Ep. 185: is everything...worse?

[00:00:03] Speaker A: So, look, it's a topic that still fascinates me. It's one that we've covered before, one that we doubtless will speak about again. But it remains a kind of a preoccupation of mine. We did like a chunky episode on paraphilias, didn't we, way back? [00:00:21] Speaker B: We did, yes. Wholesome paraphilias. [00:00:24] Speaker A: Oh, wholesome paraphilias. Okay. The. The topic still, you know, still kind of fascinates me somewhat. [00:00:33] Speaker B: Do you want to refresh the audience on what a paraphilia is if they weren't listening? [00:00:39] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, if you're. What if what if your thing. If the thing you're born with, if the thing that does it for you, if the thing that fucking lights a fire for you, if the thing that turns you on is something super unconventional or even super socially unacceptable, how do you. How does one deal with that? How does one fucking, you know, I think at the end of an episode recently, I asked you, what help is there if there is someone who's got what, what you would term what, you know, a dangerous or repugnant paraphilia? What. What must life be like in that fucking condition? And what happens when it gets acted upon, you know? So come with me back a few years then, if you don't mind, too, to Ottawa. Okay. When a student has gone missing, a young girl by the name of Nadia Kojiji, she's 18, and she vanishes, is last seen by her roommates in college and vanished. So obviously a search kicks off. Obviously there's concern. Obviously there's this frantic kind of investigation. And everyone was leaning towards suicide. But her family kind of disputed this, furiously maintaining that she was, you know, a victim of foul play, as you'd expect, as there always are, really. The kind of investigation seems full of holes. The family heavily critical of the police service's kind of handling of the whole affair. But then a body is found. You know, friends and family are convinced that it's Nadia, but yet questions remain. You know, the case is still very much live, nothing kind of concrete. Um, until about three weeks after she'd vanished. Okay, three weeks after she'd disappeared, uh, things started to get really fucky. In this case. Uh, there was an alert raised in the UK, all right, by an anti suicide kind of advocacy group, um, about a person they'd picked up, an online identity that they'd picked up in online discourse, in chat rooms, uh, encouraging suicide. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Encouraging people to kill themselves. Um, it emerged he'd been communicating with another a guy from Coventry, from over here in the UK, a 32 year old guy with name of Mark Drebrough, um, who had taken his own life, hanged himself at his home. And this, you know, the. The investigation was pointed towards this guy, this one guy using a fella using female aliases, giving specific and detailed, not just instruction, but encouragement to this guy on how to kind of off himself the noose. [00:03:17] Speaker B: Not to beat you to something you maybe are about to say. But where did he, like, meet this person? [00:03:23] Speaker A: Oh, stick with it, stick with it. It's all online. All online. [00:03:26] Speaker B: Sure. I just meant, like, is that, like, was he in, like, a suicide? Like, help me. Like, talk me out of it? Like, was it a depression for him? Like where? [00:03:36] Speaker A: Well, across numerous sites. But you're quite right, largely. I mean, and this is one of the things that raised alarms, largely. The sites that we're talking about have a kind of an internal culture of self help, you know, of. Of not killing yourself, not ending your own life. [00:03:50] Speaker B: Right, yeah. [00:03:51] Speaker A: Okay, so him actively on. On chat, you know, under the guide, the banner of those sites, actively fucking giving, literally details on what rope to purchase details on noose position. You know what I mean? That fucking raises a lot of red flags, as you'd imagine. So to mark dry Brewer, I mean, you know, a guy who'd been battling depression. He'd been early dad, glandular fever, and looking at his computer. He'd been fucking chatting with this fucking alias, which ended up, you know, being one of Melchizedekel's well known aliases. He would pose as a nurse, he would pose as a girl. Going back to the. [00:04:32] Speaker B: That's the first you've said his name. His. [00:04:35] Speaker A: Okay, well, yeah. William Melchert Dinkle Melchart Dinkle Melchart hyphen Dinkel. [00:04:44] Speaker B: Nice. [00:04:45] Speaker A: Posing as girls, posing as ladies, posing as, you know, fellow suicidal kind of ideation sufferers and persuading those persuading the most vulnerable online to do. Just talk them through it while it emerged he wanted a watch. He had camera footage, I believe, of dryburgh killing himself. What? Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is a guy who was literally asking to watch this, you know, and it's. It's. It's. It's been a super tough kind of case to look at. A grimly fucking gripping one that I've wanted to look at for weeks. But. But there isn't much in the way of detail out there on the case being as just weighty as it is. There are lots of headlines, but you really gotta fucking dig. I mean, the. The UK arm of this was largely kind of home sleuthing. This advocacy group was just a couple of women just doing, you know, kind of outreach work online. And they were the ones who became aware of this guy's activity. They were the ones who, you know, raised the alarm over in the UK. The investigation went on over weeks. Nadia, back at the top, remember her? You know, it became more and more clear that she'd been just stuck to her computer in the weeks leading up to her death, again, interacting with one of Melchart hyphen Dinkles fucking aliases, a young woman going by the name of Cammie. And it became clear that this guy was forming suicide pacts with people, um, agreeing a time and a date to end lives with people and then obviously backing out and just watching, which is like, we. [00:06:33] Speaker B: Not the first time that we've talked about someone doing something of this nature. I mean, you. You told the story of, I think it was Japan, where there was like, they were finding people in their cars having. [00:06:45] Speaker A: Yes, again, suicide pacts. [00:06:47] Speaker B: Right? Yeah. [00:06:48] Speaker A: But the japanese ones, whether this is better or not, all at least seemed well intentioned. [00:06:53] Speaker B: Right? Yeah. It wasn't like, it wasn't murder, basically. [00:06:59] Speaker A: Yes, indeed. I mean, it was a guy. [00:07:01] Speaker B: We don't want to be alone while we die. [00:07:03] Speaker A: So, yeah, that was. That was the impression I was left with. Those certainly. This is very much. Not that this is a guy, a nurse, actually, an ex nurse. A guy who's been painted as a. Yeah, I know. A devoted husband, exceptional father, you know, churchy, churchgoer, you know, um, that's a. [00:07:24] Speaker B: Red flag out the gate, if you ask me. [00:07:27] Speaker A: But again, this crazy fucking dual existence where, you know, by day, this fucking healthcare pill of the community, God fearing white guy, right, by night, just hunched over a fucking laptop, impersonating women, trying to talk people into end in their own lives. I mean, uh, he. He's confessed. In captivity, he's confessed to being involved in at least five deaths, but he ended up charged with two. And I believe he did something silly. He did a fucking, what seems like a miniscule sentence, something like six months, I think he did in the end. [00:08:10] Speaker B: And he's british. [00:08:12] Speaker A: No, he's not. He's not. He's from the states. [00:08:14] Speaker B: Oh, okay. He just like, got an international ring. [00:08:18] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah. Global pan global suicide pact racket, but claims that he'd done it to get off. You know what I mean? Claims. You know, he. Police claim that privately he said that he did it because of a fetish you know, something that he fucking really was into. I don't know if that qualifies. Does that qualify as listening to your paraphilia? I don't know. [00:08:41] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. I mean, I guess that's sort of the question of, like, where. When is it, like, a paraphilia or a fetish and when is it, like, sociopathy? [00:08:51] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:08:52] Speaker B: You know, or psycho. Psychopathy. Like, is it. I mean, when it goes to the point of, like, I need to watch someone died their life. [00:09:04] Speaker A: Yeah. From a distance. [00:09:06] Speaker B: Yeah. I feel like obviously, I mean, this is the thing that when it comes to any form of, like, disorder or things like that, is like that. That line between, you know, this is a. An expression of sexuality. This is an expression of something. And, like, this is the point at which. [00:09:23] Speaker A: Exactly. I just. I've got. Right. [00:09:25] Speaker B: Mental illness. You know, like, we talked about that with. I think this was on the fan cave, not on this. Yeah. Because it was. We were talking about frailty. Right. And one of the issues with, like, people having religious delusion and stuff like that is that, like, religion requires delusion. Right? Like, you're supposed to hear voices, you know, you're supposed to think you hear from God and have, like, all goes. [00:09:53] Speaker A: Back to our early discussions on, you know, psychics and mediums. There's only two explanations. You believe it, in which case you're a fucking loon or you don't, in which case you're a liar. Those are the only two branches of opinion. [00:10:06] Speaker B: But, like, on that note, that's the thing is like, are you crazy? Because it's like, you know, that's for psychologists. That's what's so difficult is that, you know, that line, plenty of people who do not have mental illness or things like that, or at least, you know, none that we would diagnose, are religious and they pray and they think they hear from God and things like that. And there would. To diagnose them with something would be like, why would you do that? But then you take that one step further and someone hears God say to kill someone or harm themselves or something like that, and now all of a sudden you have mental. I don't see that line. [00:10:44] Speaker A: I don't see how someone can legitimately have feared voices from God and not be deemed mentally ill in some way, shape or form from the beyond. [00:10:54] Speaker B: But I think, you know, thinking for, like, myself, I think if you have an. You, which, right. If you have, like, an inner monologue in your head, which about 50% of people do, right. [00:11:10] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:11:10] Speaker B: Or 49% or something, like that. Why wouldn't you sometimes hear it as something else, you know, or interpret it as something else besides yourself? You know, you're hearing, like, an actual voice talking. I hear a voice in my head. I don't hear. It's not like, you know, that's not a metaphor. When I am sitting here quietly, I hear talking in my head. Right. And so, you know, that's not. That's not mental illness. That's the way my brain works. Right. Do you have one? Do you have an internal monologue? [00:11:40] Speaker A: Yeah, I do. I mean, and whenever I've tried to categorize it on here before, I've thought of it as the universe, you know, evolving to observe itself. That's what my inner voice is. It's the fucking. [00:11:52] Speaker B: Well, you sound crazy. [00:11:56] Speaker A: Space atoms who've evolved this weird capacity to regard their own being. That's fucking wild, right? [00:12:03] Speaker B: But, yeah, so that's to say, it's like, you know, I hear a voice, but I don't know that I'd necessarily define it as my voice. You know, like, I don't necessarily think it sounds like me. [00:12:15] Speaker A: So what about in the case of Mister Melcher Dinkle, if that voice is telling you to do some heinous, heinous fucking stuff? [00:12:22] Speaker B: Like. So that's the thing that I'm saying is that it's, you know, when it comes to defining these kinds of things, like, the line between where we go from, like, you know, this is like, would it not be a disorder if he could watch a horror movie and get off to, you know, Jason killing someone? But it is a disorder if he needs to see someone actually die? Or, like, is it always, you know, a form of disorder or psychopathy or something like that to, you know, be attracted to death? You know what I mean? Like, it's such a. You know what? How do you. That's what's so weird, paraphilias. You know, it's like, where do we. [00:13:02] Speaker A: Exactly. It's like trying to describe a color, isn't it? [00:13:05] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:13:07] Speaker A: You know, if you don't get it, you're not really gonna get it, right? [00:13:11] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Like, clearly we are not going to get that. And certainly, as people know, from listening to us and our wholesome paraphilia episode, like, we're the farthest thing from being, like, all paraphilias or, you know, terrible and kink shaming or anything of that nature. [00:13:31] Speaker A: Come on, get real. You know what fucking cast you're listening to, for fuck's sake? [00:13:35] Speaker B: Yeah, we thought it was cute that a guy wanted to fuck a car. [00:13:39] Speaker A: Yeah, he did bring his tripod, if you know what I'm saying, right up that exhaust. [00:13:50] Speaker B: Yeah. So, you know, it's not a, it's not a kinkshaming question, nor is it an equating paraphilias with psychopathy questions, so much as it's always fascinating to me to see, like, you know, where, where do you. Where does one thing end and the other begin? And I think being able to equate it to being like, I was religious or whatever is one way of looking at that, of, like, these lines are not easily drawn between, holy shit, you're crazy. And this is a normal behavior in sort of scare quotes. Clearly, his was not a normal behavior. Did they find Nadia? [00:14:31] Speaker A: Oh, they absolutely did. Yes. Okay. [00:14:33] Speaker B: You said that they had found a body, but that it wasn't like it was hers. [00:14:37] Speaker A: There was conjecture at the time about kind of how she ended up there. But yes, the verdict was suicide. [00:14:42] Speaker B: And did he. So how did he, like, watch? Like, what did he have them do in order for him to be able to see this? [00:14:52] Speaker A: So all of the chats get really detailed, right? The chat logs between Melchart and at least these two victims get super, super detailed, super eerie. The guy is, you know, one of the police chiefs called him. He knows how to manipulate the chat logs, give you goosebumps. He is, when I. When I say detailed, like I said earlier on, he's advising how to do it quietly. He's advising what fucking ropes are by what length, how to tie it, where to position it, both. One of them, drybrog, drybra or kujuji? Talk about, you know, I want to do it tonight, but I can't because there'll be people here, people, you know, I want people to find me at the right time. They're literally planning dates and times while they're supposedly counseling one another through this. It's nuts. Like I said, you know, the, the amount of conscious, rational fucking decision making and planning that has gone into him fucking following the, the internal voice. You know, it's fucking wild. [00:15:55] Speaker B: You remember, I don't know if this. I'm sure this must have made news over there because it was bonkers, but that, like, a few years ago, there was a girl who did that with her, her boyfriend, Michelle Carter, who, like, again, the texts are absolutely chilling because she, yeah, you know, just talked him into this. And, like, I think the, the manipulation tactic here of, like, coming from a position of, like you said, the, like, message boards or wherever he was finding these people were like, self help. Right? Like, they're ostensibly, you trust that the people there, like, want what's best for you. And that was the thing with Michelle