Ep. 179: the coffee's too hot and so is the planet

[00:00:03] Speaker A: Did the story of the McDonald's hot coffee case make it to you all over there in the UK? [00:00:10] Speaker B: Right, yes. Okay. So I have. I'll explain to you what I think it is. [00:00:17] Speaker A: Okay. [00:00:18] Speaker B: So, um. Big litigation case from a woman, a lady who spilled McDonald's coffee on herself. [00:00:30] Speaker A: Correct. [00:00:30] Speaker B: Burning herself quite badly and took McD's to the cleaners. Is that right? [00:00:37] Speaker A: That's. That's the. At least the narrative. Yes, exactly. Yeah. [00:00:41] Speaker B: But this. I also. I think I'm right in saying that there's more to this, but. But I. But I don't know. [00:00:46] Speaker A: You don't need to correct it, because I will for you. But, yeah, you have. You absolutely have the gist of what happened here. And I saw someone reference it the other day on blue sky, and I had to talk about it because their interpretation was just wrong, wrong, wrongity, wrong, wrong. And I was genuinely surprised that people still get it so wrong. Like, even as you know, you live in an entirely different culture country, and you definitely, at some point, have heard that, like, maybe this wasn't the whole story behind it. [00:01:18] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. You know, I don't think that. That that would have reached maybe the man in the street, of course, which I also am, but. Because I am. But always online. [00:01:31] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:01:32] Speaker B: I'm certain I've read or, you know, seen other people discussing that there was more to this, that it was a little trumped up, or the game of telephone has happened somewhere along the line, and the facts aren't really. They don't pass the sniff test, you know? [00:01:46] Speaker A: Right. So the story we were all told was that some lady went to McDonald's, ordered a coffee, spilled it, and was surprised to find that it was hot. So she sued McDonald's, winning millions of dollars for her stupidity. It was seen as an indication of how overly litigious american society is. The kind of society where you have to warn people on bottles of household cleaners that they shouldn't eat the contents, or you might get sued when some brain genius ingests it. The kind of society that lacks common sense, where we want to blame someone else for our own dumbass decisions, where a minor injury can be a get rich quick scheme for an unscrupulous population that would do anything to avoid hard work. But, Marco. [00:02:33] Speaker B: Mm. [00:02:33] Speaker A: This. This was not the full story. [00:02:36] Speaker B: I fucking knew it. [00:02:38] Speaker A: What actually happened to that woman was horrifying. And how society and the media let a bajillion dollar corporation write the narrative around it only added insult to injury. So today, I'm going to tell you the true story of the McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit. [00:02:58] Speaker B: Now, um, the term hot coffee is, in its myself, culturally loaded. For people like myself, who are very, very, very online. As you may or may not know, hot coffee was the name of a mod, a kind of a piece of software that you could install on a particular version of Grand Theft auto, which would allow, which would show some characters nude. So there you go. [00:03:38] Speaker A: Completely unrelated, I assure you. Well, I don't know. I don't know why they made that. Maybe that is why they decided to name it that. Good to know. Now most of us probably at some point in our lives, have spilled a hot drink on ourselves. [00:04:00] Speaker B: You know. You know of the scars. [00:04:03] Speaker A: Exactly that. You know. You know firsthand how hot water can fuck you up. And if this is your first episode of Joag, Mark's got a whole Freddy Krueger shoulder from ending up on the wrong end of a pot of boiling water. What, as a toddler? [00:04:20] Speaker B: Yes, as a. Well, as a. I guess you'd call it. I think the term is coasting, just grabbing onto surfaces and just getting your bearings and calibrating your legs in the first couple of years of life. [00:04:36] Speaker A: Yes. So that resulted in a big old skin graft situation. So this is a thing that happens to many, if not all of us at some point in our lives, albeit maybe not to that extent. In 19, 92, 79 year old Stella Liebeck pulled through the McDonalds drive thru with her grandson and picked up a value meal. Because this was 1992, the car didnt have any cup holders and there werent any flat surfaces upon which you could balance a cup of coffee. So they pulled into a parking spot where Liebeck could pop the cream and sugar into her drink before they continued on their way. And honestly, I'm impressed because my dumbass would have tried to juggle it all, especially if I wasn't the one driving. Kyo is actually really good about this. He always has his thermal mug with him. So when we go through a drive thru, he just like, pulls over, opens up the door, and pours the coffee from his, from the to go cup into his. His mug over the pavement instead of his. [00:05:36] Speaker B: I can't tell you the number of times I've done that exact same move with my jack of all graves thermal cup. [00:05:43] Speaker A: Oh, lovely. [00:05:45] Speaker B: I get such a lot of use out of that, man. It is my constant driving. I have it with me everywhere I fucking go. It's great. [00:05:52] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a yeti. Those are like, those are hardcore mugs. [00:05:55] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:05:57] Speaker A: And I think a lot of the time, Kio is probably using the exact same, same mug buddies, but I'm a chaos agent. I would never do that. But short of what Kyo does, Stella Liebeck and her son did exactly the right thing. Because of the lack of places to put the cup, though. She placed it between her sweatpants clad legs, which is, again, I think, what a lot of us would do. Unfortunately, when she took the lid off, the coffee, tipped over backwards, and spilled into her lap. Now, mark, the boiling point of water is 212 degrees fahrenheit. Fahrenheit? [00:06:37] Speaker B: Yes. [00:06:38] Speaker A: McDonald's was requiring franchisees to brew their coffee at 195 to 205 degrees and serve it between 100 and 190 degrees fahrenheit. So we're creeping up on boiling here as one of Liebeck's attorneys. Yeah. [00:06:56] Speaker B: Now, I've also read all manner of crank, cranky sounding conspiracy theories as to why that might be the case. [00:07:06] Speaker A: We'll get there. [00:07:08] Speaker B: Okay. Okay, good, good, good. [00:07:10] Speaker A: Don't worry. I'll explain it to you. By the way, did you see the TikTok that Ryan sent to us on the old Instagram? I mean, the TikTokers? [00:07:21] Speaker B: I don't believe I did. [00:07:23] Speaker A: It's great. And everyone on here would probably get a kick out of it, because it was like, why is the second person there on a podcast? And it's just the person reading, like, telling the story, and the other person asking a question, and the other person going, I was just about to say that. [00:07:40] Speaker B: I'll tell you in a moment. [00:07:41] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm literally about to say that. It's like, aw, it's us. You're just always, like, five steps ahead of, like, where I am in the story. [00:07:54] Speaker B: Not something that. Not an accusation that gets leveled at me often. I won't lie. [00:08:01] Speaker A: I just. I hold. It's because, you know, my stories are so interesting. You just need to know more immediately. [00:08:06] Speaker B: Oh, I look forward to your openings way more than I do my own. [00:08:11] Speaker A: Well, as one of Liebeck's attorneys put it, the coffee had been brewed at temperatures that would approximate the temperature in your car's radiator after you drive from your office to home. [00:08:22] Speaker B: Yo. [00:08:23] Speaker A: You wouldn't touch your radiator with your bare hand because you know what would happen. You don't expect your coffee to be served to you heated to that degree. In fact, generally, coffee shops heat their coffee to 160 degrees, which would require contact for about 20 seconds before it starts to give you second or third degree burns at the temperature McDonald's was serving their coffee. It takes under 3 seconds to sustain second degree burns, if you're lucky. According to Liebeck surgeon. Liebeck was not lucky. She received third degree burns over 16% of her body, including to her inner thighs and genitals, according to the American. [00:09:05] Speaker B: 16, 1616 percent. [00:09:07] Speaker A: 16, 1616 percent of her body. [00:09:09] Speaker B: Yo. [00:09:09] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:09:10] Speaker B: Including to her bits. [00:09:13] Speaker A: Yes. I like that we both reached for the same word there. Yeah, yeah. According to the American Museum of Tort Law, the skin was burned away to the layers of muscle and fatty tissue, requiring her to be hospitalized for eight days, in part from instantly going into shock, as you can imagine from that. And she had to receive multiple skin grafts. She lost 20 pounds while in the hospital, reducing her weight to just 83 pounds. That's just shy of six stone, or 37 and a half kilos. [00:09:48] Speaker B: Thank you. I appreciate the translation. And she was 75. [00:09:51] Speaker A: Did you say 79? [00:09:53] Speaker B: Ah, that's no way to fucking see out your life, man. [00:09:56] Speaker A: Right, exactly. While her medical treatment lasted two years, she never fully recovered and still suffered the effects until her death in 2004 at the age of 92. But it is hard to fully express how horrific her injuries were. Like, everyone who's seen them, and I believe there's an HBO documentary called Hot Coffee that, like, goes into all of this, and I haven't watched it, but from. From everything that I read, I think you see pictures in it, and everyone who has seen this has just been like, this is amongst the most horrifying things that I have ever actually seen. And, like, either her sister or her daughter, like, was a doctor or nurse, and was like, I see stuff like this every day. And this is. This shocked me. Like, I had never seen anything like this before. So she was horribly burned. Now, Liebig didn't want to sue McDonald's, contrary to the narrative. You know, people were saying she was out there looking for an easy payday, and that was not at all what was happening. But her injuries were so severe that she'd racked up over $10,000 in hospital bills. So she contacted the company and asked if they would reimburse her all she wanted for McDonald's to foot the bill, since there was no way this 79 year old widow could afford it. And she also asked that they check the temperature on the coffee machine to prevent this happening to other people. So not only was she not out there looking to strike gold, she was genuinely concerned with other people's well being. In fact, her family was sure it must have been an accident or like a malfunction with the machine that made that coffee so hot it didn't even cross their minds that this was policy. So asking to be reimbursed seemed totally reasonable. You know, something in your kitchen went wrong. I've suffered these burns. Can you just pay for it? Now, if you owned a company that made tens of millions of dollars every single day, maybe more, and someone said, hey, can you toss me some money for these surgeries? And also check that your franchise isn't heating the coffee so hot, what would you do? Mark, what do you think the proper way to address this is? [00:12:01] Speaker B: Listen, if I was in the fucking driving seat at McDonald's, I would say, sorry, madam. Yes, of course. Right, here's your. Here's the money for your bills. And here's a little something extra. And here. Do you know what this is, madam? This is a gold McDonald's card. Whenever you go to a McDonald's, your money is no good. Here. You just show them this fucking gold card. And I'm gonna get an email out to every single fucking employee, every franchise with your picture that says, you give this fucking woman whatever she wants. [00:12:39] Speaker A: Right. [00:12:39] Speaker B: And imagine you don't charge her for sauces yet. [00:12:44] Speaker A: No, no. Extra $0.50 for the honey mustard. [00:12:46] Speaker B: No fucking way. For this lady. The McFlurry machine always works. That's what I would say. Yeah. [00:12:55] Speaker A: Yeah. And that seems. [00:12:57] Speaker B: Cuz she wasn't loving it. And it's important to us that she is loving it. [00:13:01] Speaker A: Yes, but up, up. [00:13:03] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:13:04] Speaker A: That seems like Justin. [00:13:05] Speaker B: Tim Blake on the fucking phone. Do her. Record her a voicemail. [00:13:09] Speaker A: McDonald's would look so good if they did that, right? Like, oh, this thing happened. [00:13:14] Speaker B: We are shocked. [00:13:16] Speaker A: Yeah. This is such a horrifying thing to happen to one of our customers. We would never want this to happen to anybody. Look at what we've done as a result. You know, we're gonna put her grandson through college, whatever, because. [00:13:29] Speaker B: Nice. [00:13:30] Speaker A: You know, the alternative you'd figure would be really bad press and be the next person to get burned so severely. Might not be so nice about it, and you'll have a much larger lawsuit on your hands. But McDonald's said, nah, fuck that, and offered Liebeck $800. $800 to pay off her 10,000 in medical debt. [00:13:55] Speaker B: What say, tell me again the year. What we talking here? [00:13:58] Speaker A: 92. [00:13:59] Speaker B: I mean, that's. That's fucking. [00:14:01] Speaker A: Yeah, this is not a, like, oh, inflation or anything like that. [00:14:07] Speaker B: But it was shit. [00:14:08] Speaker A: All right. And as it turns out, she was by far not the first to complain about this over the previous decade. The company had had over 700 complaints from customers, but McDonald's was not bothered by this, according to the pool law group. In a deposition with McDonald's quality control executive, the attorney for Miss Liebeck first asks this gentleman whether he would suggest that people should consume coffee when it's 180 to 190 degrees. He brazenly states that no one should even think about drinking coffee when it's that hot because it could cause terrible burns to the throat. Next, he is asked how he feels about the hundreds and hundreds of burn incidents that have taken place due to McDonald's extremely hot coffee. Incredibly, he declares that he is proud of those numbers because he thought they would actually be much higher d. Oh. [00:14:59] Speaker B: This is some Michael Clayton shit. [00:15:03] Speaker A: Yeah, it is. You know, it all comes back around, doesn't it? [00:15:06] Speaker B: This is some Michael Clayton corporate fucking indefensible defending the fucking indefensible bullshit. I hate it. I hate 100%. [00:15:14] Speaker A: Yeah, this is. This is peak, that shit. And McDonald's, for their part, were like, well, she shouldn't have put the