All language subtitles for TRACERTE

♪

My name is Johannes,
and I have a problem.

I like Pachelbel's Canon in D.

Even worse, I use it at least
once in all of my films.

Why?

Because it was part
of the soundtrack

of a TV series called Cosmos,

and it is burnt
into my existence

like an emotional cobalt bomb.

I first heard
the melody in 1982

in a place called Austria.

This is what Austria looks like.

Austria is primarily known
for music and mass murder,

a culturally challenged country

deep in the Heart of Darkness
of Europe.

My last name is long
and complicated,

Grenzfurthner.

"Grenze" means "border,"

and a "furt" is something
like a shallow creek or ford,

like that charismatic
U.S. president.

So in English my name
would be Johnny Borderforder.

Has an exciting ring to it,
don't you think?

English is the lingua franca
of late capitalism,

so I decided to stick with it.

Everything in German
sounds like a war crime,

and everything
in Austrian German

sounds like a war crime
served with whipped cream.

♪

I was born in 1975,

a year that
is known for the end

of the Vietnam conflicts,

a geopolitical proxy war
that, in the long run,

brought us great
plot elements for films

like Joe Dante's Piranha

and the very underrated
Jacob's Ladder by Adrian Lyne.

Microsoft was founded,

Michel Foucault published
Discipline and Punish,

and a guy named Spielberg
released a blockbuster

about a Great White one,

and I'm not talking
about Richard Nixon.

I was an only child
and grew up in the countryside.

If there's a bright
center to the universe,

I lived in a place
- Stockerau.

Stockerau's claim to fame

is providing Austria
with its first Catholic saint,

a poor Irish guy
who was hung as a spy

because of his, quote,
"strange appearance."

When his corpse wouldn't decay

and the tree they hung him on

started to bloom
in mid-winter,

the Stockerauians
gladly reassessed

their impromptu flash mob.

They built a cloister
and a kindergarten.

I can still smell the red beet
they served me there.

The Body of Christ
for vegetarians.

That was me, age 6.

Elton John.

Woschi Woschi Wau Wau,

the doggie that never pooped.

I loved Neil Armstrong,

and turning dirt
into moon dust,

and battle cruisers,

and helicopter crashes.

Books and comics
were the best thing ever.

♪

I was a huge fan
of Richard Scarry,

and I constructed submarines

to explore the Mariana Trench,

but I also built tree houses

that grew into huge
post-apocalyptic mansions.

I accidentally killed a chicken
with a chemical experiment.

I hid the body in a fodder silo.

My family still
thinks it was the fox.

My childhood took place
in an interesting time--

"interesting" in that old
Chinese-proverb sense--

the gloomy heydays
of the Cold War.

♪

♪

We only had two TV channels,
can you imagine?

But my dad had
the consumer power

of a real Baby Boomer,

and obtained a VHS video
recorder as early as 1980,

I assume to watch porn.

I was, without knowing,

part of the first generation
of the information age,

a native of
the radical technological

and societal shift

that's now called
"globalization."

A completely hollow term,

but sometimes even hollow terms
cast long shadows.

I was a good observer.

I learned a lot
about basic biology

from Grandpa Zucker,

like after
slaughtering pigs,

the stray cats always
ate the testicles first.

I also spotted that
our neighbor's hallway tiles

had the structure
of LCD characters.

I never managed
to unsee this fact.

My grandmother
always used to stay:

The kids gave me nicknames
like "UFO-Hannes."

That certainly created
a level of isolation,

but also one that let me
look for creative ways

to deal with my obsessions.

I compiled my own cut-and-paste
popular science books

on the really bad Xerox machine

of the Volkspartei
Niederösterreich,

or I made short films.

Well, I guess I started
the genre of docuploitation.

I wrote stories
about exotic diseases

like "brain-aquaplaning,"

and not to forget a play
called The Hole In The Andes.

A couple of scientists
who do research

in the mountain range
of the Andes

discover a hole that
goes right through Earth.

One of the scientists
accidentally falls

into the hole,
and the high speed of his fall

and the high heat
transform him into a zombie.

On the other side of Earth,
he is catapulted into orbit,

where he attacks spacecraft.

An excellent example for bad
science in science fiction,

but I think I could sell it
to Michael Bay or other members

of the Military-Entertainment
Complex.

My mother Hermi
was always supportive

of my strange interests,
and my Dad always said,

"Well, Hermi,
that's what you get

when you raise an open mind."

I'm still not sure it
was meant as a compliment.

♪

♪

I'm not into
sweat suits anymore,

but damn, I still
like my baseball caps,

and setting stuff on fire.

I was eager to impress,

but also jealous
about the popular kids.

I was forced into being a rebel.

My rebellion manifested itself

in a perverted interest
in cryptozoology,

conspiracy books,
and all the bullshit

that Erich von Däniken ever spat

into the face of humanity.

And when I was 11
I became an atheist.

I guess because
I started masturbating.

But over the next years
I got more sophisticated.

I devoured cyberpunk novels

and loved
to watch Robocop and...

Edison Carter vom Sender 23,
M-M-M-Max Headroom.

I goofed around
with a friend's Commodore 64,

but getting my first
IBM computer was a blast.

I learned English by playing
Sierra Online adventure games,

and I was fascinated
with GW-BASIC.

And when I was 13, I joined
the FidoNet data network.

Electronic data communication
was a wonderful way

to finally get in contact
with strange folks

from all over the planet.

And I learned the proper
term for what I was--

a nerd!

I felt at home in a world
built by outsiders,

harvesting mailing lists
and text file archives,

enjoying ANSI art.

I even created my own.

Not as elaborate,
but, ah, what the heck.

And of course I joined
endless debates about modems

and Akira
and tokamak reactors...

and smut.

Oh yes, my nerd world
was full of white dudes.

I didn't have a girlfriend--

guess why--

and I was definitely too scared

to do anything
to change that,

but the reality of your body
hits you hard, bro,

especially when it
takes a three-hour-long

long distance call
to fucking Germany

to download
your first low-res porn.

I couldn't really wait
until the image

was fully displayed.

I climaxed after
the first couple

of grey pixels were shown.

It was quite magic.

I still have a fetish
for grey pixels.

♪

I don't want to be
too Lacanian about it, but...

A lot of desire
got externalized.

For example, I was part
of a small gang,

and we played many pen and paper
role-playing games.

I really liked my character.

I mean, look at
my frickin' character sheet!

♪

I even did double entry
bookkeeping for my gold coins.

Hindsight is always 20/20,

especially if you play games
that require 20-sided dice.

You can do
what you like.

It's only bad when you don't
destroy the evidence.

♪

♪

The promise and dangers
of technology

really interested me.

When I was 17, my wish to do
something meaningful grew.

If I couldn't get a date,

at least I could
change the planet.

I really wanted
to start "monochrom,"

an online message board,
but also magazine,

about the stuff
that interested me:

cyber-topics, politics,
and fringe culture,

and I found friends
and comrades

who joined to make it happen.

And we found victims
for articles and interviews.

Folks like HR Giger,

Kathy Acker,
who were really great,

and Blixa Bargeld,

who turned out
to be major butthurt.

Techno-utopianism, my ass!

I became a leftist.

You couldn't leave the future
to stupid libertarians.

Cyberpunk made me a punk.

Hasta la victoria siempre!

Never forget!

And let anthropomorphized kiwis

puke evil provitamins
on Jean-Luc Picard!

Monochrom was born,

and it never died.

Monochrom's credo
was and still is

to find the perfect
Weapon of Mass Distribution

to spread an idea.

What started as a fanzine

experienced
a Cambrian Explosion,

and we started working
in many different media.

Robots, games,
interventions, musicals...

And so I turned
from being some nerd

into some artist.

I'm 40 years old now,

and monochrom, my baby,
is 22 years old.

Only imagine, it can now
legally drink in the U.S.

So, looking back
at my life's journey,

it occurs to me, why not
going on a real journey,

a journey from the west coast
to the east coast of the U.S.?

To visit nerdy places
and nerdy people

that inspired and shaped me,

but also having
interesting conversations

with other nerds about
nerd culture in general.

So please, join me on
my little three-week-long

transcontinental tour de force.

♪

Traceroute is a road trip,
a pilgrimage,

an inquiry, a palimpsest

to chase and question the ghosts

of nerdoms past,
present, and future.

I teamed up
with two good friends:

Jenny Marx from Germany

and Eddie Codel from California.

Eddie and Jenny at Tanagra.

Johannes, his arms wide.

We get a white rental van
and stockpile on good spirit.

♪

San Francisco is known
for free love and free markets,

a fantastic realm
of endless opportunity

and homelessness.

The cultural center
of what Barbrook and Cameron

called
the Californian Ideology,

a town saturated
in playful dissent

and positive corporate thinking.

My childhood memories of SFO

are the nightmarish game
Manhunter 2,

the adorable serial killer film
Time After Time,

and certainly Star Trek IV,

the one about breaking
and entering

a nuclear vessel in Alameda

and kidnapping two whales.

My friend V. Vale
lived in North Beach

for a long, long time.

He is a famed
publisher and documentarian.

I remember vividly
when I first laid eyes

upon his Industrial
Culture Handbook.

Vale touched
my 15-year-old brain.

It was a consensual bad touch.

City Lights Bookstore,
where I once worked.

- Oh, you did?
- Oh, yeah!

- Yeah?
- Yeah, they funded

- my first publication!
- Really?

- Yes.
- What was that?

- Search and Destroy.
- Search and Destroy!

Ferlinghetti
and Allen Ginsberg.

What do you think have
all subcultures in common?

Because you have been witnessing

many births and deaths
of subcultures.

I think all countercultures,
subcultures,

whatever you wanna call them,
movements such as this,

they've always
been started by nerds.

I mean, you have to have
a lot of solitude,

you have to be used
to being alone,

you have to be used
to being against the grain,

you have to be used
to society not approving

of the way you choose
to live your independent life,

because there is no creativity
in the absence of revolt

and the absence of revolution

and the absence of rebellion.

People just don't realize that

when they're reading
the history books.

Just a very few people
are responsible

for any new emerging
counterculture,

and to me, a culture
has to be composed

of everybody participating
and creating,

not just consuming.

And because of this,

the future will
always be created

by nerds in subcultures.

Well, well!

Are nerds the driving
force of dissent?

Or just a bunch
of hyper-consumers?

Hmm, leaves me
with an excellent case

of cognitive dissonance.

