WYS Holiday Special

A quick holiday drop turned into a whirlwind: we start with Merry Christmas chaos, trip over the “three wise men,” detour into reality TV in Utah, and end up interrogating the gap between what looks smart on paper and what actually works in real life. It’s a snack-sized episode that still serves heat—fast jokes, stray facts, and a heartfelt nod to everyone juggling family, faith, and free time this season.

We get candid about relationships and the myth of bandwidth: the “cute level of toxic,” how jealousy sneaks in when people believe you can do better, and why adding partners isn’t a productivity hack. Then we rocket into history nerd mode, arguing Titanic dates and decoding ship prefixes like RMS and USS. It’s a reminder that trivia isn’t trivial when it’s a gateway to curiosity—and that being wrong together can be fun when the goal is discovery, not dominance.

The back half tees up our next big breakdown: Interstellar. We love the film’s scientific ambition, especially time dilation near a black hole, but we push on the difference between elegant theory and messy practice. If gravity can stretch time, what else would it bend—like tides on a shallow water world? We unpack why the simplest questions can save the most time and how practical thinking keeps high concepts grounded. It’s all a preview of the full, nerdy, no-stone-unturned movie survival episode dropping soon.

Hit play for a festive blend of humor, history, and sci-fi curiosity. If you’re into movie logic, pop-culture deep dives, or friends who fact-check each other mid-laugh, you’re home. Subscribe, share with a friend who loves Interstellar, and leave a review telling us which movie “science” you’d put on trial next.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:21

Hello Survivors and welcome back to Hello Survivors Merry Christmas. Red Men Mercrimbus Merry Christmas Lord and Savior's Day. He was born in a barn. Merry Crump. I don't know. They would know. He was a man. Three wise men. That's us.

SPEAKER_00 0:47

It was way more than three wise men. You know, okay, that's genuinely one fact that actually pisses me off. Three men go with all that valuable shit going through the desert? Really? Like no one's gonna steal that? There was more than three, but anyways.

SPEAKER_01 1:02

There was definitely more than three.

SPEAKER_00 1:03

That's us.

SPEAKER_02 1:04

I'm TJ.

Reality TV And Mormon Jokes

SPEAKER_01 1:07

I'm Alex. And I'm Eric. That's and we just wanted to stop by and tell you all that we hope you had a wonderful holiday, whether it's Christmas, Hanukkah, Saturnalia, Feast of Tamus, whatever fucking Mormons do. Speaking of which, this is a really short episode because I've gotta go watch Secret Lives of Mormon Wives with my wife.

SPEAKER_02 1:37

That's so funny. Yeah, they've been watching a lot of reality TV. They all gather in uh Utah. They do? Yeah. That's uh Do you actually know about that show?

SPEAKER_01 1:48

In Caves. They they ended polygamy, though. Do you know that? Like it's there's like this whole scandal where the this girl was uh swinging, and I was like, well, I guess that part's bad, but like I thought the dude was supposed to. Now I can't get on board with Mormonism at all. It makes no sense.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

It's like, well, if you took away that, that was the only selling point.

SPEAKER_01 2:10

That was it, and now it's on to Islam.

SPEAKER_00 2:13

Oh no. It's crazy. Oh no. This is how it happens. This is how it happens. We should have learned from Europe. First it's Mormons, then it's Muslims. That's it. That is the path.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

That's the path. Exactly. And it's all for polygamy. Wow. But you know, it just proves how stupid I am that, you know, any man who has one wife knows you have more than enough. Especially my wife, who has many, many, many personalities, depending on whether she's hot, cold, tired, hungry, and that's all within five minutes.

SPEAKER_00 2:46

Yeah, I can't lie. I the idea of how busy I am right now, even adding one woman into my life seems like a big stretch. Juggling two, juggling more than two, I'm sorry. I don't who's got the time.

Polygamy Bits And Relationship Talk

SPEAKER_01 3:02

Well, you don't really have to like juggle them. Baby boomers. You know, it's like it's kind of fun if you do. You just like Okay.

SPEAKER_00 3:10

Oh, you weren't talking about that? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:12

Oh, oh, oh. You had to see my hand gestures.

SPEAKER_00 3:15

No, I think everybody got it.

SPEAKER_02 3:17

Dudes back in the day used to have uh multiple families. I know, like full-blown multiple families.

