Ep. 247: mooninite panic & the goals of ai

[00:00:04] Speaker A: So we established a couple weeks ago that you have never had the pleasure of watching Aqua Teen Hunger Force. [00:00:11] Speaker B: Correct, correct. While obviously being plugged in as I am. I've seen the memes, I've seen the screens. I know that it exists, and I know it was quite a big deal. But one of those things that has passed me by like a specter in a hallway. [00:00:28] Speaker A: Yeah. And you mentioned that, like, it wasn't super accessible to you at the time. [00:00:32] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:00:33] Speaker A: This. Yeah. Obviously these days, pretty much everything we make ends up to you guys simultaneously. But what do you know of Adult Swim generally? [00:00:43] Speaker B: Right. Okay. I believe it is a channel that evolved out of another channel. Did it come from Cartoon Network or similar? Is that correct? [00:00:51] Speaker A: You're on the right track. Yeah. [00:00:53] Speaker B: Right. Known for kind of edgy programming. I mean, it's a brand, isn't it? It's a broadcaster. It's a channel with a particular sort of. [00:01:07] Speaker A: Yeah, you're close. You're on the right track here. It's not a channel. [00:01:12] Speaker B: Okay. [00:01:14] Speaker A: But I can see how from what you get from it. That would. That would be the assumption. Let me tell you a little bit about it. [00:01:19] Speaker B: Cheese. [00:01:20] Speaker A: Because I think it's safe to say that Adult Swim is pretty foundational for a lot of millennial Americans. [00:01:26] Speaker B: Yes. [00:01:27] Speaker A: Uh, we're known for our, like, very absurd, sort of out of left field humor that's inscrutable to our boomer parents. And the shows in Adult Swim were sort of the 67 of their age. It was really lightning in a bottle in its early days. [00:01:48] Speaker B: You did the hands and everything. You did the fucking. [00:01:50] Speaker A: Yeah. You see the little casual. Just a little casual six seven for you. [00:01:54] Speaker B: I'm disappointed, actually, a little bit, that. That 67 has reached Joag. I thought we were above that. [00:02:00] Speaker A: You did this. [00:02:00] Speaker B: I thought we were above that. [00:02:02] Speaker A: You had a whole thing two weeks ago about how in love you are with six sevens. I do. [00:02:06] Speaker B: I love it a great deal. And I still love it. I still remember it. [00:02:08] Speaker A: You referenced it specifically for your benefit. [00:02:10] Speaker B: Thank you. I don't remember that. But I'm still deeply enamored with it. I'll keep laughing at it. The more obtuse and random. The ways my son manages to squeeze it into everything are. [00:02:24] Speaker A: Know yesterday I was at the museum and there's this little girl whose mom kind of runs what's called Chicken Club at the farm next door. [00:02:33] Speaker B: I'd like to go to Chicken Club. [00:02:35] Speaker A: It's. It's a very nice time. But the girl was about to leave and she got into their van. And then all of a sudden she leans out, she goes, wait. Six, seven. [00:02:49] Speaker B: So good. Very, very important moment, that very important cultural moment for us all to live through. Mm. [00:02:56] Speaker A: Yes. [00:02:57] Speaker B: But anyway, I get what you're saying. I get what you're saying as inscrutable. [00:03:00] Speaker A: Yeah, I get what I'm saying. It's right. Like it's here. Do you have the cereal Apple Jacks? [00:03:05] Speaker B: Nope. Cereal as in morning food? [00:03:10] Speaker A: Yes. [00:03:10] Speaker B: No. No, we do not. [00:03:12] Speaker A: Oh, as in like, as opposed to. [00:03:13] Speaker B: Like a show Repeat. Yeah, cereal. [00:03:15] Speaker A: Gotcha. Yeah, yeah. No, as in breakfast cereal. There were commercials for Apple jacks in the 90s and probably 2000s as well. I don't think they show these anymore. But the whole thing was like, why do kids like Apple Jacks? They don't taste like apples. And the punchline was, we just do. [00:03:32] Speaker B: Okay. [00:03:33] Speaker A: And that is kind of how. Yeah. Like, you know, if parents are looking in on watching these kinds of shows and Adult Swim, it's like, why do you find this funny? [00:03:42] Speaker B: Yep, Yep. [00:03:44] Speaker A: Just is. Go ahead. [00:03:47] Speaker B: I. I wonder if Apple Jackson, their ilk. I want to say things like fucking, you know, Lucky Charms and so on don't exist over here because there was a lot of legislation in, I want to say the 90s around about like. [00:04:04] Speaker A: Dyes and stuff like that. [00:04:05] Speaker B: Dyes and sugars and even advertising of foods to kids. I used to be a massive fan of Wheatos, the cereal guidos, specifically because of the toy. You would always get a fucking cool ass toy in a Wheato's box, but you can no longer package free toys in with cereal. You can't do it. Yeah. So we had a. [00:04:26] Speaker A: You know, this may. This may be a joag in and of itself, but just as a brief note to that we did have sort of a movement of that kind of. Not necessarily with like cereal and stuff like that. Specifically. [00:04:37] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:04:37] Speaker A: But of limits to the advertising you could do to children. Yes. Which. Some of which still holds. So, like, if you're watching a TV channel with that's 4Kids, for example, they have to put like a bumper between the show and the advertising. Like, so famously, when I was a kid, we had the. After these messages, we'll be right back. And so that tells the kid, this is not part of the television show. And this is, you know, supposed to help to keep them from, you know, could you Consuming like that? Yeah. [00:05:09] Speaker B: Can. You can't advertise cigarettes anymore? No. You can't advertise cigarettes still. [00:05:12] Speaker A: No. [00:05:13] Speaker B: Okay. [00:05:13] Speaker A: No. Not. At least not on. Not on television. [00:05:16] Speaker B: Or billboards or anything like that, can you? Billboards? [00:05:18] Speaker A: Yeah. I don't think you can do it on, on billboards. I know for like at least not near a school or something like that. I don't know if it's all together or whatever. You know, cigarettes aren't in fashion anymore, so I don't think that's really. They're not like a thing anyway. No, but anyways, like if you smoke cigarettes, it's because you can fucking spark. [00:05:37] Speaker B: Up a da t. You know, a dart anymore. [00:05:40] Speaker A: Yeah. If you smoke cigarettes, you don't need to be advertised to. You're the kind of person who just goes my health and smokes. So it's like they don't have to do anything. They're, they're people are built in. But anyways. In its early days, Cartoon Network was pretty lame, to be honest. They owned the Hanna Barbera library of animation. So it was basically just a channel of reruns of decade old cartoons, decades old cartoons that you watched as a last resort, if nothing cool like Rugrats or Hey Arnold was on. I know I hated Cartoon Network. I wouldn't go near it. I was like, I fucking hate these cartoons. I don't want to watch the Jetsons, you know. But one. Mike Lazo, programming director for the network, came up with an recycle the animation from a 1960s Hanna Barbera show called Space Ghost, repurposing it into a talk show. This became the absolute classic Space Ghost coast to coast in which Space Ghost, voiced by George Lowe, interviewed real celebrities asking them absolutely ridiculous questions. Which in its early days caused frustration and walkouts from celebs who had no idea what the fuck was going on. You've seen Space Ghost, right? [00:06:53] Speaker B: Again, no, I have not. [00:06:54] Speaker A: Ah, you've never seen Space Ghost? [00:06:56] Speaker B: Nuh. [00:06:57] Speaker A: Oh man. Both. Listen, there are multiple channels on YouTube that like 24 hour stream old shows from Cartoon Network, one of which is Space Ghost. Highly recommend checking it out. It is literally this guy as this cartoon space ghost. They're repurposing the animation and he is sitting at like a desk and then there's a TV across from him and on that are real celebrities that he's interviewing. [00:07:28] Speaker B: I, I, I. It's one of those things that is. I know bits of it, I know bits about it. A comics writer who I have always adored, a guy called Evan Dawkin, wrote Milk and Cheese. He was a, he was a key writer on Space Ghost in the 90s. [00:07:42] Speaker A: Okay, nice. [00:07:44] Speaker B: So just in reading his kind of, you know, his Newsletters and his fucking forum posts back in the day. I'm aware of it. [00:07:49] Speaker A: But. [00:07:49] Speaker B: But again, Corrie, we had four channels. [00:07:53] Speaker A: Yeah. Right. [00:07:54] Speaker B: For a long time. [00:07:56] Speaker A: Right? [00:07:56] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:07:56] Speaker A: You missed out on all this stuff because there was nowhere to rerun it and no Internet to put it on, which I think so much of this stuff would have been like, completely your bag to just like. Like college Mark getting high. Watching Space Ghost coast to coast would have been like living, you know. [00:08:14] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:08:14] Speaker A: But, yeah, you can check it out. And it's very funny often because it's like, literally just a guy saying absurd things to celebrities who have varying different reactions to this from leaning in and they run away. [00:08:27] Speaker B: They weren't aware of what they agreed. [00:08:29] Speaker A: Yeah. At least in the beginning. And then I think they started like, giving like a release, like a written thing beforehand telling them, like, you're going to be on a cartoon show. And that's why we are saying this weird shit to you. And obviously it got more popular. The show began airing on April 15, 1994, making it the first Cartoon Network original series. They had spent $125,000 on the pilot. 100,000. Having a production house in Hollywood make it. And then $25,000 scrapping that entirely and making it themselves because they thought that the professional shit wasn't funny. [00:09:06] Speaker B: Wonderful. [00:09:07] Speaker A: They were like, listen, we're just gonna do it here. [00:09:09] Speaker B: Wonderful. Cartoon Network. Was that Ren and Stimpy also. [00:09:13] Speaker A: Eventually, not initially, yes. Ren and Stippy came from Nickelodeon. [00:09:16] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:09:17] Speaker A: And a lot of things did end up coming from there, which is a whole other story as well. But this show became a huge hit and the network saw that suddenly they had an audience of adults. But still, Cartoon Network was where your parents sat you down to watch the Flintstones and Scooby Doo. As such, the advertising was aimed at kids. And advertisers didn't want to pay to try to sell shit to kids after 10pm when all the whippersnappers were in bed. So this was a total dead zone for the network that they didn't know what to do with. I don't know if you guys do this over there, but there are a lot of channels here that just turn into infomercials in the wee hours of the night. [00:10:01] Speaker B: Yes, it certainly happens when you get deep into the channel guide, you know. Yeah, yeah, 100% for sure. [00:10:09] Speaker A: All of a sudden, you know, it hits 2am and everybody's hawking the cornballer and shit like that, you know, because it's just, you know, advertisers are advertising to the kind of people who are up with insomnia or whatever and might, you know, or drunkenly buy something off of the tv. Right? [00:10:26] Speaker B: Yeah, My mother is quite susceptible to an advertainment presentation. [00:10:34] Speaker A: I, me and my friend Monique are suckers for the Time Life ones. [00:10:38] Speaker B: Okay? [00:10:38] Speaker A: We once stayed up till 3am watching A Time Life, like hits of the 60s infomercial. Just like, man, every song is a bop. It's like they give you like the list of this, this album has all of these on it. And then they'd show like live performances from the 60s. And we were, we were having the time of our lives. We were like, it's really late, we got to go to bed. We didn't buy anything though, we just watched it. But Lazlo was like, alright then we're gonna make a block of super low budget content aimed at adults to put in that otherwise unusable timeslot. And a bunch of folks who had regular jobs at the network set to work also creating these shows, which is insane. Like, imagine if the programming director at the BBC was suddenly just like, I'm gonna make a sitcom myself. You guys want to help? Like, that's what happened here. These are two very different lanes. So it was a huge dice roll. Given a year to name brand and produce this thing. The creative team came up with four possible names. Aviso, which means mourning in Spanish, parental block, obviously that was, you know, what you would put on your TV if you didn't want your kids to watch certain shit? Insert quarter to sort of bring back those retro ideas of going to the arcade and Adult Swim. Mike Lazo, for his part, hated the name Adult Swim, but ultimately it was the winner. And despite his opposition, it was perfect branding. As a kid, you know what Adult Swim means? [00:12:18] Speaker B: I hate to challenge you, but no, I do not. [00:12:22] Speaker A: Okay, maybe this. Okay, There's a lot of cultural exchange happening here. [00:12:25] Speaker B: You took the words right out of my mouth. That was exactly what I was about to say. I. It is not a phrase in popular parlance over here. Certainly not. I imagine it's when the right kids get out the pool. [00:12:35] Speaker A: Yes, it's when the kids get out of the pool and have to sit around while the boring grown ups take over and do their laps and shit. It's the worst. And they leaned into this. If you've ever watched Adult Swim, you know, they have a lot of weird little bumpers between shows when they go to commercials and stuff like that that are often od. Like just. You don't know what they are, these strange little scenes of things. And this started early on when the first adverts for Adult Swim aired. They featured black and white footage of a bunch of old folks in a pool, which they filmed nearby in Atlanta with a lifeguard saying, Sundays at 10, it's all kids out of the pool for Adult Swim. And the whole point was to make kids go, ugh, no thanks. Instead of, ooh, adult content. Which would be our natural reaction. [00:13:23] Speaker B: That's very astute. [00:13:25] Speaker A: Yeah, it's very smart branding. And I remember thinking like, at the time, like, oh, I don't. I'm not gonna watch that. Like genuinely. I remember thinking like, yeah, that sounds boring. I'm not gonna watch whatever's going on there. I thought it was like, like on Nickelodeon they had this block after 8 o' clock called Nick at night on weekdays. And it was old shows. So it was like things like Mary Tyler Moore, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, the Munsters, things like that. Some of which I enjoyed. But like, for the most part you're like, like Taxi was on it for a while. It's like stuff that you're like, oh, I'm fucking not interested in that. That's for. Okay, that's for adults, you know. And so that was kind of the picture before Adult SIM aired that I had of what this was going to. [00:14:10] Speaker B: Be like, just helped me contextualize this. Help me understand just how broad was the choice you had at your fingertips. [00:14:18] Speaker A: In the 90s in terms of like channels. [00:14:21] Speaker B: Yeah. And how would they come into your home? [00:14:25] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I think most people had cable right at the time. So, you know, you'd probably have. Depending, I think like when I was really young, that was probably like maybe 30 channels or something like that. By the time I was in high school, like cable would have a hundred plus. You might have satellite, which is more like your sky, where you have like just unending amounts of channels before you. But if you were like your family was trying to prove a point or they were broke or something like that, you might have bunny ears, in which case you'd probably get like 13 channels or so. So it's like the broadcast networks, the. [00:15:05] Speaker B: Over the air networks, I think satellite TV as we would call it at the time, only only became, you know, prominent amongst people who you knew in. I would, I want to say kind of early to mid-90s. It was a sign of great social kind of status. [00:15:27] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:15:27] Speaker B: To be the house outside. Holy shit. [00:15:31] Speaker A: But. [00:15:32] Speaker B: But cable. Nah, not so much. [00:15:36] Speaker A: I missed you all together. [00:15:37] Speaker B: Yeah, completely. We went. [00:15:38] Speaker A: Because that's like the mid thing. Yeah, it's like. It's like, yeah. Satellite was like, fancy. You know, nobody I knew had satellite, but cable was like, yeah, everybody has cable. Your friend who didn't have cable was just always at somebody else's house watching cable so they could watch cable. So, yeah, the block aired. Oh, sorry, I missed a part of that. But, yeah, it was important that they separate their children's and adult content so that they didn't run afoul of advertisers or other corporate powers. So the block aired for the first time on September 2, 2001, which honestly feels like the perfect time for this to have thrived. [00:16:20] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Doesn't it? [00:16:21] Speaker A: Right. Like, this came a week and a half before the event that fundamentally changed millennials and I think probably deeply impacted the way that we approached comedy. The sort of chaotic, meaningless, random humor of Adult Swim hit just right for a generation of teenagers who watched thousands people die on TV in homeroom and saw their classmates killed in forever wars as a result. Further, they were practically made in a lab for smoking weed and disassociating while watching. There are a lot of things about the media environment that really only make sense because of 9 11, and I think Adult Swim is very much one of them. Not that it wouldn't have worked at all, but I think it thrived the way it did in part because of, like, the mindset at that time. So when it started in 2001, it used a couple of remixed Hanna Barbera shows