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The Dinos That Made Us

2021-07-11

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#307: The team gushes about their love of dinosaurs and dinosaur related content. Including why dinosaurs have been so popular in media, and how they serve as a cultural touchstone.

Transcript

Josué Cardona 0:10
Welcome to GT radio on the Geek Therapy network here at Geek Therapy we believe that the best way to understand each other and ourselves is through media we care about, my name is Josué Cardona. And I’m joined by link Keller.

Link Keller 0:19
What’s up?

Josué Cardona 0:20
and Lara Taylor

Lara Taylor 0:22
Hey,

Josué Cardona 0:23
hey,

Lara Taylor 0:24
hey,

Josué Cardona 0:25
Link, you’re up. What do you what are we talking about today?

Link Keller 0:29
I want to talk about Jurassic Park. But in sort of a circuitous route, I have been watching lots of Docu series on Disney plus, and Netflix, and I have been watching the Netflix series that is titled The movies that made us and the second season came out recently, just a couple of weeks ago, and one of the episodes is about Jurassic Park. And so they talk about how Jurassic Park got made and how Jurassic Park sort of influenced the film industry after it got made. And it’s very cool. And I love Jurassic Park, and I love dinosaurs. And so that’s what I wanted to talk about with you guys.

Josué Cardona 1:17
Why do you love Jurassic Park?

Link Keller 1:19
Um, I saw it as a kid and I thought it was really really fucking cool. And I don’t remember if I was already into dinosaurs before that. Or if that movie got me into dinosaurs, um, I feel like I was already into dinosaurs because I was. I definitely didn’t see Jurassic Park. When it came out in 1993. I don’t think I was quite old enough. I saw it later on VHS tape,

Lara Taylor 1:51
I’m trying to remember how old I was.

Josué Cardona 1:54
I did see it in theaters.

Josué Cardona 1:55
Yeah? I definitely saw the third one in theaters. And I remember it like very much like, I remember. Like the the stupid phone sound that they played and then the dinosaur ate the phone then you could hear anyways, I remember that phone noise like jiggling my whole body in the theater seats. That’s very stuck in my head. But yeah, no, I, I thought dinosaurs were cool. As a kid. It was something I was into. I thought they were so neat. And it was always fun to talk about dinosaurs with other people and like, what are your favorite dinosaurs and I watched Land Before Time as a kid.

Josué Cardona 2:33
I thought this was gonna be a Jurassic Park conversation.

Link Keller 2:38
It’s dinosaurs kind of dinosaurs it I am going to keep circling back to Jurassic Park. Because I do feel like Jurassic Park is like, a headliner as far as dinosaur stuff and importance to me,

Josué Cardona 2:51
S-tier dinosaurs content

Link Keller 2:53
S-tier dinosaurs. Yeah, yeah. So I remember being really into Jurassic Park as a kid I read Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park and the lost world as a as a teen I watched the new the New Jurassic World movies when they came out they’re not new now. But when when they were new, I went and saw them. I was not as into them, but I still enjoyed them because it was still dinosaurs.

Link Keller 2:56
So, why do you like dinosaurs?

Link Keller 3:26
They’re cool dude.

Josué Cardona 3:28
I need more.

Link Keller 3:29
They’re they’re.

Lara Taylor 3:30
Who doesn’t like dinosaurs?

Link Keller 3:32
they ride the they ride the line between being like, regular ass animals on regular ass Planet Earth planet Earth animals. Every we see animals all the time. It’s not a big deal. They’re animals. But then also, they’re kind of like mysterious magical monsters because we only experience them through little pieces of fossils and guesses from paleontologist and archaeologist. And and, you know, if theorizing, like what makes sense based on the tiny little pieces of data we have from millions of years ago and it’s just it’s really cool. It’s it’s somewhere in between, like, very real and also very fantasy. And that feels good to me. I love that. I love that space. That and ambiguity, mmmm dinos.

Josué Cardona 4:25
I, I I’ve only ever had one imaginary friend my entire life. And it was a dinosaur. And

Lara Taylor 4:38
people can’t see his face, but it’s great.

Josué Cardona 4:43
That it was um, no, I believe it was a brontosaurus and it was so large but I but it was because it was so large. It my imaginary friend was able to move through walls and stuff. So basically it was like I would be like Like the head would come through the wall. You know, like it was so large it would like it didn’t fit completely in the room. It was able to do stuff like that. Only only imaginary friend. I remember ever having a big old dinosaur. I think I brought this up before and we tried to connect it to Land Before Time and little foot and all that. But it wasn’t though. Wasn’t Yeah,

Lara Taylor 5:27
it wasn’t little foot.

Josué Cardona 5:29
No, there was a lot of dinosaur content. In the 90s

Lara Taylor 5:35
Absolutely. the last dinosaur a there’s a whole bunch of them for dinosaurs.

Josué Cardona 5:42
Dinosaurs.

Lara Taylor 5:43
I have that on? I have that on DVD.

Josué Cardona 5:46
You have dinosaurs

Lara Taylor 5:48
on DVD

Link Keller 5:48
wow

Lara Taylor 5:50
Yeah, yeah.

Josué Cardona 5:52
The family

Lara Taylor 5:53
not the mama and my friends and I would play that at school. Like, not the mama and not the mama. That whole thing we would play Land Before Time as well. And Jurassic Park?

Josué Cardona 6:05
Yeah.

Lara Taylor 6:06
I used to have like most of Land Before Time memorized and I’m feel a little sad that I don’t have like I have my Disney movies all memorized.

Josué Cardona 6:15
Yeah

Lara Taylor 6:16
but I haven’t watched Land Before Time and and Land Before Time went on and on and on. And we dinosaurs might have gone extinct but Land Before Time certainly did not.

Josué Cardona 6:28
Humans will go extinct. Like whatever it replaces. Humans will still be making land before time movies.

Link Keller 6:33
I hope so.

Josué Cardona 6:35
I really like what you said think about it being like, like I like to joke that my favorite animal is dragons. But I know dragons aren’t real. But the closer they

Lara Taylor 6:47
but are they?

