Ep. 218: the byford dolphin accident

[00:00:04] Speaker A: Have you ever heard of a career called saturation diving? Dear Marco. [00:00:12] Speaker B: Saturation diving. [00:00:13] Speaker A: So saturation diving. [00:00:15] Speaker B: I don't think I could tell you anything specific about it. I can give you my feelings. [00:00:19] Speaker A: Oh, give me a feeling. Let's hear what you. [00:00:21] Speaker B: My instinct. I'm certain I've come across it in passing and I think it might have something to do with oxygen saturation. [00:00:28] Speaker A: I mean, you're on the right track. Yeah. [00:00:31] Speaker B: Is it like getting down to a particular depth? Is it like saturating one's blood with pure, like oxygenated gas and then diving as far as you can? Is it something like that? But you said it's a. [00:00:45] Speaker A: You're on the right track. But yes, you're on the right track with this. [00:00:49] Speaker B: Go on. [00:00:50] Speaker A: Absolutely. Has to do with gas in your blood and a career that revolves around it. So, yeah, let's get into it. I'd love to. [00:01:02] Speaker B: We've, we've seen the abyss together, haven't we? And you know where I'm going. [00:01:06] Speaker A: I don't think we watched it together. [00:01:07] Speaker B: But we saw it quite close. [00:01:08] Speaker A: Both have seen it recently, one another. [00:01:10] Speaker B: Yeah, I, I, I think I might be filling in. Like, I think I might be talking some shit here, but I'm certain either Bill Paxton or Jim Cameron said something about that oxygen fluid being like a real thing. [00:01:25] Speaker A: Yeah, right, the thing with the rat. [00:01:27] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. [00:01:28] Speaker A: I hadn't even thought about that. [00:01:29] Speaker B: Fucking gimmicks in the abyss. [00:01:31] Speaker A: I'm certain, aside from the fact that they really did do that to a. [00:01:34] Speaker B: Rat, but I'm certain that that has some scientific basis. [00:01:40] Speaker A: Yeah, I believe you're right. I don't think it's quite the same thing as this, but I feel like if, if I heard the scientific explanation again for how that was going, how that was supposed to work. I feel like it may be. [00:01:52] Speaker B: And even as I'm saying this, I'm wondering if I'm coming from the same angle as, hey, you know the hoverboards in back of the Witch two? They were real, but Mattel. [00:02:00] Speaker A: No, I think you're right. [00:02:01] Speaker B: Took them off the market because they were dangerous. [00:02:05] Speaker A: I think you actually are right about this. Either that or I only think you're right because maybe you were the one who told me this. [00:02:12] Speaker B: Yeah, possibly. Possibly. [00:02:14] Speaker A: It's hard to say. [00:02:15] Speaker B: I could be eating my own tale. [00:02:16] Speaker A: Yeah. Did I read it somewhere or did you tell it to me and now I've internalized it as a real thing? I don't know. [00:02:22] Speaker B: Saturation. [00:02:23] Speaker A: Let's talk about saturation diving here it is the absolute worst job I have ever heard of in my life. Well paid, super well paid, but an absolute nightmare. Claustrophobic, isolated, uncomfortable, dangerous. And while there are no specific stats on how many saturation divers die each year, they die a lot. [00:02:48] Speaker B: Well, you need to tell me what they are, what one is. [00:02:51] Speaker A: We'll do just that. So first though, before I get into that, let's talk about one of the phenomena that makes this profession necessary. A little thing called the bends. [00:03:04] Speaker B: Yes, indeed. [00:03:04] Speaker A: You've heard of the Bends, I'm sure. [00:03:07] Speaker B: Listen, do you want me to talk about this? The fucking syndrome or the album? Because I could talk to you for a while about Radiohead's fucking seminal. [00:03:18] Speaker A: I know I went when I was like googling the Bends to try to get like, you know, details on what it is, everything. It's just getting a lot of Radiohead. Not helpful. No, but I'm talking about the thing that happens to your body, the medical term for which is decompression syndrome. [00:03:36] Speaker B: There you go. [00:03:36] Speaker A: Generalized barotrauma. [00:03:38] Speaker B: And that's to do with like the, the, the blood oxygen barrier. Something to do with depressurization. Is that what it is? [00:03:45] Speaker A: Right. [00:03:46] Speaker B: How your body reacts to changes in external pressure? [00:03:49] Speaker A: Precisely. Yeah. We usually think about this in terms of scuba diving and other ocean based activities, but this can also happen in things like air travel. It doesn't usually happen in something like commercial flight, but can happen. And basically the bends is what happens when the body experiences a sudden and rapid decrease in surrounding pressure. [00:04:11] Speaker B: There you go. [00:04:12] Speaker A: So Harvard Health describes decompression sickness as being similar to opening a soda quote. When you open the can or bottle, you decrease the pressure surrounding the beverage in the container, which causes the gas to come out of the liquid in the form of bubbles. So in decompression sickness, that happens to your blood. [00:04:31] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:04:32] Speaker A: When you slowly reduce pressure, the gas which entered the bloodstream at high pressure should move out of the bloodstream and back into the tissue where it belongs. But if you do this too fast, the gas just gets trapped in parts of the body where it's not supposed to be, including joints and tissue around the bones. So depending on the circumstances. Right, yeah. Depending on the circumstances, the results of this can range from relatively mild symptoms to absolutely dire ones. Most people recover from the bends, but some of the symptoms include joint pain, dizziness, headaches, trouble thinking clearly, fatigue, tingling or numbness, weakness in arms and legs. [00:05:13] Speaker B: Or even a rash or Wednesday as I call it. [00:05:23] Speaker A: The most common of the symptoms According to Harvard, is the joint pain. So, yeah, Wednesday, if you're me. Yes, yes. But that can last for days to weeks. More severe decompression sickness, however, can affect the brain, respiratory, and circulatory systems in potentially fatal ways, including things like pulmonary embolism and heart attacks. By the way, the plural of pulmonary embolism I learned today is emboli. But I felt like I would sound like an. [00:05:51] Speaker B: If I said no one calls no one. [00:05:55] Speaker A: It's like I'm just gonna say embolism. Like, you know, if you were to. [00:05:59] Speaker B: Call it an emboli once in company, everybody would have forever more thing. Here comes fucking Mr. Emboli. [00:06:06] Speaker A: You walk into her room, they'd be like, oh, hey, Emboli. [00:06:08] Speaker B: Here he is. Azure emboli. [00:06:14] Speaker A: So that can happen, though. So when it comes to diving of any kind, training is required to avoid this. That's why you can't just rent scuba gear and hop into the water. Unskilled divers are at risk not only of not knowing how to prevent the bends, but also of panicking and making it worse. Like, imagine if you're diving and you experience rapid decompression and suddenly experience something like shortness of breath or dizziness if you're not careful. What's the first thing that you do? [00:06:44] Speaker B: Kick for the fucking top. [00:06:46] Speaker A: Kick for the top. [00:06:47] Speaker B: Go for the fucking light. Get me the fuck out of this water, right? [00:06:51] Speaker A: You start trying, you work too hard, you start hyperventilating, all of that shit. You panic, you pass out, you drown, right? Oh, I hate. [00:07:00] Speaker B: I hate this. [00:07:02] Speaker A: Yeah, no, it's. You're gonna see why. This is just like the beginning, and it gets so much worse than this. So dive training prepares you to both prevent this and to deal with it if it does happen. Because sometimes shit happens, you know, and you have to be able to deal with it without panicking and doing exact. That. Kicking for the top, running out of air, whatever, causing yourself to faint. So from the jump, Any diving, no matter how casual, even if you just want to go look at cool fish a little deeper than a snorkel would allow, requires training to make sure you don't decompress yourself to death. [00:07:38] Speaker B: So you've got to. When you're going past a certain depth, you've got to. You've got to go back up nice and slow. Is that what we're saying? You've got to take your time? [00:07:44] Speaker A: Oh, boy. Yeah. Yeah, you betcha. So that is, like, the most benign thing, right? Scuba diving, like, you know, you learn how to deal with the depth and decompression so that you don't panic and die. But let's take it up a notch, please. A recreational scuba diver can dive at maximum about 130ft or 40 meters. [00:08:09] Speaker B: Okay. [00:08:10] Speaker A: And that's not like you or me. If we got Patty certified, this is like legit recreational divers. Like that's like that padi. That's like the body that certifies scuba divers. So if you were on vacation and you were like, let's get scuba certified, that's who you would go through. [00:08:26] Speaker B: Padi. [00:08:27] Speaker A: Padi, yes. [00:08:30] Speaker B: Amateur diving institution. [00:08:32] Speaker A: That's the one. Yeah. Straight out of Pennsylvania. But yeah, these people who can go as far as 40 meters, 130ft, those are like basically the pros of recreational diving. Right. That's not. You're never gonna go. I think that it was for someone to do like vacation scuba diving or whatever. I think you're. The most you can go is like 80ft or something like that. So, you know, not nearly as far not to. [00:09:03] Speaker B: I don't want you to think any the less of me, but I had the opportunity when I was in Cape Town to go in a shark cage. [00:09:11] Speaker A: I wanted to do that so bad in Cape Town, but I was so broke. [00:09:15] Speaker B: It wasn't too. I, I didn't. I was wearing my, my specs and like fuck am I going in a shot cave without my fucking glasses on? [00:09:25] Speaker A: Because if, even if we got it useless. Yeah. [00:09:27] Speaker B: Completely pointless. But it was just for vision reasons that I didn't. [00:09:32] Speaker A: It's, it's unfortunate cuz like your money goes so far in South Africa, but still, even with that exchange rate that's usually incredible, it's like $300 to go shark diving. And I was like, I am a master's student. I do not have $300 to spend on this. It's that or food for this week. Yes, but anyways. Yeah, so we can't dive nearly as far as these people, but did you say 120 meters? 40 meters? 130ft. See? [00:10:04] Speaker B: And that's a master diver can get that far down. [00:10:07] Speaker A: And that's in scuba. Fuck. All right, if you think about it, that's not hugely deep, right? [00:10:15] Speaker B: Talk about fucking. [00:10:16] Speaker A: I mean, I don't want to be that deep. [00:10:17] Speaker B: Absolutely not. But talk about hubris. You know what I mean? A master scuba diver and you can. That's all you can fucking do in the face of the ocean. The ocean laughs at you. [00:10:27] Speaker A: Well, it's, it's twofold, right? So at the at the point at, like, you know, past 130ft, you're pushing both your body and the equipment. [00:10:37] Speaker B: Sure. [00:10:37] Speaker A: Beyond what they can endure. So along with the bends, diving past this depth involves the risk of things like nitrogen narcosis, which we'll come back to, and oxygen toxicity further. It's just too much pressure to drop down into like that. At that point. We're not just talking about the dangers of rapid decompression, but the compression itself. The deeper you go, the more. It's kind of like putting your body in a vise, of course. So it's hard to do that just on your own that way. But sometimes we have to go deeper than that. And it's not enough to just send submersibles which can dive much deeper, as long as they're not, you know, a tin can, the PlayStation controller. Sometimes we need people to be able to get way down deep to perform certain important jobs, especially in the gas and oil industries. And that's when we call in the saturation divers, divers trained to be able to dive to depths of a thousand feet or more. [00:11:43] Speaker B: Well outside of a craft that is. [00:11:45] Speaker A: A long way outside of a craft. F. I'm going to tell you about how this works. I already. I feel like just the thought of that should tell you why this is the worst job in the world. It's horrible. [00:11:58] Speaker B: I hate it. But I am picturing one of these guys, right? And. [00:12:02] Speaker A: Mm. [00:12:03] Speaker B: For some fucking reason, Batista is in my mind as I'm imagining a saturation. And it's Batista. Not. Not like wrestling Batista, but Hollywood Batista with his white beard and his pearls. [00:12:16] Speaker A: Right? Yeah. I just watched him in the last Showgirl, where he's got, like, nice, like, long hair and stuff like that. [00:12:24] Speaker B: Love Batista. [00:12:25] Speaker A: And me too. Oh, yeah. [00:12:27] Speaker B: For some reason, my subconscious has suggested him. [00:12:30] Speaker A: I feel good about that. He might. I think, though, he's too big. I don't think a guy of that size can do this job. In fact, I don't talk about it in here, but one of the things that one of the divers discussed, because I will get to it. They eat a lot while they're doing this, but he has to, like, train himself not to eat so much when he gets home. Because you have to, like, maintain very specific body metrics in order to do this. [00:12:58] Speaker B: I know. We'll get there. I don't doubt that we'll get there. Can we get there? Because I. It feels a bit vague. Vital stuff in the gas and oil industry, like fucking. What? What is a saturation diver going to be doing down there? [00:13:11] Speaker A: Well, just keeping in mind that, like, imagine if all of this stuff was above the ground. Right. Or above the water. You would need human beings to do maintenance. [00:13:23] Speaker B: Absolutely. [00:13:23] Speaker A: On stuff. [00:13:24] Speaker B: There we go. Okay. Okay. That's. [00:13:25] Speaker A: It's underwater and people still need to do maintenance and stuff. So it's like the same kinds of things you would do on any work site, but now you're doing a thousand feet under the ocean instead. So manual labor. [00:13:38] Speaker B: Like 10 times deeper than the most expert scuba diver. [00:13:42] Speaker A: Exactly. Right. For perspective there. Yeah, absolutely. So according to an absolutely fascinating article on Atlas Obscura, it was in the 1930s that studies initially showed that divers bodies could become fully saturated with inert gas if they remained at pressure for a certain length of time, making it so that they can remain at that pressure indefinitely as long as when it comes time to decompress, they do it extremely slowly. So the problem is not necessarily us getting the gas all up in us in weird places. It's how we release that gas afterwards or how it disperses afterwards. [00:14:21] Speaker B: You'd get like the mega bend, Right? [00:14:24] Speaker A: Yeah. Oh, man. Big time. So. So in 1964, the first sea lab at the bottom of the sea was built and occupied by aquanauts. [00:14:42] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. [00:14:43] Speaker A: As they're apparently called. Yeah. And this sea lab was a pressurized metal living quarters submerged to 192ft, which allowed for the occupants to be able to move from inside the water to the outside without experiencing a change in pressure. [00:15:00] Speaker B: Got you. [00:15:02] Speaker A: This was huge. You'd never been able to do this before. It just sorta. Someone walks from inside a pressurized thing and can go straight out into an equally pressurized ocean and not die. This is a fully new thing that they have got going on here. And from this comes saturation diving. Because you see, the sealab thing was all good and well, but it was also expensive and inconvenient. Of course, they're like putting this sea lab already at the bottom of the ocean. Right. That means you have to have every bit of like, supplies and food and all that stuff with you on that sea lab. And if anything goes wrong, you're completely disconnected from the ability to be helped by anyone. You're just. [00:15:50] Speaker B: Yeah, it's as. You may as well be on the moon. [00:15:54] Speaker A: Right. And we'll get to sort of that as well here. But it, you know, it was not a super practical idea in that sense. So it'd be a lot easier for these aquanauts if they could live in A pressurized environment closer to the surface, say on a ship or a barge. And then dive from these pressurized quarters to their work sites in what are called diving bells. Do you know what a diving bell is? [00:16:19] Speaker B: I have seen a diving bell, yes. [00:16:21] Speaker A: You've seen a diving bell? [00:16:22] Speaker B: I can call one to mind. Sure. It's like a sphere, isn't it? It's like a. [00:16:30] Speaker A: They're more. They look kind of. I mean there's different kinds. I would say more like either sort of buoy cone shaped or like cylindrical usually, as opposed to like a round maybe. [00:16:44] Speaker B: I'm thinking like an oldie worldy kind of submit, Right? [00:16:47] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. But like a diving bell is essentially like a chamber that divers get into that's connected by a cable and winch system to the vessel from which they're diving. [00:17:01] Speaker B: I see. [00:17:02] Speaker A: So it can be control. It can't be controlled. As opposed to like. So the other thing you would use to get out of something like this would be a submersible. Right. And a submersible, you have controls on the inside. You can year round whatever you're doing. A diving bell doesn't have controls. It's basically just lowered and raised to wherever you need to be. But it's connected to that vessel and that way, you know, you're basically going from this little pressurized place inside of the boat to the diving bell, which is also pressurized. Lowered to wherever you need to be and you dive from there, so. Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you had a question. [00:17:42] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm trying to visualize it. So the, the goal being that the entire journey from surface to Sea lab. [00:17:51] Speaker A: No Sea lab. We've cut out the Sea lab. [00:17:53] Speaker B: Right. [00:17:54] Speaker A: So rather than a sea lab. Yep. I'm about to tell you this actually. Let me, let me explain this paragraph and if you're in the blank. Yeah. If you're still confused after this paragraph, we'll go back to it. All right, so they're in a pressurized. Oh, let me get to this. So essentially the diving. The divers commute in the diving bell from the Vess vessel on which they're docked to whatever they're working on at great depths in the ocean. Then they work for six hours or so and return to their pressurized home. Which all sounds simple enough, but it's a giant endeavor with lots of people and moving parts. [00:18:23] Speaker B: It doesn't sound simple at all. [00:18:26] Speaker A: Well, you know, lower in bell, come back up at the end of the day like. [00:18:29] Speaker B: Okay, like a mine. [00:18:32] Speaker A: Yeah, totally. Exactly. You're looking at like. It's like taking your little tram down to the mine or whatever. But the pressurized living space in which the saturations divers live is called a dive support vessel, or dsv. And now thinking about this, I'm like, is that what seaQuest DSV was about? [00:18:48] Speaker B: Gotta be. [00:18:49] Speaker A: It's gotta be. It's just been a really long time since I've seen that. Rest in peace, Jonathan Brandis and Roy Scheider. But everything about the DSV is controlled by a huge team of people on the ship operating every element down to literally flushing the toilet of this. So we are on a ship, right? Bigger ship or barge. And then there is this thing in the ship or barge which is the dsv. That is the pressurized place that these guys live in. Right. So they are not in a sea lab in the sea. They are in the sea lab in the boat. Does that make sense? [00:19:26] Speaker B: Yeah, it does. So there is a. Almost like a vessel within the vessel. [00:19:32] Speaker A: Exactly that. [00:19:33] Speaker B: And that vessel is like turbo pressurized as fuck. [00:19:36] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. So before getting onto that dsv, the diver has to go through a thorough medical check because even the slightest cold can mean trouble for them once they hit the high pressure environment. To put this in the tiniest fragment of perspective, just a miniscule idea of what this means. It's like being on an airplane with a cold. [00:19:59] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, sure. [00:20:00] Speaker A: If your nose or your ears are already clogged and then your ears pop, you won't be able to like hold your nose and push out air to unpop them because the flow is blocked. There's something blocking that air from coming through and unpopping your ears. [00:20:12] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:20:13] Speaker A: So magnify that by a bajillion. Imagine if a diver has stuffy sinuses. They won't be able to equalize in that pressurized environment, which can actually cause permanent damage and not just a temporary annoyance. [00:20:26] Speaker B: Yep. [00:20:28] Speaker A: Before they step onto the vehicle, they call their loved ones, which sounds macabre. Like they always make sure to say one last goodbye. And yes, there is every single time, the chance that this is going to be their last chance to have their family. Every shift. But the actual reason they do this is actually a lot sillier. I mentioned before that if you dive too deep in scuba gear, you can experience what's known as nitrogen narcosis, which basically has the effect of making you feel drunk as fuck to the point where at about 300ft, you can fully blackout. In 1919, inventor and engineer Elihu Thompson found a way to Combat this. If aquanauts took in a mixture of helium and oxygen, a combo that would later become to be called heliox, it would prevent nitrogen nicosis from occurring. Yay. Problem solved. [00:21:26] Speaker B: Okay. [00:21:27] Speaker A: Only thing is, Marco, what happens when you inhale helium? [00:21:32] Speaker B: Oh, well, if you do too much of it, then you black out, you pass out anyway. [00:21:36] Speaker A: Don't even go that far. What happens if you take a balloon from your kid's birthday party and you inhale the helium? [00:21:42] Speaker B: Well, hilarity. That's what happens. You get the fucking. The amazing voice. [00:21:47] Speaker A: Exactly. These divers call their families before boarding the vessel because once they're on it, they sound like Alvin in the Chipmunk. [00:21:55] Speaker B: Amazing Batista with a silly. [00:21:57] Speaker A: Whole time. Whole time. And because of this whole process, they don't just go down there for the day and come back up and depressurize. They stay in the DSV for weeks at a time, up to 28 days at a time. Speaking like that full time, only being able to speak in squeaky voice. [00:22:15] Speaker B: Shut up. [00:22:16] Speaker A: Whole time, burly men down there doing this work. Batista talking in chipmunk voice the whole 28 days. Incredible, right? This Atlas Obscura quoted a child who was featured in the BBC series Real Men, who talked to his saturation diver dad while he was on a job and said, it's hard to understand my dad because he talks in a duck language and I don't speak duck. [00:22:48] Speaker B: Awesome. All right. [00:22:49] Speaker A: It's so cute. And this is only complicated by differing accents aboard these DSVs. These guys will be from, like, all over the place. So it can be very hard to understand someone speaking both at a weird pitch and in an unfamiliar accent. So communication can sometimes just be super difficult when you're working these jobs, which is always what you want when you're on a deep sea death vehicle. [00:23:16] Speaker B: But I imagine it gets a lot of Serbians. You know what I mean? [00:23:20] Speaker A: Like, mad cunning, something like that. It wasn't. It was definitely Eastern European. Yes, for sure. I kept thinking of, have you seen the movie Black Sea? No, you gotta watch Black Sea. This movie stressed me out so hard that after I saw it, I walked out of the movie theater. I'd gone and seen it by myself in Santa Barbara. Nice little break from my stressful studies. Went and watched this movie. And afterwards, I sat in my car in the parking lot for, like, 45 minutes, just like, oh, my God. [00:23:51] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:23:52] Speaker A: Oh, my God. Jude Law in it. What's the. What's the Northern Irish guy? Not James Nesbit, but Michael Smiley is In it. [00:24:01] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. [00:24:01] Speaker A: Lots of. Lots of people either. [00:24:05] Speaker B: Do it. This is the first time this has happened in years. I can't hear Jimmy Nesbit without doing Jimmy Nesbit. Excuse me, I'm Jimmy Nesbit. [00:24:14] Speaker A: There you go. [00:24:15] Speaker B: I can't hear his name without. I'm Jimmy Nesbit. There you go. It's out of my system. [00:24:23] Speaker A: Great. I love it. Perfect. Can't believe you. [00:24:26] Speaker B: Jimmy Nesbitted me first week back. [00:24:31] Speaker A: Oh, it's a beautiful thing. Anyways, Black sea. Watch it. It's stressful, but one of my favorite deep sea horror experiences. Not even. Well, I always say every submarine movie is a horror movie. So it's not a horror movie. It's a drama, but it's a horror movie. Terrifying black. Anyways, Black sea. Really good. So after they've been checked for their health and talked to their families and whatnot, they board the vessel. And then it's kind of a bio dome situation. The whole ship is right outside their door, but they might as well be a thousand miles away because no one's going in or out of that thing except to dive until their particular mission is done. So as Atlas Obscura pointed out, the experience is like being on the International Space Station, except it only takes astronauts from the ISS about three and a half hours to make it back from space. Saturation divers, on the other hand, have to spend days at minimum decompressing after a job is done. [00:25:33] Speaker B: God, and you're only, like 100 meters or so away from the surface. The journey is days long. Aw, fuck this job. It had better pay well. [00:25:42] Speaker A: Right? And there's no, like, heading back in case of an emergency either. Like, if you injure yourself for something like that. You can't just be like, oh, God, we got to go up. [00:25:51] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:25:52] Speaker A: Like, you have to decrease. [00:25:55] Speaker B: How long? Like six to eight hours. [00:25:57] Speaker A: Like. Well, yeah. I mean, you're in the. Yeah, the work is like six hours a day. [00:26:03] Speaker B: But it's a day or so to get up and down. [00:26:05] Speaker A: No, no, no, no, no, no. You never leave compression. Right. So you are in this pressurized thing. Yeah, right, the dsv. [00:26:17] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:26:17] Speaker A: On the boat that is fully pressurized, Right. You go in the diving bell. It doesn't take you days. It might take you an hour or so, but it doesn't take that long to get to where you're trying to get. You do that, you work for six hours, you come back up, and you stay in this pressurized thing. You never leave pressurization for the whole. However many weeks you are on this squeaky voice and all that stuff going on. And it gets worse. I haven't even described to you what it's like living on there yet. This is truly the worst job in the world. And like I said, in a case of emergency, you cannot just get out of that thing and be like, all right, get us onto the boat. Even though you are on the boat. Right. And they could open that door. They cannot do that. You have to wait however many days to decompress before you can come back out of there. [00:27:12] Speaker B: Yeah, I get it. [00:27:14] Speaker A: One diver spoke of his wife having a miscarriage while he was on the dive. And he would have had to decompress for 11 days to get back up in order to reach her. At which point his wife was like, don't even worry about it. Just finish the job. It's not worth it. [00:27:29] Speaker B: What is really cooking me here is this is. This is the ore of the ocean, isn't it? If you, you know those relatively short. I can, I can see 100 meters away right now. And it ain't that far really in. In, you know, land breathing terms. [00:27:48] Speaker A: Right? But you're not even talking a mile here. [00:27:51] Speaker B: Exactly. This is how fucking hostile the ocean is to us. To us flimsy fucking cartilage and skin and bone landlubbers. It doesn't want us down there. We aren't supposed to be down there. [00:28:05] Speaker A: No, this is, it's space, but it's here. [00:28:08] Speaker B: Exactly, exactly what it is. [00:28:11] Speaker A: That's really what it comes down to. We act like we're over familiar with something that we shouldn't be as familiar with as we are. So let's see, here they are in this dsv, right? Pressure. [00:28:28] Speaker B: What if I go like the shining in this fucking unit. What if I go nuts? Can I come out? [00:28:34] Speaker A: No. [00:28:36] Speaker B: And not even if I go nuts. [00:28:37] Speaker A: Not even if you go nuts. You will die. You can't get the fuck out of here. That's why these guys have to be like super intensely trained though. [00:28:48] Speaker B: Sure, yeah, you need to. [00:28:51] Speaker A: There were some of the things that I read about that were saying, like even to get a job like this, you have to have a lot of people vouch for the fact that you have been in extremely stressful scenarios and kept your cool. Because it's just. It has to be. You have to be able to not go crazy in a situation that is built to make you go crazy. And again, I haven't even gotten to how it's built to make you go crazy. Just you wait. They're in this pressurized dsv. No way to get back out of there safely without spending days making sure that their blood doesn't turn to soda. So let's talk about what this living situation, please, is like. The specific mechanisms and systems apparently vary from company to company. But here's sort of a basic setup, right. You go through a hatch into a tiny round room that they call the wet pot. This will be used to get divers from the DSV into the diving bell when it's time for them to go to work. It's also the bathroom. And using it is a super delicate process that in order to avoid anyone's people's bowels being sucked out into the sea and things like that, requires that someone outside the vessel operates it to flush it. You can't even just flush the toilet for yourself. You got to be like, hey, somebody want to take a shit for me? [00:30:10] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:30:11] Speaker A: Yeah. Which. There was a quote in one of these, that guy said that one of the most valuable attributes of anyone who works in this profession is being able to shit on command. So, you know, there's that. [00:30:25] Speaker B: Yeah. Another reason why you gotta be like, mega healthy. You can't be going in there after you. [00:30:29] Speaker A: Right. Yeah. [00:30:30] Speaker B: You know. [00:30:31] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:30:32] Speaker B: Wagamama. [00:30:32] Speaker A: You gotta be firecracker chicken. Precisely. So from the wet pot, they go through another hatch into the living space, which has a dining table, like an aluminum dining table fitting four to six seats. That's basically the size of a diner booth. And this is where they will spend basically all of their time when they're not working or sleeping. Crammed into this tiny booth. Yeah, they can fold up the table, give themselves a little extra space if they want. That's all they've got. [00:31:08] Speaker B: Could I. While I'm in the dsv, while I'm in the unit, I haven't got to wear, like a suit. Oh, I can. I can walk around. [00:31:16] Speaker A: No normal clothes. [00:31:17] Speaker B: So I could take like my Nintendo Switch down or something. [00:31:21] Speaker A: Yeah, I think you. I think you could probably take something like that. [00:31:25] Speaker B: Cards. [00:31:26] Speaker A: Yeah. I don't think there's any reason. Well, so you wouldn't take any of that, like, with you. They take very little stuff in with them. But as I'm about to explain, you can get stuff passed back and forth to you from the outside through little things. So you'd be like, hey, can I have my switch? Someone would hand that through because there's not enough room for you to, like, keep a bunch of shit with you, but someone could hand you it when you wanted to play it. A switch didn't come up in any of these things that I was reading about, but I'm sure there's no reason you wouldn't be able to. Well, I don't know. [00:31:57] Speaker B: Unless. Pressure, you know, Unless. [00:31:59] Speaker A: Yeah, I was going to say I don't know what video game things do in a highly pressurized situation. [00:32:05] Speaker B: Helium rich. [00:32:07] Speaker A: Yeah, right. Like, I don't know, maybe. Maybe