The Greatest Cons | Triforce #327

Pickaxe.

Mike and Alyssa are always trying to outdo each other.

When Alyssa got a small water bottle, Mike showed up with a four-litre jug.

When Mike started gardening, Alyssa started beekeeping.

Oh, come on.

They called it truce for their holiday and used Expedia Trip Planner to collaborate on all the details of their trip.

Once there, Mike still did more laps around the pool.

Whatever.

You were made to outdo your holidays.

We were made to help organize the competition.

Expedia, made to travel.

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Hello, everyone.

Welcome back to the Triforce podcast.

Oh,

it's good to be here.

Sounded like you had a bad day.

Welcome back to the Triforce Podcast.

It's great to be here.

I've had an interesting week.

Nice.

Yeah, I've had an interesting week.

I viewed a house and I made an offer on a house.

What kind of house?

It's an old house.

Was it

like a proper manor or just?

No, it's like a miner's cottage or whatever.

It was like some cottages from the 1900s that have been combined into one house.

Right.

It's

old.

And they say, don't buy buy an old house.

That's what they say.

That's what they told me.

Yeah, they do say that.

But I've been looking for a year and I was like getting sick of it.

And I was like, fuck it.

This place looks all right.

Of sort of, you know, sometimes you just, these are how things happen in your life.

You know, I don't know if you've ever been faced with a big decision like buying a new car or something really expensive.

And eventually, you know,

you're cautious for so long that eventually you just get reckless and you're like, fuck it.

I don't care anymore.

Yeah.

Let's just go for this one and deal with it.

Sometimes you just got to go for it, you know?

You just got to let your, you got to let your hair down.

You got to let your hair loose.

Yeah, so I'm a bit worried about a few things.

Obviously, like it's a bit far away from the center.

So I'm like all neurotic about whether or not I'm going to still come into the office.

So I haven't got a car.

So then I'm thinking, do I have to get a car?

And then I'm thinking, I haven't driven for like, you know, 10 years.

So am I going to have to have some driving lessons again?

And I'm getting all neurotic about all of it, basically, and it's freaking me out.

But I've just, I'm just going with the flow now, um, so we'll see what happens.

There's just a lot going on, there's a lot of things happening, a lot of tasks to do.

I've been going through, and like

I've been putting off going to the dentist, you know what I mean?

I've like

don't do that, don't put off going to the dentist.

It's like, trust me, there's a bunch of things, and it's just like, oh, I'm sort of ticking them off the list, but I'm also kind of like, even like, even like going to the doctor is like, you know, they're like, oh, you need to see this person.

And so I'm like, oh, okay.

Can I open an apoin?

They're like, oh, no, you need to see this person.

I'm like, okay.

And do you know what I mean?

But each of those conversations takes four or five days to get for them to get back to you.

Do you know what I mean?

Yeah.

So there's constantly like, and I think it's the same.

I expect it'll be the same with the house that, you know, it's going to take four or five days for them to get back to me.

And then I have to do the next thing and then wait on that.

And it's just, I guess it's just all these things rumbling in the background cause this like ground, like low-level amount of pressure.

Um, plus all the routine yogs events and stuff, like planning future things.

And um, I don't know, there's some good things we've been planning, um, which probably would have happened by the time this podcast comes out, but we're going to do like a boot sale, right?

Because it's the um 16th anniversary, 17th anniversary of Yogscast or whatever.

17th

you're gonna you're gonna like open,

you're gonna have a little stall outside in Queen Square and you're gonna sell a bunch of old yogs stuff.

I'd love to do that, actually.

Have a little table at a boot sale

and sell like junk.

I'd love it, especially if it was a regular car boot sale.

And just people were just like, What do I want with that?

It's like, well, it happens to be Frotten, the sword.

You just gotta wanna.

You just rob everybody that enters the door before it.

You gotta roll it.

And you just sell all their wallets and purses and all the contents.

You know, you just get a big collection.

I'm selling all these leather wallets.

A papalazaroo.

Do a bit of a papalazaroo one.

Yeah, do a papal.

Here's what happens: like, we hold on to so much shit, and you must be the same in your place.

Oh my god, like, no, to me, I'm just holding up this pristine.

I don't have any junk.

That's definitely true.

Yeah.

People say we make stuff up on this podcast.

My office is completely bare, other than I have a very humble table that I made myself with my computer on it.

There is nothing else here.

He made his computer himself as well.

Yeah.

he just made some circuits

empty echoey warehouse your place is I know I've been there uh sips you honestly every time I go to your house I have to like tread carefully because there's shit everywhere there is shit everywhere I know

I was saying about my garage recently I have a very narrow pathway to walk from the door of the garage to my computer chair and it's just walls of junk everywhere like it's really bad it's getting worse and worse a lot of that i remember is like boxes of stuff, though.

It's like a box for the air fryer, a box for the thing.

Yeah.

Like stuff, because you sort of also are feeling like you have to keep those in case something goes wrong with it and you have to send it back or something in the box.

That's it.

I mean, you never know.

You never know.

That's why you hang on to all the instruction manuals and everything, too.

Like it's.

Yeah.

It's hard to part with that stuff, especially like a TV box.

You're like, oh, well, when I move, I'm going to need to put the box TV back in the box, right?

Exactly.

Yeah.

And so you just hold on to vast amounts of crap.

But no, in the office, we've got another problem, which is that the office is like quite small and in a fancy neighborhood.

And so as a result, spaces are a premium.

And yet, we hold on to these things because we buy like props and costumes for a shoot, for example.

And one of them

examples was that, remember when we went to Paris, Sips, we bought you that French costume.

Yes.

We kept that for about five years.

And then probably, probably 10 years ago, when we did the last Yorkshire boot sale, we auctioned auctioned that off for charity and someone bought that for 100 quid for charity or whatever.

Wow.

God smell it because it was really hot that day

in Paris,

if you recall.

We didn't give them a warning that it would be rancid with the stench of

some shitty old sweat.

But yeah,

the back of my mind, I do remember doing this previously and having a good clear up.

But the thing is, you look through this stuff and you're like, oh, it'd be really nice to clear all this stuff out.

And then you look at it and you're like, what who would want this like you know yeah listen just put it out there just put it out there the stuff that doesn't sell nobody wants the stuff that sells

somebody wanted

it's like the four broken remote control cars that we used on a shoot one time

three of them are working fine one of them only broke when i dav gave it to me I took it home.

Me and my eldest were enjoying whizzing it around in the park near us.

Let my youngest have a go on it and she drove it straight into a fence and it broke at high speed.

Right.

Um, yeah, so I'm hoping next time I go down to Bristol, um, Dav will be able to give me one of the extra remote control cars, but at the same time, I don't care.

Well, the point is that, like,

it's over by the time this podcast goes out, but basically, like, I like the idea of doing this kind of clear-out, but then when we get to it, I'm almost like, who would want this?

Like, this doesn't have enough provenance.

Provenance in the word is thank you for pronouncing that correctly.

I wouldn't know what you were saying.

Provenance.

It doesn't

have

provenance,

it lacks a certain provenance.

We,

we, indeed.

Because it's like so tangentically

associated with the yogs, right?

It's so

loosely attached that it's like me.

It's near to be worthless.

Like that very much.

That horrible stinky teddy bear that we kicked around.

Remember that one that's covered on seagulls?

So one of those is in the corner of the office.

And every single time I come into the office, I do a double take and think someone is slumped.

Yes, because it looks like a person.

It's like sometimes when people have those cardboard standees with like, you know, someone and it freaks you out for a second because you think it's a real person for a second.

So

the offices where I go to do Dream League stuff in Sweden, they have a, I don't know, I think he's a Counter-Strike guy.

They have a

life-size, like you said, one of those cardboard stand-up things, and people put it in places to freak me out because

they put it in the toilet.

And the toilets, we've got these little toilets are dark.

You open it, you open the door, you have to turn on the light.

And so there's a dude right there.

And people keep checking me with that.

It's not funny.

You shouldn't tease on me.

Honestly, that's the place to put it, though, because at least if you shit yourself, like it's right there.

Yeah.

You know, you could just clean up.

We've got a big life-size cardboard cutout of Elvis kicking around still.

And we got this for my mother-in-law's 60th birthday.

She hates Elvis.

She's like 77 now.

And so this thing has been kicking around all this time and still to this day scares people because it gets moved around and you walk into a room, you go, whoa, Elvis, what are you doing here?

Like

it's constant.

It's just, it happens all the time.

He looks so happy as well.

Not like, you know, not how you remember him

dead on the toilet.

he just looked so vibrant you know and and happy and can you imagine if the standee of him was him like kneeling like like in a squatting position like you know holding his belly and like crying you know holding a handbook yeah that would be

really weird yeah that would be it's a way to be remembered isn't it yes yeah that's a it's a picture but i think like going through for example old that you've got i always think in my head if someone had thrown this away or if this had been like you know someone had taken this or gotten rid of this, I would have never thought about it again in my life, right?

Like, you find some of this stuff, and you're like, I

know we do YouTube and stuff, and we, everything we've ever, all the videos, someone's a fan of a little bit, like every Pokemon is someone's favorite or whatever.

Not the favorite Minecraft block episode of the Trifles podcast.

No one's a fan of that.

No, well, that's not a fan favorite.

Well, some actually, do you know what someone did say they liked it?

