# Episode 068 - Von Braun, Lopez & Parr

An episode of [Are You Quizzing Me?](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1663104901), 13 May 2024, 56 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/d7afa960/podcast/play/86688011/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2024-4-13%2F9343625e-b1c2-c342-24e6-1c328c6c1d08.mp3

Do you know what serendipitous name did Werner von Braun give to the leader of the Martians in his sci-fi novel? Do you know what character Mario Lopez played in the short film 'A Recipe For Seduction'? Do you know what was Jerry Parr inspired to do after watching a film about a secret service agent, and how did life come a full circle for him? Tune in to find out!! You can reach us at Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/areyouquizzingme/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/areyouquizzingme Email: areyouquizzingme@gmail.com Subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/areyouquizzingme

## Transcript

[0:00] Welcome to Are you quizzing Me? I am Vineet Nair with my Co host
[0:04] Aditya Kashyap. This is a quizzing trivia
[0:07] podcast show. Join us as we dive deep into
[0:10] history, science, pop culture and so much more.
[0:14] Let's get quizzing now. This is a question I ask at the
[0:18] top of every episode, which I answer towards the end of the
[0:23] episode. Hamathiology is a branch of
[0:27] Christian theology which is the study of sin.
[0:31] In Christian Hamathiology, the sins that cry to heaven for
[0:34] vengeance and that is literally the name.
[0:37] Sins that cry to heaven for vengeance in Latin called
[0:40] piccata clementia, literally meaning screaming.
[0:44] Sins are four specific sins which are listed by the Bible.
[0:50] While the Bible only refers to specific acts by biblical
[0:53] characters as crying to heaven for vengeance, in Western
[0:56] Christianity these references are expanded upon and treated as
[1:00] an establishing a category of particularly serious sins, along
[1:06] with the seven deadly sins and the eternal sins.
[1:09] The sins that cry to heaven for vengeance are the most serious
[1:13] transgressions against the law of Christ.
[1:17] Now I'm going to be telling you that three out of the four and I
[1:21] want you to tell me what the 4th sin is.
[1:24] So one is the blood of Abel which stands for homicide,
[1:28] infanticide, patricide, fratricide, matricide.
[1:32] So killing a family member, killing somebody.
[1:33] In general, #2 is the sin of the sodomites which is non
[1:39] procreative sexual acts and #3 is the cry of people oppressed
[1:45] in Egypt, the cry of the foreigner, the widow and the
[1:49] orphan which can be generalized into oppression of the poor.
[1:53] What is the 4th sin? I will reveal the answer at the
[1:57] end of today's episode. Let's now move on to the
[2:00] question that Aditya asked at the end of last week's episode.
[2:04] This is the non serious portion of the quiz.
[2:07] The question from last week was just like Snoopy from Peanuts is
[2:12] the mascot for NASA and its astronaut safety program, who
[2:17] would be an iconic mascot for ISRO?
[2:22] Here there's a little bit of conspiracy theory slash anagram,
[2:27] slash fun little piece of trivia which is completely made-up.
[2:32] But the first part is not made-up because ISRO, as you do
[2:36] know and we've discussed this before, it used to be called
[2:37] Incospar. INCOSPAR before it was renamed
[2:42] to his throw. Do you know what in COSPAR is an
[2:45] anagram for multiple things. But the one that concerns us is
[2:50] prison CA. And who is the most iconic
[2:53] prison CA in fiction of all time?
[2:57] Andy Dufrane. He was basically ACA in the
[3:03] Shawshank prison because he was helping everybody do their
[3:05] audits and their taxes. So Andy Dufrane would be the
[3:10] best and the most effective, I would say mascot for ISRO
[3:18] because because he was the original president Seer.
[3:21] Why? OK.
[3:22] Tell me you're not blown away. Yeah, because I'm fairly sure he
[3:24] was a banker. I don't know if he was a
[3:28] chartered accountant. It was before he was
[3:30] incarcerated. OK.
[3:32] It doesn't matter. You're getting caught up in like
[3:35] trivial details. In fact, ISRO, ISRO when it was
[3:37] founded. There's a very prominent
[3:39] scientist by the name of SK Mitra who was conducting
[3:43] experiments in the ionosphere through ground based radio in
[3:47] Kolkata which was one of the founding moments of Israel are
[3:50] in Gospar and guess what his name is SK Mitra Stephen King
[3:55] Mitra What? No, no, please.
[4:00] Tell me mind is not blown into a million pieces?
[4:04] I'm just surprised you're not in a white padded room right now.
[4:09] Leaving aside the paranoia and fake news, let's start with the
[4:14] serious trivia. Actual factual trivia for this
[4:17] week. I'll go first, So this is a
[4:21] fairly light, slightly long question with a very short
[4:24] answer, so bear with me. Aditya, have you heard of Werner
[4:29] von Braun? No, I have not.
[4:33] OK, so I'm going to educate you and our audience on who Werner
[4:37] Von Braun was. So Werner Magnus Maximilian
[4:40] Freyr von Braun was a German aerospace engineer and space
[4:44] architect. He was a member of the Nazi
[4:46] Party and the Alamin s s and he was a leading figure in the
[4:51] development of rocket technology in Nazi Germany.
[4:54] He helped design and Co developed the V2 or Vengeance 2
[4:59] rocket at Punamunde during World War 2.
[5:03] The V2 became the first artificial object to travel into
[5:07] space on 20th June 1944. Following the war, he was
[5:13] secretly moved to the US along with 1600 other German
[5:18] scientists, engineers and technicians as part of Operation
[5:22] Paper Clip. Now, if you don't know what
[5:24] Operation Paper Clip was, Nazi Germany had a lot of great
[5:28] scientists, many of them who'd made advances in science, even
[5:32] though they used a lot of unethical methods to get to
[5:35] those scientific discoveries, they had a lot of scientists.
[5:38] These scientists excelled in biotechnology, in biology, in
[5:42] nuclear physics, in rocketry. So the Germans and the Americans
[5:48] secretly funneled these scientists back to Russia and
[5:52] the US despite many of them being open Nazis.