Carter, was like, obviously, it's like, it's her boyfriend, you know? And, like, she talked him into the idea that it was like, you know what? You're gonna have to take your life. This is. Everything's too hard. [00:16:47] Speaker A: Yeah, come on. [00:16:48] Speaker B: We've come all this way. Yeah, right. And that's the thing, is, like, he tried to back out at the end of it, and she basically, like, bullied him into doing it and, like, checked up on him the entire way to make sure that, like, you know, he had gotten out of the car, he was gonna leave. And she, you know, said horrible things to him to get him back into that car. Like, you need to die, which is. Oh, man. And as far as I know, that wasn't for, like, a sexual thriller. Some other thing altogether with her, um, power, probably, you know, control over someone else. [00:17:26] Speaker A: Yeah. Oh, boy. He described his actions, quote, as the thrill of the chase, end quote. He. He was talking. You know, he did it just for the fucking, you know, for the bant. [00:17:39] Speaker B: Um, yeah, I mean, I think. Oh, go ahead. [00:17:42] Speaker A: No, no, it was. It was just something that he fucking clearly absolutely loved doing. Loved spending his time doing. [00:17:48] Speaker B: Right. I mean, I think that's like, it also brings up that sort of thing that for people like us who are not abusers, it is hard to imagine why people abuse. Right. Like, why would you. Nobody's life is made better, not yours or the other person's, by, you know, being a manipulator, by hitting someone, by, you know, making them feel small or any of those kinds of things. And yet people do it. Lots of people do it. [00:18:15] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, in a similar vein to what you said just a little while ago, the fact that we don't get it is a good thing. The fact that we're not, like. Right. I can kind of see the appeal of being. [00:18:24] Speaker B: I can see where they're coming from on that abusive murderer. Yeah, it's a, you know, it's a good little gut check to be like. It is simply do not understand why someone would do this. But, you know, it is from. From the perspective of people who are like that. They love that feeling of power that they have over another person and that control and the ability to thrill that. I mean, that's like, with most abusers, it's the ability to, like, affect their feelings. But in this case, it's like the ability to literally decide whether this person can live or die? [00:19:00] Speaker A: Well, yes. [00:19:01] Speaker B: I mean, don't be too chicken shit to do it for yourself. [00:19:05] Speaker A: The healthcare kind of angle didn't come. [00:19:10] Speaker B: As a shock either, right, exactly. It's like, not to besmirch healthcare workers, but certainly there are plenty who get into that field for the absolute wrong reason. And it has more to do with the power over people's health than it does with wanting to help them greatly. But you can see all of those all over the. The TikToks, you know, that's becoming, like, such a huge thing, like, healthcare workers on TikTok and how. [00:19:41] Speaker A: Yeah, it is. [00:19:42] Speaker B: Like, it is genuinely, like, not want to go to the doctor, because the algorithm works. [00:19:48] Speaker A: Every three or four swipes, I'll get a pharmacist or GP talking to me about SSRI's and various medicational approaches. [00:19:58] Speaker B: I mean, that's a good thing, you know? Like, if they're giving good information, that's great. But the thing that people talk about a lot is, like, nurses who go on to TikTok to talk shit on patients and that, like, you know. Yeah. People who are, like, extremely vulnerable and all these kinds of things, they go on there and make fun of them, and people are like, I never want to go to the doctor again. [00:20:21] Speaker A: The badly deformed child talk phase seems to have ended it. Stop showing you that, or they've stopped serving it to me, one or the other. But that was a fucking six week period where every other swipe was like a really badly physically deformed child. [00:20:38] Speaker B: Yeah, that was how they sucked you in. Like you were not a Tiktoker, and then they gave you the deformed babies and it was all over. [00:20:45] Speaker A: Fascinating, isn't it? [00:20:46] Speaker B: What about Jordan? Are you still following? [00:20:48] Speaker A: Jordan had me at hello. Jordan? [00:20:50] Speaker B: Yeah. The autistic girl, right. [00:20:52] Speaker A: Haven't seen her in ages. It is Jordan. Yes. Now you know, you mind me. She wants to go to Red Robin, but I haven't seen her for ages. [00:21:01] Speaker B: Your algorithm has changed. [00:21:03] Speaker A: Yes, it has. [00:21:04] Speaker B: It happens here. I think you gotta get her back. [00:21:07] Speaker A: Mmm. Yeah, she was awesome. [00:21:10] Speaker B: That's the uplifting way to end this. Talk about someone trying to convince people to take their lives on the Internet. [00:21:19] Speaker A: Let me quote directly from my notes, if I may. [00:21:22] Speaker B: Yes, please do. [00:21:23] Speaker A: Fucking look at these nerds. Oh, mise en scene. [00:21:27] Speaker B: I don't think anyone has ever said measlescent in such a horny way before. [00:21:31] Speaker A: The way I whispered the word sex. Cannibal receiver. [00:21:33] Speaker B: Worst comes to worst. Mark I'm willing to guillotine you for science. [00:21:37] 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. [00:21:43] Speaker B: You know how I feel about that, Mark. [00:21:45] Speaker A: I think you feel great about it. Yeah. Okay, well, welcome. Pull up a chair or stand up. You know what I mean? If you're already sat down. What I'm saying is maybe change your physical state somewhat as you listen to this because. Hey, what up, folks? It's another fucking hot off the grill, you know what I mean? Sizzling episodes of freshly fucking killed Jack, of all graves. How's it going? [00:22:13] Speaker B: Can I say something about your. The standing up thing? So my welsh class, right. Is over teams. And so, of course, I can see all of my classmates, much like I can see you right now. There's a fella in the class who has started using, like, a walk pad. [00:22:34] Speaker A: What? [00:22:35] Speaker B: You know, which he apparently has, like, a bad back. And so using the wok pad makes it so that, like, he's, you know, doesn't get sore from sitting down or whatever. [00:22:45] Speaker A: I have no idea what one of these is. You're assuming familiarity here. [00:22:48] Speaker B: Sorry. So it's like an under desk treadmill without. [00:22:53] Speaker A: That was where I. [00:22:54] Speaker B: Bars. Okay. Visualize. [00:22:55] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:22:56] Speaker B: Right. So it's just like. Like a moving sidewalk underneath your desk. [00:23:00] Speaker A: Sounds good. [00:23:01] Speaker B: But if you've ever met me, repetitive motions absolutely drive me up the wall, and I simply cannot take it. And so for, like, the first week of this, I was trying to, like, just cover, like, put a post it over where he was on the screen and things like that so that I couldn't see him. But, like, sometimes his positioning was, like, too close to the tutor. So it was like, yeah, I couldn't cover him enough and things like that. And so you're not, like, weeks ago. [00:23:36] Speaker A: Just right click and remove him or something. [00:23:37] Speaker B: You can't. No, on teams, you can't, like, mute a single video. I tried something you should be able to do. Yeah, right. Like, if I don't want to look at somebody, I should be. [00:23:49] Speaker A: What if I were doing something awful? [00:23:50] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, right. Exactly. And so you can't do that. And so finally, a couple weeks ago, I typed in the chat and I was like, I'm so sorry, but can you please turn off your video? Because I'm losing my mind here. That's not how I phrased it. But I was like, it's making me feel a little seasick. [00:24:09] Speaker A: I don't know how I feel. I gotta say, if I got a fucking dm from someone saying, can you turn your camera off? Your movement is making me sick. I don't know. [00:24:17] Speaker B: And it was. It was great. So he, you know, he turned it off. [00:24:20] Speaker A: Okay. [00:24:20] Speaker B: And all that kind of stuff. And then my. The tutor then, like, was like, oh, you know, and she, like, made a joke or whatever about it, but it was so funny. [00:24:29] Speaker A: Where's she from? Say once that she's from quite close to me. [00:24:32] Speaker B: Uh, Murtha Mirth. [00:24:34] Speaker A: Yeah, Murtha. Yes. Murthy. [00:24:36] Speaker B: Yes. Yes, that. [00:24:37] Speaker A: Not close to me now, but close to. [00:24:38] Speaker B: No, not close to you now, but yes, exactly. And she. Have you seen that video that's going around right now about the little girl who won, the little welsh girl who won the, like, welsh recitation thing? It's very adorable. And she's, like, super proud of herself, but also, she doesn't speak any Welsh, so the host keeps trying to say stuff to her. And finally she's like, I don't understand what you're saying, but, yeah, it's very cute. Look it up. And she sounds exactly like my welsh teacher. It's that exact accent. [00:25:13] Speaker A: Excellent. [00:25:14] Speaker B: But one of my classmates, yitka, she is czech, and she messaged me, and she was like, I can't believe you said that. I was just sitting here, like, you know, passive. Like, just glaring at him in my passive aggressive european way. I never would have made a comment. And I was like, yeah, see, this is why you have to have an American in every situation. Because eventually we'll just say the thing that all the Europeans and Brits are sitting there thinking, like, I know everyone in that class has spent the past several weeks like, this fucking guy. Yeah. And he's great. Like, he's a. He's a delightful person. But, like, I know everyone was thinking it, and I was the only one who was like, nope, this isn't working for me. Okay? [00:26:03] Speaker A: I would have been applauding the guy. I would have said, you keep walking, kiddo. [00:26:06] Speaker B: You just keep doing it just to spite the American. [00:26:09] Speaker A: I would have. I would have offered him encouragement and not tried to walk shame him in a group setting. Corrie, that is fucking awful. [00:26:17] Speaker B: That's what I felt like. That was the. The best way. [00:26:21] Speaker A: The play. [00:26:22] Speaker B: That was the play. [00:26:26] Speaker A: I don't know. I find that's indefensible. [00:26:30] Speaker B: That's because once he decides to give. [00:26:31] Speaker A: Up walking completely. [00:26:34] Speaker B: He'S just gonna suffer his bad back and it's gonna be all my fault. No, see, if there was, like, nothing he could do about it, then I would not have said something. But what it's like when you're not talking, you can turn off your video. Like, that's not that big a deal. [00:26:48] Speaker A: Every time you try to sweeten it, it sounds worse. [00:26:52] Speaker B: It's because you're british. This is perfectly reasonable of an ask. And that's just, you know, we're just a little more upfront about things over here. [00:27:03] Speaker A: Okay, listen, I don't condone it, but I'll understand it. Let me see. Let me just describe my sit rep here. I've got a sunburnt head. You do? [00:27:13] Speaker B: Yep. [00:27:13] Speaker A: Because summer happened in the five minutes or so. I was out earlier, and hay fever is the son of a bitch. Ah. Other than that, just a pretty standard week, you know what I mean? Fucking heads down, ass up, fucking grind through the week. [00:27:33] Speaker B: I was just thinking, you know, that this is exacerbated by your sunburn, but not too long ago, like, of course, as everyone who listens to this regularly knows, I'm always trying to figure out what brand of neurodivergent mark is. [00:27:48] Speaker A: I think I can tell you. [00:27:50] Speaker B: Oh, can you? [00:27:51] Speaker A: If you're interested. So let's treat this as a little medical update. So. Felt quite special, actually. So got prescribed, like, a brand new med, which has literally been approved for, like, the past kind of six months. [00:28:07] Speaker B: Nice. [00:28:08] Speaker A: And I was the first one that my GP had ever prescribed, so I felt quite good about that. That was quite fun. But what she also said was she's gonna send me, like, an evaluator. [00:28:19] Speaker B: Good. Yeah. [00:28:20] Speaker A: For spectrum disorders. [00:28:23] Speaker B: Yes. [00:28:24] Speaker A: And I do have the results if you're curious. [00:28:27] Speaker B: Oh, you do? Oh, man. I wish that, like, I kind of wish that, like. So the reason I was bringing this up is because, like, you're not always as aware your things. [00:28:37] Speaker A: Well, I don't know. I don't believe I have any. I think I'm just a silly little guy. [00:28:41] Speaker B: And so, like, you, I sent you, like, this, like, autism test or whatever, and I was looking at. I was like, wow, you seem to, like, put, like, really low, like, tics or whatever, like, physical tics. And you're like, oh, that's because I don't have any. And I was like, you spend, like, rubbing the top of your head with your fingers, just running them up and down the top of your head. I'm like, people don't do that. That's a dick. [00:29:10] Speaker A: No, I don't know. I don't know if it is. It's just I've got a bald head, and I quite enjoy the way. [00:29:15] Speaker B: Yeah, you do a lot of things with your. [00:29:18] Speaker A: Yeah, well, anyway, if you do things. [00:29:19] Speaker B: With your hands and whatnot, but, yeah, let me. Let me. [00:29:22] Speaker A: If you're curious. So do do do do. [00:29:25] Speaker B: I can't believe you didn't bring this up already. This is wild. [00:29:28] Speaker A: So, scores out of 50, right? Scores in the 26 to 32 range indicate autistic traits. And I got a 29. So, hey, low. You know, hey. [00:29:44] Speaker B: There'S the guy. [00:29:45] Speaker A: But there we go. That's. That's a thing. Who cares? [00:29:49] Speaker B: Well, welcome, dear friends. [00:29:51] Speaker A: Well, that don't mean shit, though, does it? It was like an online quiz, essentially. [00:29:56] Speaker B: How do you think this works? [00:29:59] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:30:00] Speaker B: Because the only other thing is you go into a doctor, and they ask you the same questions that are in the online quiz. [00:30:07] Speaker A: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. [00:30:11] Speaker B: That's. Yeah, that's how diagnosis works. They've just figured out how to streamline it, so. [00:30:17] Speaker A: But anyway, the deal I made was. Or the. The kind of the deal, the approach is for me to give this fucking new drug crack for a month and see how that works. And if not, we'll pursue something else. [00:30:31] Speaker B: And what's it supposed to do? [00:30:33] Speaker A: Well, look it up. It. Which I have, obviously. And it kind of does the inverse of what? Traditional sleep drugs. Your Z drugs, your zopiclones and your benzos, like Xanax, it does kind of the opposite of what they do. So rather than promoting tiredness that is making you drowsy, this one apparently switches off wakefulness, which sounds the same thing. Okay. But apparently it's an entirely different area of your fucking neurochemistry that it ties. [00:31:04] Speaker B: I mean, that makes sense because it's like, a lot of times, I think, those of us who struggle with sleep, the issue is, like, I'm exhausted. My body knows it wants to go to sleep, but I'm awake. Well, so that totally makes sense that those are two different processes. [00:31:20] Speaker A: Something super interesting happened last night while I was trying to go to sleep. Right. And I wouldn't have brought this up if we hadn't happened on this topic, but it was my second night on this new stuff, which I can't even remember the name of. It's that new. [00:31:32] Speaker B: I know. I like that. You said, look it up, but you gave no information. [00:31:36] Speaker A: I will look it up. [00:31:37] Speaker B: Oh, okay. [00:31:38] Speaker A: Somehow I felt I was