A confused American in England | Triforce Mailbag #59

Pickox

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Hello, friends and well-wishers and everyone in between. We are

mailbag time. It's mailbag time.
I love the mailbag.

I do love the mailbag. Do you guys love the mailbag? I love the mailbag.
Sounds like you don't love the mailbag. Alan says, sometimes I have to listen to stuff like what I'm about to play you.

And this is the two sides of the podcast coin of a mailbag. All right.
So I'll play you two songs.

This one is quite long, but it's quite good.

This is called The Mail Sad. It's a sad mailbag song.
Oh, crap. It was sent in by

Michael.

It's a minute 42. It is a minute 42.
We can get the gist of it and tap out at any time. Okay.

But

this is not an AI song, and I appreciate the fact someone's taking the time to make it. I don't think it's a bad song.
It's just it is quite long and it is quite sad. So it's sad, right?

We'll listen to it. Ready? In three, two, one, play.

That's like a radio head song, isn't it? Basically

the male, The mail sad. I like that.
It is quite sad. It's a very sounds like a 90s song, doesn't it?

I think it's actually pretty good. I like it.
It is very good, yeah.

I would very happily watch these guys at Glastonbury with a pint of cider in my hand in nice sunny weather.

I mean, I don't want them singing about the mailbag, but if they were singing about so if the lyrics

I don't know what that was, I'm just breathing.

This is good.

I think it's pretty good.

I think it's good.

I think it's well done.

Anyway, is that you, your voice?

No.

Sounds like it could be you singing this.

It's not. It probably is.
It is not.

He's doing a joke on us. He's like, hey guys, listen to this song by I can't sing like this.

Steve from

it might be you. It being auto-tuned.
It might be you. It's him.

He's using us as a test bed for this is pure michael material this is pure michael michael and i really like that i really like michael vocals or was that your vocals that was not me though people could do some clever stuff with the music stuff these days that did not sound like me that does not sound like me sound a bit like you it didn't it's just an english man singing you're like the guy who confuses you and me because we're both people

this is a p flax talking i was quite when you i was quite confused i thought i'd said something really offensive and you wanted to make sure no but this happened to me. No, it's not offensive to me.

It's not offensive to me. You said something I agree with, but there are a lot of bootlickers out there who do take offense when you criticise their precious billionaires.
So just bear that in mind.

I'm sorry. That you said those things, not me.
I'm still in the middle of the day. This is the other jingle.
This is the other jingle. This is the first time we've recorded.

two episodes back to back in a long time. And the reason we're doing it is because you're going away to a different way.
Refresh off of one right into the other. So it's...
So they're quite different.

Mailbag's quite different. They are.
Yeah, they are. I mean, it provides the information.

the mood. This is from Rory.

Now, no offense. I fucking hate this, Rory.
All right. I would recommend true the volume down to like halfway because A, it's loud and B, it's bad.
No offense. Okay, we'll talk about it.

Make it quieter. Can I just shout out the first guy, Michael, for using the.flack files? I know, I know.

Also, can you shout out Discord for being able to play it as well? Because that is nice.

Can we also just un-shout out the the fact that it's fucking 18 meg because it's dot flak? Uh, Rory's submission is 228k because it's m4a. Okay, so let's just listen, right?

That's that. Listen, if you ever wanted to know the character of this podcast, we shout out file names and file types and such.

Maybe you don't get that very often.

You don't. Oh, it's a juicy file format, the free lossless audio compression, probably or something like that.
But it's not very compressed. It is you don't see it.
You don't see it.

used by prose. Yes, that's what I'm saying.
This guy knows what he's doing. In fact,

I want to link to something you've done because I thought that was a really good song. It's just the lyrics were terrible because, of course, you're stuck with the male bars.

So, you know, I want to hear some of your music where it's your lyrics, brother, because I really am impressed.

Here is a jingle from Rory. God help us.
We're going to play it in three, two, one, play.

Welcome to the Travels Podcast.

Is this you, Sips? No.

I'm wearing my really tight undies.

It's Louis Sips and Pyrium.

The breathing.

Read your mail today.

It's like a reverse chocolate rain.

It's like

that bit of the end. He just goes, yeah.

I hated that, Rory. Thanks for sending it.
So, Rory, that is...

Do you know what? That is not made by AI. And so therefore it gets a stamp of approval.

That's why I played it. I hate it, but I'm playing it because I appreciate human endeavor.
So well done.

We are limited in how long we got until they take over. And so let's enjoy it while it lasts, everyone.
Yeah. Yeah, there is a limit.
There is definitely a limit.

We need to go back to basic

trip using. We might have to start sending this podcast out on tape.

Do you know what I mean? We need to send it out. Do you sell it on tape? What's wrong with vinyl, mate? Send it all grammar.

Well, hello there. You're listening to the Triforce Wars Podcast.
Add some crackle. Add some crackle.
Hello, and welcome to the Trive Wars Podcast. Love the charming.

This is Tride Wars Calling with an update. We've conquered Africa.

Those niggas have been subdued joy well by our boys.

Don't free, boys. Put the name in it right up.

All right, anyway. Oh, shit, there's a huge wasp in my office.
Hold on. Oh,

thank you. That's funny.
And if you can't open the windows, because the pidgeys will fly in. No, that's how he got in, was by the window.
Get out.

Maybe he followed the pidgeys. No, it's all right.
We're good. All right.
This is a

so my partner was stung yesterday on the top lit by wasps.

I'm going to stop you right there. This is a mailbag episode.
We don't

need that shit for a regular. Dear period.
Just we need to write the right thing. If you just email me in, I'll read it if it's worthy of

reading.

I've already given up. That's the whole story.
There you go. This is Jack emails in.
This is a three-parter. All these emails were sent within a minute of each other.

Are they angry in tone? I need to know.

Do they get progressively angrier as they are? Can you read them out some angry emails?

There's no anger. All right.
I'll read it out neutral and you decide for yourselves.

Hi, this is a subject, Europeans driving on the right-hand side. Hi, it's because Napoleon was left-handed.
Right. Please disregard as Lewis is now mentioning Napoleon.

Please re-regard as Lewis failed to mention Napoleon's left-handedness.

That's the triple from Jack. Napoleon was left-handed.

Napoleon was left-handed. How does that affect whether you're driving on the right or left? I mean, he didn't have a car, so you know, I don't know.

Did he hold the reins with his left hand right?

There's a scene in Bill and Ted's excellent adventure where Napoleon is bowling, if you remember, and he misses all the pins. But jumps up and down.

No, he hits the deck and he's slamming the deck

with his hand. Now, I wonder if you would, if you were left-handed, if you would be using your left hand to slam the floor whilst yelling meld, meld, meld.
Man, man, man, hold on a moment.

If you're angry, do you immediately hit with your left hand?

Or do you think that maybe Bill and Ted's excellent adventure, they didn't do their research and they might have had him using his right hand. Well, that's why I'm not sure if you're a good person.

I couldn't get it. I'm definitely an angry with my right hand guy.
Yeah. You're left-handed, but angry with your right? That doesn't make sense.
I don't think you can. Wait, you're left-handed, Lewis?

No, but I'm angry with my right. Yeah, but Sip said you're left-handed.
No,

I don't know many lefties. You don't know any lefties? My dad's a lefty.
Famous lefties.

If you're a left-handed person, just learn to do it with your right. Four-handed.
I think Jimi Hendrix was a lefty.

I'm pretty sure Kurt Colbyne was a lefty as well.

I saw a thing in the office. So we were sending out these birthday auction things the other day, and Simon is left-handed.
What? Do you want me to write it in? Oh, my God. This is not a mailbag.

Oh, my God. I want to.

Can I not tell you?

It's still the Triforce podcast. All right.
You're right. Go on.
Go ahead.

Let's carry on. You carry on.
I'm just saying. It's a story about Simon being left-handed.
How interesting can it be?

You know what? You go ahead. Thing is, he writes like with his, he's been taught to write with his right hand, but he writes in this sort of curled over way where he squeezes the ink as he goes by.

Oh, yeah, that's because he's of our generation where

they basically just if they saw a left-handed person, they just whipped him with a slipper until he wrote with his right hand.

Yeah, we were at the tail end of that real mistreatment of children in schools.

