Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] Speaker A: Now, normally on this podcast, yep, mysteries are more your domain.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:00:12] Speaker A: I like a nice neat and tidy little package. In fact, even better when I can correct the record and really drive home the truth about some little tidbit from history. Because we know more. Now.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: That is it. That is the yin and yang, isn't it?
I enjoy not knowing.
[00:00:31] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:00:32] Speaker B: You enjoy knowing.
[00:00:34] Speaker A: 100%. I like to believe there's a solution for everything, an answer to every question. You know, if only we look around, hardly enough. Yeah, yeah. If we use our logical brains, we'll find out, right?
And I know that's not true. We'll likely never know who Jack the Ripper was or even the zodiac. There are situations where we simply didnt collect or keep the right kind of evidence or ask the right questions, and theres simply nothing left but the story im going to tell you today.
Well, its a mystery, but one that it seems like we should be able to solve.
Surely its only a matter of time the way I see it, but we'll see what you think about the mystery of the missing panel from the most stolen painting of all time, the adoration of the mystic lamb.
[00:01:34] Speaker B: Right. So I don't think I know that painting.
[00:01:38] Speaker A: You might have seen it at some point or another as we'll get into super important. Okay, so obviously I've been on vacation in the Netherlands and Belgium the past few weeks. Welcome back and thank you very much. And we'll talk a little bit more about that in a little bit. But one of my favorite places that we visited was a very old city called Ghent.
And Ghent was in its heyday, one of the most important cities in Europe from around the 11th century through the Middle Ages until the 16th and 17th centuries, when various political upheavals, most significantly the 80 years war, plunged them into poverty and irrelevance.
[00:02:19] Speaker B: Belgium. Yes.
[00:02:21] Speaker A: In Belgium, when industrialization hit, though, the city began to boom again, particularly its textile industry. And now, while you may not necessarily know it by name, it's a thriving little city with a large student population, beautiful museums and buildings, and I food, and one of the most famous and bizarre mysteries in art history.
So sometime in the 1420s, belgian painter Hubert von Eck began a massive undertaking, a multi panicked, multi paneled triptych oil painting in a realist style, depicting key moments from the Bible.
And a triptych is a work made up of three panels, in this case, one large central one with two smaller wings that close up to reveal more painted panels on the outside. It's basically like opening up a pop up book.
[00:03:12] Speaker B: Is it like one of those Mad magazine inserts?
[00:03:16] Speaker A: You know, I don't remember much about bad magazine. I've probably only ever seen, like, three of them in my life, but let's just say yes.
[00:03:24] Speaker B: Yeah. I've never. I've never held one in my hand. It's just.
[00:03:27] Speaker A: Again, it's the Simpsons, an iconic fucking pop culture.
[00:03:29] Speaker B: References. You fold the page in and it says something different. Yeah.
[00:03:33] Speaker A: Oh, okay. I see. It's more like if you close it up, you get just a different painting than what you get when you open it up. Right?
[00:03:42] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, it is. It's one of those mad magazine.
[00:03:45] Speaker A: Right. So. And just in case there are, like, any art history people or whatever who want to come for me, it's also technically referred to as a polyptych because there are panels within the three panels. So I think there's like 16 panels total.
So it's not strictly a triptych, but everyone in Ghent calls it a triptych. So that's what I'm gonna call it.
[00:04:06] Speaker B: Point.
[00:04:08] Speaker A: Anyway, Hubert died in September of 1426, having left his masterpiece largely unfinished. And we're not entirely sure how much of it he'd gotten done before he died. He may have just designed it, he may have started painting it, we don't know.
Thankfully, though, his little brother, yon Washington, also an accomplished painter, and was able to pick up where he left off, completing the adoration of the mystic lamb in 1432. And in so doing so, and in so doing, creating what is considered to be the most important and influential painting in western art history, almost single handedly ushering in the Renaissance age of art out of the Middle Ages.
Measuring 14.5ft. What? You've got a skeptical face on.
[00:04:57] Speaker B: Give me that last line again. The most important and influential painting in.
[00:05:02] Speaker A: Western art history ushered in the Renaissance age.
[00:05:07] Speaker B: I feel like I would have heard of it.
[00:05:09] Speaker A: I guarantee you. That's the thing. This is not a disputed thing. This is like, this is. And here's the thing, it's influential and important. That doesn't necessarily mean the most well known, per se.
[00:05:24] Speaker B: Okay. Okay.
[00:05:25] Speaker A: Cause, like, you know, you could, like, look at, like, Picasso or something like that or whatever, and everyone knows his name because he was like a pop artist, essentially Andy Warhol. But did he change the world with his Campbell soup cans?
[00:05:39] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:05:40] Speaker A: No. This painting legitimately changed the world. That's how important this painting is.
So measuring 14.5ft by 11.5ft, it's considered the first major oil painting ever made.
[00:05:54] Speaker B: Big.
[00:05:55] Speaker A: Huge. Yeah. Enormous. I saw it. It's enormous.
As the new statesman put it, quote, it was the first realistic interior, the first genuine landscape, the first proper cityscape, the first tangible nudes, the first lifelike renaissance portraits. He took oil paint to unprecedented levels of sophistication, with glazes and transparent layers giving depth and undreamed of effects of light. It cannot be overstated how different this was from anything that had ever existed before.
[00:06:28] Speaker B: It sounds like a banger.
What was. What was so special about Van Eck as an artist and that he was able to fucking produce this?
[00:06:41] Speaker A: I think he. I mean, he was considered a master. There's not necessarily anything beyond the that. As far as I can tell. He was commissioned by the church to make this. So they clearly knew he was a master.
And he was young, too. When he died, he was only, like, 35. So this is pretty incredible that he was this much of a master at this point. And obviously his younger brother, who took over it, was young as well.
And so, yeah, he was just considered one of the masters. Is considered one of the masters of painting.
And it was, you know, it took years to create. So, you know, this wasn't something that he, you know, spent a couple days up in the attic. Right? Yeah, exactly.
[00:07:30] Speaker B: A couple of meads.
[00:07:32] Speaker A: Yeah. He took years of design and then the actual execution of painting, this whole thing. So it's a, you know, an incredible masterpiece.
This is coming from someone who is not into art at all. Like, when you look at it, you can't help but be a little bit, like, odd. Just like Jesus Christ. Someone did that.
So the piece was first placed on the altar of Saint Babo's cathedral in Ghent, where Hubert had been buried some six years before, leading to the name by which is most commonly referred the Ghent altarpiece.
Shortly thereafter, though, it was moved to the cathedral chapel, which is where you can still find it today, but not without having been removed a few times, in whole or in part.
And when I say a few times, it's estimated, depending on, like, what source you're looking at, that this has been stolen between eleven and 16 times over the course of its existence. And I'm not going to talk about all of them. I'm just going to be talking about some of the major ones here.
So the first big threat to the Ghent algebraics came with the Protestant Reformation, when Calvinists were like, you shouldn't actually be worshiping images, you dirty Catholics, and storm through Europe destroying catholic art wherever they found it.
In 1566, the iconoclasts came for the painting literally wielding torches, and Ghent saw them coming and preemptively moved it to the town hall, both because this was the city's stronghold and because if it's not in a church, it's not necessarily an object of worship. Very clever, by the way. It was in reading about this painting that I realized I actually had no idea what an iconoclast was before this.
I guess I never really thought about it, but, like, if I had been, like, pressed, I would have thought that, like, icon was short for iconoclast and not that it's people who are, like, against.
[00:09:29] Speaker B: Yeah, iconoclast is a disruptor. Yes. Somebody who.
[00:09:34] Speaker A: Yeah, it's someone who was, like, against, like, ostentatious displays of, like, art and culture or something along those. Those lines. So basically, it, like, refers to these people from the reformation who came and destroyed these images that were considered idol worship.
Those were the iconoclasts. And I learned that what they did was called the Beeldun storm, or image storm, which is a little bit metal, even though what they were doing was just, you know, burning shit.
[00:10:08] Speaker B: Basically.
[00:10:10] Speaker A: The piece survived the reformation, although it wouldn't be the last time religious weirdness impacted it, as, in 1781, Holy Roman emperor Joseph II came to Ghent and was like, what the fuck are those naked bodies? And insisted that the Adam and Eve panels be removed from the painting.
Super fun.
In 1794, none other than Napoleon Bonaparte set his sights on it.
This time, Ghent couldn't protect it, and his troops were able to make off with four panels, which they held displayed in the Louvre until Napoleon's defeat at the battle of Waterloo in 1815.
During the revolution, Ghent had harbored Louis XVIII. So as a show of his gratitude, he gave them back the panels when he was restored to the throne.
But the very next year, a vicar.
[00:10:59] Speaker B: Until giving them back. What might he have done with them? Just kept them in a fucking.
[00:11:03] Speaker A: Kept them in the Louvre?
[00:11:04] Speaker B: Not even. Okay, okay, fine.
[00:11:07] Speaker A: Yeah, it'd been. I think, yeah, like, that's what's so crazy is that, like, as this gets stolen by these various powers and stuff like that, they then display it. It's not like they're, like, squirreled away. It's like, look at this thing we have that is totally now ours.
So, yeah, Napoleon wasn't hiding it. It was in the Louvre. And so certainly Louis XVIII could have been like, and it stays. But he was like, hey, thanks, guys, for not letting me get beheaded. And he gave it back to them at the end.
But the very next year, a vicar at the cathedral was like, six of these panels are totally in shitty shape. Who needs them? Uh. And he fucking pawned them. Took them to a pawn shop for the modern equivalent of 240 pounds.
[00:11:59] Speaker B: Nice.
[00:11:59] Speaker A: The modern equivalent of 240 pounds, which.
[00:12:04] Speaker B: Is, to me, so fuck all now. Fuck all in now.
[00:12:07] Speaker A: Fuck all now. That's like taking the Mona Lisa to the pawn shop and being like, uh, 240 pounds, and I'll come back for it maybe next week.
[00:12:18] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:18] Speaker A: Yeah. It's truly unhinged. And I think it is the most unhinged of all the ways in which the city of Ghent lost control of this deeply significant piece of their history.
Not a theft, just some doofus who acted like he'd found it in his attic and brought it to Antiques roadshow.
And I get that in the 19th.
[00:12:36] Speaker B: Oh, I love that. You know what antiques roadshow is? That's the.
[00:12:38] Speaker A: Oh, we have that here.
[00:12:40] Speaker B: What, like an american equivalent?
[00:12:43] Speaker A: Yeah. And yours? We have both.
[00:12:45] Speaker B: But America's only like a couple hundred years old. I mean, how antique is it gonna be?
[00:12:49] Speaker A: Well, for one thing, people did come here from other places, so, you know, they do bring things with them.
[00:12:55] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:12:57] Speaker A: You can buy shit. Who knows where? Your relatives. Like, I think that's the thing, is, like, so many things come from, like, my dad went to Vietnam or Japan or wherever, and they just, like, pilfered shit. And it's been sitting in an attic since World War two or whatever. So, yeah, it doesn't all just come from here, but, yeah, I get that. In the 19th century, you don't necessarily know that what you've got here is the most important piece of art in existence. But after Napoleon steals it, you've got to know it's something that you should probably hold on to. It's literally the year after they got it back. They'd gone to the trouble of getting this thing back, and he's like, eh, fuck it. We need some money for the church. I'm just gonna pawn this thing.
So after failing to show up with the money to get the pawned pieces back, they were bought by a british art dealer and sold to the king of Prussia and exhibited in Berlin.
And by the way, to display the whole painting, the Germans sliced the panels in half so you could see both sides at once. I just. I can't with all of these people. I mean, I'm not.
Has it.
[00:14:09] Speaker B: Has it. Has it only reached such a level of, you know, importance since then? Or did they know at the time that they were fucking carving up something of such significance?
[00:14:21] Speaker A: You can tell because they're taking it that they know it's important.
[00:14:24] Speaker B: Yeah, of course.
[00:14:25] Speaker A: Right?
[00:14:25] Speaker B: Yeah, sure, sure.
[00:14:27] Speaker A: That's the thing. It's like, it'd be one thing if it was like, oh, they didn't know what they had, but, like, no, they are specific, specifically going to get, because they know how significant this is. And then they're like, hey, how do we. How do we make it so people can see both sides? I don't know.
[00:14:41] Speaker B: Fucking pass me that.
[00:14:42] Speaker A: Saw it in half.
[00:14:42] Speaker B: Scissors. Let's go.
[00:14:46] Speaker A: What?
It's incredible. And if you're spending huge sums of money to acquire something like that, you would think that, like, instead of cutting it up, you figure out some other way to display it. Like, now it's in this huge bulletproof glass case in this place, and you can walk around it to see the backside of the thing. And if you're there when it closes, which we happen to be, you can see them close the panels, too.
05:00 p.m. you can see the other side in its whole entirety.
But, yeah, you would think in 1815, they probably didn't have that, but you could have hung it, maybe. I don't know. Fucking Germans.