going off to sleep, right. And it was after a bit of work, a bit of mental fucking switching off. Right. Come on, Mike, you can do this. Keep it down. Trust the fucking process. And I felt I was dropping off to sleep, and then, bang, my body violently woke itself up. You ever have those, like, half dreams where you're falling or you're on a bike and you're fucking about to plummet off a fucking cliff or something? It dropped one of those on me and shocked me into being awake, which makes me wonder, where's the fucking conflict here, right? [00:32:10] Speaker B: Yeah. There's fighting going on in there. [00:32:12] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was very clear. It was kind of made manifest in that fucking moment. There's a fucking schism going on somewhere. [00:32:20] Speaker B: Something stopping you. You've got a sleep demon is what it is. Possibly, possibly, possibly just immediately trying to wake you up. You know what's weird? On the note of sleep, for the past, like, three days, I have, like, had business dreams where. Okay, I have, like, created weird businesses. Like. And one of them had, like, a pretty good jingle that I remembered for, like, an hour after I woke up, and then it disappeared into the ether. And this morning when I got up to go to the bathroom, like, basically woke up for the day, I could still remember what the dream was, and I don't remember it now, but for whatever reason, for the past few days, I've been, like, in shark tank in my dreams, just coming up with, like, weird businesses. I don't work in business, Mark. There's no reason why you don't. [00:33:08] Speaker A: You are very much a brand in and of yourself, I feel. [00:33:12] Speaker B: Yeah. Mm hmm, mm hmm. [00:33:13] Speaker A: Um, totally. You know, Naomi Klein would. Would know exactly what that was all about, right? [00:33:19] Speaker B: Yeah. I'm gonna shoot her, a shooter, an email, but no. What do you think of this? [00:33:24] Speaker A: You're not specifically in business? [00:33:26] Speaker B: No, no, not at all. Not my realm. I am not trying to sell anybody anything. And it's. [00:33:32] Speaker A: You must have had a few. I think anyone who reaches a certain duration of life has a few ideas that they think would have been world beers bopping. [00:33:40] Speaker B: No, honestly, I don't. I am not, like, an inventor type. I do not have those kinds of ideas. I have nothing bopping up around. Up here that could make anyone's life, or. [00:33:50] Speaker A: I've had one or two. I think I've probably gone over them before, though, during the joag journey, my. The one that I would have put if I'd had a horse, I would have backed it on, you know, if I had any assets at all when I had this idea, I would have staked them all on this idea. And it's the same mechanism that reebok pumps use. Right. To inflate a small garment. But it's kind of a balaclava. It's kind of a over the head kind of hood garment that you pump up. And therefore, any surface you rest your head against, like the train or the plane or the coach, becomes instantly you can nod off, have a little nap. [00:34:30] Speaker B: Interesting. [00:34:31] Speaker A: Yeah. So there you go. [00:34:36] Speaker B: I feel good about that. [00:34:37] Speaker A: How do we get to that? Yes. Your dream. So give me one of yours. Give me one of your dreams. [00:34:41] Speaker B: I genuinely, like, I don't remember them now. Like, and they seemed genius at the time. The jingle was good. I remember the jingle was good. I was like, man, I hope I remember this. Yeah. Like, I hope I remember this so that, like, when Kia wakes up, I can sing it to him. And then by the time he got up, like, an hour later, it was gone. But I was like, dang, I'm doing. Maybe I should have a business. I don't know. I should not. I think it's probably because I've been kind of, like, job hunting and I'm in the midst of an application process that maybe my brain is, oh, gotta find a job. Gotta find a job or something of that nature. [00:35:19] Speaker A: The half life of a dream varies, doesn't it? [00:35:22] Speaker B: Yeah. Right? Yeah. Sometimes it's, like, seconds. Sometimes by the time you're all the way alert, yeah, it's gone. And other times, like, it sticks for a bit. Do you ever have the thing where it's like, you, you have a dream and then it's like, it isn't until later in the day that, like, you realize it wasn't real. So, like, you've been mad at someone or something like that. And then, like, you know. [00:35:44] Speaker A: I know. Yeah, I know what you mean. I don't get it myself, but I know, you know, you can confuse realms. [00:35:51] Speaker B: Right? Exactly. It's like, oh, man. Okay. I've just. I've been in a, in a mood, and it's actually because of a thing that didn't happen. [00:36:02] Speaker A: Yeah. Um, again, you know, over the last couple of years, I've become very aware of, like, this. There's a kind of a unveil. Sounds hacky, so I won't use that. But there's definitely a kind of a level of sleep beyond which you're dreaming. But the closer you are to that limit, the closer you are to being alert. And there's a little bit of a fucking gray area between the two. And it's. It's really, you know, often quite fun that area. [00:36:26] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a weird little area, but it is interesting. Like, you know, over the past couple years, your relationship with sleep has changed. And so, you know, when we first started this, you were so, like, that can't happen. Like, there's, like. No, your ideas of, like, what dreams were and how they were talking about a journey, man. Yes. Like, just completely, like, that's not real. And now you've. You've pierced that veil. You. You understand what the rest of us are going. [00:36:55] Speaker A: Four years is a long time, as we'll. [00:36:57] Speaker B: It is. Yeah. We'll get into later in this episode where we're. [00:37:01] Speaker A: Has it been. Have I got that right? Is it four years or more or. [00:37:03] Speaker B: Less or there it'll be in August. Yeah. [00:37:07] Speaker A: Okay. [00:37:08] Speaker B: Yeah. So we're. We're coming up on that anniversary. So today our closing discussion will be about, you know, how things have changed and whether. Is everything worse? Are there things that are better? [00:37:22] Speaker A: And on a personal note as well, I mean, our own bubbles, our own realms. How are things for us? And, you know, because it's all about you, dear listener. [00:37:32] Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah. We encourage you since we've done one of these little check ins, because we have done them before. Sort of like state of the. Whatever. The world, ourselves, our listeners. [00:37:42] Speaker A: It's a good thing to do. I mean, it's one of our. It's one of our. It's part of our remit, I think. [00:37:47] Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah. [00:37:48] Speaker A: As a living document of the end times, which we fucking, you know, that's exactly what we are. That's exactly what you're listening to. [00:37:54] Speaker B: Mm hmm. Big time. So we'll get into that. A little thing I want to bring up. Last week, I posted the sort of pretty much unedited version of the podcast. [00:38:08] Speaker A: My immediate response then was, did I do bad? Oops. I was wondering what I'd. What I'd do wrong. [00:38:16] Speaker B: Jeez. Good creep. [00:38:18] Speaker A: No, one thing I do want to bring up, actually, Mark, is. [00:38:21] Speaker B: Yeah. There's actually a thing I want to approach with you. Can we talk? [00:38:25] Speaker A: Oh, no, not again. [00:38:28] Speaker B: No, no, no. You're great. You're wonderful. No, last week, I put the video of the episode on YouTube because there's probably about, like, 13 to 15 minutes from last week that would have made terrible listening because a lot of it was, like, visual what we were talking about, things like that. So. And if you listen to last week's episode, you know that also, we just kind of kept talking. We never actually hit record or anything. So pretty much hearing. [00:38:56] Speaker A: Yeah, nothing got solved last week. We didn't, you know, nothing got no. No rights were no wrongs were righted last week at all. [00:39:03] Speaker B: No. Yeah, you got basically our pre show banter rolling straight into. Into our episode. And so there's more of that on the YouTube, if you are interested. But that, you know, now with the computer that I have, it's not too hard to do that. So I'm going to try. Emphasis on the try, because I do have adhd, but I'm going to try to, every week, post the video version of the podcast as well. And that will be, like, minimal editing. There's not going to be any theme songs or music or anything like that in it. [00:39:39] Speaker A: Throw it the fuck up there. [00:39:41] Speaker B: Yeah, basically, just throw it up onto the Internet so that those of you who prefer to watch, for example, Hannah loves a video. And a belated happy birthday to you, Hannah. There are people who are definitely into watching video versions of this. And so I'm gonna try to toss those up there every week for those of you who like to take it in. In that. I've noticed, like, sometimes the way you say my name makes me laugh. Really? [00:40:11] Speaker A: No, I mean, it fucking got me all pumped. [00:40:15] Speaker B: Good. Yes, get pumped. The way you said that straight distracted me from the point I was about to make. Oh, I was just gonna say, like, with the ko fi, I've noticed that, like, everyone pretty much watches the video version of the fan cave. There's, like, very few people who listen to it. Most people watch it. And I. You know, I think there's a lot of people who really like video versions of things, so I'm gonna do that for you. [00:40:44] Speaker A: And there's a fan cave coming up this week, I believe. [00:40:47] Speaker B: Next week. Next week. [00:40:48] Speaker A: Next week. [00:40:48] Speaker B: That's it. Thank you for reminding me. Yes. [00:40:50] Speaker A: Smooth. [00:40:51] Speaker B: I know. Did you see that butter? Marco, we are going to be discussing the conjuring. So if it's been a minute since you have seen that flick, go ahead and give that a watch. And then Kristen and I will be talking about it on the fan cave. Serendipitously, the last podcast on the left just finished their three part series on Ed and Lorraine Warren, so you can listen to that. Also. [00:41:18] Speaker A: A couple of shit bags. [00:41:19] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, a couple of shit bags, as I discussed in an episode last year. So if you go to your podcast thing and search through Jack Volgraves, you can find the one where I talked about how shitty the warrens were. I believe that was in the ghost Science episode. And so plenty of background stuff, which means also for this episode of the fan cave, I'm going to have to take a different tack on my historical part. Every episode of the Joag Fan Cave, I begin by telling Kristen some sort of related historical thing or giving social context to what we're talking about. And so this time, I'm gonna have to find a different thing than just the Warrens are shitty. Yes. But I told her not to listen to the last pod episodes. Kristen's a huge last pod fan. I was like, don't listen to it until after you watch the conjuring because you simply cannot watch Patrick and Vera in that after, like, knowing who they actually are. It'll just ruin the entire thing. [00:42:21] Speaker A: Have there been any kind of IRL exposes of those two? I'm certain there must have been. [00:42:26] Speaker B: What do you mean? [00:42:27] Speaker A: Documentaries about. About those two. About the Warrens. [00:42:30] Speaker B: I don't know about documentaries, but certainly plenty of, like, stuff has been written about them and, like, last podcast talking about them on this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know? Yeah. I don't know from like, a. Yeah, I mean, there's plenty of YouTube videos. There's plenty of people, if you want to know, there's plenty ways you can find out about who the real Warrens were. A lot of people don't want to know that. And they just see it as like, hey, you're just slandering them because they were, you know, successful at what they did. This is. We're going to get into what we watched. But I want to point out, like, when I was thinking about, like, the. We both watched the first omen this week, and I was thinking about how, like, there's two categories of, like, catholic horror, and it's like, one category is, like, kind of the, like, anti Catholic. And that's not necessarily the point. Like, the point isn't this is anti catholic church, but they're definitely, like, messing with the doctrine and, you know, adding, like, elements of it that are anti Catholic. And then there's the ones that are, like, pro Catholic, like, the conjuring that it's like they're pro. The morality of the church people and stuff like that. And even the exorcist, to an extent, is like that. Right? Like, that's not really. [00:43:46] Speaker A: Definitely. Yes. [00:43:46] Speaker B: Yeah. Like, it's, you know, at the end of the day, the church is kind of the good guys. [00:43:51] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. They come in to sort it out, don't they? [00:43:54] Speaker B: Right, exactly. So, you know, the Warrens benefit from kind of the. The moral majority perspective on that, and people don't like to challenge that. A whole heck of a lot. [00:44:08] Speaker A: No, I mean, why would you. [00:44:10] Speaker B: Why would you? [00:44:11] Speaker A: Well, again, you know, it's a recurring theme of the episode. If you have to explain it to someone, if they don't get it, then they don't get it. That's one of them for me. I just don't get it. [00:44:23] Speaker B: Right. Yeah, exactly. This is not related to anything we just talked about. But you did want me to explain something else to you that happened this week. My neighbors are selling their home. [00:44:37] Speaker A: Right. Yeah. Okay. [00:44:38] Speaker B: I know. And so right now I am sitting in a sweltering room because I have to close the window because there are, like, people coming and going for the open house, which I did walk into yesterday before I realized you can just look up the house on Zillow if you want to spy on your neighbors. You don't have to actually go in, but they're selling their house. And there's been all these people coming and going. And so I texted you yesterday, and I was like, there's like, a screaming, screaming child outside of the house. These people, like, are. And they're like, russian. These, like, russian people with a screaming child, which this was, like, escalating their frustration, which was causing them to yell at increasing levels at each other as a result of this. So outside of my window was just, like, increasingly chaotic russian. [00:45:32] Speaker A: Russian behavior. [00:45:33] Speaker B: Russian. Yes, exactly. [00:45:35] Speaker A: Russian fucking hijinks happening right. Right outside the world. [00:45:38] Speaker B: The thing that really. That I. And now I can kind of explain it to you. And people watching on the YouTube can see this because it was. I understood it was a confusing thing for me to say because it was confusing to watch as well. I look out the window and it's like a couple and their baby. Not a baby. He was probably, I don't know, two, maybe like one and a half somewhere in that region big enough to be a little unwieldy in your arms. And then, like, who I assume was the grandmother was with them. And the grandmother was holding a water bottle, you know, like a metal water bottle. [00:46:16] Speaker A: Okay, okay, okay. [00:46:18] Speaker B: Let's use one of my old seltzers as an example here. And she was holding it up in front of the child's face and slapping it like this. [00:46:27] Speaker A: Slapping the bottle. Not the. [00:46:29] Speaker B: Slapping the bottle, not the fan. [00:46:31] Speaker A: So making an aggressive, fucking loud, violent gesture right in front of the. [00:46:36] Speaker B: Yeah. Like, when you're trying to distract an aggressive dog from, like, attacking someone. Like, that's what she was doing. And of course the kid is just screaming louder and