Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] Speaker A: Hey, all. My name is Richard Russell. I'm 27 and currently living in Sumner, Washington, with my incredible wife, Hannah. I was born in Key West, Florida, and moved to Wasilla, Alaska, when I was seven.
I met Hannah in Coos Bay, Oregon, in 2010 while we were both going to school. We were married one year later, and one month after that, we opened a bakery, which we ran successfully for three years.
We decided to sell and move in 2015 because we were both so far removed from our families. And failing to convince Hannah of Alaska's greatness, we settled on Sumner because of its close proximity to her family.
That was a quote from the about page of the WordPress blog, which to this day still exists, which is still out there, which is still online of one Richard Russell.
[00:00:57] Speaker B: Okay?
[00:00:57] Speaker A: You ever heard of the guy? You ever heard of Richard Russell?
[00:01:00] Speaker B: Mmm. Doesn't sound familiar off the top of my head.
[00:01:03] Speaker A: Richard Russell. Richard Bebo Russell.
[00:01:06] Speaker B: Bebo.
[00:01:07] Speaker A: Bebo bwBo. That was his nickname. He'd been given that nickname ever since he was.
[00:01:11] Speaker B: I thought that was his middle name. I was like, oh, no, no, no.
[00:01:15] Speaker A: To his friends, to his family, to his loved ones, everyone knew him as Biebs.
[00:01:18] Speaker B: Bebo, a christian singer, who. His name was Bebo Norman. Again, I think that's a childhood nickname.
[00:01:24] Speaker A: So very interesting, because Bebo loved Jesus.
[00:01:28] Speaker B: Ah, it's a Jesus nickname.
[00:01:32] Speaker A: He love. Maybe, maybe not. I don't know, whatever. But Bebo Russell loved Jesus. Picture a picture. A sturdy looking, athletic guy.
His, you know, loved ones described him as being a compassionate guy, a God fearing guy, a bit of a goofy.
He was brought up in a military family. He was brought up with military kind of values.
[00:01:56] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:01:57] Speaker A: He quoted a bible verse in his high school senior yearbook, in fact.
[00:02:05] Speaker B: Oh, what was yours first? John four eight. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.
[00:02:14] Speaker A: Oh, that's beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. Bebo cited Timothy two five, wherever that fucking means. Whoever enters an athletic competition wins the prize only when playing by the rules.
[00:02:28] Speaker B: Okay, so he's a square is what you're saying here.
[00:02:31] Speaker A: Listen, he's also a square in terms of stature. This guy is a fucking unit. Right?
Strong. He was a sportsman. He played american football. He was a wrestler in college. Shot put. This was an athletic guy.
Super wholesome. Right? Super fucking wholesome. The bakery that they spoke about there on his WordPress was called Hannah's artisan breads and pastries. And they would sell scones, muffins, you know, it was quoted in a local newspaper as being a. A perfectionist. Master. Master Baker and Bibo was, you know, Hannah's kind of scamp apprentice. He was the guy who would experiment with unusual recipes. On the fucking wall, there was another Bible verse. I have loved you with an everlasting love. I will build you up again, and you will be rebuilt.
Now, like he says there in his about page on his WordPress, they sold the bakery in 2014.
[00:03:33] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:03:33] Speaker A: Having grown kind of having grown weary of the isolation of that area of Washington that they'd settled in. All right.
[00:03:40] Speaker B: Yeah. A lot of pretty isolated areas in the Pacific Northwest.
[00:03:44] Speaker A: Okay. Okay. Okay. So they moved 2015, moving to Washington, where our boy Bebo got himself a job in an airport. He got himself a job as a, what was termed a ground service agent with horizon air. Okay. They're a regional kind of local carrier run by Alaskan Air group and definitely.
[00:04:08] Speaker B: Taken my fair share of horizon flights.
[00:04:10] Speaker A: Is that so?
[00:04:11] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. I lived in the Pacific Northwest, so.
[00:04:15] Speaker A: Well, then you know exactly where of where I speak, I mean. But for Russell, it was. It was not his dream job. Right? Once again, to quote from his WordPress, once I earn my bachelor's in social sciences, I'll either seek a management position where I'm at now or possibly join the military as an officer. That was not what he ended up doing. He ended up as a ground service agent. Right.
[00:04:36] Speaker B: And Mike, that's not how you end up on this podcast either.
[00:04:40] Speaker A: Certainly not.
Again, quoting from his blog, I always felt bad for the guys and gals who handled the luggage. Every time I traveled, I'd look out of my plane window and I'd see these sullen looking individuals throwing bags into a cart. It seemed like such miserable work.
[00:04:56] Speaker B: This is wild because every time I go to the airport, I think, why is everybody so upset here? They're like, it's like a good job. They probably have benefits and shit.
He and I have very different opinions of the people throwing our luggage around.
[00:05:11] Speaker A: But all the while, right, all the while, his colleagues, his friends, his family, he kept up this reputation as being just goofy fucking beebs, goofy, fun, sporty, God loving biebs. And he ate up the benefits from his job. You know, he. The kind of the free flight opportunities, the travel opened right up to him. He went to the Yucatan, you know, with his friends, trips to the UK. He took his missus to France and back to Alaska every now and again, which still to him was home again. From his blog, the flight benefits were my last hope of seeing my beloved family in state on a regular basis.
There was obviously something deeper going on with him, right. There was obviously fucking a kind of a deeper kind of level below the public Persona that he put out there, but there was still nothing really that gave people any indication as to what the fuck he was about to do.
[00:06:17] Speaker B: Oh, dear.
[00:06:17] Speaker A: In 2018, you see, his job frequently gave him access, unquestioned access, to the flight deck of airplanes just as a matter of his work. Right.
He would be responsible, along with a partner, along with whoever was on shift at the time, for kind of towing planes out onto runways, making sure the brakes were disengaged, and getting planes in situ before takeoff. All right?
But what he did on the fucking 18th, sorry, on the 10 August 2018, was pretty fucking incredible. Keep in mind we're post 911 here.
[00:07:00] Speaker B: I just realized I do know who you're talking about, but thankfully I did not listen to the thing you sent me yet.
There you go.
[00:07:08] Speaker A: Fantastic.
[00:07:08] Speaker B: But go on, go on.
[00:07:09] Speaker A: Fantastic. While there were no outward clues. Okay, later, unofficial kind of records and oral histories of this event and conversations would throw up the kind of the creeping suspicion that he'd been planning this for a while.
A pilot at the airport described an encounter he'd had with Russell, who had been strangely kind of shadowing him, wanting to observe what his pre flight kind of flow looked like, what the startup sequence was for some of the aircraft.
A year before this incident that I'm going to talk about in 2018, a year before that, this same pilot, the guy by the name of Monteith, said he'd come across Russell inside a jet, just kind of flipping switches, looking at the cockpit, kind of get a feel for, you know, feel for how the plane worked, how the fucking startup process looked. This pilot, Monteith, suggests that this guy had been thinking about doing this for a long time. And on August 10, 2018, what he took was just an airplane of opportunity because that is exactly what happened on August 10, 2018.
Bibo fucking stole a plane.
[00:08:21] Speaker B: Oh, boy.
[00:08:23] Speaker A: He stole an horizon air to Haviland, Canada, Dash 8400 model, right? This is a 1999 variant. Think of a a jet maybe about 100ft long, maximum of between kind of 65 and 70 passengers.
[00:08:38] Speaker B: All right, it's kind of a mid sized small.
[00:08:41] Speaker A: It's a mid sized plane, but big enough to cause some fucking mayhem, right?
[00:08:45] Speaker B: Sure.
Someone's like little prop plane or anything like that.
[00:08:51] Speaker A: No, Siri, on the other hand, neither did he steal a jumbo jet.
[00:08:54] Speaker B: Sure, yeah, okay.
[00:08:55] Speaker A: You know, yeah.
[00:08:56] Speaker B: You gotta know your limitations.
[00:08:58] Speaker A: You gotta know your fucking limitations. And Biebs kind of did. There is security camera footage of his takeoff, of his absconding with this plane. He tows the plane out from where it's parked, and with the door still open, he dives out of the cab of his van and chases the plane for six, 7 seconds with nobody in the cockpit. This plane just fucking riding the brakes, and he runs alongside it and dives in, jumps into the fucking cockpit and uses whatever fucking knowledge he's assuming, you know, accumulated, right, and just takes off.
[00:09:39] Speaker B: For, like, how long before he said.
[00:09:42] Speaker A: It feels yet according to the pilot, you see, there's no officially released record of this. There's a huge oral history of this event. Loads of people have chimed in by now about what happened. And the footage is incredible of him just disconnecting the tug vehicle he'd used, jumping out of the fucking truck and just running after this plane, diving in, scrambling into the cockpit, pulling up the hatch, and then bang, he is fucking gone. Takes off.
[00:10:09] Speaker B: You need to send me this stuff, by the way, so that everyone else can see it as well.
[00:10:14] Speaker A: It's incredible. It is fucking incredible. And what is also incredible is, is the hour long conversation that is all recorded and all out there on the news of Biebs talking first to air traffic control and then to the pilots of the two jets that they scramble immediately to track him.
The conversation starts off being really light and being really fucking. Biebs is obviously coasting on adrenaline, obviously hooped up as fuck on what he's just done.
Air traffic control rich, do you know what able, are you able to tell what altitude you're at? Is like? Yeah, that's all mumbo jumbo. I've got no idea where any of that means. I wouldn't know how to punch it in. I'm not even on autopilot.
[00:10:58] Speaker B: Jesus Christ.
[00:11:00] Speaker A: Air traffic control rich, we're just trying to find a place for you to land safely. Biebs yeah, I'm not quite ready to bring it down just yet, but holy smokes, I've got to stop looking at the fool because it's going down real quick.
[00:11:11] Speaker B: Oh, God.
[00:11:13] Speaker A: He goes back and forth looking at the fool. He starts to get more and more unnerved. Air traffic control okay, rich, if you could, could you start a left handed turn and we'll take you down to the southeast, please? This is when the reality of his situation really starts to crack. Riches. All this is probably a jail time for life, huh? I mean, I would hope it is for a guy like me.
Hey, do you think if I land this successfully, Atlanta will give me a job as a pilot?
[00:11:37] Speaker B: Oh, boy.
[00:11:39] Speaker A: And then as the fuel starts to deplete and as the flight continues after about 44 minutes in, the tone starts to take a little bit of a darker turn. I got a lot of people that care about me, and it's gonna disappoint them to hear that I did this. Meanwhile, you can hear alarms going off in the background. I just want to apologize to everyone. I'm just a. Just a broken guy. I got a few screws loose, I guess. Never really knew it until now.
[00:12:05] Speaker B: That's wild. Like, he, like, clearly spent time planning it, but, like, somehow had managed to, like, completely disconnect the act that he wanted to do from, like, the reality of, like, all of the consequences of it and how it would feel and all of that stuff.
[00:12:22] Speaker A: That's like a dog chasing a car. When a dog fucking catches a car.
[00:12:25] Speaker B: Doesn'T know what the exactly like, but, but he's a person with force. Like, that's. It's something. I mean, as a person with anxiety, I cannot imagine not thinking about the thousands of things that are going to go wrong when you do that. So this is incredible to me.
[00:12:44] Speaker A: 50 minutes in, I'm kind of just light headed, kind of dizzy, and, you know, the sites, they go by so fast. Dude, I was thinking I'm going to have this moment of serenity. You know, I'll be able to take in all the sites. It was a lot of pretty stuff, but I think they feel prettier in this different context.
Beeb is clearly not planning on landing the plane.
[00:13:05] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:06] Speaker A: And the most incredible thing, right? The incredible thing at 54 minutes in, I'm, I'm gonna do a barrel roll real quick.
He's talking to the fucking jets next to him. You know, I wouldn't mind just shooting the shit with you guys, but you're all business, you know? I feel like I need to be, what do you think? 5000ft at least to be able to pull this barrel roll off.
[00:13:25] Speaker B: All right, calm down.
[00:13:26] Speaker A: Starfox does it. He fucking does it right? He rolls the fucking plane, a vertical ascent, and then takes it into this incredible fucking nose dive towards the ocean, and at the last fucking moment pulls up. This is a fucking, a 100 foot long plane which cleared the sea level by ten fucking feet.
[00:13:49] Speaker B: Jesus Christ.
[00:13:52] Speaker A: And there's video of this. There's amateur video capturing this, and it completely fucking defies belief. It is unbe fucking leaveable. It never falters and it levels off right above the water. There's radio of one of the f 15 pilots, you know, and you can tell this guy's military, he's professional, but could not believe. Confirm he did a barrel roll. Confirm, says the first pilot. The first pilot fucking chuckles. He cleared the surface of the water by approximately 10ft.
[00:14:23] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:14:24] Speaker A: They ask him if he's gonna land. Russell is like, all right. And his voice then starts to become wild. His voice then starts to become more and more fucking unhinged. Ah, dammit. I don't know, man. I don't know. I don't want to. I was kind of hoping that was gonna be it, you know?
[00:14:40] Speaker B: Like, he was like, hoping. He was like, trying to do the trick, but he was like, I'm probably gonna biff it.
[00:14:45] Speaker A: He was thinking, this is the one. This is the one. And now, earlier on in the flight, they asked him if he has any flight experience, right? This is the kind of the change in tone of the conversation he has with air traffic control. At the start of the flight, they ask him what flight experience he has. He goes, yeah, I kind of know what I'm doing. I've played video games.
[00:15:03] Speaker B: This guy.
[00:15:05] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Beebs bebo.
So as it becomes clear that he isn't planning on landing later on, after about an hour or so of conversations, I feel like one of my engines is going out or something. But not for long. And that was his final broadcast as moments later, that plane fucking crashed into woods at the southern end of Catron island in the Puget Sound near the Olympia mountains, which he flew around, by the way, you know?