Nobody liked that one.

Was it a homeless guy that you saw on the street?

I really liked the Minecraft block episode, but after I watched it, my life went downhill.

I've never been a single

recovery.

President Biden, is that you?

Joe Biden.

I was going to be the president of the United States of America.

I watched this gosh dang video about a Minecraft block or something or other.

You know, wait a minute, I'm talking here.

How's this Minecraft block?

Sorry, favorite block.

Lewis Friend.

He's not a good guy.

Hey,

I've got a couple of bits of flax news.

It's really minor stuff if you want to hear it.

Yeah, flax news, sure.

Oh, yeah, sure.

All right.

This is a never-before-heard segment on this podcast.

We never have flax news.

I know.

And these are three things that happened to me this week.

So it's very self-indulgent, but I just thought it would be funny.

No, no, go ahead.

First of all, I don't know if you guys know, but I've been feeding the pigeons that land on my office windowsill.

Yes, I saw a clip

on Twitch and I knew it.

As soon as I saw it,

I said,

he brought this on himself.

Because

the clip happened and you were sat there playing games or whatever, and the pidgeys that you've been feeding fly in, land on your desk.

And this is your fault.

Oh, no, I agree.

I agree.

And in fact,

it's gotten worse.

So what started off, I put some birdseed out.

For anyone that hasn't been following the story, I put some bird seed out on my windowsill because I really love birds, garden birds and little birds like robins and stuff.

Sure.

I wanted to, they originally began, I wanted to attract some kind of Corvid, be it a crow or a magpie or whatever.

So I wanted to put shiny things out to get them to help me out and bring me presents and I and food and shiny things.

They weren't interested.

No.

But when I started putting seeds out, the pigeons turned up quite quickly.

Mr.

and Mrs.

Pidgey, they've been there with, I've been with them for the whole couple, like couple of months.

I've been doing this, feeding them pretty, pretty regularly.

When I went away, Mrs.

F fed the pigeons for me.

Like, I've really been maintaining this.

Get a bag of seed for like two quid from my, one of the shops near me.

And it lasts, you know, long enough.

And they're very happy.

They're very sweet.

Sadly, a lot of other pigeons have caught on because birds look to see where other birds are eating and go and compete with them.

Oh, of course.

So now in the morning, I'll come into my office and there'll be one, two, or even three pigeons there.

And as soon as I reach for the seed, they fly off and then because they don't want to get grabbed.

And when I put my seed out then, they'll all come and compete for it.

Now, the problem is the couple, Mr.

and Mrs.

Pidgey, everything was going fine.

And then a big bully Pidgey came along and they were pecking him on the head and trying to get him to leave.

He wasn't leaving.

He was just, he was using his wings to buffet them off the windowsill.

So they've given up on the windowsill a lot of the time.

So I've created, have you seen the film The Platform?

No.

Have you seen that film?

Yes, I have, but please tell everyone this thing.

So this is a Spanish movie called The Platform.

It's about a prison and it's basically a huge complex of of levels.

So the 200-something, 250-something levels.

Vertical.

Yes, it's like a talent.

Does it have a mold?

No, it has.

No, it doesn't.

No.

What it doesn't have, I mean, what it does have is a hole in the middle of every floor.

And every day,

I think once a day or a couple of times a day, there is a platform that we don't know how, but it magnetically levitates down.

It stops at each floor.

And that platform is covered in food, really fancy high-end food that they make.

And it goes down and down and down.

And each time it stops, you can eat as much as you like.

And then it goes down to the next level.

And at the end of every month, you are randomly, you are knocked out by this gas and randomly sent to a new floor.

And you might be in a good floor, like in the single digits, you live in like a king.

You might be in the 200s, in which case, by the time the food gets down to you, there's nothing there.

It's an incredibly unsubtle reference to trickle-down economics and the rich getting everything and all the rest of it.

So it's a decent movie.

It's worth watching.

But I've recreated that with pigeons because now the big Pidgey eats the seed on the windowsill, the seed that doesn't make it into his mouth that his wings knock off falls down onto the flat roof.

And then there's all pigeons down there scrabbling around for the seeds that King Pidgey deigns to dispose of.

I've realized what I've created here is a social problem for these pigeons

to sack the whole thing off as a result of it.

This is God's.

I knew this would happen, though.

I kind of like, as soon as you started feeding Mr.

and Mrs.

Pidgey, i knew there would be some comeuppers but here's the thing

it's never if i'm essentially the government because i'm the one handing out the seeds in this in this pidgey state um king pidgey will eat directly from my hand which none of the other pidgeys will so he knows that if he's really nice to me and lets me feed him from my hand um and today he hopped in and sat on my bin and just cooed at me until i gave him pigeons he's basically this he's like a lobbyist for for him he's you and he's like he is so i give him the seats and he's like great and then all the other pidgies just have to compete now, like scrabbling around for the rest of it.

He's the 1% of pigeons.

And I, like you said, though, my god.

I created this situation myself.

I feel bad.

You've got like Elon Musk of pigeons.

Just fucking rich pigeon fucker sat on your bin.

Yeah, it's bad.

Licking the ass of Donald Trump.

I know.

And I'm Donald Trump having my ass licked.

The thing is, I really love animals.

And when I see their little faces and they cooing at me and things like that, I think, well, geez, you know, they're just that animals.

People are like, oh, they're just rats with wings.

But like, look, these animals, like I was saying,

these are animals that all these animals have to get by in a world where we have colonized it with buildings and roads and farmland and all this stuff that is not for them.

Certain animals are able to get by with us.

And we're still like, no, not you.

I'm like, I am not cheesy.

I will rats here and feed the rats.

Oh, don't feed pigeons being.

I would.

Like, obviously don't feed rats.

I mustn't.

I know I mustn't, but I would.

Birds are very clean.

And also, don't forget, pigeons are almost domesticated in a sense that we took them and bred them to be, you know, friendlier.

And

we have caused pigeons, humans.

We used to use them as messengers and have them, you know, all over the place.

And then we released them back.

And we created pigeons.

They are like cats or dogs.

They've been domesticated as pets.

And they're just about surviving because they're so fearless of humans relatively due to breeding that they will approach like this this and take these risks, right?

Because the majority of humans are actually good to them.

And it is those brave animals that survive.

And that's how we got dogs in the first place, right?

It was the wolves that were brave enough to roam in.

Wonderful, wonderful segue, Lulu.

To my next thing.

Yeah.

He's going to talk about dogs.

I am.

Very well dogs.

We do not organize this.

It just happens.

Okay.

So amazing.

There's a lot of Southwest London.

It's like magic when it does happen.

It really is.

It's beautiful.

There's a lot of dogs and dog walkers in this area of Southwest London.

A lot of parks, a lot of greenery, and all the rest of it.

People love dogs.

They love dogs.

And obviously, post-COVID dog population really exploded.

There's dogs everywhere.

The most of them seem to be some form of doodle.

Whatever.

Anyway, the dog walker that I see quite regularly is an American guy.

And he walks about seven or eight dogs at once, which I don't think you're meant to do, but he does get away with it, I guess.

And he walks in

seven or eight dogs at once.

Yeah, it's too much.

He's like a pimp.

Why does he have so many?

I know.

I don't know.

He's more like the old man from up in that.

He's going to get yanked off his fucking feet if he's not careful.

Really?

Yeah.

Yeah.

But yeah, so I saw him.

Me and my eldest were out for a bike ride the other day.

And as we're approaching, it's quite a sort of narrow-ish sort of

path.

He sees us coming and he wants to get the dogs out of the way.

Now, if you had a bunch of dogs, some on lead, some on off-lead, how are you going to corral them out of the way of a bicycle?

With a lot of shouting

and

just being very hopeful that nothing dies, I guess.

But shouting would be my, I would just be shouting quite a bit at that point.

Okay.

I don't really know what else to do in that situation.

I mean, well, he didn't either, apparently, because what he did was he just spoke to them as if they were kids.

He was like,

as we're coming, I see him, and he's America, so he's very loud.

He's like, okay, guys, we got a bike coming.

Everybody over to this side of the road.

I imagine he started naming them all off, but they were all like named after big streamers.

He's like, all right, XQC,

you're going to have to get onto the sidewalk.

Asmund Gold, you two onto the sidewalk, please.

He's just like,

listen, all off.

That'd be weird.

And it was like, he said, okay, guys.

Like, they're all going to go, oh, yes, sorry.

Orders are coming.

There's a bicycle coming.

He says to the dogs.

Of course, they're just looking around because they're dogs.

They're not looking at anything.

They're just doing dog stuff.

He's like, come on, guys, over to the right side of the road.

Let this bike pass.

I'm like, dude, I'm thinking,

how do you think just saying, guys, there's a bike coming is going to get some dogs to do anything?

Of course, it didn't.

They all just milled about.

And he was like, there you go, guys.

And I went past.

I was tempted to stop and say, you know, they don't speak English.

They don't even know what a bicycle or a road is or that guys refers to them collectively.

It just really made me laugh that he was giving this insanely complicated order to a dog to these dogs rather than just pushing them over to the side of the road, which is what I would have done.

Yeah, or at least grabbing them.

Stop eating that.

Critical, stop sniffing around what's a face's ass.

Emma Ray, stop that.

Stop that, please.

He can't be like, okay, guys, there's a bike coming.