louder. Right? Like, oh, okay, you've slapped metal at me. I feel better now. Like, what? [00:46:58] Speaker A: You saw this? You saw this at me? [00:46:59] Speaker B: I was watching it out the window. It was so bizarre. I just really. Mark, I just really hope they don't move in next door to me. [00:47:10] Speaker A: Yeah, that would suck. I mean, I don't know what specifically we've done, Laura and I, but we've never really had an instance yet where we've had to actually discipline either of our boys. And it's been 13 years now, so we've never really had to not what? When I say discipline, I mean, there's never been a time when I've had to kind of smack a water bottle right in front of their faces. Like, you know what I mean? I've never. I've never had to wrestle with, you know, whether or not to give my kid a smack. I've never. Because they've never put us in that position. I wouldn't. Obviously. I think it's a boring. [00:47:46] Speaker B: Yeah, obviously. [00:47:49] Speaker A: At least smacking a bottle in front of the kid isn't smacking the kids. [00:47:54] Speaker B: Right? Yeah, it's, you know, I'll take that. Cause there. I just. I was saying this on men of low moral five, actually, I don't think. I think this was just Ben and I talking, but there was a friend of mine from college who was, like, the sweetest girl you would have ever known. Like, if people were to, like, if you asked them about it, they would have been just like, nicest person you've ever met. And she posted this whole thing about her child that was like, her kid has sensory processing disorder, which is like, what people who don't want to admit their kids have autism say. And so she's talking about her kid, like, throwing tantrums in public and all this kind of stuff with a real woe is me, Ben, right? Like, oh, it's so hard raising a child with sensory processing disorder instead of like, yeah, it's really fucking hard to be a kid who is like, has sensory overload. But she then, like, wrote like, and, yes, we discipline our kids. I've even spanked. And I was like, you're, like, 37 years old. What are you doing spanking a child? It's not 1987. What are you doing? [00:49:03] Speaker A: Bottom line, I always think there's probably a better way of resolving any issue you might find yourself in which doesn't amount to you smacking a kid, just hitting somebody smaller and weaker than you. I don't think. It just feels ever really doesn't seem quite right. [00:49:18] Speaker B: And, like, if your kid has sensory processing issues. [00:49:22] Speaker A: Yeah, give him. Give him a cuff. [00:49:27] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, just give them a whack. That's gonna. [00:49:30] Speaker A: I got some sensory fucking input for you right here. [00:49:33] Speaker B: Right? Like, I just think, like, you know, thankfully, I'm not gonna give my parents a ton of awards for the way they parented, but they didn't spank. My dad did spank me. [00:49:43] Speaker A: Also true. Also true. [00:49:46] Speaker B: And I remember it deeply. And it was because we lived between two major streets. [00:49:54] Speaker A: By streets you mean like presumably like a motorway or something. What does that mean? [00:49:58] Speaker B: No, like just a regular street. Like a. [00:50:01] Speaker A: Right. With houses, all roads. Oh, yeah, yeah. [00:50:06] Speaker B: Between two regular, like busy roads, if you will. [00:50:11] Speaker A: Context. [00:50:12] Speaker B: I know. It's like, what's another? That was one of those moments. I'm like, that's just what it's called. What do you call it? A road. [00:50:18] Speaker A: And I now can perfectly. [00:50:20] Speaker B: Yes, it's like high street on one side, Federal street on the other. And these are two of the main streets that run through my town. And I was on my little trike, and for whatever reason, I probably just spaced out. I rode the bike around the corner. And so my dad had no idea where I went. And then when he found me just riding on the edge of the street, he panicked and spanked me as a result. Never do this again. But it was afterwards he came up to my bedroom and was like, I'm so sorry. [00:50:57] Speaker A: Like I was born out of, as you say, born out of panic. [00:51:00] Speaker B: Yeah, it was straight, like a panic and fear response and a thing he didn't believe in doing but was like, you know, it just happened. And he apologized, was like, that was. I, you know, shouldn't have done that. I was terrified. I thought you were going to die, you know, and that's the only time in my entire life that ever happened. Never repeated that. But again, that's the eighties, you know? [00:51:22] Speaker A: Yeah. It's in that situation. Like I said, I'm lucky enough to have never been tested. But who knows, you know, in a hot moment like that, yeah, I might just deal one of my children a blow, you know, upside their fucking, you know? [00:51:36] Speaker B: Yeah, I think you wouldn't because it's not in our, like, it's not in our training now, you know? Like my dad grew up being like, good point. He was hit by nuns his whole life. Yeah, it was in there, that kind of thing. But, yeah, for us. But if you're an evangelical, it's still absolutely your training. Like, I remember when I was, when I lived in Oregon, you know, before I got married. They had, like, marriage seminars and things like that and all that. And they talked about how to properly hit your kid. You know, wow, really? Like, a lot of them would say, like, you know, give them a flick, so it caused them pain, but it doesn't last. And, like, things like that. Motherfuckers in church, they were telling us about the proper way to physically punish your kid. Yeah, assault your child. Right. Like, here's how you should abuse your kid properly. You don't want to go overboard. [00:52:32] Speaker A: Big fan of the church. Until you'd said that. [00:52:36] Speaker B: Yeah. I was, like, totally with. [00:52:37] Speaker A: Ruined it for me. [00:52:38] Speaker B: Yeah, totally. Yeah. I mean, this is, like, the journey also, that we've gone on over these years. Is your starting point being like, hey, if you want to believe in whatever, that's fine. Being like, listen, man, it's not that simple. There's actually a lot beyond that. And that was one of them. [00:52:57] Speaker A: Many, many episodes, many years, many space for different arcs. You know what I mean? Different fucking journeys. Yes, indeed. She took movies because we got a bunch. [00:53:08] Speaker B: We do. Well, you've got a bunch, but, yeah, so I will. I'll start just because I only have. Well, I have the one that we both watch, but I only have one thing that I watch. Cause I was out of town this week. But I regret to inform you that I have to give up my favorite band, which is a. You know, my. [00:53:29] Speaker A: I was. Did your mum ruin a band for you? Is that what happened? [00:53:32] Speaker B: It wasn't my mother this time. It was them. You know, my general rule is the, like, if I. Like, I can have anything from before. I knew they were terrible. And this week, I have watched fallen idols Nick and Aaron Carter, the docu series on the Backstreet Boys. And I'd kind of like, this is one of those things. I don't want to say I was, like, ignoring it, per se, but it was like, I knew there were allegations against Nick Carter, and it was just one of those things where it kind of, like, fell by the wayside and I sort of forgot about it kind of situation. But this docu series goes into the many women who have accused Nick Carter of everything from assault and verbal abuse to straight up rape. [00:54:25] Speaker A: The whole spectrum. [00:54:27] Speaker B: The whole spectrum of just abhorrent behaviors that he's carried out. And on top of that, his fellow Backstreet boys have publicly defended him on that, leaving no, sort of like, well, maybe the other guys are cool or whatever, and it's like your coworker or whatever, and so you still get up on stage and dance with them or whatever. It's like, no, they've come out and been like, these women are all liars. This never happened. And things like that. And like, if I'm like, you know. [00:55:00] Speaker A: A lot of Backstreet Boys tattoos walking around, I dare say. [00:55:04] Speaker B: Well, so, I mean, what's crazy is, like, as with, as happens with these things, so many people refuse to believe it. And they have some, like, super fans in the documentary who talk about it and they're like, that he could just never do it at. He's not that kind of person. It's like, you don't fucking know this guy. Like, seriously, like, if you. Oh, listen, I bet all these people would believe Harvey Weinstein did it. [00:55:25] Speaker A: Speaking of awful kind of people and kind of the impact it may or may not have on their careers or their popularity, what is the likely impact on Trump's current presidency? Run with all of the guilties the other day? Is there any, is there any realistic fucking chance of it causing anything more popular? [00:55:48] Speaker B: I think people are. It causes people to double down. Yeah. Is there, like, we'll see. You can see how the Democrats are trying to rig this election. So we need to make sure that. [00:55:57] Speaker A: Okay, okay. [00:55:58] Speaker B: That doesn't happen. Like, this whole thing is a kangaroo court and all that stuff. So, yeah, no, the, it can only be positive for him. There's no negatives to this, especially because, I mean, it's so wild, like, watching, like, all these, like, white people celebrate on the Internet and stuff like that. You know, nothing's gonna happen, right? Like, surely you cannot be this gullible. He's going to appeal. It's going to take years of appeals. So he will fully be able to be president if any, if an appeal fails, he's not going to jail. This is, there's nothing. This does nothing. Nothing is going to be changed by this. And he's going to be so smug when he's eventually acquitted. [00:56:44] Speaker A: Am I right in saying then that if he appeals for long enough for him to actually take office, he can just squash it? [00:56:52] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah, 100%. Yeah, he will 100% pardon himself once he gets into office. So, yeah, it's like, there's nothing to celebrate here. There's no world in which he sees a consequence for this. This only makes him more powerful. [00:57:07] Speaker A: Amazing, isn't it? [00:57:08] Speaker B: Yeah. People keep being like, oh, you know, at least I'll celebrate that. He's having, like, the worst day ever. Like, no, he isn't. It's not. There's no part of Trump that thinks there's going, anything's going to happen. He knows. He knows how being rich works. [00:57:22] Speaker A: Okay. Thank you for clearing. I did suspect that, but. [00:57:26] Speaker B: I would love to be wrong on this, but I do not think that that is the case. I don't think there's any world in which he sees a consequence for this. [00:57:37] Speaker A: Super cool. So New York will be spicy for me in. [00:57:40] Speaker B: Yes, it'll be super spicy for you at the end of September as we are, you know, a month and a half from the election. When you get here, it's gonna be. [00:57:50] Speaker A: You know how much I'm looking forward to the spicy streets. [00:57:53] Speaker B: Yeah, we're gonna have to, like, sit and watch, like a jeopardy episode or whatever so you can see the commercials, all that stuff. It'll be wild. Yeah, but, yeah, so, you know, and honestly, that's not that far unrelated from this documentary because that's the thing is, it's like, you know, Nick Carter knows he will never see any punishment for any of this stuff. And he's got people claiming to be witnesses or whatever, you know, his friends and stuff, like, who are like, no, I was there. It was consensual and stuff like that. And, like, it's the old he said, she said and all of that jazz closing ranks. Yeah, but, like, I would say, like, if I'm honest, like, you know, I say, like, bayside is my favorite band or whatever, but, like, if I'm like, fully honest, backstreet Boys is my favorite band. [00:58:42] Speaker A: It's mad. That is one to me. [00:58:45] Speaker B: I have seen them live, like, four times. I've seen Nick Carter's side project with Jordan Knight. Nick and Knight. Yeah. I have, like, huge backstreet Boys fan. I have all of their albums. I know every song by heart, all of that kind of stuff. And I, like, after watching this, I just was like. And, like, unfollowed all of the social media. [00:59:10] Speaker A: Must be hard. Must be tough. [00:59:11] Speaker B: Yeah, it's just like, I can't, like, I can't, like, Brian from Backstreet Boys has been, like, a terrible Trump supporter and stuff like that for ages. I never followed him or anything. [00:59:20] Speaker A: Are any of them left unbesmirched? Are there any good ones left? [00:59:23] Speaker B: If they. If they had. If they weren't saying these girls were lying, then. Yeah, yeah, sure. But, like, there was a time when they couldn't. It broke my heart. They put, like, a clip of AJ McClain in it in the documentary of him, like, saying, these girls are liars or whatever. And I was like, not AJ. Come on. [00:59:43] Speaker A: Sorry to hear this. [00:59:45] Speaker B: So rest in peace that I get to keep my backstreet boys stuff. [00:59:51] Speaker A: And Bayside get promoted. [00:59:53] Speaker B: And Bayside get promoted. Because Anthony Ranieri would never. [00:59:59] Speaker A: He was hoping. [01:00:01] Speaker B: I know, right? Like, seriously putting any sort of faith in, like, who's number three? [01:00:05] Speaker A: Who's. Who's set to take the top spot if bayside go nonce? [01:00:09] Speaker B: Uh, probably ghost. [01:00:11] Speaker A: Okay. Okay. No chance. [01:00:15] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, come on. [01:00:17] Speaker A: Right? When I talk about not getting banned tattoos just in case, right? I think. I think Ghost are the only exception. I just. I can't see a world in which Tobias is anything other than the most fucking, you know, wholesome fucking dude. [01:00:31] Speaker B: And that, like, that's one of those people that you're like, this would have come out by now. You know? Like, you would hear the whispers and all that kind of stuff about this. And, like, when you don't hear anything at all of that nature, it's like, I think this. We're probably fine. [01:00:47] Speaker A: Yes. In fact, do you know what? A little Segway past ghost is probably a good place to join the first omen. [01:00:55] Speaker B: Sure. [01:00:56] Speaker A: Don't you think? Yeah. [01:00:57] Speaker B: Yeah, let's do it. [01:01:00] Speaker A: I haven't looked at your star rating first. Right. So are you. Tell me you enjoyed it. [01:01:05] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, no. No. Like, no, no, no. Okay, here's the thing. I don't fucking face on your face. I don't like, like catholic horror because they're all fucking same movie. And I think this is very good at being the same. [01:01:29] Speaker A: You don't. [01:01:29] Speaker B: As every other. Yeah, right. Like, because, you know, you had texted me and you were like, this is the exact same movie as immaculate. [01:01:35] Speaker A: But just a thousand you sold on. It's true. [01:01:38] Speaker B: The same fucking movie. [01:01:40] Speaker A: Don't you know, plot beats and fucking. [01:01:43] Speaker B: Yes. And it's because all of them are. That is this trope. It is all of the tropes. And. But what I will say about it is you remember what I was telling you about immaculate? What drove me crazy about it was it has all of the tropes of this kind of horror movie, but with no development to it. And so, like, okay, you've got sassy, sassy nun, who is like, kind of a. [01:02:11] Speaker A: It goes from sassy to feisty, to be fair. [01:02:13] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, and then you've got, like, the by the book nun. And, like, there are all those things and it tells you they're wrong side. [01:02:21] Speaker A: Of the tracks nun. [01:02:22] Speaker B: Right? Like, they tell you these things, but, like, they're. No. There's no development to that. Personality. First omen has the exact same tropes masterfully played out. Like, you know, you have to, like, it's like embarrassing to