Ep. 252: thinking about death and also america

[00:00:05] Speaker A: It's just fascinating to me and I hope it will be to you and I hope it will be to our listeners and definitely aligned with our principles. Tell us again, Corrigan, what are those? Core Jack of all graves Principles. [00:00:18] Speaker B: You're never safe. [00:00:19] Speaker A: Yep. Or just there's another, say another three. [00:00:25] Speaker B: Just like things we believe generally. [00:00:29] Speaker A: I'm yanking you. Don't worry about it. [00:00:32] Speaker B: Oh, man. Listen, not on a week like this. Go ahead. Yeah. [00:00:38] Speaker A: What. What's been preoccupying me today over the past couple of days is wouldn't it be nice. Wouldn't it be. Wouldn't it be nice to be part of a. Would it be nice to not care sometimes? [00:00:52] Speaker B: Don't you think? Yeah. [00:00:54] Speaker A: Wouldn't it be nice not to care so much, but to be in a state of what I've. I've heard described before as unconscious unknowing. It isn't that you don't care, it's simply that you don't know what you don't care about. To be so far removed from the. That bothers people like you or I on a day to day basis. To be in a state of just removal from everything. [00:01:19] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, that's the only way. Yeah. [00:01:21] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. With an entirely different set of just a code and beliefs and society and a life that just doesn't include some of the. That that vexes us and takes us for granted. [00:01:37] Speaker B: Sure. [00:01:38] Speaker A: Wouldn't that be nice? So with that in mind, why don't we. Why don't we go to Indonesia? Would you like that? [00:01:46] Speaker B: I've never been. Have you? [00:01:48] Speaker A: Have you not? Oh, no. When on earth am I going to have gone to Indonesia? [00:01:51] Speaker B: Why did you sound so surprised? I hadn't been. [00:01:54] Speaker A: Well, you've. [00:01:55] Speaker B: You. [00:01:55] Speaker A: Well, you get around. [00:01:56] Speaker B: You get around. [00:01:57] Speaker A: Is that the second Beach Boys I know? [00:01:59] Speaker B: Wow, look at this. We got a. We got a theme coming. We're turning into what's his face. Who's that? Michael Keaton and the other guys. Right now we got to pretend we don't notice it. No, I have like a thing about. You know, I love to travel, obviously, but I don't like heat. So anywhere that's like hot is a difficult sell for me. [00:02:23] Speaker A: Well, we're not gonna really go there, right? [00:02:26] Speaker B: Oh, okay. [00:02:27] Speaker A: Instead we're gonna think about it. [00:02:30] Speaker B: It's very Magic School Bus. Or I guess not. It's the opposite of that. [00:02:34] Speaker A: I don't know what any of these things mean. [00:02:38] Speaker B: Just agreeing left and right. [00:02:41] Speaker A: We're gonna go to Indonesia and in particular we're gonna go to a fucking mountainous, clifftop, forested, dense, fucking limestone packed region known as Tana Toraja. [00:03:00] Speaker B: Tana Toraja. [00:03:02] Speaker A: Tana Toraja, which is translatable as the land of the Toraja, because it is there that we will find the Torajan people. [00:03:14] Speaker B: Okay. Nice. Unfamiliar. Completely unfamiliar with this. [00:03:18] Speaker A: Delighted. Delighted. Because today the Torajan people number around about a million worldwide. Okay. And I mean, that's not. [00:03:31] Speaker B: It's small, but not super small. [00:03:34] Speaker A: It's. It's significant. [00:03:36] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:03:36] Speaker A: You know, about half of them are still in that area that I've just spoken about. Tana Toraja. About half of them are still there. The rest, you'll find them spread around Indonesia, maintaining often quite strong links to ancestral villages. [00:03:56] Speaker B: Okay. [00:03:58] Speaker A: And the Torajans are very much integrated into modern life in Indonesia. Right. [00:04:07] Speaker B: So this isn't like an uncontacted tribe. [00:04:11] Speaker A: Absolutely not. The Torajan people, they work in cities. They fucking vote. You know, they're on. They're in local government. They're everywhere. [00:04:21] Speaker B: Okay. [00:04:25] Speaker A: You would mostly find them identifying as Christian. [00:04:28] Speaker B: Okay. [00:04:30] Speaker A: Protestant in the main. Smaller populations, you know, spread across other religions. Catholic, Muslim. But to be among the Torajan people in 2026 is almost to live two different lives. Right? [00:04:52] Speaker B: Okay. [00:04:52] Speaker A: One, one of which, like I've just described, is a modern, integrated Christian life. And the other is deeply ceremonial, deeply ritual structured. Despite the norms of their society and their state and their religion, despite modernity, the other part of the Torajan fucking core identity remains rooted around death. Oh, death. Even today is the fucking cultural axis around which the Torajan cultural life spins. [00:05:42] Speaker B: Very interesting. [00:05:44] Speaker A: Fuck. It is interesting, right? [00:05:47] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:05:49] Speaker A: They were colonized in the early 20th century. Before that, very ancestral, local, kind of deeply rooted in their almost cosmic identities. Even today, they live in. You will find the Torajans living in ancestral houses known as tongues. Conan, Tongkonan. Right. And like I said, colonized by the Dutch in the early 20th century. And that's when. [00:06:26] Speaker B: Unfortunate for them. [00:06:27] Speaker A: Oh, for sure, for sure. And it was. It was through them that this layer of Christianity was imposed, I guess, upon them. [00:06:36] Speaker B: It makes sense. [00:06:38] Speaker A: But even today, and before that, more strongly, but even today, you've got a people who believe in a kind of another world of different realms. Right above us you've got this realm of deities, ancestral powers. We all share this middle world, the land of the living. But below is a land, a realm they know as Puya P U Y A Puya, which isn't hell, it isn't paradise. It's a continuation. Right? Mm. And it's fucking insane. It's so beautiful. Okay, Right at the core of this tradition of theirs is a. It isn't a law. It isn't. It isn't a religion almost. It's more of a moral order known as aluk todolo, the way of the ancestors, right? And it governs everything they do from, you know, the architecture they live in, the agriculture that they work around. Like I said, farming lives stock the way that they're married. And to live properly is to be fully aligned with Alec to dho, right? You won't get. You won't get. It isn't sin. It isn't. It's more like kind of your ancestors can withdraw their protection from you, right? If you're not aligned with our look, then you're, you're. You're not in the cool books of the old folk. You'll, you know, you. You might find that illness besets your family, your crops might fail. And alok, it divides your existence into rituals of birth and death, right? Rambutukta, Those are the rituals of birth, marriage, fertility. And on the other side of that you've got Rambo Solo, which is death, death, mourning, burial and transformation. And like I've said, they completely integrated into modern Indonesia. But living. If you were to. If you were to walk through a Torajan village, you would see row upon row upon row of these homes. Tong Konan, beautiful kind of curved roofs built to, kind of to call to mind the living world the horn of a buffalo thatched with layers of bamboo and timber. And so much, kind of, so much of this faith I will call it goes into the building of their homes. The colors that they're painted in, the colours of the timber. Red to symbolize blood, black for symbolism of death and the afterworld. Yellows and whites for bone and purity, divine power. Inside. Their homes are kind of compartmentalized ritual spaces. No kind of open plan rooms, very. Almost private, you know, almost divided kind of spaces for prayer and for ritual. So walking through one of these fucking villages, you would hear hymns being sung all night. Ancestral all the time, chanting all night long. [00:10:04] Speaker B: Ceremony any day of the week. Or like at certain, like, well, times during. [00:10:11] Speaker A: During periods of the ritual that I'm gonna talk about. Okay, These go on and on and on, on and on and on. Look, like I've said, it isn't. It isn't recognized within Indonesia as a religion at state level, but it survives kind of in a customary kind of sense. [00:10:34] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:10:37] Speaker A: But let me talk to you about what happens when a torrejan person dies? [00:10:44] Speaker B: Yes, please. [00:10:46] Speaker A: Because it's fucking amazing. When you die in the Torajan culture, you don't become dead, you become tomacular, which translates as the sick one. [00:11:02] Speaker B: Okay? [00:11:04] Speaker A: Yeah. You aren't gone, you're still there, but you are resting, you are ill, you are recuperating, you're convalescing. So if I die, my body is preserved. So in the past, that would have been with herbs, you know. Often now they will use formaldehyde, but the body will stay in one of these homes for months, often more, sometimes years, while around them, preparations begin for the Rambo Solo ritual. The body is still greeted every morning by the family. It is still. [00:11:49] Speaker B: It's like a magpie. [00:11:51] Speaker A: Well, yeah, but, but, but left with food around it. Food and cigarettes, you know, they leave a pack of fucking darts nearby. [00:11:58] Speaker B: They all smoke while they're alive. Or is this just a thing that the dead do? Like, while you're here? You might as well. [00:12:03] Speaker A: You may. You may as well. Yeah, why not? I mean, but, but it isn't. It isn't hidden. You know, kids walk past daily. They, they. They speak to the bodies. They keep them involved in family. [00:12:14] Speaker B: What up, Grandpa? [00:12:15] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Morning. Morning, Aunt Sharon. [00:12:20] Speaker B: And traditional Indonesian name. [00:12:23] Speaker A: If you're to visit that house, you're told straight away, you're told plainly, there is, you know, we got a dead corpse in here, so just, you know, say hi. Because the soul is understood to be lingering. It's still in that place. Exactly. It's still in that place. It's not quite passed on to Puia yet. The soul is still with us, waiting for the right preparations to take place. Because sending it onwards, sending it to Puya, needs the right conditions, needs the right ritual. And that all takes so much time, so much preparation. Right? [00:13:04] Speaker B: Body's got, like, what is it? Locked in syndrome. The thing where, like, you. You're in your body and you're like, yes, indeed. [00:13:13] Speaker A: Diving Bell and the Butterfly. That, That. [00:13:15] Speaker B: I never watched that. I have it, but I did not watch it. [00:13:18] Speaker A: You really ought to. It's. It's. It's once terrifying and beautiful. What a great movie. But, yeah, I guess so. I guess so. To a Torajan. The dead are in there. [00:13:28] Speaker B: Yeah, you know, just chilling. [00:13:29] Speaker A: But like I said, this. [00:13:30] Speaker B: You guys, you gotta get. Get things set for me. [00:13:33] Speaker A: That's the tomb that they give to it. They're just. They're. They're one of the ill, they're one of the sick, they're one of the convalescing. So the ritual begins. The ritual intensity starts to begin. It starts with a big ceremonial field is built around the home, the family. And they build temporary kind of structures to house guests. To house. Oh, it's. It's Corey. It's a fundamental part of. Of their society. They build temporary kitchens for the ceremony. They build spaces for ritual and for prayer, arranging kind of huge spaces for seating, which is kind of arranged by. By status, by lineage. And you'll often get hundreds, if not more people attending the Rambo solo. It is a reunion for families. It, you know, people are invited to bring tributes. People are invited to speak and to share publicly memories of the person who is on their way to Puia, you know, and as the first night falls, when readiness is attained, and the first night of the ritual begins with something called mabadong, when family members, men, groups of men form a circle with their arms linked, and they start to move rhythmically, chanting, praying into the night. Bespoke chants written for the deceased, which tells their story, you know, tells the story of the events of their life, their family tree. [00:15:16] Speaker B: Do you know who writes them? Like, who comes up with this? [00:15:19] Speaker A: I. From. From what it feels to me, this is something that's collaborated on by their families. I mean, I guess there are kind of, you know, structures that they use. [00:15:28] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I'm sure there's like a basic outline of how this goes and then. [00:15:33] Speaker A: Exactly. But as part of the preparation for this, this is something that is prepared for that person to send them onward. And the chanting, the praying, the ritual can last, like I said, well into the night. No kind of instruments, just human voices, you know, talking about that person, talking about their life, carrying them, almost. Almost personifying them, giving them a presence in the ritual. And during the following days, it continues. The dead are displayed for everyone to talk to, chat to pay their respects to. Gifts are publicly kind of exchanged and shared almost. The, The. The names of. Of these people are then incorporated in to the funeral of future family members. You know, like I said, so there's chanting and praying, which talks about, you know, so I'm Marco, son of Arwen, who was son of Ron, you know, know your name gets passed on into future performances, and it becomes. It becomes what seems like quite a party. You get warrior dances, something called the Maranding, a warrior dance. Who, who. [00:16:55] Speaker B: Anyone gets this. Like, any person who dies gets all this. [00:16:59] Speaker A: This is. This is when I say there's always one of these on the go, you know, because there are like half a million, if not more of these people in this Indonesian zone, these. These things are happening all the time, right? So you've got your warrior dance, which talks about the person's courage, the person's feats of. Of strength and bravery. Lament kind of poems are sung by elder women. Makatia and youth also take part, known as ma dondan, rhythmic, communal kind of youth element to it. And each one of these performances is positioned really carefully within a sequence, within a structure, you know. And also a major part of it is animal sacrifice, right, dear? Yes. Huge central tenet of the Rambo Solo is animal sacrifice. Livestock will be raised specifically to be killed as part of this ceremony. Buffalo in particular, they are brought in to the space with kind of. They're killed publicly, with precision, kind of just killed and drained. The number of animals sacrificed to me reflects again my status. It reflects how well I was thought of, reflects the honor with which I died. If I, you know, maybe I wouldn't. Maybe I wouldn't get so much blood spilled in my name