Ep. 253: death on mt. hood

[00:00:04] Speaker A: I'll start. I'll just start by saying what I am hoping for from you tonight. Right? [00:00:08] Speaker B: Oh. All right. [00:00:10] Speaker A: Let's see if I can deliver listeners, darlings. We haven't spoken. Corrigan and I haven't spoken about her opener at all ahead of this week, ahead of going into this week. And I'm a mercurial type of guy, as you might know. I. My. My whims, my desires just come and go. They blow like the wind. I. I'm. I'm a different person for different seasons. Every hour of every day seems. Sees a different version of me present itself to the world. I'm never the same guy twice. Right. [00:00:41] Speaker B: Okay. [00:00:42] Speaker A: Some people find that off putting. Some people find it difficult to get a handle on. You know, I don't have many close friends, Corrigan, and maybe this is one. Maybe this is one of the reasons why. It's because I'm so inconsistent in my. In my desires and in what will please me at any given moment. So I will tell you now what I would love from you tonight. Right. [00:01:00] Speaker B: All right. Hit me. [00:01:01] Speaker A: Okay. I would like a story that has a slow build towards a climactic disaster. Right. I would like a series of circumstances that in and of themselves, if you just look at the constituent parts of the story, nothing really seems out of place. But when. But when interconnections happen and when the ball starts to roll and the machine starts to tick, events build, build, build towards absolute calamity. That's what I want from you tonight. [00:01:34] Speaker B: Honestly. [00:01:35] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:01:36] Speaker B: I got you. Oh, I have got you. I'm. That's impressive. [00:01:42] Speaker A: I knew you would. You know, like how. [00:01:44] Speaker B: I cannot stress enough. I have not told Mark what I'm talking about today. Yeah. [00:01:49] Speaker A: Is that. Well, right. Hit me. Let's see how fucking. Let's see how pleased I'm gonna be. Maybe by the end of it I won't want that anymore, but. [00:01:56] Speaker B: Yeah, maybe you'll change your mind because I will say it is not a happy story. [00:02:00] Speaker A: Great. [00:02:00] Speaker B: Here. But I can't remember how to. Put your hand down here. Oh. Here you go. [00:02:05] Speaker A: Oh. [00:02:07] Speaker B: Marco gestures wildly and I'm constantly having to lower his hand in the zoom. But Mark, you know I love the snow. [00:02:16] Speaker A: Sure. Well, you have. You have lots to love right now. [00:02:19] Speaker B: Lots to love right now. We don't usually get a ton of it where I live in New Jersey, but not only did we get a solid snow the day after Christmas, now we're in a full on winter storm. There's like 7 inches outside my window as we speak and it's still going. Me and Wally are in heaven just watching it out the window. But it's easy for me to love snow. I work from home, so. [00:02:45] Speaker A: Seven inches, you say? [00:02:47] Speaker B: Yes. [00:02:47] Speaker A: So that comes up kind of to your waist. Because you are short, aren't you? [00:02:54] Speaker B: You see why Yotta don't make me come over there. [00:03:01] Speaker A: Because you are short. [00:03:04] Speaker B: I am short. But like I said, it's easy for me to love snow. I work from home, so if I choose, I would never have to go out there and face things like icy roads that make snow actually super dangerous. But in reality, there are a lot of ways, big and small, that snow can really fuck up your day, or your life for that matter. For example, it's actually illegal, at least in New Jersey, to drive with snow on your car. [00:03:34] Speaker A: Yeah, same here. But same here, Same here. And yet. And yet. Whenever it's been snowing on the school run, you'll see sheets of snow falling off car rooftops. [00:03:44] Speaker B: Exactly right. People do it all the time. And this can lead to the snow sliding down their windshield and blinding them to the road. Or it can slide off their car and onto someone else's, doing the same thing to the person behind them, or even worse, sending a sheet of ice through their windshield. No one likes having to painstakingly brush and scrape several inches of snow off their vehicle. It's a considerably more annoying chore than just shoveling, especially now that we all drive mid size SUV's. And like you said, I'm short. I can't even fully reach a good chunk of the car to clear it. I have to like climb on the tires and shit to be able to reach parts of the car. But you have to do it so that you don't casually kill someone on the way to work or in the car line in the morning to drop your kids off. Also, you can die in the process of doing all that snow clearing and shoveling. A Canadian study found a heavy snow about 7 to 8 inches was associated with 16% higher odds of men being admitted to the hospital with a heart attack and a 34% increase in the chance of men dying from a heart attack. [00:05:00] Speaker A: 16% is not insignificant. That is a big jump. [00:05:06] Speaker B: No, that's. Yeah, that's a big leap. In likelihood that you might. [00:05:10] Speaker A: In men. Men are more likely to 16% more likely to be admitted with a heart attack during snowy conditions. [00:05:17] Speaker B: Think it's a combination of. Men tend to be the ones who are shoveling. And also the physiological elements here because cold weather can Quote, increase blood pressure while simultaneously constricting the coronary arteries, making the increase in heart rate while shoveling especially dangerous. Particularly if you're not a very active person. Person. [00:05:40] Speaker A: Absolutely. [00:05:41] Speaker B: Which a lot of the guys going out to shovel aren't you. Especially if you're like, older. Things like that. Like, if you're elderly and the one thing you do every year is go out and shovel your snow. [00:05:52] Speaker A: Do you know what problem you've. What you've touched on there? Is one of the core drivers from me moving to an active lifestyle over the last 10 years. [00:06:03] Speaker B: Absolutely. I want, as you get older, especially men, but everybody, like, your heart can give out so easily. [00:06:10] Speaker A: Yeah, it's. It's more functional than it is anything else. I want to remain fit into my elder years. I want to remain upright and mobile. I want to remain almost. I want to. I want to fucking. I want to cling on to dignity in my old age. That's what I want. That's. That's why I run and go to the gym more than anything else. [00:06:30] Speaker B: Yeah. The least time that I can spend with someone else having to take care of me. [00:06:34] Speaker A: Yeah. Wash my balls. Nightmare. [00:06:38] Speaker B: Right? Exactly. So another thing, like, say if you find yourself out and about and get stuck in your car during a snow. A snowstorm, you have to be super careful because you can freeze to death, obviously, but you also don't want to run your car for hours because you might carbon monoxide yourself to death if the tailpipe gets blocked by snow. My sister and I went through this in Canada. We'd gotten a parking ticket and thus run down our supply of money, which we were going to use to go stay in a hostel. So we went into Walmart and we bought cheap blankets and we slept in the car while it snowed outside. And every hour or so, we turn on the heat for like 10 minutes and then we turn it off until, again, we were too cold and we needed a little blast of heat. Zero stars. Do not recommend. This is definitely in your 20s behavior. [00:07:31] Speaker A: Fucking hell. [00:07:35] Speaker B: It's like now it's like, it would have been fine. We could have just stayed somewhere, but at the time it was like, nope, we're gonna save that money that we just spent on this Canadian parking ticket and we're just gonna sleep in the car. But yeah, can be super dangerous to get stuck in the car. I also, when we were kids, like, and we were, like, super poor, we drove like, we had, like, a station wagon. I don't know how old this thing was. It's the Kind of thing where it was like visibly rusty on the outside of it and it would break down all the time. And I remember, you know, sometime in the early 90s driving here from Massachusetts, which is like a four hour drive normally, but there was a blizzard and the car broke down and I remember it had like, you know that the back of it, the you know, station wagon has like all that space in the back which we called the little girls way back playground. My sister and I like to play back there. And I remember like just freezing like trying to sleep in the back of that thing in some like Howard Johnson's parking lot in the middle of like Connecticut or something like that. So you know, it's a thing I have quite a bit of experience with. Yeah, but it can be very dangerous if you don't know what you're doing when you get broken down like that or snowed in in some way. [00:08:52] Speaker A: My. I'm fucked if I. If there's no way that I'm ever going to break down in a blizzard or an ic. [00:09:00] Speaker B: It's not really an issue for you. [00:09:01] Speaker A: Not really an issue. But were it to happen, absolutely fucked. The only thing I've got in the boot of my car is a couple of tote bags full of horror novels from, from our good friend bookseller Ryan. And I'm picking through them, man, I'm getting through them, I'm getting through them. But such was the volume of books that she gifted me. I still have a load of them left and they're still in the boot of my car and they are no good as a. [00:09:29] Speaker B: No, not gonna help. [00:09:30] Speaker A: I guess you could defense. [00:09:31] Speaker B: I don't know if you've got matches in there. [00:09:34] Speaker A: Yeah. Which I don't. [00:09:37] Speaker B: You will not be surprised to hear that I have a very well stocked. [00:09:41] Speaker A: I can absolutely. What is, what, what, what goes into a full and effective cold weather life support kit then? [00:09:51] Speaker B: Blankets, of course. I've got first aid kit which also has like the, those you know, like foily looking blankets. [00:09:59] Speaker A: Space blankets? Yeah, sure, sure, yeah. [00:10:01] Speaker B: Like a space blanket in it. I've got this thing that looks like a flashlight and you can use it to jump your car, but you can also use it to charge your like phone and stuff like that. It has like a USB jack and stuff like that. [00:10:13] Speaker A: Is it also a torch? Is it also a flashlight? [00:10:16] Speaker B: Yes, it's also a flashlight. Yeah, yeah, right. You've got actual jumper cables, you know all that stuff. It's. [00:10:24] Speaker A: Do you have like a pack of like freeze dried rations? [00:10:30] Speaker B: You know what I don't have that. That is the thing that I'm missing out on. You're right. I should, you know, invest in some of that. But also, I don't go anywhere. The odds of me being stranded in. [00:10:40] Speaker A: My car, you do. You don't drive far, but you go lots of places. [00:10:44] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't drive anywhere. So what I really need is like a backpack I can walk around with with all that stuff in it in case I, I don't know, am met by an avalanche in downtown. Downtown Montclair or something like that. [00:10:57] Speaker A: Bear spray. [00:10:59] Speaker B: Bear spray. We do have bears here, so, you know, couldn't hurt, I suppose. But there's also things like downed power lines and trees that can occur in a particularly heavy snow. I have a particular fear of rogue tree branches falling on me. Yeah, it's, you know, supposed to be a freak accident, but every year it happens to be. [00:11:24] Speaker A: It too. [00:11:24] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:11:24] Speaker A: Happened recently during the last storm. We had the last named storm during the last attempt by the government to make us afraid of our weather, which is happening. [00:11:34] Speaker B: Well, you might get crushed by a branch. [00:11:36] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:11:37] Speaker B: I mean, yeah, I don't. I don't like it. It's why I don't walk in the park down the street from my house on a windy day. And we'll add to that after a snowstorm. I don't want shit falling on me. [00:11:47] Speaker A: No. [00:11:47] Speaker B: The weight of snow can bring all kinds of things tumbling down, including even more inconvenient things like your roof, for example. And snow becomes even more dangerous if you're the adventurous type who loves to take a nice layer of powder as an opportunity to go out and do some cold weather sports like skiing, snowboarding, snowshoeing or hiking. Avalanches regularly take out a few outdoors folk each year. And to be clear, it's not just sporty types they can royally fuck the deadliest. Avalanches have taken out masses of folks in situations like being stuck in a traffic tunnel, which is utterly horrific, or simply living in unfortunately placed villages. The worst avalanche ever was in Peru in 1970, when the town of Yungay was nearly entirely destroyed and some 22,000 people perished. 22,000? That's like the size of my entire town. [00:12:46] Speaker A: Yeah, close. [00:12:48] Speaker B: That's crazy. Triggered by an earthquake, mudslides and other related problems meant the full death toll was actually more like 70,000. Roll. Fucked. But being anywhere near a snowy mountain can lead to devastating consequences. And in 1980, 20 people who attempted to climb Oregon's Mount Hood, most of whom were teenagers, would find out just how devastating those consequences can be. Of those 20 people, nine would never come back down the mountain alive. Making the Mount Hood disaster one of the deadliest climbing disasters in United states history. So Mount Hood is a dangerous mountain in any season. 