Maybe a stroll
around City Hall

helps to clear my mind.

♪

♪

Invasion of the Body Snatchers
from 1978.

The post-Watergate era
found America depressed,

and Philip Kaufman told
a haunting sci-fi tale

about how the Hippie
generation grew up,

got absorbed and co-opted,

and led the U.S. into
the dark ages of Reaganomics.

Few films left me more hopeless,

yet more determined.

So, whenever you check
your Facebook status

or plan your week-long
escape to Burning Man,

please remember
that the cultures

and countercultures
of Silicon Valley

were made possible
only due to exploitation

of the immigrant poor
plus defense funding

and subsidies for corporations.

Adam Flynn is
very aware of this.

He grew up in the small town
of Yuma, Arizona,

the real-life equivalent
of Night Vale.

Now he lives in the Bay Area
as a philosopher for hire.

Good, 'cause there
are no apps for that.

Cyberpunk, for me, like punk,
is a very wide thing.

I mean, who were the cyberpunks?

So, like, 13-year-old boys
like me,

it's a very
privileged subculture,

because it's usually people
who had access to technology.

Women and minorities
and queer people

have always been
in geek culture,

but they've been made invisible.

Now suddenly geek culture
is mainstream,

like the only reliable things
keeping Hollywood afloat

are superhero action movies
from comic books.

All of these things are
trying to be a big tent,

but the people that used
to be part of the small tent

feel like, "Oh, someone's
stolen my country."

Geography creates mindsets.

- It's, like, undebatable...
- Sure!

- ...I think, yeah?
- Yeah!

You feel super alienated,

but you find somewhere
out there something

that is--that you
can connect with

and that you have this sense
of "One of these days,

I'm gonna shake the dust
from my heels

and go to the big city
and find my people."

You know, so much
of video games,

so much of comic books,
are based on this sense of

a kind of, you know,
wish fulfillment

and power fantasies

or the sense of, you know,
in playing something very hard

or going through and mastering
the secret knowledge,

this shared hardship
and discipline

that you have gone through
and mastered.

Absolutely, man, I see
that camaraderie, let's say,

the camaraderie of nerdom,

especially potent
in role-playing campaigns

when you, like,
sit around a table

for hours and hours and hours

and master and fight
monsters or whatever,

and you do it together.

I had my first date,
the first date of my life,

was in a role-playing game.

Wait, like, your character
was having a date?

Yes, the character
was having a date,

but that was for me
like my first date!

It was so--he's laughing, yes,

and you should!

I truly believe

that two things
are true about humanity:

We are a sexual species,

and we are a tool-using species.

The rest is pure speculation.

So we make our way to
the hackerspace Noisebridge,

known for tinkering
and social drama.

That's where we meet
an old activist friend of mine.

Hi, my name is Maggie Mayhem!

I'm a lifelong nerd,
and I'm a sex worker.

When I think about how
I define myself as a nerd,

I think back to a lot
of really important moments

in childhood.

For one thing, I never
really had a thing for dolls.

I did have a thing
for batteries,

and I loved being able
to design my own types

of electric circuitry
around my room.

I had lights, I had bells,
I had booby traps,

I had everything
I could think of.

I went from nine-volt batteries

and eventually graduated
up to bigger ones.

I think even,
at my shining glory,

a car battery
that I was using

to power all kinds of things.

I had a console that
let me program in BASIC,

and it reminded me of
the Catholic teachings

that I was getting at school,
my small parochial school,

about how on the first day
God created light

and then He programmed
the rest of the universe.

And that's how I felt
with my whole sandbox

where I could just do anything.

I went down to the library

and I learned how
to use the internet,

and one of my early lessons
was not to tell anybody

that I was a nine-year-old girl.

Just no one will believe you,
and if they do,

they don't have anything
good to say to you.

So I pretended
I was a teenage boy,

and that worked
for a really long time.

It worked until
I was a teenager.

As soon as I hit puberty,

I guess either through implied

or maybe even sometimes
explicit statements,

I kinda thought being a woman
meant giving that all up.

And sometimes,
now that I'm older,

that's really frustrating,

because I still love technology,
and I'm still a nerd,

and I still have all kinds
of great equipment around,

and I'll go to do something
or I'll have an idea,

and I sit down at my computer

and it's like it's
a language that I forgot.

And I can't make
the words come to my lips.

I can't quite program the way
I used to remember, you know?

I mean, on the internet,
looking at source code

of HTML on a website
was like an upskirt view.

It was exciting,
it was a chance

to figure it out
just by watching

and piecing it together,
and I think that sex workers

have always had
a relationship to technology.

Either sex has been
a driving force

in how technology
has played out

in regards to whether or not
Beta or VHS was gonna win

on how they carried porn,

or even the fact that
the Consumer Electronics Show

in Las Vegas is
one of the number one

sex work destinations.

I remember the first time
I ever traded sex for software.

It was about 2005,

and I was a student
in Santa Cruz.

I remember meeting
so many software engineers

because we could share
all kinds of conversations,

we could have a really
good time together.

We had so much in common,

and we could work out
barter arrangements.

I think sex workers
have been carrying

all kinds of innovation
and maybe help spurring it.

Maybe there's always
been a relationship

between hackers and hookers.

At the same time
sometimes now it feels like

it's a little bit more hostile.

You know, we've been alongside
technology the whole time,

and yet we're being written
out of the Terms of Service.

And sometimes I wonder
if there's ever gonna be

the people come out to say
that they were johns,

that they were clients,

that they, too, are allies
to sex workers,

that they know that
we're human beings,

that we deserve rights
and that there is a difference

between trafficking
and consensual sex.

But I can come out,
and I'm hoping that the nerds

who like to have
a good time with me

might come out, too.

Bravo!

And as a little thank you,

we present Maggie with a mug

that Jenny and I created.

The Venus of Strapondorf.

Always remember...

Josh Ellingson is a wonderful
illustrator and designer.

When I first saw
his illustration of Carl Sagan,

I was hooked to his work.

I asked Josh to bring
some of his designs.

That's Dirty Martini,
a Burlesque performer

from New York City,
and she's standing there

in front of the Mercury rocket
that's taking off.

And that piece was featured
in outer space on the ISS.

Richard Garriott, one of
those internet millionaires

or video game millionaires,
actually, took it up

as part of an art show
that he put together.

There were eight
other artists in the show,

and it was just kind
of a crazy privilege

to be featured
on the Space Station.

The space tourist
takes your art to space.

Garriott is
an interesting character

because he's one of the many,
many nerds nowadays

who kinda made it--
he's like a billionaire.

- Oh, such a nerd.
- Growing up as a nerd

in Flint, Michigan,
was probably not easy.

Yeah, and I definitely
felt different, for sure.

Like, growing up,
like, I was always

into something really hardcore,

and some of my friends
would be into it for a while.

You know, I didn't
get into, like, sports

or popular music, really.

So I guess it was--
I felt weird and different,

but I didn't know that it--
I don't know,

I guess I kinda picked on nerds
or thought I was better

than the nerdy people
or whatever, but--

So you were like--kinda
almost like a social cannibal

or something
because you were a nerd,

but you were picking on nerds?

Yeah, I didn't know
what the hell I was--

what was going on,
and I would wear--

I would try to be cool,
like, I don't know.

Like I said,
I thought I was cool.

So when did you
come out as a nerd?

I don't know, 10 years ago
or maybe 12 years ago

or something, I'm like,
"Yeah, I'm just a nerd."

Like I'm just--yeah.

- I think we should get drunk.
- Yeah, let's do it, man.

Okay.

And I sit at the bar
and put bread in his jar,

and say, "Man,
what are you doing here?"

The term "nerd" got popularized

by sitcoms around
the time I was born.

The etymology
is a bit unclear.

Some say it got invented
by my old hero Dr. Seuss,

some refer to various
slang origins,

and even Philip K. Dick

claimed to have
coined the spelling.

Doesn't really matter.

What matters
is how this new archetype

is embedded in the guts
of neoliberalism.

Dare I postulate that
the Revenge Of The Nerds

is cognitive capitalism itself.

We walk down
Hoff Street, and...

- Hey!
- Oh, hello!

- Abie, good to see you!
- Johannes, good to see you!

- So you're a therapist.
- I am.

I think, first of all,
it's important to think

about the many different types
of nerds that there are.

I think it's not
just technology.

Anybody who is
really into something,

anybody that has a focus
and an intensity

about any particular
topic is a nerd.

Our culture doesn't
necessarily value

all of these interests, right,
so you come into school,

and you found
this really cool thing,

and you wanna show everyone,
and they think,

"Ah, that's stupid,
why are you into that?"

That's the beginning
of that kind of trauma, right?

And it can also go
the other way around

where you start off
with the idea

of you're just
a little bit different,

like many of us were,
and you're ostracized,

and the way that you
deal with that trauma

is by finding something,

a passion that you pour
yourself into like that.

And so the nerdery can be--
it's a response to the trauma

and a way of dealing
with the trauma

of being an outsider,
so it kind of goes both ways.

You know, if you're just
playing guitar chords,

that's one thing,
but then you start to be a--

you become a rock star,
that's a different thing.

If you're coding in your room,
that's one thing,

but then you get hired
by Google,

that's another thing, right?

So I think when
that crossover happens

and the sense
of self in the world

doesn't catch up with it--

so it's almost a kind
of social dysmorphia

where you still feel like
you are completely powerless,

but you don't realize
that you have suddenly

become very powerful,
and it's easy not to realize

the impact of your actions on,
you know, the people around you,

the planet around you, all that.

Now sleepy time.

♪

Bye-bye, San Francisco.

A drive over the Bay Bridge

offers a good view
of the giant cranes

at the Port of Oakland,

and that triggers
two of my passions:

intergalactic oppression
and logistics.

Many fans think
that those cranes

inspired the Imperial Walkers
in Star Wars.

Well, nope.

George Lucas himself
dismissed that claim.

Walker designs
were actually inspired

by garbage trucks,

but what always stuns me
is a different fact.

One of the greatest
inventions of the 20th century

is the shipping container.

In 1955 a guy called McLean

realized it would be
much simpler and quicker

to have one
standardized container

that could be lifted
from a vehicle

directly onto a ship
or a train

without first having
to unload its contents.

That fundamentally
changed the world.

Nine billion tons of cargo
across our seas each year

in an evenly distributed system

that would be a ton
for each person on the planet.

So even though Lucas
was not inspired by it,

the container-shipping network

is the true backbone
of the Global Empire.

