Aggressive Topic Whiplash | Triforce Mailbag #55

Pickaxe

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Hello, chums, listeners, well-wishers, haters, returning listeners, long-time absentees, and others.

It's a mailbag episode, and I'm joined by my buds, Lulu,

and Sips.

The Mailbag.

the mailbag here once again.

Well, talking of mailbag theme music, let's begin with a couple of absolute corkers.

I've been sent in by some listeners.

I will tell you who sent these.

Thank you for forwarding

a TikTok to me about how to deal with my.

Oh, yes, I've got more on that as well.

I've got more on that as well.

But yeah, Nematoads is apparently the solution.

But anyway, this is from, we'll come back to that because I do have an email about the gnats as well.

Ross has sent in uh this little jingle, which I will pop in the Discord.

Uh, let me know when you guys are ready, and we'll count down and then we'll play it.

Okay, I'm ready,

ready, okay.

Three, two, one, play.

I'm talking about Sips.

Wanna hear a story about a bath plug or a sewer?

Talk about Louis Branley of the Arts cast.

Will not protect his copyright, now.

Pyrrhi and Flex,

the hero of the hour.

I should be all of your favorite eggs.

Wow, this is really funky.

I don't get that outro.

Mailbag.

Mailbag.

That's very usable, though.

Like, it is such a good blue-doo with, like, the ending bit that would lead nicely into somebody saying, you know, good morning or hello again or whatever.

Of course.

Yeah.

I guess I just wasn't also anticipating the very high-voiced intro.

Johnny, it was, and that got me, that tickled me straight away, you know, straight in with the.

Yes, it was

a goodie.

It was a good job.

Good job, contributor who will remain unnamed.

Ross.

Ross.

Call him Ross.

Ross.

Thank you, Ross.

Good job, Ross.

This is from Will.

And he said, here's my submission for a Driforce mailbag theme song.

Been sitting on it for a month because I thought it was too bad to send in.

This version is actually called Remix.

So I think he's had a few goes at this.

Well, then he heard some of the other ones.

He was like, I'm sending it.

He isn't sending any old coffee.

So these are all naturelle as well.

They're not really.

They are 100%.

Yes.

So I popped it in the Discord and we'll do a countdown and play.

Are you guys ready?

Sure.

Three from the mines.

Three babes.

Three, two,

one.

Three, two, one, play.

I've got a tiny tick.

I see what he's saying.

This is good.

Okay, so so the the the drum beat the whatever that drum is that little tappy drum it well, it's it's obviously him saying I've got a tony dick, but it sounds so nice.

I love it.

The like boxed

ASMR, like you know, the whiny

is the best, yeah.

It's uh god, no, that is thank you for sitting on that and uh saving it.

So good, so very good.

See, the AI could not come up with this kind of shit.

They just couldn't.

There's no way that at the moment, anyway, AI is creating I've Got a Tiny Dick as the drumbeat.

It's too

real, too, too precious, too special.

I also think

it doesn't understand comedy or irony or anything like that.

It all just sounds like a mishmash default version of everything else.

That's all.

Totally absent of humor or humanity.

Speaking of absent of humor and humanity, here's an email from Stuart.

I'm only kidding, Stuart.

I love you.

I was listening to episode 53, and you guys were talking about anosmia.

Do you remember people that can't smell?

Yes.

Christ.

I was born with an incredibly rare condition.

It affects one in 2 million people or so, called, now bear with me, nasal Chandromeshanaimal hamatoma.

Wow.

Or NCMH, which is basically a benign tumor which grows in your face where your nostrils should be, and in Stewart's case, completely blocked his nostrils.

It was only discovered when he was about 10.

Until then, he had no idea what smell even was.

He has no functioning nostrils, couldn't breathe through his nose or smell anything.

When he was 13, he had it removed and all the cartilage in his face remodeled so that he had a nose with two nostrils that worked.

And after two weeks of hospital recovery, they took two foot of gauze out of his face where they'd packed it in, and he was able to breathe through his nose for the first time.

Wow.

God, I thought you read gauze as in G-O-R-E.

And I was like,

gore.

Gore.

No gauze, sure.

When I got home, my mum cooked me a roast dinner and it was the first time I'd smelt food and cried my eyes out of the table while shoveling mash and gravy into my face hole.

Oh, that's a good one to go for for

like the previous E-mailer.

I also always have heavily used spicy or vinegary condiments to flavor my food.

The upside to this is that I'm now able to smell, kind of.

I have what's referred to as selective anosmia, where I can only only smell certain things, kind of like when people go deaf and lose specific frequencies.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's not that I can only smell strong smells, but it's sometimes a particular flower or food that I can suddenly smell and nothing else.

Another weirdness is that the soft palate in my mouth above my tongue at the back is now flexible and I'm able to manipulate it with my mind like a muscle.

Nice.

Anyway, this means that I'm able to control it to close off my nose and force breathing through my mouth rather than my nose, blocking all smells completely.

Yeah, that I can do that.

I think everyone can do that, right?

Well, no, you kind of gotta do that when you swim so that water doesn't gush like up your nose, sort of thing.

Right, but he's like sealing it.

He makes a seal.

All right, so try doing it now and then breathing through your nose.

Yeah, I can't breathe through my nose, but I do it.

Anyway, I could only breathe through my mouth when I create the nose seal.

Well, there you go.

He says his wife abuses this and tells him, shut up and close your flap and take the bin out.

Nice, which I think is funny.

So if you can't smell anything, it must be

because it all links in with like with taste and everything as well.

It must be really weird

to eat certain foods and then

your taste buds or, you know,

sometimes you get like a sensation in your mouth if you eat something like spicy or whatever.

But the fact that you can't actually taste it, that must be really weird.

But do you think that would be heightened because

your sniffer is not working?

Like, I think you get that.

I have no idea.

you know they sometimes say like if one thing isn't working then the other thing is like like ultra like heightened or whatever I wonder if that's the case I wonder if like you ate something and your taste buds just went like crazy and you got like that sensation in your mouth it would be like 10 times the normal person's sensation who can actually taste the food or whatever you know what I mean I think it's even like it's an element of consciousness there right like you know how some sometimes you you get used to a smell very quickly right it's like smells bad somewhere and within a few minutes, you don't notice anymore.

And it's not until you leave that place and come back or until you consciously try and become aware of it.

Yeah, I think it's like very, I think if you think something's going to be disgusting as well, your senses are definitely heightened as well.

