Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Speaker A: Hello, hello, hello, everyone. Welcome back to Weird World Adventures, the podcast. I'm your host, Mallory.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: And I'm your host, Michael.
[00:00:13] Speaker A: And we're here to show you just how weird this world of ours really is. If this is the first time you're tuning in, make sure you visit mallorysadventures.com m a l o r I e s adventures.com and. And you can follow us at mallorysadventures on Instagram. And be sure to check out Weird World Adventures, the TV show on Amazon prime, which is what we're celebrating right now.
[00:00:36] Speaker B: Season two coming out soon. Anytime soon.
[00:00:40] Speaker A: Anytime soon. As I finish my edits. Almost done. Almost done.
[00:00:44] Speaker B: This month.
[00:00:45] Speaker A: So close.
[00:00:46] Speaker B: As in October.
[00:00:47] Speaker A: As in October. October 2025.
And we have one more episode here to celebrate with everyone in our countdown for season two.
And this is an extra fun episode on Steampunk and makerspaces.
[00:01:06] Speaker B: Steampunk.
[00:01:08] Speaker A: Steampunk.
Wow.
And this one was really fun because not only did we get to interview Michael's best friend from childhood.
[00:01:20] Speaker B: Oh, yes.
[00:01:21] Speaker A: Because he actually runs a maker's business and my.
[00:01:23] Speaker B: My co. Torturer.
[00:01:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:01:25] Speaker B: Of you.
[00:01:26] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:01:27] Speaker B: From childhood.
[00:01:28] Speaker A: Yup, yup.
Him and his BFF Adam used to torment me and my BFF Marissa.
[00:01:35] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:01:36] Speaker A: When we were children. Yep, yep.
[00:01:39] Speaker B: All part of the plan. Now look at us.
[00:01:41] Speaker A: Mm.
Really, really great.
I could say so many things that would embarrass you right now, but.
[00:01:50] Speaker C: Don'T.
[00:01:50] Speaker A: Make me do it.
And we also got to do several really fun interviews at the Science Museum of Virginia.
And they're both going to be in this episode. Yes, yes. One of them is Body Worlds, which we've talked about in length here on the podcast.
[00:02:09] Speaker B: I like Body Worlds.
[00:02:10] Speaker A: It's very cool. If you guys don't know what it is or you haven't heard that podcast episode yet. It's a really interesting scientific exhibit, but it's also really artful and strange about the human body. And it's, like, shown through strangely posed cadavers.
[00:02:29] Speaker B: Yes.
Plastinates, right? Is that what they call it? Yeah.
[00:02:33] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:02:35] Speaker B: Whatever technique they use to preserve the bodies makes them plasticky looking.
[00:02:40] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:02:42] Speaker B: It's very cool.
[00:02:43] Speaker A: It's very cool. And then we also went to, like, an.
[00:02:46] Speaker B: Reminds me of anatomy lab from school.
[00:02:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:02:51] Speaker B: Cutting up those bodies.
Did you ever do, like, an animal?
[00:02:55] Speaker A: I boycott the fetal pig because it just seemed wrong. And then we did dissect a squid. I did dissect a squid, but that's not really that interesting. That was in high School.
[00:03:06] Speaker B: We didn't do anything in high school. I took like, I was like biochemist. I took a bunch of biology classes in college and we did somewhere in there, do a fetal pig. But I didn't do anything until college.
[00:03:19] Speaker A: We had fetal pigs and squids in biology in high school.
And I didn't take biology at VCU because I heard that they might make you dissect a cat.
And I was not gonna die.
[00:03:32] Speaker B: My mom had to do a cat when she was in nursing school many years ago. And she said they, she was like keeping it in their freezer.
[00:03:42] Speaker A: Oh, I think like just, just like.
[00:03:45] Speaker B: The apartment free, like the apartment's freezer and someone went in there and there's just like a frozen cat car.
[00:03:56] Speaker A: Oh my gosh.
[00:03:58] Speaker B: Did you know you have a few heads, human heads in your freezer? Oh, that's just where I keep them, you know?
[00:04:04] Speaker A: No.
Oh my gosh.
But then we went to this like off brand body worlds that they had. There are apparently several copies that are. Because we saw one in Gatlinburg and then there's one in Vegas.
