Ep. 232: the united states of concentration camps

Show Notes

In dishonor of the grand opening of the U.S. government’s latest concentration camp, Corrigan tells Marko about her country’s long history of displacement and internment.

Highlights:

[0:00] Corrigan tells Marko about Japanese internment and other instances of American concentration camps
[01:10:23] We rave about Pete, Marko asks a question about the end of the world, Marko has swapped vaping for a new vice, CoRri met Joe Pera and Marko met Kris Statlander, Corrigan was on That Other Horror Podcast
[01:33:25] What we watched: Independence Day, Clown in a Cornfield, Copycat, The Surfer, House of Wax, Reservoir Dogs, Sin City, Bring Her Back

Stuff we referenced:

Episode Transcript

[00:00:04] Speaker A: Have you heard about this new alligator Alcatraz, Marco? [00:00:08] Speaker B: All right, yes. So I know that Donald J. Trump, in, you know, like he does, tossed off some idea about reopening Alcatraz. Is that correct? [00:00:21] Speaker A: Not quite. [00:00:23] Speaker B: Did he not, like, around about the election time? It was one of the. One of the gibberish things. [00:00:28] Speaker A: Yeah, I guess he did back in the day. Talk about that. Now that I think about it, he's. He's gotten over that. That's a terrible idea. In fact, I think we might have talked about that on here. Alcatraz absolutely cannot be reopened. Anyone who has been to Alcatraz can look at that place and go, nope, that's a bad idea. There are reasons they closed it. [00:00:48] Speaker B: You say that. I mean, there's one particular view of that place which is nothing but fun and awesome, frankly, and a great ride. Sean Connery and Ed Harris and Nicolas Cage. [00:00:59] Speaker A: Well, sure. However, if you look at that place now, which is a tourist destination, it's. It's busted. Like, the amount of money it would take to, like, fix that in any meaningful way. Just not gonna happen. But no alligator Alcatraz, I guess, is his redirect from this. Right. So this hasn't really. This hasn't been all over your news the past couple weeks. [00:01:27] Speaker B: The. The term has for sure. Yes. Okay, gotcha. So look, before we go, just before we really start to go down this route. [00:01:36] Speaker A: Right, sure. [00:01:36] Speaker B: How. What. What is in this for me? Am I going to be hurt? Am I going to be. Am I going to cry? [00:01:43] Speaker A: To expect from this episode. This episode. I think this. This opener right here is going to introduce you to things about the United States that, you know, this place is bad, but I think is going to startle you, okay. That this is a part of our history and our present. So this is. This is a cultural exchange where I'm going to tell you a little bit about what America is and has been that I don't think you know. [00:02:15] Speaker B: Fine. Yep. Okay, great. Great. I just. I wanted to kind of calibrate myself. Exactly. Just work out where I'm headed here. Yeah, please. [00:02:22] Speaker A: Right. [00:02:23] Speaker B: Lead the way. [00:02:24] Speaker A: So, alligator Alcatraz. For context, this is the cutesy name that has been given to a concentration camp for immigrants being built in a remote part of the Everglades in Florida, surrounded by all kinds of natural dangers like mosquitoes, snakes, and of course, Alex, Alligators. [00:02:40] Speaker B: Of course. [00:02:42] Speaker A: And if you know anything about Alcatraz, you know, perhaps from a 90s adventure action movie, you're probably aware that it was built on an island in the San Francisco Bay a little over a mile from the shore in extremely cold and choppy water, full of sharks. In order to make it inescapable. [00:03:02] Speaker B: Yep. [00:03:04] Speaker A: That's what they're intending to do here, I see. Notably, however, Alcatraz was built for heavy hitters. Bank robbers, gangsters, murderers, people like Al Capone. [00:03:18] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. [00:03:18] Speaker A: Sean Gun Kelly. [00:03:19] Speaker B: Yes. [00:03:20] Speaker A: Whitey Bulger. And Robert Stroud, known as the Birdman, who found himself there after stabbing a guard to death in Leavenworth in front of over a thousand other inmates. So kind of your worst of the worst. That's why you put them in a maximum security prison on an island. If guys are like really good at jailbreaking, yeah, you probably want to put them somewhere like that. Illegal immigration is not a major criminal offense in the United States. Like these things. It's legally akin to something more like jaywalking than any of this stuff. But the Trump admin has decided to put forward 5,000 immigrants there as they await deportation on what USA Today describes as, quote, a 39 square mile abandoned airfield strip of the old Dade Collier Training and Transition Airport. [00:04:11] Speaker B: Just give me a bit more physical context. Where are we in the States here? Where is this? [00:04:16] Speaker A: Florida. [00:04:16] Speaker B: Okay. Florida Everglades. [00:04:18] Speaker A: You know what the Everglades are? [00:04:19] Speaker B: Yeah. Kind of swampy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Loads of private boats, just, you know, super hot, super sticky. But what I'm saying is, is this built on shore? Is this an island you have to get out to? Is this. [00:04:34] Speaker A: Well, the White House press secretary, Carolyn Levitt bragged, quote, there is only one road leading in and the only way out is a one way flight. It is isolated and surrounded by dangerous wildlife in unforgiving terrain. [00:04:48] Speaker B: Yikes. [00:04:49] Speaker A: Yep. Needless to say, conservatives are stoked on it. Taking pictures with the Alligator Alcatraz signs on the highway and even buying merch. [00:05:00] Speaker B: It's not. That isn't just like a T shirt. [00:05:03] Speaker A: It's what it's called. Yes. I've been trying to figure out, like, you know, what's the government name of this place? You know, there has to be. [00:05:12] Speaker B: What I've been doing ever since hearing. [00:05:13] Speaker A: The right, like, what is this a nickname for? It's not. That's what it's called. [00:05:18] Speaker B: I see. [00:05:19] Speaker A: It is actively called Alligator Alcatraz, which is insane to me. And like, I refuse to kind of like accept that as a thing. Like I said, it's on an abandoned airfield strip in the Dade Collier Training and Transition Airport. I think we should be calling it the Dade Collier Concentration Camp. [00:05:38] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:05:39] Speaker A: Like, sure, right. Like, let's not sign on to Alligator Alcatraz and be cute about it. Let's. Let's call it where the place is and what it is. Right. Like, maybe that's just me, but like I said, conservatives are taking pictures of the signs and buying merch in order to help raise money for it. [00:06:00] Speaker B: I think I might have a. We'll get there. Coming my way to this question. [00:06:03] Speaker A: Sure. [00:06:05] Speaker B: But in a similar way, as a couple of months back, we looked at the kind of commonly agreed definition of fascism. Is there a loosely held kind of agreement on what is and isn't a concentration camp? Yeah. All right. [00:06:25] Speaker A: Yes, we'll definitely get into that. So someone on Blue sky made a comment that I thought was kind of interesting. They said something to the effect of that they tried to find photos of people, like, smiling and posing at the gates of Auschwitz during the Holocaust, but that apparently even Nazi Germans weren't that gleeful and obviously inhumane. So it's deeply, deeply gross and horrific. And the camp is facing pushback for the obvious reasons as well as environmental concerns and concerns that they will be holding children there. [00:07:01] Speaker B: It's up and running. It's inactive. [00:07:03] Speaker A: Yeah, it's in the process. I think right now they have like 500 people there with a build time of planning to have been like a couple of weeks, something like that. [00:07:14] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay. [00:07:16] Speaker A: Yeah. And so they're, they're starting it, they're opening it up, and they're trying to expand this thing. It's going to cost bajillions of dollars that we will be paying in our taxes in order to create this thing. To hold immigrants for however long, until we can send them to some random country they're not from. Now, holding our immigrants in concentration camps is not new, of course. In fact, liberals were real up in arms about it during Trump's first term and then got real quiet about it when nothing changed during Biden's admin. As Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, aka AOC, said in 2019, this administration has established concentration camps on the southern border of the United States for immigrants where they are being brutalized with dehumanizing conditions and dying. This is not hyperbole. It is the conclusion of expert analysis. And indeed, experts on concentration camps agree that American immigration or immigrant detention centers fit the bill. Holocaust and genocide historian Waltman Wade Boim explained, concentration camps in general have always been designed at the most basic level to separate one group of people from another group, usually because the majority group or the creators of the camp deem the people they're putting in it to be dangerous or undesirable in some way. So people tend to only think of concentration camps as death. [00:08:43] Speaker B: Death camps, of course. [00:08:44] Speaker A: Right. Which, notably, even all of the Nazi camps weren't death camps. Right. Some of them were work camps and people died in them, but they weren't all, you know. Well, specifically sending people there, of course. [00:08:57] Speaker B: It's what concentration means, isn't it? Just a focused mass of people in one place. [00:09:01] Speaker A: Exactly. And so people chafe at the idea of a concentration camp being like, in any way similar to what Nazis are doing. But the central idea of a concentration camp is, like you said, to separate an undesirable group of people from the rest of society without trial, Stripping of them. Of stripping them of their rights, and often treating them horrifically. So the basic idea here is you throw a bunch of people based on a characteristic into a place that separates them from society without a trial. It's not the same thing as, you know, sentencing someone to prison. They have not been charged or, you know, found guilty of a crime and in most cases haven't been charged with any crime. The original concentration camps in the US Were Indian reservations and later Native American boarding schools. And I will go. Go ahead. [00:10:00] Speaker B: Let me think how to phrase this. And I. I don't even know if you'll know or if there's a. If there's a we'll get there or what. But globally, how far back is this practice does this practice reach? I imagine since forever. [00:10:12] Speaker A: Well, not exactly. The term concentration camp is seen to have begun in Cuba, actually, in the 1800s. And so that is, like, kind of the origin of it. I didn't spend a lot of time on that, but I do know that is where the start of the idea of a concentration camp comes from. It's simply something that, if you think of, like, in the past, there wouldn't have been a huge, like, ability to create in a lot of ways. And often kind of, you know, people were enslaved in various cultures and subjugated in many ways. But the idea of this, like, placing a group of people just in a camp away from everybody, with no real purpose except to hold them there, that is seen as having its root in Cuba. Cuba in the 1800s. [00:11:01] Speaker B: Okay. And just while I feel, you know, the edges of the concept here legal, how. How is this happening? [00:11:13] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a good question. [00:11:17] Speaker B: If what you've just said is happening, and I have no reason to doubt you, Corey, you've built up quite A five year reputation with me as a source, as an information source, you know, and if what you say at face value is true and that masses of people without charge or due process, I guess we could call it, are exactly being taken to these places and held presumably against their will, presumably with no legal kind of cause and effect, how is this being allowed? How is this happening? [00:11:51] Speaker A: It's a great question. I'll get to that in a little bit with a certain group that we will talk about here. I think when it comes to like specifically say Trump doing it or honestly, with the whole history of concentration camps in America, it's about exerting executive orders and ignoring what lower or other parts of the checks and balances system say. So, you know, yeah, Congress may say you can't do this, but if the President says, yeah, you can. Yeah, okay. You know, he's in charge of the military. [00:12:29] Speaker B: There's a, there's a stand up bit I quite enjoy about a guy talking about returning his rental car to the airport, right. And them saying, right, you've got to park it in this place, which is like a half a mile walk from the terminal building. Why can't I just drop it off at the terminal? If you want it, you'll go and get it. It's just a rule I don't have to obey. It's not gonna do, is it that kind of. [00:12:50] Speaker A: Essentially. Yeah, that's pretty much, you know, you have to have some political entity that is willing and able to push back. [00:13:02] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:13:03] Speaker A: Against it. Right. That is very difficult because often people agree with it, the government agrees with it, you know, and the question of whether, like constitutionally, legally you can do this becomes sort of irrelevant because nobody who would enforce that is going to put any barriers in place. [00:13:27] Speaker B: It makes a big fucking mockery of the entire edifice, isn't it? [00:13:32] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, if, if there's anything that I think for Americans has been a real wake up call in this second Trump term. [00:13:40] Speaker B: Major, Major far of your entire politics, right. [00:13:45] Speaker A: What everyone has sort of realized is that there are no checks and balances. That is a lie. And I don't know if you, you sort of learn about this, but that's what we learned growing up is that, you know, you've got three branches of government, right? The legislative, the executive and the judicial. And they're supposed to balance each other out so they are equal in power, you know, the courts, the Congress and the President. And what we have found out is that is not true. If the President decides to do the Everyone in those other branches just kind of rolls over. [00:14:20] Speaker B: Yes. [00:14:21] Speaker A: And it's like, well, who's gonna enforce it? [00:14:22] Speaker B: It feels like a kind of a honor system almost. We'll all go by this. Yeah, we all go by it. But what if somebody really wants to do something which is illegal under that system? Why don't you do it anyway? You're gonna