If you're looking for a bad thing.

Yeah, if you can't taste anything or smell anything.

and you eat shit like your body must realize that you've eaten shit and

and and react to it right well maybe it's good for you because i think i think if you can smell the minute the shit got got even in the room with you, you'd be like, oh my God, there's a shit in here.

And there's no way I'm eating it.

But if you couldn't smell it and you accidentally ate it, you know what I mean?

Like your body would have to do something, right?

Your body does not want to consume a shit.

I don't think.

Tips 2025.

Yeah.

Have no way.

Your body does not want to consume a shit.

No, it wants to push one out.

It wants to get rid of it.

It wants to, it's waste, you know.

You know how waste comes out.

You know how like we just said

basically like the weirder the better, right?

Well,

why do I say weirder the better?

Well, because with AI, right, everything's being homogenized.

Anything that's default, like down the middle of the road, is probably AI.

So you want to be, you want to be a weirdo.

Yeah.

A real fucking weirdo.

You want to do like weird, crazy shit, come up with weird, crazy beats and weird, crazy things.

No, no AI is saying your body probably doesn't want to eat a shit.

Or whatever the fuck you said,

I'm sure they'll get to the point where they recommend against it, though.

I think that you had had a lot of like chat GPT and you said, is it safe for me to eat my own shit?

It would come out with a with a doozy.

You know what I mean?

Like, I think you, I think you, I think the output will be in the spirit of the input, if you, if you, if you know what I mean.

Oh, yeah, I see what you mean.

If you ask it like a, an absurd question, you'll probably get a really absurd response.

I'd imagine.

I don't know.

I've never used any.

I think it's just a yes, man.

It's like all those sycophants surrounding Donald Trump, telling him he's so fucking good.

Yeah.

Giving him like Eve.

It'll just, it'll just be like, you know, it'll say things like, I've seen a few clips and screenshots.

It's like, someone asked ChatGPT, I'm thinking I'm going to jump off a cliff.

And ChatGPT is like, oh, you know, I'm good on you for like taking control of, you know, making your own choices and stuff like this.

It's like, what?

It's not, it's not, it's kind of just.

I've never used any of the

AI things.

And I have like no interest in it really at all.

Like, I know that it's like, it can produce the only, I think the only AI I ever used was in Planet Zoo where chat were sending me AI generated posters for my zoo because there's these massive, massive

screens that you can install.

And I made this huge parking lot and I wanted like big theater size screens with posters, you know, like similar to the artwork for the cover of the Planet Zoo game, but you know, just with some like extras and whatever.

And the AI was able to generate these beautiful images that we used that looked pretty cool.

I would have never been able to do that otherwise.

I mean, I guess somebody could have drawn them or whatever, but it would have taken forever, you know, like, I don't know.

I'm probably canceled now for saying that I liked one thing that AI did, but

I stand by it.

It was cool.

I thought it was cool.

But that's my only real interaction with any AI other than these the songs that Flax gets occasionally.

Here's the thing.

You don't realize how much AI is already into in, you know, I, we played a bunch of these games since Sunday.

I didn't realize like half of the fucking art was AI.

Half of the stuff we were doing was AI.

There's no mention of it on Steam.

Like, we didn't realize until people in the comments were like, guys, you don't realize.

And we're like, no.

I think most of the games that I played, like those stupid simulator games, they're all like.

like

assets like in the they're just made by like one man yeah but it's all like stock assets in the uh you know in whatever the unreal engine or whatever they use um because you just say see the same shit over and over and over.

It's either, yeah, it's either stock assets or it's AI.

It's crazy.

Anyway, PFAX, let's get on.

Let's move on.

Holy crap.

Okay.

Fungus gnats.

Okay, oh God, right.

Well, listen, I have done a couple of things.

What did you do?

I've applied, there's a thing you can get called nil gnat, or I think it's nil gnat backwards is tannlin.

And you can just, it's like the stuff they use in garden centers.

They basically put like one drip in 10 liters or whatever of your water that you water the plants with.

Right.

And it forms these little weird crystals

around the plant's roots to stop the larva from eating them.

And it's apparently like a harmless organic thing.

It doesn't make your plants toxic or anything.

And it's, I've

tried that, but this guy suggested nematodes, which are basically like little microphones.

Nematodes.

Nematodes, yeah.

So they're teeny tiny worms.

And the idea is you put them in some water, water the plants.

The nematodes are now in the soil.

They crawl about the way worms do and they stumble upon the gnat, the fungus gnat larva, which is buried in the soil and eat them from the inside out.

So if you want to torment these fuckers, that's one option.

I did have an email from a Chloe who signs off with Kiss, Hug, Kiss.

And they say when I had fungus gnats, the yellow sticky shit things on the tablets didn't do shit.

Right.

I got rid of them

every evening.

hoofering up the adults.

The fungus

gnats on the yellow tablets didn't do shit.

What a sentence sentence that is.

Hoovering up the adults.

Speaking of AI responses, that could be one for the books.

Well, didn't do shit.

After a week, I'd exterminated them.

Love you, dads.

Thank you, Chloe.

Just keep hoovering.

Hoovering them up.

Just hoovering them up.

I wonder.

So I mowed my lawn on the weekend

and the weather's been glorious.

So Terry has been outside every day.

I put him outside yesterday.

Where's this story going?

The lawn is pretty freshly mowed.

It started growing back a little bit as a lawn does does sort of thing.

But because I cut it after I let it grow, like we basically had a meadow in the backyard for a while.

It was really lovely.

Yeah, it was nice.

There was lots of bees and everything.

It was great.

But you have to cut it every once in a while.

Otherwise, the grass underneath is just going to get

all fucked up.

So I cut it.

And so, you know, all of this grass that was underneath that's still really wet because it's just been growing, growing, growing, was exposed all of a sudden.

And I think there must have been a lot of bugs down there, whatever, because uh, I went inside, looked outside the window.

I was watching Terry for a minute, and then I'm not even kidding, there was like 30 birds, uh, that just all of a sudden, like a gang descended upon the backyard.

Then a pigeon turned up and was like on Terry's little enclosure cage thing, looking around.

But these little birds were like pecking everywhere.

Like, there's nothing back there.

Like, I haven't spread any seed around or anything like that.

So, it must have just been.

You can't spread your seed.

No, not all over my backyard, funnily enough.

But there must have just been loads of little like bugs or worms or something that were exposed from the mow.