Like, what?

I'm just obsessed with that.

Like, the idea that this

heard them.

Beauty Pie, please come over here.

What?

I only want dogs with streamer names.

Oh, shit.

That's great.

But so the final piece of, if you could call it flex news, is that I'm on Munjaro, the weight loss drug.

Oh, I'm having a hard time.

Oh, no way.

How's that going?

Well, it works.

I tell you what, it works almost immediately.

Wow.

In terms of cutting down your appetite.

Obviously, I haven't lost any weight yet because it's only been four days.

But in terms of how much I want to eat and everything, it's just

you start eating, you fill up way quicker.

I'd say that the amount that I can eat now is less than half of what I was eating as like the main portion

before I was on the Manjaro.

Geez.

So it's an injection.

It is.

Yeah.

So you order it.

It's quite an elaborate pen.

And how did you get it?

When you said Manjaro, I thought you were going to say something about climbing Kilimanjaro.

Like I thought you were like, I thought you were about to segue into a...

you know,

I'm not getting any younger and I want to get this off my bucket list.

I thought that's where this was going.

I see.

I thought, yeah, it was the next walk for your group of friends.

No, we're doing Manjaro.

No, so it is just the way I'm going to go.

No, no, the

much latier.

Yeah, we're just trying to shit a couple of kids, you know.

That's what we call it for sure.

Do you, um, do you so?

I didn't, well, this is just me, but I don't, I never thought you were overweight.

Is this something your doctor has no?

No, you just.

So, you know, that I was on Surtrilline for like eight months, the anti-anxiety meds.

I put on a bit of weight with that.

I stopped that.

I stopped it

middle of last month.

I gradually weaned myself off it and now I'm off it completely.

Feel a lot better

because it kind of kills any emotions that you have.

So you just kind of level all the time.

And the problem with that is you don't really feel anything.

So you're not really, you never get sad or particularly happy.

You're just kind of like, huh, oh, cool.

You know, it's like there's nothing.

I feel like a lot of medication does it anyway.

Like, like

valium does that.

And like most antidepressants obviously do that.

And like, like, like, why, why, why does like all prescription medicine seem to do that?

Just sort of like that.

Because that's essentially what you need.

You guess.

So, yeah.

If you're suffering from anxiety, your emotions and your concerns and everything are spiraling to the point where you lose control and you have panic attacks and you feel bad all the time.

So I'm not kidding.

When I was on it, I was very chill.

Like it was like easy to just be completely chilled, but it also made me, I felt hungrier and I ate more and I drank more and it was just kind of didn't, I didn't feel full as much.

Yeah.

And so I just put on a little bit of weight.

So I'm the heaviest I've ever been in pounds.

I'm just over 14 and a half stone.

So that's 200 and something.

So heavier than you're what, six foot?

Six foot?

Six foot?

Six foot.

I'm six foot.

Yeah.

So it's like, you know, a little pudgy around the middle and everything, like a bit of a dad bod.

So I thought, well, geez, I'll lose some weight.

But I went onto the website to order it.

You can order it from a whole bunch of places.

And when I ordered it, they were like, please enter your details, how tall you are, how old you are, what your weight is, and we'll decide whether Manjaro is right for you.

So I put in all the details, and it was like, oh no, your BMI and your weight to height and everything are way off.

You're fine.

We can't give you Manjaro at the moment.

In other words, if you edited these details, then we would be able to give you the Manjaro.

But as it stands with this information, which I'm sure it's a typo, at the moment, as it stands, we can't give you Manjaro.

So I had to edit it down bit at a time, bit at a time.

So I'm now five foot five

and I weigh

a little bit more than 14 and a half steps.

It's closer to 16.

We cannot advise anyone to do this.

You shouldn't.

What the hell?

But then they said, right, now you need to send us a full-length body picture of you wearing not baggy clothes.

So I was like, well, shit, the jig is up because if I stand in front of my front door or something or my fridge, they're going to say, this guy's clearly not five foot five.

He could, he could reach the top shelf.

So I had to angle my camera and kind of squat a little bit.

No, we're still having problems processing this application.

You're going to have to send us a picture of Deep Inside Your As.

What you're going to have to do,

you're going to have to just tear your asshole wide open and hopefully leave your wedding ring on and hopefully somebody can take a picture.

Oh, man.

Ask your wife to take a picture of your asshole.

So I sent them the picture and they were like, no, send us another one.

So I sent them another one.

They were like, no, send us another one.

So I was like, fine.

So I sent them the best picture I could.

I really, you know, when you try to make yourself look thin by sucking in your gut and everything like that?

I did the opposite of that to really make myself look really

and I sort of bent my knees very little and made sure there was no shadow so it looked like I just had shorter legs.

Did you go for like the male pregnancy snap?

You know, like no, it has to be face on.

You have like a full meal and a couple of cans of cider and they just like don't hold in your gut whatsoever.

I know.

You look like Bobanders from

Trailer Park Boys.

Randy Bobette.

So, yeah, they finally accepted it.

And I was like, some bozo at Manjaro or whatever had to look at these pictures of this man clearly trying to fool the system and just be like, can't accept it.

You know, and they kept saying, like, maybe another picture, because they just want to sell you the Majora.

This isn't a doctor.

This is just some website or whatever.

They just need to tick some boxes.

If anyone looks into it, it's definitely getting taken away but it was quite funny

yeah oh my god

that is terrible for it really that you've managed to trick the system uh into giving you

which i'm sure has no plenty of problematic side effects they didn't trick the system they they 100 help you trick the system 100 i know they want you to

the funny thing is it's like it goes in cycles like you know you're miserable so you eat and now you can't eat and you'll be miserable again in seven months time you'll you you'll you'll be skinny and sad.

At least you're jolly.

Now you're fat, is all I'm saying.

Fat and jolly.

Fat and jolly.

Like a certain someone.

Not that I'm sure when I see you, PFAX,

I will be.

Well,

if I'm standing sideways on, you won't be able to see me.

I'll be so thin by the time I see you.

Everyone's got a little bit of middle-aged bread.

You can't help it.

Well, you can't.

We all get stuck.

Get on the jar of me.

When we get old.

Get on the jar of me.

You know, if you catch me from the right angle, I look like I've got a belly.

Can I just say as well?

I don't think anyone who knows me says I don't.

Don't fucking email in about this.

I don't give a fuck.

Don't email in about this, please.

I do not care.

If you have a funny story, go for it.

But I don't need another lecture.

I've had nothing but lectures on the emails and on YouTube comments lately, and I'm fucking done with it.

Stop fucking emailing me.

This one

Triforce podcast subreddit comment was the tipping point for me.

Right.

Someone was.

Did anyone else's estimations of Pyrrhian as a person drop after the last episode?

Now, you could

put that after any episode of the podcast because this is a comedy podcast and I happily make fun of myself constantly.

But this guy, do you know, what do you think his tipping point was?

Like something absolutely loose.

Something about the protagonist in a video game or something.

Sadly, nothing that banal.

Right.

What was it?

What was it?

That I look, that I, on Instagram, I follow some ladies with large bosoms.

Right.

And apparently, I'm a family man.

Well, sorry.

I didn't realize you were supposed to be the fucking Pope.

Apparently, I do.

Well, you're not.

Like, that is mad.

I gotta go.

I've wasted my time.

I thought you were the Pope.

Fucking hell.

But either way, I'm just honestly, any, if I express an opinion, people say, he's such a fucking ignorant cunt.

And then they'll express their opinion.

And it turns out they don't know what the fuck they're talking about.

So honestly,

I am done listening to you guys.

If I say something, you disagree with what I'm doing, just move on don't email me and say you really shouldn't do this or actually this that and the other just because i read it i've offered you a vent to release your frustrations about something we've said that's wrong or something i've said you disagree with and so you email me i'm just gonna stop reading them because you are pissing me off end of story end of rant let's move on right i think that i think you're right um it's it's it's a nightmare um we don't pretend to be you know scions of intellect you know we say specifically that we are not stupid clowns on the internet we literally say every time we do not know it's just a joke we're just chatting and we we learn we learn all of our stuff from reddit and quite frankly a lot of the time the stuff we read on reddit is wrong in the first place and then we only half read it so then it becomes like half remembered do you know do you know how many times someone asks a question on reddit and there's an answer the top answer is followed up by a correction to that top answer saying actually that is incorrect here is a source and that person says oh really i didn't know but then why the fuck are you posting i think don't answer questions if you don't know the fucking answer yeah there is a lot there is a lot of that that exists in in every sphere now more so than ever it's that uh it's that confidently incorrect um you know how how some people will say something but just so they're just oozing with confidence that they're so correct but they couldn't be more wrong about like what they're saying you know and it's just yeah and we live in in this age now where this misinformation spreads and spreads and spreads.

It's confidently

incorrect.

But we don't say this is correct.

We're not doing it maliciously.

We don't know we're wrong.

No one's coming here to say that.

And that just makes us stupid, not like

lazy.

But we can't go through like double checking.

I can't ring up a fucking, you know,

remember when you were in high school.

Everybody, anytime anyone mentioned Marilyn Manson, you would always hear that he had a rib removed so that he could suck his own dick.

Yeah.

Sure.

And that was like,

that's looked back on as like, oh my God, like it's different for each generation.

It is different for each generation.

But now in this day and age, it's that, but on crack.