[00:15:37] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:15:38] Speaker A: He fucking aimed for the forest. The Q 400 completely exploded. The wings were torn free. The crash set a two acre fire. Fire.
Russell himself died of what the FBI called multiple traumatic injuries.
[00:15:53] Speaker B: Yeah, I guess that's some, you know, like the descriptions of the Kobe Bryant sort of situation.
[00:16:02] Speaker A: But what if.
Yeah, there was damage to property, but who gives a fuck about that, right?
There was no loss of life apart from his what if.
What if.
Would it be so wrong of me to think of that as a theatrical and flamboyant and ballsy act of suicide?
[00:16:35] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, that's. That's kind of one of those things where it's like, how do you quantify the damage? Something does? You know, do I care that, like, they lost a plane or whatever, like.
[00:16:47] Speaker A: Couldn'T give a fuck? Not a.
[00:16:48] Speaker B: Absolutely not.
You know, I'm sure it was deeply traumatic for his family and, you know, there's probably lots of people who were trying to catch planes to things like funerals or to be at someone's bedside for their. As they're dying and things like that. That, like their plane couldn't take off because there was some. Again, asshole flying around the airport.
[00:17:13] Speaker A: The conversation I've just given you highlights. I mean, you know, he. They advise him to land at a nearby, quite busy airport, which he declines because I don't want to fuck up their day.
[00:17:25] Speaker B: Well, good for you.
[00:17:28] Speaker A: Ah, man. I don't know.
[00:17:30] Speaker B: This is like. Yeah, this was a small airport that.
[00:17:33] Speaker A: He flew out of, or this was the airport that he was working at, which was.
Well, the airport was local. Yeah. Washington Horizon air. So Fairbanks to Austin. It was a local kind of airport by the looks of things. Yeah.
[00:17:53] Speaker B: Well, yeah, there's a few airports up there. So I'm just curious, like, if it's, like, seatac or something like that. That's a big, big deal.
[00:18:02] Speaker A: But maybe it was. I have seen that.
[00:18:07] Speaker B: Maybe that was where they tried to reroute him to, that he declined.
[00:18:12] Speaker A: Yes, very possibly.
[00:18:15] Speaker B: But this. Yeah. I mean, it's.
[00:18:17] Speaker A: It was actually. He worked as a ground agent for. Yes. Yeah.
[00:18:21] Speaker B: For CTA.
[00:18:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:22] Speaker B: Yeah. That's. That's huge. That's like, you would be throwing off everybody in traveling anywhere around Washington or Idaho or things like that side of Idaho and things like that. If you.
Yeah. Took a plane from there. That's a. That's the major hub for.
[00:18:41] Speaker A: I get that. A lot of. A lot of flights displaced. A lot of plans fucked up.
[00:18:48] Speaker B: Yeah. It's like, for. I mean, I think I mentioned to you that, like, my friend's grandpa did this.
You did a band by the name of Stone Froberg, who had been a.
[00:19:02] Speaker A: Sausage king of Chicago.
[00:19:04] Speaker B: Right. He had been, you know, just like, a very, like. He'd always sort of. His, like, personality had been wrapped up in being, like, a cool, fit, old guy kind of situation. You know, the kind of, like, dude in his sixties who still has, like, abs and all of that kind of stuff, and he was, like, real with it, and, you know, didn't like. Like, didn't really like to be called grandpa. Is like, had his kids call him Stone. His grandkids call him stone because they're like. Yeah. He's like. He didn't like to be thought of as an old man, and then he got something like Parkinson's or something like that. That, of course, was going to be debilitating and take away from, like, all of that. And so what he did was take his plan now his own personal plane, and crashed it into the ocean, which is a big theatrical way to go out. Absolutely.
But, yeah, in that case, you know, it's like, just kind of his plane, he went and did his thing. It was, like, deeply traumatic for his family, but also, like, they kind of got it. They knew who he was, you know? Like, they were like, yeah, this diagnosis, rectum.
We. We get that. This was what he decided.
[00:20:16] Speaker A: Well, there was some suggestion around the Bibo incident that the. The years he spent in college playing football.
[00:20:28] Speaker B: Mmm.
[00:20:29] Speaker A: May have contributed to this. A little bit of that CTe may have not helped. Yeah.
[00:20:34] Speaker B: Cause I think that's what's so, like. Like, all of this feels very brain empty, you know, like. Like a prank gone too far or something like that, you know? But to have, like, planned it and still not have considered the consequences of it. Like, what's going on upstairs.
[00:20:51] Speaker A: Yes, yes.
[00:20:51] Speaker B: Where you can spend a year, like, poking about, trying to figure out how I could steal this plane. And never once did you go, wait, will I go to jail for this?
[00:20:59] Speaker A: Yep. Yeah. I mean, that was a realization he had in the sky, right?
[00:21:04] Speaker B: Like, it had never. And, like, you know, there's also a degree of, like, it sounds like this guy was like a real, you know, like, star sort of athlete and all that kind of stuff, and has probably never faced a consequence in his life for anything.
[00:21:18] Speaker A: Possibly.
[00:21:19] Speaker B: And so there's maybe a degree also there of just kind of, like, yeah, people have always kind of let it go when I've done things. And then he realized all of a sudden, like, this is a lot bigger than anything else I've gotten over.
[00:21:31] Speaker A: Yeah, that quote I mentioned there when he was like, hey, do you think they'll give me a job if I can land this thing?
There's radio static, but he can clearly be here to the end of that phrase going, and maybe not because I'm a white guy. So, no.
[00:21:45] Speaker B: Does he really say that?
[00:21:47] Speaker A: Yes, he does.
[00:21:48] Speaker B: Wow.
He was even ahead of all the DEi stuff. Like, he was on top of that racism as an early adopter.
[00:21:56] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:21:57] Speaker B: I mean, from everything about your description of this guy, I was like, yeah, no, I hate him.
He is like a white christian dude with bible verses all over his bakery from the Pacific, Pacific Northwest who played a whole bunch of, you know, sportsy lettered in and things like that. I'm like, this guy, I guarantee, is a fucking tool.
But, I mean, that is.
That's wild. I just can't fathom this entire situation.
[00:22:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
Please do yourself a favor, listener, if you are so inclined to seek out the audio and the amateur video of Biebs and his little flight into oblivion.
[00:22:40] Speaker B: Well, just send me. Send me the link again, and I will post it in the.
[00:22:44] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:22:46] Speaker B: That's the thing we can do.
[00:22:47] Speaker A: We'll take all of the work out of this for you. We'll put it, we in here quotes. We'll put it on the. All that fucking jack of all graves media that you all know and love.
[00:22:57] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:23:00] Speaker A: Anyway, that. That's how you get on jack of all graves, not by being a fucking, you neck a plane and fucking off yourself in a forest. That's how you make the fucking podcast.
[00:23:09] Speaker B: That'll do it for sure.
[00:23:11] Speaker A: Mm hmm.
Let me quote directly from my notes, if I may.
[00:23:16] Speaker B: Yes, please do.
[00:23:17] Speaker A: Fucking look at these nerds. Oh, mise en scene.
[00:23:21] Speaker B: I don't think anyone has ever said mise en scene in such a horny way before.
[00:23:25] Speaker A: The way I whispered the word sex. Cannibal receiver.
[00:23:27] Speaker B: Worst comes to worst, Mark, I'm willing to guillotine you for science.
[00:23:31] Speaker A: 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.
[00:23:37] Speaker B: You know how I feel about that, Mark.
[00:23:40] Speaker A: I think you feel great about it.
[00:23:44] Speaker B: I asked Keo to make jacket potatoes for dinner, and he's already started them, so the house smells like potato.
So good.
[00:23:53] Speaker A: So good.
If Joag were to have a mascot of a vegetable, it would be the fucking spud, wouldn't it?
[00:24:01] Speaker B: For sure. It would for sure be the humble spud. Absolutely.
Welcome. Welcome to Jack of all graves.
[00:24:10] Speaker A: Oh, welcome to Jack, dear. Our dear potatoes, you bunch of spuds. Fucking. Listen, jack of all graves. Look, you know what you're getting by now, I think jackable graves is. It's the podcast. That is, it's the kind of the podcast equivalent of maybe, you know, imagine take yourself off for a lovely day by the seaside, right?
Just enjoying your own company, and you enjoy the drive, and you listen to some of your favorite music and walk along the seafront, and you treat yourself to a nice lunch, you know, maybe like a polystyrene tray of lovely seaside chippies, you know?
[00:24:46] Speaker B: Oh, sure, yeah.
[00:24:47] Speaker A: Lots of salt and vinegar.
[00:24:48] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:49] Speaker A: And you kind of throw some to the seagulls. And you just enjoy yourself and you look around, you enjoy watching all the people. And maybe you've brought yourself a little picnic chair down with you, and you sit at the edge of the water, and you just, just enjoying just a lovely day. And just to cap it all off, you just stand up and just undress and leave your clothes in a nice little pile and just walk the fuck into the sea. That's what this fucking. That's up fighting.
Just walk into the fucking ocean. There's no other fucking option.
[00:25:24] Speaker B: Sure. You know, really how I always think of joag for real is like, if you were sitting in a pub and just, like, listening to the two drunk people next to you having a conversation over the course of the evening, and it's like, they're not drunk yet. So they start with, like, a conversation. Like, let me tell you the story about this thing I heard, right? And then it's like, oh, you watch anything lately? And you start talking about a movie or whatever, and by the end, you're just, like, shit faced and, like, you know what the problem with the world is? And that's, like, the main topic of this podcast.
[00:26:03] Speaker A: Something similar actually happened this week. In fact, I was able to drop some joag knowledge into a. Just a perfectly unrelated conversation, went to a work event, and there was some kind of forced, fucking cringy, horrific icebreakers. And one of them was, tell the table something that they might not know.
So I was like, did you know there's a beach and fucking human feet keep washing up on the beach and no one knows about the feet and why they fucking arrive?
[00:26:29] Speaker B: I love that. That's the one. After all these years, that's the thing that was like, yeah, this is definitely my icebreaker conversation.
[00:26:35] Speaker A: I love that. I love that one. I love that one. I followed it up with the dog suicide bridge.
[00:26:39] Speaker B: Nice.
Which someone did bring. I have to relisten to that one. There's a couple. A couple weeks ago, I asked on our Facebook group for, like, people's favorite stories from Joag, and that was one that came up, was the dog suicide bridge. I was like, I gotta. I gotta revisit that one because that.
[00:26:57] Speaker A: Was a pretty wonderful happening.
[00:27:00] Speaker B: That's a good question.
We'll have to update, find out, revisit. Are the dogs still jumping?
[00:27:10] Speaker A: Have the dogs stopped jumping? Corrigan.
[00:27:14] Speaker B: Nice. Pretty good.
I have to apologize.
It's a direct quote.
[00:27:24] Speaker A: The jumping of the dogs.
[00:27:28] Speaker B: I have to apologize because for everyone listening to this, some birds have nested in my air conditioner and are just. Just happily tweet, tweeting away, trying to drive me to absolute insanity all the time. It'll stop for a little bit. And then just when I think it's safe to breathe, there they go again.
And now you're subjected to it, dear. Listen.
[00:28:00] Speaker A: What kind of birds are they?
[00:28:01] Speaker B: I apologize. I can't see them, is the thing. They're at such an angle that I can't quite. I can see like they're nesting materials. From the sound, I'm gonna say it's just like sparrows. They don't sound like any of the like songbirds or anything interesting like that. But they are persistent.
[00:28:20] Speaker A: I can. And now you've mentioned them, I can't hear them. I'm sure your sparrow is a songbird.
[00:28:24] Speaker B: I guess that's true.
[00:28:25] Speaker A: Aren't all birds songbirds?
[00:28:28] Speaker B: I don't think all birds are songbirds. I feel like that's like a specific type bird.
[00:28:33] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:28:34] Speaker B: You know, ones that do little doodly.
[00:28:36] Speaker A: Doos and things like that. Birds suddenly appear every time. Come on, you are near.
[00:28:44] Speaker B: Why do they do that?
[00:28:46] Speaker A: Just like me.
They long to be where nested in your air conditioning.
[00:28:57] Speaker B: Excellent.
Nicely done. So apologies for that, dear friends. My other apology is that if you were looking for the fan cave on Thursday, it will be coming tomorrow. Because as is my custom, of course, I was researching an opening story and then I was like, I'm just going to look up one more thing. And then it completely changed trajectory of what I wanted to talk about for the opening story. So this was like 2 hours before starting the podcast. So I was like, we need to post postponed.
[00:29:27] Speaker A: All I'll say, all I'll say, and I won't say anything else after this, but all I'll say is, at least I waited a few years before getting flaky on my dates.
[00:29:38] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:29:39] Speaker A: That's all I'll say. I was regular as fucking clockwork for years. And what is this episode?
[00:29:44] Speaker B: We were in lockdown. Okay?
Where were you going? Where else did you have to be?
[00:29:52] Speaker A: Listen, without comment.
[00:29:55] Speaker B: I was your only friend.
[00:29:58] Speaker A: That's all I'll say. At least I waited a few years before.
[00:30:01] Speaker B: Mm hmm.
[00:30:02] Speaker A: You know, flaking.
Anyway, you got a Sunday jog this week, so what the fuck do you want?
[00:30:07] Speaker B: Right? Yeah, seriously, we're on time on this, so hey, we're doing, we're doing pretty well. And we'll try to get you a let's play or something like that coming up as well. And you know, do our thing.
[00:30:16] Speaker A: Oh, wow. You know how, you know how Ken and Barbie, you know how his job is beach.
