Ep. 241: Groypers

[00:00:04] Speaker A: All right. Me up. [00:00:08] Speaker B: Oh, boy. Yeah. Yeah, let's. Let's try it. You know, there's been a lot of discussion this week about the killing of a certain. Far. Right. [00:00:19] Speaker A: Right. [00:00:20] Speaker B: And frankly, how. [00:00:22] Speaker A: How much risk are we placing ourselves in by even talking about this? [00:00:29] Speaker B: Well, you're fine. [00:00:32] Speaker A: I think. [00:00:32] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:00:33] Speaker A: I mean, you know, are they gonna come for you? [00:00:36] Speaker B: This is a concern for sure. There's, like a part of me that's like, considered turning off the transcript for this episode so that it doesn't get, like, sucked up by, you know, the Googles and things like that. [00:00:49] Speaker A: And all hyperbole aside, that is a real and present risk. People are getting sacked. Are they? [00:00:54] Speaker B: People are losing their jobs, fired. And yeah, they're threatening. The government's threatening to take away passports, quartz and all kinds of stuff. [00:01:00] Speaker A: Good God. [00:01:01] Speaker B: So, yeah, it's pretty. Pretty dire. But listen, that's. We're not necessarily talking about that. [00:01:11] Speaker A: No. [00:01:11] Speaker B: Right. He is a waste of carbon. And the best thing we can do is let the earth take him and give him not one more thought or breath of our attention. [00:01:20] Speaker A: I will. I mean, it's. Now is as good a time as any just for me to. And again, not referencing the guy himself or indeed the situation itself, but one of the things that. One of the thrills of life in 2025 for me is the news happening around me. Right. [00:01:47] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:01:48] Speaker A: I. Like a fucking. Like a junkie shooting up with puddle water. Right. I fucking crave it. Although I know it's harming me inside, it is hurting the fucking courses and passages of my body. It is actually doing me psychological damage. But, God, I can't stop gulping from the toilet bowl. That is the online fucking just watching unfold around me. And seeing people baying at one another and watching the lines getting drawn and watching factions eyeing one another over these imaginary battle lines that they've confected for themselves, entirely for themselves. And seeing new angles on the news, new shots, no pun intended, close ups. Crowd shots, screams, running misinformation, disinformation, outright lies. Who's telling the lies? Who does it benefit? Where's that come from? Oh, that can't be right. That can't be true. Is it this guy? Is it this? Why? Why? Why all of the. It's almost as though I don't enjoy. I enjoy seeing the completed jigsaw puzzle thrown into the air. [00:03:15] Speaker B: Right? Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. [00:03:17] Speaker A: Just watching the pieces fucking fall some of the wrong way around. You're never gonna find the corners you know, I love it so much. [00:03:29] Speaker B: It's. Yeah, I mean, we're certainly seeing a lot of that. And it's bit. The media landscape has been insane. It's interesting because I'm currently. I'm in a Paul Henry phase. I can't remember if I mentioned that last week or not. Did I. Did I mention Paul Henry? I think I did mention it because I pointed out he was Victor Laszlo in Casablanca, which you would not recognize him from because you slept through it. [00:03:53] Speaker A: Never seen it, but I've been in front of it. But I. [00:03:58] Speaker B: You've been in front of it, but you've never seen it. And so I put in for his book from the library. He wrote an autobiography in 1989, I believe. And he is from Austria and, you know, was living and working as an actor in Austria in the 1930s as the Nazis were coming to power. And it is really interesting to sort of read, you know, his perspective on all this happening because he was looking at it like, as an actor, you know, he was surrounded by, like, lots of Jews and stuff like that, and, you know, people who were like, he was living in sin with the woman who would later be his wife and all these kinds of things that were, you know, kind of against the grain of society at the time. But as such, being in that, he said that when he kind of looked at the landscape of things at first, like, he didn't really see what was coming until it was there, you know, that he understood that there was this sort of looming threat and that he didn't want to be a part of that, you know, that he. He did not like the Nazis or anything that they stood for and things like that, but at the same time wasn't aware that they were at the door until they were at the door, you know, and it kind of. Reading his writing about this feels very similar to the kind of thing that we're seeing with how the media capitulates to all of this, with, you know, how things suddenly seem to happen where it's like, it didn't suddenly happen. It's been happening over a long period of time, but that, you know, now it's at the door and it's like, oh, holy fuck is it at the door? [00:05:51] Speaker A: I mean, you know, you're a layperson like myself, right? But you know, of no one else. I know you're insight is very valuable to me. That term. I mean, how. How far removed would you say we. And by we I mean you sure are from actual tangible criminal infringement of liberties, restriction of Freedom, restriction of employment and human rights. How many stages away from that are we? [00:06:29] Speaker B: We're at the point where I think about it every single day, okay. That I consider, you know, how long I might have my job or the job will look like it is, because it involves a lot of, you know, as a teacher in the humanities, you know, it involves a lot of teaching and talking about the stuff that the administration or the regime doesn't want us talking about. Right. And, you know, how long until just, like, the schools are capitulating on AI and things like that. They decide that, you know what, we're done allowing people to talk about this stuff here. So I think about it. In that case, I often, you know, while I'm sitting here in my house that I love so much, wonder, you know, how long it took before your house was taken from you, you were removed and taken from somewhere. Should I be fleeing? Like, am I being stupid by, like, not moving to Portugal and just sitting. Sitting here waiting until things get bad? When they're talking about potentially taking away passports from people who do any form of speech on the Internet that they don't approve of. Like, by they talk or the government. [00:07:39] Speaker A: Sitting administration, you mean the actual currency, current government, yes. [00:07:45] Speaker B: So while they talk about stuff like that, is it like, you know, hot air, or am I one day gonna go to the airport to go somewhere and they're gonna be like, no, absolutely not. You know, and then it's too late to go anywhere. Because he talked about that Paul Henriett in his, you know, in his book as well, that there were people who he started to, like, encourage, like, you should probably leave Austria. And they were like, no, this is like, this is my home, you know, and. And I don't want to do that. And by the time they realized they couldn't leave, you know, and they were put in camps and then they died, like, you know, that was. So it sounds hyperbolic or whatever, but it's also like, we don't fucking know. And they didn't either. It was. Sounded hyperbolic to the people in Austria at that time, too. Like, why would you tell me to leave? Like, yes. What's the worst that could happen? You know, maybe I get thrown in jail for a couple months for civil disobedience or whatever. They didn't know they were going to death camps. Right. Like, it always sounds hyperbolic until it's at the door. So, you know, it's a. It's a weird time in that way, because we don't know what's at the Door. Is it just a bunch of blowhards saying they're going to do a bunch of stuff or. You know, we've watched what ICE has been doing all this time with impunity and. Yeah, like what happened to the Koreans who were taken by ICE by accident essentially a few days ago. [00:09:18] Speaker A: The sensation I'm getting over here, and you know, for context, this weekend, some hundred and ten, one hundred twenty maybe thousand people marched, waving their fucking George crosses in the name of air quotes, uniting the kingdom. [00:09:39] Speaker B: That's basically as many people went out to march that as they're like, are refugees in your country. Right. Like, didn't you say last week it's like 150,000 or something like that? [00:09:49] Speaker A: But what, what struck me from the vox pops on the news is that, yeah, of course there were a lot of kind of the. The kind of person who you might expect to see there, but there also seemed like a lot of normies, you know? [00:10:10] Speaker B: Right, yeah. And we're gonna get into that in this cold open, for sure. [00:10:16] Speaker A: Has a point of crossover been reached over here where it isn't. It isn't all fringe cranks who were there in London that day? It was like you said, people in the orbit. [00:10:32] Speaker B: Yeah. This is exactly what I'm going to tell you about today. [00:10:38] Speaker A: Okay? [00:10:39] Speaker B: So why don't we get into it so we can get to that business? Because you have hit on something that is really important about this whole conversation about gripers and about Charlie Kirk and all this other stuff that is at the heart of it. [00:10:55] Speaker A: So that is a term which I saw for the first time maybe 72 hours ago, right? [00:11:01] Speaker B: Yes. I saw a graphic that showed like the. The Google searches for groiper. And it's like this like, very, like, steady thing. And then it's like two days ago, just. Yes, like straight through the roof on searches for Groiper. So everybody's doing it, you know, so let's talk groiping. Everybody's griping. I don't think they grip. I don't think you use that as a verb. But I don't know. I don't know everything about gripers. I'm only going to scratch the surface here because it's. It's a complicated group here. So in the immediate aftermath of that shooting, American cops and the FBI and whatnot were quick to attribute all the violence in the world to lefties and trans people. The very online, though, started to realize that there might be another explanation for who this guy is. And before I get into it, I just want to be clear that there actually isn't. It doesn't look like this guy was a groiper. People who are experts on it have been saying for the past several days, like, we do not know enough about this guy to say that he's a groiper yet. Like, he liked some memes or whatever that are adjacent to groipers, but they can also very much be construed as. [00:12:21] Speaker A: Leftist as we, as we speak. He's in court, by the way. He's making his first appearance. Yeah, he's making right now. [00:12:27] Speaker