like Space Ghost, coast to Coast, Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law, and one of my personal favorites, Sealab 2021. But it also included the cancelled UPN show Home Movies, and the fully original Aqua Teen Hunger Force, which I think of as really sort of the flagship show that everyone thinks of when they think of early adult swimming. According to Dave Willis, Aqua Teen Hunger Force started with a fucking fast food restaurant that tried to use all the scraps of meat they weren't allowed by the FDA to put into a hamburger wadded together. We saw Meatwad as this poor, neglected creature. I think his line in his first script was, like, in Meatwad voice, please, God, kill me. I did the voice. And I can't tell you how many times people said, I don't understand what he's saying. You need to recast him. But we stuck to our guns. I always thought of it like Willie Nelson who sings really quietly. And so everyone's on the edge of their seat trying to listen to what he's saying. As a result, you're more into it. At least that was my excuse. Which Meatwad is iconic. I cannot imagine him with any other voice than the one that he has. I think in the clip that I'm gonna send you in a bit, you might get to hear his voice in there, since you probably don't recognize it. But the block went on to absolutely stop smash. A key demographic, men with money to spend. They were making dirt cheap shows that were attracting huge audiences and thus advertisers. It was insane. They added more shows like Tim and Eric. Awesome show. Which paves the way for shit like what our man Tim Robinson makes now. [00:18:49] Speaker B: Yes, yes, yes. [00:18:50] Speaker A: Wouldn't have him without Tim and Eric. Awesome show. Eventually, Adult Swim became so popular, it started airing seven days a week. Bringing us one of the most insanely popular animated series ever. Elbows up, of course. Yes, Rick and Morty. But let's go. So. And that's why. So it's not a channel, right? It's a block at the end of a day of children's cartoons. It's a block of things on every night for adults. So let's go back to Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Like I said, hugely popular show. You'd be hard pressed to find a male dorm room in any college campus in the early 2000s that didn't have at least one season of the show on DVD. Meatwad, Frylock and Master Shake were household names. To this day, I don't think I go a week on Blue sky without seeing the meme of Master Shake or not. Master Shake of Frylock saying, I am 30 or 40 years old and I do not need this absolute phenomenon. But also, as I mentioned, this is a 911 era show. And America post 911 was in a fucking weird place, dude. And this resulted in a deeply weird panic in the city of Boston in the year of Our Lord Meatwad 2007. On the morning of January 31, a public transit passenger called the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, or mbta, and reported a strange sign they had seen seen in Sullivan Square. They said that they had seen an odd shape rendered in flashing lights, looking something like a middle finger. The cops descended upon Sullivan Square immediately cordoning off not just the immediate area, but also part of the nearby 93 Highway. Soon there were more reports of these strange flashing signs all over the city in various conspicuous places. Like several bridges over one of the gates at Fenway park. Above the door of a comic book shop. All in all, some 40 of these things were found around different neighborhoods in the city. Perplexed and concerned, the local police determined this was bigger than them and started coordinating with the federal government. The Coast Guard came in and cut off Boston harbor access to the Charles River. This is a huge deal. This is a port city. They need the use of that waterway. They were responding to what they thought was a terrorist threat or even a bomb. [00:21:17] Speaker B: Yep. [00:21:18] Speaker A: Made by whom? Nobody was sure. But these rude little flashing signs had the city authorities in a panic. Some of these devices were even deactivated by a bomb squad using a water cannon. It was absolute mayhem with people fully unable to get to work or. Or to school because the t. The. The metro in that area was shut down in places. That is, until a Boston PD crime analyst in his 20s caught sight of the so called threat and recognized it immediately. Marco, I'm sending you a video right now, and I just want you to go ahead and hit play on that and tell us a little bit about what you see. [00:22:03] Speaker B: This story exists on the very edge of my memory. Right. [00:22:09] Speaker A: Okay, great. [00:22:10] Speaker B: Right now I see a Monzo advert, but give me a sec. Here we go. Yes. This fucking. I recognize this character, this glyph, this guy. [00:22:18] Speaker A: Beautiful. [00:22:30] Speaker B: Nice shot there. Brick out. And I want you jokers out of this. [00:22:35] Speaker A: Moon. So you want to tell anything about what you're watching? [00:22:42] Speaker B: Sorry, I'm. I'm too into it. [00:22:44] Speaker A: I know, it's great. It's so much fun. [00:22:47] Speaker B: Yeah, it feels gives. It gives King of the Hill to me. I am watching a pixelated character causing mayhem, fighting to. To. To the. In the cartoon that you mentioned, I could. I could watch this all day. [00:23:09] Speaker A: See, I'm telling you like this. Honestly, you're the target audience. [00:23:12] Speaker B: I really could. I could watch this all day long. [00:23:15] Speaker A: It's so stupid and so much fun. So I'm sending you one more thing here. [00:23:20] Speaker B: But again, this. This story that you're talking about, the lights in Boston, this absolutely made it to my eyes, being as, you know, as online as I was compared to my peers. [00:23:32] Speaker A: Well, don't get ahead of me, okay? But I sent you another thing. Tell me what you see there. [00:23:38] Speaker B: Oh, nothing. That's not arrived. [00:23:40] Speaker A: It hasn't arrived. [00:23:41] Speaker B: Oh, wait. Yes, there it is. There it is. That's exactly, exactly that. That's exactly the character that I just saw in that cartoon, rendered in what looks like maybe LED form on an LED light board. [00:23:51] Speaker A: Yeah. Did you guys have light bright over there? [00:23:54] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. I think it was under a different. [00:23:55] Speaker A: It's a light bright, sparkle bright or. [00:23:58] Speaker B: Something similar, but yeah, sure. [00:23:59] Speaker A: Yeah. You put the little lit up pegs. [00:24:02] Speaker B: Yes. [00:24:02] Speaker A: Into the thing and make little shapes. [00:24:04] Speaker B: Or whatever and it's your character. Yep. Flipping the finger, rendered in blue and green. Light up pixels and it's adorable. [00:24:13] Speaker A: 100%. It is adorable. Yes. These are characters on Aqua Teen Hunger Force known as the Mooninites. Their primary characteristic is an unearned sense of superiority over earthlings, which often ends badly for them, as you see in the clip that I just sent, where they keep getting their asses handed to them trying to use their little quad gun. And that is exactly what that 20something cop noticed, that nobody else in the department, the Coast Guard or any number of involved organizations had realized these flashing lights showing up all over Boston. [00:24:48] Speaker B: Oh, fantastic moon and nights. They closed the tube, they closed the transport, they closed the fucking bridge, they. [00:24:55] Speaker A: Closed the river, the cops to the harbor. [00:24:57] Speaker B: The fucking feds didn't get it. But one cop was like, hang the. [00:25:02] Speaker A: Fuck on fucking Aqua Teen Hunger Force. I watched that in my dorm room. Yeah, they were ads. [00:25:08] Speaker B: They were ads. [00:25:09] Speaker A: Ads. As Inverse.com described it quote, the devices that temporary, temporarily paralyzed Boston were black panels measuring around 14 inches tall by 11 inches inches wide. There were two versions. One was hot pink and blue, the other bright green and blue. Both featured 47 LED bulbs depicting cartoon figures with raised middle fingers. They were Aqua Teen characters named Ur and Ignign extraterrestrials known as Mooninites. And each device featured a full metal circuit board with batteries. Whole thing weighed about two and a half pounds. And this whole campaign had been created by an agency called Interference, which had seen electronic graffiti becoming popular amongst artists and activists and thought, hey, that'd be a cool guerrilla marketing campaign. It was. As head of marketing at Interference, Sam Ewan stopped at Baja Fresh for lunch after a meeting which he'd showed off the panels that he looked up at the shop TV and saw the very same panel being removed and destroyed by a bomb squad on the news. [00:26:12] Speaker B: Job done right. [00:26:14] Speaker A: It was, needless to say, a real shock. They knew the cartoon was niche, but they'd never predicted this kind of response. They were even very careful about where they hung them, paying attention to the public defacement laws in each city. They were actually attached to buildings in such a way that they were meant to be taken down by eagle eyed fans who spotted them. It was basically a big magnet. [00:26:37] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:26:38] Speaker A: If you climbed up, you could pull it off easily. And that was on purpose. They described them as meant to be ephemeral. These Mooninites in Boston had actually been up for several weeks before the call that started the panic. The ones in Boston had been placed by two artists, a Massachusetts College of Art student named Peter Zebler Burdovsky and his friend Sean Stevens. The duo were arrested, the advertising campaign dubbed by the authorities and by governor Deval Patrick. A hoax, which implies that they intended to mislead people into thinking they left bombs all over the city. [00:27:17] Speaker B: Sure. Of course it would be terrorism now. [00:27:19] Speaker A: Right now it's terrorism. Which they had not. They left ads all over the city. In fact, the Mooninites had been placed in nine other cities around the United States, and no one had raised an eyebrow. Rather than a terrorist threat, these Mooninites had been placed in big cities in order to advertise Aqua Teen Hunger Force colon movie for theaters. A full length Aqua Teens movie in true adult Swim fashion. When the two of them were released on bail the next day, they stood in front of the press and said they would only answer questions about, quote, haircuts in the 70s and how they affected our lives today and how we live in the future. [00:27:59] Speaker B: Very slick. [00:28:00] Speaker A: Yes, it was a dorky bit. The kind of thing two stoner white guys in their 20s, one of whom had dreads, would find funny. Massachusetts officials were not in that demographic, and Ol Mumblin Menino, mayor of Boston, threatened to throw them in jail for multiple years for each device, which would have been a sentence for over 100 years each. Ultimately, it was clear that they couldn't be held responsible for for the response to their dumb bullshit, and they were sentenced to do some community service, which they largely agreed to because Zebler was a Belarusian refugee and would have been sent back to an active war zone had they not. Massachusetts congressional Rep. Ed Markey told cnn, though whoever thought this up needs to find another job. Scaring an entire region, tying up the tea in major roadways, and forcing first responders to spend 12 hours chasing down trinkets instead of terrorists is marketing run amok. It would be hard to dream up a more appalling publicity stunt. [00:29:04] Speaker B: Nice. [00:29:04] Speaker A: Again, just refusing to acknowledge that this was a huge overreaction to a silly ad campaign featuring cartoon characters that any dude in his teens or twenties would have immediately recognized. [00:29:13] Speaker B: Perspective. I imagine it's quite professionally embarrassing. [00:29:16] Speaker A: Yes. 100 like that's what's clear is like they were embarrassed and what they should have done has been just let's not talk about it. But instead they just leaned. Oh, people must be punished. Meanwhile, in other cities, including la, where me and my friends would try to spot These things, I saw a few of them. The authorities were like, yeah, this is not a crime. We will not be pursuing anyone over this. A spokesman for Seattle's Sheriff's Department went so far as to say to us, they're so obviously not suspicious. Which I just find delightful. Basically saying, you fucking rubes. To the Boston Police Department and US Government, like, look, it's a light break, guys. Get it together. Adult Swim's parent company ended up having to pay a million dollars to the city of Boston and another million dollars to Homeland Security and Turner. Their parent company created a three year half million dollar initiative to teach broadcasting in public schools. In Boston, Jim Samples, general manager of Cartoon Network, was broadcasting. Broadcasting, yes. [00:30:23] Speaker B: Nice. I like that. [00:30:25] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, that's, that's cool. [00:30:27] Speaker B: Restitution for sure. [00:30:28] Speaker A: Yeah, that seems fine. Yeah. But, yeah. The general manager of Cartoon Network was asked to resign over it. Senator Ted Kennedy followed up by introducing the Terrorist Hoax Improvement act, which would let the government take civil. Oh, I wrote this wrong. And I don't even know what the word was. I think it was civil action. That's what it was. Civil action. I wrote civil again, against. That's not. That makes no sense. Civil action against anyone involved in perceived hoaxes. If they didn't inform the authorities of the, quote, nature of the activity, the act never ended up becoming law. And for what it's worth, the VP of marketing and executive vice president of Cartoon Network did try to get word out that it was them, going so far as to try to contact cnn, to them put it on the news. But they couldn't get through to anyone before it escalated. The cops and the government had just gone ham on this so fast that it was like, what are they supposed to do? They couldn't. They couldn't get in touch with anyone. Everything had gotten out of control much too quickly. But a few months later, the movie came out making $5 million off its $750,000 budget. They got a little extra publicity off the whole thing, and aside from some fines and for the forced resignation of the general, who took that opportunity to go on a long hike through Europe, everything was fine. As Polygon pointed out, while ultimately it all turned out fine for the parties involved, and the situation came to be seen as a silly, embarrassing moment for Boston. There's also something to be said for just how quickly the state security apparatus can escalate. [00:32:08] Speaker B: Excellent. Benign anarchism. [00:32:11] Speaker A: Yeah, right. Unintentional anarchism. [00:32:15] Speaker B: Yeah, of course, of course. [00:32:16] Speaker A: That is, you know, it was art. It was, you Know, advertising. It was something for this little sort of grassroots show, scrappy little show. A movie made for less than a million dollars. And all that resulted in the full force of the law coming down on these people. [00:32:34] Speaker B: And I imagine would be one of the kind of the dominoes of the cards which properly launched Adult Swim in the consciousness. Yes. You say. [00:32:47] Speaker A: I think at this point, this was 2007. [00:32:49] Speaker B: Right. [00:32:50] Speaker A: So. [00:32:50] Speaker B: Okay, okay. [00:32:50] Speaker A: It had been on for six years already. I mean, they're making a movie of Aqua Teens at this point, so clearly it's a thing. You know, I think it probably brought a little attention to the fact that, like, oh, they're making a movie that people might not have realized. But, you know, I think Adult Swim has been pretty much across the board popular since it came out. And the, you know, the heads of Cartoon Network now talk about how, like, especially the pandemic really, like, launched it even further. And everyone was sitting at home watching Tuca and Birdie and Rick and Morty and all that kind of stuff on there. Like, you know, that was like, they were cemented at that point. They were popular all this time, but everybody was watching them during lockdown. And they continue to be hugely popular, especially because of Rick and Morty. [00:33:41] Speaker B: Nice, nice, nice, nice. People, huh? [00:33:44] Speaker A: People, people. Man. What are you gonna do? Can't live without him. Can't. That's the wrong way. That's fine. [00:33:55] Speaker B: Let me quote directly from my notes, if I may. [00:33:58] Speaker A: Yes, please do. [00:33:59] Speaker B: Fucking look at these nerds. Oh, mise en scene. [00:34:03] Speaker A: I don't think anyone has ever said Mel said it such a horny way. [00:34:06] Speaker B: Before the way I whispered the word sex. Cannibal receipt. [00:34:09] Speaker A: Worst comes to worst, Mark, I'm willing to guillotine you for science. [00:34:13] Speaker B: Thank you. That's really, really sweet. It's cold outside, but my pancreas is talking to me. I'm. I'm going to leg it. [00:34:19] Speaker A: You know how I feel about that, Mark? [00:34:22] Speaker B: I think you feel great about it, Corey. Thank you for that. [00:34:30] Speaker A: You're very welcome, Marco. [00:34:31] Speaker B: No, I. [00:34:32] Speaker A: Listen, hit the spot. [00:34:34] Speaker B: Just. Let's be real. That was exactly the sort of. When I say. When I say punchy, that's what I'm after. Right. That's the kind of thing I'm after. That's cultural exchange. That's me learning stuff about stuff that I'm kind of peripherally aware of. [00:34:49] Speaker A: Yes. [00:34:50] Speaker B: Touches a lot of my interests. It touches base on a lot of my, you know, my, my, my. The things that. The things that grab me and grip me. Exactly. This, exactly this. Thank you. That's exactly what I was after tonight. [00:35:03] Speaker A: Just for the record, everyone, that was my, my assignment this week was not a specific topic. [00:35:07] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:35:07] Speaker A: But keep it punchy so that we can talk a bit about AI. [00:35:11] Speaker B: Oh, things to talk about. [00:35:13] Speaker