Sending stuff efficiently
from one point to another

is a fascinating subject.

One of the big players is FedEx.

And FedEx has one of
the best logos ever created.

You ever realized
that there is an arrow

in the Ex?

No?

Look there, there it is!

Lindon Leader created
this masterpiece

of negative space in 1994.

Leader learned from
an unsung hero himself.

His first job was
working for Saul Bass,

the guy who created
the AT&T logo,

made posters and title
sequences for Hitchcock,

and directed a movie

about intelligent ants
who talk math--Phase IV,

the first film to depict
a geometric crop circle,

and it was an influence
on the pranksters

who started this phenomenon.

Time to get some
hard drives for backup.

You know, Jesus saves...

Fry's Electronics is a chain
of big-box one-stop stores.

They sell everything
tech-nerd-relevant.

They even sold porn
when that was still lucrative.

♪

♪

We have our loot,

but we are also late.

We have to make it
to Santa Cruz before sunset.

♪

She is a media theorist,
artist, and technology writer.

But she worked in many odd jobs,

one of them was
recording engineer

for Jimi Hendrix.

Sandy is considered the founder

of the academic discipline
of transgender studies.

...a real lost boy...

We have to work on
that a little bit.

The most fascinating thing
about what happened

is everything Bill Gibson
talked about came true,

plus the things
that he only thought about

that he didn't really
think would happen.

And the worst aspects of them

turned out to be
kind of the average.

You know, that's
what everything is now.

And as happens
with every movement

or period or whatever,
everybody grew up--

you know, we had
a fantastic time,

it was a tremendously
powerful time.

A lot of wonderful
things happened,

people developed,
and finished,

and moved on with really
wonderful technological things

and societal things,
and then it all went to shit.

It got ground up in
the great capitalist grinder,

and now we have post--
lost boys.

- We have post-post.
- We have post-post lost boys.

And it's all okay,

because we're all
still doing it.

I mean, the street found
its uses for technology,

and it found its uses
for the social furnishings

that those technologies
produced.

♪

He took that interest
and creative energy

of hippiedom and dropping LSD

and channeled it
into what is Apple now,

and you're just like, nobody
should ever take LSD anymore!

LSD is a tool
that can do anything.

If you are Steve Jobs,
it will make you Super Steve.

It would make you
Super Johannes.

Super Johannes, like running
a death camp or something.

Now, broiled scallops
in a tourist trap.

I always loved
the great dichotomies of life:

PLAYMOBIL and LEGO,

dinosaurs and things
that dinosaurs eat,

trees with leaves
and pine trees,

cats and mice
like Tom and Jerry.

But as someone who grew up
in Central Europe,

I never understood how a mouse
can live inside a wall.

Walls are
made of bricks!

Walls are not hollow.

Way later I came to understand

that U.S. American houses
are made of wood,

and the walls are really hollow.

♪

Sandy's car has so many
nice bumper stickers,

so we decide that
our van needs one, too.

Let's live dangerous and break
our rental car contract.

♪

I realize that
I lost my passport.

Shock!

I track it down at
the scallops-serving

tourist trap.

- Yeah!
- Perfect!

Makes me happy.

The Peace of Westphalia

gave us the concept
of the nation state,

and we all have to play
by its strange rules.

♪

Carl Sagan's take on humanity,

exploration, and pathos
is still engrained

in my thinking and doing,

and when I find out
that our route

takes us by the spot
where he shot

the famous opening scene
of Cosmos,

I can't help
but knock on some doors...

- I have information!
- Oh, yeah?

...hoping to get access to that
piece of magic grazing land.

And really,
we get an interview!

Well, my dead grandfather
bought this property

around 1910,
and he ended up with it

mainly because he couldn't
afford property

in the Salinas Valley

where it was all
the good planting land.

So he came out here
and had a few cows,

and then through the years,
people felt it was much nicer

to live by the ocean
and the views,

and so it became more
and more valuable,

which then attracted
more people

and, you know,
eventually Cosmos

and many other filming
companies showed up here,

and actually wanted
to take advantage

of the views that
we have here on the flats,

because it's one of the only
flat pieces here on the coast.

So Cosmos showed up
in the last '70s,

and I didn't really know

exactly what
they were going to do,

and they stuck
this guy out there

who I didn't know
a whole lot about,

and he had his little deb.

Since then, they've come back
and filmed the sequel to it

and, you know,
that's where we are today.

He was standing here
and holding a dandelion,

and the dandelion would turn

into the Spaceship
of Imagination--

Yeah, and he picked
the dandelion

- over there, I think...
- Ah, wonderful!

...'Cause that turns
into a bunch of field

of dandelions and poppies, so...

♪

Pee and literature break
at the Henry Miller Library.

♪

I like driving,
but realizing that we have

a journey of 7,000 miles
before us makes me shiver.

It reminds me of
the strange societal consensus

of steering tons of machinery
at high speeds

to get milk or drop someone off,

and we don't consider
this strange!

We just accept it from
an economical perspective,

although we know
how deadly cars are.

The age of self-driving cars
is dawning,

and we will look back
at this behavior

and shake our heads.

Henry Ford's decision
to pay his workers

$5-a-day-wages was
not one of welfare.

It was that he realized
that he should pay his workers

sufficiently large sums
so they could afford

the products they were making.

He wanted to expand his market.

For Google, self-driving cars
will be entertainment

and communication hubs.

I sit in my car
while it drives me around,

and what do I do?

I consume media
and make calls.

I literally become
a captive audience

for advertisers and services
that want my money.

Whoever controls that aspect

will have many
happy shareholders.

♪

L.A. feels like the aftermath

of a giant WikiLeaks release.

The truth is out,
in black and white,

everyone knows it,
it's blatantly clear

that everything
is wrong and bad

and can't get any worse,

but nobody really cares.

I appreciate this attitude.

You can't make fun of L.A.,
it's beyond parody.

It's like Henry Kissinger

receiving
the Nobel Peace Prize.

♪

We are on our way to
the botanical gardens of UCLA.

Whenever I go
to a botanical garden,

I think of killing people
with a spade

and American Airlines.

And that's because
of Douglas Trumbull's

1972 eco-sci-fi film
Silent Running.

A couple of space freighters
are carrying domes

with the last
remaining ecosystems,

and Bruce Dern is one
of the caretaking astronauts.

When the crew gets the command
to destroy all domes,

Dern freaks out,
kills his colleagues,

and flees with all the bunnies
and cactuses and stuff.

The political message
is a bit woo woo,

but the space freighters

featured big
American Airlines logos,

and I still remember it.

Best product placement
buck ever spent.

Christina Agapakis
is a synthetic biologist

who does exciting projects.

I guess I always
thought of myself

sort of a cross between
a ballerina and a scientist

when I was five,
and I realized at that point

that I wasn't going to be
a ballerina pretty early on.

As a young nerd she liked
the soothing fact

that there was always
an answer in science.

Turned out to be a bit
of a misunderstanding.

So you're also
doing art projects,

and one project
is about cheese.

Could you tell us about that?

We realized that the
chemistry of armpits

and sweat and body odors
and foot odor

is very, very similar to
the chemistry of cheese.

Um, and so a lot of the
smells and flavors of cheeses

are really similar to
the smells and flavors

of the human body,
it turns out.

So, you know, you can
have Limburger cheese

that smells like feet,

Swiss cheese can have
a kind of sweaty smell,

and that's 'cause the bacteria

are making the same
kinds of molecules,

and the bacteria themselves
are really closely related.

So the project was to kind of,
again, decontextualize,

reframe our kind of
emotional understanding

and kind of disgust at microbes

and the kind of
ickiness of them.

We created our own cheeses

using bacteria from the
human body, including yours.

You were one of our
very kind donors.

I think I had, like, armpits,

and I think it
was also crotch.

I think you did provide us a
crotch sample but I'm not sure--

But you don't know
what--what specific...

I can't remember now.

But it failed.

It--yeah, I didn't
do a very good job

sort of aging the cheese,
so that was one thing

I really learned
about--about microbes.

There's a real craft
element to cheesemaking

and you have to really
nurture the bacteria

to grow the right way.

So your cheese,
in particular,

I had to go to a conference,

so I was like, "Okay,
I'll set up the cheese.

I'll put it to kind
of age in the cabinet

that I had been using,
um, and I'll come back

from the conference,
it'll be ready."

And then I come back home,
and the house smells terrible

like it had just
gone very, very bad.

I fucked up your house.

Anyway, it ended up okay,
but I opened the cabinet,

and the cheese was moving

because it had little
maggots had laid their--

like, flies had laid their
eggs inside the cheese.

It was very, very bad.

So your cheese was a
very striking example

of kind of the
visceral disgust

that you can experience
with biological organisms

out of context
and the kind of signal

of how you really have to
care for things as they rot.

Can it get any worse?

Yes.

♪

Calm down, calm down.

I just don't want you to
fall asleep, dear audience.

Time to visit my
buddy Sean Bonner

and his wife Tara,
and son Rips.

They have an
impressive collection...

♪

- Sean.
- Johannes.

Sean, Sean, Sean, Sean.

So, we are both born in 1975,

so we are pretty much
the last generation

with an inbred angst

of total nuclear
annihilation, okay?

As kids, we didn't know
that it was weird, right?

Like, there was nothing
unusual about going to school

and your teacher saying,
"Okay, when the nuclear bombs

start dropping,
hide under your desks,"

you know, and do this sort of
stuff because you're a kid,

like, "Oh, okay, well,
that's what you do."

I was 11 years old and you
were 11 years old in 1986,

and that was a kind of
bad year for modernity

because, first of all,
Chernobyl blew up

and secondly, the Challenger
explosion happened.

Goddamn O-ring.

I don't worry too much
about the established rules

and setup of things
because I sort of--

I sort of always
approach that as that's--

Whatever--whatever
is an existing process

to do something
is the old way.

That's kind of something
that sort of sticks with me

in everything that I do, and
I think it probably is rooted

in all of this sort of stuff.

We were very, very
anxious in finding out

that everybody was
okay really quickly,

and once word started
coming back in

about what was
happening at Daiichi,

and the word that I was
getting from everyone in Japan

was that they didn't
know what was going on

and they couldn't
find any information.

There was nobody
monitoring any of this stuff,

and that the sort
of institutions

and organizations
that you would expect

to be on top of that

really didn't have
any idea what to do

and they weren't
doing anything.

The world supply
of Geiger counters,

essentially, sold out
in about 24 hours.

