Ep. 192: super(high) soldiers & near death experiences

[00:00:04] Speaker A: Look, I know that, like me, you are a big fan of war and military history. [00:00:15] Speaker B: Sure. I thought you were just going to leave it at war. I was like, I don't know if I'd put it that way. [00:00:20] Speaker A: Well, yeah. War. War mongering, technology of war, war crimes, war. The tech that goes into war. [00:00:30] Speaker B: Sure. [00:00:31] Speaker A: Tell me, Corey. [00:00:32] Speaker B: Hmm? [00:00:34] Speaker A: Let's go back to the thirties and forties. Let's go back to World War Two. What would you say are the fundamental things that a good army needs to really do well in the fighting and killing of their enemies? [00:00:50] Speaker B: Sure. You got to have, you got to have the tanks. [00:00:53] Speaker A: You got to have tanks. [00:00:54] Speaker B: Yes. Have the people in the sky. You gotta have the people in the water. [00:00:58] Speaker A: Sure, yes, water. Naval and air supremacy. Yes. [00:01:04] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. [00:01:05] Speaker A: The guns, you need the soldiers, you need the rations. [00:01:09] Speaker B: Mm. Mm hmm. Definitely. [00:01:11] Speaker A: You need the amphetamines. The amphetamine, yes, you do. [00:01:18] Speaker B: I always leave that out. [00:01:20] Speaker A: Drugs are a weapon. Drugs are war. And it just surprises and delights and intrigues me the just how widespread a tool of the second world war good old fashioned methamphetamine was. [00:01:40] Speaker B: Yeah. This, I mean, we broached this with Richard. You were not here when we discussed this. But where was I? [00:01:48] Speaker A: Was I unwell? [00:01:50] Speaker B: No, this was not in the loony times. I think you were on vacation or something. Something like that. And our dear friend Richard Lambert came here and sat in for you that day. I believe it's episode 91, episode titled Meth Nazis. But this was one of the things that blew my mind out the gate. And I think I said at the time that when I think about amphetamines, I think of them as a recent scourge, as a thing that like, you know, this, it's like, oh, yeah, like you don't talk about people in the forties, fifties doing meth, right? That's not a thing. So it's fascinating to me that. Nope, this absolutely was a thing at that point. [00:02:40] Speaker A: Yeah. And sometime before. I mean, what if I were to tell you that amphetamine was first synthesized in the late 18 hundreds? 1887, right? By a romanian chemist, a guy called Lazar Ideleneux. Um, but it wasn't until the twenties that it's the powerful fucking hep giving properties of amphetamine were truly harnessed. You know, it was synthesized firstly as like an asthma medicine, a bronchodilator, which it's excellent at. [00:03:10] Speaker B: Um, do we still use it for that? [00:03:13] Speaker A: Not methamphetamine? No, but, uh, not over the counter in the UK, up until a few years back. But ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, okay, which I believe is an amphetamine precursor, are commonly used in, like, sudafed and fucking autribeam. It just. [00:03:28] Speaker B: Why they have to put them behind the counter now. [00:03:30] Speaker A: Exactly. And yeah, it's a precursor as well, so it can be used in the manufacture of. But the. I think that's cracking example of an idea whose time has come. If the stimulant effects of this drug had been discovered and kind of researched the twenties and thirties, and then of course, war breaks out. It feels like the right time. As the world inched kind of closer and closer to war, you've got kind of armies across the globe who are noticing at the same time you've got this fucking powerful ass human potential booster. You know, doctors at the time were finding that amphetamines were useful in things like narcolepsy, depression, overweight. Smash you full of amphetamines, walk it off. [00:04:23] Speaker B: Yeah, this is. I mean, a lot of girls in the nineties were using that as a weight loss drug. [00:04:28] Speaker A: Yes, yes, yes, yes. And look, as this podcast gets longer and longer in the tooth, and as I grow less and less asked about keeping any cards up my sleeve, I used ephedrine as a weight loss aide myself in my twenties when it was, it was available, you could buy it from Belgium on the Internet and just pop. Ephedrine. [00:04:50] Speaker B: Belgium, supplying it. [00:04:52] Speaker A: Belgium, yes, that's where mine would come from. Keep the heart rate up and the appetite down. [00:04:57] Speaker B: Right, yeah, of course. [00:05:00] Speaker A: Which is essentially what it did for soldiers in the thirties. It was Japan. It was one of the first countries to experiment with amphetamines for use in the military. But it was, of course, the Nazis. [00:05:14] Speaker B: Yep. [00:05:15] Speaker A: Fucking more on which later, sons of bitches. But it was there that they really kind of went in on using amphetamine in a military setting. Right. They developed, not the Nazis, but Germany itself, they developed amphetamine under a brand name called Pervitin, meth based drug, which very quickly took hold and became a staple in the german military. Right. It was. It was initially marketed by a pharmaceuticals producer called Temle Merck to the public. [00:05:45] Speaker B: Is that the same place that is Merck now? [00:05:49] Speaker A: Do you know what it. I, that feels to me like it could be? [00:05:56] Speaker B: Yeah. It's one of those things where you're like, is that like. But would they have kept the same name that they had when Nazis were using them? [00:06:02] Speaker A: But Volkswagen sure did. [00:06:04] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. Volkswagen. There's plenty of things that still retain their nazi name. So, yeah, I don't know, we'll have. [00:06:10] Speaker A: A bit of a. [00:06:11] Speaker B: Have a little google on that. [00:06:13] Speaker A: Yes. Marketed to the public as, of course, this fucking miracle pill, it could enhance your productivity, enhance your energy. But on the battlefield, right, as early as 39, the invasion of Poland, the german frontline was being issued, perverting to really give them that extra fucking foot up on the grueling kind of schedule and the grueling demands of the blitzkrieg. It needed rapid movement, relentless attacks, you know, often the front lines with little to no rest for days at a time in the soldiers. And this drug pervading it allowed the nazi frontline to stay awake for extended periods, longer distances, go further, shoot more, you know. Soldiers would report high kind of focus of aggression. During the forties, it's reported in plenty of places that millions and millions of pervadin pills, or pervitin pills, were given to the nazi frontline to sustain their advance. Meanwhile, mean fucking while the allies were doing the same. [00:07:23] Speaker B: Oh, boy. Nice. [00:07:24] Speaker A: So by the early forties, right, you got both the british and the american militaries had noticed this and had developed, in tandem, benzedrine, which is essentially the same stuff. Yeah. The british air force, the RAF, they were giving it to pilots for long kind of bombing raids, drugs, pilots. [00:07:44] Speaker B: That's exactly who you want to be on fucking meth. Yeah, yeah, definitely. [00:07:49] Speaker A: The pilots in primitive kind of petrol engine, heavy ass fucking plane. [00:07:54] Speaker B: Right. [00:07:55] Speaker A: Um, there's a fantastic advert here from SmithKline and french laboratories in Philadelphia, marketing benzedrine sulfate. I'm gonna quote this. I'm gonna read this advert directly, please. I might even fucking do a voice. [00:08:09] Speaker B: Do a voice. Do a voice. [00:08:11] Speaker A: Tiredness is of two sorts. First, there's physical tiredness, the result of overexertion. For physical tiredness, rest is the only cure. But there is also psychogenic tiredness, the result of over worry, of monotonous routine or frustrating circumstance. The two types of tiredness are often confused. You will find that benzedrine sulfate can relieve psychogenic tiredness. Benzedrines dramatic mood effect revitalizes the patient and restores optimism, cheerfulness and a sense of well being. Benzedrine sulfate. [00:08:47] Speaker B: I don't think, um, when we talked about this with Richard, I don't think that that came up, but I had compared it to, like, ads that were targeting women in, like, the 1950s. Uh, yes. That were exactly like, essentially the exact same thing. That's like, oh, are you, you know, super exhausted from your terrible life? [00:09:10] Speaker A: Life? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. [00:09:12] Speaker B: Don't worry about it. We've got Ben's a dream. We've got, you know, all these kinds of things. Lysol, that's basically. Yeah, that's basically just going to make you high as shit so that you don't care that your life is miserable. That's the idea behind it. And it's wild to think of this applied to soldiers, to people fighting a war, because what's like, you know, there's not really a great way to increase morale when, like, all your friends are dying around you. So. Yeah, why not meth, I guess. [00:09:47] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. This. And it really feels as though it was Germany that pioneered this, this. This kind of military application of drugs. It became known, it got various kind of nicknames amongst the german frontline. It would be called pilot salt. [00:10:05] Speaker B: Pilot salt. I wonder, I just. Sorry to interrupt here, but, like, you know, there's a lot of planes that went missing during World War two. I watch a lot of expedition unknown with Josh Gates, and many episodes of expedition and unknown involve looking for world War two planes. And never is it ever mentioned that, like, maybe the pilot was on meth. But, like, I wonder. I wonder if that does play a part. [00:10:39] Speaker A: I wonder. They just didn't. Just kept on flying. [00:10:44] Speaker B: Right? Like, I mean, it can't be great for you. [00:10:51] Speaker A: More than the air force, though, with the german armies, it seems to me as though it was focused on getting perverten out to tank crews. [00:11:02] Speaker B: Okay. [00:11:03] Speaker A: Um, it. It got the nickname Panzer chocolate. Tank chocolate, mate. How fucking good is that? [00:11:11] Speaker B: That is. [00:11:11] Speaker A: Pass me the panzer chocolate. I feel as though I need a nap. Um, and, you know, german high command quickly realized what they had on their hands. It was super cheap, super effective, super easy to get out to the. To the troops and allowed the soldiers using that tech that they had, using their tanks, using their weapons, to push beyond natural, kind of realistic physical and mental limits. [00:11:36] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:11:37] Speaker A: Now, moving east, as I said, Japan also made pretty extensive use of amphetamines. They issued a particular flavor of amphetamine, which they called philopon. [00:11:51] Speaker B: Philopon. [00:11:52] Speaker A: Yeah, philopon. Which, again, completely zeros you in, locks you in, keeps you working. In fact, that name, Philippon translates as love and work. [00:12:02] Speaker B: Wow. [00:12:03] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. [00:12:06] Speaker B: Amazing. [00:12:07] Speaker A: As we know, during World War Two, it was, it was a japanese tactic of kamikaze missions. And it's reported that japanese pilots would often load up on Philippon ahead of going in for the big dice. [00:12:20] Speaker B: Basically, it's, you know, the stuff from Mad Max. [00:12:25] Speaker A: It is, yeah, yeah, exactly. What a glorious day. [00:12:30] Speaker B: Yeah. Which makes perfect sense. That's a pilot that I very much understand. Using drugs. [00:12:37] Speaker A: Yes. Well, look, we're well into the Mad Max timeline now, aren't we? [00:12:42] Speaker B: No. Just in life. [00:12:45] Speaker A: No, I say when you. When you. We watched Mad Max quite recently. Didn't it say, like, in the year 1986 or something? Fucking ridiculous. [00:12:54] Speaker B: I mean, it's possible. I feel like it's supposed to be pretty contemporary in the original one, like, only a few years ahead of where it is. [00:13:02] Speaker A: But to your point about it being a kind of a morale boost, there are letters from 1942 where a medical officer is reporting about a group of hundreds of troops surrounded by Russians and attempting to escape in freezing temperatures. I decided to give them pervadin as they began to lie down in the snow, wanting to die, wrote the officer. And after half an hour, the men began spontaneously reporting. They felt better. They began marching in orderly fashion. Again, spirits improved. They became more alert. [00:13:33] Speaker B: Well, it's like. I mean, yay, I guess they didn't want to die. But again, it's like, you know, replacing the idea of, like, this war is really bad with, like, it's fine. Just like, just shoot them up with stuff. Just have them snort some stuff, have them take some stuff. [00:13:54] Speaker A: Just grind out that little bit of extra performance. Those. Those hard yards, you know? [00:13:59] Speaker B: Right. Because. And that's like. That's the central concern, right. They're not like, oh, our soldiers are depressed. We feel really bad for them. It's like our soldiers are depressed. They're not gonna be able to fight very well. [00:14:09] Speaker A: Absolutely not. [00:14:11] Speaker B: Like, send them home. That's how you fix the depression. [00:14:15] Speaker A: But one gets the impression that it was seen benzedrine and purvidin, as this kind of miracle, you know, as this kind of fucking miracle drug. Eisenhower, General Eisenhower, he included benzedrine in the standard issue kind of medical kit for the D day invasion. You know, the soldiers were kitted out with rations, ammo, and methamphetamine. [00:14:39] Speaker B: Wow. [00:14:40] Speaker A: Fucking crazy shit. [00:14:42] Speaker B: Nobody ever tells