My job is fallout.
[00:30:24] Speaker B: Ah, still going, eh? Alright.
[00:30:26] Speaker A: It's my. It's the only thing I want to do when I'm not. When I'm not at work or when I'm not asleep, or when I'm not engaged in these wonderful weekly conversations with you. The only other thing I want to be doing is playing fallout.
[00:30:44] Speaker B: I get it, Ben. I get it.
[00:30:46] Speaker A: It's so good. She just call me Ben, man. Okay.
[00:30:51] Speaker B: Wow. You're getting jealous of my other podcast host right here.
[00:30:55] Speaker A: No, not at all. But that seems.
First time in like four years you will have done this.
[00:31:02] Speaker B: Getting my.
[00:31:02] Speaker A: But no, I know, I know you get it. I know you get it.
[00:31:04] Speaker B: Co host mixed up. Yeah, no, I've been playing nothing but, like, death's door in the bits of time that I have and managed to, I met, I decided. So we're actually doing it on men of low moral fiber this month. Just me and Ben playing. And I was like, I'm going to 100% it again this time. So I'm at 98 now. I've gotten the true ending and all that kind of stuff. I just have to pick up a couple little things. But like, I'm kind of sad because that was like another 20 hours of death's door down. And now I'm like, well, no. Do I start it again?
[00:31:38] Speaker A: Tell you what. With your, um, your skill at games like Hades and Death Store, enter the gungeon, etc, etcetera, you, you. I'm sure you'll knock this back, but you must be one formidable ass gamer by now. Cause Hades don't play, mate. Hades is fucking real.
[00:31:56] Speaker B: I am very good at one type of game. Basically, that's it. I couldn't play fallout. I would be an absolute disaster. But I am very good at a certain type of game. And I play a lot of them. I think now, like, you know, I'm up to like 140 hours on end of the gungeon or something like that. And then I looked in death's door. I'm now at like 111 total. I. Yeah, I've played a lot of those games.
[00:32:22] Speaker A: And none of those hours were wasted time.
[00:32:24] Speaker B: All of those hours were fucking fun. Like, it wouldn't be anyway because like, obviously gaming is a perfectly valid thing to do with yourself. But also I'm usually listening to a book while I play, so I'm doubling up on my recreation when I'm playing.
[00:32:39] Speaker A: Yeah, multi fucking tasking. Even in your leisure time, even in your downtime.
[00:32:45] Speaker B: Yeah. Can't be doing one thing. Come on. Life's too short to be doing one thing at a time.
[00:32:50] Speaker A: Eternal polymath.
[00:32:51] Speaker B: You never fucking stop.
I do not. No.
I am partway about halfway through the book, the September house right now while playing death's door this time through. And I recommend it. It's a good little read about a house that is super haunted. And it bleeds from the walls and all kinds of things like that every September. And the lady who lives there isn't so much bothered by it as she is worried that her daughter is going to find out.
And it's an interesting read. A lot unraveling in this book as a result. So check that out. Also, book club is next week. Next week. So jackofallgraves.com bookclub. Check out what we're reading. It'll be a fun time.
[00:33:39] Speaker A: What are you reading? Is it this one? The September?
[00:33:41] Speaker B: No, no, no. This was. Someone recommended this one to me. Well, Ryan recommended it to me a while ago, but someone else, I did a thing on my instagram where I was like, twelve people, pick a book for me and I will read those twelve books this year. And this was one that someone picked out for me. So I'm reading.
[00:33:59] Speaker A: Are you still doing the albums?
[00:34:02] Speaker B: I'm so behind. I tried so hard and it's. I just. You got so far and in the end.
[00:34:14] Speaker A: It doesn't even matter.
[00:34:16] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I like there. I know there are albums that are coming out that I want to listen to and stuff like that, but I think my goal of 52 albums is pretty. It's gone. It's not gonna happen. But I have listened to more music than usual.
[00:34:30] Speaker A: More music than usual. And imagine. Imagine how much good your teetotal life is doing you on the inside, right?
[00:34:40] Speaker B: Like, here's the thing. It's like. Like that I'm like, I'm solid on everything's great, you know? But when it comes to New Year's resolutions in general, like, the point isn't perfection, right? Like, it's to. It's to make changes or whatever. So, like, I may not hit 52 albums, but, like, even having listened to, like twelve or whatever so far is a lot more than I listened to last year.
[00:35:04] Speaker A: Listen, I don't know if this is something I've said on the podcast before, right? But a piece of a kind of a saying that has really helped me, that has really landed with me when it comes to exercise and when it comes to consistency is simply the phrase something ain't nothing.
[00:35:21] Speaker B: Totally. Exactly.
[00:35:23] Speaker A: And if. Even if every fucking workout, every fucking run, every resolution doesn't have to be perfect, the fucking act of doing something beats not doing shit.
[00:35:35] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:35:36] Speaker A: That, you know, it's all progress, it's all valid. It all builds you out because the opposite doesn't. Doing fuck all gets you nowhere, right? Something ain't nothing, Corey.
[00:35:46] Speaker B: Precisely. Mark Lewis. I am 100% on board with that saying. So if you're sitting there and you've been thinking about doing something, but you're like, I don't know if I'll be good at it or whatever, listen, something isn't nothing.
[00:35:58] Speaker A: Just go for it and fuck that mindset as well, you know? I don't know if I'll be good at it.
[00:36:03] Speaker B: You.
[00:36:03] Speaker A: You won't be if you don't fucking do anything, do you? Just be comfortable with being shit. Be comfortable with being shit. Everybody who is great at something was first shit at something.
[00:36:13] Speaker B: It's true.
[00:36:15] Speaker A: It is true.
[00:36:16] Speaker B: Mm hmm.
[00:36:17] Speaker A: It simply is. And being comfortable with vulnerability, being comfortable with not being brilliant at something is so fucking likable, man. It is so, you know, it is really, really kind of. I warm to people who are comfortable with being shit.
Something on the path to, you know, the pursuing of something better. I love that.
[00:36:37] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So let that be our little, you know, bit of. What's the word I'm looking for inspiration to you, our dear listener this week is, you know what? Just. Just do something.
[00:36:51] Speaker A: Do something. Do something.
[00:36:52] Speaker B: Do something different. You'll feel good about it. Yeah.
And we'll feel good about you doing it.
[00:36:59] Speaker A: Listen, I mean, your two little topics there, talking about books and talking about booksellerion, that's a hell of a fucking way to segue.
[00:37:08] Speaker B: True story.
Exciting times in London, England.
[00:37:14] Speaker A: I have an actual friend. Not just a podcast friend. I now have an IRL fucking friend. I met someone off the Internet.
And what an absolute fucking darling Ryan is. What a fucking absolute pint sized little beauty that girl is. It was amazing.
Ryan was over here in the UK. It was, I believe, her birthday today or yesterday.
[00:37:41] Speaker B: Is it today? I want to say yesterday.
[00:37:44] Speaker A: Well, then this fucking episode's for you, Ryan.
[00:37:47] Speaker B: That's dedicated to Ryan for the big three four.
[00:37:50] Speaker A: Yep.
And we met just for the briefest of times. It was no more than maybe like an hour, hour ten, because, you know, I got parenting to do and etcetera.
But we met just the most serendipitous recommendation from one of my absolute besties. Richard Stott sent me a link to a place in London, in London's Wandsworth called Cafe Diana.
And it's both a cafe and it's a shrine. It is a shrine opposite the gates of Kensington Palace, a shrine to the people's princess, the queen of Britain's heart, Diana Spencer herself. And how to describe this fucking joint? Just, I think the only was like, greek or cypriot. Lots of, you know, mediterranean food on the menu. Koftas and tzatziki and whatnot.
But every inch, every wall is covered in framed prints of the people's princess herself covering all of her eras, right? Because much like Madonna and much like Michael Jackson and much like Prince and Kylie Minogue, right, the princess of Hearts was an absolute fucking g when it comes to her own public image, managing her own public image. And they were the greatest hits of all of her phases, all of the iconic photos. Her just dressed in civvies at, like, her kids sports day, winning the rhymes race, her clearing landmines in her fatigues.
[00:39:39] Speaker B: Nice.
[00:39:39] Speaker A: Just looking over her shoulder, looking super sexy. That's the one that I chose for me and Ryan to be photographed on.
If you look at that, that was my favorite sexy landmine Diana cover of Bob. I'd buy that Barbie sexy lamb and Diana aids baby kissing Diana. That was another one.
[00:39:57] Speaker B: That was, yeah, of course, naturally.
[00:39:59] Speaker A: A classic, just a really, really strong era.
[00:40:03] Speaker B: Diana revenge dress. Diana, you got that one.
[00:40:05] Speaker A: Revenge dress. Diana was there all of the eras of Danny. You couldn't. You couldn't sit at a fucking spot in this calf. It was like having lunch with her. It was like having dinner with Diana. Right? Now it gets a bit weird.
[00:40:22] Speaker B: Oh, it gets weird. It's gonna start getting weird now.
[00:40:28] Speaker A: It gets even weirder, right? Because there was, there was one particular picture, right, of the.
From what I can gather, the one time that Diana visited this cafe, right?
[00:40:40] Speaker B: Oh, so it existed while she was alive.
[00:40:43] Speaker A: Yes. Oh, yes.
[00:40:45] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:40:45] Speaker A: Went there, right?
[00:40:47] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:40:47] Speaker A: She went there. And what the fucking owners have done is they've printed out this one picture of her there, and they've framed it on different kind of walls. The same fucking photo they've repeated.
[00:41:01] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:41:02] Speaker A: On the walls. Just snuck it in. And there's like a framed news article about Cafe Diana. And there's this one same photo of her with the lads from Cafe Diana.
[00:41:11] Speaker B: Well, heaven forbid you go and you don't realize she has been there too.
[00:41:15] Speaker A: Of course.
[00:41:16] Speaker B: You gotta be able to see it from every seat.
[00:41:19] Speaker A: And you could, you could see it from every seat. And it was fantastic. And Ryan was there with some of her friends who were also super engaging, super entertaining, really, really open and friendly and warm. Great to talk to. Great to chat to. All college friends.
[00:41:32] Speaker B: Nice.
[00:41:33] Speaker A: The best friends are college friends, you know, much like, like I said at the time, you hold on to your college friends and, you know, they regaled me with some tales of their college days. Love that. And shout out to Colby Sawyer.
I I imagined that Ryan would bestow some books upon me, right?
[00:41:56] Speaker B: Oh, buddy. Oh, buddy.
[00:41:59] Speaker A: I was not ready. Two fucking jam packed tote bags. Two goddamn tote bags full of pre release copies. Just the most. The best sounding horror. A novel by the guy who wrote Ring nice. Hello.
[00:42:15] Speaker B: Hello.
[00:42:16] Speaker A: Yes. So. Or, you know, enough reading material to keep me stacked for the rest of 2024, easy.
[00:42:22] Speaker B: The same thing. When I stayed at her house, we're like, you know, loading our suitcases in, and then she just comes with, like, several bags and puts them in the trunk of the car, like, all right, here we go. Everything's ready.
[00:42:32] Speaker A: I will say with all the sincerity that I can muster that the gift was actually meeting Ryan, because she delivers. She is every bit the fucking. Just the twitchy little ball of sweetness that you imagine she is. She is absolutely the most beautiful little squirrel. I love her. She's great, and it was wonderful, wonderful to meet her. So thank you, Ryan, for reaching out, and it was lovely to meet you.
[00:42:58] Speaker B: And listen, that's that endorsement you can carry with you. All of you on the fence about coming to see us in September.
[00:43:06] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:43:06] Speaker B: And you get to meet this squirrel of a person that Marco loves so much.
It'll be beautiful.
A couple things that we wanted to address before getting started. For one, a story hit the news that you immediately sent me, and we were both like, we have to. We have to talk about this.
[00:43:29] Speaker A: Oh, man. It doesn't happen often when a news story will stop me in my tracks and make me fucking exc. I hear it in my earbuds. I was on the train, and, you know, I audibly went fucking hell. Cause this is fucking massive. And if this story has passed you by, you know, I'm delighted to be the one to break this to you, because it's fucking mad. So often, what we speak about on this, on this cast, is the impending apocalypse. Heat, death, fucking poverty, social displacement and fucking the murders and the psychos and the, you know, the wrong un's and the fucking. The terrible things.
[00:44:07] Speaker B: The end of the world as we know it.
[00:44:08] Speaker A: The fossil fuelled corner that we've backed ourselves into as a society, right? So the joy, the absolute joy in hearing the tale of an orangutan in Indonesia, a guy by the name of Rakus.
So, for the very first time in all of anthropology, in all of science, in all of history, this is bananas, by the way.
[00:44:36] Speaker B: I can't believe this.
[00:44:37] Speaker A: This has never been observed before in the wild, ever, right? Not one fucking time. And there are lots of stories of primates being actually way fucking smarter than is comfortable for us, maybe to assimilate as humans, you know.
[00:44:53] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:44:54] Speaker A: Gorillas using sign language, you know, reward responses, learning behaviors. Adapting.
This orangutan was observed with a really nasty. And the pictures of it, you can. You'll see these pictures exactly what I mean. With a really nasty kind of wound, an open kind of almost like an ulcer or a saw underneath an eye on its face.
[00:45:20] Speaker B: It really looks to me like when you see pictures of people who have been bitten by sharks and it just. A huge chunk of meat is just removed from you.
[00:45:29] Speaker A: It looks like something has had a go at him. Yeah, something's had a go at Rakus and left him with a really nasty boo boo underneath his eye.
