Ep. 284: enablers

[00:00:04] Speaker A: All right, so I feel like I'm gonna have to do a little preface here pre face this with some warnings and some thoughts to kind of give you some insight into why I'm tackling this, this story tonight, where this came from. This is a. This is a tale, an incident, a period of history that I initially was going to tackle some six weeks ago, maybe more, but I decided not to because it didn't. I don't know, it's not a pleasant tale, but this week, man. What if I said that I am preoccupied with notions of enablement? Mm. I am very interested in the structures that enable atrocities to happen. [00:01:05] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. [00:01:06] Speaker A: Right. Not just kind of in the moment acts of malfeasance, but long term, almost career spanning lifespaning, dedication to misdeeds, amoral self serving miscreancy within the system, within the structure, within society, and notions not just of what it takes to perpetrate such planned, executed and considered long term deviant fucking behavior, but also the condition of those who know and don't do anything. [00:02:03] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. [00:02:04] Speaker A: And in fact do the opposite of not doing anything. Actively allow it to happen through inaction or through contribution or through structural plausible deniability. That's where my head is at this week. [00:02:21] Speaker B: Very reasonable place for it to be. Absolutely. [00:02:24] Speaker A: Isn't it interesting? Isn't it an interesting topic? Right. And it's, it's a topic that we've certainly covered a lot here over the years. Where does my mind go? My mind goes to Savile. My mind goes to Dirty Jimmy and how politics and government and royalty and the, in many cases the medical community, the showbiz community, it became like an open kind of winking. [00:02:57] Speaker B: Right. [00:03:01] Speaker A: You know, it was talked about almost obilian code, encoded language, often, you know, in the middle of. Just in a public facing way. I think in a, in it. I also think in a way, although it's less tangible, I also think along those same lines of good. The good Dr. Shipman. Right. Where it feels to me as though the environment that he worked in and the reporting that he was subject to just wasn't built, wasn't capable of seeing the warning signs, the red flags, the red lights. [00:03:43] Speaker B: Right. [00:03:44] Speaker A: Immature, you know, law enforcement and investigative procedures and a community that when you watch that documentary that I watched a while back, you kind of get the impression that people were talking about it off the record, we're talking about it off the books, even as it was going on. Right. [00:04:03] Speaker B: Well, you get that too with Lucy Letby. Right. Like whether she's innocent or guilty we know that there was a structure of, you know, bullshit going on within that hospital that was, you know, because of the structures, was allowed to happen, whether it was an individual woman or a whole bunch of people fucking up and a bunch of systems failing and, you know, things like that. This was not simply a matter of individuals making poor choices or malicious choices, but a structure that enabled that to happen. [00:04:35] Speaker A: Yes. How often have we seen it playing out in law enforcement, [00:04:41] Speaker B: right, [00:04:42] Speaker A: when the police close ranks, the police on both sides of our respective nations, close ranks, protect their own code of silence. Lamb, Huerta, you know what I mean? Just fucking keep it quiet. We'll deal with our own, on our own, mark our own homework and allow abuse and criminality and harm enable it to continue. [00:05:08] Speaker B: Right. [00:05:09] Speaker A: Interesting topic. Right? [00:05:11] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:05:12] Speaker A: So come with me, won't you? Everyone? By the way, by the way, by the way, I speak here not of equivalence. I am not equivocating all of these cases with one another. They are fucking. Obviously very different cases. Very different, you know, times, places, people, events. But that's the thread I'm pulling on here. This idea of enablement, you know, I like to take us to different times, different places, different lands. [00:05:40] Speaker B: You do, [00:05:41] Speaker A: and that's certainly what I'm gonna do tonight. You ever been? You ever been. I don't know this about you. Have you ever been to Germany? [00:05:49] Speaker B: No. We considered going when we went to Belgium and. And then determined that I didn't care about going to Germany. [00:05:57] Speaker A: Yeah. Keogh's [00:05:58] Speaker B: been twice. [00:06:00] Speaker A: Owen, he's very deep into learning his German on Duolingo. Right. He's been pecking away at the German course on Duolingo for got to be a year or more. [00:06:14] Speaker B: Do you know what the origin of this was like, what triggered a Germany? [00:06:20] Speaker A: Ophelia? No, I do not [00:06:22] Speaker B: that. Because that's a bizarre one. [00:06:24] Speaker A: What would you call it? What is the actual word for that? I [00:06:27] Speaker B: don't know. Alamania. [00:06:30] Speaker A: Well, I have no idea from where, from whence it stems. Right. [00:06:34] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:06:34] Speaker A: And I say the same thing to him when. When we talk about places we'd love to go in the world and he says, Germany. I'm like, nah, that's probably not gonna happen. Germany. I just don't care. I just have no idea. I [00:06:44] Speaker B: mean, it's two minutes away from you, so, you know, you could. You could easily make a weekend trip of going to Germany. [00:06:49] Speaker A: Yeah, but I just wonder why I would. And [00:06:53] Speaker B: I [00:06:53] Speaker A: know [00:06:53] Speaker B: reason. [00:06:54] Speaker A: Exactly. And I've got friends, you know, with Germanic tendencies, leanings. [00:07:04] Speaker B: It's like, being, like, a drunk. Like, you know, he drinks a little. He's. He's kind of. He's got some German tendencies, [00:07:11] Speaker A: but I don't share them. I have no. I don't know why I would. Right. So anyway, so [00:07:16] Speaker B: Germany, right? [00:07:16] Speaker A: Germany. Germany. And I'm gonna. [00:07:18] Speaker B: Apologies. [00:07:20] Speaker A: Apologies, Owen, and apologies to anyone who we've ostracized already. [00:07:27] Speaker B: You don't have to be interested in any country. I know a lot of Brits who do not want anything to do with America, and [00:07:33] Speaker A: that's a great. [00:07:34] Speaker B: That's your prerogative. [00:07:36] Speaker A: That's a great call. And I am going to mangle some words here. I'm gonna mangle some language. Right. [00:07:43] Speaker B: See, that's. That's the thing I know about you, Mark. If you're gonna do it, you're gonna. You're gonna go all in. I had a quiet choir teacher who always said, if you're gonna make a mistake, make it loud. And I know that's a thing. Do [00:07:53] Speaker A: you know [00:07:53] Speaker B: what? [00:07:54] Speaker A: One of Peter's teachers has a similar axiom, which is, if you're gonna be wrong, be wrong and strong. You know, [00:08:04] Speaker B: There you go. Mm. [00:08:05] Speaker A: Which I love. God damn if I, you know, put. Put it. Put it on my grave. So. All right, let's hear it. Not only are we gonna go to Germany, we are gonna go to the dying days of the Weimar Republic. In fact, it's [00:08:22] Speaker B: an interesting time. Yeah, [00:08:24] Speaker A: very much so. And I'm gonna. I'm gonna introduce you to Helmut Kentler. [00:08:29] Speaker B: Okay. [00:08:31] Speaker A: Born to military father, 1928. And when I say military. Is that right? [00:08:41] Speaker B: 1928. [00:08:42] Speaker A: Is that right? I say a father from the military. That means a dad who, after serving in the First World War and being recalled, he actually became a high commander of the Nazi army. [00:08:56] Speaker B: Oh, [00:08:58] Speaker A: right. Helmut Kentler, whose early career, under the guidance of his dad, who wanted him in the technical field, studied engineering and locksmithery. But he ended up wound up going through the psychology kind of pathway, medicine, philosophy. In the 1960, he got himself a psychology diploma and. Fascinatingly started to focus his career on youth education, sexual identity, psychology of the soul, as he described it. And he described. He himself described his pathway, his psychology studies, as engineering of the soul. [00:10:02] Speaker B: Interesting. [00:10:03] Speaker A: It's. Listen, it gets even more so. Just to contextualize this, right between the. The 60s and late 70s, the intellectual kind of climate of that period of post war West Germany, you will find often described a very deeply held preoccupation with. Would we call it perhaps, sexual propriety? [00:10:40] Speaker B: Sure, [00:10:41] Speaker A: right. It Was across. Many scholars postulated that the sexual repression of Germany as a nation was a key component of the fascist condition. Right. There is one scholar in particular, Herbert Jaeger, who claimed that in a quote unquote, sexually free society, Auschwitz would not have been possible. [00:11:19] Speaker B: That's a big claim. [00:11:22] Speaker A: Well, yes, but it is a scholarly opinion of the time that this, this kind of repressed sexual identity was a big, big, big pillar of what became the. The kind of whole natty thing. [00:11:40] Speaker B: Sure. Right [00:11:42] Speaker A: now, [00:11:42] Speaker B: I mean, to an extent, like, you know, that clearly is a lot of the big hang up with it, right? Not necessarily. I mean, they wouldn't put it that way, that it's about sex, but about the right sex. That's what eugenics and things. To an extent, yeah, [00:11:58] Speaker A: of course. [00:11:59] Speaker B: Part of it, at least. [00:12:01] Speaker A: So this being the, The. The kind of. The scholarly attitude at the time Kendall comes in, puts a lot of these views, starts to talk about these views publicly, starts to talk about these views in government. As his career develops, as his sway, as his. Almost as his credibility develops within psychoanalysis and within medicine. He writes in 1974 in a sexual educational book known as Zygmal, Show Me. [00:12:47] Speaker B: Okay. [00:12:48] Speaker A: He writes that. And here it comes. If the environment, the home environment, didn't so much stigmatize intergenerational sexual relationships. Oh, yeah. Quote, more positive consequences for personality development can be expected. End quote. [00:13:11] Speaker B: Mmm. Don't like it. Not liking where that's going. [00:13:17] Speaker A: That is not gonna change. You're gonna like it less and less. [00:13:19] Speaker B: Great. [00:13:20] Speaker A: You're gonna like it less and less. But think all the while about enablement, right? Because by now Kendall's position and reputation is growing and growing and growing. He wrote his dissertation, his doctoral dissertation in 1975. By the 90s, 30, 000 people had read this. [00:13:47] Speaker B: Okay, his dissertation. [00:13:49] Speaker A: Yes, absolutely. His doctoral dissertation, which he wrote in 1975, circulated by the 90s to some 30, 000 people. Elton learning sexual. 0. Right. Parents learning sex education. He wrote that. Fucking hell. Parents who do not, who fail to introduce their children to sexual behavior risk making them, quote, unquote, sexual cripples. [00:14:17] Speaker B: Oh, [00:14:19] Speaker A: yeah. [00:14:20] Speaker B: See, I was like, sex education, sure, yeah. Introduce that to your kids. I don't like behavior in that. In that sentence. [00:14:29] Speaker A: He in fact suggested that if intergenerational sexual activity was, quote, considerate and tender, it would be to the children's benefit. It would be to the child's [00:14:42] Speaker B: benefit. Very. If you recall the Oneida community that Charles Guiteau, who killed James Garfield, spent part of his childhood in that was kind of one of their things as well, was the sort of like, you know, once kids reached, like age 12, 13, started getting to, like, sexual maturity, it's like they would assign them an adult to take their virginity basically to be like, now you can, like, learn how this. [00:15:11] Speaker A: Fascinating. Fascinating. What a fascinating angle. Keep that in mind, please. And also do know that while obviously this is. These are fucking wack ideas. [00:15:25] Speaker B: Yes. [00:15:27] Speaker A: Kentla was by no means the only person talking in this kind of way. [00:15:35] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it's almost just to. As a sort of side to that. I mean, I think, like the Oneida community was a century before this. So he's kind of grasping onto something that people had tried and determined did not work. [00:15:54] Speaker A: Yes. Entry [00:15:55] Speaker B: before. [00:15:55] Speaker A: He's [00:15:56] Speaker B: bringing this idea in. So that's. Well, [00:15:58] Speaker A: we're in the 1970s now, so we're getting into the. The same era where I talked about the pie, the pedo information exchange in the UK or elsewhere in Germany. The Green Party. Right, the environmentalist. The Green Party in Germany was talking about reducing or, I think abolishing consent laws. Right? This is. [00:16:23] Speaker B: This is, you know, the dark side of the sexual revolution that's happening [00:16:27] Speaker A: in the 60s and 70s. [00:16:30] Speaker B: The idea, you know, at its core being like, if two consenting adults want to have sex, or as many consenting adults want to have sex in whatever way they want, great. And then that being taken out to these, like. Well, [00:16:45] Speaker A: yeah, [00:16:45] Speaker B: maybe, you know, things like age and consent are, like, actually fundamentally problematic. [00:16:52] Speaker A: These are fucking, you know, get with the times, [00:16:55] Speaker B: right? Free love, bro. No, [00:16:58] Speaker A: but let's talk about institutional embedment here, right? Because by 76, by 1976, Kent Ler had a role as a university lecturer in Hanover. He trained educators himself until he retired in 1996 and late 70s, in the early 80s, 79 into 82, he was president of the German Society for Socio Scientific Sexuality Research. This is a guy who was commonly on, like, you know. You know, you'll get a talking head to speak on the news, to speak in an article. It was this guy. It was. It was Kentler, who was a leading media authority on sex education. Right, [00:17:48] Speaker B: Right. [00:17:50] Speaker A: And his institutional kind of credibility and weight was just continued and continued to grow. He had a base where he worked from the. Here it comes. Pedagogische Zentrum Pedagogical center in West Berlin, [00:18:08] Speaker B: okay? [00:18:08] Speaker A: And this was funded and overseen by the fucking Berlin Senate, [00:18:16] Speaker B: okay? Government institution. [00:18:19] Speaker A: His fucking seat of operations, where he is training educators, where he is writing and working with These. With this. With this direction entirely funded and overseen by the Senate. Hmm. Right. [00:18:35] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:18:36] Speaker A: Wait, it gets worse. Kentler started working with runaways, drug users. [00:18:51] Speaker B: Disabled people. Are disabled people gonna be on the list? [00:18:54] Speaker A: They ha. They actually are. [00:18:55] Speaker B: Yep. [00:18:57] Speaker A: Trafficked kids in an area of Berlin Zoologischegarten Bahnhof Zoo station. Right, [00:19:11] Speaker B: okay. [00:19:12] Speaker A: And Kentler became aware of a man in the area who went by the nickname Mother Winter, who would give underage runaways for food in exchange for sex. Right. [00:19:27] Speaker B: Oh, it's like a worse Fagin, [00:19:30] Speaker A: isn't it? It's a fucking. Yeah, it is. Yeah. Oh, it really is. [00:19:36] Speaker B: Great. [00:19:39] Speaker A: So Kentler worked to formalize that arrangement. Setting up foster homes. [00:19:50] Speaker B: Oh, okay. [00:19:52] Speaker A: Right. [00:19:52] Speaker B: Rape centers [00:19:53] Speaker A: with rape centers. Getting approval from Senate offices in districts in the area. And setting up men with convictions for sexual contact with minors. [00:20:10] Speaker B: Jesus Christ. [00:20:12] Speaker