B: Court appearance. You know, as Richard sent to us earlier and has been going around, Ken Kippenstein talked to people who knew the shooter and it seems like he did not. If he had any, like, far right leanings, he never talked to anyone about them. If he had any far left leanings, he never talked to anyone about them. Like, whatever was going on with him is largely opaque. We know he didn't like Charlie Kirk, obviously, but as I tell you, you know, hey, listen, Selena's president of her fan club shot her. So it doesn't necessarily mean. [00:13:07] Speaker A: Chapman. [00:13:08] Speaker B: Mark. Mark Chapman. This is actually a question at pub quiz last week. It was what name for singers who were. Or musicians who were killed by their fans. So clearly this happens. Yes, he's not one of them. And we'll get into, though, why his dislike of Charlie Kirk is why people think he was a griper. But I just want to get out the gate. Like, if you're here for evidence that this guy was a griper and you want to be like, yes, sweet. Not one of us. He's probably. He's not one of us. But not necessarily for that reason. There's nothing pointing to the fact that he was actually a gripper. [00:13:46] Speaker A: Listen, you're using that term like, I've got a single. [00:13:49] Speaker B: I'm going to. I'm about to get into it. I just wanted to make sure that is. Yeah, I want to make sure that's clear because that's what everybody is like looking for. Right. Like when they're googling what is a groper, they're looking for it to connect to this particular guy. [00:14:04] Speaker A: Yes. [00:14:04] Speaker B: And essentially give evidence that, that, like, he's not a lefty. That's. That's more or less what people are looking for. And I understand that impulse. Just going to tell you at the gate, probably not him, but I am going to explain to you what they are, please. So I am going to warn you, you're going to feel like almost dumber for knowing this. It's very stupid, but unfortunately very important. [00:14:33] Speaker A: So see what I have determined. I mean, I thought I was online. [00:14:42] Speaker B: Yeah. And we'll get into this. Yes, I'm about to get into this because we think we're online, but we are not the right kind of thing. How would I know the time for this? Yeah. [00:14:52] Speaker A: I'm the most online people I know. [00:14:54] Speaker B: Yeah. But as the father of a tween and a young teen, you're probably well aware that there is a whole online right wing sphere threatening to hoover up all the Gen Z and Gen Alpha boys and turn them into little Nazis drones, right? [00:15:06] Speaker A: Very much so, yes. [00:15:07] Speaker B: You're completely aware that that exists. If you were to like, name some of those people that you would say, like, hey, Pete Noen, don't watch that. Like, who would you. [00:15:17] Speaker A: Well, I would have said Charlie Kirk. [00:15:19] Speaker B: Okay. Charlie Kirk, for sure. So you knew he existed. [00:15:23] Speaker A: As did they. I was, I was. [00:15:25] Speaker B: Of course they did. Yes. As we will discuss. [00:15:28] Speaker A: As did they. I would also say Andrew Tate, of course. Ben Shapiro. [00:15:31] Speaker B: Yeah. Yep, yep, yep. All of these will get a mention. Yes, in here. So you're very aware of who these are. Have you heard the name Nick Fuentes? [00:15:40] Speaker A: I have. Yes, I have. [00:15:42] Speaker B: Okay. Would you have, like, I could pick. [00:15:44] Speaker A: Him out of my life. [00:15:45] Speaker B: Would you have. [00:15:45] Speaker A: Okay, for sure, for sure. [00:15:47] Speaker B: So we'll get into that. So this. Sorry. So, like, you have this whole, like, sphere of right wing influencers. Like, you can name all of those ones and your kids, moreover, could name them. Right. And that's what this is all about. You're a late Gen Xer. I'm a millennial. And we've both sort of grown up with an Internet that formed the basis of our interactions with others. Like, if I were to respond to something you said with the words banana costume gif. Yes, of course you'd know I was referring to the I Think youk Should Leave meme in which Tim Robinson in a banana costume says, we're all looking for the guy who did this. When he. In is the guy who did this. [00:16:31] Speaker A: Point of information, he's in a hot dog costume. [00:16:34] Speaker B: Hot dog. I mean. Yeah, that's what I mean. Sorry. I went and saw Banana Ball. And so my. [00:16:39] Speaker A: But also I. I agree, because there is you. [00:16:41] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:16:42] Speaker A: A well known Gif of a little stick character in a banana suit. Doing that. [00:16:46] Speaker B: Yeah, doing the. Yeah, I think it's the Don Herzfeld thing. [00:16:48] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:16:49] Speaker B: No, I was just thinking about bananas because there's literally a big banana on my wall right now. But hot Dog costume is what I meant. Yes, but all of that is a lot of fucking context that I do not have to explain to you. And in fact you corrected me, but I absolutely would have to explain to my 50 year old, 52 year old husband who uses his phone to read books and not doom scroll microblogging websites. Right. So for people in our general age group, we've always kind of thought of the Internet and social media as a place that brings us together and makes us feel more interconnected. I know that a decade or so I would have kind of poo pooed all the hysterical criticisms of social media, making us lonely or rotting our brains or making us antisocial or what have you as just the next iteration of any technological panic. This always happens when something new comes around. Everyone gets scared of it, but really it's just, you know, the next phase. [00:17:46] Speaker A: Yep. [00:17:47] Speaker B: And to me it was always a lifeline. I started using LiveJournal in 2000 and I'm literally still friends with probably a dozen people I met there, including our joag boffin, Eileen. Yes, we were coming from Ebaum's world. We started using Twitter when people were still complaining that folks just use it to talk about their lunch. If only. Right? [00:18:12] Speaker A: My very. There are a few kind of early, at least for me, Internet moments that were irreversible. Moments of discovery when nothing could ever be the same. First one that jumps out is sitting in front of Napster for the first time. [00:18:27] Speaker B: Yes. Oh my gosh. For sure. [00:18:29] Speaker A: I. I came online in the dying days of message boards. [00:18:35] Speaker B: Yeah. Yep, for sure. [00:18:37] Speaker A: So browsing alt message boards off.net and whatever. Of rotten.com of course. And a comedy forum here in the UK called cooked and Bombed about the work of Peter Cook and Chris Morris. And yeah, just like you would like journal, there are, there are a few heads from those days who I. Yeah. [00:18:57] Speaker B: We'Re still tagging along on your socials. [00:18:59] Speaker A: 100%. 100. Who I still interact with. Just. All right. Yes, the rhetoric was often vitriolic and the jokes were insular and the culture was inscrutable to outsiders. But I completely agree with you that it was formative. It was an, it was, it was a frontier, almost a new way of communicating. [00:19:22] Speaker B: Exactly. It's like, it's not to say that it, you know, was free of its horrors and whatnot. You know, like you mentioned rotten.com and, you know, things like that. Like there were definitely assholes and edgelords at all phases of Internet development, but it was not so overwhelming as that's. What you thought about when you thought about the Internet, right? [00:19:45] Speaker A: Yes. [00:19:47] Speaker B: And now, you know, to go back to like this idea of like when Twitter started and stuff, like, and people complained about it, like, oh, you're just showing off your breakfast like now. Good luck even seeing your friend's breakfast on something. As algorithms filter out anything that doesn't make their billionaire CEOs another bajillion in ad revenue. So where you once heard people referring to the Internet as democratizing, you don't ever hear that now, do you? You know, there's like four guys who own the whole Internet now. It's a world of AI and disinformation and endless TikTok feeds telling you if you go to the doctor, they'll turn you into a trans. But you can get all the health care you need from supplements shilled by some red faced, roided out white guy who eats raw organs with his shirt off. [00:20:33] Speaker A: The guy who invented it, Tim Berners Lee, has a book out currently and he's been doing the media rounds and I'm desperate to get to get the book and read it because, hell, what a figure. But the guy who invented the Internet thinks it's time to bin it. [00:20:49] Speaker B: We gotta call it. Yeah, right. You know, Yeah. I think it's safe to say now we can be honest with ourselves that the Internet has been a become a force for bad in many ways, and it's not necessarily our fault. I didn't say all of the Internet is bad. I said in many ways. Yes, the Internet has been a force for bad. [00:21:12] Speaker A: Yes. [00:21:13] Speaker B: And it's not necessarily our fault. It has to do with who owns everything we do on the Internet. What they promote, what they censor, what they fund, what they allow. All of that is wrapped up in it more than like, we've gotten more bad, Right? But I think all of us kind of weigh the is it worth it of it all. Sometimes. Because on top of myriad other reasons, our modern Internet is a hellhole. We can attribute a lot of the rise of fascism in the past several years to the Internet, and particularly the youths on the Internet. Because while we were on Tumblr quoting Homestar, talking about why our favorite things from popular culture were problematic and shipping Dean Winchester and Castiel from Supernatural. This is not the landscape kids in their 20s and younger are living in. Instead, some of the most popular figures of their age are bonafide shitheads like Logan Paul, misogynists like Andrew Tate, white supremacists like Ben Shapiro and Charlie Cook, TikTok Trad Wives and Anti feminist influencers. And these people have a powerful tool honed by our generations at their disposal. Trolling. And it's happening out of the view of the adults, which has left it to get so far out of our hands it's hard to know how to reel it back, even though it is also impacting and shifting our views. So when it comes to groipers, it all starts with a guy named Nicholas J. Fuentes or simply Nick Fuentes. A 27 year old far right streamer little known to olds like us, but who has impacted politics to a greater degree than most of us could possibly fathom. And Nick Fuentes had some big beef with Charlie Kirk, but not for the reasons most of us do. Nick Fuentes had beef with Charlie Kirk because he thought Charlie Kirk was too moderate. If you've seen any of the clips circulating in the last week, I think you'll agree that the man