Ants vs Bees -- transcript
This is a transcript of our episode “Ants vs Bees”
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Announcer: From the brains behind Brains On, it’s Smash Boom Best.
: The show for people with big opinions.
Molly Bloom: Hi, I'm Molly Bloom, and this is Smash Boom Best, the show where we take two things, smash them together, and ask you to decide which one is best. Today, one's in the sky, one's underground, one makes a buzz, the other, not a sound. It's all-out bug brawl between two of nature's most innovative insects, ants versus bees. Which little creature is the biggest deal? Here to decide is our judge, Asenat. Hi, Asenat!
Asenat: Hello.
Molly: Asenat, I hope you're not afraid of insects because we're going to be hearing a lot about them today. I'm wondering, do you find insects generally fascinating, maybe a little freaky.
Asenat: They're a little intriguing, personally. There are some insects I do not like, I don't like spiders, I don't like anything that's slimy, typically, slugs and snails seem really gross to me. I think I've might have a phobia of them.
Molly: Well, it's a good thing that we're not talking about the ones that you're a little afraid of. Today, we're talking ants and bees. I'm curious, what words come to mind when you think of ants?
Asenat: I've heard they're really hard workers. I heard a lot about their teamwork. They're really tiny, but also really big in terms of how they collectively become one whole.
Molly: I love that big picture thinking. What about bees?
Asenat: I think they're misunderstood, to be honest.
Molly: You are a debater yourself, what do you like about debating?
Asenat: I like that you get to express yourself and your ideas, whether it's ideologically, whether it's through presenting your persuasiveness in forms of logos, ethos, or pathos.
Molly: Can you tell us about logos, ethos, and pathos are?
Asenat: They're debate, not debate styles, but sort of styles in which you persuade your audience. Logos is the logic, ethos is the ethics, and pathos is emotions.
Molly: That's great. You're going to be a perfect judge for our debate today. Do you have any tips for our debaters?
Asenat: The argument you like best is the one you're going to know the most, so just stick with your gut feeling and just stick with that argument. There's always a way to debate it out and there's always a way to win with that argument.
Molly: Excellent. We have an honest, unbiased judge here today for our ants versus bees debate. I think it is time to introduce our debaters. Standing up for the little guy always on the go, careful you don't step on him, it's Tim Barnes for Team Ant. Hi, Tim.
Tim Barnes: (laughs) How's it going? Happy to be here.
Molly: Tim, in one sentence, why are ants the ultimate insect?
Tim: Ants are the ultimate insect because they're stronger than they look and unlike bees, don't need wings and stripes to be cool.
Molly: Very good. Our next debater, he's buzzing with bravado, a friend to the flowers, watch out or he'll sting you. It's Ian Abramson for Team Bee. Hi, Ian.
Ian Abramson: Hello.
Molly: Ian, give us your take on why bees are the better bug in one sentence.
Ian: I'll give it to you in five words, ants take, but bees make.
Molly: Concise and to the point. These are going to be some big arguments for tiny creatures today, but remember, it all comes down to Asenat’s opinion. Win her over, and you win the match. Tim and Ian, how're you feeling going into it?
Tim: I'm ready for this. I already beat Ian's argument, ants make things too.
Ian: Well, ants also have wings, you beat your own argument.
Tim: A few ants do, it's not common, most ants don't.
Ian: Some ants make things not all ants, most ants don't.
(laughter)
Molly: Okay. Here's how our debate will go down. The first round is the declaration of greatness. Ian and Tim give us the best facts, figures, and stories about their side. Then their opponent gets a thirty second rebuttal to push back. Round Two is the micro round. This is a creative challenge that both sides prepared for in advance. Next, round three, the sneak attack. We give both sides a surprise format to debate in, they'll need their wits to win this one. Then, round four, the final six. That's when our debaters make their last argument in just six words.
Asenat will be giving out points along the way, but she'll keep her score a secret until the very end. Listeners, we want you to judge too. If you'd like to keep score on an official scorecard, you can download one on our website at smashboom.org or just make your own. Asenat, are you ready for the facts to start flying?
