Is Hiccup’s first girlfriend a dragon? Was Gobber’s? The riders are excited to discover their first new dragon species; Hiccup’s hypocrisy nearly gets them all incinerated; and we continue to explore what it means to be a man in a world full of dragons.

Sources:

• Pyrophytic Plants, plants the bloom after a fire
• Rumors of a How to Train Your Dragon Land at the upcoming Universal’s Epic Universe them park
• Fred Hoyle coins the term “Big Bang”
• Word of the day: “wyvern”

Episode Discussion and Reviews:

• Discussion thread on the HTTYD subreddit
• Fandom wiki entry
• O’Murchadha Pictures review

The yaks have stopped giving milk, and the chickens have stopped laying eggs! Sheep are acting like the Three Stooges, and a blizzard is coming. Integrating dragons with a society that has been at war with them for 300 years is going to have some difficulties, and in this episode, we see the problems that arise when the “big scaly lizards” try to live alongside the farm animals they have stealing for centuries.

The science section of this one is longer than usual because the episode actually brought up some very interesting questions. I did a bit of research to find some of the answers, and for those, I cite my sources!

• How far fetched is Bucket’s bucket? This question led me to learn about craniectomy (our word of the episode) and cranioplasty, which is the repair of the skull. Just what you expected from a podcast about a cartoon, right?
  1. Shah, Jung, and Skirboll, “Materials used in cranioplasty: a history and analysis.” Neurosurg Focus 36(4):E19, 2014
  2. Rogers, Spencer L, Primitive Surgery: Skills Before Science. Charles C. Thomas: Springfield, IL. 1985
  3. Courville, Cyril B. “Cranioplasty in Prehistoric Times.” Bulletin of the Los Angeles Neurological Society 24(1): 1-8, March 1959.
  4. Sanan, Abhay and Haines, Stephen, “Repairing Holes in the Head: A History of Cranioplasty” Neurosurgery 40(3):588-603, March 1997
  5. Example of a modern protective helmet for craniectomy patients.
• Can joint (or bucket) pain predict weather?
• Can fear stop yaks from giving milk or chickens from laying eggs?

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This episode has something for everyone, whether you like fleshing out secondary characters with a solid and very relevant story; are looking for a short refresher on the science of buoyancy; or you’re here for the butt humor and misgendering jokes! We have it all in this episode, “Viking for Hire.”

Sweet baby Thor in a thunderstorm! The Dragons TV series begins with a new villain, new voices, new tricks, and new questions. What kind of tricks can you teach a dragon? How do humans and dragons live together now that the war is over? Does Snotlout have a heart? Is Toothless supersonic? What color is dragon poo? How do you start a dragon academy? Listen as we try to find the answers and I go on a very long tangent about speculative dragon evolutionary history; this is going to be awesome and scary!

Sources on the vapor cone effect are here, here, here, and here.

Tetrapod sources: Snake article on Wikipedia, Tetrapod page at UC-Berekely.