coffee between her legs. Also, when it spilled, she should have taken off all of her clothes immediately. [00:15:26] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, like, Meemaw is gonna fucking do that in the carpark of a fucking McDonald's. [00:15:30] Speaker A: Keep in mind, under 3 seconds to third degree burns. So she would have had to have been, like, super human in getting those sweatpants off. And also, basically, she shouldn't have been so old because her skin was clearly more susceptible to terrible burns in the. [00:15:51] Speaker B: Interests of journalistic rigor. Right. How do we know her side is the side that's on the right side? Well, she went, how do we know? Yeah, there was. [00:16:06] Speaker A: There was a tr. I mean, like, what are you asking here? [00:16:09] Speaker B: Well, just, like, you know, this isn't, like. I was gonna say big McDonald's, but that's big mark. This isn't like, big burger trying to discredit her. This is. This is the truth, right? [00:16:25] Speaker A: This is what actually happened. She. [00:16:28] Speaker B: Okay, okay, okay. [00:16:29] Speaker A: Yeah. So, yeah, this is. I mean, honestly, what's crazy is how little work they had to do to discredit her. [00:16:39] Speaker B: Fine. [00:16:39] Speaker A: But, yes, this is the actual story of what actually happened, and they don't dispute what happened to her. It's the degree to their fault. [00:16:48] Speaker B: Okay. That's what I needed. Yeah. [00:16:51] Speaker A: Yeah. So, like I said, like, that's why they said this. Like, basically, she put the coffee between her legs. That's on her. She didn't take off her clothes. That's on her. And old people, like, their skin sucks. So, you know, we couldn't help that. She's old. But like I said, McDonald's new. Oh, go ahead. [00:17:13] Speaker B: Little rabbit hole. When you're 79 and you need skin grafts, you can't. Can you have, like, any skin or does it have to be of the same kind of, you know, and then the goes to find, like, an old person to get it from? [00:17:33] Speaker A: That's a good question. I do not have an answer for that. But that is a fascinating question. If you know that, please do tell us if you have to have the. What? A crepe. Crepe skin. [00:17:45] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Exactly, exactly. Paper kind of. [00:17:48] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:17:48] Speaker B: Or if you can. [00:17:50] Speaker A: Yeah, or if you can get, like, better skin. [00:17:54] Speaker B: Well, you know where a lot of skin for skin grafts comes from? In larger bone cases, I assume dead people. Yes. Cadavers. Cadaver skin is used very often in skin graft cases. So I can only imagine. [00:18:07] Speaker A: I have just cadaver bone in my. [00:18:10] Speaker B: Mouth from a. Oh, you do? Yeah, you do. You do. [00:18:13] Speaker A: You do. Yes. So I am familiar with where we get these things from. And certainly with her size, it's not like they would have been able to, like, pull it from somewhere else. Also, her ass was burned, so it's not like. Like a lot of times, you know, they pull from, like, your butt. [00:18:28] Speaker B: They just kind of saw what they had, what had come in that morning, didn't they? What they just. Hey, half what we got downstairs in the right. Yeah. Motorbike crash. [00:18:39] Speaker A: The more that I think about it, the more I think it's likely they just take whatever they've got. There wouldn't really be a reason to, like, match the skin to her, but I don't know. It's a valid question. [00:18:51] Speaker B: And because this is jack of all graves, it may interest you to know that the tool that they use to remove the skin from the cadavers is basically like a really big kind of potato peeler. They just peel it off. [00:19:03] Speaker A: That is. That's horrifying. Thank you. [00:19:06] Speaker B: Yes. [00:19:06] Speaker A: Good. But, yeah, like I said, McDonald's knew this was a dangerous temperature for their coffee. And I think this is where you're getting into the conspiracy theory, as you called it, or whatever. They claimed that they served it like that because it made it taste better, right? Yeah. It's like if you brew it hotter, it brings out the flavor from the beans or whatever. That was their argument. But it came out in the trial that that's not, in fact, why they. [00:19:36] Speaker B: Heated it like that. So weak. [00:19:38] Speaker A: Yeah. As we all know, if your coffee is too fucking hot, you drink it way slower. And so, in a bid to give out fewer free refills, McDonald's kept their coffee so hot, it'd be unlikely the customer would take long enough or drink it fast enough to require a refill. So not a conspiracy theory. This actually came out in the trial that this was why they did this. But it sounds like one. It sounds like what people would make up. [00:20:06] Speaker B: Oh, they fessed up to that? They admitted to that. [00:20:08] Speaker A: Yeah, this was actually came out in their depositions. [00:20:12] Speaker B: Motherfuckers. [00:20:13] Speaker A: Right. They were keeping their coffee so hot, it would cause people throat damage to avoid a few cents loss on coffee refills. [00:20:22] Speaker B: You motherfuckers. [00:20:24] Speaker A: It's horrifying. And some of those 700 burn injuries were children. And who knows how many more people were burned but never reported it because people didn't realize that they could hold the company responsible. Probably plenty of people got these injuries who never said anything to the company. [00:20:43] Speaker B: Right. Oh, Christ. That kind of dark mathematics is at play. I'm in no doubt, like, everywhere. [00:20:55] Speaker A: Well, this is what I was, you know, you're leading right into my next paragraph, which was saying this is basically the same exact thing that happened with the Ford Pinto and more recently with Boeing. The corporation knows that the product is dangerous, but they weigh out how much more expensive it would be to fix that versus paying out damages when people get hurt or killed. So McDonald's way to see. [00:21:17] Speaker B: Because I never believed that in fight club. I always thought that that was some edge lord shit. But it's. [00:21:23] Speaker A: Yeah, that guy who, the whistleblower who was killed himself a month ago, that was, you know, that was what he was pointing out was like, they are doing this math and saying, like, it is worthwhile for us to pay out those damages as opposed to fixing these problems that we have here. And that was what they found in the lawsuits about Pinto, which is probably where fight club got it from, because this would have been the most obvious case that, you know, dealt with this. [00:21:55] Speaker B: I. It's a direct result of working on this podcast for the last kind of four years or so that I am so hyper aware of the damage that capitalism has done to us. [00:22:09] Speaker A: Yeah, it is, right. [00:22:10] Speaker B: It was. It was right. The. The very act of work, right. The very act of paid work is nothing more than the fucking. The selling of the fucking hours and minutes of your life. That's fucking horrible, man. [00:22:26] Speaker A: Buddy. This is exactly what Marx was talking about. We talk about wage labor and estranged labor. You're not like, your value becomes doing shit for other people. You know, you're not, like, building a chair and you sit on it in your own house. Someone is paying you part of what it costs to make that chair so that they can sell it for more. Profits are theft. That's what it comes down to. And you see it so clearly in stuff like this. [00:22:59] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. The. The infinite nothing that existed before us and the infinite nothing that will exist after us. And we have this just this little sliver of color and fucking sensation and life, the universe regarding itself, and we're fucking just it. We've backed ourselves into this corner where we sell it off, man, for fuck all, for money. What the fuck is that? [00:23:23] Speaker A: It's fake. It's fake shit, and it's absurd, and I don't like it. [00:23:29] Speaker B: I hate this. [00:23:30] Speaker A: You can see by my rants about this stuff. Yeah, I am with you, Mark. You are correct. And in this case, McDonald's wagered that they could afford a few complaints here and there, especially if they could get away with offering $800 for the person's troubles. And I wonder how many people took that, figuring it was the best they were gonna get, especially if they didn't, like, rack up thousands of dollars in medical bills or whatever. There's probably plenty of cases we don't know about where they were. Like, here, have a couple hundo. And someone's like, okay. And never mentioned it again. [00:24:04] Speaker B: Cool. Yeah. [00:24:05] Speaker A: Yeah, right? The media did a terrible job reporting on this case, leaving out key facts and making some statements that were straight up false, like saying that she'd been driving while trying to put sugar and cream in the coffee in her lap, which would be irresponsible. That would be her fault. But that wasn't what happened. Her grandson was driving, and he pulled the car over and parked in order for her to accomplish this task. And it's like, I mean, at the gate, like, it's. It's a drive through. You know, people are going to be driving while drinking the coffee. So there's no excuse to prepare coffee in such a way that a person cannot drive and drink it like that. Just. That's how that works. But Reader's digest compiled some of the things said about Liebeck in the media, like CB's news correspondent Andy Bruni, who mused, I've been thinking of quitting work here and suing big companies for a living instead. Suing has become a popular american pastime, and I'd like to get in on some of that easy money. Yeah. Jay Leno, obviously. [00:25:09] Speaker B: She never said that. [00:25:10] Speaker A: No. [00:25:10] Speaker B: I mean, who is claimed to have said that. Heard Liebeck? [00:25:13] Speaker A: No, no, no, no. He was. Andy Rooney was saying that like, okay. [00:25:16] Speaker B: Fine, fine, fine, fine. Yeah, yeah, sure, sure. [00:25:19] Speaker A: Jay Leno joked. Now Liebet claims she broke her nose on the sneeze guard on Sizzler's salad bar. Bending over looking at the chickpeas, Ohio state Rep. John Kasich said, if a lady goes to a fast food restaurant, puts coffee in her lap, burns her legs and sues and gets a big settlement, that in and of itself is enough to tell you why we need tort reform. Tort reform, of course. Referring to the kind of law that pays out damages for people who are injured. Late douchebag country icon Toby Keith saying, spill a cup of coffee, make a million dollars on his song american drive. There was even an episode of Seinfeld in which Kramer sues a coffee shop after burning himself on a latte. All played for laughs. Exactly. The case saturated pop culture and everyone had an opinion on it, but no one actually knew the details because they simply weren't being reported. It wasn't like now where you can google it. [00:26:19] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Maybe not so much Jay Leno, but I find it hard to believe that all of those bits were, you know, were in full possession of the facts. [00:26:34] Speaker A: Right, exactly. [00:26:36] Speaker B: All you couldn't feed off is the media at the time because, like you said, no Internet. [00:26:40] Speaker A: Right. But, you know, and that's the kind of thing that you like. You give some, like, leeway to Seinfeld or Leno or something like that. As opposed to, like, Andy Rooney. You're a CB's news correspondent. Like, you should find out what this case is about instead of this. What are you giggling about? [00:26:57] Speaker B: Well, it's not the worst thing that Kramer ever said. [00:26:59] Speaker A: Oh, that's a very good point. Boy, that's a rough one. Anyway. [00:27:06] Speaker B: Oh, my God. [00:27:11] Speaker A: This is the only person to have ever truly gotten canceled. And if he said it now, he'd be fine. He'd be on tour with Louis CK Chappelle. They'd have him on SNL in a year. But this was a massive win for McDonald's, who had not only done nothing wrong in the public eye but was seen as the victim of legal extortion here. And while the media reported that she'd been awarded several million dollars, in the end this was a gross exaggeration and misunderstanding of what had actually happened. The jury awarded her $200,000 in compensatory damages, which was reduced to 160,000 because the jury decided that she was 20% at fault. For how she'd spilled the coffee. It's like fucking hell. But, like, even after. [00:28:00] Speaker B: Even after paying her, even after giving her a reward, they reduced it on appeal? [00:28:05] Speaker A: Yes. What? Not even on appeal? This was just part of the verdict. They were like, it would have been $200,000, but she's 20% at fault for this. So her award is 160,000. And then they awarded her 2.7 million in punitive damages, which was equivalent to two days of coffee sales for the company. The whole point of punitive damages, as the public citizen points out, is to punish the party at fault and discourage them from repeating the behavior. So compensatory damages is like, here's to pay you back for what you actually physically suffered. Punitive damages are like. Now, here's the. Like, here's the hurt that you put on them to keep them from doing this to other people. So often, punitive damages are very high compared to compensatory damages they're supposed to hurt. So while just under $3 million wasn't about to break the bank for McDonald's, it was meant to be a message that if they don't stop fucking around, there would be precedent for people to win huge sums of money from them. Only the judge decided to lower the amount of punitive damages to just $480,000 from. From 2.7 million? Yeah. [00:29:23] Speaker B: Oh, that'll show him, right? [00:29:25] Speaker A: Yeah. McDonald's has really taken a big l here. Absolute sham of a punishment like that is. That's nothing. It's ridiculous. Both McDonald's and Liebeck appealed this decision, and they ended up settling out of court. The rumor is that they settled for $500,000, but the number was never officially disclosed. So the idea that Liebeck had made out like a bandit, some $3 million richer, as reported all over the news, was just patently false. Did not happen. [00:29:58] Speaker B: Wow. [00:29:59] Speaker A: Right? Fuck's sake. And while these days McDonald's has lowered the temperature on their coffee by about ten degrees, that they won the PR war means that they didn't really have to learn anything from the experience. In fact, last year, an 85 year old woman in San Francisco suffered burns to her stomach, groin and leg, and scarring on her groin. After the lid wasn't secured properly on her drive through McDonald's coffee, she had put it in the cup holder and driven to her doctor's office before picking it up and spilling it on itself. So it's not even like it was fresh out the window. It had time to cool and still was so hot, she was severely burned. She then talked to three different employees at McDonald's, none of whom reported the incident. So she sued. A similar