Ep. 249: nobody expects the portuguese inquisition

[00:00:04] Speaker A: You know, normally after a vacation. Normally? [00:00:09] Speaker B: Normally, like that's a fucking thing that exists normally? What does that even fucking mean? You know what? Normally. Stop you. There no such thing. [00:00:18] Speaker A: Okay, Normally in the Joag universe. How about that? [00:00:24] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:00:25] Speaker A: When I return from a vacation, what I like to do is tell you a dark story from the place that. [00:00:31] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:00:32] Speaker A: Local. [00:00:32] Speaker B: A piece of. Bring back a piece of local darkness. [00:00:35] Speaker A: Exactly. That. [00:00:36] Speaker B: That's lovely, isn't it? [00:00:37] Speaker A: Yeah. Right. [00:00:38] Speaker B: And you know, people send postcards by sticks of rock, like a fridge magnet. [00:00:42] Speaker A: Right. [00:00:43] Speaker B: You'll tell me about that country's awful history. [00:00:46] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:00:48] Speaker A: And. And I had a doozy lined up for you today, Marco. I wanted to tell you about the Portuguese Inquisition. Have you ever heard of the Portuguese Inquisition? [00:01:02] Speaker B: No. It's one of the Inquisitions I had not heard. I think I probably have heard of it kind of in the background. [00:01:08] Speaker A: You probably haven't. No. I would say you have never heard of the Portuguese in Inquisition. I certainly haven't. A lot of Portugal hasn't heard of the Portuguese Inquisition. [00:01:19] Speaker B: Oh, fine. How many? Well, help me out then. I mean, if I'm gonna ask anyone this, it's gonna be you. Are Inquisitions common, then? Do a lot of countries have them? [00:01:29] Speaker A: Well, they're connected. Right. So it all like. It's like the Spanish Inquisition is the base Inquisition, and then like the other Inquisitions come out of it. I mean, do you know anything about the Spanish Inquisition, for that matter? [00:01:43] Speaker B: What I got, I got from. [00:01:46] Speaker B: You know, fiction and Monty Python. [00:01:48] Speaker A: And I was about to say Monty Python, basically. I. And I'm not a Monty Python fan, so I know, like, nobody expects it or whatever. And that is about. I don't remember learning about it in school. So honestly, I just knew, like, it was a thing where a lot of people, like, work, persecution. [00:02:08] Speaker B: Yes. [00:02:08] Speaker A: I didn't know who was persecuted or anything like that. It's. [00:02:13] Speaker B: Well, yeah, it's religious, isn't it? I would imagine. [00:02:17] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, it's. It's exactly what you'd expect. It's the Jews. [00:02:22] Speaker B: There you go. [00:02:23] Speaker A: It's the Jews. They persecute the Jews, largely. Other people get caught up in it. But, you know, the scapegoat throughout history. [00:02:33] Speaker B: Is the constant scapegoat. [00:02:36] Speaker A: Yes, exactly. And so I went on this dark history tour while I was there, which is incredible. I. When I go to places, what. [00:02:47] Speaker A: I mean, you know, it's a lot of places. I end up going on a ghost tour because that's what they offer. Right. And so you go and you Listen to their bullshit or whatever and you go, ooh, spooky. But it's like none of this is grounded in reality. But a few times I've managed to find like when I was in Rome and like this dark history tours. So they're not ghost tours, although they always have to kind of like throw a bone. You can tell. It's like they throw it into the script for the people who like are going to be upset there were no ghosts when they get there. But it is in no way a ghost tour. [00:03:24] Speaker B: That. That appears. That feels to me to be quite a bold move for a firm to do a dark history tour. To essentially. [00:03:32] Speaker B: Draw the tarp back on their own land, on their own country. [00:03:36] Speaker A: And tell you why it's horrible, especially in Portugal. But. And I mean obviously these things are grounded like in history. They're very rarely like recent, you know, so it's. Oh, it's from the past. Although, like with the Rome one that I talked about last year, he really kind of got into the fact that it's like, and this country still sucks if you're a woman, things like that. [00:03:59] Speaker A: But this tour basically was an arc that was about the Portuguese Inquisition and it brought in all these different other sort of elements of the history, like the dictatorship and various things, you know, their, their monarchy and whatnot. But ultimately the arc was about the Portuguese Inquisition and it was so fascinating. All of us were just like wide eyed, jaws dropped this whole time. The girl who led it was fantastic. Her name was Andrea with an I. [00:04:33] Speaker A: And she is wonderful. [00:04:36] Speaker B: I'm trying to think where the eye. [00:04:37] Speaker A: Where the I not where you think. [00:04:39] Speaker B: I can't picture it. [00:04:41] Speaker A: We got a lot of mileage out of that joke throughout our entire. [00:04:44] Speaker B: I'm sure. [00:04:46] Speaker B: Paint the picture for me, if you don't mind. Just set the scene for me. How many was it? Was it a walking tour? [00:04:52] Speaker A: Yeah, a walking tour, right. You know, it was us, the four of us, Kristen, Bree, Kiyo, me and yes, I think another couple. [00:05:00] Speaker B: Was it on Kio's birthday? [00:05:03] Speaker A: No, it was not on Kyo's birthday. [00:05:07] Speaker A: It was near Kyo's birthday. And yeah, it's walking through the city, you know, up to various viewpoints, looks out, lookouts and things like that. And she's telling this story and I. And I was so fascinated by it. But I've mentioned before that when I went to the Maritime Museum in Lisbon a few years ago, I realized that Portugal had not reckoned at all with its past in terms of colonialism and slavery and whatnot and on our food tour this time, I actually asked the guide what he thought of that and if it was changing. And he basically said, that's starting to change. But they're taught pretty much nothing. But Portugal started exploration and had the strongest navy and then got out of the game before all the bad stuff. And thus people have zero idea what they don't know. And he said, as these monuments were being torn down in the US and UK in 2020, that started young people going, wait, like, are these are our monuments to bad guys, too? [00:06:06] Speaker B: I see. [00:06:07] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's been a bit of an awakening, but Portugal was under a dictatorship for the first three quarters of the 20th century. And a thing dictators aren't super into is negative press about their country and. [00:06:23] Speaker A: Something going on in your home. [00:06:25] Speaker B: Can you hear that? [00:06:26] Speaker A: Yes. [00:06:28] Speaker A: Is everybody okay? [00:06:30] Speaker B: Everybody's absolutely fine. But Peter is vocally and animatedly playing among us. [00:06:37] Speaker A: Oh. [00:06:40] Speaker A: He sure is. That's fine. Everybody enjoy that? Yes. [00:06:45] Speaker B: Sorry, everyone. [00:06:48] Speaker A: It's. It's not terrible. It's just like it sounded. Yeah, it was just like, is someone yelling? What's going on? Anyway, so I apologize. It's all good. But, yeah, so it's been a bit of an awakening. They're under. They were under dictators. Dictatorship. Salazar. Salazar's government was real good at silencing what was actually a burgeoning historical movement in the late 18th century. Salazar. Yes. Oh, his first name is escaping me right now. Should have written it down. I'm like, I would have known this three days ago when we were seeing it everywhere. But anyway, Salazar is the dictator. And in the late 18th century, going into the early 19th century. [00:07:29] Speaker A: Historians were really starting to try to, like, recuperate records. [00:07:34] Speaker A: From history of things that had gone on, including things like the Portuguese Inquisition, and start to write about them and, you know, put these out there for people to know what had been going on in their country. But as soon as Salazar came in, he exiled all of those historians. It's like, get out or die, basically. And so those histories went unwritten, and a lot of those things, Records got lost or, you know, were in somebody's, like, basement somewhere or things like that, so that you kind of lose track of these Records. Records. And so it left this real gaping chasm in their history that they've been working on filling basically since the 80s. Salazar's government collapsed in 1974. And, you know, since then, they've been. [00:08:18] Speaker B: Trying to sort of just like so many other topics. That is so recent. [00:08:21] Speaker A: Right, exactly. Like, Kia was Alive. [00:08:25] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I will never cease to be blindsided. [00:08:28] Speaker A: Yes. [00:08:29] Speaker B: By how. This isn't ancient history. This. [00:08:32] Speaker A: This is. [00:08:33] Speaker B: This is contemporary stuff. [00:08:35] Speaker A: Exactly. Yeah. [00:08:37] Speaker B: Help me out here. Right. So. [00:08:41] Speaker B: Actually expunged physical records of this Inquisition. As in destroyed the paper trail. [00:08:50] Speaker A: Not just destroyed, but also at the time, they didn't keep a lot of them, too. That was one of the things that, you know, the. The tour guide was talking about is part of the Inquisition was. I mean, it was extra judicial. Right. So they brought in these guys, these inspectors from the Vatican or whatever, and they came to Portugal, and they would basically, like, be like, that's a heretic. That's a heretic. That's a heretic. And they would kill them or they would jail them. In this jail that. We actually went to a museum. They turned it into a museum. It's like a justice museum there. And they tortured them for days, months, weeks, years. You know, there were people that they. They would have these huge bonfires in the middle of what's now called Commerce Square, where they burned alive some tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people in public, in front of everyone. And you had to go, because if you didn't go, it was like, yeah, what are you, some kind of Jew? Like, you know, they were. That was like, oh, you had to pretend and go and watch, you know, people die these horrible deaths in public. But they didn't. Yeah, they didn't keep records of who those people were that they threw in the fire. So there's like, a mix of destroying records, not having them in the first place. Because the nature of the Inquisition was for it to be, you know, as sort of. [00:10:19] Speaker A: Under the radar in terms of, like, the actual breadth of what they were doing as possible. [00:10:27] Speaker A: And, yeah, they're, like, now trying to recuperate that stuff. And so I was searching and searching and searching, and I kept coming across things where I'm like, ah, here's gonna be, like, a narrative of the Inquisition. And I'd get to it and be a PDF, and I'd open it up and they'd be like, there is this group here who found a bunch of records, you know, of like, 80 pages of records from the Inquisition. It's now in a museum in Israel. They have not translated it at all yet. And you can look at the pages, but they're all in Italian in, like, fancy script. There's just, like, no full narratives, especially in English, available to read about this. [00:11:08] Speaker B: So what is. And apologies if. If. If you don't know this, but what, what is the, the current government position? [00:11:16] Speaker A: So the government of Portugal is pretty left, just like everywhere else. They're having like, you know, right wingers trying to take over. They have their own like reform type fucks and whatnot that are trying to gain power and people who are trying to follow them. Amongst my favorite. [00:11:33] Speaker B: Surely they, they, they don't just accept and. [00:11:39] Speaker B: Kind of. [00:11:41] Speaker B: Accept the. Just as there's a big black hole in their history that there's no official record of. [00:11:47] Speaker A: I don't think it is. From what Fred was talking about, it doesn't sound like there's necessarily a huge government recuperation movement at the moment. [00:11:55] Speaker B: Right, right, right. [00:11:57] Speaker A: So I don't think it's a priority necessarily, but I don't think that the government would be hostile to it necessarily either. I think the people want, are starting to want more information. Like when I mentioned the Maritime Museum, Fred was like, famously. He knew. He was like, famously. There's one plaque in