think about Sidney Sweeney in Immaculate after you've seen what's her face in this, who goes so hard and, you know, brings so much to that character. And the girl who is like the, you know, wrong side of the tracks nun. You know, she's like, what she, she brings to that character. You know, there is so much more depth to everyone in this movie. [01:03:02] Speaker A: It's made very much in. It's got a kind of a. Not being an omen scholar and not having seen at least the original in a long old time. [01:03:13] Speaker B: Sure. [01:03:14] Speaker A: It leaves one with a sense of cruelty. It's a cruel fucking horror movie, right? In that, you know, the deaths are great and they come out of nowhere. The socially, it's kind of weird as well. It's very. I always find the omen a very class focused horror in that these are people who are taken care of. These are people who are funded. The church has it all, you know? I mean, there's. There's no sense of any. It's the. The whole Satan thing is the only source of jeopardy in the whole film. It gives just this creep about it. And the first omen has that and it's. It's what if? Immaculate. But everybody was taking it seriously and everybody was trying their best to make a really good movie. [01:04:01] Speaker B: That's right. Yeah, exactly. And I think. [01:04:06] Speaker A: It'S got way more none fucking full frontal genitalia than it does. I would have expected. [01:04:16] Speaker B: Yeah, it sure does. Was not expecting so much demon hand from the vag. [01:04:23] Speaker A: Right? [01:04:24] Speaker B: Full, full vag. I told, like, you had, you had messaged me about this because, you know, mom core is like my least favorite thing. And yeah, I think here's the thing. You know, it's. I think it's a good thing to expose your children to, like, the real world of, like, biology as soon as. [01:04:44] Speaker A: You think they can handle it. Yeah, for sure. [01:04:46] Speaker B: Right? I came from like, hippieville. And so I, like, I was there in the room when my sister was born. They had. There was a midwife who showed me videos beforehand, like, get me, like, used to the concept and things like that. Like, I seen so many live bunnies that it was like, like, there's no, there's no miracle of childbirth to me. It's a horror show. And so from like, the very, like, I think that's the thing. And people talk about this all the time. Like, women, like, nobody prepares you for, like, what you're actually putting your body through. And I'm like, well, I was prepared. And you can see why nothing's ever come out of this because from a very early age, I saw this. So, yeah, I think the first omen would prepare someone. [01:05:30] Speaker A: Yeah, prepare someone for birth. [01:05:32] Speaker B: Right? Like, you're looking straight down the barrel. [01:05:35] Speaker A: Right down the fucking below the equator, you know? [01:05:40] Speaker B: And that's, like, again, I was gonna say that this director, like, you know, as much as, like, I don't necessarily like this just because of, like, it's not my. Not my vibe. You know, it's every. Everything in this, like, I could predict. Predict from, like, the first two minutes of it, you know, like, just. [01:05:58] Speaker A: Yeah, I was, you know, I called it as being exactly the same film, as immaculate within the first 50 minutes. I didn't realize just how. [01:06:07] Speaker B: Yeah, like, that. It's like, no, like, literally the same film. But I think this director is phenomenal. And for her to, like, this is her first feature. I think for her to, like, go there with stuff like that, you know? Like, I think, you know, for one thing, like, also a female director really getting that, like, the horror of childbirth as opposed to. I think one of the things I complained about in a movie, like, immaculate. And a lot of noncore movies is like, they're so male gazey, right? So you're gonna see, like, just tons of, like, sexy nun tits. [01:06:41] Speaker A: Well, look at immaculate and. [01:06:43] Speaker B: Right, like, sexy nun tits is sexy nun tits everywhere. Right? Like, and this is like, no, you're gonna see some tits. You're gonna see some vaginas, but it's going to horrify you. I appreciate the woman take on the nun movie because I think it's developed with much more depth and much more horror than. [01:07:09] Speaker A: I had no clue that it was a debut feature. Which makes it all the more impressive in that it tries stuff. You know what I mean? Yeah, there's, you know, it's. It's a horror film in the truest sense. And it, you know, it. It shows a lot, but sorry to invoke hereditary, but one of the best. One of the things that stuck with me so much about that movie was what you don't see or what you think you fucking seen. You know, background work, suggestion, the power of fucking did that just. And there's quite a bit of that in the omen, which I react to really well. [01:07:45] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. So I think for what it is. [01:07:48] Speaker A: You should watch that movie, by the way. [01:07:49] Speaker B: Yeah. And if you liked immatlet, then this is gonna blow your mind because it's the same movie. [01:07:55] Speaker A: It's that, but great. [01:07:56] Speaker B: So much better. Yeah, absolutely. What else did you watch? [01:08:02] Speaker A: Do you know? First omens, maybe? Wonder if it's not turning into quite a nice little year for horror. What else has it been? It was the four and a half star humane. All you need is death. I can't back that up right now, but it feels as though it's turning into quite a good year. Yeah. [01:08:17] Speaker B: I think there have been quite a few that I've enjoyed from 2024 not to, I think, like, it's maybe not the hugest years for major releases, but there's been some really good sort of indie. [01:08:29] Speaker A: Yeah. Ones, which is very much where horror is at right now as an industry. I think if you ask me, all the, you know, all the good stuff has been done on the lowdown. Like fucking. What's fish? Man fish fan? Man fish. What was man fish? Man fish. That's. That's what I'm talking about. [01:08:47] Speaker B: One of my blue sky friends who I follow on letterboxd rated. What was the other one that you had me watch? Frogman. [01:08:55] Speaker A: Yeah, frog man. Which has just announced a sequel. In fact, Frogman two is coming. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [01:09:00] Speaker B: Someone gave it like half a star, and I was like, have you no joy? Grow up. Yeah, grow up. [01:09:05] Speaker A: What's the matter with you? Get real. [01:09:08] Speaker B: That was such a fun, fun movie. [01:09:11] Speaker A: Yeah, had it all. [01:09:13] Speaker B: So you. You went to Wales and you went to. Watched a movie with your mother. [01:09:17] Speaker A: Went to Wales. Crashed with my mam overnight. Not with my mom. That would be weird. But in my mom's house, that was. [01:09:25] Speaker B: Not necessarily a needed clarification. [01:09:28] Speaker A: Was my spelling it out even weirder? I don't know. [01:09:30] Speaker B: Right. It was. It was a real, like, not involved. My. Not involved in child trafficking t shirts raising a lot of questions already answered by my teacher. [01:09:37] Speaker A: I trust you to delete that. That's cool. But what has. What has become kind of a, you know, instant tradition is that the. For the past kind of three or four times I've visited my mother, we've ended up watching just films, which in some way weren't right. I mean, they weren't the right choice. And that has continued this week with Atlas. Jennifer Lopez. [01:09:58] Speaker B: Never even heard of this. [01:10:00] Speaker A: Ah. Pull the Netflix lever right. Tapping your little prompt. Give me a Sci-Fi fucking far future war film with J lo and Chunk. It'll come out in a little cube form and you eat it, and nothing changes in your life. And you go about your day. [01:10:15] Speaker B: Okay. [01:10:17] Speaker A: That's what this was. It's got little bits of Avatar in there. It's got little bits of Star wars in there. It's got little bits of, like, first element in there. [01:10:24] Speaker B: First element? [01:10:26] Speaker A: Yeah. It's like far flung Sci-Fi future. It's, you know, we're talking distant planets. Fucking just what feels like a, you know, military colonizers. It takes a little bit from fucking a lot of different sources and does nothing at all with any of them. If you've ever watched, like, robot jocks, remember that I was a fucking video shout. [01:10:51] Speaker B: Familiar. [01:10:52] Speaker A: Yeah, space filler, proto kind of mech film, guys in fucking huge stop motion mechs. This has lineage all the way back to that this has lineage all the way back to the 1980s with big mechs. See? Also, what was the game? El del toro, one fucking giant lizards. Kaiju. [01:11:10] Speaker B: Pacific Rim. [01:11:11] Speaker A: Pacific Rim. You know, I mean, borrows it from that as well. And it's just it, again, it's movie as time filler. The only thing I got out of it was like an hour and 40 minutes closer to death is all I say. That's the only thing that changed for me after that film is J. [01:11:32] Speaker B: Lo, Bruce Willising. Like, is she. Is she going to die? [01:11:37] Speaker A: Huh? I don't. [01:11:38] Speaker B: She's, like, putting out such weird shit. [01:11:40] Speaker A: I mean, statistically, yes, she is on a tangent. Again, a little bit of a tangent. Have you seen Celine Dion lately? [01:11:50] Speaker B: No. [01:11:52] Speaker A: So I'll say, is she maybe check. [01:11:54] Speaker B: In on her knock, knock, knocking, if you will. [01:11:56] Speaker A: She might be. She might be. There's a, I think a documentary which is about to air, or has it, which is following her around. And she's quite ill. Yeah, she's. [01:12:05] Speaker B: I mean, she's never been in great health or whatever. My friends and I accidentally killed her husband by spending. We spent an entire evening, like, watching Celine Dion videos and discussing how it was that her ancient husband was not dead yet. And this, like, was like a running joke throughout the entire evening. And then the next morning, he died. [01:12:29] Speaker A: There you go. So maybe it's you. Maybe you're the one who's bringing that power to the cast, because we do this every other week. [01:12:34] Speaker B: That's a good point. Yeah, I saw. We don't just throw people off place in DC. Exactly. What? Who plays? I, like, pointed at it. And even Kia was like, what is that? And then. And he's like, oh, it's like a racket sport. Right? And I was like, yeah. Like, evaguely. Kind of knew what it was. But, yeah, it's. It was wild that I have never seen that here. [01:12:56] Speaker A: And then right after we talked, I mean, the odd case, I would go, yeah, yeah. Recency bias. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Confirmation bias. La, la, la. But it happens, like, most weeks. [01:13:03] Speaker B: Yeah. We are the pulse. [01:13:05] Speaker A: We are the pulse. [01:13:07] Speaker B: Mm hmm. Fingers on us, friends, because we so. [01:13:10] Speaker A: Don'T bother with Atlas. Pile of shit. [01:13:12] Speaker B: I will avoid. She's so pretty, though. [01:13:17] Speaker A: Like, she's just difficult to argue against that. Yes. She's no shakira. [01:13:24] Speaker B: I think I'm more of a J. Lo than Shakira person. I like Shakira, don't get me wrong. But J. Lo, I just feel, like, is, like, perfect. And of course, she married Ben, who is also perfect, so, you know. [01:13:36] Speaker A: Okay, good. Whereas Shakira prison. Didn't she. Didn't she just, like, narrowly swerved Shakira? [01:13:44] Speaker B: Yeah. Like the tax evasion. [01:13:46] Speaker A: Yeah. Tax evolution. [01:13:49] Speaker B: Yeah. She's an interesting character, but I. [01:13:54] Speaker A: When he was just resting in her account. [01:13:58] Speaker B: When I was in, like, you know, middle school or whatever, and I started taking Spanish, I was like, really? Like. Shakira was like, my. My shit. I was like, I think I learned a lot of Spanish from listening to Shakira albums, for sure. [01:14:13] Speaker A: Yeah. I have nothing but good things to. [01:14:16] Speaker B: Say about her, aside from the whole tax evasion thing. [01:14:20] Speaker A: Shouldn't steal off me. [01:14:22] Speaker B: Well, maybe kind of. Well, if you were. If you were from Spain or something. I think that was where this happened. [01:14:28] Speaker A: Steal nothing from me mates. [01:14:31] Speaker B: She's. She's the Jimmy carr of music. [01:14:34] Speaker A: Oh, don't, please. [01:14:36] Speaker B: I'm just saying. [01:14:37] Speaker A: No, I disagree. You know, maybe this is something I'll elaborate on at some future date. Maybe not. But I have no tolerance or warmth towards Jimmy Carr at all. So you step off my shakira with that. [01:14:52] Speaker B: Sorry, but just sometimes you gotta spit hard truths. [01:14:57] Speaker A: Not now. You've watched nothing else? [01:15:01] Speaker B: No, I was out of town. [01:15:02] Speaker A: Right. Let's fucking do it. Escape from New York. Classic fucking right. And one of those just scrolled to where my thumb led me. Ended up on escape from New York. Just a long time. Not first watch, by any means, but first in a long old time. And it's just all there, isn't it? You know, it's just all. Everything is right there from, you know, your soundtrack to your. Is this computer's kind of vibe of the tech. [01:15:31] Speaker B: This is like. That should be our next watch along theme. [01:15:34] Speaker A: Is this computers? Beautiful movies? No, they want to do computers. Should we put an Internet in here? But they don't quite know what that is. [01:15:45] Speaker B: Right. Yeah, virtuosity, maybe. [01:15:48] Speaker A: You remember hackers? [01:15:51] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:15:51] Speaker A: Lawnmower man. [01:15:53] Speaker B: Yeah, totally. I think we found a theme. Is this computer? [01:15:57] Speaker A: Yes, but escape from New York is one of those. I think there's a flip side to that theme. This is computers, movies before the, you know, the connected age that just got it right. One of the. You might be surprised to hear it's one of the things about Robocop that I just connect with so strongly. Right. Because you get the impression that guy is built out of a fucking. An old PC, like a Pentagon fucking. He's got a fan in his chest. You know, you can buy the tech in that film. Um, but, yes, I digress. Great, great call, but escape from New York, great movie. Also creepy as fuck. [01:16:30] Speaker B: Yes. [01:16:30] Speaker A: You know, I mean, this is very much the. Also the guy who made Halloween, you know, this is also very much the guy who made Christine. It's very fucking, you know, super creepy and super, super tense. [01:16:41] Speaker B: And it captures that, like that era of New York, much like, what was it that we watched with the Belial basket case. Basket case. [01:16:53] Speaker A: Absolutely basket case. I think Driller Killer, right? [01:16:57] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:16:57] Speaker A: King New York. That's a fucking down on the dirty streets fucking movies. [01:17:01] Speaker B: Grimy, scary New York. [01:17:05] Speaker A: Hey, Frank, you think you're gonna live long enough to spend any of that money, you fucking hump? King of New York, mate. What a movie. [01:17:13] Speaker B: Whatever you say. King of New York. Like, I know what you're talking about, but because I'm me, I think of newsies. All right, he's a king of New York. It's a totally different vibe than. Huh. Yeah. Christian Bale, even though he refuses to acknowledge it. [01:17:33] Speaker A: Like, he refuses technologies from Swansea. [01:17:36] Speaker B: Right. [01:17:36] Speaker A: Yeah, he just. He can't. He can't bring himself to acknowledge the fact that he's fucking Welsh. [01:17:42] Speaker B: Yep. But I will say that. So king of New York is a song from newsies, and our dear Kristen Latterell of the Joag fan cave does the best karaoke of king of New York you have ever seen in your life. I mean, full dancing and, you know, all the doing little jigs on stage and all that kind of stuff. Like people who never heard it before by the end of it are like, whoa, you