Ep. 188: acid rain & vacay vibes

[00:00:05] Speaker A: I'm on vacation, Mark. [00:00:06] Speaker B: Yeah, I know. What the fuck you doing? Recording a podcast for any holiday, you nutter. [00:00:10] Speaker A: Well, you know, I love podcasting. I love vacationing. It's all part of the vibe. I'm feeling really good about it. I'm in good spirits. The weather's been good. It's been raining this evening, but it's been, like, perfect weather. Amsterdam is beautiful. [00:00:26] Speaker B: It is beautiful, isn't it? [00:00:27] Speaker A: Fucking awesome city. So why not just, like, lean into that vibe and start the show off with a dark bit of science, but with a nice silver lining? [00:00:37] Speaker B: What I will say is that you have a glint in your eye and I can't see much of the room behind you, but I can tell that it's an awful mess. [00:00:47] Speaker A: It is. Yeah. [00:00:48] Speaker B: You know, so all signs that Corrie is on holiday, she lives in a shithole and is perfectly fine with it. [00:00:57] Speaker A: It was funny because when I turned on Zoom, I hadn't really processed what was behind me because I was downloading stuff onto Kiyo's computer and all that. I was all busy. And so when I opened up in the preview window, I was like, oh, no, here's the super messy bed. I think there's a coke zero on it somewhere. My backpack, things like that in the background. But you can't see as much of it as would be disastrous. And for the record, I really tried. When I got here, I was like, this is gonna be so tidy. I'm gonna put clothes away. But this is. [00:01:27] Speaker B: Why try. Why would you go against your nature? [00:01:33] Speaker A: Well, sometimes things can be better when you go against your nature. I like a tidiness. I just don't know how to be tidy. That's really the issue. So, you know, I came in here, I attempted it, but the room is really small. There wasn't enough room in the, like, drawers for both Kyo's and my stuff. And sooner or later, it became, you know, Mount Vesuvius coming out of my suitcase. It is what it is. [00:01:59] Speaker B: There's a rule that I fucking live by. And I'm certain I would have told you this before, but if you stay in for more than one night, you fucking unpack and you put your shit in drawers like you live there, because otherwise you, you know, you can't. You can't be your best self. [00:02:17] Speaker A: Well, see, yeah, that's what you got in my brain with that. And so now, like, I attempt to do that, but I was thwarted by the size of the Novatel Amsterdam cities rooms. Let the record show I listen to you. And I try to, you know, emulate your good example. I was just thwarted this time around. [00:02:40] Speaker B: Tell you what, just talk to me. Dark science. Amsterdam. Dark science. [00:02:44] Speaker A: It has nothing to do with Amsterdam. All I'm saying is I'm in a good mood. So we're gonna go with a thing that is dark, but turns bright. [00:02:52] Speaker B: Oh, that's lovely. See, you're not gonna scotch anything for me this week? [00:02:55] Speaker A: No, I'm not gonna ruin anything, not gonna destroy your world, anything like that. But listen, Mark. Yes, hello. I follow various retro instagrams that post throwback videos from, like, the nineties and two thousands. And, you know, a lot of time they remind me of some show or song that I totally forgot existed, which is always fun. You know, I never get sick of seeing that scene from the Samantha Mumba video where, like, she jumps over the railing and it turns into, like, a tall white stuntman instead of her. But listen, have you never seen that? [00:03:33] Speaker B: No. [00:03:35] Speaker A: It's so great. What was her song? Don't wanna love you if you don't love me. Remember that one? [00:03:41] Speaker B: Come on, send it over. [00:03:43] Speaker A: What is it? What is it called? I need you if you want? No, I don't know if I didn't tell you this tonight. You remember that song? [00:03:52] Speaker B: No, it sounds great, but she was. [00:03:55] Speaker A: A black irish singer. [00:03:58] Speaker B: I can play Samantha Mumba. [00:03:59] Speaker A: Oh, okay. You know who she is. She just didn't remember this. So there was a scene in the. [00:04:03] Speaker B: Video, full of cheek, beautiful, kind of plump cheeked, kind of hamster faced, lovely kind of looking girl. [00:04:09] Speaker A: Yeah, I guess I never really thought of her that way, but sure, why not? She had this, the video for that song. She jumps over like a fire escape. And of course, they made it into a stunt double, but it was like a full grown man in, like, a wig. And it's very obvious when you watch the video. And this comes up all the time when I'm watching these, like, retro instagrams. It's like every. Every couple weeks, someone posts, like. I remember when Samantha Mumba jumped over the fire escape and turned into a man. [00:04:44] Speaker B: Okay. [00:04:44] Speaker A: It's really delightful. Anyways, that's usually what's on these things. [00:04:48] Speaker B: Do you know, you might be interested to know that Samantha Mumba is now 40. [00:04:55] Speaker A: I'm almost 40. That adds up. [00:04:56] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. And she's really tried to make it back into the public eye. She released music in 20, 1314, 2020 and 23. But none of those efforts made it anywhere near the top for you. [00:05:13] Speaker A: Oh, well. Well, what even is that anymore, right? [00:05:15] Speaker B: Well, great point. [00:05:18] Speaker A: Nobody even makes albums. It's just, you put out singles and, you know, hope that the kids snap them up or whatever. So I'm sure there are people out there who are still die hard Samantha Mamba fans, and I am for that. [00:05:30] Speaker B: If she has one fan, then that is you. [00:05:33] Speaker A: Right? Exactly. But this instagram a week or so ago showed me something different than usual, and it reminded me of something that I hadn't thought of in a very long time. And that thing, it's the phenomenon of acid rain. Oh, do you remember acid rain, Mark? [00:05:55] Speaker B: Yeah, I do. I do. [00:05:57] Speaker A: Was that a big thing people were talking about in, like, the nineties in the UK? [00:06:01] Speaker B: Listen, it certainly. Yes, there was concern that it would be eroding the marble kind of architecture of the cities and. Yeah, definitely, definitely. Acid rain was definitely a thing. [00:06:16] Speaker A: Yeah, it was like. I remember it was such a big fear that, like, we were, you know, when you're a kid, you go out and you, like, open up your mouth, you stick your tongue out in the rain, and we would get, like, chastised for it. Like, oh, that might be acid rain. You shouldn't be, like, drinking the rain and things like that. Like, it was always on our minds at that point. And this fantastic video came up on my instagram with a PSA from Emilio Estevez being very serious to the point that it feels like a parody discussing the dangers that faced us if we didn't address the problem of acid rain. This is how big a deal it was. You've got a brat packer on television explaining to us. [00:06:57] Speaker B: And this was actually on air. This made it to screen on american tv. I'm Amelia restavest. [00:07:02] Speaker A: Commercial. Yeah. So wild. Yeah. And so watching this, I was like, hey, yeah. Like, whatever happened to that? It's just one of those things, like how when we were kids, we were all terrified of quicksand, and it turned out that cartoons had grossly overrepresented its prevalence in day to day life. [00:07:24] Speaker B: Let me see. Quicksand. Yes. Electricity kind of way stations. Electricity kind of, you know, little repeater stations that you get outside towns because there was a PSA, I guess you would call it a safety video that we all saw in. In schools where some kids were playing Frisbee and the Frisbee went into a power station. And the one kid climbs over the fence. [00:07:49] Speaker A: No. [00:07:50] Speaker B: And reaches for the frisbee and touches the frisbee. And there's this one shot of a pair of jeans clad legs bursting into flames. [00:07:58] Speaker A: He gets Tim from Jurassic park. [00:08:02] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've got to send you this video because it's fucking terrifying. [00:08:07] Speaker A: Psas were terrifying back in the day. [00:08:09] Speaker B: Yeah, intentionally, but it has the same vibe to it as threads. You know what I mean? The same era, same clothes. [00:08:16] Speaker A: It's like. Wait, you never watched arrested development, did you? [00:08:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I did. First couple of. [00:08:21] Speaker A: Oh, you did watch it. Okay, so it's like, you know, the. The friend of the dad who always, you know, with the arm that comes off. [00:08:28] Speaker B: Exactly, exactly. [00:08:29] Speaker A: That's why you always leave a note. Yeah. Like, psas were insane back in the day and were recruited. [00:08:42] Speaker B: I've never been elected. [00:08:42] Speaker A: There you go. The other. Did you guys have Punky Brewster? The show Punky Brewster? [00:08:48] Speaker B: Yeah. It might have been, like, on cable over here. It was never big. [00:08:51] Speaker A: Okay, so you remember, like, on top of the psas, they'd also have, like, very special episodes. [00:08:57] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:08:57] Speaker A: And, like, they were, like. So tv shows always had episodes that were psas, essentially, you know, like the famous saved by the bell. I'm so excited. I'm so scared. Episode Punky Brewster had one about getting locked inside refrigerators. [00:09:16] Speaker B: Made me really concerned about refrigerators. She ra often would be allowed to various billions of them. [00:09:22] Speaker A: I mean, Gi Joe was just all psas. You know, a lot of that stuff was. But the fridge one really stuck with me. I thought somehow I was accidentally gonna get locked inside as a kid. It was like cherry almost died in there, and I was like, this will be me. [00:09:37] Speaker B: I will. I'm unlocking core memories here. The worst and most fucking stupidly transparent and awful one of those was. I will always remember Superman, Superman himself, Kal El, the last son of Krypton, warning me not to smoke cigarettes through battling with a villain called Nick Otien. Fuck off. How fucking basic is that? [00:10:03] Speaker A: I mean, that, like, that feels. It goes, like. It goes back to the roots of those comics, though. Like, if you, like, go to the OG, Superman comics and stuff like that. It was always, like, very blatant, the, you know, in usually cool ways, like, you know, fighting the KKK or things like that. But it's, like, not a subtle comic. [00:10:25] Speaker B: Aren't you looking up nicotine now? [00:10:28] Speaker A: Oh, boy. We are so far off track here. [00:10:32] Speaker B: Nicotine was created by Sachi and Sachi and the british health board, okay? And he's a. He's just a fucking rapey looking bloke in a cigarette hat. I. [00:10:48] Speaker A: Well, I don't know who brought us Emilio Estevez in the acid rain ad. I would have to go and look at that again. But this caused me, at like 01:00 a.m. half asleep to start googling. Like, whatever happened to acid rain? I was sitting there wondering, you know, was it ever real? Is it still an issue when we're just ignoring it? Like we ignore all the other climate catastrophes we face these days? Like, what was the deal with that? And actually, I'm curious, what do you think, mark, if you had to guess, was acid rain a real threat or a media made panic? [00:11:19] Speaker B: Knowing what I know now, I think it probably had a kernel of scientific credibility to it, but was amplified and echoed and tabloidified and was kind of, you know, the. The danger was exaggerated. [00:11:41] Speaker A: Interesting. Well, to an extent, maybe there was. I did find in all of my research, there was one irish times article where a guy went hard on the idea that this was all a myth and did not, you know, it was not a thing. And, you know, the scientists just don't want to cop to the fact that it was never a thing and all that kind of stuff. And he was a scientist, but like, everything else I read said this was a thing. [00:12:07] Speaker B: Okay. [00:12:08] Speaker A: But, like, I think there is a degree. [00:12:09] Speaker B: But you say was, so what? [00:12:11] Speaker A: Yeah. Did it get better? [00:12:12] Speaker B: Did it go away? [00:12:13] Speaker A: Right, we'll get there. But I think there's like a degree to which, like there was a bit of a panic that maybe is overblown about it, but it worked to good effect. Okay, so let me first explain what acid rain is. According to scientific american, acid rain is precipitation with high levels of sulfuric or nitric acids. [00:12:35] Speaker B: Uh huh. [00:12:36] Speaker A: And it's caused by sulfur dioxide, which is. [00:12:39] Speaker B: I'm gonna pause you a sec because the kids have just come back. Can we get them on? I mean, if you want that run. We're recording. Say hello. Hello, Owens. Come back from the comedy. Peter. Say hi. Right now, your mum has given me very strict instructions that you are to go to fucking bed. Right. Shaved her up, whatever. My ear, I cut it. I cut it while I'm shaving my ear. [00:13:06] Speaker A: I'm leaving all of this in, by the way. [00:13:07] Speaker B: And it was honestly, yes, I did. Um, tiny little cut. Right? Look at. Look in the bin. Yeah. It honestly, it would not stop bleeding. That's why I'm sat here with a fucking plaster on myself. Yeah. And gushing blood. Anyway, look, do me a favor. Don't make me. All right? Yeah. Make a hot chocolate and read in bed. [00:13:35] Speaker A: I'm. Yeah. [00:13:36] Speaker B: Plan. All right, close it up. Love you, love you, love you, love you. [00:13:40] Speaker A: So cute. What a plan that is. Your child like that bedtime routine. [00:13:45] Speaker B: Yeah, that. Yeah. Hot chocolate and a waffle and read in bed. What could be better than that? [00:13:52] Speaker A: That is a small u right there. [00:13:54] Speaker B: It is. [00:13:54] Speaker A: It is. [00:13:55] Speaker B: It is. [00:13:56] Speaker A: So, okay, back to where we were on this. Caused by sulfur dioxide, which is primarily produced from burning coal, among other things, including sulfur. [00:14:08] Speaker B: Sulfurs isn't a compound or chemical that you hear about and think, oh, that's good. We need more of that around. [00:14:12] Speaker A: Right? Yeah. No one's ever been like, yeah, bring on the sulfur, please. So, given England's disastrous history with the effects of coal burning, which you may remember from my cold open on the great fog of London, it's probably no surprise that the term acid rain originated in the UK. In 1872, a paper called the Air and beginning of Chemical Climatology, written by Robert Angus Smith, described the acidic rain that was falling around industrial Manchester at the time. [00:14:47] Speaker B: Tell me again when this was, please. [00:14:48] Speaker A: 1872. Long time ago. [00:14:50] Speaker B: Okay. [00:14:51] Speaker A: But obviously, we're