But man, these birds were going crazy, and they were there for a while, too.

Like, it was just, you know, and

Terry was really looking at them, too.

Like, he's like, what the fuck is going on?

You know, like, you could see his little head craning around.

It was funny.

I'm so relieved that this story didn't end up with him being carried away.

Oh, no, they're little birds.

He was, he's bigger than these are like tiny, tiny little black birds with uh, with yellow wings.

Some of the big birds will look almost oily, like on their wings.

Those seagulls would be trying to crack them out.

Seagulls would be, but

it's fairly built up and confined where we live.

So the seagulls don't tend to land in backyards

unless there's like a diaper or something back there, then they're all

otherwise they kind of stick to the roofs of the ball.

Someone's got like a greg, yeah.

You know, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Good girl.

So it's not so bad.

But yeah, I just thought it was interesting, you know, like,

you know, if you had like an an infestation of something

and you and you mowed your grass, maybe the birds would come in and solve it for you, you know, like it's like a natural remedy, you know, they'd probably

knocked a lot of seeds off.

Yeah.

So what I'm saying is if you got fungus, fungal gnats, maybe just expose them to birds.

Well, this is it.

Yeah.

Should I get like a series of

geckos?

Yeah, do like Ace Ventura, you know, when all the birds are flying towards you and you're singing.

Just open your arms right up and let the birds in.

See what happens.

Yeah.

Okay.

I'll think about it.

Yeah.

You seem like you're friends with your pigeons on your windowsill, right?

My pidgeys, yeah, they came this morning.

They come at about 9.45, 10 every day.

I put some seeds out for them.

It's a Mr.

and Mrs.

Pidgey.

They eat the seeds and then they fly away for a bit.

Then they come back and they look at me through the window and make pigeon noises.

I put more seeds out, they eat those, and then I see them again late in the afternoon.

Wow, nice.

Wow.

I'm trying to get smarter birds.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, you know, most of these birds are pretty clever when it comes to food.

Their whole day is spent acquiring it, so I'm sure they know what they're doing.

I think most animals are.

It feels like, you know, the cats have their like route through

the neighborhood.

Your sole focus apart from staying alive by avoiding danger is acquiring food.

And think about it, pigeons are out there flying about all day.

There's not like a cat.

Cat will sleep 20 hours out of 24 if necessary.

Pigeon's got to be on the go.

He's got to keep his head on a literal swivel.

They do, but they take a lot of breaks too like you see them walking around train stations uh like over here we got like the royal square they're but sightseeing yeah they're just

having an espresso or something on a plaza they take don't worry they're fine they take lots of breaks take your time i'm not worried

you can understand animals have to eat a lot you know we oh yeah i mean we do yeah we eat you know three meals a day plus snacks maybe and the point is we're we're big pigeons are little little.

And so, but they have to eat the same volume, relatively speaking, I'd say, if not more.

They're very active.

Flying.

Imagine fucking flying.

That's got to be hard.

Anyway, this is Triforce vis-a-vis bullying Lewis.

Right.

Right.

This is an email from Cyrus Castle on behalf of their partner, Tilly.

My partner has asked me to write in.

We've both just listened to the latest mailbag.

Apparently, that was number 53.

And she wants you to stop bullying Lewis.

There you go.

Right.

You're right.

Poor Lulu.

He gets bullied, apparently.

Thank you, by the way.

Mia, was it or something?

I want some examples of this.

I want some examples of this bullying.

I don't actually think that we bully him that much, no more than we would bully each other.

Like, I feel like there's a, you know, I think there's like a healthy balance of bullying going around between the three of us, possibly.

I would just say, look, it's not bullying because it's like when you have...

This is certainly the way I see it as a bloke with my male friends.

There's a lot of bullying, like not bullying, I should say, but a lot of sort of

ribbing, a lot of ribbing and bants and teasing.

I do that to my female friends as well, and sometimes they take a situation.

It has to be done, right?

If someone is, you have to sometimes knock these guys down or else you end up with Andrew Tates.

Exactly.

It's a bit of a good crack.

You just have to be.

Everyone needs to be knocked a peg down or two.

Not into the ground, obviously.

Not like a tent peg.

And

no atomic wedges either.

And if I didn't have these guys around me to ground me, I would be an absolute unbearable asshole.

Or even more.

More than I am.

Yeah.

He's bullying himself now.

He's bullying himself.

This is this.

Let's move on.

We've been doing this podcast for nigh on 10 years or something.

Do you feel bullied, Lewis?

And ever since I've known P Flax and Sips, they have teased me.

And I have tried my best to tease them.

I think you do pretty good.

I think you'd get a couple of good ones in.

Everyone gives as good as they get, I would say.

Yeah, I think so.

Yeah.

So this is from Ben.

When I was a child, I remember a Mr.

Tickle book.

For anyone not familiar with Mr.

Tickle, he's one of the Mr.

Men.

You're not familiar with the Mr.

Ben?

He's one of the ones that needs to be cancelled.

Yeah, he's a problematic one because there's like

basically every book that he features in is about people not wanting to be tickled and Mr.

Tickle furiously trying to tickle them regardless, which

I guess doesn't stand up great these days.

If anyone tried to do this

in any situation, he would be in prison by the end of the day.

Can't even go around tickling people against your will anymore.

There's a lot of people that say you shouldn't like tickle kids as well.

That's kind of a, you know, you tickle kids, right?

Your own kids, yeah.

Well, yeah, I'm not going out and tickling other people's kids.

I tickle my own kids, but I like only a little, you know, like just like, you know, if we're just like, you know, if we're just like messing around or something, I'll just be like,

like, just like a quick one, but like, not like too long, you know, there's a, there, there, there's, there's a line for sure.

That's like, my kids, they'll laugh, but you know, like, if you did it too long, they'd be like, okay, stop now, you know, like, nobody wants to be tickled that long.

You've got no

awareness whatsoever.

I'm sure you could.

People are tickling their kids, and their kids are like, like, they can't breathe.

They're laughing so much.

And, like, yeah, it looks great.

It looks like it's probably really fun, but they're probably annoyed at the same time.

Yeah, it's too hard.

Charlie Brooker says, there you go, critiquing the unequally applied justice in the realm of Mr.

Man.

He is, Mr.

Tickle is a 1970s children's entertainer with wandering hands.

He runs around town touching strangers inappropriately from dawn till dusk.

It's true.

Exactly.

It is true.

