Ep. 277: a walk to the world cup & glacier dangers

[00:00:04] Speaker A: I have been thinking a lot about notions of futility. [00:00:13] Speaker B: Oh, okay. It's kind of on brand it. [00:00:17] Speaker A: Of course it is. As I'm fond of saying, I've got the same preoccupations I've had all the entire time we've been talking, but don't ask me why, particularly this last week. But the. And it's a similar theme to what I. I tried to explore in the Lost joag. [00:00:38] Speaker B: Mm. Mm. [00:00:39] Speaker A: You know? [00:00:39] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:00:40] Speaker A: The lost joag of a few weeks back it was live, but now it's lost. [00:00:46] Speaker B: Yes. This idea of the amazing grace of joag. It once was live, but now it's lost futility. [00:00:54] Speaker A: Mm. What fucking idiocy it is to plan anything. [00:01:01] Speaker B: This is. Okay, now I see we were talking about some. A book before this and it's very funny that you, you were like, keep that in mind while you, while I tell the story. And now I'm like, okay, go on. Interesting. [00:01:13] Speaker A: What do you see? It is to plan anything, Right. But what beauty there is in plans gone withershins, you know? [00:01:24] Speaker B: Sure. Yep. [00:01:26] Speaker A: The greatest, the boldest, the most audacious, ostentatious, hubristic, unrealistic. [00:01:38] Speaker B: Yep. [00:01:39] Speaker A: Implausible plans. [00:01:41] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:01:44] Speaker A: Even the most successful and the most well executed plans, you stack them both up to, you know, next to one another and in the end they all come to naught. [00:01:54] Speaker B: Sure. [00:01:55] Speaker A: But what beauty and poetry there is in a badly executed, badly made plan. Going badly. [00:02:06] Speaker B: Sure. Okay. [00:02:07] Speaker A: Don't you think that's brilliant? Don't you think that's beautiful? You'll. In a. You'll know my long standing preoccupation with the story of Timothy Treadwell, the bear guy, you know? Yep. Grizzly man, like a, like, like a glacier coming towards your ship on the horizon slowly. Everyone saw it coming and it happened anyway. And it plays out exactly as everyone predicted. But what beauty there is in that, I guess. Oh, there is. There is. There is just this wonderful poetry of an end that everyone saw coming, maybe. Except the guy or gal at the epicenter, right. Who just inches from disaster, inches from tragedy, carries on anyway. [00:03:06] Speaker B: All right, let's see where this is going, listeners. [00:03:10] Speaker A: Maybe you can relate because right now, now I'm talking this out, right. It's death, isn't it? [00:03:17] Speaker B: Well, sure. [00:03:18] Speaker A: It's coming towards us every day. So anything you do in the meantime, whether you it up royally or you make the best go at it, it doesn't matter at all. It doesn't make a fucking tiny little whit of difference because it's the end is coming anyway, so it doesn't matter if. If your plans go. If you execute. Look, I'll get to the point. I'll get to the story. [00:03:48] Speaker B: Yeah. I just. I don't entirely know if I agree with that premise, but. [00:03:53] Speaker A: So you're gonna come with me? Like, I often like to place these in a geographical time and space. [00:03:58] Speaker B: Yes, indeed. [00:03:59] Speaker A: You're my source of truth here about American things. [00:04:02] Speaker B: Okay, I'll do what I can. [00:04:05] Speaker A: How would you pronounce a place in Washington? Y a, K, I, M a. Yakima. Yakima. [00:04:12] Speaker B: Yakima. [00:04:13] Speaker A: Yakima. [00:04:14] Speaker B: Yes. Yakima, Washington. [00:04:16] Speaker A: Welcome to Yakima. Welcome to Yakima, Washington in 1970. Right, right. [00:04:21] Speaker B: All right. [00:04:22] Speaker A: What might I expect in that area? [00:04:24] Speaker B: Corrigan Trees. [00:04:26] Speaker A: Nice. [00:04:27] Speaker B: It's like, a lot of trees. It's the Pacific Northwest. It's just trees and water. Very pretty. [00:04:34] Speaker A: Okay. Actually sounds beautiful. And I guess it would have been even more so in the 1970s. 1970. Not a data center to be seen in this landscape. [00:04:46] Speaker B: I would just. It's very funny for you to put it that way because I'm currently reading a book called Murderland, which is about how the landscape of Washington was so dotted with industry, it's probably the reason why we had so many serial killers. Ah, wow. [00:05:03] Speaker A: Really? So lots of places disappear into. [00:05:05] Speaker B: Yeah, let's. You know, maybe no data centers, but they probably. They may have had a smelting factory that, you know, turn people crazy. [00:05:15] Speaker A: Yeah, sure. Well, okay, look. Well, hey, I'll introduce you to our. Our man of the moment here, right? One Richard Swanson. [00:05:25] Speaker B: All right. Unfamiliar, Richard. [00:05:27] Speaker A: Are you unfamiliar? Okay. Interesting kind of career path on Richard. Unremarkable youth. Dad wasn't around much. Dad was in the Navy. Not his biological father, in fact. But was married to his mother, but. But was absent in his life. Was. It was. It was. It was a military guy, not an affluent household. A guy who married and had kids quite young. He married at 19. He had his first son at 20. By his mid-20s, he'd had his second son. And just six years after that, he and his wife divorced and he started over in Seattle. Right, okay. Where he found a kind of fledgling career as a private detective. [00:06:25] Speaker B: Oh, okay. [00:06:29] Speaker A: Stakeouts. Sitting in a van, he went. He bounced between jobs. Graphic design, web design, videography. But got laid off. Right, Got laid off. [00:06:42] Speaker B: Laid off from being a private detective. [00:06:44] Speaker A: No, no, no, no, no. From graphic design. From videography and graphic design. [00:06:48] Speaker B: Got it. [00:06:49] Speaker A: You went into web design. Got laid off from that. [00:06:51] Speaker B: Got It. [00:06:52] Speaker A: Right. But what I'm saying is this is a guy who bounced around. [00:06:55] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:06:56] Speaker A: In life, it feels. In his career. [00:07:00] Speaker B: Yeah. Just trying to find his way. Feeling around. [00:07:04] Speaker A: So his marriage is over. His career has spat him out. [00:07:10] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:07:12] Speaker A: And he, it feels to me, has what you might describe as a crisis. [00:07:20] Speaker B: Sure. [00:07:20] Speaker A: Right. Maybe there may be a masculine kind of crisis. His kids have grown up. His. The stability that he's always kind of lived in and around has gone from under him. So what he does is sells his fucking house. [00:07:35] Speaker B: Sure. [00:07:37] Speaker A: Moves in with a girlfriend and finds himself with no job, no mortgage. Sold his house. He's good, you know, he doesn't have a mortgage. [00:07:49] Speaker B: He's untethered. [00:07:50] Speaker A: Yeah. Ex. That. Oh, is he untethered? He is fucking untethered. And finds himself most rich in time to think about what he wants to do with his life. And this is what he settles on. This is the idea that he settles on some. Five years earlier. You know how I love pro wrestling. [00:08:15] Speaker B: I do know that. Yeah. Sit there in your Kenny Omega jersey. [00:08:21] Speaker A: You couldn't quite do it, Kenny. But we're still here for you, my guy. Whatever you. Whatever the next step takes you, we're going to be here for you. Cleaner. We fucking love you. But Richard found a passion for what us Brits would call football, of course. [00:08:38] Speaker B: Right. [00:08:38] Speaker A: And what you would call soccer. There you go. He played in a local league and had his sights set on going to the World cup, which was in Brazil in 2014. Right. [00:08:56] Speaker B: Going as in, like, as a player or going to. [00:08:59] Speaker A: No, no, no, no, no. As a. As a punter, as a ticket holder in the crowd. You wanted to go and see games [00:09:05] Speaker B: in the World Cup, Right. All right. Yeah. So I got you now. [00:09:11] Speaker A: But he's gotten a way of getting to Brazil, and it's a few years away, and it feels as though he's kind of steadily losing the plot. So these are his own words, Right. Spoken directly to camera in a video that you'll. You'll. You'll get the. You'll get the idea where this. This happened. [00:09:31] Speaker B: Okay. [00:09:31] Speaker A: He set himself a plan. I should just walk to the World Cup. Oh, screw what happens. I don't even care. Take off out the door and start hoofing it. Head south, Right? [00:09:44] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:09:46] Speaker A: He decides he's gonna walk to fucking Brazil. [00:09:48] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:09:49] Speaker A: From Seattle. And the plan starts to take shape. The plan starts to develop. What he decides he's gonna do is dribble a football, kick a football the entire way. Right. Have a football at his feet the whole Way. Now, this is a distance of some 10,000 miles. [00:10:10] Speaker B: Nice. [00:10:13] Speaker A: Eleven countries. Mm. And he built himself a. Over a year, well over a year, some 400 odd days of a schedule to arrive in time for the opening match in June 2014. Right. [00:10:32] Speaker B: 2014. Oh, so this is recent. [00:10:35] Speaker A: He left. He set out in 2013. May 2013. [00:10:39] Speaker B: The story started in 1970. Right. [00:10:41] Speaker A: That was when he was born. [00:10:43] Speaker B: Oh, okay. [00:10:44] Speaker A: I was filling you in on his early. [00:10:45] Speaker B: Like, I got you. I'm painting a fucking word picture of this guy. My bad. Okay. I was like, how old is this guy now? All right? [00:10:53] Speaker A: He's in his 50s. By the time he sets out, sure. [00:10:55] Speaker B: Right. Okay. [00:10:58] Speaker A: The plan escalates. The plan grows. A kind of. What's the word? Altruistic vein kind of comes into play. He learns about a. An organization called One World Football, a company that makes an almost indestructible football to be used by kids in war zones and third world countries, developing countries, sure. Great. Cause, yeah, kids who would normally play with kind of rags, balls of rags, plastic bags. So what he does is he takes one of their balls and he tells a local newspaper that he's raising awareness for One World Football. It's the missing piece of the puzzle, and it was the deciding factor for me. And that one piece kind of brought her all into focus for him. Once again, in his own words, all of these pieces started to come together. It felt natural. Felt like I was doing what needed to be done. This is the next stage in my life. So he funnels proceeds from selling his fucking house, buys a GoPro, right. Buys a fuck ton of hiking gear, backpack, two man tent, starts to train. He's walking around Seattle with his pack on his back. He's worked out his route and starts to build a social presence. [00:12:22] Speaker B: Right, yeah, of course. [00:12:23] Speaker A: Builds his. He's got a site, he's on Facey. He's got. He's got a Flickr account, you know. So by the time he sets out, he's already got an audience. Set and set out. He does. [00:12:36] Speaker B: Okay. [00:12:37] Speaker A: On the 1st of May, 2013, he sets out from the fucking Space Needle in Seattle. Right, right. [00:12:43] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:12:44] Speaker A: Gotta start out with her mother's been weirdly. [00:12:46] Speaker B: Oh, she's been the Space Needle. [00:12:48] Speaker A: She has. My mother used to have friends in Seattle. She went there when I was a kid. I remember vividly spending some time out there. [00:12:54] Speaker B: It's a nice place. [00:12:56] Speaker A: So he sets out and, you know, it's local press and he's got his girlfriend walking the kind of first stretch beside him, he leaves at 6am and it immediately starts to fucking fall apart. [00:13:11] Speaker B: Right, right. [00:13:13] Speaker A: Instantly. Instantly. On day three, he gets stopped by a copper for walking illegally down a six lane motorway. [00:13:25] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, right. Wouldn't recommend that. I mean, this is obviously like the clearest shot if you're trying to do this the most efficient way possible. Yeah. You're gonna be on like roads that you are deeply not allowed to be [00:13:40] Speaker A: on, which, you know, we'll, we'll get to that. But on, on day fucking three, he, you know, it, it starts to come into focus how poorly scouted. [00:13:53] Speaker B: Right. [00:13:54] Speaker A: The root was the practicalities, the legal mechanics. And this is in, this is just in. This is in America still. This is in his hometown. [00:14:03] Speaker B: Well, yeah, he hasn't left Washington at this point. If he's three days into this, on [00:14:08] Speaker A: his second night, he's staying with somebody who he's kind of hooked up with online and he decides to cut the weight of his pack by half. Right? [00:14:21] Speaker B: Sure. [00:14:22] Speaker A: So he ditches a lot of equipment on his fucking second night. He's dropped his MacBook, which he was gonna use to update his website, things like that. Cut that. So he's updating his progress from his phone. Sure. And staying along the way almost pretty much exclusively couch surfing. People who have come to his website come to his Facebook page. [00:14:46] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:14:47] Speaker A: He's staying on couches and updating on his phone all the way. You know, little social videos. I'm overwhelmed by all the support. You know, everyone's making this the best experience of my life. He says on day five, I love my life. [00:15:03] Speaker B: Of course. [00:15:03] Speaker A: Yeah. He manages to get in time with his family. He visits his son in Vancouver, Washington. [00:15:09] Speaker B: Nice. It's just on the border of Washington. [00:15:12] Speaker A: Beautiful. He's called the project Breakaway Brazil. Right. And, and his within, you know, he's up to like 400 followers within a couple of weeks. Not huge numbers, but grassroots support. But Corrigan, he started out walking in flip flops, right? [00:15:31] Speaker B: What? [00:15:32] Speaker A: Yeah, walking in sandals for the first. The. The guy hasn't really thought this through. It's like everyone telling Tim, the bears are gonna eat you. [00:15:47] Speaker B: Like, flip flops is just like such a weird choice because, like, they wear out very quickly. He's kicking a soccer ball, like walking 10,000 miles. Like that's not even. That's not just like poor planning. That's like a choice. Like, why would you make that choice? [00:16:02] Speaker A: Yeah. In his defense. Right. Very, very