So what Rakis was seen to do was treating his own fucking wound. Treating his own ailment medically, using a medicinal plant. So bananas fucking using a plant that, you know, has kind of antiseptic, anti inflammatory, antibacterial kind of properties. Rhakus was seen chewing the plant, making a kind of a poultice, making a kind of a, you know, a kind of a paste and coating his wound in this fucking medical plant, in this medicine, which then, you know, he spent a reportedly seven minutes applying this liquid, applying this paste onto his wound, completely smearing the chewed leaves onto the wound and eating these leaves. Then afterwards, for 30 minutes. And within five days, within five fucking days, not only was there no sign of infection, I think it was after.
[00:46:38] Speaker B: A month that it was fully gone.
[00:46:41] Speaker A: The wound had closed. Within five days, there was no sign of infection, and after a month, he was fully fucking healed.
[00:46:48] Speaker B: Sinsanity.
What?
Like, the article even says that, like, the. The plant that he used is used locally to treat malaria and diabetes. Like, this is the thing humans use as well. And this animal has figured it out.
[00:47:08] Speaker A: Now, therein lies the question, because this is the first time this has ever been observed. Has he figured this out right?
[00:47:16] Speaker B: Or is this the thing they all do?
[00:47:18] Speaker A: Exactly. Is this something that has been passed down to him? Is this right? Learned knowledge? Is this learned behavior? Well, obviously it's learned behavior. It's not something he's going to have done, you know, randomly. But is he the first orangutan to ever do this? Or is this something that has been passed down to him from fucking elders or parents?
[00:47:37] Speaker B: That's what's so crazy to me, is thinking like that. Like, when I said, this is the first time this has ever been observed, I was like, surely that can't be like we've been watching these animals in the wild. For a century or more, we have been paying close attention to them. How can this be the first time that we've absurd this behavior? Is it really the first time? Or like, maybe, you know, in whatever situations, a lot of times, like, humans would intervene and. And help, you know, so we didn't see them doing it because we helped them. Or, like, I don't know, but, like, did they see a person do it? What? It's breathtaking for them to do this.
[00:48:18] Speaker A: It is absolutely breathtaking.
[00:48:20] Speaker B: And even if it's the first one, theoretically, like, potentially it could hand it down from now. Exactly.
[00:48:26] Speaker A: Yes, exactly, exactly, exactly. That could be the very first instance of evolutionary behavior.
[00:48:31] Speaker B: Right.
[00:48:32] Speaker A: Being observed live in the wild, man.
[00:48:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
So bonkers.
[00:48:39] Speaker A: What I would challenge you to do here, right. If it's not too painful for you, if you can step back into your God squad mindset.
[00:48:48] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:48:48] Speaker A: Right.
And explain that shit to me from the perspective of somebody who's all loved up with the little baby Jesus.
[00:48:57] Speaker B: I mean, I don't think that that would be incompatible at all. Like, animals. So christians, depending on, like, how, like, totally fundy you are or whatever, but largely believe in adaptation, not evolution. So species don't change into something else over time, but you can have adaptations.
Cause that's observable in your everyday life. That doesn't take millions of years to do. You see something, you know, birds plumage change colors over time or, like, things like that. Like, you can see, right? Yeah. You can see an adaptation happen. So, yeah. The idea of, like, learning a behavior and then even passing it on and stuff like that wouldn't necessarily be incompatible with most evangelicals, unless they're, like, really? Like, you know, there's some that would probably just be like, you know, God taught them that.
[00:49:57] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:49:57] Speaker B: You know, or it's just imitating something it saw a person do. But for the most part, yeah. An adaptation is not something that would, like, totally throw people's worldview for a loop. Okay. But we do. Christians do have a weird relationship with is shit that apes and monkeys do that are similar to us.
[00:50:17] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:50:18] Speaker B: Causes a lot of discomfort.
[00:50:20] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, it's that classic pushback, isn't it? Well, if we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys? Come on.
[00:50:26] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:50:27] Speaker A: Think about it. Do your own research.
[00:50:28] Speaker B: Duh.
[00:50:32] Speaker A: Interestingly, yes. Only yesterday, right? Yesterday in my beautiful town of Bicester, sun was out, the street was busy, it was a lovely day, and I was taking Owen for a haircut. And as is common on towns and city streets, the length and breadth of the country, just as it is in the States. You've got your leaflet hanger outers?
[00:50:56] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:50:57] Speaker A: Come talk to me about Jesus. Come talk to me. Wouldn't it be great if I. What would you say if I told you there could be a world without pain and I was approached in a way that I'd never quite been approached in before by one of these folks and it caused me to pause, right, it was a girl. Couldn't have been any older than like, 1617. Just fresh of face, sparkly of eye, just with all of the hope of the world in her eyes, right? And instead of the usual gambit, she said to me, haya, is there anything you'd like me to pray for for you today?
[00:51:33] Speaker B: Nobody's ever said that to you before?
[00:51:35] Speaker A: Nah.
[00:51:36] Speaker B: Oh, that's like. That's missionary 101. Yeah, that's like, nah, first thing. Also, what's hilarious about that is usually that's the thing you say to someone that looks like they have problems.
[00:51:49] Speaker A: Oh, oh, oh.
[00:51:52] Speaker B: It's like in a lot of homeless ministry and drugs ministry and stuff like that. It's like, is there something you'd like me to pray for you about now? You're supposed to open up and explain all of the.
[00:52:06] Speaker A: I was with my boy. I was just, you know, taking him for a haircut. I was wearing that t shirt I got with the fly with Jeff Goldblum spewing into his hand.
[00:52:13] Speaker B: Nice. Yeah.
[00:52:14] Speaker A: I don't know if that helped, if.
[00:52:15] Speaker B: That might have been the one contributed at all.
[00:52:20] Speaker A: Legend on the back saying, help me be human. Maybe.
[00:52:25] Speaker B: You had red flags up all over the place. It's a beacon. I need to be prayed for.
[00:52:32] Speaker A: Is there anything you'd like me to pray for you for today?
And she caught me off guard, man, and I thought it through afterwards and there were a few things I would have asked for.
[00:52:40] Speaker B: Oh, man. Missed opportunity. Well, she's probably still there.
[00:52:46] Speaker A: Ten to eleven on a Sunday night, she's probably there.
[00:52:48] Speaker B: He's probably still hanging out there. Like, I know the help me be human guy is definitely coming back.
[00:52:55] Speaker A: Oh, he's coming back anytime now. But I would have asked her to have prayed for a new nightmare on m Street film. And I don't know if that's within.
[00:53:02] Speaker B: Her remit, if she's. If she's cool, she would. She would have gone with it.
What does Owen think, though? Like, when you, like, you're accosted by someone, dad, why does she want to pray for you?
[00:53:16] Speaker A: Well, my response to the girl, my verbatim response. This is exactly what I said. No thanks. I'm not the praying type. And off we went.
[00:53:25] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:53:26] Speaker A: You know, I didn't blank her, acknowledged her. Oh, with a smile. No thanks. I'm not really the praying. And we disappeared. But look, look, my kids know what I'm about, right? They know. They know their dad.
[00:53:39] Speaker B: They know I'm more interested in what he thinks of her than what he thinks of you. Oh, yeah.
[00:53:44] Speaker A: Oh, uh, I. Interesting.
Very interesting. I, I can't help but think that they would view them as cranks.
[00:53:56] Speaker B: Uh huh.
[00:53:56] Speaker A: Because of me.
[00:53:58] Speaker B: Sure, yeah.
[00:54:00] Speaker A: Um, but on the other hand, I mean, you know, I've said before, Laura isn't above taking the boys off for a bit of free food at the fucking community hall when they've got a fucking church do on a Sunday. And she's atheist, you know, she, yeah, but she's, she's worse. If anything, she's like fucking mercenary atheist. If there's fucking, if there's free cakes involved, she'll turn up at anything. You know what I mean? And I got no time for that shit.
[00:54:27] Speaker B: Well, listen, you know, I grew up with parents who are deeply anti religion and look what happened to me. So, you know, you better hide your kids from that prayer girl.
[00:54:38] Speaker A: That's a great point. They just say that kids turn up rebelling against.
[00:54:42] Speaker B: I know, it's like if you're too permissive, then it's like your kid can only rebel by being following some sort of new strict law instead.
[00:54:52] Speaker A: I would find it hilarious.
[00:54:56] Speaker B: But I am curious, you know, next time you come across like someone proselytizing on the street or whatever, like, if you ask what your kids think of it, I'm very curious as to how they interpret that, especially because it's like, it's rarer, like, like here. Like not necessarily the proselytizing on the street. I've seen tons of that in the UK.
[00:55:13] Speaker A: Yeah, of course.
[00:55:14] Speaker B: But like here, a good chunk of your friends at school would also be christian if you're not, you know. So I'm very curious because it's like generally less, like religious.
[00:55:28] Speaker A: I think I'm right in saying that because Britain is a far more diverse place than it was 20, 30, 40 years ago.
I think I'm right in saying that Christianity is all but kind of phase out in school now.
[00:55:45] Speaker B: Oh, in school, yes, yeah. Like as in, you know, like institutionalized religion.
[00:55:53] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly, exactly. I mean, you know, I vividly remember we would say the Lord's Prayer and fucking assembly.
[00:55:58] Speaker B: Really?
[00:56:00] Speaker A: For real?
[00:56:02] Speaker B: That's incredible. I, you know, I would go into classrooms in Northern Ireland into the re classes, the religious education classes when I was there. And, you know, that was where they got like their religion stuff in, but it was like everything, you know, they learned about like Islam and Christianity and like, all that kind of stuff. It wasn't like, yeah, they weren't saying the Lord's Prayer or anything like that for sure. It was just kind of a like general learning about like, what religion is in the world.
[00:56:30] Speaker A: Yeah. And that existed when I was in school as well, which is, you know, quite right, as it should. And I know that and I know that it still does. But there was more of a christian core that's fascinating to schooling. It was assumed that we were a christian school and as such, we would sing hymns in assembly and we would say the Lord's Prayer daily as a school. Right, everybody, here we go. Our father.
[00:56:57] Speaker B: And it wasn't like a, like, this is like a public school or whatever you would call them there, right? Like, you didn't go to a religious, specifically religious institution.
[00:57:07] Speaker A: This was, this was just kind of the way things were done in schools. You would all say the Lord's prayer in assembly, go back to class. Yeah.
[00:57:13] Speaker B: In like the eighties and nineties, one zillion percent.
[00:57:16] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:57:17] Speaker B: That's incredible because I think, like, here, you know, that's pretty much phased out by like, the fifties. There's not much, however, you still pledge.
[00:57:26] Speaker A: Allegiance to the flag, I believe.
[00:57:28] Speaker B: Yeah. Which is so weird. It's deeply bizarre to me. I volunteered with girl scouts, like, you know, ten years ago or whatever, and I was at like their summer camp or whatever, and they'd start with the pledge of allegiance. I'm like, I'm not doing that. It's not gonna be a thing. Same with, like, sporting events, like you have to sing the national anthem and all that kind of stuff beforehand, and it's like, nah, yeah, no, I'm good. Not gonna do that. But, yeah, the fact that kids like, stand up at the beginning of the day and like, pledge allegiance to the flag, like what?
[00:58:04] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:58:04] Speaker B: Why?
[00:58:05] Speaker A: I wonder if the Lord's pray I.
Looking back, I view that more as just an act of saying something together as a school, rather than it being specifically the Lord's prayer.
I think it was just an act of getting everybody to join and to say something and to foster some feeling of unity within the school before you all fuck off back to your separate classes.
[00:58:31] Speaker B: Yeah, totally.
[00:58:32] Speaker A: But I'm reasonably sure it doesn't happen anymore.
[00:58:34] Speaker B: Yeah, I would imagine so. I would imagine that it doesn't.
I feel like your kids probably would have told you if that was the thing that they were doing in school every day.
And it definitely didn't happen in the school and the schools in Northern Ireland that I've been in for sure. That's fraught in a lot of ways anyway.
[00:58:54] Speaker A: And I vividly remember some of the hymns that we would sing as kids.
[00:58:57] Speaker B: Really? Like what?
[00:58:58] Speaker A: Yes.
Okay.
Am I fucking doing this? All right.
[00:59:06] Speaker B: Yeah, you're doing it.
[00:59:07] Speaker A: Some days when the grass is jeweled and the silk inside a chestnut shell jet planes meeting in the air to be refueled all the things I love so well so I mustn't forget no, I mustn't forget to say a great big thank you. I mustn't forget now that one in.
[00:59:27] Speaker B: Particular, like, that's like a very secular sounding hymn.
[00:59:32] Speaker A: Yeah. And has only grown weirder as the years have gone by because every fucking british kid sang this song. Right.
[00:59:39] Speaker B: That's weird.
[00:59:40] Speaker A: And let's analyze that verse. Autumn day is great.
[00:59:44] Speaker B: Mm hmm.
[00:59:45] Speaker A: Grass being jeweled. Absolutely fine.
[00:59:47] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:59:48] Speaker A: The silk inside a chestnut shell. Great. Everyone's collected conkers. Yeah.
[00:59:52] Speaker B: I don't know what you're talking about, but sure. I mean, I know what a chestnut is, but I don't know.
[00:59:58] Speaker A: There you go.
[00:59:58] Speaker B: Silk inside of it.
[01:00:00] Speaker A: So, uh, when, uh, chestnuts, conkers, as we call them, fall from the trees and break open from this spiky cont, have I never fucking talk to you about conkers? Here we fucking go. Conkers. Conkers.
[01:00:13] Speaker B: C o n k e r s. Exactly this.
[01:00:16] Speaker A: Just like it sounds. Conkers. So the seeds from the horse chestnut tree come in like a spiky little casing, and they drop from the tree. The casing breaks, and you've got a conker inside which is a brown, kind of off spherical, kind of ovoid solid.