There was nobody--nobody
buying them before that

and then everybody
buying them after that,

so the entire supply chain
died up immediately.

What you need for a
functioning market

- is a good crisis.
- Yeah, exactly.

The example that I use a lot
is, like, if you wanted

to find out what the weather
was in Los Angeles right now,

and the best thing
you could get

was an average for
all of California.

This device collects
a radiation reading

every five seconds and
ties it to a GPS point

and then uploads
it to a server

that's shared for
the entire world,

so now we have just shy
of 30 million data points

covering the entire world.

This is more data than
every other organization

who's ever collected
radiation readings combined.

- Wonderful.
- It's been pretty fantastic.

Yes, it is, and we will
take it on the road with us.

Yeah, absolutely,
I have one for you

so you can map out
the entire route.

We'll strap it onto our
little Town & Country

and find out
what is out there.

Yeah, totally,
you should, you should.

Let's check out
the L.A. River.

♪

We have to get
to Griffith Park.

The fastest route is the
wormhole in Sean's beard.

♪

This tunnel is
very dear to me.

It goes right into my heart.

Thanks to Hollywood

and its love for
cost-efficient wizardry,

I'm standing at the entrance
of three marvelous universes.

This tunnel is the
portal to Toontown

in Who Framed Roger Rabbit,

a movie about the destruction

of the public transport system
by private car companies.

It's also the scene of the
wonderful hoverboard sequence

in Back to the Future II,

set in the distant
future of 2015.

And most important:

it's the tunnel
into the bowels

of mutual assured destruction,

the entrance to NORAD,
in WarGames from 1983.

Home of WOPR, a supercomputer

that almost turns
the world population

into sizzling hamburgers.

WarGames was
very influential.

For the first time ever,
it presented the trope

of the lone,
intelligent hacker

to a mainstream audience

and created a whole flood
of keyboard jockeys.

For me, WarGames
offered the first glimpse

into understanding the obscene

and absurd power
structures of society.

We don't need experts,

we need people who
are willing to play.

Thirty years later, hacker
culture is still too white

and too male and mostly
made up of highly educated,

extremely well-paid people

who think they're
being oppressed.

What about a nice game of
dialectical materialism?

♪

On the way to 4267
Roxbury St., Simi Valley.

I need to show you something.

Damn, we are too late.

Now you can't see
why we are here.

But I will give you a hint.

♪

Hiding in the suburban
darkness behind me

is the former estate

of the Freeling family
of Poltergeist fame.

♪

In the 1970s,
Raymond Williams postulated

that the real
innovation of television

is television itself.

He calls this "flow."

An experience where all the
different program elements

and styles form a
mesmerizing emotional pastiche

for the viewer.

There used to be an
end to this "flow."

Sometime came the
inevitable nightly signoff.

Snow.

I remember from my childhood
how that was a moment

of terrifying
stillness and clarity.

It is no coincidence
that Poltergeist

used this phenomenon
as a plot device.

After the American national
anthem, the broadcast is over;

the snowstorm sets in,
and the eerie voices

of the damned start calling.

♪

♪

The first American
towns I knew by name

were New York City
and Pasadena,

the latter because of NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory,

birthplace of
the Viking probe

and other fine goods of
interplanetary gadgetry.

It's 10:00 p.m.

Let's try to sneak in.

Hello, honestly,
we're just tourists

and wanted to check out JPL.

Can we go in?

Okay, that didn't work.

Frustrating.

Let's get hammered
in the hotel bar.

Suddenly, there is a
strange image appearing

on the rear-view monitor.

We stop to check
what's going on.

♪

Jack Parsons was an
explosives hobbyist,

science fiction enthusiast,

and Crowleyan occultist.

He was also one of the
earliest people to focus

on practical rocketry.

In the '30s, rockets were a
crazy science fiction idea,

so it took people who had
an entirely different concept

of what was possible
to make rocketry

a practical reality.

Although, his only
experience in the field

was working in an
explosives factory,

Parsons hooked up with a group
of Caltech grad students

trying to build
working rockets.

After ruining one lab in 1937,

the team known as
the "Suicide Squad"

were sent out to the Arroyo

where they could only
damage themselves.

Many things did explode,

but somehow they did not
blow themselves up.

Parsons' designs
became the foundation

of modern
solid-fuel rocketry,

and the location
of their tests

became the Jet Propulsion Lab.

The Suicide Squad's
leader, Frank Malina,

became the director of JPL.

This combination of
occultist and technologist

blowing things up in
the dusty foothills

made sense in the context
of the freaky technoculture

of Los Angeles which
was a heavy blend

of boundless optimism
and cosmic paranoia.

It was in this context that
someone like Jack Parsons

could be one of the
inventors of modern rocketry

because why the hell not?

And it was in this context

that a pulp science fiction
author named Lafayette

ended up performing
Crowleyan sex magick rituals

with that same amateur
rocket scientist

in a Pasadena mansion.

L. Ron Hubbard went on to use

some of Aleister Crowley's
religious symbols

to create his own
Church of Scientology.

Jack Parsons was killed
in a mysterious explosion

in a Pasadena garage in 1952.

He has a crater
named after him

on the dark side of the moon.

Today, JPL controls a
team of Martian robots.

♪

I like palms...

♪

A century ago, the iconic
street tree of Los Angeles

was not the palm.

In the 1920s and 1930s,

L.A. was busy
building its modern grid

of automobile boulevards,

and the city was looking for
standardized street trees.

Palms held out the promise
of symbiotic infrastructure:

they could provide
beautification

without dropping fruit
or buckling concrete.

Now palms stand for
glamour and celebrity.

A symbol was born.

♪

For longer than I exist,

the name Stan Winston
has been synonymous

with iconic
fantasy characters.

♪

Stan Winston Studio
continually set new standards

of excellence and innovation.

♪

After Stan's untimely
passing in 2008,

Matt Winston co-founded

Stan Winston School
of Character Arts

to preserve Stan's legacy
by fostering creativity

in a new generation
of character creators.

I grew up consuming
all the stuff

that your father
was working on

like The Thing or Aliens
or Jurassic Park.

You were living in a
household with your father

who was creating and
really doing all this stuff,

so you were probably
sitting there eating pizza

and your father would
say, "Ah, Jim Cameron,

he wants this and
this, I don't know."

I don't know, is this
also like part of that?

Yeah, I was very
fortunate to be around

when Jim Cameron would
come and work with Dad

and they'd do tests
for alien queens

and, you know, you'd
think it would be,

"Oh, humdrum, this is
what I grew up around."

It was never humdrum for me.

I was always totally
excited by it and around it

just like you were 5,000,
6,000 miles away.

It was the same for me.

I was--I'm still the
biggest nerd for this stuff,

and I just got a closer
insider view of it,

but it's really
the same thing.

You know, we both
are--love, you know?

- Heart to heart.
- It really is.

I mean, I still--I get
a big grin on my face

every time I go to a
special effects shop

and I see an artist working.

I'm wearing--look at that.

I'm wearing an Aliens
Colonial Marines cap.

- And it never gets old.
- It never gets old!

It never gets old,
and I'm the same as you.

Wait, I'm dragging it here.

Look at this,
the Weyland-Yutani,

Weyland-Yutani bag on
my frigging backpack.

And I was--just happened
to be lucky enough,

I get to go onto
the set of Aliens

and help puppeteer
the alien queen.

Ah!

But I was as
excited as you were.

I was never like, "Ah,
a day at work with Dad."

It was always like, "Holy
crap, this is so awesome."

That's wonderful,
that's wonderful.

So little outview,
what do you think will be

the next five, ten years
of special effects?

Where will the--the really
interesting stuff go now?

Um, I--I believe that there is

a pendulum swing
back to embracing

lots of techniques
for making movies.

I think after CGI came along,

everyone was so excited
by this brand-new toy

that they used it
for everything,

and I think there's
a new generation

who want to see us come
back to using everything

and I think that's where

the industry's headed
and that's where the magic

comes back to movie making.

No one gets into
the movie business

to go to a big empty stage

with green walls
and people in green.

No, you get into storytelling
because you like--

You want to lick
the Terminator.

You want to lick
the Terminator.

He's actually licking
the Terminator.

Yes, I am, I am.

This is what nerds
do, it's fine.

Just don't lick the
zombie head, um...

I can put my finger up his
nose, like I can do this.

You can, and you can't
do that with pixels.

I can actually lick the nose.

No, please stop
licking our stuff.

- Okay, I'll stop.
- Thank you.

We'll remove that in post.

It's okay, we'll
remove it in post.

The wonder of
special effects.

Now another good example,
Fantastic Mr. Fox.

- Did you see that?
- Of course!

Old-style stop motion.

Great, it's magical to watch.

The Boxtrolls.

So I think we're
getting back to variety.

That's what I think the
next ten years holds.

Thank you so much--hug, hug!

Oh, don't lick me though.

No, I don't lick you,
I don't lick you.

I know he's gonna lick me.

Oh, he licked me!

He just licked me!

Stop licking people,
you crazy Austrian!

No licking?
What does he expect?

We are in San Fernando Valley!

I got so excited
that I forgot to ask Matt

the most important question:

Why do they send a high-tech
killing machine back in time

that can't speak
proper English?

An 8-bit problem?

Escape from L.A.

Our next destination:

The El Mirage Dry Lake Bed
in San Bernardino County.

♪

Ouch!

The lake bed is an
interesting place

of speed and stillness.

It is mostly used in car
commercials and yoga videos,

but it also was a testing
ground for rocket cars.

Is this the right turn?

♪

Reminds me of the waltzing
truck scene in Convoy.

♪

After 45 minutes driving
around in dusty nothingness,

we are getting a bit worried.

♪

Oh, look at that jet
engine right there.

There's the gate.

Okay, so what do we do?

I don't see any
human being and--

Back up?

...and that's the last
thing you want to do.

You want to...

Okay, welcome to
El Mirage, California.

I'm into race cars.

We are damn lucky that we run
into the mayor of Dry Lake.

Well, he is not
really the mayor,

but everyone calls
him that way.

And rightly so.

He has the demeanor of
a Mad Maxian warlord,

and he sells car parts on eBay.

This is a fiberglass replica
of a 1929 Ford.

Supercharger
and this is the fuel injector.

The car weighs 5,000 pounds.

Oh, that's lead.

Yeah, lie down in there.

Woo!

'Cause you're not--you're not
really steering this thing.

You're just hoping
that it goes straight.