We've got to help Ben here.

Ben says that he read this book.

In the book, Mr.

Tickle goes around tickling people.

Surprise, surprise.

However, he tickles one time too many.

A fairy gets involved and tells him he can only tickle one person per day.

This is a very common occurrence in Mr.

Men books.

So I have never seen this one.

Mr.

Tickle reluctantly agrees, leaves all sad, but then reaches back and tickles the fairy.

It is such a good joke.

It makes me laugh to this day.

I've been looking for it for about six months and I cannot find it.

If anybody knows about this Mr.

Tickle book where he tickles a fairy, let us know.

It's not a fairy.

I know the one.

My kids have it.

It's not a fairy.

It's Little Miss Magic.

I think it's like Little Miss Magic that says you can't tickle.

She basically makes it so that his extendable arms don't extend anymore.

So he's unable to tickle.

It's another

limit.

It's another minimum.

He's tickling.

He can do one tickle per day under the new rules.

So he leaves the house and with his one tickle per day, he reaches into her window and tickles her.

And that's the last thing that's.

This is exactly it.

Oh my God, you're tired.

You're absolutely right.

I've read it recently.

I found the description of it.

I actually read it recently.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Do you know what's the eighth book?

The weirdest thing about that is they're the Mr.

Men and they're hanging around with all these little misses.

Yeah.

What the fuck?

It's like non-Sese.

You can't sexualize any of this because they live in like happy town and there's also like chilly town and fun town and stuff.

Yeah.

And

they don't reproduce or anything.

You know, they're just there.

They don't have any sexual organizations.

They're just there when they're just really helpful to each other and sometimes not very helpful to each other.

But, well, in the case where somebody's not being overly helpful.

Cancel.

Cancel.

A very common thing for Mr.

Men or Little Miss Books is for a fairy or a magician or a wise old wizard that appears out of nowhere or like a goblin community that lives in the stump of a tree or something

they will perform some sort of magic that limits the person to try to teach them a lesson to say never works you know you're too grumpy so don't be so grumpy or else every time you're grumpy i'm you know i'm gonna make your dick explode or something whatever you know

there's a downside there they learn quickly not to

fuck around you know um so that that is that is a very common theme in the mr men books and they're okay i don't find them them overly problematic.

And my kids love them, like really like them a lot.

You know what?

If you look at the original Mr.

Men books, there is a lot of fucking text on each of the pages.

Yeah.

That's the thing you don't realize.

It's value.

No, it's terrible value.

I tell you what.

There's two measurements for bedtime.

Okay.

If it's a quick bedtime, i.e.

we're both tired and we need to move things along.

The go-to is like, is spot.

You ever seen spot books?

The spot the dog

lift the flaps and they're so quick.

There's like two words on each page.

And there's like five pages total.

Yeah.

So

it's life hacks for rushing through.

We're busting out

in a pinch.

But then, you know,

on a normal night where we're not like in a rush or we're not like that tired yet or whatever, it'll be like a Mr.

Man book, sometimes like a Peppa book or something, you know.

Yeah.

But I mean, you've just got to balance the fact that if this becomes your kid's favorite book, it's like a fucking 30-minute bedtime every night

it is can we finish this tomorrow no you want to know who happens mr tickle assaults a range of people that's the song luckily get me to read it again if you're reading a book every night luckily the mr men series there's loads of them so you are you know before you're coming back onto one that you've already read before you're talking months you know like it there's there's like 60 70 80 books in the series like can you guys not learn to paraphrase you know

They know.

You can't have to read every

day.

They remember the words that you read the previous 400 times and the voices that you did.

And now you've got to commit to that performance every time.

My youngest.

What you're doing when you read a book is like you're performing a greatest hits tour.

And if you veer off, people are going to be like, play the greatest hits songs.

Like, we love.

We don't want this new material.

So you just have to do the same thing.

Yeah.

Oh, no.

You have to play the same fucking hits for 40.

My youngest has has a Gabby's dollhouse book.

She got,

we didn't get it for her.

She got it for Christmas from someone or

it

appeared in our house, but it is, it, every time she picks it up and she's like, let's have this one.

My heart sinks because there is so many words, but also it's a fucking nightmare to read because I'm not familiar with any of the characters.

I've never watched the show or anything.

And all of their names are like Sminkly Pinkly

Magic Bunny and stuff.

And

it just goes on and on and on like that.

And it takes like an hour to read.

It's so fucking long.

So that one, I'll read like, I just read like two sentences per page and just try to like TLDR the whole thing.

Sometimes she notices.

Other times I get away with it.

So Sminkly Pinkly,

you drop the thing.

And then they went to the tree.

You just like try to get through it really quick.

But that,

I mean, of all the books they have, there's like one book that, and sometimes you'll get it.

I'll be like, oh, let's have this one.

Let's read spot tonight.

Oh, shit.

Oh, God.

Dad's got, Daddy's got things to do.

Can't be sitting here with doing all this.

Man, bilateral achievements aren't going to achieve themselves, you know?

Like, I need a little bit of time.

Gabby's dollhouse.

Oh, my God.

That's a that's an anti-shout out for this podcast.

Yeah.

This is from

Stephen.

Steven?

So I'll cut straight to the chase.

I, 21 male, have a good friend called Alex.

And yes, that is his fucking real name.

And a few months ago, had a conversation.

And God knows how this came up.

But most of the time, he said when he's masturbating, he will finish into the toilet, directly into the toilet.

Directly into the bowl.

Yeah.

Which struck me in quite a weird way because, like, how is that comfortable?

Bro is wasting good wanks.

He could be in bed, light a candle, play some Barry Manelow.

It's about quality, not quantity.

But that's not it.

That's not the worst part.

Well, recently, he casually came off that sometimes he will do it in the sink.

Now, Alex still lives with his mom.

So, like, yes, you can wash it, but his mom is washing her face in that sink.

So, this

house is weird.

Blasted in residual cum.

It's just everywhere.

Yeah.

There's no way you're getting all of it off.

We have done such a hard turn on this podcast in terms of the topics.

The topics of

plastered income, basically, because

it'll be getting into all the hard-to-reach areas for cleaning and stuff.

Oh, absolutely.

I would assume that most people just do it into a Kleenex or some toilet paper or something.

Sure.

Or a handkerchief if you're really posh, I guess.

Directly into maybe into a sock or right into your boxer shorts, maybe even.