the whole museum that mentions slavery briefly. And sure enough, when we went into it again, this time saw that plaque and sure enough, there it is. And it says exactly what he said. Like, oh, you know, we started in this, but we got out, you know. So the slave trade is sort of mentioned as like just like items, right? Like we were getting sugar and spices and slaves and blah blah, blah. Like it's just a list of commodities. Like that's it. That's the only mention in the entire thing. So people know that. They know there is something that they're missing here. [00:12:48] Speaker B: Incredible. [00:12:49] Speaker A: Yeah, incredible. Isn't that fascinating? [00:12:53] Speaker A: Yeah. So all that to say 13 minutes later that I am going to have to save the Portuguese Inquisition for a later date when I can figure out how to research it further. I'm working on my Portuguese. Maybe I'll be able to read some stuff. I went through the like Portuguese section of history books in the oldest bookstore in Europe. Actually it might be the oldest bookstore in the world now that I think about it. But I went through and it was like, even in Portuguese, there was not a lot of. I don't think there was a single book on the Inquisition. There was stuff that like talked a bit about colonialism and whatnot, but I didn't see a single one that mentioned the Inquisition. Obviously I don't speak Portuguese, but I can gather enough knowing Spanish and it didn't see it on anything. So we have to table that. And instead today I'm just gonna dive into a classic set of joag topics. Evangelicalism, a cult leader. [00:13:54] Speaker B: You've swerved the out of me. I thought we were going into this. [00:13:58] Speaker A: No, I told you I wasn't going to be able to talk about it. [00:14:02] Speaker B: All right. I've told you what I. Swerve me. You've done a real sneaky on me there. [00:14:09] Speaker A: Yeah, I know. The same to me, to be honest with you, I don't have the information for you because it doesn't exist in English and, And barely in Portuguese. So we'll work on that. [00:14:23] Speaker B: All right. [00:14:24] Speaker A: But I will come back to it at some point. But I. I did think you'd find it interesting. Just why have that information all the. [00:14:32] Speaker B: More, you know, to my chagrin that you, you know, that it's just going to leave that hanging. [00:14:39] Speaker A: Leave that hanging with you, knowing that there's very dark history to be told. Maybe I can get the. Maybe I can get the dark tour host on the podcast. [00:14:49] Speaker B: Obviously, that's the best possible scenario, isn't it? [00:14:53] Speaker A: I'm gonna send a TripAdvisor message, see if I can get Andrea on here. [00:14:58] Speaker B: With an eye. [00:14:59] Speaker A: With an eye. That's probably where you think. [00:15:04] Speaker B: Yeah, Love that. [00:15:05] Speaker A: So. [00:15:07] Speaker A: A month or two ago you were telling us about that cult leader guy who was sort of a benign cult leader in England. Yeah. [00:15:16] Speaker B: Yes. Speaking to the. Channeling the space gods. [00:15:20] Speaker A: Right, yeah. Sort of leave if you want to. Whatever. Kind of charming. [00:15:23] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:15:24] Speaker A: Chill ass cult leader. And I mentioned a woman by the name of Amy Semple McPherson While we were talking about that, and I don't expect you to remember who that was, especially because I think I also mentioned Mary Baker Eddie in the same episode and multiple three named Christian weirdos from the earliest 20th century. 20th century is a lot to take in. But Sister Amy, as she was called, was a particularly interesting Christian weirdo who amassed an absolutely astounding following, particularly in Southern California, but around the world, created her own denominator denomination and may or may not have also faked her own kidnapping. [00:16:06] Speaker B: Beautiful. When are we talking about here? [00:16:10] Speaker A: Well, Mark, Sister Amy was born Amy Kennedy in Ontario, Canada, in 1890. [00:16:19] Speaker A: Her mother, Minnie, who would become a huge part of her later ministry, worked for the Salvation army, which was a denomination at the time. I don't think it's considered a dominant denomination now. It's just like a place you buy clothes. But her father, James, was a Methodist, and Amy didn't subscribe to either one of those denominations, but was a religious zealot of her own kind by high school, when she started writing to newspapers, bitching about the teaching of Evolution in schools. [00:16:53] Speaker A: She began going to Pentecostal revival meetings at the age of 17. And Pentecostalism is a huge shift from the more staid denominations like Methodist. I come from a Pentecostal denomination. And these are the folks who, you know, jump up and down tongues and. [00:17:12] Speaker B: Theatrical and cast out fucking demons. [00:17:15] Speaker A: Yes. 100. [00:17:16] Speaker B: Music and performance. [00:17:20] Speaker B: All of that. [00:17:21] Speaker A: Right? It's a show. Pentecostalism, righteous gemstones, shit, you know, exactly. [00:17:27] Speaker B: This. [00:17:28] Speaker A: That's what we're talking about. [00:17:29] Speaker B: Would love to attend a revival meeting. [00:17:33] Speaker A: I. I think now you wouldn't. Well, maybe you would, because revival meetings now are, like, creepy instead of fun. [00:17:40] Speaker B: Okay? [00:17:40] Speaker A: Like always. Just, like, people prayed for three weeks straight without sleeping in a tent, and you're like, okay, weird. But there are things, like. I think it still exists in Southern California. There's things called, like, Harvest with this terrible pastor named Greg Laurie. And they do this. And, you know, there's like, big bands come. Like, the big Christian bands will be there and perform, and they have worship things. Everybody raising the hand, speaking in tongues, all that kind of stuff. And it's so big that they have it at, like, Angel Stadium, the baseball. Major league baseball stadium. So something like that you might enjoy. Because it's weird, but less like, culty feeling. I mean, it's culty, but at least entertaining. [00:18:28] Speaker B: It doesn't. Like when I went to the. The spiritualist and just kind of sat at the back and checked it all out. I don't think I'd be able to do that, would I? [00:18:37] Speaker A: No, you totally could. I mean, because when you're talking about these kinds of things. [00:18:43] Speaker A: Like, this is megachurch shit, and I'll get into that in a bit. But, like, nobody's necessarily, like, looking at you, per se. Okay. Yeah, yeah. You know, there might be someone who's a little bit of a busybody who comes up and, like, notices that you seem like you're not involved and, like, wants to know your story, you know, so they can minister to you. But largely, these things are more for people to, like, worship. You know, they're there to sing their hearts out, praise Jesus, all that jazz. But, yeah, so this, like, these revivals were having a big moment in the early 1900s, and these revivals were being held all over the United States. If you listen to the Joag fan cave, I know you don't. I'm talking to our listeners. But you will have heard me talk about some of, like, rapture theology and things like that and how that became popular in the mid-1900s. Same guy who brought that over from England, the American guy who took that from England was one of the people who was instrumental in bringing the Pentecostal revival thing here. And it's essentially just itinerant pastors popping up big tents all over where they'd invite people to these raucous worship services and invite them to be saved by Jesus. [00:20:03] Speaker B: Of course. [00:20:04] Speaker A: And people love this. You can imagine why. Right? Like people were already at least sort of casually religious in the early 1900s. The church was often the center of community life in America, especially in less urban, urbanized areas. Like when urbanization hit and people moved to the cities, then the church in the cities were less of like your hub of community. But if you lived in a rural. [00:20:26] Speaker B: Area, certainly imagine the thrill of the tent rolling into town, you know? [00:20:31] Speaker A: Yes, it's like the circus. Like literally, sometimes actual circus tents were used for these, you know, like these people were bringing excitement to what was often just an obligation. Yeah, you go from singing hymns that sound like funeral dirges to worship music that has you climbing on tables like it's Coyote ugly. Right. Like this is a huge shift. So at age 17, Amy Kennedy rolls up on one of these things and is absolutely spellbound, not just by the proceedings, but by the handsome Irish missionary leading them as well, a man by the name of Robert Semple. And that turned out to be a two way street. They were married the next year. To make ends meet, Semple started working in a foundry. But their aspirations were too big for menial labor, so they decided to head to Chicago to further their Christian training. In 1910, the pair, including a heavily pregnant Amy, took a missions trip to China, where they immediately both came down with malaria and Robert died. [00:21:40] Speaker A: She gave birth to their daughter Roberta shortly thereafter, and with the help of funds from friends back home, she came back to the U.S. a widow with a newborn. Being 1910, that was an even more precarious position than it would be now. So she remarried within two years to an accountant named Harold macpherson, who was by all accounts a total square who wanted a trad wife and a normie existence that Amy simply was not built for. They settled in Rhode island and had a son named Rolf. But Amy fucking hated the whole situation, saying she suffered, quote, suburban neurosis and writing some real emo descriptions of her persistent depression. Yeah, you would like some of her writing about this time. I think you would enjoy the way she explained her darkness. She's a really good writer, but yeah, she'd been relegated to being a stage stay at home mom after already, at her young age, having, like, traveled the world, had malaria in a foreign country, or her husband died. She was a trained missionary, and now she's gonna sit at home. And I can only imagine how boring and unstimulating being a housewife would have been in 1912. [00:22:51] Speaker B: Christ. Yeah. [00:22:52] Speaker A: You don't even have, like, a TV to keep you occupied. [00:22:55] Speaker B: Did they have amphetamines? [00:22:58] Speaker A: I don't even think you had amphetamines at this time. Like, you were just SOL at this point, Man. Past the moonshine. [00:23:06] Speaker B: What did you call it? Suburban Neurosis. [00:23:08] Speaker A: Suburban Neurosis, yes. [00:23:10] Speaker B: Real nice. [00:23:11] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:23:11] Speaker B: It's bad religion album title. [00:23:14] Speaker A: It's true. And I think it's really interesting because obviously it would be another 50 years almost. And when. [00:23:24] Speaker A: Betty Friedan writes the Feminine Mystique and talks about the problem that has no name, right? The idea of these women sitting at home supposedly having everything, you know, the house, the kids, the husband, the money, and questioning, Is that it? And suburban neurosis is exactly that, right? You have all the things that you're supposed to have, and yet you're sitting there going, I'm. I'm not happy. And society tells you that's a defect in you as a woman, right? Like, well, you're supposed to be. So clearly, like, something is wrong with you. And Amy Sembel McPherson, like Betty Friedan would later lead women to do goes like it. I don't. I'm just not gonna do that then, you know, the problem is not, in fact, with me. So after two years of Rhode island living, she got hit with appendicitis, which ended up being a turning point for her. She nearly died of the affliction and claimed that during the ordeal, she heard a voice calling her to the light. When she recovered from the surgery, she determined she needed to follow that voice. [00:24:28] Speaker A: So with that, she packed up the kids and her mother and started traveling the US Doing her own big tent revivals. [00:24:36] Speaker B: Nice. [00:24:37] Speaker A: Her husband joined them for a minute, but like I said, he was a normie, and he couldn't hang, so he went back to his accounting job, and they communicated via letters. Meanwhile, Amy was absolutely thriving in her new role as a traveling preacher. And she took a different angle in her sermons than a lot of her contemporaries. At the time, preachers were still scaring people into faith with fire and brimstone