thing had happened in Canada two years prior to a woman named Lock Feng. A drive thru worker handed her her coffee without securing the lid properly, causing burns to her left wrist and thigh, resulting in another lawsuit against Mickey D's. And honestly, this is another one where I feel like there have to be so many more cases of this, because I know it's happened to me tons of times that I have gone to drink a McDonald's coffee and the lid just popped off and poured it all over my hand, you know? So that feels like another thing that people could be suing for but don't. And the responses from Americans on the whole is largely an eye roll, because what they remember is some dumb broad who didn't know hot drinks are hot, making millions after driving around with coffee in her lap. And we have a societal tendency to hold the individual responsible and laugh off injuries people receive from consumer products. Think of the whole tide pods situation. Not only was there not an epidemic of dumb teenagers eating laundry detergent, the real issue was children putting shit in their mouths. Because kids love to put shit in their mouths. I guarantee when I was five years old, I would have absolutely housed a tide pod. That texture, irresistible to me. [00:31:57] Speaker B: Look, you know what? The fucking. The scald on my shoulder, the skin graft, the visible skin graft on my shoulder is a daily reminder to respect that shit. Right, right. And I don't know, it's hidden under my beard, right. But there's a patch of that burn is just there on my jawline. Right. [00:32:16] Speaker A: Mm hmm. [00:32:17] Speaker B: Which is a further reminder of how goddamn close I came to getting two faced, right? [00:32:22] Speaker A: Yeah, 100%. Yep. [00:32:25] Speaker B: And you bet your fucking ass that I've impressed that shit on my kids, right? [00:32:32] Speaker A: Yeah. But at the same time, when they, like, didn't speak English yet. [00:32:37] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:32:38] Speaker A: What were you gonna do? Right? Like, you know, when they're toddling around, if they make that mistake, like, it's obvious on you to make sure they can't reach a pot or a kettle or whatever, but, like, if they're toddling around and they grab it, it's not because your asshole. [00:32:50] Speaker B: That's where I was going. I mean, I'm living, walking fucking wrinkled. Proof of that, you know, all I saw was a fucking, you know, a cable and with. With, like, maybe a pretty plume of steam coming out of somewhere. I'll take a look at that shiny. [00:33:06] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, at further of the ten people who have died from eating tide pods. Two were toddlers and eight were seniors with dementia. [00:33:17] Speaker B: Oh, Christ. [00:33:19] Speaker A: Yeah, right. We're talking about vulnerable populations here, that it's actually a good thing to try to protect, but we knee jerk side with corporations and assume that if someone is harmed by them, well, it's their own asshole fault for being a stupid asshole. [00:33:35] Speaker B: And don't change the law because you've taken our freedoms. [00:33:38] Speaker A: Right, exactly. You know, if people are too stupid to protect themselves, well, that's, you know, Darwin awards shit. Survival of the fittest, right? Like, don't take away things from me. Don't make me read a label just because someone did something dumb. So, yeah, what I want everyone to take away from this is that whenever you hear about some allegedly frivolous lawsuit against some multi billion dollar corporation that makes the aggrieved party look like an idiot, maybe remember that you live under capitalism and that corporations are paying good money to. To make sure you feel that way and you never hold them responsible. [00:34:17] Speaker B: It's very difficult because, fuck, man, I do love a McDonald's. [00:34:28] Speaker A: Right? I mean, nobody wants to give up their maccas. It's delicious. [00:34:34] Speaker B: Oh, it is, though. [00:34:36] Speaker A: Nothing. [00:34:37] Speaker B: There's nothing like it. There's nothing like that. [00:34:38] Speaker A: But they don't care about you. Listen, just because they provide you with the bombest fries on the market does not mean that they give a shit about you and your family. [00:34:50] Speaker B: Yeah. And I. They. I don't think they're allowed to do birthday parties anymore, are they? They're not allowed to have kids parties at McD's anymore. I don't think. [00:35:00] Speaker A: I just assumed they stopped doing them because now they've turned them into, like, McCafes instead of. They have no play places or anything like that. But. [00:35:08] Speaker B: But even, you know, whenever I order McDonald's on Deliveroo, which I do a lot. You do that a lot? [00:35:16] Speaker A: I see McFlurry containers in a lot of your pictures. [00:35:21] Speaker B: Oh, fuck. Do you really? But they. They'll always be a little popular. Say McDonald's will deliver to schools. You know, delivery will not deliver muftis to. So I don't. I don't know if it was either the, you know, the. The kind of corporate transformation of the interior spaces of McDonald's or whether or not they're just not allowed to fucking, you know, market so overtly to children anymore. [00:35:48] Speaker A: Interesting. And I would say I don't. I mean, you guys have a lot stricter rules about that than I do. I was just reading about how, like, what was. Oh, they took off a comedian. I can't remember who, but he had ads in the, like, in the underground that had him with, like, hot dogs or something in it. And you're not allowed to put processed food and ads in the underground. And so, like, he had to change it. You guys have. No, I don't think it was Phil Wang. No, I fucking love Phil Wang. I was, you know, as we were talking about Wonka and that, obviously you hated it, but I loved it. And he showed up in that, and I was like, he was super briefly, super, super briefly. But he had a little song. Oh, I thought you meant walk. I was like, he had a little song and dance in there. But anyway, I was going to remember. [00:36:41] Speaker B: Chill kids parties thing. Yeah, yeah. Um, it occurred to me that even when McDonald's did kids pies, it wasn't. It wasn't necessarily for the revenue of having the party at the time as much as it was making little consumers of the future. [00:36:58] Speaker A: Well, right. Like, I mean, I famously had my 8th birthday party at Burger King, and I never was allowed to eat fast food when I was a kid. Didn't have, like, any junk food when I was a child. But the Burger King Kids Club was a thing, and they, you know, had these cute characters and all that kind of stuff, and, like, gave you little rewards for coming on your birthday. And so I had my 8th birthday there, and I threw up on the floor, which did not help my attempts at later getting fast food when the experience was she got hopped up on Burger King and puked. But, like, the idea is, like, okay, I got a free happy meal or whatever, but I also brought ten people with me to the Burger King, who now also are members of the Burger King Kids Club and keep coming back because they have incentives, you know, and. [00:37:52] Speaker B: You know, you associate those lovely memories. [00:37:55] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. It's about building, you know, a consumer that keeps on coming back in this, like, idea that, like, you know, oh, they're. They want to treat you, you and your kids well, but, like, you know, if something. If I was, like, strangled in the ball pit or something like that, they would not try to do anything for my family about it, you know? So it's, uh. Yeah, they don't care about you. Sorry. [00:38:22] Speaker B: No, I'm just. I'm happy to move on with that. Yep. Let me quote directly from my notes, if I may. [00:38:29] Speaker A: Yes, please do. [00:38:31] Speaker B: Fucking look at these nerds. Oh, mise en scene. [00:38:34] Speaker A: I don't think anyone has ever said mise en scene in such a horny way before the way I whispered the word sex. [00:38:40] Speaker B: Cannibal received. [00:38:41] Speaker A: Worst comes to worst, Mark, I'm willing to guillotine you for science. [00:38:45] Speaker B: Thank you. That's really, really sweet. It's cold outside, but my pancreas is talking to me. I'm fucking. I'm gonna leg it. [00:38:51] Speaker A: You know how I feel about that, Mark. [00:38:53] Speaker B: I think you feel great about it. Let's go. Let's do it. Listen, uh, congratulations. If I listen, I always get the episode numbers wrong, right. But I believe this is episode 180. [00:39:05] Speaker A: I think it's 179, bud. Shit. [00:39:08] Speaker B: Son of a fucking. I was really prepared for a milestone then. But I want to congratulate you, the listener. Dear, dear listener. Because if you've listened to all 179 episodes so far, if you listen to 180, if you listen to next week's episode as well, then that qualifies you for a promotion within the ranks of our organization. [00:39:34] Speaker A: Yes. [00:39:35] Speaker B: And if you can give us some kind of proof, be it from your app or, you know, however you. You download and listen to podcasts, if you can prove that you played every single one of them. No, it isn't. Okay, you've got it. Email me. Specifically, screen grabs of every single one of the 180 episodes haven't been listened to. If you can do that, then you are promoted to Joag wizard, second degree, and you get the real secrets. Then that's when we give you the link to the. That's when we give you the link to the, like, the double double extra secret snack of all graves. [00:40:16] Speaker A: It's, like, going clear, but it's Joe eggs. It's, like, going. [00:40:19] Speaker B: Going dark. Yeah, that's what that's worth it. Going dark. So next week is the big one, folks. If you. If you've been with us on the whole joag journey, and if you can document that and have somebody else vouch for you. [00:40:34] Speaker A: Oh, wow. This is a lot of caveats for something that is not like a physical. [00:40:41] Speaker B: Reward in any way, but the physical is transitory. Right. What you're doing by giving that proof and showing that commitment is demonstrating your commitment to a higher purpose, which is the Joag journey. You're really coming along with us. That means you're not an observer. That means you're not just idly watching on and listening while we walk, like, you know, while we, like the fellowship of the ring, just do the journey for you. No, no, no, no. [00:41:13] Speaker A: Well, let's sign our billion year contract. [00:41:16] Speaker B: Exactly. Providing that documentary proof to us. You've got a seat at the table, right? And you're the real. You're the real fans. [00:41:28] Speaker A: I thought you made yourself giggle thinking about that. [00:41:32] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:41:33] Speaker A: Mark, I have a question for you. [00:41:35] Speaker B: Yeah, I got him. [00:41:36] Speaker A: What is. [00:41:37] Speaker B: Oh, you could at least say. [00:41:40] Speaker A: I'm not saying it. [00:41:41] Speaker B: Say it or I fucking. Or I'll sit here in silence for the next hour and a hour and a quarter. [00:41:49] Speaker A: I've, I've got a question, Mark. [00:41:53] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, you do. Right, go on then. I'll allow it. Come approach. [00:42:01] Speaker A: What is Mister Blobby? [00:42:04] Speaker B: Oh, fuck me. Mister, right? I mean, you, you want to. You, you asked it. You're gonna fucking get it, mate. [00:42:15] Speaker A: Give it to me. [00:42:17] Speaker B: We spoke. Well, all right, hang on, let me just. One. I flip. Reverse this. What do you think Mister Blobby is? [00:42:24] Speaker A: Okay, well, here's my context. I was watching the new season of Taskmaster, Mark, what is Mister Blobby? Fuck off. Mark. I was watching the new season of Taskmaster and they had this task where they were walking straight ahead and there was something following behind them on this little wheeled thing and they were to try to guess what it was by asking yes or no questions essentially about it. And it was more convoluted than that. But let's just say that's of the task. It's Taskmaster. If you've watched it, you know, they're very complicated. But the thing that was following them was Mister Blobby, which on the show was like this inflatable guy who was like kind of clowny looking. That's about. That's all I've got. Okay, so I would guess he's from a cartoon. I don't know. [00:43:24] Speaker B: Believe it or not, right? There are more joag intersections with Mister Blobby than you might imagine. Oh, okay, right. So maybe a year or so ago, does you remember the name Noel Edmonds? [00:43:41] Speaker A: Yes. [00:43:42] Speaker B: But british. [00:43:44] Speaker A: It was a presenter of some sort. [00:43:46] Speaker B: Yes, indeed. British light entertainment presenter. Uh, originally, you know, way back in the seventies on shows like Swap shop, he would host top of the pops he was on. [00:43:58] Speaker A: Right. [00:43:58] Speaker B: You know, he had a couple of stints on radio and, um, he, he was, he was at the helm of that show where a prank went wrong and a guy died. [00:44:09] Speaker A: Right, okay, yes, I do remember talking. [00:44:11] Speaker B: About this Noel Edmonds. So, um, often mentioned you could, you could think of him alongside Jeremy Beadle, whose grave we saw in highgate of that. Of that era of kind of a nascent british, good natured, jolly prank tv kind of genre, right? No, no, this is all from memory. So the facts might. The, you know, the dates of the facts. [00:44:42] Speaker A: Sure. I'm putting you on the spot. So this is fine. [00:44:45] Speaker B: Yes. So if you were to place no Evans on one side on one hand and Jeremy Beadle on the other, Jeremy Beadle would prank members of the public, right? So. Oh, I've come from work and there's a fucking building firm digging up my garden and I'm being filmed remote. You know what you do, mate? Beep. Oh, out comes Jeremy Beadle. It's a prank. Right, sure. Now, Noel Edmonds was famous and culturally huge over here was a staple of weekend BBC tv. He. His version of that was to prank fellow celebrities, okay? [00:45:22] Speaker A: An Ashton Kutcher type. [00:45:24] Speaker B: Yes, if you like, a proto punct. Yes. Right, before all of that. Before all of that. But in a far more kind of, you know, provincial, kind of small scale kind of shit british way, right, sir? So he would have a section, a segment on his show called Noel's House party, the gimmick of which was it was supposedly in Noel Edmonds house, which was like an old english stately home. And the segment of the show was called Gotcha, whereby he would elaborately rig a prank on a fellow celebrity, a fellow dj, a tv star, a presenter, a host, a sportsman, etc, etcetera. Right? Now, a staple of this segment was Mister Blobby. [00:46:21] Speaker A: Okay, I never would have guessed this. All right, go on. [00:46:25] Speaker B: Right? Not a cartoon, a fictional children's tv show. That a fellow celebrity would be invited on and out would come Mister Blobby and cause utter fucking mayhem, okay? And the celebrity who was