Ep. 281: free will & the illusion of choice

[00:00:04] Speaker A: Okay, so we are. I've got a lot on my mind. Oh, I've got a lot on my mind. And I will preface this episode. I'll preface this opening with something that I often. Maybe a little Marco disclaimer. Regular listeners will have heard it before. [00:00:23] Speaker B: Yes. [00:00:24] Speaker A: That I don't necessarily know what you're about to hear is not necessarily representative of my final opinion. Right. [00:00:31] Speaker B: Okay. So we're working through something today. [00:00:34] Speaker A: Exactly. But what I love to do and what this cast beautifully helps me to do is to explore ideas, explore concepts, find out my position in real time. [00:00:49] Speaker B: Okay. [00:00:51] Speaker A: And I'm gonna ask you a lot of questions, Corrigan. And the reason that I ask you questions is because your perspective is valuable to me. [00:01:01] Speaker B: Oh, thank you. [00:01:03] Speaker A: I mean that. [00:01:03] Speaker B: I appreciate that. [00:01:04] Speaker A: Please do take that in the spirit it's intended, that is reciprocated. Well, that's very kind. Makes me scratch my head a little, I won't lie. But it's very kind. I. There is, and I don't have, really, another stage or another forum in my life where I get this opportunity to explore concepts like this, to explore ideas like this. [00:01:27] Speaker B: Well, this is a good forum for it because not only do you bounce it off me, but then you get feedback from a bunch of people who will either yell at you or agree with you on the discord afterwards. [00:01:36] Speaker A: That certainly happened often enough, hasn't it? Yes, but I mean, in a work setting, I mean, I can't start as, you know, a call at work. Work. I'm just going to explore some ideas with you all, if that's fine, and then bang on for half an hour about. [00:01:49] Speaker B: I don't know, you're kind of the boss. You can do what you want. I've had weirder things. I'm the superiors. [00:01:54] Speaker A: Nothing. I'm the boss of Dag Shite. Right. You're the king of dark shite. Now, that is a deep cut. Okay, if anyone. If anyone can. A couple of people who know this. You, Chunky John, you just go around saying you're the king of this and that. You're the king of dark shite. It's a deep cut. I hope Zoom doesn't cut that out. It might. [00:02:16] Speaker B: It might. Yeah, we'll see. And it'll be very funny if it does. [00:02:19] Speaker A: I'm telling you, this, Junkie John. You're junkies, bastard. You're junkies. Junkies, bastard. [00:02:28] Speaker B: I've already lost control of this conversation. [00:02:33] Speaker A: So, anyway, I'll start with a question. [00:02:35] Speaker B: Okay. [00:02:38] Speaker A: What is your stance on whether you have Free will. [00:02:46] Speaker B: Somehow I knew this was going to be the question you asked. I don't know why, but my brain was like, he's going to ask about free will. I don't know why, but I was like, that's where we're going today. [00:02:59] Speaker A: How. What, what gave you that intuition? [00:03:02] Speaker B: I don't know. I'm not entirely sure. Maybe it's because there's a photo that comes up on my Facebook every year. I think we've hit year 20 of it coming up on my Facebook of. I used to be an RA RA resident assistant. So they're like the student who is in charge of like a floor or a building or things like that at a university. Right. And so I had like a board, a whiteboard outside of my door so that residents could like write concerns or like, whatever, say, hi, what's up? Draw a cartoon, anything that they wanted. And my friend Andy had written on that board like, you know, something like, do you believe in predestination? Something along those lines. It was just like all these, like, casual drawings or whatever. Like my friend Andrew had drawn like a cartoon of me farting and like things like that. And then just, do you believe in predestination in capital letters across the middle of this board? So I don't know. Maybe it was just that. That is a thing that I see once a year that made me think, Mark is going to ask me about free will. [00:04:08] Speaker A: Interesting. Well, would I have asked you about free will if you hadn't have seen that picture? Yeah. [00:04:16] Speaker B: Now there's a. [00:04:18] Speaker A: Feel free to answer this from whichever perspective feels most comfortable and most appropriate. From your ex evangelical perspective, answering character as an evangelical in your past, if you would, like, as a. As a, you know, we live in a society. So as a member of society, ask yourself and to answer it in. In character. But to you, where you are sat right now, what are your thoughts on free will and whether or not we have it? [00:04:46] Speaker B: Yeah, it's. It's interesting because to me, I think I'm kind of. I feel like obviously, yes. However, that's not an obvious answer. Right. There's people, whether they are religious or not or whatever, who have all different kinds of perspectives on this. So, like, even looking at it from like an evangelical perspective, like, they're not all on the same page on this, like, to. Free will can have limits to it. Right? Like, there's ideas about, like, predestination. There's ideas about like, you know, God chose a certain amount who will follow him, you know, and so whatever you say about that if he's already chosen you, you're eventually going to come back around and believe in him and things like that, you know, so there's all these like different ideas about like how much choice we have in following God, how much choice we have in our day to day lives. You know, to me, I mean, I guess my thing is coming from. And I, and I always believed in free will when I was a Christian too. But I think outside of that, I guess my thought is why wouldn't we. I suppose if there is no one pulling the strings. [00:06:02] Speaker A: Okay. [00:06:03] Speaker B: Then why would we not have free will? [00:06:05] Speaker A: Okay. Fantastic. [00:06:07] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:06:08] Speaker A: If there's no one pulling the strings, Right. Do you believe that there is no one pulling your strings? [00:06:17] Speaker B: Yes. I mean obviously from like the world we live in, perspective, there's people pulling every single string that exists. Yeah, right. [00:06:26] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:06:28] Speaker B: And I guess maybe it's definitional, right? Like what do you think free will is in the, in the first place? And so I think I separate the idea of are our choices shaped by the experiences and things that we encounter differently than do we have free will? Right. So like we can never be a tabula rasa. Right. We are always going to be impacted by literally every single thing that happens to us. But does that negate the idea that we make our own choices from that? I don't think so. [00:07:06] Speaker A: Fascinating. Fascinating. I'll give you a little context as to what's got beyond this particular piece of. Right. [00:07:12] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:07:15] Speaker A: It feels like more than ever in the last maybe three, four years I've heard some variation of the phrase who asked for this? [00:07:28] Speaker B: Right. [00:07:29] Speaker A: No one is asking for this. And yet it happens anyway. Right? [00:07:34] Speaker B: Right. [00:07:35] Speaker A: It being any one of a number of elements of creep in our day to day lives that no one asked for. Yet we are, it almost feels forced or shepherded or herded into Right. Decisions we don't make that nonetheless shape a massive portion of our lives. [00:08:04] Speaker B: Right. [00:08:05] Speaker A: And it's occurred, not occurred to me. It's clearer than ever that so many things in our day to day life in physical space as well as digital space are choices that we are maybe made to feel like we are making, but we aren't making for ourselves. [00:08:33] Speaker B: Yeah. The illusion of choice. Right? [00:08:35] Speaker A: You got it? Yeah, you fucking got it. And I will. Have you heard, have you heard this described with the term dark patterns? [00:08:48] Speaker B: I have not, no. That one's not familiar to me. [00:08:51] Speaker A: That is not a term you've heard? [00:08:52] Speaker B: I don't think so if I've ever heard it. Certainly not In a way that like sticks out to me. [00:08:58] Speaker A: Dark patterns. This is a term which is. It is, it is, it does pop up from time to time. You see people talking about dark patterns. There's a new dark pattern emerging. [00:09:10] Speaker B: Okay. [00:09:10] Speaker A: Dark patterns are the machinations that external forces. Companies, corporations, providers, vendors, people with a interest in your behavior. [00:09:25] Speaker B: Right. [00:09:26] Speaker A: The techniques that they use to influence your actions to their benefit. Right. It's a term, just a bit of background. It's a guy, a British guy by the name of Harry Brignall, Cognitive scientist, researcher, decades of experience in ux. Know the, the science of user experience. [00:09:53] Speaker B: Right. [00:09:54] Speaker A: And it, it was in the 2000 and tens recoined this term dark patterns for the, the. The techniques of manipulation used mostly online to fucking trick you. Now I talk. Let's. I keep circling back to this question of free will. [00:10:18] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:10:19] Speaker A: Is participation in the online space a matter of choice in 2026? Right. I'm asking you. [00:10:32] Speaker B: Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, you know those people, right, who like you have never seen on the Internet, right? Like you have to use it in some way, I suppose, but you don't have to use it the way that most of us use it. So like I remember there's like a guy that I went to school with who I was good friends with and then lost touch with after high school. He has never ever had a social media profile ever. Doesn't even have a LinkedIn. There's like a couple articles about him because I guess he became like a doctor, um, and like, so there's like a few, but there's not a single very interesting anywhere on the Internet. [00:11:19] Speaker A: I too have equivalents in my life. People who I went to school with and have looked for and I would love to reach out to, would love to contact, but I have no details for them. [00:11:29] Speaker B: They've never been online and they have [00:11:31] Speaker A: no online fucking footprint at all. [00:11:34] Speaker B: Right? Yeah, you know, they're not sitting there scrolling. They have no idea what anyone is doing on the Internet. You know, they use it for. To what degree you would have to, you know, look up a phone number, things like that. But they are not engaging with it the way the rest of us are. Which is part of like what I was thinking with like your question and this idea of like, you know, the manipulating forces and stuff like that that maybe is something that as we talk about this shapes the way I view it is like is it impossible to make another choice? Would be my question. And as long as it is possible in some way to make a different choice Then we have. [00:12:20] Speaker A: Then we have free will. [00:12:21] Speaker B: And especially because, like, we're talking about it from like a very, like, Western perspective too. Like, it is not hard to not [00:12:26] Speaker A: be on the Internet fully acknowledged. [00:12:29] Speaker B: Yeah. In a tribe in, you know, different country, you know, if you live in a tribe in Africa or something like that, if you, you know, live somewhere that it's very easy to be off the grid. So, you know, these manipulated choices and things like that are very different. [00:12:45] Speaker A: Manipulated choices, yeah. Is it still free will when the one option comes with huge social financial costs? [00:13:00] Speaker B: Still? Yeah, I think it's still. Is it impossible to make the choice? Right. Will you lose something? [00:13:08] Speaker A: Yes, yes. [00:13:09] Speaker B: Can you make the choice? [00:13:12] Speaker A: And here we come back to this idea of definition, free. Free as a marker of cost and value as opposed to. [00:13:19] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, that's not how I think about it. [00:13:22] Speaker A: Nor I. But there's interpretations here. [00:13:25] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Right. [00:13:26] Speaker A: I think of, you know, Gen Alpha. Right. Would they agree that they have a choice to not participate in the online world? Absolutely not. Obviously we can't do that. [00:13:43] Speaker B: Well, they're children. [00:13:44] Speaker A: Their entire. The kind of the. The way they interact, their social development, their friend network, their school work. [00:13:54] Speaker B: Yeah, well, and I think there's probably plenty of ways you could argue that children from a social perspective do not have free will because they aren't able to make most of their choices for themselves. Right. Most things are determined by what is permitted by their parents, by their school, you know, by things like that, you know, and so to a degree, they have a choice of whether they're gonna, like, rebel against those things. But on a level of like, you know, how do you choose the way you engage with society and with any choice about your life, your body and things like that? I think there's an argument to be made that, like, you don't achieve that when you're under guardianship of someone else. [00:14:35] Speaker A: Okay, so even on the other end of the spectrum then. Yeah. With kind of cashless society becoming more and more prevalent with, you know, the administration and the paperwork of life moving, in many cases exclusively online, is it. Is there an option to live a completely offline life? My point is, right, if we are being shepherded into a realm, into a world where there is no choice but to live in some sort of online world way, how can it be right that. That online life is subject to so many dark patterns and there are many of them, many, many of them. The work of this geyser that I'm talking about, Harry Brignall, There are some 16 individual types of fucking horrific, dark, deceptive patterns that are everywhere that you would care to go. And everyone will recognize them straight away. And you learn to navigate your life around them as naked, avaricious plays for your time. To deceive you, to make you question your actions all the time. Simply to further the wishes and the profits and the needs of the person who the money funnels up to. [00:16:15] Speaker B: Right. [00:16:17] Speaker A: For example. And this is. This is based. This is all stuff that we are so used to having been existing our entire lives. The, you know, the old trope of the roach motel, right? Something being easy to get into but hard to get out of. It's easy to fucking pay for something, but it's impossible to cancel it. I have had this myself the last few months, right? [00:16:38] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:16:38] Speaker A: I've been in a. In a phase this year of trying to pay down my debts, of trying to minimize my. My what I'm owing, right. And it's easy as to get credit, but when you pay it off and you want to cancel, all of a sudden you've got to ring someone, all of a sudden you got to talk to someone, write a letter. [00:16:55] Speaker B: Yeah, I love the write a letter one. It's. That's always the thing with gyms. You're gonna have to write a letter. [00:17:00] Speaker A: Yes. [00:17:01] Speaker B: What. How about. [00:17:02] Speaker A: There you go. [00:17:03] Speaker B: How about you just click that little button there that I can see right in front of you to cancel it? [00:17:07] Speaker A: There you go. You know, things as insidious as. Hey, hey, hey, hey. Things always cost less in the start of the journey than they do at the end. Things get added on something called. Something called confirm shaming. Right. [00:17:27] Speaker B: Okay. [00:17:28] Speaker A: Oh, no, no thanks. I don't want to save money. Click this button if you don't want to save money. [00:17:33] Speaker B: If you don't want to support our important mission. [00:17:36] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:17:37] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:17:38] Speaker A: Button if you're a scumbag. [00:17:40] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what they do. Like Greenpeace does and stuff like that on the street too, right? Do you care about animals? [00:17:47] Speaker A: It. Exactly. This is. These are all dark patterns. And to my. To my shame, to my fucking absolute quivering shame, there have been roles I've been in the past, in my working life where I've had to fucking train people to engage in these dark patterns in real life. Things like the illusion of scarcity. Hey, go for this now or you might not get the chance. [00:18:12] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah, this is. I was watching something a while back that was talking about websites and the idea of like. Like they'll pop up with things that, oh, this many left, you know, along with like, oh, and this person just bought it. And like, none of these are real. Like, that's. None of that is an actual thing. They're all tricking you. [00:18:34] Speaker A: You are talking there about what Brignall calls fake social proof. You are misled because you see fake reviews, you see fake stock levels, you see fake Testimonials, activity messages. 