Like it's, it's, it's that and it's everything.

Like all of these, all of these like myths are just spread and spread and spread like crazy now.

But so many people believe them.

Whereas like that that that was of no consequence, right?

If you believe that or not.

It was just that it was just like somebody says, Marilyn Manson, that's your response.

You know, oh, did you reach that?

Yeah, Richard Gear.

But there's loads of those now where it's like really serious stuff that people just have these misinformed stock responses for.

You know what I mean?

Like

it's worse than it's ever been.

I guess it's only going to get worse somehow, too.

But back then, it was just these like, you know, these really innocent urban myths, you know, like

they were these things that everybody knew, but, you know, whether it was true or not, it didn't, it didn't matter kind of thing.

But now it's just, it's, it's just on that, that whole thing is just, it's out of control now.

Like, it's, it, and it's everything.

It's crazy.

But I think Marilyn Manson did have a rib removed

or two.

I heard it on a podcast.

I heard it on a podcast.

Yeah, I heard that too.

Yeah.

It's a true fact.

Apparently, people did used to have some of some celebrities did used to have ribs removed, but instead it was women having it removed in order to fit into tight dresses or have a tighter women.

No, they're really apparently Cheryl.

Cher was subject to that rumor but never apparently share hired a physician in 1990 to confirm that she actually still has a full set of ribs

right well because people thought that she was isn't this the shit that people have she was messing around with quell these rumors like that's what people were angry about in the 90s she had a rib removed

that's what people were angry about they weren't angry about people fucking like hiring an island and filling it full of you know teenage girls to suck them off.

You know, that was that was what

Epstein was doing.

This is the house that Lewis viewed recently.

It's not, it's an old island.

Welch is an older a lot of young people.

You know, I do say that this is a miner's cottage.

I'm looking for a miner's cottage.

Don't you dare that is so good.

Oh god, Lewis has gone full Epstein buying this miner's cottage.

Oh my god,

you know what?

If you look at the P.

Diddy trial artist's impressions, I'm pretty sure I saw you in the background there, cheering on the verdict.

Yeah, cheering it on.

Let Diddy go.

Let Diddy go.

That's uh, that's that's Lewis's t-shirt.

He got he he got uh let off from like the the more serious charges, um,

old, old, uh, P.

Diddy.

Yeah, he did, yeah.

He did.

I think what he is

is getting charged with, though, can potentially have him in jail for up to about 10 years or so.

Yeah, but apparently, it won't be.

Like, apparently, it'll be a couple of years.

So, I think there were five things.

The main thing was they had this Rico charge, and that is that essentially organized.

The implication was that he was part of a criminal enterprise that was organizing these orgies specifically to take advantage of young women and make money or whatever.

So the idea was that they had to prove that this wasn't just him putting on parties and pulling names out of a phone and saying, hey, come over, we're having a freak off, but more that he was part of some criminal, not gang in the sort of mafia sense.

Right.

But I think the whole point of Rico is that you want to prove that this is a bigger organization than just one guy.

Because if you get that, then you get them on a much bigger charge.

You can get other people too, I presume, and all the rest of it.

So the difficulty is proving that is very hard.

Apparently, they weren't able to do it.

There was also one juror, apparently, who was like hard no on all of this stuff and was like, He's innocent, he's innocent.

Big P.

Diddy fan, I guess.

I wonder if it was Mace.

It might have been Mace, yeah.

It might have been Mace.

Um, but yeah, so Diddy just sent him a text every single day after the hearing.

It said, Mo money, more problems.

He could have been.

Yeah.

Uh, he became a preacher, by the way.

Who Mace?

Uh, Mace, yeah.

Mace got beat up by Ghostface Killer one time as well.

Apparently, Ghostface Killer and his crew beat up Mace at a club, and nobody heard from Mace for like 10 years.

His street cred was decimated.

Yeah.

Can I show you this picture?

This is this is the picture from the it looks, by the way, like this is done with pastels.

It's quite a nice little

drawing.

I put it in the chat in the Discord.

Yeah.

That is a picture of Diddy when the trial, when the verdict was read out.

I can't tell if that's sorrow or joy,

but it also looks a bit like maybe this is one of the poses he would frequently take at the freak offs.

It's hard to say.

Oh my God.

Maybe he'll send this picture in with his application for

weight loss drug.

See, we get rejected

because he's only three feet tall and curled up a lot as well.

So

hopefully this can straighten me out a little.

Yeah, that's

quite a bit.

I have seen this

court case pictures of him.

They look like they're done with pastels or something.

Yeah, that's what I said.

Yeah, pastels.

It really does.

It's really stylized.

But yeah, it's quite funny.

There was one of him with sort of with all these guys around him and he's hugging them and stuff.

And that was quite funny as well because you could just see his little face peeping out with all these big dudes either embracing him or I don't know what's going on.

It's just his worried face peeping out.

It was quite funny.

It is crazy that we still have like, obviously, no cameras are allowed in a lot of these courtrooms.

And so they have to do these artists.

It's kind of crazy, though, that that is like, it's almost like a loophole that hasn't been closed.

I'm just disappointed it wasn't televised because I guess it's a criminal suit right like it's a criminal case not a civil case it's a criminal case why was the oj trial televised and this wasn't was the the oj trial was i don't know maybe it's all the rules maybe it's to do with the state or i don't know see we don't know we are not saying we know we don't know but i do feel like it shouldn't be i feel like it is kind of um it kind of we associate this stuff so much with fiction and this you know these candidates

it becomes like a drama doesn't it I mean, like the civil suits could tell you, right?

Like the Gwyneth Paltrow skiing one, which is fucking amazing.

Civil suits, that was not often.

I don't think so.

Because there was a whole bunch of civil suits after OJ's big

trial, which basically absolutely bankrupted him about a million times over.

But

there was never even any news about that.

It was just like

it was the car chase and the trial, obviously, was sensational.

And it kind of ushered in the era of 24-hour news as we know it now today.

But before that,

there was no news channels on all the time like that.

You just had, you know, the six o'clock news or the 10 o'clock news or whatever.

And that was it.

But this was just on all the time, if you remember.

The whole car chase

trial was just on all the time.

It was just like, it just, everybody just was so into it and watching it and stuff.

But then

after it was all done, you just never really heard much about it again.

But there was loads of civil suits after

the criminal trial.

Which is crazy because you think the easiest thing to do in a civil suit would just be say, well, he's not guilty and here's the court case to prove it.

Why do they find it interesting that they have to prove it all over again?

Well, a lot of it was, a lot of the civil suits were

he was releasing books and trying to make money off of books like that one, If I Did It and stuff.

Yeah.

And all the civil suits basically were to redirect profits back to the families of the victims rather than to him.

So he never actually made any money off of it.

In terms of its motivation, I completely understand that.

But what I'm saying is, if, I mean, this is something I would like, and please, if you're a lawyer or you know a lot about American legal systems or something, that would be an interesting email.

I would love to know why it is that they were able to get him in the civil suit for something that he was found innocent of in criminal court.

And

what's the difference there how does it work because if i sue you and say i'm suing you for making money from selling your story about killing my sister or whatever yeah why is he you know he could say well i didn't i'm writing about what might have happened well i mean i think i think i mean he he he he argued all that as well but it was it was just not i just find that interesting like how is that how is it able to go two different ways why is it anyway let us know if you if you know let us know yeah i have no idea

i'd be interested to to know as well actually yeah i don't know if we've we've got enough time.

I could just do a couple of these.

I did something about famous.

These are actually not famous, maybe just some interesting frauds and hoaxes.

Frauds and hoaxes.

We love those.

Do you want to hear a little bit about this?

Yeah, God love them.

All right.

So

do you know the one about the world's littlest skyscraper?

No, I've never heard about the world's littlest skyscraper.

Okay, so this is the Newbie McMahon building, commonly referred to as the world's littlest skyscraper.

It's in Texas, in Wichita Falls, Texas.

I will send you, I will put a picture of this.

If you're listening to this podcast, imagine a four-story building that's quite narrow.

That is not a skyscraper, quite clearly.

There it is.

That is not a skyscraper.

I mean, it does scrape the sky

somewhat.

I mean,

it looks like, you know, in a fire station, when they have that practice tower thing that they use for training, it looks a bit like one of those, but with some windows.

Like, it really clearly is not a skyscraper.

So

what happened was this guy said that he would build it.

So the whole point of the swindle swindle was that in the legal documents that listed the building that he was agreeing to build for them for 200,000 pounds, which is about three and a half million quid nowadays.

So this is 1919.

He said he'd build it for them.

Signed all these documents.

He got all this investment capital from these sort of naive investors.

He's like, I'm going to build high-rise off this building right there in Wichita Falls.

You guys are going to be a part of it.

They're like, fuck yeah, let's do that.

So he gets a document, gets them to sign it.

It lists the height as 480 with two quotation marks for inches, as opposed to 480 feet, which would be a single quotation mark.

They didn't notice.

They signed the contract.

And he never verbally stated that the actual height would be 480 feet or 150 meters.

So he built it and they were like, What is this?

A skyscraper for ants.

He was like, Well, check the contract.

It went to the law.

And they said, Well, you signed it.

It says 480 inches.

Why'd you sign that?

So now that's why they have this tiny, teeny, tiny little skyscraper.