[5:57] So that was called Operation Paper Clip. the US operation to
[6:00] do that was called Operation Paper Clip.
[6:02] So among the scientists who got moved like that was Werner von
[6:05] Braun. Once he reached the United
[6:08] States, he worked for the United States Army on an intermediate
[6:11] range ballistic missile program, and he developed the rocket that
[6:15] launched EU s s first space satellite, Explorer One, in
[6:19] 1958. In 1960, his group was
[6:23] assimilated into NASA, where he served as director of the newly
[6:27] found Marshall Space Flight Center and was the chief
[6:30] architect of the Saturn 5 Super Heavy Lift launch vehicle that
[6:35] propelled the Apollo spacecraft to the Moon.
[6:39] So this tells you who Werner von Braun was, right?
[6:43] Sure. Even though these are the things
[6:46] that he's famous for, my question has nothing to do with
[6:48] any of this Project. Mars, a Technical Tale, is a
[6:53] science fiction novel by von Braun which he wrote in German
[6:58] in 1949. Henry J White translated the
[7:03] book into English and it is published later by Apogee Books.
[7:06] The novel is set in the 1980s and is about the first human
[7:11] mission to Mars and their encounter with benevolent
[7:14] Martians on the planet. The humans learn about the
[7:18] Martian social structure and they are form of government
[7:23] which is run by 10 men under the leadership of 1 Martian, known
[7:27] by their title X. So I want you to tell me what is
[7:34] the title given to the leader of the Martian government in Werner
[7:40] von Braun's Project Mars. A technical tale.
[7:45] I know this sounds like a question from left field, but
[7:50] I'm telling you can guess the answer.
[7:54] Is there a Nazi reference? Is it furor or something?
[7:59] The surprising thing is, it's an absolute opposite of a Nazi
[8:02] reference. Oh, so somebody was Jewish and I
[8:15] don't know, was it something to do with Einstein, what they
[8:19] called the Great Einstein or something?
[8:23] You're very close with the kind of title you're looking at.
[8:25] Yes, it is a name of a famous person, and you're also right
[8:32] when you're saying you're guessing that the name is Jewish
[8:34] in origin. Jewish in origin, but not
[8:40] necessarily of a Jewish person. Interesting.
[8:47] And when I say interesting, I mean completely confounding.
[8:52] I have no idea. So as we've said before,
[8:55] sometimes you instead of playing the question, playing the game,
[8:58] you play the person, right? So I'm asking you this question,
[9:01] and I'm asking you this question about Mars, right?
[9:05] And I'm asking you the question about this person who would be
[9:08] the leader of the Martian government.
[9:15] Yeah, I as far as I know, you've never been to Mars, so I don't
[9:20] know how long they have anything to do with you.
[9:22] Actually, I had many, many years ago, almost a decade ago, I
[9:25] think NASA had put out, you know, asking for volunteers for
[9:29] any potential Mars mission in the future.
[9:32] I signed up. I have an e-mail from them
[9:34] saying that we will consider your application, but nothing
[9:39] ever came of that. Yeah, I signed up for it too.
[9:41] I signed up for it as well. So at least now we know if if
[9:46] you both move to Mars, you can continue the podcast.
[9:51] Yeah, First Martian podcast. OK, so well, Jewish in nature.
[10:00] Jewish in origin. Like maybe then something from
[10:03] the Old Testament. Is it like Abraham or something?
[10:06] It is a biblical reference. You are right, it's from the Old
[10:08] Testament. However, almost everybody knows
[10:12] his name. But unless you've read the
[10:15] Bible, or you have a very keen eye for detail, you may not know
[10:19] that this is a Jewish name. Interesting.
[10:30] This is a very obscure reference about a man many people have not
[10:33] heard about. Right?
[10:34] Warner von Braun, At least in the 80s, nineties.
[10:37] Like I grew up hearing about this guy.
[10:38] He was a very controversial figure, but like the general
[10:42] public now, 20-30 years later, may not know one of one brown
[10:46] words unless they watch, you know, a lot of historical
[10:49] miniseries and things like that. But then I've dragged something
[10:52] and obscure. I think that he has, he wrote in
[10:54] 1949. And I'm putting in front of you
[10:57] and I'm telling you it's guessable, and I'm telling you
[10:58] it's about Mars. So it has something to do with
[11:03] somebody current or or something that is current.
[11:08] Yes, Mars. Mars.
[11:16] And and current only makes you think of Elon Musk.
[11:19] It is Elon. The title is was called The
[11:22] Elon. Oh wait, firstly I'll laugh
[11:27] properly at that answer, but Elon isn't Jewish name.
[11:31] I had no idea. Yes, Elon was a Jewish name.
[11:34] OK, now back to me laughing at the.
[11:39] OK, so this is. This is called Elon.
[11:42] Yeah, so this is a very weird kind of coincidence, right?
[11:46] So there was this book, as I mentioned, that Werner von Braun
[11:49] wrote in 1949 in German. It was called Mars Project in
[11:54] German, but it was not published for around 57 years.
[11:58] So the book had nothing to do with Elon Musk being named.
[12:01] His his father liked the name Elon because of its biblical
[12:05] references. Fun fact, he was actually going
[12:08] to be named after Nice, the French city.
[12:12] So we might have got Nice Musk, which would have made his name
[12:15] sound even more like a perfume. So in the biblical book of
[12:23] Judges, Elon was a leader judge of the ancient Israelites.
[12:29] Elon appears in Judges 12:11 to 12:00.
[12:32] He was a member of the tribe of Zebulun who served as a judge of
[12:36] Israel for 10 years. So its I think as Jewish a name
[12:40] as you can get and the fact is its a complete coincidence.
[12:49] Nobody knew this until the book was published around 53
[12:53] something odd years later. Elon Musk was already grown by
[12:56] the time and suddenly now we have this crazy man talking
[13:01] about space and getting to space and putting up a colony on Mars.
[13:05] And his name also happens to be Elon, which is the name that 101
[13:09] Brown had given as the title of the person leading the
[13:13] government of the Martians. In that case it was a title.