being pranked, they would be, you know, being filmed covertly for their reactions to Mister Blobby. Now, right? I'm serious when I say blobby would cause fucking absolute outright chaos, right? Just running about like a cunt knocking over. [00:47:02] Speaker A: It's like a guy in a suit. [00:47:04] Speaker B: It's a guy in a suit. It's a guy in like a big kind of foam suit with a voice changer on his vocabulary. Just. Oh, he says one word, blobby. Blobby. Blobby. Blobby. Blobby. Blobby. Blobby runs around, causes fucking mayhem on set while the moose celebrity looks on, goes, what the fuck am I on here? What is going on? And Mister Blobby kind of outgrew Noel's house party. [00:47:36] Speaker A: It would have to cause, like, surely that would have. That would only have so many legs. Like, basically people would know, right? [00:47:45] Speaker B: Yes, exactly. There's only so many times you can pull the fucking Mister blobby fucking gag, you know, and then of course, Noel Edmonds kind of fell out of favor culturally. Noel Edmonds was beautifully, beautifully caught in himself by Chris Morris on an episode of Brass Eye. Noel Edmonds was, and I firmly believe that this contributed to Noel Edmonds kind of cultural cache. Just completely diminishing. Morris invented a fake drug called cake and got celebrities to, you know, to be worthy and thinking of the kids and thinking of the families and to deliver these fucking air quotes. Heartfelt fucking pleas to kids to say no to cake. And Noel Edmonds was one of these nice and blobby kind of outlived that, though. Blobby outlived, you know, he released an appalling novelty single, like a song that I. [00:48:49] Speaker A: Just saying, blobby. [00:48:51] Speaker B: No, no, no. I'm not gonna fucking say. I remember the chorus, but I'm not. I'm not gonna dignify it. Um, I think I'm right in saying that that Blobby was at Christmas number one one year. [00:49:02] Speaker A: Wow. [00:49:03] Speaker B: Yeah. And still every so often will get wheeled out for a pop, for a cheap laugh on a fucking quiz show or something. Blobby will run out and cause fucking mayhem. That's. That's Mister Blobby. Not from a cartoon, no, but the progeny of one Noel Edmonds, whose pink and yellow fucking ghost continues to fucking, you know, to haunt the corridors of british culture. [00:49:33] Speaker A: Okay, well, now I can. That also makes being sort of stalked by Mister Blobby on a taskmaster even creepier than it already was. [00:49:41] Speaker B: Yeah. See, the thing is with blobby, though, it's ersatz, it's fake. It's faux. Blobby was created from the outset to be this horrible cunt that nobody wanted to see around and is the exact kind of mirror opposite of my nemesis, Mister Nosey Bonk. [00:50:04] Speaker A: Right. [00:50:05] Speaker B: Who was. [00:50:06] Speaker A: Who was intense, supposed to be charming. [00:50:08] Speaker B: But ended up being supposedly this kind of, you know, this kind of french culturally mime inspired kind of interesting character, and who was just genuinely a ghoulish fucking right bastard who everybody was scared to fuck out of. Whereas on the other hand, you know, blobby was just. Yeah, just a puff of shit, really. And remains so. [00:50:35] Speaker A: Fair enough. [00:50:36] Speaker B: I. I'm. I can't believe how long we've spoken about that. And you ask the questions, you get the responses. [00:50:44] Speaker A: I know. No, that was more than I was bargaining for, but I'm happy with it. I really feel like I've learned something today other than just you being like, oh, yeah, I was just like a thing on a kids show one time. It could have been a very simple answer. [00:50:58] Speaker B: Joag intersectionality, right at the, you know, the beginning of prank tv culture here in the UK. And, you know, the brainchild of multiple manslaughter, you know, participants Noel Edmonds. [00:51:19] Speaker A: There we go. It was more joag than I even expected. [00:51:22] Speaker B: Yes, indeed. [00:51:23] Speaker A: Good on a joag. Note that, listen, hey, friends, as always, there's a timestamp in the description if you're not interested in the thing that we're talking about. So, you know, you can always skip who fuck. [00:51:33] Speaker B: Wouldn't be interested in that. [00:51:35] Speaker A: Not that part, the next part. Because what I want to, I also want to talk about a little bit of wrestling. [00:51:42] Speaker B: Oh, shoot. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:51:44] Speaker A: This, this week on the AeWs, we actually legitimately saw footage of the all in fight. It's like not even the right word. Confrontation, altercation between CM punk and Jungle Boy. Jack Perry. I mean, he's not really jungle boy anymore, is he? He's just kind of Jack Perry. [00:52:14] Speaker B: I can't wait for him to come back. I think this has done wonders for him. [00:52:17] Speaker A: Yeah. And this has been, listen, like, obviously I've only been watching wrestling for almost four years now, right? But like, part of it is like the constant, like, is it a work or a shoot? Is it, you know, like the drama, the, like, the fact that it's all super over the top and things like that. And this, for me, lines right up with what makes it so fun. Like, could it possibly be that we're really going to see? [00:52:47] Speaker B: It's great. [00:52:49] Speaker A: It's great. And I'm having so much fun with it. [00:52:51] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:52:52] Speaker A: Wrestling fans are pretty torn on this. [00:52:54] Speaker B: It's great. Right. If you, if you didn't enjoy what aw have done and a little bit of context, little bit of background, the show that me and my kids were at, right? While that fucking CCTV footage was going on, me and my fucking boys are sat like a couple of hundred feet away. [00:53:11] Speaker A: Yes. [00:53:12] Speaker B: And immediately after that, Punk and Joe came out and put on a actually a really good match. [00:53:18] Speaker A: Yeah. Which Joe should have won. [00:53:20] Speaker B: Oh, a zillion percent. But look at its best, iMho, right, in, in my opinion, I enjoy wrestling the most when it, it just rubs up storyline against reality and causes that little kind of friction. [00:53:39] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:53:40] Speaker B: Between the, you know, the fake and, and the real world. Kayfabe is the term, right? And man, showing that footage and working it into a storyline and working it into the bucks new characters is great. It's so good. I fucking love it. [00:54:02] Speaker A: And this is like, it's such a moment because, like, this is the second fight. So for people who don't follow AEW, like, this started with the brawl out fight, right? [00:54:13] Speaker B: You should have been gone different, right? [00:54:15] Speaker A: Yeah, a different pay per view in which afterwards punk attacked the evps of the company and they all ended up suspended for months and months and months. And then finally he came back and almost immediately fought another person. And this whole time there's been like this constant back and forth of like, people who want to believe what punk says and it's just everyone else is the problem. And, you know, he's just like this victim who things keep on happening to or the version that everybody else tells of what happened. And so, like, you know, for the past two years or whatever, like, it's basically been this constant back and forth of like, well, we don't know what happened. And finally it's like, oh, now we get to see what happened. And Jack Perry is just standing there like his arms are behind his head and punk play with his hair most of time the. Yeah, right. And punk comes at him out of nowhere. And the story that he told about this was like, with Jack being the aggressor, you know? [00:55:25] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:55:26] Speaker A: So, like, not only is it like a chance for them to kind of be like, are we really gonna still, like, fault, like, just say it is his thing and people who like him, they're gonna believe it anyway. I saw people being like, see, now we see this exactly how punk said it went. And I'm like, are you on something? But for the rest of us, it's like, okay, cool. Now we've seen it. And they worked it into a storyline with, like, already. I'm like, so into the bucks doing. [00:55:52] Speaker B: This beautifully, you know. [00:55:54] Speaker A: Asshole evps. [00:55:58] Speaker B: Their mock succession in new music is great. [00:56:02] Speaker A: So perfect. [00:56:04] Speaker B: There's actually a chance that little Jack Perry might actually get, you know, find his feet now and put jungle boy in the past. [00:56:12] Speaker A: Like, it's so good for him, you know? And I feel like that's the thing is, like, everyone kind of put it as like, you know, WWE spent like the past week taking shots at AEw at like, their WrestleMania and WWE worlds events. [00:56:27] Speaker B: Biggest goddamn show of the year, right? [00:56:30] Speaker A: And they just spent it bitching about eight. [00:56:32] Speaker B: Everything fucking points towards, right? And they still can't fucking that Vincent fucking McMahon territory mentality that they have to be the only game in town, that they have to fucking stamp out the competition, that everything else is fucking 3rd, 4th tier and look, fucking hell. Pepsi needs to exist. There's always gotta be fucking burger kingdom of these. You know what I mean? You don't have to be the only fucking game in town, you fucking idiots. You fucking absolute fuckwits. That is such a tedious fucking legacy mindset that I fucking hate your ass or you're nothing. Fuck that, man. Exactly. [00:57:23] Speaker A: Yeah, I do as well. And there are plenty of people that I see on wrestle sky and everything who watch both things and happily are willing to let them coexist with one another. And then there's the people who, like, need for it to be a thing. So it got played as like, oh, you know, AEW is just being petty because WWE was trashing them all week instead of, like, thinking about the fact that it's like, actually they have just very much put Jack Perry over with the audience. Like, you know, showing this whole thing. It's like, not only did it advance the storyline, but now when we bring him back, like, you know, we've got all this behind us as well. So I am having a delightful time with it. I thought that was a lot of fun. And as someone who loves the tea, you know, I always want to see what happens. It was just a delightful moment for me to be like, oh, yeah. [00:58:16] Speaker B: What'S the old saying? When someone tells you who they are, believe them the first time. You know, shows you who they really are, believe them the first time. And I fucking, I went in hook, line and sinker, man. When Phil came to AEW that, that episode of Rampage where he debuted, I swear to God, every single follicle on my body was stood on end watching that happen because it was, you know, it was, it was the one thing that was never, that people said would never happen, you know, and it did. And it was for the fucking good guys, right? [00:58:47] Speaker A: Yeah, the, the person he presented himself to be is man of appeal and all that kind of thing. [00:58:52] Speaker B: It's like very voice of the voiceless. Give me a fucking break. [00:58:56] Speaker A: Yeah, my sister and I were talking about it. We were saying, like, the thing about punk is that, like, he's always on the right side of things for the wrong reasons. Like, it's because of his ego more than because it's like, I really like, you know, I'm standing up for the little guy or whatever. It's like, yeah, you know, he can feel superior because he supports trans people, not because he is like, deeply invested in trans rights or things like that, you know. And so, yeah, this is when he came back. I felt the energy of it, but, like, pretty much as soon as he started, like, talking and wrestling. I was like, I think I needed to have seen this guy before because I hate him. [00:59:34] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:59:35] Speaker A: Like him at all. [00:59:36] Speaker B: You know, I. It feels like the, the world overtook him while he was away big time. Not in terms of the caliber of the people that he was now expected to perform on the same level with. [00:59:50] Speaker A: Right. [00:59:51] Speaker B: You know, those who'd managed to stay, you know, injury free and those who'd managed to carry on fucking as students of the game. Like Bryan Danielson, for example. [00:59:59] Speaker A: Right, yeah, exactly. [01:00:00] Speaker B: He was gone a long time as well. Yet when he fought and got cleared and came back, he. It was like he had missed a step. The guy changed his style. The guy fucking altered his moveset. Well, you say that he was still doing crazy fucking head butt neck shit when he came back. [01:00:16] Speaker A: He sometimes does things that are illiterate. [01:00:20] Speaker B: But he's obviously, you know, he's obviously changed his style to accommodate his, his is kind of his blind spots. But Fel was just, just content to do the same thing that he always did, only slower, slower. Fragile mind, fragile body, fragile ego, and a hypocrite, man. They're such a fucking. The worst hypocrite. I hope those words, the apology should be as loud as the disrespect. I hope those words fucking haunt him also. [01:00:57] Speaker A: Really interesting to see how the words will haunt him about the saudi blood money. [01:01:03] Speaker B: Oh, you fucking hell. Yeah. [01:01:09] Speaker A: Anyways, just needed to get that in just because it was a joyful and hilarious experience for me this Wednesday watching that footage. And, you know, so any of our other wrestling fans out there, hopefully you enjoyed that too. Or maybe not. Maybe you're one of those who says, I never want to hear about this again. [01:01:28] Speaker B: Yes. But after all, as John Oliver says, wrestling is better than things you like. And there's a quote from Bryan Danielson when he came back, and I've got this quote memorized word for word. I firmly believe that if you sit anyone down in front of excellent pro wrestling, they will enjoy it because excellent pro wrestling is fucking awesome. [01:01:55] Speaker A: It's 100% true. How many people have I taken to dynamites who have not watched wrestling and have had an amazing time? [01:02:03] Speaker B: Yeah, it's the shit. All right. What are we doing? What we talking? What we watching? What we watching? [01:02:08] Speaker A: Yeah, what we watched while you look up yours. I have wanted for years to watch Reefer Madness, the musical. Have you ever seen like the original Reefer Madness film? [01:02:24] Speaker B: I. Yes, I have. I was very, very stoned, as most. [01:02:32] Speaker A: People probably are when they watch reefer madness. It's a film for me, it was. [01:02:37] Speaker B: A 02:00 a.m. Kind of uni watch. We fucking chucked it on one night while fucking doing the bongs. You know, as we would do doing the bongs. [01:02:47] Speaker A: Yes. It was a film from the 1930s, ostensibly made to educate people on the dangers of marijuana. Now, of course, the other thing about it is keeping in