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What if kittens played the glockenspiel?
What if unicorns were real?
What if you could fly or travel back in time?
We welcome you to What If World.
Hey there folks, and welcome back to What If World, the show where your questions and ideas inspire off-the-cuff stories.
I'm Mr Eric, your host, and today we're bringing you a teaser of our supporter-only show Stump, Mr Eric.
Every month we bring you a mega episode including a short story trivia challenges, special guests from What If World and lots of supporter questions getting answered.
You're grown up. can go to whatifworldpodcast.com slash support to find out more and get every episode of What If World plus all 42 episodes of Stump Mr. Eric ad-free.
You'll be hearing just the bonus story this week, but Miss Lynn and I really had a lot of fun with it, and I hope you do too.
Hey, folks.
Hang tight through this quick ad break, then we'll be right back to the show.
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What if?
Visit ixl.com slash what if to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price.
We have two questions today.
The first one is an audio question that was sent in by Samuel.
Hello, What If World.
My name is Samuel and I live in London in England.
Am I?
What If?
Question is what if pizza could fly bye?
So uh, that's samuel's question.
And then we have a writing question from lucy who asks what if fred the dog pranked everyone by having a pizza party, but the pizzas were actually pizza looking cookies, So pizza can fly.
Pizza party that are really cookies.
I don't know where it's going to go, but those are the questions we have from Samuel and Lucy.
And it's so funny because I feel like...
You know, Fred the dog in the main in the public feed.
He's he's in and out of the public feed in the for the past couple of years.
But I feel like with these with these short stories, he is just all over the places.
I mean, we still get the most Fred the Dog questions of any character.
Yeah, absolutely.
These stories give us a chance to use those because honestly it could be.
You know the Fred the Dog show featuring What If World.
Yeah, for eternity.
For eternity.
Yes, exactly.
Or as long as anyone continued to listen to that.
Yeah, so all right.
So we have uh samuel in london and england.
Thank you asking what if pizza could fly.
We have lucy, a prolific writer of questions.
If it's lucy, i'm thinking of uh, who asked what if fred pranked everyone by having a pizza party but the pizza was cookies?
Is that right?
That's it.
All right, so let's figure this out together.
I might need your help, Lynn.
We'll see what happens.
Fred the dog was planning a pizza party.
Oh boy okay, you know, we haven't hosted anyone here in the tuna fish cabin on the moon since we moved in and this place is a mess, JFK.
I don't know.
We're going to have to get a friend to help cleaning up.
I think it's too messy.
Maybe we should get Miss Lynn or...
Or, you know, some character.
I'm actually, I don't know.
I kind of just sent out a lot of invites.
So we'll see who is enough of a sucker to show up.
And, you know.
Oh, there they are.
Thank goodness, because you were doing a lot of mumbling.
Hey, Fred and Jeff.
It's me, Toofy the Mermaid.
Oh, Toofy the Mermaid.
I'm so happy to see you here.
Is it nice being in this microgravity?
Does it feel like being underwater?
You know, it is not dissimilar to being underwater, the sort of floating.
I feel like I dig it.
It feels pretty familiar.
But you know I'm an inventor so I brought an invention to help you clean up this situation with the tuna cans and everything.
I also noticed that you sort of built an invention around your body to keep you in the water, sort of in the space water out here.
Yes.
I mean, I wasn't going to call attention to it because it's meant to be sort of low key.
But yes, I have so that I can keep breathing water or, you know, air because.
There's none of either of those up here.
Yeah, then it seems that we flooded our entire house with water for nothing.
I mean, that's okay.
It's been leaking out of the tuna fish cans for quite a while.
Some are floating away.
I think we need to, like, glue these together or something.
We just kind of stacked them up to make walls.
And the longer we live here, the more I think this might not be a good long-term plan.
I mean, maybe something a little bit more durable than Tuna Fish Camp.
I mean, especially because there are so many that have had the contents emptied out.
They're really looking a little, you know, shaky there.
Those ones give our house its incredible aroma.
Yeah, I'm just gonna keep my invention on my head to, so i you know i'm missing out on the tuna fishy smell.