[13:16] It was the Elon. Very cool.
[13:20] Very cool. Yeah.
[13:22] Not surprising. I would not have expected that.
[13:25] But yeah. Again, let's see why Vineeth
[13:28] would be interested in this trivia.
[13:31] I see you, Vineeth. I see you.
[13:33] Yes. All right, let us move from that
[13:40] unexpected twist in trivia to another unexpected moment in
[13:46] history. And here we talk about 1807.
[13:52] Do you know what happened in 1807?
[13:54] We need. I'm guessing a lot of things.
[13:56] OK, cool. Yeah, the budget is to happen in
[13:58] 1807. One of the things, though, was
[14:04] that the outset of the Peninsula War, it was the military
[14:09] conflict in the I Median Peninsula by Spain, Portugal and
[14:13] the United Kingdom against the invading and occupying forces of
[14:16] the First French Empire during the Napoleonic Wars.
[14:20] OK. Yeah.
[14:21] It lasted from eighteen O 7 to 1814, so in eighteen O 7
[14:27] Napoleonic forces invaded Portugal due to the Portuguese
[14:30] alliance with Great Britain. OK.
[14:33] The Prince Regent of Portugal at the time, John, who had formerly
[14:38] governed the country on behalf of his mother, Queen Maria, the
[14:41] first since 1799. Anticipating the French
[14:46] invasion, John did something completely unprecedented.
[14:51] Just something nobody else would have ever done before that in
[14:56] history and did since then. What unexpected move did John
[15:04] pull out just as he was anticipating the invasion from
[15:10] French troops? OK, so I'm going to take our big
[15:15] guess here. I'm guessing he took French
[15:17] spies and crucified them on the dock so that when the French
[15:21] came in they saw that and they were like and they got scared
[15:24] and went back. That is a very accurate
[15:29] depiction of what would have happened.
[15:31] By the way, if nobody knows. Oh OK, I thought it was a Game
[15:36] of Thrones reference, but actually I think the French
[15:39] spies would have gone awe and then the edge would have been a
[15:43] little missing in the Haw that we just did.
[15:46] Yeah, the French accent was slightly off, but everything
[15:50] else was accurate. Except no, that is not the
[15:53] answer. Do you want to take a stab at
[15:57] something that not just historically significant because
[16:01] obviously 1807, but also geographically significant?
[16:16] Anything to do with marine life? The Portuguese man O war
[16:21] jellyfish. Oh no, no, nothing to do with
[16:25] that. OK, I'm going to need a clue.
[16:30] Sure. So the clue that I can offer is
[16:34] that this change while it happened in 18 O seven, it
[16:38] lasted till 1821 when things were reset back to as they were.
[16:45] So around a period of like 1314 years.
[16:48] OK. Something changed and it was
[16:50] reset only back in 1821, which is when John the 6th of Portugal
[16:58] set things back to as it was. Set things back to what it was.
[17:12] This can't be a blockade, right? Obviously it's not a blockade or
[17:15] anything because they were, they were trying to.
[17:17] It was more of a strategic retreat than anything on the
[17:22] offence. It was more of a defensive move.
[17:26] OK, see The thing is I can't get a grasp of what it could be like
[17:33] because I I do know about this particular point in history, but
[17:36] it's mostly broad strokes. I would ask you to focus on the
[17:40] fact that it was a strategic retreat.
[17:44] Where would they be retreating to?
[17:48] Portugal has only one place to retreat to Spain.
[17:53] Or. Wait, what?
[17:58] Portuguese is almost surrounded? If my geography serves me right
[18:00] there, Portuguese is almost surrounded on three sides by
[18:03] Spain and one side by the sea. Uh huh.
[18:07] There we go. A maritime retreat would lead
[18:13] them to. OK, they can go north, which
[18:17] would take them to the British Isles.
[18:18] They could go South, which would take them to North Africa, or
[18:21] they could go West, which would take them to the US.
[18:27] How about southwest Portuguese, southwest of Portugal?
[18:34] You're going to South America? Across the Atlantic.
[18:38] Brazil. Rio.
[18:40] Wait, wait. Did they shift the power of
[18:41] goddess, the seat of government, from Portugal to Brazil?
[18:45] For the first time in the only time in history I the European
[18:49] seat of government, a European capital was moved to somewhere
[18:53] else. That was in South America, and
[18:56] specifically Rio. So for 13 years, Rio was the
[19:00] seat of the Portuguese empire and that actually saw the seeds
[19:06] for Brazilian independence, because the future rulers who
[19:10] were born there felt more Brazilian in their identity than
[19:14] Portuguese, and they actually started the whole process of
[19:18] Brazilian independence. Before that, Brazil was sparsely
[19:21] populated. It's only when the Portuguese
[19:25] decided to move their entire African capital to Rio did the
[19:29] country gain some of its own identity.
[19:32] Yeah, I thought it was pretty interesting that that a European
[19:37] capital was outside of Europe for a while.
[19:40] I'm going to call this the longest castling move in
[19:43] history. Yeah, that is pretty, pretty
[19:48] accurate. OK.
[19:52] That was a great question. I really did not know that that
[19:54] was a complete TIN. OK.
[19:56] So the Portuguese empire had their entire capital shifted to
[19:59] Rio. Nice.
[20:02] I don't have a proper segue to give to this, but there is a
[20:05] segue somewhere properly in the answer.
[20:07] So I'm going to ask you a question which has been sent to
[20:10] us by one of our listeners, Dr. Vt Rajesh.
[20:13] So let me preface this by saying that this questions based on a
[20:17] very, let's say, well known or popularly known fact.
[20:21] Even though the evidence for it is lacking historically.
[20:24] So before anybody comes to the comments and says that no, there
[20:27] is no evidence, we don't know this.
[20:29] Yes, I know this is an apocryphal story, but it's a fun
[20:31] question and Rajesh did spend the time to mail us with the
[20:36] question, so I'm going to ask it anyway.
[20:38] So to whom in history can we attribute the invention of left
[20:43] hand side driving or driving on the right side of the road?