do it anyway. [00:14:36] Speaker A: Just do it. Yeah. At least if you have power. Right. And we've seen that happen with, you know, the case recently of Kilmar Abrega Garcia, I think his name was, the fella who was mistakenly sent to the El Salvadorian prison that is notoriously horrendous. He was, you know, beaten and tortured there and subject to all kinds of psychological torture and all that. But he. He wasn't supposed to be. Right. And when, you know, people pointed that out and his lawyers came and were like, you know, he's not charged with the crime. You can't. He has not been through the justice process. He hasn't been, you know, sentenced to anything. You can't just send this guy to El. El Salvador. The Trump administration response was like, but we did it. So, you know, and we, months later, finally did get him back. And what is the Justice Department doing? They're charging him with a crime to try to send him back now, Like. Well, actually he's. We think he did this, though, and he's, like, involved in gangs. Right. [00:15:46] Speaker B: It's unreal to me to hear this, you know. [00:15:49] Speaker A: Yes. See, this is what I, What I was telling you is, you know, this is an episode in which you're going to learn some shit about America that is so contrary to the image of ourselves that we portray to the world. This is antithetical to the place that we want everyone to believe that we are. [00:16:08] Speaker B: Because, hey, look, we have issues with justice here. We have miscarriages of justice. Of course we fucking do. Jesus Christ. A year or two ago, a geezer got out of jail after, fuck me, I think he was in prison for like 20 odd years, accused of rape that he didn't commit. [00:16:27] Speaker A: Right, right. Yeah. There's going to be miscarriages of justice, obviously. [00:16:31] Speaker B: Yes. Happen all over the place. [00:16:34] Speaker A: The Brits are in many ways the template for a lot of this stuff, too. Carrying this out around the world. I mean, also, like, you know, what the British did in South Africa is a model for a lot of the stuff that we do here in terms of concentration camps and things like that. So, you know, but I mean, the Brits do it too. Just not usually on British. That's what I'm saying. [00:16:56] Speaker B: And yes, look, maybe the. Maybe the term concentration camp needs some pr, because it doesn't sound great. [00:17:05] Speaker A: Right, well, we'll talk about that as well, because we don't refer to our concentration camps. [00:17:10] Speaker B: Questions are just firing off in my head here. What if I didn't want to call it Alligator Alcatraz. [00:17:18] Speaker A: Like I said? I would call it by. [00:17:20] Speaker B: The Dade Florida Glade illegal concentration camp project. [00:17:24] Speaker A: Right, exactly. Yeah, I. That's what I would say. It's not. Yeah. Its government name is apparently Alligator Alcatraz, but I would call it by the other thing. [00:17:34] Speaker B: This. What I'm saying is this does feel flagrant. [00:17:38] Speaker A: Yes, extremely. Yeah, very much so. [00:17:42] Speaker B: I don't. I mean, and again, correct me if I'm in any way misled here, but this isn't even something covert. It's not the undercover kind of Florida Glades concentration camp project. It's. [00:17:57] Speaker A: No, yeah, it's. This is their big flagship. They're like. They're telling everybody there's pr. Like I said, there is merch for this. This is a thing that is like. [00:18:06] Speaker B: Yeah, yes, of course. [00:18:08] Speaker A: And. And politicians are tweeting about it and things like that, celebrating it. And, you know, the. That horrible woman who, you know, is kind of like a influencer. Right. Far right influencer. Laura Loomer had posted about, you know, the alligators there will be well fed with like, 65 million. [00:18:31] Speaker B: Sure. [00:18:32] Speaker A: You know, meals or whatever, which refers to all Latinos in America, not just illegal immigrants. There are 65 million Latinos. They're talking about eradicating all of them from the United States, regardless of immigrant immigration status. [00:18:48] Speaker B: That's the point she was making, right? [00:18:50] Speaker A: Yep. 100%. [00:18:53] Speaker B: Because I was about to make the heinous point that surely it's called Alligator Alcatraz because between the shores of this institution are hungry reptiles that will eat and kill you on sight. That's awful. That is an awful thing to name any. [00:19:11] Speaker A: They're acting like. That's cute. [00:19:12] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. [00:19:13] Speaker A: Funny. [00:19:14] Speaker B: But I mean, when. [00:19:15] Speaker A: That's horrifying. [00:19:16] Speaker B: But what. What you've done there is just ruined it completely by openly. Openly. What they're doing is openly saying these alligators are here. What's the word? Ideologically, symbolically, you know, this moat is between races, not land. [00:19:34] Speaker A: Yes, yes, very true. Very, very true. It's a horrifying concept on its face, you know, and that so many people are, like, gleefully behind this. They're so happy to think about the Idea of immigrants being eaten by alligators, you know, it's incredible. I mean, I think one of the things that makes it so shocking is, like, that person was talking about a blue sky. And this is not to rehabilitate the image of N season anyway, but, like, Germans understood that they should pretend they didn't know what was going on. Right. Like, they wanted to be like, oh, I didn't re. I knew, like, they were rounding up Jews, but I didn't know what they were doing in. [00:20:20] Speaker B: Well, that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For many of them, that was the defense, wasn't it? For many, Right. [00:20:24] Speaker A: Like, oh, I had no idea. You know, And Americans aren't doing that. They're going, yes, torture them. Feed them to the gators. Get rid of all of them. We know it's there, and we're happy that it's there. Do your worst to these people. [00:20:39] Speaker B: I see. [00:20:40] Speaker A: Yeah, it's really something. So as I was saying, the original concentration camps in the US Were Indian reservations and later, Native American boarding schools. And I'm gonna go deeper into that in a separate episode because it's worth more than just being a footnote. But I'll give you some of the basics just to get a sense of how long we've been doing this and to whom. So while the first Native American reservation was established in 1786, it was 1830 when things really hit the fan with President Andrew Jackson getting Congress to pass the Indian Removal act, which forced the natives to leave the United States and move out to Indian territory west of the Mississippi River. I would just like to point out, too, I just read that book Careless People about Meta. And Mark Zuckerberg's favorite president is Andrew Jackson. He likes to tell people, okay, thank you. [00:21:33] Speaker B: Thank you. [00:21:36] Speaker A: So obviously, we hadn't expanded that far out west yet. So that area west of the Mississippi wasn't part of the United States. And various Cherokee tribes came together to bring the issue to the Supreme Court, where SCOTUS actually ruled in their favor, saying the government couldn't force them onto these reservations. The central reasoning that they were being removed, after all, was because gold had been found on their land, and the state of Georgia was trying to sell it off to whites via lottery. So not legally sound. And the Supreme Court was like, yeah, you can't do that. Other groups of natives, however, had signed treaties with the US that gave the government the authority to assist them in moving to Indian territory. The deadline for all of this came in 1838. And this is gonna blow your mind, Mark, but the US Government didn't respect the Cherokee's legal win. [00:22:28] Speaker B: No, I don't believe that for a moment. [00:22:31] Speaker A: In fact, President Jackson was quoted as saying, quote, chief Justice John Marshall has made his decision. Let him enforce it now if he can. He couldn't. So there's your answer to how does this happen legally? The President says go ahead and try and enforce it. Yeah, test me. [00:22:52] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's literally what is happening now? Literally. [00:22:55] Speaker A: Yes, exactly. So instead, as the Library of Congress explains, thousands of federal soldiers and Georgia volunteers entered the territory and forcibly relocated the Cherokees. Some hunting, imprisoning, assaulting and murdering Cherokees during the process. The ones who survived that onslaught were forced on a 1000 mile march to the established Indian territory with few provisions. The National Park Service explains families were separated, the elderly and ill forced out at gunpoint. People given only moments to collect their cherished possessions. White looters followed, ransacking homesteads as the Cherokees were led away. This journey came to be known as the Trail of Tears. [00:23:44] Speaker B: They made him walk a thousand miles. [00:23:46] Speaker A: Walk on foot with very little food, water, anything not prepared for, you know what this journey would entail. [00:23:56] Speaker B: And the last thing you see as you set off is your house getting fucking smashed in by looters. [00:24:00] Speaker A: Exactly right. How horrific is that thought? You're just walking away as someone is destroying everything that you've made on land your family has lived on for tens of thousands of years. Pretty horrifying. So some 4,000 Cherokees died on that journey, which was nearly a fifth of the entire Cherokee population. And as you can imagine, a large number of those were the vulnerable babies, the ill and the elderly. Meanwhile, between 1830 and 1850, some 100,000 natives from other tribes living between Michigan, Louisiana and Florida also were moved west, usually as a result of treaties they were coerced into under threat of military actions. Basically a sign this or die situation, they weren't given like a whole lot of Choice here. Some 3,500 Creek Indians died in Alabama on the journey. And according to the National Park Service, along with terrible treatment, some of them were even transported in chains, which is totally how you transport people with whom Yuvtot signed a very cool and non problematic treaty in chains. In total, it's estimated about 15,000 Native Americans died just in traveling from their homes to the reservations. Obviously, considering the whole point of the Indian Removal act was to get the natives off of land that was rich in resources or agriculturally abundant, they didn't send them to super nice digs and soon the government was like it isn't enough to put them on shitty reservations out of our sight. We've actually gotta kill these people, whether through actual physical death or through assimilation. [00:25:40] Speaker B: Yep. [00:25:42] Speaker A: During the National Conference of Charities and correction in 1892, Captain Richard Henry Pratt uttered a phrase in a speech that has become, kill the Indian in him and save the man. This became the justification for stealing native children who were already living in these open air concentration camps and taking them to boarding schools where, if they were lucky, they'd have their language and traditions beaten out of them. As we keep finding out, more and more, the unlucky ones died en masse. Nearly a thousand at minimum, between 1871 and 1969. 1969, less than a decade before you were born, Native American children were being forced into re education camps where they were brutalized and murdered. This happened in Canada as well. But like I said, I will dedicate a full open to these things because there's so much to talk about and they deserve really fleshing out. But all this is to say that the entire project of westward expansion in the United States relied on the internment and removal of Native Americans. And this lasted from the late 18th century to the mid 20th. Our treatment of our indigenous people was so brutal that Hitler cited it as inspiration for his own concentration camps. [00:27:10] Speaker B: Yeah, I saw that recently. [00:27:12] Speaker A: Yeah. As Hitler biographer John Toland wrote, he often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America's extermination by starvation and uneven combat of the red savages who could not be tamed by captivity. He was very interested in the way the Indian population had rapidly declined due to epidemics and starvation when the United States government forced them to live on the reservations. He thought the American government's forced migrations of the Indians over great distances to barren reservation land was a deliberate policy of extermination. And it absolutely was. So he then emulated this. You know, those long walks of Jewish people and whatnot to these camps that would kill them along the way are modeled after us delivering Indians to. [00:27:59] Speaker B: Is that taught in school, Corrigan? [00:28:04] Speaker A: No, of course not. [00:28:06] Speaker B: Is that the man on the street's understanding of what transpired? [00:28:11] Speaker A: No, no, definitely not. I think, you know, depending on where you're from, what you will have learned about this is going to be different. [00:28:21] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:28:23] Speaker A: And I think, say, you know, I am. I'm a coastal elite. Right. I grew up in Massachusetts and then in California to ostensibly liberal places, more so Massachusetts than California, where by the time I was in high school, I would say we started to learn that what had happened to the Native Americans was bad. And we learned that the Trail of. [00:28:49] Speaker B: Tears had happened in high school, though. [00:28:52] Speaker A: In high school. When I was in elementary school, we were still doing the, like, Thanksgiving thing where we, you know, make little hats with construction paper and feathers on them to look like Indians and stuff like that. I would imagine kids don't do that in Massachusetts school schools now, 30 something years later. [00:29:09] Speaker B: What if I told you. What if I fucking told you that I have a memory of doing that? [00:29:15] Speaker A: The. The feather thing? Yes, weirdly. And. And this would be an interesting thing. I don't know whether you should tackle it or I should, but there is a really fascinating connection between Brits and Western imagery, specifically of Native Americans. [00:29:31] Speaker B: All I could. All I could give you is, like, the vaguest sketch of a memory of a memory. But there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that at one point in school, towards the end of a term, towards the end of, like, maybe going into summer, like, days before we were. Before school would end and we'd break up or whatever, we all made air quotes at the time. Indian headdresses, right? [00:30:00] Speaker A: Yeah, totally. [00:30:02] Speaker B: Cutting out different colored feathers, sticking them on. On a. On a headband. There you go. You're. You're. You're