talking peak coal production once you get into that, you know, second industrial revolution kind of era, and it was sort of a catch all term. It is sort of a catch all term that includes things like acid fog, acid snow, and acid hail, which all sounds straight out of a horror movie. [00:15:13] Speaker B: All acidic precipitation. [00:15:15] Speaker A: Yes. The actual scientific term that encompasses all of this is acid deposition, which includes these wet forms, as well as dry depositions, which happen close to the source of the emissions and can transform into salts in the soil. So acid salt in soil, this is obviously bad. And, well, get to why. But wet depositions are worse because they can travel for thousands of kilometers. What initially started specifically in industrial areas by the mid 20th century, when we had started talking about man made climate change, had become a much more widespread problem than that. These emissions could travel on the wind and obviously in the clouds, hence the whole precipitation thing. [00:16:01] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:16:01] Speaker A: So we're basically just cycling them around the earth. The US was blowing sulfur dioxide into Canada, the UK was blowing it into Sweden and Norway. It was an international crisis. Like, it didn't matter if Norway stopped using coal, because as long as England was using it, they were fucked. [00:16:19] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:16:19] Speaker A: It's as if black lung was no longer a thing you got from working in the mines, but from existing anywhere within half a continent of a line. [00:16:28] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. See, right. Listen, that. That feels to me, progress is insidious, and it's a very short distance. It feels from, you know, the. The thrill of discovery to black lung and microplastics in your nuts. [00:16:48] Speaker A: 100%, yeah. [00:16:50] Speaker B: Chronologically, you know, the time between finding out and fucking around is, yeah, one. [00:16:56] Speaker A: Follows the other over the past, you know, two centuries, like, where we've really sped all of that up so much. And it's interesting being here in Amsterdam where, like, one of the things I've told Keough, because I've been going to my very normal quarry, types of museums and things like that. So, you know, maritime, maritime museums and castles with like a science bent and things like that. And like, one of the things about this is like, it makes you realize how antisocial our cultures are because we don't see everything as interconnected and we don't feel it is our responsibility to. And I don't, when I say we, I mean from a societal, especially structural and governmental level, I think obviously, from conversations we understand that we are part holistically of this whole thing. But societally, we come from very individualistic societies and increasingly becoming more so. We've always been like this, but it's, in the UK, increasingly more individualistic. And here there is so much focus on combating these kinds of things and making a society that recognizes that our pushes forward in technology have wreaked so much havoc on everything. So then what do we do to mitigate that? And in fact, I was trying to find, like, when I went to the maritime museum, I found, like, about like, all these floods and things like that that had happened here, but they're a forward focused country. So I was like, maybe I'll do a cold open on, like, one of the major floods that happened here. But they don't dwell on it. Like, when we have something like that, we'll have all these, like, tragedies. Oh, it was such a tragedy. We hold a memorial for it every year and talk about what a, what a horrible tragedy this was. They don't do that. They go, okay, we just then fixed everything in society that made that happen and we focus on that. And so it's really hard to find, like, details on, like, how horrific something was, because what they want to talk about is like, you know, these people died. And so instead we changed the entire infrastructure of this country, country to make it so that places don't flood anymore and stuff like that. It's just such a fascinating thing to see them kind of go, okay, we know how advances in technology and things like that have caused this stuff to happen. What do we do to, like, shift that? And our countries don't do that. They just simply don't, you know, that's been sort of pushed off on private companies that have the, like, will to be green and things like that. [00:19:42] Speaker B: I don't. I don't expect a full answer to this. Right, but what. What are the characteristics of countries that have done that versus yours and mine? [00:19:54] Speaker A: I mean, obviously, I think that there's, like, a collectivist society, a way that there's. I think, you know, religion plays a part in this. You know, there's like, a whole bunch of things to this. And one of the things, like, I'm not gonna pretend this is like a utopia. I don't know enough about their politics to say that. And I know that most of Europe is going through a lot of, like, right wing fascist stuff, so I don't know if that's. [00:20:16] Speaker B: Yeah, France is today. France today has lurched to the right. [00:20:21] Speaker A: Yeah, they've always been kind of horrible, but, yeah, it's especially so now. And. But I think that there is something to like this country being developed without a monarchy, with, you know, religion not having the same kind of foothold that a lot of other countries have, that they've kind of always had a sort of accepting open society from the histories that I was reading, like, where they were really kind of like, hey, whatever, do whatever the fuck you want, and, like, liberal, a very liberal society. And I think that that leads to them being able to do sort of collectivist things that more morally rigid societies have a hard time doing. I think that there is a degree to which we, and I speak for America in this case, that we are sort of, like, from a moral perspective, opposed to fixing things because we think we should do it ourselves and that capitalism will fix things and, like, that's God's way, you know? So, yeah, I think there's a lot to the history of this place that allows it to be as liberal as it is compared to our cultures in the way that they developed. [00:21:46] Speaker B: Very, very interesting stuff. [00:21:47] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. It's something I'd like to delve into for sure, but it's been interesting here. But so that is to say, you know, this acid rain by, you know, the nineties, two thousands was considered a major problem in Canada, England, Scotland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, West Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, Russia, Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, southwest China, India and Japan. It was, you know, a big concern everywhere. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it had a pretty diverse array of effects. For example, as you talked about before, it could damage buildings and structures, which could range from simply dirtying the surfaces of things to corroding metal and causing paint and stone to actually deteriorate. In fact, we always say that, like, the Statue of Liberty is green. Because that's what happens when copper reacts, oxidizes. [00:22:42] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:22:42] Speaker A: Yeah, right. That's what I had always heard. Not true. That is not accurate. [00:22:48] Speaker B: So you are scotching? You scotch? [00:22:50] Speaker A: I am scotching. I'm sorry, I just scotched something. It is not from pure oxygen. [00:22:55] Speaker B: You can help yourself. [00:22:57] Speaker A: No, it's just in my nature, it has to happen at some point. It's from sulfur and oxygen reacting with copper. And in fact, the color that comes from that is called verdigris. And it's been used in paints and things like that for centuries. So it's not something that simply happens. Cause if that were the case, like all of our. I don't know if you have anything, if you have these, but pennies here are made from copper, and they will turn green if they interact with certain things. But, like, all of our pennies aren't green. They're copper colored because they're not coming into contact with sulfur. And so, you know, at the time, in the 18 hundreds when the Statue of Liberty was built and placed in New York harbor, they were burning a shit ton of coal. And because of that sulfur coming off of it, it turned the Statue of Liberty Green. And we just, like, pretend that's not how that happened, which is insane to me. But weirdly, despite all of that, according to the EPA, walking or even swimming in these acidified conditions is actually not harmful to humans, at least not in water. [00:24:17] Speaker B: We'd know by now, right? [00:24:19] Speaker A: Yeah. The emissions that cause acid rain are actually far more dangerous to us when it's in the air, creating smog and things like that than it is when it's in water form. But it's devastating to the environment in various ways. For example, according to a 2006 paper in the Journal of Environmental Biology, due to the interaction of these acids with other constituents of the atmosphere, protons are released, causing increase in the soil acidity. Lowering of soil ph mobilizes and leaches away nutrient cations and increases availability of toxic heavy metals. Such changes in the soil chemical characteristics reduce the soil fertility, which ultimately causes the negative impact on growth and productivity of forest trees and crop plants. [00:25:07] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:25:07] Speaker A: So, heavy metal. [00:25:09] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:25:10] Speaker A: That's the takeaway from that paragraph. Yes. Basically, it was this ever growing issue that saw things like leaves being stripped from whole ass forests, just bare trees, because the trees lacked the nutrients to grow them, and they became weak. In places like the Gezera mountains in the Czech Republic, dead and dying trees were a common sight due to acid rain. And it's also devastating to lakes and streams, first slowing the ph level and then also releasing aluminum into the water where it's ingested by trout, bass, frogs, salmon, crayfish, mayflies, and phytoplankton, among other things. And all that stuff is eaten by other stuff. So you're introducing acidic, aluminum filled prey to the food chain. And worse, you see a reduction in the fish population as their food dies off. [00:26:05] Speaker B: Yep. [00:26:06] Speaker A: To this day, according to the New York state government, many bodies of water in the northeastern United States are still too acidic to sustain aquatic life. Acid deposition just straight up made whole bodies of water that had once been vibrant ecosystems, fully inhospitable to life, and they haven't bounced back. [00:26:24] Speaker B: And for clarity, there can be no other explanation for this other than industrialization. That's us. All us. [00:26:33] Speaker A: We'll get there. Okay. This is definitely us. Yes. I will talk about how they figured that out. So the thing about acid rain is that while it doesn't drill a hole through your roof or burn your skin or anything, that's easily visible to us, the real danger to do with how far it can spread these harmful emissions and how it gets into the environment and disrupts the ecosystem. Trees unable to properly photosynthesize. Phytoplankton dying off. So the insects that feed off of them have less food, which obviously leads to bigger and bigger animals on the food chain dying off. Rivers and lakes being unable to support life, which, again, disrupts the food chain. Soil being stripped of nutrients, making it so things don't grow or grow very weak, all of that kind of stuff. [00:27:20] Speaker B: And, you know, I wonder if. I mean, I remember an episode a year or two ago where I talked about bioamplification. When a fucking toxin enters the food chain, like mercury, for example, the amount grows according to the size of the, you know, the further up the food chain it goes. [00:27:39] Speaker A: Right? Right. [00:27:40] Speaker B: You know, the bigger the risk. [00:27:43] Speaker A: Right? Yeah. And that didn't come up in the things I was reading, but is probably quite relevant to this for sure. But all of that is pretty unsexy from a marketing perspective. And it's kind of wild. That became such a huge thing. Now we are literally seeing constant floods and deadly heat waves and unseasonable cold snaps and bodies showing up on a melted Everest and things like that, all of which should make us go, holy fuck, we're in danger, but we don't do anything. And yet acid rain, which, like, makes buildings look dirty and kills off the food that causes bugs we don't like to thrive, gripped the globe. Obviously, that's a good thing, though, because the world came together to defeat the scourge once and for all. Kind of. Here's what happened. In the early 1960s, scientist gene Lykans collected a rain sample in a forest in New Hampshire and was like, holy fuck. This is a lot more acidic than it should be. A hundred times more. In fact. He and others connected this back to that Manchester research from the late 18 hundreds that I told you about and were like, listen, we need to figure out why this is happening, because it has the potential to be really bad for humans and the environment. And just to make sure they weren't overreacting, scientists ran tests on a healthy lake to see what happened when they added acid to them. Sure enough, over the course of seven years, the plankton the lake trout fed on died off. And then the lake trout stopped reproducing because they were starving. People thought before that the acid in the water would have negligible damage or would need to have a high volume to make this kind of thing happen. But here they'd prove that at farther, far smaller quantities than anyone had thought before, you could literally kill off species. This all coming from these toxins that were being emitted. And as I said, the toxins doing this would spread. It was soon realized that emissions from around Pennsylvania in the US, were causing the acidification of lakes and streams in Canada, making it an international dilemma, and one that it was imperative to figure out. And the same is going on across the pond. But of course, as with, just transmitted. [00:30:07] Speaker B: Through the kind of the water cycle, just transmitting. [00:30:09] Speaker A: Exactly the water cycle. [00:30:10] Speaker B: Cloud migration. [00:30:12] Speaker A: Precisely. I mean, we could see this like, on a. In a really stark way with the canadian wildfires last year. Right? Like, it was the entire, like, down to, like, Florida people were, you know, getting covered in all of this smoke and yellow sky and all that kind of stuff. So we can see how just this stuff travels that way. So, yeah, water cycle. Just bringing it from one place to another. As with climate