But uh, when are the other guests coming to this pizza party?
Oh, they're probably coming in the next uh, three to five minutes.
Just depends on how much time we spend vamping while we clean up.
You know They should be here soon though, so I hope your invention's a really good one, because that's not a lot of time with the amount of mess we have here.
I think it's pretty good.
I mean, this is gonna be its first, uh, real world, or should we say, real moon trial.
So, you know, let me just fire this up, and, uh, whoo boy!
Whoa!
Oh, okay, there is a lot of fire.
Do we just put all the trash in the fire?
Is that how we clean?
Well, it's supposed to... Let me give it a little kick.
Yeah, it's supposed to go and, like, it has an incinerator.
It's like a Roomba, except...
It actually incinerates the stuff that it sucks.
So give it a wide berth, I'm just saying.
Feed me, feed me trash, feed me trash.
I will turn it into renewable energy.
Thanks, Firebot.
Yes, Firebot.
Firebot eats, eats, all, all eats.
Well, Firebot is just learning language.
I get it.
You're hungry.
You're excited.
To you, everything must be sticks.
Sticks.
Where are sticks?
Guys, sticks burn very well.
Give me sticks.
Oh, no.
Oh, God.
Don't let it near my stick stash.
Firebot, listen to me.
Just pick up the trash, that's.
I mean I know it's a little bit hard to tell because it's like a carpet, but just the stuff that's not carpet.
To the mummy creator carpet, eat all.
That's, I'm not really sure.
No uh okay well, diddy it it okay.
So it ate the carpet, not just the dirty things on the carpet.
But i mean, the carpet was mostly just a collection of dirty things, so i i suppose that's fine.
It probably did need to be replaced anyway.
Now that you mention it but uh, you know, maybe Is that the pizzas.
Yeah, no, I think that's the first guest, probably.
Because we didn't, we should have said like a start time or an end time.
We just kind of said, come to the moon.
Get here however you can.
So, I wonder how people like it.
All right, all right, it's me, Sprite.
All right, I can teleport.
So I teleported a few people here, including, of course, my partner, Fair Elise.
Hello, it's I, yes.
There's a bit of a, we should sort of air this place.
I know there's no air on the moon, but we should still air this place out a bit.
Yeah, the firebot doesn't really take care of the stench, unfortunately.
Maybe uh maybe, there's some sort of spell that could, you know, change the scent.
Yes, firebot produces own air to so that firebot can burn.
We didn't, we didn't need that.
We'd already run through the bees on that one.
We We hadn't been thinking about that.
We're trying to deal with a different problem here, Firebot.
Firebot will cook pizzas.
Pizzas for party.
Party pizzas for people.
Oh, yes.
Oh, no, I didn't.
I didn't remember to cook the pizzas.
I was going to cook pizzas for everybody.
So you want me to cast some sort of spell to these?
There just seems like a lot of problems happening all at once.
There's a lot going on.
Fred, why don't we just order in the pizzas?
Oh, yeah, okay.
That, that, yeah.
Oh yeah, that'll do, that'll do.
Let me just call the pizza company.
Lookin' at phone sounds, cause I don't have a phone yet.
It's a really long phone number when you're in space.
It has to come a long way.
And I'm almost finished typing the numbers in the air.
Ring, ring, ring, ring.
Hello, this is Queen Beignet's Pizza Store.
Can I help you?
Hey, Queen Beignet, it's me, Fred the Dog.
I want to order $13.
I'm sorry.
I didn't quite get all of that.
Could you repeat it?
I said I want all my friends are here, and I'm not trying to prank them at all.
I'm trying to feed them pizzas at my pizza party, so I just want 13 cookie pizzas.
That was a really weird caveat that you stuck in there, but okay.
13 cookie pizzas coming very soon.
Watch out for our delivery person bringing your cookie pizzas.
13 cookie pizzas, correct?
Yeah, you don't have to say it so loud.
I just wanted to make sure that you're getting cookie pizzas and not regular pizza pizzas.
Okay, I'm going to take you off the speakerphone.
This is why I need a real phone rather than an imaginary one.