Whoa, Jesus...

H. Christ.

I'm in the middle of
nowhere, as you can tell,

but I really enjoy this,
you know, this kind of living.

Hear the noise in the
background, you know.

But over the years I've
seen all kinds of movies.

Clint Eastwood's
been out here,

uh, they did some
Star Treks out here.

A lot of times,
if I see a movie

and then I may know
somebody working on it,

and I'll go out
and that's always fun.

Yeah, you know, see the crew
and hang around with them,

and, of course, I go
bum a little free food.

Bum up to the roach coach,
you know.

Hey, the movie
people eat well.

You know, they'll have
burritos for breakfast,

they'll have roast beef
sandwiches,

and then they'll have
steak for dinner,

and there's always
the craft person there.

Thanks, now I'm hungry.

The lake bed is featured
in the opening sequence

of Knight Rider,

but my favorite
movie shot here

is The Adventures
of Buckaroo Banzai

Across the 8th
Dimension from 1984.

A brain surgeon,
speed car racer,

rock star,
alien defender epic

with one of the best
bare man breasts

in the history of
bare man breasts.

It's a remarkably
enthusiastic,

good-natured movie for nerds

at a time before nerd
culture was mainstreamed.

It sadly fails offering

a single interesting
female character.

♪

Heroes and heroines
are our demise.

We don't need them.

We can't change the world
without thinking as a group,

as a system.

Retelling and fetishizing
the hero narrative

is deadly naïveté,
perpetuating a belief

that "exceptional
people will save us."

No, especially not Elon Musk.

Can you see us drive away?

That's because we
are in the process

of accidentally leaving
our GoPro behind.

♪

The next step on
our little journey

on Damnation Alley
is Las Vegas.

Nothing should
be here but dust.

Vegas exists due to an
overlap of weird factors.

Trucking routes,
the mafia, the military,

and the entertainment business.

Vegas is gorgeous
hyperreality,

but most of the stuff
people like here

is not my cup of tea.

I don't gamble, and I
don't like Penn & Teller.

I'd rather be locked
into a basement

full of Philip Glass
recordings.

But I'm no party pooper.

♪

Let's go to the outskirts

and visit my friend, Kristina
Amerson, for a coffee break,

and let Eddie fly his drones.

He hasn't flown his
babies in two days

and that means
severe withdrawal.

♪

We spot an interesting RV.

♪

It belongs to Kelly Poots.

He repairs CB radios.

Back when this was
really booming,

um, a lot of people used it
and they repaired it,

you know, that's the--
the component level,

if something broke,
then you fixed something

inside the radio.

And nowadays,
everything, if it breaks,

you throw it in the garbage,
you buy another one,

and that's, unfortunately,
that's the way the whole world

is going through
a bunch of stuff.

But I see the last--at least
three or four years anyway,

that people are really
afraid of terrorists

and government and weather

and things going
on in the world,

and these still are 12-volt.

They hook up--when
something happens,

these are garbage, you go
in the--boom, you're done.

These, you can
still communicate

at least five, ten miles

without any kind
of technology.

And everybody just had 'em
because it was convenient.

The economy crashed,
everything went south,

and now we have a whole
different crew of people

driving the trucks

that don't even know
what a radio is.

You know, they see this,
"Oh, okay," you know,

and they don't know what--

Like the guy that
was just here.

He come to the
door and he says,

"Oh, my radio's not working."

I said, "Well, bring it in."

"What, I've got
to bring it in?

I don't understand."

In retrospect,
only those technologies

that prove functional
for a culture

and can be integrated into
everyday life are left over.

We need to talk more about
the fascinating underworld

of Dead Media, about
the abandoned branches

of the tree of
media creation,

from cuneiform tablets
to Apple Newton,

from passenger
pigeons to MySpace.

♪

Something draws me northwest.

I crave ice cream.

♪

While Eddie is a
bit too energetic

and floods the bathroom...

I finally get my ice cream.

I think we are very close.

Dirt road.

Follow the dirt road.

♪ Follow the dirt road ♪♪

♪

Somewhere beyond
this gate is Area 51.

Nobody really knows
what's going on inside,

but the reality
of military life

is certainly far
more hilarious

than anything Roland Emmerich
could ever come up with.

My friend, Trevor Paglen,
does a lot of research

to make this hidden world
visible and more accessible.

- Uh, wonderful.
- Good to see you, Johannes.

I'm surprised that
it's actually working,

so, um, good to have you
and, please, tell me

a little bit about the
blackness behind me.

Okay, so Area 51, right
by where you're standing,

is inside a much
larger restricted area

called the Nellis Range,

and the Nellis Range is a
giant restricted military,

um, area in Nevada

that's about the
size of Switzerland.

Area 51 is basically
a black facility.

But there's other
places as well

like the Tonopah Test Range,
for example, is in there.

On the southern border is
the Creech Air Force Base

which is where
they fly all the drones

around the world from
via satellite uplink.

The military loves patches.

Almost everything
it does has patches,

even, oddly enough, programs,
units, and activities

that are officially secret.

It says,
"Classified Flight Test,"

and it has this alien
eating a stealth bomber.

And this stealth bomber has

this weird sigma
symbol in here

and what that represents
is invisibility, right?

So that's when they're doing
a radar cross-section test,

this is what
they're looking for

in a stealth airplane, something
approaching invisibility.

Um, the--here's
the numbers, the 509.

The 509 is the 509th
bombing squadron

whose lineage goes back,

actually, to Roswell,
New Mexico, which is, hence,

where this alien
figure comes from.

It's kind of talking
about Roswell,

but then also
Area 51 is an alien.

You see this a lot in patches
associated with Area 51

where they use aliens
a lot in their patches.

And if you're a
conspiracy theorist,

some people interpret that
as like, "Oh, my God,

they have aliens
at Area 51,"

but, you know,
the other part of it

is that they've appropriated
that image of the alien

and incorporated it
into their own mythology.

Here at the bottom it says,
"Gustatus Similis Pullus,"

and what that means is, it
says, "Tastes like chicken."

It's government-funded
fraternity humor on crack.

♪

Long drive to Phoenix is long.

♪

Time enough to ponder.

Did you know that if you
removed all nerve cells

from your brain
and laid them out

end-to-end in a straight
line, you would die?

We are super excited.

We are visiting the
headquarters of Bad Dragon,

flourishing producers of
fine fantasy sex toys.

Only a few nerdverts
have that privilege.

The location is kept
a strict secret.

It's wonderful to be here,
and what we can see

is a huge variety of dicks.

- Oh, yeah.
- Bad Dragon started

as a WordPress blog
about your endeavors

of creating molds and doing
do-it-yourself prosthetics.

When we started out, like,
basically what happened

is I was working 14-hour days
between university and a job,

and it was all in
front of the computer,

and 14 hours a day
in your house

studying and doing
computer stuff,

you know, it gets very boring,
and I wanted to get out

and, you know, do something and
learn some practical things

and, you know, learn some
new skills or something

and take up a hobby.

And so I what I did is I
decided to try sculpting.

And so what I did is I
went and bought some clay,

some air-drying clay,
hobby clay, right,

from the art store,
and took it home

and said, "I'm gonna teach
myself how to sculpt,"

and I decided I was
gonna go sculpt dragons

and fantasy creatures
and all the rest of this,

and I had great aspirations
of I'd have this new hobby,

and then proceeded to
find that the only thing

I could sculpt with any
degree of competency

was dragon dildos.

And what was funny was I,
you know, just sculpted stuff,

you know, you squidge it around,
"Oh, that's kind of

sort of a dragon
dick, you know,"

and then shared it
with your friends

and, you know,
posted pictures online,

and people saying, "Hey,
so when can I buy one?

When's this toy coming out?"

And I'm like, "Really,
really, you want this?"

Now Bad Dragon is
a thriving company

employing over 40 people,
who have a lot of fun

while really doing
groundbreaking work.

Every day they use thousands
of dollars worth of silicone

and ship hundreds of toys,

many of them
custom-made pieces.

The sex toy industry is a
very uncanny environment,

and Bad Dragon doesn't
even try to compete

with the harsh reality

of dildo-producing
sweatshops in China.

Varka and his fellow
cocksmiths are nerds

and have a very imaginative
perspective on designing,

manufacturing, and promoting.

Werewolf strap-ons?

Basilisk vaginas?

Shut up and take my money!

Nerds like assembling in clans

that always end up in
tribal warfare scenarios

that are very,
very unhealthy.

Now add gender and sexuality

and you usually end up
in a toxic wasteland.

The story of Bad Dragon
and its message of openness

and acceptance is
telling a different story

and a super encouraging one.

Johannes, what the
hell are you doing?

I think he was
just laying down.

Yeah, I'm just
laying there, yeah.

Okay, and, now,
bring the dicks.

♪

I feel like I'm in
San Francisco again,

seeing some
performance art

and wondering, "What
the hell is going on?"

Ah, you don't get it.

Let's go to Olive Garden.

It is a fascinating example
of corporate culture.

Its menu is entirely based
on customer statistics.

It offers as Italian food

what Americans think
Italian food is.

It's a gastro-empirical
feedback loop,

and it knocks us straight

into a well-deserved
Alfredo coma.

♪

What does my subconscious

want to tell me?

Maybe the physically
impossible promise

of unlimited breadsticks

haunts my skeptical mind.

Or maybe it tells me

that we should
go to Flagstaff

and check out Meteor Crater.

♪

"The world's best preserved

meteorite impact
site on Earth."

♪

Meteor Crater is the
result of a collision

between an asteroid
and our planet,

before Bruce Willis
could stop it.

♪

This is an impact
simulation using impact.

And we're not allowed to
do "Arial" photography.

I wonder if we can use
Helvetica instead.

♪

We make a stop at the dinosaur
tracks near Tuba City.

♪

Very impressive.

Our Navajo guide, Virgil
Secody, is very helpful.

West side of Tuba City,
right here,

is a little town on top,
that's where I'm from,

but back here, we've got
some corn fields on top.

That's where my
grandpa's ranch at.

I come from back there.

How far would you
actually find tracks here?

Well, in this area,
it's probably like

a quarter acre right here.

Full of bones and then
tracks everywhere.

During the summer, there's
a bunch of people stopping.

Everybody took off
'cause it's kind of cold,

so it's just me
and him, that guy,

we're still waiting
for some customers.

In the end, he asks
for a donation,

and we gladly help.

Another reminder that
the socio-economic status

of the region is dire.