50 people have this in their cart. [00:18:51] Speaker B: Yeah, Right. [00:18:52] Speaker A: The. They do. These are dark patterns. Yeah. Nagging emails, fake urgency, disguised pathways, addictive design. All of this stuff are examples of the dark patterns that we. You and I, and I dare say everyone fucking listening to this has just become used to navigating around. [00:19:19] Speaker B: Right. [00:19:19] Speaker A: As our lives have irrevocably, I would say, become more and more digital and online and connected. [00:19:29] Speaker B: It's kind of funny that you bring that up too, just on, like this, the marketing elements of this. Because Richard and I were just talking about this before this. Like, someone had posted like kind of a meme thing or whatever. I don't know if there's any truth to this and what study they might have come by or if it was just like a joke, but that someone posted on it looks like it's Twitter. I honestly don't understand how ads are supposed to work on me. There's no way you think interrupting my video that I was watching will make me like your product. [00:20:01] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:20:01] Speaker B: And then someone responded, said, neurodivergent people are impervious to propaganda. We. Which is not true. We know that much. But they. Yeah, but they posted a thing about advertising underneath. It's a def. It's like a screenshot from something. It says. Scientific research indicates that traditional advertising often completely falls flat on autistic individuals because their cognitive processing tends to bypass the subtle psychological manipulation and pseudo science of modern marketing. [00:20:28] Speaker A: Fascinating. Fascinating. [00:20:30] Speaker B: So it's not. It's definitely copied from something, but it's not cited. So I don't. I'll have to look into that. But it is a thing that every time I see these kinds of manipulations on stuff or something interrupts what I'm watching or whatever, I immediately go, oh, so I'm never buying that. [00:20:45] Speaker A: You see through the matrix, don't you? [00:20:47] Speaker B: Immediately I'm like, I don't want that. [00:20:51] Speaker A: Do not work on me, Brian. [00:20:52] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, right. [00:20:55] Speaker A: Deflect, roll a block. Roll, spell, deflect. I. I throw D12 for neurodivergence. Right. [00:21:05] Speaker B: Yeah. Now, you know, that doesn't mean, like, that I'm impervious to marketing of any kind or things like that, you know? I am a person who likes to wear my interests on my sleeve and stuff. I'm wearing a Toni Storm T shirt, right? [00:21:17] Speaker A: Very, very literally in your case. [00:21:19] Speaker B: Yeah, quite literally. And I have, yeah, tattoos of things I like and stuff like that. Like, you know, I enjoy things and, you know, I have to find out about them some way or another. But it's this type of deceptive marketing that, you know, I don't trust that a celebrity likes a thing. I don't trust that an influencer likes a thing. Just because a commercial shows it to me doesn't mean I'll buy that. I buy the generic brands of all the stuff at the store. I don't buy brand name of anything unless, like, I actually know it's better. I'm drinking what if generic diet cola. [00:21:53] Speaker A: That's good. Good. And for you, you also have a strong and very robust sense of social conscience, right? [00:22:04] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, and obviously that, to your point, the life that we live in modern society makes it very difficult to apply that across the board. There's always going to be ways in which it's like, yeah, you can't, you can't purchase your values all the time unless you are willing to experience the, like, the negative aspects of that. [00:22:27] Speaker A: Right. [00:22:28] Speaker B: And, you know, there are degrees to which, you know, we are willing to do so and degrees to which we aren't. My sister and I were just talking today. I bought like a couple of things from Etsy for my Halloween costume. And one of them came in and Kia was like, you got a package. I was like, oh, who's it from? He's like, Amazon. I was like, Amazon, what? And so he grabs scissors, he opens it up and he hands me what it is. And I was like, I ordered that on Etsy, but is that drop? Yeah, it's like the drop shipping, right. And so it came through Amazon and that happens from time to time. I once bought a water bottle that I spent an extra $10 on because it was $5 more on the website and $5 shipping. And it came from Amazon. [00:23:15] Speaker A: What a great example of a dark pattern intruding. [00:23:20] Speaker B: You did not choose by passing my ethical choice. [00:23:23] Speaker A: Fucking these motherfuckers, right? These find a way to exploit even your attempt at disrupting their dark patterns, their deceptive design. Isn't that incredible? Isn't that disgusting? And you are right to not trust the online world around you, Right? Some fucking stats. This is incredible. These are all from the same PhD. These are all from Harry Brignall. Right? 2022, an investigation by the European Council. 97 of all apps and websites reviewed by the EU in 2022 had deceptive patterns within them designed to trick or mislead the user into an action counter to what they intended. [00:24:19] Speaker B: Right? Yeah, Right. [00:24:21] Speaker A: We like to make a song and dance about gdpr, right? About how information is so safe. [00:24:26] Speaker B: Gdpr. [00:24:28] Speaker A: Gdpr. I will tell you where it stands for. It's a rule that we care that we implemented General Data Protection Regulation. [00:24:36] Speaker B: Okay. [00:24:37] Speaker A: It's been a European union law since 2018, governs who can use your information, how long they can keep your information. And it's why we get so many cookie pop ups and consent kind of, kind of signifiers on the web. Right. [00:24:55] Speaker B: We do have those now, but they are very misleading. A good chunk of the time. [00:25:00] Speaker A: Thank you. You was a good chunk of the time. What about 99% of the time so et al from 2020, 99% of cookie consent notices online have examples of deceptive patterns. Check my settings is tiny. Accept all is in a banner right at the top of the pop up. These are. [00:25:24] Speaker B: And sometimes the slider is like the wrong color. That's the one that I really hate. Where it's like you can't tell whether you've turned on this on the setting or off the setting, right? [00:25:36] Speaker A: Yes. [00:25:36] Speaker B: Like that's, that's diabolical. Like I don't know whether I just turned everything on or off, but it [00:25:42] Speaker A: is it just like so many other things that are destructive and damaging and are wearing us down as people and as a society have just, it's just become part of the fucking furniture of online life. [00:25:59] Speaker B: Right. [00:26:00] Speaker A: We just go about it once again, last time I'm gonna quote this guy. But once again from Harry Brignall, deceptive patterns are a rational response to an underregulated and under enforced marketplace. Online happened quickly and as a result this stuff was allowed to become embedded in the fabric of that experience. [00:26:23] Speaker B: I don't even think that's what happened there because online didn't happen that quickly. Right. But deregulation happened quickly and sort of letting it get out of hand happened very quickly and intentionally. Right. So you know, there was a good chunk of time where, you know, the, the Internet as it exists right now, we're looking at like a decade of, you know, it was not like this. [00:26:50] Speaker A: That's true. [00:26:51] Speaker B: Very recently. So the slide into this came from the consolidation of money and power amongst these like, you know, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, like these guys that we can name got all of this power went before, like in the United States went before our Congress, went in front of your MPs, things like that, and basically argued that you should not regulate them. And then when they were regulated, they have so much money that they just accept the fines when they're caught out for not doing the things that they're supposed to do. And so I think it's, it's, you know, to say, oh, it happened fast and thus it was like just got out of control, kind of negates. What really happened was that these men consolidated a huge amount of power and money and then governments opened the floodgates for this because, you know, they promised both politicians and, you know, polities these like big pie in the sky things. Oh, this is going to be so good for you once you have this right. Your constituents are going to like get so much out of the neck opening this. Right. And so it was a very conscious, you know, set of regulational choices and lobbying from a small number of very powerful men in the past decade, decade and a half that brought us to the place that we are. [00:28:24] Speaker A: So incredible then. And again, I appreciate the perspective. I'm forming my fucking opinions in real time. [00:28:30] Speaker B: Right. [00:28:32] Speaker A: All the more astounding that it is happening again right in front of our fucking eyes, is it not? [00:28:41] Speaker B: Well, what do you mean? [00:28:43] Speaker A: Well, okay, put it like this. Back to this question of free will. Right? Back to this question of free will. What if I talk to you about the. What is becoming incontrovertible that our interaction with AI, our interaction with talking to chatbots and using them as the first port of call for questions and for work and for, you know, ideating, as people say, it's is having an impact on our physical language, our physical idioms. People. There is starting to be the suggestion that people are beginning to talk like AI. [00:29:38] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:29:39] Speaker A: Adopting kind of LLM sort of tells right in their non. LLM generated speech. Is this something that has reached your attention? [00:29:54] Speaker B: Yeah, I have seen that before. Yeah, [00:30:00] Speaker A: the, the, the research, there is research on this already from UCLA and universities in Copenhagen strongly suggesting that GPT is influencing word choice. [00:30:15] Speaker B: Listen, I don't, you know, I've never used chat, GPT or any other thing besides like the AI that's built into Google that you, you know, have to do extra steps to avoid. [00:30:25] Speaker A: Hold that thought. [00:30:26] Speaker B: But so never used like intentionally any form of generative AI or anything like that. And I sometimes struggle to avoid language. I said earlier today that one of like the annoying things about this program Grammarly, do you know Grammarly. [00:30:45] Speaker A: Grammarly. Grammarly. No, I know. I see Owen does Duolingo all the time and I see dark patterns in Duolingo. [00:30:51] Speaker B: Well, yeah, Duolingo loves its AI. That's why I quit using it two years ago. I have to learn now. I have to do all my Welsh on flashcards. Analog. I have these flashcards here for all my Welsh lessons. But Grammarly is a program that is like enhanced like spell check and grammar check. You know when word you used to get like a little underline for spell chambermark Squiggle. Yeah. And then the blue squiggle or green squiggle if it was grammar and it would give you like some suggestions on like what you might switch it to. With Grammarly you can like write whatever you want to write and then basically be like, make it sound professional and it'll AI it into language that it thinks is, you know, what your school would like to hear, your work would like to hear. So everything sounds exactly the same that comes out of it. And one of the tell using Grammarly is that it will always start the last paragraph overall. Without fail, it will always start the last paragraph overall. It drives me up the wall. But now sometimes when I'm writing I have trouble thinking of how to. [00:32:01] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:32:01] Speaker B: Use a word other than overall. [00:32:03] Speaker A: Sure, sure, sure. [00:32:04] Speaker B: Right. Like I, my brain just goes, end of this, summarize it overall. [00:32:11] Speaker A: Right. While I can't cite anything specific to, to back this point up. [00:32:17] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:32:18] Speaker A: We mirror almost what is, what surrounds us. You know, accents will change depending on immersion. [00:32:27] Speaker B: Absolutely. [00:32:28] Speaker A: Slangs, colloquial terms, language. We absorb and reflect what we see around us. [00:32:35] Speaker B: Yes, absolutely. [00:32:36] Speaker A: And if, you know, hell, it, the last kind of six months or so has felt like a lot of the people in my day to day life, my nine to five, if you know what I'm saying. I've had a complete brain transplant, a personality. Right. And it is no stretch for me at all to, to, to kind of push that a little bit further and think, well, if that's what I'm seeing and reading and that's how people communicating with me all the time, that's what I'm going to grow to communicate myself. [00:33:12] Speaker B: Right. [00:33:12] Speaker A: So once again, do you have free will? You didn't ask for this. [00:33:17] Speaker B: Right. [00:33:18] Speaker A: Well, it's happening to you and all around you. [00:33:21] Speaker B: Yeah. I think maybe free will is the wrong question or at least because I think. [00:33:26] Speaker A: Yes, yes. [00:33:27] Speaker B: I think of free will more as like a philosophical concept. Right. Because like I said at the end of the day, impossible to make another Choice? No, you just have to accept the consequences of making another choice, which could [00:33:39] Speaker A: be your homelessness choice that you make, you know, without knowing there was an alternative. Free will. [00:33:46] Speaker B: Right. And. And I mean, again, I think that's tricky because no one is, you know, omniscient, Right? No one knows everything about everything. So if that's kind of the baseline for whether or not we can make choice, you know, did a person, you know, who didn't know that the earth was round have like a choice about that, you know, about how they engaged with the world? [00:34:10] Speaker A: Okay, okay, okay. [00:34:13] Speaker B: So we're always growing in knowledge and things like that. I think from a philosophical perspective, there is not necessarily a puppet master that says, you know, like, if we are. And again, there's also, like, complications of this, like, physiologically and things like that neurologically. Right. Like some of us are born with higher neurological function than other people, you know, and that is going to make an impact on these things. You know, if someone is capable of understanding