And, marco, listen, you can't just have six panels of the greatest art piece in western civilization hanging up in your gallery. If you give a mouse a cookie, what's he gonna want? Mark?
[00:15:43] Speaker B: Another one.
[00:15:45] Speaker A: Some milk. But, yeah, same principle instead of phrase.
It's a popular children's book. Do you not have that one there?
[00:15:54] Speaker B: Never fucking hear that in my life.
[00:15:57] Speaker A: Well, Mark, if you give a mouse a cookie, he's gonna want some milk.
[00:16:01] Speaker B: That's probably with another cookie.
[00:16:04] Speaker A: Well, and it goes on from there. All spirals.
And the Germans attempted to yoink the last two panels from Ghent to join the other ones on display in Berlin.
However, a church custodian. What?
[00:16:18] Speaker B: Nothing. Nothing.
[00:16:21] Speaker A: However, a church custodian squirreled away the panels in the bishop's residence and then bricked them into the walls of two local houses. And the german soldiers were shown a letter saying that the panels had been taken to England.
Once Germany lost the war. The treaty of Versailles had among its stipulations that the painting be returned, a thing that really miffed german public, which is kind of silly to me, because, a, they should probably have been more concerned with the fascism than a painting, and b, it was not their painting. It very much belonged to get.
It's also worth noting that the Germans didn't give up on the painting in 1942, Hitler managed to get it back, and according to the new statement, quote, it ended the war hidden in the Altousi assault mines rigged with explosives against advancing allied troops.
They go on to explain, quote, even the panel's return to Ghent was eventful. The plane carrying them was hit by a storm of such severity that it had to make an emergency landing on a small rural airfield. And there's a whole movie about this situation starring George Clooney called the monuments Men, which I've never been interested, but now I kind of watched. So again, like, with this whole, like, well, I've never heard of it. Like, there is literally a movie about it. I think neither of us are art people, so that's why we have no idea what this is.
[00:17:45] Speaker B: I feel like somebody could run that by me.
[00:17:49] Speaker A: Anyway, the painting comes back to Ghent, and everyone is deeply pleased, except for one thing. It wasn't the whole painting.
See, before Hitler's homies got a hold of it in 1934, thieves had made off with two of the panels, leaving in its place a note reading, taken from Germany by the Treaty of Versailles, which, of course, is just a reference to how they got it back. But a weird note to leave when you have then stolen part of it and is sufficiently vague.
There was one witness to the crime, a man who happened to be robbing a cheese shop nearby at the time and said that he saw two men carrying the panels off under a sheet.
It was 20 days later that the bishop of Ghent received a ransom note asking for a million belgian francs to get the panels back, to which their bishop responded, nah.
And the thief was like, wait. What the fuck? And an additional eleven letters were sent back and forth before one of the panels was left in the luggage apartment of Ghent. As a show of good faith, like, see, I will give it back, I promise. Just like the business about the 1 million francs. Let's just do that.
But the cathedral still said no.
So here's where things start to get all kinds of weird and complicated and mysterious, because there's things we know and we don't know involving what happened next.
Heres the basic fact of the matter. Its nearly a century later, and we still have no clue where that last panel is. Completely disappeared without a trace, despite still being an open case to this day. And there having been all kinds of investigations, including some very high tech ones since then.
The painting that you see now, the one that we went and saw last week, has a very skilled reproduction of the original panel, but it's not the original panel.
So the same year of its disappearance, 1934, a stockbroker named Arsene Godertier, dying of heart failure, told his lawyer that he was the one who'd pilfered the panels and instructed him to look in a drawer in his writing table there.
[00:20:08] Speaker B: Um, just for my sense of kind of physical scale, a singular panel from this painting would be how big?
[00:20:17] Speaker A: I think about five and a half feet by.
[00:20:21] Speaker B: So, you know, not something you could just tuck away somewhere.
[00:20:25] Speaker A: Absolutely not. No.
Yeah. It's like five and a half feet tall by.
Yeah. Three wide. I don't know. Something like that. It's huge.
[00:20:36] Speaker B: In a drawer made really?
[00:20:37] Speaker A: No, no, no.
He didn't say that it was in a drawer.
He told the lawyer to look in the drawer. And there the lawyer came upon carbon copies of the ransom notes that had been sent regarding the panels, as well as one unsent note that read, it rests in a place where neither I nor anybody else can take it away without arousing the attention of the public, which is intriguing and frustrating. Right.
[00:21:05] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:21:06] Speaker A: Like, it gives you this sense that it's hiding somewhere in plain sight. Like.
[00:21:10] Speaker B: Yeah, I can imagine riddles. You're gonna fucking riddle, are you? You just fucking hand it over and.
[00:21:18] Speaker A: It goes further than that. There was also, apparently, what's thought to be some sort of code scribbled on the note. Six words. Wiseau, art, Jean, Nina, Earp and phore. And the number 152.
Because of that note, there are those that think Godier was in cahoots with a priest and that the panel is actually still hidden somewhere inside the cathedral.
But according to the catholic leader, magazine x rays conducted to a depth of 10 meters of the entirety of the cathedral did not reveal the panel.
[00:21:56] Speaker B: Let's have that note again. Nice and slow.
[00:21:59] Speaker A: Okay. It rests in a place where neither I nor anybody else can take it away without arousing the intention of the public.
[00:22:08] Speaker B: Right. So, uh, 100% in a public space.
[00:22:13] Speaker A: Right. Maybe.
[00:22:14] Speaker B: Wazzo.
[00:22:15] Speaker A: Wazzo.
[00:22:16] Speaker B: Bird.
[00:22:17] Speaker A: Right, Art. Yeah. Good job.
Jean. Nina.
[00:22:23] Speaker B: Jean, as in the name or the color? Right.
[00:22:28] Speaker A: Nina, which I think is a name as well. It's not a french word. And furor, which is fur.
[00:22:37] Speaker B: Okay. It's. Well, it's in a zoo, isn't it?
[00:22:41] Speaker A: Bird and fur.
[00:22:43] Speaker B: It's in a zoo. It's in. Is there a zoo in that area?
[00:22:49] Speaker A: Question. I don't think so, but maybe.
I know. We'll have to. We'll have to follow up on this. What if that. What if it's that simple? What if it's just in a zoo somewhere? Certainly would arouse suspicion if you found a painting in a zoo?
[00:23:07] Speaker B: Yes, it would.
[00:23:09] Speaker A: So, like I said, x rays were conducted to a depth of 10 meters. Did not reveal the panel. And I don't know how x rays work when it comes to searching for a painting. Like, obviously, I know they see through stuff.
I don't know what they can and can't see through or how detailed what they see is if it's through layers of things. So I'm not sure whether that means categorically it cannot be in the cathedral, but the church seems to be pretty sure it is not there.
Another theory is that the painting is in the tomb of King Albert I, who died the same year as the theft in a rock climbing accident.
Apparently, people find that a sketchy explanation for his demise and think that perhaps his death actually has something to do with the disease appearance of the painting.
That his family never let anyone search the crypt is thought to be super sus by these conspiracy theorists.
I think that's pretty fair. It seems like a stretch that they'd just, like, bury this super valuable painting, never to see the light of day again. And knowing that it's not there, you can understand why they don't want people all up in the crypt.
Seems logical.
There are people who think the painting was just straight up destroyed. One particular theory says, like, specifically in 1975, this was destroyed. There's no evidence of that. But of course, that's a possibility. That would be a good reason why no one has found it. It simply doesn't exist anymore.
In June of 2018, engineer and treasure hunter Gino Marshall, or Marshall or Marcal. I don't know what his nationality is, so I'm going to say marshall, and we'll go with that. Geno Marshall announced that he'd cracked the case and knew where the missing panel was. Based on the code on the note, he claimed, according to the Independent, that he had, quote, found locations linked to four of the words that were all 152 meters from a single point on the Kalandeberg, and that plotting the route spelled out the letters for the name Nina.
[00:25:14] Speaker B: Awesome.
[00:25:15] Speaker A: Which is. Yeah, very national treasure. Doesn't feel like Dan Brown. Yeah, right. Exactly.
Okay. It seems a little bit of a stretch, but if you're a treasure hunter, like, that's exactly this whole thing, the kind of thing you're looking for.
[00:25:29] Speaker B: This whole thing reads like fiction. It really like airport fiction. It really does.
[00:25:33] Speaker A: Exactly. I mean, I think that's one of the reasons why I also am, like, this has to be findable, because that's the thing, is, it's like you read about this stuff in a Dan Brown novel or whatever, right? Like, there's clues. We have the clues.
Surely there's a way to find it.
And the Kalandeberg is a square in central Ghent. And after this announcement, the city was like, I'm sure we're all very excited, but please, for the love of God, don't everybody go digging up the town square looking for it, which I'm sure they absolutely would have done. They were like, we're taking it seriously, and we'll do the search.
And in 2019, they did just that. They dug up the calender Berg in hopes of finding the panel. Oh, I don't think you're going to be surprised to hear that they did not find Jack down there. Well, that's not entirely true. They found a very old iron ladder of no significance to anything underneath there.
But again, this dude was in shitty health, and this square is in the middle of town. Surely they didn't think that somehow he had managed to dig that shit up and hide it and then repave it with no one noticing.
[00:26:44] Speaker B: You know, finding it from there would be in the public eye, would disturb it would.
[00:26:49] Speaker A: Yeah. It's like if, you know, his clues panned out the way that he says they did, and, you know, it is a place that it would be hard not to rouse suspicion, but you have to think about how it would have gotten there in the first place. I think that's the key, is wherever it is, it would have to be somewhere that he could have gotten it without the whole town being like, there's a man burying a painting in the middle of the square, you know?
So historian and former Brussels MP Paul.
[00:27:19] Speaker B: De Ritter, questions, as they occur to me, in the context of the larger piece, the triptych.
Is it like, a super important panel? Is it, like, the middle one or something?
[00:27:31] Speaker A: No. So it's part of the. I believe the lower left wing and half of that panel is gone. And to be fair, all of it's important.
There's not, like, an unimportant part of this thing, but it's not like the whole middle of this thing is taken. It is half of one of the wing panels that is missing.
[00:27:57] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:27:58] Speaker A: And like I said, they have meticulously recreated it so when you look at it, you can't tell that anything is a miss. And, in fact, they've done it multiple times, taken, like, I think, in 2019 or something like that. They did, like, almost all of the panels, they took them out and retouched them up, and they actually like, they cleared off dirt and layers of varnish, stuff like that, and found there's like a lamb in it, right. Hence the name of the piece. But they smudged it down or whatever, and it revealed its, like, original painted face, which is, like, very human and creepy. And they're so proud of it. Like, look, we revealed this. And I'm like, are you sure he didn't cover it up on purpose?
[00:28:45] Speaker B: That's a great point.
[00:28:47] Speaker A: You know, he didn't have an eraser. Maybe he was like, jesus, I really fucked this sheep and made it look a little puffier instead. But they are. It's like, on everything, like, oh, look what we revealed, the original sheep face. So there you go. So they have done this many, many times. You cannot tell what is not original on that painting.
But Paul de Ritter has a much more straightforward theory. You have another question.
[00:29:14] Speaker B: Great point.
Because knowing jack shit about art restoration, that is what cleaning paintings tend to be, is they're just scraping off layers of accumulated.
[00:29:27] Speaker A: Right.
[00:29:29] Speaker B: Is that not the equivalent of, like, restoring an old version of a save file? Like, if I'm writing.
[00:29:34] Speaker A: Yeah, right.
[00:29:36] Speaker B: And you're just restoring it to a version that I've saved over.
[00:29:39] Speaker A: Right? Yeah, I mean, I think.
I think they can tell, like, based on art boffins.
Yeah. Do we have any art boffins? Well, I think the thing is, like, just like, you can. When people look at, like, a piece of paper, something that was written, you know, you can tell if it was written now or if it was written in the 1940s or whatever, even if you made it look aged or things like that because of the type of ink, the type of paper, you know, chemical composition and all that kind of stuff. And so I think they have ways of knowing, like, what was the original artist and what was someone who came to touch it up later and pulled, like, what that lady did on the. The Jesus painting a few years ago. Right. Which, of course, I don't know if they've done it, but, like, they can restore that, they can fix it, you know, as they've done with all of this other stuff.
But, yeah, I think they can tell what the original artist did or people around the time of the original artist versus something that was, like, touched up 200 years later and things like that.
So Paul de Ritter and his theory, uh, given everything that we know about rich people, I think makes a lot more sense than anything else.
He believes that the painting is in the hands of a, quote, prominent ghent family. And when he says that, he doesn't mean just like, some rich family out there has it. He, like a specific family, he thinks has this painting, and they know that they have it, but they haven't come forward because it's not gonna look great.
According to de Ritter, late professor Robert Sennell had been part of negotiations between this family and the diocese to return the panel. But the mediation fell through, and it's still in their possession.
