#169: Best of Barbenheimer

We detonate our thoughts on the atomic pink meme machine that has swallowed summer 2023 and share candidates for potential future Barbenheimers.

Get show notes for this episode and check out past episodes of the Speaking Human podcast by visiting speakinghuman.com.

Episode Transcript

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We wanted to start today's episode byprefacing that we're talking about the marketing efforts
for the Barbie movie and Oppenheimer.The list of marketing efforts we've curated is
in no way a reflection of howwe feel about war, or the atrocities
that have happened from atomic explosions,or even war efforts in general. This
episode is solely devoted to appreciating themarketing machine and not the war machine.

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And now back to your regularly scheduledprogram Speaking Human. Today, on Speaking
Human, we detonate our thoughts onthe atomic pink meme machine that has swallowed
summer twenty twenty three, and sharecandidates for potential future Barbenheimer's Speaking Human.

(00:57):
Welcome to Speaking Human, where wecomplify the world of marketing for humans.
I'm Shad Calmly and with me ismy co host Patrick Jebber. And Patrick,
let me ask you an important questiontoday. Would this podcast be more
popular if we added Nheimer to thetitle, as in Speaking Human Heimer?

(01:23):
What do you think? First,we've already changed the name of the podcast
is Speaking Human Heimer. That's alreadydone, Chad, Oh, okay,
that's happened. So people listening arelike, oh, what does this speaking
human Heimer? Yeah, I meanit does make it better, does it.
Won't everyone want to listen to speakinghuman once they hear it's speaking Humanheimer,
Well, they're like speaking human herd. That speaking human Heimer much more

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appealing, which you know, leadsto the sub question, the secondary question,
is everything better with an Enheimer atthe end. Some examples Macaroni and
Cheesenheimer, Iphonenheimer, Coca Kollenheimer,or Kockenheimer and Harry Pottenheimer. Which that's
a good one. Well, firstof all, Coca Kollenheimer sounds like a

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gastro enterologist. Yeah, I'd goto see doctor Coca Kollenheimer. But yes,
and know everything and nothing sounds betterwith Enheimer at the end of it.
That's a good way to put it. You know, as I'm looking
at these Inheimer words, I thinkthis practice works best with shorter words or
words that end in a vowel soundthat you can replace with the Enheimer.

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So, for example, Nike Nikenheimerworks pretty good. Yeah you know,
yeah, um, But then ifyou try it with something like there's the
podcast Cereal, do you try tomake that Serialleenheimer? M M, not
working so good? There right.Yeah, also words that already end in

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an e en sound Joegenheimer. I'llhave a dozen Heimer donuts, a dozen
Heimer, like a dozen Heimer donuts. Like, go get some donuts and
say that, see how many youget? I bet you'll get more.
Probably, Yeah, you've got anexplosion of donuts. I mean they'll be

(03:20):
all over the box. That's whenthey actually give you thirteen donuts and then
they just smash them all over thebox. You gotta try that. When
I take donuts into the office,they'll be like they're all smashed and be
like, that's a dozen Heimer donuts. Be like, oh, you got
donuts? How many do you get? A dozen Heimer? And then they
open the box like what last example, you could buy a ticket to go

(03:44):
see the new movie The Haunted Mansionheimer. Yeah, so you're on board with
this? Do you like the methodologyhere? Yeah? No, it's a
weird phenomenon for sure that we runinto. If our listeners don't know this
already, what they call that asa portmanteau portmanteau, I don't know if
that's actually how you say it.I might be butchering the actual word that

(04:04):
describes what that is. But it'sa word blending the sounds or combining the
meanings of two others. So likepodcast is a portmanteau. It's a made
up word from a combination of iPodand broadcast podcast boom, dropping the knowledge
on the podcast design. I mean, that's a good takeaway. People can

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use that. Yeah, you didit. You made a poor man's toe.
Poor man's toe? Is that howyou say it? Poor man's toe?
Definitely? And that gets us intowhat we're actually talking about today,
which is Barbenheimer in the birth ofthis phenomenon as you call it or trend
that has kind of just taken overthe world and taken over the Internet for

