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SMNTY Classics: Women and the Apocalypse · Stuff Mom Never Told You

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: And Samantha.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: And welcome to Stuff Never Told You, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: And welcome to another classic, and this one is on
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: the apocalypse. Women, and the apocalypse specifically. There's a lot
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: of reasons I was thinking about this. Obviously, the news.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: I think it's become a more common topic of conversation
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: than it already was when we were recording this. And
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: part of that is I was trying to make my
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: grocery list today and I don't know. I don't know
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: what to do. There's so many food recalls. It's just,
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: it feels very go grow your own. You know what
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: I mean? growing on produce but then you're talking about
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: i can't eat these three tomatoes they're only gonna get
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: me so.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: Far i have five tomatoes now oh i'm.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: Sorry i didn't mean to didn't mean to slight you
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: but yeah things like that um yeah obviously the last
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: of those days coming up so thinking about that yeah
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: halloween's coming A lot of things.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of things happening.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there really is. I miss the days of me
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: making a grocery list. I've got to research every single thing.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: I don't even know what I'm going to eat for
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: dinner tonight, but I'll figure it out. I'll figure it out.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: In the meantime, please enjoy this classic episode. Hey, this
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: is Annie.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: And Samantha.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: And welcome to Stuff I've Never Told You, a production
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio.
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: And for no specific reason at all or timing at all,
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: we thought it would be fun to talk about the apocalypse.
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: No? Sure. Everybody loves, everybody loves in time. No fun
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: for all.
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: And if you've been following along recently with our episodes
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: and kudos to you, cause we know we have a
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: lot of content.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: So if you're like, yeah, I heard that one. I'll
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: be like, wow, good on you.
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: Uh, I have been exploring how to survive the world. Uh,
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: as it starts to implode, I, I bought a bread maker.
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: I have plans for gardens and other things, uh, which
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: made me ponder, what do people think when it comes
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: to women and the apocalypse? Because, you know, again, as
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: we told you previously many, many times, we're always thinking
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: about episodes in this show specifically.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: So there you go.
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: And perhaps to no one's surprise, there's a lot of
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: speculation on women, especially in like a zombie apocalypse, because
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: that's the majority of like when we were looking for
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: quizzes or something fun, it's just zombie apocalypse. And yes,
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: that includes several articles based on The Last of Us.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: Annie, I know, I know.
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: But also a lot of references on how women are
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: the face of the biblical apocalypse as well. So why
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: don't we talk about some of the facets of this apocalypse.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: And women, Annie? Why don't we jump into it?
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: Let's do it.
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: You ready? So I'm thinking this is going to be
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: a little bit shorter one. Why do I do this?
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: I just set myself up, didn't I?
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: You're starting the apocalypse. This is like what, at the
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: beginning of the pandemic, when everybody was thinking about the
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: one thing they did or said.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: That started it. Ours was the predictions, weren't they? Okay,
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: moving on. We're not going to harp on that one again.
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: So the apocalypse is a wonderful, I say this sarcastically,
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: setting for so much entertainment, whether we are talking about movies, books,
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: or games. It has opened up so many... scenarios and
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: possibilities and plot lines.
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: And how many types of apocalypse are there? Well, a lot.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: There's a lot out there.
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: Some of them include like pandemic level. And yeah, we
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: still need to finish our game, Annie. Yes.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: Pandemic being a board game that is very, very fun, very,
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: very difficult. It has many difficulties and also different iterations.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: We were playing it during the pandemic. We got through
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: two of them.
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: One.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: We got through the main one that people play, and
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: then we did the longer campaign one, and then we
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: had a second longer campaign one, and we haven't finished
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: that one. And when we sit down to play that again,
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: we're going to have to do a refresher.
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: We're going to have to do it. I'm almost thinking
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: we might have to start over.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: No, because my character is so interesting.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he's probably going to die.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: I was the traitor in the other one.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: So many.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: I didn't mean to be.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: A few of our characters died.
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: Y'all. They're fun.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: It's a thing. It's fun.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: It is.
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: But it's also like a 30-minute setup to remember how
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: to play it.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: But we love those campaigns, right?
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: So there's the pandemic. And then we have the man-created war,
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: nuclear holocaust.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: There's alien.
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: You know, that type of apocalypse. And so much more.
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: But it seems the more recent or, I guess, favorites
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: are something along the lines of a specific disease or
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: disaster that eventually creates a zombie-like environment that's going to
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: come and eat you or infect you.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: Like one of those iterations, right?
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: And to add some depth to these, here's some explainers
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: of some of the apocalypses. Again, I think they have like,
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: the list goes on and on. I looked at one
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: and you know how Google shows.
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: You the top, whatever.
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: So there was like, 12 listed, and then the number
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: says many more.
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: So we're not doing all of them, okay? But just
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: to give kind of a small explainer. So one timely
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: classic is the nuclear war. I'm thinking Fallout, that game,
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: you know what I mean, where everybody's hiding in bunkers,
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: all these things. It isn't a surprise that after the
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: usage of the nuclear weapons in World War II... that
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: people had legitimate fears of world-collapsing attacks, and of course,
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: the current state of being with power-hungry people who've been
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: given unlimited power, or so they claim.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: So, you know, that's one that's in the back of
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: our heads. That's an option, right?
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: Then we have the pandemic apocalypse. Again, something that seems
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: like it could occur at any moment. And ashills.com even
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: talks about being the most plausible of all the apocalypses.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: Here's a quote.
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: A pandemic apocalypse is one of the most plausible types
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: of apocalypse, and it's a scenario that we are currently
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: living through with the outbreak of coronavirus. While the current
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: pandemic isn't yet on the scale of some of the
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: fictional examples below, it's still a grim reminder of how
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: quickly a virus can spread and how easily civilization can
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: break down. So, yeah, that's one. And I have like
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: his article was in the midst of this. So makes
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: a lot of sense. One we didn't mention before is
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: the religious idea of the rapture. Remember the Left Behind series?
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: Did you read any of those, Annie? Or watch Kirk
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: Cameron in action?
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: That was a heavy sigh. I did read Left Behind.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: I know there was a show. I didn't watch that.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: I have said before, I had a teacher in eighth
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: grade who just really, really didn't like that I wasn't
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: that i was an atheist and he would always say
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: it's like you're running off a cliff and i i'm
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: trying to stop you uh and he was like you've
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: got to read left behind and i did it it
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: was fine.
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: I love when people take fictional tales and be like
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: you need to read this this is gonna be you
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: he was really like.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: This is gonna change your whole perspective and i was
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: like okay Let me try it.