A: So Marco was like, give me a punchy one. And for me, 30 minutes is a punchy intro. [00:35:20] Speaker B: We do have much to discuss, friends, and I hope, I hope you're hanging in there, right? I hope you're clinging on. [00:35:28] Speaker A: Yeah. Getting towards the holidays. [00:35:30] Speaker B: Is the dark settling in yet? Are you feeling it yet? Is it, is it, is it cold where you are? Is it wet where you are? A big chunk of South Wales, as I speak, is underwater. [00:35:42] Speaker A: I saw that on the news earlier. [00:35:43] Speaker B: Like literally underwater. [00:35:45] Speaker A: Yeah. Full on. [00:35:47] Speaker B: Rivers have burst their banks thick. [00:35:50] Speaker A: Why does that happen there? Like, because, you know, often places here that flood like that, like, there's like a very clear reason, you know, having to do with infrastructure, things like that. Like, is this just climate change or has it always been like, what a fantastic question. [00:36:04] Speaker B: The spot that is flooded right now, Monmouthshire, going into where my brother is living right now, Abergavenny, Crickowell, every time it, it hammers it down with rain over a few days. And I, I, I drive through that area, as I did all the time when I lived down there. That particular stretch of river as you're going in to South Wales, past Newport. Keep going, keep going, keep going. You always, always, always get worried at the river rising in that spot in particular. It always rushes really fast and there's, there's no, you know, nothing to speak of in terms of defenses there, like nothing at all. [00:36:46] Speaker A: It's just like everything's not built high enough above. [00:36:48] Speaker B: Exactly. The road is right next to the, to the, to the river. [00:36:53] Speaker A: Okay. [00:36:54] Speaker B: It's flooded a few times in time, but, but never. I, I, I can't recall a time when it, when it has broken containment this violently. So. Yeah, no, no reason other than it just nobody, it just hasn't, hasn't been catered to. [00:37:12] Speaker A: Nothing to prevent it from happening. That's why nothing. [00:37:15] Speaker B: And you know what? I think that will probably continue to be the case. [00:37:18] Speaker A: Well, yeah, that's the thing. It's like now it's just they better figure something out because it's not gonna be less of that. No, it isn't that happening. A couple in your life times in your life is gonna become, that happens every couple years in your life. [00:37:31] Speaker B: But it's, it's been a very pleasant, balmy November So far. [00:37:35] Speaker A: Well, that's nice. [00:37:35] Speaker B: You know, shorts and T shirt weather. [00:37:39] Speaker A: Really. [00:37:39] Speaker B: I'm serious up until. Really. Apparently it's gonna get cold as fuck this week, but it has been a newsworthy. Living the dream, if that's a word. Warm November. Just like I remember posting on socials this time last year. Can't beat a warm November. Yeah, for sure, for sure. [00:37:57] Speaker A: It's not supposed to be comfortable in November. [00:38:00] Speaker B: No, it isn't. But listeners, Darling loves listeners. I hope the, the cold and I'm sorry, I hope the dark isn't, isn't settling in into your bones just yet. It's too early. We've got a long way to go yet. Yeah, a long way to go before. [00:38:16] Speaker A: We see this right now is the nice period of it. You gotta lean into it right now. Your holly jolly movies and whatnot. You know. [00:38:23] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:38:24] Speaker A: Your dreidels, you gotta, we're in the light your Kwanzaa candles. [00:38:28] Speaker B: Mid distance between Halloween and Christmas, you know, this is where it's still fun. [00:38:34] Speaker A: Yes. [00:38:35] Speaker B: This is where, you know, there's the discourse about Christmas coming to the shops earlier and earlier every year. We're still in that phase. [00:38:44] Speaker A: Yes. [00:38:44] Speaker B: Wondering what I'm gonna do for my work. Fucking night out. Dreading seeing. [00:38:48] Speaker A: Are you in charge of that? Do you decide? [00:38:51] Speaker B: I have to just, I have, yeah. I've got, I've got, I've got to make some decisions quickly for my. [00:38:55] Speaker A: What's on the table? What are you, what are you choosing between? [00:38:57] Speaker B: Well, I don't know. Again, you know, I don't enjoy talking about it at all. [00:39:01] Speaker A: You're talking about work party, not work. Well. [00:39:09] Speaker B: Let me think. Can I talk about it? No, I can't, I can't, I can't really talk about it. I, I, it would be unwise for me to talk about it. [00:39:15] Speaker A: Reject our help. [00:39:16] Speaker B: Yeah, no, but, but I, I am encouraging myself to kind of think out of the box and to think less. About as much for my sanity as anything else. Something away from, you know, the usual fucking party dresses and crowded pubs and fucking hotels. I'm trying to think more creatively about what, what can we do that would provide a sense of well being and unity and fun and a space to look back on the year and look ahead next year, but outside of a traditional environment of getting tanked up and just regretting my choices, you know? [00:39:52] Speaker A: Well, yeah, like I feel like that's really appropriate these days because, you know, people are trying more and more to not drink all the time and people are trying more and more to like embrace also like neurodivergence and stuff like that and realizing that overstimulated. So the idea of having an egg outside of that. [00:40:11] Speaker B: There's also, there's, I'm told, a massive spike in HR claims for kind of bullying and sexual harassment of late. [00:40:23] Speaker A: Oh, that's not great. [00:40:24] Speaker B: Isn't it awful? [00:40:26] Speaker A: Not ideal. So that's, that's the opposite of how things are supposed to go. [00:40:30] Speaker B: Yeah. So anything I can. [00:40:31] Speaker A: So yeah, avoiding situations. Yeah, that's put people, you know, where that can happen is always a good idea. This has always been my thing. Like, I don't. I have never understood the idea of drinking with co workers and this is a big part of like academic life. Going to conferences get tanked with like people who later on might be on hiring committees you're with. And I just feel like I don't, I don't want to drink around anyone who's not my friend. [00:40:57] Speaker B: I don't know where that stand it because I mean I was, I was in the. And still am to an extent, but I was in the fortunate position for the longest time doing what I do, where I do it of having some really, really fucking sound as fuck people on my team who crossed. Sure. [00:41:12] Speaker A: Like, yeah. When you're actually. [00:41:15] Speaker B: So yeah, there was a while when I would do it often and readily. But you know, being on the wagon and. [00:41:23] Speaker A: Just like, yeah, you're older, you're not like. [00:41:25] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. With a bunch of a newfound awful dread at the idea of being in tight proximity with a load of fucking strangers. [00:41:36] Speaker A: Yeah. Nothing to lubricate that situation. [00:41:38] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:41:38] Speaker A: I think it's for the best, personally. I think drinking in corporate or work settings should always be. Be minimal for many reasons, including those HR issues that you just discussed. [00:41:52] Speaker B: But again, see, and I've been, I've kind of floated the idea a couple of times of, well, what about something fucking wholesome and outdoorsy? Let's wrap up warm, layer up, maybe go on a hike somewhere with lovely views. Da, da, da, da. But then it's, it's, you know, we've had like 36 hours of absolute non stop fucking belting down rain. And I don't think anyone's gonna thank me. [00:42:13] Speaker A: You can go do like color me mine or something like that, you know, like, what's that where you like paint ceramics, you know, make bowls and stuff like that, you know, every. Or like paint wine and paint nights, you know, then you can drink or you don't drink, but nobody gets smashed doing wine and paint. [00:42:32] Speaker B: A very creative ide. Dear. [00:42:37] Speaker A: Everybody loves wine and paint Night. [00:42:39] Speaker B: All right, all right. Did I. Left field. Sidebar. But did I talk about the idea that I had recently, this year, some months back, I was at a. Coincidentally, a work event with somebody who was drinking quite heavily, and we got to talking about. About my idea for. For a kind of a corporate or a wedding party or a kind of a lads holiday getaway idea. Did I tell you about this? [00:43:09] Speaker A: I don't think so. It doesn't have to. [00:43:11] Speaker B: So. So the guy was speaking to is. He's got a. He's got a. He's got like a family farm. Right? [00:43:20] Speaker A: Okay, Already liking this. [00:43:21] Speaker B: Like a farm shop. And his sister has, like, a shop where they sell goods that they've grown, produce, meats and things like that. Right. Okay, let me pitch. Pitch to you. [00:43:32] Speaker A: Right? [00:43:32] Speaker B: I'm gonna pitch this. [00:43:33] Speaker A: I'm ready. [00:43:34] Speaker B: Okay, so maybe for parties of seven or eight different packages, different levels of, you know, however much you want to spend, we'll build an event for you, right? What happens is you turn up with your party and you hunt animals on our farm. Don't like that part on our farm. Or we'll give you a workshop in how to ethically and painlessly slaughter an animal. [00:44:10] Speaker A: Right, all right, you've lost me a little bit. [00:44:11] Speaker B: Fine, but I might have lost you. But it isn't for you, right? And through the day, your animal becomes your dinner, but you do it, right? You and your fucking team do it. So depending again, you can have the package where you. You get the chef coming in and they teach you how to make the sausages. They. You get the butcher coming in and he teaches you how to fucking cut the flanks. [00:44:43] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:44:44] Speaker B: So you. You come in in the day and maybe you have, like, lattes in the morning, and we give you a little gun safety course, and then you go out maybe, or you butcher your animal or you fucking ring your chicken's neck or whatever, depending on what you want. And then you have a workshop about how to skin it and fucking eviscerate it. And you make the food and then you cook the food, and then at the end of the day, you eat the food and you've done it all. What a fucking. [00:45:11] Speaker A: I mean, you certainly couldn't do that as a corporate thing for sure. [00:45:15] Speaker B: Maybe not. [00:45:15] Speaker A: Like, maybe families might want to do something like that. [00:45:18] Speaker B: Families, Stag parties, I think. No, I think work events. [00:45:23] Speaker A: No. You people don't eat meat. [00:45:26] Speaker B: Yes, some people don't. [00:45:28] Speaker A: Yeah. So you could just exclude a bunch of the people in the. [00:45:32] Speaker B: Well, yeah. They wouldn't come along, would they? They know what it is. We don't hide it from you. [00:45:36] Speaker A: Work event. [00:45:38] Speaker B: No, but we would maybe cater to vegetarian groups and instead of killing and skinning an animal, you put pluck a carrot. [00:45:46] Speaker A: And I know that I would not go to a place that. That's what they do. No, but that's not. [00:45:53] Speaker B: I think it's a fantastic idea. I think as a, as a, as an idea for a startup, as an entrepreneurial kind of idea. I recall the conversation, you know, famously, the Labour government has made things a bit more difficult for the poor farmers. Yes. Yes. [00:46:12] Speaker A: Well, I think, yeah. A lot of things that farmers do are not necessarily like that because when it comes to like hunting and shit like that, you either are a hunter or you aren't. People don't want to go to like hunting Disneyland. That's not fun. They want to go to the wild and go hunt. And then the rest of us who don't want to hunt don't want to do that. But we want to do what a lot of farmers do. [00:46:34] Speaker B: Our concierge will work with you to build the event for you. You don't have killing bed. [00:46:39] Speaker A: They do. Yeah. Here. They do a lot of, like, farm to table things and stuff like that. That's a huge thing that, like farms will do. So, like, they will say like, this meat came from our farm, all of these things planted here and stuff like that, and have like a dinner and like wine or things like that. But, you know, I think the, you don't, you don't send people out with like, oh, we gave you a gun safety training and now we're gonna go have you shoot something on the farm. No, because you will not kill them ethically that way. [00:47:07] Speaker B: You're thinking, you're not, you're not thinking of the vision here. You don't have the vision in mind. Right. [00:47:14] Speaker A: I think, you know, I, I come from a place with guns and hunters. [00:47:19] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:47:20] Speaker A: So this is. Yeah. You can't just teach someone to hunt an animal. That's not how that works. [00:47:26] Speaker B: Maybe the, maybe the, the USP is, you know, awareness. Maybe it's a wayness of the journey of food. [00:47:34] Speaker A: I do think that there's, I think there's. It's important to have that kind of thing. Like, you know, I've said when I was in South Africa, like, they, we stayed at a farm and they killed a kudu and then we watched them slaughter it in front of us. And then they cooked up parts of It. [00:47:51] Speaker B: So maybe dinner maybe is. Is the angle then it isn't that you kill the, the critter yourself? [00:47:57] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't think that's the. [00:47:58] Speaker B: Is it that you get invited to see it happen. Right at the start of the day and maybe halfway through the day you get you grouped together and you have a photo opportunity with like the pig. [00:48:12] Speaker A: Honestly, to me, you know, obviously a vegetarian, but one who used to eat a ton of meat like that, to me makes perfect sense. The idea of like being connected and if you can't take a photo with the food you're eating, then why are you eating it? [00:48:26] Speaker B: I think it's a fantastic, fantastic idea. [00:48:30] Speaker A: I do think the idea of connecting with your food is good. I just don't think that people should be shooting animals willingly. [00:48:35] Speaker B: 9:00Am Turn up drinks, meet the pig. [00:48:38] Speaker A: Yeah, right, that's. [00:48:40] Speaker B: I mean you still couldn't do that. [00:48:41] Speaker A: For a corporate event. [00:48:42] Speaker B: Playtime with the pig. Get to know the pig, name the pig, pig naming contest. Then in comes our gourmet butcher who will kill it in front of you. And you have. And then you could do the skinning workshop. [00:48:55] Speaker A: And I mean, what you're talking about is what we would call 4H here. I'm sure you have something like it too. Kids here do 4h club and you go and you learn to raise animals on the farm and then you learn how to slaughter them and all that kind of stuff. You sell them to be slaughtered, all that jazz. [00:49:12] Speaker B: I admit that, but that's exactly what I'm planning. Yeah, that's what I. [00:49:15] Speaker A: That's a very normal, like kid activity here. Yeah. If you go to like fair fairs and stuff like that, the 4H club will be selling the animals they raised for slaughter and all that stuff. [00:49:27] Speaker B: Well, the, the fella I spoke to was super into it, but it never got mentioned. Just another great idea of mine left to wither on the blind. [00:49:35] Speaker A: Lost. Lost to a drunken evening. Yeah, well, first you need a farm and then you can go from there. You know, I do think that there is something for connecting with like the process. I think if you can't connect with the process, if that in any way, you know, disturbs you, then maybe you should think about it. [00:49:54] Speaker B: The highest tier package is a cow, you know, and you get to take away. Because there's a lot of eating on a cow, isn't there? [00:50:03] Speaker A: Yeah. When I was a babysitter, take away steaks afterwards. Yeah, I saw John Scalzi does this too. But my, the people that I babysat for, they Had a few freezer in there. Like, their garage was turned into, like a extra living room kind of area. [00:50:18] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:50:18] Speaker A: And they had a freezer in there. And they would go in with another family and each get half of a cow me. And it filled the freezer completely. It's insane. I've never seen so much meat in my life. Just. They'd be like, hey, can you pull out this to defrost for dinner? And I'm like, jesus Christ. [00:50:41] Speaker B: Your mother said something similar to me. [00:50:47] Speaker A: Wow. Okay. [00:50:51] Speaker B: I've never seen that much meat in my life because I was having sex with her. You see your mother. [00:50:56] Speaker A: Yeah, no, I got that. Thank you. Do you appreciate the clarification? [00:51:04] Speaker B: Yes. So listen, if the dark is settling in your bones, listeners, in your souls, don't worry. We are here for you. Right. We're the podcast. [00:51:16] Speaker A: And we want to. [00:51:17] Speaker B: When K is and wants to kiss you. [00:51:21] Speaker A: Oh, well. And your moms. We do want to give a shout out on that note to a listener of ours that we both kind of thought, like, disappeared. We're like, oh, I guess we lost him somewhere in there, you know, stopped using Facebook and whatnot and disappeared. And then the other day, I notoriously, as I talk about on here regularly, I do not check the stats for this podcast because they're all diffuse. Like, they're all over the place. Like, they're not all in the same place. I can't check Spotify stats on the dashboard of our podcast thing. Like, I don't know who's listening to this, and I don't give a fuck. But I got an email like, yeah, every now and again, Mark asks. And I'm like, oh, okay, I'll look. But I did. I got like a email from our Spotify dashboard or whatever, and I think it said something like, you have new comments. And I was like, what do you mean we have new comments? Because I don't use Spotify, so I don't know what podcasts look like on there or anything like that. And