A: As foster carers. Oh, [00:20:15] Speaker B: my God. [00:20:16] Speaker A: Disadvantaged drug using, trafficked runaway kids. [00:20:22] Speaker B: This is the seventies. [00:20:24] Speaker A: This. Did [00:20:25] Speaker B: this persist till the nineties? [00:20:29] Speaker A: Yeah, it did. Yeah. Just. Just [00:20:31] Speaker B: fuck me. [00:20:31] Speaker A: Hold tight. Hold tight. [00:20:32] Speaker B: Okay. [00:20:34] Speaker A: And this was all kind of made legal, Right. And something. See, [00:20:41] Speaker B: again, it's like the dark side of good ideas, right? Like the idea of, like, legalizing sex work or decriminalizing sex work. Right. For people who are sex workers, that is for their safety, you know, and to be able to make it so that if, like, they are assaulted, then they have, you know, some sort of. There's legal repercussions to someone actually [00:21:02] Speaker A: doing that. They're not, [00:21:03] Speaker B: you know, hidden. And. But then you take this and apply this to like, oh, we're just going to create a place where it's legal for sex offenders to sex offenders. That's not what we mean. [00:21:16] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, just again, hold that thought. When we talk about legally enabled Used Youth Welfare act used, you know, Kendler using his prestige to gain willing ears and advocates in the Senate kind of administration. This idea that foster care with known pedophile men was known about and accepted in various kind of district offices, you know, centralized knowledge, but. But kind of happening in different districts around the area. With the best documented case between 1973 all the way up to 1988. Right. A guy by the name of Fritz Henkel who housed over that, what, 30 years? Well, it. It stayed open until 2003. So over 30 years, they had 10 or so children. Right. And it was that home that became the center of a criminal investigation, a legal investigation in 1979. But Kentler directly intervened on Henkels, on Frit Henkel's behalf. A guy who he had regular contact with a guy who'd become a key part of his network, and the investigation was entirely suspended. [00:23:00] Speaker B: Oh, my God. [00:23:00] Speaker A: After. After his. After Kentler's involvement. [00:23:07] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, and I'm sure you'll get there. The question to me right here is, I mean, is this man just an institutional trafficker? Like, did he have any good? Like, did he think really he was doing anything good, or did this man just find a way to groom and traffic with government subsidies? [00:23:31] Speaker A: Ostensibly, he was a advocate and activist because, keep in mind, back then, he self identified as gay, and homosexuality at that time was illegal in Germany. So he was an open advocate for decriminalizing homosexuality and couched this. The. This, this horrific work in that argument in, I believe, very similar ways. It's the playbook. It's the [00:24:04] Speaker B: playbook, right? Yeah. It's what everyone, like, assumes is happening. Oh, what. What gays really [00:24:09] Speaker A: want of the children, [00:24:10] Speaker B: pedophilia, you know, [00:24:12] Speaker A: so we have to, [00:24:13] Speaker B: you know, like, whatever. It's like, yeah, this is the worst thing that people think is actually going on when it's not. [00:24:19] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:24:20] Speaker B: You know, like. [00:24:21] Speaker A: Yeah, completely. Completely. Completely. And it's not even as though Kentler was reticent about admitting his ambitions and admitting what he was doing. In 1980, he was interviewed in Der Spiegel and openly talked about how pedophile men could offer therapy and therapeutic interactions to neglected kids. Right. He's talking in Parliament about, you know, like I said, his. His. His umbrella, his beard. Of decriminalizing homosexuality. And he starts just in the middle of talking about it, unprompted, unquestioned, spoke about, started talking about his foster scheme. You know, [00:25:13] Speaker B: How is this received? Because one of the things, like, when you talked about that other, like, sort of pedophile network in the UK and kind of the ways in which they. They used a lot of, like, social justice language and things like that to almost infiltrate and make themselves into something that became, like, you could talk about it, like, it was like, a little bit legitimized or whatever, with, obviously, this guy's got government funding behind him. He's going before, before Parliament, talking about these kinds of things. Things. What were people saying? If you have. If you have that information, [00:25:47] Speaker A: we will get there. But stunningly, right, like, stunningly. It was only in 2013, right? [00:25:57] Speaker B: Oh, no. [00:25:58] Speaker A: That public knowledge, public reckoning almost began after an article got published in a German publication. The article was known as Der Versuch. Der Versuch, the Experiment. And it was only after that, and then Later, a article in the New Yorker where all of this mad shit started getting broader public attention. This article, like I said in the New Yorker, focused on two survivors. A kid by the name of Marco, another by the name of Sven, that's Marco with a C. Both of which were runaways. Marco was came to the attention of authorities in Schonerberg after being caught walking the streets alone at 5, was placed with Fritz Henkel. And every few months, Henkel himself would drive Marco to see Kentler face to face after they would speak weekly by phone. Right. They were, they were very, very close and openly, often communicating with one another. The other kid, Sven again was, Was found in a subway begging at 7 years old and was placed in Fritz Henkel's home. After he was, they, they, they found him a foster place, you know, and deemed that Henkel was the perfect match. Both of these kids, not just sexually abused, but were isolated. Family was blocked from seeing him. And when either of the kids tried to alert authorities, Kentler intervened, protected Henkel, silenced any interventions or investigations, and it was enabled, it was allowed to continue. [00:28:17] Speaker B: Right. It's so, it's, it's shocking, you know, it, I think it's, it's so shocking because obviously this happens in foster homes and any other home all over every country, right, that kids are abused and things like that, and even that the system in some way enables it, whether by not believing them or turning a blind eye or things like that, but to institutionalize it to the point where this seems like it was, you know, they, they knew that was why he was putting them in these homes specifically. And this is an experiment, it's research. And something that is being like, sanctioned like that is deeply shocking to me that it's not simply, you know, enabling by looking away, but enabling by being like, yes, let's try it. Let's see what it's like. If we let someone rape children for years, you know, maybe it's a good idea and we've just been thinking about it wrong. What. [00:29:23] Speaker A: And later in his life, Kendler in private was said to have changed his viewpoints. An adopted son of his took his own life in the 90s. They are. Why it's, it's never been confirmed or proven. There's, there's speculation in a lot of places that Kendall was, was, you know, [00:29:50] Speaker B: practicing what he preached. [00:29:52] Speaker A: Exactly this, exactly this. And even though privately he, he, he admitted that he was partly to blame for that suicide in public, he still continued fucking pushing that thesis. [00:30:11] Speaker B: Yeah. In which [00:30:11] Speaker A: case [00:30:11] Speaker B: it doesn't matter. Exactly. [00:30:14] Speaker A: Believe about a thing if this is what you do. Exactly. [00:30:17] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:30:18] Speaker A: As late as 99, he was still banging on about it, talking about how, quote, pederastic conditions had a positive effect on young men. You know, and the grimly inevitable bit of all this is that he died in 2008 having seen no justice. [00:30:45] Speaker B: Right. No consequences at all for this. [00:30:48] Speaker A: None at all. [00:30:50] Speaker B: They didn't start talking about it in articles till five years after he died. [00:30:55] Speaker A: Exactly this. And when it comes to Sven and Marco, it was Marco who realized that the fucking state had enabled all of this and sanctioned all of this when he fucking saw a picture of Kent Ler in an article that he read in 2017. [00:31:15] Speaker B: Wow. [00:31:17] Speaker A: Up until that point, [00:31:19] Speaker B: he had no idea, [00:31:20] Speaker A: being unaware that this was something that the fucking. The state knew about all along. [00:31:27] Speaker B: That's horrifying. [00:31:29] Speaker A: Isn't that fucked? [00:31:31] Speaker B: My God. I mean, yeah, like I said, we know this happens all the time. I mean, that is a thing that we are very aware of. But that degree of just the betrayal of knowing, you know, that not only were you was this happening and you weren't protected from it happening, but in fact people were actively on purpose. Keeping this happening to you would be just so incredibly difficult to deal with. You know, much like as you said with what's his face, the big. The big bad [00:32:11] Speaker A: Savile. [00:32:12] Speaker B: Savile. Right. You know, with a lot of famous men like that, like your Weinstein's and your Russell Brands and things like that that people are fully aware of, including the people who should be in charge of stopping this. You know, the network people, the hospital executives, the. Whoever else who should be intervening for you and making sure the stops are actually, like, pushing you into it. Being like, it's fine. It's like the. It's the, you know, I'd. I'd rather you drink at home kind of situation. You know, like, I'd rather you rape the kids we supply to you rather than go find victims out on the street. It's better if we're watching than if you do this yourself. No, it's not. [00:32:58] Speaker A: So what's my point? I don't really have one, other than. Other than enabling. Happens fucking everywhere. Mm. Has happened everywhere for as long as you could possibly. You know, for as long as there's history, as long as there's recorded history. [00:33:25] Speaker B: Right. [00:33:26] Speaker A: Institutional enablement has been a thing. Institutions so fucking bedazzled and glamoured by a doctorate or a fucking idea that it can be led. Institutions can be led into the darkest of waters. [00:33:50] Speaker B: I mean, just Thinking of the thing too like that to sort of expand upon your point here that, you know, how important it is to like recognize enabling within institutions and things like that, you know, to the point where it becomes sort of an active participation in it. And, you know, I sent the group chat the other day, that article about how in the Russell Brand case there's another woman who had come out with a complaint against him and he and his girlfriend at the time basically filed a harassment suit against her for [00:34:27] Speaker A: bringing [00:34:28] Speaker B: it up. And what ended up happening is that the judge, without letting her testify, without her having a lawyer, anything of that nature, banned her from ever speaking to anyone, including the [00:34:41] Speaker A: police [00:34:42] Speaker B: about this. She's not allowed to tell the police about the fact that this man raped her. That's, I mean, the system coming against this girl, you know, this, the judge going, you don't even have the right to defend yourself. We will arrest you if you so much as tell the police what happened and try to get in front of a court of law to talk about this. [00:35:09] Speaker A: Yeah, [00:35:09] Speaker B: we had. And the implication of this was basically, you know, the, the journalist who uncovered that this had happened was like, the scary thing is we don't know if this happens all the time because the people it happens to, the women it happens to. [00:35:25] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:35:26] Speaker B: Aren't allowed to say it's happening to them. So we don't know if the system is doing this. And it's a reminder that like, this is how it enables men to get away with this stuff and that we have to be like paying attention to see that this is not how the institution works. You know, [00:35:44] Speaker A: bottom line, all large scale offending requires a network of enabling behaviors. [00:35:54] Speaker B: Right. There is no darkness on this stuff. There's, you know, shadows, but you can see what's in the shadows. People can see what's going [00:36:02] Speaker A: on. You don't make a career out of this without a lot of people knowing about it. [00:36:09] Speaker B: Right. Because how many can keep a secret, Mark? [00:36:13] Speaker A: Well, yeah, yeah, [00:36:14] Speaker B: two can keep a secret if one is dead. So if this is all happening, a lot of people telling each other about it. [00:36:27] Speaker A: I told you you wouldn't like it. And I, and I, [00:36:30] Speaker B: as promised. [00:36:31] Speaker A: What? Listen, just, let's, let's just lift the curtain a little bit, right? Let's just. Wizard of Oz this a little bit with our listeners, with our wonderful audience. What kind of mood was I in about 40 minutes ago? [00:36:43] Speaker B: Jubilant. In a wonderful mood. When we first got on this [00:36:48] Speaker A: joined, jumped on full of just animated and doing bits, you know, talking and Gone, gone, [00:36:58] Speaker B: gone now [00:36:59] Speaker A: because of the world that we live in. We don't. Well, we don't live in that world anymore. I'd like to think that things have improved. [00:37:06] Speaker B: Mark, this is like 20 years ago. [00:37:10] Speaker A: Yes, very. That's very true. Within. This is not [00:37:13] Speaker B: from history. I thought this was going to be about the Weimar Republic and not when I was in high school. [00:37:19] Speaker A: No, no, no, no. Fuck me. This was when I was in. For fuck's sake. Oh, no. [00:37:28] Speaker B: Good chat, Mark. Thanks. [00:37:29] Speaker A: Thank you. Let me quote directly from my notes, if I may. [00:37:34] Speaker B: Yes, please do. [00:37:36] Speaker A: Fucking look at these nerds. Oh, mise en scene. [00:37:39] Speaker B: I don't think anyone has ever said mise en scene in such a horny way before. [00:37:43] Speaker C: The way I whispered words. Sex. Cannibal. Recently, [00:37:46] Speaker B: worst comes to worst, Mark, I'm willing to guillotine you for science. [00:37:49] Speaker C: Thank you. That's really, really sweet. It's [00:37:52] Speaker A: cold [00:37:52] Speaker C: outside, but my pancreas is talking to me. I'm fucking. I'm gonna leg it. [00:37:56] Speaker B: You know how I feel about that, Mark. [00:37:58] Speaker C: I think you feel great about it. [00:38:02] Speaker A: Oh, it got dark there. Holy shit, [00:38:03] Speaker B: it did get dark. I should turn on a light. One second. [00:38:06] Speaker A: Ah, that's better. [00:38:08] Speaker B: There we go. [00:38:09] Speaker A: Know ye of the show Red Dwarf? The British show Red Dwarf, [00:38:12] Speaker B: do. Yeah. It's one of my sister's favorite shows of all time. [00:38:14] Speaker A: You just looked like Holly. You just looked like. Just entirely black background, dark attire. That's what [00:38:20] Speaker B: I was going for. [00:38:25] Speaker A: Beloved though it is. Oh, it aged badly. [00:38:30] Speaker B: The show itself or the people on it? [00:38:33] Speaker A: No, the show itself. The show itself. Right. Hell, you would never find a more ardent and committed Red Dwarf enthusiast to me in school. Right. Read the novels, memorized the show, did the bits in the Voices With My Friends. What a nerd. Right? But then you catch a couple of episodes of it now and you're like, fuck it. [00:38:58] Speaker B: I watch a couple every now and again. I haven't gotten any. That, like, really horrify me, but I haven't tried to, like, go all the way through it. [00:39:06] Speaker A: Terrible. Don't bother. It's terrible. [00:39:10] Speaker B: My sister still loves it, but I imagine she's doing a lot of, like. Yeah, you know. I know. [00:39:15] Speaker A: So I tell you what. I'll open us up with a little something