you this. All the war shows and movies, and for some reason, they never show your soldiers popping the benzedrine. [00:14:51] Speaker A: Yes, indeed. But, I mean, as you've said, not without a severe kind of pattern of drawbacks, right? You know, the crash was awful. Paranoia, hallucinations, addiction, immense physical toll, long term health problems. People would come back from the front line with a fucking monkey on their back. You know, in. Just to quote from the letters of one american soldier, benzodrine kept me going when nothing else could. But it also took something from me, I came back from the war, but I was never the same. And that sentiment and others like it are echoed, you know, by many who'd used that, you know, that substance during the war. And it opens up the discussion about. [00:15:35] Speaker B: Ethics, you know, big time. [00:15:38] Speaker A: Yes. I mean, you know, yes, there was a tactical advantage, but did the fucking grunts know what they were doing, what they were taking? Were they right? [00:15:50] Speaker B: If we're talking about something that, you know, was synthesized in the 1880s, not really used until the 1920s, certainly your average Joe would not have encountered this, because when you think about who was sent to fight in World War Two, you know, you are talking about, like, kids basically. They wouldn't have been out there partying and doing meth. So you're giving this to people who have no idea what consequences there are to taking something like that. So the immediate, it feels good, you know, they have no idea what they're about to face for the rest of their lives as a consequence of that. Nor is there the research to show what they're going to, you know. [00:16:32] Speaker A: Well, yeah, yes. So, you know, guinea pigs kind of exploitation. It leads you down that path, doesn't it? You know? Yeah. [00:16:43] Speaker B: And again, like I said, the ephedrane. [00:16:48] Speaker A: You said was ephedrine. Yes. [00:16:51] Speaker B: Did that have, like, effects like meth did? Like, did you have no, absolutely no. [00:17:00] Speaker A: Mood or kind of cognitive impact at all? It was just kind of follow stimulation, just empty pulse quickening and, you know, sweat. But I was thin. [00:17:13] Speaker B: Oh, good. Well, there we go. I mean, and that's what really matters. [00:17:17] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:17:19] Speaker B: Nineties. [00:17:21] Speaker A: It was the nineties. But what if I were to tell you that purvitin was still in use in some way, shape or form right up until the sixties? [00:17:33] Speaker B: Wow. [00:17:34] Speaker A: In the german military, Tamlewerk, the we mentioned earlier, was still supplying the german armies east and west with purvigin pills. [00:17:45] Speaker B: In the military? [00:17:47] Speaker A: Yes. [00:17:49] Speaker B: Wow. Who were they fighting in the sixties and seventies? Or was it just like general? [00:17:54] Speaker A: Like just, you know, as part of the kit, as part of the stock? [00:18:01] Speaker B: That's bonkers. Cause like, listen, I'm not like, I don't know a ton about Germany, not an area of expertise for me. But I assume they were kind of sitting in time out, not allowed to be like, fighting wars all over the place. So they're just giving people benzedrine just like, for shits and giggles. Probably because there's a military contract. That's why I've answered my own question. I'm sure there's a military contract with the company that they were making a ton of money off of, and that's why they were still giving the military this shit. [00:18:32] Speaker A: At that point, I will. As a kind of an object lesson in Purvitin's efficacy, I'll share a no doubt, at least partially apocryphal story. [00:18:46] Speaker B: Okay. Grain of salt story. [00:18:50] Speaker A: Or indeed a grain of pilot salt. [00:18:54] Speaker B: Hey. [00:18:55] Speaker A: Hey o. This is a tale that's been reported in lots of different places, and all of the reports have things in common. Right? So this fucking happened in one way, shape or form. A finnish soldier by the name of Amo Koivunen. [00:19:12] Speaker B: Okay. [00:19:13] Speaker A: And we are in 1944, on March 18, we are in Lapland and Koivunen's patrol. [00:19:21] Speaker B: What's lap. What's Lapland? I don't know where that is. I know. It's the name of a cigaros song. I don't know what Lapland is. [00:19:31] Speaker A: Let me, by all means, turn to my map here. [00:19:34] Speaker B: Thank you. I've said multiple times, geography is not my strong suit. I know places that I have been to. I travel a lot. But otherwise, the map is a little bit of a mystery to me, especially when you get to, like, parts of northern Europe and whatnot. [00:19:49] Speaker A: Yeah. So Lapland, you're looking north of Finland. [00:19:53] Speaker B: Okay. [00:19:54] Speaker A: Right, sure. Close to the coast. Yeah. So you got Sweden. Keep going north past, you know, Norway, Norwegian Sea, that kind of peninsula there at the top, just off, you know, keep going and you'll get to Greenland. [00:20:11] Speaker B: So is it part of somewhere? It's not its own, like, country? Right. Like it is, you know? Oh, it is its own place. I don't. I genuinely have no idea. [00:20:24] Speaker A: I think it is. [00:20:26] Speaker B: Is Lapland in the Olympics? [00:20:29] Speaker A: No, it's. Right. Right. Okay. I'm going to quote here, because I'm not going to paraphrase this. It's the largest, northernmost region of Finland. [00:20:37] Speaker B: Okay, got it. [00:20:38] Speaker A: Check, check, check. [00:20:39] Speaker B: Thank you very much for providing that information. And I'm sure there's someone else listening to this who is bad at geography, who's like, thank you. I felt stupid. [00:20:46] Speaker A: There you go. [00:20:47] Speaker B: So let me take that bullet for you. Anyways, let's get back to our friend here. [00:20:52] Speaker A: Indeed, in again, March 18, 1944, when the ski patrol that Couvenan was a part of was ambushed, pushed by soviet forces. And now Koyvunin was the lead skier, I guess you'd say, of his platoon. [00:21:10] Speaker B: Okay. [00:21:10] Speaker A: And he was exhausted. He was desperate. He was penned in by Russians. And it is widely reported that Koivunen consumed his troops entire supply of pervading meant for his whole squad. [00:21:33] Speaker B: Nice. Was he trying to kill himself? [00:21:38] Speaker A: Fuck only knows at this point, right? [00:21:40] Speaker B: He was just like, this is going to. [00:21:42] Speaker A: One could only speculate. One can only speculate. [00:21:44] Speaker B: Okay. [00:21:45] Speaker A: Um. But the rush that he experienced, the energy and the boost he experienced allowed him to evade the Soviets and just ski like a motherfucker. He woke up alone, without supplies, completely separated from his unit. He survived. He lived in a ditch for a week. Survived a landmine, spent a week in a ditch eating pine buds and a single bird that he managed to catch and eat raw. [00:22:19] Speaker B: It's very reminiscent of the kind of guy. It's like the guy who drank all the bat blood. Exactly. Exactly. Running that marathon. [00:22:27] Speaker A: Exactly. And he was at large in the wilderness for over a week. And where he took. Where he dosed himself, next to where he was found, he'd covered more than 400 km on skis alone. [00:22:42] Speaker B: I don't know how far that is. [00:22:43] Speaker A: It's a fucking. A long old distance. What do you want that in miles? [00:22:49] Speaker B: Give it to me in miles. Yeah. [00:22:51] Speaker A: Uh. What if I were to tell you that he'd covered 248 miles? [00:23:01] Speaker B: Jesus Christ. Okay. Yeah. That's a really long way. [00:23:06] Speaker A: Yes. On skis. And when he was found and taken to a hospital, he weighed 94 pounds and had a heart rate of 200 beats per minute. [00:23:18] Speaker B: Oh, my gosh. [00:23:19] Speaker A: Yes. [00:23:20] Speaker B: Still, like a week later. [00:23:22] Speaker A: Yes. Yes, indeed. But I mean, knowing something about kind of, you know, how alkaloids are processed, I find it hard to believe that a week later he would still be buzzing, no matter how huge the dose was. [00:23:39] Speaker B: I would just die of anxiety if my heart was going. You know how weird I am about my heart rate. [00:23:45] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:23:46] Speaker B: 200 beats per minute for a week. I would just stress myself out till I died. [00:23:51] Speaker A: But here's the thing. Yes, there are doubtless apocryphal elements of that story, but he lived until 1989. Okay, so he was able to tell about this. You know what I mean? [00:24:03] Speaker B: Right. [00:24:04] Speaker A: This isn't just hearsay. I mean, this is stuff that he would have fed into the legend of. He died at the age of 71, which. Not bad, I guess. [00:24:13] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I guess for the time, not the worst. And for someone who took a lot of amphetamines. [00:24:18] Speaker A: Took a lot. A lot of amphetamine. Uh. [00:24:22] Speaker B: I just thought it hurt real hard. [00:24:24] Speaker A: I just thought it might be interesting to just chat a little bit, you know, about the drugs in the army, in the war. Yeah. [00:24:32] Speaker B: Honestly. [00:24:34] Speaker A: Find out where Finland is. [00:24:35] Speaker B: Yeah. I wonder. And I'm sure that they're probably. I don't spend a lot of time on the, like, current military or things like that. [00:24:44] Speaker A: No, no. Do I? [00:24:45] Speaker B: And so I do wonder. I'm sure there are books and stuff like that about, like, what people are using now. I'm sure there are drug tests and things like that and that, you know, ostensibly, they are not technically feeding people drugs to keep them good. But I do wonder, well, what are soldiers on these days? [00:25:07] Speaker A: Interestingly. Very interestingly to me, right, there is a. I mean, it's. It's regarded as kind of a laughing stock in the sporting community, but there is a guy who's doing his best to launch the enhanced Olympics or, like, the enhanced. [00:25:23] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:25:25] Speaker A: Sporting competition. [00:25:26] Speaker B: Yeah. Just let the people do whatever it is they want to do and see. Exactly. [00:25:31] Speaker A: Exactly. Allow me to quote from enhanced.org, the website of this. This I'm in case, you know, it might not shock you to learn that I'm 100%, 110% behind this. Yeah. [00:25:42] Speaker B: Surprise. [00:25:43] Speaker A: When 44% of athletes already use performance enhancements. It's time to safely celebrate science. [00:25:51] Speaker B: Fucking right. It's an interesting thought. I think, you know, if people are gonna do it, then, yeah. Give them a separate thing. Because obviously, my central thing is that it pushes people who don't want to put shit into their bodies into having to use it to be able to compete in sports. So, you know, that's like. That's why you get someone like Lance Armstrong doing that shit. It's like, he didn't. Not that I'm letting him off the hook for any of this shit, but, like, he did it because, like, you can't do that sport without doing it. And that should not be how sports work, that you cannot play this if you're not on drugs. So if people are going to keep doing it. Yeah, give them olympics for that. Give them leagues for that. I think, you know, I got very dangerous. But if you're. If you're willing. [00:26:41] Speaker A: No reasonable adult could disagree with that. [00:26:43] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean. I mean, I'm sure there's plenty who. [00:26:46] Speaker A: Do, but no, then they are not reasonable adults. [00:26:50] Speaker B: Well, I think, you know, you can argue that, like, creating something like this also pushes people into doing dangerous things to their bodies. Like, it's just like with football, right, the enhanced games. Yeah, it is. I mean, that's the thing is, like, even with, like, the NFL, right. Like, there's plenty of reason to argue that should not exist and is an unethical sport in and of itself. Right. Because even though people are growing up and consenting to do this and whatnot. The things that they're doing to their brains as a result of playing this and the, you know, what happens to them and what they do to other people as a result of the head injuries that they take and stuff like that. You know, you can argue that that's wholly unethical on its face. And I think you could say the same thing about the idea of a performance enhancing drug competition. Is the idea. Well, what it does to you can be considered unethical. [00:27:44] Speaker A: The guy sounds. The president of the enhanced games is doctor Aaron Ping D'Souza. Right. And he sounds like a kind of a cross between Hermann Goering and Vince McMahon, the kind of shit he's writing. [00:27:56] Speaker B: So he's a great combo. [00:27:59] Speaker A: At the enhanced games, we encourage the use of performance enhancements under the appropriate medical safeguards. This is our opportunity to evolve humanity by demonstrating what the body is truly capable of. I'm super into this. The enhanced games, that seems to permit the use of performance enhancements that result in competitions that are fairer, safer and more thrilling to watch. You see what I'm saying? [00:28:25] Speaker B: You're really getting towards, like, running man type shit when it comes to things like this. That's the thing, is, like, for our entertainment. Yeah, sure. Like, roid them up. But there's, like, so many health issues. Even doing it safely, I just. [00:28:38] Speaker A: I'm looking at one page and he says it would safety a lot because that's. [00:28:42] Speaker B: That's the thing everyone's gonna have concerns about because there isn't really a way to. [00:28:46] Speaker A: Is there? [00:28:48] Speaker B: And. And do it safely. You know, that's really the issue. So it's not that I'm necessarily against it outright. Like, I think, you know, if people. People