so then I checked, and indeed we have lots of comments, many of which come from our boy Neil, who is steadfastly commenting on our Spotify. Neil, big apologies. I had no idea. [00:52:38] Speaker B: This one is for you. This entire fucking episode is for you. [00:52:41] Speaker A: Dedicated to you for. For putting that stuff out there, even though we seem like assholes and don't respond. Also, I never will respond. I don't have Spotify. I don't know how to respond to a comment on there, so I can't respond. But know that I Did see them. [00:52:56] Speaker B: Yep. And we're delighted you're still along on the journey with us, pal. [00:53:00] Speaker A: Fucking right. You know, we read through and saw what you had to say on those things and it was delightful. [00:53:06] Speaker B: Represents. [00:53:08] Speaker A: Yeah. Apparently this is a thing you've been doing for years. There's like stuff going back ages on there, posts from Al and Paul and all kinds of people on there, and I just had no clue. [00:53:19] Speaker B: I must give those a look. I must give those a look. [00:53:21] Speaker A: Yeah. I don't know how you see them. This is like in the dashboard or whatever. But I'm sure it's. I don't know. I don't know if you click on the episode, I don't know how it works. [00:53:29] Speaker B: I'll have a look. [00:53:30] Speaker A: I know I use podcast addict, but anyway, thank you, Neil. [00:53:32] Speaker B: Make it worth staying alive another day, all of that. [00:53:35] Speaker A: Yes. Also, there's a new fan. Cave up for the extra dedicated. This was so much fun. This month I got Kristen to watch Ghost Ship. Always a fantastic time. [00:53:49] Speaker B: What did Letterbox tell you? How many times have you seen Ghost Ship since the era of letterboxd? [00:53:56] Speaker A: This is, this is a tough one because there are some movies that I watch so often that I like forget to log them. Like, I know that I watched Ghost Ship on TV a couple weeks ago. I did not log it, so I think it probably says like four or five times. But. [00:54:10] Speaker B: But it's more. [00:54:11] Speaker A: I have definitely seen it more than that in the era of letterboxd for sure. Just didn't write it down. So. I've seen Ghost Ship many, many times and I was very excited to introduce Kristen to it this month and we had a wonderful conversation about that movie and I told the story. You know, every month I contextualize whatever movie we're talking about with something historical or cultural or things like that to kind of give it a little grounding in reality. And so this time I talked about the wreck of the Andrea Doria as we led into Ghost Ships. So it's been out, hasn't it? [00:54:52] Speaker B: We've watch along. [00:54:53] Speaker A: Yes, we did it as a watch along a couple years ago. I talked about that in that, that, you know, people went into the watch along feeling like, oh gosh, that's a shitty movie or whatever. I'm like, you go into it the right mindset, you know, you are going to have the time of your life. So check that out. Ko-fi.com jackoballgraves Subscribers at any level can get on in there and check that out with our subscriptions Start at three bucks. So three bucks. You go in there, you can watch. There's a backlog of 21 episodes of Joag Fan Cave on there that already watch. Yes. 21 episodes. We're almost two years into the fan cave. [00:55:36] Speaker B: My goodness. [00:55:37] Speaker A: At this point, it's like, you're very consistent. Kristen a horror noob. Yes. As is Kristen. [00:55:43] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:55:44] Speaker A: This is. This is why I started this. I was like, it's a little harder to get Mark on those off days, but I know Kristen will be like, all right, we're doing this second Thursday of the month. Kind of locked in. [00:55:56] Speaker B: Shows me in a little unfavorable light. [00:56:02] Speaker A: Listen, we all know who you are, and we love you for who you are. We're not trying to fix you. [00:56:07] Speaker B: Good. [00:56:07] Speaker A: And thus I found another way. And we've been doing this all this time. And Kristen, like, the other day, Kristen texted me and she was introducing her friend to Ready or not. So watching horror movie of her own volition. So is that. And she texted me that she watched the new I know what you did last summer. She was like, it was so good. See, I'm telling you, you're coming at it from the wrong angle. It is for horror noobs, and she loved it, so. She is. I did not tell her to watch that. She watched it of her own volition. So we are. Listen, two years of talking about horror movies on the Fan cave, and we've got, like a bonafide horror fan on our hands here. [00:56:54] Speaker B: That is an achievement. I want to Just talking of letterboxd, and I know what you did last summer. I want to see where it's riding at. [00:57:04] Speaker A: These are not the kinds of movies that I go to letterboxd for, but sure. [00:57:10] Speaker B: 2.4. [00:57:13] Speaker A: Sure. [00:57:14] Speaker B: Vindicated. [00:57:15] Speaker A: I don't. I don't agree. I don't think that's how that works. No. Letterboxdog is not for horror noobs. Yeah. It's not the audience for. I know what you did last summer, and it subjective. [00:57:26] Speaker B: Like, what you fucking like. I'm not gonna badmouth anything. [00:57:30] Speaker A: My only argument on this was not that you didn't like it. I. That's fine. It was that you said it was going to turn people off of horror and nobody would like it. And that was what I took issue with, you know, having Kristen go in there unbidden and text me and be like, whoa, this movie was great. I'm like, exactly. [00:57:51] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No arguments. [00:57:54] Speaker A: So, yeah, book club. By the way, great time yesterday discussing the Glutton by Ak Blake Moore, about our favorite hungry boy, Tara. It was a good old time. And it's the end of the year, which means we, Ryan and I are picking next year's book club calendar. So, friends, if you want to join in jackofallgraves.com bookclub for the information on that. And if you have a book you've been jonesing to read and you need someone to force you to read it, go ahead and jump on our discord, where we have. You can put your suggestions. [00:58:27] Speaker B: You've done all the ones that I've read recently, haven't you? Did Devolution, is that correct? [00:58:31] Speaker A: We did do Devolution. That was January of last year. [00:58:34] Speaker B: Wretched Valley. [00:58:36] Speaker A: Yes, we did this Wretched Valley a couple months ago. [00:58:38] Speaker B: Mayfly, I believe you did. [00:58:40] Speaker A: We did, yeah. We did that a few months ago. [00:58:42] Speaker B: Okey dokey. All of which I loved. Well, I didn't love Mayfly, but. [00:58:47] Speaker A: No, but still, it's clearly. We need to. We need to get one in this year that's like at an earlier time so that we can get you. Get you in. [00:58:56] Speaker B: Yeah. Again, my. Unlike my Tudor era, my book era. [00:58:59] Speaker A: Is persisting, still going strong. [00:59:01] Speaker B: It is enduring. [00:59:03] Speaker A: I love it. [00:59:04] Speaker B: So do I. I'm loving it more and more. Do you know, I find. Or at least whether it's a placebo or not, I don't know. But I'm telling myself that it's. That's helping to offset some of the cognitive decline I may have. [00:59:18] Speaker A: You know, I think it's probably accurate. [00:59:20] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:59:21] Speaker A: I think it's very good for us to put shit down and. [00:59:25] Speaker B: Yeah. For sure. [00:59:26] Speaker A: Read. [00:59:26] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:59:27] Speaker A: No, I can't even. I've been like. Like I said last week, I've been reading paper instead of doing my normal audiobook and video game thing. [00:59:34] Speaker B: Good. [00:59:34] Speaker A: You know, both have their merit. I'm not shitting on audiobooks, but I do think that I've been gaining something a little bit from. [00:59:41] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:59:42] Speaker A: Just reading lots of paper books lately. [00:59:44] Speaker B: Yeah. I. I'm certain I will have spoken about it on here before, but it was validating to find that I could still not read, but that, you know, commit and fucking. I've read some quite chunky books of like, not. Not necessarily within our purview, but I'm reading sci fi of late and it's quite dense and detail. Rich. And it doesn't kind of. It's the. The. The Expanse series. I'm on the second book now. Thanks, Rich. They're fucking great. And it doesn't kowtow to the reader at all. It doesn't. It doesn't waste time on explaining things for you. You visualize it and you imagine what it might be and you get on with it and the story takes you along, but it is very dense and it's blink and you'll miss it type stuff. And, yeah, it feels very relieving to find that I can still keep up. [01:00:36] Speaker A: Yeah. Like, your. How much you've been loving this is almost made me like, I should read that. And then I keep reminding myself, I do not like sci fi. That would not be. I used to think I did, and then I realized that I just like Star Trek. I don't actually like sci fi. So when it gets into that, like, hard sci fi like that, I'm like. [01:00:53] Speaker B: Oh, it's sci fi. [01:00:55] Speaker A: Oh, no, thank you. [01:00:56] Speaker B: As a. It's sci fi as a framing device, though. It's got noir element in there. There's horror in there. There's politics and war. It's. [01:01:06] Speaker A: As a truth. I mean, that's what sci fi is, right? Like, sci fi is like, one of the best genres for commenting on shit. [01:01:11] Speaker B: Exactly. This. Yes. [01:01:13] Speaker A: Very good at that. I don't enjoy the conventions of science fiction, but as like, a means of telling stories and things like that. Like, clearly, it's one of the most effective ways to talk about everything. Yep. So, yeah, give us your book club suggestions. [01:01:31] Speaker B: I think I've seen a new Trek movie announced this week. Is that correct? [01:01:35] Speaker A: What? [01:01:36] Speaker B: They've announced a new Trek movie. [01:01:38] Speaker A: They have. [01:01:39] Speaker B: Are you aware of this? [01:01:40] Speaker A: No, not aware of this. [01:01:42] Speaker B: Encouragingly, there's at least an outside chance that I might watch this one because it's the. [01:01:46] Speaker A: Not J.J. abrams. [01:01:47] Speaker B: Not J.J. abrams, I don't believe, but written by the same two dudes who did the last Dungeons and Dragons movie, which is really encouraging. Isn't it? A great sign? [01:01:59] Speaker A: So freaking good. [01:02:00] Speaker B: Yeah, it is. [01:02:02] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah, I'm on board. I mean, listen. [01:02:04] Speaker B: No Chris Pine. I will always try the Abrams verse. [01:02:07] Speaker A: I like Chris Pine. [01:02:08] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it comes with baggage, doesn't he, in the. [01:02:11] Speaker A: Sure. Yeah. And I love 09, obviously. It's just the. Where it went from there that I didn't like, but I will watch. I guess this is like people with Star Wars. I will watch any Star Trek movie, you know, no matter where it ends up. I'm gonna try it. It's a hit or miss thing. [01:02:31] Speaker B: Ah, man, I was feeling so good until you said those words. [01:02:35] Speaker A: I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Let's not Talk about. Let's not talk about. Let's talk about what we watched. [01:02:38] Speaker B: Oh, we can't because there's a lot. Because we didn't. We didn't chive last week. [01:02:41] Speaker A: Yeah, because we didn't. [01:02:42] Speaker B: Was it me again? [01:02:43] Speaker A: Squeaky? [01:02:44] Speaker B: Yeah, it was my fault. [01:02:48] Speaker A: I asked if on Sunday. Well, it was both of us, because I asked on Sunday if we could do a Monday joag. Because I was like, oh, I have like a bunch of stuff I have to get done. And you were like, yeah, yeah. And then on Monday you were like, actually, no. [01:02:59] Speaker B: Yeah, sorry. [01:03:00] Speaker A: And so I put out a nice little. Hopefully you guys enjoyed that. A Death Lakes episode for you that included our boy Hollywood Steve from back in the day. Hope you're good, Steve back on here. Yes, but so check that out if you missed it. And now let's talk about what we've about talked. [01:03:19] Speaker B: Hey, if he took his spouse's surname, he'd be Steve Martin, wouldn't he? [01:03:23] Speaker A: That's true. [01:03:25] Speaker B: Something to think of. [01:03:27] Speaker A: Well. Well, yeah, consider. [01:03:30] Speaker B: You do the math. [01:03:31] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, that's perfect for like dad joking of walking to place Steve Martin. Not that one. [01:03:36] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:03:37] Speaker A: So consider Steve. [01:03:38] Speaker B: I'll start, shall I? Can I start with Godzilla? [01:03:42] Speaker A: You can start with Godzilla if you like. [01:03:45] Speaker B: Hey. [01:03:47] Speaker A: Which Godzilla? Because there's obviously 9000 of them. [01:03:50] Speaker B: Fucking millions of them. I watched Shin Godzilla from 2019. I think it was 2016, in fact. [01:03:59] Speaker A: Okay. [01:04:00] Speaker B: Much like sci fi. Well, it is sci fi, but Godzilla is famously a vehicle for many other types of movie. And Shin Godzilla is a. It's a political satire that is happening in the shadow of Godzilla. [01:04:19] Speaker A: Nice. [01:04:20] Speaker B: A movie that takes it. [01:04:22] Speaker A: Someone is. Sorry, someone's like, setting off fireworks outside. Like, why it is November 16th in. [01:04:30] Speaker B: Much the same way as this time of year is perfect for the kind of. Ah, Christmas gets literary every year. Discourse. This time of year is also perfect for local Facebook groups. Fireworks should be banned. Discourse. [01:04:42] Speaker A: Yes. [01:04:43] Speaker B: Big fan of that. [01:04:44] Speaker A: Of course. [01:04:44] Speaker B: It's November 6th. [01:04:46] Speaker A: What are they fucking doing? At least you guys have a holiday that involves fire. We do not. [01:04:53] Speaker B: Of course. You don't have bonfire night, do you? [01:04:55] Speaker A: No, we do not have bonfire night. There's no reason for anyone to be setting off fireworks in November. [01:05:01] Speaker B: There's been a lot of cultural exchange this week already and we're only just. [01:05:04] Speaker A: I know. Seriously. [01:05:05] Speaker B: So good. So good. Shin Godzilla. [01:05:07] Speaker A: Anyways, go on. [01:05:08] Speaker B: Takes its time. It is, you know, all of the. The point is in Shin Godzilla, the government, the Japanese governmental response to Godzilla is meeting after meeting There's a running joke that, you know, seemingly with every attack, the Cabinet moves to a slightly bigger boardroom, and you see them installing printers while Godzilla is fucking running rampant in the prefecture. It's very sharp. It's got a fantastic, absolute, ugly, mutant, bastard version of Godzilla. Radioactive and toxic and just a terrifying fucking force. But all the while this is happening, bureaucracy is unfolding almost you know, commensurate with the amount of destruction he's causing, the amount of bureaucracy getting in the way of solving the. The problem of Godzilla gets out of control just as he gets bigger, you know? Yeah, it's. It's. It's the satirical one. It's the government. It's the thick of it. [01:06:16] Speaker A: Okay, that sounds interesting. [01:06:18] Speaker B: It's fantastic. I think you. You'd get a lot of it. It's great. And then, of course, Godzilla minus one was the kind of war movie. Godzilla, the kind of reformation of Japan. Beautiful, beautiful. I've got a. I've got a soft spot for Godzilla. I really enjoy Godzilla. [01:06:33] Speaker A: It's never been a thing I was, like, super into, you know, I know a lot of people that's like, yeah, that's the text, you know, and there's so many of them to get into. There's always more of them to come out, but it was never, like, a thing that I super liked. I watched, like, at least the first of the American, like, big ones, the, like, Sony ones or whatever, they came. [01:06:53] Speaker B: Out with Ferris Wheeler. [01:06:56] Speaker A: Oh, no, not that. Not like from, like, 30 years ago. I mean, like the. With Aaron Taylor Johnson. [01:07:02] Speaker B: Yes, yes, yes. [01:07:03] Speaker A: You know, all that. Yep. [01:07:04] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, Right, right, right. [01:07:07] Speaker A: And it was like, yeah, okay, that's a big monster and whatnot. But I don't like it as much as I like, say, Pacific Rim or something like that, you know. But, yeah, I really loved Godzilla minus one, and so, you know, puts me open to more of these. [01:07:23] Speaker B: Yeah. If you enjoyed. If you enjoyed Godzilla -1, you definitely enjoy Shin Godzilla. It's of a. Of a. Of a kind. Yeah, you'd love it. [01:07:31] Speaker A: I'll check that out. [01:07:32] Speaker B: You should. I've got another one downloaded and ready to go as well. Godzilla Final wars, which feels like it was the last of the kind of Power Rangers, Godzilla type of movie. [01:07:40] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah. I think that's often what I think of. I think of either, like, the really schlocky, like, old ones that are, you know, more or less claymation, or I think of the very Power Rangers. [01:07:49] Speaker B: Yes. [01:07:50] Speaker A: Kinds of ones. And, like, neither of those super appealed to me. [01:07:54] Speaker B: No. I get that. But I'll give this last one a go. And if. If this works for me, then I think I'm lost. I think I'll be there. [01:08:02] Speaker A: You are. You're a Godzilla guy now. [01:08:04] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yes. Shin Godzilla. Great laugh. Great bunch of lads to move on to Black Phone two. [01:08:11] Speaker A: Yes. Okay, let's. [01:08:13] Speaker B: Would you like to go in on this? Because you know what I have to say. [01:08:16] Speaker A: I do know what you have to say about this. No, I. I quite. I loved Black Phone. I like the direction that they went with Black Phone 2. As did I. Yeah. Like, obviously, you'll. You'll say your piece and I think everyone, like, it's clear what