But now, of course, it's kind of a tourist trap.

That is the tiny true.

It's just like an urban one.

This is true.

Okay.

This is true.

Only in America.

Okay.

I feel.

this is something that would probably potentially happen in Britain as well.

Let's be real here.

Um, that it just seems that the whole thing seems so um silly, it's just silly, isn't it?

It is very silly, yeah, but also funny,

it's funny enough, yeah,

it's more silly than funny, it is silly, it's silly.

How about this one, though?

This is the Hollywood con queen scam.

Have you heard about this one?

The Hollywood concept.

Yeah, so an Indonesian imposter named Hargobind Punjabi Tahil Romani

was running a scam where for years she would get targets in the entertainment industry, like gig workers, to travel to Indonesia thinking that they were going there to work on a film or production or a TV show or something like that.

So she'd approach them.

They'd come out to Jakarta.

And when they're there, there's a driver drives them around.

And she's like, no, no, no, you're going to just have to get a cab and go to this place.

We'll tell you where we need to go.

The driver, you will have to pay him, but you know, the driver will take you wherever you need to go.

Now, there's a lot of traffic in Jakarta,

and they would make sure that they would time the driving so it was really busy and they'd keep having a reschedule and the meetings would change and they'd transport them all over to various various locations.

They'd be paying the driver with the fact that don't worry, it'll all be covered by the production, it will all be covered by the production.

And of course, they'd eventually realize that it was just that was the con.

You trick someone out there and get them to pay this driver over and over and over again, and then eventually they give up and go home.

Um, it's it's so funny.

Isn't that a weird, such a weird mind-up con?

Yeah.

Um, so the perpetrator was actually a bloke who could do a very good impression of a woman's voice, and he would impersonate women in the industry and men in the industry to convince people to come out.

Um, I thought it was absolutely fantastic.

I love this scam that it's like really quite a complicated setup just to get someone to drive you around in Chicago's heavy traffic to squeeze money out of you.

That is bizarre, right?

Oh my God.

So, there was so they paid for their flights flights out to

the shit, I guess.

Absolutely.

And this, don't worry, all they remember spending money.

Yeah.

And the spending money that they spent on the car driving around in the taxis, driving in circles around the city for days.

I know.

That was how they made their money.

Mad.

I mean, there's a lot more to it.

If you want to read more about it,

it's really funny.

But yeah,

it's something.

And there was more to it.

It wasn't just that.

It was a lot of other stuff as well.

But I thought that detail was funny.

So it actually looks like it's targeting mostly gig work.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like people who are working on the production, like a cameraman or a photographer, yeah, exactly.

So, it's not stars because they're not going to put up with that shit.

It's like people who are just trying to get into the industry or looking for that job, and they're like, oh, this is good.

And, you know, it's all fictitious.

It's all absolutely you could have

fallen for this so easily for a doer event.

I was, I literally thought the same thing.

I thought, yeah, I could easily have fallen for that.

Yeah, like you've been to Wollinger Carth, haven't you?

No, I haven't.

I've actually never been to any of the Southeast Asian events other than a TI in Singapore.

That's it.

I I thought you'd been to my own.

No, like, I feel like, I feel like if you'd been asked by a, you know, some woman purporting to be someone, you googled her and she had big tits, you'd be like, oh, yeah, just you'd be sucked in like fully to that.

Oh, I'd be sucked in, all right, baby.

Right into that, clean and

please.

Yeah, I do.

My estimation of you went down

big time.

I don't want my estimation to drop any further.

My estimation dropped, but my erection grew.

It's all a balance.

It's all a big

I got one more because this is low.

Well, I've got a couple more, but I don't think we've got.

Maybe we've got time.

This is the Nick Russian con.

Have you heard of this?

The Nick Russian con.

Yeah, a guy called Nick Russian.

No.

N-I-K-Russian.

This was his con.

He was a British guy who was working in Waterstones, just as a shop worker in Waterstones.

And he put adverts in big publications asking people to audition for a year-long reality TV show.

And the pitch was you could win £100,000.

Okay.

He got hundreds of responses.

He auditioned some of them on a little island in the Thames called Ravens 8, which is like a little silver star.

He auditioned.

This is sounding screepy.

He selected 30 successful auditiones to take part, but he never told them that no program had actually been commissioned.

Right.

It hadn't been commissioned.

They were just going to, either this was a con or he was going to hope for the best.

The show would take an entire year.

They had to leave their homes, quit their jobs, meet him in London on the 10th of June, and they would be divided into teams of 10.

Their challenge for the next 12 months is to make a million pounds in one year as a group right um they suddenly realized that they would be essentially making their own prize money so what's the point like he's not going to give them a hundred thousand pounds yeah you have a group of 10 if they if they earn a million they get a hundred thousand pounds each that's not a prize

that's just working

That's just working for a year and getting £100,000.

And if you do more than

any other member in your group, you're actually losing money because you're getting £100,000 of a million pound kitty that you maybe worked and earned 200,000 pounds of.

So a whole bunch of them quit.

Some of them stuck it out and tried to

see it through.

And they eventually realized it was a con.

They were sleeping on the floor of like the camera person's house.

Oh, no.

They had to give everything up.

They had no money.

Of course.

Either way, it is.

a really funny story and I recommend there's a couple of YouTube videos about it, but I love this guy's ambitions.

Yeah, that's nuts.

I don't know if this was a con so much as him because he doesn't make any money from it.

Like he's not charging them thousands and thousands of pounds.

He just feels like he wanted to make this show, came up with this idea, realized he had no money.

Yeah.

And realized that if he got them to earn the prize money, win-win.

And then he gets to pocket the money that he gets from making the TV show.

So yeah, I guess in his head, he thought, if I get like three teams of 10 people to try and make loads of money and do it, set up a business and like do this thing, maybe one of them will make a million pounds, you know, if they, if, if they, if we all work together on something, maybe, and then if, and then, if they make a million pounds, we split it and then everyone will be happy, right?

Like, so he didn't take any money from them, which is why no criminal charges were pressed.

He just basically time wasted, right?

He wasted a bunch of their time.

Someone did, one of the participants did track him down.

He lives, he was in Richmond.

He was living in Richmond at the time, not far from me.

But it is really funny, and I recommend looking at him.

He went into hiding.

Yeah, after the program found he went to hiding.

He was originally, his original name was Keith Gillard, which he changed to Jack Lister.

Yeah.

And then he changed to Nikita Russian.

Yeah, which is a crazy name.

A crazy name.

This guy has got clear mental problems.

Yeah.

A bit of a nut.

It's worrying, though.

I just think somebody can come up with an interesting idea.

Yeah, an idea like this.

But then people will go along with it.

But I guess if you look back and you think of all the things like, I remember the first time Lewis was like, oh, you should do YouTube stuff.

And I was just like, okay, I didn't even think about it.

But, like, you could have been, you know, scamming me or wasting my time or anything.

Well, originally, you said no, did I?

You were like, nah,

and then, like, six months later, you came back to me and you were like, Do you think I could still do YouTube stuff?

And I was like, Yeah,

that's called a long

time.

You literally just shut me down the first time we mentioned it.

You're just like, No, I didn't even remember.

Not for the reason I remember.

God.

Just as well, I came back.

I mean, geez, I would have been kicking myself.

Imagine?

That would be crazy.

Man.

That's wild.

I watched,

I think it was a Panorama or something

this week.

There was one about the, you know, like the pyramid schemes, all the ones that come out of Utah.

You know, like,

it's all.

No, no, it's a, it's just, I don't know what it is about, um,

it, it is, it's nothing to do with Mormons.

Well, not that I know of anyway, but they're just hugely popular in that, in that area in Salt Lake City.

There's tons of them.

All these big makeup, you know, like

Avon and whatever.

They're all these makeup companies that they have all these seminars and they, you know, they try to sell you, upsell you all these products that you will then go and sell.

And you remember you have to recruit your friends to sell it and stuff.

And there's all these people coming back saying, I lost thousands of pounds buying into this.

I've wasted so much time.

It was never going to work.

Marriage is full of like anime body devils.

I don't know anybody who has disposable income for this stuff.

Like some of the, you know, skin serums were like £150 a bottle and stuff.

And like.

And even if they do, the worst thing about this is that it makes people alienate their friends.

Yes.

Yeah.

It forces people to try and like sell shit to their friends.

Yeah.

And a big part of it is basically like if your friends aren't buying stuff off you, it's because they're jealous that you're trying to like improve your life and you should ditch them, basically.

You should just cut them out of your life because they're no good for you.

They're toxic.

So it's

so embarrassing as financially

and

social,

right?

Ruining people's lives.

Yeah.

It's horrible.

Yeah.

It's one of the worst things.

So here's it all comes off the idea of like giving people back their own independence.

It's like, you know, you've you love, you know, makeup.

Here's a chance for you to be your own boss.

Yeah, it's very sell this makeup.

You know, we'll help you do it.

And it's all just so here's a, this is an article.

This is from the KUER, which is a radio station, I think.

And it looks like they've written an article about this.

That Utah is twice as twice as many Ponzi schemes take place in Utah as opposed to anywhere else in the world.

Yeah, there's so many MLMs as well.

MLMs, there's tons of them.

Yeah.

That's the whole thing was.

There's so many MLMs is, and I heard this because in Utah, a lot of the wives still stay at home.

