Ep. 187: the lars mittank mystery & the sham trial of lucy letby

[00:00:04] Speaker A: It's time for another chilling episode of Marco's mystery. [00:00:13] Speaker B: Oh, boy. Here we go. [00:00:15] Speaker A: Come and learn with Marco all about a mystery. Corey, give me your. [00:00:23] Speaker B: Could you make sure this time that, like, it is a mystery and there isn't, like, if you look at another page, it's solved. [00:00:30] Speaker A: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What do you mean? [00:00:32] Speaker B: I'm just wondering. [00:00:33] Speaker A: What do you mean this time? [00:00:35] Speaker B: There's just been a couple of instances. [00:00:37] Speaker A: Where you claim 180 odd episodes, right. [00:00:39] Speaker B: That would be a couple, wouldn't it? [00:00:42] Speaker A: Twice in four years. I've talked about mysteries which may have. [00:00:47] Speaker B: Been solved, and one of them happens to have been, like, two months ago. So it's fresh in my mind. I just want to make sure. [00:00:54] Speaker A: Recency bias. [00:00:56] Speaker B: Bias. [00:00:57] Speaker A: My hit rate is excellent. [00:00:58] Speaker B: Okay. Okay. Hit me with your. Your mystery. [00:01:01] Speaker A: Yeah. Can I get a little theme tune? Tune? [00:01:03] Speaker B: Like a mystery theme tune? [00:01:05] Speaker A: Yeah. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. Yes. Very nice. All right, so won't you please, listeners, meet Lars. [00:01:19] Speaker B: Lars. [00:01:20] Speaker A: Lars Mittank or Mittonc or. Well, he was german, right. And may still be, for all we know. All right, let me talk to you about Lars. Born in 1986. [00:01:34] Speaker B: Is he younger than me? [00:01:35] Speaker A: And there you go. German national. Lived in a town called Itzeho in Germany. To all intents and purposes, the most normal guy. I think you could probably wish to come across great relationships with his family, in a relationship himself, you know, had a girlfriend. Nothing really remarkable about Lars. Just. Just your average everyday german guy. Okay, so come with me then, to 2014, if you don't mind, where Lars is joining some of his old school friends on a holiday to Bulgaria. Okay, sure. Lars and five of his crew are in Bulgaria, and the holiday is off to a pretty poor start. Okay. [00:02:34] Speaker B: All right. [00:02:35] Speaker A: He joined a handful of his school friends in a place called Varna in Bulgaria, where he and his friends stayed at a resort on the coast of the Black Sea, a golden sands resort. And the holiday started badly when at one point early on in the trip, Lars found himself involved in a brawl. He found himself involved in a bar fight. [00:02:59] Speaker B: Oh, dear. [00:03:00] Speaker A: About what? A, you know, so fucking prosaic a topic about football, right? [00:03:05] Speaker B: Sure. I'm imagining all the, like, bulgarian bar guys looking like Miro. So this sounds like a bad start. [00:03:13] Speaker A: Mmm. Possibly. Built like fucking like a brick shit house, right? Super, super, super strong. But anyway, look, they got arguing about. About which fucking, you know, which football club was the better. Mitton supported SV Werda, whereas the other four were Bayern Munich fans, and they ended up in a heated argument. Lars left the bar before his friends, and they claim not to have seen him again until the next morning. Okay. [00:03:42] Speaker B: Okay. [00:03:43] Speaker A: Now, Lars turned up the next morning back at the Golden Sands resort and told his friends that he'd been jumped. Told his friends that he'd been beaten up. Now, again, this. Different reports vary here. Lars told his friends that he'd been attacked by a group of men who were friends with the guys that he'd argued with originally. Some of the friends said that, you know, the guys who he'd argued with the other night had paid some locals to duff him. He saw a doctor. He was quite badly beaten up. The doctors found that he'd injured his jaw quite badly and ruptured an eardrum. And he was advised, Lars was advised by local doctors to stay in Bulgaria to get treated for his eardrum injury before he could be cleared to fly back. [00:04:33] Speaker B: Sure. That makes sense. Yeah. [00:04:34] Speaker A: With me so far. [00:04:35] Speaker B: Yeah, totally. Right on. [00:04:37] Speaker A: Cool. So Lars friends were all adamant that they all stayed behind with him. Okay. But Lars was like, it's cool. Don't worry. He'd been prescribed antibiotics. I nearly did an accent then. [00:04:50] Speaker B: You nearly did? [00:04:52] Speaker A: I nearly did a german accent, but I did. I thought, no, I can't pull that off, so I'm not gonna bother. [00:04:58] Speaker B: Who are you? What's going on here? I have concerns. [00:05:01] Speaker A: I don't know. I've changed this week. Anyway, listen, like I said, lars was prescribed antibiotics and he stayed behind on his own. All of his friends checked out, and his friends all flew back to Germany. [00:05:14] Speaker B: Okay? [00:05:15] Speaker A: And Lars checked in on his own to a different hotel, a nearby hotel called Lorvana, for a night to let his antibiotics kick in. I don't know. But here's the thing, right? Whilst there alone on the 7 July, Lars started behaving super, super fucking erratically. [00:05:39] Speaker B: Okay? [00:05:42] Speaker A: There is CCTV from his hotel captured of Lars just behaving just like an absolute lunatic. Pacing up and down corridors, peering out of windows. [00:05:58] Speaker B: Kind of an Elisa Lamb type situation. [00:06:01] Speaker A: Exactly. This. That was exactly the name I was just reaching for. You know, focusing really intently on items on the walls, looking at pictures, looking out of windows, hiding behind corners, hiding in a lift, hiding in an elevator. Just being a proper kind of weirdo, right? So Lars was due to fly home on the 8 July, the day after his friends. Okay, and Lars made it to the airport. He made it to Varna airport on the 8 July. He had a flight booked. Lars texted his family. He texted his mother just to, you know, just to keep her abreast, just to let him know that he'd made the. He'd made it to the airport. Whilst there, he met up with a doctor at the airport, just to kind of keep an eye on his injuries, to check up. And it would be then that he would be told whether he could fly or not. Um, doctor cleared him, told him he could fly, but this is when things kind of reach ahead. The doctor claims that this is when. After you told him he could fly, Lars started to look really strange and nervous, started to look really panicked, started to come at him with loads of kind of questions about the antibiotics he'd been prescribed. There were. There was building work going on at the airport at the time. And while Lars was in a consultation room with the surgeon, the doctor says that a construction worker entered the office and this spooked Lars, completely freaked him out. He's quoted as being heed, saying things like, I don't want to die here. I don't want to die. I've got to get out of here. I've got to leave. And he did. He got up and left the airport. [00:07:40] Speaker B: Wrong way, buddy. [00:07:42] Speaker A: Fled the fucking airport. Left behind all of his luggage, left behind all of his possessions, including his passport. [00:07:50] Speaker B: Hmm. That's gonna be a problem. [00:07:52] Speaker A: And this is where the case gets. Gets fucking super interesting, because there's video of him, which I'll send you. I will send you this video of Lars literally just walk, running out of the hotel, out of the airport. Sorry. Out of the airport? Out of the airport, yes. And leaps a fence, runs to the airport, towards a forest which surrounds the airport. He climbs the fence, he runs away, disappears from the camera, disappears into the forest. And Corrie, he is never seen again. [00:08:33] Speaker B: Just how big is this forest? [00:08:37] Speaker A: Not. Not especially. But here's the thing. After he jumps that fence and after he leaves the airport, that is the last anyone ever sees of Lars. [00:08:48] Speaker B: No body? No. But nothing in the forest. [00:08:51] Speaker A: Nothing. [00:08:52] Speaker B: He's just never turned up. [00:08:54] Speaker A: Nope. He has never, ever, ever turned up. That's the last he's been seen. Um, you know, like I said, the doctor has given interviews about this. It's a doctor, Kosta Kostov. She says that Lars was saying things like, I don't want to die here. I've got to get out of here. I have to escape. I have to leave. Obviously, obviously, obviously, obviously. There are theories left, right? And has the medication been giving him paranoia? [00:09:26] Speaker B: But that would only last for so long. Right? [00:09:29] Speaker A: Well, yeah, exactly. Plus, the doctor claims that Lars hadn't been taking his meds anyway. [00:09:33] Speaker B: Oh, well, okay. Yeah, he was probably too paranoid to take the medication like this. Feels like some sort of head trauma or whatever that caused. Yeah. [00:09:44] Speaker A: Antibiotics aren't going to give you. Paranoia aren't going to give you. I wouldn't have thought anyway. But it seems as though, you know, concussion, perhaps delusion, perhaps. Now, in the months and years. Because the case is still open, right. In the months and years after Lars disappearance, there have been people who claim to have seen him in 2019 in Germany, in Dresden, a truck driver claimed, you know, claimed to have picked up a hitchhiker. He subsequently learned about Lars disappearance and became convinced that that was Lars that he picked up. So it looked a lot like him. His family. Lars family have said that they think he's still out there. They think he might have lost his memory. They think he might be still alive. Lars mother, Sandra, is very active on social media, trying to keep Lars in the public consciousness. [00:10:34] Speaker B: He knew when he was at the airport, he knew who he was, right? [00:10:38] Speaker A: Yes. [00:10:39] Speaker B: Okay. So, like, if there's some sort of amnesia situation, it would have been later. It wouldn't have been immediate, which I don't know if that's a thing, an onset of amnesia later on or something like that, but I don't know, man. [00:10:55] Speaker A: I don't buy that. [00:10:56] Speaker B: Yeah, like, that doesn't feel, like, necessarily a thing. What else? Go on. [00:11:01] Speaker A: Well, look, you know, whenever there's a high profile kind of unsolved disappearance like this, I'm thinking, like, Madeline McGann or something similar, the same theories tend to kind of come in. Oh, human trafficking. [00:11:14] Speaker B: Sure, yeah. Unlikely, given the circumstances. [00:11:17] Speaker A: Unlikely? Well, yeah, considering he was, like, a, you know, pushing 30 fucking bloke. [00:11:22] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Who left of his own volition. [00:11:26] Speaker A: Who left of his own accord. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Again, like I said, many, many more sightings. There were claims that he'd been seen in Brazil in 2016. Let me see. Years and years of investigation from Germany's kind of feds, the BKA, Germany's kind of federal criminal police office. He's still being searched for out there. And every so often, you know what I mean? New theories come to light. New amateur kind of detectives or sleuths will pipe up, but they. They are. You know, the prevailing theories seem to be. Was it intentional? Did he decide he was gonna vanish? [00:12:04] Speaker B: Right. Like, did he, like, set up. Oh, I got beat up by some people, and now I'm gonna act crazy. [00:12:09] Speaker A: Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, was it a kind of a faking his own death kind of affair? Is he still out there? Is he on the streets? Is he homeless? Has he died subsequently since? But the magnetic thing about mysteries like this for me is when there is just nothing, right? [00:12:30] Speaker B: Like there should be some indication we live in a time of like, CCTV everywhere. Like if there was like a body that was found, certainly people would have identified it to this active case. Like, exactly. It's. It's not easy to disappear in this time in history. [00:12:50] Speaker A: Post 2000, I think, right? Any, any kind of notions about going off grid. Forget it, man. You can't do it. [00:12:58] Speaker B: Yeah, it's more or less. [00:12:59] Speaker A: And again, in the same kind of vein as the McGann story, high profile, unsolved disappearances like this have such a lot of scrutiny on them. You know, the eyes of the fucking world tend to kind of, you know, look at these, at these, at these cases. You can't hide a body for that long. You can't, you can't. [00:13:22] Speaker B: You could, but obviously you could. I mean, you could. That's not unheard of, right? Like, even, let's look at your, your method, for example. It isn't unheard of that people. And another one of your cold opens from the past. It is not unheard of for people to have a body in the fridge. You know, if somewhere his corpse has been, you know, taken, surely it could be, you know, it could be buried in someone's backyard. There's any number of things that, like, you wouldn't necessarily look for someone. So, like, the idea of a body never turning up, but in being dead is totally plausible. But the thing about that, that I think throws me is that because it seemed like he, assuming he didn't fake it, had some sort of TBI, right? Some sort of traumatic brain injury or whatever that caused him to do this, then there'd be no reason for someone to murder him, right? Like, you know. [00:14:20] Speaker A: Exactly. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. [00:14:22] Speaker B: Any way that he would have died would probably be like, hit by a car, starved to death, froze to death, something like that, where you would have like, a body in the street or things of that nature. [00:14:33] Speaker A: So, like, the, the chain of events doesn't ring true, does it? Doesn't gel, doesn't coalesce. [00:14:40] Speaker B: Like, certainly the soccer fans weren't, like, so pissed that they, like, ran into him again, let's murder him this time. So unless he, like, lied about what they fought about or whatever. But to me it seems like if this is like a head trauma thing and he suffered severe long term brain damage that changed him permanently, not just for a period of time, then there's every reason to think that, yeah, he probably is somewhere. He is probably some small towns crazy person who, you know, everyone, you know, is seeing and giving a. Some food, too. And they go, there's that. There's that german guy or whatever, and like, yeah, nobody is so online or whatever that they know that people are looking for him. You know, he grew a beard, whatever, and he's just, like, chilling somewhere. [00:15:38] Speaker A: You know, my instinct is that he, like you said, some sort of cranial, concussion based kind of confusion type feel led to him legging it from the airport in the. In the grip of psychosis. And I think he met a sticky end in the woods. [00:15:58] Speaker B: So you think he's still in the woods outside the airport? [00:16:02] Speaker A: No, no. As in, I think he might have died in the woods. [00:16:04] Speaker B: That's what I mean. Elements. [00:16:06] Speaker A: Or. [00:16:07] Speaker B: And they just never found. [00:16:09] Speaker A: Yeah, I do. I reckon. I reckon he's in the woods, Tara, I'm gonna do right now, right, I'm gonna look on maps. I'm gonna see. [00:16:14] Speaker B: Yeah, see what that. Yeah. See what the. Cause I think that makes a difference because I'm thinking, like, you know, this is a forest that's, like, between a city in an airport or whatever. And I'm like, how would you not find him? That. It cannot be that hard to find. [00:16:26] Speaker A: Varna airport. Here we go. This is podcast sleuthing, mate. This is the kind of fucking shit we need, right? [00:16:32] Speaker B: Yeah, back off, TikTok. We got this one. [00:16:36] Speaker A: Yeah. Let's just put the old satellite view on here. [00:16:40] Speaker B: Let's see how big this forest is and whether our man could just disappear into it. Because, yeah, I was picturing something, like, mall here, and I'm like, why wouldn't they have just, like, gone in and followed him and looked for him? [00:16:56] Speaker A: Uh, it's not big at all. [00:17:01] Speaker B: Okay. [00:17:02] Speaker A: Like, a toll. We show you this. We share this. [00:17:08] Speaker B: I think I have to allow you to do this. Does this. Does seeing it change your mind at all, or you think they're just. Yeah, it does bad at searching. Okay, go ahead and share it. [00:17:20] Speaker A: Look at this. Look at. Look at this fucking. Can you see that tiny bit of forest? [00:17:29] Speaker B: Oh, wow. Yeah, that's like. Forest is very much overstating this. [00:17:33] Speaker A: For those of you down there, I. [00:17:36] Speaker B: Guess there's nothing around there that's big enough that you wouldn't be able to search it in a day, in a couple hours, for that matter. I mean. Yeah. For those of you listening and not watching this, there are a few patches of trees that could constitute a very small forest if you're not used to being around actual forests. But they are. [00:17:57] Speaker A: It's a thicket, doesn't it? [00:17:58] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a hops thicket. Right. There's. It's certainly not something that you wouldn't be able to walk through and find a body in at all like that. You would have to be very bad at searching to not be able to cover all of this with like ten people over