Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Oh, man.
[00:00:07] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:00:07] Speaker A: I suppose that for a specific type of fuck up in life, I guess you can.
It's never too late, is it?
A.
[00:00:26] Speaker B: This sure depends on where this is going.
[00:00:28] Speaker A: Do you know what I mean? It's never too late. And even if you. Even if you've led a kind of a nondescript life and even if you've led the kind of life that, you know, would leave very little kind of digital footprint.
[00:00:45] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:00:46] Speaker A: You know, very little social footprint.
There's always a hope, isn't there? There's always. There's always hope that your life could take the fucking weirdest left turn imaginable.
[00:01:00] Speaker B: There's hope. This doesn't. So far, this doesn't sound like something I'd look forward to, but if you're the.
[00:01:07] Speaker A: If you're the type of person who craves notoriety, sometimes it can just happen to you.
[00:01:18] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:01:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:01:20] Speaker B: Yeah, it can just.
[00:01:21] Speaker A: Yeah. You had a Brian Wells?
[00:01:24] Speaker B: Brian Wells. I don't think so.
[00:01:26] Speaker A: You've got a Brian Wells. Brian Wells. Um. Is it. It's a fucking awesome story. Right? Okay, so Brian Wells was 46, right?
46 year old geezer from Pennsylvania. From a place called Erie. Erie, Pennsylvania. Erie, pa. E Pennsylvania.
[00:01:46] Speaker B: Eerie, Pa. Ah, now.
[00:01:52] Speaker A: It'S so. Fuck, I love this case. Right?
What if I were to use the term pizza bomber?
[00:02:01] Speaker B: Pizza bomber. This. This sounds vaguely familiar.
[00:02:03] Speaker A: What if I would use the term the collarbomb heist?
[00:02:07] Speaker B: Oh, the color. Like the one from the Netflix thing. Yeah.
[00:02:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:02:11] Speaker B: Oh, man, this is so. You know, obviously, I've seen my fair share of gory, grim things. Just like two weeks ago, we were talking about having watched, you know, self immolation videos. We've talked about all kinds of things that we've seen on here for whatever reason.
I think it's kind of the way that it's presented in that documentary, but I simply. I have not seen the point at which the guy blows up because I think it's in the. Did you see the doc?
[00:02:41] Speaker A: No, I haven't. I didn't know it. You just mentioned it.
[00:02:44] Speaker B: Oh, okay. Yeah, there's a documentary and it's presented as, like a countdown.
[00:02:49] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:02:50] Speaker B: Obviously, it's like, you know, to. And you're gonna talk about the case for other people who haven't seen this, but it's a countdown. And it just. It stressed me out so much that I had to. I closed my eyes and I still have yet to see.
[00:03:06] Speaker A: You were stressed. You were stressed.
[00:03:08] Speaker B: Imagine fucking right I was stressed. Imagine being Brian Wells. Oh, man. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:03:12] Speaker A: Brian won.
[00:03:13] Speaker B: Because this is.
[00:03:14] Speaker A: All right.
[00:03:14] Speaker B: Freaking crazy. And it's been probably, like, seven or eight years or whatever, so I do not remember the details of this. I just remember being too stressed out to watch this guy's head a little bit.
[00:03:24] Speaker A: A little bit further away than that. This was 2003, okay.
[00:03:27] Speaker B: No, I mean, since the documentary.
[00:03:28] Speaker A: Oh, the documentary. Right, right, right. The incident itself was 2003. So let me talk to you a little bit about Brian. Brian. Poor Brian. Born in 1956. Just like I say, super unremarkable. Kept himself to himself. Reserved, kind of non confrontational.
A guy.
This fella worked. He'd worked at this point for about a decade as a delivery driver for a pizza place in Ereco. Mamma mia's pizzeria.
[00:03:58] Speaker B: Fucking pizza mamia.
[00:04:00] Speaker A: I didn't make it.
[00:04:01] Speaker B: He made it a pizza.
[00:04:01] Speaker A: No, you did it. That's racial.
[00:04:03] Speaker B: Well, listen, I've been learning Italian on Duolingo. And what?
[00:04:07] Speaker A: He make it a pizza?
[00:04:08] Speaker B: I just want to say. Yeah, I think I sound pretty good.
[00:04:11] Speaker A: Okay, fair enough. I agree. So, um, the guy had no, you know, family. He didn't live. He lived on his own. He lived on his own with cats. Yeah, he was a cat guy. He had three cats.
[00:04:24] Speaker B: You didn't. You don't, like, in 2003. I feel like you didn't meet a lot of cat guys, like, now you do, but I don't feel like cat guys was, like a type.
[00:04:32] Speaker A: I know what he says. Yeah. So was he an innovator? I don't know. He was an influencer. He was right.
[00:04:37] Speaker B: He was at the forefront.
[00:04:38] Speaker A: He was a zeitgeist fucking paradigm shredding existence that this guy lived. But what I'm saying is, no.
No priors, no real serious criminal activity.
Nobody. Nobody. Nobody wasn't wealthy. He wasn't, you know, obviously, he was struggling financially. Fucking hell, who isn't?
[00:05:00] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:05:00] Speaker A: Yeah, but until August 2003, if you'd asked somebody to describe Brian Wells to you, they would have probably described somebody quite soft, maybe vulnerable, maybe gullible, maybe somebody easy to manipulate.
[00:05:20] Speaker B: Sure.
And not how I want people to describe me. Well, like, I don't need notoriety, but I don't want to be described like that.
[00:05:30] Speaker A: I. After this, I'm gonna choose to always remember Brian Wells as the first major cat guy.
[00:05:38] Speaker B: Yes. Let's change the legacy.
[00:05:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:05:40] Speaker B: Right here and now.
[00:05:41] Speaker A: And what I'm not gonna remember.
I'm not gonna remember him as the guy who, at Mamma Mia's pizza on August 28, 2003, he got a routine kind of every fucking day. Did 50 of them a day in an order at work. But this one was strange. It directed him to deliver the pizza to the fucking. To the end of a dirt road on the outskirts of his town, at the foot, at the base of a kind of a remote, kind of tv transmission, aerial kind of tower. Okay, so Brian arrives at the location. He gets to the.
[00:06:17] Speaker B: Did he know that? Like, obviously we're talking pre Google Maps and things like that. Like, you kind of had to know where you were going. Were they like, hey, leave this in the middle of BFe?
[00:06:28] Speaker A: I guess they must have been, but, you know, which would have seemed strange to me had I not seen the late eighties, late nineties teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. You can get a pizza delivered anywhere.
[00:06:40] Speaker B: They'll deliver anywhere, even in the sewer. Well, and also, like, I guess you would probably just think, like, kids were, like, out there doing something, you know, like being weirdos. You wouldn't question it.
[00:06:51] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:06:51] Speaker B: I'm sure you deliver pizzas to all kinds of weird ass places.
[00:06:54] Speaker A: Exactly.
So no suspicion, no trepidation. But when he arrived at the location, see, the first kind of investigation hinged on this idea that Wells got ambushed at the tower. Right, sure. Um, by any number of thugs, conspirators, who attached, after giving him a beat down, a bomb to his neck.
[00:07:22] Speaker B: It's like straight up battle royale, 100%.
Did battle royale come out before this?
[00:07:28] Speaker A: Oh, battle royale.
[00:07:29] Speaker B: Because I saw it in high school.
[00:07:30] Speaker A: Pre millennium, for sure. Yes.
[00:07:32] Speaker B: Yeah. Like, it had. It had to have. I wonder if they were like, yeah, we could do that to somebody.
[00:07:38] Speaker A: Well, interestingly, battle royale was 2000.
[00:07:42] Speaker B: Yeah, that sounds about right.
[00:07:44] Speaker A: Hmm.
[00:07:45] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:07:46] Speaker A: Very interesting. Anyway, whether they, whether they were, you know, movie buffs or what, gets a fucking bomb attached to his neck. Secured to his neck. And the situation just escalated from there because at that point, at the base of the tower, freshly reeved of his pizza, he's had a bomb locked around his neck. Wells is then given a shotgun. Right. A gun disguised as a walking cane.
[00:08:15] Speaker B: Nice.
[00:08:15] Speaker A: How fucking mad is this?
[00:08:17] Speaker B: Did you see a picture? Does it really look like a walking cane? I consider that's like it's some penguin shit or something.
[00:08:23] Speaker A: Oh, it is. It really is. It's, um. Seed. This is what I mean. The whole thing is fucking theatrical and weird as fuck.
[00:08:31] Speaker B: Yeah, totally.
[00:08:32] Speaker A: He's given this cane and a set of super detailed instructions for a weird ass fucking scavenger hunt. Right, okay. The. The list that he's given, the instructions that he's given, tell him that if you get all of the items. If you follow every single step on this list, it'll disarm the bomb, and you'll be sound as fucked, however genuinely.
[00:08:56] Speaker B: Someone trying to be a Batman villain.
[00:08:58] Speaker A: It's crazy, isn't it? But, I mean, when.
[00:09:00] Speaker B: When?
[00:09:01] Speaker A: Item number one on your list of super legit and cool things to disarm this bomb we've put on you. Item one. Rob a bank.
[00:09:09] Speaker B: Like, maybe start smaller?
[00:09:11] Speaker A: I don't know, man. I don't know.
[00:09:13] Speaker B: That's going a little hard out the gate.
[00:09:16] Speaker A: Yep. Because it is thusly that around 02:30 p.m. on that date, he was found walking into the PNC bank on Peach street in Erie. Bomb completely visible around his neck, and with a note in his hand, which he handed to the teller, demanding quarter of a mil, right? $250,000, which he does not get.
The teller doesn't have a cool 250 g's in the drawer she gives him, flying around, just under nine grandd, and out he goes. Well, he strolls out of the bank with the money. He goes back to the list, following the instructions, but of course, he didn't get far.
Just a few minutes after that robbery, the cops stop him, arrest him, handcuff him, put him on the ground. As we've seen time and time again. And it's here that Wells tells him about the bomb. He's pleading for help. He's fucking desperate. He's crying.
But even though initially they're all like, get fucked, pal. This is bullshit. This is a hoax. They change their tune when it starts to beep.
[00:10:22] Speaker B: God.
[00:10:23] Speaker A: And everywhere I read says that this was actually captured on tv. This was captured on the fucking. This was live.
[00:10:29] Speaker B: This was captured again. If you see the documentary, it is how this opens. You can watch this whole thing happen. It's horrifying.
[00:10:37] Speaker A: He's on the ground. He's handcuffed. The bomb begins to beep faster and faster and faster. And almost about. About a half an hour after he was apprehended, the bomb explodes, blows his chest open, rips his fucking neck apart, and Wells is there, bleeding out on the ground.
[00:10:55] Speaker B: Good old cops, right? What a fucking protect and serve. Just leave the guy. I mean, that's one of the things that, like, is so heinous about it. Like, I get at first thinking the guy's full of shit. Sure, yeah, right? Like, I'm sure people do. Like my brother, who, you know, held up the coffee shop with a syringe, saying it was full of AIDS, right? Like, sure, people do dumbass shit all the time.
[00:11:21] Speaker A: But, like, in all of the kind of long running characters we've got on this podcast, your fictional crazy brother is my favorite.
[00:11:28] Speaker B: He's not, unfortunately, not a fictional man.
[00:11:31] Speaker A: It's a really real man, well drawn character you've put together.
[00:11:35] Speaker B: He has been on this podcast before. Oh, yeah, yeah.
Like, I get that. Once you figure out that it's real. What is crazy when you watch this footage is they literally just left him sitting there.
[00:11:49] Speaker A: Jesus.
[00:11:50] Speaker B: And it's like, obviously it's unsafe or whatever. You have a bomb squad for shit like this. You don't know how long it's going to take to go off, but, like, just letting a guy sit there by himself on the ground until he explodes is, like, so cruel. Yes.
They made, like, no effort.
[00:12:11] Speaker A: You're just watching darkest of exits, the darkest of ways to die.
[00:12:15] Speaker B: Horrible.
[00:12:15] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, the investigation hasn't come anywhere near solving this. Hasn't come anywhere near figuring this, really. I mean, initial suspicions were that he was complicit. You know what I mean? That this was something, that he was an inside guy.
But when looking at the kind of the instructions that he'd been given by his, you know, the perpetrators, it was super convoluted, right? Super complex. And the bomb itself was, like, a really professional piece of work.
[00:12:49] Speaker B: Right?
[00:12:49] Speaker A: You know, this was something that there was no way that Wells could have disarmed on his own. This was something that no way could you put together in your fucking living room with your cats walking across the fucking surface all the time.
[00:12:59] Speaker B: Right?
[00:13:01] Speaker A: But as the kind of investigation kind of got broader and broader and broader. Eerie, Pennsylvania, had a fantastic little cast of weird ass characters, any of which could have slotted right into this. There were a group of local individuals at the center, a lady by the name of Marjorie Diehl Armstrong.
Super troubled, super long history of mental illness, violent behavior, volatile nature around the town. She'd been implicated in murders in the past, mentioned in the killing of her boyfriend that very same year.
And, you know, the drug community in Erie was a big kind of area of interest. There was a guy called Kenneth Barnes, a guy who used to deal crack. He was a close associate of Marjorie. Was it a scheme between the two of them to kind of, you know, sell debts, raise money for other nefarious purposes, for crime as fucking idiosyncratic and weird as this, right?
[00:14:06] Speaker B: Cause it's like, I think what's so bananas about it is it's the theatricality. It's the. It's.
He was set up to fail.
[00:14:16] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:14:17] Speaker B: Right? Like, yes. If they just. If they wanted money, right? If they wanted him to succeed, they would have made it easier for him.
[00:14:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:28] Speaker B: To what end?
