Episode 213

January 20, 2025

01:25:46

Ep. 213: supervolcanos, human evolution, & david lynch

Hosted by

Mark Lewis Corrigan Vaughan
Ep. 213: supervolcanos, human evolution, & david lynch
Jack of All Graves
Ep. 213: supervolcanos, human evolution, & david lynch

Jan 20 2025 | 01:25:46

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Show Notes

Naturally, we had to take some time to reflect on David Lynch's life and philosophy. But first, Marko tells Corrigan about the Toba Catastrophe and what it might tell us about the future of humankind after we climate change ourselves to death!

Highlights:

[0:00] Marko tells Corrigan about the Toba Catastrophe Theory
[23:05] Mark's inscrutable bits, our special guest for next week,
[32:30] Now that Mark listens to podcasts, his latest listen brings him to a discussion of conspiracy theorists in the White House on the eve of the inauguration
[42:18] What we watched: The Man They Could Not Hang, The Straight Story, Gladiator II, Cuckoo, Twin Peaks, The People's Joker
[1:03:15] Looking back on Lynch

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Episode Transcript

[00:00:04] Speaker A: I thought it might be nice today to open with a tale of hope. What do you think? [00:00:13] Speaker B: Oh, okay. Yeah. I'm here for it. [00:00:16] Speaker A: I thought it might be nice today to just hit a note of optimism. Right. Note of. Of just. The future might not be so bad. Right. And there are examples. Right? There's. There are examples throughout human history of when we endure. Right. People endure and live on. Right. [00:00:47] Speaker B: All right. Yeah. [00:00:48] Speaker A: So I thought maybe let's talk about that a little bit and see. See if we can't draw parallels between what I'm about to talk about and where we're at now. [00:00:56] Speaker B: Okay. [00:00:57] Speaker A: What do you think? [00:00:57] Speaker B: Excellent. Yeah, I'm on board. Give it the. The President Whitmore from Independent State Treatment. [00:01:02] Speaker A: Exactly. That's what I'm. [00:01:04] Speaker B: Survive. [00:01:04] Speaker A: You fucking nailed it. That's exactly what I'm gonna do. And as is often, you know, something I love to do, you're gonna come back with me, right? [00:01:15] Speaker B: Yes. Take us there. [00:01:17] Speaker A: You're gonna step into Marco's fucking DeLorean. But this time. This time it's not a DeLorean sound. No, it isn't. Load up the plutonium and set the flux capacitor because we're going back. We're going back about 74,000 years. [00:01:37] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, that's right. All right, who's here? Who's here 74,000 years ago, Mark set the stage for me. [00:01:45] Speaker A: Homo sapiens are here. [00:01:47] Speaker B: Okay. We exist. [00:01:49] Speaker A: We exist. We exist. And. All right, look. Physically, anatomically, we look kind of similar to how we do now. Sure. Culturally, of course, totally different. We are a nomadic species. Right now, we move around. We have kind of groups, tribes. There's maybe about 20 or 50 of us in a tribe. We are hunters. We are scavengers. We are omnivorous. We are gathering plant animals. We are. We're a great bunch of lads. Right, sure. That's what we are. So if you don't mind, I'd like to focus. I've set my time circuits, but I've got a TARDIS here, and I've gone back 74,000 years and I've landed. [00:02:42] Speaker B: How many of you are. We each taking our own ride. Is that one of us gets a DeLorean, one of us gets a Tardis. Is that how that works? [00:02:47] Speaker A: Plenty of room in the tardis. You can come along. [00:02:49] Speaker B: Okay. [00:02:50] Speaker A: You can be my companion this time. And I am the doctor. [00:02:52] Speaker B: Great. All right. I'm down for that. [00:02:54] Speaker A: All right. Shall we go to Sumatra, maybe? [00:02:58] Speaker B: Okay. You're gonna have to tell me where Sumatra is. That Africa, Sumatra. [00:03:03] Speaker A: Let me just get the old maps. I'm. I want to say it's kind of Indonesia sort of. [00:03:07] Speaker B: Oh, that sounds more correct, yeah. [00:03:10] Speaker A: Yes, indeed it is an Indonesia. [00:03:12] Speaker B: I couldn't see Sumatra on a map of Africa. My Asia is a little weaker. [00:03:19] Speaker A: Yes. Indonesian island. It is now known as Sumatra. [00:03:24] Speaker B: Okay, and you mean they didn't call it that 75,000 years ago? [00:03:28] Speaker A: No, I don't think they did. I think they probably would have called it or something like that. Something like that. But I'll tell you something that happened on Sumatra about 74,000 years ago, okay. A fucking horrifically massive explosion from a super volcano. [00:03:53] Speaker B: Ooh. [00:03:54] Speaker A: Known as Toba. [00:03:56] Speaker B: Toba. [00:03:57] Speaker A: Toba. T O B A the Toba super volcano. [00:04:01] Speaker B: Fucking what makes a volcano a super volcano? [00:04:05] Speaker A: Just the absolute size of this land. [00:04:08] Speaker B: Okay. [00:04:08] Speaker A: Right in awe at the fucking scale. A mega unit of a volcano. [00:04:15] Speaker B: Sure. [00:04:15] Speaker A: Right. Fuck. You think you, you think, you think you've seen a volcano? Bullshit. Because if you were a Homo sapien tribe at the foot of Toba when it erupted about 74,000 years ago, me, were you about to have a bad day? Because what Toba did was take a beautiful, beautiful region, biodiverse as a right tropical, lush, kind of dense rainforest blanketing this highland, and fucked it utterly right nice. Okay, we are talking ash, fire, sulfur, fucking all manner of absolute pollutants. But yeah, the scale, the scale of this eruption was absolutely fucking off any kind of scale that we've seen in, in, in our, in modern times. [00:05:17] Speaker B: Yeah, in the modern era. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:05:19] Speaker A: Just cubic fucking absolute fucktons, kilometers of volcanic material issued forth from this eruption, covering just most of South Asia in ash. Absolutely blanketing the atmosphere with. With sulfur dioxide. And this kind of created almost like a little strata of the atmosphere all of its own and. [00:05:49] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:05:50] Speaker A: Plunged the fucking planet, the entire planet, into something of a volcanic winter. [00:05:58] Speaker B: Mmm. Have you seen a volcanic volcano eruption? [00:06:02] Speaker A: Yeah, there's one going on right now, isn't there? [00:06:04] Speaker B: In like, you've been there? [00:06:06] Speaker A: Oh, no. [00:06:07] Speaker B: Oh, okay. [00:06:09] Speaker A: I'm from a small town in South Wales called Tragedia. Right. [00:06:13] Speaker B: You travel, so there's every chance that you. Like, I've seen the very volcano that is erupting now erupt before in Hawaii. Yeah, I've been there. It's pretty, pretty bananas to see. [00:06:28] Speaker A: I've seen kind of video on the news of it erupting and it looks metal as fuck. [00:06:33] Speaker B: Yeah, it's inching from like, you know, we go up to like Mauna Kea and look down and you can see like in, in Kilauea, the, the crater through Kilauea Iki and all that kind of stuff where like you can see like from a distance, the like splashing of it coming out and stuff like that. And in other places you can go and see like where the lava flows like underground and like cracks and fissures underneath and you can kind of walk along, but you're not supposed to. You know a lot of the. There's often cops and stuff like that to keep you from getting so close that you can injure yourself and stuff like that. But just to say like any kind of eruption or like think of when that one in Iceland erupted and just like shut shit down for months. [00:07:17] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, yes, I've tried it. [00:07:19] Speaker B: Any kind of eruption is so disruptive in some way. You know places, even a small thing like that one in Hawaii. My brother in law lives on the Kona side of the island and that eruption that is going on now and that I've seen before is on the Hilo side of the island. And whether it's that or like eruptions on like Maui and stuff like that, it all kind of like gathers on the Kona side and they just have like. What do they call it? Vog. [00:07:49] Speaker A: Vog. [00:07:50] Speaker B: Volcano fog covers the area. Volcano fog. [00:07:52] Speaker A: Amazing. [00:07:53] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:07:55] Speaker A: Which is a smaller scale of exactly what we're discussing here, right? [00:07:58] Speaker B: Exactly. This is a tiny version of this thing. [00:08:01] Speaker A: Yep, you're right in that I've been about. But you know, I would probably travel away from an erupting volcano, not towards one. I've never been lucky enough to be in the same place as an erupting volcano. I'd like to. I'd like to. [00:08:16] Speaker B: Yeah. As long as it's like a little, little guy. [00:08:18] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:08:18] Speaker B: This is always the thing that stresses me out though, like because you know, Kyo's family lives on Hawaii and all that kind of stuff that like what if we go there and it like big erupts. [00:08:27] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:08:28] Speaker B: You know, like that's nowhere to go from there. [00:08:31] Speaker A: Well, yeah, yeah. [00:08:32] Speaker B: Volcanoed. [00:08:33] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. And you know, if you, if you take a little. What happened to Homo sapiens at the time of Toba? You don't want to be around a super volcano. Right, yeah. [00:08:44] Speaker B: Also, sorry, just one more side note, but to that effect as well. When I was in New Zealand we went to like a exhibit that showed because obviously New Zealand is like volcanic as well. And for some reason this museum had like an exhibit of like what would happen if like any of this shit went Active. And it was like the most horrifying thing I've ever seen in my life. It's like you're. They put you inside of a house, like as if you're just in your living room and you can see the volcano, like across the water erupting. And the, like, it, you know, shows like first the kind of like, shockwave hitting you and the, like, place like shakes or whatever