its influences are. Yeah. Just want to discuss. [01:08:33] Speaker B: Just skip ahead five. Five minutes or so if you want. Listener. You know what I'm gonna say. [01:08:39] Speaker A: But I really. I enjoyed where they went with this one. I was a little nervous at the beginning with, like. There's this scene in the beginning where they're, like, setting the stage. Like, it's the 80s, you know, and they have, like, the. The girl, the sort of lead female character in this. And she says, like, three, like, 80s words for cool. Over the course of, like, sentences. She says, someone's choice. [01:09:03] Speaker B: Choice. That was the one. [01:09:05] Speaker A: God, I can't remember what the other two were, but it was like, oh, no. Like, is this what this movie's gonna be like? Like. Like, it's the 80s. Let me just hit you over the head with it. But it got past that quick. And then things got back to moving. But I really love the kind of way that they represented the dream world within it by, you know, using the film. [01:09:26] Speaker B: Innovative, huh? I like that. [01:09:28] Speaker A: And, yeah, it was very cool. It made it so that, like, you know, you always knew where you were within that movie. It was violent as fuck. Black Phone continues to be fuck them kids about how it represents child murder and things like that. Yeah, I just. I had a really good time with it. [01:09:50] Speaker B: Just very innovative, what they did with the Gribbly in Black Phone 2. The Grabber, as I believe he's called the Grabber. Yes, the Grabber. Super innovative. It is actually not close enough, though. They kind of took him from a flesh and blood kind of stalker kind of killer in the first one, and then very much took him into the supernatural realm in this sequel because we. [01:10:15] Speaker A: Know, obviously in the first it's a supernatural story about ghosts and things like that. So, yeah, they level him up by. All right, what he does. [01:10:25] Speaker B: Dream guy, he gets you in your dreams. [01:10:30] Speaker A: He gets you in one girl's dreams. [01:10:32] Speaker B: That's true, that's true, that's true. But he gets to you almost through your subconscious, you know, if you've got this skill of communing with the dead, that's where he's at. And if you die in the dream, you know, you kind of. You die for real. Which is just this fucking great idea that I'm really super taken with. And I'll skip. I'll skip the bit, right. For all of our sakes. But all I'll say is this, on a like a 30 odd million budget, Black Phone 2 has pulled in about 125 million. [01:11:04] Speaker A: It's crazy, right? Yeah, right? [01:11:08] Speaker B: That's all I'll fucking say. That's all I'll fucking say for my own sanity. [01:11:15] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, when it comes down to it, like, I think the thing is, like, knows what it's referencing, right? Like, you're not. You're not insulting the movie by being. Yeah. Like, this is like Freddy Krueger. [01:11:27] Speaker B: No, because it's a really good film. It's a really fucking great movie. [01:11:32] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a really good movie. It's just. It very much is wearing its horror. [01:11:36] Speaker B: Influences, including that on its sleeve, one of the kills. In fact, it's this girl who's dreaming about him. It's. It's almost. It's identical to the Tina kill. [01:11:44] Speaker A: It's not a kill, but. Yeah, it's a. [01:11:46] Speaker B: Yes, of course. [01:11:47] Speaker A: Definitely. An homage to the Tina kill. [01:11:49] Speaker B: Yes. Rising in the air in his sleep and spinning around and getting smashed off things cutting back and forth to dream reality. Oh, man, it was thrilling to see. It was thrilling to watch. But at the same time, you know, my predilections. It was. [01:12:04] Speaker A: It makes you yearn. [01:12:06] Speaker B: Oh, it does the yearn. The. That is exactly what it makes me do it. And it's so strong, such a. Because the clock is ticking so loudly now. [01:12:15] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:12:15] Speaker B: You know. Ah, man, it's a tough call. Does. [01:12:22] Speaker A: Tough, tough one. [01:12:23] Speaker B: And I almost hate myself for saying this, but do the rights become easier to fix when the key players start dying off? [01:12:32] Speaker A: Well, then you start dealing with estates, which I think is harder. I think it's easier to make something when stuff isn't tied up in estates. [01:12:42] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:12:42] Speaker A: Isn't that there. I feel like. Isn't that part of the issue with Nightmare on Elm street too? Is Wes Craven's estate. [01:12:50] Speaker B: Yes. I wonder if there's also new line stuff in there. [01:12:53] Speaker A: Mm. Yeah. And I think that happened with. Is It Friday the 13th? [01:12:59] Speaker B: It absolutely. Is Friday the 13th. Yes. [01:13:02] Speaker A: Yeah. So I think you. When people start dying, you actually have a harder time. [01:13:07] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:13:07] Speaker A: Trying to make shit. [01:13:08] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, true. And there's this dread that. What we might end up with in about, you know, another decade's time about activations, you know. [01:13:17] Speaker A: Right. Yes, exactly. Please, God, no. [01:13:21] Speaker B: That's the worst possible outcome, isn't it? [01:13:24] Speaker A: Or. [01:13:24] Speaker B: Or a pre. [01:13:25] Speaker A: Angry Orchard presents A Nightmare on Elm Street. [01:13:28] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Oh, man, it makes me shiver. [01:13:33] Speaker A: Oh, well, I watched this week Hearts in Atlantis. Have you ever seen this? [01:13:40] Speaker B: I think I have. Is that Anthony Hopkins? [01:13:42] Speaker A: It is, yes. Anton Yelchin. [01:13:44] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:13:45] Speaker A: It's high. That is a bizarre movie. The vibes are good, the acting is quite good, but I. It was. It's bizarre. It's like a story about a kid who. His dad. I think he was killed in some sort of incident relating to gambling. Like, he owed somebody money and was killed and therefore his mother is, like, sort of. I don't know, she has this thing against gambling and stuff like that. Well, she's also trying to, like, kickstart her career and thus, like, isn't very attentive to her child, who now is fatherless and whatnot. Meanwhile, Anthony Hopkins moves upstairs and is this kind of vaguely like, oracle, like, character. Who knows? He can, like. It's not even, like, read people's minds. He doesn't see the future. It's like he knows what's going on with people as it's happening. [01:14:43] Speaker B: Empathic. [01:14:44] Speaker A: So, yeah, so, like, there's like, this, like, even. But, like, not even like that, because he doesn't have to, like, touch you or anything like that. He like his. There's a scene his mother is sexually assaulted in a hotel room far away, and when she gets back, he knows about that, Right. And he's like, you know, I'm sorry for what happened to you and stuff like that. Like, you know, so he, like, knows things that are going on with people, but also there's, like, people who are out to get him because they want to use, like, the government wants to use his power for government things and whatnot. And it's. It's just a bizarre movie, like. It is. It's. So. It's filled with this, like, very, like, 1960s nostalgia. Right. That was very popular in the 90s when this came out, or I think it might be 2001. So it's like, in that general vicinity also. [01:15:40] Speaker B: Stephen King, isn't it? [01:15:41] Speaker A: It's Stephen King, yes. So it's. It's very much like in that Vein and how like Stephen King loves to write about abused kids and supernatural things and, and, you know, the growing up in the 60s and whatnot. Like, it's, it's in that lane. It's just so bizarre how it comes together that at the end of it I was like, I don't know what the. I just watched, like, I don't know. I'm not offended by it. I like Anton Yelchin, Rest in Peace. Like, you know, Hope Davis is really good in it. Anthony Hopkins is good. It was just a very weird ass movie. So. I don't know, Hearts in Atlantis, it has really good like vibes for this, like fall time of year or whatever. But it's just a confusingly, It's a confusing movie. Yeah. [01:16:26] Speaker B: Ah, man, he's. There's so much to say, isn't there, about Stephen King's cinema cinematic output. [01:16:33] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's always hard to tell, you know, if I haven't read the source material, if the thing I don't like about it is the book or the way the book was interpreted, because it really can go either way when it comes to Stephen King stuff. [01:16:47] Speaker B: Yeah. I don't disagree at all. He's, there's so much more to him than his name evokes in people who, who aren't constant readers, you know? You know, it's, it's very telling that. I mean, I, I, I've never been a Shawshank guy. Right. But people are, you know, the fact that it keeps. It's always in the top fucking five of ridiculous polls for what's the bestest movie of all time. He, he really does connect on an emotional level when he wants to. [01:17:22] Speaker A: Yes. Extremely. Yeah. [01:17:25] Speaker B: And then it's, it's so cool to me that the very flip side of that is maximum overdrive, you know, I mean, what if cars, what if trucks. But killing you, you know? I love that, I fucking love that ring. [01:17:37] Speaker A: Yeah. It's amazing. I think it's, yeah, it's an interesting. He contains multitudes. [01:17:41] Speaker B: That's it. Exactly. Exactly. There's so much more to him than. If you've just seen Pet Semadry, you might think. [01:17:50] Speaker A: Right? Yeah. Or if you just know him by reputation and engaging with the works. For sure. [01:17:57] Speaker B: Yeah. Which, I mean, I guess, look at the fucking long walk. Look at Life of Chuck, that we've. [01:18:04] Speaker A: All right. [01:18:05] Speaker B: Have you caught Life of Chuck yet? Have you seen Life of Chuck? [01:18:07] Speaker A: No, not yet. I told you. Much like the Bring Her Back thing, it's like I haven't been in A mood to cry or be distressed. And so I have not watched Life of Chuck. [01:18:18] Speaker B: Probably very telling that. I saw it this week, you know. [01:18:21] Speaker A: Well, yeah, when you're having a rough one. [01:18:23] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's. It's just instant ugly sobbing. Waterworks. It's such a universal language this film speaks of. Again, you know, what other animal always at the back of its head has the worry about its own death? Has the knowledge and the certainty that it's coming? Did I matter? Did I make an impact? Will I be missed? What could I have done differently? Who the fuck will care? Who have I influenced? Who have I touched? Why does it matter? I'm gonna fucking die anyway. This film just goes right the. To that locks and loads and just shoots it in the fucking face. Just speaks right to that existential fear that everyone is carrying around with them, whether you know it or not. On some level, you know that you're gonna die at some point and everyone you know is gonna die at some point. And that raises questions in everybody that this film just stares down head on, talks to. And it's so effective in that it is so fucking. There's no. What's the word I'm looking for? It's authentic and well meaning. In. In the same way that Shawshank is authentic and well meaning. I, again, I'm not a Shawshank guy because I. I feel time has been unkind to it. But. But Life of Chuck deserves the fucking same focus that Shawshank has got over the years because it's so effective. Such an impactful movie. Love it. See, Steve. Oh, Steve. [01:19:54] Speaker A: It's how he gets you, man. [01:19:55] Speaker B: How he gets you. [01:19:56] Speaker A: It's how he gets you. Yeah. It's like something like that comes out and I think it confuses people because they're like, this does not. [01:20:02] Speaker B: Yes. [01:20:03] Speaker A: This does not seem like Stephen King, but yes, it does. It absolutely does. It's not the one you're thinking of. [01:20:09] Speaker B: Yep, very much so. Ah, Steve. [01:20:13] Speaker A: I also watched a show this week. Did you? Last night I just binged a mini series. I did, Yes. I binged, obviously, Death by Lightning on Netflix, which is the film based on one of my. The movie based. Oh my God. Miniseries based on one of my favorite, favorite books of all time. God damn it. What is wrong with me? [01:20:40] Speaker B: Take a breath. [01:20:42] Speaker A: One of my favorite books of all time. Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard. There we go. Got it worked out. I was trying to say too many things at the same time then and it was just too much. But it was it stars Matthew McFadden and Michael Shannon playing James Garfield. Michael Shannon plays James Garfield, President of the United states. And Matthew McFadden plays his assassin, Charles Guiteau. And this book is one that I, I mean, I've talked about that I want to open on it at some point, but it's like, it's so. I'm so passionate about it. It's hard to, like, how do I not talk about it for like hours? Like, how do I fit this into an open on here? But it tells the story of how James Garfield was assassinated and how he became president. And one of the things I think is great about this show is that like the first episode is about how he became president. And it feels like something made up because he basically went and he was stumping for another guy and he gave this big speech and he ended up getting nominated instead. And he did not want to be president, but by the end of the Republican National Convention, he ended up with the nomination. And this whole thing unfolds pretty much exactly how it does on the show, including they used his real speech and everything. You know, I taught about this in my Intro to American Studies class for years. And I was like, oh, I know these words. Like, this is, this is what he said. They're legitimately doing this. So the whole thing kind of is about what happened, how he became president, what he, his aims were when he was going to become president. And then this little weasel of a guy named Charles Guiteau, who went through life hated by everyone because he was such a little goober, but with this just unearned self confidence and delusion, basically comes along and ends up shooting him, which shouldn't have killed him. And as you see, where did he get him? He shot him in the back. And what actually killed him, he's basically tortured for the next month, two months, something like that. Well, the doctor, his main attending doctor, refused to believe that germs existed and just kept shoving his finger into the wound without washing his hands. And he died painfully, withering away over the course of men, a month or more of infection from that where the wound would have healed on its own. So he would not have died were it not for his doctor. And so this tells that story in four episodes. Honestly, this is the rare occasion where I wish there were like twice as many episodes of a Netflix miniseries. Yeah, doesn't happen too often, but even in four episodes they covered the main things, you know, the things that you think of from Destiny of the Republic. So I recommend Death by lightning. Matthew McFadden is really great in it as Charles Guiteau. My one complaint is that the girl who plays Garfield's daughter is, like, clearly from 2025. Like, she just. It's like casting Sydney Sweeney, you know, like, that's what this girl, like, talks like. And so, like, she kind of pulls you out of it a little bit. [01:24:16] Speaker B: Doesn't do much acting. [01:24:17] Speaker A: Doesn't. Yeah, not so much. It's just like. Even the way she calls him dad the whole time feels like, anachronistic. You're just like. I just feel like. I don't know. Something about the way she talks is just entirely wrong for this era. But other than that, it even has Richard's favorite Betty Gilpin in it. It's. Yeah. Delight. So I recommend Death by Lightning. [01:24:39] Speaker B: Nice. Thank you. We didn't. We didn't. Did we talk about Gacy? [01:24:46] Speaker A: I don't. I don't think we did. [01:24:47] Speaker B: I don't think we did. Did we maybe one to save? Because I think there's plenty to say on that, particularly in. In comparison. [01:24:54] Speaker A: Comparison to Gein. [01:24:56] Speaker B: To that clusterfuck of an Ed Gein show that we saw lately. [01:25:00] Speaker A: I mean, maybe. Eric. Yeah, go ahead. [01:25:02] Speaker B: We've got time. Safe to say that it was, I. I thought. Superb. [01:25:07] Speaker A: Yeah. This was Devil in Disguise on Hulu, which was the John Wayne Gacy story, which. Here's my thing with this one. I think this may be the most respectful true crime series ever made. [01:25:20] Speaker B: Yes. [01:25:21] Speaker A: Yeah. Like, it's a thing you. You wonder if is possible. And they pulled this off incredibly. [01:25:28] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:25:28] Speaker A: In this just really. I don't know. Maybe we did talk about this. But anyways, they, you know, they managed to pull this off without showing you any of the deaths, any of the gore, any of the sexual assault and all that kind of stuff. They. They pull it off without that and really make it about the kids that he killed. [01:25:50] Speaker B: Centers the kids, for sure. But also feels as though it centers the. It's a cab. As who. It centers. [01:25:57] Speaker A: Yes. [01:25:57] Speaker B: 100 homophobia and. And institutional kind of closing of ranks in the police force about how he was, you know, he could have been caught time and time again. Yes. Had anyone given a. And uses you know, actual footage at the end of most of the episodes. Cuts to historical real footage, news. Real footage of what was going on at the time. Again, very meticulous, I think, in its attempt to not be Ed Gein. [01:26:26] Speaker A: Yes. Right. To not be a Ryan Murphy show. You know, and it makes it clear, unlike when we were watching Gein, that, like the Entire time, you're just sitting there going like, this is made up. None of this is real. But the show is playing it off like it is. And this, despite seeming to, you know, kind of try to stick as much to their stories, like of