are already doing it. So. Yeah. Like, do it somewhere where you don't. Then force people who don't want the horrendous effects on their body. Yep. To have to do it, too. [00:29:11] Speaker A: All right, well, that's all I got for you. [00:29:15] Speaker B: Good chat. [00:29:21] Speaker A: Let me quote directly from my notes, if I may. [00:29:23] Speaker B: Yes, please do. [00:29:25] Speaker A: Fucking look at these nerds. Oh, mise en scene. [00:29:28] Speaker B: I don't think anyone has ever said mise en scene in such a horny way before. [00:29:32] Speaker A: The way I whispered the words sex cannibal receiver. [00:29:35] Speaker B: Worst comes to worst, Mark, I'm willing to guillotine you for science. [00:29:39] Speaker A: Thank you. That's really, really sweet. It's cold outside, but my pancreas is talking to me. I'm fucking. I'm gonna leg it. [00:29:45] Speaker B: You know how I feel about that, Mark. [00:29:47] Speaker A: I think you feel great about it. [00:29:51] Speaker B: I've got great news. [00:29:52] Speaker A: Mark Wonder. Oh, fantastic. [00:29:54] Speaker B: Fantastic news for you this week. You know last week we were ripping apart that documentary about near death experiences that we watched a few years back and we were pieces. Nonsense. [00:30:06] Speaker A: I even remember what it was called. Surviving death. [00:30:09] Speaker B: Surviving death. That was the one. Nice. I could not remember. But listen, Mark, I come here chastened. I come here corrected. [00:30:17] Speaker A: What? [00:30:18] Speaker B: All thanks to my MSN homepage which served me up an article from Insider entitled this is the title. I've studied more than 5000 near death experiences. My research has convinced me without a doubt that there's life after death. [00:30:34] Speaker A: Oh, fuck. And who is this? Who's this guy? [00:30:36] Speaker B: Well, this is Doctor Geoffrey Long, an oncologist from Kentucky who says he has seen his patients see the other side. Do you want to hear what he has to say about it? [00:30:51] Speaker A: Well, yeah, obviously. I mean, this seems like it might be difficult to argue against. [00:30:54] Speaker B: It's gonna be real hard to refute. But we're gonna have to sit here with our shit, you know, with our worldview glasses off and just try to. Try to take it. So the article starts, Mark, I'm just. I'm going to read you some bits of it. We'll hash it out. 37 years ago, I was an oncologist resident learning about how best to treat cancer using radiation. These were the pre Internet days, so I did my research in the library. One day I was flipping through a large volume of the Journal of American Medical. Of the American Medical association when I came out. I am going to sneeze. Come on, man. [00:31:33] Speaker A: Look at a light. Look at a light. [00:31:35] Speaker B: I don't think. [00:31:35] Speaker A: Gaze at a light bulb. [00:31:37] Speaker B: My light has a. [00:31:41] Speaker A: I thought that was it. [00:31:42] Speaker B: Me too. Oh, this is sad. Okay, let's see. Let me see if I can read that sentence again one day. God damn it. I was flipping through a large volume of the Journal of the American Medical association when I came across an article describing near death experiences. It stopped me in my tracks. All my medical training told me you were either alive just imagining that, or. [00:32:06] Speaker A: Dead, just flipping through pages. [00:32:11] Speaker B: Just a little like, you know, that meme of the woman with all the numbers. [00:32:16] Speaker A: What's this near death experience? [00:32:20] Speaker B: All my medical training told me you were either alive or dead. There was no in between. But suddenly I was reading from a cardiologist describing patients who had died then come back to life reporting very distinct, almost unbelievable experiences. From that moment, he says he became fascinated with near death experiences or ndes, which I'm sure did not color his perspective for the rest of his life in any way. Nor did finishing his residency and immediately starting the near death experience research foundation, where he, as he put it, collected stories from people who had had ndes and then evaluated them with the mind of a scientist and a doctor. Yeah, no ulterior motives, Mark. Just a regular science guy, you know? [00:33:11] Speaker A: Science and doctor. A scientist and a doctor. [00:33:14] Speaker B: Scientist and a doctor. Yep. He said, I make opinions based on evidence, and came into this as a skeptic, which he told us that he wrote a book about this and devoted his life to it. So I feel like skeptic is kind of the wrong word for how he. [00:33:31] Speaker A: Ended up looking for funding. [00:33:33] Speaker B: Right. I just love, like, you see this when you're watching shows about the supernatural, you know, bigfoot, cryptids, all these kinds of things. It's that, like, in order to make themselves not sound like they're making it up, people always say that, like, I was a skeptic before. I would never have believed this until it happened to me. And it's like, bullshit. You were not a skeptic. You did not come into the like, you know, I'm honest about this, that my, you know, that in my head, I'm very much a skeptic. I don't believe in any of this stuff anymore. However, if you put me in a haunted house, my brain's gonna go crazy, and I'm gonna think there's ghosts in there, you know? Like. [00:34:18] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:34:18] Speaker B: You have to be honest about what you mean by being a skeptic. [00:34:22] Speaker A: For a rational lady of science and culture as you are, it. It is a source of continual amusement and delight to me that you love a ghost tour. [00:34:35] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, man. [00:34:36] Speaker A: You know what I mean? You. You'll drink that shit right in. [00:34:41] Speaker B: Yep. That bit of, you know, suspension of disbelief for an hour or two. Absolutely love it. You know, and so I will. Yeah. The idea, even as a person who is genuinely a skeptic, if you put me in the right circumstance, I'm not gonna call myself that. So the idea that, you know, let. [00:35:01] Speaker A: Me just try and get a grab on that word. [00:35:04] Speaker B: Right? Do it. Yeah. [00:35:07] Speaker A: To me, a skeptic is someone who doubts, right? Yes. [00:35:12] Speaker B: Yeah. Whose inclination is to disbelieve. That's what I would think. [00:35:17] Speaker A: So what is the kind of, what is the next level of skeptic? Because I am not a skeptic about the afterlife. I have. There is no gray area in my right. Well, my certainty, I guess. [00:35:32] Speaker B: See, that's an. That's an interesting thought because the way that I always approach things is that you can never be 100% sure about anything. I think I am. But the idea that I would shut myself off to the idea that there is, like, there could be a scientific thing that does not make sense to me. You know, if there were somehow that someone came and, you know, found the portal to hell or whatever, you know, or figured out, you know, whatever connection, and they scientifically mapped it out and they were like, this is how matter transfers into this. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, then I wouldn't go, nah. And that, to me, that is what says skepticism. Because beyond that, then you just have a belief, right? That's just a belief. You believe a certain thing. [00:36:26] Speaker A: That doesn't do it for me either. [00:36:27] Speaker B: Potential for evidence. [00:36:28] Speaker A: Because a belief is a position, isn't it? A belief is. [00:36:33] Speaker B: Which is what that is. Right. Like, because you can't know. You don't know this. You can think you know it with your whole soul, but you don't know this. There is a, like you always say, right. There's only one way. [00:36:47] Speaker A: Yeah, listen, you pulled the woods right out of my brain. That's exactly what I was just thinking. That's why, you know, it's the decapitation conundrum again, isn't it? [00:36:55] Speaker B: Right, exactly. There's only one way you can possibly know these kinds of things. [00:36:59] Speaker A: And so I'm not comfortable in describing myself as a skeptic because that leaves far too much leeway. [00:37:06] Speaker B: Sure. Yeah. And I see what you mean there. I think. And I think that is something that often when I, like, read things from people who say they're skeptics is one of the reasons why you question it. Right. Because it leaves room. And then you're like, so does that mean you do believe this? But you just need the right thing? I think for a lot of people, though, who call themselves skeptics, it means, like, you would have to show me absolute scientific proof. Otherwise, absolutely not. So I get what you mean. [00:37:39] Speaker A: I guess that's where I am. Yes. I would need peer, fucking triple peer shit on my desk. [00:37:46] Speaker B: And I think that's the thing. So, yeah, the word skeptic is fraught because there's a range of who calls themselves, I don't have a desk. There's this guy who very clearly decided early on that he believes in this, but calls himself a skeptic because he tried to approach it with the scientific method. And then there's the people who are like, no, until you show me absolute proof there's no such thing as this. Who calls himself skeptics using the same term and it meaning opposite things. So I'm. [00:38:25] Speaker A: Yeah, I. I'm not. I don't have a head full of bees. I don't. But I'm rabbit holing all of the. I was absolutely infuriated to read earlier this week the word unlockable. Right? The word unlockable. [00:38:42] Speaker B: Unlockable. [00:38:43] Speaker A: Unlockable simultaneously means something that can't be locked or something to be unlocked. [00:38:51] Speaker B: Oh, sure. [00:38:52] Speaker A: Isn't that irritating? That irritates. [00:38:53] Speaker B: That is irritating. Yeah. Yep. [00:38:57] Speaker A: Fucking hate that, man. [00:38:59] Speaker B: Where did you see that? [00:39:01] Speaker A: Tick tock. [00:39:02] Speaker B: Oh, for fuck sake. But it's also, like a word no one would ever use, so I guess it's not like, it's not as annoying as, like, bi weekly, you know? [00:39:18] Speaker A: Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yeah, that's. I'd forgotten about that. I'd forgotten about how annoyed I was at that. [00:39:26] Speaker B: I'm okay with unlockable because I've never said unlockable my entire life, but bi weekly will always be the bane of my existence. [00:39:32] Speaker A: I'm gonna stop dragging you off course now. Go for it. Skepticism. [00:39:35] Speaker B: Skepticism. This guy claims to be a skeptic, even though he saw this in a medical book and immediately started an entire organization around near death experiences. He claims about 45% of people who have had an NDE report an out of body experience. When this happens, their consciousness separates from their physical body, usually hovering above the body. [00:39:59] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. [00:40:01] Speaker B: The person can see and hear what's happening around them, which usually includes frantic attempts to revive them. One woman even reported a doctor throwing a tool on the floor when he picked up the wrong one, something the doctor later confirmed. [00:40:15] Speaker A: Well, close the fucking case. [00:40:18] Speaker B: How else could she have known? Certainly not the doctor mumbling like shit, I dropped my scalpel. Yeah, right. Like, I know how I would. How I react when I dropped something. But no, she had to have been. Yeah. [00:40:35] Speaker A: Fuck. [00:40:36] Speaker B: Had to have been hovering over her body watching this happen in order to know that. An interesting thing that makes me think of, too, is I can't remember what it was that I was hearing someone talk about, but it was some sort of medicine that they give you as anesthetic or to put you under, things like that. And one of the things that they said about this, I'm sure you've either experienced it having medical work done or heard about this, but is the idea that as you go under, you're going to feel a floating sensation, like you're floating outside of your body. That's just like the normal effect of this medicine on you. And so the idea of people thinking that they. [00:41:25] Speaker A: Yeah, it feels like, I mean, widely, widely used as a anesthetic, you know, is about as close as you can get to a safe, quick acting, quick attack and decay rate of this drug is very quick onset and is perfectly, perfectly fine for use in a medical setting. I don't. I can buy that. It might. That you might get a floaty sensation on the way down. Yes. [00:42:01] Speaker B: Yeah. And so the idea of, like, you know, someone being put under or something of that nature before something happening that they're using to revive them or whatever, that seems. [00:42:11] Speaker A: And I've read in plenty of places that, you know, there's a theory that it's your brain releasing DMT. [00:42:18] Speaker B: Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah. [00:42:19] Speaker A: In the face of imminent shutdown and death. [00:42:22] Speaker B: Yeah. And we were talking even before the show started about how we know that, like, we're about to fall asleep because our brains start misfiring and coming up with just nonsense. And so I know that, like, you know, as I fall asleep, I think I'm in situations that I'm not in all kinds of stuff, and that's a perfectly normal reaction as well. So I just find this entire thing a very funny way to, like, say, like, no, this is definitely, this is definitely because people are actually floating outside of their bodies, not because this is your brain shooting off all kinds of random stuff as it fights for its life. [00:43:03] Speaker A: That pre sleep state is so fascinating to me. [00:43:07] Speaker B: I know, right? Yeah. [00:43:09] Speaker A: It is so interesting to me because, I mean, I've told you before about how I use it as an indicator that I'm gonna