Yeah, did you guys ever have that like rubber triangle on your pencil to teach you how to hold the pencil right and stuff?

Well, I saw it, I never needed it because I knew how to hold a pencil, but a lot of kids didn't because they'd never had them at home. Yeah, it's the same with books.

A lot of the kids I was at school with didn't have any books in their house at all, not even kids' books. Not even the adults didn't have books.
The kids didn't have books.

So when they came in, a book was and reading was a complete mystery to them, which is kind of scary to me. But equally, they were never given crayons.
They were never given pencils or pens.

I don't know what they did with their time. They're probably all professional footballers now and making a fortune, but what do you know? Yeah, but back then, back then, that wasn't the case.

No, they didn't have crayons. Fucking bitches.

This is ex-Hooters employee part two. We spoke about, we had an email about an ex-Hooter's employee previously.
Yes.

So when we were working one weekday, we had a customer come in by himself in one of our more bubbly and gorgeous waitress sections.

After he'd eaten and was paying for his bill, he asked the waitress, how much for your panties? Right.

Because she was nice and was sadly used to this sort of behavior, she joked around and said, oh, these are $1,000. To which the customer replied, works for me.

He then proceeded to pull $1,000 out of the ATM and handed it to her.

So sort of blown away, she ran back to the kitchen, talking to me and the other cooks about whether she should take the money or what. I told her she should because it's like an easy grand.

But she didn't want to give her panties to him. So she went to the changing room, took hers off, grabbed a clean pair from her locker, and handed him the clean pair.

It was sort of strange because everyone in that day, everyone was clued into this happening, and there were lots of other customers. He was just sitting at the table.

Everyone cheered and clapped for him as he got his clean, unworn panties. Isn't that utterly bizarre? How disgusting, man! A thousand bucks.
Well, I mean, I'm not kidding.

When I go to Japan next week, I'm going to get some from the fucking vending machine like a real person. Man, nobody would want to buy my underpants for a thousand bucks.
Someone would even one buck.

Someone would. No.
Yes. I will bet you 50 quid.

If you did a charity auction for a pair of your underpants, a jingle paper. A pair of my easily raise a thousand dollars.
That'd be like getting Homer Simpsons underpants, basically. Yes.

In an auction. I guarantee you, someone out there would pay a thousand bucks for Sips' underpants.
Oh,

I don't think so.

Well,

not in a sexual way. I'm sure they just want it for funny.
It's just a funny piece of, yeah. They even

Like, frame them? Yeah, for just funny.

There you go. Hang them on the wall.

Seriously, seriously, though, like, my advice for people generally is to, so we were doing this Yosta's birthday auction, right?

And after I'd made all these listings and put all this stuff in, I had a couple of people come to me and say, oh, can we not do this because it's too big or it's not going to work?

And the auctions they'd like removed from the list were the joke ones, like the funny ones, like the skeleton of Wheelboy.

And I said, like, that, that's not, you know, I know it's a faff to send, to send it out and deal with it and it's silly and it's and all this stuff but it it's it's it's funny

we've got to have the funny stuff in there as well as the serious stuff right like you've got a it's it's important like so many games don't and movies and things they need comic relief even shakespeare knew that you know you needed a comic relief character right you needed this and and i think that that you look at any successful pro anything any success

and then usually they usually have some comedy in them right yeah um somewhere

Look at Marvel and like some of their, sometimes they went too far with the comedy. You know, I think that's what people say about the, some of the later Thor movies, right?

But, but, like, I think you've got to try and inject humor in whenever you can.

And, and a little bit. Yeah.
And so, yeah, like, I, I think that's, but I don't even think it's all that bad. Like, you're in hooters, right? And a jokey, laddy thing to do is to.
Yeah.

And you're rich, maybe you think, look it, this will be funny. This will give you fun.
But I think you're rich. This will give the girls a kick back in the back in the hooters.

There's almost like a little bit of joke chicken going on there with like the

waitress. That was a great answer.
A thousand dollars, you know, that like put past the guys, right? But, but then

she got to the back room, she was like, Man, I should have said a million. Like, yeah,

a million bucks. But I think it's that's not funny, though.
That's like shutting it down, you know, too much. A thousand is the perfect amount because he's just crazy enough to do it.

He'll be like, exactly. And then it's almost, he's just crazy enough to buy that for a story and it's just about affordable.
Right. And like, I think the whole thing kind of works as a nice anecdote.

Right.

And I don't think he can even, he can, like, yeah, I, I, I once went to a hooters and bought a waitress's panties for a thousand dollars.

Like, that's not even that bad of a, it's not even that cringe of a story. It's kind of funny.
It's depends on who's telling you, right? The story. It is.

Yeah. If it was Michael Portillo.
Yeah, if Michael Portillo was like eating a sausage in a very posh way on a train and told you that, you might switch over to another show.

While he's cutting the sausage and applying mustard,

I once bought a pair of underpants from a young lady in Hooters. Cost me $1,000.
No, just eating sausage.

What the hell? By the way, we talked about Michael Portillo on this episode and the previous episode. Keep your eyes on the news for Michael Portillo relationships.
It's fantastic.

I guarantee it's coming. I've had odd thoughts this week.
Let me share two odd thoughts I've had with you this week, okay?

My first odd thought was:

we've had a lot of building work done on our house. We've had a lot of builders around.

trying to, I was having a conversation with my wife, and we were trying to think of the least gay person that we know, and this builder came up because he's really a burly man.

And yeah, we're talking about it, but

wouldn't it be funny if you know this guy is like you would never in a million years guess that he was gay.

But then, what if he went down to like uh, like, you know, pride uh parade and he's just getting sucked off by like three dudes? Like, I don't think that's yours.

I know they don't do that, but I just thought it's a funny thought, you know, like the gayest man at the pride.

It's funny to me that you see a burly guy and think, he'd never be gay.

No, it's just everything about him, you know, like he's just, he's, he really is just like a guy, but like, just like, not, not like simple, like in a dumb way, but you know, like, he's just very like straightforward land.

Yeah, I totally get where you're coming from. Yeah, there was this guy doing some painting around the office.
And I sort of, I think I said to someone, like, oh, he's a nice looking guy.

And, and they just said, oh, you should see the aircon guy. And then all the, all the ladies in the office like turned and were like nodding frantically.

You know what? You know what? That is so funny because that happens where someone that like someone you know or work with or like meet occasionally. Like I'm not being funny.

I can see that like Ryan Gosling is a good looking guy. But sometimes there'll be a guy that a lot of women are like, oh my God, he's such a dream.
Oh my God, he's so gorgeous.

That a lot of straight dudes are just like, I had no idea that he was this, this unbelievably dishy dude. But all the women know.
Well, you basically

exactly right. Like, no landman.

Can't even. No, listen, my other, my other thought was, you know, in, you know, in movies when you have like,

you know, somebody's holding like a gun to somebody's head and they're like really threatening. They're like, just fucking give it

a name or whatever.

You know, they got the gun right to the head okay imagine you can't you can't get a boner okay and you but you're holding the gun to your dick and you're saying fucking fucking bro you know like like in the movies like to say give me the money back but like no you're threatening your own dick with with the gun like to say like you better

you better fucking get hard or I'm gonna fucking shoot you you know like you're you're you're like you're what if that was your thing what if being threatened with a gun was your kink I want I just want to see that in a movie or something like I just think like the physical

Comedy of that would be great, you know, this is just another just another random thought that I had

full of good thoughts

by that one there is one of the goodest thinkers out there I'd say indeed here is an email from Scott

So he's talking about the pronunciation of the letter Z or if you're from North America the letter Z I recently heard an American call the 8-bit computer the ZX Spectrum.

Even though I'm an American, it sounds wrong since I've typically heard Brits talk about it and it was by a British-made company. Of course, this is the ZX Spectrum.

On the flip side, would you find it weird if you heard someone call the band ZZ Top? Which I know some people have done. My father-in-law loves to do that as a joke.

If something has a Z in its name, should it be pronounced the way it would be in its country of origin? I think very simply, yes. End of story.
Thanks, Scott.

We cleared that up. It is tough.

I'm not too strict on that.