130 people have died in climbing accidents alone since 1900. [00:13:35] Speaker A: I'm sure you'll get there, but could you characterize for me a little bit about the terrain on this mountain? Is it. Are we talking vertical climbing? I'm certain we'll get there. [00:13:43] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. There are plenty of ways to, you know, die or get yourself into dangerous situations on that mountain. I'll get to explaining kind of what it's like and it'll come up a lot, but each year about 25 to 50 rescues are required on this mountain. I remember my friend Andy and I once drove up there to go to the Timberline Lodge, which. Does that name ring any bells for you? [00:14:06] Speaker A: The Timberline Lodge. It absolutely gives me nothing at all. [00:14:15] Speaker B: I've never. Timberline Lodge is famously the exterior for the Overlook Hotel in the Shining. [00:14:22] Speaker A: Wonderful. [00:14:23] Speaker B: Yes. But when we went up there, the snow had made the road impassable without tire chains. So we just took some photos with it in the background and went back home. It's a place you can't be too cautious about. It's also gorgeous. An imposing and ever present feature of the Oregon landscape. You can see it from pretty much anywhere. If the place is flat enough and there's no buildings in your way or whatever, you can kind of always see Mount Hood in the distance when you're in Oregon and when you fly in, you fly over it and it's really like. It looks. I mean, it's like a. I think it is. It's a big volcano. [00:14:57] Speaker A: Wow. [00:14:58] Speaker B: So you're just looking at this like giant volcano when you fly over and it's really quite impressive to look at and you can see why people are attracted to climbing it. [00:15:08] Speaker A: Yes. [00:15:10] Speaker B: Now, are you familiar with a program called Outward Bound? [00:15:15] Speaker A: Once again, no. No, I am not. [00:15:17] Speaker B: Oh, interesting. Okay. [00:15:19] Speaker A: We're naught to two here. [00:15:21] Speaker B: Yeah. And I'm kind of surprised by this one because Outward Bound was actually founded in Wales in 1941, but it absolutely took off. [00:15:30] Speaker A: When you say a program, I'm going. [00:15:33] Speaker B: To explain it to you. [00:15:34] Speaker A: Okay. Because I'm aware of, like, Outward Bound as, like an organization, but not. [00:15:39] Speaker B: Well, what. When you think of the organization, what are you thinking of? [00:15:43] Speaker A: Like kids just doing mountain shit, Doing outdoors shit? [00:15:49] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. [00:15:49] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, I know about it. [00:15:50] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. It was Founded in Wales in 1941, took off many other countries, including the U.S. huge here. And yeah, like you kind of said, it's a, it's a program that involves building skills and character through strenuous, treacherous outdoor activities. And they have a model they use called the Outward Bound process model which entails, pardon me, taking a ready motivated learner into a prescribed unfamiliar physical environment along with a small group of people who are faced with a series of incremental interrelated problem solving tasks which creates in the individual a state of dissonance requiring adaptive coping and leads to a sense of mastery or competence when equilibrium is managed. The cumulative effect of these experience leads to a reorganization of the self conceptions and information the learner holds about him or herself. The learner will then continue to be positively oriented to further learning and development experiences. [00:16:55] Speaker A: Which seems perfectly rational. [00:16:59] Speaker B: Yes. [00:16:59] Speaker A: You know, fucking push, get them in at the deep end, scare them, put them in a place where they don't have a fucking clue what's going on. [00:17:09] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:17:09] Speaker A: Until they get a fucking clue. Sort it out and then they'll go into the rest of their lives more ready, feeling competent. [00:17:17] Speaker B: Yeah, right, exactly. [00:17:18] Speaker A: I mean on paper that fuck. Yeah, that sounds perfectly rational. [00:17:22] Speaker B: Yeah. Richard's wife does something like this with the girls at the school that she teaches at. Like it's a pretty sort of common model. [00:17:30] Speaker A: Yeah. Good friends of ours, the barbers, they live that outdoor life. Right. When we had the storm the other week, they're fucking. Their oldest kid is the most outward bound of kids you will ever meet. And he posted video with his GoPro of him fucking skiing down a mountain in Abergavenny on the mountain range. [00:17:57] Speaker B: Amazing. [00:17:58] Speaker A: Just literally skiing. Just whacked his skis on and skied down the fucking mountain. [00:18:02] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean I grew up in a town with a lot of people like that and just recently this happened when I was in sixth grade too, but just happened again last week. The entire town flooded and so there were videos of people who just busted out their kayaks and were kayaking down Miller Avenue. Just, you know, like might as well. Yes, but yeah, so the danger and the hardship is the point. Participants learn how to deal with adverse conditions through various forms of training and confidence building activities. And then they're brought out into situations where they'll have to use those skills. It's kind of scouts cranked to 11, basically. [00:18:38] Speaker A: Yeah, it sounds like a hardcore Duke of Edinburgh award. It's. [00:18:41] Speaker B: I think that's the thing that, that Jen does. [00:18:44] Speaker A: There you go. Yeah, it sounds like that, like you said, with the volume up and the guardrails off. [00:18:51] Speaker B: Yes, exactly. So in the 1980s, Oregon Episcopal School, a private school, a private academy in Portland, required that its 10th grade students take part in a program called Basecamp, which is based off that Outward Bound model, which, out of the gate, is a little unhinged. To me, it's a great extracurricular, don't get me wrong. But the idea that all students had to participate in this. [00:19:19] Speaker A: Yeah. And they've kind of made their own version of it. [00:19:22] Speaker B: Yeah. Like there. There's a lot of reasons that not every 15 year old should be going out on dangerous outdoor expeditions. Additions. [00:19:29] Speaker A: Yep. Agreed, agreed, agreed. [00:19:30] Speaker B: Not for everybody, but the school's heart was in the right place. You want to teach kids teamwork and problem solving, and any of us who have ever done some sort of outdoor team building experience can probably attest to the fact that it does build a lot of camaraderie and makes you feel super accomplished afterwards. Like, I get it, you know, like we were just saying, the idea makes sense, you know? But at oes, Oregon Episcopal School, the kids spent months learning the ins and outs of snow climbing, from the basic how to's to things like first aid. And just before midnight on May 11, 1986, 15 of those high school sophomores gathered their equipment and boarded a school bus to Mount Hood, where they'd get to put those skills that they'd learned to the test. The 15 students were joined by five adults. School chaplain and leader Thomas Gohman, dean of residence and student affairs, Marion Horwell, parent Sharon Spray, Outward Bound instructor D. Zeduniak, and professional climbing guide Ralph Summers. [00:20:35] Speaker A: Fine. No, I was just kind of keeping a running kind of tally there of the kind of people that they've got on the case. All seems fine. All seems fine. You've got experts. You've got a man of God. [00:20:48] Speaker B: Obviously. Yeah, I think, you know, I keep kind of trying to think about how this would be done now. Right. And I'll mention it throughout this. So this is 40 years ago in May. Right. And, well, like, sure. This kind of makes sense. I do think that the ratio would be different, you know, five adults. Yeah. And that they weren't. All five of those adults weren't trained. [00:21:14] Speaker A: Yep. [00:21:15] Speaker B: You know that like the student affairs woman, Marian Horwell had never climbed a mountain before in her life. This was the first time. She wasn't trained with the kids or anything like that. She just went along on this. So, you know, you've got that. You've got a parent chaperone there. So that means only three of those adults. [00:21:36] Speaker A: It's 100% the kind of thing Laura would volunteer for. [00:21:40] Speaker B: Yeah, sure, absolutely. [00:21:42] Speaker A: Together. A girl as she is, with her head screwed right on, fantastic parent, fantastic, you know, governor and whatever. Never climbed a mountain. [00:21:54] Speaker B: Right. And I can see like if Laura was gonna do that, she would probably prepare in some way. [00:21:59] Speaker A: Well, she would make sure it was risk assessed to hell. [00:22:02] Speaker B: Yes, exactly. And it feels like this is not as we'll keep on going and talk about. So they all assembled at Timberline Lodge at 3am for their six mile round trip adventure. With the snow about calf deep, according to Outside magazine, which I used for most of this. And the temperatures were high enough above freezing to be comfortable. The standard route up the mountain indeed departed from the Timberline parking lot. That's usually where you would leave from, paralleled by a ski lift called the Palmer Chair. So you could kind of see this ski lift next to you as. And this thing went to the summit. So it would have been there the entire way. It's a good little marker. [00:22:43] Speaker A: Yeah, sure. [00:22:43] Speaker B: If you are going up this mountain. The summit stood around 10,500ft. The lodge was around 6,000ft. So students are looking about 4,500ft climb here in the ice and snow. So outside describes the landscape of Mount Hood, to your question earlier, as almost otherworldly. Nice. Covered in volcanic steam vents that send silvery plumes of mist into the air, giving moonlit nights a luminescent glow. [00:23:14] Speaker A: That sounds amazing. [00:23:17] Speaker B: Right? It's the kind of description that sounds absolutely beautiful in good conditions and terrifying in conditions like the ones I'm about to describe to you. As beautiful as it is. Like I said, it's dangerous. [00:23:31] Speaker A: Tell me again how old These kids were. 15. Kids of what age? [00:23:34] Speaker B: Yeah, like about 15 years old. 15, 16. 15 to 17. Yeah. Were the ages. Most of them were around 15, but yes. So on this mountain, there are tons of crevasses to fall into, there's avalanches, there's sudden turns in the weather, and as such, who is guiding you up that mountain is very important. In this case, the guide was that priest and chaplain, Tom Goeman. And while he was an experienced climber who'd led many successful base camp expeditions before, in this case, he was the wrong guide for this situation. The horribly wrong guide for this situation. Students loved him. He's just super beloved dude. But one student who later became a writer and had gotten particularly close with him, Joel Shallet, noted that he sensed Goemon was seriously troubled as he got to know him more intimately. He'd even stayed with Goemon and his wife for a period of time. He said that he'd seen Gohman embarking on a reckless streak leading up to the climb that day, recalling one particular climb during which Goemon responded to students nervous about belaying down a steep precipice by taking off his helmet, yelling en belay. And swan diving over the ledge. This is, as you can probably imagine, a really dumb and dangerous thing to do. And his body smashed against the jagged rock walls as he descended down the side of mountain. He then proceeded to do this eight more times in front of increasingly shaken teenagers, understandably freaked out by their bloodied and manic guide throwing him off of himself, off of a mountain, over and over again. Now, in 2026, again, I think if a thing like that happened, he would have immediately been taken out of that position. You know, when kids came home and told their parents about that, the school would have gotten calls and they would have been like, you know what? Maybe you're stressed out. I don't know. We're gonna take you off of this for a little while. [00:25:48] Speaker A: Yikes. [00:25:49] Speaker B: In 1986, not so much. [00:25:51] Speaker A: I've. I mean, I'm warming to the guy. [00:25:57] Speaker B: Relatable. [00:25:59] Speaker A: I get it. Teaching is difficult. [00:26:04] Speaker B: Yeah. I don't know. I. As. I'll get to. There's, like, not. The information that we have about this whole event is somewhat limited. A, because a good chunk of them died, and B, because there's no one. [00:26:18] Speaker A: To fucking talk about. [00:26:18] Speaker B: Which has been. Yeah, right. Yeah. It's very intentional that it hasn't been talked about. So, like, I don't know why he was like this. I don't know if he was having home problems. I don't know if he was like, bipolar any other. If he. Yeah, right. If he was drinking any of that stuff. That's like, not available listeners, you know. [00:26:36] Speaker A: The gesture I just made. [00:26:37] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, sorry. [00:26:39] Speaker A: You know it. You can see it. [00:26:41] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:26:41] Speaker A: Marco's thumb and pinky out. [00:26:43] Speaker B: Thumb and pinky. Drinky, drinky. [00:26:46] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:26:49] Speaker B: Yeah. So, yeah, that may. Even though he had. That had happened with a bunch of the students, he was still out there leading these base camp students up Mount Hood. [00:26:59] Speaker A: Okay. [00:27:01] Speaker B: So while the weather had been pleasant for their 3am takeoff, the forecast warned of a huge storm coming in with, quote, vicious winds and heavy marine moisture surging in. But Goman's assessment was that they could totally do the climb safely before the weather got too crazy. Meteorologist Matt Zaffino told Outside that a guide familiar with Mount Hood should know that these kinds of storms hit fast, and you can't necessarily predict when or how hard they're going to reach you. By dawn, some of the hikers had begun to develop misgivings. Sharon Spray, the parent on the excursion, turned around with her daughter Hilary, who had a stomach ache. Reflecting back, Hillary says that despite the fact that she didn't feel she was physically well enough to continue, Gohman and the other leaders pressured her to keep going. She said he pressured all of the kids, but knowing her body wasn't up to the task. Thankfully, her common sense overrode that. Cajoling at 7,000ft, they reached a warming station called Silcox Hut, where Lorca Smittana complained of intense cramps, and she turned around accompanied by Courtney Boatsman. Two more climbers noped out shortly after. And at 11:30, D. Zaduniak, the Outward Bound woman, also turned around, suffering from mild snow blindness, which is, again, insane. This broad can't see, and they're like, all right, just retrace your steps. That's fine. Good luck. What? [00:28:37] Speaker A: So this, this speaks to how kind of poorly equipped this expedition was. I mean, did they not have, like, eyewear? [00:28:49] Speaker B: I assume they would, because, again, she's, like, from Outward Bound. I would assume she'd be ready for this. I don't know how that happens. I think it. The thing about, like, snow blindness is I don't know if it actually comes from, like, glare stuff hitting your eyes. I think it's like a pressure thing, isn't it? Like, it comes from, like, the altitude. [00:29:10] Speaker A: Right? [00:29:10] Speaker B: Okay, I could be wrong, but I think, you know, there's, there might be another reason that you get this. Otherwise people would just wear goggles. They'd never get this. But, yeah, for whatever reason, she becomes partially snow blind, turns around by herself, goes back down the mountain, and again in 2026, I just feel like this simply wouldn't happen. They would have all turned around. At