have a decent night and that I am actually gonna go to sleep if I'm just patient enough. It's when I recognize that I've had a thought, which I didn't try to have. [00:43:25] Speaker B: Right. [00:43:26] Speaker A: But you know, that almost, like, almost. It's almost as though somebody has planted an external idea in my head. I have no idea where it came from, but. And then I'll out of nowhere, be able to recognize, oh, hang on. I didn't try and have that thought. And an abstract kind of situation or face or voice has arisen in my mind. Oh, right. That means I'm tuned in. I'm on the right wavelength. I'm going to go to sleep. It's cool. [00:43:51] Speaker B: Do you actively try to have your thoughts? This is actually, like a. An interesting little aside you've brought into this here, because I don't think you've ever described it that way before. And that's fascinating to me because I have a super ADHD brain and my brain is nothing but thoughts that I don't mean to have. [00:44:12] Speaker A: Well, a part of what I think is at the root cause of my ongoing issues with sleep is the anxiety cycle. This don't think of a fucking elephant kind of problem. [00:44:27] Speaker B: Right. [00:44:28] Speaker A: You can't try and relax. And as soon as I realize that I'm trying to relax, fucking fuck off, forget it. So I nightly kind of have this balance between almost not. Trying not to look at. Trying not to regard myself, trying not to regard my own processes. Almost fucking hell, you know? Trying not to. Trying not to try. [00:44:56] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:44:57] Speaker A: That's what I'm trying. That's what I'm kind of getting at. I'm trying. I'm trying to do things naturally. And when I realize that something has happened that I didn't try and make happen, then I can relax then because I realize I've got it nailed. [00:45:09] Speaker B: Okay. This makes so much more sense because I'm like, you. Last week's cold open that everybody has commented on. It's like, it doesn't feel like your thoughts are totally deliberate, organized, but. No, I definitely get what you mean there of the, like, you know, when you are actively trying to. Yeah. Don't think about thinking, and then all of a sudden something comes out of nowhere and you're like, oh, yeah, that's an indicator that I am no longer running this ship. [00:45:37] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. That is interesting as hell to me. That is. [00:45:41] Speaker B: Yeah, it very much is. And just like you were saying, I think it's usually. It's a really nice feeling to me where it's usually like a moment of confusion and then going, oh, sweet, I'm falling asleep. I'm actually falling asleep right now. [00:45:56] Speaker A: The experience of using sleep medication is totally different. That's more akin to switching off a light. [00:46:06] Speaker B: Right. [00:46:07] Speaker A: When there's no kind of radiation between awake and asleep, there isn't a kind of a drift, you know, where your thoughts get subsumed by whimsy. There's none of that. When you're using sleep meds. It's 1 minute you're awake and then the next minute you're awake, but it's the next day. [00:46:27] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:46:28] Speaker A: You know? [00:46:28] Speaker B: Right. [00:46:29] Speaker A: Which is. [00:46:30] Speaker B: This is what happens to me if I take a Benadryl. [00:46:33] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's exactly this, which is. Which is functionally sleep, but it isn't. [00:46:39] Speaker B: Right. But it doesn't feel like the same thing. Yeah. [00:46:42] Speaker A: It's like dinner in pill form, isn't it? [00:46:45] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:46:46] Speaker A: It's better like space dinner. [00:46:47] Speaker B: Space dinner. Yeah. That's precisely what sleep meds are. Okay. Interesting. So out of body experiences here, much like, perhaps if you don't take your space pill. And he says after the out of body experience, people say they're transported into another realm. Many pass through a tunnel and experience a bright light. Then they're greeted by deceased loved ones, including pets, who are in the prime of their lives. Most people report an overwhelming sense of love and peace. They feel like this other realm is their real home. And he says that while he knows these things sound like tropes, he believes that they're tropes because they're true. [00:47:34] Speaker A: Oh, that old chestnut. Okay, okay, okay. [00:47:37] Speaker B: Right, everybody? Yeah. [00:47:40] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:47:41] Speaker B: It's because it's actually happening. [00:47:43] Speaker A: To be honest, it's. You've touched upon there one of the reasons why I consider myself like a mega skeptic. If there's just because, you know, with the amount of people who've died by now, constants would start to emerge. I don't give a fucked. I want to know, are your pets included? Are insects included? If so, is it? You know, I want to know. I want to know the fucking. I want to be able to write it down. I want to be able to fucking know the exact. [00:48:20] Speaker B: Well. And according to this guy, you know, all of those things are reported regularly from people. So if you're looking for constants, like a consistency in people's reports, then absolutely that exists. The issue being that we don't know why that happens, right? Like, if it's the fact that we've been watching media for a century that presents near death experiences with that, and so we sort of associated it. It's like, you know, the chupacabra, right? Talking about that, like, you know, a woman had a nightmare after watching species, and then all of a sudden, other people reported seeing the exact same thing she'd seen. You know. [00:49:03] Speaker A: I'm never more than two or three thoughts away from thinking about hereditary, right? And I haven't spoken about hereditary for a while, so I'm just gonna. [00:49:08] Speaker B: It's been, like, two weeks. [00:49:10] Speaker A: I know. But at most, having this discussion has really brought into relief one of the reasons why I've gone so fucking gaga over that film. Because the job it does of showing a skeptic seeing what they believe to be incontrovertible evidence of something beyond the veil and dealing with it is fucking just so good. [00:49:35] Speaker B: It's the best. All right. You've gotten your hereditary in for the episode. That's it. [00:49:40] Speaker A: Thank you. [00:49:43] Speaker B: But, yeah, it's like, we don't know if it's just kind of like people reporting the same thing that they've heard over and over again, so it kind of sticks in their minds. We don't know if it is something that the brain does. The synapses fire in such a weird way that you see light or you picture these various things, and he sort of goes on to talk about again, I love that he keeps saying things like, seemingly unbelievable because they are unbelievable. [00:50:13] Speaker A: Because you've got to maintain that facade, isn't you? [00:50:17] Speaker B: I know it sounds crazy, but this is. Other people seemingly report seemingly unbelievable events. You're gonna like this one. Which we can later confirm. One woman lost consciousness while riding her horse on a trail. Her body stayed on the trail while her consciousness traveled with her horse as he galloped back to the barn. Later, she was able to describe exactly what happened at the barn because she had seen it despite her body not being there. Others hadn't spoken to her, confirmed her account. Wow. [00:50:48] Speaker A: So she fell off the horse. [00:50:50] Speaker B: Off the horse. But her consciousness went with the horse. [00:50:54] Speaker A: Just dundle and the landing. No one just stayed on that fucking horse. [00:50:58] Speaker B: I feel like if. If I could, like, astral project some sort of Tulpa, me, I would have skipped the horse. I would have to, like, the hospital or like something, you know? Yeah, like, why would you. Oh, shit. I fell off my horse. I better get a back on and ride it. [00:51:15] Speaker A: Yeah. Awesome. [00:51:19] Speaker B: Ghost doesn't seem expedient to me. [00:51:23] Speaker A: And also, I enjoy how, uh, did he refer to her as one woman? No name needed, no words, no. [00:51:31] Speaker B: Just sauce. [00:51:32] Speaker A: Trust me, bro. [00:51:33] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Maybe in. You know, maybe this is detailed in his many files or whatever, in his institute for this stuff. I don't know. But I also always. [00:51:46] Speaker A: Institute of Ndes. I bet it's like, in my head, it's like that call center from telemarketers, right? [00:51:54] Speaker B: Totally. [00:51:56] Speaker A: A bunch of stoners and fucking alcoholics. [00:51:59] Speaker B: But I also love that. Like, one of the things that is, again, like how he keeps confirming this is, you know, someone who hadn't spoken to her, confirmed her account, or I, the doctor who had dropped his tool, confirmed that that had happened. You know, it's like, oh, somebody else saying this happened definitely, definitely means it did. Which, like, we know what memory is like and how easy it is to, like, implant an idea in someone's head and make them think that that happened. You know, we're pretty agreeable that way. If you tell us something happened, then, you know, we will replace that with our memory of what went on. This is another great one. He also believes in the thing he calls fear death experiences, which is Fdes. FDE's, which is where you fear that you're about to die. Like when you nearly get into a car accident or if you have a sudden fall, things that cause you to react with the certainty, oh, my God, I'm going to die. [00:53:01] Speaker A: S? Y es. [00:53:04] Speaker B: What's, what's s one? [00:53:05] Speaker A: It's a shit yourself experience, isn't it? [00:53:09] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay. Clearly that's what he's fear death discovered shit yourself experience. He says that these people often report seeing their lives flash before their eyes, including events they couldn't possibly remember from toddlerhood, but are later confirmed by family members, which, like, listen, my mother loves to tell the same stories over and over again about my childhood. I can imagine there's a lot of things locked up in there. I could say I remember. In fact, I don't know if you have any of these things, but I always think I remember when I was like, to me, I assume that I was like, four or whatever. I was not. I was like a baby. I always think I remember my brother giving me this puppet show with a fozzie bear puppet, like hand puppet. But I think I remember this because there is a photo in a photo album of my brother doing this puppet show. And I think just somewhere in there, it implanted and became my own memory. [00:54:10] Speaker A: Yeah. I have very, very similar kind of context. I'm certain. I remember textures and kind of the sensation of a leather sofa that was in the very first house that I lived in with my family, even though I'm way too young to remember that. And there are photos. I know photos of me sat on it, you know? [00:54:33] Speaker B: Yeah. So it's like some, it just kind of gets mixed in with your memories over time, which I imagine probably has something to do with people thinking they see this. It's also fascinating considering last week we talked about, like, drowning and how, like, we have deep details, what people think about when they're in the process of drowning. Um, and, you know, I have, on a couple of occasions, had very, like, fear death experiences, moments where I was like, ah, shit, I'm definitely going to die. And a lot of times what we get reported from people who experience these kinds of things is almost like, silly stuff. There are people who think about, like, oh, you know, like, look over their life and reflect or whatever. But, like, a lot of times people think of like, really trivial things when they're about to die, you know, or fixate on one element of their life. Like a lot of people, obviously, it's like, oh, my kids. I'm really sad for my kids, or things like that. But other people will think about some dumb thing they've never done or a mistake they made or things like that. So this idea that, like, oh, you know, when you fear you're going to. [00:55:40] Speaker A: Die or whatever, everyone has a uniform response. Everyone does the same thing in the same order. [00:55:46] Speaker B: Yeah, we all get this thing that happens. Because I think to your point earlier where you were like, I want a consistency or whatever, I think that is more the thing. If there is an afterlife and we know, for example, people drown to death, then they should all come back with that same exact. [00:56:11] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:56:12] Speaker B: But they don't. They report thinking about whether their stove was turned off or things like that. So if people can die physically and be revived and not have those experiences, I think that speaks to what you're saying about why doesn't everybody experience this then? Do only some people get an afterlife? What does that mean? [00:56:35] Speaker A: See, to me, if I were, hey, I'm a skeptic, but to me, that opens up an even more kind of terrifying possibility, okay, that the afterlife itself exists and yet is subjective. So the void exists. There is, there is, there is an else, but no two people experience it in the same way. We are, we are so poorly equipped to fucking handle the enormity of that next step. Our physical brains all fucking weird shit. [00:57:10] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. [00:57:11] Speaker A: And experience it differently. [00:57:12] Speaker B: Yeah, I feel like that, that is a great concept. And it kind of speaks to like, what John Keel, the author of the Mothman prophecies, he talked about. I'm trying to think of what it's called. I keep thinking super structure, but that's not what super spectrum, I