Ep. 239: a fiery five year banger

[00:00:04] Speaker A: You know, I love a disaster, Marco. [00:00:07] Speaker B: It's kind of why we're here, isn't it? It's kind of what we're all about. [00:00:11] Speaker A: It is. It's true. [00:00:13] Speaker B: We both have that in common. We both love a disaster. We both. We both. I think we both consider it a responsibility to bear witness to disaster. Somehow I don't. Does that make sense? Maybe that's a little bit for, you know, 15 seconds into the pod, but I feel almost as a sentinel kind of figure, you know what I mean? Cursed to always watch and, you know, and remember. Maybe not so much remember, but to experience disaster on behalf of everybody else in the world, on behalf of my people, I just drink it in. I absorb it. [00:00:54] Speaker A: All right? Yeah. [00:00:56] Speaker B: You know, my cells are saturated. My cytoplasm is filled to bursting of the emotional toll of 46 years of witnessing and internalizing calamity. [00:01:18] Speaker A: I feel like this manifests differently in each of us, you know, because we've talked about multiple times, including right before this. You know, as the podcast optimist, I always feel like this. There's something grounding in. In witnessing catastrophe and processing catastrophe and things like that. And I'm just fascinated by humans experiencing or getting themselves into catastrophic scenarios. You know, how does it happen? What happens once it does all of that, you know, and how we remember it. Right. What years on do we talk about when it comes to these things? [00:01:53] Speaker B: Yep. [00:01:55] Speaker A: And about a year and a half ago, I read what may have been the most horrific disaster story I have ever encountered in my many years of disaster fandom. [00:02:07] Speaker B: Did it. Did you read about it a year and a half ago, or did it happen a year and a half ago? [00:02:11] Speaker A: I read about it a year and a half ago. [00:02:13] Speaker B: I see. [00:02:13] Speaker A: Yes. It came from a book called Under a Flaming the Great hinckley Firestorm of 1894 by Daniel Brown. He's the same guy who wrote the Indifferent Stars above the Amazing Donner Party book. [00:02:31] Speaker B: Ah, yes, yes, yes. [00:02:32] Speaker A: This guy knows how to write about disaster. [00:02:36] Speaker B: Do you think at any point he and the author of the Da Vinci Code have had a conversation? Which of them is gonna be down? [00:02:43] Speaker A: Yeah. Which one gets to. Well, yeah, this guy lost this guy. He goes. I think it's Daniel J. [00:02:48] Speaker B: Brown, right? [00:02:49] Speaker A: Yeah. Who knows? Okay, yeah, maybe Dan Brown hates being called Dan, but that's his. That's his lot. They drew Naomi Wolf. [00:02:59] Speaker B: Naomi Klein situation. [00:03:00] Speaker A: Yeah, right. But I probably don't even need to ask this, but have you ever heard of the Great hinckley firestorm of 1894. [00:03:10] Speaker B: Fuck no. [00:03:13] Speaker A: Yeah, neither had I until I read this book. And part of me was like, what the fuck? How come this isn't common knowledge? [00:03:21] Speaker B: It's an entire book. [00:03:23] Speaker A: It's an entire book. Yes. An actual whole book on this incident. And this is a long, cold open I'm gonna give you here, but it is an 11 page summary of a 260 page book. So I am leaving out so much and there's so much context and so much that's super interesting in this book, but I'm going to zero in on like the most horrific bit because this is Jack of all graves and it is our five year anniversary. Yes, right, exactly. [00:03:50] Speaker B: Do those poor people justice. [00:03:52] Speaker A: Exactly. But yeah, I was like, why isn't this common knowledge? Because it's such a bonkers story. But also, it's honestly too dark to be common knowledge. [00:04:03] Speaker B: Please. [00:04:05] Speaker A: On last podcast on the Left, they often talk about how some of the heaviest hitters of serial killers, most people have never heard of. And it's because the stories are so gruesome and so dark that mainstream folks would go from more morbidly curious to nightmares and crying jags. So serial killers like Ted Bundy and Ed Gein and Jeffrey Dahmer are, for lack of a better word, marketable. [00:04:33] Speaker B: Yep. [00:04:34] Speaker A: Whereas someone like David Parker Ray, the Toy Box Killer, is so depraved and his methods so torturous that you kind of just want to lay down and have a good cry after hearing them. [00:04:45] Speaker B: Sure. [00:04:45] Speaker A: And that doesn't really make for, like, good TV or good headlines or things like that. You don't want to depress. [00:04:53] Speaker B: Yes. [00:04:53] Speaker A: Your audience. [00:04:54] Speaker B: Yep. [00:04:55] Speaker A: And that's what the Hinckley fire is like. So, of course, on this, our fifth anniversary, I'm going to tell you about it. [00:05:05] Speaker B: Okay? Okay. Okay. I mean, go easy on me. [00:05:10] Speaker A: I shall do no such thing. So I want to start by having you read this passage from the prologue of the book, which gives some idea of what the people of Hinckley, Minnesota were dealing with on September 1, 1894, 131 years ago tomorrow. [00:05:30] Speaker B: Okay, where is Hinckley, Minnesota? Minnesota, Right. Let me just. Okay, here we go. Ordinary forest fires move in fits and starts. They give people a chance to get out of their way. This fire afforded no such opportunity. It came on faster than a man could flee, even. Even on horseback or even, as it turned out, on a train. As the onrushing wave of fire broke over Hinckley, the winds that propelled it reached hurricane strength and flames towered 200ft over the surrounding forest, Enormous bubbles of glowing gas drifted in over the town and then suddenly ignited over the heads of the town's terrified citizens, raining fire down on their heads. FIRE WHIRLS Tornadoes of fire danced out ahead of the main fire, knocking down buildings and carrying flaming breathe thousands of feet into the red and black sky. Temperatures at the core of the fire soared above 1600 degrees Fahrenheit, the melting point of steel, quickly cremating people who had been alive only minutes before. [00:06:41] Speaker A: Thank you, Marco. That's very Rod Serling reading of it that I feel. [00:06:45] Speaker B: That's instant. Instant cremation. [00:06:47] Speaker A: Instant, yes. I mean, we've. We talked about this. I'm trying to think of which one, which episode this was, but there was one where we talked about how hard it is to burn human bodies. [00:06:59] Speaker B: I feel like we've spoken about that a few times. [00:07:02] Speaker A: Yes. And in cremation, usually the oven that they use is 15 to 1600 degrees Fahrenheit. So, yeah, we're talking about cremation. Instant cremation level fire here coming through this town. So the morning of September 1st, there was a distinct murky smokiness in the air. People noticed it as they started their day. That kind of distant smell of burning wood. And I'm from Southern California, so I know that smell well. And the reaction that they had to it as well. You go, oh, there's, there's a fire somewhere. And you go about your day thinking, but certainly it's not right here. And much like Southern California, Minnesota had a fire season. It was perfectly normal for there to be hundreds of little fires in the summertime, and people became accustomed to the presence of wildfire smoke. The summer of night of 1894 had been worse than usual for forest fires, though, and people did remark upon it. They just had no idea it was leading to something much more devastating. There was a hint, though. In July, a lumber town in northwestern Wisconsin called Phillips was nearly seized by fire when several bark piles flared up, bringing the town's volunteer firefighting force out to push it back. The winds that were driving it died down by evening, and things seemed safe. But when the winds picked up again the next day, the fire came back with a vengeance and ended up burning most of the town. Their saving grace was a freight train that came through and gathered up most of the citizens, dropping them off in a town nearby. Still others found clearings to wait it out, like the county fairgrounds. And others, some 400 of them, found themselves wading into the nearby lake, splashing water on Each other to stay cool. Most of the townspeople made it out of the Phillips fire alive. But one group was not so lucky. A man named Frank Cliss had gathered his family and 11 neighbors onto his houseboat. Seemingly a smart escape plan after all, the water saved hundreds of other townspeople. [00:09:22] Speaker B: You can't. [00:09:23] Speaker A: It didn't save them. [00:09:24] Speaker B: You can't burn a lake. You can't burn to death on. [00:09:27] Speaker A: I mean, you can, depending on, you know, what's on that lake, say if there's oils or things like that. But generally you can't burn a lake, but it didn't save them. A journalist named Moose Kenyon described the scene as the houseboat passed a lumberyard engulfed in flames. [00:09:49] Speaker B: Flames shot a full thousand feet into the air, and the whole burning mass took on a rotary motion. Whole piles of burning lumber were carried high into the air, and the suction of the whirling mass seemed. Seemed to draw everything loose toward it from hundreds of yards outside its periphery. The floating boathouse was caught in this suction and drawn to the burning yard, Whirling as it went, like a great spinning top. [00:10:16] Speaker A: That's right. The fire sucked the houseboat in. [00:10:22] Speaker B: Wow. [00:10:23] Speaker A: Yeah. And Cliss was trying to hold the houseboat steady using a pike pole When a flame leaped from the lumber yard and. And ignited him, burning him to death where he stood in front of all the other passengers on this houseboat. The others tried to scramble onto other boats as they hadn't pushed far out into the water yet. But air rushing toward the fire was causing six to eight foot waves that ended up drowning everyone. Nine kids and four adults. [00:10:54] Speaker B: It sounds like you'd're describing twisted if it was on fire. [00:10:58] Speaker A: Yes, yes, exactly. Like this genuinely reminds me of the opening scene of Twister where the dad is holding onto the door and then gets sucked out or whatever. Like, there he is, you know, Frank cliffs with his pike and then the fire comes and takes him, and then all the other people are scrambling. But this is. And this will come back multiple times in here. The thing about fire, what we know about fire is it sucks the oxygen, right? And so it creates this flow. It creates wind coming at it. And so as these people were trying to scramble onto neighboring boats, the airflow trying to get to the fire was causing these huge waves, and that's why they ended up all drowning. Cliss's wife was the only survivor, and she did not get out unscathed. She was burned over her whole body and lost her eyesight, along with her whole family. But this is the kind of thing that you'd expect to be like a once in a century kind of horror, you know, like a fluke thing that you'd hear about bad luck. [00:12:06] Speaker B: Apologies if I've missed it, but what started it? [00:12:11] Speaker A: What started it? [00:12:12] Speaker B: Yeah, just fire season. [00:12:13] Speaker A: It was. Yeah, it's just fire season. It's always hard to tell this. You know, it said several bark piles flared up. [00:12:21] Speaker B: Yeah, okay. Okay. So just fire season. Just halt. [00:12:23] Speaker A: So. Yeah, right. Exactly. Who knows what. Especially at that point, like. Like tracing exactly what lit it. Pretty difficult to do. Just something ignited. But the evening of August. Oh, sorry. But yeah, so like I said, this seems like it would be something that would be kind of a fluke, like you said. What are the odds that these bark piles light up and all this crazy goes down and this, the houseboat ends up caught up in it. But a few months later, what happened to Frank Cliss and his passengers would seem quaint. The evening of August 31st was a perfectly normal one in a perfectly normal late 19th century American lumber town on the rise with a population of about 1500 people. It was a Friday, Labor Day weekend, just like now. The school year was about to start and the teens were out square dancing and playing kissing games. Family meals and picnics went on as usual. Everything was normal. It was a great weekend. Around 3am A train pulled into Hinckley's train depot, and Emil Anderson, a pastor in his last year of seminary in Chicago, climbed aboard to head to the town of Sandstone to see his own congregation before returning to school. As the train pulled out of town, it passed between brush fires on either side of the track, but Anderson thought nothing of it because, as we've been saying, fires had been firing all summer long. It had just become sort of a nuisance rather than something to be alarmed about, despite what had happened in Phillips already. But what he was witnessing was the beginning of what was about to be something catastrophic. So we know that the stage had been set in motion in the wee hours of the morning already. And on the morning of September 1st, it was hot, sunny, dusty, smoky, same as it had been all summer. But as Ewan Kerr of NPR News explained, the town was experiencing what was called a temperature inversion, a blanket of cooler air that traps the warmer air beneath it. By around 10am and I will come back to that. By around 10am there was a brush fire and a trash fire going on in Hinckley, and a strong wind fanned the flames of both of them. The heat and the smoke from each was trapped under this inversion so cool air on top, heat underneath, and the cool air is trapping all the heat underneath it, as Kerr put it, quote. Ultimately, the fires merged and the resulting blaze was fierce enough to punch a hole through the blanket of cooler air. As the hot air blasted upward, cooler air rushed in to take its place, fanning the flames and intensifying the blaze. Suddenly, the people of Hinckley were not facing a fire, they were facing a firestorm. It's like some kind of unholy combination of a backdraft and a microburst. The conditions were just right for what otherwise would have been some normal nuisance fires to become something far worse. Now, not everyone was casual about all this fire, to be fair. Angus Hay, for example, was a journalist at the Hinckley Enterprise, and he had spent the whole summer trying to warn everyone that this hot, dry weather and the constant fires could be leading to something terrible. He's like straight up the guy in every disaster movie that now listens to. It really is. It's set up like a movie, this whole situation. He diligently reported front page stories on sawmills burning down in nearby towns, on the Phillips disaster, on the deaths of 25 people in a fire in Ashland and the displacement of hundreds of others whose homes had burned. If people generally would take as much interest in their own fire protection as is shown by the Hinckley Fire Department, it would be more harmonious work for all concerned, he warned, as timber and hay kept in the woods outside Hinckley were taken by fire. A big problem, though, was that weather