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: It's the same thing as the Da Vinci Code. It
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: came around the same time. So you would think like, anyway,
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: but anyway. Yeah. So here's a brief explanation from that
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: same article, ashtales.com that says, the religious rapture apocalypse is
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: a popular motif in fiction, often used to explore themes
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: of fate, morality, and human nature. In these stories, the
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: world comes to an end, not through natural disaster or
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: nuclear war, but but through the intervention of a higher power.
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: This can take the form of God sending angels to
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: whisk away the faithful or of Jesus returning to judging
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: the living and the dead. Whatever the specifics, the religious
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: rapture apocalypse is a powerful way to explore the idea
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: of an all-powerful being who decides the fate of humanity.
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: And we're not going to go too deep into that
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: in itself, but we do want to come back around
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: and talk a little bit, just kind of mention some
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: of the female images used to portray these end of
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: times within the religious concepts of the apocalypse based on Revelation.
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: And if you know, you know.
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: But you're going to know at the end of this.
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: But yeah, I find this interesting because... Again, when you
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: have tales of the rapture, there's always a center character
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: about the Antichrist. Yeah. And if I were to go
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: back and I look at the Left Behind series, it
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: feels like it's.
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: Portraying someone we know.
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: He becomes president.
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: Just FYI.
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: Um but what's so funny is my part of my
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: family in that that like kooky crew um extended family
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: really really thought it was oprah.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: The antichrist wow i'm like like a black woman's gonna
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: have that much power ever.
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: Dang.
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: Like, not because they're not powerful. It's because society wouldn't
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: let them give that kind of authority. But that was their.
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: Belief for a while. I love the whole... I think
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: Beyonce is actually now part of that category.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: I do. I mean, I find it really interesting that
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: a lot of times a woman gets really powerful and
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden... Heavy quotes around, like, respectable conservative
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: media is like, they must be witches. There's no other way.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: There's no other way.
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: Which, again, I will say at least the Left Behind series,
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: whether or not it's because of lack of imagination or
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: they also felt like, no, there's no way that anybody
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: but a white man in power could be this powerful.
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: He does portray the Antichrist.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: As a white man.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: So, you know. I think we're all on the same
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: page there.
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: Anyway, and then the last example we want to give
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: is addressing the zombie apocalypse. which pretty much like the
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: other types are multifaceted and could all be connected, such
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: as maybe a nuclear war creating zombies and diseases and
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: being caused by some ideal of a holy war.
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: You know, you could put all that together. But zombies,
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: much like vampires.
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: Or witches, because we've talked about this before, or werewolves,
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: seem to be a part of a cyclical horror fad
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: that becomes trendy at different times. Because like, Train to
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: Busan and all of those movies came out. World War Z, Zombieland,
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: they kind of all came out in a chunk together.
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: And they're still popular. So they have outdone the gamut
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: of most other fictional characters.
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: Villains? Would you call them villains? Just horror?
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's the question. We don't need to get into
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: a morality debate about vampires right now. I wouldn't call
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: zombies villains because they typically don't have any brain function.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: So they're more like.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: A sad outcome of a virus.
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: I won't call them villains.
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: What, which movie, which zombie movie is it that they adapt?
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: Like they suddenly get faster and they figured out how
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: to do doors and they kind of figured out like.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: Is that census? It's 28 days later. Maybe they were,
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: they were, it was 28 days later was new and
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: that they were fast.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: Um, There's another one.
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: I just remember they have this conversation, the survivors do,
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: about they're adapting.
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: They're adapting to us, trying to get to us. And
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: I was like, huh, they are becoming more people-like.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: They're like raptors.
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: Ooh, oh my.
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: With all of that, zombies are somehow created and become
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: a part of the threat of humanity. But we know
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: by this point that it's often a cautionary tale of
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: the downfall of humanity in itself. As Ryan Law, again,
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: who wrote the Ashtales.com article, says, Although it is usually
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: presented as a horror story, the zombie apocalypse can also
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: be a commentary on society, human nature, and our relationship
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: with technology. And of course, like we looked at George
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: Romero was like the beginning of the zombie movies and
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: having this whole conversation. Like it was a conversation of race,
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: if I remember, like a lot of things in society,
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: but this specifically about race in this conversation. And then
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: we had filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino who came in trying
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: to make his own kind of version of horror. And
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: when he did it, it was all just like, I
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: have a lot of opinions about him, but all like,
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: just gross-esque, like, type of shocking movie. And I remember
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: there was a quote about just, like, Romero, like, getting
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: up and leaving in the middle of the screening because
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: he didn't like it. And Quentin Tarantino took that as
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: a victory, saying he scared him so badly when in
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: actuality he was just disgusted because the whole point of
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: Tarantino's movie was to gross people out, to shock people.
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: I think there was a scene where he's trying to
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: rape somebody and his dick falls off, which is kind
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: of funny.
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: You're like, okay.
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: But that's obviously no real social commentary to that other
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: than he wanted to be gross and have that as
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: his conversation. So we know when it comes to things
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: like the zombie movies and especially as its.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: Origins, it's a bigger conversation about all of this.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: The wave before the wave we're in now, those zombie
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: movies were largely about consumerism because it was like, I mean,
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: very basically. I could talk about this for a long time. But,
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: you know, it was essentially, a lot of them took
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: place in malls. And it would be your sort of
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: mindless zombie and that representing consumerism. But also kind of being,
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: I won't even say romanticized, but like some part of
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: you being like, that would be nice if my life was.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: Heavy quotes again. More simple in terms of I just
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: have to survive, I guess. I mean, yeah.
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: And as Laws wrote also, it can be a conversation
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: about our relationship to technology.
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: And I think that's like the newer version of things.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: So it is like, OK, OK, interesting.
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: So in the world of fantasy, these scenarios happen often.
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: But the question that we're having is how do women fare,
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: especially in these fantasies and horror situations? And we are
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: going to look at the entertainment factor because there's a
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: lot to be said about what people think may happen.
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: happen and how they see women in these scenarios as well.
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: So I want to go ahead and put this caveat.
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: Most of this conversation, unfortunately, is very cis, heteronormative in
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: the ideal that they want. Like, it's almost rendering it
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: back to gender norms, like classic gender binaries. So they
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: really heavily weighs on that. So that's the bigger conversation.
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: And that's bigger examples that we have. Of course, there's
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: new people who are doing things that are creating and
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: pushing the boundaries, of course.
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: But we can't ignore.