and things like that. And then this like, you know, the ash and everything suddenly coming in a wave towards you, which is basically what would like kill you in the first place. Like, you wouldn't have time to get hit by everything else would be the ash and everything goes dark and, you know, shakes around you, everything falling down and all that stuff. And I was like, this is. I mean, you'd be dead so fast. [00:09:48] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. [00:09:49] Speaker B: You know, like, you wouldn't have time to have a bad day. You'd just be dead. [00:09:52] Speaker A: So bad. Un. Preserved for future wankers to come and have a gore bath. [00:09:56] Speaker B: Right, exactly. [00:09:57] Speaker A: While you were busy making coffee or fucking feeding your dog or whatever. [00:10:03] Speaker B: Yes. But I'm sorry, go on. This is like. It's interesting that you picked this because, like, three weeks ago I considered asking if you wanted to do volcanoes as a main topic. And so you've stumbled upon something that I find very interesting and terrifying. [00:10:16] Speaker A: Good, good. See, what I don't think you've grasped yet, and listeners, I don't think you've grasped yet just what a global clusterfuck TOBA was, right? It was an absolute. Firstly, it kind of overlapped with the Ice Age. So, you know, the world was already on a kind of a. The world was already going through a big evolution in terms of species, in terms of, you know, population spread, biodiversity. And then bang, TOBA happens as well, creating this absolute, just, ah, this incredible perfect storm of environmental fuckery. You know, and there is a very strong academic argument. There are people who are. Who disagree with this and I'll talk about that in a bit, but there's a very strong academic argument that the Toba eruption came very close to completely eradicating Homo sapiens and stopping mankind before it managed to get a foothold in society and evolution. Right, okay, Right, check this out. Some. There are some academics who. Who think that that eruption caused such a pronounced crash in human population that it reduced our numbers to as few as between 3 and 10,000 individuals. Jesus. [00:11:52] Speaker B: That's crazy. [00:11:53] Speaker A: Fucking. What? [00:11:54] Speaker B: That is absolutely nutty. [00:11:58] Speaker A: It's known as a population bottleneck theory. [00:12:01] Speaker B: Mm. [00:12:03] Speaker A: And see what absolutely grips Me about this is, you know, the good old theistic argument about, well, if we evolved from chimps, why are there still chimps? Bollocks. Because this event reduced our numbers to such a fucking. You know, if you go with that, with that train of thought, it reduced our numbers to such a tiny fucking amount that our genetics were very possibly kind of limited as a result. Right. Sure. There are clues in the kind of human DNA history about this event. And whenever I talk about science, I. [00:12:49] Speaker B: Can feel Eileen dying, like, oh, boy, here we go. [00:12:54] Speaker A: But come with me. Right. I think I've got a grasp on this mitochondrial DNA. Right. Which is a particular kind of DNA, which we. Which is inherited maternally. Right. It's passed down from our mothers. [00:13:07] Speaker B: Okay. [00:13:08] Speaker A: And around about the same time as Toba, 70 or 80,000 years ago, there was a fucking. The diversity in mitochondrial DNA just plummets, which gives credence to this idea that a small group of women carried that genetic. [00:13:29] Speaker B: Right. [00:13:30] Speaker A: Kind of material forward during that time. And then on the other side of things, on the paternal side of things, the Y chromosome. The Y chromosome DNA, again, shows a massive plummet in diversity. So it's. It's as though at that point the kind of the. I guess the family tree of humanity. [00:13:54] Speaker B: Kind of shrinks down. Yeah. Because presumably people who survived were probably in specific areas and, you know, that were somehow shielded or they were able to stay away from the effects or, you know, had innovated something to keep themselves from dying or something like that, so. [00:14:14] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:14:15] Speaker B: Certainly, whatever. Yeah. Diversity that existed at that time, you're suddenly going to cut out. Probably anyone in the immediate vicinity of Sumatra didn't survive. Exactly. [00:14:26] Speaker A: Anyone right around there, you know, and the fact that this wasn't just limited to. To that. To that region, to Indonesia, to South Asia. This was. This happened fucking globally. [00:14:35] Speaker B: Right. Because again, I think that the, like, it's obviously a much smaller version of that, but that Iceland volcano is like a little microcosm of just seeing how much something like that can change the environment and cover so much. Like just thinking this one thing that happened here, you know, disrupted the way, like, the. A good chunk of the Northern Hemisphere worked for a chunk of time. You know, like we. I don't know that we totally grasp, like you said, like, the scale of disaster that would be upon us if any of these, like, really big volcanoes. [00:15:16] Speaker A: Yes. [00:15:16] Speaker B: Blew their top. [00:15:18] Speaker A: But I guess this is where the hope comes in. Right. [00:15:21] Speaker B: Okay. Mm. [00:15:24] Speaker A: That group of Homo sapiens weren't kind of. What's the. How to passive Kind of victims of nature like this. This was a kind of a resourceful, a very mobile kind of capable species. And that disaster may well have led to innovation, you know. [00:15:49] Speaker B: Okay, yeah. [00:15:50] Speaker A: The spread of that smaller population of early humans might well have led to things like more efficient tool making, different diets, you know, broader kind of protein sources, stronger kind of social bonds. Had that not happened, our kind of. Our entire fucking branch of evolution might not have happened the way it has. [00:16:18] Speaker B: Sure, yeah. [00:16:19] Speaker A: Which is fucking crazy to think about. [00:16:21] Speaker B: Demanded an ingenuity of us that previous conditions had. Not that we could have been content to exactly. Hunter gatherer hunt, gather all that kind of stuff, but needed to do something else. [00:16:32] Speaker A: Back to that question, so why are they still chimps? Meh. Shit like this causes, at least in my kind of limited fucking grasp of the. Of. Of, you know, of the process, it's stuff like this that causes that Darwinian branching off, that Darwinian adaptation to different environments and leads to different fucking variations of the species. This is the kind of thing that made us who we are now. [00:16:58] Speaker B: Right? Yeah. I mean, I don't know enough about like this. Every now and again I have to read up on evolution again because I'm like, I don't. I learned about this in sixth grade. I don't remember how any of this works, but you know, it is, you know, branching, obviously. Like that's the thing is unless there is like a distinct reason for something to go extinct. [00:17:18] Speaker A: Yes. [00:17:18] Speaker B: You know, these are branches and evolutionary lines. Just like, you know, other species of things are like that as well. You know, why do we have lizards and birds or whatever? You know, like these are different branches of. Of dinosaur. Yeah, like that's just part of how these things branch off. You don't go like, oh, there shouldn't be. There shouldn't be crocodiles because there's blue jays. [00:17:46] Speaker A: Exactly, exactly. And again, although admittedly tenuous, my grasp of it is. Yeah, we didn't. We didn't directly evolve from fucking primates. We evolved from a species of them which branched off and branched off and migrated and moved to a different area and you know, and, and grew. [00:18:02] Speaker B: We weren't living together with the primates. Like one day someone gave birth to a Homo sapiens. Like, I guess this is one of us now. [00:18:13] Speaker A: And you know, obviously loads of shit happened. Like I said, Ice age shit like this. But man, isn't it fascinating to think, at least it is to me, that when things start to go further and further south on the trajectory that they are now, what might the next hundred thousand years of mankind look like if indeed we are able to adapt as Homo sapiens did and has, what might, you know, after the climate fucking, you know, and climate migration, water scarcity, food scarcity, what might we look like next? [00:18:53] Speaker B: Right. [00:18:54] Speaker A: I find that fascinating. [00:18:55] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, it's a thing I've certainly thought about, obviously. Like, we have things like X Men and stuff that are kind of asking that question. Right. Like we were to adapt to, you know, modern things, like if evolution worked at an extremely quick rate. Yeah. What kind of adaptations would we make to the world in which we live? And you get X Men. Right. But like, I think that's, I, I've considered that before. Like we kind of take this kind of idea that like, oh, like a million years from now there won't be humans or whatever. Right. Like this place will have burned up. There's not going to be that. But, you know, maybe there won't be Homo sapiens, but maybe there's something else that a small group of us evolve into, something that can survive that, like cockroaches, you know, like maybe there is some thing that you narrow us down to a band of 4,000 of us or whatever, but those 4,000 become some other, some other species. [00:19:55] Speaker A: Equally as fascinating to me is what will mankind, if you know, for want of a better word, in that far in the future, what will they remember of us? [00:20:09] Speaker B: Right. You know, because we've never had. Well, as far as we know, we've never had like a society that was able to communicate the way that we do and safe records of themselves. [00:20:17] Speaker A: Exactly. But Right, thinking about Toba, specifically Indonesia has lots of kind of oral myths and stories about kind of exploding mountains. [00:20:31] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. [00:20:31] Speaker A: You know what I mean? [00:20:32] Speaker B: It gets passed down. I mean, that's like on a smaller scale. Like we talked about that with the, not Shackleton, but the Franklin expedition. Right. And that over 200 years or whatever, the Native American story had not changed of where those ships were and they found them in exactly that place. But you also hear stories of like, like South America and the, the empires have been wiped out in South America by Europeans and things like that. But like these stories of contact with other cultures and these stories about nature and about things that they had discovered that persist. [00:21:14] Speaker A: Yes. [00:21:14] Speaker B: Regardless of, you know, what other contact had happened and things like that. And so there is a degree to which, like, we can lose so much and even through oral history manage to have these things that a lot of people disregard, like, oh, that's like superstition or something. [00:21:32] Speaker A: Folklorism. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. [00:21:33] Speaker B: Folklore. No, a lot of times, you know, when historians and archaeologists and scientists and ecologists look back, they'll suddenly be like, that maybe has been interpreted through a folklore lens, but that was actually talking about real shit that happened back then that persisted. So. Yeah, that's an interesting thought as well. How long can, you know, some sense of our story persist beyond us? [00:22:01] Speaker A: So, friends, we come to you this week with hope that something may endure. You know? [00:22:11] Speaker B: Right. [00:22:12] Speaker A: Think of it as a really awkward and uncomfortable and painful period of change. Maybe. If it helps you get through another. [00:22:21] Speaker B: Day, see if that's hopeful. We're gonna live on. [00:22:25] Speaker A: Yes. [00:22:25] Speaker B: We're gonna survive. [00:22:26] Speaker A: Well, not us. Not us specifically, but yes. [00:22:33] Speaker B: Great, thanks. [00:22:35] Speaker A: Let me quote directly from my notes, if I may. [00:22:38] Speaker B: Yes, please do. [00:22:39] Speaker A: Fucking look at these nerds. Oh, mise en scene. [00:22:43] Speaker B: I don't think anyone has ever said mise en scene in such a horny way before. [00:22:47] Speaker A: The way I whispered the word sex cannibal recently. [00:22:49] Speaker B: Worst comes to worst, Mark, I'm willing to guillotine you for science. [00:22:53] Speaker A: Thank you. That's really, really sweet. It's cold outside, but my pancreas is talking to me. I'm fucking. I'm gonna leg it. [00:23:00] Speaker B: You know how I feel about that, Mark? [00:23:02] Speaker A: I think you feel great about it. [00:23:05] Speaker B: Greetings, Mark. [00:23:06] Speaker A: Oh, hello, hello, hello, hello. Hello to you and hello to you and you and you. Maybe you've pressed play on Apple podcasts this week or maybe Spotify or one of the other platforms that we're on. [00:23:19] Speaker B: I use Podcast Addict for mine. [00:23:21] Speaker A: Podcast Addict. Maybe you're one of those. [00:23:24] Speaker B: Iheartradio. [00:23:27] Speaker A: Maybe you've thought to yourself this morning, oh, man, things are kind of shitty, huh? Why don't I listen to something which might make me feel a bit worse? Why don't I do that? And that's why not. [00:23:41] Speaker B: Why not just, like, dig in? [00:23:43] Speaker A: That is where you find us. Just here in a little corner, making things worse for everyone. [00:23:51] Speaker B: It's so funny. I. This week, Laura posted Latour. Yes. Posted about another podcast. And unfortunately, the name is escaping me and I haven't gotten a chance to. [00:24:03] Speaker A: Are there other podcasts then? [00:24:05] Speaker B: Apparently I'm finding out there are other podcasts. Listens to them, which, you know, traitor. But nonetheless, clearly. But she was listening to this other podcast, and it's like, mission statement was basically Joe Ag. It's like, what siblings? It was like, basically their whole thing for their podcast was like, talk about anything that terrifies you. And I was like, that's what we do. [00:24:33] Speaker A: Well, hang on now. I think more. I think it might be more apposite to say that that's what we did. I think. [00:24:41] Speaker B: Well, yeah, maybe. [00:24:43] Speaker A: I think we've evolved a little in the last four some years. [00:24:46] Speaker B: True. [00:24:47] Speaker A: You know. [00:24:48] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:24:49] Speaker A: Much like Homo sapiens at the base of toba, we too have evolved and. Yeah, I don't know. I think we've certainly found a groove and I think our remit is no longer so narrow. [00:25:04] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I don't know. I feel like that's still like at the heart of it. Right. Yeah. Anything that causes you anxiety or things like that. Oh, I'm horrified. Is the name of the podcast, a weekly podcast covering all things horrifying from artificial intelligence to women's pants. Like that. That sounds very much. [00:25:25] Speaker A: Yeah, Talk to me. Let me know if they're still around in four and a half years. [00:25:29] Speaker B: Yeah, I think they're on episode 154. [00:25:31] Speaker A: Fuck them. [00:25:38] Speaker B: That's. I was like genuinely. I was like looking at this, I was like, this is wild. It's like they've been around like a little less time than like a year less than us. I guess by that maybe year and a half less than us, but like a similar, similar sort of thing. It feels like they have a similar, like amount of listeners as we do. I'm like, we've just been like existing on the unaware. Completely unaware of each other. [00:25:59] Speaker A: Their host is Mark with a C and he doesn't have a beer. [00:26:03] Speaker B: It's actually the girl on the podcast is Welsh, the guy. [00:26:08] Speaker A: Nice. [00:26:08] Speaker B: No, I don't know who the host. [00:26:10] Speaker A: I'm joking. I don't really mean fuck them. I mean it's lovely to have somebody else, you know, in our wheelhouse. [00:26:16] Speaker B: If anyone's like listening to this podcast at this point and takes any of your bits seriously. Well, that's true. Sometimes you do pull off a bit that it's difficult to tell. Like apparently when you were pretending you didn't know who Ariana Grande was. [00:26:28] Speaker A: Yes. Last week. Very pleased to hear that. Thanks. [00:26:31] Speaker B: I feel like if people can see my face, they can see the moment I real. Like if you're watching the video version, you can see the moment. I realize you're kidding. [00:26:37] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:26:38] Speaker B: But it's not always evident in my voice. [00:26:40] Speaker A: I like to dance on the razor thin threshold between reality and fantasy, you know? [00:26:50] Speaker B: Yes. [00:26:51] Speaker A: Kind of like who was Rucker Hauer in. In Blade Runner? I'm kind of like that. You know what I mean? What is real and what is not? [00:27:00] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:27:00] Speaker A: That's where I live. [00:27:03] Speaker B: Corey, I think I would phrase that you like to fuck with people, but you know. Yeah, we can go with that too. [00:27:09] Speaker A: But no, no, no, no. There's way more to it and I think you do me a huge and hurtful disservice. [00:27:16] Speaker B: Just think of how earlier today I texted you and I was like, all right, we all set for you to cold open joag today? And you're like, to do what? [00:27:26] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You fuck those twilight parts of reality that I make my own, you know. [00:27:34] Speaker B: Mm. [00:27:35] Speaker A: Yeah, it's quite, quite sexy, isn't it? [00:27:41] Speaker B: I'd fuck me. So welcome everybody. Jack of all graves doing our thing. Friends, we are so excited right now. We told you last year, at the end of last year we were like, we have some fun things that we're super stoked on doing come this year and one of those things that we were excited about is coming next week. [00:28:09] Speaker A: Yes, one of those things. And one of those people, a man who is always just a treat to interact with, a man who is just a paragon of intellectual masculinity, I think is the way I would sum it up. One of our long term listeners and friends, a regular at our watch alongs, Mr. John Benfield, who works in risk analysis. Threat analysis, yes. [00:28:37] Speaker B: Just right up our alley, obviously. [00:28:40] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:28:40] Speaker B: Yes. And Benners, as Marco has dubbed him, sent a link the other day to the 2025 World Economic Forum Global Risk Report and basically was like, I'm going through this right now so we can, we can discuss whatever. And I was like, how is next week? And he was like, yeah, let's do it. So we are going to look at what we should be terrified of in 2025. I'm sure that's not how he phrases it as one who analyzes such things, but that's how we're putting it. What should you be scared of? [00:29:16] Speaker A: Yes. [00:29:16] Speaker B: In 2025 and given the state of everything, I'm sure this is going to be a fascinating. [00:29:22] Speaker A: Oh, for sure. You know, no longer do you need to take our word for it to. [00:29:26] Speaker B: Fucking podcast cranks like us. [00:29:29] Speaker A: Someone who actually gets paid for this shit, right, is gonna, is gonna actually using science and statistics and all manner of other, you know, credible sources is gonna really lay out where, where you need to direct your anxieties over the next few years. [00:29:48] Speaker B: And hey, listen, the other end of that is maybe there are things that we have been panicking about that John will be able to tell us we're not as worried about that or hopefully. [00:30:00] Speaker A: There'll be things that we haven't even conceived of that are just waiting to bite us all in the ass. [00:30:09] Speaker B: It is hard to get to things that we haven't conceived of, though. We are pretty good at being anxious. And over the past five years, we have covered a lot of that, I think. Did I. I can't remember if I mentioned it on here. If I was just talking to you about the book that Eileen recommended to me. Did I talk about it on the podcast? I don't know. Apologies if I'm