According to the Flanders News, the story goes that the painting had been, quote, stolen in an ill conceived plot to force the diocese to bail out a collapsing banking group that many catholic families had invested in.
Obviously didn't work because the bishop was like, we're not paying for this.
And ever since then, this family has had possession of the painting, even having it restored and keeping it in good condition from what de Ritter claims to have been told.
He reported this to the authorities, and people were questioned, but of course, they denied everything.
The article didn't say if anyone's possessions were searched or anything like that. And I'm guessing the answer is no. If this is a prominent family of the city, they probably were like, how dare you? And that was, like, the end of it.
But on the tour I took in Ghent, the guide seemed to kind of allude to something like this likely being the case, especially since the gathering of the evidence and police response to the theft, when it happened, was bungled to an extent that it almost seems deliberate, like they weren't really trying to catch who did it because they knew. And, you know, thus, this is what we end up with.
[00:32:38] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:32:38] Speaker A: And I have to read you my favorite quote from this article, by the way, which concerns people who don't believe in this prominent family theory.
I knew SuneL well, and he never mentioned the just judges to me, says political journalist Rick von Coelhart. Van Coelhardt is said by some to belong to the family de Ritter is referring to.
Weird. Weird that the guy never mentioned that he thought your family was a bunch of thieves to your face, Rick. Can't imagine.
[00:33:08] Speaker B: I didn't say that.
[00:33:09] Speaker A: Yeah. Can't imagine why it never came up.
Very strange.
But historian gel Duboul concurs with de Ritter, saying, quote, I speak from my own conviction, but I think there are enough clues that show there's a probability that the painting still exists and is in the hands of a family and is the subject of negotiation.
So theres a chance that we may never know where the panel ended up. Maybe it was destroyed. Maybe it really is buried in the square somewhere. Maybe some rich assholes are just gonna hold onto it forever. Showing it off to their rich asshole friends at parties.
I think were gonna find out, though. I have to think so. I cannot live with such a stupid mystery going unsolved.
[00:33:55] Speaker B: Did the. Did the movie have an opinion? Did the Clooney film.
[00:33:59] Speaker A: I haven't seen the movie.
[00:34:00] Speaker B: I'm just wondering, did it have a.
You know, did it have any.
[00:34:05] Speaker A: I would guess not. Because the movie is about the part where it was taken to Germany. It's not actually about the mystery of the panel.
[00:34:14] Speaker B: I see.
[00:34:15] Speaker A: I don't think. But Clooney himself might have some opinions about it. I don't know.
It did not come up in any of my reading.
[00:34:24] Speaker B: Well, he certainly has opinions.
Let me quote directly from my notes, if I may.
[00:34:30] Speaker A: Yes, please do.
[00:34:31] Speaker B: Fucking look at these nerds. Oh, mise en scene.
[00:34:35] Speaker A: I don't think anyone has ever said mise en scene in such a horny way before.
[00:34:39] Speaker B: The way I whispered the word sex. Cannibal, receive.
[00:34:41] Speaker A: Worst comes to worst. Mark, I'm willing to guillotine you for science.
[00:34:45] Speaker B: Thank you. That's really, really sweet. It's cold outside, but my pancreas is talking to me. I'm fucking. I'm gonna leg it.
[00:34:51] Speaker A: You know how I feel about that, Mark.
[00:34:54] Speaker B: I think you feel great about it.
Back and to the left.
Back and to the left. Back and to the left. I have to tell you what a strange day Saturday was. Right? What a strange day Saturday was.
What a strange day Saturday was.
So I do remember a couple of weeks back when I was walking through Vista and I received an offer from a very kindly young lady asking if I would like her to pray for me.
[00:35:27] Speaker A: If there anything in particular to remember this.
[00:35:30] Speaker B: Remember, this Saturday was a very strange day in that I think I said to you, I felt. I just had this fucking defeated feeling all of Saturday just kind of beaten down, just on my ass. Just. Ah, fuck. Just. I just. I don't know what it was. I was. There was. Something wasn't right on Saturday. Something was wrong with me.
And it happened again, right?
I was walking through town, I just. Taking the voice to tennis and a different. Same church, same banner, same group of people, but a different. A different girl. A girl by the name of Lavendere.
[00:36:08] Speaker A: Lavender?
[00:36:09] Speaker B: Lavender.
[00:36:10] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:36:11] Speaker B: Just blindsides me. Pops out of nowhere in front of me, waving a leaflet in my hand.
Would you like. Is there anything in particular you'd like me to pray for? For you? And I just let her.
[00:36:25] Speaker A: You did?
[00:36:26] Speaker B: I just fucking let her do it, man. I just let her do it.
[00:36:31] Speaker A: This is how they get you, by the way.
[00:36:33] Speaker B: I. I didn't have any. I didn't have any fight left in me.
[00:36:36] Speaker A: Yeah, I thought, that's how this works.
[00:36:38] Speaker B: Should I say some funny shit or should I just. Shall I give her the old brush off? Shall I keep walking? I just sent it. I looked right at Lavender and I went, yeah, okay, okay, right.
[00:36:50] Speaker A: So what'd she say? What was the.
[00:36:52] Speaker B: No word of a light lavender waves over two of her fucking mates, right? Two of them.
[00:36:56] Speaker A: Do they lay hands?
[00:36:57] Speaker B: A guy called Ben.
[00:36:59] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:36:59] Speaker B: Ben and another lady whose name I didn't catch. Right, sure, right?
[00:37:04] Speaker A: Mm hmm.
[00:37:05] Speaker B: And they asked me, what. What would you like us to pray for? What would you like us to pray for? For you. And again, I thought to myself, should I make up some shit? Shall I make up some funny shit? Shall I say something? You know, shall I say something? And I just fucking gave it to him. I gave it to him on a plate. Wow. I said, well, look, I'm angry all the time. I feel lost. I can't sleep very well. I. I'm angry. I don't really feel like there's much point in living. That's what I fucking said to him.
[00:37:36] Speaker A: That's what. Wow. Oh, my God. Do you know how many people have heard about this since this happened?
[00:37:44] Speaker B: No.
[00:37:45] Speaker A: Yeah. Their whole church knows about this.
[00:37:47] Speaker B: Oh, really?
[00:37:47] Speaker A: Absolutely, yes.
[00:37:49] Speaker B: Well, so then Lavender says, would it be okay if we put our hands on your shoulder?
[00:37:55] Speaker A: Yep. Laying our hands.
[00:37:56] Speaker B: I went, yeah, fucking go for it. So Ben puts his hand on me, and lavender puts his hand on me, and they close their eyes and. Motherfucker. Do they get into this?
[00:38:06] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:38:07] Speaker B: Like, I'm stood in the middle of Bicester, fucking sheep street, right? The main fucking street in Bicester, and there's people walking past. I started to feel like a bit of a dick after, like, eight years.
[00:38:17] Speaker A: Did you close your eyes? Did you look down?
Were you looking around?
[00:38:22] Speaker B: I just gazed forward. Just kind of, you know, like I was having like a. Like a medical exam or something, just waiting for it to be finished. And Ben, you know, goddess, you know, we commend this mark. What was your name? Sorry, Mark.
And we ask that you fill him with compassion and with love and that he's going to be. He's going to be able to treat, you know, see life with fresh eyes, and you're going to fill his heart with joy.
And it finished. And I went. I went on my way, right?
[00:38:55] Speaker A: Amazing thought.
[00:38:56] Speaker B: Yeah. But what. What I felt about it afterwards was, I think. I think I felt like I was doing them a favorite.
[00:39:03] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:39:04] Speaker B: You know?
[00:39:05] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:39:06] Speaker B: I think I felt as though they enjoyed it more than I did, and I think I did a nice thing for them. For Ben and Lavender.
[00:39:13] Speaker A: Yeah. There must have, like, something in you needed to, like, get it out, though, you know, possibly. Yeah. It's like I. You know what? Yeah, I just. I just want to. I'm just going to get this out.
[00:39:26] Speaker B: Obviously, they caught me. They caught me at the right.
[00:39:29] Speaker A: They got you in a vulnerable moment where you're like, you know what? I just. Yeah. I would like to say this out loud to somebody, and I am going to. I'm going to take. I'm going to take this, see what happens.
[00:39:38] Speaker B: I'm going to take the prayer. I'm going to take the. Listen, but if what you've just said, if you really believe that, if what you've just said is true and you think that they, you know, they shared that and they talked to that about their church friends, I'm fine. I'm happy about that. I think I've done the nice thing for them.
[00:39:52] Speaker A: Yeah. Like, that's a. That's the kind of thing that you go and you're like. You go back and you're like, we really. You know, we touched this guy. We planted a seed. You know, he really needed us, and you could tell we were there for him at just the right time.
I don't know if it's good, but, you know, you definitely made them feel good. I don't know that that's a good thing as an ex v myself, but, yeah, if you were looking to make them feel good, they definitely are going to be dining out on that one for a while. Like, getting someone who, like, genuinely, like, felt broken in a moment is like.
[00:40:29] Speaker B: Then I'm super happy. I'm actually pleased because, you know, Ben and lavender, I'm. You know, if you listen to this, I hope it was good for you, you know.
[00:40:43] Speaker A: Yes, I guarantee that was probably. Probably one of the best ones they had that day. Like, because 99% of the people who walk by them are gonna be like, no, no.
[00:40:52] Speaker B: Well, yeah, on any other day.
[00:40:54] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. You are that person who walks by and says, no, the only problem now.
[00:41:00] Speaker B: Is horror filmmaker metal or satanic t shirt. No, but no, not that day.
[00:41:06] Speaker A: The only problem is, like, they're gonna see you again now. So, you know, you have to know what your plan is.
[00:41:17] Speaker B: If they should try it again, they'll get the shortest of shrift, you know, but. But they're on in that moment. Fucking good. Good for them. I hope. I hope. I hope they enjoyed it.
[00:41:28] Speaker A: I'm sure they did. Yeah. Good job.
[00:41:31] Speaker B: And then.
And then I went. Went to the movies. Went to long legs, which we'll talk about in due course.
[00:41:37] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:41:39] Speaker B: But then as I was coming out of the movies, back into the left. Back into the left, my fucking phone blew up with this super disappointing fucking event.
So disappointing, man. So fucking disappointing.
It was. Well, it was history, but it was almost so much more, you know? It was almost perfect. We came so close. It was almost beautiful, wasn't it?
Yeah, it was almost beautiful. Motherfucker. You had a fucking sniper rifle and a clear shot, you bitch. You had a fucking clear shot.
[00:42:24] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, to the point where it's like, I was. I just sent you a thing before there was. You know, if you're listening to this a bajillion years later, I'm sure you can. You can guess what we're talking about. The assassination attempt on President Trump. The failed assassination attempt. And, like, I sent you the group chat a thing right before this of, like, apparently, like, even a cop saw him and was like, hey, what are you doing? And then when the guy pointed his rifle at him, the cop was like, oh, okay, back down.
[00:42:53] Speaker B: Sorry, sir.
[00:42:53] Speaker A: My bad. Like, and then the guy, like, had a chance take shots. Like, how do you. How do you miss?
[00:42:59] Speaker B: Well, you didn't entirely miss. I mean, he killed a fucking dude in the crows.
[00:43:03] Speaker A: And I assume he wasn't trying to do that. Like, so we missed.
Like, if you kill a bystander, buddy, you've missed.
Wrong.
[00:43:14] Speaker B: You've. Turbo missed. Yeah.
[00:43:16] Speaker A: You've. Turbo missed.
Yeah. So that was because here's the thing is, we're gonna get all the fallout of it being as if he was assassinated, but still. Yes, that's what's. Yeah.
[00:43:29] Speaker B: With none of the Trump being dead.
[00:43:31] Speaker A: Right? Yeah, exactly. So we're gonna get the insanity that follows and everything being terrible and the chaos of the assassination attempt and still have Trump. So just like a failure on every conceivable.
[00:43:48] Speaker B: But it was incredible. Literally, as the credits for long legs were rolling, the alert came in on.
[00:43:54] Speaker A: My wall, and I'm, like, blowing up the group chat. Like, somebody please respond, you guys, so good.
[00:44:01] Speaker B: And I did. I did say to you at the time, I mean, I got back, it was a late showing of long legs that I caught, and I got back and Laura was asleep, and I hurriedly, like, you know, like Santa had been or something, I hurriedly kind of ran upstairs and gave her a little shake. Laura.
[00:44:14] Speaker A: Laura.
[00:44:15] Speaker B: Donald Trump's been shot.
And she just rolled over and went, oh, good.
And then just. Just immediately went back to sleep. It was perfect.
Oh, good.
[00:44:27] Speaker A: You know, my husband, much like you, is, like, kind of a news junkie, but, like, we've been working on weaning him off it because all the news is, like, terrible. You know, it all has an agenda and it just causes rage because it's so, like, obviously right wing, all the media. And so he hasn't been watching a ton of it. But then I texted him, because obviously, I'm quarantined in here. We'll get to that. But, you know, I'm just in my room. I have not left this room aside from to be in, you know, four or five days. So I texted him, and I was like, hey, like, Donald Trump was just shot. And he was like, really?