That could be a big part of it.

That apparently is through Mormonism.

They want like a work-from-home business.

Yeah, it's like a trad wife stuff, right?

Yeah,

Mormons sort of say, you know, you know, the place for a wife is at home, you know, to look after the home and raise the children and stuff like that.

Have as many babies as possible.

But then obviously, as with all Mormon stuff, there's a loophole, and the loophole is going to still work from.

Oh, yeah, sorry.

Yeah.

Sorry, I thought you were going to talk about sulking.

Soaking.

Or anal.

Right.

Yeah.

Oh, my God.

They're not allowed to do that, are they?

Well, God's not looking in the, you know, I just think he should soak it in there.

It's fine.

I was thinking, that's pretty crazy that you're going to believe that God is watching you do this, but you're thinking he's going to be like, he can't detect movements.

You got me there.

Well done.

I'm very sorry.

You know, hate the sin, not the sinner.

Well done.

You've uh

played that one well.

Tyrannosaurus Rex.

As long as you're not moving,

I don't see any movement.

I don't know who that is jumping on the bed like that.

Very well done.

Not sinning.

So he can't see through pen.

He can't see.

I can't see through duvets or sheets.

Everyone knows that.

My godly x-ray vision.

I can't see a thing.

Jesus, Holy Spirit, could you see anything?

Like they're the subspero trio.

Nothing, Captain.

Oh my God.

So one of the reasons is apparently the whole church of Mormonism builds a very trusting culture.

And they're all just very open and sort of quite sweet.

And therefore, they're just like suckers lining up to be conned.

Florida, number two.

And I would put that down to meth and idiocy.

So you've got very trusting, kind of

innocent people.

Yeah, so actually, I think it's because.

Yeah, you're right.

Utah is very trusting, so falls to the cons, but Florida is very scammy and scummy.

And so they're doing the cons.

A very stupid state.

One of the most remarkably stupid places I've been, actually, Florida.

If you're from Florida, I do apologize.

You guys are just the worst.

You hear it a lot about Florida.

There are a lot of known people not from Florida, but who have lived in Florida.

And every story is the same.

It's just the story story of this crazy guy came in the other day.

He was waving a shotgun and a zebra head around.

I couldn't believe it.

It was like that is a standard.

Talk to Bobes.

I've had this conversation with Bob, but she's never like, How dare you?

She's like, Yeah, it's fucked.

Florida is fucked up.

It's awful.

Yeah.

I speak to another guy from Florida the other day, and he was like, Yep, the stereotypes are true.

It's crazy.

But I guess

what's the equivalent of Florida in the UK?

No, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no.

I think it would probably be.

I mean, I know that

people think of

Norfolk as being

quite stupid.

Blackpool's got to be a contender, at least.

Just pretty sleazy.

A lot of those old seaside towns, but I don't know.

If you have an idea of what the

British Florida is, please let us know.

Obviously, the problem is Florida is like...

fucking the size of England or whatever.

So it's kind of hard for us to compare places.

But it's more just like the

vibe, you know, like the yeah like hillbilly setting cars on fire and stuff and it's just it's weird because florida has like different biomes like rim world okay try to imagine that florida is a rim world map right you've got all these the the number one biome is jungle because anything not on the coast is just teeming with swamps and it's flat and there's mosquitoes and gators and that's it it's it's miserable it's hot it's humid it's insect heavy and it's everything it's just it's rotten on the coast, beautiful, but a lot of that is taken up with rich dickheads who have private beaches, or it's just like the sand just goes on for miles and miles.

It kind of actually feels more like a desert than a beach sometimes.

And because it's the Atlantic on the on the east coast, the water is not warm.

It's fucking freezing.

And if you go on the other side, the Mexican Gulf side, or sorry, the Gulf of America, if you go on that side,

the water's warmer, but it's like, from certainly from what Boba told me, it's crazy.

Like, it's just super crazy there as well.

And then you have Miami, which is insane.

It's weird.

It's a really weird place.

And also, because it's got this kind of immigrant community with a lot of people coming from South America and

Cuba and stuff like that to southern Florida.

But then you have the deep south flavor in North Florida, where you're bordering Georgia and Alabama.

Who the fuck?

I think they got an identity crisis and a meth crisis and a mosquito crisis all combined into one.

Yeah, a lot of thunderstorms there too and hurricanes they got a hurricane crisis they got a thunderstorm crisis as well but dude the thunderstorms are amazing are they they're every day they are every day at the same time it absolutely busted thunderstorm just

and it's gone yeah it's really something that's wild i mean i've sat on the beach and watched a storm come in because you've got nothing like when you're on the coast of florida there's no hills you can see all the weather and it comes right off and you've just got this flat spit of sand that the weather just pummels and then it rolls over.

Um, so we watched this storm come in, and as it's coming in, you can see it raining before it gets to the shore.

And this cloud, we just watched it shrink and disappear in front of us, and all that water just went straight into the you know, into the ocean, didn't make landfall.

But about nine, ten o'clock every night, bam, huge thunderstorm, massive thunderbolts gone because it's wet and hot.

Yeah, this was perfect.

Yeah, huh, God, these there's so many scams, aren't there?

I remember like there was back in the day, it was always things like white vans selling speakers.

God, yeah.

Did you guys ever get that?

I see

you saw it like a few times.

Yeah, so you'd be on the like when I worked in New Malden, I had a van pull up to me a couple of times, different bloke every time.

He's like, oh, mate, you want to buy some stereo equipment?

I'd be like, what?

I was like, you want to buy some stereo equipment?

So, well, not especially, thinking he was going to point me to a shop.

And he opens up the back of his van.

There's all speakers and the stereo stuff in there.

And they try to sell it.

I think the scam is it's either stolen or they charge way over the odds.

But how am I going to get this home?

I didn't come to work with a car.

I took the train to visit a carrier stereo home like a bit at a time over the course of a week.

It was so weird.

That is weird.

The idea is that speakers are actually incredibly cheap when you look at what's in them.

Right.

And most speakers you can buy for fuck all.

It's just a bunch.

And the idea is that, but they can be really expensive, you know, and so you could say, oh, yeah, if you imply that they're nicked, you know, someone, someone might, I think it's a quite a common scam as well, this sort of idea that there's something more valuable, that you're getting something more.

You can, if you convince someone into that they're buying something more valuable than they are.

The other one I

like is stuff like the one where someone will bump into you and be like, oh, and they'll drop like their glasses or whatever, and it'll break.

And they'll be like, you brought my glasses.

That's you guys cost me $100 to report.

Wait, where is this person from?

I just want to know what your go-to voice was there because it's Rome.

There was a lot of Rome.

You dropped my glasses

I just feel like I saw the last time I saw a lot of scams going on it was when I was in Rome

I witnessed many scams as well well actually all across Europe but I it's got to be said

it's a lot of scams major cities in Europe especially train stations scams

there's lots of them there's every everybody's looking for a way to

earn a buck.

You get a lot of them in Paris, a lot of them in Rome.

I haven't seen that many scammers in London, but you do get a lot of pickpockets.

But I certainly, when I'm out in London, I don't see people coming up and doing the whole, oh, do you want to buy this jewel?

Or did you drop, I think you dropped this bracelet or whatever, you know, all that kind of thing.

Yeah.

Like actual old school scams that they seem to run in these places.

But in London, I don't know if it's because you haven't got like a dedicated tourist area in London where there's only tourists.

Because if you're like, let's say you're on the South Bank and you're thinking, oh, I'll scan the tourists here who are on the South Bank, are they near the Tate?

There's also offices there.

People commute there.

People walk over the bridge to go to work.

There's a lot of locals.

So it's kind of hard to pick out.

In Paris, if you go to the Eiffel Tower, it's easy to find tourists because the only people there are tourists.

And the same goes for like Rome, go to the Trevy Fountain and that kind of place.

It's like these are the tourist hotspots.

Whereas in London, I think because the quote-unquote tourist stuff is jam-packed in amongst other working things it's kind of hard to single them out maybe i don't know yeah the other thing about these things that always you know when you're walking down the street and someone's like come in come in to like this this place i'm like never ever going with any of those people into their place right it doesn't work for me it's almost going to put me off and the reason is because you hear so many about these if whatever effectively like um just overpricing scams where basically someone will you know charge you way too much much or something.

Or that's just tourist shit.

I mean, you know, that's

exactly.

It's just taking advantage of tourists.

But I think some of them are more elaborate.

Like they have sometimes like women will approach you and be like, oh, you know, do you want us to buy us a drink or whatever?

And then, you know,

they buy something really expensive.

And then they're, oh, I don't have any money.

I thought you were getting it for me.

Jeremy, that's

just gargantuan breasts.

Then I'll fall for that.

No comment.

Then I'll fall for the scam.

Don't worry.

I'll take the hit on this one, Flex.

I'll take it.

Kind of upset me.

No, no, I'm just kind of.

I think my opinion of you has dropped as a result of that comment.

You're a married man with children.

You're talking about women's breasts.

I think that's disgusting.

Well, I can talk about men's breasts as well if it balances it out, maybe, or makes it.

My opinion of you has fallen down a lot as a result of your comment on men's breasts.

I think this is a married man with children.

He's talking about men's breasts.

It's disgusting.

What the hell am I going to do now?

Have you?

Is anyone else a poor?

I'm going to start a Reddit.