more complex concepts than another person is, you know, that is a whole thing that plays into it. So to me, I think from a [00:34:51] Speaker A: philosophical perspective, is that not even more insidious then? [00:34:55] Speaker B: Well, well. And so here's what I'm saying is just that I think free will is the wrong question because I think as a philosophical concept, right, that there's. We, given the abilities that we have that we innately have or develop over the course of our lives, we have with that information the ability to make choices. And there's no predetermined pattern of our life, right. So no matter what Jeff Bezos does or whatever, he can't pick who I marry, Right. No matter what Jeff Bezos does. Like, he can't predict for me that 15 years from now I'm going to do XYZ. He can influence the things I purchase on the way there. He can even influence the way that I think about things. But he can't say that I will make XYZ choice and land in this certain place. When I think of free will, I see that wrapped up in like, pre determination and our lives in a binary. [00:35:54] Speaker A: You have free will or you don't. But surely, surely even in that admission that someone who you will never encounter, who you have no shared experience with, no frame of reference for, is subtly changing the way you behave and act on your way through life, surely that in itself is an erosion of free will. [00:36:16] Speaker B: Yeah, I just think it's the. It's the term that hangs me up here because of kind of how I Think of like, like I can still make a choice, right? And there will be repercussions for that choice. And there are influences to that. However, again, nobody is a blank slate. We are a combination of influences. And so to say that our social environment is, I mean that's it. Your social environment, if we think of it that way, is an erosion of your free will. Because every interaction you have shapes the way you approach the world. And so it's not simply these top down guys, like my conversations with you then are eroding my free will because I think think differently about things because we are in social relation with one another, right? Anything that happens to you shapes that. I go see a movie, you know, someone mugs me on the street, whatever. It changes your relationship with the world. I don't think that that changes free will. It changes the way we interpret our surroundings. So I think more the question is about free choice, right? And the illusion of choice. And that's a little bit different to me, right. Our lives are not predestined and they will not land at a certain place because you know, we are guaranteed to make XYZ choice. It is that we live in a social environment. And right now we are allowing people outside of our social connections to control a whole bunch of those elements that shape our social lives. I think that is more how I see it. [00:37:55] Speaker A: I, again, making my mind in real time. I, I, I think fundamentally I disagree. If I am making a choice that someone else has had, again, somebody far removed from me, with goals that may be contrary to my own fucking values, then I, I cannot with a clear conscience call that an exercise in free will if I need to. [00:38:24] Speaker B: Can you? [00:38:24] Speaker A: Not if my strings are being pulled. [00:38:26] Speaker B: But can you not make a choice? Physically it's impossible for you to make a choice. Or would it simply disrupt your comfort if you made the other choice? [00:38:35] Speaker A: Brass at kind of grassroots level when it comes down to brass tax, yes, of course I could could make another choice. But if more and more hang about, if more and more it is being positioned as undesirable, uncomfortable, you know, it becomes more and more unlikely that I would make a contrary choice. But when my conditioning. But I would not. [00:39:07] Speaker B: But you could. So you have free will, you just sort of reject it essentially like you could make the other choice. However, it is always going to be a difficult thing to exercise that, at least in our context. Right. Again, there are places all over the world who do not have to deal with this at all. You know, this is completely outside of, you know, I mean they do deal with the repercussions of this like all of this stuff. Climate change is everywhere, right. Even if you've never touched the Internet, you're still going to be impacted by what these assholes do. So you know, don't get me wrong there, but in terms of like making another choice in terms of your own self determination, I don't think hard as is the same thing as non existent [00:39:56] Speaker A: is self determination as you put it, truly self determination if it has been manipulated before you even engaged with the decision to do something. [00:40:09] Speaker B: If that's you know about it, don't you? [00:40:12] Speaker A: Right me? [00:40:13] Speaker B: Like you know you're being manipulated. [00:40:15] Speaker A: Yeah, man, nobody can get to me. I'm built different. [00:40:20] Speaker B: But, and, and like honestly just thinking about that over the years, like this is a thing that like we've gone back and forth over so much over the past few years because it's like you know, for a time and you've backed off from this now. But like the new gadget, you always had to have the next one like whatever the upgrade was and stuff like that, which is a thing you've pulled back from at this point, you know, but like that, it was like something [00:40:42] Speaker A: that would make you proud of me. Did I tell you what I did? [00:40:45] Speaker B: What did you do? [00:40:46] Speaker A: I had an iPhone 18 Pro Max on pre order. I canceled that motherfucker. [00:40:50] Speaker B: I think you might have told me that. Yes, that's. Yeah, that does, that does good things for my heart as a person who buys used phones on ebay every time I get a new one. But yeah, like things like that, like it's always a degree of choice, especially the more privilege that you have. [00:41:09] Speaker A: Point. That's a great point. [00:41:10] Speaker B: And I think that to me and to a degree this is like kind of a semantic argument, right? I think I'm coming from a perspective that like this was, this is a constant conversation in a theological setting, you know. So it's one I've thought about a lot from being in courses where we discussed this, you know, with relation to the Bible, with relation to different like schools of thought about this kinds of things. [00:41:34] Speaker A: Does the Alpha course bring this up [00:41:35] Speaker B: at the Alpha course? For sure. I actually, I don't. [00:41:38] Speaker A: I'm intrigued by the Alpha course. I'd love to do the Alpha course. How long is the Alpha course? How long do you have to do the Alpha course? [00:41:42] Speaker B: No idea. [00:41:43] Speaker A: I'm doing an apprenticeship right now. I might as well be doing the Alpha course for the fucking many of the time. Actually I've attended an online Workshop and thought of it as doing the alpha course. [00:41:55] Speaker B: I do think that I like that. But no, so I think like maybe the way that I'm looking at free will. [00:42:03] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:42:03] Speaker B: And also kind of coming at it from like the kinds of things like again, theory, from like film studies and stuff like that, and from cultural studies in school. I'm looking at it kind of from this perspective that's a little more like. It's the. Like, can you. Right. And so, yes, understanding, you know, it's a little bit of that nature versus [00:42:24] Speaker A: it's at a mechanical level. [00:42:26] Speaker B: This. Yeah, this kind of like the. The ability to choose within the confines of whatever your particular things, like what your brain is like what your class is, like what your education is like, things like that. Within those things, do you have the ability to choose and your life is not a series of choices already made for you? I think because I'm kind of looking at it like in a very like sort of literal sense like that. Right. Like no one is making those choices for you. That I don't see. I think we have free will because no one can specifically do that for us. Whereas on sort of a broader sense, like in terms of this idea of illusion of choice, like if we want to maintain our comfort level, if we want to be able to get hired for a job, if we want to be a part of society, would it take incredible sacrifice that would probably lead to you not being able to make money, to experience ostracization. Ostracization, Things like that. By making a different choice. Yeah. [00:43:37] Speaker A: You know, on that level, which I, which I. In my, you know, when I use the term free will. [00:43:44] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:43:44] Speaker A: I, I kind of. [00:43:46] Speaker B: You're veering more towards that. [00:43:48] Speaker A: Yes. Making it so undesirable, so costly. Contrary. Yes. On. On both a human, economic, health, social level, if, if the alternative is to put yourself in jeopardy, then that, that to me isn't free will at all. [00:44:07] Speaker B: Right. However, I do think again, I. That that's not necessarily the case. Right. Like my friend who apparently is a doctor but doesn't, you know, use any form of social media, like clearly he is not seeing repercussions for not doing. Not engaging with the Internet, you know. Yes. [00:44:28] Speaker A: Make a great point. [00:44:29] Speaker B: Yeah. So I think that like, maybe that's another element of how we're being manipulated is to think that life outside of you have to opt in is impossible [00:44:38] Speaker A: before you fucking feel the pain. [00:44:40] Speaker B: Right, Exactly. Yeah. Like, because we have now sort of interpolated ourselves into this, that makes it so much harder to then opt out, as opposed to, you know, people who never sort of put themselves into that setting, who don't have to, you know, don't have to deal with that. And I have known people who have quit to people who just, like, don't. They don't have, you know, they have a flip phone, they don't use social media, they don't read their news online, things like that, you know, and it's. There's a social cost to it, for sure. But I think part of this is that we are so accustomed to the perceived benefits of being online, the perceived social benefits, the perceived economic benefits that we have in that way, been manipulated into thinking that we. It would be too hard to. To leave it. [00:45:36] Speaker A: I think that holds. I think that perspective holds for a very specific cohort of people. That holds for a very specific maybe generation of people who remember life before and after. I don't think there is a before now. [00:45:54] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, but you also do see younger people trying to opt out in various ways, too. So there is a knowledge that there is something better than this that a lot of them choose as well, whether that's, you know, in their technology and trying to take on analog forms of that, trying to avoid algorithmic manipulation. You know, people who go and they buy CDs and tapes and stuff, stuff like that, because they don't want to win for Christmas. [00:46:19] Speaker A: What wants a turntable? [00:46:22] Speaker B: Turntable, yes, he does. Nice. I have one right behind me. But, yeah, there's like this sort of conscious understanding. And I think that's the thing is as much as people are manipulated and whatnot, that we do, we do have the ability to think, you know, and to go, is this. Is this best for me? Is this giving me the life that I want to lead? And even if you've never experienced something else, you know, it's like. It's like the Giver. Did you read the Giver when you were young? [00:46:57] Speaker A: I didn't see the Give. I didn't read the Given. No, I did what Today Live Again recently. So maybe that's. [00:47:01] Speaker B: Sure they live. [00:47:03] Speaker A: You know, why I'm on this tip? I don't know. [00:47:05] Speaker B: Yeah, there's a lot of sort of young adult dystopia that kind of falls along these lines. Right. Of like someone being sort of indoctrinated into a certain type of life. [00:47:14] Speaker A: Yes. [00:47:14] Speaker B: And like, then, you know, escaping that and finding like, holy shit. [00:47:20] Speaker A: Interesting. Interesting, interesting, interesting. In that some of these dark patterns share traits with cult behavior. [00:47:33] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. [00:47:34] Speaker A: What if I said, you know, this Roach motel thing. Easy to get in, difficult to get out. Consistent nagging kind of reminders. Almost love bombing you, you know. [00:47:46] Speaker B: Right. [00:47:46] Speaker A: Yeah, there's, there are parallels. There are parallels with IRL cultist playbook. [00:47:53] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. [00:47:54] Speaker A: You know, talk about free will. And I've, I've kind of banged on about this, so I did. I've got more to. Maybe it'll save for a future episode. But another thing that I'm preoccupied with. You will have heard me ask before when. If you think about our kind of oil dependency, right, or our combustible fossil fuel society plastic dependency, I often wonder, was there a turning point moment where we could have decided not to do this? [00:48:30] Speaker B: I highly recommend that you listen to the dupont's series of last podcasts on the left. I think you will be enlightened and horrified by the journey of plastics and other things that poison us in our day to day lives. [00:48:46] Speaker A: Fascinating. [00:48:47] Speaker B: Yeah, I think. [00:48:47] Speaker A: Please do send me that. I do have a gap for a podcast actually, because my regular show is just, just don't come quick enough for me. So I've got a gap. [00:48:55] Speaker B: Didn't. Did any of your regular shows get the chopping block on the Radio 4 massacre? [00:49:02] Speaker A: Not yet. I will write an email or two. I don't mind fucking telling you if. But my, my Radio 4 shows are the, the pillars, the ones that I think are untouchable today. World at 1pm Gardener's question time Media show. I, I think they'll be fine. [00:49:24] Speaker B: Oh, good. [00:49:25] Speaker A: But what I can tell you is all of the. Pretty much everything we've spent the last 50 minutes and change talking about. There is a point at which I think all of this spawned a German guy, right? A guy by the name of Victor Grunbaum, okay. Was a, a refugee to the States from Vienna in the 1930s. Who designed America's first. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller Shopping Mall. [00:49:58] Speaker B: Oh, interesting. [00:50:00] Speaker A: Right. And remind me to talk about this in the future. Right. But pretty much so many, so many of these dark patterns that we've spoken about, this deceptive design that we've spoken about kind of had its embryonic birth there. [00:50:19] Speaker B: Well, I think the other thing, and this is another one, I think you should definitely read Murderland, which I keep on hyping up. But that kind of timing also aligns with these kinds of rich oligarch, oligarchical families that we had in the United States that got rich off of oil and plastics and things like that. And so this is those guys who sort of in the early 20th century and late 19th century, like hoarded all of this money and then put it into that stuff. Were absolute masters of manipulating public opinion in ways that would later inform things like your Madison Avenue style advertising and the things that we are seeing now that have come out of that. [00:51:07] Speaker A: So. [00:51:08] Speaker B: So if you look, you're in the right time period, basically I think is when you get into like the, the early 20th century, you really see how these rich folks used manipulation in order to carry out very evil things that we are still dealing with the repercussions of now. [00:51:24] Speaker A: Yes. And that self same manipulation formed the fucking online playbook for keeping your attention in a particular zone. You know what I mean? Keeping your. Keeping your eyes on one thing and not another, keeping your money in one place and not another. And it's become just part of the fabric now. It's become just part of. Oh, the more I think about it, the more I hate it. Even when we aren't working, right, it feels like we're being put to work. [00:52:00] Speaker B: Right. [00:52:03] Speaker A: I mean, I feel that sincerely, even in my leisure time, even when I'm not on the fucking clock, I'm earning for someone else. [00:52:12] Speaker B: Right? Yep. [00:52:13] Speaker A: How can. How do we fucking get here? [00:52:17] Speaker B: Right? [00:52:18] Speaker A: How do we get here? [00:52:19] Speaker B: And I think, you know, it's a point that we've kind of talked about in various forms over the course of this podcast, but to, you know, to think about it in this context of like the degree of choice that we have. I think this is one of our biggest problems, and again, we've talked about this a lot, is the comfort that we get from this, from this level of consumerism and whatnot, makes it difficult to find our way out of it. Right. What we see is our benefits make it difficult to push back against it in any way. And you know, we see that with like politicians who kind of are in charge of regulating this stuff. It's like they could regulate it or they could take the kickback from it [00:53:05] Speaker A: and like not worry about short termism. [00:53:08] Speaker B: Right? Short termism. And it's this thing where it's like, you know, what we get in the comfort of our homes, especially as, you know, middle to upper middle class people, it makes it difficult for us to like see a way out of the manipulative cycle that exists here. And then from, you know, a working class perspective or a poor perspective, you know, you really get stuck in this because no one is offering you another choice. You can't just pay more and get out of the cycle. Right. And so this keeps us in this. Like the people who are more towards the top. People who are comfortable aren't. They don't have enough urgency to do anything that would make things better for the people at the bottom who are struggling. No one wants to push back. We just go, eh, we don't have control over this. You know, we, we are being ruled by people. So I don't know, we'll vote in the centrists and we'll allow this to happen and we'll just keep buying because what other choice do we have? And like, we do have other choices, but it does require, like, active sacrifice. [00:54:15] Speaker A: I'm paraphrasing. Right, but look, if there's a. I'm paraphrasing. This has just occurred to me that what I've essentially done over the last hour, you know the, the 1987 motion picture RoboCop? You ever seen that movie? You ever seen the movie robocop? [00:54:27] Speaker B: Rings a bell. Refresh my memory. [00:54:29] Speaker A: One of the great things about RoboCop is that it gets the, the satire of news and advertising spot on. [00:54:38] Speaker B: Right? Yeah. [00:54:39] Speaker A: And Media Break is the, the, the, the quick kind of 60 second. Give us three minutes and we'll give you the world, the show that keeps coming up in robocop. And they, they do a bit where they go to people talking heads, vox pops, and they go, they go to one guy who I think might be Eddie Van Halen in a cameo, and he goes, oh, it's a free society, man, but ain't nothing free, you know what I'm saying? And that's. I feel that quite deeply today. [00:55:06] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, just thinking through, like, what it takes to get out of this kind of thing. I think of like, when I lived in South Africa, right? They have. You've been to South Africa, you know, basically, you know, they're like main groups of people racially are whites, blacks and coloreds. [00:55:28] Speaker A: Super quickly. It is not Eddie van Halen in RoboCop. It's a guy who looks like him. [00:55:32] Speaker B: Okay, fair enough. I don't remember ever thinking, hey, that's Eddie Van Halen. But I was like, you would know better than I would. Anyways. So whites, blacks and coloreds, and coloreds look to us here like mixed race. It's more complicated than that, you know, But a lot of them look like me. What they did there is essentially that colored people were given slightly more rights and more ability for economic mobility than black people were in South Africa. And because of that, that made it so that they had less incentive to push back against the apartheid system because if they did, that would be risky. Right. That's how you get thrown in jail. That's how you lose what little bit of social mobility, economic mobility that you have. So it was a very calculated way to make sure that there was a group of people. Even though there are a lot more black and colored people in South Africa than white people, you keep them from rising up by giving this middle class too much comfort to risk it for the people at the bottom. And I think that is one of the things that we are dealing with at this point, is that we have a very small middle class in this day and age, but that middle class is too comfortable to do anything to make things better for the world. [00:56:47] Speaker A: It has long been a refrain of mine that at a micro level, we're doing so great. [00:56:54] Speaker B: Right. [00:56:54] Speaker A: But you zoom out and things are irrevocably fucked. [00:56:58] Speaker B: Right? Yeah. And so I don't think we're as trapped as we think we are. But getting out of that requires a real big mindset shift for those of us who are comfortable. [00:57:12] Speaker A: Yeah. Thank you. Okay, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful discussion. Is there an outcome? Is there a point? Is there a call to action? No. Not here. Not on my watch. Not on one of my episodes. Absolutely not. Let me quote directly from my notes, if I may. [00:57:26] Speaker B: Yes, please do. [00:57:28] Speaker A: Look at these nerds. Oh, mise en scene. [00:57:31] Speaker B: I don't think anyone has ever said mise en scene in such a horny way before. [00:57:35] Speaker A: The way I whispered the word sex. Cannibal received. [00:57:38] Speaker B: Worst comes to worst. Mark, I'm willing to guillotine you for science. [00:57:42] Speaker A: Thank you. That's really, really sweet. It's cold outside, but my pancreas is talking to me. I'm fucking. I'm gonna let it. [00:57:48] Speaker B: You know how I feel about that, Mark. [00:57:50] Speaker A: I think you feel great about it. I found that nutritional. [00:57:58] Speaker B: Ooh, nutritional. That's a good word. [00:57:59] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Good morning. Afternoon. I got nothing. Actually, I put it all in that front in that opening there. I really top loaded. [00:58:10] Speaker B: You did. [00:58:11] Speaker A: My involvement in this episode. So all I have. Tell you what, why don't we strip it back and rather than me just giving you some stream of consciousness bullshit to welcome you into the show, why don't I just keep it sincere, keep it honest, keep it heartfelt, and tell you that you are welcome today to this episode of Jack of All Graves with me, your fucking friend Marco and my friend Corrigan. Now, that isn't to say that she's your friend. [00:58:40] Speaker B: Oh, right. Oh, okay. [00:58:42] Speaker A: She's my friend and I Am your friend. So maybe your friend by association. [00:58:47] Speaker B: Isn't there a word for that in the math? I don't know why I'm saying that. Neither of us would know. [00:58:53] Speaker A: Jesus. No, I'm joking. Of course Corrigan's your friend. Of course she is. [00:58:57] Speaker B: We both the most parish social podcast on the Internet. Jack of all graves. [00:59:00] Speaker A: It is and we welcome it. We actively. Is it parasocial if we encourage it? [00:59:04] Speaker B: No, I guess not. I guess that it's just social. [00:59:09] Speaker A: Do not turn up at my house, if you know what I'm saying. I'm winking. [00:59:16] Speaker B: Couple of duffels. [00:59:17] Speaker A: Right. Listen, lots to talk about. Just so much to talk about. So much to talk about. It feels like one of those we didn't start the fire weeks. You know what I mean? Just. There's like rapid fire. [00:59:29] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:59:29] Speaker A: Fucking rigmarole going on. [00:59:32] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah, that's a good way of putting it, I think. [00:59:36] Speaker A: Bloke dies in the tiger pen. Drunks are climbing in again. Live streamed executions. Walking off the job. It's. There's a lot going on. [00:59:48] Speaker B: There's a lot going on. [00:59:50] Speaker A: The. [00:59:51] Speaker B: The man in the tiger pen, he was drunk. Is that. [00:59:55] Speaker A: Oh, I don't know. I don't know. [00:59:57] Speaker B: I mean, it seemed like it. The video that I had you send me, the. The, like, BBC article or whatever it was, made it sound like there was. It was like, horrific or whatever. And it's. [01:00:07] Speaker A: Yeah. I can only assume maybe there's more ages. I mean, firstly, first things first. How do you encourage the spread of a video clip? [01:00:16] Speaker B: Yeah, what you do is don't look at it. [01:00:18] Speaker A: You. You get BBC to push out a message saying, police ask you not to share the video. Right. [01:00:27] Speaker B: It's like how my sister used to, like, sidle up to my brother and go, don't tickle me. [01:00:33] Speaker A: See, that's a dark pattern. If ever I had no free will in that matter at all. I was gonna look for that. [01:00:41] Speaker B: Yeah, that's. You know. And so, of course, knowing that Mark was gonna look for that video, I then texted him. I was like, mark, do you have the video? I was like, yeah, I got you and this man. Yeah. [01:00:51] Speaker A: I thought there was another video. I was looking for ages for the real video. [01:00:54] Speaker B: Yes. No, it's just a guy kind of jumps and it gets, like, knocked around a little bit and then tries to, like, shame the tiger into not attacking. He gives him a little finger wa. We. Yeah, we. Do not kill me here. It didn't work. The tiger. [01:01:12] Speaker A: If only he had, like, a massive laser pointer. [01:01:17] Speaker B: That would have done it. Oh, man. I will say. Okay, this is. I think I may have mentioned this before, but in South Africa I went to some park where they let us pet like lions and cheetah. [01:01:33] Speaker A: No. [01:01:34] Speaker B: And whatnot. [01:01:34] Speaker A: Thank you. [01:01:35] Speaker B: Yeah, no hindsight. [01:01:36] Speaker A: Were they ketamine? Were they ripped to the tits? [01:01:39] Speaker B: Right? You would think maybe they were, but. So like I pet this cheetah and I did not like this experience. Like on the one hand, I'm like, oh, big cat, that's kind of cool. But like chance, it purred the whole time. So cheetahs with big cats, right, they can either purr or they can roar. A cheetah is a purring cat and you'd think that'd be like, nice, but it's not. It's like a lawnmower and that shouldn't be coming from an animal. So it was horrifying. [01:02:10] Speaker A: What conditions is the petting to take place? What happens? Do you reach into a cage or. [01:02:13] Speaker B: No, they put you in the habitat with it. Yeah, straight up. So we're in there. I'm petting this thing. I'm like, this is fucking crazy. Cheetahs also can't retract their claws. They're always out, right? So like a cat in your house can like retract them or whatever. Cheetah can't do that. [01:02:30] Speaker A: I guarantee those animals were on weapons grade doses of. [01:02:36] Speaker B: Well, let me tell you something, Marco. Like six months after doing this, I find out this very wildlife park, that cheetah that I pet straight up mauled someone. [01:02:51] Speaker A: The self. Same cheetah. [01:02:52] Speaker B: The same cheetah mauled someone on one of those little, you know, oh, let's go pit the cheetah adventures. So it's like as dumb as this guy jumping in there is, there's also people all over the world running the tiger king ass sort of things where this happens to people who just like go in thinking it's under control in the interests of. [01:03:16] Speaker A: Of just my moral compass piping up twice now in 10 minutes I've claimed he was drunk. You said he was stupid. He might have been. Not either of those things. And ill or something. [01:03:29] Speaker B: Oh, I guess that's possible. [01:03:31] Speaker A: So I don't. [01:03:32] Speaker B: I feel like they might have mentioned that, but yes, you have a point. There could be mental illness of some kind involved. [01:03:38] Speaker A: I'll be the good guy situation. Right? I'll be voice of conscience. I'll be Jiminy Cricket. [01:03:43] Speaker B: Yes, you be the Jiminy Cricket in this situation. We don't have the full details of what happened here? [01:03:49] Speaker A: Neither do we have the full video, disappointingly. [01:03:51] Speaker B: Yeah. I don't. It would probably be awful. [01:03:54] Speaker A: All of us still. [01:03:55] Speaker B: For the best. [01:03:56] Speaker A: That's fine. [01:03:57] Speaker B: They saved us from ourselves, say. [01:03:59] Speaker A: Yeah. Video shows a man being attacked by a tiger. Later, he died, so there's more. [01:04:05] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah. [01:04:07] Speaker A: You know, I think the tiger's still alive, though. They didn't. They've not. [01:04:10] Speaker B: Yeah. Thankfully. Which is always. Yeah. A good thing. But then also, I mean, on the note of watching the video of that, then it was like Pete Hegseth said that here in America, we're gonna watch a man die. [01:04:25] Speaker A: Right. [01:04:26] Speaker B: Which is insane. [01:04:28] Speaker A: Delighted you brought this up. Delighted you brought this up. Because, firstly, I mean, there is absolutely no way that's gonna happen. [01:04:41] Speaker B: No. Yeah. Absolutely not. [01:04:43] Speaker A: None at all. Vance has already walked it back. [01:04:46] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:04:48] Speaker A: And the concept and the execution, no pun intended, of this idea are wildly different. What. Fucking live stream on what platform? [01:05:01] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. Who's gonna. It's like what I was saying last week about the. The death penalty drugs. Right. That like, no manufacturer, like, no big pharma will make that. It's like the only sites you're going to put that on are, like, dark web shit. [01:05:16] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:05:17] Speaker B: Like YouTube. [01:05:18] Speaker A: And they've all been closed down anyway. All of the good gore sites are gone now. [01:05:20] Speaker B: Well, there you go. You know, they're going to put on Truth Social. [01:05:24] Speaker A: Exactly. Think of the logistics of getting the cameraman in. [01:05:27] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:05:28] Speaker A: Or, you know, setting up the fucking action cam or whatever. [01:05:32] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:05:33] Speaker A: And think of the legal position, the appeals. [01:05:35] Speaker B: Well, right, Exactly. [01:05:37] Speaker A: Never. [01:05:39] Speaker B: This exact execution's supposed to be in December. The idea of, like, now that he's brought in this whole live streaming thing, like, this is clearly a thing that they're going to argue is violating this guy's rights. And there's appeal. So this, even if it were to [01:05:52] Speaker A: happen with Christa pike, they've. They've put a pin in all fucking upcoming. [01:05:59] Speaker B: You can't throw these, you know, little wrenches in it and expect to just go along as usual, if anything, rather [01:06:07] Speaker A: than a kind of a. A real world concern. Because it isn't. It's. It's. It's up there with, you know, annexing Greenland and Canada. It's. It's that kind of level of idiocy. [01:06:19] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:06:19] Speaker A: But listen, pardon my saying so, but all it does, I feel, is hold another, were it necessary, spotlight on the clownery. Right. Of your current administration. [01:06:33] Speaker B: Well. And just that, you