A confused American in England | Triforce Mailbag #59

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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 mailbailbag.

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 the two sides of the the the podcast coin of a mailbag all right so i'll play you two songs this one is this one is quite long but it's quite good um this is called the mail sad it's a sad mailbag song oh crap sent in by by um by michael um so it's a minute 42 it is a minute 42 we can get the gist of it and tap out at any time okay um but it's it's a it this is not an ai song and i 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 male sad.

I like that.

It is quite sad.

It's a very.

It 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, just breathing.

This is good.

I think it's pretty good.

I think it's good.

I think it's well done.

Bang, is that you, your voice?

He flexed.

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

Steve from...

It might be you.

It be auto-tuned.

It might be you.

It's him.

He's using us as a test bed for

This is pure Michael.

Michael,

I really like that.

I really like that.

Was that Michael vocals, or was that your vocal?

That was not me, though.

People who do some clever stuff with the music stuff these days.

Even without

sound like me, that does not sound like music.

That does sound a bit like you.

It didn't.

It's just an Englishman 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 confused.

I thought I'd said something really offensive and you wanted to make sure.

No, but this happened.

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 criticize their precious billionaires.

So just bear that in mind.

I'm sorry.

That you said those things, not me.

I'm still reading.

This is the Carthagina Jingle.

This is the Carthage 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 lot of people.

Refresh off of one right into the other.

So it's

quite different.

Mailbag's quite different.

Yeah, they are.

I mean, it provides the information.

It's a different 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, well, thanks so much for

make it quieter.

Can I just shout out the first guy, Michael, for using the.flack file?

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 unshout out the fact that it's fucking 18 meg because it's dot flak?

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

have to use file format.

The free lossless audio compression probably does something like that.

But it's not very compressed.

It is

used by pros.

Yes, that's what I'm saying.

This guy knows what he's doing.

In fact, Michael,

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 barracks.

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.

Yeah, that was me.

I'm wearing my really tight undies.

It's Louis Sips and Period.

The breathing.

Read your mail today.

It's like a reverse chocolate rain.

It's just 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 stab of approval from me.

That's why I've 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.

You know, there is a limit.

There is definitely a limit.

We need to go back to basic

using.

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

Do you know what I mean?

We need to send out a lot of people.

You say tape?

What's wrong with vinyl, mate?

Send it all grammar.

Well, hello there.

You're listening to the Trive Horse Podcast.

And some crackle, Add some crackle.

Hello, and welcome to the Trident Horse Podcast.

London, darling.

This is Triforce Calling with an update.

We've conquered Africa.

Those natures have been subdued

by our boys.

Don't breathe, 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 Wasp.

I'm going to stop you right there.

This is a mailbag episode.

We don't sorry.

All right.

I'm writing that shit for a regular dear period.

Do you want me to write the

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 John emails in.

This is a three-parter.

All these emails were sent within a a minute of each other okay

are they angry in tone i need to know um do they get progressively angrier 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 um 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.

Apparently, 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 and right hand?

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 were left-handed, if you would be using your left hand to slam the floor whilst yelling meld, meld, meld.

Man, man, man, I remember now.

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.

I'm definitely.

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 Cobain 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 tell you.

Can I not tell

you?

I'm not going to be able to do this.

It's still the Triforce podcast.

All right.

You're right.

Go on.

Go ahead.

Let's carry on.

You carry on.

I just say 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.

He's of our generation where

they basically just,

if they 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 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.

They were, 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 even have crayons.

Punchy 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 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 this 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 dinghy

would 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's underpants.

Oh,

I don't think so.

Okay.

Well, not for a sexual way.

I'm sure they just want it for funny.

It's just a funny piece of, yeah.

You want to go with?

Like, frame them?

Yeah, for just

frame them.

There you go.

Hang them on the walls.

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, um, and and a little bit, yeah, and so, yeah, like, I think that,

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 funny things.

But I think you're rich,

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 I bet she got

to the back door.

She's like, man, I should have said a million.

Yeah.