[00:14:29] Speaker A: Exactly. Exactly.
[00:14:30] Speaker B: Do you hook someone up to this and, like, make it so that there's basically no way that they could possibly succeed at this task and they're going to blow up and no one's going to give you that money after they blow up. What's the point? Aside from, like, literally comic book villain shit?
[00:14:49] Speaker A: Exactly. It's circular. Nobody gains from it. Right.
It was those two. It was Marjorie Armstrong and Kenneth Barnes who ended up convicted. She died in prison in 2017.
Kenneth Barnes tested against Marjorie for a kind of a lighter sentence. He got 45 years.
Fucking 45 years. That's insane.
[00:15:12] Speaker B: That's your whole life.
[00:15:14] Speaker A: That is. Yeah, exactly. That. That is your whole life. But it was eventually kind of settled on the fact that it was those two doing their best to kind of extort.
Extort him somehow. But like you said, if step one. If step one is to lift 250 grand from a bank, right, you may as well end your list there.
[00:15:36] Speaker B: But. And here's what's bananas about that, too, is like, okay, like, you. You have the smarts to build an elaborate bomb to put around this guy's neck and a gun that looks like a walking cane.
[00:15:54] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:15:54] Speaker B: But you can't think that through that. Like, we're not gonna get past step one here.
[00:16:01] Speaker A: What the gun does, the gun does. The gun. The gun itself is a piece of work. I'm gonna just send this to you on the.
[00:16:09] Speaker B: Do you know what the rest of the list was like? What was he eventually to do with the cane gun?
[00:16:15] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, we've got the actual instructions right here.
[00:16:18] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah. Tell me what else he was supposed to do.
[00:16:22] Speaker A: That's so cool. So cool.
[00:16:26] Speaker B: Listener. When Mark says cool, condone the actions.
[00:16:31] Speaker A: Directly from the list of wells.
Number one, you must follow a course of instructions to find keys and combination codes to disarm bomb. Do not insert keys into keyholes until instructed. Some keyholes are booby trapped to prevent tampering. Fuck me. It's so detailed.
[00:16:47] Speaker B: None of this is. Well. And it's, like, completely unnecessary because he never got past step.
[00:16:51] Speaker A: Nowhere near.
[00:16:53] Speaker B: He never got to any keys or codes. What the fuck were you?
[00:16:56] Speaker A: Instruction two, you must drive 60 mph throughout the course.
[00:17:01] Speaker B: They speeded him.
[00:17:02] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Instruction three, use only two or three minutes at each stop. A sentry will be watching at each stop to ensure you're not being followed.
Number four, bomb has trip wires. Forcing or tampering or detonate. Wow. Number five. All weapons, papers, containers, tapes, etc. Must be returned to us. Each item you find has a key and or combination word you will need to dislike.
[00:17:22] Speaker B: Just like a fucking. What do you call it? Like a escape room.
[00:17:26] Speaker A: It's diode with a vengeance.
[00:17:27] Speaker B: Make sure you. Make sure you bring the stuff back at the end.
[00:17:30] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly, exactly.
[00:17:32] Speaker B: We'll keep your id for collateral.
[00:17:34] Speaker A: Is a guy following him? Giving him clues if he sucks, right?
Uh, yeah, it's. It's, um. It's incredible. Let me just send you this. Let me just send you this, uh, this gun, because it's.
[00:17:45] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, I do want. I do want to see the gun. You've never seen seen game night, right?
[00:17:50] Speaker A: Mmm, no, I don't think so.
[00:17:53] Speaker B: Oh, you'd know if you'd seen game night. It's so good. I think I mentioned this to you a few weeks ago, too, because it's one of those movies, like, now, I don't know how well it did when it was in the theater.
[00:18:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:03] Speaker B: But, like, it has become, like, just absolutely cult classic.
I'm going to look at it, but you need to. You need to watch game night to give clues and potential real kidnappings and things of that nature. And now I see the cane.
[00:18:20] Speaker A: Gun good in it.
[00:18:21] Speaker B: It's. Yeah, like, I don't think I'd question it. I'd be like, someone has kind of a janky cane. It's kind of got, like, a boxy thing near the handle. Um, and a weird. Yeah, it's like, a weird shape, but also could be, like, you know, when people have, like, I want to say rickets, is that a thing, like, old school, like. Or polio, like, old school diseases. And they'd have those kinds of, like, bent canes that kind of wrap around.
[00:18:49] Speaker A: Yes, for sure.
[00:18:51] Speaker B: Instead of it just being a handle, it kind of has that look.
[00:18:54] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:18:55] Speaker B: To it.
[00:18:57] Speaker A: And there's a look at the actual bomb itself.
[00:19:00] Speaker B: I also like that, like, in the pictures of him with, like, the thing around his neck, it's like they put a t shirt over it as if it was gonna hide it.
[00:19:09] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:09] Speaker B: Like, oh, no one will know. He's just built like this. Looks like backwards Uncle Fester.
Nobody's gonna question why he looks like that.
[00:19:18] Speaker A: And that's what I mean when I say that, you know, if you've lived a life entire, entirely devoid of notoriety and, you know, and interest, if you're just a cat guy, you're never safe. Joag, rule number one, no matter what your job is, no matter who you fucking hang with, you might find yourself notorious one way or the other.
[00:19:40] Speaker B: Yeah, I would say, you know, the way you made it sound in the beginning, like, oh, it's never too late. You could become notorious. Like, you can.
This is less aspirational.
[00:19:50] Speaker A: You can. It's never too late to end up on jack of all graves.
[00:19:54] Speaker B: Well, sure. That's true.
You know, put it in your will. If you want us to talk about you on jack of all graves in the event of your untimely demise, by golly, we will do it.
[00:20:06] Speaker A: Fucking right we will.
Let me quote directly from my notes, if I may.
[00:20:11] Speaker B: Yes, please do.
[00:20:13] Speaker A: Fucking look at these nerds. Oh, mise en scene.
[00:20:16] Speaker B: I don't think anyone has ever said measlescent in such a horny way before.
[00:20:20] Speaker A: The way I whispered the word sex. Cannibal receiver.
[00:20:23] Speaker B: Worst comes to worst, Mark, I'm willing to guillotine you for science.
[00:20:27] 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.
[00:20:33] Speaker B: You know how I feel about that, Mark.
[00:20:35] Speaker A: I think you feel great about it.
The, um, the.
The collar of the bomb after the explosion was still intact, so authorities were forced to sever his head so the bomb could be retained and investigated.
[00:20:53] Speaker B: Ooo, cute.
[00:20:57] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:01] Speaker B: Mark Lewis.
You'll get caught up in the Mark Lewis.
[00:21:07] Speaker A: Of course. If some people tried to stick a bomb collar on me in the middle of my working day and told me to go and rob a bank, I would simply tell them to fuck off and do it themselves.
I would simply not complain.
[00:21:22] Speaker B: This is the unfortunate thing about us not, you know, him getting exploded. I mean, aside from him getting exploded, we have no one to tell us what actually how the hell they did it. Yeah, right. Like, was he just that, like, you know, just that easy to get to do something that he. He just went with it? Or, like, did they knock him out and then put it on him or.
[00:21:49] Speaker A: I don't know. I think there was something he could have done.
[00:21:53] Speaker B: Wow. Victim blaming.
[00:21:55] Speaker A: Yeah, I do. I've had the chance to think it through.
[00:21:59] Speaker B: Having no information about how this transpired.
[00:22:02] Speaker A: I've had the chance.
[00:22:02] Speaker B: He decided he could have.
[00:22:04] Speaker A: I've talked it through, thought it through.
[00:22:05] Speaker B: You know, they have at least one gun in this situation. I would say they probably have multiple.
[00:22:12] Speaker A: Brian or the relatives of Brian, if you're listening. He could have done more. He could have ducked and dived. He could have. You know, feint left, swing right. He could have been a little bit more nimble. He could have got out of there.
He could have used the pizza as a kind of a fugazi and got out of there, you know?
[00:22:36] Speaker B: I do wonder if they ate the pizza.
You know, they're like, oh, we're hungry from all this evil villain shit.
[00:22:44] Speaker A: Look.
[00:22:44] Speaker B: Anyway, slice of the ol.
[00:22:46] Speaker A: How's everyone doing?
[00:22:49] Speaker B: Hey, everybody, we're here. It's jaggable graves coming back with a bang.
[00:22:56] Speaker A: Yes, indeed, coming back at you, coming back in your life, in your week, in your Monday, and indeed, and it's with a happy heart that I wish ye all a very good week and I hope you're well. How's it going, Corrie? You good?
[00:23:10] Speaker B: Doing pretty well. Yeah. Obviously it was chaotic last week. I was saying before, I think this is the first time that we've ever just not like, without any planning or anything like that, managed to just like, not get an episode of Joe agonization. In our four year existence, we've like, even if it's been like a Friday, we have managed to get a joag in, but we just could not make it work this week.
[00:23:39] Speaker A: Life is occasionally like that, right? And it's. I, you know, not to want to spend too much time talking about it, but across the planet with families and work and fucking life being how it is, it's occasionally tough, but hey ho, we need to say no more than that.
[00:23:56] Speaker B: Yeah, and listen, people are so nice about everything, reassuring us that it's fine and all that. I tend to put a lot of pressure on myself about these kinds of things and I don't want to let people down and want to make sure everyone gets their Joe ag each week and all of that. But people, again, were reassuring. Like, listen, you guys are a two man operation. Running this thing for all these years and not missing them, that's pretty good. And thinking about it, I'm like, yeah, most podcasts, with the exception of ones like dead and lovely, that also managed to just never miss one.
Most podcasts that are weekly, especially for as long as we have been, are getting paid to do this and have other people working to help get things, get things done.
It's just you and me, and if things come up, there's like, no, there's no person to fall back on or anything like that.
[00:24:59] Speaker A: It's just.
[00:25:00] Speaker B: But look, we do our best for you guys. We're not gonna make it a habit. We just, you know, it's good to remember there's a little grace there.
[00:25:09] Speaker A: Yes, very much. Thank you.
[00:25:10] Speaker B: Thank you for your grace.
Yeah, and it was wild. You were super busy. We ended up having a little bit of an emergency in our home. A little, er, visit earlier in the week for Keough. Don't worry, he's fine. But we had a little. Little bit of an incident at the beginning of the week that we had to deal with and that kind of threw things as well. And. Yeah, it was just a little bit chaotic, weren't it?
[00:25:39] Speaker A: Yeah, it was. But we're here now and that's what counts.
[00:25:42] Speaker B: We're here. We're here now and we have all kinds of things. Listen, we had book club yesterday, talked about slew foot by Braum. Let's see if I can hold it. Yeah, there we go. If I hold it close enough to me, you can see Braum. Braum is his name. Apparently he grew up. Braum is his last name. And he grew up on military bases where people tended to call you by your last name and it just stuck. And so as an adult, he took that on as like a pen name and sloofoot. I highly recommend, notoriously, everyone who is, like, in book club knows that. Like, I don't like things that are fantasy. I don't like, you know, anytime you bring, like, fairy creatures and all that kind of stuff, I immediately, like, shut down. Like, I want nothing to do with this.
Found an exception. This book absolutely rules. Takes place in, like, puritan colonial America in 1666 about a woman who is sent from England to the colonies to marry a fella, and while there finds herself sort of running afoul of puritan society while also encountering maybe Satan in the woods.
And we see how that develops over the course of it. And it's so fucking good.
[00:27:08] Speaker A: Very nice.
[00:27:09] Speaker B: I mean, I recommend sloofing.
[00:27:10] Speaker A: What I was just pondering on there was, you know, I've. I've got a lot of grace towards people who decide that they want to capitalize.
[00:27:21] Speaker B: Capitalize?
[00:27:22] Speaker A: Yeah, their names.
[00:27:23] Speaker B: Oh, sure, sure. Okay.
[00:27:24] Speaker A: Yeah. I don't think I have that same leniency to those who decide they want to one word it.
[00:27:32] Speaker B: Wait, you hold that against, like, zendaya, not into it.
If you've got a. If you've got a name that stands out, sure, go for it.
[00:27:41] Speaker A: But, you know, you'll have a surname also, won't you? You think you're beyond such things. Deal with your one name.
[00:27:48] Speaker B: I mean, hey, if people know who you are.
[00:27:54] Speaker A: I think.
[00:27:55] Speaker B: I think it's fine.
[00:27:56] Speaker A: No, I'm not cool with that.
No, I'm not. I'm not cool with that if I think it's something you've got to earn.
[00:28:04] Speaker B: Why?
[00:28:05] Speaker A: Well, because people have two names, don't they?
[00:28:09] Speaker B: No, some people have five names.
You're choosing one way or another. Why don't you go by your. All three of your names?
You're always leaving something out here and there.
So, yeah, names are fake.
Do what you want with it.
[00:28:29] Speaker A: Yeah, that's also true. If it gives you a bit of.
[00:28:32] Speaker B: Fun, who cares, right? Yeah. Like, call me whatever. It's, you know, where life is hell, if you want to be called Braum or Zendaya or whatever the fuck, why not?
[00:28:45] Speaker A: Fair enough.
[00:28:45] Speaker B: All right, I'm over it.
Over it. Also, we have got watch along coming up this Saturday, our pre Halloween watch along, in which Mark is going to just select the movie he feels like watching for us.
[00:29:02] Speaker A: And all you need to know. All you need to know is that there's a watch along this Saturday, and it would be lovely if you were there. You don't need to know anything else.
[00:29:10] Speaker B: Nothing further. Although we will save the movie so that you can get a hold of it.
[00:29:14] Speaker A: Yes, yes, yes. You will need the movie, which will be revealed 48 hours before time.
[00:29:20] Speaker B: Okay. 48 hours beforehand. So that'll be. That'll be coming. But set your calendar. Set your calendar.