So Stephen has subsequently followed up with uh a uh screenshot of a message that he exchanged with alex he sent him a meme where it's the meme is a guy saying this is from r slash sink pissers right

just a subreddit yeah and the lad has said this is the guy talking with his wife it makes me sick this is her i wash my face with that sink you cunt you need therapy you need to go to therapy get therapy or i'm fucking done and he sent that to his friend, Alex.

Alex responds, told you I'm not the only one.

And Stephen replies, I wasn't trying to provide some sort of camaraderie, dude.

Yes, exactly.

He's trying to shame you.

He's not saying lots of people do it.

That's terrible.

Stop coming in the sink.

Stop coming in directly in the toilet as well.

That's weird.

You know, do it onto.

List your couch cushion and do it.

Put the cushion back down or something.

I don't know.

Believe it or not, what you were talking about, this jizz everywhere, Stephen, who I think Stephen might be obsessed with cum, he actually sent a subsequent email.

Right.

He said that we were talking about the ocean, uh, and some guy on Reddit worked out how much whale cum is in the ocean.

Oh, there must be some.

So, there's what 1.35 billion cubic kilometers of water in the world's oceans.

The average whale, when it nuts, it's 1,500 liters of cum.

Average whale breeds once every two years, lives between 40 and 100 years.

Currently, there are around 1.3 million whales, and a whale on average breeds 13 to 43 times in their life.

Only 10% of the whales come makes it into the partner.

So each time, 1,350 liters is dumped in the ocean.

With 1.3 million whales breeding on average 28 times, 1,300 liters getting into the ocean, 50 billion liters of jizz.

Kind of weird.

0.038% of the ocean is whale cum per cubic meter.

There's three liters of jizz.

Kind of weird to think that the guy who wrote in's friend Alex, if he was a whale, would uh be the type of whale who would uh swim directly down to the wreckage of the Titanic and come on it.

He'd not on the beach.

He'd not right on the wheel.

People are trying to use the beach.

That's so interesting, people,

because I was wondering why the sea was so salty.

Exactly.

It's all a whale nut.

That's what's that's it.

Yeah, leaders and leaders of the stuff.

Oh, look, look, you know, you know, when people, um, people get like infections and stuff from going in the sea, uh, which can happen if you've got a cut and you get salt water on it, you know, you can get quite nasty infection.

The fucking sea is not just water.

We've got this idea it's just water, it's brimming with life.

It's like the most filthy pond you can't do.

Well, it was until all the sun was gone.

Plastic went in, killed it all.

True.

True.

Oh my God.

Listen, about

this, come, come, come.

How do we help?

Come, the sink kisser.

Come, come, come, come, come, quad.

How do we help?

How can I help?

I love that.

How can I help?

Listen, if you are, if you're listening to this right now and you need to stop yourself doing it,

the power is in your hands, my friend.

Just don't.

It's not good for your mind or your body.

What?

Or your future

relationship.

Well, I don't think that.

It's like, it's like, I think, okay, this is how fetish is.

This is going to be a very cocaine.

Who is lighting a candle to jack off?

Like a long sleeve.

It's like Pavlov's bell.

Do you know what I mean?

If you continually jack off into the toilet, you're going to start getting a boner whenever you see a toilet.

That's not what you want.

You're not.

You don't want that.

You wouldn't get anything.

I'm talking about.

You think that if I just...

Oh, no.

Well, by that token, then I should get a boner every time I see a computer screen.

Well, I think.

It doesn't make sense, does it?

Oh, no, it doesn't actually make sense.

You're right.

No, let's go with a nice follow-up email.

Let's refresh the palette.

This is from Meredith and Paul in Montana.

I wrote in last year to tell you about vetoing my husband's insane plan to name our child Pimpus von Gontard.

Right.

That was what he was going to call it.

Pimpus von Gontard.

Pimpus von Gontard.

In December, via C-section, a massive waste of a good gaping vagina, says Meredith, they had a little boy.

We took none of your name suggestions and went with Calvin.

And then I will show you guys a photo of Calvin.

I think Calvin is a great name, actually.

You don't hear

lots of Calvins these days.

It's like an older name that's sort of dying off, you know.

Yeah.

Semi-presidential, but then again, it's also the case.

Calvin's cute.

Look at it.

He's a cute little bubber.

Look at him.

Calvin Klein.

He could go into politics or fashion design with that.

Yes, true.

True.

Good name.

Strong name.

So I have had loads of emails where people have sent me shopping lists that they found after I talked about shopping lists on the podcast and how I used to collect them.

I realize now I shouldn't have done this because there's no way to show them on the podcast.

So what I might do instead is do a little Instagram album and pop them all on there.

You could be the shopping list guy.

I could be shopping list guy.

But so the thing is, we don't have a Triforce Instagram.

No, do you want to make one?

But other podcasts do, yeah.

Um, and if there's pictures or images, they will say, we'll pop it on the Instagram feed and they put it on there, and that way, uh, listeners can see the thing that we're talking about.

I just wondered if we wanted to do that.

Well, yours is just pictures of you looking grumpy anyway.

Yeah, I have one with three pictures of bird shit on my shorts on the clothesline.

That's it.

Nice.

I wanted to that to be my thing.

I don't know.

I just post pictures of social media podcasts.

I post

that birds have shit on my stuff or my house or whatever.

Like one time, a bird shit on my front window, and

it looked like a bear

took his shit on the window.

Like it was this massive, massive shit.

It was crazy.

Yeah.

I hope Terry was safe.

He was safe.

Yeah, he's fine.

He's armored.

Terry's fine.

Yeah, he is.

Yeah.

All right.

This is from Michael.

Should I move to Great Yarmouth?

I don't know anything about Great Yarmouth.

I haven't been there.

Hoping some listeners can help out.

I'm currently debating taking a job with my current company that requires me to move to Great Yarmouth.

Go for it, man.

Been with the company for eight years.

Manager for four and a half years.

Both me and my girlfriend have been wanting to move away from some time.

They live in Maidenhead, but he's working in Hayes in West London.

So it's a big move.

So should he move to Great Yarmouth?

I looked it up on Google Maps.

Looks all right.

It's on the east coast, just east of Norwich.

Yeah.

I don't know how bad it is.

Probably all right.

Yarmouthites, Yarmothians, great and small.

Email in and tell us what Great Yarmouth is like.

Lesser Yarmouth.

Great Yarmouth was what am I thinking of?

What's the one in the Isle of Wight that's nice?