the course of 5 hours. [00:18:17] Speaker A: Well, that's blown it wide open. That's. [00:18:22] Speaker B: Like, if he died in there, like, let us go, somebody buy us tickets to Bulgaria and we'll go find him. Because, you know, maybe he ended up in a different forest. Like, that's what I'm saying. Like, the idea that a body could end up somewhere and it's never been turned up is so certainly not beyond the pale. Like, he could have booked it from there and who knows? Maybe he's in a lake. You know, there's any number. I don't know. I don't even know where Bulgaria is, to be honest with you. But I assume that it has geographical features that are dangerous in one way or another. [00:18:57] Speaker A: Bulgaria. So go above Greece, go above turkey a little bit. You're in kind of southern, in the Mediterranean and south Serbia kind of way. That kind of. [00:19:05] Speaker B: Okay, gotcha. It's kind of an area that's a little bit of a, like, if he. [00:19:09] Speaker A: Drifted into Serbia, he's fucked. [00:19:12] Speaker B: Like, maybe that's like, that's the thing. There's all these like, places that he could have ended up like. [00:19:18] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:19:18] Speaker B: So he's probably not in the trees outside the airport, but that doesn't mean he didn't end up in some other. [00:19:25] Speaker A: You know, I've re, I recant that theory. [00:19:29] Speaker B: Yeah. It's, I feel like it's, it's one of two things. Either he is, he died in some, you know, spot that is more difficult to find people, or. Yeah, he's like just some, you know, unhinged guy in a town that nobody questions. [00:19:49] Speaker A: He's a transient. Oh, that's. [00:19:52] Speaker B: Especially if he's like, paranoid. You know, he's got like, paranoid delusions. He wouldn't tell people his real name and things like that. [00:19:58] Speaker A: Like there's perforated ear drum, possibly partially deaf. [00:20:02] Speaker B: Right. Absolutely. Yeah. Like, there's so many things to that that he could, he could really, basically, to me, 50 50 could be alive or dead based on these. [00:20:14] Speaker A: You. I. If you're listening and you're German and you. [00:20:19] Speaker B: Huh. [00:20:21] Speaker A: You know, you've got, like, fragmented kind of memories of how you got to be where you are. You might be Lars. [00:20:27] Speaker B: That's a good point. [00:20:29] Speaker A: I just want to let you know you could be Lars Mitank. So have a think about it. Ring your mum. [00:20:36] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:20:37] Speaker A: Look for your birth certificates. It could be you. [00:20:39] Speaker B: Could be any of us. [00:20:42] Speaker A: Let me quote directly from my notes, if I may. [00:20:45] Speaker B: Yes, please do. [00:20:46] Speaker A: Fucking look at these nerds. Oh, mise en scene. [00:20:50] Speaker B: I don't think anyone has ever said miserable senator such a horny way before. [00:20:54] Speaker A: The way I whispered the word sex, cannibal, Rousseau. [00:20:56] Speaker B: Worst comes to worst, Mark, I'm willing to guillotine you for science. [00:21:00] 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. [00:21:07] Speaker B: You know how I feel about that, Mark. [00:21:09] Speaker A: I think you feel great about it. [00:21:13] Speaker B: I love that. Good mystery, Mark. [00:21:16] Speaker A: Excellent. I do love a mystery. In fact, I might. Maybe. Maybe my cold opens are all gonna be mysteries from now on. [00:21:23] Speaker B: Mark's mysteries. [00:21:25] Speaker A: Because I like. [00:21:25] Speaker B: I'll have to work on your theme song then. Hey, I liked my spooky tones, but I could. I could definitely go farther with a little. Is it. Is it. I was about to say thanksgiving. Is it Father's day there or. No, sure is it is. Didn't even mention it. [00:21:53] Speaker A: One doesn't. [00:21:53] Speaker B: Like, I was like, how was your day? And you're like, it was good. People were nice. Yeah. You mean they celebrated you. [00:22:02] Speaker A: I got. Look, look. [00:22:05] Speaker B: Okay. [00:22:06] Speaker A: Knowing anyone who knows misses Lewis, she ain't one to celebrate me. Right. You know, I think I'm doing well if I can get her to reply to me. [00:22:21] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a good start. [00:22:22] Speaker A: Let her alone. But yes, to answer your questions, yes, it is Father's day here. Yes, I have been celebrated. [00:22:29] Speaker B: Very nice. [00:22:30] Speaker A: I am feeling validated and seen. Having kids was the best thing I ever did. [00:22:34] Speaker B: I love that. Big fan of that. And I like your kids. I haven't met your kids. I will say you posted a new profile picture with your children today. And I feel fairly confident that at this point they are both taller than me. [00:22:48] Speaker A: Uh, Owen, possibly? [00:22:51] Speaker B: Yes, like that. I was just looking. I'm like. They're like. They're up to your face, basically. And I don't. I don't come to your shin. So I think safely. [00:23:02] Speaker A: Yeah, they put it like that. Yeah, they probably both are at ten. Owen. Owen does some irritating shit sometimes, okay? He's in the habit right now of whenever I walk past him, he'll smack my ass really hard and shout, gyat. [00:23:24] Speaker B: See, me and your kids would absolutely get along because I do the same shit to Kyo all the time, to the point where sometimes he hustles away from me with his hands over his ass so that I can't slap him. [00:23:36] Speaker A: Smacks my ass. How does he go smacks my ass? [00:23:39] Speaker B: Where did he get this from? Is this a reference to something or. [00:23:42] Speaker A: Just, you know, he spends every waking hour on YouTube shorts. [00:23:49] Speaker B: Oh, I always wonder, like, well, this is thing. Obviously, I don't do the TikToks and the things like that. Like, so those little, like, videos, like, don't appeal to me at all. And every time I see those, I'm like, who watches this? Who wastes their time with these shorts? Because all the YouTube videos I watch are, like 4 hours long. Like, I literally. I kid you not, mark. This week I watched a four hour video about why the Star wars hotel failed. I don't like Star wars. There's no reason I would have ever been to that hotel. But did I watch that entire video? You bet your fucking life I did. [00:24:25] Speaker A: Wasn't it like eight grand a night or something like that? That's why. [00:24:29] Speaker B: So this was one of the crazy things about it. This girl who did this video actually did stay at it at her own expense. She wasn't. It wasn't like, you know, paid for by anyone. She's an influencer. She paid her own way. And she was saying that one of the crazy things about this was that, like, you couldn't know how much it cost. You had to actually, like, call them, and then you had to have, like, dates in mind and the exact number of people who would be in your party, and then they would be like, yes or no? That date is available. And, you know, for that many people. And if it is, then they would give you a number based on that. So it might have been like, there's peak seasons, there might have been off seasons. Like, there's no way for you to know. You can't mess around with the number of people. Like, well, what if there's only two of us? Or, like, completely opaque pricing. [00:25:18] Speaker A: How is that legal? [00:25:20] Speaker B: I mean, I don't know. I guess it is. You don't have to have online services or whatever, you know, I have no idea how this kind of thing works, but. Completely opaque pricing. And then, like, everything was, like, an add on to it. And one of the things that she was talking about was like, how the only thing she elected to add on to, it was like a photo package. Like, and you've been to Euro Disney, I assume they do the same, of course thing here where there's like all the people in the park taking pictures or whatever of you, you come in and they're like, oh, take a picture here. Tinkerbell in your hand or whatever. [00:25:55] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:25:55] Speaker B: And so they were supposed to have those all over this, like, hotel. And she said she never once saw one of those people. So she paid like $190 or something like that, and no one ever took. [00:26:07] Speaker A: Well, there you go. [00:26:09] Speaker B: It's wild. Like, honestly, if you just, if you. The kind of person who puts on a YouTube video in the background while you're working or whatever, and you like those long kinds of youtubes, I recommend watching this video. Just search up. Search, like, Star wars hotel, and it'll be like the first thing that comes up in your recommendations because it is truly wild. It's like, genuinely one of my favorite movies is the movie Austin land. And the premise of this is this woman, played by Carrie Russell, goes to, like, an Austin experience, a Jane Austen experience. [00:26:42] Speaker A: Right, right. [00:26:43] Speaker B: But she's like, not rich, and so she gets like the, like, you know, poor people package essentially. So, like, everyone else is having a great time, but she's being treated like shit the whole time because of her not having enough money to pay for the good package. And it's like this in real life with this Star wars thing. It's insane. [00:27:05] Speaker A: I mean, you know, you've just sat through like 4 hours on this, so we won't kind of go into this. But am I right in saying that this was a hotel without windows? There were screens in place of windows? [00:27:15] Speaker B: Yeah, there's no windows in this. And they have like a. An atrium thing that's supposed to be like, oh, this is where you acclimate to the planet, which is basically there for claustrophobic people because it causes people to panic to be in a building with no rooms in it. So they had to make like a fake outside space with, like, trees in it and stuff like that to make it so that people wouldn't have panic attacks. Being locked inside of this thing with no windows for three days, it's so crazy. Like, oh, man. [00:27:50] Speaker A: And, you know, the extortionate prices and the expectation that you'd have to interact in character with people. In character? [00:27:57] Speaker B: Yeah. And like, it's supposed to be like a, you know, oh, it's like being on a cruise ship or whatever, but like, the rooms were like, tiny and like, you know, so you're paying all this money, and she, like, compared it to what a room on an actual cruise ship would be like for the same amount of money. And it was like you would basically get a deck of the boat and you get, like, tiny bunk beds in this thing. Like, oh, it's so bananas. Big recommend watching this video. [00:28:25] Speaker A: Do you know, you've actually kind of got me curious. [00:28:29] Speaker B: I mean, I'm a background person. Yeah, put it on while you're working. And it is. [00:28:33] Speaker A: I am a background guy. Yeah, you're right. [00:28:35] Speaker B: Truly a wild watch. [00:28:37] Speaker A: I mean, was there was the ambition to kind of make it aspirationally priced to kind of price out casuals. So you've got kind of an experience level kind of product that they can push out, but, oh, no, no, no. I think the question is more how did it stay open as long as it did? [00:29:06] Speaker B: Right? Yeah. It's just everything about it is the wrong choice on every possible level. So I think trying to reason it out is like, yeah, how the heck. [00:29:18] Speaker A: Did we get to this topic then? [00:29:21] Speaker B: Oh, and watching a lot of YouTube. [00:29:23] Speaker A: There you go. [00:29:23] Speaker B: Slapping you on the assessor. [00:29:25] Speaker A: And I can confirm from dictionary.com, comma, the slang is an exclamation used to express excitement or shock, especially in reaction to seeing large buttocks or a voluptuous woman. [00:29:36] Speaker B: Oh, well, he's kind of complimenting you there. [00:29:40] Speaker A: I'll take it. I am known for being voluptuously buttocks. [00:29:44] Speaker B: You know, he can't resist that peach. You know. That's right. [00:29:49] Speaker A: Mysteries, big ass. [00:29:52] Speaker B: I got a great ass. So great. Glad to. Glad to hear you were feted today. Got your ass slept, and I did whatnot. [00:30:08] Speaker A: Wonderful to hear it. Got to pick my dinner. [00:30:11] Speaker B: Oh, what'd you pick? [00:30:12] Speaker A: Yeah, I picked my favorite dinner. Was it not burgers? [00:30:18] Speaker B: I was gonna say it's burgers or. Ooh, man, I feel like I should know what your favorite is. [00:30:27] Speaker A: I wouldn't be surprised if you don't. [00:30:29] Speaker B: Okay, what is it? [00:30:30] Speaker A: It's very pedestrian. Um, sausage egg and chips. Fucking so nice. [00:30:35] Speaker B: Sausage egg? [00:30:37] Speaker A: Yeah, fried eggs. Fry up a couple of eggs. [00:30:40] Speaker B: Oh, like, like on a, like on a platter together. Like a. Okay. [00:30:44] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:30:46] Speaker B: I got it. I was like, what are you. I don't know. I was trying to figure out what do you do with the sausage and the eggs? [00:30:53] Speaker A: Oh, I cook them up and fucking. [00:30:58] Speaker B: That's delightful. I love that. I'm very excited because I've now taken to ordering my dinner ahead before starting to record the podcast. [00:31:07] Speaker A: I did see a little post on the social. Somebody's got a little taco bell, kind. [00:31:11] Speaker B: Of a little taco bell on the way after this, and I'm, like, very stoked on it. Looking forward to that this entire time. But just as a heads up to everyone last week, I said that joag mailings and fan cave and whatnot were coming last week. But I'm sure a lot of you were, like, thinking further ahead than I was and were like, that seems like folly. You're putting your dog to sleep this week. It was folly. I was too sad to do any things this week. I did no things. I just was sad all week instead, understandably. Yeah. So those will come next week. Well, I'll still be sad, but, like, hopefully not catatonically sad. [00:32:02] Speaker A: Is that the degree to which I'm. [00:32:04] Speaker B: Telling you, like, in the 17 years that we've known each other, neither of us have cried so hard ever. And, like, five of my family members, including my father, have died in that period of time. It was truly just the exhausting. Yeah, absolutely exhausting. You know, went in there for the whole procedure and everything, and the people were so sweet, so nice. You know, the. The vet was, like, rubbing my back and, you know, consoling me and all these kinds of things. And, you know, we were both just, like, an absolute mess. And then, you know, we came back and we buried him in the backyard and everything. And, you know, trying to sort of process things in our own way. I had made sure to, like, put away all his stuff beforehand so that it wasn't like we came back. We're like, oh, now we have to get rid of his things or whatever. I boxed it all up beforehand, and I was like, let's go to, like, a pub quiz or something. My husband was like, I would like to just garden and cry, please. And so, you know, he did that. He sat by the grave and hung out for a while. He, like, when we went to bed, he was like, maybe I'm gonna go get his. His heartbeat dog, which is like, this little dog with a heartbeat that he would sleep with. That, like, made it so that he, you know, could sleep better if he wasn't touching one of us. And so, like, keo brought the dog to bed to have something to kind of cuddle with, and. Which was a great idea. Really glad that that's been there, but it's been like, you know, when you have a senior dog like that, a 17 year old dog, like, it's your whole life, right? So, like, everything you do revolves around the dog. So it's like there's no single motion that I do throughout the day that isn't like, oh, there's supposed to be a dog here while I do it, you know? [00:33:58] Speaker A: Well, yeah. He was attached to you, wasn't he? [00:34:00] Speaker B: Yeah. Like, you know, all the time, every time I roll over in bed, oh, I make sure not to, you know, crush the dog. Or anytime I walk downstairs, I'm usually holding him under my arm to put him on his little bed. Or, you know, just every little movement is usually wrapped up in having the dog with me. [00:34:17] Speaker A: Are you open to a couple of logistical questions? [00:34:20] Speaker B: Sure. Yeah. Hit me. [00:34:23] Speaker A: After the procedure, how did he. How did you get him home? [00:34:29] Speaker B: Well, he's very small, so. Yeah, but did. [00:34:34] Speaker A: Did they box him up or what? [00:34:36] Speaker B: No, we. So we brought him in a blanket that I had put in, you know, that little satchel that sometimes I would wear him while doing the podcast. [00:34:46] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:34:46] Speaker B: So we put. We wrapped him in a blanket and put him in the satchel, and then. So when it was done, we just wrapped him back up in the blanket, and we put him back in the satchel and took him home. Like that. Yeah. Which made for a very drive. We drove. Made for a very weird moment when we got home, and, like, our neighbor was outside, and it looks like he was going in, but he was, like, hovering, and so we were like, oh, Matt, go inside, go inside, go inside, go inside. But it turned out he wanted to, like, talk to us and ask us a question, and we were like, fuck. So, like, was just asking something about, like, disposing of a trash can or whatever, and I was like. I felt like we were really short, so later on, I