[00:29:27] Speaker A: Set.
Mark your calendar.
[00:29:30] Speaker B: Mark your calendar. Set your alarm.
[00:29:32] Speaker A: Stopwatch.
[00:29:34] Speaker B: Set your stopwatch.
I don't think that's it either.
[00:29:39] Speaker A: Set. Yeah.
[00:29:40] Speaker B: Set your line for Saturday, October 26 at.
[00:29:44] Speaker A: Is this, like, our first episode? Is this the first time we've ever done this?
[00:29:47] Speaker B: See, we take one. One week off, and all of a sudden, it's like, what even are words anymore?
It's. It's difficult. It was like I didn't even know you when I opened up Zoom. Like, who is this guy on the other end with all the chest hair? What's going on?
Look at all that. Look at this guy.
[00:30:08] Speaker A: People flock into the video.
[00:30:10] Speaker B: Mm hmm. Exactly. That's how we advertise the video.
But, yeah, so we'll do that. We'll tell you what it is. It's gonna be a good time.
We'll also have a snack to the future coming out this week.
[00:30:26] Speaker A: Indeed. In an effort to right the wrongs of last month, in an effort to fucking. I'm still bored and I'm still angry, and I've still got that bittersweet taste in my mouth. I can't. I brush and brush my teeth, and the taste won't leave.
[00:30:44] Speaker B: I kind of. I'm sorry, but I take some small pleasure from how much you hated virtuosity just because, like, it is a shitty movie, but just, you know, eh, I've seen worse.
[00:30:56] Speaker A: Oh, listen, I've said time and again, I'd rather hate than be not in the least moved at all.
[00:31:03] Speaker B: So it has caused you to feel, you know, it's a reminder you're alive.
[00:31:08] Speaker A: Thank you. That is very much what virtuosity is. It's a reminder that you still live.
[00:31:13] Speaker B: Right. I can still be passionate.
[00:31:15] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:31:16] Speaker B: Something. And it is my hatred for virtuosity.
[00:31:20] Speaker A: And in an effort to right the wrongs, a better movie, a similar but better film. This time it's gonna be demolition man. And I cannot wait because I don't know, I don't know. I don't know why, but I've got, like, this. I don't think I read the tar, the tie in novelization, but I've got. I've grown up with a lot of affection towards demolition man, and I'm looking forward to seeing if it's justified, if it holds up.
[00:31:45] Speaker B: Yeah, it is. It's definitely been since I was a kid, since I've seen this. So I'm excited to revisit this movie. I could tell you pretty much zero things about it. So stoked on that.
[00:31:58] Speaker A: Good.
[00:32:00] Speaker B: Wednesday, we're gonna watch that Wednesday, we're gonna talk about it on Thursday. Get it up on the Yolko Five for you.
A quick update, dearest of friends.
A few weeks ago, we talked about shaken baby syndrome and the currently on death row inmate Robert Roberson, who was set to be executed on October 17. Obviously, I've been impassioned, posting all over everything. I even used our TikTok, which rarely happens. Managed to accidentally add a sound to the beginning of the TikTok.
[00:32:36] Speaker A: Oh, cool.
[00:32:37] Speaker B: Which is unfortunate. Don't know how it happened.
[00:32:39] Speaker A: What was the sound?
[00:32:40] Speaker B: How did you get rid of it? It was like some guy going like, hey, look at this. Hey, take a look at this. It's like, fuck is what it is.
But this is what happens when you're old and you try to use kid technology to get the word out about something.
So that happened. I boomered on TikTok, but got the point across, posted everywhere to try to get people to call Governor Greg Abbott to sign the petitions, all of that kind of stuff. People all over the Internet were trying to do something about this. And the appeals were getting denied and denied, denied up until an hour before he was set to be executed. They had started setting everything up, you know, final meal, all of that kind of stuff. They had everything set.
Had a final hearing on, like, sort of a technicality, basically. That judge granted a restraining order that allows for Robert Roberson to. He did not die. They did not kill him, which was incredible. I literally nearly puked when I read the news because I was just. The relief was so palpable. This never happens. I mean, they executed an innocent guy last week. They do it all the time. No compunction about this. But they held off. He's going to testify in his own defense next week, and we'll sort of see where it goes from there.
But fucking hell, you guys, it happened. If you did call or sign the petition, thank you so much for doing that.
[00:34:21] Speaker A: I don't know how much I'm expecting you to know here, but do last minute stays of execution often result in the death penalty itself being kind of commuted, fully or not?
[00:34:37] Speaker B: No, no, not really, no. Usually it's just appeal after appeal after appeal until the person eventually runs out of appeals and they're executed.
But this is an unusual situation. It doesn't usually happen like this. So we'll see. We'll see what happens. But at least for once, a judge intervened and made a decision in the right direction, and hopefully that will lead to him being able to speak for himself, talk about what happened. More introduction of the evidence of these, of what occurred there, showing what. Now we're pretty sure about this kid died from complications of pneumonia.
But it's crazy. Like, reading news articles and stuff about this, it's still bananas. Like I said, how, like, doctors don't want to let go of this. And they insist there is no medical consensus, is there?
There's no controversy. That's what they keep saying. There's no controversy about shaken baby. I'm like, well, when the people who came up with it say it's not real, I would call that controversy. Yeah, like that. You have decided that it is, you know, unquestionable, I guess that's not controversy. But, you know, they just. It's crazy to me that people would say that with their whole chest when a guy is about to be executed, you know, that they would be like, there's just simply no question here, and just ignore all the evidence. Otherwise.
[00:36:20] Speaker A: We know that I don't really have a solid grasp of american law.
[00:36:25] Speaker B: Right, right, yeah.
[00:36:27] Speaker A: American law, american policy, politics.
The only, you know, the only thing I'm sure of is that it's convoluted to the point of it being an unworkable but is so convoluted, it's impossible to extricate your system from that system and reform it properly. Because there's.
[00:36:46] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it's tricky because it's a system that, in theory, should work. Right. Like that. You know, the idea of the jury, of your peers and, you know, that the idea of innocent until proven guilty and, you know, all these kinds of principles are great.
Unfortunately, the structures are set up so that basically that only really works for a certain kind of person. It is not set up to work for others.
[00:37:20] Speaker A: What I guess I was reaching for there, you said that, you know, a judge will cling on to that shaken baby ruling even though it's a, you know, shaky.
[00:37:32] Speaker B: Well, and I was talking about doctors, not judges.
[00:37:34] Speaker A: Right, right.
What I. What I guess my question is, is does power lie with individuals too much so.
[00:37:49] Speaker B: Oh, absolutely. So, yeah.
[00:37:51] Speaker A: So it's possible for one guy, one fucking solitary guy, to go, no, no. Sticking to this. Sorry.
[00:37:58] Speaker B: Yeah, pretty much.
[00:37:59] Speaker A: Without that individual being accountable to a different group or a board or a fucking process.
[00:38:05] Speaker B: Yeah. Because it's basically. I mean, certainly there were committees and things like that along the way, but once that initial judgment is made by that jury, then for anything to change. Yeah. It has to basically be a judge or, you know, a panel of people in appeals situation that says no, that it's, you know, we can overturn this. And if those people don't know enough about the science or have a prejudice or whatever the case may be that they come across, then, yeah, they have a huge amount of power in cases of life and death like this. I don't know what the solution to that. I mean. Well, the solution is obviously no death penalty, but in a broader sense, what do you do about the fact that these small groups of people have such insane power when it comes to the fates of people?
And again, that's one for when we finally get to our talking about prison reform and abolition discussion. But, yeah, it is deeply, deeply flawed in a way that. I mean, that's why people talk about prison abolition and things like that, is that you can't fix this. Like you said, there's like, what do you do with this? It's too. It's at its core, made to be like this.
But. Robert Roberson, for now, lives.
[00:39:37] Speaker A: Yes. Okay.
[00:39:38] Speaker B: And that is beautiful.
[00:39:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:39:39] Speaker B: Small victories, small victory.
So I know many of you will be really happy to hear that. Um, anything else? Oh, the other thing, the one more announcement that I have here is a few weeks ago, you said that I could pick out an old horror movie. I don't know if horror is the, is the right word, but yeah, like an old horror thriller situation for you to watch.
[00:40:08] Speaker A: I said this.
[00:40:09] Speaker B: You said this because I watch these all the time and you basically are kind of like, I won't watch them unless I am like sitting. I have all of my attention on it, all that kind of stuff. And so you don't do it very often and you miss out on a lot of these old gems.
And so you said I could pick one for you to watch.
[00:40:33] Speaker A: It's all coming back to me.
[00:40:34] Speaker B: Spooky season.
[00:40:35] Speaker A: Go for it.
[00:40:37] Speaker B: And so I have decided that you are going to watch the classic film Knight of the Hunter. Have you ever seen this?
[00:40:45] Speaker A: Ooh, no, but it sounds great, hopefully.
[00:40:47] Speaker B: Yeah, this is, I mean, a terrifying flick from, I believe, 1955. Yeah, 1955 with Robert Mitchum about a sort of corrupt preacher figure who meets a man in jail. I mean, oh, man, this goes to so many things that we've been talking about. Basically a man who's going to be executed and finds out that he has somewhere on his property buried money. And so this man goes and tracks down where that guy lived in order to manipulate his family to get that money that he knows is buried somewhere on that property. And it is, yeah, a great thriller, great film noir. Great, just like sociopath movie and yeah, one of the greats in the american canon. So hopefully you will enjoy night of the hunter and report back.
[00:41:46] Speaker A: Excellent. I shall have that for you next week.
[00:41:48] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah, excited about that. And if you at home want to watch it as well, highly recommend. So that, you know, when we debrief what he's talking about, a classic film everybody should see.
[00:42:02] Speaker A: Beautiful. Thank you. Corrigan accepted.
[00:42:06] Speaker B: Beautiful.
So, Mister Lewis.
[00:42:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:42:11] Speaker B: Shall we talk about what we've watched.
[00:42:14] Speaker A: Over the past two weeks now, I suspect a lot of what we're going to be talking about is going to focus on one particular movie. That's good because it's the only movie I really want to talk about right now because it's. Well, good. Let's. Okay, we'll breeze past.
[00:42:28] Speaker B: We'll power through the other stuff to get to this one.
[00:42:31] Speaker A: Just plow on through. Hellboy, the crooked man.
[00:42:36] Speaker B: Oh, boy. Hellboy, the crooked man. How was this made? By cranked guy.
[00:42:42] Speaker A: By crank guy with direct input from Mike Mignola.
[00:42:46] Speaker B: Yeah. Like, what happened here?
[00:42:49] Speaker A: Don't know. Look, it's, it's, it's difficult. The question it left me with was just simply why, you know, why? Why, why you want to, you want to reclaim Hellboy on screen and you do it like this.
[00:43:06] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:43:07] Speaker A: Why. Why not wait. Wait until you've got a few extra dollars, right? Yeah. If you've. You know, if you've got a green light to make the movie, the movie's gonna get made. Why rush it and film it all in one, like, 20 foot square bit of forest?
[00:43:24] Speaker B: If any of you joined us for the watch along in which we watched the movie that Mark was in, it feels like that. That is the quality of Hellboy, the crooked man.
[00:43:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
I'm struggling my words a lot more than usual tonight, but I keep going back to that. That promise I made right at the start of the joag journey, where I'm not gonna just rag on films for no reason. Right? So if I'm pausing and if I'm trying to pick my words, it's because I'm trying just not to be a prick about this film. But it's fucking terrible.
[00:43:58] Speaker B: Well, and here's the thing. Making a movie like that, when it's made by the people who made your movie for, you know, like, on a shoestring budget with no name people or whatever. Yeah. Like, good for them, right. But this is not that. That's what. That's what makes this something that you can kind of shit up. Like. This is made by real filmmakers, and this is what they. They made, which plays as, like, almost cynical to me, to make something this terrible.
[00:44:25] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:44:26] Speaker B: You know how to not do that.
[00:44:28] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, was it. Is it. Is it a rights thing? Is it a right? Is it a legal obligation on someone's to make this film? I don't know.
[00:44:37] Speaker B: Yeah. It does not feel like a passion project.
[00:44:39] Speaker A: No.
Just do me a favor, friend, and don't watch Hellboy the Crooked man instead. Just, if you have a hankering, if you've got a little appetite for something Hellboy, you've got an itch you want scratched. You know, there's only one place to go if you're not going to pick up a book, if you're not going to read it, you just need to pop on Neil Marshall's 2007 Hellboy for a definitive look at how that character is meant. 2017. My apologies. And how that character is meant to be portrayed on screen.
[00:45:13] Speaker B: Listen, I will say I made it through all of hellboy the Crooked man, and I left the movie theater during the 2017 one, so that's a shame.
[00:45:25] Speaker A: And it's actually 2019, so we both suck.
[00:45:28] Speaker B: 19, I was gonna say. Well, okay, I only said 2017 because that was, like, 2007. Isn't right.
It felt more recent than that. One of those. Just those last pre pandemic movies, you know, 2019 is that weird moment that it's like it's the last time you saw anything in the movie theater. Yes. It's in that zone. And I left.
Oh, big time.
[00:45:52] Speaker A: Did you walk out?
[00:45:54] Speaker B: Yeah, I gave up. I was like, this is.
[00:45:55] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:45:56] Speaker B: Well, this is beyond. It's one of two movies I've ever walked out of in my life.
[00:46:00] Speaker A: And the other.
[00:46:01] Speaker B: The other one. Open water.
Yeah. I was like, this is. I cannot watch white people fight for another minute. I gotta go. I hate someone posted on the dead and lovely group about fall. Is that the name of the one where they're up on the top of the tower thing, which I've always.