SPEAKER_00 3:24

Like, how are you kidding? I don't understand.

SPEAKER_02 3:27

I just don't understand how the other the first family doesn't come. Oh, do it where I'm like fucking Anita, and that's my sister, and I say that shit to fucking Maddie all the time. And I'm like, I don't even fucking live there anymore, dude.

SPEAKER_00 3:42

Here's what you do if you marry a Susan, you have to marry another Susan.

SPEAKER_02 3:47

No, that would make two kids all the same.

SPEAKER_00 3:50

Like this is Susan Jr.

SPEAKER_01 3:52

This isn't even remotely as important as a marriage and a family. But like you guys, if we're hot and like arguing and we're in the moment, I can call you TJ or him Eric, not like I catch myself all the time, but it's like TJ.

SPEAKER_00 4:10

I'm pretty sure I'm pretty sure I've called you Eric. You introduced me as Eric. Yeah. So I I am no stranger to that mistake.

SPEAKER_01 4:21

So so you are on to something there. You gotta marry the same named woman.

SPEAKER_00 4:26

Yeah, so your options are limited, but I mean if you're doing that.

SPEAKER_01 4:30

Or if you're really, really good, you get the new girl and be like, Man, you know, I'm just like, I don't mean to offend you, but you really look like a Susan. It's mind-blowing to me. And then as you keep like gaslighting her into believing that it's natural that you call her Susan. Then when you do, it was ah, you know what I mean.

SPEAKER_00 4:53

Yeah, I'm not gonna lie, I don't think I'm nearly attractive enough to get away with that.

SPEAKER_02 4:56

And I'll try to convert them to more than something.

SPEAKER_00 5:00

I'll try it. I was literally okay, I was actually talking to Ali and Effa coworker about this. Um we were talking about like what's uh a hot level of toxic in a woman. Um and I was like, yeah, you know, like I want a girl who's a little jealous, like not like full-blown crazy jealous, where like a girl's like, hey, how do I get here? And I'm like, oh, you just go over there, and she's like, Why the fuck were you talking to her? I don't need that, but like, you know, a little crazy, like a girl like lightly flirts, and she's like, and she, you know, just steps in and gets all a little crazy. I'm kind of into that, but uh well we were talking about it, and I was like, What what I need is like a healthy amount of crazy where you realize I'm not pulling, you know, I I'm not I'm not out here with a billion options, so there's no need to get that crazy.

SPEAKER_01 5:47

You want to know the irony in it? If you can pull, if you can land with, let's say your girl is we're gonna say a solid six, right? If you can land a six and she believes, whether you can or not, she believes that you can land sevens and eights, she's gonna have that natural jealousy, but she'll never let it show.

SPEAKER_00 6:15

See, like I'm allowed to do it.

SPEAKER_01 6:17

She'll just she'll just like try to keep one upping and try to to quote be better.

SPEAKER_00 6:24

See, I think there's a cute level of toxic. This might be an unpopular opinion. I have a bad relationship with crazy, but crazy finds me, and crazy is attractive.

SPEAKER_01 6:33

Uh I'm I'm over crazy.

SPEAKER_00 6:36

Well, it's like I don't I don't want the crazy, but also the crazy is always pretty.

SPEAKER_02 6:45

True. I can't I can't argue with it.

SPEAKER_00 6:48

And that's what sucks, you know?

SPEAKER_02 6:50

You can't you can't have a good face and a good brain.

SPEAKER_00 6:53

It just doesn't work that way. And if they do, they're already married.

SPEAKER_01 6:58

That's why if you want to be happy for the rest of your life, make an ugly woman. Oh, take an ugly woman for your wife. I messed it up.

SPEAKER_00 7:06

Was that a quagmire line? No. It sounds like a quagmire line.

SPEAKER_01 7:09

That's a like an old um, it's not Monty Python. Uh uh, what's his name? What's his name? I think that was on Dr. Demento. That's an old radio show.

SPEAKER_00 7:17

I don't even know what that is. Who else but Alex? Alex. Alex.

Titanic Trivia Spiral

SPEAKER_02 7:23

I'll take things only Alex knows for 500. Fuck off, guys. We need we need a theme song for him where he makes a random fucking quote from something. It has to be like in 1944 playing. Yeah, you guys haven't seen this thing from 1912.

SPEAKER_01 7:41

What thing from 1912?