Where are the buttons?
All right, goodbye.
Um, Fred, are you trying to somehow prank me? us your friends who came to your party on the distant moon uh by serving us cookie pizzas oh did you hear that oh boy okay hang on i'll get it i'll get it all i want to say something now Hello!
Hello.
It is I, Chip, the alien pizza deliverer.
Oh, wow.
Oh, I didn't realize that your mustache could also carry seven pizzas on one side and six on the other without you know, tipping you over with.
You know the awkward balancing.
Well, I needed to carry them carefully so I could steer my ship.
Yeah, just put them down here because we're planning to use the pizza boxes to build a table.
Because we don't really have a table.
We had a tuna fish table, but that washed away.
So now we're going to have a pizza box table.
Just getting scrappy, you know what I mean?
Just to make sure, these are not actually pizzas.
They are cookies.
What?
No way.
That's so crazy.
Cookie, that's so weird.
Wow.
Hey.
I finally showed up.
I'm ready for some pizza and some party.
What's this?
Cookie rather than pizza?
Fortunately, I have an audio receipt right here.
I will play it back for you.
I would like to order 13 cookies, cookie pizzas.
13 cookie pizzas, you say.
I just wanted to make sure that you wanted them all to be cookie pizzas.
I'm going to take you off speakerphone now.
That's some pretty condemning evidence, Fred.
Yeah, but it was weird how our voices just sounded a little different in that recording.
The audio receipt does not have the best quality.
Nevertheless, I think it is apparent that you ordered cookie pizzas.
Okay, well, here's the thing.
Because I know it seems like a prank, but it's actually a helpful prank.
It's like a surprise prank because... these pizzas can fly the only way you can you you need a cookie pizza on the moon because you don't want the soft cheese to get soggy you need a nice crisp cookie that because pizza can fly today so that way you can all fly around on the moon you don't float away and then they'll take you home later and then you can eat it wow i really wish we had these flying cookie pizzas in my first story which was what if a mermaid wanted to fly that would have saved me a lot of oh wow this one goes really fast And it's also delicious.
Oh, this is cat-friendly cookie.
Yeah, we got cat-friendly cookies, dog-friendly cookies, you know, people-friendly cookies and mermaid-friendly cookies, of course.
I like the shrimp flavoring.
Wait, I want a mermaid-flavored cookie now!
Do it!
Bye!
The end.
The end.
All right, listen, hey, they have to be short stories.
The whole idea, short stories.
And we still, we can't keep them under like 12 minutes these days, it seems like.
We just have too much fun together.
And I hope you all enjoyed your story.
Lucy and Samuel, thank you so much for your questions.
That was a vast cast of characters for a short story.
Really true.
And a lot of appearances.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Wow.
Okay, well.
Full marks for round one, Mr. Eric.
Great job.
Yep, you get you sharing those points.
That's for sure.
Thanks, thanks.
I'll double it so we'll each get lots.
There you have it, folks.
I hope you enjoyed our little teaser of Stump Mr. Eric number 42.
And grownups.
I hope you'll consider going to whatifworldpodcastcom slash support so you can hear the rest and help us keep doing what we love.
What's something that you know a lot about, but maybe not everyone else does?
Can you think of a few trivia questions that might stump Mr. Eric or your friends?
We like to play truth or quiz at the dinner table because truth or dare was getting a little messy.
So maybe you could come up with your own stumpers and try them out on your grown-up friend or family member.
You could even get your grown-up's permission to email.
Hello at whatifworldpodcastcom and share your trivia questions or funky challenges with us.
Please include the answers where appropriate and use the word stump in the email subject so that only Miss Lynn opens them and I don't get an unfair advantage.
Let us know if you aren't a supporter of the show and if your ideas get used, we'll message you back with an mp3 of that episode of Stump, Mr Eric.
And our sincerest thanks.
I'd like to thank Karen O'Keefe, my co-creator, my producer, Miss Lynn Craig Martinson, for our theme song, and all you pizza lovers at home who may one day solve the debate of whether or not a cookie pizza counts as an actual pizza.
And until we meet again, keep wondering.