change and cigarettes and alcohol and everything else that makes a lot of money for big corporations, but is terrible for everyone else. There were acid rain deniers as scientists found more and more evidence the burning of coal and auto emissions were fucking everything up. The companies responsible pushed back, denying the existence of acid rain, trying to instill doubt in the public, and politicians attempting to cover up and downplay how much they were to blame and doing their best to stall any meaningful legislation, basically just trying to get it hung up so that no one could pass anything. That this was a phenomenon in which you could directly point to the cause and that it was in these situations, like one country actively poisoning another, though, meant that there were larger factors in play than just appeasing some rich folks. [00:31:27] Speaker B: Right. I know that the word evil isn't helpful. [00:31:31] Speaker A: Right, right. [00:31:32] Speaker B: And time and time again we've said how there as an entity, there is no such thing as evil. But I think the closest we have, my position is the closest we have to tangible evil on earth right now is those who hold up progress and healing and hasten catastrophe, global fucking ecological catastrophe, for the sake of dollars and pounds. Yeah, that is fucking sickening to me. [00:32:04] Speaker A: Yeah. It's so violent. One of those things that I truly can't wrap my head around. I mean, I think that's why we reach for the word evil. Right. It's because there's like a depth of like a lack of empathy and things like that that it's so hard to process. Yeah. You need something outside of the words that we have to explain, like that someone can just lack any sense of concern for anyone but themselves and the amount of wealth that they can amass, you know? So. Yeah, 100% with you on this. And one of the things that makes it so hard to do anything about climate change writ large is that we haven't applied the attribution science broadly enough to be like, look, Chevron is responsible for this much damage and shell this much and so on and so on. Obviously in that book, the heat will kill you. First we heard about scientists that are trying to do that attribution science and to be able to like, actually quantify how much each of these big corporations is responsible for this. [00:33:12] Speaker B: Yes. And that. That is, you know, that gives one a little hope, right? [00:33:18] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. I think it's one of the few things that can really glacial pace of. [00:33:22] Speaker B: Legal fucking, you know, the legal process though. [00:33:26] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:33:26] Speaker B: And again, you know, the power wielded by those with endless financial resources to frustrate and delay. [00:33:35] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. That's. It is like delaying things is one of the biggest practices that these people use is just make it so that you just kick it down the line. Kick it down the line. Kick it down the line. Because none of us have the money to keep something going indefinitely. But they do. [00:33:53] Speaker B: But, yeah, that feels like the closest thing to. The closest thing to a practical route out. BP and Enron fucking pay to fix the world. [00:34:06] Speaker A: That I 100% agree because I think that's, you know, it's kind of like taking someone to civil court. Right. Like there are times in which like someone clearly did a murder, for example, like OJ Simpson. Right? Like, clearly did murders, but they couldn't get those on them. But they could take him to civil court and make him pay for them. The same, you know, the same kinds of things that, like, you know, Alex Jones has been doing and things like that. Like, you can take someone to civil court and make them pay for stuff that a criminal court, you couldn't necessarily get them to do. And that's kind of what these attribution scientists are trying to do, is be like, well, the burden of proof to say that they have done something criminal is something we're probably never going to meet. But we can quantify how much damage that they've done and make them pay restitution in order to do this. And one of the things that if they are able to do that, then is that that makes it unprofitable for them to continue to destroy the world, because they're going to have to keep on paying for it. And so they're gonna have to find new ways to use energy better and use our resources better. That doesn't cause them to have to constantly pay out the ass for the damage that they're doing. [00:35:18] Speaker B: Have you ever heard the term a wet bulb event? [00:35:21] Speaker A: I have, yeah. We hear about those a lot where. [00:35:23] Speaker B: I live that I can't remember where I've read it, but people are speculating that a kind of a large scale wet bulb event where people. It's so hot and humid that people literally can't perspire enough and die from heat, that will be the tipping point whereby, you know, motherfuckers start getting called to account. [00:35:45] Speaker A: Right. Yeah, but it's like one of those things we're like, I sure don't want it. [00:35:51] Speaker B: No, certainly not. [00:35:52] Speaker A: It's not there. It's like such a deeply worst case scenario. Just mass death of us choking on our own breath from the humidity is not great. But so, yeah, like, this is kind of the problem, right? Like, as long as we can't pinpoint which one of them is responsible for x amount or whatever, it's easy to sort of pass the buck and insist no one in particular is responsible for it. But in this case, they were like, nah, you fucks. We can see where this is coming from measurably. And it became a bipartisan issue, but it took a long time. The Clean Air act of 1963 was sort of the, like, big, monumental legislation that cleaned up the air throughout the United States and, of course, throughout North America as a result of, you know, us cleaning up our act. And in fact, if you ever, like, look at, like, pictures from, like, Los Angeles and like the fifties and stuff like that, there are some pretty incredible smog pictures from before the Clean Air act was passed. And people like, literally wearing gas masks and stuff like that because it was so bad. But it took until 1990 for there to be legislation on acid rain despite the fact that we'd known about it for all of that time. The acid rain program implemented that year had matching legislation on the canadian side of the border. So we were all doing our part to reduce our emissions and keep this from happening. And in 1998, the UK, which had been referred to by scandinavian countries as the dirty old man of Europe throughout the seventies and eighties. [00:37:29] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. [00:37:30] Speaker A: Enacted the Gothenburg protocol to reduce their sulfur and nitrogen emissions. So by tackling the problem from the source, they managed to restore many of the ecosystems that were on the verge of destruction. Although, like I said, not everything has returned to normal. And there are plenty of articles and stuff about the issues that still persist, including the fact, oh, God. [00:37:53] Speaker B: Air quality, I believe in London has improved quite a lot since hugely, like the mid 2010s. There was, like, a clean air act, which is. Which has done a lot of good. [00:38:05] Speaker A: Yeah. And you've had, like, those zones, like, specifically for driving and, like, where you have to pay like a tax or whatever, like a drive, things like that. Like a lot of stuff to reduce the amount of emissions because the UK has historically had terrible air and spread it to everybody else. And so these various things have sort of been pushed. And I think, like, the Gothenburg protocol was specifically to reduce emissions of sulfur by 84% from pre 1980 numbers by 2010. [00:38:45] Speaker B: Right. [00:38:45] Speaker A: So, you know, that's kind of, I imagine probably sort of then had a re evaluation once that came about. And I think it was nitrogen emissions by 49% or something like that. So huge, huge difference between 1998 and 2010. [00:39:04] Speaker B: Hilarious to me that since then, helicopter crash survivor and comedy bigot Nigel Farage, his fucking clown party reform, one of their manifesto pledges is to scrap the Clean Air act and the ultra low emission zone. Fucking get rid of that woke nonsense. What, Trump, it's helped you. [00:39:24] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. And that's like, you know, that's the thing is, like, when you have sort of a moral belief that people have the right to unlimited extraction and unlimited capitalism, you know, this becomes a freedom issue, right. It becomes something that is like, about protecting the national identity and, you know, protecting our rights, even though we can, like, you can tangibly see how much things are better than this. Like I said, there are still polluters that we haven't fully dealt with, one that shouldn't surprise anybody, being emissions from fertilizers and livestock feed. As is the case with climate change broadly, our reliance on animal products is one of the things that keeps us from fully eliminating acid rain. There's also a lot of issues with this in China, which is obviously one of the more industrial places in the world. So of course there's things that they're dealing with with the acid rain there. But an important takeaway is that the massive push to freak the public out was a huge part of getting things done. So, yes, maybe it was a little overblown, but, you know, as we've discussed, acid rain sounds scary as fuck, and we were all deeply concerned about it. So it didn't matter what side of the political aisle you're on, and building cross party coalitions is one of the most significant things that can be done when it comes to climate change. [00:40:48] Speaker B: I'd love to know who first coined the term. [00:40:50] Speaker A: I already told you that. [00:40:52] Speaker B: Did you? [00:40:52] Speaker A: Yeah, that guy in Manchester in the 18th. [00:40:54] Speaker B: Ah, yes, of course, of course, yes. [00:40:57] Speaker A: But yes, he's. I mean, he certainly didn't realize he was doing marketing when he did it. Yeah, exactly. But when it was later deployed, it worked out. I mean, that's a lot better than acid. What did I say it was called? [00:41:12] Speaker B: Acid. Acid precipitation. [00:41:14] Speaker A: Deposition. [00:41:15] Speaker B: Deposition, right. [00:41:16] Speaker A: Like that does. I can't even remember it, and I've said it like 14 minutes times. So, clearly, acid rain works. Among the strategies deployed to combat acid rain by people who were working on it was, quote, talking to coal workers at sportsmen's shows, engaging them in conversations about clean water for fishing salmon, and going for walks in war cemeteries where acidity was ruining the limestone of gravestones. It's like meeting people where they are. This is stuff that, like, the average dude cares about, right? Just like Joe Schmo likes fishing and thinks we should preserve, like, these cemeteries, things like that, right? Yeah. And Adele Hurley explained, quote, a broad spectrum of people came to believe that it was important to protect natural resources. Our forests, our northern lakes. And the fish, they contain resources that belong to everyone. A sense that we were all in it together, that it could be fixed, and that it was to all of our benefit. To do so meant that we were able to actually make the necessary moves to fix this. And what's wild to the point we were just talking about, is that most of us have no idea this happened. People get so up in arms about the idea of regulating big corporations, thinking somehow we're all gonna see costs of shit going up or some of our freedoms are gonna be taken or whatever. But we mostly conquered acid rain and none of us even noticed. We should really talk about that more. [00:42:44] Speaker B: It's not a popular view, but freedom is killing us. [00:42:54] Speaker A: Yeah, it's true. [00:42:56] Speaker B: As is democracy. As is capitalism. [00:42:59] Speaker A: Right. [00:43:00] Speaker B: Burn it down. Start again. Benevolent dictatorship. [00:43:06] Speaker A: Now, I mean, to, like, honestly, though, just thinking about where I am right here, you know, I don't think anyone here thinks they are not free. In a city where, like, there's almost no cars. Everyone bikes and walks everywhere. [00:43:23] Speaker B: Tram is made. [00:43:24] Speaker A: Yeah. Where you can't get, like, you know, a plastic soda bottle. Everything's in glass. You know, you have to pay an extra fee if you want to take something out and have it packaged, you know, stuff like that. I don't think anyone feels like they're not free because of this stuff, you know? So I think it's. It's the. The limits of the capitalistic idea of freedom is killing us. [00:43:49] Speaker B: It isn't gonna be easy, and it isn't gonna be pretty. And people will die. Well, in the short term, but we're gonna rip off the plaster. It will hurt, and there will be disruption. And we have to say goodbye to the old ways, which are the current ways. [00:44:08] Speaker A: Mm hmm. [00:44:10] Speaker B: But it's a sacrifice I'm prepared to make. [00:44:16] Speaker A: Oh, good. Well, at least that's one. [00:44:20] Speaker B: Let me quote directly from my notes, if I may. [00:44:22] Speaker A: Yes, please do. [00:44:24] Speaker B: Fucking look at these nerds. Oh, mise en scene. [00:44:27] Speaker A: I don't think anyone has ever said mise en scene in such a horny way before. [00:44:31] Speaker B: The way I whispered the word sex, cannibal, Rousseau. [00:44:34] Speaker A: Worst comes to worst, Mark, I'm willing to guillotine you for science. [00:44:38] Speaker B: Thank you. That's really, really sweet. It's cold outside, but my pancreas is talking to me. I'm fucking. I'm gonna leg it. [00:44:44] Speaker A: You know how I feel about that, Mark. [00:44:46] Speaker B: I think you feel great about it. There's a thrilling kind of social upheaval going on here in the UK right now as I speak, as a keen and enthusiastic and committed watcher of both people and society. Always got one eye on the news, always got one finger on the pulse, always got an eye on the zeitgeist. I always fucking think I like to know which way the wind is blowing. Right? [00:45:19] Speaker A: Sure. [00:45:20] Speaker B: And there is a very specific tectonic plate underpinning british culture, which is shifting today. [00:45:28] Speaker A: Okay? [00:45:29] Speaker B: Now, if you go up to anyone in the street in Britain, right? In the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, if you just ask anyone who is the best british necrophile, right? [00:45:45] Speaker A: Oh, God. Okay. [00:45:47] Speaker B: Everyone will straightaway say David Fuller, right? [00:45:50] Speaker A: Okay. [00:45:51] Speaker B: He's the king of the genre. He was fucking great at it. Over abused over a hundred corpses over a 13 year period. [00:46:00] Speaker A: Right? [00:46:01] Speaker B: This guy was the top dog in the field. Right? [00:46:06] Speaker A: Right. Yep. [00:46:08] Speaker B: So it's thrilling to me to see someone else is coming for the crown. [00:46:14] Speaker A: Oh, Boyden. [00:46:15] Speaker B: Someone else has taken a run at the big man in the UK. Ah, yeah. Uh, just this week, a guy from Grimsby, a guy by the name of Damon Tingy. T I n g a y. Damon Tinge. Damon Tinge has been jailed. He's been sent down for six years for an incident of corpse bothering, which I just had to bring to this fucking podcast. [00:46:47] Speaker A: Oh, no. [00:46:48] Speaker B: And as I talk to you about this, this is going straight out to one of the kings of our community, right? Paul. Paul Thomas. [00:46:56] Speaker A: Okay? [00:46:57] Speaker B: One of our most valued and consistent pillars of the Joag fucking online community. Paul. Thanks for bringing this to our attention. Damon Ting. I'm going to just talk to you about the story, right? In march of this year in Grimsby, in the Diana princess of Wales Hospital. Damon Tinge of 30 years old, right. No, kind of. No fixed address. Kind of a transient guy breaks into the grounds of the Diana, Princess of Wales Hospital. You bastard. [00:47:33] Speaker A: Not Diana. [00:47:34] Speaker B: You bastard. Leaving a chalky white stain on the dress of the people's princess. You motherfucker. Right. [00:47:41] Speaker A: Mm hmm. [00:47:43] Speaker B: Breaks into the grounds of the hospital on his bike. [00:47:47] Speaker A: On his bike. [00:47:50] Speaker B: Is seen on CCTV driving around the grounds of the hospital, hiding from security for 2 hours. Right. [00:47:56] Speaker A: Okay. [00:47:57] Speaker B: Swinging from a bottle of alcohol, swigging from a bottle of spirits. [00:48:01] Speaker A: Sure. [00:48:03] Speaker B: Hides from security for 2 hours. CCTV witnessed witnesses him dropping his bottle of whiskey at one point by mistake. Whiskey or brandy, he's then seen dropping to his hands and knees, sucking the fucking booze from the doorway floor. [00:48:19] Speaker A: Oh, no. [00:48:21] Speaker B: Oh, geez. Breaks into the morgue. I say, breaks in, pushes a door which is loosely fastened, right. Pushes a door which is held closed by, like, a magnet or something. Something, right. [00:48:33] Speaker A: They probably don't deal with a lot of people trying to get in. [00:48:37] Speaker B: Hey, no one wants to get in the morgue. [00:48:39] Speaker A: Right? Yes, exactly. [00:48:41] Speaker B: Well, apart from Damon Tinge, who gets into the morgue and then spends four minutes. Four minutes in the morgue. [00:48:50] Speaker A: Okay. [00:48:51] Speaker B: Four minutes in which he opens some ten drawers, pulls out ten corpses, pulls off shrouds. And opens bags and. And disturbs bodies. [00:49:04] Speaker A: Okay. [00:49:05] Speaker B: He is seen on CCTV punching a corpse. [00:49:10] Speaker A: Okay. [00:49:10] Speaker B: Yeah. Punches a fucking. Punches a dead guy. And in that four minutes, is seen on CCTV committing penetrative intercourse. Yeah, yeah. With a dead guy. [00:49:27] Speaker A: Wow. [00:49:28] Speaker B: He is then apprehended all the bases fucking. He had four minutes. And, my God, did he make him count. Very different in his mo to David. [00:49:39] Speaker A: Fuller, who's little less meticulous. [00:49:43] Speaker B: David Fuller meticulously documented his exploits. [00:49:48] Speaker A: Well, in a sense, did nothing. Our friend here, by being captured all over CCTV. [00:49:54] Speaker B: Yes, yes, yes, he did. I mean, you know, his. His star shone bright, but brief. You know, the brightest flames burn quickest. That's what they say. And Damon Tenge is tonight serving, you know, his first few weeks of a six year sentence at his Majesty's pleasure for punching and fucking corpses in a four minute fucking absolute necro fucking weirdo binge. His lawyer went to bat for him, mind. His lawyer called him. What did his lawyer call him? His lawyer had some lovely things to say about the guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let me go. The judge says your actions were depraved, perverted, indeed. Utterly grotesque. But, yeah, his lawyer said that it was clearly out of character for this friendly, kind, considerate man. [00:50:51] Speaker A: I mean, yeah, like, we're talking about, like, a transient dude who has gone on quite a bender. If we're at the point where he's, like, sucking it off of the ground, like, it feels like jail is not what this fella needs, you know? [00:51:06] Speaker B: Hey, there was a red flag. I mean, some years previous, he was arrested, uh, for that classic. That classic crime of, uh, walking around with a sword down his trousers. [00:51:18] Speaker A: A sword. [00:51:19] Speaker B: It's always the swords, isn't it? It's always what the tabloids refer to as a samurai sword. [00:51:26] Speaker A: It's just like. Samurai swords are just, like, a dime a dozen. Yeah, they are. [00:51:30] Speaker B: They are, they are. But it's a big red flag when somebody is arrested for possession of a samurai sword in public. Down the line, they're not all corpse punchers, but this one certainly was, like. [00:51:42] Speaker A: I said, probably deserved it. [00:51:44] Speaker B: And on that, which is to say, welcome to Jack. [00:51:47] Speaker A: Welcome. [00:51:48] Speaker B: What I mean to say is, welcome to Joag. Corrie, as you've heard, is on holiday. It's fucking mad to me that you're doing Joag while on holiday. Fucking mad. Shit. [00:52:01] Speaker A: You know the person I am, Mark? [00:52:03] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:52:03] Speaker A: I mean, we had a little wiggle room where I made you tell a story last week, but I wasn't simply going to fuck it off, you know. That's not. [00:52:13] Speaker B: Yes. [00:52:14] Speaker A: Not me. [00:52:14] Speaker B: Not you at all. Did you enjoy the story, by the way? [00:52:17] Speaker A: Did you listen to it? I did. It was wonderful. Listen, I only skimmed it before giving it to you. And let me tell you, you took all the weird sex stuff that I did not notice in stride, and I was very impressed. [00:52:32] Speaker B: Delighted. I'm glad you enjoyed it. It was a lot of fun to do. I loved it. [00:52:35] Speaker A: You said the word member without snickering. And listen, you got to put yourself. [00:52:41] Speaker B: In the Clive Barker headspace, haven't you? [00:52:43] Speaker A: Right. [00:52:44] Speaker B: I think that's how he talks 100%. [00:52:48] Speaker A: Absolutely agree. So if you haven't listened to that yet, go back to last week's episode, which is simply mark doing a reading of the Book of Blood from Clive Barker's anthology, Books of Blood, which I did. Part of why I picked it was because way back, you know, nearly four years ago now, one of the first movies that we watched together, you know, sitting there in front of our laptops watching stuff, was books of blood. Yes. And so I thought it would be fun to use that while I'm off on vacation. [00:53:25] Speaker B: It was Ace. [00:53:26] Speaker A: Yes. Beautiful. So more readings, of course, to come. As I force Mark to do them more. [00:53:33] Speaker B: Maybe they should get progressively weirder and memberesque. [00:53:40] Speaker A: Just like now, I'm going to be picking based on the strangest words for Cox in each reading. [00:53:48] Speaker B: Nice. [00:53:50] Speaker A: That's going to be it. Speaking of Cox, I hope everyone who is in our top tier on our ko fi received your cards this month. I had a lot of fun with this month's mailing, which involves a naked mole rat and naked mole rat facts. And so I hope that those have reached you and that you are sharing naked mole rat facts with everyone that you interact with. Because I was. Oh, man, I was having a real good time with that. [00:54:24] Speaker B: Yeah, you should. [00:54:24] Speaker A: Some crazy shit about those guys. Pretty fun. So pass it on. Pass it on. And if you would like to get that kind of mailing, you know what to do. Join the ko fi. [00:54:37] Speaker B: Do the right thing. [00:54:40] Speaker A: That. Exactly. Lots of fun stuff on there. [00:54:44] Speaker B: Speaking of lots of fun stuff, just super briefly because it's been all over the news and you can't have missed it. Hey, Joe. Byron. [00:54:53] Speaker A: Do I have to listen? He beat Medicare, Mark. I don't. I don't know what more there is to say. [00:55:04] Speaker B: It wasn't the rambling so much that I enjoyed, although I did enjoy them. We beat Medicare. Alright, that was great. But my favorite bits were him just gazing off into the middle distance, like he'd turned up at the airport and, like, remembered he'd left the fucking oven on. That's the fucking face. Just. Just looking up. [00:55:31] Speaker A: Nothing. It reminds me, I can't remember if I've ever talked about this before, but, like, my favorite video of Doctor Ben Carson, who, you know, was in the Trump administration, and, you know, ostensibly, you would think would be, like, a brilliant person because he's a brain surgeon, but apparently the only thing he's good at is brain surgery, and he is otherwise the dumbest human being known to man. And there's this narrow video where he is being interviewed, like, right after he got off the plane from somewhere. He's arrived at home or arrived at his office or something like that. And so the news is there, and they're talking to him, and he's having this interview. And, like, halfway through a sentence, suddenly, like, he's like, oh, my luggage. And, like, the taxi is driving off. He never took his luggage out of the car. Just like, buddy, it's like the fucking dodos from follow that bird. That's like the whole. It's. Yeah, it's too much. It is unserious. I don't know why anyone is subjecting themselves to these things. Then everyone's, like, all riled up about all this stuff, and I was like, you knew this is who these two idiots are. Like, why is anyone upset? [00:56:46] Speaker B: I fucking hate Donald Trump as much as the next guy. Right? And I do. I fucking do. The guy is a vacuum. He is. Ugh. He's the worst. But don't tell me. I don't know what he said. I don't think he knows what he said either. That's fucking. [00:57:07] Speaker A: God damn it. [00:57:07] Speaker B: That was laser focused. [00:57:11] Speaker A: Like, whoever. Like, that's the thing is, whoever prepped him for this was like, just go for the Alzheimer's. You know? If you keep on pushing that, it's. [00:57:22] Speaker B: Gonna make hard for it. He didn't have to go far. [00:57:25] Speaker A: Mm hmm. This is very dumb. [00:57:29] Speaker B: Just another super entertaining chapter in the. The end of days. And that's what we're here for. That's what we're here for. [00:57:35] Speaker A: After your own one of those debates. [00:57:38] Speaker B: Yes. [00:57:40] Speaker A: Just really cool to watch. Our countries have no actual choices. [00:57:43] Speaker B: Great, isn't it? [00:57:45] Speaker A: Super great. But anyways, I'm on vacation. We are keeping his light and whatnot. And today, obviously. Oh, go ahead. [00:57:53] Speaker B: So you're in Amsterdam, you've done museums. [00:57:55] Speaker A: I have. Yes. I have not. No, I am. So it's so funny. I'm in Amsterdam and I'm, like, the most, like, boring person on the most. [00:58:05] Speaker B: Sober you've ever been? [00:58:06] Speaker A: The most sober I've ever been in my life. Yeah. Not drinking, not smoking, just. And listen, the sodas cost as much as alcohol here, so I'm not saving any money on it, but I'm drinking my fantas and my Pepsi maxes and things like that and having a spectacular time while doing it. But, like, I even, like, I was like, I'm not interested in the red light district, but am I really gonna come to Amsterdam and, like, not see it? And I spent like, five minutes walking through and I was like, this is just not interesting. This is not. I don't know, maybe college years, Cory would have been scandalized by it or whatever, but I'm just like. There's just, like, sad women in windows and the smell of weed everywhere but. [00:58:55] Speaker B: Right. The smell. My fucking abiding memory of the Red Lake district is the smell of fucking latex and Febreze. [00:59:07] Speaker A: It's so gross. [00:59:08] Speaker B: That's the fucking smell of the Red Lake district. Daubers and fucking wet wipes. That's the smell of the Red Lake district. And it is Grimda. [00:59:17] Speaker A: Yeah. I want nothing to do with that, to be honest with you. It's like, I'll give it a look. And I'm just like, this is just. Listen, don't force yourself, Corrigan. You like maritime museums? [00:59:26] Speaker B: You do. Yes. [00:59:27] Speaker A: That's the person. [00:59:28] Speaker B: That's your lady. [00:59:29] Speaker A: You are. Yes. And you gotta. You don't have to wen and roam things. I think that's the thing that I've learned as an adult, is like, you know, I don't have to do that. I can just do cory things when. [00:59:43] Speaker B: In Rome, if you want to, if. [00:59:44] Speaker A: You want, do as the Romans do. If you don't, do as the boring Normie from New Jersey does. And that's been working out really well for me around here. Like I said, I've been learning a lot. As I've said before, maritime museums are the best because especially anywhere where you are in a place that has colonized another place or is a colony, was a colony. You're going to learn so much about that place from their maritime history. Like, that's how that worked. And, you know, the last one that I've been to that I talked about on here was when I was in Portugal last year. And it was wild because it does not deal with the negatives of colonization at all. It's like, deeply proud of Christopher Columbus. And, like, you know, all of that kind of stuff, it, like, does. It is not going to mention slavery or, you know, the murders and horrific things that happened. It's just like, look at how good we were at conquering the world for a minute there, and it does not process it at all, which you don't see a lot in maritime museums. And here it was like, the polar opposite of that, where it was like, it will not state a single positive fact without going. But we've rethought that because this had a horrible implications for everyone that we interacted with. So, yes, our culture benefited these things from it, but the other end was we did horrific things to other people. And, yeah, it is the polar opposite of a portuguese maritime museum, which is fascinating and, again, tells you so much about the culture here, which is, yeah, just interesting. [01:01:32] Speaker B: Listen, you're a zillion things, but you. You're no normie. Just FYI, just point of information. [01:01:45] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, I just think of, like, you know, when I say that, I just think of, like, oh, I'm like a person who likes to, like, stay home and is like, you know, yeah, don't drink, don't smoke, don't do drugs, you know, married, like, you know, just like, all those kinds of, like. Yeah, yeah, I'm very middle America on paper, and then I'm, like, very odd hd in practice. [01:02:11] Speaker