I feel like whatever the popular way to say it is just the right way to say it, you know. But I like popular like that.
Well, like GIF indeed.

So the reason it would be ZZ Top is because they're an American band. But when they come to England, we don't go, oh, do you mean Z Top? Like, I feel like you just say, well, no, they're American.

So it's ZZ Top. And it's the ZX spectrum because it's a British-made computer.
Yeah. No, I think it's all

rotten tomatoes, rotten tomatoes.

This is the essence of mailbag for me. Please send more of these in.
I like this kind of, I like, I love, I've sort of spoke about this before, but I love people's gaps in gap, people's gaps.

There was this great clip recently where

Nazi did a, but does this pub quiz? And so he's very trivia knowledge, trivia heavy. And he was answering some questions on this pub quiz.
And so Zoe was running it.

And one of them was like, what's the largest American island? That was the question. And Nazi answered Alaska

and instantly

was very confused because I guess

it's just a gap in his knowledge.

It's like a blind side. Oh, I know why.
No, because it's not actually connected to the rest of the country, right?

When they show a map of America, they'll have it off to the top left, just in a void. Exactly.
So he thought it was an island with one perfectly flat side.

Yes. No, I don't think he thought it was an island.
He was probably knowing Nilesy, he was probably

like betting that this was like a trick question sort of thing. Right.
And he was being clever with it. Yeah.
I mean, I think you could get away with it being a joke because, like,

and I don't, maybe it was a joke, honestly, because Nilesy's always doing this kind of stuff. But, but, like, it's a, it's a kind of a funny idea because you do see it in that little box.
Yeah.

You could see a comedian make a joke about that, right? When, especially when they do the voting and Alaska's there in the middle of the ocean, right? Right. Um, on off to one side.
I don't know.

I like that one stuff. That's what was the largest, but I don't really know.
What is American Samoa? That's quite big, isn't it? What was it? Well, yeah, we should pick it up.

Biggest American Island, biggest American island, yeah.

List of islands in the U.S. by area.
It's Hawaii, it's the big island. Yeah, I would say, I would have said Hawaii.
It's pretty close, though, because it's not that much bigger than

Puerto Rico or Kodiak Island. Kodiak Island, which is in Alaska.
It's one of the islands. There's loads of islands in Alaska.

In fact, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight of the top ten areas.

And of course, Long Island, which is Long Island's long, it's not, it's not, it's great.

It's not, uh, it's, it's just long. It's thin and long.

Indeed.

All right, we've got two emails here related to the cheeky girls. Now, nice.
My Triforce mailbag instincts, honed as they are over years of reading this, makes me think that this is a

urban legend specific to the cheeky girls that for some reason comes around. Anyway, you be the judge.
All right.

These are both essentially the same email, but I'll read them. I'll pray see them.

This is from Joe.

My mum was a manager for a high street pharmacy, and a few years ago, she interviewed someone who, at the end of the interview, said, I should probably let you know, I am slightly well known for a group that I'm in.

And my mum asked which group, and she replied, I'm one of the cheeky girls. My mum then looked her up, and she was indeed one of the cheeky girls.

And my mum did to hire her, but for a different shop location. And as far as I know, she still works for them.
So that's one from Joe. We then have one from Jodie, which is intriguing.

Just want to add to the discussion about the cheeky girls. I used to do recruitment for a car dealership in the York area.
And one of the cheeky girls applied and came in for an interview.

She was incredibly friendly and high energy. The sales manager walked by and did a double take so hard, he nearly dislocated something.

I ran a perfectly normal interview or tried to, but it's difficult to keep a straight face when you're asking someone about their sales KPIs after a quick bit of small talk about their live performances.

We didn't end up hiring her, but honestly, not because of her previous job experience. She just wasn't keen on working weekends.

So there you go. We don't know.
Joe and Jodee, I genuinely don't know if those are true, but I like the idea that they are. Good to know that the cheeky girls won't work on weekends.

So if you're ever like thinking of, you know, renting them out for a kid's party or something like that,

you'll have to have it during the week, maybe over the summer or like a half term or something.

Yeah, I mean, I assume it's because they want to do performances and stuff. Like they want to do gigs or, you know, because they're still going to make a few quid.
I'm sure.

If you hired the cheeky girls for a performance, I'm guessing you'd probably pay a grand or something like that to have the cheeky girls perform. Really? Yeah, I'd guess.
For how long?

In fact, just a half-hour set. Hire the cheeky girls.

Hire the cheeky girls. Here they are.
They are available. Book the cheeky girls today.
Right now. Oh, wait.
Hang on. Give me a price.
It doesn't matter.

Well, if there's no price, that means it's more than a grand flex. No, that means that they negotiate.
But I guarantee you. You gotta.

If i offered a grand for a half hour set i bet i'd get it you gotta yeah well no i don't know a set well how they just gotta play the touch my songs do a bit of crowd work and away you go so their fee range is please contact which means they they don't have a flat rate well that's it

that means they're not big that means that no no no that's the opposite I would say if you're expensive, you put out there a huge rate because you know that you will get it.

Like, I know that if you want to hire Bear Grylls, it's like, I think it's 250K, and you have to helicopter him there and back, something like that. Yeah.
Um, is the fee. So that's like there.

Because why would he say, oh, come talk to me? If you don't want people to come in and try to lowball you, you want to make upfront, it's a shitload of money. If you're contacting me, it's this much.

It's a lot. And I'm announcing it.
And this is non-negotiable. That's the amount.
Cheeky girls, they'll be like, if it's 50 quid and a free meal, we might do it if we're stuck.

You know what I'm saying?

Fair girls get 250K and helicopter transport, cheeky girls get 50 quid and a meal if they're lucky.

And they won't do weekends either. No, no, they won't work weekends, but they will do gigs at the weekends.
That's what I'm saying. It's still work, though.
Yeah, but it's not work.

It's half an hour of telling people they can touch your bum and you eating a nice ham bat. No, no, but I don't think people are touching the cheeky girls' bums.
I would touch the cheeky girls' bums.

Oh, yeah. I don't think people are touching me.

I don't know if they're allowing you to do that. They have gone through life being touched, their bums being touched by people who think they should be.

I'm saying, if I was offered the chance and it was part of the act, right, I would

absolutely be perfectly honest with you. Like John Cena, like John Cena, I'm a big fan of consent.
All right, I would never touch a cheeky girl's bum without permission.

Oh, what kind of permission are we talking here? Like, is it just like a written agreement or something? Hired them for the event. I'm the boss of the company, and they're like, did

touch my bum. They're like, okay, it turned the four size desired us to tonight to be the cheeky girls.
Come a bit and touch our buns. And I'm like, oh, I'd still find that.
No, no, no, no.

Everyone's going to

touch that bum, touch that little bum.

It would be all on camera, too.

Yeah, but that's the point is that on camera is them saying, get up here now and touch our bums. And I just put my hand on the top end of their Derry Airs and I make a face like Benny Hill like

I can imagine it. Which brings us to our next email, which is about aphantasia, which is something we've discussed in the past.
This is from Derek.

Lewis mentioned aphantasia in the podcast, which is the inability to have a visual imagination for anyone that doesn't know. I see more and more Reddit posts with aphantasia scoring quizzes.

So, you know, it's a quiz about where you answer these questions and at the end, it tells you whether you've got aphantasia. Do you really buy that stuff?

Although I believe some people are better than others at visualizing things in their mind's eye, measuring this in a test seems like absolute nonsense.

I can imagine myself imagining imagining things perfectly in my mind, but also not at all. It depends on how you interpret this incredibly subjective notion of imagining things.

Science seems to back this up, by the way, but people just love scoring themselves on things like this. I think it's something you can train, like learning to draw.

I'd like to get your always informed opinions on this. It's complicated, okay? Like aphantasia is visualizing,

but it's also things like being able to think of a smell and

think of a taste and kind of, you know, there's a lot of complexity to it. And I think it is different for everyone's brain is different.
Everyone's experience is slightly different.

And it's very hard to conceptualize and describe something which is only accessible in individual people's heads.

And if you have very severe aphantasia, it's almost like you kind of don't really realize you do. And it's almost

this hypochondriac type thing of, oh, do I have it? How would I know? Maybe I do.