[00:04:19] Speaker B: Body Worlds is the original, the original brand. And then there are other ones that are called different things. So calling them body worlds is not accurate. But I'm not, I don't remember.
[00:04:29] Speaker A: It was called Real Bodies.
[00:04:30] Speaker B: Okay.
Ah, real bodies.
[00:04:33] Speaker A: Ah, real bodies.
And it was a lot grosser.
It was. Body Worlds is done in a way to help you. They want you to like celebrate life. And like, they keep having like reminders to smile. The one in Vegas, I think is what you would expect in Vegas where it almost smelled a little bit.
And they, they had bodies.
[00:04:57] Speaker B: What does it mean to almost smell?
[00:05:00] Speaker A: It was a little weird. And then there were.
[00:05:03] Speaker B: I don't think you smell bad, but you look like you almost smell bad, right?
[00:05:10] Speaker A: It had inch thick slices of bodies that. Remember that one disgusted me.
I did not get sick in Body Worlds. I got sick in the real bodies.
[00:05:21] Speaker B: The body slices bothered you a lot. I guess it didn't bother. That one specifically. Didn't bother me that much because it's how I look at human bodies as my day job. They're on computer screens, granted, but they're axial slices, okay. You know, the plane of slice that like imaging is done in by default. And that's how they slice the human. The human meat slabs. So I guess it was like how I'm used to seeing human anatomy displayed.
[00:05:53] Speaker A: These were like.
[00:05:53] Speaker B: I get it.
[00:05:54] Speaker A: Inch thick.
[00:05:55] Speaker B: They were thick.
[00:05:56] Speaker A: And then one of them had ears on them. And you had the Ear thing. I was like, I can't do this.
[00:06:00] Speaker B: One of the slabs caught the ear.
[00:06:02] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh.
[00:06:03] Speaker B: I liked the skin suit.
[00:06:05] Speaker A: Yeah. I told you. They just had a skin suit. And you were like, what? No, they don't. I'm like, yes, they do. It's right here.
[00:06:10] Speaker B: Some Buffalo Bill style. It rubs the lotion on the skin or else it gets the hose again.
Right.
[00:06:17] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I was okay with. They had like the wall of.
[00:06:21] Speaker B: I'm a medium.
[00:06:22] Speaker A: Okay. I'll keep that in mind when I go skin suit.
[00:06:25] Speaker B: Yeah. Thank you.
[00:06:25] Speaker A: You're welcome. I may have to go find somebody about your size a little bit bigger so you fit in it okay.
[00:06:31] Speaker B: Yeah, it has to be a little bigger because there's some shrinkage. I've heard when you're preparing the skin suit.
[00:06:36] Speaker A: Right.
[00:06:36] Speaker B: I've been told.
[00:06:37] Speaker A: Okay, I'll keep that in mind.
The wall of skeleton and bones was cool. Skulls.
[00:06:44] Speaker B: That's like. You're into that. That's your thing.
[00:06:47] Speaker A: When the meat's off, it's okay. Yeah, it was the. The. The chonky slices of people was a lot.
But I felt like it was there to be alarming though, too, because they also had a room just for like, babies and fetal stuff. Like, it was. Which they, like, had trigger warnings.
[00:07:05] Speaker B: Yeah, they did a fine job. It wasn't overtly offensive. It was just less positively displayed. The body world went out of its way to be like, you're looking at.
[00:07:20] Speaker A: Dead people, but they're doing fun things and we're all, life's important and smile.
[00:07:25] Speaker B: Right.
[00:07:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:27] Speaker B: And this one was very vagus y. Like, yeah, shit's weird, right?
[00:07:31] Speaker A: Yeah, it was.
And then we also got to do an interview at the science museum on steampunk, which was very cool.
[00:07:43] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't know a ton about steampunk. It's not been my not to poo poo on it. It's just not my. It has never been my area, I guess, like the Victorian weird.
It's like Victorian era, but with like, kind of mechanized. It's like Industrial Revolution on steroids.
[00:08:07] Speaker A: It's like Victorians looking at the future, saying, this is what we think the world.
[00:08:11] Speaker B: Yes, That's a good explanation of it.
Airships and it's the future. Jules Verne would have pictured and did.
[00:08:19] Speaker A: In some of his writings him, H.G. wells.
[00:08:22] Speaker B: We don't know anything about computers or software or any digital.
And nothing in the digital age exists, so we don't have any frame of references.