[01:00:32] Speaker B: Yeah, that's just what we'd call the chestnut. Yeah, yeah.
[01:00:35] Speaker A: Okay. Okay. So. And again, doesn't happen anymore because, you know, health and safety. But for years, like from the fifties, forties, thirties, all the way back, the game of conquers involved getting yourself one of these chestnuts, hammering a nail through it and tying a string to it. So you've got a conquer at the end of a string, okay?
[01:00:58] Speaker B: With the nail through it.
[01:01:00] Speaker A: Not the nail so much. You take the nail out and it would just be a conqueror.
Yeah.
[01:01:04] Speaker B: Now I got you.
[01:01:06] Speaker A: I can't believe we're talking about conkers and you and somebody else who's done the same with their conker, would engage in the game of conkers where you take it in turns to smash the other fucking players. Conquer with your conquer.
[01:01:20] Speaker B: Okay.
[01:01:21] Speaker A: And the person who wins, the person whose conquer is unsmashed, you take it in turns until what? Until one of the conquers breaks.
[01:01:28] Speaker B: Uh huh.
[01:01:29] Speaker A: Right. And then that means if you've got the surviving conquer, you have won that game of conquers.
[01:01:33] Speaker B: It's like danger pogs.
[01:01:36] Speaker A: Yeah. If you will, yes. And it would be very easy to, you know, and often would be done intentionally to hit a knuckle.
[01:01:43] Speaker B: Sure. Yep.
[01:01:44] Speaker A: Get somebody in the cheekbone. Ah, fuck.
But the more. The more like beyblades, I guess.
[01:01:53] Speaker B: Okay.
[01:01:54] Speaker A: The more games of conkers your conquer had won, it would then rise up the ranks. You'd have a two er or a three er or a four er.
[01:02:01] Speaker B: Okay.
[01:02:01] Speaker A: You know, and, you know, kids would resort to things like, you know, it was rumored that soaking your conker in vinegar overnight would toughen it up.
[01:02:12] Speaker B: Sure.
[01:02:13] Speaker A: And you'd play conkers. That's the game of conkers again. Out. Lord now doesn't really get played anymore.
So that was the explanation of that particular line, the silk inside a chestnut shell. Now, the next line is the one that is achieved in, for me, jet planes meeting in the air to be refueled.
[01:02:29] Speaker B: Right? Yeah.
[01:02:30] Speaker A: I've never fucking seen that. I've never seen that.
[01:02:33] Speaker B: Yeah. It felt like it came out of left field for sure. It's like. Cause you're talking about, like, the natural world here, right?
[01:02:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:02:40] Speaker B: Let's all enjoy the natural world. And then jet planes.
[01:02:43] Speaker A: Jet planes meaning the air to be refueled.
Not only have I never seen that, I've never spoken to a single fucking kid who's ever seen that, let alone has it become one of their formative memories of autumn.
[01:02:57] Speaker B: Yeah, that classic autumn thing where the. Where the planes refuel in the air. And I thank elementary school.
[01:03:05] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Jet planes meeting in the air to be revealed.
[01:03:09] Speaker B: Doesn't necessarily say thank God, does it?
[01:03:13] Speaker A: There's another verse where I think it goes into God. And if not God, then who the fuck am I saying thank you to?
[01:03:19] Speaker B: Well, you're just like. Like, you know, mother Earth. I come from hippie territory, so all of this kind of stuff, I'm like, yeah, you're just, you know, that's just like, thank you, mother Nature or whatever. Until you get to the plains, and then it gets weird. But that's.
I don't have an explanation for that.
[01:03:33] Speaker A: All right, well, the other. The other the other big hitter that I remember from school was seek ye first.
[01:03:38] Speaker B: I was gonna say. I was like. I was looking for some old English. Like, some, like, how great thou art. You know, things like that. Yeah.
[01:03:46] Speaker A: Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you. Allelu. Alleluia. That was another banner.
[01:04:02] Speaker B: There you go.
[01:04:03] Speaker A: And then we do the Lord's prayer and fuck off for a day of mayhem.
[01:04:06] Speaker B: Fair enough. We would do. I guess this goes along with what you were saying before. We would do, like, patriotic songs in the morning. So, you know, my country. Tis of thee. Things like that.
I can't even remember what most of them were, but, like, you know, we'd sing, like, a patriotic song and do the pledge of allegiance and go about our day. That was, like a normal morning when.
[01:04:30] Speaker A: I was in school.
Very weird, crazy shit.
[01:04:33] Speaker B: I just don't think kids need rituals, to be honest, you know?
[01:04:39] Speaker A: Not. Maybe not rituals. No, I think. I don't know. I think structure is probably a good thing, right?
[01:04:45] Speaker B: Like, structure is fine, you know? But, like, do we need some sort of weird group ritual that we have to do?
[01:04:54] Speaker A: Yeah. What you're describing is indoctrination, right?
[01:04:57] Speaker B: Yeah. Do we need those? Probably not. I think it's okay to just, like, start your day, you know, maybe sing the Mickey Mouse club or something. I don't know. Or Mickey Mouse clubhouse for the. For the youngsters. To horror legends this week that we just want to quickly acknowledge good old Roger Corman.
[01:05:16] Speaker A: Pouring one out for Roger Corman. Holy shit. Who the fuck knew that he was still even alive?
[01:05:22] Speaker B: Well, he appears every now and again on Joe Bob, and every time he shows up on it, I'm like, Roger Corman is still alive. I think the last time he was on it was only a few months ago.
And alas, no more Roger Corman, who kick started many a career.
[01:05:40] Speaker A: So goddamn many careers. Jack Nicholson.
[01:05:43] Speaker B: Yeah. Martin Scorsese.
[01:05:45] Speaker A: Scorsese.
[01:05:46] Speaker B: Ron Howard. Fucking Joe Dante. Peter Bogdanovich.
Lord, just name anyone of a certain era. He was probably their mentor.
[01:05:57] Speaker A: When I saw the departed a couple of weeks back. Or was that a couple of months back? I don't know.
I went down a kind of a departed rabbit hole and was listening to Matt Damon talking about Jack Nicholson on the set of the departed and about how Nicholson was always about kind of getting value for the fucking time that you've got of film. Not wasting any film. You see. I'm from the corpsman school. You know, you gotta get your money's worth.
So even, even fucking now, you know, his influence is still just impossible to, to overstate on what we consider to be cinema now.
[01:06:36] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So absolutely. Pouring one out for him as well as for Susan Becalini, known as Chrissy, the girl who gets eight in the opening scene of Jaws.
So huge, huge place in horror history. Absolutely iconic. And she just died this weekend as well.
[01:06:58] Speaker A: The Jaws curse strikes again. Eh?
[01:07:02] Speaker B: The, uh, the jaws curse.
[01:07:04] Speaker A: Think about it. What was her name?
[01:07:06] Speaker B: Susan Becalini.
[01:07:08] Speaker A: Susan Becalini. Dead. Roy Scheider.
[01:07:12] Speaker B: Dead.
[01:07:12] Speaker A: Dead. Robert Shaw. Dead.
Sounds kind of sus, don't you think?
[01:07:19] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, within 50 years of filming this movie.
[01:07:24] Speaker A: Don't tell me that.
[01:07:26] Speaker B: Look what happens.
[01:07:27] Speaker A: Just. All I'm saying, do your own research. Just look into it.
[01:07:31] Speaker B: It's definitely something amiss here.
[01:07:34] Speaker A: Why has nobody picked up on this?
[01:07:38] Speaker B: You should definitely ask Richard Dreyfus about this at a q and A and just see where it goes.
[01:07:48] Speaker A: Anyways, yes.
[01:07:50] Speaker B: Anyway, let's get into. We'll roll through what we watched real quick. I did watch a bunch of things, but you only watched one thing. It makes it really easy to just.
[01:07:59] Speaker A: Yep.
[01:08:00] Speaker B: Dive right in and get there.
[01:08:02] Speaker A: Look, super quick one from me. Super quick and super fun. Abigail.
[01:08:07] Speaker B: Abigail. It's a good time, man.
[01:08:11] Speaker A: It's a fucking hell of a fun time, right? You know, I love a vampire.
[01:08:15] Speaker B: You do? Love a vampire.
[01:08:17] Speaker A: I love a vampire. I love a lot of, and I think I've said this before, I love a lot of different flavors of vampire. Right?
[01:08:23] Speaker B: You do? Yes.
[01:08:24] Speaker A: I quite enjoy your kind of poofy shirted, kind of poetry fucking french vampire, right? Oh, it is so painful to be dead. I like your stupid, melodramatic, Bram Stoker's Dracula kind of, you know, your, your grand guignol fucking sturm and rang vampire. I love all that.
I love a fun vampire. I love a lost boys vampire, a comedy vampire.
I like a sinister vampire. Like a fright night vampire.
I love a grungy kind of leather vampire, like your neo darks, your bill paxons.
I love a ridiculous vampire, like from dusk till dawn, a monster kind of vampire. And it was just so satisfying and comforting and fun to see Abigail bringing back that kind of lost boise kind of fun vampire movie.
You've got a great ensemble cast. Oh, what a fun fucking cast.
[01:09:29] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[01:09:30] Speaker A: Just people who, the dialogue feels nice and natural. The interactions are fun, and everybody's got a little skeleton or two in the closet, right? And they're on this fucking. It's a heist movie for the first 20 minutes. And then there's a vampire. Um, just a proper evil little bastard of a vampire. Uh, vampires that explode violently in some way.
[01:09:55] Speaker B: Yep. You can tell it's the same dudes who made ready or not, they love to explode somebody.
[01:10:02] Speaker A: Very much. So. Your boy Dan Stevens. Dan Stevens. He's great. Isn't he great? He's great. I love him.
[01:10:11] Speaker B: He's always great.
[01:10:12] Speaker A: I totally get it.
[01:10:13] Speaker B: I totally get it. I think he's excellent. Yeah.
[01:10:16] Speaker A: And, you know, to get that part, he must have had to have beat off a lot of american men.
[01:10:21] Speaker B: But I'm.
If you've never seen that interview, look up Dan Stevens beat off.
[01:10:34] Speaker A: It's one for the british audience. Everybody has seen it. It's one of the best tv of all time. It's Susanna Reid.
Susanna Reid interviewing Dan Stevens just before the release of the. It must have been the guest with not even knowing the fucking colossal double entendre that she's just dropped, she says to him, it must be such a great achievement for you because in the audition process, you must have had to have beat off a lot of american men. And he gets it straight away, and you can hear the fucking camera crew in the background going. And she doubles down, goes, why are you laughing? Did you not have to beat them off? And it's brilliant.
[01:11:17] Speaker B: It is really great.
[01:11:19] Speaker A: But, yeah, it brought.
[01:11:20] Speaker B: I'm also a huge fan of Kevin Durand, who I think is a super underrated person. And him playing just, like, the stupidest human to ever live.
[01:11:28] Speaker A: Oh, he was the muscle. Yeah.
[01:11:29] Speaker B: Yeah. He's, like, so excellent, endearing and what have I. Menacing.
Uh, well, he was in Deadpool before. Like, the. Or not Deadpool. He was in the Wolverine that had the bad Deadpool in it. He was the big guy. Big. But I don't know. He was, like, for a while, in, like the, like, late two thousands, early 2010s, he showed up in a lot of stuff. He was on lost. He was Martin Keemy on lost, the really terrible mercenary who kills Ben's daughter on it.
[01:12:07] Speaker A: I saw literally four episodes of lost before realizing, fair enough.
[01:12:12] Speaker B: Yeah. He was in a lot of stuff for a while, but just huge guy. But who's also, if you listen to interviews with him, is just the really soft spoken, heart of gold kind of guy.
Yeah. And I love him in Abigail. I think he's. That character just is a delight to me.
[01:12:32] Speaker A: Such a massive near dark reference in there, too. I don't know if you caught it. I mean, spoilers abound here a little oh, no, no.
[01:12:40] Speaker B: Don't spoil.
[01:12:41] Speaker A: Okay. You've not seen near dark, have you?
[01:12:43] Speaker B: Oh, I've seen near dark. I thought you were going to spoil Abigail.
[01:12:46] Speaker A: Oh, no. But there is a big near dark nod in Abigail. Huge.
[01:12:51] Speaker B: Don't do any spoilers because obviously it's just come out on vod, so a lot of people are just getting to it. But I think we both recommend it. It's a really fun time. Just really feels like. Like, you know, when you watch something, you're like, yes, that's a horror movie. And that's, like, what I wanted, you know, it's, like, fun and bloody, you know?
Yeah. It just hits all those little spots of, like, the. When you want to go to the theater and see something fun, you know, like, yeah, I just want that. That was what this movie was.
[01:13:21] Speaker A: I think it really loud and clear. It was broadcasting lost boys vibes to me. Just loud and fucking clear, you know, even. Even down to the vampire lore, you know, some of the tropes don't work. Some of them do. You've got to work out.
[01:13:36] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[01:13:38] Speaker A: Good shit. Good shit.
[01:13:40] Speaker B: Yeah. Very fun.
[01:13:42] Speaker A: You went to the movies, didn't you?
[01:13:44] Speaker B: I did. I did a double feature the other day because I'd been hunkered down so much the two weeks before that. I was just, like, watching movies come in and out of the theater and not being able to see them be like, no.
So the other day I went to the theater and I saw what that's.
[01:14:02] Speaker A: That's kind of the noise I make when a movie I want to see in the pictures. I don't get to see it. Like, oh, no, no, it's gone.
[01:14:10] Speaker B: Where'd it go? No, come back.
It's exactly what I do every day.