was like, I'm so sorry. I feel like we were being assholes, but, like, we had our dog in that bag with us. When we walked in, he was like, okay, no worries. It's all good. [00:35:31] Speaker A: It's like, yeah, yeah. You know, so they didn't just kind of hand him over, is what I'm saying. [00:35:38] Speaker B: He was like, you know, they put him to sleep on the bed in the blanket, and so they didn't really do anything with him. We just wrapped him back up, and I see. Back in the bag. [00:35:47] Speaker A: Okay. That's the only logistical question I have. [00:35:49] Speaker B: Okay. [00:35:50] Speaker A: Oh, one more. Okay. Was he interred in a vessel or just raw dog in the earth? [00:35:59] Speaker B: We got him. So there's these things called eutha bags, and they're biodegradable, and you just zip them up into the eutha bag, put his little body in that and zip it up, and then you can bury it like that and it should all decompose together and be fine for the earth. [00:36:22] Speaker A: Beautiful nutrients. [00:36:23] Speaker B: The lady was like, I know the image is terrible, but you should bury them in a plastic bag so that, like, things don't, like, come and try to dig it up. And I was like, I'm not. Listen, I'm a little too earth conscious to put my dog in a plastic bag, to just forever be a plastic bag under. Under the backyard. So we put him in the eutha bag and all that. Nothing has tried to dig them up. It's just good. It's fine. [00:36:47] Speaker A: Youth. A bag. [00:36:48] Speaker B: Eutha bag. Yep. [00:36:50] Speaker A: Love that. Are they just pets? [00:36:56] Speaker B: Kyo looked at the exact same thing. He was like, how big do these go up to? It's, like, not human sized. It's not what those. [00:37:04] Speaker A: You can get them in the UK. [00:37:06] Speaker B: Well, there you go. So, you know, when your mice go, you can put them in that or. No, you can bury a mouse. That's. Nothing's gonna come for a mouse. [00:37:17] Speaker A: They're probably. They're too small for me, but you. [00:37:23] Speaker B: Might fit me in one of them, you know, like, a few of them. Yeah. I think they go up to size for, like, a Saint Bernard and I'm smaller than a Saint Bernard. [00:37:32] Speaker A: These are fucking brilliant. You can write on them and everything. You can write little. [00:37:35] Speaker B: I made little. Little message, you know, on there for Mister Gaucho Edmondson. [00:37:40] Speaker A: Oh, they're brilliant. I love those. [00:37:43] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. I was obviously, again, being me, I was, like, looking into, like, what's the best thing that we can, like, you know, put. [00:37:50] Speaker A: Now this is where I find the price. [00:37:53] Speaker B: They're. They're not expensive at all. [00:37:55] Speaker A: Not at all. [00:37:56] Speaker B: Yeah, right. [00:37:57] Speaker A: A gouge sized bag under a tenner. That's fantastic. [00:38:00] Speaker B: So anyone who needs such services, I'm sorry, but also euth a bag, really easy to do and, you know, much cheaper than cremating your pet as well. [00:38:14] Speaker A: If we ever did get a sponsor, I would be perfectly happy for it to be the good people at Euthabag. [00:38:21] Speaker B: That would be really fitting, wouldn't it? [00:38:23] Speaker A: It'd be perfect. It would be absolutely perfect. Why euthabag? [00:38:26] Speaker B: The only ones I make for my pets. Euthabag. [00:38:29] Speaker A: The number one choice in earth conscious pet carcass disposal. [00:38:35] Speaker B: There you go. So, yeah, all that to say, that's why I didn't send stuff and why we didn't record the fan cave last week, because I was busy eating my feelings and watching happy movies. Instead, this week, tomorrow, Kristen and I are recorded, the fan cave. And I will get those mailings out ASAP as well. [00:38:58] Speaker A: Wicked. No one's gonna judge you. You were mourning and indeed still are. [00:39:03] Speaker B: Yes, this is very true. Also, on a separate note, Mark. [00:39:10] Speaker A: Hello. [00:39:11] Speaker B: We were talking earlier about the cinema going problem because furiosa is already out of theaters in your neck of the woods. They were, like, two weeks thing. Shit. To the last two fucking weeks. [00:39:24] Speaker A: It lasted before they pulled it. Yeah. [00:39:26] Speaker B: And this has become, like, a huge conversation. What I was saying was that, you know, I've seen a lot of people basically say, like, bring back movies for adults, because, you know, every movie is supposed to be a blockbuster, so they're all marketed towards the entire family, from grandma to baby and things like that. And there's nothing out there for us. So this is amongst the things that people have suggested maybe would help, is bringing back stuff that's for all of us. Although inside out, too. Just, like, broke records this weekend. [00:39:57] Speaker A: Peter went to see it yesterday. [00:39:58] Speaker B: Yeah, it's not gonna help. But you have your own ideas for how to save cinema. You're convinced you can save the theaters. [00:40:06] Speaker A: Uh, I. I could fix the cinema. [00:40:10] Speaker B: Okay, do it. I'm desperate. You know, I love the cinema. [00:40:15] Speaker A: It might not be. It might not be the cinema that you remember. It might not be the cinema that you recognize from your youth. But if it's to survive, I feel that cinema has to evolve, okay? And shake off its kind of roots as an entertainment for the masses, for the general population. Right. Because media consumption trends have changed. Media consumption habits have changed society. I don't think it's too hyperbolic to state that society itself has changed since the good old days of the cinema. And I'd go with a farthing, and I'd have chips, and I'd still come back with change, and we'd smoke a fucking woodbine in the back, and I'd have a snog with my girl, and I'd come home singing with a pint of fucking ale on the way home. Roll out the barrel. Those days are fucking gone. [00:41:19] Speaker B: I don't know if we had those days here, but I smell what you're stepping in. Go on. [00:41:24] Speaker A: They're gone. They are fucking gone. Cinema needs to become a more curated experience. It needs to. And I. Look, look, I am not gonna use the word elitist, right? Sure not. [00:41:45] Speaker B: Okay? [00:41:46] Speaker A: But let's evolve out of this idea that cinema is a casual activity for casual people who want a casual experience. It isn't anymore. Right? [00:42:00] Speaker B: Okay. [00:42:01] Speaker A: It's too fucking expensive to risk, to risk dropping money and to be sat surrounded by people who have, you know, the attention span of a 2024, you know, moviegoer. [00:42:21] Speaker B: Right? [00:42:21] Speaker A: Right. When. When culture serves up your media in 32nd fucking clips and encourages you to respond and to clap back and to make your own voice heard in response to what you're seeing. That ain't cinema. [00:42:36] Speaker B: Sure. [00:42:37] Speaker A: And I think if. If cinema wants to carry on attracting people, make it worth the fucking money it's costing, for a start. And take the draft house approach. I've said this to Alan, right? I think there is room in the UK for a chain of theaters, a chain of cinemas with a really strong brand identity, a very, very clear manifesto. You shut the fuck up. You put your fucking phone away, and you're here to enjoy a movie with other people who want to enjoy a movie. If a cinema chain were to make that its brand and actually follow through on enforcing it, I am abso God damn lutely convinced that that would take off. [00:43:30] Speaker B: The funny thing is, I think that what you're talking about is a return to the old way cinema worked. The problem is the new way that it does. But what we're really talking about, and Al said this years ago, and I was like, this is exactly right. Was like bringing back ushers, would entirely change the movie going game. Because it used to be that you didn't talk during movies, you didn't text during movies, and things like that. But it turns out people need that enforced. They don't just do that 100%. [00:44:02] Speaker A: The honor system does not fucking work. [00:44:04] Speaker B: When you're in dark. That's what we've found is it doesn't work. So, yeah, you're paying exorbitant amounts of money to go to these things where odds are there's going to be people who answer their phone in the middle of it and who start texting because they lost, you know, lost interest partway through and all that kind of stuff, that if you just had someone who every now and again came through with their weird little lightsaber and, you know, reminded you they were there, it would stop. It'd be right instantly. [00:44:32] Speaker A: Let's workshop this, right? Let's chuck a few ideas about what if as a moviegoer, what if as a patron of this chain of cinemas, the name will come to me at some point. It's not there yet. Okay, I'm a patron. And for my, let's say, 8.99 ticket, what if I have an anonymous fucking knock button on my chair? [00:44:57] Speaker B: Yes. Seriously, for real, right? [00:45:01] Speaker A: Maybe even like a directional rocker, like a left, right, up, down kind of rocker. And I can point to a particular. [00:45:06] Speaker B: Where's the disturbance? [00:45:09] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then, like you said, matey boy can come in with his light. When, let's say that a threshold has been reached. Let's say they've received, like, three or four different kind of inputs about a certain direction in the theater. They'd come in, keep an eye on it, their present, and all of our. On the posters, on our adverts, on the tickets, we are in bold text, we're about fucking coming to see movies with. This isn't a social venue. This isn't a fucking bar. This isn't your living room. This isn't tech talk. You come and watch the film and you enjoy it and fuck off, and we'll see you next time. So when you see me, when you see me in my uniform with my light coming through that door, you fucked up, right? [00:45:48] Speaker B: I guess for me, and this comes from, like, being an american moviegoer, you know, that I do, like, a degree of engagement with the movie. I don't want, like, Alamo Drafthouse is fun to go to occasionally for, like, an independent movie or whatever, but I don't necessarily want to all the time feel like if anything escapes from me, you know, it's gonna be like, you're fucking out of here, you know? Like, that's a stressful way to see movies. [00:46:14] Speaker A: No, that ain't what I'm saying. That ain't what I'm saying. [00:46:17] Speaker B: But you know what I mean is, I think simply just a person coming in every now and again with their little thingy is enough. Because it always was when I was growing up, you always were like, you were afraid that, like, they would catch you talking or texting or things like that. You didn't need anything further than that. You didn't need a button or anything like that. I think it's simply just the fact that people know there's nothing anyone can do about it and no one is going to come for them is like, enough that they act like assholes and stuff. I want movies to be for the masses. I want us all to go and have a good time. And if it's the right kind of movie, we, you know, are raucous and partying together. And if it's not that kind of movie, we're all solemn and things like. [00:47:02] Speaker A: You had me until raucous and partying together. [00:47:04] Speaker B: Absolutely not. [00:47:05] Speaker A: Absolutely. Laugh if it's funny, obviously gasp if it's scared you. [00:47:10] Speaker B: Right. [00:47:10] Speaker A: But a raucous party fucking vibe at the cinema. [00:47:13] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I guess maybe I'm not talking about, like, we're all talking through it. That's not what I mean. But I mean, as in, like, you know, there have been movies that I've gone to and, like, say there's something scary in it, right? That, like, the whole audience jumps or something like that. If for like, 15 seconds after that, you. That. That, like, little cathartic thing where everyone is like, oh, my God. [00:47:33] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, right? [00:47:35] Speaker B: Like, I love that kind of thing. I think that that's, like, super fun and we're all having this shared experience together, so I don't want to, like, cut it into, you know, this thing where we're all playing narc on each other, especially because I don't want to have to sit through the movie thinking about narcing on other people. All I want is for someone to come in every now and again, remind them that we will kick you out of here if you're going to be an asshole. And that's it. That's all you need. Pay someone to do that. [00:48:03] Speaker A: Okay, so by that same token, do you think that there's also potential in a chain of theaters where the experience of being in a fucking shared room with a load of people who also don't particularly give a fuck about the film could be the one that they lead with social cinema or social screening. [00:48:26] Speaker B: I think it'd have to be very well because that's the thing is, like, there are those, right? Like, I go to lots of outdoor screenings and, you know, gimmicky screenings and things like that. And I don't think that there's any danger of those falling out of fashion. People love to go to something like that. You know, it's the actual in cinema thing. But I think, like, what it really comes down to is, like you said, like, it really does come down to that. People are jerks in there and they need to do something about that and that it costs too much. So, like, you know, people only go and this is like, I think that's the uncritical thing they're doing, is that they're making everything that goes into the theater for a wide audience because they think you're going to make that calculation that, okay, this is for all of us, and I'm not going to be wasting my hundred bucks between my whole family and the popcorn and all this kind of stuff to go see it, like, inside out, too. People showed up because it's from a franchise we all know about. We know that all that money that we're putting into it, we're going to get a return on where, like, nobody is gonna go. Like, whenever I go see things, like, like when I went to see the strangers, right? Like, who's going to spend $17 on a ticket to go see the strangers? You know, like, that's, that's absurd. So no one's doing it. And they're like, gosh, why is no one going to the movie theater? [00:49:47] Speaker A: See, there was that, there was that exec at Sony a couple of weeks back who, I'm not sure if this was the same guy or if it was two different people, but there was almost within a couple of days of one another, real, real good fucking sense coming out of Sony and industry murdering. Just ridiculous horseshit. Um, it seems it felt like in one day there was a leak of what an exac at Sony saying, we just. Cheaper movies. We need to make movies for less money. [00:50:23] Speaker B: Yep. [00:50:23] Speaker A: We need to make movies. Movies don't need to be three fucking hours. Don't need it. Tighter, leaner, more grown up, shorter movies will be very, very good for cinema as a whole. Can't argue with any of that. [00:50:39] Speaker B: The mid budget, but then. [00:50:41] Speaker A: Exactly. Yeah, great. Mid budget movies. Mid budget movies for adults. Fucking brilliant. But then, on the other hand, seemingly within a day or two, they were like, right, let's fucking ramp up AI research now to make our movies cheaper. That's not. That ain't it? [00:50:55] Speaker B: Fuck's sake. That's not, that's not what we're saying. Yeah. I wonder if we should obviously be in charge of movies is what it comes down to. [00:51:06] Speaker A: Oh, a hundred percent. I also had the idea some years back when the, the kind of, the Infinity saga was, was at its kind of, you know, the final couple of chapters. I wondered if some blockbusters might skip the cinema altogether. Right. Let's take Disney, for example. [00:51:28] Speaker B: Right? Right. [00:51:30] Speaker A: What about some kind of system, whether it's hardware or whatever, whereby your Disney app knows what equipment you're using to watch it through. It knows what tv you've got, it knows what sound system you've got. And might Disney certify specific kinds of equipment as being, like, Disney certified? You can, you don't need to go to the fucking cinema to watch this. Your home setup is really fucking good. You can watch avengers in your house if you want. [00:52:00] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, I think that's what they're aiming for generally. I don't like that though, because I go to the movies to go to the movies. Yeah, I agree. Sitting in my living room will never be going to the movies, period. [00:52:15] Speaker A: No, I don't agree at all. [00:52:17] Speaker B: For me, it will never be because I can look at my phone if I want to. I can, you know, constantly pause it and get up, go to the bathroom. I might decide to turn it off. You know, there's any number of interruptions and things like that that can happen while I'm watching it at home. And, you know, I would, I go to the cinema specifically to be in a room where none of those things exist. And it's just me in the movie and some friends as well. Two different things to me. [00:52:50] Speaker A: I'd like. What I guess I'm reaching for is I think the cinema industry needs a. [00:52:56] Speaker B: Disruptor, but that's like the, to me, it doesn't. It needs to go back. That's what I'm saying. And that's the idea of the mid budget movie. Think of what your favorite movies are from growing up and the things that you have the fondest memories of and stuff like that. I think of things like practical magic and Empire records and can't hardly wait. And, like, none of them were blockbusters. You know, there's, like, very few things that, like, really snagged me in my life were huge blockbusters. And they simply don't make the mid budget movie for theaters anymore. You know, they put them straight to their streaming things and stuff like that, and then expect you to spend a ton of money to go see their blockbusters that they spent all of their money to make in the theater. And I say bring those little ones that you didn't spend so much on and that then your box office return is a much bigger portion of its budget that you're getting back instead of constantly trying to make up for the fact that you spent half a trillion dollars on this thing that you made. You know, that's, I, that's what I think would make a difference. [00:54:12] Speaker A: Yes. I can't disagree with any of that, but I think we need to start kicking some ass. [00:54:22] Speaker B: We got to start our own studio where we make logically the kinds of movies that need to come back, come into the theater and then, yeah, everyone will be like, why is this working? I'll be like, gosh, I don't know. [00:54:34] Speaker A: Because us. [00:54:35] Speaker B: Because us, obviously. But we did watch some movies. [00:54:40] Speaker A: We watched a few movies. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All at home. All at home. [00:54:45] Speaker B: Yes. Did not, did not make it to the movie theater. [00:54:48] Speaker A: What did you see? In the cinema last, um. [00:54:53] Speaker B: Strangers, I think. [00:54:56] Speaker A: Huh. [00:54:58] Speaker B: Why? [00:55:00] Speaker A: I'm wondering what mine was. [00:55:03] Speaker B: I. Obviously, I see movies in the theater. [00:55:05] Speaker A: Apes. [00:55:05] Speaker B: Plan of the time. Plan of the. There you go. Yeah, normally I go at least once a week, but where? It's kind of a dry spell at the theater around the corner right now. There's no horror movies there. They're not getting any horror movies this summer for some reason. I don't know why. [00:55:20] Speaker A: Are there any? [00:55:22] Speaker B: I mean, there have been the past several weeks, like, strangers. Like the violence one. The. What is it? I can. Neither of us are ever going to remember what the name of this movie is. [00:55:35] Speaker A: The violence one. [00:55:37] Speaker B: The violence one. The guy walking through the movie in a violent nature, you know? Yeah, there's been several, but they haven't put any of them in the. In the theater around the corner. [00:55:46] Speaker A: I'm absolutely frothing to watch that movie. I don't know where the fuck it is. [00:55:50] Speaker B: I know. Come on, shudder. Get it together. Should be. [00:55:53] Speaker A: I mean, July the 12th. [00:55:55] Speaker B: Really? [00:55:57] Speaker A: Fuck's sake. [00:55:58] Speaker B: I did. Wow, that's wild. Like, it's a shudder original. [00:56:02] Speaker A: Crazy. [00:56:02] Speaker B: Once it's not in the theater, it. [00:56:04] Speaker A: Should just be nothing stopping them putting that up there tonight. [00:56:08] Speaker B: Yeah, that's dumb. But what else was on the. On the docket this week? [00:56:14] Speaker A: What was on the slate? We did the stupid fucking shark one, didn't we? [00:56:20] Speaker B: Yeah, that was last week. [00:56:22] Speaker A: All right, so let me just super quickly mention thale, which is a norwegian spooky creature feature. You would not enjoy it. Okay. [00:56:33] Speaker B: I'm not usually into, like, the norwegian kind of vibe. [00:56:39] Speaker A: Yeah. It's a little bit. What's the word I'm looking for? Detached. You know, and this is kind of detached. It deals with two guys who work as crime scene cleansers. [00:56:52] Speaker B: Okay. [00:56:54] Speaker A: And in one of their jobs, in a premises, they find a lady who turns out to be a mythical creature with a tail and things like that. Really cool. This is perfectly solid, really atmospheric, beautifully shot, nicely performed, idiosyncratic, quirky indie vibes I have no problem with fail at all. It's quite highly regarded, I gather, and I have no issues with giving it three and a half stars. It's really relatable for a. [00:57:23] Speaker B: Okay. [00:57:24] Speaker A: For a country like Norway. I don't really have much to latch onto there. I don't. I don't. I don't really. I don't really relate to the scandinavian. [00:57:38] Speaker B: Yeah. Just vibe. [00:57:42] Speaker A: Vibes. I'm trying hard not to say vibes, but sometimes only vibes. [00:57:46] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:57:49] Speaker A: But, yeah. You know, I think we all have ideas of how we'd react if while we were working one day we found a mythical woodland witch creature. [00:57:58] Speaker B: Sure. [00:57:59] Speaker A: We all. And that was born out in Thailand. They reacted like I think I would. [00:58:03] Speaker B: Nice. I do. You know, I appreciate that in something when people act like people. I'm a. I'm a big fan of that. Do you ever. Have you seen the. Just because of the premise of this. Have you seen the. The Greg Davis show where he's a crime scene cleaner? I think it might just be called the cleaner. [00:58:20] Speaker A: Uh, no, I haven't. You love Greg Davis. [00:58:22] Speaker B: I do. I do love Greg Davis. I mean, why? Why not? [00:58:28] Speaker A: I. I mean, I don't wish him ill. You know what I mean? I got no issues with the guy, but he's got a fucking fan base. [00:58:36] Speaker B: Well, Taskmaster is probably, like, hugely at the center of that because Taskmaster is so beloved. So I think, you know, you can't help but love him when you're used to watching him on that. And so, you know, and I've seen him on other panel things and stuff like that as well. But, yeah, he's on this show where he. He plays a guy who cleans up after crime scenes. And it's quite funny, but it's also, you know, there's relatable things about it, and it's at times very dark and sort of dealing with someone who's, like, doing a job that's very important and things like that, but that everyone just, like, treats like shit as, like, you know, like he's a janitor and stuff like that. And, like, his life has fallen apart in various ways that manifests through his experiences as a cleaner. So each episode is, like, sort of self contained. [00:59:28] Speaker A: Nice. I like that. [00:59:29] Speaker B: Yeah. And, like, I think it's like, the first one has, like, hell in a Bonham Carter, and it has some, like, pretty crazy guest stars casting throughout it. Yeah. But I quite enjoy it. I can't remember if it's called the cleaner, but it feels like it's called the cleaner. [00:59:45] Speaker A: Something I love to do. Would you care to guess for me how old Greg Davis is? [00:59:53] Speaker B: Uh, he is 56 years old. [01:00:00] Speaker A: Did you know that or is that a guess? [01:00:02] Speaker B: That's a guess. [01:00:03] Speaker A: It's fucking bang on. [01:00:06] Speaker B: Nice. [01:00:07] Speaker A: It's bang on. And his birthday is in May, so it's pretty much bang on. [01:00:12] Speaker B: Thank you. Thank you. Ow. [01:00:15] Speaker A: I think you knew that. [01:00:17] Speaker B: No, I didn't know this. But I will say there's a running theme through this season of Taskmaster where this one guy on it, he was on happy. Happy Valley. Is that that cop show? [01:00:29] Speaker A: Yeah, sure. [01:00:31] Speaker B: He was on Happy Valley. That's what I know him from. But apparently he's also, like a comedian. But he is apparently, like the same age or younger than Greg Davis, but he looks way older, so everyone treats him like the grandpa on the show. And so I had in my mind that I was like, he's a man in his fifties. That was where I was. I was coming from. [01:00:51] Speaker A: Very nice. [01:00:51] Speaker B: Pretty pleased with myself there. [01:00:53] Speaker A: Very impressive. [01:00:54] Speaker B: It's also six foot eight, Greg Davis. Huge big man. [01:00:57] Speaker A: Over 2 meters. Huge. [01:00:59] Speaker B: Yes, I suppose it is. Okay, so fail. Great. Did you want to talk about other ones before I get into mine? [01:01:13] Speaker A: Yes, we can certainly do that. Let me see. What else did I watch? [01:01:17] Speaker B: I have that you watched one of my favorites this week. [01:01:21] Speaker A: Yeah, that was last night. In fact. Um, I talked about the strangers last week, didn't I? [01:01:26] Speaker B: Yes. [01:01:26] Speaker A: Didn't we? Now, I saw, I saw the tv glow, right? [01:01:33] Speaker B: Yes. [01:01:36] Speaker A: And really, really, really rated it. I, ah, man, I'm actually hurt that you didn't. I really enjoyed it. I, the, I thought the characters were really compelling. I thought the confusion, the kind of, the lost, kind of vacant kind of space that these characters live in, they feel like liminal people almost. They're people in a state of being, which is, you know, in flux. Just vague lines around characters who are, you know, empty fucking spaces where there should be fucking souls and people. I it's a lost movie. It's a movie which feels like it's people who are struggling to put their finger on who or why they are. And I love that. That fucking just really speaks to me. And I thought the, the eighties kind of tv vibe that it conjured up was really beautifully done. I love it. [01:02:40] Speaker B: Supposed to be nineties. And I think it misses the mark completely. I mean, I think it did some things in it that were like, like, it was that thing where I was like, it almost gets it, but it's, it's not, it's not, it doesn't get it at all. But that did bring one of the things that I liked. Probably the only thing I liked in this is there was, like, one scene where there was, like, two guys standing out on the, the lawn, and I was like, is that Pete and Pete, like, from a distance? And then I, like, looked up on IMDb. I was like, that's Pete and Pete. That's Pete and Pete, a popular nineties tv show that they're clearly trying to emulate with the pink opaque. [01:03:19] Speaker A: Yeah, see, it was the show within a show that led to me breathlessly recommending. I saw the tv glow to you. [01:03:28] Speaker B: Yeah, see, but this is like, I. It's like so many of the things that, like, I hate about movies are present in this. And this is why it, like, surprised me that you recommended this one to me. [01:03:41] Speaker A: I was so convinced. I thought this was a fucking absolute lock. [01:03:46] Speaker B: No, this is like a vibes all the way through kind of movie, which, you know, I hate the flat affect through this whole thing. Like, this is. I had to turn it off 20 minutes before the end because I was like, if another one of these people says a single fucking word, I'm going to throw something through my tv. I hate them so fucking much. Make an expression. [01:04:08] Speaker A: Intonation in anyone's voice. [01:04:10] Speaker B: Like, I literally yelled at the tv. Make an expression. I was, like, so upset with, like, I'm like, people don't talk like this. Like, this is not. You have to. You have to act like you felt something ever in your life. And I don't like the, like, you know, like that. That it's the thing that I hate the most. It's self serious. There's no, like, there's nothing funny. There's nothing that, like, hints that it's not taking itself seriously or that, like, any of this is like, you know, it's like, this is an important movie and we are doing important art with this movie. [01:04:47] Speaker A: See? [01:04:48] Speaker B: Oh, God. [01:04:49] Speaker A: That can work if it is born out to be true. If you are. If you. I think it's fine to take your work seriously. [01:04:57] Speaker B: Well, remember, that's the difference. There's a difference between taking it seriously and being self serious. That annoys me. And I don't like self serious things. And this reads as self serious to me, that it's, like, very aware of, like, I am making an important metaphor and, you know, the way that I'm doing this is, like, very important. While it's very, like, just kind of, like, aping, like, real, like, tumblr and TikTok aesthetics of things and that, like, so the, like, attempt at this nineties thing feels so shallow. It doesn't feel like the actual nineties. It feels like someone who went on Pinterest and went, nineties aesthetic made a movie based on the nineties aesthetic. And, you know, I was just. Yeah. The entire time just sitting there. Like, also, you know, from, like, just a personal thing that's. This is not necessarily a judgment on the good or bad of the movie, but, like, we've talked before about, like, one of the reasons I don't like animation being that, like, I can't read their expressions. So, like, they don't, they don't hit for me at all. [01:06:04] Speaker A: They don't come to life. Yeah, yeah, right. [01:06:06] Speaker B: And so having two characters who, like, never express emotion in any possible way, like, there's nothing for me to connect with because I've learned how to understand humans via aping their expressions by cues. Right. Like, you know, so if you don't give me a cue, to me, you are a robot, you know? So I didn't connect with these characters at all. I don't like those kinds of, like, it's a very throwback to, like, two thousands indies movies for someone to like, you know, just sort of like, wander up to someone and become their friend. And it just like, sit on the bleachers. Yeah, yeah, sit on the bleachers. You know, go to their house, have awkward sleepover. Like, you know, just kind of, like, incidentally, like, attach to each other in these ways. And then, like, by the time, you know, this character disappears or whatever, I was like, who gives a fuck? Like, you know, oh, annoying girl who doesn't have any emotions disappeared. Okay. Like, so it's just the whole thing was, like, deeply impossible for me to get through. I just could not do it. [01:07:18] Speaker A: I was so sure this time. [01:07:22] Speaker B: It's a, you know, it's made for a specific audience is the thing, you know? And I think it has hit that audience very well. And I think, like, this is why it had very limited release. You know, is that it's like, this is not necessarily the kind of thing that everybody is going to the movie theater and gonna be like, yes, absolutely. But there is a target audience that has, by word of mouth, really, like, talked this out, who is like, this is my shit. It's just the absolute opposite of my shit. [01:08:00] Speaker A: Hmm. No, you've contextualized that beautifully with the, you know, with the, what's the word? Fuck me. My vocabulary is going to shit today. That's because I'm 45 and I'm on day two of a two day hangover. [01:08:15] Speaker B: Exactly. You've had a week. [01:08:19] Speaker A: Inscrutable characters. You, that, that makes a lot of sense now. You've heard it that way. [01:08:23] Speaker B: Mm hmm. Right. Yeah. That's like, that's always gonna be, like, a tough sell for me. It's why I like, also, like, I, you know, never liked Jenna Malone in movies throughout, like, the two thousands, because that was the character she played was like, blank face, no emotion, and then when I saw her in the Hunger Games movie, I was like, holy shit. Jenna Malone rules. She's actually fucking awesome. But, you know, the blank faced, flat affect person is just. It's a trope that, you know, I'm not into. So, like I said, it connected super well with the people that it is for. For sure. [01:09:01] Speaker A: Yes. [01:09:01] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:09:02] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't. I wouldn't necessarily say that is me. I'm not. I'm not who this movie was made for. [01:09:09] Speaker B: You love movies like this, though. [01:09:11] Speaker A: Oh, I really do. Right. [01:09:14] Speaker B: Like, not necessarily. Like, I think that's the thing is, like, not just who it's for in terms of, like, getting the message or whatever, things like that. Because even that is fraught. I was, you know, I always. Every time I finish a movie, go through, like, the hundreds of letterbox reviews and stuff like that. And it's like, for some people, this was like the. Like, there's one person who was like, this is the first time I'm acknowledging out loud that I'm trans. And this movie caused me to do that. You know, there's other people on there who are like, this is fucking offensive as a movie about transness. You know? Right. Yeah. And it's like, you know, it has that kind of thing. So I don't think it's necessarily, like, for you in a sense that it's like, this is. Really speaks to your soul so much as, like the. This is a movie that hits the notes you like. [01:09:59] Speaker A: I'm gonna say the vibes again, you. [01:10:00] Speaker B: Know, but it is. It's vibes. Yeah. [01:10:02] Speaker A: Emotionally untethered characters, lost fucking, you know, lost souls, unreliable narration. Is it happening? Is it not happening? I'm done with all that. And I love this one. [01:10:13] Speaker B: It did cause me afterwards, though, to go and watch three episodes of are you afraid of the dark, though? And that was. [01:10:18] Speaker A: See, yeah. I. Not. Not having partaken of that era of tv like you did, I thought the pink opaque seemed pretty spot on. [01:10:29] Speaker B: Oh, God, no. I was like. I kept on, like, wanting it to just, like, do something that was anything. Like. Like it. It looked like a nineties