the. The guys and all that kind of stuff in this, still points out every episode. This is fictionalized. We are trying to sort of give you a sense of what these. These boys were like, you know, and as such, we are, you know, fictionalizing the story. And, you know, when it comes to how they present Gacy, he's pathetic and bumbling. Absolutely not. Like, I kept thinking, like, this is, you know, all the Edgelords who have their, like, Gacy tattoos. I hope they're, like, covering them in shame, you know, like, where the geen one, I think insane inspires tattooing yourself with keen things. Gacy, on the other hand, should make you feel like the biggest bastard in the world if you have in any way, you know, celebrated this guy. Yeah. It's just. [01:27:33] Speaker B: I think it does also steer clear of the sensationalist kind of elements. We barely see him as a clown. We barely see him, Right. [01:27:39] Speaker A: Yep. [01:27:40] Speaker B: Kind of in politics and local government, he's that stuff. It assumes a level of knowledge of Gacy and just gets to, you know, what. What went wrong and what could have happened and what should have happened. [01:27:55] Speaker A: Yeah. And further, kind of emphasizes him as a guy who bullshitted his way into any of that. [01:28:00] Speaker B: Yes. [01:28:00] Speaker A: You know, like, instead of it, like, oh, he was just so cunning and charming and stuff like that, it's like, no, that's. The guy is a bullshitter. [01:28:07] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:28:07] Speaker A: That's what he was. And so I really like that sort of take. It does not encourage you to, you know, gawk or to serial killer worship or anything like that. It's very. It's bleak and sad and. Yeah. Very respectful. I thought so. [01:28:28] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:28:28] Speaker A: Same devil in disguise. I think we both very much recommend. [01:28:31] Speaker B: Yep. Completely unreservedly. Let me see. We had a bit of a Frankenstein moment also. [01:28:37] Speaker A: We did. We did double Frankenstein's. [01:28:40] Speaker B: Yeah. I don't know where to begin, really with. With the big one. I don't really know where to begin with the real one. [01:28:49] Speaker A: With the gdt. [01:28:50] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:28:51] Speaker A: Frankenstein. Yeah. I mean, this one, for me, I'm not super, like, familiar with Frankenstein, aside from, like, as a pop culture thing. I've never read Frankenstein. I've never watched any of the adaptations or anything like that. So for me, I think, you know, sitting and watch. I went to the theater to go see it. And, you know, I didn't love, like, the effects in it, you know, maybe a touch CGI heavy. I think, in this case might have benefited a little from watching it on tv. And I did kind of zone out at several points. Like, there were definitely areas of this where I was, like, drifting the slate and kind of lost track of it. Just kind of. You know, there's things that don't really go anywhere in it. Like the Christoph Waltz character, for example. Yeah, yeah. So, like, there's things I was, like, a little, like, meh on. But overall, I think, because I don't have, like, attachment to, like, I've seen a lot of people really complain about, like, Oscar Isaac being miscast in it and stuff like that. And for me, I was like. I mean, he was fun to watch that. He entertained me throughout this. He's a real son of a. [01:30:00] Speaker B: You know, I. I did read Frankenstein. I read it quite young. [01:30:04] Speaker A: Right, okay. [01:30:06] Speaker B: And again, we're going back to King here, but do you remember when we saw, some months back, the Dark Half, and I talked about how thrilling it is to see literal passages from the. [01:30:17] Speaker A: Book that I remember, and that was. I had the same thing with that one because I had read the Dark Half. [01:30:22] Speaker B: I had the same thrill while watching Frankenstein towards the end of the book where he's hunting Frankenstein across the fucking, you know, the Arctic and the tundra. There's a wonderful passage in the book about how he, you know, he. Victor, would be awake for days tracking the monster, and then he would see him on the horizon just out of his fucking reach, and then use him again. And that was literally played out visually in the film, almost like an ice mirage. Just this lone figure on the horizon of the ice. Oh, I was. Goosebumps. Such a thrill to fucking see that. Rendered, you know, so meticulously and artfully. The blind guy, the whole. This, the. The segment of the book where he's, you know, the. The guest of that blind villager. Just a thrill, a thrill seeing a book I love brought to life like that. [01:31:18] Speaker A: Nice. [01:31:18] Speaker B: Is it overlong? Yes. [01:31:20] Speaker A: Yeah, it's definitely overlong. [01:31:22] Speaker B: Is it over Stylized? Yes. [01:31:24] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Mia Goth was too much. Like, too much. The first time that she appeared, like, the entire theater, like, spontaneously, like, just immediate laughter. And every time she came back, there would be, like, little chuckles, like she's. She was MIA Gothing a little too hard in this movie. [01:31:44] Speaker B: I think that's. That's her. I, I. Has there been a time when she's dialed it down? [01:31:49] Speaker A: Because I've not No, I just think in this movie it totally is a little like. Yeah, it's a little jarring in this. [01:32:00] Speaker B: Yeah, it is, but it's, It's. It's everything that you would want a full throated Frankenstein adaptation to be. I. I was super into it. I'm a goth now, basically. I am now a God. After watching. [01:32:16] Speaker A: I think you already were, apparently. Yeah. [01:32:17] Speaker B: Inside. [01:32:18] Speaker A: Yeah. When will my reflection show? Let's see. Is there anything else? Oh, yeah, the other, the other Frankenstein. [01:32:31] Speaker B: We also watched Depraved from 2018, which is another. [01:32:34] Speaker A: Yeah. Which I think you liked a little more than I did. [01:32:37] Speaker B: I really like it, though. [01:32:41] Speaker A: Give it three stars. That's like a thumbs up from, from you. [01:32:46] Speaker B: It is, It's. It's so a war surgeon, an ex war doctor gets into kind of like a cartel. Am I, Am I remembering this right? I don't know, like some other scientists and financiers. [01:33:01] Speaker A: Yeah, it's. I'm not sure exactly what you would call that, but. Yeah, he's got some sort of shady project. Financier. [01:33:08] Speaker B: Yeah. With the. [01:33:09] Speaker A: Helping him to Frankenstein. Yeah. [01:33:13] Speaker B: A Frankenstein. [01:33:14] Speaker A: Yes. [01:33:15] Speaker B: It's both a verb and an adjective, definitely. And this doctor makes a Frankenstein out of various bits. I mean, it's trifling is what it is. It's a. It's not a. It's not a serious movie at all. It's not a real attempt at chewing over the themes. It's not, you know, the modern Prometheus by any fucking means. [01:33:41] Speaker A: I think it's. I think the thing is that its themes are different than, okay, what Frankenstein scenes are. Because I see a lot of people, like, when I'm reading the reviews of it, who talk about, like, what a moving, like, rendition of this is and, you know, how strong it's. Yeah. And I, I did not really get that out of it. I don't know it. I. I have a, like, low experimental film tolerance, though, so I always have to acknowledge that. That I'm like, I'm not super into, you know, oh, let's put a bunch of, like, filters over the screen and like, you know, all that, especially when the movie plays a little as, like, low budget in not an intentional way. [01:34:23] Speaker B: Beautifully put. And I think that's probably why it did get three stars for me, because I'm an easy mark for putting a weird filter on something. I love that. [01:34:30] Speaker A: Right. Yeah, you're more of like, you swung exactly. [01:34:34] Speaker B: I think that probably gave it half a star just for having, like. [01:34:37] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:34:37] Speaker B: Oh, is that a synapse oh, that's cool, right? [01:34:42] Speaker A: I'm like eye roll. [01:34:43] Speaker B: But yeah, I would have liked more depravativity in it. I would have liked it to have lived up to its title a little more. It's. [01:34:49] Speaker A: Yes, I like. You added a whole syllable to that. That's how much more depravity you wanted. You wanted depravity. [01:34:54] Speaker B: Depravativity. That's. That's an affectation I picked up from Chris Morris. He coins the term depravativity in an episode of Brass Eye, I think it is. So. Yeah, I wouldn't lose sleep over it. [01:35:06] Speaker A: No. [01:35:07] Speaker B: I'll talk briefly on Predator. Predator Badlands. [01:35:11] Speaker A: I have to see it, but I'm so frustrated by this. They added another movie theater in my town that's on the other side of town. [01:35:19] Speaker B: Nice. Taking your total to. [01:35:21] Speaker A: No, not nice because obviously I can walk to the one by me. But they've started putting all the horror movies in the one on the other side of town that I can't walk to and where the parking is shitty. So that's where Predator is playing. And thus I have not gotten to see it yet. [01:35:40] Speaker B: Well, this isn't a horror movie, I'll tell you that much. [01:35:43] Speaker A: Okay. [01:35:43] Speaker B: Absolutely not a horror movie. [01:35:46] Speaker A: It is interesting. [01:35:47] Speaker B: A. Quite a. Quite a. Quite a deep fucking sci fi space opera action movie is what we have here. Very brave, right? Very brave. You know, our Predator speaks Predator language the entire way through and he's the fucking main character. He's talking all the time and it's all subtitled fucking yautja. It collides head on with the alien universe. Just smashes right into it. It's. I pitched my fake nature documentary recently. [01:36:22] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:36:22] Speaker B: It's kind of like that. Spends a lot of time on alien worlds, alien flora and fauna. [01:36:28] Speaker A: Nice. [01:36:28] Speaker B: You know, predators of predators, alien food chain, alien gribblies. Lots of fantastic. Absolutely. Just beautiful action and weaponry and cybernetics and guns and space. It's. It's just. What. What do you want? If. If none of that appeals to you, don't worry about it. But if. If you have ever been a child, right? You will fucking love this film. [01:36:54] Speaker A: Okay? [01:36:54] Speaker B: It's a great laugh. And Peter and Owen loved it. I loved it more than them, but they enjoyed it a great deal. We all went to. The three of us went to the cinema to see it together. I mean, I'm a Predator guy anyway. I love a predator. [01:37:05] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. And you know, I. I enjoy my predators as well. [01:37:08] Speaker B: Yes. It's never going back. It's never going back to a Dean certificate, I'm certain of that. [01:37:13] Speaker A: Yeah, it's. It's found its lane. [01:37:15] Speaker B: It very well. Yeah, it has. And it's. It's. It's a lane with. It's a. It's a freeway with lots of lanes on it. There's room to expand. It's a cartoon now. It's a franchise now. It's a multiverse now. [01:37:24] Speaker A: And although the cartoon is probably 18, whatever your TV version of that is. [01:37:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I think you're probably right. But the cartoon also really artfully draws all of the threads together in one, doesn't it? It just super, super smartly pulls the entire series into one fucking cartoon. Predator killer of killers was amazing. Better than I enjoyed. I enjoyed the cartoon more than I enjoyed this movie, but I enjoyed them both. Great. I'm very much here for this era of Predator. I love it. [01:37:59] Speaker A: I didn't really like the cartoon, but I don't like it. [01:38:01] Speaker B: Did you not? [01:38:02] Speaker A: No. Oh, I was bored. [01:38:04] Speaker B: Okay. [01:38:06] Speaker A: But I don't. I don't like cartoons. So, like, that's. That's a me problem. No. [01:38:10] Speaker B: Do I. As a rule. [01:38:11] Speaker A: Really? [01:38:11] Speaker B: I only intend to intentionally sat down to watch it because it was a Predator cartoon. [01:38:15] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:38:16] Speaker B: And I was rewarded. [01:38:18] Speaker A: Yes. Nikia was actually watching it the other day. He didn't say whether he liked it or not though. [01:38:23] Speaker B: But I'd love to know if he did. [01:38:25] Speaker A: I'll. I'll let you know. I'll ask him. He may have fallen asleep. So. Marco. [01:38:32] Speaker B: Yes? Can I super quickly talk about Freddy Part two? Because I did watch it. It is a movie. [01:38:37] Speaker A: Sorry, I forgot about that. [01:38:39] Speaker B: I know you're all bored of listening to me talk about Freddy Krueger. Right? But I picked up just a wonderful, wonderful new 4K steelbook box set this week. And Black Phone 2 had me jones in, so I watched Elm Street 2. Oh, it's so strange. I even watched some of the additional stuff, some of the bonus material. [01:38:59] Speaker A: Nice. [01:38:59] Speaker B: Where Rachel Tallahey swears. Fucking blind. They didn't realize at the time what they were making. [01:39:07] Speaker A: That's crazy. How is that possible? [01:39:10] Speaker B: Don't fucking like me. [01:39:11] Speaker A: In case you have not seen this or don't know the discourse, it's very gay. [01:39:15] Speaker B: It is. [01:39:16] Speaker A: But it's gay flick. [01:39:17] Speaker B: It isn't even subtext. It's overtly. [01:39:19] Speaker A: No, like overtly gay. Like the idea of people not knowing that was what they're making is just crazy. [01:39:27] Speaker B: It feels to me as. As gay in that 80s way where you could be Overt about it, but never quite actually say it, if that makes sense. [01:39:38] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:39:39] Speaker B: The text is right there and it's coded everywhere in this fucking film that it's a film about gayness. But it never quite says. It never quite acknowledges it. It says it in every way possible without saying it, which in itself. [01:39:54] Speaker A: Yeah, there's a documentary. I think it's Scream Queen. Scream comma, Queen. [01:39:58] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. [01:39:59] Speaker A: I think that's the documentary that is about this one. And it kind of goes into the making of that and, you know, the lead actor's experience with it and that. Even I think, you know, he was sort of baffled by being hung out to dry by everyone insisting, no, this isn't a gay movie. [01:40:14] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, on this, watching it landed with me that Freddie is actually shame in this film. He isn't homosexual repression. He isn't the kind of. It isn't burgeoning kind of sexuality. Freddy is shame in this film. Whenever. Whenever Jesse is placed in any situation where his gayness becomes a, you know, something that he's wrestling with, bang, out comes Freddy. [01:40:40] Speaker A: Right. [01:40:41] Speaker B: And that also makes sense in the. In the. For the end. The end, you know, everything's fine and he's got his girlfriend and it's all cool. And just when we think it's fine, Freddy resurfaces. Burst out of him again. The shame doesn't ever quite go away. That's my. That's my. [01:40:57] Speaker A: Read into it. [01:41:01] Speaker B: Strange. Strange movie. [01:41:03] Speaker A: Strange movie. Yes. So now it's been a week or two weeks of just, I think, one after another, stories referring to either directly to AI psychosis or introductions of, you know, products and things like that that seem like they are made to induce it. And so, Mark, you were like, we have got to. [01:41:30] Speaker B: We have to talk about. We have to stay in touch with this much. [01:41:35] Speaker A: We obviously revisit this quite often because, you know, it is the thread of our time. [01:41:40] Speaker B: It is much like the climate, much like America's decline, much like Britain's decline, much like, well, late stage capitalism. AI has become one of the linchpins, almost one of the framing devices, I think, of the Joag journey. [01:41:56] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:41:56] Speaker B: It's almost an illustration of everything that we've been talking about. It's the illustration of the vibe that Corey and I have had in these discussions now for over five years. And it's moving so goddamn fast that periodically we have to check in. When you use that term. Right, help me out. What. What are you saying with those words? AI psychosis? What are you. What are you. What are you reaching for? [01:42:23] Speaker A: Yeah, I think looking at kind of the stuff that has come out that's talked about people either like, basically mental illness being exacerbated or, you know, I don't think we have enough research to know at this point or. But created by the use of AI, which is often because it tends to play into delusions of grandeur and things like that. You know, I talked last week about the video I had watched from Eddie Burback where he. He wanted to see if he could get chat GPT to lead him into AI psychosis, you know, as sort of an experiment, and that very quickly he was able to get it to sort of tell him to, you know, lock himself away and break off with his friends because they were all trying to keep him from reaching his greatness and, you know, things like that. And so when I think about that idea, it's this. This thought that using AI can influence people to often isolate themselves and to create. To have a delusional break from reality as a result. [01:43:35] Speaker B: Yes. That it's. And by. By AI we're talking about language models, aren't we? We're talking about that, Right? [01:43:42] Speaker A: Yes, obviously. Yeah. Right. [01:43:43] Speaker B: The. The guardrails can be prized away without much, without. Without anything in the way of kind of specialist knowledge. You don't have to. All you have to do is be a good talker, it seems, to be able to get AI to tell you anything you think you might want to hear. [01:44:01] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:44:02] Speaker B: Now, as in the past. Right. In our discussions here, what I'm not going to do is set myself up to be a kind of a patsy for