Link Keller 6:48
but are they?

Josué Cardona 6:49
Yeah, yeah, like yeah

Lara Taylor 6:52
Pterodactyl or whatever they’re called now

Link Keller 6:56
based on what I’ve learned about dinosaurs in the 90s to what I know about dinosaurs now which I’m regularly learning new things because so it turns out

Josué Cardona 7:06
the dinosaur experts Yeah, exactly. Turns out

Link Keller 7:09
a lot of that stuff was like we don’t know and we make guesses and it’s being updated regularly

Lara Taylor 7:15
like now feathers and bird sounds

Josué Cardona 7:18
that’s old stuff like

Link Keller 7:20
It’s like from the 90s to now is like they’ve only gotten more Dragon like in my opinion so like dragons maybe

Josué Cardona 7:28
I love the like the the critique of the New Jurassic Park movies. It’s like, why don’t they have feathers? We know better now. You don’t have to keep making I but the continuity and stuff and they don’t look as cool. It’s like get out here. So there’s the largest remains that have been found of a dinosaur called a titanosaur is that they call it I went to the display in in New York. And this was recent, this is just a couple years ago. Um magical it is. It is. So it is it is like what you said, I think Jurassic Park captures that. That magic perfectly right? Well, you’re so small. And there’s this thing that we know was real, right? existed in some even, even if we don’t have the details, right? The size is right. Right. We know that big so Titanosaur is just so big. And it’s like, well, you both have in California, like I’m assuming you’ve visited the scene sequoias. Right? Yeah. Like you like those trees are like something out of out of a fantasy, right? It’s like,

Lara Taylor 8:47
you need a person’s picture. You need a person for scale. Otherwise, it could just look like any old tree. You need the person to realize, it’s gigantic.

Josué Cardona 8:56
Yeah, but like when you’re there, you’re like, you’re like, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, right? It’s like, who shrunk me. Right? It’s like, how is this thing so big? I’ve never seen a tree the size before it’s impossible. And and like we don’t have things like that in nature and like that’s around us regularly. Like sure there’s like whales that are huge and like then we

Lara Taylor 9:16
structure them unless you go out in the water. Yeah, yeah.

Josué Cardona 9:21
But like sequoias are huge. Like, you know, dinosaurs are like that and like the Titanosaur it was that feeling it felt like because I’ve seen

Lara Taylor 9:32
I have seen replica or actual like T Rex bones. Yeah, natural history museums.

Josué Cardona 9:40
Yeah.

Lara Taylor 9:40
How big is the Titanosaur compared to that?

Josué Cardona 9:43
It’s way bigger. Way bigger. Um, it’s like it’s like standing next to a Sequoia. Like it’s that kind of thing. And you’re like, you’re just like, wait, I mean, it’s it’s not as tall as a sequoia. It’s like, how

Link Keller 9:56
you’re too big

Josué Cardona 9:57
it’s that is large

Link Keller 9:58
too big.

Josué Cardona 10:00
That is really big. It’s like, but it’s such a cool idea. It’s terrifying in a way. But it’s also so it’s just so cool. And I love that. Yeah, I mean, everything that that that episode of the movies that made us talked about regarding the audience reactions and seeing that in theaters and even the them the the creators of the movie themselves seeing the footage of the T Rex for the first time and like their minds being blown, that they were actually able to pull it off and it look realistic is just like, I kept it because like the whole world felt like that. Like we never like we never

Lara Taylor 10:40
seen CGI like that.

Josué Cardona 10:42
Yeah,

Link Keller 10:43
there had been some some CGI stuff, but nothing like nothing like that. Nothing that went for that kind of realism,

Lara Taylor 10:51
which by the way, holds up better than a lot of the CGI I’ve seen happened since then.

Link Keller 10:57
And I do want to say, and they mentioned this in the movies that made us but they were originally using, like stop motion animation for it. And the computer graphics guys were like, look, we’re gonna build like a walking animation of the skeleton and show it off. And they were like, This is really cool. But

Lara Taylor 11:18
like, you just need to fix the motion. Like,

Link Keller 11:21
can you can you like, can you fix this. And I think that because they went and utilized all of these practical practical effects you like building big ass robots out of clay and foam latex and stuff like that, and actually having you know, big animatronics. And then also having the CGI and blending those two together, made something so much better than either of those could have done on their own. It’s so cool. And it totally reflects that thing I was talking about earlier with dinosaurs sort of being in between real and fantastical is like they really leaned into that idea of being like, when we’re doing the close up scenes, when the dinosaurs are interacting with somebody that that is a physical piece of machinery that is moving that is being driven by somebody. But then they were like, Okay, now we need it to like, throw another dinosaur up in the air and then catch it. I do a couple of fun chomps like, Okay, we’re gonna we’re gonna use computer for that one.

Lara Taylor 12:22
Because we’re like the scene, the scene where they first see the dinosaurs, and they have to do all this fake reaction to like, oh my gosh, there’s this big thing. And like when Dr. Grant like falls over on the ground like that was he had nothing to look at

Link Keller 12:38
It was just an actor acting.

Lara Taylor 12:40
an actor acting. And then having Steven Spielberg make the noises.

Link Keller 12:44
That was really I did really appreciate that. That was very funny. Sam Neill is a peach.

Josué Cardona 12:54
Yeah, I did enjoy that episode a lot. Um, I don’t remember ever watching, like behind the scenes stuff for Jurassic Park. I wish I would have seen it sooner. Because there’s a lot of cool stories there.

Link Keller 13:07
Right?

