What To Do When The Asteroid Hits ☄️
Reviewing Cleo Abram’s new blockbuster explainer
Neighbors,
With the calendar turning to December, we’re officially all in on the holiday season. And for our Chicago readers, mark your calendars for two upcoming events:
Loose Ends & Friends (12/18): I’ll be showing a film at this indie festival, which was organized by our good friend Noah Guardado! Join 200+ patrons at the historic Ramova Theatre—all proceeds are supporting The Greater Chicago Food Depository. Tickets available here.
The Holiday Function (12/19): The day after the fest, we’ll be hosting an end-of-year mixer with the Loose Ends audience and our community. It’ll be a great night to meet other writers, filmmakers, and creatives from around the city—we’ll be sharing more details through this newsletter soon.
We can’t wait to celebrate with you all; expect one last Show Your Work! night before year’s end, too. In the meantime, scroll on for this week’s edition of Neighborhood Watch, written by yours truly.
— NGL
P.S. Last blog, we shared five things inspiring us right now as we reach the end of 2025. You can read it here.
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Video: ‘Humanity’s Real Plan to Stop This Asteroid’ (2025)
Creator: Cleo Abram
Runtime: 21m 55s
Review by: Nathan Graber-Lipperman
Growing up in the aughts, one might remember The Day Before Break—the mystical holiday that only came around a couple times per year. English teachers would flip to the film adaptation of the book; gym class would feature an all-out game of Capture the Flag; and the history teacher might even tell his entire life story.
But even as a kid more predisposed towards math and writing, science class always held room for a special spectacle. No, millennials, I’m not talking about Bill Nye. I’m talking, of course, about Adam Savage, Jamie Hyneman, and their ragtag crew of engineers and special effects experts. I’m talking about Mythbusters.
Sure, there was always a Jackass-but-make-it-PG level of spectacle that captivated the prepubescent male mind: big machines, bigger explosions, and a barrage of science quips. Yet what made each episode of Mythbusters special was its multi-layered storytelling. The crew would start in one place before going their own separate ways; each A, B, and even C Plot would serve the greater goal of busting the myth.
I was reminded of this storytelling style while watching science and tech creator Cleo Abram’s latest upload, “Humanity’s Real Plan to Stop This Asteroid.” Cleo introduces the concept off the jump: In 2013, an asteroid the size of a building hit Chelyabinsk, Russia, sending shockwaves through the region and debris around the globe.
“The scariest part?” Cleo narrates. “No one saw it coming.”
What follows is a two-pronged exploration, answering two questions. First, if an even bigger asteroid found itself on a collision course with Earth, how would we know? And second, what would we actually do about it?
Cleo tackles these questions in tandem—and takes us along for the ride. She travels to a remote facility, where she learns how researchers track asteroids at all times of day. Simultaneously, she collaborates with Mark Rober to bring a hypothetical collision scenario to life, narrating the different responses humanity would take (alongside the tech they’d employ).
Add in Cleo’s trademark motion graphics and elevated animations to walk us through both the A and B Plots, and the video feels like it reaches a new plane of what’s possible in the YouTube explainer genre. It’s a testament to the team’s technical abilities, but it’s impossible to ignore the clean-cut scriptwriting, either. When added together, those two components make this video feel like something that truly earned my living room watchtime.
And who knows? TV screens in classrooms across the country might one day fire up episodes of Huge If True, Cleo’s YouTube show, the same way they once did Mythbusters DVDs. Methods of media distribution may come and go, but The Day Before Break lives on forever.
Nate’s Score: 4.8 / 5
Dedicated to the books, music, movies, and physical media that played a meaningful role in stopping our scroll.
Film: BUGONIA (2025)
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Runtime: 1hr 59m
Is BUGONIA a black comedy? A thriller, bordering on horror? A sci-fi film?
Yes.
“Weird” is the floor of any Yorgos movie, but—with respect to Poor Things (2023) and The Lobster (2015)—the Greek director’s latest project may very well register as his strangest yet. The film follows a girlboss CEO (played by Emma Stone) who is kidnapped by two conspiracy theorists convinced she’s an alien; to say twists follow would be the understatement of the century.
While its focus on conspiracy culture felt relevant, the film lacked a strong message to latch onto, and I’m still left wondering what its final scene meant. Nevertheless, BUGONIA is shot beautifully, and we’re all better off when Stone—one of our most talented working actors—isn’t afraid to take on absurd roles like this one.1
Nate’s Score: 3.8 / 5
Invention: New Haven-Style Pizza (1925)
Creator: Frank Pepe
Also known as “apizza,” this thin, charred pie is baked in a coal-fired oven and served up like a slice of heaven, offering a chewy texture that paradoxically melts in your mouth.2
Pepe’s, the originator, has expanded to over a dozen locations. The seventh? My hometown, West Hartford.
You don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone. I’ve been making do with a monthly pie from Piece Brewery here in Chicago. But if there’s one thing I’ll ever be elitist about, it’s the real, authentic thing back east.
Nate’s Score: 😋 / 5
Thanks for reading! Shoot us a reply, comment, or DM if anything resonated with you in particular—we respond to them all.
Of course, Jesse Plemons shined as an intelligent-yet-broken warehouse worker who slips down too many Internet rabbit holes. Something about the guy where he’s always teetering on the edge of violence really both enthralls and scares the shit out of me.
Okay, it doesn’t actually melt in your mouth. But it might as well. It’s that good.