electronics don't fare super well because there was no mention of anything like TVs or anything like that in these situations. And I don't know if that was space or because they couldn't. Like, they wouldn't work. But they go into this living space and then the other place that they can be, aside from that little dining room, is the sleeping quarters where there are six bunks in a U shape. And the bunks at the far side of this chamber are partially blocked in by the other bunks. So once you're in, you're just sort of wedged as fuck into your tiny little bunk space. And this is actually an improvement because in the early days of these things, like, they would normally have like three bunks, and then you would have to, like, just kind of rotate who was sleeping at any given time. You wouldn't have your own. So now having your own bunk is like, you know, oh, hey, luxury. And once everybody's all loaded up, the heliox gets pumped in and they start pressurizing the joint, which is called blowdown, and takes varying amounts of time depending on the depth they'll eventually be diving to. Sometimes it can be as little as three hours, while other times you're looking at 10 or more hours of the pressurization process. And this whole thing is uncomfortable as shit. As first it gets super hot and humid as the pressure increases, and then it gets super cold as it fills with the heliox because helium doesn't retain heat very well, so the thermostat has to be cranked to 90 degrees to keep the divers any semblance of comfortable. The entire time blowdown is happening, the divers will be fanning themselves, yawning, swallowing, and doing. What I learned is called the Valsalva maneuver. That's the thing I mentioned before, where you pinch your nose, close your mouth, and blow to unpop your ears. [00:33:57] Speaker B: Oh, it has a name. Good. [00:33:59] Speaker A: It has a name. Valsalva Maneuver. And after all of this, they'll experience body aches for hours to days. Their joints click with movement as the cartilage shrinks for the first several days that they're down there, and after all of this is done and they're more or less adjusted. This is just their lives for the next several weeks. Like I said, they don't bring a lot of stuff with them, but things can be passed through special airlocks from the outside when they need them, like books, tools and food. The divers will eat about 6,000 calories a day because of the strenuousness of their job. And they pick their meals from a menu four times a day. So it's not like it's not space food. Right. They're not like eating, you know, freeze dried whatever. Yeah, no, they get real meals and the quality of that just depends on like the chef on the boat or whatever, you know, so it's not like five star restaurants or anything, but perfectly good meals of meat, vegetables, sandwiches, salad bar fare, and the like, you know, normal food. They also take vitamins, especially vitamin D, because they're not going to see the sun at all. Over the course of the weeks that they're in there, they will experience darkness like most of us will never know. [00:35:11] Speaker B: On every level. [00:35:12] Speaker A: On every level. So now let's go to work. Mark. The crew split into teams of two or three for alternating shifts and are awakened an hour before it's time to get moving so they can eat and hit the bathroom. Hence why you want to be able to go on cue. [00:35:28] Speaker B: Yep. [00:35:29] Speaker A: By the way, the article in Atlas Obscura did mention several times that they will just pee themselves while they're on the job because obviously there's no bathroom. So, you know, you just pee in the suit, just normal. But they put on these diving suits which circulate hot water so that they don't experience hypothermia in the freezing cold ocean. They go through the hatch into the wet pot and seal themselves off before heading through the other hatch into the diving bell, which is of course, the same pressure as the chamber and the same pressure as the water where they're going from there, they disconnect from the DSV and drop into the water via cable from the ship's hull through what's called a moon po. They then put on their hats, which is what they call their dive helmets, and dive out of the bottom of the diving bell to work. And the work can be a variety of things, like I said before, from cleaning up junk in the water after accidents and disasters, to plugging and capping wells, to repairing or performing maintenance on equipment. Basically anything that they need human hands to do, that's what these guys are there for. And this often happens, like I said in extremely limited visibility, they have a light in their hat. But divers say that can actually make it harder to see due to all the particles in the water which then kind of disperses the light in weird directions and doesn't help them see at all. [00:36:52] Speaker B: Would there at least be the possibility of seeing like a cool weird fish? [00:36:56] Speaker A: I'm gonna get to that because I want to read to you from a Reddit post from a guy claiming to have been a saturation diver. And I say claimed because there is some controversy about this. He posted this from the same account that he had, a different post about being like a 19 year old kid whose dad wants him to get a shop in his mechanics shop or something like that. And so people are like, did he make this up? Are these clout chasing things or whatever? [00:37:23] Speaker B: I feel like thing to lie about. You'd have to research the fuck out of that. [00:37:27] Speaker A: His. Yeah, his comments are so specific and line up completely with like stuff that I've read about other people that if he's making it up, he's making it up from a place of like deep research. My, my theory on this is that like it's his kid and he didn't realize he was logged into his dad's Reddit because it makes perfect sense for someone who used to be a saturation diver to be like a, some sort of like mechanical person now. Similar skill set. So that's my theory. It seems really weird to like intentionally from the same account do such totally different posts. But so, but I'm gonna just give you that grain of salt with this. Like it's Reddit. You can never tell if anyone is who they say they are. Right. But let me read to you from this. I'm just gonna pick out some of the, the good parts here. So. Used to do saturation diving. I did work on oil rigs. It's pretty spooky down there. Not like particularly spooky scary sea monster stories, but it's not a nice place for one. It's dark as a motherfucker, pitch black and your lamp barely goes more than a few yards effectively. The water is filled with particles, so it's kind of like shining a light into smoke. It's seriously like being in a void. And the only things in this void are you and the rig. I never disconnected from it longer than I had to. It just feels like you can fall forever, you know, they, I think people had asked him about like sea monsters or whatever and he's like, didn't really see that kind of stuff. But he said, more than a few times I saw something big and fast moving just beyond my light. Sound doesn't travel well in water, but you can hear the rig popping and other shit. Always really deep tones. You see a bunch of really weird fucking fish, though. No joke. Divers usually see a lot of fish that aren't identified. The aquanauts have to do. The aquanauts have to do that. But they can never get the funding to come down and see what we see. So we just live with the aliens. So basically it's so perfect. Like, the corporate entity has enough money to go down and have people in this undiscovered place, but, like, scientists can't go down there and, like, see what this shit is. So they're just seeing stuff. He said, we named a few, but you don't really see them often and rarely more than two or three times. Some fish are drawn to the lamp. Some stay away from him. I think the most interesting thing is what mixture was what. The mixture. I think he's talking about the heliox and depth does to your brain. When you've been out in the water for a while and literally only you and the piece of metal you're clinging to are the only things that seem to exist. Your brain tries to fill the void. At least I hope that's what my brain was doing. The rig popping is really ominous because it's like a bass drum that's all around you. And the only sound is almost absolute silence. You can see things moving in the dark, and when you look at them, your lamp only goes 10 yards or so and it's hitting all those particles. This happens a few times and you're certain you're not alone down there. You feel like you're being hunted. A lot of guys die because they try and rush something. And that's something you can't do underwater no matter how much you want to. You have to get in your head that like, well, Sid, I hope it doesn't eat me and keep working. But it can be hard not to panic. They teach you tactical breathing both to conserve and to keep you from losing it. [00:40:30] Speaker B: Did you say this movie Black Sea is about this profession? [00:40:33] Speaker A: No, it's not about this specifically. It's just like a submarine oil movie or whatever. It's not. It's not about this. I've never heard of this before. This is all new to me. Yeah, you start focusing really hard on the tactical breathing when you swear you saw something on the edge of your vision, felt the water move against your back and Hurt the shift. So he's just basically like, you know, there's not really anything spooky down there, but it's easy to convince yourself. [00:41:01] Speaker B: You imagine gribblies in the fucking blackness, right? [00:41:04] Speaker A: And then you have to, like, talk yourself out of it, you know, so that you don't panic. Let's see, on the topic of death, the pay was good, but the only place it could really get you was dead eventually. I know of many people who died, and I personally knew, too. One panicked. Louis working, as I understand, and fucked himself up. Getting hurt down there is a death sentence. You can't back up, get back up in time to get patched up. My other buddy died because they fucked up his mixture. You can't put too much oxygen in the tank because it doesn't react well at depth. He went down and had a seizure due to it. There was a huge investigation after that one. I think the closest I ever came to dying was when I went on an excursion, which is where you go to a different depth than the bell is at. I was about to come up when I got tangled in my gear really bad. I lost track of it as I went back and forth around the pylons. Normally, it's pretty easy to get out of, but it got caught under my helmet, which is bad for a variety of reasons. Also, when you're tangled and it's not taut, you can fall or rise without noticing. So basically, I had to carefully unweave myself without snapping any harness or locks while I fell into this bottomless abyss. It was actually pretty terrifying. Tactical breathing at its finest. I obviously made it out okay. So, yeah, it's. If he's making that up, it is from somebody's experience that he's pulling right from. Yeah, yeah. And in fact, there is. I guess it's probably. Now that I think about it, I guess maybe it is. Is it? No, it wasn't. Black Sea. There's another movie I think we might have watched together. Did we watch kind of like a submersible movie, like, two or three years ago that had some people in, like, a little capsule thing and they were diving. [00:42:45] Speaker B: There was that piece of shit diving. Found footage movie that we saw. [00:42:49] Speaker A: No. [00:42:49] Speaker B: Lake house. Not that. [00:42:51] Speaker A: No. I'm gonna have to look into this, because now that I think about it, I'm like, I think I did watch a movie on this, and I thought it was with you. I have to remember who was in it, though, to even try to look up what it was. But I'm like, I think I Think I had heard of this and I just didn't know what it was. [00:43:04] Speaker B: This is all new to me. This is completely new and completely terrible. [00:43:08] Speaker A: It's so terrible, I want nothing to do with it. And once all that is done, as I said, the whole point is that they very slowly depressurize. The rule being generally about 24 hours for each 100ft of pressure. And if anything goes wrong, it can extend it. One guy talked about how an inexperienced diver started to feel panicky about what were actually pretty normal symptoms of decompression. But since obviously you can't take any risks, that meant they had to restart the whole process over again to make sure that it was done properly, adding extra time onto the ordeal. And during these days of decompression, you have absolutely nothing to do. You're not working or anything. You're just chilling in your tiny bunk or at that tiny table, waiting for it to be safe enough for you to get off the DSV and breathe fresh air that doesn't make you sound like a cartoon. And when they do finally disembark, they are a mess, usually experiencing joint pain, headaches, shortness of breath, along with disorientation, exhaustion and irritability. And just to add insult to injury, they're also usually super pale when they get off of this thing as well. And that's all. Assuming that everything has gone perfectly on the excursion, your best case scenario is to come out like this. But, Mark, while there are plenty of examples of things going awry in killing these divers, I'd like to tell you about the gnarliest one on record, the Byford Dolphin accident. This tragedy was so fascinatingly horrible. The medical journal discussing the autopsy findings used exclamation points. I have never seen a journal article where the tone was more can you believe this shit? Than this one. And it's got the gory photos to back it all up, which I have sent you. But wait just a moment. [00:45:01] Speaker B: My trigger finger is itching. [00:45:02] Speaker A: Yeah, you're ready. So we talked about the diving bell, which they get into through a series of secure hatches and latch shut before disconnecting from the DSV and being lowered to the work site through the hull of the ship. On the team of people making sure this process goes smoothly are workers called tenders, who are, according to how stuff, or who, according to how stuff works, help unspool and retract the umbilical, the thick line of air supply tubes and communication wires that connect the divers to the surface. They used to also dock the Diving bell to the dsv. They don't do that anymore. And in no small part, that is due to a horrendous accident that happened on November 5, 1983. The tender on this occasion was a man named William Crammond working on a semi submersible oil rig in the North Sea called the Byford Dolphin. On this particular rig, there were two pressurized chambers with two divers in each. [00:45:59] Speaker B: The rig was called the Byford Dolphin. [00:46:01] Speaker A: The rig was called the Byford Dolphin. Yes. In a routine he would have done every day, he connected the diving bell to the chambers where the pair of divers that had been out on the job were safely returned. In the other chamber, the two divers who hadn't been on shift were resting in their bed for reasons we can only speculate about because everyone involved is big dead. The diving bell was detached from the living chambers before the doors were properly sealed shut instantly, resulting in what's called an explosive decompression. Now, you're probably thinking something along the lines of what happened with the Titan submersible, right? [00:46:44] Speaker B: Yes. [00:46:44] Speaker A: Like everyone just kind of instantly becomes sea dust. This, however, left a much more gruesome trail of destruction, especially when it came to diver Truls Helvik, who had been standing in front of the living chamber door when the pressure was suddenly released. So, Marco, why don't you go ahead and open up that medical report there and maybe just describe some of these photos before I start telling you what the fuck happened here. All right, and we'll scroll down. [00:47:16] Speaker B: Tell me again this guy's name, please, before I look at what remains of him. [00:47:21] Speaker A: His name was Truls Hellevik. And you're not just gonna see him here. [00:47:27] Speaker B: We're. [00:47:27] Speaker A: We'll go through, like, scroll down to the third page of this and maybe start describing what you see here. [00:47:36] Speaker B: Okay, so we have what appears to be. These are black and white photos and we have what appears to be a naked, grinning, seemingly. [00:47:53] Speaker A: Yeah, I guess it does kind of look like grinning to me. [00:47:56] Speaker B: The man looks as though he is frozen in an expression of mortal kind of terminal bliss, just