Asenat: I am more than ready.
Molly: Perfect. Let's go.
Announcer: Declaration of Greatness
Molly: Asenat, you have two points to award this round, one for the best declaration and one for the fiercest rebuttal. We flipped a coin and Tim, you're up first. Get us amped up about ants.
Tim: Ants. They’re all over. You can find ant colonies on every continent except for Antarctica - which is weird because it literally has “ant” in the name. Can’t really make an ant hill out of ice, I guess. Wherever you find ‘em, they’re always moving, always busy. Makes you wonder -- what’s it like in their world? Maybe like this…
Narrator: It was a glorious, busy day in the ant farm, but the only thing that was wrong was that there was no food. The queen of all ants made an announcement and said…
Queen: I can not and shall not tolerate one minute without food.
Narrator: So the queen called up my partner and I, the two scientific ants, and told us to go into the house of doom… where there are giants and strange creatures.
Queen: You two. Fetch food - I command thee!
Narrator: Exactly after mother told her speech, four soldier ants pulled my partner and I to the back door and kicked us out.
I’ve always been fascinated with ants. In fact, what you just heard was an excerpt from a short story I wrote when I was in elementary school. Spoiler: the ants do find food and totally save the day.
Ants have a few things in common. Like big heads, powerful jaws, elbowed antennae and verified Instagram accounts. Okay, maybe not the Instagram thing. But they have something cooler -- an exoskeleton. Which is a skeleton on the outside, and it’s also fun to say… EXOSKELETON! While our skeletons are on the inside, probably because they’re shy and want to hide away and read books or something, ants’ exoskeletons protect them like armor!
Ants are also strong. Some can lift up to ten, fifty or, by some estimates, 5000 times their own body weight. And they are amazing engineers.
Ants build sprawling cities underground called colonies. The largest on record stretches 3,700 miles! From northern Italy, through France to the coast of Spain.
There are lots of kinds of ants too, ones with kinda innocent names like Carpenter Ants and Weaver Ants…Bizzaro ones, like door-head ants or rasberry crazy ants.
And ones with names that keep you up at night, like Bullet Ants and Fire Ants.
DAVID: So there’s 10,000 species of ants in the world.
Tim: That’s David Hu. He’s a professor of mechanical engineering and biology at Georgia Tech. Basically he’s …
DAVID: … a scientist who uses engineering to study bugs.
Tim: David is an ant man. Not THE Ant-Man... I think… He works with fire ants because they do something pretty fascinating: they build with their bodies!
DAVID: And that means they can actually act like Lego blocks and build physical structures that are way taller and way wider than just one ant.
Tim: It’s sort of like how cheerleaders can stack into a human pyramid at football games. But way cooler. Fire ants can group together to form towers, bridges and even rafts to protect themselves from drowning when their territory is flooded. It’s sort of like how the five power rangers put their robots together to form a megazord.
DAVID: Except instead of just five robots imagine, like 100,000. And if there’s several colonies, you could have, you know, 10 or 20 colonies forming this huge, you know, a bed-sized raft of like millions and millions of ants.
Tim: When they build something it’s both sturdy and changeable because sometimes ants make mistakes. Like maybe they’ll build a tower and they’ll build up too tall on one side. So, they gotta let some ants ooze out and start over.
You know what? It reminds me of a great quote from Martial Arts master Bruce Lee about being like water…
BRUCE LEE: Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.
DAVID: And I bet Bruce Lee if he saw the fire and see what it changed, he’s like, Oh, don’t be like water. Be like a raft of oozing fire ants that is about to bite you.
Tim: But ants do more than just build cool things. They also help plants by digging into the ground and creating tunnels for air and water to reach the roots. They help crops by protecting them from other bugs. And they gobble up food that otherwise would begin to mold, rot and smell.
And get this: there are more living ants on Earth than any other things besides bacteria. Maybe it’s time to stop thinking of them as pesky invaders who eat all our cookies. Ants don’t really invade our homes. We invade theirs.