[00:46:21] Speaker A: I've long wanted to see and Peter really wants to see.
[00:46:24] Speaker B: Oh, you haven't watched it?
[00:46:25] Speaker A: No.
[00:46:25] Speaker B: Oh, I thought you did. Listen, it could be. It's a great premise and all that kind of stuff, other than the fact that it completely steals the end of it from another movie, the twist in it is exactly a different movie that I like a lot, but they're, like, in a life or death situation, and they're fighting over a man for the duration of this movie.
Guys, pay attention here. You got something to figure out. This is not the time to deal with your issues of infidelity and whatever shit here.
A man who's dead already at the beginning of this movie, and they're fighting over him for the duration of this movie. I don't. I don't have time for that. And that open water is the same thing. Like, you guys. You are stuck in the middle of the ocean.
[00:47:14] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:47:14] Speaker B: Being surrounded by sharks. This is not the time to work out your marital problems.
[00:47:18] Speaker A: The sharks don't care.
[00:47:19] Speaker B: Fucking get it together, right? I have no patience for that kind of movie. I want nothing to do with it.
[00:47:26] Speaker A: It's a very intentional act, isn't it? Walking out of a film that you've paid to sit down.
[00:47:31] Speaker B: Right, exactly.
It's really gotta push you to that point.
And I think with Hellboy, it was just kind of like. I was like, that was one of those moments where I'm like, am I in this for sunk cost?
[00:47:45] Speaker A: Aye.
[00:47:47] Speaker B: And it's like, ah, yeah, I'm just gonna go.
[00:47:50] Speaker A: It helps that. It helps that no currency changed hands. I mean, I.
I'll watch. The fact that I paid nothing to see your film means I'm more likely to finish your film.
[00:48:02] Speaker B: It's a weird. Yeah. Counterintuitive.
[00:48:05] Speaker A: Yes. But had I, I wouldn't have. I wouldn't have walked even if I had paid to see this, because I like cowboy a great deal.
[00:48:13] Speaker B: There you go.
[00:48:14] Speaker A: But it.
Yeah. Look how they massacred my boy, I guess is the only thing I can say.
[00:48:19] Speaker B: Right.
Let me just bowl through, because obviously I've been watching a lot of stuff. You've been watching less things than I have, of course.
And I narrowed it down to just things I've seen for the first time, or a very long time ago, one of which was Suspiria, which I haven't seen since I was in high school.
I don't like Suspiria.
Like, I know I'm very in the minority on this. This is one of those, like, universally beloved movies, and I absolutely get it, 100% get why people. Do you like Suspiria?
[00:48:56] Speaker A: Yes, a great deal. And I also massively enjoyed the remake.
[00:49:01] Speaker B: Oh. Which I've heard great things about, and I do want to watch, for sure. But, like, I mean, even people who love this movie acknowledge, like, it's not really a movie. It's a vibe. Right. And I think it's beautiful to look at the soundtrack. I eventually just kept muting as I was like, this is literally giving me a headache. I can't keep listening to this. But if you like that, then it works for you. Just that constant pounding soundtrack throughout, that whole thing.
And it doesn't have a story.
That's everybody who watches it. You read all their views. Five stars. Loved this. It's a vibe. There's no story.
[00:49:41] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:49:42] Speaker B: Whatever. Just doesn't super work for me. There are other Argento movies I like a lot more. A lot of jalos I like more than this one. If you're gonna give me Argento, it's gonna be tenebrae all day. That's gonna be my favorite of the crew.
[00:49:56] Speaker A: I seem to remember enjoying the remake more than the original, though.
[00:49:59] Speaker B: You know, a lot of people have said that, too, like, I've heard. And it's Luca. What's his favorite? Guadalupe Guadagnino, who I like a lot. So do I. Don't know if I've ever not. Oh, I didn't like bones and all, but other than that, I think he's.
[00:50:17] Speaker A: Doing another horror next.
[00:50:19] Speaker B: I think so. Yeah.
But, yeah, Suspiria doesn't really do it for me, but I get it. I get why people like it, and I like how much pink there is in it, because pink is my favorite color.
[00:50:28] Speaker A: Yes, it's certainly quite timely. I mean, what we're gonna chat about shortly has a lot in common with suspiria, I believe.
What the substance.
[00:50:41] Speaker B: Oh, okay.
I was like, what are you talking about? One of the stories. No, no, I'm with you now.
[00:50:48] Speaker A: It was a timely pick. Yes.
[00:50:50] Speaker B: Gotcha. Okay. Another beloved one that didn't really hit for me, that I just watched was pulse. Have you seen pulse?
[00:50:56] Speaker A: Have I seen pulse?
[00:50:58] Speaker B: Japanese movie.
[00:51:00] Speaker A: The name is ringing a massive bell.
[00:51:02] Speaker B: People keep committing suicide because of some sort of phones.
Yeah. Like Internet, early Internet kind of thing.
Before cell phones. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's. Yeah, it's one of those, like, very universally beloved movies.
I think one of the things about this for me is, like, it's very much dealing with, like, loneliness and isolation and obviously in japanese society, that and suicide being, like, huge issues.
And so it's kind of addressing that those are not, like, loneliness and isolation are not things that are super relevant to me. Like, if anything, I could stand being alone more.
And so I think thematically, it didn't hit hard enough for it to cover the rest. It's a vibes movie as well. There's no character development in this at all. People just kind of appear and they going about their lives and then they're dying and all these things. You're like, who are these people? Doesn't really matter. That's not the point. But for me, as someone who needs a lot of character development, I was like, I don't give a fuck about these people.
So, like, it's definitely very vibey. And if, like, loneliness and isolation are things that, like, scare you, then I think it's probably very effective. But pulse didn't. Didn't work for me. I just did not care at all and was very bored. Although there is one of the scariest images I've ever seen in a horror movie in it. And it is simply the way a woman walks.
[00:52:37] Speaker A: Nice. Very nice in it.
[00:52:38] Speaker B: And it was like my stomach dropped out of my butt.
[00:52:41] Speaker A: J horror is very good at that, though, isn't it?
[00:52:43] Speaker B: Yeah, they're good at that imagery. It doesn't happen much in the movie. That's probably the only scary thing in the whole movie to me, but it was really scary.
[00:52:53] Speaker A: Luca Guadagnino is, in fact, making a new version of American Psycho.
[00:52:57] Speaker B: Oh, right, right. I saw someone post about that, like, 3 hours ago. Yeah, I'm in. I'm in to see what he does.
[00:53:04] Speaker A: With it as I'm on.
No, I'll wait for casting. That's what I'll do.
[00:53:10] Speaker B: Sure. I'm gonna watch it no matter what. So we'll see. Let's see a thing that I did enjoy.
[00:53:17] Speaker A: Go on.
[00:53:17] Speaker B: I watched dead man's curve, a thing that I have been trying to watch for ages. I've even had you attempt to find it for Plex several times over the past four years. And finally you can watch it on stuff. It is streaming now.
And so I rented it the other night. It is a late nineties Matthew Lillard Michael Vartan joint in which they find out that if your roommate commits suicide, you get an automatic 4.0. And Michael Vartan plays a character who's very obsessed with getting into Harvard law.
And so he sort of hatches a plan with his roommate to kill their other horrible roommate and frame it as a suicide.
And this is. Listen, it's not a good movie, but it is. Oh, it's so much fun. The director is taking it so seriously and doesn't realize he's making camp. Like, he thinks he is making art here. I enjoy that.
[00:54:21] Speaker A: Which.
[00:54:22] Speaker B: Yeah. Thus the camp is just like cranked to eleven. The choice. Like, there's a point in this where Matthew Lillard is telling a story in a bar, and as he's telling it, the bar sort of fades away and it becomes, like, black and silent as he's telling this story. And it's just like, this is too much for what should be, like a teenage, like an I know what you did last summer kind of story. And it's great because of that. Like, it's so. And this is probably the, like, this may be my favorite Matthew Lillard ever because he's just cranked all the way up. Total sociopath. Like, just allowed to, like.
[00:55:04] Speaker A: What you're telling me here is great. What I'm hearing is that this is a film with ambition, right? And I'm not gonna, like.
[00:55:11] Speaker B: This is exactly.
[00:55:13] Speaker A: I'm not gonna be the guy.
[00:55:14] Speaker B: It's not good, but it is.
[00:55:17] Speaker A: It really wants to be. Yeah.
[00:55:19] Speaker B: It really wants to be. Right? Yeah. So I recommend dead man's curve now that you can get it places like, oh, it is. It's so much fun. It's so much fun. And it gets really twisty at the end to like, a degree that is just too much. And again, that makes it work really well that you're just like, come the f. You can't. You can't do that, brother. You cannot. That's too many twists.
It does not believe in rules. It's just gonna go with it.
[00:55:48] Speaker A: It's like the departed just bang after bang after bang.
[00:55:54] Speaker B: It's camp departed.
[00:55:55] Speaker A: Wonderful.
[00:55:57] Speaker B: Love that.
[00:55:59] Speaker A: I'm actually quite keen on seeing that. Can I watch that instead of.
[00:56:03] Speaker B: No, you still have to watch Night of the Hunter.
Let me roll through just a little bit more. I watched Sam Raimi's the gift from 2000, I believe. Have you seen that one?
[00:56:13] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.
From what a fascinating little chapter of Sam Raimi's career.
[00:56:20] Speaker B: That's from, right? Yeah. It's a weird moment and a weird movie.
[00:56:27] Speaker A: Pre Spideye, post evil dead.
[00:56:31] Speaker B: Right.
[00:56:32] Speaker A: Sam Raimi kind of.
It feels as though he had ambitions of being an actual maker of films.
[00:56:40] Speaker B: Right? Like. Yeah, like drama.
[00:56:42] Speaker A: Yeah.
He was getting. He was getting a list casts and budgets for a bit, wasn't he?
[00:56:47] Speaker B: To me, this stars Cate Blanchett. Yeah, yeah, it's Cate Blanchett. Keanu Reeves, Greg Kinnearhe, Giovanni Rubisi. You know, every single person who appears in this movie, it's so bizarre. It's a bizarre movie. Katie Holmes is in it. And basically Cate Blanchett plays, like, a psychic who, when Katie Holmes character is murdered, is sort of leading them towards who did it. But this sort of implicates her as well, because obviously, like, when you tell the police stuff, then they're like, a psychic. How does she know shit?
Keanu Reeves, visibly asian, Keanu Reeves plays the most virulent racist you have ever seen in your life. And it's bizarre. It's like dropping n words and stuff like that.
[00:57:41] Speaker A: And you're like, I never want to hear that.
[00:57:44] Speaker B: Is he.
It's so bizarre. You're like, what is going on here? The accents. Everyone just invented their own in it. So you've never heard a human who sounds like any single character in this movie. And they certainly don't all come from the same place, but they're supposed to have basically grown up in this small town board and raised forever where everyone knows each other. It's bizarre. It is a bizarre movie.
Yeah. The gift, not the one. There's like 37 movies called the gift, but this is the Sam Raimi one. It's one that I'm like, yeah, watch it. It's a weird time capsule and a weird, like you said, moment in Sam Raimi's career. Yeah, I didn't necessarily like it, but it's interesting.
[00:58:27] Speaker A: He's. He will. He will forever go down as one of the most fascinating, idiosyncratic and noteworthy filmmakers ever, ever, ever. His fucking.
Absolutely fascinating.
Yeah. And that's like I said, there was this weird half hour where he was like, eh?
[00:58:48] Speaker B: Yeah. Like, maybe I'm. Maybe I'm a serious guy. I don't know.
[00:58:52] Speaker A: Who knows? Who knows?
[00:58:54] Speaker B: But I also watched 1980 two's next of kin. Have you seen that?
[00:58:59] Speaker A: Next of kin? Next of kin. Next of kin. Again, superfluous.
[00:59:04] Speaker B: Yeah. It's an australian movie and it rules.
It is weird movie about a woman whose mother dies and she inherits an estate from her, which is called Montclair.
And it's got all these old. It's like a retirement home, basically, that she inherits. Got all these old people in it, but they start dying horribly in this place.
[00:59:31] Speaker A: Much like the gift. There are 50 million next of kins.
[00:59:34] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. This is the 1982 next of Kin has John Jarrett from the Wolf Creek movies. But when he's, like, young, which is bizarre, but yeah, it is. Fuck me, it's so good. Watch next of kin. Like, I don't need to tell you a whole lot more than that.
[00:59:54] Speaker A: Just writing down titles.
82.
[00:59:57] Speaker B: It's australian, so, you know they make good shit. 1982.
[01:00:01] Speaker A: Yeah, they do.
[01:00:02] Speaker B: I recommend next of kin.
I don't recommend. It's what's inside. I don't know how this has such high ratings. Everybody has been watching this on a few occasions.
[01:00:12] Speaker A: This last week. I've nearly watched that.
[01:00:14] Speaker B: Nearly watched it. I would be curious. What? I don't recommend it to you because it's genuinely one of the worst movies I've ever seen in my life.
[01:00:20] Speaker A: Awesome.
[01:00:21] Speaker B: But I would also be interested in seeing what you think of it. This is a body swap movie.
Well, if you don't like them, this is not going to change your mind. Imagine a body swap movie, but nobody had any personality to begin with.
[01:00:36] Speaker A: Oh, cool. Okay.
[01:00:39] Speaker B: The premise is, like, this guy brings, like, a machine to a party where they can all swap bodies, and they decide to play a game where they try to guess who's in each other's bodies.
Once they are in each other's body, they act no different than when they were the person that they were before because nobody has a personality in this. And they just immediately start confessing things to each other and having sex with each other, which is like, you don't know who's in the other body.
[01:01:04] Speaker A: Netflix.