sermons, warning of what would happen if you didn't follow Jesus. But Amy was like, let's talk about how fucking awesome your life is going to be if you do follow Jesus instead. And we would essentially call this the prosperity gospel these days. Have you heard that phrase before? [00:25:20] Speaker B: I don't believe so. Prosperity gospel. [00:25:22] Speaker A: Prosperity gospel. So that refers to guys like Joel Austin and Kenneth Copeland who basically, you know, these big televangelist guys who get on TV and they're like, God's gonna make you rich and give you a shiny future as long as you follow him. Right? And anytime someone like, is not blessed with riches and things like that, it's clearly because, like, they weren't praying hard enough, their faith wasn't strong enough and things like that. You know, Jeremiah 20:29 11 says, God has a plan to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you hope and a future. Right. I think that's what it says. Obviously I'm quoting from memory, but very good. If so, yeah, I mean, listen, I can quote a good chunk of that, that book there, the Bible is what I mean, not Jeremiah specifically. But this is what prosperity folks focus on. Not all the dark shit. You know, it's really kind of that, that sort of stuff. God has plans to prosper you, so you just follow him and you're gonna get that money. And it's a real crowd pleaser with people. People love to be told that there's this one simple trick that's gonna get them God's favor, right? That's a lot better than if you think about like what people previously talked about was basically like, suffering is a virtue, you know, like you suffer and that's how you know you're really following God. I've been reading the, the Ed Gein book, the Harold Schechter one. That's sort of the definitive book on Ed Gein. And it's like, that's the kind of thing that his mother thought about, right? Like any kind of earthly pleasure, you know, is displeasing to the Lord. You need to really suffer. And she's going against that. She's like, no, actually, he's like, got really cool plans for you. And people love it. And audiences started flirting with flocking to her. So she settled in Los Angeles, which is really what allows for all of this to happen. She gets right in there at the, like moment where mass media technology is beginning and she harnesses it right out the gate. She founded a denomination there called Foursquare. And I'd actually never heard of it until I went to college. But my good friend Sarah was four square. So I was like, oh, what is this? And found out about this lady. [00:27:42] Speaker A: So while it Was her following was huge. It was also, in many ways, very regional. Louisiana has always been the kind of place where people go for fame and influence, and Sister Amy would be on the cutting edge of that. She built a temple in Echo park, which actually is still there and seated nearly 5,500 people. [00:28:05] Speaker A: What's the biggest church you've been in, Mark? [00:28:09] Speaker B: Oh, Christ. [00:28:12] Speaker B: I mean, I've been in, you know, some landmark churches, some cathedrals, but did you say how many? [00:28:20] Speaker A: 5,500. 5,500 people. [00:28:26] Speaker B: I think to be able to say that you built a temple within your lifetime is wild. Surely a temple is someone. Something that other people build for you. [00:28:35] Speaker A: Yeah, right, exactly. And over, you know, decades. [00:28:39] Speaker B: Exactly. You know, exactly. [00:28:40] Speaker A: She had this church, built her million dollar temple when she was like 30 years old. [00:28:46] Speaker B: Fuck me. After a brush with appendicitis. [00:28:49] Speaker A: Right? Yep. I mean, yeah, she took that real serious. [00:28:54] Speaker B: Yes. This. [00:28:56] Speaker B: So far, I like this girl. You're describing to me with absolute fucking direction. Moxie. Yeah, exactly. [00:29:03] Speaker A: Totally. Yeah. Very likable. And, yeah, over 5,000 people in a single church over half a century before the rise of the mega church. Right? [00:29:13] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:29:14] Speaker A: And she was preaching often seven days a week in this place. So filling that giant church seven days a week with people, it's just hard to fathom. [00:29:27] Speaker A: And she supplemented this with a radio show. Like I said, she harnessed the technology straight out the gate again. And just. [00:29:34] Speaker B: I just. [00:29:34] Speaker A: More. More. Yeah. [00:29:36] Speaker B: To enjoy. [00:29:37] Speaker A: Right. Yeah. I think, honestly. And I'll talk about at the end, but I think, despite what I will tell you about her shortly, the image that people largely get of Amy Semple McPherson is someone who was extremely driven, very charming and charismatic and likable, but was also a woman in the early 20th century and constrained by a lot of things. And maybe her choices were driven in part by that. [00:30:08] Speaker A: So, yeah, I must say, I have a fairly sympathetic view of her, but I. There's gonna be some negative coming. [00:30:15] Speaker A: So, like I said, she had a radio show, and that vastly increased her reach from thousands in a given week to millions of people listening to her at her Echo park church. She put on lively displays, borrowing things from Hollywood studios to zhuz up her stagecraft. Charlie Chaplin once told her, half your success is due to your magnetic appeal and half due to the props and lights. She's the kind of person who's running in circles with Charlie Chaplin. [00:30:47] Speaker A: Female pastor. Yeah, right. It's pretty crazy. There'd be huge musical numbers and absurd spectacles like a motorcycle she rode across the stage Or a boxing ring in which she KO'd the devil himself. In one of her sermons, she always wore white, which made her look especially angelic and brought out her natural beauty. As the New Yorker put it, she was more recognizable than the Pope. She couldn't go anywhere without being swamped by fans. Well, almost anywhere. She did like to escape to the beach. [00:31:24] Speaker A: And go ahead. No, that was just gonna get killed. Wait for it. On May. On May 18, 1926, at the age of 35 years, celebrity preacher Amy Semple McPherson disappeared from Venice Beach. She was with her assistant working on a sermon. Sister Amy, now long divorced and living her best life as the most famous religious figure in America, kept a room at the Ocean View Hotel, ostensibly for exactly such getaways. Although some suspected she might have had other uses for the room, if you know what I mean. [00:32:04] Speaker B: I do. Sex. [00:32:06] Speaker A: Sex, yes, for the sex. [00:32:08] Speaker B: I do know what you mean. [00:32:10] Speaker A: She was scheduled for a meeting at 4:30pm followed by her evening sermon, but decided to use the preceding hours to have a swim and a snack and prepare. So she and her assistant, Emma Schaefer, got some waffles. But I just like that as a detail because I don't think about people back then eating waffles. Oh, let's go get some waffles, Emma. Nice context, right? So they had their waffles and they headed to the beach where they sat under an umbrella on the sand. Amy went for a swim for about 15 minutes before returning to the umbrella and sending Emma on a few errands. She told her to call Minnie, her mother, and tell her some changes needed to be made to the night sermon and radio show. And she also had her cancel the appointment. And for good measure, she asked her to bring her back some orange juice. Emma did as she was told, and when she came back, she. [00:32:58] Speaker B: Can you perhaps give me a little more about this radio show of hers? [00:33:03] Speaker B: Is that hosted on a. On like a commercial station? Does she have like an hour? [00:33:08] Speaker A: I think she actually owned the station, which will come up in a bit. Yeah, it was her station that she funded, and so I don't know exactly how much programming there was on it. I would assume it was more than an hour. Certainly broadcast her sermons every day. But I would imagine based on what radio is like, there were probably. [00:33:28] Speaker B: It's a little empire she's got here, isn't it? [00:33:30] Speaker A: Yes, absolutely. She is. She is. Girl bossing hard. Yes. [00:33:37] Speaker A: But. So Emma does what she's told, does her errands, and when she comes back, she sees Amy Back out in the water, enjoying herself. So seeing everything's cool, she picks up her Bible, starts reading, noting Amy was swimming further out. And then the next time she looked up, the preacher was gone. After a frantic search, she went back to the hotel and called the authorities, but they found no trace of her. And in the search, a diver died when his equipment malfunctioned. [00:34:07] Speaker A: That night, Minnie stood in front of the congregation, delivered a sermon, and then at the end announced that Sister Amy had gone to be with Jesus. Stunning the congregation. One distraught follower drowned herself in the ocean to join Amy in heaven. [00:34:25] Speaker B: Wow. [00:34:26] Speaker A: Yeah, people were real upset. [00:34:29] Speaker B: That sounds like it might be apocryphal. Is this verifiable? [00:34:32] Speaker A: No, that's verified. Yeah, that's 100 true. This is in every single newspaper thing and whatnot about this. [00:34:41] Speaker A: 33 days later, all hope lost, Minnie held a funeral service for her daughter and some 20,000 people showed up, donating generously to the church in tribute to their lost leader. [00:34:56] Speaker A: And then two days later, the impossible happened. [00:35:00] Speaker B: No. [00:35:02] Speaker A: Amy turned up just across the Arizona border in the Mexican desert and she had a hell of a story that day on the beach. She'd seen some people in distress and gone to help. It was a trap, however, and they abducted her and took her to Mexico where they kept her in various safe houses and threatened to sell her into sex slavery. After over a month in captivity, bound and tortured, she managed to escape her captors, sawing through her binds with the lid of a syrup can before slipping out a window and proceeding to walk 22 miles across the desert until she found a house around 1am and collapsed at the gates. [00:35:42] Speaker A: An absolute miracle as far as the public was concerned. A real Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat situation, isn't it? Yeah. Her children were flown to Arizona to see her, along with various media outlets, each trying to get the exclusive pic of the recently undead preacher. A crowd thought to be somewhere between 50,000 and 150,000 people gathered in LA to welcome her home. [00:36:10] Speaker A: Authorities had questions right out the gate though. I mean, Marco, what would you imagine someone would look like if they had just made a great escape that involved bolting 22 miles across the desert in. [00:36:23] Speaker B: The summer, filthy and tired, disheveled, bruised, hungry, dehydrated. [00:36:32] Speaker A: Yep. [00:36:33] Speaker B: Tear streaked, maybe just in rough shape. [00:36:38] Speaker A: Absolutely, yeah. Like you would be able to tell. But they noticed she didn't have chapped lips or a sunburn or any sign of injury to her feet, aside from two small blisters, in fact. [00:36:53] Speaker B: Her feet? [00:36:54] Speaker A: Yeah. Her feet were basically pedicured at this point. Further, the search along Venice beach had turned up absolutely nothing to indicate there had been any kind of struggle. And retracing her steps in the desert didn't lead them to this alleged safe house where they'd supposedly been keeping her before her escape. And perhaps most damning, there were people who said they'd seen her in and around the town of Carmel by the sea. And not in the company of sex traffickers. In the company of one Kenneth Ormiston, the married manager of Sister Amy's radio station. In fact, rumors of Amy and Ormiston's affair had already been causing waves around the church. His wife had showed up at the temple to confront her about her adultery before their disappearance, and he'd recently left his job at the radio station. And her own mother was actively trying to keep her and Ormiston apart as congregants had heard them flirting over the church intercom. And she was worried they were going to stupidly expose themselves to the whole ass congregation and destroy the cash cow that was their ministry. [00:38:03] Speaker B: Disappointing. [00:38:05] Speaker A: Disappointing. The investigation and trial were expansive, the trial becoming the largest and most expensive in California history until the Manson family would eventually break that record. [00:38:21] Speaker A: The story got bigger and bigger as Amy and