Wow. Kinda wish I were an ant now.
Molly: Tim turning all of us into ant men and ant women with that hard-working declaration for ants. All right, Asenat, what stood out to you about Tim's argument?
Asenat: I like their use of ethos, logos, and pathos. I found out that they used the professor's input as logic, their emotions were the story that they read, or that they wrote beforehand when they were younger. Those are all things that really stood out to me and I love them.
Molly: Excellent. Yes, I love the thought of little baby Tim, writing his ant story. It makes me so happy. Okay, Ian, you have 30 seconds to respond to anything that you heard in that ode to ants. Your time starts now.
Ian: My biggest question that I will begin and end with is, what would you rather eat? Honey or whatever it is that ants make? I was kinda not clear. Tim said that ants make stuff. What is it, holes in the ground? Is that what you want? I don't need more holes in the ground. Listen, ants are great, but I wouldn't invite them to a picnic, and neither would you. Let's be serious. I would also say that ants just follow a path. They have to follow each other but bees are independent and they can trail their own path to find their own food. Ants are only followers-
Molly: Time.
Tim: Wow. You're anti-working together as a group the way ants do?
Ian: Tim, ant is in the word anti.
(laughter)
Tim: All right. Enough with you and your logos. Okay?
Ian: It's ant-I.
(laughter)
Tim: I can't think of anything that makes bees more frightening than thinking about how independent they are. They can just go rogue.
Ian: What you're saying that you like about ants is that they're completely controlled by the people in charge?
Tim: I wouldn't say that. I'd say that they have a sense of honor. They have a sense of duty. It's almost like the Vulcans in Star Trek, you know how they say the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few? That is the motto for the ant.
Molly: Well, Ian, now that you're all warmed up, it's time for you to bring the love for bees. Let's hear it.
Molly: We need to interrupt for just one second, we want to let you know that when this episode was first published we made a mistake. Ian said hat bees turn pollen into honey. This is not true, they turn nectar into honey. We’ve corrected the mistake and replaced “pollen” with “nectar.” Here’s Ian.
Ian: Here is the office of a honey bee.
HONEYBEE: Hello? Yes this is a honey bee. I don’t have time for this, we’re making honey and helping plants grow all across the world! I gotta go!
Ian: Ok. I’ll be honest with you, I’m not a honey bee, just a big fan of them. Bees are colorful, magnificent creatures that are not only fascinating, but hold our world together.
Now there are many types of bees, but the one you are probably MOST familiar with, and what is definitely the COOLEST bee is the “honey bee.”
They’re called honey bees because of what they create: Baby bees they affectionately refer to as “honey.” Which are named after the sweet, sticky substance we all know and love: honey!
Honey bees live in hives, which I thought was short for high five, but actually is the structure bees live in, it’s also what the entire group of bees is called: a hive. It’d be like if you called your family the car you drove. “Yes hello, this is my brother, he is part of my Nissan Sentra.”
There can be over 60,000 bees in a hive, and each hive has three types of bees:
There’s the drone bee, which helps the population grow, and the worker bee that collects the dust on flowers known as pollen for the hive.
The LAST kind of bee is the queen bee. She’s named after the classic rock band because she will ROCK you. Queen bees are the only ones that lay eggs and they talk to other bees using chemicals their body produces. When other bees smell the chemicals, they know what the queen wants them to do. Imagine if when you sweat, it let your mom know you wanted chocolate. Now that’s something I have in common with the queen bee. But maybe it’s because I always want chocolate and my mom knows it.
ANOTHER thing honey bees do that I can’t is dance. When I get on the dance floor they put out traffic cones so people avoid the area. Worker bees however can dance so well they do it to let other worker bees know exactly where flowers are located. They walk in this sort of figure-eight shape, and based on how long and wide the loops are, other bees can figure out where they found food. It’d be like if you asked me for directions and I backflipped to tell you.
After getting the nectar, worker bees take it back to the hive and turn the nectar into honey. How? Well, I brought in a bee to explain it.