know, every single guy. [01:06:36] Speaker A: Yours, You. [01:06:38] Speaker B: Yeah. Mine personally. Every single guy in this administration. Is like living out some fantasy. Right. Like, you've got Cash Patel out there, like, you know, just flying on jets and, like, going to soccer games and, you know, drinking champagne with his girlfriend and all that stuff. And then you've got like, Trump trying to get his Nobel Prize. You got, like everybody doing these things. And Pete Hegseth wishes he were a Nazi. And so everything that he does is just an attempt to, like, live his dream of being a Nazi. [01:07:10] Speaker A: Exactly. The eugenic flavor of his. His rant last week about the armed forces. [01:07:16] Speaker B: Right. Everything that he does is just kind of like. [01:07:18] Speaker A: The only cosplay didn't say was they're all going to be white. And he fucking was desperate to say it. [01:07:24] Speaker B: Yeah. And he, you know, they removed all of the, like, non white and non male, like, plaques or whatever from Arlington Cemetery that talked about notable in there. Yeah. So they're all white men now. Yeah. So it's not even subtle, you know, it's very clear what he's doing here. And so, you know, this is why he just said this is like, you know, and everything points to the fact that he's probably gonna get fired pretty soon anyway. So he's just trying to, like, speed run. Like, I really want to see a public explorer execution and. [01:07:58] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:07:59] Speaker B: Putting that out there. But it's, you know, I think the thing is that this brings up for me along with. I mean, there's so many layers of how up this is. But the idea if they, you know, all of these conservatives and whatnot, with their bloodlust and being like, yeah, do it, do it. It's like there's just. If you. If you are not the kind of person who has seen a million deaths on the Internet and things like that, like, it's a thing that changes you, you know, it's a thing that, like, fundamentally, like, does something to your soul. You know, you can't casually be like, I'm just gonna watch them shoot a man and then, like, go about your life. [01:08:39] Speaker A: Certainly a conversation I've had with my boys and told them, don't. Do not go looking for this stuff. Right. Just without the merest hint of a smirk on my face right now. Right. I fucking mean it. There is a person you were before and after. [01:09:00] Speaker B: Exactly. [01:09:00] Speaker A: And you will never, ever, ever be free of seeing somebody die in those traumatic circumstances. You simply cannot. And I am somewhat inured to it now. [01:09:15] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:09:17] Speaker A: And I'm not really fully saying that I regret the context into the human anatomy that I fucking garnered over the years, shall we say? [01:09:29] Speaker B: Sure. [01:09:30] Speaker A: But you're not the same person afterwards. [01:09:33] Speaker B: Right? Yeah. And I think for a lot of people, you know, especially when you're coming at it from a bloodlusty position like this, that person is. [01:09:41] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:09:42] Speaker B: Not just traumatized, but worse. A worse person afterwards. You know, when you have cheered someone dying in front of you, you have to reckon with what that means about yourself. [01:09:55] Speaker A: You've hit the nail on the head. It's knowing that their time or that that particular administration's time is very short and getting shorter and just ticking off the bucket list, you know? [01:10:08] Speaker B: Exactly. [01:10:09] Speaker A: I want to be able to say these things. I want to see these things. It's. It's. Yeah, it's. I think the kids might call it LARPing. [01:10:15] Speaker B: Well, yeah, that's exactly, you know, it's larp, it's cosplay. It's, you know. [01:10:19] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [01:10:20] Speaker B: It's just playing at. They're playing army, you know, and all these kinds of things. And it has terrible for the rest. I don't think that's current. I think larping is like a 15 years ago phrase. [01:10:33] Speaker A: It is, but I think it's current usage to mean what it means in 2026 is more recent than you might think. [01:10:43] Speaker B: I don't know. [01:10:45] Speaker A: No, it's. It's a. It's a catch all term to mean anyone. Anyone who's trying to fake it. [01:10:49] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, that's how I've used it for many moons. So I don't know. All right, maybe I was just ahead of the slang. I don't have kids, so I don't know what they say these days. [01:10:57] Speaker A: Yeah, that's true, that's true. [01:10:59] Speaker B: I don't know how they're talking, but yes, it's a. Just a horror show. Just. Even though, like you said, it's absolutely not gonna happen, just the implications of it being said are exactly disgusting, you know? [01:11:14] Speaker A: Exactly. Is that the Overton window in full effect? I wonder. [01:11:17] Speaker B: Right? Yeah, I mean, amongst many things. So where. Where. What are we. What are we doing here? It also brings out that annoying liberal tendency to the. This is not who we are nonsense, you know, what are. What are we, some kind of Asians? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually we. We do this a lot here. You ever heard about lynching? That's a thing. That's not. Not that long ago. [01:11:48] Speaker A: Sure thing. The defendant is non white. The defendant is not Caucasian. [01:11:58] Speaker B: Nope. Exactly. So go. Fascinating. They want to try it out on. Yeah. What else? What else. Oh, I was telling you earlier. [01:12:09] Speaker A: Did murder 13 people. So the he did Harrison doesn't really hold. Not that I'm saying he deserves to be shot at all, let alone over the Internet. [01:12:18] Speaker B: Right. But compared to innocent black people being lynched, it's a different situation. Yes, very much so. But, yeah, I was telling you earlier about the Kelvin wave. I don't know if you all saw that, but you should look up. [01:12:29] Speaker A: That sounds like some Star Trek into darkness, right? [01:12:33] Speaker B: Yeah. Apparently this is the thing that had meaning before. I don't understand the science of it, but it. How it manifested was big wave. Big waves in Southern California that rode all the way up to like the. What were you waving at? [01:12:49] Speaker A: I was giving you a big wave, obviously. I thought that would be obvious. [01:12:57] Speaker B: So confusing. Sounds like he's looking into the camera and he's waving. Oh, big wave. Yep, got it. Anyway, okay, so big wave and yeah, hit San Diego, went up. Pch, went up onto like the city streets, which is insane. It basically is like, yeah, mini tsunami status, which is. [01:13:22] Speaker A: I'd love to see it. I've not caught any of this. [01:13:24] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm surprised. [01:13:24] Speaker A: This one, I would love to see it. [01:13:27] Speaker B: So maybe if I remember, is this [01:13:28] Speaker A: something that has happened before then? In your lifetime or in your memory? [01:13:30] Speaker B: Absolutely not, no. [01:13:31] Speaker A: Wow. [01:13:32] Speaker B: I've seen storms in which, like the waves hit the windows of like a beachside house or something like that, but never flooded the city streets of San Diego. That's insane. Absolutely insane. I was saying, you know, there's a scientist that I follow on Blue sky who was like, everyone is underreacting to El Nino. And this is a perfect example of that. Like, this is bad, folks. This is a rollback. [01:14:00] Speaker A: You'll remember a while back I shared with your chart that showed the impact, the temperature impact of El Nino in previous years with this year's. With a red line going above and beyond all of the other lines. Right. We are now, let's say maybe two or three months after that. And you know what they've done, Corrigan? They've had to get a bigger graph to properly illustrate the. The absolute magnitude of this weather event. They've simply had to zoom out on the scale. [01:14:36] Speaker B: It's crazy. Yeah. And while this is happening, my sister is very lucky to be here in New Jersey while all of this is going on, because how is she? They've been having incredible heat waves in California. So she lives in Marin county, which is known for being extremely temperate. When I was a kid, it was like, you know, it was Normally like between 65 and like 68 degrees. Most of the year. And it was always like, we'd complain about having to go slightly north and mar into Nevada because sometimes it would get up to like 80, like, oh, too hot up there. And it was 101 degrees in Mill Valley, which I have never experienced in my entire life in Mill Valley. I mean, I've obviously elsewhere, but not there. [01:15:18] Speaker A: Listen, different scale, different circumstances, different part of the world. Right. But I went for a run earlier and today is the 11th of October, right? [01:15:28] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:15:29] Speaker A: And for the first time all year, I noticed some. Some browning of leaves. [01:15:36] Speaker B: Jesus Christ, that's so crazy. [01:15:38] Speaker A: Everywhere else, like, literally is in beautiful green, lush bloom. The, the warmth, the heat. Just, just this week have I noticed a little bit of browning and a little bit of leaf droppage. It's the middle of October. This is. [01:15:59] Speaker B: Oh, boy. It's bad. It's not. It's so bad. [01:16:03] Speaker A: It's really bad. It's really bad. [01:16:05] Speaker B: Oh, man. Yeah, just. It's just climate change is rushing at us breakneck speeds, so there's. [01:16:14] Speaker A: People aren't taking it serious enough. But we know this. [01:16:17] Speaker B: Yeah, we know this. We are. [01:16:19] Speaker A: We know this. Yeah, we. We are. You are. [01:16:22] Speaker B: We're very concerned about this. [01:16:26] Speaker A: Yeah. So much more. Your energy crisis, your fossil fuel cost crisis. [01:16:37] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:16:38] Speaker A: Being ameliorated by. Wait for it, Wait for it. Russia. [01:16:41] Speaker B: Russia. Yes. Oh, boy. [01:16:45] Speaker A: We're not. Listen, and I'm not going to bang on. We're not. We're not. [01:16:47] Speaker B: No, but it is. Yeah. No, but you're right. It's. It's a week of, of we didn't start the fire. You're absolutely right that we have, like, sanctions on anyone doing business with Russia. But we're gonna take Russian oil. Like, what. What are we doing? [01:17:03] Speaker A: I hadn't even thought of that. That's incredible. [01:17:06] Speaker B: Like, we've tariffed anyone else taking it, but we're gonna take it. [01:17:09] Speaker A: That is so good. [01:17:12] Speaker B: Incredible. Just incredible. I don't. [01:17:16] Speaker A: That is so good. [01:17:20] Speaker B: What's going on? I gotta say that, you know, it was a terrible time to take a road trip with these oil prices, that's for sure. Gas is not cheap. Yeah. I went to Nova Scotia last week. [01:17:33] Speaker A: You didn't fly. You didn't fly. You drove. [01:17:34] Speaker B: No, we drove. It was a road trip. Yeah. Very expensive road trip. So, you know, there's that. What are you gonna do? That's. That's the price we, we pay for. [01:17:47] Speaker A: It's the price we pay for love. Love. [01:17:50] Speaker B: For love. Yeah, let's. Let's go with that. I like It. Anything else to address? [01:17:57] Speaker A: Ticket pick? Where do you want to start? [01:17:59] Speaker B: That's about. Yeah. [01:18:02] Speaker A: Let me ask you. Let me ask you. And I think you had a topic, but I'm not sure we're gonna get there because we've still got movies to cover, haven't we? It was. [01:18:08] Speaker B: Oh, I have to. I have to at least talk a little bit about it, but go on. [01:18:12] Speaker A: I think it was some kind of mental health awareness day yesterday. World mental health something, something, something day. Yeah. How is yours doing? [01:18:22] Speaker B: Personally? [01:18:24] Speaker A: Yes, I'd like to know. [01:18:26] Speaker B: Pretty good, actually. Yeah, good. You know, especially comparatively to previous times. Pretty low anxiety. I haven't had a panic attack on Joag in, like, four years. And, you know. Yeah, generally things are pretty good up in the headspace. Do you. [01:18:47] Speaker A: If I'd overlay Corrigan in 2026 with Corrigan, say in 2020, would you say your. Would you say the trajectory, the journey, sorry to use the term, is taking you to a better place? Are you. Are you. Are you, on balance, a more mentally healthy person than you've been in the past? [01:19:08] Speaker B: Yes. And. And obviously we were in lockdown mode at that point. Everything was uncertain. We all felt crazy. So there's that also, you know, I think one of the things that is always important to recognize when it comes to mental health is that, yes, there are chemical imbalances and things like that that make people, you know, have mental health issues. You know, there's things like neurodivergence that, you know, cause various mental health issues. But capitalism also causes mental health issues. And being in a place in which money is not a constant concern is a really good way to alleviate, yes, a lot of mental health issues. And having a job that is not, you know, something that causes you distress. [01:19:55] Speaker A: Listen, I don't remember who said this, and I'm paraphrasing, but I've. I've read a quote lately that somebody in. In the mental health space along the lines of, look, all right, yes, money can't buy happiness, but a lot of mental health issues go away when your [01:20:14] Speaker B: fridge is full, when rent is paid 1,000%. And so I think, you know, over the years, basically from once I started working on, like, wisecrack on things really kind of, like, changed in both, like having, you know, money and then also getting, like, an inheritance that helped as a big cushion and stuff like that, but also having jobs that, like, don't cause me immense stress, you know. Right. Which, like, that's the thing about, like, academic life and stuff like that, that I Didn't realize until I joined wisecrack could be different is that in academia, you, most of the time are being torn down. You know, you're always getting critiqued. Even if you write something beautiful and magical, it's part of the academic process that people critique it, you know, and often do so in cruel ways, you know, and they. It's. It's a sucky career. [01:21:14] Speaker A: Has anyone ever come at you in that, from that angle? [01:21:17] Speaker B: All the time. Yeah. Like, constantly. Yeah. It was just a part of things. Like, I've said this before, and it was so funny. I posted about this once, just reminiscing, and someone knew exactly who I was talking about just from how mean it was. But, like, I had this 1 Prof. At UCSB who he didn't really give. Like, he didn't give, like, an assignment for, like, our final paper for the class. Right. He just kind of, like, rambled and, like, gave a few kinds of things we should address in our final project, whatever, and I wrote them all down. So I wrote like, a final paper and I get it back. And he just wrote in red on the back, this isn't what I asked, and you know it. [01:21:56] Speaker A: Oh, no, you withering the. [01:22:03] Speaker B: No, I did not know that. I wrote down what you asked. [01:22:07] Speaker A: I like his energy. [01:22:08] Speaker B: He's. No, he's a giant racist. Yes, he's definitely him. He later got in trouble for kicking a black kid off campus who was there filming a film with some of the other film students. Yeah. [01:22:23] Speaker A: No longer like, [01:22:26] Speaker B: you know, but it's like, always like. Or I did like, a presentation at a convention or. Not a convention, a conference once, and there was a guy, and he was going into other, like, tons of these things, and specifically picking on women, largely, but just like, picked apart the methodology of, like, the. The study that I'd done in ways like, made no sense, you know, but just because he