[20:48] And can you tell me what the reasons were that he or she
[20:51] stores this side? Oh, interesting.
[20:56] It's funny because very often when I'm trying to find trivia,
[21:02] I usually end up going down rabbit holes, as do you.
[21:06] And I've gone down the rabbit hole of driving and and its
[21:11] history and even the right hand, left hand side.
[21:14] But somehow I never encountered this, even though you said it is
[21:17] an apocryphal tale. Not necessarily solid history,
[21:22] and I still haven't encountered it.
[21:24] Let's see, somebody came up with the right hand side driving.
[21:29] Yes. No, I'm.
[21:32] I'm lost. No, no idea.
[21:35] So you know that what we do in India, right, and what is done
[21:40] in the UK and many other countries of the world is that
[21:42] we have right hand driving or we drive on the left side of the
[21:46] road right? Now that is the historical
[21:50] legacy that we have from the time the people were riding
[21:55] horses. So why, if you were, say, riding
[22:01] a horse, say in ancient Rome or even in England in the medieval
[22:05] period, why do you think you would want your horse to be on
[22:10] the left side of the road when riding?
[22:13] Oh, right, right, right. I think this is something I've
[22:16] also read to be able to draw your sword from a right hand in
[22:20] case of somebody was an enemy was approaching us.
[22:25] Yeah, so this was the norm, say in England, which is where most
[22:30] of these customs, due to their extremely colonial nature,
[22:34] everybody followed that up to a point.
[22:36] Now let's say if England is the focus point for you to say that,
[22:39] OK, this is the country which kind of popularized driving on
[22:42] the left hand side of the road. Again, that's not completely
[22:45] true, but for the purposes of this clue, let's assume that it
[22:49] is England. Who do you think would be
[22:53] responsible for saying no? If they're going to drive on the
[22:56] left hand side of the road, I will drive on the right hand
[22:58] side of the road I. Would assume Washington.
[23:07] No, it was in Washington per SE. I believe in America left hand
[23:12] drive was common until around the late 19th century.
[23:19] Yeah, I remember eating that as well.
[23:21] Then I'd say Hitler. No, no, no.
[23:26] This is much, much, much older than that.
[23:28] Much older than that. OK.
[23:29] So again, as I mentioned, this is apocryphal.
[23:32] Then then I would have to go with the petroleum.
[23:35] Yes, so the story goes. Again this is just a story,
[23:39] there are no historical documents or primary sources
[23:42] which can prove this. But the story goes that Napoleon
[23:45] Bonaparte invented driving on the right hand side of the road
[23:49] for two reasons. One reason being to rub it in on
[23:52] the British by choosing their opposite side and also to avoid
[23:57] horse clad swordsman fighting each other, since in this cases
[24:01] the swords will be the opposite sides for right-handed men.
[24:05] Right. It's never made a lot of sense
[24:08] to me, but yeah. Napoleon took the peaceful route
[24:14] quite literally and metaphorically.
[24:16] That seems slightly out of character for him wasn't exactly
[24:21] known to be a peaceful man. Anybody who has was named after
[24:26] him cannot claim to be a peaceful person.
[24:28] True. And shout out to Doctor Vt
[24:31] Rajesh for sending us that question.
[24:34] Please keep sending us such questions.
[24:36] We would love to put them on the show.
[24:38] Yeah, great question and thank you for sending that question.
[24:41] Please send more questions in Makes our life easier, OK?
[24:47] Yes. So since we have been sticking
[24:49] to Europe for a significant portion of this episode, let me
[24:55] do another question. And this time we move to
[24:59] Denmark. So a little bit of a historical
[25:05] background to this question. For hundreds of years there were
[25:10] spice salesman who would travel around Denmark and they would
[25:15] remain bachelors because they were never in one place long
[25:18] enough to settle down with someone.
[25:21] They would not find a partner and they would sometimes be
[25:24] known as Pebbles Wentz. I'm probably mispronouncing
[25:29] that, but that roughly translates to Pepper Dudes, and
[25:33] so single women also came to be called Pepper ma Pepper Maiden.
[25:39] So my question is, how is this little historical trivia
[25:47] relevant today? Or what artifact does it have in
[25:51] Danish culture today? I know precious little about
[25:59] Danish culture, but see, my mind was actually going to Peppa Pig.
[26:06] But then I guess that's not Danish.
[26:11] Oh, that would, that would be, yeah, something.
[26:16] OK, so this is something that has historical roots.
[26:20] Men who remained bachelors because they couldn't settle
[26:24] down. They were spice merchants and
[26:25] kept roaming the country. And you said the women, women
[26:32] traders were called Pepper. Ma, did I understand that right?
[26:37] Honestly, don't quote me on the pronunciation of it, but yes,
[26:41] the female maidens not the traders.
[26:46] Women who are unmarried were called Pepper MO and the men
[26:50] would be called Peppers Wins Pepper Dudes and Pepper do
[26:56] dance. OK, I have no idea where to go
[27:05] with this. I'll need a clue of some way,
[27:10] shape or form. This is completely alien to me.
[27:14] Yeah, I wouldn't imagine this would be very common knowledge
[27:17] outside of Denmark, but it is still a fun piece of trivia.
[27:20] So I'd ask you to focus on the fact that it has to do with
[27:24] being single and it is almost a milestone celebration.
[27:30] Shall we be even more specific when men at the age of 25 and
[27:35] even at the age of 30 are perhaps unmarried?
[27:38] Because the average age of men getting married in Denmark is
[27:42] 34, if I'm not wrong. So unmarried men at the age of
[27:45] 25, and even later at the age of 30, go through, let's say, a
[27:51] specific kind of celebration on their birthday.
[27:55] You'll take a guess as to what that celebration is does.
[27:59] This have anything to do with the horror movie Midsummer?
[28:05] No, no, no. It has nothing to do with
[28:07] Mitzomar. OK, is this like a bachelor
[28:13] party? They think.
[28:14] I mean like do they have a coming of age party?
[28:17] Like a Sweet 16? It's like a pepper 25 or
[28:19] something. You're actually not too far.