and climate science in the late 19th century was little more than observation and superstition. In Brown's book, he notes that the National Weather Service, created in November of 1870, largely reported weather that had already happened. Rather than predicting what was to come for prediction, they turned to a series of proverbs. [00:17:04] Speaker B: That isn't much use. [00:17:07] Speaker A: Not super helpful. Not really. It's been the National Weather surface. Their motto is just so that happened. [00:17:15] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:17:18] Speaker A: But for predictions. [00:17:18] Speaker B: Did you say Proverbs? [00:17:21] Speaker A: Series of Proverbs. That sounds straight out of Pirates of the Caribbean, for example. A red sun has water in its eye. [00:17:30] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:17:31] Speaker A: When the walls are more than unusually damp, rain is expected. [00:17:35] Speaker B: Yep. [00:17:36] Speaker A: Clear moon, frost soon. [00:17:38] Speaker B: Red sky at night, Chip shop delight, sailors delight. [00:17:42] Speaker A: Yeah, right. My personal favorite here. Hark. I hear the asses bray. We shall have some rain today. So they were like, really good, I guess, about watching things that cause rain. I don't know. Yeah. So not super helpful, these things. No, not exactly. The Doppler. By 1894, they had some ability to detect short term trends, but they couldn't foresee things that fell outside of normal weather patterns. [00:18:16] Speaker B: Would you mind just giving me the one about the ass's bray again? [00:18:19] Speaker A: Hark, I hear the ass's bray. We shall have some rain today. [00:18:24] Speaker B: Fantastic. [00:18:25] Speaker A: Keep that one in your back pocket. A shall say it to the kids one day when the sky is getting a little gray, picking him up from school. Hark. [00:18:35] Speaker B: Dad. [00:18:40] Speaker A: So like I said, they didn't really have a way of predicting anything that fell outside of normal weather patterns. Like at this point they can kind of go like, yeah, at this time of year, like, if this happens, this week should probably look like this. But they couldn't be like, you know, there's gonna be a hurricane or a blizzard or a flood, things like that. That we often rely on the weather for. Nowadays, with the exception of things like tornadoes and earthquakes, we can largely predict major weather events and even just changing conditions. Like this inversion that could be harmful. Like now if that was going to happen, someone on the news would be like, hey, there's gonna be a weather inversion. You gotta, gotta watch out, right? But like this past like two weeks, the thing has been riptides, like, oh, the weather is like this. So for the next week, we're closing the beaches because you're gonna die. They can predict all kinds of things like that that they could not do at that point. So while Hay could fill the paper with as many warnings as he liked, there wasn't some specific forecast telling them, hey, September 1st is gonna be firestorm conditions. And if the worst could happen any day, you start to just figure, eh, what are the odds it's today? Still, the summer had been hugely hot and excessively dry. And these things should have sounded alarm bells, they just didn't know. Industry itself naturally was contributing to this problem in some ways even more so than now, because no one was trying to put limits on capitalists. When big companies saw a natural resource to be extracted, they went at it hard. Yes, in Minnesota, this meant that loggers just chop, chop, chopped their way through the forest and all they really needed was the big straight trees that every millennial fears seeing on the back of a truck on a freeway, right? No branches, no leaves, none of that stuff. So they would cut them down and then they'd hack off all those branches and leaves and whatnot and leave them on the forest floor where all that discarded dead stuff would just dry out in the sun. And unless the land could be Used for farming or something like that. They wouldn't bother to ever come back and clean that up. They just leave literally millions of acres deforested and covered in dry, flammable brush. But, and this is actually kind of wild to me, fire science at that point was basically not a thing. It made the weather service look futuristic. And I think part of this is that we're talking about, like, white Europeans that had moved to the middle of the country. Like, a large part portion of these immigrants in Minnesota were from Norway. And they're settling in a terrain that they were largely unfamiliar with. And being awful at observation, bad things sort of seem to happen. The colonization and expansion of the United States is rife of store with stories of European settlers getting their asses handed to them by the land and needing indigenous help to not starve, freeze, or fall in a hole. So if these people in Minnesota had talked to the indigenous people, they probably could have told them, yeah, when it gets dry and hot, shit catches fire. And when it's humid out, there's less of it. Yes, but they didn't know this. Nor did they know that fires can literally create their own weather. Fire was a whole mystery to these people. Coincidentally, as often happens to be the case, just nine days before this happened, Forest management expert and Civil War veteran General Christopher Columbus Andrews had addressed the American Forestry association saying that people were needlessly dying from forest fires every year because of this American capitalist habit of laying waste to the forest and leaving behind tinder for the flames. [00:22:45] Speaker B: Fascinating. [00:22:46] Speaker A: Yeah. In Sweden, the country to which he was actually an ambassador, they would selectively cut and replant forests specifically to avoid this problem, which, again, is very much in line with what indigenous people in the Americas would do. Indigenous people were very attuned to the fact that you had to cut and replant and control burn and things like that. So similar kinds of things would need to be done. But naturally, everyone was like, fuck off, buddy. And nine days later, Hinckley burned. So these two fires grew. One was thought to have been the result of a spark that came off of a passing train. And the other was thought to have been set by a farmer clearing his field. And as the wind blew and the heat swelled, they moved on a trajectory to meet in Hinckley. By the afternoon, things started to get noticeably iffy to the townspeople. By late morning, the smoke seemed heavy, and it got so hot that men and women alike stripped off all of their layers and worked in their shirt sleeves, which would be so scandalous at the time. Out There just wearing shirts. The fires had moved so slowly at first, but when they hit the cutover land, loaded with all those nice piles of dry brush, the flames exploded, leaping more than 50ft in the air. And before long, as Brown put it, they began to race rather than crawl through the woods and clearings, still running on the ground for the most part, beginning, but beginning to leap from one pile of slash to another now, igniting them as quickly as they found them. [00:24:30] Speaker B: I am fucking wrapped in this, by the way. [00:24:33] Speaker A: Good. Just. Just to let you know, it's just like when you get quiet, it's hard to tell if your brain has gone somewhere else or if you're like, holy shit. No. [00:24:42] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:24:45] Speaker A: Good. Wonderful. Gets crazier. So shortly after noon, the fires left the ground, leaping into the trees. So there are three classifications used for wildfires. Ground fires, which move slowly on the forest floor, or even underground. Surface fires, which move much more quickly through brush and undergrowth and. And, quote, produce flames of moderate height. [00:25:11] Speaker B: And these classifications are held by whom? [00:25:15] Speaker A: Like fire expert. [00:25:17] Speaker B: Okay, okay. Fire ologists. [00:25:20] Speaker A: Fire ologists. [00:25:20] Speaker B: And are they still used? Are they still in use? [00:25:23] Speaker A: These are the current. Yeah. This is the. What? Yeah, how they describe wildfires. And then there's crown fires, which are the ones that get up into the canopy of the trees and not only move extremely quickly, but violently and erratically. When a fire is strong enough to become a crown fire, it will likely have enough energy to create what is called a convection column. [00:25:47] Speaker B: Sure. [00:25:47] Speaker A: Which is kind of what I was describing before. This basically means that a fire is hot enough to, like I said, punch a hole in the overlying cool air. And when the hot air bursts through that hole, it creates a tower of gas and smoke that may rise 30,000ft or more above the surface, which is. Which is freaking bonkers. [00:26:10] Speaker B: 30,000Ft. [00:26:12] Speaker A: 30,000Ft. I don't feel like an airplane. [00:26:16] Speaker B: Well, yeah. And that has happened. That is something which is observable. [00:26:19] Speaker A: Yes, this is an observable phenomenon. Yeah. Right. Further, as the smoke and gases rise up that column, fresh air is sucked violently inwards towards the base of the column to fill what would otherwise become a vacuum. [00:26:35] Speaker B: Sure. [00:26:37] Speaker A: Meanwhile, that heated air at the top cools. Once it hits that cooling layer and it sinks back down to the ground. So this is what we mean when we say fire can create its own weather. The fire is now generating its own wind from that process. And you can't predict fire wind like you can predict regular wind. And you can end up with what are technically called Fire whirls. But what you might colloquially get, colloquially here referred to as firenados, literal tornadoes of fire that spring off from the main part of the fire and start new fires wherever they land. Like, this is cartoonish almost. You've got this huge fire and then these like tornadoes just jumping out and lighting everything in their path on fire as well. And worse. Oh boy. These firenados can also happen horizontally. In other words, a big, fast, rolling pin of fire just making its way across the countryside. Yeah, this may be the scariest mental image I could possibly conjure and makes me glad that I can't actually bring images to mind. This concept. Fuck me. Fire. Rolling pin. By 1pm, two huge columns of fire were making their way towards hinckley with a two to three mile wide wall of flames ranging from 10 to 90ft high, riding along with Jesus. [00:28:21] Speaker B: This. It's amazing to me that this has never been realized on film. I mean, you've got an independent USA T shirt on, this has got Emerick or. [00:28:30] Speaker A: All over has. And as we get into how terrible this all is later on, it also has that feeling like it could only have been made in like the late 90s when they just made like the saddest movies that you could possibly imagine. Like, you don't make movies where everyone dies anymore. But yeah, we really missed that period where this would have, like, just fit right in there. Yeah, because visually this is crazy. And the story just, again, it'll get worse. So 10 to 90ft high, this wall of fire and this, these fires were moving at about the speed of a human walking at a fast clip, which is not great. As the fires raced toward Hinckley, people began to get nervous. Despite being protected by multiple firebreaks and an extensive system of waterworks, managers at the Brennan mill started to get nervous and directed the men to stop doing their normal jobs and put their energy into protecting the mill from the encroaching fire. Plowing to extend the fire breaks and using shovels and buckets of water to put out the fires, the embers that were already making their way onto the lumber. So basically, you know, fire breaks essentially, it's just digging out ditches, more or less, that would normally stop the fires. And one of the things that this book kind of talks about too is, like, that they would do this, but they didn't know why any of this worked. Right. Like, they knew you could dig and like cover fire and shit like that. But like, from a fire science perspective, they didn't know, like, oh, you're you're. When you smother a fire, you're removing the oxygen from it or any of that. [00:30:16] Speaker B: But that wasn't commonly known. [00:30:18] Speaker A: No, it's just observational. Fully observational that these kinds of things could stop fire. Which. It's fascinating, right? [00:30:28] Speaker B: Like very much so. Yeah. [00:30:30] Speaker A: A hundred and one hundred thirty years ago. Right. [00:30:33] Speaker B: Wow. [00:30:33] Speaker A: That these people had no clue why they were carrying out the things. [00:30:38] Speaker B: You and I and anyone listening to this knows more about fire than, than. [00:30:42] Speaker A: Any of these people. [00:30:43] Speaker B: Like a hundred years ago. [00:30:43] Speaker A: A hundred odd years ago, we learned more in like a third grade assembly than any of these people knew. [00:30:50] Speaker B: The fire triangle. [00:30:52] Speaker A: Wait, what's the fire triangle? [00:30:54] Speaker B: Oh, I'm on the spot now. [00:30:57] Speaker A: You're like, oh no, I can't describe it. [00:30:59] Speaker B: For a fire to occur needs three things. It needs fuel. [00:31:07] Speaker A: Right. [00:31:08] Speaker B: Oxygen. Right. And a third thing. [00:31:14] Speaker A: It's like a. I mean it's like the ignition or whatever. [00:31:18] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:31:19] Speaker A: Something to spark it. [00:31:20] Speaker B: Yes. [00:31:21] Speaker A: I don't think ignition is the right word, but yes. [00:31:23] Speaker B: Something to ignite a catalyst, some kind of chemical reaction. Yeah. [00:31:30] Speaker A: Right. So they did not know about the fire triangle, that's for sure. But so yeah, all these guys at this mill, they're redirected, don't worry about work. It's just right. [00:31:43] Speaker B: Like heat, fuel and oxygen. [00:31:45] Speaker A: Yeah. So put all your energy into digging this place out, getting water ready, all of that kind of stuff. And Hinckley was like a pretty advanced town. Like it was really up and coming. So they had, you know, really good resources for the time, but it just wouldn't match up to what was about to happen to them. By 1:30, it was clear to the whole town that this was not just one of their regular nuisance fires. The yellow tinged sky was snowing ash upon everything. The smoke went from white to black and bit by bit obscured the sun until it was so dark everyone had to light their lamps to be able to see. The wind strengthened by the fire picked up and folks started preparing go bags in case they had to evacuate. When a train pulled into the depot at 2pm Some men put their wives and children aboard with as many belongings as they could carry, while others still saw this reaction as, you know, kind of overwrought. Like you're getting ahead of yourself. Don't worry about it. This will happen again and again. In this story, the town's 19 volunteer firefighters gathered with their chief to make a