have not lived until you've seen Kristen Duke, king of New York. Maybe we can get her. I have, like during our meetup of doing karaoke on the Saturday night and I think maybe we can get Kristen to. [01:18:19] Speaker A: I would do that. I would be all fucking over it. [01:18:23] Speaker B: So you don't even know. Put that request in for Kristin to practice up on that. She's ready to do it. If I. If I like, you could bring her. [01:18:33] Speaker A: Into this zoom right now. [01:18:33] Speaker B: Yeah. If I called her into this zoom right now, I was like, Kristen, can you do a little king of New York? She wouldn't miss a beat. She'd be right on it. What else you got? [01:18:43] Speaker A: Let's see. Do do do do do do do do skip past the fall. Guy gives a shit. I watched it from over the top of my phone. It is exactly the film that you think it is. [01:18:54] Speaker B: Yeah, that's one of those cases where we both said the same thing about it. It's just your rating was a lot lower as a result of that. Like it is. It's exactly the movie you think it is. So it's really just a matter of. [01:19:06] Speaker A: No more knowledge that. Yeah. [01:19:07] Speaker B: That works for you or not? [01:19:09] Speaker A: Yes. And I'll end with. Right, I'll end with the coffee table. Right, the coffee table. Do you like. Do you like Spain? Do you like spanish films? Because here's one. Do you like, you know, like, you know, do you like tense fucking movies with stressed couples and fucking. [01:19:30] Speaker B: Oh, no. [01:19:32] Speaker A: Unresolved trauma. Do you like that? [01:19:36] Speaker B: 0%. [01:19:38] Speaker A: Because that's what we got here. We've got a very close quarters spanish horror movie, which, I gotta tell you, it got three stars from me based on the fact that, my God, would this make a great piece of theater. Right? That's. That's why I gave it three stars. My God. So, um, spoilers. If you're planning on watching the coffee table, and you should, so why are you spoiling it? Yeah, maybe skip past this. I want to talk about why I like to so much give it. [01:20:12] Speaker B: How long is it going to take you so we can warn, in fact. [01:20:15] Speaker A: All right, listen, I'll dance around it, but this dance around, that's better. Clear and present tension in the very kind of small scale. It all takes place in an apartment, you'd say like a flat, pretty much. And there's a ever present sense of fucking threat and danger in that flat. And it's beautiful. It is beautiful. To be there in person for something with that quality would be stunning, I think. Yeah, it's really tight. It's a really nice surprise. It's one of those don't even know where I fucking happened across it thinking, this is one fucking guy on TikTok, right? [01:20:56] Speaker B: Oh, boy. [01:20:57] Speaker A: Who talks about a quotes disturbing horror movies. [01:21:03] Speaker B: I hate that I come across this. [01:21:05] Speaker A: Fucking dickhead every other day, he's always gazing off into the middle distance like he's looking off into some red mist, like he's had PTSD from the trauma that he's just experienced and from whatever director video fucking found footage turd he's chatting about. Honestly, I can't recommend you watch this film. It's the most disturbing thing I've ever. Fuck off, pal. You know what I mean? I'll watch it with my fucking ready breck. [01:21:30] Speaker B: Your what? [01:21:32] Speaker A: My. My ready breck? My. My oatmeal. [01:21:35] Speaker B: Got it. Yeah. Every time I like. Because sometimes those come into, like, the instagram. Yeah, I got you page or whatever, and it's just like, if I even, like, accidentally click on one as soon as they start, it's like the mix of, like, the. The intense voice and the music and everything. I'm just like, fuck off. [01:21:54] Speaker A: Get fucked. Yeah. Yeah, it's a movie. [01:21:56] Speaker B: Yeah. There is nothing that is as disturbing as you're describing. Blair witch two right now. Like, this is. This is too much. Yeah, but I mean, the thing is, there's a lot of, like, people obviously watch horror for different reasons or whatever, and there are a lot of people who are terrified. [01:22:19] Speaker A: Monetize. They fucking tick. [01:22:21] Speaker B: Well, that too. But I mean, like, it works for people for, like, you know, to. To have these kinds of things where it's, like, these are the scariest things. There's a lot of people who are gonna watch them be like, they are the scariest thing I've ever seen because it takes. And it's like, I don't necessarily watch horror to be scary. I love when it does happen, but, you know, that's. That's pretty rare. So those kinds of things just, like, don't speak to what I'm watching a movie for, because I. [01:22:47] Speaker A: It also occurs at this point if maybe I'm a little desensitized. [01:22:50] Speaker B: Sure. Yeah, yeah. Maybe seen almost everything at this point. So it's kind of hard. [01:22:57] Speaker A: Just a little bit. [01:22:58] Speaker B: Yeah. But I think, like, I mean, the thing about that is, like, if something hits the right chord, there's no amount of completely. [01:23:08] Speaker A: The callus hasn't grown all over. I can still. I can still be scared, definitely. [01:23:12] Speaker B: That's what, like, if I want to. [01:23:12] Speaker A: Be, like you said, it makes it more of a treat when it does happen. [01:23:14] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Like, if I want to be scared, usually it's like. Like a home invasion stuff is like, okay, I'm probably gonna be freaked out by this. You know, it's gonna cause me to be stressed. Unless it's just, like, terrible. But, like, you know, if I wanna. If I'm looking for a scary movie, it's probably gonna be something like that from that genre. Mm hmm. Though, things surprise me. Like anguish, which Anna actually watched this past week I saw and I was pleased with, but, like, that one scared me and came out of nowhere. [01:23:47] Speaker A: It did, didn't it? [01:23:48] Speaker B: I remember that I was like, I can't totally explain to you what it is, but there's something about the, like, hypnotic ness of this movie that genuinely is kind of terrifying and, like, the peril that these girls are in, in this movie theater that they don't understand and that it's like, you know, ultimately like a shooter, you know, like, which is terrifying. Like, this kind of thing is very scary. [01:24:12] Speaker A: So, anguish, was that not the one that really cleverly kind of baits you in with the film within a film set up and you're not quite sure where you're at? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was. That was a load of fun. And I can see, you know, how that I can. I can totally get it. I think my last one was late night with the devil. That. That probably gave me a little bit of. A bit of a tingle, you know? [01:24:31] Speaker B: Nice. [01:24:32] Speaker A: The set and setting were perfect. I mean, it was a. It was a packed little theater and everyone was super into it, and it did the trick. It was really good. [01:24:40] Speaker B: I want you to watch that. The. I think it's Argentina. The. The one that I was saying is, like, very similar to late Night with the devil. [01:24:49] Speaker A: Oh, nice. Yes. I remember saying, yeah, I can't think. [01:24:53] Speaker B: Of what it's called, but I would love for you to watch that one because it's, like, very. It's an interesting flick that, yeah. Has a lot of. A lot of things in common with this, but, yeah, it's much more weird. [01:25:07] Speaker A: Good. [01:25:09] Speaker B: So I will send that to you. That's it. [01:25:14] Speaker A: That's it. Like I said, good week of movies. That felt like. [01:25:18] Speaker B: Love that. Yeah. Feel great about this. I'm hopefully get some flicks in this week because it's just gonna be me and gaucho hanging out and spending quality time. Spending quality time and whatnot. And so I think we'll catch some flicks and, you know, relax. [01:25:39] Speaker A: Nice. What. What kind of movies does gaucho prefer? What does he watch? [01:25:45] Speaker B: You know, that's a good question. Gaucho has never, you know how there's, like, some dogs that, like, if they see an animal on screen, they'll, like, jump at it or anything? Like that gaucho has never recognized the screen, ever. And it was funny because, like, when we. We got him when I was moving to Portland, and so I lived far away, and I'd, you know, kia, when I would, like, Skype, and I would be like, sitting there like, gaucho. Gaucho. And he like, did not. It's like, that's not a person. That's. It never registered at all. [01:26:23] Speaker A: Object kind of permanence. [01:26:25] Speaker B: Yeah, just like, did not. Yeah. The idea that anything happening in the screen was a real thing has never been a thing with him. So, you know, he just sleeps. He always has just slept there through movies, which is good, because then I've just got, like, a little thing to pet. [01:26:40] Speaker A: Nice. A little portable warmer. [01:26:43] Speaker B: Yes, exactly. [01:26:45] Speaker A: Nice. [01:26:47] Speaker B: So, Mark, you wanted to kind of rehash some things, check in on the state of things. [01:26:55] Speaker A: Well, yes. I mean, it's been really nice over the past week or so, reading that some people are listening to older episodes of ours. [01:27:04] Speaker B: I know. [01:27:05] Speaker A: That is always nice, isn't it? [01:27:06] Speaker B: Loving that. [01:27:08] Speaker A: I enjoy that a lot. [01:27:09] Speaker B: Yeah. Hearing, you know, Hannah started posting about it, then other people sort of jumped in on some of their relistens and what they've come across, including, bless you, Dan, for pointing out how many times I have explained Meet the Robinsons to Mark. [01:27:24] Speaker A: Oh, really? [01:27:27] Speaker B: Every time you're like, I've never heard of it. What's that? [01:27:29] Speaker A: This is a brand new movie that I have never heard of. [01:27:31] Speaker B: Yes. And, like, Dan, I think it is time for you to watch it. But, yeah, really enjoying that sort of trip down memory lane reinvigorated my passion also for preserving the video, man, which I still think we need to find a way to do, but. [01:27:48] Speaker A: Oh, that was. That was cool as fuck, wasn't it? What was I even saying? Yes. All that kind of brought home to me was, you know, we're veterans now, you and me, in the. The podcasting realm. Our. Our listener numbers immediately were excellent. Very promising. On Joe, I can. They've done nothing but stay there. We. Our last episode was like seven, 8 million people, I think, obviously. [01:28:14] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:28:16] Speaker A: And it's occurred to me that in that time, in that it's only taken us four years or so to reach that, but four years and in podcast years is like 108 years. [01:28:24] Speaker B: It's true. Yeah, it's like dog years. [01:28:26] Speaker A: You know what I mean? Like, yeah, I think it's maybe a good idea to chart or to have a little, you know, lick our fingers and stick them in the air and see if we can get a kind of a direction. The wind is blowing globally. How have things improved since we've been on the air? Globally, on the air or online, how have things got worse? And on a kind of personal note, if you think yourself back four years, Corey, if you project back four years from being sat here tonight, describe your life for me. [01:28:57] Speaker B: That's a good question. I mean, I think generally, on a personal level, things are better. Obviously, we started this mid pandemic, and not just mid pandemic, because obviously we're still mid pandemic. By the way, if you're not vaxxed up, make sure you get vaxxed, because we're in another wave. But, you know, mid lockdown when we started this. So, you know, what we've got going for us is that we started at a pretty low point. [01:29:34] Speaker A: That is a great point. [01:29:35] Speaker B: Yeah. We were both kind of in a place of, like, going a little bit crazy, feeling really stifled and stuck. And I think, you know, when we would have pretty regular. I think it's saying something that, like, in our earlier episodes, we had a lot of sort of therapeutic check ins with each other. Like, it was pretty regular in each episode to kind of, like, go through our, like, where are we? How are our feelings process things and stuff like that. And I don't feel like we do that as much anymore because I think in a large part, we're not on the verge of cracking like we were at that time. [01:30:10] Speaker A: That is an excellent point. You'll know that I. Okay, I'm not even gonna say, really. I never listen back to old episodes, but I'm not sure I actually even want to listen to some of them back from that time. Memories, you know? I mean, there was. You know, there was. There were definite fractures there with two of us. Were there? It was insane. [01:30:29] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So I think, you know, that's one thing to. To sort of look back on and be like, I think we are in better places generally. And also, like, I know, like, for you, and of course you're gonna talk about yourself, but, like, being very proactive about, like, fixing mental health things and stuff like that has, like, made it so. Yeah, I think, yeah, I am in a. [01:30:55] Speaker A: Well, you have to. I mean, you wouldn't walk around on a fucking broken toe, would you? [01:30:59] Speaker B: Plenty of people do. That's the thing, you know? And I think that that was kind of when we started this. When we started this, I think you were kind of in the walk around on a broken toe zone. [01:31:11] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point. [01:31:12] Speaker B: That's a good point. But, yeah, I think in general, as I've talked about before, like, I am less anxious. I think I kind of have, like, my shit together more, have figured out, like, what caused my anxiety. I've kind of figured out more about, like, my various neuro spice that, you know, has led to, you know, basically my entire life, why things made me stressed out and stuff like that. I think I've got more of a handle on that now and avoid it and have figured out that stuff. [01:31:46] Speaker A: You've. You've been sober since the start of the year? [01:31:50] Speaker B: Yes, five months. [01:31:52] Speaker A: Pretty much half a year. Okay, so nearly half a year. How has that changed you? [01:31:57] Speaker B: That's a good question. [01:31:58] Speaker A: Have you seen, you know, benefits, perceptions? What. What has changed in that six months? Because that's a length of time to stick anything, isn't it? [01:32:06] Speaker B: Yeah. Right. [01:32:06] Speaker A: If it was going to elicit change, it would have done in that. In the foot in this five months. So what have you noticed? [01:32:11] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a. That's a good question. I think, like, there's a degree to which, I think when it would come down to, like, anxiety and things like that, when it would hit my inclination probably would have been like, have a drink, you know, and, like, just try to, like, unfeel it or whatever. You know, have a couple of old fashions and watch a movie and try to, like, just power through or whatever. [01:32:43] Speaker A: Yes. Which is, of course, perfectly fucking valid. [01:32:46] Speaker B: Right? Yeah, like, you know, fine, if that's what you do or whatever, but not being able to do that has made it so that I have to sort of, like, figure out other ways to deal with stuff, you know, and how to, like, you know, when you have a bad day or something like that. Or something frustrates you or things to that, like, of that nature. What can you do about it? Which for me usually is like, get the VR on and work out or something like that. I walk a lot, I play video games and listen to audiobooks and stuff like that. And so doing things that are more productive instead of just being like, let me just get tipsy and forget that this is bothering me. Instead, it's kind of sit in a position where I can think about it and, like, process it and, you know, find other ways to, like, work through it. Like, sometimes when something, like, really frustrates