Original subtitles

Welcome to Important Things with Dimitri Martin. I'm Dimitri Martin.

Tonight's important thing is brain.

Brain. What do we start with? Okay, we got a lot of options for covering this

thing. We can start the show with jokes, read some idiot's mind, or get high and

do puzzles.

Joke.

An easy way to separate man from animals is his ability to reason.

Another thing you can go by is last names.

What's his name?

Patches?

Patches what?

That's a dog. Don't waste my time. Come on.

So I think these twins are really interesting because they're the only

who can write a biography and an autobiography at the same time.

I remember when I was in school, my teacher said, can you name the

I was like, sure.

They already have names, but if you want me to do that.

I'm talking to one of my friends, and I said, ATM machine.

And he said, you know, the M stands for machine.

So you're repeating, you're basically saying ATM machine machine.

So then I corrected myself. So now I say, ATM -a -sheen.

If you're colorblind, eating candy must be a completely different experience.

All right.

Come on, Starburst, let's see what we got here.

Lemon, damn it!

I was in the gym and this really big guy got mad at me because he was like, spot

me, spot me, spot me.

I was like, okay, you're right there.

At 10 .05pm on November 13th, 2007, Eric Sterberger was spell -checking his

college application essay on what three great historical minds he'd most like to

have dinner with when a lightning bolt struck his computer, catapulting him

through the space -time continuum to a nearby TGIFs, where he found himself

seated across from the very geniuses he was writing about, Benjamin Franklin,

William Shakespeare, and Galileo Galilei. Oh, my God!

You guys are all really here.

We are here, Eric.

Oh, man.

Oh, my God.

At your service.

Thank you for choosing us.

I have so many questions. I have no idea where to begin.

Mr.

Franklin. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's do that. Let's do the questions.

Can you tell me a little bit... Are you guys all ready to order? You need

another minute.

Hello. Well, I'm ready now.

I think we are, too. Let's do this. Let's do this thing.

Pray, tell me, might you be on this menu?

Nope. Shame, because I'd order that.

No, I will take the chicken fajitas.

Hot. Spicy.

Shakespeare taking it south of the border.

And an appletini.

Okay, and for you, sir? What would you recommend, Kathy?

The burger's good.

I love a big, juicy burger, huh?

I'm not going to lie.

Does that burger come with warm buns?

That'd be better.

Better salsa.

And for you, sir?

I'm going to have a tuna club, jalapeno poppers, and an iced tea. Okay, and for

you? I'll just have water.

Water. Kids on a diet.

Thanks,

guys. Thank you,

Kathy.

Okay. Oh, oh.

That is the perfect ass gentleman.

Boinga de boinga.

Am I right?

Pure poetry.

Wow. Konnichiwa. Wow.

Galileo, where were you? What? Did you not see her?

I'd like to take off a slow, you know? Ooh, slow -plated. There you go.

That's the move. Snake in the grass.

Hey, hey, hey.

Can we just talk about my questions? Eric. Yes.

Sorry. You go ahead. Okay.

Mr. Shakespeare.

Mr. Eric. Oh, here she comes.

There she is, Miss America.

All right, Kathy.

Enter Kathy.

Restaurant left. Looking lovely.

Take it down. Very nice.

Whoopsie -daisy. Oh, are you kidding me?

Okay. Huh?

Galileo, what the fuck?

What? He? What?

Seriously, Galileo, that was horrible. Why would you do that? I'm making my

move. No, it's a little early.

You talk, it's chitter -chatter. Misjudged.

This judge. This is our hand at space.

Excuse me. Excuse me, gentlemen.

Hello, sir. Is everything okay here?

Very good. Very good. I just had a complaint from one of my servers that

you might have grabbed her.

No. No.

Really? Out of here. Sir.

You? Not here. Nope.

Not us. Sir. Not us.

What?

You looking at me? I'm looking at you. Okay, fine.

But you know what?

She's a... Hey, waitress. Oh, boy. She coming over here, leaning over the

going to Shakespeare. That was bad. That was actually bad.

Maybe her ass will bump into my hand.

You know what?

That's fine. I'm going to ask you guys to leave now. Come on.

I want you to go. I want you out. Come on.

Come on. I appreciate it. Let's go. Come on.

We'll go.

I want you out. Let's go. Then we go.

Really?

Hey, everybody.

The manager of TGIF kicking out of Galileo. I make an attempt.

You look like a pirate. What? You heard me. Say it again.

Brain. Brain send me thoughts of what I ought to do. When I look at you, I

wonder if you have those thoughts too.

Think. Think.

of the tinkle of the sprinkle and the drinkle of the water. That is knowledge.

Brains are what?

Hello, Jamie.

How was work today?

Lucky break, fat boy.

Excuse me. Yeah.

Sorry. I'm just trying.

I'll go in then.

What are you doing?

I said excuse me. Get nice.

I said excuse me.

Get out of the way.

That's my baby.

She's cute. What's your baby's name?

Stella.

She's cute too.

Yeah, yeah.

Let's take a look at brains in a little more detail.

This is a graph. The thickness of a person's neck versus the thickness of

books they've read.

You'll see that as the neck gets thicker, the thickness of the books

Until a crucial point where they start wondering, why the hell is my neck so

abnormally thick? I need to read up on this.

This would be medical text about neck thickness.

Neck. That's an improper fraction.

And that is a really improper fraction.

This is actually very interesting. This is a GPA versus limbs. All right, let's

look at the values. 4 .0, for GPA, that's great. For limbs, good, good.

3 .5, good GPA, bad.

3 .0, pretty good GPA, bad.

2 .0, average GPA, bad.