if I was like an outcast, if I was just some. Right? [00:18:36] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:18:36] Speaker A: But if I was an elder, if I was a family member, they would bring often the most expensive, the most highly prized breed of buffalo, albino livestock, for example, costing them thousands, would be killed in my name as part of the ceremony. And finally, after however long that takes, until they feel enough fucking justice has been served for me. [00:18:59] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:19:01] Speaker A: The body is finally ready to pass on to Puya. It is finally ready for burial and is interred in tombs carved into the fucking limestone of the cliffs. [00:19:15] Speaker B: Right? [00:19:17] Speaker A: How fucking cool is that? [00:19:19] Speaker B: How long is it usually between, like, death and limestone? [00:19:24] Speaker A: Well, it, it feels like days. It feels like, you know, numerous days. A few days while preparations take place. I mean, there isn't. It doesn't feel like there's a kind of a. Right, let's just turn to page eight. Let's see right where we got. Four days. How long are they aware that my death is coming? Preparations can take place. [00:19:42] Speaker B: Yeah, that's true. Right. I'm sure if it's not sudden, you've been working on it for a minute. [00:19:47] Speaker A: But when everyone agrees it's time to fucking go into the cliff, literally. Tombs carved into the limestone stone chambers, sealed up with wooden doors, effigies. Right? Carved icons, almost known as Tao Tao, carved fucking dolls are placed outside as. As representations of the deceased. Facing outwards over the cliff, facing outwards over the village. It's the, the, the, the dead almost stay visible even, Even on the landscape, you know, visible in the home. Visible on the landscape after the rituals have been completed, after they've been interred. And I guess in much the same way as we visit our dead in cemeteries, the relationship. Our kind of relationship with the dead then takes on a kind of a lesson, open, less upfront tone. [00:20:44] Speaker B: But yeah, it's like, people get, like. It's a place that you don't really go. You don't go to where the dead are buried in a lot of Western cultures. [00:20:52] Speaker A: Exactly, exactly. Exactly. But. But to the Toraja, they do, you know, the families visit, they speak, they commune, they talk, they ask for protection, they ask to be kind of looked out for. They ask for luck. And every few years, out, they come out the fucking tomb. Clean them up. Yes. They give them new clothes, they will clean the bodies up, they will fix them up, they'll repair them. [00:21:19] Speaker B: Wow. [00:21:20] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe sometimes carry them through the village, take some pics, take some photographs. And this happens now. This happens now. [00:21:27] Speaker B: That's wild, isn't it? That's super wild. I mean, I wonder. The thing that I think of with this is like. I wonder during, like, Covid. What this must have been like, because certainly if they, like, work amongst everybody else, then they must have died like everybody else at that time too. [00:21:49] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:21:50] Speaker B: And like, what that would have. Yeah, like what that would have been like at that point of, like, having, like, a lot of this happen all at once. And, you know, dealing with the sick in this way. [00:22:04] Speaker A: Yes, yes. [00:22:06] Speaker B: Yeah, that's. That's really interesting. Yes, to me. [00:22:09] Speaker A: So. [00:22:10] Speaker B: And then bringing them all back out. [00:22:11] Speaker A: Like, bringing them all back out. When I say that it's. It's the kind of the core thing that they. That their lives revolve around. I'm not kidding. This is always going on. [00:22:21] Speaker B: Yeah. Because if people are always dying, which they are obviously, and this is this much preparation is going into every single one, then, yeah, your life is going to be consumed by death all the time. [00:22:32] Speaker A: And at the same time, like I've said, to be Torajan in 2026 is to be living in two fucking completely different worlds. You still register the deaths officially with the Indonesian state, you know, Right. You still go to church, you still participate. You still go to your fucking job. [00:22:50] Speaker B: Yeah. Put on a suit, go do your thing at work. [00:22:53] Speaker A: But at the same time, the fucking ancestral ways, man, they fucking reassert themselves and kick right the fuck back in. Whenever death shows itself, the space changes. They fucking build their own kind of ritual space around their homes. Everyone comes on in, the dead are invited back, relatives are invited back. Everybody the fucking. [00:23:14] Speaker B: And this isn't a group that largely considers themselves Christian. [00:23:18] Speaker A: Yes. [00:23:19] Speaker B: Which is also fascinating on a whole other level. Like that. [00:23:23] Speaker A: Everything 20th century, they've considered themselves, in the vast majority, Christian people. [00:23:28] Speaker B: Yeah, it's fascinating. I mean, obviously we. We've talked about this kind of thing before, but, like, clearly between colonization and then missionaries. Right? Like, so missionaries come, which is probably why they're largely Protestant, and they come in and they teach them the Christian religion. But when they come and they do this, they realize, like, there's a negotiation that has to happen here where you can't, like, fully replace all of the beliefs of the people that you come and you witness to. And so you go, okay, well, what beliefs do they have that, like, don't totally interfere with ours, that we can let them keep? Right. And clearly in this society, they would not have been able to bring Jesus in here at all, of course, if they were like, but yeah, you cannot do all this death. You have got to. You gotta leave that be. Like, we know what happens when you die. You go to be with Jesus, it's done. You know, whatever. There's nobody left in that. Which is like, what Christianity teaches, right? Is like, your soul has left. And, you know, there's. Christians will tell you, like, oh, you can weigh a person. They even weigh less because their soul is. [00:24:37] Speaker A: Yeah, right. I've seen that. [00:24:39] Speaker B: And so, like, there. There's nothing there. That's like, what Christianity generally teaches. But these missionaries must have come in there and gone. We will make no headway if we do this. We need to let. Have. [00:24:52] Speaker A: Let them do their thing. Yes. [00:24:55] Speaker B: Yeah. So it's really interesting to me to see, like, that kind of thing where it's like, this would be to. If you told an evangelical in America about this, like, they'd be like, they do what? You know, but they're Christians. [00:25:11] Speaker A: I'm certain. I've spoken before, back in the early years about one of the issues I have with things like spiritualists. Right. One of several issues. I have this idea that you can contact the dead. It. It for me, has always shown up in a really unhealthy way for people who cling on to that, deny themselves. Deny themselves a. A productive closure to the grieving process. Right. When you're always looking for, oh, I've. [00:25:40] Speaker B: Seen them in a fucking photo. [00:25:42] Speaker A: I've said, you know, I've given a fucking fiver to a cold reader, you know. Yeah, I've always found that profoundly unhealthy. [00:25:48] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:25:49] Speaker A: But I gotta say, I see nothing Unhealthy here? [00:25:52] Speaker B: Well, yeah, I think that's such a great point because I think you see the huge difference between, like, indigenous practices versus the things that Western cultures have come up with largely in the last, you know, century or two. [00:26:08] Speaker A: Yes. [00:26:09] Speaker B: To deliberately not deal with. With death, often in traumatic situations. Right. We talked about this, Kristen and I, on the Fan Cave episode, about the others that, like, you know, spiritualism often, like. Or when it, like, really boomed, was in the wake of a lot of, like, wars and that, like, really traumatically took people away. Especially, say, World War I. Right. Like during World War I, all of a sudden, particularly in the UK, these men were dying and their families were getting no closure because they died in another country. Right. So they. They didn't see what happened to them. They didn't get to take care of them as they were dying. One day they were alive, and the next they get a letter in the mail or someone at their door that says, you know, they were killed in some battlefield somewhere. They died in a trench. And so spiritualism really comes out of shit like that. Right. Like, people being unable to deal with. [00:27:11] Speaker A: Yes. [00:27:12] Speaker B: Not having closure about death. And. But when you see. Like that is. It is unhealthy. Right. Like, it's trauma. Trauma is inherently an unhealthy thing. Right. Like, that's the. That's the point. But when you see, like, indigenous practices like this, it's a completely different thing. Where it's not a matter. [00:27:32] Speaker A: Context is totally different. [00:27:34] Speaker B: It removes trauma from the equation. Right. Because it's sees death as a part of the life cycle and that, you know, there is a continuation by the fact that, you know, despite the fact that corporeally, this person does not exist anymore, that I have the ability to sort of, you know, speak to this presence that once existed in my life, and it is all part of this grand arc or circle that we find ourselves in. And so when you, like, hear about indigenous peoples and cultures, you know, seeking wisdom from ancestors and things like that, it's not because of a trauma response. It's because of this idea that they have about, you know, the continuity of life and our places as this small part of it. So, you know, I think that's really. It is very different, those kinds of things. And also the grifter element, obviously. [00:28:30] Speaker A: Yes. [00:28:31] Speaker B: But, yeah, it's totally different things. I think that's really fascinating. [00:28:35] Speaker A: Yes. And with the week that it's been, with the year that it's been so far, isn't it fascinating? Because, listen, I am not. I am Not a Tongkonan person. Right. I don't live in a Tongkonan. Sorry I'm not one of the Torajan, but I have trouble believing that they're losing any fucking sleep over the kinds of things that are troubling us right now. Mm. [00:29:01] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. [00:29:02] Speaker A: You know? [00:29:03] Speaker B: Mm. I don't know. [00:29:05] Speaker A: I'd love to ask, are you a Torajan? If so, would you like to come on our podcast? [00:29:14] Speaker B: Yes, please tell us all. [00:29:15] Speaker A: We are quite big in the Torajan. [00:29:18] Speaker B: Circles of the million. [00:29:20] Speaker A: Yep. [00:29:21] Speaker B: Most of them listen to us. [00:29:23] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Big, big audience. Let me quote directly from my notes, if I may. [00:29:28] Speaker B: Yes, please do. [00:29:30] Speaker A: Fucking look at these nerds. O mise en scene. [00:29:33] Speaker B: I don't think anyone has ever said mise en scene in such a horny way before. [00:29:37] Speaker A: The way I whispered the word sex. Cannibal receipt. [00:29:40] Speaker B: Worst comes to worst, Mark, I'm willing to guillotine you for science. [00:29:44] Speaker A: Thank you. That's really, really sweet. It's cold outside, but my pancreas is talking to me. I'm fucking. I'm going to leg it. [00:29:50] Speaker B: You know how I feel about that, Mark. [00:29:52] Speaker A: I think you feel great about it. Is that interesting to you? [00:29:59] Speaker B: It was interesting to me. Thank you. I quite enjoyed that. Well, you know, I love a death ritual. And in fact, this is. Andy had brought this up in a message, you know, he had brought up some interesting topics for us to explore that I've added to my list and whatnot, but nice. I think he hadn't gotten to it yet or whatever, but he was talking about like burial practices and things like that, you know, what different things to do when you die or whatever. And it's always just like a fascinating concept, I think, you know. Yeah. Death is such an interesting thing that happens to every one of us. And yet no matter how much you and I talk about it on this show and no matter how much religion addresses it and whatever else we have about this kind of thing, it's all always going to have this very open ended thing that makes you want to explore it more. [00:30:59] Speaker A: I would like a. I would like a ton burial right here in Bicester if I'm still here in 30, 40 years time as part of my final visit. [00:31:09] Speaker B: Cliff. [00:31:12] Speaker A: A couple hours drive away, you know. [00:31:13] Speaker B: Sure. Yeah. [00:31:14] Speaker A: Let's see how Bicester town council figure that in there. I mean I. Laura could. Could legalize a way around that, I'm sure. [00:31:24] Speaker B: Yeah, she'll figure it out. It'll be fine. [00:31:26] Speaker A: Right. To some people. Anyway. Anyway. Anyway. Welcome, friends. Welcome to this week's Jack of All Graves. So, so I feel like I've got a few bits to chat through here. Right. So I'm not gonna waste time, I'm not gonna fuck about. [00:31:35] Speaker B: Yeah, let's do it. Let's get in. [00:31:37] Speaker A: Hey, I'm not gonna fuck about here, okay. There's something, there's something weird going on that I've just started to kind of pull at the threads of and I've, I've connected a few dots over the past few years. Right. [00:31:56] Speaker B: All right. [00:31:57] Speaker A: It's all kind of swam into focus a little bit lately with my readings with, with book era, with Doppelganger, with Minority Rule, thinking about culture war, thinking about the media, thinking about what the media is doing to, to us. [00:32:15] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:32:17] Speaker A: Plenty of thinkers and writers have drawn a line between the, the fucking current culture war between trans and non trans people as being directly manufactured by legacy media. [00:32:29] Speaker B: Right, Right, exactly. [00:32:30] Speaker A: So come with me on this a second. [00:32:32] Speaker B: Okay. [00:32:33] Speaker A: Because I think the same is happening in other fields and I don't know why it's happening. Do you name your weather over there? Do you name your weather? Do you name your. Right, because we've started naming our weather over the past few years. Right. [00:32:46] Speaker B: Only recently. [00:32:48] Speaker A: I can, I can only, it, it's, it seems now that every time there's a prolonged period of inclement weather, it has a name. [00:32:57] Speaker B: Yeah. We've always done that my entire life. [00:32:58] Speaker A: Right. We've, I, I, we may have been doing it for longer, but it's only. [00:33:03] Speaker B: Been, it's only, yeah, there's just more storms for them to name and. [00:33:08] Speaker A: Well, yeah, possibly, possibly, possibly. But the media are talking kind of non stop about whether with names now. Right. And Right. Think Mark, put these pieces together. I don't ever want to be the