[28:25] So the pepper thing is at the age of 30.
[28:27] But what what specifically do they do with the pepper?
[28:31] Want to take a guess? I have various guesses, but none
[28:37] of them can be said on this podcast unless I want to change
[28:41] the nature of its rating. No dude, I'm just lost here.
[28:50] I should really know more about Danish culture.
[28:58] Sure, you I guess can find out more about Danish culture, but
[29:03] it's actually rather simple. You are covered in spice, they
[29:08] throw a lot of cinnamon on you at your 25th birthday and then
[29:12] when you turn 30 they throw pepper on you, which sounds a
[29:14] lot more painful and sometimes even eggs for more adhesion is
[29:19] what I read. So they cover you up in cinnamon
[29:22] and with pepper when you turn 25 and 30 respectively.
[29:26] If you are single and are from Denmark, your friends would do
[29:31] that to you, and that is a birthday celebration in Denmark.
[29:36] That is so weird. Yeah, though, I, I, I, I mean,
[29:42] considering the kind of things that people did to each other
[29:44] back in college, especially the boys that I was sitting
[29:48] alongside of that. Really.
[29:50] Really, I would say brutal treatment that you receive on
[29:54] your birthday. It doesn't make any sense.
[29:58] Yeah. I've seen people being covered
[30:01] in toothpaste, in mud, in egg and milk and rotten milk, and
[30:07] just absolutely. And it's it's a birthday
[30:09] celebration. For some reason.
[30:10] I don't get it. Then again, most things that
[30:14] college boys don't, I don't think anybody gets it.
[30:17] So this is how the Danes celebrate 25th birthdays for
[30:22] single men and women. I remember this English or other
[30:27] Indian comedian who's auk citizen right now.
[30:31] She has. I can't recall her name.
[30:34] I'm very sorry, but she has. She's married to a Danish
[30:37] person. I remember her talking in one of
[30:39] her sets that the Danes are a bleak people.
[30:43] Yeah, I think this particular it is just encapsulated that they
[30:47] are very, very bleak. Just imagine waking up on your
[30:50] 30th birthday and having Pepper thrown in your eyes.
[30:53] I mean, like, there's no upside to it.
[30:55] Like if it's finely powdered, your eyes are going to just
[30:58] burn. If it's not been powdered or if
[31:00] it's whole, it's like being pelted with mini rocks.
[31:04] I mean, I just do not see the upside.
[31:09] No, it is sediment powder. But I think I'm forgetting the
[31:12] fact that in India we also used to give, and I don't know if
[31:15] they still do, birthday bumps to kids, which is basically this is
[31:18] just kicking the hell out of them beating.
[31:22] Them up. I am aware of those.
[31:24] Yes, I am. Yeah.
[31:26] But then that's. Yeah.
[31:28] Who am I to judge? Yeah, you're right.
[31:32] Yeah. It's.
[31:32] Not so big when you think of birthday bumps.
[31:34] Kids beating each other up, wailing on each other.
[31:41] Yeah, but then in India at least, I think it's only the
[31:43] boys who do that. I've never seen girls do
[31:45] birthday bumps. I guess in some way then the
[31:49] Danes are more progressive. Everybody is equally stupid.
[31:55] Equal opportunity torture. OK, nice, very spicy question.
[32:00] So I'm going to move to spice of another kind in more ways than
[32:06] one. A Recipe for Seduction OK, the
[32:11] name of the movie is A Recipe for Seduction is a short film
[32:15] produced by the Lifetime channel starring Mario Lopez. 90S kids
[32:21] might remember him as the guy from Saved by the Bell.
[32:25] So this was a Lifetime movie. Called A Recipe for Seduction
[32:29] starring Mario Lopez. It premiered on December 13th,
[32:32] 2020. It tells the story of a young
[32:35] Iris who struggles to choose between a wealthy suitor chosen
[32:39] by her mother and the new house, Chef X.
[32:45] The film has a 70% score on Rotten Tomatoes, indicating
[32:49] generally positive views. Many critics noted the
[32:52] juxtaposition between the film's bizarre premise and its familiar
[32:56] use of tropes associated with Hallmark movies.
[33:00] Liz Kokan of the website Decider praised the film storytelling
[33:04] and called it comfort food. Alexandro Del Rosario of
[33:09] Deadline Hollywood said that the film had an unusual casting for
[33:13] an even order title. So as I mentioned earlier that
[33:18] the story is about a young Iris who struggles to choose between
[33:22] a wealthy suitor chosen by her mother and the new house chef X,
[33:26] who's X, who's the character who plays the the lead, who Mario
[33:31] Lopez plays. I will give clues but I just
[33:35] want to see if you can work it out from this.
[33:40] I'm going off the fact that you said the name is a recipe for
[33:44] seduction. You also mentioned that some
[33:47] critic called it comfort food, and seductive food makes me
[33:53] think of chocolates. OK.
[33:55] So I'm thinking some chocolate here.
[34:01] Nestle or Hershey? Is it?
[34:06] Is it any of these people? You have the right idea, but the
[34:10] wrong side. Is it Willy Wonka?
[34:13] Is it non? No.
[34:14] No, no, it's not really Wonka. So my clue for you would be
[34:21] repeating certain parts of this question.
[34:23] The name of the movie, as I mentioned, is a recipe for
[34:25] seduction. Alexandro Del Des Rosario of
[34:29] Deadline Hollywood said that the film had an unusual casting for
[34:34] an even order title. I've already mentioned the
[34:37] casting starring Mario Lopez. Mario Lopez plays X, so that's
[34:43] an unusual casting. So Mario Lopez, going by the
[34:47] name, is an Hispanic individual, Yes.
[34:52] And I'm assuming it's unusual casting, which means the person
[34:55] in question is not traditionally Hispanic.
[35:00] Is it a historical figure? Is it a fictional character
[35:04] played by Mario Lopez? So you were very close with your
[35:06] first answer. close in the sense like you have the right spirit.
[35:10] You were thinking of a chocolate here.