1 .0, you're not going anywhere. You're not going anywhere.

Let's talk about memory.

Okay, we all know that memory is associated with certain senses. So if

something, you might remember it pretty well. If you see something, even better.

Smell, as you may have heard, is really strong for triggering a memory.

But what's even stronger is, is if something's inserted into your body.

That's strong.

Where are my keys?

I got my keys, but I need a band -aid, actually.

Between Michelangelo and Donatello, there was... ...Dimitri.

For thousands of years, the power of flight has belonged only to birds.

But no longer shall man be cursed to walk the earth and stare longingly up at

the clouds.

By closely studying the anatomy of birds...

I will build a flying machine and take to the sky.

What mechanism propels a creature into the air?

Of course.

Yes.

Flight will be mine.

Let's take a look at some simple equations.

Equations help our brains understand how the world works.

Okay.

Rate times time equals distance.

It also equals how expensive a hooker is.

Okay.

Let U represent U.

Let C represent a comic book store.

You times the comic book store over time equals lonely.

This one's a little more complicated.

Let X equal a popular girl in high school.

Now, add 20 years, subtract a job,

multiply that by a couch, and you get fat.

P equals the amount of pizza there is divided by me plus my friend,

which always comes out to one less than the number of slices I want to eat.

And that equals...

I like that thing and I wouldn't touch that with a 10 -foot pole.

That always made sense to me until I reversed it.

I was like, wait a minute.

I would touch that with a 10 -foot pole.

You would touch that with a 10 -foot pole?

Yeah, I'd definitely touch it if I, you know, with a 10 -foot pole.

That's not that different than not touching it with a 10 -foot pole.

Once a 10 -foot pole's involved, it's pretty much the same kind of situation.

Yeah, but I'm, you know, I'm just saying I'd poke it and be involved with it

with the pole. You know, I had the pole. Yeah, but it's not the same. No, but

I'm saying with the temple pole and as much as it's in my presence, I'm not

using the pole to touch it.

There's me with the temple pole and I'm touching it.

Really?

That's how I roll with prepositions, man. Come on.

Fairly important fairy tale.

The Prince and the Pauper.

Five years later.

Hey! Hey!

Hey, hello.

Great to see you.

Remember me?

Prince of the Boardwalk. We did the switch.

What a surprise.

Can I tell you something?

I love this. The whole crown, the castle, the food is really

something. Thank you. Thank you. Great to catch up.

Great to see you.

Okay. Right. I'm going to get back to the... What?

Let you and me switch.

Um, so you become a... And I go back to... Come on. There's an idea. Come on.

What a great idea. Do you know, that's a terrific idea.

Here's another thought. Let's say we are.

How's that?

No?

Second idea.

Okay? Just firing them out.

Um, kill him.

Mia!

Let's educate every boy and girl for the children are the future of the world.

What shall we teach them?

Let's teach them to work very hard.

Because children are basically animals you can train to do the work you don't

want to.

Mnemonics. These are really helpful for remembering things. I want to just run

through a couple of them right now. Okay, let's start with the planet.

Now... Footnote, I'm including Pluto in the planets because I think it's

terrible what they did to Pluto and it's still a planet to me. I grew up with

Pluto as a planet. I'll always be a planet.

Okay, you want to remember the

planets, including Pluto.

Just use this simple mnemonic that involves state capitals.

Okay, Montpelier, Vermont, Madison, Juneau, Nashville, Pierre, Mercury,

Venus,

Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Uranus, Nashville, and Pluto.

Okay, next.

You want to remember the order of the alphabet.

It's pretty long, but this can help. A sentence, a simple sentence.

Always beware of cats darting erratically forward going halfway into

Kathy, lest mopey neighbors open poorly quilted radioactive sunlamps to

ultraviolet waves or x -rays. Yo, Zach!

This is the sketch.

Yes, it is.

This is the sketch. That's right.

This is the sketch. Yes, it is. The sketch.

We put something in the show to test our viewers. Hopefully you caught it.

There was no Saturn in that line -up of planets.

If you caught that, congratulations, your brain is working.

Between Socrates and Plato, there was Demetrius.

What is the basis of attraction?

Is it not in the mind?

Nature dictates that the man is attracted to the body of the young

woman, but the woman is attracted to the intellect and superior intelligence of

the man, the older, wiser man, her teacher, for example.

But sometimes, nature makes a terrible mistake.

And the woman is attracted to some brute with disgustingly large muscles who

knows nothing of poetry or mathematics.

I would have taught you mathematics, bitch.

So I used to do graffiti.

What I would usually do is I would just try to, like, do the least amount of

work but still have an impact.

So, like, if I saw a pizza parlor, I would just, like, add a Z to it.

And people would be like, man, there's a lot of pizzazz parlors in this part of

town.

The village has way more flair than I thought.

Get your ass in the car.

That's pretty strong. That's the command.

But word order does matter.

Get the car in your ass.

I got a Hot Wheels fetish and we're going to work this out.

Hey.

My friend asked me if I ever swam with dolphins.

And I was like, yeah, of course.

What distance are we talking about?

From the dolphin.

Because the last time I was in the ocean, I'm pretty sure I swam with most

them.

Think about it.

All right.

I'd like to take a minute just to thank some of our sponsors for tonight's

important thing, brains.

Brains brought to you by tweed jackets and glasses.

The timeless uniform of the pompous ass.

Brains brought to you by the prenuptial agreement.

Still the smartest way to say, I love you, but I don't trust you.

Brought to you by physics, containing the power to bring down your grade point

average.

Quite a graphic we got for that.

Brought to you by Raising Your Voice, the next best thing to being right.

Thanks to all our sponsors.