repeating myself, but Eileen recommended a book and she said it was very joag adjacent and it is called Gory Details. And she was like, there's a lot of joag overlap in this book. And it was a woman who writes about, like, macabre things and stuff like that. And sure enough, we'd covered, like, probably three quarters of the things that she talked about in this book. I was like, you were not kidding. It's like, really? Yeah. We have covered a lot of ground in the past four and a half years, for sure. [00:31:09] Speaker A: Yep. And there's way more still to come. We ain't going. [00:31:11] Speaker B: And there's way more. Listen, my. My list of future topics as long as my arm. It is. There's a lot that we have yet. [00:31:20] Speaker A: I've got one of those too. [00:31:21] Speaker B: Do you? [00:31:22] Speaker A: Yeah. Every. Whenever I'm out and around in the world and I find something which I think might find its way under the cast, I just write it down and as I, you know, put it in a note and I'm deleting Toba Volcano as we go. [00:31:37] Speaker B: That's cross it up the old list. I love it. Yeah. So we are. We have no shortage of things to. To discuss as we move on. So get ready for that. That's going to be a really fun one to listen to you next week. Really excited about that. We're going to get in a let's play this week. I'm going to play some Astrobot getting myself just playing a little bit to get to the spooky levels so we can do some nice ghosty play on there. Hopefully tomorrow. Tomorrow, Wednesday. [00:32:08] Speaker A: Yeah. Super cool. We haven't yet talked about time. Copy that. We haven't yet done. [00:32:12] Speaker B: We haven't talked about Time Cop. Yeah. It's busy week for you. I know. So we're gonna do the easy thing and do the let's play this week. But Time Cop is coming. Like I said, we watched it already, so it's just a matter of sitting down to discuss that. Bonkers movie. [00:32:27] Speaker A: Yes, splendid. Everything okay with you? Generally? You? Good. I gather it's snowing where you are. [00:32:32] Speaker B: Yeah, it's snowing, which is really nice. Very out there. [00:32:37] Speaker A: Don't you have a flight that you need to catch A flight? Surely you'll be hightailing it to D.C. any moment now. [00:32:48] Speaker B: Obviously the big part. Obviously. Yeah. No, leaving bright and early tomorrow to get. Get to D.C. you know, take the train. Obviously it's only. Only three hours or so from. From here. Make sure that I get to see ol Donnie T. It's gonna be a big party. [00:33:06] Speaker A: It's good. [00:33:07] Speaker B: Well, they have to. They have to bring it inside because it's so goddamn cold right now. Which, you know, I think works in his favor because now he can act like the crowd is, you know, huge. It was gonna be huge, but we had to bring it inside, so. [00:33:23] Speaker A: So everybody couldn't fit on that. I've become quite a fan of podcasts generally lately, and I was listening to one whilst running earlier. Okay. A fantastic series called the Coming Storm, a BBC podcast written and presented by a reporter by the name of Gabriel Gatehouse. Fantastic. And he dropped a bonus episode on inauguration eve. Very joag adjacent. It talked about how the. The. The premise of this podcast has all been about. The first series was all QAnon. [00:34:02] Speaker B: Okay. And always interesting. [00:34:04] Speaker A: Yes, yes. The second series was about the Federal Reserve and some of the conspiracy theories surrounding its. [00:34:13] Speaker B: The host American. [00:34:14] Speaker A: No, he's not. No, he's not. [00:34:16] Speaker B: It's just a podcast about America. [00:34:18] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:34:19] Speaker B: Okay. [00:34:20] Speaker A: And this bonus episode, fucking fascinating stuff, was basically about how there's no point making that podcast anymore because all of the conspiracy theorists are now about to be in the cabinet. [00:34:32] Speaker B: Right. [00:34:33] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:34:35] Speaker B: They're running everything, which is very cool. [00:34:38] Speaker A: A lot of it focused on Bobby Kennedy. [00:34:40] Speaker B: Yeah. Oof. [00:34:42] Speaker A: Wow. [00:34:42] Speaker B: Man, oh, man. If you listen. If you're listening to this and you have not listened to the four part behind the Bastards on Bobby Kennedy, you are not Bobby Kennedy, RFK Jr. [00:34:53] Speaker A: Yes, of course. Yes, yes, yes. [00:34:55] Speaker B: Let's distinguish. For all his flaws, Bobby Kennedy was not this clown. RFK Jr. Is truly just one of the most nefarious characters American history and the degree to which he is both like an evil sociopath and also a conspiracy theorist. Nut cannot be understated. Listen to those behind the bastards. [00:35:20] Speaker A: But the light bulb for me was some of his views about the murder of his dad. You know, the guy, a Palestinian guy who killed Robert Kennedy in, you know, at a rally. And all of the fucking. The. The Interrogation and the hypnosis and the links to MK Ultra in that case. Super, super, super interesting stuff. And one which maybe. [00:35:50] Speaker B: What was the name of the podcast? [00:35:51] Speaker A: The Coming Storm. [00:35:53] Speaker B: The Coming Storm, sure. It's on BBC Sounds. [00:35:55] Speaker A: It is indeed, yes. And is well worth your time. I'd like. [00:35:58] Speaker B: Which is an app you can get here. You don't need. Like when I watch, when I watch like BBC stuff, I have to pretend I use your zip code and I use a vpn. Oh, great. Or your post code. I use a vpn. But the. Yeah, you don't have to do that with BBC Sounds. You can, you can use that. [00:36:17] Speaker A: I would quite like to hear you delve into that at some point. The murder of Robert Kennedy and sure. [00:36:25] Speaker B: I was just telling. Poor Richard made the mistake of texting me something from his CIA book or he was talking about his CIA book and then he started getting into JFK conspiracy theory stuff and I was like, oh boy, you've stumbled into special interest because the Kennedys, if, you know, obviously I have this blurry background on, but if you could see my shelf, I have lots of Kennedy memorabilia and things like that back there because I find that family to be fascinating. Just, just such a bizarre little dynasty. [00:36:58] Speaker A: Yes. [00:36:59] Speaker B: That is so important to American culture that the patriarch Joe Kennedy is just such again, like an entire sociopath. And the way that that manifested and was pushed back against and, and the way it actually showed up in various relatives of his is so interesting. So I'd be happy to info dump on the RFK Jr assassination. [00:37:24] Speaker A: I would love that. [00:37:25] Speaker B: I also have the book RFK A Memoir sitting up there as well. Yeah, terrific. Very interesting. We can get into that. But I do want to check out that, that podcast sounds. [00:37:37] Speaker A: Yeah, you should. It's, it's, it's terrific. Very, very good stuff. [00:37:40] Speaker B: Love it. There was a reason that you said that, but I don't remember why. [00:37:46] Speaker A: Let's think. Trump inauguration, I think it was. [00:37:49] Speaker B: Oh yeah, that was it. It just came from the Trump inauguration. Yeah, it's a. It. I don't even. We're just gonna see what happens. [00:38:00] Speaker A: We'll see. We'll see what happens. Yeah. [00:38:02] Speaker B: The worst thing is that, you know, obviously he's made his. His first order of business cracking down on immigration, which there have been rumors of raids that are going to happen in Chicago over the next few days and things like that, which feels very Gestapo esque and I love that. [00:38:22] Speaker A: Look, as I've said before, I've. I even did it again in the, in the light of the, the TikTok and the meta events over the last couple of weeks. It's so craven, isn't it? And fucking repugnant how the, the knee is being bent without even everyone just, just without even. Without even the pretense, you know, there's just no pretense. Zuckerberg, you know. Well, yeah, new sheriff in town. New guy in town. So this is what we're doing. TikTok thanking him in that little message they're showing to American users thanks to President Trump, we can now do. It's fucking terrifying. And yes, I, I take it off. I take it off next to the criteria of the, the fascism fucking memorial. And it's, it's, it's so, so, so stock. [00:39:20] Speaker B: Yeah. And watching just stumbling into it this way, like the TikTok thing to win the hearts and minds of the youth. It's like whenever you think about like Hitler and things like that, not to Godwin's Law thing or whatever, but like, people supported Hitler because it was like, well, he may be doing this thing, but he is doing this. That benefits me. [00:39:42] Speaker A: Sure. [00:39:42] Speaker B: Right. And it's like he. Trump is setting things up like that. Or like people go like, oh, yeah, I don't like what he's doing with like immigrants and stuff like that. But on the other hand, he's doing a lot of stuff that like, the Democrats wouldn't do. You know, he's ending the war in Gaza. He's. He's saving TikTok and it's like none of these are like, true per se, but like, that's the way he's, he's coming into office and it's like, it's just. Yeah. Priming everyone to just accept fascism. [00:40:12] Speaker A: Yes. [00:40:12] Speaker B: Like just roll over and allow it to happen as long as we have our bread and circum. Circuses, you know, like, if I can still watch my Tiktoks. Yeah, I guess everything's fine. [00:40:22] Speaker A: Yes. So that's neat. Yeah, it'll be, It'll be interesting. [00:40:31] Speaker B: Yeah. I don't want things to be interesting. [00:40:34] Speaker A: Okay. [00:40:34] Speaker B: I don't. When I want interesting, I go travel, I read a book, you know, I learn about the infinite wonders of the universe. I don't want it to be, you know, people are deported and foreigners are bombed and things like that. [00:40:51] Speaker A: Where does this intel about raids coming from then? [00:40:55] Speaker B: It was like one of those things where, you know, the newspapers were talking to internal sources from the incoming administration or whatever, so unnamed. But