So I went and saw fall guy, which, you know, so it's just like a. Again, it's like a fun, fun little mindless flick to go see. Although there is, weirdly, an amber and Johnny joke in it that just, like, simply does not need to be there. And it's, like, very startling. Other than that, it's like a total, like, family friendly, fun action movie with, like, a cute little romance at the center of it. Really charming. I mean, you know, talk about gosling.
[01:14:47] Speaker A: You got Emily blunt digging deep for iPad.
[01:14:51] Speaker B: What do you mean?
[01:14:53] Speaker A: Well, the fall guy. You know, the show the fall guy. No, surely to fuck. You know of the american tv show the fall guy on which this movie is loosely based.
[01:15:04] Speaker B: No.
[01:15:06] Speaker A: Lee Majors, okay. Plays a stuntman.
[01:15:10] Speaker B: Okay.
[01:15:12] Speaker A: And my memory here gets hazy cause this is right at the very edge of my childhood memories.
[01:15:18] Speaker B: Sure.
[01:15:19] Speaker A: But he plays a stuntman, but in much the same way as a kind of a highway to heaven, the hulk sort of way. Murder, she wrote. He's a crime solving stuntman.
[01:15:29] Speaker B: Mmm. Okay.
[01:15:31] Speaker A: Cause I'm the unknown stuntman, the mid Eastwood searcher star. That was how the theme tune went. And now, fucking 50 odd years later, they've blown the dust off that ip and made this huge action spectacular out of it.
[01:15:44] Speaker B: Yeah. I guess, like, if you know the sort of story behind, like, I mean, it's directed by a stuntman and all that kind of stuff, it makes sense for that to be something that he would have, like.
[01:15:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:15:53] Speaker B: Grown up on and been like, let's bring this back. So, yeah, definitely digging deep. I've never even heard of the OG thing.
[01:16:01] Speaker A: Astounded and a little bit pleased.
[01:16:03] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, that's like, you know, that's definitely in that period of things where there's, like, it just. It would never have rerun. Or if it did, it would have been, like, in some slot that I would like. It would have appeared to me as old people stuff, and so I wouldn't have touched it.
[01:16:25] Speaker A: Fall guy.
[01:16:26] Speaker B: Fall guy. Well, there we go. But, yeah, it's a fun movie. I mean, Aaron Taylor Johnson, who I think is largely a terrible actor, his accent in this is another one of those, like, space accents. This is not. This is not. No American on Earth has this accent, but there comes a point in it where he is playing a character, and he actually has a really good Matthew McConaughey impression. I was like, I'm actually pretty impressed by how well he's nailed that. But, yeah, it's a fun, cute little, you know, movie. Like, you know, you could watch it with your family, put it on. On a Friday night or whatever, and you'll.
[01:17:05] Speaker A: And that is, I think, exactly where it is destined. That has got fucking streaming web rip written all over.
[01:17:12] Speaker B: Right. Yeah, get your dominoes. Everybody hang out and watch Fall guy.
And then the other movie I watched was challengers, which I was really stoked to see because everybody has been going to see it and loving it, and I think it absolutely lives up to the hype. One of those movies that kind of, to a degree, defies sort of explain the basic plot line of it doesn't do justice to what the movie actually is, but it's a movie in, which.
[01:17:40] Speaker A: Is it, by anyone of note.
[01:17:42] Speaker B: Yeah, it's Luca Guadagnin.
[01:17:44] Speaker A: Guadagnino.
[01:17:46] Speaker B: Yeah. Huge. Huge simp for that guy absolutely love his stuff. So I was like, obviously already in. And so you're know that.
[01:17:55] Speaker A: I didn't know that.
[01:17:56] Speaker B: There you go. This movie. What I will. I'll explain in a second. But my thought process on this movie is that if you watch it, you specifically Mark Lewis in the wrong mood, you will hate it. If you watch it in the right mood. This is gonna be one of those movies that you sit with afterwards, like, oh, fuck. But there's no in between. There's no like, oh, you might kind of like it. You're either gonna be like, this is annoying, or you're gonna sit down at the right mode and watch it and be like, wow.
[01:18:24] Speaker A: So call me by your name. Adored it.
[01:18:27] Speaker B: Love it. Yep.
[01:18:28] Speaker A: Bones and all. Fucking adore.
[01:18:29] Speaker B: Yeah, you.
[01:18:32] Speaker A: There is no reason why I am now not all in on this film. And I fucking wish I'd never known.
[01:18:38] Speaker B: Before, but it was a Luca born in your film. It's great. So it's about these two guys who were besties, tennis playing besties at boarding school growing up, and they meet this other phenomenal, beautiful tennis playing woman, and both sort of develop a thing for her. And over the course, this movie takes place over the course of 15 years and jumps back and forth in time. You kind of see this. This tension between, you know, the relationships between each other and her and all of this kind of stuff. And like I said, on the surface, that doesn't sound that interesting. It just sounds like a standard love triangle played amidst tennis. But it's Luca.
And you end up just absolutely floored by this movie. Gives you so much to think about. And immediately I wanted to see it again, which was exactly what happened when I saw call me by your name. The first time I went and saw call me by your name, I literally walked out and walked back in again. I just bought another ticket and went and saw it.
[01:19:41] Speaker A: Never done that.
[01:19:42] Speaker B: Never done that. Yep, we're doing this. And then I bought it on Blu ray and challengers is the. If I didn't have something else to do afterwards, I probably would have been like, you know what? One more ticket. Let's go do it again.
[01:19:54] Speaker A: And yet you hated bones at all.
[01:19:57] Speaker B: I did hate bones and all. Yes, this is true.
That's. Yeah, that just hits, like, all the things that annoy me in something that's one of those ones that it's just like. It's just all the parts were wrong for me personally.
But, yeah, overall, I generally am a big fan of him, and this delivers. So I think I think you're gonna like it a lot.
And I watched when a stranger calls as I was researching things for our, the strangers episode of the Fan cave, which. Have you ever seen when a stranger calls?
[01:20:33] Speaker A: Not to my recollection.
[01:20:35] Speaker B: Yeah. So, you know, it's 1974 home invasion movie where it's very weird because, like, the first 20 minutes of it are an excellent horror flick based on the, you know, the call is coming from inside the house sort of babysitter, urban legend thing.
And it's like, genuinely very tense and scary and all that kind of stuff. And then it becomes a very boring police procedural in the middle.
And then the last ten minutes are again like a scary horror movie.
So, yeah, when a stranger calls, weird one. I looked at the, like, I'm the letterboxd. And I was like, it has a pretty low rating. I'm kind of surprised by that. And then I watched it and I was like, oh, yeah, okay. One of those movies. It's like a classic, but, like, not very good.
[01:21:29] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:21:29] Speaker B: You can see why in 1974, people would have been into it. And now it's like, why does this exist?
I also watched the Ministry of ungentlemanly Warfare. The.
Listen, it's fun. It's kind of exactly what you think it is.
[01:21:46] Speaker A: You couldn't pay me.
[01:21:47] Speaker B: You couldn't fucking.
[01:21:49] Speaker A: I would pull out. I'd put pins in my fucking eyes before I watch anything by Guy Ritchie.
[01:21:55] Speaker B: I think, you know, generally with Guy Ritchie, I'm like, it's exactly. I know what I'm getting into.
And it's gonna be mindless fun or whatever with lots of excessive violence and, you know, quippiness. And that's what it is. So, you know, if that's what you're in for. The thing I kind of appreciate about this one, it's like, you know how I was complaining about inglorious bastards and like, the kind of, you know, let's make us all look like even cooler saviors than we already are and all that kind of stuff. Ministry of ungentlemanly warfare is very much one of those things where it's like everybody is in this. Just kind of like nobody has a moral stance on it. Just kind of like, oh, you're gonna pay me for this. Okay. And everyone sort of picks their sides based on what is, you know, most beneficial to them in this. So it's not really like a patriotic kind of movie. Mercenaries. So it's. Yeah, exactly. Just mercenaries.
And so, yeah, it's, if you like a guy Ritchie joint, it is exactly what you're expecting.
[01:23:02] Speaker A: Okay?
[01:23:03] Speaker B: That's what you're gonna get out of it.
And Rewatch Twister, because it was the 28th anniversary of Twister, so, you know.
[01:23:13] Speaker A: It'S like, tell you something about Twister.
[01:23:16] Speaker B: Okay?
[01:23:18] Speaker A: You may or may not know this, but Twister.
[01:23:20] Speaker B: Oh, my God.
[01:23:21] Speaker A: Was the first ever movie to be made commercially available on.
[01:23:28] Speaker B: Oh, you don't say?
[01:23:30] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:23:30] Speaker B: First time that's ever been said on this podcast.
[01:23:33] Speaker A: Just a little something that you might want. Little tidbit for those new joiners of the Joey movie. That's a little something you might want to know. First ever commercially available movie ever made on DVD.
[01:23:42] Speaker B: I'm worried that one day we're actually going to google this, and that's not going to be true.
[01:23:46] Speaker A: But don't fucking do it, because I won't.
[01:23:48] Speaker B: But this is joag lore, so accept it. Whatever. You don't need to look it up. But yes, rewatch Twister, always great time. The other thing that I watched, for whatever reason.
[01:24:01] Speaker A: I'm sorry, you know, twisters.
[01:24:04] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:24:05] Speaker A: Is that a direct sequel or is a.
[01:24:08] Speaker B: Apparently it's a direct sequel.
[01:24:10] Speaker A: Okay, good. Okay.
[01:24:11] Speaker B: Yeah. I don't know what to think about that. It looks dumb and fun, and I'm into it. I'm just probably gonna pretend it's not related to the other one because I'll watch a dumb tornado movie. I've watched many of them.
So a big budget tornado movie I'm in. I just don't know if I really want it to be related to my second favorite movie.
[01:24:30] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:24:33] Speaker B: The other thing that I watched was a history of violence, which is a weird fucking movie.
[01:24:40] Speaker A: Oh, it is. Super strange.
[01:24:42] Speaker B: Oh, weird, super strange.
You know, that I tend to. When it comes to Cronenberg, I don't like the, like, weird sexual thriller body horror ones as much.
You know, there are exceptions to this, but largely not my thing. And I tend to like his, you know, sort of more Normie kind of movies.
[01:25:06] Speaker A: See, that's one of the reasons why I love him so much as a filmmaker, because he had that fucking phase, right, where it was just gritty as fuck.
[01:25:18] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:25:18] Speaker A: Crime thrillers, you know, eastern promises and the history of violence. And I think there was spider he did, which wasn't. Was way outside of his fucking nerve. And they were all great. They were fucking brilliant, brilliant movies. I don't know if I.
[01:25:33] Speaker B: Here's the thing about a history of violence, and I don't mean this to, like, dog it in any way, because I liked it. The issue is not me. Liking it. I don't know if it's a good movie. And it was like, I was just sitting there afterwards, I was like, I think that was bad. But in, like, a way that works like nothing about it is actually a good movie. It strands its plot lines all over the place. The, like, people make no sense in it. It, like, doesn't. It is barely held together as a story, and its characters are barely held together and things like that. And yet somehow a history of violence works, which I think is sort of a testament to Cronenberg, is that he took something that isn't actually all that good. But at the same time, I was sitting there.
[01:26:20] Speaker A: Elevated it.
[01:26:21] Speaker B: Yeah, elevated something that is actually not great.
[01:26:24] Speaker A: I think that, admittedly, it's been decades since I've seen it.
[01:26:29] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. I remember that. And eastern promises came out like a year apart when I was in college, and I could never tell which one was which, but, yeah, so it's been, what, 20 years or whatever since it came out.
[01:26:42] Speaker A: I just remember Ed Harris being fucking great.
[01:26:45] Speaker B: Oh, I mean, come on.
Like, it's just.
Yeah, it's such a weird movie. I encourage people to watch it. I mean, the movie is about a guy who, you know, he is a family man, lives in sort of a rural area, runs a diner, and one day.
[01:27:07] Speaker A: Joe Schmove.
[01:27:09] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Just any old guy. And one day these two men come into his diner and insist that he is someone else, and he ends up killing these two men, which starts this whole spiral because he ends up a famous hero on national television and whatnot. More people start coming for him and we're sort of wondering, is he the guy that they are claiming he is, or is this some sort of colossal mix up and it begins to sort of unravel his family life and all of that kind of stuff as this occurs. So it's an interesting story, for sure.
Yeah, it's just an interesting movie.
[01:27:55] Speaker A: Quite similar beats to the long kiss goodnight.
[01:27:58] Speaker B: I have not seen that. That's another. I mean, I have seen that. I have not seen that in 20 years. It was a household staple when I was younger, but I don't really remember much about it.
[01:28:08] Speaker A: Great movie. But, yes, you've made me badly want to see both challengers and history of violence again tonight.
[01:28:15] Speaker B: Watch both. Highly recommend.
[01:28:18] Speaker A: Honestly, I ask him why he's so good at killing people.
Great movie.
[01:28:25] Speaker B: Yeah. History of violence. Worthwhile challengers, worthwhile.
That's the watches, Mark, what are we talking about this week?
[01:28:34] Speaker A: All right, let's get the trigger warnings out the way.
[01:28:39] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. For sure.
[01:28:41] Speaker A: Yeah. Let's get the trigger warnings out in the way, which will become clear why in a moment or two. So I, like many others, enjoy sinking some time scrolling with my finger up and down on the social media platform TikTok.
I enjoy it. Now, you may or may not know that TikTok uses algorithmic predictions to serve you content based on stuff that you've spent time watching prior.
[01:29:17] Speaker B: I had a feeling this was gonna like, as when you recommended this, I was like, I have a feeling this is because Mark has been TikToking.
[01:29:25] Speaker A: Do you know about this? Do you know about how TikTok.
[01:29:28] Speaker B: I have heard content about this particular thingy bandit.