here. Right, [00:39:20] Speaker B: okay. [00:39:21] Speaker A: Welcome. Obviously, first, the most important thing of all, [00:39:24] Speaker B: clearly. [00:39:25] Speaker A: Welcome to Jack of All Graves. Welcome to another week and say goodbye to the previous week. It's dark now, isn't it? It's dark now. If you're not already in that mindset, Light a little candle and, you know, draw the curtains at 5pm because we're right at the start of the dark times now. And you gotta fucking find your anchors right now. Find the things [00:39:54] Speaker B: that are gonna give you hope over the next few [00:39:56] Speaker A: months and stick to them because they will see you out to the light. They will give you strength over the next months if you don't draw your totems close and rub your metaphorical rosaries. You need to find them now because there's no point searching for them in the midst of the dark. [00:40:14] Speaker B: It's good advice. [00:40:15] Speaker A: Fucking find what brings you joy in the light and cling on to it when it's dark. It's the wisest [00:40:22] Speaker B: thing I've ever said. I know, right? That is. [00:40:24] Speaker A: I've never fucking said anything. That one. [00:40:27] Speaker B: I think you just gave the message you needed to hear as a committed January depression, man. [00:40:32] Speaker A: The comforts that you find [00:40:34] Speaker B: in the [00:40:35] Speaker A: dark are born of the dark, right? [00:40:38] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:40:39] Speaker A: Find the joy in the light and take it with you into the dark. Fuck me, I've just cured myself. [00:40:45] Speaker B: You just cured yourself just now. Bam. There it is. [00:40:48] Speaker A: Incredible. Anyway, [00:40:50] Speaker B: amazing stuff. Good job. [00:40:52] Speaker A: I don't. I don't really. I'm not really interested in forming new beliefs. [00:40:59] Speaker B: To my chagrin, [00:41:01] Speaker A: at this age, I think I've made my mind up about everything, right? So imagine my surprise when I formed a new belief this week. [00:41:10] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. This is where you pick friends. Just imagine. Just imagine me receiving a text message about this. Go on, Mark. [00:41:19] Speaker A: Imagine my shock this week when I had an experience, tangible meat, bone and blood, fucking real as the hair on my chin. Experience that has challenged me and led me to form a new belief. All right, Rewind two weeks, right? And I would have been talking to you, Corrigan, on this fucking podcast, right? With a kind of a mutated Resident Evil esque T virus. Fucking bulbous. [00:41:50] Speaker B: It was not that bad. [00:41:52] Speaker A: In my head it was. I would look in the mirror and I'd be like, monstroid, Lisa sue, right? I would be like the substance, just this bulbous, horrible, bulging cyst in my eyelid. Right, listeners, I won't dwell on this because this is a happy tale. I'm not going to open that up again. But [00:42:08] Speaker B: we know where this was going. But, yeah, a reminder of where this was going. [00:42:13] Speaker A: You'll know that I bought some kit, right? I'd been through the medical procedure twice to have these things removed, and I knew exactly how the doctor did it. And I bought the kit. I bought a pack of 10 disposable. Sterile scalpels I bought. And I've got them in the cupboard right now. Fuck knows what I'm gonna do with them. I bought a isolator cyst isolating clamp with a screw on it that I could pull my eyelid down with. Da, da, da, da, da. I bought the lot, right? And I had the date locked in. I was gonna do it this Friday, just gone. Or a week ago Friday. [00:42:44] Speaker B: I got the alert, the. I think it's. I think the time is coming. I think it's gonna be Friday or Saturday. [00:42:49] Speaker A: Really fucking hurt. It had started to hurt, and it was growing, and it was just vile. So everybody's advice was ringing in my ears, right, Eileen, Beautiful, beautiful piece of medically sound advice. [00:43:01] Speaker B: Yes. [00:43:02] Speaker A: Everybody's advice were just different ways of saying, mark, don't be a dick and don't do it. [00:43:09] Speaker B: Right, right. [00:43:10] Speaker A: I was all set to ignore that. [00:43:12] Speaker B: And [00:43:12] Speaker A: I was mapping it out in my head, right? Almost obsessively on the Thursday before. I was thinking, right, I'm gonna lay my equipment out, thus, I'm gonna do. I'm like. I was almost like a checklist in my head that I was going over and over and over and over and over. You're gonna clamp, pull, cut, irrigate, let go the clamp, disinfect, put the fucking cover over. And I was going over it because I don't want to fuck this up. I'll look like such a dick if I do this, and I can't. [00:43:43] Speaker B: Yeah, you could. You were. If you had to come onto this show and explain how you had permanently blinded yourself. Can you imagine? [00:43:49] Speaker A: Fucking hell. And I, [00:43:51] Speaker B: we'd be insufferable, [00:43:53] Speaker A: desperate not just to have, you know, alleviated the complaint itself, but also I wanted to not hurt myself, right? Yes. Over and over and over throughout the entire day. Clamp, pull, cut, irrigate. Clamp, pull, cut, irrigate. And do you know what happened? Well, you do, but listen to. You know what happened on the Friday, the day of the procedure, the cyst had gone or all but gone. It deflated. I woke up on the Friday morning with like a. Like a gunky as fuck eye because the growth, the cyst had, I'm gonna say, expunged itself. [00:44:38] Speaker B: Right? [00:44:38] Speaker A: Right. All over me, right? [00:44:41] Speaker B: This is so gross. [00:44:43] Speaker A: And now here's where the belief comes in. [00:44:46] Speaker B: Yeah. Cause that's, you know. Here we go. This is [00:44:49] Speaker A: twice. On two separate occasions, these fucking things had grown in my eyelid and stayed there for eight, nine, 10 months. They don't just heal themselves. They don't just go, right. So did I mind over matter myself? Did I command my body to almost evacuate this material by thinking so obsessively for fucking 18 hours non stop. Clamp, pull, cut, irrigate, clamp, pull, cut, excise, cut, heal, treat, surgery, surgery, cut, cut. And then overnight in my sleep, no less. [00:45:38] Speaker B: Yeah, [00:45:40] Speaker A: it took care of itself. I don't think that's a coincidence. Right, [00:45:50] Speaker B: interesting. [00:45:52] Speaker A: We have talked at length about the placebo effect. We've talked at length about the body's ability to effect observable, measurable physical change. [00:46:08] Speaker B: Right. [00:46:09] Speaker A: Did I, without realizing I was doing it using the Dennis method, frankly, sickness begone. Did I, did I give my body a command? [00:46:23] Speaker B: Can I just for the sake of argument, posit the other side of this, [00:46:30] Speaker A: please? [00:46:31] Speaker B: Did you worry yourself into the thing being there in the first place? Also a pots because we know that's a thing you do. Right? Too right. Like you're gonna, you don't want to go to school in the morning and you're like, I'm gonna pretend I'm sick and then you have a stomachache or something like that, or you actively develop symptoms of a cold, things like that. What if in fact you worried yourself into a cyst, which worked itself out [00:47:04] Speaker A: well [00:47:05] Speaker B: because it happened so fast, like you had literally just got in. [00:47:09] Speaker A: Surely the [00:47:10] Speaker B: pissed out of your eye, [00:47:11] Speaker A: you can see that it is not there anymore. [00:47:14] Speaker B: I mean, it looks basically the same as it did before to me, to be honest with you. [00:47:18] Speaker A: Well, [00:47:18] Speaker B: it [00:47:19] Speaker A: isn't. [00:47:19] Speaker B: I trust that if I were in your eye, I would be able to see that. But you know, if we're just talking about [00:47:26] Speaker A: there was material all over me, [00:47:28] Speaker B: right. If we're talking about, you know, just because it was so soon after you got them out. Like what if you were stressed out about getting another cyst? Getting [00:47:38] Speaker A: another one. Yeah. [00:47:39] Speaker B: And you somehow placeboed yourself into having a cyst, which then worked itself out, you backed your oils up in your eye and they eventually. [00:47:50] Speaker A: Well, surely either either way, that is evidence, quote unquote. [00:47:56] Speaker B: Yeah. It's not exactly peer reviewed. [00:47:59] Speaker A: Surely that is, [00:48:00] Speaker B: it's not a double blind spider. What [00:48:02] Speaker A: passes in my head for evidence of psychologically manifesting a physical change in my meat. [00:48:12] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, maybe I would also, you know, posit in your sleep, you may have just squeezed your eyeball or something. I mean, squeezed your eyelid or something of that nature as well. [00:48:24] Speaker A: That doesn't [00:48:24] Speaker B: work though. I squeeze it [00:48:25] Speaker A: a lot. Squeezing isn't. Does not do that. It's not like a, you know. [00:48:31] Speaker B: Also like, eyes don't just work cysts out, so you can't just go. It doesn't do that. [00:48:35] Speaker A: Well. Anyway, look, I don't dwell on it, but I formed a new belief this week. [00:48:39] Speaker B: It's a fully mind over matter. Mark has now become a faith healer is what we're telling you. [00:48:44] Speaker A: Oh, God. That's exactly what I. [00:48:46] Speaker B: So if you've got something that you need worked out, maybe Marco can guide you in a meditation. [00:48:52] Speaker A: Just sign up for my simple course with one easy payment. [00:49:01] Speaker B: How much is the one easy payment? [00:49:04] Speaker A: 300 quid. [00:49:06] Speaker B: That seems fair. [00:49:07] Speaker A: It's pretty good, isn't it? [00:49:08] Speaker B: Yeah, [00:49:08] Speaker A: that's fair. [00:49:09] Speaker B: So that's pretty fair. I think so. Get in touch. [00:49:13] Speaker A: Results not guaranteed. [00:49:17] Speaker B: I'm happy your sister's gone, though. [00:49:19] Speaker A: Yeah, so am I. I feel great. I feel like a newly said life. [00:49:21] Speaker B: Yeah. Sleeping [00:49:24] Speaker A: really well. [00:49:25] Speaker B: There you go. [00:49:25] Speaker A: I'm sleeping really well. And. Would you like to hear of that? [00:49:28] Speaker B: Sure, please. [00:49:29] Speaker A: Okay. We haven't. We haven't shared for a while. We haven't shared about our, you know, mental health journeys. I. Over the past. God over probably since spring, or at least until at least since the summer, since that horrible heat came and went. I've been gradually tapering my nighttime sleep meds, using off prescription sleep medication. And I know that's not great long term. [00:50:05] Speaker B: Sure. Yeah. [00:50:05] Speaker A: So without wanting to kind of jolt my body into doing something horrible, I've been tapering very gently, just half at a time. Half a pill down after a few months, half a pill down after a few months. And I'm at the lowest maintenance dose of sleep medication that I've been on for a couple of years. And it's holding, man. It's holding [00:50:25] Speaker B: nice [00:50:26] Speaker A: and it feels good. It is a really good feeling. Yeah. [00:50:31] Speaker B: You're almost making the sleep chemicals yourself at this point. [00:50:34] Speaker A: Or I'm making more of them, or I'm relying on synthetic ones a little less. [00:50:38] Speaker B: You're just like. You're on the cusp. [00:50:40] Speaker A: It's gotta be progress. [00:50:42] Speaker B: Yes, I would say so. [00:50:43] Speaker A: It's got to be progress. [00:50:45] Speaker B: Well, I'm very happy to hear that as well. [00:50:47] Speaker A: Yeah. I'm almost now back to how I was before I started talking about the German pedophile. [00:50:55] Speaker B: We're going back up. We're climbing that hill by the end of this podcast. Listen, there's a thing I wanted to talk to you about. It kind of relates to something that you brought up, like a month or so ago on this podcast. Which is, we talked about the fella who was going to walk from the Pacific Northwest to Brazil for the World cup and then made it to like the Oregon border and immediately got hit and killed by a truck, [00:51:26] Speaker A: fisted by an articulated lorry. I gotta tell you, I. That. Thanks for reminding me of that because that story really affected me. [00:51:34] Speaker B: Yeah, it was a horrible story. [00:51:35] Speaker A: It was. But in a Tim Treadwell kind of way. The guy obviously wasn't in a great place. [00:51:41] Speaker B: Right. [00:51:42] Speaker A: The guy obviously, [00:51:44] Speaker B: he was never going to make it. [00:51:46] Speaker A: Was just clinging to this idea as a life preserver, you know, on the bobbing waves of his own fucking life. Fall into bits, you know. [00:51:58] Speaker B: Right, yeah, exactly. [00:51:59] Speaker A: And didn't make it. And that's horrible. So talk to me about this other guy who walked, I think from Chile, [00:52:04] Speaker B: I believe it was Chile. And I don't have anything pulled up. This is just a conversation I wanted to have. But this. I'm sure other people have seen this in the news. This guy walked from Chile to [00:52:15] Speaker A: Kent, I want to say. [00:52:16] Speaker B: Yeah, I believe it's Kent in England. And he. It took him 28 years to do this. [00:52:25] Speaker A: Maybe 38, [00:52:26] Speaker B: I think it was. I want to. 38 [00:52:29] Speaker A: seems like a long time. [00:52:30] Speaker B: Yeah, because he. Well, that sort of so does. Yeah, 28 is many, many years as well, because 28, [00:52:38] Speaker A: you're right, it's 20 years. [00:52:39] Speaker B: Yes, 28 years. And I have found reaction to this really interesting because reaction is very mixed on this journey. I'm curious first on your thoughts on this because I can already tell they kind of differ a little bit. What do you think of walk from Chili guy? [00:52:59] Speaker A: What I think so, I. You don't do that if everything is going well. [00:53:08] Speaker B: No. [00:53:09] Speaker A: How about that? [00:53:09] Speaker B: Yes. [00:53:10] Speaker A: We start there. That's not the kind of choice you make. You're either walking away from something or walking to something, aren't you? Either way, you. You do that if you want to be somewhere other than where you are. And I mean, there's a, you know, mentally or whatever. [00:53:27] Speaker B: Right. [00:53:28] Speaker A: So the framing that I've seen of this as being some kind of triumph, as being some kind of story of humanity's indomitable will to overcome this good news story. Like, you know, they. They'd cast Tom Hanks as this guy. [00:53:53] Speaker B: Totally. Yeah. [00:53:54] Speaker A: You know, I don't buy [00:53:55] Speaker B: that. Absolute. Yeah. [00:53:57] Speaker A: To me, this feels like a 28 year long fucking mental illness episode. [00:54:05] Speaker B: Right. Yeah, [00:54:06] Speaker A: that's. And I. And that. That isn't something to be celebrated. It's certainly something to be studied and something to be talked about because it's no small fucking feat. Holy shit. [00:54:15] Speaker B: Right? Like [00:54:16] Speaker A: fuck. [00:54:17] Speaker B: Mm. [00:54:18] Speaker A: But again, you don't, you don't do that if things are cool. [00:54:24] Speaker B: Yeah, Actually, I think, you know, we're not necessarily far off on this. I've been very startled by the attempt to make it into like some sort of like. Yeah. Feel good. Yeah. Human triumph story or whatever. Because I don't think there is any way to frame it that way. I think it is. It's a mental breakdown over the course of three decades. And it's a man who, I mean, he had a. He had an eight year old child. [00:54:50] Speaker A: That's true. [00:54:51] Speaker B: Who, you know, people have kind of. Yeah, people have tried to justify this by going, well, so he and his wife divorced, she moved to Northern Ireland, and because he was like a British soldier, he was not allowed to move there, which doesn't make sense, but apparently that's the thing that they say. I'm like, it's literally British. So I think they'd invite British soldiers to live there. But this is the excuse people are giving on the Internet and whatever for. Fine. That maybe gives you a few years. 