was not moderate by any stretch of the imagination. He was loudly racist, anti semitic, misogynistic, a Christian nationalist who said under God's perfect laws, gays should be stoned to death. Although of course he added the caveat that we can't do that now. But that's what God wanted. He used the Bible as a weapon, cherry picking its most violent and exclusionary interpretations so that it somehow made rich white American men the only benefactors of God's grace. It's just not moderate at all. So it should give you an indication of just how far right Nick Fuentes is. If he felt Kirk was so weak in his convictions he needed to be targeted for humiliation and his followers re educated. You might remember a few years ago we talked a lot in culture about the alt right. A term you don't even hear anymore because it's just regular GOP at this point. And they were essentially led by the very punchable and often punched Richard Spencer. They came to. Do you remember that guy, Richard Spencer? He had the dumb alt right haircut that everybody started to get kind of a dapper racist. And there, you'll see all over the Internet there's a great image of him getting punched in the face while he's mid sentence. And he was kind of, yeah, the figurehead for the alt right at the time. You'd recognize him if you saw him. [00:24:42] Speaker A: I, I, I know exactly the fucking clip of a guy getting punched that you're talking about without even looking at. Yes, I know. [00:24:48] Speaker B: Right? Yeah, that's the, that's the guy. So they came to full attention of the US populace during their Charlottesville, Virginia. Unite the Right rally in which they marched through the streets wielding tiki torches and chanting cute little slogans like Jews will not replace us. The rally took an even darker turn when a 20 year old Neo Nazi drove through a crowd of people protesting the rally and killed 32 year old Heather Heyer while also injuring 35 others, many critically. This event ended up fracturing the alt right, but again, probably not in the way that you would think. As they tried to redefine themselves, they separated into a sort of secular branch and a Christian branch. Richard Spencer did not give a fuck about religion, and in fact, he loved to promote paganism and use pagan symbols. To him, the most important element of the movement was the white supremacy. And white supremacy is a big tent. It could include all kinds of people under it. [00:25:50] Speaker A: Broad church, yes. [00:25:53] Speaker B: But this was not far enough for Christian alt writers. Spencer, to them, was too socially liberal. They thought that white nationalism needed to be guided by the morality of their interpretation of Christianity. And that meant that it wasn't enough to want a nation that excluded non whites. It also needed to exclude any non heteronormative, non gender conforming behavior. As Ben Stigsmith put it in Crisis magazine, the American cultural mainstream's focus on transgenderism and gender fluidity encouraged young right wingers who might once have been attracted to the alt right to accept the premise that religious traditionalism and not white identitarianism was the principle around which their movement should cohere. So basically they looked at the TV and whatnot and saw a bunch of queers and were like, we can't have that. Let's be religious nationalists. You have a thought? [00:26:48] Speaker A: I. Yeah, I've got several. I mean, even. Even at this stage in the tale. [00:26:55] Speaker B: Mm. [00:26:56] Speaker A: This is already the most chronically online shit. [00:26:59] Speaker B: It is, yes, all of it is, very much so. [00:27:02] Speaker A: Meanwhile, out your fucking, outside your window and outside your front door, nobody is fucking, nobody acts like this, nobody speaks like this. [00:27:10] Speaker B: Precisely. [00:27:11] Speaker A: Right. [00:27:12] Speaker B: Which is why it gets so crazy that they manage to move the conversation so much. But yes, you're absolutely right. [00:27:18] Speaker A: The other thought is, I am reminded, you know, in the infancy of Joag, where common refrain you'd hear from me was, you know, they've always been cranks, but the Internet has just let them talk to one another more and amplify one another more and reflect each other back at each other more. And there's a direct line. It's, it's, it's over. It's five years later now. This is where we are. [00:27:43] Speaker B: Yes, Absolutely. That's a really good point. We went from this being there will always be crank to, like, your kids know who this is, right? [00:27:52] Speaker A: This Joag journey. This is the core of the Joag journey. Charting the decline. [00:27:57] Speaker B: Yep, exactly. [00:27:58] Speaker A: Oh, God, it is a curse. A heavy burden indeed. [00:28:03] Speaker B: A heavy burden. You called it out from the beginning, though. You knew. So, yeah. Enter Nick Fuentes, a Catholic YouTuber whose channel is entitled America First. And he's one of those Mel Gibson types of Catholics, the kind that actively blames Jews for killing Jesus and think women are lesser beings worthy of little more than scorn and popping out white babies. And the thing about Fuentes using Catholic morality as the center of his ideology is that it's much more palatable than outright white supremacy. Like what Richard Spencer was doing. Like, when people see Richard Spencer promoting, like, pagan ideology alongside white supremacy, that turns off people. Right. Like, people are terrified of non Christian spirituality. So when you make it about Christianity, it's. It's easier to digest. Right. Ah, it's not white supremacy, it's about Christian values. [00:29:01] Speaker A: In parallel to this, polling and public opinion and online discourse is all about reform UK right now, who had their first ever party conference last week. And a return to Christian values was such a common. Just from so many different places. A return to British values. British values, yeah. [00:29:30] Speaker B: As we go along with this, you'll see they're following his template because it's worked extremely well. [00:29:35] Speaker A: But it's so clearly a code. It's a dog whistle. [00:29:39] Speaker B: It's a dog whistle. Yes, a thousand percent. But for people who already were racist. [00:29:46] Speaker A: Yes. [00:29:46] Speaker B: They can dress this up and they feel better about it. You know, I'm not racist. It's just my Christian. Yes, right. That's what's happening here. And as I was saying, you know, we see this with the reactions to that. [00:30:00] Speaker A: What is not. Not all who claim to be Christian are racist, but all racists. [00:30:06] Speaker B: Yeah. Like, it really kind of comes down to that shit. Like the reactions to the shooting this week as we talk about very regularly on this podcast. I'm a former evangelical who went to a Christian university, so I still have Christian friends on my social media, although weeks like this lessen the amount of those that I have. [00:30:25] Speaker A: Did you see that? Did you see that I'm following? Did you see? [00:30:28] Speaker B: Oh, I unfollowed. I probably unfollowed maybe 30 people the other day because on Wednesday they were coming out of the absolute woodwork. People I've never seen post a political thing ever to praise Charlie Kirk and talk about what a wonderful Christian servant he was. And when faced with all the horrific things he said, they would insist it was taken out of context, or that it was just debate, or even that he was just speaking the truth of Christian values that the world doesn't want to hear. [00:30:55] Speaker A: I had the conversation with my mother. Oh, you see, my mother is on tick tock. Right. [00:31:03] Speaker B: Is she really? [00:31:04] Speaker A: Yes. [00:31:05] Speaker B: Interesting. [00:31:06] Speaker A: Her algorithm is. It serves her up a lot of Charlie Kirk. [00:31:12] Speaker B: Incredible. [00:31:13] Speaker A: So, yes, we've. We've. We've had that conversation. [00:31:15] Speaker B: We've had to talk about, like, that's not really what he's. What he's about. Yeah, but it's a lot easier to swallow than he and I agree that white heterosexuals are superior. Right. Instead, we just share Christian values. And Fuentes has capitalized off of that. He and his followers, the Groipers. And we will get into why they're called that work to normalize white supremacist views by framing them as religious traditionalism instead. And while I hate to quote the adl, they sum this up nicely to the Groipers. America first means that the US should close its borders, bar immigrants, oppose globalism and promote traditional values like Christianity, and oppose liberal values such as feminism and LGBTQ rights. They claim not to be racist or anti semitic and see their bigoted views as normal and necessary to preserve white European American identity and culture. However, some members have expressed racist and anti Semitic views on multiple occasions. They believe their views are shared by the majority of white people. And we've all heard that, right? These people aren't racist. They're just saying what all of us really think. But no, that's. That's not what all of us really think. That's what white supremacists think. But if you normalize it, make it seem like a common sense position, people start to see it that way. [00:32:39] Speaker A: Yes. [00:32:41] Speaker B: So one of the things they champion is great replacement theory. And to be clear, Kirk and others like him believed in this too. Kirk said it was great Replacement. Replacement reality, not a theory. And this is the idea that if we allow immigration and whatnot, soon white people will be replaced by ethnic others, and this will then erode European ideals and destroy the country. This is exactly, again, the same thing that you're going through with these protests that took place this past weekend. This is not a new concept. In fact, it wasn't too long ago that even mainstream news orgs would publish semi panicked articles talking about the demographic shift that would have whites as a minority by 2050. And I remember My dear Asian American husband, having a real epiphany reading one such article and going, why is that bad? Why are they writing about this? But one of the reasons Fuentes method is so successful is that to a degree, he's right. White people might not be able to put their finger on why it makes them so nervous that they might be outnumbered, but they take it as a given that they should be nervous about it. So gripers feed off of that. And this is how their animosity got turned towards Charlie Kirk and his organization, Turning Points USA or tpusa. To Griper's Charlie Kirk, like most mainstream conservatives, doesn't sufficiently prioritize the interests of whites, particularly religious ones. One of the reasons people like to act like Kirk was such a fair debater was that he would debate anyone, including people like queer people. He would also have on his show anyone who was on his side of things as a guest, even if they were, for example, black or gay. If he had a gay conservative friend, he would have them come on the show while he was absolutely a white supremacist and homophobe. It was to his benefit to keep a couple tokens around as a cudgel to beat back accusations of racism based on his actual words. It's the I have a black friend defense. Of course, if you say to a TP USA fan, tpusa makes racist shit, they'll go, nuh. They've had XYZ black people on, so they can't be racist. Yes, that's how it operates. Groipers are having none of that. There is no place for guests or debates with people who are not their kind. That's capitulation. They speak fondly of Jim Crow segregation, saying it was better for everyone. They were once Trump supporters, but turned on him for supporting Israel and endless wars. Which sounds great, except that they don't like those things because they hate Jews and want America to be a little isolated Christian bubble that doesn't engage with the outside world. [00:35:32] Speaker A: I'm certain you're gonna get there. But at this point, as a rational human with interests, as a grass toucher. [00:35:44] Speaker B: Yes, right. Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. [00:35:46] Speaker A: You say they speak. They speak of this. Where and to whom? [00:35:54] Speaker B: On the Internet. To each other. Right. And we'll get into kind of like who is watching and things like that, because that's grown. But yeah, largely other extremely online people in forums and stuff like that. And through Nick Fuentes has a YouTube channel and he has a podcast. Right, right, right. So that's the, yeah, that's where the largest majority of, like his just sort of broadcasting of these views come from. Come from. They also go to debates like Charlie did and whatnot. So we'll, we'll get into that as well. But yeah, needless to say, they have no time for Jews like Ben Shapiro or anyone who works for him like Matt Walsh. So some of the most far right people we can think of in this online realm, they wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole for them. They're basically race traders. They're communists. This is, they're not conservatives. So like I said, let's get to the Internet poisoning element of this. You're familiar with Pepe the Frog? Yes. [00:37:05] Speaker A: Yeah, sadly. [00:37:07] Speaker B: And he was at first just a silly little Internet meme. A drawing of a cartoon frog with thick lips and droopy eyelids created by cartoonist Matt Fury for his webcomic Boys Club. He was used largely as a sort of reaction meme, with his most popular associated phrase being feels good man. But in 2015, he was adopted by the alt right as a symbol. And soon it came to pass that if you saw someone with a Pepe avatar or posting a Pepe meme, you knew they were a white supremacist. Like today, if you see someone with a Pepe thing, you don't go like, oh, they're probably a fan of Matt Fury's webcomic. Like, that's a, that's a Nazi is what that is. [00:37:50] Speaker A: Yeah, I backed away quickly. Right. When on Reddit a couple of weeks back. I was posting on a forum. I was posting on a, on a subreddit about. I can't even remember what. I posted a picture of something that I wanted somebody to weigh in on. And in the comments, someone replied to me, looks like a soy jack. [00:38:14] Speaker B: Oh, God. [00:38:15] Speaker A: Right? And I didn't. I don't have a fucking clue. So I looked it up and like Grandpa Simpson walking into the bordello, I just turned the fuck around. [00:38:31] Speaker B: Yeah. The way, again, this is like very online youngsters, the way they have weaponized soy to mean, you know, weak testosterone, less male is a fascinating thing in and of itself. And yeah, whole world of like, surrounding that, that thankfully we don't encounter a whole lot in our online experience. [00:38:58] Speaker A: Again, yes, yes. Meanwhile, out your window, in your, in your local shop, in your towns and communities, no one's gonna talk to the. [00:39:07] Speaker B: Former Black Panther across the street and ask him if he's familiar with Pepe the Frog and soy Jack. You know, like, do you need a hospital what's going on? So a Griper Groiper is one version of Pepe the Frog. That's his name, depicted seated on the ground with his chin resting on his hands, his fingers interlinked underneath it. And this version of Pepe was taken up specifically by Fuentes fans who then started calling themselves Groipers, named after this version of Pepe the Frog. And the rest of their tactics are similarly Internet. For example, they refer to conservatives as cuckservatives, claiming that mainstream conservatives have been cuckolded by Jews and people of color. They attend public appearances of conservatives like Charlie Kirk or Donald Trump Jr. And disrupt them with edgelord bullshit that attracts the attention of the media and gives them a bigger platform, essentially real life trolling. And they have a way of doing this that tends to kind of confuse people in the out group. So it's hard to tell exactly what their beliefs are just by what they're doing. To the untrained eye you might see this group criticizing Israel and think that they're leftists. But what underlines their critique is actually anti Semitic tropes and lies. As Eiko Millay wrote in Digit magazine, they ask questions aimed at framing Charlie Kirk as pro Israel, anti white, anti American, loyal to a different country, anti Christian, pro drag queen and an anal sex supporting fake conservative Christ. Yes, they just go up and ask dumb questions that back him into a corner and make him sound like he supports these things because he doesn't come down hard enough. Sure, on them. One of their big Gotchas is a 1967 incident in which Israel fired on a US spy ship thinking it was an Egyptian vessel and killed 34Americans. Both the US and Israel have said this was a mistake and Israel paid $6.7 million to survivors and to the victims families. Groipers however, believe that this was intentional, or at least they pretend they do. And they see the whole thing as a giant Jewish coverup. So they'd show up to events for TP USA and ask Kirk why he refuses to acknowledge the attack on the USS Liberty. And Kirk would answer that he doesn't consider it to have been intentional. And to this, to the Groipers, this is proof that he was in on that big fat Jewish conspiracy. Similarly, while most of us have heard the oft repeated lie about there being Muslims dancing on rooftops in Manhattan after the 911 attacks. Yeah, you've heard it. Yeah. Yes, Groipers claim it was actually Jews dancing and that Israel did 9 11. [00:42:10] Speaker A: Not that I'm. Not that anyone can Kind of answer conclusively to this question. But is that a belief or is. [00:42:22] Speaker B: It a troll or is right exactly like that's Surely no one know the. [00:42:27] Speaker A: Answer in their true selves believes that. [00:42:30] Speaker B: Yeah, I cannot say, you know, I feel this way about so many right wing beliefs that I'm like, surely, surely you can't in good faith believe this thing. And I have no way of knowing. [00:42:44] Speaker A: It serves your purpose. It serves your. [00:42:46] Speaker B: Yeah, it serves you. And so. Exactly, precisely. So in the end, obviously it doesn't really matter whether they believe it or not. They espouse it. Right. So asking these questions would cause them to go viral. And an article on neo Nazi website Daily Stormer advised gripers who don't get an opportunity to actually ask their questions on Mike to just start yelling things like Google the USS Liberty, Google dancing Israelis or just Nick Fuentes. And this would direct people towards their content. They then make memes about their free speech being stifled. Whoops. Using popular images that people recognize and laughing at me and make it look like ol free speech. Charlie and his ilk weren't up to the task of dealing with common sense questions from real conservatives. And what's important about all of this is that it's been targeted largely at college students. That's why when Kirk got ganked, the first reaction from a lot of people was fucking who. He became a martyr over the ensuing hours as folks talked about his amazing Christian legacy. But most of the people eulogizing him had zero knowledge of him before Wednesday. Like the pastor of my old church in Oregon posted Killed for the faith. My heart aches. [00:44:15] Speaker A: Yes. [00:44:16] Speaker B: That pastor is like 70 years old. There's no fucking way he had a clue who Charlie Kirk was. The target audience for TP USA and for Grapers is kids. They're trying to get you at 19. [00:44:29] Speaker A: Great thrills about the what? You know, sitting there amongst all the news last week was watching the BBC try and wrangle with how to fucking speak about this guy. You know, in the hour after it happened, I watched the live news on BBC call him Charlie Cook like twice. [00:44:49] Speaker B: Yeah, over and over again. I turned on like the ABC 7 or ABC World News 24 hour coverage. And that woman exclusively called him Charlie Cook the whole time. [00:45:00] Speaker A: And it's. And even after some time had elapsed enough for, you know, the journos and the fucking hacks in the back to wrangle with. All right, this is who this guy is. Predictably disappointing that the angle was man with a family, you know, man with a family who went out and openly encouraged free debate among, you know, in, in seats of learning and was shot. That's what the fucking angle was. That's what the news was, right? [00:45:37] Speaker B: Which is exactly what he wanted. Listen, when you're a Christian, the thing you always hear is that kids grow up in nice Christian homes, much like the shooter, and then go to college and get corrupted and turn into queer Satan worshiping atheists. And that's not entirely wrong. When you're exposed to other ideas, you're gonna start questioning the bullshit on the other end of the ticket. This also tends to happen to seminarians, people who actually go to seminary to become pastors. A lot of them end up coming out atheists or agnostics because when they actually dig into the scholarship surrounding the Bible, they realize it's myth. Just like any other religion. Keeping people Christian often depends on a degree of keeping them ignorant. And what we learn as Christians is that thus we either need to silo ourselves off into Christian schools like the one that I went to so the world can't taint us, or we need to become powerful witnesses on our campus, effectively shoving our fingers in our ears and shouting John 3:16 over our classmates. So TPUSA and the Groipers take this to heart. They want to get to the college day's kids right when they would be starting to rebel and show them that actually religious traditionalism is cool and fulfilling. They come to your campus with the little memes and their very online references and trolling, co opting language languages