She said 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 if it'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 um and i don't think he can even he can like yeah i i i once went to a hooter's 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 just kind of funny

right the story it is

yeah if it was michael portillo yeah if michael portillo was like uh eating a sausage uh in a very posh way on a train and told you that you might uh switch over to another show while he's 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, no, just eating a 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.

We've had some developments, I guarantee it's called.

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.

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 we're talking about it, but I was like, what is everybody knows?

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,

you know, Pride

parade and he's just getting sucked off by like three dudes?

I don't think that's.

I know they don't do that, but I just thought it's a funny thought, you know.

The gayest man at the private

section.

I just think 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 i sort of i think i said to someone like oh he's nice looking guy and and they just said oh you should see the air con 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 i'm not being funny i 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 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 know,

exactly right.

Like, Nolan.

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 me that

money 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, you know, you're threatening your own dick with the gun.

Like, to say, like, you better,

you better fucking get hard or I'm going to fucking shoot you, you know, like you're.

You're like, you're.

What if that was your thing?

What if being threatened with a gun was your kink?

I just want to see that in a movie 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.

A good thought.

It's full of good thoughts.

Yeah, that's as evidenced by that one.

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 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.

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 it'll be popular like that.

Well, like GIF indeed.

So

the reason it would be ZZ Top is because they're an American band.

And 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.

It's like rotten tomatoes, rotten tomatoes.

This is the essence of mailbag for me.

Please send more of these in.

I like this kind of thing.

I love, I've spoken about this before, but I love people's gaps in gap, people's gaps.

There was this great clip recently where

you like the gaps.

I love the gaps.

Look at the gap on Atlas as well.

North.

Nancy

does this pub quiz.

And so he's very trivia knowledge, trivia heavy.

And he was answering some questions on this pub quiz.

And Zoe was running it.

And one of them was like, what's the largest American island?

That was the question.

And Nasi answered Alaska

and instantly, like, sort of was very confused because I guess

it's just a gap, right, in his knowledge.

It's like a blind side.

Oh, I know why.

No, because he'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 is always doing this kind of stuff.

But, like, 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?

Especially when they do the voting and Alaska's there in the middle of the ocean, right?

Right.

on off to one side.

I would like Guan stuff was the largest, but I don't really know.

What is American Samoa?

That's quite big, isn't it?

What's there?

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 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 in Alaskan Islands.

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 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 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 Jodie,

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, you 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 say.

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.

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 I'd get it.

You gotta, yeah.

Well, no, I don't know.

A set?

Well, how about they just gotta play the Touch My Ball song?

Do a bit of crowd work and away you go.

So their fee range is please contact, which means they don't have a flat rate.

Well, that's it.

That means they're not big.

That means they're 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 bare grills, it's like, I think it's 250K and you have to helicopter him there and back.

Something like that.

Yeah.

Is the fee.

So that's like there.

Because why would he say, oh, come talk to me?

You don't want people to come in and try to lowball you.

You want to make up front, 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.

Right.

Cheeky girls, they'll be like, if it's 50 quid and a free meal, we might do it if we start.

You know what I'm saying?

Bear Girls gets 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 at work, though.

Yeah, but it's not work.

It's half an hour of telling people they can touch your bum and you're eating a nice ham bath.

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 they're bad.

I don't know if they're allowing you to do that.

They have gone through life being tucked, 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, I wouldn't be able to be perfectly honest with you.

Like John Cena, I'm a big fan of consent.

All right.

I would never touch a cheeky girl's bum without permission.

What kind of permission are we talking here?

Like, is it

like a written agreement or something?

Hired them for the event.

I'm a boss of the company.

And they're like, did they touch my bum?

They're like, okay, it turned for size.

He has hired us to not have to be the cheeky girls.

Come Come up here and touch our buns.

And I'm like, oh, I'd still find that.

No, no, no.

No one's going to

touch our bum.

Touch our 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.

I've thought about this.

No, I don't.

