#disaster area

Fields of Mathematics in Hitchhikers:

So just for a little Podcast 101 introduction:

My name is Jennifer and I’ve been doing this podcast since the very last day of 2015. I’m a neurodivergent bisexual with a very cute beagle mix named Professor Pancakes. I like road trips, gay romance novels, and little crafty things like paint by numbers kits and mini DIY dollhouses. My personal Tumblr is @trollprincess.

Each episode of the podcast is focused on one disaster in particular, although I do sometimes stretch one disaster over multiple episodes if necessary. For example, not long ago I covered the Grenfell Tower fire, which took three episodes. I’ve also covered tangentially related emergency organizations and groups like care teams and the RNLI.

I wish I could say I get an episode out a week, but I have two other jobs, one full-time on the weekends and one part-time during the week, so episodes come out when they come out. To get them early, I have a Patreon for the podcast which can be found at the link below. I post episodes there as soon as I record them, and they’re also ad-free there.

My definition of “disaster” is pretty broad. I will cover anything from shipwrecks and plane crashes to financial disasters (“Cats” the movie is on my request list) to DashCon. Yes, I did an episode on DashCon. I couldn’t resist. (It’s episode 132, fyi.)

As an addendum to that, I also cover mass shootings. (It’s my podcast, I make the rules.) The rule for me on covering mass shootings is that the shooter’s name will only be mentioned once, if that, and that each victim will be named if possible.

As an addendum to THAT, disasters and tragedies can be very difficult subject matter. Please understand that episodes may feature death and destruction and decide accordingly if listening to each episode will be good for you and your mental health. I provide more specific trigger warnings at the start of each episode if necessary, but I will completely understand if a new episode is not something you’re comfortable listening to and you’d rather go watch Taskmaster or something.

There will be mentions of politics in episodes, but very much because emergency declarations, evacuations, regulations, etc. are an important part of disaster response. I also talk about mental health a lot, both for my own sake and to normalize talking about it. Like I said, difficult subject matter.

I am not a conspiracy theory sort of person. Don’t expect me to use the phrase “false flag” with anything other than sarcastic disdain.

You don’t have to start at the first episode! Honest. The first episodes of a podcast are almost a mess with people trying to find their footing, and this one is not any different. I’m not perfect, and I make mistakes, but I’m totally up for correcting myself if I screw up.

Every hundredth episode I cover a fictional disaster like a real one. Episode 100 was the attack on Nakatomi Plaza, and Episode 200 was the events aboard Trans American Flight 209. I’ve got a while before I decide what to do for episode 300.

Episodes I’d recommend: I’m very proud of episode 170 about United 93 (I read and watch everything I can get my hands on about 9/11, but I don’t plan to cover the whole event on the podcast because with the way I cover disasters, it’d be twenty episodes long at LEAST). I also very much recommend Episode 72 on the “Twilight Zone: The Movie” helicopter crash, mostly because someone told me to stop mentioning American movies so much so I did a whole episode in which I mentioned as many movie set disasters as possible. I’m also absurdly proud of myself for the Chernobyl series, because I never did finish the AIDS series and I learned I very much could pull it off. (I did mispronounce roentgen, but that’s on me.)

If you listen to older episodes, I have taken requests in the past but I am currently on hold with those because my request list right now is at 62 disasters. (Yes, including “Cats”.) So give it a little bit and let me get a few more done and we’ll see if we can start those back up again. 🙂

Douglas Adams: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe Radioplay (1980)

“In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.”

So begins The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, part two of The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and the reason why May 25th has been decreed Towel Day, in tribute to author Douglas Adams, whose BBC radioplays were later edited into several essential novels and this 1980 LP.

Ironically, the anecdote explaining why a towel is the single most important item that a hitchhiker can carry (“if they want to see the galaxy on less than thirty Altairian dollars a day”) is ironically omitted here, along with numerous memorable gags, leaving something to be desired vs. the first album.

Said album had left our heroes -- earthlings Arthur Dent and Trillian, aliens Ford prefect and Zaphod Beeblebrox -- facing certain death on planet Magathrea, prior to escaping far into the future, to the titular Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

Perched in a time-bubble at the end of time itself, the eatery obviously contradicted all kinds of space/time conventions, but then, this is why it’s been called “One of the most extraordinary ventures in the entire history of catering”.

Once there, our friends reconnect with characters both new (e.g. Hotblack Desiato, frontman with plutonium rock band Disaster Area) and old (Marvin the paranoid android, who has waited millennia for their return, lately parking cars), before absconding with the former’s sun-crashing stunt ship and being selflessly teleported to safety by the latter.

Alas, as I mentioned above, multiple tasty storylines from the book and BBC special had to be excised for brevity, so the rest of the program centers on Arthur and Ford’s encounter with Golgafrinchan Ark Fleet Ship B, whose tale now seems strangely pertinent to our post-COVID-19 experience.

It tells of the clever way in which planet Golgafrinchan managed to efficiently rid itself of a full 1/3 of its useless population -- insurance salesmen, telephone sanitizers, hairdressers, marketing executives (hey, wait a minute!) -- by telling them their planet was doomed, then staying put after blasting them off to crash-land on a distant planet ... which turns out to be prehistoric Earth.

I don’t know about you, but if I could place all of the Trump-influenced anti-vaxxers into a space ship, and blast them off to another galaxy (or the heart of the sun), I’d, uh, strongly consider it.  

This LP of The Restaurant at the End of the Universe concludes in another cliff-hanger, with Arthur and Ford trapped on the ancient planet/supercomputer (you’ll have to listen to the first album for that explanation) while native neanderthals die off and the Golgafrinchans take over, inadvertently subverting the ten-million-year program meant to answer the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything.

That, you’ll have to read about in book number three (entitled, uh, Life, the Universe and Everything), or listen to the original teleplays, because I’m not aware of an abridged version of the book trilogy’s final chapter on record ... something as incongruous as Adams’ subsequent decision to write a fourth book.

Anyway, R.I.P., Douglas Adams, and long may we celebrate Towel Day!