from video games and message boards that are instantly recognizable to their young audiences. And again, not to us. We have no idea what's happening. You may be there to fight them, or you might be there to just listen just because you're curious, but at the end what they want is for you to be led to their podcasts and their YouTubes where you might watch with investment or just kind of put it on in the background like people do with Joe Rogan or like I do with Hasan for that matter. You may not agree with everything, but after a while you start to think, you know, they do have some good points and maybe the mainstream media is doing a censorship by not letting them have their say. And then you start to think, hey, maybe they're right then, that Jews own the media and that's why they toe the party line. And before long, ain't no liberal indoctrination your profs can do to you. Because all day you're listening to and engaging with kids you're own Age who get it and are explaining to you all the reasons why the people with degrees are just Soros funded propagandists and only they are telling you the truth. Ultimately the goal of the groipers, who by the way also aren't like a specific organization, but more of like a loose assembly of online guys with essentially the same beliefs. [00:48:26] Speaker A: Yeah. Which is the other thing I'm kind of grappling with. [00:48:30] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:48:30] Speaker A: For such a nebulous. You couldn't even call it a group. [00:48:35] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. Makes it so effective concept of a person. [00:48:40] Speaker A: How does, how does. Ah, fuck, I'm gonna sound so old. How do. How does some. How does a. An entity like that gain traction right. When I've never fucking. You know, they're like fucking hobbits. I've never seen a fucking guapa and yet I'm hearing about them all over the fucking place. [00:49:02] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:49:02] Speaker A: What does one look like? [00:49:03] Speaker B: And yet they are. They are controlling the conversation. Yes, yes. These weird little like pixies or whatever running around throwing wrenches in the machine. [00:49:12] Speaker A: Leprechauns. [00:49:13] Speaker B: Yeah. Right. But yeah, their goal is to move the Overton window to the right, making the baseline of what is acceptable political discourse far more racist and anti semitic. And it's clearly worked. As many of the articles I read this week pointed out, Kirk himself did move towards some of their more extreme views over the. Over time as he kept on being challenged on these. [00:49:36] Speaker A: That has really landed. That has really landed the way you phrased that as moving the baseline of discourse. [00:49:43] Speaker B: Right. Yeah, that's the, that's what we're seeing that we were talking about right there. And in the wake of his death, where a decade ago it would have barely been a footnote on the news and most people would have been like, oh, he sounds terrible. Now our discourse, that baseline has gotten so right wing. You've got Jamie Lee Curtis out here sobbing about what a good Christian he was, even though she didn't agree with him on things Further, Nick Fuentes, who had been banned from Twitter but reinstated by Elon Musk, has gone from 140,000 to three quarters of a million followers in the past 6, 16 months. And his streaming viewership has shot from 100,000 to half a million. And now that we're all talking about it, that reach is sure to grow. Unlike tpusa, which did what it did with tons of big money behind it from corporate and private entities with a stake in keeping America, right wing groipers are grassroots. They're just a bunch of gamer weirdos whose online landscape was infiltrated by white nationalist extremists at the right time and in the right language to become something huge, huge. And shift the youth political demographic in ways that are confusing, incoherent, in many ways terrifying, and actually managing to change the politics of adults like us. [00:51:06] Speaker A: It's incredible. And this is a very broad opinion. I'm by no means the first person you'll have heard saying this, but does any of this happen without the Internet having turned into what it has? [00:51:26] Speaker B: I mean, that's the, that's the big question, right? Because I think what's fascinating to me is that we have spent, you know, the past, what, 80 years since World War II doing like never again shit and like, trying to teach people about it and, you know, making sure that we recognize the signs of fascism and how bad fascism. Fascism was for the people who lived under it, only to have the Internet come around and have all these people go, actually, the Holocaust never happened. And actually it's really like the stuff that fascists were doing was like, really good. And that's what protects a nation. And, you know, completely writing out all of the like, terrible ends of this. I don't think you do that without. [00:52:11] Speaker A: Even, even the specifics, like events like last week. I mean, yeah, Charlie Kirk's notoriety is algorithmic. [00:52:18] Speaker B: Yes. [00:52:19] Speaker A: Fed and pushed to so many eyes because of Tick tock. [00:52:24] Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah. Like your mom seeing it. [00:52:27] Speaker A: Yes, exactly. This, exactly. [00:52:28] Speaker B: You know, like, and with that, the degree to which that my mother, who. [00:52:34] Speaker A: Could go a month without seeing anyone of a remotely different shade to her. [00:52:39] Speaker B: Right, yeah. And what she's filtered. Like, I'm sure the version of Charlie Kirk that she was seeing was not the one, of course, that was like, you know, if I see a black pilot, I don't think they're going to be qualified and things like that. Like, they're giving the like the good Christian boy version of this to people which, you know, she's too old to go and then Google him and like, find his other views and like fall down the rabbit hole. Right. But like, you know, 19 year old seeing that might be like, oh, I'm a big fan of this Charlie Kirk. And then go and like actually fall down that rabbit hole and start believing the other shit he says. [00:53:17] Speaker A: Yes. And so because of Insidious, your feed reflects you. [00:53:24] Speaker B: Mm. Right. It reflects you and it shapes you at the same time. It's like a reflection reification process that's happening with this. That like, you know, one of the things that we have to like, actually grapple with is the fact that like TikTok stops your thinking process, right? Like, and, and again, it can seem like a reactionary, like, oh, the new technology thing, but you're literally just scrolling through and never like stopping and letting an algorithm feed you things and not taking enough time to like stop, sit with it and process it. Like we know that that's bad for your brain. That's the thing that like it stops you from ever like sitting with information and deciding if you. Yeah, like making that conscious decision of how you feel about it, right. Like if you sit and read a book, when you finish it, you can sit for a minute and be like. [00:54:28] Speaker A: Or even a movie or a sore. [00:54:29] Speaker B: Or a movie, right? Anything, right? Like you sit with it or just a YouTube video even, like it will stop. And unless you have it in a playlist, it is not going to keep on serving you like Tick Tock is doing. And that really can, can get to people, you know, and that's what these guys are kind of doing. And then you see the media kind of reflect that as well. Like when you get this version of Charlie Kirk that has, that the media has been presenting, which is not at all who he was, you know, even when it comes to this idea of like, oh, he just, you know, he just wanted debate and whatever, that's not what he did. He went. If he wanted debate, he would be going to college campuses and debating professors on stage, right? Like what he was actually doing was going debating 19 year olds who are barely out of their parents house, then doing this with like gotchas and logical fallacies, then editing that and putting it onto the Internet so that it always made him look like he owned these children. [00:55:35] Speaker A: Well, there is only one version of Charlie Kirk that exists in my fucking mind's eye now. [00:55:43] Speaker B: Marco, be good. Don't get my passport taken away. [00:55:48] Speaker A: All right, all right, all right. Let me quote directly from my notes, if I may. [00:55:52] Speaker B: Yes, please do. [00:55:54] Speaker A: Fucking look at these nerds. Oh, mise en scene. [00:55:57] Speaker B: I don't think anyone has ever said mise en scene in such a horny way before. [00:56:01] Speaker A: The way I whispered the word sex cannibal. Recently. [00:56:04] Speaker B: Worst comes to worst, Mark, I'm willing to guillotine you for science. [00:56:08] Speaker A: Thank you. That's really, really sweet. It's Carlo saying, but my pancreas is talking to me. I'm fucking. I'm gonna leg it. [00:56:14] Speaker B: You know how I feel about that, Mark? [00:56:17] Speaker A: I think you feel great about it. [00:56:20] Speaker B: Do you feel smarter or dumber now, Mark? [00:56:23] Speaker A: Yes. [00:56:25] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah, that's the Joag journey. [00:56:32] Speaker A: Right, so again, as a grass toucher and I think I'd like a cap that says that we're teaching. [00:56:37] Speaker B: I know, I kind of love that. What's the next Joag merch? Grass toucher. [00:56:41] Speaker A: Listen, do you have cex? Do you have CEX in the States? [00:56:45] Speaker B: Cex like the. Oh, maybe I'm thinking, is that like a conference? [00:56:50] Speaker A: No. Fuck no. [00:56:51] Speaker B: Okay. What's cex? Oh God, I don't know what I'm confusing that with. I'm thinking of something that happens like Vegas or whatever. [00:56:58] Speaker A: You're thinking of similar. Yeah, but yeah, go on. CEX is a chain of second hand shops in the uk, Right. It's essentially an evolution of like a pawn shop. P, A W N. Oh, thank you. [00:57:18] Speaker B: So Gears. What a shop. [00:57:21] Speaker A: Yes. [00:57:21] Speaker B: Okay. [00:57:21] Speaker A: Yeah, where you can take your old, your old console or your old phone, old blu rays, old DVDs and get, you know, a pittance of exchange for them and cash or a voucher. [00:57:37] Speaker B: This still exists? [00:57:38] Speaker A: Oh, fucking right it does. CEX is a staple of the British high street. There's CEX in every city. [00:57:46] Speaker B: Right, interesting. Okay. [00:57:47] Speaker A: Oh, have I never spoken of CEX before? [00:57:50] Speaker B: I don't think so. And we like that kind of thing. Just like anything that has to do with like physical media or whatever, like does not exist here. So we don't have that. [00:57:59] Speaker A: Right. I fucking adore cex. Okay. It's there, they're seedy as hell. Right. And in