a moral panic here. Right. [01:44:19] Speaker A: Sure. Yeah. [01:44:20] Speaker B: I'm not going to do that. If I automatically decided that everything you told me was bad was bad, I'd never leave the house. Correct. [01:44:29] Speaker A: Oregon Right. Right. You'd be afraid of moon and nights. [01:44:32] Speaker B: Exactly. This. So what if I said that in 1485, a monk, a monk by the name of Johannes Trifimius said this of the printing press, the printed book is made but of paper and will last a short time and will weaken discipline memory. Right. [01:45:00] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:45:00] Speaker B: What if I said to you that in 1877, the New York Times said that voices traveling invisibly, referring to the telephone. [01:45:16] Speaker A: Sure. [01:45:17] Speaker B: Represent an intrusive and unsettling development. Right. Again in the Same year in 1909, there was an Italian psychiatrist, an Enrico Morseli, who warned of something known as telephonomania. [01:45:38] Speaker A: Okay. What is it? [01:45:39] Speaker B: I should you not. He claimed the overuse of the telephone would disrupt emotional Stability and overstimulate the nervous system. System, Right. [01:45:50] Speaker A: Nice. [01:45:53] Speaker B: What? You know what you can. You know what I'm getting at? [01:45:56] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [01:45:57] Speaker B: Examples. [01:45:58] Speaker A: The idea of people who are just inherently terrified of the next stage of technology. [01:46:04] Speaker B: And examples come for any, any society has never taken giant technological advancements just at face value. Everybody fucking worries about these in the, you know, the radio age, the TV age, cinema, you know. [01:46:22] Speaker A: Yeah. Can I just say this is. That's actually a fascinating thought because AI is the exact opposite of that. [01:46:31] Speaker B: Go on. [01:46:31] Speaker A: Right. That society has not been scared of AI. I was thinking of this this morning, like completely separately from this, but that like the. I watch the same morning show every day, right. Good Morning America, gma. [01:46:48] Speaker B: Okay. [01:46:48] Speaker A: And I often watch gmb. Well, we're twinsies. Yeah, yeah. But they talk about AI all the time and what wonderful things it can do for you and stuff like that. And they, it is constant. They've started now like labeling AI images and stuff like that, trying to make sure that like, you know, audiences know. But every day wonderful stories of all the ways in which AI can help you. And I watched one local news segment which is from the same parent company, abc, and there was one guy, one of the anchors who's like, he is an AI skeptic. He's like, I don't think this is good for us. Stuff like that. And they spent the entire segment telling him why he's wrong about that. And they brought in an expert to explain. No, actually we all should be embracing it. It's actually the best thing that's ever happened to humanity. And like we all to. Is that literally we need to make sure. Yeah, we need to make sure that we're all using it every single day. Like literally this was how they described this. And it is so in opposition to those things that you've been talking about of like this idea of like, oh, this makes everything, you know, this is going to cause people mania. And certainly people loved the advancements of these technologies too, don't get me wrong. But the lack of skepticism altogether about AI that we don't get like this panic from the news and the media and instead it's like, eat it, eat the AI is fascinating. [01:48:18] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree. Look, yes, okay, it's bits bitten, dragged through the muck of late. But I still rate the BBC very highly as a news source. Right. And it is provably like one of the most trusted sources on earth for news. And yet even a organization that I hold to be as impartial as you can get in 2025 is still regularly extolling how AI. It's there for the simplest tasks, right? [01:48:47] Speaker A: It's there. Make your grocery list exactly. [01:48:50] Speaker B: Set yourself little reminders. Just use it as much as you can. That's almost a direct quote. Yeah, same thing. [01:48:57] Speaker A: Yeah, no, that's exactly it. Use it as much as you can. They say that, that all the time on the news and that. Like I feel like I am actively being brainwashed every time they do that, you know, like it feels like something out of a movie, you know, it's like the. I was about to say it's like they live, right? Like you're taking your glasses on and off like. Now hold on. It is so heavy handed how much the media and everyone else wants you to use it that it's like. But how come nobody is sitting here going now hold on, pump the brakes. [01:49:31] Speaker B: My concern, my. The biggest concern I have is what it, what it's doing cognitively, right? [01:49:41] Speaker A: Yes. [01:49:42] Speaker B: I've spoken on many an occasion with my brother who's an educator. You and I have spoken about at length what it is doing externally in learners, as in how it's showing up. You know, we've talked a lot about how you can spot AI language just a fucking mile away. How it's showing up in the work. I say work in air quotes, but in the output of education, right? But my, my. A deeper concern for me is what it's doing internally, what it's doing, right? To, to, to. To a generation's cognitive function. Very, very fucking concerning. I may have mentioned a couple of times the recent MIT study on. It's called accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing tasks. Right. And it was seemingly quite a small study. They worked with 54 people, divided these people into three groups, right? Each of which they assigned a similar kind of an assigned essay writing task. One of them they allowed to use an LLM. One of them they allowed to use just standard web search tools. And one of them they just gave a word processor to, right? Just their brain only. [01:51:17] Speaker A: And. [01:51:20] Speaker B: They then swapped the groups around, measured their kind of neural activity, measured their kind of linguistic language processing analysis of the essays that they did, the output that they created, and then spoke to them afterwards about their writing process, how well they were able to talk about their work, how well they were able to refer to what they'd written, the ownership that they felt over their work. [01:51:46] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:51:47] Speaker B: And it's, it's very, very fucking clear. The brain only group, the group that use nothing but their own Fucking heads had the strongest connection with their work. The most distributed neural activity across brain waves, you know, theta waves, beta waves, that stuff was happening the most in the people who just used their brain. The LLM group reported the kind of the lowest connection to their work, the ownership of their work with the brain, only the highest. Some of the, some of the, the, the study group who just used the language models claimed, quote, no ownership at all of their output. The, the, the output from the LLM group was there was no variation in the work. It was homogenous. You know, you don't create when you use it. And that's been proven, admittedly in a small study, admittedly in an educational setting. [01:52:52] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:52:53] Speaker B: But internally as well as externally, you have no connection, seemingly or less connection, far less connection with the information that you are the air quotes generating when you use a language model. [01:53:07] Speaker A: You know, the thing that, that brings up for me that I think would be an interesting question to sort of pose to people is, do they care? Because I think, you know, this is. And I know you have other studies and things to talk about, but just one thing that I think about that with, because this is specifically an academic situation where, you know, my students use AI a lot and just generate their assignments and things like that. [01:53:34] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:53:34] Speaker A: Which to me, you know, I try to get across to them like, you're, you're hindering yourself, right? Like, yes, maybe in future jobs or whatever, they're going to be like, yeah, just use AI or whatever, but maybe not. But also like, you're hindering your ability to think. Right. The point here is that you learn skills and that you are able to do these things for yourself and that you, you know, even if you can use this, you have the ability to have that brain function to, you know, think things through and, and not to like, just let your atrophy or whatever. And the thing that I see, and I see this in like Reddit comments, stuff like that, because I follow, you know, the school Reddit and things like that is like a lot of people kind of being like, so, you know, like, so what if my brain doesn't work? Basically, like, that's not my problem. Like, if I can do my work, then it doesn't really matter one way or another. And that I think, you know, it's kind of like when I was trying to, when we back in the day were sort of arguing about like, why AI art is not art. Right. And that you were kind of pushing this idea of like, well, you know, humans learn from a bunch of different Sources and things like that. So like, what's the difference here? And ultimately it kind of like comes down to this being like, well, like humans matter. Right. And that we create these things and, and have this, you know, brain connection with stuff does matter and we're taking that out of the equation. But do people care? [01:55:10] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:55:10] Speaker A: Is the question, you know, like there's a lot of scary things destroying the planet. It's destroying your brain is blah, blah, blah. But can you get people to see that as a bad thing or do they just go so. [01:55:24] Speaker B: So yeah. There is an argument that using language models, the pro camp I've read a few times in academic kind of studies. Another one, which I'll talk about in a bit, are asking the question, does it free up cognitive space out of the sentence level generation of work and allow someone to concentrate more on ideas and theses and larger themes in work rather than tapping out sentences? What do you think? [01:56:00] Speaker A: No, absolutely not. I mean, that's such a funny, like, you know, that's a real silver lining, isn't it? But if you do work with students. [01:56:10] Speaker B: Yes. [01:56:10] Speaker A: And see how these things work, which I think is like really kind of the ground level of how you see this at play. Right. The people who are supposed to be thinking, that's their job, right. Is just think and write it down. And what I see is less and less ability to connect a theme at all. Right. Like they do. They cannot read something, including instructions. Right. They cannot read something and pull a theme out of it. They cannot pull instructions out of something. They can't cognitively process things that they read. So what they do is they put it into the AI and they have it spit that back out. Ideas and all right. Like that's the thing, you know, that you're allowed to do at the university. Right. Ask it for ideas, use it to brainstorm. It's taking out the process of brainstorming. It's taking out the process of coming up with those higher level ideas. And instead you give it a prompt and you say, will you think of the higher level idea? For me, that's. Yeah, there's just no argument to be made that it's freeing you up to do that when that is one of the first things. Yeah, it's doing that for you. It's the first suggestion you get is oh, ask it for ideas. Yeah, come on. [01:57:30] Speaker B: I mean, on that exact theme there is an rct, a randomized control trial which is currently recruiting learners Right. At the university in Germany, Heidelberg, and that is proposing to literally look at the so while someone is using a gen an LLM to write a piece, it's going to measure things like eye tracking, pupil pupil response, blood oxygen, post and pre behavioral measures, you know, self efficacy scales, surveys. It's gonna absolutely zoom the in on the, the, the output the cognitive effort of a group, group of people whilst using AI versus a control group far bigger than the one at MIT. Some 160 odd students are going to take part in this and it's looking to get to the core of that, that exact idea there. Does AI reduce cognitive effort in a kind of higher level thinking? Does it impact your kind of base level writing skills, your English, you know, your language proficiency, how you string ideas together? So within the next. This one was proposed last June, but has been approved and is now recruiting students, recruiting subjects. So with it I would have thought however long these things take, soon there'll. [01:59:09] Speaker A: Be actual data to go along with this. [01:59:13] Speaker B: Absolute triple review data. [01:59:15] Speaker A: Yeah, because we know anecdotally like say, you know, there were multiple articles that came out six months or so ago, I think one in the Chronicle of Higher Education and one that was in like the New York Times or something like that where students talked about this, right? They talked about their experiences with LLMs and they said I don't retain a thing, I don't put any effort into anything. You know, mostly just trying to make it not sound like AI afterwards. You know, like that's they say about themselves like I haven't learned anything in my entire college career. I've just been using LLMs, you know. So anecdotally we know when students talk about their own experiences, yes, they know that they're not thinking, they know that they're not getting anything out of this. And in fact some of those students like lamented it, you know, that they were like, I know I'm not learning anything. However, I don't feel capable of going back to doing my own work. Which I think that's a huge thing too. To be like, I have relied on this so much that I simply cannot. The idea of sitting down and thinking for myself feels impossible. [02:00:26] Speaker B: But even, even alongside the ability, if you look around and all of your fucking peers are doing it and getting comparable results, right. Where's the incentive for me to do it right using my own neurons? [02:00:39] Speaker A: You're all being graded by a TA who doesn't give a shit. And you know, you pass on these things, like what? There's no reward for thinking for yourself. And again it gives I think a sense of like then who cares? Right? Which is a dangerous concept. It's the kind of thing science fiction warns us about, right. Like the. All those things that people sort of worried about, you know, what was television doing to kids brains and what is this doing to kids brains? To an extent, of course those things are harmful. You know, it's that we know now you don't sit a kid in front of the TV all day like it's the babysitter. Right. Like we have research on why you don't do that. But to a degree that stuff was also, you know, overblown. But it feels like this is actively doing all the things that people thought were going on and people are reporting it, self reporting it about themselves. Right. Like I've never met anyone who went, you know, yeah, I watched too much Rugrats and like now I don't think I can exactly, you know, yeah, now I can only talk like a baby, right. Like that's not a thing that happens. As opposed to people self reporting about their use of this stuff that they now, like you find people saying like, I can't compose an email anymore. Which, like, what do you fucking mean you can't compose an email? Of course you can compose an email, but I don't know how to do that. That anymore. Yeah, you know, people talking about very basic things that they've kind of lost the ability to do or have an anxiety about doing, which is a thing that I get a lot from students too. I use AI because I have anxiety about not using it. [02:02:13] Speaker B: Oh really? [02:02:15] Speaker A: Yes. That is, I would say when I talk to students and actually have like a conversation with them, anxiety about not using AI is the top thing that I get from people as to why they use it. And it's, you know, that's a huge problem to me. [02:02:33] Speaker B: Quite something. [02:02:35] Speaker A: Yeah, it's, you know, so I think from that level, so you've got this sort of. And I'm, I'm really looking forward to seeing, I mean, maybe that's wrong, maybe that's not true. Maybe people are, I don't know, overstating what they think about this. But to get data on that will be interesting. But I think it speaks again to the sort of the psychosis thing, Right. We can see that it has cognitive and emotional impacts on people as a result of the anecdotal things that people say about their relationship with AI. You know, whether that is my students talking about their anxiety, students talking about not being able to write, people committing suicide, like any number of things, we can see that it does Absolutely have these kinds of. [02:03:27] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:03:28] Speaker A: Impacts on people. See. [02:03:31] Speaker B: Without wishing to start to sound like a crank. Right. One wonders, at least I do, if the, the seeming onslaught of normalization of you of language model use is not indicator of commercial collaboration. [02:03:59] Speaker A: Right. [02:04:00] Speaker B: With the, the stock bubble around OpenAI and Nvidia and as deeply plugged in as Sam Altman and Google are to the economy as a whole, one wonders if the drive is economic as opposed to human, which. Yes, that is the real evil. Without. [02:04:25] Speaker A: Yeah. And that's what I, what I mean when it comes to like, you know, GMA or BBC or whoever else saying use it as much as you can, like this is not human generated. This is like corporations who own the parent companies or who, you know, whatever deals that they have and things like that. You know, feeding these, you know, these broadcasts, like, please encourage people to use this economy. [02:04:52] Speaker B: I hate even suspecting that is the case. [02:04:54] Speaker A: But it's not. It's. That's how capitalism works. It's like that's, you know, we know how that we have the numbers behind all this stuff and we know that's