show. [01:10:38] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [01:10:39] Speaker B: But the interactions on the show and the tone and things like that were like, nothing like a nineties show. And so it was like, ugh. It's like, just. Just give me. Just give me something. Just give me something. And. Yeah, but watching Ari fate of the dark afterwards, I was like, oh, this. This hits the spot. This is exactly what I wanted. Finish that. So. [01:10:59] Speaker A: Well, I'm sorry. It didn't land for you, but I'm glad you were able to salvage some joy. [01:11:03] Speaker B: I was going to watch it either way anyway, so. You know, it's not like you convinced me to watch a movie that otherwise I wouldn't have, and now I'm mad. But the other movie you watched is amongst my favorites. [01:11:18] Speaker A: The other movie out. Sometimes just scrolling about the place with no plan leads to such wonderful places. I mean, again, just to contextualize. Two and a half bottles of wine, right? That's what's got me like this on Friday night and in a search for some kind of sucker, some kind of balm for my soul, you know what I mean? Some kind of tonic. [01:11:44] Speaker B: Yep. [01:11:45] Speaker A: To bring me back. I happened upon killer clowns from outer space. [01:11:50] Speaker B: And it just never fails, does. [01:11:52] Speaker A: It's like Bongella on an ulcer. Killer clowns. [01:12:00] Speaker B: What? [01:12:02] Speaker A: Bon, right? Fuck. Think, Mark. Mouth ulcers. Right. [01:12:06] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah. [01:12:07] Speaker A: Oh, so painful, so irritating, until you just get that first little dab of Bonjella on that mouth ulcer. [01:12:13] Speaker B: Okay. And basal on a canker sore is what you're. [01:12:16] Speaker A: There you go. Canker sore. Is that what you call a mouth ulcer in that it's instantly soothing and cooling, and it just gives you a glimpse of what life might be like if things were good. That's what killer clowns is. [01:12:31] Speaker B: Yes, absolutely. [01:12:32] Speaker A: It's like a fucking portal into another dimension where everything's okay. [01:12:37] Speaker B: Truth. Yeah, man, I love that movie. Just puts me in a good mood every time. [01:12:41] Speaker A: It's the best. And it, um. Every time I see it, it gets more deranged that I never seem to remember. Like, the little. The little clown heads on sticks. [01:12:57] Speaker B: Amazing. Yeah, it's so good. It's. You know, it also falls in line with things like, are you afraid of the dark? And stuff like that. That. To that end now at 38, like, I still find killer clowns kind of scary. Like. Cause it's just so uncanny and weird and, you know, the way they move and things like that. Like, it's so bizarre that it, like. Yeah, it gets my tummy a little unsettled watching it, even though it's also very silly and fun and all of those kinds of things, so. Yeah, that's just always a good time. [01:13:29] Speaker A: Yeah. Why has that never had a sequel? [01:13:34] Speaker B: I feel like. So Kyo actually is, like, acquainted or was acquainted at that time with the Kyoto brothers who made it. [01:13:44] Speaker A: Okay, great, great. [01:13:45] Speaker B: And I know that they had, like, in there. So basically, killer clowns was supposed to be their ninja Turtles. That's how they put it at the time. And there were various sort of, like, studio machinations and all kinds of things like that that ended up with it kind of just becoming destined for bargain bin b movie status forever. So it was supposed to be a bigger thing than it was. And, yeah, there would have been sequels and things like that, but there were, you know, I'll have to ask Kyo to tell the story at some point, but I love that. Yeah, there were. There were reasons why this time has. [01:14:22] Speaker A: Been very kind to it, hasn't it? I mean, it's found. It's got a solid kind of audience. People keep revisiting it. It's had a great cultural kind of impact. People keep talking about it. I. This money, man, there really is. There's money in a killer country. [01:14:36] Speaker B: I mean, that's why they just made that game, right? There's absolutely still money in the franchise. [01:14:42] Speaker A: All right, here's my pitch. [01:14:43] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:14:45] Speaker A: Killer clowns two title, TBC, but entirely a period piece. It's set literally the day after the first one. [01:14:56] Speaker B: Okay. [01:14:58] Speaker A: And everything is, you know, everything is period. Everything is, you know, set design and fucking vehicles. No phones and shops and costumes. It's 1986 still, and it takes place the day after. And as soon as they vanish, they just. Another load of clowns come back and it carries on. [01:15:16] Speaker B: I love it. I'm in. I'm 100% in for that movie. [01:15:19] Speaker A: Yep. Dicky's still alive. Can we get them to do the song? [01:15:23] Speaker B: That's a valid question. I'll have Kyo call up the Kyoto brothers and see what we can get. [01:15:28] Speaker A: Less fucking green light. Dickies are an american punk rock band formed in 77. [01:15:38] Speaker B: Nice. Perfect. All set. It'll be very hard to top that og theme, but, you know. [01:15:45] Speaker A: Yeah. Um, but. But here's the thing. They aren't. We aren't trying to top it. The. The. The conceit is this movie came out in 1988. [01:15:55] Speaker B: Sure, right. Like, do we need, you know, do the dickies make a new theme song or they just sing it again? [01:16:02] Speaker A: Oh, they do. No, they make a new one. [01:16:03] Speaker B: But. [01:16:04] Speaker A: But with the vibe that this movie is greenlit 20 years ago. You're not trying to top anything. Imagine it's 1988. [01:16:12] Speaker B: Love it. I'm in. [01:16:14] Speaker A: Oh, man. [01:16:17] Speaker B: Yes. We're just, like, full of great ideas. So everyone should be paying us tons of money to make stuff this week. Like I said, I was in kind of mourning mode and watching different things, so I won't go deep into all these stuff because most of them are out of our purview. But I will say I went into kind of happy movie mode. Like, things that, like, you know, would be, like, just kind of make me feel good in some way or another, which essentially were Romy and Michelle's high school reunion can't go wrong. So goddamn good. I think it's even better now than it was at the time. It's just, ah, man, that movie is so good. [01:16:58] Speaker A: It is good, isn't it? When, like, just like with killer clones when time is kind. [01:17:02] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's so, like, shortened to the point, you know, so it's like a hour and 28 minutes or something like that. And it's like, bam, bam, bam, story. You're golden. I love it. I watched too. Wong fu. Thanks for everything, Julie Neumar, which I had never seen, but I was telling Keo, my, like, my connection to this movie was that when I was in elementary school, my fourth grade teacher would give us these newspapers for kids, and every week we would go through them together. We'd read the top stories. We knew what was going on in the presidential elections, and we knew what was going on. I love that in the world. [01:17:35] Speaker A: This is a teacher, you said this. [01:17:36] Speaker B: Is a teacher who unfortunately passed a few months ago. But he was phenomenal, man. My brother and I both. [01:17:43] Speaker A: Mister Ward. [01:17:44] Speaker B: Yeah, Mister Ward absolutely shaped me in many ways. And he. One of the things that was in this newspaper was the top ten box office movies. And so I was very aware in 1995 of what was in the box office the whole time and how long it had been in the box office. And so I remember they didn't have the whole title, but it was shorter to Tu Wong fu. Tu Wong fu being in the top ten for several weeks in 1995 because of that little paper. But I didn't know what it was like at the time. I'm sure I thought it was like a martial arts movie or something like that. And it wasn't until much later that I was like, oh, nope, it's about drag queens. And it's delightful. If you've never seen too Wong fu. Thanks for everything. Julie knew more. [01:18:30] Speaker A: Ugh. [01:18:30] Speaker B: It is. It's so good. It is just a real feel good movie. But drag queens trying to drive across the United States, who end up stranded in this middle of nowhere town full of hillbillies of vaguely threatening auras and then winning over the town and sort of changing this place for good. And it's. [01:18:51] Speaker A: Does sound excellent. [01:18:52] Speaker B: Yeah, it's great. It's Patrick Swayze, Wesley Snipes, and John Legazamo. I mean, can you ask for anything more than that? [01:18:58] Speaker A: Yeah, fair enough. [01:18:59] Speaker B: So big into that, I watched pride, which people have been telling me to watch for ages. And so I finally got you to put that on the plex for me, which is about the gay and lesbians for the miners who helped to sort of fund a town who was participating in the welsh miners strikes, and kind of tells the story of these overcoming their various prejudices towards each other in order to work together. Beautiful for this. And have you seen pride? [01:19:30] Speaker A: No. [01:19:31] Speaker B: Oh, I'm surprised. Okay. Yeah, I would recommend it. It's a great little watch. [01:19:36] Speaker A: If you're whereabouts in Wales is it set? [01:19:40] Speaker B: A place I'd never heard of, you would probably know, but it's definitely South Wales, because there's a joke in it where one of the characters is from north Wales, and everyone acts like they're going to ostracize him as a result of it. [01:19:52] Speaker A: That's why I asked, because if it's mine to strike, it's definitely somewhere I'd recognize. [01:19:57] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, it's somewhere in south Wales, but it was a name I'd never heard before and is not coming to me off the top of my head. I think it started with a d, but yeah, it's a good little flick. And, you know, if you're looking for Pride Month themed things, both tuang fu and pride are obviously great choices to get in the zone for that as well. I also watched Bratz, the documentary about the Brat pack made by Andrew McCarthy. [01:20:26] Speaker A: Oh, holy shit. Right? Okay, okay. I heard Bratz with a z. Oh, no, no, no. [01:20:34] Speaker B: Let's listen. I wasn't that desperate. No, Bratz is a documentary about the brat pack in which Andrew McCarthy tracks down most of the members of the Brat pack and. And basically is trying to get them to talk about how terrible that label was for them. And the article in which it, you know, was coined was, like, so terrible for their careers and whatnot. And over the course of this, it becomes very clear that no one else is as traumatized by this as he was. And so it's kind of, like, embarrassing to watch in a way. It's. He's a. Seems like a very nice guy. I had a big crush on him when I was a kid, you know, I appreciate seeing him. The whole brat pack all look amazing now. They all look incredible. [01:21:25] Speaker A: How many left? Who's alive still? [01:21:27] Speaker B: All of them? Yeah. There's no. No dead brat packers. [01:21:31] Speaker A: Wait, wait, wait. You're not talking about Sinatra and. [01:21:34] Speaker B: No. Oh, my God. We are really talking past each other on this one purposes this week. The brat pack. For anyone else who thought I was talking about not Martin Sheen, but Emilio Estevez, Demi Moore, Judd Nelson, Andrew McCarthy, Anthony Michael Hall, Rob Lowe, that whole posse back on board with me. And hopefully, if people at home didn't know what I was talking about, that's what I'm talking about. They were breakfast club, pretty amazing pink, you know, all those kinds of movies from that point. And so I think, like, you know, when he goes to Demi's house, like, she is like. Like, almost, like, gives him, like, a really good therapy talk where she's, like, essentially being like, this is around, like, how you framed this, right? Like, you know, you've been living in the shadow of this thing, but, like, it's more about how you interpreted and framed being given this label than it is about the label itself. And that's more or less where everyone else is on this, too. And he keeps, like, sort of trying to, you know, pull this thread out of how bad this was, but nobody else is really with him on this. They're kind of like, well, yeah, it sucked at the time, but, you know, whatever, it's the past. And he even talks to the journalist who coined it, and the journalist is, like, unrepentant and is basically just like, you need to get over it. And so no one is really on his team, but he doesn't change tax as a result of this in this documentary. So it's a weird one to watch. I think if you like the brat pack, you're gonna get, you know, get something out of just seeing them and seeing how good they look and getting a little reminiscence or whatever. But it's a very weird documentary because it doesn't really accomplish what it sets out to do. He could have used someone else directing it instead of him doing it himself, someone else to guide the narrative towards the things that are actually happening. [01:23:30] Speaker A: The. The documentary, it turned into sounds a lot more interesting than the documentary it was intended to be. [01:23:36] Speaker B: Right? It's like, if he had really leaned into that, like, and processed, like, what. Who am I as a person that I internalized all of this and, you know, came out this way when all of my, you know, colleagues were able to move on with their lives and then had, like, you know, done, like, a meditation on that, I think it really would have been something. Instead of it just, like, kind of. Yeah. Looking like the. The one guy who didn't get it, you know, is what it is. The other terrible documentary that I watched this week was called six schizophrenic brothers and don't, don't watch it. Yeah, I wonder. Don't watch this. This documentary, it is like the peak exploitation dreck. I think it was on Max. And it is about exactly that. It's a family with twelve siblings and six of them are schizophrenic. And what happened is, and the documentary is just, I mean, like when it interviews the surviving schizophrenic brothers from this family, like they're interviewed in these like dark, menacing warehouses that make them look like monsters. And like there's all the, like, it's just, it's the worst. Don't bother with it. But I was reading the letterboxd page for this because everyone was in agreement on that. This was terrible. And someone said, like, I am upset that this is what they did with one of my favorite books. And so I went and I looked up the book, which is called Hidden Valley Road, and it has been hard to pull myself away from because it is really good. And I texted you about this earlier. I was like, I'll talk to you about this later. [01:25:13] Speaker A: But you did. Yeah. [01:25:15] Speaker B: Book Hidden Valley Road is the actual story of this family. Like I said, a dozen kids, six of them with schizophrenia. Big content warning for like sexual assault and rape and things like that in here. You know, violence, murder, suicides, like all kinds of stuff in this because it's a family with intense mental illness, but it also goes through kind of like, you know, this was like the seventies, and you're early on in the DSMs and they're still trying to figure out what schizophrenia is, what qualifies as schizophrenia, what is it being caused by? How do you treat it? And so you're also getting all of these sort of insights into these doctors and psychologists and all this kind of stuff coming and trying to figure this out. Like, people who think, you know, like one of the prevailing early things about it was like, it's a mother's fault. This is a disorder that happens because moms aren't good enough, you know? And so, like, that was a huge part of it. Versus people who are like, well, this is something that, like, you can only treat with medication, versus people who are like, no, you can do this with therapies. People who thought this is a societal problem. And like, these people are actually like, they're evolved beyond us, and it's society that is the problem, not the schizophrenic. And so you're seeing all of these kinds of things coming together while hearing the actual sort of really sad stories of what on the ground this looked like for this family, especially for the two girls who were the youngest in the family. There's only two girls, and they're both the youngest daughters who bore the brunt of what a lot of the most horrible elements of this was. Big recommend Hidden Valley Road. It is a hell of a. [01:27:05] Speaker A: Never thought of schizophrenia as a genetic complaint. [01:27:10] Speaker B: Well, and that's. Yeah, right. Because it isn't a simple genetic one, at least. And that was one of the things that they were dealing with, because it's like, you don't. There is definitely a predisposition. If other people in your family at some point have had it towards you having it. But it's not as simple as if your parents have it, then a certain amount of your children will. It's not like twins, right? Like, it's not, you know, it's not like your eye color. It's not a guarantee. And so, you know, one of the things that they're. And I haven't gotten to any conclusions on this yet, but one of the things that they're kind of looking into is they're like, so why? What is manifesting here? And this is early in the DNA testing phase, too. So that's like, they can only, like, look at, like, one gene at a time, but they're like, we