sort of co host that I don't ever want to be an old man yelling at a cloud. Right. I'm 47, but I'm not there yet. But, but, but it feels to me that we used to be able to handle weather better before the media started screaming about how nuts the weather was gonna be. Right. I, I sat down in front of the TV this week and a few stations, a few TV news programs referred to the storm that we've just had over the past few days as weather bomb set to hit uk. A what? A what? A weather bomb. [00:34:07] Speaker B: Is that a, is that the term that the, what do you, what do you call it the meteorologists use? [00:34:12] Speaker A: Met Office? Certainly not. That's, there's no such thing. That doesn't exist that is no self respecting meteorologist or climatologist would ever use that term. Surely, surely there's a thing called a. [00:34:24] Speaker B: Bomb cyclone but I don't think that's the same thing. [00:34:26] Speaker A: Weather bomb set to hit the uk, right? [00:34:28] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:34:30] Speaker A: And trains get cancelled, work closes and I guarantee you those same media outlets, those same media sources will in five, six, seven months time at the end of the year. Tell me more about how the economy is sucking, how the economy has failed to perform as expected. Whereas what they're also doing is queuing people up to fear the fact that they're queuing people up to expect disruption from weather. Right. There's something going on there. I, I was due to have a tooth pulled earlier this week and I'm in a lot of pain at the minute from it, from a tooth and I woke to a voicemail that had been left a quarter past seven. Sorry Mr. Lewis, are gonna have to move your appointment. The dentist can't make it because they're affected by the storm. Right, right. Corrigan, Corrigan in your town really? Or look even in our like an hour journey any direction from my town which, which, which that dentist could reasonably be expected to live in. It was just rain, right? It was just some rain and regular, all rain but yet that dentist was either affected or felt affected bad enough to not get into work even though it was just some rain. [00:35:47] Speaker B: Right, yeah. [00:35:49] Speaker A: There's something going on there where people are being queued up to panic about things to panic about. Weather resulted in disruption, right. It has resulted in power cuts, it has resulted in the, some of the country, the north of country, Scotland. The north has had intense snow. It has, I'm sure not taking that away from you. [00:36:09] Speaker B: Big audience you're talking about. Yeah. This particular from you just the basic. [00:36:14] Speaker A: Normal national fucking media was queued up to panic and terrify over this and it's. And it's a repeating pattern. It's a repeating pattern. It's the. [00:36:23] Speaker B: Well I think overall, I mean, yeah, what you're talking about here is the way that like basically the clickbaity nature of news now in general, right is like you want to, you know, people have options and that they're always either going to change a channel or look at their phones and not pay attention to what you're you know, putting out there and you want to, you need to get an emotional reaction from the people. [00:36:47] Speaker A: That's exactly what it does. My kids were absolutely keyed up and expecting their school to be closed this week and it was not Right, Thank. Good job. Good job. My kids, school, they opened, but my kids went to bed having been primed by the media, by the news, by their friends, by the conversation. Our school's gonna be closed. We're gonna have a storm day, snow day, whatever, we're staying home. And there was fucking mayhem in the house when they had to go to school the next day. [00:37:15] Speaker B: It's so funny too, because now, like with climate change and things like that, like that kind of thing that like closes schools when I was a kid used to happen all the time and it doesn't anymore. [00:37:26] Speaker A: Okay, Okay. [00:37:27] Speaker B: I can't remember if I said this to you or not, but I know that I told you about the couple that we talked to when we went up to the volcano and, and we were waiting for it to erupt and, you know, we talked to this retired couple who sort of chase all kinds of phenomena all over the place to, you know, be able to see these kind of once in a lifetime events and stuff like that. [00:37:47] Speaker A: Super cute. [00:37:48] Speaker B: Yeah, gave me the little honu. Yeah, yeah, yeah, little turtle. But that one of the things that he said to me, you know, we were just chatting and I said, you know, I remember when I was a kid and it would be like, you know, three, four feet of snow and like sitting there and waiting to find out if the. Because he was from Massachusetts too, and like waiting to find out if school was closed or not and things like that. And he was like, oh, if you were getting three or four feet of snow, I can't tell how old you are. But that was clearly a long time ago, right? Like, we don't get that kind of weather anymore. That's, you know, they don't get three or four feet of snow every winter in Massachusetts. And so like, because of climate change, a lot of those kinds of things, there's less of than there used to. There's actually not as much of this. And yet the media, you know, getting people all like, this is going to be crazy. [00:38:41] Speaker A: And it's so clear that that is exactly what is happening is priming people to disruption and to expect madness and to get people fucking wound up and. [00:38:53] Speaker B: Feared, which, like, to be fair, your dentist may have just wanted a day off and it was a reason. [00:38:59] Speaker A: Listen, the benefit of the doubt, right? [00:39:02] Speaker B: Yes. I know you love your dentist, but actually I don't. [00:39:06] Speaker A: I've got a different dentist. I've got someone else. I don't have Kate, unfortunately, which is a big, big blow to me actually, because my dentist was fit. But why, What Is it? And who benefits from getting people primed to expect disruption? [00:39:26] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's straightforward. I don't think it's that, you know, unclear. I think it's just the same reason you click on, you know, people click on Daily Mail or whatever the case may be. Yeah, I think it's. I don't think that there's anything all right. Like interior. I think they are just trying to keep you tuned in. [00:39:44] Speaker A: Had I spotted this five years ago, I would have agreed. Right. I don't think. I just think it's the way that the attention economy works. [00:39:52] Speaker B: Right. [00:39:53] Speaker A: But I don't know. I don't know. It's. It's so ubiquitous that every news source, from the most globally recognized and trusted news brand in the world, BBC to commercial news to radio, everybody was saying the same thing again. [00:40:09] Speaker B: You're exactly it. Each one of those is competing against each other to get you to keep listening to it. So if they're just on there, like, hey, just so you know, drive carefully. It's gonna be a little bit of a wet one out there. Like that's not gonna hold your attention. Like the one that's like there is a bomb of weather. [00:40:28] Speaker A: You make a great point. [00:40:30] Speaker B: They're trying to keep your attention when they know that you are this close to changing the channel. Your brain's in TikTok mode and they're like, how do we keep you here? Which is interesting thing. I'm probably gonna write a blog about this, but because I found this really fascinating. I watched this video that was actually asking about. It was talking about like the idea of attention. Right. And obviously we all talk about like our, our attention spans getting shorter. And you've talked a lot about this in recent weeks and going into your book era. And one of the things that you've said about this is that you've been really happy to find that you're able to, to go back to giving your attention to this stuff. Right? Yeah. Like you, you were worried that like, have I lost this ability forever? And so there's aren't like a ton of like studying attention is really difficult. And so, you know, there's been various ways that people have tried to study our attention and you know what, you know, the Internet and TikTok and things like that are doing. But one of the things that like so far studies have shown is that specifically short form video, TikTok and YouTube, what do you call them? Shorts. [00:41:46] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:41:47] Speaker B: Specifically kill your attention span, make you perform terribly awful for your cognition. I Was actually thinking when I watched this, I would love for you to watch it with Owen and just like talk through the findings of this. Because other things they have not found this with, right? Like incredible Facebook, you're, you know, even a scrolling feed, like Blue Sky Twitter, things like that. It's short form video specifically, that is really bad for our attention and cognition. [00:42:19] Speaker A: Well, yeah, I mean, either last week or the week before I spoke about it, that that's the one form of social media that has been weaponized by design, Right? [00:42:26] Speaker B: Yeah. It really went along with what we're talking about. [00:42:29] Speaker A: There you go. Fucking right? [00:42:30] Speaker B: And that you were saying the guy who invented it was like, fucking. [00:42:34] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, sorry, yeah. [00:42:37] Speaker B: It's short form video is deeply bad for your brain. From the studies that they have been able to compare it to other things and stuff like that. And so, again, like, that is what the media is competing with, right? Is this thing that is so absorbing that it takes all of our attention away from anything else that we could possibly hope to be paying attention to. Like they're competing against this feed, which, you know, another thing that was really fascinating about this, was it talking about sort of an illusion of choice thing, right? What these short form video things do is essentially turn off your brain and you think you're training your algorithm, right? Oh, it's finding more things that I like. And that is not what it's doing at all. It is very much programming you to watch certain things instead of the other way around. And it's actually very difficult. And I found this myself, like, because, you know, I hate stuff like TikTok and things like that. And, you know, rarely I look at the reels people send me sometimes, but I don't, like, scroll through them. And one of the things that frustrated me when I tried to watch TikTok videos was that I was like, okay, well, I would be interested if I could watch like disaster videos here, right? Like, if I could find like natural disaster videos and watch. [00:43:56] Speaker A: Okay, okay, okay. [00:43:58] Speaker B: You know, tsunamis and earthquakes, things like that. Hindenburg, you know, whatever. Yeah, like just disaster videos, I think are interesting. And the idea that people's perspectives are captured on things, I would be interested in seeing that. And so I tried to get the algorithm to show me that. And do you remember what I kept sending you screenshots of that it was actually showing me. [00:44:18] Speaker A: Remind me. [00:44:19] Speaker B: It was like naked women doing contortion. [00:44:23] Speaker A: Yes, I do remember this. [00:44:25] Speaker B: And it was like nothing I could do would get this to like, do the things that I want. It to do. And even now like someone will send me a TikTok or whatever and that's basically the only time I open that app. And then when I try to close out of it and it takes me to like the feed, it's always like a Fox News thing, like something to promote Trump, things like that. And I'm like, I don't have control over this at all. Yeah, but it makes you think you do. [00:44:50] Speaker A: I was. [00:44:51] Speaker B: And just keep scrolling. [00:44:53] Speaker A: Chat about this later. But I, I'll, I'll talk about it now. I mean it's validating that what, that what we spoke about is, you know, it isn't just being, we're not just being cranks. This is, this is demonstrably, this is actually a thing and book era. I've just finished Tim Berners Lee's book. This is for everyone. And this guy created, you know, he created the World Wide Web. He didn't create the Internet, but he used his fascination with the potential of hypertext and got, you know, stakeholder approval at CERN and fucking built the world Wide Web and gave it the fuck away for free. Right, right. Just gave it to everybody. What a fucking lad. And the, the, his book is wonderful. It's, it's as much a memoir as it is a, A kind of a retrospective on, on his views of what has happened to the web since then. And he 100 goes right for the jugular of short form video and social media. You know, talks in detail and at length about the attention economy and how it was a massive, massive wrong move for governance. Not, you know, for governance to have allowed capitalistic interests to have taken the, you know, a colossal amount of the traffic that goes through the Internet and diverted that from the early days of the web when the vibe was very much weirdness and creativity and unpredictability and collaboration, which it was. I was there, you know. [00:46:35] Speaker B: Right. [00:46:35] Speaker A: It was a weird time when you never knew if you were going to get something wonderful or horrific buying the club. To have allowed that frontier spirit to have been co opted and just monetized at every step. And he hates it and is working on alternatives. Maybe a little bit too optimistically. I think it's too late. He does not. [00:46:57] Speaker B: Yeah, you know, of course I'm gonna be on his side on that. I mean one of the things that I've tried to do lately is, you know, bit by bit find like AI free things. Like now I use Vivaldi as my browser. Working on switching From Gmail to ProtonMail, you know, working on like Anything that I can do to drift away from that, I know other people are doing that as well, like. Or trying to find things that are not, like, owned by the same, you know, four or five companies and things like that. And I think, you know, like, with how much people hate AI, particularly in the United States, I know it's not that way everywhere, necessarily, but in the United States, people hate AI. And we can be that general. [00:47:43] Speaker A: Can we? Do people hate AI? [00:47:45] Speaker B: Hate AI? Yeah, it's the, like, you know, polls on opinion of it and things like that are very negative. You know, there's always going to be the people who use it, or they, you know, they're like, well, it's necessary evil or whatever, and they use it for that. They don't. They don't like AI. That's not a thing people enjoy. It's making everything worse. And, you know, you'd have to be stupid to not see that. Right. Like, I can't do anything anymore because AI makes things harder. So public opinion of AI is very in the trash in the United States. And generally, I think people are often trying to find, like, something to make their experiences of things better, and people are opting out as well. People just using less social media, trying to just, like, peace out of the whole thing. [00:48:31] Speaker A: What Tim