[00:45:05] Speaker B: You really haven't left that room. You've really locked yourself the fuck down.
You're so good, aren't you?
[00:45:13] Speaker A: I am good. Gosh darn it. Yes. You're one of the good ones. I have gone nowhere. I have been in this room.
And so he turns on the news or whatever, and he was. I'd asked him to make lo mein for dinner last night, and he got so caught up in it that when he finally brought the lo mein up, he was like, I'm sorry, it's mushy. I got really into the news, just completely absorbed by the whole thing and let the dinner cook too long and was, yeah. Watching it for hours after that, which I did not. I watched collision and stopped watching it. But, yeah, pretty crazy times over here in America. The fallout will be weird and probably terrible.
[00:45:58] Speaker B: A fucking shame. Such a massive shame that just, like, at the end of the debate the other week, that killer fucking line that he delivered at the end of the debate, I don't know what he said. I think he knows what he said. Fucking brilliant. It's so fucking hateful to me that. That fucking image of him fucking fist pump in the air with blood across his cheek.
[00:46:21] Speaker A: It's so iconic.
[00:46:22] Speaker B: Metal. Fucking iconic image. Shit.
[00:46:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:46:26] Speaker B: He's made it worse.
[00:46:27] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, it's the thing where it's like, you know, obviously I'm joking when I'm being conspiracy theorist about it, but, like, the one of the reasons why everyone is like, it's faked. It's faked is, like. It's, like, so perfect. You know, like, you could. You almost. You. Well, you couldn't. You couldn't plan a better image than him getting up triumphant, covered in blood with his fist in the air, like, oh, jeez, this is. And of course, the Democrats responded by, like, suspending their campaigning and things like that, like, because they don't want to win this, apparently. You know, like, oh, he's just been handed a great image, and then his base is galvanized. People are going to have sympathy for this. They're going to come out for him. We better not campaign anymore.
[00:47:15] Speaker B: You know, no one, no other world leaders can say what we're saying right here, which everyone's obviously fucking thinking, right.
Every fucking world leader is thinking the same as us. Fuck, we nearly had it back into the left. We nearly had another one. Fuck.
[00:47:29] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:47:31] Speaker B: But they can't say that, so everyone.
[00:47:33] Speaker A: Can'T say they have to condemn.
[00:47:35] Speaker B: Violence has no place in the political process. We wish nothing but the best for Trump and his family. Everybody has to say that. So it's just fucking helped. It made sense. Things worse.
[00:47:45] Speaker A: Exactly. Yeah. It is the worst possible.
[00:47:49] Speaker B: By inches. By inches.
[00:47:51] Speaker A: Inches.
[00:47:52] Speaker B: Inches away from a metal fucking photo opportunity and somebody picking fucking skull out of their popcorn in the front row, you know?
[00:48:01] Speaker A: Yep.
America, what are we doing here? What are we doing here? No one's going to get another chance.
[00:48:12] Speaker B: No, see, that's. Again, that's what everyone's thinking. That's. That's. That's the most disappointing thing. That was the one fucking shot. Literally the one shot at it. That was the one fucking crack we had at that.
[00:48:26] Speaker A: Yeah. I say we like it.
The world.
[00:48:31] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:48:32] Speaker A: In this case. And I, like, I just think it's so disingenuous, anyone pretending, like, like, they don't. They didn't want that. Like, unless you're a trump supporter yet. Don't give me your fucking sanctimonious whatever about, like, oh, there shouldn't be political violence, blah, blah, blah. Like, shut up. I don't believe you for a second.
You would. You would not have mourned. Uh, you would pretend to, but you know that this would be for the best.
[00:48:58] Speaker B: So Byron is.
[00:48:59] Speaker A: Fuck out of here.
[00:49:00] Speaker B: Byron sent his best wishes to President Taft.
[00:49:10] Speaker A: Oh, Christ. We are so fucking screwed.
Oh, man.
[00:49:15] Speaker B: Well.
[00:49:20] Speaker A: On top of all that happening in America, I came back to these United States to a computer that immediately broke.
And finding out that I have. Covid, brought a little past.
Yeah, brought a little past. Little souvenir from Europe, which I sent this to you earlier, and I just think it's so great. Two weeks ago. Exactly. I texted you and said, my no, Covid streak is for sure. Coming to an end because everybody in Amsterdam is sick and coughing all over me.
And sure enough, I was 100% correct on that. I came. Luckily for me, the timing was perfect. I managed to not get it until the end of the trip, so it didn't hit.
[00:50:10] Speaker B: Yeah, great job. Great job. I arrived home, you will know, but I want to make this, you know, explicit. I'm only chortling because I know you're fine.
[00:50:17] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, exactly like this is. But, like, you know, listen, I have had a, like, five vaccines to this point, you know, built up plenty of those antibodies. I am, you know, I haven't had any alcohol or anything like that. My. I've been exercising my body.
Yeah. My body is operating at the peak that it is possible for my body to operate at, which is fascinating because, like, you know that I'm obsessed with kind of, like, looking at, like, my, like, numbers and how healthy I am at any given time, you know, and I'm always.
Yeah, yeah. Like you with calories. I am with just, like, my general, like, health and wanting to make sure that, you know, everything is running the way it's supposed to. Um, so I'm always really aware of, like, where my heart rate is, and my resting heart rate normally is, like, 62, 63 ish. And it's fascinating to watch that. Like, as my body has been fighting this, it's been consistently, like, you know, the lowest it gets is, like, 78, and it's consistently at, like, almost 90 because my body is, like, just fighting constantly, trying to hit this. And it's like, I can see, like, a tangible thing showing me my immune system working by looking at my heart rate, which I think is absolutely fascinating.
[00:51:33] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:51:35] Speaker A: So it's been an interesting, like, process because it hasn't been bad. It's been intriguing to me. So it was like, I came back and I had a little bit of a scratchy throat, and so I tested and it came back negative. And so I was like, okay, I guess I just caught a cold or something, which I have had colds over the past several years or whatever. So I was like, I guess I did manage to dodge it, and I just have a cold the next day. I was, like, my stomach was, like, hurting, and it was like I was eating something, and I was just, like. It kind of had the feeling so, you know, I have, like, a fructose intolerance. Right. And I've talked about how, like, if I eat apples and things like that, it feels like someone is trying to slice their way out of my stomach. With a razor. And I was like, yeah, apples, pears, like, things that fruit that have high a lot of fructose.
[00:52:34] Speaker B: Lactose. Okay. Fructose. Lactose is, of course, fructose, because you're the only person I've ever known with this particular reaction. What I've always considered to be the most benign fruits.
[00:52:46] Speaker A: Right? Yeah. The things that, like, everyone is supposed.
[00:52:49] Speaker B: To be able to eat the softest and most delicious and sweet.
[00:52:52] Speaker A: I love berries.
[00:52:54] Speaker B: Oh, I love a pear.
[00:52:55] Speaker A: They're so good.
[00:52:56] Speaker B: Can't eat them, though.
Season. I bought something.
[00:53:01] Speaker A: Okay.
Riveting podcasting. But also, I love that you stood up to reveal a big bowl of fruit. Oh, and you have returned with a banana.
A banana holder.
[00:53:16] Speaker B: It's a banana box. Banana case. I'm gonna take a banana with you.
[00:53:25] Speaker A: Wow.
Listen, I like this idea because I have deep issues with bananas.
So bananas, if they have ripened, like, at all.
[00:53:39] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:53:40] Speaker A: The smell of them is, like, will immediately cause me to vomit. It's like just the most visceral reaction if someone opens one, anyone, anywhere near me immediately as it hits me, I'm like, well. And people are always taking them out and then just leaving them on the desk they're sitting at or things like that. I like the banana box to prevent that smell.
[00:54:06] Speaker B: Isn't this fucking awesome?
[00:54:08] Speaker A: Big fan of it. Yeah.
[00:54:10] Speaker B: Don't tell me this isn't awesome as fuck. And I tell you something, I cannot wait. I cannot wait to pull this out.
[00:54:16] Speaker A: To pull that out of your lunch bag at work.
What's that? A banana?
[00:54:21] Speaker B: Oh, no, no, no.
[00:54:23] Speaker A: Not yet.
[00:54:24] Speaker B: Fucking banana caddy.
[00:54:26] Speaker A: Incredible stuff.
[00:54:27] Speaker B: Bananas, much like pears, have a.
Not as bad as pears, but they've got just a very narrow window of acceptability, don't they? A very narrow window of viability.
[00:54:37] Speaker A: Exactly. It's like there's a point at which they're just rock solid, and then there's a point at which they are too far gone. And that window in between is very, very small.
Me and fruit in general just have super.
[00:54:50] Speaker B: Just last word on fruit. Right. From me.
[00:54:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:54:54] Speaker B: One of the most.
You beautifully used the term visceral there. You know. You know, my. My. Ick about, like, food touching my hands and, you know. Yes.
[00:55:07] Speaker A: Someone brought this up recently. I think it was hand. Yeah. Relisten that. We both can't do food touching the hands.
[00:55:14] Speaker B: Yes, of course. Um, back when I was in my brief, my short lived teaching career.
[00:55:21] Speaker A: Right.
[00:55:22] Speaker B: Uh, I will always fucking remember. Uh, I picked up my bag to go and just school one morning, and da da da da. And reached into my bag when I was, like, on the walk, and I'd left a pair in there over the weekend, and it was. It was over the winter months, so I'd left it, like, on a radiator next to a radiator.
[00:55:43] Speaker A: No. Oh, no.
[00:55:45] Speaker B: I reached in to grab something.
I almost fucking screamed. I just scooped out this liquid fucking pearland. I.
And it was the most horrific thing. It was vile. Anyway, sorry, go ahead.
[00:56:00] Speaker A: So all of that to say. Yes, I had the feeling, like I get when I eat fruits that are high in fructose. My stomach just was like someone was trying to cut their way out of it. I was like, ugh. And so I, you know, go into the bathroom, and I'm like, I think I'm. I think I'm gonna throw up, which is. I was a big puker my whole life. But finally I feel like I've got it under control. Like, I don't react to everything by immediately vomiting, except banana peels, but big puka. Yeah.
My family called me the vomitous one when I was growing up. It's just.
It's a problem I've always had.
[00:56:38] Speaker B: Bigger is the greatest name.
[00:56:41] Speaker A: My rap name. Big Bucher.
And so, yeah, then I just hurled my guts out, and, like. And then when there were no guts left, I was just screaming into the toilet with nothing coming out for, you know, probably two or 3 hours. I was just kind of going back and forth, like, doing that.
And then I felt like. I was like, oh, okay, I'm all right after this. So I was like, I guess I got, like, all the symptoms that I had were, like, something like norovirus, you know? And so I was like, yeah, that happens when you're around a lot of people and stuff like that too. Fair enough. Then the next day, I still have the scratchy throat, a little bit of a stuffy nose, and keo made a cobbler.
And I lean over, and I'm like, does this have a smell? And Kia was like, oh, is it. Is there something wrong with it? And I was like, no, no, no. That's not what I mean. I mean, does it smell like anything? And he was like, well, yeah, like, you know, like a cake, I guess. And I was like, uh.
And so I took another test, and immediate bright red line just, you know, before the control even began to like, yep. You know, the control took a few minutes to sort of fill in the.
[00:58:05] Speaker B: Like when you get the three sevens on a slot machine.
[00:58:08] Speaker A: Yeah, right. Just, bam, there it was. I was like, oh, I have big time Covid. And then since then, it's been kind of like. So I lost my sense of smell and my nose was congested and sore throat and stuff. And then by the next morning, I had half my sense of smell back and my nose stopped being congested. And now I've just, like, what's lingered is I have a bit of a cough, obviously, and this sweet, froggy voice.
[00:58:37] Speaker B: But I was delighted that you bombed so hard, you burst your eye.
[00:58:43] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. I didn't even mention that. Yeah, I puked so hard, I burst a blood vessel in my eye. I went to, like, I, like, looked in the mirror or something like that. Or I think I was going to say something like, take a picture or whatever, and I was like, what the fuck? And I was like, yeah. Oh, man, that wasn't like that five minutes ago and realized I just puked so hard that I had burst a blood vessel in my eye. So that was. That was fun. But, yeah, all that left now is just sort of this lingering cough and all that kind of stuff, and we're just trying not to spread it. So, like I said, I've stayed in my room. Kyo has just brought me food and drinks in his little mask and whatnot, and he's tested, and he's fine. He's totally good.
And. Yeah. So neither Keo nor my mom have it. And I have been in here playing incredible amounts of Disney Dreamlight Valley and listening to audiobooks.
[00:59:37] Speaker B: Good, good, good.
I am led to understand that it's very likely that you have the Omicron variant. That is the current.
[00:59:47] Speaker A: Yeah. So it's the flirt variants, which are. That have come off of Omicron is what is currently going around.
