Ep. 212: that's telekinesis, kyle

[00:00:04] Speaker A: Did you know, Marco, that the show Stranger Things is based on a real life US government conspiracy theory? [00:00:12] Speaker B: Right. So. No, I didn't know. But one gets clearly the impression from watching it that a lot of stuff, a lot of law has played into it. [00:00:24] Speaker A: Yes, very much so. And to be clear, when I do say real life, I don't mean it actually happened. [00:00:30] Speaker B: Of course. [00:00:30] Speaker A: It's conspiracy theories. [00:00:31] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Some shit that people have spoken about. [00:00:35] Speaker A: Yeah. Does the Montauk project ring any bells for you? [00:00:41] Speaker B: Absolutely not. It's. It's. It's a sequence of words that I've heard. [00:00:48] Speaker A: Sure, yeah, absolutely. [00:00:49] Speaker B: But what it is, what's behind it? [00:00:51] Speaker A: Nothing. Yeah, right. [00:00:52] Speaker B: I don't know. And I'm eager to know. [00:00:55] Speaker A: Beautiful. Do you know, I'm eager to tell you. [00:00:58] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, right. I know so much shit now. [00:01:04] Speaker A: It's true. You do. [00:01:06] Speaker B: Seriously, Not a. Barely a. A week certainly doesn't go by without someone trying to fucking lay some knowledge on me. And me going, I am not the guy. You're not that guy, pal. [00:01:23] Speaker A: I know, it's. It's funny. People do often, you know, tell me about things and. [00:01:29] Speaker B: Do you fake it? Do you go, oh, really? [00:01:31] Speaker A: Well, that's the. This is such a tough decision for me because I'm always like in between. Like, is it douchey to be like. Yeah, I know about that. Yeah, right. Like, sound like a know it all or whatever. But. But like also like, is it douchey to pretend and be like, oh, fascinating when someone tells you something that you're like. Actually, I've talked for two hours about that. Go on. [00:01:57] Speaker B: And that's another point that we'll get on to. But Montauk, M, O, N, T, A, U, K. Yes. [00:02:04] Speaker A: Perfectly spelled. And Mark, this conspiracy has everything. Esperant, time travel, teleportation, telekinesis, portals between worlds, and even monsters from other realms. [00:02:19] Speaker B: Maybe I'll save this for when you're finished, but for some reason, the Star Trek transporter discourse seems to have had a moment lately across the resurgence. Yeah. You know, the questions that it raises and. And. [00:02:38] Speaker A: Right. [00:02:38] Speaker B: So maybe that's. That's one for later on that actually. [00:02:42] Speaker A: Sort of comes up in here. Weirdly beautiful in multiple ways. And to be clear, this isn't. I'm not going to be solely talking about the Montauk project here, but this is a. Our entree into today's topic. So here's the gist of what happened here. [00:02:57] Speaker B: Okay. [00:02:59] Speaker A: There were two military installations on Long island right over here in New York. [00:03:03] Speaker B: The most magical place on Earth. [00:03:05] Speaker A: That's right. You know it. Camp Hero and Montauk Air Force Station, Long island specifically. Obviously after. After World War II. And again, I just need you to imagine air quote air quotes and the word allegedly around everything I'm saying so that I don't have to keep on saying it. Yeah, but after World War II, these Montauk bases were turned into hubs of paranormal research. [00:03:30] Speaker B: So these bases. These bases definitely existed. That's the first thing. [00:03:35] Speaker A: The bases for sure exist. Yeah. [00:03:37] Speaker B: Right. [00:03:37] Speaker A: They didn't make that up out of whole cloth. The paranormal research part? No. At least not to our knowledge. In 1992, Preston B. Nichols self published a book called the Montauk Experiments in Time, in which he claimed that he had recovered memories of having been a researcher for this paranormal project. He described what the facilities looked like, the day to day operations, the strange advanced technologies they used, the paranormal activity that occurred, and myriad abuses visited upon test subjects, many of whom were children. [00:04:13] Speaker B: Okay. [00:04:14] Speaker A: Once this book got out into the world, o cranks, other folks began recovering memories that straight away had been. [00:04:22] Speaker B: I'm calling this bullshit. All of it. [00:04:25] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah, this is not. This is not a question. I am not. Ye. Sometimes I put things out there and I'm like, what do you think, Mark? [00:04:35] Speaker B: We're gonna. [00:04:35] Speaker A: We're gonna cut that out. This is bullshit. Obviously it is. I mean, this is kind of a funny one, because it is. It's like so. It's so far out there, but obviously there's plenty of people who believe shit like this. The more out there something is, the more people are like, whoa. Like, if you told this to Naomi Wolf, she'd be like, fuck yes, we need to be talking about this more. So once this got out, folks began recovering memories that they too had been a part of the Montauk project. But the government had used MK Ultra techniques to wipe their memories of the shady things that had gone on there. Apparently those techniques didn't work well enough though, because now, according to all that's interesting, Nichols had full recollections of experiments in, quote, mind control and telepathy, opening space time portals, contact with alien life, and the abduction of runaway children, all under the authority of a US military program financed by Nazi gold recovered during World War II. [00:05:43] Speaker B: Oh, God. Right, let's just give this the joag treatment here. Right? [00:05:46] Speaker A: Sure. I just love that last detail so much. Just to like really drive it. [00:05:51] Speaker B: Sneak that in under there. Nazi gold, obviously. [00:05:54] Speaker A: How else would they have funded it? [00:05:56] Speaker B: MK Ultra mind erasure techniques. [00:06:00] Speaker A: We'll get there. [00:06:01] Speaker B: Such as? [00:06:02] Speaker A: Yeah, it's like using LSD for the purpose of mind control. [00:06:08] Speaker B: Okay. Because if it's. All right. Okay, fine, fine. I'll wave it. Wave it through. [00:06:15] Speaker A: Okay. You were gonna. You had questions like there were. If. If this is one thing, then maybe we're on to something here. [00:06:23] Speaker B: Well, no, I mean, mind control. All right, maybe. I mean, if it's. If it's mind erasure that you want, then it's right. [00:06:29] Speaker A: I mean, I'm sure that was amongst the things they thought that they could do. [00:06:32] Speaker B: Xanax is your one there. Surely, if you want to forget. [00:06:36] Speaker A: What's the. What's the one. It's not Xanax. I've taken plenty of Xanax. Doesn't make you forget anything. What's the. The one that we did. The sleep medication. Ambien. [00:06:48] Speaker B: Yes, yes. [00:06:49] Speaker A: Ambien is what they needed at that point. They want the forget me now juice. That's it. But okay, so all that stuff recovered. Not to gold, yada yada. Nichols wrote of something he called the Montauk chair, which would use electromagnetism to sort of amp up the psychic powers of anyone sitting in it. While in the Montauk chair, some sort of hairy monster was provoked at one point that showed up on base and ate or smashed anything it could find. [00:07:22] Speaker B: Hey, we've all provoked the hairy monster in the Montauk chair, haven't we? [00:07:27] Speaker A: Unrelatable. [00:07:30] Speaker B: I'm doing it right now. [00:07:34] Speaker A: Okay. Wait till after the cast, buddy. Straight Stranger Things pretty much took all of that straight out of the book. Just about everything we see go down. And all those experiments with Eleven and her ilk are things described by Nichols and the Duffer brothers, actually, initially were just going to call the show Montauk. [00:07:59] Speaker B: I think I've heard that. Yeah. [00:08:02] Speaker A: And I think even in the show, I think the organization might be called Montauk or it's in Montauk or something. Like, I feel like they do use it somehow in there. But the show did not end up called that. One of the so called Montauk boys, these kids who were involved in the experiments, said he'd recovered memories, that when the experiments started, they'd target expendable boys like orphans, runaways, or the children of drug addicts. The kind of kids no one would really come looking for. The aim was to fracture your mind so they could program you. They would change the temperature from very hot to very cold, starve you, then overfeed you. I remember being beaten with a wooden Pole. And they loved to hold your head underwater until you nearly drowned. That was effective. It makes a person less likely or makes a person likely to listen to and obey their rescuer. They also used LSD to put our brains into an altered state. He also claimed that the Montauk boys had been sent to Mars and to biblical times through the portals, which I'm sure would be two very different and jarring environments. And some boys never came back from Mars. Or the Bible. Yeah, so there could be characters in the Bible that are just lost Montauk boys for all we know. No way of knowing. [00:09:22] Speaker B: Wow. They gave me LSD and sent me to the Bible. [00:09:28] Speaker A: That's a bad trip, man. [00:09:29] Speaker B: Right? Or is it? You know? [00:09:33] Speaker A: Yeah, I think it is. I think it is. Once its sinister experiments were done, the installations were abandoned and filled with concrete. The equipment all destroyed. This, however, is not the only time the US government has been accused of metaphysical meddling. In 1943, there was the so called Philadelphia Experiment. Have you ever heard of this one? [00:09:58] Speaker B: Yes, I have, I have. [00:10:00] Speaker A: Okay, so again, conspiracy theory, not an actual thing that happened. So scare quotes around everything I say. 1943, the US military wants to become undetectable to Nazi radar. And they think they can do that using electromagnetic fields. [00:10:21] Speaker B: Yep. [00:10:21] Speaker A: The magic. The magic trick to everything. [00:10:24] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:10:25] Speaker A: So they tested this out on the USS Eldridge, a naval ship stationed in Philadelphia. According to legend, the Eldridge not only became invisible to radar, but to the human eye as well. That's right. They'd full on invisibility cloak to the boat with electromagnetism. But that's not all. Oh no. In doing so, they also sent the ship through a hole in space time 200 miles away to Norfolk, Virginia before bringing it back again. The result, dear Margo, was Cronenbergian. [00:11:04] Speaker B: Crazy how they do that. [00:11:06] Speaker A: I know. Some of the crew were fused into the bulkheads of the ship and others had rematerialized inside out. Yeah, man. Gnarly. [00:11:20] Speaker B: Obviously. There's photos, naturally. [00:11:23] Speaker A: Yeah, tons of evidence all over the place. [00:11:25] Speaker B: Of course, you'd want to get people in to record that, wouldn't you? [00:11:30] Speaker A: Yeah, you would think. Yep. But those who came out physically unscathed were driven to madness by the disorientation of their short existence out of space time. [00:11:40] Speaker B: The things they must have seen. [00:11:42] Speaker A: I can only imagine. Needless to say, people who actually served on the Eldridge are like, lol. What? [00:11:52] Speaker B: I must have been off off shift that weekend, right? [00:11:55] Speaker A: I was on shore leave. You know, it's crazy, but one of the folks who claimed to have worked at Montauk, claimed to also have been involved in the Philadelphia Experiment and claimed that the two were connected. Disappearing ships and telekinetic monster summoning children aside, FOIA documents do show that the US has at least had a passing interest in telekinesis as a phenomenon. That's not entirely surprising. As I talked about on the Fan Cave episode about the others on our Kofi in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, people were really trying to figure out if there was some scientific basis for Paranormal Activity. [00:12:35] Speaker B: Yeah, I am a sometime fan of Hellboy. [00:12:39] Speaker A: Right, sure, yeah, of course. [00:12:41] Speaker B: Enjoy Hellboy a great deal in both in print and on screen. And I think I've reflected on this numerous times. And one of the big hooks that grabs me so much about Hellboy is the fact that, you know, alt history, I adore anyway. [00:13:01] Speaker A: Yes. [00:13:01] Speaker B: But I also, I also love the idea that, you know, they're a fucking foot thick concrete vault somewhere. [00:13:08] Speaker A: Mm. [00:13:09] Speaker B: Where the fucking government and the ethereal are working hand in hand on shit that we can't conceive of. Forces so dangerous that were they to escape for a moment, we'd be fucked. You know what I mean? I, I, I love that as an idea. You know, it's, you know, it ends there. [00:13:30] Speaker A: Very unlikely to actually exist and to have been able to remain secret. And control is another victim that veil the game. [00:13:43] Speaker B: Control, yes, that's a fantastic example of that, of, of that bit that I love so much that, you know, past any fucking office door on a city set on a city street, just mere feet away from our regular tangible kind of life that we can interact with and have dinner and fucking see our kids and go to work. Just on the other side of that glass door there's fucking tentacles and fucking mind control and shit. [00:14:11] Speaker A: I'm all Men in Black, for that matter. Amongst my favorite degrees of yes. [00:14:17] Speaker B: I'm not as big on Men in Black as some people are. [00:14:20] Speaker A: I love Men in Black, especially men in Black 3, which I have seen probably a dozen times at least at this point. [00:14:27] Speaker B: Isn't that the shit one? [00:14:29] Speaker A: No, that's two. Two is the shit one. [00:14:31] Speaker B: Men in Black 3. Lara Flynn Boyle. [00:14:35] Speaker A: No, that's the first one. Or no, that is the. No, she's in the first one, right? [00:14:38] Speaker B: Nah, it's Rip Torn in the first one, right? [00:14:44] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah, you're right. I was thinking, who is. Oh, I was thinking Linda Fiorentino. That was who I was thinking from the first one. And I got her confused with Laura Flamboyal. But yes, the second one is awful. The third one is the one that has Jermaine Clement as the bad guy. [00:15:01] Speaker B: Can't remember it. Ah. [00:15:03] Speaker A: Oh, it's so good. So much fun. I highly recommend giving that a rewatch or a watch if you haven't seen it. [00:15:11] Speaker B: I don't know which one it is. Right. But it's such a fantastic joke in one of those, where Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones are fighting an alien. Right. They're having a punch up with an alien and Will Smith shouts, he's a bald Chinian. And he's got like a set of balls on his chin. So they just punch him in the balls on his chin. He's the first one a Paul Chinian. He's a Balchinian. That's great. That is an amazing gag. [00:15:47] Speaker A: I know, right? See, Men in Black is great. I love Men in Black. But all that to say back to where this line of thought came from is. Yeah. Late 19th, early 20th century, people were trying to figure out if there was a scientific way that they could reach. [00:16:05] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:16:06] Speaker A: The other side, you know, talk to the afterlife, figure out if there are other realms. Which I think is. Is fascinating. You know, like, you know, for me that while I am very much a skeptic and an atheist and all those kinds of things, that my perspective differs from yours in that I'm always like, you could. You could prove it to me. Right? Like, if you gave me the right evidence, you could prove it to me. And I like the idea. [00:16:32] Speaker B: Then what. What is the quotes? Right. Evidence. Peer reviewed. [00:16:37] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Right. Yeah. I need to be able to see all of this, you know, it needs to be duplicable. People need to be able to. You know, scientists all over the world need to be able to repeat those experiments and get the same result. You know, in which case, then, sure, like, I wouldn't shut myself off to something because I just simply don't believe. [00:17:00] Speaker B: See, I would believe that too, however. [00:17:03] Speaker A: Okay, right. [00:17:04] Speaker B: I'm not. I'm not. You know, if all of those things were in place and minds that I trusted, like Brian Cox, for example, he would probably be the litmus test for me. If Brian Cox. Not off. Not from Succession, you know. [00:17:19] Speaker A: No, I know who. Brian Cox. [00:17:20] Speaker B: I just feel I had to qualify that. Not fucking. What was his name? [00:17:25] Speaker A: Brian Cox from Succession. Who came out. [00:17:33] Speaker B: Not Logan Roy. If Logan Roy were to go on telly and tell me that there was. [00:17:37] Speaker A: Hey, I might buy it. [00:17:39] Speaker B: No. Yeah. For some. For some reason, Brian Cox is my Arbiter of the rational that feels. [00:17:45] Speaker A: That feels fair. [00:17:46] Speaker B: If he were to. If he were to appear on. On. On TV and tell me that, yeah, this is the one. [00:17:52] Speaker A: Show you all of the evidence that people have asked. [00:17:54] Speaker B: Exactly. I would. I would believe it. I wouldn't. I wouldn't be, you know, a flat earther about it. I wouldn't be like, right, yeah. [00:18:01] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:18:02] Speaker B: No, I guess more. [00:18:04] Speaker A: Yeah. The difference is that, you know, I am less likely to be shut off immediately. I think maybe our. And maybe that's just like ultimately kind of a semantic difference or things like that. That. [00:18:16] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:18:16] Speaker A: I just always refuse to be certain about anything where you're more certain. But if that, you know. [00:18:23] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:18:24] Speaker A: Came across would be the same thing. So it's this. It's this a different road to the same place. [00:18:30] Speaker B: Beautifully put. Yes. [00:18:33] Speaker A: And so I love this idea that, like, at that point, you know, we've got science kind of having this. This revolution that's going on at the time and people going like, okay, can we use these things to try to like, actually validate? [00:18:48] Speaker B: Isn't that things that we think about the world isn't right. Isn't that kind of indicative of a time where anything was really up for grabs? [00:18:58] Speaker A: Right. Like, we didn't know shit. [00:18:59] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:19:00] Speaker A: We didn't know anything about anything. It was like, fucking try it. [00:19:04] Speaker B: Fuck it, why not? Yeah. I think that is delicious. [00:19:09] Speaker A: Yeah, very much. There's just so much possibility in that and so much that's interesting about it a lot that's terrifying about that too. I mean, we're talking about a time when people are like, just. Have just figured out germs and shit like that. You know, people are still dying from all kinds of things. Medicine is just burgeoning as like an actual thing. So it's a scary time to be alive. [00:19:29] Speaker B: If germs had been discovered now, you'd get no end of cunts queuing up to go on Joe Rogan. You know what I mean? [00:19:35] Speaker A: Right. Germs are being discovered now. Good fucking luck. Come on. Just. There's some. One of these days, someone out there is gonna get a hold of germ theory as their next target and just like, that's gonna blow up. Everyone all over TikTok or whatever replaces TikTok is going to be like, oh, yeah, there's no such thing as germs. Actually, what was. You should just. [00:20:03] Speaker B: I mean, I have my own feelings on this. I think everyone will have. But I wonder what was the. The. The tipping point of kind of crank amplification Cramplification, if you will. [00:20:16] Speaker A: Cramplification. [00:20:18] Speaker B: What, when did it become legitimate? [00:20:24] Speaker A: Mark down that thought because I think that would be interesting to, to talk through because we've, we've sort of looked at the edges of it in various things, whether on here on the fan cave, things like that, sort of the lineage of crankdom over the past, you know, 50 years. [00:20:42] Speaker B: Yeah, let's, let's revisit that because it. [00:20:44] Speaker A: Would be an interesting thing to actually sort of look at the trajectory. [00:20:47] Speaker B: I've got a very clear memory of, of a new. I think, I think it might even have been fucking Question Time, right, on the BBC. For those of an American kind of persuasion, Question Time is a weekly panel, live panel news discussion show on the BBC where members of the public are invited into a fucking, you know, a college auditorium or a sports hall or whatever, provincial towns across the uk and politicians and influencers and media figures, five, I believe, on a panel and they take they field questions from the audience, right. And a couple of years back they had the fucking most egregious crank on there. It was a flat earther or someone similar on fucking Question Time, for fuck's sake. [00:21:37] Speaker A: Like, you don't need to, you just don't need to give that any sort of credibility. No, yeah, it's like these people have obviously always existed. [00:21:47] Speaker B: Well, you know my take how you. [00:21:48] Speaker A: Get religion and things like that, but yeah, it'd be an interesting way to look at like that cross section of broadcast media and the rise of people falling into crankdom. But so 19th, 20th centuries, people didn't believe it, didn't just believe in it, they wanted to. They thought that with the right technology and scientific rigor, they would be able to prove the paranormal once and for all. And obviously that didn't really work. There ended up being, you know, a lot of disappointment amongst the people who were a part of that movement. There was a lot of hoaxes and things of that nature. So that fad died out for the most part. But that didn't mean that people gave up on the notion entirely that there could be a paranormal realm and that we as humans might be able to not only just tap into it, but utilize powers from it in. Oh, go ahead. [00:22:43] Speaker B: Right. I, I, I'm certain I will have kind of talked about this briefly on the cast before. Right. But I, There is a part of me that yearns to have a run at dmt. I would fucking love to have a go at dmt. [00:23:00] Speaker A: You know, Mark, it is. You are forever unpredictable. I never Know where a sentence is going. [00:23:05] Speaker B: Yeah, well, because of the various kind of reports there have been. I was in bed reading an hour, an hour of a fucking scientific paper on the study of DMT experiences in a control group. [00:23:23] Speaker A: Right, okay. [00:23:25] Speaker B: Really going in depth about the categorization and the characterization of their experiences. Things they saw, things they interacted with, things that spoke to them. And a common characteristic of DMT experiences is the experience of communicating with other worldly beings. Right. [00:23:48] Speaker A: Oh, Lord. [00:23:49] Speaker B: Beings who are. [00:23:49] Speaker A: I don't know if I'd like that. [00:23:51] Speaker B: Well, yeah, I know. Same. That's why I'm so fucking, you know, fascinated. And, and oh man, I'd love to give it a go. Short duration only lasts like 15 minutes. But like it's, it's, it's a fucking massively common report of people who break through using dmt that they are introduced to a completely separate physical realm which has no physical kind of similarities to our own. [00:24:20] Speaker A: Right. [00:24:21] Speaker B: And that people in like the majority of reported cases come back with clear memories of having communicated with other worldly beings. [00:24:31] Speaker A: Right. Yeah. I remember seeing a lot about that when we were researching psychedelics and people kind of reporting very similar sorts of things to each other that like, you know. Yeah. Like, is there. Are they tapping into another, like, actual realm? Like, is there something there or is it just. It's just the effects of this thing? [00:24:53] Speaker B: Well, it is, it's. [00:24:54] Speaker A: It's, you know, obviously, yes, but no. What's the effects of these things? [00:24:58] Speaker B: So many people say that they've talked. [00:25:01] Speaker A: Right. I think that the, the thing that I brought up the last time that you talked about, this is the thing that I always find really fascinating. And the idea of John, that John Keel had about like the super spectrum and the idea that there is like, like literally just like the thinnest of veils between us and this like, thing that it's walking amongst us, all these different sorts of stuff like that, and we simply can't perceive it. But there are some people who, you know, are more sensitive to that. Like, anyone would be more sensitive to light or sound or things like that. And some people can peer into the super spectrum and you know, obviously that's not real, but it's convincing. You know, when you. [00:25:43] Speaker B: Dolphins don't know about Disney World, do they? [00:25:47] Speaker A: Dolphins don't know about Disney World. [00:25:49] Speaker B: And it's right there next to them. [00:25:50] Speaker A: It's right next to them, exactly. So, you know, maybe there is this super spectrum that DMT actually lets us. Pierce, fucking hell. I don't know. So in the 1930s and 40s. [00:26:07] Speaker B: Stupid fucking good choices. [00:26:12] Speaker A: Proud of you. In the 1930s and 40s, Duke researcher JB Rhine began researching whether it was possible for people to affect the outcome of random events with their minds. And he was convinced that his research showed telekinesis to be real. Unfortunately for Ryan, no one else managed to duplicate his results. But further, during the Cold War, the Russians were said to have been amassing an army of psychic spies, as LiveScience put it. And the last thing we were going to do was be behind Russia in something. So of course, we had to have our own military program, which we called Stargate, to make sure that if psychic abilities were a thing we'd have to Stargate, than Mother Russia. It was called Stargate. [00:27:00] Speaker B: Fuck's sake, boys, use a little bit of lateral thinking in your code names. [00:27:09] Speaker A: So the CIA got very into studying what they could do with the human mind. After all, if humans are capable of things, capable of things like ESP and telekinesis, you've basically got human drones on your hands. [00:27:21] Speaker B: Yep. [00:27:21] Speaker A: You've got people who can learn state secrets from our enemies just by peering straight into their heads. You can dismantle an enemy bomb, or direct a trajectory of our own through the power of someone's thoughts. [00:27:33] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:27:34] Speaker A: And we don't have to put our troops in harm's way or lose our expensive equipment in the process. You're just remotely having someone do this shit. [00:27:43] Speaker B: Scanners, mate. [00:27:44] Speaker A: Yeah, right, exactly. [00:27:45] Speaker B: That's what you're talking about, scanners. Literally, scanners. [00:27:50] Speaker A: The plot of scanners, again, like, stuff like that is obviously taken from real things that people have found out that the government was. Was doing. You know, I'm sure if, yes stole Crohn's, he would say this was based in some way on Stargate. And we're all obviously, as you said before, at least passingly familiar with MK Ultra. The experiments in which volunteers and some unknowing saps were dosed with LSD to see if it