Bersee is optimistic about is the kind of the disruptors in the social media space, Blue Sky Mastodon. He mentions those by name as being, you know, really excellent and promising alternatives to the fucking idiocy of X and Facebook and whatever. [00:48:48] Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah. You know, having. When it's so clear that stuff doesn't work anymore. I mean, Mastodon is too complicated. It's never gonna work. But, you know, in terms of, like, Blue sky just being Twitter, basically. [00:49:01] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:49:02] Speaker B: You know, if you have something people can jump to. [00:49:05] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:49:05] Speaker B: And they're not getting anything from the thing they were on before they, like. Because we always did that. Right. Like, you know, when I think through my history on things of being, you know, Friendster, LiveJournal, MySpace, Facebook, you know, Instagram, blah, blah, blah, It's. I'm not loyal to any of these platforms. Just once it hit a certain point. There has not been a viable alternative since then, and that's by design, too, to what you talked about last week. Like, you know, why is there no viable alternative to Facebook? Because, you know, Zuckerberg buys it every time or in other ways gets it, like, shut down. Like, Instagram. Wasn't Facebook that, you know, it was getting too popular and pulling people away from Facebook. So he bought it. And so just things haven't popped up since then that work as well as the thing that we're already built into, but if those existed, people would leave. [00:50:04] Speaker A: I just want to rewind 15, 20 minutes here, right? Just. I'll. I'll wrap this topic up for now with one more fucking weird example of what I'm talking about. [00:50:16] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:50:17] Speaker A: So it's felt to me over the past few years that media are priming us to be afraid of weather now, right? [00:50:25] Speaker B: Which, like, I mean, if they were doing it the right way, they should be. But that's not what they're doing. [00:50:32] Speaker A: The Daily Mail, right? Awful fucking shit rag, right? [00:50:37] Speaker B: Yeah, Right. [00:50:38] Speaker A: But the Daily Mail has run the exact same fucking story every year since as long as I can remember. I first noticed this three years ago, bro. I've gone back to 2019, and I'm right. They have run one particular fucking story every single year, at least since 2019 and probably before. Right? [00:51:00] Speaker B: Okay. [00:51:01] Speaker A: I'm gonna read you some headlines. [00:51:02] Speaker B: Do it. [00:51:04] Speaker A: April 2025. Fears grow as record number of killer Asian hornets have already been spotted this year. [00:51:12] Speaker B: Right? Yeah. [00:51:16] Speaker A: September 2024. Urgent warning to Britons over invasion of Asian Hornets. I'm gonna continue 2023. April warning as deadly Asian hornets sighted in Kent for the first time in four years. Back to 2022. Brace for return of Asian hornets. [00:51:35] Speaker B: Have you ever seen an Asian Hornet? No. [00:51:38] Speaker A: Neither has anybody that I know. 2021. Scientists urge Britons to help stop an invasion of Asian Hornets. 2020. Killer Asian Hornets Spotted in Hampshire. One more. 2019, Britain. Braces for invasion of deadly Asian hornets. [00:51:58] Speaker B: Wow. [00:51:58] Speaker A: What's going on here? [00:52:00] Speaker B: I mean, I think that's very thinly veiled, sort of. [00:52:06] Speaker A: Oh, it's xenophobia. [00:52:07] Speaker B: Yeah, Xenophobia happening there. Right? But that's wild. To just keep running that same thing yearly on any other provider. It's like they just pull it out. It makes. I wonder how many other things they do this with. Like, if you. Because here's the thing is you're not reading the Daily Mail, so I wonder how often they have, like, stories like that that are just like, hey, pull that one back out of the. The file. Just run that again and again. [00:52:39] Speaker A: That. That's something that I kind of loosely noticed a year or so ago, and I wonder if they're still doing that. And they are like a calendar item every single year. That is Invasion of deadly Asian Hornets. I'd love it if someone can pull some strings, make some calls. If you've got friends in legacy media. Online fucking news, please. Why the Annually. Is the Daily Mail trying to make me scared of deadly Asian hornets? Right. Who. Where's the money? Follow them. [00:53:11] Speaker B: Once again, I think you know the answer to this. Oh, it's not really about the Asian hornets, of course. [00:53:18] Speaker A: It's. It's very thin. [00:53:19] Speaker B: It's not the bees. Yeah. [00:53:22] Speaker A: What a fucking crazy story to run year after year. [00:53:25] Speaker B: Yeah, that is. That is wild to have caught and noticed and then be able to trace that through the years. [00:53:32] Speaker A: All right, I'll move on because I'm starting to sound like a crank. [00:53:37] Speaker B: Yeah. If you guys though, if you. If you've noticed things like this, do let us know. And if you have a different opinion, you know, am I underselling it? Is it more than just, you know, vying for your attention? [00:53:50] Speaker A: Or am I wrong? I'm speaking to banners directly here as our risk. [00:53:53] Speaker B: Oh, that's true. Yeah. [00:53:55] Speaker A: Should I be worried about an invasion of deadly Asian hornets? I don't know. [00:53:59] Speaker B: It's a valid question. They're just lying in wait. You know, this year for sure is the year they're getting to bister. [00:54:07] Speaker A: Fucking weird world, man. The torridge and don't give a fuck about any of this. [00:54:11] Speaker B: Give a fuck, man. You know what they'd say to those bees? Fuck you. [00:54:15] Speaker A: They would. They would invite them to have a chant. [00:54:16] Speaker B: Yeah. Hey, why don't you guys come in? [00:54:19] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:54:21] Speaker B: Make sure you greet grandpa. [00:54:26] Speaker A: Right. Can I just ask you one. Can I just ask you one last thing? [00:54:29] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:54:29] Speaker A: Do it before we get on to. Before we move on. So America is a very strange place, isn't it? [00:54:37] Speaker B: Right. Which. Yes. [00:54:39] Speaker A: I don't really understand it. [00:54:41] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:54:42] Speaker A: And one of the. We're all about cultural exchange here on Jack of All Graves. [00:54:48] Speaker B: Indeed. It's our bag. [00:54:49] Speaker A: I am not an American. Corrigan is not a British. And from time to time, when things occur, I'll openly ask her in a wide eyed vibe of childlike naivete and innocence. I'll ask her to cut to the core of social norms. Just things that you just do. Things that you accept around you that maybe haven't translated over the Atlantic. Maybe the signal has got mixed up and I don't really get what they are. And I'm gonna ask you something right now. [00:55:18] Speaker B: Right. Okay. [00:55:19] Speaker A: I can't. I don't know why. This is why I haven't asked this in the last five some years, but do me a favor. What is the field sobriety test. [00:55:33] Speaker B: Like? General? [00:55:34] Speaker A: Yeah, Talk to me about that. If you don't mind, Just FYI, right, If. [00:55:40] Speaker B: Yeah, okay. [00:55:41] Speaker A: In Britain, if I'm driving, let's say it's maybe 10 o' clock at night, it's dark, I got a copper behind me, and maybe I'm waver, wobbling, going over the line a little bit on the road. Whoa. They'll bang the lights on, they'll pull me over, they'll invite me to step out of the car, and they will give me a Breathalyzer test. [00:56:03] Speaker B: Okay, gotcha. [00:56:04] Speaker A: Okay. They will pull out a little gizmo with a little tube and they'll tell me to breathe into the tube and they'll go, keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going. Stop. And then instantly, this little fucking box will show, literally, chemically to the nano liter, how much blood volume is in alcohol is in me. Right? [00:56:26] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. [00:56:27] Speaker A: Now, what happens if a cop suspects that I might have had a drink in the States? [00:56:31] Speaker B: So that is an option, but you can reject a Breathalyzer. [00:56:37] Speaker A: Yeah, you can do that here. You can say, nah, I'm good, I don't want to. [00:56:40] Speaker B: And then what do they do? [00:56:41] Speaker A: And they'll take some blood from you. [00:56:44] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. They couldn't just take blood from you. That would. If you reject a Breathalyzer, they're not taking your blood. But. [00:56:51] Speaker A: So there's also a Breathalyzer option at the station as well. They've got one at the fucking cop house, which they can take you to and get you to breathe into that. And then blood is like an optional two down the line. [00:57:00] Speaker B: Yeah. So instead of taking you all the way to the station, what they will do is go, all right, you don't want to do the Breathalyzer, then here, do some basic tasks for me. You know, I think it's things like saying the Alphabet backwards or walking in a straight line and touching your nose or things like that. [00:57:19] Speaker A: I'll tell you if you'd like. [00:57:21] Speaker B: Oh, you have some. Okay, great. [00:57:22] Speaker A: There are three elements to the field sobriety test, Right. The first is medically known as horizontal gaze nystagmus. That's where they move a fucking back and forth and see if you can track a pen or an object in front of your eyes, right? Yeah. The second is walk and turn. So you fucking walk the heel to toe across a straight line, turn in a very specific kind of manner, do a fucking 180 heel turn and walk back all the time counting your steps out loud, right? [00:57:56] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:57:57] Speaker A: And then the third bit is stand on one leg while counting out loud for 30 seconds. [00:58:04] Speaker B: Okay. Which I couldn't do on my best day. Yeah. [00:58:11] Speaker A: And they will do all that. [00:58:13] Speaker B: Mm. [00:58:14] Speaker A: This fucking weird pantomime, this weird physical, you know, gamut of tasks that you have to run on the side of the road, often at night. [00:58:25] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:58:26] Speaker A: For them to determine, rather than getting you to blow into a fucking tube for. [00:58:30] Speaker B: Well, because you can say no. If you say no, then. Well, what would be. I mean, they're not gonna, like, just take every person into the station. Like, sometimes people are tired or something like that. You know, like, oh, sorry, I weaved. I was like, falling asleep, things like that. But if they find that you can't pass those field sobriety tests, then you're not going any further. They're like, all right, well, now we are taking you in. [00:58:59] Speaker A: The same is true of the uk if you. If you decline a roadside breath test. They're not like, all right, all right, all right. They're mate, on your way, you'll then. [00:59:07] Speaker B: Right. But you're saying they would take you to station. So they're not going to do that because you might not be drunk. You might, like, just be tired. Like, you're allowed. It's legal to be tired. You know, like, there's things that, like, can cause someone to, like, you know, or they were looking at their phone or something like that, and that's a ticket, but it's not. They're not going to arrest you if you were looking at your phone. Right. Like. So there's different things that may have occurred that made you swerve or look like you were drunk, but they're not all arrestable offenses. [00:59:40] Speaker A: So just as a process point here, if I. I've. I've not. I've never seen in any media a Breathalyzer be offered by an American cop. They always. They always is the breath. [00:59:52] Speaker B: That's just media. Because it's not like an entertaining thing to put in a TV show. Oh, they blew it. And then they. [00:59:58] Speaker A: Exactly, right. [00:59:59] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:59:59] Speaker A: I would get. I would get offered a Breathalyzer first. Yes. [01:00:01] Speaker B: Yeah, you would be. They would likely offer you the Breathalyzer first. Yeah. [01:00:06] Speaker A: Right. And if I decline that, that's when I get invited to do the test. [01:00:11] Speaker B: Yes, the field sobriety test. Exactly. [01:00:13] Speaker A: So I could be. I could have had a drink, declined the Breathalyzer and lucked out and done the tests. Fine. [01:00:22] Speaker B: Right. Well, because also, I think, like, I don't know. Do you know what your legal limit is there? [01:00:28] Speaker A: It's very low. And legislation feels like it's about to get Even lower. [01:00:34] Speaker B: And so I think, like, also, like, the amount that you're allowed to drink here is higher. [01:00:39] Speaker A: Okay. [01:00:39] Speaker B: So it's like 0.08 is like the amount. So technically, if you, like blew a breathalyzer, again, you could still be under the limit. So the field sobriety test tests whether you're impaired, not just whether you are over. Under the legal limit. So, like, I could be at 0.06 and technically that's legal for me to drive, but if I can't walk in a straight line, then they can go, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. Absolutely not. Right. So it's kind of a way of like, you know, I think our limit is higher than yours is, but people are impaired before they get to the legal limit. [01:01:19] Speaker A: Cultural exchange has done its thing. I, I did not realize that a breathalyzer was offered in the first instance. [01:01:25] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Know that you can breathalyze someone and like, if you are a chronic DUI getter to get your license back, they'll like hook your car up with a breathalyzer and your car won't start like in. Unless you have. Oh, does she have that? Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's right. [01:01:42] Speaker A: I forgot before you can drive. [01:01:44] Speaker B: Yeah, that's. There's a fella I knew who had one of those in his car. Yeah. Which obviously also, if you're a drunk, you can have other people do it for you. But, you know, thank you, thank you, thank you. [01:01:58] Speaker A: Hashtag culture exchange. [01:02:00] Speaker B: No, Yeah. I know that our drinking and driving culture is a little different. [01:02:05] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:02:05] Speaker B: Over there. Although I did see the whole thing about how, like now conservatives in the UK are worried that rural bars are going to go out of business if the legal limit is lowered. [01:02:16] Speaker A: Oh, listen, what are we going to. [01:02:18] Speaker B: Do if the farmers can't drive home drunk? [01:02:20] Speaker A: The drink drive limit is quite, I believe, a little bit further down the list of things that are threatening the nighttime economy here. There's a lot with property rent prices and such like right now. Thank you. I. It's, it's still, it's still nuts to me that a cop could go to that field test first, though. [01:02:45] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. I mean, but yeah, like, I think, I think it's smart. [01:02:49] Speaker A: Is it, Is it known as a way of giving somebody? Because like you said, I couldn't stand on one leg for 30 seconds. I probably couldn't walk nine steps, heel to toe. [01:02:58] Speaker B: Is it, Is it like, sir, I have Ehlers Danlos syndrome. That's not happening. [01:03:02] Speaker A: Well, yeah, exactly. Is it culturally thought of as. I mean, is that do cops have a reputation of using it as a way of getting somebody to incriminate themselves? Is it. Am I, look, am I more likely to pass a field sobriety test when white? [01:03:20] Speaker B: Well, that's a good question. I mean, I think that's probably true. But the other thing is that from there, like, you'll still have to go to court. Right. And so like I was once pulled for like a jury that was literally that. It was just, you know, a guy who had gotten pulled over, a Latino guy, and he had, you know, blown. I don't even know. He might not have. I think he didn't pass the field sobriety test. I don't think he blew anything. And so it was put to a jury to decide whether, you know, he would, you know, see jail time or whatever punishment for that. So, you know, it's not the be all, end all what happens at that field sobriety test. At the end of the day, you still. [01:04:06] Speaker A: So even if I fail it, I would still have legal recourse from that point forward. [01:04:12] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Thank you. Yeah, it's a thing I never really thought about, but yeah, it's, you know, like I said, our. Our legal limit is high, so testing impairment is probably the smarter way to go about it. But as with everything. Yeah, I'm sure you're more likely to fail and get arrested if you are from a marginalized group that cop feels like terrorizing. [01:04:35] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:04:36] Speaker B: On a given night, realistically. [01:04:38] Speaker A: Okay, I've banged on enough here. What do you want to talk about? [01:04:42] Speaker B: Well, should we talk about what we watched? [01:04:43] Speaker A: Yes, by all means. First fucking week of the year. Slow, slow. You expressed surprise that I'd returned to Predator Badlands this week. [01:04:53] Speaker B: Well, yeah, because as anyone else who listens to this shows know, you're not like a big re watcher. Like, unless it's like you'll REWATCH youR, like old 80s favorites. Yeah. Your comfort films, but you don't rewatch a movie usually, even if you liked it. [01:05:08] Speaker A: I've been on tenterhooks kind of checking the torrents every fucking day waiting for a decent copy of Predator to come out. I've been really looking forward to seeing it again. I can't believe you haven't seen it yet. It's just as fun second time around. [01:05:20] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:05:22] Speaker A: Maybe this speaks to, you know, no new ideas, looking for new markets to monetize. Obviously, you know, it's a sanitized predator. Right, Right. [01:05:32] Speaker B: Yeah. And I've seen people complain about that for sure. [01:05:36] Speaker A: Yeah. And I'm not I'm not necessarily complaining about it because rather than, you know, it isn't like at home with the Predator. It isn't like Alf. They haven't turned him into Alfred. [01:05:49] Speaker B: Watch Predator vs Elf. [01:05:51] Speaker A: Yes. [01:05:52] Speaker B: Elf vs Predator. It's AVP still. [01:05:54] Speaker A: It's as solid an attempt to reframe Predator into a kind of a more action, space action setting without the gore, without the violence, without, you know, any of the. Any of the maybe more edgier elements. There's no edge to this. It's all, yeah, it's all action, it's all Griblies, it's all jargon. It's, you know, it's. It's a. It's. It's just a space action roller coaster. And it's such fun. I worried if I'd been so harsh on it by giving it three and a half stars, but I got that bang on. [01:06:28] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:06:29] Speaker A: And it places it smack bang in the Alien universe, which I was super intrigued about. Look, you know how much I enjoy watching films, my kids. You know how much I enjoy almost trying to. Is it tragic? I'm 47 and I'm a dad and I want I more so Owen than Peter, who is 12 this week. He's 12 on Friday. I want him to realize that Fortnight didn't fucking invent these characters. [01:06:59] Speaker B: Right? Yeah, right. [01:07:01] Speaker A: And he walked in on me towards the end of watching Predator and like, oh, this is super cool, dad. Yeah, we saw this at the cinema. Why are you watching this again? Because it's so cool. Look, it's in the Alien universe now. Weyland Yutani. And he immediately pipes up with Fortnite. Oh, yeah, I've seen that in Fortnite and. [01:07:16] Speaker B: Oh, no. [01:07:17] Speaker A: Like a red rag to a fucking bull. Right? You little fucker. I thought, I'm not having that. Yeah, you're gonna learn. We're watching Aliens this week. So we did. We had some time. [01:07:30] Speaker B: He watched Aliens. Has he seen Alien? [01:07:33] Speaker A: No, he hasn't. Because. Okay, I'm not. Look, week in, week out, we talk about the attention economy and we talk about how there's no attention span with kids anymore. And I thought to myself, is he really okay? [01:07:46] Speaker B: Yeah. Which is he gonna get into? [01:07:48] Speaker A: You know, is he really gonna engage with a slow burn? Beautifully crafted, you know, wonderful build. Haunted house slasher in space. The alien is. Or is he more likely. And there's more company law in aliens. [01:08:05] Speaker B: Yeah, that's true. [01:08:05] Speaker A: You know, he's got. It's Ripley, who he's got in Fortnight, who he Plays as her pickaxe. Every character has a pickaxe. Right. And of course you can pay Fortnite dollars V bucks for cosmetics. Ripley's pickaxe is a power loader arm that she can pull off her back and use to hack shit up. And I guess so I thought, right, you need to learn. So we sat down. I didn't subject him to the director's cut. [01:08:29] Speaker B: Yeah, that's probably why that would have defeated the purpose. [01:08:32] Speaker A: Yes. And we sat down, we watched Aliens and he engaged beautifully with the, you know, with the marines and the tech. Dad, this looks quite good for a film from the 80s. [01:08:43] Speaker B: He said to me, that's hilarious. [01:08:46] Speaker A: Dad, this looks quite good. [01:08:47] Speaker B: Oh yeah, yeah. For an old classic film, this looks really good. [01:08:51] Speaker A: Clench my hand at the appropriate moments. [01:08:55] Speaker B: So precious. [01:08:57] Speaker A: Yeah. And it look, it's showing its rough edges a little bit. Owen recognizes the name James Cameron now because we talked a lot about James Cameron during the Ocean Gates imbroglio. [01:09:11] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:09:11] Speaker A: Oh, dad, is a James Cameron. Yeah. Big Jim. Oh, Big Jim. And yeah, it's as good as it looks 30 odd years later. 30 years later. Or is it 40? [01:09:23] Speaker B: Yeah, it might be going towards 40 at this point. [01:09:28] Speaker A: It's, it's showing its edges, but it's, it's every bit as good as. As you want it to be. As good as you remember. And that it managed to, that it managed to cling on to an 11 year old in 2026 for a plus 2 hour runtime. Obviously I wasn't letting him walk anywhere, but he didn't even try to walk off. You know, he didn't even try and extricate himself from the lesson. [01:09:52] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:09:53] Speaker A: So one fucking IP at a time, he's gonna learn one fucking character at a time. [01:09:59] Speaker B: I like the strategic way that you approached it. You know, it's not as much as you might want to be a completionist about it. You thought it through, you were like 100%. I don't want to turn him off to the series. Maybe when he's a little older he might be like ready to like sit down and enjoy the art of Alien. [01:10:16] Speaker A: Same with Peter and Freddy. I'm not going to start him on fucking new Nightmare. [01:10:22] Speaker B: Whoa. Hello. I don't understand. Why not? [01:10:25] Speaker A: Well, there's law and it's, you know, it's very meta. It's a movie about movies. If that was the first Elm street you'd seen, you'd be scratching right what's going on here? [01:10:34] Speaker B: Ye. Yeah. [01:10:36] Speaker A: And with that in mind, next time I sit Freddy down in front of him, Peter. Down in front of Freddy. We're gonna skip number two, I think. [01:10:43] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah. [01:10:44] Speaker A: And we're gonna go straight into number three, I think. [01:10:46] Speaker B: I think that seems fair. Yeah. [01:10:49] Speaker A: Gotta give him a chance. I know. [01:10:50] Speaker B: Yeah. Two is great, but it's not the kind of thing that a, you know, 20, 26 teen is ready for. It's like the wrong. Yeah, that's. That's gonna confuse him. [01:11:03] Speaker A: Yeah. In all. In every way to mention. So, yes. The strategy next is for Peter to watch Elm Street 3. And I'll. [01:11:13] Speaker B: I'll. [01:11:13] Speaker A: I'll sit there and I'll look through all of Owen's Fortnite skins and I'll pick a movie for every single one of those. [01:11:19] Speaker B: I love that idea. [01:11:20] Speaker A: That's what I'm gonna do. [01:11:21] Speaker B: That's amazing. That'll be. You gotta do that as a snack sometime, too. To be delightful, Poltergeist this week. Posting it up tomorrow. Kristen and I talked about it on the fan. Fan cave. I mean, I don't need to hype up Poltchageist to you folks. You know it. But if you don't know it, you know, watch it, revisit it. If it's been a minute. It was delightful to introduce Kristen to this. I wanted to start off the year with a classic. And Poltergeist was exactly the right thing to introduce her to. Out the gate. [01:11:53] Speaker A: Jesus. I'm. I'm thinking back over the last hour of this episode, right? I'm thinking of some of the shit I've talked about. I fucking hate myself. And I hate myself even more for what I'm about to say about Poltergeist. [01:12:04] Speaker B: Oh, no. [01:12:05] Speaker A: It is so easy to go. Well, they don't make them like they used to, but they sure as shit don't make that very, very narrow type of horror movie like Poltergeist anymore that is on paper for families. That is on paper of fucking pg, but is so fucking gnarly in places. [01:12:27] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. [01:12:30] Speaker A: And just bursts of surprising practical gore. Absolutely fucking nerve. Shreddingly tense and spooky movie. [01:12:41] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:12:41] Speaker A: And I've seen it quite recently. I'm not. This is an old memory of a movie. [01:12:44] Speaker B: No, I still like that. I still close my eyes and the guy peels his face off and things like that. Like, we talked a little bit about this, you know, and I thought it was interesting when I believe it was. Neil asked us about, like, things from when we were young that, like, spooked us and things like that and that, like this was a pretty popular genre in, like, the 80s and 90s of things that were, like, ostensibly for kids or for families and things like that, but were scary and, like, gory and things like that. So Poltergeist comes up. I had just read. I'm rereading all the Goosebumps books this year. [01:13:20] Speaker A: All of them? [01:13:21] Speaker B: All of them. All of the originals, I should say the original. [01:13:24] Speaker A: How many is that? [01:13:25] Speaker B: Roughly two of them, I think. [01:13:26] Speaker A: Yo, but they're only brief, though, aren't they? [01:13:29] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Like 90 to 100 pages. They're not like, huge books or anything like that. And so I had read welcome to Dead House, and it is, like, so scary, like, legitimately at 40 years old reading it. I was like, this is, like, creeping me out. It's making me feel like I'm being watched reading this. And it's super gory. Like, eyeballs falling out all over the place, faces melting, things like that. I was thinking about watching Are you afraid of the dark? Eerie, Indiana. Like, all these kinds of things that, like, it just is not a thing that they make now. And I think it's really interesting too. Like, one of my favorite shows from when I was in middle school. Yeah. Like, I think eighth grade, ninth grade. Somewhere in that general vicinity was a show called so Weird on Disney Channel, which was about a girl named Fi, who was. Her father had died when she was a baby, and her mother is a touring musician, and she is. They basically, everywhere they go, they kind of. She runs into, like, Paranormal Activity. And all the while she's trying to get in touch with. In touch with her father that she's never met before. And this is like, the burgeoning Internet era, so there's a lot of, like, cyber stuff and things like that that she's finding people through Internet message boards and stuff like that. It's great if you have. You have Disney plus, right? [01:14:47] Speaker A: I had it. I canceled it. [01:14:49] Speaker B: Okay, well, you could also find it on your plex, but I'm not getting. [01:14:52] Speaker A: Someone'S gouging me, mate. [01:14:54] Speaker B: Yeah, great. Little bit of turn of the millennium Internet stuff, but it's, you know, dealing with death in a lot of interesting ways. And all of these shows were that, like, you don't get now. And much like we were talking about with the, you know, indigenous practices around death versus, like, fear of death, I do think that there is something to the way that, like, kind of the millennial generation grew up with, like, a whole lot of stuff about death and dying and processing death and dying that, like, probably Gen Z is not. And Gen Alpha are like, not getting in the same way. And I'm very curious because I don't have kids to, like, know what, like, their view of, like, death and horror and things like that are as a result. [01:15:48] Speaker A: Great, great, great question. And a huge topic, I think. [01:15:51] Speaker B: Yeah. Because I'm like, I can't make any, I don't even have a guess. I don't know how they process any of this. But I'm curious because obviously, like, corporations and parents and whoever is in charge of these things don't make this shit for kids anymore. I'm very curious as to what impact that has on. [01:16:10] Speaker A: I think the only perspectives, the only. Ah, man. The only, the biggest kind of leap forward for me in my cognitive recognition and processing of death is you've gotta have it happen to you. [01:16:25] Speaker B: Right, Yep. [01:16:25] Speaker A: You know, and Pete lost a couple of mice. All right, fine. [01:16:28] Speaker B: But sure, that's the first stage. [01:16:31] Speaker A: That's the first stage. But even at 47, at 47. Vividly, vividly, vividly, with such clarity, do I remember being woken up in the middle of the night to be told that my granddad on my mother's side had died? And I will remember that if every other memory leaves me. I will never forget that. And I, I, I'm sure I've spoken on the cast about, you know, my, my granddad being in his coffin in my nan's house for days afterwards. Open lid. Yeah, just, just his head resting on, on velvet, you know. And since then. All right, okay. Death, that