Britain, in British culture, CEX has a very particular. You say CEX is someone and they immediately will conjure up a dimly lit Aladdin's Cave of PlayStation 2s and you know, you'll find it maybe a Zune on the shelf, you know what I mean? You'll find like a load of, you know, laser disc. Yeah. No, no, no, no, you wouldn't get a laser. This player. [00:58:41] Speaker B: Not that far, not that. [00:58:42] Speaker A: Like PC components, like a 10, 15 year old range of graphics cards, AirPods, they, they'll certainly do a brisk trade in stolen phones, proceeds of burglary, you know, heroin vouchers, you know what I'm saying? But the thing about CEX is that it's the one place where all of the stereotypes are fucking born out whenever you walk into one. [00:59:07] Speaker B: Right, okay. [00:59:09] Speaker A: The person behind the counter, you will always have an alt presence behind the counter. They do a very brisk trade in anime DVDs and Blu Rays. Kind of monster on the go. Just wildly vividly colored hair, everything. You, you, every. If you just do me a favor and just after, after this recording, just take a little wander through Brit culture and see what people online are saying about CEX. Right? [00:59:41] Speaker B: Because find a YouTube video inside a CEX or something. [00:59:44] Speaker A: It's all true. It's all true. And I don't even know why I choose to bring this up other than to relate because Owen through me has come to love a cex. Right? There's nothing Owen loves more than us going to our gaming shelf where I'm pointing right now, and dusting off some of the old games we haven't played in a few months, giving the disc a blow and a polish and popping down to CEX and seeing what we can get. Right, Seeing what we can trade, right? [01:00:13] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:00:17] Speaker A: So, boy, this was when I had my week off work a few weeks ago and CEX really comes to life kind of midday on a weekday. Okay, honestly that's. [01:00:31] Speaker B: This is always a good sign. You know, a place is like real legit when everyone without a job is there. [01:00:39] Speaker A: Just breathe it in, enjoy it. I just, in my day to day job, I'm often in shopping centers in the middle of a weekday afternoon. [01:00:48] Speaker B: Oh, that's gotta be really interesting. [01:00:50] Speaker A: I love Corrigan. I love it. What are these people doing? [01:00:53] Speaker B: Yes. [01:00:54] Speaker A: You know what I mean? What's the plan today? What are you doing here? Wandering. And I was in cex. Owen wanted the new WWE game. He's a child. [01:01:12] Speaker B: Sure, yeah, we'll allow it. [01:01:14] Speaker A: And it was there on the shelf, secondhand. Fantastic. And we had a nice little clutch of old switch games to trade for it. Fantastic. So we go to the counter, right? Owen wide eyed because we have a little look in the beyond the glass cabinets. We look at the old, you know, arcane tech relics, the old consoles. Oh, and that's, that's an Xbox 360 mate. Right. And we get museum. Very much so, very much so. You know, you'll get box sets of Country File and Sharp. Cadfire might well be in there, you know, cadfile box set, £2. Owen gets to the counter and he hands over the, the box and the girl just shakes her head no. Sorry, what? Right, because Corrigan, it's rated 16, right? [01:02:21] Speaker B: Uh huh. [01:02:22] Speaker A: So I say to the girl, don't worry, it's for me, right? And she goes, sorry, if what if, if the person who's clearly underage hands me the box, I can't sell it to you. I can't give it to you even. [01:02:38] Speaker B: If you then do it. Okay. [01:02:40] Speaker A: So I say to. And I lit. These were the words out of My mouth. So what's the play here? Do I go back and put it back on the shelf and walk back over or do you want me to go out of the shop and come back in? How do we, you know, what do we do in this situation? [01:02:56] Speaker B: Yeah, what, how do we proceed here? [01:02:58] Speaker A: And by now a queue is formed behind me, right? And there's a lady behind us and she's got like one Nanny McPhee kind of long tooth, right? [01:03:12] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:03:12] Speaker A: And she's on like a, like a stroller. She's, you know, she's of working age but is in cex in the middle of the afternoon and she's bought, she's got a. She's buying TV shows on DVD. [01:03:28] Speaker B: Nice. [01:03:29] Speaker A: On a Wednesday, fucking about 11am, right? [01:03:32] Speaker B: She's got plans. [01:03:34] Speaker A: She's got plans and she chips in. She fucking gets involved. [01:03:40] Speaker B: Amazing. [01:03:41] Speaker A: She, she addresses Owen, she talks directly to my friends son and says, yes, it's the same. I was in Tesco's trying to buy Jack Daniels and they can't sell it to you even if you've got an adult with you. It's illegal. It's illegal. [01:04:00] Speaker B: She says it to Owen, she's talking. [01:04:02] Speaker A: To fucking Owen, not me. She says, you've got to give that to your dad. And Owen looks up at me kind of wide eyed and he hands it to me and I said to him, owen, you don't have to do that. And behind me, under her breath she goes, illegal. I could just hear her go, illegal. Obviously I've confounded the girl behind the counter with my logics. There's no way out of this that doesn't end with me getting that game. So she just calls her boss over and he goes, just whatever. He's in the back, like grading. [01:04:43] Speaker B: Yeah, Like I don't give. [01:04:45] Speaker A: Yeah, whatever. [01:04:46] Speaker B: So nobody is paying paid enough to deal with this. [01:04:49] Speaker A: Yeah. But that interaction with the lady in the queue behind me, that's what's happening in the real world. [01:04:56] Speaker B: Yes, that is spot on. [01:05:00] Speaker A: Meanwhile, outside, that's what's fucking going on. [01:05:04] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:05:05] Speaker A: And just. I didn't even acknowledge, I didn't even turn around and look at her. But I, I heard her in the back, just illegal. As I completed the transaction. Illegal. So good. So good. I'm. I'm certain in the, in the Joag Multiverse, the UK arm of the Joag. [01:05:25] Speaker B: Family, will we, I know, tell us your cex stories. [01:05:29] Speaker A: I know our fucking people and I'm certain we've got some Cex heads here. [01:05:34] Speaker B: Yes. [01:05:35] Speaker A: What a place, man. [01:05:37] Speaker B: Would love to hear about it if, if you've got stories. [01:05:43] Speaker A: So it's light and dark, isn't it? You know, it's tonality, it's texture. That's what Life is in 2025. [01:05:48] Speaker B: Yeah, you know, absolutely. I mean, that's what, when it comes down to it, you know, it, that is what is so strange about living and you know, it's reflected in the Paul Henry book and things like that, is that my day to day and the people that I interact with and whatnot, you know, is very pleasant. And none of them have any idea what is going on with groipers and all of this kind of shit. And you know, we're just, we're just bopping about, you know, I've got late library books to return, things like that. And none of this is real life, but unfortunately the people who run the government are like very online. [01:06:28] Speaker A: So let's talk about real life. Right, Okay. I, I don't know if our listeners realize this, but I've certainly put it in these terms to you and to some of our other friends. Last week was even before Charlie Kirk expired in front of the world in fucking crimson gouts. [01:06:54] Speaker B: Fucking couldn't help yourself, could you? You just had to. [01:06:57] Speaker A: Fucking freshly oxygenated blood just fucking gushing through from his carotid artery. What a shot. Even before that, even before that. This was the maddest fucking week I have ever lived through in terms of just events, real world events. [01:07:22] Speaker B: It's crazy because like I turned 40 on Tuesday and that feels like 37 years ago. [01:07:32] Speaker A: Lifetime between then and now. [01:07:34] Speaker B: Yeah, it was wonderful. [01:07:37] Speaker A: Right? And I, I, I've, I can't, I can't do a long jog tonight just for my own health. I can't do it. But I gotta fucking just talk about a few things. [01:07:51] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:07:51] Speaker A: Just such incredible things. So know ye of the town of Shrewsbury here? [01:07:57] Speaker B: I've been there. Yeah. [01:07:59] Speaker A: Beautiful. [01:07:59] Speaker B: Tell me your birthplace of Charles Darwin. [01:08:03] Speaker A: Oh, how fitting. [01:08:06] Speaker B: I don't know what story you're about to tell, so I don't know that it's fitting, but yes, I have been to Shrewsbury. It's a beautiful, just adorable little town. [01:08:14] Speaker A: See, I knew, I knew that that was Darwin's birthplace, but I hadn't, I hadn't. The penny hadn't put it together. How fitting. You have good memories of Shrewsbury then? Yes. [01:08:23] Speaker B: Yeah. Saw harpist there with Richard and Nick. [01:08:26] Speaker A: Did you happen to go by the exotic zoo? That's what it's called, the exotic zoo. [01:08:32] Speaker B: Ooh, okay. [01:08:36] Speaker A: Because was it in Shrewsbury. Give me a sec. It was either. [01:08:41] Speaker B: All this lead up. [01:08:43] Speaker A: It was either in Shrewsbury, Shrewsbury or nearby. It was, yeah, it was near Shrewsbury. It was actually in Telford, a short. But a short drive from Shrewsbury. [01:08:52] Speaker B: Okay. [01:08:56] Speaker A: An iguana in that zoo. [01:09:01] Speaker B: Oh, yes, right. [01:09:02] Speaker A: An iguana in that zoo. Reproduced, right? [01:09:09] Speaker B: It did. [01:09:10] Speaker A: Reproduced. She did. [01:09:13] Speaker B: Mm. [01:09:14] Speaker A: Reproduced. Eight perfectly healthy hatchlings. [01:09:21] Speaker B: Yes. [01:09:22] Speaker A: Despite having never encountered or been housed with a male iguana. [01:09:32] Speaker B: So like straight up, Jurassic Park. [01:09:35] Speaker A: Jurassic park is what happened here in a process known as parthenogenesis. [01:09:41] Speaker B: Go on. [01:09:42] Speaker A: Spontaneous reproduction. Eggs developing into fully fucking formed, living, viable embryos without a hint of fertilization, without a fucking suggestion of male iguanic contact. [01:10:02] Speaker B: Is there like. Is there a known scientific way that this occurs or is this like a medical mystery when it happens? [01:10:09] Speaker A: Okay, okay, okay, okay. It is not by any means unheard of. [01:10:15] Speaker B: Right, sure, yeah, there's a name for it, clearly. [01:10:19] Speaker A: Exactly this. Exactly this. Do you know what? Jurassic park actually. Fucking had it. Right. Parthenogenesis is. You could kind of think of it as a biological last resort for a species. It's far more prevalent in captivity than it ever is in the wild. [01:10:38] Speaker B: Okay. Species trying to propagate itself, thinking it's dying