could be used for mind control, brainwashing and psychological torture. And in retrospect, it all sounds very silly. While a bad trip can be psychological torture, and the loopy way users act might make them seem like they're under mind control, that's not actually how LSD works, but you can see why they'd want to test the limits of that. Right? Again, it's science. You gotta. You gotta see what it does. Right? [00:28:46] Speaker B: Yep. [00:28:47] Speaker A: But here's a genuinely stupid example of CIA telekinesis research. URI Geller you heard of him? [00:28:56] Speaker B: F off. Have I heard of him? [00:29:00] Speaker A: I don't know that a lot of people now would. So I am gonna describe him. But you do know Ol Yuri? Yes. [00:29:06] Speaker B: Oh, listen, I'll take a run at this. Right. Uri Geller. So in the 80s, early to mid-80s and into the 90s, and he's even, you know, if he's still alive. [00:29:16] Speaker A: He is. [00:29:17] Speaker B: He's like Mr. Blobby in the UK. [00:29:19] Speaker A: He's a big Trump guy now. [00:29:20] Speaker B: Oh, well, imagine my shock. Uri Geller, you can talk about him maybe in the same breath as David Icke. [00:29:31] Speaker A: Oh, right, yes. [00:29:32] Speaker B: You know, he was initially like a light entertainment figure who would perform these prestidigitation tricks which he claimed were focusing energy, mind energy, which would typically just revolve around making a spoon bend, you know, which has been. [00:29:51] Speaker A: We'll get there. [00:29:51] Speaker B: Yeah. Debunked and fucking exposed time and time and time again. But since then, you know, he would pop up whenever like the England fucking football team reached the finals of a competition and he would appeal to the public to focus at the kick, oh my gosh. And influence the outcome. I believe he was a sometime friend of Michael Jackson. [00:30:15] Speaker A: That's unsurprising. Yeah, it's the kind of kook that Michael Jackson would hang out with. [00:30:22] Speaker B: But it doesn't surprise me at all to hear that he's Maga. [00:30:26] Speaker A: His name comes up. Oh, that he's Mac. [00:30:28] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Sinister kind of undertones to what he ended up becoming. [00:30:35] Speaker A: Right. [00:30:36] Speaker B: You know, far, far from the kind of chat show, light entertainment circuit that he was on. Yeah, I, I, I associate him with the, the darker side of crankism. [00:30:51] Speaker A: Right, yeah. And I think that's absolutely correct. That is the right way to, to think about this guy. But you know, for those who aren't familiar with him, that's a pretty good description of who the guy is. He is an Israeli illusionist, to put it kindly, but a grifter to put it more accurately. He is essentially a magician but claims to have telekinetic powers. He became very popular in the 60s and 70s, taking these so called abilities to television and dazzling the puppet public. Famously, as you alluded to, in 1973, Geller did an appearance on the Johnny Carson show. Oh, and Carson, yes, who was also into magic, was like, I don't buy this act that you're really doing telekinesis or whatever. Let's see once and for all if this guy's a fraud or the real deal. [00:31:47] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:31:49] Speaker A: So normally Geller Would bring all of his own props and whatnot, like any illusionist. [00:31:55] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:31:55] Speaker A: But when he arrived at Carson, they were like, you can't use those. We've supplied our own. They then brought him out on stage and insisted he show them his skills right then and there, rather than doing an interview, as he had expected to do when he came out. So completely blindsided the guy. This meant he had no time to swerve now and his own. Now that his own stuff was inaccessible to him. And he was visibly shaken by this. Stammering about how he was surprised because he was supposed to be asked these 40 questions they'd given him saying he didn't feel strong and things like that. Just a whole bunch of excuses for why he couldn't perform on cue, leading to 22 minutes of just excruciating awkwardness on this show as it became very clear he could not do the things that he said that he could do. But remember how I told you a while back about that one social experiment in Long beach where they brought a guy who said he was psychic into two different classrooms? And they told one classroom that he was a grifter, and they didn't tell the other classroom that. And the classroom that knew he was a grifter was more convinced he was the real deal than the other classroom they really thought, you know, he must actually have these abilities despite being told he was working them. Yeah, that. That's. That's what happened with. With the people of America and the world. [00:33:24] Speaker B: With Uni Geller. [00:33:25] Speaker A: Geller. Geller was sure his career was over, but viewers were like, wow. Guess see, these aren't party tricks. He can't just summon them on cue. He must be the real deal. So rather than ending his career, he ended up being bigger than he had been before because people thought his inability to perform on Carson was proof that his powers were real. [00:33:48] Speaker B: Incredible. [00:33:49] Speaker A: Incredible. Shit. [00:33:51] Speaker B: It's why I have. You know I hate magic. [00:33:55] Speaker A: I know you do. [00:33:56] Speaker B: I hate magicians and I hate the whole industry. I fucking hate it. That said, I retain a little place in my heart where there is affection for Andy Nyman and Darren Brown. [00:34:14] Speaker A: Okay. [00:34:15] Speaker B: Because wide open that it's a work, you know? [00:34:21] Speaker A: Yeah, they all are. Nobody is not wide open that it's a work unless they're Uri Geller. [00:34:26] Speaker B: But. But what it seems to me that Darren Brown does is he is very, very open that he's fake. But I say fake in air quotes because there's a load of skill and a load of study and a load of Practice and, you know, skill involved in what he does. But he obfuscates the methods that he used. [00:34:48] Speaker A: So that's what all magicians do. That's literally their bag. [00:34:53] Speaker B: There's something different about what Darren Brown does. He kind of, he shows you one method that he wants you to believe he's using, but uses a different method entirely. [00:35:02] Speaker A: So he adds misdirection. [00:35:03] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's, it's not misdirection that in the sense of, I'm. How to describe this? It's misdirection but with layers of truth in it as well, I think. [00:35:18] Speaker A: I don't know, like, who hurt you when it came to magicians or whatever. But like, you're literally describing every magician. Like, that's all of them. [00:35:27] Speaker B: Not so much. Not so much. [00:35:29] Speaker A: You are. And I've seen Darren Brown. [00:35:31] Speaker B: I'm not articulating it very well. [00:35:33] Speaker A: Just like all the other magicians. There is no difference personality. [00:35:38] Speaker B: I disagree. There's. What Derren Brown does is at least more interesting than any other fucking, you know, glittery jacketed, glamorous assistant. [00:35:49] Speaker A: I think, like you have like a picture of like a 1980s Paul Daniels, like, entertainer. [00:35:58] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:35:58] Speaker A: And like, that's like, not, that's not like what every magician is. Like, that's like a specific place in time. And that's not how, like, that isn't gonna work for an audience. And 2025 or whatever. [00:36:12] Speaker B: I've not articulated it particularly well, but I, I, I might because so far. [00:36:16] Speaker A: I'm like, you're just describing every, every magician. But, but not Uri Geller, not Yuri Geller, who genuinely is doing the thing where he pretends that his magic tricks are actual shit that he's like getting from aliens or whatever. [00:36:34] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:36:35] Speaker A: And among those just as convinced as the television viewing public was the CIA, who that very year brought in, brought Uri Geller into the CIA labs to test out his abilities. With researcher John G. Fuller telling the agency that, quote, at the University of London, several leading physicists were finding that Geller could run up a Geiger counter to a point 500 or to a point 500 times better background radiation. By concentrating on it, he could dematerialize part of a vanadium crystal sealed inside a plastic capsule simply by holding his hand over it. There were several, several other tests, all of them repeatable and startling. [00:37:18] Speaker B: Well, in my youth, right, I was able and I saw this, I was there, right. I took part in an experiment where I was able to directly change the weight of another Child simply by holding my hands above their head and saying an incantation along the lines of light as a feather surface aboard. And they just almost rose from their seat. [00:37:49] Speaker A: Crazy shit. [00:37:50] Speaker B: I was there, Corey. I saw this in the. [00:37:53] Speaker A: I mean, is it repeatable? [00:37:56] Speaker B: Well, children across the world, I think, have taken part in similar studies. [00:38:05] Speaker A: Think on. Yes. So he went on to say, quote, the Geller effect of metal bending is clearly not brought about by fraud. [00:38:14] Speaker B: The Geller effect. [00:38:17] Speaker A: So you see, as you alluded to before, metal bending was kind of Geller's signature thing. Thing, yes. When you see telekinesis demonstrated in movies as such and such by people bending spoons with their mind, that is a nod to Geller. He would do that trick and blow everyone's mind. And let's get this straight right out the gate. It is a trick. He has been busted on multiple occasions, including on your man Noel Edmonds show in the 90s where A. He was on this hidden camera show and was caught at an odd, unexpected, expected angle for him bending the spoon. [00:38:54] Speaker B: What is this, podcast man? Yuri Geller and Noel Edmonds. [00:38:58] Speaker A: Noel Edmonds, right. [00:39:00] Speaker B: DMT and Montauk experiment. What is this? [00:39:06] Speaker A: It's a journey is what it is. It's a journey. And as a fun aside, by the way, in 1976 a bunch of kids in England who probably had been watching Yuri Giller, Yuri Geller claimed to be able to bend spoons. And researchers at the University of Bath were like, wait, this really seems like the real deal. They seem like they're doing it, but eventually they discovered again through the use of hidden cameras that the kids were like ol Yuri, bending the spoons with their hands when they thought people weren't watching. So let's just be super clear here. Not only is spoon bending bullshit, it's not even hard to emulate bullshit. A bunch of children learned to do it and fooled scientists. So cool. Cool stuff. CIA and this. [00:39:56] Speaker B: Just to go back to the Geiger counter thing, right? That was. He had fucking boffins in the room with him, right? [00:40:04] Speaker A: At the University of London. [00:40:07] Speaker B: How did he. Geller, how? [00:40:09] Speaker A: I mean, power of suggestion. [00:40:11] Speaker B: Did they, you know, did they want to fucking believe it? [00:40:15] Speaker A: Because like, maybe that's like David Blaine type, right? Like David Blaine when he does things like that. You're like, genuinely like, I don't. [00:40:23] Speaker B: Who I hate, by the way. [00:40:25] Speaker A: I'm not surprised. And. And I don't think he's a good guy. But I, I love David Blaine. I love watching his stuff. His hot ones is one of My favorites of all the people who've been on Hot Ones. And I like that. It's like, genuinely. I'm like, how. What is he doing? How's he doing this? Because whatever the stuff he's doing is. It's so far beyond just, like, sleight of hand and things like that. [00:40:48] Speaker B: Eileen wouldn't have fucking had any truck with that shit, let me tell you. If she'd been there. [00:40:53] Speaker A: Yeah. If she'd been in the room, she would have put. Nonsense. [00:40:57] Speaker B: Yes. [00:40:57] Speaker A: Yeah. But there's certainly, I think, like, someone who's. It's got to be a degree of skill in, like, human psychology and manipulation on top of it. Right. Like, it can't just be being good with your hands and stuff like that, but really understanding how you can trick another person. [00:41:15] Speaker B: Yes. [00:41:15] Speaker A: Into thinking they saw something they didn't see. You know, Like, I don't know what on earth you would do to have something in your pocket that activates the Geiger counter. Like, I don't know what you would do. But, yeah, somehow he was able to convince them that he was doing that stuff. And the CIA was like, yes, that shit is definitely real. So they brought him to the Stanford research institute in 1973. There he was, quote, locked in a shielded room and asked to recreate a target picture drawn by an experimenter down the hall. So the standard, like, thing where someone draws a picture in one room, you're sitting in the other room and you try to draw the same. Same thing that they did. Kind of. Kind of like the Ghostbusters. [00:42:02] Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah. Remote viewing. [00:42:04] Speaker A: I think it's called remote viewing. That's exactly what it's called. Yeah. And he didn't get them all, right. But apparently he got enough of them, right. That they were like, wow, this guy really is a psychic. The CIA's report on the experiment said that he has demonstrated his paranormal perceptual ability in a convincing and unambiguous manner. [00:42:28] Speaker B: And this was after Carson. [00:42:30] Speaker A: This is before Carson, but the same year. [00:42:32] Speaker B: Okay. [00:42:33] Speaker A: And I will get to that in a second because it's just further embarrassment. I went through this on this week's fan Cave about 10 Cloverfield