quickly, the ball dribbling bit became symbolic almost, Right? [00:16:10] Speaker B: Yeah. Right. [00:16:11] Speaker A: He would only pull the ball out for photo opportunities. [00:16:16] Speaker B: Kick it across state lines. [00:16:18] Speaker A: Exactly, exactly, exactly. Generally, he would carry that with him. [00:16:21] Speaker B: Okay. [00:16:23] Speaker A: Ostensibly for safety's sake. Right, Right. So he's winding his way across America for less than two weeks. We're on May 14th here. Right. When he arrives in Oregon, he arrives in Lincoln City, Oregon. [00:16:42] Speaker B: Okay. [00:16:44] Speaker A: He is cold. He is soaked. [00:16:47] Speaker B: What month is this? [00:16:49] Speaker A: May. [00:16:50] Speaker B: May. Okay. [00:16:52] Speaker A: Is that. Does that. Does that make sense? Is it Northwest? [00:16:56] Speaker B: Is. It's rainy a lot. Really? I mean, it's not necessarily cold, but especially not now. Climate change has really hit it hard up there, but, yeah, it would. You would be chilly from being rained on all the time, for sure. [00:17:10] Speaker A: Well, by this point, his feet were so swollen. Right. [00:17:14] Speaker B: Mm. [00:17:16] Speaker A: That his host, on the night he arrived in Lincoln City, Oregon, a lady by the name of Susan Albright, she reported that he was moving like his feet were bound, taking tiny, slow kind [00:17:31] Speaker B: of steps, walking like me. [00:17:34] Speaker A: Almost staggering by the sound of it. Yes, like you. Like you stagger. [00:17:38] Speaker B: Yes. [00:17:40] Speaker A: She fed him a hot meal, let him use her bath, which, you know, was a luxury. He posted to Facebook, kept his followers abreast. But Ulbricht, a psych, a psychotherapist, in fact, she said that. She described him as glassy eyed, disconnected. She. She uses the word depersonalization. Right. This was a man who had two weeks in, two weeks in. [00:18:15] Speaker B: Hey, yeah. Yay. [00:18:17] Speaker A: Described him as depersonalized, like a guy who had taken leave of the physical plane and was just operating on some kind of calling. This is what had happened. This is the fucking. This is the decision he had made not to walk to Brazil. He had decided, it feels like, to walk out of. To check out of humanity. [00:18:38] Speaker B: Right. [00:18:42] Speaker A: So she bids him farewell the next morning, gives him egg and bacon, and sends him on his way. [00:18:48] Speaker B: Okay. [00:18:49] Speaker A: Now, that morning. So I feel that we are on the morning of the 14th, he posts a video of himself on the beach with his ball at his feet, and he's in high spirits. I finally made it to the ocean. [00:19:05] Speaker B: Okay. [00:19:05] Speaker A: Very exciting moment. I'm going to be on the ocean for thousands of miles. Cheers, everyone. He signs off. And at approximately 10am Right. Swanson's walking south on Route 101. [00:19:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I figured that had to be it. If he was on the ocean and [00:19:25] Speaker A: he is struck from behind by a pickup truck. [00:19:32] Speaker B: Ah. He was, like, actually walking on Highway 101. [00:19:37] Speaker A: Yes. [00:19:40] Speaker B: Oh, no. [00:19:42] Speaker A: What Lincoln City police describe as technically the wrong side of the highway for a pedestrian. [00:19:48] Speaker B: Okay. [00:19:52] Speaker A: And he is killed. [00:19:54] Speaker B: Wow. [00:19:56] Speaker A: Right. [00:19:57] Speaker B: Okay. Jesus. [00:19:59] Speaker A: He is killed. Okay, well, now, hang on, hang on, hang on. Let's, let's. There is more here. [00:20:09] Speaker B: Yeah, go on. [00:20:11] Speaker A: But having completed less than 3% of his journey. [00:20:14] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, that's one state. [00:20:18] Speaker A: Yes. [00:20:19] Speaker B: He made one state. [00:20:21] Speaker A: Yes. Not in the jungle. No. Or not just on Highway 101. Just on the road, like a couple of weeks out from his house. [00:20:31] Speaker B: Oh, man. This is. I had to. When I lived off of Highway 101. My street intersected Highway 101 when I was in high school. And it's like. Even in the area that I lived in, technically you can walk on it. There's like bike lanes or whatever. So we'd walk to 711 and things like that on Highway 101. But it is like. It's dangerous. It is not really where especially not for a long period of time, people, well, bike and do all kinds of stuff on it. But it's one of those things that I'm always like, you are taking your life in your hands. [00:21:04] Speaker A: Even. So, it is. It is said that Swanson was the first pedestrian fatality on that section of [00:21:15] Speaker B: the highway stretch of it. Okay. [00:21:17] Speaker A: Nobody had died there in six years. [00:21:19] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:21:21] Speaker A: After his death, a journalist, a guy by the name of Robert Powell, wrote a really fascinating profile of Swanson, which. Which I massively recommend. I'll send you the link. [00:21:37] Speaker B: Okay. [00:21:38] Speaker A: He traced the plan for Richard's journey. Right. For Richard's walk, and pretty much concluded that it was entirely unworkable. Right. [00:21:48] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:21:50] Speaker A: You know, whatever the fuck. How we met his end. [00:21:53] Speaker B: But, you know, he was never getting to Brazil. [00:21:56] Speaker A: He was never gonna do it. He would have needed to have walked a marathon a day. [00:22:00] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:22:01] Speaker A: Pretty much every fucking day for 400 days. Right through the fucking. Through El Salvador, you know what I mean? Through fucking Honduras. [00:22:10] Speaker B: Right. You're dealing with rainforest, right? Yeah. You're dealing with the elements. You're dealing places that are laid in crime. Yeah. [00:22:19] Speaker A: He spoke no fucking. [00:22:20] Speaker B: Yeah. Dealing with authorities crossing borders and expl. Explaining why you're coming. [00:22:26] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:22:27] Speaker B: Oh, man. [00:22:28] Speaker A: This journalist Powell, he also visited the crash site directly and put the details together. [00:22:37] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:22:40] Speaker A: Shards of the truck's glass in spray paint circled by law enforcement. The. The football was found on the scene. You know, his body had been thrown 70ft down the freeway by the impact. [00:22:56] Speaker B: Jesus Christ. [00:22:58] Speaker A: It wasn't like he just got clipped, you know, the scene of the crime. He was absolutely launched. [00:23:04] Speaker B: Good grief. [00:23:07] Speaker A: Down the freeway. Now, the. What? I would set your mind at ease. He was not kicking the ball at the time. He was. The ball was not Impaired, you know. [00:23:17] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:23:18] Speaker A: Just there he was, he was simply walking the wrong way down the road and got totaled by a truck. [00:23:26] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. I would wager probably part of the reason that nobody had died there in six years. It's not a lot of foot traffic. [00:23:33] Speaker A: Yes. But when I talk about pathos, when I talk about futility, when I talk about the best and the worst plans, all pretty much come into the same thing of a 10,000 mile walk. He was 270 miles in. [00:23:49] Speaker B: Yeah. It's, you know, almost comical in just how many ways it could have gone wrong spectacularly and would have and that it was just the most mundane. Like just, just got hit by a car in like what would have been a, you know, four hour drive from where he started. [00:24:10] Speaker A: Like, regarding, regarding the driver. [00:24:14] Speaker B: He [00:24:17] Speaker A: eventually did not get charged with anything. He had two trials. [00:24:21] Speaker B: Okay. [00:24:22] Speaker A: And the second trial returned a not guilty. This defense talked about how it was a genuine accident, no negligence, the police investigation was flawed. He was, you know, the driver was of ill health. La la la la la. But after two trials, he was deemed not guilty. No, no, no consequence. It just. [00:24:44] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, when someone walking the wrong way on the road. [00:24:48] Speaker A: Yep, yep, yep, yep. The guy was. [00:24:51] Speaker B: People don't really get in trouble for hitting pedestrians, even when they're entirely at fault. So, you know, this is a, this is a huge issue here. You can kill pedestrians. That's basically legal. [00:25:04] Speaker A: Is that, is that true? [00:25:05] Speaker B: Pretty much, yeah. You will not get in trouble for it. [00:25:08] Speaker A: Well, Scott Van Hyatt did not. Right. And reportedly he, after hitting Swanson, he stayed at the scene, he cooperated, There was no intoxication, he was contrite in court. He apologized to the family. [00:25:22] Speaker B: Yep. [00:25:25] Speaker A: So what do we take from this? I don't know. What do we take? What do you take from this, Corrigan? [00:25:32] Speaker B: That's a good question. [00:25:33] Speaker A: What I will say. What I will say. After his death, after Swanson's swan song. Hello. [00:25:42] Speaker B: Very nice. [00:25:45] Speaker A: His follow account jumped to like 8, 000 people on Facebook within days. Of all the people to chime in, the musicians. Sting, Sting. [00:25:58] Speaker B: What did he have to say? [00:25:59] Speaker A: Sting posted a public message of condolence. Sting himself. Why? [00:26:06] Speaker B: That's bizarre. But Sting, Sting, he just felt really moved by this, I guess. [00:26:12] Speaker A: But not that Sting. The other Sting. [00:26:14] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a, it's interesting. You know, I think there's just so many things at play here, you know, because he. It's very peak, kind of like 2014 to like make a, a charity spectacle of something like this. Like you know what? I can't just, like, find a way to get myself to Brazil for this. But what I'm going to do is, like, make this into a social media thing and, like, you know, do something crazy. You know, whatever midlife crisis thing he was going through at this point. [00:26:48] Speaker A: Yep. [00:26:49] Speaker B: Like, to make it and you see this, like, happen. There was a story. There's plenty of grifters who do things like that. Like, there's a guy who, like, pretended to have cancer and, like, had news coverage all over the world. He went to, like, Australia and stuff like this and was like, doing all these things as like, this is my, like, what I do before I die kind of situation. And then I think he ended up. Something like that happened to him too. He just like. Or actually, I think he killed himself because people figured out that he was lying and he eventually was like, I can't talk my way out of this. But I also watched like a movie with another guy like that who faked. Not a movie, like a documentary. Another guy who, like, faked having cancer and like, became famous. And, you know, and then people were like, he, like, does not look like he have cancer. He has cancer and he's just going places. And, like, people are just like, giving him free alcohol everywhere he goes. And, you know, it's like this very weird compulsion to sort of use the social media, like fame and to use. At that point especially people were really into, like, charitable stuff now. But nobody gives a. Over charity at this point. It's just about, like, you know, individuals and influencers and stuff like that. But at that point, you know, we're talking like ice. Ice bucket challenge time and things like that. And you just saw so much of that. So the impulse to not just like, find a way to meet his goal, but to turn it into this, like, larger movement and then to be so ill prepared at doing it too. Like, he clearly wasn't. You know, when you see people successfully do stuff like this, like, they have like a support system around them. They're not just like, hoping this goes well. [00:28:37] Speaker A: A lot of you will see a lot in reporting of this case that what he was. He. He got what he was looking for in the two weeks of his walk. Right. [00:28:51] Speaker B: A guy, Christopher McCandless situation. [00:28:55] Speaker A: Give me a bit more on that. What is that? [00:28:56] Speaker B: Into the wild. [00:28:58] Speaker A: Okay, okay, okay, okay. Is this a guy without a sense of purpose? Is this a guy with nothing really to. To rally behind? [00:29:09] Speaker B: Right. [00:29:09] Speaker A: With nothing really to keep him. The. Keep the lights on inside, you know? Yeah, that is Certainly the angle of the. The article I spoke about, this profile of him says that he found what he was looking for. He was looking for something and he got it, and he found it in the two weeks before he died. It certainly boosted the profile of the. That non profit One World Football. [00:29:34] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:29:37] Speaker A: They, as you'd imagine, set up a donation page in his name. So he raised some money. He kind of spread awareness of this. This company. So it did some good, right? [00:29:48] Speaker B: Yeah, potentially. Probably more than had it just failed somewhere in Texas or something like that. You know, like the unfortunate element of this, which. To sort of talk about your thought at the beginning earlier about the meaninglessness of it all. That's part of why I. I take some issue with that. Right. Like, we've talked, of course, about, like, things like, you know, life doesn't have a point per se. Right. [00:30:18] Speaker A: None at all. [00:30:18] Speaker B: But in terms of, like, meaninglessness, everything we do has meaning and has ripples and things like that. And this guy made a dumbass choice that ended up. It was going to flame out spectacularly one way or another. And the irony of it being that, like, it flamed out in just a very terrible, tragic way and then ended up doing a shit ton of good. [00:30:44] Speaker A: Yes. [00:30:45] Speaker B: Out of that. Right. Like, that's not meaningless. You know, it's random. It is, you know, chaos or whatever. It's not chaos because it's bad planning. You could predict this, like you said, but, you know, it's. It's not meaningless in that way. Everything has its ripple. [00:31:04] Speaker A: But as I always, always, always land on whenever I go into a spiral about the fucking amazing futility of everything, the meaninglessness is the meaning in itself. [00:31:17] Speaker B: Right? Yeah, exactly. It's like, I think, yeah, that's more where it goes like. Yeah, it doesn't. That he died sucks in this tragic. And in and of itself, you know, man, what's the point? But, you