(04:47):
sure, as all these memes andcan't really go anywhere without hearing Barbenheimer online
in some space, you know,you can probably only get three clicks and
then you're gonna see Barbenheimer. WhereWhen I google Barbenheimer, seventy nine million
results, When I google Barbenheimer meanstwenty million results. It's overwhelming. Actually,

(05:11):
it's become overwhelming. Yeah, yeah, at first it was funny.
Now it's terrifying. Still still alittle funny, but it's become a thing.
How did it become a thing,according to the Barbenheimer Wikipedia, always
a reliable source. The first knownuse of the term Barbenheimer was in a
post on Twitter dated April fifteenth,twenty twenty two, by Matt Niglia,

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editor in chief of the entertainment awardswebsite Next Best Pitcher. The post made
fun of the fact that both filmsseem to be constantly announcing new cast members.
Obviously, since then, it's Snowballthe lot getting the jokes, the
fake posters, the t shirts,the videos, the costumes, suggestions for

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how to watch the two movies.But it's really caught on. It's one
of those things. It is.It's funny. You first hear it,
you're like, that's clever, that'sfunny. I want to repeat that to
somebody, and you hear it online. We've had this idea of counterprogramming of
movies releases before, where you releasea movie that appeals to a different audience
on the same date. You know, horror movie and a family movie come

(06:16):
out at the same time. Butfor some reason, this one really grabbed
people's interests. They're like, thesetwo different movies, this contrast. People
are like, I can do somethingwith this. I can make a joke
about this online too. Completely oppositeconcepts. That's where the humor lies,
right, They're so completely polar oppositethat it's hard not to understand what the

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joke is. You know. Yeah, it can be something bright and something
dark. It can be something simpleand something complex. You know, a
picture of somebody in dark clothes pictureand somebody in bright clothes. This is
my Barbenheimer. Incredibly easy for anybodyto make me out of it, yeah,
and jump on board. From marketingperspective, it was all encompassing,
is like, it really got everyoneinvolved. It wasn't just the people who

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could make memes. Even the audiencewas like, this is a lot of
fun, you know. Yeah,And that was an interesting thing I think
about it too, was that thiskind of viral thing happened and the distributors
of the movie, the theater ownersembraced it and instead of pushing against it,
you know, you had like Cinemarkpromoting Barbenheimer, like, hey go

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see Barbenheimer, go see both thesemovies the same day, pushing tickets for
that. The studios for better orworse commenting on some of these memes and
stuff, and like getting involved inmarketing their movies in some of these ways.
So it became this really fun thingthat everybody was involved, and that
was both an online typical joke andviral movement, but also like a celebration

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of movies in some ways at thesame time it was it all felt very
like fun and positive. Yeah.Speaking of cinemark, the other thing I
just read today was AMC Theaters announcedtheir best week ever because of these two
movies from July twenty first to Julytwenty seventh, based on admissions revenue,
the best week ever one hundred andthree years the chain has been opened.

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This was their best week ever.That's pretty insane to me. There's never
been two movies that made as muchmoney as they did opening weekend, which
I thought was also pretty crazy.Yeah, and at the same time,
they're dealing with writers strikes, theScreen Actors Guild and the American Federation of
Television, the Radio Artists sag AFTRA, they're all on strike, and all

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this is happening, All of thissuccess is happening while that's also simultaneously happening,
is pretty incredible, I mean,because you would think it would need
all of these things sort of workingin unison and right now they're not and
it's still as big as it is. Yeah, And part of that is
this Barbenheimer piece to it kind ofsad in a way that this great things

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happening and then you have this kindof storm looming in the future, Like
what is this going to look likein the next few months, if not
the next year of movies based onthe stoppage that's going on. Yeah,
we should actually note people are havinga lot of fun with this. I
think most people didn't even think aboutthe implications related to some of this imagery

(09:18):
from Oppenheimer that they used in alot of memes and things like that.
But obviously there's a sensitive nature tothat. And August first Warner Brothers,
you know, it was kind ofa news story. They had apologized after
Japan criticized some of the Barbie tweetssome of the memes that they were seeing.
People were offended by those and kindof how they were trivializing the atomic

(09:39):
bomb and stuff in those And Ithink most people really didn't have much thought
when they were putting that content outthere to that part of it. I
think it was more like this isa movie, and this is a movie
taking imagery all those movies and puttingthem together. It wasn't what does this
imagery actually mean or thinking that deeplyinto it, And a lot of that
material carries pretty heavyweight with it.Yeah, while we are talking about the