yeah, there's no reason to think that's not happening. It's what he said is going to happen. So I was like yesterday googling, like, is it true that, like, you can't get arrested in churches and stuff like that? But it's. It's not. If you are like, an immigrant, you can't hide out in a church or anything. [00:41:24] Speaker A: I didn't even realize that was. [00:41:26] Speaker B: You see it in movies and stuff that it's like, oh, if like, you know, like, a church will, like, hide criminals or whatever in their sanctuary because, like, the police can't come and arrest them. And that may be true of, like, actual, like, American citizens, but it is actually illegal to harbor an undocumented immigrant. [00:41:45] Speaker A: In a church or anywhere. [00:41:47] Speaker B: Anywhere, yeah. In your own home, in a church, anything like that. So. So if they know they're there, they can come in and arrest them. They could come into my house if I had an undocumented immigrant here and arrest us both. [00:42:00] Speaker A: Well, that's crazy. Okay. I hope that doesn't happen. [00:42:04] Speaker B: Yeah, I hope so, too. But listen, I do it. Government fucking do it. So take that. [00:42:17] Speaker A: A light week on watches for me at least. [00:42:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I got some things in. But yeah, let me. Let me tell you. I mean, nothing to go super deep on, but I, you know, as usual, got in one sort of oldie this week. I watched the Man They Could Not Hang, starring Boris Karloff, which is. [00:42:38] Speaker A: Did he have, like, a super thick neck? [00:42:42] Speaker B: Had, like a regular, regular neck. It wasn't, like, physically could not hang him. That's a little bit of a misnomer in terms of the name of this. But he plays a doctor who has figured out, he thinks, how to bring people back from the dead. And a volunteer. He has this volunteer on the table who they've stopped his heart and everything, but his, like, secretary panics and goes and tells the police, like, he's killing someone. You must stop him. And when the police come, they arrest him before he's able to bring the guy back to life. So he dies. And so they decide to execute him, but he ends up coming back and they end, like, killing off the jury who convicted him. And it's a fun little, like, short. Like, it's one of those things where, like, looking at it from now, you're like. It's like, very tropey. And you can kind of see everything that's happening, what's. What the twists and turns of this are going to be. But for something made in, like, the. I think it was like the late 30s. It's, you know, it would have been terrifying to watch at the time. And there's some very cool little, like, you know, there's some tension in. In this movie. And, you know, the first time someone dies, you're just like, holy. Okay, this is happening. So, yeah, It's. It's like 60 minutes long as a lot of those kinds of films that Boris Karloff was in the time were. And you can watch it on YouTube. So the man, they could not hang. Not a bad time. [00:44:22] Speaker A: Beautiful. [00:44:24] Speaker B: I watched Gladiator 2. If you'll recall, I saw Gladiator for the first time in Rome a few weeks ago. We figured, we're going to the Coliseum tomorrow. I should see Gladiator. Why not? Do you know when I found it? Oh, God. [00:44:42] Speaker A: The chances of me watching that are getting ever more remote. I don't know. [00:44:45] Speaker B: Yeah, no, listen, so I watched Gladiator 2 the other night. Kyo and I were, like, scrolling through. What are we gonna watch? Well, why don't we. Why don't we finish it? Why don't we do the second one? It is. I thought the first one was absurd. This is a waste. It's an absolute waste. Except Denzel Washington. I would watch him do that role all day. Like, even just, like, walking around his kitchen pretending to be that guy. Like, he is so much fun in that movie. And he is the only thing worthwhile in that movie. Paul Mescal. This is the only thing I've ever seen him in before. And so as far as I know, juiceless man has no juice. [00:45:29] Speaker A: You've never seen Paul Mescal in anything else? [00:45:32] Speaker B: Never seen Paul Mescal in anything because I don't watch dramas. So he's only in dramas. And so while he is, like, the it boy right now, I'm like, I've. He's just never been in anything that I would watch. [00:45:44] Speaker A: I just. If you do fancy something watching something with him in it, I cannot recommend after sun highly enough. [00:45:51] Speaker B: Yeah, I always hear good things about it. It's just like, one of those things where I'm like, when am I ever gonna be in the mood for it? I don't disbelieve that. It's a great movie. It's just like. I just can't imagine being in the mood to watch that. [00:46:05] Speaker A: It's un. Fucking real. So good. [00:46:08] Speaker B: Yeah. But whatever is so great about him and all the other movies he's in is not present in Gladiator 2 is bland. And they're just making him do the Maximus story over, but, like, basically going like, you. You remember. You remember Maximus from The first movie. We're not gonna build this up in any way. Just. We're just gonna follow that story and, you know. Yeah, you get it. Right. So it's like completely. Nothing is filled out. The characters are not filled out. And I gave the Pedro Pascal completely miscast, which I didn't know. Pedro Pascal could be bad in anything. [00:46:44] Speaker A: Sure. [00:46:45] Speaker B: And he's terrible, terrible in this. But I gave the first movie crap for the score being the exact same score as Pirates of the Caribbean. I don't know why they didn't recycle it again. Just use it again. This movie has, like, no music in it. And so it's like two and two and a half hours long or two hours and 15 minutes long with just, like, nothing going on in the background. I genuinely, like, checked to make sure. I was like, do we have, like, a weird rip of this? I was like, no, this is correct. Like, there were a few other people I saw on letterboxd comment on it, too. Like, why is there no music in this movie? Oh, cgi. That is abysmal. [00:47:30] Speaker A: Have I got this wrong? Or do they, you know, like, in the first one, they've. They. The gladiators fight a tiger. [00:47:38] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And they nod to that, too. They, like, briefly show you a tiger. Like, remember how there was a tiger in the first one? [00:47:43] Speaker A: Have I. Have I dreamt this? Or did I see a screenshot in a review somewhere of them fighting like sharks in the coliseum? [00:47:49] Speaker B: Sharks, yes. [00:47:50] Speaker A: Oh, that does happen. [00:47:51] Speaker B: Like, yes, in real life. I do know they did flood the Colosseum for some things. They did not bring great white sharks. That is completely Ridley Scott's creative license in this movie. It is just like. At least the first one was, like, a fun kind of lunacy where you're just like, I don't understand why any of this is happening. And, like, why nobody asked any questions about this plot. This one is just, like, boring and dull. Except for Denzel, who is holding the entire thing on his toe. Good shoulders. [00:48:30] Speaker A: The chance of me seeing it just vanished a little further into the distance. [00:48:34] Speaker B: There's. You would have so such a bad time, Mark. You would have such a bad time. The other thing that I watched. Besides, we're gonna. We're obviously. We're clearly. We watched David lynch things this week. We're gonna talk about that at the. At the end. So I did watch a David lynch thing. I'll talk about that later. So the other thing that I watched was cuckoo. I finally got around to that. [00:49:01] Speaker A: Oh, yay. [00:49:02] Speaker B: Because our dear Friend Anna Martin from the Hell Rankers podcast had done this cool thing last year where she watched a movie from every year that we have movies. And then on her Facebook, she like wrote her favorites from each decade. And her favorite movie from the 2000s was Cuckoo. And I was like, okay, that's. That's a ringing endorsement. And I knew that you liked it a lot too. I did. And so I was like, hey, Kiyo, do you want to watch that tonight? He was like, yeah, sure. [00:49:38] Speaker A: You hated it, right? [00:49:39] Speaker B: And no, I loved it. [00:49:40] Speaker A: I think we could. [00:49:42] Speaker B: There is a point about 25 minutes into this movie where something happened that I literally like brought my hands up to my ears and was like, that's too scary. I'm too scared right now. I was like, oh, I love that. That doesn't. That doesn't happen too often. [00:49:57] Speaker A: Do you see what I mean about it being a film with just such a really strong sense of its own identity? [00:50:06] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. [00:50:08] Speaker A: Just from the setting, from the choices that some of the performances make, the Gribblies. [00:50:15] Speaker B: I love, like, what's my guy that I love so much? Dan Stevens. His sort of like Peter Laurie esque thing that he's doing in this. Oh, everything about it is so balls to the wall too. And I love Hunter Schaefer. Is that the lead's name? [00:50:33] Speaker A: Possibly? Don't know. [00:50:35] Speaker B: I think Hunter Schaefer is her name. Her reactions to things are very like real to a 17 year old, which I think is so great. And there's like these little bits of like just very low key comedy to her responding to things. And, you know, I feel like she's very easy to connect to in this movie while you have these other sort of very over the top characters as well. And this eeriness of not knowing what the fuck is going on. [00:51:05] Speaker A: But yes, until you do. And it fills out what the fuck is going on really nicely. [00:51:12] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, it really. There's a return on the vibes, right? [00:51:15] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:51:16] Speaker B: Easily be like a vibes movie and lose me, but it follows through. [00:51:21] Speaker A: I could easily watch an. I could easily watch like Kook 2. You know what I mean? And you can have that, by the way, Neon, if you're watching. [00:51:30] Speaker B: Take it. It's all yours. [00:51:32] Speaker