Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] Speaker A: Did it wrong, did it backwards.
[00:00:05] Speaker B: I know. I. My brain just like circuited.
[00:00:08] Speaker A: It worked out and we are in.
[00:00:10] Speaker B: Yeah, we got it.
[00:00:11] Speaker A: We are.
[00:00:13] Speaker B: Have you ever been. Marko. Okay, listen. Okay, can I just say, just super.
[00:00:27] Speaker A: Briefly, why it occurs to me, right? Why it occurs to me.
[00:00:30] Speaker B: Okay, yeah.
[00:00:32] Speaker A: Something that I've, that I, I realized the other day in the car while listening to the radio.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:00:39] Speaker A: Which I, which I've come to realize is one of the core reasons why I fucking don't like most podcasts. Right.
I do. You know what I hate? I hate it when hosts laugh at themselves.
Right. I was listening to Radio 2 to the day and who was on it?
Josh Whitakem. Right. And he was interviewing another comedian and they were just laughing at one another.
Aren't we funny?
[00:01:08] Speaker B: Literally what we do.
[00:01:09] Speaker A: No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Subtle but definite difference. Okay, you, you, ah, how do, how do, how to put this? The topic needs to be the entertaining thing, not cracking yourself up because. Haha, I'm so funny. This is great, isn't it?
[00:01:29] Speaker B: Yeah. You don't like, like battle of wits kind of.
[00:01:33] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:01:34] Speaker B: Thing like the banter has to be about the topic and not the focus.
[00:01:37] Speaker A: Exactly. The content is the star. The fucking topic is the funny bit. Not haha. We crack one another up. Aren't we fucking hilarious. Fuck off. Fuck off. If you find yourself the funniest person in the room, you're in the wrong room.
[00:01:52] Speaker B: I don't know if you really believe that.
[00:01:53] Speaker A: I do, actually. I do. And that might sound.
[00:01:56] Speaker B: You talk all the time about how much you make yourself laugh.
[00:02:00] Speaker A: Yeah. Privately.
I'm always laughing internally.
[00:02:05] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:02:05] Speaker A: And it isn't, ah, you, do you, not you, you think so little of me.
[00:02:12] Speaker B: I just, I think I'm struggling to find the difference because this is one of the things we talk about all the time is, you know, how much we make each other laugh and how much you enjoy making yourself laugh. And you're often just sitting there sort of giggling to yourself because you have a thought that has made you laugh.
[00:02:32] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. But what I'm not doing then is, is kind of publicly declaring to everyone the, the little comedy bit that I'm doing in my head. It's always internally thought. No. Nobody's amusement but myself.
[00:02:45] Speaker B: That is true. You, you do often say that, that a lot of times nobody knows that you're doing a bit.
[00:02:50] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm just doing a bit. I love that. I, I, I think there's, I don't know, I enjoy that. It's, it's purely. Purely for my own amusement. What I'm not doing is then. Ha ha ha. Everyone, I just had the funniest thought.
You know what I mean?
[00:03:08] Speaker B: Self. Yeah.
[00:03:10] Speaker A: You know when you're just so thoroughly amused by your own fucking. Oh, God.
[00:03:15] Speaker B: I mean, I guess that's kind of the thing about, like, comedians in general, right, Is like your tolerance for them is really about how much your sense that they're funny reflects their own sense that they're funny. Nobody get us up there and does comedy who's like, I. I am not that entertaining to watch.
[00:03:32] Speaker A: I fucking hate people who think they're funny.
I really do. I.
[00:03:37] Speaker B: One of your good friends is literally a comedian.
[00:03:39] Speaker A: Yeah. And he's great. And he's a. And he's fucking great. He's a. He's a really good mate of mine. He's a great bunch of lads.
But what he isn't. Oh, man, it. What am I trying to fucking. What am I trying to zone in on here?
[00:03:53] Speaker B: It's smugness. Yeah, right, I'm ribbing you a little bit. I do know what you mean. You know, it's just a very funny thing to say in a podcast on which, you know, we constantly crack each other up and do bits and things like that. But I do understand the distinction that you are making. I'm just razzing you for saying something that on the surface sounds extremely absurd.
[00:04:13] Speaker A: Yeah, well, consider me razzed. I apologize. I have butted in. It's not even my opener. Go on.
[00:04:19] Speaker B: Not even your opener? I'm trying to tell you about really dark things today.
There will be death, there will be destruction, and there's probably gonna be laughter, realistically.
Mark Lewis.
[00:04:34] Speaker A: Hello.
[00:04:35] Speaker B: Have you ever been to an auto race?
[00:04:37] Speaker A: Oh, no, I haven't, actually.
I don't.
I'm really not interested. Don't really care.
[00:04:45] Speaker B: I'm shocked. Shocked.
[00:04:46] Speaker A: Don't really care. I tell you, I've. I've been to plenty of auto tracks, but auto racing on them at the time.
The site of Download Festival is. Is at Donnington park, which is a racetrack.
Let me see. I went to a.
Yeah, I went to a track once to see jousting.
Oh, that was great.
[00:05:09] Speaker B: That's fun.
[00:05:10] Speaker A: It was so. There was something quite pro wrestling about it. It was, know you obviously.
[00:05:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:05:14] Speaker A: The heels and the faces and the black armor and the jester, you know, it was. Yeah, it was good.
[00:05:19] Speaker B: Next time you're here, we gotta go to Medieval Times. You'd have a.
I'd love that. Yeah, it's it definitely has wrestling vibes. It's very fun.
[00:05:27] Speaker A: But car racing?
[00:05:29] Speaker B: No, Never. Never gonna see it. I went to one when I was in middle school.
[00:05:32] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:05:33] Speaker B: At Sears Point Raceway in Sonoma, California. It is not called that anymore. I can't remember what it's called now.
I think it might just be called like Sonoma Racetrack.
[00:05:43] Speaker A: But the people put me off as well.
[00:05:48] Speaker B: Well, race people kind of see that. I think it's a more diverse group of people than you think it is because there are a lot of different kinds of racing.
[00:06:00] Speaker A: Yes, I know this as well, but I.
[00:06:03] Speaker B: People watching nascar.
[00:06:05] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:06:05] Speaker B: And the people watching Formula one are like very different groups people. Right.
[00:06:11] Speaker A: I. I think Formula one people. Oh, and you've got the little jacket of you with the, with the logos on it, like you're in the team of you. Oh, yeah. Is it, mate? Nah.
[00:06:21] Speaker B: I mean, I don't watch racing. I'm not like, trying to, you know, defend racing or whatever. But I will say I think that there's like a sense of like, oh, race car people are like this. And it's like there's like so many. I was reading about them. There's so many different kinds of racing and they're in like different regions and like all this kind of stuff. So, like, the people who are watching them are not a type.
[00:06:43] Speaker A: I am. I am confronting that. I am, as we speak now. I'm confronting the. The realization that most of the things I don't like is because of my preconceived ideas of the people who like them. I'm sure if I was less of a prick, I'd enjoy more stuff.
[00:07:02] Speaker B: Well, yeah, we've talked about that with like, sports and things like that too. That it's like a part of your reasoning for like you like wrestling and nothing else is your perception of what the people who watch those other things are like.
[00:07:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:15] Speaker B: Which. Listen, if I grew up in like a football country, I might feel the same way. To be fair, that is understandable because football fans are kind of the worst.
[00:07:26] Speaker A: Do you mean your football or our football?
[00:07:28] Speaker B: Yours. Yeah, your football.
[00:07:30] Speaker A: Good God.
[00:07:31] Speaker B: If that was like, common here, I might have a lot of.
[00:07:34] Speaker A: No hang ups.
Couldn't be me.
[00:07:38] Speaker B: But I went to a race when I was in middle school.
[00:07:41] Speaker A: Right. You say there's loads of different kinds of race. What kind of race is this?
[00:07:45] Speaker B: This was something that was closer to like a NASCAR type thing, like that kind of car.
[00:07:51] Speaker A: NASCAR is the one where they like in a bowl almost and they go up the sides overtaking yeah. That's not the one with the long cars, is it?
[00:08:02] Speaker B: No, no, it's not the one with the long cars. They're more like regular cars.
[00:08:07] Speaker A: Right.
[00:08:08] Speaker B: And this isn't a history of racing. So like I haven't like, you know, explored like how did these cars.
Why are these.
Why are these like the cars they drive in this and not.
[00:08:19] Speaker A: And it's not the one where they have like a little parachute at the end to stop them.
[00:08:23] Speaker B: There's no. No stop. Parachute. Parachute. No, just a regular car. It looks like any car on the street, but covered in logos like that's basically what NASCAR type things are. It's not the one I went to.
[00:08:33] Speaker A: See like Captain Caveman and like a procession of like. It's not Wacky races. That's last one, isn't it?
[00:08:40] Speaker B: Wacky races. There's no.
What's the, what's the monster truck who crushes everybody? Oh, what's the name of that truck?
This was a Jeopardy. Question or Jeopardy. Clue the other day too. And I was like, duh, how do they not know this? And now I can't think of what it's called. But it's not that. I've been to one of those as well. Lots of fun. Demolition tropy.
[00:09:01] Speaker A: Standard normal looking cars just souped up to fuck.
[00:09:05] Speaker B: Right, Exactly.
And my next door neighbors had a friend who was a driver, so they took me along because he gave them free tickets to go see his race that night.
Now my mom had always said she hated watching races because she felt like every time she watched one someone died. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
While no one died at the race, I went to. We were horrified when the guy we came to see did indeed end up in a pretty terrible crash.
After some tense moments, it was determined that he was fine, but shaken up. We left. We didn't stay for the rest of the race.
It was then that I realized, you know, know, I don't think this particular sport is for me.
I can get into most things. As I wrote this cold open, I was watching Game 6 of the NBA Eastern Conference Finals. Like I'm, I'm pretty into sports spectatorship in general.
[00:09:58] Speaker A: Was it the Lakers?
[00:10:00] Speaker B: No, it was not the Lakers. It was the Indiana Pacers versus the New York Knicks.
[00:10:05] Speaker A: What are basketball people like?
[00:10:08] Speaker B: Basketball people can be anybody. Anybody can be a basketball fan. That's not. Yeah, there's not a type of those either. Really.
[00:10:14] Speaker A: I think I might have an outside shot at enjoying basketball.
[00:10:18] Speaker B: You think?
[00:10:18] Speaker A: Yeah, I like it. Yeah, I like, I like the look of It. I like that it's quite small. It's on a quite a small little court, doesn't it?
[00:10:24] Speaker B: True. Yeah. It's easy to follow. There's not a lot of crazy stuff going on.
[00:10:28] Speaker A: I like tall guys.
[00:10:30] Speaker B: Tall guys. Yeah. Knocking each other down, throwing a ball in a hoop, like sometimes doing a trick.
[00:10:36] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:10:38] Speaker B: And it moves really fast. It's high scoring.
[00:10:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:41] Speaker B: Feel that.
But, yeah. So I can get into pretty much anything. But as much as I like dark shit, I'm not super into the idea that I could watch the guy I'm rooting for die horribly before my eyes.
Plus, auto racing also has the unique risk of threatening the life of you and or your fellow crowd members.
[00:11:01] Speaker A: That's true. That's true.
[00:11:02] Speaker B: And I'm not about to knowingly risk my life for any spirit sport, to be honest with you.
[00:11:06] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:07] Speaker B: But auto racing is more popular than I can remember. Remember it being in decades.
[00:11:12] Speaker A: Big moment for me in. In my learning to drive, which took out. I don't know if I've spoken about it on here before, but it took years, man, to.
[00:11:19] Speaker B: To learn to drive.
[00:11:21] Speaker A: Took me literally years and untold thousands of pounds to get me to learn to drive.
[00:11:28] Speaker B: And I'm not going to say you've nailed it either.
[00:11:31] Speaker A: I'm better than I was. Right. I got nine points on my license, and those last three really did the trick. They have really, really slowed me down. I'm re. I'm a far more thoughtful driver currently than I ever have before because I do not want to lose my license.
[00:11:44] Speaker B: Well, that's good.
[00:11:45] Speaker A: But early on, with my second driving instructor, a wonderful, kind, gentle man by the name of Dave Robbins.
Dave, you are an absolute king, mate.
He said to me, mark, what you got to think, mate, a car's a weapon.
And that landed like a ton of bricks.
[00:12:06] Speaker B: Yes, that's absolutely true. And more people need to be told that this is a thing. Every single day of my life. You know, I walk all the time and I am constantly nearly getting hit by cars.
[00:12:17] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:12:19] Speaker B: Say it to yourselves. Yeah, you, dear listeners, a car is a weapon.
[00:12:23] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:12:24] Speaker B: Drive it with that.
[00:12:25] Speaker A: It's called a Joag Rule number six.
[00:12:27] Speaker B: Yeah.
The car is a weapon.
[00:12:29] Speaker A: Car is a weapon.
[00:12:30] Speaker B: Drive it like you're driving a grenade.
But two years ago, my friends and I went to Montreal. Montreal. And by happenstance, ended up there on Formula one weekend. And it was mayhem. People came from all over the world for the festivities.
When I posted to my Instagram stories that I was in Montreal, people Responded like, oh, are you there for Formula One?
I had no idea. This is a thing people I knew were into. I think I kind of had that idea like you did of like, oh, there's a type of people who watch Formula One and it's not the type of people that I know. And it turned out. No, it very much is.
It absolutely is similar. Similarly, there was some big Formula one thing a week or so ago and my Blue sky feed suddenly lit up with commentary.
Despite the dangers and the fact that to me it's about as interesting as sitting and watching a freeway. People love watching men drive fast.
[00:13:26] Speaker A: Now, is it? I mean, I, I'm sure I can guess the answer to this, but it's a, a male dominated field then. Yes.
[00:13:34] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Yes, there are women now. It's still pretty rare though. Yeah.
You, yeah, you don't see a lot of them.
So, yeah, generally. And everybody I'm going to talk about here are men.
I don't know if any women have had any like hugely marked accidents or things like that in racing, but they certainly didn't come up in what I was reading. Okay. But scarred at an early age by having watched an acquaintance nearly meet his end on the racetrack. Naturally, when I think about the sport, I think first and foremost about how you could die doing it.
[00:14:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:11] Speaker B: And the thing that actually brought this topic to mind for me was like, just like an ad that for some reason kept on coming up on like my Facebook and my socials and stuff like that for an article about Dale Earnhardt Jr.
Who is now older than his father was when he died in a race they were both a part of in 2001.
In the final turn of the final lap of this race, Dale Earnhardt Senior's car and another racer's car basically just nudged each other.