plan. And it was a well equipped department with all the newest firefighting equipment. Surely they could handle this as the town braced for impact, multiple trains approached Hinckley from various directions. And one of these trains found itself making its way between brush fires lining both sides of the track, which was normally something to be wary of, you know, keep an eye out, but not a huge concern. They'd simply speed up so that the flames couldn't catch hold of the train. Which is crazy to me. I mean, this is. I've done this myself, right? I've talked about this before. That once a tree that was flaming on the side of the road during wildfires in Santa Barbara suddenly, like, bent across the road while I was driving, and I just drove through the flames. Like, if I go fast, it can't catch me. And you know that. I guess I don't know how that science works either, in this way. It's 1894 for me, too. But that's what they would do with the trains. Exactly what I did with my little Ford Focus. Just put the lead on and hope the fire doesn't catch you. But this didn't work out. Suddenly, it felt as if the world was on fire and the air ablaze. Flames reached 80 to 90ft above the train on both sides of the tracks. The roar so loud it drowned out the sound of the locomotive itself. If you've ever heard a train in your life, the idea of something drowning out the sound of a train is pretty insane. I mean, the sound of the fire that is, like, constantly described throughout this book, like, is unimaginable. Just this roar, like a monster, louder than anything you could possibly imagining and telling you something really horrific is about to happen to you. Like, it's just an awful thought. But there was nothing that this train could do at this point but to try to power through it full throttle. Soon, the train approached the Pokegama Creek Bridge, and the engineer could see the underside of that bridge over was on fire and the tracks sagging. And again, all he could do was power through it. It's not like he could back up. He could feel the bridge trying to give way underneath, but they made it across fast enough to avoid its collapse. But the tracks on solid ground weren't much better. They were already warping in the heat, and trees were falling across the tracks. Finally, the train hit part of the rail so warped it caused it to derail into a ditch, landing in burning brush. The engineer saw a spigot and opened it, letting water flow over them to prevent burning to death. As passengers screamed and gasped for air. And one crewman begged for a gun to kill himself. A Brakeman remembered the gallons of water in the train's reservoir and found buckets to fling water at the underside of the train to strop stop the worst flames. And soon a bucket brigade formed to help. I mean, just think of like the hottest you've ever been, right? And imagine that like times five. And just the air, the air itself feels like it's on fire. [00:36:19] Speaker B: Yes. [00:36:19] Speaker A: That's what these people were experiencing in here. And just obviously immediate panic as a result. [00:36:25] Speaker B: Yes. I, on my seemingly lifelong mission to irrevocably fuck up my mental health using the Internet, I've seen plenty of people on fire and read plenty about burning to death. And it is exactly that inhalation of flaming hot air, which is as lethal as the skin tissue nerve damage that you sustain from the fire itself. [00:36:52] Speaker A: You breathe more usually. And we will get to that. But honestly, what I'll. I'll talk about later on is if you do die from that inhalation, that's the best way you can go. [00:37:04] Speaker B: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. That's. Yeah, that's surviving. That is, is just a life sentence. [00:37:11] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Terrible stuff. So as this was happening, it was at this time that the first structure in Hinckley caught fire. A chicken cooper. The firemen went to put it out, figuring it's a chicken coop, we'll make short work of it. But before they could, the adjoining house caught fire and then the barn, then another chicken coop and then another house. They were playing whack a mole with these fires. Every time they tried to put one out, another would pop up. [00:37:41] Speaker B: And I have the awful darkly comic image of a burning chicken running from building to building, spreading the fire, you know, setting things on fire as it goes. Horrible that would be in the movie. [00:38:00] Speaker A: Depends on who makes that movie, I think. But all of this was more than 19 volunteer firefighters could manage. No matter how good and modern their equipment was. The chief called for men from the mill to come help, which the mill managers reluctantly allowed, realizing if they couldn't stop the town from burning, it was only a matter of time before the mill was destroyed too. So they figured, listen, alright, fine, they can go fight the fire if that will prevent the mill from burning. Still, by 3pm as structure after structure ignited and the alarm whistle blew throughout town, many townspeople still thought the town too impenetrable to be in real danger. Others waited anxiously for the train and soon heard that one coming from the south had derailed in Pokagama and that people had died. That train was not coming. Pokegama had already succumbed to the fire. The townspeople heard the fire coming and the first people who saw it thought it was a tornado before they felt the wave of hot air hit them, causing them to run. Some ran home, some jumped into any creek they could find and some took off into the woods trying to beat the flames. One elderly woman tried to keep up with her family who called to her from a pond to hurry and join them. But a few yards before reaching them, a flame reached out and took her, burning her to death, screaming in front of her son, her daughter in law and her grandchildren. Very reminiscent of that one scene in Dante's Peak. Yeah. You ever see Dante's Peak? [00:39:36] Speaker B: Not so one with Pierce Brosnan. Certainly seen it, yes. [00:39:40] Speaker A: There's like a part that for some reason is like the only thing that I ever really remember about this movie. Well, I know why, because it's like the most horrific scene in the whole movie. But there's like a grandmother who's kind of a bitch throughout this whole movie. But. But then it comes to a point where like there, there's like the water is like acidic from volcano shit and they're in a boat that is like going to sink and they're like near the dock but they're not going to make it. And so the grandmother sacrifices herself by jumping into the water and pulling their little boat to the dock and then just like dies horribly in front of the family during this movie. That's kind of what I picture. [00:40:21] Speaker B: It's the image of me. [00:40:22] Speaker A: Yeah, the Dante's Peak grandma. Many of the townspeople couldn't swim and had to stay near the edge of the pond. But as the flames came closer, they'd be forced back, struggling to stay out of the flames, but also not to drown. One of the town founders, C.W. kelsey, took his family to hide in their well, holding a wet blanket over their heads and singing hymns to try to drown out the sound of fire. They didn't have a lot of choices, I guess. [00:40:50] Speaker B: Well, good point. Yeah. [00:40:54] Speaker A: Just think about it again. There's like what else? Bring my bluetooth down there or whatever. Another farmer, Fred Mullender, jumped into his well and beckoned his wife to follow him with their 3 year old daughter and 1 year old son. She refused and instead ran into the house and closed the door, hoping it would protect them from the flames. Needless to say, it didn't. When it was done with Pokegama, the fire barreled on to the village of Mission Creek. Home to 73 people and consisting of 26 houses, a sawmill, a Hotel, a blacksmith shop, and a general store. The homes were largely clustered around those businesses. The fire reached them 50 to 80ft tall, and the proprietor of the general store, Ed Boyle, instructed everyone to gather in the center of a potato patch behind the store. He then had his employees load a wagon with several barrels of water to fight the fire. As the air heated up around them, people buried their faces in the dirt and tried to dig out pockets of cool air to breathe. Embers scorched them. Ash and smoke nearly blinded and suffocated them. And they watched as the entire town burned to the ground around them for 30 to 40 minutes before the fire was gone as fast as it had come in. [00:42:14] Speaker B: The. Just to. To kind of explore that. How does. How does our author know this? Because people, I guess, were found with their faces in dirt. [00:42:26] Speaker A: This. At my next line here. The whole town survived, thanks to Boyle's quick thinking. [00:42:31] Speaker B: Fine, okay, great. Fine. [00:42:34] Speaker A: Yep. Yeah. No, I mean, it was brilliant. Really. As much as desperate as these people were and all of that, like, his thinking there, like, all right, everybody get in this one area. We're going to. We're going to make a circle. We're going to fight the fire around that circle, and we're all going to stand here and wait it out. Saved. [00:42:52] Speaker B: A Part of why I ask is because the. The kind of what a person does when it's inevitable and imminent that you're about to die is very gripping to me. Like the people flinging themselves out of the World Trade Center. Right. [00:43:07] Speaker A: You have stories like this here, too. Like when one of the. I'll talk about a train that crashed, but I didn't include this detail that, like, people were breaking the windows and jumping out the windows into the fire. [00:43:19] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:43:20] Speaker A: Yeah, right. [00:43:20] Speaker B: Like, see also the. The kind of charred figures of Pompeii, you know, I mean, the base of the volcano. People going about their daily lives frozen, you know, in ash. Yeah. What. What people do in their final fucking seconds as a kind of a swing, as a Hail Mary is super gripping to me. [00:43:45] Speaker A: And that's one of the things that is so fascinating about this entire story, because you see, like, the whole gamut of human reactions to things. You have people like this guy who, like, instantly was like, all right, I got a plan. Here's what we're gonna do, right? And then you see people who panic and do things like jump out of a train window, or the woman who wouldn go down into the well and instead just went in the house and hoped for the best, you know, like people do all kinds of things. They're in denial. They, you know, fight the best they can. They freeze, you know, every. Everything that you can possibly imagine happens in this story when faced with fire. So in Hinckley, the firemen were doing their best. The men at the front of the fire line had so much water being blown back on them by the wind cooling them down, they didn't realize that behind them the fire and heat was building, nor that many of the other firefighters had already given up and fled to try to find and help their families. It wasn't until suddenly the flow of water stopped that they turned around and realized that the hose had been burned through between them and the engine. And they became aware of the heat and the rumbling of the fire. The town's Catholic priests ran through the town, shouting at everyone to leave everything and get out. We can't save the town, he said. Don't lose a moment, but fly. According to Daniel Brown, as two already large fires approach one another, they often begin a kind of tug of war, competing over the available fuel and oxygen in the space between them. During this time, their pent up energies build towards a kind of climax. Both generate tremendous winds, but the area between them may be relatively small still, as the countervailing winds tend to neutralize each other. This area between them also grows extremely hot as both fires radiate heat down onto the surface. Then suddenly and violently, the state of equilibrium collapses as one of the fires pulls the other into itself. And at that moment, the fires will erupt. So when that happens, whatever is between those two fires gets incinerated and the fires merge into one big mass fire, way more powerful and dangerous than they'd been on their own. And this is exactly what was happening in Hinckley. And it was happening as a locomotive helmed by Bill Best was rolling into town. The people were in a panic. Folks tried to find their spouses, their kids. They ran every which direction, unsure of where to go. Some went home to try to grab their prized possessions. Those with wagons loaded their families up and grabbed as many people as they could along the way. But this caused a traffic jam of wagons, buggies, animals and so on, all trying to get out of town across a narrow bridge. The depot had caught fire, but there were two trains, so the most clear headed made their way there. As the chaos carried on, the flames neared. Glowing balls of gas detaching themselves from the main fire and undulating over the town, then slinging onto buildings, draping them with fire. Firenados danced ahead of the Fire knocking things down and sucking things up, leaving them all aflame. As the train conductors worked on a plan to leave, they could see people crumpling in the street from the heat and the smoke. Some flood, fully engulfed in flames. They packed as many people as they could into the cars and they began to move. The passengers closed the doors of the cars, trapping in the heat, but blocking out the view of the many people running alongside the train, screaming for it to stop and let them on. One man rode up alongside the train on a horse, and the passengers reached out, hoping he could jump and they'd be able to pull him aboard. But the horse got spooked and pulled away from the train, and soon both the horse and the rider were caught by the flames as the passengers watched. In town, the situation was dire. People who had stayed behind in their homes were now royally fucked. John Rogers and his wife fled too late with their two daughters, ages 4 and 2, and their newborn baby. But having nowhere to go, they only made it a few feet before all five of them were taken by the flames. Those that had fled along the wagon road soon were met with a horrific discovery. The fire had leapfrogged them, and a quarter mile ahead down the road, they were surrounded by flames, and the convection winds from the fire behind them was literally pulling the fire ahead of them backwards towards them. So they're basically between two encroaching walls of fire, like being in, like a trash compactor at this point. Some tried to run for the river, but the fire was too fast. Others could hear the whistle of the train, so they ran towards it. 127 people had run for the train from the wagon trail and ended up in a clearing as the train barreled by too fast to stop for them. Whole families ended up there, children who'd been separated from their families, everyone screaming for their loved ones, screaming from the heat. [00:49:12] Speaker B: Brown wrote instinctively, people got down on their hands and knees