28 years ago was what year? 19. Eight [00:55:26] Speaker A: years ago. 98. [00:55:30] Speaker B: Right. So this is technically post Troubles. Right? So this doesn't make any sense whatsoever. But let's say for some reason in this just post troubles era, he can't live there. All right? Give it two years and then go live with your fucking son. Right. Like instead he has always. Another [00:55:52] Speaker A: way. [00:55:53] Speaker B: Yeah. I'm thinking like, Mark, imagine as a father of two beloved boys who are your absolute life. [00:56:03] Speaker A: They sure are [00:56:05] Speaker B: taking six months and not seeing those children. [00:56:09] Speaker A: Couldn't be me, [00:56:10] Speaker B: couldn't be you. Right? Like that is if it were the case that it was like, all right, his kids live in another country that's a 30 minute plane ride away. Like, he would be doing everything in his power to get to that kid, but he did not do that. He left that child for 28 years. And that kid, bless him, did come and like visit him on his walk a few. Few times, you know, things like that. So, you know, fine, they've healed their relationship, whatever the case may be. It's still fucking ridiculous to me that a parent would do this. And then on top of it, it's, you know, it didn't take 28 years for him to walk. Someone like averaged it out. And that's like three miles a day. Three miles a day, that's. That's crazy. And there's times at which like he got stuck at Borders and stuff. I mean. Yeah. Being charitable. [00:57:00] Speaker A: It's not. It's not all just walking, is it? There's climbing and swimming. [00:57:04] Speaker B: Well. And he had to take some flights to, like, various places, you know? And then I think eventually he took a boat. Right. Or. I don't know. There's some. There's a few areas in which he could not walk. This. In which case. I mean, it just sort of is like. So a guy just took a really long time to get home. [00:57:28] Speaker A: No, no, come on. [00:57:30] Speaker B: I don't. That's not. That's not even a story. That is. He moved to South America is what happened. He did not walk for 28 years. He moved to South America and he just moved back to England is what occurred. If I go for. If I walk for three miles, I haven't left this town. Okay? Like, that's. That's not how this works. If he walked for 28 years, he would have gotten home 20 years ago. [00:58:01] Speaker A: I think there's. I think maybe my view falls kind of between your view and the BBC's view, [00:58:09] Speaker B: right? [00:58:11] Speaker A: I wouldn't. I don't. I put more reverence and more respect on his. On what I believe to be an achievement. He was on the move for that entire time. [00:58:21] Speaker B: No, he wasn't. [00:58:22] Speaker A: Was he not [00:58:23] Speaker B: if he were on the move that entire time, he would have been home 20 years ago. [00:58:28] Speaker A: Right. I'm. I'm gonna. I'm gonna belay my response here. I'll come back to you next week, [00:58:35] Speaker B: Chris. Yeah, yeah, Check into it. Yeah, I think if you're gonna. If you're gonna treat that like an achievement, right, you have to be walking at least, like, 10 miles a day. [00:58:48] Speaker A: Well, I'm. Like. I say I'm gonna belay my response. All I've seen is the media. I haven't done [00:58:52] Speaker B: my own [00:58:52] Speaker A: research, and that's important. So before I get on the fucking. The Corrie. Hate train, right? [00:59:01] Speaker B: It's not a hate train. I just think, like, the. The response is. Is. I don't know. It's wrong. If this response is wrong, we're looking at. If it was as [00:59:14] Speaker A: flimsy as you're making out. I'm sure someone else might have pointed that out, but I've seen nothing. [00:59:20] Speaker B: Oh, I've seen a lot of people pointing out. You [00:59:22] Speaker A: have? Okay. [00:59:23] Speaker B: Yeah. Like I said, I didn't do that calculation. What I. From someone else [00:59:27] Speaker A: is that he's always seemed bewildered. He's always. Whenever I've seen the guy talking, he's Always seemed kind of. Oh, well. Yeah. You know. [00:59:37] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. So. Yeah. No, I do agree with you that I think it is, you know, a story of. I mean, and that's a story of something more interesting, too. Why does a man leave his life for 28 years under this. Yeah. Under the idea [00:59:55] Speaker A: that [00:59:55] Speaker B: he's walking home, which is not what he's doing. I think that's interesting. You know, [01:00:00] Speaker A: that's the story for me, [01:00:01] Speaker B: what was really going [01:00:02] Speaker A: on. [01:00:03] Speaker B: What was going on here, you know? And I feel like, I don't know, maybe someday we'll get that story. I don't know if we will. I don't know if that's the story people want from this is. Why the fuck did he do that? I think they want to believe it's as straightforward as it is. [01:00:19] Speaker C: But I. You know, I won't say that I don't get it. [01:00:23] Speaker B: Walking away for 20 years. [01:00:26] Speaker C: There have been days, man. [01:00:30] Speaker B: Sure. You know, I mean, but like I said, I think at the end of the day, like, you could. You could never. Because you have two boys that you love more than anything in the world. Right. Like whatever. Whatever spawned whatever pushed you away. There would be something that would pull you home before this would happen [01:00:56] Speaker A: completely. [01:00:58] Speaker B: Just a thing I was. I wanted to hear your perspective on, and I found your perspective very interesting. So thank you for. And [01:01:05] Speaker A: I mean what I say. I shall come back to you. [01:01:07] Speaker B: Oh, yes, please do. [01:01:08] Speaker A: I'll formulate a more considered opinion. [01:01:13] Speaker B: Indeed. Well, friends, this week, because it has been so many weeks since. [01:01:20] Speaker A: Just super briefly. [01:01:22] Speaker B: Sorry, go ahead. [01:01:23] Speaker A: Super briefly, you say? This week. Quite a week. [01:01:26] Speaker B: Quite a week. Yes, I forgot. We were just. We were gonna recap a little bit of this week, [01:01:33] Speaker A: just to restate thesis. Right, yeah. [01:01:37] Speaker B: Not a current events podcast. [01:01:38] Speaker A: Not a current event podcast, but a living document of the era. Right. [01:01:45] Speaker B: Not [01:01:45] Speaker A: current events. Absolutely not. But in the future, when, you know, when hackers are tapping into the fucking underground frequencies and the bandwidth is opened up and they're able to jack in to the lost networks and rifle through the archives of what came before, what was the. Amidst the ruins of humanity and they happen upon the Joag archive, and they just rifle through and pick out this week's episode, it is our duty to let them know what occurred here. It is our duty to bear witness to events that have come to pass. And there's certainly been some this week. [01:02:34] Speaker B: Yeah, [01:02:36] Speaker A: it's. I wouldn't go as far as to say that it gives you hope. [01:02:42] Speaker B: Yeah. I don't know if that's the right word, per se. [01:02:46] Speaker A: Well, it isn't. It isn't the right word because it gives me no hope. [01:02:49] Speaker B: I [01:02:50] Speaker A: have no hope. [01:02:51] Speaker B: What? So this week, which right now, it is November 8th of 2026. Cute [01:02:58] Speaker A: how you say that. You just miss out a load of letters from. 8th. 8th. [01:03:07] Speaker B: Say it again. [01:03:09] Speaker A: 8th. 8th. E, I, G, T, H, T, H. [01:03:12] Speaker B: 8th. [01:03:13] Speaker A: 8th. Yeah. Thank you. One [01:03:14] Speaker B: more [01:03:15] Speaker A: time. [01:03:16] Speaker B: 8th. [01:03:18] Speaker A: It's better than 8th. [01:03:20] Speaker B: November 8th. [01:03:22] Speaker A: Yep. 2026. [01:03:25] Speaker B: 2026. And this past week, we had our midterm elections here in the United States in which tons of. Not just, like, Congress seats, but governors, mayors, various propositions, all sorts of things were up all over the United States for people to vote on. But probably most specifically, our Senates and House of Representatives were kind of big things that were. [01:03:54] Speaker A: I imagine you'll know this if I ask. I mean, just to put this in terms of scale and context for the non Americans out there. [01:04:02] Speaker B: Sure. [01:04:04] Speaker A: This is the biggest swing in how long? [01:04:11] Speaker B: That I don't necessarily know. In, like, years or whatever. [01:04:16] Speaker A: I think somebody is. I'm sure I've heard it since Watergate, perhaps. [01:04:21] Speaker B: It's possible. Yeah. I mean, what you tend to see is, like, often when it comes to, like, you know, there's a president from one party that there's maybe like, a little bit of a swing towards the other party and kind of. Kind of this, like, idea of, like, balancing things out. People maybe vote a little more for the other party in those. Those seats, but not like this. In which case we went from like, a, you know, Republican majority in our Congress to like, a large Democrat majority, which, if you. This is the funniest thing, because all the pundits are like, well, they were all on X. And we're like, oh, yeah, you know, it's. It's. People don't like liberal policies, blah, blah. You have to cater to the. To the right wing or we'll never win any elections or things like that. And everyone on Blue sky was like, fuck that people are going to vote Democrats because they hate Trump so much and they hate everything that's going on. And then Blue sky was right. [01:05:19] Speaker A: Which speaks to the suspicion that I have. Right. Mm. Is it like. Is it a similar set of circumstances to your [01:05:30] Speaker B: last labor general [01:05:31] Speaker A: election that we had over here? [01:05:33] Speaker B: That's. Yeah, that's kind of my. Did [01:05:35] Speaker A: Democrats win or did. [01:05:37] Speaker B: Or did Trump lose? Yeah. [01:05:39] Speaker A: Yes, [01:05:39] Speaker B: exactly. And I definitely think that that is kind of the risk here. And I think people are trying to activate a little bit to make sure that's not the case. So, for example, you've probably seen Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, who are kind of our villains of the Democratic Party, or leaders of the Democratic Party who are Republicans, basically, and do everything in their power to make sure that the left wing never makes any progress. So people are really kind of coming out and being like, they cannot be the leadership. You know, call your representatives and be like, do not vote for these people to be in the leadership of the Democratic Party moving forward, because we are not going to make any progress if they're in charge. So, like, I think there is, like, when Biden was elected, people really had this, like, and now we're going back to brunch kind of attitude. Like, phew, great, everything. We're. We don't have to do any more work, you know, obviously not like activists and things like that. There's plenty of people who were trying to do stuff, but really they kind of rested on their laurels in that way and didn't do anything. Didn't like, you know, codify abortion, for example, so that the Supreme Court couldn't take away that. Right. You know, stuff like that. They didn't do what they said they were going to do, you know, promise that student loans, you know, federal student loans would be erased. And instead, you know, it made it worse. And everyone owes more in student loans than they did before that. So so many things they promised didn't happen. And, like, nobody pushed back on that in, like, a large scale, meaningful way, which feels like there is much more awareness of that this time that, like, all right, we voted these people into place and like, more normies, I would say, I see actively being like, [01:07:24] Speaker A: yeah, yeah, [01:07:25] Speaker B: we need to push this because there's obviously the leftists who are like, this is not enough. Right. But it's when you start seeing the normies go, this shit needs to change that, you know, that there's, you know, something going on. And so that's the one thing I would say may prevent it from turning out. Like in the UK when Labor won and then just fully shit the bed and turned into a Conservative party and everything went horribly awry. [01:07:53] Speaker A: Was. Am I right? Would you agree with the categorization that seems to the, The. It's certainly what I've heard everywhere I choose to listen to, which is admittedly left leaning. [01:08:08] Speaker B: Yeah, right. Of course, [01:08:10] Speaker A: you know, podcasts. [01:08:11] Speaker B: Right. But [01:08:12] Speaker A: it's, it's, it's fuel, isn't it? That. That's been the tipping point. That's been, [01:08:17] Speaker B: I think to an extent. I think the Republicans are really trying to frame it that way too, so that it's easier to, like, say, get rid of Pete Hegseth and then be like, everything's fine. Right? Like, you know, he started this war and we're just gonna like him off, and then like, don't worry, everything's okay, or whatever. They're really trying to, like, make it like, oh, it's not Trump. It's not the administration that's unpopular. It's just this damn war and the gas, like, that's the issue. But I don't think. I mean, I think it did turn a lot of Republicans for sure. You see like, man on the street interviews with, like, people Trump supporters at Gas Stat that are just like, [01:08:57] Speaker A: sure, [01:08:58] Speaker B: fuck me, I hate this guy now because gas is so expensive. I don't want to downplay that. That was a huge thing. But also, like, so Hispanic and Latino populations turned out in huge droves for Trump in the election, and that flipped because obviously ICE has terrorized Latino communities. And they don't care who you voted for. They don't care if you were a Trump supporter. All they see is a brown person and they will deport, deport you to some country you didn't come from if you don't die in jail. And before they do that. And that kind of thing makes a huge impact on people. Shooting dead to white people who are protesting, like, that has an impact on white people who might otherwise vote for Trump. Right. Like, they're like, we still see this as a free country. You can't just go, like, murdering Americans. You know, there's. The economy is fucked. Our groceries are so expensive. They're talking about food shortages, all kinds of stuff. So I think at the end of the day, gas is like emblematic [01:10:03] Speaker A: food shortages. Food [01:10:05] Speaker B: shortages. Yes. [01:10:06] Speaker A: In the fucking richest country on Earth in 2026. [01:10:13] Speaker B: Exactly. And of course, part of that is a climate change issue. Right. Which then, of course, another unpopular thing the Trump admin is doing is trying to like, you know, use public lands that are ours for things that will continue to destroy the environment, which people are not into. Data centers. Exactly. Drilling, like, all kinds of stuff that are hugely unpopular to people. [01:10:37] Speaker A: Well, and on that, the Republican midterm massacre was immediately followed this week. Buy While, you know, it's nowhere near the sequence of catastrophic failure that needs to happen in that sector, but what seems to be a gigantic deletion of value from the share prices and the stock prices of many major tech companies, [01:11:16] Speaker B: right. They see the writing on the wall here. They know where they're, you know, where the money was coming from and who was deregulating the industry so that they could continue to build and build and build. And whether they're correct or not, the perception is that a Democrat loaded Congress is going to stop that from happening, that those are not the people that they have in their pockets right now. I mean, Mark, this whole thing is like genuinely funny to an extent because you have, that. You have the, you know, just immediate downturn in the value of AI related stocks and things like that. You have the cybertruck immediately going out of production. You have companies that are immediately returning to DEI stuff that they had ditched two years ago when Trump said to get rid of it. They, all these people are. And these corporations are seeing like, oh, fuck, we, we planned like this