But when you're going a bajillion miles per hour, that can obviously be catastrophic.
He had initially slid off the track, but gained some control and managed to get back on. But as he did, he crossed in front of another car and hit it before slamming into a retainer wall at around 160 miles per hour.
Just, just an unfathomable speed to me. Like I can't even, I can't imagine what that feels like. No, obviously also going extremely fast and not knowing the extent of what had happened. The rest of the racers sped past him and Dale Earnhardt Jr. Came in second place while his dad laid dead in an embankment, having fractured his skull on impact.
A saying in pretty much every dangerous field on earth. Is regulations are written in blood, meaning usually rules that protect people aren't made until somebody has gotten their shit wrecked in a horrific way.
[00:15:38] Speaker A: We will circle back to that very line later on this episode.
[00:15:42] Speaker B: Excellent.
[00:15:43] Speaker A: Yeah, I've heard that line spoken this very week.
[00:15:48] Speaker B: Yeah. Such was the case in nascar after the death of arguably the most famous man in the business, they tightened everything up and no one has died a NASCAR race since then.
Not being a race car girl, I read this and thought, oh, wow, no one's died racing in nearly 25 years. What an achievement.
I was wrong.
NASCAR is not all racing. And the deaths have absolutely continued since then.
While I couldn't find more recent statistics, in 2014, the Charlotte observer wrote that 520 people in the US alone had died in the previous 25 years in auto racing accidents. So not since the inception of racing, but since 1990.
[00:16:31] Speaker A: Yikes.
[00:16:32] Speaker B: 520 people. Only in this country had died.
[00:16:37] Speaker A: That seems like a fucking large amount of people, right?
[00:16:40] Speaker B: That is an insane, insane amount of people dying in that time. At least 47 spectators were also killed, which is unreal.
47 people between 1990 and 2014 were killed just watching people drive cars.
What?
I don't, I don't think there's another sport on earth with a spectator body count like that. At least not from the sport itself. Like obviously we've discussed on the show, like soccer crushes and collapses and fires and things like that that have killed many supporters, but that's not quite the same. Same thing as like say, a rogue ball flying into the stands and taking out a bunch of people. It's not the sport that's killing the crowd in a soccer game where it is in auto races.
They also noted that there isn't an official body that counts racing deaths, so there's a solid chance that they're actually under counting. These are just the ones that they could find reported.
The majority of racing deaths occur on short tracks, which is the most common kind of track in the US this isn't fully because the short tracks themselves are more dangerous. It's in part because the rules around restraints for your head and neck are more lax on short tracks than long tracks.
[00:18:00] Speaker A: Right, right, right.
[00:18:02] Speaker B: Yeah. Which is like with Dale Earnhardt, it. They determined like there was a. I can't remember what the, the restraint is called. Yeah, but he had one and he didn't want to wear it. A lot of race car drivers are like, it's too restrictive. I don't want to. Now you have to. Right after that, he had it like in the backseat of his car, probably would have saved his life, but he wasn't wearing it. He died.
So on these short tracks, a lot of times it's not required.
But the tracks and the type of racing that happens on them are dangerous too. And fans are often incredibly close to the action, putting them right in the line of fire if something goes wrong.
They also involve drivers driving at speeds of around 130mph and jockeying for position and weaving in and out in ways that are obviously hugely dangerous. Yeah, the chances of clipping each other and sending a car or a tire flying are a lot higher than than in races that occur over longer distances now. The deaths have certainly slowed. In 2001, the year Earnhardt Sr. Died, there were 40 racing deaths in the U.S.
in 2024 and 2025. No Americans died in racing deaths.
The Last one on US soil was in 2023 when 26 year old sprint car driver Justin Owens car hit a wall during a qualifying race and flipped several times.
The last year that multiple Americans died racing was 2018 when six US drivers died.
Australians and Kiwis seem to have the most deaths in recent years. I don't know if they have laxer rules or short tracks or what, but for some reason in the most recent years that's who there have been multiple of.
It's probably safety regulations. I didn't dive into it, but Australians.
[00:19:52] Speaker A: Not Australians in the States, but Australians in Kiwis in Austria. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:19:59] Speaker B: But there are several deaths a year in auto racing still to this day, which is pretty remarkable for a mainstream sport.
There are other sports that are more dangerous, but they're usually more blatantly extreme sports like cliff diving, base jumping, mountaineering, stuff like that. Right.
Why are they not sports?
[00:20:18] Speaker A: What, cliff diving?
[00:20:20] Speaker B: Yeah, why is it not a sport?
[00:20:26] Speaker A: All right, all right.
[00:20:26] Speaker B: We don't have time for this.
[00:20:27] Speaker A: No, no, no. Another time.
[00:20:29] Speaker B: Fighting sport. But like things that you like have to do, like physical strength and climbing and things like that.
[00:20:36] Speaker A: Is it competitive? Jumping off a cliff competitively?
[00:20:39] Speaker B: Well, not all sports are necessarily competitive, but yeah, I, I think you compete.
[00:20:44] Speaker A: Name me a sport that is not competitive.
[00:20:48] Speaker B: I don't, I don't know, maybe.
[00:20:49] Speaker A: Surely that's the definition of sport.
[00:20:54] Speaker B: I don't know. I have to think about it. But regardless.
[00:20:56] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:20:57] Speaker B: I'm pretty sure these are in some way competitive.
[00:20:59] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:21:01] Speaker B: I do not follow cliff diving because I do not.
[00:21:04] Speaker A: I consider those elite level hobbies.
[00:21:09] Speaker B: I don't think so. I think if you have to do, like, a lot of physical prep and training, and then you go to, like, big tournaments and things like that where people do it.
[00:21:19] Speaker A: All right, I'm open to being swayed. Okay.
[00:21:22] Speaker B: Anyways, just to say there are lots of things that are more dangerous, but they usually eat, like, extreme sports like that. Right?
[00:21:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:30] Speaker B: Sports you do in the water can also be deadly for obvious reasons. So a lot of people do die, like, swimming and stuff. But, yeah, drowning is always a risk, but there's pretty much nothing else you can watch on TV that runs as great a risk of showing you someone's violent end.
And that's the thing, Marco. When people die racing, a lot of the time they do so while being broadcast on live television. You knew exactly where I was going with that.
And as such, we have a lot of footage of this happening.
[00:22:03] Speaker A: Oh, boy.
[00:22:04] Speaker B: So, Mark, please take out your phone.
[00:22:07] Speaker A: You got it.
[00:22:08] Speaker B: I'm gonna send you some videos and tell you about some.
[00:22:11] Speaker A: I didn't know I was getting treats tonight.
[00:22:15] Speaker B: No. Right. This is a. It's not even your birthday. Yeah.
Yeah. I'm gonna start with one I know that you've seen before. Yeah. But I can't remember if we've discussed it on the cast or if this is just one of the horrific things that we've shared with each other in daily conversation.
This is one of several of these crashes that is so graphic. YouTube makes you click and. Are you sure? Message before you watch it.
So I'm gonna send you this, and if you will just scroll into that video about 35 seconds.
[00:22:54] Speaker A: It's a clip. I know.
[00:22:55] Speaker B: Yes.
And I want you just. I know you know it, but describe what you're.
[00:23:00] Speaker A: Say. 35 seconds.
[00:23:02] Speaker B: 35 seconds into that and describe what.
[00:23:04] Speaker A: I've gone back from.20.
We have a driver here who is.
His car has stalled or broken down somehow, some in some way, and he is stuck on the side of his racetrack. There is a couple of people trying to get him out. He is now out of the car and. Oh, yeah, there it is. Someone has ran across the road.
The road. Somebody's ran across the track into the.
[00:23:38] Speaker B: Not a road.
[00:23:39] Speaker A: Let me just rewind that into the path.
Oh, fuck me. It is wild to me. That clip is on YouTube, on public.
[00:23:49] Speaker B: It is. I can't believe that that is actually just on there. You don't have to, like, search the annals of Reddit or anything like that to find this, because it is the.
[00:23:58] Speaker A: First time I saw that clip. I had to really dive deep to find this particular version of it because the only version I could find had was blurred out at the moment of impact.
[00:24:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:10] Speaker A: This man has ran along the track into. Into the path of numerous cars and he's been hit.
And I've. I've also seen a kind of a upscaled frame by frame of this.
[00:24:23] Speaker B: Mm. I think it actually does that at the end of this too. Or it was in one of the ones that I watched.
[00:24:29] Speaker A: You've. If you've not seen this clip, you've seen nothing like it before.
It's not, it's. It's. Oh yeah, here's the frame by frame. It's quite an old clip. So it's, you know.
[00:24:41] Speaker B: Yeah. It's not.
[00:24:42] Speaker A: The quality isn't exactly. But it looks. Jesus to all. Oh.
It looks to all intents and purposes like this guy's skin and all of the internal components of his body have become completely separated and his skin is essentially like a blanket.
[00:25:02] Speaker B: Yeah, pretty much.
[00:25:03] Speaker A: You know what I mean? If you imagine for me a blanket drifting in the wind, blowing in a. In a. In a violent wind, that is what this man's body becomes. Just opened up completely and devoid of all manner of. You know. It doesn't look like it doesn't have humanoid form.
[00:25:19] Speaker B: Right. Exactly. That's the thing about this being so graphic, is that it is a kind of graphic where it does not look like a person anymore. It becomes unrecognizable as a human being. From what I read in one of the accounts of this, he was.
His body was so destroyed that the like head.
[00:25:39] Speaker A: Didn't his head go through somebody else's fucking windscreen? Like somewhere further down certain. I've seen an account.
[00:25:45] Speaker B: No, we'll get. We'll get there. I will tell you what happened here, but just to describe this carnage.
He was. His body was so destroyed they couldn't tell who he was. And the like head of the safety marshals had to assemble all of his other marshals to figure out who was missing.
[00:26:00] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:01] Speaker B: Couldn't identify him based on his body.
[00:26:04] Speaker A: Un. Fucking real way to go if you.
[00:26:07] Speaker B: If you, you know, aren't scared of it. Of course I have all the links of my sources in the bio and there's one thing that I included on here that has videos of most of these things. Not all of them, but one of the links that I linked to says like 20 worst racing videos or whatever and that has the video. So if you want to watch that, I linked it in there instead of linking all of the YouTube videos.
[00:26:32] Speaker A: Incredible to me that that's on the open YouTube.
[00:26:36] Speaker B: Just behind a little. Are you sure?
Like Jesus.
But this video comes from the 19th.
[00:26:45] Speaker A: Yeah, sorry, you were literally about to say when was this from?
[00:26:49] Speaker B: Yes. Let me tell you all about what you've seen here. This video comes from the 1977 South African Grand Prix. And the poor guy you watch get absolutely annihilated in that video was 19 year old safety marshal Janssen van Vuren.
But he wasn't the only casualty of this horrific accident as you just alluded to.
[00:27:08] Speaker A: Ah yes, the driver too.
[00:27:10] Speaker B: The driver of the car that hit him. Welsh racer Tom Price also met his end.
So what happened here was, was that during lap 22, Price's teammate Renzo Zorzi pulled off the track due to trouble with his car.
In an earlier part of the video you see him sitting in the car trying to figure out what happened and then he disconnects this like some sort of oxygen thing that's in his helmet. I don't know what this is because I don't know anything about cars, but it causes a fire. His car suddenly catches fire, not a huge fire, you know, and he's able to climb out. You can see that it's not like an explosive fire that's threatening to kill anyone, it's just the car is a little bit on fire.
He got out of the car, it was more or less safe, but fire is always something you want to contain.
So two of the safety marshals crossed the track with fire extinguishers.
This is one of those things that like in hindsight seems obviously stupid, but you have to take into account how fast these cars are going. Of course there's a good chance when they started crossing there was no one in sight and the track looked totally safe to them. Yeah, a car coming at 140 plus miles per hour is gonna come out of fucking nowhere. Like imagine if you were on the street and you stepped out and a car came at 100 something.
[00:28:28] Speaker A: As I was driving back from work earlier this week, some fucking knob ed driving like a lunatic undertaking me. Like he was not there and then he was fucking there.
[00:28:39] Speaker B: Right? Yeah, exactly.
[00:28:41] Speaker A: And this guy was probably doing 90, you know.
[00:28:43] Speaker B: Right? Yeah. Someone coming out of nowhere is a thing we've all experienced. So just like double the speed of anyone that you have seen do that, you know, on a street and that's what you have happening here. So should they have known better? Probably. But in their minds they needed to get this fire out as fast as they could before it became a bigger problem.
So they ran for it.
Just as Tom Price and Hans Joachim Stuck came over the crest of the hill where Zorzi had parked.
Stuck managed to swerve somehow, but Pryce didn't. And he collided with Van Buren at a speed of 170 miles per hour, essentially shredding him.
[00:29:24] Speaker A: Yeah, he was fucking.
[00:29:25] Speaker B: He wouldn't have felt a thing. Instant death.
[00:29:27] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:29:29] Speaker B: Meanwhile, the fire extinguisher that Van Buren had been carrying.
[00:29:33] Speaker A: That's it.
[00:29:34] Speaker B: Hit Price in the head, causing him to be partially decapitated by his helmet strap.
He too died instantly.
So at least for how horrific this incident was, neither of the deceased had any idea what happened to them. They were alive and then they weren't.
As far as they were concerned, Formula One driver Roger Williamson was not so lucky in July of 1973 at a Dutch track called Zandvoort. And I'm gonna say, send you another video, Corey.
Let's see here.
And I think you just jump right into this one.
[00:30:15] Speaker A: Alrighty. Now, this one's a new one on me right down. Very similar setup here. We've got some old footage. We've got the cars going around the thing. Oh, oh, that car's crashed out. And fucking hell. Has skidded what looked to be like 80 to 100ft on its roof, leaving an absolute trail of high octane flame behind it on the tarmac.
[00:30:43] Speaker B: Yes, this is a fire. Fire. Not like the little one that happened in that other case. And that fire and what happened afterwards were the result of some real fucking around when it came to safety and preparedness.
It was the eighth lap of the race when Williamson's left rear tire failed. And this is the case in a lot of crashes. It's just the tires.
The idea of my tire going flat or loose on a freeway going like 65 is one of my constant paranoid fears. So imagine going more than twice that speed, and what could happen in this case?
Williamson's car veered off into the track's barriers, which had been erected wrong and. And as such, turned it into what Weisz described as a springboard, launching the car into the air and causing it to flip.
When it hit the track, as you've just described, the car burst into flames as it skidded.