A: I think they could. They could absolutely build on just what the fuck they're doing there. [00:51:37] Speaker B: Right? Exactly. Obviously it's not meant for there to be a sequel, but it's left in a place that if they did one, it wouldn't be like. No, you could. This could very much. This could Go on. And, you know, obviously we don't want to spoil anything about it, but. Because part of it is the journey of being like. But it, it does. One of the things I like about a movie like Cuckoo is playing on things that are, like, kind of universally scary because, like, you know, monsters aren't necessary to everyone. Ghosts aren't necessarily scary to everyone. You know, all these things aren't necessarily scary to everyone. But, but like, you know, people not knowing where someone is but that they could sneak up on you at any time is terrifying. Right. [00:52:28] Speaker A: Your family not being who you think they are, you know. [00:52:32] Speaker B: Right, exactly. Being disbelieved when something horrifying is happening to you. Yeah. It really uses stuff that I think scare most people. [00:52:43] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:52:44] Speaker B: In good ways. [00:52:46] Speaker A: And it hides all that in funny. Dan Stevens is just hilarious accent. [00:52:52] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, totally. Right. [00:52:55] Speaker A: He. Fuck it, man. He is now somebody who could sell a film to me. [00:53:01] Speaker B: Oh. I mean, he has been forever for me, but. Yes. [00:53:03] Speaker A: But I'm very much there with him post cuckoo. I, I, I will watch a movie he's in now based on the fact that he's in it. [00:53:11] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. [00:53:12] Speaker A: I think he's great and I have nothing but high hopes for him. [00:53:15] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. And just, I think, you know, yeah, he chooses stuff where he. I think we've mentioned this before. It's like, he's a very handsome guy and all that kind of stuff, but he is not invested in playing handsome roles. You know, he will take on whatever and he's gonna throw himself into it. I mean, after watching Gladiator 2 and seeing, like, Denzel is often a similar kind of guy where it's like, he's gonna take whatever you give him and he's gonna act his ass off. Or on the same note, I was listening to on Hell Rankers, they'd picked my movie virtuosity out of their little hat or their, their trash bin. Yes. And they were talking about, like, exactly what I said about that movie with, like, the thing about Russell Crowe in it is that in all of his roles, no matter what it is, he shows up and acts like it's, you know, he's acting for his life. You know, this is an important role and he's gonna throw us back into it. And I think Dan Stevens is that kind of guy too, where it's like, give him whatever and he is gonna. Yeah, he's gonna put his whole self in. [00:54:27] Speaker A: I, I still will not accept the love that virtuosity gets. I still don't get it. I Still won't. [00:54:34] Speaker B: I'm not saying I love virtuosity. I don't think it gets love. No, Everyone seems to like it. [00:54:39] Speaker A: Looking at the Hellrankers, the comments on the posts, it seems like people were begrudgingly tolerant of it. Yeah, right? [00:54:48] Speaker B: Yeah. I think it's just one of those ones that, like, it is stupid in a way, that is so of its time that it's, you know, appealing. I don't think anyone is. Yeah, I don't think anyone's going to town for it as, like, a good movie by any stretch of the imagination. It's more just like, did you sit there and have fun? And unlike you, a lot of people did. So cuckoo. I recommend. And the only other thing that I watched this week was with you, which was. Which I know you have a lot to say about. [00:55:21] Speaker A: Yeah, I do. Hey, Hello. Let's talk about the People's Joker. [00:55:26] Speaker B: I was amazed by the way I was like, hey, you know, I had already been like, we're gonna watch a movie tonight. You know, whatever. And then I was like, so let's watch the People's Joker. People seem to like this. And I was sure because every movie that I've brought to you for, like, three weeks, you'd be like, nope, no, not feeling it. [00:55:42] Speaker A: I've been getting a lot of that. [00:55:43] Speaker B: Yes. You were like, I don't know what that is, but yes, let's watch it. [00:55:48] Speaker A: And I was like, well, what played into your hands was the fact that I was completely on my own in a hotel room and fuck all else. [00:55:55] Speaker B: True. [00:55:55] Speaker A: I had nothing else to offer me, so I went with it. And I. I had no clue not just what the movie was, but what I was letting myself in for. Fucking hell, man. [00:56:09] Speaker B: Yes. [00:56:11] Speaker A: How? [00:56:11] Speaker B: I mean, describe it as best you can. [00:56:15] Speaker A: Okay. So plenty of times I've talked about how hook, line and sinker I go for movies where necessity is the mother of invention. Right. Obviously, this film works within a lot of constraints, a lot of limitations, and instead of it, it doubles and triples down on its limitations and is creative in a way that. Fuck me, I. You can't conceptualize. It uses everything, everything available. Live action animation, CG audio, video, found footage. Intellectual theft. [00:57:06] Speaker B: Yes. [00:57:07] Speaker A: Announces itself. [00:57:08] Speaker B: I don't know how it gets away with most of what it's doing. [00:57:11] Speaker A: Is this film allowed to exist? I mean, it's. You know, it loudly declares itself as, you know, being able to exist under parody laws, which it then uses to just steal intellectual property from fucking so many other sources. Ostensibly, a Batman tale, a Batman film set in Gotham City. It's. It's more like a how to. It's. It's a visual collage, I think, rather than. It is. Rather than it is a movie. It's almost it. Fuck, am I gonna sound like a suit here? It defies genre characterization. [00:57:48] Speaker B: Right. Because it feels very, very much to me as like, it's very millennial in, like. Did you grow up with, like, adult swim shorts and, like, MTV in the 90s? I was gonna say things like that. Yeah. It's got that very, like, frenetic feel to it. Lots of color and sound and quick things and, you know, it's like a very chaotic movie, but in a very cool way. Very punk. Like, the whole thing is put together. [00:58:20] Speaker A: In these really super punk. Yes. [00:58:21] Speaker B: Fascinating ways. [00:58:22] Speaker A: You know, I. The first few minutes, I was like, ah, fuck, cuz, too much. Sorry, I can't deal with this. But a light bulb went off when I realized. Hang on. The closest thing visually I can compare this to. See, I'm gonna look at your face when I say this is Ang Lee's Hulk. [00:58:45] Speaker B: Oh, interesting. Okay. [00:58:47] Speaker A: And that's not to say that it's like that, because it isn't. It's. It's. It's that. And then more and more and more and more in terms of the different styles and different formats and different tools it uses. But the scattershot kind of never still for a minute. This film never fucking stays still. And the. The. That kind of everything. Fucking everything. Go for it or bust this film. You will like it all or you will die. [00:59:20] Speaker B: Right? Yeah, exactly. It is one of two things. You know, you're either gonna be on board for what it's doing, or you're gonna be like, I hate everything about this. [00:59:29] Speaker A: And if you like it, you're gonna love it. [00:59:31] Speaker B: You're gonna love it. It's, you know, the story of a trans joker, essentially an origin story for a trans joker. And it's, you know, it's got so much that speaks to that experience and the growing up, coming of age and, like, understanding yourself through comic book lore. Right? Like, which is always such an interesting thing. The way that, like, we connect to art and the way trans kids did that, especially in. In areas that like. Or families don't accept them for who they are and things like that. You know, using this as a metaphor and taking on this character to describe this journey. It's also, you know, on top of telling that story, just very, very funny. There was. There are some scenes in this that I was like literally cry laughing through. There's like a bit with Bane booing that every time it happened, I was just losing my ever loving shit. [01:00:30] Speaker A: Yeah. I can't stress enough. It is a very authentically, honestly, genuinely funny film in a way that isn't. Oh, it's funny by doing bits that. That, you know, it's funny like this or it's funny like that. It's funny very much in its own voice and above and beyond all of that, it's also just as part of the mix actually a shithot Batman tale as well. [01:00:55] Speaker B: Yeah, right. [01:00:56] Speaker A: It is, you know, the creator. I can't remember. I can't remember their name. Who is it? [01:01:01] Speaker B: Who is. I can't either. [01:01:06] Speaker A: I looked it up and watched some of the videos. But there's a reason that they've chosen Batman as a framing device for, you. [01:01:16] Speaker B: Know, laying out Vera Drew is her name. [01:01:18] Speaker A: There you go for laying out the trans experience like they have. Because when you know the topic that you're working in so well, I guess you've got license to really fucking explore it and add your own experience into it. And that's what. That's what's happened here. It draws on all fucking. All every flavor of Batman you could possibly imagine. This film draws on the. The, you know, the pre movie kind of Frank Miller comics golden era stuff. All of the Nolan films, all of the Schumacher films, all the Keaton films and loads of other shit as well. There. There are fucking niche characters from the Superman movies in here. Just every. [01:02:00] Speaker B: Everyone UCB and SNL stuff in there. That's, you know. Yeah, there's a lot going on. [01:02:08] Speaker A: It knows it's Batman lore inside out. I was. And barely 30 seconds goes by without. Oh, fuck. Without anything surprising and just beautifully, beautifully executed happening in it. I really, really, really, really like this. And when I say. When