Josué Cardona 13:08
And but there’s something about bringing that stuff to life, right? The scale. I can think of other moments where I’ve also actually, um, it’s like, you watch the movie and you believe you believe something. And it’s like that movie magic of like, I’m believing that this is possible. Reminds me of the tagline for the original Superman movie was you’ll believe a man can fly. And, and it was one of those things where like, oh, like, sure we’d seen people fly in movies before. But it looks so stupid. And it’s like this movie like, No, we, you know, let’s have the Godfather author write the script. For the Superman film. Let’s make sure that it looks realistic. And ironically, it doesn’t look that good now, but at the time, it really did. And there’s something I can think of a few other moments that have that have been like, Oh, this is like they described it like just everything. Nothing will be the same. Like it’s, we’re done. Like we’ve crossed into a new thing. Like I felt that way with virtual reality is the same way like you like you can represent scale and do things that you couldn’t do before, right. And like once you do that once you’re like, oh, oh, wait, what? It’s really like, like, Breath of the Wild. I think to a lesser extent. No Man’s Sky made me feel that way. Well, I was like, oh,

Lara Taylor 14:32
there’s millions of planets

Josué Cardona 14:33
fly off this and fly to another one. Yeah. But it was like that experience of like, I’ve never flown off of a planet and then just kept flying fly into another like, it’s this. This stuff that you’ve imagined. I think that’s a part of it, too. Right? It’s like, I had tons of books about dinosaurs. I knew I was I was that kid, right? Like I could I could. I could. I wanted you to test me on my dinosaur knowledge, which that was probably all wrong because As the science was wrong back then, you know.

Link Keller 15:01
the names of things

Lara Taylor 15:03
The feathers Yeah,

Josué Cardona 15:06
yeah, all of it. But but suddenly this. Yeah, but only thing that you imagined was real. Not real real but real. And a part of me still. And, and I bet this happens to both of you. It must, it has, it has happened to so many people, that there’s a part of you it’s like, it seems believable, like how they did it, like, why haven’t we actually done that? Right? Like, like, we’ve cloned sheep. And we’ve we’ve done all this other stuff. Like, I’m always waiting for it to actually happen. And every now and then there’s like, oh, you know, we think we’re gonna splice you know, an elephant with a woolly mammoth DNA that we found. And we’re gonna do it. I’m like, Do it, do it? I don’t care. I don’t care about what happened in the we did do it.

Link Keller 15:49
I feel like you haven’t watched these movies,

Lara Taylor 15:51
watch the movie or about science? thing think so focused on whether they could but didn’t really like I think they didn’t?

Josué Cardona 15:59
Yes, we got to do it

Lara Taylor 16:00
stop to think if they should.

Josué Cardona 16:02
But do you believe it’s possible? Just like just?

Lara Taylor 16:06
Well, there were news articles and stuff going on, when before and after the movie, like talking about cloning dinosaurs and bringing dinosaurs back? And whether we were going to be able to do that and

Josué Cardona 16:17
do you believe that it’s possible?

Lara Taylor 16:20
mhmm

Josué Cardona 16:20
Do you?

Lara Taylor 16:21
Maybe,

Josué Cardona 16:22
Link Do you believe it’s possible? And some part of you think they can do that? Or is it is

Link Keller 16:27
it possible to to create dinosaurs

Josué Cardona 16:33
do something? Like in the movie?

Link Keller 16:36
yes, I do believe that it is possible. I agree with the stance of the books and the movies, that it’s probably a bad idea. Because we have, we don’t have the context of the environment that they lived in as, as a way to understand that animal. Seems pretty bad, bad ideas. But, um,

Josué Cardona 17:02
there’s a there’s an episode of psych tech that I recorded once. That is just me going on about CRISPR and like, CRISPR being like, the DNA editing technology, right? When that was the new, like, I believe there’s a they won a Nobel Prize for the for the for the development of that technology. I have to double check if that’s true. But like I believe that’s a big reason. Why I mean, it’s been it’s made a lot of things possible that weren’t possible before. I wonder if I mentioned

Link Keller 17:42
like if you if you want if you want dinosaurs like we’ve still got crocodiles and sharks

Lara Taylor 17:50
Komodo dragons

Link Keller 17:52
Yeah, like we got some stuff and also if you hang out with like, larger birds for any amount of time they they are like dinos they’re scary little Dino’s scary

Lara Taylor 18:06
ostriches

Link Keller 18:09
i’m thinking like Cassowaries Secretary birds coming in just like rip you to shreds and then do that fun little head bob thing

Lara Taylor 18:18
you know what? I think? I think Hummingbirds are just small dinosaurs. They are territorial and mean

Link Keller 18:25
they make loud noises at you when you get too close. That I mean dinosaurs do that for sure.

Lara Taylor 18:34
I don’t Giant Sequoias to tiny little

Josué Cardona 18:37
I don’t like zoos. I hate to say can’t go to them. So I think an actual Jurassic Park would still bummed me out. It would depress me I would probably be part of that group in there’s one of the movies were like they’re trying to free the right like they’re trying to shut it down and see

Lara Taylor 18:51
was that lost world?

Josué Cardona 18:53
I don’t know if it was I think it was one of the newer ones I cuz I can’t remember lost world or at all

Lara Taylor 18:59
I couldn’t watch

Link Keller 19:01
the most the most recent Jurassic World is that the island is exploding and so they are trying to rescue the dinosaurs off of the islands yeah as both a like animal rights protection thing but also you know, gotta get that money

Josué Cardona 19:19
Yeah, yeah,

Josué Cardona 19:20
I guess in my version

Lara Taylor 19:21
two groups can agree on the same thing

Josué Cardona 19:24
my version I would liberate the dinosaurs I would cause

Lara Taylor 19:27
and then kill us all.

Josué Cardona 19:28
Maybe

Link Keller 19:29
I mean, that’s sort of where it leaves off is that they they get the dinosaurs off the island and then they have definitely gone to other places. I think in the third Jurassic Park movie The the pterodactyls or Pteranodons whichever ones the flying ones already escaped and was like, it’s like well, they’re off Island. Now. We’re gonna see how they integrate with, you know modern ecosystems.

Josué Cardona 19:57
Well, I mean, that’s why it’s a Jurassic World. not just stopped Park

Link Keller 20:01
dinos. Yeah. I do love the idea of humans being like we’re gonna create this thing because boy we just love playing god. Oh no the cause of our demise. Oops.

Lara Taylor 20:16
I mean, dinosaur

Link Keller 20:17
pretty funny story.