and pressed their mouths close to the ground, sucking in the cooler air. People prayed and cried and wailed. They gagged and retched on the smoke. Some simply sat in the grass, staring at the approaching flames as if they could see something through them. [00:49:35] Speaker A: See, that's exactly what you're talking about here, right? Like, this is the whole spectrum of reactions to imminent death. And the flames came, pushing them toward the center of the clearing, packing them closer and closer together until there was nowhere further for them to go. [00:49:59] Speaker B: One by one, the women's long dresses erupted. Everyone screamed, but the screams came out thin and unnaturally high. Pitched, the withering heat had desiccated their vocal cords, pulling them taut like overstretched rubber bands. Grown men suddenly sounded like young girls. When the screams were over, they had to breathe in, and when they did, they inhaled flames and superheated air, sucking the flames into their very mouths. [00:50:29] Speaker A: Al Fraser crouched 50 yards away and years later would recall, quote, recall, quote, the long wailing that rose to a crescendo of dry, brittle shrieks and then died out in less than a minute. Then nothing but the roar of the wind and the fire again. Kind of reminds me of that, like, horrifying scene in. Nope. Where, you know, all the people are inside of Jean jacket or whatever, and then all the screaming stops. Like, just this horrifying moment of, like, you're hearing all these people suffering, suffering, suffering, and then it's gone. And that's worse. [00:51:08] Speaker B: There's a lovely detail which I. I don't think I've ever heard anyone else refer to in Romero's Day of the Dead, right when that amazing killer at the end when Rhodes gets pulled apart by. By the undead, and as they're pulling his head off his neck, his voice goes up, like, you know, two octaves into this kind of awful screaming wail as his vocal cords are stretched. What a fucking brilliant detail that is in that kill. [00:51:40] Speaker A: Yeah, it's not really a thing you think about, you know, the impact of these kinds of external factors on someone's vocal cords, and yet. Yeah, that is wild, wild detail to add. Yeah. Back at the Wagon Bridge, Ida Martinson and her four daughters, aged between two months and nine years, had taken shelter in the muddy water. But it was shallow, no more than a foot deep. She'd rolled her girls back and forth in the mud to try to keep them cool and wet. The air was fairly clear down there due to a current of fresh air from the bottom of the ravine. But this was a curse disguised as a blessing, as we were just talking about. As Brown points out, heat is the worst way to die. In a fire, most people die from inhaling smoke. If you're sleeping, you might not even wake up. You just quietly suffocate. But if you have enough fresh air not to die by the time the fire gets to you, then you will die in excruciating pain. A witness described what became of Ida Martinson and her daughters with heartbreaking screams more like the cries of beasts than of human beings. These suffering ones writhed like worms in the mud as they endeavored to escape. But they couldn't. And so they rolled and flailed and screamed until they were dead. Just after 4, another train rolled into town, greeted immediately by a throng of panicked citizens running up the tracks at it. If there had been such thing as zombie movies at the time, I'm sure that's what it would have looked like to the conductor. Just all a sudden, all these people running, like literally running out of the woods, up the tracks, all of that stuff at him. As the train slowed, people streamed out from every direction. More than 200 people, and the engineer, Jim root, estimated this. Many of them were half naked, many were black with soot. He asked a woman what was happening, and her only response was, for God's sake, will you save us? People piled onto the cars, and as root pulled an acquaintance aboard, he said, everything is burned up. Everything is burning, including the depot, which is, you know, bad news if you're driving the train. And worse. The train was starting to catch fire. It was clear they'd need to leave as quickly as possible. And they couldn't go through Hinckley. He was going to have to back the train up. As they pulled away, the brennan lumberyards exploded all at once, creating an updraft that carried stacks of flaming lumber into the air and just spat it out all over the countryside. Projectiles, essentially. So much energy was released by the burning lumber, it caused a blast of super heated air that acted something like a shockwave, basically, and that slammed into the train, blowing out every single window on its west side and nearly pushing it off its tracks. Flames burst through the windows, sending the passengers into a panic. One survivor described the scene. The wild panic was horrible. There was no humanity in it. Every fear crazed person was for himself, and they did not care how they got out of the swirling, rushing avalanche of flames. Like at that point, you've got flames from outside coming inside a closed train that you're in with hundreds of people. Yeah, it's every man for himself at that point. The train finally pulled up to skunk lake, the fire hot on their trail, and root ordered the crew to help the passengers into the water. The fire came, and for an hour, people alternated between ducking under the water to get out of the superheated air and coming up to breathe it in. Meanwhile, the other train pulled into the depot of a small town called sandstone, the one that the priest at the beginning of this story had been going to to see his flock. And there the citizens were, starting to see the same things witnessed by the people of hinckley. As the firestorm approached, they were already lighting their lamps to compensate for the darkening sky. As the train pulled up, they were shocked to see the state of the people inside, who urged them to board the train and get out. But the people of Sandstone waved them off, insisting the fire wouldn't make it that far and that they needed to stay and look after their property. Brown actually mentioned the Bradford City fire in describing why this is actually a fairly normal response. Incidents like this show the extent to which, without realizing it, we live our lives according to internal scripts. We have certain expectations about how things will play out and what our and other roles are, which we can often adhere to, even in the face of evidence that we are actually super. In the case of the Bradford fire that you talked about a few weeks ago, people were unconcerned at first. Some even took photos of the fire and then just went back to watching the game completely. [00:56:41] Speaker B: People were fucking about in front of the news cameras. You know what I mean? [00:56:44] Speaker A: Right? Yeah. No sense of the actual peril that befell them. And it wasn't until shit hit the fan that they actually hit the bricks. And for many of them, it was obviously too late. That's basically what happened here. In the face of all the evidence that something terrible was going on, the people of Sandstone went, oh, no, that can't happen. That's not in the script. And they just let the train ride away without them. As the train rolled off, the rumbling of the fire began. Then the firenados came. Emil Anderson ran from house to house, trying to get people to run for the river, but hardly anyone did. At 5:15, the firestorm hit Sandstone head on, raining fire on the people and the structures. The fire was now 10 miles wide and stronger than it had been when it hit Hinckley along First Street, Dozens of people ran out of their homes and businesses and were simply incinerated before they could run a hundred feet. Again, very Emmerich images here. A man named Frank Anderson had taken shelter in his cellar with his wife and two children. The fire sucked the oxygen out of the cellar and suffocated all of them. This happened all over town afterwards, when they came around looking for survivors and whatnot. People who had hidden in cellars largely had been suffocated pretty much immediately. People lined the banks of the river, terrified to jump into the rushing water. But before long, they had no other choice. Peter England, who lived on the west end of first street, had climbed into his well, along with his wife, his seven children and nine others, mostly kids from the neighborhood. When they were found later, they were all dead and had been stewing in their own juices for almost 48 hours, so that when rescuers tried to remove them, their heads and limbs detached from their bodies. [00:58:39] Speaker B: Fuck yeah. [00:58:42] Speaker A: They were among many who would be boiled. Yes, exactly that. They were soup at that point. And they were among many who would be found in wells and root cellars and just out in the streets of sandstone afterwards. It came so fast and no one was even vaguely prepared for it. The train rolled on into another town called Partridge and once again implored the townspeople to climb above aboard, only to be rebuffed. And that town too was soon in ashes. As the firestorm finally passed these Minnesota towns, survivors began to emerge from wells, rivers, lakes and other such places to see the devastation left behind. Corpses absolutely everywhere. And actually the book has a little photo spread inside of it that shows some of these pretty horrifying pictures of the bodies that they found. As you can imagine, you know, just kind of the like rictus grin of people who've been burned and all that kind of stuff. And the contortions of their bodies. People had essentially been baked. Quote, intestines were protruding from abdomens, eyes bulging out of their sockets and liquefying foul smelling black fluid running from gaping holes that had once been been mouths. There were pieces of people everywhere. Black lumps only recognizable as former humans by things like a shoe or a handbag. [01:00:12] Speaker B: Black lumps, just black lumps. Black lumps. [01:00:16] Speaker A: And those still alive weren't out of the woods with burn complications to deal with. In the best scenario, burns leave you open to further damage and infection. And many of these people had been burned and then sat in murky gross water for hours. Many had been blinded, all had been traumatized. Although PTSD had yet to have been labeled a thing at this point. But psychologists talk about how fire is actually one of the like foremost things that causes PTSD in people. Now we know that it's one of the most traumatic things you can possibly experience. All in all, 436 people died in Minnesota and at least nine more in Wisconsin. Over a hundred couldn't be identified because of the state of their bodies. People just knew that if they never saw their family member again, they were dead. There's a museum dedicated to the event, the Hinckley Fire Museum. And as we record this podcast right now, there is a performance of a brand new musical based on the fire going on at that museum. [01:01:27] Speaker B: A musical? [01:01:28] Speaker A: A musical. I'm very curious as to what that is like. I imagine it leaves out most of the Gruesome details and focuses more on the heroism of the many people who helped the victims. [01:01:41] Speaker B: If it isn't called Black Lumps with like an exclamation mark. [01:01:48] Speaker A: But yeah, I imagine it focuses on the heroism of all of these people who helped, whether by loading them up on trains and hauling us out of town, or nursing them back to health, or offering them food and supplies and helping them get back to their feet. All of which are things that happened in the aftermath of this. When you read up on this story, that's the legacy people seem to want to come out of all of that pain and trauma. Which makes sense because like the Toy Box Killer, the Great Hinckley Firestorm is perhaps a little too fucking bleak and violent to be marketable. [01:02:22] Speaker B: You aren't wrong. Did it at least did it kind of move fire science forward? [01:02:27] Speaker A: It did, yes, absolutely. I mean, that's probably the biggest thing that came out of this, was the fact that, like, there was a ton to study. [01:02:36] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:02:37] Speaker A: From it, there became more of like a call to actually, you know, fix shit after this. So it did, in fact give cause like, a huge move forward in terms of. Of fire science at this point, which is incredible because if you think, you know, it was only like 20 years before this or whatever the Great Chicago Fire had occurred, and that didn't really move the needle on fire science and in particularly marked way. So, you know, that's kind of the. The best they can take as a silver lining from this situation as well. It made it so that everyone tried to make sure this wouldn't happen again. [01:03:24] Speaker B: I mean, often I'll plug Joag on my Instagram or, like, do a little story recommending it. I can't in good conscience recommend this to anyone. [01:03:38] Speaker A: Unless you already listen to this podcast. [01:03:40] Speaker B: I can't listen. [01:03:42] Speaker A: This is why it's the five year special, man. It's because only the real heads can listen to this. And if you want more of it, like I said, this is a, you know, 250 page book or whatever with lots of details that I did not include here, some of which are even more horrific. But, you know, well, we'll save that one for your own choices. You know, Hark. [01:04:06] Speaker B: I hear the ass is bray. We may well get some rain today. Let me quote directly from my notes, if I may. [01:04:14] Speaker A: Yes, please do. [01:04:16] Speaker B: Fucking look at these nerds. Oh, mise en scene. [01:04:19] Speaker A: I don't think anyone has ever said mise en scene in such a horny way before. [01:04:23] Speaker B: The way I whispered the word sex. [01:04:25] Speaker A: Cannibal receipt Worst comes to worst, Mark, I'm willing to guillotine you for science. [01:04:30] Speaker B: Thank you. That's really, really sweet. It's cold outside, but my pancreas is talking to me. I'm gonna leg it. [01:04:36] Speaker A: You know how I feel about that, Mark? [01:04:38] Speaker B: I think you feel great about it. Well, I don't know what to say, really. I don't know where to begin. I mean, they say every. The longest journey begins with a single step. A little. Did we know upon taking that first step five years ago this weekend that we would still be here? Pretty much every fucking week? Talking it out, thinking it through, bearing witness, standing guard, sucking it all up, absorbing it all, talking it out, sharing it inwardly, outwardly, the horrors, both internal and external. You and I on this fucking cast. Five years. [01:05:22] Speaker A: Is that your stomach? [01:05:24] Speaker B: Yes. [01:05:28] Speaker A: Your mic is positioned just so you get, like a nice little gurgle. [01:05:32] Speaker B: Yeah, well, go in there. I'll share. Fuck it. Why not? I'll share. Earlier on today, my family and I visited Chili Fest, right? Held in the grounds of. Of Waddesdon Manor in Aylesbury. [01:05:46] Speaker A: Ooh, sounds fancy. [01:05:48] Speaker B: Local