I can't, I can't watch telly in my head. So it's other people can watch telly in my head.
You waste a lot of it.

It's stuff like that, that moment where you realize you're like, well, I thought life was this way, but actually, it turns out like I've been wrong all along. It's because I've been affected by this.

Is that why people are like kind of obsessed with these things? Like they want that moment. I don't know if it's a matter of time.

I just like everything I thought was true is a lie because of this or whatever.

No, I think they just, I think, I think in general, in general, all of these online, take this online quiz to see if you have ADHD. Take this online quiz to see how autistic you are.

They're all just, it's all just clickbait. And

they advertise these things on Reddit. They push these things on social media because there's ads on it and people click on it and it's lots of engagement because it's always next slide.

It loads another page, another ads, another impression. So anything that seems like this, oh, it's everywhere now.
Everybody's got a fantasy. No, they haven't.

It's just that these quizzes are everywhere and they are not scientific. I wouldn't trust them as far as I could throw them.
It's just a fantasia is a real thing,

but all these quizzes are a load of wank. That's the way I see it.
I could probably

pretty far.

Yeah.

I think it's very difficult to, this is one of those things that

you might feel that you're missing out. Sure, right? Or like, I don't know, it's just so complicated.
And you're right. These quizzes are all nonsense, but I think like it doesn't

matter.

I don't really think.

the classic thing I always hark back to is when like you know Neil Gaiman

who is being thoroughly cancelled by the way

he's a comic book writer

and writer yeah who

who who sort of I think he tweeted something like you know oh it's just just just think this is just think about a fairy in your head and

all this stuff. Why don't why just use your imagination and other people were like we don't we can't like we don't, we don't visualize things in the way you apparently do.

And he sort of had almost no concept that other people might have a different brain, a different experience.

Well, it turns out he's a bit of a sociopath anyway. So like, that's why.
What did he get canceled for? Sexual assault. Just being a creep, I think, generally.
He's apparently not a good guy.

Right, okay. Here's an email.

This is from Jonathan, longtime listener, has come to the UK after various anecdotes about life in Bristol, was excited to look around.

So these are bullet points, things that an American noticed and thought about the UK. All right.
So I quite like these.

He traveled all over the UK. So the restaurant famous for where JK Rowling, another cancelled person, wrote her books in Edinburgh, had a fire in 2023.

The tour guide said that the staff went into the burning building with one goal, which was to save the desk where she wrote the books. Everything else burned down.
Christ saved. They saved the desk.

I didn't know that detail. It's quite interesting.
Menus on the outside of restaurants. Apparently, is that a UK thing?

That's a European thing, more simple. So you can go up and see what they're offering and the prices and go in or not.
Wait till you go to Japan, Flax. You'll be able to see

a plastic version of the food. I love it.
I'm really looking forward to that. It's hilarious.
Especially as a foreigner coming there. A lot of this stuff, I'm like, I've never heard of that before.

I don't know what it looks like. Now I'll know.
And

there's a giant eyeball in rice or whatever. I'll be like, oh, well,

you don't even need to be able to visualize it. You can just see it in front of your damn eyes.

No customization or limited customization on your food. I finally don't need to be quizzed just to get a burger.
Yeah, I mean, it shows you what's in it.

And then you can say, can you hold the lettuce or please no tomato in that or whatever?

But yeah, it's not a fucking 20 questions just to order a burger. No,

I think some things are more customizable. Oh, for sure.
Yeah, yeah. Like you're not going to be able to take the onions out of a curry.
Do you know what I mean? Right, right.

Built-in tipping, yeah, which is quite it's just in the bill, the service charges included. Yeah.

And it's definitely reasonable most of the time. Although

some of that Americanism

is creeping over here. Tipping stuff.
Yeah, but it's creeping over here with the. I was in a pub last year and I went to get around.

And when it came, when he gave me the machine to tap my card on, I had to decide what percentage of tip to add in a pub. Yeah, did you put that?

I just put no, but the guy, every other time anyone was ordering, he was just mashing no, and so it just comes up automatically. And we've had emails about this before, actually.

Some people are saying the landlords are actually taking the tip and not giving it out. Absolutely frustrating.

I feel bad when I'm presented with something which and then I have to press no to the case.

If you tipping, tip in cash. Like you have to tip in cash.
But then the other thing is I don't carry cash. And sometimes I'll go to a place and they won't put service on the bill.

And I say, can I add service? And they're like, you have to pay cash. And I'm like, well, I don't have any cash.
So how much does it it? This happened to me recently.

At New Year's, me and my, was it my oldest or my youngest? My oldest, we went out into town to meet,

I can't remember who we were meeting. I think Mrs.
F and my youngest were going to a show and we were going to have dinner and then meet them afterwards.

Anyway, we went out for a meal like right around the Christmas, New Year's period. And me being an idiot, midweek, I fucking, I've just been like, oh my God, we haven't booked anywhere.

All of these officers are going to be having their, you know, end of year's meals.

And I was like, shit, they're never going to get a table. Managed to get a table, went there, service not included.

And I said to the guy, because he was the guy that served this was really, really good, really friendly and just helped a lot. And he was just really, really attentive, but in the perfect way.

And I said, there's no service included. He goes, yeah, they don't include it.
I said, how can I tip you? He said, there's an app and you can tip me through that.

So there's like a little app that you can get and you find him on there. So you go to search by restaurant, find the guy by name, and then you can tip him direct in there.

So, you know, you can do it that way. So you can still do it electronically, but what a faff.
I did do it, though.

Soda fountains aren't a thing. Most soft drinks come in a can.
What is a soda fountain?

You know, like if you go to McDonald's and

it dispenses the soda into like the cup, you know, like from there. There's no soda fountain in McDonald's, is there? You press the button and it just like it comes out of like that.

Oh, and you're like M5 guys. They've got them in five guys.
Yeah, yeah. Okay.
Right, right, right. They are just not a thing, though.
Nowhere. You see, Mayo.
That's because you know why that is?

Because we don't do the infinite refills thing no you just buy a coke and there's your yeah you don't very rarely

uk or europe you very rarely find a an all-you can eat buffet as well they're they're not yeah they're not as prominent as they are in uh north america mayo on everything dear god i like mayo but come on um i know it's not i like mayo i haven't noticed that but i will look out for

mayo i do like mayo every time a tour guide mentioned the name anne boleyn second wife of henry vieth i kept hearing Amber Lynn. Amber Lynn, who I believe

is a porn star or a Twitch streamer.

She is a porn star. Amber Lynn.
Yeah. It's quite a fancy.

Yeah, she's 60 now. So, you know, this is going back away.

The London Eye.

Yeah, the London Eye essentially had TSA to board. So yeah,

they searched you.

Well, probably.

Good.

So

pod 13 was removed from the London Eye. It just sounds 33.
It goes 11, 12, 33, 14. They don't know.

You know,

that is a tourist thing, though. I think, you know, even in places like Japan,

it's unlucky, seen as an unlucky thing.

Some big buildings in New York have the 13th floor. Yeah, there's no 13th floor.
Removed, right? Or is that just on, is that like a TV movie thing? I don't know. No, it's true.
All right.

So this is related to Big Ben. Big Ben.
This is one of the main reasons I'm writing this email. This is what he says.

He's got a bunch of different stories as to why it's named Big Ben. Big Ben is not the tower.
It's the Elizabeth Tower, and the bell is named Big Ben. That is that is true.

Um, it was renamed Elizabeth Tower, it used to be something else. It's called Big Ben because the sister bell is the Liberty Bell and is a nod to Benjamin Franklin.

I'd be very surprised if that's the case, but I don't know. Uh, it's called Big Ben because the man who forged it was named Ben.
Don't know what that is.

It's called Big Ben because the construction manager of Elizabeth Tower was named Ben and a portly fellow. See, that's bullshit.
Um, so let's look up Big Ben. Big Ben Ben

on Wikipedia is a British cultural icon. Yes, it is.
It's the great, It's the great bell of the Great Clock of Westminster.

Elizabeth Tower, originally named the Clock Tower and properly known as Big Ben, was built as part of Charles Barry's designs for the new palace of Westminster and was large after the old palace was destroyed in 1834 by fire.