think, is what he calls it. And essentially it's kind of this idea that there is sort of a beyond the veil, right? Like there are other layers of, like, matter and existence that are all happening at the same time as what we're in, but we simply lack the facility to be able to deal with it. And that there are some people who are able to. And that's a person who might experience cryptid activity or ghosts or things like that, but that most of us simply can't engage with that other layer of existence that's coexisting with us. And yeah, I think that is kind of a terrifying concept. Like, what if there is an afterlife for all of us? But it's a subjective. It makes me think you can't handle it. Yeah, right. Like thinking. [00:58:14] Speaker A: Or you can't handle it in a way that translates to the physical realm, to the mortal realm. You can't. You can't. It's like Cthulhu. You can't talk about it because it's too fucking big. [00:58:22] Speaker B: Or what if it's like, you know, you just, like, thinking about people who think about, like, leaving. They left the stove on or something like that, as they're dying, you know? Like, what if it's existential anxiety for all eternity because your mind can't comprehend what you're experiencing, and you just spend all of eternity in a state of stress as a result? You know, like me when I have a gummy. Like, this is supposed to be fun. Some people are having fun here, and I'm stressed out and I think my gums are numb. What if that's the afterlife for me, God. [00:59:01] Speaker A: But isn't it cool that there's only one way to know and we're only. [00:59:04] Speaker B: One way to know? [00:59:05] Speaker A: We're all going to find out, but, well. [00:59:07] Speaker B: Or we won't, right? Because if there is no afterlife, we will never find out. [00:59:16] Speaker A: No, but even that is a kind of knowing. [00:59:20] Speaker B: Is it? How's that? How's that? [00:59:24] Speaker A: Surely there's a fucking. A fulcrum, a tipping point when the physical fucking, you know, the electric impulses across your muscles have gone and there's just that little bit of electrochemical zap left in your brain. [00:59:43] Speaker B: What if I go and I, like, straight, like, shoot you in the face straight through your brain? [00:59:49] Speaker A: Yeah, fair enough. Fair enough. Yeah. Given ideal circumstances, we'll all find out. [00:59:53] Speaker B: Okay? I don't know. I don't know if I think that. I think. I don't think we ever get to know. I think it just, you know, is or it isn't. We only get to know if there is. [01:00:04] Speaker A: From a philosophical perspective, we all find out, and not finding out is in itself. Okay, give me that. Let me have this. [01:00:21] Speaker B: I will let you have that. No, that's a very valid way to put it. You know, I struggle. I struggle with the philosophy. I have a very literal brain, and so, you know, that's why I don't think that way. But I get you. I get what you mean. [01:00:39] Speaker A: From where I'm sat right now, the. Even if you find out there's nothing to find, you still found out. [01:00:46] Speaker B: Sure. [01:00:51] Speaker A: But doesn't finding out itself imply something left there to find out that there's nothing? [01:00:56] Speaker B: Well, yeah, that's what. That's kind of where I'm coming from on this, is that there's got to be. That would be afterlife if there was something there. [01:01:06] Speaker A: To Jack, of all gray. [01:01:11] Speaker B: Welcome, friends. Welcome to the podcast where we just talk about, like, lightning shit that, you know, has no impact on anyone or anything. [01:01:23] Speaker A: It bears repeating because I'm very much in that zone. But the idea that you can't know until you know, is so great. I love it so much. [01:01:33] Speaker B: I don't know that I have, like, the same piece about it that you do, but, like, that's. That makes sense because obviously, as we've talked about on this podcast from episode two, uh, the reason that I went through my christian phase was because of not knowing and that being too stressful a thing for my brain to. To deal with. And so I had to subscribe to something that told me there was a way to know. I'm not. I am not in that phase anymore. But I will say that, much like your unsolved mysteries versus my needing to, you know, what's our word again for scotch things. [01:02:15] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:02:16] Speaker B: Yeah. I still do prefer knowing. [01:02:21] Speaker A: Good. Because that would indicate that would. That would be cause for concern. [01:02:29] Speaker B: Would it? [01:02:30] Speaker A: Yeah. To me, if, as I said, I have grown to know you as a lady of science and culture. Sure. And I don't. The version of you that I have in my head would entertain none of that nonsense. [01:02:49] Speaker B: Yeah, it's true. [01:02:51] Speaker A: Don't go flaking on me. [01:02:54] Speaker B: No, I don't think we have any, any signs that's going to be changing anytime soon. [01:02:59] Speaker A: Good. [01:03:01] Speaker B: But. Hello, Mark. How you doing? [01:03:03] Speaker A: I'm all right, thank you. Well, yeah, yeah, I'm good. Interesting place to be the UK this week. [01:03:10] Speaker B: Fucking right. What's going on over there, man? [01:03:14] Speaker A: Very interesting place to be. It seems to be quite small pockets, but the far right are up to there. Fucking. Somebody left the door unlocked on the far right or out and about in towns. It seems to be largely in the north, Sunderland and Huddersfield, that kind of place. There was. There was an horrific, horrific, inexplicable act of murder last week. A 17 year old kid, man, a 17 year old kid in Merseyside walks into a fucking dance class and just starts knifing kids. And the far right urged on with the. The most predictable fucking dog whistling man from your friend and mine, light aircraft crash survivor Nigel Farage uses that classic fucking phrase, right? I wonder if the truth is being hidden from us. [01:04:17] Speaker B: Fuck that guy. [01:04:19] Speaker A: That's almost exactly what he said. [01:04:21] Speaker B: And that's all it takes. [01:04:22] Speaker A: I wonder if the truth is being hidden from us. And obviously that's not the only factor, but now you've got fucking. I'm gonna use cunts here, which is the c word, isn't it? I mean, yes, draped in their fucking George cross flags. One fucking gimp was on the news earlier on in a full kind of arthurian night costume. [01:04:45] Speaker B: Stop. [01:04:46] Speaker A: I'm not. [01:04:47] Speaker B: People are just like, just nerds. I hate themselves. [01:04:52] Speaker A: Parodies of themselves. [01:04:53] Speaker B: I mean, I've talked about this before, like, I like far right people and, like, the fact they don't realize that they're just dumbass cosplayers. Like, yeah, completely. It's enraging that. It's like, you are such geeks and you think that you are warriors, but. [01:05:10] Speaker A: Yeah, warriors who seize control of their country and take back their freedoms by looting fucking shoe shops, breaking into a cinema setting, fight to a fucking library, for fuck's sake. [01:05:22] Speaker B: All under the idea that it wasn't actually this 17 year old british kid, but some Arab who did this. [01:05:30] Speaker A: Well, obviously good old social media. It was circulated that the kid was a migrant, came over on a boat. Not true. [01:05:40] Speaker B: Right? [01:05:41] Speaker A: It was circulated that the kid was Muslim. Not true. The kid was born in Cardiff, for fuck's sake. Cardiff. [01:05:49] Speaker B: Yep. I did see something about that. Yeah, where they were talking about the, like a well off family, right? Because I think that I was watching an interview and they were saying, like, yeah, the area we lived in had money. And, you know, when they moved from Wales, they moved to another place that was, you know, pretty well off as well. The kind of place that has a Taylor swift dance class, you know? [01:06:11] Speaker A: Exactly, exactly, exactly. So, you know, only he will fucking. He. Only he will be able to shed light on what the fuck? [01:06:19] Speaker B: What happened. Yeah, 17, Corrie, 17 killed three little girls. [01:06:26] Speaker A: But that is. [01:06:28] Speaker B: And yeah, the right decided that is given to go and then burn down England. [01:06:32] Speaker A: As a result, the white wing, it's given them license in their heads to go out and cause their little bits of mayhem currently kicking off in Tamworth. Seems to be all in the north. I don't know. I don't know. But it's horrible to watch and it's. Man, it would be funny if people weren't actually being hurt, right? [01:06:55] Speaker B: Exactly. That's the thing. Usually these guys get together and they just do dumbass shit with themselves. [01:07:01] Speaker A: And there is comedy. I mean, in the group chat, that clip of the fucking knobhead getting brained by a brick, right? And then literally 2 seconds later getting a second brick to the balls. Fucking brilliant. So good. But on the other hand, like I said, they said fight or fucking library looting shops and not just public property. I mean, there's been videos of a black geezer walking on his own, getting. Just jumped. Getting fucking beaten by a group of these fucking balans. [01:07:39] Speaker B: Yeah. That they're attacking people who are already vulnerable, you know, and the victims of a lot of hate and things like that as it is. And just sort of going after them under. I mean, it's like. It's like that. You remember Liam Neeson and the, like, I went out looking for a black guy to attack after my friend was raped kind of situation, you know? And it's like they all. That's what they're doing. Except that there was no black attacker in the first place. They invented that in their minds. And now they're just like anyone. Anyone's a target. [01:08:11] Speaker A: Setting fires in the lobbies of hotels, which they suspect might be used to house migrants. [01:08:18] Speaker B: It feels like the same. It's like a two sides of this. Not even two sides of the same coin. It's just the same coin with the thing with that. That boxer this week, who, you know, the right decided is actually a man because she hit a white person too hard. And it's like the thing that happens with this stuff is, you know, people start spreading misinformation on TikTok and you see it, like, anytime someone tries to correct anything about this boxer, all of the comments are like, no, she has xy chromosomes and she's elevated testosterone and all this kind of stuff. None of which is true. There is nothing to say this. We have no evidence that any of that is true. But you end up drumming. [01:09:00] Speaker A: Scotched that. This 17 year old was a british kid of christian parents. [01:09:04] Speaker B: Right? Yeah, exactly. [01:09:06] Speaker A: Did they go, oh, sorry, lads. [01:09:07] Speaker B: Yeah, my bad. No, they double down and they begin attacking people who are marginalized already and spreading all of this stupid, dumbass hate that becomes like that. We know the truth is completely lost. Nobody cares what the truth was. They're mad now. And you go and burn something or whatever the case may be as a result of it. It's just. It's so. [01:09:41] Speaker A: T shirts, tighter on their fucking faces. [01:09:44] Speaker B: Yeah, right. Cowards. Absolute cowards. [01:09:48] Speaker A: Yeah, it's Mingin. [01:09:49] Speaker B: Yep. Don't like it. Don't. If you see these people, please. Brick them right in the junk. [01:09:58] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:09:58] Speaker B: Is the official Joag party line on this? Is. You see people on your street. Brick them in the junk. [01:10:06] Speaker A: Yes. If you can get your hands on. [01:10:09] Speaker B: Some use what's available to you. [01:10:12] Speaker A: Well, I was thinking nazi methamphetamine. Just load yourself up. [01:10:15] Speaker B: Sure, yeah, load yourself up and go. [01:10:16] Speaker A: To town with permitting and go ham. [01:10:20] Speaker B: Absolutely. With whatever tools you have necessary. Get to it and we support you. We will start that bail fund for any Joag person who goes and bricks. [01:10:31] Speaker A: That would be something to find in your grandad's attic, wouldn't it? [01:10:34] Speaker B: A tube of fucking, a little permatin. [01:10:37] Speaker A: Little questions, finding original lewds. [01:10:45] Speaker B: On a separate note. Hey, we want to give a shout out this final week to our good friends, good friends over at the Dead and Lovely podcast who would happily brick any fascist who came their way and will continue to do that in perpetuity. But nothing on the podcast. Dead and lovely, as they have come to an end this week after seven years of bringing us much joy. I mean, not, not Mark, because Mark doesn't listen to it, but Steve has been on this podcast, and that has brought you much joy. [01:11:19] Speaker A: Steve has been on this podcast on more than one occasion. I've been on dead and lovely on more than one occasion. [01:11:23] Speaker B: Yes, that's true. Yep. That's a good point. [01:11:25] Speaker A: And let me tell you something, right, tell you something, Stephen. Ben, when Corrie first floated the idea to me of starting a podcast, do you know what she did? Do you know what she told me to listen to? She told me to listen to an episode of dead and lovely, and I did. [01:11:40] Speaker B: That's true. I forgot. [01:11:42] Speaker A: Yes, dead and lovely was my object lesson in what a podcast ought to sound like, because I'd never fucking listened to one before. It's true. And no, I haven't listened to any of them because I don't have, like, podcasts. But I listen to yours to get a fucking idea as to what ours should sound like. And thanks. Thank you very much. [01:12:06] Speaker B: Here, here. Many thanks to our dear and your community. [01:12:09] Speaker A: Fucking love you, man. I mean, I'm a member and I contribute from time to time, but you've got, you've got, like, fucking people who