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memes and the marketing, obviously it'ssad and serious for a lot of people
out there. So so we founda few Barbenheimer memes and we thought we
would share them and we'll describe thema little bit too. Because you're just
listening to the podcast, you're notseeing it necessarily right now. Unless you
go on the website and you watchthe viewable version of the podcast. Yeah,

(10:28):
then you get both. Yeah,the visual and the audio. That's
the best of both worlds. Iwant to start with not one of my
official picks. I was just goingto talk about the Barbenheimer poster that was
made by an English graphic artist,Sean Longmore, commissioned by Layered Butter magazine.
That really looks like a real movieposter. Kind of has all the

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characters from both movies. It hasyou know, Oppenheimer with a serious face.
It has Barbie looking very excited sittingcross leg on the I think,
what is the bomb? I don'tknow exactly, and you get kind of
the fiery Oppenheimer on one side andthe kind of pink sky on the other
side. It's a great looking poster, which you would expect to see hanging

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in a theater, and it's justa great piece of artwork. So I
just wanted to call that one outto start. It's a really good mash
up. Those collages with all ofthose characters reminds me of kind of like
the Star Wars era. That artistdid a really great job of really pulling
together the pinks, the colors rightfrom Barbie, but also like the little

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bit of darkness or like desaturation,the CPA tones, the ageness of the
Oppenheimer movie. Right. Yeah,And I like that you called attention to
like the Star Wars style of poster, because that's exactly what I think of
two where you just have all thecharacters kind of shown front and center,
with the world or the universe inthis case, two of them in the
background behind him. There's a lotof really good artwork that was created as

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memes, and I'll just set thatup. We're picking a couple, and
really you could pick a dozen easily. The one I would pick The design
or the image that I picked wasbased off of Pink Floyd's ninth studio album,
Wish You Were Here. And inthe original artwork for the studio album,
you see these two men in suitsshaking hands. It's like on a

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studio lot of some kind, andthe one guy is on fire. It's
a very iconic image. And inthe meme they've replaced these two men with
Barbie on one side in pink andOppenheimer who's shaking her hand. Who's he's
the guy who's on fire. Reallygood, it's really well done. You

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know, it's not a scene fromthe movie or anything, so you would
have to kind of know that it'sBarbenheimer because it doesn't really say it in
the meme. Yeah, that's areally good one. I'm glad you If
you wouldn't have picked that one out, I would have definitely called that out
too, because that really caught myattention. Loved to play on the Pink
Floyd album cover. Obviously it fitsin some way, the fact that he's

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on fire, you know, andthey're coming together. I feel like it's
a perfect fit for this moment andwhat's happening. A great one. Let
me share with you also kind ofa movie poster style one, taking it
and kind of like making a movieposter of a rom com Oppenheimer on one
side looking at Barbie on the otherside, you know, him dressed in

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his suits, her and her bathingsuits. And then you have the Barbenheimer
title at the top with the greattagline He's a scientist, She's the bomb.
Taking these two very different movies,making up a completely different movie as
a result, displaying it like,Okay, what if these two are together
in their own movie. That's Barbenheimeris it's its own thing. Packaging that

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for us, what would that looklike? Really like that idea, and
definitely like the tagline they put togetherhere, that one's great. And I
really like most of the memes usethe font, the Barbie font to sort
of like bridge the gap because it'slight, it's whimsical, it's Barbie and
him him, it's Barbie Heimer.Yeah. So the other one that I

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chose was actually is like a blatantripoff from the Lala Land poster which featured
Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone. Butin this they show Oppenheimer in sort of
a dance pose. Robbie Margo takingthe place of Emma Stone, and it's
a blatant ripoff. Don't ask mewhy this is a thing other than Ryan

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Gosling was in that movie. It'snot the same time period or anything like
that. So but underneath Barbenheimer,which is in the same type of font
from the Lala Land poster, theyhave the world Forever Changes. Yeah,
people went down some really kind ofcreative routes and it just took their brains
to different places. It's almost hardto pick. So, you know,