wanted to tear me down, you know, like, just kind of like, how dare you, essentially. Right. And that's what academia is like. And then I started working at Wisecrack, and it was like, when we would, like, kind of do things collaboratively, it'd be like, sometimes something in something I wrote didn't work right. It'd be like, okay, we're just gonna cut it and we'll, like, move on. But, like, everything, like, this is great. You know, overall, just, this doesn't fit. You know, we don't like this joke. We'll just take it out, blah, blah, blah. And it was just like this thing where, like, it was collaborative it was congenial. It was like. We all were. Like, there was no, like, oh, you fucking suck. How dare you write this paragraph, which was always like, the. [01:23:26] Speaker A: It was for the good of the work as opposed to. [01:23:28] Speaker B: Right. Like, exactly that. Right. You don't have to tear someone down to, like, make the thing better. And so all that to say that, like, being in a better work position and being in a better financial position is good for the mental health. And I just think, like, in talking about, it's a thing worth acknowledging that, like, when people are beating themselves up over, like, being depressed or, you know, this, that and the other thing in their lives, like, just recognize that, like, also capitalism is doing this to you. It's not your fault that this sucks. [01:24:01] Speaker A: Yeah. It's beautifully put. Absolutely beautifully put. [01:24:03] Speaker B: What about you, Marco? [01:24:04] Speaker A: Thank you. Oh, look, listen. Largely similar. I. While I am in no way. While I don't have consistency in how I feel, and yes, you know, in every day, I'll either be one kind of in one direction or another. I don't. I don't seem to have three or more days when I feel the same way. I mean, they're very, very up, very, very down. But I'm. I'm never in the. I'm never consistent. Yeah. But, you know, a lot of what I've come to terms with over the last couple of years has allowed me to stop questioning why that is and yearning for it to be anything other. Right. [01:24:45] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:24:46] Speaker A: I just simply accept that that's the way things are and the way I am combined. [01:24:51] Speaker B: That's true. Yeah. [01:24:53] Speaker A: And this is the result. [01:24:55] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:24:56] Speaker A: Interesting. It's nothing more than it's. It's interesting. [01:24:58] Speaker B: It's a roller coaster. But you understand, there's something that I [01:25:01] Speaker A: wring my hands about and clutch my head about. Why am I like this? Because I am right. And because the world is. And that's often cool. [01:25:14] Speaker B: Yeah. And that is a big shift from the early days because I think that was a thing that really caused you a lot of turmoil, was just not getting why. Why you were like this. So that understanding does make a big difference. [01:25:28] Speaker A: So. Yeah, I hope. I hope the same is true of you, listener. I hope if you're dealing with anything, if you're yearning and wondering why the do I have to feel like this? Just, it's. It. It is cool. And, you know, you are cool. [01:25:45] Speaker B: You are cool. You know what? Yeah. It's not just. There's nothing wrong with you. [01:25:50] Speaker A: That. [01:25:51] Speaker B: That's. I think what, you know, get across is whatever the case may be, whether it's the brain chemicals or the job or whatever, there's nothing wrong with you. [01:26:00] Speaker A: Circumstances and the circumstances that we talk about week in, week out. Frankly, it would be worrisome if you weren't a little bit topsy turvy. [01:26:11] Speaker B: True, Very true. Yeah. [01:26:13] Speaker A: To be able to deal with all of this with, you know, implacability and just an impassive demeanor, that would be strange. [01:26:22] Speaker B: Agreed. [01:26:23] Speaker A: Right. Say that. Be like geezer from no country for Old Men. You know what I mean? [01:26:29] Speaker B: Sociopathy. Sociopathy is how you get drinking weirdo. Well, shall we get into what we watch? [01:26:38] Speaker A: You're not a milk drinking weirdo, are you? No. So it's cool. [01:26:42] Speaker B: It's all good. [01:26:44] Speaker A: We can't get into what we watch because there's much to discuss. [01:26:48] Speaker B: Much to discuss. I was a little sad to find that you didn't like Mortal Kombat 2, but I do think we often have differing opinions on what kind of big dumb action film we like. [01:26:59] Speaker A: Ooh, who said I didn't like Mortal Kombat 2? I don't remember. [01:27:05] Speaker B: Two stars. Two. Not a 2.5. [01:27:09] Speaker A: Doesn't mean. Doesn't mean I didn't like it. Right. Okay, what if I told you that. [01:27:17] Speaker B: What's the. [01:27:18] Speaker A: Let me see, how to describe this? Mortal Kombat 2. Right. Was never, ever, ever gonna get more than two stars. [01:27:26] Speaker B: Okay. [01:27:27] Speaker A: Right. So the fact that it got two stars means that it got a hundred percent of its potential. [01:27:33] Speaker B: Okay. [01:27:35] Speaker A: How about that? [01:27:36] Speaker B: Interesting rating. [01:27:39] Speaker A: It did a fantastic job of making a film about what it's like to play Mortal Kombat. [01:27:45] Speaker B: Sure. [01:27:46] Speaker A: It basically is the plot of Mortal Kombat. The games. [01:27:51] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:27:52] Speaker A: In a movie. Right. Yeah. Now that is never gonna be a fucking four star film ever. Right. That is a two star maximum. [01:28:03] Speaker B: Okay. [01:28:03] Speaker A: So getting two stars means this film achieved all of its potential. [01:28:07] Speaker B: That is okay. Just from your premise, one of the reasons that you gave four stars to Resident Evil was because it so well emulated. [01:28:20] Speaker A: Yep. [01:28:21] Speaker B: Playing this video game. [01:28:22] Speaker A: Yep, yep, yep. [01:28:24] Speaker B: So. [01:28:25] Speaker A: Right. And. And Resident Evil is a title and a series. Full of depth. It is rich, it is quirky, it is. It is full of idiosyncrasies very much of its time, but in. In some aspects steadfastly refuses to evolve in its choices. Right. For a 20, 25 year old series of games, it has core principles and beliefs which it refuses. No, I will not change for you, the consumer. No. And that movie reflected that ethos beautifully. That gets you in the four star zone. Right. Mortal Kombat has none of that and the film exemplified it all. [01:29:14] Speaker B: Okay, fair. So did you enjoy it? [01:29:17] Speaker A: Yes. [01:29:17] Speaker B: Okay, well, I'm glad to hear it then. [01:29:22] Speaker A: Welcome to my system. [01:29:24] Speaker B: Yeah. I don't know why I do this to myself. [01:29:27] Speaker A: Welcome to my system. [01:29:29] Speaker B: I watched for the first time in 25 years joyride with Paul Walker and Steve Zahn and Lily Sobieski. [01:29:39] Speaker A: Oh, dear, no, no, no, not for me. [01:29:43] Speaker B: Have you seen it? [01:29:44] Speaker A: No, but the past eight seconds of your description. Not for me. [01:29:48] Speaker B: I didn't even describe it. I just listed a car film. Not a car film per se. It's a horror movie about a guy who picks up his brother who has just gotten out of jail on the way to then pick up this girl he has a crush on. But on the way they come into contact with a CB radio where they decide to prank some guy. And while pranking him, it turns out this man is a vicious serial killer and first rips off the jaw of someone. That. [01:30:24] Speaker A: Oh, that sounds quite good. Sorry. [01:30:25] Speaker B: Engaging with judgment. [01:30:28] Speaker A: That actually sounds quite good. I don't like car films, you see. [01:30:31] Speaker B: No, yeah, it has nothing to do with a car. [01:30:33] Speaker A: They are smoking a Bandit, Thelma Louise, Fast and Furious. I don't enjoy car movies. [01:30:38] Speaker B: Yeah, no, they are just in a car. But then, you know, this semi driver is following them and like tormenting them and you know what? Not after they pull this trick on him. [01:30:49] Speaker A: Well, that's better. That's a horror movie. [01:30:50] Speaker B: That's not car. A Lady. Yes. Well, yeah. I wasn't the one who said it was a car movie, was I? [01:30:57] Speaker A: You're watching me form opinions in real time. That's what Joag is. [01:31:01] Speaker B: Anyway, it was a fun watch. It's very tense and, you know, very interesting to watch 25 years later because it's one. This must be what it's like, like when our parents watch stuff from their youths with us and it like just has no collect connection to the world we live in now. The paper, maps, no cell phones, the, you know, going. Calling on a payphone. [01:31:25] Speaker A: Payphones. Yes. [01:31:26] Speaker B: Yeah, this like just everything about the world that they live in is unrecognizable. How much things cost in it. Just everything is like, you know, seeing a movie from the 60s and they go and buy 5 cent candy, you know, like that's what it feels like watching this. And it's wild to be like, that's. That's what it was like when I was in high school. This is how things were. And so just as like a time Capsule in and of itself, it was fascinating to watch, but also just like a really fun. [01:31:59] Speaker A: When I'll put something on from even the 90s, you know what I mean? Even the fucking noughties. Even, even that in. Even that recent. To you and I. Yeah. [01:32:12] Speaker B: And 30 plus years ago my dad [01:32:15] Speaker A: gained me something from the 50s or the 60s. [01:32:17] Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah. 100%. It's so weird. And I felt like it really hit me with this one. I think a road trip is a really good like example of that because of all the like analog technology and things like that and being like unable to communicate with people and cigarettes. Yeah, they're in the car, right? Yeah. And they're being like this being aimed at young people. Right. Like they're, you know, the characters in this are like 22 years old or whatever. 21. 22. And so like seeing something that's like ostensibly like a teen movie that is from just this entirely different era was so fascinating to watch. So Joyride is a fun watch. If you haven't watched it in a while or haven't seen it, I recommend it. Also the voice of the serial killer is Ted Levine, which is always good. [01:33:06] Speaker A: Maroon 5. [01:33:07] Speaker B: No, that's Adam Levine. [01:33:09] Speaker A: No, I don't know who Ted Levine is. [01:33:11] Speaker B: You do know who Ted Levine is. Buffalo Bill. [01:33:13] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah. Oh, what a horse. Yes. What a voice. [01:33:17] Speaker B: Yeah. So he's our villain in this movie [01:33:21] Speaker A: with that kind of voice, you know. I mean, that's what you're going to be, isn't it? [01:33:26] Speaker B: Well, I've said before though, the funny thing is that a lot of times I used to always just think of Ted Levine as like the chief from Monk. And so like, it's like a very like non threatening role. But then he also, you know, in his younger years played much more murderous characters. But yeah. So Joyride I recommend for a good watch. [01:33:50] Speaker A: Excellent, excellent, excellent, excellent. Let me just open up a letterboxy. [01:33:54] Speaker B: What are we going? [01:33:54] Speaker A: Oh, okay. [01:33:55] Speaker B: Oh, go ahead. [01:33:56] Speaker A: We a fantastic weekend that we saw a couple of things together, didn't we? [01:34:01] Speaker B: We did, yeah. We got a few things in together. [01:34:04] Speaker A: And it's such a pleasure, Right. It's such a treat and such a sadness that so many people don't get the opportunity to fucking link up with a buddy across the sea, you know, and just enjoy a movie at the same time in different continents. Oh, it's such a pleasure. [01:34:24] Speaker B: Yep. A pleasure to have very different experiences of a film from. [01:34:31] Speaker A: All right. [01:34:32] Speaker B: Across the sea. [01:34:33] Speaker A: Let's talk about Rose of Nevada. [01:34:35] Speaker B: Rose of Nevada. Yeah. [01:34:37] Speaker A: Why don't we talk about Rose of Nevada? Because we watched at the same time. [01:34:42] Speaker B: We did. [01:34:43] Speaker A: We watched it on the same platform, but we didn't seem to watch the same movie. [01:34:50] Speaker B: No, very much did not. [01:34:55] Speaker A: Let me. Can I maybe talk about the movie I saw? [01:34:58] Speaker B: Yeah, please do. [01:34:59] Speaker A: Right. What I saw was a beautifully executed vision of a film. Right. I saw a brave film that cut itself free from convention in so many ways. Cut itself free from conventions of presentation, just even the practicalities of filmmaking like aspect ratio and sound design and performance and maybe structure. Cut itself free of all that. [01:35:39] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:35:40] Speaker A: And delivered a texture. A texture of film which I cannot think of anything of. Its. Like, in my recent memory, a film of its own pace, slow, languid, detailed. And I mean physically detailed as well as emotionally detailed. Physically detailed. A film that lingers. It's a film that takes place on the seafront in the United Kingdom across two different time periods and is preoccupied with rust and cracked paint and salted air and period detail. Beautifully realized. Tarmac and bitumen and brick and metal and wool and skin. Stop. [01:36:38] Speaker B: And fish. [01:36:40] Speaker A: So beautiful. Right? Like a visual and auditory piece of sculpture. Oh, wonderful. And what did you call it? That's what you called it. Boat. Skinnamarink. And do you know what? I agree. [01:37:02] Speaker B: Yeah. It's only an insult if you don't like Skinner. [01:37:06] Speaker A: Exactly. You know, listener. How that. Those two words might mean very different [01:37:12] Speaker B: things to Corrigan and I. Yeah, well. And I think. I think you kind of hit on this here. And you thought I was patronizing you when I said this. And I'm like, no, that's not what I mean. Or I was like, oh, I did. [01:37:22] Speaker A: Uh. [01:37:23] Speaker B: Yeah, you took umbrage because I said. I was like. [01:37:24] Speaker A: I do sometimes find you to patronizing Corrigan. I won't lie. [01:37:29] Speaker B: I know you do. It's rarely the intention. But I did go to film school twice. And so what you said here about, like. Oh, you can't remember a film like the. Like, you know, a. I saw this guy's first movie and his men didn't realize it was same guy. Hated that too. So very similar kind of vibe to those. So I have seen another movie like this three years ago when he made another movie like this. But also, this is like such like a standard film school experimental film. Like just focusing on every little detail. It felt like, all right, I was. [01:38:11] Speaker A: Why is that bad? [01:38:12] Speaker B: Let me. Let me. Let me just go through this. You have to let me finish my thought here. Like one. So the two things that I thought of were like, when I was in college, there was in one of our classes, we got to use like 16 millimeter cameras. And it was like, this is exactly. You were just like, oh, holy shit. You go and you just like, shoot stuff like, that looks cool. That looks cool. And then when you cut them together, like, all right, well, I have a whole bunch of like, cool shots, but like, now what? And then there was this one time in my PhD program where we watched a movie that was like. It was just shots of stuff like this. And I was so understimulated that like 25 minutes into it, I just started bawling. It's like, I can't. My brain is not doing anything and I'm so bored. And I just started just bawling. And I was like trying to like, tuck my. Like, you know, we were in like a dark room, so I was like trying to like, tuck it in so no one could see. But I was like sobbing into my shirt because I was so bored of looking at shots of things. [01:39:18] Speaker A: I will. Very interesting. [01:39:21] Speaker B: You did. [01:39:21] Speaker