think this must be a combination of genes, which is why it activates in some people and not in other ones, because they have to have the right combo of the genes that they are getting through heredity that come together and cause the perfect storm to do this. So you don't normally find families like this with a huge amount of schizophrenics in it. They might go, oh, yeah, I think your great uncle was schizophrenic or something like that. But it's not usually like this. So, yeah, it's a fascinating look at trying to figure out what this is in the first place and how it actually affects people. [01:28:40] Speaker A: Hidden Valley road. [01:28:42] Speaker B: Hidden Valley Road. Sounds like a salad dressing, but it's a book about schizophrenia. Thank you. [01:28:47] Speaker A: Yes. [01:28:49] Speaker B: And the only other thing I watched, even though we talked about how we were done with religious horror and none core and everything, for a while I went back to the OG and watched the omen, and I don't regret it because that movie rules. It's so good. And I forget, like, I was talking to Keough about this, and I was like, I forget how violent it is. And he's like, yeah, I don't really think of it as a violent movie either. Yeah, but there are like some crazy deaths in that movie throughout it. [01:29:19] Speaker A: It catches you off guard. [01:29:21] Speaker B: Exactly. [01:29:22] Speaker A: With those kind of. Those kills, those moments of violence. It properly. Whoa. It takes you aback because you don't see it coming. I think I called it cruel the other week and it is. It surprises you 100%. Really creative deaths. [01:29:34] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. And I, and my biggest takeaway from that is, you know, the omen really gets that christian theology is terrifying. And if you take it literally, it is. It's horror. You know, they're not everything that they. All the scripture and stuff like that, that's in the book that they're using here. And they are just pulling out the actual words from the Bible and the actual theology and things like that. And it's like, yeah, that's scary, huh? Yes, there it is. And it does that much better than any other religious horror movie I think I've ever seen. Does. [01:30:11] Speaker A: Exorcist still pips it for me, but, yeah, I don't disagree with a single word you said. It's meticulously put together. Film. [01:30:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I love exorcist. I just think that the omen really nails the theology of it in a way that I haven't seen other ones do. So, yeah, that was my week. [01:30:33] Speaker A: Wonderful. Good week. [01:30:36] Speaker B: Now, this is a thing we've been sort of sitting on for a few weeks and kind of referenced as well. Obviously, one of the things that is my passion on this here podcast show is sort of myth busting and, you know, bringing justice to people who we've scotching things, you know, people who we have misunderstood or concepts we've misunderstood and things like that. And about actually a month ago. Exactly. An article turned up in the New Yorker by journalist Rachel Aviv that in some 13,000 words cast out on the entire Lucy Letbe case, which we have referenced on multiple occasions on this here podcast, the alleged serial killer nurse who killed lots of babies in the UK. Now, due to legal barriers in the UK around what you can publish about an active case, which she's actually in court right now for another attempted murder. So hence it's active. Even though she's already been sentenced for seven murders. The New Yorker had to block brits from being able to access this story at all. And of course, as Aviv and Niemann Lab's Sarah sire point out, there don't seem to be any such rules about articles about her guilt. With the Daily Mail saying that Letby has, quote, thrown open the door to hell and the stench of evil overwhelms us all. And the Guardian calling her one of the most notorious female murderers of the last century. So there don't seem to be any rules around declaring her guilty in a journalistic setting and haven't been this whole time. But you can't question whether there might have been a miscarriage of justice thus far or it's influencing the current trial. It's interesting. So here it is. [01:32:37] Speaker A: It is fascinating. And, yeah, it's. It's a. It's a law that is woefully unprepared for the way that anyone communicates in 2024. [01:32:53] Speaker B: Yeah, 100%. And that. And as such, what it ends up doing is censoring instead of, you know, actually doing anything to prevent, you know, undue influence on a court case or anything like that. What we've got here is something that says only one side of this can be presented. And, you know, any questioning of that is something that can potentially result in penalties for journalists who do so. And the mere existence of the article has gotten brits all up in arms banned from the Lucy Letbe subreddit, which is a thing, because they don't allow conspiracy. [01:33:33] Speaker A: She's got her own sub. [01:33:35] Speaker B: Yeah, there's a whole subreddit dedicated to Lucy Letbe, but you can only post things about her guilt because of the no conspiracy theories policy. And anything that questions whether she's guilty is considered to be a conspiracy theory, which is wild. [01:33:56] Speaker A: Incredible. [01:33:57] Speaker B: Yeah. So I'm gonna get into what this epic of an article says, but I did tell you I wanted to ask you a question outright, because, okay, people are mad. And obviously, this being an american article, a lot of that ire is aimed at Americans for having the audacity to, you know, talk about shit we don't know about and things like that. [01:34:19] Speaker A: Stay in your own lane. [01:34:20] Speaker B: Right. But as such, I wanted to ask the question that I think frames a lot of our thoughts around, like, guilt in general when it comes to. And justice in general when it comes to people being arrested for heinous crimes, we tend to attach to the idea of someone being guilty. Right. And once we've attached to that, we don't want that challenged. Even if it turns out we're wrong, it is very difficult to let go of that. So my question to you is, why do you think people can't have their view on Lucy? Let be challenged? Why do they need her to be guilty? [01:35:02] Speaker A: Okay, so in this case, and again, this is right off the top of my head, I'm speculating. I'm pre wheeling here. [01:35:09] Speaker B: Sure. Yeah, go for it. [01:35:12] Speaker A: The. You were quite right in that. The fact that that article came from the states. How fucking. You criticize our justice system, you sons of bitches. You're still fucking electrocuting people to death, right? How fucking dare you write your little article. How about you fuck off and stay in your lane and let us deal with our own child murderers? How about that? Right? [01:35:38] Speaker B: Yeah, totally. [01:35:39] Speaker A: There's a huge amount of that, right? [01:35:41] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. [01:35:42] Speaker A: Um, you've also got the fact that this is such an outlier of a crime. This simply doesn't happen. Uh, and someone has to answer, someone has to pay for it. And we've got our man. Thank you. This is done. Now. We need to be working on putting this behind us as opposed to dredging it up and keeping it light and keeping it current. Right? [01:36:12] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:36:12] Speaker A: Not only is the crime such a fucking random data point, such a freak occurrence, but it's a crime. A freak occurrence that happened in one of the most beloved and sacred of british institutions, right? This happened right at the fucking heart of our NHS. The victims were some of the most. You know, if you're gonna kill anyone, if you're gonna kill someone and you kill a baby, for fuck's sake. [01:36:43] Speaker B: So we're not laughing at the babies. [01:36:45] Speaker A: We're not. [01:36:46] Speaker B: For some reason, Mark's computer decided to give us balloons right as he talked about murdering children. [01:36:52] Speaker A: Tim Apple needs to work on that. But look, it's an outlier of a crime, a heinous crime committed by the most unlikely of perpetrators at the heart of our most sacred of institutions, at the, you know, the most kind of unthinkable victims. All of that stuff together. Something that I would say Britain wants to move the fuck on from. Every single area of that crime shouldn't have happened even once, let alone, you know, is it four or five? She's. She's. She's been shot. [01:37:31] Speaker B: Seven. [01:37:32] Speaker A: Seven. Um. So keeping it alive and. And suggesting that it needs. It needs, you know, it isn't over yet. That is what I think would lead to Aya. You know, I think the same thing would have happened had, you know, the. What are some of the other huge kind of british cases in history? The Jamie Bolger killings. If the Jamie Bolger killing. If, you know, if some american newspaper had written an article suggesting that maybe those John Venables isn't so bad, the same thing would have happened. Um, Harold Shipman, Fred west, you know, I mean, if. I think the same thing with other Moore's murders. The same. That you would've got the same. You would've got the same reaction were any of these kind of huge, high profile, x factor fucking killings. [01:38:29] Speaker B: It's interesting you sort of put it that way, because, I mean, the thing about all of those people that you just named is that we have a ton of concrete evidence of what they did. [01:38:41] Speaker A: Yes, right? [01:38:42] Speaker B: We know what they did. You know me, I tend to be a little coldly analytical about things, and so I have a tendency to not totally be able to relate to people's emotional takes on facts. Right. Like, this is just an element of me. And I think about this a lot on Dateline. Right, where there will be someone who was, like, very clearly guilty, but their family refuses to. Nope. Absolutely not. That didn't happen. Or vice versa, there'll be someone who. It's like, it became very clear the DNA didn't match, things like that. But the family of the victim is like, nope, it is that person. And I need them to be in jail. And I'm always like, why? If it wasn't them? I don't feel better about someone who wasn't them being punished. But I think to your point, there. There is something about that, like, wanting to have resolution, because it's worse not to, you know, so, like, you can't allow sitting in the idea that you're wrong. But this isn't resolved now. [01:39:55] Speaker A: We've sorted this out. It's over. We've done it. We've put it to bed. We've got someone for this. [01:40:00] Speaker B: Yeah, totally. So that, you know, I think you're really onto something with that concept. And it's a thing that I don't personally relate to, but I think that especially as sort of. That's like, an ethos that Britain especially is known for, right? That kind of, like, keep moving forward and, like, you know, let's not. Let's not make a thing of it. Let's just, you know, move on. And us dredging that up, you know, even though this is a journalist, it's not the american government or things like that. [01:40:33] Speaker A: No, of course, there's hardly dredging if something is actually happening now. [01:40:37] Speaker B: Right? [01:40:38] Speaker A: See, as well as which, um. If you. Fucking hell. If you. If you open your mind to the possibility that as high profile and as flagrant a crime as this, which took place in plain sight, could lead to a wrongful conviction. Right, stop pulling on that thread. Towards the end of last year, there was a guy by the name of Andrew Malkinson who had a conviction overturned after he'd spent 17 years in jail for rape. [01:41:15] Speaker B: Wow. [01:41:15] Speaker A: Right. In the UK. And he was fucking exonerated fully. [01:41:19] Speaker B: Happens all the time. [01:41:20] Speaker A: 17 fucking years of wrongful imprisonment. [01:41:23] Speaker B: Mm hmm. [01:41:24] Speaker A: If you start to open your mind to the fact that. Hang on, where do you fucking. Where does the thread lead? If you start to think this needs reform or this needs rethink, it's. I'll say it, I'm blue in the face. But the world of 2024 bears no resemblance to the world, you know, which. Which saw these systems being kind of written up and brought into being. [01:41:48] Speaker B: Yeah, very true. Very true. [01:41:50] Speaker A: I think it's a kind of a flamingo syndrome. Bury your fucking head. Fingers in the ears. La la la. I can't hear you. Everything's fine. We've got her, we've got the nurse. It's fine. Yeah, the system works, right? [01:42:03] Speaker B: Yes, exactly that. And in this case, the systems, right? Because you're talking about the justice system and you're also talking about the NHS. So, you know, you've got a lot of stuff at stake here. So let me just. You know, I'm gonna go through. I was gonna, like, summarize some things. It's still gonna take me a minute to get through. I'm not gonna get through all of the alleged crimes or things like that, but give you enough to get a solid sense of what the doubts are here. And of course, we're not gonna sit here and say, you know, lucy Letby is 100% innocent, absolutely, without question, not guilty, because that would be doing, like, the same thing, right? Like, you know, we're. We're sitting here with these facts in front of us. I think after reading this, I lean more towards, she's probably not guilty, but I do everything in my power not to tick tock sleuth things. So, yeah, of course, we're not here to say that what we are going to talk about is sort of, you know, what it means to have this much reasonable doubt and these, you know, especially compared to the narrative that people in the courts heard and the media heard and, you know, what that says about our justice systems and things like that. So let's see, where was I gonna go? So, like, obviously, like I said, this is the kind of thing that I like to do and think about also, when we talked about, like, the lady with the dingo a couple weeks ago, right? That, like, you know, it's been 30 plus years, nearly 40 years or whatever, and you still thought that she murdered her baby, you know, and she would still. She would still be doing hard labor in the australian outback if people hadn't started to question that narrative. So it's important to get into this, and we are going to do that. So for a little background, I want to read a quote from the author, Rachel Aviv, about how she came to this case. So she said, clusy de Alvara, an incredible researcher I work with, pointed me to the let be case last spring when the trial was still underway. We were both struck by the fact that the case seemed to hinge almost entirely upon the belief that there had been too many deaths to have occurred by coincidence. The case made me curious about the way that our statistical intuitions play out in criminal investigations and trials, specifically the kinds of unexamined beliefs we have about the nature of chance and our tendency to attribute causality to random events. I was struck by the parallels between the Lepe case and the case of Lucia de Burke, a nurse in the Netherlands who was wrongly convicted of murder in 2004, largely because of an association between her shift patterns and the deaths on her ward. Her case is now seen as one of the worst miscarriages of justice in dutch history. So she was seeing patterns herself here and decided to delve into it, which she did with incredible depth that even if we wanted to, we wouldn't be able to. She went through 7000 pages of court transcripts, for example. But a fun fact about the british courts is that it costs about $100 for one day of court transcripts, and you need the judge's approval to get them. So she paid an exorbitant amount of money that is not accessible to the rest of us and spent about six months awaiting approval to look over this stuff. A thing appeals, lawyers generally aren't even able to do because of the expense. So just think about that. Like, access to the kind of information that could help people get acquitted is nearly impossible for the people representing them because of the time and expense in order to acquire it. [01:45:40] Speaker A: You've answered. You've answered a question. I had kind of at the outset of this, before we kind of started the topic. I mean, the article in question, the New Yorker article, has. Has been kind of. It's had peer review. Yeah, it's watertight. Okay. Okay. Okay. [01:45:56] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And it's. Yeah, it's incredible. We'll keep going with this. And like I said, like, you know, it is. The unfortunate thing is it is one article, and as she points out in this, you can't make equivalent articles in the UK, and so it limits the amount that what she's doing here can be validated, because, like, there was one journalist who was, like, afraid to even post a picture of their New Yorker cover on Twitter because they were like, this might actually be illegal that I even acknowledge that this exists. So this is one of the reasons it's really hard to fact check or anything, any of this. We know she delved into this, and it's airtight journalistically. But british papers cannot address what is. [01:46:50] Speaker A: In this article, which is fucking mad, isn't it? [01:46:54] Speaker B: It's insane. Like, just absolutely unreal to me every. [01:47:00] Speaker A: Now and again, and I mentioned pop bitch a few weeks back, every now and again, there'll be a politician or a celebrity or somebody