this point, when you've lost this many people, people are getting sick, people are losing their sight. Like, you go, you know what? Let's call it. This isn't Everest. You don't have only one day to get up there, or you miss it for a season. It's a mountain 90 minutes from home. They could come back when it's safer. I looked at, like, a. A sort of assessment of this because there's various. Like, most of what you find about this is, like, risk assessments or studies on what went wrong and things like that. And you know, one of the things that they said was like part of the issue here was scheduling and that it was like an artificial pressure to do it on this day because they had like four climbs scheduled per year and if they missed it, their scheduling was as such that like you couldn't just go back and make it up. Right. And miss that entire climb is it. [00:30:21] Speaker A: Has history allowed us to pin this pressure on anyone in particular? Is was there a driving force behind? Come on, we got to do it. Come on. [00:30:30] Speaker B: I mean, we'll get there and it's gomen largely. But that element of scheduling was sort of multifactorial. You know, it was about like the school schedule, it was about his schedule, it was about student schedules, all of that kind of stuff. So like it puts an artificial pressure to be like, we have to get this done right now. We don't have a date. We can reschedule this right when that's not that important in the grand scheme of things. Like, you know, if they don't get to do this, at least they don't die. But nevertheless, Goemon fucking persisted. In the two hours after D's snowblind ass began her descent, the weather took a sharp turn and guide Ralph Summers started to consider that it might be time to call it. But Goemon thought they could still make the summit and turn around without issue. At 2pm, however, he finally convinced Gohemon that they could press on no further. He'd gone up ahead alone for 20 to 40ft and he could see the conditions were too unsafe and also that he lost sight of them behind him. [00:31:35] Speaker A: Oh wow. Within 20ft. [00:31:37] Speaker B: Within 20 to 40ft, yeah. So they should have turned around long before this and it was far too late to do so. At around 3.30pm, 15 year old Patrick McGinnis fell to the ground slurring his speech and complaining he just wanted to go to sleep bad. They descended. Yeah. Not great. No. I mean that's the kind of thing that if it happens to you on Everest, they just leave your corpse. Yep. They don't bother with you at that point. Yeah. They descended a few hundred feet to a point that would have offered a clear view of the Timberline Lodge on a good day, but with visibility around 20ft rendered the lodge entirely invisible to them. This is extremely disorienting. Conditions like this can induce vertigo. It's impossible to differentiate ground from sky and when you take a step, you don't know where your foot will land. It's a horrifying thought, and this is where that otherworldly landscape goes from beautiful to an absolute nightmare. The students sprung to action, gathering around the sick teen and getting him into the group's only sleeping bag. Senior Susan McClave actually took off her boots and jacket and got into the sleeping bag with him to keep him warm, which would turn out to be a deadly mistake for her. Summers heated up some water on his field stove and dissolved two lemon drops in it for Patrick to drink, which warmed him up, but also meant that they weren't moving. They spent an hour tending to him before continuing on, an hour in which the weather continued to get worse. And as they got. [00:33:13] Speaker A: They carried on. They carried on with this guy. Carried on up. [00:33:16] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, he's a kid. You can't leave him on the mountain. [00:33:18] Speaker A: No, but I meant go back and. [00:33:20] Speaker B: Be like, sorry, he's up there. [00:33:22] Speaker A: If by now you haven't all collectively decided to turn the fuck around. [00:33:26] Speaker B: Oh, no, they're going down. [00:33:27] Speaker A: Yes, Sorry. Okay, my bad. [00:33:29] Speaker B: Yes. They had, you know, once the summers went up and realized, like, we can't go any further and I can't see the. [00:33:35] Speaker A: Of course, of course, of course. [00:33:37] Speaker B: They turned around and went back down. So they are. They're going back down, but they're basically, like, carrying this guy with them because he can't walk on his own. But, yeah. So they spent an hour on this as weather's getting worse. And as they got moving again, perhaps the worst mistake of all was made. In order to avoid a canyon, Goemon overcorrected and set their compass 20 degrees off course. It's uncertain whether Goemon himself might have been suffering cognitive issues from the altitude and cold at this point. But whatever the case, his mistake would end up a death sentence sentence for most of the group. Now the group was moving across the mountain, down the mountain. Yeah, just awful. And soon, Summers noticed a troubling crack in the snow that he thought might indicate that they were crossing into the White River Glacier, an area laden with invisible crevasses and which was subject to a process called mechanical hardening during snowstorms with heavy winds. Essentially, this is when snow accumulates over empty spaces to form what look like bridges, but which collapse under your feet as soon as you step on them. It's like something out of, like an adventure movie from the 80s. Like, just, you know, you go out like, oh, good, and you're dead. So Summers warned the group to follow his footsteps and to never step on the crack. Visibility got worse. 10ft. The winds blew harder. They finally passed that crack. But suddenly summers foot went over an edge and he realized they'd reached a crevasse about 30ft deep. It was 7pm they didn't know where they were. They had a student who couldn't walk on their own and they were at the edge of a glacier at 8,200ft. [00:35:35] Speaker A: And probably like half a mile a mile away from a fucking motorway. [00:35:42] Speaker B: Like maybe not quite that like, but. [00:35:44] Speaker A: So in within distance of civilization on a clear sky you could see civilization. [00:35:48] Speaker B: You could see civilization if it weren't. Yeah, 10 foot visibility, 100%. Yeah. They would have been able to look and go, hey, that's where that ski lift is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's go towards that and follow it down. But they couldn't see anything that would give them any indication of where they were. So summers determined that the best thing to do was to dig a snow cave for them. It took about an hour to dig out the cave, which was about six by eight feet with a four foot ceiling and a three foot entrance. The whole crew of 13 people at this point jammed themselves into that small space. But having so many people inside caused the walls to start thawing from their body heat. And this meant that those that were in the middle of the cave ended up sitting in a pool of ice water. About the worst possible scenario. [00:36:43] Speaker A: I think I can actually see like some of the snowy landscape out of your window there behind you. [00:36:47] Speaker B: Oh, can you? [00:36:48] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, now I look at it. Yeah. See there add some lovely context to what you're talking about. [00:36:53] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. You can kind of, you know, imagine this, but not magical. [00:36:56] Speaker A: Yep. [00:36:59] Speaker B: So yeah, the students jammed themselves into the space, it got hot, they ice pooled. Anyone in the middle is just sitting in ice water and nobody could breathe because they were packed so tightly in there. So they decided to rotate, taking turns outside and inside the cave. And one survivor recalled the sound of Goemon screaming in pain in the cold outside of the cave during his rotation. Outside side just completely, you know, at the mercy of the elements. Back at the timberline. As night faded into early morning, concerns began to grow for the students who should have returned by then. Portland Mountain Rescue, or PMR, was called in and reached the lodge at 5:21am One PMR volunteer Mark Kelsey estimated that he had summited hood some 460 times at least. And that day was the absolute worst weather he had ever seen on a search. And it was the only time in his entire climbing career that he got frostbite. When you have that context, it just Makes it crazier that Goemon just was like, no, this is fine. Yeah, we're gonna be fine. Like, he may not have known it was gonna hit that hard, but you have like the indications, you know, of like, this is. This is gonna go really wrong here. As they set out on May 13, the winds at the Palmer chairlift were blowing at 103 miles per hour. Matt Zaffino, the meteorologist I mentioned before, explained that you can't even stand up in wind like that. And you certainly can't see where you're going as it's whipping snow around you. Still, team after team showed up with all kinds of equipment, including snow cats like we see in the Shining, to try to find these kids. [00:38:49] Speaker A: Love those things. [00:38:50] Speaker B: Yeah. But keep in mind, again, they're off course. These rescuers are expecting them to be along the regular path, which is a straight line. That's not how the hikers walked. They were sitting ducks in this cave in an area where no one was looking for them. Along with rotating their place inside and outside the cave. [00:39:10] Speaker A: Do they have like. Do they have. Do they not have like flays or whistles? [00:39:15] Speaker B: I think that they. Well, I don't know. I'm not sure. I would imagine they must have had these things. I don't know why they weren't being. [00:39:24] Speaker A: A whistle is the. I'm not going up a mountain unless you give me a whistle. [00:39:30] Speaker B: Right. I know how Rose survived. [00:39:33] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:39:33] Speaker B: In Titanic. I'm gonna, I'm gonna take the whistle. Yeah. I don't know why we don't see anything about flares or whistles or other things like that in the story. It'd be crazy to me if they didn't take anything like that with them. [00:39:48] Speaker A: Well, yeah, but I mean, the fact that there is no report of them just banging out a flare or a whistle, that's all you need to know. I mean, if they were, they would have used them. [00:39:57] Speaker B: Yeah, right. I mean, there's the possibility that no one could see them also because of the visibility. So I don't even. A flare. I don't know how well they work in ten foot visibility. You know, I'm not sure what they cut through, so I'm not sure on that. I can't say one way or another whether they had those kinds of things with them. I know that there was something mentioned about them trying to like signal. It just didn't say flares or anything like that in that. But so along with rotating their place inside and outside the cave, they had to keep the Mouth of it open, obviously. But during the night, both the shovel they were using for that and the sleeping bag were swept away. They had to use an ice axe to keep it clear. By Tuesday morning, it was clear that they were going to die if they all stayed there. Especially since at this point, Goemon was completely gone, mentally and physically. Summers asked him if he could count to 10. [00:40:53] Speaker A: Oh, no. [00:40:54] Speaker B: Yeah, just 100% gone at this point. Yeah. So Summers realized. [00:41:01] Speaker A: Can't even count to ten, mates. [00:41:03] Speaker B: Yeah, right. Like fuck. So Summers realized he was gonna have to set out and try to get help if they stood any chance of being saved. He asked for volunteers to go with him and Molly Shula said that she would. Off they went, but again in the wrong direction. At 9:50am, by sheer luck, they made it to Mount Hood Meadows, a ski resort a whole two miles to the east of Timberline Lodge. That's how far off course they'd gotten. They're two miles east of the place they initially had come from and have made no headway going downhill at this point. It was lucky that they found this place, but. Yeah. Holy shit. So wrong. And being so wrong meant it was going to be very difficult to figure out where they'd left the rest of the group in the snow cave, because they were operating off the assumption that they were going in that straight line down the mountain, and they very much weren't. Not so. They were completely disoriented to where they had come from. On the second night, Allison Litzenberger, Aaron o' Leary and Eric Sandvik ventured out of the cave, and then they couldn't get back inside. Four feet of snowfall had accumulated, essentially sealing the other eight people inside of the cave and sealing them out. Wednesday morning, the weather finally started clearing up, and Mark Kelsey's team was able to drive the Snowcat up the mountain from Mount Hood Meadows, the ski resort where Summers and Shula had ended up. At around 5.45am, they saw two black dots in White River Canyon. When they reached them, they found the bodies of Allison Litzenberger and Aaron o' Leary curled up in the fetal position, one on top of the other. Yep, Eric Sandvik's body was found not far from the girls. He had essentially fallen in the snow at the opening of the cave, trying to get it open. [00:43:02] Speaker A: Ah, it's no fucking way to die. [00:43:05] Speaker B: Yeah, just terrible. And Summers went up in the helicopter to try to help find the cave. But this actually probably made things worse. Kelsey thinks because of where Sandvik was found, they were actually only a few feet away from the cave when they found his body. But because Summers thought it was somewhere else, they followed his hunch and went for that. And it was not where the cave was, so they probably could have found them right then. But another day passes. So the storm had completely wiped away any trace of the climbers. Four feet of snow, you're not gonna get any prints or anything. They're just completely gone. On Thursday, a master sergeant named Richard Harder took up the search, insisted they focus around 8200ft where he thought the cave was. They set up a probe line of searchers starting at 8,500ft and moved slowly down the slope about 3ft apart from each other, pushing avalanche poles into the snow. At 5:38pm, Sergeant Charlie Eck finally hit something. They immediately started digging and when a rescuer stuck his head into the hole they'd uncovered, he said it had a bad smell, which, macabre as it may be indicated, they were in the right place. Underneath another student, Giles Thompson, they found Brinton Clark, who was moaning and barely conscious. Her body temperature at 74.12 degrees, which in our degrees is. It's supposed to be 98.6, I think, so obviously super hypothermia. The other students were found with core temperatures ranging from 37.4 to 54 degrees. Pretty much unsurvivable. Although