We leave behind
a little warning

for all the colonialists

and creationists
for that matter.

Monotheism is a dictatorship.

The number of
the beast is one.

Come here and get your
well-deserved face-melting!

♪

Bilingual Navajo
speakers were recruited

during World War II
by the Marines

to speak Navajo language
as an unbreakable code,

and it helped
the U.S. win the war.

Teddy Draper, Sr., one of
the Navajo Code Talkers,

later commented that
when he was going

to boarding school
before the war,

the U.S. government told
him not to speak Navajo,

but during the war,
they wanted him to speak it.

A precise summary
of the problem,

amplified by the fact that
the only Code Talker Museum

on the planet is
in a Burger King,

with the biggest exhibit

being a printout
of Nicolas Cage.

♪

No idea how, but we make
it to Durango, Colorado,

a former mining and smelting
town turned tourist mecca.

A lovely place
full of wonders.

Not only because
my good friend,

Ryan Finnigan, lives here
and creates crazy tech art

like Benny the Booze Organ,

or this floating
speaker system,

or a machine that
turns itself off.

Ryan runs CarbonForm Design,

and creates new
techniques for metalwork,

like etching photographs
and similar glorious things.

Durango is very Wild West.

♪

Fap, fap, fap.

We check out the
Powerhouse Science Center,

a former electric power
plant that lit up Durango

even before New York City
or Chicago.

It was designed by
inventor, futurist,

and kind of mad scientist,
Nikola Tesla.

Yes, this guy.

One of my favorite nerd
battles of all times

was the "War of the Currents."

Industrialist
Westinghouse was promoting

Tesla's alternating
current, AC,

while Thomas Edison tried
to sell direct current, DC.

Edison toured the U.S.
on a PR campaign

and killed cats
and cows with AC,

just to discourage
people from using it.

His desire to
disparage the AC system

even led to the invention
of the electric chair,

even though he opposed
capital punishment.

A man with priorities.

Twitter tells me that a truly
great one died yesterday:

Terry Pratchett.

One of the few fantasy
authors who was a knight

and owned a greenhouse
full of carnivorous plants.

You will be surely missed.

♪

What a sunny day.

We drive out to
Smelter Mountain

and strap one of Sean Bonner's
Geiger counters to a drone.

And there is a
reason for that.

The Durango Uranium Mill
was a uranium recovery plant

set up secretly in 1943

to produce uranium for
the Manhattan Project,

the project to create
the first atom bomb.

The area underwent clean-up,

but can we trust
the government?

Hmm, let's send in a probe
and get some measurements.

♪

What a picturesque view
of Lake Nighthorse.

Let's turn the drone
and check out the dark side.

I wish this pile of gravel

would turn into
a giant creature

and use our drone
to take a selfie.

Okay, we have enough data.

♪

They must have done
a really good job

of keeping it in there.

Well, seems okay.

Taxpayers' money well spent.

Today is the
nerdiest of all days:

Pi Day.

♪

Ah!

♪

The rest of the
night is blurry

and I dream of a
spirit named Jeannie

who torments an astronaut.

♪

Durango has a weekly
atheist meet-up,

and I'm talking about real
atheists, not agnostics.

Agnostics are like
vegetarians who eat fish.

We meet our host, Ryan,

in front of Durango's
Cowboy Church

during Sunday
morning service.

Maybe I could talk
a little more broadly

about kind of the
differences between

the foundational
thinking methodologies

that kind of span over into
religion and science also.

Um, so, I mean, obviously,
the foundational difference

is that if you're starting
first from a conclusion

and moving backwards, always
attempting to find evidence

to support your position,

like religious mythopoeic
speculation models,

um, comparative to
scientific empiricism

where you start with
evidence, you observe,

find evidence, and then
infer from that evidence

what seems to be the best
explanation offered thus far,

which is always
an approximation,

and the value of your position
is not in the conclusion,

not in what your ultimate
belief ends up being.

It's in the way in
which you got there.

It's the process,
it's the methodology.

The conclusion is always
potentially fallible.

It'll always change
based on new evidence

as anomalies occur

and you're forced to
reconsider that new evidence.

Whereas from a
top-down structure,

um, where you start
with the conclusion,

you're always susceptible
to confirmation bias.

You're always gonna just
attempt to find evidence

that just supports
your position

because the value
in your conclusion

is in your conclusion
and not your method.

For instance, there
was a classic debate

just recently between
Ken Ham and Bill Nye,

it was all over the
internet, on creationism,

and at the end of it, one of
the questions was asked was:

what would change
your position?

Or what would
change your mind?

And Bill Nye said, "Evidence,"

and Ken Ham said, "Nothing."

And that's not the type
of thinker that you want

functionally in a democracy
aside of you voting

because when we start facing

much more complex
moral dilemmas

in the near future with AI

and the types of moral
dilemmas that are going

to be brought about by
advancing technology,

we need to have
a healthy debate.

Christianity is a death
cult gone horribly wrong.

♪

I experience a moment
of ontological panic.

♪

Today is a day about death,

but not in a bad way.

♪

I'm the least
spiritual person ever,

but this place is awe-inspiring,

and unknowing future
generations will definitely

mistake this place
for a place of worship.

Metal flowers who
listened to dead stars.

What's also dead
is our cell phones.

The VLA is such a sensitive
receiving system

that it could detect
a cell phone's radio signal

at the distance of Jupiter.

♪

Trinity Site, the location
of the first nuclear explosion,

is not far from here.

Now we know where all
the uranium from Durango

got turned into
thermal radiation.

A couple of miles down the road
is Blanchard Rock Shop,

selling beautiful
geological wonders.

One of these wonders
isn't geological per se,

but a unique man-made artifact:

Trinitite, the glass formed

by the first nuclear explosion.

Allison Cameron runs the
rock shop with her husband,

but she bought if from
the Blanchard family

in the early 1990s.

Mr. Blanchard,
the founder of the shop,

was a kind, and freedom-loving,
and adventurous man.

He had a rattlesnake pit that
tourists threw coins into,

and he climbed down every
day to get the money out.

Just the right kind of guy to
venture into a nuclear test site

to harvest Trinitite to sell.

They made it a national
historic site,

which made it a federal offense
to remove from the site,

to remove the Trinitite.

So you can go out
there once a year now--

it used to be twice a year,
but now it's only once a year,

the first Saturday of April--
and see the site,

but you're not allowed
to pick it up.

It is a federal offense
to remove it from the site.

It'd be like going to
Mount Rushmore and chipping

on George Washington's
nose or something.

But I, fortunately,
have a whole bunch of it,

and it's some pretty
rare stuff to have.

This is my favorite piece of it.

Ah, oh my, look at that,
May I touch it.

Oh, beautiful.

Most of 'em are flat, because
what happened when the bomb

was detonated, it says
it fused the ground.

It did, but it didn't.

What happened is it liquefied
the sand in the air,

and then it splattered
to the ground like paint.

So most of the Trinitite
is gonna be flat,

not three-dimensional
like this so much,

but it's gonna be flat
and the bottom side

is going to be sand.

It's gonna be sandy, where
the top is gonna be glassier.

Oh, wonderful, so, and how much

of the Trinitite
did he carry out?

- Not enough.
- I guess, how much

- would that sell, let's say?
- That piece there,

I would sell that piece
for about $5,000.

In 1992, Mr. Blanchard
told his wife

that he would shoot himself.

She said that he
should go outside,

because she didn't want
a bloody mess in the kitchen.

Five minutes later,
she heard a shot from outdoors.

He was in charge of his life.

He did not want anybody
controlling his life.

He didn't believe in
being a burden to anyone.

He didn't want the government
taking care of him,

and didn't want his wife
taking care of him.

So he decided to kill himself
on June 30th of '92,

and it's kinda
an interesting story,

because I have a lot
of connections with this place

before I ever even
knew it existed.

I almost died on
June 30th of 1987.

♪ We'll meet again ♪

♪ Don't know where ♪

♪ Don't know when ♪

♪ But I know we'll meet again

some sunny day ♪

The first American
in space was Ham,

the Astrochimp.

Ham was known as Number 65

before his space flight,
and only renamed Ham

upon his successful
return to Earth.

His final resting place is at

the International Space Hall
of Fame in Alamogordo.

Well, let's say Ham's
final resting place

minus his skeleton.

That is somewhere else.

♪

Remember E.T.,
the friendly alien?

E.T. died a horrible
death in shame,

and was buried in a mass grave.

Believe me.

This is the Atari video
game mass burial site.

In 1983, Atari got rid
of all the unsold copies

of "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial",

one of the biggest commercial
failures in video gaming,

by dumping them
in a landfill.

The end of several eras.

♪ Some sunny day ♪

♪

Gotcha!

Ufology is the perfect religion

for the troubled postmodern age.

It's a convincing blend of
a strong belief in technology,

of helplessness and masochism,

spiced up with a full-grown
inferiority complex.

♪

Driving through Northwestern
Texas feels a bit

like time dilation, and
I fear the world is suddenly

ruled by apes when
we stop at a gas station.

♪

Austin is great,
and I have to say this

because my ex-wife is
coproducing this film.

South by Southwest
Interactive is happening,

the biggest techie
culture event in the U.S.,

and the streets are
swamped with badgers.

That's how the locals
call the thousands

of festival guests
very fittingly.

It feels like a citywide
start-up swinger club.

We meet cyberpunk veterans Jon
Lebkowsky and Bruce Sterling.

Old friends and collaborators,
and Bruce was the first person

I interviewed for
monochrom in 1993.

I hosted a conference on the--
well, like an online forum

for Mondo 2000, the magazine

that was published at the time.

And people kinda showed up
who were sort of in this mode

and thinking about
these sorts of things.

And there was a guy who called
himself The Alien who showed up,

and he started talking
about how he was a cyberpunk.

I didn't really think of it
as a thing you could be

or as a political movement
or anything like that.

And suddenly people like this
guy were starting to show up

saying that they were cyberpunks
and that this was a reality

that they were living
or expected to live,

and it's like, "Wow, you know?"

That was super fun, and I
remember when I left the U.S.

and was hanging with the
Milanese cyberpunk underground,

guys from ShaKe Press,
or "Shake,"

And you know, these
were guys who were like

Milanese anarchists,
but they'd been reading a lot

of cyberpunk, and they'd
sorta decided to like,

carry it into daily life
and their normal, you know,

'80s, Italian,
left-wing drop-out world

of, you know, squats,
and bicycle repair shops,

and you know,
socialist communes.