[00:59:56] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a very. That's a fine variant. That's a good variant.
[01:00:01] Speaker A: Yeah, flirt variant. It's like everybody, like, my DM's were just like, people either going, everyone I know who's come back from Europe has it, or I have it. So it is basically everywhere right now. So my friends, you know, be like, obviously mask up and everything, but if no one else masks, like, it only takes you so far. Like I said, everyone was just coughing and hacking on me and things like that. So there was nothing that I could really do to prevent that from happening.
[01:00:33] Speaker B: But, you know, having been to ghent and seen the most important piece of work of painting in the entire world history of era, was it worth it? Was it worth picking up a dose on balance?
[01:00:44] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, we'll see if in 20 years, we find out that there's some sort of horrible brain thing that happens as a result of COVID But as of right now, in terms of the illness that I have, that is not so bad. Worth it for a very wonderful vacation in Europe. And, yeah, it has not been so bad. Just, like, sitting around, like I said, playing Disney, dreamlight Valley, listening to books, all that stuff. But on top of it, the more annoying thing is my computer being dead.
Hopefully my sister can help me with that or whatever afterwards. But just FYI, this is why Kristen and I did not do our. I know what you did last summer episode for the Ko fi. It is coming as soon as possible. Obviously, we could not record because.
[01:01:36] Speaker B: Oh, and your opener there about the painting, that was what you were going to do with your computer survivors.
[01:01:41] Speaker A: And yes, I was going to record, like, a cool little video and thing. Like, since we didn't have an episode last week, I was like, oh, I'll just record this story here. And then my computer didn't work, and being fatigued from the COVID I did not have the energy to set up an alternate situation.
So, yeah, all the stuff is a little bit behind and all that kind of stuff. But hopefully the electric or the Joag fan cave will be out this week. We'll do a. Let's play.
[01:02:13] Speaker B: We sure will. I'm in the early stages of Assassin's Creed mirage, so that'll be a load of fun. Let's get all over that.
[01:02:20] Speaker A: Yes. We'll get that stuff coming to you. And a watch along. Yes. July 27.
[01:02:27] Speaker B: July 27. That is a week. Saturday.
[01:02:32] Speaker A: Set your calendars. Is that not. Set your watches, mark your calendars. That's it.
Right. Mark your calendars.
[01:02:43] Speaker B: Mark your watches.
[01:02:44] Speaker A: July 27. Our theme being.
[01:02:48] Speaker B: Our theme. Right.
[01:02:49] Speaker A: So is this computers?
[01:02:52] Speaker B: Is this computers I love, right. One of the things I love so much about eighties, nineties, even early nineties genre movies, is, you know, this was the undiscovered country, right? The world was getting smaller. Global connectivity was just starting to kind of emerge nascent kind of Internet and movies. Didn't have a fucking clue what it was or what it would look like.
Kelly Rowland was texting her boyfriend using Excel on a fucking, you know, on a, you know, handheld tablet, little Nokia.
[01:03:33] Speaker A: Flip phone or whatever. Exactly.
[01:03:35] Speaker B: Jeff Bridges was literally asking his, how long will virus take to take over world? So what I want to.
[01:03:43] Speaker A: That's actually exactly how I type into Google, so.
[01:03:46] Speaker B: Well, yeah. Don't happen to know that, Mandy.
[01:03:49] Speaker A: That's always.
[01:03:50] Speaker B: That's how. That's how I now interact with my technology.
[01:03:52] Speaker A: Yeah, he actually nailed it.
[01:03:54] Speaker B: So look, what are your favorite examples of genre movies? Doesn't actually. Horror, fuck, sci-Fi whatever.
[01:04:01] Speaker A: Sure.
[01:04:01] Speaker B: That took a fucking stab at imagining what the technology of the future might look like. So just off the top of my head, I don't fucking know. Lord, Mel, man is an obvious one. Johnny and Monica is an obvious one because there's an obvious one.
[01:04:17] Speaker A: And the one that I insist on being in the poll, this I have to explain. I really. And I brought this up before, I want virtuosity to be in the poll because I remember being here in New Jersey when that came out and seeing the ads for it and it looking like super cool and like cyber whatever and all that. And also, it was the first time I ever saw Russell Crowe. And I was like, he is very handsome.
So I just have to have it on there just as a, you know, maybe it's time.
[01:04:53] Speaker B: So, yes, two weeks time. We're going to hack into the mainframe together, friends. We're going to jack in to the fucking cyber mainframe or whatever.
So come at me. Yeah, come at us. Come at us with your ideas. We'll have a little think and we all get together and we'll watch a movie and we'll fucking chat shit. And it'll be amazing. Just like ways.
[01:05:11] Speaker A: Yes, cyber chase. We're moving. We're beaten. Hacker at his game.
[01:05:16] Speaker B: Yes. Love that.
[01:05:18] Speaker A: And also, just as a thing on top of that. Listen, it's summertime. There are so many things that come up in this vacations, Covids. Mark, you were sick two weeks ago. Your kids, things get busy. We've decided to do a sort of stripped down version of joag till the fall, which is. Listen, a lot of times we just end up not getting to our main topics because we've talked too much. But also, sometimes it's like, oh, gosh, we got to throw this together at the last minute because there is so much going on. So for the summer, listen, we're just going to. We're going to keep it at a cold, open, talk about movies and see where the conversation takes us. Maybe like last week, we'll have a question like the one that we had about quiet place, you know, like just. We're just chilling because we know you're, like, stressed out and doing a shit ton of things too. So let's just vibe.
[01:06:13] Speaker B: Fuck, mate.
[01:06:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:06:15] Speaker B: We are vibing the antidote to whatever stress you might have going on in your life. We are the fucking cool pad. Pressed against your migraine forehead. That's what we are.
[01:06:29] Speaker A: Yeah, because listen, nobody, nobody listens to this podcast because of the structure. No, no, no. That's not how this works. If you're still here, you're here for the chaos. So, you know, we're just going to see what happens.
[01:06:41] Speaker B: We are the layer of kind of like wooden beads on your car seat.
[01:06:45] Speaker A: Mmm. Okay.
[01:06:47] Speaker B: I mean, we are. That's what we are.
[01:06:50] Speaker A: And we've already got several things lined up for when we come back to doing topics. We've got a lot of stuff happening, so, you know, you're gonna get some good stuff when we. When we come back to it. But for now, Corrie, I mean, it is all good. I mean, you're gonna get some good, insightful main topics.
[01:07:09] Speaker B: Not like this shit. No, no, no.
[01:07:10] Speaker A: Not like this. This is, you know, we're just a little brain worms for a few months. And I think that's good in its own way.
[01:07:19] Speaker B: Um, the UK has been pretty fucked actually this past couple of weeks.
[01:07:23] Speaker A: Hasn't.
[01:07:23] Speaker B: I don't know. I don't know if that had been brought to your attention. Just a couple of days where just easiest fucking crimes unfolded.
[01:07:31] Speaker A: Yeah. Like crazy stuff.
[01:07:34] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. A triple crossbow murder, thank you very much.
[01:07:38] Speaker A: Which is interesting.
[01:07:40] Speaker B: Triple fucking crossbow murder. Just three ladies of the same family in their own home executed with a fucking crossbow. Bye. Uh, one of the daughter's ex boyfriends, uh, which is horrific on a zillion fucking levels.
[01:07:55] Speaker A: And then a terrifying weapon, you know, like someone who uses a crossbow as a terrifying person. Like the. How much more forceful than you think it is, is terrifying. It's a. It's a scary weapon.
[01:08:11] Speaker B: So.
I love a crossbow in a video game.
[01:08:18] Speaker A: Sure.
[01:08:18] Speaker B: Right.
[01:08:19] Speaker A: Yep.
[01:08:20] Speaker B: In particular, the crossbow in last of us is possibly apart from the fully tricked out shotgun. The crossbow is my favorite weapon in last of us because it is fucking. Just the sound effect and the feedback and the joy pad. It is the devastating way that it kills a clicker. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.
[01:08:38] Speaker A: Like, I feel like that is part of, like, again, like the whole. It's too satisfying. A weapon shouldn't be that satisfying.
[01:08:45] Speaker B: Yes. In. Right. But the very day of those killings, if not, like, maybe 24, 48 hours after, just immediately, the government were like, yeah, we're reviewing the fucking rules on crossbow lines.
[01:09:00] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, imagine that. That's. That's wild.
[01:09:04] Speaker B: I'm not saying I'm not. That's for you to decide.
[01:09:07] Speaker A: I think here, with a crossbow, that could happen.
[01:09:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:09:10] Speaker A: You know, because, like, people will be like, oh, it's not necessarily a law. Like, you know, constitution doesn't necessarily say anything about a crossbow.
[01:09:16] Speaker B: Whatever.
[01:09:16] Speaker A: We could potentially ban that. But what would happen is that then in the next, like, you know, week, every crossbow in America would be purchased.
[01:09:27] Speaker B: Of course.
[01:09:28] Speaker A: It would be just a huge run.
[01:09:29] Speaker B: They're coming for our crossbows.
[01:09:30] Speaker A: Yeah, they're coming for our crossbows. And people who have never seen a crossbow in their lives would be like, I need my second amendment protected fucking crossbow.
[01:09:41] Speaker B: From my cold, dead hand.
[01:09:45] Speaker A: Exactly.
[01:09:46] Speaker B: Kirk Douglas isn't still alive, is he?
[01:09:49] Speaker A: No. No, he's not.
[01:09:53] Speaker B: And then within days of that happening, there's the Bristol Chopper.
[01:10:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
Is that what people are calling him, or are you just calling him?
[01:10:05] Speaker B: Oh, no, that's what I am calling him.
[01:10:07] Speaker A: Because you said it to me in a text, like. And as if I was just gonna know what you were talking about. And I was like, who?
[01:10:14] Speaker B: I've used it. I've used. I've used that. I've coined that in a few different group chats with a few.
[01:10:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:10:19] Speaker B: Trying to get on, like, a website or in a tabloid. So I can say that the Bristol chopper, that was me.
[01:10:26] Speaker A: That was me. Yeah.
[01:10:28] Speaker B: So the Bristol chopper, Giza, gets in a fucking taxi, gets in a cabin, right? Gets in a fucking. A fucking taxi with two suitcases full of bits. Full of body parts full of bits. Drops them at the base of Clifton suspension Bridge. And I don't know if this has reached you, but some days later, another suitcase was found in a flat in London.
[01:10:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:10:56] Speaker B: Linked to the same crime. Same body, possibly same bits now.
[01:11:02] Speaker A: Same.
[01:11:04] Speaker B: The mo is sound.
[01:11:06] Speaker A: Oh, my God.
[01:11:08] Speaker B: Stop.
Hola. Right.
[01:11:11] Speaker A: Uh huh. No, except they know who he is already.
[01:11:16] Speaker B: Mo. Absolutely sound. Obviously a lot to be desired in the execution.
Right? If we just roll back a year or two. Let's just roll back a year or two and I'll just sound blow the dust off the Marco blueprint for getting away with murder. You gotta wear the Bristol chopper, which is what everyone's calling him.
Where he messed up was in a few key areas. And I'm gonna outline those areas for you now.
[01:11:46] Speaker A: Yeah, please. Expert here.
[01:11:49] Speaker B: Firstly, you gotta go small with the bits, you gotta go smaller. You've got to fucking atomize the remains. You've got to go. Absolutely. You've got to reduce them to liquid, to paste to crumbs. You've got to get a pestle and mortar, you've got to fucking chop and chop and chop until it's fucking liquid, until it's just, here's the thing, Mark.
[01:12:12] Speaker A: Like, there's so many, so many killers who have tried to do that. And, like, unless you have access to industrial machinery, that is so much harder than you think it is. In fact, your man, the consensual cannibal, is amongst the people who attempted to do that, to try to. Yeah. And he found, unfortunately, it is impossible to get people down to those tiny little parts.
[01:12:41] Speaker B: Is it? Impossible? Because if you look at impossible, it also says I'm possible, doesn't it?
[01:12:46] Speaker A: So, you know, I hadn't considered that, Mark. That's a good point.
I take it back.
[01:12:51] Speaker B: Maybe you got me a motivation issue.
[01:12:56] Speaker A: Fair.
[01:12:57] Speaker B: So what the Bristol chopper did was theoretically sound, but the execution was lacking. He didn't go small enough. Second area where he dropped the ball. And this one, frankly, I'm, you know, you don't get a taxi to the drop off site. You don't do that.
[01:13:14] Speaker A: No, I think, see, because one of my criticisms of your plan is that you live in one of the most surveilled countries on the planet earth, and so doing anything in your own vehicle or a rented vehicle or someone you know's vehicle is going to come up on every camera, everywhere. Attack will not.
[01:13:37] Speaker B: This all links together. You see, this all ties in the reason why you've got to go fucking so, so, so meticulous with the grinding and the pasting and the chopping.
You can't, you can't capture me on camera carrying a body if it's in a fucking flask.