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: That that has been a perpetual part of the conversation,
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: especially when you look at like apocalyptic film where they use,
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: and we're gonna talk a little more, use women, whether
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: it's as victims or as the plot line, like, you know,
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: dead women or rescuing women and all those things. So
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: that does come into play as well. Now, like many
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: things in life, This question, how do women fare in
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: this situation, is a toss-up.
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: It's a toss-up, y'all.
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: There are those who see women being portrayed as mere tokens,
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: because you got to have some type of romantic tension, right?
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: So for one to survive a long time must be
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: somewhat capable, but not too capable. And an example that
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: we were given is the World War Z. It's been
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: a long time since I've seen that. I did remember, like,
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: I liked it, but it does point out the fact
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: that his wife, who kind of She's supposed to be
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: a scientist, I believe.
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: Do you remember the movie?
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: I've never seen it.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: Or the book? Oh, you've never seen it?
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: That's surprising.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: No. I have question marks. Because it's definitely a horror
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: movie-ish thriller, I guess. Suspense?
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: I don't think it's enough on my horror radar.
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: Okay, okay. It's got a few jump scares.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: But, like, the woman is with their family, and he's
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: trying to get to them, but he's needed because he's
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: so important to all these things. And, like, she has
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: this conversation with him, and then, like, she just stays
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: on the boat.
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: Like, that's her entire character. Yeah. Who plays this. So that...
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: Or even Walking Dead. Like, you.
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: As many, like, good characters are in there, it's, like,
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: the token. They're still not the actual main characters. They
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: might be a foil. Think about Glenn and Maggie. Like,
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: a lot of people hated Maggie at the end of that.
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: Because they blamed her for his death. And I didn't
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: even see that scene. I was not ready for that scene. Oh, no.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: Is this spoilers?
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: I don't know when that happened. I don't... It's later on,
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: but that... That's been a while, right?
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: Anyway, things happen. Maggie gets blamed. All right.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: We're going to go with that.
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: And then you have the women being a product or hostages.
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: Think Mad Max or Handmaid's Tale. And yes, there is
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: female leads to this one. And even in the later
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: Mad Max, Furiosa and Fury Road. But there also lies
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: the abuse of women. as a subplot for most of
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: that uh even like the old school one with mel
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: gibson and tina turner come on her her her costume
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: is iconic but it still doesn't say much to uh
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: women i will say again we've had this debate and
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: i think had i already started on the show when
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: fury road came out.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: Yes because i've I got in big trouble at my
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: job the day I saw Fury Road and it all
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: worked out. But I remember very specifically the day I
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: saw Fury Road.
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: Were we together? No.
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: I was, no. It was before you. I was in Texas, actually.
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: So I just remember being really upset.
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: Not upset, but like disappointed because everybody had painted this,
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: all the men who hated this movie, talking about how
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: they didn't need her character.
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: She made it worse.
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: And in the end, it was like, but she's the
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: one that gets saved. Like, yeah, she has a pretty
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: badass role, but in the end, she still needed the
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: main character to save her.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: So why are you mad? This seems typical. What's happening?
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: So even with the big, like, publicity to that, it
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: still didn't wow me and like, oh, look, there's this
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: feminist icon. And don't get me wrong, she is in
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: the feminist... Charlize Theron on her own.
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: As an icon.
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: But in that movie, it didn't... match the energy that
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: was given to me, but all those things. And talking
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: about all of this, writer Sable Aradia talks about these
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: types of scenarios in her post titled Sexism in the Apocalypse.
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: And she goes on to talk about how using these
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: types of scenarios are another addition to the harmful idea
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: that the only way women would survive is by being
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: protected by the good men or good guys from the
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: bad men.
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: She writes, Yes, and she continues.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: The roving bands of raping marauders are orcs for writers.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: You can feel okay about killing them because it's justified,
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: but I think it's perpetuating a dangerous, misogynistic, and misandrist
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: stereotype that has repercussions. The idea that feminism is dependent
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: upon civilization, and that if the authority of civilization were
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: to fall, women would become prey and men would descend
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: immediately into acting like gorillas competing for a harem. Even
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: Margaret Atwood, hailed as a powerful feminist voice, has fallen
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: victim to this stereotype.
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: So the stereotypes obviously transcend the horror, but also into
• 21:57
  Speaker 3: the comedic ideals as well. Another example of women not
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: doing much or barely seen is from the apocalyptic comedy
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: of This is the End, where most of the people
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: and women specifically all get swallowed up in a sinkhole.
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: or the one woman that appears, Emma Watson, playing herself,
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: comes through but hurriedly runs away with an axe when
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: she realizes she may be stuck with an entire group
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: of strange men who make comments that are a little
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: too eager.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: So obviously she runs away.
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: But there's definitely a lot of conversation because that is
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: one of the biggest critiques to these movies and to
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: these shows about apocalyptic scenarios is that, once again, women
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: are just property i.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: Think i would say one of the things i noticed
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: when i was compiling uh the survival horror chapter in
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: our book you can go get wherever you get your
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: books your books is that i mean and we've been
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: doing it in this episode is that a lot of
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: times it's the one she's the woman like there's it's
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: all men and then there's the woman And then if
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: there are more women, then, yeah, they are usually some
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: type of property or something to be exploited or protected.
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: But they're not, like, fully realized characters.
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: Right. Well, with all of those risks and uncertainties, we
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: do have some, as you said, who have done better.
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: been treated better, existed better, such as the ladies from Zombieland.
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: Some trickery and deception could keep you alive a bit longer,
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: you know, according to them. However, another article written by
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: Ray Alexandra titled How to Be a Woman in the Apocalypse,
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: according to male-dominated movies, so this is somewhat sarcastic, does
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: give praise to one woman, again, that one, who plays
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: it smart and safe, and that's Michelle from 10 Cloverfield Lane.
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: I have not seen this movie. Have you seen this one?
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: I have seen this one.
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: This one you have. I like that we've seen one
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: of each at this point now. And she writes this.
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: The protagonist of 10 Cloverfield Lane, Michelle, played by Mary
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: Elizabeth Winstead, offers a damn near perfect guidebook on how
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: to realistically survive the apocalypse.
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: Thank you, J.J. Abrams, she says.
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: She knows when to be patient and when to fight.
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: Her mind is always working overtime, and she's crafty enough
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: to make her own hazmat suit and gas mask. Thanks
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: to these factors, as well as taking the time to
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: heal from a physical injury, Michelle ultimately outwits the shady
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: doomsday survivalist who ran her off the road and held
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: her in his bunker. On top of all of that,
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: Michelle shows us that even when you do finally find
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: out that the Earth has been invaded by humanity-destroying aliens,
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: it is best not to freak out. Just quietly get
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: into the nearest car and bravely head out to find
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: other survivors. So we do have some. I like that
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: she wrote that this is our guidebook.