a red Indian, right? [00:30:10] Speaker A: Yeah. And then, you know, even one of the articles I was reading was talking about even, like, Hitler played cowboys and Indians when he was a kid. You know, like the. The imagery of the American west was so pervasive all over the world, and Brits certainly were very into it, and this kind of, you know, cartoonish idea of cowboys versus Indians and things like that, you know. Yeah, it's. It's fascinating the way that that kind of spread. [00:30:40] Speaker B: One of the first comics I ever read as a kid, the Beano British tradition, still running now, got to be 60, 70 years old. One of the regular weekly strips was about a Native American kid. [00:30:55] Speaker A: Yeah, there you go. It's fascinating. And it would be worth kind of looking into, like, what is the deal with the Brits and Native Americans? Because I'm sure there's something fascinating to that history. But, you know, I would also bet that, like, your kids didn't do that, right? [00:31:14] Speaker B: Absolutely not. [00:31:15] Speaker A: I think there's been a lot of changes in the 30 to 40 years since we were elementary schoolers. Yeah. And an understanding that, like, maybe that's, you know, cultural appropriation is a bad idea and there's maybe something complicated about this whole history. I think there's probably still parts of the United States that are More hostile to the idea that we did anything wrong that would still do that and might not then learn about the Trail of Tears or like, this was. So, you know, my. My husband's family is extremely conservative and, you know, very Christian. And one time, I don't even remember how it came up, but his dad said something about, like, you know, the Trail of Tears. Like, yeah, it was, you know, terrible for the Indians or whatever, but it ultimately, like, served God's purpose of, you know, America being able to spread Christianity throughout the United States. And that's the kind of thing you're. [00:32:10] Speaker B: Gonna fucking say that, aren't you? [00:32:13] Speaker A: That's. That's the kind of thing that, like, if you're going to a Christian school, will be in your textbook. [00:32:17] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:32:17] Speaker A: Like, yeah, maybe America did, but ultimately it was saved to the Indians. [00:32:22] Speaker B: Well, the reason I ask isn't really to know the answer because obviously, you know. [00:32:27] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:32:28] Speaker B: But if. If that isn't so much hidden knowledge. Right. If it's out there and freely available, it is wild to me that North America, the usa, then ascends the way it does globally. A country with that on its ledger is then allowed to maintain the position that it is maintained throughout my lifetime at the head of the world table, leader of the free world. [00:33:01] Speaker A: Yeah. And this is not going to be the last time this happens. [00:33:03] Speaker B: No, certainly not. Certainly not. Well, of course it continues to happen. [00:33:08] Speaker A: And I think if you go back to, you know, our episode during the sort of Palestine series, the first one, where I sort of began by talking about American imperialism and the way we kind of disguised it. [00:33:20] Speaker B: Yes. [00:33:22] Speaker A: Our sort of PR for ourselves has always been very effective in covering up the degrees of these. These sins, you know, and thinking, you know, at the time that this was occurring, certainly, you know, if you asked Brits, they wouldn't have thought there was anything bad about this. You know, they would have been like, yeah, good move. That's probably a wise way to get rid of these people. And obviously Hitler's watching and going, yeah, that's a good idea. Looking at it now, of course, we look back and, oh, yeah, that's bad. You know, sure. If this were happening currently like this, you know, it might seem like everybody should rally against us, which I think is at least to some degree, at least ideologically, I think a lot of places are against us now, even if they're still sort of allies because of our various. [00:34:19] Speaker B: It's so fascinating to talk to somebody of another land and listen to them go, well, with a bit of luck, everyone will now rally against us, which I think is happening. So, you know. [00:34:30] Speaker A: Right, yeah, cross my fingers. Yeah, it is, it is, I suppose, kind of, yeah. You don't expect someone necessarily to be like, oh boy, I hope somebody stands up to us. But like, we need it, you know, it is more than time. But at the time that this particular incident was occurring, I think that, you know, if you were talking to most white Europeans, they wouldn't necessarily have found like a huge problem with it. If you look at narratives of discovery, of course. Yeah, right. Like, how did, how did America get here? Like, it was a bunch of explorers coming over here and murdering and pillaging and raping and whatnot until they owned the land and slaving and all of that kind of stuff. You know, we're only, what was it, like 1830s, 1840s, that Britain got rid of slavery somewhere in that general vicinity, Maybe a little before that. But like, so you're not looking at a bunch of people abroad who have like super good moral compasses. [00:35:30] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:35:31] Speaker A: About this kind of thing, which I think is part of why this carried on. Like I said, you know, the Brits were doing this in South Africa and other groups were doing it elsewhere. Certainly the Portuguese and the, the Dutch had done terrible shit like this in various places. So, you know, that's how this was allowed to happen. And America was still. [00:35:53] Speaker B: Yes. [00:35:54] Speaker A: A force. [00:35:54] Speaker B: Yes. So to the point, to the point where some 70 odd years later, they kind of think, we can do it again. [00:36:04] Speaker A: Right, let's try it again, see what happens. Right, exactly. Or as I will continue to tell you, through this, we have never super stopped doing it. So while Hitler was modeling his grand plan for Europe, after what we'd done to our native population, we went ahead and started up more concentration camps, this time ostensibly to fight him and the other enemies during that time. So on December 7, 1942, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. [00:36:40] Speaker B: Yep. [00:36:41] Speaker A: A naval base on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. The thing about the US is we're kind of far away from the wars we get ourselves into, especially by this point in the 20th century. There's no blitz in America. Yeah, yeah, right. We're experiencing the war in Europe through newsreels. We haven't gotten involved yet. Yet. We're like, over here just kind of like we're preparing, but like, we don't know if we really want to get our shit in here. So while Hawaii is still pretty far from the mainland U.S. an attack on our soil was a huge deal and it led to us officially joining the war abroad. But it also led to some real unsavory treatment of folks on our own soil who we perceived as enemies. In the aftermath of the attack, President Roosevelt announced that Germans, Italians and Japanese were to be considered enemy aliens. Anyone from these groups deemed to be a threat to the same again. Japanese, Germans, Italians. Okay, exactly. Who You. [00:37:45] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, of course, of course. [00:37:48] Speaker A: As you can probably imagine, what exactly made someone a threat wasn't super well defined. And the people who would end up in these camps were never found guilty of a single crime. On February 19, 1942. [00:38:01] Speaker B: Never is a big word. Categorically never. [00:38:04] Speaker A: Categorically never. On February 19, 1942, FDR signed Executive Order 9066. I feel like I said Pearl harbor was 42 before, which obviously is not true. It was 41, but. So if I said that, apologies, but. February 19, thanks. Really didn't want to embarrass me in front of my friends. [00:38:25] Speaker B: Take it off. [00:38:27] Speaker A: February 19, 1942, FDR signed Executive Order 9066. This order authorized the removal of anyone who could be a threat from the west coast of the United States to what they called relocation centers further inland. Now, another thing I'll get into at some point on a different episode is things like the Chinese Exclusionary act and other policies that put quota quotas on Asian immigration in the US but the gist of it is that over a quarter of a million Japanese folks had immigrated to the US between the mid 19th and mid 20th centuries, with most coming before 1924 when strict quotas on Asian immigration were put in place. Many of these folks worked on sugarcane plantations in Hawaii, like my husband's family. His grandparents met while living in adjacent camps, not the concentration kind of for sugarcane laborers. And some of those immigrants opened up shops like the very one my father in law now owns in the historic Ishigo Building in Honamu, which was built in 1910. He bought it from the son of the original owner. And the first time I went to Hawaii, Mr. Ishiga was still alive and telling stories from this period. Cute ancient man with little talon like hands sat there and liked to eat his ice cream and laugh in the bakery. But other Japanese immigrants settled on the US west coast where they established ethnic enclaves and largely worked in areas like farming and fishing as well as opening shops. As the US National Archives notes, immigrants have always established enclaves in order to maintain community and support systems. But the ethnic concentration of the Japanese also happened because of racist US policies, both de facto and de jure. For example, Realtors just wouldn't sell to Japanese Americans anywhere but inside of these enclaves. And in 1913, California restricted land ownership to people eligible to be citizens of the U.S. asian immigrants were not. So when the Japanese struck Pearl Harbor, White west coasters were already in just give me a reason mode when it came to Japanese Americans. While he didn't really need much pushing, white people from the west coast who saw Japanese people as either economic competition or racial undesirables petitioned FDR to move the Issei, or foreign born first generation in the US Japanese and the Nisei, the second generation who were born in the US and therefore citizens by birthright somewhere else. And this whole group of Japanese, is. [00:41:04] Speaker B: That what you say? [00:41:05] Speaker A: Yeah. So Issei is born outside of the US and came here. First generation Nisei is the second generation born here in America. And all together, you call them Nikkei for any sort of member of the Japanese diaspora. So Congress, as you can imagine, was not sure this was a thing you could do constitutionally. Just get all of these people and send them somewhere else, taking them out of their homes and whatnot. So FDR was like, fuck it, and issued the executive order bypassing Congress and taking it straight to the military. The language didn't specify an ethnic group, mind you, but Lieutenant General John DeWitt of Western Defense Command went ahead and announced curfews specifically for Japanese Americans right out the gate. He then encouraged Japanese folks in certain areas to voluntarily evacuate. And about 7% of them did that. They were like, I don't want any trouble. We're just gonna go somewhere else. At the end of March, though, he issued proclamation number four, which gave 48 hours notice for the forced evacuation and detention of all Japanese Americans on the west coast, violation of which was a misdemeanor that could result in a year of prison or a $5,000 fine. When it comes to forced relocation, though, it's not like you're really given that option. The military shows up at your door with guns and you're just gonna say, now, I'll take the fine. Nah, it's not gonna happen. Only allowed two suitcases each. They fucking went. [00:42:54] Speaker B: This is ing states. This is in your land. [00:43:00] Speaker A: Yes. [00:43:01] Speaker B: Really? Recently? [00:43:03] Speaker A: Yes. Well, my grandparents, all of them, except my matern, my paternal grandmother, were in the war effort, you know, were in various ways serving in the war. This was happening pretty crazy. And again, much like the situation with the Native Americans watching people ransack their house behind them, imagine These people have 48 hours and can bring two suitcases and everything else. They're just waving Goodbye to over 120,000 people. Families, 70,000 of whom were American citizens, were forced into assembly centers over the next six months. As USC law student Mike Makawa explained in retelling the experience of his grandparents, these assembly centers, quote, were often former work camps or fairgrounds where internees were forced to live in horse stalls and barns. Another student, Cynthia Chu's grandmother, recalled being sent on a train with the windows blacked out so that they wouldn't know where they were going. They were then moved from those assembly centers to what we've come to call internment camps. [00:44:10] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:44:11] Speaker A: So sort of to your point before about the naming and whatnot of these places, like, here's why you don't hear people talking about the fact that Americans had concentration camps, because they're internment camps. And honestly, who the fuck knows what internment means? Go ask someone on the street what internment is like. I don't. I don't know. I don't know what that is. So these were concentration camps, places where civilians charged with absolutely no crimes were fenced in and guarded, kept away from the rest of the population for the crime of their ethnicity. There were 10 of these internment camps in Heart Mountain in Wyoming, Tule Lake and Manzanar in California, Topaz in Utah, Postone and Gila river in Arizona, Granada in Colorado, Minidoka in Idaho, and Jerome and Roher in Arkansas. And these places sucked. So. [00:45:14] Speaker B: As aghast as I was to learn that America still considers itself leader of the free world despite having a singular concentration camp episode on their books. [00:45:26] Speaker A: Right? Yep. [00:45:27] Speaker B: It's kind of part of the. Just the way that you do business. [00:45:34] Speaker A: Exactly. That's exactly what I'm saying here, Marco. This is business as usual. [00:45:40] Speaker B: I see. [00:45:41] Speaker A: In the United States. Yeah. And Canada, for that matter. I'm not focusing on Canada here, but a lot of the exact same things that I'm talking about. Also, the Canadian government did, which in this case, I learned about from a show called Bomb Girls that was on Netflix, like, 15 years ago. That's, you know, one of the partners of one of the women on it and was Italian and ended up in a concentration camp. And I was like, hold on, what's going on here? And learned about all of that as well. But much like the natives, they weren't about to put these people on