History Podcast / MidnightBurger

* ApatheticStudent: Casper describes his son as a person who is so smart and so insightful that he recognizes all the hypocrisies and cruelties of the world and, as such, sees absolutely no need to perform any school work or put in any academic effort of any kind. Casper admits that he was like this himself as a kid, but not nearly to his son's extent -- after all, his son is ''a lot'' smarter than he is.

* BerserkButton: Don't sit in Ava's booth.

* TeamChef: Despite being a pretty bad cook, Leif actually held this role after leaving his life of crime -- he's from Earth, and the people of the cosmos love Earth food, so he was able to get work on various ships as a cook.

* AbsentMindedProfessor: Ava shows signs of this at times -- she once described her eating habits during her time on Earth as going home, getting caught up in work, completely forgetting about food, then ordering takeout from the local Thai place once she realized she was actually hungry. Her friend Marguerite was even worse.

* BrilliantButLazy: Ava is quite genuinely one of the smartest people in the universe. She also has absolutely no interest in helping with any aspect of the diner's operations. Her friends are stunned when she actually brings food to the table at the Mucklewain house.

* TheEeyore: Casper's ability to be miserable and depressed in just about any situation is one of his superpowers. The gang actually weaponizes it in one episode where Casper tries to talk a conquering space pirate out of taking control over three galaxies by pointing out all the pain-in-the-ass organizational and logistical work they'd have to do to actually run their new territories. It doesn't work, but they do seem pretty put out by it.

* JerkAss: Casper can be a real asshole at his worst, though this is mainly in the past -- he is 178 years old, after all, and he's mellowed a bit. He was apparently quite terrible in his younger days, and what we hear of him during his time at the Department of Motor Vehicles certainly makes him sound like a miserable jerk.
** The Teds are basically an Empire of Jerkasses, running their intergalactic fiefdom with a combination of genuine evil, apathy toward the lives of trillions of living beings, and low-level pettiness.

* TeamChef: Gloria used to run her own taqueria and is quite an excellent cook. Casper, on the other hand, is a terrible cook, and Leif is only a little bit better. The diner's food gets much better once Gloria takes over in the kitchen.
** Despite being a pretty bad cook, Leif actually held this role after leaving his life of crime -- he's from Earth, and the people of the cosmos love Earth food, so he was able to get work on various ships as a cook.

In the aftermath of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, with her restaurant shuttered and never re-opening, Gloria answers a help wanted ad on Craigslist for a diner called Midnight Burger. But it's an odd situation -- when she shows up, the manager, Casper, isn't even aware of posting an ad on Craigslist. And then the curiously old-fashioned radio on the counter, which had been playing old-timey music and Christian sermons, begins ''talking'' to Gloria. Even more curiously, this doesn't surprise Casper at all. Nor does it surprise Leif, the diner's cook, or Ava, a brilliant theoretical physicist who's apparently a regular customer at the diner.

As it turns out, Midnight Burger is no ordinary diner. It is, instead, a time-travelling, dimension-spanning diner -- a "point of null entropy," as Ava insists on calling it. Every day, it travels through space and time to some planet (sometimes Earth, usually not) in some timeline, and plops down in a random spot for six hours. Casper, Leif and Ava have no control over any of this, but they're used to it, and hey, they have a diner to run. So every time the diner settles in a new location, they open the doors and sell food for about six hours -- well, Casper and Leif do. Ava isn't so fond of this "work" thing.

Created by Joe Fisher (who voices Casper) and Finlay Stevenson (who voices Ava).

** The Teds are basically an Empire of Jerkasses, running their intergalactic fiefdom with a combination of genuine evil, apathy toward the lives of trillions of living beings, and low-level pettiness.

In the aftermath of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, with her restaurant shuttered and never coming back, Gloria answers a help wanted ad on Craigslist for a diner called Midnight Burger. But it's an odd situation -- when she shows up, the manager, Casper, isn't even aware of posting an ad on Craigslist. And then the curiously old-fashioned radio on the counter, which had been playing old-timey music and Christian sermons, begins ''talking'' to Gloria. Even more curiously, this doesn't surprise Casper at all. Nor does it surprise Leif, the diner's cook, or Ava, a brilliant theoretical physicist who's apparently a regular customer at the diner.

* HumansAreSpecial: Humanity is often treated as a punch line by the universe's denizens, as humans seem to be a technologically backward race compared to everyone else. But it turns out that Earth's cultural exports, including television, music, food and even the English language, are ''incredibly'' popular popular across the cosmos. One of the reasons the Teds are so eager to suppress technological advancement on Earth is because they understand that if Earth ever got its act together scientifically, then that, combined with the planet's cultural dominance, would make humanity a serious threat to the hegemony of the Ted empire.

* BerzerkButton: Don't sit in Ava's booth.

Created by Joe Fisher (who voices Casper) and Finlay Stevenson (who voices Ava).