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: You know, now that you mentioned it, yeah, that is true.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: Because it's like a guy's trying to protect her, but
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: really he was keeping her, holding her captive. And she
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: had to kind of outsmart him and then gets out
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: in the world. Turns out he was right, but hey.
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: She was like, nah, I'm better off. I'm good.
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: Without you, thank you very much.
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: Which brings us to those who think women may be
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: the last to remain, according to our entertainment. The Last
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: of Us is talk full of women leadership. The survival
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: of women is not guaranteed. And it talks about how
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: it is stacked against women.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: But.
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: The fact that they're all these that exist. Are they
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: all great?
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: No. I like that, though.
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: But they're leaders. But they're leaders. So we have Marlene.
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: We have Kathleen. We have Maria. And Ellie herself, of course.
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: And we're not talking about The Last of Us 2 yet, Annie.
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: Not yet. I know. You really want to.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: Well, we can't.
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: You know what? I'll give you the exception.
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: Who would you add from The Last of Us 2?
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: Abby. Obviously. Is she a leader for her group, though?
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: She's a leader within her organization, I would say. She's, like,
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: first pick of the team. You want Abby. Also Mel.
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: But that's a different story. Okay, I won't go into
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: it too much. But, yeah, I mean, I do like...
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: There are a lot of women leaders in The Last
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: of Us series. I kind of like, because I think
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: the whole point of The Last of Us, we jokingly
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: called our crew when we did Betrayal at the House
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: on the Hill, that campaign, that board game. We called
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: our crew The Least of Us. Because it's like, how
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: did you survive? You probably had to do some things
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: that weren't great.
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: I didn't know that. I didn't know that's how we
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: called ourselves to that.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: You chose it i assumed that was me.
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: That was my partner i'm not that creative i thought
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: it was you.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: Uh but anyway so i like that you know you
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: see the kind of the good and bad of them
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: and you understand like that's one of the most painful
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: and wonderful parts of the last of us because you're
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: like okay i get it maybe i don't like.
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: It i mean that's the whole point of end of
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: times content, right? Like, this is the end of humanity.
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: How far do we go? How good or how bad
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: is it? Yeah, and with some of those great examples,
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: there's also the argument that many of the women leaders
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: or survivors are often white, perpetuating the idea of white saviors.
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: One thesis written by Sarah Austin wrote about this, specifically
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: titled White Girls in the Apocalypse, Race, Gender, and Sexuality
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: at the End of the World. And as the title implies,
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: it also takes on the more stereotypical heteronormative standards as well.
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: So it's a very cis-heteronormative, gender-binding type of ideal. So
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: Austin writes, To maintain the cultural status quo while focusing
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: on a girl power heroine, the post-apocalyptic white girl savior
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: subgenre has specific markers that center around white women's sexuality
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: and reproduction as hallmarks for the survival of humanity at large.
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: This combination of traits intended to make characters relatable and
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: aspirational for a young adult audience, also acts as a
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: form of capitalist activism by exploiting white feminism and girl
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: power rhetoric to generate viewers, ad revenue, and licensed products.
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: These texts and media maintain the importance of white women's
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: sexuality and roles as mothers in late-stage capitalism while denying
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: the full humanity of queer, trans, black, indigenous, and people
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: of color, or BIPOC, and the other women marked by
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: differences from an idealized heterosexual white identity. So it does
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: say a lot to that. Now, again, we're going to
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: give kudos to the last of us who really kind
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: of changed some of those ideas by bringing in a
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: queer character and.
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: All of these things.
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: So we definitely see a little differences in that type
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: of conversation. But for the most part, a chunk of
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: all of these kind of like girl power end of
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: times conversations heroism, fighting for society, movies, it is white, cis.
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: Heterosexual girls.
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: So in her article, Austin gives examples of Katniss from
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: Hunger Games, Buffy from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and even
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: Emma Swan from Once Upon a Time.
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: I was like, ah, look at that.
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: I don't think of that as end of times, but
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: there is a lot of the times where they're trying
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: to end the world.
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: Or take over the world.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: Okay, okay.
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: And make it theirs. So, like, they destroyed the fairy lands, essentially. Oh, okay.
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: And they come to a different world, and then she
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: wants to take over that world.
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: Got you.
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: So, all those things. So, kind of.
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: And with that, she points out their transparent attempt to
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: be inclusive by writing... I argue that the post-apocalyptic white
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: girl savior is always haunted by race and queerness. These
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: side characters make the reader feel as if the trope
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: is inclusive and allows the subgenre to access BIPOC and
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: queer identities to the service of white supremacy and heteronormativity,
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: building on the cultural narrative of white women as universally
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: welcoming and mothering. The girl savior must be near these
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: forms of differences but cannot embody them. since she is
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: chosen for her lineage or special qualities, which are inextricably
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: tied to her heterosexual white femininity. Buffy, for example, is
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: both more effective and more civilized than the first black slayer, Sanaya,
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: which means restless, apparently. Despite the Savior's straight, white, unmarked identity,
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: her friends and helpers, such as Buffy's lesbian best friend Willow,
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: demonstrate her open-mindedness and universal appeal. So, Her entire paper
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: is a fascinating read. It's a pretty long paper. And
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: she does clearly show the continued white savior trope within
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: these shows or books. And she, like I said, gives
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: true blood as an example of that as well. You
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: have that heterosexual white girl, innocent white girl, a fairy
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: at that, coming to save, but all her, like, cronies,
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: her sidekicks, are from the BIPOC community, essentially, as well
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: as usually queer community. So, like, it does hang on to, like, yes,
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: it's about her sidekicks, but they can't be the embodiment
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: of the Savior, obviously. In it, she also talks about
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: the different tropes, such as the love triangles and why
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: that's necessary, as well as motherhood that is heavily used
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: in order to tie the feeling of humanity and emotions
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: into a plot. But still has to stay within that
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: heteronormative standards. You cannot stray from that at all. And
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: of course, a part of that conversation with things like
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: vampires or all those is about having children and not
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: being able to be a mother.
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: We know that. We've talked about that. Not siring a child. Huh.
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: And that's part of like, you can't do this. Which motherhood,
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: if that is something that's important to you, can break
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: a relationship for sure. But it definitely has this level
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: of incompletion for those characters.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: So, you know, you do it like Twilight and get
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: pregnant with a vampire baby, whatever. Look.
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: It's coming. It's coming, Annie.
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: I'm waiting for the day. Oh.