artisan chili. Fucking sauce. [01:05:52] Speaker A: Does the chili have beans there or. No? [01:05:55] Speaker B: When I say chili, I mean pepper, as opposed to the food. [01:05:58] Speaker A: Stuff the peppers. Okay, got it. Yeah. [01:06:01] Speaker B: Not like eating chili. No, no, no. [01:06:03] Speaker A: This. This is so American that, like, I immediately. Because, like, if you're going to like a chili thing, like chili. [01:06:09] Speaker B: No, no, no, no. [01:06:09] Speaker A: This is. Okay, gotcha. Chili peppers. [01:06:12] Speaker B: Yes. Chili, as in the pepper. [01:06:13] Speaker A: Okay, so now I'm with you. [01:06:17] Speaker B: And I sampled a lot of sources, purchased a lot of sources. A lot of Scotch bonnets, a lot of reapers. My fucking. You wouldn't want to be my gastric. [01:06:30] Speaker A: You got the hinkly firestorm going on in there. [01:06:32] Speaker B: That's exactly what I've got. Like this. When I say both internal and external horrors, that is what I'm talking about. So that's where you find me in a position of some gastric malaise this evening, friends. Tmi, maybe. But there's that fucking cast. I mean, what. What do you want, right? [01:06:50] Speaker A: Yeah, your stomach was telling on you anyway. [01:06:52] Speaker B: I'd like to hear that. I didn't realize it was coming over. I apologize if that drowned out either or both of our voices. So what do you think, Corry? How are we feeling? How we feeling after five years? [01:07:06] Speaker A: I mean, listen, I'm. I'm having fun. [01:07:09] Speaker B: Good. [01:07:10] Speaker A: Clearly, I. I've reached the point where I'll just openly depress you straight out the gate. [01:07:16] Speaker B: But. [01:07:19] Speaker A: It'S interesting, isn't it? Interesting? An interesting dynamic. [01:07:22] Speaker B: Interesting. Yes, yes, yes. The journey that we've been on. I mean, I don't know what to say, really. I mean, where do you want to. Where do you want to begin in picking apart the last five years? [01:07:36] Speaker A: Oh, are we. Is that what we're doing? [01:07:37] Speaker B: I don't. [01:07:38] Speaker A: I mean, just reflecting a little bit on the last five years. [01:07:44] Speaker B: It would feel remiss not to. [01:07:47] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, obviously we want to get into. We're going to talk about some of our favorite things we've watched over the past five years, some of our favorite things we've talked about on this cast. But yeah, I mean, let's. And we have stick around or look at the timestamp. We also have a big announcement for you at the end of this here podcast, too. We're breaking up. No more Joe Egg. Jk. Don't you. Don't. Don't you get that look? No, but the. [01:08:15] Speaker B: Could she read my notes? [01:08:20] Speaker A: We both have different announcements for the. [01:08:22] Speaker B: I like these notes. [01:08:25] Speaker A: That's the dead giveaway. Yeah, no, I mean, I've been thinking about it all day, you know, just kind of looking back on where we came from, locked away in our. In our homes, you know, if anyone has joined since then, you know, in the past few years and was not one of the folks who has started over from the beginning and whatnot. You know, we were. We were just Twitter friends, you know, for years. [01:08:57] Speaker B: Long. Five. Five years previous. Yeah. [01:09:00] Speaker A: Yeah, more than that, I think. But yeah, we'd. We'd been Twitter friends for a while, spread to Instagram friends and. And whatnot. And I just kind of got. Got it in my head that I was like, I bet he would be really fun to talk to. Even though the most that we'd ever done is, like, tell each other jokes on Snapchat. It just was like, I feel like we would hit it off really well. And so, you know, I messaged you and was like, hey, would you. Would you do this with me? And you were like, I've been waiting for you to ask. [01:09:36] Speaker B: I don't. It's certainly not an exaggeration, I don't think to say that we've probably spoken or at least texted every single day since. [01:09:42] Speaker A: Yes, exactly. We have in some way contacted one another every single day for five plus years. You know, just the month or whatever that we prepared for this podcast and ended up, you know, I think it. That goes to what this has become. It went from this, like, guy I kind of know online that I think maybe, maybe we might have some interesting things to say about, like, horror movies or whatever to someone who. It's like we share our day with each other and do, you know, like, talk about stupid shit with one another and ended up becoming, you know, besties over this time and creating like a little community of close friends around us and whatnot too. And I think that's one of the big things that, like, I take from all of this is I would be sitting reading these things and telling them to Kyo or whatever. Either way, you know, see, he's trying to go to sleep. I'd be unloading about this firestorm to him. But instead, you know, I have this group of people who actually want to hear these stories and have become my friends and who I get to hang out with and all of that stuff. And so I think that's, that's like the biggest thing for me, what the past five years have meant. [01:11:06] Speaker B: I would certainly be internalizing a lot more, you know, right. There's, there are. I mean, there's very little that is off limits on our Sunday nights. You know, there's very little I don't talk about. I mean, this, this obviously stuff that I keep back. But sure, I would, I would internalize a hell of a lot more if not for this. [01:11:30] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:11:30] Speaker B: And I've said often, at least in the past kind of six months to a year, about how my tone has changed a lot over the, over the five years that we've been doing this. And I can put that down to any one of a number of things. But I, I'm very confident that it has been a net positive for me in terms of my, my social circle, in terms of my own well being. Yeah, it's, it's. When you weigh it up, Joag has been nothing but a positive thing in my life and. [01:12:06] Speaker A: Good, I'm glad to hear that. And obviously I agree wholeheartedly on that. And we're just, I think I speak for both of us when, you know, I just say it's so wonderful to have so many people who have come along on this with us and, and walked this weird path with us and I hope get some catharsis and, you know, it's a net positive for them as well. I think there's just something to, you know, being able to hear people give voice to the things that you worry about and stuff like that that I think can be helpful to feel not alone in it and that hopefully that's what we do instead of causing people to worry about things they weren't worried about before, you know, so let me. [01:12:47] Speaker B: Ask, and I. I'm not just asking you here. I'm asking anybody who might be listening as well, to consider the you of today, the U of 31st of August 2025. Measure it against the you of this weekend five years back, how things would you say, do you feel better than you did? Does the world around you feel better than it did? Because before. Before we started recording, I jumped on one of those little kind of life calculator websites that are dotted around the place. Right. [01:13:29] Speaker A: Oh, gosh. [01:13:30] Speaker B: Okay, let's just crunch a few numbers here. Super quick. Let me just get my calculator up. Right. What episode number is this? Corrigan. I come to you for the stats. [01:13:42] Speaker A: This is episode 239. [01:13:44] Speaker B: Okay. Early episodes were a little shorter. We. We used to go for like an hour and a half. Nowadays we tend to go for two hours or so. So along with the snacks and along with, you know, the let plays and the reads and all of the other stuff, let's. Let's say it averages out two hours per, right? [01:14:03] Speaker A: Sure, yeah. [01:14:04] Speaker B: What episode did you say this was? 2:39.239 times two. So that gives us 478 hours, right? [01:14:14] Speaker A: Why is that? Times two. I. Oh, two hours. Yeah. [01:14:17] Speaker B: Two hours. [01:14:18] Speaker A: So how many. So 400, 478 hours. Okay. [01:14:22] Speaker B: Yeah. Now, okay. I've been alive for, let's say 409 and a half thousand hours. Oh. Which feels pretty good, doesn't it? [01:14:35] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:14:36] Speaker B: So let's do 478 as a percentage of. What did I say it was? It was four. Let's just round it up. 410,000 hours, let's say. [01:14:53] Speaker A: Okay. [01:14:54] Speaker B: As a percentage of 410,000. What if I told you that we've been doing Jack of all graves for 1.17% of my life? [01:15:16] Speaker A: 1.17%. That. A whole percent. And that's just the. That's just the recording. [01:15:23] Speaker B: That's. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. That's simply sat. Being sat there. [01:15:26] Speaker A: A whole percent. [01:15:27] Speaker B: Speaking. I've been speaking to you on a Sunday evening for rounded at 1.2% of my entire life. [01:15:35] Speaker A: Right? [01:15:36] Speaker B: Yeah, that's. [01:15:37] Speaker A: That's wild. What about. What's five years as a percentage of life? [01:15:45] Speaker B: So five. Let's just go to percent. Calculator. Hang on. Percentage calculator. Five is what? Percent of 46? 10. It can't be 10%. [01:16:04] Speaker A: It's gotta be, right? [01:16:05] Speaker B: It is. It is. It is almost 10.1 do me, do me. Okay. You're almost 40, aren't you? [01:16:13] Speaker A: Yeah, I'll be 40 in a week. [01:16:15] Speaker B: Okay. We've been doing Joag for 12 and a half percent of your entire life. [01:16:18] Speaker A: 12 and a half percent of my life. That's bonkers. And some of you have been listening to this for that entire 12 plus percent of your life. [01:16:29] Speaker B: You know, what that represents is a very significant investment of the fucking time that I've got on this one world. [01:16:36] Speaker A: True. Yeah. [01:16:37] Speaker B: You know, does it not? [01:16:39] Speaker A: Mm. [01:16:42] Speaker B: So it would be ridiculous to think that I would continue doing this if, if I was getting nothing from it, if there was no net gain from it. [01:16:52] Speaker A: Right. Yeah. Seriously, at that point you get 12%. I gotta reconsider something. [01:16:58] Speaker B: Really? Really? Really? Yeah. [01:17:00] Speaker A: But whereas like, my reaction instead is like, that was a good use of 12% of my life. [01:17:05] Speaker B: Good. Well, fantastic. I agree. I feel the same way. That's 10% of my life that I've not been fucking scrolling or I've not been, you know, eating junk food. I feel that it's productive. I feel that it's been, like I said, in terms of my kind of well being, in terms of the knowledge, in terms of the people I've met, in terms of the experiences that I've had and how can it be other, how can it be anything other than a net positive now, globally? Right. [01:17:43] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:17:45] Speaker B: A lot in the first few years we would talk about, you know, how what a rare treat and a thrill it is, what a privilege it is to watch everything decline around us. [01:17:55] Speaker A: We would say that. [01:17:56] Speaker B: I certainly, okay, fine. I, I, I said that on many an occasion. [01:18:03] Speaker A: Yes. [01:18:05] Speaker B: How do things feel? Would you say, if you were to throw yourself back five years compared to now, Would you say the, how do you feel the world? Do you feel, do you feel we were wrong? Has the world proved us wrong? Have things, do you feel things are better now than they were half a decade ago? [01:18:23] Speaker A: Certainly not. I think it is interesting to look back and I, I don't think I could have foreseen that the worst thing would always happen, you know, and we talk about like, you know, we joke about me system optimist and all that. And I think that even as a person who, I'm an optimist, but I do consider myself a realist. Right. Like, you know, I kind of try to take a balanced view of things and not be, you know, not expect the best, not expect the worst, basically, and kind of think of in the lens of history, how do these things usually play out and I guess I didn't see, like, Weimar Germany being the situation that we were in. Right. I didn't see. I thought there would be some balance in the force here. [01:19:17] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [01:19:19] Speaker A: And that people wouldn't keep choosing the worst possible things. And. And what was on offer to us, I think, is the problem. Right. Like our entire landscape is built by having bad choices. [01:19:34] Speaker B: Yep. [01:19:35] Speaker A: And they're not being a good choice to pick and thus ending up in just a position where it's, like, weird. All the things we've been talking about for these past five years are happening. They're coming to pass. And nothing mitigated any of the stuff in between. And there. [01:19:53] Speaker B: That's an excellent point. There's no mitigation. [01:19:56] Speaker A: Right. [01:19:56] Speaker B: There's no. There's no yin. It's all yang, baby. It's all black lumps. [01:20:01] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. It's all black lumps. Is what's happening here that I think is probably the. The biggest thing for me is I didn't think that always the worst case scenario would happen. And that is what has happened, and. [01:20:18] Speaker B: It continues to happen. And the even worse. Even worse is always just around the corner. Right. [01:20:29] Speaker A: And I think I still don't believe that. Right. Like, even though there's nothing to counter. [01:20:34] Speaker B: Now, you don't believe that even worse is just around the corner. [01:20:37] Speaker A: It's the same psychology as the Sandstone people. [01:20:42] Speaker B: Sure. [01:20:42] Speaker A: In here. Right. I'm playing from a script of expectation. [01:20:46] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:20:47] Speaker A: And there. We have spent our entire lives watching movies and television and things like that that have an arc and reading textbooks that gave us an arc. Right. That said, you know, from this to this to this. And, you know, things work out in this way, in this way, in this way. And there's, you know, a path from A to B and it may get wobbly, but you're there. And I think to a degree, it's still hard for me to go there. Just. There is no script. That's not how this works. Nothing comes in. There is no deus ex machina. There's. None of this stuff happens. So I think, you know, there's still like a part of me that is like, it can't. It can't continue this way. Right. Like, it can ship. [01:21:36] Speaker B: It can. And moreover, can get worse. Like just a snapshot of the uk, Right. Just even today in the news. I mean, our current government is shitting the bed hard. Right? [01:21:51] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:21:52] Speaker B: Drifting. Not even drifting. Swerving to the right. [01:21:56] Speaker A: You've got your Biden administration. Right? [01:21:59] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Well said. Well said pretty much. And Even. Even in their craven attempts