B: Yes. [01:02:12] Speaker A: That's really what it comes down to. But I'm having a very good time. [01:02:15] Speaker B: Delighted to hear when you're back, when you back the night back in your own country. Not back yet. [01:02:20] Speaker A: Yeah. So we've got another nine days or so exploring Belgium, Brussels. We're going to Bruges, Brussels, gonna go to. There's another maritime museum that I want to see in Antwerp, the red Star line, museums. We're gonna go do that. You know, lots of things still left to do on this here vacation. [01:02:42] Speaker B: Wonderful. What are you. What are you. What are you. What are you on right now? What are you podcasting on right now? [01:02:48] Speaker A: It's like we've just talked about the fact that I'm not on anything. I have a big bottle of water right here. No, I am on my husband's computer with a mic that he set me up with and all that. So it's not my rig, which means that there's a good chance that I will upload this tomorrow, because I realize I have nothing on here. That's my normal uploading things. So if this is a Monday joag, just know that we recorded it Sunday, and it's the thought that counts. [01:03:18] Speaker B: Uh, almost. Almost kicking myself even before I've said this. But I can try if you want me to do it. [01:03:27] Speaker A: We'll revisit this shortly. We'll see what happens. Maybe Mark will be uploading this. [01:03:33] Speaker B: I'm not editing it. I tried that once. It was fucking awful. So difficult. [01:03:40] Speaker A: I think you've done it twice now. The first time I was like, over your shoulder. [01:03:43] Speaker B: You were, press that, Mark. Now. [01:03:44] Speaker A: Press that. Yeah. Now you do this and you know. But we'll see what happens. I appreciate the offer, but anyways, what we figured we'd do today, since this is a vacation episode and it's late here, normally I am 5 hours behind Mark, but today I'm an hour ahead. So it's already midnight for me. And so we're just gonna like, instead of researching a whole other topic and all that kind of stuff, we're gonna talk about some movies. And then I have a fun little question, a little thought experiment, or, you know, not a thought experiment, but a fun little prompt based on a quiet place part three, which we've both seen. But for the record, it's not going to be spoilery. The only thing that you'll know is the basic plot of this movie, which you get from the trailer or if you watch the first few minutes of this movie. So it's not going to spoil anything. You're not going to be like, oh, no, now I can't see quiet place. It is just a question based on the basic premise. [01:04:49] Speaker B: Cool and quiet place part three. Because it's been a fortnight since we've done a proper joag. We've got a bunch of movies to talk about. [01:04:56] Speaker A: We do. Yes. Most of which we've both seen. So it's a perfect scenario for us to sort of dive deep into some films and have a conversation. So hopefully you're in for that voyage. We've got some built in disagreements on movies here. We've got some stuff that we've got built in loves. It's. Yeah, I think we're gonna have a fun time. So, Mark, do you wanna do. We wanna start with the two things that you and I have watched that weren't. That we both haven't seen or what I mean is. [01:05:26] Speaker B: Yes. [01:05:27] Speaker A: Yes. You know what I mean? [01:05:28] Speaker B: Let's do that. Let's just. Let me see. Where do we. Fucking killer clowns, I think was the last thing we spoke about two weeks ago, wasn't it? On the 15 June? [01:05:37] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:05:38] Speaker B: So let me just talk about Friday the 13th part two, that's the one. Which is. Do you know what? Tying in first place for my favorite Fridays. [01:05:49] Speaker A: Really? [01:05:50] Speaker B: Part two is excellent. [01:05:53] Speaker A: Does it tie with Jason lives six or with X? Okay, so with Jason lives. [01:05:58] Speaker B: Got it. [01:05:58] Speaker A: Okay. [01:05:59] Speaker B: Jason X comes second, but two and. [01:06:02] Speaker A: Oh, right, you said it ties now I'm with you. Okay. [01:06:04] Speaker B: Yes, yes, yes. Part two is just excellent, though. God, it's good. [01:06:09] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:06:11] Speaker B: Baghead Jason, which is the best Jason. [01:06:15] Speaker A: Sure. [01:06:16] Speaker B: But you know, Baghead Jason is great in his dungarees and his plaid shirt. He's great. The big lug. And he gets a kicking. That's one of the things I love most about Elm street is Freddy gets the shit beaten out of him. [01:06:30] Speaker A: Right? Yeah. [01:06:31] Speaker B: And Jason takes a proper beating in this one. He gets kicked about, he gets pushed over, he gets stuck, stabbed and fucking kicked about. Lovely, lovely, lovely film. The kills are great. Likable, fucking likable teens. Friday things. Part two is. Is distilled Friday the 13th. I don't think it ever got better than that, really. You know, the law is all there, the bit, you know, his mother's fucking head and all that. The mind games, the fear of the water, fucking aqua Jason. Oh, man, it's so good. It's good times. It's really, really, really fun. [01:07:09] Speaker A: Yeah. I keep considering, like, you know, with the fan cave, like, introducing Kristen to all kinds of things that she's never seen. And I really don't think there's anything in the first Friday the 13th for her. And so I keep on thinking, like, I really want to introduce her things, but can I feel like I can skip it? I just don't think she's gonna. [01:07:30] Speaker B: You can skip the first one. If you want to get Kristen into franchise horror, Friday the 13th, part two is a great place to. [01:07:38] Speaker A: I think that's the better way to do it. [01:07:39] Speaker B: Yep. Certainly. [01:07:41] Speaker A: I feel good having your approval on that because it's a thing I've been thinking about a lot. I was even considering doing it for, like, this month and then decided to go with, I know what you did last summer for some perfect 4 July horror, but, yeah, I think. I think that's the place to start with it. I think there's a lot more in it for a noob horror fan than starting at the OG. [01:08:04] Speaker B: Yep. Completely agree. I watched Braindead because I needed a pick me up. I needed a pick me up and drugs are off the table. So I watch Braindead and it never gets old. It never gets old. [01:08:22] Speaker A: Always a good choice. [01:08:23] Speaker B: Now I'm certain I've said this before, but I can't believe the number of times I've seen Braindead and only recently learned that the sequence of Wellington, New Zealand, in the beginning is all miniatures. [01:08:40] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:08:41] Speaker B: Right, right. [01:08:42] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:08:42] Speaker B: However, I was looking out for it this time, and fuck me. Is it obviously miniatures? Oh, my God. [01:08:48] Speaker A: I. [01:08:50] Speaker B: How did I not fucking spot this? For, like, 20 years of watching this fucking film? I never spotted that. It was all miniatures in the beginning, but then when, you know it's miniatures, oh, my God, it's fucking, you know, it's clearly miniatures, but the, you know, all builds and feeds and helps and aids the charm of that film. I can't think of another movie which pays charm, an actual, authentic just quirk with just malice and excess and the most fucking. The dodgiest sense of humor. [01:09:28] Speaker A: Right. [01:09:30] Speaker B: Of the two cuts of braindead, you know, the american dead alive and the british brain dead, the major thing, no gore was cut from the american version. No gore is cut from dead alive at all. The only thing that they cut, really, are the pedo jokes. [01:09:43] Speaker A: Oh, the what? [01:09:44] Speaker B: The pedo jokes. There are. There's loads of fucking pedo jokes in the global version, which didn't make it into the american cut. Can't imagine why, but, yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, like I said, the film has a malicious, fucking gleefully mischievous sense of humor. And, yes, it was. Did it have the same effect as drugs? No, but I. It helped in the moment. [01:10:11] Speaker A: Yeah, fair approximation. [01:10:14] Speaker B: Yes. [01:10:15] Speaker A: Yes. [01:10:16] Speaker B: Five fucking stars. If only there was six. If only there was a 6th star. [01:10:22] Speaker A: Well, the only thing, um, that I. Really worth talking about that I watched was on the plane. I always watch, like, documentaries, whatever documentaries are available on united Airlines at that given time. I did watch the Jason Isbel documentary who's a, like, country singer, like an americana kind of country singer that I like. But mostly it just stressed me out because he and his wife had, like, the worst marriage. And the entire time I was just like, how do people live like this? Then I googled afterwards, and they have since split. But the, the other thing that I watched was a documentary called telemarketers. Have you seen this? [01:11:04] Speaker B: No, I have not. [01:11:06] Speaker A: So this is. Oh, man. You know how much I complain about documentaries and documentaries and things like that and how they're stretched out and they're stylized and it's just like, they're deeply annoying at this point. This docu series, three episodes, produced by the Safdie brothers. Actually, it is about, like, these guys who worked at a telemarketing company in, like, the early two thousands that employed the unemployable. Basically, people who had just gotten out of prison. The guy who's, like, making this is, like, a high school dropout. Drug addicts, like, all these kinds of people who, like, would not pass the background check at other places. This company employed them. [01:11:56] Speaker B: Am I unemployable, then, having just got out of prison? [01:11:59] Speaker A: You just got out of prison? [01:12:01] Speaker B: Yeah. Surely I'm very employable having just got. Am I to be denied employment and the chance of a new life? [01:12:08] Speaker A: This is a hypothetical question you're asking me here. No, I was like, when did you get out of prison? What? Did you. No. [01:12:15] Speaker B: You were not very uncharacteristically mean spirited of you, too, say that. I mean, there's a firm over here called Timpson's, a dry cleaning firm who are famed for giving opportunities to homeless and ex cons. And they've got a really good rep for doing that. [01:12:33] Speaker A: That's why they exist. Right. Because you're unemployable after this, not because of your skills, but because other people will not employ you. [01:12:41] Speaker B: Right, fine. [01:12:42] Speaker A: That's fine. Thank you for the clarification. [01:12:43] Speaker B: Thank you for clarifying that character. [01:12:46] Speaker A: No. Oh, I see. Yeah. You thought I was saying. You thought I was making a judgment on these people? No, no, no. I meant as in, yeah, won't pass a background check. No one will hire you. Unemployable. These people could clearly work. That's like the telemarketing company obviously wanted success. So it's not like they were like, we're just hiring people because it's fun. Like, you know, these people could work, but as such, there was no rules in this workplace. And their kind of mindset was like, do whatever you want as long as you make your quota of sales and stuff like that. And so this guy, he's, like, 18 or whatever while he's working in here. He started when he was, like, 15 and dropped out of school, and he's just got this camcorder or whatever and is filming things going on. He's filming people just straight doing heroin in the office and all kinds of stuff like that, and then getting on sales calls and just so, like, his kind of. He's filming this as a young guy, like, being like, oh, this is kind of fun, or whatever. And then, like, putting these videos up on YouTube where, like, they get four views, you know, early YouTube. [01:13:49] Speaker B: Oh, this does sound like something. This does sound. This appeals to my interest. [01:13:53] Speaker A: I mean, yeah. [01:13:54] Speaker B: Having kind of done a few contact center jobs myself. [01:13:57] Speaker A: Yeah. Yep. [01:13:59] Speaker B: Yes. I've seen some burnouts. [01:14:02] Speaker A: Right. Yeah. You know, and so. But what this company was doing was allegedly representing police fraternal orders, like, you know, like, the basically, like, union police union type shit and saying they were raising money for, like, widows of fallen police officers and stuff like this, you know, and, you know, 10% would go to these organizations, and the other 90 would go straight into the pockets of the company. And over the course of this, this guy and another guy that he works with named Patrick start realizing, like, this is, like, it's obviously shady, but they think it's way shadier than it seems, and that, like, there is some sort of weird thing going on where the cops are involved in the shady grift that's happening here. [01:14:59] Speaker B: Oh, okay. Okay. [01:15:00] Speaker A: And so this basically unfolds over the course of, like, 20 years, from when they first start making these little videos to when they start revisiting this later on. [01:15:11] Speaker B: Like poison. [01:15:12] Speaker A: Yeah, like, straight up. But it's made by these guys, right? Like, so it's not. There's no fancy stuff to this. This is not, like, professional filmmakers. Like, they're not, like, when they start interviewing people, like, the guy behind the camera suddenly raises, like, wow, Patrick really sucks at this. He's so passionate, but he's so bad at interviewing people. And, like, it's so bare bones and grassroots the way that it's made, and they end up uncovering insane shit that says a ton about our government and how in the pocket they are of the police and why you cannot make any movement to, you know, challenge the police or police unions on anything. They end up talking to, like, big people in, like, all the branches of government that would be able to crack down on these people. And every single one tries to, like, pass it on to another one. Like, oh, I do something about it, but it's Congress or it's this group, because nobody wants to, like, go against the police, and they're all in the pockets of the police, and it's wild to watch. And ultimately, you know, these guys are. They're whistleblowers who, like, what they do doesn't change anything but exposes why it's impossible for us to push back against both the police and the super Pacs, which have now sort of taken the place of these organizations like that, that they were raising charitable things for. Everybody should watch telemarketers. It is a wild ride and incredible. And I just love watching two very normal, like, you know, blue collar ass guys. [01:17:03] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [01:17:04] Speaker A: Expose something like this in a way that, like, we think, like, film school savants need to do. You know, it's really, it's great. [01:17:13] Speaker