did the trick. [01:17:14] Speaker B: Yeah. Right. It's in your house. Right. Like it's there. Like there's a body, you know, that's, you know, with wakes and all that kind of stuff. It's like, it's there. You're connected to it. [01:17:26] Speaker A: And I think I would have been 11 or 12, Owen's age. And by then, I mean, I, I read horror, I'd started watching horror movies. But that nothing, nothing lets you contextualize death, you know, like experiencing it, like having it happen. [01:17:42] Speaker B: Right, yeah. Which I think, again, which is a good thing, you know, doesn't happen as much to kids and whatnot now as it did when we were young as well, you know, that's like I had friends or friends of friends who died when I was as early as elementary school and things like that in ways that I don't think, like kids really die now and stuff like that. So, you know, I think there's a distance there and I'm just, yeah, I'm just curious you know, like what do. How do kids process it compared to, you know, those who either grew up seeing it more in person or those who grew up with a lot more media faced a head on. [01:18:28] Speaker A: I'll ask. I'll throw this out to the Joag galaxy. You know, is it just that we're not kids anymore and we don't see what the, what the media is. Is there still, you know, is there still dark fiction with a bite? [01:18:43] Speaker B: I mean, I do try to watch it when I see it. I love kids tv. So every now and again like Disney will put out a show that's like the Haunted Hathaways or things like that, you know, that deals with like death or whatever. Not nothing with the bite of a poltergeist or things like that. But every now and again I do see something like that. [01:19:03] Speaker A: That comes Wednesday, isn't it? Stranger Things Wednesday? [01:19:05] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. But those are aimed at like you're supposed to be like what, 13, 14, 15. When you watch that, you're not supposed to be. [01:19:12] Speaker A: I've not read, I've not read Goosebumps. But the one what you're describing there is very much, you know, there's no kind of huge spirit worlds and monsters and the world is at threat. La la. These are all quite intimate. Local level, family level horror. Is that correct? [01:19:30] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I would say that. [01:19:32] Speaker A: I mean, not like eight seasons worth of two hour episodes horror. [01:19:36] Speaker B: Right. [01:19:36] Speaker A: This is kind of. These are little stories. [01:19:38] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a little arc about. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's exactly it. [01:19:43] Speaker A: That's the kind of stuff that I think is very valuable. Super valuable. [01:19:48] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. So I don't know. Another question, you know, for those out there who have kids and whatnot, do, is there something they watch that is like this that we've missed? And also if you have any insights onto what your kids think about death and processing it and things like that. Because we often, you know, it's a thing we say often on this show is like, oh well, like, yeah, we were allowed to watch that but like I wouldn't let my kids or you know, it's probably inappropriate for kids. And I think there's something to unpack in that, you know, like, why. Why are kids so shielded from that stuff? You know, like, why are we so worried about it? I don't know. [01:20:27] Speaker A: I think they should run school trips to the Torrigen communities. [01:20:35] Speaker B: True. Yeah. I also finally got around to watching Man Finds Tape, which was a bone of contention between us because for like two weeks straight I just kept being like, mark, can we watch Man Finds Tape? And he was like, no, I don't feel like it. Or no, let's watch. What was the fucking Oz Perkins one like, oh, no, let's watch. But I just wanted to watch Man Finds Tape. And you were like, no, no, no, let's watch this instead. And I was like, ugh. And then I went to Hawaii where I could not watch anything. And then I open up letterboxd, and what has Marco watched but Man Finds Tape. [01:21:23] Speaker A: Would it comfort you to hear that I can't remember a single. [01:21:27] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, I've lost you. [01:21:29] Speaker A: Oh, what? You lost me? [01:21:30] Speaker B: Oh, there you are. [01:21:31] Speaker A: Okay, sorry. Would it. Oh, my Internet connection's unstable. That's new. [01:21:36] Speaker B: Oh, well, that. That explains it. [01:21:37] Speaker A: I'm still recording, though, and I can say he'll be fine. Would it. Would it help if I said that I can't remember a single thing about it? One single thing? [01:21:44] Speaker B: No, it doesn't help, but no. I kind of feel the same way about was. It was fine, I think, you know, it's got some good gribblies in it. It's, you know, a found footage movie about a girl who's got sort of a troubled brother. Yeah, yeah. Like Internet fame by making, like, creepypasta type. [01:22:06] Speaker A: I remember. [01:22:07] Speaker B: Yes, yes. But then he insists that he has actually uncovered something that is going on where we see a pretty gruesome video in which these people are all walking down the street and then they all suddenly sort of go to sleep. Like, they just kind of slump over all of a sudden. And as a result, a van just slowly rolls over and annihilates a man who is standing in the middle of the street. And then everybody wakes up and, like, has no idea that they missed anything. But now there's a dead guy in the street. And so it's kind of unraveling the mystery of what the hell is going on here in this town where something seems to be, like, causing people to pass out and have no recollection of doing so. And so. Yeah, I mean, it does some good things in it. I think the actors are pretty. Some of them are pretty real, some of them less so, which is real. [01:23:04] Speaker A: As we've said time and time again, is how found footage dies, isn't it? [01:23:07] Speaker B: Right. It's like, how do you believe these people? I think the sort of lead female character really holds it up in that way. She's pretty believable as is. Like, there's a pregnant character in it. She's really good, too. The women basically hold this up, the men are a little less believable. [01:23:21] Speaker A: I think the people are even more important in found footage than the gimmick. [01:23:25] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:23:25] Speaker A: Oh, one, the longer a found footage film goes on, the more difficult it is to sustain the gimmick. Yes, exactly. Do you have a tape rolling at this point? [01:23:34] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. [01:23:35] Speaker A: But if you can, if you can support the gimmick with people who feel like found people. [01:23:40] Speaker B: Yeah, totally. Then you don't. Yeah. You're not watching for the errors in the, in the artifice. Right. Like if, if you're selling me on the people in it, then I'm not going to be paying attention to when little bits of that fall apart. Right. So, yeah, I think man finds tape is fine. It's like nothing to write home about, but, you know, it's solid. It's. Yeah. Got good gribblies and grossness in it. Yeah. [01:24:08] Speaker A: What did you star it, by the way? And what did I star it? Let's take a look. [01:24:11] Speaker B: I gave it 3. You gave it 3.5. [01:24:13] Speaker A: Okay. [01:24:14] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:24:15] Speaker A: Okay. Comforting. I'd like maybe not one for this week, but next week. I definitely would love to look ahead at 2026 from a horror perspective and see what, Is there anything to get excited about? Is there anything to get excited about? [01:24:28] Speaker B: I don't know. I haven't really looked. This last year was not, in my opinion, was not a like super banner year. So I would love to look forward. [01:24:38] Speaker A: I think last year was superb. Actually. [01:24:41] Speaker B: There were a couple things I really liked overall. I could not be bothered with most of, of what came out. [01:24:50] Speaker A: So that's interesting to me. I, I, I'm certain if you think that through there's a lot more to recommend. [01:24:58] Speaker B: No, we talked through this. Yeah, that's like, like this year's movies have been just like extremely white and it showed. And most things I was underwhelmed by or not interested in that. [01:25:11] Speaker A: Okay, now you've said that. That does ring a bell. I was whelmed by a lot more than you were. [01:25:16] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. Like you were more the target audience for a good chunk of the movies came out than I was. And it felt like, yeah, nothing was made for me, although I a list of like black horror that came out this year and it's just none of it was released in theaters, but a lot of it looked really good that I would love to revisit. It's just everything that came out in the mainstream was just like largely a snooze for me. [01:25:43] Speaker A: Well, sinners aside. [01:25:45] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:25:48] Speaker A: Yeah. Actually looking at It. All of these were ones that you kind of mad, but I lost my shit over weapons. Absolutely loved. [01:25:55] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:25:56] Speaker A: Bring her back. I went bonkers. [01:25:59] Speaker B: That I still haven't seen. [01:26:00] Speaker A: You will love it. [01:26:02] Speaker B: Yeah, I. I think I will really like that one. It's just. Yeah. The thing has been, like, not being in the zone to be like, do I want something that's gonna destroy me today? [01:26:11] Speaker A: It's so scary. [01:26:14] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:26:14] Speaker A: What a scary. [01:26:15] Speaker B: I will get to that one. I will get to that one. [01:26:17] Speaker A: The monkey. Yep. Complete disparity on our responses. I think I loved it more though. Did I? [01:26:23] Speaker B: No, no, no, no. I have. I have the Blu ray. Yeah, I bought that. That's the. My 1oz Perkins movie is the Monkey. That's the thing is like, there was like, out the gate, like Sinners and the Monkey. Like, I was like, yes, I'm in great year. And then it was like, from that point forward, I was like, it all. Everything that came out, I was like, together. [01:26:41] Speaker A: You were bored. [01:26:42] Speaker B: Yep. [01:26:43] Speaker A: 28 years later was shit. [01:26:45] Speaker B: Yeah. Awful. [01:26:46] Speaker A: Let me see. [01:26:48] Speaker B: Ed. [01:26:48] Speaker A: Companion. That was again. [01:26:51] Speaker B: Yeah, I like Companion. Very early in the year. [01:26:54] Speaker A: Yes. Drop. I was bored. [01:26:57] Speaker B: Yeah, it was fine. [01:27:00] Speaker A: Yeah. Maybe not such a banner year then. [01:27:02] Speaker B: Yeah. Like, it really. It was not a lot to write home about this year. Except there were a couple of. Yeah. Movies that really wowed white men this year. And I was not taken by any of them. And I just, you know, I hope there's. I mean, I don't. Not hopeful that there's gonna be more diversity because obviously they've been given a huge pass now to Huge. Make sure that there's no diversity in things. Everyone's trying to keep themselves out of trouble. So they're trying not to put anyone of color or queer or anything else into stuff. But I don't know. I think that's one of the things that I'm thinking about this year is just kind of like. Like I said, my, like, big thing is I am no longer watching any movie made by a white man about race. Simply not happening. Not gonna do it. And I am, I think, gonna try to really, like, dig into more of that stuff, like finding like, black horror, queer horror and things like that that doesn't come out in the theater. [01:28:06] Speaker A: Yes. Listen. Absolutely unimpeachable ambition. One battle is gonna win everything this year, though. You know that. [01:28:16] Speaker B: Yeah. I'm so fucking annoyed, but I already muted one battle after another and obaa on Blue sky because it makes me hate people. [01:28:23] Speaker A: I know. [01:28:24] Speaker B: And so I'm like. I Just. I was like, if I mute it, then I don't have to see it. And then I don't hate everyone. [01:28:31] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:28:32] Speaker B: Which shout out to Ella, though, who, as soon as she watched it, she, like, messaged me, was like, oh, my God. How. Why. Why do people like this? This is just fucking awful on every conceivable level. Like, she's like, not obviously not, like, cinematically or whatever, but in terms of story and everything else, she was like, yeah, that's hot garbage. And I was like, thank you. Thank you for just, you know. [01:28:58] Speaker A: Well, yeah, it's. I know. I know you flat out just don't want to talk about it, but maybe the will save a surrounding topic for a little bit later on when it sweeps the board of everything this year and we'll. [01:29:11] Speaker B: Maybe I'm just gonna. Not. I'm not watching anything to watch. There was already a clip of, like, Michael B. Jordan losing the, like, actor award to Timothy Chalamet and, like, his kind of, like, knowing look and whatnot. I was like, yeah, he's like, I'm gonna have to watch Delroy Lindo lose to whoever the. To, like, Benicio Del Toro for being comic relief in a white supremacist movie. Like, I'm not watching award shows and seeing that. Just not gonna. Not gonna subject myself to that this year. Absolutely not. [01:29:46] Speaker A: Okay. [01:29:47] Speaker B: But anyway, the other thing that I've been watching is I've just been binge watching 91 1, the ridiculous Ryan Murphy show, as we'll get to. It's been a hell of a hell of a year in the past week, and I just wanted to, like, kind of turn my brain off and, you know, find something I could do, like chores to and work, too. And also that, like, is just mindless. And 911 is the absolute perfect show for this. Just the dumbest storylines you've ever seen in your life. You know, I. They're super over the top. The ones I was just watching were about, like, a tsunami in la. There's been, like, a giant earthquake. There's, you know, all kinds of insane things happening at all times. None of it really possible, but it's. It's so much fun. And if you're looking for something to. Yeah, it's in, like, season nine. I didn't. I thought it only been on since, like, like, Covid times or whatever, but I guess that's just when I started noticing it. But it's been on since 2018, which is interesting in and of itself. Like, I post about this on Blue Sky. There Was like, a scene where, you know, someone has suffered a head injury, and they're like, all right, do you know what year it is? And, like, 2018. Like, do you know who the President. Can you tell me who the President is? And they're like, do I have to? And, you know, it's like, there's that and there's, like, the. I'm watching the second or third season now. It's like, 2019. And, like, Ronda Rousey is in it. A person that no one has thought of since 2019. Like, there's just all of these little bits of, like, the older episodes where you're like, oh, wow. Boy, the world was different. [01:31:36] Speaker A: Shots. Yeah. Of a time gone by. [01:31:39] Speaker B: Yeah. So, yeah, if you're looking for something, like, very