[01:13:54] Speaker A: But your car is everywhere that the bits turn up.
[01:13:59] Speaker B: But the idea is that they're not recognizable as bits. You can pour it away or just scatter it.
[01:14:06] Speaker A: I don't know how that works. People find like, tiny blood dots in things. Certainly if you throw human goop somewhere, someone is going to figure out that.
[01:14:19] Speaker B: New candle from Gwyneth Paltrow.
[01:14:24] Speaker A: Yeah, this is, you know, it's figureoutable.
[01:14:29] Speaker B: Hey, I doubt they'd be in a hurry to put their hands on me and pray for me again if I told them that's what was on my fucking mind.
[01:14:40] Speaker A: Well, you see, I took a taxi the other day.
[01:14:43] Speaker B: Tell the rest of your flock about that one. I grind and I grind and I grind and I can't get the bits small enough to fit in the bottle.
[01:14:51] Speaker A: How do I get the bits?
[01:14:53] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't mind you putting your fucking hand on my shoulder, lavender.
See?
[01:15:01] Speaker A: Was there a third criticism or was it just the two?
[01:15:04] Speaker B: Um, just those main two.
[01:15:07] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:15:08] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. And and distribution. You don't put them all in. You don't put all your bits in one basket, as the old saying. Well, no, he used two. Two suitcases.
But what you want to be doing is going as wide as possible a little bit in a lot of places, right?
[01:15:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:15:27] Speaker B: That's what you want to be doing.
[01:15:28] Speaker A: That's just how you end up with your stuff in a bunch of jurisdictions.
[01:15:32] Speaker B: Yeah. Which also should you get, you know, collared. Makes things a bit more complicated, stretches things out, you know?
[01:15:39] Speaker A: Or you just get, like, sentences in a bunch of different places consecutively.
[01:15:44] Speaker B: Little bits, a wide area.
Don't get a taxi.
No motive, right?
[01:15:56] Speaker A: Yeah, I legit was watching an episode of Dateline the other night, and every now and again as I'm watching these, and I'm like, how did they think they were getting away with it? I always just think people who think they can do a murder need to watch Dateline and realize you can't do a murder.
It's just in the time in which we live, you can't do it.
[01:16:22] Speaker B: Look, you know, I'm not gonna. And you all listen.
[01:16:24] Speaker A: Yeah. Nobody thinks you're going to do this, especially after telling us your mo, which is really bad.
[01:16:32] Speaker B: But listen, let's just imagine I did from this starting point, from this juncture, having spoken about it for years on a podcast.
[01:16:43] Speaker A: I would. This is the like, if I were to make a nineties, a nineties thriller.
It's someone listening to this podcast who then does your mo and frames you for a murder by doing all the things that you said that you were gonna do.
[01:17:04] Speaker B: That is the first time it is even entered. This is how fucking dense I am. Right.
[01:17:11] Speaker A: Only there's the perfect crime.
[01:17:13] Speaker B: Had I even entertained that? You know, podcasts don't make killers. They just make killers more creative.
[01:17:21] Speaker A: Exactly.
[01:17:23] Speaker B: Everything presented here is for the purposes of entertainment only. Right?
[01:17:28] Speaker A: Disclaimer that'll hold up in court.
[01:17:31] Speaker B: Jack of O'Graves is not a murder manual. Right? It is not. Do not do crimes of that nature, please.
[01:17:39] Speaker A: Especially if you're going to frame me for it.
[01:17:43] Speaker B: You invoked me. Zeletpi.
She can't catch a break.
[01:17:48] Speaker A: Can't catch a break.
[01:17:50] Speaker B: Can't catch a break.
[01:17:53] Speaker A: It wilds me after, like, you know, going through that whole article and reading everything about that and stuff that, like, they're still bringing things into these trials. It was like, no one ever said that. That wasn't a thing anyone said in the first place. And now that's a thing you all witnessed and saw, like, what this is such a farce. It's insane. And apparently Pauldin is your let be apologist friend who we made fun of many moons back without the evidence. And now a public apology or whatever to Paul for listen.
Now, knowing what we know on the.
[01:18:34] Speaker B: Right side of history, just for the record, just like I said before, I still believe that she did it.
[01:18:38] Speaker A: Yeah. Which is insane to me, but is riddled, just riddled that there is zero evidence, and in fact, a plethora of evidence to the contrary.
But regardless, yeah, this trial is a shame.
[01:18:55] Speaker B: If only instead of insulin, she'd used Wolf's bane, eh? She'd have been fine.
[01:19:01] Speaker A: Exactly.
[01:19:01] Speaker B: She would have whistled.
[01:19:03] Speaker A: Would that be a lesson?
Wolfsbane.
Um, what have we. I have not. Obviously, I have not watched much because I was in another country in several other countries in several other countries lately.
[01:19:19] Speaker B: If you can, if you can get it small enough, if you can get the fucking body small enough. Go on holiday. Go on holiday with it.
[01:19:26] Speaker A: That's a terrible idea. You don't want to create an international situation that's worse.
[01:19:35] Speaker B: If you can get some in a bottle and pass it off as like, a bottle of juice or a fucking smoothie. That's what. That's the goal. You want to be making human smoothies and you can just then take them anywhere with you on the go. You know what I mean?
[01:19:49] Speaker A: You can't even bring a bottle of water on a plane, but you're going to bring human smoothies.
It's definitely going to work.
Yeah. So I wasn't watching a whole bunch of things. We managed to get one thing in together. I have watched a few other things. Here's the thing. I think I've said this before. I do not like watching tv during the day. Not a big fan of watching tv or movies when the sun's out. Don't like it. Never have my entire life, and this is a problem when you are in bed for days at a time. So it's like every now and again I'm like, oh, maybe I'll watch a movie or something. And then I'm just like, it always.
[01:20:28] Speaker B: Feels kind of sinful to me.
Do you know what I mean? Does that make sense?
[01:20:33] Speaker A: Like, I get what you mean. Like, you should be doing something productive.
[01:20:36] Speaker B: Productive? Yeah. Have a cheeky day off from work. Or if I ever sicky, I'll put a movie on. I'll be like, teehee.
[01:20:44] Speaker A: It's true. You do do that.
[01:20:46] Speaker B: Yeah, I do. I do.
[01:20:47] Speaker A: I think. Well, I guess the thing is, like we talked about this too, just in text that, like. Or I think we talked, like, on the video chat the other day or whatever. But, like, I'm a person who's, like, always doing things.
And so, like, I just like sitting in the middle of the day, not doing anything.
My brain doesn't like it. And there's so much of the stuff I should be doing, and not in a feeling bad about it way, but in a. I want to be doing other things, not good of just sitting still. And the thing about the COVID is I was just so fatigued that even sitting and writing something or whatever was just not going to happen.
So I did binge watch the bear.
Had to do that. I haven't gotten to. I want to watch the boys and stuff like that, but the mood hasn't struck. But I did go through the bear because obviously that's like 5 hours of television. Took me a little bit to get back in because Carmi is not like, I love him. He's not someone that. It's fun necessarily, to be in his world.
So it's one of those things where it's like, I appreciate his storyline and all that kind of stuff. But oftentimes my favorite episodes of the bear are ones that revolve around someone else. Like in the last season, it was the Richie one where he kind of learns why you should care about food and working in a restaurant and giving people this great experience. And in this one, it was the Tina episode, sort of watching her struggle with unemployment and trying to find a place and finally getting some kindness showed to her. And I was just like.
[01:22:44] Speaker B: Which, in the space of a 27 minutes episode, you learn so much about.
It's not even plot because it doesn't tell you anything new. You know that Tina struggled and ended up working at the bear. You know, the same at the end of that episode as you did at the start.
[01:23:03] Speaker A: Right.
[01:23:03] Speaker B: But in terms of the window that it gives you into the people in that restaurant, it's fucking staggeringly well written, I find.
[01:23:14] Speaker A: Which I think is, like, really what? Like, this season is not plot driven.
[01:23:19] Speaker B: No, no, no.
[01:23:20] Speaker A: Like, pretty much at all. And it doesn't go anywhere, really.
[01:23:24] Speaker B: That's a really good point.
[01:23:25] Speaker A: Nothing particularly knowing anything.
[01:23:27] Speaker B: No one moves on. There's nothing.
[01:23:30] Speaker A: That's not the point of this season at all. Nothing has really moved forward. And the few things that are in the process of potentially moving forward are left completely up in the air by the end of this. It's really a season that is completely focused on either filling in what we don't know about people or how they're processing everything that has been happening with them, whether throughout their entire lives or with the restaurant or whatever the case may be.
[01:24:00] Speaker B: Yeah. And you're quite right. That episode in particular is a standout. I also loved sugar and Jamie Curtis in hospital. Wonderful, wonderful stuff. So impactful. I must thank you for telemarketers. I've got to thank you for that.
[01:24:19] Speaker A: I'm so glad that you watched telemarketers.
[01:24:21] Speaker B: Just to recap, right. What we have here is a three part documentary that spans, like, 20 odd years.
Two guys meet and become firm friends working at the shadiest fucking contact center, like, ever in the world. Yeah.
[01:24:40] Speaker A: Now you see what I mean? Because you thought that I was, like, judging them when I told you about this the first time when I was like, oh, you know, they hire people who can't get hired anywhere. And you're like, whoa, hold on. I was like, yeah, yeah. No, no.
[01:24:50] Speaker B: Like, they're completely drug users, drug dealers, you know, felons, criminals, burnouts. So the. The environment that they work in. Right. I kind of relate to. Not on anything like the level of.
[01:25:05] Speaker A: Nobody in that office, but back.
[01:25:09] Speaker B: Let me see. I would have been 21, 22 myself, and a similarly fucking idiosyncratic crew of people worked through the night, night shifts at a contact center, answering directory inquiry calls from the public. Right.
[01:25:32] Speaker A: What is that like? What's like when people are like, can you give me the number for.
[01:25:36] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Before the pre, you know, pre consumer.
192 as it was back then. Right.
[01:25:44] Speaker A: Nice.
[01:25:45] Speaker B: And we were completely free of supervision.
[01:25:48] Speaker A: Nice.
[01:25:49] Speaker B: Completely free of, you know, unfettered by matters of, like, time.
Because they always just blended in to one another. And it was just a case of getting through the night and I would smoke weed on the job.
You know, we'd be playing. I would be playing on my game boy advance, just. Just fuckery. Treating the people who would ring us in the dead of night very shamefully, really badly. We provided an awful service. Right.
Provided a terrible, like, I don't even.
[01:26:26] Speaker A: Know how you can provide bad service at telling people someone's phone number.
[01:26:31] Speaker B: Well, put it like this. On a Friday night at 02:00 a.m. right? 03:00 a.m. people are ringing you in all manner of conditions.
[01:26:40] Speaker A: Right, sure.
[01:26:41] Speaker B: And the most common thing that people would ask for would be the number of, like, a takeaway, a local fucking restaurant.
[01:26:47] Speaker A: Yeah, that makes sense.
[01:26:48] Speaker B: And on plenty of occasions, people would ring me and come through to me fucked up, thinking that they were already speaking to a takeaway.
[01:26:58] Speaker A: Sure.
[01:26:59] Speaker B: And, oh, fuck, man, this is so horrible. I would. I would take their order. I would pretend to take their order and tell them that it'll be like, 20 minutes. All right, cheers, mate. Yeah. How much? Yeah, 15.
[01:27:14] Speaker A: You know what? Honestly, you probably did a lot of people a service here because there are people who, like, would have spent money they shouldn't have spent and probably more, like, asleep by the time that delivery was supposed to come and you saved them from their drunken mistake.
[01:27:33] Speaker B: That's a very charitable way of looking at it. Thank you, Cory. But shout out to Lee, my boy Leroy. Shout out to Kerry Thomas, my girl Carrie, who all did their time there.
So I get the kind of, you know, not really giving a fuck about the work and just being allowed to do it as long as you were basically competent at it, you know?
[01:27:53] Speaker A: Right.
[01:27:54] Speaker B: But out of that environment, this friendship, Pat Papsis and his buddy. Was it Jerome? Jeremy? What was the other guy called? I can't quite remember.
[01:28:05] Speaker A: I would have known until you said that because I don't think that's anywhere near. I feel like it's like Sam or something like that.
[01:28:12] Speaker B: Yeah, possibly.
But, you know, they start to pull on the threads of just how fucking corrupt and gamed and, you know, self serving and profiteering and corrupt and horrible and criminal the enterprises that they work for.
And I don't think it's. It's. It's an exaggeration to say that it gives their life meaning.
[01:28:41] Speaker A: Right? Yeah, totally.
[01:28:42] Speaker B: Particularly for Pat.
[01:28:43] Speaker A: Especially for Pat. Yeah.
[01:28:45] Speaker B: The most lovable fucking heroin user. The most lovable, idiosyncratic, quirky, super fucking sharp minded, but just a dropout of a burnout in a system that works against him.
[01:29:01] Speaker A: Right?