Lane. But it just needs to be said that the CIA is very stupid, okay? And it's not just that they were tricked, but how easily they were tricked as a kid. [00:42:51] Speaker B: Right. I remember vividly watching Uri Geller on, like, Parkinson and watching him do his shtick with a fork. And as I. I can't have been any older than, like, eight, nine, thinking Off. [00:43:09] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's clearly. And that's, that's the thing is. See again, I feel like now we're getting to the root of your hatred of magicians. It's early maybe to people like this. Yeah. Because, yeah, that's like, you know, that's, that's taking us as idiots. [00:43:27] Speaker B: That's what it is. Playing me for a fucking rube. [00:43:30] Speaker A: Right where, you know, I think a good illusionist, you know, like, that's the point is their skill in being able to mess with your mind. Not that you think that they're actually doing the thing. Right. Like, that's the fun of it is being like, ah, we know we're in on this together. But I don't know. I don't know what you're doing. But yeah. So in this case, like one of the pictures was a camel and Geller passed on drawing that one, but he said that his first guess was going to be a horse. And they were like, horse, camel, Same, same. Yeah, definitely got that One picture was a flying seagull. Geller drew a bunch of birds and said that he saw a flying swan. They were like, yep, definitely. He for sure got that. If they're showing you a bunch of animals, chances are you're gonna get close just guessing on some of these. You're just gonna like draw the thing and it's gonna be like, oh, yeah, yeah. That's pretty similar to what we were going for. So it's not like he was sitting there drawing the exact same thing that they had in the other room. He was just kind of like getting in the vicinity. [00:44:41] Speaker B: Yeah. And what's, what's the threshold for success? If he'd drawn a sheep, four legs, four legged. [00:44:47] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:44:48] Speaker B: Hoofed animal. [00:44:49] Speaker A: My weird cow. Would that count as a camel? Like, I don't know. So they took his flock and swan identification as a slam dunk. And we're like, yes, this guy definitely psychic. And according to ctv, when the CIA honchos finally realized they'd been had, it wasn't because they debunked it in their labs, but because of Johnny Carson and other news media investigations into his chicanery. It's so dumb. They figured out he was lying from tv. [00:45:23] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:45:24] Speaker A: Our intelligence agency, not their own investigation. That's. That's embarrassing. [00:45:32] Speaker B: Very cool. [00:45:33] Speaker A: So discovering they'd been duped didn't take them fully out of the paranormal game though. In a report you can actually see on the website, on the CIA website and that will obviously be linked below in the description as the result of the Freedom of Information Act. You can see that in 1980 they were looking at the possibility of what they called remote perturbation, which sounds like jacking off to porn, but is not. [00:46:01] Speaker B: Using your mind. [00:46:03] Speaker A: Using your mind, right. This included seeing into the future, which. [00:46:08] Speaker B: Is the first thing I would do if I was a Jedi. [00:46:11] Speaker A: What like most people would do. I think. [00:46:13] Speaker B: Force One. [00:46:14] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's. [00:46:15] Speaker B: There we go, yeah. [00:46:18] Speaker A: This included seeing into the future, spying using ESP and using telekinesis to. With enemy weapons. The beginning of the document, part of the Stargate experiments, of which the Geller experiment was also part, reads, there have been many reported accounts of phenomena variously known as telekinesis, psychokinesis, teleportation, etc. Most of these accounts are clearly derived from carefully staged tricks which are revealed whenever they are studied under controlled and well recorded conditions. There are a few, however, which describe serious research by reputable investigators. Included among these are experiments in which the subject attempts to perturb by mental processes alone the the outcome of an otherwise random event. So out the gate, basically they're like, listen, I know we've been burned by this before, but I swear this time it's real research, you guys. And continuing in that somewhat defensive mode. The writer says even if one were to assume that there were 10 unreported non significant experiments for each reported significant one, the entire expanded database would still show significant effects with odds against chance of better than 2001. Essentially, they're like, sure, there is a lot of evidence against this, but the fact that there's even some evidence for it makes it nigh irrefutable. Ultimately, the report concludes that there is enough evidence to indicate that it would be a good idea to research this further. It goes on to explain what the processes will be for that future testing, as well as some of those past experiments. And I'm not sure how much, if any, of that future testing was actually carried out. I couldn't find any other documentation on remote perturbation. So it may have ended there. They may have just decided, not worth the money to. [00:48:02] Speaker B: I would hope so. [00:48:03] Speaker A: Into this or what? Yeah, I have no idea. But according to a Baylor University study, 15 of Americans believe in telekinesis. And according to a separate study. [00:48:13] Speaker B: Current study. [00:48:15] Speaker A: Current, yeah, separate studies stated on statistics, some 40% believe in ESP. So. Well, as far as we know, the government has finally given up on this whole paranormal research thing. For all we know, there could still be some CIA holdouts trying to aim one of Putin's own nukes at him with their minds. [00:48:35] Speaker B: Awesome. [00:48:37] Speaker A: I know, right? [00:48:38] Speaker B: Yep. Hey, hey, hey. For all we know, it may have already happened. [00:48:47] Speaker A: Yo. [00:48:48] Speaker B: We just haven't been told about it. [00:48:51] Speaker A: They. They wiped our minds with ML street techniques. [00:48:55] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:48:57] Speaker A: In the water that we don't even realize. [00:49:00] Speaker B: Do your own research. That's all I'm saying. Good people on both sides. [00:49:03] Speaker A: Do your own research. What to think about. [00:49:06] Speaker B: Let me quote directly from my notes, if I may. [00:49:09] Speaker A: Yes, please. Stay open. [00:49:10] Speaker B: Fucking look at these nerds. Oh, mise en scene. [00:49:14] Speaker A: I don't think anyone has ever said mise en scene in such a horny way before. [00:49:18] Speaker B: The way I whispered the word sex. Cannibal routine. [00:49:20] Speaker A: Worst comes to worst, Mark, I'm willing to guillotine you for science. [00:49:24] Speaker B: Thank you. That's really, really sweet. It's cold outside, but my pancreas is talking to me. I'm fucking. I'm going to leg it. [00:49:31] Speaker A: You know how I feel about that, Mark? [00:49:33] Speaker B: I think you feel great about it. [00:49:36] Speaker A: Take us in, Mark Lewis classic little opening there. [00:49:39] Speaker B: I'll take. [00:49:41] Speaker A: I know I took us out of the dark this time. We've been getting a little. We were getting a little dark the past couple weeks. I was like, hey, esp. [00:49:50] Speaker B: Hello, Corey, my old friend. It's time to talk with you again. Hey, it's true, my mental health is somewhat flaky because the earth we're on is bakey. [00:50:11] Speaker A: Ooh, good one. [00:50:13] Speaker B: I like it. There is AI and war and crypto and billionaires gives me the scares. So I guess it's time for joag. There you go. How'd you like that? [00:50:32] Speaker A: That was perfect. Infection, no notes, my friend. That was something to bring us in here, boy. This first 12 days of January has been a whole year, hasn't it? [00:50:44] Speaker B: Well, isn't it always? Every fucking year, isn't it the same? [00:50:49] Speaker A: It's my whole ass. Like, home state is burning down, man. [00:50:53] Speaker B: Yeah, it is. And the news ticker right above my screen here on the TV says, 16 now dead. [00:51:02] Speaker A: Jesus. And like, they just keep being disabled people because everything is terrible. [00:51:09] Speaker B: I saw the story that you posted and. [00:51:12] Speaker A: Yeah, and there's more of them than that. That's not even the only one. [00:51:15] Speaker B: I genuinely could not give it space. I couldn't. I couldn't. I couldn't focus on it. I could not fucking focus on it. It was too much, too horrible. [00:51:24] Speaker A: Yeah, it's. I mean, it's bananas, obviously. Like, I've spent. Spent most of my adult life in Southern California, just outside of LA and Orange County. And so, you know, I've had friends whose houses have burned down. And, you know, I've been kind of watching their stories as they talk about that. And they're, you know, dealing with that, with their children who just want to go home, but they can't. And what do you do in that situation? And lots of my other friends have evacuated. And the ones who weren't, like, technically evacuated, a lot of them just, like, left because the air quality was so bad. And, you know, there's fire everywhere. And you don't know when something is going to turn and come towards you. And it's, you know, it's always been a part of Southern California life. You know, there's. I'm sure I've put stories up and stuff like that of waking up in the morning and there being. [00:52:20] Speaker B: That is. All right. So that is interesting to me. That's a fact. Is it? It has always been fire season. Yes. Okay. [00:52:26] Speaker A: Especially. Yeah. And it's obviously gotten much worse in recent years. But one of the things, you know, for those who aren't Southern Californians. So, yes, there's a fire season. It shouldn't have really started yet, but there is a fire season. Everything dries up. This year it was exacerbated by the fact that there hasn't been measurable rainfall in eight months, which is insane. The last rain was in May. They've had, like, sprinkles, but nothing you could measure. It's like less than a tenth of an inch has fallen in eight months. So super dry conditions. And then on top of that. [00:53:03] Speaker B: So where does Californian water come from then? [00:53:08] Speaker A: It's a really good question. Elsewhere we have aqueducts all the way up and down the state to carry the water from Northern California and from other places to get to Southern California. Because at the best of times, Southern California doesn't make a whole lot of it. [00:53:27] Speaker B: I see. [00:53:28] Speaker A: And again, it's a thing that's changed in, like, when I was in college. So, you know, 20 years ago, we would get thunderstorms and stuff like that. But by the time that I left Southern California, one of the things that I was like, we need to leave was that it never rained. It's like, there's no. It is, you know, sunny every single day. There is no rain. This is not healthy. We gotta get out of here. So no rain for eight months, and then we have these things called Santa Ana winds. Are you familiar with Santa Ana winds? [00:53:57] Speaker B: Not in the slightest. [00:53:59] Speaker A: They are dry, hot winds. That are like someone blowing a blow dryer in your face. So when you go outside, you see a nice breeze. It's not a nice breeze. That breeze is, you know, 90 degrees coming at you. And this also has like kind of a season. It tends to come through Southern California. And so this year, along with that extremely dry period, there's unprecedented Santa Ana winds that were whipping up to like 80 miles per hour, which is Hurricane force hot winds. [00:54:36] Speaker B: Fucking hell. [00:54:38] Speaker A: Yeah. Oh, it is. Even when it's not like that, Santa Ana winds are truly horrific. And again, it's normal. This will happen every year in Southern California. If you live there, you're used to there being some days where you just can't go outside because of the hot wind. And then imagine that at hurricane force. And so the speed with which these fires spread was just literally there's nothing anyone could have done about this. There's all these kinds of conspiracy theories about, you know, the DEI fire department and, you know, the turning off the water and all these kinds of things. But the fact of the matter is that like you, the conditions were unprecedented. There was. It's just. This is climate change, right? You have a Santa Ana winds that you've never had like that before and a dry period that should not have been that dry, and you end up with a good chunk of LA burning down, just burning down to the ground. [00:55:37] Speaker B: I think it was this last week. I think it was a. Both a combination of. Because the, the, the fires have been just constantly on the news cycle over here, like permanently and rightly so. [00:55:49] Speaker A: I mean, it's. Yeah, it's, it's truly hard to really explain the scale of this, but a. [00:55:55] Speaker B: Combination of that being front and center all the time on in the media and, you know, I can't put the news down. I simply can't do it. [00:56:03] Speaker A: Yeah, you're. You're a little bit of an addiction. [00:56:05] Speaker B: I am. And the piece from the BBC on the 10th, so Thursday of this week about the kind of 1.5 degree climate threshold having been passed for the first time in 2024. [00:56:19] Speaker A: Am I wrong in saying, because I asked you at the time, I was like, when we started this podcast, weren't they still talking about us being able to avoid one? [00:56:28] Speaker B: Oh, possibly. I don't remember. I don't remember that far back. [00:56:32] Speaker A: We're definitely at least talking about being able to avoid 1.5, but I feel fairly certain that it's within