I say it uses every single format you can think of, I fucking mean it. It obviously doesn't have much in the way of budget going on. Right. And there's. There's one sequence set in the Batcave where I fucking. I am sure. I am certain they modeled the CG in Quake. Right? [01:02:45] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:02:46] Speaker A: As I fucking live and breathe, I recognize the textures from Quake. And I'm fucking telling you that Bat Cave was made in Quake. [01:02:56] Speaker B: Once you said it, I was like, oh, you very well might be right, actually. [01:03:00] Speaker A: Incredible. [01:03:01] Speaker B: It's so good. Oh, man. Watch the people's Joker. You're gonna love it or you're gonna hate it, but hopefully you'll love it because Honestly, so much fun. [01:03:10] Speaker A: Fantastic. Really good. [01:03:11] Speaker B: It's so much fun. [01:03:14] Speaker A: So on that note, right, so, yeah, my only. My only. My only watches was I. I've ripped through six episodes of Twin Peaks season three. [01:03:24] Speaker B: Right, yes. And it's time to, you know. Well, look, obviously if you haven't. If you've been living under a rock, if you've been trying to avoid, you know, you've been on a meditation retreat or something like that, you know, you may not know that this week we lost David Lynch. [01:03:42] Speaker A: It is time, unfortunately, yes, time to talk of that. It is time to talk of a matter of great, great, great sadness and that that is indeed the loss of David Lynch. There is just to get the kind of superficial stuff out the way, a very compelling argument that we absolutely lost the best filmmaker of all time this week. I think if you look at body of work and if you look at commitment to vision, if you look at singular fucking flat out refusal to compromise. [01:04:30] Speaker B: Right. [01:04:31] Speaker A: If you look at pursuing ideals and ideas within his art, on any metric you might choose to measure a filmmaker, be it technical, be it in terms of the kind of control that for the most part he was able to keep over his vision and over his work and critical success, getting the most out of everyone that he worked with. There is a very compelling argument that this week the greatest filmmaker of our life has died. [01:05:19] Speaker B: Yeah, I think, you know, that's compelling because to me, the thing about David lynch is, you know, I would call myself a David lynch fan, even though I don't necessarily like a good chunk of the stuff he does. It's kind of like Cronenberg where, you know, it's like, I always like kind of the ones that you don't think of when you think of Cronenberg. You know, I don't really like the, like, more body horror stuff and things like that that he does. But like, I think with, with lynch, it's like, I do. I love, like Eraserhead, Twin Peaks. I like Dune. This week, what I watched was the straight Story. We'll talk about that. [01:05:58] Speaker A: Isn't it fucking telling how the most subversive thing that he could have done at that point in his career was. [01:06:05] Speaker B: To make a just like a heartfelt. Yeah. [01:06:08] Speaker A: And, you know, meditation almost on just the lengths one will go to to express love. Isn't that fucking that telling about that, man? [01:06:22] Speaker B: Totally. And I think that's the thing is that, like, I don't necessarily like a lot of his stuff. It's got a lot. It's. He tackles a Lot of stuff that, you know, I don't enjoy watching in movies. Right. There's a lot of sexual violence and things like that in a lot of lynch films. That said what? I say that because I still agree with you on all of those things. That makes him such an incredible filmmaker, that it isn't really about whether I enjoy watching his entire body of work so much as this is a man who made what he set out to make, like you said, without compromise. And that whether I enjoy watching it or not, I'm not gonna say no movie that I've ever seen. I hated Blue Velvet. It's a good movie. You know what I mean? Like, hated the experience of watching it. But I'm not gonna sit here and be like, oh, that was a shitty movie. No, I just didn't like it. You know what I mean? And so, you know. Yeah, I think you're. You're right, that if he's not the greatest of his time, he is certainly close. You know, I can't think of anyone that I would. [01:07:35] Speaker A: This piece about Rival. Right. You know, he was perfectly open in talking about how, you know, often filmmaking is a capitalist venture and you need to make money. So from time to time, he would even. He would do commercials here and there. You know, his PlayStation advert, his fucking added ass advert. And they're the same as his fucking films, man. 20 seconds of him exploring his own themes. [01:08:03] Speaker B: Mm. [01:08:06] Speaker A: And that's so fucking rewarding to me, man. It is so rewarding. And it is such a sadness. I don't even. I don't even know where to go. I mean, I could. I could talk about not just my enduring love for his movies, and there isn't a single one of them, not a single one of them that I don't adore. You know, his more conventional stuff. Air quotes, conventional stuff. [01:08:32] Speaker B: Even Dune. [01:08:33] Speaker A: Yeah, even Dune. [01:08:34] Speaker B: Cause see this piece, I love Dune. [01:08:36] Speaker A: So this piece about not compromising, even on the occasions when he was forced into a corner, right, where he. By his own admission, and he says this himself in many interviews and in lynch. On lynch, he bit off way more than he could chew with Dune. And, you know, he felt the kind of. The pressure of having to perform on that scale. But even though he hated talking about it and considered it his misfire, it's a fucking fascinating film to watch. [01:09:07] Speaker B: Yeah, it's. I genuinely, deeply enjoy that movie. Yep, it is. [01:09:13] Speaker A: Even when you. When he put himself in a box and back himself in a corner, you still come up with something beautiful, unique, Completely, completely. Un. I mean, I've just described what the word unique means, but it is completely unlike any other sci fi. [01:09:28] Speaker B: Right. Compelling, you know, keeps you, keeps you in. Yeah. [01:09:35] Speaker A: And again, much like the Straight Story, his other, most air quotes, conventional work, the Elephant Man. [01:09:41] Speaker B: Even when someone else. Sorry, someone said this on, on Blue sky earlier today and I was like, I thought I was the only one. But they were talking about how like they had seen Elephant man for the first time when they were like six or seven years old and like were so drawn into this. And I was like, same here. I was extremely young when I saw that for the first time. And like, you know, there is something in that. It's probably, I mean, Twin Peaks as well, is probably six or seven years old encountering that for the first time as well. And there's just something so deeply compelling and like human in those things that like makes you, even at a very young age, just like little things. [01:10:22] Speaker A: And we're getting here to the heart of what it is about him that I find still so special. Right. I physically want to slap anyone who I hear using that term, Lynchian or Lynch like. Because I've never known anyone use that term who hasn't wildly missed the point. Everyone using that term just gets it fucking wrong. There's no such thing. People will always go, well, it's weird, isn't it? Fucking weird in a very unique way. Very weird. Weird in a specific way. Weird, isn't it? It doesn't really make sense. A doesn't necessarily lead to B or C. It's very weird, isn't it? And you don't get the point. You've missed the point. Lynch. And I'm paraphrasing him. This isn't just me. Take my take on it. This again, I'm paraphrasing him in interviews and books. To understand lynch is to understand his point of view. That there is wonder and mystery and beauty and horror in the tiniest fucking spaces. [01:11:29] Speaker B: Yes. [01:11:30] Speaker A: Under the door frame, behind the radiator, in the cracks, between fucking one place and another. Inch wide spaces can hold mystique. And through it all is the transformative power of love. Through it all. [01:11:50] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:11:50] Speaker A: And in so many instances, the horrific things that happen in his works are a result of love gone in the wrong way or love being repressed or love not quite coming out. Right. And the fucking weirdness that can cause. Back to Twin Peaks. Just such formative, such vivid stuff, right? It was the hottest kind of topic among me and the rest of the nerds at school. [01:12:25] Speaker B: What happened this week. [01:12:26] Speaker A: How can we make sense of it? You know, we, we passed around a well worn paperback of the Diary of Laura Palmer and everybody read that and Miguel Ferra in, in Twin Peaks. Beautiful. And there's a point, kind of halfway through the first season, I believe it is, of Twin Peaks. And hitherto Albert, Agent Rosenfeld has been nothing but a bastard, right. He's come into Twin Peaks, the city FBI agent, you know, calling everyone hicks. He's just this horrible fucking big league cunt. Until, until he just admits after being the most horrible bastard that everything he does comes from a place of love. Love is the most important fucking force. Love is the most important thing. I love you, Agent Truman. And it's so disarming, man. It's so fucking disarming. Love is everywhere in Lynch's work and it's the most important thing. And that, that kind of just, just him as a guy as well, right? [01:13:31] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:13:34] Speaker A: If this doesn't sound ridiculous, I kind of loved him a little bit there was. And I'm gonna go do it. No, no, no, I'm all right. He, he was, he would often say the most outlandish in interviews, but yes, it was always so self aware and there's so many examples. Just watch him in interviews, man. And he knows when he said something provocative because he has this wonderful little kind of mischievous little smile. [01:14:05] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:14:05] Speaker A: About him. You know, this is a man who lived an entire life in service of his