out. [01:10:42] Speaker A: That is exactly what it is. And incredibly, every single one of the offspring, every product of parthenogenesis is a genetic clone of the mother. [01:10:55] Speaker B: That is wild. That is bizarre. Honestly. More than anything, right? [01:11:02] Speaker A: Fuck a griper, man. I don't know why this. This isn't the discourse. [01:11:08] Speaker B: This should be the headline on the. Can only things that lay eggs do this? [01:11:13] Speaker A: No. Ah, actually, hang on, stop. Let me just fucking not. [01:11:19] Speaker B: Did I just hit on something? [01:11:20] Speaker A: Throw my balls here? It's super, super fucking rare in vertebrate animals. [01:11:33] Speaker B: Okay? [01:11:33] Speaker A: Right. Far more common in kind of insect species, invertebrate species, parasites. [01:11:45] Speaker B: Oh, sure. [01:11:46] Speaker A: Aphid, kind of, kind of species. In mammals, almost completely unheard of. [01:11:55] Speaker B: Okay. [01:11:56] Speaker A: But let me tell you this, right? [01:11:59] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:11:59] Speaker A: I'll tell you where my mind went. [01:12:03] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [01:12:07] Speaker A: I didn't get anywhere near enough credit for referring to this as the Jesus lizard online. Right? Simple. The funniest thing I've ever said. The absolute best thing I've ever said. [01:12:15] Speaker B: You were relying on people having more context. [01:12:17] Speaker A: Yeah, I suppose so. I suppose so. But I've not seen anyone write off completely that this is where Jesus came from. [01:12:29] Speaker B: I think that's just because clearly it was just sex. [01:12:33] Speaker A: Or was it? Or low. Was he born of a virgin? [01:12:41] Speaker B: Now that would be incredible. [01:12:43] Speaker A: Eh? [01:12:44] Speaker B: Don't get Me wrong. I think it was just sex. But I like the idea. I'd watch the movie. [01:12:49] Speaker A: If it can happen in Telford. [01:12:54] Speaker B: Why not in Bethlehem? [01:12:58] Speaker A: So, Right, so not only that. Right, not only. [01:13:01] Speaker B: Yeah. What else? [01:13:03] Speaker A: Did parthenogenesis occur in my lifetime in my country? [01:13:08] Speaker B: Yes. [01:13:10] Speaker A: Oh, then within like 24 hours, NASA pipes up. [01:13:15] Speaker B: Right, yeah. [01:13:19] Speaker A: Publicizing findings from the fucking good old great bunch of lads, the Perseverance rover. Yeah, what a guy. Collecting and reporting back on a sample of rock, clay based, silt based, but with Corrigan. With components that are all used in the fucking processes of microbial life. [01:13:56] Speaker B: Yes, I did see that as well. With some like caveats from various science people. But your caveats. [01:14:05] Speaker A: I don't. Do you think I'd want to hear about caveats? Look at me, look at my eyes. Are these the eyes of a man who wants your caveats? [01:14:14] Speaker B: Once again, Marco's reactions strike. And as he said, look at my eyes. A big thumbs up bubble came directly out of his eyeball on the screen right. [01:14:26] Speaker A: Now. The. There's a. There's a. There's a. Have you heard of the cold scale? [01:14:33] Speaker B: The cold scale? [01:14:35] Speaker A: The cold scale. Capital C, small O, capital L, capital D. The confidence of life detection scale. [01:14:43] Speaker B: Oh, okay. No, I have not heard of that. Yeah. [01:14:46] Speaker A: Now I follow a lot of astrophysicists on blue sky, right? Big in the astrophysics community. Yeah, all of them, bar one, are fantastic. And the cold scale is used to almost act as a firewall to prevent kind of premature claims of earth shattering paradigm shifting. [01:15:13] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:15:14] Speaker A: Pant shitting discoveries. It's almost a kind of a. Like a firewall. [01:15:20] Speaker B: It's a slow your roll. [01:15:21] Speaker A: It's. Yes, it's a hyperbole buffer is what it is. And let me. It has seven kind of levels, right? One through seven, with each giving you a step up a ladder rung to stronger evidence that the best explanation for a finding is life. Okay, right. Just super quickly, I'm gonna rattle through these. Level one is detection. Detection of something interesting. That's the first level on the cold scale. An interesting discovery. [01:15:51] Speaker B: Tick. Sure. [01:15:52] Speaker A: Right, yeah. Level two is preliminary analysis. So is it real? Is it reproducible? Are there margins for error in your instrumentation? Right, sure. [01:16:06] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:16:06] Speaker A: Past that. Tick. Level 3 on the Cold scale, you establish environmental plausibility. So can you evidence that that environment could support life? Presence of water conditions, that might be, you know. [01:16:24] Speaker B: Yeah, right. Like if there's just absolutely no way life could thrive here, then clearly whatever you're seeing is not about life. [01:16:29] Speaker A: Exactly. Now this is where our discovery here falters. On level four, is the evidence completely inconsistent with non biological explanations? [01:16:40] Speaker B: Right. Yes. That seemed to be kind of what I saw was that like there may be other explanations for this that don't rock, guys. Yeah, right. Yeah, completely rule that out. Yeah. [01:16:55] Speaker A: Further up the scale you go, you then need multiple kind of independent sources of evidence. That's never gonna happen. [01:17:00] Speaker B: Right? Yeah. [01:17:01] Speaker A: Biological explanation then becoming the most plausible in level six. And then level seven is confirmed detection of life within a week. Right. Within one fucking week. We had parthenogenesis. We had level four on the cold scale for life on Mars, right? [01:17:19] Speaker B: Yep. [01:17:20] Speaker A: We had your 40th birthday and we had the shooting of Charlie Kirk on fucking practically live tv. [01:17:26] Speaker B: Yeah. And then Robert Redford died. [01:17:29] Speaker A: And then Robert Redford dies. Can you. You know, we bear witness, Corrigan, and I don't think we've ever borne witness. I don't think anyone has to. A week as fucking batshit as that. [01:17:41] Speaker B: Yeah. Right. Seriously, so much craziness going on. It's just nice when some of it is like, just interesting, like parthenogenesis and things like that. And it's not all like the world falling apart. Like, if you look, there's actually like a whole bunch of really interesting shit happening too, which is. [01:17:59] Speaker A: Yeah, completely. Completely. And yet one thing, you know, that I didn't say during your opening earlier on, it's a constant source of disappointment to me in the media. I hate the term mainstream media. I hate it. It's such a red flag. It's such a red flag. Legacy media, fine. But if you. [01:18:21] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a second. [01:18:22] Speaker A: You say mainstream media. [01:18:26] Speaker B: Right? Yeah. [01:18:26] Speaker A: My Geiger counter is twitching. But in those legacy media forms, I feel the cranks are given way. Disproportionate airtime. Man, it's so disappointing. Just like we've spoken about with identity politics and culture war, that is a. There's a direct through line to media eyes. And if it bleeds, it leads. You know, it serves the media so well to disproportionately report on the cranks. [01:19:00] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. [01:19:02] Speaker A: This fucking shit. Potential life on Mars and parthenogenesis is a fucking sidebar. [01:19:10] Speaker B: Right. [01:19:11] Speaker A: And that ain't right. That's so disappointing to me. [01:19:14] Speaker B: You know what? Specifically, I think you make a really good point there because we all do know and lament that this is happening, right? That you know, the. That the media pays too much attention to the cranks because it drives clicks and it does all these kinds of things when. When it comes down to it. It's. It is sort of a self perpetuating thing. Right. Like if the, if the news was more interested in things other than the culture wars, it was interested in science miracles and things like that, maybe it wouldn't be so hard to convince people science exists, you know, that like there's a direct line of their. The shaping of the interest that's happening here. It's again, not just, it's not just reflection, it's reification too. It's creating the same, it's creating this atmosphere. [01:20:06] Speaker A: But then we speak to human nature, you know, then we speak to human nature. It wouldn't, the media wouldn't have trained, wouldn't have learned on that model of division and conflict and infighting being so popular. It hasn't learned that in a vacuum. It hasn't created that. Or at least not entirely by itself. [01:20:29] Speaker B: Right. Yes. I mean, that's the plot of Mad Men, isn't it? [01:20:34] Speaker A: Yeah, sure, sure. [01:20:35] Speaker B: It's a little bit of. Right. It's a little bit of human nature and it's a little bit of manipulation. [01:20:41] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:20:42] Speaker B: Of human nature. But it'd be nice to see, you know, other things that are. Because I do remember that from when I was like a kid and we got. When I was a kid there was a show on Nickelodeon called Nick News, hosted by a woman named Linda Ellerby. [01:21:02] Speaker A: Yes. We had an equivalent in the UK called Newsround. [01:21:05] Speaker B: Nice. And the whole thing was the W5. Nick News. W5? Who, what, where, when? Why? [01:21:10] Speaker A: Oh, beautiful. [01:21:11] Speaker B: And so it had famously, Meghan Markle was in one of the early episodes because she was doing. She was trying to like get attention to some like issue in her town when she was a little kid. And in that bit she and I look exactly the same. When I was a kid, I exactly like her. I see it. Yeah, there's resemblances, but especially when we were kids. But yeah, it was like a show that was like this mix of like keeping us sort of posted on the news, like things like wars and things like that going on, but then also like really special interests. What, like what activism are kids doing, what science thing is going on. And we'd get these little. In my fourth grade class, Mr. Ward, we'd get these little newspaper type things for just kids and same thing, keep us, you know, on top of elections, stuff like that. It also had like, what were the weekly top 10 movies and books and you know, little like what's going on in the zoo and shit like that. [01:22:14] Speaker A: It sounds less like newsroom More like something like Blue Peter, like a kids magazine show with news and, like you said, you know, environmental items and things like that. [01:22:24] Speaker B: And it's like, we grow up on this, and if there's anything we know from, like, what millennials are like and stuff like that is that, like, nostalgia is a thing that we're very into. If you just kept giving us this stuff, like, we'd