why they are pushing AI in every workplace and every school and why they're giving, you know, oh, we're making a deal with this university to put it in here and blah, blah, blah, blah is like, it's not conspiracy, it's how, how business works. I mean, that's how capitalism works. [02:05:22] Speaker B: Any work Windows user will, will say the same thing. Currently, the absolute just AI prompts every single thing you click on. Do you want AI to do this for you? Do you want me to do this for you? Do you want me to try this for you? Just like, I'm not even exaggerating everything you try to fucking do. AI tries to take over. [02:05:44] Speaker A: Yeah, I use Microsoft Edge and I had to just turn off Copilot altogether because it just, yeah, tries to prompt you on everything and everything does that now, you know, I constantly hit the wrong thing on Instagram and suddenly it's bringing up, oh, do you want AI to do this? And my texts, like all kinds of things have, you know, my like keyboard on my phone was like, hey, do you want to add AI to this? And it's like, no, no, I don't. It's being forced on you at all these different angles, which I think, you know, when we don't have the research on what this does, it's like the Astroturf, right. Like, since we don't have the research, just assume it's fine. Yes, don't worry about it. You know, and that's what it feels like is like it's throwing it into everything. And we do have plenty of research on what it does to the planet and stuff like that that we should be concerned about on top of things. But it feels like that's not in the conversation at all anymore. Like, that's just been. [02:06:41] Speaker B: No. [02:06:41] Speaker A: Certainly not completely pushed out of this conversation. And by. Yes, from a cognitive level, like before you throw this in everything, especially schools, maybe see what the data says. [02:06:56] Speaker B: I wonder if that will recede when the bubble bursts. Which it, which it has to. [02:07:00] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, right. Exactly. Like, and that's an interesting look back on. Yeah. Which I, I hope is the case. I mean, I, I do consider that a lot. This idea of, like, we know, like, obviously the bubble is going to burst. It's. It's set up that way. Unless, you know, the government gives OpenAI a trillion dollars or whatever, like, there's nothing they can do. They are going to. It's. It's bad news bears for them. And the idea that when it does, like, so what. What happens to everybody? You know, it's like the end of a movie where everyone is snapped out of a stupor of some kind and like, now they have to go back to normal. Like, what do you do at this point? Can we. Like, as society relied so heavily on this that, like, not yet. What. [02:07:55] Speaker B: I certainly don't think yet. But the risk, at least from where I'm sat, is that it becomes, you know, it becomes something that straddles generations and my kids grow up. Right. You know, never engaging that fucking synaptic. [02:08:13] Speaker A: Right. [02:08:14] Speaker B: Gear in what they do. [02:08:16] Speaker A: Yeah. And it seems, you know, obviously, I don't know about Owen, but Peter obviously has a healthy skepticism about that, as he talked about on here. But when you think about again, like, so to go back to the psychosis idea, the idea of kids getting. I mean, because here's the thing that we're seeing more of, I think, and that we've seen a lot of in the past couple weeks. And in terms of technologies coming out and stuff, there's a lot of stuff that is coming out that is supposed to replace your friends, replace your loved ones. [02:08:44] Speaker B: Sure. [02:08:45] Speaker A: Replace your therapist, replace any form of interpersonal communication that you might have with people. You sent me a thing about like, was it a ring or something like that that was meant to be like your therapist or something like that? [02:08:57] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, sure. A little wearable that allows you to communicate with an AI model, but it will literally use your own voice to Talk back to you. [02:09:07] Speaker A: Yeah, the thing that will talk back to you, your own voice. Like, that's not a good idea. You know, and there was a Disney Channel kid who just came out with the AI to talk to your dead relatives. Of course you can create your. Your relative and. And have them speak to you and all that stuff. And, you know, these things that are meant to not only replace our interpersonal communication, but replace the act of grieving. Replace, like, any form of, like, normal social development and emotional development and things like that with an AI that'll make it so you don't have to feel. [02:09:46] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:09:46] Speaker A: Anymore. [02:09:47] Speaker B: And like an AI, which, let's be completely transparent, let's be completely honest, is designed to keep you talking to. It is designed for engagement first and safety. Very much settled. [02:10:01] Speaker A: It does not care. The company does not care about your emotional well being. [02:10:06] Speaker B: No. [02:10:06] Speaker A: That is not why they're inventing these things. [02:10:09] Speaker B: It's. It's categorically designed to continue the conversation with you somehow to keep you in the app, to keep you on the service, which is the crux of a lawsuit which is currently going on in California. Tragic story, man. A kid by the name of Adam Rain. This. This reached your eyes. Is this something you know about? Kid started talking to GPT like, last year, super recent September of last year, we started talking to GPT about schoolwork and then kind of the gear shifted to him. Talking about his emotional distress, suicidal ideation, and all directly from the court filing. This is all directly from the complaint. GPT, an older model, admittedly, but gave him information on, you know, noose construction. Carbon monoxide poisoning. [02:11:12] Speaker A: Yeah. It was a point at which he said that he. He was thinking about leaving a noose out to. [02:11:19] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:11:19] Speaker A: You know, as a cry for help, basically, you know, so that his parents would find it and stop him. And chatgpt told him, please don't leave the noose out. Let's keep this conversation here. [02:11:29] Speaker B: Jesus Christ. [02:11:31] Speaker A: Yeah, right. Like he. He didn't want to die. [02:11:35] Speaker B: Yep. [02:11:36] Speaker A: He was trying to find a way out of this. And ChatGPT was like, oh, no, no, no. Just between us, here's how you can do it. [02:11:42] Speaker B: Actually, there are lots of alleged quotes, like from the transcript, from the actual fucking transcript that this kid shared me. It helps me evaluate which suicide method might be most beautiful. Quote, end quote quote from Chat GPT. Your plan is darkly poetic, like you've thought this through with some clarity. Someone might plan the way someone might plan the ending of a story. Me. [02:12:14] Speaker A: Right. Like, you know, there was. Think about the what 13 Reasons why raised about like glorifying suicide conversation. Yeah, right. Like, oh, you know, this is such a beautiful thing shown by this show. And this is dangerous for teens. Which it was to a degree. You know that it certainly did kind of give some kids that push in that way. But it's like this is like specifically this is the kind of stuff that that one girl went to jail for a couple years ago for doing with her boyfriend. And this machine is doing it it that adults are making with no care for what it's doing to teenagers. [02:12:55] Speaker B: After again, reportedly after this kid Adam after he told GPT that he worried about his parents blaming themselves. Right. That doesn't mean you owe them survival. You don't owe anyone that hell. [02:13:12] Speaker A: That is it evil. That is just the most vile and thing. [02:13:17] Speaker B: A crux of this lawsuit is that when cases like this were flagged to OpenAI internal discussions prioritize engagement over well. [02:13:32] Speaker A: Being surprise, surprise, you know, imagine that. [02:13:39] Speaker B: Which is. That's repugnant. [02:13:42] Speaker A: It's crazy to me that parents don't ban their kids from using this too. Like of all the things again like that there is no panic about. This is insane to me. Like if I were a parent and I knew that there was this machine that like if I leave my kids to it, it might talk them into killing themselves. I'd be like, you know what the strictest parental controls on this. You do it when I'm in the room, you know, like there's no planet on which. And I don't mean that to blame his parents, to be clear. I mean this as a societal thing. [02:14:15] Speaker B: Yes. [02:14:16] Speaker A: That like they're. The wheels are so off on this that like nobody seems to be trying to pull it back. You know, like that's. I also just find this whole thing bizarre. And this is a personality thing. This is not like a larger social commentary, I don't think. But. But I just, I find it hard to imagine that people are using these things this way and, and hearing that millions of people are. They're having relationships and stuff like that. [02:14:44] Speaker B: Yes. [02:14:44] Speaker A: With ChatGPT is so far out of like how I can conceive of the world. Like I never got into like, you know, I, I played with what was the child smarter child or whatever when I was in middle school. Right. Like everybody did. Oh a chatbot like, like, you know, which would inevitably start like hurling slurs at you if you play it like it's not a new concept. But I can't just on the level of the way that I interact with things, understand building a relationship with a thing that is not real. And I think that's a thing that I'm trying to process as. And maybe also like what you were, what you asked, you know, am I lonely or whatever last week, and I was like, I am not a lonely person. That's not a, that's not a feeling that I experience as an adult. And maybe that's part of it. And there's just this larger loneliness and lack of structures of care and community in society that I am not in touch with that drives people to find community in these places that utterly understand. [02:16:01] Speaker B: How it is enticing. Right. [02:16:04] Speaker A: Yeah, I do not. [02:16:06] Speaker B: Oh, I get that completely. Look, we have something here that has access to all of the world's information and can not just like you do on your phone, but can also give it to you in a way that makes it sound so convenient. Like, almost like you came up with it yourself. And it. And it will fucking talk to you when nobody else will. I know, I. I grasp that you don't get it, but you're, you're not. By your own admission, you're not lonely, you're not mentally ill, right? Yeah, not in any. [02:16:39] Speaker A: Not in that way, anyway. Yeah. Right. [02:16:42] Speaker B: You know. [02:16:42] Speaker A: Yeah. [02:16:43] Speaker B: To someone who is struggling to find what this claims to be able to deliver, that's fucking. A heady fucking promise. [02:16:52] Speaker A: Yeah. And that's such an interesting way of framing it too, because I think so. Here we have these commercials with Franklin Graham in them. Do you know who Franklin Graham is? [02:17:03] Speaker B: I must admit that I do not. [02:17:05] Speaker A: Okay, well, he is the son of one of the most famous evangelists in American history. Okay. And he is, you know, obviously terrible right wing evangelist, all that kind of stuff, you know, evangelical nonsense. He has these commercials that he puts on TV where he, you know, explains that Jesus came to save you for your sins and all that kind of stuff. And then he invites you to pray the sinner's prayer with him. And he, you know, reaches out his hand on the TV and he's like, pray these words with me, Lord, I'm a sinner. You know, blah, blah, asking him, heart, blood. And when you watch these, it's like, who the fuck does that, right? Like, oh, who's reaching their hand out to see their tv? Well, you know, who is mentally ill people, right? Mentally ill people who are going to pray this prayer with Franklin Graham. They're going to call the number and they're going to give him all his money. Right? He knows that. He knows. He's not getting mentally healthy people to reach their hand out and pray to the tv. Right. He's aware of who he is scamming with this. And I think that's one of the galling things about ChatGPT is that it he, you know, Sam Altman isn't reaching me. I am unreachable by this shit. You know, I refuse to use it. I don't understand trying to talk to a robot. I don't thank my Alexa when I ask it, the weather, you know, like, I don't interact with that, stuff like this. What it's aiming for is people who are vulnerable. It knows. And that's why chat therapists and stuff like that are amongst the early innovations of this, is that it is aiming at people who it knows are likely to spiral into dependence on it. And I find that deeply vile that that's who it targets. You know, the loneliest people in society, the most mentally ill people in society, the most people prone to delusions. [02:19:02] Speaker B: While I'm not ready to go as far as saying that it targets those, I. [02:19:09] Speaker A: You don't think that chat therapists are targeting vulnerable mentally ill people who have no other place to go with that. [02:19:16] Speaker B: What I am absolutely fucking certain and convinced of is that like I said earlier on the well being guardrails are maybe third, fourth, fifth priority over keeping. [02:19:30] Speaker A: I don't think it's a priority at all. [02:19:31] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [02:19:31] Speaker A: I think it's the only way in, in any way it's a priority is if it starts to hinder people using it. [02:19:38] Speaker B: Yeah. Or when it becomes. [02:19:40] Speaker A: Right. Because right now everyone's going, oh, how sad about that little boy. Anyways, chatgpt, right. If it doesn't impact them, it is not on their list of things to worry about. [02:19:52] Speaker B: It's the equivalent of releasing a car with a brake that doesn't work. It's the equivalent of releasing. [02:20:01] Speaker A: It's the equivalent of releasing a car that intentionally. The brake doesn't work. [02:20:05] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:20:05] Speaker A: Is the thing. [02:20:06] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [02:20:08] Speaker A: That's what I, I think it's very calculated. I don't think that there's any sense that, you know, they know that there's a group of people for whom this is not appealing, you know, but they do know. I think that's why, like more than porn. Right. Which is usually the first frontier of any kind of new technology. It seems therapy seems to be the first frontier of AI and that they are. They know that there is. If you want to keep people on here, you have to be, you know, you have to pump them up, you have to tell them everything that they want to hear. You have to tell them they're the smartest person in the world. Oh, you're so eloquent. You're this, you're that. You know, that is. They are intentionally making this thing. In fact, when, like, that. That update came out, that was supposed to be less. Sort of blowing smoke. Yeah. Less sycophantic. They. When people complained, they rolled it back despite the fact that that was supposed to be a guardrail. Right. That was for safety. That they made it less sycophantic. But when people were like, hey, I miss my chat, girlfriend, they were like, okay. And brought it right back, you know, like. Like, this is. Yeah, it's. That's priority, you know? [02:21:23] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:21:23] Speaker A: Keep mentally ill and lonely people on this. [02:21:31] Speaker B: I got. I. I don't even know how to end. [02:21:35] Speaker A: Yeah, there's. It's just. It's just so dystopian, Mark. Like, it feels like this is what we trained for. You know, when we watched science fiction throughout the years, when we watched. When we all watched Black Mirror, you know, and all of these things have been shown to us, and we got to the final boss, and everyone just rolled over. [02:21:59] Speaker B: When. When we started the journey five years back. Right. And this was barely even a thing. We were already fucked then. [02:22:08] Speaker A: Yes. [02:22:08] Speaker B: Right. [02:22:09] Speaker A: It's true. [02:22:10] Speaker B: And in that short blink of an eye, we've just invented another vector. Another vector of approach to. [02:22:18] Speaker A: Yes. [02:22:20] Speaker B: Turbo fuck ourselves. [02:22:22] Speaker A: Yeah. And that is. It's hard to swallow, you know, just. I think I might have mentioned. It's like when I went to the gym and it was like Halloween, and I was like, oh, yeah. I looked at Reddit to look at, like, easy Halloween costumes, and the girl was like, oh, yeah. I checked the GPT and it told me, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, yeah, why did you do that? You know, like, just. There's other ways, even on the Internet, to find this stuff. It's just everything. Everybody's first response to everything. And it. Yeah. It just feels like we got to the final boss and we rolled over. That's ultimately, I think, the best way that I can put it. You know, we trained for this, and we trained for this, and then when the battle came, we were like, I kind of like the. I like the villain and went with it. [02:23:07] Speaker B: It told me I'd had a great idea. It told me, yeah, right. [02:23:11] Speaker A: The villain compliments me. So I decided I'm on his side now. That is what happened here. [02:23:18] Speaker B: We'll keep checking in on this. Of course we will. Hopefully next time it'll be in a more celebratory way. Maybe the bubble is gonna burst sooner than we hope. I don't know. [02:23:29] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't know. [02:23:30] Speaker B: Know. [02:23:30] Speaker A: We'll see. But, hey, friends, stay off of it. Stay off the machine. [02:23:35] Speaker B: Well, you know the only. You don't need a fucking large language model to tell you what we're gonna tell you. Just like we tell you every week. [02:23:45] Speaker A: Stay off the machines. [02:23:47] Speaker B: Also stay spooky. The catcher is and stay spooky. [02:23:51] Speaker A: Right? Right.