with this death grin. Rictus on his face. [00:48:09] Speaker A: Yes. Teeth bared like. [00:48:11] Speaker B: And mouth pulled back, is puffy. And he is bruised. [00:48:20] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:48:21] Speaker B: What looks to be coated in deep on the. On the print. Black, because they're monochrome. But this man is, you know, if you. If you to look at this in color, I would assume that he is purple. [00:48:34] Speaker A: Yeah, I would assume so, too. [00:48:36] Speaker B: Coated in bruises and swollen. He looks like a swollen fucking guy. A swollen, bruised dead man. [00:48:46] Speaker A: Yeah. How about the next guy? [00:48:48] Speaker B: Oh, my God. [00:48:53] Speaker A: Did you skip forward a page? I did, yeah. Maybe just give us a quick. The other two guys on that page and then we'll go into what you just came across. [00:49:03] Speaker B: So we. Oh, yeah. Whoa. Back on this page we have diver one, diver two, and diver three, all of whom are displaying similar symptoms of puffy, bruised death. That's what I'm seeing here. I'm seeing. I'm just seeing three fucking dead guys. [00:49:23] Speaker A: Yeah, lots of bruising looking or like. Yes, lots of bruising, things like that. [00:49:27] Speaker B: The third guy's arm looks like it's kind of, you know, maybe a little rigor mortis is kind of bent around. He doesn't look like he's had any fun at all. I mean, the first guy looks like he might have overdosed on, you know, some kind of happy chemical. The third guy does not. He did not die in a fun way. [00:49:46] Speaker A: Yeah. So you want to get to the, the next page then and talk about what you're seeing here. [00:49:51] Speaker B: All right, so the remains of diver 4. This is figure 7. The remains of diver 4 are in no way recognizable as a human being. This looks for all the world like the outcome of a. An absolutely horrific plane crash or a traffic accident. [00:50:11] Speaker A: Right? Yeah. [00:50:13] Speaker B: A high velocity, high speed impact. You don't the. To the credit of the mortician or the scientists involved, they've done their best to reassemble it. [00:50:24] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:50:25] Speaker B: In some kind of anthropomorphic shape. But I'm gonna use a term you hate here. We have here a tray of chunks, mate. [00:50:34] Speaker A: That's true. [00:50:35] Speaker B: That's what we have. We have a trough of distended bits that in no way resembles a human being. This is what happens when something explodes. This is. Yes, this is meat. We have meat on a tray. [00:50:50] Speaker A: Yeah. You want to give a little description of the next couple? You know, you don't have to go as in depth, but the next couple. [00:50:58] Speaker B: Of pictures as well here on Figure 8. Well, I am reminded of. We've all seen the, the kind of the museum pieces which are the remains of Joseph Merrick. Have we not? [00:51:13] Speaker A: Sure. [00:51:14] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what I'm seeing here. I am. Oh, man. This is a head, a human head. This is what reminds us of a human head. [00:51:24] Speaker A: It's. I wouldn't even call it a head. It's just a face there. If you look at that, there's nothing behind it. [00:51:31] Speaker B: Carapace of a head, isn't it? It's, it's front kind of out, out of a Human head obviously been reassembled by a mortician. Hollow eye sockets, no teeth, no tongue, no. The. The entire right occipital fucking chunk of the head is missing. This guy has been decompressed very quickly, clearly. Oh, my God. [00:51:57] Speaker A: Next page. [00:51:58] Speaker B: Oh, my goodness. The. I'll read verbatim how it's described. The opened thoracoabdominal cavities. Cavities that died before. Again, what you have, man? [00:52:14] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. This is our. It's just. It's just me. [00:52:18] Speaker B: It's simply meat. It is open, distended, shapeless, without form. Meat. Just an open human. [00:52:30] Speaker A: Yes. So let me. I'm going to read directly from this autopsy report because I just. I feel like I cannot do better than like the incredulous wonder of the way that they. [00:52:44] Speaker B: What page you gonna read from? Allow me, please. [00:52:45] Speaker A: I'm gonna start. Well, I was gonna kind of skip around a little bit, but if you. I think you can kind of figure out what, like from Opera on page 94, starting at operations A and B had been completed or. Yeah, start from there because that gives. So basically they've described what is supposed to happen being, you know, the hatch is shut and moved in. [00:53:10] Speaker B: Operations A and B had been completed and Diver 4 was about to carry out Operation C when for some inexplicable reason, one of the tenders opened the clamp. The result was a free communication between the chamber system with a pressure of 9 ATM and the surroundings with a pressure of 1 atmosphere. A tremendous blast shot from the chambers through the trunk, pushing the bell away and hitting the two tenders. The one who had opened the clamp died and the other one was severely injured. Unfortunately, the dead tender was not sent to us for autopsy. Figure 2 shows how diver 4 probably was about to close the chamber door when the accident occurred. The chamber opening was 60 cm in diameter. Unfortunately, the door jammed so firmly that it later had to be cut loose with an acetylene burner. Diver 4 was shot out through the opening and completely disintegrated. Parts of him were found scattered about the rig. One part was even found lying on the derrick 10 meters above the chambers. Exclamation mark. Postmortem examinations. The remains of Diver four were sent to us in four plastic bags. All parts showed fractures and wounds. The fractures of the long bones were of transverse as well as short and long oblique types, the fracture lines being more irregular than usual with small splintered fragments. The scalp with long blonde hair was present, but the top of the skull and the brain were missing. The base of the skull was a collection of tiny bone fragments. Only the soft tissues of the face were found, however, completely separated from the bones. It fucking blew his face off. It blew his face off. The left upper arm. I'm not. That wasn't a quote from the autopsy, by the way. No credulity. The left upper arm had been separated from the body just below the shoulder joint. The right upper arm was torn to pieces but still attached to the body. Both hands had been separated from the lower arms. The right thigh, leg and foot were missing, but the knee joint was found. The left thigh had been separated from the pelvis just below the hip joint. The pelvis itself had been divided into three parts. To one of these parts, a small segment of the small bowel was attached. The penis was present, but invaginated. [00:55:40] Speaker A: Yeah. And that means exactly what it sounds like it means. I looked it up. It means the penis was turned inside out. [00:55:47] Speaker B: Turned his dick inside out. [00:55:49] Speaker A: It sure did. Yeah. [00:55:52] Speaker B: Just a moment. [00:55:53] Speaker A: A moment's silence, please, just for this poor guy. It goes on like that. Everything is pretty much separated completely. Do you want to go down to the autopsy on divers 1, 2 and 3 there? [00:56:05] Speaker B: Yes. The autopsy on divers 1, 2 and 3 were performed three days after death, and the findings were essentially the same. In all three cases, the rigor mortis was unusually strong. The hypostases were light red, and in two cases, there were numerous petiteal hemorrhages in the Levos. All the organs showed large amounts of gas in the blood vessels, and scattered hemorrhages were found in the soft tissues. One of the divers had a large subconjunctival bulla. [00:56:34] Speaker A: Sir, all of these things are like. Like. Oh, that sounds bad. [00:56:38] Speaker B: Yeah. To be honest, these are all kind of. I. I get. I get medically why you have to describe this stuff, but. [00:56:46] Speaker A: Yeah, let me. Let me put this in layman's terms, please, for you here. So Hellevik, the one who'd been standing by the door, was sucked out of it and torn open with his eternal internal organs ejected onto the deck of the ship in so many bits, they delivered him to autopsy in four bags. The tender Crammond was killed by the diving belt itself when it went flying from the explosion. And the other three men who'd been inside the DSV were boiled from the inside when the nitrogen in their blood violently erupted into gas bubbles. The only silver lining of this is that it all would have happened instantly. They were all dead before they even knew. He didn't even know what happened here? [00:57:28] Speaker B: He died not even knowing his dick was the wrong way around. [00:57:34] Speaker A: It was. It was the right way. And he never had to know it was the wrong way. [00:57:39] Speaker B: Small mercies and this. [00:57:40] Speaker A: Yeah. So I present you, Mark. The worst job in the world. [00:57:50] Speaker B: I got. I mean, I got questions, but maybe, maybe no for now. I mean, does this happen everywhere? I mean, are these. Obviously, these things still exist. [00:58:00] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. No, this is still. This is still a job people do. This is. Like I said, this is like the. The worst accident. The accidents are normally more. I mean, it's terrible, but they're like normal accidents like that guy described. Or like I read one about someone being crushed by equipment. [00:58:19] Speaker B: Normal kind of industry kind of accidents. [00:58:22] Speaker A: Right. And then compounded by being under the water. So if something happens, like, you know, someone's hat being crushed, then they just instantly die. Things like that, you know, it's just a face. Literally, like you said, blew his face off. [00:58:40] Speaker B: It feels like some of these photos should be in training. Should be in the training process for this job. [00:58:46] Speaker A: It's like the red asphalt for saturation divers. Like, you know, this could happen. Pay attention. But like I said, they've changed the way the diving. It doesn't take a tender anymore to detach and attach it. It automatically latches. So like, it physically. That cannot happen anymore. Unless there was like some huge mechanical failure. That can't happen. [00:59:11] Speaker B: Well, listeners, I have learned here, and I am certain you will have too. I. I have. I have nothing. I'm simply. I'm simply transfixed by that by. By page by page. 97 here. It's fucking mad. These. These pics are available on request and look well. [00:59:33] Speaker A: And of course that link will be in the blog. I'm not gonna put them on Instagram because sometimes Instagram starts like the slide later and someone accidentally ends up seeing dead body. [00:59:43] Speaker B: Well, that's happening quite a bit on Instagram anyway at the moment. [00:59:46] Speaker A: Yeah. Apparently that's what reels are doing as it is. But I'm not gonna put it there. But the link is in. [00:59:54] Speaker B: Yes. And let's, you know, let's stay conscious that these are human beings. They are, you know. [00:59:59] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:59:59] Speaker B: Or were or. Yeah. [01:00:01] Speaker A: Well, you know, welcome back, Marco. [01:00:04] Speaker B: Thanks. Let me quote directly from my notes, if I may. [01:00:09] Speaker A: Yes, please do. [01:00:11] Speaker B: Look at these nerds. Oh, mise en scene. [01:00:14] Speaker A: I don't think anyone has ever said mise en scene in such a horny way before. [01:00:18] Speaker B: The way I whispered the word sex. Cannibal received. [01:00:21] Speaker A: Worst comes to worst. Mark, I'm Willing to guillotine you for science. [01:00:25] Speaker B: Thank you. That's really, really sweet. It's cold outside, but my pancreas is talking to me. I'm gonna leg it. [01:00:31] Speaker A: You know how I feel about that, Mark. [01:00:33] Speaker B: I think you feel great about it. Let's go, girls. Ah, good to be back. [01:00:44] Speaker A: Still a little disappointed that you didn't end up doing that at karaoke when you were here for some. [01:00:50] Speaker B: All I could think of to do was. Was. Was Dan's egg. That's the only thing I could think of to do. And several times. [01:00:57] Speaker A: Only one choice right now. [01:00:58] Speaker B: Several times since I thought, oh, maybe I should have done that at the time. Only that song could me to do. [01:01:04] Speaker A: Incredible. Who knows where thoughts come from? They just appear. [01:01:08] Speaker B: Fuck. Who knows where they go, where they come from? Delightful to be back. [01:01:13] Speaker A: Yay. [01:01:14] Speaker B: It is delightful to be back, listeners. I missed you. I missed you. Let's see, what can we say? I mean, in the last month, you know, Western society is still riddled with tumors, isn't it? Riddled it. [01:01:29] Speaker A: Yeah, it's true. You know, things are. [01:01:32] Speaker B: With pox. [01:01:34] Speaker A: Yeah. Things are as you left them. Maybe worse. I don't know. What's the gauge anymore? [01:01:41] Speaker B: Worse, man. [01:01:44] Speaker A: I just don't know what the scale is at this point. You know, it's like the doomsday clock thing where it's like. Oh, ticked. Another second closer. Like, friends, it is 11:59.59 right now. Let's not. Yeah, yeah, let's not play. So every day is like. It's like. Well, I don't know. Is it worse? What's worse than worse? [01:02:02] Speaker B: Yeah, it does feel. It does feel worse. It does feel worse. Since the start of February. Just since the start of February. Isn't that incredible? It feels worse. World leaders arguing and openly fucking at. At loggerheads with one another in front of the world's media this past 48 hours. [01:02:19] Speaker A: Just incredible stuff. [01:02:20] Speaker B: Incredible stuff. Superpowers aligning with the wrong ones, you know? [01:02:27] Speaker A: Yeah, we're the bad guys. We're the axes on this. [01:02:32] Speaker B: You are actually very. [01:02:34] Speaker A: It's very odd, you know? [01:02:36] Speaker B: How's it feel? [01:02:38] Speaker A: Not great. That's not my favorite thing. [01:02:42] Speaker B: Just going back to the early days of. Of the. This European conflict. At the time, you were quite blase about it, weren't you? You didn't really give that much of. [01:02:51] Speaker A: A fuck, and I still, like, don't per se. Yeah, like, it's the thing where, like, to the extent that, like, obviously borders aren't real. Right? Like, that's not A real thing. And you can't just like take people's land or things like that. Right. Like, I'm for self determination and all of that kind of stuff. You know, at the same time, it's just, to me, like I said, and this is often a Republican talking point, so, like, you know, it sounds very conservative. But what I mean is it like there was never. It felt like there was never an attempt at any form of diplomacy over this stuff. Right. It was just like, our solution is send billions of dollars to Ukraine and just like, hopefully they eventually, like, kill Russia. And like, that's still, to me, like, that's just not. [01:03:44] Speaker B: Stop. [01:03:44] Speaker A: It's just not gonna work. You know? And so it's hard to like attach to something where it's like, this is like, nobody is trying to solve shit here. It's just kind of like, Zelensky, like, give me weapons. And us like, okay, here's weapons. And like, that's the whole thing. So that's kind of my thing is I'm like, I just don't like. It's not the same thing as, like, say, Gaza, where it's like extermination happening before our eyes or whatever, terrible things are happening to the Ukrainians, but it's also like an actual war where there's like billions of dollars of weapons being given to Ukraine to fight their side of it. [01:04:22] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:04:23] Speaker A: So that's kind of my thing. [01:04:24] Speaker B: As opposed to a wholesale kind of eradication project. [01:04:30] Speaker A: Right, exactly. [01:04:31] Speaker B: Yeah, I see. [01:04:31] Speaker A: Yeah. Like, this is about, you know, who gets to be in charge of their way of life. Not the Ukrainians will all be ethnically cleansed. [01:04:42] Speaker B: I don't know if I agree with that. Because Ukraine was in charge of that way of life and somebody decided they shouldn't be anymore. [01:04:49] Speaker A: Right, that's exactly what I'm saying. Yeah. Like, so they're fighting for the right to still be in charge of their way of life. If they lose, they are not wholesale going to be slaughtered. Right. Like, just Russia's in charge of them, which is bad. I don't want Russia to be in charge of Ukraine. It's a