And I thought,
"Okay, you know,

like, the genie's
out of the bottle.

These Milanese kids are
just like all over this."

And they had names like
Wrath of Valvole and Goma.

A lot of the effective cyberpunk
writing was very critical

of American politics because
it was basically Canadian.

The last thing I wanna get to
before they take our chairs is--

No, no, you're welcome to 'em,
we gotta go anyway.

I have a present for you guys.

So, it's a project I did
with Heather Kelley,

and it's called Dogs Playing
Dungeons & Dragons.

- Dogs playing D & D, yeah.
- It's fantastic.

- You can put it somewhere.
- I'm gonna commemorate it.

- Arf, arf, arf.
- Needs to be online.

- You're welcome.
- Thank you, thank you.

- Making a mess here.
- Oh, no worries.

It's kinda like a Stonehenge
of chairs, I really like...

Steve Jackson Games
is based in Austin.

They created one of
the best pen and paper

role-playing systems, GURPS.

Part of the series
was a role-playing

scenario book for Cyberpunk.

The company got raided
by the Secret Service,

because they thought
it was an actual manual

for cybercriminals.

Fantasy and reality can
short-circuit in odd ways,

especially if you
add incompetence.

In the case of the
Steve Jackson Raid,

it ended in the confiscation
of their computers,

and a minor uproar in
the alternative scene.

But a short drive north
and we can visit a location

where incompetence really
led to a horror scenario.

The Branch Davidian
Compound near Waco

was the stage
of a 51-day standoff

between the church
members, the ATF,

and the FBI in 1993.

It ended in the death
of most of the Davidians.

I'm leaving behind
some Kool-Aid.

You think that I'm getting
my cult metaphors mixed up here?

Well, no.

The Kool-Aid is for the public,
who drank it in big gulps

by accepting the official
story too easily.

The Davidians were surely nuts,

but it was also one
of the biggest fuck-ups

in the history
of law enforcement.

♪

Oliver Stone's
movie interpretation

was probably too blown up,

but I will never forget
this quote from the film.

"What is past is prologue."

A motto to live by.

It's actually from
Shakespeare's Tempest,

but I never read that one.

♪

Driving, driving, driving,

and we have only one thing
that keeps us sane,

talk radio.

And we are so focused
on it that I miss a call.

I check my voice box.

Howdy, Johannes, it's Dan
Wilcox, AKA danomatika online.

You should be just pulling
up into my hometown

of Huntsville, Alabama.

Remember that's Hunts-vull,
not Hunts-ville.

You don't wanna say
it Yankee style.

Growing up there was pretty
interesting, it's like living

in an island of engineers
in a sea of rednecks.

Yeah, and you should be just
coming in on, I assume, I-565.

You should be rounding
the corner and seeing

the giant lit up space penis,
that is the Saturn V

from the U.S. Space
and Rocket Center.

Spent a lot of time there.

I went to space camp
when I was eighth grade.

Yeah, growing up there
was pretty interesting.

It's a big Department
of Defense town

with a lot of
defense contractors,

and a very large army base
called Redstone Arsenal

which has Marshall Space Flight
Center from NASA on there.

A lot of amazing smart people,
my dad being one them.

He was an aerospace engineer,
and for some reason,

it makes me think--
he worked for a long time

on this huge project
called Safeguard

which was an anti-ballistic
missile defense system

deployed in the mid '70s,
and it was only deployed

for one month, and
then it was taken off

due to the SALT II treaty.

So I guess it totally
did its job, right?

Pretty amazing that--
you know, back then,

that was a time when the
United States actually built

huge, amazing
large-scale systems,

and hey, now we build apps.

But whatever, at least we can
talk to each other on the phone,

except that you're not
picking up, but whatever.

Go drink a beer under
the Saturn V.

Talk to you later, ciao.

And certainly we do.

♪

We enjoy some very decent

German-ish sausages and beer.

The whole museum is a shrine
for Wernher von Braun,

who is one of the best
examples of the horrors

and wonders of the 20th century.

His rockets sent
people to the moon,

but he could only do that
because he worked for the Nazis

building V2 rockets
to destroy London.

Well, more people died in
the labor camp where they built

the V2 rockets
than did in London.

"Through Hardship To The Stars"
is not just a saying.

It's a curse,

but there is something
like symbolic karma.

Remember the shiny
American flags,

the message of triumph
of a system

of living over another?

While the $5.50 nylon flags

are still waving
on the windless orb,

they are not flags of the United
States of America anymore.

All material experts
have no doubt about it,

the flags are now
completely white, faded.

The beautiful outcome
of the indifference

of years of cosmic bombardment.

♪

From the darkness of outer
to the darkness of inner space.

No, not Martin Short's
gallbladder,

but Mammoth Cave in Kentucky,

the longest cave system
known in the world.

Last time I was here, I was 11.

I remember I asked a park ranger
where I could buy ice cream,

and he sent me to the bathroom.

I guess my accent
got better since then.

♪

African Americans
played a vital role

in the development
of cave tour routes.

Stephen Bishop was one
of the lead explorers

of the cave system,
he was a slave.

He gained his freedom in 1856,
and sadly died a year later.

But his legendary mapping
work laid the foundation

for future explorers.

One of them was Will Crowther,
a programmer and caver,

who wrote the first
text adventure game,

Adventure, in my
birth year of 1975.

Having just gone through
a divorce, he was looking

for a way to connect
with his two kids.

So he wrote a text-based
cave game based on

many of the locations that
Bishop discovered and named.

The game triggered
a global chain reaction.

Most importantly,
inspiring Roberta Williams,

the godmother of graphic
adventure gaming.

A lone woman in
a male-dominated field,

and one of my absolute heroines.

An interesting arc
of oppression, exploration,

personal loss, and creation,

and deeply rooted in the
troubled history of the U.S.

♪

Guess where I am.

♪

Beautiful Pittsburgh.

Birthplace of Michael Keaton
and chemical mace.

Look close,
focus on my underpants.

Can you see the 3D dolphin?

In fiction, Pittsburgh
is the origin

of the Videodrome signal.

In reality, it is known for
being one of the few cities

that made a successful
transition from a steel-based

to a knowledge-based economy.

Both equally cruel.

Wait to cross technology.

Do you know this fellow?

He created one of
the most interesting

political mythologies
of pop culture.

George Romero and his radical
consumers, the Zombies.

We drive to
Monroeville Mall,

location of Dawn of
the Dead from 1978,

to chat with leftist critic
and computer game designer,

Paolo Pedercini.

I think the ironic
part of this history

is that the shopping
mall indoors

was actually devised
and invented

by, yes, a Viennese architect

who escaped from Austria
during World War II

and seek refuge
in the United States.

And he tried to essentially

counter the suburban sprawl.

He tried to bring some lessons

from Europe, I guess,
to recreate the social--

the social context of a market,

of a square.

And through times,

he kind of realized how
his original concept of

recreating a piazza and sort of
like bringing people together,

creating a cultural center,
not just a consuming center,

he kinda realized how it
kind of failed as a project.

We are talking about
like a public space

while there is
a security guard here

probably trying to shut us down,
because this is a social space.

It's meant to be a sort
of simulation of a square,

but it's actually
a very private space,

and they're gonna kick us out
in five minutes, you know?

I think there is a strong
connection between

this kind of space
and geek and nerd culture

because geeks find their own
communities online essentially.

I think there is a strong
connection between

living your teenage years

in kind of an
isolated environment

that you depend on
the car transportation.

So you are always with your
family, always in your--

in your domestic environment.

Security is tight, because
a couple of months ago

a teen girl fight
turned into a giant mob.

Wow.

That's even more
terrifying than zombies.

If you are 15 and want to
rebel against your parents,

there is a store
for that, Hot Topic.

A reminder that we shouldn't
fear the end of the world,

but its never-ending decay.

Watch children.

We flee to Punxsutawney,
Pennsylvania.

The center of this community
is a rodent on welfare.

Punxsutawney Phil, known
everywhere because of a film

that took the world by
snowstorm, Groundhog Day.

The never-ending loop
of small-town life

that brainwashes
a cynic into true love

is one of my favorite
conservative plots.

Only beaten by Ghostbusters,
a film that honestly tries

to convince us that a free
market can save the world,

and that Environmental
Protection Agency inspectors

don't have penises.

Oh, the Euro is worth
less than the dollar,

for the first time
in recorded history.

Greece, ♪ I got you babe ♪♪

♪

Boston, Massachusetts.

We visit the makerspace
Artisan's Asylum,

and in front of Stompy,
a 4,000-pound,

six-legged hydraulic robot,

we meet my good friend,
Kit Stubbs.

Kit has a PhD in Robotics
from Carnegie Mellon,

but will not talk
about robots at all.

Kit decided to change careers
and work in the field

of sex tech and sex education.

Disclaimer, our Canon's SD
card committed suicide,

but monochrom's Evelyn
fixed the footage in post.

The stereotype of nerd doesn't
include sex, or does it?

It's a double-edged sword
though, because on the one hand,

you have the, like, poor nerd
who can never get laid,

and on the other hand,
you have a lot

of nerd cultural stories

in which the nerd, through
persistence, gets the girl.

And it's the horrible
sort of entitlement culture

where if you just work
hard enough, you know,

the person that you want
will suddenly fall for you,

which is just
absolutely horrible.

What I have found is that
a lot of geeky people,

who are interested in thinking
about different kinds

of problems, find
sexuality fascinating.

So I self-identify
as a sex geek,

and I know a number of other
folks who do as well.

And so what you're just
taking is you're taking

all that passion, right,
of how you love something,

because nerds, we get into
a thing and we love it,

and we talk about it, and
we make our own creations

that are inspired by whatever
fandom we're talking about.

You can do the same
thing with sex.

You know, there's
sex-positive podcasts,

and making their own toys,
like I do, or you're going

to Cons and you're talking
with people about sexuality.

Like all that stuff
still happens.

By identifying myself
as a sex geek publicly,

that is a political act
in this culture,

because we live in this
very sex-negative culture

where sex is this kind
of shameful activity

that we don't really
wanna talk about,

and yet it's everywhere
in the media, complicated.

I'm trying to use
my privilege in ways

to help people feel
kind of more accepting

of their own desires, other
people's desires, and yeah.

Sex geek, it's a thing,
it's a great thing.

Kit encouraged a wave
of new sex geeks

and the feedback is exciting.

♪

I fear two things:

Shoggoths and Goatse,

and both out of nostalgia.