A: You DNF'd this. [01:39:22] Speaker B: Yeah, I didn't. [01:39:24] Speaker A: Straight up walked out. [01:39:25] Speaker B: I was like, I'm gonna make dinner. Tell me what happens. You were like. [01:39:29] Speaker A: Would the equivalent have been you just start crying? [01:39:31] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. [01:39:32] Speaker A: Are you gonna leave now or I start crying? [01:39:34] Speaker B: I was. I could feel like I was like welling up a little bit from under stimulation. I was like, I can't. I'm. I'm gonna go make some dinner instead. I'm gonna make a salad. So, yeah, I think the issue from. It's understimulating. There's not yet on paper. [01:39:48] Speaker A: It should tick several of your boxes [01:39:51] Speaker B: because I was excited to watch it because again, I didn't realize this was the same guy who made NS Men. If I had known that, I would [01:39:57] Speaker A: have been like, ooh, commonalities, Boat core, [01:39:59] Speaker B: loop core, loop, core. Yeah. Things that I like. It's just the execution of it was. Made me want to die. [01:40:10] Speaker A: Yeah, I get it. I mean, right? As a kid, a couple of my brothers are and were not so much. Not at all anymore, actually, but are in the building trade, right? And I've spent a little bit of time in vans with, you know, everything's covered in paint splotches and dust. And there's a hollowed out part on the dashboard where the car stereo should be. And there are loose coins and keys and men in tattoos wearing signet rings and chains, paying for things in cash. You know, I. [01:40:52] Speaker B: You've described my older brothers. [01:40:54] Speaker A: There you Go. There you go. There you go. And got the period detail and the detail of that kind of life and that kind of existence. [01:41:03] Speaker B: Right. [01:41:03] Speaker A: I think was beautifully observed and beautifully realized and felt lived in and real, if that isn't too fucking hacky to say. [01:41:11] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I think I get that to a degree. I also wasn't, like, super. I felt like the acting wasn't great, which didn't, like. I think, for how real a lot of that felt, that it was like, really. I think the female characters were underwritten, so they weren't given a lot to do with those characters. And I felt like that made it so I was like, there's a lot of this, like, real texture and all this kind of stuff to this film. That then every time there's not a lot of talking in it, but every time there was talking, I was like, oh. Pulled directly out of whatever realism there was. Because these are just caricatures of people. They're not. They're not real people in this. So when they're kind of, like, moving around, going about their own, you know, things, you're just kind of observing. They feel more like real people than the script allows them to be once they speak, in my opinion. So, I don't know. It's just, you know, two very different approaches to these kinds of movies. I just. Yeah. I don't do well with the, like, under stimulation of just. [01:42:15] Speaker A: Yeah. Looking, you know, not to dwell. But I. I think maybe I value the opportunities to experience that, you know, I am. I still struggle with my screen time. I still struggle. [01:42:30] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. [01:42:31] Speaker A: With the dark patterns sucking me in, you know. [01:42:33] Speaker B: Yes. Slowing down feels intentional. [01:42:36] Speaker A: When I have the opportunity to spend a bit of time in someone's vision at their pace, I take it and I respond to it. [01:42:44] Speaker B: Yeah. And I do appreciate, you know, the filmmaker whose name is escaping me at the moment. I think it's Mark something, actually. But I appreciate that, like, his kind of thing is really sort of bringing this Cornish feel to stuff, you know, and, like, really bringing forward a culture that feels lost and ignored in British media. And so, as much as I didn't enjoy Rose of Nevada, I do appreciate kind of what he is trying to do. Like, as someone who's learning Welsh, I obviously, like, understand the importance of kind of trying to bring a culture that is underrepresented to the fore and, like, be like, this is. And a way of sort of showing our way of life through this, I think is very cool. [01:43:36] Speaker A: Cool. All right. Good, good, good. And listen, we. I don't Think we need spend much time on vhs mixtape? [01:43:44] Speaker B: No, I don't think so. [01:43:45] Speaker A: Do we at this point? Look, hey, past a certain point, you've gotta face up to the truth, right? [01:43:55] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:43:56] Speaker A: And I am big enough and old enough and confident enough to accept at last the VHS is an endeavor of diminishing returns. Yeah, let's go. Let's put it like that. [01:44:12] Speaker B: Yeah. I do think the funny thing is I went through because I wanted to see what I'd rated the other ones. And I apparently have never rated one. I just am so disgusted by the VHS series that I don't. I just don't acknowledge that I have watched them. So I thought that was kind of funny. I think I'd rated like viral maybe of all of them, but I also looked through and you had not rated like you'd logged them, but had not rated most of them. And then there was like one that you gave a three and one, you gave a two. So I don't even think you like these movies as much as, you know. [01:44:43] Speaker A: I think I do. I like the early ones a great deal. And I think the reason why I wouldn't have had a rate in there was a lot. [01:44:50] Speaker B: Watched it when you were hand logging. [01:44:52] Speaker A: Exactly. [01:44:53] Speaker B: Exactly. [01:44:53] Speaker A: When it was just a notepad on my laptop. [01:44:58] Speaker B: I don't know. A lot of them have come out since then, though. [01:45:02] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a great point. That's a great point. Look, vhs, viral. [01:45:05] Speaker B: Mixtape. [01:45:06] Speaker A: Mixtape. I apologize. It just really does just go straight in at 200 miles an hour with Gua. But that in itself, you're either going to respond to or not. [01:45:19] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:45:21] Speaker A: The. The framing device here is. It's simply Gua doing. [01:45:25] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:45:26] Speaker A: The band Gua. [01:45:26] Speaker B: There's not. And they clearly didn't have like a script or anything. They're just kind of like. [01:45:29] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:45:30] Speaker B: Bullshitting. [01:45:32] Speaker A: And anybody who has seen any of Gua's anything ever. [01:45:37] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:45:37] Speaker A: Knows that this pony has but one trick. [01:45:42] Speaker B: Yeah, pretty much. [01:45:43] Speaker A: And I can only imagine not. Not everyone knows about gore. [01:45:52] Speaker B: Right? Yeah. There's gonna be a lot of people watching this movie who are like, what even is this the. [01:45:57] Speaker A: Is this. It's terrible. [01:45:59] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:46:00] Speaker A: Because you either like Guar, you hate them. I happen to really enjoy Guar. I've always loved Gua. They're great, right? Yeah, but. But not when I don't put Guar in other things. [01:46:12] Speaker B: Yeah, well, that's the thing is it's. It's context. Right. It wasn't funny. Why are context of this movie, of all the baffling as to why they're in this. Yeah. Doesn't fit at all. [01:46:28] Speaker A: Apologize for the stunned silence. But I'm baffled. Like, if you unlock your phone, right, and like, Gua were on your homepage. [01:46:35] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:46:36] Speaker A: You'd be like, get the. Why the fuck are Gua doing Guar things when I don't expect them to be there? And that kind of sets things off badly. And the segments themselves are terrible. [01:46:46] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:46:46] Speaker A: It's a real shame that Tobias Forgy is in this or, you know, or is attached to this. Has worked for this, because it is, at best, pedestrian. [01:46:57] Speaker B: Right. It's just a nothing music video. Like, at least it's not bad. It's just not memorable. Yeah. [01:47:05] Speaker A: The. If. If any of it. If any of it is. Is. Is good. It's the last bit. There is a directed slasher segment that's really good. See, unlike Mortal Kombat 2. [01:47:17] Speaker B: Really good. [01:47:18] Speaker A: This was the best he's ever gonna get. [01:47:19] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:47:20] Speaker A: VHS could have gone to three, three and a half, but fair. [01:47:24] Speaker B: And it did not. No, no, no, no. Yeah. So we. And, you know, everyone I've seen from, who we know from this podcast so far has also hated it. I have not seen any particularly good ratings from anyone I know on this. So I don't think we're outliers on this one. Every now and again, we're the outliers, you know, like, whenever. I love the monsters. And we hated it. [01:47:45] Speaker A: But how super enthusiastic I was to watch VHS mixtape. [01:47:49] Speaker B: I know. And I was like, oh, no. I don't know why you want to watch this with me, because I'm going to, like, I'm going to make it terrible for you because I'm not gonna like it. And then you were on the same wavelength, so it worked. I was giddy. [01:48:00] Speaker A: I was childlike. [01:48:02] Speaker B: We doing this. No VHS time. Yeah. [01:48:07] Speaker A: Awful, awful, awful. Which leads us. [01:48:10] Speaker B: Yes. Oh, wait, one more thing before then. Just one that everyone should watch, of course, at Halloween time is that my sister and Kio and I watch the Fog, John Carpenter's the Fog last night, the 1981. [01:48:24] Speaker A: Unimpeachable. [01:48:25] Speaker B: So fucking good. It's wonderful. I thought I was like, I have to show my sister this one as a Marinite because it is filmed in West Marin. And so, you know, I was like. When you know her radio station, Adrienne Barbeau's radio station, in it is the Point Reyes Lighthouse. And I was like, oh. I went there this one time, and I went into the little house and they showed me a Fresnel light. And all this I'm like, you know, info dumping about the Point Reyes Lighthouse. Were watching this, so I was like, ed, you're gonna wanna see this because you're gonna recognize everything. West Marin looks exactly like this now. They've never developed it or anything like that. And then it's just such a banger of a movie with, like, all of John Carpenter's favorite actors. And it's so spooky and violent and just. [01:49:07] Speaker A: Ugh. [01:49:07] Speaker B: And even better when I've watched Widow's Bay 10 million times now because Widow. Widow's Bay's lore is very much, like, kind of based around the fog and, like, the pact or the, you know, the town charter that is made in the fog. Yeah. The covenant that's made in this sort of shapes the Widow's Bay as well. So that made me love it even more. Watch the fog this Halloween time. [01:49:35] Speaker A: And indeed, anytime. [01:49:37] Speaker B: Anytime. Yes, absolutely. I mean, I think it takes place in the summer, I think, or it takes place in April. April 30th. So, you know, watch it. Watch it at Easter time if you. If you want to. [01:49:47] Speaker A: Very nice knowledge. [01:49:50] Speaker B: Yes. But then the other thing that we watch together, obviously. [01:49:54] Speaker A: Carrie. [01:49:54] Speaker B: Carrie. Good old Flannis. [01:49:56] Speaker A: Such a thrill. Such a thrill to have a TV show that you. Oh, speaking personally, at least, that you just. Just cannot wait to watch the next one of. [01:50:11] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. [01:50:12] Speaker A: I am not really involved in the discourse in this one. I don't know if people loved it or not. [01:50:17] Speaker B: Yeah, people are just being weird. I don't know this. I've. I've been frustrated by it because it's like, you know, Mike Flanagan has been advertising this through, like, doing, like, AMAs and interviews and stuff like that. And people are taking, like, every answer he gave in AMAs out of context and then being like, oh, this guy. Or whatever. Oh, let's make a happy Carrie. Blah, blah, blah. And like. Like, it's not what this show is. It's. [01:50:39] Speaker A: God. [01:50:40] Speaker B: No, it's not. I don't know why all of a sudden there's backlash against Mike Flanagan. Like, he hasn't given us a million different. [01:50:46] Speaker A: Great. I've seen some of that. But regarding Carrie itself, I haven't. I don't really know what the mood is. I don't really know where. How it's landing, if people are enjoying it or not. So I speak purely from my own perspective when I say that I loved it. [01:50:59] Speaker B: Yeah, I did, too. Absolutely. I'm delighted you were concerned. I didn't. When I. Because I wasn't saying anything about, like, I was keeping it under wraps, how I felt about it always start. And you were like, oh, no, you're withholding. You didn't like it. [01:51:12] Speaker A: So I really loved it. And you were keeping it to yourself. That, to me, the math there seemed to be adding up to you doing a poop on it. [01:51:22] Speaker B: No, no, no, I loved it. Oh, that's good. [01:51:24] Speaker A: Tell me what you loved. I love to hear what you loved. [01:51:27] Speaker B: So, okay. When I was teaching at Cal State Fullerton, I showed the original Carrie to my students like eight years ago somewhere in that, like just pre pandemics, like 2019. And they thought it was ludicrous. They laughed through the whole thing, thought it was the stupidest movie they'd ever seen. They were like, this is clearly made by men. Like, they have never spoken to a woman in their lives. Like, you know, just. We're like, this is fucking terrible. And I was like, okay, interesting, because, you know, it's kind of considered a classic. But, you know, all right, this does not hold up. This has nothing to say to a 20 year old in, you know, 2019, you know, and looking at it through their eyes, I was like, yeah, I can absolutely see this. You know, it just obviously from out the gate, like this girl never having had her period when she's got like full breasts in the opening scene, which takes time to linger on all these, like, this is man movie. This has nothing to say to a woman. And so, you know, it has themes and stuff like that that carry on or whatever that should be relatable. But because of the way the movie is made, it doesn't speak to an audience now, you know, and I felt like what I really liked about this is that it is very now like, it is dealing with issues that we deal with now, but it's also very gray. And a lot of people have been complaining that like, oh, making Carrie likable and stuff like that, like, that's a bad thing. But I think. [01:53:07] Speaker A: I think quite the opposite. She did nothing wrong in this film. [01:53:10] Speaker B: Right? Well, and people think that's bad, you know, like, oh, no, she's supposed to, you know, she's supposed to do a lot of terrible bad things or whatever out of her trauma and yada yada. But I think that this throughout it, like, I mean, she does do wrong things in this. You're just sympathetic to her. But every character in this is flawed. You know, there's nobody who is. [01:53:35] Speaker A: Depth. There's depth. [01:53:37] Speaker B: There's depth to it, including the fact that like her mom. Who we know is a villain. Right. And I'm using scare quotes is right. A good chunk of this movie, you know, or this show. And I think that's so interesting to be like, this is a character we know is abusive and terrible. However, she is correct about, you know, what is going on in this situation. And so it forces us to not just think of these as, like, black and white characters. Like a character that. I'm not going to give away what happens, but a character that we love through most of the episodes of this turns out to have been doing something horrible that we didn't know about the rest of the show. Right. So, like, these