different scenario than what America is doing in Gaza. [01:05:13] Speaker B: Yes. [01:05:14] Speaker A: Where we are wholesale arming a genocide. Right. Like, we are helping Ukraine fight their war. But also, like, why are. Why is nobody trying to, like, have a conversation here super briefly? [01:05:26] Speaker B: And this is appalling that I would interrupt this conversation for this. [01:05:30] Speaker A: Oh, no. [01:05:31] Speaker B: In front of me on the tv, we're live at the Oscars red carpet. And who's just Shown up who? My favorite saturation diver, Batista. He's just rocked up on the red carpet, and he looks great. Oh, I don't know. I don't know. [01:05:51] Speaker A: It's just, you know, it's like. It sounds callous or whatever, and I, like, innocent people shouldn't die in any conflict. You know, it's more of, like, a matter of degrees, of, like, what is our role in this in America? And, you know, we've basically gone from, like, a side of just unconditionally arm Ukraine, give them all the money possible, you know, all that kind of stuff to, like, now, like, Ukraine, and it's like, well, this is. This is not, like, what do we. What are we doing here? This is. We're taking a team side on this, and then we're doing, like, a whole genocide in another part of the world. That's more my take on it. [01:06:36] Speaker B: Yeah, listen, I get it. I do. Where. Where it kind of. Where it goes above and beyond that, for me, is the implication of. Of. Of what comes next or what could. [01:06:50] Speaker A: Come next, you know, which is, I mean, you know, fair. It just feels like also, I don't know, there's like, such huge instability with everything that we're doing that we're destabilizing the world. And Ukraine is just one part of the world that we happen to be destabilizing at this moment. You know, we give a lot of attention to it in America because they're white people and we relate to them, but we're doing this all over the place. So, you know, I think, because I don't live on that landmass, this is just another group of people that were destabilizing at the moment, and it matters, but it's also kind of a like, you know, we have given them billions of dollars to fight this. I don't know what more you want from me. You have all of my tax money. I don't have. I have nothing left to give you but everything that I got paid last year. So. [01:07:50] Speaker B: Hmm. I don't know, of course, which has been. Which is not a change in your position. I get this. I do. But. But listen, nonetheless. Nonetheless. Thank you. I'm back. [01:08:02] Speaker A: I still think what. Yeah, what happened the other day was insane, for sure. Like, with. And if you've been living under a rock or you're listening to this, you know, five years later in the wastelands. Insane meeting between Trump and Vance and Zelensky, where they just kind of attacked him. [01:08:23] Speaker B: Just press gangs again. [01:08:25] Speaker A: Unhinged. Yeah, it was crazy. And that's like. Yeah, that's. That's the kind of shit that starts, like, world wars. Yes, that's a problem. [01:08:35] Speaker B: Yes. Yes. Again, far from it being why. Why? You're not wrong in what you say. Fuck it is. Is just another symptom of a destabilized world. [01:08:50] Speaker A: One that America seems to think that we can just buy. [01:08:53] Speaker B: Yes. [01:08:53] Speaker A: I mean, that's at the root of this. Right. Like, we went from being like, we support Ukraine with all these weapons, things like this, and now we don't support Ukraine unless they'll let us, like, buy them, basically. [01:09:04] Speaker B: Oh, exactly. This. Yeah. [01:09:06] Speaker A: Like, okay, supplies of. Great. We're gonna buy them supplies. [01:09:10] Speaker B: Canada cadmium, which is very useful to electric vehicle manufacturers. Isn't that interesting? [01:09:16] Speaker A: That's so, so crazy. I wonder if, like, there's, like, anyone. Isn't that, like, in the vicinity of the government who would be interested in that. [01:09:24] Speaker B: That's very interesting. But, yeah, it's the only symptom of a destabilized world so far, which feels like a real front runner, a real contender to be a tipping point for something very awful. [01:09:39] Speaker A: Yeah. Because it's the kind of thing like, you know, whenever, like when you were in school and you learned about, like, oh, what caused each of these world wars. Always, like, time and again, it's some dumb thing. They're like, oh, well, we. Someone did this, and then this country was an ally with this country, and that meant that they had to get involved, but because this was an ally with this one, they had to dissolving blocks, shifting allegiances. Yes, exactly. And it feels like we're putting ourselves up against the entire rest of the world's alliances at this point and only aligning ourselves with, like, Russia and China, the bad guys. The baddies which are kind of the baddies which, like, listen again, like, borders aren't real. None of this is real. I don't think any. Like, we are the bad guys. I think that's the one thing that is interesting about this, is that America has always been the bad guy, just like Britain has always been the bad guys. Like, you know, we are not on the right side of anything. [01:10:37] Speaker B: Borders aren't real to you or I or anyone progressive, but right to the rest. [01:10:43] Speaker A: Geopolitics. [01:10:44] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:10:44] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. [01:10:46] Speaker B: Yesterday. I just say that yesterday was David's Day, right? [01:10:49] Speaker A: Yes, it was. [01:10:51] Speaker B: And I, I, I had a couple of happy St. David's Day dads from my kids. [01:10:56] Speaker A: I wondered, I. Did they say it in Welsh or they say it in. [01:11:00] Speaker B: No, in English and I. And I smiled and went, ah, thanks. But what I wanted to say was, you may as well say that to the fucking wall, because the very idea of nationality is embarrassing to me. [01:11:14] Speaker A: Sure. Yeah. [01:11:15] Speaker B: It is disgusting that somebody would think to celebrate the parcel of land they were born on by accident, off. Let's move on and move on. You know, that's what I wanted to say. [01:11:29] Speaker A: You do? Yeah. But you come from. I mean, what is the reason for that, though, is coming from a place that is. That was oppressed by the people that, you know, own this land that you live on. And so it's not. It's not the same kind of nationalism as British nationalism is. It's a way of sort of taking back the fact that you weren't allowed to say this, you know, not that long ago, you weren't allowed to speak Welsh. You weren't allowed to have, like, this culture. And, you know, so it has, like, a slightly different meaning than, you know, me saying Happy Independence Day or something like that. That, like, you know, what is. [01:12:14] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:12:15] Speaker A: What does that mean? They come from different places. I would say it's. Yeah. [01:12:22] Speaker B: Yes. [01:12:23] Speaker A: But, yeah, that's. It's a. It's a weird time. And as our, you know, as you always say, we are sort of documenting. Yeah. Whatever this spiral is. And I would say we've predicted a lot of craziness over the years, but I don't think we ever thought we. [01:12:38] Speaker B: No, we certainly didn't see this last couple of days coming. [01:12:41] Speaker A: No, I think we were. I think we've been fixated mostly on, like, the climate catastrophe. [01:12:47] Speaker B: Yes. [01:12:48] Speaker A: And the diplomatic one didn't seem like it was going to be. No, quite like this. [01:12:54] Speaker B: Fascinating, though, again, in a weird sort of way to privilege. It is. I mean this in a darkly comedic way that. That is often how I describe it to people when I. When I'm pressed on. Mark, why. Why don't you smile much? You know, I. When people wish they'd never asked that question, that's usually the. That's usually the line I finish on. In a way, it's kind of thrilling and I still mean that. [01:13:20] Speaker A: Yeah. I think that, like, one of the interesting things from, like, being here in a, like, quickly waning superpower. Right. Because beyond what we're doing on the world stage, we have everything that, like, Elon is dismantling over here, just being allowed to dismantle, like, our entire government, RFK being allowed to dismantle our government. So, you know, our health departments being dismantled, our education being dismantled, our social services all being dismantled. Like, this is, you know, potentially no privilege will exist. Like, I think that's the thing that people tend to have this perspective that things can't get as bad as they could. You know what I mean? Like, where, like, no one thinks the worst case scenario could happen. [01:14:10] Speaker B: Yes. [01:14:12] Speaker A: And it can. And you know, we could all be very fucked. And someone was said on Blue sky earlier today, like, hey, someone let me know, like, did. Did other countries welcome Germans during World War II when they tried to escape from what Germany was doing? You know, and it's like, oh, yeah. Like, even if we want to get out of here, there's no guarantee as we're making ourselves enemy on the world stage that people will continue to accept Americans if we want to leave. And so, you know, it's a scary kind of thing to be like, everything is like legit crumbling and, you know, I don't know if one week I won't be able to talk to you anymore because there's no power, infrastructure or things like that. There's no Internet or whatever to be able to do that. [01:15:02] Speaker B: I mean, and we've said this before, haven't we? It's been a staple of our conversations these, these, you know, past years that, you know, things are as bad as they've ever been. Things are only gonna get worse. But it is actually happening now. [01:15:14] Speaker A: Yeah, it's like legitimately happening extremely quickly. Wow. Yeah. [01:15:22] Speaker B: A little bit of a light bulb. That was a little bit of a light bulb moment to me there. This, this thing, this, you know, multi pronged approach of catastrophe that we've always known was coming is actually here. [01:15:41] Speaker A: Like, best case scenarios for America are bad. Like, yeah, the amount of funding that's been stripped from things, the amount of people who have been fired from their jobs, the amount of stuff that's just been destroyed and dismantled. Like, best case scenario, we're not coming back from that. [01:15:57] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Completely. Completely even. Yeah. A tiny, tiny percentage if any of that stuff is gonna get reinstated the rights, you know. [01:16:08] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:16:09] Speaker B: Wild. [01:16:11] Speaker A: Wild. Absolutely wild. So like I said, you know, keep your. Keep a spare bedroom for the Edmondsons. [01:16:20] Speaker B: A couple of times you've talked about moving over the past few years. Is that still on? [01:16:24] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Well, you know, yeah, we've. We've been thinking about it for a while. There's no way we're like gonna retire in this country, especially now. But there's never, like here if you're old and not working. We don't have health care. So it's like the idea of retiring here when Social Security is probably already gonna be gutted. It was going to be before all this anyway, with no health care for everyone and stuff like that. Like, there's just no way to live like that. So we always knew we're gonna leave here, like at retirement. It's just, will we, will we move before that is the question where we were looking, you know, 15 years down the road or whatever. It's like, well, maybe not. [01:17:09] Speaker B: We might be speaking Russian over here. [01:17:13] Speaker A: Who knows, right? What a world. What a world. Coming in hot. It's good friends coming in hot, this is. Listen, we got to get everything in now that Mark's back. A good gory story, A little bit of doom about the state of the world. [01:17:30] Speaker B: How has the last month been? How have things been going? Well, listen, from a Joag perspective, who's. [01:17:37] Speaker A: Who'S been on it has been a delight. [01:17:41] Speaker B: There we go. [01:17:42] Speaker A: Yes. We had Ryan here, which was, you know, always wonderful. We had Anna and Steve come in here, had a little maritime story, which was wonderful. We had Brianne here, who has never been on Joag before, telling a delightful tale last week. All the things, everybody chose things that were like, very Joag themed to talk about. And it was just wonderful. So thank you to all of them. If you haven't listened to those episodes, go back and check them out because they were such a good time. [01:18:16] Speaker B: Cut this out. Or don't. I don't really give a fuck the world's ending. But I, I think Bran's quite cute. [01:18:21] Speaker A: Oh, of course she is. She looks a lot like stat to me. Yeah, I get to be honest, they're very similar faces. I once, I made like a side by side thing once. Like, don't they look a lot alike? And then I didn't, I forgot to send it to you. But there you go. You know, they're all, they're all cute. You're all beautiful people and it was wonderful to have you guys on here. So thank you so much for that. And yeah, it's been, it's been a delight. Joe Ag Wise, obviously we missed you dearly. Obviously I missed you dearly. I tell you all the time. Well, that, like, I, I, I just missed talking to you and so I'm glad you're back. But for everyone here, listen, it's March and that means Ko Fi mailers. [01:19:08] Speaker B: Oh, cool. [01:19:08] Speaker A: You are about to get mail from Rome. I collected all kinds of things when I was in Rome on my trip to send to people. So that will be coming to your mailbox. This month. Keep an eye out. I'm excited to send all this stuff to you. I have it right in front of me. It's gonna be a good old time. [01:19:28] Speaker B: What is it? What format does it take? What have you got there? Is it. [01:19:31] Speaker A: Oh, I'm not gonna say. [01:19:34] Speaker B: Silly question. [01:19:36] Speaker A: I do have one thing for you as well that I got there, but I figured I'd send it with everybody else's. But. Yes. So if you are our upper tier of subscribers on our KO Fi, you've got mail coming. And I'm very excited to send that to you along with all the things that we're gonna be doing. If you haven't yet, make sure that you watch Battle Royale because that is what Kristen and I will be talking about. [01:20:02] Speaker B: What a movie, right? [01:20:05] Speaker A: I'm super stoked about this. I haven't watched this in ages. Oh yeah. I'm stoked to introduce Kristen to this one. Yeah. I feel like this was like a real like moment for me. Like I just feel like it like opened door when I saw it for the first time. I remember sitting in a friend of a friend's house in western Massachusetts and you know, someone putting this on TV and just being like. I feel like I'm a different person now. [01:20:40] Speaker B: One of my first ever horror movie T shirts was a Battle Royale shirt. [01:20:43] Speaker A: And it was amazing. [01:20:45] Speaker B: Beautiful. And I wore the fuck out of it in my 20s. It was this beautiful kind of vector portrait of one of the girls. [01:20:52] Speaker A: Oh, amazing. [01:20:53] Speaker B: Just super cool. Yeah, great. [01:20:55] Speaker A: Yeah. So if you've never seen it, definitely watch Battle Royale. But you know, give it a re. Watch if it's been a minute because we are going to talk about that in a week and some change on the fan cave on our KO Fi. And of course we'll, we'll. Let's play. We'll. We'll talk about something. Have a little snack. [01:21:17] Speaker B: Went back to that piece of shit Star wars game for now. [01:21:20] Speaker A: No more of that game. You gotta, you gotta let it go. I saw there's been going around. Maybe some of you guys have seen this as well. There's been going around I guess on Roku, which you don't have there. I don't know if it's on something else, but on Roku you can watch like some sort of like the OG version of Star wars, like the first one. [01:21:42] Speaker B: All right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [01:21:44] Speaker A: And so it's like as you would have seen it in 1970. Whatever. Well, they've been watching that. [01:21:51] Speaker B: An ongoing. I'm certain it's still Ongoing project amongst like, a load of semi professional kind of video archivists and video editors to create the ultimate despecialized versions of the Star wars trilogy. So as close to exactly how they would have been in theaters, cobbled together from loads of different