No, it just comes to me very naturally because 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 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 digital hair, 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 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, you, 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

stuff like that, that moment where you realize you're like, well, I thought life was this way.

But actually, it turns out 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.

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, 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 aphantasia is a real thing,

but all these quizzes are a load of wank.

That's the way I see it.

I could probably

quiz 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, 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,

who's

a comic book writer.

The comic writer

writer.

Yeah.

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 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 the way you apparently do.

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

Well, it turns out he's a bit of a sociopath anyway.

So like,

what did he get cancelled 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.

Right.

He traveled all over the UK.

So, the restaurant famous for where J.K.

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.

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?

european thing more more similar i mean you can go up and see what they're offering and the prices yeah

wait till you go to japan uh flax you'll be able to see a uh like a plastic version of the food i'm loving i'm really looking forward to that it's hilarious um especially as a 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 yeah now i'll know and i'll you know there's a giant eyeball in rice or whatever i'll be like oh whatever you can you don't even need to be able to visualize it you can just see it right in front of your damn eyes um 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 um but yeah it's not a 20 questions just to order a burger no 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 um uh 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 the guy?

I just put the 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.

So 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

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 this have?

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 meal.

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 the guy that served us was really really good really friendly just helped a lot and he was just really really attentive but in the perfect way and I said there's no service included because 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 um 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 Soda fountains aren't a thing.

Most soft drinks come in a can.

What is a soda fountain?

It's a restaurant.

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 in five guys.

They've got them in five guys.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Right, right, right.

They are just not a thing, though.

Nowhere.

Mayo.

That's because you know why that is?

It's because we don't do the infinite refills thing.

No, you you just buy a Coke and there's your

free gallon.

UK or Europe, you very rarely find an all-you-can-eat buffet as well.

Yeah.

They're not as prominent as they are in North America.

Mayo on everything.

Dear God, I like Mayo, but come on.

I haven't noticed that.

I like Mayo.

I haven't noticed that, but I will look out for it.

I like Mayo.

I do like Mayo.

Every time a tour guide mentioned the name Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII, I kept hearing Amber Lynn.

Amber Boleyn, who I believe is

a porn star or a Twitch streamer.

And she is a porn star.

Amber Lynn.

Yeah.

It's quite a family.

Amber Boleyn.

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

they searched you.

Well, probably.

Good.

So

Pod 13 was removed from the London Eye.

It just has 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.

Like, 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, 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 this is what he says.

He 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 true.

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.

It's called Big Ben because the man who forged it was named Ben.

Don't know if that's true.

It's called Big Ben because the construction manager of Elizabeth Tower was named Ben and a portly fellow.

See, that's bullshit.

So let's look up Big Ben.

Big Ben.

Big Ben on Wikipedia is a British cultural icon.

Yes, it is.

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 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 Poogan the design of the clock tower, which resembles early designs by Poogin, including one at Biscarrisbrick 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.

The hell was it like some sort of joke then?

A 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 corn very close uh to to swear wood but no ben corn um 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 uh 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 it sounds like a good trip

little bits of trivia attention all small biz owners at the ups store you can count on us to handle your packages with care with our certified packing experts your packages are properly packed and protected

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i saw that this is an interesting thing that um emma watson yeah uh arrested for speeding yeah got got uh got her license taken away

uh

that is some 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.

I always knew she was.

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 her.

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.

Zoe Wanamaker 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

the 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 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 in 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.

My premiums went up on my driving insurance and now I've got no points.

Jesus.

They've decayed, have they, since then?

So how long did they last the points?

Like a year?

No, I think it's longer than a year, but I don't know.

I think it might be three years.

Points on license.

Very easy to decay.

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 yeah to try and 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 you can actually i think you can 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 i god forbid you go up to nine because then you'll one slip away your one emma watson or zoe wanamaker away from them sending me a 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 felt fair.

One of those.

Yeah, that's one of those rare moments as a husband.

So do you have to wait?

Sometimes you don't even remember 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 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.