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: And with that, actually, we stumbled upon another article, and
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: this was written by Nicole. It doesn't have her last name,
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: so I'm not leaving it out. Her name is Nicole,
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: and it's for beyondblackwhite.com. And the article is titled and asks,
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: Would Black Women Survive a Zombie Apocalypse? So she talks
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: specifically about survival skills and how she imagines people may
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: be planning the end of times. And she brings on
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: good points about things that can lessen the chances for
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: anyone's survival. So she talks about children or having a
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: lot of children. And I think about the fact that
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: I have a pet and how.
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: There's no way I.
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: Could remain alive for long if I try to keep peaches.
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: Because if we're being hunted down by zombies or just
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: bad peoples in general, she's going to bark.
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: She's a barker. And then she hides with me. And
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: I'm like, what?
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: So she's going to give me away immediately after the barking.
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: And I guess, like, again, when we talk about, like,
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: young babies or toddlers that don't know why they're in
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: this emergency situation and cry when they need things, like,
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: that's their communication.
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: That could be a problem.
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: This reminds me of... I haven't watched it yet, but
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: I have it. Quiet Place Day 1 with the cat.
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: Oh, with the cat. Well, like the Quiet Place 2
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: where she has the box. I mean, the first one.
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: With the baby.
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: The first one or the second one? Both.
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: Both.
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: The second one she has the baby in a box. Yeah.
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: And so when it's born, she immediately puts it into
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: that box with the oxygen tank, which is already running out.
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: I'm like, okay.
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: That's genius.
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: How do you know for sure without testing?
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: Okay. Okay.
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: Willing suspension of disbelief. This is what makes these movies amazing. So,
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: you know, those things I do think about as well.
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: But she never really.
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: Nicole never really gives any definitive answer outside of the
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: fact that beyond Black women know how to survive, point blank,
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: and they know how to push forward.
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: As Nicole writes, I'm a survivor. I'm not going to
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: give up. Destiny Child right there.
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: If nothing else, Black women are survivors. For better or worse,
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: we pride ourselves collectively on the ability to make a
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: dollar out of 15 cents. The tenacity would be one
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: of the key ways Black women could survive. In the
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: face of adversity, we plant our feet and get that
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: work done.
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: Additionally, I could count on.
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: Black women to make the canned food rations and swirl
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: meat post-apocalypse to be rather tasty given the apocalyptic circumstances.
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: It is a talent to be able to cook just
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: with what you have and make it good. There's only
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: a handful of people that I know that can do that.
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: Chefs, obviously. But, like, that I've known in real life. And, yeah.
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: I'm not one of those people.
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: And, however, Nicole does say, like many others, can't imagine
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: that humanity in itself would be so kind or giving.
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: And with all of those uncertainties, you know, could they?
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: Who could survive in this scenario? Who is going to
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: survive in those scenarios?
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: So. She gives advice.
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: So if you want to go back and look at
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: that article that I just mentioned, you should go back.
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: She's just like, you know, if you're into witchcraft, get
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: those herbs, ladies. And I'm like, yeah, that's actually really smart.
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: Get those herbs.
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: With all of that, because we're kind of going to
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: come back into, I guess, the real thing. scenario like
• 36:35
  Speaker 3: could this actually be could we survive if this was
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: a real scenario so do you have any characters annie
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: that you would regard as good examples of surviving or
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: just iconic women of the apocalypse yeah.
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: I mean i i i hesitate because like good examples
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: again i think a lot of times apocalypse media is
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: about like how you hold on to your humanity when
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: you're in this situation so There are examples of people
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: doing that. But it's still like you've faced so many losses.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: I would say Dina, who is from The Last of
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: Us 2. I won't give any further spoilers, but just. Yeah, Dina.
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: Clara Redfield from Resident Evil 2. She's a good one.
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: Maybe Heather from Silent Hill 3, which, by the way,
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: I recently found out. I don't know how I didn't
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: know this, but there's a Silent Hill 2 movie that's
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: based on Silent Hill 3, which is one of many
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: funny things about that movie. And I watched it, and
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: I had the time of my life, to be honest.
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: You know, Carrie M. Moss is in it.
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: Carrie M.
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: Moss is probably like, please never bring this up again.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: But speaking of Carrie Ann Moss, Trinity from The Matrix. Yeah.
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: She's a good one. I do think Maria from The
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: Last of Us and Marlene. It's just so tragic. All
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: of it's so tragic. I'm struggling to think of one.
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: That's a spoiler alert.
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, those are some good ones. Again, I haven't seen
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: all of Fallout. Obviously, the Fallout is just beginning. But
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: the main character, she seems to be... Again, she's also
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: very wholesome. And she's also very white. So I wonder
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: if this is the same context as we were talking about.
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: I'm trying to think because, yeah, in all the horror movies,
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: the train to Busan was a pregnant woman with.
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: A little girl.
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: That survived but it was based on her father and
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: the father of the uh or the husband of the
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: pregnant woman like that really helped so yeah.
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: I mean this is really interesting too in terms of
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: um the the fiction piece we do uh once a
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: month that i wrote when i was right out.
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: Of college yeah you're We're pretty sure the last of
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: us people stole it from you, which they've never read.
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: This, so somehow.
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: They absolutely didn't, but I like to blame them as
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: if they did. But it is interesting in terms of that.
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: Instead of being a Joel and Ellie, it's a woman
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: and her son.
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, which is interesting. The flip.
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but it does have a lot of these things
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: in it. It's hard to escape.
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: It is.
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: So with that, let's ask the real question. How will
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: women do in an apocalypse?
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: For real.
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: In real life, Annie. So in a zombie type of scenario,
• 40:03
  Speaker 3: do you think we could survive?
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: No, I don't think I could. I've thought about this.
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: We've talked about it on the show. I've already I'm
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: in Atlanta. I would be in huge trouble. I mean,
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: if the CDC something happens there, I'm already infected. But
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: like to get out of the city and then you're
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: dealing with like dwindling supplies because, you know, in a
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: city you have more, but there's more danger. I've thought
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: about it a lot. I don't think I would make it.
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to. I think I'd make it maybe
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: a little bit longer than some people, but not very long.
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: Not very long.
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: How about you?
• 40:43
  Speaker 3: I don't think I would make it either, but I
• 40:45
  Speaker 3: think I would make it just doing the whole like
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: don't come out hiding.
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: You know what?
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: Y'all stick around because we're going to do a very
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: informative and obviously very realistic quiz.
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: Definitely.
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: To see if we could survive at the end of this.
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: But according to Megan A.
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: Armstrong, she says maybe. Maybe.