know, what happened afterwards, the ripples of that is like. Yeah, that's where we get the meaning from. [00:31:35] Speaker A: But depending on what day you catch me. Depending on what. How I'm feeling on that particular day, I. I love the meaninglessness, as you know. [00:31:45] Speaker B: Right. [00:31:45] Speaker A: It's what. It's what keeps you moving forward. [00:31:48] Speaker B: Mm. [00:31:49] Speaker A: The puncture that we tried to put in the void just for the fucking second. [00:31:53] Speaker B: Right. [00:31:54] Speaker A: That we are alive, that we are able to do it. I. I think there's so much beauty in that. Depending on what day you catch me and. [00:32:03] Speaker B: Right. [00:32:04] Speaker A: Richard. For whatever reasons, for whatever is. For whatever, that that host of his, Albright, saw In his eyes that morning, she gave him his bacon and eggs and sent him on his way. That led him to make some decisions with which he tried to puncture the void. And he did. But he also punctured that guy's windscreen. Let me quote directly from my notes, if I may. [00:32:32] Speaker B: Yes, please do. [00:32:34] Speaker A: Fucking look at these nerds. Oh, mise en scene. [00:32:37] Speaker B: I don't think anyone has ever said mise en scene in such a horny way before. [00:32:41] Speaker A: The way I whispered the word sex [00:32:43] Speaker B: cannibal received worse than worse. My Mark, I'm willing to guillotine you for science. [00:32:48] Speaker A: Thank you. That's really, really sweet. It's cold outside, but my pancreas is talking to me. [00:32:52] Speaker B: I'm. [00:32:53] Speaker A: I'm gonna let it. [00:32:54] Speaker B: You know how I feel about that, Mark. [00:32:56] Speaker A: I think you feel great about it. Did you enjoy that courage? You enjoy that little story that I just told you? [00:33:04] Speaker B: I was not sure where that was going. I thought he was going to get farther than that. [00:33:11] Speaker A: No, he didn't get very far at all. [00:33:14] Speaker B: That is like. [00:33:15] Speaker A: That's. [00:33:15] Speaker B: He just went for a walk. He just went for a long walk. [00:33:19] Speaker A: That's all. And please, please, if. If you think I'm laughing at the fact the guy got totaled by a truck, I am not. [00:33:29] Speaker B: That's not what's funny about this. [00:33:32] Speaker A: I'm not. And surely the. We've literally now literally been doing this six years. Literally. Yesterday was our sixth birthday. July is six. And if you've listened to any more than a handful of episodes, then you know that mockery is nothing, not even a tiny component of what we do. Corrie, gonna lie. Absolutely not. Right. It. It cheapens and offends me if you think that it's rubbernecking or mockery or schadenfreude or anything at all involved in these conversations that we have in this podcast that we recorded is not. [00:34:12] Speaker B: I mean, sometimes there's schadenfreude, like when, like, Captain Cook got ganked by a bunch of people or something, but not in a case like this. [00:34:19] Speaker A: If you deserve it. [00:34:21] Speaker B: Yeah, if you deserve it. Being a dumbass doesn't mean you deserve it. [00:34:26] Speaker A: No, no, no. Or mentally compromised, as I. After dealing with Richard for much of today, much of this evening, I have come to believe that what Richard Swanson embarked on was a very theatrical and elaborate suicide. Yeah, basically. [00:34:47] Speaker B: That seems safe to say. Yes, there we go. But it is our sixth anniversary. [00:34:53] Speaker A: It is our sixth anniversary. And what a. What a perfectly opposite way to kick our sixth anniversary off. A story of badly planned endeavors that end badly for all concerned. Welcome to Jack of all Graves. This is what we're talking about. This is what we do. You know it by now. You know we're all about. [00:35:11] Speaker B: That's the arc. [00:35:14] Speaker A: I wonder is there. I mean, I know a few of you have, but if you've heard every single episode, right. Think back to. Think back six years. Think what you've personally achieved in those six years. Think of how your lives have changed. Maybe you've fallen in love. [00:35:33] Speaker B: Oh, that'd be nice. I like that. [00:35:35] Speaker A: Maybe you've been bereaved. Maybe you've had great fortune or maybe you've performed acts of great kindness or sacrifice. Perhaps you have been wronged by others. Perhaps you have been the victim of great crime or injustice in the last six years. Statistically, you probably have. Some of you probably have. [00:35:59] Speaker B: Yeah. Maybe not you person listening at this, but somebody. [00:36:04] Speaker A: Somebody. [00:36:05] Speaker B: Sure. [00:36:06] Speaker A: Statistically, Corey. [00:36:08] Speaker B: I suppose I don't know the statistics, [00:36:11] Speaker A: Mark well like I do, but statistically, maybe we've lost a couple of listeners along the way, if you know what I'm saying. Lost with a capital L. Or maybe a few of timed out, you know. [00:36:24] Speaker B: Yeah. Somebody have some people have walked the 101. [00:36:28] Speaker A: Oh, how lovely. How beautifully put. [00:36:31] Speaker B: Thank you. [00:36:32] Speaker A: Maybe they've gone to the World cup on foot. [00:36:35] Speaker B: That is such a good euphemism. That is. Oh, it's unfortunate. It is so niche. You can never use that in conversation. [00:36:46] Speaker A: We can. Me and you can. [00:36:48] Speaker B: Yes. Right here. [00:36:50] Speaker A: And not often, but I am. I. You know, I don't enjoy talking about the cast on the cast, but I'm very quietly proud of Swan Son's Swan Song. I think that was a. [00:37:02] Speaker B: That was absolutely good. It's a good follow up to what was. What was your inspect the casket. [00:37:08] Speaker A: Inspect. It happens less and less frequently these days. Right. But sometimes you get a glimpse of the old Mark, don't you? Eh? [00:37:19] Speaker B: I think you think your brain is goner than it is. [00:37:22] Speaker A: You know, like often, whether apocryphal or not, you'll hear carers of dementia sufferers say just before the end they became lucid. [00:37:33] Speaker B: Right. [00:37:34] Speaker A: Sometimes that'll happen with me, won't it? And you'll get a glimpse. Oh, Mark, you used to be mighty. Not now. But you were six years ago. [00:37:47] Speaker B: Yeah, I remember that guy. [00:37:49] Speaker A: Do you remember that guy? I don't. [00:37:52] Speaker B: He was still holding on to a little hair at the time, you know, it was. [00:37:58] Speaker A: I was. You look at our early YouTube videos, man, and. And I think I Think maybe I should have shaved it off a bit earlier. [00:38:07] Speaker B: I think I showed you a picture and I can't even remember what it was from. It's probably like from the first time I came out or something like that. But like, your reaction to it was just, oh, I should have shaved that sooner. [00:38:20] Speaker A: I can tell you about the moment, if you like, where, when I think I went home and shaved it off that very night. [00:38:28] Speaker B: I think you might have mentioned this before, but go on. [00:38:30] Speaker A: I was at work and I caught a glimpse of the back of my head on a security monitor and listeners when I tell you that fucking night. I reclaimed the passage of time. I seized it. [00:38:50] Speaker B: I took. [00:38:51] Speaker A: I took the power back. I used my agency and my free will and I thought, no, no more. And I've never been him since. [00:39:00] Speaker B: Nobody likes the back of our. Of our heads, though. The back of your head is a no man's land. It's none of my business what's going on back there. [00:39:06] Speaker A: That's interesting, isn't it? Like, you know, you. If you ever see the inside of your body, you know something's gone badly wrong. [00:39:14] Speaker B: Yeah, right. [00:39:15] Speaker A: Like if you ever see your own organs. [00:39:17] Speaker B: Yeah, that's not a good thing. [00:39:20] Speaker A: Man's eyes. Now, there was something else and like, please, I hope you remember. But I. Maybe it was on the Discord. [00:39:28] Speaker B: Oh, yes. You were going to remind me to talk about something you were going to tell. [00:39:33] Speaker A: It was seeing Labyrinth in the cinema. [00:39:36] Speaker B: Seeing Labyrinth in the cinema. Yes, that's it. [00:39:40] Speaker A: We'll talk about the Watch along in a sec. Should we actually pause it until we talk about the watch along? Because I don't think I'm finished. [00:39:44] Speaker B: Will you remember when you. When we get to that point? All right, we'll see. We'll see what happens. [00:39:50] Speaker A: How are you doing, Cory? What are your reflections on the last six years? Corey? I've lost my hair and my memory. What about you? [00:39:59] Speaker B: My hair is. Well, I've got a lot less hair than I did when we started this whole thing. [00:40:04] Speaker A: You do, but you've still got the capacity for hair. You can still generate hair, can't you? [00:40:09] Speaker B: Yes. I did this on purpose, but I feel great about it. You know, I think overall, if I look back over the six years, I. I think I've said this before. The world is not healthier, but I think both of us are. And we are. You know, this has been a six year journey of mental and physical fitness for both of us. And I think that is a positive of this year. [00:40:41] Speaker A: It's a Wonderful point. And as you were just speaking, I had this wonderful sense of, you know when you put a mirror opposite a mirror and you get like an infinity tunnel, you know what I mean? Like when you've got your camera on and you show it to a screen and you see, you get that infinity fucking visual. I adore that. And I got that sense then. This felt like a 3 or 4 years ago Joag episode. We just captured a little fucking flavor there of what we would do for years ago. And you're right, I'm forever talking about ways in which I am depleted. Right. It's one of my favorite things to talk about. I love talking about. I love to ponder on what time has taken from me. [00:41:31] Speaker B: Sure. [00:41:35] Speaker A: Like a fucking. Like a septic amputee getting his stump cut off by inches as the rot spreads, you know? Oh, we've got to take a bit more, Mr. Lewis. We've got a. We thought we'd caught it, but we've got to take a bit more. Marco, last time. Time is a. Time is a savage surgeon. Right. And his blade is dull. Right? [00:42:00] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:42:00] Speaker A: But why don't we talk a little bit about what we have gained, eh? [00:42:05] Speaker B: Exactly. I think we definitely have. [00:42:08] Speaker A: Why don't we instead flip the script? Right? [00:42:13] Speaker B: Yep. [00:42:14] Speaker A: Why instead do we not talk about ways in which we are stronger? And I'll tell you something, I'm fucking a stronger man. [00:42:27] Speaker B: I agree. [00:42:28] Speaker A: Than the shallow, impressionable young whelp. Right? [00:42:38] Speaker B: Oh, okay. [00:42:40] Speaker A: Led by pretty lights and glamour and the. The possibility of, ooh, physical sensations and situations that you might have found six years ago. Right. No, no, no, no, no. Here you find a calloused, thickened, armored. [00:42:59] Speaker B: Uh huh. [00:43:02] Speaker A: Blister of a man, A Veruca, a walking fucking welt, a scar tissue fucking covered, armored, hardened, almost ossified man. Right? [00:43:17] Speaker B: Huh? [00:43:18] Speaker A: Whose every vulnerability is now plated by experience. Right? [00:43:27] Speaker B: Okay. [00:43:28] Speaker A: Gone for me are the mistakes of youth. Right? Right. Vanished for me are the fucking follies and the questions and the yearning, they're all gone. Right. What you see before you is a veteran, Right? A man who has learned every lesson that life has had to throw and has no more fucking mistakes left to make. Right? [00:44:10] Speaker B: Okay. Maybe you haven't changed that much. [00:44:12] Speaker A: When. When you see. When you see me and you note. Maybe my spirit is kind of. Maybe I've got my spirit as its arm in a sling or an eye patch or. And maybe a drooping mouth, you know? Know that those imperfections have come with the benefit of knowledge and learning and experience and that Is that is a beautiful thing. The net gain. Mmm. The gain outweighs the loss. [00:44:49] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:44:50] Speaker A: Right. [00:44:50] Speaker B: Yes. [00:44:51] Speaker A: Ask me to tell you the stories of these scars. I cannot. I have forgotten. But when I, I. But I. The lesson remains, even if the experience has faded. All I need do is rub a callous thumb over the raised scars across my body and soul. And the lesson remains, even if the teacher has died. Yeah. [00:45:19] Speaker B: Okay. [00:45:20] Speaker A: What do you think of that? [00:45:21] Speaker B: Yeah, that was intense, Marco. [00:45:26] Speaker A: Six years. [00:45:28] Speaker B: Six years. And all of that for six years. Yeah. I did not think of it as like a scarring and ossifying six years. But, you know, I'm just. I just think whatever all it has been, it's been. It has been that. Well, the man who came out the other side, I think, you know, is a healthier version than the one from six years ago. And I like to think the same over here. [00:45:58] Speaker A: I agree. [00:45:59] Speaker B: And we have lots of friends that we didn't have six years ago. [00:46:02] Speaker A: Lots of friends, lots of perspective, lots of knowledge. [00:46:04] Speaker B: And knowledge. [00:46:07] Speaker A: Who's to say? Who's to say what? I'll have to reflect on in. [00:46:10] Speaker B: On the 12th anniversary episode. Hey, Very interesting. See what else is ossified in that time. [00:46:16] Speaker A: Who's to say I'm just gonna be a head in a jar [00:46:23] Speaker B: six years from now. That's what you're gonna be. Fully futuramaed. [00:46:27] Speaker A: Gonna be just a head on a pillow, mate, with this fucking same mic. The fucking. If this blue YETI could talk, eh? [00:46:38] Speaker B: Yep. I look forward to it, you know. Should make a time capsule for it. [00:46:44] Speaker A: Hey, talk about value for money. Fucking hell, this mic never missed a beat, hey? [00:46:49] Speaker B: Right. These things are solid. [00:46:51] Speaker A: Hasn't given me a fucking minute's trouble. Talk about value. [00:46:55] Speaker B: Yeah, I've had this since like 2013 or something. [00:46:59] Speaker A: Like, incredible. To all the people listening at yeti, and I know you are. Hook your boy up. Well, actually, don't. You don't need to. [00:47:07] Speaker B: You don't need to. [00:47:08] Speaker A: I'm fine. I'm just saying I am recommending your product right now because it's great. [00:47:12] Speaker B: Yeah, they really. They