Lara Taylor 20:18
Dinosaurs AI robot overlords either way, it’s gonna it’s gonna happen

Link Keller 20:24
what a beautiful marriage that could be that

Lara Taylor 20:27
that’s like some Horizon Zero Dawn shit.

Josué Cardona 20:30
It is.

Lara Taylor 20:31
Exactly

Link Keller 20:32
the things I really liked about Horizon Zero Dawn is the parts that felt like Jurassic Park. I’m just now realizing that. Oh,

Josué Cardona 20:42
oh, yeah.

Lara Taylor 20:44
Dinosaurs.

Josué Cardona 20:45
Yeah, yeah. No, there’s there’s Yeah. Yeah. I love dinosaurs. In the Mitchell’s versus the machines. There’s a there’s a character who loves dinosaurs. And he meets a girl like he also loves dinosaurs of his age. And it’s it’s it’s it’s hilarious. It’s very nice.

Lara Taylor 21:13
Dinosaurs win everything we have like space dinosaurs magnets on our refrigerator. We’d love Nina loves every joke about like that. T rex is having little arms and big heads. I have she put in that screen behind me the screen that our listeners can’t see. But she wants she knew what we were talking about tonight. So she put her toy Stegosaurus in the screen.

Link Keller 21:42
that’s so cute!

Lara Taylor 21:43
She says it’s the best the best dinosaur. She’s not taking any comments or arguments.

Josué Cardona 21:54
There’s, yeah, there’s there’s something. A dinosaur geek is like, who like who doesn’t like dinosaurs? It’s true. Like when you said before

Lara Taylor 22:05
who doesn’t like dinosaurs? Right? So like, what is this?

Link Keller 22:09
It’s just a range. It’s like, everybody likes dinosaurs. And then and then there’s like, oh, that’s if love dinosaurs. But like, I have never met someone who’s like dinosaurs. No, thank you. Like, right. So So That’s never happened to me. If that’s you, listeners, please tell me I would love to talk to you about your dislike of dinosaurs.

Lara Taylor 22:27
So it’s no judgement.

Link Keller 22:29
I Just want to know, I want to know that’s cool. It’s interesting.

Josué Cardona 22:33
Yeah, like if it’s if it’s binary, right? It’s like DC or Marvel, Star Trek or Star Wars but dinosaurs and

Lara Taylor 22:41
I feel like though the dinosaurs like we get into these dinosaur camps, right? Like, which was

Link Keller 22:48
is it dinosaurs or dragons? Is that the divide?

Josué Cardona 22:51
Is it though? Is it

Lara Taylor 22:52
is it?

Josué Cardona 22:56
I mean, I mean, of course within within the dinosaur. Fandom of course, there’s like, the Jurassic period or you know, some other period or you know, like, of course, you know,

Lara Taylor 23:07
all your Stegosaurus fans or your Brontosaurus Brachiosaurus fans or Triceratop and all the different ones. Yeah,

Josué Cardona 23:16
right. Yeah. But like, yeah, that was not like, No, I don’t like dinosaurs because I like cheese. Like I’m like, Well, what is what is the opposite? Right? Like,

Lara Taylor 23:25
what is the opposite of dinosaurs.

Link Keller 23:28
I don’t like dinosaurs, I like asteroids

Josué Cardona 23:33
is it aliens?

Lara Taylor 23:34
Well, I was gonna say aliens cuz dinosaurs in the past aliens. Maybe in the future? I don’t know.

Josué Cardona 23:41
I don’t know.

Lara Taylor 23:42
But I feel like there’s room for both.

Josué Cardona 23:44
I think it’s the other way around. I think aliens in the past. dinosaurs in the future.

Link Keller 23:48
Aliens are the dinosaurs of the future.

Lara Taylor 23:52
There we go. That solved that

Josué Cardona 23:57
aliens are the dinosaurs of the past?

Lara Taylor 24:02
are dinosaurs the aliens?

Josué Cardona 24:03
I’m just saying the opposite of whatever you say at this point.

Lara Taylor 24:06
Dinosaurs are the aliens of the past. The dinosaurs came from space. And now they’re here. And then well, now they’re not they work here. I think I broke Link’s brain

Link Keller 24:19
but who was phone??

Josué Cardona 24:21
So when I watched Jurassic Park when I was a kid, I remember I must have been it was 1993 right that it came out.

Link Keller 24:28
93

Josué Cardona 24:29
we were when

Lara Taylor 24:30
we were 10.

Josué Cardona 24:31
I was I was nine when it came out?

Lara Taylor 24:33
Nine.

Link Keller 24:34
Yeah, you guys would have been nine you would have been about to turn 10

Josué Cardona 24:37
Yeah, I turned 10 After the movie came out because it came out in the summer. It came out in June. And it came

Lara Taylor 24:42
in in June 1995. We would have turned 12. So 12 back two years ago Yeah, I would have told right now next time.

Josué Cardona 24:53
You broke me broke your own brain earlier when you were doing the past future alien dinosaur

Lara Taylor 24:58
thing. I think that’s what happened. Yes, yes. So,

Josué Cardona 25:01
so I was definitely nine. I believe you were too

Lara Taylor 25:04
yeah nine.

Josué Cardona 25:05
And I remember going to the theater and I remember the we went live with a family friend and she they covered my sister’s eyes in the part with the, with the velociraptors in the in the kitchen with the kids. I don’t know why that’s a memory that I’ve always thought it was. So I don’t think my sister was scared at all. I think my sister was as into it as every other kid in that in that theater. And I remember being so mad that she covered like the she made her miss part of the movie.

Link Keller 25:38
What are you doing?

Lara Taylor 25:39
I don’t remember my pet anyone covering my eyes for like my family. We would watch. We watched Robin Hood Prince of Thieves and they made me cover my eyes for like the beginning of it until the guy’s hand gets chopped off because they didn’t want me to watch that part. But I could see Kevin Costner’s butt later on, but just not the hand getting chopped off. I don’t know what I don’t think remember anyone covering my eyes for Jurassic Park? Maybe they just thought I wasn’t going to be scared. I don’t think I was scared either. Although it was loud. Rawr!