B: It sounds terrific. It sounds fantastic. [01:17:15] Speaker A: Yeah. I think you would really enjoy it and enjoy the characters in this. Like, I would, I would die for those guys. They so great guys. Names. Patrick J. Pespis. And he always says that every time he's. Hi, I'm Patrick J. Pespis. They're from, they're from New Jersey. It's. It's so good. [01:17:32] Speaker B: If he doesn't sound exactly like that. [01:17:34] Speaker A: If he does, he has a high nasal voice. It's so good. [01:17:38] Speaker B: Telemarketers, right? I'm having that. [01:17:41] Speaker A: Yes. You're gonna have a good time with it. So then we've watched many a thing that we both watched over the course of the past couple weeks, the first of which was invasion of the body snatchers. In memoriam, you immediately upon hearing of the death of Donald Sutherland. [01:18:02] Speaker B: Yep. Paul won the fuck on out for all that one. Yeah. And it was the first watch. [01:18:06] Speaker A: And I don't know. [01:18:07] Speaker B: I don't know how, how have I managed 45 years on this earth without watching invasion of the body snatchers? Oh, man. Wow, though. [01:18:16] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a great flick, isn't it? [01:18:17] Speaker B: Like, right, right from the opening minutes, that. That kind of biological, kind of creepy opening sequence that's all tendrils and cells and fucking plasma. Um, it's. I don't, I can't really think of any other examples of what I think of as eco horror almost, or, like, bio horror. [01:18:43] Speaker A: Right? Yeah. [01:18:44] Speaker B: This horror which deals with your relationship with the fucking systems around you, the world around you, the. The flora and fauna around you. Oh, no, I get what, what was that? What? That in the earth. Is that what it was called? Ben Weebly. [01:18:55] Speaker A: Is it Ben Wheatley? [01:18:56] Speaker B: One that was shrewd. [01:18:57] Speaker A: I never saw it. [01:18:58] Speaker B: That kind of thing, that kind of invasive horror where, you know you're a fucking. An unwitting victim of the fucking ecosystems around you. Jesus Christ. So good. And it's just super creepy, super paranoid, super tense. And then it kind of much like the alien pods themselves, the film blossoms into this special effect piece, the fucking prosthetics, the gore is, ugh. Shocking. Shocking. [01:19:32] Speaker A: Yeah, totally. [01:19:33] Speaker B: Seeing pod people get their faces caved in. Fucking man faced alien pod dog. Shocking, terrifying stuff of nightmares and completely unheralded. I mean, you think you've got their mo down, they'll plant themselves next to you and they'll touch you and they'll clone you and you'll go to sleep, and the hairs will come out the podest. At no point is it suggested that we're gonna see fucking man dog, right? Man dog is a shock. It comes right out of nowhere. [01:20:07] Speaker A: I was reading something about this at some point where it was saying, like, that's like a mask, right? Like. But it's so uncanny. You really kind of, like, accept it as the dog's face. [01:20:17] Speaker B: Is it a mask? [01:20:18] Speaker A: Did they put a mask on? The mask? It's a mask. It's actually a mask on a dog. Just a dude's face and a dog. But they got really lucky that the dog just happened to, like, lick at that time, too. So you get that weird effect of the tongue coming out of the face, too, and it's just. Oh, it's so horrifying. [01:20:33] Speaker B: Yes. And, you know, a classic kind of bleak ending. One of those classic downer endings that I love so much. A hopeless film, you know, a film. You know, a film where the fucking baddies win, man. The pods win. The pods win pods. One mankind nil womp diddly womp womp. And Donald Southern is fantastic. He's. [01:20:58] Speaker A: Oh, I mean, that whole cast is. [01:21:00] Speaker B: Wait a fucking minute. I mean, you and I text one another, I think, at the exact same moment, there's, you know, a couple of fucking. Just Jeff Goldblum and Leonard Nimoy and Donald Sutherland on screen at the same fucking time, right? [01:21:16] Speaker A: Like, what? There's so much. So much on the screen at once. [01:21:22] Speaker B: Jesus Christ. In 2024, knowing the trajectory of all of their careers, knowing where it took them and knowing where their art took them and how they came to be regarded, just. It was. It was a genuine. A genuine cinematic thrill seeing those three sharing. Sharing a box. [01:21:40] Speaker A: And when Jeff Goldblum, like, came into the movie, I texted you something about, like, you know, he just, like, comes in hot. Just, like, rolls in, you know, steamrolls right into that movie. And you put it perfectly. You're like, yeah, he really comes in here fully formed. And I think that's one of the things that works so well about this movie is everyone kind of does. Like, it doesn't. You know, we're not sitting here needing, like, exposition to get people introduced and stuff like that. It's just everyone comes into this movie fully formed, and you just get who they are by the shape that they already are. You know, I. [01:22:12] Speaker B: Regarding Jeff Goldblum, I was talking more about him from a career point of view. [01:22:17] Speaker A: Oh, okay. [01:22:18] Speaker B: Even. Even though, I mean, this can't have been I. Maybe not his first movie, but certainly one of his first films. [01:22:24] Speaker A: Pretty early. Yeah, for sure. [01:22:25] Speaker B: It didn't seem like there was any kind of curve in him finding his Persona. Yeah, that was bang. That was. That was him. He just arriving on the scene fully, fully formed. Brilliant stuff. [01:22:36] Speaker A: So it works career wise and it works with the character because he really rolls in there and just. It's as if he's been in the rest of the movie. You know, there's no explanation. He's just there. [01:22:48] Speaker B: Not connected to his body, no cadence of speech unlike any other human. [01:22:55] Speaker A: Right. Yeah. He's his own thing. [01:22:57] Speaker B: Yeah. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. Loved it. And I recognized. [01:23:02] Speaker A: Was she from Alien, the lead lady? [01:23:07] Speaker B: Yes. I seem to recall her from Aliena. [01:23:12] Speaker A: Maybe. I feel like every time I see her, I'm like, what's she from again? Then I'm like, oh, yeah, right. These, like, eight things that I know. [01:23:21] Speaker B: I remember her. Not the only thing I remember about her from alien is the amazing noise she makes in the dining scene when ash gets fucking, you know, exploded. She goes like, brilliant. Oh, God. Really fucking good. Really. I mean, if, you know, if the kind of. The apocryphal stories have any shred of truth to them and none of the cast were told. [01:23:45] Speaker A: Yeah. But they were actually surprised by that. [01:23:47] Speaker B: It certainly sounds. She makes a properly shocked, repulsed noise. [01:23:53] Speaker A: The kind of sound I would make. [01:23:56] Speaker B: I'd be like, whoa, do it again. [01:24:03] Speaker A: I don't know. I've seen you. I've seen you startled. Playing a lot of video games. Usually a little bit of a yip. [01:24:11] Speaker B: Did I tell you about the time I got an espresso martini poured on me? [01:24:15] Speaker A: I believe you did, yes. [01:24:19] Speaker B: I had the piss taken out of me the entire rest of the night because I made a feminine scream like Flanders. I was relentlessly mocked for the entire rest of the night. [01:24:34] Speaker A: It's gotta happen. Something else we both loved this week. Right here, right now. The ghost. [01:24:46] Speaker B: I don't know what to say about that, really. I mean, if you love ghosts, you'll get it. If you don't, you won't, you know? [01:24:54] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty much what it comes down to. [01:24:56] Speaker B: Simple as that. And I am so passionate about that band and about that guy. As deeply silly and unserious as their. Their image and their lore and their Persona is. It's silly. So fucking fun and silly. But it's a silliness which belies vision, man. That entire project is held together by that guy's fucking vision. [01:25:24] Speaker A: Right. [01:25:25] Speaker B: You know, and his talent. And it's. It's inspiring. It's really fucking inspiring to see. Yeah. Ghosts live show is fucking brilliant. It's spectacular. I've seen him, I think, four times by now. Four or five times. And each time out does the last. And to this day, Ghost at the Royal Albert hall is one of the best, best live music experiences I've ever had. It was phenomenal. And right here, right now, a document of just what makes their live performance so special. It's silly, but it is unifying. It is inclusive. Everyone is welcome. You know, everybody is welcome. No one is left behind. And it's wonderful. And a few moments. A few moments in that concert film really did move me to tears. The arrangement of if you have ghosts. Oh, God. [01:26:21] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh. Right? Holy smokes. That's incredible. [01:26:25] Speaker B: That's a top five track for me, anyway. It's a top five ghost track for me anyway. I adore it. I fucking love it. And seeing it kind of stripped back with strings and fucking, you know, vocal harmony. Just perfect. Just perfect. [01:26:40] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, that was. The funny thing is, like, I've seen, like, basically that tour three times. I went to, like, the pre imperator, the imperator and the re imperator. And so, like, you would think that I would be, like, sick of this. And I'm not like, I know everything that's gonna happen in this. I'm still good. And then, like, that and twenties in it, like these, like, there were a few surprises in there as well that, like, I didn't see, you know, because they brought them out just for this stuff. And then all the back, the behind the scenes stuff was so much fun. Yeah, I was talking about, about it and, you know, I had told him beforehand, I was like, oh, there's all these lore videos on YouTube, you know, so, like, if he, you know, he was like, oh, I'll try to watch them. And then he ended up not getting around to it. And then he said it was so funny. He said that he, you know, everyone was speculating at the end of the film, and if you haven't seen it yet, I'm not going to spoil what they were speculating about. But on the Reddit, people were speculating, and Al made the mistake of suggesting that it's just a metal band and this stuff doesn't matter. And he said he got downvoted to shit. [01:27:55] Speaker B: Don't say that to the guesties, man. You don't do it. [01:27:59] Speaker A: But listen, he understood. He was like, I did not read the word correctly, which I respect. It's like, listen. Yeah, you fucked up, buddy. It very much does matter in this. In this house. It absolutely does. But that's, you know, that's part of the fun of the. Of the whole thing. [01:28:18] Speaker B: Yeah, I. [01:28:19] Speaker A: Fun and wholesome and. [01:28:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I lean more towards Alan's perspective in that I don't really give a monkeys about the fucking, you know, I have. [01:28:27] Speaker A: I have fun with it. It was one of my, like. [01:28:29] Speaker B: Yes. [01:28:29] Speaker A: Yeah. You recall, like, it was one of my little hyper fixations during lockdown when I was, like, just looking for anything to, you know, hold my attention at the time. And so I was watching all those lore videos and everything. And it's like. It's just fun. Where is this going and all of this stuff? And at the end of the film, you can tell. That's the thing is you don't have to watch that stuff. [01:28:56] Speaker B: Exactly. It's a lovely little side dish, isn't it? [01:29:00] Speaker A: And so when it kind of gets to the point where there's a little bit of surprise, surprisingness, like, I gasped and nobody else in the theater reacted at all. And I was like, okay, so I'm the only one who caught what's going on here. That's fine. [01:29:16] Speaker B: I don't think I know what you're talking about because I didn't wait until after the credits. I kind of. [01:29:22] Speaker A: Which is insane to me. Why would you not wait till the end of the credits of this film? [01:29:27] Speaker B: It was super late is the point. It was super late, and I had a drive home, so I fucking booked. But I should really YouTube that. [01:29:34] Speaker A: Well, yeah, I was gonna say, we'll talk about it afterwards and I'll explain to you what was going on. But, yeah, that's the thing, though. It's like, there's so there's such a range of people into it. It's just everybody had a good time, whether you're like, you know, you hyper fixated on this or you just like them. And, like, I would say 80% of the audience was wearing ghost shirts. [01:29:54] Speaker B: Oh, same, same, same. And I was delighted to see, you know, a lot of lone travelers like myself just turned up on their own to see it. There were couples. There were, you know, it was just. It was as welcoming an atmosphere as I think Tobias would have wanted. [01:30:12] Speaker A: Yeah. It was like kids. Everybody was there. It was, you know, the grand old time. [01:30:19] Speaker B: Yes. [01:30:21] Speaker A: We watched the other night, we watched loop track, which is, you know, a no budget indie movie that is on shudder. I've been hearing about it for a long time. This is kind of. I think, you know, did like, little horror festivals or whatever. And so I've seen other people watching it for ages. And we watched that two nights ago. [01:30:45] Speaker B: Yes. And here is a movie which is rescued by its last nine minutes. [01:30:55] Speaker A: It's. I mean, it's like a half hour of it. I checked the, like, time on when it, like, already. [01:30:59] Speaker B: When it shows its hand, when it. Yeah, the prestige. Because, you know, you've got a walking fucking documentary of new. You've got a. It's a New Zealand. A New Zealand micro budget New Zealand horror movie. It gets a point or two from. Just through being from New Zealand because what a likeable bunch of people. [01:31:19] Speaker A: Right. [01:31:19] Speaker B: Apart from the racists. I mean, it's quite racist, apparently, over there. [01:31:23] Speaker A: I don't know if that's, like, a general thing, but I think it's going through the same thing that everybody else is going through right now, where white people are getting more terrible everywhere. I don't think that, like, generally Kiwis are more racist than everybody else. [01:31:36] Speaker B: No, I think they are. [01:31:39] Speaker A: You think they are? Yeah. [01:31:41] Speaker B: I don't know where I've got this in my head from. My good buddy Nathan, who emigrated to New Zealand, like, eight, nine years ago. I'm sure he mentioned a lot of racism. [01:31:53] Speaker A: Huh. I spent a month there and did not really encounter. Did you not anything to speak of. No. [01:31:59] Speaker B: I think you were lucky. [01:32:00] Speaker A: That's not to say it doesn't exist. I just, you know, didn't get the sense that