Show Notes 106 "Burnout"
What’s that on your back, Agents?
As always, you can click here or you can click play on the embedded player below to listen to this week’s episode as you read through the show notes.
We kicked off this week talking about writing teams, because this week’s Writer Appreciation Corner focuses on the duo of Matthew Federman and Stephen Scaia. We’ll be issuing a formal correction in the podcast for 108, but I mistakenly said that writing teams were paid a full salary each. I was incorrect! And Stephen Scaia himself was kind enough to correct me!
LOL. Sad horns indeed, sir. Thanks for the correction, truly!
This is important, because 1) we always want to give you the most accurate and complete information we can 2) this is not the only time or the only writing team we will be dealing as we make our way through Warehouse 13 together.
Miranda and I discussed how our podcasting partnership mirrors that of a writing team. Often it seems that we share a brain, and we’re always super supportive of each other.
Moral of the story? Get yourself a BFF like this.
We talked a little about how this episode had a darker, more X-Files-esque tone. We thought it worked really well for this episode but wasn’t sustainable in the long term, because who would want to tone down this fun energy?
We also talked a bit about how much we loved the whole team behind this episode for letting the mystery play out for us instead of relying on formulaic storytelling techniques. We liked how it showed a trust in the audience to be smart enough to follow a more complex narrative.
Leave a comment below about how you feel about these things!
Miranda pointed out the retro-futurist implications of the massive library-style card catalogue in the Warehouse 13 office.
My personal head-cannon is that they write information about new artifacts on cards and then the data automatically transfers to the digital display screens in front of each artifact in the stacks.
We mentioned that Artie and Claudia’s relationship as well as the conflict between his luddite ways and her more technology-driven approach to life gave us strong Willow-Giles vibes.
Yes, that is another Buffy the Vampire Slayer reference. #NoRegrets
After Claudia’s adorable *big reveal* of her hologram projection machine…
…Artie realizes that she’s used something called a “Bell and Howell Spectroscope.” You can find out more about that here. And you can learn about how that figures into Claudia’s hologram projector here! This whole website a great resource for all Warehouse 13 fans looking to learn a bit more about the artifacts we don’t get to talk as much about one the podcast.
In the episode, Miranda calls Claudia a necessary “fly on [Artie’s] butt” and explained that it was a reference to a Platonic philosophy. Miranda was referring to the concept of a “social gadfly.” It is the most perfect way to describe Claudia and Miranda is, as always, brilliant for thinking of the exact right term.
You think I’m gonna mention a fly and NOT reference Breaking Bad?! Come on, now.
When Claudia smacks her hologram projector, she refers to the process as “percussive maintenance,” which is a term that anybody who lived through the 1990s and early 2000s would consider quite useful. (We all did this all the time)
Even though Artie didn’t acknowledge Claudia’s brilliance as she deserved, Claudia didn’t let it get her down! Listeners and readers, my wish for us all is that we have the confidence of Claudia! Let us not depend on others for external validation, but be kind enough to ourselves to recognize our own strengths.
(But also, don’t be Artie. When someone does something great, let them know! Everyone like compliments!)
Regarding another turn of phrase, we mention that Claudia says she “upgraded the whole megillah.” Here’s some information about that phrase here and more information about what the megillah is here and here.
Claudia realizes that the tattoo on the body of the as-yet unnamed warehouse agent is a marine symbol, but I’m not sure we get a super clear view of it. So here’s an image of what that symbol looks like.
Moving forward, we talked about the cool luggage carousel-like thing and how that brought up some major Star Trek: The Next Generation vibes.
Pete can’t say no to cookies!!!
Miranda used her amazing brain to highlight the amazing items on Artie and Claudia’s brainstorming board. The items are listed below and hyperlinked to more information about what they are/might be:
Babylonian Battery (wikipedia info here)
Teller’s Microfusion Reactor - Likely an artifact that they were brainstorming might exist based on the life and works of Edward Teller.
Gilbert’s Headstone Amber - This one took some digging to figure out! So, William Gilbert was 16th century physician, philosopher, and physicist (say that five times fast!) who is one of the people who invented the term electricity, and he used amber both as in his physical research into electricity but also as a metaphor for electric attraction. Whoever wrote that item on the chalkboard is a genius who really does their research!
Thunderer of the Nite—now I can’t see Miranda’s notes, so it could have said “nite,” but I couldn’t find anything about that. What I could find was information about something called Thunderer of the Nile.
(this one reminds me of Fringe and all the Faraday cages)
I know you do, Walter! It’s OK! Eat your Redvine!
ELF transmitted through Kennedy HH… (we couldn’t get the whole item there)—ELF likely refers to Extremely Low Frequency but I have no idea about the second part.
…and last but not least, the Egg of Columbus! Why did I save this one for last? Well, because I think it’s the funniest. Also, because there are three possible answers. The most likely answer is Tesla’s Egg of Columbus. But I talked with friend-of-the-show Tobie James, and she shared two other fun things that could be described as “Eggs of Columbus.” The first is the actual egg mentioned in the story of the previous link, and the second refers to puzzles of both the tangram and mechanical variety.
Thanks to Miranda and her amazing brain for capturing this list so we could ogle at the brilliance of whoever in the Art Department is responsible for this amazing and detailed background imagery. Thanks for being our Artie/Watcher, Miranda.
Yes, that is another Buffy reference! #TakeAShotEveryTimeWeReferenceBuffy #YoudBeVeryDrunk
After this, we figure out that this is called the “Spine of Saracen.” And we would like to wholeheartedly thank our amazing Expert of the Week, Dr. Suleiman Ali Mourad. He illuminated a lot of information about the term Saracen and its Crusade-age origins.
Dipping into some ~heavy themes~
Please be mindful of how you use the term “Saracen” in daily life. If you’re unsure of how to use it, don’t use it at all. Dr. Suleiman referred to the fact that it’s not always a negative term, but it can be as offensive as the N-word. Personally, I wouldn’t use it to refer to anything other than Matt Saracen of Friday Night Lights. (But seriously, though. Please don’t use the word if you’re at all concerned it could be misconstrued as offensive.)
Anyway, we talk a little bit with him and with each other about how the Islamic Golden Age flourished years before the European Renaissance. It didn’t make the final cut of the episode, but we talked a little bit about how the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium) led to Eastern nations of the ancient world inheriting the important cultural works of the Greco-Roman Empire—which meant inheriting the words of Galen, the originator of most medical and nutritional knowledge in the world until the modern era. We’re talking the dominant source of knowledge for literally thousands of years. So, while the nations flourishing the the Islamic Golden Age advanced medical knowledge, Western Europe lost most of that knowledge and was plunged into the Dark Ages. You can learn more about this from a source we referenced in our 101A and B Show Notes, Food: A Cultural Culinary History by Dr. Ken Albala. More purchase options linked in the 101 A and B Show notes linked above.
Dr. Mourad talked about how this Islamic Golden Age was heavily tied to the Translation Movement in the Islamic Civilization of the age. This is a fascinating subject that I did not know about before Miranda spoke with Dr. Mourad.