*A loud buzzing*
Hello, uh, yes excuse me Ms. Worker Bee can you tell me…
*Buzzing*
How do you turn nectar into honey? Okay she’s picked up a permanent marker… and is writing? Would you mind using something we could wash off after? Ok, fine. Oh great, she wrote it in bee. Let me get my bee translation book. Okay… That’s a g… Italics means it’s sarcastic… Well, what she wrote was, “Go look it up, I’ve got work to do.” Well, you are a worker bee I guess that makes sense. Give me one second here…
We’re back. It’s been three years since I recorded this last. I have a very long white beard. It’s naturally brown but I dye it. I have now learned everything there is to know about honey bees.
So, one bee chews the nectar, then passes it to the next bee’s mouth and so on until a bunch of bees have chewed it. The same way I’m sure you and your family enjoy a Sunday night dinner, chewing each other’s food until it becomes honey. Then they spit it into a honeycomb, and flap their wings to dry it out and make it even stickier. Like cooling a bite of hot soup except the whole family has already had it in their mouth and then they just save it for later.
But bees are bigger than just their hive. They help spread pollen which helps more plants grow. That’s a MAJOR way flowers manage to spread out and grow in such great numbers. Bees!
So, next time you see a bee, tell them thank you.
Molly: A very sweet declaration for bees. Asenat, what is your take on Ian's argument?
Asenat: They are making it so hard for me to choose which one I like more. Again, I split it up into three categories. The logic of it: The random little facts they gave me about what type of bees and how many there are per hive and how they make honey. The emotion that went into it when they told me all of those jokes, and they portrayed themselves as a bee.
Molly: Great points, Asenat. Tim, now it's your chance to bite back. You get 30 seconds to rebut Ian's arguments and your time starts now.
Tim: That was cute Ian. That whole beautiful thing you made. You didn't once even explain what bee stands for. B. It's a grade that is decent to get in a class but your parents are still a little disappointed at you. You definitely highlighted how flashy bees are, especially when it came to dancing. An example of someone answering a question by backflipping before they answer to you? If I met someone to who I asked a question and they backflip to me to answer it, I would slowly walk away.
Molly: Time.
Ian: Can I respond?
Tim: I have so much more. I'll sit.
Ian: The genius part about bees is not that they backflip in response. It's that other bees know exactly what that means, Tim. If you can't understand the beauty of the language of dance, you should look inside, and not blame the most incredible insect on the planet.
Tim: I don't know, it was just hard to understand what you were saying throughout this whole thing because you definitely highlighted the annoying sound that bees make. Do you know what an ant sounds like? Exactly.
Molly: All right. Well, Asenat, it is time to give one point for the best declaration and one for the best rebuttal. They can both go to one person or you can split them up. Think it over. Let us know when you've awarded the points but don't tell us who you've given them to. We'll wait till the very end of the show to hear who won. Have you awarded your points?
Asenat: I have.
Molly: Was it a hard decision?
Asenat: It was very difficult.
Molly: Excellent. That means our debaters are doing a good job. Listeners at home, mark down your points too, and feel free to pause if you want to talk it over with a friend. Ian and Tim, how are you feeling after the first round?
Tim: I know that there are ants somewhere in my apartment right now. I know that they're rooting for me.
Ian: I felt bad doing such a better job than Tim but we both had the same amount of prep time and I think we'll remain friends.
(laughter)
Molly: All right. Well, everyone, it's halftime. Stretch your legs, straighten your antennae, dust off your wings if you've got them, and stay tuned.
Asenat: We'll be back in a flash with more Smash Boom Best.
(music)
TAYLOR: Taylor Lincoln here, with 795-time debate champ, Todd Douglas! (beat) Todd?
TODD: Oh! Oh. Sorry -- I got so caught up in this book I’m reading… I, ah... hiya debate-heads! We got a debate on tape that’s literature-ly gonna blow your minds!
TAYLOR: Yeah! A grandmother and her grandson got into a bit of an argument about which is better to take on vacation -- an e-reader or an actual book.