But Williamson didn't die in the crash stop.
He was alive, trapped inside that burning car.
The race officials didn't stop the race, however, and the rest of the cars continued to whip by.
Only driver David Purley, who had actually seen the accident happen, stopped and ran to try to aid Williamson with nary a thought to his own well being. He reached into the car as it was burning and tried to flip it over. But obviously one guy cannot flip over a whole ass burning car no matter what those legends about your adrenaline tell you. You can't do that.
Meanwhile, because the race was still going, the fire truck couldn't get across the track to get to Williamson.
Further, the marshals who were there weren't equipped with fireproof clothing so they couldn't go running into the inferno to help him.
So as Purley tried his best to save Williamson all by himself, he listened to the man screaming for help in agony until he finally succumbed to inhalation of the smoke and flames.
It took eight whole minutes for the firefighters to get to him.
Firefighters who were there, it's not like they had to like come from across town. The people there to do the safety thing couldn't get to him because the race people didn't stop the cars from driving Fucking insane.
That course.
Go ahead.
[00:33:15] Speaker A: No, no, just nothing really to add to this. This is fucking, this is just fucking horrible.
[00:33:21] Speaker B: Yeah. That course existed for another decade or so and multiple other drivers died in that time.
[00:33:27] Speaker A: Well after this one.
[00:33:29] Speaker B: After this one, yeah. Multiple drivers still died on that same track.
Racing is very much one of those activities like climbing Mount Everest. Whereas this, there's this sense that, you know, if you die doing what you.
[00:33:42] Speaker A: Love, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:33:45] Speaker B: And that probably covered a multitude of safety sins over the years.
And it's all good and well when drivers knowingly take their lives into their hands, but it's a whole other can of worms when they take the crowd with them.
Like in 1957 at the Italian Mio Miglia road race, this was a thousand mile race and spectators would line the road like you see now for things like the Tour de France, right. All the people just like weeee on the side of the road.
[00:34:14] Speaker A: As something that Owen and I have become quite fond of lately is the Red Bull soapbox races.
[00:34:19] Speaker B: Oh yeah, totally.
[00:34:20] Speaker A: Such fucking great fun.
[00:34:23] Speaker B: Yeah. Red Bull does a lot of really fun little competitions and things like that.
[00:34:28] Speaker A: They do, they do, they do like.
[00:34:29] Speaker B: Cliff diving things and they do stuff along those lines.
[00:34:32] Speaker A: Very interesting brand, Red Bull.
[00:34:34] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:34:34] Speaker A: Not a drinks company. You know, they, they, the drink is like a tiny bit of what they do.
[00:34:39] Speaker B: Right. That's their side hustle.
[00:34:41] Speaker A: But yes, the, the soapbox race is far less likely to end in an inferno.
[00:34:47] Speaker B: Yeah, right.
[00:34:48] Speaker A: Very little chance.
[00:34:50] Speaker B: Yeah. It doesn't usually happen.
So at this race I'm actually going to have you watch A clip from the movie Ferrari rather than from the real thing. Because being 1955, there's all kinds of newsreel type footage. But it cuts out the moment that things get real.
[00:35:12] Speaker A: I see, you know, Is that the woman?
[00:35:13] Speaker B: Which.
[00:35:14] Speaker A: That's not the one with Christian Bale. It's not the one with Christian Bale.
[00:35:17] Speaker B: I think that was Ford versus Ferrari.
[00:35:19] Speaker A: Christian Bale, different movie.
[00:35:21] Speaker B: I have seen that one. I haven't seen this one. But this CGI quality aside, the movie does not fuck around showing you how horrific this was. So I'm going to send you this and have you skip to 15 seconds into the clip.
[00:35:34] Speaker A: Right, what am I looking at here? I'm looking at a recreation, is that right?
[00:35:37] Speaker B: You're looking at a recreation of what happened in this story that I'm about to tell you.
[00:35:42] Speaker A: 15 seconds. Here we go. 12, 13.
Okay. Whoa. Slam. What is that thing in the middle of the road there?
[00:35:55] Speaker B: I'll tell you about it.
[00:35:56] Speaker A: Okay.
Cars taken to the air. Oh, fuck. Wrapped it around a lamppost midair, mid air.
Fuck me.
[00:36:05] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:36:07] Speaker A: Must have absolutely fucking cluster fucked about 15, 20 people there.
Just a car flying through the air, spinning on its fucking horizontal axis like it's been thrown. Like you'd see in a Marvel film, right?
[00:36:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:36:23] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:36:24] Speaker B: Straight into the spectators on the side of the road.
[00:36:26] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:36:28] Speaker B: So the car here was driven by Spanish driver Alfonso de Portico or Portago, I'm not sure where that.
Portugal. That sounds more Italian than Spanish, but, you know, one of those.
But he was actually only there that day because driver Cesare Perdisa, who is Italian, had quit auto racing after the death of another driver at that course the year before.
And Enzo Ferrari had invited him to fill Perdisa's spot.
So Deportago and his co driver, Edmund Nelson had attempted the mill Miglia before, but the fur or the melee Milia. But the first time the car caught fire a few hours into the drive and the second time they crashed into a mile marker within a few minutes of starting the race.
So at this point I'd say if there is any karmic force, cosmic force of guidance in the universe, it was certainly telling them, let this particular race go.
[00:37:27] Speaker A: Yeah, don't do it.
[00:37:29] Speaker B: But listen, I'm an athletic type. I know that failing at something certainly makes you want to try harder rather than discouraging you from doing it. So they made attempt three, being largely unfamiliar with the course because they'd never actually finished.
Was 3:30 on May 12, 1957, when the pair, according to history.com entered a straightaway near the northern Italian village of Cavriana.
They were going 155 miles per hour when once again, tire trouble.
Something punctured the left front tire of the car, causing it to veer off the road and slam into the curb, then flip through the air.
When it hit the ground, it careened through the crowd of spectators, smashing nine fans, multiple of whom were children, and obviously injuring a bunch more.
This was, by the way, not the first time this had happened. At Mille Miglia In 1938, one of the cars launched over a tramline and killed 10 spectators, seven of whom were children.
This caused the cancellation of the race, but people clamored for it and it came back two years later in 1940. But apparently they did nothing to make it any safer in the intervening years.
The 1957 crash, however, marked the end of the Mille Miglia for good and nearly resulted in the imprisonment of Enzo Ferrari, who was charged with manslaughter and accused of cutting corners like equipping his cars with tires that weren't suited for these speeds.
He was acquitted after a four year trial when automotive engineers determined that the cat's eye reflectors on the road punctured the tire and caused the accident, not negligence on Ferrari's part. So that was the thing that you saw him drive over were these little reflectors in the road.
So likely, if he had been a little more familiar.
[00:39:25] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:39:25] Speaker B: With the course, he would have known that was there but not realizing it, drove over it and it punctured his tire.
[00:39:34] Speaker A: You say that there is. There is like, there is footage of that incident. Is there? But it's.
[00:39:39] Speaker B: Yeah, it just doesn't actually show it. You see like the aftermath of it, you know, the like crushed car and stuff like that, but not like the actual asking for car flying through the bodies.
That may exist somewhere. But it also might not. Like, you know, there's a good chance that no one was filming that part of the course.
And so they only have like footage, which is not the case with the one that I am about to show you.
So don't hit play just yet, but skip to a minute and ten seconds.
[00:40:08] Speaker A: You got it.
[00:40:09] Speaker B: This one?
This.
[00:40:13] Speaker A: A minute ten.
[00:40:14] Speaker B: Minute ten.
[00:40:16] Speaker A: This is the worst Le Mans is a 24 hour race, isn't it? Is that right?
[00:40:20] Speaker B: I was. Yeah, I'm going to explain that.
[00:40:22] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:40:23] Speaker B: Yeah. So this is the worst disaster in racing's history.
And this had actually happened three years before the melee.
Milie 1.
This was June 11, 1955, at one of the most famous tracks in the world, France's Le Mans.
So go ahead and play that and describe what you see here. So there's gonna. You're gonna have like, there's probably like 30 or maybe even like a minute of this for you to describe what happened and what's the aftermath of.
[00:40:56] Speaker A: We have that beautiful Pathe newsreel kind of vibe of this. Oh, shit. No. Oh, straight in me. It's like the Hindenburg. Just people are just.
[00:41:09] Speaker B: Yeah, right. This is like final destination. Yeah.
[00:41:12] Speaker A: Absolute chaos.
I'm just gonna go back and describe this. So black and white, kind of over cranked feel to the newsreel footage. Vintage kind of cinema newsreel cars speeding. Beautiful, beautiful old cars, if you like that kind of thing. Just wonderful, sleek lines, tightly packed crowds of spectators lining the track.
The speed these fucking cars must be going. Good God.
[00:41:40] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:41:42] Speaker A: And here it is.
Bang. One of the cars hits.
Oh, fuck the boundary and just absolutely plummets through the air. Just like an F1 fucking plane just screeching through the fucking air and just taking out absolute throngs of people just plowing, rolling.
Oh, God. This is on YouTube as well.
[00:42:11] Speaker B: This is on YouTube. It's path A. This is history right here. But it's surprising because. Describe what you see.
[00:42:16] Speaker A: Just mang. Fuck me. Mangled, broken bodies bent at the most horrific, unnatural angles, lying in and around this inferno.
Panic. People running, screaming in all directions, scattering.
That's incredible, right?
[00:42:35] Speaker B: Yeah. It's surprising to have that kind of footage from 1955 of this. But they, they showed all of that.
[00:42:43] Speaker A: That one shot of that one guy just lying there and he is all fucked up.
[00:42:48] Speaker B: Yep. Yeah, it's a truly horrifying. Like I said, it's in, it's in the links if you want to see them.
But. Yeah, yeah, he's fucked up, man.
So like you said, Le mans is a 24 hour race in which the car that covers the greatest distance over the course of 24 hours wins. And it's more. It's kind of a mix. It's a demonstration of the cars and the drivers. Not just the driver. Yes, in this case. So the, the cars are. This is like really early kind of stuff of like sponsoring cars, basically.
Not even just sponsoring. So the cars would be like, there's Mercedes cars and there's this kind of car and there's this kind of car, there's Ferraris, all this kind of stuff. Because those automakers wanted to show off the capabilities.
[00:43:33] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:43:33] Speaker B: Of those cars.
So in the early days of this, the race cars that were featured. The cars that were featured weren't race cars. They were actually cars that you at home could buy if you were rich. You know, these were sports cars and, you know, they were showing off like, this is what these cars can do.
So on this day in 1955, Frenchman Pierre Levegh was one of the two drivers for the Mercedes Benz team.
According to history, their car that year was remarkable because it featured a brand new automotive innovation and air brake that would enhance cornering.
Now, a common theme in a lot of these tragedies is someone basically foreseeing it beforehand and expressing concerns.
And this was no different.
Levegh had said prior to the race that the course narrowed too much near the pit stop and grandstand.
He was right.
During the race, at a speed of about 150 miles per hour, Levegh swerved to avoid clipping another racer's Jaguar as they approached the pits.
As a result, he crashed into an Austin Healey driven by Lance Macklin, resulting in his car being catapulted into the air.
It smashed into an embankment and all but disintegrating, disintegrated, launching Lavey onto the track, where he was killed instantly.
Horrifyingly, debris from the car flew into the crowd, including the car's flaming engine block and the hood or the bonnet, which whipped through the crowd for 100 meters, decapitating everyone in its path.
That is probably the wildest detail of this. Like, that is the real final destination thing, you know, like just the. The hood of a car detached from the car just 100 meters coming at.
[00:45:23] Speaker A: You, whipping the head horizontally at neck height.
[00:45:26] Speaker B: Yep. Yeah, it's like ghost ships.
[00:45:28] Speaker A: Yeah, completely. That's exactly where my mind went.
[00:45:30] Speaker B: Right.
The rear of the car exploded into flames and landed on the track and in the Grand Stand. And it wasn't a normal fire either. It had a high magnesium content, and apparently magnesium fires get worse when you pour water on them.
So as they tried to fight it, they actually made the wreckage burn longer and more intensely than it would have if they had just left it alone.
Meanwhile, Macklin's car careened into the pit wall and ran down a police officer, a photographer and two officials, all of whom survived but severely injured.
All told, the race killed 83 spectators.
83.
And injured hundreds more besides, with people having to use the advertising banners from the course to carry away the bodies of the injured and dead from there, and they didn't stop the race.
The reason given, if you said this.
[00:46:33] Speaker A: I apologize, but at what Point in the. During the 24 hours was this.
[00:46:37] Speaker B: So this is 3:30. So I think there should have been a half hour left because it starts at four. Okay, so that should be, yeah, 30 minutes from the end of the race.
So the reasoning, reasoning given was that if they'd stopped the race, the spectators leaving would have caused the traffic jam, caused a traffic jam that would have prevented rescue personnel from reaching the scene.
Lots of people think that's bullshit though, and cite other reasons, like organizers fearing being sued by race participants for loss of revenue, a general the race must go on mindset, and some resistance from different corporate teams which each didn't want to drop out and risk losing to a team that didn't drop out of the race.
Ultimately, this would end Mercedes Benz participation in races for decades. And much of Europe banned auto racing until better safety measures were put in place.
Obviously, this didn't include Italy since the Mille Miglia disaster would happen three years later.
So, like I said, people don't seem to die nearly as often as they used to. But the number each year is never zero.
It's still a hugely risky sport. And outside of deaths, people still get injured all of the times too. Crashes are not rare, but folks love it, man. Formula One is one of the most popular sports in the world and getting more popular each year.
In 2022, Formula One reported 195% profit growth in the past three years, with revenues of over $2.5 billion.
So people gonna die, but people gonna watch too.
Dear listeners, all I can say is, you know, maybe watch it on TV and not in the stands.
[00:48:16] Speaker A: Let me quote directly from my notes, if I may.
[00:48:18] Speaker B: Yes, please do.
[00:48:20] Speaker A: Fucking look at these nerds. Oh, mise en scene.
[00:48:24] Speaker B: I don't think anyone has ever said mise en scene in such a horny way before.
[00:48:28] Speaker A: The way I whispered the word sex cannibal.
[00:48:30] Speaker B: Recently. Worst comes to worst, Mark, I'm willing to guillotine you for science.
[00:48:34] Speaker A: Thank you. That's really, really sweet. It's cold outside, but my pancreas is talking to me. I'm fucking. I'm gonna leg it.
[00:48:40] Speaker B: You know how I feel about that, Mark.
[00:48:43] Speaker A: I think you feel great about it.