sources, loads of different prints. [01:22:11] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm sure that must be. [01:22:12] Speaker B: That is one of those. [01:22:13] Speaker A: What this is. Yeah. [01:22:15] Speaker B: Obviously all wildly unofficial and illegal. [01:22:18] Speaker A: Yeah. Because people keep saying, like, watch it while it's up. Watch it while it's up. So I don't know where it came from or anything like that. And obviously, like, there was a part of me that was like, oh, maybe I'll watch it. And I was like, why? You don't like Star Wars? [01:22:29] Speaker B: No, no. [01:22:30] Speaker A: It was like. Everyone was so excited, though, that it was like, for a minute, I got wrapped up in it. I was like, oh, boy. Yeah, let's all watch Star Wars. It's like, I'm not gonna have fun doing that. I don't like Star Wars. But I did think about telling you about it before, and then I was like, you know what? We had that whole conversation on the KO Fi that even those are tarnished for you now, where it's gone. [01:22:51] Speaker B: So not interested. [01:22:52] Speaker A: But that does exist also. Crazy. Listen, you know, calm down, Mark. It has been a minute since I talked to you. [01:23:02] Speaker B: Take a break. You know how I get decompress or you'll end up turned inside out. [01:23:08] Speaker A: Just gonna throw my face here. I get excited. No. So you remember in 2016, like, all at once in, like, January and February, just like, all the celebs died. It was like, well, at least, you know, they. Yeah, it was like when Bowie and, like, Prince and, like, all these, like, huge celebrities, like, kicked off all in, like, one go. Yeah. I was like, holy shit. And everyone was like, oh, man, 2016. This is the worst life of ever again. [01:23:38] Speaker B: I do remember that. [01:23:40] Speaker A: And that was like, you know, right before Trump's election or whatever. And like, now we're having another moment of, like, all the celebrities dying in one fell swoop. [01:23:48] Speaker B: Yep. [01:23:48] Speaker A: Here. That's like. It's like they're being taken back to the mothership. [01:23:52] Speaker B: Yep. [01:23:53] Speaker A: And the one, of course, that's, like, drumming up the most conversation right now is Gene Hackman. I mean, obviously I'm a millennial. Grew up on the Nickelodeon and whatnot. So Michelle Trachtenberg. I can't say I'm, like, surprised. She looked terrible. But it is, like, a big bummer. [01:24:10] Speaker B: Laura had to tell me who she was. I had no clue who she Was. [01:24:13] Speaker A: You didn't watch Buffy? [01:24:14] Speaker B: I did not. Laura, however, was a big fan. Laura was a huge fan of Buffy. Passed me right by Justin. [01:24:22] Speaker A: Fair enough. Yeah. Yeah. If you didn't watch that, I don't know what else you would have. [01:24:28] Speaker B: There were no circumstances, though, whether she was ill from a liver transplant, I believe. [01:24:32] Speaker A: Yeah, apparently. Which is interesting because, like, I had looked at her Instagram, like, six months ago or whatever, and there had been something she was kind of, like, fighting back against people talking about what she looked like. And, you know, she was like, you know, don't talk about women. You know, all that kind of stuff. But people were like, no, but, like, you look, like, sick. Like, your eyes are, like, kind of yellow. Like, this is, like, usually a sign of sickness. And I wonder if she didn't know at the time that she had some sort of liver thing and if, like, fans talking about it pointed it out, like, how. I mean, fucker. But Amy Schumer, that happened with her, that people commented on, like, her weight gain in her face. And at first she was like, oh, how dare you all talk about women's weight and stuff like that. And then people like, no, but it's like, I have this disorder and it makes my face look like that. And it turned out she, like, had an illness that made her look like that. Yeah, I'm glad she's sick because fuck Amy Schumer. But, yeah, I wonder if Michelle Trachtenberg went into treatment for the liver thing after people pointed out, like, hey, like, jaundice is, like, a bad sign. [01:25:39] Speaker B: We can but speculate, and in that frame of mind, let's talk about Gene Hackman. [01:25:45] Speaker A: Let's. [01:25:46] Speaker B: Oh, my God, let's, by all means, speculate on what the fuck has happened there. [01:25:49] Speaker A: So, yeah, nine days between when he. When his pacemaker said he died and when they found him. [01:25:57] Speaker B: Days. [01:25:58] Speaker A: Yeah. And it was a. [01:25:59] Speaker B: Who am I thinking of in my head there, hearing that voice. That's Principal Rooney from Ferris Bueller. Nine times. You know exactly what I'm doing. [01:26:09] Speaker A: Your impression of principal. [01:26:11] Speaker B: Yeah, nine days. [01:26:13] Speaker A: I hear it. It's there. Yeah. [01:26:15] Speaker B: You've been dead on the floor. [01:26:17] Speaker A: And it was. You know, when he died, initially, there was, like, the articles came out and they were just like, no foul play suspected. You know, just. But he. His wife and his dog are dead. Like, okay. So, like, basically, I was actually pretty impressed with the Internet on this. That, like, of course there was, like, the posse of people who are like, oh, it's like, you know, something crazy. But, like, most People were like, oh, it sounds like carbon monoxide. And it did. But then, like, later that day, they came out with more details on this, that they were like, it's suspicious, but still no foul play is. [01:26:54] Speaker B: It's suspicious as fuck is what it is. And I don't. [01:26:58] Speaker A: I honestly don't think it's that suspicious to me. This is very you and me here, the conclusion, oh, is it not? [01:27:06] Speaker B: Is it not suspicious? Is it not? It's not suspicious. [01:27:08] Speaker A: I mean, not in like a foul play way. [01:27:11] Speaker B: And they are. Fucking dog were all found dead in separate rooms nine days later. Nothing suspicious about that, is there? [01:27:19] Speaker A: No, no, not in, like a not in a foul play way. I don't think. [01:27:23] Speaker B: What other kind of play is there that would lead to that kind of circumstance? [01:27:28] Speaker A: Think about how they were found. Right, so Gene Hackman has fallen and is at the bottom of stairs. [01:27:36] Speaker B: All right, let's workshop it then. So we're in the Hackman residence. [01:27:39] Speaker A: We're in the Hackman residence, Gene. [01:27:41] Speaker B: 95. [01:27:43] Speaker A: Yes, 95 years old, if you've seen any pictures of in the past few years, frail as fuck, found at the bottom of stairs, very well could have fallen down them. [01:27:56] Speaker B: That's established. Is it? He was found at the bottom of some stairs. [01:27:58] Speaker A: Yeah, he was found at the bottom of stairs. Yeah. And then his wife is found in the bathroom with pills surrounding her. And then one of the dogs is found dead. The other two dogs are still alive and were found just running around. [01:28:18] Speaker B: Right. This is new information to me. So I thought it was just the one dog, and that dog was dead. One of the dogs was dead. [01:28:24] Speaker A: One of the dogs was dead. And I think that dog had been in, like a pen or something like that. So likely hadn't eaten in nine days or whatever. Between, I wonder, had the other two dogs eaten? Nothing came up that they had eaten of the people. [01:28:44] Speaker B: What, in nine days? In nine days. [01:28:46] Speaker A: But they were free. So they could have eaten other things. I think that they might have. The door might have been open or something like that. So they could have been able to go outside as well. I'm not entirely sure, but this to me says, Jean dies, distraught wife either intentionally ODs or fucks up and OD's in her, like, sadness. And then the dog is in the pen and starves to death. And the other two dogs are just running around trying to figure out what to do because their owners are all dead. [01:29:21] Speaker B: Okay. Or. Right? [01:29:24] Speaker A: Or. [01:29:27] Speaker B: I mean, what do we know about. How do we characterize Gene Hackman and. And his Wife's relationship. She's the younger of the two by some 30 years. [01:29:35] Speaker A: Yeah, she was like 65, I think, something like that. [01:29:39] Speaker B: Was he known for. Because I don't know this, but was he known for, like, emotional abuse? Was he known to be abusive in any way? [01:29:45] Speaker A: To my knowledge, just a good guy. As far as I know, nothing came out that was like, this guy's like bad News bears. [01:29:53] Speaker B: The pills, though. [01:29:55] Speaker A: The pills, Yeah. I mean, I, you know, he clearly didn't feed them to her, but if. [01:30:00] Speaker B: My spouse had taken a tumble and died at the foot of some stairs, I'm not then gonna go, ah. And kill myself. That's ridiculous. [01:30:09] Speaker A: Well, listen, Shakespeare wrote a whole play about this shit. [01:30:14] Speaker B: Come on. [01:30:15] Speaker A: So in the. [01:30:16] Speaker B: In the actual real world with people, you ring the fucking ambulance. [01:30:22] Speaker A: Yeah, you would think, you know, but he's dead already or what? [01:30:26] Speaker B: So I'm gonna leave him there, not move him, not call anyone at all. Our family, our friends. Call no one distraught and immediately go to the bathroom and die of an overdose. Get real. I don't know what happened, but I know what didn't happen. And it did not pan out that way. Ah. Jean's taken a fall and died. Quick. I must end my own life. Come on. [01:30:50] Speaker A: It makes more sense for that than to have thought about it for a while and done that. That's like an in the moment overreaction. Oh, my God, my life is over. Pops and pills situation. [01:31:02] Speaker B: Not. Oh my God, I'm about to be even richer than I already am. [01:31:08] Speaker A: I am very concerned. This is more. Did Mark my murder. His wife content, right. Thought is money. [01:31:19] Speaker B: Something has happened here that you or I have not countenanced yet. Something has gone down there and it's suspicious enough for an investigation to be opened. [01:31:33] Speaker A: Well, of course, yeah. I mean that A, that would happen in any death, there's always an investigation. But B, like, yeah, if it's not straightforward investigation doesn't mean we think something untoward happened. Investigation means we're not sure exactly what happened here. [01:31:47] Speaker B: I'm gonna run to the bathroom. No note, no calls, no ambulance, no police. [01:31:53] Speaker A: If you call someone, they'll stop you from killing yourself. [01:31:55] Speaker B: I am simply going to end my own life at the same time as I've seen my husband dead. It just does not. It just doesn't hang together. Columbo would fucking eviscerate this in no time. [01:32:07] Speaker A: Mmm, I don't know about that. It seems perfectly reasonable to me. People do shit like this all the time. I watch a lot of dateline Mark. People do weird shit like this when they are distraught. [01:32:17] Speaker B: Okay, well, I'll be watching this, right? [01:32:20] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:32:20] Speaker B: See you back here. [01:32:22] Speaker A: Yeah. Like, I may not have all the details correct, but I am fairly certain that it's going to end up something very mundane like that. I don't think any. No one murdered anyone in this situation. [01:32:33] Speaker B: And it's just, you know, the Internet, whilst well behaved very quick to. Gene Hackman was one of the greatest actors of all. A lot of people. [01:32:47] Speaker A: Yeah. There's no evidence otherwise. [01:32:49] Speaker B: A lot of these people, you think. [01:32:50] Speaker A: At 95 for Chris Benoit, like £90 shows. Well, Chris Benoit, come on. [01:32:57] Speaker B: No one saw that coming in. He was an excellent wrestler, but he was in wonderful person. [01:33:01] Speaker A: Look at the man. [01:33:02] Speaker B: Friend to everyone. Oh, yeah. [01:33:04] Speaker A: He was also obviously right, listen. Yeah, he was built up easy for him to commit murders of people smaller than him. What I'm saying is, yeah, brain was garbled and people knew that he was spiraling into Christian fundamentalism in the time between him. [01:33:22] Speaker B: No showing for Monday night Raw and being found dead. And then the news emerging about the atrocity they committed. Loads of people were very quick to praise him, weren't they? Loads of people were very. They had a fucking. They had an episode. They had a tribute episode on Raw. [01:33:35] Speaker A: What is Gene Hackman going to do? Have you seen pictures of the man? That man was half the size of me. [01:33:45] Speaker B: I'm not saying. [01:33:46] Speaker A: And then he fell, put his wife. [01:33:48] Speaker B: In a crippler crossface until she died. I'm not saying he did that, but I'm saying. I'm saying the whole circumstance is fucking weird as fuck. And immediately end in my own life because my husband has fallen down the stairs and died simply does not ring true. Like I said, I don't know what happened, Corry. I don't know what happened. But it ain't that. [01:34:11] Speaker A: I think it's that. I think it's that simple. [01:34:13] Speaker B: Well, isn't this good? [01:34:15] Speaker A: Maybe it was even an accidental od, but I think it's as simple as, you know, she saw, she tried to medicate one way or another, whether to an end or not, because how else do the pills end up in her body and on the floor? [01:34:29] Speaker B: Care to make it interesting? [01:34:30] Speaker A: I don't think the dog did it. [01:34:33] Speaker B: How do you know the dog was in a box? I didn't know the dog was penned up. [01:34:36] Speaker A: It was in one of the. It was in one of the articles. [01:34:38] Speaker B: Well, that's fine. That. That tucks the dog away nicely. That squares that one off. That's fine. Because I gotta say, the dog having been killed was a big part of my theory about why it was murder. [01:34:54] Speaker A: Yeah. That there were other two perfectly fine dogs. Okay. It's an important detail. [01:35:00] Speaker B: Well, that. That does. [01:35:02] Speaker A: We'll see. We'll return to it, friend. [01:35:03] Speaker B: You know, we will. [01:35:07] Speaker A: So today I did what. [01:35:09] Speaker B: We're gonna talk movies now, aren't we? Yeah. Okay. [01:35:11] Speaker A: Yeah, we are gonna talk. Talk movies. We figured we'd just ease in for our sort of main topic, if you will, and just go through, like, our top flicks that we watched in February, including. Both of us managed to get to the theater several times. I mean, that's not that unusual for me, but it's a little more unusual for you and just sort of. Yeah. [01:35:32] Speaker B: And maybe not even top in terms of quality, but top in terms of notability. The most notable films that we have seen throughout February. Because there have been some. [01:35:44] Speaker A: Yeah, there have. [01:35:46] Speaker B: Let me just crack open my letterbox here on my computer because my phone isn't. [01:35:49] Speaker A: Well, let me start. I watched. I, like, watched a few classics this week. [01:35:54] Speaker B: Yep. [01:35:55] Speaker A: Or this. This month, I believe that, you know, are worth pointing out. So along with Hackman, we lost Bob Orchie, Roberto Orci this week, who was distressing to me. Co creator of Fringe, but also co writer of Star Trek 2009. And, you know, that was one of those movies I remember seeing in the theater and just being, you know, in love. I was always a big original series fan of Star Trek, and so I was stoked for it in the first place. And then it was just so much better than I possibly imagined. And I watched it over and over and over again, but it has been a minute since I'd watched it. So I put that on in his honor. And I love that movie just as much as I loved it back then. It holds up so well, and many people have said it, but that opening scene of Star Trek 09 is something so special and just an example of Orchie's writing that just hits so hard all these years later. We first see our man Chris Hemsworth as Kirk's dad in the heartbreaking opening in which he. He dies. But Jim Kirk is born so fucking good. So Star Trek 09, if you haven't watched that in a minute, go back and give it a watch. [01:37:18] Speaker B: I haven't, and I am minded to give it another crack because it did nothing for me at the time. [01:37:22] Speaker A: What? That's crazy. [01:37:24] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:37:24] Speaker A: I love it so much. The other. The sequels, maybe not as much, but. Oh, Nine helps. I mean, like I said, it's predisposed because I do love TOS so much. But I was