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Alright, hello Masako. Hello Asami.
It's been a couple weeks since we last talked. I am 30 years old now as of yesterday,
so I'm older than the last time we spoke. Okay, happy birthday.
Thank you. But as you know, I don't have friends in this town since I just moved.
Um, so my birthday, I was all alone, 100% solo, which is not that bad. I've done something like
this before. My birthday is in summer, which means there's no school, so usually it's just family.
Or, you know, if I'm like away from family and there's no school, I'm just by myself
or, you know, my friends. So this is not new, that's okay. But the biggest problem I had was
which one do I watch, Barbie or Oppenheimer? Okay. Are they promoting these two movies in Japan?
I don't think so yet. Neither of them? Okay. Yeah, I guess, I don't know,
it usually takes a little bit of time. But Barbie is by Greta Gerwig, who did Lady Bird
and Little Women most recently. Yeah, and she, so it's her Shinsaku and it's got like Margot Robbie,
Ryan Gosling, Sim Liu, Michael Cera, like funny all cast, like all-star casts.
It looks very funny, it looks very like satirical, you know, making fun of
like the perfection obsession that Barbie symbolizes, right? So I thought that was
fun too. And Oppenheimer is a completely different kind of movie, but also an A-list caster movie.
You know, Cillian Murphy's playing it, Emily Blunt's in it, who else, Matt Damon's in it,
and it's Christopher Nolan's movie. I don't know if you watched his like Inception or Interstellar.
I did. Yeah, so like his newest movie is this one, Oppenheimer. And Barbie is like all pink,
Technicolor, you know, fuchsia pink, happy vibes. And Oppenheimer is all depressing, dark, you know,
I don't know, in case you don't know who Oppenheimer is, he is a physicist credited for
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the making of the atomic bomb. So he's often referred to as the father of atomic bomb. And
he was the director of Manhattan Project, who, you know, did the development of atomic bombs,
and, you know, made it possible to have this technology. So it was a story about him,
his, you know, rise to the sort of, you know, America's national hero, right,
like ended the World War Two, effectively, to like, fall after that, like, he struggled a lot
with the moral conundrum of the impact that his bomb had, and his project had, and so many sort
of political messiness that he got himself into. He lost a lot of friends doing this, and his
reputation basically was tarnished after, you know, being credited as one of the, you know,
national heroes of America, right? And the ally forces in general. So he, it's a complicated
figure, you know, and he, on all accounts, he seems, you know, pretty brilliant. But after
the Manhattan Project, together with him being, having to be busy with other sort of more political
interests of his, like, I don't think he did much research after that. I don't think he
was able to really go back to doing physics full time. You know, like, neither his sort of fame,
nor his, like, reputation allowed him to do that. So it's like a biopic, like,
story of a scientist. So I like both of the directors, I was really curious, and they were
both coming out in the same day. So the biggest debate in America was like, which one are you
going to watch first, Barbie or Oppenheimer? Right, because those are two extremely different
vibes for a movie. But as a solo movie to watch on your birthday, I felt like Oppenheimer is a
little bit less sad than watching Barbie alone. Because I feel like I want to watch Barbie with
my friends and comment on, you know, exactly like I want to be able to chat and like laugh at the
movie theater if I'm going. And I want to go there with my friends. Whereas like, Oppenheimer,
I can just like sit in a corner. Yeah, depressing too. Yeah, like, I mean, I'm sure plenty of my
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scientist friends would have loved to watch with me. But I'm okay with, like, watching on my own.
Like, I do not frequently, but I have watched movies alone in movie theater. And I don't hate
that experience. So it just that it was very weird, because this is kind of like a blockbuster,
blockbuster, I guess, but like, highly anticipated movie of a very famous director. So
I felt a little bit funny to go alone. But I did anyway. And it was great. I think it was worth it.
Worth it, because it, like, I wouldn't say it was like, the best work of his. I mean,
I completely love Inception and Interstellar. Like, I think those are really, like,
interesting film who are like that, that are using very interesting techniques to convey
complete new stories. I love his Batman too. But like, so if you're like, live it, you know,
did he live up to that level? Not for me. But it was definitely a solid biopic, I think.
And every time I watch a biopic that's based on scientists, I have a few things that, like,
comes to my mind. And it did this time as well. So the first thing is,
how unrealistic the Jikken scene is, or like, the Eureka moment part is. I think, I mean, okay,
given that Oppenheimer is a theoretical physicist, so, you know, they're like,
sitting around a table, like, scribbling equations on paper, like, that part was
like, realistic, and it's fine. Like, I actually, I think this movie did a decent job of
showing how unglamorous that process is. You know, there was no, like, random writing on a board,
like, dramatic music in the background, and like, lightbulb moment, you know,
none of that was there. But I thought it was funny, as an experimentalist, that
it's like, no real theoretical physicist would get, would even be allowed to get so close to
the experiment. Because like, there's a scene where he's like, actually in the lab, like,
touching the bomb or something, right? I was just like, dude, no one would do that. No theorist
would do that. It's like, one, they'd be scared out of their mind, and two, no experimentalist
will let any theorist touch their experiment. So thought it was funny. But of course, you know,
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cinema has to happen. So that's fine. The other thing is, I am so glad that my line of research
is not that controversial, you know, ever.
That's it for the show today. Thanks for listening, and find us at
EigoDeScience on Twitter, that is E-I-G-O-D-E-S-C-I-E-N-C-E. See you next time!