First class.
Absolutely.
[00:48:51] Speaker B: Told you it'd be great.
[00:48:51] Speaker A: No, no, listen.
[00:48:53] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:48:55] Speaker A: First class. Corey, that entire piece.
Right.
[00:49:00] Speaker B: Thank you, Marco.
[00:49:01] Speaker A: Let me say this right now, that is a gold star, little bit of podcasting that you just did.
[00:49:08] Speaker B: Thank you, sir. That was a lot.
[00:49:10] Speaker A: That was the apex of what you do. That was brilliant.
[00:49:18] Speaker B: Gosh. Well, thank you, Mark. And I hope those of you at home felt the same way.
[00:49:23] Speaker A: I. I wasn't even. I wasn't even podcasting right then. That was me talking to you directly. Right.
[00:49:27] Speaker B: Okay, thanks.
[00:49:29] Speaker A: Just a little. As a little aside there. That scored high with me. That was very good.
[00:49:33] Speaker B: I knew. I thought you'd like that one, but I'm glad it hit. That hit harder than I thought it would.
[00:49:37] Speaker A: It does. That was superb.
[00:49:40] Speaker B: Good. I'm glad I was able to entertain you.
[00:49:44] Speaker A: And entertain isn't. Isn't.
Oh, man. I. I sometimes worry that my kind of. My enjoyment of death videos, which is what it is. I enjoy them. I enjoy watching them.
I often worry that it comes across like I'm sensationalizing or I'm taking pleasure.
[00:50:10] Speaker B: Right. In other people's suffering.
[00:50:13] Speaker A: That isn't it. That isn't it. At no point, you know, am I like, you know, I'm not watching them because. Because I. I don't. How did this.
[00:50:20] Speaker B: Yeah, it's like somehow it's not. It's not a good time. No, like, that's not the. Not the idea behind it. But I think, you know, we've kind of discussed before, and it's always worth kind of coming back to you when we do an open like that. Like the kind of, you know, the curiosity and the.
[00:50:37] Speaker A: That's what it.
[00:50:38] Speaker B: Close.
[00:50:38] Speaker A: That's what it is.
[00:50:39] Speaker B: Death, you know, and being. I'm not like we are.
[00:50:44] Speaker A: I'm not, you know, I'm not about to whack off or anything. It's.
[00:50:47] Speaker B: Right. Yeah, It's.
[00:50:48] Speaker A: It's more. Yes. It's curiosity and.
[00:50:51] Speaker B: Yeah. And we come from, you know, a time where we are more removed from the process of death and things like that than we have ever been. People die in hospitals and away from us. We don't see what those processes are like.
And these kinds of things are a window into something that can happen to any of us.
[00:51:13] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:51:14] Speaker B: But we don't.
[00:51:16] Speaker A: We don't experience, accept I have and continue to describe myself as death positive. It's.
[00:51:22] Speaker B: Right.
[00:51:23] Speaker A: It's. It's a fact. And yes. One that I, you know, I have a. Still to this day, a gripping curiosity towards.
[00:51:32] Speaker B: Right, exactly. Even when it's, like, horrifying and it makes you, like, scared, which, you know, any of these things kind of do.
Like you, I think, like you said, you're like your driving instructor said of the idea of cars being a weapon. And every day it's something that we encounter, and every day people die in them. And, you know, it's A terrifying reality. So there's something to watching these things that really puts you.
We may not ever be in a position where we're running across a track with someone coming at US 170mph, but every day we walk out into the street where someone can come out of nowhere and annihilate us with a giant machine.
[00:52:11] Speaker A: So look both ways and buckle up.
[00:52:13] Speaker B: Look both ways, buckle up. Be careful while you're sitting in the stands.
[00:52:17] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:52:17] Speaker B: Don't get Final Destination, you know.
[00:52:19] Speaker A: Yes, good. Think we saved some lives there.
[00:52:23] Speaker B: I think we did. I think today we saved some lives. Someone is going to be like, I was going to go to a Formula one race, and then I listened to you guys and I didn't go. And then the crowd died.
[00:52:32] Speaker A: Imagine that.
[00:52:35] Speaker B: Can you imagine? Yeah, that would be wild. All my friends are just going to see banana ball. They're not getting.
[00:52:41] Speaker A: Oh, what's that?
[00:52:42] Speaker B: Killed and anything. Banana ball is wonderful. Have I not told you about banana ball?
[00:52:47] Speaker A: No. Pickleball. Banana ball. What is this fucking fascination you people have of naming fruits and vegetables into sports? Why?
[00:52:57] Speaker B: Banana ball is baseball, but fun.
So, like, have you heard of the Harlem Globetrotters?
[00:53:06] Speaker A: Oh, absolutely. They, you know, just a basketball. Fucking basketball. Sports entertainment troupe.
[00:53:16] Speaker B: Precisely.
[00:53:17] Speaker A: There you go.
[00:53:17] Speaker B: Right. Like, they're not real games. They're there to show off their tricks and do goofy moves and stuff like that. So banana ball is basically that for baseball. Yes, it's hugely popular now. They just. This league started maybe, like, four or five years ago, and these guys, you know, they will, like, in the middle of a play break and do like, a choreographed dance and things like that, or they'll, you know, jump on a trumpet. They have all these, right? Yeah. Like, they just have all these little things that they do. They have, like, a segment in every game where they have a bunch of grandmothers come out and dance, like their cheerleaders, you know, things like that. Like, so it's just very fun. It's got, like, different. Vaguely different rules that make the game move faster and sort of play in more entertaining ways than, like, if you're not, like, into baseball. Because a lot of people think baseball moves too slowly, doesn't score high enough, stuff like that. This alleviates your problems with baseball.
And instead, you know, moves fast, gives you a lot to look at. There's, you know, everybody does these dances. The whole crowd will know it's very fun. So they just came to Anaheim today and yesterday, I believe. And so I've seen some of my friends going, I really want to go, but you have to get into a lottery a year before.
So Keo and my sister and I are all in the lottery for the New York City game in September, and you don't find out till a month before whether you got the tickets, so.
[00:54:45] Speaker A: I see.
[00:54:46] Speaker B: We'll see. Hopefully I'll get you some banana boys. Yeah. Our dear listener, Satan, yeah. Is super into banana ball as well. Recently discovered it, and she posted on, like, the Dead and lovely Discord and was like, this feels like something Corey would be into. And I was like, I am. In fact, I watch the games on YouTube all the time.
[00:55:09] Speaker A: How do we get to that? How do we get to that?
[00:55:11] Speaker B: I don't remember.
It's not important.
[00:55:15] Speaker A: What is important is that, hey, it's another week, it's another joag. That's the fucking important thing.
[00:55:21] Speaker B: That's true.
[00:55:22] Speaker A: Delighted to have you here.
I don't think I've said this for a while, but if you've. If you stuck through that opening, you're the. You're the real deal, aren't you?
[00:55:31] Speaker B: Yeah, you're the real deal.
[00:55:32] Speaker A: You're here for a bad time, not for a good time.
[00:55:35] Speaker B: Yes, Trent Reznor style.
[00:55:39] Speaker A: Indeed. But in many ways, aren't we all, hey, in 2025, is there anyone, really, can we all say that we're having a good time now? Can any of us claim to be having more fun than we were at the start of the Joag journey? I don't know.
[00:55:53] Speaker B: Hmm. Well, we did start the joag journey in lockdown.
[00:55:56] Speaker A: We did.
[00:55:57] Speaker B: So at least we're allowed to leave the house as it. As the world burns down around us.
[00:56:02] Speaker A: That's true.
I think I read Covid is getting interesting again, isn't it?
[00:56:08] Speaker B: Yeah, it sure is.
We've got this very cool symptom of this one, which they call razor blade throat.
[00:56:21] Speaker A: Who calls it that?
[00:56:24] Speaker B: You know, whoever talks about this. I don't know.
But basically, this is why, you know, you said you were sick a couple weeks ago and couldn't be on the podcast and basically described razor blade blade throat, where you couldn't speak and things like that.
And it does. Ulcers, mouth ulcers. You were taking. You were like, oh, I took a COVID test and came back negative. But apparently that is pretty common these days, that those rapid tests come back negative when you actually have it. So it started in China a few weeks ago, has spread to Europe, and inevitably is on its way here, much like last year when I got it in the Euro wave. When I was in Belgium, so. And then came back and everyone got it here.
[00:57:15] Speaker A: I.
I went to work a few days into that week, I. I simply had to. And on your.
On your urging, I did actually mask up. I masked up and wore a mask on the train and wore a mask in the office.
[00:57:29] Speaker B: Proud of you.
[00:57:29] Speaker A: And I'll tell you what, fucking people treated me as a freak.
Like, they really did. It was. It was quite an eye opener.
[00:57:42] Speaker B: Right?
[00:57:42] Speaker A: To. To. To feel the eye of, you know, people thinking the. What is this weirdo doing in a mask in 2025? Yeah, very interesting. Very interesting social kind of eye opener.
[00:57:57] Speaker B: Yeah, it is interesting over there that it's just. It's just not done. But here people still do it. You know, I was in Asia and people mask all over the place. Not just because of that also, you know, for air quality and stuff like that.
But yeah, it's a very weird thing in the UK when you put on that masking and kind of see people just like the fuck.
[00:58:17] Speaker A: Very rare now. Very, very, very rare in uk, which.
[00:58:20] Speaker B: Is so weird because you guys, like, don't have, like, vaccines accessible and things like that. You just get Covid all the time, which is fucking unhinged. And then everybody's like, why can't. Why does my brain work anymore? Because you've had Covid 97 times, that's why.
This is one of the chief symptoms of COVID is your brain stopping working.
[00:58:41] Speaker A: Well, I'm not, I'm not kind of. I'm not gonna say that that last one was covered. It could have been any one of a number of things. But I'm on. I think I'm on three or four goes now.
[00:58:50] Speaker B: You've had at least three. Yeah, for sure.
And it's. Yeah, it's bonkers to me that, like, Europe has just decided to, like, just sacrifice the population entirely to it, which now, you know, RFK is trying to do with us as well, making it so you can't get the vaccine here either. But, you know, that's why I have done so well with it is I'm like super vaxxed.
Every six months.
[00:59:19] Speaker A: We'll talk on him maybe in a bit more depth in weeks to come, but sure. Hearing some very interesting thoughts coming from the guy.
See, before. Before this administration came to power, some of the radio programs I listened to talked at length about RFK and about how despite some of the wackier things he said about autism and the. And vaccines and so on, that, you know, he's. I am not anti Vaccine?
[00:59:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
It's like that is the ultimate gaslighting. Like, I'm not anti vaccine. I just think you shouldn't take them and I'm going to make laws specifically saying you can't have them.
Oh, so what's the functional difference here?
Theoretically, like, that's basically what he's saying is theoretically there could be a safe vaccine. I just don't believe they exist yet. That's his position.
[01:00:16] Speaker A: Yeah. And while we're on the topic of just horrific decisions by governments, I Many, many times I've called myself kind of politically homeless. Right. There's just. I don't have anyone really to root for currently in politics in the UK with any. With any chance of. Of getting within a sniff of power. I voted Green in the last local elections. Went with my heart. But, yeah, there is no chance that anyone with values that seem in keeping with mine will get anywhere near power. And the labor government continues to disgust me.
Yeah, like.
[01:00:59] Speaker B: Anyway, sorry, just real quick, is your mic wobbling?
[01:01:03] Speaker A: I don't think so.
[01:01:05] Speaker B: Hearing kind of a thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump.
[01:01:07] Speaker A: I'm sorry about that. I'm getting a little bit animated with my hand there, so maybe.
[01:01:10] Speaker B: Yeah, maybe that's why. But go on. So what did the. What did the labor government do this time?
[01:01:15] Speaker A: So since coming to power, they've made visible kind of steps to roll back legal rights for trans people, with, you know, our Prime Minister himself kind of saying that biological sex is, is the overriding factor in, you know, just. Just the most fundamental of rights, like where somebody goes for a piss. You know what I mean? Just.
[01:01:40] Speaker B: Right.
[01:01:41] Speaker A: The most ridiculous shit.
More children will be in poverty during this government than ever have been before.
Welfare cuts, winter fuel payments, that kind of thing being slashed. And as if all of that weren't fucking heinous enough. And that's just the tip of the iceberg, by the way. But if all of us weren't heinous enough, today, the 1st of June, is the first day of a nationwide ban on disposable vapes.
[01:02:15] Speaker B: Ooh, motherfucker, that's right.
[01:02:19] Speaker A: And now you're.
[01:02:19] Speaker B: I feel like that snuck up. Like, you never even mentioned it. And then like two weeks ago or whatever, I heard about this for the first time.
[01:02:26] Speaker A: This is day one. This is day one of single use. Disposable vapes gone.
[01:02:32] Speaker B: Now, you said you don't use those, so it doesn't necessarily apply.
[01:02:35] Speaker A: Well, I think.
I think my little adult pacifier, as I believe you've called it previously.
[01:02:41] Speaker B: Yeah, I Think I have. Yeah. I have called it your binky.
[01:02:44] Speaker A: You have indeed made me cry. One. Thanks for that.
I think mine sneaks in under the band because it has a little USB C in the bottom there. I can recharge it. I can refill it. Should I wish. So I think my vape of choice gets away with it. But what if, you know, it's choice, isn't it?
[01:03:03] Speaker B: What's the.
So what is the reasoning behind it? Is it supposed to be environmental or.
[01:03:09] Speaker A: I believe that's a big part of it. The waste that they generate is.
Listen, the waste that they generate is appalling.
[01:03:18] Speaker B: Yeah. The way that people use them in the UK is unreal. I've never seen anything like the vape use over there.
[01:03:25] Speaker A: There have been just absolutely hilarious stories in the press over the past few days, as you'd imagine of just people spending ridiculous amounts of money in shops, stocking up, you know, just amassing a stockpile.
[01:03:39] Speaker B: I think I even. You might. I can't remember if you sent the article or what, but there was in the group chat we were talking about this and there was a lady in one of these articles who.
It was like she'd bought like 40 vapes and it was like, that will hold her over for a few weeks. And I was like, I'm sorry, for how long?
What the. I still have your weed vape from when you were here in September, just sitting next to my bedside table. I cannot imagine. Just. I know it's not weed, but just smoking so much that 40 vapes is going to get you through a few weeks. Like that's a point at which maybe some self reflection.
[01:04:16] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure.
[01:04:17] Speaker B: To be done.
[01:04:18] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, last one I had, by the way. And when. When are we talking? September, October, November, December, January, February, March, everyone. Eight months.