talking about it with Brienne and Kristen and Brienne was like, yeah. When I went and saw it, like, I was like, I don't even like Star Trek. I don't know why I'm seeing this. And she's like changed my life, you know, like completely. Just like her interests all shifted after that one. And I had gone and seen it with my friend Emily who also like does not watch sci fi at all. And I remember her having the same reaction, just being like, what? [01:37:58] Speaker B: Very nice, very nice. [01:37:59] Speaker A: Why was that amazing? So yeah, maybe give it a, maybe give it a revisit all these years later, see if it does anything for you. [01:38:06] Speaker B: Right. We'll talk a little of Companion then, shall we? [01:38:09] Speaker A: Yeah, Companion. [01:38:13] Speaker B: Look, at this point, at this point, anyone who says that horror is not booming is delusional, is absolutely deluding themselves. We're in a place where horror can take swings at the moment, where horror is a no longer a. If it ever was. But it certainly isn't any more a commercial risk, right? [01:38:38] Speaker A: Yeah, not at all. [01:38:39] Speaker B: You know what I mean? Just this year we're only in March and there have been, you know, just off the top of my head, three, four or more big, big kind of marquee horror movies released just in the last like six weeks. [01:38:55] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:38:55] Speaker B: Fantastic times to be a horror fan. So validating. And when you get just casually, really, really fun, really smart, really self aware movies like Companion, it's a great time to be alive. Very interesting to me how it's, it's a, a reflection of the times. Like horror so often is, you know. [01:39:17] Speaker A: Yes. [01:39:18] Speaker B: If it isn't horror about nuclear war or if it isn't horror about, you know, space and alien invasions or horrible zombies and capitalism and whatnot. Hey, hello. It's AI Horror. Horror about robotics, right? [01:39:31] Speaker A: Yeah, AI and incels. [01:39:33] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly this. Yep, exactly. [01:39:37] Speaker A: Yeah, this was, it was fun going to this one. I feel like this has a similar thing to. Kristen and I were talking about 10 Cloverfield Lane on the Van Cave a month or two ago and I was saying the thing about 10 Cloverfield Lane is it's clearly made in such a way that like they weren't going to call it 10 Cloverfield Lane. Like you can tell and this was going to be a reveal later on in the movie that it was related to Cloverfield. So that whole movie, like you're really supposed to not have any idea whether there are, there Is something outside or not? Right. You're with Mary Elizabeth Winstead in this bunker going, is John Goodman making this up? Or are there aliens out there? Like, where is the safer place to be? And like, you know, that's sort of what was intended. And obviously then the company, you know, the production, distributing, they were like, yeah, no, nobody's gonna go see this movie if they don't know it's a Cloverfield sequel. So they had to change it. [01:40:32] Speaker B: Yeah. And I don't think that would have been the case in 2025. [01:40:36] Speaker A: Well, I think that's with Companion. Absolutely. How this is made to be. So I didn't really watch a trailer, or if I did, it was long enough ago. I didn't know what it was about. [01:40:44] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:40:45] Speaker A: And if you don't know, this movie is set up with that as a reveal. Yes. And that is very fun. Like, starting to, like, piece things together completely as I watched it. Like, wait, did he call her? Beep. Boop. And like, all these, like, you know, why does she know what the weather is? Like, I think this, you know, clearly the marketing, they decided, no, let's go all in, and we'll tell people out the gate that she's an AI girlfriend. But it works so well if, like, me. You go in and you have no idea. [01:41:15] Speaker B: Well, I didn't. I had no clue. I had absolutely no clue. You know. You know my policy. If it's. [01:41:19] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:41:20] Speaker B: If it's a movie that I think I'm gonna want to watch, I will learn nothing. [01:41:23] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:41:23] Speaker B: Just outside of what I have to know about it. And I had no clue that that's what it was. I was rewarded. I was so rewarded because I'm not. I'm not the most switched on of guys. Sometimes when it comes to movies, I do like. Yeah, I do like to watch. You know, to read a Wikipedia article about a movie I've just seen, I will do that. And I didn't even see it coming, that he was an incel. I thought that he was. You know, they just described that scene where they met perfectly at face value. And I was like, oh, that's lovely. [01:41:50] Speaker A: Right. [01:41:50] Speaker B: This is gonna be a nice, fun film. I didn't see any of it coming. [01:41:54] Speaker A: I love that. Yeah, it really. I think that's a very fun ride. And obviously, like, I would feel like we were spoiling it, except literally the poster is her with the robot eyes and, like, all the marketing for it as clearly as an AI. But it really did reward the fact that I had, like, no clue. And Was piece like, obviously, you know, I pay more attention and, like, notice those things. So I put it together. [01:42:16] Speaker B: You're a super recognizer. [01:42:18] Speaker A: Super recognizer. But, like, it was a fun journey. [01:42:22] Speaker B: Yes. [01:42:23] Speaker A: To getting there and being like, wait, now, hold on. Like, what's happening here? Yeah. So Companion is like just very, very fun and creative and, you know, in your face about what it's saying and just a really good little. Little ride, you know? [01:42:42] Speaker B: Yeah. Yep, yep, yep. Super, super fun. [01:42:45] Speaker A: And the music is great too. Really great soundtrack. [01:42:49] Speaker B: Is the music great? I can't remember it. [01:42:52] Speaker A: Well, watch it again. You'll be like, oh, yeah, the music is really good in this. [01:42:58] Speaker B: I feel like I should remember. Is it contemporary music? [01:43:01] Speaker A: I mean, it's kind of a mix of various things. They use some sort of oldies that use some new wave, but it, like, really fits. Oh, it does just make very purposefully chosen music throughout this, which I really like. [01:43:15] Speaker B: Yes. Ah, Companion is so good. I want to watch it again. [01:43:19] Speaker A: You should. I watched it again with Kyo and it was a delight. [01:43:23] Speaker B: I love that closing shot in the credits of her with. With her arm at the window. [01:43:27] Speaker A: Yes. Wait, I guess we're kind of. That. That might be a little. Well, it's not really a spoiler. [01:43:31] Speaker B: No, not at all. I've kept it fake, but it's. Yeah, it's excellent. [01:43:35] Speaker A: You're told in the beginning what is going to happen at the end. So again, that's not really a spoiler either. Yep. [01:43:41] Speaker B: Lovely. I will just dismissively talk about the Wolfman. Stupid, stupid film. [01:43:46] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. [01:43:46] Speaker B: Lee Grannel, you're worth more than this. You're. You're better than this. [01:43:50] Speaker A: It's very disappointing considering how much I and everybody in that are like, great actors and stuff too. And it just like. [01:43:56] Speaker B: It's no one else's fault. It's. No. Nobody carries the weight of this film on screen. Right? Everybody's doing their best. Everybody's doing their best, but it's fucking stupid. Stupid idea and a stupid film and very disappointing. This is not the same guy who made Upgrade. This is not the same. [01:44:14] Speaker A: Or Invisible Man. No matter. [01:44:16] Speaker B: No. [01:44:17] Speaker A: Yeah. Or Saw or any other number of things. This guy has a fantastic track record. This is a very rare full miss. [01:44:26] Speaker B: And you've earned it, dude. Right? But I know you're listening. I know you're listening, but I expect better next time. Yes, werewolves are fucking stupid anyway. I hate them. [01:44:37] Speaker A: It's true. It was cursed from the beginning. [01:44:40] Speaker B: Werewolves. Grow up. Give me a fucking good Dracula any day of the week. But I don't like werewolves. And I didn't like this werewolf. Interesting. Yeah, it is interesting because at one point, Wolfman was. It was the three and a half. Right. I was like, oh, this is actually an interesting take on werewolves. And as the longer it went on, it just. I could almost feel it shedding half stars as it went along. [01:45:05] Speaker A: I just say, the thing for me that, like, out the gate I just. I hated is that, like, this family in this movie had clearly never met each other before. [01:45:14] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:45:15] Speaker A: Yeah. Great chemistry. I have never seen less chemistry in a family to the point where I was trying to figure out how they ended up with this kid. And I was like, is this, like. Is it his kid? And, like, she's like the stepmom or, like, did they. Are they siblings? And, like, this kid somehow came into their life. I was like, there's no way this is actually a family. And considering this movie really hinges on the family dynamic, the fact that you're like, these people don't know each other makes it very difficult to enjoy the Wolfman on top of all of its other sins. [01:45:50] Speaker B: Thumbs down outside of the Joag purview somewhat. But, you know, I talked about my policy there about not knowing anything about films I'm probably gonna watch. Sometimes that is. Sometimes that has weird effect. Right. Sometimes that plays into a weird kind of rug getting pulled out from under me from a film I thought I was watching to one which I was watching. I'm gonna talk about. We live in time. [01:46:19] Speaker A: That's right. I forgot that you watched. [01:46:21] Speaker B: Right. Ah, great film. Really enjoyed it. Really, really, really great film. [01:46:26] Speaker A: But your son's pick. [01:46:28] Speaker B: Yeah. For some reason, Peter or Owen picked it. I thought I was getting into, like, a Time Traveler's wife kind of movie where Andrew Garfield was gonna go back in time and save Florence Pugh from dying, and that never happened. It is not that film. There's no time travel at all. He doesn't discover a portal or anything like that. [01:46:47] Speaker A: Just regular movie about a white movie. [01:46:49] Speaker B: But. Yeah, but. But a tragic event. So great. Good laugh. But not what I wanted. I wanted a time travel heist, rom com kind of movie. [01:47:00] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:47:00] Speaker B: Didn't get it. [01:47:02] Speaker A: It's. It's too bad. It's. The press tour was too much fun for, like, what the movie actually is. Another re watch that. I went back to that. Now I'm like you. I think you're gonna love this movie. I rewatched In Cold Blood, which I hadn't seen since high school. And this is one of those Things. So like I went to independent study school. So I basically got to like pick what books I read and things like that. [01:47:29] Speaker B: How's that work? [01:47:29] Speaker A: And so I. How does that work? Yeah, so I didn't like my junior and senior year, I didn't go to like regular high school except for like Spanish class and stuff that they didn't teach at my independent study school. So my independent study school, I have one teacher for everything except math and French and those were two like other tutors. It's basically like one on one thing and give all your assignments and you do them on your own and then you come back the next week and you have like another two hour session with your teacher and talk through these things and you know, set off. So it's more self guided. It's like individual college. More like, you know, you don't sit in a classroom and someone guides you through things. You have to do it all yourself and then come back and. [01:48:17] Speaker B: Fascinating. Never once have I heard of that as a concept. Seems to work well for you anyway. [01:48:22] Speaker A: Yeah, it was. I hated being in classrooms and things like that. Too many people in them. So it worked out really well. I went from being like the worst student on earth to like acing everything except for math, which still took me too long. But anyways, I had chosen to read In Cold Blood in my English section of my schooling. And then I was like, I fucking love this. Which if you've never read In Cold Blood or heard of In Cold Blood, it's considered the first sort of true crime novel. It's a novelization of a real event. The murder of the Clutter family in the 1960s was written by Truman Capote and made into a film, the lead in which would later go on to murder his own wife. But it is phenomenal. This is like filmmaking, especially when it comes like the cinematography and the lighting, like, God damn, what a movie. And the acting, everything about it is just like when you're watching it, you can't help but be like in awe that people made this movie and rewatching it, you know, now 20 plus years later, I was like, Jesus Christ, this is even better than I remembered it being. So In Cold Blood. I highly recommend. If you've never seen this movie, watch it. And I think, Mark, it is like right up your alley with like the old movies that you have enjoyed. It is. Yeah, it's really something special. [01:49:50] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah. Nice, nice, nice, nice. Sold. Did you get around to the Gorge? [01:49:57] Speaker A: No, I didn't watch the Gorge. I just couldn't get up the interest. [01:50:01] Speaker B: Yeah, well, look, hey. I mean, again, Silly Mote is along quite fun. Always great to see Sigourney Weaver. Not a serious film. Not a serious film. [01:50:19] Speaker A: I feel like I just kind of have like a, like, meh. Ness about Anya, Taylor, Joy and Miles Teller too. That makes me so. I'm like, whatever. [01:50:27] Speaker B: I want to know why every film she's in, she has. She obviously has some kind of agent or some kind of claws in every film that she signs on to work in that they do something with her eyes and put them on opposite sides of her head. I don't know why they do that. [01:50:45] Speaker A: Weird, weird effect that they insist on doing. [01:50:49] Speaker B: Is she like, incognito? Is she in witness protection or something? Because they take her eyes and they move them super far apart. I don't know why. [01:51:01] Speaker A: She's one of those weird things about. Well, it's like, you know, people who have, like, really stark looks have always been a thing when it comes to fashion and Hollywood and stuff like that. Like, even look at, like, the. The girl with the teeth in White Lotus and Stu like that. [01:51:17] Speaker B: Have you ever been in a game where you've got to, like, create your own character and you just hold down the button until the eyes move to the opposite. Opposite sides of the head? That's her. [01:51:28] Speaker A: Yeah, she's. She's made it work for her, that's for sure. She's turned that into like an ethereal look instead of just like, yes, weird looking. [01:51:37] Speaker B: What can I tell you? [01:51:38] Speaker A: Instead of looking like a hammerhead shark. It makes her look elegant. [01:51:42] Speaker B: The gorge. The gorgeous, gorgeous gorge. So come with me on this. Have you. It's a. It's. It's. It's definitely a recent phenomenon, right? Like, Alien Romulus had a similar issue. And I think I might even have said this at the time, that it feels like you're watching a video game cutscene or you're watching someone play a level of a video game that the. The. The. The movie is arranged into set pieces, right, that are all computer animated. There isn't. I don't think there's a single physical set in this entire fucking film. I mean, it. I mean it. The entire thing looks like it's done on a green screen. It looks like we're like a Covid movie, right? Which is inexcusable in 2025 mm. And it just looks like you're watching someone play a game. Oh, now they have to go through the level in the factory, and now they have to go through the fucking car. Chase Jeep level. [01:52:38] Speaker A: I watched something else like that just in the past few weeks and I can't remember what it was like. Yeah, the very distinct feeling of like, this is. Yeah, I'm observing a video game, not people. [01:52:47] Speaker B: Now here's this bit. Oh, now we've gone on to this bit and it's time to meet this. [01:52:52] Speaker A: NPC who sends them on their quest 100%. [01:52:55] Speaker B: Oh, they found some information here. Oh, right. And it destroys immersion. It's. There's nothing. There's. And that's another