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: But it definitely isn't a great set for women. In
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: her article for International Feminist Journal of Politics titled, Why
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: is the zombie apocalypse so terrible for women, gender, militarism
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: and ontological insecurity at the end of the world? She
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: explores the topic with the help from the book and
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: film World War Z, which I have now referenced twice
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: because it's in several of the articles. She takes a
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: deep look at the basis of the heavy militarization of
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: the situation, how they take on the very masculine, violent
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: role or route as a solution to the problem.
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: She writes, This is a common theme in apocalypse narratives,
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: the chaos of the immediate aftermath of the disasters leading
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: to a Hobbesian state of nature. What we imagine to
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: be a robust, stable civilization can be taken down and
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: fast by a single destabilizing element. Apocalyptic visions of the
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: future can help to articulate present anxieties and offer hypothetical responses.
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: They create a space for an imaginary future in which
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: characters map out a means of survival. Such visions allow
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: audiences to imagine themselves in the narrative and therefore produce
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: certain kinds of normative, legitimate responses. However, in WWZ, World
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: War Z, The aggressive, militarized response to the zombie threat,
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: led by a particularly masculinized hero figure, departs in some
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: ways from other examples of the genre.
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: Right, so.
• 42:27
  Speaker 3: We're jumping into the fact that, again, it's kind of
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: like the one versus the total, which I don't think
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: is too different.
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: But during the beginning of World.
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: War Z, it kind of was different, especially if it
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: was like an international. So I don't think it happens
• 42:40
  Speaker 3: in the U.S. It happens somewhere else first, which a
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: lot of things do take place. But sometimes it just
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: happens in the U.S.
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: First.
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: And the article talks about the gendered role specifically. Once
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: the zombies strike, however... This, and they're talking about all
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: the stuff that had happened previously, is undone, and Karen
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: remains with the children, the wife, as we were talking about,
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: as Jerry travels the world in search of the key
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: to eliminating the zombie threat. This suggests that WWZ, like
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: so much of the zombie genre, functions to stabilize gender
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: roles in a time when traditional gender roles have been
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: increasingly destabilized. This return is, interestingly, informed by the more
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: progressive gendered order depicted at the outset of the film.
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: Jerry is neither aggressive nor violent, but first and foremost,
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: a family man who will give up his career to
• 43:29
  Speaker 3: protect his family and fight for their survival when necessary.
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: And she continues explaining why this is all important, saying...
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: There are some for whom the normal way of life,
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: the status quo upheld in the extermination of the zombie,
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: was never conducive to survival, but their stories are not
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: often told in zombie narratives. WWZ does reveal that certain
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: kinds of families may survive the zombie threat while others
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: will not. To occupy normative gender role is not enough
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: to guarantee survival, and here we see how the knowledge
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: system of zombie reveals itself to be not only gendered,
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: but racialized. So she goes into a deep dive on that.
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: It's a very fascinating paper.
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: She really goes deep into this conversation, almost like this
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: is a societal tell on warning us that feminism is.
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: Ruining our lives and it's going to kill us because
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: of zombies.
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: I got... I can't help it. I got a couple
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: more points about The Last of Us. Go ahead. One
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: is that... And this is so tricky, and I actually
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: do have an episode that's coming out about this that
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: I wrote forever ago, but because it's a pain, I've
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: just been putting it off. But I feel like the
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: message that was intended at the end of The Last
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: of Us, a lot of people took.
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: Not, they took it very differently. And so, yes, they were,
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: they were like angry. Oh, she's a girl. She can't survive.
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: Like she's a young, this is wrong. When I don't
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: think that's what the actual material was saying, but people
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: were taking that, um, and using it as like, oh,
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: this is why I, this can't be right. I hate this.
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: And I've even heard that in terms of the violence that,
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: that Ellie does the main character, one of the main characters. Um,
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: like I don't, I'd feel like this is irredeemable. I'm like,
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: you seem to be cool when Joel did it. I
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: find this really interesting, but like those, those divides, we're
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: going to, we're going to see how that plays out.
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: But also I've been in the first time I went
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: to drag con, which is a huge convention and, Here
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: in Atlanta, that's kind of like Comic-Con, very nerdy and
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: all this stuff. I made a mistake. And I went
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: to how to survive a zombie apocalypse panel. And all
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: of them were like conservative dudes that were saying, you know,
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: liberals are all going to die. And then we'll go
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: back to the right way.
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: The right way.
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: The natural way.
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: The natural way, as God intended, obviously.
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: Right. Anyway, anyway, Armstrong concludes, when we read artifacts such
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: as WWZ with attention to what they reproduce and normalize
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: through the zombie as knowledge system, we can understand negotiations
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: of ontological insecurity as they are enmeshed with gender and
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: race and remain attuned to what responses they render intelligible
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: and possible. Here we can see the ways in which
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: anxieties over how Western civilization survives the overwhelming threat of
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: the zombie are materialized and resolved. The zombie reveals what
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: and who is considered necessary for civilization to survive, as
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: well as who will be abandoned. The sense of contemporary
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: feminism as a threat to the male self comes through
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: in the negotiation of a kind of masculinity that is
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: responsive to changes in gender norms and expectations, but still
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: positions masculinity as a savior. Yes, also in every Survival
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: horror game. Pregnancy. Oh, my God. That's disturbingly not that
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: far off. It's dangerous.
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: And then also that conversation of, like, who has access
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: to things and trying to get those things just in cases.
• 48:10
  Speaker 3: There was, of course, one response, and I think it
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: was a really interesting idea, is that Rider Sammy Eastwood
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: watching some of these horrors. And we've talked about this
• 48:19
  Speaker 3: in video gaming, like these impromptu crop tops that make
• 48:23
  Speaker 3: no sense in trying to defend your land property or self.
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: She says that women won't survive the apocalypse thanks to
• 48:31
  Speaker 3: our clothes. Like that's the beginning of her article. And
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: she talks about those conversations of like, why are we
• 48:37
  Speaker 3: dressed like this? Like we couldn't wear ballet slippers. Like
• 48:40
  Speaker 3: no wonder we're falling over ourselves and dying when the
• 48:42
  Speaker 3: killer is chasing us because those hills do not work.
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: When you're running in dirt.
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: You lose them. You use them as a stabbing device.
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: But yeah.
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: But also, I can't walk in them. So, like, breaking
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: my ankle does not work.
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: Well, and by that point, it's too close. You don't
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: want to be that close to them.
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 49:00
  Speaker 3: Exactly. I did the parody video just recently about how
• 49:05
  Speaker 3: the woman gets a complex because the serial killer keeps
• 49:07
  Speaker 3: passing her by and ignores her to kill everybody else.