love you. Truth fucking mad, isn't it? People who actually love you and what you've contributed to their lives. And it's inspiring. [01:12:27] Speaker B: Hear. Well deserved love. And we love you guys. And Steve will be going straight back into the old podcasting world with our darling Anna, who has also helped to co host this podcast in our time of need. And so make sure you are subscribing to hellrankers, in which they will be doing the Anna Martin every week or every month by watching and the entirety of a franchise and talking about it once a month. And then in between, they'll be doing their trash Tuesday episodes that are more focused on, on single films. But everybody loves an Anna martining, so make sure you're following hellrankers, and we'll look forward to that and to getting to hang out with them next month. Mark Lewis. [01:13:16] Speaker A: Oh, my God. Is it really next month? [01:13:18] Speaker B: Month. The month after the one we are currently in. [01:13:23] Speaker A: Oh, that's mad. [01:13:24] Speaker B: Isn't that bonkers? [01:13:25] Speaker A: Talk about a, you know, talk about a journey to get to that point. [01:13:29] Speaker B: I know, right? Yeah. Seriously, four years. And finally we are bringing Mark here next month to hang out. And boy, it is so exciting, all the rsvps we're getting sending out those packets and just so stoked to see you all and get together, you know, Boff. And Eileen said she's trying to come. And even though she and I have been friends for 20 plus years now. [01:13:58] Speaker A: Shut up. [01:13:59] Speaker B: We have never met. [01:14:01] Speaker A: Wow. That's incredible. That's incredible. [01:14:03] Speaker B: We've been live journal friends since probably 2000, like 24 years or so. We have known each other and we've never met. So if she makes it, this will be the first time we've ever met. [01:14:14] Speaker A: You know, this has the potential to be bigger than either of us could have ever imagined. [01:14:21] Speaker B: Right? I know. [01:14:23] Speaker A: Irl, first time connections happening. [01:14:27] Speaker B: Beautiful. [01:14:28] Speaker A: So nice. [01:14:28] Speaker B: So if you are thinking about coming, even if you're not sure, just hit us up on the discord and I will send you a nice little info packet so that you can find out more about. [01:14:38] Speaker A: Why do I giggle whenever you refer to it as a packet? [01:14:40] Speaker B: I don't know, because I do. [01:14:42] Speaker A: I do. Like, I never fail you. You without fail, call it your info packet, and I, without fail, will have a little titter. I find that hilarious. And I don't know why. Info packet. [01:14:54] Speaker B: So it's just like when I. I said television a couple weeks ago and you laughed for, like, minutes. What are you watching on the television? [01:15:03] Speaker A: Mark, have you read my packet yet? [01:15:06] Speaker B: A question I asked, like, 47 times. Maybe that has something to do with it. [01:15:10] Speaker A: I'll read it after. I don't need to read the packet because I'm going to see you. The author of the packet. [01:15:16] Speaker B: No, but I need validation. [01:15:19] Speaker A: No, that's true. [01:15:20] Speaker B: That was. So it got to. Got to the point where I kept texting, Mark, have you looked at my packet yet? Have you looked at my packet yet? And then I finally, like, had one of the. That was, like, very serious, Mark, I would really like for you to look at this info packet. Yes. I spent, like, a month on this. Please look at it. [01:15:38] Speaker A: And I did. That was what got me when you conveyed to me how important my consumption of the packet was. [01:15:45] Speaker B: Yes. [01:15:46] Speaker A: I then went and drank deeply of. [01:15:48] Speaker B: The packets and it was listen for. Yeah. As much as, you know, I may make fun of you on this show for not listening to me or whatever the case may be. And it's a running bit. What? Huh? This running gag that we have, when it comes down to it, if I tell you something's important, you always. You're always on top of it. [01:16:09] Speaker A: Yep. [01:16:11] Speaker B: It's a let the record show listener. He's not actually a jerk. That's just a bit. Hold on. [01:16:21] Speaker A: I wasn't doing that bit. [01:16:26] Speaker B: We've misinterpreted the bit. Um, Mark, do we want to talk about what we watched then? [01:16:32] Speaker A: Yeah, we can do. I mean, this won't take long. Let's have a little look here. What do we have on the letterboxd? It's all been stuff we've watched together, hasn't it? [01:16:40] Speaker B: Yeah, we have. We have pretty much just. I mean, I've watched. [01:16:43] Speaker A: Who told you psycho three was any good? [01:16:45] Speaker B: I don't remember. Well, it was like a whole blue sky conversation with, like, multiple people involved with it who were like, yeah, you know, psycho two is really great and everything, but psycho three is maybe even better. [01:16:57] Speaker A: What the fuck that is. Put one of those people before me because it's insane that anyone thinks that. [01:17:05] Speaker B: It is truly bafflingly bad. And I think I said to you while we were watching it, like, this was Anthony. What's his last name? Perkins. Perkins. I keep wanting to say Hopkins. Anthony Perkins. Like, dealing with how repulsed he is by heterosexual sex through. [01:17:29] Speaker A: He is working things through there. [01:17:31] Speaker B: He is working some shit through dealing with some things in this movie. The premise of. I mean, it's very similar in premise to the second one. Just more convoluted. [01:17:44] Speaker A: Good God. Four stars. Four stars. Three and a half stars. [01:17:47] Speaker B: I don't. [01:17:48] Speaker A: Four stars. Four stars. [01:17:49] Speaker B: Fucking. [01:17:50] Speaker A: What is wrong with people? [01:17:51] Speaker B: What's the overall letter boxed on this? [01:17:54] Speaker A: 2.8, which is 1.3. Too many. [01:17:58] Speaker B: Yeah, right. It's too many. But that seems a little more reasonable. [01:18:01] Speaker A: More reasonable. [01:18:02] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:18:03] Speaker A: This film has, sorry to say, it stands. [01:18:06] Speaker B: It does have stans, and I don't. It's. I mean, I think it appeals to a certain, like, sleaziness that a lot of people really like in a movie. I mean, tons of nudity and sex and sort of. Yeah, just sleaze in this movie. [01:18:27] Speaker A: I don't like what it does with Norman as well. [01:18:30] Speaker B: Right. Yeah, I think Norman is, yeah. Completely misused in this. [01:18:34] Speaker A: Norman is the Norman of Psycho two is a deeply sympathetic character. He is a victim. He is the victim of other people doing their best to manipulate him to get what they want out of his story. [01:18:47] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:18:48] Speaker A: But Psycho three, it turns Norman into something seedy into something. All right. [01:18:54] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:18:54] Speaker A: He's a fucking weird lad, right? But there's one particular shot where he's at his kitchen table, and he's taxiderming a little bird, like, he likes to do, gooping out the bird, putting the sawdust in the bird. And there's no reason why they should characterize him in this way, but they make a point of showing him putting, like, peanut butter on a cracker with the same hand that he just used to scoop out a bird without washing it. It's like, eh, Norman's a fucking weirdo. Leave Norman alone. Literally, in the last movie, which only took place, like, a few months before this one. [01:19:28] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. It's immediate. [01:19:30] Speaker A: He's just a fucking mentally ill guy, right? [01:19:33] Speaker B: Yep. [01:19:36] Speaker A: I have big problems with psycho three. They did Norman Dewey, and I like Norman Bates a lot. [01:19:42] Speaker B: Yeah, me too. Absolutely. And I think psycho four retcons that a little bit. So I then had you get psycho four for me because I was like, I just. I mean, I gotta finish it. Like, we're not that far from the end here. If there'd been more than one. No, but I was like, cycle four. Let's do it. It's got Henry Thomas in it, which is always good time. [01:20:07] Speaker A: Elliot. [01:20:09] Speaker B: Elliot. Yes, indeed. [01:20:11] Speaker A: Young Norman. [01:20:11] Speaker B: Is he young Norman? And this one, basically, CCH Pounder plays a radio host who is, uh, talking to, um, like, a murderer. Like, she has a show where she interviews murderers. Um, and she. [01:20:28] Speaker A: I've I've never said her name out loud. And I'm really glad, based on what I've just heard. [01:20:33] Speaker B: What did you. What were you gonna say? [01:20:36] Speaker A: In my. [01:20:36] Speaker B: Literally three letters. [01:20:38] Speaker A: Yeah. But in my head, I've been calling her, like, church Pounder. [01:20:45] Speaker B: What? [01:20:46] Speaker A: A cuch pounder. That's. I'm so, I'm so glad I've never had the need to say her name out loud, because that would have been embarrassing, you know? Touch pounder. [01:21:00] Speaker B: I love that. [01:21:01] Speaker A: Well, well, well. [01:21:03] Speaker B: I wonder if people ever say that to her. People just overthink it and end up saying that to her face. [01:21:10] Speaker A: Not. It isn't church Pounder. What does the CCH stand for? [01:21:13] Speaker B: I've looked it up before, and I don't remember. I mean, that's too many letters for me to remember. It's not their everyday name. [01:21:22] Speaker A: I quite like the hubris involved in putting letters in your name. [01:21:26] Speaker B: Right? Like, there's that one guy whose name is. I think it's a. Like a Rodriguez or a Ramirez or something like that. I can't. But every time I see it, I'm. [01:21:37] Speaker A: Like C. Thomas Howell, Michael J. Fox. You know what I mean? [01:21:41] Speaker B: Well, yeah, a lot of times that's just to get around equity sag. Like, because there's already someone with your same name, and so you can't have the same name as somebody else. Or McG is like, how McG? [01:21:57] Speaker A: Oh, fucking. Got something you want to say to this, Brick? But how dare you do that to your own name? Although, again, I'm not full of bees, but I'm rabbit holeing. I will always respect any artist who insists on stylizing the name of their working capitals or their own name. I will always respect that. If you want to write the name of your work in caps, I will respect that. [01:22:23] Speaker B: Like their name or, like, a title. [01:22:26] Speaker A: Take Inland Empire. [01:22:28] Speaker B: Okay? [01:22:29] Speaker A: Right. Lynch insists that that has to be written in caps. [01:22:32] Speaker B: Okay, I got you. [01:22:33] Speaker A: Who the fuck am I to argue with that? It's your work. It makes no effort at all to press caps lock. [01:22:39] Speaker B: So you respect someone's work more than their identity. [01:22:47] Speaker A: Man, we are fucking going for it this week, Corrie, on a level. On a level, maybe I do. [01:22:57] Speaker B: Interesting. [01:22:58] Speaker A: Because I value an act of artistic creation more than what I consider to be a frivolity in just chucking a word, a letter into your name. [01:23:14] Speaker B: But if that's not why they're doing. [01:23:15] Speaker A: It, though, anyone can do that. Oh, you're telling me that CCH pounder has a fucking manifesto behind those three letters to shit? [01:23:22] Speaker B: Do you need a manifesto for your identity? You know, it's your own. It's your own thing. [01:23:29] Speaker A: I respect. [01:23:30] Speaker B: I have a capital r in my name. I mean. [01:23:33] Speaker A: Yeah, you do. You do. And it took me a while to respect that. [01:23:36] Speaker B: Yeah, it did take you a very long time to. [01:23:38] Speaker A: What I tend to do now is I avoid writing Corrie because I don't feel comfortable putting the b r in there. But if you wrote the story and insisted it had to be written in all caps, the title, I would do it till my dying day. [01:23:51] Speaker B: That's a problem. [01:23:52] Speaker A: Hmm. What's up with that? [01:23:55] Speaker B: Interesting. Much to ponder. What were we talking? Oh. So, Cch Pounder, which I love that you keep on, like, insisting, though, that you don't have brain bees. [01:24:05] Speaker A: I don't. [01:24:05] Speaker B: There is a difference between, like, last week, did you listen back at. Because I told you to watch the cold open to last week's video. [01:24:12] Speaker A: I watched a couple of minutes of it. Yes. [01:24:14] Speaker B: Because, yeah, that's like a different kind of rabbit holing where it was just like, this has nothing to do with anything and your brain was just in like another planet. As opposed to. I have a related thought to the thing that you're talking about. [01:24:27] Speaker A: I think my second appearance on Dead and Lovely was in the grip of COVID in the thrall of the novel coronavirus. And I must have just seen Mister Kool ice on Reddit that day. I just could not get that fucking guy out of my mind. [01:24:45] Speaker B: It happens, you know? But in this case, so we've got a radio host who interviews murderers, and then dear Norman calls in and ends up sort of telling her his backstory, in which we kind of find out about a sort of incestuous relationship with his mother, who is played by Hussey, Olivia Hussey. You know, the one from Romeo and Juliet. [01:25:12] Speaker A: Yeah, sure. [01:25:12] Speaker B: British lady. And so you get kind of the backstory of his weird relationship with his mom and all the things that happen as a result of that, how his mother dies and so forth. But also that he is about to commit another murder because he feels he has to. And in this case, it is, again, a situation where it's not like he is like a sociopathic killer or whatever. It's that like there is something in his head that has tweaked and this has triggered him. And essentially he is, even though he is calling