was forever and now we're supposed to like, win back the American people. And we have just spent the last couple years like, stripping them of their jobs, their, you know, access, their, you know, all these different things. And it is really interesting to watch just in a week, how much things have flipped [01:12:42] Speaker A: just in a week. And I. Not something I've ever in my life ever done before, but I'm looking at stock prices right now. And yes, Alphabet and Nvidia have risen since Friday to maybe a half or two thirds what they were at the start of last week. [01:13:05] Speaker B: Yeah, it's pretty incredible. And I mean, I think that's. So when we talk about, like being hopeful or whatever, that these corporations seem to be scared is kind of a thing to be hopeful for because they at least perceive that this new Democrat Democratic government is going to be unfriendly to them. Now the question is, will they? [01:13:27] Speaker A: Certainly appears to me to be a moment where that facade that we've spoken about of this is the most transformative and dangerous power that we will ever see. And the very future of humanity depends on us being the ones to wield this inevitable unknowable force. It certainly makes that start to seem like bullshit to the average fucking guy in the street, whereby all of your fucking, you know, just a bad result, a bad night for one government can send that entire house of cards shaking. [01:14:09] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think this is what is so interesting about this, is that this really is a moment where it determines whether all of this is or not. Right? Because we have a majority, majority now. It's like one of the things that like the Dems kind of have relied on is that there's always like a spoiler, right? You've got your Fetterman, your mansion, your cinema, someone like that, who they can always go, we would have had it, but that one person, you know, voted with the Republicans. So what are you gonna do? And now that that is not the case, they basically have to either do what their constituents are asking them to do or acknowledge that this is not a party that does what it says it does and that it actually wants those conservative policies that it's been pretending that there's a spoiler candidate getting in the way of. So it's really a moment where, like, the Democrats have to, like, take a side. They can't just be like, oh, our hands are tied by xyz. Now, if they. If they don't want to fight for trans rights, they're gonna have to say they don't want to fight for trans rights. If they don't want Medicare for All, they're gonna have to say they don't want Medicare for All. [01:15:23] Speaker A: Yeah, [01:15:24] Speaker B: they can't blame it on a Fetterman when their policies don't go through. [01:15:30] Speaker A: Fascinating. That was [01:15:32] Speaker B: the [01:15:32] Speaker A: week. That was the week. [01:15:34] Speaker B: The week. It's been. It's been something. [01:15:37] Speaker A: And you. You mentioned before we started recording, you know, again, in and of itself, there's no. There's no real change, tangible change from this week. But it's like the oven fan has gone off for a little moment, isn't it? [01:15:57] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Very interesting. We'll see what happens. We will continue to document as it moves forward. [01:16:04] Speaker A: Oh, we. It's our cause, it's our calling. [01:16:07] Speaker B: There's [01:16:08] Speaker A: nothing else we could do. I don't even know if anyone is listening to this. You know what I mean? It doesn't stop me. [01:16:17] Speaker B: Yeah, it's true, [01:16:19] Speaker A: you know, [01:16:22] Speaker B: very good point. [01:16:23] Speaker A: And anyway, what we have for the remainder of this episode, what we have next coming up for you, is because we haven't spoken about our consumption of media in weeks. [01:16:35] Speaker B: Yeah, Yep. We. We missed an episode just because. Busy life things. And then we had Craig on here last week, [01:16:44] Speaker A: a lovely guy, [01:16:45] Speaker B: an absolute delight. So great. [01:16:47] Speaker A: Fucking absolutely lovely guy. [01:16:50] Speaker B: So wonderful. Just delighted. Slotted right in here, you know, chat shit with us in the best possible way. So, by the way, as we talked, Craig Wallwork, his book, the Instruction Manual to Being a Vampire, was a little difficult for Marco to get a hold of. It's. It's one of those books that, like, you know, you kind of had to go to the Evil Empire of Amazon if you wanted to buy a hard copy. But of course, our dear Ryan has come Through. So you can go to gibsonsbookstore.com and you can order your hard copy of the instruction manual to being a vampire by Craig Wahlberg. And I highly recommend it. It's delightful. I know Laura's reading it right now because it's her no vampire. Where she reads books. Oh, that's [01:17:38] Speaker A: very good. Like November. Yeah. [01:17:40] Speaker B: Yes. So pick it up. [01:17:45] Speaker A: Just briefly talk of a book. I'm holding a book up right here called [01:17:48] Speaker B: you are [01:17:49] Speaker A: the ones you love by Sarah Maria Griffin. It's from the box, right? It's from the international box of horror fiction from Ryan Gibson's books. New England, right? [01:18:04] Speaker B: Yep. [01:18:04] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:18:05] Speaker B: Conquered New England. [01:18:06] Speaker A: Takes place in Dublin and is just super dark, super authentic exploration of love and regret and fucking missed opportunities in small town island. The life you missed out on, the life you failed at, the life you fucking yearn for, the person you fucking wish you could be. Set in the framing device of a plant that can fucking read your mind and eats people. [01:18:42] Speaker B: Excellent. [01:18:43] Speaker A: Yep, I'm [01:18:44] Speaker B: in. [01:18:44] Speaker A: Wonderful. Couldn't put it down. [01:18:46] Speaker B: Beautiful. So many thanks to Ryan for all of these things. [01:18:50] Speaker A: Yes. Best. [01:18:52] Speaker B: I'm about halfway through Trad Wife at the moment and enjoying that action. I [01:18:57] Speaker A: think one more sitting on Trad Wife and I have it finished. I've got [01:19:00] Speaker B: about [01:19:00] Speaker A: 30, 40 pages left. Great. [01:19:01] Speaker B: Yeah. I haven't had a ton of time this week and it's been a busier weekend than I usually have. I've gone out like each day. Today I volunteered to help with a cemetery tour. So I did that this afternoon. Yes. With the history center, of course. That's [01:19:16] Speaker A: nice. That's [01:19:16] Speaker B: lovely. So I did that yesterday. We went to. I mean, it was Friday. Gosh, I don't. I don't even know. We went to. Oh, yesterday. Went and saw Godzilla, which we'll talk about, obviously. And then we went to Applebee's, which was a delight. Made me feel very like 90s, 2000s to go and do that. And the day before that, we went to this thing called Choir. Choir. Choir. And they go around. Yeah, I mean, I'm kind of with you on that face. Did not enjoy it. They go to different places and they teach you to sing songs like a choir. So like this one, the theme was like anthems. [01:19:53] Speaker A: No fucking thanks. [01:19:54] Speaker B: No, thank you. Yeah, for one, it felt like I was in church. I mean, it was in a church, but it was a really pretty church. But that was nothing to [01:20:00] Speaker A: do with choir. Choir, choir. [01:20:02] Speaker B: See, here's. So I was in choir, you know, when I. Oh, so was I. [01:20:05] Speaker A: So was I. So. [01:20:06] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. And the worst part of choir is learning the songs. And so my thought, what I said to Kiyo afterwards is like, I'd just kind of rather see, like, a cover band, you know, If I want to, like, sing along to, like, songs, let's just have someone play covers. And I'll just pay for this. Yeah, you. But you buy tickets, you go and they teach you. And the thing. So, like, their big one, like, you know, they do like a couple, like, small things. They teach you, like, little parts or whatever. And then their big one at the end of this one was Hallelujah. You [01:20:35] Speaker A: paid for this? [01:20:36] Speaker B: Yes, this is Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah. And they teach the parts. And when it came together, it sounded lovely, don't get me wrong. But I was so bored because it's like, again, I was in choir, so, like, if you teach me the part, I. I can remember the part. Most people cannot do that. Right? So there's so much repeating these things because as soon as he goes to teach the other part, the people over here have forgotten their part. [01:21:05] Speaker A: Is it well attended? [01:21:06] Speaker B: A lot [01:21:07] Speaker A: of people come to [01:21:07] Speaker B: this. Yes. 500 people in this church. Crazy to me. And everyone loved it. Don't get me wrong, I am the odd man out on this. Like, people fucking loved this. They had the time of their life. I will also say Keno and I were the only non white people in that whole church. I was searching. It's like there's. And I live in a town that's like. Like 30% black or 40% black or something like that. There was no other people of color in this entire thing. I was like, I think we have found the whitest thing you can do on a Friday night in Montclair. Like, black people said, nah, we have church. If we would like to sing, like a choir, and we'll figure out the harmony ourselves. [01:21:50] Speaker A: What a week. [01:21:51] Speaker B: Yeah, but so all that to say I haven't had, like, a ton of reading time and things like that, because for once, I've left the house every day of the weekend, which does not happen very often. [01:22:01] Speaker C: Good. [01:22:02] Speaker B: I'm a homebody, Marco. I think you know that about me. [01:22:05] Speaker A: Same. I'm a homebody, but I'm married to someone who loves activities. [01:22:09] Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah. You're forced to leave the house on a pretty. But that's probably for the best, though, because you. You would just be like, at home 247 if you didn't have someone who was like, [01:22:21] Speaker A: well, that's sort of that's my [01:22:22] Speaker B: mark. [01:22:23] Speaker A: I push back on that. I mean, I'd. You know, I run, I go to the [01:22:27] Speaker B: gym. [01:22:28] Speaker A: I do things [01:22:28] Speaker B: I enjoy. So do I. Still a homebody? [01:22:31] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. [01:22:32] Speaker B: The only place I go is the gym. Whenever I, like, go out and I run into people and I actually know them, it's from the gym or the pool and maybe the history center. The three places that I go. Or someone who's like a local political figure and I go to [01:22:50] Speaker A: movies. [01:22:50] Speaker B: Marco. I also. I forgot about this. On Thursday, I went to, like, a little, like, watch party for the local elections or Tuesday I went to a watch party for the local elections as well. So, like. Like the. It was like, just to, like, watch all the. Yeah. Results or whatever. Wasn't really watching that, but like, I was at this, like, little party with like, several of the, like, local council members and things like that there. So. [01:23:15] Speaker A: Get you. It's cool. [01:23:16] Speaker B: Look at me. Crazy. Blame Melanie for that one. Shout out. But yes, movies. [01:23:25] Speaker A: It isn't just the gym I go to. I also go to the movies. [01:23:29] Speaker B: You do go to the movies. As do I. We have. Left to our own devices. We have very similar places. Two places. [01:23:36] Speaker A: I'd go two places. [01:23:37] Speaker B: Gym and movies. [01:23:38] Speaker A: Yeah. And we gotta get through some of these because we got so many. We got fucking. [01:23:43] Speaker B: We have a ton. And not everything needs to be discussed at length. We. I will say so. We. For our KO Fi, we did watch Ghost in the Cell. And we're gonna have a lot to talk about with Ghost in the Cell, so please watch it. [01:23:58] Speaker A: Ghost in the Cell has, in the space of less than two hours, validated six years of this podcast for me. [01:24:11] Speaker B: Oh, wow. [01:24:12] Speaker A: If it all led. If I could say that it all led to my watching Ghost in the Cell, it all would have been worth it. [01:24:19] Speaker B: This is such a perfect, like, I love you so much, Marco. This is so you. That you make such a big statement on a movie that you gave four stars to. [01:24:32] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, force us. Eight out of ten. That is excellent. That is a wonderful, wonderful film. [01:24:37] Speaker B: It's a B plus. That's just a B. Regular B. But I just. I just love that. That it's like you have your. Your reasons behind this. But yes, Ghost in the Cell is great, and I would love if you all watch that and we talk about it. I've [01:24:54] Speaker A: thought of. I've thought about Ghost in the Cell pretty much every day since we've seen it. Right. It's been. It's occupied fucking space in my. In my head. Ever since seeing it. And while we won't talk about it in depth, here. Here's the best way I can put it right, [01:25:09] Speaker B: please. [01:25:10] Speaker A: You can walk in to Boots or cvs. Right. [01:25:14] Speaker B: Okay. [01:25:15] Speaker A: And buy a bottle of Tylenol. Right. Paracetamol. Right, [01:25:20] Speaker B: Sure. I love this instant translation that's happening for everything that you say, [01:25:25] Speaker A: isn't that good? [01:25:25] Speaker B: It's great. [01:25:27] Speaker A: But they're not doing any of the research into solving illnesses in cvs. They're not doing the work. [01:25:37] Speaker B: Right, [01:25:37] Speaker A: right. Ghost in the Cell is doing the work. [01:25:43] Speaker B: Interesting. [01:25:45] Speaker A: Right, [01:25:45] Speaker B: okay. [01:25:46] Speaker A: Whereas you can get served up the effects and the impact that Ghost in the Cell gives you in any one of a number of places. You could watch Obsessions. [01:25:55] Speaker B: Sure. [01:25:55] Speaker A: Or you could watch Evil Dead Burn. Right, [01:25:58] Speaker B: sure. [01:25:59] Speaker A: And get the Tylenol. [01:26:01] Speaker B: Right. [01:26:02] Speaker A: But those movies aren't doing the work. Ghost in the Cell is putting the fucking work in to push forward the science. [01:26:10] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. I love that. [01:26:13] Speaker A: That's what I'm talking about. [01:26:17] Speaker B: So please watch it. It is worth your time. And then we're gonna talk about that and post a podcast episode solely dedicated to that one. Last night, Mark, I watched for the. This is probably gonna surprise you. For the very first time, I saw Maximum Overdrive. [01:26:34] Speaker A: That's great. Great. Or [01:26:36] Speaker B: is it [01:26:37] Speaker A: great? I don't know, because I've not seen it in about 30 years. [01:26:39] Speaker B: Yeah, right. And it was great because Keo was. He had this really distinct memory of the commercial for it when it came out. [01:26:51] Speaker A: Is. Does Maximum Overdrive star Emilio Estevez? [01:26:54] Speaker B: Yes. [01:26:55] Speaker A: Right, fine. [01:26:56] Speaker B: You've got the right movie. Yes. That's the one you're thinking about. [01:26:59] Speaker A: Does Emilio Estevez also star in a movie called Terminal Velocity? [01:27:07] Speaker B: What's really funny is I think that you have multiple times confused Terminal Velocity with other things. [01:27:14] Speaker A: Have I? [01:27:15] Speaker B: Yes. And I don't know if Emilio Estevez is in this, but I'm fairly certain this is not the first time that you have. [01:27:22] Speaker A: That's interesting. [01:27:23] Speaker B: Terminal Velocity was a different movie than it is [01:27:29] Speaker A: because in and of themselves, those two titles are the same. Maximum Overdrive and Terminal Velocity. They are the same fucking title. [01:27:40] Speaker B: And [01:27:40] Speaker A: if Emilio Estevez is in on both, [01:27:43] Speaker B: that's just lazy. [01:27:45] Speaker A: You're gonna be all fucked up. [01:27:46] Speaker B: When I look up Terminal Velocity, I do not get the movie at all because I so broken. Terminal Velocity, 1990, Charlie Sheen. That's