choice pieces of land with lush greenery and serene vibes. They stuck these people in deserts, in barren wastelands, just dust on dust on dust. If you want, just Google the, like, Google image search Japanese internment Camp just to get like a. A visual because they all look the same. They are all like this Japanese concentration camp. Internment. [00:46:44] Speaker B: Oh, internment camp. [00:46:45] Speaker A: We don't call it that. [00:46:46] Speaker B: Yes, of course. [00:46:49] Speaker A: You know, Mikoa's grandmother was interned at Poston, which was nicknamed Toast in Poston due to the desert heat and the sandstorms that beat down on the internees. Are you looking at pictures? [00:47:02] Speaker B: I sure am. [00:47:03] Speaker A: What do you see here when you look at these pictures of these internment gifts? [00:47:07] Speaker B: I think earlier on you used the term horse stalls. [00:47:10] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:47:12] Speaker B: This feels like something similar. These are the tiniest rows, tightly, densely packed, row upon row upon row of. I guess being charitable, you would call it like a chalet, but we wouldn't. [00:47:26] Speaker A: We would call them barracks. [00:47:27] Speaker B: Barracks. That's. Yeah, okay. [00:47:32] Speaker A: Chalet is very charitable. [00:47:34] Speaker B: Yeah. I, I come from a kid who went on a lot of Butlins holidays that would. The chalet means a different thing to us as it does to you. [00:47:41] Speaker A: Okay. [00:47:42] Speaker B: But yes, it's, it's. It's a concentration camp in everything but name. [00:47:49] Speaker A: Right. Like when you look at that, you immediately go, oh, that's a concentration camp for sure. Yeah, yeah. The website Salt river stories describe conditions at Gila camp saying, quote, water, gas and electricity shortages plagued Canal Camp through the throughout the summer. Dust storms and monsoons were common through the hottest months and the overcrowded population struggled to adapt. Summer daytime temperatures soared regularly exceeding 100 Fahrenheit through the months of July and August, which I think is like something like 40C or something like that, like in that general vicinity. That's horrific. Maybe even higher than that. Yeah. The camps had been specifically chosen because they were so remote. And when prisoners arrived, they found themselves surrounded by watchtowers, armed guards and barbed wire. They slept on cots and barracks and shared facilities like bathrooms and laundry with other inmates. Water was only available sometimes and hot water rarely. Some of the places like Wyoming, were freezing in the winter and the barracks were uninsulated. Along with lacking hot water, prisoners were issued a coal burning stove on which they would heat up bland government issued issued food. Which may seem minor in the grand scheme of things, but food is so culturally important. And you know, as a passionate Japanese food fan, this seems so demoralizing. You come from a culture with this incredible food and you're stuck eating what they make for white people in prison every day. You know, like, that's just one of those things. It's like very adds to that injury, right? Yes. And while they were in these miserable camps, many of them, most Lost their homes, their stores, anything that they had owned before. With property loss and net income loss estimated to be in the billions in modern dollars. First lady Eleanor Roosevelt actually visited one of these camps and upon finding the. How atrocious the conditions were, immediately started campaigning to disband the camps. Nobody liked that. [00:49:57] Speaker B: And this was after spending like a morning at 1, right? [00:50:01] Speaker A: Yeah. She spent like a day at Gila camp. It was like, I don't think people should be here. [00:50:07] Speaker B: Tell me something. What was the plan for these particular camps? Because Native Americans, like you've said yourself, the onward plan is put them somewhere we can't see them and then kill them. [00:50:21] Speaker A: Right. Yeah. [00:50:21] Speaker B: But for Japanese, Germans, Italians, what was the fucking plan with these people? You're not gonna wipe out the fucking Germans here. [00:50:29] Speaker A: Right. The idea. And to be clear, while Italians and Germans were put in camps, a much smaller proportion of. [00:50:35] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:50:36] Speaker A: Of course. Much more like not entirely discerning still, people were put without charge and who didn't do anything, but compared to just all Japanese out. [00:50:46] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:50:47] Speaker A: They were not put in that kind of situation. But basically it was. We needed to win the war so that there was no power that they could, you know, like, if you just have Japanese people, but like, Japan isn't a power that is dangerous to us. [00:51:03] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:51:04] Speaker A: Then fine. You know, it was basically waited out until they're not a threat anymore. [00:51:10] Speaker B: Wow. That's nuts. And then what? Free em? No. [00:51:15] Speaker A: Yep. Yes. Yeah, we'll get there. [00:51:20] Speaker B: Yeah. No, I don't doubt it, but you know, when the light goes off and you start to realize. Whoa. [00:51:28] Speaker A: Right. Yeah. This is exactly kind of what I was expecting in terms of. Your reaction to this is just the incredulity. The. Like, how the. Does this work? You know, like what. How is this how America. [00:51:40] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:51:41] Speaker A: Operates. [00:51:42] Speaker B: And what becomes of, you know, these prisoners and their descendants now? [00:51:49] Speaker A: Exactly. Right. Yeah. Well, let's. Let's go on, please. So like I said, nobody liked Eleanor Roosevelt's idea of disbanding these camps. [00:51:59] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:52:00] Speaker A: Since the internees weren't allowed back to their homes, which were in military zones that potential enemies were not allowed in, that would mean that if they were to be released, they'd be living amongst the people near where the camps were in places like Arizona. [00:52:14] Speaker B: Can't have that. [00:52:15] Speaker A: Yeah. The whites were not amenable to the prospect of Japanese settlements in their neighborhoods and made sure that that did not happen. Still, the prisoners did their best to improve conditions for themselves and make like life livable in these camps. Creating small town councils and block governments learning to do agriculture in harsh desert conditions, forming baseball leagues, holding church services, doing school, all of that kind of stuff. They just tried to make life as normal as possible given the circumstances. Nikkei prisoners of the internment camps were issued a loyalty questionnaire intended to aid in recruitment of an all Nisei combat unit. And I highly recommend. I know, yeah, I'm gonna keep going. [00:53:03] Speaker B: On to then fight for. [00:53:04] Speaker A: That's fucking crazy. [00:53:05] Speaker B: America. [00:53:06] Speaker A: Yes, for America. I highly recommend the 1951 movie Go for Broke, which is about the 442nd Regimental Combat Team made up of Nisei soldiers. And some of the stars of the film film were actual members of the 442nd. The movie is notable because it portrays. [00:53:28] Speaker B: Feels like a very tough sell. [00:53:31] Speaker A: Well, yeah, the movie is notable because it portrays Asians positively and shows their heroism at a time when there was. That was pretty much unheard of in Hollywood and in American media. Like, yeah, this was not a thing. You didn't have movies that were like, yay, Japanese people. And this movie starring actual people who fought for our country showed them in that light and. And the sort of horrors of the fact that their families were at home in concentration camps and things like that. It is incredible that this movie exists from 1951. It's very moving, also very funny as well. It's just, it's a great film all around. And so I highly recommend Go for Broke. It's in the public domain so you can watch it on archive.org like it's freely available to you. I used to show it to my classes, but, you know, that's all well and good, I guess, insofar as getting people you are actively putting in concentration camps to join up to defend you in a regiment with an extremely high casualty rate without promising the restoration of their own citizen rights is citizenship rights is good. And well, there were other consequences of the loyalty questionnaire, as the Densho encyclopedia explains. Questions 25, 28 asked whether an individual's birth had been registered in Japan, if the individual had renounced his Japanese citizenship, if the individual would serve in combat duty wherever ordered, and finally, if he would declare loyalty to the United States and renounce allegiance to the Emperor of Japan. [00:55:03] Speaker B: And is this renunciation, Is it a technical thing? Does it need recording? Or do I simply have to loudly say I renounce the Emperor? [00:55:12] Speaker A: Well, you're filling out a questionnaire, but. [00:55:14] Speaker B: The, the very act of writing that down is my act of renunciation. [00:55:19] Speaker A: Right, okay, for now. We'll get to that in a second too. But that's the idea you're basically marking. Okay, I renounce this. Okay, Sweet. [00:55:26] Speaker B: Cool. Okay. [00:55:29] Speaker A: But those last two questions were extremely complicated and fraught to answer. If you recall, as I mentioned, Japanese immigrants, the Issei first generation, were not allowed to become American citizens. So what happens if you renounce your Japanese citizenship, the only citizenship that you actually have? You're now a citizen of nowhere with the protections of nowhere, which is a scary place to be. Right. If you renounce that citizenship, that's it, it's gone. You have no citizenship anywhere in the world. So that was a problematic thing for Japanese people to commit to on this survey. If I fill this out, does that mean that now I have no. I have no rights? [00:56:20] Speaker B: Nothing? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:56:22] Speaker A: In the whole world, no one gives me any rights. Like fucking yikes, man. Young men in the camps worried that if they answered that they were willing to serve, that would be taken as volunteering. [00:56:34] Speaker B: Yep. [00:56:35] Speaker A: They didn't want to do that. A, because duh, they were being imprisoned by this country. Why would they want to fight and die for it? And B, because a lot of them had families. Families who now had no homes, no businesses, nothing to go back to, and who would be royally fucked after the war if their breadwinner died overseas. What's a woman with children supposed to do after that? [00:57:01] Speaker B: Well, yeah, a Japanese woman with children in America. [00:57:04] Speaker A: Japanese woman with children in 1950. Them. Yeah, yeah, right. Many of the people in the camps resisted this registration questionnaire and pushed back for changes in wording that left them less vulnerable. The loyalty question was revived, revised to ask, will you swear to abide by the laws of the United States and take no action which would in any way interfere with the war effort of the United States? States. Fine. That's, you know, why not? But other concerns were met with threats from the government. Rather than changing the language around Nisei combat service to guarantee them the restoration of their citizenship rights. [00:57:46] Speaker B: This would be a roundabout. The formation of the un. Yes. Where the is the un? [00:57:53] Speaker A: Well, we're gonna get to the UN end concentration concentration camps shortly. Some bad news for you, Mark Lewis. Just prepare yourself, like I said. So, you know. Rather than guaranteeing the restoration of Nisei citizen citizenship rights, the prisoners were told that refusing to comply with this draft would cause them to be prosecuted under the Espionage Act. Hilariously, the War Relocation Authority was shocked. Shocked that not only were the Nisei not falling over themselves to fight for their jailers, only 6% of intern Japanese ended up serving voluntarily, but also a shit ton of them. Submitted applications for repatriation and expatriation. Some 16% of the incarcerated Nisei were like, you know what? Just get me the fuck out of this cursed country. And the WRA were flabbergasted. They were like, we did not expect that. We thought they'd just checkity check the box to their very extremely mild credit. Like giving someone credit for pissing on your shoe instead of in your face. [00:59:01] Speaker B: Yes. Yes. [00:59:02] Speaker A: The WRA social scientists recognized that the negative responses to the loyalty questionnaire were a form of resistance against their relocation and imprisonment and not a sign of actual disloyalty. Someone not checking the boxes on there didn't mean that they were hostile to the United States. They were just like, why am I here? This was the pushback that they. They were able to do. Congress, on the other hand, was like, no, if they can't agree to all these things, they are clearly loyal to Japan and passed the denaturalization act of 1944 that allowed citizens to renounce their citizenship during wartime. And all of this served to divide Japanese Americans into categories of loyal and disloyal, which obviously resulted in stigma that was long lasting. Like, Keo remembers kids bullying him on the playground for being responsible for Pearl harbor when he was a kid in the 70s. [00:59:57] Speaker B: Oh, look. [00:59:58] Speaker A: That's how long lasting this was. [01:00:00] Speaker B: It's what I'm. I'm struggling with all of this. But. But the, the logistics of it, the legalities of it, the technicalities of it astound me. Oh, okay, so I've ticked some wrong boxes here. I'm officially disloyal, right? According to who? How is that enforced? How, you know, do I see that? Do I see like a disloyal deduction in my tax? Am I ever going to be free? [01:00:25] Speaker A: Really? This operates off uncertainty, right? Because kind of like to your point of what you asked before is, like, to what end is this? The Japanese people who were incarcerated here didn't know what the end was going to be. Like, when are we going to be released and what is going to happen after that? [01:00:42] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:00:43] Speaker A: So when they made their decisions about what they were marking on that, they were doing it without any sense of, like, what does this mean? What if I'm seen as disloyal after this? Is that going to follow me? [01:00:54] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:00:55] Speaker A: Or is this just something like in the camps, it is what it is. Or, you know, so there's so much uncertainty about what is going to happen to these people, people after the war, and they're kind of making decisions based on like what, what they can bear personally, you know, what risks are they