[01:29:02] Speaker B: And over this, over the 20 years, they keep revisiting the story, getting a little bit more traction with government, with senators, with fucking police. They get stonewalled. They get kind of. They get leads. They travel the fucking country documenting it all themselves on vhs.
And just the tiny victories that they're able to eke out as they go along this journey that they're both on, both literally and figuratively. This journey, it's so life affirming.
[01:29:33] Speaker A: It is.
[01:29:34] Speaker B: You can find. You can find meaning just in the strangest of places. And for these two guys, it fucking gives them something to push back against and to fight against and to define themselves against.
And it's the most magical documentary. And I unreservedly fucking urge you to watch tally marketers. It's fucking brilliant. Such a. Such a great piece of work.
[01:29:58] Speaker A: I'm so glad that I hit so well because that was. Yeah, I came out of that just like. Yes, yes. Like I said, I was like, this is what. This is what I've been searching for in all my documentary. Watching and everything is this exact thing. And it's just. It's beautiful. Watch telemarketers. Yes. I think it's on Max here.
[01:30:15] Speaker B: Yep.
[01:30:19] Speaker A: I watched. I rewatched. I know what you did last summer because that's what we're talking about on the Joag fan cave. So if you haven't watched it yet, haven't rewatched. I know what you did last summer. The episode is coming, so can I.
[01:30:35] Speaker B: Say something that you're gonna hate?
[01:30:37] Speaker A: Sure.
[01:30:38] Speaker B: You know, in a violent nature, sir.
[01:30:43] Speaker A: Better than scream, you're an idiot.
[01:30:49] Speaker B: What do you think of that?
[01:30:50] Speaker A: I think you're wrong.
[01:30:51] Speaker B: You're an idiot.
[01:30:52] Speaker A: So it doesn't really matter.
[01:30:54] Speaker B: You're an idiot.
[01:30:55] Speaker A: I know you're poking me and also that you're wrong.
[01:30:57] Speaker B: So I am both poking you and expressing a heartfelt viewpoint. I believe it to be better than screaming.
[01:31:03] Speaker A: This is not. This is not accurate because you have re going to go through this again, but you have redone scream in your mind from a movie that you loved to something that you hate based on not watching a whole bunch of movies in between and not liking one film in a series.
[01:31:22] Speaker B: Just my rationale. Right? Both scream and in a violent nature know their source material intimately. But in a violent nature takes a bigger swing and tries more and upends that source material in braver and more ambitious ways than scream ever did.
[01:31:46] Speaker A: Not even slightly, because scream was doing something that nobody had done before scream and so was upending things in a whole new way. And this is not brave enough to commit to its central premise. So fuck that, baby.
[01:32:01] Speaker B: Okay. I needed to get that out there because I've chatted about violent nature with Alan amongst other people and it's just reinforced my belief that it's a very, very good, and I would also say important film.
[01:32:18] Speaker A: Absolutely not. But that's fine.
I think in five years, no one will give a shit about this movie. It is absolutely going to do nothing for poor films. Or maybe someone will do a good version. That is the thing that I will say.
[01:32:35] Speaker B: I would even go as far as to say it doesn't matter if in a violent nature is never touched again because that is perfectly in keeping with it. Subverting her expectations, being shit. And no one thinking about not getting more sequels.
[01:32:53] Speaker A: Oh, no, that's not what I was talking about. I wasn't talking about sequels. I meant just maybe someone will commit to the bit instead someday, that's all.
[01:33:03] Speaker B: It doesn't commit to the bit? Is that what you're telling me?
[01:33:06] Speaker A: We're not doing this again.
[01:33:07] Speaker B: Okay. All right, we'll take it off. A.
[01:33:14] Speaker A: And, oh, this. Because I was sick, I managed to guilt trip you into watching another nineties thriller with me because that has been where my brain has been. I've been in, like, just the mode of nineties thrillers because, listen, they're just, they're better to watch than most things that come out now. It just is what it is. You can see them, you can hear them. They are passionate. Yeah.
[01:33:47] Speaker B: They're tangible. They're solid.
[01:33:49] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's just like, it, you know, there's this I, like, don't want to sound like one of those, like, get off my lawn type of people. So that's why I'm, like, thinking about it. But, like, it's just that thing where, like, most things get released in cinemas and I don't, like, I'm. I think horror is kind of outside of this problem to a degree. Not completely, but to a degree because we do get tons of shitty sequels and all that kind of stuff. But everything has to make so much money that it just feels like things aren't really made with that passion anymore because there's always going to be someone with their hands in it saying, this is not the movie that we want.
You can't sell this. And that's always been the case.
Famously. Harvey Weinstein did that all the time, right? Just like, straight up being like, you need to change the end of your movie or whatever. So I'm not saying, like, mist couldn't.
[01:34:44] Speaker B: Get made for fucking, you know, five years or more.
[01:34:48] Speaker A: It's like, wait. There was never a golden age where this didn't happen. But I think just things felt more, like people were, like, passionately making stuff than, like, the only things that you can get broad distribution for now are things that, like, are butts and seats, movies. And it's just even something like turbulence that we watched the other day, which is a bad movie, has so much heart in it. It treats itself like it's a good movie. You know, the shots in that movie, like, are so carefully chosen. You know, the, the performances in that movie are like, they believe that they're making something here and it's just a schlocky thriller. Cheesy ass, makes no sense thriller. And yet it's so committed and is so derivative. Oh, 100%. Yeah. It is a movie. Like, I guess maybe that's the other end of it is like. It is a movie that. I don't know. I don't. It doesn't feel like it was, like, necessarily the thing where it's like, we just need the cash. But it is absolutely, like, a. People liked these. Why don't we make a movie that is the same thing?
[01:36:01] Speaker B: Yep. It's. It's die hard two and Connie in one high. Lovely little package with Ray Liotta to the point where the last shot of that movie is the same shot as the last shot of Die hard two.
[01:36:13] Speaker A: It's 100%. Yep.
[01:36:15] Speaker B: It's a Christmas film. You know what I mean?
[01:36:16] Speaker A: It is. It's fucking the same, 100%. But neither of those films have Brendan Gleeson's.
[01:36:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:36:25] Speaker A: Southern accent that. This one.
[01:36:28] Speaker B: It's a southern accent, but southern way. You know what I mean? Could be.
[01:36:32] Speaker A: Is it this planet who. I don't know. It's inquiry. Like, it's so crazy that every time he said something, it would take my brain a second to process it, to understand it. Like, there was a point at which I was like, do I need to turn on subtitles? But I was like, no, I'll catch it. It's just taking a second to figure it out.
It is worth watching turbulence simply for that accent, because you're not prepared for it when he first speaks.
Whammy.
[01:37:07] Speaker B: Yeah. And what you also get is you get to see. You get, you know, when somebody does what they're well known for, like, a great example of them doing what they're great at. And that's where you get in turbulence with Ray Liotta just flicking in the. In a matter of, you know, lines of dialogue between your relatable, every man charming. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then on a fucking sixpence, just the most unfathomable psycho you could ever wish to meet just on a. You know, at the drop of a hat.
[01:37:44] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:37:45] Speaker B: Paul went out to Rayleigh. Odd. He was a real r1. Fucking always, always great to see him in a movie.
[01:37:50] Speaker A: Yeah. So turbulence was not a good movie, but I have no regrets about that, and I thank you for saying. Yeah. All right, let's do it.
[01:38:00] Speaker B: Can't watch a low investment, late nineties sky thriller with my co host when she's got the novel coronavirus. And what the fuck am I good for? What the fuck am I even for? You know? Do it for me.
[01:38:16] Speaker A: I would. I absolutely would.
[01:38:17] Speaker B: Well, actually, no, you wouldn't, because how many times have I asked you to watch hereditary with me and you just won't do it? You just won't do it. I've been jonesing for hereditary so bad over the last couple of weeks.
[01:38:28] Speaker A: That was. The thing is, I think I also was like, how about instead of watching hereditary, you watch a movie with me?
So it's like a double sacrifice. It's like. But I am absolutely not watching. Time number four is not going to fix it. It's just not. It might not going to click. It's. Hold my eyelids open and watch it a few more times. And surely I will like this movie.
[01:38:56] Speaker B: Oh, dear.
Let me see, let me see, let me see. All right, I'm gonna. Let's talk about Maxine.
I will talk. I'll just super briefly talk about step brothers.
When mum's away, the boys will play.
Laura had a rain night out with her, you know, school chums. So what do we do? Obviously, we get ice cream, we get the duvets out on the sofa, and dad watches an inappropriate film.
[01:39:23] Speaker A: Beautiful.
[01:39:23] Speaker B: And we watch step brothers. And it landed big time. The kids loved it. I loved it. It's a five star fucking film. I think it's probably the funniest film I've ever seen.
[01:39:30] Speaker A: I love that.
[01:39:32] Speaker B: It is.
It's the funniest that. And let me think, what are some of the other funnies that. The South park movie.
I can't think of two funnier films.
What's your favorite comedy? What's the funniest film you've ever seen right now, the funniest film you've ever seen?
[01:39:50] Speaker A: Well, my favorite comedy is dodgeball. We've talked about this.
[01:39:53] Speaker B: Oh, of course.
[01:39:53] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel airplane is probably up there. Yeah, that's. Those are the two that come to mind when I think, funniest movie I've ever seen. Dodgeball an airplane.
[01:40:04] Speaker B: I don't know how it does it, but step brothers actually manages to really get you emotional at the end as well.
Fucking the stupidest, absolutely scientifically weaponized stupidity, that film. But at the end, I just get a lump in my throat when they perform the Catalina wine mixer. It's just. I just love it. I just fucking love that for you. Stepper. Maxine. Right.
Boo.
Right.
Two and a half stars booze. Must try harder. Ty West.
[01:40:39] Speaker A: I mean, two and a half stars isn't, like, terrible for you, but, you.
[01:40:42] Speaker B: Know, it's still five out of ten, though. It's bang average.
[01:40:45] Speaker A: Isn't it? Fair? Yeah. Considering what, you know, following Pearl, that's.
[01:40:51] Speaker B: And you know what? I'm looking. And I didn't even give it that half. It's a two star. Two star movie.
[01:40:55] Speaker A: Yeah, that sounds. That sounds more like it.
[01:40:57] Speaker B: Now, I will confess, dear listener, much as I confess to Corrigan, that only upon leaving the cinema and having a.
[01:41:11] Speaker A: Bit of a. Oh, my God.
[01:41:14] Speaker B: Did the penny drop that Maxine is actually the same character from X.
Now, I watched the entire film thinking, how does this connect to the first two?
[01:41:27] Speaker A: Then?
[01:41:27] Speaker B: I don't really see what the connection is here.
[01:41:32] Speaker A: I know that there are many of our listeners, like, yelling at this right now, like, you can't be fucking serious. Because both of us, when we watched Pearl and then we're talking about Maxine or whatever, we're like, no, I'm not sure who Maxine is and how that connects or whatever, and then everyone came at us and was like, you doofuses. That's the girl.
[01:41:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:41:56] Speaker A: From X. We're like, oh, yeah. Yeah. So not only have we already been told this, after both of us being idiots and not remembering this, you then forgot again?
[01:42:07] Speaker B: I then forgot what? I'm gonna go ahead and pull the kind of. I think maybe it might have had something to do with that kind of six to eight months I spent in the wilderness.
[01:42:15] Speaker A: I don't know. I think maybe a synapse didn't quite.
[01:42:18] Speaker B: Connect and it didn't land, but it was only on my way back to my hotel there I was like, oh, fuck. Yeah, it's her from the first one.
[01:42:27] Speaker A: Yeah. And then I had to explain to you how perfectly it's connected to each other.
So.
[01:42:34] Speaker B: Yeah, but even had I had a perfect grasp of the dramatic through line of these three movies, it wouldn't have changed the fact that Maxine is a movie which never finds its gear, it never takes the brakes off. It never revels in the excess in the way that X did. And it never gives you the character development that Pearl did.
It isn't as far out there as Pearl was. It doesn't take you on that journey beyond where you think it's going to go. And it doesn't have the. It doesn't. It has the juice. Yes, but it doesn't. It doesn't have the juice.
[01:43:19] Speaker A: Right.
Yeah. I'm really curious. I mean, I am in such FOMo mode right now and we'll talk about it, but, you know, with vaccine and log likes both out and me not being able to go see movies, I am, like, dying right now because both of these movies, I feel like chances are I'm not going to like them, but, God, I want to know. And with Maxine, it's like, as you know, Pearl is the only Ty west movie I've ever liked. And I always pretty much think that he only knows how to make two thirds of a movie. And, listen, that is born out.
[01:43:51] Speaker B: Or indeed two thirds of a trilogy.
[01:43:53] Speaker A: Yeah, or two thirds of a trilogy. But I didn't like x either. So, you know, for me, Pearl is the only one that all the way through works.
[01:44:03] Speaker B: I'm gonna nail my colors to the mask here, right. And gonna make a prediction. Right? Okay, Maxine, I didn't enjoy it. I think you probably will.