TODD: I feel pretty passionately about this topic my SHELF! (LAUGHS) GET IT?!
TAYLOR: Book. Shelf. Ya, I do. Alright, Todd. Roll tape!
GRANDMA: Sweetie, I think you should bring your e-reader to the beach.
MARCEL: But grandma… I love real books. The actual object is the object of my affection! I love the way books smell, I love the feel of the pages between my fingertips...
GRANDMA: But all those books you’ve got there -- they’ll take up a lot of space in your suitcase! E-readers are pretty convenient sometimes -- and they actually have less of an environmental impact than books do!
MARCEL: You think regular books are bad for the earth!? Grandma -- what is up with your values? I expect so much more from you! You used to be a librarian, and now you’re saying books are evil!? WOW. Just…. WOW.
(Buzzer)
TODD: Ummmmm prettty sure that’s not what she said.
TAYLOR: Yeah. Marcel just committed a logical fallacy. Logical fallacies come in all different shapes and sizes, but they all make your arguments weaker than they need to be.
TODD: Uh huh. He used one we like to call the “Straw Man Fallacy.” It’s when you misrepresent or exaggerate your opponent's argument, making it easier to attack.
TAYLOR: Let’s see how grandma strikes back.
GRANDMA: I did not say “all books are evil” -- I just suggested that an e-reader would be easier to bring on vacation, and they’re not as bad as you might think. If you use ‘em for long enough e-readers actually leave less of a mark on the environment than books do. If you don’t believe me, I’ll send you the literature!
MARCEL: (groan) Grandmaaaaaa….
TAYLOR: Ding ding ding! Grandma for the win!
TODD: I’ll say. Well, debate-heads -- another example of what NOT to do when it comes to debate.
TAYLOR: Steer clear of those straw man fallacy fails, and next time you partake in a debate -- aim to be a bit more like grandma!
TODD: Can’t hurt! Catch you next time on…
TAYLOR/TODD: STATE OF DEBATE!
(music)
Molly: You're listening to Smash Boom Best, the show about showdowns. We love the debate ideas you send our way, like this one from Lev.
Lev: My debate idea is microscopes versus telescopes.
Asenat: A scope-off. Great idea, Lev.
Molly: Totally. We'll check in again with Lev at the end of the show to see who he thinks should win. Now, it's time to get back to our bug battle. Ian and Tim, do you have a strategy going forward?
Tim: Yeah. I think my strategy is to focus on how bees are just about flash, but it's all to disguise, as Ian highlighted, the disgusting methods they use to create honey.
Ian: I would say that ants are twice as disgusting and they don't create anything.
(laughter)
Molly: All right. Well, next up it's the--
Announcer: Micro Round.
Molly: Your Micro Round challenge is the ultimate getaway. Pretend you're a travel agent and sell us on the idea of vacationing with either ants or bees. We'll pack our bags and book a ticket with whichever side makes the best case. Ian, you're up first this time. Tell us about the perks of a bee-cation.
Ian: Are you tired of feeling isolated? Alone? Do you ever wish you had thousands of brothers and sisters? Do you often wish you could cozy up with a relaxing night of vomiting wax to build your home?
Well, then it’s time to go on vacation to the Honey Bee Hive, the only one-star resort that lets you live with and as a honey bee! (Our one-star rating is out of 1, so that’s a top grade!)
Spend your evenings learning how to flap your wings to dry out flower sweat and turn it into food so delicious that humans steal it from our very hives! You want to meet the Queen? Well you can! Fair warning, when you smell her perfume you’ll suddenly understand what it is she wants you to do and how to get that thing done. You may be tasked with finding fresh flowers, creating wax combs to store honey!
That’s right folks, sign up now and you could be first to get shrunk down and turned into a bee using a process scientists are calling “impossible” and the government is saying “we don’t condone it even though we don’t think it can be done!” You’ll be making history, making honey, and making memories that will last a lifetime (Which for a honey bee is usually between 17 and 22 weeks).