A scam called

pigeon drop.

Pigeon drop is a classic.

It's the it's it's in the depicted in the film The Sting.

Yeah, yeah.

It involves the mark or pigeon.

It's not actually a pigeon involved, which is sad.

No, it's just like it's the slang term.

Luckily, what do you mean sad?

I don't want to you want to drop a pigeon.

The pigeon drop is what happens when they knock the seeds off and they drop down onto my roof and eat them from there.

That's

the pigeon drop economic.

The one in the sting, this is a classic.

A guy is

he's sort of uh

running from a mugger and he trips and falls.

And

one of the other guys,

all three of these guys are in on the con.

The mugger is in on it.

The Good Samaritan is in on it.

The guy falling on it.

And the guy who's whatever is in on it.

The mark or the pigeon is, they time it just right so that he's there at the same time.

So in the movie The Sting,

this guy is getting chased by this other guy.

He pulls a knife.

They see him off.

He runs.

And now

it's the guy on the ground who's got the money.

It's Robert Redford and it's the mark.

And the guy says, please, I've got to get this money across town because I do the drop for this Mafia boss.

And this money is for the bookie.

It has to be here at this time.

And he says, I don't know, Pops.

I don't want to get messed up with any kind of mafia stuff.

And the other guy says, if you give me a hundred bucks, no, he says, I'll give you a hundred bucks if you do it.

He's like, geez, I don't know.

He's like, yeah, okay, old man.

And then Robert Redford says, okay, what you want to do is you want to wrap it up like this and tuck it in your trousers because no one's going to frisk you there.

He says, here, give me, you better put your wallet in too.

So he gives him his wallet and he wraps it up with the money, shows him the real money, wraps it up in a cloth, tucks it into his trousers, like into his, the front of his pants, and says, like, see?

And then he pulls it back out again and hands it to him.

Of course, he hasn't handed the money or the wallet to the guy.

It's a replacement.

Right.

So he takes that

fake money.

gets in a cab and says, I just made the easiest three grand of my life.

Let's get out of here.

And when he opens it up, it's just paper.

So not only have they taken his wallet and everything in it you know they've kept their original money of course the the setup in this thing is that's a lot more money than they expected and they're now they're in trouble because they've robbed the wrong person like that's the the setup but the whole idea is it's giving someone the impetus to give you some money for a bigger payoff later on they do this with a lottery as well where you pretend that you found a winning lottery but uh you're underage or something so you get someone to say oh i think this is last night's lottery ticket and we've won it and you call up and say and they say yes those are the numbers and you've won like 500 bucks and you say um oh geez only you know i i if you give me half now you can cash it and you can you can take it and they're like oh cool cool cool so they give you half of the money that you've won but of course the lottery ticket is a fake or it's yesterday's numbers and it's like all these cons to get people to give you money for a bigger payoff later that's the pigeon drop yes uh and there's lots of different ways to trick it and it relies largely on people's desperation or greed yeah it's all it's all greed or trust like in a way people could be like yeah we'll split this 50 50 don't worry here i'll give you half and I'll get the rest of the money.

Like, sometimes people are just interesting, right?

You, you have to, you have to take your time, you have to trick them, you have to become friends with them.

You have to be like, Look, I've got this problem.

I've got this lottery ticket that I can't claim because, you know, I'm, I'm, you know, wasn't, I worked for the lottery at the time, I'm not allowed, right?

Exactly.

All that kind of stuff.

And then you want to let them get that thought in their own mind, which is like, oh, maybe I could help you out.

I could cash it for you.

And he'd be like, well, what if you ran off with it?

You know, and he'd be like, well, I'll just, yeah, I'll buy it.

I'll just put something down, you you know to prove that i'm you know on on par and before you know it yeah like this is this it's so much fun though it's a great starter for a movie right but it does rely on people being in a certain way right like greedy or or um you know desperate or you know some other situation leads them into this it's easy to slightly pseudo crime especially if you pick a slightly dodgy person they think they're getting one over on you like that's the the best kind of con is where they think they're the ones who are conning you and then they realize there's a ton of really good articles and wikis about cons because they're so interesting.

And they, a lot of them play on, like, like Lewis said, greed and stuff.

Some of them just play on people's confusion about how things work or basic faith in other people.

And a lot of it is like these, these scam artists are just brilliant actors, really.

Yes.

They're like very scamming.

They're able to maintain it.

They're very believable.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But they don't come across as too believable.

They just seem forgettable.

Like one of the common scams you see in London, I guess it's a scam.

It feels more like pickpocketing, to be honest with you, is the map scam, where if you see someone at a table in a cafe and they've got their phone out, you go up and you hold a map and you say, Sorry, are we on this road?

And when they say, Oh, no, you're over here while they're doing that, you just take their phone from under the map, put it in your pocket, and say, Thank you, and walk out.

And people do that all the time.

So, that's not a scam so much as a misdirection pickpocket scam.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

God, I'd hate to get it.

Oh, God, yeah,

this is bad.

Yeah, have it told my friends.

It sucks.

Um, it's it's like a constant paranoia of mine as well, but apparently, it just happens.

You can't avoid it.

Just fucking, this shit happens.

Don't feel bad.

Do you remember that in the 80s?

I remember a friend of mine got a wallet that was pickpocket proof and it had a tiny switch.

It had like a mousetrap.

It had like a switch with a bit of sort of a rough side to it.

And when you put the wallet in your pocket, if you pulled it out and the switch would be flipped, it would go like beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.

So you'd know.

But you knew it was there.

So you knew to cover the switch when you took it out and not to trick it.

Jesus.

And I thought, geez, first of all, you're 13, you don't have any money, no one's going to pickpocket you for your three pounds fifty.

Um, but second of all, I don't know if that would work really because pickpockets are very, very good, they don't just sort of drag it out so that it would hit a pocket, it's all they bump into you, and it's gone in like a flash.

If you watch uh YouTube of a professional pickpocket, they're it's like magic, you'd never know, you literally don't feel it.

It's crazy.

My trick is I just don't have any money, so uh, you know,

I'm always running on empty.

So there's the poorest man in Jersey.

They're not.

I guess it's their phone they're stealing now or whatever, right?

Like it's something different.

Did you see?

I watched a diminished video on that.

It's been on there for a while.

It's called Finding Fen's Gold.

Oh, I've never heard of that.

Basically, it's about

this sort of treasure hunt that this guy set up, this old fella,

Forrest Fenn.

And basically, he hid like a chest with, you know, a couple of million quids worth of gold bullion and jewels and stuff in the middle of the Rocky Mountains somewhere, and it was kind of a phenomenon for a while.

Like, people were going out treasure hunting, and the documentary covers the story of how it all sort of played out.

And it got a lot of people outside, you know, hunting because he wrote like a book

that had the guides for how to find the treasure, and it was all cryptic and sort of, you know, where warm waters halt, you know, follow Golden Valley down or whatever.

Like, you know, it had a whole like, had a whole like cryptic thing.

And it fought, the documentary is quite interesting.

It follows a few different groups of people as they um

tried to decipher it with a with and reading completely different things into it you know you've got this group of hillbillies who were honestly hilarious um i thought uh you know and talking about what they were getting up to and then you've got this one sort of guy who's trying to build like a facial recognition software some complete asshole basically like being super awkward about it and then and then you've got like this old woman who's like seducing him um and trying to like get answers from him by like basically cozying up to him and it's so funny, like they're different approaches, you know.

Like one of them's like, you know, this, this scientific guy is like analyzing everything he says and like looking at all of his TV appearances and like looking at where he lived and like, you know, the hillbillies are just going for it, you know.

And I, it's, it, I guess, everyone took their own approaches to it.

And they were such diverse approaches and very meta, right?

In that, like, a lot of people, you know, were like, I don't know, going to his house and stuff.

And like,

it attracts a lot of crazy people.

And the thing about it is, is that it was this kind of fever at the time.

And, um, but even today,

people still don't believe, you know, it was eventually found, but people didn't believe it, right?

And they refused to believe it.

And then they sort of still are hunting for it today.

And there's almost this group delusion that they don't want it to be over.

Like, everything's cryptic.

Everything's

a lie.

It's, it's so strange, right?

We've always had these treasure hunts and things.

And I'm sort of quite fascinated with how they play out, you know, and

the stories because, you know, it's always been a,

you know, when we were in the 80s and 90s, right, P-Flex, there were puzzle books that came out.

Yeah.

You buy the book.

And

there was a very famous one in the 70s, I think, and the guy, it was a lot of, it was very large drawings, like just pictures, and it would lead to some treasure.

I think someone found it.

Let me see if I can find.

Yeah, there were a series of them, and they had like a series of treasures.

And the idea was that if you could solve the puzzles in this book and get a solution, it would.

And the idea was that the treasure was worth 10 grand.

So you had to sell, you know, a couple of thousand of these books to make enough money to pay for the treasure, right?

Do you see what I mean?

So it was kind of a someone did the math.

Yeah, I think this one is called The Secret, which is a treasure hunt, which is one.

But there were, there were, I'm sure there were, there was a more famous one.

Yeah, there was a bunch.

There was one which had like a chalice and there was a bunch.

There was a bunch of games that were made.