mind that at that time, there was a lot of limits on what you could, like, show in a film. So there was a degree to which this film was also, like, getting past a lot of rules about what you could show in. In movies by presenting it as educational, which is a really common thing. It's the same thing that, like, there's a lot of, like, basically porn films that were made as sex education films and things like that. A lot of early, like, documentaries about tribes in other countries that walked around nude. These were ways of getting around that you couldn't have nudity in films and stuff like that. So if you wanted people to see them, you make an educational documentary, right? [01:03:40] Speaker B: Well, well, well, yeah. [01:03:42] Speaker A: It's an interesting little sort of moment. So reefer madness kind of served dual purposes in that way. On the one hand, it was supposed to be educational, you know, like, oh, be careful about the marijuana that all the blacks and Mexicans are bringing in, and it's corrupting your kids while also being a thing that people could, like, watch some, like, dangerous content at the same time. And so it is. It's a fun time if you're, like, just looking at it for, like, the absurdity of it is if you're looking for, like, a good movie or anything like that, it's not. [01:04:14] Speaker B: What was it? [01:04:15] Speaker A: Twenties, 1920s, thirties, 1930s? Yeah, okay. And in this, it's like, basically, marijuana causes these formerly good teens to go on rape and murder sprees and things like that as a result. And so Reefer madness, the musical, is, like, sort of making fun of that. So it's, like, basically presents. Alan Cumming plays this guy who comes to a school to tell the parents about the threat of marijuana by showing this educational film. And thus they make, like, a musical version of the original movie, which I think, like, it's a thing that when I watched it, I was like, everybody in it is great. And it's very fun. And, you know, the tone is really fun in it, but I really wanted to see it on stage was my reaction to it where I was like, I'm enjoying this, but I feel like I'm just not quite immersed enough. But if I watched this on stage, this would be such a fucking fun time. [01:05:18] Speaker B: Yeah. Um, I don't know if chains or cinema chains over there do the same thing, but Vue, in particular over here will often host televised, you know, filmed versions of musicals, national Theater and Royal Shakespeare Company, where you can go to the pictures and see a fucking play, and I can't. [01:05:37] Speaker A: Over there. [01:05:38] Speaker B: There you go. Which one? Benedict Cumberbatch. [01:05:42] Speaker A: Yeah. The Benedict Cumberbatch. Cumberbatch. And Johnny Lee Miller. I can't remember which one of them was the monster in the version. I think Johnny Lee Miller was the monster in the version that I saw because they switched. Obviously, that was part of the sort of gimmick of that one. But I can kind of get into it. But I think the energy of reefer Madness is, like, really suited to this stage. And so, you know, that's not to say I don't recommend it. I think it's a fun time. I had trouble rating it. Cause I was like, on the one hand, this is good. On the other hand, it just made me itch to see it live. Has both Campbell's in it, Christian and Nev, which is kind of fun. Kristen Bell is, like, your female lead in it. Anna Gastire is in it. Like I said, alan Cumming. Great cast. Good time. So, yeah, there's that. [01:06:37] Speaker B: Nice, nice, nice, nice. Um, I'm gonna talk about monkey man. Yeah. You ever write about that? Fuck. Fucking hell. Just heavily stylized. Just a fucking all out, balls to the wall action revenge thriller. Yeah. Yes. To those who say it's indian John Wick. Yes, it very much is indian John. [01:07:01] Speaker A: Wick, self consciously, so it's not an. [01:07:04] Speaker B: Accident, but with less guns and more punching, you know, I mean, this is a guy who fucking punches his way out of his problems, and I love it. [01:07:17] Speaker A: Close up violence. [01:07:19] Speaker B: Yes. [01:07:20] Speaker A: Nobody's running around in bulletproof suits. [01:07:23] Speaker B: The color on this film, you know, um, does it take place against Diwali? Is that. Is that right? Is it that the plot? And. I don't know. I think that comes across in the palette, the color palette of the film. It's all beautiful neon purples and blues. It's fucking beautiful. About a guy who works his way up the ranks of an organization responsible for the, you know, for the sacking and the burning of his. Of his homeland, his village. It's got the best. It's got the most. Not the best, but the. The most. It's got a unique training montage. [01:08:00] Speaker A: Mm hmm. Yeah, definitely. [01:08:01] Speaker B: You know the one I'm talking about. He's just punching the bag of rice when the guy's playing that fucking the drum. And it is. It is. It is badassery on a fucking cosmic scale. You walk out of monkey man feeling fucking 14ft tall. It is an absolutely fucking great movie. [01:08:19] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. Huge recommend. You still haven't watched rrr, right? [01:08:24] Speaker B: No, I haven't, but I fucking sure as shit will now. [01:08:26] Speaker A: Yeah. Because I'm like, whatever we need to do to get you to watch that, even if it's like, do it in three days because it's 3 hours and it is split into parts, you could do it that way. I have never been able to turn it off, though. I have seen that movie five times so far and I have never once stopped it. No, that's not true. When I was in Canada with my friends and we watched it, we did stop it because it was. We were all falling asleep. But that's the only time I've ever been able to stop that movie and not keep watching. [01:08:54] Speaker B: Do you know, you know, I posted on blue sky about this, but if you ever catch me complaining about runtime, tell me to shut the fuck up. Just say, mark, shut the fuck up. Because I've inhaled the bear and fallout all bar two episodes of Fallout, like, in the space of a fucking week. So, yeah, yeah. Call me an idiot. [01:09:14] Speaker A: Somehow different. But yeah, no, watch our rr. It is. [01:09:18] Speaker B: Yep. [01:09:19] Speaker A: It's about time. And now that you've watched monkey man and you're like, in the zone of an indian revenge film. Yeah. It's such a fucking masterpiece. [01:09:30] Speaker B: Cool. [01:09:30] Speaker A: Yep. [01:09:31] Speaker B: Looking forward. I'm gonna watch that this very goddamn week. [01:09:34] Speaker A: Okay, I'll nag you about it. [01:09:37] Speaker B: I'm not working. I'm not working tomorrow, so maybe I'll watch it tomorrow afternoon. [01:09:40] Speaker A: There's an idea. We're into it. Tell me when. I'll hit play with you. And while I'm doing chores, I will watch RR with you because I'm always working tomorrow. Why are you not working tomorrow, Mark? [01:09:54] Speaker B: Because I'm going to the hospital. [01:09:56] Speaker A: Oh, are you getting your eyes figured out? [01:09:59] Speaker B: I'm going to get my eye figured out and I thought while I was in there, maybe I'll get a brazilian butt lift. [01:10:07] Speaker A: I think that would. You could rock that. Yeah, I'm into it. [01:10:10] Speaker B: I think I could as well. I've seen the curvaceous asses and. Oh, I've seen the curvaceous asses, let me tell you. And I feel as though I want a little bit of that myself. [01:10:22] Speaker A: That's what you're missing. Listen, you got the big biceps, you know, you got the pecs, you got all that stuff. But it's the ass. [01:10:30] Speaker B: I want a would be arse. [01:10:34] Speaker A: Really looking forward to seeing the results. [01:10:36] Speaker B: Yep, sure. And while I'm there, I'm gonna hopefully get them to remove this lesion from my eyelid. [01:10:41] Speaker A: Yay. Did the other one go away? [01:10:45] Speaker B: It hasn't. It hasn't got any bigger, and I'm palpating it a little as we speak. It's still there, but it hasn't. [01:10:51] Speaker A: Okay. You don't have to palpate it for my benefit. [01:10:55] Speaker B: Okie dokie. [01:10:56] Speaker A: Now, you say that if I had a nickel for every time. Now, I went to the city yesterday all on my own. I mean, I met someone once I got there, but, you know, traveled into the city on my own. Usually I have Kia with me when I go, but went to lower Manhattan, where we will be visiting on our Joag and lovely meetup. [01:11:22] Speaker B: Yes. [01:11:23] Speaker A: Plug for that sneaking up, bro. It is five months away now, so start planning creepy, creepy, putting money in your piggy bank and whatnot. But yeah. So took the train into lower Manhattan and went to the Alamo drafthouse there to see the irish folk horror film. All you need is death, accompanied by a Q and a with the director, the filmmaker. I mean, he did. [01:11:52] Speaker B: I know nothing of the movie, but that is a great title. [01:11:55] Speaker A: And the tagline is love is a knife with a blade for a handle. [01:12:02] Speaker B: It's very stylish. [01:12:03] Speaker A: So good. Yeah. And so Paul Duan is the filmmaker. He wrote, directed this movie. And it is. I think this is the. I can't tell fully whether you'll like, like this movie or not. I think you will, but I think you are going to really respect the big swings this movie takes. And so what I would say about this movie is that it, you have to accept first that, like, it is low budget. So there are things that, like, might distract you, right? There are things that might initially take you a minute, sort of get into, because you're like, okay, this isn't, you know, like, some of the sounds like if someone closes a car door, it sounds like a car door on a camera, not a car door in real life. Right? Like, you know, little things like that. But. And then, like, you know, this kind of is based around the idea that there is an underground folk music collecting ring. Like, you'd have a black market drug ring or something like that. A black market organ ring, you know, something like that. So, you know, you have to lean into a very weird premise. Right? Like, this doesn't exist in our world. This exists in a world where capturing songs is something that, like, you know, is, like, deeply dangerous and stuff like that. [01:13:20] Speaker B: Right. I'm intrigued by this already. [01:13:23] Speaker A: Right? [01:13:23] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a really interesting premise. [01:13:24] Speaker A: But I can I can see people going like, that's ridiculous. And, like, tuning out. But from there, where this movie goes gets super bananas. It gets Cronenbergian. Gross. At various points. I mean, you got a lot of mutilated weird stuff and, you know, people transforming in odd ways. And it gets so balls to the wall by the end of it that it's like if you're still thinking about any of the, like, amateurishness of things like that and stuff like that, it's like you are you just need to, like, I don't know how you can not get sucked in. [01:13:58] Speaker B: Practical effects. [01:13:59] Speaker A: Practical effects. Yeah, there is some cg towards the end, but for the most part, I mean, you're getting. Yeah, practical. And that's one of the things that's so interesting about it too, is like, I caught myself sitting there thinking like, this is definitely this is 100% practical. How did they how did they manage to do that? You know, which I love that feeling of like, just like, oh, man, they're using makeup somehow here. [01:14:23] Speaker B: And, you know, briefly chatted this over this very topic over with my darling big bro Alan last night, in fact, as he was watching terrify two. And I I believe that the discussion around practical versus digital special effects is similar in. I think it's it's similar in its basis to the discussion between vinyl and digital music. [01:14:54] Speaker A: Okay. [01:14:54] Speaker B: In that one, it's this. It's this question of the noise of life, isn't it? One lacks a warmth, whereas the other has a kind of, you can do more with one format in what you put on screen. But the very best digital effects still don't quite fucking echo right, you know? [01:15:20] Speaker A: Yeah. And this is one of the, like, you know, with, and I know you're enjoying this. This is not to diss the show or anything like that, but this is one of my issues with fallout is, you know, so much CGI violence and stuff in it that for me, like, it's a video game, fine, or whatever, but it does lack that, like, feeling of like, oh, this is, like, actually happening in this show. [01:15:44] Speaker B: Just mass and weight and fucking actual tangibility. [01:15:49] Speaker A: Yeah. So when you, like, see it, you know, it, like, really. That's the thing is because most things at this point are going the digital route with it. [01:15:57] Speaker B: Yes. [01:15:58] Speaker A: And so then when you see something do, like, the practical stuff, it, like, really reminds you of, like, you know, whether or not, like, neither are believable necessarily practical or digital effects, but it's kind of about, like. Yeah, that. That feeling of, like, something tangible to it that you don't necessarily get from being like, yeah, that just looks like a computer did it. [01:16:21] Speaker B: But again, you know, with the analog, you've got pops and scratches on a vinyl. That isn't to say that a practical effect is always gonna look better, right? [01:16:32] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. [01:16:33] Speaker B: Fuck me. How many shit looking fucking prop severed heads have we seen? Yeah, but I'll always take a prop. Seven head over a digital one, right? [01:16:42] Speaker A: Yeah, 100%. Yeah. So I recommend all you need is death. You know, go into it, like, knowing you're looking, like, literally he was talking about the fact that he's like, I went broke making this. No one would fund this movie. It was too weird. Like, this doesn't sound like a thing that anyone would watch. So he had to make it using his own money. So, like, you know, think about it that way and then be in awe of what is made of that. And more importantly, like, so many movies are the same now. Like, especially when it comes to, like, you know, you've got kind of, like, the Blumhouse machine, which is hit or miss. Sometimes it's great, and sometimes, just, like, it's just a copy. You got. Hulu puts out, like, a new horror movie, like, every week, and they're, like, all basically carbon copies of each other. You have not seen another. All you need is death. This is a new idea. And so whether it works for you or not, you're watching something you've never seen before, and I think that makes it super worthwhile. [01:17:41] Speaker B: Do you know you have done a fantastic job of selling. What are the plans for release of when and how am I going to it get? [01:17:47] Speaker A: You can get it on Vod now. It's in limited release, like, you know, just where the distributor was able to get it. [01:17:54] Speaker B: So can I steal it and give the guy some money? Can I do that? [01:17:57] Speaker A: I'm sure he'd probably be fine with that, you know, very cool guy. I also told him, I was like, hey, I