work incredibly well, you know, this little boy. [00:47:20] Speaker A: So what are we talking about this week then? Well, we got. [00:47:23] Speaker B: For what, a few. A few little, you know, just joag business things. A fun thing is happening. We are double mailering this month. For those of you in that tier on our Kofi, as I said before, it was just kind of a nightmare trying to mail out the last mailers I walk to the post office, it has rained all Summer, and there's no parking at the post office, so it's rained all summer. And then when I went to buy British stamps, they didn't have any. And it's just been just an annoying thing. So I asked Mark this time. I was like, you know what? Let's do something special. Why don't we each send a mail? [00:48:09] Speaker A: So, yes, I'm gonna send a bunch out now. You're taking a big gamble here, Corrigan? [00:48:14] Speaker B: Yes, yes, very much so. [00:48:16] Speaker A: You're taking a big gamble here, or so you might think. You're actually not gambling at all. Because I'm gonna totally do it. [00:48:26] Speaker B: You heard it here, friends. He's gonna totally do it. [00:48:30] Speaker A: It's not a gamble. It's already done. Practically beautiful. You know, there's a mindset I went to see a fucking speaker once. Like a life coach, guy who used to train athletes. Right? [00:48:42] Speaker B: Okay. [00:48:44] Speaker A: And his. I fucking God. Even if I say the word mindset, I want to be sick in my mouth. [00:48:50] Speaker B: Right? [00:48:51] Speaker A: But in his own words, the mindset he tried to grow in his athletes is that if you've done the training and if you've done the work, the race is immaterial. You've just got to turn up and collect your fucking metal. [00:49:03] Speaker B: Yeah. You stay prepared so you don't have [00:49:05] Speaker A: to get prepared, Corrigan. The mailers have already gone out. [00:49:09] Speaker B: All right, Rice. That's what I like to hear. That's the mindset. [00:49:16] Speaker A: It's already been done. As soon as you said, Marco, do a couple of melees each. It was locked in from that fucking moment. [00:49:26] Speaker B: That's not true. When I reminded him earlier, he was like, I forgot about that. Let's keep it a hunted here. That is not how it happened. Believe your exact words were, I forgot about that. But it'll happen. We'll make it happen. It's already done. We're sending out mailers. So if you're in our tier that receives those, keep a lookout. I'll tell you when to mailed. I know that like both I and listeners are like, I don't know whether I received it or not. I will tell you when they go out. And we will. We'll pop it in the discord so that then you know to be watching. And then if it doesn't show up, you know that the post office hates you. And so there's that. Also, we're gonna watch. We're gonna continue our snack series. [00:50:19] Speaker A: Yes. [00:50:20] Speaker B: Where we watch international film. [00:50:23] Speaker A: Much like Richard Swanson. We've got to our second one of these yes. [00:50:28] Speaker B: And now we may get hit by a truck. But for now, the plan is to watch the first Soviet horror movie ever made. What year was it from, mark? [00:50:41] Speaker A: I believe 1967. [00:50:44] Speaker B: 1967. And it's called V. Yes, Spelled V, [00:50:49] Speaker A: I, Y. V I, Y, V. So [00:50:53] Speaker B: not entirely sure how to pronounce that. But if you want to watch it before we do or before we talk about it, find a copy of that. It's certainly available on the high seats. [00:51:06] Speaker A: It seems quite well received, quite critically acclaimed. [00:51:09] Speaker B: Yeah, Everyone on my letterboxd who's seen it has enjoyed it. So I think that bodes well. But it's definitely. I've never seen a Soviet film of any kind, I don't think. [00:51:18] Speaker A: Oh, sure. [00:51:19] Speaker B: Well, no, that's not true. I've seen Soviet films. Just kidding. I went to film school talking about. I think when I think of like the. That I watched like when I was in a PhD program, I'm like, that doesn't count because it was under duress. So I just kind of. Anything in that time period is like, that's. That does not. I have seen plenty of Soviet films at that particular point, so maybe the first time I've watched one of my own volition. And I'm very excited about that. [00:51:52] Speaker A: And the horror also. [00:51:53] Speaker B: And a horror. Yeah, obviously. So check that out. [00:51:58] Speaker A: Yes. [00:51:59] Speaker B: And we're gonna watch that tomorrow and record as soon as we get a chance. And it'll be up on the KO Fi. We've got. What are Kristen and I watching? We are watching a movie. I don't know. Go check out the most recent Fan Cave. And at the end of it, I said what we're watching next. And so you can watch that. And that will be out next week when my birthday is so fun. [00:52:23] Speaker A: I know I say this often, but how is. How is it going with Kristen's journey? With Kristen's. [00:52:29] Speaker B: Oh, it's fun. It's always entertaining to see where things go and they. [00:52:34] Speaker A: You've. You've already got to the crux of where I was going with that. It shouldn't be fun. [00:52:39] Speaker B: Well, you say that. [00:52:40] Speaker A: Oh, it's fun. It should not be that way. [00:52:43] Speaker B: Except that when Kristen watches ones that aren't fun, she has a bad time and never wants to watch a horror movie again. [00:52:51] Speaker A: So. [00:52:51] Speaker B: So, you know, you gotta balance these things out. So we've watched like maybe three that were like too scary or she didn't get. And she's like, I fucking hate this and I hate you a little bit for making me watch it, it's not really what I want, the occasional one just to be like, this is what people, big harp heads, watch. Fine. But we watched Lake Placid this past month, and that was kind of fun because this is the first one that she was like, just in between on, she's like, didn't blow me away. Didn't hate it. You know, just kind of for the ride. [00:53:29] Speaker A: Thirst right now. I don't know why you were talking about it the other day. Dear, dear friend Sam was talking about it earlier tonight. I am so ravenous to watch the Substance again. I'm gonna watch that as soon as I get the chance. I'm gonna watch that film. [00:53:47] Speaker B: Yeah, I, I, well, you've seen it several times, right? [00:53:51] Speaker A: Three, I think, at the last time. [00:53:52] Speaker B: Three times. I only saw it the one time in the movies. It's one that I thought was great, but it's not necessarily a thing that I, like, crave to watch again. But I did say, you know, I told the group chat and to Marco that I had my dear friend over this week who is, of course, Demi's nephew. And it occurred to me while sitting there watching, I was like, wait. Or not watching it, but just, like, watching. We were watching a food show or something, and I was like, Mac, did you see the Substance? And he was like, of course. I was like, was it, was it weird that you're like, aunt is naked the whole time? [00:54:33] Speaker A: How old is Mac? [00:54:34] Speaker B: I mean, he is 31. Okay. Yep. And he was like, yeah, I just closed my eyes for most of it, which I thought was delightful. I was like, yeah, that's got, I mean, I guess you're used to it. He was like, no, I just don't watch her naked movies generally. [00:54:50] Speaker A: Yeah, fine, fine, fine. I'm glad, I'm glad you said that because, you know, she's never been. She's always been a brave performer into physicality. [00:55:00] Speaker B: Yeah. And his cousins are like that too. You know, it's a thing he's, like, used to. But he still doesn't really want to see it. [00:55:08] Speaker A: No. [00:55:08] Speaker B: Good for them. That's still my relative. [00:55:11] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:55:12] Speaker B: I always wonder. It's like one of those things that I always just wonder when it comes to celebs who do a lot of nude scenes and stuff like that. Like, do their families go see it? Are they just like, yeah, yeah. She was always like this growing up, like, you know, things like that. I am forever curious as to, like, what it's like as a family member. And then I was sitting there and I Was like, I can ask someone. [00:55:33] Speaker A: So it's a fantastic question, isn't it? [00:55:36] Speaker B: The things that occur to me. But yes. So yes, those things happened. I think that's most of the business that we have to deal with. [00:55:46] Speaker A: That's business. That's business taken care of, Joanne. Business. [00:55:51] Speaker B: So shall we talk about what we watched? For one thing, I think it's important to note that one, one thing that shapes a few of the things that have been watched in the past week is that since we last recorded, both Dolly Parton and Tim Curry died. [00:56:05] Speaker A: Crazy. [00:56:06] Speaker B: It was a fucking terrible week. [00:56:09] Speaker A: Very, very intense couple of weeks. In terms of death, things seem to have taken a. Yeah, quite a. The gear seems to have shifted up. [00:56:20] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:56:21] Speaker A: In 2026, maybe it's a decade on from 2016. [00:56:26] Speaker B: Right. And remember, the same thing happened that [00:56:28] Speaker A: year is like, man, is it a ten year thing? I don't know. [00:56:31] Speaker B: Oh, the celebrities got like raptured before. Things like got really shitty. So now I'm like, geez, it's gonna happen. [00:56:38] Speaker A: It feels to me like there's a, A kind of a category of celebrity. They're all hovering around a particular age group and we're just gonna start as things get better. Maybe as things get. [00:56:52] Speaker B: That's the thing is like a decade ago they were like a little young to be dying. Right? Like David Bowie and stuff like that. It was like, they're not quite there yet. [00:57:01] Speaker A: But I'm thinking, look at your Dick Van Dykes. Look at your fucking. [00:57:04] Speaker B: Literally 100. [00:57:06] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:57:07] Speaker B: I think. Isn't Clint Eastwood like 98 or something? Maybe he's like 91. He's early. [00:57:11] Speaker A: He's up there. He's up there. But there is, there is an echelon of very aged boomers. Some beloved. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:57:20] Speaker B: And the boomers are dying. [00:57:23] Speaker A: It's. You should expect it. Boomers be dying. You should expect it to be happening. [00:57:27] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's, it's, I think always it's a weird feeling because obviously like our, our parents are boomers, right. And so it's like people who were like famous when we were kids that we watched with our parents and things like that. Like those are the, the tier of people who are like out now. So it's like all the like legends, the people that you like really like looked up like, oh, untouchable, you know. Yeah. Cher seems like she's in good health, so that's good. She's all over the place still. So there's that we knew Dolly was like sick of at like, she Was canceling shows for, like, the past year or more. We just didn't know, like, oh, she had cancer. [00:58:08] Speaker A: All I'm saying is, you know, don't be surprised. [00:58:13] Speaker B: Yeah. At this point. Yeah. We're going to be losing people left and right. This. I. This is why I was, like, very disturbed to find that Steven root is, like, 76 years old. I was like, I'm not actually okay with that. I'm not ready for his mortality at this point. So. [00:58:33] Speaker A: No. Beloved. [00:58:35] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:58:36] Speaker A: Really, really, really beloved guy. Always, always great and everything we're talking about. I'm talking about him like he's dead. He's not. [00:58:40] Speaker B: No, he's not. He's not dead. He's fine, Mark. And he shall be fine. [00:58:46] Speaker A: Pre condolences to everyone on the upcoming death of Steven Root. [00:58:52] Speaker B: That's what. I can't even put that on, like, the Deadpool as, like, a guess ever, because I would just feel like I killed him. That's. That's a big no. No. [00:59:02] Speaker A: Yeah. Let me see. Celebrities in their 80s. Jane Fonda. [00:59:06] Speaker B: Yeah, Jane Fonda. Yep. [00:59:09] Speaker A: Right. Without looking, how old is Morgan Freeman? [00:59:12] Speaker B: Morgan Freeman. 84. [00:59:17] Speaker A: What if I said he's 88? [00:59:19] Speaker B: I buy that. Yeah. He's been old forever. [00:59:23] Speaker A: You know me. What if I said Pacino? What if I said Harrison Ford? What if I said Judi Dench? [00:59:31] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. I saw something with Harrison Ford's age on it, like, a week or two ago, and I was like, oh, that guy is so goddamn old. [00:59:39] Speaker A: What if I said Paul McCartney? [00:59:42] Speaker B: Well, I mean. Yeah. You know. Yeah. All these people are. They've just been around forever. They were, like, at the, like, beginning of everything, so. [00:59:54] Speaker A: Right, right. [00:59:55] Speaker B: The thing about Harrison Ford is because he was older when he, like, became famous, it, like, has, like, a weird effect of you being older. Yeah, Well, I mean, her mom was Judy Garland, so she's clearly old as fuck. [01:00:11] Speaker A: What if I said Joni Mitchell? What if I said fucking George Takei? [01:00:15] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. [01:00:16] Speaker A: Incredible. [01:00:17] Speaker B: He was in a Japanese internment camp, so he's got to be pretty old. [01:00:20] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:00:21] Speaker B: Oh. [01:00:22] Speaker A: What if I said Michael Palin? Fucking George Lucas? [01:00:27] Speaker B: What if I said George Lucas is in his 80s? [01:00:29] Speaker A: He's 82. [01:00:31] Speaker B: Okay. That's surprising. [01:00:33] Speaker A: That. [01:00:33] Speaker B: Actually, that surprises me a little. [01:00:35] Speaker A: Don't act surprised. What if I said Danny DeVito? [01:00:39] Speaker B: Danny DeVito. Now Jack Nicholson. You're surprising me. [01:00:42] Speaker A: DeVito's 81. Jack Nicholson's 89. [01:00:45] Speaker B: Oh, he's almost 90. Who would have thought Jack Nicholson would live to be 90? [01:00:50] Speaker A: Incredible reaping ahead of us. [01:00:54] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. It's gonna be a rough couple of years. [01:00:57] Speaker A: It's gonna be rough. [01:00:58] Speaker B: Yeah. Unless all of these people live to be centenarians, it's gonna be. Your people are gonna be popping off. [01:01:06] Speaker A: Michael Douglas, Debbie Harry. There's so many. [01:01:11] Speaker B: Well, that's so many. Like, so then when you, like, say someone like