several of them were barely alive at the time. They were all helicoptered to area hospitals where doctors did everything they could. But only Clark and Thompson survived. And Thompson only barely. He went into cardiac arrest during treatment and the surgeons opened his chest and massaged his heart by hand to jump start it back to life. Just fucking wild. [00:45:21] Speaker A: That is the most invasive fucking hardcore surgical technique you could possibly imagine. Reaching in and fucking palpating somebody's heart with your fist, man. Cracking open the fucking ribs, the thoracic cavity and just getting in there. [00:45:38] Speaker B: Yeah. And I read in another article there was something about how like, then they had to like use some sort of elaborate machine to like pump his heart back to like the proper temperature because his heart was basically like frozen in his chest. This whole thing is sort of like an example of that thing that you always say, like you're not dead until you're woman dead. [00:45:56] Speaker A: Sure. [00:45:57] Speaker B: So like several of these people had like faint heartbeats and stuff like that, you know, Patrick, Stuff like that. And they brought them to the hospital, but once they warmed them up, they. Yeah, so all told, oh wait, I missed part of it with that kid who. They massaged his hand back, his heart Back he. And he did end up losing his legs. But I think considering the alternative, you know, could be a lot worse. All told, seven students and two adults died up there on Mount Hood. Tom Goeman among them obviously. So he never had to face what he'd done in pressuring these kids up a mountain in deadly conditions despite having all the information he needed to know it was a bad idea. Most of the families received an insurance payout from the school. One sued only one and received a half a million dollar settlement, which again is chill. [00:46:50] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:46:52] Speaker B: Half a million dollars, like for gross negligence. Like this is. Yeah. Fucking wild. The school got off really easy because the parents didn't want anyone making money off of their tragedy. There's never been a movie or TV series made about it. They all. [00:47:08] Speaker A: I was gonna ask. I was gonna ask. [00:47:10] Speaker B: Yeah. You will not find it. They like got together and basically signed a contract with each other saying we will never accept royalties or anything like that to tell this story to then. Thus nobody's like to get the information on this. They'd have to talk to the parents and whatnot. And so all of them like, we're not giving it up. And so nothing has ever been made about this. This story. [00:47:34] Speaker A: Nothing stopping anyone from, you know, having a crack though. Is there an approximation like you could. [00:47:39] Speaker B: Make it up for sure. Especially since now we know more because Paul's tautongi wrote this article for Outside magazine, but the school actually tried to stop its publication. The school statement read in part, quote, we asked Mr. Tau Tongi and Outside's editors consider the negative impact of revisiting this tragedy on the families and friends of those who died, as well as on those who survived. We are disheartened that the editors chose to publish the article despite requests from OEs and several survivors not to do so, which is just such transparent bullshit. [00:48:12] Speaker A: Oh, it's. It's suppression, isn't it? It's got fuck all to do with, you know, honoring or respectful. It's all about suppression of blame. Completely. [00:48:24] Speaker B: I mean I, yeah, I read. I read Outside magazine pretty religiously. [00:48:30] Speaker A: Do you? [00:48:31] Speaker B: And they are. I love it. Yeah, it's probably my favorite magazine next to Food Network magazine. [00:48:38] Speaker A: Listeners. [00:48:42] Speaker B: But they're long form articles are incredible. Super respectful, incredibly well researched. You know, Jon Krakauer wrote for them for many years like very respected and respectable publications. So like, you know, they're not, it's not a tabloid that's going to go out. [00:49:01] Speaker A: Yeah. Exploit this situation. [00:49:02] Speaker B: Right. And they know that. It's just, they've Never had to be held accountable for what happened. And they certainly don't want that to happen now. Instead, each year for the past 39 years, they've quietly held a Mount Hood climb observance day at the school's bell tower, during which they tell the story and they read the names of all of those who died ringing a bell after each name. [00:49:33] Speaker A: Thank you. That delivered pretty much all I was looking for. [00:49:36] Speaker B: I was gonna say, I think that met your criteria. [00:49:38] Speaker A: It did. Deeply bleak. [00:49:41] Speaker B: Yes. [00:49:42] Speaker A: Extremely terrifying. Very frightening. [00:49:45] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. It's one of those stories that if you try to put yourself in the. [00:49:50] Speaker A: Position which I was doing, like, you can't help it. Yeah. [00:49:54] Speaker B: You know, as you read this, you think about, what would that feel like? What would I do? And to have. I think it just hits me because it's, like, largely on one guy's decisions. Right. Like, there's obviously other elements that are at play in this, but that it comes down to someone that, like, kids trusted, you know, and he kept making choices that put them in danger, despite all evidence that that was the case. [00:50:23] Speaker A: Awful, awful, awful. Takeaway. You know, what can. What can. What can. What really can go wrong with one absolute fucking zealot, given the trust, given. Given the fucking. Given the. The keys to the trip. [00:50:38] Speaker B: You. [00:50:38] Speaker A: You talk about, you know, putting yourself in that situation. That's exactly what I was doing during that. And it. I think, well, look, I've been up Pen Yan, right, In Bannock, Brick and York. I've. I've summited Penavan. I'm a seasoned climber. Not many Welsh people have been up Pen Y Van. That's a little fact for you. And I have. And I think all the old ladies. [00:51:03] Speaker B: In my Welsh class have been up Pen Y Van. [00:51:05] Speaker A: Everybody's been up Pen Y Van. That's a joke. That's an inside joke for those who don't know. [00:51:09] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:51:10] Speaker A: I don't know, man. It's hard to think what I would have done differently, but I think I. Constitutionally, I probably could have handled it. I. I'm. [00:51:20] Speaker B: You have, like, zero ounces of fat on your body. You would have been the first one gone. [00:51:26] Speaker A: I'm able to grow a thick and powerful layer of body here which would have acted. [00:51:32] Speaker B: That is true. [00:51:34] Speaker A: You are well insulated as an additional level of insulation. And also, I'm kind of. I'm built different. That's the bottom line with me. Right? Well, yeah, and I rest in peace. [00:51:47] Speaker B: But I'm built different. [00:51:49] Speaker A: I'm able to make. I've got very good Instincts. [00:51:53] Speaker B: And it's like the more I think about it, the more I'm like, you would be absolutely useless. [00:51:59] Speaker A: No, no, I've got. [00:52:00] Speaker B: Excellent. You can't walk out of a store that we just went into without walking the wrong direction and get back to the car. [00:52:06] Speaker A: A shop that I'm not familiar with. I think I could have come up with some kind of magnet that would have pointed some sort of compass that would have pointed in the right direction. [00:52:15] Speaker B: They had a compass that was just set wrong. Oh, no, that was the issue. He just. He set it to 20 degrees off of their proper heading. [00:52:25] Speaker A: And it occurs to me that exactly this sort of clownery for me is why the school, I guess, want to keep the, you know, want to keep the details. [00:52:34] Speaker B: Right. [00:52:34] Speaker A: I don't like people talking about it. Listen, respect where it's due. That's a fucking awful, awful, awful tale indeed. [00:52:42] Speaker B: But thankfully we don't do shit like that anymore. [00:52:45] Speaker A: No. And this is the podcast that you're tuning in on? Of course. This is Jack of All Graves. This is where you come for stories like this. [00:52:52] Speaker B: So this is your fault. [00:52:53] Speaker A: So if anyone's to. If, if anyone needs examining here, it's probably you, listener. You know, what are you doing here? Think on. Let me quote directly from my notes, if I may. [00:53:05] Speaker B: Yes, please do. [00:53:07] Speaker A: Fucking look at these nerds. Oh, mise enemies. [00:53:11] Speaker B: I don't think anyone has ever said mise en scene in such a horny way before. [00:53:15] Speaker A: The way I whispered the word sex cannibal. [00:53:17] Speaker B: Recently, worst comes to worse, Mark, I'm willing to guillotine you for science. [00:53:21] Speaker A: Thank you. That's really, really sweet. It's cold outside, but my pancreas is talking to me. [00:53:26] Speaker B: I'm. [00:53:26] Speaker A: I'm going to leg it. [00:53:27] Speaker B: You know how I feel about that, Mark? [00:53:30] Speaker A: I think you feel great about it. Good. [00:53:36] Speaker B: Right. [00:53:37] Speaker A: Well, where do we even begin? Wouldn't it be nice to have just one week. Wouldn't it be nice to have just one week of. Just nothing really for me to talk about on this bit? Wouldn't it be nice to have one week where things don't get just. We should have our own little Joag clock, I think. You know, the Doomsday Clock. [00:53:54] Speaker B: How many days since that kind of thing. [00:53:58] Speaker A: If either of us could be asked, I think we could. We could have just how close we are to the abyss, you know, just how close we are. But always fascinating. Ever gripping, ever absolutely unable to tear your fucking eyes away as week by week, much like that doomed trip up the mountain. Much like One fucking man's crazy actions. One fucking man's determination to plow on with a course of action, but this time is dragging seemingly all of the Western world along with him. [00:54:39] Speaker B: Yeah, I didn't mean for that to be a metaphor, but, you know, but it is. [00:54:44] Speaker A: Anyway, there it is. I found it. I found it. [00:54:47] Speaker B: Even if it wasn't, you're like a youth group leader, you can always point it back to you. [00:54:51] Speaker A: It's kind of like Jesus, isn't it? Every single weekday morning I listened to Today on Radio 4. It's, it's, it's often been said that if you want to drop an idea in the ear of the nation, if you want to guide the conversation of the nation, today is where you do it. The headlines and the news cycle starts on today at 6:00am every weekday morning on Radio 4. And it very much sets the agenda for the news of the day. [00:55:19] Speaker B: Sure. [00:55:19] Speaker A: But there's an item on Today every morning around 7:30, I think it is 7:38 called Thought for the Day. [00:55:31] Speaker B: Okay. [00:55:32] Speaker A: And it's a religious leader. Oh boy, cross faith, you know, often Hindu, Muslim, often Christian. And they'll just have a little, you know, 10 minute space to give you their thought for the day. And it is exactly as you've just described. And I guarantee you, I guarantee you tomorrow's Thought for the day will be one of these fucking gonks, right? This, this week we've seen Donald Trump talking about how he thinks America should own Greenland. And that's a lot like Jesus, isn't it? Jesus thought that we should. He'd like us all to own our own spiritual awakening. [00:56:23] Speaker B: I love that you have this experience through the radio that I always had through church growing up, let me tell you, I was. So my morning routine is that I watch a show called Good Morning America. [00:56:33] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:56:33] Speaker B: And they had a Christian singer on. You know, every now and again they'll have like musical performance. And they had Christian singer on the other day on Monday and it was the same day that they had had Maury Povich on. Do you know who Maury Povich is? [00:56:47] Speaker A: I do actually know, yes. [00:56:49] Speaker B: Yes. His most famous thing, right, was, you know, you are or you are not the father, you know, doing DNA tests on children and then telling on air whether the, the dad was the man in the room or it was someone else. And so this Christian singer gets up and you know, he's, they interview him first, you know, talk a little bit about, you know, what you do and all this kind of stuff. And he goes, you Know, but just like Maury over there, I'm just trying to point people to who the father is. [00:57:18] Speaker A: There you go. Boom. [00:57:22] Speaker B: I audibly groaned like, no, sir, I have not heard someone do that in years. And it just. I recoiled. [00:57:35] Speaker A: No, I've come to really enjoy Thought for the day. I've come to really enjoy how fucking tenuous it often is. [00:57:41] Speaker B: Right. [00:57:41] Speaker A: It's that, like, just being the little storms, hasn't it? And that's in many ways like Jesus, isn't it, who encourages us all to confront the storm of doubts, you know? [00:57:54] Speaker B: Yeah. My friend Michael Burns, who hosted Wisecrack, he is really good at those. Like, he just has a knack for pulling out those. Like, what would the youth pastor say with. With an. How would they somehow make that tenuous link? There was the dean of students when I was in college, Linda. She was always like that. Like, anything would happen, a glass would break, and she would be like, well, isn't that just like, you know, your walk with the Lord? Fuck. You know, sometimes you're the pieces on the ground. He's gotta pick you back up, and you're just like, linda, turn it off, babe. [00:58:30] Speaker A: Yeah, take a fucking day off, Linda. Oh, my goodness. Just one week, please. Just one week. Mmm. [00:58:39] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:58:40] Speaker A: 1 4. [00:58:42] Speaker B: As you know, I've been watching 911 religiously lately, and there was an episode I watched last night in which I think it was called the Jinx. And there is a proby, which, you know, is like a trainer training fire person. You know, when someone's training to be a fire. I know that. [00:59:00] Speaker A: Is that what they're called? [00:59:01] Speaker B: Okay, yeah, that's what they're called. A probational fire person. Yeah. As a probie. And this probie, you know, they ask him, oh, how's your. How's your day going? Or whatever? How's it been so far? And he says, you know, oh, it's been quiet. And they're all like, no, as soon as you say it's been quiet, then everything goes to shit. And so then the rest of the episode is them, like, in total chaos after this guy has said it's been quiet. So, I don't know. Part of me is like, listen, if we. If we get to the point where, like, it's been quiet, the next week, like, who