[01:01:05] Speaker B: Why would you do that? Netflix? Yeah.
Which eventually culminates in someone dying, leaving some people without bodies. Now, because people have died and nobody cares that people have died. The rest of the movie is just about them trying to figure out what they're going to do now that they don't have bodies or whatever it's very bad.
So it's bafflingly bad and confusing. It's like they keep on saying people's names, and it's like, I don't know who that is. Who are these people?
[01:01:39] Speaker A: Do you know one of the.
It's always thrilling to have a surprise, to see a surprise hit, isn't it? To see a movie that has just arrived out of nowhere and is a fucking banger.
But it's so grimly predictable and kind of crushing to know that every time you get one of those amazing surprises two or three years down the line, you're just gonna get a load of shit. Kind of like.
[01:02:05] Speaker B: Right.
[01:02:05] Speaker A: And.
[01:02:06] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I mean, this is just bodies, bodies, bodies.
[01:02:09] Speaker A: Yeah.
It sounded to me as though you've described, like, talk to me.
[01:02:15] Speaker B: Right? Yeah, exactly. Yep. It's bodies, bodies, bodies meets talk to me and you'll see that in reviews and stuff, too.
I don't. I feel like I watched a different movie than the people who liked this one because I simply cannot imagine watching a bunch of characters that you have no idea who they are immediately swap bodies so you then don't know who they are twice.
And then, like, trying to, like, piece together, like, how do you have a whodunit when you don't know who the whos are?
[01:02:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:02:43] Speaker B: Yeah, right.
[01:02:44] Speaker A: That's a who is it?
[01:02:45] Speaker B: Yeah, right. It's not a whodunit. It's a who is it?
So, yeah, I don't recommend. It's what's inside. Do recommend horror in the high desert.
It's a found footage movie that, I mean, your mileage may vary depending on how much you like found footage. Some people absolutely hate this. Some people absolutely love it. But I think it really. You know, the thing that I love about found footage is just if it's a. Sells it and I think it's real.
[01:03:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:03:10] Speaker B: And this feels like they just took footage of real people and, like, turned it into a horror movie. Like, there's. I'm like, this has to be this guy's actual, like, like, YouTube channel or whatever, right? Like, they didn't make this up. Like, surely this is real. It's that authentic.
And that worked really well for me. Horror in the high desert two doesn't really stick the landing on that. So I don't know about the series, but the first horror in the high desert, I watched that.
[01:03:39] Speaker A: Beautiful. You're right. And I. Whenever I'm watching fun footage, I'm always internally going, that's a little bit. That's a little bit of a stretch.
[01:03:49] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. So knowing this feels like an episode of Dateline. And I loved it.
[01:03:54] Speaker A: Perfect. Okay, nice. Yeah, I'm all over that.
[01:03:57] Speaker B: Your movies that you watched.
[01:03:59] Speaker A: Right. So let's just, um. Asrael. Asriel. Yes.
Has this reached your radar?
[01:04:08] Speaker B: I think Kyo watched it the other day. That's the one where it's like a, like rapture. Exactly. Right.
[01:04:14] Speaker A: Yes. Samara weaving is a. An escapee from a kind of a cult, a society broken down into kind of cults and sects led by women in silence. It's a kind of a future where there's like a vow of silence and it's a bit last of us. And it trusts you to do a lot of the work because a lot of it is in silence, which you know, I love. I fucking love movies where there's no dialogue.
[01:04:45] Speaker B: Oh.
[01:04:45] Speaker A: So good.
It kind of lets you piece together what has gone on in the society, why they're the way they are. I also really, really like Samara weaving. I think she's great.
[01:04:55] Speaker B: Yeah, she's great. Absolutely.
[01:04:57] Speaker A: Talk about an expressive face on that girl. Yeah.
[01:05:01] Speaker B: Right. I think you've said before that she's kind of like bizarro Margot Robbie. Like, she's like, kind of off Margot Robbie. But it works really well.
[01:05:09] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:05:10] Speaker B: You know? Exactly.
[01:05:11] Speaker A: She's like Margot Robbie and meets, like, phineas finneas of and Ferb. Oh, you know what I mean?
[01:05:22] Speaker B: Yeah. Actually, you're right. That's 100% true. Yeah, that is. Yeah.
[01:05:26] Speaker A: Accurate.
[01:05:27] Speaker B: And I think it absolutely works in her favor.
[01:05:30] Speaker A: It's a compliment.
[01:05:31] Speaker B: Yeah. That is not an insult by any stretch.
[01:05:34] Speaker A: 100%. She's great. She's fascinating to look at and can carry. Can easily carry a movie where there isn't much in the way of dialogue.
[01:05:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:05:41] Speaker A: And she doesn't mind getting fucking, you know, thrown about in the name of horror, which is great.
[01:05:47] Speaker B: Yeah, totally.
[01:05:48] Speaker A: Asriel is a great laugh. It's also really nice. Pleasingly violent.
[01:05:52] Speaker B: Nice. I will definitely check that one out.
[01:05:54] Speaker A: Yes, you should.
[01:05:55] Speaker B: Speaking of pleasingly violent, you saw another big one for you this. This week.
[01:06:00] Speaker A: Um, let's think. I mean, you know what terrifier three is?
[01:06:07] Speaker B: Sure.
[01:06:07] Speaker A: Right. So my. My opinions on terrifying three are worthless. They don't matter.
[01:06:16] Speaker B: That's a really good point. Yeah. It's either a thing you like or it's a thing you hate. And it's going to be the movie you think it's going to be.
[01:06:25] Speaker A: There is, I guess the most damning thing I can say about terrifying three is that it holds no surprises. Right?
[01:06:34] Speaker B: Sure. Yeah.
[01:06:35] Speaker A: But that's the only disparaging thing I can say about terrifying three, because everything else, you know, you're gonna get. You get so fully.
If you're hungry for this one thing, then, friend eat that. Is it.
[01:06:55] Speaker B: Sure.
[01:06:55] Speaker A: Right. I happen to absolutely love in the space of only, you know, three movies that what, what terrifier is it? It. It's. It's become just through fucking absolute commitment to being the name in fucking gore out there and not giving a fuck and, you know, not compromising. It's. It's made it a little institution for itself in horror. And I. I'm so pleased that it exists. I'm so glad to have terrafire in our lives.
But of course, my opinions don't matter because it gives you what it is going to give you and it's going to give you a lot of it.
[01:07:39] Speaker B: Now, here's the sort of maybe as close to an objective question as I can have for you, because you're right, it is. You know. You know what you're gonna get. So you like it or you don't. It is shorter than the last one, but it's still very long. It's like 2 hours and five minutes or whatever.
[01:07:53] Speaker A: Yep.
[01:07:54] Speaker B: How does that feel watching it? Does it feel like it's 2 hours and five minutes?
[01:07:58] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:07:59] Speaker B: Take yourself out of your enjoyment of it and just.
[01:08:02] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:08:02] Speaker B: It feels 2 hours long.
[01:08:04] Speaker A: Yes, it does. But again, you know, as I'm certain I've said, I would rather. I would much rather watch 2 hours 20 of an individual's vision than I would watch 2 hours 20. That's got 40 minutes added in because of some notes some fucking exec gave you, right? Or, you know, our test audiences said that this bit was a little big, so we went back and we reshoteze, right? Terrifier three is one man's fucking party. Right? And you're gonna fucking enjoy it or you're not.
[01:08:38] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:08:39] Speaker A: So that's fine.
[01:08:40] Speaker B: Or in my case, I am genuinely an in between person on terrifier where I'm like, you know, I like it fine.
It's indulgent to the point of boredom for me, where it comes to the point where I'm like, it's so gory that, like, there's. I have nothing left in me to be like, ugh. It's like, yeah, no, I get it.
[01:08:59] Speaker A: Oh, no.
[01:09:01] Speaker B: Oh, wow. She's being skinned. Oh, my God. Crazy. You know, what do you do now? I wear out quickly on the concept. So it's like, I like it to a point, and then I'm kind of like, hey, I kind of need a little more movie than this. You know?
I need a little something to. I need to, like, think, maybe he's not gonna get away with it. I need for, like. I don't know, I need something other than just like, lots of gore.
[01:09:25] Speaker A: Well, this one has lore.
[01:09:29] Speaker B: Lore is good.
[01:09:30] Speaker A: Yeah, you're gonna learn a little bit.
[01:09:31] Speaker B: And the, you know, the last one tried to do that. It was. Well, but you end up with things like you're like 25 minutes dream sequence in it.
[01:09:39] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Like this.
[01:09:40] Speaker B: Yeah, no, that's not.
[01:09:41] Speaker A: There aren't. There are no kind of egregious moments of fuck is this?
It doesn't have a dream sequence.
[01:09:50] Speaker B: Nice.
[01:09:51] Speaker A: You know, at least not one as.
[01:09:52] Speaker B: Obviously I'm gonna watch it. I don't think I'm gonna get to the theater to see this one, but I definitely will watch it, obviously.
[01:09:59] Speaker A: I'm looking forward to replacing my terrafire two and three Blu ray with a terrifier two and three blu ray. One and two. Three.
[01:10:07] Speaker B: You're gonna do. You're. You're going to do that even knowing there's a four coming?
[01:10:11] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:10:13] Speaker B: Fair enough.
Together. Also, we watched red rooms.
[01:10:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:10:20] Speaker B: This week, which was like. This movie is like. Had Mark written all over it. Yeah, it did.
[01:10:26] Speaker A: In that it's. It's french, which is a.
[01:10:30] Speaker B: Generally a giant negative for me, but I mean. I mean, this is a movie that I. I don't know if I liked it, per se, and I rated it, like, 3.5 at first because I was like, it's doing good things. And I moved it to a four because I was like. I feel like I didn't like it, but it's very good.
Yeah. I have a weird relationship with this movie.
[01:10:52] Speaker A: All right. So conceptually, right, it's perfectly possible to appreciate that something is excellent without necessarily enjoying it completely.
[01:11:02] Speaker B: It's like, what was that courtroom? What? Also french when the anatomy of a fall.
[01:11:07] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
[01:11:08] Speaker B: Where I was like, I don't think I like that at all. But it was a good, good movie.
[01:11:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
I'm not that in that place with red rooms. I actually really enjoyed it as well.
[01:11:16] Speaker B: No, it's very much your vibe.
[01:11:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
Just obsession and fucking assassination and murders and intrigue, and it's all without showing.
[01:11:27] Speaker B: You anything, which is crazy. This is what caught me, because someone was talking about this, and they were talking about the horror of this movie and everything that they had watched and the tension and all of this. And they were like. And there's no. No on screen violence at all or anything. And I looked. I was like, sure enough, no nudity, no violence. Like, none of the like things that I think of when I think of a french movie. Like, I think extremity, you know, I think of. Yeah, all of the stuff that I hate in a movie and your dose of misogyny and all the things that are french culture in a french movie. And this is not that. It's very effective without any of that stuff in it.
[01:12:07] Speaker A: I think this has been an excellent, excellent, excellent week for movies. Any week, any fucking week where you have the substance is an excellent week.
There was no point at which my thumb paused before hitting that five star.
It's simply. I simply didn't even have to consider it. Right? It wasn't. There was no. There wasn't a moment after seeing the substance, where it was in doubt whether it would get five stars. Can I be any clearer on this matter?
[01:12:43] Speaker B: Right.
[01:12:45] Speaker A: I wish to leave no doubt at all that the substance, the movie, the substance, 2024 starring Demi Moore, is a five star fucking film.
[01:12:59] Speaker B: I mean, I will say I gave it 4.5, but it's a quibble only because I don't think a movie needs to be two hour and 20 minutes long. That said, that's my only quibble with this movie. Otherwise, it's pretty damn near perfect, to.
[01:13:13] Speaker A: The point where I don't even know where to begin. So accomplished, right?
Not in any way a criticism. I quite enjoy it when a decent movie weighs its influences on its sleeve. If you're gonna be shit and rip things off, oh, I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger. But if you're gonna be awesome in your own fucking way, whilst also merrily paying homage. Yes, crack on. Fucking do it.
[01:13:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:13:44] Speaker A: I mean, I would. I would. I would start with the question, really. I mean, what did you spot? What. What kind of source material does the substance draw from? What did you notice? I mean.
[01:13:57] Speaker B: I mean, like you said, jalo's for sure. It's absolutely a modern jalo.
[01:14:01] Speaker A: Yep.
[01:14:02] Speaker B: Without a doubt.
And there were things while watching it that I certainly caught that were, like, direct, like, oh, that is a direct reference, like a frame or whatever from some other thing and stuff like that off the top of my head. I don't remember what they were, but it absolutely. I mean, it very much wears its influences on its sleeve to that point where you're like, oh, I've seen that before.
[01:14:24] Speaker A: Even I think stuff that might not immediately leap out at you. Right. So if you don't know the premise of the substance, Demi Moore is an aging Hollywood starlet.
[01:14:36] Speaker B: Well, she's a fitness person. Yeah. She's like a Jane Fonda kind of situation without the acting.
[01:14:44] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And as the years rack up, you know, her star begins to fade.
And I'm not a woman.
Right. Let's just get that nice and fucking clear.
[01:15:02] Speaker B: Okay?
[01:15:02] Speaker A: So I can't. Interesting revelation I can't speak to. Not only am I not a woman, I'm not a kind of a perimenopausal woman in LA. I'm not. I'm not any of those things.
[01:15:12] Speaker B: I think we can go ahead and call Demi Moore menopause.
[01:15:16] Speaker A: Fine, fine, fine.
[01:15:16] Speaker B: Not perimenopausal.
[01:15:17] Speaker A: Um, but what if I. Fucking Alice. Say it. Say it and be damned.
I kind of felt like one after this film. Fucking hell.