others tried to defend her. There was something about ransom notes, another story about a blind lawyer being approached by her kidnappers, and perhaps my favorite, the assertion that actually a woman impersonating Amy in Carmel was who people were seeing with Ormiston. Why? [00:38:46] Speaker A: Who knows? She also asserted that the whole thing had been set up by seedy LA underworld figures with a grudge against her for preaching against liquor in dance halls. [00:38:57] Speaker A: Ultimately, though, there was no concrete proof that things hadn't gone down as Amy said they had. And she maintained that everything she said was absolutely true. Thus, in the end, no charges were brought against her or anyone else who might have been involved. Her followers wanted to believe her, and she went back to her ministry, marrying a third time. And her church did really good shit, it must be said. While the prosperity churches of the modern day are known for being real assholes to the poor. Like the time Joel Osteen's church turned away Katrina survivors and wouldn't let them use his church as a shelter, this wasn't what Sister Amy was about. When the Depression hit, she and her church fed and clothed the poor every single day. They offered free medical and dental care. They had a nursery school, a laundry, and even an employment office in the church. She may have been a liar and a grifter but she put that grift money where her mouth was when she was needed. She absolutely used it for good things. Sister Amy died of an accidental sleeping pill overdose in 1944. But the foursquare Church continues on around the world. There are still millions of members of the Four Square denomination. [00:40:16] Speaker B: The LA Temple still stands, still in business. [00:40:18] Speaker A: LA Temple still stands. I don't think it's the one they use anymore, but there's still. I think there's. The Foursquare in LA has like half a million people in it or something like that. It's still big. It's just not. It housed in that Echo Park Temple anymore, I don't think. And she's faded into obscurity now, obviously, but songs were written about her time at the time, including one by Cole Porter. Countless movie characters were based on her, and Faye Dunaway played her in a Hallmark biopic. [00:40:47] Speaker B: So she's hardly faded into obscurity then. [00:40:50] Speaker A: Well, at the time. [00:40:51] Speaker B: Do they still. Do they still speak of her? Is she celebrated? [00:40:55] Speaker A: I mean, the church does. If you're in the church, you know, you probably know who she is. And not even if you're in the church. Like, if you asked any Christian around the United States, they would have no idea who Amy Semple McPherson is. I went to a Christian school, however, so we had to study religion. Therefore I know who Amy Semple McPherson is. [00:41:13] Speaker B: They have British arms. They have British premises. [00:41:17] Speaker A: Yeah. All over the world. [00:41:20] Speaker A: And like, the vast majority of Foursquare people actually aren't in the United States. I think there's half a million in the United States and then there's like 8 million worldwide or something like that. [00:41:31] Speaker A: But she was, in a sense, a template for the age of personal branding. There are a thousand influencers just like her in TikTok Feeds, crafting an image full of half truths and presenting it to audiences who want to believe and want to buy. So we'll never know for sure what happened out there in Carmel by the sea or the Mexican desert or what have you. But what we have is the fascinating story of one of the first celebrity megachurch pastors who amassed a following so passionate, at least one member literally died for her. [00:42:03] Speaker B: If I may, I'll just quote from the UK. [00:42:08] Speaker B: Foursquare website. [00:42:10] Speaker A: Yes. [00:42:11] Speaker B: Which might give you an indication as to how healthy they are. The goal of Foursquare GB is to plant at least one center of discipleship in every county in England, Scotland and Wales by the year 2022. [00:42:33] Speaker A: Oh, wah, wah, wah. Are you familiar with that? That phrase, a church plant. [00:42:40] Speaker B: Oh, no, I'm not. [00:42:41] Speaker A: Yeah, that's what. What evangelicals call it. When you want to put a church in a place, call it a church place so it spins off of another one. Like it's not just starting a church, but our home church is going to plant a church somewhere else. So it'll be someone from the congregation, you know, who's probably had some seminary training or whatever, is going to go and be the pastor at that church plant. So that's what they're talking about when they. When they say this planting facilities thing. [00:43:12] Speaker B: I don't like the imagery. [00:43:15] Speaker A: No. And it's, you know, it's not great all around, but it seems like. I mean, Foursquare has a lot of the same problems as any evangelical group. But if they're maintaining what she was like, hopefully they at least you know, feed the poor and that kind of. [00:43:31] Speaker B: Stuff and do it with a little bit of fucking, you know. [00:43:34] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:43:34] Speaker B: Vigor con brio. [00:43:38] Speaker A: Oh. [00:43:40] Speaker A: Con brio. [00:43:41] Speaker B: Con brio. That's an Italian term that means with life. I think. [00:43:48] Speaker B: It'S a musical term. Yeah, with vigor. There we go. [00:43:52] Speaker A: Oh, well, there we go. [00:43:54] Speaker B: Yes. [00:43:54] Speaker A: New word. Everybody write it down. [00:43:59] Speaker B: Let me quote directly from my notes, if I may. [00:44:01] Speaker A: Yes, please do. [00:44:03] Speaker B: Fucking look at these nerds. Oh, mise en scene. [00:44:06] Speaker A: I don't think anyone has ever said mise en scene in such a horny way before. [00:44:10] Speaker B: The way I whispered the word sex cannibal recently. [00:44:13] Speaker A: Worst comes to worst, Mark, I'm willing to guillotine you for science. [00:44:16] Speaker B: Thank you. That's really, really sweet. It's cold outside, but my pancreas is talking to me. [00:44:21] Speaker A: I'm. [00:44:22] Speaker B: I'm gonna leg it. [00:44:23] Speaker A: You know how I feel about that, Mark? [00:44:25] Speaker B: I think you feel great about it. [00:44:30] Speaker B: Welcome home. Welcome home from your holiday and welcome everybody else back to Joag. Here we are. Yes, it's the podcast you love. It's the podcast that fucking, you know, sees the icebergs on the horizon. You know, the podcast that fucking watches the charts and watches the dark clouds gathering and interprets those for you and lets you know that you're fucked, completely fucked, just like everybody else, just like your friends and family for generations to come, all completely fucked. And the. The rate at which the fuckitude is progressing is just getting faster and faster and faster. Don't they? Don't. Isn't. [00:45:11] Speaker B: Do the priests not say of the rapture that was. You get. As you get closer to the rapture, things will start happening a lot faster. Right? [00:45:17] Speaker A: Yeah. Is that Right, Yeah, it's funny. [00:45:20] Speaker B: Events will start to occur with more and more frequency. Well, that's where we are. [00:45:26] Speaker A: Only instead tribulation, my friends. [00:45:28] Speaker B: Exactly that. Only instead of the rapture hurtling towards us, it's just the inshittification of everything. Everything you enjoy. [00:45:37] Speaker B: Happening at an alarming rate day in, day out, all around you. And where the only podcast that you could ever listen to that just takes it on the chin and chuckles our way through it and wants you to do the same. [00:45:52] Speaker A: There's an article that I was reading, I think, I think it was BBC that put it out. [00:45:58] Speaker B: Could have been. Yeah. [00:45:59] Speaker A: You don't even know what I'm going to say. [00:46:01] Speaker B: No, no, no, go on. [00:46:05] Speaker A: Thank you for the encouragement though. [00:46:08] Speaker A: Yeah, could have been. Go on. Yeah. [00:46:12] Speaker A: But it was like why young people are like using analog technology now? So it's like the main thing was like a kid playing with like a PSP from you know, 2005 or whatever. [00:46:25] Speaker B: Interesting. [00:46:25] Speaker A: And talking about like, you know, another kid who was like, collects DVDs to watch and stuff like that. And so, you know, it was really, it was an interesting article. But people have been like reposting it with like, you know, in their quote posts, like just shitty things. Like my refrigerator has ads. Wonder why the kids are returning to analog technology. You know, like. Yeah, yeah. Gee, I can't imagine. [00:46:53] Speaker B: Listening to Richard Osman and Marina Hyde this week. And I could not wait to share this with you. [00:46:58] Speaker A: Right, okay. [00:47:00] Speaker B: And I'm par. I'm piecing this story together from a couple of day old memory. Right. They claim that there is a streaming service in Korea. Right. Whichever is future Korea, not South Korea. Dictatorship Korea. Yeah, that Korea that they, they have a streaming service. We know how you'll. If you look at a picture of a fucking spoon on, on the Internet, every advert you'll ever see will be for spoon. [00:47:30] Speaker A: Yeah, right. Yeah. [00:47:32] Speaker B: They claim there's a streaming service that is dialed into your search history and uses green screen when they're shooting shows and will show you insert the thing into the show. So if, if a character picks up a box of cereal, it'll be a green screen box of cereal and they will put it in the fucking show according to your search history that it thinks you'll be more likely to be interested in or buy. [00:47:58] Speaker A: Wow, that's crazy. [00:48:00] Speaker B: And that, that plays right into your quest to your, to your point. [00:48:06] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:48:06] Speaker B: But what you've done there is you've subtly reminded me that I need to get hold of a fucking video. I Need to get hold of a video player before August. [00:48:13] Speaker A: Before, like a vhs, like a vcr. [00:48:15] Speaker B: Yes, I do. Before Joag in. [00:48:18] Speaker A: That's right. [00:48:19] Speaker B: London. [00:48:20] Speaker A: Yes. We need footage. [00:48:23] Speaker B: I need to get. I have to do that. I need to get hold of. I'm sure they're like 20 quid, aren't they? I'm sure they're fucking a piece of piss. [00:48:28] Speaker A: I don't know, sometimes it's exp. Like. So I wanted to buy a Blu Ray player and I was like, oh, nobody's watching those anymore. They're probably gonna be super cheap. And then it's like they're not. The, like cheapest ones are like a hundred bucks. Like you used to be able to get one for 20 bucks when people watched that stuff. [00:48:44] Speaker B: But yeah, I'm certain I could get one from argos for about 30 quid. But I need a region free one. Do you have. Do you have my package? [00:48:51] Speaker A: Region free vcr? [00:48:53] Speaker B: No, no. Region free dvd. I've moved on, Corrigan. [00:48:59] Speaker A: I was like, whoa, buddy. [00:49:00] Speaker B: I moved on from that topic. [00:49:03] Speaker A: I did get your package. [00:49:06] Speaker A: Mark had his. [00:49:10] Speaker A: Many language TCM sent to my house, which arrived the other day while our house sitter was here. [00:49:18] Speaker B: I really don't want to wait until August for it. [00:49:20] Speaker A: Well, I'll be there in June. [00:49:22] Speaker B: Okay. Well, still, it's a long time. I'd quite like to be watching it now. [00:49:26] Speaker A: Well, should have thought of that before. [00:49:28] Speaker B: Yeah, true. [00:49:31] Speaker B: So I will have to. [00:49:32] Speaker A: It's not as bad as you sending things this direction, but the shipping is pretty expensive and especially if you want to like. Like I could ship it, ship it media mail to you for like 40 bucks, but then you have to worry whether it's gonna get there or not. [00:49:43] Speaker B: 40 fucking dollars, really? [00:49:45] Speaker A: Yeah. It's cheaper in the States, but when you send it out of the country, everything is insane. [00:49:51] Speaker B: My God. [00:49:52] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't know. I'll have to ask Ryan if she's got tips. [00:49:56] Speaker B: Maybe I'll. Maybe I'll just wait. [00:49:58] Speaker A: Maybe I'll just wait. [00:50:01] Speaker A: Or there is that option. [00:50:04] Speaker B: Maybe I'll pirate it. [00:50:07] Speaker A: Watched it a few times before. But yes, you do need a region free DVD player and they're cheap enough. [00:50:12] Speaker B: They're like. I've Alan