knows, we're gonna try to own England next. [00:59:39] Speaker A: But just to, you know, for the record books, for the, you know, in the final. In the final, you know, when. When civilizations to come dust off the archives and bring up the joag files. If you're listening to this episode in the future, this was the week where until. Until such time as America is allowed to buy Greenland wholesale, the American administration is putting economical tariffs, trade tariffs on EU countries, including the UK, adding 10% to everything bought and sold, everything exported from the US rising to 25% in June or July, I believe. Until such time as America is allowed to own Greenland, put in fucking trade tariffs on fellow fucking ally members of NATO. [01:00:43] Speaker B: So insane. It's so unhealthy to encourage them to. [01:00:47] Speaker A: Allow him to take over one of another one of the NATO alliance members. [01:00:52] Speaker B: Right? And, like, this is what's almost more bananas than that is like, Europe is now, like, sending troops to Greenland to stop us like that. Like, NATO allies are being sent there to stop us from invading this place. [01:01:11] Speaker A: The scaled up security presence in Greenland almost feels like an act of appeasement because, you know, obviously it's a. It's a. It's a diversionary tactic for America to get its hands on the rare earth minerals and the gold, all of the gems, you know. But one of. One of the lines is, look, NATO cannot defend Greenland properly. [01:01:34] Speaker B: Right. [01:01:34] Speaker A: We can only defend Greenland properly. [01:01:37] Speaker B: Right? [01:01:38] Speaker A: So this dialing up of the security presence in Greenland is an act of attempted, A play, a pantomime to America to show that, look, of course we can defend each other. [01:01:50] Speaker B: Yeah. We can take care of this. [01:01:51] Speaker A: We're sending troops up. [01:01:51] Speaker B: Look, from what, like, I know Russia and China are the, like, boogeymen in this or whatever, but, like, neither of them are threatening to invade Greenland. [01:02:00] Speaker A: No. [01:02:01] Speaker B: So, like, why are we so worried about that? [01:02:04] Speaker A: That's why, indeed. Why indeed? [01:02:07] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, obviously we're not. It's about the rare earth minerals and whatnot. But, like. [01:02:11] Speaker A: But yes. [01:02:12] Speaker B: That's so crazy. [01:02:13] Speaker A: This is the week that. [01:02:13] Speaker B: That happened. [01:02:14] Speaker A: Effective from. Of February, Everything. Everything I buy from you is gonna cost me 10% more. [01:02:24] Speaker B: There's gonna be more. Well, you don't buy that much stuff from here. [01:02:27] Speaker A: Not anymore. I don't. I used to, but not anymore. I don't. [01:02:29] Speaker B: But yeah, it's like you can always get things shipped to my house. But. [01:02:34] Speaker A: But listen, zooming out a little bit outside of this living room, right? [01:02:38] Speaker B: Mm. [01:02:39] Speaker A: That move in itself is gonna take billions off our economy. Right, Right. And we're an economy, which is stuttering anyway since Brexit, since COVID since, you know, that 15 years of. Of Tory government. Our economy is in the shitter. [01:02:57] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:02:58] Speaker A: So a move that between, you know, end of January and the start of February, you're talking billions off our economy. And we are that. That's something that is going to put us perilously close to, if not in the recession kind of zone. [01:03:11] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. [01:03:14] Speaker A: We've got a. Apart from the last kind of six months or so of his relationship with the U.S. our Prime Minister is widely fucking derided as being just a fucking gimp with piss poor approval. [01:03:27] Speaker B: Nobody likes that. [01:03:28] Speaker A: Far right. With the furthest right party leading in every poll. Our chancellor has had plenty of reasons for the public to kind of question her position. So there's also the very real possibility that the damage this does to our economy could end up fucking completely destabilizing government. [01:03:49] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And he knows that. [01:03:52] Speaker A: Of course. [01:03:52] Speaker B: And he knows, or whoever's advising him knows that. Yeah, for sure. And that is, you know, one of the unfortunate outcomes of Brexit, Right. Like that's coming around to bite everyone in the ass too, is not being able to have that European connection of like, all right, well, we've already kind. [01:04:11] Speaker A: Of none at all. [01:04:12] Speaker B: We can steel ourselves against this, using ourselves as the backup for all of this. [01:04:17] Speaker A: So, yes, I mean, on, you know, it's tempting to look at, look at the news and go, hey, oh, he's doing that thing with the tariffs. Oh God, it's Britain too, this time. But if I zoom out of my circumstances, this is something that has and will have a very real impact on our economy and on our. And on the viability of our government, which is, which is perilous even as I speak. [01:04:42] Speaker B: Which is why, like last week when we were talking about this, I was saying, like, it's like, this is why it's bananas to like, nobody stopping us, you know, is like, this is like, we're gonna end up in like World War III by like destabilizing entire other countries and things like this weird whim. [01:05:00] Speaker A: To get so provocative. I'm paraphrasing. I can't remember who it was who said this, but earlier on, one of the quotes from, from the US and from you, Corrigan. Right. Because you're the only American I'm speaking to right now. So I'm. This is coming to you, right? Why are you doing this? The quote was, no one but America can probably defend Greenland. And if America owns Greenland, no one's going to attack Greenland. It just the, the, the language, like last week kind of, you know, this is our hemisphere. No one's gonna fuck with the U.S. no one's gonna fight the U.S. or Greenland. It's so kind of what's the word I'm looking for. It's posturing. And it's all so Hollywood. The language is so. It's pantomime. It's. It's very theatrical. And what's the word I'm looking for? Bombastic, Kind of devoid of merit. The kind of language that gets used. There's absolutely no nuance in any of the kind of rhetoric that comes out of the States, that comes out of your country. You. Right, So I don't know. [01:06:08] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:06:09] Speaker A: What can you. What are you gonna do differently, Corrigan, as an American? [01:06:13] Speaker B: This is. Mark is. Is picking on me this way because I was ranting before we started here about Europeans and the weird way that they look at Americans, like. Like, yeah, sitting here like, oh, you know, I wish I could do something. Or, like, we're, like, into it or whatever. When it's like, that's not what's happening here. Like, millions of people are protesting famously. Someone was shot and killed last week while doing, like, you know, like, Americans are trying. You know, we're not sitting here like, yes, absolutely. This is our hemisphere. Blah, blah, blah. It's like when I go through, like, my blue sky feed and stuff like that. It's just people constantly being like, please someone, like, anyone. We don't care. Invade us. Like, whatever you need to do. Just, like, stop this. Stop us from doing this. It's bad for all of us. And that, like, smug thing from Europeans of just being like, well, if Americans bothered to protest, and you're like, fuck off. I don't know where this comes from, but we are. [01:07:14] Speaker A: I wonder if there is. [01:07:15] Speaker B: We're doing that semi. [01:07:17] Speaker A: Seriously. I wonder if there is gonna come a time where it puts our friendship at risk, though. [01:07:22] Speaker B: Why would. Why would that. [01:07:23] Speaker A: Well, I mean, how heinous does your country have to act before I turn on you? You know what I mean? [01:07:30] Speaker B: Well, that would be bizarre. [01:07:30] Speaker A: It would, wouldn't it? I mean, I'm just wondering. [01:07:34] Speaker B: I mean, I don't know, Mark. How heinous. Doesn't have to be. [01:07:38] Speaker A: Well, I. [01:07:38] Speaker B: When do you start blaming me? [01:07:39] Speaker A: I can't. I can't conceive. But I'm wondering if. If at one point it might. [01:07:46] Speaker B: I think if I, like, suddenly started approving of it, that'd be one thing. [01:07:50] Speaker A: Would. Would a Jew from Poland have had a podcast with a Nazi? [01:07:56] Speaker B: Not with a Nazi, but maybe a German? [01:07:58] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, that's a great point. Once again, yes, that is a great point. [01:08:08] Speaker B: Come on, Marco. Polly. All right, you big goob. You're stuck with me, you can't. You can't use our wars against me or whatever. [01:08:19] Speaker A: And you, listener, you're stuck with us. [01:08:21] Speaker B: Yes. [01:08:22] Speaker A: However, you can decide not to tune in. I have to do this. [01:08:26] Speaker B: Yeah, no, this is. If you didn't show up to the Zoom, I'd just be at your house one day, like, hey, yeah, should we go now? I know where you live. You have your location on. On everything. But, yeah, I want to say before we, you know, talk about things we watched and things like that, great first book club of the year was so wonderful to see everyone and talk about American Rapture. This is, like, the sweet spot of books where I think, like, we all liked it, but also had criticisms of it. So you get, like, a really good conversation of, like, the. The good and the bad of this book. And. And I think, like, that's really. That's kind of what you want in something. [01:09:11] Speaker A: Yeah. You want dialogue. [01:09:12] Speaker B: Don't. [01:09:13] Speaker A: It's not much fun when everyone agrees. [01:09:16] Speaker B: Yeah, right. [01:09:18] Speaker A: There's got to be. [01:09:18] Speaker B: If everyone agrees, it's bad, it can be fun. But ranting is always a good time. If everyone agrees, it's good, it can be harder to have, like, or, like, if everyone agrees that it's like, oh, this is perfect. I loved it. It can be harder to have, like, a full discussion about it, but this really had, like, a good mix of sort of. Yeah, I really like this. It was a great ride. Also didn't love this element of this, which is a lot of fun. So if you are trying to enter your book era and you haven't yet joined the Jack of All Graves Book Club, you [email protected] bookclub next month, we're reading Chain Gang All Stars by Nana Kwame Aje Brenya, which I have heard only really great things about. Our boffin Eileen suggested this book when I posted on Blue sky, like, our, you know, yearly calendar. People were like, oh, it's so good. So I'm going in blind. I don't really know anything about it, but I have heard only good things. So pick up your copy of Chain Gang All Stars from Gibson's from the library, from your local indie bookstore, and let's read that one together. [01:10:26] Speaker A: I'd quite like the book club to read the book that I'm currently reading just so I can get it. Get it clear in my head if I. If I'm not enjoying it because me or if it's just. If it's just me because you should. [01:10:38] Speaker B: Go into the book club. On Discord and be like, will someone else read this? And I'm sure someone will. [01:10:43] Speaker A: Do you know what? That is a great idea because there is a Discord channel for book club get togethers. That is a fantastic idea. And maybe, maybe somebody has read it. Yeah, it's called Ghost Station, right? Ghost. Ghost Station. And one of two things is going on here. I'm coming fresh off the back of reading three novels in the Expanse series, right? And as I've said before, I think this is probably as good as I've ever read sci fi, being it's fucking majestic. [01:11:13] Speaker B: Is that all of them? Are you done? [01:11:14] Speaker A: Oh, God, no. There's another seven. I've got the next two. Oh my God. Sorry. There are seven in total, I believe. Okay. And I've got the next two on the shelf in my TBR pile. [01:11:25] Speaker B: Okay. [01:11:25] Speaker A: So either now all Sci Fi forever is ruined for me or this is shit. This book is really, really not very good. And I. It's. It's definitely one or the other. It's a story of a. It's. It's the story of, of a, of a psychiatrist, a young doctor. She's female and she's never felt. She's, she's always felt excluded from her, from her family and from her work. And she's troubled and she's got trauma and she ends up on a mission to a remote world with a, with a team of roughneck exploration, mining, you know, blue collar space workers. And they don't, they don't, they don't accept it readily. And maybe it's, it's because of her, but, but maybe there's something more going on and. Oh, but, but, but. The captain seems handsome. Is that, is that vulnerability I sense in him? Oh, man. And I don't know how long. When do you know. When do you know part of a book when, if it's gonna be a dnf? When do you often not finish a book? Because I hate to not finish a book and I really want to not finish this book because I'm really not enjoying it. [01:12:38] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I think I, I think I DNF books fairly often. I don't like to do it and thus I usually choose my books pretty carefully. Like, I don't usually go into something without like a, a really good sense of whether I'm going to like it or not. But yeah, if I get like. [01:12:55] Speaker A: Ghost Station is all written in the present tense as well, which is irritating. Mark sits down at the computer. [01:13:01] Speaker B: I don't mind that on the tv. [01:13:03] Speaker A: I Don't enjoy that. [01:13:05] Speaker B: But yeah, if I get like 50 pages in and I'm like, I want to do a murder, I usually don't continue. Although if you've listened to the Joag fan Cave this month about Poltergeist, we did have a conversation about how I'm doing the the story graph challenge from the Lay down podcast, Ryan's podcast. And one of the prompt is a blank of blank and blank. And any book that's gonna be a blank of blank and blank is fantasy, and I hate fantasy. So I went through Reddit and I picked out something and I will never remember what the title is because there's a thousand things that are a blank of blank and blank. But yeah, 50 pages. And I texted Ryan. It was like, I want to kill myself. Yeah, it's like, I hate this so much. But that one I am trying to persevere with because I don't think that there's gonna be a better one of that kind of title. I think I'm gonna hate it either way. [01:14:11] Speaker A: A massive trend in metal band nameage about 15 years ago where just there was so many metal bands that were something to something. [01:14:25] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, like Brace the Fight. [01:14:27] Speaker A: This