notable who tries to squash story about them and take. And goes through the courts and takes an injunction. Sorry. And stops things getting published. But, you know, as I said a few minutes back, that is so out of fucking step with how news is distributed, how 100%. Yeah, it's wild. [01:47:30] Speaker B: Yeah. It's all very anachronistic to our times. But so on top of all that, she went through notes and journals and texts and so on, many of which she had found had been taken horribly out of context by the press and were deeply mundane when situated amongst everything else. Everyone was essentially coming at this from the angle that Letby was a monster, and then using little bits and pieces to back that up. Right. Just coming from that angle and then reading everything. [01:47:59] Speaker A: So, yeah, making the evidence fit. [01:48:01] Speaker B: Mm hmm. Right. So what she tried to do. Yeah. Was remove the monster lens as she looked at this and go, okay, so who was this person, actually, without that? Basic facts, stripped of all the salacious bits, are that Ledby worked in what Aviv describes as a struggling neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital in the west of England, where a cluster of seven deaths occurred between June of 2015 and June of 2016. All of the babies, save for one, had been premature, three, weighed less than three pounds, and, you know, had generally just gotten an inauspicious start to life. Letby was never seen, ever, by anyone harming a baby, and the coroner found no indications of foul play in any of these deaths. The central evidence of her guilt came from a diagram circulated by police, which Aviv describes. On the vertical axis were 24 suspicious events, which included the deaths of the seven newborns and 17 other instances of babies suddenly deteriorating. On the horizontal axis were the names of 38 nurses who had worked on the unit during that time, with xs next to each suspicious event that occurred when they were on shift. Letby was the only nurse with an uninterrupted line of xs below her name straight out of the gate. One of the things Aviv noticed was that in one of these cases, Letbe wasn't there. They had gotten that wrong, but it was never corrected, and the diagram continued to be circulated further. This chart insinuated that the only common factor was let be and didn't account for anything else that might have impacted mortality, including, you know, the fact that these specifically are like severely underweight premature babies. Already, letbe, by all accounts, had nothing in her past to suggest that she was secretly yearning to end the lives of children. She'd wanted to be a nurse her whole life. People described her as kind, gentlemen, soft, joyful, and peaceful. She was as basic a bitch as you can imagine who hung out with her girlies from the unit, loved wine and makeup, and was sad to have moved away from her family, but felt called to be where she was so she could work with babies. The unit itself was less put together than ol Lucy. The head of the unit said that because of a lack of space and equipment, the risks of infection for the babies is greater the closer they are to each other. Aviv also noted that there were problems with the drainage system. The pipes in both the neonatal ward and the maternity ward often leaked or were blocked, and sewage occasionally backed up into the toilets and sinks. They were understaffed and only had one neonatologist working there. A year before Lucy's alleged murders, a newborn died when doctors trached a baby's esophagus instead of his trachea. The lack of staff meant it took hours to get x rays and blood tests, and that some staff were splitting their time with other parts of the hospital. Staff, especially Lucy, who lived on hospital grounds, were regularly doing extra shifts. Now, this right here is a big chunk from the article, but I'm going to read how these deaths started to you. In June 2015, three babies died at the countess. First, a woman with antifus antiphospholipid syndrome, a rare disorder that can cause blood clotting, was admitted to the hospital. She was 31 weeks pregnant with twins and had planned to give birth in London so that a specialist could monitor her and the babies. But her blood pressure had quickly risen and she had to have an emergency c section at the countess. The next day, Letby was asked to cover a colleague's night shift. She was assigned one of the twins, a boy who had been called child a. The court order forbade identifying the children, their parents, and some nurses and doctors. A nursing note from the day shift said that the baby had had no fluids running for a couple of hours because his umbilical catheter, a tube that delivers fluid through the abdomen, had twice been placed in the wrong position and, quote, doctor's busy. A junior doctor eventually put in a long line, a thin tube threaded through a vein, and let be, and another nurse gave the child fluid. 20 minutes later, Letby and a third nurse a few feet away noticed that his oxygen levels were dropping and that his skin was mottled. The doctor who had inserted the long line worried that he had placed it too close to the child's heart, and he immediately took it out. But less than 90 minutes later, after Letby started her shift, the baby was dead. It was awful, she wrote to a colleague afterward. He died very suddenly and unexpectedly just after handover. A pathologist observed that the baby had crossed pulmonary arteries, a structural anomaly. And there was also a strong temporal relationship between the insertion of the long line and the collapse. The pathologist described the cause of death as unascertained. So a lot of medical issues here, none of which have anything to do with Lucy. She is, like, the least problematic part of this entire story. You have a doctor who may have put something in too close to the baby's heart. You've got a baby that is prematurely born from a mother who has some sort of disorder. You've got all of these different things happening with this child. And also Lucy with another person, never by herself with this baby. When they put in that iv or whatever, she's with another nurse, so she's never alone. [01:53:30] Speaker A: Am I right in saying that there was also kind of a lot of theorizing and story changing from a consultant doctor on the case? [01:53:42] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, there's two doctors who basically end up like dogs with a bone on this whole story who are really dead set on making sure that it's connected to her. So we get more. The next night, when Lucy is also on duty, she helps another nurse with the iv bag for the surviving twin, who 25 minutes later starts displaying purple and blotchy skin and a drop in her heart rate. They're able to resuscitate this baby, and she recovers. But the leader of the unit posited that it was the mother's disorder that left the twins in such a vulnerable state. Absolutely makes sense. The next day, a woman with a dangerous placenta condition came in and gave birth to a boy weighing one pound 12oz. The child developed pneumonia a few days later, and while Leppi wasn't working in the ICU nursery at the time she was called in to help. Unfortunately, the baby couldn't be saved. Again. Letby is there, but she's not the only one there, and the baby is seriously ill. It's under two pounds and their unit actually wasn't really equipped to even deal with a baby with that low of a birth weight in the first place. It was just on the cusp of what they were even allowed to treat. Shouldn't have been in there. A few days later, a woman came in having noticed her baby wasn't moving as much inside her. She wanted antibiotics because she was afraid of an infection, but said that she felt forgotten by the staff who didn't give her the antibiotics and told her to wait. When the child was born by C section, she was dusky and limp and wasn't given antibiotics for nearly 4 hours. When her oxygen alarm went off the next day, Ledby came to help, but the baby got worse overnight and couldn't be saved. Pneumonia was found in the baby's lungs and a pathologist said that the infection was likely present at birth again. This so clearly has nothing to do with her. Who, devastated, texted her close friend and colleague saying, we lost her. In fact, Lucy herself said that the circumstances should be investigated in that text to her friend because of the delay in the treatment, the antibiotics the child was given, and overall how chaotic the situation had been. So she was encouraging people to look into what the fuck was going on with the deaths of these babies. She wrestled with those deaths in the messages, saying that some of them seemed unavoidable, but that she couldn't get out of her mind. The ones that didn't, she seemed heartbroken. And to everyone in the department, the sentiment was basically, thank God she was there. She's good in a crisis. Everyone liked her. In a tiny unit like that one, dealing with a host of emergencies, there was nothing at all strange about the same nurse being present for multiple deaths. Who else is gonna be there? There's seven people in this department, and she works all the extra hours because she lives on the campus and she doesn't have a partner or children. So she takes on all those extra hours that the other nurses can't. It was four months before another baby died, having been born at 27 weeks again, just barely in the circumstances that the unit would have treated, they weren't really equipped for a baby born that prematurely. She had an infection and a brain bleed at birth and was transferred to another hospital for two nights before they brought her back to Countess, where her condition worsened. According to the unit heads, Stephen Brerrie, who was one of the two guys who ended up sort of getting fixated on Lucy. [01:57:02] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [01:57:03] Speaker B: Senior nursing staff were blaming the neonatal unit that sent back the baby, saying they hadn't been entirely honest, that they were just trying to clear a space. The baby's mother worried that the staff at the countess were too busy to pay proper attention to her daughter. She recalled that a nurse named Nikki was sneezing and coughing whilst putting her hands in the baby's incubator. She added, to top it off, whilst Nikki was in the room, the doctor, who was seeing another baby asked Nikki if she was full of a cold, to which she said, yeah, I've been full of it for days. So even the doctors were aware and didn't do anything. Again, when we sort of are thinking about, like, the institution here and where the blame would be laid if it weren't laid on Lucy. [01:57:48] Speaker A: Yes. And, you know, you mention the mortality rate while Lucy was employed, while Lucy was there. I also seem to remember the article making reference to a particular form of bias where no data was included from the periods before Lucy joined the team. [01:58:09] Speaker B: Right, yeah, exactly. And further. And I'll get there. But it wasn't just within her unit either. [01:58:16] Speaker A: Right, right. [01:58:17] Speaker B: So, yeah, lots of things to think about. But I think, you know, in terms of now, as we're thinking about the framing of this, like, what is, you know, your, your thought before, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. Your thought before of, like, we want to move past this and, you know, this is the heart of a beloved institution and things like that. Everything so far is pointing to an institution that is fucking up at every step and people do not want to hear that 100%. So a survey of over 1000 staff members at that hospital was undertaken a year later and two thirds said that they felt pressured to come in even when they were sick. This is it institutional issue. Lucy was called in to help with the deteriorating baby while they awaited transfer to another hospital. But the child, who had been struggling to breathe, died. Letby was seen crying with another nurse, upset that this kept happening to her and she wrote a card to the family of the child. But people did start talking about the fact that it did seem to be Lucy who was always on when the babies died, bringing it to senior management. Upon reviewing the cases, however, the manners of death were so different, there was no reason to think one person had caused them. Nothing in common with one another. Meanwhile, Lucy was so good at her job, other nurses looked to her for help, including once when she was in a salsa class and received several panicked calls from nurses asking her for help on giving a baby intravenous immunoglobulin treatment. Letby was flabbergasted that these people didn't have the know how to do this and told another friend on the unit that it was chaos and a madhouse and that staffing need to be looked at. This didn't go unnoticed by others either. Many people in the hospital were pointing out how overworked the staff was and how little equipment they had to do their jobs. Even things like incubators running out at times. Stretching everyone so thin was a recipe for disaster. So again, Lucy keeps on saying, people need to start investigating this shit. Which would be a weird thing to say if you were the person causing it. Right? Like, you'd probably just let it. Let it go. Oh, shucks. [02:00:31] Speaker A: But. Right, so, on that point specifically, could that also not be the tactics of a murderer to evade detection? [02:00:44] Speaker B: Like, I mean, I think obviously murderers try to be clever, you know, things like that, insert themselves into investigations and things like that. If no one is seeing any form of pattern between these deaths, it would be very silly to bring that to their attention. I would say, you know, like, she have to be very stupid if that was the case, which we don't really have any indication that she's an idiot. So despite the jumps in deaths and Lucy's presence at them, most people were unconcerned that she was involved. But it did sort of get stuck in the craw of a couple of the staff. They shifted Lucy's shift from night to day, since most of the deaths happened at night and there was more support during the day. Three months later, in June of 2016, Lucy was warned by another nurse, her best friend, not to come in because of the absolute chaos on the unit. Five admissions, one vent, she'd told Lucy in a text. Plus a premature boy with hemophilia who looked like shit and whose oxygen levels had dropped overnight. Lucy took over care for that boy, and doctors tried to intubate him, but weren't able to due to not having the right anesthesiology equipment. Lucy told a junior doctor that she wanted to. Sorry, I typo'd and I don't even know what word it was supposed to be. Oh, that's icy. Lucy told a junior doctor that she wanted to cry after running around all day and not really achieving anything positive for him. A week later, a woman gave birth to triplets who were each supposed to have their own nurse but let be fresh home from a holiday, was assigned to two of them and a third baby from another family, while also training a student nurse at the same time, who she said was clinging to her side the entire time. 7 hours into her shift, one of the triplets oxygen levels dropped, and he developed a rash. Lucy called for help and performed CPR, but the baby died. She was then assigned as nurse for the two surviving triplets the next day and found one of them had a distended abdomen, a potential sign of infection. She was so stressed, she texted a friend that she didn't feel in the frame of mind to support the baby properly. The infant ended up on a ventilator and was later found to have a collapsed lung, perhaps from the pressure of the ventilator. The mother said she saw a doctor googling, inserting a line into the chest, a very basic procedure. [02:03:11] Speaker A: Fuck. [02:03:11] Speaker B: And another doctor was coughing and spluttering into her hands as she resuscitated the child. The baby died, and the mother said, let be. Seemed almost as upset as we were. The third triplet was taken to a hospital with better equipment and more competent staff, where it survived. But Lucy, according to everyone around her, did everything by the book. Her work was above reproach. She was surrounded by incompetence, but she was doing her fucking best. And there are more, but listen, they go on and on like this. She's in charge of too many babies, expected to be in too many places at once. The place is a dirty fucking madhouse where people are coughing on premature babies. None of these babies were healthy when they got there. They had infections, they were underweight, they had breathing issues, etcetera. There was no reason for anyone at the time to suspect anything was wrong, except the two doctors, the head of the unit and the head of the department, who were like a dog with a bone on this. And they found in a post mortem x ray that one of the babies had shown gas near the base of its skull, which is, it turns out, often the case when people die, you find gas in places like that. But one of them, Doctor Jayaram, was like, okay, sure. But this can also happen because of air embolisms, a horrifying situation in which air bubbles enter a person's veins or arteries and blocks blood supply. He became convinced that even though this had only happened 53 times recorded in history, and none of those times had it ever been a murder, this was definitely what Letby had done. And so she was effectively removed from her job, which she later filed a grievance about saying that she'd essentially been let go without any real explanation