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: And she's like, why not? Why not me? Anyway. But yeah.
• 49:15
  Speaker 3: That could be a problem. That could get us killed,
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: some say. But, again, all this may be upon. Many
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: have said that the way of survival is actually... the
• 49:25
  Speaker 3: gendered idea of femininity. It might be a savior to this.
• 49:29
  Speaker 3: History even shows that more women survived some of the
• 49:33
  Speaker 3: most difficult times. From a 2018 Complex article, journalist Victoria L.
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: Johnson writes, Scientists over at the University of Southern Denmark
• 49:41
  Speaker 3: analyzed times of feast or famine in the past 300 years,
• 49:45
  Speaker 3: including the Swedish famine of 1772 to 1773, life expectancy
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: of enslaved people in Trinidad in 1813, the 1845 Irish
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: potato famine, the measles epidemic in Iceland in 1842 and 1882,
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: as well as the 1933 Ukraine famine. And there was
• 50:03
  Speaker 3: always one truth that remained true on average. Women lived
• 50:07
  Speaker 3: longer than men. And this is regardless of age as well.
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: So she is actually referring to a study titled Women
• 50:14
  Speaker 3: Live Longer Than Men Even During Severe Famine and Epidemics.
• 50:18
  Speaker 3: In that research paper, they write, women are the life
• 50:23
  Speaker 3: expectancy champions. They can expect to live longer than men
• 50:27
  Speaker 3: almost anywhere in the world today. This pervasive inequality has
• 50:31
  Speaker 3: intrigued researchers for decades. The cumulative corpus of research supports
• 50:35
  Speaker 3: the conclusion that the gap has biological underpinnings modulated by
• 50:39
  Speaker 3: social and environmental conditions. And what's more, it's during the
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: hard times that women still outlive men. So they continue,
• 50:48
  Speaker 3: The conditions experienced by the people in the analyzed populations
• 50:52
  Speaker 3: were horrific. Even though the crisis reduced the female survival
• 50:56
  Speaker 3: advantage and life expectancy, women still survived better than men.
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: In all populations, men had equal or higher mortality than
• 51:04
  Speaker 3: women across almost all ages. A substantial part of the
• 51:07
  Speaker 3: overall female advantage and life expectancy was due to survival
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: differences among infants. Further support of the hypothesis of an
• 51:15
  Speaker 3: overall ability of women to withstand high mortality crisis better
• 51:18
  Speaker 3: than men comes from a different mortality measure. From all populations,
• 51:23
  Speaker 3: the extreme age, the age to which 5% of the
• 51:25
  Speaker 3: population survived, was higher for females than for males.
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: And writer Sarah Youngblood Gregory writes specifically about the need
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: for a feminine approach to survival in their article for Cosmopolitan.
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: And here's a quote from Gender roles are obviously socially constructed,
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: and yet their conventions shape our lives and justify exclusion
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: and oppression, even in our fantasy worlds. Femininity, which I'm
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: defining in a traditional sense as relating to women, softness, motherhood,
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: physical weakness, emotional communication, collaboration, and submissiveness, is often an
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: affront to the gritty, survivalist mentality of the apocalypse genre,
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: which in a COVID era, climate change ravaged Earth, has
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: captured the imagination of so many.
• 52:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and they go on to talk about how this, though,
• 52:15
  Speaker 3: can actually help survival rates and how being able to
• 52:19
  Speaker 3: listen and communicate and like standing in a group, that humanity,
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: which is often seen as feminine, can actually bring on
• 52:28
  Speaker 3: a survival rate. tactic and bring on more for being
• 52:32
  Speaker 3: able to survive. They also go on to talk about
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: writers from the marginalized community and how they understand how
• 52:39
  Speaker 3: their leading heroine doesn't reject womanhood, but embrace it. And
• 52:43
  Speaker 3: they talk about how it comes from a depiction of
• 52:47
  Speaker 3: real life. So here's another quote from Gregory. Butler, the author,
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: and Brown's depiction of womanhood lean on the true history
• 52:54
  Speaker 3: of women surviving world ending events. Writer Fannie Cho argues
• 52:57
  Speaker 3: in her latest work that the apocalypse is nothing new.
• 53:00
  Speaker 3: It happened over and over again to marginalized people. And
• 53:04
  Speaker 3: they conclude, true femininity is a tool for better, more
• 53:08
  Speaker 3: just worlds. Through community care, communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and empathy,
• 53:13
  Speaker 3: femininity has already survived the worst and will continue to
• 53:16
  Speaker 3: do so. Maybe not on TV, but always where it counts.
• 53:20
  Speaker 3: And yeah, I think that was an interesting conversation because yeah,
• 53:23
  Speaker 3: like we often see femininity portrayed as a weakness. So
• 53:27
  Speaker 3: they get hysterical and cry and can't move on and
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: they don't want to survive anymore.
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: And that's not necessarily how that goes. Like you, the.
• 53:36
  Speaker 3: Horrible opposite portrayal of like an angry mother that needs
• 53:40
  Speaker 3: to get revenge versus like the mother who just gives
• 53:42
  Speaker 3: up instead of the in-between who sucks it up and
• 53:45
  Speaker 3: is like, all right, been through this. I know how
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: we can get through this.
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: Interesting.
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: And there've been a lot of, we've done past episodes
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: on this about a lot of studies about pain endurance
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: and women versus men. And just like long-term endurance. And
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: women usually come out on top in those studies.
• 54:13
  Speaker 3: And yeah, I just want to kind of head on
• 54:16
  Speaker 3: to what I think is interesting, specifically when it comes
• 54:19
  Speaker 3: to the religious apocalyptic literature. This was my secondary in education,
• 54:27
  Speaker 3: I think I might have said before.
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: Apocalyptic literature.
• 54:31
  Speaker 3: But I find it fascinating because this one actually comes
• 54:36
  Speaker 3: from the westendbiblicalchapel.org, and they talk about Revelation, and they
• 54:40
  Speaker 3: talk about the four women present of the apocalypse. And
• 54:43
  Speaker 3: I believe there's several depictions in books often used. And
• 54:48
  Speaker 3: these are all going to sound familiar, but one of
• 54:50
  Speaker 3: them is the Jezebel, or Jezebel. which is a she-devil,
• 54:55
  Speaker 3: and they describe it in their resources that she is
• 54:59
  Speaker 3: the leader of a church for idolatry and immorality, and
• 55:06
  Speaker 3: that she was guided by the familiar spirits of the
• 55:09
  Speaker 3: wicked queen of Jezebel of the Old Testament. If you
• 55:12
  Speaker 3: know Jezebel, she gets a pretty bad rap, you know.