[01:04:26] Speaker B: Eight months, yeah. That's a good long time.
[01:04:28] Speaker A: Eight months.
That was also the last drink that I had was in the States. Haven't touched a drop of alcohol since then.
[01:04:36] Speaker B: This sober ass podcast.
[01:04:39] Speaker A: Wild. Absolutely wild. Wild, wild, wild, wild.
[01:04:43] Speaker B: So, yeah, there's that.
Happy Pride Month, everyone. Yes, thank you.
[01:04:49] Speaker A: Yes, indeed.
[01:04:50] Speaker B: I'm thinking tomorrow, sometime this week. I'm gonna try to do it tomorrow, but I might make a little graphic of some of the queer books that we've read in book club that we've particularly enjoyed, which most of them have been queer.
[01:05:05] Speaker A: But listen, that's great.
Yeah, but when's straight Pride Month then? You know, you know, I'm just.
[01:05:18] Speaker B: It's a really good point, Mark. I'm going to spend the rest of the year making sure that I highlight the straight books that we are reading. Jaws, you know, and Psycho. Just asking.
Yeah, it's valid.
[01:05:32] Speaker A: Taking anything away from that point.
[01:05:35] Speaker B: Just asking when I know a lot of our listeners are not feeling seen by me right now, and I want to make sure that, you know, dear CIS het audience, I see you two.
[01:05:45] Speaker A: Who's speaking up for us?
[01:05:47] Speaker B: Who is speaking up for me?
[01:05:49] Speaker A: Right? As a white, mid-40s straight cis male.
[01:05:53] Speaker B: Yeah, we're getting real hard out there.
[01:05:55] Speaker A: Where's my representation?
[01:05:58] Speaker B: You know? Yeah, it's a great question.
[01:06:00] Speaker A: I'm just.
[01:06:00] Speaker B: We will be that podcast for the white man.
[01:06:03] Speaker A: I just think it's interesting to ask that, you know.
[01:06:07] Speaker B: But yes, I will be sharing some books that we have read in our book club. Like, honestly, I think even when we don't do this intentionally, a good chunk of the books that we pick have queer themes and stuff like that in. In them. So, you know, it gives some suggestions from the Joag Book club for people if you're looking for some good queer horror. This, this here Pride month. And one of the things I've seen, you know, like our dear pal Xander talk about and things like that is, you know, the, the, what do they call it? Rainbow capitalism.
Every year Pride comes around and everybody comes out with their Pride line of shit. Friends, this year, don't buy that. Buy from all of the bajillions of queer artists out there that are on your Blue sky feed and on your Instagram. And if you're, if you're going, oh, I don't know any. Well, maybe this is the time to look into it. Buy your T shirts and your Pride gear and all that stuff from small independent queer artists who are making it instead of from Target, who's embarrassed by having to participate in Pride and doesn't care about queer people the rest of the year. Buy it from the small, small folks.
[01:07:22] Speaker A: Breaking news from the BBC.
Targeted terror attack in Colorado.
[01:07:28] Speaker B: Oh, no. What? What kind?
[01:07:31] Speaker A: Just now, literally, just now, news literally just popped up.
FBI is investigating a targeted terror attack in Colorado. An incident at Boulders, Pearl Street Mall that left multiple people injured.
[01:07:47] Speaker B: It's weird for them to call it a terror attack that quickly, isn't it?
[01:07:51] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:07:52] Speaker B: Doesn't usually. So. So.
[01:07:54] Speaker A: So that leads you.
[01:07:55] Speaker B: They're brown then.
[01:07:56] Speaker A: Exactly.
[01:07:59] Speaker B: We can deduce.
[01:08:00] Speaker A: Infer they are.
[01:08:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
Suspect. Well, we will. We'll see where that goes.
[01:08:06] Speaker A: We will update as we come in, friends.
[01:08:09] Speaker B: Yeah, a funny thing as we get into what we watch, because it's going to be sort of relevant this week.
This is one of. I feel like this is kind of a hilarious low key, proud moment of mine on Blue Sky.
I accidentally caused a Blue sky pylon of D. Snider. You did yesterday.
[01:08:33] Speaker A: You told me about this and I, I don't think I quite, I don't think I quite put two and two together. This is Dee Snyder from fucking Twisted Sister. That Dee Snyder.
[01:08:40] Speaker B: Yes, that Dee Snider, yes.
He had posted a very silly review of Sinners a week ago on Blue Sky. Right. That's what I'm saying.
[01:08:52] Speaker A: It's.
[01:08:53] Speaker B: Yes, right. We're gonna talk about it in a second. We'll make that first thing of what we watched. But let me, you know, explain my story here. Dee Snider wrote a review of Sinners on his Blue Sky a week ago in which he said something about how, you know, everybody's praising sinners but nobody talks about the effed up message about, you know, how like rap and hip hop are like the, the, the origins of all the music and at the end this decrees that it's Satan's music. It's just more satanic panic bullshit.
And so I'm like, didn't watch the movie. There's just like simply no way to take that from this movie.
[01:09:35] Speaker A: Right.
[01:09:35] Speaker B: Like there's just absolutely no interpretation you can have of Sinners where you come out of that going.
The message here is that music, rock music, R and B, rap, whatever, blues.
[01:09:48] Speaker A: If anything that's not opposite of that.
[01:09:51] Speaker B: The exact opposite of that. Right. And so I took a screenshot of it. I didn't even like quote post or anything like that. But yesterday I took a screenshot of that and I just wrote lol. What?
And this caused this week old post to suddenly get traction where like nobody had quote posted it before or anything like that. It like had like maybe 20 likes on it. Like 2 replies. Nobody was like paying attention to this thing. And now if you look at the posts, there's like there's like 60 quote posts of it. The whole thread is all these people like, are you fucking stupid? Like what is wrong with you? I was like, well you, you, you.
[01:10:34] Speaker A: Are something of a Blue sky celebrity, aren't you?
[01:10:38] Speaker B: No.
[01:10:38] Speaker A: Would that be fair with your 2.7 thousand followers?
[01:10:43] Speaker B: I feel like a lot of those are not like really people. You know, there's, you know, I have a fair amount of followers but like I'm in feeds and things like that. So people see stuff. Especially Black Sky.
[01:10:58] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:11:00] Speaker B: So you know, I Think a lot of black people saw that and were like, what the fuck, dude? You know, I would say I get a good amount of engagement on Blue Sky. Not that I'm like a Blue sky big account or anything like that.
And so it was just very funny that like this like thing that I discovered like a week later in passing, I then reposted and began. When he logs back on to Blue sky, he's going to be like, what the fuck?
This was a week ago.
[01:11:27] Speaker A: He's going to come for you. He's going to come for you.
[01:11:29] Speaker B: I didn't quote post him. So I am the one person who we can't tell is the reason that this started.
[01:11:37] Speaker A: Should we talk about sinners then? I'd love to.
[01:11:39] Speaker B: Let's talk about sinners. My God. Everyone knows I have been begging you.
[01:11:44] Speaker A: Yep.
[01:11:45] Speaker B: To watch this.
[01:11:46] Speaker A: And I was not fucking asked. I simply wasn't bothered.
[01:11:49] Speaker B: No.
We started the journey with you being like, I don't give a fuck about this movie. I've seen too many trailers. I don't want to watch it at all. To my talking about it to you going like, all right, I will go see it in cinemas. And then like, yep, I kind of want to see Final Destination more.
[01:12:04] Speaker A: Which I didn't even see either.
[01:12:06] Speaker B: Which you didn't see either. But like, yeah, your. Your attitude towards this was very. Take it or leave it.
[01:12:13] Speaker A: Yeah. And I mean before I say anything else, I will, I will. I will say the words five stars. Right? And that should tell you. That should tell you a lot. That should tell you everything we know.
[01:12:23] Speaker B: How precious those five star reviews are, how deeply guarded they are with you.
[01:12:28] Speaker A: Locked behind just a series of checkpoints. You know what I mean?
[01:12:35] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:12:36] Speaker A: So I'll. That should tell you everything you need to know about how I reacted to Sinners just within. Within like 20 minutes.
Within 20 minutes of it. Of. Of watching this film and how rich the fucking world of this film is.
[01:12:55] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:12:56] Speaker A: Just detail and just character beats and character notes.
Unspoken character notes. You know what I mean? You see, you are shown everything you need to know about the characters in this fucking movie.
[01:13:11] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:13:12] Speaker A: And it is a fucking. It's a painting.
It does something. Right. It does something which. There's a star straight away for that you'll know that I'll give you a star if you show me like a bird's eye view of a car on a road.
[01:13:26] Speaker B: I love that.
[01:13:27] Speaker A: Tell you what else is a shorthand of getting another star out of me. Ratio changes. Give me a fucking aspect ratio shift Use an aspect ratio change to, you know, good effect in your film and that will immediately draw me in. Which this film does.
It kind of. It deploys aspect ratio as a way of emphasizing the fucking landscape.
Even, even people. It, you would, you would normally think, right, we'll go to full screen when there's like you know, huge kind of natural beauty or there's a wide shot or there's loads of action that you want to fit in. Nah, this film goes to widescreen. This film goes to kind of full frame to illustrate kind of character moments you'll have. It'll take advantage of the, of the, of the big screen just to show fucking the expression change on someone's face.
[01:14:21] Speaker B: Oh.
[01:14:24] Speaker A: It'S such a beautiful film.
And that's before you even get into that wonderful, wonderful thing with, where one performer plays two roles but you, you know, you immediately know which is which on screen before they utter a word.
Characterization, physicality and costume are just so, so, so powerfully and subtly deployed in this film. You know, exactly. The people that you talk to, you know, their history, you know, the, the. Oh, it's, it's beautiful and beautiful and beautiful and rich.
And that's before you even get into the subject matter of the film itself. The, the music of this film.
Surprising, right? Even though I'd seen that trailer fucking every time I went to the cinema for seemingly the past six months or more, it, it doesn't tell you shit.
[01:15:23] Speaker B: No, not at all. Yeah, that was what I told you when, you know, I first, you were like, I've seen that trailer too much. I was like, trust me, it did not give you any information about trailer doesn't tell you. You don't know what you're in for.
[01:15:34] Speaker A: And even if you, even if you go one level beyond what the trailer tells you and you. Okay, so it's a kind of a black lens vampire film that. Way more, way more going on. Way, way more going on. Can we talk about it? Can we talk about the film itself? Are we allowed yet as the statue.
[01:15:50] Speaker B: I'll give a timestamp and we will. Yeah, let's. So if you have not seen Sinners yet, it is now out on digital.
So fucking watch. I've watched it twice this week and pre ordered the Blu Ray which comes out next, next month. I might watch it again tonight. We'll see.
But let's. I'm timestamping you now and just skip forward on the timestamp and you will come back in after we have discussed this.
[01:16:16] Speaker A: The.
The nexus of music in the juke joint where you've got, like, what might be Bootsy Collins. When you've got Run dmc, when you've.
[01:16:26] Speaker B: Got kind of a Hendrix.
[01:16:27] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You've got native African, you know, music of black origin. Performers from every fucking era of music sharing this Nexus.
[01:16:39] Speaker B: This is the moment when you're suddenly like, this is a different movie than I thought.
[01:16:42] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Just unreal. Just pulling on fucking threads throughout history and culture to tell you just the power that these people wield.
You know, it's. Which goes completely outside because it's almost like a period piece up to that point, right? Very much so. You know, like I said, it's got period detail. And even though a lot of that visual kind of period is sketched in with cg, you wouldn't know it. The best CG is the one you don't notice, and you don't for a second notice that this is like a digital landscape, but when it. It kind of steps outside of space time.
And in that barn, in that joint, they create, like I said, this.
I think of it as what. Which Star Trek film is it? Generations, where you've got the Nexus, where time and space convene in one fucking one. Crossroads.
Ah, my jaw hit the floor. Just so inventive, so creative.
[01:17:47] Speaker B: Yeah. That was what I said about seeing the movie the first time, is that that scene, my mouth was like. My jaw literally dropped, and I was just sitting there, open mouth, watching this. Like, I've never seen that.
[01:17:57] Speaker A: This. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:17:58] Speaker B: I've never seen anything.
[01:17:59] Speaker A: Exactly, exactly. That. The thrill of the new. Like, nothing you've seen before. And then outside, the vampires are doing the same thing, you know what I mean? With their fucking plinky, plunky little banjo folk tunes.
And then, of course, then it's. Then it's dusk till dawn. It's 1930s. Dusk till dawn breaks out.
Just fantastic. And the ending, the postscript is that. Buddy guy.
[01:18:30] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is. I. I watched a little interview thing about this and. And Buddy guy actually can't read.
[01:18:38] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:18:39] Speaker B: Really? He, you know, left school when he was in, like, third grade or something like that, you know, so when Ryan Coogler asked him to be in this, he was like, I don't. I don't know if I'm gonna be able to, like, say my lines or anything like that, but it ends up being so moving.
[01:18:53] Speaker A: Oh, that postscript scene with him, wonderful.
Where, you know, it brings the entire thing full circle and just, honestly, it does. It brings tears to your eyes. Even though everything that happened before that, before the sun went down, that was the best day of my life, you know?
Fucking stunning. We've got a sequel on a plate.
[01:19:15] Speaker B: Which he said he's not gonna do. He's not gonna do any sequels.
[01:19:20] Speaker A: I want someone. I want someone to. Just because I love the world so much.
[01:19:23] Speaker B: I know the world is incredible. I would love. My thing is, I would love a, like, adjacent film about the Choctaw.
[01:19:30] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah, for sure.
Yes.
[01:19:33] Speaker B: Yeah. Who?
[01:19:34] Speaker A: Like, Vampire Hunters. Native American vampire hunters.
[01:19:36] Speaker B: Yeah. Native American Vampire Hunters. I'm like. I would love.
[01:19:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:19:40] Speaker B: That movie, you know, but he. Yeah, he's. He said he's not doing sequels or prequels to this, and. And that's fine because it's also a perfect movie.
[01:19:50] Speaker A: Oh.
[01:19:50] Speaker B: It is itself.
[01:19:51] Speaker A: It is.
[01:19:51] Speaker B: The world is so incredible that it's hard not to want more of it.
[01:19:55] Speaker A: Well, let's. Let's wait and see. I mean, maybe the incredible kind of reaction that film has got might.
[01:20:00] Speaker B: Right.
[01:20:02] Speaker A: Change some hearts and minds about that. And I'm sure the money truck won't hurt either.
[01:20:06] Speaker B: Sure.