SPEAKER_00 7:43

We wouldn't know. Exactly. We wouldn't know. Give us an example. Jeez.

SPEAKER_01 7:48

The Titanic sank in 1912.

SPEAKER_00 7:50

See, you would know. No, I think that was it. We know it sank. We just don't know when.

SPEAKER_01 7:58

Yeah, I'm like second guessing myself. Was it 1915?

SPEAKER_00 8:01

No, 1912 sounds right. Yeah. Because I think it was before the war, right?

SPEAKER_01 8:05

Yeah. But we didn't we didn't get involved in the war until 17, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_00 8:10

Uh that sounds maybe about right. I think the war spanned from 14 to 19, right?

SPEAKER_01 8:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:16

Yeah, well, but it sank on the same day, right?

SPEAKER_02 8:22

As what?

SPEAKER_01 8:24

Same day as what?

SPEAKER_00 8:25

Wait, actually, yeah, that it started. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:28

Was that the same day that the war started?

SPEAKER_02 8:31

No, the fucking Titanic. It sank in 1912. 1912. It was constructed in 1909, launched May 13th.

SPEAKER_01 8:42

Okay, wait, wait, wait, April 12th, 1912.

SPEAKER_00 8:46

15th. So it was Ah dang it. It was they struck the iceberg on April 14th, and it officially sunk er uh April 15th, early in the morning.

SPEAKER_02 8:56

Well, it was like early hours of the morning, April 15th.

SPEAKER_01 9:00

How early? Like 3 a.m., 2 a.m.

SPEAKER_00 9:02

No, I'm guessing they struck the iceberg on April 14th. So I'm guessing they struck it around like 11 30, somewhere around there. Close to midnight. And then they sank just after midnight. It says sinking early on April 15th.

SPEAKER_01 9:14

Damn. Oh yeah, because that's true. It was like one of the fastest sinkings.

SPEAKER_00 9:20

How cute of a ship it was.

SPEAKER_01 9:22

Random facts on this happy Christmas.

SPEAKER_02 9:25

Yeah. We went from Mormons to the sinking of the Titanic.

SPEAKER_01 9:31

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. We went from polygamy to the sinking of the Titanic.

SPEAKER_00 9:39

Apparently, the Titanic launched on May 31st, 1911.

SPEAKER_01 9:44

Yeah. I think TJ already said that.

SPEAKER_00 9:49

I did.

SPEAKER_01 9:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:51

I wasn't listening. No.

SPEAKER_01 9:52

You were.

SPEAKER_00 9:53

And neither was anybody else. So now they are.

SPEAKER_02 9:55

No, the Britannic sunk in 1960.

SPEAKER_00 10:01

Nobody cares.

SPEAKER_02 10:02

They hit a naval mine.

SPEAKER_00 10:04

Fake ship.

SPEAKER_01 10:05

Fake ship. They're all fake ships because they were all British.

SPEAKER_00 10:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:10

Britain doesn't exist.

SPEAKER_00 10:12

Br Britain Navy? What? Has anybody even heard of the English Navy?

SPEAKER_01 10:19

I mean, you know, not since 1776.

SPEAKER_02 10:23

What does RMS stand for?

SPEAKER_01 10:26

Royal Marine Ship? You looking it up?

SPEAKER_00 10:33

It stands for Royal Massive Sucker.

SPEAKER_01 10:36

Royal Massive Sucker Ship? Mill ship? I did not know the mill ship. Mail. I thought it mail.

SPEAKER_02 10:43

Was the ship delivering mail? Was the Titanic delivering mail?

SPEAKER_00 10:46

No, it was delivering rich people.

SPEAKER_02 10:49

And they're mail.

SPEAKER_01 10:53

Royal mail ship. I did not know.

Ship Acronyms And Silly Rebrands

SPEAKER_02 10:55

That carry mail under contract to the British Royal.

SPEAKER_01 11:00

Now, now check this out. Is is USS I don't think it's just simply United States ship. I think it's something like United States Sea Vessel.

SPEAKER_02 11:12

USS Is it just ship?

SPEAKER_00 11:19

No, it's United States ship. It is, okay. USN is United States Navy.

SPEAKER_02 11:25

No, I'm changing it. Star Trek's United Starship.

SPEAKER_01 11:29

United Starship. I'm changing it. USS is now United States Sea Vessel. Get on.