shared a link with one on ebay. It's like 60 quid, something like that. [00:50:17] Speaker A: They're so expensive. Everything is so expensive. I just don't understand why it's the. The problem I live with all the time. But I think next year, you know, my New Year's resolutions I'm gonna. It's gonna be a buying less. I mean, not that I buy as. [00:50:35] Speaker B: It is buying even less. [00:50:36] Speaker A: Even less than I already do. So, you know, I'm not even gonna have to worry about it. [00:50:41] Speaker B: I was gonna comment that you've stuck to it very well this year. So buying even less would be to buying even less. Things existing on my plan that you grow in your garden. [00:50:53] Speaker A: Yes. Little cucamelons. No, My plan for next year, I think I'm gonna, like, try to cut all Internet buying except stuff that I have to get, like my hair stuff or things like that. That it's like, oh, this is how I get it. You know, my. A lot of my zero waste stuff, like my dish detergent and stuff like that comes online, but I think I'm gonna, like, no, no buying t shirts and DVDs and things like that online. I need to go to a store and buy things. I. I do that for the most part. But, you know, I definitely. I think I can do better. [00:51:30] Speaker B: Well, there's. We can always do better, can't we? [00:51:34] Speaker A: We can always. [00:51:34] Speaker B: But I. I think, you know, you've. You've done excellently this year. I. I've seen you. I've seen you stick to it. I've seen you adhere to that resolution really well. [00:51:43] Speaker A: So, yeah, the lowering waste thing has gone well. I think I've mentioned before, it's like, now we make so little trash that really, we just take out trash to keep it from stinking. We don't need to take it out that often because we don't use all that much. So I'm feeling pretty good about it. [00:51:59] Speaker B: Superb. We're skittering around conversations this week, aren't we? [00:52:03] Speaker A: I'm tired. [00:52:05] Speaker B: You're very right to be. You know, I will publicly say. I mean, you got back from Portugal yesterday and you just tore straight into work. You tore straight into exam grading, paper marking or whatever. I. Fucking hell. When I finish a flight, even like a. Even just like an hour flight to fucking Edinburgh or whatever, I'm like, fuck everything next two days. [00:52:30] Speaker B: Oh, God. Confused by everything. I'll do nothing for fucking Daisy. Decide. But all power to you, you just kind of got off that plane and go straight on with it. So if you are. If we are a little skittish, this is week, and if you are a little bit weary this weekend, if we do run a little short this week, that's why. [00:52:44] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah, that's it. That's it. You know, we got on here, we're like, we got no main topic or anything like that. We're just gonna shoot the breeze and whatnot because I'm tired and last night I'm a passenger. [00:52:55] Speaker B: This week I come with nothing. [00:52:57] Speaker A: Last night I was falling asleep while grading and I kept waking up and having typed like just a random letter a thousand times in the feedback box on people's grades. So I'm trying not to do that to you all today. That's my main goal. [00:53:15] Speaker B: It would probably be. [00:53:18] Speaker B: Remiss not for us to just super quickly talk about what the fuck Netflix are doing. [00:53:24] Speaker B: Wouldn'T it? [00:53:27] Speaker B: I think, I think we'll look back on this as a kind of a fulgrim. [00:53:33] Speaker A: Well, it's where things go fascinating because when, you know, this has been basically since the Clinton era and regulations being taken away that like media consolidation has just, yeah, like bit by bit chiseled away from there being a variety of different groups of people making things too. Like we're down to like five companies if that, that own everything. [00:54:03] Speaker A: And I think every few years there is a merger like this that changes everything. [00:54:10] Speaker A: And yeah, this is a huge one of those moments. You know, there was NBC and. [00:54:20] Speaker A: I can't think of what it was. It just happens so often now that it's. It's hard to, to remember. But it's like basically now like I saw Paramount also kind of wanted this, who is like owning everything now too. And it's just there's a few companies, often ones that are increasingly right wing and increasingly ones that don't pay royalties and ones that often just don't keep their properties. You can never access them again because they don't want to have to deal. [00:54:51] Speaker B: With things like that AI reproduction of humans, you know what I mean? Extras just being fucking AI characters in the background. [00:55:00] Speaker A: Yeah, Netflix has gone hard on AI for sure. [00:55:04] Speaker B: Yes. There's a quote from the CEO Ted Sarandos, right that fucking day. Everything you would need to know, I think is within the entirety of this quote. This is from Variety. What is the consumer trying to tell us? That they'd like to watch movies at home? Thank you. The studios and the theaters are duking it out over trying to preserve this 45 day window that is completely out of step with the consumer experience of just loving a movie. [00:55:31] Speaker B: That'S. It's all there. It's all there. [00:55:34] Speaker A: It's just a guy who doesn't like movies. Yeah, you know, I mean all of these companies are run by people who have like disdain for the thing that they're running, you know, and they're running like, all of these companies have their hands in, like, all these different things where it's like, this was. I mean, you watched 30 Rock, right? [00:55:53] Speaker B: Some of it. [00:55:54] Speaker A: And. Right. So that, you know, that was constantly joking about media consolidation in these mergers. And so like NBC, in that they are constantly joking about, like, okay, they own all these other things, but also they, like, own like a toaster company or things like that. Right. Like, they're also, you know, the major, like, utilities that we have and appliances are owned by and things like that. Right. It's like the. These people are not interested in any of the things that they're selling. They're just what's the quickest way to a buck here? Which has huge repercussions for us. Like Time Warner or. I mean, Warner Brothers owns Time Warner. Another merger. Warner Brothers owns tcm, which, you know, I'm a huge fan. Fan of Turner Classic Movies. And already with Zaslav at the head of it, they were, like, really worried about what was going to happen to that archive because they have everything in there. And Netflix owning it only brings up more fears of what's going to happen. Are we going to lose all this media from the, you know, early 1900s because of this merger and just it's gone forever as a result, you know, nowhere we can watch it. [00:57:08] Speaker B: I know it's. It's definitely a. A topic that I pitched to you before, but we never quite got round to. I'd love to just kind of lay on paper all of the subscription services that I pay for each month. [00:57:20] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. [00:57:21] Speaker B: And I would love to just get the red string out and see just how many. [00:57:25] Speaker A: Yeah. How connected they are. [00:57:27] Speaker B: Are behind those. [00:57:28] Speaker A: Right. Yeah, totally. [00:57:31] Speaker B: For sure. [00:57:32] Speaker A: Mm. For sure. Yeah, it's. [00:57:36] Speaker A: It's a problem. I think the thing that I was thinking about with this is how much it makes you want to find alternatives. Right. So, you know, with all of the, like, stuff about, like, Google and AI and, you know, all the stuff in your inbox and whatnot, that it's trying to, you know, organize using AI and various things. I switched my email, which obviously requires a lot of things, but I changed to ProtonMail, which is like, doesn't use any AI or any of that kind of stuff in it. Encrypted, all the sorts of stuff like that. So I'm like, I'm just. I just don't want to be a part of that anymore. And then I switch my browser. I'm using Vivaldi now. It's AI free browser. It Also like stops all the stuff that's trying to like prey off of you on the Internet. So it's a lot fewer ads and things like that. Like it is, it's incredible to use. But I'm finding myself really actively trying to find ways to just opt out and you know, thinking about like, what are the ways that people can do that on a larger scale? Like there have been places in the past that like when the phone companies were being like taken over in a monopolistic way, like there were people in like rural communities who created their own infrastructure for phone in their communities. And of course the, the big corporations found ways to, you know, tear that down. Right. But like, you know, that kind of stuff can exist. And what I wonder is, is there a point in the enshittification of everything that like that starts being a thing, you know, where it's like we've just. Everything's unusable, everything is so expensive and doesn't work and whatnot that people start making alternative forms of infrastructure and public utilities and things like that to get around it. [00:59:45] Speaker B: I'd love to know, man, there's government regulation at least here, which I, what I, what I'd really, really love to see or I'd really be curious to see is if community cellular comms are possible, but that involves kind of spectrum auctions. That involves paying for the rights to certain kind of broadband spectrum space. [01:00:09] Speaker A: Yeah. And how much are you still sort of beholden to the, the infrastructure built by exactly the corporation or the government or things like that. Yeah. Right. Getting around it gets harder and harder the more the corporations own everything and the more regulation favors. [01:00:24] Speaker B: Yes. [01:00:25] Speaker A: Corporations as well. Because it's not regulation that's the problem. That'd be great. But it's regulation that favors corporations in every situation. [01:00:38] Speaker A: I don't know. I don't know, man. It's a weird kind of moment. [01:00:42] Speaker B: Community scale mobile communication as possible without cellular. You can do all that stuff with. [01:00:53] Speaker B: Some kind of Bluetooth, I believe. I think there's a device that does it already that allows you to communicate with other devices within a few miles. [01:00:59] Speaker A: If you look at stuff that like people have created in Gaza. [01:01:03] Speaker B: Sure. [01:01:04] Speaker A: Over the past several years. You know, it's like you can create these kinds of things. Obviously that's on a very small scale and using, I mean they're using very little to do it too. Right. There's no free factories that they're processing things in. And it's, I think it just reminds you that it's like. Yeah, we, we can do this stuff. It's just a matter of, you know, I think people getting frustrated enough with what they're being sold to on mass. Get on board with something else. [01:01:36] Speaker B: I wonder how bad it'll have to get. [01:01:38] Speaker A: Yeah. I don't know. There's. It's. I. I find that that's what makes, like, now such an interesting time where everyone kind of knows everything sucks but are so easily placated with, like, the. [01:01:51] Speaker B: I've said it time and time and time and time again. It's. It's macro versus micro satisfaction, isn't it? [01:01:57] Speaker A: Yes. [01:01:59] Speaker B: Slow approach of an unlivable culture and an unlivable planet and an unworkable economy. But your immediate environment being just lovely. [01:02:11] Speaker A: Mm. Exactly. Right. Or just lovely enough. [01:02:15] Speaker B: Yes, yes. [01:02:16] Speaker A: Right. Where you. You're still frustrated, but there's just enough ease to it that you don't want to. You're not willing to push back entirely. [01:02:24] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:02:26] Speaker A: Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I don't have any skills to contribute to the fixing of any of this. But I'll sign up for whatever people do, that's for sure. Give me the. Whatever the next phone I get is. Will not have AI things in it. Done with that and just. Yeah, I'm out. I'm out. I'm opting out. That's what I'm doing. [01:02:49] Speaker B: I look. Well, keep checking in. I look forward to hearing about that in 2026. Along with you buying even less stuff. [01:02:58] Speaker A: I enjoy not buying things. That's true. I just get taken by, like, things every now and again. Like a. Just like a really good T shirt or, you know, something like that. That's usually what gets me. But I think I can. I can go