Debbie Harry, then it's like, yeah, like, that's someone who was big in, like, the 80s. And I'm like, I'm from the 80s. [01:01:20] Speaker A: They can't be. Yes. What if I said Steve Martin? Tom Selleck. [01:01:27] Speaker B: Tom Selleck is like. He just does old people commercials now. [01:01:30] Speaker A: I know. Some of which I've seen. But what was it? Christopher Lloyd. [01:01:35] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Yep. That makes sense. [01:01:37] Speaker A: You know, 80s guys. I could go on, but I won't, Right? [01:01:41] Speaker B: Yeah, but just. Just be ready for the reaping, is what we're saying. Because you're going to be sad a lot in the next, you know, year to decade, that's for sure. [01:01:54] Speaker A: Oh, man, I kind of wish I hadn't looked at that list. [01:01:58] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a bad idea. Bad vibes. Sixth anniversary. Bad vibes. [01:02:03] Speaker A: Yikes. But the vibes are always bad, though. [01:02:06] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:02:07] Speaker A: That's what we're here for on Jack of All Graves. Bad vibes. [01:02:10] Speaker B: Only because of. Here's the thing about Tim Curry, he's obviously just one of the greatest. Right. I think one of the. The things that you saw with people like, mourning Tim Curry is that's like, everyone had a different iconic role. That was like. That was my Tim Curry, you know, like, he's got so many huge roles that, like, just made a huge impact. However, on the other hand, he's in a whole lot of shit as well. So this was incredibly funny to me, you know, shout out to the screaming Chat. I dissed them last week by saying that they watch kind of shit movies or whatever. And I did not mean that in a pejorative way. I just meant, you know, that's what the. That's what they do over there. [01:03:03] Speaker A: Look. [01:03:03] Speaker B: But everyone making fun of me about [01:03:05] Speaker A: it makes it that long in a career without some stinkers. And I think that is a testament to longevity. If you can make a couple of shitters and keep coming back and keep working, it's a working career as well, not just highlights. [01:03:18] Speaker B: So for Scream and Chat, everyone was making fun of me about the fact that I made fun of them on here. When we watched the Tales from the. [01:03:27] Speaker A: I would have banned you. [01:03:29] Speaker B: We watched the Tales from the Crypt movie Ritual, where or the ritual with Tim Curry. Yeah. You've never heard of it, right? Because it's fucking awful. And Tim Curry is not in it nearly enough. And when he is, his character is not a bad guy. This is not meant to be villainy. He's just extremely casually racist. He's just like the mouthpiece for the movie of being like, you know, this is one of those, like, ooh, scary black people on an island kind of movies. And, like, you know, there's all the white characters are fish out of water here. And he's like, telling the main character, like, oh, these people aren't so bad. Like, they don't. They don't worry about death. They just smoke weed and, like, hang out. And you're like, do they? Oh. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, God. [01:04:23] Speaker A: What stage of Tim Curry's career was this? [01:04:26] Speaker B: I mean, this was, like, I think 2002, I want to say. So he's, like, in his, like, early 50s. Ish. Yeah. But it's the 2000s, which, as I always say, should be stricken from the record. They are just the worst. And this movie is a perfect example of that. That we were like, oh, okay. Well, there's a reason none of us have ever seen this Tales from the Crypt movie because it's fucking awful and racist. And clearly they just kind of were like, we're just not gonna. We're not gonna talk about that one. So if you're trying to, like, binge watch Tim Curry things, I do not recommend the ritual thunder. [01:05:10] Speaker A: Nice. We had a little bit earlier. [01:05:14] Speaker B: Huh? [01:05:15] Speaker A: We had a little bit of thunder earlier here. [01:05:18] Speaker B: It. [01:05:18] Speaker A: Even though it's cooled down, it remains humid. [01:05:21] Speaker B: Hate it. I also hate that constant rain. [01:05:23] Speaker A: I'm not talking about the weather. I'm not. You know, we talk about bigger things here. We talk about better things. [01:05:29] Speaker B: So what else? [01:05:30] Speaker A: We talk about the weather when it's deadly, but not when it's, like, a bit. [01:05:32] Speaker B: And we will get there in a little bit. [01:05:35] Speaker A: Oh, did I. Did I talk about how soul mate. Did I talk about soulmate? Is that even worse? [01:05:41] Speaker B: You did not talk about Soulmate. But I will say, when I was writing down what movies you had watched, I looked at this, and the title made me so angry because it's called Soulmate with an 8. With an 8, but also with a text. [01:06:00] Speaker A: Right, so we'll get there. Right? Pause right there. [01:06:03] Speaker B: Okay. [01:06:04] Speaker A: I. Here is a movie that I feel like I was hoodwinked into watching. I think I was shanghaied into watching this movie under false pretenses because I'M certain that said, it might have been me, it might have been my mistake. But I'm certain I have read that this movie SoulMate with an 8 and then a TE. I'm certain I read somewhere that it takes place in the Megan verse. [01:06:33] Speaker B: Oh, you sure that wasn't just an assumption because it had a number in the title? [01:06:40] Speaker A: I'm fucking. I would not have watched this movie on its own merits because it looks fucking dreadful and there is nothing to sell it on its own merits. [01:06:51] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:06:51] Speaker A: I would only have watched this film believing that it took place in the Megan verse, which I like. I like the Megan verse. [01:06:57] Speaker B: Me too. [01:06:58] Speaker A: I enjoy Megan. And for all of its sins, I also enjoy Megan 2.0, if that's what it's called, because it was stupid. [01:07:06] Speaker B: I liked it too. Yeah. [01:07:08] Speaker A: And I thought this was kind of like a spin off, maybe produced by James Wan. It's Blumhouse. And maybe I'm putting two and two together and getting a good movie, but this is not. There's nothing to recommend this film. Right. [01:07:24] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:07:25] Speaker A: What this film is, the more I think of it, the more this. This film is nothing more than a course correction. Specifically and cynically targeted at those who saw Megan too and didn't like the direction into a family friendly action movie that it was and wanted it to be about killer robots. Because this is a film about killer robots. In particular, killer sex robots. [01:07:49] Speaker B: Okay. [01:07:49] Speaker A: Right. [01:07:50] Speaker B: Yep. [01:07:51] Speaker A: What if. What if AI. Right. And chatbots. You know, chat. You know. You heard of the chat bots now? [01:08:02] Speaker B: Yeah, I think I've heard some rumble. [01:08:03] Speaker A: You know, the kind of people when you're talking to them and they say, well, I asked GPT about this and here's what told me, right? What if those people and tech bros and very clumsily kind of put into a killer robot movie that has kills. [01:08:25] Speaker B: Mm. [01:08:26] Speaker A: But has nothing to say. And it does things that other movies have done better. You know, like I. Quite one of them. One of my favorite. One of the things that hooked me on RoboCop and a trope I love to this day is a really good, punchy toothy, satirical fake advert. [01:08:47] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. [01:08:48] Speaker A: You know what I mean? Something like that. That's really. That's really well observed and uses the tropes of advertising. [01:08:53] Speaker B: You know, like before there was Scrooge, there was Ebenezer. [01:08:58] Speaker A: Oh my God. That's not even a satire. That's Incredible. Incredible. But Soulmate8 has all of that stuff in it, but it's. It. It says nothing. It does nothing with it at all. In fact, the only interesting thing that Soulmate does is self referentially mocks its own title. [01:09:23] Speaker B: Oh, okay, right. [01:09:25] Speaker A: Because the killer sex robot in the movie is called the Soul mate with an 8 and a TE. And some guy goes, but why they got an 8 in the name, man? Surely that'll be pronounced like soulmate, like everybody was saying about Mithrigan. [01:09:39] Speaker B: Yeah, you know, all right, I see [01:09:42] Speaker A: they've heard that at Blumhouse. [01:09:44] Speaker B: Yeah, we heard your criticism. [01:09:46] Speaker A: Right. [01:09:47] Speaker B: So. [01:09:48] Speaker A: And we've said it. So it doesn't matter. [01:09:52] Speaker B: Yeah, that's more annoying, I think. [01:09:54] Speaker A: So what if the sex robot with AI in it watched YouTube and realized, hey, patriarchy and women's rights. And what if they had the guardrails taken off and the sex robot committed crimes? [01:10:07] Speaker B: So it's a dumb companion. [01:10:10] Speaker A: That's a. That's not a bad way of looking at it. Does it get points for kills? No, it doesn't. Although. And if this sounds like a recommendation, it isn't. But the Soulmate 8 does tear off a guy's dick, okay. By clenching her fanny on him mid coitus. [01:10:37] Speaker B: Oh, okay. [01:10:38] Speaker A: She's fucking some guy and she clenches up and pulls the guy's dick off with a robo fanny. [01:10:44] Speaker B: Wild. [01:10:45] Speaker A: Yeah, it is wild. [01:10:46] Speaker B: It's good stuff. [01:10:47] Speaker A: It is wild, actually, that I've made it now. I say that out loud. That's actually quite good, isn't it? [01:10:53] Speaker B: I don't know, but isn't that, like, that movie Teeth's basic, like, premise? [01:10:56] Speaker A: It is. Yeah, it is. [01:10:58] Speaker B: It doesn't really get points for originality there. [01:11:01] Speaker A: And. Yeah. And, you know, even though. Even if I may have made that sound lurid and, like, something good, it isn't. It's. It's. [01:11:10] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:11:11] Speaker A: You know, fair enough. [01:11:15] Speaker B: I rewatched for the first time in many moons, the Glass House, which was a favorite when I was a teenager, Lily. Okay. The cast of this is actually insane because I was like, oh, you know the Lily Sobieski movie, the Glass House story about a girl who. She and her brother, you know, her parents go out for their anniversary and they are killed in a car accident. And they are this because they don't have any other family sent to live with their family friends, the Glasses, who also live in a big glass house. And as it goes on. So the glasses are played by Diane Lane and Stellenbosch Skarsgard, which is wild. There's, like, Chris Noth shows up in it. Bruce Dern plays the lawyer in it. I'm Trying to remember who the mom was because it was someone. Oh, Rita Wilson is the mom before she dies. Like, everyone in this is insanely famous. And you're like, this is just like a teen thriller. Why. Why are they all in this movie? But it's just like a fun, sort of, like, paranoid. What's going on. Like, you know, there's something wrong with these new parents, but there's always this little, like, sense of, like, well, is she just being. You know, is she traumatized from losing her parents so she's, like, reading into shit or whatever? Or is there really something awful going on here? Which, of course, it's a thriller. There's something awful going on there, and it's still a fun ride all these years later. You know, it is just a fun, fun, mindless teen thriller that I recommend, you know, revisiting the Glass House or watching it for the first time. If you've never seen it. It's a fun one. [01:13:08] Speaker A: Nice. It sounds a good laugh. [01:13:10] Speaker B: Yeah. Right. It's not. It doesn't have anything super powerful to say or anything like that either. But that's not the point. It's like watching something like the Skulls, you know? [01:13:21] Speaker A: Yeah. It sounds to me as did. Have you ever seen the 1988 parents? Randy Quaid. [01:13:29] Speaker B: Yeah. With Bob Balaban directed that one. Right. [01:13:33] Speaker A: Cannibal movie. [01:13:34] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:13:35] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [01:13:36] Speaker B: That's a good one. [01:13:37] Speaker A: Kind of like that. [01:13:38] Speaker B: Like, it's not campy like Parents, though. [01:13:41] Speaker A: Okay. [01:13:42] Speaker B: No, this is. This is more of a straight thriller than. Than that one is, you know, there's no Cannibals, just shady people. [01:13:50] Speaker A: Okay. [01:13:51] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:13:53] Speaker A: I must watch that film again. I'm really loving it. [01:13:56] Speaker B: Parents. [01:13:57] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:13:58] Speaker B: Yeah. I watched that for the first time, I think, during lockdown times. And quite so great. Quite a kick out of that one. I did go to the movie theater and watch Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma. [01:14:12] Speaker A: Every fucking day. I look to see if I can stream it. I want it so badly. [01:14:19] Speaker B: I don't know it. Did you. Did you, like, you've seen tv? I saw the TV glow. [01:14:26] Speaker A: Yes. And I enjoyed it a great deal. [01:14:27] Speaker B: Okay. And then the I. Everyone's going to the World's Fair or [01:14:32] Speaker A: whatever it was that I have not seen. [01:14:33] Speaker B: And if I have, I thought you'd watched that one. [01:14:37] Speaker A: No, I don't remember it. I would be a fool to claim to know what it was about. [01:14:40] Speaker B: Yeah. I don't think I vibe with their movies. Jane, Sean, Ron, I think is their name. Yep. I don't like there. There are Things I really liked about this, I went with Mac the other day and you know, there's some really funny bits and stuff like that in it, but it's not a horror movie. I think that's the thing that people should know outright going into it because I feel like the way that they've promoted it with like, you know, the leads covered in blood and all that kind of stuff like really makes you. [01:15:11] Speaker A: That does surprise me because I have as a I, you know, I believe it to be one. Had we not had this conversation, I sat down and did not see a horror movie. I would have been pissed. [01:15:23] Speaker B: Yeah, no, just a heads up in advance, it's not a horror movie. It's more of like a, a yearning romance movie more than anything else here that deals with like obviously a lot of queer themes and stuff like that transness, you know, being like asexuality, you know, all kinds of stuff in it. And