[00:08:30] Speaker A: All mechanical.
[00:08:30] Speaker B: So it's all Mechanical. But the machines are probably gonna be awesome in the future. Right. So here's our best bet, right at what this awesome machinery is going to do. But it's still all mechanical. It's all clockworky looking.
[00:08:41] Speaker A: Yes. And even it tied it into, like, Mary Shelley and Frankenstein and the idea of, like, maybe we could do this in the future.
So the exhibit itself was very cool. It was very interesting.
It had a lot of fun, practical, like, mechanical, hands on stuff. That was pretty neat.
[00:09:01] Speaker B: I have to say. This is a derail it a little bit here. I said I'm not into steampunk, but then maybe one of my top three video games has a lot of steampunk vibes to it.
[00:09:11] Speaker A: Right.
[00:09:12] Speaker B: So I can't really say that.
[00:09:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:14] Speaker B: Final Fantasy 3 6, depending on which numbering scheme of your 1 of ones they screwed up in. The English translation, has a lot of steampunky ness to it.
[00:09:25] Speaker A: Is there an airship?
[00:09:26] Speaker B: There is an airship.
[00:09:27] Speaker A: See, there you go.
[00:09:29] Speaker B: Manned by my boy Setzer.
[00:09:31] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:09:33] Speaker B: I could probably hum his theme song for you.
That's how important this game was to me growing up.
[00:09:38] Speaker A: Well, there you go.
[00:09:39] Speaker B: The Gamblin man. Setzer.
[00:09:43] Speaker A: Footprint is in so many things. You don't even. Even in the Malory realm.
Not promoting this movie. It was terrible. But the second mummy, they have an airship.
The second mummy, they have an airship.
[00:09:59] Speaker B: Yeah. I like my example better.
[00:10:02] Speaker A: Okay. The first movie was so good, it made the second one okay.
[00:10:10] Speaker B: The first one is great.
No, no, no, no. It's.
It's good because it should be terrible.
Does that make sense?
It should be laughably bad, but it's very decent and watchable. You're like, you know, this is a solid seven and a half. If you're being really generous, maybe an eight, but it should be a three.
So it gets. It feels really good because you go in expecting to just be like, man, this is a total throwaway.
[00:10:44] Speaker A: It somehow just does the comedy so well. And the relationships. I like it because I like the relationships between everyone. I like Evie and Rick, and I like Evie and Jonathan. I like Jonathan and Rick. They all have good relationships.
[00:10:58] Speaker B: You've dressed us all up just like this.
[00:11:01] Speaker A: So good. But anyway, there's steampunk vibes everywhere. And then now it's kind of. They're transitioning into the makerspace movement, where that's kind of like the modern idea of steampunk because it's people coming and building things in their community.
[00:11:18] Speaker B: Mm.
Yeah. Well, the steampunk motif has a lot of, like, not mass produced stuff.
[00:11:26] Speaker A: Mm.
[00:11:27] Speaker B: It's like here's my airship that I cobble together. And it. There. There are no, it's not like mass produced. Here's. You know. Yeah. My 2022 Honda Civic. And they all look the same.
[00:11:38] Speaker C: Right.
[00:11:38] Speaker B: Might be a different color.
[00:11:39] Speaker A: Right.
Yeah.
Custom.
[00:11:43] Speaker B: Custom machinery.
[00:11:44] Speaker A: And we did a podcast with Adam way back when about his makerspace.
[00:11:49] Speaker B: I'm gonna build my airship and wear my finest skin suit coat.
[00:11:54] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:11:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:55] Speaker B: I'm that guy in the steampunk world. Yeah.
[00:11:58] Speaker A: So if you're interested in watching about skin suits and seeing lots of interestingly displayed dead bodies.
[00:12:08] Speaker B: But yes, we, we. I did interrupt you there while you're talking about my friend.
So, yes, my. My best friend from childhood and your.
One of your torturers along with me has a MakerSpace in Lynchburg, Virginia. So if you're ever there, Vector Space.
Check it out. It's very cool.
[00:12:28] Speaker A: And he gave us a tour for Weird World.
[00:12:30] Speaker B: He has a full forge there. I still have to get down there. We have plans to slowly, over years, build a full suit of Hoplite armor.
Start small, start with a greave.
[00:12:42] Speaker A: It's gonna take you forever. Yeah.