symptom of there being no physical sets in the film. It's nothing to root for in this movie. Although, you know, on the surface it's got stuff that I feel as though I would like. It's got really good gribblies. The monsters are great. Nice action is great. Fucking Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross soundtrack. [01:53:25] Speaker A: Oh, that's right. Yeah. [01:53:26] Speaker B: So much to like that. [01:53:27] Speaker A: You think they're not like super discerning about what movies they soundtrack, though, it. [01:53:31] Speaker B: Feels like are getting less so. [01:53:33] Speaker A: Yeah, it's not like. That's not like really a prestige thing anymore. Bless them. They make a good score, whatever they're doing, but they'll kind of do whatever they do. [01:53:42] Speaker B: And it is very recognizably him. It's very recognizably them. It's got. It's got all of their hallmarks. The kind of. Some of the piano phrases that you often use. You can see. You can see them a miloff. And it feels like they started off being quite discerning. You know, we're only working with David Fincher and we're doing Pixar and we're winning Oscars and they are paying the bills, I think, a little more these days. [01:54:09] Speaker A: Exactly. Got some college age kids, I'm sure. [01:54:12] Speaker B: Exactly this. He's got like five kids, I think, trained. [01:54:16] Speaker A: There you go. Yeah. Someone's gotta pay. Yep. [01:54:21] Speaker B: Let's see. [01:54:22] Speaker A: I watched another one I think that you would enjoy, go for it. Called Monolith. Have you heard of this? [01:54:28] Speaker B: I think I've seen Monolith. [01:54:30] Speaker A: Have you seen Monolith? It seems like one you would like. It's, you know, very sort of closed space, like. It's just this whole thing kind of like. You've seen Locke, right? Yes, with Tom Hardy, where he spends the. Yeah. Spends the entire movie in the car. And this is very similar to that where it's like one woman in her house, you know, talking on the phone to people and video chatting with people. [01:54:57] Speaker B: You liked it okay, four stars. [01:54:58] Speaker A: Yeah, I really liked this movie and I think you will too. That's basically sort of her. She plays like a. A journalist or like a podcaster essentially, who has been like disgraced in some way. Like some article that she wrote or something like that came out that in one way or another caused problems. And now she's trying to make her comeback and she has been sent information about this weird brick that people have received in the mail mysteriously that seems to cause some sort of strange devotion among them and like various things to happen. And so she starts to sort of dig into this and see like, you know, basically what is this weird cult y shit is where she starts this, like, why are people so obsessed with this? And then sort of starts spiraling herself as she continues to research what's going on with this. So yeah, it's like held up by one woman this entire movie. And it is. Yeah, I really liked it. Yeah, it's a. I think you will really enjoy Monolith. [01:56:05] Speaker B: Feels like it could be on stage. [01:56:06] Speaker A: Right up your alley. And you know, I love that 100%. Yeah. You could completely picture how this would be done on stage. [01:56:13] Speaker B: Now. Heart Eyes. So. So all I'll say here is what I said on letterboxd. Yes, It's a wonderful time for me, for you, for everyone listening to this podcast. Everyone who loves horror films. It's a wonderful time. The profile and the commercial success and the creative fucking new ground that horror is treading. It's a great time. But even during the Renaissance, there were probably a lot of mediocre paintings. Yes. [01:56:44] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:56:46] Speaker B: Hence Hard Eyes. A movie with the best of intentions and with some great design. And some great design. Hey, someone's really taken a swing at a new icon, haven't they? But it's unfortunately flat as fuck. [01:57:02] Speaker A: It is, yeah. It's too. Well, and this is. I've said before, I just don't vibe with Josh Rubin movies and I thought this was gonna be the one that. That changed that. But one of the things that really bugs me is it's. It's too self aware and too referential and so it's just too clever for its own good. It doesn't let us like sit with the story. Everyone knows they're in a story, they're quipping about every everything and you know, just joking about things that like even there's. There was like one joke that was like almost really funny and then it over explained the joke. Oh, where the. The two cops turn out to be named Hobbs and Shaw and the yeah. One of the characters, like your names. [01:57:47] Speaker B: Like the film we know should have. [01:57:50] Speaker A: Just left it at Hobbs and Shaw. [01:57:51] Speaker B: Or even just like a look. [01:57:52] Speaker A: Yeah, like. [01:57:52] Speaker B: No, okay. [01:57:54] Speaker A: Yeah, right. Like you didn't have to say like the film and that. That's. It's like just. [01:57:58] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, you've nailed it. Absolutely hit the nail on the head with that Corrigan. You really have. Yeah. Nothing else to say. [01:58:06] Speaker A: Yeah, pretty much. You know, the leads were cute and charming. [01:58:10] Speaker B: Yeah. And again, kills. Creative, imaginative, lovely kills. But it's. It's a movie that thinks it's funny as opposed to a movie that is actually funny. [01:58:18] Speaker A: Unlike the monkey. [01:58:21] Speaker B: Oh, hang on. Just super quick on highlights. Right. [01:58:24] Speaker A: Okay, go ahead. [01:58:24] Speaker B: I have to. I have to give voice to the fact that it is. It is the. It's the sister film to In a Violent Nature. It is the. It's the same concept as In a Violent Nature, but done. [01:58:39] Speaker A: There is definitely a similarity there. [01:58:43] Speaker B: It just like In a Violent Nature, It's. It's a mid franchise movie. It takes place in the middle of a franchise. Heart Eyes Killer has been around for ages. He's been stalking three or four different cities and it's another violent thing. This is obviously part three of a different franchise, which, you know, I mean, just like In a Violent Nature is. It's something that tries its best to do something different but fails. It just made me want to watch A Violent nature again. That's all it did. [01:59:07] Speaker A: I remember having the thought it reminded me of In a Violent Nature, but obviously in a much less complimentary way. [01:59:12] Speaker B: What a great movie. [01:59:12] Speaker A: I watched it. [01:59:15] Speaker B: Let's end on the monkey. Let's talk about the monkey. [01:59:17] Speaker A: Well, I have one more before that that I just want to throw out on our Gene Hackman thing, which is the Poseidon Adventure. [01:59:23] Speaker B: Okay. [01:59:24] Speaker A: I've been rewatching some Gene Hackman's movies. Listen, if you want to get to like the root of who Corey is, watch the Poseidon Adventure, which kickstarts my love of disasters, horror, the sea, all of that in this. I remember watching this when I was like 4 or 5 years old. Scared the living daylights out of me. And all I wanted to watch it was. All I wanted to do was watch it again. It's like this is. I'm like sobbing. I'm so anxious and terrified after this and I just want to watch it again. Poseidon Adventure is a perfect movie. Beautiful, absolutely perfect. Just it's. It's funny and goofy until it's not. And it's horrifying and Tragic. And it's just so great. [02:00:16] Speaker B: Watch the Poseidon Adventure on that same note. Hang on a second. Let me just swallow this. [02:00:23] Speaker A: The end of the show. Gulf of the pills. [02:00:26] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah. When I started to believe that maybe it wasn't kind of a multiple murder suicide, I watched a Gene Hackman movie and I went with Unforgiven, in which he is. He is splendid. It's. It wasn't a first watch for me. It was when I had not seen since probably my teens, and Clint Eastwood's shit baggery notwithstanding. Yeah, it's. It's. It's. It's unreal. It's just unreal. He. He directed the absolute out of that film. Again, like you said earlier on with. I can't remember you. You mentioned a movie just beautifully in terms of cinematography. You've got split diopter shots in there. You've got beautiful framing. You've got landscape as a character silhouette and faces. Just. It's. It is a feast. It is absolute cinema. And the movie itself just. It takes its time. This tale of, you know, bad people doing bad things for what they think are good reasons, struggling against one's nature just. It's a fucking meal, this film. Unforgiven. It's fucking incredible. And he is. He is resplendent in it. Yeah. [02:01:50] Speaker A: I mean, I've watched several other of his movies in the past few days, and just watching his range and how good he is and everything, you're just like, damn. [02:01:58] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:01:58] Speaker A: That's wild that. That guy got out of the game, you know, and good for him, isn't it? Straight retiring. You know, he reached retirement age and he retired, but, boy, did he have a career before he went. [02:02:07] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:02:09] Speaker A: So the Monkey. Let's close out. [02:02:11] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:02:12] Speaker A: On the Monkey. A movie we both just. [02:02:15] Speaker B: Well, here we loved. Here we are. I mean, here we are here. And I mean that I say that intentionally. Here we are. This is the fucking. This is. This is the. The Monkey is the most recent step forward in a path which recently has seen the substance and which recently has seen, you know, the Nosferatu. I know you hated it, but Terrifier. The. The Monkey is a part of that journey which is pushing us forward. And whatever you think of his movies, you cannot look at Oz Perkins as anything other than one of the filmmakers that is taking us forward on that journey. [02:02:58] Speaker A: Right. [02:02:58] Speaker B: He is advancing the fucking genre. And in such a commercially friendly yet edgy way. The Monkey's a weird film for us for a. You know, for. For a. For a tent Pole, which it is, man. [02:03:16] Speaker A: Yeah. [02:03:17] Speaker B: It's garish. It is brightly colored, it's lurid. It is, it's unrestrained. You get the impression that there were no choices that were made that didn't make it into the final edit. [02:03:29] Speaker A: Right. Yeah. [02:03:30] Speaker B: For a tight 90 minute film, it goes all out. And I don't think anyone, which I. [02:03:35] Speaker A: Will say, by the way, for all of these movies that we've been watching this year have all been 90 minutes. This seems to be the zeitgeist right now, which I appreciate as well. [02:03:44] Speaker B: Yes. But yeah, I, I, one doesn't get the impression that nobody passed on anything because I don't think that'll quite, you know. [02:03:53] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. [02:03:54] Speaker B: Because not only is there gore and I, while there's a brief part of me that still laments practical gore, if the offshoot is this level of creativity in the chunks that we're served up, I can take it, you know, I can take it because, yeah, it also, it gets weird. It gets really weird, this film. But it's perfectly acceptable. I, and I know I said this to you, I, I said this to you at the time, but it bears repeating because I really think I got close to feel to summing up the vibe of this film. If you remember Bordello of Blood and Demon Knight, the two Tales from the Crypt films, you could put four minutes of the Crypt Keeper at the start of this film. And that there's your vibe. It is a one shot, you know. [02:04:38] Speaker A: Straight up, completely self contained. Yeah. It has this very like 90s feel to it in that way, which is great. Like, it's so millennial. I'm the same age as the main character in this. Right. Like, they're just. When you see those flashbacks, that's me at the same age, Goosebumps poster on the wall and all that kind of stuff. They're supposed to be like, literally the exact same age that I am. So it goes back to this time that, like, you know, it does. It goes to Tales from the Crypt and things like that. Also like your Goosebumps and Are you afraid of the dark in its tone, your Stephen King tone, obviously, you know, all these kinds of things that like a millennial would have grown up on at that specific, like late 90s, 2000s. [02:05:23] Speaker B: Point, and then hold that up to something that, what was it called? Y2K, that film. [02:05:28] Speaker A: Yeah. [02:05:29] Speaker B: Y2K batters you over the fucking head with it. [02:05:32] Speaker A: Exactly. Fuck off. Yeah. It doesn't do that. [02:05:35] Speaker B: Nope. [02:05:36] Speaker A: It simply is, it just captures the vibe of like, what the Horror we were watching at that time was like. And what it was like to be a kid at that time and does that so well. And then, like you said, gets so weird with it. Which also millennials are very absurdist. You know, we're an absurdist generation. And so it really speaks. Speaks to that kind of. That we like things heightened. We like things to, you know, be kind of out of left field and absurd and silly and some of the sort of, like this. This idea behind it of kind of the inevitability of death. Which, of course, when you're talking about Oz, Perkins, too, like, you know, his father clearly died young. His mother died on 9 11. Like, she legitimately died in one of the planes to hit the Twin Towers. Like, just. This is a guy who in this movie, as silly as it is, is also dealing with the deaths of his parents. Sure, right. Like, he's this character who loses, you know, his family in these tragic ways. [02:06:39] Speaker B: It didn't go unnoticed. [02:06:40] Speaker A: Perkins. [02:06:41] Speaker B: Such a big chunk of it took place in motels either. [02:06:43] Speaker A: Yeah. Like, it's very much referring to his own family. There's also a plane crash in it. You know, like, where someone dies horribly in a plane crash. Like. Like he is referencing his own family in this. So this absurdist, over the top film is actually also, in weird ways, processing a traumatic childhood. [02:07:04] Speaker B: Yeah, completely. Completely. [02:07:07] Speaker A: I just. I love it. I love it. This is gonna. I'm going to buy this on Blu Ray. I will watch it over and over again. And Theo. James. Theo. Well, it's his last name. [02:07:17] Speaker B: I'll tell you who it isn't. [02:07:20] Speaker A: It's not James Franco. [02:07:21] Speaker B: Certainly isn't James Franco. Took me until the end credits. [02:07:25] Speaker A: You watched an entire season of White Lotus with this guy in it and did not recognize. [02:07:29] Speaker B: No, I thought it was James Franco the whole time. [02:07:32] Speaker A: No, he's James Franco. Wishes. No, he was so good in this, playing these two different characters that are so dissimilar from each other. Also, as I keep on telling you to watch Meet the Robin, one of my favorite movies of all times, the brother in this has serious goob vibes. If you've ever. For those of you who have seen Meet the Robinsons, straight up goob, down to like, the kind of stuff he's wearing and everything. It's wonderful. And I loved that. But yeah, the monkey was just a triumph. Loved it. I'm surprised that, like, it's as polarizing as it is. I'm like, I don't see anything not to like about this movie, but I think, you know, it is a certain type. [02:08:16] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:08:17] Speaker A: Of film and it's very much. [02:08:19] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:08:20] Speaker A: You know, if you, if you're into it, you're into it. And I guess if you're not, you are very not. [02:08:24] Speaker B: Yep. No, it hit the spot big time. Really, really, really fucking enjoyed it. So wonderful as I've enjoyed being back. [02:08:34] Speaker A: So great good to have you here. [02:08:36] Speaker B: Glad to hear you say so. [02:08:37] Speaker A: Thank you, friends. I know you enjoyed it as well. Thanks for coming along on the journey. Let us know all of your thoughts. What do you think of these here flims we've talked about? What do you think about living in America's end times? You know, would you ever be. [02:08:53] Speaker B: Have you or does anyone, you know ever had experience as a saturation diver? [02:08:59] Speaker A: Saturation diver? You know, is it worth it for the. For the big money that you might blow your face off? Tell us in the comments. [02:09:09] Speaker B: Stay spooky. [02:09:10] Speaker A: Stay spooky.