to appease the right, they're still shitting it, right? They're doing their best to appeal to the right while instantly, while simultaneously losing the support of the right. You know, it's not right enough. [01:22:20] Speaker A: Exactly. The right is never gonna want you. Stop trying to court them. [01:22:26] Speaker B: As I've said plenty of times on this cast in the past, what the net has done, what social media has done, what rolling news has done. [01:22:34] Speaker A: I think you said the net, that's like the most Gen X thing you've ever said. [01:22:37] Speaker B: Yeah, but this all happened within my lifetime, right? This has all happened within my lifetime. [01:22:40] Speaker A: But I know nobody ever says the net before, so I appreciate it. [01:22:43] Speaker B: I'm bringing it back. Has amplified cranks, right? [01:22:49] Speaker A: Yes. [01:22:50] Speaker B: And all through this fucking summer for our, for our American listeners, our American friends, all the way through this summer, the cranks have been on their here in the uk, right? The scale of our immigration has been wildly amplified. It's the identity politics, right? It's the news, the fucking, you know, the media, the rich, those with a stake have fucking played it so beautifully. They have just absolutely went through the playbook. And right now that the fucking. The. The what normally would just be isolated pockets of crankery in disparate towns across the UK really feels at a kind of a bubbling kind of boiling point. There are, there are full on kind of protests, riots at fucking premier inns and travel lodges around the uk. [01:23:55] Speaker A: There are fucking dickheads, Premier ins and travel lodges. [01:23:59] Speaker B: So it's, it's been policy because of the absolutely glacial rate of processing asylum claims in the uk, right? [01:24:08] Speaker A: Oh, asylum hotel. [01:24:11] Speaker B: Exactly this. Exactly this. Exactly this. Exactly. [01:24:14] Speaker A: Quote unquote. [01:24:16] Speaker B: And right wing fucking. What's the least fucking offensive term I can use? Just the fucking sights that you are seeing out in. In towns like all, all across the place. And maybe it's the media I'm watching, maybe it's, it's, it's, you know, it's. What I'm seeing is amplifying things, but it's everywhere. It's in the south, it's in the Midlands, in the north, you know, Norwich in the east, all over London, all over Birmingham, Essex, Worcestershire gatherings, man. Are they all racist? Yes, they are. Yes. Yeah, absolutely they are. And yep, it's getting, it feels as though it's catching, you know what I mean? It feels as though it's. It's getting traction and the media, right, the fucking hell. For a party with four MPs, right? Four fucking MPs. The amount of Airspace that is given to platforming the views of what feel to me as though the. The second biggest party in the UK now reformed. Certainly in terms of polling numbers, certainly in terms of public discourse, certainly in terms of the amount of volume that they're getting, the amount of coverage and the amount of platforming that party are getting for parliamentary parliamentarily. Such a fringe fucking party, right? Yet they are getting such a lot of fucking airspace. [01:25:56] Speaker A: That's reform or what party is it? [01:25:57] Speaker B: Reform? Yes, that is reform. [01:25:58] Speaker A: Okay, that's reform. I didn't know it was that like small representation wise. [01:26:03] Speaker B: Tiny, tiny representation in parliament. Four MPs. The same amount, I believe, as the Green Party. No fucking right. [01:26:12] Speaker A: You don't hear anything. [01:26:13] Speaker B: No fucking airspace at all. Insane. Particularly, you know, the numbers, the immigration numbers are nowhere near the problem that these fucking morons think they are. Something like 90,000, I've read today something like 90 something. No, it's even less. Give me a sec. Let me just find. I've read Today something like 32,33,000 currently in the UK claiming asylum, right? Which is a third the size of Wembley Stadium, Right. [01:26:53] Speaker A: It's crazy. [01:26:54] Speaker B: Like imagine Wembley Stadium. Now. Imagine it a third full, right? Those are the fucking numbers we're talking about. And yet this air quote issue is being wrapped up in this narrative that it's some kind of free ticket that a migrant might get, that it's luxurious, that it's hotels and that it's free meals and that it's this and that and this and that. [01:27:21] Speaker A: Yeah, that guy that we had talked about recently is. I sent a picture of him to you because he has a terrible plastic surgery face. But you were like, he's actually like pretty well liked guy. He's like a reality. [01:27:33] Speaker B: You're talking about Rylan Clark, aren't you? [01:27:35] Speaker A: Yes. And then he pretty well liked him. [01:27:37] Speaker B: Certainly not by me. I never fucking claimed the guy. He's got people who have, you know. Oh, he's so down to earth. He's a nice guy. I never bought that. He's not my cup of tea at all. But just to fucking have the lack of self awareness, the lack of fucking Contextual awareness at 10 or 11 o' clock on a weekday morning bemoaning in, in your words, the mainstream media, you dumb. You silly, silly cunt. Complaining about a narrative and then pushing that exact same narrative. [01:28:15] Speaker A: And it isn't for those who have no idea what this is. He had talked about how the, the refugees are given like phones and all kinds of luxuries. And things like that as soon as they arrive by the government, there are. [01:28:30] Speaker B: Charities that attempt to fucking give, you know, second, third hand equipment to people arriving here. Yeah, that's not government. [01:28:37] Speaker A: It's not a government program at all. [01:28:41] Speaker B: But these, the same fucking talking points keep coming out. They got in four star hotels, you get a free iPad. All of which is fucking idiocy. It just, it doesn't stand up to the slightest bit of scrutiny. It is I being employed, you know what I mean? I don't see fucking daytime TV as it goes. [01:29:04] Speaker A: Right. [01:29:04] Speaker B: But one has to wonder if you've got time to fucking rock up at a Premiere Inn on a weekday afternoon. Where are you getting your news from? [01:29:13] Speaker A: Right, yeah, exactly. [01:29:16] Speaker B: So anyway, sorry, I apologize. [01:29:19] Speaker A: Hey, listen, you gotta get it out. [01:29:21] Speaker B: But if you think that's what we're here for, if you think worse isn't gonna happen right in front of me, the two opposing parties right now, Conservative and Reform. Conservative, the Conservative Party have claimed. Right, next election, if we win, forget net zero, it's time to just fucking absolutely rape the fucking North Sea. You know what I mean? Every resource we can get our fucking hands on, we're gonna drill for yes, worse can happen. Worse can fucking happen. [01:29:53] Speaker A: Yep. [01:29:54] Speaker B: So who's, you know, five years, I. [01:30:00] Speaker A: Mean, yeah, you're right. I'm. I'm holding out for hero, I guess, you know, Zoro and Mumdani save us or something. But like, you know, we can. The hope is five years from now we sit here for the 10 year anniversary of Joag and things are sunshine and rainbows. That's, you know, we have nothing left to talk about because the world is so great. [01:30:24] Speaker B: That would be. [01:30:24] Speaker A: The AIs have been defeated and we're saving the climate and that kind of stuff. We'll check back. [01:30:33] Speaker B: Yeah, I hope so. But I'm as frustrated and tense and worried today as I was five years ago, if not more so, because I don't have, you know, crutches to fall back on today that I might have had five years back. Things are unfiltered for me at the moment and I feel it quite keenly. The world is no better than it was five years ago and is in every metric that I think we can see and feel markedly worse. Everything is more expensive, everything is more divisive. War continues. The fucking, you know, nuclear rhetoric is continually mentioned in the press. The environment is as bad, if not worse than it was five years ago. The trajectory is not only this, in the same fucking downward direction as it was five Years ago. I feel it's steepened. [01:31:31] Speaker A: Yeah, agreed. Very much so. [01:31:34] Speaker B: So, you know, I don't know what to tell you. You want if, if it's a vibe check you want, if it's a gut check you want that, that is it. That's, that's where we're at. [01:31:44] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, agreed. Like I said, I hope that's not what it continues to be, but for the five year gut check. Agreed. I have no, I cannot refute anything that you have said here, but do let us know where's your five year gut check? [01:31:59] Speaker B: You know, unless I' Unless, you know, the algorithm is just bumming me. [01:32:05] Speaker A: Right. Like, are we just doom scrolling? Yeah, that's the other option here, you know, and I think that's one of the things that I often balance with as well is that, you know, I'm often reading books or watching PBS or things like that. That present, you know, here's what is being done or things like that as sort of a reminder that, you know, it isn't all, all of this. There are things happening, but it's hard to tell the scale because. Yeah. What is our media landscape now anyway? I think that's, that's a, that's a whole joag in and of itself that I think is worth looking at. What is our media landscape. [01:32:49] Speaker B: I agree. [01:32:51] Speaker A: It's a complicated, complicated thing. [01:32:56] Speaker B: Interestingly, on the war topic, and this is very much a sidebar. [01:33:01] Speaker A: All right, hit me. [01:33:05] Speaker B: There's been a lot of conflict between Russia and Ukraine in a region I'm gonna mangle this pronunciation called Dnepropetrovsk. Dnipropetrovsk. [01:33:21] Speaker A: I'm gonna say you nailed it. [01:33:23] Speaker B: And the only time that I've ever heard of that place before was because it was the setting of the only video that I've ever had to nope out of on the Internet. [01:33:39] Speaker A: Really? [01:33:40] Speaker B: Yes. [01:33:40] Speaker A: It would be from Russia or Ukraine. [01:33:44] Speaker B: It's Ukraine. We're going back. It has to be 15 good gods, probably 20. And a absolutely infamous Gore video emerged from that region of a group of kids very badly murdering a homeless guy with a hammer and screwdriver. And it was the only video I've ever seen online that I couldn't make it through to the end of, had to turn off. And now there's war there. [01:34:14] Speaker A: So speaking of things that had to know bout of last night, you sent me a Chris Morris. [01:34:23] Speaker B: Yes, indeed. [01:34:23] Speaker A: YouTube Radio. [01:34:25] Speaker B: Did you listen? [01:34:27] Speaker A: I started it, but it was too cringe. I was like, I can't to turn it off. I got like about three and a half minutes into it. And I was like, no, it's too cringe. I can't keep listening to this. [01:34:39] Speaker B: The skit in question has become known as Taxi Bothering. Chris Morris had for the. For a brief but beautiful period of time, a primetime fucking music show on Radio 1. And he would, as he. As he is known to do, fuck about with members of the public from his studio live on air. And this. The. The clip in question that I sent you was his partner in crime at the time, a guy called Paul Garner, whom he had dressed up in, like, fucking thick NHS glasses, covered him in tcp, so he stank of disinfectant and had an earpiece in where he would feed Paul Garner things to say to a taxi driver, who got in a taxi and would feed Paul these ridiculous fucking weird things to say to a taxi driver. And it was very. I've always loved that clip. Just as the hilarity kind of builds and builds and builds as the conversation becomes more unhinged. You couldn't get through it. [01:35:34] Speaker A: No, no. It was causing me stress. Oh, no, no, no, no. This is against the social contract. You cannot do this. And so I had to know about a bit, but I do enjoy. [01:35:47] Speaker B: Why were we talking about Chris Morris? [01:35:50] Speaker A: I sent you a meme or something like that. Oh, it was. Who would be the funniest person to break the news when it happens? [01:35:58] Speaker B: Which we kind of thought it had for a couple of minutes this weekend. [01:36:01] Speaker A: Well, listen, there's still hope. Like, he posted a picture that was, like, really nice to go golfing with Jon Gruden today. And then someone pointed out that it's a picture from, like a week or two ago. [01:36:15] Speaker B: Fantastic. [01:36:16] Speaker A: So, listen, he could still be dead fantastic. It could still be a thing. I. I would love it. That would be the best birthday present. Can you imagine how lit my birthday party would be? [01:36:27] Speaker B: Yeah, it would be sick. We were at Nando's, actually, when this discourse was going on, and Owen asked the question, which I will put to you now. Okay, so how long has he got left of his term? Two years? [01:36:39] Speaker A: Three. [01:36:40] Speaker B: Three years? [01:36:41] Speaker A: Yeah, we just started. [01:36:42] Speaker B: Does it just. Is it just Vance then to the end? [01:36:46] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:36:46] Speaker B: Okay. Okay. [01:36:48] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah, that would be. And the. You know, we won't get into it too far, but nobody likes J.D. vance, so as much as he'd be terrible, also, he would not have the power that Trump has. So, you know. [01:37:02] Speaker B: In what sense? [01:37:04] Speaker A: Because Trump can do whatever the fuck he wants because everyone gets behind him. No one's gonna stop him. His supporters are, you know, they cannot be persuaded by anything that he is ever wrong about anything. And so whatever he does, no matter what, they will change their entire worldview to make it fine. [01:37:24] Speaker B: So would. Would that. Would that endorsement then not carry over to him? [01:37:31] Speaker A: No. Nobody likes J.D. vance. [01:37:33] Speaker B: I see. [01:37:34] Speaker A: He's a worm. Nobody likes him. It was. There were points during the election where, like, Trump was trying to distance himself from his own vice presidential candidate because he realized he was tanking his approval. Like, he's. No, He's a loser. Nobody likes him. [01:37:50] Speaker B: He was over here recently, a few weeks back, he was holidaying in the Cotswolds about half an hour drive from. From here. [01:37:56] Speaker A: Yeah. I feel like I remember reading some of the embarrassing things from his trip over there, but, yes, that's it. So just one more thought on this. My. One of my goddaughters hates Trump and hates ice with a fiery passion, and she is 8 years old. And, you know, they have, like. Basically their rules about most things are like, keep it in the house. Right. So they don't, like, you know, they can swear or whatever in the house and things like that. Just don't go to school and do it or whatever. And so, you know, my friends are constantly sending me pictures and things like that. She'll, like, you know, make