[01:15:27] Speaker B: Sure. I think. No, I think that that is very.
It's so well done that I think you understand.
You understand. Like, I was part way through this movie, I was thinking, like, there's a ton of nudity, obviously. There's a ton of, like, shots of female bodies and things like that. I didn't know who made it. And in the movie theater, partway through, I was like, I feel like a woman made this. And I looked it up in the theater and I was like, sure enough, I'm like, there is a way in which you shoot things and tell the story and everything that even when you have tons of nudity and stuff, you know, a woman has made this.
[01:16:05] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:16:06] Speaker B: And this movie really gets to, I mean, from the beginning, you open on, like, demi Moore, like, leading her class. Right? And she's beautiful. She is drop dead gorgeous at, you know, nearly 60 or whatever that she is at this point. And then following this, like, you know, but the world has said she's useless at this point.
And this sort of journey that she goes on that feels like, parallel to the way, you know, we've talked about, like, Madonna, right? Madonna at this point has, like, mutilated her face into something that doesn't look like a person anymore, which leads us to talk about how she's mutilated her face into not looking like a person anymore. And it's like, is this what you want?
[01:16:52] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:16:53] Speaker B: Is this what, I've done it. You told me I needed to fix it, so I did. And it feels very much like that when you're watching this, this, like, there's nothing you can do. Like, you're just supposed to age out of society and, like, gracefully do so. Never be. Never be professionally successful. Never be a sexual being.
[01:17:14] Speaker A: Never be anything.
[01:17:16] Speaker B: Just stop.
[01:17:17] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:17:17] Speaker B: You know, like that scene I was talking about this with Ben the other day, like, where she's sitting there and, like, Dennis Quaid, who is fantastic in this, says something about, like, when you pass 50, it stops.
[01:17:31] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:17:32] Speaker B: And she's like, what stops? What stops?
And he doesn't have, like, an answer for that. He's just shoving shrimp in his mouth or whatever. It's like it just stops. And, ah. The way that this movie expresses that of just, like, the futility of being a woman over 50.
[01:17:51] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:17:51] Speaker B: And is incredible.
[01:17:53] Speaker A: Expresses it as though it's fact. As though. Even though this is contrived and even though this is a fucking industry set up for men by men.
[01:18:03] Speaker B: Right. Yep.
[01:18:04] Speaker A: This is just the way it is. Sorry. It's. It's simply. It's simply how it is.
[01:18:08] Speaker B: Can't be changed. Immutable.
[01:18:09] Speaker A: Yep.
[01:18:10] Speaker B: What are you gonna do?
It's. Yeah, it is really. It's incredible to just. I keep thinking, I'm like, how is this poor woman gonna follow this movie? Although I haven't seen revenge, which apparently is great as well, but I'm like, how do you follow a movie like this that goes so balls to the wall. Oh, it goes so hard with what it's doing.
[01:18:33] Speaker A: Right. Yes. It's gory. Right. But it's gory in a very specific kind of. Particular type of way that I enjoy. You know what I mean? It's got the exact kind of gore that I like.
[01:18:47] Speaker B: Sure.
[01:18:47] Speaker A: It just does all the things that I really enjoy.
[01:18:50] Speaker B: Does all the things.
[01:18:51] Speaker A: Um, the.
[01:18:52] Speaker B: This does a lot of practical things, which is just great.
[01:18:57] Speaker A: Even though it's long and even though there's a lot going on, it finds time to be funny as fuck.
[01:19:02] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I mean, it is a satire.
[01:19:06] Speaker A: Yeah, of course.
[01:19:06] Speaker B: That's, like, one of the things that's so important to, like, you know, think about with this is like, like, Ben was saying that when he left some, like, Zoomer was like, that was the most con or patronizing movie I've ever seen, or something like that. And it's like you're just like, you're not.
You're not paying attention. You know? This is. It's a satire. It's not. It's not talking down to you. It's not saying something that you've never heard before. Like, oh, what? It's hard to be a woman over 50, like, we all fucking know that. It's about how it says it, that, you know, that works so well.
[01:19:43] Speaker A: Yes, I adore how I use adore very deliberately. I adore it. I adore the fucking film. I adore how the kind of the entertainment industry that it presents is stylized to be superficial to the point of there just being nothing. There is nothing beneath the surface in the industry that Elizabeth works in. It is fucking inch thick. You know what I mean? Just asses and fucking crotches and lipstick and fucking gyrating and music. That is it. That is the world she exists to service.
And while railing against the ageism of it, there's also a kind of a pathos at Elizabeth being so fucking hung out to dry by this industry, yet content to do ever more extreme things for that final fucking fleeting chance of staying a part of it, staying relevant. Um, it's. Right.
Do me a favor. Never, ever fucking face to face, never be in the same place as me and use and say that it's Cronenbergian. Don't ever fucking do that, you motherfucker. I'll end you right, right. I I fucking hate that, man. It's reached out so often as the laziest.
[01:21:05] Speaker B: It just means body horror. Oh, there's body horror. It's Cronyberg. Exactly.
[01:21:10] Speaker A: Cause it is. But it's. But that doesn't mean anything. You know what I mean? He made those fucking movies for a very narrow part of his career before he went into his fucking crime drama fucking era. But his Viggo era, had he never left that awesome era in the eighties and become more and more extreme with the society around him watching those films, this is probably the kind of thing he would be making now had he never left the fucking shivers and rabid kind of era.
[01:21:41] Speaker B: Yeah, because something that really inherits the mindset behind why that body horror.
[01:21:50] Speaker A: Exactly. Exactly. And, you know, if you're maybe an hour, 45 minutes in and thinking, is it gonna go up a gear? It's a bit subtle, isn't it?
[01:22:03] Speaker B: Don't worry.
[01:22:03] Speaker A: Like I said, it's extreme in a very specific, pleasing way to me, particularly.
[01:22:11] Speaker B: Yeah, well, into a lot of people, I think, like, so when you were here, we were gonna go see it, and then it left theaters because it was only planned to be in theaters for, like, a week. It didn't get super wide distribution. And so we were gonna have to drive up. We were gonna go to Kevin Smith's theater down the shore to go see it. And then we ended up just, like, chilling and, you know, getting high or whatever, but we couldn't see it because of that. And then they brought it back to theaters because people were clamoring for it. It's been in theaters ever since. It's still in theaters. And it's, like, breaking records for, like, the smallness of it. It's not like, you know, it beat out still some of the, like, I think it beat out what. What was the big. Oh, the Joker movie? Yeah, sure, sure. You know, like, it's. It's small, so it's not doing like a billion dollars in box office, but purely on the power of how much people liked it. They brought it back into the theater, and it's been doing numbers, so it's hitting with a lot of people.
[01:23:14] Speaker A: Yeah, rightly so.
I don't.
I can't. I can't convey just how good it is. Like, I can't convey how good a fucking movie this is.
Because if it was, like, terrifier, right? Every headline about terrifier is going to lead with this film is gory as fuck.
[01:23:37] Speaker B: Right? This many people puked. This many people walked out.
[01:23:40] Speaker A: Gory film. The substance could lead on that.
[01:23:45] Speaker B: Sure. Right. Absolutely.
[01:23:46] Speaker A: It could lead on the extremity of the piece, but it doesn't have to because it's.
[01:23:50] Speaker B: Yeah, it'd be burying the lead.
[01:23:52] Speaker A: Exactly. Exactly, exactly. It's. It's. It's a package of extremity as opposed to, you know, oh, that gets a bit. Gets a bit fucking wet. You're in there. Nana. Nana. The entire thing is so solid. And there's. When I was talking about influences, I mean, the. In the first, like, the first 3rd, um, we've. They're doing, like, the severance thing where you've got one of them taking control of the life and leaving the other. Da da da da da. It explores the internal kind of geometry of her apartment, the geography of her kind of her living space. And I even got fucking skinnamarink vibes from it. When you're kind of pulling back endlessly through fucking, you know, dream state corridors and shower rooms and tile and bathrooms, and you start to.
[01:24:35] Speaker B: I mean, yeah, to use gen z sort of parlance. Like, it is certainly an experience of liminality when it comes to that building and a lot of what? Because everything feels like an in between space in there, right? Like, you never get, like, a busy city or anything like that. You're always in sort of corridors. You're in her apartment. You're in hallways. Long hallways that withd, you know, nothing in them.
[01:25:02] Speaker A: Exactly.
[01:25:02] Speaker B: Long red hallway with just photos on the wall. Like, everything is a transitional in between space in this movie.
[01:25:10] Speaker A: Yep.
And when it. Yeah, when it fucking goes up that gear.
[01:25:18] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:25:19] Speaker A: It might lose you.
[01:25:22] Speaker B: Sure? Yeah, absolutely. It runs that risk.
[01:25:25] Speaker A: Um, again, I thought, very timely that you mentioned suspiria, particularly the remake.
It will go up a gear, and it might leave you behind.
[01:25:35] Speaker B: Sure.
[01:25:35] Speaker A: You might be tempted maybe, to laugh.
No, no, no. If that is natural, and it's fine, but don't.
[01:25:43] Speaker B: And certainly it is funny, too. It gets so extreme that you have to kind of laugh. Right. But it's.
[01:25:50] Speaker A: It's superb athlete, puncturing tension with, like, really fucking smart sight gags.
Just the vaguest of. Vaguest of spoilers. When things get. When the wheels start coming off at the end, and they both decide that it's time to wrap this up, and they decide they want to stop the process. And I think it's Elizabeth who opens the final package and is, oh, we're sorry, you've decided to leave us kind of note. It's hilarious. It's satirizing, fucking, you know, subscription culture.
[01:26:20] Speaker B: Yeah. She's essentially got a body swapping subscription package.
[01:26:24] Speaker A: Yep, exactly that.
Yeah.
[01:26:27] Speaker B: And see the substance.
[01:26:29] Speaker A: Oh, please. You should. You should.
[01:26:31] Speaker B: If you take anything from this podcast, you know, watch Night of the Hunter, watch dead man's curve, all that kind of stuff.
[01:26:36] Speaker A: But watch how often friends do I fucking sit here and say, I've just given a movie five stars? I think it's true. You should watch it. I never say that.
[01:26:46] Speaker B: That's a good point. And that we both feel pretty equally passionately about it. I mean, especially when it comes to, like, we know body horror is not my vibe. It transcends that.
[01:26:57] Speaker A: Yes, it does. That's just wonderful.
[01:26:58] Speaker B: It's great at that, but it transcends that. Yeah.
[01:27:03] Speaker A: It's very tough to imagine it not being movie of the year for me. Definitely.
[01:27:08] Speaker B: Right? Yeah, exactly. I said the same thing to Ben the other day. I was like, movie of the year? Think it'd be very difficult to argue anything else, will. And obviously, you know, it's one of those things where, like, we know the oscars don't matter or anything like that, but I think it would be a travesty to not recognize the movie, but especially Demi Moore in this movie.
She's incredible, and it's such a brave role to take on, you know, to just look that aging out of Hollywood thing in the face and let us see your entire body, every wrinkle, every mole, all of that kind of stuff. As a woman in her fifties and see it become more and more grotesque over the course of this. And Margaret Qualley also is incredible in this. They're both great, but yeah, I think if she's not recognized for this. Come on, guys, get real. Get real.
[01:28:06] Speaker A: So, Mark, was that it movies wise? Please watch the substance. Oh, please.
[01:28:13] Speaker B: The one other thing that we, we watched that it seems silly to even discuss after the substance was we watched the WNUF Halloween special as well.
[01:28:21] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:28:22] Speaker B: Which I think you were getting a little more mileage out of than I was. I think it commits to the bit.
[01:28:26] Speaker A: I was really enjoying it. I thought, again, not being from that time, that era, that place, it felt. Well, you said it yourself, the fake commercials, bang on.
[01:28:37] Speaker B: Spot on. Yeah, absolutely spot on. To me, the only problem was, thus the plot gets really lost because it is like 70% commercials in it as it's recreating these ads. So it very much feels like watching an actual special from like the eighties and nineties. It's just at a point, it's like, I would really like for us to tell this story.
It doesn't hit as well for me as like Ghostwatch does.
[01:29:01] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:29:02] Speaker B: Where it's like genuinely a really scary story that they're telling between their little bits in the actual studio and everything. It's like when they get there, you're like, oh, shit, this is terrifying. This is never terrifying. It's just a really good representation of watching a Halloween special in 1988 or whatever.
[01:29:22] Speaker A: Nice.
[01:29:23] Speaker B: So you know, your mileage will marry. I think WNUf Halloween special is great to put on in the background at a Halloween party or something like that. Just as a fun little.
Have it rolling and you don't have to pay close attention to it. Cause the story does not matter.
[01:29:37] Speaker A: No, it does not.
[01:29:40] Speaker B: Now for our topic of the week. As I said last week, I just wanted to go through some of the many things we've been getting so many posts on our Facebook lately of bananas, stories and things like that, that people have come across the Internet. And I cannot express enough how much we love when you post that stuff. It really. I love that this is the place you run to when you saw some weird shit somewhere.
And also, for those of you who don't use Facebook and things like that, get on the discord. And in Xander's amazing interface of this, you can post stuff on there as well. Well, we haven't really been using it for that, but I'm trying to sort of use that stuff more because there's so many cool places to discuss things on there. So always share your weird stuff with us, but I'm gonna go through some of those stories, Mark, and tell you about some of the stuff that our listeners have told us about. Gonna start. This one was related to our jaws pod from our live show. This was sent to us by Jennifer Will. This was about that. Every year, dozens of female hammerhead sharks mysteriously convene in French Polynesia under the full moon.
[01:30:56] Speaker A: Oh, nice.