Yeah, there were video games where it was a treasure hunt also had a treasure hunt in them in the early days and they're kind of this almost legendary thing so it's been around for a while so this is this this one is an american one um but i'm sure there was a famous british one someone i'm sure someone will know that the artwork was very odd i'm sure it was the 70s or 80s but listen to this one um the secret was created by a guy called byron price uh he wrote the book in 1982 um and this the boxes there were these boxes buried at secret locations in cities across the us and canada um anyone who discovered one was entitled to exchange it with price for a precious gem so he died in 2005 and his estate assumed the responsibility of honoring the terms of the treasure hunt and as of 2024 only three of the 12 boxes has ever been found and he kept no record of their exact locations before his death so it's a possibility they may never be recovered so wow if you imagine dropping that into a community of treasure seekers especially like people are going to solve this online, the interesting thing to me would be at what point do the clues get to the stage where people realize they're getting close and stop collaborating?

Because certainly you don't want to be the one who is like a thousand people are working to solve these clues.

Because if one guy's like, you give him this one bit of information, it's like, oh shit, I've got it.

He's not going to share that.

He's going to go fucking get the treasure.

So you don't want to collaborate too much.

But it is interesting.

Of course, but also these things were not designed to be hidden for 35 years, right?

The landscape changes, like the place has been built over.

I'm sure a lot of people have found them and just thrown them away because they're an empty treasure chest.

They don't know they're attached to this thing or whatever, right?

I think there's tons of these.

And in a sense, like it's similar with the Forest Fenn thing, really, that I sort of got the impression that if it hadn't been solved before he died, and you, as an old man, you don't think you're going to die really.

You know, you're going to die at some point, right?

But you don't think it'll be soon or tomorrow.

And so, you know, it's not, and sometimes it's sudden, right?

You have a heart attack and you die, right?

And you think, oh, of course, this is how it is in the movies.

I'm going to have a chance.

I'll be on my deathbed and then I'll tell my son and he can write

all the things.

Do you know what I mean?

I'm not going to put it in my safe or anything.

I'm not going to put it here because I'm not going to tell anyone because, you know, I've got to keep the secret.

Right.

And so this is a very common thing that I imagine happens in that this guy didn't trust

the people who is even his immediate family.

Right.

Partly because, you know, there was this big idea around the forest fen thing that his grandson had gone and recovered the treasure.

Right.

And because there was this idea that the family were being threatened and that people were going out into the wilderness and dying, you know, and that he was feeling bad about it.

And so he wanted to stop it.

And so he told his grandson where the treasure was and his grandson went out and got it.

Do you know what I mean?

And so it was this, this, and no one, everyone couldn't quite believe that it had been solved legitimately.

And that part of the reason reason was because it was sort of solved by this guy who wanted to remain anonymous.

And he didn't want like he found the treasure, but he didn't want his life to be upended.

And so,

you know, that caused that anonymousness of the finder led to this great deal of disappointment

in the rest of the community because they were like, oh, someone found it.

Who found it?

Where?

Exactly was it?

Where did how close were we?

Right.

Just, you know, none of that sort of came out,

at least not initially.

And so it was kind of like,

this is the kind of stuff that leads to conspiracy theories.

It is.

So the one I'm thinking of, by the way, is a 1979 book by a guy called Kit Williams called Masquerade.

And this was the English one.

And it was found.

The solution and everything is printed.

The Sunday Times published an additional clue that Kit Williams created to help.

But the scandal was that the winner of the competition in 1988 was found to be a fraud.

And essentially, he knew someone who had known Kit Williams, previous girlfriend, and they basically figured something out about roughly where it was and went and found it with metal detectors, not using the clues.

So, yeah, they just fucking found it.

And they submitted this sketch of the location to Kit Williams, and he said, Oh, yeah, that's correct.

But of course,

it was kind of shocking.

So, yeah, you can read all about that.

So, so, I mean, I can understand that, but I also feel like, in my view, that is the nature of the world we live in, right?

And it's, and you know, people are social engineering fucking Forrest Fenn, do you know what I mean?

To like get close access to him, to get extra clues, to get extra, you know, because he, because he would sometimes reply to people's emails, right?

And so, as a result, like the whole thing felt like it was a little bit unfair right from the start.

Yeah, you know, it like it was almost like this is, but I think people want a treasure hunt to be equal and fair.

And I think people, I think, actually, you know,

I hate it that you can social engineer these things, but they are not foolproof.

You know, they're made by people.

And, you know,

what would so if we did you know what?

Here's the thing, Lulu.

You've got all this extra yog stuff that you're thinking about what to do with.

What if you did a treasure hunt for one of the particularly good pieces?

You hid it somewhere in Bristol.

What if we buried

like a packet of Jaffa cakes?

Yeah.

So

here's what you do.

You get, get a, no, no, not just a packet of Jaffa cakes.

I'm talking about something that people might want, like a piece of yog's light.

All people would want some piece of jaffa cakes, though.

You could get one of the shops and say you found it.

I know, yeah, the gold play button.

There you go.

That's a gold play button.

That's worth like a grand or something.

So you get that.

Ah, probably.

Anyways, it's not important.

We'll tell the papers it is.

That's how much I paid for it.

And then you put clues out

in Yogg's videos.

Well, we had to.

We had to pay for.

Well,

when YouTube updated them, they were like, oh, do you want a new play button?

And we were like, sure.

And they were like, oh, you got an update.

I still got the original one.

I got fucking scammed by YouTube.

So you meant to get one at 100k 100k subscribers, right?

And then you get one at a million and all that.

Yeah, I got the million.

I never got, I never got my 100k, they never sent it.

I got the 100k was a silver one.

We got a silver one.

Yeah, I never got it.

I never got it, never got any gold on the rewards page.

You'll be able to get one.

You'd probably have to pay a couple of grand.

I got a Twitch one too, like a purple tattoo.

It's still in the box.

I haven't even opened it yet.

But yeah, you should do it.

Anyway, Luc, you should do that.

You should do it.

The Yogg's treasure hunt, and you can embed little clues in the videos and stuff.

And I'm not saying Christ.

I'm not saying dig a hole.

I'm saying you put it somewhere.

I mean, we'll think about it.

Play it in Paris, though.

Send people on a wild goose chase through Paris.

It's all

it's a really cool idea, but no way.

Like, looking at how it turned out for these people, it's such a fucking stress for them.

No, I know.

It's easy.

It's just so unstrugging.

It's not easy.

I get

super crazy people who chase you for your rest of your life.

I'll be on my deathbed.

No, it's a fucking

fucking deathbed in four years.

And some guy, it's a nurse, some guy will come in, disguised as a nurse.

He'll be like, oh, George, should you give you a sponge bath?

Also, where's the fucking treasure?

Where's the treasure hidden, you bastard?

I'll be like, oh, I'm dying.

And I'll die.

That's how I

go.

So you think people are going to lose their minds about a YouTube play button with zero resellability that is definitely not worth a thousand pounds.

They're going to lose their minds.

But it's about the Mona Lisa wasn't worth anything until it was stolen.

So now when they got it banned, your play button.

Global News is the same thing.

The only reason the Mona Lisa Lisa is so famous is because of its provenance.

Did somebody say provenance?

Anyway, that's enough of this stupid podcast.

Just put it out there.

Talk to Harry about it.

If Harry's on board, do it.

Or Sarah.

And if they both go, nah, then fuck it because I'm not going to do it.

I'm an ideas guy.

This guy's going to be a good idea.

I tell you what, I did actually.

I tell you what, I have got a thing that's similar to this.

So it's just real quick.

There's a guy called Ron Smalek.

No, there's.

He's a lovely man.

Ron Smalek.

If you Google him.

Why are you calling him a lovely man?

He's a lovely man.

Ron, how are you spelling this guy's name?

Ron Smalek.

No.

How are you spelling?

Ron.

Yes.

S-M-A-L-E-C.

Smalek.

Ron Smalek.

Ron Smalek.

He's on X here.

He's on IMDb.

Writer, Minecraft Adventure Maps.

Yes.

And then the next one, next Google down is Candle's Quest treasure hunt.

I'm this guy seeing this.

Can you just link this guy?

Oh, I see it now.

I see it.

It's at the bottom of the page.

Here we go.

A Minecraft treasure by Ron Smalley.

Yeah, yeah.

Called Candle's Quest, which is a treasure hunt in Minecraft.

It's like Fent finding Fenn's treasure.

Where does he have to go on his server and try and find the treasure?

You buy the book and it gives you clues and then you go onto his server, but also the server links you to other servers.

Oh, that's quite cool.

And there's like other clues, and there's like all sorts of things.

I like that.

And yeah, and so there's and if you do the he actually he actually um if you look at the cover he he actually is like a artist like a bob ross style artist and he will paint minecraft scenes in real life right on canvas very cool um and you can win one of his paintings if you solve the treasure chest because he doesn't have like multi-million dollars um you know yeah he just has this his own little shit going on right and you know i used to know him back in the day because he

would make Minecraft, he would review and make Minecraft adventure maps and we would look at the stuff.

Oh, my cleaner's here.

I have to go.

Okay.

Thanks, everyone.

Thank you so much.

Check out Rosmanic's Treasure Hard.

Bye.

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That's when I started to find my people and my path.

Small classes helped me connect with professors who saw something in me.

They helped me discover who I could become.

Now, as a junior, I can say at Elon University, I found more than a major, I found my purpose.

Learn more at elon.edu.