Say that. That, you know, postscript to it as well always gets me in. In a way that I've always kind of been fascinated by, like, movies in which someone. Movies, stories, books, things like that. About the idea of immortality.
[01:20:21] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:20:21] Speaker B: And things like that. And these two generations of people coming up against each other who started in the same place is such, like. It really makes you think about mortality.
[01:20:31] Speaker A: Yes, it does.
[01:20:32] Speaker B: You know, see these two young people and this old man who was younger than them.
[01:20:37] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:20:38] Speaker B: You know, 60, 70 years ago was. You know, it just. There's something that. That brings up in me to think about, like, time and its passage, you know, and the. The way we approach that and what it feels like.
[01:20:52] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. That. That. That postscript just completely upends the power balance of the whole film, you know, now we are forever younger than you. The way that fucking. Is it Smoke or Stack where he fucking sniffs him and goes. Yeah, yeah. Your time's. Time's running out. Just. Yeah, I loved it.
[01:21:11] Speaker B: Yeah. Great movie.
[01:21:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:21:13] Speaker B: So end of spoilers and whatnot.
If you have not seen that, you gotta.
[01:21:19] Speaker A: Yeah, you do. You really gotta.
[01:21:21] Speaker B: Yeah, it's still in theaters. Like, it's. It's in my indie theater here. It's in IMAX in some places and stuff like that, so you can still go see it on the big screen. And I recommend it.
One of these nights when Kyo is actually Home. We're gonna have to put it up in the backyard and watch it on this big screen again.
I cannot get enough of that movie.
[01:21:43] Speaker A: And there's. There's so much more to talk about with it as well.
[01:21:45] Speaker B: I mean, yeah, we're only scratching the surface of Sinners. I don't know, maybe. Maybe we'll sidecast about it. Maybe we'll just talk to about it with each other. But there's so much to discuss with Sinners.
[01:21:57] Speaker A: There is.
Did we watch anything else together? I mean, we did.
[01:22:02] Speaker B: Yeah. Yesterday.
[01:22:03] Speaker A: On the other hand.
[01:22:04] Speaker B: Yeah. On the other hand, not everything warrants that much conversation.
[01:22:08] Speaker A: I'll sketch out the process between my choosing Hell Hole on Shudder. Last night we were gonna watch a movie together. Then we weren't, and then, you know, because it's half term, the kids are up, blah, blah, blah.
So this was a quick grab. This was a quick scan through Shudder. Oh, this looks interesting. A kind of a Serbian.
[01:22:30] Speaker B: It's not really Serbian. It just takes place in Serbia.
[01:22:34] Speaker A: Is it not Serbian?
[01:22:36] Speaker B: No, because the family who made it, the Addams Family, are American.
[01:22:40] Speaker A: Okay, fine.
[01:22:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:22:42] Speaker A: So in Serbia. Well, let me ask you this, right? Dare to imagine, just dare to try and conceptualize what if in a Serbian fracking site.
Right. I can tell you're hooked already.
The drilling operation uncovers an ancient kind of squid type mollusk parasite which possesses its host often through the anal cavity.
[01:23:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:23:20] Speaker A: Through the anus.
[01:23:21] Speaker B: In and out in there. Real willy nilly.
[01:23:22] Speaker A: Yep. And you know, fucking hilarity ensues. Not. It's. It's. It's not as good as I've made it seem.
[01:23:34] Speaker B: No. But I think it's also not as bad. I mean, here's the thing. I have never seen any of the other Adam Stanley movies, but other people seem to really like them, and they all say that this is their weakest movie.
[01:23:43] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:23:44] Speaker B: And so that makes me want to check out the other ones, because I thought with this one, it had a lot of potential. I really liked the acting in it. I liked the, you know, the people felt very relatable. Yes. Yeah, super relatable in it. Like, the way that people reacted to things felt like exactly the kind of dumbass reactions we would have in this situation. You know, it felt like they were drawn really well.
I liked when they did do practical effects. They were really well done.
[01:24:12] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:24:13] Speaker B: There. The CGI is terrible.
[01:24:15] Speaker A: The CGI is terrible. But they did. At least they went to the trouble of making a puppet, Right?
[01:24:20] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[01:24:21] Speaker A: So you do get some gloriously Stupid squeaky noises.
[01:24:26] Speaker B: Yeah. And so I enjoyed that element of it, the puppet.
[01:24:30] Speaker A: If you'd like. If you'd like to conceptualize how the puppet looks. If you're a fan of the band gwa, pour one out for Dave Brocky.
Before he died, Gwar had a bit where Odorous's cock was an entity in and of itself known as the Cuttlefish of Cthulhu. Right.
This is Odous's dick. And it looks like that.
[01:24:55] Speaker B: There you go.
[01:24:56] Speaker A: Looks like that.
[01:24:58] Speaker B: If you don't want to go to the trouble of watching the movie, just.
[01:25:01] Speaker A: Watching some GWA videos and it's.
[01:25:03] Speaker B: Watch the excellent Guar documentary. Yeah, that is also on shudder.
[01:25:07] Speaker A: Right? Yeah, yeah, it is, it is.
[01:25:10] Speaker B: But yeah. So, you know, I think it has a lot of things going for it, but.
[01:25:14] Speaker A: But they're all superseded by the crime of being boring.
[01:25:19] Speaker B: Yeah. It grinds to a halt and starts getting very talky for the majority of the middle of the movie.
And that is like. Well, these.
I think that, like, what it's trying to do is good. It's just. There's not. It's not interspersed with enough happening.
[01:25:38] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure.
[01:25:39] Speaker B: That work.
[01:25:39] Speaker A: Plenty of times I've said that low budgets are often the, you know, the. The cause for innovation and for, you know, finding out cool shit you can do on us on a shoestring. This doesn't. This does not rise to that challenge and unfortunately just becomes people standing around talking, which is.
[01:25:56] Speaker B: Yeah. Talking to each other. And I think, like, honestly, I think the things that they're saying are interesting and I like the way it develops a storyline, except that nothing else is going on to balance out that we're just sitting there watching them talk.
So I think, you know, I can see it suffers from like what terrifier suffers from. Even though you love it, but I think you can still acknowledge that, like, it's a one man show and therefore his indulgences go unchecked. So if it's too long, if, you know, whatever about it, nobody's there to check him on it. And this family, it's the same thing, right? Like everything is done by this mom, dad and children.
[01:26:37] Speaker A: Which is a lovely story in itself.
[01:26:39] Speaker B: Yeah. Which I absolutely love. I think that's so great.
But as such, they also don't have like that mediating outside influence to be like, hey, the middle of this super fucking drags, dude, you gotta cut this out.
And I think that, yeah, I'm interested in seeing what else they've made because I think all the bones are there. It's just. They got bogged down.
[01:27:01] Speaker A: Take a second. Right. My brother and I had this really brief exchange a couple of weeks back.
Let's fucking hear it for Shudder for a second, can we?
[01:27:10] Speaker B: I know, right? Yeah.
[01:27:11] Speaker A: Whoa, man. The fact that, right.
Absolute legends of the game, Shudder, they are producing good shit.
Some of the. Some of the Shutter originals over the past couple years have been some of my favorite horror movies in decades. Totally right. Violent nature and so on.
And they offer.
Exactly. Late Night with the Devil. I think that was another really, really excellent, excellent. Horror lovers. Horror.
And on top of all that, you know, there's. You've got Giallo on there. You've got.
They do little. Little.
[01:27:47] Speaker B: Yeah, you got lots of classics.
[01:27:48] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:27:49] Speaker B: Categories like classic documentaries.
[01:27:51] Speaker A: Yes.
Joe Bob and, you know, the fucking.
And. And. Right. I can't remember the last time. In fact, I don't think they've ever, while I've been a Shutter subscriber, raised their prices. Not even fucking.
[01:28:06] Speaker B: Yeah, right. It's super cheap and it stays that way.
[01:28:10] Speaker A: And that means a lot in 2025. That means a fucking lot to me.
[01:28:16] Speaker B: Agreed.
[01:28:17] Speaker A: So. Shudder. I know you're listening. I know you're big fans.
I want to say we're big fans of you.
[01:28:22] Speaker B: We support you. We're big fans. Yes, absolutely.
And so, you know, hey, you could try Hellhole on Shudder. Or I think their other movies are also on there.
[01:28:33] Speaker A: So what was the one?
[01:28:34] Speaker B: Yeah, maybe watch the other one.
[01:28:35] Speaker A: Was it called Man Fish?
[01:28:37] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:28:37] Speaker A: Right. Sometimes in the. Kind of. In the deep grass of the Shudder kind of scroll wheel.
[01:28:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:28:45] Speaker A: You'll just hit on one and get your fucking socks blown off.
[01:28:48] Speaker B: Huge winner. Yeah.
[01:28:50] Speaker A: Unfortunately, Hell Hollow is in that film.
[01:28:52] Speaker B: No, watch Man Fish, though.
[01:28:54] Speaker A: Dude, please watch.
[01:28:55] Speaker B: Looking for something? Watch Man Fish. It's so great.
[01:28:58] Speaker A: That's what. That's what I'm saying. When, you know, low budget breeds invention and heart. You know, that's what. That's when you get something fucking ridiculously good, like lionfish. But, you know.
You know what I'm saying.
[01:29:12] Speaker B: Yeah, you fucking know.
[01:29:14] Speaker A: You fucking know what I'm saying Here.
[01:29:18] Speaker B: I also made you download Omen 2 and 3.
[01:29:23] Speaker A: Yeah. What was that about? Talk me through.
Why I.
[01:29:29] Speaker B: For some reason, I was watching something and it referenced it. And then I saw Sam Neill was in Omen 3. And I have kind of been wanting to do like, a sequel Sam Neill Binge lately. Like a young Sam Neill Binge, because there's been kind of like a meme going around essentially about Spielberg's casting for Jurassic park and it's like, hey, why don't we get the girl from all the David lynch movies and the guy in all those, like, fucked up horror movies.
[01:29:58] Speaker A: What's the one called?
[01:29:59] Speaker B: The weird guy from the Cronenberg movie.
[01:30:01] Speaker A: Phenomenon is our gender. Which one is it? What is it called?
[01:30:03] Speaker B: Possession.
[01:30:04] Speaker A: Possession. That's the one.
[01:30:05] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:30:06] Speaker A: He's the guy.
[01:30:07] Speaker B: He's the guy, yes. You got Laura Dern, the Lynch lady. You got Goldblum, the Cronenberg guy, and you've got Possession Sam Neill in this. Like, what on earth is this a really good point.
And so, yeah, it kind of made me want to, like, watch some of those other old weird Sam Neill things, stuff like that. So he is in the third Omen movie, which I'm only partway through. I then got interrupted by something else. But I did watch Omen 2, which is pretty good. It's just Damien is like the title, title of it.
And, you know, I think there's like a little too much going on. It's doing a lot of things. There's like all this sort of political intrigue and things like that, like, going on in this. And you're watching like, basically young Damien, like teenage Damien, and he's in like military school, coming up through military school.
And he's kind. You kind of like empathize with him in this one, right? Like, he's not a little shit. Like he is in the Omen here. Like, oh, this kid, like, he's just. He's just a teenager trying to figure things out with his bestie and all that stuff.
[01:31:16] Speaker A: Does he. Does he know that he's Satan?
[01:31:20] Speaker B: Over the course of this movie, I think it becomes clear to him. And he eventually sees the symbol.
[01:31:25] Speaker A: Sure, okay.
[01:31:26] Speaker B: On his head and all that stuff. So. So he's like kind of discovering who he really is over the course of this movie.
[01:31:31] Speaker A: Nice.
[01:31:33] Speaker B: And so then of course, kind of put it when I was. I can't remember if it was on Letterbosch, if I was talking to someone else about it, but that it feels like the Omen movies walked so Final Destination could run.
[01:31:46] Speaker A: Ah, I can see that.
[01:31:49] Speaker B: One of the great things about those movies is just the unhinged deaths that happen in them at Damien's, you know, hands or mind as is. Right. You know, so nobody ever just like dies in like a really normal way.
It's like someone gets attached to like the hitch on a front of a train and the train starts rolling and then it crashes into the back of another One, they get severed in half, things like that. Like, so it has really good deaths, just like the first one does.
And, you know, an interesting story. It was. It was a good time. Omen 2 is. Is fun. And now I just have to finish Omen 3, which is where he's really coming into. You know, he's an adult. It's Sam Neill, and he is, like, fully formed Antichrist now.
[01:32:31] Speaker A: I think I've mixed up two recent movies in my head. Right. So, okay, which is the one?
Is it Possession? No, not Possession. What's the one with Sydney Sweeney?
[01:32:44] Speaker B: The fucking. I don't remember what it's called.
I was gonna say the Last Exorcism, but that's not.
[01:32:52] Speaker A: I've mixed up that one.
And the first Omen, which is the one where they're Jurassic Parking, Satan in the basement, where they.
[01:33:00] Speaker B: That. That's the Sydney Sweeney, right?
[01:33:02] Speaker A: That's not the first Omen.
[01:33:03] Speaker B: Yeah, no, right, yeah. Which. I think the First Omen is the better version of those two movies, which are the same.
[01:33:10] Speaker A: Oh, the First Omen was awesome.
[01:33:13] Speaker B: Yeah. Surprisingly. Yeah. What is that called?
[01:33:17] Speaker A: You sure it's not called Possession Possessed.
[01:33:20] Speaker B: It's not called Possession? No.
I'm sorry to everyone who is currently yelling the title of this movie. Immaculate right now. Immaculate. There you go. I can see where you were getting.
[01:33:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:33:33] Speaker B: Possession from there.
Yeah. But so I watched that, and then I got to the theater to go and see Friendship.
[01:33:43] Speaker A: Oh, fantastic. And I've got my Tim Robinson shirt on right now, in fact.
[01:33:47] Speaker B: I didn't know you had a Tim Robinson shirt.
It just says Tim Robinson.
[01:33:51] Speaker A: It does, yeah.
[01:33:51] Speaker B: Amazing.
Yeah. I went to see Friendship, and, you know, it is one of the funniest things I have ever seen in my life. I laughed my ass off. The whole crowd was in stitches the whole time. There's some beats at the end that happen in such a way that I was laughing so hard I was having trouble recovering from a line.
And then they hit with a physical comedy moment, and I was gone.
[01:34:21] Speaker A: I need it.
[01:34:22] Speaker B: When I left the theater, I was, like, sobbing and snorting and trying to breathe. I was like, I. I can't recover from this. What I will say about it is, it's 2A24.