willing to take in the long run? So the camps did close in the months after the war ended, all of them being closed, I think by the end of 1945, I think there was one that was still open until January 1946. [01:01:29] Speaker B: And the immediate next step physically for the intern, for the people who were prison imprisoned there, where do they go directly after? [01:01:37] Speaker A: Well, as I mentioned, the incarcerated didn't have anything to go back to. [01:01:41] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [01:01:42] Speaker A: Their homes, businesses and farms had been sold off and their belongings taken who knows where. And it's worth noting that non Japanese folks in the US were completely fine with all of this. As the Library of Congress notes, quote, no serious explanations were offered as to why no large scale internment of German or Italian Americans ever took place or why internment of people of Japanese destination dissent was necessary on the mainland, but not in Hawaii, where the large Japanese Hawaiian population went largely unmolested. The army was never required to prove that the Americans interned in the camps posed any military threat or that relocation in any way made the nation safer from attack. Their ancestry was considered evidence enough. No Japanese American was ever convicted of any act of sabotage during World War II. So they had spent three years, three years of their lives arbitrarily locked away in camps and everyone thought they deserved it. They faced huge amounts of discrimination and hostility once they returned to society. And ultimately, it wasn't until 1988 that Public Law 100383 acknowledged and apologized for Japanese internment and paid $20,000 to each person who was incarcerated, which hardly seems sufficient for what they had endured and how much they lost. And as I mentioned up front, while these are perhaps the most widely acknowledged concentration camps, even if we call it internment instead, they weren't our first or our last. During the Korean War, America led the UN in putting 150,000 communist prisoners from North Korea and China into concentration camps. And in Vietnam, the US worked with the South Vietnamese government to create strategic hamlets which were heavily policed and controlled in which they allowed guerrillas to surround and fire upon anyone who left. And to this day we've been holding immigrants without charge in even worse conditions than the Japanese faced. While some argue that these don't count as concentration camps because they are being held technically for having committed a crime, not because of their ethnicity, that's a pretty hard sell. You're not finding a bunch of Canadian stoners who overstayed their visa to surf in San Diego. Locked up in these places. No one would Stand for white people facing these conditions, which are a horror show. A 2019 article in GQ detailed some of the treatment which included rotten food causing illness amongst prisoners, migrants being held in kennels facilities holding six times their capacity and separation of families. There have been a dozen deaths in ICE facilities just this year and 52 between 2017 and 2021, 95% of which were found to be preventable if prisoners had received proper medical care. Michael Zenk, head of the Elie Wiesel center for Jewish Studies at Boston University, affirmed Ocasio Cortez's assertion that ICE detention centers are concent camps, adding, quote, how can we be indifferent when we see thousands of innocent civilians fleeing murder and abuse in their countries of origin, rounded up and placed in detention centers? Abused families separated, people placed in cages, children dying. He suggested taking the phrase never again one step further, using a German saying, werret den anfangen, which means resist the beginnings. In other words, we shouldn't wait until the facilities are exactly like the death camps instituted by the Nazis to call them what they are. When it's too late, we need to acknowledge what they are now and fight to end our legacy of putting those we consider undesirable into concentration camps. Thoughts and feelings. [01:05:42] Speaker B: Yeah, very tough to articulate. I, I reached my kind of the. The battery got filled when I realized this wasn't just about like another example of this happening at one point. [01:06:03] Speaker A: Right. Yeah. [01:06:05] Speaker B: That, that this is standard operating procedure. [01:06:09] Speaker A: Right. [01:06:10] Speaker B: Whenever a nation doesn't want people who don't look or sound like it, whatever that means in the way is, is very rough and I mean, I've. It won't shock you to learn that, you know, Britain is decorated with instances like this as well, but I can't see any on our own soil. [01:06:32] Speaker A: Right, yeah, exactly. It's, you know, that distance. It doesn't make it better, obviously, to subjugate other, other nations and colonies and things like that. But what is interesting about it is that there is a reason why you don't know. [01:06:50] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, right. [01:06:51] Speaker A: If you don't know what the boars were doing in South Africa, if you don't know what happened in India, if you don't know whatever from your history, it's because these things were intentionally done thousands of miles from you and not in your, you know, where your people live. [01:07:09] Speaker B: And I, I can't, I can't. [01:07:11] Speaker A: Where it's happened where, where we live. [01:07:14] Speaker B: Words like better and worse maybe cease to apply in these kinds of situations, but I don't know if that is better or worse. [01:07:22] Speaker A: Well. Right. I mean, in either case, it's a distinct process, a deliberate process of obfuscation by the people who educate us and by the government who determines what we learn and things like that. You know, there's a reason we don't know about this. And even looking. [01:07:42] Speaker B: Isn't it interesting as. It just occurs to me that historically, the, you know, the. The. The kind of. The. The language. Internment camp, the language of concentration camp. Which of those is least, you know, the fucking etymology? 2025, Alligator Asylum. [01:08:08] Speaker A: What could be Alcatraz. [01:08:09] Speaker B: Alcatraz, sorry. What could be more reflective? [01:08:13] Speaker A: Right, exactly. Yeah, you've gone from like, it is interesting, this sort of like the language of obfuscation to here's what it is. We're creating this place where we want animals to eat immigrants like that. We. We aren't in any way shielded from this. And I do think that one of the reasons that is so surprising is because of the language that we've used to cover up the fact that we've been doing this for all of American history. You know, if we acknowledge that it's like literally from the moment Columbus got here, we have essentially been doing some version. [01:08:52] Speaker B: It is fascinating to me. People wouldn't be as startled that this current iteration is. Is referred to as a catchphrase, you know, an alliterative. Almost like a kids program. [01:09:02] Speaker A: Right? Yeah. Like, oh, it's quite the cute little alligator. Alcatraz. Yeah, I put it on Nicktoons. [01:09:08] Speaker B: Exactly this. Exactly this. That. I think there's more to be said on that. [01:09:14] Speaker A: Absolutely. [01:09:15] Speaker B: Populism is talking in catchphrases with the simplest number of syllables to, you know, if that's what populism is in 2025, that, then that's clearly what happening here, isn't it? [01:09:26] Speaker A: Yeah, it's. It's a thing that every day I. I think a lot about, you know, kind of marketing fascism in that. [01:09:37] Speaker B: Yes, that's exactly what it is. That is exactly what it is. [01:09:41] Speaker A: We live in a time of branding and we're marketing fascism. [01:09:47] Speaker B: We do live in a time. [01:09:50] Speaker A: We do live in a time. [01:09:53] Speaker B: Let me quote directly from my notes, if I may. Yes, please do fucking look at these nerds. Oh, mise en scene. [01:10:00] Speaker A: I don't think anyone has ever said mise en scene in such a horny way before. [01:10:04] Speaker B: The way I whispered the word sex. [01:10:06] Speaker A: Cannibal received worst comes to worst. Mark, I'm willing to guillotine you for science. [01:10:11] Speaker B: Thank you. That's really, really sweet. It's Cold outside. But my pancreas. He's talking to me. I'm. I'm gonna let it. [01:10:17] Speaker A: You know how I feel about that, Mark. [01:10:19] Speaker B: I think you feel great about it. So here it is. Here it is. Here's this week's episode. Jack of all graves. I am reminded Corrigan podcast, not just of horrors around us and horrors yet to come, but of horrors past. [01:10:38] Speaker A: Yes, indeed. [01:10:40] Speaker B: You know what I mean? [01:10:41] Speaker A: All the horrors. [01:10:43] Speaker B: What hubris to think that we're the only generation to enjoy horrors. Grow up. You know what I mean? Take a look at yourself. Yeah, check your horror privilege. The horrors have existed long before we did, but maybe not so long after. [01:11:01] Speaker A: Hear, hear. [01:11:01] Speaker B: Mmm. Very interesting. So listen, I had a question for you that occurred to me. Welcome, everyone. By the way, that opener affected me quite badly. Just some of the. You know, when you. When you try and look at things through the lens of the people involved. It's fucking horrible, isn't it? That it is what you see behind you as you leave your last memories of your life. [01:11:25] Speaker A: Yeah. This is why. And you know, we won't. We won't spiral further, but I just will say this is why conservatives have such a huge war on empathy right now. And, like, evangelicals are trying to teach that empathy a bad thing and stuff like that. Because for you and I, imagining people in that position is, like, horrifying. To the point is starting to, like, well up. And so it's important to teach people that you shouldn't feel that way about folks. [01:11:55] Speaker B: Yeah, we've done that many episodes now that they keep tying into one another. I know. And we both know that, you know, you don't need divine instruction to not do harm. Of course a moral code exists when there's nobody watching you, when there's no God to look out for you because you know how pain feels. And to inflict it on somebody else would. Would be wrong. [01:12:23] Speaker A: Seems so simple. [01:12:24] Speaker B: It does. It's just incredible that the opposite can be used to justify that. That it's the enactment of God's will. [01:12:32] Speaker A: Right. [01:12:33] Speaker B: The enactment of God's will. [01:12:35] Speaker A: Yeah. A lot of mental gymnastics. [01:12:37] Speaker B: My God. So my will. I don't know. [01:12:41] Speaker A: Well, almost as if that's how it works, isn't it? [01:12:47] Speaker B: Just so. Yeah, I hope. Look, I hope you weren't having too good a day, because, you know, that's what we're here for. You just stop that. [01:12:58] Speaker A: You knew what you signed up for. [01:13:00] Speaker B: You knew every week. You fucking know, don't you? You dirty pig. Yeah, you fucking snow swine. I've passed on all of your kind regards to Peter from last week, by the way. I've done that. [01:13:18] Speaker A: Yes. That was so good. I was, like, genuinely surprised because, you know, I think occasionally Pete wanders in while we're beginning to record an episode and I overhear a conversation or I get to wave or something of that nature, but I don't necessarily get to have like a full conversation with him. So I was so impressed. If you haven't listened to last week's episode, you have to listen to it. Mark talking to his son, who is 14 years old, about kind of what it is like to be a teen now, to go to school, to deal with AI, to deal with social media. [01:13:57] Speaker B: All I sat down with him to do was to chat about Scream and Fear Streets. The rest kind of organically. [01:14:03] Speaker A: Yeah, it all just kind of came. [01:14:04] Speaker B: Out spiral off, which I'm pretty proud of. [01:14:06] Speaker A: You know, he's so incredibly well spoken. I think I texted you and I said something about how it just made me laugh that he properly used the term penultimate in. In the episode. [01:14:20] Speaker B: He did. [01:14:21] Speaker A: He's very thoughtful. He really measured in the way that he answered then careful in his speech. But I also loved hearing kind of reflections of things that you've talked about in your parenting come back out of his mouth, you know, so we've talked, you know, especially early on in this podcast when we were kind of establishing our columns, you know, our left column, right column system for horror movies. Left column being, you know, appropriate for the kidlies and all that kind of stuff. And you, you broached this with him and what does he. What scares him in horror and things like that, which his answers were really interesting. But also he kind of talked about how when he starts to find himself scared or things like that, he also finds himself going, okay, well, how did someone make that? You know, how did they do that? [01:15:15] Speaker B: Just try and zoom out a little bit. [01:15:17] Speaker A: Right? [01:15:17] Speaker B: Just see the people around the camera. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [01:15:20] Speaker A: And I remember you saying, you know, all those years ago that, like, when I'm watching something with my kids, I try to, you know, get them to look at that kind of stuff so that it takes some of that fear out of it. And so to hear him, like, repeat that, to repeat several things throughout this that, like, I know you have made a concentrated effort to talk about with him over the course of his life, I thought was very cool and just. Yeah, I thought it was so interesting to hear him be able to articulate why things scare him. His sort of feeling of Safety and being bubble wrapped and isolated from things. The way that he talked about true crime and the idea of sort of distance between what is happening to people, you know, all this kind of stuff. I just felt he was able to articulate things that adults often aren't able to articulate. [01:16:19] Speaker B: And I mean, literally before we sat down, I just said to him, look, it's not an interview, it's a conversation. And I think that landed with him. It was just absolute pleasure, just an absolute treat. And I've passed on everybody's kind words and he's very, very pleased. So thank you. And you said something which landed, which resonated with me just afterwards. Corrigan, as a podcast, we do tend to do what the fuck we want, don't we? Really? [01:16:40] Speaker A: Yes, exactly. [01:16:44] Speaker B: That's pretty much the formula we've landed on now in year five, we'll pretty much do whatever we want. And I'm, you know, it's, it's deeply rewarding that there are people who seem to enjoy it. So if it works for you. [01:16:56] Speaker A: Exactly. I think that is a wonderful element of it. [01:17:00] Speaker B: Oh, do you want to see something? [01:17:01] Speaker A: I can't be here this week. We're gonna do this. [01:17:03] Speaker B: I've brought something. [01:17:04] Speaker A: We're gonna do this crazy thing and we know our listeners are gonna go along for the ride. [01:17:08] Speaker B: Speaking of doing what I want. Right. So what have you not seen me do this past hour? [01:17:13] Speaker A: Ah, you haven't vaped. [01:17:15] Speaker B: Have a vape. [01:17:17] Speaker A: Oh, my. [01:17:17] Speaker B: Haven't vaped. I think I believe this to be either day five or six off the vapes, Right? No vapes. [01:17:22] Speaker A: Nice. [01:17:23] Speaker B: I'll tell you what I am doing now. I'm going to introduce you to a little something here. If you've seen these little guys, this is a little. [01:17:31] Speaker A: What is that? [01:17:33] Speaker B: Well, this brand, this is a Zyn. [01:17:36] Speaker A: Okay. [01:17:37] Speaker B: Right, Zinn. What you do is. This is a little pouch of nicotine extract. Would you just. Oh, no, fucking shove it under your gum there and you can. [01:17:47] Speaker A: Is that not gonna give you like, mouth cancer? [01:17:49] Speaker B: Apparently not. [01:17:51] Speaker A: Okay. And what's, What's. So it's nicotine and what? [01:17:55] Speaker B: No, literally, just that it's nicotine and nothing else. It's like a nicotine extract and you just leave it there for a little bit like I'm a cowboy. [01:18:07] Speaker A: This feels a little like a lateral move, but hey, whatever works. [01:18:11] Speaker B: No inhalants, so, you know, nothing being inhaled. [01:18:13] Speaker A: No. That's good. Yeah, it's good for good feelings. You know, I always get a little, like, iffy about, like New shit like this where I'm like, I know. Do we know that's not gonna. Your jaw is not gonna fall off as a result? [01:18:25] Speaker B: I think it'll be okay. [01:18:27] Speaker A: What was your question? [01:18:29] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, I think it's been overbuilt now. So would. [01:18:35] Speaker A: We were not talking about it at. [01:18:37] Speaker B: All during the first couple of years of Joe Ag. Right. [01:18:39] Speaker A: I think this is built up. [01:18:40] Speaker B: We just took you through my process during the first couple of years of Joanne, I was quite excited about the idea that the fucking world's gonna end. Right. [01:18:51] Speaker A: Sure. [01:18:52] Speaker B: Whereas what I feel is happening is in shitification is overtaking everything. [01:18:58] Speaker A: Yeah, right. [01:18:59] Speaker B: And again, I. Yeah, okay. I had an onion tied to my belt, which was the style at the time. And I am an old man. I am yelling at clouds. But this is all statistically, factually correct. Things are smaller, things are more expensive. There are ads fucking everywhere. Every moment of you existing is a. It can feel as though you were being mined, almost extracted from. [01:19:24] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:19:25] Speaker B: Permanently. And it feels as though things are just gonna. From my perspective at least, you know, at fucking, you know, was it 11:10 on a Sunday evening. It just. Rather than things ending where I'm at now is seeing us just grinding along worse and worse and worse and worse. [01:19:46] Speaker A: Totally. [01:19:46] Speaker B: Would you prefer the world to end? [01:19:51] Speaker A: This is weirdly a thing that I have somewhat thought about partly. The other night, you know, we were watching Independence Day, naturally, because it was Independence Day, and I caught myself, you know, kind of drifting in my thoughts to. Someone had said on. In reply to my saying that I was going to watch this, like, you know, an object entered our orbit or whatever, you know, or whatever the object did. I didn't Google it. I saw it somewhere on social media as well. But, you know, the same day that it did in the movie Independence Day. And I said something back like, wouldn't it be hilarious if we all got blown up while we were watching aliens blow us up on Independence Day? But that made it so. As I was watching aliens blow us up in Independence Day, I was like, you know, would it be so bad if just like a beam came down and we were all gone? You know, as opposed to slowly slipping into inshittification and concentration camps and, you know, whatever else is going on and just life just being worse. Yeah, on every conceivable level. And like, I mean, I don't think I really think that, but, like, a part of me thinks that. [01:21:13] Speaker B: Yeah, that's. That's kind of where. That's kind of where you find my mind this week. [01:21:18] Speaker A: Right. [01:21:19] Speaker B: Things ain't getting any better. They're never gonna get any. [01:21:21] Speaker A: They're getting so much worse. [01:21:23] Speaker B: So is it. I don't know, Might. Might it be best if it just ended? [01:21:30] Speaker A: And sometimes I think, too, like, it's just feels like there's, like, so many things happening that one way or another, someone is gonna push a button or whatever and it's all gonna end. And it's like, yeah, I don't know. Maybe I'm resigned to the idea that that could happen more than anything else. That's not. You know, we were talking about, like. Like, fears. Cold War fears a few weeks ago. Right. And, you know, kind of your reaction to land war in Europe versus my. [01:21:58] Speaker B: Reaction to it and. [01:22:00] Speaker A: And. And the sort of general generational difference between approaches to. To the idea of nuclear war and things like that. And to a degree, I feel like people between the 40s and the 80s were terrified every day that the nukes were gonna fall. Right. Like, I remember I had one of my professors in my masters. He always talked about how, like, he would write, like, apocalyptic stories and his band sang songs about, like, what would happen at the end of the world and stuff like that. And movies were coming out that were, you know, addressing this. Like, we talked about threads and Red dawn and the. What's the cartoon one? [01:22:44] Speaker B: When the Wind Blows. [01:22:46] Speaker A: When the Wind Blows. Things like that. Like, you were constantly being inundated with this idea because you're doing drills at school and whatnot. And I feel like the difference between now and then is a resignation in that whenever we talk about these kinds of things, there's sort of a like, well, fuck, I guess, you know, people aren't leaving their lives every day in fear of it. It's like, could happen. [01:23:10] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:23:10] Speaker A: More than anything else. [01:23:12] Speaker B: And that. It's so ubiquitous. That doesn't. And look, they'll always. They'll always be open space. There'll always be the fucking smell of a flower and the smile of your loved ones. That stuff ain't going anywhere. But this process of minding that I talk about seem is. Is so ever present. It is so tiring sometimes to feel that everything. Go on. [01:23:38] Speaker A: I was gonna ask if it was you, but I don't think it was you. Someone yesterday, though, had talked about going to see. See, I want to say it was Jurassic World. They went to see something in the movie theater. And there's, like, a new thing now that, like, beyond just, like, the trailers and stuff like that, like, one of the cinema. I think it was amc, like one, our largest cinema chain here is now showing regular commercials before the movies. And this person was like, I can't go anywhere. [01:24:09] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [01:24:10] Speaker A: Without being advertised to. You know, I have to sit here before the movie. I have paid $20 to see and watch 40 minutes of commercials. Like, I can't go anywhere without being commodified, you know, exact. [01:24:27] Speaker B: I mean, yeah, the. All right, it's scumbag company does scumbag things. But it's the most common complaint about WWE at the minute. Like, on a service, you pay for Netflix, right. Every single fucking big performer has a sponsorship deal with whatever they've got going on at the time. So they're advertising to you. [01:24:45] Speaker A: We are all NASCAR now. Like, that's just life. Yeah. [01:24:49] Speaker B: And it's. I don't know, it feels, again, oddly thrilling. That's the joag journey. But rather than. Yeah, I think from a spectator's perspective, I'd rather the world end than carry on like it is. [01:25:10] Speaker A: Yeah, it is. It's one of those things, I think, because of that feeling of, like, how does it. How do we bounce back from this? You know, like, especially on that level, like, we can bounce back from war and shit like that. We've done that in the past. But there's a degree to which the commodification of everything and capitalism of everything. [01:25:33] Speaker B: Proving a tough one to bounce back from. [01:25:36] Speaker A: Right. Like, yeah. It's destroying the planet, for one, which is a thing we can't bounce back from. But also, like, how that is something that capitalists don't want to put back in the bottle. So is there. It's hard to look to a future. [01:25:49] Speaker B: Yes. [01:25:50] Speaker A: Where things aren't worse. [01:25:52] Speaker B: Yes, yes, yes. [01:25:53] Speaker A: Like, where it isn't that was it the first episode of Black Mirror, where he's. Where he asked, like, you know, in order to live his life, like, watch certain ads and shit like that. He's in, like, you know, everything is conducted that way. Like, that is, I think, what makes it so hard to, like, not feel like, ugh, just, you know, send the meteor or whatever. Is it only going to get worse than this for the rest of our lives? [01:26:19] Speaker B: Well, that's easy. Yes, that's. That's the answer to that one. That's a simple answer. [01:26:24] Speaker A: I like to think it won't. [01:26:25] Speaker B: Oh, it will. [01:26:26] Speaker A: You know, I like to think we have limits, but I don't know, maybe. [01:26:29] Speaker B: That'S the thrilling thing then is. Is, you know, hoping to live to find where they are, where they are. [01:26:34] Speaker A: Socially, to see how we bounce back from it. [01:26:38] Speaker B: Yeah, but we won't. [01:26:41] Speaker A: We'll see. I'm the podcast optimist here, so we'll see. [01:26:45] Speaker B: And you're the creative director. But we will. We will. [01:26:48] Speaker A: Anyway. [01:26:49] Speaker B: Yep. Hell, what to tell you, I got nothing. Really. [01:26:55] Speaker A: In other news. Hey, this. This past week, I was on that other horror podcast. Friends of the cast over there invited me to be on it, as always. You know, I. I was telling you beforehand, I always feel a little bit like, you know, the. The consolation prize because every time I go on another podcast, the hosts will inevitably tell me like, oh, we'd really love to get Marco on here, but, you know, it's just the time difference. The time I'm like, hey, I'm right here. But no, I. [01:27:29] Speaker B: More than anything, I get concerned that it's false advertising because people will tune in. Obviously, you'll be the bait on the hook. And then we reel them in and they get my dour ass. [01:27:41] Speaker A: Like, boy, this is a whole day. It's true. Because when I go on things like, you know, it's just bubbles all the way through, right? There's no counterbalance to my, like, wee. Those kinds of things. Which is certainly the case on that other horror podcast where I was asked to pick a horror movie to watch with the gang. And I, of course, being the person I am, picked a movie from the 1950s. I picked House of Wax, which is super fun. I wasn't sure how they were going to react to this movie, and so it was very fun to sort of talk through, you know, this kind of out of left field pick for them. And the experience of watching that is something that is like, so old and from this era of horror and whatnot. And we had a blast. So check out that other horror podcast and watch House of Wax and enjoy. [01:28:45] Speaker B: Come along. Beautiful, beautiful. [01:28:47] Speaker A: Come along. [01:28:47] Speaker B: Great job. [01:28:48] Speaker A: Come along on that. That their journey. I did another podcast, but it's not out yet, so I will mention that one whenever it does come out. [01:28:55] Speaker B: Okay. [01:28:55] Speaker A: Busy, Busy week. [01:28:57] Speaker B: Busy week. [01:28:59] Speaker A: Busy week. It was busy for you at least yesterday. Two days ago, it was. [01:29:06] Speaker B: It was. [01:29:07] Speaker A: We both. Within 24 hours, both of us met. [01:29:10] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:29:10] Speaker A: Who was your heroes? Joe Pera. I went to see his show. If you. If you're not familiar with Joe Pera, his show, Joe Talks with youh is just one of the greatest things that has ever been out regularly. [01:29:27] Speaker B: I can see the guy in my mind, but I don't know of him regularly. [01:29:31] Speaker A: They talked about this at the shows. This show called the Dan and Joe DVD show that people come up to him constantly after his shows and they're like, you changed my life, you cured my anxiety, you got me through the pandemic. [01:29:43] Speaker B: Just Google Joe Pera. That's not the guy. [01:29:49] Speaker A: No, well, yeah, he's this kind of. He takes on this character of this like sort of almost old man in a young person's body, sort of hunched over and talks real quiet and stuff like that and. And tells takes this just interesting and optimistic view of life that while also being very, very funny. So yeah, went and saw him and I being again the person I am, had to sneak out for a bathroom break partway through and he happened to be standing, you know, kind of getting himself ready for his set. And I was like, hey, are you like getting in the zone or would it be okay if I took a picture? And he was like, oh, that's fine and let me take a picture and ask me my name. And then he shake my hand and being extremely awkward. I was like, I just come out of the bathroom, so I just washed my hands. And so I was like, oh, sorry, my hands are wet. But like clean wet, clean wet. It's like, okay, okay, bye. Yeah, but you, you also have. [01:30:56] Speaker B: Yes. [01:30:56] Speaker A: An interaction. [01:30:57] Speaker B: So as a 46 year old male, I continue to be an avid pro wrestler enjoyer, AEW in particular. And when I learned that my favorite is favoriteist in the world, Kris Statlander was wrestling in London this week, I fucking you could not have stopped me from getting down there. [01:31:16] Speaker A: So I kind of wonder because sometimes, you know, you can get nervous about your awkwardness and whatnot and it made me think like, so my little sister gets very starstruck and like one of my favorite memories with my sister was that I had met Nana visitor from deep space in Kira in the gym at. Yes, Kira in the hotel gym. And then ran into her again on our floor with my sister. And I was like, oh, this is my sister who I was telling you about. You're like her hero. And my sister just like froze. Could not make any words at all. And then later she was like, please don't introduce me to people. Sorry about that. So part of me when