[35:12] Just don't think chocolatier. It's not a chocolatier now.
[35:15] I said chocolatier way too many times.
[35:19] The word has lost all its meaning, so if not a chocolatier
[35:23] somebody, it's a recipe. So I'm guessing it is either
[35:31] Coke, but then again, probably not that the second person is it
[35:37] Colonel Sanders? Yes, it is Colonel Holland
[35:42] Sanders, the KFC Colonel himself.
[35:45] Oh, what? It is a spicy question, I see.
[35:51] Yeah, so this movie stars Mario Lopez, a very Hispanic person,
[35:56] playing the Uber white a Kentucky Colonel named Harlan
[36:01] Sanders in his youth. And he looks, you know, bulging
[36:05] biceps and short T-shirts, but he still has the trademark white
[36:08] goatee. It's it's a weird, weird movie,
[36:14] unsurprisingly sponsored by KFC. Oh, that makes sense.
[36:19] That makes sense, Yeah. Yeah, so the KFC Colonel Colonel
[36:24] Colin Sanders has his own ROM com.
[36:26] My next clue for you was going to be this.
[36:29] Christine Dizzarella of the Los Angeles Times gave a favourable
[36:32] review, calling it a tongue in cheek take on the Lifetime
[36:36] romance genre and aimed at women who love men who love chicken.
[36:46] That, that that adds up I guess. Yeah, so recipe for seduction.
[36:50] There's AKFC Movie. OK, so moving from that secret
[36:55] recipe which turned out to not be a disaster 70% on Rotten
[36:59] Tomatoes. Wow that that.
[37:01] I would not have guessed that ever AKFC movie with 70% Rotten
[37:06] Tomatoes. But since we are in the realm of
[37:10] film, I'm going to talk about another film and a little kid
[37:15] who watched that film and was inspired by it.
[37:18] So Jerry Parr when he was a young child, 9 year old child in
[37:24] fact he saw the movie Code of the Secret Service.
[37:29] Code of the Secret Service was directed by Noel Smith and it is
[37:36] the second of four films in a series based off of Agent Brass
[37:42] Bancroft and there were a few more movies in that series.
[37:48] Can you tell me what watching this movie inspired Jerry Parr
[37:52] to do in life? Which is the first part of the
[37:56] question. OK, that's the first part of the
[37:59] question. So I have to answer this to get
[38:01] to the second part of the question.
[38:02] Or are you going to be giving me the second part as well?
[38:07] Yeah, so the first part will lead you to the second part.
[38:11] OK, right off the bat, Jerry Parr does not ring a bell, at
[38:20] least not immediately. Code of the Secret Service,
[38:23] which was the 2nd in the series of movies you said, right?
[38:31] Anything to do with James Bond? No, it's very straightforward
[38:36] actually. Straightforward.
[38:39] Jerry Parr saw this movie and he was inspired by it.
[38:42] What is he inspired to do? OK, there's something to do with
[38:46] encryption. Pretty good security, pretty
[38:48] good protection, PGP security, anything like that.
[38:52] I think, I think you're you're perhaps overcomplicating this
[38:56] question. You saw a movie, The movie's
[38:58] name was part of the Secret Service.
[39:00] It is a movie in a series about a certain agent Brass Bancroft.
[39:06] And when Jerry Paris, a nine year old, saw this movie, he was
[39:10] inspired. What was he inspired to do with
[39:13] his life? Wait, this is not Stanley's real
[39:18] name or anything, right? Jerry Parr?
[39:19] Brass Bancroft. He then goes on in his life to
[39:23] illiterate every character he creates.
[39:24] You're again more complicating this.
[39:26] Jerry Parr is not. Not OK.
[39:29] I think you're trying to play the person too much right now.
[39:33] This has nothing to do with anything that interesting.
[39:38] Cherry Parr saw a movie called Code of the Secret Service.
[39:42] What was he inspired to do in his life?
[39:46] Became a director or an actor. That would be 1 route to take
[39:50] or. He became a spy.
[39:55] I'll give it to you. He became a Secret Service
[39:57] agent. It's just as simple as that.
[40:00] There's nothing complicated about it.
[40:02] Add on. OK.
[40:04] Yeah, it was the most straightforward question I have
[40:07] ever asked on this. See, that's a problem.
[40:11] You're not supposed to ask straightforward questions.
[40:14] Well, I will satisfy that urge of yours in the second part of
[40:19] my question. So Jerry Parr himself became a
[40:22] Secret Service agent. There was one significant event
[40:26] in Jerry Parr's career. What you could say is service.
[40:30] Did he perform for his country, for the United States of America
[40:34] in his role as a Secret Service agent?
[40:36] What did he do? Heroic thing he did, which is
[40:39] related to the film that he watched.
[40:43] OK, so my problem again, this is to all the people listening to
[40:48] this podcast. When he said Secret Service, my
[40:50] mind went to the British Secret Service, which is an
[40:52] intelligence organization. My mind did not go to the
[40:55] American Secret Service, which is more of a security and
[40:58] investigative organization. So I'm guessing that Jerry Parr
[41:01] is the Secret Service agent who saved.
[41:04] I think it was Reagan who got shot, not Reagan.
[41:08] Was it Reagan? No.
[41:08] Who? John Hinckley shot Reagan,
[41:11] right? It was Reagan who was being
[41:15] attacked, and Jerry Parr did save him.
[41:20] Yeah, I've read about this. It's like one of those forgotten
[41:23] facts. Jerry Park, the name didn't
[41:25] register. Secret Service didn't register.
[41:26] But when you told him, told me that you know the American
[41:29] Secret Service, it just clicked. I remember reading this, yes.
[41:33] OK. Do you want to connect just the
[41:34] last part of the trivia for me? How is this relevant to the film
[41:38] we watched? I think in that film also a
[41:42] Secret Service agent saves the president from a crazed fan or
[41:45] something like that. There is some kind of parallel.
[41:48] I remember there's a parallel, but I don't remember what it is.
[41:51] OK, I'll do this for you. I'll just connect the last part
[41:53] for you, Agent Brass. Bancroft was played by.