vision. And it, it was so profoundly fucking important to have discovered him when I did, you know. [01:14:21] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:14:22] Speaker A: And it is, it's a great sadness. It is a great, great, great sadness that he's gone. And I said this to you all, it, all the day after finding out about, about his passing left me with was just this gratitude, this absolute yearning. Gratitude. And isn't it, isn't it incredible in 2025 to see no one single bad word? [01:14:54] Speaker B: Yeah, right. Nothing coming out the day after of like, actually here's all the ways in which he was a predator, abuser or anything, anything like that. Just everyone he worked with expressing incredibly deep gratitude for him. And even in just, I think even your attitude there and what I think I see amongst everyone and the way I kind of feel about this is that I think, you know, some people when they die who have been very important to you, it leaves you with this sense of tragedy. Right. And I think David lynch and his approach to the world and his approach to death itself and the way that he talked about it and how full his life was and what it demonstrates to us about how we should approach the world. Makes it so that it's sad that he's gone, but it's not devastating that he's gone. Cause what did David lynch leave undone? Right? You know, like this is. That's a guy who. He did it. You know, he did it. And he. His attitude towards death was kind of a. Like it's not real. You know, it doesn't exist. You will still have me after I'm gone. It's a see you later kind of thing. And I think everything that he has made has left everyone with this profound sense that we're just lucky to have had it, really. Instead of a misery that it's gone, you know? [01:16:28] Speaker A: Yep. I. And again, if this seems like a stretch, I apologize, but I've thought of pretty much nothing else in the last 48 hours. I mean, this. I've been going about my life just constantly thinking about this. And I can, I can just trace a direct line to some of the ways I view the world now, to some of the stuff that I've. That I've discovered about myself through his work. All so many times. I'll be driving super early. I'll have to get in the car at like 6am somewhere and I'll catch just the sunset or the sunrise in my rearview mirror and I'll. I'll think I'll. Sometimes the world serves you up little gifts, you know, I'll be running and I'll. I'll see just birds crossing my path. And I think, how lovely is that? The world has given me something. And. Yeah, without any, you know, obviously, you know, I, I'm not one for transcendentalism or meditation or anything like that. I'm really not. But I do believe, man, I do firmly believe in this idea of giving yourself little boosts, you know, giving yourself little gifts about how important it is to look for beauty, you know, And I, I can, I can trace exactly where that came from. It's. It's a sense of goodness and it's a sense of finding love within yourself and love within the world, even in the face of unimaginable hidden horror everywhere. [01:18:00] Speaker B: Yes. [01:18:01] Speaker A: And. And that's, that's left me with, like I said, just gratitude. [01:18:07] Speaker B: I love that, absolutely love that. And I think, yeah, well deserved on his part that that's, that's the legacy that he's left behind, you know, just given to. Given to everyone who. At least those paying attention. You know, like you said, there are people who are going to use Lynchian to Describe a vibe and not describe philosophy, which I think when you talk about something being lynching, that is what you're. What you're discussing is a philosophy, not just a vibe. [01:18:38] Speaker A: And to talk, because there is a. [01:18:40] Speaker B: Huge difference between Eraserhead and Straight Story, for example, you know, it's not just a vibe. [01:18:48] Speaker A: And to not get lost in, you know, the kind of social side of acknowledging and mourning the passing of a public figure. Having mainlined six fucking nearly seven hours of Twin Peaks in the last two days. It's unreal. It's simply unreal what Kyle McLaughlin does, playing three distinct characters all of the same, very differently. Tell you something else, right? I'm somebody who can watch. Let's take succession as an example, right? Halfway through any given season of succession, I don't have a fucking clue what is happening, right? And it's frustrating. It's frustrating to me. Fuck, why don't I get this shit? Put me in front of a season of Twin Peaks and I don't know what's happening. But that's fine, right? Yeah, it's fine with a show. [01:19:40] Speaker B: I think that's my attitude towards. Like, when I tried watching Twin Peaks for the first time as an adult, not as a child watching this in reruns or whatever, I remember being like, I don't know what's happening. And then it was like the third time that I decided to sit and watch it, that I went, what if that's fine? And sat through it and then you can enjoy it on its own terms instead of, you know, that being the central element of it. Like, that's. I think the fact that it has me, you know, a little at odds with myself or confused about what's happening is not unintentional. [01:20:20] Speaker A: And it does. It bears repeated viewings. It does kind of resolve itself a little bit more and repeat the feelings. For example, like I said, I'm halfway through season three now. And Mr. C, which is bad. Cooper has created this doppelganger version of Cooper because he knows he's going to trap him on the way out. The Black Lodge. So we got Dougie Jones, who is Cooper in his body. And it's fantastic. The Black Lodge is guiding him. And the. The soft, beautiful way that Kyle MacLachlan kind of plays Dougie Jones as a man who's getting echoes of who he ought to be. He's getting echoes of the Cooper that he is somewhere. Just. Just the way he holds his coffee and the way he clutches his insurance case files and the way he stares at the statue with a gun reminding him of the agent that he used to be. Oh, and none of this is spelled out. It's all instinctive. You kind of get it on a level just like Dougie is getting it, you know? You know, fuck, it's you, mate. Come on, you can do it. [01:21:25] Speaker B: I feel like Kyle MacLachlan embodies, you know, kind of who lynch was in a lot of ways too. I mean, if you're looking at someone who, like, in terms of his mindset and philosophy, those two men were just so linked with one another. [01:21:43] Speaker A: It's great, isn't it, when someone with that commitment to a vision finds. [01:21:48] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [01:21:49] Speaker A: They lose, I guess. [01:21:50] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. And, you know, he wrote a lovely tribute to him, but I think, you know, just everything. And that's clearly, you know, a mentorship relationship of two people who got each other. But also that so much of Kyle MacLachlan's life has been shaped by being under the mentorship of David lynch as well. And I think that's one of the cool things too, when it comes to someone who's an artist like that is seeing how, you know, they shape us, the viewers, but even more so the people who are around them. And to your point before, for that to be so positive and for us to not find out like, oh, people who were, you know, under him, he was treating like shit, or anything like that, but instead for them to have been able to shape this philosophy of love around having been, you know, and wonder and awe, because I think that is kind of such a huge part of that. If you just follow Kyle MacLachlan's Instagram, like, that is a man who understands wonder and awe and, you know, that childlike, you know, approach to life and things like that, even in, in darkness. And I just think that's so cool to see. [01:22:56] Speaker A: Yes. [01:22:56] Speaker B: Play out. [01:22:58] Speaker A: Yes. It has become something of a cliche to say, isn't it? Whenever any, any kind of notable high profile figure dies, somebody will pipe up, hey, what a miracle that you got to be alive at the same time. But it really is true here. It really is, man. The. The best. The absolute best. [01:23:18] Speaker B: Yeah. I love it. So we raise our seltzer and I'm. [01:23:23] Speaker A: Gonna water on this disposable fruit flavored vape in honor. And just a great smoke. Just a fantastic smoker. What a smoker. [01:23:36] Speaker B: I think I've said this to you before, but, you know, when my dad, my dad was a smoker, you know, he started smoking, he was 12, smoked his entire life And I'd say to dad, like, you know, that's gonna kill you. Why don't you quit? And he's like, I don't want to. I like it. [01:23:52] Speaker A: Yep. [01:23:53] Speaker B: And he did not live long enough for the smoking to get him. But I feel like that's the thing with David Lynch. It's like, boy, you know, it killed him. But he had fun doing it the whole time. [01:24:04] Speaker A: Oh, it was. You know, you read him talking about the act of smoking, and he can make fucking sparking up a nail sound like the most beautiful, mysterious, fucking transcendent experience. [01:24:20] Speaker B: Just. [01:24:21] Speaker A: Just the most fucking mundane thing, like smoking a fucking fag. In Britain, it means cigarette, you know? Again, he lived. He lived it. [01:24:35] Speaker B: Mm. Yeah, we should all embrace some of that philosophy. Not the. Not the smoking till it kills us, but the rest of the lynch philosophy, I think, is something that we should. We should, you know, take this time to think about how we can apply to our own lives. [01:24:51] Speaker A: Yes, yes, yes, yes. So, a strange week, but again, with nothing but gratitude. [01:24:58] Speaker B: Hear, hear. Anything to leave our dear listeners with. What. What would David lynch say to our listeners? [01:25:08] Speaker A: I. I wouldn't even like to guess. I wouldn't do him a disservice. But thanks for listening, friends, and thanks for being with us. You. You. You may not. Or maybe you do, you may not realize it, maybe you do, but it matters. It really matters, indeed. [01:25:25] Speaker B: Very much so. And on that stay sp.

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