you said this was happening was like, oh, I don't. [01:32:06] Speaker B: Look, it was awkward, of course, it was fun awkward, but it was a well regimented, it was a well managed awkward, you know, standing line, come and say your peace off. So there was, there was. I didn't really get much opportunity. [01:32:20] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [01:32:24] Speaker B: But yeah, great, just lovely, lovely to take that off. Got a. Got an autograph, got a fist bump. [01:32:29] Speaker A: Cool. Hey, very nice. You know, which before you had previously had her hello from me that I got for you, which was lovely, you know, four years ago. So it just kind of your turn now. [01:32:44] Speaker B: Your turn is next. [01:32:46] Speaker A: My. What's my turn? [01:32:47] Speaker B: Well, you met her than I did, so now you've got to. I've got to knock it back to you. It's like Statlander 10. [01:32:52] Speaker A: Oh, is that how that works? Yeah, they weirdly like at the time, which was like kind of in the midst of. Of COVID things. It was like when things just opened back up, they were doing meet and greets and whatnot, but they don't really do them as like I've been to several Dynamites since then and none of them have had meet and greets since. [01:33:10] Speaker B: Well, this one was lovely. It was in the pub garden. It was in the open air. [01:33:13] Speaker A: It looked really nice. [01:33:14] Speaker B: Lovely, lovely warm evening. And yep, it was very casual. [01:33:20] Speaker A: Love it. Very pleased for you. And one other thing, I figure we should just, you know, send one up for a couple of legends that we lost this week, including one of them had a win, I believe, on your Deadpool. [01:33:35] Speaker B: We got a winner for Michael Madsen, which I was very pleased with. Right. [01:33:41] Speaker A: Not well, the win, not the death. [01:33:43] Speaker B: The win. Because the guy. Very interesting. The guy who picked Michael Madsen in my Deadpool. And for those who don't know, every year, it's literally the only reason I say still use Facebook is to post my annual Deadpool, wherein on every New Year's Day or New Year's Eve, I invite my followers to pick three people who they think are gonna die. Only celebrities and public figures. No real people, no personal picks, you know, and the guy who named Michael Madsen is only a Facebook friend of mine because of the Deadpool. He joined specifically to take someone else. [01:34:22] Speaker A: Like my friend does this joins. [01:34:24] Speaker B: Exactly. [01:34:25] Speaker A: That's incredible. [01:34:25] Speaker B: It is. And he's a young. [01:34:28] Speaker A: Oh, he's a young. Yes. And he picked Michael Madsen. Yes. Interesting. [01:34:33] Speaker B: Very interesting indeed. Looks like he can't. He's early 20s, perhaps. [01:34:39] Speaker A: Oh, wow. [01:34:39] Speaker B: And joined because of the Deadpool. Rolled a winner on his first year. Fucking good on you, Ronan Burke. [01:34:47] Speaker A: Good job. Shout out to Ronan and Michael Manson. Yes to Michael Madsen. I think we both. We both then watched Michael Madsen movies this week. We can kind of integrate what we watched here, which I feel like is very on brand because you watched a Tarantino movie and I watched a Robert Rodriguez. [01:35:07] Speaker B: Perfectly, perfectly, perfectly on brand. [01:35:12] Speaker A: You watch Reservoir Dogs? I watched Sin City this week, which did not. Did not hold up. [01:35:18] Speaker B: Well, do we. [01:35:19] Speaker A: Do we. [01:35:20] Speaker B: Do we just barrel into this? [01:35:22] Speaker A: Well, yeah, sure, because the other person who died also is in a film that I watched. So I guess we can. We can just barrel in and we'll get there. [01:35:28] Speaker B: Do it. Corrigan. Who's the other one? Oh, Dr. Doom. Fucking Julian. What's his name? [01:35:33] Speaker A: Julian McMahon. [01:35:34] Speaker B: Julian McMahon, yes. Very young. [01:35:37] Speaker A: Very young. And we'll get to it. But I had watched the Surfer this week and literally thought while watching it, like, holy shit, that guy is peak. He is, like, healthy, fit, hot. This is like, peak Julian McMahon. And then two days later, he died. [01:35:55] Speaker B: Oh, no. Well, yeah, we did watch that first Fantastic Four movie a week or two ago, me and the boys. So they'll be aware of Dr. Doom. [01:36:06] Speaker A: You know, I didn't even remember that he was in that. [01:36:10] Speaker B: He was. [01:36:11] Speaker A: It's been a minute, but yeah. So then let's. Yeah, let's go. So I. I watched Sin City last night because I had been scrolling through Facebook and there was someone had posted an interview with Robert Rodriguez where he said that when he and Frank Miller were making Sin City, they had kind of. They had, like, a rule that, A, all the people had to, like, look like the characters in the graphic novel, and B, that the dialogue couldn't be changed and no one was allowed to improvise so that it would be as faithful to the graphic novel as possible. And the only person that they broke both of those rules with was Michael Madsen. They were like, he's such a great writer. And, like, look at him, his physicality, all that kind of stuff. He was so perfect for the role, and he had so many good ideas. He was the only person that we broke both of those rules for. So I was like, I literally have not seen Sin City since it was in theaters in 2005. And I have a great memory of it because I was a freshman in college and, you know, you're still kind of, like, getting a feel for, like, friends and whatnot amongst your classmates. And as we've discussed at great length, I went to Christian school, and so I went with a huge group to go see Sin City. We all went to Metro Point Mall and went and saw Sin City. And afterwards, there were about half of us that were like, hey, that was fun. That was a cool movie. And there was the other half who was so deeply scandalized by it that they were offended we liked it and never hung out with us again. These fucking Heathens Yeah, I got nothing. [01:37:57] Speaker B: But good memories of Sin City. I mean, I. I came to it it from print, you know, and how they did a hell of a job of just making it look identical to the book, you know, to the point where I don't know why you would bother. [01:38:12] Speaker A: Well, I certainly hadn't read Sin City when I went and saw that, for one. It was an entirely new property to me at the time. I think Ben or his brother had probably at some point kind of babbled to me about it, but I'd never really experienced it myself. Wholly new thing. The cast on that is like a who's who of, you know, people I would have been interested in. [01:38:34] Speaker B: Bruce is right in front of me right now. Die Hard 2 is on BBC1. [01:38:39] Speaker A: Nice. Yeah, you got Bruce, you got Elijah Wood, you got Josh Hartnett, you know, you got all these people in it that like. It's like, yeah, why would you not go see that movie? Also, at the time, movies were more events because you didn't have streaming anything. So we all went and saw this movie. And I will say this, I don't know if it's like a function of how iconic the movie kind of was at the time or if it's just the fact of, like, how much more attention we paid to things. But despite my only having seen it once, like, I remembered lines and stuff like that from it straight up. Like, you know, as soon as someone's about to say something, I knew the, like, punchline of a joke or, you know, where it was going. Deeply remembered it, but I mean, it's so deeply misogynistic and, you know, it's. There are parts of the visuals that hold up well and parts that very much don't. [01:39:30] Speaker B: You're not gonna frame for frame, panel for panel, dialogue bubble for dialogue bubble. Adapt a Frank Miller work. [01:39:38] Speaker A: Right. It gets grating, for sure. It's like at first you're kind of like, oh, this dialogue's clever. And then by halfway through it, you're like, it's not. It's just. It's self indulgent is what it is. But nonetheless, I have good memories of seeing it. And of course, Michael Madsen, you know, had to get that view of me, even though he's not in it that much. And of course, he always makes an impact. [01:40:05] Speaker B: Was he a piece of shit? Like, he might have been. [01:40:08] Speaker A: Everyone's a piece of shit in that. [01:40:10] Speaker B: What, like, as in you, you meet him? [01:40:12] Speaker A: Yeah, like, you know, you've got your hero saving a girl. [01:40:16] Speaker B: Oh, no, no. I Mean, Michael Madden in the north himself was the guy. [01:40:20] Speaker A: Oh, I don't, I don't think he's like. I don't think he's, like, known for being a piece of shit. [01:40:26] Speaker B: Weirdly, I think of him in, you know, in the sim in a similar breath as you would Chris Penn or. Who's the other guy who was in. [01:40:32] Speaker A: Like, Chris Penn wasn't a piece of shit either. He was just a drug addict. [01:40:35] Speaker B: I thought he was a piece of shit. [01:40:37] Speaker A: Was he? I don't know. He's been dead so long. I don't, I don't know. He's been dead since I was young enough that I barely was aware of him in the first place. [01:40:44] Speaker B: Who's the other guy I'm thinking of? He was in Tom Sizemore. Tom Sizemore is the other guy, I'm thinking. It is Tom Sizemore. And he was a piece of shit. [01:40:53] Speaker A: Yeah, he was a piece of shit. Yeah. [01:40:55] Speaker B: And I, maybe I'm, I'm conferring that status on Michael Madsen. [01:40:59] Speaker A: Honestly, I was thinking kind of the same thing. Like, when Michael Madsen died, I was like, is he, like, problematic for some reason? And then nobody said anything, and it's like, oh, I think he was, like, maybe a little troubled, but not like in a abusive way. [01:41:12] Speaker B: Yeah, fair enough. And what a fucking body of work, by the way. What a body of work. [01:41:17] Speaker A: Yeah, big time. Although I was also thinking it's surprising Michael Matson seemed like such a presence that I thought he was like one of those guys who's in everything. [01:41:27] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. [01:41:28] Speaker A: And then I was reading one of the obits, and it was like he starred in dozens of movies. Like dozens, Right? Just does. I thought of him as like an Eric Roberts, you know, like, oh, that guy never says no to anything. He's all that. [01:41:43] Speaker B: No quality over quantity. I think, with, with our boy. And as far as the rest of our dogs goes, if anything I've come to. It was certainly irritating to be watching it last night, Right? [01:41:55] Speaker A: Sure. [01:41:57] Speaker B: Very irritating in that, as we've talked about at length on Joag, I have no time for Tarantino at all. I, I, I find the guy. I find him. I find him. Worm. Like, I don't like him at all. I find him just a horrible little piece of shit of a guy, right? And unfortunately, Reservoir Dogs is his. And, but, yeah, but, yeah, but Reservoir Dogs. And it's, it's unassailable. It's completely unassailable. It's, it's, it's such a powerful, you know, tight Couple of hours, that film. And it, you know, you can. I fucking hate Tarantino so much. But. [01:42:41] Speaker A: But, I mean, it does have some of his worst tendencies in it as well. But I think it does come together in a way that, you know, as a film works in ways that cover his worminess. [01:42:54] Speaker B: Yes. And. And Michael Madsen is unfucking real in it and not in it for long. You know what I mean? He's there for a good time, not a long time. Again, like his career, he's just yet casts a shadow over the entire fucking piece. [01:43:06] Speaker A: Right. It's who you remember. Like, the first thing you think of with Reservoir Dogs is him. [01:43:11] Speaker B: Very true. And I meant where I said on Blue sky, the opening credits of Reservoir Dogs. You can just be like, dead, dead, dead, dead, alive, alive, dead, dead, dead. They're all dead. [01:43:22] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:43:23] Speaker B: As soon will we be Indeed. [01:43:27] Speaker A: I went and saw on that note a play on Broadway last week, which was why I could not podcast with you on Sunday or on Monday. I went and saw Dead Outlaw. It was closing, and I was like, I really want to see this movie. It is about a guy that we have actually talked about on Joag, Elmer McCurdy, the man who. His corpse was sort of passed around after he died and eventually was discovered in a fun house in Long Beach, California, like 50 years later or whatever. And so they made a play about this. And I was like, this is interesting. I'm very curious as to how, like, what that's going to be about or whatever. And it is a play about the inevitability of death. And the whole theme of it is, you're gonna die. Everyone, you know is gonna die. Your pets are gonna die. Everything is going to die. And, you know, what do we do with that realization? And I was like, holy shit. [01:44:27] Speaker B: Well, fuck. [01:44:30] Speaker A: This is. I was not expecting this. And what an interesting musical. [01:44:36] Speaker B: And it's a musical to have something. [01:44:38] Speaker A: It's a musical. Yeah, right. And so, you know, they keep coming around to sort of like the main sort of song motif that comes around again is this constant. They keep on bringing in more things. You're gonna die. This celebrity's gonna die. This celebrity's dead. You know, things like that. Just to keep grounding you in death throughout the whole thing. So it was. [01:45:02] Speaker B: Sounds right up my street. Not maybe what I actually wanna see. Because I know, you know what I mean when I watch heroin. Content that just tells me stuff I already am harrowed by. [01:45:11] Speaker A: But I think it presents it in an interesting and affirming way that you Would really like. Right. So Dead Outlaw was really interesting in that way. I watched the Surfer. [01:45:23] Speaker B: You like the Broadways, don't you? [01:45:25] Speaker A: I do like the Broadway. [01:45:26] Speaker B: I like that about you. I enjoy that you like to go see a show. I love that. [01:45:31] Speaker A: Well, thank you. But I watched the Surfer as you recommended. [01:45:36] Speaker B: Stressful, huh? [01:45:38] Speaker A: So stressful. This was by far the most stressful film watching experience I've had. Stressful since Uncut Gems. [01:45:48] Speaker B: Oh, wonderful. [01:45:51] Speaker A: Like the whole time just like, oh, no. Oh, no. I was like, I'm glad I'm watching this at home. I just kept, like, pausing and going to the bathroom. What? Like that? Like, more just for a break than anything else. [01:46:02] Speaker B: Like, do you know what I'm. Do you understand what I'm saying now? When you think it's hit bottom and then there's more indignity, there's more. [01:46:09] Speaker A: Yes, you know, yes. [01:46:12] Speaker B: That this man can. [01:46:13] Speaker A: But I really like this as an entry into the sort of the men are not okay genre. The toxic masculinity, dealing with, like, incels and, you know, patriarchy and all this in a way that is like, directly