[01:30:58] Speaker B: So, apparently, every austral summer, Rangaroa and Tikihao atolls in French Polynesia host a mysterious assembly of female great hammerhead sharks, which are critically endangered and typically solitary.
And for whatever reason, nobody knows why they're doing this, but for the past few summers, they have recorded 54 female great hammerhead sharks and one whose sex could not be determined.
At these two atolls, which are 9 miles apart, they noted that more than half of the sharks were seasonal residents, meaning they spent more than six days a month there for up to five months. And this was published in a journal called frontiers in marine science. What are they doing exactly? Nobody knows why it is that they're coming here. They're solitary, they're endangered. Why the fuck are they gathering here? But Jennifer did have a theory.
They're there to discuss the brodies and listen. That's as good a reason as any. As far as I'm concerned, yes. So, Brody family, look out. The hammerheads are coming for you.
[01:32:11] Speaker A: Nice.
[01:32:14] Speaker B: This one I found, actually, but this was. An 81 year old man in the United States was sentenced to six months in jail for creating giant hybrid sheep for hunting.
Yeah, this is a bananas one. There's a few things about this that stand out to me. For one. So, an 81 year old Montana man was sentenced to six months in federal prison for illegally using tissue and testicles from large sheep hunted in central Asia. No.
And the US to create hybrid sheep for captive trophy hunting in Texas and Minnesota.
This paragraph is my favorite, right here.
The us district court judge, Brian Morris, said he struggled to come up with a sentence for Arthur Jack Schubarth of Vaughn, Montana. He said he weighed Shoebarth's age and lack of criminal record with a sentence that would deter anyone else from trying to, quote, change the genetic makeup of the creatures on the earth.
[01:33:17] Speaker A: Listen. Sorry. How was he doing this?
[01:33:20] Speaker B: Right. So that's the other thing to me, is I realized I don't understand how cloning works. Can anyone just take, like, tissue and, like, testicles and be like, I have made sheep? Like, how is this. Can I do it with you. Could I make another mark?
[01:33:37] Speaker A: A so crisper.
[01:33:46] Speaker B: I don't know what that is. I don't know what it is. Why does it sound like somewhere you keep your salad?
[01:33:54] Speaker A: I've seen a crispr kit in a museum, and it looked baffling.
[01:33:57] Speaker B: A crispr kit. Can you. Can you buy it?
[01:33:59] Speaker A: Yeah. This is the thing. You can buy yourself a CRISPR kit, which contains all of the equipment and instructions to clone stuff. I don't know about cloning stuff. I know that Crispr you can use to edit your genome to insert things into your genetics.
[01:34:18] Speaker B: Okay.
[01:34:20] Speaker A: As far as how you would go about how some dude would go about making, like, turbo sheep.
[01:34:25] Speaker B: Right? Like, this was, as I read this article, I was like, I feel like we're taking a lot for granted here. How do you do this? Like, you know, I understand how you make, like, plants breed or whatever and things like that, and you. You make a new plant or whatever. I don't understand how you. Is this. Is this the same thing that, like, is it Barbra Streisand who uses to, like, just clone her dog over and over again? Like, how does this work?
[01:34:52] Speaker A: I mean, I'd love a little bit more info on this, please. Um, yeah, just purely, you know, benign. I'm not gonna do it.
But how seriously?
[01:35:04] Speaker B: I wasn't concerned until you said it.
[01:35:06] Speaker A: Yeah, but how. How seriously I take this guy depends a lot on, you know, did he just have, like, a, you know, did he sellotape some fucking testicles to a dog?
[01:35:18] Speaker B: Yeah. Like, I don't know how serious this is, but I do love the idea that, like, the. The. He needs to be sentenced to deter people from Jane changing the genetic makeup of the creatures on earth. Like, the idea is, like, we have to stop people, because if we just allow this, folks are gonna be, like, fucking up all the animals, you know? Like, they know now. They know this exists. Like, what else are they gonna mess with? You know, they just found that hybrid fox dog in South America or whatever.
[01:35:45] Speaker A: Like, so you can't.
[01:35:47] Speaker B: People gonna do.
[01:35:48] Speaker A: You can't clone with CRISPR. What you can do is you can permanently modify genes in living cells and organism and organisms.
[01:35:59] Speaker B: Like, so, like, in me now, not like in a baby of mine, but, like, in me. I could change.
[01:36:04] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:36:05] Speaker B: Could I, like, change my eye color?
[01:36:06] Speaker A: I don't know about changing your eye color, but you could treat genetic causes of disease.
[01:36:14] Speaker B: Well, why don't we. Why don't we do that? What's.
[01:36:16] Speaker A: Because you can't. You can't just fuck with the genetics of life. You can't do that because that would then be transmissible, wouldn't it?
[01:36:25] Speaker B: Right? Yeah.
[01:36:26] Speaker A: So if, let's say I crisper out. I crispr out the areas Danos fucking gene in you, right?
[01:36:32] Speaker B: Sure.
[01:36:34] Speaker A: If you then went on to procreate, your progeny would also have that edited.
[01:36:39] Speaker B: Gene, which would be good, right? Then they wouldn't have the eds.
[01:36:43] Speaker A: No. It wouldn't be good, though, would it? Because you can't. Because you can't just go around editing genes of animals, can you?
[01:36:53] Speaker B: Why not, Mark? Why not? The crispr kit seems to think I can.
[01:36:57] Speaker A: Because what if there was that guy in China, wasn't it? There was that, like, rogue dickhead who thought he could. I'll just cure HIV, no worries. Yeah, but, yeah, you can't just go making unilateral decisions about the genetic makeup of our future species.
[01:37:16] Speaker B: But what is that? So, like, then, what does the kit do?
[01:37:19] Speaker A: You.
[01:37:20] Speaker B: What can I change?
[01:37:22] Speaker A: You can, but you shouldn't.
[01:37:26] Speaker B: Okay, so it's a Jurassic park situation.
[01:37:28] Speaker A: Exactly this. Exactly this. And in terms of law in the.
[01:37:34] Speaker B: UK, saying law or law.
[01:37:37] Speaker A: Yes, law la w. Yes. Okay, so I read that in a. In a research setting in the UK, it's lawful to. I'm just gonna go ahead and quote from Bing. Really? It's lawful to create and use genome edited human embryos, sperm or eggs in research.
[01:38:00] Speaker B: Okay.
[01:38:01] Speaker A: But it is illegal to then go on to use them in assisted reproduction.
[01:38:06] Speaker B: Mmm. So I like you. Like a fertility clinic couldn't use this.
[01:38:10] Speaker A: Exactly.
[01:38:12] Speaker B: So can I buy one of those kits?
[01:38:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:38:15] Speaker B: And then what am I allowed to do with it?
[01:38:19] Speaker A: You can do whatever the fuck you want on yourself, I think.
[01:38:22] Speaker B: On yourself. But then if I have kids, I've changed.
[01:38:25] Speaker A: But then if you have kids, you've changed the human genome and are a monster.
[01:38:32] Speaker B: And that's how we get the substance.
[01:38:34] Speaker A: Exactly. Exactly. Listen, I'm just sending.
[01:38:37] Speaker B: We're gonna have to, like, delve into this, I think. This is not like a yemenite. This is not a brief conversation. I think we're gonna need to do a CRISPR episode.
[01:38:45] Speaker A: But there you go. There's a link coming your way on how to purchase your own.
[01:38:49] Speaker B: Oh, good.
[01:38:51] Speaker A: Build your own CRISPR solution. It's just coming your way.
[01:38:56] Speaker B: It's like 3d printers for your jeans. I also don't know how 3d printers work, so it all falls in line.
[01:39:03] Speaker A: Oh, my. Listen, you won't be able to do this.
[01:39:07] Speaker B: Wow. Okay, challenge accepted.
[01:39:10] Speaker A: You won't be able to do this. This looks fucking solid. This looks really difficult.
[01:39:16] Speaker B: Would Eileen be able to do it?
[01:39:18] Speaker A: Eileen could. Eileen's probably done four today.
[01:39:23] Speaker B: Okay, interesting. We're gonna do. Guys, we're gonna do a CRISPR episode, because I need to know more about how this works.
[01:39:29] Speaker A: I mean, I'm done with it. I'm super into it.
[01:39:34] Speaker B: Apparently, though, this poor guy is very sad about what he's done. He said I will have to work the rest of my life to repair everything I've done. And his attorney said that his life, reputation, and family were ruined. And I think this has broken him.
All just from cloning some sheep.
[01:39:52] Speaker A: Yeah, mate.
[01:39:54] Speaker B: I don't know if I'd feel that bad about it.
[01:39:56] Speaker A: You can get, like, there's instructions and kids everywhere. Have a look at that link I just sent you. There you go.
[01:40:03] Speaker B: Where did you send it?
[01:40:05] Speaker A: Zoom. Start genome editing with CRiSpr cas nine. You can do it.
[01:40:09] Speaker B: What is this? The weirdest we live in the future in, like, the weirdest fucking ways.
[01:40:15] Speaker A: DIY bacterial genome engineering CRiSPR kit, $130 on Amazon.
[01:40:20] Speaker B: $130?
[01:40:22] Speaker A: Yup. 130 quid.
[01:40:23] Speaker B: It feels like it should cost more than that.
[01:40:26] Speaker A: Well, it feels like it shouldn't exist.
[01:40:28] Speaker B: I'm gonna go edit Walter, see what happens.
[01:40:30] Speaker A: Do it. Give him some extra testicles.
[01:40:33] Speaker B: Oh, no, we already got rid of the ones he had.
We don't want him have any more. He's already started humping mark. I don't need him to do that.
Let's see what else we got on the list of stories from people. Oh, we got this one from a few people. First from Rob, then from Richard.
This is this story.
I'm gonna read you this, and I'm gonna see if you have the same first reaction question that I had.
[01:41:06] Speaker A: Give it to me.
[01:41:06] Speaker B: So, headline is horrifying. Mistake to take organs from a living person was averted.
[01:41:12] Speaker A: I've seen this witness. This one I have seen.
[01:41:16] Speaker B: Let me read this to you. Read the beginning of this article.
Natasha Miller says she was getting ready to do her job preserving donated organs for transplantation. When the nurses wheeled the donor into the operating room, she quickly realized something wasn't right. Though the donor had been declared dead, he seemed to her very much alive. He was moving around kind of thrashing, like moving thrashing around on the bed, Miller told NPR in an interview. And then when we went over there, you could see he had tears coming down. He was crying visibly.
Wait for it. The donor's condition alarmed everyone in the operating room at Baptist Health Hospital in Richmond, Kentucky, including the two doctors who refused to participate in the organ retrieval. She says, the procuring surgeon, he was like, I'm out of it. I don't want to have anything to do with it. Miller says it was very chaotic. Everyone was just very upset.
Miller says she overheard the case coordinator of the hospital for her employer, Kentucky organ donor affiliates, call her supervisor for advice. So the coordinator calls the supervisor at the time and was saying that he was telling her that she needed to find another doctor to do it, that we were going to do this case. She needs to find someone else, Miller says. And she's like, there is no one else. She's crying. The coordinator, because she's getting yelled at. Mark, what's your first thought here, just out of curiosity?
[01:42:36] Speaker A: Stop the fucking process.
[01:42:37] Speaker B: Now he's alive.
[01:42:40] Speaker A: You know what I mean? The guy was declared brain dead. He isn't brain dead. He's moving.
[01:42:45] Speaker B: No, no, no, no, not. He was not declared brain dead. Declared dead.
All the way dead.
[01:42:53] Speaker A: Warm and dead. Yeah. Declared warm and dead.
[01:42:57] Speaker B: Yeah. Right. Like the way you take organs out of people. Right? You want to do it as soon after they die as possible.
But he was declared dead, and he's crying.
[01:43:06] Speaker A: Listen, genuinely, what I'm hearing are parallels to what we spoke about right at the top with execution.
[01:43:15] Speaker B: Mm hmm. Yeah.
[01:43:16] Speaker A: The evidence of your fucking eyes and ears is telling you that you can't harvest from this guy. He's alive. I just get somebody else to do it. We're here now. We've come all this way.
What?
[01:43:28] Speaker B: That is bonkers. And I was reading this whole article. I'm like, are we gonna address this? Because this seems like. Like, yes, it's a horrifying thing to imagine. You could be declared dead and someone harvest your organs or whatever. But when I saw the story, I assumed that the person seemed dead. I did not expect to read the story and find that they were, like, showing obvious signs of being alive. It's not like, you know, pouring salt on a frog's legs or something like that. And it's like, oh, they dance. It's like, no, this is, like, a living person.
So for their part, the organization, coda, said that, whoa, this is being misrepresented.
She said that they did not attempt. They did not try to press anyone to operate on a person who was living.
They claim that that's a lie or whatever.
All these people say that that's what happened that to me. Like, did they. Why would they lie about that? Like, everyone was in a panic over this, like, crying, calling people. It was a full emergency. Why would you make that up?
[01:44:42] Speaker A: It's one of the real core takeaways of this podcast over the past few years is that I don't think there's a single system which is 100% fucking failsafe.
[01:44:55] Speaker B: Sure. Right.
[01:44:57] Speaker A: Even, even something as fucking nightmarish as that, as that story is, and even when. Even in that fucking fringe case where you're about to harvest someone and they're thrashing about the place and crying and there still isn't a failsafe.
[01:45:17] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. Like, that feels like that edge is like, very distinctly delineated.
[01:45:23] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:45:23] Speaker B: And yet if one of those doctors had just been like, well, my job's on the line. They say I got to do it and did it, they would have just cut some living person open.
[01:45:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
What? Wild.
[01:45:35] Speaker B: Wild.
That's a, that's a bonkers one.
[01:45:39] Speaker A: You're not safe. You're never safe.
[01:45:41] Speaker B: You are never safe in a clearly obvious situation where everything is, you know.