[00:12:44] Speaker B: It's a lifetime project.
[00:12:48] Speaker A: But it was cool. They had like a woodworking shop and like a welding area and like a metal cutting area and they have legit gear there.
[00:12:56] Speaker B: They get a lot of it donated. So a lot of it is.
A lot of it's industrial grade machinery.
[00:13:05] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:05] Speaker B: Not stuff you would just go out and buy on your own. They're getting it donated from.
[00:13:09] Speaker A: Yes. Legitimate manufacturing plants and such.
Legit stuff. And then like stained glass studio and like a costume area and fabrics and like a computer studio. It's very cool. So we're gonna. If you want to learn more about makerspaces and kind of see the tour of Vector Space and see a skin su.
[00:13:32] Speaker B: And who among us does not exactly.
[00:13:36] Speaker A: Get up and see all those dead bodies and learn more about steampunk and just some of like that strange.
What's the right word for it?
Mechanical technology that the Victorians really thought would be the future. Then it's a great episode of Weird World.
[00:13:58] Speaker B: It's sci fi as envisioned by somebody who had no concept that there would be a digital age or an information age or computers or software or anything like that.
How would you.
[00:14:08] Speaker A: Exactly. And it's. It's gonna be an interesting episode.
[00:14:11] Speaker B: It'll be good.
[00:14:12] Speaker A: It'll be very good. So we're going to give you a little preview now from the steampunk exhibit. At the Science Museum of Virginia. It's called Discover Steampunk and I hope you enjoy.
[00:14:24] Speaker B: You also have the long winded episode of Vector Space, the full. The full tour viewable on your YouTube channel.
[00:14:33] Speaker A: It is, yes. Make sure you check out my YouTube channel. It's Mallory Mackey and it has all of our fun extended videos there. It also has us playing in Big Bounce too.
[00:14:45] Speaker B: That's true.
[00:14:46] Speaker A: Which is fun.
[00:14:46] Speaker B: I guess that's a good point because we're doing a lot of these episode recaps which will obviously have truncated interviews. But a lot of the raw full interviews for a lot of these places will either are already there or will be on her channel after the show. So if you want an extended interview or tour of some of this stuff, check out the channel.
[00:15:07] Speaker A: Yep. And make sure you watch Weird World Adventures. Here's a sneak peek right now of Discover Steampunk.
[00:15:17] Speaker C: We're about to enter the Discover Steampunk exhibition. This is a touring exhibition that we have here this summer at the Science Museum of Virginia. And it's been incredibly well received by our guests. It's such a fun exhibition because it really kind of incorporates the science and the art. It also incorporates the past and the future. What is steampunk? You know, we. Some people may have heard of this term, some people may not have heard of this term. Steampunk is kind of this concept of powering the future with.
So what if we didn't have some of the more modern electrical technology that we all enjoy today? What if it really was a future where steam was the primary engine source for all of the things that we enjoy? Steampunk is about innovation, it's about creativity, it's about material usage and really thinking outside of the box. There's kind of a great play of invention and iteration. So this is a really fun piece that looks at the fashion and the style involved in steampunk. It kind of have. It kind of has its own aesthetic. You know, it's. And you're looking at like clocks and gears and, you know, different pieces of machinery that kind of look a little weird. Well, I mean, like these shoes. This bouquet is so fun. A bridal bouquet. And then looking at this dress and some of the embellishments.
[00:16:50] Speaker A: This.
[00:16:50] Speaker C: There are lots of different costumes in the exhibition that are really fun. In the middle section of the exhibition, we kind of get into more of the hands on aspects of the exhibition.
Here at the Science Museum of Virginia, we're always trying to bring in exhibitions from other creators and organizers that match the feel of what we offer to our guests on an everyday basis. So it's really important for us that the exhibitions be engaging and be very hands on and interactive. And sometimes the actual how it works piece of steampunk is more exciting or interesting to guess than actually what happens on the outside, if that makes sense. Like looking on the inside is kind of a part of it. So this display is fun because, yes, you see what happens when you turn the wheel, but really what you want to see is how it's happening underneath.
If everybody who sees the Discover Steampunk exhibition walks away with the inspiration to try to go home and figure out how something works, or to think about what in their daily lives they saw in the exhibition, or they even go so far as to try to create something on their own, then we've done our job. It's just kind of fun and weird and interesting and it's doing so many things. The heart is changing color, the clock is spinning, there's electricity going through the bulb. There's so much happening.