Molly: That sounds like an excellent vacation. Tim, now it's your turn to wow us with your all-inclusive ant resorts. Let's hear it.
Tim: Welcome to the Ant Travel Agency! My name is Exo and I’ll help you book a trip to any ant hotel in the world -- from the desert planes of Africa to the colony in your best friend’s backyard. Once your trip is booked, we’ll use shrink ray technology to bring you down to ant size.
Let’s try it now! There you go, now just press that lever there.
(SFX: laser shrink ray)
There you go! Now we’re the same height.
So, how about our Amazon rainforest package? It has nothing to do with those packages that get delivered to your door, but everything to do with having a great time! The Amazon rainforest is a dense area of lush trees, birds, lizards, and even us ants!
Oh wait. That’s sold out. How about a luxury suite at the Acacia Tree Hotel. Not all ants live in hills. Some of us live inside of trees! The Acacia ants live in symbiosis with Acacia trees. Symbiosis is a fancy way of saying the ants and the tree help each other out. Ants protect it from nasty herbivores and the tree gives us a 24-hour sap buffet. All the sap is on the house… literally. And trust me, it’s way more fun than vacationing with bees. I mean, who wants to hear constant buzzing while they’re trying to relax?
(Typing sounds)
Okay. You’re booked! Did you enjoy this experience? Great. If you don’t mind, please give me five stars. Oh - and let me unshrink you.
(SFX: laser shrink ray)
Please don’t step on me!!!
Molly: Looks like Tim has that shrink-ray technology. Pretty cool. Great job on both sides, but, Asenat, you've only got one week off. Which insect are you going to vacation with? Let us know when you're done. Have you awarded your point?
Asenat: I have. This one was a lot harder than the other one.
Molly: Why was that?
Asenat: They were both filled with a bunch of little jokes that I really, really loved. The way they were comparing some things with others, that was really lovely.
Molly: Well now, we have to be ready for anything because here comes the--
Announcer: Sneak Attack.
Molly: Your Sneak Attack challenge is Jingle Jam. Make up a short and catchy jingle for your side. Sing it to us and win us over. We'll give you a few minutes to write while we listen to some lovely hold music.
Singer: Ants build hills, some chew wood.
Aerating soil, they do good.
Mini engineers, they can walk on walls.
Buzz buzz bees, build a hive.
Pollinating flowers they dance and jive.
Spitting yummy honey for their precious queen.
Molly: All right. Tim and Ian, are you ready?
Tim: Yes.
Molly: Okay. Tim, you're up.
Tim: Oh boy. All right.
Ants are stronger than you think, they are.
Ants are on the planet near and far.
Ants are very, very extra-ordinary,
even though they're tinier than packets of peanut butter and jelly.
Uh-oh, remix.
These ants are bananas.
A-N-T-A-N-T-S
These ants eat bananas.
A-N-T-A-N-T-S
Ants were made for me and you.
Molly: I love a jingle with a remix. So good.
Ian: Incredible.
Molly: All right. Ian, let's hear what you came up with.
Ian: Great. To the tune of Scott Joplin's The Entertainer.
Do do do do do do, do do do do do do
do do do do do do do
Would you want to be a bee?
As an ant, there's not much to see.
Would you want to dig a hole?
Making honey would fulfill your soul.
How cool would it be to fly?
Better than being an underground guy
because then all the feet
you'd be destined to meet
when they stepped on you on the ground.
Tim: Wow. Well, I don't see how that song doesn't give one nightmares.
(laughter)
Ian: I know it will haunt your dreams because it's what makes you lose, Tim.
(laughter)
Molly: Asenat, good luck with this one. They're not making it easy for you, but award a point to whichever team had the better jingle. Was it catchier? Did it make you laugh? The lyrics? Whatever your criteria is, it's up to you. Have you awarded your point?
Judge: Yes, I have.
Molly: Tim and Ian, what went through your mind during that last challenge?