characters throughout this force us to think outside of just like, you know, bad abusers, traumatized girl doing traumatized girl things. You know, like, all of this stuff is like, you've characters that, like, you understand each one of them and they are wrong and they are right and they are messy and you hate them and you love them, but there's just so much nuance in it that, like, I don't think the movie had. [01:54:42] Speaker A: Fantastically put. Just fantastically put. It is a. It complicates things. [01:54:50] Speaker B: Yes, absolutely. Yeah. [01:54:53] Speaker A: And that is the perfect response to visiting Carrie in an. In a more complicated world. Right? [01:55:07] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:55:08] Speaker A: It makes more sense that there's depth and ambiguity in people doing bad things. But for what reasons, man? [01:55:20] Speaker B: Right. [01:55:21] Speaker A: No one. I think from every single character in this. Well, maybe apart from the one he is. Most of that you can kind of. You can see. You can. You can envisage a circumstance where you might have done something similar. [01:55:38] Speaker B: Right? Yeah, totally. Like, you know, not to, like, extremes or whatever, but that, like, you can. That you can get why. What their motivations are and how human they are, I think is an important element of this. [01:55:52] Speaker A: And then, of course, there are the choices that it makes. [01:55:59] Speaker B: Right. [01:56:01] Speaker A: And you will maybe see people questioning why it's been changed. [01:56:10] Speaker B: Right. [01:56:13] Speaker A: But what if I said that this adaptation of Carrie doesn't change a thing? [01:56:25] Speaker B: Interesting. And I trust you as a real kingaholic Corrigan. Yeah. [01:56:31] Speaker A: This version of Carrie is the version of Carrie that has always existed. It's just that it's always existed on her level of the tower. Ooh. [01:56:49] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [01:56:51] Speaker A: It didn't change shit. But there are other worlds than this car is a wheel. We are seeing the same Carrie that always was there, but she's just on a different level of the tower. That's all. [01:57:06] Speaker B: Okay, that's really interesting. [01:57:07] Speaker A: So know some fucking ball before you [01:57:11] Speaker B: complain of changes Right, right, yeah. [01:57:14] Speaker A: And then. [01:57:15] Speaker B: Well, and I think to that end, I mean, I think in general, especially something that's been made so many times in different ways, like, I don't think fidelity to the book is the most important thing in the world in the first place. Like any adaptation, you know, you probably don't want it to be exactly like the book or you're going to be disappointed by the few deviations it makes. But also, if you're working within the King universe, of all people, there is so much room to stretch where he [01:57:47] Speaker A: knew he was doing it at the time or not. [01:57:50] Speaker B: Right. I don't think he knew much of what he was doing at that time, to be honest with you. [01:57:54] Speaker A: What a great point. But it turned out well, yes, because what he's done in the Dark Tower is just write himself out of any adaptation questions of his work. And look, there are the level of, of. Of the Dark Tower that this Carrie lives on brings her into contact with so many possibilities and so many other people who you may or may not be familiar with and who may be the ones you think they are if you're a King head. And I've said it time and again over the course of this podcast, the SKU is money. It is money. As if somebody could do that. And they've been attempts. What was that show with? [01:58:40] Speaker B: What's the name of the. Castle Rock. [01:58:42] Speaker A: Castle Rock. I was struggling to think of that all day today. There have been attempts. People can obviously see that it's money, right? [01:58:49] Speaker B: Yeah. Just hasn't. [01:58:50] Speaker A: Is. [01:58:51] Speaker B: Hasn't quite. [01:58:52] Speaker A: Just hasn't happened there. Flanners on the case yet? [01:58:56] Speaker B: Yeah, well, in this, Kyo came downstairs, he was like, so is this in the same universe as welcome to Derry? And I was like, I do not know, but those are different channels. So I'm gonna say probably not. But, you know, I think that is a thing people recognize. Like, if you could just like put all of this together, we'd be on Connect the Dots. The place that we stayed at that Stephen King rental, they had like what looked almost like a subway line map or whatever, but of connections between Stephen King novels, characters, you know, all that kind of stuff. All the overlap. Yeah, it was a lot. I was like. Even the ones that I knew, I was like trying to like, find. I was like trying to tell them because Tommyknockers was the first book that I was reading that I realized that they were an intertwined universe because someone came into it that I was like, wait, they were from something else. And then I Like, so I was trying to find it on the map and I was like, there's so. Just so many dots that I was having trouble. Even the one I knew trying to find it. [01:59:54] Speaker A: It's unbelievable. And you will. You will never see it all and you will never know every connection because you just can't. [02:00:01] Speaker B: Because. [02:00:02] Speaker A: So Labyrinthine is. Is the. The King of Earth? [02:00:05] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:00:07] Speaker A: But Carrie promises some really fucking intriguing things. And if it's all done in this quality and by now Flanners is a brand, right? [02:00:18] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. [02:00:19] Speaker A: With Flanners, you can be guaranteed you are going to get exceptional production quality. You are going to get exceptional ensemble cast and dialogue. You are going to get the most tense and uncomfortable build. And you're gonna get such exultant payoff. Me. [02:00:41] Speaker B: Is it gonna say the prom scene is gruesome of the prom scenes I think that we've gotten in any of them now. [02:00:49] Speaker A: I hated the soundtrack to this series. Right. [02:00:52] Speaker B: You know, I don't know that I hated it per se, but I will say there is, in the last episode, a song that is used and kind of sung along to that felt very out of place to me. And I was like, if they had set this up earlier or used a song that, like, everybody knows this would have worked better. But overall, I mean, there were a couple songs I. Shazam. I didn't hate the soundtrack. [02:01:16] Speaker A: I did hate the soundtrack, but at the same time, I'm also self aware enough to know that we're up to me, everything would have Marco's Ultimate Metal Gym Playlist. [02:01:29] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. [02:01:29] Speaker A: You know what I mean? Which is a thing, by the way. I can show you right now. Marco's Ultimate Gym Metal playlist. That's what it's called. Right. I'll have like Rust in Peace playing over everything. [02:01:38] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:01:39] Speaker A: That's not doable, isn't it? [02:01:40] Speaker B: No. Yeah. [02:01:41] Speaker A: No, I think it's. [02:01:42] Speaker B: It's a very appropriate soundtrack to a show about teenagers, you know. And I did want to ask you [02:01:50] Speaker A: how accurate in your. In your experience is its depiction of high school? [02:01:56] Speaker B: I, you know, I was in High School 20 plus years ago. [02:02:01] Speaker A: Fair enough. [02:02:03] Speaker B: So there's, there's things that are, like, familiar. I was like the, you know, the dance being in the school gym, and they didn't like overdo it like a lot of shows do. I was like, that's what a school gym looks like. Made up for homecoming or prom or whatever. So it's like, that was very, you know, felt very real. The thing was that the school that I went to schools that I went to weren't super cliquey. And so a lot of times when there's like, stuff like this, it's just like, I don't relate to it just because, like, we didn't really have like, super mean people on campus who like. Of course there are some people who are like bullies and stuff, but it wasn't like this, you know, and the way that a lot of movies are, there are places especially more in the middle of the country and whatnot where those, like, social hierarchies were like, much more at play and people would relate to this more. But also that I was like the only person I knew who used the Internet when I was in high school means that there's a whole. So much of this revolves around the Internet and the fucked up ways that social media has destroyed human contact that, like, I don't know what that's like. [02:03:13] Speaker A: I felt so warm towards Carrie. [02:03:15] Speaker B: Yeah, she's got like a little bit of like a sort of speech impediment that like, really is charming, you know? You just want her to win. [02:03:25] Speaker A: I just. I want to. Well, come with me. I will shield you from the world and you'll be fine. Just do not let any harm come to my character. I love her. I love her deeply. [02:03:39] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:03:40] Speaker A: And what a treat. What a treat to see both Matthew Lillard and Amber Mindhunter in. [02:03:48] Speaker B: Did you call her Amber Mindhunter? [02:03:50] Speaker A: I did. It was a good. I'll wrote it back. Oh, Amber Mid Thunder. [02:03:54] Speaker B: I like that, though. [02:03:58] Speaker A: It came to me during an episode [02:03:59] Speaker B: and I thought, yeah, I gotta. Gotta throw that in there. Yeah. [02:04:02] Speaker A: Matthew Lillard obviously will always deliver and will always be one of the good guys. He's like Billy Zane to me. [02:04:07] Speaker B: When. [02:04:07] Speaker A: You should totally always watch Matthew Lillard. And you know what I noticed during. And I'm not sure he's always done it, but look, what am I doing now as we speak? [02:04:18] Speaker B: Gesticulating. [02:04:20] Speaker A: I speak with my hands, right? I speak with my. I use all the available fucking extremes extremities of my body to illustrate my point. And plenty of times I noticed Matthew Lillard acting and punctuating his points with his hands with hand gestures. [02:04:37] Speaker B: He's definitely always done that. Think of, you know, him as Stew. Think of him in what's it called? And what's the virtual reality one? Hackers. You know, he's. You have seen it. We've watched it together. You seen Hackers? Yes, we did it as a watch along. You were there. [02:04:56] Speaker A: Not me. [02:04:57] Speaker B: Not me. Baby, open up your Letter box. Let's see what you rated it. But yes. He's always been a hands actor, and I love that. [02:05:12] Speaker A: I felt seen. I really did. I really felt. [02:05:14] Speaker B: I know. You said that while you're watching it, like, it's like his hands. I feel very seen by this. [02:05:19] Speaker A: I've not rated Carrie yet. I'm gonna rate it live. Do you want to rate that? [02:05:22] Speaker B: Oh, what are you gonna rate it? [02:05:23] Speaker A: Four and a half. Loved it. [02:05:24] Speaker B: That's. I think that's. That's where I am on it as well. [02:05:27] Speaker A: Yeah. And of course, you got Katie Siegel jumping in at the end. Always great to see her. [02:05:31] Speaker B: Yeah. And she directed one as well. [02:05:33] Speaker A: She did. [02:05:34] Speaker B: I think. You know, so Flanners directed four of them, and the other four are directed by women, which I think is cool. You gave hackers a3, by the way. [02:05:45] Speaker A: Well, that's unusual. I must have been hacked because I have not seen that movie. [02:05:52] Speaker B: Sure. [02:05:53] Speaker A: Anonymous must have got to my letterbox. [02:05:56] Speaker B: One of their priorities. Shifting your letterbox. All right, so I guess I'll talk about my thing next week. Even though it'll be less timely. [02:06:06] Speaker A: Well, when you build out and make [02:06:08] Speaker B: an opening of it, it's not opening level. It's just a. [02:06:13] Speaker A: Just quickly ask me now and I'll just. I'll just throw a quick answer at you just to end this on. Or is it more? [02:06:17] Speaker B: Ask you what? [02:06:18] Speaker A: I thought you had a question for me. [02:06:20] Speaker B: Oh, no, I was just going to tell you about a televangelist. [02:06:23] Speaker A: Oh, you were? Yeah, we'll. We'll start with that next week. [02:06:27] Speaker B: We'll. [02:06:27] Speaker A: I want to hear about it. [02:06:29] Speaker B: Don't tell me what I'll start with. [02:06:31] Speaker A: No, good thing. It's a good thing you've got a big talk with the ocean Separate in this. Yeah, [02:06:39] Speaker B: bumpy gums like a little dog over here. Yep, yep, yep. [02:06:42] Speaker A: Yeah, you wouldn't say that and say that to your investor. I'd be down your ends, mate. [02:06:47] Speaker B: You'd be what? [02:06:48] Speaker A: Down your end? [02:06:49] Speaker B: Down your ends. [02:06:51] Speaker A: Yeah. Your. Your place, you live. Yeah. And. [02:06:55] Speaker B: Oh, okay. I like it. Into it. [02:06:58] Speaker A: Okay. [02:06:59] Speaker B: So, friends, thank you for joining us as we worked through some things and, you know, we hope you're. You're feeling well. And if you're not, you know what? Nothing wrong with you two. [02:07:10] Speaker A: Paracetamol and walk it off. [02:07:12] Speaker B: Exactly that. Watch Carrie. Watch the fog. You're gonna have a fun time. There's a new fan cave up about Spirited Away, so make sure you check that out. Also, a new Joag radio where I Talked about werewolves, and I talked about spiritualism. So go ahead and check that as well. [02:07:26] Speaker A: Do we want to trail that? We've got a guest coming up the Halloween weekend. [02:07:29] Speaker B: Oh, it's gonna be the weekend after that. I meant to tell you because he can't make it, but we do have a vampiry guest coming. [02:07:37] Speaker A: He's not a vampire book, which is. [02:07:39] Speaker B: Written a vampire book. That's. Craig Wall work is coming. Or Craig, as you would say, Craig Wallwork Wall work is gonna come hang out with us. [02:07:49] Speaker A: I hope he's not. I hope he's not irritated at my basic vampire questions. [02:07:55] Speaker B: Oh, I think he's ready for him. I'll tell him. I'll tell him in advance. You're gonna get some real vampire cues. [02:08:03] Speaker A: All I want to do. I have very little intention of reading this book. I'm. I won't lie. But I. I write. I would love to talk about vampires and ask my vampire questions to somebody who knows a lot of vampire vampires. I'd love that. Don't take that away from me. [02:08:16] Speaker B: I would never. [02:08:18] Speaker A: The only reason I can't read his book or I'm unlikely to read his book is because it's on PDF and I'm not gonna sit there in front of my computer reading a book that's. [02:08:26] Speaker B: You have an iPad? [02:08:29] Speaker A: Oh, I don't use it. No, I want to read a book. I don't like to look at a screen to read a book and scroll through. [02:08:34] Speaker B: Okay, fair enough. All right, so, hey, if you do want to read Craig's book. Book. It's called Guide to Being a Vampire, I believe I'll buy it. It's. Yeah, it's out. Out. Yeah, you can buy it. Absolutely. And it's getting rave reviews, especially, you know, from some authors that we'd recognize and things like that, including, I think, Stephen Graham Jones, who are reading for book club right now. And so I'm excited to read it. [02:09:03] Speaker A: It's called Guide to Being a Vampire. [02:09:05] Speaker B: Guide to Being a Vampire. Yes. So if you want to check that, check that out in advance. I'm stoked. I'm ready to read it. It'll be a good old time. [02:09:16] Speaker A: Enjoyed that episode a great deal. Is it the end? [02:09:18] Speaker B: I think it's the end. [02:09:19] Speaker A: All right. Well, listeners, just as it was a joy when we came together at the start of this episode, it's now a deep sadness that we must part. But the great news is we'll see you next week. Stay spooky. [02:09:33] Speaker B: That's right.