SPEAKER_02 11:37

Or Universal Studios Singapore.

SPEAKER_01 11:40

Okay. Alright. That's what it really means. Universal Studios Singapore. Because you know, these are the things that matter.

SPEAKER_02 11:48

Who the fuck is going on? Universal Studios in Singapore.

SPEAKER_00 11:51

Every aircraft carrier is actually just a mobile Universal Studios.

SPEAKER_01 11:56

Universal Studios Singapore. Universal Studios Singapore Roosevelt. But we've got a good one we're working on right now that uh this is only about the ninth time I've seen Interstellar.

SPEAKER_00 12:11

This is my first time.

SPEAKER_01 12:13

You've got to be kidding me. I've said this on the podcast like four times.

Interstellar Tease And Time Dilation

SPEAKER_02 12:17

With him, but he we just haven't lined up.

SPEAKER_01 12:21

Dang him being home. Great movie. It's a great movie, and I love that there is such a wide number of physicists who say theoretically it's correct.

SPEAKER_00 12:34

Theoretically, sure. But the entire movie is all about how theoretically doesn't mean shit.

SPEAKER_01 12:40

Mm-hmm. Isn't that wild?

SPEAKER_00 12:43

I think that's kind of like the thing with everything. It's like you could theoretically know how to do something, but it doesn't necessarily mean you actually know how to do it. That's exactly right. It's the difference between reading it and then actually doing it. You can read how to do plumbing, but then actually doing it is a whole nother beast. Oh tell me about it.

SPEAKER_02 12:58

I I I was talking to Eric about it, but I like how they like like all the actual like science about how like gravity affects time, you know? Yep. Yep. Which he's gotten to. He said he has like 30 minutes left.

SPEAKER_01 13:12

Oh, that's this it's all wonderful. How long they were on that planet.

SPEAKER_00 13:18

That water planet was crazy.

SPEAKER_02 13:21

Yeah, it's because it was is so close to the uh black hole. Yeah. The black hole. The gravity was like normally the tide. For like, you know, because our moon's close, that's how we get tides. It raises and lowers the water. There's like a bubble, it's pulling it, right? So that's why the waves were so big, is because the fucking the black holes pulling it. So they were able to walk.

SPEAKER_00 13:47

You would have thought these scientists, you know, all these some of the smartest people that are left of humanity, would have known that, hey, this is a water planet, and it's really close to the biggest black hole we've ever seen. Should we consider tides? Like, nobody can they land on the water, which is like a foot deep.

SPEAKER_01 14:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:11

In an all-water planet, and there's no part of you that goes, Where are the waves?

SPEAKER_02 14:16

What's going on? What's happening here? There's gonna be just a foot of water. The mountains.

SPEAKER_00 14:22

Yeah, they but that's what I'm saying. They land and there's a foot of water. And and you're there's no part of you that's like, I feel like this should be a little deeper.

Water Planet Logic And Tides

SPEAKER_01 14:31

And for all the rest of that, make sure you tune in to our episode Will You Survive Interstellar, where we're gonna go through the whole movie like we always do, because we never just go and talk about the movie for about five minutes and then go off on side tangents. No, no, no. We don't do that on this podcast. We talk about the whole movie. Legal disclaimer, we always do that.

SPEAKER_00 14:57

Do we need to legally disclaim that?

SPEAKER_01 14:59

No. Oh. It was just for fun.

SPEAKER_00 15:02

No, we always do that.

SPEAKER_01 15:04

But for uh for all intents and purposes, um Merry Christmas, guys.

SPEAKER_02 15:11

Yeah, Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas, happy holidays, whatever you fucking celebrate. And until next time, stay alive. Unlike our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who won't for us.

SPEAKER_01 15:26

Oh, don't do that. He came back, actually.

SPEAKER_02 15:30

Yeah, he came back, but Try again loser.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

Try again, loser.

SPEAKER_00 15:35

He ascended is alive forever.

SPEAKER_01 15:38

No, I don't think it's zombie.

SPEAKER_00 15:41

I think we've had this conversation.

Holiday Sign-Off And Zombie Jesus Bit

SPEAKER_01 15:43

We're gonna have to have this conversation through Interstellar, because that'll make sense. We're talking about theoretical knowledge versus practical knowledge.

SPEAKER_02 15:52

In theory, if he died and then came back. Zombie? Yeah. Find out next time on Will You Survive.