be tuning in forever. But, you know, that's not what we then are trained to be interested in. So. [01:22:46] Speaker A: The school my boys are at, I don't know if this is common practice in secondary schools, but they get a little update on the news a couple of times a week in their assembly, the teachers will read out the biggest news stories of the day, which I love at face value, but I also then want to ask questions about who picks what stories, you know? [01:23:06] Speaker B: Right. And then what do they do with them? Yeah, because, like, I remember also when I was in third grade, every week we would each bring in a current event, and it was just like, something we'd cut from the newspaper, literally. And we'd go around the circle and we'd share our current event and we'd talk about them. For some reason, the only one that, like, really stands out to me is I remember one from when Wally Amos, the cookie guy died and cutting that out and sharing it. Wally Amos, Famous Amos cookies. [01:23:34] Speaker A: I hid you. [01:23:34] Speaker B: Yeah, Famous Amos cookies are very popular, and they were invented by a black man named Wally Amos. [01:23:42] Speaker A: Nice. [01:23:42] Speaker B: And my dad really liked him. And so when he died, I brought in a little clipping to my third grade class and talked about the legacy of Wally Amos. But, like, that. That degree of, like, dialogue about the current event is important, too. Not just reading out, like, you know, what the news stories are, but, like, then how do you interrogate them? Yeah, right, exactly. Which is, like, that's the step that we. We still need because we certainly have a. A media literacy problem. [01:24:12] Speaker A: Yeah. I wonder. And worry is a bit strong. I don't. I certainly don't worry about it yet, because I've been given no cause to. But that old adage about your kids, you know, intentionally becoming the opposite of what you were, pushing back on your beliefs. I. I'm so vociferously left wing. Like, I. I hope I'm not, you know, unintentionally creating the next couple of groipers. [01:24:46] Speaker B: Right. I mean, I think, like, there's, you know, that also comes from, like, boomer parents being terrible. That's why you rebel against your. Whatever side your Parents are on. It's because they tried to force something on you and, you know, you feel like you need to push back against it. Like me with my atheist parents and my Christianity. But I don't. I don't think that that is gonna be a problem for you, Mark. I think you're pretty set. I've listened to Peter talk. I shared Peter's episode with my friend Emily the other day. I was like, you're. Have I shared this with you? You'll absolutely love it. And sure enough, she was like, that was incredible. He's so well spoken and smart. Like, I know. [01:25:33] Speaker A: Only getting more so. [01:25:36] Speaker B: It'S gonna be trouble. They're gonna get smarter than you soon. It's gonna be a problem. You'll be able to push back. [01:25:42] Speaker A: Well, he's reveling in being taller than me. [01:25:44] Speaker B: And is he taller than you? [01:25:47] Speaker A: There's very little in it. There's a fucking hair in it. And Owen is learning how to use his size and mass in combat. [01:25:58] Speaker B: So, yeah, you're hosed, bro. [01:26:01] Speaker A: Taekwondo and, and you know, we, we rough house from time to time and he can, you know. [01:26:07] Speaker B: Yeah, between size and intellect. Yeah, you've got it. You've got your work cut out for you. [01:26:13] Speaker A: Indeed. [01:26:17] Speaker B: We didn't watch a whole heck of a lot this week. Oh, I did want to point out, I for one, that Friday we posted up the latest fan cave on the Kofi talking about the Omen. We had so much fun discussing that. So jump on in. I give you the history sort of of like religious horror in there and kind of not like the full history, but a history of religious horror and sort of meanings behind that and whatnot in there. So we had a great time talking about the devil and the Rapture and the Antichrist and all that kind of stuff, and watching the Omen. Also, for this month's mailers, I've sent out all the ones that are going to Americans. I'm just waiting for my British stamps to come in the mail because they never have them at the actual post office, so they'll be going out soon. It's just, you know, a matter of time. It cracks me up for some reason. Stamps ordered from the postal service take like weeks to come. Like you're. And they charge for postage. This feels like it should come super quick and be free. I am buying from you, but whatever. [01:27:30] Speaker A: Some Kafka shit. [01:27:35] Speaker B: But okay. So having the Kofi stuff out of the way, subscribe to us if you don't already. It's a real fun time didn't watch a lot. Do the right thing. Didn't watch a lot this week, really. So my sister was here. It was my birthday. We went to banana ball. [01:27:51] Speaker A: You can. I mean, feel free to tell me again what that is if. If you think it'll go in this time. [01:27:56] Speaker B: Yeah. Banana ball is like the Harlem Globetrotters of baseball. [01:28:00] Speaker A: Yes, I remember. [01:28:01] Speaker B: Yes, yes, yes. And it was even more fun than I thought it was going to be. Like, the day before. They send a message and they're like. So starting at 2pm on the field next to Yankee Stadium, there will be a festival with, you know, music and all kinds of stuff going on here. And you can buy your merch, because merch is a huge part of banana ball. And so we got there, took the train into the city, got there, and bought all of our banana ball shirts and foam bananas and all of that kind of stuff to be properly ready for the game. And then they had, you know, a stage with, like, all these musical performances. [01:28:38] Speaker A: They have a. A crowd cam on the big screen inside the stadium. [01:28:44] Speaker B: They have the Jumbotron. Not out. [01:28:45] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, okay. [01:28:47] Speaker B: But, yeah, I love that. So, yeah, it's very fun. And so we did that whole thing. And then you go in and the, like, during the game, there's, like, all kinds of things, like, lots of stuff with cute kids. There's at one point, this, like, guy comes out in, like, this weird, shoddy rat costume. Like, what's going on here? And then he's Master Splinter. And then all of a sudden, they turn and there's, like, these four tiny boys who are, like three or four years old, all in Ninja Turtles costumes, looking very lost, the way the little. Little kids do. And they have them do a race to home plate from the outfield in these. There was another one that was a race where they had three dads, and each of them had two kids. And the kids got a head start. And the first dad that could wrangle their two children won the race. They had, like, a little girl who had to. You know, they had this whole ceremony of peeling a banana. And if the banana is good, then that means it's gonna be a great day. But if it's rotten, it's gonna be bad. And, of course, it's like a perfect banana. But this little girl was, like, so into this whole process, and she, like. They give her the banana, and she takes, like, the biggest bite, you know, huge, huge mouthful. Like, how's the game gonna be? And she's like. She's like, this four Year old girl is gon. They do all these like really cute things like that. And then, you know, in between plays, they're dancing. They brought out the second guy who played Hamilton. The guy who played Hamilton after Lin, he came out and did my shot with the bananas as the background dancers. Like, the whole thing was so much fun. And the whole time, like, as opposed to baseball, you know, it's like you kind of. There's a lot of quiet in baseball. You know, they'll play like, walk on music or they'll have the organ or things like that. And then anytime, like things are in play, it's quiet, you know, aside from people talking, whatever. But they never stop playing music at banana ball. So they're. You're like constantly just kind of like dancing, you know, everything's like just moving all the time. And then occasionally the players get into like a choreographed dance or something too, along with you who's like, in the audience dancing. And it. It was just all day fun. We had such a blast at the end. [01:31:09] Speaker A: Sounds like a lot. I bet you were pooped. [01:31:11] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Deeply exhausted after the next day, I was just like, dead, you know? [01:31:18] Speaker A: You're talking about real life again, aren't you? [01:31:20] Speaker B: Yes. I kept thinking that. Yeah. Like, there are 49, 000 of us just in Yankee Stadium right now watching some guys in banana suits and whatnot, like, do silly stuff. You know, there's a pitcher who's on stilts. Like, you know, like, this is what people are doing in the world. And it's nice to be like, out and among them. [01:31:45] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, I think that's a. A really. I think that's the theme of this episode, isn't it? It's an episode of two halves. It's. [01:31:52] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:31:53] Speaker A: The morass of what algorithmic connectivity has given us. [01:32:00] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:32:01] Speaker A: But you can. You can. You can sim. You can look away for now. [01:32:04] Speaker B: Yeah. You can turn it off, you know. Well, and that was the other thing that I kept thinking, like there were a couple times throughout it while this was going on is I was like, is this the thing that we're gonna look back on as like the last silly thing that we did before you weren't allowed to go anywhere before we had to hide in our basements. You know, there's definitely this element of that to it as well. So it's kind of like you said, two halves. It's, you know, the. The grass touching and the like, L, you know. [01:32:35] Speaker A: I love it when you drop a fucking L. It's one of my favorite things. I've got a couple of very, very interesting movies that I'm very keen to talk about. But I'm also quite keen park on First Sunday, if that's cool with you. [01:32:49] Speaker B: Sure, yeah. Trying to figure out what my dog is chewing on because it sounds plasticky. Oh, Walter. [01:32:57] Speaker A: What do you got, bud listeners? Do me a favor, if you can, for your old pal Marco. Share with me what your life outside is like. And by outside, by outside, I mean outside the fucking sphere. I mean outside the screen. [01:33:14] Speaker B: I mean, tell us what the grass feels like. [01:33:18] Speaker A: Has there been a fucking moment that you only get irl? [01:33:24] Speaker B: Yes. Love that. [01:33:26] Speaker A: That's what I'd love to hear this week. If you can share something with us, please. [01:33:32] Speaker B: Feels great. And while you're at it, go ahead and stay spooky. [01:33:37] Speaker A: Spooky? [01:33:40] Speaker B: Yeah.