[01:45:47] Speaker A: You should be obvious, nice and safe and dead.
[01:45:53] Speaker B: Another one came from Dale. I love this one.
This was a Bay Area startup, claims it developed two way communication between people via dreams.
[01:46:05] Speaker A: This is my buddy Dale. This is my buddy Dale Evans. I used to work with Dale. Nice guy. Really fucking good lad. Hey, Dale.
[01:46:11] Speaker B: Hey, Dale. Thank you for this.
Love this one you spotted out the gate that like, you know, there's the, like, wherever the link came from, whatever was very like, woo. All that. For the record, this has been covered by the news. There is a Bay Area ABC seven News. You'll see this in the, in the links. If you look at the, the blog or at the bottom of this, the description for this episode, ABC News did cover this, but I want to emphasize that it says, claims it developed communication by Adrian.
We don't know this. So it's a startup, of course. Naturally. The Redwood City startup says it reached the milestone on September 24 with the technology that linked two people in a lucid dream state. It achieved the communication on October. Lucid dreaming, of course, is a state in which you're asleep but also aware you're dreaming. So Michael Reduga is CEO of Remspace and showed pictures of the participants.
[01:47:13] Speaker A: Right.
[01:47:14] Speaker B: For example, when this participant found himself in a lucid dream, our server sent him a random word, so nobody knew what word it would be. And in a lucid dream, he replied.
Roduga said, while pointing to a board with the participants picture on it. Our server detected his reply and confirmed that it was right. And when the next person found herself in a lucid dream, we sent his answer to her, and she repeated it as well.
He says this is achieved through a special device that attaches itself to different areas on the head. And in that video on the ABC seven thing, you can see this, which looks as, like crack potty as you imagine it would look like it very much. It's like, you know, when in back to the future when Marty comes in and Doc's got. Trying to read his mind with the thing on his head, it feels very much like this. He says, when you talk in this language, which he calls Remyo. When you talk in this language, in your dreams, we can hear you and we can connect two dreamers together.
This guy is Russian, by the way. He said he's been working on this specific project for the last few years, bringing the operation to the Bay area from Russia five months ago.
So he said people in different countries are participating in this, and he is trying to submit it for peer review.
Yeah, I don't know. I'm not swayed by pictures.
[01:48:41] Speaker A: I'm not particularly swayed either, by pictures of shite, but peer review that shit. And then we will talk.
[01:48:51] Speaker B: Right? Yeah. If you get this peer reviewed and they're like, yeah, sure enough, there it is.
[01:48:57] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:48:57] Speaker B: All right, buddy. Yeah, it is legit enough that they got on the news, but, you know, they'll interview anybody. So we'll see. Dale, see something.
[01:49:11] Speaker A: One of the kind of. One of the founding points of the topic that I didn't talk about last week or this week or the week before, but intend to. Right. A fascination I have is the seat of consciousness. Right. Where. Where does consciousness actually reside?
[01:49:34] Speaker B: Right.
[01:49:34] Speaker A: Because it isn't as clear cut as, oh, it's in your brain. And there are. There are. There are life forms. There are life forms that exhibit consciousness in fucking all manner of parts of their bodies.
[01:49:47] Speaker B: Fucking mushrooms.
[01:49:49] Speaker A: Exactly. Squid, octopus. Decentralized fucking nervous systems.
So it isn't. It isn't completely in the realms of wacky horseshit for me to. I could believe. You could talk me into believing that we could communicate through lucid dreaming. I could buy that after a while.
[01:50:09] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's not beyond, like, the realm of possibility.
[01:50:13] Speaker A: No.
[01:50:14] Speaker B: This guy seems like a little bit of a crackpot, but, you know, we're like, people are figuring out how to make it so, like, people who are paralyzed can control things with their brains and stuff like that. So I don't think. Yeah, I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility that we'd figure out how to do that.
We'll just see if it's this guy who is the one who figures it out.
[01:50:39] Speaker A: I'm very keen to see the results of your peer review, sir.
[01:50:44] Speaker B: Yeah, we'll keep up with that.
Another story. This one came from Richard. I love this one.
Disguised GP admits attempted murder, poisoning.
I'm going to send you this one, Marco, so that you can see his dissection here.
So a doctor who wore a disguise when he injected his mother's partner with poison in a dispute over an inheritance has admitted attempted murder.
Are you seeing it?
It could not be more like. The only way this could be more obviously disguised is if he was wearing, like, a groucho mark.
[01:51:30] Speaker A: Oh, that's glasses.
[01:51:32] Speaker B: It's. Do you want to describe so good what he's got going here?
[01:51:35] Speaker A: To all intents and purposes, he looks as though he's wearing those fucking, you know, Marx brothers fucking set. He's got a pair of glasses on. He's got just the fakest looking straight mustache and a little kind of goaty beard. The nose doesn't look right. It's the worst looking disguise I've ever seen.
[01:51:50] Speaker B: Yeah, he's clearly got, like, kind of brown makeup on his face.
[01:51:54] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:51:54] Speaker B: And like a toupee that looks like an upside down bird's nest.
[01:51:58] Speaker A: He's obviously kind of darkened his skin. Yeah. And has created a fake id using the name Raj Patel. All right.
Okay.
Could have been a little bit more imaginary, I think.
[01:52:11] Speaker B: Yeah. Thomas Kwan, 53.
[01:52:14] Speaker A: Look at him originally. If you see, it's without the disguise.
[01:52:18] Speaker B: Without the disguise, yeah. Let me. Let me read to you from this, because I love the way this discovery comes. He had denied the offense against Patrick O'Hara, who was given a toxin which caused a rare and life threatening flesh eating disease.
Prosecutors said Quan went to extraordinary lengths to disguise himself and prepare the attack at the victim's Newcastle home on the 22 January.
So Quan had. Let's see. Let me see where it says what. What happened here. He said Kwan's mother, Wyatt King, also known as Jenny Leung, had made a will, leaving her home in Newcastle to her partner of 20 years, Mister O'Hara, with it only passing to her children in the event of his death.
Quan, who had been a well respected GP, was obsessed with money and his inheritance, so hatched an intricate plan to eliminate the impediment posed by Mister O'Hara. Kwan sent his victims letters purporting to be from the NHS, saying he was eligible for a home visit from a community nurse for a medical checkup. The GP disguised himself with a mask and glasses and carried out the visit himself. Also offering the victim a Covid-19 booster jab.
Mister O'Hara. Oh, good. Really glad to hear that.
Thank goodness.
Mister O'Hara felt a terrible pain as soon as the injection was given. With the visitor making a swift exit, the court had heard the victim. I love this. The victim became suspicious when Miss Leung said the nurse was the same height as her son and then sought medical help. Hmm. He is suspiciously exactly the same height as my kid. That's the giveaway on here. Love that. Mister O'Hara ended up being treated for necrotizing fasciitis at Newcastle's Royal Victoria Infirmary and had to have parts of his arm removed.
The guy on top of his shitty disguise had a borderline obsession with poisons and how to kill people.
And of course, every dumb idiot who tries to do stuff like this, they went to his house and he had his whole search history was like, how do you kill people with poison? And what's a poison recipe and shit like that? So.
Right. Just like the most obvious stuff on the planet.
Bless him. Thankfully, his poor stepfather recovered, aside from the pieces of his arms, arm removed. So good for him.
[01:54:52] Speaker A: I'm delighted.
[01:54:54] Speaker B: And the final story that I want to share goes to something that we have discussed. I'm actually going to need like a brief refresher on, on here. It has to do with the game of conkers.
[01:55:08] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah. Great, great. Yeah.
[01:55:10] Speaker B: Remind me again how you play conquerors, because I think that's gonna be important to what happened here in this story.
[01:55:17] Speaker A: You are in school, right? You are eleven.
Sure it is autumn.
Conkers are dropping from trees in their multitudes, which are horse chestnuts. Horse chestnuts in their little spiky little dome casing cracked open. Get your conker.
You may want to temper your conker. You may want to strengthen it somehow. Maybe, perhaps you'll soak it in vinegar, you know, maybe you'll bake it in the oven for an hour. You want to get your conqueror hard as fuck, because you're going to drive a nail into it with a bootlace and you're going to put that conqueror on a string.
And your opponents, who've done the same thing, you're gonna take it in turns to hold your conquer up like so, while your opponent has a go at just twatting it with their conquer as hard as they can. And your conquer survives and it is the winner.
[01:56:13] Speaker B: There we go. Sounds dick. Do people get hit a lot with the conquered while playing this? Because it feels like a small target. Your knuckles would imagine a lot. Raw knuckles.
[01:56:22] Speaker A: Do you know what? I think I'm as certain as I can be that most schools have, you know, banned. Outlawed at this point.
[01:56:29] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:56:30] Speaker A: But. Yes.
[01:56:31] Speaker B: Big business.
Yeah. They may have outlawed it in school, but there is still a world conquer championship. And, Mark, there has been disrespect upon the name of this very game. Not the headline.
[01:56:47] Speaker A: Skullduggery.
[01:56:48] Speaker B: Skullduggery. Cheating. Alleged after men's world conquer champion found with steel chestnut.
[01:56:56] Speaker A: Son of a bitch.
[01:56:57] Speaker B: Mm hmm. The world conquer championships is investigating cheating allegations after the men's winner was found to have a steel chestnut in his pocket.
David Jenkins won the annual title in Southwick.
[01:57:09] Speaker A: Yeah. Very good.
[01:57:11] Speaker B: Hey, there we go.
On Sunday for the first time after competing since 1990. 1977.
It's a long time to be playing conkers on the professional stage, on the circus.
[01:57:23] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Doing the tournament.
[01:57:26] Speaker B: Yeah. But the 82 year old was found to have a medal replica in his pocket when he was searched by organizers after his victory. The retired engineer has denied using the medal variety in the tournament. Jenkins was responsible for drilling and inserting strings into other competitors chestnuts as the competition's top judge, known as the King Conquer.
[01:57:45] Speaker A: Nice. Nice.
[01:57:47] Speaker B: Alistair Johnson Ferguson, who lost in the men's final against Jenkins, said he suspected foul play. The Telegraph reported. The 23 year old said, my conquer disintegrated in one hit, and that just doesn't happen. I'm suspicious of foul play and have expressed my surprise to organizers.
Jakin said, I was found with the steel conqueror in my pocket, but I only carry it around with me for humor value, and I did not use it during the event. Yes, I did help prepare the conquerors before the tournament, but this isn't cheating or a fix, and I didn't mark the strings. Apparently, in pro conquers, everybody puts their conquerors into a sack and you pull one.
Yeah. So you shouldn't be able to reinforce your conqueror.
[01:58:32] Speaker A: It is luck of draw kind of home.
Methods for strengthening one's conquer are all part of the magic. See?
[01:58:41] Speaker B: Right. Yep.
[01:58:43] Speaker A: But not.
[01:58:44] Speaker B: I mean, and that seems like. Yeah, obviously, steel is too far, but it does feel like trying to reinforce your conqueror would make the game more interesting than just.
[01:58:53] Speaker A: Yeah, it does.
[01:58:54] Speaker B: Did you pick a random horse chestnut that's stronger than everybody else?
[01:58:58] Speaker A: This idea of kicking off the tournament by everyone grabbing a random conquer, that doesn't sit well.
[01:59:02] Speaker B: Yeah. It feels like defeating the purpose, right?
[01:59:04] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:59:04] Speaker B: Not that. I mean, I'm not. I've only learned of this through this podcast. But it just feels like it would be more interesting to see if you could reinforce your conquer at the start.
[01:59:12] Speaker A: Of the Grand national. You don't all just jump on a random horse, do you?
[01:59:15] Speaker B: Sure. Right. Exactly. Yeah.
Very, very good way of putting it.
So, yeah, just some of the things that have been brought to our attention on our Facebook page over the past few weeks. Wanted to share those because I've gotten a kick out of them. I know other people have gotten a kick out of them. And always we wanted to bless you with those as well.
[01:59:40] Speaker A: Always. But look, underneath all of the fun, yeah, underneath all of the japery with your chums here, Mark and Corrigan, there's a lesson, isn't there?
[01:59:52] Speaker B: Oh, is there?
[01:59:52] Speaker A: There's a lesson. And sometimes the stories are a little bit more fun, aren't they? Yeah. And sometimes there's a metal conquer and a guy in a silly disguise, but it's still a fucking nasty world, isn't it, eh?
[02:00:07] Speaker B: That's true. No getting around that, my dear friend. No getting around that.
[02:00:10] Speaker A: Don't be tempted. Even though there's some whimsy now and again, punctuating the awful, inky fucking forever blackness, still. Still fucking horrible.
[02:00:22] Speaker B: Can't get away from that. Wow. Okay, well, that's one way to wrap up this delightful time that we've had here.
[02:00:30] Speaker A: There's nothing before it, nothing after it.
[02:00:32] Speaker B: That's all we got.
[02:00:33] Speaker A: That's all we got, friends. It's all we fucking got.
[02:00:39] Speaker B: But anyway, if you have some whimsy in your life that you would like to share with us or some of the dark and terrible, you know where to find us, all over the interwebs. And we are here to listen and, you know, perhaps bring these around every now and again just to. Just to remind everyone of, you know, it's wild out there. You never know what's gonna happen next time. Someone might strap a bomb to your neck. Someone might use a steel conker.
You don't know wild cards left and right.
[02:01:10] Speaker A: It's a scale, isn't it?
[02:01:11] Speaker B: It's a scale, right?
[02:01:13] Speaker A: Steel conkers at the one end, blowing up on telly neck, bombs on the. On the other end. And in between those two extremes, the only thing you can do, really, is to stay spooky.
[02:01:28] Speaker B: You just got to stay spooky.