the past few years that we were talking about avoiding one degree and the speed at which we hit that threshold is, yes, crazy. It's much faster than I think anyone expected. [00:56:50] Speaker B: It feels like it, doesn't it? And to qualify it that, that that news isn't in and of itself a kind of a tipping point because that, that 1.5 has to be maintained over a longer period. But 2024 was the first year when compared to kind of pre industrial averages globally We've seen a 1.5 degree rise in the climate temperature. [00:57:15] Speaker A: That's not good. [00:57:16] Speaker B: It's fucking awful. And I've really struggled. I've really goddamn really fucking struggled. It really gets tough to keep pretending, which is what I feel as though everybody is doing. [00:57:33] Speaker A: Right. [00:57:34] Speaker B: Right. And a couple of weeks back, just after Christmas, me and the lads and Laura, we went on a lovely kind of evening tour around National Trust property Waddesdon Manor. And it was beautiful. They had a light trail, just beautifully lit and it was stunning. And even in the midst of that, with hot chocolate in my hand, holding my kids, kind of cold digits in mine, and marveling at the beautiful surroundings even in that kind of environment, in the back of my head I was thinking. I vividly remember thinking, what is this? How are we going to keep pretending every year that this is fine? What will happen? What will happen to kind of tradition? What will happen to touch points like Christmases and stuff when it, when it no longer becomes possible to pretend? [00:58:32] Speaker A: Right. I think about that a lot and it's, you know, I try not to be despairing about it or anything like that, but at the same time, like this, this Christmas, this winter has been, you know, not like a ton of snow or anything like that, but we've had a few snows here. I can still see snow on the ground when I look out my window right now. And we had, I've said to Kyo several times that I felt like this year kind of had the most regular New Jersey weather that we'd have had since we moved here. Like the period of heat in the summer and the, you know, cold in the winter. But at the same time there actually have been much greater extremes than there have been before. Like how, you know, when you got here, I keep saying it was like the only days that it rained for like two and a half months. And the cold has been unseasonably cold. The, the heat did get extremely hot and lasted for a really long time. And I think to myself, like, you know, I guess kind of the way that I keep looking at it is like, I gotta savor this snowy winter that I get because, you know, we may never have one again. You know, think, like, the things that I'm so used to, my markers of the passage of time, the things that, like you said, the traditions that we have and things like that. I keep thinking, like, is this the last time that I will get to enjoy that? Because everything is changing so quickly, you know, measurably, observably. How much longer do we get to have the things like this? [01:00:10] Speaker B: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And, you know, it will become more and more an act of willful self deception to be able to do stuff like that. To be able to walk around a fucking National Trust property and to be able to shield my children from it and to be able to, you know. [01:00:35] Speaker A: I mean, I don't know if. Yeah, I don't know if I'd put it that way, per se, because like I said, like, the way I kind of look at it is like, you know, if things are gonna be terrible, you gotta treasure what you have while you have it. Um, and I think, I think it's natural to want to, like, shield your kids and things like that from the realities of how terrible things are. Just like, if you grew up poor and stuff like that, your parents would try to get you presents on Christmas and things like that anyway. Like, it's human nature to try through. [01:01:05] Speaker B: The lens of, let's say, a decade from now. Right, right. If the trajectory that we are witnessing and sensing continues and even speeds up, like we sense maybe it is. [01:01:16] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:01:17] Speaker B: And, you know, climate migration becomes a thing, you know, more of a thing, then economically this stuff is gonna be ridiculously kind of more costly than it is now. [01:01:32] Speaker A: Oh, sure. [01:01:33] Speaker B: And what will that do? What will that do to those annual kind of touch points that we, that we. That we kind of frame our lives around? How can. How can. How can we carry. For how long can we carry on pretending? [01:01:52] Speaker A: Right. And, you know, I think I get what you're saying. I just think. I don't know that self deception is for. At least not for everyone. Right. Like, I think there are plenty of people who are still pretending this isn't happening. You know, there was a comment, I thought this was crazy on one of the, like, you know, a post on Instagram about climate and, you know, why this happened, and climate scientists talking about how they'd warned of this and things like that, and someone in the comments said something along, along the lines of, like. And what's horrifying is that, you know, scientists have been predicting this for like a century, you know, and someone's response to that was like, and yet we're still here. It's like, yeah, no, right, but you are looking at the things that are happening, right? Like, that's what they said was good. That's what they predicted. They said around now this would, like, they didn't say the world was going to spontaneously combust and everything would be gone by 1950. Like, they said, if we don't stop this trajectory by around this time, we're going to start seeing increase in climate disasters. So there's absolutely people who are just refusing to see what is in front of them and are just going to be. You know, there's a ton of political cartoons about the frogs in the pot, right? People just sitting in the pot boiling and being like, you know, it's totally. It's totally fine. I don't notice anything, right? Like, this is natural. But I do think, you know, there is a degree to which part of the process of. Of living through it and trying to change things also is taking in what is here and being able to observe the changes. And, you know, you have to. You have to live life. Like, what do you do just every time you go outside, be like, this is the end of the world, or do you, you know, try to. Try to give your kids a good time in the end times, it's gonna. [01:03:56] Speaker B: Get tougher and tougher to not do that. For me personally, I mean, you know, an angle that I keep trying to cling on to, and this is something I discussed with a good friend of mine, Camilla, over, over Instagrams, over posts, is that there is still a part of me that sees it from us in a perverse kind of way, as being quite a privileged time to live in, because only this very specific kind of cohort of people are gonna be able to live through this and see it. It's quite an interesting thing to be able to fucking be alive for. [01:04:35] Speaker A: Mm. [01:04:36] Speaker B: To witness. [01:04:37] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:04:38] Speaker B: To bear witness. [01:04:39] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, it's. It's an unfortunate thing to. To be alive for. It's an interesting. [01:04:45] Speaker B: Crushingly fucking awful is what it is. [01:04:47] Speaker A: It's one of those things where, you know, when we talk about, like, social things that are going on right now and the ways in which our politics and stuff like that are turning fascist and going backwards in so many ways. A lot of people worked out, you know, it's been worse pretty much through all of history, which is true. It is absolutely true. History has never been good to people. It's always been bad to be a marginalized person. And it's A return to form. And people have always fought and you know, gotten past that stuff in various ways. But what does make things different is doing it while the world is burning. [01:05:24] Speaker B: Yes. [01:05:25] Speaker A: And that is a thing that can't be ignored in that discussion. Is that like. Yes. Our fight against fascism is not new. And active activists have always worked to try to end this, but they have never done it while the world was ending. And you know, there's so much to. So much to fight all at once. And you know, as we have said many times, the capitalism has kind of got to go. Otherwise it is what it is. But hopefully that is a thing that then happens and you know, we stop pretending that we can keep operating as usual as we watch how that works around us. [01:06:07] Speaker B: Well, yes. And you know, my thoughts on that also. [01:06:11] Speaker A: Yes. But it's been. Yeah. As such, this past week has been, you know, not great for anyone's climate anxiety, I'm sure. [01:06:20] Speaker B: Yeah. Long story short, that's what I'm getting at. Yeah, it's been, it's been on a. Internally for Marco. Internally. It's been. It's been a fucking interesting week. Yeah. [01:06:34] Speaker A: Yeah. A lot to work through. So I get it. Understand completely. I have just. I don't know if it's connected or I've just been playing too many video games or what, but I've had headaches all week and I've had kind of had one all day as well. I took like a 30 minute cat nap before this because I was just like, my head hurts so bad. I got a. I gotta take care of that. So as such today, you know, we had a nice little cold open. We're gonna talk about some movies and things like that, but we're skipping our main topic. [01:07:04] Speaker B: We're gonna wrap it the fuck up. [01:07:06] Speaker A: Yeah, we're just gonna wrap it the fuck up after we. We talk about movies and whatnot because I have a headache. Alright, Stay spooky. Hold up, hold up. Jk, you crazy kids. [01:07:21] Speaker B: I'll go on a movie if you like. [01:07:23] Speaker A: Well, hold on. One thing we do want to tell everyone is mark your calendars because watch along February 1st. [01:07:33] Speaker B: Yes, yes, yes. I've got maybe a little theme that I'm thinking of brewing up a theme. But if you've got Nothing planned on the 1st of February, which is a Saturday, I would, we would be super grateful and super honored and super humble and proud to see that discord filling up with the fucking. Our besties, our global besties from around the world. And yeah, we haven't Done one this year yet. So let's kick back. [01:08:05] Speaker A: Yeah, gotta get into it. [01:08:07] Speaker B: Crack open a fucking non alcoholic beverage of your choice and enjoy a movie. So yes, you can do like. Oh, fuck, I was about to say you can, you can put invites on the Facebook group, can't you? But that's another fucking thing, isn't it? [01:08:23] Speaker A: Well, yeah, that's a whole other can of worms that, you know, we'll be thinking on for a while. [01:08:34] Speaker B: Perfect. [01:08:36] Speaker A: That's all I got is a fucking hell. Good grief. But for now, we're, we're still, we're still using the group, we're still doing whatever as fascism encloses upon that as well. [01:08:50] Speaker B: But February 1st of Feb, watch along. A lot of fun. [01:08:53] Speaker A: We're gonna do a watch along also book club this week. Hey, if your New Year's resolution was to read more, read with us. The 18th we're gonna be getting together. Can't remember what the book is called. It has something to do with magic. Mr. Magic. I don't know, something like that. I've been assured that it is a very quick read under 300 pages. I always read the book like the day of book club, which gives Kristen panic. But she read the book and she was like, you could absolutely do this in a day, it's no problem. Check jackofallgraves.com bookclub for the actual title of the book, the link to buy it from Gibson's. It usually comes pretty quickly. Get it from your library, whatever the case may be. And join us, let's read more together this year. I'm currently reading on top of that, the book that you recommended, Tananarive. Due's the Reformatory. [01:09:48] Speaker B: Yes. Finished it this morning, in fact. And yes. Fuck me, man. You know, like I said, on blue sky, in 46 years on Earth, I can't remember enjoying a novel as much as this one. [01:10:04] Speaker A: I love that someone responded like, it's the best novel I've ever read. Someone else posted about it the other day. [01:10:12] Speaker B: Simply a fantastic, fantastic bit of work. I read the last kind of 30 pages through a mist of tears, but good tears, man. [01:10:24] Speaker A: Love that. [01:10:25] Speaker B: Just uplifted to tears by this fucking book. It's incredible. A real, real, real great piece of work. And if, if you've got a gap in your life for a real meaty, fucking edible piece of horror and history, you know. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah. I cannot recommend it highly enough. Really, really stunning. [01:10:49] Speaker A: Yeah, the Reformatory. I'm about a third of the way through it. [01:10:53] Speaker B: And you know what? Let's fucking hear it for bookshops. Because I went into the bookshop knowing I wanted to buy a book, I wanted to buy a horror novel. And the only reason I picked the reformatory was because it had one of those little staff review cards. [01:11:08] Speaker A: Yeah, I love those. [01:11:09] Speaker B: And that was the only reason I picked it. It caught my eye. I'd never heard of it before, never heard of Tenana Reef due before. And it was, you know, a little handwritten recommendation card from the staff at Oxford. [01:11:24] Speaker A: That's beautiful. Yeah. For bookshop. [01:11:27] Speaker B: Yep, yep, yep, yep. [01:11:28] Speaker A: Super into it. So join us for book club. Read that totally separately, but worth your time nonetheless. I've just been listening to it and playing Astrobot, and it helps me to not throw my controller while playing all of the. The one shot, the levels. [01:11:47] Speaker B: There's a final, final level called the Grandmaster Challenge on Astro Bot, right. And I don't think I can king of games my way through it. It's. It's fucking. [01:11:59] Speaker A: It's crazy, this game. Probably a lot of you are playing it. If not, if you've got a PlayStation, you got to get Astro Bot. But I went through this whole game like, oh, this is so fun. This is so fun. I'm having the time of my life. And then until it gets real, turns on you, it betrays you. And like you said, the thing about this game is that whenever you mess up, it's your own fault. But that is infuriating with these levels, because there's a, you know, these. These levels that you have to do towards the end. You have to get through them in one go. You can't die. You don't respawn. You start from the beginning on them. [01:12:36] Speaker B: One hit. [01:12:37] Speaker A: And honestly, one of the things about that is, like, you start to get. You start to get lazy, you start to get cocky, or you start to get frustrated and you get worse after a while. Like, there comes a point where, like, you've played a level enough times that you're like, I have to exit out, because now I'm just dying the second I step off the platform and I need to go do something else for a little bit. But it's, you know, it's also extremely satisfying when you finally win one. [01:13:06] Speaker B: There's no feeling like it. There's no feeling like through sheer force of will and commitment and muscle memory and denying your emotions, besting a level like that is fucking unreal. But this last one, the Grandmaster Challenge, I. I think it might have beaten me. I'm three bots. [01:13:23] Speaker A: How long have you been working on it? [01:13:25] Speaker B: Oh, I dip in and it humbles me and then I respectfully leave again. I'm, you know, I'm on a journey and I. Controllers are expensive, so I know, I know when I know. I can see the red flags now. [01:13:42] Speaker A: You've grown. [01:13:43] Speaker B: I'm proud of you, baby. [01:13:47] Speaker A: Well then tell me about the movie that you wanted to talk about there. [01:13:50] Speaker B: All right, so see if you can come with me on my thought process here. Right. See if you can follow on this psychological kind of how the, how the dominoes fell. So here in the UK it's been cold as fuck and it is cold as right now. It's freezing. And there's been this weekend a lot of mist. [01:14:13] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, Right. [01:14:16] Speaker B: So what I did was I watched the mist. [01:14:20] Speaker A: It's a tough, tough line of thought to follow, but I. [01:14:22] Speaker B: Tell me if you want me to slow down. [01:14:25] Speaker A: No, I think I, I think I'm following. [01:14:27] Speaker B: Yeah, there you go. Because I saw a lot of mist around me. I watched the mist and delighted that I did. Great movie. Let me tell you something about the mist, right? For those who haven't seen it, it's an adaptation of King air quotes short story. A novella. Should we call it a novella? [01:14:43] Speaker A: Yeah, novella, yeah. [01:14:46] Speaker B: Government fuckery, military fuckery results in a mist covering, you know, one of the suburbs of Castle Rock. And there's Griblies and all of the townsfolk are trapped in a supermarket. And much like the dark half. It's a slavish adaptation of the book. It's the book on screen. Thomas Jane doing that character. He does. Likable, tough guy. [01:15:13] Speaker A: Every man. [01:15:14] Speaker B: You know that guy. You know him, you like him? He's a nice guy. [01:15:17] Speaker A: My kids back. [01:15:19] Speaker B: That's him, that's him, that's him. Famed for its fantastic downer ending. Now four and a half stars for the mist because I love it. Right. It's got a lot going for it. [01:15:32] Speaker A: Your four and a half stars for the mist is my five stars for ghost chips. [01:15:36] Speaker B: Fine. Yeah, I could buy that. Yeah, that makes sense. It's got the gribblies. It's, you know, it's got King isms. It's great, great, great, great movie. But it, it. What gives it that extra half a star between four and five is that it taps into something for me. Right? [01:15:59] Speaker A: Okay. [01:15:59] Speaker B: It taps into a truth. Let me ask you this, what do I think it's true that all people, all humans really are seeking the same thing, aren't they? Really? Right? [01:16:18] Speaker A: In like a maslow's Hierarchy of needs. [01:16:20] Speaker B: Way or kinda, I think, whether they admit it or not, perhaps even whether they realize it or not, all human beings are seeking out the absolute lowest point of despair that is possible to experience. Right. [01:16:40] Speaker A: Okay, yeah, sure. [01:16:41] Speaker B: Come on. It's true. [01:16:42] Speaker A: I'll buy that. [01:16:43] Speaker B: And the mist finds that. [01:16:46] Speaker A: Right. [01:16:47] Speaker B: But it finds it in a very meta textual kind of way. As an audience, we find that wonderful note of utter despair. And as a character within the movie, our boy Thomas Jane finds that there is no lower place possible to go than the end of that movie. It is the absolute lowest possible point of despair. [01:17:16] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:17:17] Speaker B: And it is so great, right? To watch the mist is to finally find utter. Fucking. Utter despair. [01:17:29] Speaker A: Mm. That's true. [01:17:30] Speaker B: Ah. I just. I celebrate it. It's so great. [01:17:35] Speaker A: Oh, fair enough. [01:17:37] Speaker B: Fucking. I could watch it again now. Just the last. What he should have done. Spoilers. [01:17:44] Speaker A: Wait, don't, don't, don't, don't. I don't wanna have to edit out a spoiler. I got a headache. [01:17:51] Speaker B: Oh, God, it's so great. [01:17:55] Speaker A: I mean, probably everyone's seen it. But we're not gonna spoil the mist, because if you haven't, you're not expecting it, you're not going for it. [01:18:02] Speaker B: Oh, man. Oh, fuck. [01:18:06] Speaker A: Did you watch anything else? [01:18:08] Speaker B: Well, okay, so I didn't. I didn't watch it as such. [01:18:13] Speaker A: Right, okay. [01:18:14] Speaker B: Because I was reading the Reformatory, okay? But Owen fucking blesses. Fucking every fucking fiber of him, has become quite the fan of Wicked, right? [01:18:30] Speaker A: Oh, gosh, like the movie. [01:18:32] Speaker B: Yeah. Dad, watch Wicked. No, dad, come on, dad. Dad, honestly. You know how, like, when Peter said, watch Cobra Kai and you didn't want to, and then you watched it and you loved it? It'd be like that. It'll be like Wicked. No, it won't. But he and Laura and Peter put it on anyway, right? While I was in my book, right, I'm sat on the sofa with my head in this book and they're watching Wicked. So I kind of caught. I kind of dipped in and out of Wicked and looked at it a bit, right? Horrible. [01:19:03] Speaker A: Yeah, it's awful, right? Like just deeply, deeply bad movie. [01:19:09] Speaker B: Horrible. I write, I'm sure, and I like Wicked. [01:19:13] Speaker A: To be clear for people, you know, who think that I'm. No, I'm just. I'm not talking about you. I like Wicked the musical, okay? This is not being a hater. The movie's terrible. [01:19:23] Speaker B: Awful. Ages ago. We gotta be going back 15 years now, right? I saw a video on maybe Liveleak or I think before liveleak it was ogrish.com. right. [01:19:39] Speaker A: Okay. [01:19:41] Speaker B: I saw a video of a guy who'd been cut in half by a train. Right? [01:19:47] Speaker A: Sure. [01:19:48] Speaker B: Bisected neatly at the kind of lower abdomen, groin kind of area. [01:19:53] Speaker A: Like. Like up the middle. [01:19:56] Speaker B: No, kind of laterally across the waist. [01:19:58] Speaker A: Okay, right. A horizontal cut. [01:20:00] Speaker B: Yeah. And his legs were like Beetlejuice. [01:20:03] Speaker A: Beetlejuice. [01:20:03] Speaker B: Beetlejuice. Exactly, exactly, exactly. And because of the shock, this guy was perfectly conscious and he hadn't quite realized what had happened to him. And he was trying to sit up and he was kind of absent mindedly, kind of fiddling with his kind of guts. Trying to push him back into himself. Right. I'd watch that again before I watch Wicked. Right? [01:20:29] Speaker A: Wow. [01:20:29] Speaker B: I would. I would. I would watch that fucking movie on a loop before I watch Wicked again. Used to call you call it an ugly film. And you were so right. [01:20:39] Speaker A: Right. It's hideous. [01:20:41] Speaker B: The, you know that CGI main character, the one who's Elphaba, the one in pink, that fucking cgi. Oh, wait, the one with a big. [01:20:52] Speaker A: Are you talking about Ariana Grande? [01:20:53] Speaker B: Is that what they call the character? She's got like big eyes, that cg. Glinda Jar Jar Binks. [01:21:01] Speaker A: She's like a person, though. She's not green. [01:21:04] Speaker B: Yeah. She's the one who's always in the pink dress, like spindly arms. [01:21:07] Speaker A: That's Ariana Grande. [01:21:09] Speaker B: Big star, Dobby cg. [01:21:11] Speaker A: Yeah. I think she just looks like that, though. Like, if you look at Interview, like, she just looks like that. Both the leads of that movie have not eaten in like three years. And their heads are enormous and their bodies are tiny. [01:21:24] Speaker B: Terrible. [01:21:25] Speaker A: And it's. Yeah, not great to look at on that level either. It's just. Oh, man. Yeah. Someone commented. Someone found. So I, when I saw it, I wrote about it being ugly and then I screenshotted it and put it on my. My blue sky. And I was like, God, I hated that. You know? And, you know, it's like most of the people that I know on Blue sky and what are like movie people, whatever, so whether they agree or not, it's like they're not gonna get like, hurt over me not liking Wicked. Right. And someone like a month later, like, found this random post from a stranger. I did not know this person and was like, you know, actually all the effects were practical. But you know what? The world needs stupid people, so keep on being dumb. And I was like, okay, for one, you need to go to therapy if you're that mad at a stranger about not Liking a movie you like, but also saying that the ugly effects were practical and not CGI doesn't make it better. Who's that guy who does all that practical movie. [01:22:35] Speaker B: Who's that guy who does all the fucking. He was the fish guy in Shape of Water. And you know, who's his name? Doug something or other. Doug Jones. He was. He was Ariana Grande. Surely that was him. [01:22:49] Speaker A: You know, Galinda played by Doug Jones. [01:22:52] Speaker B: With like tennis balls all over him. Ping pong balls in a suit. [01:22:55] Speaker A: I'd buy it. I would buy it, but I just thought that was funny. I looked it up afterwards. Apparently a lot of the sets were practical. I was like, so it's just. It's just hideous. It's. That's just what it looks like. That's not good. [01:23:07] Speaker B: Stunning lack of ambition in that design. It was kind of like the gr. The Grinch. [01:23:12] Speaker A: Mm. [01:23:13] Speaker B: You know, I mean, the Lorax meets fucking Harry Potter. It was fucking. Hey, it was shit. Interestingly, right. Owen has never seen the wizard of Oz, right? [01:23:25] Speaker A: Oh, wow. [01:23:26] Speaker B: He's fucking 10. When is he gonna watch the wizard of Oz? [01:23:28] Speaker A: That is so funny. When do you watch the wizard of Oz? Like when you're like seven, Right? [01:23:33] Speaker B: Well, all the way through Wicked, right? He'd been kind of pulling my toe to get me to look up from my book. Dad, there's. There's a big twist coming. Really big tw. You never see the twist come in. Dad, the twist was the fucking wizard isn't real. It's just Jeff Goldblum like. Oh, fuck. I know, mate. [01:23:53] Speaker A: Oh, boy. Does he know there was a movie that is. [01:23:57] Speaker B: He does now. [01:23:58] Speaker A: So funny. Like it. I had never considered the idea of seeing Wicked without any sense of the source material. [01:24:08] Speaker B: That's his thing. [01:24:08] Speaker A: So it's just. [01:24:09] Speaker B: It's just a first exposure to the Oz verse. Yeah. [01:24:12] Speaker A: It's just its own thing. [01:24:13] Speaker B: Yeah. I recommended. I'm gonna sit him down in front of Oz, the Great and Terrible. Or is it Oz the Great and Powerful, the Sam Raimi. I think I really like that film. And not because I'm a fucking Sam Raimi. Stan. I. I actually think it's slept on. I believe that to be a really good movie. [01:24:30] Speaker A: I wish that I had slept on that movie. Waste of my time. Anything else? [01:24:38] Speaker B: No, that's it for me. [01:24:42] Speaker A: I managed. Am I not allowed to talk? [01:24:45] Speaker B: No, go on. [01:24:46] Speaker A: My headache. I can. I can talk. I actually managed to get some. Some movies. And last week I was saying how it always takes me a little bit at the Beginning of January to like, start watching movies. I'm like, getting back into my routine and all that. Like, okay, I gotta sit down, work, sure, yada, yada. So this week I was like, back in the game again. Especially because it's too goddamn cold to do anything normally. I'm out and about. Like, I'm. I'm walking to the movie theater. I'm going and doing things. [01:25:14] Speaker B: You're not leaving this house getting your fitness on, aren't you? I'm noticing. [01:25:18] Speaker A: I'm getting my fitness on. Yeah. Because, hey, fit by 40, right? Yes, that's the. That's one of the. The goals. So I've been getting my VR headset on. Probably doesn't help with the headaches, but. No, that isn't gonna help my VR. [01:25:34] Speaker B: Your head. Literally putting your head in the fucking Zucker verse. [01:25:38] Speaker A: Honestly, I think a lot of it too was. Was Astrobot. And then I realized there is a setting on Astrobot to reduce motion sickness. So I turned that on and hopefully that'll help because I noticed playing it yesterday that I was like, I kind of