wasn't blessed to fall something to something until that was all completely put an end to by a band calling themselves Verb, the noun, which is such a great name for a band. [01:14:40] Speaker B: Oh, man. Verb, the noun. I guess that'll kill it. Yep, that'll. [01:14:45] Speaker A: Nice one. [01:14:48] Speaker B: So, yeah, join the book club. [01:14:50] Speaker A: That's bottom line. [01:14:51] Speaker B: Yeah, bottom line. Join the book club. We have a really good time. Also, we just want to like now since it's this year, we want to keep on. [01:15:01] Speaker A: We're in the year of Joag UK. We're in the fucking year of Joag UK. Weekend of August 8th and 9th. [01:15:08] Speaker B: Yes. [01:15:09] Speaker A: London, United Kingdom. [01:15:11] Speaker B: Yes. [01:15:12] Speaker A: UK. Right. England. England, the capital of this nation. Jack of all graves. In person, live in your space, right? [01:15:28] Speaker B: Yes. [01:15:30] Speaker A: Look at one another, speak to touch one another. You know what I mean? Exchange oxygen, inhale one another's flakes. Do you know what I'm saying? Do you know what I'm saying? [01:15:42] Speaker B: Yes. [01:15:43] Speaker A: Catch a cold off one another, right? [01:15:46] Speaker B: Yep. [01:15:47] Speaker A: And. And fun things. [01:15:49] Speaker B: And fun things. [01:15:51] Speaker A: I have been scoping out venues. I've shared a list of potential venues with Corrigan. [01:15:56] Speaker B: Yes. [01:15:57] Speaker A: I'll start a channel in the discord soon, I guess. It. It. [01:16:02] Speaker B: There's one in there already. You just gotta use it. [01:16:04] Speaker A: Yeah, I know. I think. I think I'll rename it then Joag uk because I want it to be special. [01:16:08] Speaker B: Do it. [01:16:09] Speaker A: I'll make a packet. I'll make this year's information packet. [01:16:12] Speaker B: This is exciting. Mark asked me earlier, you know, you know, is it incumbent upon me to make the packet this time? And I was like, I mean, I'm willing to do it. And you were like, no, I feel. [01:16:24] Speaker A: Like I've got to make the packet. [01:16:24] Speaker B: I'm doing it. [01:16:25] Speaker A: I probably won't do it as early as you did. You had the packet raised to go, like eight months out, didn't you? [01:16:29] Speaker B: Yeah. And for those who did not come to this, I made like a whole PDF packet with, like, information like where you can stay and where to park and, like, what we're doing scheduled by the hours, things like that. [01:16:41] Speaker A: We gave it all. And I, I'll actually, I. I'm open to input on this if. If there's anything anybody out of town or out of country would like to do as a group activity, I'm open to it. There's a whole ton of joag, you know, adjacent. [01:16:58] Speaker B: Ryan had a really good suggestion of like a garden or something that was, like, really creepy and cool that I was like, yeah, what we're doing that. That's in. So, yeah, we take suggestions. Open for sure. [01:17:10] Speaker A: Wide open to input. But look, if you aren't hype already, you can fucking start to get hyped because this is going on, it's coming, and always, always, always fucking gets here quicker than you think. So. [01:17:23] Speaker B: Exactly. [01:17:23] Speaker A: If you're in. Good. [01:17:24] Speaker B: Want to make sure that, like, we. [01:17:25] Speaker A: Keep book your fucking travel. Let's fucking get this done. [01:17:28] Speaker B: Yeah, we're seven months out now. That's gonna. [01:17:30] Speaker A: I'm even thinking of. [01:17:31] Speaker B: That's gonna fly. [01:17:31] Speaker A: I'm even having ideas for bits, bits we can do during the show. [01:17:36] Speaker B: Oh, I'm excited for you all to see Marco Bitts in person, which is always a delight. You know, there's some. Plenty of people there who, you know, came to the. The US Meetup, people who, you know, things like that. But those of you who have not gotten to experience the Marco in person, I think. I think it's a different experience than listening to you. [01:17:59] Speaker A: Is it? No. That's interesting. Maybe that's. That's one for another week. I'd love to know. How worst is that? Am I a disappointment? Am I disappointing to you? [01:18:06] Speaker B: No, no. I think you're. I think you're more. I think that the person that you are in the context of, like, the, like, confident conversation with your bestie or whatever, sure could almost Be like intimidating. Right. Like, I think, like, you come across as very self assured and things like that. And, and, and in person, you're. No, no come across that way at all. I've. I've called you like a baby deer before. Like you're, you know, but in like a good way. I think. Like, you're more. I think when people meet you, you are much more approachable than you might come across otherwise. Like, you're very much the kind of person that, like, you could immediately be like, oh, that's. That's my buddy right there. Oh, you know. Yeah. So I mean it in a good way, but I just think it's a. Yeah. There's distinct difference between mark in your ears and mark in your space. [01:19:02] Speaker A: Beautifully put. Beautifully put. I do, you know, please don't. This isn't. Don't take this as a pejorative in any way, but you are very much the same. [01:19:13] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. [01:19:15] Speaker A: Like. [01:19:16] Speaker B: Yes, I know that. [01:19:21] Speaker A: No difference. Your podcast Persona is. Is just you. It's just your Persona. [01:19:27] Speaker B: I have this thing where, like, I will. Because I look exactly the same as I always had my entire life too. [01:19:33] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:19:34] Speaker B: And so I will go to. I'm from a small town in Massachusetts and everyone knew my dad and kind of knew my family when I was growing up and stuff like that. And I will still go back there and be like, walking down Main street and someone who I haven't seen in 30 years will be like, hey, it's Jimmy Vaughn's kid. And they'll come up and they'll be like, you're exactly as I remember. Like, my personality has been. Been the same. [01:19:57] Speaker A: That is very sweet. [01:19:58] Speaker B: My entire life. So. Yeah, no, I'm aware of this. See about me. [01:20:03] Speaker A: What? Yeah, okay. I mean, what. I am quite awkward face to face. I am quite awkward in public, which, you know, hitherto I'd be able to just mask by just getting a load on. You know what I mean? Just getting absolutely ruined. [01:20:19] Speaker B: Yeah, that will not be the case. [01:20:21] Speaker A: No, it won't. Well, not. Not from this perspective anyway. A lot might change in seven months. It's. Maybe I'll have a particularly tough few months. Who knows? But yes, this will be fucking on the wagon as well, so. [01:20:36] Speaker B: Yes, exactly. Which is. Which is fun. I think it's gonna be. [01:20:40] Speaker A: I agree. Oh, listen, I cannot fucking wait. [01:20:42] Speaker B: I can't wait. Something there reminded me of something. We were talking about you being awkward in the same. I've lost it. I don't know. I had a thought and it's don't worry about. Was so important. I know it, but I don't know. Should we talk about what we watched? [01:21:00] Speaker A: We can do. Yeah, I gotta. I gotta. I got a few. I got a few interesting ones, but a few documentaries this week. There's one that, that we let. That we did leave off the list. I'll talk about movie movies first. What have you got? I haven't looked at your letterboxd. [01:21:11] Speaker B: Hey, Monday. [01:21:14] Speaker A: No, tomorrow. Oh, exciting. I'm going to the Bone temple tomorrow. [01:21:18] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. I might try to do that as well because I didn't like the last one, but everyone seems to really love this one. [01:21:27] Speaker A: So, so, so interesting in that it's running out of four on letterboxd currently. Everyone is enjoying it. Everyone is really enjoying it. All the friends. Good friends. People with good taste. Good, you know, great bunch of lads. Everyone seems to enjoy it. And it has tanked at the box office. It has whiffed it completely. It's dropped something. Like when you compare it to the last movie, it's down like 58%. It's done no business at all. [01:21:58] Speaker B: I wonder if that's because of the last. [01:21:59] Speaker A: Hey, maybe reap what you sow. [01:22:01] Speaker B: So I think, obviously, as like, genre fans and stuff like that, to me, there's a distinct difference between a Danny Boyle movie and a Nia DaCosta film. And that's what gets me interested in this, is that I'm like, I'm gonna be seated for Anita Costa. [01:22:16] Speaker A: Sure. [01:22:17] Speaker B: Movie. And I don't know that, like, your casual viewer is gonna, you know, have seen the last one and be like, oh, but this one's gonna be markedly different. You know, this is gonna have a different style, you know, things like that than the last one. So I wonder if that has impacted it at all. [01:22:36] Speaker A: But I'm wildly looking forward to the bone temple. What do you have? We did. We managed to fucking carve out some time together to watch a movie this week. How lovely was it, though? Wasn't it fun? [01:22:46] Speaker B: Yeah. Which you. You asked me. Because if you listened. Last week, I was very frustrated that Mark kept turning down the thing that I suggested over and over, and then he finally watched it without me. [01:22:57] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:22:58] Speaker B: And so this week he was like, do you want to watch a movie? Whose turn is it? And I was like, mine. [01:23:03] Speaker A: You were? Yeah. [01:23:04] Speaker B: No, fucking my goddamn turn to pick the fucking movie. And it was a bit random, but I think someone else had watched it and it had been on my see when you watch list. [01:23:17] Speaker A: When you mentioned the title, it echoed in My head. Somehow I've seen that fucking title somewhere recently, and I could not for the life of me place it way. So I'm. I'd love to know how. How you decided that it was something we needed. [01:23:30] Speaker B: Yeah, I. Actually, someone had posted. Now that I think about it, someone on Blue sky had posted an image of the Phantom from this. And people were making comments about how much they love the movie order, but no one's saying the name of the movie. I was like, what the fuck is this? So I did like, the Google, like, circle thing to figure out what this was a screen grab from. And it was like, oh, it's the Phantom of the Paradise. I was like, okay, interesting. And then I looked and I was like, oh, this is already in my watch list. It's a Brian De palma film from 1974. [01:23:59] Speaker A: Bang on. Yes, 1974. [01:24:01] Speaker B: 1974. Somehow before Rocky Horror, whichever. You've seen this. If you've seen this, you're like, huh, Fascinating. I don't know. Why don't you describe it? Because I thought this was like. When I. I sent it to you, and you were like, oh, I don't know about this. And my response, as I often do, you're the. You're the one who's more likely to enjoy a De Palma movie than am. And you were like, you know what? [01:24:24] Speaker A: Good. Which is what sold me. But listener, dear, dear listener, let me tell you. [01:24:28] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:24:29] Speaker A: This is not what is in your head. When I can. When. When you hear the name Brian De Palma, you. You would be forgiven for going to crime thrillers. You'd be forgiven for going to Carrie, you know, fucking the Untouchables and so on. Oh, God, he can direct the shit out of a film. Brian De Palmar. I've said this time and time again, I fucking love him. I think he's amazing. But what you probably won't envision is a. Almost like a fucking rock opera, right? Horror slash romance. As the title suggests, a riff on the Phantom of the Opera. [01:25:18] Speaker B: Right. And also on, like, Faust. [01:25:20] Speaker A: Also, of course, yes. Very much on Faust. Imbued very much in the spirit of glam with camp dialed right up. It is so colorful and inventive with huge, broad performances. It's. It's. It's not, you know, it's not a music industry you might recognize with any foot in reality. It's hyper real. It's. It's. I kept. [01:25:55] Speaker B: It's got definite giallo sort of influences. [01:25:59] Speaker A: Massive, massive, massive jello influences. I kept coming back to Clockwork Orange. Also. [01:26:05] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:26:06] Speaker A: In terms of costume and language, it. It evokes a Clockwork Orange. All of. All of Brian De Palma's cinematic language is in here. You'll jump into that carry split screen. The action sequences are very, very. With a keen eye for detail and orchestration. You know, there's a lot of cause and effect like one event leading to another event a few shots down the line. Music wise. Right. Incredibly, one of the film's cast and when. When this clicked and I looked up the guy's career, it just clicked. Loud and clear. Is a guy called Paul Williams who plays a. One of a music producer who turns out to, you know, be a fucking evil, evil guy. And you look at this guy's CV and it is incredible. The guy's a musician and writer. Wrote a load of music for the Muppet. Yeah. [01:27:12] Speaker B: Like Rainbow Connection, for example. [01:27:14] Speaker A: There you go. A. A voice actor of some renown has done loads of voices for Batman animated series. Does Mr. Freeze in the Batman animated series. Huge. Fucking huge credits. And this guy wrote the music for Bugsy Malone. [01:27:31] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:27:33] Speaker A: The. The. The player piano kind of motif of Bugsy Malone. And that is. So if you go into the Phantom of the paradise knowing this. God, it makes such sense. I. I'm a Bugsy Malone Stan, by the way. Right. [01:27:50] Speaker B: I. I didn't know this. [01:27:51] Speaker A: I love Bugsy Malone. It's brilliant. [01:27:55] Speaker B: Nice. [01:27:55] Speaker A: Like on the music is brilliant. And oh, why don't just. The idea is just so ballsy. You know what I mean? Let's make a prohibition. You're a gangster movie. But kids. [01:28:10] Speaker B: Right. [01:28:10] Speaker A: Never referred to. It's not. It is. It doesn't refer to itself at all. Hey, wait a minute. Why the fuck are we all children? Nope. Doesn't. [01:28:18] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:28:19] Speaker A: It just an idea that it's pre. [01:28:21] Speaker B: Meta commentary completely. [01:28:23] Speaker A: Hey let's. Let's cast Jodie Foster as a fucking speakeasy hooker who's a child. Why the fuck not? But what I'm saying is the music in Phantom of Paradise is fantastic. All bespoke, all written for the show. You've got bands duking it out with other bands and it's. It had a massive impact on me, but one that only came to light when I couldn't stop fucking thinking about it the next day. [01:29:02] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Because it was. I think both of