[01:29:33] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's. It's, you know, it's a dopamine delivery fucking mechanism is all it is.
Now some fucking how tick tock has got it into its head that I really want to watch videos of child abusers or potential child abusers getting stung by online vigilante fucking child air quotes protection groups, right?
I can't scroll TikTok for more than fucking five minutes at a time without seeing some fucking terrified dude surrounded by four other people, brandishing a camera in their face, recording them live, presenting them with chat logs and images and truth of their repugnant online behavior.
[01:30:34] Speaker B: Right.
[01:30:36] Speaker A: And I thought this needed exploring a little.
[01:30:41] Speaker B: Sure. Yeah.
[01:30:44] Speaker A: I thought this needed just a little bit of joag unpacking, because as I. And as we have done time and time again across other topics, I don't know how I feel.
[01:31:00] Speaker B: Yeah, this is a complicated one.
[01:31:02] Speaker A: Yes. And I need to talk it through. I need to talk online fucking predator hunters through.
[01:31:09] Speaker B: And just to, you know, in terms of the.
Yeah, in terms of content warning here, I don't think we're gonna be talking about any specific, like, acts on no children. Right. So we're really. We're just talking about, you know, the people who hunt pedophiles, as they call it, online.
[01:31:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:31:26] Speaker B: You know, and things like that. So if that is. Is an issue, peace, apple. We're not going to be, like, actively talking about acts perpetrated upon.
[01:31:37] Speaker A: Certainly not. But more their methodology.
[01:31:40] Speaker B: Right. How they groom things like that.
[01:31:43] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, stats wise, right? I mean, just to kind of put this in. Into some context, the NSPCC, which is a british society for the prevention of cruelly to children, as of February 24, the suggestion is that around one in 20 children in the UK have been sexually abused in some way or other. Right. Which is colossal. One in 20 kids. It's fucking wild.
[01:32:09] Speaker B: This is. I found, like, I don't have the exact statistics. I didn't write it down. But one thing that was wild to me was like. It was like a child is, you know, sexually abused in the United States, like, every, like 15 seconds or like, every. Something like that. And it was like nine for the UK, which, thinking about that, like, the UK is a lot smaller than us. And so this is clearly, for whatever reason, a huge issue there. It's a huge issue everywhere, obviously, but clearly an ever present one there.
[01:32:48] Speaker A: Yeah. And this, you've got to call it, is phenomenon too big a word. I don't know. But independent groups, non law affiliated groups, groups acting completely outside of the law and completely of their own recognizance.
Since there was a documentary on in the UK in 2014, right. Called the Pedophile Hunter, about a guy called Stinson Hunter.
[01:33:19] Speaker B: And yes, he did come up in my research. Yeah.
[01:33:23] Speaker A: And since that documentary, in just five years, a tiny handful of groups grew into, at least in 2014, there were 191 separate and distinct online active kind of pedophile hunting groups.
And it. It's a lot. And it's growing and growing and growing. Right.
[01:33:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:33:45] Speaker A: And it feels.
There's so many fucking questions that this raises, man, what with the fucking methodology that they employ and.
[01:34:00] Speaker B: Right.
[01:34:02] Speaker A: Are they a force for good? Is the fucking work that they do?
Gah. Is it. Is it well intentioned work which is executed badly? Or is it simply for personal glory?
[01:34:18] Speaker B: Yeah, I think, like, these vigilante groups are kind of a perfect storm of, like, all kinds of elements of societal breakdown, because, like, there is a very real problem with child sexual abuse in the US and the UK, where these groups have become so common. I think our countries are the areas where they are most likely to exist. And there's a huge inability to do anything substantial about it because you can't arrest every single pedophile, especially since a lot of times it's happening, like, in people's homes and families.
But then it's like, you know, the solution to cops failing is not to create a society of cops. Obviously, that's not helpful. But on top of all this, well, you know, a lot of these people are coming from a good place. Like, a lot of them came from abuse in their past and stuff like that. There's also many who are, like, up to their ears in far right talking points, or even worse, are using their positions in these vigilante groups to cover their own sex crimes. And of course, there's just generally the Internet, which supplies these people with an endless amount of potential victims and also causes these vigilantes to do this stuff for clout, but also shows that parents aren't doing their jobs when it comes to protecting their kids in many instances. Not all, obviously, you can't be over your kid's shoulder all the time, but there's a degree of supervision and a degree of training that's missing here. Making kids vulnerable. Like, all of these factors come together to make this so complicated because we have a very real issue that is being played into from all of these different angles.
So are these guys the solution? Is this good?
[01:36:02] Speaker A: See, the first conflict here is, for me, the fact that the police approach to any kind of vigilante justice and to any kind of online, independent, unregulated pedophile hunting is one of condemnation. Right, right.
Going back to 2014, at the time, a guy by the name of Simon Bailey, who was the national police chief Council lead for child Protection, is quoted as saying, we understand the desire to protect children, but any member of the public who has information about child sexual abuse should get in contact with the police so we can investigate and bring people to justice. So called pedophile hunters are taking risks they don't understand and can undermine police investigations. Most importantly, unlike our officers, they have no way of safeguarding child victims right.
Now.
In opposition to that, the common methodology of online pred hunters is not. Is to act as decoys themselves, right?
So as not to kind of use bait kids, right?
[01:37:10] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:37:11] Speaker A: You know, not to. Not to kind of share indecent images themselves, but to act as decoys themselves on websites online where adults and children will communicate and to wait to be approached themselves by a potential offender.
[01:37:26] Speaker B: Right?
[01:37:29] Speaker A: And the other thing that kind of seems to me to butt up against that stance of condemnation by the police is how often evidence from these groups seems to be being used in convictions and charges and prosecutions.
A stat that I got from the BBC. In fact, no, a stat that I got from a paper from Cambridge, Cambridge University, was that in 2018, 60%, 60 fucking percent of all child sex offense convictions made use in some way of evidence provided by hunting groups.
[01:38:09] Speaker B: Which is interesting. I think this is. This might be a. I was thinking about it. This might be a divide between the US and the UK, because it's not the case here. Go on here. Generally, because of the way they obtain that evidence, it can't be used. And so a lot of times what ends up happening is that, you know, whether the cops are already looking into someone or they give them some, someone new, whatever evidence they have not usable, and then that person will go and delete any other evidence that exists because now they know people are watching them. Right. So because of the way that, like, our legal system works, you know, the vast majority of these people don't end up getting charged also or like, prosecuted for it on top of that also, the police have said that in the majority of cases examined, the targets do not actually reflect any sexual interest in children. So the vast majority of the people that these vigilantes go after aren't actually pedophiles.
And even.
What was the name? Stinson, the guy that you were talking about, he even admitted this. He said that the guys that I catch generally aren't pedophiles. A massive percent of them are guys that have been lonely and someone has paid them attention and they jumped on it.
So again, that makes it pretty difficult to prosecute people because they're largely not actually doing the thing they're being accused of. And if they are, they can't use that evidence because it was essentially obtained illegally through coercion, through methods that amount to harassment.
[01:40:05] Speaker A: That was actually a question I was going to ask. Is it the reason that it can't get used so much in the US? Is that entrapment laws?
[01:40:12] Speaker B: I think it's different from entrapment because the Supreme Court, I believe, did rule that they can do this, right, if they follow the right methods or whatever, they are allowed to do this. And I think the cops can do it, too. I don't think that it's necessarily entrapment to pose as someone in order to get, you know, if they take the bait that's on them. Right. Like, I don't think it's the same thing as entrapment for whatever reason. So it is legal technically, to pose as, you know, an eleven year old girl and then, you know, someone comes to you and you can turn them in or whatever. But I think that's part of it is like, you know, you can then turn over whatever evidence to the police.
Things get sketchier with, like, what a lot of these guys do. Like, what's showing up on your TikTok feed is that they're, you know, accosting people on live streams or even if they're uploading it later. They're not blurring faces or anything like that. These are, you know, we have due process. You're not allowed to, even if you show someone on like a tv show or whatever, you have to say beforehand, like, they are innocent until proven guilty, things like that. And they're uploading this onto the Internet, opening them up by their real names. In one case that I read, it was like they put someone's mobile number up there and they're opening them and their families up to all this harassment without them ever having gone through any form of trial or anything like that before doing so. I think that's why it's really difficult to use evidence from them here because, you know, essentially, you've. You've just, like, harassed someone in this situation.
You know, put their. Put their image online without any form of due process or anything like that.
[01:42:08] Speaker A: Yeah. Unleash the nouns on them in itself, you know, has the potential for impact on kind of secondary victims. So non offending kind of partners, family members, ostracization, fucking trauma from seeing somebody, you know, who may be a loved one or a family member getting fucking pilloried in public.
[01:42:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:42:34] Speaker A: In fact, a complete lack of any kind of due process or rigor.
[01:42:38] Speaker B: Yeah. And one of the cases that I was reading about that legal action was being pursued on the wife of the person who they had caught had attempted to take her own life by overdosing on pills because she couldn't take the harassment before. Throwing bricks at their house and stuff like that, calling constantly all of these things. And in that case, this was essentially, I think, what entrapment is that they had conversations with this guy posing as an 18 year old. And then when he showed up, they started filming and said, why are you trying to, like, have sex with a 15 year old? And he was like, what? What are you talking about? Like, that's not what happened. And they had after texted him, like, you know, I'm 15 or whatever. And he's like, I just got this. I was gonna leave. Like, I wasn't planning on this, you know? And, you know, they chase.
[01:43:33] Speaker A: You are talking about where he lives?
[01:43:35] Speaker B: Yeah, go ahead.
[01:43:37] Speaker A: You're talking about a guy by the name of Peter. A guy in Staffordshire.
[01:43:43] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:43:44] Speaker A: A guy who was approached on an adult dating site by a decoy who claimed to be 18.
He turns up to meet Erin Acosta.
Before the meeting, the guy gets a text saying, oh, I'm actually 15. As soon as he gets that text, he fucking leaves.
[01:44:03] Speaker B: Right. Yeah.
[01:44:05] Speaker A: And is then doorstepped.
[01:44:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:44:08] Speaker A: By, you know, on. On fucking camera. By a group accusing him of trying to meet a 15 year old for sex. And is from then on, ruined.
[01:44:17] Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah, 100%.
And like I said, yeah, his. The stress of it got so intense that, yeah, his wife attempted suicide as a result of it. Other things that, like, people brought up, like a.
A group called KTS Predator Hunters, which is run by a guy called Kyle Swanson.
He, like, basically kidnapped a guy, held him in his car, wouldn't let him go, and threatened to hurt him, which in that time that he was being held in the car. The guy deleted all the evidence, so the cops also couldn't use it.
He also met up with what they called a potentially dangerous adult in an elementary school parking lot without telling the school or the security people or anything, that he was going to bring a pedophile to the elementary school.
And the cops said of this that his methods made it virtually impossible for us to charge anybody. And he claims that and is correct in saying his efforts have led to hundreds of arrests, but very few of those have actually held up in court because of the way that they did that. So even hundreds of people were arrested because of the things this guy did and then released because of the way he did it, and now are wised up to the fact that this can happen to them and are going to get a lot smarter about their methods from this point forward.
[01:45:58] Speaker A: See, one of the elements of that whole culture which fucking sits so badly with me is the kind of language that they use when referring to themselves.
There's an embedded kind of culture. It feels of them as the heroes, as seeing themselves as doing the fucking work of heroes.
Like some of the fucking names these groups give themselves. Dark justice. Yeah, lots of guardians of the north.
[01:46:33] Speaker B: Oh, God.
[01:46:34] Speaker A: You know what I mean?
[01:46:35] Speaker B: Yeah, just dumb cosplay shit.
[01:46:37] Speaker A: Yeah, that's exactly what it is. It's fucking vigilante cosplay stuff. And there's a fantastic article again from University of Cambridge about a professor who spent three years kind of embedded in one of these groups.
[01:46:53] Speaker B: Oh, I saw that one.
[01:46:54] Speaker A: Yeah, it's. It's. It's superb reading. And, you know, this guy's a fucking professor. And, you know, a lot of his opinions lean towards how they judge the success of their efforts based on the number of fucking views they get.
[01:47:08] Speaker B: Right? Yeah.
[01:47:10] Speaker A: You know, quote, one explained, oh, the two we did this weekend has some great exposure. Quarter of a million and 200,000 viewers.
[01:47:18] Speaker B: It's like, I mean, just on a basic, like, think this through level, right? You're showing people your methods for catching predators, and predators are on that website learning how you catch predators, you know, so this is like, it's count. It goes against what you're trying to do in the first place to upload if they really wanted to be doing this for the good of kids. They wouldn't be uploading it online. They would be quietly running these sting operations without anybody's knowledge so that nobody's getting wind of the fact that they're out there.
[01:47:55] Speaker A: Yes.
And herein is the source of some of my conflict about this. Right.
As a parent, I would want to know. I'd want to know.
[01:48:08] Speaker B: Mm hmm.
[01:48:10] Speaker A: And the argument for live streaming this stuff and the argument for getting as much air quotes, awareness, or on their videos as they can is so that communities will know, right. If there's, you know, a potential offender in their midst.
[01:48:26] Speaker B: Right?
[01:48:27] Speaker A: But when the methodology used is so fucking shady, right.
And, you know, the, the, the potential for collateral harm is so high, right. And the, the fact that these guys, like you said themselves, are just cosplaying Batman, the ends seem noble, but the means are all the fuck. That's, that's what I'm, that's what I struggle with so much here.
[01:48:56] Speaker B: Exactly. And I think, you know, when it comes to organizations that approach trafficking and things like that, you know, none of them are on board with this. You know, they pretty much across the board say, like, this is not the way to accomplish this. You know, we have, like, all these sort of structures that we use to try to get people out of these kinds of situations, you know? And there's, I think what makes it so tricky is that, like, it's not enough, right? Like, it's never enough because this is still happening.