Link Keller 26:15
Scary!

Josué Cardona 26:17
Yeah. I don’t get scared. I wish I had more memories about the movie. Like I remember liking it. I remember that experience of loving it. And that was during a time when movies would be in the theater for sometimes over a year, like they were just like not leave theaters. There was that scene in the or that clip in the in the Netflix show where they said like, lots of other movies like they just like they pulled their movies from theater like they were not going to

Lara Taylor 26:43
didn’t want to compete.

Josué Cardona 26:46
Yeah.

Lara Taylor 26:48
I remember we had it on LaserDisc. And we had a nice sound system. And

Link Keller 26:53
laserdisc! yes!!

Lara Taylor 26:54
yes we had an on laser

Link Keller 26:55
speaking of fossils! Ahh!!

Lara Taylor 26:58
So my dad was so proud of his because that was before DVDs, right? So it was good quality sound and video before DVDs even came out. And so we had the laserdisc and I remember my dad’s sound system. And we would just like shake the house with with the booming it was like being in the theater. But at home. It was amazing. And this was the 90s

Josué Cardona 27:24
Yeah. There was there was definitely something magical about that. But I tell them I think about it. I don’t know. I don’t have any like other like, I don’t remember any connections really, with other people about it. I don’t remember anybody.

Lara Taylor 27:46
My best friend and I used to play Jurassic Park in the backyard. We had the little Jurassic Park trucks, the jeeps and we my backyard had a patch of dirt and we would like dig out dinosaur like footprints in the dirt and then put mud and like drive the Jeep through the dinosaur. Yeah, it was. Yeah,

Link Keller 28:07
that’s precious. I definitely yeah, I remember being a kid and like doing pretend dinosaur. We would be dinosaurs we would be watching dinosaurs. I remember playing dinosaur veterinarian. Fuck, that was cool.

Lara Taylor 28:27
I bet my dad’s backyard still has like fake dinosaur bones buried in it somewhere that my friend and I buried. He’s remodeling I should go check it out.

Link Keller 28:39
Dad if you if you come across any bones, would you me now?

Lara Taylor 28:42
Like fake ones? Probably like chicken.

Josué Cardona 28:46
favorite, favorite, favorite dinosaur?

Link Keller 28:49
What’s your favorite dinosaur?

Josué Cardona 28:51
Dyno bots? I just remembered. Those are my favorite dinosaurs. They were transformers that were there were

Link Keller 28:59
dinosaur shaped.

Josué Cardona 29:00
Yep. Grimlock was a the T Rex. When they when they put them in the movies. Finally, I was so excited.

Lara Taylor 29:08
you were very excited.

Josué Cardona 29:09
I think that’s part of I know I’ve said this multiple times. And you all are still my friends. But like, Transformers five was like the best time I’ve ever had at a movie theater. And part of it was like it was a four D and it was a 40 film and it was an Grimlock showed up and like they just they did no Mike Michael painted Dinobots Isla Michael Bay and in 4d and things shaking and it was it was it was so great. So much fun. Oh, but there was a I just found that TV show that which is the reason like where my favorite. Like my imaginary friend came from. I’ve always thought anyway, the show called Dino-Riders. And it was I believe it was like, these group of people like I sent back in time and apparently tell us a lot of shows about people getting sent back into dinosaur times. It was a cartoon? And so

Link Keller 30:12
if you’re gonna get sent back in time, like why would you pick a terrible modern era where other humans are nay no millions of years before that? Thank you. I don’t want to

Lara Taylor 30:22
Dinosaurs!

Link Keller 30:23
Very little as far as like apes mammals. I don’t really need a lot of those big lizard Big Bird. Yeah,

Lara Taylor 30:31
that’ll eat you

Josué Cardona 30:35
okay, you got it? Yeah, no, it’s Dino-Riders very cool. But you’re right like dinosaurs were everywhere like what was why? What was it just capitalism?

Lara Taylor 30:45
dinosaurs were cool

Josué Cardona 30:46
very cool

Josué Cardona 30:47
was it just capitalism? Just like we can make money

Link Keller 30:49
I mean, a big part of it is how how big Jurassic Park was That was that was a big part of it. It led to a bunch of other industries being like, well, this is the option like dinosaur stuff throw some dinosaurs in there people loving

Lara Taylor 31:03
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers

Link Keller 31:05
yeah, throw a dinosaur in there. People will love it.

Josué Cardona 31:10
Wait a minute. I mean, but like, Dino-Riders was 88 Flinstones was when was the flinstones?

Lara Taylor 31:16
longer.

Josué Cardona 31:17
No, I know it was way before like when was 1960 is when the flinstones started. I’m not I’m not saying that Jurassic Park wasn’t like a renaissance of dinosaur

Link Keller 31:33
No, I mean, dinosaurs have always been very cool.

Josué Cardona 31:36
Yeah.

Link Keller 31:36
But I think Jurassic Park was was a shift because you know, like we were talking about earlier so much of it was illustrations in in books and and animation and stuff. It was very much imagination based. Of course Jurassic Park is still imagination based but it gave the the feeling of realness the verisimilitude of like, those are real life dinosaurs with skin and teeth and spit and like that made them feel so so much more real than they had before even dinos

Lara Taylor 32:17
there were so many shows in the 90s so many shows with dinosaurs. Extreme dinosaurs,

Josué Cardona 32:27
now we’re getting

Lara Taylor 32:28
dink the little dinosaur Cadillacs and dinosaurs. dinosaucers.

Josué Cardona 32:35
Here we go. A psychological explanation of kids love of dinosaurs. Here we go. Let me see.

Link Keller 32:43
They are very cool. The end?