The 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 more

grateful for still being so 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 very,

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

So,

or the midpoint, 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 you're over

this year yeah you're dead you're basically already dead

is it's getting it's getting old i i think that

yeah wait how old are you gonna be this year 43 42 42 this year all right yeah so i'm gonna be 50 next year and that feels to me everything up to 50 felt like i wasn't old i just turned 45 so right i mean you're not far off either but 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 a different phase.

You got to, you, you're, you, you, you, you got to look forward to, you know, possibly grandkids, more dogs.

Like, it's just life just

is different.

It slows down.

It's different to what

you're used to, but you should be kind of ready for it as well, you know?

I'm ready.

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 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 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 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 I had nothing recommended.

No, do this, more, do that, more, cut down on that.

Great.

So that made me feel really good.

Mental health, I really 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.

Munjaro,

yeah, I've lost the equivalent of a small child in weight.

I've lost eight pounds, I lost eight pounds, that's 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.

I'm gonna be careful.

Do not follow P Flex's lead.

Be careful.

I'm gonna be uncareful.

That Pidgey thing was, you know,

was a disaster.

It was.

I'm just saying.

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 was 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 align, my anxiety meds.

I'm 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 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

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 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 this, because we've been talking about Jong-u-Tupper.

Jongui Tupperware and Jong-u-rubber boots.

Yeah.

Exactly.

And the 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 cultural workers.

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, um, oh gosh, I think he's mistyped something here.

Wound goosebule 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 the Italian mafia, which keeps roads bad and full of potholes.

i was always told as a kid that it just never recovered from hosting the olympics like right it's just been in so much debt and uh therefore all the infrastructure is bad and uh is is never never fixed and stuff but i 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 roads around here are shit.

I'm not going to blame the mafia.

It's just bad governance, really.

That's all it is.

Oh, over here, I hate,

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, 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, fuck off with all this granite all the time.

Like, it's just so annoying.

But, like, I, I places get into like a rut, you know, like they, they have like an identity or whatever.

And, you know, people that come, come and go in government, they just, they 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 will be like, no way, that's not dated, but

yeah, but from the government's, but 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.

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 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 uh yourself on like another country and culture that fully either.

You know, like you, yeah, I I get you want to have a resort, but you, you know, I think the, the, the, 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.

They said it was like the 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.

To be the same,

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.

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 get, you know,

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

And I think that

I think that applies to the world generally too, right?

Like someone is invested in

keeping French national, you know, the French language going.

They can 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 ordinateur to shut that shit down and scare people.

And that scare tactic keeps them in a job, right?

And that's their

livelihood.

A lot of people are very defensive about causes that are, quite frankly, not worth worrying about because they're incentivized to do so, right?

Man, I did watch a great documentary this week.

It was

the David Assenborough Ocean.

Oh, is he 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 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, but they're all faster.

Normally, land areas will be fucked by construction and stuff.

Ultimately, pollution of soil or pollution.

There's a huge problem on land 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 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.

um and i think that 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 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 the planet we're the planet real bad at the moment and it's it's horrible um but actually the solution is there and and also the the the goals are aligned right like the people who want to sustain the the 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 um and the only and that there's a very easy solution and that is to protect protect a portion of the planet and and it's it's a really hope it's a really hopeful message at the end of it.

I might watch it then.

So, I mean, and David Aspert is such a fucking

icon.

He's amazing.

He's 99.

He's 99.

The dude is amazing.

Fuck.

He 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

destroy

underwater landscapes

with no consequences and unregulated, and it's terrible.

So, yeah, really.

By the way, so he's a Middlesex boy.

He's from around here.

He's basically a local badge.

Yeah.

I absolutely love it.

Is he a bit of a cheeky chappy?

Not at all.

No, no, he's not.

I'm less interested.

1926.

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 old enough to go to the war.

Right.

Was he a coward?

Maybe he had bone spurs, you know?

Maybe.

Yeah.

What was he doing during the war?

What was his being?

I'm sure there's an incredibly good reason why.

Maybe he was.

Maybe he was, while everybody was at war, he was studying the Blades.