Although Barry was the chief architect of the neo-Gothic palace, he turned to Augustus Poogin the design of the clock tower, which resembles earlier designs by Poogan, including one at Buscarisbrick Hall in Lancashire.

So the design, blah, blah, blah, Erton Wright, prison room name. Journalists during Queen Victoria's reign called it St.
Stephen's Tower, as members of the parliament originally sat at St.

Stephen's Hall. That's the story I'd heard.
These journalists referred to anything related to the House of Commons as news from St.

Stephen's, a term that survives in Welsh language political reporting as San Stefan. The palace does contain a feature called St.
Stephen's Tower, located above the public entrance.

On the 2nd of June, 2012, the House of Commons voted in support of a proposal to change the name from the clock tower to Elizabeth Tower to commemorate Queen Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee.

The Commons confirmed the name, change, proceeded, and that was that. So that's the tower.
I don't know why the bell is called. Oh, here, Big Ben, the Great Bell.

The original bell was a 16-ton hour bell cast in Stockton-on-Tees by John Warner and Sons.

It is thought the bell was originally to be called Victoria or Royal Victoria in honor of Queen Victoria, but MPs suggested the bell's current nickname of Big Ben during a parliamentary debate.

The comment is not recorded in Hansard, so they just name it. Yeah, there you go.
Big Ben. What the hell? Was it like some sort of joke then? A big little MP joke? They don't know.

So they don't know if it was named after Sir Benjamin Hall, Minister for Public Works, who oversaw the installation.

They don't know if it was heavyweight boxing champion Ben Cornt, very close to a swear word, but no, Ben Kaunt.

Very clear from statements to the press at the time, the name derives from the nickname of Hall, who was very tall.

So Benjamin Hall, who was the overseer of the building of it, they called it Big Ben. Apparently, that's according to Wikipedia.
Either way, you can look it up. Stonehenge.

A henge literally translates to ditch. So in a literal translation, it's stone ditch.
Yep, that's how we used to name things.

And the same spot in Bath where the power station is is the same place in which Mary Shelley's Frankenstein's monster was supposedly brought to life. So some interesting takeaways from your UK trip.

Thank you. Jeez.
Jonathan. This sounds like a good trip.

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I saw that this is an interesting thing. That

Emma Watson

arrested for speeding. Yes.

Got her license taken away.

That is so serious speeding.

Well, she only got she was 38 in a 30 zone. No, no, they don't take your license away for that.
Well, no, but she had nine points.

So she had nine points

from previous speeding.

And she got her license taken away

on this particular day in Crown Court. And interestingly, on the same day, Zoe Wanamaker,

who was also in the Harry Potter movies, yes, I used to love this. Had her license taken away in the same court.
It's a conspiracy. The same offence of speeding, like doing

each other by any chance. Is that what it was? I don't know.
So I want to make her and Emma Watson routinely have races on a stretch of road near them and they both got caught at the same time.

But it's a very slow race because they only get up to 38 miles an hour. Isn't that interesting? That she was in.

Both Harry Potter actresses got their licenses taken away in the same day in the same court. But that also, I'm not being funny.
The most I got, I had six points on my license. That's the most I had.

Now I have none because you lose them over time. For anyone that doesn't know, in the UK, you get three points points on your driver's license for going over the speed limit and getting caught.

And if you get up to 12, they take your license away, I think for a year. And then if you like routinely do that, they just take it away for longer.

And eventually you can get banned from driving, I believe.

But certainly three points for us to get caught speeding. First time offense, you can do a speed awareness course.
I've done the speed awareness course. It was very good.

It did change the way I drive. But I did subsequently get caught by speeding cameras on a trip to Bristol coming off the M4 and heading into Bristol.
It very quickly drops down to 40.

And I think I was a few miles an hour over, and the same in Bournemouth. And I got done within a week, one week, my trip out of Bristol, sorry, into Bristol, and then my way down to Bournemouth.

I got caught arriving in Bristol and arriving in Bournemouth and got six points. Um, put my premiums went up on my driving insurance, and uh, now I've got no points.

They've decayed, have they, since then? How long do they last the points? Like a year? I know, I think it's longer than a year, but I don't know. Um, let's, I think it might be three years.

Points on license very easy to gain. I remember back in the day, it was a thing where

husbands would take the points for their wife or something, or say they were driving at the time

to try and

spread them. And I'm sure that happens even now.
But they usually have a picture of who's driving. And if you get caught doing that, you can lose your license.
Oh, yeah.

I mean, so

I think you could actually get in trouble for it.

When I had six points a year later, or maybe a couple of years later, when I was really driving very carefully, because God forbid you go up to nine, because then you'll one slip away.

Your one Emma Watson was OE Wanamaker away from them taking me license away. Um, another letter arrived from the DVLA, and I was like, oh, fuck me, there's no way I got caught speeding.

I was so careful, and Mrs. F was like mocking me, and like, you idiot, and all this kind of stuff.
Check the dates, I wasn't even in the country, motherfuckers.

It was her driving the car, she had to do the speed away, and of course, it got fair.

One of those,

yeah, that's one of those rare moments as a husband. So, do you have to identify

that? You

who was driving on that day? It's normally me. Mrs.
F doesn't really enjoy driving. I do quite enjoy driving.

But I imagine it can happen with a couple of sharing a car that they something happened a month ago. They genuinely don't know which one of them was speeding up.
Absolutely.

And you could probably even claim, if you got caught lying and say, I'm so sorry, it was 100% honest mistake. They might even let you get away with it.

They're quite reasonable, I'd say, about these things. Anyway, don't speed.
That's the lesson. First episode.
Lewis Old question mark? This is from Tom.

Just went back and listened to the first ever episode of the podcast. It's like eight.

First ever one. Nearly 10, I think.

Been listening nearly since the start, and this is the first time going back. Very taken aback to hear Lewis calling you, that's me, the old man when I was 39.
And now, nearly 10 years have gone by.

What do you all think has changed about yourselves? And Lewis, do you now consider yourself an old man now that you've surpassed this self-inflicted boundary? Yeah.

I think my viewpoint has changed when I reached 40 for sure. I think I am am more

grateful for still being so hail and hearty and healthy, given, you know, the things that could happen. I also think I'm a bit more like,

I don't know, I have changed a lot. And it's and I do consider myself

older or middle-aged at least and and very,

you know, I mean, the average person on earth, I think, is, is 30, something like that. So

or the midpoint, like like you can divide the population of the earth in half and half are under 30, half are over 30, right? So 30.9. Being 40

this year. Yeah, you're dead.
You're basically already dead.

It's getting old. I think that.

Yeah. Wait, how old are you going to be this year? 43.
42. 42 this year.
All right. Yeah.
So I'm going to be 50 next year. And that feels to me, everything up to 50 felt like I wasn't old.

I just turned 50.

Right. I mean, you're not far off either.
The weird thing is, is that to me, 40s still felt viable because you get some footballers who play into their 40s.

You get some golfers easily winning stuff in their 40s. You even get some Formula One drivers that are driving that late.
All kinds of, you know, young man activities, you'd think.

Loads of singers, actors are in their peak in their 40s. 50s? Come on.
I'm basically dead to the world at that point. No one's going to ever talk to me or look at me ever again.

I'm just going to be so old and withered next year that it's basically all over for me. No, it's just crazy.

life was possible it's just a different phase you gotta you you're you you you you gotta look forward to um you know possibly grandkids more dogs like it's just life just uh it just is different it slows down different to what you you you're used to but you should be kind of ready for it as well you know i'm ready it's a it's a gradual decline i'd say although this was my year i set myself a goal this year which i very rarely Actually, that's not true.

I set myself goals all the time, but I never actually followed through on them. This year, I was done things a little differently.
I I said at the start of the year, I need to look after myself.

I'm going to be 49 this year. I want to start taking care of myself mentally, physically, going into the latter stages of my life.
Sure. So I was, I wanted to lose weight.

I wanted to sort my teeth out. I wanted to sort my mental health out, cut down on drinking, do, do better.
So you want to sort your teeth out? What? Like,

I didn't have bad teeth. I didn't have bad teeth or anything like that, but I had a little bit of a sort of continual problem.

If I bite down on the left side of my mouth, sometimes it would like hurt.