The other thing about it, though, is how much are they manufacturing it happening? Giving people opportunity that they never would have had otherwise, and this person would have just gone about, like, their regular life or whatever. Like he said, like, they're just lonely people for the most part. Most of them aren't even pedophiles.
Like, you know what I mean? That it's like, you've manufactured, like, a place in which these people will do this stuff. And that's not to excuse it, but at the same time that, like, there are people actively doing this in homes, in schools, in churches that institutionally are protected and trusted. And largely that's where we see a lot of this coming from. Not random people, you know?
[01:50:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:50:21] Speaker B: Like, a lot of preventing this kind of stuff, like this Internet stuff. If they really wanted to stop this, why aren't they doing extensive education courses for parents and their children, right? Like, why have they not created some sort of, like, program that is in every school to teach kids how to recognize when they're being groomed, right? Like, why not get to the root of the problem.
Stopping people from victimizing children and stopping children from being in a position to be victimized as opposed to a self aggrandizing, look at me, look at me, I'm a hero method of going at this.
[01:51:01] Speaker A: There's one particular group whose name I don't know, but who continually get shared so broadly on TikTok. And the.
The approach they take when they have someone cornered and. Cornered is the fucking. Right term. Like four or five to a man is. Is one of mockery. Is one of, you know, pillorying them.
[01:51:26] Speaker B: Right.
[01:51:28] Speaker A: One of the. A video that gets shared often is they use just like a walkie talkie, right? Just a cheap walkie talkie. Kids radio, and tell the fucking guy that they've got caught, that it's a fucking nonce detector. They get him to blow in. They get him to blow into the aerial of this walkie talkie, this guy with a fucking ring light shoved in his face, right? And then a guy in the other end goes, yep, he's a nonce. That's fucking appalling.
[01:51:52] Speaker B: Right? Like, that's entertainment. You're not exactly this, you know, exactly this. That's not a joke. Like. No, genuinely, if this is someone who is victimizing children, that's not fair. Funny.
[01:52:04] Speaker A: No.
[01:52:04] Speaker B: Like, that's.
[01:52:06] Speaker A: But again, it's. It becomes their trademark. It becomes the thing that gets shared, and it really makes you fucking question the real motives for what they're doing.
[01:52:19] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. It's.
It brings up complicated reactions for people because on the one hand, we all agree with the idea of, you know, putting away pedophiles for good, you know, and making sure that they don't victimize people and all of that kind of stuff. And there's a catharsis to, like, watching them get humiliated and watching them seemingly get taken down, even if most of them are released, because you can't use that evidence for anything. You know, there's a catharsis in being able to think that justice is being served here. Yes. You know, but when you think further into it, you think about those, like, secondary victims wives and kids and things like that who are, you know, they have their dad getting millions of views on Facebook and they have to go to school the next day with this happening and with people throwing bricks at their house and stuff like that. You know, like we. The Internet can't be trusted with this information. You know, just like the TikTok sleuths going and trampling over evidence and things like that, you know, trying to find Nicola bully and stuff like that. Like, we can't be trusted with this information. People do stupid shit, you know, and.
[01:53:39] Speaker A: I mean, AcAB obviously. Obviously.
But again, quoting from who at the time of this BBC article in 2019, a guy who was national police chiefs council lead for online child abuse activist groups, a guy with the name of Dan Vasovich prosecute. Yeah, here we go. When I said that, like 250 odd prosecutions coming through the work of these groups. But some of those, he's quoted as saying that some of those prosecutions may have actually diverted police resources from more significant offenders as a huge one that fucking admits. Yeah, like, like one of these fucking most prolific hunters himself admits these are generally just lonely guys who are responding to some fucking, you know, attention dopamine in a fucking chat room.
[01:54:33] Speaker B: Right?
[01:54:33] Speaker A: But now you're dragging that fucking geezer through the courts and pillorying him in public, potentially fucking up his life and that of his family and his kids.
[01:54:42] Speaker B: Right?
[01:54:43] Speaker A: While you've got significant police resource allocated to that. And for what? So for your 200,000 views.
[01:54:51] Speaker B: Yeah, right, exactly.
That was the thing that I came across a few times and just thinking about that again, what I was saying before is, yeah, these guys may have never offended, even if they showed up there or whatever, they might have talked to an eleven year old or whatever, they weren't going to do anything. But, yeah, the resources that the cops are using is for people who genuinely are a danger to society and now they have to, like, worry about some guy who, you know, followed a chatroom rabbit hole.
You know, it's certainly not a defense of anyone who would do that by any stretch of the imagination.
[01:55:30] Speaker A: You know, none of this is. Jesus Christ.
[01:55:34] Speaker B: Yeah, that's not the case. The issue isn't that what they're doing isn't abhorrent or anything like that, but it is a matter of, like that doesn't make this process being the right way to approach it. There is a hole. And that's why it makes it so difficult for us to fully, like, for society to condemn these vigilante guys in general. And even some of these groups have said that while the police publicly condemn us, we actually have a really good relationship with the individual officers and stuff like that because they actually approve of what we're doing.
And it's, you know, when you have this kind of deep societal problem and institutionally nothing is really being like, done on a grand scale to fix this. You know, these guys come in and it's hard for people to be like, well, no, no one else is doing it. What, I'm supposed to condemn them?
[01:56:27] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And again, without wishing to generalize the.
Every single fucking comment page on TikTok or one of these is, you know, you can copy and paste it. Do a great work, boys. Protect our kids. Boys, get out there, boys. Well done. Dark justice. Well done. Justice for the kids. Well done. Right.
To.
To pose a question here. I mean, we spoke about paraphilias in the past.
Is pedophilia biological? Is it a paraphilia that you were born with?
[01:57:04] Speaker B: Right. Yeah, I mean, that's a. I think that's a debate that, like, is it an orientation? You know, things like that. And I feel like to go back to the thing that we have sort of talked about for ages here of empathy and things of that nature, which is not to condone or anything like that, but to say, you know, if. If that's the case, that it's something people are sort of intrinsically born with or whatever, then how do we as a society deal with that? You know?
[01:57:36] Speaker A: And I'm certain I've asked this question before, and I don't know if there was an answer. What help is there?
What help is there for someone born with this paraphilia who recognizes it in themselves and recognizes that acting on it would be abhorrent?
What is there available for that individual who seeks to change who they are?
[01:57:59] Speaker B: Yeah, I know that groups do exist that are sort of support groups for people like that, but I think the other end of that is the degree of shame is very hard to overcome. And if people find out what that would do, you have to be really sure you're having anonymity in these kinds of groups. You know, what if someone sees you coming out of something, or what if somehow your Internet history is exposed or something like that?
I think that's one of the tough things about this conversation, too, because we all agree it's amongst the worst things that you can do is to exploit a child. However, we also have a system set up where it's very hard for anyone to get resources for that without instantly being ostracized from society. You know.
[01:58:54] Speaker A: There was, in fact, a paper that I read written by a Janice Wolak, who is a researcher against crimes against children in the University of New Hampshire. Right. Who suggests that as opposed to an opportunistic sense of sex offender, you know, somebody, you know, a. A rapist, then, or somebody who, you know, would attack a member of their family.
She suggests that an online groomer and the kind of the higher kind of social functioning that is needed to engage with somebody online and to set up a kind of a predatory grooming, you know, power imbalance relationship on the Internet. That kind of personality actually lends itself better to successful therapeutic interventions. Interesting than it would getting pushed into a fucking street corner and having a light shone in their face and, you know, being told to blow into a fucking nonce detecting machine.
[02:00:03] Speaker B: That's really fascinating, isn't it? Yeah, it's almost counterintuitive, but at the same time, like, you know, I would trust the expert on that kind of thing. And I do think, like, you know, that's like the movie the Woodsman, I think with Kevin Bacon kind of delves into this as well. Like, the degree to which societal ostracization and putting something down is like the ultimate incurable thing that needs to be punished no matter what, is sort of a way that pushes people to what Stinson's talking about here, what the cops are talking about here, that these people take this validation or whatever, wherever they can get it. If society is saying you're the worst thing in the world and you're irredeemable, and the only thing we can do is castrate you, if not kill you, but it's probably best to kill you.
Kid will talk to you. You're basically just pushing people towards that, you know, because they have no support from the rest of society.
[02:01:11] Speaker A: And towards suicide, which has happened on more than one occasion.
[02:01:15] Speaker B: And, you know, a lot of people would say, find good.
[02:01:18] Speaker A: Of course. Yes, yes, yes, of course.
[02:01:21] Speaker B: That's really what ends up. What it sort of comes down to is that people don't have any sense of empathy for. For someone in that kind of position, which I think, you know, if they act on it, it's, you know, you're well within your rights not to be empathetic towards that person. But, you know, people struggling with this.
[02:01:40] Speaker A: Stuff, if we haven't fucking nailed that, clearly at this point, then let's please. Of course the deed and the acting on an impulse like that is fucking deplorable. And there isn't really any coming back from that, and nor should there be.
But. But then I imagine to myself, what if, what if I lived in a world where everybody told me that mark, liking titties is disgusting?
[02:02:07] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. I mean, you don't even have to, like, be that. Like, you know, it doesn't have to be something like that. Like the homosexuality. Well, of course, illegal and, you know, punishable by death and things like that, like this is a real thing that in real recent history or in some places currently has the same people have the exact same attitude towards it. That's not to say they're the same thing again, but to say that the idea that people take something as the ultimate, this is worthy of death form of sexuality is, you know, and for.
[02:02:50] Speaker A: And for that, then through the actions of what I can't see in any other way, as self aggrandizing groups become almost fucking commodified as entertainment.
[02:03:05] Speaker B: Right.
Just. Yeah, I mean, that's like, that's going. And watching people on the gallows, you know, it's lynching postcards, you know, labeling some people as so unworthy of any human decency or compassion that we would like to just watch them tarred and feather in front of us and not thinking about what impact that would have on anyone else around them, letting everyone else be collateral damage and like, oh, well, they shouldn't have been the kid of a pedophile, then.
[02:03:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[02:03:38] Speaker B: Yeah, okay.
I guess it's just, you know, I understand the impulse. I understand why people see this as justice and why they want to see it. And abuse is so prevalent that, you know, a good chunk of people have experienced it. And thus, you know, most people will never get to see any justice come to them and whoever did it to them. But you can watch it happen here, you know, and that.
That is an understandable form of catharsis.
[02:04:14] Speaker A: It's almost as though a shortcut to a visible outcome being misperceived as justice, when in fact, it's anything but.
[02:04:23] Speaker B: Right. And what we really need, as with most things, is institutional, you know, changes.
[02:04:29] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[02:04:30] Speaker B: We need education and we need things that are hard, that aren't, as you know, it's a lot easier to have a whole squad of tough guys roll up on someone and back them into a quarter and make them breathe into a nonce detector than it is to be like, how do we get programs in schools that teach kids this? And how do we get parents informed? How do we get media literacy to be a thing that helps people with this? And how do we have people who are in powerful positions already held accountable, you know, and watched and made sure they're not in positions where they can take advantage of kids and stuff like that? Like, that's hard work, you know, this is so much easier than that is.
[02:05:16] Speaker A: So no answers, friend. No answers.
[02:05:18] Speaker B: No answers. No. Except I don't like these guys. I don't.
Especially because. Especially here in America. Well, I saw this in the british articles as well. A lot of them are very much parts of huge right wing groups. A lot of these guys also are covering. Oh, yeah, yeah, it's huge.
[02:05:39] Speaker A: I would be far more inclined to get on board were they to take the public facing element completely out of this.
[02:05:50] Speaker B: Exactly.
[02:05:50] Speaker A: And submit evidence through proper channels and to stop giving themselves fucking cloaked innocence. Defender of the north. Fucking stupid fucking pirate nicknames.
[02:06:02] Speaker B: Exactly. I take them a lot more seriously and their motives a lot more seriously if.
[02:06:08] Speaker A: If they didn't sound like a bunch of airsoft pricks. You know what I mean? Like they were going to play fucking war games. Fuck off.
[02:06:12] Speaker B: Yeah. If they were more interested in actually fixing things than they are in the views that they get pretending to.
[02:06:20] Speaker A: Yes, yes.
[02:06:24] Speaker B: What do you.
[02:06:24] Speaker A: Once again, friends. Friends.
[02:06:27] Speaker B: Let us know. Are you.
[02:06:29] Speaker A: Did you say the Lord's prayer at school.
[02:06:33] Speaker B: Or sing a hymn about jet planes fueling? Have you seen jet planes fueling?
[02:06:39] Speaker A: If you seen a jet plane fucking meeting in the air to be refueled more than once ever in your life, to the point where it's one of your favorite things about autumn, I. I call you a liar.
[02:06:51] Speaker B: I just want to hear if anyone's seen it. Like, once even. I'm just curious. I've seen it on television. I've never seen that in real life.
[02:06:59] Speaker A: No. Next to a fucking tree full of freshly felled conkers.
[02:07:06] Speaker B: Ay, ay, ay, ay. Dear friends, we love you big time. Big time. And we hope they have the best week and that you do something with it, even if it's not perfect.
[02:07:21] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[02:07:22] Speaker B: If it's hard, if you suck at.
[02:07:24] Speaker A: It, shit at something for a laugh.
[02:07:26] Speaker B: Just like, fucking do it. Because something ain't nothing.
[02:07:31] Speaker A: Something nothing. I fucking love that. And in the meantime, as always, as every single week, we tell you the same thing until you're gonna listen to us. And what is that thing, Corrigan?
[02:07:41] Speaker B: They have got to stay spooky.