There is nothing nice on the Isle of Wight.

Apparently, it is nothing.

No, trust me.

Isn't there a festival on the Isle of Wight every once in a while, every year?

I don't know.

Yeah, I mean, there used to be.

I don't know if there still is.

I think there might be.

But if you go to the Isle of Wight, it's like it's quite magical, really, because the magic is it takes you back to the 1970s.

I mean, if you want to go back to the 1870s, visit Sark, I would say.

Uh, another uh trip back in time.

Um,

not not a pleasant thing either.

It's just that there's a regular Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight.

That's right.

You've only been to regular Yarmouth, not great.

Ventner is on the Isle of Wight, isn't it?

I think that's the big city on the Isle of White.

It's a blasted hellscape with no people, no culture, and no, no, uh, no future.

That's it's one of the hidden gems.

We know what the topic of next week's mailbag is going to be primarily now.

I think we should go.

I think we should go.

Let's go.

To the Isle of Wight.

We've been planning a fucking trip for years right now.

Let's do our first one.

Let's go to the Isle of Wight then.

No, let's not.

I don't want to go to the Isle of White.

It's shit.

Well,

we need to.

Well, I thought we were going to go to Jersey.

We should do the trains.

Yeah, we can do that.

We can do all those things.

But we should,

if we comment on somewhere and say that it's shit, we should at least visit there and then

so that we can turn around and be like, Yeah, you know what?

It was actually kind of

currently going to Australia or Wisconsin.

Wisconsin, we can't go to probably for a while.

Uh, Australia, maybe, but it's too far.

But Isle of Wight is doable.

I mean, we could do that in a day, easy.

What do you mean for a while?

Why not?

What's going on?

Well, there's like, you know, there's an administration that is potentially rounding people up and

deporting them and stuff.

I don't really want to go to the US and Day while all this stuff is.

Yeah, I don't want to take a chance.

I don't want to take the chance.

No shot.

Yeah.

Especially because I'd be traveling on a Canadian passport.

I think there's a bit of tension between those two nations.

I think you mean the 51st state, don't you?

Well, could be.

You never know.

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all right this is an email from a teacher uh he says trainee teacher slash pub quiz nice uh firstly thank you so much for the podcast it uh provides me and other trainee teachers much comfort on our commutes to school some funny stories from teaching before we get to the quiz uh we have to do daily uniform checks on students uh for my first one i politely asked a student could you just take your coat off for me to which he replied could you just fuck off i haven't haven't done uniform checks since.

Fair enough.

Recently, the year 11s have gone on study leave, and of course that means end-of-year pranks, including my entire classroom, chairs, desks, and even the whiteboard being moved outside.

Jokes on them, it was a lovely day, and we taught the lesson outside.

Finally, I've been helping year 10s with CVs for mock interviews.

I was surprised how many put their tota MMR and disappointed that it was so much higher than mine.

Gosh, I'm sorry to hear that.

So we can do this little pub quiz if you want.

It's kind of a teacher-themed pub quiz.

Right, okay.

So So let's do the GCSE questions.

How many prime numbers are there between one and a hundred?

Oh, God.

50.

Wow, that seems like a lot.

I'm going to say 60.

I'm going to say

nine.

25.

Wow.

What?

Wow.

What does the population have to be over to class a city as a mega city?

Ooh.

12 million.

5 million.

10 million.

No, Sips is bleeding.

which american president delivered the gettisburg address uh it was uh abraham lincoln i'm gonna guess also abraham lincoln yes it was what is and this is something my kids learn the powerhouse of the cell cell meaning like a single cell you know uh i'll go for the nucleus first last time the mitra mitochondria correct in buddhism what is the ultimate goal of life where one achieves freedom from suffering zen any advance on zen uh

It is

something to do with removing all material things from your life.

It's a single word.

They're trying to reach.

Trends, Trent, Nirvana.

Nirvana.

Nirvana.

What is the spirit used in the cocktails Mai Tai and Daiquiri?

Gin?

I don't know.

No, it's...

I don't.

It's.

I'm going to go with rum.

It's rum.

What is Stinking Bishop?

It's a cheese.

It is a cheese.

What is the name of the u.s band formed by debbie harry and chris stein in 1974 blondie it is blondie what is the currency of egypt uh the egyptian pound correct no way author jm barry

author jm barry bequeathed the rights to which children's book to the great almost tree hospital in 1929 uh paddington

Peter Pan.

It was Peter Pan.

Holy shit.

What connects these answers?

The answers we gave were rum, cheese, blondie, pound, and pan.

Oh, fuck.

Rum, cheese, rum, blondie, cheese, blondie, pound, and pan.

There is a connection between those answers.

Rum, cheese, blondie, pound, and pan.

Oh, it's gonna.

This is like, I'm not, this is like only kind of.

It's like something to do with bacon cakes.

It is cake.

No way.

That's all the things that I should put in a cake.

For

just all kinds of cake.

A pound cake,

a pancake, rum cake, yeah.

Badly described movie plots.

All right.

So you have to guess the movie from the bad description.

Bloke punches himself and encourages others to punch him.

Correct?

Hamlet, but with lions.

Gladiator.

Lion King.

Lion King.

An old man abducts a young boy scout after his wife dies.

Up.

It is up.

A

boy learns to dance with no effect on pit closures.

Billie Elliott.

Oh, that's Billie Elliot.

Correct.

An office worker joins a cult in order to dismantle the government.

The Matrix.

It is the Matrix.

Oh, well done.

And do you, this is student slang, if you want to hear this.

If someone were to have Riz, what would they have lots of?

Charisma.

It is.

Did someone send you this?

I'm just fucking smart, man.

I don't don't know what to say.

Damn.

Define.

Yeah, but no, but you've hit them like the exact phrasing as well.

I'm just swaddling.

I don't know.

Define, let him cook.

It's like,

you know,

you say that to, you know,

like leave him do his thing.

Like, you know,

it'll be good if you just let him do it sort of thing.

Give them the opportunity to do their thing.

Yes.

What does it mean if something be bussing?

It's got a big ass.

I think it's like a, it's, it's good.

It's a good thing.

It tastes good.

If something is chuggy, what is it?

This I have no idea.

It's dirty.

It's outdated or cringy.

Right.

Oh.

So, yeah.

Would like me.

Do you want to do any more of these or yeah?

They're fine.

Fucking keep it going.

All right.

Taylor Swift or Shakespeare?