as to why. Which, again, like, if you were killing babies and they let you go, like, I think you'd probably be like, oh, thank God they didn't press charges. Instead of like, hey, let's look into that. Why was I fired? Right. [02:05:14] Speaker A: And just to take up an opposing position, just to kind of explore this. [02:05:22] Speaker B: Yeah, do it. [02:05:22] Speaker A: That also could be a murderer trying to seem less murdery. [02:05:27] Speaker B: That feels like tv murderer. Right? Like, that feels like our. Like, you know, our villain who's trying to outsmart people, whatever. But again, there is nothing in her pathology, like, through her entire life, that indicates that this is the kind of person that she is, you know? And so adding on top of that, that, like, she keeps trying to push this stuff that if they look into it further, is actually going to be bad for her. Like, what that says to me is that she certainly, even if she did it, she certainly didn't think that they thought she was a killer. So either she thought she covered her tracks really well or she didn't do it. You know what I mean? Which murderers thinking they covered their tracks beyond reproach is certainly a thing as well. But as it turns out, the hospital saw an influx of deaths in the maternity ward in 2015 as well, where let be had not worked. A team from the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health concluded that it was an institutional problem. They needed more nursing and medical staff. Further, there was no link between the deaths, aside from gut feeling and simple correlation, and that these deaths were not materially different from others in neonatal units around the UK. And Letby's co workers were roundly upset that she'd been removed from her duties. So outsiders came in to figure out what was going on and were like, there's nothing. There's a couple of guys who have decided this is a thing and emotionally are invested in it, but there's nothing to say that any of this actually happened. [02:07:06] Speaker A: That's what that article really brought home. It seems to me that every single piece of evidence used to convict her was completely circumstantial. [02:07:14] Speaker B: Exactly. There's nothing at all. You know, she was with people for every one of these deaths, and you would think someone would have noticed her injecting air into a child at some point. You know, like I said, the unit head and department head, brerry and Jayaram, would not be deterred. As I said, air embolism is extremely rare and the vast majority of doctors on earth would never have seen one. There's very little research on them as a result. And as such, it's also really easy to blame pretty much everything on it because we don't know exactly what happens. Right. There's, like, someone who, in the article who described, though, like, he had never seen one, but there had been one at the hospital he worked at 20 years before he got there. And the description was basically like, you know, someone accidentally inserted air into a baby's stomach, and the baby basically just dropped dead immediately. And so, like, that seems to be, like, what actually happens? You pretty much immediately die upon an air embolism. But they had all these ideas about, like, oh, well, maybe it makes you turn purple and makes your skin modeled, and maybe it also causes a distended belly, you know? And it's like, how do we disprove that? Gonna give someone an air embolism? Like, sure, maybe that's what happens. So let's skip forward to the damning post its and all of that stuff in her house, knowing what we know now, all of these kind of contextual things, that this is a woman who has been in this crazy unit where she has been present at all these deaths. People are starting. She's been removed from her job. People are starting to blame her for what happened, right? So these notes said things like, not good enough. There are no words. I can't breathe. Slander, discrimination. I'll never have children or marry. And perhaps most damningly, I killed them on purpose because I'm not good enough to care for them, and I am evil. I did this on another piece of paper she had written, I just want life to be as it was. I want to be happy in the job that I loved with a team who I felt part of. On another she'd written, we tried our best, and it wasn't enough. When asked about the notes, she said it was just a way of me getting feelings out onto paper. It just helps me process, which is deeply relatable to me as a journaler. I'd hate for people to read anything I've scrawled in a notebook, which is why I think, as I said last week, when I came across a bunch of my, like, 16 year old journals in the storage thing, I just threw them away. Like, fuck that. Absolutely not. Nobody needs to see me process anything. She explained that she didn't really think she'd done anything wrong, but that she worried they'd find that she was at fault somehow by not being good enough, by not calling for help fast enough or giving an improper dose of a medication or something like that. She said that the situation made her feel that others would see her as evil as having done this on purpose. The notes weren't confessions. They were about processing how others would see her and the impact that this would have on her life. When she explained that it felt that she felt it was her fault if her practice wasn't good enough, and that's why she'd written the note about having done it on purpose, an officer said, you're being very hard on yourself there if you haven't done anything wrong. To which she responded, I am very hard on myself, which is absolutely true. We can see that from everything that we know about her and how much she overextended herself within that practice and everything to try to do things, and how much she took all of this to heart. Her friends, family, patients, other professionals, they all came out to say that she'd been good at her job. But when it came down to speaking out as a character witness, people said that their support of her had already caused them problems, socially and professionally, and that they didn't want to further damage themselves. There's so much to this, and I think that's probably enough to go through for now to give people a huge overview. But there's still more, and I've linked to the article in the description. As always, you should really read it. But listen, like I said, maybe she did it. You know, maybe she's everything they say. But this here is not how the media has talked about it, and this is not how the courts have talked about it. And everything has been presented in the worst possible bad faith context to create the image of a woman who somehow was a horrific, homicidal monster, but hid even the vaguest hint of darkness from everyone around her and from herself until her spiraling out as a result of the accusations. It's not like she had diaries full of her deep, dark desires. We know she's a journaler. We know she writes notes. But there's nothing like this. In her entire life, she'd never had these thoughts anywhere. And many of the nurses still side with her, which, of course, the head of the department, Brary, thinks is insane, like they're just not facing the truth. But when it really comes down to it, there is so much reasonable doubt here. [02:12:20] Speaker A: Oh, vast, vast reasonable doubt. And one, you know, one is left with the impression of somebody who's too fucking bland, right. To string together a career of fucking, you know, infanticide. [02:12:33] Speaker B: Utterly guileless, this woman, you know, and that seems like part of what makes it so easy to pin this stuff on her is just that she's not. Yeah, she's blank. Right. And that. Yeah, that creates almost a, you know, this deeper evil to her as well. Like, oh, this, you know, just under the guise of this blank canvas is this actual monster. [02:13:00] Speaker A: I. I occupy two conflicting points of view which are unsatisfactory in that I think she did it. I still believe that she is guilty, but the means by which she was convicted and sent down were dreadful. [02:13:18] Speaker B: Mm hmm. Yeah. I mean, there's no, like. Yeah, given the evidence we have, like, there is no evidence that she did this. [02:13:26] Speaker A: It's. Yeah, completely. It's all circumstantial, but I find it to be overwhelmingly circumstantial. [02:13:31] Speaker B: How so? [02:13:32] Speaker A: When? [02:13:32] Speaker B: This is interesting to me because, you know, like, the fact that there is, like, there's literally nothing to connect her other than being there, which we have multiple accounts of people having had the same thing happen to them. I talked about a different guy when we talked about hospital horrors. Same thing had happened to. He just happened to be there when these people died, and he's still in prison for life for it. You have the woman that I talked about at the beginning that spawned this article in the first place, because of that miscarriage of justice, that same thing, she'd been in the presence of various deaths. So what is it about this, that despite there not being any evidence and all of her coworkers saying this did not happen and all of this stuff, what tells you she did this? [02:14:27] Speaker A: The general mortality rate, infant mortality across England and Wales in the NHS is around about three, three and a half deaths per 1000 live births. Right? [02:14:40] Speaker B: Mm hmm. [02:14:43] Speaker A: A room where she alone was the common factor. [02:14:47] Speaker B: She wasn't. Keep in mind, she wasn't the only common factor. She is a common factor, and not even the common factor in one of those that they said that she was there for. [02:14:57] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, the fact. The fact that a room that she was in had seven. [02:15:03] Speaker B: Sure. [02:15:05] Speaker A: When, like I said, the rate is three and a half per thousand across the UK. [02:15:11] Speaker B: I don't know how many. Okay. How many were born in that unit? I don't know. So that may not be crazy in and of itself, but also, again, think of the circumstances. How many across the. I would bet that across the UK, there are some neonatal units that have higher than others. Right. Because just like here, you know, hospitals are underfunded in certain places, places that minorities go to have higher death rates. You know, these are extremely vulnerable. Children, all of them, were born almost dead already. Right? So she can't have anything to do with that. She did not. Whatever disorders the parents had, she didn't give that to them. She'd never seen them before. All born in situations that they shouldn't have been. In a unit with seven people attending in the whole unit, she's getting three babies at a time when she's supposed to have one to take care of things like that. So the common denominator is not just Lucy again, because there's only seven people who work in this. [02:16:22] Speaker A: It's the hospital itself. [02:16:24] Speaker B: Hospital is the common denominator. Right? Like, you know, if you tell me I need to save babies, and you put me in the room with a peanut butter sandwich and a chainsaw, like, I'm sorry, those babies are gonna die, you know? Like, I can't do anything about that. [02:16:42] Speaker A: And I don't know if this information is accessible, but wouldn't it be interesting to note, has the mortality rate of the countess of Chester changed? [02:16:53] Speaker B: Oh, I'm sure it has. I mean, you think after this, they're not gonna fix shit? Like, you know. Yeah. Like, they are not going to let the same things happen when they have the eyes of the entire country on them. But like I said, it was happening in other units as well. It wasn't just in the neonatal unit. The hospital, on the whole, was having a higher mortality rate than they normally had. So this was institutional. It wasn't simply in that word. And like I said, she took on all the extra hours, so she was working, like, 20 hours a day. So there's only 4 hours that she would not have been there in a good chunk of the days. So, yeah, she's gonna be present all the time, you know, as these children are being born there who should not be being born there, all dying of completely different things, which means she is somehow changing her mo every single time, but not being caught for doing that. [02:17:58] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm experiencing similar. Similar feelings to how I was when I read the article the first time. It. It's full of holes. [02:18:07] Speaker B: Full of them. And that's. I mean, I think that's what it comes down to. Like, this is. I'm curious, just picking apart that, based on this evidence or whatever, but I think you come to the right conclusion here is whether or not you think she did it personally. That's not how the law should work. [02:18:24] Speaker A: You know, no arguments. [02:18:27] Speaker B: Yeah, there's no evidence. I have a gut feeling because I made correlations, even though we know correlation does not equal causation. There were some connections that looked like a pattern, and therefore, I can't hear otherwise. Right. Like. And that's where we kind of are with this, is that british people can't hear any of this. It'd be one thing for you to hear all of this and make up your mind, but you're not allowed to. And the justice system is running off of, you know, just vibes to bring it back to that again. It is a vibes based justice system, which we have here as well. You know, like, that. That can't work. That's not how things should work. And that's really the bigger picture here than did Lucy let me do it or not. It's that we don't have evidence she did this, and yet we're treating it. [02:19:25] Speaker A: Like, you know, and the suggestion that something this. This big could have been fumbled, that could have been gone wrong. You know, I. You know, certain as I am that there's one life, the. The knowledge and the reality that that can be taken from you for nothing that you've done right is so unsettling. [02:19:52] Speaker B: Yes, 100%. [02:19:54] Speaker A: And to try and empathize and to try and inhabit that condition of being somebody doing a lot of time for one of the worst fucking things a human can do when you didn't fucking do it right is so dark. [02:20:09] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. It's really the worst, worst case scenario. Completely. [02:20:15] Speaker A: Yes. So, yeah. Can I understand somebody on Reddit from the UK getting fucking eggy as an article suggesting that, you know, we've dropped a bollock on one of the most awful cases in our history? Yeah. Yeah, I can see why that might ruffle some feathers. [02:20:35] Speaker B: Yeah. It's an interesting sort of. Yeah. Story because of that. Like, what it means larger and on a larger scale for society and questioning this kind of stuff. And then to. Yeah. Just to have to think about what if we were wrong on this case and what have. What have we done? And then we've now allowed an institution to scapegoat an individual in this way, knowing that the institution itself was the problem and skirting that accountability by picking out a person. I mean, the fact that it's the head of the department and the head of the unit that are the ones that deeply drove this, while everyone else was saying she had nothing to do with this, every outside reviewer, every internal reviewer, every colleague said she had nothing to do this. But there's all these deaths, and the people in charge who would probably have to face the music for that went, um, no, it was her. Yeah. Right. Like, that's unsettling to think about. Like you said, like, that. That has to throw into, like, this sort of stark, I don't know, vision for you. Like, how easy it is for us to be stepped on under this system. [02:21:59] Speaker A: Yes, yes. And again, you pull on that thread. Well, hang on. What happened to her? [02:22:04] Speaker B: Right. [02:22:05] Speaker A: Wait a fucking minute. [02:22:06] Speaker B: Yeah. Who else do we have to think about? What else do we have to think about? What are the deeper issues here? Have we. Can we move on? Or do we have to, have to have a big conversation? [02:22:16] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. So I. Yes, I get the anger of the redditors, and I get why it's verboten to mention the article, and I get why people might want to keep it that way. [02:22:26] Speaker B: Yeah, totally. But, friends, if you have the time, read the whole article. Let us know what you think. Like I said, I'm as passionate as I always come across when I talk about anything. I am not saying she is for sure innocent. We don't have more information on this because the british press is not allowed to address it, so people can't expand upon what has been put here. Um, so we have this to go off of. But what do you take from this? What are your takeaways, um, on this case? Do you think she's guilty still? Do you think she's innocent? Um. You know, anything that you take from this? I'm curious about your thoughts. [02:23:12] Speaker A: Hmm. Or you are you. Do you think perhaps you might be, even if you think there's even a small chance that you might be german? [02:23:21] Speaker B: Lars, just please let us know. [02:23:25] Speaker A: Drop us a line, please. [02:23:26] Speaker B: Yeah, we'll help you. We'll help you figure it out. [02:23:29] Speaker A: We can bring you back. We can bring you back in. [02:23:32] Speaker B: Absolutely. And, of course, one thing you got to do once you figure out who you are. [02:23:39] Speaker A: Stay spooky. [02:23:40] Speaker B: That's right.