Lara Taylor 32:45
That’s the answer. Dinosaurs are cool and like they connect us with the past that we don’t really like. We don’t know what we know about but we don’t can never know like much about right like, written history. What even if it’s in pictures, like in pictograms and all of that, like we have some kind of idea? We really don’t know anything about dinosaurs as the last decade of learning about dinosaurs is proven

Josué Cardona 33:16
in 2016 alone there are more than 30 New dinosaurs discovered bringing the list of potential favorites to more than 700 This article says

Lara Taylor 33:28
Now I need to study all the other my dinosaurs are dinosaurs are basic minds a triceratops

Link Keller 33:35
nice nice

Lara Taylor 33:36
mine’s Triceratops which is interesting because Land Before Time is like my go to like dinosaur example and I don’t like Sarah.

Link Keller 33:45
Okay side question How old were you when you realize Sara was not S A R A? H maybe but was C E R A like try-cera-tops?

Lara Taylor 33:54
just now.

Josué Cardona 33:55
I was 37 years old.

Link Keller 33:56
I got to be that person for you guys? Her name is cera

Lara Taylor 34:04
I’m googling this shit. I believe link too just my brain just exploded right now.

Josué Cardona 34:15
Okay, here we go. Why dinosaurs matter? There’s a book.

Link Keller 34:20
Why dinosaurs matter?

Josué Cardona 34:22
Yeah. Hashtag dinosaurs. Dinosaurs matter

Link Keller 34:25
we’re getting philosophical here

Josué Cardona 34:26
um,

Link Keller 34:27
what is a man? a miserable pile of secrets

Josué Cardona 34:30
okay huh

Lara Taylor 34:36
oh my god you’re right and their last name because the dad is called Daddy tops. So her name is Cera tops

Link Keller 34:45
hehehehehe

Josué Cardona 34:53
maybe umm

Lara Taylor 34:54
I’m broken.

Link Keller 34:56
See that? That is now my my go to Land Before Time. Fact, because it is much happier than the other one I used to go for.

Josué Cardona 35:08
Maybe, maybe it is because like it’s a mystery that we’re still unraveling like I’m trying to, I’m trying to

Link Keller 35:13
I think that’s definitely a big part of it because there’s an aspect especially when you’re like a kid, right is the idea of like, this is like a frontier, unexamined. Like, you could be that person who goes and discovers whole new dinosaurs who learns you know that actually that one dinosaur we thought we understood was we put it on backwards and it’s a completely different dinosaur. Like you

Lara Taylor 35:39
way easier than going to space right?

Link Keller 35:41
I gotta imagine you’re talking about 2016 A whole bunch of new dinosaurs showing showing up being found and catalogued

Josué Cardona 35:51
coming to the park.

Link Keller 35:54
getting invited to the museum,

Lara Taylor 35:57
and they renamed pterodactyls to Tyrannosaur or not tyrannosaurs pterosaurs, like so that happen,

Link Keller 36:04
but yeah, I imagine you know, the people who are who are, you know, working in paleontology now, I imagine majority of them watched Jurassic Park as a kid and you know, maybe that inspired them getting into that field in the first place. I can’t imagine that’s a rare story.

Josué Cardona 36:23
I hope it’s not Yeah, I can’t imagine.

Link Keller 36:26
I imagine as far as like, when you’re a kid and exciting new mysteries. You got dinosaurs. You got past dinosaurs you got space and it is easier to get into a paleontology program than become an astronaut

Josué Cardona 36:45
Yeah, I’m I’ve got my thinking face on No, because I’m just trying to pinpoint like other than Yeah, I thought they were the coolest things I can’t I don’t remember it being like it’s not even like my family went to see Jurassic park it was like a moment we had together like I didn’t even see it with my parents. I saw it with someone else. I don’t remember being a big part and yet I Yeah. I still love dinosaurs, man

Link Keller 37:20
Okay, so my favorite dinosaur is the compies the compsognathus which you might know from the beginning of Jurassic Park 2 the last world where there’s a whole bunch of them and they chase and chew on a little girl and that solidified me going like that’s my favorite dinosaur they’re tiny they’re cute they they chomp little girls that’s fun.

Lara Taylor 37:41
the chihuahuas of the Dinosaur World

Link Keller 37:43
so some of you may know that my Twitter handle is chicken dinosaur chicken dinosaur is a username I have used for I don’t know

Lara Taylor 37:57
every time I have

Link Keller 37:58
over a decade

Lara Taylor 37:59
chicken nuggets I think of you

Link Keller 38:00
chicken nuggets and that is certainly an aspect of it because I do love myself a dinosaur shaped chicken nugget for sure. But the reason I love chicken dinosaur as a name is when I was growing up and I was looking up compies in dinosaur books they were always labeled as a chicken sized dinosaur which I thought was so funny like all of them all of the all these different books books that were aimed towards you know adult books that were aimed towards like little children they were all like a chicken sized dinosaur

Lara Taylor 38:28
probably the scientific ones for actual like paleontologists

Link Keller 38:32
what I learned today today! is that they now believe that the fossils they had before were juveniles so now they have been upgraded to “likely Turkey sized”

Lara Taylor 38:46
so are you gonna change?

Link Keller 38:47
amI gonna change my turkey dinosaur doesn’t have the same chicken dinosaur has the right number of syllables I’m just I don’t know but that’s that’s my favorite dinosaur.

Lara Taylor 39:01
Chicken dinosaur and Turkey dinosaur have the same number syllabals

Link Keller 39:04
they do! I realized as soon as I said it. it’s not the same mouthfeel

Lara Taylor 39:09
No, it’s not it’s and you have the added bonus of the chicken dinosaur dino chicken nuggets

Josué Cardona 39:14
but I do appreciate the symbolism of you being like I was a chicken dinosaur I am now Turkey dinosaur

Link Keller 39:22
now based on new knowledge that I’ve discovered today I am now Turkey I

Josué Cardona 39:27
did not know I could grow more than I have already so I am now I have I have decided that of a chicken I am Turkey dinosaur.