[41:58] Ronald Reagan, Yes, OK Ronald Reagan was the actor who played
[42:02] Agent Brass Bancroft. Yes.
[42:05] Now it comes back to me. Yes.
[42:06] I remember this fantastic piece of trivia.
[42:09] This is. Exactly, yes.
[42:12] So just to tie it all up together with the niche bow on
[42:15] top, Code of the Secret Service is a 1939 film directed by Noel
[42:20] M Smith and starred Ronald Reagan in the heyday of his
[42:25] acting career. It was about the US Secret
[42:28] Service agent Brass Bancroft, portrayed by Ronald Reagan
[42:32] himself. And when Jerry Parr, this young
[42:36] guy was nine years old, a little boy from Alabama, he saw this
[42:42] film and he was inspired to join the Secret Service when he grew
[42:47] up. And at some point when Ronald
[42:49] Reagan became president, there was an assassination attempt and
[42:53] JAIPA was there to save the day as a Secret Service agent in
[42:57] service of Ronald Reagan, who was his original inspiration to
[43:02] become a Secret Service agent. And sometimes life just comes a
[43:05] full circle. Yes, it does.
[43:09] And what's even more interesting, John Hinckley, I
[43:12] think was the name of the would be assassin was inspired to
[43:16] Assassinate Reagan not because of any political problems or
[43:21] political disagreements. It was because he wanted to
[43:24] impress Jodie Foster, the actress.
[43:28] Yeah. Which is as weird as motives go.
[43:32] It is. It is pretty insane because also
[43:34] inspired by a movie. Taxi Driver?
[43:37] No, I don't remember which movie that was.
[43:39] Yes, Taxi Driver. He started stalking Jodie Foster
[43:45] after the release of Taxi Driver and became obsessed with her and
[43:50] and whatever she was up to and he wanted to impress her.
[43:54] Just like in the film, the protagonist Travis Bickle in the
[43:58] end attempts to assassinate a United States Senator who's
[44:01] running for president. So over the years, Hinckley
[44:05] followed Jodie Foster around the country, and he actually went as
[44:09] far as to enroll in a writing course at Yale University when
[44:13] he read somewhere that she is a student at Yale University.
[44:17] So he was quite the stalker, quite the creepy dude who wanted
[44:23] to actually initially try to assassinate Jimmy Carter.
[44:27] And at some point he even came very close to it, but did not
[44:31] get around to finally doing it. And then he decided that he's
[44:35] going to try to do that for Ronald Reagan instead.
[44:37] And that is when all of these worlds of fiction and movies
[44:43] collided. And Jerry Parr saved our real
[44:47] life. Nice, nice.
[44:51] That's I think a fantastic way to end our questions for the
[44:55] day. There is still the matter of the
[44:58] question I had asked at the beginning of today's episode,
[45:00] which is the audience question. I hope some, at least some of
[45:02] you have worked it out. The question was that
[45:05] Hamathiology is a branch of Christian theology which is the
[45:07] study of sin. In Christian Hamathiology the
[45:10] sins that cry to heaven for vengeance are four specific sins
[45:15] listed by the Bible. Now along with the seven deadly
[45:18] sins and eternal sins, the sins that cry to heaven for vengeance
[45:22] are the most serious transgressions against the law
[45:24] of Christ. I listed out three of the four
[45:27] sins. One is the blood of Abel which
[45:29] is homicide, infanticide, fratricide, patricide, and
[45:32] matricide. Then there was a sin of the
[45:34] sodomites which was non procreative sexual acts.
[45:38] There was the cry of the people oppressed in Egypt, the cry of
[45:40] the foreigner, the widow in the orphan, which can generally be
[45:43] termed under oppression of the poor.
[45:45] What was the 4th sin? Aditya, Do you have any idea?
[45:51] Did we cover infidelity and? No, this is not part of that.
[45:55] These are, as we mentioned, things that cry to heaven.
[45:59] For vengeance is so heinous that the sins themselves are
[46:03] automatically like a call to heaven to lay God's vengeance
[46:06] upon this person who is committing the sin.
[46:12] No, I have no clue right now actually.
[46:15] So I'm going to just tell you the answer because I don't think
[46:17] you can guess this. But the reason I asked this
[46:20] question is I find it very interesting that this sin with
[46:26] this particular terminology exists when you look at America
[46:30] right now. And not just America.
[46:32] Most capitalist countries, many of whom are predominantly
[46:35] Christian, some of whom are openly Christian, like the far
[46:40] right in America, and who are mostly capitalists.
[46:43] So I find this sin to be quite ironic.
[46:46] The sin is the injustice to the wage earner, which literally
[46:51] means taking advantage of and defrauding workers.
[46:55] Oh boy, yeah, that is quite the irony.
[47:02] So I read this piece of trivia somewhere about how in just in
[47:07] terms of sheer volume or a number of I guess occurrences,
[47:13] the greatest crime that is committed in in in the US is
[47:17] probably wage theft. If that is truly a crime that
[47:20] cries up to the heavens, boy, Americans are in for a Broughton
[47:25] deal at the end of the day. Yeah, so that was the audience
[47:32] question. I hope at least some of you got
[47:33] that. Aditya, what's your question for
[47:35] next week? The non serious one, the one
[47:39] that will torture us for eternity.
[47:42] Oh, there is a never ending list of those.
[47:45] So the question for next week is just like KFC made a film called
[47:50] Recipe for Seduction, which Indian film was sponsored by an
[47:55] Indian brand, an Indian FNB brand and how did they execute
[48:02] this particular product placement?
[48:07] Oh God, I'm actually dreading the answer a week in advance,
[48:12] but that is the nature of the beast and I wouldn't want you to
[48:17] change what do you do and how you are.
[48:19] So let's. We'll get to that answer at next
[48:24] week, next week's episode. Aditya, any pop culture
[48:27] recommendations before we go? OK, so for my pop culture
[48:34] recommendation for the week, I'm going to do 2 things.
[48:37] I'm going to give a show that was very popular, but just in
[48:40] case you haven't seen it, you must check it out.