there's some really interesting stuff in there, I think that's like relatable about sexual repression and all this stuff that like I was on board with the meanings behind it. It's just so heavy handed in the meanings behind it that it's like it feels like halfway through the movie kind of grinds to a halt to like then spend the rest of it telling you what it means. Just not my favorite thing. Also I had some issues with like there's like a movie within a movie situation in it. So like they have like this whole sort of 80s slasher within it. And I think it's part of when you watch it getting this kind of like the overall idea about movies that this thing is saying or about like what's happening in the movie. But the movie within a movie does not take on the like characteristics of an 80s movie at all. There's like tons of CGI blood and stuff like that for like comedic effect, you know, to have like big blood spurts and stuff like that. And the movies, the music is like Long December by Counting Crows which is clearly from like the late 90s. Someone has a camcorder. So like it's. It clearly supposed to be intentional. But I don't get why you'd break from like what could have been a very cool like 80s throwback scene or whatever. So I don't know, it just didn't really work for me. And I think, you know, probably a lot of people who actually are queer will get more out of it than I did. But I do think it's also like a. If this is your style, I'm certain [01:17:13] Speaker A: there, there has to be a specific term for that, for the, for the, the outcome of trying to evoke a particular period or place or location. But in the interests of shorthand or accessibility or ease of consumption, using elements that are out with the time period you are trying to evoke almost as a shorthand. [01:17:44] Speaker B: Right. [01:17:46] Speaker A: It's, it's. It might seem like a disjointed example. Right. But if having. I came of age in the 90s. Right. Born in the 70s, grew up a little bit in the 80s. 90s was my era. Right. And 90s nostalgia is so different to the reality of what the. [01:18:09] Speaker B: Absolutely. Yeah. [01:18:11] Speaker A: And I, I have quite a keen eye and a distaste for those who evoke a period intentionally because I don't for a second think that these, this disconnection that you talk about there was unintentional. [01:18:27] Speaker B: Right. Like, there's definitely a. Like you can't put a camcorder in an 80s movie. Like it didn't exist. So there's like a reason. [01:18:34] Speaker A: So what is the process by which someone would intentionally evoke a period of time using artifacts and cultural reference points that are not of that time? [01:18:46] Speaker B: Right. [01:18:46] Speaker A: And what impression does that give the viewer who might not have been through that time? And does it do time itself and the culture that you're a disservice by having it willfully misrepresented for the sake of a scene? [01:19:03] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean that. You raise a point there that I hadn't even thought about of like I was there. And thus the anachronisms are a thing I recognize and thus recognize that it must mean something for them to be there. [01:19:16] Speaker A: Is that not. [01:19:17] Speaker B: If I were born in. [01:19:18] Speaker A: Is that not disinformation? [01:19:20] Speaker B: Yeah. Like, would I get what this is doing it all. Would I see that this was anachronistic? You know? [01:19:26] Speaker A: Exactly. Is that not. Is that not cinematic disinformation? [01:19:31] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:19:32] Speaker A: I mean, unless it is unintentional, which is an entirely different conversation. [01:19:36] Speaker B: Well. And I think maybe this is one of the things that I'm kind of like I've been thinking about in terms of this movie in general and that this movie comes across as deeply personal and the like lead character feels like a scene self insert of the director and thus kind of everything going along. This feels very much like the. It's the director's journey through this. And I felt put off by that in a sense where I'm like, this is clearly like so on the nose for someone's journey. However, like, if I were reading a book or like if I were, if I looked at an art piece maybe is a better way of putting this. And, and it was about if it's, if it's Frida Kahlo and it's a painting that talks about, you know, the terrible accident that she was, reflects, you know, her pain and all this, you know, her work was very autobiographical. I'm not bothered by that. So like, do I have some sort of weird hang up about self inserts in fiction that I don't necessarily have about other things? Like why do I feel like that's heavy handed to the point of annoying when it's in something? So you know, that was just kind of a thing that I've been thinking about with this is like to me, this, the fact that it feels so self referential was annoying to me. But is there merit to that as a hang up either? I don't know. [01:21:00] Speaker A: Hmm. I don't. I mean not having seen it. [01:21:04] Speaker B: Yeah. You obviously can't, you know, say one way or another yet. [01:21:07] Speaker A: But what I will say is, what I will say is I am an absolute beast for veracity. Right. [01:21:15] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:21:15] Speaker A: I am an apps. When you, when you, when the. If you're trying to paint a world that is lost to time, right. If you are putting me as a fucking viewer and as a participant in your fiction in a time that I have lived through that is now gone, you better make it fucking make sense. It had better be true. [01:21:39] Speaker B: And I think in the grand scheme of the movie, you can see like, again, I can see why that could be a deliberate choice based on other elements of the movie that you'll have to see it to understand. But at the same time with that, I spent the entire like movie within a movie going like, this isn't how movies work. This isn't how the 80s or 70s worked. What's going on here? You know, whatever artifice you're, you're trying to present, whatever point you're trying to make, you don't really want the like viewer to be sitting there going, this doesn't. This. I don't understand why this is happening in a way that isn't like, oh, I'm curious about why this is happening. But instead is like, I am confused by this. Yeah, yeah. [01:22:28] Speaker A: If you pull on that thread, it's the worst kind of indulgences of nostalgia. And it. And again, I stand by that. If that's intentional and you're misrepresenting another era, that is disinformation and you are doing a disservice to those who are watching that movie who were not alive during that era, you're painting a fucking inaccurate picture of what that time was like. Why would you do that? [01:22:51] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I think there's maybe some flexibility with that. I mean, all movies that take place in the past are obviously a fiction in that way. Right. Like nothing ever represents it the way that it was. And you can, like, you can do interesting things with that. Right. Especially if your audience is aware that that is what is happening. You know, take something like Pleasantville or something like that. Right. Like where the artifice of the time is part of the point. But yeah, I just, I just more felt confused by this. [01:23:23] Speaker A: You have made me both less and more interested in seeing this film. [01:23:27] Speaker B: Yeah, I think you have to see at all possible. [01:23:31] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm in a state of quantum flux in my desire to watch this film now. I'm both at the same time uninterested and madly fucking passionate to see this movie now. [01:23:41] Speaker B: Right. I think it's one that like you have to, you have to see. You know, it's a thing everybody's talking about and, and you may end up loving it. It just wasn't my thing. [01:23:54] Speaker A: I'm a 47 year old bloke. Corrigan. What do you think? I don't think it's for me. [01:23:59] Speaker B: I don't, I don't. Well, yeah, I mean, clearly neither of us are necessarily the target audience for it, but also you weren't the audience for I saw the TV glow and it worked for you. So. [01:24:10] Speaker A: Wow, [01:24:14] Speaker B: there you go. What else you watch? [01:24:19] Speaker A: Oh, listen, I mean, nothing of nothing else really. I mean, a delightful watch along took place. [01:24:25] Speaker B: Yes. That was the other Tim Curry flick that we watched this week. [01:24:29] Speaker A: Always heartened. Right. You know, I, I've, I. It used to be the case that, you know, we didn't know to watch alongs like a fortnight in advance. [01:24:39] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [01:24:41] Speaker A: Not anymore. Day before watch along. But it's always so validating and so rewarding and so fucking fun. People turn out and show. [01:24:50] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. [01:24:51] Speaker A: Show up for watch alongs and watch movies with us. I fucking love it. The crew who comes along, the watch alongs on, on the Saturdays and we do them. I'm so grateful for you, I really am. Because it's always such a great time and this was no exception because even when the film isn't great, the company always is. [01:25:11] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [01:25:13] Speaker A: Legend. [01:25:14] Speaker B: Legend, yes. Ridley Scott's legend, which was a bit of Ridley Scott. [01:25:22] Speaker A: I don't, you know, I won't go on. But what if I said Ridley Scott? He's got to be fucking. He's got an eight for sure. [01:25:29] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. What if I said Ridley, he's gonna save Alien again? You know, saving. [01:25:37] Speaker A: It's the healthiest. It's healthier than it fucking ever was. [01:25:40] Speaker B: Yep. I mean, this is so my thing with Ridley Scott is like, obviously he has some unimpeachable classics behind him or whatever. He also has a lot of movies that just make me go, what? You also have Black Rain or even like, I watched Gladiator for the first time when we were in Rome two years ago. And I was like, come on, are you all fucking with me? Gladiator, this is the movie of all. This is what you've all been obsessed with for the past 25 years. This is the dumbest fucking thing I have ever seen in my life. [01:26:19] Speaker A: I get that. [01:26:20] Speaker B: It is so like, there's a lot of his movies that I'm just kind of like, I don't, I don't know if it's cocaine. I don't know, like what's going on? And Legend is one of those. I remember liking it when I was a kid. I think my mom liked it, but also I couldn't follow stories when I was a kid, so no problem here. No clue what's going on. [01:26:44] Speaker A: I mean, I don't really have anything to add about Ridley Scott. Right. I think he's. I think he might be in the John Carpenter zone. Mm. [01:26:53] Speaker B: Okay. [01:26:54] Speaker A: Where you. You bulletproof, right? [01:26:58] Speaker B: What? [01:26:59] Speaker A: Your contribution has been so vast that it doesn't matter really. [01:27:06] Speaker B: Sure. Yeah. [01:27:07] Speaker A: Right. There's nothing at all I can say about Ridley Scott that can detract from the high points of his cv. [01:27:17] Speaker B: Exactly. Right. [01:27:18] Speaker A: There is not a, there isn't a bullet that is made that can penetrate the armor of Alien and Blade Runner. [01:27:26] Speaker B: Right? Yeah, exactly. [01:27:28] Speaker A: So whatever Legend is, even if, even, even if it's bad, which it is, right. It's bad in a very, in a number of very singular, very interesting ways, right? [01:27:43] Speaker B: Yes. [01:27:45] Speaker A: Can a film be awful and yet be visually absolutely fascinating, beautiful? Yes, it fucking can. [01:27:54] Speaker B: And you know, technical, everything going on. [01:27:57] Speaker A: Cana film have absolutely no sense of logic and cause and effect through line. Can a film be a, you know, a two hour long music video, right. Whilst still having characteristics of some of the greatest of his films? Does it have the architecture of, of, of Alien? You know, the Alien fucking weird otherworldly fantasy architecture in that film and the sense of depth and visual fucking world building the Of. Of. Of Blade Runner. Right. There are sequences and sets and creativity in the world building in this film. That's like, God, this is lived in. [01:28:48] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:28:49] Speaker A: And it feels just thrumming with otherworldly life. God, can it be arresting whilst being terrible? [01:29:02] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:29:02] Speaker A: Yep, yep. [01:29:04] Speaker B: Absolutely. [01:29:05] Speaker A: So, yeah, I'm. I'm not. I'm not going a fucking single star over two. [01:29:13] Speaker B: Right. [01:29:14] Speaker A: Right. Yeah. But don't. [01:29:16] Speaker B: You know, it's cinema. [01:29:19] Speaker A: It's bad, but it is cinematically bad. [01:29:23] Speaker B: Mm. Yeah, absolutely. [01:29:25] Speaker A: That's all I got to say about that. [01:29:28] Speaker B: Well, Mark. [01:29:30] Speaker A: Oh, and what do you do. What do you do on a Sunday, Tuesday morning when you've got the morning. When you've got the day off work, Right? [01:29:36] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:29:37] Speaker A: When you've had a fantastic long weekend and you've been to see a great wrestling show and you've eaten great food in. [01:29:43] Speaker B: You saw Bewitched. [01:29:44] Speaker A: I saw Bewitched. Right. [01:29:46] Speaker B: Didn't even tell me. [01:29:47] Speaker A: B. Witch. And I'm gonna tell you a little something about Bewitched super quick, Right. [01:29:51] Speaker B: That they're amazing. [01:29:54] Speaker A: Corey, what if I said they come across or who's the leader of them? [01:30:03] Speaker B: I don't know. [01:30:03] Speaker A: Who's kv Is that her name or is it. [01:30:05] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, there is. That is one of their names. Yes. [01:30:08] Speaker A: Come across is quite needy and quite bitter. They did. They did a new song and. And kind of were a little bit spiky with the crowd or a little bit like this, whatever it was. Yeah, they pissed me off. They pissed me off a little bit. They only did. They only did half an hour on that, but that's fine. They've only got like four songs and you know that there's not going to be an encore because they've only got four songs. [01:30:36] Speaker B: So fair enough. [01:30:38] Speaker A: They were. But they were brief and it was a lovely day. But what I'm saying is, what do you do after you've had a lovely weekend and it's