have a horror podcast. If you ever want to come and talk to us about how you made this movie. And he was like, yeah, please. Would love to do that. So maybe we'll get Paul Duan on here to talk about his journey. [01:18:13] Speaker B: Plenty of stuff I'd like to ask him. [01:18:15] Speaker A: Yeah, I was like, oh, Mark will definitely pick his brain otherwise. We watch together. [01:18:22] Speaker B: What would you put in a new nightmare on Elm street film? What do you think about nightmare on Elm street? Do you think. [01:18:28] Speaker A: It. That's the whole interview. Great talking to you, Paul. Thanks for your time. We watched a movie together called Mute Witness this week, which is we don't have to spend much time on. It's a, it's a movie about a woman who is working on a horror movie set. [01:18:50] Speaker B: And the whole premise of the movie is in the title. [01:18:57] Speaker A: It's true. It is. Yeah. You could probably make up what you think this movie is about from the name mute witness. And you're correct. [01:19:04] Speaker B: Yes. [01:19:05] Speaker A: This woman is on the set of a horror film, somehow ends up left behind in the studio when everybody leaves and she's trying to get someone to come let her out and realizes, hey, there's like a film, another film being made over here and ends up witnessing the making of a pornographic snuff film and seeing a woman murdered. And she is, the woman who witnesses this is mute. And so she is trying to both escape this situation and let people know what's going on without being able to speak. And it turns out that this goes much higher up into the russian government. And so there's a whole cabal of people now after her for having witnessed this murder. [01:19:49] Speaker B: Yes. And that is it. That's all you need. [01:19:52] Speaker A: It's, it's a weird ass movie because it seems like it's like a very serious film or like it starts very silly. The opening scene is very silly, then it gets very serious and then it's like straight slapstick towards the end of it. It, the tone is confusing. [01:20:07] Speaker B: Yeah. I, like I said to you before we hit record, I don't remember anything about it. [01:20:14] Speaker A: Yeah. I'm not mad for watching it. It was just like a very weird movie. [01:20:19] Speaker B: Yeah, it's video shop shelf filler stuff, isn't it? You know, it exists out there. It is one of the films of all time. That's what it is. [01:20:27] Speaker A: Yes, precisely. [01:20:29] Speaker B: Yep. Mute witness friends. Ah, let me see. Did I watch anything else? Did we watch anything else together? Just checking the old. We didn't know that was good old letterbox. [01:20:38] Speaker A: It's a slow week for both of us. [01:20:40] Speaker B: Um, so, well, large. [01:20:42] Speaker A: We were watching tv. [01:20:43] Speaker B: I have absolute plans this week to catch civil war. And, uh, they are my two, they are my two priorities this week. I'm fucking civil war and, uh, uh, uh. [01:20:54] Speaker A: Oh, right, right, right. Yeah, definitely. [01:20:57] Speaker B: I'm frothing for civil war. I can't fucking wait. I think. [01:20:59] Speaker A: Alec, I am not. [01:21:02] Speaker B: Oh, are you not? [01:21:03] Speaker A: No. Not even slightly. Okay. [01:21:06] Speaker B: Why is that, Alex Garland? Is it the plot? What is. [01:21:08] Speaker A: No, no. [01:21:09] Speaker B: What is it? [01:21:10] Speaker A: As I determined, there's only one Alex Garland movie I don't like, and that's annihilation. But I don't like annihilation either. [01:21:17] Speaker B: But everyone seems to love it. [01:21:18] Speaker A: No. Yeah. For what? That's, like, his most acclaimed one, and I do not. [01:21:21] Speaker B: And it's got Natalie Portman in it. [01:21:24] Speaker A: If it can't win you over with Natalie Portman. But, yeah, the idea, like, with civil war, of, like, managing to make a movie about an american civil war that doesn't say anything about american politics is like. Like, what are you. This, to me, is like three billboards. Like Martin McDonough making three billboards and trying to say something, and it's like, yeah, you biffed it, buddy. I love Martin McDonough. But don't make a movie about american relations when you don't know anything about american race relations or, you know, like Paul Aggis and Crash. You know, buddy, this is, you know, your. Your canadian perspective or whatever, does not understand this. [01:22:06] Speaker B: It's the true Chekhov's gun, isn't it? If you're gonna fucking. You interrogate your themes, you fucking spineless nerd. [01:22:12] Speaker A: So, yeah, that's what with. With Civil War, that's basically sort of roundly the thing that I keep reading about. It is, like, it doesn't. It doesn't say anything, you know, like, in a country that is extremely divided and, you know, constantly on the cusp of civil War, like, why would you make a movie about that? That doesn't. That's not the point. You know, I didn't. [01:22:37] Speaker B: Is that the critical kind of view, then? Is that the critical stuff? [01:22:41] Speaker A: No, he's said that, like, he's come out and said that this is not like a meditation on american politics or whatever. In fact, he looks at it as, like, a commentary on, like, journalism. But from what I've read, people don't think it makes a really super good point about that either. So it's one of those ones that I'm like, I'll see it sometime when it's on DVD. It's just not at that. Like, normally an Alex Garland movie is like a. Yeah, I'm in. I'm opening day or whatever with this. I'm like, do I really just want, like, a stressful movie about American civil War when I live in an America that's, like, already about to tear itself apart, eh? [01:23:16] Speaker B: Well, I'll see it so you don't have to. [01:23:18] Speaker A: Yeah, you can. You can talk about it. I do hear, of course, Kirsten Dunst and her hubby are amazing in it, so that's a plus. No complaints. Have I heard about the acting in this film? [01:23:30] Speaker B: Okay, well, more next week because I'm gonna catch it this week for sure. [01:23:34] Speaker A: Yes. [01:23:36] Speaker B: I'm delighted that you've taken the fucking plunge and watched the bear. I'm genuinely, genuinely delighted that you did. What are your thoughts? [01:23:45] Speaker A: I mean, I love it. It's fantastic. And I feel like we need this. I was. I suggested we do this as a snack because I'm like, we have so much to talk about with the bear. Like, I don't feel like we can do it in. In the amount of time we have here, but it is. What I will say is, like, you know, I've said before, the only reason I wasn't watching it is because people warned me it would stress me out with all the yelling and all that kind of stuff. But what people didn't think about was, a, that I watched shameless religiously, and b, that I watch cooking shows religiously, including stuff like kitchen nightmares, where it's just often people screaming at each other. So it's actually like, I'm weirdly the target audience for the bear. Yeah. There's so much to say about it. I feel like we need to do it as a separate thing. But, like, what's your overall that you want to say about this thing? [01:24:38] Speaker B: Um, I. More than once I've said that. You know how clearly I remember a particular episode of Breaking Bad and reflecting to myself, stepping outside of the episode and saying to myself, nothing will ever be this good again. I I'm delighted to have been proved wrong because this fucking program, it. It reached me in a completely unexpected and unprecedented way. It just. It reached right into me. And yet, you know, the. The aggression and the. The kind of. The casual fucking cruelty of these characters is all. It all comes from a place of just confused love. You've. You've got a fucking. Learn to express love, right? That's what the fucking. That's if people. If everyone in the show could just express their love for one another properly. Oh, man. You've got to be taught to express love, and you've got to learn that it's fine to express love. Just express love for the people around you. That's what this fucking show is telling me loud and clear. [01:25:55] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, yeah, again, we need to talk more about it. But it's watching that journey and the different ways in which that plays out for people is just incredible. You know, the places where people start in this and where they sort of end up so far is it is that journey and it's really moving to watch. [01:26:21] Speaker B: It's unreal. It's unreal. And of course, just to briefly talk about fallout, look, it's way better than you could have wanted it to be, right? It didn't. It completely understood the assignment. It could have just. It could have just gone through the motions and been a fallout tv show. All right, fine. And, you know, nailed the aesthetic and called back to the games and, you know, drop some shit in there for the fucking nerds. But it, it took it fucking self seriously. It took the assignment seriously and it does way more than you fucking thought it would. Fallout is excellent. It is an. [01:27:01] Speaker A: It's all right for me. I don't think I'll finish it. But, you know, I appreciate what it's trying to do. [01:27:07] Speaker B: I suppose it's a, it's an excellent tv show. And if we are now in the era of high value, big fucking, you know, big budget movie video game adaptations, then it's an era that I'm happy to fucking be in. Sign up and give me more. [01:27:32] Speaker A: It makes sense. Yeah. [01:27:34] Speaker B: Oh, it really does. I mean, since I was a Wii gamer, yeah, since I was but a little teen fucking stoner with my PS one failing uni, I've been dreaming of that Metal Gear solid adaptation and it's never gonna happen in movie form. It's just never gonna happen because it's batshit and you couldn't fucking do it. But if you take the same rigor and the same fucking approach that they've taken a fallout that is think it through and get it fucking right. I swear to fucking God I would, I would, I would. I would drop to my knees and weep if the next was metal gear solid. It would be amazing. [01:28:17] Speaker A: Right on. [01:28:19] Speaker B: Well, mark, hello. [01:28:22] Speaker A: Listen, you've been in your taking Corrigan's recommendations era. I love it too. It's a great era. I know. I'm trying to tell you all this time, but anyways, most recently that's been the book the Heat will kill you first. Life and death on a scorched planet by Jeff Goodell. And this is a book about the urgency of climate change. And his basic argument is that we need to scare the shit out of people because what's happening is terrifying. And that includes everything from branding, like the shift away from global. The phrase global warming and the idea that we should start naming heat waves like we do hurricanes to giving graphic details of the horrific deaths. People are already dying as a result of the climate crisis. [01:29:10] Speaker B: Yeah. Which it does on both a global and national and personal level. Individual level. Individual stories of people who just did not fucking reckon with the heat and died. Families, individuals, normal fucking air quotes. Normal people whose lives you can relate to, you know, and who just fucking died because it's hot as fuck. [01:29:34] Speaker A: Exactly. But on top of that, he talks about some of the ways that we've historically adjusted to changes in the climate, some of which, like air conditioning, only made things worse. And some of the ways in which scientists are trying to science our way out of certain death. Because let's face it, we're not headed in the direction of holding corporations accountable right now. [01:29:57] Speaker B: Right. We have failed. That. That's my standpoint right now. We have failed. [01:30:03] Speaker A: And you have something. Oh, go ahead. [01:30:05] Speaker B: Something in particular that one of the central kind of pillars of this book that I'm really, really, really getting behind is that we have to rethink just what heat is. You know, in that we're so used to either being able to control it on a personal level. Turn the heat up, turn the heat down. On a global level, it gets hot in the summer, it gets cooler in the winter. It's freezing cold at the north of the planet, in the south of the planet, and hot in the middle bit. All of that needs to fucking go. It isn't something we can control. It's something that is going to control. No, Siri. No, Siri. And we failed to do that. [01:30:47] Speaker A: And you have some staggering stats and things, if I understand correctly, about how. [01:30:52] Speaker B: Badly we've failed at this to anyone and not just, you know, the level three Joag wizards. Anyone who's been listening to jack O'Graves at all really would know that we've fucking failed. And I started looking at this simply within my lifetime, right? Simply within the last 45 years, for that is how old I am, right? I'm 45. And since 1982, land and ocean temperature combined has gone up almost 0.4 degrees per decade, right? Yeah, per decade. And that's more than three times faster than it did the long term average since the mid 18 hundreds. [01:31:36] Speaker A: Jesus. [01:31:37] Speaker B: So just in the last five decades. [01:31:40] Speaker A: Yeah, that's one of those things that people I don't think totally have grappled with, like, that speed that this has happened with. [01:31:49] Speaker B: Yes. Just like those individuals who get caught up because they don't see it coming the speed. That's why we can't think of heat as something. Ah, future generations, future generations. Na na na na na na na. Here and now. Um. And what I also. One of the things that I adore, right. So much about this whole thing. Ah, well, there's a couple of things. And not to want to rabbit hole too much, right? I have become convinced of late that this is the great filter. I'm convinced this is what it is. This is why there's no one out there. It, it has become my belief, it has become my kind of my head cannon that the reason why there's no one out there is because as part of socialization, every species will go through the same kind of broad beats as in trying to get off their own planet, trying to, trying to kind of air quotes improve their life and every society burns up their own planet. That's my, that's what I believe. And we are, we're about to do that. That's why I think there's no one out there. That's my, that's my fucking, that's the way I'm talking to myself now about, you know, the Fermi paradox. But the cool thing is we've known it all along, right? [01:33:12] Speaker A: And just as a side sort of plug, if you will, except only for additional information, we did a video on this on wisecrack not too long ago and we talked about the fact that, like, to be clear, 50 years ago scientists told us exactly what trajectory we were on and we have hit it exactly pretty much to the year from their predictions. So this is not stuff we did not know. We have known this was coming. [01:33:39] Speaker B: There's a wonderful Guardian article which I've read today. The IPCC is the intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is a branch of the UN studying climate change, right? And since 1992 they have periodically been reporting on the change in earth climate. And what the Guardian has done is printed just key lines from each one right up until the present day. And they get more and more stark and forthright in their language. 