us are kind of reaction. That was like, I'm glad we watched that. I don't really like want to see it again, but I'm glad we watched it. And then the next day you were like, I have to stop thinking about. [01:29:12] Speaker A: The Phantom of the paradise, stop thinking about this movie. And in the moment it was, it was an easy three and a half stars. But talk about a movie that fucking lingers, man. Oh, just, just fantastic. It's cinematic operatic reality dialed up to 500. Just, just a proper curio, A proper piece of fucking weird cinema. [01:29:42] Speaker B: Yeah. So yeah, justice for beef. [01:29:44] Speaker A: Justice for beef. Corry. When you're right, you're right. When you, when you get the picks right, you really do. And it look, I'm sure like we can both, we're both big enough to admit doesn't happen all the time. No, listen, sometimes there are. [01:29:59] Speaker B: We're always going to something we haven't seen before. So, you know, they can't all be winners. [01:30:03] Speaker A: Please. If you're in the mood to be challenged, if you're in the mood for something that. And I hate Rocky Horror as well, mind you. [01:30:10] Speaker B: Oh, that's interesting. [01:30:11] Speaker A: Yeah, never got it. Never got it at all. Although I wonder if maybe that's the fault of all of the people I know, right? [01:30:19] Speaker B: There can be a degree of like fans of it shaping that. I watched Rocky Horror like at home when I was like seven and it's like amongst those like, you know, again we were talking a couple weeks ago about like formative horror movies or whatever. Like that was a watched and it gave me nightmares and all of that stuff. So I like, I'm outside of the fandom of it and just watching it like as you know, on its own as a terrifying thing I didn't understand as a child. [01:30:49] Speaker A: So listen, present company accepted, everybody I've ever encountered who expresses a strong desire to a strong fandom of Rocky Horror I have found profoundly irritating. [01:31:03] Speaker B: I mean it's the ultimate theater kid text, right? You know, it's got that. I remember when I, when I was teaching at Cal State Fullerton, I had a trans student but like obviously she was young, right? Like so you know, not of the era of people who kind of grew up with this as like a transgressive text, you know. And she was like, I feel like it's like transphobic. And I'm like, yeah, from like a modern lens, it doesn't like hold up super well to have your, you know, main character be this cross dressing kind of trans coded character that is a murderer or whatever. You know, like at the time it was like something that people were like, oh, I kind of, you know, see this campy version of, of myself or whatever. And it's putting this stuff out there that you know. Yeah. Is sexually transgressive in a time when that was not, you know, the case with everything but it in a modern lens. Yeah, it's, it's problematic. [01:32:06] Speaker A: Okay. If, if you're a fan of Rocky Horror, I absolve you. And I'm sure you're not irritating as fuck. [01:32:12] Speaker B: Sure you're cool. But yeah, I did go to one our. I ran like the, the school. So at UCSB we had a theater, like a movie theater that there was a course that the students got to like run it essentially. And I taught that course. So I was like the head of this sort of thing. But one thing that every term or every year they would do is like there was always one of those midnight Rocky Horror things. And that's like the one time that I've been to one I was like, I hate this, this so much. Yep, this is the worst. [01:32:50] Speaker A: Just gonna rummage down here for a little drink. Here. [01:32:52] Speaker B: Drink of water. Well, while you're doing that, I also, you know, I realized I hadn't opened up the sheds and looked through at what was on there for a minute. So I went into shudder. And there was a war movie on a boat with sharks from Australia called Beast of War. And I was like, listen, that is relevant to my interests. I love Australian horror. [01:33:17] Speaker A: Was it gory, like shark things? [01:33:20] Speaker B: It was extremely gory. Listen, the effects in this are great. They went practical. People are blowing up, there's limbs everywhere, there's a problem. Practical shark looks great. You know, they do a lot, but with clearly very little. So there's other elements of it that like it's very clearly filmed, like on a sound stage in a pool. [01:33:45] Speaker A: You know what, Just before we started recording tonight, I always got the news on in the background. You know, this about me. God, I wish I could be free from the news, but I cannot put it down. Story about a kid in Australia who was pulled from the water after being absolutely fucking savaged by a shark. [01:34:06] Speaker B: Oh dear. [01:34:07] Speaker A: Like life changing bodily injuries. But here's the thing, right? [01:34:13] Speaker B: This was today. [01:34:14] Speaker A: This was today. Here's the thing. You know what the beach was called? I have a guess. [01:34:20] Speaker B: What was it? Shark Attack Beach. [01:34:22] Speaker A: Shark Beach. [01:34:26] Speaker B: Close enough. Listen, there's a not to victim blame, but read the sign. Yep. You know. [01:34:33] Speaker A: Yep, yep, yep. [01:34:35] Speaker B: Yeah, so Beast of War, it's, it's budget. Definitely gets the best of it in that. Like it never feels real because it's like it's basically, you know, these guys in this one, like on this piece of floating debris and then it's, like, foggy around them so that you can't see anything else. Right. So it gives that. Like, you're very much aware that, like, they are not on the ocean. They're in a soundstage somewhere filming this. And I think that pulls a little bit from the story is not having any atmosphere to, like, set it up, you know, to feel like they're really in peril in the ocean. [01:35:11] Speaker A: You say that right. [01:35:12] Speaker B: Kind of thinking this is a movie. [01:35:13] Speaker A: But I would every day of the week take a film that budget limitations makes them shoot it all on a soundstage than in front of a green screen. [01:35:25] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, like, I feel good about that in that way, but it doesn't change that. That's how certainly you feel watching it. Like, I'm glad they did that. And not cgi. However, it also makes it really hard to get into the movie. I also felt like, you know, it has the. A thing that I don't like as a trope in a movie is just kind of like people being adversarial from the get. And so, you know, you're dealing with this soldier who is of Aboriginal descent, so, of course everyone's racist towards them, especially this one soldier in particular who really doesn't want to serve with, you know, an Aboriginal person. And so there's kind of the scene with this, but it starts with, like, just out the gate, like, a lot of fighting between characters and things like that, and doesn't build up, like, a real good, like, sense of, like, who these people are and why we should like them or kind of want to be on their side and thus, like, they're very interchangeable once they start getting, like, picked off by various things, you know, so it gets points for, like, the effects and things like that, and it is well acted. I think the. The characters are really good. The sort of main guy who plays the. The guy of the Aboriginal background, he. He was an apple cider vinegar. He was really good in that. But, yeah, Beast of War, I don't know. It's like, it's watchable. It's like the kind of thing you could put on in the background and not, like, not have to focus all your attention. [01:36:49] Speaker A: Feels like a dual screener. [01:36:51] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. You know, you won't be missing out on much. I really was like, I'm gonna. I'm gonna pay attention and watch this. And then I was like, I don't think it really requires me to. [01:37:02] Speaker A: Okay, let me. Let me speak, if I may, on A House of Dynamite. Yes, please do know Ye of this film. [01:37:10] Speaker B: Yeah. I had seen like, you know, a month or so ago. When. Or maybe a couple months ago, whenever it came out, people reviewing it on letterboxd. It's obviously not the kind of movie that I would watch, so. [01:37:22] Speaker A: Ask you a question. [01:37:22] Speaker B: It never entices me. [01:37:24] Speaker A: You know Catherine Bigelow? [01:37:25] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. Yep. [01:37:27] Speaker A: She of Near Dark and Strange Days and fucking Point Break, right? [01:37:33] Speaker B: Yes. [01:37:35] Speaker A: What the fuck happened there? Is. Do you. [01:37:38] Speaker B: Is she. [01:37:39] Speaker A: Is she. Is she maga? [01:37:43] Speaker B: Why? Because she does like military shit and whatnot. [01:37:45] Speaker A: Well, yeah, I mean, House of Dynamite, right. For those. Just if you bring it up to speed. It is. It's a movie that kind of asks the question. So look, if there was a nuclear strike launched against the States, what would actually happen? [01:38:04] Speaker B: Sure. [01:38:06] Speaker A: What does the chain of command look like? Who's in that? Who's in the circle? Who's in that? Need to know kind of group of military and politicians, international relations. Who gets woken up in the middle of the night, who gets called off their holidays, what interns have to scramble, what's the security protocols like, what happens underneath, what happens in the Oval Office, what happens in the situation rooms, what actually happens. Ah. But it feels like propaganda. [01:38:40] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:38:40] Speaker A: Right. [01:38:41] Speaker B: I mean, I feel like my read on her and I don't really watch her movies again, so not really the kinds of things that would attract me, but I would guess more like centrist shitlib than maga. [01:38:56] Speaker A: Yeah. Fair enough. That tracks. [01:38:58] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:38:59] Speaker A: Because America is. Oh, Dave launched an attack on America. You know, it's very much. These are the guys scrambling to save you. And I. Yeah. [01:39:12] Speaker B: Mm. [01:39:12] Speaker A: Everybody. Everybody in a House of Dynamite. And I'm thinking back on it now and I. I really feel as though no one in this film is painted as anything other than the last line of defense. Those fucking heroes out there, and they've got a lock there. [01:39:30] Speaker B: There's no one with ulterior motives or anything. [01:39:34] Speaker A: No, there aren't. Listen, it's. It's a fascinatingly built film because it, It's. It's not quite a time loop film, but it replays the same sequence of kind of 13 or so minutes from a few different perspectives. Right. So conversations that you half here from somebody else's perspective, you see from the other perspective elsewhere in the country, elsewhere in Washington. Context is filled in and built with each loop. You see things from the intern's point of view, from the general's point of view, all the way up and up and up to the President. Right. Who is Idris Elba? Oh, okay. [01:40:16] Speaker B: Okay. [01:40:17] Speaker A: Oh, hey. [01:40:18] Speaker B: Our British president. [01:40:19] Speaker A: The one. What? What? House of Dynamite is unimpeachable is in terms of its cast fucking. Some of the great current performers are in House of Dynamite. You've got Rebecca Ferguson, always incredible on screen. [01:40:35] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:40:36] Speaker A: The mighty Jared Harris. [01:40:39] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Love me some Jared Harris. [01:40:41] Speaker A: Spoiler alert. To ends his own life again. Yes. All he does. Come on. Every time you see Jared. [01:40:49] Speaker B: Can't Lane price me. [01:40:50] Speaker A: It's Jared Harris. You just check in the watch. When's he gonna fucking end his own life? [01:40:56] Speaker B: But I can't handle it. My heart's still broken from the last time. Awful. [01:41:00] Speaker A: But Cass is great. Structurally beautiful. Tension great. The first kind of. The first couple of times you see this loop play out, you're like, fuck me, this is gripping. Right. You've got, you know, just you. You almost feel as though you're getting a glimpse of what international protocol is and the hope that it could be a mistake or, you know that time when, you know, we spoke about the Russians nearly launching a nuke over a glitch in the system. The hope that it's something like that gets stripped away. Fail safes. Fail to fail Safe. [01:41:36] Speaker B: Like the movie Fail Safe. [01:41:38] Speaker A: Yeah. I've not seen that. [01:41:39] Speaker B: Have you seen that? [01:41:39] Speaker A: No, I have not. [01:41:40] Speaker B: You should watch that one. [01:41:41] Speaker A: You know, attempt to me to intercept. And Jen, it becomes ever more inevitable that this is going to result in millions dead. It's. It's gonna hit in Chicago. But the further up the chain the movie goes, the more it becomes, as I say, it just feels like propaganda. The president is pulled away from an engagement ways with a school basketball team. And we see him on satellite calls to his wife who's in Kenya raising awareness on a. You know, on a. On some kind of safari with elephants. Well, anything I can do to raise awareness, honey. You know what I mean? It's very yank washing. It's. It's properly. There's. There's no do. There's not even a suggestion here that anyone is. Is anything other than that last fucking clinging on that thin line of defense between us and nuclear Armageddon. And the further up the chain we get. It starts to feel like an episode of 24. It really starts to feel like an episode of 24. I'm just really curious. What happened in Catherine Bigelow's life between like Point Break and Zero Dark Thirty, Right? Something changed there. For her. Was it. When did she. When did she and Big Jim get divorced? [01:43:13] Speaker B: I feel like it was a really long time ago. [01:43:15] Speaker A: I don't know. I, I blame that. That's what I blame. [01:43:19] Speaker B: I don't know. I mean, in that time. Yeah. He's gone off in a weird direction as well. [01:43:24] Speaker A: And he's gone off on Pandora. What did they do to one another? [01:43:28] Speaker B: What, they still, like, work together all the time? I don't know. It's a weird. [01:43:32] Speaker A: That's fascinating, isn't it? [01:43:34] Speaker B: Relationship. But. Yeah. I don't know. I, I, yeah. Don't know enough about her as a person. [01:43:41] Speaker A: I'd love to know a little bit more about what happened. [01:43:44] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:43:44] Speaker A: Why she talk about two careers who took a turn? [01:43:49] Speaker B: Swerve. [01:43:50] Speaker A: Yes. Big Jim, who, as you pointed out to me earlier this week, is setting us up for something, isn't he? [01:43:56] Speaker B: Yeah, he certainly is. Oh, I need to find a way to cut costs. [01:44:01] Speaker A: All the