the morning and the kids are still in bed and Laura's at work? You watch Threads, don't you? [01:30:50] Speaker B: Do you? [01:30:52] Speaker A: I do. [01:30:53] Speaker B: Okay. [01:30:54] Speaker A: This morning I was seized, and seized is the right word just to watch Threads. And I did. I watched the. It's a. Not a short undertaking. It's like hour 47, hour 50. It's a long, long piece. And Threads this morning. But there was no suffering involved. [01:31:09] Speaker B: Just. [01:31:12] Speaker A: Just, you know, it's maybe a hacky perspective. But you ask yourself, as you're watching Threads, how the fuck did this make it to Telly? [01:31:21] Speaker B: Right. [01:31:23] Speaker A: What. Just what must the experience of watching threads have been like in 1984. [01:31:33] Speaker B: Right. [01:31:34] Speaker A: You know. [01:31:35] Speaker B: Yeah. When everybody was already just like, already just on, perpetually terrified of nuclear war. It was always just gonna happen every day of your life. [01:31:46] Speaker A: More effective than a thousand, you know, news broadcasts or leaflets or, you know, here's what to expect in the event of a nuclear war. Pamphlets come through your letterbox threads to this day. And while it has elements which are of its time, shall we say, unflinching, uncompromising, unrelenting, bleak, the best attempt of that era, and maybe since I've not seen since, a better, more earnest attempt at depicting the best stab that anyone has ever had at what an actual fucking suburban nuclear strike would look like and the impact it would have on society. We see it all. Cannibalism and infrastructure collapse and radiation sickness. Radiation sickness and food distribution and violence. And we see it all. Burning bodies. We see it all. [01:33:01] Speaker B: Yep. [01:33:02] Speaker A: And the fact that it isn't in London, it doesn't take place in New York. [01:33:06] Speaker B: Right. [01:33:07] Speaker A: Sheffield, right? Working class Sheffield. The mundanity of local government, the, you know, the fallibility of bureaucracy, all reduced to. To a grasping hand sticking out of rubble, charred flesh and, ah, mutants. It's great. So great. So good. [01:33:34] Speaker B: See, you're making me want to rewatch it. But then this is a thing that happens to me every, like, you know, six months or so. It'll, like, come up and something. I'll be like, I should rewatch that. And then like, as soon as I go to, I'm like, am I in the mood for that? [01:33:49] Speaker A: I mean, I don't know. I don't think. You don't need to be. All you need to be is in a mood for something real. Right? [01:33:56] Speaker B: Yeah. Right. That's definitely kind of the real. [01:33:59] Speaker A: Do you want the real deal? When are you not in the mood for the real deal? When do you not want the real fucking deal? [01:34:05] Speaker B: Yeah. Love escapism. Love. Not real things. I've been watching some dumbass show called Anna Pigeon on my friend's plex recently. This is like the stupidest Canadian crime [01:34:19] Speaker A: procedural where you and I part ways. Cause I just want the real deal all the time. Yeah, right. [01:34:26] Speaker B: Yeah. Soak in those bad vibes. [01:34:28] Speaker A: If it ain't real, I am seated. Do you understand? [01:34:33] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:34:33] Speaker A: If it ain't real, I'm looking at my phone. Give me threads or give me death. [01:34:41] Speaker B: Well, Mark, it's great that you say that, because I'm gonna give you something real right now. [01:34:47] Speaker A: Terrific. [01:34:48] Speaker B: Yeah. Dear bookseller Ryan, because this is a Late episode this week. She insisted we go all out today. You know, cold, open movies, banter, full main topic, and that seems fair. [01:35:01] Speaker A: I mean, we would have. [01:35:03] Speaker B: Anyway, I did not have this prepared for. Normally we talk so much that we don't have time for a main topic. And, you know, exactly that. Now, we've been a little conscious of this to try to avoid that, you know, getting through the movies and whatnot as fast as possible. So yourself. [01:35:24] Speaker A: I've been conscious of nothing. [01:35:26] Speaker B: Okay. I. I've been conscious. We have been in our roles here, is what I'm saying. But, yes, Ryan, you should be careful what you wish for, because. Fine. I've got a terrible main topic for you today. Glaciers. Yes. Specifically, yes. Why climate change. Melting them is a huge problem. So get ready for your new nightmare, Rye. Here we go. [01:35:56] Speaker A: Topical. [01:35:57] Speaker B: Yes. Obviously, if you're listening to this, shortly after its release, uh, it's clear that this is on my mind because of the absolutely horrific events that happened in Nepal last week. [01:36:08] Speaker A: So let me ask, firstly, if I may. [01:36:10] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:36:13] Speaker A: Is it. Is it beyond speculation now that climate is a major contributing factor in that chunk of ice peeling off? [01:36:27] Speaker B: I mean, obviously, forensically, we cannot necessarily, like, prove that, like, explanation I've seen [01:36:34] Speaker A: is tectonic movement, so. [01:36:36] Speaker B: No, no, no, no, no, no. And I'll get into that. So. Okay, okay, let's explain a little bit in case you aren't listening to this contemporaneously. Huge flash flood, as you're saying, initially thought to have been triggered by an earthquake, raced through an area of the borders of Nepal and Tibet and absolutely destroyed everything in its place. Path. The videos are harrowing. It's very clear in all of them that you're watching hundreds of people die, while the official death toll as of last night, when I was writing this was 955 people. [01:37:13] Speaker A: Oh, I've seen higher today. I've seen in the thousands today. [01:37:16] Speaker B: 4,500 people are still missing. [01:37:19] Speaker A: Yes. [01:37:21] Speaker B: So realistically, the death toll is probably some 5,500 people in total. They just don't know for sure. You can't pronounce everyone dead yet, but likely that's the case. [01:37:33] Speaker A: Survivors are still being pulled. [01:37:35] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. So not all of those people are necessarily dead. It's just every day, obviously, recovery becomes more unlikely. [01:37:45] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:37:46] Speaker B: So, like I said, the thing is, it turns out it was not an earthquake at all. What actually seems to have happened is that a huge chunk of a glacier broke off the north slope of a mountain called Long Tong Lirung, causing an impact on that mountain that registered a 5.2 magnitude on the Richter scale. So it was actually the breaking off that caused that impact that made it seem like it was tectonic activity. [01:38:15] Speaker A: When I say tectonic activity, a factor that I'm referring to, that I've read of isn't like a tectonic event, right. [01:38:24] Speaker B: But rather its placement on a. [01:38:27] Speaker A: Yes, exactly. And over decades and centuries, naturally there is topographical. Topographical kind of shift and glaciers breaking off is quite commonplace. But this one was fucking massive, right? [01:38:40] Speaker B: Yeah, this was huge. And as far as I know nothing of, and I read lots of, of things that, you know, they took drones over it and all of that kind of stuff. Nothing said that it had anything to do with its location on, you know, plates or anything like that. It's pretty clear that this broke off because of climate issues. So the result of this was essentially a powerful avalanche of ice and rock that picked up everything in its path and pushed it into the Lendahalla river, causing a rise in water levels of over 20ft in a period of 30 minutes. This was needless to say, catastrophic. And any building, home or human in its path was instantly washed away as if by Kaiju attack. Just completely wiped off the map. [01:39:29] Speaker A: And you're right about, you know, it can't be overstated. How fucking wild the footage of the day is. [01:39:41] Speaker B: It's truly, it's, it's horrible. [01:39:44] Speaker A: It evokes the tsunami of a few years back. [01:39:47] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. [01:39:48] Speaker A: Nine, 11. It evokes, you know, the very worst disasters that you have seen. It is, it is among them, you know. [01:39:56] Speaker B: Yeah, 1,000%. I will say people have been very annoying about that on the Internet because obviously, you know, people are posting these videos and being like, hey, we, we need to pay attention to the climate. And then people are like, trigger warning. There's people dying in this. Like, yeah, that's gonna happen because of climate change. So get used to it. Yeah, this is not a like, oh, but my mental health time. Like you, you, this is what's happening. So there it is. But anyway, why did this happen? To put it quite bluntly, because of us. Or to be more precise, because of man made climate change caused by our reliance on fossil fuels and the predatory corporations profiting off, keeping us reliant on them. So as we've discussed very recently on this show, every year keeps being the hottest year on record. [01:40:54] Speaker A: Yes. Today's news announces that yes, this summer in the UK was the hottest ever. Ever in the history of ever. [01:41:00] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:41:01] Speaker A: As you know, keeping in mind, the context that I spoke about last week when so were the three years before it also. [01:41:07] Speaker B: Exactly. Yep. Every year is just the hottest year on record. That is just how things work now. And according to the Guardian, two days before the collapse of that glacier, the ground temperature hit its highest point in two years, which was already unusually high. As glacial glaciologist Dr. Hamish Pritchard of the British Antarctic Survey put it, quote, these high temperatures would have weakened the snowpack, snowpack filled crevices. Let me try that again. These high temperatures would have weakened the snowpack, filled crevices with water, and thawed the bonds between ice and rock that hold these glaciers in place. So while this specific incident obviously was a surprise, that it was going to happen somewhere, wasn't just three years ago the UN Science Board warned that the melting of icebound land masses like permafrost and glaciers would cause them to become more unstable and in turn result in disasters like this one. As we discussed last week, we have gone ahead and barreled straight into that 1.5C above pre industrial levels warming that we were totally aiming to miss a few years ago. And it's actually happening even faster in alpine and polar regions because snow and ice insulate the land by reflecting solar energy. And as they melt, the ground absorbs more of that energy, as does the ocean, and both get warmer. Dr. Richard Walter explained it like this. Think of the high mountains like this as shattered bedrock glued together by ice filled joints. As the permafrost and the ice filled joints melt, then there's the potential for these type of catastrophic failures. So thinking of it as glue, I think is a helpful way of looking at it. Basically this shit is all glued together and when it melts, that's the glue coming apart and everything just going, coming across, coming apart. If, like me, you're interested in things like maritime history, you're very aware that water is about the most central reason we as humans choose to settle anywhere. Oceans, rivers, lakes and so on, they're how we keep ourselves alive. We can't live without water. And on top of that, water often brings things like trade that help our civilization to thrive as such. Lots of places are built on bodies of water that are downstream of glaciers, the oceans included, obviously. So glacier retreat, as it's called, is a threat to humans all over the world. As one study showed, glacier loss in the area of Nepal where this flood occurred has increased fourfold since 1964. And science scientists emphasize. [01:43:44] Speaker A: Sorry, say that again because that sounds ridiculous. [01:43:46] Speaker B: Yeah, the glacier loss in the area of Nepal where this flood happened has increased from fourfold since 1964. [01:43:54] Speaker A: Okay. [01:43:55] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a lot. And scientists emphasize that other areas are equally vulnerable to this kind of event, including the Andes, the Himalayas, the Caucasus, and the European Alps, among others. According to climate.gov, part of the National oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, website'2023 24 was the 37th year in a row that the reference glaciers tracked by the World Glacier Monitoring Service lost rather than gained ice. This means that since 1970, the glaciers that have been tracked have lost the equivalent of about 27.3 meters of water. What? The site equates to slicing an average of 98ft of ice off the entire surface of every glacier. And this process is ever accelerating from. And this is crazy. Okay, listen to these numbers. From 6.7 inches per year in the 80s to 18 inches per year in the 90s to 20 per year in the 2000s. And 35 inches of loss per year for the 2010s. From 6 inches of loss per year, which was already bad news, to 35 inches per year. [01:45:09] Speaker A: The. The 6 inches per year was when. [01:45:13] Speaker B: The 80s. [01:45:15] Speaker A: Good God. [01:45:16] Speaker B: Yeah, right. Really, really bad. Some 41% of the total loss since 1976 has happened in the past decade. Mark of all of that, 41% has happened in the past 10 years. 