fair, because that's almost Emilio estate. Again. [01:28:00] Speaker A: That's fair. [01:28:02] Speaker B: Yeah, You're. You were in the right ballpark, the right family, literally. [01:28:07] Speaker A: They're almost like Parodies of one another. Those two movies. [01:28:12] Speaker B: Maybe. I've never seen Terminal Velocity, so I. [01:28:15] Speaker A: I don't even [01:28:16] Speaker B: know. I don't know [01:28:17] Speaker A: if I have. [01:28:18] Speaker B: Yeah. I'm gonna say it probably is zero. Like, Maximum Overdrive. Other than in their leading man [01:28:24] Speaker A: and their titles. [01:28:26] Speaker B: They don't have the same leading man. They're just related to each other. [01:28:31] Speaker A: Yeah. They're synonyms of one another. [01:28:34] Speaker B: Right. So Maximum Overdrive. Kyo had this memory of the seeing the trailer or the commercial when he was a kid, and it has. He was like, it's got Stephen King in the commercial. And he's like, my name is Stephen King. I'm gonna scare the hell out of you. And then he found it online, found this thing. But Keo was like a little Christian kid, and so he was like, oh. He said, hell, and it's supposed to be scary. He's like, I don't want to see this movie. And so we watched it last night, and I don't know if he'd ever. He had seen it by this time, but I had never seen this movie before, and its reputation is, like, classically like, this is a shitty movie from Stephen King's cocaine era. You know, like, whatever. Pre [01:29:19] Speaker A: Accident. [01:29:22] Speaker B: I want to say yes. Yeah. [01:29:23] Speaker A: It would make a lot of sense to me if he was hit by a motor vehicle [01:29:29] Speaker B: and then wrote a story about it. I don't think so. I don't. I mean, I think that makes sense pre then, but I'm not entirely. [01:29:38] Speaker A: Is it okay? Yeah. Is it good? [01:29:40] Speaker B: I thought it was a lot of fun. There is such insane violence. It's so goofy. It feels like, you know. Yeah, it's cocaine fueled, but in a way that, like, it's the cocaine fueled movie he wanted to make. So it's like, exact. It's intentional how insane it is. [01:29:57] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:29:58] Speaker B: And so you have like. Like, there's like a whole, like, real them kids scene where it's like a bunch of kids get, like, nailed by, like, sodas flying out of a soda machine and killed. Remember that? And then one of them gets run over by one of those, like, what's the thing in Austin Powers Thresher Flattens the guy. Yeah. Oh, Zamboni. Not a Zamboni. But it's like. [01:30:18] Speaker A: Like a. Like a [01:30:19] Speaker B: land Zamboni, you know? Flash. Yeah, [01:30:21] Speaker A: yeah, yeah. A steamroller. [01:30:24] Speaker B: Steamroller. Thank you. [01:30:26] Speaker A: Land Zamboni. Corrigan. [01:30:32] Speaker B: That's autism, baby. But a kid gets rolled over by one of those, and you see, like, his head explode out of it like a child Mark, like, it is so just like, doesn't give a shit. Everyone's getting pulled apart and like, from the opening scene. And I don't. I think because I've. I'd only ever seen the poster. I was imagining it more like. Like cat, not Carrie. Christine meets Duel. I thought it was like one truck. Oh, [01:31:01] Speaker A: no, [01:31:01] Speaker B: that was like maybe possessed or something. But yeah, it's like all the machines. And I'll say that, like, it does manage to drag, even though it's only 98 minutes long. There's like a section of it where you're kind of like, this movie's kind of done, you know? But overall, I was expecting, like an absolute disaster. But I'm going to. To use Alfie's term, call this a trashed or piece. I had a great time watching that. Such a great. [01:31:31] Speaker A: There's a whole bunch of Big Steve's stories which are what if this thing. But haunted, [01:31:40] Speaker B: right? Exactly. [01:31:42] Speaker A: Millions, Like a million [01:31:43] Speaker B: percent. Yeah. Which is a genre of thing I enjoy. I think the idea of thing being haunted is a scary concept and also fun to play with. [01:31:53] Speaker A: Yeah, sure. [01:31:54] Speaker B: I [01:31:55] Speaker A: could look to my left and see like nine of his. What if this book Spooky, [01:31:59] Speaker B: right? So I would say, listen, if you haven't watched Maximum Overdrive in a minute, watch it go in with an open heart. And it is a fun little ride. [01:32:08] Speaker A: What a great wreck. I will take you up on that. I'm [01:32:11] Speaker B: good. [01:32:12] Speaker A: Super, super into that idea. [01:32:13] Speaker B: You took me up on another wreck this week. [01:32:16] Speaker A: Did I? [01:32:17] Speaker B: You did a very subtle wreck that I gave you this week. You're gonna talk about the [01:32:22] Speaker A: cycle. [01:32:23] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:32:24] Speaker A: Right again, There are movies out there doing the work, right? [01:32:31] Speaker B: Yes. Mm. [01:32:33] Speaker A: There are movies out there. Right. When. When, as I often do, when I talk about horror being so healthy right now, being in such a fucking robust place. Right. It's tempting to just go obsession back rooms, right? [01:32:50] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:32:50] Speaker A: You know what I mean? Resident Evil, all of the. The tent [01:32:54] Speaker B: pole horrors doing [01:32:55] Speaker A: huge numbers. Right. And grabbing the headlines. Curry buck. Right. But they're also movies that are never gonna be on the landing page of Variety or whatever, [01:33:11] Speaker B: Right. [01:33:11] Speaker A: That are out there fucking eight scrolls deep on shudder. Right? [01:33:18] Speaker B: Yep. [01:33:19] Speaker A: That are doing the work. [01:33:21] Speaker B: Right. [01:33:22] Speaker A: And the cycle is one of them. And Corey, you sold this motherfucker. You. It was like, oh, you played me. You played me. You gave me everything I needed to know to prioritize watching this film. And then you pulled a sneaky on me and you didn't tell me what it was. And listener, I'm not going to tell you what it is either. [01:33:46] Speaker B: No. [01:33:46] Speaker A: Right. Other than to say that the cycle is out there right now on shudder. It's got Deborah Ann Wall in it, [01:33:54] Speaker B: who's wonderful. Love her, she's great. Unsurprising thirst from Mark. [01:34:02] Speaker A: You are not wrong. Deborah Ann Wall is in it and it is doing the work of beautiful man. There's a fucking. There's a prosthetic rubber latex fucking company that did well [01:34:22] Speaker B: gangbusters from this one. [01:34:24] Speaker A: Somebody sold a lot of latex makeup to this fucking show, right? Absolutely. I say show advisedly because it has a kind of a TV feel to it. [01:34:34] Speaker B: It does, yeah. [01:34:34] Speaker A: Right. Like it's a. Like a two hour block of like four TV episodes of a TV show. Right? [01:34:43] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:34:44] Speaker A: Complimentary. [01:34:45] Speaker B: Yeah. In a good way, I think. [01:34:47] Speaker A: Oh, man, I want to say so much more about this movie. What if. Oh, no, I can't tell you because you're gonna watch it, right? If you do one thing for your old fucking buddy Marco. [01:35:02] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:35:03] Speaker A: Sit yourself down, grab two hours and watch the cycle [01:35:06] Speaker B: and then post about it on the Discord so that [01:35:08] Speaker A: come and fucking, we [01:35:09] Speaker B: can talk about it. [01:35:10] Speaker A: It's so great. [01:35:13] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:35:13] Speaker A: Oh, [01:35:14] Speaker B: yeah, it's a real surprise. I was seeing it come up from people on Blue sky and on my letterboxd and things like that, and I was like, I gotta. [01:35:22] Speaker A: Yeah, [01:35:22] Speaker B: I gotta get on this. As soon as I watched, I was like, Mark's gonna have such a good time. [01:35:27] Speaker A: It's a forensic. It's like Silence of the Lambs. It's like seven, [01:35:32] Speaker B: you [01:35:33] Speaker A: know, But. [01:35:34] Speaker B: Autopsy of Jane Doe. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [01:35:38] Speaker A: But it's got a card up its sleeve, mate. Let me tell you that. [01:35:43] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. You need no more knowledge. Watch the cycle and you're having a good time. [01:35:48] Speaker A: Just the joy, man. The joy, the joy. It's so validating. [01:35:54] Speaker B: Yeah, [01:35:55] Speaker A: right. And I'm not, I'm not. I'm not talking down obsession. It's a great movie. [01:36:00] Speaker B: No, yeah, Absolutely not. Just. I'm not talking down back rooms. It's [01:36:03] Speaker A: a great movie on second viewing, right? [01:36:06] Speaker B: Sure. [01:36:08] Speaker A: But we've been here since day one, bitch. Right? We've been fucking watching horror all our life and it's so fucking good to see that. It's great. [01:36:21] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:36:22] Speaker A: It's always. It's always been great. But it's so great to see everybody else realize that it's great. [01:36:28] Speaker B: Exactly. [01:36:29] Speaker A: Yeah. Do you know what I'm saying? Mm. [01:36:31] Speaker B: Validating. Like you said, [01:36:33] Speaker A: validating to know that we. I fucking planted my Flag in this genre. Oh, yeah. Welcome, everyone. Welcome to the Best thing on Earth. What took it so long? [01:36:48] Speaker B: What took you so long? On the other end of that? I finally got around to watching Exorcist 2, the Heretic. [01:36:55] Speaker A: Okay. All right. [01:36:57] Speaker B: Which I think. I don't know if I've mentioned it to you. I'm sure I have, but there's a actor, you know, golden Age of Hollywood actor named Paul Henry. He's in Casablanca. He also directed several films, things like that. So I've kind of been keeping track of every Paul Henry movie that I watch. And I read his, you know, autobiography, all kinds of things like that. Just kind of one of those, like, little niche Corrigan interests, you know, just love Paul Henry. So he. This is. If not his last role, one of his last roles is in this. So it's when I was like, I gotta. I gotta get to it. And so I watched a few weeks ago a documentary about the making of this film, which is kind of universally reviled. Everyone fucking hated this. Have you seen Exorcist 2? [01:37:47] Speaker A: No, I don't believe I have. [01:37:48] Speaker B: Okay. It does have Linda Blair in it. It has the woman who played Nurse Ratched in Over the Cuckoo's Nest. And it's a fucking bizarre movie. And one of the issues with this is the guy who made it hated the first one, decided to make a movie that was nothing like it. It stars. What's your countryman there? Richard Burton? [01:38:12] Speaker A: Yeah, sure. Who, according to Craig Wallwork, I sound like [01:38:19] Speaker B: you. A pretty passable Richard Burton. Yeah, it stars. [01:38:24] Speaker A: Listen, just [01:38:24] Speaker B: super [01:38:25] Speaker A: briefly, have I imagined this? Have I incepted a fake memory into myself? You know Crystal Lake, right? [01:38:31] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:38:32] Speaker A: The story of Pamela Voorhees. [01:38:35] Speaker B: Yes. [01:38:36] Speaker A: Wasn't there, like, a Nurse Ratched version of that? A TV show about that character? Did I get that right? Have I imagined that? Or is it a movie like a pre. [01:38:46] Speaker B: Movie? You mean as in, like, there is a movie. I mean a TV series about Nurse Ratched. [01:38:50] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:38:50] Speaker B: Yes, it was Netflix. I think it was Sarah Paulson maybe. [01:38:55] Speaker A: It's a fucking. A little. Little genre of its own, isn't it? [01:38:59] Speaker B: It is, yeah. That's true. It's an interesting micro [01:39:03] Speaker A: genre. [01:39:04] Speaker B: Yeah. Right. But anyways, Richard Burton is in this [01:39:08] Speaker C: beach motel. [01:39:09] Speaker B: It's a micro genre. He clearly is in a don't give a era of his career. In Exorcist 2, he was apparently drunk, like, fucking all the time. Couldn't remember lines. [01:39:25] Speaker A: Richard. [01:39:25] Speaker B: But like, Richard Burton, just like kind of a nightmare to work with. There was a story in the documentary about how he apparently hated table reads. And so at table reads, he would pretend to have diarrhea and he would just like run out every couple minutes to like go to the bathroom and then spend like, you know, 15, 20 minutes and then come back and then be like, oh, my stomach and leave again. Yeah. So just like not great. Whole thing is insane. I'm not even gonna attempt to describe Exorcist 2, but if you haven't seen it, you are not missing anything. Just skip it. Go to Exorcist 3, which is a masterpiece. Which also seems kind of like what they're kind of basing the new movie more on. It feels a little more Exorcist 3 esque than or 2 [01:40:20] Speaker A: is that next year. [01:40:22] Speaker B: It's coming soon, I think, because I've been seeing trailers for it. So yeah, it's either the end of this year or next year. [01:40:27] Speaker A: Okay. [01:40:28] Speaker B: Yeah, it's coming and it looks so good. I know you're intentionally not watching trailers. [01:40:32] Speaker A: Nope. But [01:40:33] Speaker B: I don't want to see Bomb looks really good. I'm excited about it. [01:40:38] Speaker A: Oh, my God, we got so many movies together. [01:40:40] Speaker B: So many movies. Go. [01:40:42] Speaker A: God of Frogs. God. If you think you mishear this, you didn't. God [01:40:48] Speaker B: of Frogs. What a weird ass movie. [01:40:51] Speaker A: It's doing the work, [01:40:53] Speaker B: right? [01:40:54] Speaker A: It's doing the work to less success. [01:40:58] Speaker B: Yes, [01:40:59] Speaker A: but not all experiments yield useful results, do they? [01:41:04] Speaker B: No, no, they do not. [01:41:05] Speaker A: That doesn't make them any less valid. Right? [01:41:09] Speaker B: Yeah, they're definitely trying something. [01:41:11] Speaker A: What if there was an anthology movie? We all love an anthology horror. Don't [01:41:16] Speaker B: we love an anthology? Yes, [01:41:17] Speaker A: we all love a plucky underdog anthology horror clearly made by like a bunch of friends. With the framing device here is frogs. [01:41:32] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:41:33] Speaker A: Spooky frogs. Mutant frogs. Mind controlling frogs. Killer frogs. [01:41:39] Speaker B: Yeah, [01:41:40] Speaker A: Sexy frogs. [01:41:41] Speaker B: Sexy frogs. Yes. [01:41:43] Speaker A: And it's got loads of character and it's funny, actually. And it's got some kick ass frog effect. Frog makeup, [01:41:54] Speaker B: frog [01:41:54] Speaker A: suits. Frogsthetics. [01:41:58] Speaker B: I like it. Yeah, it's pretty good, [01:42:02] Speaker A: man. That was good. Frogsthetics, wasn't it? [01:42:05] Speaker B: I love when you impress yourself. It's good. Yeah. Frogsthetics is good. [01:42:09] Speaker A: Not good. [01:42:10] Speaker B: You sell that back to them. [01:42:14] Speaker A: Let me see. Two and a half stars though, you know? [01:42:16] Speaker B: Yeah, no, it wasn't good, but it had ambition and it was the kind of thing where you can tell, like given I don't know that they put enough. The people in this could do effects for sure. You know, when in this world of like shortcutting and you could use AI or things like that that they took the time to, you know. What a great point. [01:42:40] Speaker A: What a [01:42:40] Speaker B: fucking great, you know, CGI and things like. I'm not [01:42:44] Speaker A: talking smack about the crew behind God of Frogs at all. Right. [01:42:48] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:42:48] Speaker A: What I might say is this, though. In a lot of cases, necessity is the mother of invention. When you find the limits of your means and your budget and you push beyond them. [01:43:02] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:43:03] Speaker A: God of Frogs finds those limits and accepts them. [01:43:06] Speaker B: Right? That's a good way of putting it. [01:43:10] Speaker A: It finds those limits. It goes, yeah, all right. [01:43:12] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, we did it. I