movie press. [01:44:02] Speaker B: Avatar. [01:44:02] Speaker A: Big Jim Cameron says he has to find a cheaper way to make Avatar movies. What could you. [01:44:08] Speaker B: Yeah, I wonder what that. Cheaper ways. [01:44:10] Speaker A: What could you be waiting to tell us, Big Jim? [01:44:14] Speaker B: Yep. But speaking of, you know, casts in movies, I also watched the new Netflix movie that everyone has been watching that also isn't really up my alley except the people in it, which is the Rip, starring Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. [01:44:35] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. [01:44:36] Speaker B: Yes. So as soon as I saw this, I love those, I'm like, all right, me too. You know, big fan, huge fan of those. Those boys. So I was like, obviously, I'm gonna. [01:44:45] Speaker A: Watch whatever the it is. I cannot find myself. I cannot dislike Ben Affleck for all his transgressions. [01:44:53] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, he's just, he's just some guy like, you know, like, that's his charm. It's like, he is, you know, that guy. Yeah. Like this man, the guy who keeps getting back together with his ex. You know, it's just like, always a little. [01:45:11] Speaker A: But he's got very smart things to say about the creative impact of AI. He's, you know. [01:45:15] Speaker B: Right. He speaks fluent Spanish. He's a smart man. You know, he's trying to make a living. [01:45:21] Speaker A: Like. [01:45:21] Speaker B: Yeah. Like, this is. Yeah. Of the two of them, he's definitely, you know, my fave. [01:45:29] Speaker A: Like it or not, he's Batman, sadly. [01:45:31] Speaker B: Yep, there's that. Yeah. I just both of them sometimes say things that I'm like, come on, guys. But, like, largely, they're the kind of dudes that you're like, yeah, no, I get that guy. Yeah. And I like their partnership. I like, you know, guys who've been friends their whole life and, you know, all that stuff. Yes. That's healthy, but yeah. So they're in this movie, the rip on Netflix. It also has Tiana Taylor, who. Listen, now that we know she's, like, cool with anti Semitism, finally gonna say it. Her plastic surgery makes her look like an alien, and I'm sick of pretending it doesn't. I'm sorry, but that is the worst plastic surgery I've ever seen in my life. And I think it's weird. We all ignore. Just don't understand what's her name. From one battle after another. Tiana is Tiana. [01:46:25] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, for sure. I didn't spot it at the time. [01:46:30] Speaker B: Her entire face is not her face. Oh, God. Like, you know, giant upper lip, the eyes pulled back, the nose that's been rhinoplastied to death. Like, that's not what human people look like. And if you look at pictures of, like, her when she's younger, like, oh, yeah, that's. It's not what she's supposed to look like. And, you know, I just feel like now that she's been like, oh, it's fine that Kanye hates Jews. I can say what I feel about Taylor. But, yeah, she's in this. There's. Who else is in this movie? There's several great actors in this film. Nestor Carbonell is in it. [01:47:13] Speaker A: Oh, I love Nestor Carbonell. [01:47:15] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, he's. He's not in a lot of it, but he's. He's in the beginning of the movie. And I had no fucking clue what was going on. Oh, Kyle Chandler. Kyle Chandler's in this. And Steven Yuen. That's important. I had no idea what was going on at, like, any point in this movie. It's a movie about, like, cops in Miami who get word of a stash house where there is X amount of money stashed. And they go in there, and when they find it, it turns out that there's, like, something bigger going on, and you can't tell who is. Like, someone is clearly, like, trying to steal it or, like, maybe the people who own the house are, like, coming after the cops or, like, we don't know. There's, like, all these. You never quite know what people's motivations are. So you're questioning everyone. Are they. Are they sneakily trying to, you know, take this money or whatever? All these cops are a little bit, like, shifty because they're cops, but. So you're, like, constantly questioning. The thing was that I was like, even though I have no idea what's going on here, I figured out, like, who did it, literally in the first, like super recognition that you saw them. Yeah. It's like, come on, it is very clear who it's gonna turn out is responsible for this. So even with no idea what was going on, it was like, yeah, no, I got that. That much. And it's like a, it's, it's just mid, It's a very mid movie. You know, it feels very sparse and empty, unpopulated. There's like three locations in the whole thing. Which is weird because it also feels like a big budget movie. [01:48:49] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:48:49] Speaker B: But there's not a lot going on. There's no extras, nothing like that. Right. Like, it's just these people. I don't know. It's a bizarre vibe. It's, you know, I'm not like mad at it or whatever. It just again, it feels very much like you could be scrolling while. [01:49:08] Speaker A: Fine. [01:49:09] Speaker B: I mean, I was trying to pay attention because I was like, I don't know what's going on here, so I'm gonna watch it. But also I feel like if I had been scrolling, I wouldn't have missed anything either. [01:49:18] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:49:18] Speaker B: It's just. [01:49:19] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:49:19] Speaker B: It's a mid Netflix movie. [01:49:21] Speaker A: I'm certain it was designed as such. [01:49:24] Speaker B: Right. Well, but it feels like it's not because it's. There's so many threads you have to follow. Right. Because it's one of those things that like, when they finally reveal, it's almost like a Benoit Blanc type situation, you know, like, oh, well, while this was going on, I was doing this and blah, blah, blah. So like you really, it feels like you're meant to be paying attention to the whole thing, but at the same time, like I said, like you could kind of just pick it out based on the characters. [01:49:47] Speaker A: Maybe it's, maybe it's Boomer of me, but one has to suspect that part of the mission. Breach of Netflix. [01:49:54] Speaker B: Yes. [01:49:57] Speaker A: Every. Is to make every, every kind of high, high profile piece of content second screenable. I'm certain that's in the manifesto. [01:50:05] Speaker B: Right. But yeah, you get to see Matt and Ben doing their thing. Yeah. So, you know, that's fun. They are, they are being them and it's, it's a good time. [01:50:15] Speaker A: Splendid. [01:50:16] Speaker B: The rip, eh, you could watch it. [01:50:19] Speaker A: A couple of documentaries I'll speak of. I'll. I'll talk briefly about a hole in the head. Right. [01:50:27] Speaker B: Yes. [01:50:29] Speaker A: Now, one of my fixations, a piece of Mark Law here that long term listeners will know straight away is I have a real kind of. I can't get the fucking bee out of my bonnet. With the concept of trepanation, right? Trepening the act of boring a hole in one's skull down to the gas permeable membrane of the brain. And the pseudo scientific belief, pseudo medical belief that it enables oxygen saturation levels of the brain to increase and thus to raise awareness and consciousness and induce a permanent elevated experience of life. Quite why I was on. For some reason I was just doing mark things, just reading about trepanation on the Internet just like I do and became aware of a documentary from. How old is this doc? From 1990. [01:51:41] Speaker B: Okay. [01:51:42] Speaker A: Ah, here it is. That's why I was looking, I was looking for a movie called Heartbeat in the Brain. Right, okay. Which is a self filmed documentary by an artist from the UK, I want to say in the late 70s, early 80s who filmed herself performing this procedure. [01:52:02] Speaker B: Oh, Jesus Christ. [01:52:03] Speaker A: The movie doesn't exist publicly. It isn't, it isn't at all possible to get hold of and God knows I've tried. But this documentary, A Hole in the Head, features still images and scenes, you know, shots, two or three second clips from that film. [01:52:21] Speaker B: Oh, interesting. [01:52:22] Speaker A: Very fucking interesting, Corey. A Hole in the Head. It explores the idea of trepidation, the history of it, you know, Chinese, Egyptian medicine. And follows the stories of a number of people who've done it to themselves. They are still out there, they are still alive. Right. Well one was a professor from Amsterdam and he speaks to the camera and he's quite visibly got the indent right in the front of his skull with the skills, the skin has grown over. Another is this very self, same artist from the UK from the movie Heartbeat in the Brain. Another is a guy and his wife who both did it, he did himself and her, and they have kids and they're, they're white, kind of upper middle class. They, they in give interviews to the camera while their kid gambles around them on a picnic blanket. You know, I mean just the most perfectly normal guy you should ever wish to meet. But he's got a hole in his head under his hair. But I gotta tell you, some of the archive footage is fucking amazing. There are long excerpts from a documentary and I forget I missed the name of the documentary and I missed where it was filmed, but the documentary follows tribal instances of skull surgery, of head surgery, right, and has long graphic scenes of the shamanic kind of village doctor after like a two or three day ritual with ritual washing of hands and face and preparation of, of the site, the affected or the, or the ill, you know, member of, of the, of the, of the Village, whatever would come in and would have the front of their head just cleaved open, the skin pulled back. All on camera, all being narrated. And the doctor would just chip away. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. Wash, chip away, bang, bang, bang. And would pull away a piece of skull. And then within hours of the operation, which, which, which took hours by the way, often a day, a full day to complete, the village has their head fucking bundled up in, in, in like a cloth bandage and is walking back to their home. Shots of other people who this performance, this, this procedure was carried out on, who live then the rest of their life with like an open kind of fissure in the skin stretching across the entire front and the scalp of their head with exposed bone. Absolutely incredible. And this, this, this documentary is on YouTube. Freely available on YouTube. [01:55:25] Speaker B: You like linked me to it. I'm like, does that feel like a thing I would watch? [01:55:29] Speaker A: But it's, it's, it's the kind of thing, you know, that you would find on shock sites, gore sites, right? Yeah, totally intense. [01:55:37] Speaker B: There's a weird amount of that on YouTube. Stuff that you would like never imagine could be on there. Like, you can't like say certain words and things on it without getting demonetized, but like this shit will be on. [01:55:51] Speaker A: For a sicko like me. This was. Oh, mana, you know what I mean? I laughed it up. The documentary then in the last third talks to actual doctors who are like, no, obviously not. There's no fucking basis for this at all. What do you mean? [01:56:07] Speaker B: It, you might survive it, but it's not going to make a difference. [01:56:10] Speaker A: Exactly. One of the people who treponed themselves claims that it's to do with allowing the brain to pulse with the heartbeat. When you've got a hole in the top of the skull, the membrane is able to expand and contract with the heartbeat, thus allowing more oxygen to permeate. The doctor goes, well, it already does that. You've got a hole at the fucking bottom of your skull where your throat and your jaw connect. You've got ear holes and nostrils or whatever. [01:56:36] Speaker B: There's already fucking, there's a system of tubes in there to do that. [01:56:40] Speaker A: Another doctor makes the observation. Now all of these people that you've spoken to all have one thing in common, recreational drug use. And that is true. The guy from Amsterdam is like, well, I embarked on a long career of using psychedelics and I arrived at this option, you know, all hippies. But yes, if, if you're at all interested in the subject, as I clearly am, it gives real fucking Medical insight into the procedure. You see people performing trepanation on themselves. You see trepanation carried out in a tribal medical setting. It's super, super gripping. It's. If you're a fucking sicko like me. [01:57:22] Speaker B: All right, I'll put the YouTube link in the description for those of you who do want to. Yes, actually, check that out. [01:57:28] Speaker A: How the fuck have we managed to go two hours? This is ridiculous. What have we been talking about? [01:57:33] Speaker B: Lord knows. Talk about your last documentary real quick. I can smell dinner. [01:57:37] Speaker A: Okay. Chain reactions. Chain reactions. Oh, fuck. I wish I'd done this earlier because I got more to say about this. [01:57:42] Speaker B: You can talk about it next week if you want to. [01:57:44] Speaker A: Yeah, well, talk about it next week. We'll start about it next week. [01:57:47] Speaker B: Maybe I'll watch it before then. [01:57:48] Speaker A: It's basically a retrospective on the cultural impact of Texas Chainsaw Massacre as told in the voices of some really notable cultural contributors. Patton Oswalt talks about it really insightfully. Honestly. Stephen King pops up in there. Takeshi Miike is in there. The. The insight. The insight into Texas Chainsaw Massacre these people bring is incredible. It's. Right. It cannot be overstated just how much there is to talk about in that movie and the impact that it has had culturally. They. Honestly, if. If you think you're reading too much into Texas, you haven't even started. There is so fucking much going on in that film. Talking about the. Reflecting the industrial landscape, jobs lost to automation, family dynamic. How everything in a fucking modern American family. Family is. Is. Is encapsulated within those. Within that house in Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Just. It's wonderful. [01:58:51] Speaker B: I'll. [01:58:51] Speaker A: I'll stop there and I'll talk more about next week because we are nearly out of time. What are you having for dinner? Oh, Kio's making cod. [01:58:58] Speaker B: Kio's making cod. [01:58:59] Speaker A: Fishy, fishy fish Dinner. [01:59:01] Speaker B: Fishy. [01:59:04] Speaker A: Fishy, fishy dinner. Listen, friends, who knows what the geopolitical landscape of planet Earth might look like this time next week? I can't even. Who knows, Dare to guess. But I'll tell you one thing for sure, right? We're gonna be here. [01:59:19] Speaker B: That's right. [01:59:20] Speaker A: And you're gonna be here as well. And thanks for listening, friends. We will see you soon. Stay Sp. Sam.