they were more racist than anywhere else I'd ever been. [01:32:08] Speaker B: Well, um. When uploading the story to castos last week, I had a little look at our global kind of geographical listener kind of distribution, and very little traction in New Zealand. So I'm comfortable calling them racist. [01:32:23] Speaker A: You're. You're fine with that? Because no one's going to. [01:32:25] Speaker B: Perfectly happy with that. [01:32:26] Speaker A: Melanie, don't listen to him. He's. He's kidding. You're lovely, but. Yeah, I don't know about that. Kiwis seem pretty all right. Yeah, me, but, yeah. Loop track. Like, I enjoyed this more than you did. But I think we both, like, this is one of those things where I think we actually agree basically on this movie. It's just then how much we were fine with it is what varies, because it takes too long to get going. It's too silly for the first hour. [01:32:59] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:33:00] Speaker A: Kind of trying to be a little too clever and quirky. Yeah. [01:33:04] Speaker B: It felt like one of the british kind of kitchen sink comedies. Of, like, the seventies, like Alan Bleasdale or Willie Russell. It felt like something like that. Like fucking. Oh, man. Yeah, it. It felt like a quirky kind of relationship character piece about these repressed fucking Kiwis on their little hiking holiday, but then turns into a creature feature in the last half hour. [01:33:30] Speaker A: Right? [01:33:31] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:33:31] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think what works for me really well is that even during the part that, like, was too slow and I didn't really like the. The dynamic of and everything. The lead is very compelling in his anxiety and. And how it just is, like, you know, getting higher and higher and higher throughout this movie and that you're never sure if it's justified or not. Like, is. Is all of this in his head? Like, what's good? Why is he like this? And you don't know where that's going, but you're just watching him get more and more paranoid and anxious throughout this movie, and you don't know why. And I think, like, he took me with him on that journey so that even when I wasn't, like, totally sold, he had me sold on it. And then when it gets creature y, I absolutely loved that. [01:34:23] Speaker B: I just wished we could have had an hour and a half of that. [01:34:26] Speaker A: Right. Yeah. It should have been like. Like, even. Not even, like, if you had given me 2030 minutes of, like, the building of this stressful, strained relationship that these people have. Fine. And then I can see where it's like, you could have killed this person here and had that, you know, push this forward or whatever. [01:34:45] Speaker B: The creature is excellent. [01:34:47] Speaker A: Yeah, the creature is great. [01:34:49] Speaker B: The creature is fucking brilliant. Yeah, it did. It pulled it back. It pulled it back at the end. If you could have just done that sooner, that would have been great. [01:34:57] Speaker A: Yeah. But I think loop track is definitely worth watching. You know, with that in mind, that it's like, it's. It could be better, but I think it's doing. I like where it's going. [01:35:11] Speaker B: You know, FYI, forbidden door zero has just started. [01:35:15] Speaker A: Oh, nice. [01:35:16] Speaker B: Just saying. Just saying. [01:35:18] Speaker A: Very nice. And then the movie we do not. [01:35:25] Speaker B: Motherfucker. [01:35:26] Speaker A: Yeah, but, like, for different reasons than you thought, I think, of course, the. The big sort of release this week is in a violent nature. You. You said I was gonna hate it. [01:35:41] Speaker B: Yes. [01:35:42] Speaker A: I think that is the wrong phrase for this movie. [01:35:48] Speaker B: See? Go on. [01:35:50] Speaker A: I think it is deeply bad, but it's so bafflingly bad that I had a lot of fun watching it. Like, literally was cry, laughing through this movie. [01:36:07] Speaker B: Right. If anything, that's. That's worse than hating it. You're mocking it. [01:36:12] Speaker A: It's so bad. It's fucking so bad. So bad. [01:36:18] Speaker B: And I knew, I knew. I knew you wouldn't like it, but I still hate that you, you just don't get it. You watched it wrong. [01:36:30] Speaker A: No, if I had watched it correctly, I would have. Yeah, I would have hated it because it is, it's like it thinks it's doing something. [01:36:41] Speaker B: It is doing. It's doing loads of things. [01:36:45] Speaker A: Go ahead, tell me what it's doing. [01:36:47] Speaker B: Okay. I don't even know where to begin it, and I'm sorry for fucking saying it, but this is exactly what it's doing. It's taking much like the bear, right? The food that you see served in the beer. Taking things that you're so comfortable with and so familiar with and so, you know, comfortable in the tropes and quirks and machinations of a genre and pulling them to bits and reassembling them in a way that is totally fucking tangy and fresh and sparkly in a violent nature knows what it's doing backwards and it's just taking it to bits and putting it back together in a new shape. So good. [01:37:35] Speaker A: Totally disagree. I mean, the way that I like, because so many people like, you know, I mean, this is a pretty polarizing movie, but it's like the, the people who do say, like, oh, this is deconstructing horror or whatever. I'm like, in what way is it doing it that. In what way is it doing it that is in any way new, right? Like, what is it commenting on that other parodies or satires or anything isn't doing? [01:38:02] Speaker B: Okay, so it starts, it begin. This film begins where? This film begins on like chapter four. This is the fourth entry in a franchise, but it's the first movie for a start, right? You've got three or four movies worth of fucking lore and content before you get to the opening scene of in a violent nature. [01:38:27] Speaker A: Okay? [01:38:28] Speaker B: Right, that, that fucking, that gribbly Johnny, he's already been risen and fucking killed a couple of times by a few different groups of people. And we've joined this fucking story on like, part three, right? Brilliant, right? [01:38:44] Speaker A: Sure. [01:38:45] Speaker B: Wicked. It deconstructs what, what do you expect from Friday the 13th, part four or five or six? You expect jump scares. This film pulls that apart, flips around its head. You don't get jump scares. It shows you the fucking horror you're about to get. It shows you what is gonna happen. [01:39:03] Speaker A: People stand there and they just blank faced, wait for them to kill him. [01:39:07] Speaker B: Bollocks. Bollocks. It telegraphs. [01:39:09] Speaker A: I have video evidence because I was. [01:39:12] Speaker B: Telegraphs the skate and then slowly moves you towards it and then delivers it so bad. [01:39:17] Speaker A: It's so bad. Like, just rubberization. Rubber parts of people. [01:39:22] Speaker B: And that's another thing. [01:39:23] Speaker A: Mannequins. So terribly done. [01:39:26] Speaker B: I don't. Respectfully. Respectfully. Right. With respect, I would suggest to you that for a film which, whether you liked it or not, had earnest fucking effort and vision put into it, they would try in something whether it worked for you or not. [01:39:44] Speaker A: Yeah. But it's doing the thing that I hate. It's trying, like, what they're trying to do is they're trying to, like, elevate horror or whatever by, like, oh, I'm gonna do this from a different angle or whatever. That fails miserably just from a basic filmmaking perspective. [01:39:59] Speaker B: Like, what the fuck do you. [01:40:00] Speaker A: They should have, like, I think the thing you, things like you thought that I wasn't gonna, like, I actually would have loved, like, what I thought this movie would sort of be is us from the perspective. Because it's like the pov of this killer, right? And we're gonna watch him slowly walk through the woods and kill these unsuspecting. Well, yeah, people. Right? [01:40:22] Speaker B: Yeah. It's the story you've not seen before. [01:40:24] Speaker A: He doesn't have confidence in that concept. And so, like, it has, like, you know, he'll. It'll be walking and then it cuts forward. Right. And the person who made this film said his point was to piss us off. This is not art. This is not deconstructing. He said he wanted to make people mad by making the scenes too long, and they lost confidence in that. So they would jump cut so that you didn't have to watch as long as he walked through things. And then they showed too much that wasn't from his perspective. And the acting is bad and the script is bad when it comes to those kinds of moments. And so you get terrible cuts, you get continuity errors. You get, like, just bad filmmaking. Not deliberate bad filmmaking, as in, like, nobody knew how to properly edit a film. Bad filmmaking. You have, like, all of these kinds of, like, the exposition is terribly done. The sound is terribly done. Like, the whole thing is just made poorly. And that, I think, is like, you know where I'm like, they had a good idea, but they didn't think it would sell. And so they tried to add other elements into it that make it worse. And instead you get your idea of the reversal of the jump scare or whatever. Fine. Except that this does mean it is a movie without tension because these people don't know they're being hunted. We have no sense of his internal life. And in fact, it's kind of offensive because his entire thing is just that he's, you know, intellectually disabled and that makes him violent. And so he has no, that's the story. That's the story you're given. And you see him sitting and displaying, like, when you have the moments of him, where you see him is him displaying how, like he doesn't have any mental capacity. And then he's just, all he does is kill. And so you have a guy with, like, no real. You're not getting any of his interiority. You're not getting any interiority from the people that he's attacking. When he does attack them, he walks up to them. They don't usually, like, scream or anything like that. They just wait for him to kill him, kill them. And then you have, like, really not great effects when he, when they do it. [01:42:50] Speaker B: Just on that, on that point, I find it churlish to mock the, the product of, you know, budget restrictions in a film that has such a lot of earnest effort put into it. I find that fucking money. [01:43:07] Speaker A: No, I think the thing is, you could do better. [01:43:11] Speaker B: And also there was at least, look, I've seen plenty of IRL fucking decapitations and mutilations, right? And there was some convincing ass decapitations in that fucking film. The kill where he squishes. That guy with the rock was. I rewound that motherfucker about eight times. [01:43:31] Speaker A: And that's, you don't see anything. You just see blood spurt out. So that works fine. [01:43:34] Speaker B: How brilliantly. Fucking hell of a cool angle. [01:43:37] Speaker A: The other ones don't hold up at all. And I was sitting close to it, so maybe it's cause I can see them better than if I were sitting across a room from it. But they just look like rubber heads. [01:43:47] Speaker B: The head in the log splitter was great. The girl getting turned into where you. [01:43:51] Speaker A: See beforehand the little box where the blood is gonna come from coming out. And he's got the little mannequin arm like it is. Just listen. This would not like what we just watched. You know, the, what was it? The fucking owl, the zombie movie that we just watched a couple weeks ago. And that is so much better done. Made in like, the eighties. [01:44:16] Speaker B: Oh, day of the dead. [01:44:18] Speaker A: Day of the dead. [01:44:18] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:44:20] Speaker A: And, and that's like, that would be fine, right? Like, you know, I watch a lot more, like, shitty horror than you do, so it's not necess. It's not that in and of itself. It's. The combination of all of these things is a problem for me. [01:44:34] Speaker B: I was actually, like, super impressed at how deftly they'd hidden CG amidst practical. I thought that there was obviously some CG splatter in there. But I, you know, they fucking hit it really nicely with the practical prosthetics and the appliances. I had no issues with the effect at all. [01:44:55] Speaker A: The rest of the movie is just. I mean, I like, when Kyo got back, I showed him, like, clips from it and he was like, jesus Christ. Like, as someone new, you know, works in the film industry and has in the past and stuff like that, it's like, it's so amateur. [01:45:12] Speaker B: And on the walking point, right? I didn't read the interview that you're talking about. Don't. So, ergo, I'm not asked. But for me, that was just telling the story that you've never seen, whereas. [01:45:25] Speaker A: Which I was into. Like I said, I would have been fine with it. I don't like that they lost faith in it. I think this movie, if we had seen it entirely as him walking and murdering people occasionally and it stuck with that conceit, that that would have been really interesting and a challenge to the genre. Like, I think you would have hated it even more. [01:45:47] Speaker B: You would have gone skinnamarink on it. [01:45:48] Speaker A: Absolutely not. No, I think. I mean, like, even if I didn't enjoy it, this is how I think. Like, I may not have enjoyed watching it, but my thing with Skinnamarank is that I'm, like, I'm not afraid of corners of houses. So, like, I don't understand why Gen Z is so fucking scared of corners, you know? But, like, the. The idea that, like, we're seeing, because we always see, like, what is with the fucking slow walking villain? Okay, show me through his eyes how. [01:46:20] Speaker B: It'S happening, and let me flipping it on its head. It's deconstructing. [01:46:22] Speaker A: Because what, like, I think what would. [01:46:24] Speaker B: Be interesting in a 1987 fucking franchise entry, we'd see the gribbly pop out of nowhere from behind a tree, right? But we take place. Okay? [01:46:34] Speaker A: We're talking about the same thing. I'm not bothered by the walking. I disagree with all the reviews that say this is boring because it was, you know, 60 minutes of walking and 30 minutes of merchants. Like, I completely disagree. I think that was a great premise that it didn't stick with. It is where it falters, that we have to sit there and watch a camera circle around a fire of bad actors as they, you know, tell a story terribly that we have to get inside of their perspective, that we end up with, like, a final girl that who the fuck gives a shit about at the end of it and, like, some random lady telling a story no one cares about. [01:47:15] Speaker B: The end was brave as shit as well. [01:47:17] Speaker A: I hated it. Like, just give me the, like, stick with the thing you said this movie was about. That's what I want to see, that it didn't do that. [01:47:27] Speaker B: That's what you want. That's not what it's going to give