overgrown one, the Poisoned Land, which I don't have a super great grasp on, but it's like marsh garbage.

Sounds like a lot of the stew again.

And then Scorched Wastes, which are just normal-ish.

A little more fiery than Mad Max, I'd say, but still very Mad Max-y.

Any of those above ground, jungle, underground would be super cool.

I think the Frozen one would be cool and also be a good tie into the Subtropolis setting of why they're all underground.

I think a lot of those would explain us getting, like, the ocean one, like the flood, like a flood situation.

I can make them all work, don't worry.

The scorched earth one makes a lot of...

Yeah, that's what I mean.

I think we have a ton of flexibility.

Yeah, there's tons of cool things.

My two favorite would probably be the ocean flooded based apocalypse or the Frozen apocalypse.

The ocean would be a lot of fun.

It'd be a lot of fun with ocean being in the ocean.

I just love the idea of a jungle full of dinosaurs.

We said we would talk about what we're doing after these fall in love questions are over.

Yeah.

So now that we're done with the questions of fall in love, what are we doing next?

We had that one episode where we were putting together our apocalypse team, and I had a stupid idea that we could continue that trend of kind of...

You see this a lot where people are like, what would you bring to a stranded island?

What would you bring if you were stranded on an island?

That sort of thing.

And I think it would be really fun if we start with general questions like that and then get more and more specific every time.

I think it would be very funny.

And maybe every week someone else is responsible for the question, but we all answer it.

I'm fine rotating around responsibilities.

Oh, that could be really fun if we each came up with our own question.

So I view these as like icebreaker questions, right?

Like that's kind of what they are.

But fun, not like real icebreaker questions.

Because we know each other.

And it's you guys as characters still, and I have to answer them as reals too.

Yeah.

So I think the intros will be more fun than the questions nerd scientists came up with.

Yeah, those fucking nerds.

Those dumb nerds.

But we got to make sure they're not too long.

Our come up with a team question was definitely the upper limit of how long we should spend.

How do we end these?

Last time, I think we struggled finding a dramatic way, and you just repeated the cliffhanger from the previous episode.

If I recall correctly.

I have no idea how we ended the last episode.

You guys didn't go re-listen to the previous one right before this?

You should end it with Jacob saying, I have no idea.

I have no idea how to end this.

Well, in 20 more episodes from now, I can once again return to playing real Stu instead of the character known as Stu.

What, Brady, you got excited?

We have to acapella make the ending theme song, and then Stu will record the outro.

Oh, my God.

Over top of the filling.