dumb, full of, like, pretty people doing crazy things, lots of gore stuff like that. 911 is the show for you. [01:31:53] Speaker A: Nice book. ERA continues. [01:31:56] Speaker B: Oh, good. [01:31:57] Speaker A: I'm gearing up for another run at the Expanse. I've got two more Expanse books locked and loaded, ready to go. And I'm taking a pause and reading a comic for the first time in fucking ages. I've got a comic on the go. It's the. It's the last Ronin, which is a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles story. [01:32:14] Speaker B: Nice. [01:32:15] Speaker A: And it's quite substantial. Very highly critically acclaimed, and it's fantastic. You can just. [01:32:24] Speaker B: Beautiful. [01:32:25] Speaker A: You know, the. The panels are super detailed. The action is fantastic. The story is really. It's a proper punch to the heart. The story. Mikey is the last turtle. The brothers died. [01:32:37] Speaker B: I was gonna say. I think I read. I read this one. Yeah. [01:32:40] Speaker A: It's like an elseworlds future where, you know, the war between the. The Shredder's clan and Splinter's clan is. Is winding its way to its final confrontation between Mikey and the descendant of Shredder who wiped out his brothers. Oh, it's really good. It's one of those, like, Logan kind of tales. [01:32:59] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:33:00] Speaker A: Where it. It's. The Turtles are old and. And broken down. [01:33:04] Speaker B: Right. [01:33:05] Speaker A: April's got, like, one arm. Good. [01:33:09] Speaker B: Glorious. [01:33:10] Speaker A: Yeah. I love the Ninja Turtles. I love them. [01:33:13] Speaker B: Yeah. Ninja Turtles are great. I'll never be able to tell them apart, but I enjoy Ninja Turtles very. [01:33:18] Speaker A: Much, so it's easily done. [01:33:22] Speaker B: There's a song even. [01:33:25] Speaker A: All you need to do is just remind yourself. [01:33:30] Speaker B: If the song said, like, what color they were wearing, then what weapon they're holding, then I would know who each of them is. Knowing who's a party dude does not totally help me when I'm looking at the panels. So to finish out, you know, last week we, I started out and I was like, listen, we have the whole year to like dwell on our doom and whatnot. I was like, I'm gonna start with like an inspiring tale and like, get, get the year started on like a hopeful note. And well, it's proving difficult. Proving difficult. And, you know, I think maybe we'll just kind of talk through a little bit of this. Especially I'm interested from like your outside perspective. I mean, this whole, the story I told last week certainly seems relevant, that's for sure. [01:34:27] Speaker A: Well, where to fucking start? [01:34:31] Speaker B: I think it started with kidnapping the president of a sovereign nation. [01:34:35] Speaker A: So geopolitically. Right. That's what I'm really struggling with, what your, your country is fucking up to right now. [01:34:43] Speaker B: Yeah, yes, same. [01:34:47] Speaker A: And I. And it's very difficult to believe not just what has happened already, but what, what, what your fucking country seems determined to make happen. [01:35:02] Speaker B: Right? [01:35:03] Speaker A: Not just, just the fucking shit that, that, that is being said publicly before the press. Things like, you know, no one's gonna fight with America over Greenland. No one's gonna fucking militarily stand up to America. I think that was Marco Rubio. [01:35:21] Speaker B: No one. His own morality. [01:35:25] Speaker A: Yeah. Again, again. What is he, Secretary of State? This is our hemisphere. [01:35:36] Speaker B: So fucking crazy. You know, other places can hear you. [01:35:40] Speaker A: This is our hemisphere. [01:35:43] Speaker B: Well, and I mean, what it comes down to is like, is he right? You know, which so far seems to be the case. Like when it came to Venezuela, it's like that should. Everyone should have stopped that from happening. And everyone more or less kind of went, eh, actually, well, we didn't like Maduro, so that's fine. And the next question is like, if Trump somehow takes Greenland, is Europe gonna fucking do anything? Or is he right? Is he, are they right that this is our hemisphere and we get to do whatever the fuck we want? [01:36:25] Speaker A: Like the better minds than mine, you know, historians and politicians and actual military fucking analysts have spoken at length on the news that I listen to day. [01:36:42] Speaker B: In, day out, which I'm very curious about, because obviously we're getting very different news. [01:36:48] Speaker A: It will, if, if through any means other than mutual consent, America decides to co opt Greenland and to make it one of yours, one of your states, however that looks. And there is not a military response to protect it. That means the collapse of NATO. [01:37:14] Speaker B: Yep. [01:37:14] Speaker A: And a complete fundamental reordering of lines of strategic defense and allyship, globally, across the fucking world. [01:37:26] Speaker B: Right. [01:37:29] Speaker A: The midterm and the long term impact of that are completely impossible to fucking Underestimate. [01:37:35] Speaker B: Right. [01:37:36] Speaker A: And. All right, yes. Greenland is. I think I'm right geographically, that it's. It's all that stands between you and Russia. Yeah. [01:37:47] Speaker B: I mean, I guess from an angle, his sort of perspective on it is, you know, we need to have it because it's huge. [01:37:54] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:37:55] Speaker B: Which is a misunderstanding of the map, but I mean. Yeah, it's there. I think there's other stuff in between. [01:38:04] Speaker A: But it's also so craven and kind of extant that with its fucking rich, rich mineral and precious metal deposits, what are referred to as rare earth elements and gold, uranium, It's. It's more obviously than anything else a capitalist venture. [01:38:42] Speaker B: Right. Yes. [01:38:43] Speaker A: It is to secure American wealth, specifically American wealth for generations to come in perpetuity. [01:38:54] Speaker B: Yeah. And American wealth is even. Not really the right way to put it, because it has nothing to do. Like, I would not be impacted by this at all. Corporate billionaires would be the ones impacted by this. Yeah. [01:39:08] Speaker A: Yes. In the same way as, you know, it's always the next sentence or two whenever America discusses any kind of settlement or deal in. In Ukraine. In the Ukraine, Russia invasion scenario that America would have to have pay off in the form of Ukraine's mineral deposits. [01:39:36] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. It's. He's doing a deal here. You know, he's trying to. How do I get paid out of whatever is going on here? And that's the only incentive. [01:39:45] Speaker A: And the advantage that. I mean, I think I said this before, like, months back, but the first, the biggest and strongest air force in the world. Right. Is the US Air Force. Right. The second biggest and strongest air force in the world is the US Navy. Right. [01:40:09] Speaker B: Yeah. It makes sense. [01:40:12] Speaker A: They are correct in saying that nowhere on the globe can militarily step to the US the size and strength and fucking power of your military is utterly, utterly unassailable. [01:40:29] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:40:30] Speaker A: But that being now used so flagrantly and so openly as a means now with the right or wrong person in charge, they can now pretty much use that to do what the fuck they want. Casting aside traditional notions of ally, of allyship, post war, Post World War II, it was it now long enough ago that it doesn't matter anymore. Have we passed that point where we can maybe not. [01:41:04] Speaker B: Reset. [01:41:04] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Not only. Yeah. Do the lessons not count anymore? [01:41:09] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, that's kind of the thing with all of this is it's like a. It is a reset. It's all things that we don't like. We don't get new territories now. We've stopped doing that. That's not. We don't. We don't go and take over other places. It's not a thing we do. You know, we, like, all of this stuff feels like. I mean, obviously now we're kind of taking the, like, Nazi side of this, but we are better armed and better prepared to do what the Nazis were trying to do. And that's kind of what. Yeah, the idea of allies only works if, like, the most powerful or if everyone has similar power. You know, when you have one country that, like you said, has amassed the vast majority of the power, and all the other allies were like, well, we're in this. Like, we've got, like, a social contract situation here, you know, and then that one goes, fuck you. You know, we actually. We decided no. And you've all supported us getting this far, and, well, that was your mistake. Like, what. What do you. What do you do from there? Like, nuke us from orbit? Like, what's the. What's the way that you deal with a rogue nation that could kill every other nation on the planet? [01:42:27] Speaker A: And I'm. That is it. That is it. What. What are you gonna do? Really? What are you gonna do? [01:42:33] Speaker B: Yeah, and that's what Trump and his people have figured out is like, the. They can say they're sanctioning us or, you know, things like that, but also no one's doing that. Like, you know, like, oh, well, if they do this one more thing, we are gonna sanction them. And then no one does it. Like, because also we have the money and no one wants to met. Like, hearing Starmer talk about, like, oh, well, we wouldn't want to do anything that would threaten our allyship with the United States. Like, well, someone's got it off. [01:43:04] Speaker A: Bending over backwards, jumping through hoops, twisting themselves into fucking crazy to not fight us. A single fucking syllable that could even be construed, that could even be manipulated to sound disparaging of Trump specifically. It's not a word. [01:43:22] Speaker B: Not a fucking word. Insane. Because all of this is about, like, money. [01:43:27] Speaker A: Yes. [01:43:28] Speaker B: You know, and if we take Greenland, but no one trades with us, like, that's it. You know, like, if people actually, like, you know, put their money where their mouths were, like, then it would stop him, because then what there'd be. You know, that's the one thing he's going for. But if the response from everyone is just to let us do all this, like, I don't know. I don't know what to do. Like, you know, we can't. We can't stop them from here. Like, it's been very clear. We don't have any power over our government. I think that's very clear. [01:44:09] Speaker A: A minute or so ago there, you used the N word, right? What, and Nazi? Corrupt, the other one. [01:44:18] Speaker B: Like, I did no such thing. [01:44:26] Speaker A: Imagine. But when we talk about the playbook and the lessons of history with a armed militia on your streets, seemingly given the backing of. Of government, the impunity to fucking execute in the moment, without recourse, without reprimand, almost so far. In fact, quite the opposite. Not just without reprimand, but with advocacy. You know. [01:45:06] Speaker B: Right. That JD Van Ice has absolute immunity in these cases, which is insane. Like, this is literally secret police right there. We don't know who they are. Their face is covered. Going, pulling people from their homes and in this case, murdering a woman in the street. Which, you know, I mentioned this on Instagram. It hits close to home. We did our missions at the same place, you know, she and I. She worked with Paul Bowman, the pastor that I worked with in Saintfield, Northern Ireland. Yep. Tiny church. Tiny church. [01:45:40] Speaker A: So you have just one degree of separation between you. [01:45:42] Speaker B: Yeah. I'm trying to think if I may have met her because I think when she was there, she spent the summer there and I had come out to visit my friend Carlos. So I think I may have even met her at the church in Saint Field, but I'm not sure. But either way, like, you know, there's an article in the BBC about her missions work in Northern Ireland. [01:46:00] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:46:01] Speaker B: And it's my friends who are all quoted throughout this, this article because we did our missions work at around the same time at the same tiny church in this itty bitty town of 4,000 people in Northern Ireland. And it makes me feel like very like connected because I'm like, I know, I know her story. You know, like there's a reason I have that giant Northern Ireland tattoo on my arm. It's from spending my time at the same exact place that impacted her so much when she went on her missions there. [01:46:30] Speaker A: She used the. Renee Goode. This is the lady. [01:46:32] Speaker B: Renee Goode. Yes, yes, yes, Renee Goode. She did her missions there with my friend Paul. And you know, I know how that impacted her. And for her, like, she still considered herself a Christian, where obviously I don't. But, you know, knowing her, like, journey and knowing how impacting that was for me and what it did in my life and what it must have been like for her and that we would know all these same people and have had such similar experiences really like, brings that home that it's like, you know, that we have this, like, heart for justice. I think, you know, a lot of us who did, like, missions in Northern Ireland, a lot of this is about, like, you know, this idea of like a country that's like, divided allegedly by religion. Right. And when you go, it's not right. Like religion is a cover for, you know, these larger issues of empire and colonialism and class and things like that. And seeing that in person, you start to like, realize, especially because it wasn't like as long past a lot of like the first time that I went to Northern Ireland, which would have been around the same time as her, like someone had just driven up to Stormont and like, tried to blow it up with pipe bombs. So it was like, still in the midst of like, shit like that was happening in Northern Ireland. And like, you know, learning about, like, peace through this and what kinds of artificial things divide us was such an important part. [01:48:10] Speaker A: Beautifully put. And artificial division. You'll know how thrilling I find it being in that kind of zero hour when notable events occur and watching lines of reporting happen. Watching almost. Lines of almost watching sides being taken, almost watching divisions forming in real time. Most recent example I can think of was Charlie Kirk getting shot in the neck. Great shot, buddy, by the way. And seeing immediately the, the. The. The same predictable people going, he was a saint. No, he wasn't. He was a fascist. And watching the lines getting taken up and stuck to. And the same fucking thing happened instantly in fucking real time. [01:48:56] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:48:56] Speaker A: When you've got video multi angle, within fucking minutes of it happening, every possible angle you can think of was covered of exactly how it played out. And watching the narrative being just denied, being changed in real time by people right in fucking front of you. Hang on. What you're telling me just happened didn't