[01:44:12] Speaker A: You think I will? Okay.
[01:44:14] Speaker B: I think you probably won't. And long legs, I fucking loved, and I don't think you will like it at all.
[01:44:20] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't think I'm gonna like it because I don't like Oz Perkins movies. Like, these are two directors that I do not enjoy. So, yeah, I think you're probably right about that. But, like, the thing, I just want to know. I want to know if I'm gonna like it or not. You know, am I, like when I. I posted a silly video because I've been bored out of my fucking mind the past few days. And I posted a video saying that, you know, this is the worst week to be sick because everyone else is seeing long legs. And my DM's were so polarized. People being like, you're not missing anything. It's the worst thing I've ever seen. And, like, people being like, oh, it was so great. I absolutely loved it. And I just. I just want to know how I feel about it.
[01:45:03] Speaker B: It played beautifully. It was. There was a huge, you know, the cinema was full.
[01:45:10] Speaker A: Like, yeah, you took a picture. And I was like, holy shit, there's, like, people there at, you know, 09:00 or 930.
[01:45:16] Speaker B: Half nine. Half nine showing on a Friday night. And the place was packed, which I'm fucking, you know, delighted with.
[01:45:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:45:28] Speaker B: And I'll tell you something else, right? Based on everything I said about my Saturday, right, about how for some fucking reason, man, the stars weren't aligned properly for me, and I just. I wasn't. My heart wasn't in Saturday. Just couldn't get the hang of that Saturday, right?
[01:45:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:45:44] Speaker B: I walked out of long legs on a cushion of fucking air. I had the biggest fucking grin on my face.
You could hear a pin drop the entire time, right in long legs. Nobody made a fucking peep. And while the trailers were on strangely, in Bicester, a group of what must have been, like, six american guys came in.
Yeah, work that out. And with your, you know, with your descriptions of the american cinema going experience ringing in my ears. They sat right behind me, took up an entire row behind me.
[01:46:18] Speaker A: Oh, no.
[01:46:19] Speaker B: Fuck. Here we go. It's going to get real. I'm going to have to fucking. Here we go. I'm going to have to fucking lay the law down on these motherfuckers. And they. They were so well behaved. They were impeccably behaved, those guys.
[01:46:30] Speaker A: Nice.
[01:46:30] Speaker B: I almost wanted to thank them at the end. I thought you guys were gonna make sense, but you know what? You're all right.
Um, long legs. Long legs. Long legs. Long legs. So this is. This is. This is my jam. This is. This is my. This is my shit. This is my fucking. This is my fucking type of thing, right? Uh, okay.
Two cups of manhunter, you know?
[01:47:00] Speaker A: Yeah, that's already not a great start for me.
[01:47:03] Speaker B: Uh, whip it up with a quart of seven.
[01:47:08] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:47:08] Speaker B: Yep.
[01:47:09] Speaker A: I'm bored.
[01:47:10] Speaker B: And then let me tell you something else. Let me tell you something else.
[01:47:13] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:47:17] Speaker B: Strike me the fuck down if this movie isn't influenced by the Alan Wake control universe.
[01:47:25] Speaker A: You're not the only person that I've seen say that. I actually almost tagged you in something where people were talking about that.
[01:47:31] Speaker B: I am fucking telling you, this movie reeks of Alan Wake uncontrollable to the point where I'm convinced in the first 15 minutes there's a visual reference to the video game control.
[01:47:43] Speaker A: Have you, like, checked Reddit for this?
[01:47:45] Speaker B: I haven't. I haven't.
[01:47:46] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:47:47] Speaker B: Um, but it's. It's.
It leapt out at me. That's fucking. They're nodding at control. That's incredible.
[01:47:56] Speaker A: Nice.
[01:47:57] Speaker B: Um, on top of that, the cherry on top the glass. A cherry on the fucking Mister Kipling's bakewell. Right? Is Nick Cage just goofing around at this point? Right. Yeah, he's, you know, he's. He's come through mom and dad and Mandy and fucking dream scenario, and at this point, he is just fucking about and having the time of his life. And I love it. I love it.
[01:48:27] Speaker A: I feel like that's the one thing that I. That there's no way for me to not like is I'm always gonna appreciate Nic cage.
[01:48:35] Speaker B: You can't not. You can't. You can't nothing.
How can you not enjoy Nick Cage in this movie? Right?
I don't give a fuck. It's. It's it.
It even feels difficult to call it a typical Nic cage performance because what is that?
[01:48:53] Speaker A: What is that? Yeah, right. What does that mean? Yeah.
[01:48:55] Speaker B: You know, he's got such a fucking toolkit. He's got such a bag of tricks, that guy.
[01:49:01] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think when you say something is a typical nic cage performance, what it means is no restraint. And that doesn't mean a specific thing.
[01:49:15] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:49:15] Speaker A: It just means he's not going to be holding back. It's not subtlety because that's not his thing. It's not what he believes in.
[01:49:23] Speaker B: Yeah, completely. And his performance is.
I don't have words.
No other performer could do that. I don't think no other performer could do that and not reduce the movie to a laughing stock.
[01:49:38] Speaker A: Sure.
[01:49:39] Speaker B: Somehow, as fucking ridiculous as Nicolas Cage is in long legs, it is perfectly fine in the context of this film. Nice guy gets it and I love him for some reason. I don't know why, but earlier on this week, I went on a kind of a David Lynch YouTube kind of movie, and there's a wonderful, really short clip of Nick Cage at some corner or other on stage talking about working with David lynch on Wild at Heart. And he breaks into this brilliant David lynch impression. I really encourage you to just find it's only like a. Like a 2025 2nd clip of Nick Cage doing David lynch in his long legs. It doesn't look. It doesn't just. It steals from seven. It's thieves from it in terms of structure as well. Like, you know, like, you know, two thirds of the way through, the fucking killer allows himself to be captured. It's. It's very.
[01:50:37] Speaker A: I feel like that's a spoiler.
[01:50:38] Speaker B: It isn't. It isn't. It isn't. It is not. It is not even to the point where the end credits come down as opposed to up.
[01:50:48] Speaker A: Like, it's. It's nice.
[01:50:51] Speaker B: Blatant in its thievery. Right?
[01:50:53] Speaker A: But.
[01:50:57] Speaker B: The cinematography, it is an impeccably designed film.
You are given lots of time to look at long legs.
The audience is afforded the respect and the film is confident enough to allow a discerning audience to really look at what is in the frame. You are allowed the time to look at the work that's gone into the set design and the world building.
It holds up to your gaze. You know, you can really look at the work that's gone into this film and it's. It's. It's the shit. It's. It's the shit I love to see.
[01:51:36] Speaker A: Love it. I mean, I deeply do not enjoy Oz Perkins joints, but at the same time, it cannot be said that they aren't, you know, his vision, you know, that he's not. I feel like that description, everything you just said is characteristic of him, even if I hate it.
[01:51:52] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:51:52] Speaker A: You know?
[01:51:53] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:51:54] Speaker A: He is confident in what doing.
[01:51:56] Speaker B: Yes, yes, yes, yes.
[01:51:57] Speaker A: Exactly. I just don't like it.
[01:52:00] Speaker B: And look, I love it as much for the effect that it had on me as everything else. It turned my fucking day around.
[01:52:07] Speaker A: Well, that's usually what you're really going for.
[01:52:10] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:52:10] Speaker A: The effect it has on you more than anything else.
[01:52:13] Speaker B: You know, I almost became self conscious midway through the film because in a totally silent theater, I was the only one making noise, and it was involuntary giggles. I was laughing from time to time at how much I was enjoying it. I was literally just laughing at what the film was doing. And then on the way out, I realized that Trump's been shot. You know what I mean?
Such a strange day. There you go.
[01:52:35] Speaker A: Surreal.
[01:52:37] Speaker B: Don't you fucking tell me this podcast doesn't have a through line. Right? I just circled back.
[01:52:42] Speaker A: Look at that main topic coming around.
[01:52:45] Speaker B: Look at that circle back. Connected the dots. Close the circle. Yeah. Ouro burros. That's what this fucking podcast is made. Never ending.
[01:52:54] Speaker A: Do you have any thoughts, then, that you'd like to close this year podcast with?
[01:53:03] Speaker B: No, I don't, actually, if I'm to be honest with you. Right.
I.
You talk about questions, right? About ending on questions, ending on thoughts. Um, and it's not. It's. It's. It's a bit of a curveball, maybe, and a bit of a. Kind of a. Kind of a record scratch.
[01:53:26] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:53:27] Speaker B: We've talked lots about the end of life, right?
We've talked lots about. We've even talked about the end of own lives. Yeah. I mean, what. What. You know, how would we hate to go out? How would we love to go out? My question that I'd like you to think on, and I don't necessarily want an answer. Right.
[01:53:44] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:53:45] Speaker B: But based on the way you've lived your life so far, based on the condition of your physical matter, based on the environment that you live in and the people you interact with and the risks you take and how you mitigate those risks, rather than wondering how you'd like to go out or how you'd hate to go out, I'd like to know, weighing up all of the evidence and all of the factors, how do you think you're gonna go out?
[01:54:23] Speaker A: Oh, interesting.
That's a really interesting question.
[01:54:30] Speaker B: And I don't necessarily.
[01:54:31] Speaker A: Yeah, kind of. I don't know. I feel like maybe it's just me. I'm like. I think about that from time to time. Like, in a. Yeah, yeah. What's the inevitability? What are.
What do you think is gonna happen?
[01:54:44] Speaker B: Mmm.
[01:54:45] Speaker A: Really interesting question.
[01:54:46] Speaker B: Weigh it all up. Have a little thing. Maybe come back for you next week or maybe open it next week with that.
[01:54:50] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Well, we'll come back around. So let us know.
Dear friends, weighing everything in your life, how do you think you're gonna go? And I feel like that can also be spread to how I've said before about how my friend who died of COVID he died at the exact age that his dad died, and he had been terrified of dying at that same age as his dad. Right. And, like, so I have. Like, my thing is, I'm terrified of, like, aneurysms. And so, like, my immediate thought is, like, I think. I think I'm gonna die of an aneurysm, you know, like, because I've just been so scared of it. Like, that's some sort of, like, self fulfilling prophecy or, like, whatever. Medically, I may be at a slightly elevated risk for that based on, you know, some chemical things and whatnot. But, like, you know, but that. That was, like, the first thing. So I feel like we can include in this, like, you know, is there something that you think is going to happen to you, but it's not based necessarily on your physical reality, but this, like, feeling in you, like, yours also, you. You say you. You're convinced you're going to die of a lung complaint.
[01:56:05] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:56:05] Speaker A: You know, something like that. Is there something that you think you're going to die of?
[01:56:11] Speaker B: My.
Since kicking the cigarette, it's got to be about eight, nine years ago now, if not more. My lungs have never been better. Right?
[01:56:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:56:23] Speaker B: Since knocking the joints on the head and just vaping.
My lungs are a million bucks. I never touched my blue inhaler anymore. I could run for fucking God knows how long. I feel great, and yet, still. And yet when I sit at a certain angle or when I.
When. When I kind of mindfully check in on my body, I can't stop this fucking strange focus on the lower part of my left lung.
Something's fucking down there waiting for me, mate. I'm telling you.
[01:57:03] Speaker A: Interesting.
So let us know, what do you think is gonna get you? Whether it's, you know, just reasonable thinking of die in your sleep, old age, happy as can be?
Or is there a thing that you've always think is lurking, waiting for you.
Tell us about it.
This is, honestly, this is a cathartic question because I have had like a. A week full of various deaths around me as well, so. And unexpected and young ones. So, like, there's a part of this process of, like, thinking about that that is somewhat cathartic in the face of that.
Yeah.
[01:57:43] Speaker B: And while you're thinking of that, on a personal note, please do let me say welcome back and it's lovely to be jogging with you again.
[01:57:49] Speaker A: Thank you, sir. It is beautiful to be back in action, to get to hang out with you and, you know, our dear friends and all of that. Oh, and before we go, just, hey, meetup is coming up. If you haven't started looking at, you know, places to stay or flights or buses or trains or whatever, start doing that. Join our discord so you can ask any questions. Like I said, I've got a PDF in the making that will go out soon enough with information from people about what exactly we're doing. But Joe AG and Hellrankers, you're going to get a live podcast recording. You're going to get a tour of New York City. You're going to get to hang out with your podcast besties. It's going to be a grand old time. So let's get. Let's get working on that. Dear friends, it's going to be so much fun and we're going to be so glad to get to hang out with you all.
[01:58:42] Speaker B: Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. And in the meantime, there's only one thing we ask. We parade ourselves before you regularly. We lay ourselves bare, open our hearts and our souls and give you a fucking front row seat right into the dark innards of what makes us tick and drives us nuts. The only thing we ask in return, the only thing we ask that you do in return.
[01:59:10] Speaker A: Just one thing.
Stay.