Simple round.

You drew stars around my scars, but now I'm bleeding.

Taylor Swift.

That is Taylor Swift.

Correct.

Did I close my fist around something delicate?

Did I shatter you?

That is Taylor Swift.

Yeah, sure.

Taylor Swift.

My tongue will tell the anger of my heart, or else my heart concealing it will break.

Shakespeare.

That is Shakespeare.

That is Shakespeare.

Past the curses and cries, beyond the terror in the nightfall.

Shakespeare.

Sure, yeah, Shakespeare.

It's Taylor Swift.

Oh, my God.

Love is merely a madness.

Shakespeare.

That sounds like Shakespeare, right?

That is Shakespeare.

Well done.

And then these are teacher quotes, and you have to guess the famous teacher from the quote.

Okay.

You were born into a family that doesn't always appreciate you, but one day things are going to be very different.

Wait, it has to be a teacher that said this?

Yeah, they're teachers.

Oh, God.

What, like, from movies or just generally...

From movies and literature and all the rest of it.

So these are

fictional teachers.

You were born into a family that doesn't always appreciate you, but one day things are going to be very different.

It's a motivational speech for a little child, and I don't know.

It could be from literally anything.

It is from Matilda.

Oh, man.

And I was going to say Matilda, but I wasn't sure

what the teacher is.

Is it from like Miss Sugar or whatever?

Ms.

Honey.

Ms.

Honey.

Ms.

Honey.

Ms.

Honey.

Fuck.

All right.

Fuck.

Carpe DM.

Seize the day, boys.

Make your lives extraordinary.

The teacher from Dead Poets Society.

Direct.

Teacher.

Oh, wow.

Mr.

Keating, Robin Williams.

Now, you could be a regular student or you could be a rock star.

Jack Black in School of Rock.

And for a bonus point, what was the name of his character?

No.

Edward Jack Black.

Edward Vale of Rock Van Halen.

I don't know.

So he was pretending to be Mr.

Schneebley.

That's right.

Mr.

Schneebley.

And then Glee is about opening up yourself to joy.

Okay.

Glee is about opening yourself up to joy.

This is a bit silly because the name of the program is in the question.

It's glee.

It's Mr.

Schuster from Glee.

Oh.

So they wanted you to name the teacher, but we're just going to need these teachers.

And then this one is Bart.

The only reason I'm here today is because I'm contractually obligated.

Let's both not try to cry today.

Just name the character.

Miss Crabapple.

Mrs.

Crabapple, exactly right.

Very good.

Yeah, good little quiz.

Thank you for that.

Great name.

Yeah.

Let's move on to this one.

This was great.

This has been, all right.

I want to talk about the way things come back around.

And I assume it's because people are young and they miss it the first time around, then it comes back around and they think it's new.

Currently, it's the every podcast has the same three people.

And it's the picture of three Disney dads or Disney characters.

Please stop sending me that.

Do they actually, though?

How many podcasts out there are this format?

Lots of them.

Exactly.

It's gibberish.

All of them.

I mean, it's just three blokes in a podcast.

All of the ones that I've listened to have always just had like one dude.

You listen to solo two

only.

Well, no, I don't listen to that many podcasts.

There's that podcast with What's Her Face and the other

girl?

Yeah,

What's The Face of the Other Girl?

I never listened to a full episode of it.

I just know that it exists.

It's awesome

to the guy from

Lily Allen and

Lily Allen and another woman.

I think it's done now, though, or they're taking a break.

They had a podcast.

That's two women doing a podcast.

Adam Buxton, I listened to before, that's just one guy with guests.

No, it's not.

He has a guest done, doesn't he?

Yeah.

Yeah, he has a guy.

Like every time.

Yeah.

But it's still like, you know.

I think the dynamic is better with three.

I'm just saying.

I like three.

I like three.

Three's

company, as they famously say.

This is from James, and he says, basically, the one gorilla versus a hundred men thing.

Now, I don't want to give an answer to whether who we think would win because it's a ridiculous question, but it's interesting that this has come back around, and people are it's all over fucking TikTok and all the rest of it, as if it's some new thing.

Yeah, it's not, but the point is, I feel like most of the content that is people saying, yeah, 100 people could easily beat a gorilla, are just rage baiting.

And it's just engagement bait, and they just want you to comment like those videos wherever you're going to be able to do it.

Like, the would you rather and the ice bucket challenge challenge and the reply girls and all that stuff.

And all this shit is.

And the main reason with this shit is that it's unclear what the rules are.

Right.

And so as a result,

you always have people arguing both sides because there's a lot of fucking idiots out there as well.

And also, it's kind of also a fairly gruesome image as well.

You can imagine a gorilla.

Like, everyone, I think, is a little bit terrified of being torn apart by a gorilla.

And so, you know, I don't think a hundred people would know what to do with one out-of-control ballistic gorilla.

Like, I think like a fully grown male alpha gorilla, I think, I think 100 people are, you might as well just like get your wheels ready, you're done.

I don't think people understand how strong these things are.

Yeah, like, I really just, please, just stop asking this stupid question.

It's ridiculous.

Um, this is from Sonny, uh, a 23-year-old cleaner from Edinburgh.

Uh, on Mailbag 29, you were talking about a kid at your school who was a massive bully, and his second name was a root vegetable, before you were rudely interrupted by Lewis muttering, James Potato, Tony Carrot.

And I had an interesting story I was going to tell, and then I abandoned the story because you kept interrupting me.

I've listened to the whole backload podcast three times, and whenever this one comes up, I always want to know the story you're about to tell.

Well,

we don't, we shouldn't name people from our lives.

No, of course, but I'm not naming him.

Call them out for being bullies, even though they ruined your childhood and

shaped you.

Look,

imagine the life you would have had if you hadn't been bullied.

Mate, his name name could be James Potato or Tony Carrot.

Like, I'm giving no more detail than

his last name was a real vegetable.

That's what I'm saying.

I was right.

And I'm just the whole thing was: he was new at school.

Jonathan Horseradish.

He was new at the school.

Michael Mooley Radish.

Right, that's it.

Story scary thing.

Sorry, son.

You'll never know.

Hey, Tony Turner.

Fancy seeing you here.

Hey, Baldy.

Hey, Baldy.

Buddy Play Donor again.

You're having a nice time feeding your pigeons, Baldy.

I was born at school.

This is from Graham.

We got to talk about this, actually.

