Lightning Round! with Chelsey Weber-Smith
episodePreviously titled “Lightning Round with Chelsey Weber-Smith” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 3, 2026
Transcript
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Being pressured to do scary things makes me feel included. Why is there always a gnat in my wine? A gnat? Yeah, every time I drink wine, within five minutes, a gnat decides to die there.
I don't know if I can tell the difference between a gnat and another winged insect.
The gnats are the really little ones that love to fly into my glasses of wine. Yeah, okay. All right.
I'm looking at a chart.
Okay. Yeah. Okay, sure. They're really tiny. It's not like having a fly in there. That would be, like, really gross. And of course, an Alanis Morissette song. Of course, of course. Rather ironic, if you will.
Nothing more ironic than a bug in your wine. Yes. Is this our cold open?
Chelsea, who the fuck are you? Sorry for swearing, kids. I am a gnat. I am a big gnat. You are a gnat. You're the gnat in the wine glass. You're the bay leaf in the potato salad.
I'm the gnat of the podcasting world, buzzing around. Looking for some fruit in your kitchen. I would love some wine, though. I wouldn't mind being consumed in a wine glass currently. In your next life, you can come back as a gnat in my wine. Yeah, that would be... I would be fine with that.
Yeah. A nice short life, you know? Yeah, you're born, you fly into my wine, you pass away. Probably pretty drunk.
But to me, it would seem like an eternity because all I have is my own context of time.
That's an interesting idea. Did you ever read one person, when I say this, will be like, yes. Did you ever read... There's this Ursula Le Guin story. This was in this collection called The Compass Rose. It is called The Author of the Acacia Seeds. I remember my mom buying this book for me when I was 13 years old and getting in the car with her outside pals, which is a wonderful bookstore, but is much more of a gift shop than it used to be. In the 90s, it was really like a warehouse with a bunch of yellow books in it. Yes. And it was so much better that way. Yeah, yeah. You know, because it's nice for things to be new and shiny and well organized and have polite people working there. But at what cost? There are limits.
You're from Seattle, you know. I do. I do. We've ruined everything here. But I remember sitting in my mom's car on a summer's day. She drove... I don't know which direction on Burnside, but, you know, back towards our house. I should know this. A lot of detail. I would say east to get on the freeway.
This is like a fiction writer when it's like way too much detail. They're like, we passed 123 Sycamore Street.
I really struggle with that. Yeah. And I remember reading the story and it was just such a beautiful moment of like, my mom was like knocking it out of the park when I was 13 with presents, I think 13, 14. Sounds like it. Because she was like, oh, she's depressed. So she bought me my first Leonard Cohen album when I turned 14. Wow. Yeah.
Love that. Yes. We just love your mom here in podcasting. We love in this house. We love my mom. Yeah.
Yeah.
But anyway, what about your frigging story?
What about my frigging story? All right, Chelsea. Let's get there, Sarah. We were heading down Burnside in July 2001. We had no white onions because of the Spanish-American War. Oh boy, oh boy. That was back when Nichols had bees on him. Give me five bees for a quarter, he'd say. Because that was the style at the time. Um, okay. But anyway, yes, I remember reading this story and just that moment in time. And the, it's a wonderful collection of stories by Ursula Le Guin that are just sort of like speculative fiction, as we would call it today in the most sort of like nimble and weird and feminist way. And the first story is about like, it's this theoretical academic paper about discovering poetry written by an aunt.
Oh, on seed husks and, like, their interpretation of, like, what this worker ant who secretly wrote poetry was trying to say. Wow.
I know. Wow. That is a very you story. And I was, like, watching this ant, like, maybe today or maybe yesterday, like, walk across a log at the beach carrying this big ass thing and I was like, revolt.
you can turn around you don't have to bring that to the queen you can be free don't do it you can eat your crime yourself but ants don't want to live alone up there you know we have to live with that they don't want to be rescued the ants and then i googled do bugs have brains do they probably little tiny ones right yeah little tiny brains yeah yeah great that was my day at the beach
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–13:28
2
What is the lightning round format and how are the rules set up?
13:28–30:33
3
Which high-stakes pop‑quiz opening question about McDonald's hot coffee asks 'What temperature was the coffee?'
30:33–35:34
4
Who actually won the 1994 Olympic ladies figure skating gold — Tonya Harding or Oksana Baiul?
35:34–47:25
5
Which famous trials have been labeled 'Trial of the Century' or 'Trial of the Century/Decade'?
47:25–1:00:30
6
Why does Rosemary's husband make a deal with the Satanists in Rosemary's Baby?
1:00:30–1:06:20