made by and addressing men and showing how stupid, you know, it all is, how silly what cosplay it is, while also how scary. [01:46:41] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [01:46:42] Speaker A: Kind of talks masculinity, just weighty. The untraction. [01:46:46] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. [01:46:48] Speaker A: Exactly. All while doing this in a way that is unhinged and funny and stressful and, you know, it's the full. [01:46:56] Speaker B: I'm delighted you liked it because I didn't think you would. I thought it would be. [01:47:00] Speaker A: Yeah, I know you were like, it could really have gone either way. And I think off the strength of Nick Cage and Of course, Julian McMahon in that, who is just, you know, as the leader of this little man cult, is just fantastic. You know, he's just menacing while playing it off as being charming. And yeah, Surfer is. It's a good one. [01:47:29] Speaker B: The surfer is fantastic. And, you know, all shot on just the tiniest little bit of space, just a little bit of beach. [01:47:37] Speaker A: And there, like, comes a point where, like, that. That is part of why it's so stressful. And you just want. You just want him to leave. [01:47:45] Speaker B: You can walk away. [01:47:47] Speaker A: Yeah, you just. Just go up that hill and you are out of this situation. And the fact that he stays here. Oh, so stressful. [01:47:55] Speaker B: I adore how the trailer gives you nothing. Shows you a lot, but gives you nothing. I love how, you know, there's a moment in the first kind of 40 minutes where you realize, oh, wait, this Ain't what I thought it was, you know, beautiful. [01:48:07] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:48:08] Speaker B: Great movie. [01:48:09] Speaker A: Yeah. Watch it. [01:48:10] Speaker B: Yeah, I. Because I have lots to say about Bring Her Back. So I don't know. Do you want to go? [01:48:20] Speaker A: Oh, sure. The. I think the only other thing that I watched was, you know, besides the things we watched together was in my standard need to go back and watch 90s thrillers and whatnot. I watched a movie called Copycat. Have you ever seen that? [01:48:35] Speaker B: I'm certain I will have seen it in years gone by. [01:48:38] Speaker A: You got. You got your Holly Hunter. [01:48:39] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:48:40] Speaker A: You got your. Your Sigourney Weaver. You got your. Let's see. Oh man, there's so many. So many folks in this. You got Dermot Mulroney, Harry Connick Jr. Basically this movie is. Sigourney Weaver plays a. An expert on serial killers who has sort of literally written the book on serial killers and she is being stalked by one as well and sort of puts him in jail and he gets out somehow and tries to kill her. And this causes her to develop agoraphobia. She stays inside and, you know, plays chess on the Internet with strangers and things like that to avoid engaging with the outside world. But a serial killer comes around who she discovers is doing copycat killings and she gets involved in the investigation of this. It's a total. Is this computers movie, which is very fun. And so that's kind of a neat element of it. It is insane and unhinged. Nothing about this movie is realistic in any way. It is over the top. It is. It's fun, it's dumb. It's a good little serial killer thriller. Breaks your heart unnecessarily and it's a good time. So Copycat, I think is. Is worth a little watch if you're jonesing for a 90s thriller. [01:50:09] Speaker B: I just want to quickly pick up on something. The term 90s there has woken something up in me friends. You'll corry and I do it all the time, right. Whenever we're watching a movie and the point in the movie comes across, we hit that point in the movie about 20 minutes in when a mobile phone would save everyone. Oh yeah, if only we had a phone. This movie can end now. So what? As you know, what movies all do now is it can just be one line of dialogue. Hey, I got no service me. And that's it. It's dealt with. Put it away. [01:50:39] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:50:39] Speaker B: I am always, always, always on the lookout for the earliest example of that gag. And I thought we'd found it, Corey. I thought we'd Found it in. In 2005's Red Eye, Wes Craven's last movie. [01:50:51] Speaker A: Yes. [01:50:52] Speaker B: A mobile phone would have saved the day, but they had no service. [01:50:57] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:50:58] Speaker B: A few months back, we found an example of this even earlier and some years earlier as well in Breakdown. Kurt Russell, Road action conspiracy, action thriller. They do that gag from 1997. Man. [01:51:16] Speaker A: So crazy. [01:51:17] Speaker B: 1997. So Kurt Russell is kind of, well, to do, you know, white blue collar. White collar, which is that I can never remember white. [01:51:25] Speaker A: He is white collar in that. I think they're kind of wealthy. [01:51:29] Speaker B: And he's got one of the fucking first ever mobile phones I've ever seen. And. And it's great. And he can't use it because he's got no signal. And that was 1997. [01:51:38] Speaker A: Yeah. It's funny because I was watching the Parent Trap the other day, which is 98, I believe, and there is a gag. It's obviously not for the same purpose, but there's a gag in the beginning where there's a girl at the camp and she's holding a cell phone to her ear. She's like, oh, no service. [01:51:54] Speaker B: I would have accepted it. [01:51:55] Speaker A: 98. [01:51:56] Speaker B: I think my criteria are that there has to be a mobile phone. It has to be no service, and the phone having no service has to be to rescue the part of the plot. [01:52:06] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Which is not the case in Parent Trap. Yeah. You would solve the. The issues. We did watch a movie together as such this week that pulled the. The thing right out at the gate. We watched Clown in a Cornfield this. [01:52:22] Speaker B: Week, just completely unmoved. I mean, who's it for? Who's it for? You know, who's it for? [01:52:29] Speaker A: That's very. It's because it. It feels like it's made for kids, but there's too much swearing and kind of innuendo and things like that in it for it to be for kids. [01:52:41] Speaker B: Yeah, maybe it's not for kids, but it's a movie that knows that kids will lie to their parents to see. [01:52:48] Speaker A: Right. It's four kids, but that totally. Yeah. And it very much does. The thing. We've been kind of talking about this in book club of, like, noticing that a lot more horror books now are like. They kind of lose steam in the end because they feel the need to tell you the message of the thing you just read instead of, like, really just, like, closing it up and letting you figure out the metaphor yourself. And Clown in a Cornfield, I think is like an entry into horror that does this too, where, like, at the End. It really gives you this, like, power of love message and, you know, adults not listening to children and, you know, all these kinds of things that. It's like they spend so much time, like, lecturing on these things. Like. Huh. [01:53:31] Speaker B: Yeah, I'll buy that. It. Oh, man. Yeah. Who's it for? I mean. [01:53:40] Speaker A: Yeah, it's just. It does. It doesn't do anything. You've seen this movie before. It's a budget. Dark Harvest. [01:53:45] Speaker B: I've got half a idea in my head. Like, when there were two volcano movies, was it in Inferno and Dante's Peak? [01:53:53] Speaker A: Dante's Peak and not Inferno, but something. [01:53:58] Speaker B: And. But then there were two, like Volcano. Yeah, fair enough. Yeah. That makes a lot. And then there were two. [01:54:03] Speaker A: I like, literally just watched it like three weeks ago. [01:54:07] Speaker B: Oh, what if insects. But people. You know what I mean? Bugs. Life. And what was the other one? [01:54:11] Speaker A: Ants. [01:54:11] Speaker B: Ants. This. Right. In. In those. In that kind of phenomenon. It's obviously studio skullduggery. Oh, people will like this. So let's give them this. But. But if this is what's going on with Clown in a Cornfield, because clowns are real big right now with terrifier, sure. No one is going to see terrifying. Go. I could really use some more clown horror. Let's check out Clown in a Cornfield and be pleased they've made that decision because it gives you nothing. It gives you nothing that you might reasonably expect. [01:54:40] Speaker A: It's a movie built for second screening. [01:54:41] Speaker B: Yeah. Completely all. Yeah. Or even third. It was. Was. [01:54:44] Speaker A: Doesn't really matter. If you. If you come off terrifier and you turn this on and you start scrolling your phone occasionally, you're going to see a kill. [01:54:54] Speaker B: That's right. [01:54:55] Speaker A: And there you go. That's all they. That's all that this is built for. [01:54:58] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right. That's right. Not like Bring Her Back. [01:55:04] Speaker A: Not like Bring her Back. [01:55:05] Speaker B: Which is. [01:55:06] Speaker A: Which be. You know, you can't. No spoilers or anything like that. I am going to eventually watch it as I'm sure our. [01:55:12] Speaker B: I can't. No spoilers. Right. Don't need to. Right. [01:55:16] Speaker A: Okay. [01:55:17] Speaker B: Because Bring It Back accomplishes so much. This is such an accomplished film. The fundamentals are so strong here. Right. Cinematography is. Is detailed. It's beautiful. It gives you everything you need in the frame. All you got to do is find it, which, you know, I love. It's all there for you, mate. It's all there for you. Just have a little look around the screen and you'll find really interesting things and you can Use those to put it all together. Fucking wonderful. [01:55:48] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:55:50] Speaker B: Performances bangin. Just kids who don't act like kids act. Do you know what I mean? Getting out with our kids who appear real people as opposed to kids who are plucked from a fucking drama school. Yeah, exactly, exactly. [01:56:05] Speaker A: Right. Yeah. [01:56:10] Speaker B: But you see, I bring her back. Started a conversation with myself on a few different topics. Right. Firstly, what a, what a. What a gift letterbox has been to the world. Do you agree? [01:56:25] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, definitely. [01:56:27] Speaker B: What a gift letterbox is to, to film enjoyers. Because it's it, it almost you've got a conversation with yourself about a movie after it's finished on the most ridiculous of movies, you've just the slightest little dialogue with yourself. I'll watch like give that one star bang. You've, you've had a little conversation with yourself about the film. [01:56:48] Speaker A: Yeah, that's true. [01:56:49] Speaker B: But for me, when you get into the higher ratings for four and a half five, that conversation takes longer and you need to actually fucking think about it. Yeah, because I rated, I gave bringer back a 4.5 and then returned like an hour later to add the extra five. [01:57:03] Speaker A: Yeah, you were talking to me, you were like, what do I, I mean, how do I justify not giving it a 5? [01:57:08] Speaker B: I couldn't get it out my fucking mind. And the writing, I could not stop thinking about it. If Mark, I said to myself, mark, if that wasn't a five star film. [01:57:17] Speaker A: Then what the fuck was? [01:57:19] Speaker B: What is it? What is that movie left on the fucking table that would claim that extra five star, that extra 0.5 of a star. Because it leaves nothing unsaid. It leaves no question. It. Chekhov's guns. Every theme that, that arms itself within the first third, it pays them off, pays each of them off. And what leaves it absolutely unavoidable to give it that extra half a start, I give it a 5 is because it does the deftest. The most impressive, the most wonderful piece of cinema. Sleight of hand, that is so rare. But when I encounter it, I am instantly, I am won over. It's. You may hear me call it the four lions trick. You may hear me call it the seven trick. When okay, up to a certain point in the movie, no matter what atrocities you've seen, visited, no matter what hell is played out in front of you, you can find the most acute of angles. Way I kind of get it, you know what I mean? And bring it back. Did that for me because I get it. If I lost either of my kids, I'd be doing that too. I'd be looking for demons. You know what I mean? I'd be looking for rituals I could do. I'd be looking for. I could pull to make it better. I. I know a little tiny part of where she's coming from in that movie. And it is such a dissonant moment when it occurs. Not, not, not so much in the film. There's no one moment when you're like, what? But when you find. When you realize that there's a conversation like that to be had with yourself. The reason I call Four Lions is because about two thirds of the way through, you realize you're cheering on and laughing with Jihadis. Whoa. [01:59:09] Speaker A: Right? Yeah. [01:59:10] Speaker B: Seven. You know, there's. There's a second or two in seven where you're like, yeah, maybe he's got a bunch of. And bring her back. Does it as well from. Not just. Not just in a parental sense, in a fraternal sense. It's a film about grief and survival and abuse and just all of the horrible things you can imagine. And there but for the grace of God. [01:59:39] Speaker A: Yeah. This is why. I mean, you have raved about it. I've seen like pretty much everyone on my letterboxd has given it a 4 or plus higher. But I'm just not in the mood to be sad right now. [01:59:49] Speaker B: Get in that mood. Right, because it's gonna. This film is gonna make you sad. If you weren't sad already. Yeah, you will be sad and you will be horrified. And yeah, you will also be delighted because it's so good. [02:00:03] Speaker A: Yeah, that's. That's pretty much what I'm expecting. So I'm. I'm saving this one for a time when I am in more the zone to be sad while watching media. I'm in the zone of watching Copycat and Parent Trap and Independence Day. [02:00:20] Speaker B: Save it for a day when. So you need to be brought down a peg or two. You know, I mean, when you're getting a little bit. [02:00:25] Speaker A: I think I go to Broadway. [02:00:27] Speaker B: You know what I mean? Save it for that next time. [02:00:31] Speaker A: There we go. [02:00:31] Speaker B: Check yourself. [02:00:34] Speaker A: Love it. Anything else you would like to add to this before we. [02:00:39] Speaker B: No, no. [02:00:40] Speaker A: Close out. [02:00:41] Speaker B: I'd love. Well, you know, if there's one thing I do want to hear from our listeners this week, it's. Is it better for a nuclear war or is it better to have like ads on your fucking water? We're pulling up the tap. [02:00:54] Speaker A: Exactly. If you think into the future about where there's going to be ads, would you rather we just blew up. Let us know it. [02:01:04] Speaker B: Stay spooky.

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