1990 219 92. We are certain of the emissions resulting from human activities substantially increasing the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. These increases will result, on average, in an additional warming of the earth's surface. 1992, their very first ever summary report. Second report in 95. Global mean surface temperature has increased by about 0.3 and 0.6 since the late 19th century. The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate. Adverse impacts on human health with significant loss of life. 2001. There is now stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities, rising socioeconomic costs related to weather damage and regional variations in climate. 2007 warming of the climate system is unequivocal. Eleven of the last twelve years rank among the twelve warmer years on records. It goes on and on and on, and every single report is more fucking by the end they're like, fuck's sake, right? [01:35:14] Speaker A: We're just screaming into the void at this point that we have just walked off the cliff. [01:35:19] Speaker B: Yeah, I'll just jump to 2018. Climate change is occurring earlier and more rapidly than expected. Even at the current level of one degree sea warming. It is painful. This report is really important as a scientific robustness that shows 1.5 degrees c is not just a political concession. There is a growing recognition that two degrees c is dangerous and nothing has changed. I've said it before, I've said it before. Every target has been missed. Emissions have just increased. Nothing has changed. We are now fucked. [01:35:54] Speaker A: Yes, completely. [01:35:57] Speaker B: So with that said, yeah, we've talked. [01:36:00] Speaker A: Many, many times about our sort of hopelessness when it comes to climate change. And one of the things that can be underwhelming about climate books can be that the solutions rely on us suddenly being able to rein in the corporations that are responsible for this in a world where that is absolutely not going to happen anytime soon. And one of the things I liked in this book is it did talk about using litigation as a way to go through this. If we're not going to regulate, then. [01:36:29] Speaker B: That'S pretty much exactly where I am now. Yes. [01:36:31] Speaker A: Yeah. There are people who are researchers who quantify how these companies have, you know, how much they've contributed to warming. They are scientifically determining this so that they can take these companies to court and, you know, hold them accountable. [01:36:52] Speaker B: It's now the case that science has caught up to the point where extreme weather events can now be directly attributed. [01:36:58] Speaker A: Exactly. And it's called attribution science. I believe that's what they refer to it in the book. But this has also led to some innovative ideas, even from you, Mark. In fact, not too long ago you called into BBC radio two to propose one of these solutions. Should we have a listen to that real quick? [01:37:15] Speaker B: Do it. Let's listen to me fucking chatting with Jeremy vine and some fucking. [01:37:19] Speaker A: Yeah, we'll quack. Roll the tape. [01:37:21] Speaker B: Very good question. [01:37:22] Speaker C: Mark Lewis in Oxfordshire. [01:37:23] Speaker B: Hi Mark. Hello Jeremy, thanks for having me on. Hello, Doctor Smith. My question is, so as someone who's super anxious about the future of our planet, you know, oceans and rivers clogged with plastic, nuclear waste, industrial waste, etcetera. I'm wondering, is there any compelling reason why, as a, you know, as a. As a species or as a population, we can't gather all of that stuff up and shoot it into space? [01:37:48] Speaker C: You know, I've often wondered this, Chris. [01:37:50] Speaker B: What is the answer? Why can't we just put all of our rubbish and all of our carbon into space? [01:37:57] Speaker C: Well, first point, the amount of plastic that's just floating around in the ocean, you could make a chain of it continuously to the moon and back multiple times. There's so much of it. So, one, it's a volume problem. Number two is, why are you trying to do this? You're trying to do this to clean the place up. Well, if you expend more energy and bigger carbon footprints cleaning the place up than you actually save by scavenging all this stuff, then you're not really onto a winner. You're in a net no gain position. So really, prevention is better than cure here. We know that we need to stop making as much of these materials and polluting as much. The other question is one of risk, that it takes a lot of energy to blast things into space. But when you blast things into space, as Elon Musk showed recently with one of his test flights, you can end up with one of these premature disassemblies as whatever the choice of words they used to describe the rocket blow, you could end up with an accident now with bits of plastic. Okay, that would be an environmental problem, but if it was nuclear material, it could be an environmental disaster. And so we would not want to do something which would jeopardise a much greater area and make an even bigger problem than the one we started with. So really, the focus is on bear down on not releasing this stuff, not polluting, not making as much, and not releasing as much of the stuff in the first place. In the longer term, think about how we clean it up, but certainly don't put it into space, because the next mess we're making is in space. There are thousands of bits of material out in space at the moment that we've put there. Literally thousands of objects in orbit, dead satellites, bits of satellites. The Chinese blew up a satellite a few years back and made a horrible mess everywhere. So we're very worried, actually, that we can't turn space into our next dumping ground because that stuff will then travel through space. It may land on other places and pollute distant planets, that we want them to be pristine for various reasons. So the best thing is, keep our mess on Earth, curate it better. Don't make so much of it in the future. [01:39:45] Speaker B: Mark Lewis, thank you for your question, Doctor Chris. [01:39:47] Speaker A: Now, you were deeply displeased with his dismissal at that time. [01:39:52] Speaker B: I was, and I'll tell you for why. Right. That won't solve anything, Mark. We have to address this at a systemic level. We have to come together and really interrogate why this is happening. And we have to figure it out down here on Earth rather than just blasting our problems into space. Had I been given just a couple of moments more airtime, my response would have been along the lines of, yeah, mate, I fucking know that. But it ain't fucking happening, is it? [01:40:27] Speaker A: Right, that was bad. [01:40:28] Speaker B: Religion have a song on their amazing album, the empire strikes first, I believe. And the chorus simply says, won't somebody please come up with something? [01:40:37] Speaker A: Right. Yeah. That was ultimately like your. Your response at the time was just like, okay, well, it's. At least it's an idea, you know, like somebody. Yeah, come up with something. Although you said you've since talked yourself out of it, what has been your reasoning behind not shooting our trash in the space? [01:40:56] Speaker B: Well, right, okay, so, um, little experiment to run with you, right? Little thought experiment. So let's say, uh, for the purposes of the jack of all graves horror and horror culture podcast, let's say, to launch. To launch 1 matter into space takes 1 fuel. [01:41:17] Speaker A: Mmm. [01:41:18] Speaker B: Right, so 1 matter takes how much fuel? [01:41:23] Speaker A: 1 kg. [01:41:24] Speaker B: Perfect. Okay, 2 matter would take 2 fuel. Fucking wrong. Because fuel has massive. Oh, okay, so 2 matter would take 2 fuel to support the 2 matter. But then you've got four fucking kilograms. [01:41:45] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [01:41:48] Speaker B: So for every extra fucking kilogram you add, the fuel cost goes up exponentially. You've got to double it and add a bit every single fucking time. [01:41:57] Speaker A: Yeah. So to be fair, I believe my criticism of this at the time was that it would require more resources from fossil fuels in order to shoot it into space. [01:42:12] Speaker B: Bing. There it is. [01:42:13] Speaker A: Okay, like, if we. If we go back to the tape from when we talked about this months ago, you're actually making the exact argument that I made. [01:42:22] Speaker B: Do you know, it was dizzying, the speed at which you unleashed that, I almost didn't see it coming. [01:42:30] Speaker A: I was just sitting here like, surely he's not. He's not repeating my argument. You repeated my argument back, but with numbers. [01:42:38] Speaker B: I did my own research is what I did. Right. [01:42:41] Speaker A: Yes. [01:42:42] Speaker B: Which you gotta do, friends. [01:42:43] Speaker A: You do, you gotta do it. Listen, it's your own research. [01:42:47] Speaker B: So. Yeah, fucking cross that one off. Cross that one the fuck off. [01:42:50] Speaker A: Well, what else have people come up with though since then? What have you found that people have? [01:42:54] Speaker B: Well, I don't really give a fuck what people have come up with, but my. Well, yeah, there are a few. I mean. [01:43:02] Speaker A: Like, I think you mentioned something about like the cloud brightening thing. [01:43:05] Speaker B: Right, I'll get there. Right, I'll get there. [01:43:07] Speaker A: Okay. Okay, I will. Sorry. Now I'm doing it. Now I'm getting ahead of you. [01:43:14] Speaker B: The two, I think, ideas that represent our best chance at surviving beyond another three or four generations in the face of increased extreme weather events, climate, migration. Right, and I've mentioned these before, but again, first it's volunteer. Fuck, I even hate saying it. It's voluntary population control. [01:43:42] Speaker A: Oh yeah, right. That's toughie. [01:43:46] Speaker B: It's so tough. But again, even in my lifetime, the fucking population of the world has gone from something like 4 billion to nearly ten. That's fucking, that can't, that's not sustainable. [01:43:59] Speaker A: It's not. Although people seem to be very worried about falling birth rates. But we don't really need more people. [01:44:06] Speaker B: No, we absolutely do not. And looking in, just scratching the surface of this, there are two kinds of schools of thought on population control, one of which is called axiological population ethics, which in, you know, deals with how we do things whilst still dealing with people's well being. You know, ideas of identity, ideas of kind of, you know, managing population control downwards then. And the other school of thought is normative population ethics, which is how do we prioritize lives over others? Do we? You know what I mean? [01:44:48] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. That's where things get really sketch is when it comes to the, you know, you're basically doing that, the boat thought experiment, right? If you have all these people in the boat and you have to get rid of someone, who do you save? [01:45:03] Speaker B: Right, but less people, you can't tell me less people wouldn't be a way out. [01:45:10] Speaker A: I mean, the amount fewer people we would need for this to be of any help feels like that's simply impossible. Like there's just, it's not like, I mean, how many, how small would the population have to be for us to be able to continue consuming at the rate that we currently do and it makes a difference. That would be my thought. Because you could, you know, make it so people don't have kids. But if we keep consuming like this, like if anyone has one kid, we're still adding to the, you know, to the population and it's unsustainable. [01:45:46] Speaker B: Oh, man. The fucking. Just the words are difficult, but you'd have to go with both ends, man. You'd have to go. You'd have to take it at both ends. People live less lifetimes. People don't, you know, we can now support fucking end of life care into the fucking nineties and hundreds. [01:46:04] Speaker A: Right. [01:46:05] Speaker B: That's gotta stop. [01:46:06] Speaker A: And it doesn't gotta stop. That's. [01:46:08] Speaker B: No, I'm. I'm in character. I'm in character. I'm exploring an idea, you know, that. I don't know. [01:46:13] Speaker A: Just to be clear, this is not from Mark's perspective, this is normative. Normative what? [01:46:21] Speaker B: This is normative population ethics. [01:46:22] Speaker A: Yes, normative population ethics would say we are. We are living too long and my. [01:46:28] Speaker B: Face is screwed up even as I'm saying these words. I hate saying these words. You can fucking please tell people I wasn't laughing. [01:46:36] Speaker A: Right. Yeah, no, this is not. This is a. You look like me the time that you asked me if I could kill you in a zombie apocalypse. [01:46:45] Speaker B: Yes, exactly. When. When I thought you'd been killing dogs your whole life. [01:46:49] Speaker A: Right. Yes, exactly. [01:46:53] Speaker B: Tackle it at both ends. Limit family growth, whilst also Logan's running it and putting a fucking end, you know, putting an end time on your lifespan over a few decades. I think that might do the trick. [01:47:09] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:47:10] Speaker B: It was something I would say. [01:47:11] Speaker A: I just wanted to. Yeah, yeah, no, I get it. And obviously. Yeah. But even from any kind, like, even if you were to be able to ethically try to limit the population one way or another, I think, like, we're so far past the point at which we could minimize the population fast enough to do anything about what we've done already. Like, we. It would have to be coupled with. With those structural changes that we're having so much trouble making. Right. [01:47:43] Speaker B: Okay. [01:47:44] Speaker A: That would be my. What? Like, that's my thought process with it, or my question, I suppose, more than my. It's not so much a rebuttal as a question is, like, how much would we have to reduce the population and how long would that take to make a difference? [01:47:58] Speaker B: It's not a concept that I've revisited since initially, floating it early in the days of early Joag, but democracy has to go. [01:48:09] Speaker A: Well, yeah, we have discussed that as well. [01:48:14] Speaker B: Democracy has gotta go because. [01:48:18] Speaker A: And even. I don't even know if that's the. Yeah, I mean, I think that's true. And I would say to do one better, and I think it's. Exactly. What you also mean, is capitalism has to go. [01:48:28] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:48:29] Speaker A: Like, more importantly, it's not necessarily that we need, you know, dictators or anything like that. Though, of course, as I mentioned, you can look into the concept of, like, dictatorship of the proletariat. That is a principle, but