[48:42] The Bear. The Bear season three is coming
[48:46] out very soon, so check out the first two seasons ASAP and then
[48:51] get ready to binge the third one as well.
[48:53] The Bear is a story about a young chef who comes from the
[48:58] world of fine dining and comes back to his home city of Chicago
[49:03] to run his family's sandwich shop and eventually transforms
[49:07] it. It's a really interesting show.
[49:10] It is high octane in expected ways in as in the terms of a
[49:15] kitchen that is run under a lot of pressure, but also anxiety
[49:19] riddled in some very unexpected ways in just in terms of how
[49:23] family dynamics play out sometimes.
[49:25] And if you are an anxious person, I would recommend
[49:28] watching it, but perhaps with something to comfort you
[49:31] alongside of it. And that would be my first
[49:34] recommendation. The second recommendation is
[49:37] actually the limited series Chernobyl.
[49:41] Chernobyl came out I believe in 2019 and was, as the name would
[49:47] suggest, about Chernobyl and the disaster that occurred there.
[49:50] It is a very compelling watch. Obviously it is a fictionalized
[49:55] account of what happened there, but a lot of critics and a lot
[49:59] of people, a lot of historians had to say that it came close
[50:02] enough to reality and yet managed to not be boring or or
[50:07] just throw information at you and still be interesting and
[50:11] engaging as a watch. So I would say these two things
[50:14] the show Bear and the limited series Chernobyl on HBO.
[50:21] Nice, nice, awesome recommendations.
[50:23] I think you've also also mentioned the bear you know
[50:27] before on the show. So it's a it's a great,
[50:29] fantastic show. I yet have to get to it yet.
[50:32] I'm guessing Season 3 coming out should be an impetus for me to
[50:35] actually start watching from season one onwards.
[50:37] So thank you for that recommendation.
[50:38] Aditya, my recommendation for this week is based of a message
[50:43] or comment that I received from someone who listens to the
[50:46] podcast and that kind of inspired me to give this
[50:49] recommendation. My recommendation is about
[50:52] Indian movies or rather the best Indian movies in my opinion who
[50:56] have been inspired by The Godfather.
[51:02] I'm not looking at direct 1 to 1 copies, so let's leave Daewan
[51:06] and not Daewan, Aatanki, Aatank and all those out of the, you
[51:11] know, free. I'm just talking about really
[51:12] good versions which have been inspired by The Godfather.
[51:16] So my first one would be Sarkar, which was directed by Ram Gopal
[51:20] Verma. That is all a very faithful
[51:23] adaptation of The Godfather amidst Maharashtrian politics,
[51:28] chilling and fantastic. Amitabh Bachchan playing Marlon
[51:31] Brando's role. So that's a very faithful
[51:33] adaptation. That would be my first.
[51:36] The second recommendation I'm giving is Rajneeti, which is the
[51:41] story of The Godfather set amongst A Mahabharat style
[51:45] family in the Hindi heartland political belt.
[51:48] Of all the movies that I'm mentioning, this is actually the
[51:50] weakest of the list. However, Ranbir Kapoor does a
[51:54] decent facsimile of Michael Corleone and the movie is very
[51:57] watchable. The two that I would recommend
[52:01] as being the best are both which are only very loosely inspired
[52:06] by The Godfather. So the first one would be Naikon
[52:09] which is Mani Ratnam and Kamal Hassan's fantastic movie based
[52:14] off The Godfather and the real life life of Varadaraja
[52:18] Modalayar who was an actual dawn in Mumbai in the 60s seventies
[52:22] and maybe early 80s. The movie came out in 1987 and
[52:25] is was declared as one of Time Magazine's best movies around
[52:29] the world, Top 100 movies around the world.
[52:31] So that's a fantastic watch very loosely inspired by The
[52:34] Godfather. There are portions which are
[52:36] inspired more by The Godfather Part 2 rather than one but
[52:38] Fantastic Watch and a more recent film called Bhishma
[52:42] Parvam. It's a Malayalam language film
[52:45] which released last year starring Mammootty as the Marlon
[52:50] Brando Esque character. It's also set similar to
[52:54] Rajneeti, It's inspired by The Godfather.
[52:57] It's also inspired by portions from the Mahabharat.
[52:59] But it's very loose. It's just inspirations.
[53:01] There are no copies or anything, but it's very loosely inspired
[53:05] and it's again a fantastic film. So these are my 4
[53:08] recommendations. There are a lot more movies in
[53:10] India which have been inspired by The Godfather, but these are
[53:13] my 4 recommendations. Sarkar Rajneeti Naikan and
[53:18] Bhishma Parvam. So those are my recommendations
[53:21] for this week. Yeah, great recommendations,
[53:24] Vineet, interestingly enough. So I'll give another third
[53:27] recommendation because a similar conversation happened recently
[53:31] with a friend and we were discussing Gangs Over Sepur and
[53:37] how both of us love the film and Gangs Over Sepur.
[53:39] Obviously a film that if you haven't seen you should check it
[53:42] out. It is a pretty great Arora Kasha
[53:44] film. And another friend of ours
[53:47] mentioned or rather asked if Gangs Over Sepur is inspired by
[53:51] Godfather as well. And I can see why 'cause cause,
[53:55] crime, family and all of those things.
[53:57] But a closer inspiration would be City of God rather than
[54:03] Godfather. And City of God is the third
[54:06] recommendation I'd give just sheer brilliance of a film.
[54:10] If you like gangs over Sipur, I would highly recommend checking
[54:13] out City of God. It is based on Rio and the crime
[54:19] Lords and the drug gangs over there.
[54:22] So yeah, something you should check it out.
[54:27] Great. So you have your pop culture
[54:29] recommendations set for this week.
[54:32] That's all the time we have for this episode.
[54:34] Thank you all for listening in. We hope you enjoyed the show.
[54:37] Learn something new. If you like what you heard,
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[55:31] We appreciate your support and look forward to sharing more
[55:34] episodes with you in the future. Thanks again for tuning in.
[55:37] Have a great day. See you guys next week.

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