• 55:17
  Speaker 3: Then we have woman clothed with the sun. And apparently
• 55:19
  Speaker 3: I think she is the better version. So there's always like.
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: A yin and a yang.
• 55:23
  Speaker 3: I'm using Asian ideology. But this woman represents a corporate body.
• 55:29
  Speaker 3: She's the nation of Israel. So remember that. She has
• 55:33
  Speaker 3: given birth to the man-child who is the Messiah. So
• 55:38
  Speaker 3: that's the other one.
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: And then the harlot. The harlot, she's present in a
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: lot of like apocalyptic type. Supernatural?
• 55:47
  Speaker 3: She comes up a lot in that. So this is
• 55:50
  Speaker 3: the third woman that's designated, and she's the mother of
• 55:53
  Speaker 3: all prostitutes and the abomination of the earth. This is
• 55:56
  Speaker 3: all in all caps when they describe these people, by
• 55:58
  Speaker 3: the way.
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: Oh my goodness.
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: So you'd be forewarned. Extra wary.
• 56:04
  Speaker 3: And then we had Bride of the Lamb, who is,
• 56:07
  Speaker 3: once the whore of the Antichrist is destroyed, she is
• 56:11
  Speaker 3: the Bride of Christ.
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: Who is displayed.
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 56:17
  Speaker 3: So in a lot of representations, I think we've talked
• 56:19
  Speaker 3: about this, there's the Trinity, and it's often the church
• 56:24
  Speaker 3: is the bride.
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: To that.
• 56:27
  Speaker 3: So there's so many conversations. But I thought that was
• 56:29
  Speaker 3: interesting because that does come into play in our regular
• 56:32
  Speaker 3: types of things, like supernatural, like we talked about, because
• 56:34
  Speaker 3: there's how many apocalyptic situations do they have in their
• 56:37
  Speaker 3: 15 seasons?
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: Every season. Every season?
• 56:41
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: Yes. This is the TV show, by the way, everyone.
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: Oh, yes, yes. Popping back up.
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: I just saw someone's reaction to watching all 15 seasons,
• 56:49
  Speaker 3: like she was having a time. But I thought it
• 56:52
  Speaker 3: was interesting because that does play a lot in what we.
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: Are hearing today. I know the Bride of Israel, all
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: of that, that's a big conversation we're having, especially when
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: we do come back and talk a little bit about
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: Project 2025 and trying to come back to these roles again.
• 57:11
  Speaker 3: Those gender roles that they think is holy in order
• 57:16
  Speaker 3: to fix things, but also telling us that all of
• 57:20
  Speaker 3: these things, such as natural disasters and such, being a
• 57:25
  Speaker 3: thing of the apocalypse and who we should be watching
• 57:27
  Speaker 3: out for. So something to take note of. I did
• 57:31
  Speaker 3: say that we were going to talk about whether or
• 57:34
  Speaker 3: not we're going to survive.
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: I sent you two quizzes, Annie. Did you take them?
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: I did.
• 57:38
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 57:40
  Speaker 3: The first one. How long would you survive the ultimate
• 57:43
  Speaker 3: zombie quiz?
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: I got five months. I made it five months, but
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: no more.
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: I think I lived four months longer than you.
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: Good for you.
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: I'm going to eat your body. I'm just kidding.
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: You don't like the taste. Too much cheap light beer.
• 58:04
  Speaker 2: I don't know. Beer chili is great. And there's a
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: beer can chicken or something.
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: Oh, gosh.
• 58:15
  Speaker 3: And then this one, this is the BuzzFeed quiz. How
• 58:17
  Speaker 3: would you make it in The Last of Us? How
• 58:19
  Speaker 3: long would you make it in The Last of Us Apocalypse?
• 58:22
  Speaker 3: How long did you make it?
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: It said 90 years. And that I would die of
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: natural causes.
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: 90 years? That's not even possible, is it? I guess
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: it is. But....
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: I took it twice.
• 58:38
  Speaker 3: Oh.
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: And I, like, the first time I did, like I said,
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: the last time we took a quiz like this, and
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: I was like, you know, I'm in between these two.
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: And the first time I took it, I got one day.
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: So I'm on the, I think I'm like, I'm on
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: the ledge of living for a long time or dying
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: very quickly.
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: One or the other. Either you're immediately going to die
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: or you'll survive forever if you can survive that one day.
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: I think so. Okay.
• 59:04
  Speaker 3: Mine says 30 years so I feel like that's a
• 59:07
  Speaker 3: good time after 30 years of barely surviving you trip
• 59:10
  Speaker 3: on some fungi and a heart of fungi people come
• 59:12
  Speaker 3: to you.
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: I'm devoured by fungi people.
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: That would be sad.
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: That would be sad. I'm like, oh, no. Well, I
• 59:21
  Speaker 2: don't get a natural death, I guess. That's fine. That's fine.
• 59:25
  Speaker 3: It turns out that we do kind of survive-ish. I
• 59:28
  Speaker 3: do like the people who are like, who?
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: Because they did write that. I was like, immediately. I
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: want immediately out. Like, Caroline and I have a whole.
• 59:36
  Speaker 3: Pact in case a zombie apocalypse happens. So, there you go, guys.
• 59:43
  Speaker 3: That is a very shortened could we survive? Let's look
• 59:47
  Speaker 3: at what society and entertainment tells us could we survive
• 59:52
  Speaker 3: it's a toss-up.
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: I mean you know like took us an hour long
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: to get to about yeah toss up because it is
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: that's kind of what the apocalypse is about i guess
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: although you know religious like the rapture in theory if
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: you've done everything right you'll be all right that we'll
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: have to come back and talk more about some of
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: that stuff but for now um that is what we
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: have to say about women and the apocalypse please let
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: us know if you have any thoughts on this if
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: you have a favorite apocalyptic uh entertainment uh peace media
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: or just any suggestions about what what more we should
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: talk about about this um you can email us at
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: stuff media mom stuff at iheartmedia.com or hello at stuff
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: will never told you.com uh you can find us on
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: blue sky at mom stuff podcast or on instagram and
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: tiktok at stuff will never told you we're also on
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: youtube we have a tea public store and we have
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: a book you can get wherever you get your books
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: and we do talk about some of this stuff in
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: there uh thanks as always to our super producer christina
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: our executive producer maya and our contributor joey thank you
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: and thanks to you for listening Stuff I never told
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: you is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
• 1:01:17
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• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.