without. [01:03:12] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree. Let me see, while you were away, I was pounding through movies and tv. I don't think we've spoken of Pluribus yet, have we? [01:03:24] Speaker A: No, we started it together. No. Yeah. We have not talked about it on here. [01:03:28] Speaker B: We started together and then we diverged quite quickly because you found it boring as fuck and I found it intriguing and awesome. [01:03:36] Speaker A: Yeah, I liked the, like, premise. I didn't really like the execution. [01:03:40] Speaker B: So it's a new show from Vince Gilligan of Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad. The premise being that. [01:03:47] Speaker B: A extraterrestrial code is discovered by some nerds and decoded and turns out to be a fucking instructions for a virus. A virus which. [01:04:00] Speaker B: Enforces a hive mind upon the 99.999 of the entire planet. Everyone is connected. Everyone has the intellect and experiences and knowledge of everyone else. You. Everyone speaks as one. And there's a tiny pocket of, like, 11 or 12 who aren't susceptible to this virus. And what do you do? What do you do in that. In that situation? I find it. [01:04:30] Speaker B: Broad and. [01:04:34] Speaker B: Unsubtle. You know, there's nothing subtle about so far, no, but. [01:04:42] Speaker B: It'S. It's also right. It's also very quirky. It's also beautifully written. It's also. I was gonna say it's beautifully shot, but I don't know if it is. It has a lot of tricks it keeps using. It's the show where on. In static shots, something will happen in the background and then come to the foreground of the shot. That happens about six times an episode. A character will slowly walk in from a back door and then come to the front of the fucking frame. That happens, like, every single week. But I'm super into it. I really, really enjoy Vince Gilgan. And. [01:05:17] Speaker B: Why did it bore you so much? Did you just find it too? [01:05:20] Speaker A: Well, there's two things. One, it felt like nothing was, like, happening, per se. It felt like every. It was just changing different rooms and then having exposition conversations. I felt like everything was just being, like, explained in conversations that does happen just in different rooms. And I was like, okay, but, like, is there, like, does stuff go on in this? So those first two episodes, I was like, this is too much talking. John Cena was explaining to me what's happening. I did see that on. On the Internet. But the other thing is, it felt. I. I think I said at the time, I was like, it feels first drafty. Like, all of the jokes and everything like that are, like, so obvious that, like, it feels like it needed to be edited better or, like, you know, get. Get a couple different goes at it or something like that. Like, it just felt like it was like, I don't know, kind of like what a college student would write when it comes to the. The humor and stuff like that. And I was like, I just. I just need. I hate the, like, it's so tropey in the, like, what you're talking about, the hive mind. And I hate when there is a character that has. Or a hive mind of characters that has more information than the other character, and they smilingly withhold information from that other character. And that just drives me crazy because, like, no, I know how this works. Just fucking tell her what's going on. Or don't. Like, but, right. Like, it's like, oh, we're. We understand someday you'll be on our side too, but, like. No, okay, yeah, I get it. [01:06:51] Speaker B: I understand. Yes. [01:06:54] Speaker A: So, yeah, it just played into things that are like, not my bag. [01:06:56] Speaker B: Yeah, cool. It's. It's interesting that it felt first drafty to you. I didn't. I didn't get that at all. But it's. It's not like. It's not like Vince Gilligan is prolific. It's not like he's doing much or maybe he's doing stuff that I'm not aware of, I don't know, but. But he's. [01:07:13] Speaker A: Both of those other two shows were on for a very long time. [01:07:16] Speaker B: They were. [01:07:18] Speaker A: I don't know if that counts as prolific, but he was doing those for. [01:07:22] Speaker B: A very long time and very interesting. Again, to be wrapped up in a weekly show. I've been really fucking jonesing, like, being. [01:07:31] Speaker A: Into a show that's on weekly. [01:07:34] Speaker B: I've been super, super jonesing for new episodes. Like by the middle of every week, I'm like, ah, fuck, when's Purebus coming on? [01:07:42] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:07:43] Speaker B: Such a strange feeling now. [01:07:45] Speaker A: Yeah. That's the few things that I have, like, on my DVR or whatever that I do watch every week. I do fit. It's like part way through the week, I'm like, is it time yet? And then when it shows up, I'm always like, ah, yes, let's go. Yeah, I love that. [01:07:59] Speaker A: I love liveness. You know, that's just my. My thing, even if I'm not watching it live. But, like, that feeling of liveness brings. [01:08:07] Speaker B: It all the more into focus. Having last week, seen my two boys get home from school at 3 o', clock, right? They walk through the fucking door together. And they didn't fucking move from that sofa, drop their bags in the hallway and just sat there until they'd finished the first drop of Stranger Things. Right? [01:08:27] Speaker A: Oh, nice. [01:08:29] Speaker B: And I'll tell you something else, Karagan. It's not been spoken of since. [01:08:34] Speaker B: They ain't fucking mentioned it since. For the four hours or so that it was on. [01:08:40] Speaker A: Oh, no. [01:08:41] Speaker B: Peel their fucking eyes away from the screen. It was. They were wrapped. It was fucking, you know, gasping and screaming and laughing. Okay, Just super into it. Just taken along for the ride. But when the ride is over, it's gone. [01:08:54] Speaker A: Why? [01:08:55] Speaker B: Well, because. [01:08:56] Speaker A: Is that because of the show or because of Kid Brain? [01:08:59] Speaker B: I. It's. [01:09:03] Speaker B: It's out of the conversation when it's done. I think that. And I think that's true of everything that drops at once in one big. [01:09:10] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, Binge it. [01:09:12] Speaker B: You mainline it, you watch it all, and then it's gone and then it's done. [01:09:16] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:09:18] Speaker B: Unlike something like I. Severance comes to mind. That seemed like everything that the entire discourse was concerned with severance for the entire time. It was. [01:09:29] Speaker A: Well. And I think that's like one of the things that kind of killed the bear too, right. Nobody talks about the bear anymore because they switched from week to week to dropping them all at once. And it just knocked it straight out of the conversation. It went from being like, oh, we talk about this all the time, to they drop everything. You watch it or you don't, and then no one ever mentions it again. [01:09:49] Speaker B: Yeah, I could. And both have their thrills, right. [01:09:55] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm not a huge binger. I do it sometimes, but rarely I. I like a miniseries binge. I don't like, like a full season binge. [01:10:06] Speaker B: I. I would have absolutely inhaled Pluribus if it. If I had been able, I would have finished it by now and eaten it. [01:10:17] Speaker A: Yeah. But it's a. I mean, it's what, nine or 10 episodes the total full season. [01:10:22] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:10:22] Speaker A: It's supposed to be. So it's a lot of. It's a lot of show. [01:10:25] Speaker B: It is. It is. It is. It's just a thing of great interest to me. [01:10:31] Speaker A: So if you're looking for something to. Yeah. Watch weekly along with Mark, we still. A couple episodes of Bluribus left this season. [01:10:39] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. And we'll go into movies in a bit. But you do remind me, skittish though we are this week. Must fit in a December watch along. I'm thinking, oh, yeah. Between Christmas and New Year in the Gooch, you know? [01:10:52] Speaker A: Yeah, in the Gooch. [01:10:55] Speaker B: Right. In. [01:10:57] Speaker B: Squeeze 1 into the Gooch this year at the year's end. [01:11:02] Speaker A: Okay, yeah, we'll work on that. But on the. The TV note. So we were packing from. So we went. We stayed in a hotel the first couple days, and then we stayed in an Airbnb. So we were packing up the hotel rooms that we were in, and there are these, like, this suite of American channels called Star. Right. And I texted the girls in their room and I was like, hey, Law and SVU is on Star right now. So they turned it on. So in our respective rooms, we're packing and we're watching SVU and then 911 comes on. Do you know about 91 1, Mark? [01:11:38] Speaker B: I can picture it in my head, but I can't honestly tell you hand or how that I've seen. Seen it. [01:11:45] Speaker A: 911 is a phenomenon. It's Ryan Murphy. [01:11:49] Speaker B: There's a British boy band called 911, maybe. I'm thinking of those. [01:11:53] Speaker A: I can picture them. They have these haircuts. No, it's. It's a show. It's produced by Ryan Murphy. I don't know what he has to do with writing it or whatever, but if you know anything about Ryan Murphy, obviously that means it's not based on the planet that we live on. It is just completely over the top and insane. [01:12:14] Speaker A: And this show is known for just fucking insane storylines. Like the ads for this season, like, one of the characters is in space. This is a show about EMTs and, like, cops and firefighters. There's no reason for any of them to be in space, right? So that's, like, level of reality. And so every, like, episode of the show, you're basically tuning in to be like, what the fuck are they going to do this time? Right? But none of us. Like, I had watched one full episode. I watched the Halloween episode this year. I've always kind of wanted to watch it because it looks so crazy. I'm like, this is the kind of thing that you do watch every week, right? Like, you put it on the DVR and every week you watch what crazy thing these people get up to. But I hadn't watched it. So this episode starts, and it's like a plane is like, there's some sort of collision in the air, and one of the characters is on the plane with some guy she's transporting, right? Like a witness or something like that. And this plane has some sort of midair collision. Pilot gets sucked out of the plane, and now our cop character is left to, like, fly the plane, essentially. And, you know, that's not all in this show, of course. There has to be, like, 10 other emergencies that happen simultaneously to this. But there's, like, you know, talking about bees. Like, there's something. We see there's bees going on. Like, what's going on? And so this episode ends and then flows into another one. And we're like, whoa, it was a to be continued situation. And so we're all like, we have to check out. We can't watch the rest of the episode. So we get back to the. The Air Airbnb. We get to the Airbnb and I plug in my computer and we're like, we gotta finish this episode. We find out, like, this. There's, like, a whole other thing going on with, like, a bee NATO that had been released after, like, a truck tipped over. And the bees from this bee NATO got Into, like, this plane. And then the, like, it got the, like, pilot of that one. And so then the plane crashed into that one, and that's why there were bees. And like, this whole thing was just insane. And we were like, well, all right, well, we gotta start from the beginning. Right. [01:14:29] Speaker B: And you. [01:14:30] Speaker A: Like a season seven episode. So we watched over the course of the, you know, four or five days that we were in this Airbnb, we watched like eight episodes of the first season of this show. It was just like we'd get back from whatever we were doing for the day. All right, time for 91 1. Put it on and watch this. [01:14:49] Speaker B: Insane. That's a part of Holiday, though. You do that? [01:14:51] Speaker A: Yes, 100%. [01:14:52] Speaker B: When we were in Grenada, we just got hooked on just like 1970s. They looked like 1980s episodes of Wheel of Fortune and. [01:15:01] Speaker A: Yeah, totally. Yeah, it's part of the holiday. [01:15:04] Speaker B: Right. Bang, on it goes. [01:15:06] Speaker A: Yep, totally. And so, you know, I haven't watched any movies or anything, but I have watched nine episodes of 911 and several of Taskmaster because the girls had never seen it before, which was crazy to me. So just like me, we started with so crazy. We started with season 19 and