will say so kind of on the same track, I watched a really surprisingly fun low budget film with the screamin chatters from hell rankers. Of course. We watched a movie that was on YouTube called Haunt Season. And there's. This has kind of become a sort of sub genre of its own in the past few years. The like, horror movies that take place at Halloween haunts, you know, spook houses, those kinds of things. Serial killer in the spook house. It's like become its own little thing. This is maybe my favorite of all of the ones that I've seen. It has so much heart. They really, they put effort into the effects and things like that. The characters feel really real, really likable. The female friendships in it are just, oh, chef's kiss. So good. You're just. The entire time you're really kind of rooting for the cast of this movie as they get killed off one by one in this little spook house. And yeah, it just. It had no right to be as good as it was for something that clearly is operating on very little budget. But it makes the right. You know how I always say about like terrifier that I think color correction covers a multitude of sins? Okay. I'm like, this movie looks a lot more professional than I think it really is because it's really well color corrected. And Haunt Season also does. Has really good color correction, which I think when it comes to horror movies, one of the surest signs that tells you something is low budget is usually lack of color correction. So like God of Frogs, there's no color correction going on in that, you know? Yeah, I know what you're saying. Each [01:45:02] Speaker A: chapter of the anthology looks like it was like shot on a totally different set of equipment. [01:45:10] Speaker B: Completely different [01:45:11] Speaker A: and nobody cares. [01:45:13] Speaker B: Yeah, it's no continuity in the look of that film at all. But Haunt Season really like uses what they've got and knows how to make something look like a movie, which I think is A skill that a lot of people who make independent movies don't necessarily have. They have the pluck, they have the ideas, but they don't necessarily know what it is visually that makes something look like a movie or what it is in the editing that makes something look like a movie. And Haunt Season really does those fundamentals super well. And then on top of that, has a very likable cast that's well acted. And so I really recommend that. It's free. It's on YouTube. We had a ton of fun with that. I think everyone loved it. [01:45:56] Speaker A: Rattle through a couple here, right? If I were to approach a hundred people on the street, right, and thrust a microphone in their face and say, what is the worst Nightmare on elm street film? 98 of them will say, dream Child, right? [01:46:11] Speaker B: Yes. I would be amongst them. Yeah, [01:46:13] Speaker A: but if that's true, right, why did I have such a great fucking time watching dream child on the 23rd of October? Why did I [01:46:23] Speaker B: set [01:46:23] Speaker A: myself up to go, I'm gonna watch this? I fancy watching one of the lesser Elm Streets. And I thought it was great. [01:46:32] Speaker B: Interesting. Let [01:46:33] Speaker A: me tell you this. It feels like a intentional attempt to amalgamate the quippy MTV Freddy of 4 and 3 with ideas of a kind of a more gothic aesthetic, [01:46:52] Speaker B: right? Yeah. Dream [01:46:54] Speaker A: Child, it's. Somebody Left the Crow in my Elm Street. It's got churches and gargoyles and Isha optical illusion photography and really good dream sequences and really good kills and awful, awful, awful dialogue. And probably my least favorite Freddy makeup job. [01:47:19] Speaker B: His [01:47:19] Speaker A: look in. In Dream Travel is terrible, man. It's spongy and it's just not right. But don't. Don't tell me. Well, is it the worst Elm Street? Yes. [01:47:32] Speaker B: Yes. [01:47:33] Speaker A: But that isn't to say that it isn't fun, because it's a great laugh. And if you've not seen Elm Street 5 in a while because you think it's bad, it is bad. But it's also. [01:47:44] Speaker B: But you might have fun with it, [01:47:45] Speaker A: but it's also really, really fucking good. An inventive. It's an inventive. It's a noble failure. It's an inventive, noble failure. [01:47:54] Speaker B: I think maybe if I were watching it, like in a group or something, this hasn't been that. It's maybe been two, three years since I watched it. So it's not like, oh, maybe I remember it wrong, but if I watched it, like in a posse or something, maybe I could appreciate the fun of it more instead of being like, why is this happening to me? [01:48:11] Speaker A: Yeah, it's not just a churn out another fucking Elm street kind [01:48:14] Speaker B: of [01:48:14] Speaker A: sequel. At least somebody has come [01:48:16] Speaker B: on [01:48:17] Speaker A: board and gone, hey, you know what? I think I can do something here. [01:48:22] Speaker B: Right? Yeah, fair enough. I revisited, you know, one of my favorite genres, Spooky Boats. [01:48:30] Speaker A: Oh yeah, you do like [01:48:31] Speaker B: that. And watched. I think it's from 2002. Somewhere in that journal of Cinniti. [01:48:37] Speaker A: Long [01:48:37] Speaker B: time below the submarine movie, which is one of those movies from that time. There was like a. A crop of actors that were just like always cast as like World War II soldiers, Marines, Navy, whatever, you know? [01:48:53] Speaker A: Like who? [01:48:53] Speaker B: Like, [01:48:53] Speaker A: like who? Give me one. [01:48:54] Speaker B: Like there's just like all these. I mean, no one you would even know because you don't watch those movies. But there's like all these like young guys and stuff like that that, like, there's guys in this that were in Band of Brothers and like, things like that. People who are in like u571, all these dudes who are. Is just like, we need like young, hot, like military types in World War II. And they were all in there. So this has like tons of people. Got Matthew Davis, Bruce Greenwood, who's the wife from Sixth Sense. She's an Olivia, I think. [01:49:24] Speaker A: Nope. [01:49:26] Speaker B: You would know her immediately if you saw her. And like all these different. It's got Holt McElhenney from. You know him. What's the. The FBI TV show Mindhunter. All right. Oh, [01:49:42] Speaker A: yeah, yeah, [01:49:42] Speaker B: sure, sure. Okay. [01:49:43] Speaker A: Minecops [01:49:44] Speaker B: Mind Cops. Yes, of course. Just one of those casts where it's like everyone who comes in, you're like, oh, that's that guy. That guy is that guy. That guy. And it's, you know about a haunted submarine. And so throughout this, there's like something that is killing people and interfering with things. So you have both the peril of like this boat constantly being like depth charged by Germans and things like that, while also there is something happening on the boat. And over the course of this movie, you know, it kind of is uncovered what has happened that has caused this. [01:50:19] Speaker A: I see [01:50:20] Speaker B: it works backwards. Yeah, right. And I fucking love it. This is just like the most Corey Coded entertainment that you could possibly find. Just a bunch of cute boys on a submarine in spooky peril. Like, [01:50:33] Speaker A: oh, wow, [01:50:34] Speaker B: it's the best. So below, I highly, highly recommend. It's just a fun time. If you're into that genre as I am, [01:50:42] Speaker A: we can just almost entirely skip Ice cream Man. Why did I. Why did I. [01:50:48] Speaker B: I was genuinely baffled as to why you even gave that A try [01:50:52] Speaker A: actually thinking hard about why I watched it as opposed to the film itself, which is not even worth our [01:51:00] Speaker B: AI Nightmare [01:51:02] Speaker A: rubbish. I seem to recall I watched Ice Cream man because I was in an awful mood. I was feeling really bad about my life and myself and everything about me was just sickening me. And I thought to myself, right, I [01:51:18] Speaker B: feel like I deserve. [01:51:19] Speaker A: I have to watch this at some point for the discourse. It might as well be now when it can't make me feel any worse. [01:51:30] Speaker B: Okay. [01:51:30] Speaker A: That is it that. What a. Were [01:51:32] Speaker B: you right? Or did it make you feel worse? [01:51:34] Speaker A: What a choice that is to put to be in that position where you have [01:51:37] Speaker B: to [01:51:37] Speaker A: decide that isn't that. [01:51:39] Speaker B: Yeah. Like, instead of like, most people would go, like, what is a movie that I love that'll put me in a good mood? And you're like, nope, this is. I just need to watch this movie, get it out of the [01:51:48] Speaker A: way. A disgrace. And the fact that just a film is excrement. [01:51:54] Speaker B: Yes. Nobody. It's got like a 1.2 rating on Letterboxd or whatever. It really goes without saying that no one needs to watch it. [01:52:01] Speaker A: Nothing to redeem this piece of shit film. [01:52:07] Speaker B: Yep. Fair enough. [01:52:11] Speaker A: All right. [01:52:11] Speaker B: Say no more on that. [01:52:13] Speaker A: I've talked about it lots in years past, so I won't spend any more time. But I made good on a promise I made myself during our let's play of Hellraiser revival. The game which I played precisely one additional time since [01:52:32] Speaker B: it's not even a long game. My friend Scott had replied to our thread about that, and it's like it took him eight hours. So really [01:52:38] Speaker A: difficult, though. I [01:52:40] Speaker B: don't need to [01:52:40] Speaker A: difficult. I find it difficult. So check [01:52:42] Speaker B: out. Yeah, Scott's a little more of a professional gamer, so that might be part of it. [01:52:48] Speaker A: Because [01:52:48] Speaker B: whenever people say something's eight hours, it takes me like 20. [01:52:51] Speaker A: Exactly. Yeah. And you know the Mark tax onto that. [01:52:54] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:52:56] Speaker A: I did make good on my promise to myself and revisit hell bound Hellraiser 2. [01:53:01] Speaker B: Yeah. Because if you listened to that. Let's play or watch that. Let's play. You heard Mark say, like, multiple times, like, I just want to watch Hellraiser 2 now. [01:53:09] Speaker A: Oh. And I did. And it Hellbound. Hellraiser 2 is a film utterly without compromise. Right. It is visionary. It is so creative. And I get the impression that if this isn't the case, then it certainly gives the impression that it was made entirely without any pushback from anyone on the vision and what was put on that screen. [01:53:47] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:53:48] Speaker A: Because so incredible. Are the visuals in this film so incredible? Is the world so wide? Is the law and the techniques in play? Everything happens in this film, right? [01:54:04] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:54:05] Speaker A: And you can't hide from this film. You will be left battered and stunned and just in awe. Right. Of Hellraiser 2 because it's incredibly good, [01:54:23] Speaker B: you know, And I. Obviously we have a few other things to talk about, so I won't go off on this, but I do think, you know, when people talk about things that, like, couldn't be made these days, you know, and it's just like, usually like, cuz woke or whatever. [01:54:34] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [01:54:34] Speaker B: But I think just in the way that you talk about, like, no one intervened in the making of this film. I think that's more the thing that, like, when it comes to, like, movies not being made now, it's just like, there's just so many hands in everything that it's like, it's hard to imagine a movie. Maybe they did. Maybe they did. I don't [01:54:50] Speaker A: know. I don't know. [01:54:50] Speaker B: The oral history, I [01:54:51] Speaker A: don't know. [01:54:52] Speaker B: Whatever was, you know, just whether people had their hands in it or not. The idea of a movie that comes out that's like, as singular as this, or is the Help Hellraiser series kind of is to be, like, wide release as well? These weren't like one and two, for sure, were, like, released in theaters. These weren't, like, straight to, you know, VHS or DVD movies. And that, I think, is something that, like, when it comes to, like, what we get to actually see in theaters, like, seeing something like the cycle, like, it's. It's only on shudder. Right. Like, just the idea that something that's made that's, like, so uncompromising and is what it wants to be and also gets to be on our big screens is something that I think we have lost, you know? [01:55:33] Speaker A: Yeah. Oh, God. I. I listen, I hate having to move on. Right? But we must. [01:55:42] Speaker B: But we must. I hate [01:55:43] Speaker A: having to move on from Hellraiser 2, but I. It is one of the. My favorite sequels of all time. [01:55:50] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:55:51] Speaker A: It's unreal. [01:55:53] Speaker B: I went back, back, back because Kyo made some comment while we were watching something about Peter Laurie in M. And I had actually bought the Criterion Blu Ray of M like, six months ago, maybe a year ago. And it's just been sitting on the tv and I was like, great moment to put M in now. You've never seen this, right? [01:56:17] Speaker A: No, I have not. [01:56:19] Speaker B: You. You must. It's an interesting watch. It is absolutely the template. Like, if we did not Have M, we would not have Scorsese. You know, like, there's so much that is, like, very much. You see the seeds of what films would become in M, which was made by Fritz Lang. It's a German film. There is an American version of it as well, but Fritz Lang didn't direct it. But it is on the Criterion Blu Ray, and it's from 1931, I want to say. And it's this really interesting film because it's on the cusp of, like, the switch from, like, silent to talkies. Right. And so there's a lot of things that are kind of very distinct because of that crossover. And there are bits of this where the sound actually is, like, lost. So there's parts of the movie that don't have sound in them and things like that. So you'll have like a, like, panicked street scene and whatnot. It's completely silent because that. They lost that audio, you know, a century ago. But it is about a serial killer who preys on young girls. And essentially what happens in this movie is that because of this serial killer, it causes more focus on, like, the crime families in the area. And the crime family, like, the cops can't catch this guy. Of course. It's a very ACAB movie. Like, cops are absolutely useless, and they're, like, just a nuisance more than anything else. But because of the serial killer, now they're going in there, like, raiding speakeasies, and they're making life hard for the criminal underworld. So the criminals of the town come together with, like, the homeless people and stuff like that, and they come up with a plan to catch the serial killer. It is so good. Peter Laurie is incredible in it as the serial killer, you know, has to be a risk early in your career to play a child rapist. [01:58:16] Speaker A: Yeah, [01:58:16] Speaker B: yeah, yeah. You know, but he absolutely plays it so well. And yeah, watch M if you've never seen it. It's fantastic. It. You'll sit down and you kind of have to get into the rhythm of a movie that is very old and it's missing, like, bits of sound and stuff like that. But once it gets going, my God, it is absolutely brilliant. It's funny. You know, there's so much humor in this movie, while also, you know, you're really getting a lot of sort of political commentary and things like that as well. M is a masterpiece. [01:58:48] Speaker A: Phenomenal. What a great wreck. Wildwood. [01:58:54] Speaker B: Wildwood. [01:58:55] Speaker A: Devastating. Just devastating. Staggering. Staggering. Right in. Just staggeringly profound was my connection with this film. It hasn't happened in the longest Time when quite apart from any kind of the content of the film, I. I found myself on the brink of. Of choking up simply because of the art and the artistry and the achievement and the life of a film. Thrums at you. Vibrates off the screen, man. Not just the. I know you're not a stop motion enjoyer. Nah. Nor am [01:59:43] Speaker B: I, [01:59:43] Speaker