signs that say, like, fuck Ice and stuff like that. And so they had a little chat the other day that was like, listen, you need to not get us on a government watch list, and you can't keep talking about assassinating the president. And he's like, you can do it in the house. Just please don't, like, take it to school. Okay. And so they, you know, there's two girls, and she's the younger of the two of them, but she gets her older sister and walks up into the living room to greet my. My friend wearing, like, a, like, pink wig and, like, looking really fancy and stuff like that, like, party outfit or whatever. And her sister's wearing a similar thing, and she just says, this is what we're gonna look like when it happens. [01:39:36] Speaker B: And she's eight. [01:39:38] Speaker A: She's eight. [01:39:38] Speaker B: Incredible. Incredible. [01:39:42] Speaker A: It kills me. I was. I was rolling. [01:39:46] Speaker B: I occasionally. I don't feel as though I need to, but I do occasionally underline to the boys that, you know, there's indoors family conversations and shit you talk about at school, you know? [01:39:58] Speaker A: Yeah, Just some things you leave here. [01:40:00] Speaker B: Yes. [01:40:02] Speaker A: Assassinating the president is probably amongst them. [01:40:04] Speaker B: Yes. [01:40:07] Speaker A: But you can definitely say it at home. [01:40:09] Speaker B: And I'll sometimes. I'll sometimes workshop Jog topics at the dinner table. You know, I'll sometimes run, you know, just workshop bits. So I'm hoping none of that makes it to the playground. [01:40:23] Speaker A: Hello, cps. [01:40:24] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Or prevent. Is the, the early warning terrorism program over here. [01:40:32] Speaker A: Amazing. [01:40:33] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:40:35] Speaker A: Marco. Hello. Before we get to our big announcement, let's. Let's reflect here on a few things now that we've gone through the things that we've hated. [01:40:43] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:40:44] Speaker A: To see over the past five years, let's talk about things that we liked. First, I want to talk about some of our favorite films. Because this movie kind. This podcast kind of started out as like a horror podcast. [01:41:00] Speaker B: And it still is tailored. [01:41:01] Speaker A: It still is, but like, you know, a horror movie podcast, I should say it is definitely still a horror podcast. But our, like early things, we, you know, we had things like where we would have horror noobs on, which would be fun to bring back sometime. That's enjoyable. But you know, we kind of talked a little bit more about like topics that related to horror movies, cursed films, things like that. And we have watched, we looked this up beforehand in the past five years. Movies just made since the start of this podcast. Horror movies made since the start of this podcast. I have watched 306. [01:41:41] Speaker B: Yeah. I've done something like 225. What if? [01:41:44] Speaker A: Right. [01:41:44] Speaker B: What if I told you in five years. That can't be right. One, two, three, four, five. I have only awarded five horror movies five stars in the last five years. [01:42:00] Speaker A: I am, I'm not surprised by that. Let me see mine. I have rated. Oh my goodness, 17. [01:42:10] Speaker B: See, I wonder if you're a little bit easy to please. [01:42:16] Speaker A: What's really funny, though, I don't know if these are. I don't think I actually have. I think the thing is, when I looked at this, it's how many times I've rewatched these movies. [01:42:27] Speaker B: Sure. [01:42:27] Speaker A: Because when I look at my list of horror films from the 2000 and 20s that I've rated five stars. Sinners, sinners, sinners. Nope. Sinners, sinners, smile two. Alien, Romulus. Quiet Place, day one. Godzilla minus one. Oh, follow the House of Usher was a series. Nope. Psycho Gorman. Nope. This is Kwar. Nope. Nope. So actually I think that's more like seven movies or something. Something like that. I just watched them a ton of times. [01:42:57] Speaker B: Would you care to guess any of my five stars over the past five years? [01:43:02] Speaker A: Oh, that's a C. I'm. The thing is, it's like between the 4.5 and 5 stars, very narrow ground. [01:43:11] Speaker B: Yes. [01:43:11] Speaker A: Yeah, you gave, like, Skinnamarink I know is up there. [01:43:15] Speaker B: That's a five. That's a five. [01:43:16] Speaker A: Five. [01:43:18] Speaker B: That's the first. [01:43:19] Speaker A: I'm like, there's a couple I don't like. [01:43:21] Speaker B: Yep. [01:43:22] Speaker A: Yeah, Skinnering. I know a Walk in the woods is up there. I'm never gonna remember the name of that movie. [01:43:30] Speaker B: In a violent nature. [01:43:32] Speaker A: In a violent nature. [01:43:34] Speaker B: That. Do you know, I. I need to watch that again so I can bump it up. I only gave that a four and a half. My fights of the Joag era have been host. No, I'm a liar. I give that four and a half. Huh? [01:43:47] Speaker A: All right, all right. [01:43:48] Speaker B: Skinamarink. I gave a five. Godzilla. I gave a five. Godzilla minus one. The substance, I gave a five. And then two from this year, Sinners and Bring Her Back were both fives. [01:43:59] Speaker A: Nice. Yes. Which I've yet to see the latter, but obviously Sinners. It's so fun. I've. According to this, I've watched Sinners five times, and I've watched nope, four times. And I think I've seen nope, more than that. [01:44:13] Speaker B: Honestly fascinated to note once again that Humane got four and a half. Caitlin Cronenberg's fucking Humane got four and a half. I think I might be ready to tell that story. Right. [01:44:30] Speaker A: Please do, because it's very funny. I was so baffled. So we watched Humane together. If you've seen Humane, it's not a four and a half star movie. And I was baffled by the like, not. It's not bad. It's just, like, average, right? Like, it's nothing special. And I was so confused as to why Marco had loved it so much until three or four months ago. You explained it to me. [01:44:59] Speaker B: I was secretly taking ketamine while watching, and it was a completely different film than the one I thought I'd seen. I thought I'd seen a really brave, kind of visually fucking interesting movie about how AI was seeping into humanity. And as the movie went on, the film became more and more like an early Dali kind of fake video with people's eyes going all fucking weird and fuck me, this is incredible. And it was not that film. [01:45:33] Speaker A: None of that happened in that movie. [01:45:37] Speaker B: Totally different. I literally. I literally saw a different fucking film than the one the rest of the world saw. But there it sits at four and a half stars because as easily influenced as I am, somebody on blue sky, I can't remember who has got into my damn fool head that in order to revise a star rating, you have to watch the movie again. And like, am I watching that again? So there it's. [01:46:01] Speaker A: You already came up with a great film in your head. [01:46:03] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, honestly, the film in my head was banging, you know, and the fingers were going all weird, like, early. Early AI video would do. And it was great. [01:46:13] Speaker A: However, it was so funny because you would. There was no indication to me in this conversation that we were having about the movie at the time that anything was amiss. And so this is a very funny story to hear. [01:46:27] Speaker B: Yes. [01:46:27] Speaker A: You know, two years later. [01:46:29] Speaker B: Functioning, functioning, functioning. [01:46:32] Speaker A: Pulling it off. [01:46:34] Speaker B: Up to a point. But there we go. [01:46:36] Speaker A: Up to a point. [01:46:36] Speaker B: There it sits. Four and a half stars. [01:46:38] Speaker A: Four and a half stars. Okay, so what are some of your other faves that have come out since we started this year podcast? [01:46:48] Speaker B: Look. At the risk of just repeating myself, my love for In a Violent Nature is well documented and I've said everything that needs to be said. It is. It is such a thrill to see a new idea. The Pepto Bismol ad has just come on. [01:47:02] Speaker A: Stop. [01:47:03] Speaker B: I'm serious. I'm serious. [01:47:06] Speaker A: Yes. Oh, my gosh. Apparently, Pepto Bismol is new to the Brandis kingdom, and they are. They are just popping. Ingestion the NASA heartburn. Heartburn, indigestion, upset stomach, diarrhea commercials. Mark had never seen it before this, so that's amazing. [01:47:24] Speaker B: Do you remember Resurrection? [01:47:28] Speaker A: Yeah. With a what's her face who's always Rebecca Hall. Yes, Rebecca. [01:47:32] Speaker B: Fantastic psychological thriller with Tim Roth as an ex who resurfaces in her life. Wonderful bit of unreliable narrative. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Great. Really twisty. Really, really fun. Let me see. Bones and all. We clashed over this, but it remains very special to me. I've seen it since. Just a pitch perfect vampire love story. Pitch perfect. That lovely Trent Rezna soundtrack. Just this lovely, wistful kind of. Oh, it must be so sad to be a vampire, eh? What if vampires. But sad, that's what bunch and all is. Fantastic. Late night with the devil deserves a shout. Misgivings aside, we didn't know then what we know now. [01:48:19] Speaker A: True. You know, that movie is one that unfortunately, every time I watch it, I like it less than the last time that I watched it. And I keep on. My thing is, if you enjoyed that one or your look, you were like, almost. I always recommend Historia del History of the Occult. It's an Argentinian movie that's from a few years before this one, but is very similar down to, like, certain story beats and things like that in it. Except that it's like a got Like a twisty intelligence, parallel timelines kind of situation going on. So it's like a much more cerebral. Like, cerebral. Yes, exactly. It's a cerebral, very heady version of Late Night with the Devil, History of the Occult. So, you know, if you liked that one or if you felt like it was just missing something, you might like History of the Occult. [01:49:16] Speaker B: Okay. [01:49:17] Speaker A: And there's no AI in it. [01:49:18] Speaker B: There've been a few absolute day ruiners in the past few years as well. When evil lurks. Just. [01:49:25] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Yep. [01:49:28] Speaker B: Do you know what? Your opener this week had a similar effect on me to when evil. [01:49:33] Speaker A: Right. [01:49:33] Speaker B: Just. [01:49:34] Speaker A: Yeah. A day ruiner is a good. [01:49:37] Speaker B: Nothing good is gonna come out of this day when. When you watch that movie, it will absolutely cast a fucking Paul. A cloud over your entire day, that film. But in a good way, if that makes sense. [01:49:47] Speaker A: Right. Yeah, absolutely. [01:49:49] Speaker B: Let's see the monkey. Nosferatu. One of which you agree with. [01:49:55] Speaker A: Yes. [01:49:56] Speaker B: What are yours? What are yours? What are yours? Talk to me about some of yours. [01:49:59] Speaker A: Do you know several of the ones you've said. [01:50:01] Speaker B: Yeah, I. I enjoy the space that we've created as well, for us to wholesomely disagree about films, because it happens. [01:50:10] Speaker A: I've said many times that that's one of the, like, I think really great gifts of this podcast is that, like, sometimes we, like, deeply disagree on movies. And I think regularly, regularly. And, you know, I think that people get so vitriolic about precious kind of thing, about disagreeing about things, and you see people, you know, just rage. [01:50:36] Speaker B: Yes. [01:50:37] Speaker A: About what people think about the thing that they like or they don't like. And I think it has been, like, wonderful to me to not feel protective. [01:50:47] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:50:47] Speaker A: Of anything anymore. Or of my opinion of something anymore. Like, you know, there will be things, like. Or two weeks ago when I'm like, okay, my issue is not with the quality of the movie, but about, like, a deeper issue like racism or things like that. That, like, maybe there's something like that. But otherwise, I don't. I feel like it's like we can. We can come at things and, like, yell at each other for 15 minutes about it and then be like, anyways, yeah, of course. So what are you having for dinner? [01:51:15] Speaker B: You. And I love that you put it quite well. I think earlier this year, I was going back and forth on Instagram with some guy arguing about, like, pro Trump promo. Ask the question, what have you. What stake do you have in this, really yourself. That's worth getting tribalistic about. That's worth pinning, like, actual emotional Exchanges and falling out with people. Over what? Over what, really? [01:51:42] Speaker A: Right. [01:51:42] Speaker B: Have your strong beliefs. Yes. But hold them loosely. You know, be open to challenge because who gives a really. [01:51:48] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Like, on things that don't matter. [01:51:51] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, literally, it doesn't matter. [01:51:54] Speaker A: It doesn't matter. Yeah, like, you know, save that for trans rights, for genocide, for, you know, things like that. And the rest of the time. Yeah, just leave it. [01:52:08] Speaker B: Enjoy. Should I go? [01:52:09] Speaker A: Yeah, just enjoy. [01:52:10] Speaker B: Yes. [01:52:11] Speaker A: But, yes, Things. Cuckoo was a highlight for me. Really unexpected, expected, that movie and I just had such a fun time with that Dan Stevens and Hunter Schaefer. [01:52:24] Speaker B: See, I think if I expand things to four stars, four, five stars, that widens things out. Oh, my goodness. That opens the floodgates. And you're right, Cuckoo was fantastic. [01:52:37] Speaker A: Yeah, Cuckoo was a blast. Loved that one. It's that same thing. Even though I disagree with you about in a violent nature, it's that, like, something that surprises you that you're like. [01:52:47] Speaker B: I. I didn't think there was anything new to say here. And yes, how wrong I did it. [01:52:54] Speaker A: Yeah, loved that. And similarly, all you need is death. Paul Dwan, the Irish filmmaker's film that I went and saw. You know, whether you like it or not, nobody's done it before. And I think it's a. It's a cool concept, this folk horror. What? What was that? [01:53:13] Speaker B: Sorry, do please finish. But you've just reminded me of a point I meant to make a week or two ago. [01:53:18] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah. I think just doing something so interesting with, you know, he spent his life savings to make this passion movie that does some really interesting things and says some really interesting things. That's not a perfect film. But I think of it as a highlight in terms of just, you know, filmmaking. You know, that's. That's what we're here for. Right? [01:53:42] Speaker B: It's always very disappointing to see the innovation, imitation cycle playing out in front of you. Very disappointing because we all know it exists and we should be preparing ourselves for it by now. But the other week when I went to see Weapons, Right, I. Absolutely. I'm not exaggerating here. Every single fucking trailer. Every single trailer was what if? Long legs. Hey, what if. Oh, yeah, long legs crossed over, didn't it? That jumped into the fucking real world, didn't it? People were talking about long legs. What if we made everything feel like long legs? [01:54:24] Speaker A: Yes. [01:54:24] Speaker B: Every single fucking trailer. It was like long legs. And it's boring. I hate that cycle. I hate it. [01:54:32] Speaker A: Yeah, agreed. Absolutely agreed. But on another, you know, interesting, unique movie no One will save you. I thought that was genuinely quite scary. Alien invasion movie. Like I don't think. Oh, the quiet dialogue. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If there is any dialogue, it's very little. And at the beginning it's largely just Caitlyn Deaver versus Alien Invader. And yeah, I found it quite terrifying and interesting and unique. A cool way to do a movie. So I quite enjoyed. No One Will save you. The Passenger. Another. [01:55:09] Speaker B: I was literally looking at that right there on my Xbox. [01:55:13] Speaker A: Great movie. [01:55:14] Speaker B: Gritty. [01:55:15] Speaker A: Kyle Gulner. Yes. Pearl, of course. Which is the only Ty west movie I like from beginning to end. So it gets like extra marks for the fact that it. It held out. Another one we disagree on. Dead Stream. It's become like a standby for me. I go back to it over and over again. It's another one I've probably watched four or five times in the three years or so. Three or four years that it's been out. [01:55:41] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:55:43] Speaker A: We do agree on. [01:55:44] Speaker B: We do. [01:55:45] Speaker A: Australian flick about an unhinged girl who you think is the protagonist and then is not. Man Fish. [01:55:55] Speaker B: Again. Was just looking right at it. [01:56:00] Speaker A: Yes. Man Fish. A surprise. Unique. Interesting. [01:56:04] Speaker B: You know, aside from you and I, I've never seen anyone anywhere else mention Man Fish. I've never even fucking seen. [01:56:12] Speaker A: We talk about it a lot. I don't even think. Yeah. Like none of our. We. We recommend it constantly and there are so many things I see our listeners watch that we recommend. [01:56:20] Speaker B: And nobody watches, nobody is bitten for man. [01:56:24] Speaker A: Just watch Man Fish. You're gonna be delighted. [01:56:26] Speaker B: Roll the dice. Do it for us. For five years, right? For 1.2% of my fucking life I've spent. If you listen to one thing only. Watch Man Fish. Which feels if I'm gonna ask you to do just one thing for me. That feels like a waste. But all right. [01:56:40] Speaker A: But there it is. Get no take backs. Hunter. Hunter. A surprise. Devin Sawa gets real crazy in it. Empty man with James Badge Dale. Another one that you don't know what you're expecting and ends up being so much more than what you're expecting from it. Also first movie I saw when you were allowed to go to movies again. [01:57:05] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:57:05] Speaker A: Which was good times. Psycho Goreman, of course. Just an absolute blast. Got to see that in the. On the big screen with the Dead and lovely crew and loved that. Wolf of Snow Hollow naturally. Which again I've just watched over and over again. Made me a Jim Cummings Stan on the Rebecca hall track. Nighthouse. Fucking love. [01:57:31] Speaker B: Beautiful, beautiful movie. [01:57:33] Speaker A: And the only other one that I wrote down that was not on your list was Rent a Pal with Wil Wheaton, which, you know, was another surprising flick. I. You know, I loved Wil Wheaton, first crush, all that kind of stuff, but he can be hit or miss in things. I don't really think he's necessarily a great actor, but as the character that he is in Rent a Pal, which again, goes batshit and gets violent and wild in the end, the great flick. [01:58:01] Speaker B: Only thing I've ever enjoyed him doing was off into deep space with the Traveler. Get the out of here, Wesley. [01:58:10] Speaker A: Well, if you had been a little girl. [01:58:12] Speaker B: Door on your way out. [01:58:17] Speaker A: Yes. Any other films that didn't make the list yet? [01:58:21] Speaker B: Black Phone. Wicked. [01:58:23] Speaker A: Yes. [01:58:23] Speaker B: Right. However, saw the trailer next to Weapons the other week. Look, Shit looks so bad. [01:58:30] Speaker A: I have. Yeah. I mean, it was a trailer. I was like, sure. [01:58:34] Speaker B: It did nothing for me. We'll see Malignant. You'll disagree. Great laugh. [01:58:39] Speaker A: Sure. The last 20 minutes. [01:58:42] Speaker B: Yes, fresh. [01:58:44] Speaker A: Oh, fresh. Yes, Fresh is a great one. With our Sebastian Stan, your co hosts. [01:58:50] Speaker B: Love a cannibal. We love a cannibal. [01:58:52] Speaker A: It's true. This is a thing we share and, yeah, it's. [01:58:57] Speaker B: You don't see enough cannibal movies. [01:59:00] Speaker A: That's a good point. You know, we could use a few. [01:59:03] Speaker B: More of those as a genre. A rich, untapped vein of content. I feel so. Yeah, I. None. I mean, there's. There's plenty more. I mean, another day ruiner was the sadness. Did you ever drag yourself through that? [01:59:17] Speaker A: Oh, no, of course not. You know, I don't do the sexual violence ones. [01:59:22] Speaker B: Oh, yeesh. [01:59:25] Speaker A: Yeah, Fuck yeah, Skipped that. [01:59:28] Speaker B: But as I. As I often say, I will always add a star. If you go that far. You know, if you really want to fucking lay it all out there, I'll give you a star. [01:59:39] Speaker A: They sure did. [01:59:40] Speaker B: Yes. Do you know what? How's this for a fucking final note? [01:59:47] Speaker A: Okay. [01:59:48] Speaker B: There is one thing in 2025 that's better than it was in 2020, and that's the genre that we founded this podcast on in the first place. [01:59:57] Speaker A: Horror. Good point. [01:59:58] Speaker B: Horror continues to boom. [02:00:00] Speaker A: Yep. Just gets better and better all the time. [02:00:02] Speaker B: It really does. And we're gonna do a little. We'll snack in a few days, maybe later on this week, and we'll talk about a couple of movies that we saw this week. The Bear Conversation. I know what you did last summer. 2025. And. What was the other one? Together. [02:00:17] Speaker A: Together. Yeah. [02:00:20] Speaker B: Lots to say about those. But, yes, the direction of travel and the vibe around Horror right now is better than it's ever been. Certainly better than I can ever remember. [02:00:30] Speaker A: Totally. [02:00:31] Speaker B: So what about that for a little coda and maybe a little coda of positivity to wrap us up on. [02:00:37] Speaker A: Well, we still got one more section. [02:00:40] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, we do. [02:00:41] Speaker A: Yeah. Our favorite. Our favorite joags. [02:00:43] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. [02:00:44] Speaker A: Of the past five years, you know, what, what stories, what bits, you know, what things stood out to you. [02:00:51] Speaker B: Okay. I've written a few down. I really enjoyed. I really enjoyed the IRL experiences that we've had. Right. Our live episode in your garden, our Comic Con misadventures. Real life highlights. Real life highlights, stuff. Yes, I really enjoyed Walk it off, I think, which was one of the early episodes, I think we're in the 40s, about geezers who sustained the most brutal, fucking brutal physical damage and somehow managed to walk it off. The dude who got sucked off through a tiny hole and. [02:01:24] Speaker A: Yeah, I think about that one a lot. [02:01:26] Speaker B: He didn't just survive, he went back to work, same place. Oh, you dweeb. What are you doing? Talk about trauma. Seriously, you know, how do you. [02:01:37] Speaker A: He was Russian, wasn't he? And Russians don't believe in. [02:01:40] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a good point. They mine best us with their bare hands. I enjoyed learning about. What's the word I would use environmentally conscious and future focused methods of disposing of your body post mortem. [02:01:58] Speaker A: Yes, I definitely said that. [02:02:00] Speaker B: Green burial pods. Scientific research. I loved talking. [02:02:03] Speaker A: Yes, episode 86. [02:02:04] Speaker B: 86, indeed. 107 was a standout for me, forensic psychiatry, when we had our guest, Ben Duffer Jones on there. [02:02:09] Speaker A: Dr. Jones, listen, that one gets point for me because it relates to another one, that episode 31. We talked about how we would get away with murder. [02:02:18] Speaker B: Yeah, I. I thought of that one very soon. [02:02:20] Speaker A: In episode 106, Dr. Duffin Jones signed off on my murder method. [02:02:27] Speaker B: I don't know if that's true. I don't know if that's what he did, but all right, I think he did. I didn't quite get the episode number down, but. Bodies in a freezer, bodies in a suitcase, Bodies in your loft, Bodies in the fucking cellar. Bodies in your garden. [02:02:43] Speaker A: That's another one I think about all the time, walking by houses, wondering who has a body in the freezer all the time. [02:02:49] Speaker B: Now, what was I watching recently that validated my method of murder? I don't know if it was. Yeah, it was a TikTok. I was watching about a mafioso who. I can't remember. I did write his name down because I think the. A coal opener in him. And he patented, you know, his own method of killing, which involved tiny bits widely dispersed and got away with it for a lot of years. So. [02:03:15] Speaker A: Well, we know who he is, so he didn't really, did he? [02:03:17] Speaker B: Well, that's. That's a great point. But he got away with it forever. [02:03:22] Speaker A: The idea is to get away with it forever. [02:03:23] Speaker B: That's true. You don't get away with something temporarily, dear. [02:03:26] Speaker A: No, it's not getting away with it. [02:03:31] Speaker B: Yours. [02:03:33] Speaker A: You know, I love any chance that I get to Scotch things. Of course. So, you know, bystander effect, episode 136, talked about Kitty Genovese, the real story, the McDonald's hot coffee case in episode 179, the dingo ate my baby lady in 183, the war of the world's panic broadcast. And 180. Or the ghost Science episode that we did where we talked about the various ways you can debunk ghosty evidence in episode 109. And, of course, chiropractors. [02:04:09] Speaker B: Yes. [02:04:09] Speaker A: In episode 173. We had a lot of fun with that one. I love ones where you, you know, talk to someone, like your interview, surprise interview with Jed shepherd in episode 15. And when you talk to your son in episode 231. Super into those things anytime we discuss weird shit like the ethics of cannibalism in episode 11. [02:04:35] Speaker B: So let me tell you something. Episodes I also enjoy are. I was thinking about this in the shower earlier on. I don't think there's. There's nothing that can't be explained. Right, right. [02:04:45] Speaker A: I mean, there are things that can't be explained, but at least by our current knowledge. But I get what you mean. [02:04:50] Speaker B: In the same vein as, like, Penn and Teller, I enjoy episodes where I can't quite work out what the fuck has happened here. [02:04:57] Speaker A: Yes. Think about pushing you on those ones. Yes. [02:05:02] Speaker B: You know, I love an episode. I love a story. I love an event where I'm left going right. So I know what didn't happen. It isn't aliens and it isn't ghosts. But what is actually fucking going on here. I enjoy those. [02:05:14] Speaker A: Yeah. And I was gonna say, amongst the things that is, you know, my favorite kinds of episodes are the ones where I, like, ask you your opinions on, like, some. Some story or try to get you to fill in the gaps or things like that, you know, I really enjoy. Or, like, even when I'm kind of giving you a hard time or whatever. Like when I laid out you killing your wife. [02:05:36] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:05:37] Speaker A: And how the TikTok Sleuths would find. Would find out that you did it or whatever. You know, anything like that, where we have these neat little back and forths like that. And of course, our boffin episodes. 64, 99, 148. We definitely are overdue for a boffin one. So Eileen, get yourself ready. [02:06:00] Speaker B: Yes, please. [02:06:01] Speaker A: And of course, everything maritime related, you know, by the way, sorry everyone. My dog just started aggressively squeaking his toy behind me because he wants attention. [02:06:11] Speaker B: Zoom doing his thing. Didn't hear that. [02:06:13] Speaker A: He's standing right here next to me with his toy. You can't hear it, but on the microphone they'll be able to hear it. [02:06:19] Speaker B: Enjoy. [02:06:20] Speaker A: He's got his paws on me. He's just squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak. So that said, we've got a little announcement that we would like. So next summer. [02:06:32] Speaker B: Yes. [02:06:32] Speaker A: Hopefully sometime around this time, this exact weekend. Summer. This. I'm not gonna pick a date. This weekend next. [02:06:41] Speaker B: On or around this weekend, on or. [02:06:43] Speaker A: Around this weekend next summer, we are going to do the Joag uk. [02:06:49] Speaker B: Yep. [02:06:50] Speaker A: Meet up. [02:06:50] Speaker B: Yep. We absolutely are. I've floated this with a couple of people already. There are plenty of potential venues, be they pubs with kind of theater esque rooms above them, or maybe even a smaller like scale kind of theater in and of itself that we could potentially get our hands on. I've got comedian friends who have talked to about it who can suggest venues. [02:07:13] Speaker A: Yes. [02:07:14] Speaker B: Yeah. One zillion percent will get a live episode together. We. I guess it falls to me to plan. [02:07:21] Speaker A: Yeah. This. [02:07:21] Speaker B: A lot of that. [02:07:23] Speaker A: Yeah. This time you're gonna have to at least take some of the lead. [02:07:27] Speaker B: Yeah, on it. [02:07:28] Speaker A: Well, which will be. [02:07:29] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm thinking a lot of it. So. Expect the unexpected. But. But what you will be assured of is rigorous, robust planning. [02:07:43] Speaker A: Yes. [02:07:44] Speaker B: And smooth execution. [02:07:47] Speaker A: Yep. Flawless. It's gonna go off without a hitch. So for UK people, listen, get ready. It's gonna happen. If you're in the US again, we're aiming for around this weekend next year. So, you know, if you have been waiting your whole life to go to the uk, why not make it? [02:08:07] Speaker B: It's time. [02:08:07] Speaker A: This time. [02:08:08] Speaker B: It's time. [02:08:09] Speaker A: Let's all. Let's all go together. So with that said, get your calendars out, write it down, whatever. And what do we want to say to them as we end out our five year episode? Marco. [02:08:24] Speaker B: Thanks, everybody. See you next week. [02:08:26] Speaker A: Stay spooky, do that.