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for one last one, I'll show. If you've seen any Barbenheimer memes,
this one is probably the one.I feel like it needs to be mentioned.
There's these houses in Los Angeles andright next door to each other,
one black house, you know,several stories right by the beach, right

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next to that one purple and pinkhouse. They're very close together. Somebody
you know has taken a picture ofthat and it represents Barbenheimer very well.
So you take that picture and thenpair that on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok,
your social media network of choice,in search your witty comment of choice

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related to Barbenheimer, and you havea sensation right there. The one I'm
looking at right now says their entirelives have led up to the Oppenheimer Barbie
release. These people of these houseslike it was meant to be. And
you know, there's sixty three thousandpeople have liked that particular tweet. But
it's just a good example if somebodyjust finding something in the real world that

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represents Barbenheimer for them, of whichthere's also a lot, a lot of
memes related to that. I sawa lot of them. Objest, here's
these two people sitting there. Thisguy's wearing a pink sweater, this girl's
wearing black pants, and it's likeBarbenheimer. Yeah, you know, stuff
like that, where just finding thesethings in the real world and they're just
relating that to this Barbenheimer visual ideal. Yeah, in a meme filled world,

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there is an appreciation I have forthe creativity that goes into people making
the memes original artwork from it.But there is so much to love about
taking stuff from the real world andapplying the meme concept to that. Not
everybody can necessarily create a poster fora movie, but a lot of people

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can find an image that sort ofrepresents the same kind of concept. Barrier
of Entry is a lot lower.You know, anybody can partake in that,
right, and I like that aboutthose. It's kind of the fun
and creativity that you can find onlinelike anybody can. Just the artistry and
craftsmanship that people kind of come upwith always blows me away a little bit.

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It's wild. It's wild, man. It's a big, big moment.
And who knows if we'll ever seesomething like this again, or it
could be a while or maybe notif we have our way. That's right,
because part two of our episode wetalked a lot about Barbie and Oppenheimer,
But what about future Barbenheimer's. Whatmovies could be merged into one to

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become a Barbenheimer of the future.We've got Barbenheimer. Now, are like
movie studios theater owners? Are theygoing to start looking ahead on the schedule
and be like, can we dothis again? I know this happened organically,
Can we make this happen? Canwe plant the seeds? Can we
get our influencers out there and startmaking this happen. I don't know if
that's a real thing. I'm justspeculating, but this was highly successful.

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Where there is success, there's oftena seed. Cool It's possible. I
think there's going to be some fatiguein Heimer. You know, other people
are already taking this mentality. Auser name Cole on Twitter mentioned that Barbenheimer
is so July, so get readyfor Stray Beetle starting August eighteenth, combining

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the movies Blue Beetle and Strays.So that's a social user out there in
the world before we get to ourpicks. That's one of something somebody else
has come up with our picks.What do you got? So I combine
a couple of movies that have alreadycome out, Harold and the Purple Crown
and Insidious Red Door, Purple crayonRed Door. I don't know. It

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sounds like it's gonna ring to it. Two very distinctly different movies, right,
which is what I was going forthere? You could have fun with
that. I like that title,Purple crayon Red Door. What about Insidious
Harold? And then you know Ihad an actual poor Man Toe. How

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about combining the Hunger Games with themovie Napoleon with Joaquin Phoenix. It's coming
out November twenty second, Hunger Apoleon, Hunger Apoleon. What do I think
of that? Hunger Apoleon? It'syou know, it's kind of like Oppenheimer.
You know, it's yeah, mouthfulhunger. Apoleion kind of weird and

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interesting, so not super good.I also use Napoleon like you So Napoleon
biographical action film about a French militarycommander from the director of Gladiator. Wish
a family film about a girl whowishes on a star and the star comes
down and joins her. So,combining those, I've got either Wisholeon or

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napoleonsh I don't know if that's Barbenheimermaterial. That's the Wisholean. I kind
of wanted to be wish upon Napoleon, kind of play on the phrase wish
upon a star, but no,I like the I like the Napoleish.
Let me throw one at you here, say September twenty nine. This one's

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real obvious, so obvious. Ijust couldn't resist it. We've got Saw
X, a torture horror movie.We've also got paw Patrol The Mighty Movie,
a family cartoon about helpful pups withgadgets. You probably see where I'm
going, people, That's right,Saw Patrol. These pups come and kill
you in unique and clever ways.Saw Patrol. Can you see the memes?