I suspect suspect i had a crack in my tooth and my gums were okay but the dentist would always say you should look after your gums a little better i was like yeah yeah yeah i really went to the dentist i got work done fixed the cracks took care of my gingivitis and everything i do interdental brushing every day i really look after them went to the dentist last week expecting a big panoply of disasters and he said it was a two-minute appointment he said your teeth are in excellent condition no great teeth are fine your gums are great No notes.

I was like, fan, fucking tasting. First time I've ever been to the dentist and had nothing recommended.

No, do this more do that more cut down to that great so that made me feel really good mental health i've really worked on that this year and i've definitely seen improvements in that and weight loss i've been on munjaro now for three weeks baby three weeks of munjaro

yeah i've lost the equivalent of a small child in weight i've lost eight pounds i lost eight pounds three and a half kilos so imagine caring a baby relatively newborn baby all the time that's fallen off my body i don't know where it's went nice but it's worked be careful all right no everyone else i'm gonna be uncared.

Do not follow P Flex's lead. Be careful.
I'm going to be uncareful. That Pidgey thing was, you know,

was a disaster. It was.
I'm just incident. How is he losing weight? I don't know what you're doing.

Just be careful. I love the way your assumption is.
that I don't know what I'm doing. Because I'm just pigeon feeding.
But it often gets proved like a couple of weeks later that you don't.

I've lost weight. This is a positive thing.
Losing weight is a positive thing for your health, especially as you get older.

And I've been more active now that I'm off the search reline, my anxiety meds. I'm cycling a lot more often.
I'm up and about more often. I feel better.
I am trying to do everything right.

I'm eating better. I'm drinking less.
It's all good news. And you're like, no,

no, no, no. This is bad.

Be careful. Such a negative Nelly, aren't you? Unbelievable.
Yeah.

You got to have a negative Nelly in your life, though. You do.

You can't just be surrounded by, you know, people are are always like, surround yourself by positive people and stuff like that. No, you have to have, you got to have some counterpoints, too.

You got to be, you got to be realistic.

You can't just have people around you who are just telling you what you want to hear all the time because you're not going to be, you're not going to round out properly. You're just going to.

Talking about negative, negative Nellies. How about this? This is from Logan who emails in about the Quebec language police.
Right. This is because we've been talking about Jong-u-Tupper.

Jong-u-Tupperware and Jong-ui rubber boots. Yeah.
Exactly. And

Joey Bag of Donuts and all those guys. Yeah.

So this is how the French, we spoke about how the French see their French as the true superior version of French and their culture is actual French culture.

So the Quebec Language Police or the Office Québécois de la Long Française,

also known as the Language Police, here are some of the crazier things that they've done to keep French as the number one language in Quebec.

They send undercover agents into stores to make sure customers are greeted in French and can find the stores between $3,000 and $30,000 if they don't comply. Jeez.

Recently, they tried to ban and fine stores for greeting customers with bonjour, hi, which is common in bilingual areas like the island of Montreal. They want people to just say bonjour.

Any signage or packaging must include French and the French text has to be at least twice as big as the English text.

New immigrants have six months to learn French and pass an exam to stay in the province. Any non-English immigrants are required to send their kids to French schools, not English ones.

All government health services are in French only, meaning if your French isn't perfect, you're forced to discuss extremely sensitive medical information in a language you might not fully understand.

As a rare primarily English-speaking person in Quebec, it really feels like a purge of anything that's not French, which makes it tough for the people to live in an English-speaking country where not knowing, oh gosh, I think he's mistyped something here.

Wung Gujulu could seriously hurt your chances of living or working anywhere else. Anyway, just wondered if you guys had any thoughts, especially SIPs.

Oh, and there's one additional fact before we keep going about Montreal. The entire city is controlled by by the Italian mafia.

Roads bad and full of potholes.

I was always told as a kid that it just never recovered from hosting the Olympics. Like,

it's just been in so much debt and therefore all the infrastructure is bad and

is never fixed and stuff. But I don't know if that's true.

That could just be one of those things that you just, you know, you hear as a kid or you misinterpret as a kid and it kind of sticks with you.

The whole mafia thing could be just an urban legend i mean it could i'm not being funny but the roads around here are i'm not going to blame the mafia it's just the bad governance really that's all it is oh over here i i hate uh like parts of it are nice but like they're um they they rely on granite because they've just they've always used granite for a lot of stuff over here But like, it just looks like shit.

Like, they line the sidewalks with it and everything, and it just looks so tired and old. And it's like, just make some modern looking sidewalks and roads, and like

off with all this granite all the time. Like, it's just so annoying, but like, I

places get into like a rut, you know, like they have like an identity or whatever, and you know, people that come and go in government, they just don't want to change things around too much.

So, yeah, you just end up with like this, this look, but it just looks so dated, in my opinion.

I'm sure other people would be like, No way, that's not dated, but to me, but from the government's from the local government's perspective, they've got a supplier who supplies the granite.

They've got some contract. They know what it's going to cost.
And everybody that lives there at the moment, no one's up in arms about it. It's just rock, just fucking.

Whereas if you come in and say bold new idea, people fucking hate bold new ideas related to paving if it's outside their house or their shop. So they're like, no, no, no.

People just want things to stay the same. Of course.

I get it, but it's

still nice if it was like, you know, just modernized.

Just modernized a little bit. Yeah.

It's a very nationalistic thing to be protective of your language. Well, France itself is very protective of its culture.

So it's not surprising that Quebec would be

like a miniature version of France within a country or whatever. But I mean,

France themselves,

if you read about most things to do with France or foreign companies coming into France or whatever, there's all sorts sorts of stuff like

Disney, for example, when they opened up Disneyland, Paris, before they could even put a shovel in the ground, they had to agree that like 80% of the products that are sold there have to be made in France.

There's a certain proportion of people that work there have to be French, like, you know, from... citizens of France.
Like loads of stuff.

Like they do a lot to protect their culture, their people and everything.

And to outsiders, it's annoying. I mean, probably especially American companies who are used to just like deregulating everything to make things easier for themselves.

They must find dealing with a country like France a total nightmare because France are very insistent on things being done very specifically to benefit them. But

you can't have it both ways, though, either.

You can't impose

yourself on another country and culture that fully either.

I get you want to have a resort, but

I think the

hosting country should be able to have some stipulations as well.

Yeah, I mean, otherwise it's like cultural colonialism, really. Yeah, that's what they, yeah, well, that's what they were talking.
That's what they were saying.

Like, originally, they were super opposed to it, even opening.

It's a homogeny of everything to say, we want it. Like, I feel like a lot of these big American businesses that are consumer focused,

the whole point is the homogeny. Yes, you want every McDonald's that you walk into anywhere in the world.

Pretty much the same. Yeah, exactly.
And that's their whole thing: it's this safe haven.

I'm sure that Disney and all these companies are the same, where it's just, no, no, no, no, it has to be like this. But by doing that, you do dilute all those other cultures.

And it's like, we don't want you to come and stamp Americanism on everything any more than people should want Britain to tell, you know, Brazil. No, no, no, it's got to be British.
style. No, no, no.

You can do it. Your company can exist within a different culture.
Yeah. It can still have all the hallmarks of your culture within reason, but it should not be a replacement.

It should be seamlessly integrated, I think, would be I feel like there's always a push for independence movements, which I'm generally fond of small

people self-governing themselves.

But I think there is this element of the people who run these like independence parties kind of know that if they get independence, they're going to be the president of this new country.

They're just a minor character in

government politics until

they manage to get through this movement and suddenly they are a big deal. And

I think that applies to the world generally too, right? Like someone is invested in, you know, keeping French, national, you know, the French language going.

They can, you know, drive up some sort of nationalistic pride and some oh we don't want our language to die out look people are using the word computer instead of audien atur we need to shut that shit down and scare people and that scare tactic keeps them in in a job right and that that's their that's their livelihood a lot of people are very defensive about causes that are quite frankly not

worth worrying about because they um

it's it's they're incentivized to do so right man i did watch a great documentary this week it was

the David Attenborough Ocean.

Oh, is it good?

I mean, look, I love all of his work and I love nature documentaries, but like everyone else, I am suffering from the absolute impending doom of climate change to the point where watching a TV show about failing environments and dying animals and the agony and horror of it all is just not something I can sustain.