you. That's. [01:47:30] Speaker A: I I don't think that that's in and of itself, just being like, fuck you, viewer is not like a good movie to me. Like, fine, you're edgy. Here's your pat on the back. But that doesn't make a good movie. [01:47:45] Speaker B: Oh, so I'm basic. I liked it because I'm basic. [01:47:48] Speaker A: Yes. You liked it because you're basic, is what I'm saying. I mean, no, that's not what I said. [01:47:54] Speaker B: No photo questions. [01:47:55] Speaker A: No, my point is that it's like they had an idea that I think was a good idea, but they didn't have enough faith in their idea and they didn't have the skill to do the rest of it. And so you just end up with this poor script with bad actors that, you know, ultimately is unsatisfying because it's trying to do something instead of doing the thing, you know? [01:48:24] Speaker B: Okay, what about, what about, what about. Allow me to speculate. Um, what it does have in common with your midseason franchise entries is your paper thin, you know, machete fodder and your, you know, your patchy script. That's the stuff that this has in common with the world that we think we know. [01:48:46] Speaker A: But why are the bad parts and not the good parts? [01:48:53] Speaker B: I'm treading water a little bit. Look, I, you know, I'm a sucker for a swing. Yes. [01:48:59] Speaker A: Yeah, I do know that. Yes, absolutely. [01:49:03] Speaker B: This was a big swing, and it connected to me big time. [01:49:08] Speaker A: Fair enough. [01:49:09] Speaker B: Yes. [01:49:09] Speaker A: Me, not so much. Not so much. But do let us know what you all think, because obviously everyone's gonna watch it. It's like, you got it. [01:49:19] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:49:20] Speaker A: You really do. Yes, it is. It is the. The thing everyone's watching. So let us know where your take. [01:49:27] Speaker B: On in a violent nature also makes me super optimistic that something else is going toe to toe with terrifyer in the grand Guignol ghost eggs. [01:49:38] Speaker A: You know, I, you know, honestly, it's kind of funny, though. Like, I didn't. And maybe it's just because I didn't like the effects of in it and because of the lack of tension, I was not. I did not find the gore nearly on par with something like terrifier. It was boring gore to me. I was like, okay. Like, I think that's the thing, is I found that I was like, if there's no fear, if there's no tension, like, I don't. I don't watch gore because I like gore. Like, you know what I mean? Like, that's like, I do like gore. I obviously like gore. But, like, it's contextual, you know? Like, so when you take all of the context out of it, it is like, you know, putting a stake on a counter to me. Like, this is. That's gory, but it's not scary or tense in any way. So I just was, it didn't connect at all to me. So I was like, yeah. Everyone kept, oh, the yoga kill. The yoga kill. And I'm like, yeah, okay. [01:50:42] Speaker B: The yoga club. It was all about that rock splat for me. [01:50:47] Speaker A: Yeah. I think that was by far the best kill in the whole movie. [01:50:51] Speaker B: Stunning. I wanted to applaud. If this film was on vhs, I would have worn that motherfucker out rewinding it. [01:50:58] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's the most effective one. But then it's followed by that line that I sent to immediately. [01:51:05] Speaker B: Very good. Very good. Yes. [01:51:10] Speaker A: Anyways, the final thing that we both watched and that I want to ask a question about, but first we'll discuss. Was a quiet place. [01:51:21] Speaker B: Yep. Day one. [01:51:23] Speaker A: Yes. I was gonna say chapter one. That's the strangers. A quiet place, day one. [01:51:28] Speaker B: Yes. Is this the truth of what elevated horror is? Hmm, I wonder. [01:51:40] Speaker A: I would say yes. You know, after I watched this movie, I texted you first, crying emojis. And then I said, and I completely meant it, that I was like, you know, like 75% of Oscar best picture nominees aren't as moving or as well acted or as well shot as this movie is. [01:52:04] Speaker B: You could not be more right by that. I mean horror that elevates itself simply through earnestly doing a fucking great job of what it sets out to do as opposed to approaches its thesis with ideas above its station. [01:52:20] Speaker A: Right. Yeah. [01:52:20] Speaker B: You know, artificial artifice, artificially elevated. Self consciously elevated horror. [01:52:27] Speaker A: Right. [01:52:28] Speaker B: As opposed to horror, which is just elevated by simply being goddamn good at what. [01:52:33] Speaker A: Like it believes that. [01:52:34] Speaker B: Yes. [01:52:35] Speaker A: That a horror movie is enough. [01:52:37] Speaker B: Yes. Me, earnest. Well, doing that. Well put. [01:52:42] Speaker A: Yeah. And this movie, man, it's I mean, it's only 90 minutes, which I love. [01:52:48] Speaker B: Or about that flies by, doesn't it? [01:52:50] Speaker A: Fly is by. And I was shocked by how moved it was. Like, listen, I like the quiet place franchise. Yes, I think they're scary and they're interesting and all that kind of stuff. But I feel like this one really was above and beyond your story here with Lupita Nyong'o being a terminal cancer patient who just wants a slice of pizza in the end of the world before she dies. And then being sort of joined on her journey by this wayward man who doesn't want to be alone at the end of the world and her cat. And there's so much that is so deeply moving while also being genuinely scary. These monsters are terrifying. So well done. And the situation is scary. I love the way every one of these movies, and this is no exception, like, it causes the audience to be silent. [01:53:53] Speaker B: And it did, man. Leicester squared view, right in the middle of London. Oh, half dimension, by the way. So I'm queuing up for my fucking popcorn and MCDC and as fucking close to me as I am to my fucking laptop screen right now, like a matter of inches. Washington listener, a celebrity, right? I'm gonna give you 10 seconds to guess the celeb, right? Middle of London, lesser square. Ten, nine, eight. Who could it be? Six, five. Have a think of a celebrity. 4321. It was Gary Newman. What the fuck? Dana, man. And Gary Newman. I went to see a quiet place with. [01:54:39] Speaker A: How do you get there? [01:54:40] Speaker B: Did you get the tube? Or maybe did he get the worst? Or did he get here in my car? [01:54:46] Speaker A: I came here in my car. [01:54:50] Speaker B: Gary Newman, who has performed with Bowie and Nin. [01:54:54] Speaker A: It's wild, you know? Absolutely wild. And you took the least subtle selfie with him behind you that I absolutely. [01:55:01] Speaker B: Loved and give a fuck. What's he gonna say? You just take a fast. [01:55:05] Speaker A: Nick, can I take a photo? Better to have him looking vaguely disgruntled in the background. [01:55:13] Speaker B: That's a creepy. The needy. [01:55:16] Speaker A: Fair enough. Absolutely fair. But yes, he came and watched quiet place with you. And, yeah, I found myself here. Like I said, everything comes in glass, right? So my glass bottle of coke. And I found myself, like, slowly putting it down on the table to try. [01:55:34] Speaker B: To not make any noise. The theater was so silent. Just absolutely hear a pin drop. Silent. Isn't that great? A movie that can control the fucking energy state of the room. So good. So good. [01:55:46] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And what I said on blue skies, it's also the most diabolical kind of movie, because it's the movie that makes you cry right before the lights in the theater come up. So, like, just the weird american in here crying. Absolutely. Loved it. That'll be a one that I revisit again. I guess that guy from Stranger things was amazing in it. [01:56:11] Speaker B: Yeah. As. As was the guy from hereditary. [01:56:16] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, right. Yep. Absolutely. [01:56:18] Speaker B: Who I didn't recognize under the beard until I saw the mole. [01:56:24] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Pretty distinct. [01:56:26] Speaker B: That was what gave it away. [01:56:28] Speaker A: Yeah. He looks considerably older in this. He's put, like, a little bit of, like, weight on so that he's like. Yeah. He's, like, filled out a little more. He's not, like, a little scrawny dude. Yeah, everybody's great in this movie. This is another movie in a long line of movies that relegates Jaime Hanso to an extra almost huge deal for a minute in the late nineties, and then now he's only ever in movies for, like, minutes. [01:57:01] Speaker B: Yeah. He's been relegated to kind of henchmen, kind of. [01:57:04] Speaker A: Yeah, it's very strange to me. But he's great in the bit that he's in. Yeah, he is. But my question for you, based on this movie, because as I explained, the sort of basic premise of this movie, is that Lupita Nyong'o is dying when we meet her in the beginning of this movie, and now the end of the world is happening, and all she wants is a slice of pizza. So, Mark, if you are dying anyway. [01:57:32] Speaker B: And it's the end of the world, are we all. [01:57:34] Speaker A: Are we all imminently dying anyway and it's the end of the world. What totally ridiculous last thing would you do? What would be your frivolous thing that you would risk getting flayed by monsters for? [01:57:51] Speaker B: That's a fantastic, fantastic question. The. The. Oh, man. And you put me on the spot, and I can't. I can't. I know where I am. [01:58:03] Speaker A: I did ask you if you wanted me to. [01:58:04] Speaker B: Yeah, you did. I know where I. If it was in any way realistic or feasible, I would head to Aberystwyth. [01:58:15] Speaker A: Okay. [01:58:17] Speaker B: And I would want to view the world ending from the top of the mountain, the hill in Aberystwyth, Constitution Hill, which has a beautiful view of the. The sea, the shore, the beach, the town, the pier itself jutting out into the ocean. While everybody else would be running towards the evacuation, I would be going the other way, and I would want to climb the mountain and just watch it all go down. That's what I would like to do. [01:58:48] Speaker A: I like it. It feels very you. Yes, I think I would. I would want to go for a swim. [01:58:56] Speaker B: Oh, nice. [01:58:57] Speaker A: Yeah. Which in this case would be, like, the. [01:58:59] Speaker B: A great idea. [01:59:00] Speaker A: A great idea. Because this particular end of the world situation, as we know the things don't like water, but another kind of end of the world in which that's not also an escape route, I think that that would. I would want to get to, like, the prettiest body of water that I could possibly get to on the way for a really nice swim. [01:59:25] Speaker B: I think I would try and find, like, a high end menswear shop. [01:59:30] Speaker A: Oh, okay. [01:59:32] Speaker B: Super fucking dressed up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would buy some high end fucking street wear and climb constitution hill and go out looking like a million bucks. [01:59:43] Speaker A: I think, like, Lupita, I would probably just, like, want snacks. I just want to, like, eat all the things and go for a swim. Like, those are, like, my favorite activities. So if I'm gonna go out, it's gonna be, like, stuffed with hostess cakes. [01:59:59] Speaker B: Twinkies. [01:59:59] Speaker A: Ruffles. Not the Twinkies, definitely the cupcakes and all of that. [02:00:06] Speaker B: And just a yo yo. [02:00:10] Speaker A: Ho. Ho, ho ho. [02:00:12] Speaker B: That's it. [02:00:12] Speaker A: That's the one. [02:00:13] Speaker B: That's what I'm talking about. [02:00:14] Speaker A: So close. Like, can't eat a yoyo hoo ha. No, not. Not selling hoo ha. Kids, friends. I want to know your answer to that too. If it were the end of the world and I were gonna die anyway, what's the frivolous pleasure that you would take part in? It could be something, like, meaningful, you know, engaging in one last memory, things like that, or something deeply stupid. But what would be the thing you would do? And, like, listen, I know you all. If you have kids and stuff, I want to spend it with my family. Let's just, like, take that. We get it. Yes, of course. You would hold your loved ones close. [02:01:03] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:01:04] Speaker A: Just you. You're solo. For whatever reason. You are on a business trip. Whatever. You're solo. What do you. What do you do? That's our question to you. [02:01:12] Speaker B: What do you do, hotshot? There's a bomb on the bus. [02:01:20] Speaker A: I love it. Friends will be back next week. It may be another low key sort of episode because it'll be another vacation week. I guess we'll get a Marco's mystery next week. [02:01:34] Speaker B: You know you will. Absolutely. [02:01:36] Speaker A: Yeah. And it'll be a grand old times. Thanks for hanging with us. We hope that so far your summer is going great and you're living the dream. Happy 4 July. To those of you who celebrate. [02:01:49] Speaker B: Oh, by the next episode. [02:01:52] Speaker A: Hmm. [02:01:55] Speaker B: We'll have a new government in the UK. [02:01:57] Speaker A: Oh, crazy. So there's that. Congratulations or whatever. [02:02:03] Speaker B: I'm not sure that I'm working from home on the fifth, because it's gonna be a late one. [02:02:11] Speaker A: Oh, boy. So that's exciting also. Hey, it's. It's July 1 here, now, so, technically, pinch punch. [02:02:19] Speaker B: Oh, it's July 1. Six months, three minutes. [02:02:22] Speaker A: Six months without drinking. [02:02:24] Speaker B: Oh, congratulations. [02:02:25] Speaker A: We're halfway. We're halfway through. [02:02:27] Speaker B: Yes. What. What would make a year successful then and not six months? Because you got nothing to prove now. [02:02:36] Speaker A: It was a resolution. [02:02:38] Speaker B: Okay, yeah. Fair enough. [02:02:42] Speaker A: Yeah, it's. It's beating my own thing. But I also, like, have no interest in going back to drinking realistically. So, you know, just after a year, I might occasionally have a glass of wine or something like that if the. If the moment calls for it. But I have learned that don't miss it. So what's the point? Why poison yourself if you don't have to? Right? If you don't even like it. [02:03:05] Speaker B: Yes. [02:03:06] Speaker A: Why poison yourself? [02:03:07] Speaker B: Yes. [02:03:08] Speaker A: You know, who's it for? [02:03:09] Speaker B: Who is it? [02:03:10] Speaker A: Who's it for? Yeah, you know, I got nothing to prove. I like my diet coke, and I'm a cheap date now, at least. [02:03:17] Speaker B: Proud of you. [02:03:18] Speaker A: Not in Amsterdam. [02:03:19] Speaker B: Very proud of you. [02:03:20] Speaker A: Thank you very much. Uh, so, friends, you, uh. You talk to us and all the things, and we love you a lot. And you've got one thing to do this week. [02:03:30] Speaker B: Stay spooky. God damn it. [02:03:33] Speaker A: I really thought you were going to sing.