A: man. I love [01:59:44] Speaker B: it [01:59:44] Speaker A: when I see stop motion. But, you know, I'm not like a ball knower of stop motion. You know what I mean? [01:59:50] Speaker B: Yep. [01:59:51] Speaker A: But even the voice work, right? The voice performances, just unreal. There's a particular voice in there and as soon as you hear it, you're like, right, that is one of two people that [02:00:07] Speaker B: is [02:00:07] Speaker A: either Nick [02:00:08] Speaker C: Nolte or it's [02:00:09] Speaker A: Tom Waits. And [02:00:11] Speaker B: it was Tom Waits. It was. I love a Tom Waits appearance. [02:00:15] Speaker A: Great to [02:00:16] Speaker B: fucking hear him. [02:00:17] Speaker A: There's a. There's [02:00:18] Speaker C: a sight gag [02:00:19] Speaker A: right in the first 20 [02:00:21] Speaker C: minutes [02:00:21] Speaker A: of the film. A [02:00:23] Speaker C: sight gag that's [02:00:23] Speaker A: on screen for [02:00:24] Speaker C: like a second that probably took like a month to animate. [02:00:27] Speaker B: Right? Yep. [02:00:28] Speaker A: And as our protagonist is on a bike ride through her city. Oregon. What know ye of Oregon? [02:00:35] Speaker B: I lived there. [02:00:36] Speaker A: Did you? [02:00:37] Speaker B: It's where Alfie and Steve live too. [02:00:39] Speaker A: Incredible. [02:00:40] Speaker B: I hope this is. I lived in Aloha, Oregon. Right outside of Oregon. [02:00:43] Speaker A: I'd love to know. [02:00:44] Speaker B: I've actually been to Laika. [02:00:47] Speaker A: The studio. [02:00:48] Speaker B: The studio. Yeah. [02:00:49] Speaker A: No. Yeah. [02:00:50] Speaker B: When my friend was like one of the first influencers, you know, 20 years ago, she took me with her because I lived nearby. She took me with her when they invited her to come take a tour of the studio. I have been to, like [02:01:05] Speaker A: very much. I would like that very much. But anyway, just a quick throwaway gag as. As a girl's driving through the town on a bicycle, there's a artist giving away paintings for free. And the artist has a sign on her stall that says, enjoy handmade art before it's gone forever. Right. And right there my throat got full and my eyes started to water up. Because so beautiful is Wildwood. So fucking staggering achievement is Wildwood. It is. Came to represent in my head everything that we stand to lose. Everything [02:01:43] Speaker B: they are [02:01:44] Speaker A: trying to fucking replace. [02:01:46] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. That this was a movie that took a decade to make and $250 million with no hope of making that back. You know, there's. There's no way but that that wasn't why they made it. [02:01:58] Speaker A: Yeah. [02:01:59] Speaker B: You know? [02:01:59] Speaker A: Yes. There is so much at stake, friends. There is so fucking much at stake. Not just the economy. Yawn. Not just. You Know the. Not just the way that emails read. Right, [02:02:18] Speaker B: Right. [02:02:19] Speaker A: There is so much at stake. The planet and art are at stake here. And it is. It is so heavy. It weighs heavy. And Wildwood brings it all home in a way that I never could. It's stunning. It's stunning. [02:02:40] Speaker B: Excellent. I think that's a good one to close out on. [02:02:43] Speaker A: Okay. Should we save Godzilla? [02:02:45] Speaker B: Oh, Godzilla. Sorry, I completely forgot about Godzilla. I don't know why. Let's talk about Godzilla before we go. [02:02:52] Speaker A: What? Right, so four stars. Three and a half stars. [02:02:56] Speaker B: Three and a half stars. I gave it [02:02:58] Speaker A: a thought that occurred to me earlier. At what point do you think exactly. At what point did the letterboxed rating system become so entrenched in our vernacular, in the way that you and I talk about and rate movies? Because we talk about it every time now. We do. [02:03:15] Speaker B: We [02:03:15] Speaker A: never talk of a movie without going, yeah, three stars, four stars. [02:03:17] Speaker B: Well, we haven't talked about what we rated. The vast majority of these. I think it's normally the reason that we talk about the rating we gave it on ones like this is because either it's a way of showing how close together or how far apart we are on our. Our perception of a film. [02:03:34] Speaker A: Insightful. That's insightful. We use it as shorthand to describe our synchronicity or asynchronousity on a topic. [02:03:43] Speaker B: Yeah. So I think that's why we don't talk about it. Like, in every movie, it's usually in a. Like, where are we on this big film that has just come out? [02:03:51] Speaker A: That's great. Was it. I mean, why. What. What did you love? You must have. There's so much to love. You must have loved. [02:03:57] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, I think. Here's. I think one of the things, for me that it, like, doesn't knock it out of the park is partly comparison because the previous one was just so incredible, you know, so it had a lot to, like, kind of measure up to. And so I kind of felt like this one was a little more disjointed, a little more messy throughout, maybe a little too much going on with all the different characters and things like that. That felt like I didn't. I couldn't quite grasp on to a lot of it the way that I could with the first one. But that said, you know, this is such, like, a. It's a good adventure. It's got so much. The action in it is just. I mean, mind blowing. Every single. Every single piece of this. You know, the way that these monsters work. The CGI is impeccable. I've [02:04:52] Speaker A: never seen a giant monster film this incredible, giant monster action like this. It's incredible. And I kind [02:04:58] Speaker B: of. You have never seen. Yeah, [02:05:00] Speaker A: you've never seen [02:05:01] Speaker B: anything. You've never seen anything like this. And we saw an imax, you know, to fully enhance that, I will say. Also, a funny thing is, you know how I have that, like, pee timer app, right? [02:05:12] Speaker A: Yeah, [02:05:12] Speaker B: yeah. And so it tells you when a good time during a movie is to pee, and then it gives you a synopsis of what happens so that you don't miss anything while you go to the bathroom. So for anyone who needs that app, it's called Run P. Highly recommend it. But this one, I've never seen this before. It added a timer for, like, a content warning. Because I think a lot of people go into this thinking of it as like, a normal Godzilla movie or whatever, and you're not prepared for, like, people getting their face melted, things like this in this. So it actually had, like, a content warning. Like, you may want to, like, look away at this part, because this is really disturbing. And so I think it really kind of. This one really delves into kind of, like, the horror of the bomb even more than the other one. I think, like, the first one kind of emotionally tackles it, and this one really, like, physically tackles the horror of the bomb. [02:06:06] Speaker A: I [02:06:07] Speaker B: took [02:06:08] Speaker A: away from Minus zero. A heartfelt parable about the aftermath of a war, what it leaves behind in its orphaned children and its shattered government and national identity, and how we fucking reconcile the horrific deeds using, you know, weapons and people as weapons. How do we fucking. How do we. How do we rebuild a sense of pride, both personally and nationally, after being forced into circumstances where that's necessary? [02:06:46] Speaker B: And then how do we not repeat it, too? Like, you know, like you said, with the. The people into weapons being. One of the stronger themes in this is, like, once we, you know, learn. Once we're trying to. Once we do rebuild, how do we not just do this again? Because now we have the power to. Once we. Once we know how to build a weapon, once we know how to use a weapon, how do we not continue to use that weapon just because it exists? And [02:07:13] Speaker A: just like, minus one, it tells that story so deftly and so authentically, but it also has some of the most incredible fucking visuals. [02:07:27] Speaker B: Yes. [02:07:27] Speaker A: You've ever fucking seen. [02:07:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I. We were talking about this at Applebee's afterwards, you know, over appetizers, just some of those. Like, I was thinking. I'm like, why doesn't like, why doesn't a Marvel movie look like this? You know, I've never watched, like, the Hulk and been like, listen, what a great [02:07:49] Speaker A: point. What a great point. The. You know, when I'm. When I'm in a bad mood and talking about cg, I'll talk about how it's weightless and it's fucking, you know, candy floss and looks like a PS5 cutscene. Yeah. [02:08:04] Speaker B: I could touch these monsters. [02:08:06] Speaker A: You could. The weight of these monsters. [02:08:11] Speaker B: Even, like, the kind of, you know, the thing where, like, something's heavy and thus it moves slow. Like, kind of things like that, that they managed to do with these monsters. Or, like, the little details. Right. I think are so important that it's not just the cg, but the way that's integrated into the environment. So one of the things that really stood out to me, that there was this small moment that they did not need to do this with, where one of the monsters, and I can't remember which one it was [02:08:37] Speaker A: because it's out now and there are pictures of it all over the place. [02:08:39] Speaker B: And I'm not gonna. I'm not spoiling anything. Fine. Okay. I'm not giving anything away at all in this. Just merely that this one monster kind of like. Like blows up a spot or something like that, or steps on a spot. Things are flying everywhere. But there's just, like, one guy, a real guy, clearly, you know, this isn't a little cg. Whatever. A guy who is there and he runs away, and you could easily not notice [02:09:06] Speaker A: that [02:09:06] Speaker B: he was there. You know, it's just. It's just there because he would have been right there. [02:09:12] Speaker A: And I don't know about you, but I don't ever think there's been a giant monster movie that has actually frightened me. Right. [02:09:20] Speaker B: Yeah. That other guy. [02:09:22] Speaker A: That other fucking monster is terrifying. [02:09:24] Speaker B: Terrifying. Sweet Lord. [02:09:26] Speaker A: Properly terrifying. And the. The. The one. The moment I knew that I knew we were in for a fucking ride in this film anyway, right? Because it's. It's. Obviously, it was going to be great, but the one [02:09:39] Speaker C: moment where I thought, okay, this is. This is the real. Was when the other monster is tearing it up. And we cut to the fucking sea and we hear the theme, and one of the crew on the boat just looks at the sea starting to boil and goes, oh, no. And Godzilla is on the scene. Oh, man. I love it. [02:10:10] Speaker B: Yes. [02:10:11] Speaker C: I love it. [02:10:12] Speaker B: Yeah. So, I mean, see it as big as you can, you know, it is. [02:10:18] Speaker C: I mean, like. And, like a couple of other movies over these past couple Weeks. I've been thinking about it ever since. [02:10:26] Speaker B: It's been an. It's been a good couple of weeks for you in terms of. Things have just [02:10:31] Speaker C: that theme, that. Godzilla's theme, his emergence theme. It just. [02:10:36] Speaker B: You feel it each bro. And movie theaters are so fucking loud now too, that it's like. It like rattles your rib cage when he comes. I do wonder if anyone has. Because my one thing with Godzilla and I'm coming out like of the deep, you know, is like, he'll often kind of like be like kind of standing up and like shooting lasers. And I'm like, he can't touch, like, he can't be that tall. And I just want like someone to like make like a. An animation of like his little. [02:11:14] Speaker C: There is some. There's some frankly ridiculously beautiful cinematography in Godzilla minus zero. Like astounding. There's just mid dog fight when you've got the pilots and they're doing the maneuvers to try and get away from the one monster, and you've got just this shot of the plane flying into the camera and it just kind of banks aside and the entire frame, the entire screen is just Godzilla's fucking eyes looking right at you. And it's like, [02:11:46] Speaker B: yeah. [02:11:48] Speaker C: Oh, what a time. What a week. [02:11:51] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think, you know what, the next time that I watch it, not directly comparing it with the one before it, I may, you know, I don't know, star up on it, but you know, [02:12:00] Speaker C: I would. I can happily go half a start up on Godzilla -0. The only thing that fucking kid is annoying, man. [02:12:08] Speaker B: Oh, I mean, yes, but kids are annoying. She's very good, I will say. [02:12:14] Speaker C: Yeah, but did they have to have her crying for so long? Very annoying crying. [02:12:21] Speaker B: I think there were. That was one of my complaints is like those scenes, especially the one at the end stretches on for way too long. Like it should have been 90 seconds and it's like a seven minute scene. Yeah, yeah. You're like, okay, that's enough. We get it. I think the actor. And this is another thing that Q and I were talking about though, that was with this film, comparing it to something like Marvel, that Marvel isn't paying for, like featured extras, basically, right? So if you watch, like I noticed this especially in say, Fantastic Four, right? If you look at the extras, they're not doing anything. They're just standing there. And if you pay any attention to them, you're like, why are these people here? You know, the only people who are ever going to speak are your main characters. You know, you Don't. You don't have anyone coming in and out saying stuff or whatever like that. The people in Marvel movies at this point live in a world where they are the only people who speak, you know? Yeah, yeah, [02:13:17] Speaker C: I'll buy that. [02:13:18] Speaker B: And one of the things that he was pointing out about this movie was that, like, say when they're in the orphanage, which is like a kind of recurring location in this, where they kind of. I guess it's her aunt, the little girl's aunt works at this orphanage. So they drop her off. With her is like, almost like daycare with a whole bunch of orphans. And there's like a scene in it where, like, the orphans are kind of confronting her about something. And then Kia was pointing out, it's like there's stuff going on with the other orphans in the background. Sure. Like, they'll. They're moving around. They're walking up to each other. They start crying. They comfort each other. [02:13:54] Speaker C: Yeah, [02:13:54] Speaker B: I noticed [02:13:55] Speaker C: the same thing. They're [02:13:55] Speaker B: in the scene [02:13:56] Speaker C: even when they're [02:13:57] Speaker B: not on [02:13:57] Speaker C: the camp, you know, [02:13:57] Speaker B: the focus. These kids are not just, like, standing there watching the conversation happen. Which is what a lot of movies would do, is like, we don't want to deal with the continuity. We don't want to deal with, like, kid actors. You know, stuff like that. They're like, these kids would be doing shit. [02:14:13] Speaker C: It's that. It's [02:14:14] Speaker B: on a different scale, [02:14:14] Speaker C: but it's that same detail that you spoke about with the [02:14:16] Speaker B: little [02:14:16] Speaker C: geezer running away in [02:14:17] Speaker B: the fucking [02:14:18] Speaker C: corner. It's detail. It all [02:14:19] Speaker B: matters. [02:14:21] Speaker C: It comes across as beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful. Love it. [02:14:24] Speaker B: Yes. Go see Godzilla. [02:14:26] Speaker C: Just go and just enjoy the week crew. [02:14:29] Speaker B: Right. [02:14:30] Speaker C: It's been lovely speaking to you this week. I. I don't know. I love. I love you. And I love this cast. And [02:14:36] Speaker B: long [02:14:37] Speaker C: may continue, you know. [02:14:38] Speaker B: Amen. [02:14:39] Speaker C: I'm finding what brings me light whilst still not quite yet in the dark. You know, [02:14:46] Speaker B: that's the ticket right there. Marco, you're a smart man, a wise man, even. [02:14:50] Speaker C: I know. All right? [02:14:57] Speaker B: I know. He says.