After These Messages: Billy West

In the wake of our "Doug Bags a Neematoad" episode, Julia and Geoffrey decided to explore the many commercials Billy West did voiceover work for. SPECIAL NOTE: For the month of June, send us a copy of a receipt for a donation to Freedom Fund, or Community Bail Funds, and we'll give you, or the person of your choice 3 months of access to our paid subscribers' episodes!First up we watched Billy West talking about his work as the Honey Nut Cheerios Bee and the Red M&M.Which is how we learned that Billy West is a professional bumblebee and Geoffrey … is not. Then we took a look at the thing Geoffrey was the most excited for: The Marfalump. This was an alien creature designed specifically to tie in with Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace annnnnnd Pepsi products! We watched this Marfalump commercial.And this documentary by the person who sculpted the Marfalump model (which, btw, we're super impressed with the sculpting!).That documentary included not only the behind the scenes look at how Pepsi created the character, but also a Marfalump commercial which definitely wants us to think pod racing is cool.We talked about how much fun it is to play villains, and how often the people who play villains are kind and empathetic in real life. This led to some discussion of how Mick Foley (who wrestled as the villain Mankind in the WWE) does a lot of charity work with children and other traumatized people, and how Margaret Hamilton (who played the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz) came as a guest on Mr. Rogers so that children could see that she wasn't really scary in real life. And we finished out this episode by talking about "The Real Life Lord of The Flies" — an account of several teenage boys being stuck on an island in real life, and how they worked together to support each other and survive instead of tearing each other apart. If you're having fun listening to us, please tell your friends about us! Subscribe to our newsletter at thisiswhywerelikethis.substack.com for free, or pay $5/month to get access to two bonus paid episodes each month! We're also on Patreon if that's your jam! Rate and review us! follow us on Twitter where we're @thisiswhy_pod! And, of course, you can always drop us a note at at [email protected]. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thisiswhywerelikethis.substack.com/subscribe