they are now fully invested in Taskmaster, so mission accomplished. And we watched Bad Bunny on Hot Ones, which is like the fifth time I've watched it, but it never gets old. [01:15:37] Speaker B: Listen. [01:15:40] Speaker B: I'll talk about it just super briefly. Right. Throw back to an episode from a few months ago when we. We spoke about online grifters. [01:15:52] Speaker B: And in what. What I think I will look back on as being one of the worst decisions I've ever fucking made in my life. [01:16:00] Speaker B: I've become just glued to this one particular fucking grifter on Blue Sky. [01:16:09] Speaker A: Yes. The one that I talked about. [01:16:11] Speaker B: Yeah. Because it's. It's real and it's the most unfucking believable display. [01:16:19] Speaker A: Yeah, I know. I feel like you didn't believe or like you were. You questioned me at the time. [01:16:25] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:16:27] Speaker B: It felt strange coming from you. [01:16:32] Speaker B: To doubt. [01:16:35] Speaker A: Right. [01:16:36] Speaker B: Someone. [01:16:38] Speaker A: Yeah. Who says they're experiencing poverty and need money. Right. Like, I'm pretty much like, no reason for us to question this. [01:16:44] Speaker B: If anything, you know, if anything, we kind of roll reversed. [01:16:48] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:16:48] Speaker A: And you were like, whoa, hold on. [01:16:51] Speaker B: Me being the kind of, you know, finding it awkward watching mutual aid posts from people who aren't in kind of, you know, war torn countries. I. I really did my best. [01:17:06] Speaker B: But it's the most riveting, awful display. And I know. Well, it's going on Right now, as we speak. [01:17:17] Speaker A: Yeah. We're in a major storyline here that is spiraling with this person who has now crashed her car. She definitely really did do this. But with a storyline about trying to escape someone. That definitely did not happen. [01:17:35] Speaker B: I'll drop the name on our Discord if people want it. If people. [01:17:38] Speaker A: There we go. You can put it on Discord. We're not gonna put it all the way out there, but just beware, because once you, like, get into it, when. [01:17:46] Speaker B: You see the patterns and when you. You know, when you realize that. That this is the most flagrant and awful continued career of deceit. [01:17:58] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. [01:17:59] Speaker B: Ever seen. [01:18:00] Speaker A: Career of deceit is a really good way of putting it. [01:18:03] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It is. It is. [01:18:05] Speaker A: And, you know, it's the thing. What? There's, like, a few things that irk me about it, obviously, that it's. She uses the most horrifying things that can happen to people as, like, a plot device in her grift that I think is deeply shameful and vile. But also that there are a lot. Like, this is what people claim everyone is doing. [01:18:25] Speaker B: Right. [01:18:25] Speaker A: Like the. You know, it gives people fodder to be like, oh, you can't give. Give to people because this is, like, what they're doing. Like, she is doing the thing. Thing that people use as an excuse to report everybody is spam or whatever. You know, like, this is. She is the grifter that everyone is talking about. [01:18:44] Speaker B: Permanently trapped between wanting to just reply to her and go, what the. And knowing that it'll just cop me a block and. [01:18:56] Speaker A: Right. And then you'll not be able to watch the rest of the story unfold. Yeah, it's basically. Yeah. The. The situation. I just. At least at this point, you know, I feel like very few people are still falling for it, but it is frustrating to see someone pulling this for going on six years. [01:19:21] Speaker A: Right. Like, oh, man. [01:19:24] Speaker B: Incredible. [01:19:25] Speaker A: Incredible stuff. So, yes, he mentioned that because we got a message in our group chat with someone who also is appalled by this entire situation, but incredible. Yeah. Anyways, what else did you watch? [01:19:38] Speaker B: All right, let's run through some movies. A little movie called One Battle After Another. Right? [01:19:42] Speaker A: Nope, we already went through this. [01:19:43] Speaker B: Fine, fine, fine, fine. Okay, fine. Let's talk Begonia. In that case, do it. Listen. [01:19:52] Speaker B: Did you like Poor Things? [01:19:55] Speaker A: Sort of. [01:19:56] Speaker B: Okay. [01:19:56] Speaker A: I liked half of Poor Things, yeah. Okay, we'll call that a yes. [01:20:01] Speaker B: Right? Let me think how to. How. Begonia is fucking brilliant, right? [01:20:06] Speaker A: Okay. [01:20:06] Speaker B: It is categorically fucking brilliant. It is brilliant. [01:20:10] Speaker A: Okay. [01:20:10] Speaker B: It is grimy and it is weird and it is surprising and it is funny. [01:20:18] Speaker B: It is. [01:20:20] Speaker B: Like pluribus unsubtle. [01:20:23] Speaker A: Okay, well, I mean, that was kind of my issue with poor things is that half of it is really fun and then half of it is just like. Did you get it? [01:20:30] Speaker B: Yes. [01:20:30] Speaker A: Did you get what this was about? And that was what annoyed me. [01:20:35] Speaker B: But. Oh, man, this. Some begonia touches a particular spot. I don't and I can't. It scratches something in me. [01:20:47] Speaker B: I don't know if it's Jesse Plemons. I don't know if it's. [01:20:50] Speaker A: I do love a Jesse Plemons. You still haven't watched Game Night? [01:20:53] Speaker B: No, no, I have not. [01:20:55] Speaker A: You really got to sort that. [01:20:56] Speaker B: It's the place that it ends up. It ends up in an entirely different place than you think it's going to end up. But maybe, I mean, you're a super recognizer. You might go, okay, that's what's gonna happen if you do. I'll be, I'll be. I'll be furious. [01:21:11] Speaker A: I'll keep you posted. [01:21:14] Speaker B: The soundtrack is phenomenal. Just this nice. [01:21:20] Speaker B: Up front, brazen, kind of Hans Zimmer esque brass soundtrack bomb. Just maybe you. I'm describing things you would hate like a bomb. Beautiful symmetry. [01:21:35] Speaker A: Seen a lot of Nolan? [01:21:37] Speaker B: Well, yeah, exactly. But there's so much lovely fucking pleasing visual symmetry in the. In every, you know, in frames. You could just fold the screen in half down its horizontal axis and just the shots would fit together beautifully. Performances are stunning. It is. [01:21:56] Speaker B: Super violent. Just moments of just laugh out loud surprise gore. [01:22:01] Speaker A: Okay. [01:22:02] Speaker B: It, it's, it's exacting and unfucking flinching in, in how it focuses on faces and skin, paws and hair. Just peach fuzz on some. On. On the, on the light behind someone's ear and just cuts and sweat and stubble. Oh, it's so grimy and. Ah, it's beautiful. It's beautiful. I loved it. I loved it. [01:22:29] Speaker A: Nice. [01:22:29] Speaker B: I can't, I can't stress enough how much I enjoyed Begonia. It's wonderful. [01:22:33] Speaker A: It's definitely on my list. [01:22:34] Speaker B: For sure. It's really, really cool. I did tear through some movies while you were gone. If I had legs, I'd kick you. [01:22:39] Speaker A: Oh. [01:22:40] Speaker B: Oh, man. [01:22:42] Speaker B: Hey, talk about Rose Byrne, right? It is Roseburn. Talk about. Did everybody watch the same film I did? [01:22:51] Speaker B: If you like stressed out women, if you like stressed out moms. [01:22:57] Speaker A: Yeah, we know how I feel. [01:22:58] Speaker B: You know what I mean? If you like, if you like stressed out kids. [01:23:03] Speaker A: No, thank you. [01:23:04] Speaker B: You'll love this. I did not. And I do not, which is. I, I wanted to, I really wanted to. I, I, you know. [01:23:13] Speaker B: On paper, this is a movie I would really enjoy, but it's, it's just stressful. It's really stressful. I had the problems with the soundtrack of this that you had with the soundtrack of one battle after another. It. [01:23:24] Speaker A: Oh yeah. [01:23:25] Speaker B: Tweaks my. It's like, you know, tapping a tooth with a metal imprint. [01:23:31] Speaker A: Right. [01:23:32] Speaker B: Like just repetitive kind of car alarms and appliance noise and medical appliances beeping all the time. It's. It's. [01:23:40] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:23:41] Speaker B: O I. Yeah, it's like chewing tin foil. This one I didn't enjoy. [01:23:47] Speaker A: I'm gonna be skipping that one. [01:23:48] Speaker B: I think you should. You should. I would also. [01:23:53] Speaker B: You're a daddy's head. [01:23:55] Speaker A: I've heard the name. I can't remember. I don't think I've seen it. [01:23:59] Speaker B: Daddy's head. Oh, God. It's another stressed out white people film. [01:24:03] Speaker A: Oh, geez. I'm telling you, Mark, let me just say this is one thing looking at this year. I've been struggling a little bit with movies and I just think the movies have gotten very white this year. You know that A real standout like Sinners and then everything else is very white. And it has not worked for me. [01:24:22] Speaker B: That hadn't occurred to me until you just said it. [01:24:26] Speaker A: It's like just across the board, such a white year of movies. And I'm just like, you are Corrigan. [01:24:35] Speaker B: You are not wrong. [01:24:37] Speaker A: Thank you. [01:24:39] Speaker B: You really aren't just going past the past month. It's all very stressed. Caucasian films, right? [01:24:47] Speaker A: Yeah. It's like a thing just not on board. Like we gotta. This whole. I don't know if it's like the anti DEI push or whatever, but it just feels like we are really swerving back that direction and it is making movies less interesting. [01:25:05] Speaker B: That is very well observed. [01:25:10] Speaker A: Comes from a lot of rage this year. I noticed this. [01:25:13] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, yeah. If I'd like to kick you. Daddy's head is the same. The, it's one of those. The gribly is grief. [01:25:22] Speaker A: Okay. [01:25:23] Speaker B: Yawn. You know? [01:25:24] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:25:25] Speaker B: The gribbly is latchkey kids, fractured home. It's divorce, it's trauma, it's grief. And it's not a monster. If it were a monster. So the story being a kid's dad dies in circumstances and they're very wealthy and well off and the guy was an architect and left them his home and a load of money. So, you know. [01:25:48] Speaker B: But the kid starts to see a Gribbly with his dad's face skittering about the place on like insecty legs. [01:26:03] Speaker B: But is he really. Or is it just grief or is he just, you know, a nutter. [01:26:10] Speaker B: You know? [01:26:11] Speaker A: Okay. [01:26:11] Speaker B: Yeah, that's it. That's the movie Pass. Yeah, this. [01:26:15] Speaker A: I think that's kind of a genre that I'm like completely. There's. So if. When you're scrolling through Shudder. The number of movies that the story is. Parent A or B died and you know, that's right. Kid sees. [01:26:29] Speaker B: That's so true. [01:26:30] Speaker A: X thing is like. It's just constant. I'm like, I just. I think I've seen all of that movie that can exist. [01:26:37] Speaker B: That's. You have. I think you have. Oh, and the dog dies. But did the kid kill the dog. [01:26:42] Speaker A: Or was it the gribbly? [01:26:43] Speaker B: Oh, no, you know. [01:26:44] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, the dog dying. Yeah. I'm completely out. [01:26:49] Speaker B: The highlight of the week was watching the thing with the boys. I took. [01:26:54] Speaker A: Oh, right. [01:26:55] Speaker B: You know what I did? I swooped in like an opportunistic fucking parent. And while Laura was out for a couple hours doing Christmas shop, I was like, boys, come on, watch this thing. It was on a Sunday morning. [01:27:11] Speaker A: Wow. Just the time. [01:27:13] Speaker B: Yeah. Pissing it down with rain outside. Come on. [01:27:15] Speaker A: Oh, that's nice. [01:27:16] Speaker B: It was. It was great. And look as much as anything, it took them off their phones for two hours. [01:27:22] Speaker A: Nice. [01:27:23] Speaker B: You know, and they watched a fucking story unfold and they saw some art and watched something that they both really, really enjoyed. [01:27:33] Speaker A: Yay. [01:27:33] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. They asked. They asked questions and they made predictions. Oh, I think it's him. [01:27:38] Speaker A: Oh, amazing. [01:27:39] Speaker B: Is it? Is it him? What they do in there, dad, you know? Yeah, really nice. [01:27:44] Speaker A: I wanna. I wanna watch a