feel like I'm gonna throw up. [01:25:53] Speaker B: Astrobot is the first game I've ever turned down. The volume of the speaker on the controller. [01:25:59] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, same. It's so very loud. I have it turned down like, probably to a third. And it's still pretty aggressive on it. [01:26:08] Speaker B: Because there have been times when I've got up like a little bit early to get in a bit of Astrobot. [01:26:13] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:26:13] Speaker B: And I've got the TV down on one and the fucking controller is just. Just beeping at me. So I'll turn that down. [01:26:20] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it's. Kyo asked me to turn it down because he was like. I was playing and I had put on headphones because he was going to sleep. And then I was like sitting there playing it and he was like, I can still. I can still hear it. It's like, it's. I think it's just rumbling at this point. It's just such an aggressive game that even the rumble makes noise. Even when you. You have your headphones on. [01:26:43] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:26:45] Speaker A: But, yeah, so I have been working on my fitness, which is great. Enjoying that a lot. Some nice sore soreness in my muscles and it's a good time. But this week, yeah, I watched some. Some flicks. So when was the last time we recorded this? [01:27:02] Speaker B: Last week, this last Sunday. [01:27:04] Speaker A: This. This. I was just trying to figure out. I'm like, did I had I watched this yet? I think after. I'm thinking the six. Yeah. So I watched Y2K. Oh, God. Yeah. Which is. I'm. I'm very sad about how bad Y2K was. I was hoping that, like. Yeah, I was hoping that, like, I would disagree with all my friends who didn't like it because I love Kyle Mooney. [01:27:30] Speaker B: Yeah, he's great. It's not his fault. Just he's in a shit. [01:27:33] Speaker A: Well, I mean, he is the writer and director. [01:27:36] Speaker B: Oh. Oh, shit. Sorry. Not the fucking Curse of the Wilder People guy. What's that film? [01:27:41] Speaker A: Oh, no. Yeah. I don't know what his name is. I always call him Ricky Baker. [01:27:44] Speaker B: Yeah. What's that film called? [01:27:46] Speaker A: Hunt for the Wilder People. [01:27:48] Speaker B: There we go. Yeah. [01:27:49] Speaker A: Yes. No, I love him and. Yeah, but the, the writer, director, who plays like kind of stoner guy in it. Kyle Mooney. Love him. And I was so disappointed at how terrible this movie is, which I checked. So, you know, this ostensibly is about, like, the Y2K bug hitting and taking physical form and murdering a whole bunch of people. It is 35 minutes into this 90 minute movie where that finally starts to happen. And that 35 minutes leading up is just basically, remember this thing from 1999? Remember this thing from 1999. And that is tiring, exhausting. Right? Like, as, like, listen. Millennials are very prone to nostalgia. We love to look back and listen to our old things and stuff like that. This is the worst incarnation of that when just becomes like, it's so referential that you're like, okay, tell a story. [01:28:53] Speaker B: Yes. [01:28:53] Speaker A: And yet, despite all of those references, this also doesn't feel like it takes place in 1999. [01:28:59] Speaker B: Not at all. [01:28:59] Speaker A: Those kids are very much from now. [01:29:01] Speaker B: Exactly. And I got the same feeling in that first 35 minutes of watching Y2K as I got from watching, like, Jay and Silent Bob reboot. Just fuck off. The world has moved right on from this. It's terrible. [01:29:17] Speaker A: Yeah. And I love the concept because I think, you know, Y2K it, like, would be a fun thing to riff on, you know, remember like, 25 years ago we were convinced the world was gonna end at midnight on New Year's because, like, our computers were gonna go backwards. Like, that was. That's a funny thing to look at. And it was like, you know, there were real concerns about what was going to happen. Like, you could channel that into something. But whatever was happen was just. Well, it's not funny. It's not, like, particularly heartfelt. Doesn't. Yeah, it just doesn't. Like, I was sad. [01:29:54] Speaker B: I was very kind to it, giving it one and A half stars. And that was only for like one or two quite good kills. [01:30:01] Speaker A: Right? Yeah, that's. That's really the thing it has going for it is that it does have some really good practical effects in it. They lovingly crafted the kills. They just can't fix the movie. [01:30:12] Speaker B: Yes. Okay, listen, good that, I'm glad. Perverse though it sounds, I'm glad you didn't like it. I'm glad we don't have a Nosferatu on our hands here. [01:30:22] Speaker A: No, we definitely. No, absolutely not. Obviously for the fan Cave Rewatch 10 Cloverfield Lane, which is always a good time and really enjoyed discussing that with Kristen. So if you haven't signed up for the KO Fi, go listen to it because. Because it was a blast. [01:30:39] Speaker B: What's the, what's the read on John Goodman these days? [01:30:43] Speaker A: Did he get his house burned down? [01:30:48] Speaker B: I mean, was he, did he get sucked into the kind of Roseanne orbit? Is he. [01:30:52] Speaker A: No. [01:30:53] Speaker B: Is he? [01:30:53] Speaker A: Okay, remember straight. [01:30:55] Speaker B: Oh, they cut her. Yeah, fine, fine, fine. And then just did a new. [01:30:58] Speaker A: Made the show without her. [01:30:59] Speaker B: Fine, fine, fine, fine. [01:31:00] Speaker A: Exactly. No, he did not get pulled into that. And as far as I know, good guy. He's. I think he's been married to the same person for like 50 years. Whatever. Like just cool, dude. I, I love him deeply and you know, I've been watching, I just watched the special features on my True Stories dvd. My Criterion, very nice True Stories DVD here with John Goodman's upside down head on the COVID and I, I love him. And in 10 Cloverfield Lane he plays that character who you're never quite sure what the fuck is going on with him so incredibly well, I mean just. [01:31:41] Speaker B: Who made just great? Who's behind that? [01:31:45] Speaker A: Weirdly, Damien Chazelle is one of the co writers of the screenplay. He didn't come up with the story, but he co wrote the screenplay, which I thought was fascinating. The other guy is, let's see, crew here, director Dan Trachtenberg, the other writers. [01:32:02] Speaker B: That's who it was. Yes. [01:32:04] Speaker A: Matthew Stuken and Josh Campbell. [01:32:05] Speaker B: Dan Trachtenberg of Prey. [01:32:08] Speaker A: Yes, exactly. So he knows what he's doing out there for sure. And I just love 10 Cloverfield Lane. 1 of the things we discussed is that like neither of us, I've seen like half of Cloverfield but it made me too nauseous. I didn't finish it and she hasn't seen it at all. And I think one of the, like the movie 10 Cloverfield Lane, clearly you can tell that they didn't plan to call it that and they were gonna let it be a surprise that it was in the Cloverfield universe. Okay. [01:32:40] Speaker B: Fuck, I wish movies would do that. [01:32:42] Speaker A: Right. I'm sure that, like, the studio was just like, fuck, no. Nobody will go see a random, you know, kidnapping movie or whatever if it's not a part of this franchise. You're not gonna do that. But I was saying that, like, to me, that would be. Because I didn't see Cloverfield, Ike and Kristen either. We got to go through this whole thing sort of not knowing where it was going and whether there was something outside or not. And it's so cool to go through this movie like that, which is clearly what they intended, because there's a part, you know, near the end of it where, like, the mailbox is tipped over and you see the address 10 Cloverfield late. It's clearly supposed to be a reveal. [01:33:21] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:33:22] Speaker A: Right. Like, oh, shit, this is part of the Cloverfield universe. And I was thinking it's like in split, when you don't know that this is part of the unbreakable universe. Right. And then you get to the end of it and you're like, yep. [01:33:36] Speaker B: What? It's one of my strongest ever, I feel. Pitches for an Elm street prequel was a surprise Elm street prequel that you don't know is an Elm street prequel until the end. [01:33:45] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:33:46] Speaker B: Which I'm happy to go into in depth if you. If you'd like, at some future date. Not now. [01:33:51] Speaker A: Yeah, okay. Not now. Yes. But I. I would love to hear how you pull that off. For sure. [01:33:56] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. It would be amazing. [01:33:59] Speaker A: Yeah. But I wish that. [01:34:02] Speaker B: Imagine the black phone. Right. [01:34:05] Speaker A: No, no, no, no, no. Now we've said you're gonna tell it later date. [01:34:09] Speaker B: It's kind of like the black phone. And then at the end, you realize that the killer's already. Kruger. There you go. I've done it. [01:34:17] Speaker A: There it is. Yeah. I wish they'd been allowed to do what was clearly their vision for this, because as people who hadn't seen Cloverfield, that made, like, the tension is through the roof of this not knowing, you know, what's really going on. Yeah. In this. Whereas if you are familiar with Cloverfield, you know, like. Yeah. There is something actively outside. I will never watch it, but I'm sure it's wonderful. [01:34:46] Speaker B: Can you not, like, just take a bunch of Advil first, like a load. [01:34:52] Speaker A: Try to power through it so much, it's worth it. Yeah. I don't know if it. Take a Dramamine beforehand, see if. See if it works out. Yeah. I don't Know, I don't know about that. DMT and watch clothes, take some DMT and seeing monsters all over the place. I watched a little bit of old school boat Corps, the 1941 movie the Sea Wolf last night, which can't be as good as it sounds. Basically, it is kind of a psychological thriller. In which. You don't like psychological thrillers. [01:35:34] Speaker B: Well, I love a psychological thriller, but not as much as I would love a film about a sea wolf. [01:35:41] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't know. A movie called the Sea Wolf about an actual Seawolf in 1941 would be, like, the cheesiest thing you can possibly imagine, if that's what you're going for. But no, this is about midnight on the high seas. [01:35:55] Speaker B: Full moon. [01:35:55] Speaker A: Edward G. Robinson plays a ship captain who is already a big asshole, but over the course of this film, basically loses his mind and things become more and more dire on this ship as he goes off the deep end. [01:36:15] Speaker B: Nice. Nice. [01:36:17] Speaker A: And I mean this. It's a movie that's really held up on the power of how good Edward G. Robinson is in this role. Like, oh, man, he just. He's so mesmerizing that the whole time you really riveted. And it also, it has some surprising moments for a Hays Code era movie, including, like, a guy killing himself by jumping off of the mast of the ship and, like, a man being attacked by a shark. Well, like, being, you know, held in the water by his. By his crewmates and stuff like that. Like, things where I was, like, deeply, like, oh, you don't really see violent shit like this in movies from this era. So. Yeah, the Sea Wolf was a. Was a good little. Good little ride. [01:37:02] Speaker B: It's. It's like the black phone meets in a violent nature. Right? [01:37:07] Speaker A: Oh, God. All right. [01:37:08] Speaker B: Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. [01:37:09] Speaker A: And I don't know about it anymore. [01:37:10] Speaker B: No, no, no, no. Less walking. Right. But it's. It's from the janitor's point of view as he plans, like, meticulously plans one night of making kids disappear, right? And we tail him while he's tailing kids, watching them with their families, working out what their fears are, working out what they're afraid of. And then choreographed over the course of one night, he plays on all of these fears that these kids have. And we follow him, like going to a hardware store and making his shit, you know what I mean? Making his fucking kidnap kit. And he's building something in his fucking basement, and we don't know what it is. [01:37:55] Speaker A: What's he building out there? [01:37:57] Speaker B: Exactly. And then at the end, you know, he gets captured and the fucking cops pull his jacket open and he's got a fucking striped sweater on, and we see that he's wearing this glove. Fuck me, it's Freddy. Tell me that doesn't sound amazing. It does. [01:38:14] Speaker A: That's a. I think it's a pretty good idea. I also watched to die for, the 1995 Gus Van Sant film with Nicole. [01:38:27] Speaker B: Very good movie. [01:38:28] Speaker A: Phoenix. Matt Dillon. It's a. It's an interesting one. I don't know what to. So I remember this movie that, like, I stumbled. [01:38:37] Speaker B: If you like milfs. [01:38:40] Speaker A: Oh, sure. Yeah. I mean, she's like 27 as well at the time. So, you know a MILF when you saw it, when you were, you know, however old you were in 1995. But yeah, so it's interesting because I remember stumbling across this on TV on, like, HBO when I was probably, I don't know, 14 years old or whatever, and finding something about it, like, mesmerizing, but absolutely not really, like, getting this movie, you know, it was just kind of something about it that I was like, huh, this interests me. And watching it now, it was kind of interesting because I like. I love mockumentaries, you know, like Christopher Guest movies, all that kind of stuff. Best in Show, Waiting for Guffman, Spinal Tap, all those things. And as a mockumentary, it's like, it's too artificial. Right. But that's the, like, it's not supposed to be like a mockumentary and that. It's not supposed to be realistic. These people are supposed to be over the top and caricatures and stuff like that. But it's hard for