in and, you know, as if it's inevitable by purging the story, you also kind of get the feeling that he also wants to be caught and is fighting against that nature, much like he does in the other psychos, is trying to push back against the inevitability of him committing murder. [01:26:10] Speaker A: See, that's at the heart of why he's such a beautiful, tragic, right. [01:26:16] Speaker B: He doesn't want this. [01:26:19] Speaker A: He doesn't revel in it. He's not your typical slasher. He knows that he's ill and that's. [01:26:26] Speaker B: Why he disassociates and becomes his mother when he kills, because he doesn't want to be doing this. [01:26:31] Speaker A: Oh, God, psycho two is so good. [01:26:34] Speaker B: And I think Psycho three is quite good. I mean, it doesn't live up to one or two. It's so hard to live up to one or two. But I think it is much more watchable as a movie and hangs together with what you know of Norman and all of that kind of stuff much better than the abomination that is. Three does it. [01:26:55] Speaker A: Did you watch Bates Motel? [01:26:58] Speaker B: I watched, like, a season of it, and then, as usual, I forgot I. [01:27:00] Speaker A: Was watching it because I loved Bates Motel. [01:27:04] Speaker B: I liked what I saw of it. Great show. Very into it at the time. [01:27:08] Speaker A: Great show. So you're the wrong person to ask, really, if the two. [01:27:15] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't have a good enough memory of it. I should rewatch it, like, now. I've watched four psychos. I might as well finish. [01:27:24] Speaker A: If you're going to, yay. [01:27:24] Speaker B: It's motel. [01:27:26] Speaker A: If you're going to Anna Martinet, do it properly. I've realized that I don't have the constitution to really call myself a true Anna Martin, consumer of franchisees. Didn't finish. [01:27:35] Speaker B: You're a share zone guy. I am, yeah. [01:27:39] Speaker A: And that's fine. [01:27:41] Speaker B: Hit the bricks. Exactly. I'm in between those things. I won't, like, keep going if I'm having a miserable time with it. Like, I would never watch all of the hellraisers, but I, you know, if I'm like, I can manage. I think this. I'm having enough of a good time, or I think there's, you know, a light on the horizon and I'll keep going. Yeah, exactly. Especially if it's. I've already watched enough of them. Might as well watch one more. It's 90 minutes, you know, not wasting a whole lot of my life. So I don't know. I would be interested if you ever get around to psycho four and seeing what you think of it. But, you know, I also. [01:28:21] Speaker A: It's one of those that there is, like, a nerve or a part of a bone in me that would quite like to watch it, but until there's literally nothing else. [01:28:32] Speaker B: Right. It has to be like, this is what I. This is the thing right now. I've run out of others. I get that. [01:28:39] Speaker A: Yes. Hmm. Because after all, Corrigan, we are what we are. [01:28:45] Speaker B: We are. But we are. [01:28:48] Speaker A: You'd seen this one before. [01:28:49] Speaker B: Yes, I had. Like, when it came out. So almost a decade ago, I guess, now, right? Or a little over. It was, like, 2013. [01:28:57] Speaker A: Just over. Yeah. 2013. [01:28:58] Speaker B: Yeah. And I remembered liking it a ton. I didn't remember, like, the details of it, in fact. Thus, I was, like, surprised when Wyatt Russell showed up at it. I was like, this was long enough ago. I don't think I knew that was Kurt Russell's kid when I watched this. So, yeah, we are what we are. [01:29:15] Speaker A: How could you not know he's Kurt Russell's kid? He can walk past you in the street. Russell. [01:29:21] Speaker B: A lot of people look like other people. [01:29:24] Speaker A: Yeah, that's true. That is true. I've often kind of wondered, are there only a. Is there a physically finite number of permutations of a human face? [01:29:38] Speaker B: Right. [01:29:40] Speaker A: Because you do. You see people somewhere and you're like, they don't, like, look the same, but they have the same kind of face. [01:29:45] Speaker B: Yeah, right. Exactly. [01:29:47] Speaker A: Hmm. Anyway, sorry. We are what? We are just such a joag adjacent film. [01:29:54] Speaker B: Mm hmm. Definitely. [01:29:58] Speaker A: It's a very earnest, very, very meticulous, very respectable horror movie, this and that. That shoots right for a very sweet spot of mind. See, I have no time or truck or fucking. I have no interest in people who look down their noses at horror. [01:30:30] Speaker B: Right. [01:30:30] Speaker A: And enjoy it for. Well, yeah, it's a bit of fun, isn't it? Jump scares. Oh, horror. Horror films. Fuck off. Right? Fuck you. There is nothing you can't achieve in the conventions of a horror film. Nothing at all, right? And we are what we are knows this. So it turns the fuck up. And performances are fucking terrific. [01:30:56] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:30:56] Speaker A: Fucking terrific. It's a. It's a. It's a drama. It's a kitchen sink drama. It's a family drama of generational trauma and fucking secrets and lies and folding prion disease. [01:31:09] Speaker B: Hell, yeah. [01:31:11] Speaker A: Hello? [01:31:12] Speaker B: Yes, please. Yep. [01:31:15] Speaker A: Um. When, you know, when a character's misdiagnosed with Parkinson's, but then the pieces start to fit together, you know what I mean? The fucking tremors and the unusual disappearances and the fucking. Oh, lovely stuff. Really cool. [01:31:32] Speaker B: Yeah. With a good amount of gore in it as well. For. Indeed, for those of you who love a bit of blood. [01:31:38] Speaker A: Yep. And Ruth from Ozark. For those of you who love Ruth from Ozark. [01:31:41] Speaker B: What is her name? I can't think what it is. She's in a Ruth. I mean, she is australian. And she is in an australian movie that came out recently that I keep meaning to watch and then kind of forgot about after a while. [01:31:56] Speaker A: From Ozark is Julia Garner. [01:31:59] Speaker B: Julia Garner. That's it. Yeah. She's in something that I keep meaning to watch but haven't gotten around to. And, yeah, I have. You know, it's not her fault, really, but I noped out of Ozark because I found that character too annoying, which I think is her doing it. [01:32:17] Speaker A: Well, was she the reason why you abandoned Ozark? [01:32:21] Speaker B: I couldn't I was like, good God, if I can't punch her through the screen, I can't watch this show. [01:32:27] Speaker A: And so I straight noped out because quite the opposite. She was one of the most compelling things about the show. [01:32:32] Speaker B: I think a lot of people really liked her on it. [01:32:34] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, she was terrific. [01:32:36] Speaker B: Yeah. I think the fact that I hated her so much, like, from the ones that I watched, I don't know if she gets more lovable or anything like that, but from the ones I watch, I was like, I hate her so goddamn much. I think that speaks to her being good in it. It's just like she's the most annoying person I have ever seen in my life. [01:32:54] Speaker A: I don't know about lovable, but she becomes a character of real purpose. You know, she becomes a big fucking catalyst for the entire show. Really? [01:33:03] Speaker B: Right? Yeah. [01:33:04] Speaker A: Awesome. [01:33:05] Speaker B: Yeah, maybe one day I will go back to it. But, yeah, I was just, I couldn't take her in that. And again, not her fault. I think that's her playing the role. [01:33:14] Speaker A: Well, I just, yeah, I couldn't. I mean, she plays a 14 year old in we are what we are. I'd love to know how old she was actually at the time because without that age. Yeah, Kermode. She delivers a performance belying her early years. I thought she was terrific. [01:33:33] Speaker B: Yeah, she's good. She's doing, she's playing Madonna, isn't she? [01:33:38] Speaker A: Fuck out of here. Really. [01:33:40] Speaker B: If you see the pictures, she like, legit looks exactly like Madonna. [01:33:44] Speaker A: I hate it at all. [01:33:45] Speaker B: It's pretty wild. [01:33:49] Speaker A: Surfer. [01:33:50] Speaker B: Oh, is she? [01:33:51] Speaker A: Yes. [01:33:52] Speaker B: Interesting. It's got a lot, lot going on. [01:33:55] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [01:33:58] Speaker B: But yeah, so we are what we are. I loved it when I watched it initially and still holds up. Still super dug it. [01:34:06] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. That was my pick and I don't know where I got it from. [01:34:12] Speaker B: Yeah, another one of those out of nowhere picks for you because we were going to watch Cemetery man, which was the last dead and lovely one, and you were like, it's my pick. We're doing this. So, yeah, I don't know why an eleven year old movie became the thing that ended up on your radar, but was it Reddit? I feel like usually it's Reddit. [01:34:35] Speaker A: I think usually it is. I think I'll tend to Google Reddit like obscure horrors. [01:34:41] Speaker B: Great choice wherever it came from. [01:34:44] Speaker A: Yeah, great deal. [01:34:45] Speaker B: I watched the King of comedy this week, which came up, so I had added it on Paramount plus because it came up in the suggested movies after watching Running man, which it's like, I guess I kind of see where that's coming from, but it's a tangent. [01:35:05] Speaker A: I can see it. I can see the, I can see where the thread it pulled from. [01:35:09] Speaker B: Yeah. The satire and, you know, all that kind of stuff. And much like Ruth on Ozark, the king of comedy, I will acknowledge is a great movie that was just very much not for me because I can't stand annoying characters who can't read the room. And De Niro is through the roof in this movie. [01:35:36] Speaker A: You know, I remember talking to you about dog day afternoon, right? [01:35:40] Speaker B: Mm hmm. I loved Dog day afternoon. Yeah. [01:35:42] Speaker A: Oh, how can you not? [01:35:44] Speaker B: Fantastic. [01:35:47] Speaker A: I think it was Dog day afternoon. That really shows you the range that young Pacino had. He could play any fucking thing. [01:35:56] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. [01:35:58] Speaker A: And king of comedy does the same thing for me with De Niro. [01:36:01] Speaker B: Yeah, 100%. [01:36:02] Speaker A: Not the same De Niro that you think, you know. [01:36:05] Speaker B: No, 100%. I was thinking the exact same thing while watching it. That was, I'm like, I'm not enjoying my time here, but both him and Sandra Bernhardt. [01:36:14] Speaker A: Yep. [01:36:15] Speaker B: Frickin a. And so incredible in that movie, which the one thing I will say about it is so I hadn't seen it and watching it, and I don't mean this to offend you, dear Mark, but it makes Joker seem very derivative. [01:36:32] Speaker A: That's what you usually say before you're about to offend me. [01:36:35] Speaker B: No, sometimes I come at you hard. In this case, I am not trying to, you know, poke at you with, with this one, but watching it, you know, two, three years, whatever, after seeing Joker or whatever, I think Joker kind of crosses from homage to being like, oh, yes. Derivative of this movie. Like, through the whole thing. [01:36:59] Speaker A: It is very much gets by a lot on not many people having seen king of comedy. [01:37:04] Speaker B: 100%. That's. That was exactly what I was thinking. It's like that I hadn't seen this makes it so. I think I like it is incredible because I didn't realize how much it was ripping. [01:37:15] Speaker A: It's been a long time since I've seen king of comedy, but, yeah, but what I remember of it, it's shameless. [01:37:22] Speaker B: Completely shameless. It's like one of those things where you're like, almost like, why didn't he just make a remake of King of comedy? See sort of the same movie. [01:37:33] Speaker A: Down to the way that New York is shot, you know? [01:37:36] Speaker B: Yeah, 100%. [01:37:37] Speaker A: Just little detail to the same. [01:37:39] Speaker B: And he has, like, he has all the same kinds of, like, delusions. That are shown to you as if they're really happening. [01:37:45] Speaker A: Yes. [01:37:45] Speaker B: With the, like, black woman that he's imagining a relationship with and these kinds of things. I'm like, this is the same movie. [01:37:53] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, long legs did it. Don't tell me that. [01:38:01] Speaker B: I don't think that that is. I think that's taking, like you said, you're about to name a bunch of different movies that it cribs from because we're talking about influences. Right. It's not the storyline of any of those movies, like seven or Silence of the Lambs or like, any of the things that it's a, taking its very clear inspirations from. It didn't steal their story. This is the same story as Joker. King of comedy and Joker have the same story. [01:38:38] Speaker A: Yeah, they do. They do. [01:38:39] Speaker B: Yeah, they do. Down to him, like, holding hostage the same guy who is the hostage taker in the movie, which is like, you know, whatever. It's fine. Like, it was just interesting to me to watch this and be like, I had heard this was an homage to king of comedy. I didn't realize how much it was like, it's a remake of King of comedy using the Joker. [01:39:05] Speaker A: You can't offend me by going after Joker. Right. Because I know, again, you know what you're. [01:39:11] Speaker B: Yeah. You know what you're watching there. [01:39:13] Speaker A: But I can't. I can't deny my heart's true love. I love joggers so much. [01:39:18] Speaker B: Yeah, that's fine. I'm not. I'm not faulting you for that. Like I said, when I went back and looked at, like, what my rating on it was like, my. I think the thing is, it kind of just, like, disappeared from my brain as soon as I watched it. And so I thought. I didn't like it. It's like. No, I thought it was fine when I saw it. It's not one of those movies that I