Well, I think that's what everyone is expecting from this movie. And I put off watching it for a while.

I had it ready to go queued up and I just wasn't feeling like I could handle it because quite frankly, I felt exactly the same as you.

And I imagine people are fatigued and exhausted by seeing so much misery.

And, you know, we know that the ocean is being fucked by humanity from dumping stuff in there to dredging to overfishing and climate change, destroying and bleaching all the corals.

It's a fucking disaster. And it's really, really sad.
But the takeaway of the movie is that there are these protected areas on the earth that have been allowed.

Like there was a place off the coast of America that was fished so badly that it was made a no-fish zone because there was no fish there. So it wasn't really a downside to making it a no-fish zone.

But then five years later, it had really recovered and really bounced back in a way that you don't see on land.

You know, when land areas are fucked, they don't bounce back to the effect that the ocean is able to. Yeah,

normally land areas will be fucked by construction and stuff. ultimately pollution yeah or pollution

there's this there's a huge problem on on land with with national parks because so many national parks are privately owned and they're just grazed on and they're not natural and it's all monoculture it's a disaster anyway but but land is a different topic this ocean thing it actually ends with this really positive message that if we can convince governments to sequester or like protect you know significant you know i think they're looking at doing and this is a global thing which hopefully it will go through.

There's this initiative to protect 30% of the world's oceans from fishing by 2030.

And I think that that would effectively protect the whole ocean because it would allow these kind of these zones, they're kind of like, because they're so, because the ocean used to be so full of life and so vibrant that when it's that these protected zones spill out and actually provide overflowing amounts of plant and fish and animal life to the rest of the ocean from these sort of seed zones.

And so I think it's

the real message of the documentary is that, yes,

the planet, we're fucking the planet real bad at the moment and it's it's horrible.

But actually the solution is there and and also the the the goals are aligned, right?

Like the people who want to sustain the ocean and the people who fish from the ocean, they have the same goals of more fish and more life. And at the moment, all we're doing is depleting.

And the only and that there's a very easy solution and that is to protect a portion of the planet. And it's a really hope, it's a really hopeful message.

I might watch it then. So, I mean, and David Aspera is such a fucking

icon. He's amazing.
He's 99.

He's 99.

The dude is amazing. Fuck.
Honestly, like,

the sort of, because he's obviously been involved in this sort of stuff, and he's lived through the way that we've changed the way we use the oceans, right?

It used to be this kind of, you know, infinite big blue bin of

unending bounty. But now, you know, we realize that we have this incredible impact on it from these trawlers that go out and just, you know, destroy,

you know, underwater landscapes

with no consequences and unregulated and it's terrible. So, yeah, really.
By the way, so he's a he's a Middlesex boy. He's from around here.
He's basically a local badge. Yeah.
Absolutely love.

Is he a bit of a cheeky chappy? Not at all. No, no, he's not.
I'm less interested in 1926. I went, I was looking for a 99-year-old cheeky chappy

to

develop

a parasocial relationship with.

So, interestingly, he didn't do national service and he wasn't in the military until 1947.

So, he would have been, he would have been old enough to go to the war. Right.

Was he a coward?

Maybe he had bone spurs, you know?

Maybe

yeah.

What was his, what was he doing during the war? Was his beef interested? I'm sure there's a incredibly good reason why.

Maybe he was, maybe he was, uh, maybe he was, while everybody was at war, he was studying the Blaze. He was only 13 when war broke out.
Yeah, he was at home practicing to

the documentary. He was born in 19, oh, 1926.
Okay, so he was 13 when war broke out.

he was a fucker.

My bad, my bad. Yeah, so he wasn't actually old enough to serve.
That is true. Absolutely fair enough.
So when he was 21, he went into national set. So he was a little bit young.
That's fair.

We don't want to send kids to war. And thank goodness, we might have lost Attenborough.
You never know. We might have lost.
Brilliant man, honestly. Absolutely brilliant.

I thought the implication was that he hid. Here under the stairs is my tiny hiding space.

They've tried to make me fight in this godless war, but I will not be found. It's just hiding.

Eating insects and

we got a love of insects. These insects are delicious.

I've been surviving on wood lice and

mushrooms.

Toad jam. I've been living my own toe jam for six years.
For six years. Thank God the war is over.

So this is a little fact check. Do you remember we talked about the grape lady? The grapevine? Yeah,

this was a very early, I want to say meme, but widely shared video of a woman falling off the game. Oh, we talked about it recently, yeah.
Because I'd only seen the video recently. Right.

For the first time,

God, that fucking sound is awful. So this is from Callum.

I thought it was ironic that in the same episode you were talking about Google AI being unreliable, it looks like you may have fallen for it.

After some extensive Googling, I found many people saying that the Grape Lady broke several ribs and quit television due to the incident.

However, there are no verifiable sources the info comes from a radio show where they mock interviewed the grape lady as a skit obviously it wasn't actually her right the cameraman who was at the scene said in 2008 that she had some bruised ribs and a bruised ego but was on her feet shortly after and went back to work within a few days right she did leave the new station at some point within the eight years between the original airing and when the video was uploaded but she got a job as a weather reporter elsewhere so she didn't break a bunch of shit she just i mean that's she was just badly winded i think is what that sound is i mean yeah i i also think like this is the danger of ai isn't it that it the misinformation it it interprets repetitive you know it can't really distinguish between lies and or or miss or mistreatment or just misremembering like a lot of the time people will say oh i thought that because they've they've misremembered it and then they tell someone they tell someone that becomes a new fact um but i think at the same time

we had a moment in this episode where you took all of the stuff from big ben the wikipedia page as fact and we just all accepted it as a fact.

I mean, there was a time when Wikipedia was really considered to be very bad. That's because we didn't know how bad it could get, to be honest.

But I think we are willing to accept a certain level of misinformation. Yeah.
And I think we've all accepted that Wikipedia feels like a pretty reliable source.

It's pretty reliable. I mean, I know it's not perfect, but as a collective, essential, sort of grassroots-led encyclopedia movement, I think it does a really good job.

Honestly, it's such a boon to humanity in a sense that it does.

Think about what if we didn't have such a reliable source, or if it was controlled by more of a corporate entity or by a government. I mean, didn't Elon Musk want to buy Wikipedia?

I'm pretty sure that was.

If he did that, that would be the end of knowledge. Yeah, it would be like because we would have nothing to go.
Can you imagine if Fox News had bought Wikipedia? Yeah,

they're outrageous.

There is no problem.

I watched it recently with some of the stuff going on, especially with

Zoron Mumdani in New York,

the progressive guy there that

won the primary. Yeah, it is

insane the stuff that they say, that they're allowed to say.

It is mental what they get away with saying.

It is a propaganda tool. I mean,

it's literally...

It's

unashamedly so.

And it's not... It should be declared, though, though, in a sense.
it really should be declared. It should.

It should be wild.

It doesn't have to be. It doesn't have to be.
It doesn't have to be. Because they're not listed as a news station.
Yeah, no, they're not listed as entertainment. Yeah, they're listed as

a list of entertainment, yeah.

Let's talk about Nick Cage.

I thought this guy might give you guys a chuckle. Right.
Nick Cage. Nick Cage.
Nick Cage. Nicholas Cage.

Nicholas Cage. The one still going.
He's still going with the music.

Still alive. Still.

He's

weird and wonderful and terrible. This is the thing.
I feel like Nick Cage set up the second, let's say the third phase of his career.

He started off making independent movies that were very well regarded. Then he made absolute shit for like 20 years.
And now he's finally decided to start making whatever the fuck he wants again.

And he's making all kinds of weirdo stuff. Long Legs, I think, was a film that he was in recently.
He was superb. That was such a good movie.
I haven't seen it, but I heard it was so good.

A lot of people hate it. A lot of people hate it.
Oh, I loved it. It It was really good.
Really creepy psychological horror movie.

It's really on the border of people either love it or hate it. I thought it was really good.
Anyway, give it a try. You can be your own judge.
So this is about Nicholas, aka Nick Cage.

Of course, that's not his real name. His real name is Pickley.