[01:34:38] Speaker A: Challenge accepted.
[01:34:40] Speaker B: Yeah. It's like it slows down and does nothing for long periods of time, where, if you're watching, I think you should leave. Like, a lot of times you're sitting in the awkwardness of a joke for a long time. This doesn't do that. It'll cut A joke. Right. As soon as it's made. Right. Like, it doesn't let you linger on a joke, but it will let you sit in nothing happening for long periods of time.
[01:35:04] Speaker A: Fine, Fine.
[01:35:05] Speaker B: You're just selling it to me.
Yeah. Like. Yeah, you might. You might love that about it. It just feels very much like it when it's trying to tell the story.
It is deeply boring and uninteresting.
The story isn't coherent. There isn't a conflict.
Like, there are conflicts, but there is not a conflict in this movie.
[01:35:28] Speaker A: Again, you're just describing a deeply interesting and unusual film to me.
[01:35:32] Speaker B: Yeah, it's not unusual. It's very. A24. It's like watching any A24 movie, but with Tim Robbins and bits shoved in every 10, 15 minutes or so. Both Kyo and I said, like, I had. So, you know I have a pee timer.
Yeah. So I started at the beginning of the movie and it tells me when it's safe to get up and it tells me what happened during that, you know, scene or whatever.
And when I got up to go to the bathroom and looked at the pee timer, I was sure that we had to be like an hour and 15 minutes into this movie. And it was like 29 minutes. And Kyo said the same thing afterwards. He was like. It was. It was fun, it was funny. But about a half hour in, I thought we were at the end of the movie. I was like, I know. It is so goddamn slow.
[01:36:19] Speaker A: And there is. There is not a fucking.
A suggestion of a UK release date yet.
[01:36:27] Speaker B: That is a bummer. Like, listen, I. It is worth seeing for how goddamn funny it is when it leans into. It's. I think you should leave moments.
It's just when it's not doing. I think you should leave. It has no idea what it's doing.
And it's. Yeah.
[01:36:46] Speaker A: Genuinely, all you've done is just made me even more interested.
[01:36:49] Speaker B: Yeah. You have more patience for that artsy bullshit.
[01:36:54] Speaker A: I do, yeah. Yeah. It's one of the things I really like.
[01:36:57] Speaker B: Yeah. You love to be fucking bored during a movie.
[01:37:01] Speaker A: No, no, no.
I enjoy not being handed everything on a plate. I don't. I. You know.
[01:37:08] Speaker B: Oh, it's handed to you. There's again, there's nothing like subtle or anything about this movie. It's. It's just slow. It's just incredibly slow. There's nothing happening again.
[01:37:17] Speaker A: A lot of this movie, just violent nature. I'll just keep going back to that movie. That's, you know.
[01:37:24] Speaker B: Yeah, well. Well, which, you know, my complaint about it is not the slowness. I thought it should have been slower, but friendship.
Very, very funny.
[01:37:32] Speaker A: Awesome.
[01:37:33] Speaker B: Like I said, had a hard time recovering afterwards from the movie.
[01:37:38] Speaker A: That, that's, that's it for movies. But there is, there is more.
[01:37:43] Speaker B: There's two more. Yeah. I think television wise.
[01:37:50] Speaker A: I don't know where to begin with mine. I don't know where to begin with the Ocean Gate documentary.
[01:37:59] Speaker B: Implosion, the Titanic sub disaster which aired on Discovery Channel this past Wednesday. Which was obviously, you know, a mid year birthday present to both of us.
[01:38:10] Speaker A: Yeah, completely. And I'll at the risk of contradicting what I said about 40 minutes ago in not, not reveling in, you know, high profile and, and unusual deaths.
[01:38:28] Speaker B: I mean, if there's anything you take from this particular documentary about it, it's that Stockton Rush deserved to die as much as anyone has ever died. Deserved to die. That is a terrible human being. And it's unfortunate he took a bunch of other people with him on that journey, including, you know, a teenager.
[01:38:49] Speaker A: Yeah, of course.
[01:38:50] Speaker B: But that man had to go.
[01:38:53] Speaker A: But I mean, if, if you think, you know, just how fucking unhinged, deranged, just completely divorced from reality, if you think, you know, how bad it was with that guy, then I put it to you that this documentary is worth a watch.
[01:39:13] Speaker B: Because no idea.
[01:39:14] Speaker A: You have no fucking clue. Utter disregard, utter, utter disregard. Lost completely to his own ego and hubris and reputation and inflated ideas of what it, what he was and what he was doing.
Yeah, just categorically disregarding and ignoring physics and, you know, safety and, and humanity in the quest for what? Exactly. For.
[01:39:45] Speaker B: All right, who Exactly. Because one of the things this points out is that Stockton Rush was not interested in the Titanic. And it's easy to think he might be considering like his wife is like a descendant of.
[01:39:57] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:39:57] Speaker B: A descendant of people who died on the Titanic.
[01:40:00] Speaker A: Was it Macy's? I think her grandparents owned Macy's and were on the Titanic. Yes.
[01:40:06] Speaker B: Right. So you would think it's like, oh, it's like a personal thing. And it's not. It's absolutely not. He just wants to like be the guy who does this thing.
[01:40:16] Speaker A: It was the first time I'd heard of something called the Bohemian Club. That was a new one to me.
[01:40:21] Speaker B: Which was incredible because I talked about this when you were gone to Ryan two weeks ago.
Yeah, this was, this was wild. I was watching this and I was like, I had no idea this existed till two weeks ago. And it turned out Stockton Rush's father was the president of the Bohemian Club, which was the group that, when I talked about that literary cult in Carmel, California, a couple weeks ago, they were members of the Bohemian Club, who's gone out there and done their little occult ritual and whatnot together.
Yeah.
[01:40:56] Speaker A: Who put Crazy Connection, apparently put some money his way and invested in Ocean Gate.
You know, the speculation that the debts were racking up and the fucking PR was getting too bad. So he was just plowing ahead. Plowing ahead, plowing ahead.
[01:41:09] Speaker B: Let's just go.
[01:41:10] Speaker A: But. Right. Yeah.
[01:41:11] Speaker B: As this thing was noticeably breaking more and more on every single test dive that he did.
[01:41:18] Speaker A: There were. There were. There was at least one occasion I watched this with Laura and Owen. Right. Laura, who's got a kind of. She loves air crash investigation, as you all know.
[01:41:25] Speaker B: So this is a good disaster. Yeah.
[01:41:28] Speaker A: And you know, Owen. Owen was in for the ride as well. There were a few times during this documentary where I kind of made a joke that. Oh, yeah, he's probably. Probably did that as well, didn't he? And then to. Then they announced in the document that that's exactly what he did. Like after.
After one of.
After one of the seasons ended and they had to kind of dock the sub over the winter, I offhandedly, jokingly said, oh, no, he's probably gonna leave it in a car park. And he fucking did.
[01:41:56] Speaker B: He did.
[01:41:57] Speaker A: He left this fucking incredibly finely tuned, expensive piece of shit in a fucking open air car park during winter.
[01:42:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:42:08] Speaker A: In like Seattle or something.
[01:42:09] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:42:10] Speaker A: Pissing it down with rain, freezing, expanding, and just started using it again after the winter.
[01:42:19] Speaker B: Yeah. You're not like, listen, I was saying to Mark before this that I think I have watched every television special that has been made so far about the Titan. Like, obviously I haven't seen every YouTube video or things like that about the Titan, but when it comes to things that have aired on television, I have watched every single one. And still it. This was beyond.
[01:42:42] Speaker A: It's incredible, you know?
[01:42:43] Speaker B: No idea.
[01:42:44] Speaker A: Some of the eyewitness reports of failed launches were almost comedic tragicomics. How fucking inept.
[01:42:50] Speaker B: Exactly.
[01:42:50] Speaker A: They were just the dome at the front falling off because they had to put the screws in properly.
You know the geezer from Expedition Impossible.
[01:42:59] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:42:59] Speaker A: Josh just turning up, taking one ride in the thing and being like, cancel the fucking show.
[01:43:04] Speaker B: Calling Discovery Channel and being like, where? I'm falling on my sword here. We're not doing this.
[01:43:08] Speaker A: Yep. If we publicize this guy, we are enabling deaths to happen.
[01:43:12] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:43:12] Speaker A: This guy's a fucking lunatic. No chance. And he is the. The. You Know, if. If you. If you think. You know how inept and out of control that whole setup. Setup was, you don't. It was wild. Just wild.
[01:43:25] Speaker B: Yeah. The PlayStation controller was tip of the iceberg.
[01:43:28] Speaker A: Yeah, that's the. Yeah.
[01:43:28] Speaker B: I don't even think they mention it in this. That's how unhinged all of this was. So that the implosion, the Titanic sub disaster, you can probably. I'm sure it's on Max.
[01:43:39] Speaker A: I think this is probably the only example of a time when I want the Netflix documentary to be nine episodes.
[01:43:46] Speaker B: Right. Yeah, exactly. And I think it's not. I think it's just a. Like a motherfucker hour doc or whatever.
[01:43:51] Speaker A: The one time I want you to stretch this shit.
[01:43:55] Speaker B: Yeah. Seriously.
[01:43:57] Speaker A: Yeah. Really cool stuff.
[01:43:59] Speaker B: And then the other thing that you watched, I just think is funny because I suggested it to you and you so quickly dismissed me.
[01:44:06] Speaker A: There's a pattern here. That happens a lot.
[01:44:09] Speaker B: This does happen a lot. I was like, hey, Mark, there's a new Fred and Rose documentary on Netflix, and it has a lot of good footage in it. And you responded to something like, I have nothing left to learn.
[01:44:22] Speaker A: I am a Fred and Rose scholar. There is no more that I can learn from this case. Thank you. Thank you.
[01:44:29] Speaker B: Okay.
[01:44:29] Speaker A: Yeah. But, no, I was wrong, and I'll qualify it. I mean, I didn't learn anything new.
[01:44:35] Speaker B: No. Yeah. It's not new information.
[01:44:38] Speaker A: No.
[01:44:38] Speaker B: But that's not why this is interesting.
[01:44:41] Speaker A: It is.
It is always fascinating to dive back into that case because there's. I. You know, in my lifetime, there's been nothing like it in. In Britain. It's the most incredible, layered, complex, dark, horrible case of, you know, of. Of rape and torture and murder. And over decades, over decades.
Netflix did come up with the goods, though, in terms of footage and video and photographs that. That were just brand new had never seen the light of day before.
[01:45:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:45:17] Speaker A: You know, from within.
They were a family, right? You know. Yeah, they were a family.
[01:45:25] Speaker B: And, I mean, they're talking to, like, a neighbor, which I think is from old footage as well, but, you know, where she's just kind of like, you know, Rose, I knew she was, like, a prostitute or whatever, but, like, hey, that's their business and everything, like. And that's fine.
We just. That's not the level I knew them on. I knew the family, and whatever they did was their own business.
[01:45:46] Speaker A: The last episode has interviews with Stephen West, Fred's surviving son.
[01:45:51] Speaker B: I was really surprised by that because I think he doesn't usually appear in Stuff he keeps pretty low profile.
[01:45:57] Speaker A: Yeah. Incredible, isn't it? Incredible how alike they look.
[01:46:02] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. He doesn't look as trolly as Fred west does. He's, you know, a much more like normal looking guy. But you can tell that is Fred west kid.
[01:46:14] Speaker A: But yeah. Incredible to have to. To have testimony from a living kind of survivor of that family. Mad.
[01:46:21] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:46:22] Speaker A: And yeah, that was the angle I took away from that. It's a fascinating case, but. But again, if you lived in that, you know, we all, we all, we've all reached adulthood. Thinking back and thinking, wow, there's some up things my family did that seemed perfectly normal at the time because, yeah, it was your family. And that must have been how it was for the Wests. It's just what we do in this house, you know.
[01:46:43] Speaker B: Yeah. Even if you're aware of things kind of like I don't like it or things like that, it's still, it's clear they didn't recognize how abnormal all of this was.
[01:46:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
And I inhaled the three hours of that in a hotel last week. I just.
[01:47:03] Speaker B: Nice.
[01:47:03] Speaker A: And it was late, you know, way past my bedtime. I'm normally quite fastidious. Half 11.
[01:47:07] Speaker B: Yeah, you are.
[01:47:08] Speaker A: But I couldn't, I couldn't. I couldn't put it down. Fascinating.
[01:47:11] Speaker B: Yeah, really interesting. So that's on the Netflix. Check it out.
[01:47:15] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:47:19] Speaker B: So, Marco.
[01:47:21] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. This is my topic, isn't it? This is.
[01:47:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:47:26] Speaker A: What do I. What, what am I. What I want to bring to the table here.
It's.
It's the one problem that I think it's impossible to solve, isn't it? It's the one truth that it's impossible to square away, really.
That all of the things that you think matter, don't.
That's certainly what I grapple with anyway.
I'm sure other people will come at it from a different angle, but all of the things that seem to be so important aren't because you can't hide the fact that it ends right. There's no escaping it. There's no hiding from it. There's no. You can't lie to yourself.
Death is an immutable truth.
And when you pull on that thread like I have so often, your death and your descendants and their descendants, and then the society that we live in and amongst, and even the world that we live on and even the fucking. The planetary systems and galaxies that we inhabit, the clock is ticking on it all.
[01:48:39] Speaker B: It's true.
[01:48:40] Speaker A: And I struggle with that.
I always, I always have you know, I always have it.
[01:48:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:48:48] Speaker A: Ever since we've started this cast, it's always bubbling under the surface of my mind.
And it can be. It can be a defense mechanism as well as a downer. You know, you. When. When things are going shit in work, you know what I mean, Or I'm not sleeping very well or whatever. You know, they even use the exact line in the first Terminator movie in hundred years. Who's gonna care? Right? Everything that can be seen as a good and a bad thing.
So I think often about what matters and about what you leave behind.
[01:49:25] Speaker B: Right? Yeah.
[01:49:26] Speaker A: You know, is it futile to even try to etch a mark on inevitability?
What is, you know, what is that? I'm paraphrasing and I don't even know where the quote comes from, but, you know, man makes plans and God laughs, right?
[01:49:53] Speaker B: Yeah, totally. Is.
[01:49:54] Speaker A: Is it. Is it. Is it futile to try and Is the very word, the very notion of legacy, permanence, hereditary, is.
Is that all futile?
[01:50:12] Speaker B: Yeah.
It's interesting because it is such a huge drive when you think about humanity and history and things like that. If people have seen Hamilton, that's kind of one of the central themes of that. What is a legacy? It's planting seeds in a garden that you'll never get to see.