me, I'll, like, do, like, a VR workout. And, like, I think I'm thinking the whole time about the things that's frustrating me. You know, it's not like it's not ignoring the problem or anything like that. Like, for the first 30 minutes of that workout, I am processing. [01:34:01] Speaker A: Yeah, sure, sure. [01:34:02] Speaker B: You know, and then usually I have sort of, like, worked it through so that the last, you know, 15 minutes or half hour or whatever, I'm like, okay. [01:34:12] Speaker A: Almost like, yeah, draw a line under it, work it out. [01:34:16] Speaker B: Right, exactly. So I think that's one of, like, the biggest things, is just sort of, like, being more productive with myself than if I were to just drink a problem away. And, like, as such, also, it's, you know, just the various things of. I think now looking at it is like waking up the next morning and not feeling well or not having slept well or things like that. Like, I can't imagine doing that again. You know? Like, it doesn't appeal to me at all. Like, I've had, like, a sip of, like, keo got an interesting drink the other day, and I had a sip of it, but it's like, my thought process on that is, like, I wouldn't want to have a whole one of those because I just simply don't want to not sleep as well. Like, so I think it's. It's just given me, like, a new lease on my health on top of everything else. [01:35:10] Speaker A: Nice. [01:35:11] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:35:12] Speaker A: Which is exactly what, you know, that's what I wanted to hear, mate. That's exactly. [01:35:17] Speaker B: Well, there you go. Yeah. Can validate that. What about you? Where do you see yourself compared to four years ago? [01:35:24] Speaker A: Um, I mean, just basically. All right. You know what I'm saying? Just basically, you know, one of the great pleasures of my life is, and has long been watching my two boys grow up, and that's happening at pace. [01:35:39] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:35:42] Speaker A: And is. And continues to be the kind of source of everything I do, really. Yeah, it's fantastic. Work wise, again, things are much the same. Mentally, things are much the same. But like you said earlier, that's coming from a low starting point. [01:36:03] Speaker B: Right? Yeah, totally. [01:36:04] Speaker A: You know, we started this podcast kind of terrified about the, you know, not only the world around us, but the world of the near future. Like I said earlier on, about just being an hour and a half closer to death after atlas, we are four years down that path. [01:36:25] Speaker B: Yep. [01:36:29] Speaker A: You know, and four years down that path, there's still very little change, and I don't think much in the way of hope. So nothing's really changed. Nothing's got worse. [01:36:40] Speaker B: You're still that guy. [01:36:41] Speaker A: I'm still. Oh, yeah, look, that's, you know, in the DNA, but nothing's got, you know, markedly worse. Hey, look, am I a paragon of, you know, excellent mental health and fucking good routines? No, but it has always been such. [01:37:03] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think there are. You're selling yourself short a little bit on that. I think you have made improvements in various ways over the past four years. Just not everything. You know, you're not fixed, because that's. [01:37:13] Speaker A: Not how it works, is anyone is a. [01:37:17] Speaker B: Exactly. But, you know, I think that, yeah, you're selling short the fact that you have made a lot of positive changes for yourself over the past several years. [01:37:26] Speaker A: Well, thank you. [01:37:26] Speaker B: And the past year. [01:37:29] Speaker A: Again, you know, mental health is health. [01:37:32] Speaker B: Precisely. Yeah. Now, from a larger perspective. And actually, before we move on to that, just FYI, we want to hear from you guys, too, for you. Oh, yeah. [01:37:42] Speaker A: Very much so. [01:37:42] Speaker B: To this journey, please. What is that? [01:37:47] Speaker A: What was that? [01:37:49] Speaker B: Could you hear that? [01:37:50] Speaker A: No, I couldn't, but is it a russian child? [01:37:52] Speaker B: It's a russian child outside. [01:37:56] Speaker A: Getting bottle slapped. Oh. [01:37:58] Speaker B: It's like some sort of machinery out there. But anyways, yeah, let us know, you know, your four year state of your person. You know, how do you feel? Do you think you. You're doing better or worse than August of 2020 when we began? [01:38:15] Speaker A: Your point of view? Yeah, your perception. [01:38:17] Speaker B: Yes. Hopefully everybody's doing better, but we want to hear it either way. So, you know, jump into the socials and give us your life updates as well. [01:38:29] Speaker A: And do you know what? I think I started this topic off in a similar fashion last time, but it's really fun. So there's something called the Legatum Health Index, right? Which is awarded the Legatum Prosperity index, in fact, and it rates nations. I'm quoting here from statista. It rates nations on how well they support the flourishing of their systems. So economic, social well being, life expectancy, crime, health, sickness, risk factors, loads of things put together to assign every single country in the world a score from zero to 100 in terms of how well they are. Right? [01:39:05] Speaker B: Okay, sure. [01:39:08] Speaker A: I. Clearly. I'm sure I did this last time, but I would love you. I would love you to take a crack at guessing what is top. [01:39:15] Speaker B: Like, what place is doing the best. [01:39:17] Speaker A: What country in the world would you think might be at the top of the Legatum prosperity index for 2023? [01:39:27] Speaker B: Okay, and what are the metrics? [01:39:29] Speaker A: So, lots of them. Right, okay. Um, macroeconomic measures of prosperity. So, wealth, GDP, income per individual, but also things like health, health outcomes, mortality rates, things like social economic factors, homelessness, poverty, to give each country a score between zero and 100. [01:39:57] Speaker B: So I would guess either somewhere northern Europe. You know, one of the sort of socialist kind of areas. [01:40:08] Speaker A: Interesting. [01:40:09] Speaker B: Or somewhere like Japan. Those would probably be my guesses. [01:40:15] Speaker A: Japan is number two. [01:40:17] Speaker B: Nice. Hey, there we go. [01:40:18] Speaker A: Very good. And what if I told you that the top five. Or Singapore. Japan. South Korea and Taiwan and Israel, but the top four. [01:40:27] Speaker B: Imagine that. Yeah. Yeah. I figured. I was like, it either has to be northern Europe or Asia. That was my. [01:40:36] Speaker A: Europe doesn't come and do it until Norway, which is like seven or eight down. Then Iceland. Sweden. We are way down, by the way. We are way down the list. [01:40:44] Speaker B: Shocking. [01:40:45] Speaker A: Yep. UK getting 78. Just below the UAE and just above Uruguay. [01:40:51] Speaker B: Okay. [01:40:52] Speaker A: It isn't alphabetical. You might. You might be tempted to think that they've gone alphabetical. [01:40:56] Speaker B: Yeah, it does sound like it, doesn't it? [01:40:58] Speaker A: USA. Would you get a guess? [01:41:00] Speaker B: Mmm. Is it lower than that? [01:41:04] Speaker A: It's some distance lower. In fact, it's a good 20 places lower. [01:41:08] Speaker B: Yikes. [01:41:09] Speaker A: I don't know. It didn't rate you on a scale, but you come in at 73.3. Is your score just below? Anyone? Anyone? Armenia. [01:41:19] Speaker B: Cool. Cool. It's great to be doing worse than a place that has had a fairly recent genocide. [01:41:30] Speaker A: And just one above. Anyone? Anyone? Bula. Algeria. [01:41:34] Speaker B: Algeria? [01:41:36] Speaker A: Yes, indeed. [01:41:38] Speaker B: Huh? [01:41:39] Speaker A: Yeah, that's really. I mean, you're two below Jamaica. [01:41:43] Speaker B: Wow. We're below, like, colonized territories. [01:41:50] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Jesus. Nice dice. And there's other metrics as well. I mean, if I look specifically at the UK, right, there's the Office for National Statistics, which is, I believe they're government run and government funded, but is always keeping, you know, an eye on the shape and the mood and the. Just the vibes in the UK, right, that's what they do. Constant polling, polling, polling, polling, surveying, surveying and collecting stats and data on just the. Like I said, the UK as a whole. And in things like personal well being, right, since 2011, not really much in the way of change, it stayed pretty consistent. 5.8% of UK adults. Right, this is quarter 420. 23 rated their life satisfaction as low. Just 5.8%, which seems low. And it's pretty much exactly where it was in 2011. [01:42:49] Speaker B: Okay. [01:42:50] Speaker A: Hasn't. Hasn't changed at all, which seems good to me. [01:42:55] Speaker B: Yeah, like, that seems positive, I suppose. What about the. The other index? Do you have, like, what it was at in like, 2019? [01:43:03] Speaker A: Oh, the. I'm sure I could rustle that up. [01:43:06] Speaker B: You know, I don't know if there's just like a drop down menu you can look at or something like that, but I'm very curious. [01:43:12] Speaker A: I too, I would like to know if there's been much change. Leave that with me. [01:43:17] Speaker B: Right, okay. We can come back to that. Because there's certain things, you know, I kind of looked at a few things that had some dubious results in these past few years, and I know that in the UK, of course, and I didn't research this, but I know just from being there and watching the news and stuff like that, that the cost of living crisis has been a huge thing in the past few years. Right. The cost of your utility bills has become exorbitant to a degree that's really quite difficult. [01:43:54] Speaker A: To the risk of this, you know, not being the podcast I truly believe it can be, there's. That's not the only way that. That you're getting fucked at the moment. [01:44:09] Speaker B: Sure. [01:44:10] Speaker A: You know, it isn't just. It's the fact that everything is littler. Corrie. [01:44:14] Speaker B: Yes, that was actually what I was about to talk about. [01:44:16] Speaker A: Everything is fucking smaller. And it is. And it isn't just, you know, me. This isn't just, you might. This ain't GB news, right? This is. This is genuine observational facts. Everything is smaller and more expensive. And when things get better, when the war in Ukraine and, you know, and every other war on the planet fucking ends, prices won't come back down and things won't get bigger again. [01:44:38] Speaker B: Right, exactly. Let me tell you a little bit about this, because I was actually going to ask if you were facing the same kind of thing. But so everything here, and I assume there, like you're talking about, has gotten really expensive, particularly groceries, food, all of the stuff you're going to get, like that. Groceries in the United States are currently 25% more expensive than they were in 2020. 25% more. And of course, we've gone through a period of inflation, but that's not what this is. The term that has become popular for this is greedflation. And to sort of explain the difference, inflation happens on the reg due to various economic factors like supply chain disruptions, like what you were talking about with Ukraine, that's going to cause inflation. Right. Because some of the things that normally would be available to you at a certain rate now either aren't available or are much more expensive as a result of that. [01:45:42] Speaker A: You see also petroleum also, right? [01:45:44] Speaker B: Yes, exactly. [01:45:45] Speaker A: Just everything in the supply chain and the fucking resourcing of it all. [01:45:50] Speaker B: Yes. So supply chain disruptions, increases in production costs, or just increased demand. Right? All of those can cause inflation. Greedflation, on the other hand, is exactly what it sounds like. Corporations raise prices because they're greedy and want more money, and they use inflation as a cover for this. [01:46:11] Speaker A: Well, exactly. Look, if. If all of my fucking, you know, my peers and competitors are raising their prices and getting away with it quite handsomely, why the fuck would I not? [01:46:21] Speaker B: Right, exactly. What, like, out of the good of your own heart? Come on. [01:46:25] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Exactly right. [01:46:27] Speaker B: And greedflation has outlasted actual inflation, and it proportionally is way higher than inflation. So, like, we're actually in a period where inflation is going down, but the greedflation is not. And it goes hand in hand with another thing, which we call shrink flation, which is what you're talking about when the amount of the thing you're buying gets smaller but the cost doesn't. So a box of cookies that used to have 24 now has 18 in it, but it costs. [01:47:02] Speaker A: I personally use the Mark Lewis Yorkie volume index. I will, many, several times a week, I'll purchase a Yorkie for myself. Delicious. [01:47:12] Speaker B: And I saw you do it just last week. [01:47:14] Speaker A: There you go. My hands certainly are getting bigger. [01:47:17] Speaker B: You know what I'm saying? [01:47:18] Speaker A: Summons up. [01:47:21] Speaker B: Exactly. Like, if you're coming home every week from the grocery store and thinking, there used to be more in these packages, you're not imagining it. That's absolutely right. You're being charged the same amount for less. And this has been getting out of control since 2021. Now, one of the things we said about this was that we were going to talk about, like, have things gotten worse? Have things gotten better? And so there is kind of a weird silver lining to this, and it's not about the greedflation itself, but it's about our response to it. So when this happened in the seventies and eighties, it was devastating, and it took a long time to defeat as consumers took on what fortune calls an inflationary psychology. So what that means is as inflation happens, people start buying more and more in hopes of stocking up before the prices go up even further. But now what you've just done is create demand, which perpetuates inflation and drives the costs up even more. So if we're willing to pay, and especially in bulk, because we're trying to get things before the prices go up, then the prices will not go down. And that was one of the several driving forces of that huge economic crisis in the seventies and eighties. In 2024, people simply aren't willing to pay. So this gouging is mostly done by big corporations. And once upon a time, they could depend on our brand loyalty to keep us paying and you, like, you remember that? It was like, you know, were you gonna get the generic, like, rice poppies or get rice Krispies? Like, you know, you wanted to get that name brand thing. And Americans at this point have said, fuck it, I'll just buy generic. And further, we'll start shopping around for better deals instead of just going to the one store we always go to because it's convenient to get everything in one place so people aren't just like, well, if, you know, whole Foods is selling these things, I have to pay what Whole Foods is selling. Like, you'll go to different shops. [01:49:34] Speaker A: It's. The avarice is so naked. It is completely fucking, you know, flagrant. [01:49:44] Speaker B: Right. It. [01:49:45] Speaker A: 100%. Yeah. Like I said, you know, I talked about fuel very briefly early on, but the colossal spike in, you know, Covid profit and bonus from. From petroleum companies is shocking it. And what is that if not just profiteering? [01:50:05] Speaker B: Yeah. Let me tell you about some of the, like, bananas ones in the grocery store here, because like I said, it's the corporate brands that are doing this. So you can compare to generic brands which are subject to inflation, but not necessarily to greedflation, at least not to the same extent. So fortune gives these examples. A twelve ounce tub of Kraft's Philadelphia cream cheese costs $6.69. [01:50:32] Speaker A: Storm, give me 12oz. How much is 12oz? [01:50:36] Speaker B: Yeah, I think you're kind of in that vicinity. [01:50:39] Speaker A: Philadelphia. All right. Yeah, Philadelphia. Yeah, yeah. [01:50:41] Speaker B: You know what a Philadelphia cream cheese container is like? Yeah, absolutely. Great stuff. $6.69 for one of those tubs. The store brand is 319. So less than half of what that is. A 24 pack of craft singles, $7.69. The store label, $2.99. [01:51:04] Speaker A: Fucking hell. [01:51:05] Speaker B: A 32 ounce Heinz ketchup bottle, $6.29. The generic, $1.69. So as they added this up, this five products together, if you bought those name brands would be $30, while the alternative was about 13. And so consumers basically, whether, like, because you have to, right. Like, if you just don't have the money for brand names, you're not going to buy brand names. But even those of us who, like, can theoretically afford the name brands have fucked them off and been like, you know what? There is not a difference between the generic and the brand to make me pay over twice as much. [01:51:49] Speaker A: So I think my only red line, brand wise, is, unfortunately, Diet Coke. That's my only kind of non negotiable. [01:51:54] Speaker B: Which I am negotiable. [01:51:55] Speaker A: Which you just do completely. Yes. [01:51:57] Speaker B: Yeah. And does save a ton of money. Boycotting Diet Coke actually is a financial boon. But yeah, because of this, there's been articles and stuff that have come out recently that the greedflation is actually starting to drop because the brands are realizing people aren't taking it like they traditionally do. Normally they would just suck it up and pay and now nobody's doing that. So they are finally having to drop their prices in response to our actions. [01:52:33] Speaker A: Between 2021 and end of 24, number of adults who claim they spend more than they, more than they usually would when the food shop has gone, you know, fucking up to 40% from less than 20 in the space of the last few years. [01:52:50] Speaker B: So wild. [01:52:51] Speaker A: Yeah. Another thing that, and again, the pause is me just kind of, again, letting it sink into myself that it never goes the other way. It never seems to go the other way. Unless I'm wrong. [01:53:06] Speaker B: Unless I'm wrong. [01:53:08] Speaker A: Has there ever been a time when post crisis budgeting has ever resolved itself into, you know, things being less, it's pre crisis state? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [01:53:19] Speaker B: I mean, I think that does happen sometimes with like gas where it's like, it gets, yeah, it goes through these periods where it's more reactive, expensive and then like, yeah, sometimes it's just like, like here there was a point where it was like just over $2, which it's like, I hadn't seen that since like 2005, you know, like, so I think there's very rare cases of that. But I don't think, but I think it has to be something that just fluctuates generally. Not something like, will they put more cookies back in my container or less air in my chip bag? Like, no, that's, that's forever. [01:53:57] Speaker A: Yes. And that's, you know, in the kind of food industry, change is a lot kind of more difficult to, to, it's less reactive than petrol is what I'm saying. The market, the old market fluctuates daily, whereas, you know, consumer products take a longer time to fuck with like that. Which again, I guess is why it's so difficult to unfuck them particularly. [01:54:25] Speaker B: Right. [01:54:26] Speaker A: You know, if it's working out, if the bottom line is all in green. [01:54:30] Speaker B: Yeah. So that's the, that's the great thing is that this time it has become unprofitable for them to do the thing to us that they usually do. And so they are having to backtrack. It's still inflated, but they are having to backtrack on how much it is inflated. So, you know, good job us. [01:54:51] Speaker A: Yeah, but, you know, I've got my fingers crossed, but I'm not optimistic. Well, that's which is just me, though, isn't it? That's me, Oliver. [01:54:59] Speaker B: Well, that's true. Yeah. [01:55:01] Speaker A: I have my fingers crossed, but I'm not optimistic. [01:55:03] Speaker B: I don't think optimism is necessarily our bag here. I mean, I think I'm a little more of a silver lining person, but I'm a realist, too. Yes. In terms of another thing that I looked at that I think it's hard to. One of the things we focused on a lot over the past few years is AI, right, which is at this point, almost a meaningless term. [01:55:29] Speaker A: Well. [01:55:32] Speaker B: It'S so broadly applied for these sort of machine learning. [01:55:39] Speaker A: I'm almost reluctant to say this, but for the first time over the past few weeks, I've started to get unmistakable kind of whiff of fucking gimmick graphene syndrome from AI. Okay, I mentioned graphene, if that doesn't ring a bell. It seemed like for years, the press, the science press, was super fucking worked up about this wonder material, graphene, which was super light and super strong and had a zillion fucking applications, and it was going to change our life. It was going to enable interstellar travel. It was going to enable just brain implants, food in pill form, jetpacks, all that. And none of it happened. None of it came to pass. Graphene just doesn't exist anymore. And I'm. I called 3d tvs, man. Everyone who brought, everyone who got themself a 3d tv came under the target of my scorn. I was like, you fool buying that? And I'm starting to fucking feel that way about AI, man. I think everything it's gonna do is kind of. Its doing. [01:56:46] Speaker B: Yeah, it's. They fucked it really, by. It's been NFT ified is the way I kind of looked at it is, you know, it's not ready. It's very rudimentary and basic. But a lot of corporations spent a lot of money because tech bros convinced them this was the future. [01:57:06] Speaker A: Every other fucking, you know, sentence in my work right now is. [01:57:12] Speaker B: Yeah, and like, as I've said, like, you know, at this point, it's very hard for me to, like, find work because everything is, you know, AI writes it and they want you to correct it, you know, for minimum wage, which is. [01:57:25] Speaker A: It's just. It's just fucking autocomplete, isn't it? It's a fucking. [01:57:28] Speaker B: Right, exactly. Well, and that's it. Right. That's why I was saying this is like a meaningless term because it's not all AI is that we've got right now is the same exact shit that is like your autocorrect and your. What would have predicted your searches and stuff. [01:57:45] Speaker A: Predictive text, that's all it is. Congratulations, humanity. You've invented predictive text again. [01:57:50] Speaker B: Right? And it's backfiring so quickly and so clearly been a scam, adding it to things that we don't need it on. So all your meta shit now has AI search, which you cannot opt out of. You are stuck with, you are training. People in the UK can opt out of your meta stuff being used to train AI. [01:58:13] Speaker A: I think I did. [01:58:14] Speaker B: Americans cannot. Yeah, we are stuck with it. Usually the UK and Europe have like better rules about that stuff than we do. [01:58:22] Speaker A: How. You know, and I'm not looking for an answer because I guess you're about as close to the process as I am. But how can a global generative AI tool not accept learning data from one part of the world, but force enforce it in another? How, what does that, how does that speak to the, the broad fucking experience of using AI? If it's, if it's only. If the fucking data it's learning from. [01:58:52] Speaker B: And it is only from a pool of people who were forced into. Yeah, I mean, that's a really good question. And we've seen, I think the biggest sort of crash and burn of this is Google, which already had functionally made itself unusable over the past several years. It's been quite a while since it has been a particularly useful thing. I switched to Duckduckgo and then now I use Bing. I pretty much don't fuck with Google at all, except maps. [01:59:21] Speaker A: From Google to Bing. [01:59:23] Speaker B: Yeah, Bing gives you unique things from like actual, like a unique variety of websites and things like that, where like Google, it's like you have to go like ten pages to not see like copies of the exact same thing over and over again. Like, you know, if you look up a specific topic or whatever, it's just going to be the same article that's been aggregated onto various websites or whatever. And Bing actually gives you unique results. So they have like an AI or whatever. It's much easier to ignore. And funk works a lot better if you do end up with it. Like sometimes if I'm looking up for like how to play a game or something, the AI will come up and like give a thing and I'm like, actually that's pretty useful. That did tell me what I needed to know. But AI or Google has shit the bed with their AI and there have been some pretty staggering examples of this. For example, one of the queries that someone put in, and obviously people are testing it, right? Like, these are not things they were actually looking for answers to, but they're testing to see what is the AI going to say to this. So one of them was how many rocks should I eat? And the AI overview told users that according to geologists at UC Berkeley, you should eat at least one small rock per day, as rocks are an important source of vitamin and minerals. This was excellent from a satirical article from the Onion. But the AI does not know the difference between a joke website and a real website, as did a lot of. [02:01:06] Speaker A: Humans for a long time. [02:01:08] Speaker B: Right? Yeah, this is true. Much like actual people, they cannot tell the difference between the onion and real news. Another satire piece came from the little old lady comedy, which suggested that running with scissors is a great cardio exercise that can increase your heart rate and require concentration and focus. [02:01:29] Speaker A: Yeah, nice. [02:01:30] Speaker B: Another result said that a dog has played in the NHL was drafted as a fourth round pick. [02:01:38] Speaker A: I'm sure that was like four to. [02:01:41] Speaker B: Play 63 games for the Calgary Flames. This was again a like, not a satire. But this was an article called NHL to host first Stanley Pup rescue dog competition. So this was not the actual NHL. It was a cute little promotion thing that they were running. [02:02:03] Speaker A: If they haven't done an earbud sequel where he does hockey date or two, and they should call it pups, that's what they should call it. Oh, it's kind of six puck pubs. [02:02:13] Speaker B: Yeah, I like it. The Google AI has firmly answered the question, does Acab include Batman? Because if you ask it, is Batman a cop? It says yes because he works for Detective Jim Gordon. [02:02:29] Speaker A: That's appalling. Of all of these, that one's really made me itch. That one is really fucking. [02:02:35] Speaker B: Yeah, I can see you immediately. Like, how dare you. Another suggested that if your cheese is not sticking to your pizza, you can add an 8th of glue to give the sauce more tackiness. [02:02:52] Speaker A: On Reddit, the guy who wrote that was just some knobhead on Reddit. [02:02:55] Speaker B: On Reddit, yes, exactly that. Another suggested that you could combine gasoline with italian spices to cook spaghetti. And another said that parachutes are no more effective than backpacks when jumping out of an airplane. [02:03:18] Speaker A: Nice, nice, nice. [02:03:20] Speaker B: Yes. From what I remember about this study. So in the study it says the drop in the study was only 2ft. And I think I had read something about this, that the study was actually meant to show how like, you can distort results. [02:03:34] Speaker A: I see. [02:03:35] Speaker B: Well, in something I'm sure they delighted. Yeah, the Google AI fell right for that. And so again, for sort of a little bit of a silver lining on this. [02:03:47] Speaker A: That's a great idea. You know, I think there's legs in that from an artistic point of view. If I knew my SEO, fucking dark arts, would I be able to influence one of those larger modules just by putting fucking fake articles up about a topic? [02:04:03] Speaker B: Exactly. And that seems to be the case. Yeah. It's kind of, you know, it's an SEO situation. [02:04:09] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [02:04:10] Speaker B: So it has very little to do with what is true or factual and more to do with who put in the best keywords in order to do this. So my silver lining to this is that, you know, we have been sort of following AI and the, the problems with it for like, and this quick jump, like we talked about this with like, the difference between your, your dolly dickscapes and the kinds of stuff that you can make with, you know, generative AI now. [02:04:41] Speaker A: And yet. Right. And yet it felt like the last general election here in the UK, it felt like, you know, the pundits were all like, hey, we think AI is gonna play a disruptive role right in the election this time. Gonna get some deep fakes, gonna be super confusing. A lot of fun. Didn't happen then. [02:05:01] Speaker B: Yeah, has not happened. And I think we're seeing the limitations of the technology and that these, there has been such catastrophic results to this and such public backlash to being forced to accept it that, you know, it feels a little NFT, like, and maybe that's premature to say, but it does feel like, you know, the corporations are gonna have to cut their losses at some point and recognize, like, this isn't working and pull back on the investment they've put into it. Cause that's the thing about corporations is like, once they've realized, like, their investment is tanking stuff, like, they're not gonna just sit with it and let it hemorrhage money. The only thing they care about is the money. So when they, when did you see a 3d tv light? Right. Yeah, it's like they don't just keep making them because like, no, for sure we're gonna force people to do this. And so I think to a degree, hopefully we're gonna start seeing some pulling back on the use of AI because it has gone so fucking terribly on pretty much every conceivable level. [02:06:09] Speaker A: It's good. We'll look back and Chortle. [02:06:12] Speaker B: Yeah, I hope. I mean, there's still stuff like, you know, one of the, the heads of one of the big studios was just like, yeah, we're really looking at how we can start, you know, writing movies with AI. [02:06:23] Speaker A: Oh, that was, that was Sony, I believe. [02:06:24] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I think it was. And it, you know, so there's certain. [02:06:28] Speaker A: Good luck. [02:06:28] Speaker B: Yeah, have fun with that. But I think also. Yeah, go ahead and try it. [02:06:34] Speaker A: I hope. Yeah, I mean, I hope the budget savings are worth it because ain't no one going to fucking see that. [02:06:40] Speaker B: Yeah. I think at this point, the one thing that we hadn't totally accounted for in our horror about how things are going with AI is that is how badly it was gonna suck. It is turning out not to be profitable because it actually is terrible. [02:06:57] Speaker A: Yes. So that's a good thing. That's a good thing. Any kind of twitchiness we might have had about that, we've seen it off. It's just another format that we've fucking seen live and die. [02:07:05] Speaker B: Right. Is our latest laserdisc. [02:07:08] Speaker A: Exactly that. But I am, like I said earlier on, friends, in a very well intentioned way, I hope that when you take stock and when you look at where you're at right now and you go back to the start of the joag journey, I hope all of the graphs are pointing upwards. I hope all of the trends are good ones. [02:07:26] Speaker B: Yes. [02:07:28] Speaker A: And we hope you're here next time we do this in another four years. [02:07:32] Speaker B: Hear, four years and four years and four years in perpetuity. [02:07:36] Speaker A: Forever and ever and ever. [02:07:37] Speaker B: 100 years, Jack, of all graves like Trump's presidency. [02:07:43] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [02:07:45] Speaker B: So, dear friends, tell us how you're feeling and, you know, go ahead and stay spooky for us. [02:07:55] Speaker A: Oh, nice.