But this isn't doing anything. You know, it's not producing anything. It's not like washing my dishes or cleaning my floors. But it's still a really cool art technology combination to kind of showcase the vibe and the aesthetic of the exhibition. You have a theremin over here. Some people are familiar with theremins, some people maybe haven't, but it's kind of a fun, almost like musical instrument that people can play with to create some kind of spooky sounds and, and, you know, kind of like just have a little fun seeing how close or how far away it takes for their hand to make some sort of response. And this is a Van de Graaff generator.
Not sure if you're familiar with the Van de Graaff generator, but once you turn the wheel and kind of build up, you can create shocks.
So it's kind of fun.
So this part of the exhibition is kind of a display of innovation that actually has a real use.
We don't really think about how shoes are made nowadays. Like, we just go to the store, we buy a pair of shoes. But, you know, 150 years ago, making a pair of shoes was a pretty intensive labor and there were materials and you needed economies of scale. How many shoes can I produce in one day? How much am I going to sell them for?
So this is an example of a kind of fun machine, steampunk sort of vibe that was created to actually help that process.
Throughout the exhibition, guests are introduced to various steampunk esque or Victorian era inventors or writers, Jules Verne or Mary Shelley or H.G. wells. Some of these people that in their time were thinking of that futuristic sort.
[00:20:53] Speaker A: Of.
[00:20:56] Speaker C: Planning what the future may look like, but like fantastical elements included in it. You know, steampunk is kind of light and fun and engaging, but there's also some real questions there that when you develop something, you have to kind of think about those things in that ethical mindset.
And as we come to the end of the exhibition, you can enjoy some more of the costuming, the real artistic quality of materials, and the creativity that goes into different pieces. You can appreciate the detail that some of the artists have put into every piece that they have made for their costume. I think people of all ages have appreciated it. There's something to take away. No matter how old you are, whether you're really young and you just don't think about like, oh, that's what a camera looked like 100 years ago, or whether you're a little bit older and you can appreciate all the work that goes into building some of the pieces that people have built. It's. It's just one of those exhibitions that I think does really well with a variety of audiences. And it also is another one where if you're really into steampunk and you already knew what that was and you came in with a deep understanding, you can still enjoy it. But if you also walked in and had no idea at all you'd never heard the word steampunk, you can also enjoy it because it's that kind of broad. But yet it has those pieces that let people dive a little deeper into topics if they're interested in them.
[00:22:24] Speaker A: Well, that was fun. I think my favorite part of that exhibit was the weird, like car looking machine that had like the shoes on it and all the time machine decided it was. I don't think it was actually a time machine, but we made it. Your time machine.
[00:22:40] Speaker B: Okay. I thought it was supposed to be a time machine.
[00:22:42] Speaker A: I think it was supposed to be something like to make shoes or repair shoes.
[00:22:46] Speaker B: But there was a time machine in the Transylvania Steampunk.
[00:22:48] Speaker A: There was, and it looked like that too. So maybe. That's right. That's right. We also have Discover Steampunk.
[00:22:53] Speaker B: That's right. Yes. There's a full other one.
[00:22:55] Speaker A: There is that. That is the Steampunk Museum.
Steampunk Transylvania was also just great. My favorite part about that was the bookshelf. There's like a hidden room and you flip on a switch and it makes a laser go through like several mirrors down and points at a book.
And then you go and you pull the book and then it opens like a hidden wall. And there was a time machine. Am I going back in time?
[00:23:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:24] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:23:25] Speaker A: It was very cool.
[00:23:26] Speaker B: It's cool.
[00:23:27] Speaker A: Very cool. So, anyway, make sure you check out Weird World Adventures on Amazon Prime. You will see all over our socials, our big giant announcements, the second that it goes live.
So it will be here within the month. So, yay. Weird World Adventures on Amazon Prime. Make sure you follow mallorysadventures.com and mallorysadventures.
And Michael's Instagram.
[00:23:54] Speaker B: Really has not a lot on it.
[00:23:56] Speaker A: Mildonado MD3.
[00:23:57] Speaker B: Mildenado MD3.
[00:24:00] Speaker A: And yeah, thank you guys for tuning in. And until next time, everybody stay weird.