2023 alone accounted for about 6.6percent of the total loss since 1976, which is crazy. One year. So what does all this mean for us? You'll of course, have heard that classic tweet. Climate change will manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phones with footage that gets closer and closer until you're the one filming it. Right? Yep. Indeed, we can see that happening, whether in Nepal or in the flood that killed several people in the Grand Canyon last week, or the one that killed nearly two dozen little girls at a camp in Texas last year, or in the massive El Nino event that we're dealing with, or the tornado that took out a beach club in Long Island a couple weeks ago. [01:46:23] Speaker A: It's a tweet that keeps occurring to me, particularly when I saw the wildfire footage in Wales over the summer. [01:46:30] Speaker B: Right. Yeah, exactly. Like closer. [01:46:33] Speaker A: When it becomes closer and more relevant and more realistic and more tangible. Mm. [01:46:38] Speaker B: Yes. The climate crisis is very much upon us, and glacier retreat is one of the real big things we need to worry about. First and foremost, the melting of the glaciers makes the sea level rise. And when the sea level rises, coastal areas and islands and things like that become a Lot more dangerous when hit by the huge climate change powered storms that keep powering through. It's a real two fur or three fir because coastal erosion caused by sea level rise makes this even worse. So we're basically losing coastline as the glaciers melt. So people who didn't used to have beachfront property have beachfront property. And some areas are experiencing so called outburst floods, which happen when ice dams that hold back newly formed meltwater lakes give way and release that meltwater rapidly. On the other side of the same coin, that glacial meltwater also makes sure that rivers and streams keep flowing during the summer when it's hot and dry. Glacial retreat means that there's less meltwater, which means that people and ecosystems that rely on that meltwater might be sol as there's nothing to melt and keep the rivers flowing. The National Snow and Ice Data center points to the AMU Darya river in Central Asia as an example. While glacial belt only accounts for 8% of the annual river flow, it accounts for 27% of river flow in the summer when there's little to no snow melt to provide water. So basically, glaciers melting at a normal speed is part of this process of keeping rivers flowing. As those glaciers retreat, less water comes through. You end up with things like drought as a result. And glaciers are also used for irrigating crops in places like Switzerland, Pakistan and India. And they're used for hydroelectric power in Norway, Central Europe, Canada, New Zealand, South America. Intact, unmelted glaciers are very important. When we talk about things like dealing with climate refugees, all of these things play a part. Rising sea levels causing flooding, drinking water drying up, losing the ability to irrigate crops and thus causing food shortages. These are all things that happen because of glacial retreat. Melting sea ice and glaciers also impact the weather. As I said, the Arctic is warming faster than anyone anywhere else. Twice as fast in fact. And as it melts, revealing darker patches of ocean, the air gets warmer because it's no longer being cooled by the ice. So the ice was keeping the air cool. It isn't doing that anymore. And warmer air causes disruptions in regular patterns of ocean circulation, which causes things like the more frequent polar vortexes, vortices. I don't know how you're supposed to say it, but those happen because of this. And it's because of changes to the jet stream that happen as a result of warming air and water in the Arctic and in the tropics that we get bigger storms and hurricanes, which we've also clearly been seeing these past few years. So ice melts in Antarctica or in the Arctic. And we end up with changing weather patterns everywhere because the air is now too warm. It's not just the water, it's the air too. Glaciers are also full of all kinds of bacteria and viruses that have been chilling there for centuries, maybe millennia. We have no clue. We're only just now starting to research whether bacteriophages from glaciers are still infectious after the ice melts because we couldn't get to those phages before. [01:50:22] Speaker A: A fascinating vector of insanity that I'm very curious and tuned to see play out the concept of like an ice age pathogen. [01:50:42] Speaker B: Yeah, we'll get there in a sec. But like, obviously these things are coming out because things are melting. So obviously, as you're saying, it's important that we figure out whether there's like some Prometheus thing going on in there. [01:50:57] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm saying. [01:50:58] Speaker B: Or it's all benign. Thankfully, scientists think that because these things have adapted for so long to the cold, they are not likely to survive in a warming environment. So it's unlikely that they'll be able to kill us off. They will probably simply die when it gets too warm. Yeah, probably. It's disconcerting nonetheless. But little pathogens aren't the only things in there. There's also all kinds of algae potential stores of methane and other fun stuff that contribute a sharp a shit ton of carbon emissions. More specifically, about 650,000 tons of carbon a year coming from stuff that's been released as a result of the melting of glaciers. By the way, all the articles I read about these microbes referenced your alma alma mater, Everest with university, as they apparently are leading the way in studying this. Which just a funny side note, one of the articles that I read referred to it as Previscle Aberystwyth University, which I thought was funny because basically that meant that like, they got a letterhead that had it translated into Welsh and English and they thought that that was the name of the university. It's just Aberystwyth University. University, yeah, that's what that means. But anyway, in a New Scientist video, they address the question of whether we can stop glacier melt. Now, there are of course, ideas about, like, geoengineering. Right, Things that we've talked about. But for example, some scientists have considered if it would be possible to create an underwater curtain that protects the glaciers from warming waters. However, this would probably cost some £100 billion and would also require lots of upkeep. And it's not clear who would even do that, because there are the parts of the polls that don't belong to anyone and then there are parts that belong to Greenland, and Greenland clearly can't be dropping a hundred billion on their own plus maintenance. And you know, it's, it's just real impractical. Scientists are in general wary of technological solutions. [01:53:10] Speaker A: Yes. Action on rubbish into space. [01:53:14] Speaker B: Right. Yeah, Simply not the best strategy. [01:53:17] Speaker A: By the way, I, I class geoengineering alongside that kind of big swing solution. If you're gonna fucking, if you're gonna scatter reflective particles in the troposphere or whatever, you really might as well fire the rubbish into space. [01:53:35] Speaker B: Yeah. And they largely, that's kind of how they feel about it. They of course, want to come up with things because like, fuck if things don't change. Like, we gotta take big swings. But they're very clear that action on climate change is the most important, cheapest and implementable solution. And we are accelerating renewable energy products around projects around the world. And as Miles o'. Brien. Not that one pointed out on the PBS Horizons segment, Engage. Trump's defending defunding of the NHS meant that the United States no longer has an Antarctic research high school breaker to do this research. But Korea has taken over basically where we left off there. So this stuff is still being done. And this might surprise you, Marco. I think it will. Horizons also pointed out, and I fact checked this as well, that in the US and Europe we are actually using more renewable power than natural gas now. And this is shifting. Yes. Like. Well, not globally, like, so the United States is using more renewable power than natural gas. This is also true of other countries as well. I think the UK is amongst places that this is also true. So Yale Environment360 pointed out that in March of this year, fossil fuels generate, generated less electricity than in any March going back at least 25 years. So it's a huge reduction in natural gas to be used. The Energy Information Administration said that solar, wind and batteries will account for 93% of power capacity added to the grid in America this year. And China's carbon emissions are flattening and possibly even going down at this point. And I think that's really important to hear because it does feel like we're making zero progress here. Whenever we talk about this stuff, we're like, well, yeah, there are solutions, but good luck getting people in charge to implement any of them. But they actually are. So maybe not fast enough, but faster than we realize and more fully than we realize, we really are making those transitions into renewable energy at A pretty good clip at this point. And while America is obviously shitting the bed in a lot of ways, other countries are picking up the slack. Plus, renewable energy is proving to be profitable, which means that even here in this cesspool, corporations recognize that making that switch can actually be positive for them both in the short and long run. At the risk of ending what was sort of positive. On a downer note, though, there's really one thing getting in the way of all this progress with renewables. Do you care to guess, Marco? [01:56:17] Speaker A: Is it capitalism? [01:56:18] Speaker B: Well, yeah, but more specifically. [01:56:21] Speaker A: Oh, is it fossil fuel in Big, Big Fossil, Big Fuel, Big Oil? [01:56:25] Speaker B: More specifically, because, like I said, we have been switching away from fossil fuels, but there's one thing that is bringing the fossil fuels back. [01:56:37] Speaker A: Oh, okay. Go for it. Tell me. Oh, data centers. [01:56:40] Speaker B: Data center. [01:56:41] Speaker A: Yes, of course. What else? Of course. [01:56:44] Speaker B: According to Yale, rapid, rapidly rising power demand is giving a lifeline to fossil fuels. Tech companies are installing natural gas generators at new data centers, while grid operators are delaying the retirement of aging coal power plants. [01:57:00] Speaker A: Sick. [01:57:02] Speaker B: Nine coal power plants that were set for retirement last year have had their operating lives extended, including five in response to emergency orders from the U.S. department of Energy. Only four coal power plants retired generators last year, according to the eia. The total capacity retired last year was the lowest in 15 years. And this is why, friends, it is absolutely crucial that you make everyone you know allergic to AI. This is why you gotta refuse to use it at work. It's why you gotta show up to the town council meetings when they say they want to build a data center where you live. This is why it is the most pressing issue of our time. We are actually on our way to staving off the worst of climate change. And there is one obstacle in the way. The fucking data centers. [01:57:59] Speaker A: Well, I can't. I can't quote a source, but again, the. You know, you read that fucking. One of these cunting things will pump out a city's worth of emissions, right? [01:58:15] Speaker B: Or multiple cities worth. [01:58:17] Speaker A: Yes. And you will also read that they're on essential infrastructure lists so that water to schools and fucking. Yep, Public facilities will be switched off. [01:58:32] Speaker B: Before the whole city of Gary, Indiana didn't have power for like three weeks because they were using it for the data centers. [01:58:38] Speaker A: My God. [01:58:40] Speaker B: Yeah. This is like. I can't emphasize enough how crucial it is that we oppose and sabotage these things at every possible step, because this is. This is what's going to kill us. We are moving towards renewable energy and this has undone the progress that we've made these stupid data centers for all your AI. That's making everyone's life worse, making everyone poorer and more miserable. That is going to end the world. We got to get rid of it. Mark, stroking his head. [01:59:30] Speaker A: You were the first person to, to notice that that is actually a tick. [01:59:34] Speaker B: Yes, of mine. [01:59:35] Speaker A: I just thought, you know. Oh, just I like to sit here happily stroking my head. But that is an anxiety thing. I do that more when I'm, when I'm anxious. I, I don't, I don't really have anything to say to this. But it's horrible. But it's horrible. One of the sickest things about it is that piece I spoke about just there about it, about a data center being considered. And not all data centers are for AI, are they? [02:00:00] Speaker B: Right, obviously. But the influx in them that suddenly is like, oh, we need to have them everywhere. Like obviously they've existed. That's how we use the Internet. That's how we, how things worked before that. [02:00:13] Speaker A: Right. [02:00:14] Speaker B: That they're proliferating like this is a result largely of AI. [02:00:19] Speaker A: One of many things that I can't quite reconcile and get my head around. Right. Is why is it so completely unfathomable and unpossible and it can simply not happen that large companies like, you know, Altman and, and, and GPT and Claude and whatever, why can't they lose money? [02:00:43] Speaker B: Why are they not allowed to lose money? Listen, the finances of this are beyond me because obviously they are losing money. But yeah, if they, if we acknowledge that we all go into like immediate depression. Like financial, not like sadness. [02:01:05] Speaker A: Yeah. [02:01:06] Speaker B: Because all the money is wrapped up in this, everything. This is what all of our banks are invested in. This is what our retirements invested in. So if AI collapses, there goes the whole ass economy. And everyone who relies on us, there goes their economy and we all are fucked. [02:01:28] Speaker A: Alright, so that's, that's all the bad vibes I think I can handle for this week. [02:01:34] Speaker B: Yep. You're welcome, Ryan. [02:01:36] Speaker A: It started at 10 o' clock this morning where I watched Threads. [02:01:40] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:01:41] Speaker A: Picked up a little bit and then logged on here with my good friend Corrigan. [02:01:46] Speaker B: You said you wanted the real mark [02:01:49] Speaker A: and you gave it to me. It's. It's all I crave. It feeds me. [02:01:54] Speaker B: Yep. Something to take to bed with you. There's so much thunder right now. I may have to use the Zoom audio because also there was like work on the house across the street. So it might be too loud. But if I am able to use this, people are getting a really nice sound soundtrack right now. Like just persistent thunder listeners. [02:02:13] Speaker A: I'm sure you all are joining us in wishing a happy birthday to us. I'm sure you're all doing. I'm sure you're as proud of us as I'm proud of us. I'm proud. I'm proud of you, Corian. I'll just snick that in the end. I'm proud of you. And likewise, a great, great, great fun partner and icon to do this with. You're iconic, right? [02:02:33] Speaker B: Oh, okay. [02:02:35] Speaker A: I'll take you're iconic. And long may you remain so. [02:02:38] Speaker B: Hear, hear. And right back at you, my dear bestie. Thanks for coming along on this journey. And forever and always. Until one of us kicks the bucket. Stay spooky. [02:02:52] Speaker A: Till one of us goes to Brazil [02:02:54] Speaker B: on foot, walks the 101.