Lara Taylor 39:36
I am Turkey hear me roar

Link Keller 39:39

[turkey noises]

Josué Cardona 39:43
Alright, so it’s it has taken me it has taken me 40 minutes but I’ve come up with an answer. For 40 minutes I’ve been thinking why do we care about dinosaurs so much? And I think I have an answer for myself. Okay, as you grow up. So many things that you learn about. You find out aren’t true. The tooth fairy, Santa Claus, rabbit,

Lara Taylor 40:13
chicken sized dinosaurs

Josué Cardona 40:15
just so many different things. And even though we’re still learning about dinosaurs and stuff, it is one of those things that felt magical and like Unreal, right? It’s like I can, there’s a version of like that. To summarize,

Lara Taylor 40:29
it’s magic but it’s real.

Josué Cardona 40:30
But I had to summarize this part, right when I’m asking and I’m going through all the lists of all the things that I like, like, is sugar good? No, like you can’t no not even know. Like, you can’t like nothing like nothing like no, you can’t keep any of these things. They’re not healthy. They’re not good. They’re not real. They don’t exist. It’s a lie. But dinosaurs.

Link Keller 40:49
Dinosaurs have never betrayed me.

Josué Cardona 40:51
dinosaurs have never betrayed me. That is why I like dinosaurs. They may change. They may be bigger. They may be small, they may have feathers.

Lara Taylor 41:04
They may sound like weird birds.

Josué Cardona 41:06
I think that I think that if one day someone’s like, guess what? It was a scam. There was no such thing as dinosaurs. They’ve all been all fossils have been fabricated in a factory in Russia. For years. It’s a huge conspiracy. Y’all fell for it. You’re stupid, stupid Americans. It would be the largest the biggest betrayal of my entire life. And I don’t know if I would if I if I could. If I could deal with something like that. So dinosaurs are the one constant just in general, just just ever. That’s my answer.

Link Keller 41:45
dinosaurs always got your back.

Josué Cardona 41:47
That’s my answer. To the only constant

Link Keller 41:51
65 million years they’ve had your back

Josué Cardona 41:55
when you feel when you need to be grounded. And remember that it’s dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are the one thing

Lara Taylor 42:02
dinosaurs.

Josué Cardona 42:03
It was it was a lot in Lost. Right? It was the thing about like, the the constant, right? Is that Is that where that came from? Right. Like, remember that the guy who kept jumping between this Lost right? The series of y’all watched lost the series.

Lara Taylor 42:20
I watched everything. The last half of

Josué Cardona 42:23
it. I don’t I don’t know why I’m asking you. I mean, Google this.

Link Keller 42:28
I have seen lost. I don’t remember.

Lara Taylor 42:31
Lost betrayed me.

Link Keller 42:32
I remember. big, dumb polar bears on an island.

Josué Cardona 42:37
the constant the constant, of course, it’s a yeah, there’s a there’s somebody who is traveling back and forth in time, like it couldn’t and couldn’t, couldn’t control it. And the thing was, like, you had to find a constant, something to like, ground them so that they could actually stop jumping back and forth. I was making a lost reference. I’m sorry. I had to explain it.

Link Keller 42:59
dinosaurs. dinosaurs were the constant

Josué Cardona 43:00
The other thing yeah, that’s my answer that that’s why it’s like it’s like the one piece of it sounds depressing. Now that I’m saying it out loud. It’s the only part of like, my childhood that I believe is still intact, is still good. And, and that I remember fondly and it’s still like, yeah, that’s it. It’s dinosaurs. I hope this isn’t true. But this the answer that I’ve come to in throughout the course of this conversation.

Lara Taylor 43:29
Would you say you have a secure attachment?

Josué Cardona 43:31
believe I have a secure attachment. Yeah, no, no, no. There we go. Yep. Yep.

Lara Taylor 43:39
They’ll never let you down

Josué Cardona 43:40
Yeah, see now I feel much better now. This this this this has been helpful. Now I’m Yeah, yeah. Yeah, either dino bots, whether they’re Jurassic world. Chimera Dinosaurs. Whether they’re

Lara Taylor 43:57
Zords

Josué Cardona 43:59
dinosaurs. Not my mama stuff. Like all that stuff. It’s all it all counts. Dino. No, no, it’s Dino. No, but up in the Flintstones is Dino. Dan, right.

Lara Taylor 44:13
It’s Dino. Yes.

Josué Cardona 44:16
How old are you when you realize that Dino is just di no and the first part of dinosaurs did you did you? That wasn’t today.

Lara Taylor 44:23
I knew that from the beginning.

Josué Cardona 44:28
Lots of revelations today. A lot of fun around dinosaurs today. New discoveries every day.

Lara Taylor 44:36
Even the small ones that blow our minds. My mind isn’t blown that that wasn’t blown that dinosaurs had feathers but when you told me that cera’s name is spelled c e r a.

Josué Cardona 44:49
Actually, what did it what did it for me was when you said that they had last names. That’s That’s what blew my mind.

Link Keller 44:57
I was interested in that. They’re they use a patriarchal naming convention. interesting.

Josué Cardona 45:03
They use first name. Last name last name is the family name. Interesting. Yeah.

Lara Taylor 45:09
Only only the Triceratops apparently though. Only though, because there’s the little foots grandmother and little foots grandfather. Daddy Tops. Yes.

Link Keller 45:24
Okay, now now that you’re saying out loud again, that’s, that’s a different joke. That’s a different joke that somebody managed to slip into a children’s show. Did you guys know that the the spiky tail on the end of the stegosaurus is called a Thagomizer?

Josué Cardona 45:42
I learned this the other day.

Lara Taylor 45:44
No?

Link Keller 45:45
Do you know where that name came? It came from a Gary Larson cartoon where he has a single panel and it’s just a scientist pointing we call this the thagomizer and paleontologists thought that was so funny that they kept using it at the it didn’t have an established name it was just like the tail spines and so they started using it it is now like the official name is the thagomizer.

Josué Cardona 46:09
Why did I learn this like a week ago? I don’t remember where I learned this from I don’t know

Link Keller 46:16
it’s always a good time to learn more Gary Larson facts I feel.