was like, ugh, fuck this. I gave it, like, a 3.5. [01:39:40] Speaker A: So Joker, worst thing about Joker, right? The first time I saw it, um, in other movies, uh, a fella and his girlfriend turned up drunk off their ass. [01:39:52] Speaker B: No, no. [01:39:53] Speaker A: And they did not know the fucking. They did not know the movie that they'd come to see. They were expecting, like, Jack Nicholson Joker. [01:40:00] Speaker B: Okay. [01:40:01] Speaker A: They were expecting, like, wacky Joker. [01:40:03] Speaker B: Yeah. Right. [01:40:05] Speaker A: Just forced, kind of bursting out in laughter at the most ridiculous fucking moment. Really irritating. [01:40:11] Speaker B: Yeah. That's the worst. [01:40:12] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:40:13] Speaker B: The other thing that I watched this movie was for our ko fi, which is, you bad friend that's a terrible, terrible friend. I made Kristen watch it for this month's Joag fan cave, as in the movie, not the miniseries. And it went, from what I can tell, as you would expect, she said she had trouble sleeping afterwards. I've glanced over her notes from it. Yeah, it's a lot. [01:40:51] Speaker A: You don't have to do this. Does she? You're not paying. [01:40:53] Speaker B: No, she is just out of the goodness of her heart doing this podcast with me. And to be fair, we've watched some things like she loved. I. I know what you did last summer when we watched it last month. She's gotten some good stuff out of these as well. But the thing was, she had kind of expressed early on, she kept saying it, and I don't know that she knew she was doing it. She was like, are we going to watch it? Or things like. And it came up multiple times. And I was like, I think we need to rip the band aid off. I think we need to do it. So I rewatched it last night and I forgot, like, it goes in so fast. Like, you don't get it. [01:41:35] Speaker A: I loved it. Chapter one. [01:41:36] Speaker B: I really enjoyed it. It's so good. And yeah, the scary stuff starts rolling immediately and it does not give you much reprieve. [01:41:46] Speaker A: And I seem to remember it being one of the first of the books that I'd read. I remember clearly, misery was my first ever Stephen King book and I think it was hot on the heels of that. Yes. And I've read it time and time again since. [01:42:03] Speaker B: Nice. [01:42:04] Speaker A: And the opening with Georgie losing his arm in the sewer and the way that Georgie is described as a little brother, you know, and you know how he's gone. He's never going to see his little brother again. And it just gets me, man. It really fucking hits hard. And the movie did a spectacular job of translating that. [01:42:26] Speaker B: Yeah, I absolutely agree. Honestly, I think the miniseries does a pretty good job with that as well. But definitely the movie crushes that. I think it really. I mean, I'm one of the few also that really enjoyed the second one. I think they both just kind of get to the emotions at the heart of all of this stuff. [01:42:46] Speaker A: But the first one specifically, I ask myself, did it? Did you need to make two movies there, mate? I don't know if you did. [01:42:57] Speaker B: Hey, they took six episodes to make it before. It is hard to get all of that. [01:43:02] Speaker A: Yeah, it is. [01:43:03] Speaker B: You're right. But I mean, I was thinking about it. [01:43:06] Speaker A: I could make a fucking banging 90 minutes. Lord of the Rings. I am telling you, no movie needs to be 9 hours. [01:43:12] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I agree with that. I was thinking about that, though, when I finished it last night, that I was like, it feels like maybe it's a little too long, but at the same time, I don't know what I'd cut from it. It feels like everything serves what it's there to do. So I could only nitpick cuts from it being like, maybe if you cut a little bit of time out of this scene or things like that. But I think it's a hard story to tell in a brief way. [01:43:45] Speaker A: But then again, I also ask myself, does the book need to be 1200 pages? Does it? [01:43:49] Speaker B: Sure. Right. You know, but you keep reading it. [01:43:53] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a bloated story. Let's go with. Let's go with that. [01:43:57] Speaker B: Yeah, I will. I will grant you that. But it's. It's a good one, I think, you know, it showcases the best things about Stephen King, that it's not just the scariness and creepiness that makes your skin crawl, but the real sort of getting to the heart of a lot of deep issues and the emotions and feelings of people dealing with really hard stuff. [01:44:20] Speaker A: And it's got a fucking awful ending. So. [01:44:24] Speaker B: So what are you supposed to do about that? Right? [01:44:26] Speaker A: Everything about big Steve is there in Technicolor in that fucking movie, right? [01:44:32] Speaker B: Yep. Totally. [01:44:34] Speaker A: Oh, it's a spider. All right. [01:44:35] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay. Sure. Why not? [01:44:38] Speaker A: Hey, Spider. [01:44:41] Speaker B: Yeah. But then the other thing that I watched was sort of on your recommendation, in a sense. So years ago when it first came out, I started watching Gobra Kai because a friend of mine was watching it, but that friend was, like, an asshole conservative QAnon type thing. And so I was sort of watching it. [01:45:04] Speaker A: I can see how Cobra Kai might attract that mindset, right? [01:45:07] Speaker B: You can see it's very much like Archie bunker, right? Like, where most of us knew this was mocking, like, a bigoted conservative person, but conservatives thought he was on their side. They thought he was speaking their mind. And so when I was watching Cobra Kai the first time in, like, 2018 or whatever, I was seeing it through the lens of my conservative friend who thought Johnny was a hero, you know, who was like, this guy is just saying what we're all thinking, and, you know, yeah, these kids are all pussies and they need to grow up and blah, blah, blah, blah. And so I was like, I noped out of it because I was reading it through that lens, and I was like, fuck this show. And then years later, lots of people have said how much they love this, who are very much not conservatives. And I was like, maybe I should give it another try. And you've been consistently watching this with your family, which is kind of crazy. I was like, this is not family entertainment. [01:46:06] Speaker A: I think it mellows out. I think it goes down to twelve after a season or two. [01:46:10] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah. Cause that first season was like, jesus Christ, you watched this with your kids? Yeah. [01:46:16] Speaker A: Well, Pete watched it on his own and strong armed me into watching it. He was like, dad. And it took him ages to get me to watch it. I don't care. Pete. Don't care. Don't care. I gave it a chance and I just dove headlong into it. And he is very fond of using that, as you know. Well, I can get you to watch anything now because you like Cobra Kai, didn't you? [01:46:34] Speaker B: Ah, yep, yep. [01:46:35] Speaker A: How far through are you? [01:46:37] Speaker B: I'm still in the first season, near the end of the first season, so don't spoil anything for me, but really loving it. [01:46:46] Speaker A: Cobra Kai takes place in an alternate fucking reality, right? It ain't planet Earth, that that show. [01:46:52] Speaker B: No. Is it not? [01:46:53] Speaker A: Nah, not at all. And as the seasons continue, you'll kind of get what I mean about that. It exists in a parallel realm where karate is important. [01:47:04] Speaker B: Sure. Right. [01:47:05] Speaker A: And people, like, loads of people are into it. [01:47:08] Speaker B: I guess the first season isn't that way, like, because the first season it's like very clear that karate is dorky and nobody wants anything to do with it. [01:47:19] Speaker A: There's a bit of Power Rangers in there. There's a bit of Beverly Hills in there. It's very, very reverent and respectful of the source material. It loves karate kids, which I don't particularly. I don't really give. [01:47:32] Speaker B: Not a huge van. It's fine. [01:47:36] Speaker A: Johnny, who you talk about, just, it becomes such a hilarious running joke that he doesn't understand modern things, you know? But all of those things. All right, they sound all right, but it all kind of comes together. The heart of the show is so fucking authentic, you know? This show really feels it. Ah, man, I can't wait for you to progress through Cobra Kai. [01:48:04] Speaker B: I started it with Keo, so I have to wait for him to get back from New York to watch some more of it. But yeah, I'm having a blast with it. Also, Johnny sounds and acts pretty much exactly like Dennis Duffy from 30 Rock. And that makes him even funnier to me. Liz Lemon's ex boyfriend, the irish, irish american ex boyfriend who calls her dummy. [01:48:27] Speaker A: Never seen it. [01:48:28] Speaker B: You've never seen 30 Rock? [01:48:30] Speaker A: Correct. I have never seen 30 Rock. I couldn't even describe for you an idea of what it's about. I have no clue. [01:48:37] Speaker B: That's incredible. I think I was confused because you did watch arrested development and I kind of lined those things up in my head with the same sort of absurdist humor of that particular moment, riffing on rich people and all that kind of stuff. But, yeah, there's a character named Dennis Duffy on 30 Rock who is basically Johnny. And so every time he talks, I just can't hear him as anything else. But I was going to name other things that you had known from, and I was like, they're all so american. He was on law and order SVU. He's in these running commercials where he plays a character named Mayhem for nationwide insurance, I believe. Oh, man, they're so. They're very funny. You would enjoy them. They're just basically he comes in and represents chaos in really stupid ways. But, yeah, I can't think of anything that I'm like. What would a british person think of any relevance at all other than 30 rock? We'll work on that. But, yeah, that's all the things that I have watched this week. [01:49:47] Speaker A: Anything coming up you're enthused about? [01:49:51] Speaker B: Well, I really want to see trap, but it's not playing at the indie theater. I have to go all the way to the AMC and pay $15 to see it. Yeah, it's out. People are talking about it. And to mixed reviews, but I've heard enough good, solid. It's fun reviews that I'm like, all right, I know it's going to have a stupid twist, but I'm here for the Josh Hartnett serial killer stuff. [01:50:16] Speaker A: Same and M. Night. I know you're a listener, so I'm addressing you directly. I am sorry, but I am going to steal your film. Oh, you ain't getting a fucking penny, right? [01:50:29] Speaker B: That's right. [01:50:29] Speaker A: But I'm going to enjoy it probably for what it is. [01:50:33] Speaker B: That's my plan. Enjoy it for what it is. Like, listen, even when we watched old, which is one of the worst movies I've ever seen in my life, we had so much fun. [01:50:41] Speaker A: Can you give it its full title, please? [01:50:43] Speaker B: I'm sorry. The beach. That makes you old. [01:50:45] Speaker A: Thank you very much. [01:50:46] Speaker B: It was so much fun, despite being so incomprehensible. So I'm going into trap with the mindset of like it for what it is. [01:50:58] Speaker A: I don't know why I do it, but he's the only filmmaker who I have to make a sentence out of the titles of his movies. I do it all the time. The man who was unbreakable, I call it. [01:51:10] Speaker B: I did not realize that. Interesting. [01:51:13] Speaker A: Well, well, well. Sorry. [01:51:14] Speaker B: I feel like there's something about his movies that lend themselves to, like, over description. It makes sense, but, yeah. So I really want to try to see unbreakable. I really want to see trap this week. If I can make it out to that one. [01:51:30] Speaker A: Yes. And when I see it, I will know what its full title is. [01:51:34] Speaker B: Yes, exactly. The concert at which they set the trap, possibly. [01:51:40] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Workshop it. [01:51:43] Speaker B: Yeah, we'll see what happens. Do you have anything you would like to ask our audience? [01:51:47] Speaker A: The boy with the 6th sense? Honestly, can I just be straight up straight, spitting facts? No, I don't. [01:51:56] Speaker B: All right. [01:51:57] Speaker A: If we're going on the same format as our cold opens, it's your turn anyway. [01:52:04] Speaker B: Oh, is that how we're doing it? I think you just usually have a lot of weird questions on your mind. That's why I look to you for questions. Your brain's a weird place. Sometimes I just like to check in, see what you're thinking. [01:52:21] Speaker A: This week. I think I've exercised all that as we've gone along. [01:52:25] Speaker B: I think so, yeah. Very much so. So the only thing, it's not like a real question, but my thought process here is can, you know, philosophically, I guess, whether there is an afterlife and give us your thoughts on this whole near death experience thing. And, oh, if you've ever had a near death experience, do you remember what you thought about as it was happening? [01:53:00] Speaker A: We have millions of listeners across the world. One of you. One of you must have had an NDE or an Sye. [01:53:09] Speaker B: An sy, yeah. [01:53:11] Speaker A: And not only would we love to hear about it, frankly, if you're not, like, a real weirdo, I'd quite like to talk to you about it. [01:53:20] Speaker B: Oh, hey, there we go. So you know where to find us. You know where to hit us up to talk about such things. But in the meantime, you know what you gotta do. [01:53:30] Speaker A: Yeah, man. Stay spooky. [01:53:32] Speaker B: Spooky. The way you wound up to that with your face, it's just a lot. [01:53:44] Speaker A: Threw my fucking heart and soul into it.