He was only 13 when war broke out.

Yeah, he was at home practicing

documentary.

He was born in

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 journey.

Absolutely fair enough.

So when he was 21, he went into national service.

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 Attinborough.

You never know.

He might have lost.

He's a 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.

He's just hiding.

eating insects and

eating

a love of insects.

These insects are delicious.

I've been surviving on wood lice and

mushrooms.

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 grape lady.

Yeah, it was a new, this was a very early, I want to say meme, but widely shared video of a woman falling off the water.

Oh, we talked talked about it recently yeah i because i'd only seen the video recently right

that sound is awful so this is uh from callum uh though it was 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 great 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.

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 back to work within a few days.

She did leave the news 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 also think like this is the danger of AI, isn't it?

That the misinformation, it interprets repetitive, you know, it can't really distinguish between lies and or miss or mistreatment.

Or just misremembering.

Like a lot of the time, people will say, oh, I thought that because they've misremembered it.

And then they tell someone and they tell someone that becomes a new fact.

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 would be

if he did that, that would be the end of knowledge.

Yeah, it would be like

because we would do nothing to go.

Can you imagine if Fox News had bought Wikipedia?

Yeah, it would be the end of knowledge.

They're outrageous.

There is pretty much it.

I watched it like 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

unashamedly always.

And it's not...

It should be declared, though, though, in a sense.

Like, it really should be.

Yeah, it should.

It's 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

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.

He's still making movies.

They are 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 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 yeah he was superb that was such a good movie i haven't seen it but i heard it was so

a lot of people hate it a lot of people oh i loved it

really good really creepy psychological horror movie it was 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 Nick Cage.

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, 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.

I mean,

okay.

So, hmm.

That does mean you have.

I don't like thinking about it.

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, that'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.

Smoked to the butter.

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.

People are just bonkers on that.

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

heartbreak one.

Give us all the pick.

I want the heartbreak one.

All right.

If I remember correctly around 2017 i was 16 my friends were asking pro cs go players to sign their steam profile i thought to myself who could sign mine well i had the bright idea to donate something like ten dollars asking perion on twitch to sign my steam profile and i wish i had a clip of it but the conversation went something like this

perion sign a steam profile what does that mean someone in chat it's like when someone wants to collect internet points from online people perian 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 know.

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.

As three middle-aged guys, can you explain this?

These people exist.

They are out there.

As judged from the Pyrrian'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 as

they just as

some people have malfunctioning brains.

Do you think 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 quented Tarantino movie shit.

Do you know what I mean?

You could see that, like some frustrated businessmen.

It's like, I gotta get out of this.

You fucking dick.

You let me down again, you fucking piece of shit.

Yeah.

This final one is Google Trends.

We swung the Google Trends for search topics.

And 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?

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.

Or 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.

People will be looking at it.

Cheeky girls hiring rate.

Let's try and find it.

People.

Cheeky girls hiring.

And their agent's going to go, guys.

Oh, God.

We've had a uptick in people interested in hiring.

The cheeky girls.

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, A-M-P-E-R, Lind.

The Great Lady.

Great lady.

The fucking, I don't know, just all the shit we talked about on this fucking podcast.

I think it was funny, though, because we do talk a load of shit about old shit, like Lembit Opic and the Cheeky Girls.

So it's funny to see young people who have no idea who these things are.

Exactly.

That's what I love.

I love people, because I love these kind of...

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 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,

now 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...

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

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And it's so, he delivers it so well with like this little wry smile.

And it, you know, and 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 war 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 I don't think he's been cancelled.

No, but I feel like a lot a lot of these people I was like, oh my fucking God.

I was shocked by how many of them I referenced, I recognized, you know, and it was because I'm from that generation, you know, when all of these celebrities are on, you know, the 90s telly.

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

What else can you 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.

So, yeah.

I know the mailbag in the

wonderful world.

Anyway, keep the emails coming.

I keep so many 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.

Do not use.

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.

Love you.

Goodbye.

Goodbye.