it's the, you know, it's the capitalist form of democracy, oligarchy, all that stuff that we have now. Absolutely. I don't think. Yeah, I'm with you. I don't think we can do any of this, really, under the systems that we have now. [01:49:00] Speaker B: And the initial kind of knee jerk, the allergic reaction to that term. You know, we fought for this. We fought for your fucking right to vote. [01:49:10] Speaker A: You know, this is the best system that exists in the world. [01:49:14] Speaker B: Exactly. But it ain't working. Nope, we're still working. [01:49:21] Speaker A: If this is the best system. Back to the drawing board buds. Like, yeah. That doesn't mean we have to keep doing it this way if it's failing so badly. [01:49:29] Speaker B: Yeah. So with those two out the way, let's turn to the nerds. Turn to the nerds. Space dust, right? There are two schools of thought on space dust. One called stratospheric aerosol injection. Harvard, boffins are all over this. What they're saying is, uh, this actually came. The idea was inspired by a volcanic eruption in the Philippines in 1991. And what this involves, stratospheric aerosol injection. Just a fuck ton of dust. Right? Chalk dust. Like a fuck ton. Like an absolute fuck ton. You'd. You'd need to drop it, like, 12 miles above the surface of the earth. [01:50:16] Speaker A: Right. [01:50:17] Speaker B: And use dust to block the sun. [01:50:23] Speaker A: Yes. [01:50:24] Speaker B: What do you think? [01:50:26] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a. It's an interesting thought. I think this is the sulfate aerosols. Yeah. Is what they're working with. [01:50:31] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. [01:50:33] Speaker A: The idea is it not just blocks the sun, but bounces the sun away from us. [01:50:38] Speaker B: Yeah, it kind of acts like a shade and reflects the fucking radiation back into space. [01:50:42] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. And so, like you said, it's natural. These things are naturally occurring from volcanoes, but they are also produced by fossil fuels, which sounds bad. No, wait, hold on. It sounds bad, except that they actually serve to offset some of the effects of global warming that comes from greenhouse gases. So that's not to say that burning fossil fuels is good, but that it'd be a lot worse if it weren't for these sulfate aerosols. So, you know, the scientists want to send these up into the stratosphere with the use of airplanes and hot air balloons to reflect the sunlight away. But like you said, it's like they have to be like a certain 12 miles or whatever you said, because the problem is on the ground, they are actually dangerous to us. [01:51:30] Speaker B: I think I'm right in saying that it would need to be a constant process as well. It's something that would need to be completely replenished quite often. [01:51:38] Speaker A: Yeah. And Harvard estimated that this would cost about 2.5 billion per year. [01:51:44] Speaker B: See what I'm saying? [01:51:46] Speaker A: But, like, think, like, on the grand scheme of, like, our budgets, like, worldwide, if we're gonna say we cannot hold a corporation accountable to anything, we need another way to stop this, then I think governments would be more likely to spend 2.5 billion to reflect the sun back at itself than to tell Chevron not to drill oil. [01:52:11] Speaker B: Yes, yes, yes. [01:52:12] Speaker A: You know, like, if we're thinking about what is the more realistic solution here. [01:52:18] Speaker B: Like, because that would at least be a, you know, a big gesture. Look what we're doing for the fucking. To save the planet. You know what I mean? This is gonna win votes for fucking generations. [01:52:28] Speaker A: Yeah. And just to, like, you know, to go into, like, all of this feels like you're. You're shooting trash into the sky. Right? Like, yeah, it does. This is a concept called geoengineering, and this is basically the idea of using technology to stave off the impacts of climate change. And this can be, like, totally normal stuff, like wind, solar, and geothermal energy. So, like, renewable energy is something that we all accept and don't really question. But that's a climate mitigation strategy. It's technology that the existence of it is to stop the use of fossil fuels that are fucking the environment. But it sounds a lot more like weird and dystopian. It gets our hackles up when we talk about geoengineering like this. And it should, to be clear, because we shouldn't need these kinds of mitigation strategies. But if we think about them as mitigation strategies, much like renewable energy, it makes them a little less like, what the fuck are we doing? You know? [01:53:32] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, it's got to the point where it's, it's, it. I think the mindset has to shift more towards cultural reform and social reform, and more towards moonshot. Fucking, we gotta try something major here. Something has to come out of left field. [01:53:52] Speaker A: You're moonshot. [01:53:55] Speaker B: Moonshot, yes. I believe that was a terminal that came from, you know, America landing on the moon. An idea so fucking ridiculous, nice and so difficult to pull off without fucking infinitesimally small chance of success. But if it works, it would be fucking wild, right? [01:54:16] Speaker A: Yeah, totally. Absolutely. That. Absolutely. That. That's kind of where we are. Yeah. And, like, some of this stuff, like, really does work, but, like, there's other things that we're doing too. Like, obviously, another one of the huge issues that we have with climate change is that the ocean is dying. [01:54:34] Speaker B: Yes. Becoming more acidic. [01:54:36] Speaker A: Yeah. CO2 causes ocean acidification. And the thing that is currently basically ensuring that all of us, those of us who haven't seen the Great Barrier Reef and don't plan to in the next few years, will likely never see the Great Barrier Reef is because it's being bleached the fuck out. So scientists are messing around with something called ocean fertilization. Did you come across this? [01:55:00] Speaker B: Oh, I did not. Sounds good. [01:55:01] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah. It means supporting the growth of phytoplankton, which converts CO2 into oxygen through photosynthesis. So more phytoplankton means more CO2 consumption. And because the ocean absorbs about 25% of the CO2 we release into the atmosphere, this not only will help the oceans, but it will help all of us on land as well, allowing for more of the CO2 to be absorbed and consumed instead of hanging around in our atmosphere. [01:55:30] Speaker B: Okay, now you see, that sounds plausible to me, right? [01:55:33] Speaker A: This is very plausible. According to Harvard, it's a much cheaper and faster method than planting more trees, even. But there is a downside. Potentially. Potentially, we don't know this. This has to be tested. In this case, this could create algae blooms that actually deplete oxygen levels in the ocean, which would be detrimental to sea life. And it can also mess up the balance of the marine ecosystem by introducing a shit ton of one particular nutrient source. We know this. You introduce something, you know, if there's too much of it, this can potentially make, like, a predator thrive that didn't before. You know, a parasite, like any number of things. And then we can deal with that. Something else, right? [01:56:19] Speaker B: We can deal with that. We can deal with fucking. [01:56:21] Speaker A: Yeah, we have. Well, the issue is like, of course, it's circle of life, right? So, like, fucking up something in the ocean doesn't just fuck up something in the ocean. It's like how we can't kill mosquitoes as much as we hate mosquitoes, because something bigger eats a mosquito and something eats that, and then we end up not being able to grow plants or whatever if we don't have mosquitoes. We see this with the bee populations, right? As much as we'd all love to not have bees, we need the bees, because otherwise nothing will grow anymore. So you do have to be careful of that kind of thing. But, you know, they're studying it as such. They're researching to see, can we grow more of this phytoplankton without fucking up that ecosystem? Or what can we do to make sure that we don't do that? In which case, this is an incredible way to, you know, deal with our immediate CO2 problem through science, through relatively cheap means to do so, which is pretty incredible. [01:57:29] Speaker B: You mentioned bees. Certain fucking specific weird quotes stick in my head, right? And, fuck, I can't remember. Was it a painting? Was it a. Was it a play? Was it a monologue? Somebody wrote, bb, population is decreasing. Yes. Like, quickly, what would the bees say right now? And it goes like this. We are dying, but we won't all day. Enough of us will die. So you all die and then we'll come back, right? [01:58:04] Speaker A: Yeah, 100%. Yeah. I mean, and to a degree, that can also be, like, a harmful mindset, because a lot of people think, like, well, then we'll, you know, humans will die off and everything will go back to normal. And that's not true. There's stuff that we have irreparably broken in the environment. You know, we have caused things to go extinct, and, you know, all of this stuff that, like, we could be gone forever and they will never come back. But at the same time. Yeah. That is part of this is like, recognizing that, like, a lot of, you know, life finds a way, and a lot of nature will heal beyond us, but we are really fucking ourselves when we fuck with their ecosystem. It's not simply that we kill off the bees or the mosquitoes or the whatever, but that that little point in the circle of life has now been removed, and that has drastic consequences. Beyond that, did you have any others. [01:59:03] Speaker B: That you just super quickly, regarding the fucking space dust idea, there's also a school of thought that says we could use moon dust. [01:59:14] Speaker A: I think I have seen that. Yes. [01:59:17] Speaker B: Moon dust, which we would put in this weird midway point between the Earth and sun. But that's even more bollocks, because the, you know, the very engineer and the very craft to do that doesn't exist yet. And if we're talking moonshot, I've always enjoyed the idea of generational spacecraft. Right from a straw. From a purely science fiction point of view, I. I've always enjoyed this idea of the ark in space. [01:59:49] Speaker A: Yeah, we're not getting on that, so. [01:59:52] Speaker B: Oh, well, certainly not. I mean, but there have been, you know, boffins who've suggested it. One of the fathers of rocket science, a guy by the name of Robert Goddard, died in 1945. He was all about the interstellar arc. The only. But the biggest problem with that idea is that it's bullshit. I mean, right? [02:00:17] Speaker A: There's so, so many things wrong with that idea. [02:00:20] Speaker B: It's just never, ever, ever gonna work. Just. Just. The numbers are ridiculous. Proxima centauri BC and D are the nearest habitable kind of extrasolar planets to Earth, 4.2 light years away. You're gonna need to, using current fuel and propulsion. But 58,000 km/hour it's gonna take us 80,000 years to get there. [02:00:46] Speaker A: And the resources on your giant states are supposed to last 80,000 years. [02:00:53] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:00:54] Speaker A: That is going to be floating space junk full of corpses within a hundred. [02:00:59] Speaker B: Before they get past Mars, right? You know what I mean? They'll be fucking killing one another. Eating the dead. [02:01:07] Speaker A: Yeah, basically, you know, it's a. It is. It's a very Sci-Fi concept. You know, it appears in so many, like, movies and things like that, you know, whether it's wall e or passengers or like any number of things. This idea of like, oh, we'll just like, cryogenically freeze people for this amount of time. But, like, we have to acknowledge that technology doesn't exist. It simply doesn't exist. Simply doesn't exist. We are so far from the idea of space ark, whether one that would be habitable or one in which we freeze people on them, it is not a thing. [02:01:39] Speaker B: So what are we supposed to do, Kari? What are we supposed. Are we just. [02:01:42] Speaker A: Well, we grow the phytoplankton, right? You know, we grow the phytoplankton. We take the companies to court in these legal battles that we can show exactly the damage we're doing. If the governments won't tax them, won't punish them, put regulations on them, then we make them pay their fair share through legal ways. Maybe we put some space dust up there to reflect the sun back at itself or whatever. You know, just knowing that this stuff is there is at least like a marginal comfort because like I said, I mean, you had this experience when you finished doppelganger, too. It was like, okay, I know all of this and this was a great read and everything, but, like, now and. [02:02:27] Speaker B: Yep. [02:02:28] Speaker A: And I think with the heat will kill you first. You're getting a little bit of. And are we sure that this is, this stuff is going to help us or anything like that? Well, no, not necessarily, but these are people, whether through figuring out messaging or through sciencing their way out or legally attacking the problem. There are people who are thinking past just culture and society need to be completely revamped, which is not a place, unfortunately, that we're in. As much as I think you and I would both like that to be the case. [02:03:09] Speaker B: Ah, man, I know it's. I know it's been a fun joag. When I finished the episode, just feeling empty and hollow, that's when I know that we've, we've interrogated our fucking thesis. As much as I can handle. [02:03:27] Speaker A: This is such, like a, like a classic, like, you and I sense of like the end of a joag where I come out of it. Like, I feel kind of optimistic about things. You're like, fuck, I live in world of darkness. [02:03:43] Speaker B: I prefer talking about Mister Blobby. [02:03:48] Speaker A: Should watch that, um, that taskmaster task. That'll, that'll cheer you right up, watching. [02:03:53] Speaker B: Tell you what I'll do. I'll dig up some vintage, I'll dig up some vintage eighties nineties blobby for you. [02:03:59] Speaker A: So you can see, I would really like to actually see that in action. All right, dear friends, let us know. Have we depressed you and put you in darkness? Or do you actually now feel like there may be a way out? Or are you somewhere in between? I don't know. Let us know. Although knowing our dear listeners, they'll be like, oh, that's really interesting. And then we're just going to have like a train of comments about Mister Blobby. That's gonna be the only thing anyone comments on in this whole thing. And that's why we love you. That is not a complaint. I love that you guys will listen to a two hour episode of information and focus on the dumbest detail from the whole thing. I find that extremely charming. [02:04:43] Speaker B: As do I. And that's why we do it. And that's why you listen, and that's why this week you're gonna stay spooky.