And what that means for people can be so many different things. Whether that's, you know, I want to leave generally a better world behind when I go, or I want to have children that carry on my family name, or I want everyone to read about me in their textbooks or things like that. There are so many different levels of how people try to almost stave off mortality through the idea that something is going to live on beyond them.
[01:51:13] Speaker A: And even that, you know, feels hubristic and pointless because the textbooks that they write, they too will become.
Nothing will all be gone, you know?
[01:51:25] Speaker B: Right.
[01:51:26] Speaker A: Rather than seeking permanence, all you're doing is delaying just infinitesimally something which is inevitable. Inevitability is immutable. The idea that of ending is utterly, utterly undeniable. There is nothing you can do about it.
[01:51:44] Speaker B: Right. And one of the things that I always think is interesting too is the idea, let's say, you know, let's say for as long as humans exist, right. You are so important that there is some idea of you, right. At some point, you know, you become some sort of ship of Theseus. You where you're pieces of things that people have built you into and you're an idea. Right. Like, what do we really know about Plato and Aristotle and things like that, right? Like, what do we know about Jesus and the disciples and the Bible's writers and things like that? These are, at this point, our own constructions that we have rebuilt and rebuilt over time.
[01:52:28] Speaker A: Not even ours, until we have the ones that we've consumed from other sources, from other.
[01:52:32] Speaker B: Right. Like they're pieces of what one person said here and one person said here and one culture said here to the point where we have no idea whether the thing. The person that we know about now bears any resemblance to what that person once was. What is that legacy if eventually you're gonna be telephoned out of existence, you know?
[01:52:55] Speaker A: And what I.
I mean, the. The. The place where I land on this really, is that I'm. I. I'll cue this up with a quote, right?
A. A playwright and an artist who I studied briefly in college 80 million years ago.
Guy by the name of Eugenion.
Absurdist, surrealist, doesn't matter. But a quote of his that I love is only the ephemeral is of lasting value, right?
And that's kind of where I draw comfort from the. The ridiculousness of it is the point. That's the whole point, right? It doesn't. Recording that something happened isn't important. It's that it happened. That's the important thing. That's what has value.
The fact that it vanishes and that there is nothing. That's. That's what makes this click of a finger, this blink of an eye, that's what makes it brilliant, is that it's completely pointless.
And I love that. I fucking adore that.
And I also adore some of the attempts that people have made to just grab some kind of comfort and. And to grab some kind of.
Just to take a shot in the dark at something after them.
To make something just.
[01:54:21] Speaker B: There's one like quote that. That always makes me think of from this very obscure movie called dancer. Texas, population 81, right?
[01:54:31] Speaker A: Never heard of it.
[01:54:32] Speaker B: Came out in 1998. Yeah. Nobody has.
It has the cast. It's really famous. Ethan Embry, Peter Facinelli, Brecken Meyer. Like, it's got famous people in it. Who's the gal from the Last of Us video game?
[01:54:49] Speaker A: The girl from the video game?
[01:54:52] Speaker B: Yeah. The one who plays.
[01:54:53] Speaker A: Oh, Bella Ramsey.
[01:54:55] Speaker B: No, the video game.
[01:54:56] Speaker A: Oh, I don't know.
[01:54:57] Speaker B: Not the television show. Okay, well, she's in it, but there's. There's a part of it where Ethan Embry plays this character named Squirrel, and he is standing with another one of the characters looking up at the sky. And he says, you know, he says, let me get this straight. The universe was chaos, right.
And now, billions of billions of years later, it works out so that me and my father, the drunk, live in a trailer on the outskirts of Dancer, Texas.
[01:55:23] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[01:55:24] Speaker B: And the. The other guy says to him, you know, what's your point?
To which he responds, something like, my point?
Well, there is no point.
[01:55:35] Speaker A: Yeah, that's my point. That's it. That is it.
[01:55:37] Speaker B: Exactly.
And that always sticks with me all these years later. You know, one of those things I kind of memorized from a movie back in the day, because it really, you know, hit me like that's such a. You know, that was a thing, of course, at that time, that I was also terrified of, but also just this moment of clarity that this character has of kind of like, you know, all of this chaos. And it comes down to me living here in a trailer with a drunk. What does that mean? Doesn't mean anything.
[01:56:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:56:08] Speaker B: It's just how things shook out. Right.
[01:56:11] Speaker A: And in case.
In case this hasn't become clear yet, what these conversations between Us Weekly are for me is that is. Is because these will outlive us.
[01:56:23] Speaker B: Right? Yeah.
[01:56:24] Speaker A: You know, in. In whatever form the Internet is forever. These will be. These will outlive both of us.
You know, obviously it isn't forever, but it's. It's. It's longer than it lasts, longer than.
[01:56:37] Speaker B: We get, longer than we are.
[01:56:39] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
So us talking these things through every weekend, that. That's what this is for me. It's. It's something that will exist after I'm gone.
That's why it's so important to me that we do this.
[01:56:53] Speaker B: I like that.
But you were going to talk about. I interrupted you before. You were going to talk about.
[01:56:58] Speaker A: I mean, there.
[01:56:59] Speaker B: One such case.
[01:57:00] Speaker A: Well, I've got.
Isn't it. It's. It's inspirational to me when people approach this question, this unsquarable circle, with a little bit of theatricality and aplomb, you know?
[01:57:18] Speaker B: Sure.
[01:57:19] Speaker A: I'll talk briefly about a guy, a British guy by the name of Jeremy Bentham.
So, yes. Turn of the 17th to the 18th century. He died in the 1830s.
Guy was a philosopher. He was one of the founders of what became known as utilitarianism. Is that a word that is familiar to you? This idea that the. The. The best thing to do is always the thing which is of benefit to most people.
You can help people out. That's the thing you should do. That's my understanding of it now, ahead of his time in some of his views. He was a prison reformist.
He argued for animal rights, decriminalizing homosexuality. Grew a bunch of lads for that time of, you know, for that, for that time of history.
But this utilitarian mindset played out in his wishes for his mortal remains.
Designed his own death, designed his own kind of posthumous impact.
Wrote a very detailed will with the instructions that his body would be created into something which he called an auto icon. Right, an auto icon, A kind of a preserved figure dressed in his. His clothes preserved as his actual remains, almost as a tool that could, that could educate and almost entertain future generations. Right, yeah. In his will, he insisted that a good friend of his, a doctor with the name of Thomas Southwood, firstly he was to be publicly dissected in a lecture theater. Wrote that down, have to do it.
And after that dissection, he determined that his skeleton was to be reassembled, padded out, dressed in his clothes, in a suit, with his walking stick, all of which took place.
The head preservation didn't work, right?
Possibly an apocryphal tale, but some sources say that for in the years leading up to his death, he walked around carrying in his pocket the two glass eyes that were to be used in the preservation of his own head.
[01:59:50] Speaker B: Sure as you do.
[01:59:52] Speaker A: Very cool. But yeah, the head preservation went all too fucking.
They used, they tried to use a kind of a Maori head shrinking practice on him. Didn't work. It was horrible.
The result was quote, distressing.
[02:00:07] Speaker B: Can you imagine?
Oh, oh no. Oh, what have we done?
[02:00:11] Speaker A: But here's the thing, right?
In 1850, so like 20 odd years after his death, the auto icon in a glass kind of museum grade case was donated to University College London.
And it's there still in the student center, so in public view.
[02:00:33] Speaker B: That's amazing.
[02:00:34] Speaker A: All of the student body, it fucking sits there right now with a wax effigy of his head on top of the. Of the shoulders. But fully dressed with his walking stick. He's there in a fucking case with, you know, with like a. With multimedia content you can look at underneath, talking about his life.
[02:00:53] Speaker B: You should go see it next time you're at work, Dan.
[02:00:55] Speaker A: That would be a great idea. That is an absolutely great idea.
[02:00:57] Speaker B: That'd be amazing.
Get us some pictures of Jeremy Bentham.
[02:01:00] Speaker A: One time in 2013, he was actually wheeled into a meeting.
[02:01:08] Speaker B: I love the sense of humor about it.
[02:01:11] Speaker A: To mark the retirement of one of the board, there he was wheeled into a meeting.
Just one time only he was marked as present but not voted.
[02:01:22] Speaker B: See, this is what I relate to. Let me kind of frame my sort of take on this, because a thing that I've always said is that, like, obviously people are going to forget who I am and things like that. You know, Dee Snyder won't make such a.
[02:01:38] Speaker A: Anytime soon.
[02:01:39] Speaker B: Dee Snyder won't. Fucking ruined his life. He's gonna die before me. So, you know, he's. He's, you know, at least hopefully. But, you know, I think I don't even have, like, kids that I'm, like, passing on whatever to and things like that.
And so the one thing that I've always thought about is that, like, I've always liked the idea of having a gravestone that said something funny on it, right? So that when people are grieving, they walk through and they see that grave and it makes them laugh.
Something like that. You know, something where the. The legacy that I leave behind is one that is just people get some kind of joy out of whatever my corpse is doing, you know, that kind of thing.
And so one guy that I really sort of relate to was an eccentric multimillionaire by the name of Charles Vance Miller.
And this guy died with lots of money and no heirs. And he was apparently a bit of a prankster in life. And he decided in death as well, in life he would do things like he would, like, hide behind a bush and drop money and then watch people pick it up just to, like, see how they reacted, you know?
And just like, he thought of it as, like, this funny little social experiment.
[02:03:04] Speaker A: The floor trick. Very nice, right?
[02:03:06] Speaker B: Yeah. Except, like, he didn't take it or any. Like, the money was there, they could grab it. He just liked seeing how people reacted to money. He had a lot of money. Money was of no consequence to him, but he realized it's real important to everyone else.
So a lot of times he was interested in seeing how people reacted to money. So when he died, he had a will that had some very silly things in it.
So, for example, he left his stock in his. In a brewery and an entire racetrack to a group of prohibitionist Protestant ministers. So people who would have been absolutely against breweries and racetracks. He left those things to them, which I think is amazing.
He also left $500 to a housekeeper who was already dead. Oh, yeah, he.
He gave a holiday estate in Jamaica to three lawyers that hated each other on the condition that they all live there together.
Beautiful hell.
But the thing that he is most known for is the thing that came to be known as the Great Toronto State Stork. Derby. It's kind of a hard phrase to say stork derby, but. So the great Toronto Stork Derby was a stipulation in his will that said that in the 10 years between his debt, like, between his death and 10 years later, he would bequeath the rest of his fortune, which is equivalent to about $10 million in today's money, to whatever Toronto mother had given birth to the most children. Wow. In that period of time, which started a little baby boom in Toronto as people tried to have enough kids to get this $10 million equivalent from his will.
And in the end, he, you know, he had stipulated that if there are multiple who have the same amount, you know, they should split that. And there were all kinds of, like, legal things, you know, when this 10 years were up, about, like. Well, do, like, stillborns count? Or what about illegitimate kids, kids born out of wedlock? Like, what exactly qualifies here?
So in the end, there ended up being a tie between Annie Catherine Smith, Kathleen Ellen Nagle, Lucy Ellis Timlek, and Isabel Mary MacLean, who each gave birth to nine kids during that decade. So basically a kid a year. As soon as they heard about this, they were like, let's f. Cking go.
Started making kids. No multiples, just each had nine kids. And they all got about $125,000 or. Well, yeah, these four all got about $125,000 each, which is around $2 million by today's standards. Just crazy. Just for having these babies. Big risk.
[02:06:11] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[02:06:12] Speaker B: But, you know, they had this. And then two others received smaller amounts as their stillborn illegitimate. Illegitimate or unregistered children were not counted in their totals. Still got some money for the whole thing.
The amount was enough for the mothers to buy new houses and to pay for their children's educations.
[02:06:32] Speaker A: Superb.
[02:06:33] Speaker B: I love this. This is. This is the kind of thing that I'm like, you want to leave. You want to leave a legacy? You know, it's a little irresponsible, right? Like, because plenty.
[02:06:42] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[02:06:42] Speaker B: Probably had all those children who could not afford to have all those kids. And I don't know if he thought that people were actually going to go through with this. Some people think it was, like, a statement that was supposed to be about, like, the state should provide contraceptives for people and all these kinds of things. Like, so, you know, there's certainly a dark side to this thing, but ultimately, I love that he had a will that was dedicated.
[02:07:06] Speaker A: It's intentionality, isn't it?
[02:07:08] Speaker B: It's yeah, right. It's. He wanted to bring joy to people. He wanted to prank people. He wanted to have fun with his will. And that is the kind of thing I think it'd be cool to be remembered for.
[02:07:19] Speaker A: Yes, I completely agree. And not to want to go out on a dark note, but I. I desperately, desperately hope I have advance warning and the presence of mind to almost manage my own demise.
[02:07:39] Speaker B: Right. Yeah.
[02:07:42] Speaker A: Do you know what I mean?
Yeah.
It's a scenario I often play out in my head. It's something that I really hope I have the wherewithal remaining at the end to do something funny.
[02:07:57] Speaker B: I don't know if I want to have, like, that kind of, like, advance notice or what, you know, I obviously, I think I would love to just be like, a regular, like my grandma. Just, like, die in your sleep kind of thing.
[02:08:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
[02:08:08] Speaker B: I know. Maybe without the dementia she had for a year or so beforehand.
But, like. Yeah, I don't know that I really want to know. But I do, like, want to, you know, be ready in some way like this, you know, like, for it to be like. Yeah, I know. It's at least. It's at least on the horizon.
[02:08:28] Speaker A: Yes, yes. So the moment can be prepared for it.
Now, I'm. I have. I have one more up my sleeve, but I'm gonna save it because it's my opening next week and it's quite a tale.
[02:08:39] Speaker B: Oh. Oh, okay.
[02:08:41] Speaker A: It's one. It's one that affected me quite a lot today when I was reading about it. It's a wonderful, wonderful story about a French guy from a few hundred years ago.
[02:08:51] Speaker B: Wonderful.
[02:08:51] Speaker A: Yes. But I will save that next week. But, friends, I'd love to hear what your wishes are for your legacy, if indeed the words. If indeed the very word isn't laughable, you know?
[02:09:05] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Very much would love to hear how you feel about it.
[02:09:09] Speaker A: Yes. And if you've learned one thing from this week, buckle up. You know, watch it on tv.
[02:09:17] Speaker B: Yes.
[02:09:18] Speaker A: Cars come at you fast.
[02:09:20] Speaker B: Car's a weapon.
[02:09:22] Speaker A: And stay spooky.