Here is the tombstone
of H.P. Lovecraft.

We are not allowed to film,
so please don't tell Pickman.

H.P. Lovecraft loved
cheese and hated fish,

was a racist, and died,
without any success as a writer,

a horrible death of cancer.

Maybe too much cheese,
not enough fish.

♪ It's beginning to look
a lot like fish-men

everywhere I go ♪

Lovecraft was very
important for me.

He was the first of many idols

that I learned to question
and disagree with,

and I needed that to grow up.

♪ I'm beginning to hear
a lot of fish-men

right outside my door ♪

♪ As I try to escape in fright
to the moonlit Innsmouth night

I can hear some more ♪♪

♪

Is love our true destiny?

No, it's Hopewell Junction,
New York,

to meet Jason Scott,
computer historian.

Nerds care about history,
but until somebody

kind of walks them through
what exactly happened,

the stories they'll tell you
will be extremely self-centered

and extremely oriented
towards their world view.

Okay, so,

currently we're located
in the information cube,

which is actually an information
shipping container,

which is a shipping container
I started renting

a number of years ago when
I moved out of my old house

and moved to New York State.

And I had collected
all variety of technology,

just various pieces of
human and computer culture,

and wanted to store them
in some sort of way

that I could then figure
out what to do next.

What I've done next, of course,
is just amass more stuff.

You stay where you are.

So, here's a Hello Kitty
personal pleasure toy.

A Pac-Man energy drink.

This was during the insane
energy drink wars of the 2000s.

This was a bunch of Baby
Boomers who thought that

they could explain the
computer revolution by using

50 and 60-year-old writers.

A bright and disgusting color.

This thing sank without a trace,
nobody ever heard of it again.

Sometime around, you know,
the '50s and '60s,

we were producing
a lot of electronics,

especially post-war,
but nobody looked at it

as a pure historical force.

It was just products.

In the same way you
might not get worked up

about a traffic cone, or you
might not get worked up

about a shopping cart,
you wouldn't get worked up

about a computer or a piece
of electronic equipment.

And what we've discovered
is that, no, it has real

historical value
and meaning and where is it?

Floppy disks,
if you're a younger kid,

look, it's a bunch
of save icons.

What I and others have
to do is go through them,

pull out the data that's on
them, and store them online

so that later,
in 40 or 50 years,

we're still able to figure
out what these things were.

The third font disk, this
is the second font disk.

This is the first font disk.

This is the disk that lets
you read the other fonts.

Manuals to machines
or equipment or software

that no longer exists, and
this is vital to understand

where we came from
in terms of programming,

and what different machines did,
and what roles people played.

There's even, to a lighter
extent, a patent aspect

to understanding
who patented what when.

Minimum COBOL, this is
a business language

that computers used
on mainframes,

and is still in
use in some places.

American civilization and
perhaps worldwide civilization

still runs on COBOL.

When somebody says to me
like, "I think you have

a hoarding problem,"I go,
"Well, I'll take your opinion

and I will carefully stack
it with all the others."

We leave, and I'm glad Jason
didn't delve too deep.

I feared he would
awake the Balrog.

En route to New York, or N'Ork,

as they call it in
A Canticle For Leibowitz.

Laughing Squid's Scott Beale

is hosting a Traceroute
party for us.

A good chance to record drunk,

nostalgic statements.

It's really weird
being mainstream now.

And I used to write down URLs

in my little notebook so
I could go when I get back

to a computer to look
up the websites.

URL, university
tilde user, you know.

So that's pretty precious,
I mean, really.

This recent hype

that I call "nerdsploitation,"

because for example, you know,

you have this
Big Bang Theory, right?

I mean, it kind of feels weird.

I mean, I definitely
think the nerds-nerds-

nerds-nerds-nerds-nerds,

they definitely tend to
be the early adopters.

They tend to be way
more engaged on a whole.

♪

Baby Jesus,
please open my motel room.

♪

Baby Jesus.

♪

To Raymond Rocello
and his orchestra,

whose smooth jazz

got interrupted too many times.

Welcome to Grover's Mill,
New Jersey,

picked by Orson Welles in 1938

as the location of a
fictitious Martian invasion

for a live radio
dramatization of--

The "War of the Worlds"
by H.G. Wells.

It caused a mass panic.

I demonstrate.

♪

Concerned citizens even shot
a nearby water tower

thinking it was one
of the alien invaders.

What is there to learn?

Nothing, but the true
lesson of life,

when and when not
to give a fuck.

♪

Hello, Washington,
District of Columbia!

The Pentagon,
always a good excuse

for liberal American self-hate.

Arlington National Cemetery.

We pay our tributes.

♪

But my fondest memory
is one of fiction.

The last minutes
of the glorious 1970s

paranoia movie, Capricorn One.

NASA fakes a Mars landing,
and when something goes wrong

they need to kill off
the astronauts for real.

But James Brolin survives,
and shows up at his own funeral,

in hyper-slo-mo.

I couldn't believe how
cool that ending was.

And I wish I could still
believe in such fantasies,

still believe in
the great narrative

of truth versus lies.

But it's just a fantasy.

I know that nerds like the
story of the lone underdog,

but it's ultimately
self-degrading

and conceals the real problems.

It's not the evil feminists,
if you're a

It's not evil patents,
if you are part

of the fellowship
of open-source.

It's not the evil NSA,

if you're a privacy
hacker martyr.

All of these are
third degree symptoms

and reductionist blunder.

All that exists in and through

and because of capitalism,

a totalitarian economic
game that encompasses

our planet since the late 1700s,

and there is no difference
if you live in Austria,

Iran, or Arlington, Virginia.

The basic rules are the same.

Capitalism separates us,
forces us into alienation

and de-solidarity,
and many nerds are just

willing cannon fodder
for its next upgrade.

Google Campus is like Logan's
Run with free shuttle busses

to visit Peter Ustinov
sleep on the street.

They initially set themselves up

as essentially Neverland,

a place where you
never had to grow up,

a place where everything
was there for you

so that you could spend
every waking moment

working for the company.

And for the nerd type, the one
that's built up this bubble

of existence and this way
of looking at the world

from the outside--
was and continues to be

really, really
appealing to them.

The thing that drove me nuts
when I went to Facebook

was they had this DJ booth,
and they had vodka bottles

with little spouts attached
to them so you could

nail down the vodka
and do some DJ spinning.

And I was like, "Well,
that explains Facebook."

♪

Kind of overwhelmed
and a bit in a bad mood,

and this doesn't
make it any better.

Well, last day.

In 1955, someone
in the film industry

decided to put an explosive
under a blood-bag

to simulate a gunshot wound.

This technique is still
in use and performers

get hurt by shrapnel
all the time.

Steve Tolin is a marvelous
special effects problem-solver.

So he created a completely new
system based on air pressure.

Eureka, but originally,

Steve wanted to
become a biologist.

In my heart, I'm a creature
creator above all else.

You know, and I think
that that really is because

of the biology foundation
that I've got.

So with biology,
what you're doing

is you've got the
form of something,

and you're gonna try to figure
out what the function is.

You're gonna figure out what
the hell does this thing--

where does he live, what
does he eat, what eats it.

With a creature in a movie
I've got the obvious scenario

where they give me a script and
they told me who he's gonna eat,

they told me what is gonna
try to kill it, how it moves,

where it lives, and so
my job then is to totally

reverse-engineer
the function of it

into what the form would be.

You wanted to go into biology,

and you do creature effects,
you do puppets.

And now you're working
for the Jesus nerds,

you're working for
a museum for creationists.

So the point that
I was just making

is really evident when
I'm working with creationists.

I've done it in the past,
I've worked for the museum

they built initially,
and you really feel like

that kinda sense,
in that group of people,

of trying to recreate
God's work.

It's much more specific even
than what I'm talking about--

I'm trying to recreate what
exists, and they definitely

are trying to recreate
what they see

as having been created
ahead of them.

And they are now recreating
a full size ark, Noah's Ark.

They're rebuilding the entire
thing, it's gonna be, I think,

3 stories tall and
whatever, 500 cubits long.

I mean, it's gonna be a giant
place that you can go inside,

and they're recreating
everything.

And again, this is what was
so fascinating about it to me

because if you look about
it in terms of form

following function,
function sometimes is,

okay, so how does
the thing work?

Like what is the physical
part of how it works,

but then there's also
the function of like,

how does it function
theologically?

You know, and so what's
the form in terms of--

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah.

I had always heard
your entire life

flashes in front of your eyes

the second before you die.

First of all, that one second

isn't a second at all.

It stretches on forever,

like Hilbert space.

For me, it was eating
barbecue-flavored chips

while playing Micro Machines
on my AT 386.

♪

Or visiting Skywalker Ranch
and touching the real

Holy Grail from Indiana Jones.

Or watching American Beauty
for the first time,

and being the only one
in the theatre to understand

its true reactionary agenda.

I guess I could be pretty pissed
off about what happened to me,

but then I remember to relax,

and stop trying
to hold on to it,

and then it flows through
me like Russian hydrazine,

and I can't feel anything
but gratitude for every single

moment of my stupid little life.

You have no idea what I'm
talking about, I'm sure,

but don't worry.

You will someday.

♪

♪ The force ♪

♪

♪ The force ♪

♪

♪ The force ♪

♪

♪ The force ♪

♪

♪ The fucking force ♪

♪

♪ The motherfucking force ♪

♪ The force,
the motherfucking force ♪

♪

♪

♪ eBay ♪

♪ The force ♪

♪

♪ eBay ♪

♪ The force ♪

♪

♪ eBay ♪

♪ The force ♪

♪

- ♪ eBay ♪
- ♪ The fucking force ♪

♪

- ♪ eBay ♪
- ♪ The motherfucking force ♪

♪

- ♪ eBay ♪
- ♪ The force,

the motherfucking force ♪

♪ My kingdom and my horse ♪

♪ My kingdom and my horse ♪

♪

♪ eBay ♪

♪ The force ♪

♪

♪ eBay ♪

♪ The force ♪

♪

♪ eBay ♪

♪ The force ♪

♪

- ♪ eBay ♪
- ♪ The fucking force ♪

♪

- ♪ eBay ♪
- ♪ The motherfucking force ♪

♪

- ♪ eBay ♪
- ♪ The force,

the motherfucking force ♪

♪ My kingdom and my horse ♪

♪ My kingdom and my horse ♪

♪

♪

Subtitles by www.vicaps.com