Josué Cardona 46:20
I think so. Alright, so any closing thoughts on on dinosaurs? Why They Matter

Link Keller 46:35
I just quickly want to touch on that the the people and the the company Industrial Light Magic that did the the CGI on Jurassic Park then went on to create Pixar. So Jurassic Park is directly the reason that toys exist and so that scene and in toys were Rex the dinosaur he goes Rawr! Like that’s a reference to Jurassic Park directly.

Josué Cardona 47:05
There’s in Toy Story is not toys Toy Story in general. They’re not responsible to

Link Keller 47:11
Toy Story.

Josué Cardona 47:12
ILM made Star Wars to right yeah

Link Keller 47:16
they did.

Josué Cardona 47:16
Yeah, we’re not giving any credit to Star Wars. We’re just we’re just only just I’m just okay. Okay. We just to say

Link Keller 47:24
credit due to this all the stuff in Star Wars, but he’s talking

Lara Taylor 47:28
like to like, they’re not doing the same

Link Keller 47:33
level of stuff as they did for Jurassic Park.

Lara Taylor 47:36
They talked about how ILM was doing Jurassic Park, everything after that. It’s not digital. Cinematography, it’s digital filmmaking is filmmaking, right. Like it’s

Link Keller 47:52
Jurassic Park gave them gave them a lot of the respect that they deserved already. But they were able to point at and like, Yeah, we did this thing that was so cool. People like peed their pants in theaters. So like, yeah, give us a film studio

Josué Cardona 48:10
this. I’m assuming that this is this really happened. Although the movie doesn’t tell us the story. They do say that George Lucas was in the room. When they showed all that footage that people’s minds were blown. They did not confirm nor did they deny that that was the moment when there’s this was like I can finally go back and add CG to the Star Wars films.

Lara Taylor 48:34
Which

Link Keller 48:35
oh my god, that probably is

Josué Cardona 48:36
exactly the time it

Lara Taylor 48:38
that was the moment.

Josué Cardona 48:39
Finally,

Link Keller 48:40
he’s like, oh, excuse me, could I get your name and phone number? please

Josué Cardona 48:44
only had the THX vision. He’d only he’d only changed the names like three times.

Lara Taylor 48:49
I’ve done a better job with with Jabba’s like skin or something than they did with that first run of the season.

Josué Cardona 48:58
That was it.

Lara Taylor 48:59
If they can make a dinosaur believable

Josué Cardona 49:00
Jurassic Park is the reason why we have nine versions of A New Hope.

Lara Taylor 49:07
goddamn

Josué Cardona 49:10
Yeah, I would have never known if it weren’t for the movies that made us Yeah, yeah.

Link Keller 49:19
Yeah, there are seven other episodes about seven other different movies. I highly recommend people check them out. They’re really cool and fun and you get to learn new little things about movies that you have probably seen or if not seen, you know of because they are major cultural touchstones.

Josué Cardona 49:36
So So I had a realization about dinosaurs. Link links identity is based on on dinosaurs. Lara, what is the is there a like a like, what is your life? Like? How what’s the most meaningful thing? How did how did dinosaurs affect you or Jurassic Park in particular?

Lara Taylor 49:59
I’ve always liked like dinosaurs. I love dinosaurs

Josué Cardona 50:02
what’s the one thing like

Lara Taylor 50:03
I have

Josué Cardona 50:05
the one that would you name your kids cera for example spell c e r a would you? Would you

Lara Taylor 50:11
no

Josué Cardona 50:11
Okay, I mean,

Lara Taylor 50:12
okay, no, no. But I mean, in my house, any cute dinosaur thing we see we have to get, which is why we have a stuffed stegosaurus

Josué Cardona 50:24
that sounds like a disorder is what I’m thinking of like positive things that are oh my mind maybe maybe that is part of your identity. It’s okay. I can’t.

Lara Taylor 50:33
I mean, I could I could talk about how my first week at summer camps that shaped my life. Our theme day was Jurassic Park theme day. And the theme the theme for so you go through the whole day and there’s different like themed activities like you’d paint instead of pet rocks you paint like dinosaur buddies or like you instead of going on a creek stomp, you’re going on like a dinosaur hunt or something. And then the whole camp does an activity in the evening together. Like a like sometimes it’s a scavenger hunt. Sometimes it’s like capture the flag this they hid a watermelon in the forest and said it was a dinosaur egg. And at the end, whichever cabin had the person who found it, got to crack open the egg and have the watermelon.

Link Keller 51:24
dino omelette!

Lara Taylor 51:26
dino omelette. I know. It was amazing. It was the coolest thing. And the counselors were all like in the woods making noises like dinosaurs and like

Josué Cardona 51:36
that’s what we think dinosaur

Link Keller 51:38
that’s choice

Josué Cardona 51:40
there’s a

Lara Taylor 51:41
yes

Josué Cardona 51:42
I can’t imagine if I found like an ostrich egg in the in the in the woods I’m sure the My first thought would be with it. It was like a dinosaur egg.

Link Keller 51:50
dino egg!

Josué Cardona 51:52
it’s it’s in my DNA. There’s no way that I would think anything differently. Oh, sure.

Link Keller 51:57
Dino DNA! Oh, I just had a visceral memory of teaching myself the Jurassic Park theme on keyboard and fifth grade. I got in trouble for not playing from my music book [vocalizes theme] doo doo Oh my Gosh

Josué Cardona 52:27
dinosaurs are cool.

Link Keller 52:29
Dinosaurs are cool. Yeah,

Lara Taylor 52:31
they’re the coolest. I want all my friends to be dinosaurs.

Josué Cardona 52:37
I don’t know. But if it’s tell us what your favorite dinosaurs are, or your favorite dinosaur memories in any of our community spaces, which are in find links to in our in the show notes, more Geek Therapy, you can visit geek therapy.org Thank you so much for listening. Remember to geek out and do good. We’ll be back next week.

Link Keller 53:12
RAWRR bye!!

Josué Cardona 53:12
Geek Therapy is a 501 C three nonprofit organization dedicated to making the world a better place through geek culture. To learn more about our mission and become a supporter, visit geek therapy.org

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Characters / Media