movie with your kids. [01:27:48] Speaker A: I wanna experience that maybe in 2026. [01:27:52] Speaker B: Maybe in June, who knows? [01:27:53] Speaker A: Yeah. There we go. Beautiful. Anything else? [01:27:57] Speaker B: Let me see. Pluribus Movies thing now. That's it. [01:28:04] Speaker A: Yeah, it's pretty good. [01:28:05] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:28:05] Speaker A: I do find it funny how many things you manage to get in when I'm not here. [01:28:10] Speaker B: Well, I use it almost as an opportunity to just mop up the movies that I kind of have an interest in seeing, but that I know you'll. [01:28:18] Speaker A: Yeah, we've got this week we've got to watch. What's that one that I sent to you? It's. It's. Everyone's raving about it right now. [01:28:26] Speaker B: Ah, yes. [01:28:28] Speaker A: Do you remember what that's called? There's a movie that just came out and it's like it's the thing, it's the zeitgeist at the moment. [01:28:42] Speaker B: The pics of Jonathan Frakes. [01:28:44] Speaker A: It's called. [01:28:46] Speaker A: Man Finds Tape. [01:28:47] Speaker B: That's the one. I've never heard of it. I don't know if it's, if it's in the discourse, but I've never heard of it. [01:28:53] Speaker A: Okay, well, we've got to get on that one this week before I leave for Hawaii. Oh yeah, when we can watch it while I'm in Hawaii too. But you know. [01:29:03] Speaker A: Friday. [01:29:04] Speaker B: Okay. Don't, you know, don't get boiled in. [01:29:08] Speaker A: The, in the thousand foot lava. Right. Which is, by the way, the Jonathan Frakes. I don't know. I know we must have mentioned this before, but in case you have forgotten, whenever I ask a very weird left field question, Mark sends me a picture of Jonathan Frakes and I got freaked twice before 7am this morning. [01:29:32] Speaker B: You just ripped into it just first thing in the morning. I don't know if you funny thing is, woke up and reached for your phone or what. [01:29:38] Speaker A: Well, here's I even thought, because the first question that I had for you, I wanted to ask, but I was like, I can't. I can't just like say it out of nowhere. And so I did say good morning first. [01:29:50] Speaker B: No, you did. Fair play. [01:29:51] Speaker A: But then I asked, I was like, I'm gonna say good morning and then I'm going to ask the question. [01:29:58] Speaker A: Which was, have you ever been to the Museum of English Rural Life? [01:30:06] Speaker B: What I really enjoy doing is replaying with a different picture of Jonathan Frakes. [01:30:09] Speaker A: Yes. A different Frakes every single time. Yeah. I'm gonna put this question. My second question that I got freaks for was when you're really hungry in the morning, does it ever sound like there's like static in your esophagus? Like a, like a fizzling, like your digestive juices are trying to find something to digest. When I wake up, like really, when I wake up really early in the morning and it's like, you know when you've, you wake up and you haven't. You've just been like lying in bed for too long and you just start to get like super hungry. It's like a kind of hungry you only get from lying in bed and then. Oh, okay, well, so we're, we're off to the wrong start here. In the first place, I just want. [01:30:52] Speaker B: To shut you down. [01:30:52] Speaker A: But I've not the breakfast hunger anyways. If I've been lying in bed for too long because I woke up at like 5 and then it was getting towards 7. I get extremely hungry and when that happens, it. I just feel like. Like I hear this, like, fizzling sound. Like my insides are trying to like, digest something that isn't there. So if anyone else experiences this, please let me know. Or maybe this is just a weird Corrigan thing. [01:31:22] Speaker B: Maybe that's what you hear after you die. [01:31:27] Speaker A: This. Honestly, when, whenever, like when you talked about how your blood fizzles or whatever after you die, that was. That's what my. What I imagine is the sound that my, like esophagus makes when I'm hungry. Here. [01:31:40] Speaker A: I'm just that close to death. Every time I don't eat fast enough in the morning, it's my blood fizzling. [01:31:46] Speaker B: Telling me, oh, God. What else? Listen. Interestingly so I have. On the 9th, I have. I have an appointment to get a tooth pulled. Right. And this is. I. We're just chatting now. If you. If you're still listening to this, I apologize. Feel free to tune talking there. And while we've been chatting over the last hour and a half. [01:32:05] Speaker B: I felt. I felt like real. The. It's gone now, but for. For moments, I felt like what I think this tooth is going to do if I don't get it taken out soon. Like paralyzing, kind of aching starting to set in. It's gone. It was just there for a second or two, but it's a little mark. This is coming your way. If you don't get this tooth removed. [01:32:28] Speaker A: Really? What's wrong with it? [01:32:30] Speaker B: It's 40% filling. It's. It's. It's a fucking. It's a hole in my mouth packed with dental cement more than. [01:32:39] Speaker A: And they're just like, we can't do it any further. We just got to get rid of it. [01:32:42] Speaker B: Yep. The dentist said, well, we can root canal it and then you'll also need a crown or we can take it out. And I was like, look, fuck, I. [01:32:49] Speaker A: Didn'T say, that's why I don't have a tooth. They root canaled it and then they're like, yeah, you're gonna need whatever. [01:32:55] Speaker B: Exactly. If I'm just gonna back in a couple of weeks to get it pulled out anyway. [01:32:58] Speaker A: Just take it out in case, like. Nope. No, thank you. I can live without that. [01:33:04] Speaker B: But yeah, it's. [01:33:07] Speaker A: This reminds me though, and I don't know if you wanted to like, do this as a longer conversation, but you said your mom has dentures, but she did it. [01:33:18] Speaker B: Okay, let me. There are two things I wanted to actually. Did I ever tell you. [01:33:26] Speaker B: Did I ever tell you about the time that my mother gave a sympathy card to a guy who died and he was very much alive? Did I ever tell you about that? [01:33:33] Speaker A: Oh, I think you did mention that. [01:33:36] Speaker B: That occurs to me every so often, and I just. [01:33:40] Speaker B: For those who haven't heard the tale. God, it's got to be 25, 30 years ago, a neighbor of my mother's was, like, super ill. Like really, really. Prognosis, terminal kind of ill. And she'd heard, like, third hand of a friend of a friend that the guy had passed away. So she buys a sympathy card and writes in it, you know, to his wife and takes it around, knocks on the door and hands the card. This guy's sat in the kitchen. [01:34:06] Speaker B: Hi, Elaine, how are you doing? Oh, and what do you do? [01:34:10] Speaker A: You know what I mean? Wrong house. [01:34:11] Speaker B: Do you take it back? He then died a couple of weeks later. And I. I've never. I'd never. I've never followed up and asked, did she just give him the card back? [01:34:21] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:34:22] Speaker B: Did you buy another one? [01:34:23] Speaker A: Yeah. What was the next move? [01:34:24] Speaker B: But anyway. [01:34:26] Speaker B: Now my mother has no teeth, right? [01:34:30] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:34:31] Speaker B: With dentures. Full. Full dentures, top and bottom, I believe. Definitely full dentures on the top. [01:34:40] Speaker B: And. [01:34:42] Speaker B: With things that are kind of out of place growing up, you never realize they're out of place until you don't get there anymore. And you think back, why the fuck does my mother have no upper teeth, right? I've asked her this and talk about a vague fucking response, right? Oh, I just had all my teeth taken out when I was younger, ma'. Am. Why? Well, it's just what you did back then. [01:35:06] Speaker A: Is this true? What? Oh, yeah. Is it friends? Is this true? I don't think that's true. Like, maybe there was, like, a shitty dentist in town, like a rogue, and he was like, oh, yeah, this is what. You know, this is the style in London or something. We all do dentures. [01:35:25] Speaker B: And I'm not kidding. That's as much of an answer as I've been able to elucidate from it. [01:35:31] Speaker A: That's so bizarre. [01:35:32] Speaker B: Yeah, it's just what we did in. [01:35:34] Speaker A: Those days, Friends did, people. How long ago do you think? Like, what year would you think this would be? Has she had them your whole life? Like, do you remember her getting them? [01:35:41] Speaker B: I can never remember my mother with an upper tooth in her head. [01:35:44] Speaker A: So we're thinking. So it was before, sometime in the. [01:35:46] Speaker B: 70S, maybe late 60s, early 70s, maybe even before that. I mean, she's 77. [01:35:52] Speaker A: Okay, listen, I'm gonna approach a stereotype here, but you know, Brits in the past were known for bad teeth. Is that why everyone did it? [01:36:02] Speaker B: That ain't it. I don't know. [01:36:05] Speaker B: It's just. It's just what we did. [01:36:08] Speaker A: It's just what we did. That's so weird because you have for some you take good care of your teeth, but you have shitty teeth, right? [01:36:14] Speaker B: I try my best, man. I try my fucking best. I brush all like. [01:36:18] Speaker A: That's often like a genetic thing which is like. Did she just not want to say she had bad teeth? Or like cuz you know, if it was passed down to you. That makes sense. [01:36:30] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:36:30] Speaker A: You know a guy who brushes his teeth multiple times a day and things like that. And like your teeth are constantly needing fillings and falling out of your head. [01:36:38] Speaker B: I have to get to the bottom of this. I have to. [01:36:40] Speaker A: You do for sure on this. I want to know the answer. [01:36:45] Speaker B: I'm going down this weekend, so I'll take another one at it then. [01:36:49] Speaker A: Please do. Please see, see if she's ready to approach this topic. I have such questions. Listen, I. This is one of those things that I'm fascinated by though, because apparently like most people end up with dentures eventually. Sure. And I just think it's crazy that like we one of those. You know how it's like if you live long enough, you'll get cancer. [01:37:11] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. [01:37:11] Speaker A: It's like one of those weird elements of our living longer is just that like our teeth aren't meant to last that long. [01:37:18] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [01:37:20] Speaker A: You just. [01:37:21] Speaker B: You just don't look at all the most batshit to me that you would electively get all of your fucking teeth taken out. [01:37:29] Speaker A: I guess you might as well. Might as well. You're gonna eventually. [01:37:34] Speaker A: Get a deal. You got a coupon. [01:37:35] Speaker B: This way of looking at it. [01:37:38] Speaker A: I suppose. I don't know. We'll see. Maybe someday I'm gonna get sick of these and just be like, just take them. Maybe they're going anyway. [01:37:44] Speaker B: Maybe, maybe they make them. [01:37:46] Speaker A: Do they make them look like your teeth? I don't know how that works. Just look like generic teeth or is. [01:37:51] Speaker B: It like a false eye where they color match it to the other one? [01:37:54] Speaker A: Right? Yeah. Like, do they kind of like my weird teeth? [01:38:00] Speaker A: Kind of. If I get dentures, I'd like to kind of make them look like that. I don't know. Tell us your denture stories, friends. Tell us everything we need to know about dentures and denture culture and whether Brits dental culture just pulling their teeth out. [01:38:11] Speaker B: All I have to do is just fucking hang on until the 9th of January when this comes out, and at least then that'll give me an excuse for an opiate binge for a few days. [01:38:24] Speaker A: It's like. Is this where that. Yep. No, that is where it's going. Yeah. [01:38:29] Speaker B: On a plate. An excuse for a few days. [01:38:34] Speaker A: Silver linings. Yeah. [01:38:36] Speaker B: I might get some oxycontin. [01:38:38] Speaker A: Oh, God. [01:38:41] Speaker A: All right, friends, that's. That's enough rambling from us two weirdos for this time around. So if you're still here, you know, you are. You're just. You're just a classy, classy fella. [01:38:54] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:38:55] Speaker A: Non gender neutral fella, non denominational fella, if you will. And we like you and we jump into the ocean for you. [01:39:05] Speaker B: Yes. Join the discord and stay spooky. [01:39:09] Speaker A: Amen.