And he's a pickle. His real name is Nicholas Kim Coppola because he is, of course, related to Francis.
He's in the Coppola family. He's in France.

I didn't know that.

Oh my god. He used to choose his diet based on how the animals have sex.

So this is. I can't do a Nicholas Cage impression, but I'll do one for the sake of this.
I have a fascination with fish, birds, and whales, sentient life, insects, reptiles.

I actually choose the way I eat according to the way animals have sex. I think fish are very dignified.
So are birds. But pigs, not so much, so I don't eat pig meat.
That's it. Nice.
So he doesn't.

This is from the Guardian 2010 interview. He eats animals based on how they fuck.
I thought that's quite interesting. Thanks, Jonas.
Okay, you have to have a.

Okay,

so

that does mean you have.

I don't like thinking about, I don't like, I mean, I'm glad I'm

not one of the reasons I'm a vegan, but like, you know, I don't really like the idea of thinking about how animals are fucking when I'm eating them.

You know, it's not a, it's not, it's not a great way to go about having a meal, is it? Well, it's Nicholas Cage, mate. Nicholas Kim Coppola Cage.
Nicholas Kim Coppola Cage.

I quite like how the fish spunk out all those eggs. for me.

Slow to the bottom.

It's quite dignified. Okay.
Dignified. Yeah.
Sure. That's funny.
Do we want one more or are we done? Bonkers. Let's just do one more for the road.
Or just bonkers on there. One more.

I'll give you some titles and you decide what you want to read. Or you want me to read.
Pyrrhion Broke My Heart. Islam and Praying 50 Times a Day.
Oh my God.

Whether drinking strolls have one hole or two.

Strange Encounter. Just give us a pick.

Give us the heartbreak one. Give us all the pick.
I want the heartbreak this one. All right.

If I remember correctly, around 2017, I was 16, my friends were asking pro CSGO players to sign their Steam profile. I thought to myself, who could sign mine?

Well, I had the bright idea to donate something like $10 asking Pyrrhian on Twitch to sign my Steam profile. And I wish I had a clip of it, but the conversation went something like this.

Pyrrhion. Sign a Steam profile.
What does that mean? Someone in chat. It's like when someone wants to collect internet points from online people.
Pyrrhion. Oh, fuck that.

What a stupid thing to ask for. Issue a refund request.
I don't care. Go away.
Nice.

It's been eight years, and I do agree profile signings are cringe, but for some reason, throughout the years, that moment has stuck in my brain.

Apologies for that. I'll sign your profile, dude.
Let me ask you. Yeah, ask Lulu.
Next time he's streaming, you ask him. If you donate 10 bucks to charity, I'll sign anything you want.
Fuck.

Strange encounter. Zoe was asked this.
Uni student here. Random middle-aged lady walking her dog came up to me today and asked if I knew anything about physics.

i said no and when asked she said that she was wondering if the reason the universe expands and contracts is because it follows a figure eight orbit right i politely said i don't know and left uh as three middle-aged guys can you explain this these people exist they are out there uh as judged from the period's instagram posting shopping lists sometimes they just have like dead dog on their shopping list or whatever and it's like there's no rhyme or reason these people are just fucking crazy they're out there they are just they they just as

some people have malfunctioning brains. Do you think they ever hold a gun to their malfunctioning dick and just say, you better fucking play ball here, Buster? You're dead.

That is some Quentin Tarantino movie shit. Do you know what I mean?

That is, that is, you could see that, like some frustrated businessman. It's like, I gotta get on this.

You fucking dick. You don't let me down again, you fucking piece of shit.

Yeah.

This final one is Google Trends. We swung the Google Trends for search topics.
Someone sent me a link.

So

I'll just go by the screenshot. Found this interesting.
So thought I'd share.

Just listening to the latest mailbag, Britney Spears and the pedo baiting surround her early career was brought up, specifically the picture of her on a bike.

Do you remember I talked about sent you the picture of a bike?

Figured I'd take a look at the photo and

curiosity struck for the reach the podcast has. So here's a Google Analytics review and a clear zero search results right up until the podcast release date, which carries on into the next day.

And he threw in another topic as well. So these two search options had zero traffic prior to our podcast coming out.
Britney Spears Bicycle peaking at 59 on July the 10th. Nice.

Well, just after July the 9th, just after the podcast came out. Lembit Opic, 100 searches for Lembit Opic, the MP who dated one of the cheeky girls.
Yes. 100 searches for him just after the podcast.

So those are the two things that we caused a spike in searches related to Lembit Opic and Britney Spears on a Bicycle. I want to know what else we can cause to spike in terms of Google trends.
Okay.

I love that we did this thing.

It has to be something very, very niche that people haven't thought about in a very long time.

Because Britney Spears is not niche, but Britney Spears' bicycle picture is niche because it's from like 20 odd years ago. I bet most people don't even know it exists.

We've already talked about him. How much does it cost to hire out the cheeky girls for a half-hour gig?

There you go.

Cheeky girls' hiring rate. Let's try and find it.
People, cheeky girls hiring. And their agent's going to go, guys,

cancel your summer holidays. We're going to be busy, busy, busy.

It's going to be all the shit. There's been about 50 new searches

for rates.

Oh, my God. Alongside Lembit Opic.
What? It's going to be, it's going to be fucking Anne Boleyn.

She's going to be going. amber amb e art

the great lady great lady

the fucking i don't know just all the shit we talked about on this podcast like i think it was funny though because we do talk a load of about old like lembit opik and the cheeky girls so it's funny to see young people who have no idea what these things are exactly that's what i love i love people because i love these kind of sometimes i watched this clip yesterday and it was some awards ceremony and it was what i tell you what it was it was a it was just it was just recommended to me on TikTok or something.

And it was like Spike Milligan doing

a bit where Jonathan Ross is up on stage and he's giving Spike Milligan like a lifetime achievement award. And Spike's just cracking jokes all the time.
And there's this great bit where Prince Charles

has written him a letter,

then Prince Charles, saying how much he was a big fan, big fan of yours. And Spike sort of, you know, in just this moment of

really good comic timing, like just in a gap in all the laughter and conversation, Spike says, groveling bastard.

And it's, and it's so, he delivers it so well with like this little wry smile. And it, you know, it, and every, everyone, you know, it really, it really kills the room kind of thing.

And it's just like this, you know, he was really, I don't know, like, obviously an expert, comic spent his whole life trying to make people laugh, you know.

I think he was, you know, in the ward doing that sort of stuff as well. Like he was kind of on stage with the players, you know, it was his whole thing.
And

you see these, these, that, but that room, that awards ceremony, I was absolutely stunned by how many people, how many faces I recognized in the crowd.

It was like, you know, Ben Elton, who probably has been cancelled, God knows, you know, and all these

celebrities. Okay.
I don't think he's

been

cancelled. No, but I feel like a lot of these people, I was like, oh my fucking God.
I was shocked by how many of them

I recognized, you know, and it was because I'm from that generation, you know, when all these celebrities are on

the 90s telly. I was watching so much telly, you know, in the 90s.

What else can you do? Because that's all there was to do. There's nothing else to do.
Yeah. So I was just stunned by that.

Every time they shot to the crowd, I was like, oh, I know who that is. I recognize all those people.
And I could name them all as well. It's fascinating.
It's funny, isn't it?

So, yeah. I know the mailbag in the

quadruple world.

Anyway,

emails coming. I keep spoken I wanted to read, but I'm look, a lot of your emails I would read, but we don't do a mailbag for a couple of weeks.

And then I come back and it's like, shit, this is talking about something that was two months ago. So keep them coming.
I do go back. I do read them.
I read every single email that you send.

I guarantee you. Even the crazy ones, even the ones that are never going to get read out, I read them and I make, I put them in the do not use bin, which I have a bin.
He's got a bin.

So keep them coming. I love reading them.
I read as many out as I can. I think the lads really enjoy hearing them as well.
So, and I hope you guys do too.

Thanks for another successful email bag, bag, mail bag, email bag. Thank you so much.
Email, mail, bag. And email, mail bag.
Thank you, everyone. See you next time.

Goodbye.

It's sufficient for me me the fiestas. And no one receives a year, because also

a refresh with

a

macripoor union. But

participation can bear, you can combine with a

middle.