me to shut off the fact that I'm like, they don't really talk like real people. They're very much actors, you know, throughout this whole thing. And so, yeah, that's more of like a me hang up. It's not really the movie. It's just being used to a certain kind of mockumentary that this is not doing and. But like, it's still very interesting. And Joaquin Phoenix is such a weird character in this as the. The kid Nicole Kidman talks into murdering her husband. Yeah, it's just a fascinating sort of look at like, fame and, you know, Hollywood and what people will do in order to. To accomplish things, especially stardom and the artifice. [01:40:30] Speaker B: Does it have any of that basis in fact? Is it. Is it based on any kind of real case? [01:40:35] Speaker A: I'm not sure, because. [01:40:36] Speaker B: Or like a bunch of few cases. [01:40:39] Speaker A: Yeah, I think it's probably more that. Because obviously there was, like, the thing with. What was the woman who ended up like, I think she's still married to the kid that she was a teacher who she slept with her student, had a child with him. She went to jail for, like, 15 years or whatever, got out, he waited for her. They've got more kids and stuff like that now. But I, like. I think it's based on several things. I don't think there's just, like, one case that this is based on, but an interesting movie to die for. And it has, of course, that. That weird scene at the end that the Simpsons parodied with the ice skating to Season of the Witch. That is iconic. And I always think of whenever I hear that song. I also. What? [01:41:27] Speaker B: Nothing. [01:41:28] Speaker A: Oh, I watched the Discourse. I watched the Boys from Brazil. Have you seen this? Oh, no, 1978. It was funny because I was watching it, like, and then Keo came in, like, two thirds of the way through and was like, is this the Boys from Brazil? It's like, how do you pick this shit out? Like, this is incredible. But it's a movie from 1978 with a cast, an unbelievable cast. This movie has Laurence Olivier. It has Gregory Peck, James Mason, UTA Hagen. Like, the famous. Like, she's famous for, like, her school of thought and acting is one that people, you know, follows. Got Aunt Miro, Bruno, Bruno Ganz. Like, just an insane cast in. In this. And it's about, like, a Nazi hunter. Lawrence Olivier plays a Nazi hunter. Gregory Peck plays Josef Mengele. And so this sounds like it should be an absolute slam dunk. And I watched it because I don't know if you saw this. Did you see the video of Steve Guttenberg during the LA fires? [01:42:43] Speaker B: I certainly did, yes. [01:42:44] Speaker A: Yes. So for those of you who didn't see this, a local news station was, you know, doing man on the street interviews, goes. And he's interviewing this guy who is like, hey, people, if you abandon your cars, leave your keys in them because, you know, we're out here moving those so emergency vehicles can get through. And then the. The news anchor is like, what's your name? And he's like, my name's Steve Guttenberg. You know, and he goes on, and then this news anchor, clearly someone said in his ear, like, that's an actor. He's kind of famous. And the news anchor should have just played it off, but instead he's like, oh, you're an actor. Yeah, I recognize you now. And it's so awkward and embarrassing. You're like, should have Left it. Let it go. Steve Gutenberg was not concerned with whether or not you recognized him anyways, in the comments on that video that someone had posted on Instagram, someone mentioned him in this movie, the Boys from Brazil, which I think might have been his first movie. He's like 19 or 20 in the beginning of this. And I was like, I'll watch that. I love me some Gutenberg. And it's awful. It's a truly staggeringly bad movie in which Gregory Peck and Laurence Olivier both are putting in probably the worst performances of their entire careers, like, baffling German accents in this. And it centers around what would be a great batshit idea for a movie, right? Like, if you really committed and it's based on a book. But if you committed to this and made it as batshit as it sounds, it could be great because it centers around the idea that Mengele has cloned Hitler baby like Hitler and has, like, implanted him into various, like, homes around the world. So there are 94 child Hitlers growing up all over the world. [01:44:46] Speaker B: Well, that sounds sick. [01:44:49] Speaker A: Like, sick as in, like, oh, cool, or sick as in, like, that's a bad idea? Mengele? [01:44:53] Speaker B: Well, both. That's a hell of a fucking concept, right? [01:44:57] Speaker A: Great concept. That should be balls to the wall if you're gonna do it. And it doesn't do it that way. It's like you don't even really find out about this. And, like, you're. You're hearing about there's like, 94 of someone in this that, like, they, like, are trying to prevent assassination of or something like that. And then, like, it's like, three quarters of the way movie that you finally, like, meet these kids and, you know, the Nazi hunter is, like, coming across them and being like, wait, that kid looked exactly like that kid. Hold on. What's happening here? [01:45:30] Speaker B: They cloned Hitler. [01:45:31] Speaker A: They've cloned Hitler. And it should. Yeah, it just should be such a batshit, crazy fun movie. And it does not do that at all. And it is truly just on every level. Oh, and the sound design is unhinged because the background noise is so loud in every scene that at some points, like, you just cannot hear the dialogue. It's just like cars going by and things passing overhead and dogs barking and shit like that. It's truly. Oh, the Boys from Brazil is a bad movie. But, you know, maybe watch it. I don't know, put it on in the background if you're not doing anything else. Just to see a baffling. [01:46:12] Speaker B: It feels like it would benefit from another go. [01:46:17] Speaker A: Well, that's the thing. This is the kind of movie that I'm like, when people remake movies, that's what you remake. Something that's like a really good idea, but was just executed so badly. This could be a very fun movie to remake now. So someone get on Boys from Brazil. I'm sure someone's thinking about it somewhere. [01:46:37] Speaker B: Yes, yeah, yeah. [01:46:40] Speaker A: At any given time, any movie. The last thing that I watched, though that is the opposite of that, that I think was phenomenal was the Order. Have you heard of this one? [01:46:53] Speaker B: The Order? No, no, I do not know this. [01:46:59] Speaker A: It kind of flew under the radar because this was an end of last year movie. Kia watched it like a month ago. I think he watched it's been a minute. And it is. Jude Law plays an FBI agent who is transferred to the Pacific Northwest. And he discovers that there is this white supremacist group that's operating up there. This is based on a true story. And this white supremacist group is conducting bank robberies, violent bank robberies, while also doing all kinds of other violence, whether outside of their group or to, you know, people within their group. It's just a hugely violent white supremacist organization that he comes in and is like, we have got to get rid of this. And it's a really. I mean, this feels like a movie that, like, is straight from the 70s. It's very much got that vibe. Jude Law plays this FBI character in a way that's very classic and old school and, you know, it's well lit. You can see everything. You can hear everything. It's beautiful. You know, Pacific Northwest are really taking advantage with lots of shots of just trees and forests and the beauty of the area juxtaposed against these horrific people who are up there. And one of the things that I thought while watching this was that it just. It validates even more how much I hate Civil War and how Alex Garland approached American politics as if it's somehow inscrutable and hard to understand. Like, what's going on over there? Why is everybody killing each other? They're all the same. And this is like, no, that's violent white supremacy. That's the problem that we got going on here. [01:48:47] Speaker B: Jude Law and who else? Who else is in Nicholas Holt? [01:48:50] Speaker A: Isn't it Journey Smollett? [01:48:52] Speaker B: Ah, yes, yes, yes, yes. Nosferatu's Nicholas. [01:48:56] Speaker A: Nosferatu's Nicholas Holt, which, I mean, you know, I told you I felt that he was really miscast in Nosferatu. And I was talking with Someone else who said that he was miscast in this, I was like, I agree. It's one of the weaker points of this. [01:49:10] Speaker B: He was Renfield as well, wasn't he? [01:49:12] Speaker A: He was Renfield, which I liked him in. [01:49:14] Speaker B: I like Renfield was a great laugh. Yeah. [01:49:16] Speaker A: Yeah. I feel like that's more his. His bag. I like him as kind of a doofy comedic actor, maybe. And I don't know that, like, he pulls off these more serious roles super well. Yeah, I was talking to my friend Zed about that, like, and he said the same thing. He was like, yeah, I felt the same in Nosferatu. Like, it just feels like he doesn't quite fit. But regardless, you know, he may be the weakest point, but he's. It's still a really good movie. I recommend the. Or the Order wholeheartedly. That's just. That is a film and one of those ones that had me, you know, I probably at some point talk about them in a cold open or whatever. But, like, this group is truly horrific. And like many of the white supremacist groups in America, inspired by the dumbass book the Turner Diaries, which inspired Timothy McVeigh to blow up the Kansas City, Oklahoma City. I mean, the building there, just a weirdly influential book for dumbass white people who want to be in power. And this group was just virulently anti everyone, especially blacks and Jews. They murdered a prominent Jewish radio personality. Like, you know that. Which I delved into afterwards as well. Excellent movie. Watch the Order. [01:50:33] Speaker B: Nice. Thank you. Last year, you say yes. [01:50:37] Speaker A: Yeah. 20, 24. Yeah. Just end of this past year. [01:50:40] Speaker B: There is a chance that I will watch that. Yes. Not so much. [01:50:43] Speaker A: Yeah, I think. I think you're gonna like it. [01:50:45] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's up your alley. Probably steer clear of the fucking wolf. Man of the Sea. Is that what it's called? [01:50:52] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah, that's the one. Yeah. I don't think that that one's gonna be your speed. [01:50:56] Speaker B: Yes. [01:50:56] Speaker A: But the Order was more made for me. [01:50:58] Speaker B: You've described a movie that I'm interested in. [01:51:01] Speaker A: Yes. If I were going with, what of these things would I recommend to you? Definitely the Order. I think it's. You're gonna really like it. [01:51:09] Speaker B: Cool. Hopefully we'll squeeze in a movie or two this week. I know that we've had much opportunity recently, but I think the stars might align us to get some in. [01:51:19] Speaker A: Let me tell you, this is. I pointed this out to you, but I did the thing where I texted it to you while you're Sleeping. And you never respond to anything that I text you when you wake up in the morning. You look at it and it is gone. But I had said that, you know, we have. On average, we watch at least. Generally, aside from off weeks like this, we watch at least one movie together pretty much every week, sometimes more. [01:51:44] Speaker B: Yep. [01:51:44] Speaker A: And doing this usually more. Yes. And we have been doing this every week for four years plus Mad. Which means that. Yeah, we have literally watched hundreds of movies together, which I think is. Is wild. [01:51:59] Speaker B: I agree. I agree. I love that. [01:52:01] Speaker A: I never really thought. I kept seeing, like, am I doing the math wrong? Like, no. There's 52 weeks in a year we're watching two movies. Ish. A week. It's literally hundreds of movies. [01:52:11] Speaker B: And then you add in, you know, the hours. A couple hours a week on a Sunday night where we actually cast together all the conversations that we have that go into the cast. The journey is long, man. The journey is. [01:52:21] Speaker A: It is. [01:52:22] Speaker B: It's a significant chunk of. Of our fucking time on earth that we've. That we've spent on and around. [01:52:29] Speaker A: And I feel great about that. [01:52:30] Speaker B: I love it. I say that, you know, with. With much fondness. And I. I'm not. I'm not averse to a little tattoo, you know, a little joag tattoo at some point. The hand. The joag hand. The helm's hand. [01:52:44] Speaker A: Yeah. I think we've reached the point, you know, hundreds and hundreds, thousands of hours. [01:52:49] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:52:50] Speaker A: Over all these years. [01:52:51] Speaker B: Yes. [01:52:52] Speaker A: I think it's safe to say yes. It's time for the ink. [01:52:55] Speaker B: It might be. Maybe it might well be. And. And what a delight it is to have you along with us, eh? [01:53:03] Speaker A: Here, here, here, here. Friends, we're so glad you're here, spending these thousands of hours with us. [01:53:11] Speaker B: Yep. Totally agree. Whatever your week holds in store for you, I hope it's a good one. Hold your loved ones close. If you have a fucking crazy idea that you've had in your head that you can't quite seem to get rid of or that you worry that people might not like it or that you're worried that you're not good enough or talented enough, give it a fucking go. Do something. [01:53:30] Speaker A: Yeah, do it. [01:53:31] Speaker B: Do some shit, man. You never know, because that might be the thing. That might be the thing that people will remember when they think of you when you're dead and gone, which you. [01:53:43] Speaker A: Will be like now, while you're alive. [01:53:45] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that too. [01:53:49] Speaker A: And stay spooky. [01:53:50] Speaker B: Yay.