Tim: It was a whirlwind, I'm not going to lie. I found a musical element in my soul and I really let that part of my psyche sing, I think.
Molly: Beautiful. Ian, what were you thinking?
Ian: Tim and I are old friends and he definitely has the musical gene inside of him more than he does. I had to tap deep down and just go for the sincere belting of an age-old tune.
Molly: It was gorgeous. All right. We've arrived at the end of the line and it's time for the--
Announcer:The Final Six.
Molly: Tim and Ian, you've got just six words left to sway our judge, make them count. Ian, let's hear your final six.
Ian: Would you eat honey or ant stuff?
Molly: (laughs) All right, Tim, let's hear your final six.
Tim: The ants are listening right now.
Molly: Asenat, you've got a big decision to make about these tiny creatures. Give your final point, tally them all up, and then let us know which industrious little insect is the Smash Boom Best. Are you ready to call it?
Asenat: I am ready.
Molly: Okay. Asenat, who won this debate?
Asenat: Bees won this debate.
Ian: Yes!
Tim: Wow.
Ian: Tim, I'm sorry if it stings but that's the way the cookie crumbled.
(laughter)
Tim: I went in here knowing the ants are the underdog and I'm not going to stop rooting for them. Ants make better superheroes. I haven't seen a single superhero that isn't an ant in the cinema.
Ian: That was a very good job, Tim.
Molly: Asenat, what was the strongest argument that you heard that swung you over to the bee side?
Asenat: The very last one. Y’all were tied all the way through.
Molly: The Final Six? Final six did it?
Asenat: The Final Six was the one that caught my attention the most.
Ian: I was nervous the whole time. Tim is an incredible joke writer that makes a very compelling argument, he can write music and sing significantly better than I can and I respect that, he did a great job.
Tim: Yeah, and Ian had a wealth of jokes and he can be funny at a speed that I can't contend with.
Molly: Well, Asenat crowned bees the Smash Boom Best today, but who do you think won?
Asenat: Yes, we want to know if you agree or disagree. Our online poll is waiting for you. Head over to our website smashboom.org and cast your vote.
Molly: That's it for this debate. Smash Boom Best is brought to you by Brains On! and American Public Media.
Ian: It's produced by Molly Bloom, Rosie DuPont, Marc Sanchez, Sanden Totten, and Jennifer Lai.
Tim: We had engineering help from Johnny Vince Evans.
Ian: We had production help from Elyssa Dudley, Kristina Lopez, and Menaka Wilhelm.
Molly: Anna Weggel is the voice of our hold music and our announcer is Marley Feuerwerker-Otto. We want to give a special thanks to Austin Cross, Taylor Coffman, and Jed Kim. Ian, is there anyone you want to give a shoutout to today?
Ian: I want to thank the wonderful team at Smash Boom Best for helping me write, edit, and make this as strong as it can be.
Molly: Awesome. We were fishing for compliments.
(laughter)
How about you, Tim, anyone you want to say thanks to today?
Tim: David Hu, the wonderful mad scientist that I interviewed for one of those pieces and you know what? Paul Rudd, for really doing a great job playing Ant-Man and I'm going to give him a call, see if he can change these results.
Molly: I want to thank Paul Rudd every day too. Asenat, do you want to give any special thanks?
Asenat: I'd like to give a special thanks to Smash Boom Best for having me here.
Molly: Thank you for being here. You did an awesome job. Before we go, let's check in with Lev. Remember, he suggested a microscope versus telescope match up, and here's who he thinks would win.
Lev: I think telescope would win because when you look at a moon regularly, all you can see is just a bright spot. When you look in a telescope, it zooms in and you can see a bunch of details.
Molly: Awesome point, Lev. If you've dreamed up the best idea ever, we want to hear about it. Share your ideas at smashboom.org. We love hearing from you.
Asenat: We'll be back soon with another debate battle.
Tim: See you later.
Molly: See you.
Ian: You all come back now, you hear?
(laughter)
(music)
Tim: Like the Vulcans on Star Trek, everything you're saying is made up.
(laughter)