fucking happen, Right? [01:49:26] Speaker B: Yeah. This has been the thing that has really, like, for me, I'm like, you, like, I saw people be like, oh, I watched the video. She ran him over in cold blood and things like that. I'm like, then you didn't watch the video. That's not what happened. You know, she said, I'm not mad at you, bud. And then tried to turn her car and, you know, he shot her and called her a fucking bitch. That's what happened. Like, and that there's people who just completely don't see that. And then a narrative that they're then given by J.D. vance, by the President, by Kristi Noem, things like that. It's this like, dividing, not just the, like the arbitrary division that I was talking about that she and I both would have seen when we were actually talking to people in Northern Ireland about like, why is it like this? And seeing how the government does that. Right. And puts out like this line and says like, oh yeah, what you saw happened isn't actually what happened. You know, what we say is this. And here's who your enemy is. It's this lesbian mom with a dog in the back of her car and you know, stuffed animals in the glove box. Like, that's your enemy right there. You know, it's not us who are shooting you in the streets and raiding your schools. [01:50:43] Speaker A: Sarah Smith, who is a correspondent, she's BBC's North America correspondent. Right. She also co hosts AmericasT, which is twice weekly podcast which I listen to about American things and American matters, spoke of watching news unfolding after the event in Massachusetts last week. Simultaneously, Minnesota. Sorry, my bad. Minnesota. Watching it unfold simultaneously across different channels over there in the states and at the same time concurrently, different channels were relaying the same event with completely different narratives. [01:51:22] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. [01:51:24] Speaker A: That's incredible to me. [01:51:26] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. That you can in real time see the narrative develop. [01:51:31] Speaker A: Yes. [01:51:31] Speaker B: You know, and when you see those little chirons or whatever from like Fox News and stuff like that, that it's telling you what to think. You know, I think I mentioned it's like, you know, my, my father in law watches all of the OANN and Fox News and Newsmax and stuff like that. But like largely through YouTube shorts and, and listening to it is so interesting because I'm like, how do you not hear it? Like, how do you not hear you're being given like direct propaganda? Because if you're looking at anything like, like I was watching the local news. They try to be careful, you know, even when like things come out like they were being a little straightforward because they were like, there's a video, like, here's what your eyes are telling you and here's what JD Vance is telling you. They were pretty clear about that. But at the same time, like, they couch their language. Right. Like they try not to be like leftist about it or anything like that. They're not, they're trying to be like, we're just reporting the news. And then when you see like, you know, what Fox News pops up and stuff like that, like, how are you not watching this and going, I'm being told how to think. [01:52:35] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:52:36] Speaker B: You know, like, how does that not occur to you from people who think that? They're like very critical too. They're like, oh, I don't trust the government. I don't trust this. And then when they're given the exact narrative, they just, like, don't see that they're being spoken to like it's, you know, straight out of a dystopian novel. It's crazy to me. Yeah. [01:52:54] Speaker A: And that exact thing has happened over here as well from different news sources. Not to that extent where our sources are, you know, painting mistruths. But there are differences to just how forthright different news sources over here have been with their language. Plenty of people have shared dismay at how non partisan the BBC have been over reporting of this. [01:53:21] Speaker B: Right. A video that's not your country. You don't have to eat. Talk about it. Like you talk about what's happening in China, you know? [01:53:28] Speaker A: You know. [01:53:29] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:53:30] Speaker A: Like, bystanders claim very, very, very non committal. Whereas the Guardian have led with, you know, a headline. Trump Administration unleashes Torrent of untruths after Woman shot by ice. Fantastic. [01:53:45] Speaker B: The correct headline. [01:53:46] Speaker A: Just no fucking around at all. After quoting Trisha McLachlaughlin, one of these violent rioters weaponized to a vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers. Multiple ICE officers were heard, she insisted, when videos of the shooting showed no such thing. I mean, the Guardian haven't around on it at all. They've been very, very clear. [01:54:04] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's. It's just. I don't know. I don't know. I think this is one of the things I don't know what to do with. Not living in the same reality as other people. You know, like that. And I think it's. [01:54:19] Speaker A: It's. Yeah, there was someone, just like Norman Klein said. It's. It's this. [01:54:22] Speaker B: This. [01:54:22] Speaker A: It's this. It's two people. [01:54:25] Speaker B: Right. [01:54:25] Speaker A: And be in the same place looking at the same sources, getting the same news, but live in two completely different. [01:54:32] Speaker B: Yes. [01:54:33] Speaker A: Timelines. [01:54:33] Speaker B: She's always right. And, you know, I will say there, you know, was a. I can't remember who it was, but a black feminist who posted about this on Facebook and was like, just to be clear, like, you know, it's going to. You're gonna feel crazy every time you see an article about Renee Goode or things like that filled with people saying she deserved it and things like that. And she's like, keep in mind, like, a good chunk of these are bots. For one, they're not real people, and for two, that, like, these are, you know, the people who are sort of chronically on Facebook looking for stuff like this to like, you know, say the worst possible things on and stuff like that, but it's not representative of how people really feel about what's going on. In fact, people hate this stuff. You know, you see so many, like normie white people out, like, protesting ice and filming ice and things like that, because, like, people do not like secret police. They do not like that we have Gestapo around. And so, you know, it's. It's always good to remember that, like, the amplification of the worst voices who live in that alternate reality are not necessarily representative of reality. You know, that they may be louder and, you know, you see more of their comments, but the rest of us who live in reality aren't sitting on Facebook making shitty comments on stuff. [01:55:58] Speaker A: It's the, the, the destination, though, of the train of thought feels to me, at least in much the same way as we talked about the size and the scale of your country's resources. It just means. It just means that it doesn't matter. Yeah, I mean, it's been decided by those who are making the decisions. It doesn't make any difference who fucking is saying what about it. It's gonna happen anyway. [01:56:23] Speaker B: And I feel like this is. I can feel the helplessness that people must have felt, you know, under, like, the impending invasion of Nazis and, you know, countries like the Netherlands and Poland and France and everywhere else in Europe that they came into of, like, no one, no one's gonna save us here. You know, as all of this is happening, it's like the. The government has taken a line and we can't fight our government. We. We do not have guns enough to take down the US Military, no matter how many of us protest and things like that. You know, there's no guarantee that when midterm elections come around or when the next presidential election comes around that there's going to be a peaceful transfer of power. And, you know, they start following the laws and just go, okay, yeah, you can have it. Even if we vote all leftists into, like, office or things like that, you know, they're not following laws. And it's definitely, you know, I, I'm always one who likes to believe there's a way to organize around this stuff and things like that, but it's just like being the biggest power, there's no America to come and pull us out of this, you know, like, nobody else can do that. Maybe if everyone banded together in Europe and Africa and Asia and whatnot and came for us, but that's about all we've got. [01:57:56] Speaker A: Perfectly telling, isn't It. I mean, you spoke earlier and you use the term secret police. There's nothing secret about who the individual is. [01:58:03] Speaker B: Well, they are. They cover their faces so that we can't tell. [01:58:06] Speaker A: I'm certain the guy is known and. [01:58:08] Speaker B: Well, that guy is now, but the rest of them aren't. Like, they come in to people's houses, to workplaces and things like that, covered. They are literally secret police. [01:58:18] Speaker A: A week out and nothing from the guy who pulled the trigger. Nothing at all. The guy vanished and they let ranks have closed. The guy is obviously kept. [01:58:30] Speaker B: They let ICE go and, like, move his. Everything out of his house. [01:58:35] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, delete his social profiles. [01:58:38] Speaker B: Yeah, all of that stuff. Like what? [01:58:41] Speaker A: So it isn't even as though, you know, it being 20, 26 and everybody being connected. It isn't so much that the police is so secret. This guy's identity is freely available, but he himself is not because the organization has closed ranks around him. [01:58:59] Speaker B: Yeah, and they're. They're operating off of, like, the reason they go around masks and stuff like that is because it's harder. Right. Like, if they were walking around, like, cops are, like, they are beholden to the rules that cops theoretically are beholden to, but that's not how they operate. They operate specifically so that you have no one to come after. There's no one who you're going to report to internal affair affairs or anything like that. They're a masked group of people who are outside of the law. You know, they. They operate under their own law, and we don't have any control of them. We don't know who they are. They just get to do whatever the hell they want. Right. Like J.D. vance said, absolute immunity. And, like, that's what secret police is. Whether or not we can identify individuals when they do something like, this is not the point. The point is that we all know that at any given time we could be walking around and without doing anything wrong, a man in a mask can come up and arrest us and do whatever they want. Our IDs don't matter or anything like that. Now they're saying that real id, which is supposed to be the ultimate test of, like, you know, you have American citizenship. They say that doesn't count as an id. They can still arrest you and, you know, hold you, even if you have a real id and they're arresting people based on you. [02:00:31] Speaker A: Look, Brown, I'd love to talk more about reality. I've not heard of that before. Maybe at some point in the future, I'd love you to fill me in. [02:00:38] Speaker B: It's been a thing for the past 20 years or whatever, and they finally just managed to push it all the way through. But yeah, it's basically like an internal passport. It proves that you've jumped through all. No, no, like a ID card. Like a driver. Your driver's license can be in a real id. Mine isn't, but it's like shows you have given all the documents to say that you are a legal citizen in the United States. [02:01:04] Speaker A: Okay. [02:01:06] Speaker B: But doesn't have to accept those. [02:01:08] Speaker A: I see. Wow. [02:01:09] Speaker B: Yeah, they can just be like, you're too dark and arrest you without cause or charge or anything like that. And. Yeah, that's a. That's a scary place to be and to know. Yeah. No one's coming to save us. So what do we. Where do we go? [02:01:28] Speaker A: Yeah. From there it is the 11th of January. [02:01:34] Speaker B: Yeah. So that's cool. I don't know, man. [02:01:41] Speaker A: Yeah. So look, I. We've got to stick around, haven't we, you and I? We've got to keep. [02:01:51] Speaker B: Keep on documenting it. [02:01:52] Speaker A: We've got to keep on talking. We've got to keep on watching it. We've got to keep on talking about it. To. To stop doing so now, I think would be a complete waste. [02:02:02] Speaker B: Right. And if the secret police pick me up, you gotta. [02:02:05] Speaker A: Yeah. [02:02:05] Speaker B: You gotta tell everybody about it. [02:02:07] Speaker A: Yes, exactly. I hope that doesn't happen, but, I mean, I can't tell you definitively that it won't. [02:02:14] Speaker B: Right. Yep. No idea. No clue. We just gotta hope and I don't know. That's not. [02:02:23] Speaker A: That isn't even alarmist, though. That's the mad thing. That isn't even. This isn't even theory. This isn't even hyperbole. [02:02:29] Speaker B: Exactly. That is what is so bananas, I think, to like, wrap your head around is that like, as I read things like the story that I told last week, and like anything about Nazi Germany or things like that, anything about fascists anywhere really, that's like this. This is it. This is. And you know, it's international. We're trying to take over other countries and we're stealing the president from another country. And like, this is your baseline here is deeply alarming. It's not alarmist. It is alarming. And you know, if. If no one steps in, I don't. I don't know what happens next. [02:03:17] Speaker A: Okay. And I think anyone who claims that they do is full of. [02:03:25] Speaker B: True. [02:03:26] Speaker A: So let's see. Friends. [02:03:27] Speaker B: Yeah, we'll see. [02:03:29] Speaker A: Going anywhere? [02:03:30] Speaker B: Keep it on. [02:03:31] Speaker A: No, but we're, you know, delighted with the few hours a week that you give us and continue to give us. [02:03:40] Speaker B: Indeed. [02:03:41] Speaker A: That's why we do what we do. Thanks very much indeed. I'm gonna wrap it up. Corey, what do you think? [02:03:44] Speaker B: And a big congrats to Ryan. [02:03:46] Speaker A: Oh. [02:03:46] Speaker B: For running her marathon. [02:03:48] Speaker A: Rip Ryan's knees. [02:03:51] Speaker B: Right. Good grief. Could not be me, but bless you, Ryan. Third time's a charm. And God damn it, you did the fucking thing. So congratulations on your marathon this week. Anyone else have any accomplishments that we're missing out on? [02:04:08] Speaker A: Well, if you. If. If you did, and we have, then we're very, very proud of you. [02:04:13] Speaker B: We are. [02:04:13] Speaker A: If you've done something cool, something you're proud of, something you've shared with others, if you've helped out your community or your family or even yourself, if you had. If you cooked yourself a little treat, then we are fucking proud of you, whatever you do. Because the world needs it and it needs you. So don't go anywhere. [02:04:29] Speaker B: Here. Here, you just. Wherever you are, you stay spooky.