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I can I can't. I thoughtyou were going to go with paw
Saw. I could go with Pasaor saw stopah. Yeah, if they
get all the all their paws aresawed off, or like the little dogs
with saws for pause. Yeah,too distinctly different movies, and I tried

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to go for a Barbenheimer type juxtaposition, a contrast, if you will,
when I was looking at some ofthese, all right, there are two
movies that are happening in December.They're not polar opposites, but um,
you got Wonka Okay with Timothy ShallapooChallaman, and you got Aquaman in the
Lost Kingdom. So I thought,what if you had Wonka Man, or

(21:23):
you could do Aqua Wonk. Ilike Aqua Wonk because it's weird. Yeah,
I think it's a it's different,you know, Wonka Man's kind of
it's it's too traditional. I alsohad played with this one and thought about
it, and I came up witha different title. Oh, with those
two common I tried that one.I came up with a quanca a quanca,

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which reminiscent of you know, Danceswith Wolves a little bit, Tatonka
Quonka Aquanca. I like that aquanca. What was yours? Yours was
aqua wonk aqua wonk? Yeah,I like Wonk Wonk is funny. See
that has Barbatheimer potential. Maybe it'sa quank, a little bit of everybody

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loses an a. I could seethe visuals there too, you know what
I mean. Like you've got Wonkastanding with his trident and the Lost Kingdom
or whatever, but it's chocolate insteadof fish. You've got the little umpa
lumpas. This one has the mostvisual potential because it has two distinct worlds,
right, yeah, which people standtoo. Yeah, you can make

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Wonka waterman and you could make Aquamancandy. Yeah, and very much like
Purple Crayon Red Door it it canterrify you and also make you laugh at
the same time. Yeah, aquank, I think most potential. That
being said, I took Wonka andmixed it with a different movie coming out

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the same day of December fifteenth.Lesser known, smaller movie, an indie
movie called Happy Suicide with a veryweird synopsis. This movie follows a woman
who wants to protect her lover froma horrible secret. She decides to protect
him and his child, even ifshe lost her own life because that is
unconditional love. That sounds dark man. Yeah, I don't even know what

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that means exactly. Anyway, Wonkaand Happy Suicide come together to create Happy
Wonka side. It's like different waysto kill yourself with candy. This chocolate
can kill you, like I'm gonnakill myself and then you. It's got

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to be in that order too,because if you kill yourself, your ghosts
comes back and get it oo loopwhat goes? That's real dark man.
Wonka is supposed to be happy withchocolate. Like, here's the beauty of
this is that like the Barbenheimer aboard mando, in which you know you're
you're sort of mashing two things togetherthat don't really belong. That's the beauty

(24:17):
of it. Those two things don'tbelong together. It works, though this
teaches us a lot harder than itseems, right Barbenheimer, you can understand
why it was such a phenomenon.I mean, you can shove these things
together all day and not get agem like Barbenheimer. Yeah, it is
much harder, but it's also thefun part of just being silly, you
know, and some of what theInternet is, and that's what you know,

(24:41):
created Barbenheimer. I mean, youcould argue Barbenheimer is the best of
the Internet and what we rarely seethese days, right, Yeah. You
and I often talk about the factthat, you know, the Internet is
just not what it used to be, and this, this right is what
it used to be. This iswhat it used to be, just dumb,
silly fun. Well, we hopeyou enjoyed the Barbenheimer memes. We

(25:03):
hope you've enjoyed the barbon Hier marketingmachine that has helped theaters come back.
You know, this is going tobe one of those efforts where, like,
five years from now, we'll belike, remember Barbenheimer, that was
weird? Yeah yeah, and that'sokay, I love those. Yeah.
So that's it for today's episode.You can find current and past episodes of

(25:29):
the podcast on none other than SpeakingHumanheimer dot com. No, it's Speaking
Human dot com. I didn't wantto confuse you. Just in case you
thought we were changing the name.It's it's actually still Speaking Human. Well,
we might want to consider it.It's gonna be hot. We'll be
back in two weeks with another episodeof Speaking Human Catch you then, Humanheimer's Speaking Human