Did we mention it yesterday that Billy's very Cyrus is dating Elizabeth Hurban?

We mentioned it yesterday.

Yeah.

This is one that you might like, Sips.

In fact, I'm going to say this should be one of your favorite emails that I've had in recent months.

Is it very nice to me, like complimentary of me?

Not at all.

Here it goes.

I know Sips is into The Apprentice.

Yes.

So this is about the fact that I was the designer on the Apprentice episode making the piggy bank dog

from series 19, episode 7.

The piggy bank.

Yes.

So I was filmed for four to five hours sketching, cadding, and producing logos and managed to make it on the screen for about four seconds.

Yes.

So he was the designer.

So here are some odd things that went down on the broadcast.

If you'd like a little bit of behind me, I would love it.

Yeah.

Okay.

The producers often force the candidates to say specific lines and pin them into boxes to make them look a certain way.

A lot of manipulation.

You can tell that, though, that this that that kind of stuff happens.

There's

definitely

times where they say something and you can tell that they've rehearsed saying it and it's it's just so awkward.

You know, they'll be like, well, guys, guess what is coming tomorrow?

And so you know what I mean?

Like there's loads of stuff that they have to say for sure.

You can tell me.

The producers give them time penalties, stating that they must decide this element or that element within five minutes in order to create some excitement, which is why most of their ideas are so fucking awful, I guess.

The designers and other people will get advice from, are not allowed to offer any advice.

We were told we can only sit there and produce exactly what they tell us to.

So, you just have to sit there and draw the sleeping.

Some of it is dreadful, but you know, it's not the designer's fault.

It's because what they're being told to do is so idiotic.

But they just have to put up with it.

As the designer, I have 12 to 15 hours to produce the whole product, which can be challenging.

I need to do the CAD, the 3D printing, the electronics in time for the following day.

Tim and Karen do not sit with the candidates during most of the shots filming, just come in at the end for some cameo shots.

The producers are the ones who dictate the story of the show.

So this is the one in this series, you had they made these piggy banks that would then link to an app.

So the idea was that if you got some allowance, you know, if you got like coins or whatever, you put it in the piggy bank and then the app could keep track of how much money was in your piggy bank.

And then you could like, you know,

manage your money or whatever.

It was like, it was to teach kids like how to, you know, save money and whatever.

I mean, kids don't use cash anymore.

I'll just say that.

Like very, very rarely do my kids have cash.

Yeah.

So, yeah, we just, I electronically transfer the money and they pay for shit on their phones like, like everybody else.

Alan Sugar also has barely any involvement during the process, flies over from the U.S.

just for the boardroom meetings.

Wow.

Yeah.

The runners that they have at the BBC are the real heroes.

Amen.

I used to be a runner.

Does he actually live in the US now?

Apparently.

They work ridiculous hours all day.

The runners were constantly caught napping and catching sleep in taxis in between sets.

That's exactly it.

You're literally expected to be there start to finish, and all you're doing is getting people cups of tea and carrying things and sending messages and blah, blah, blah.

It's a fucking nightmare.

And for the final episode, they film it twice with the last two candidates.

One episode with one winner and another with the other winner.

Oh, and they so the results cannot be leaked until the end.

Wow.

So there you go.

But anyway, two of the three candidates I had got fired, so I'm pretty proud.

What a strange old show.

Apparently, the next season will be the last season.

Oh, right.

Okay.

It's been better.

Like they went through a period where I think

the contestants that they had on were not great and they have a better process for vetting them.

And it's made the show a lot more enjoyable to watch.

But that's only in the last two seasons.

Yes, they have to make sure they're incompetent in order for it to be fun.

No, well, the thing is, is they were getting people who were clearly just trying to

get Instagram famous or whatever.

But imagine every contestant is like that.

So it is a nightmare.

Like none of them knew what they were doing and they were all

pretty difficult to watch and stuff.

But recently, maybe in the past, like I said, two seasons, there have been people who already have functioning businesses that are just interested in, you know, the process and potentially winning and stuff.

And some of them are actually quite competent.

But then you still get a good mix of absolutely incompetent people as well.

But I mean, it's fine.

Like,

it's a fun one to watch.

I can't believe it'll be the last season next year.

That's crazy.

20 seasons.

Yeah, it's been going for a long time.

And so we have a couple of weird eating habit emails.

Oh, no.

On the rare occasions, this is Aladdin and his partner of eight years.

On the rare occasions we venture into McDonald's, she will order a Big Mac and then eat it in a way that she swears is not weird.

She will separate the Big Mac into two smaller meals by lifting the middle bun and everything above it off the base to create a small Mac.

leaving just a bun, cheese, lettuce, and one patty remaining, which she then eats after like some kind of circular, beefy brischetta.

Every time I see it, it weirds me the flav out.

Right.

Yeah, that is a bit

of an odd one.

I think with something like that, you know, you're either you get the little container that it comes in in, you sit down, you open the container, and then you just eat it like anybody would eat a burger.

Uh, or, you know,

you take it home and put it on a plate instead.

But like, nobody really does that, right?

With McDonald's.

I mean, you are dealing with.

But those are the two ways that you like, and both of them involve just eating the burger normally.

Like, anything different to that, to me, is a little bit weird, I would say.

I, quite frankly,

was horrified the first time I saw inside a Big Mac.

Do you know what I mean?

It's like sad, wilty, cheap meat.

Do you know what I mean?

Like,

it is.

That's the whole point of it is to be as cheap as possible.

That's their whole business model.

And quite frankly, like disassembling it

and succulently enjoying the

each element of the Big Mac.

Honestly, like, at least if you're eating it normally, it's disguising it somewhat.

How much does a Big Mac cost these days?

It turns my stomach so much.

Aren't they like eight bucks or something for a Big Mac?

Oh, probably.

But, you know, they'll charge what they can charge.

Surely not.

I'm going to look.

Average price.

Average price.

I mean, whatever the price is in the UK is the price, right?

It doesn't vary by US.

I guess it is a double burger, right?

So you can

$5.69 in 2024.

Pretty nuts.

I guess you can make to

enjoy it twice.

Maybe she just has

a difficulty getting a mouth round to the bottom.

She can't fit a mouth around Big Mac.

You know?

Yeah, indeed.

All right, let's finish on this one.

You guys might not want to reveal this.

It's up to you.

But essentially,

Dan has emailed in

and he wants to know how much we've spent on Steam over the years.

How do I check?

I didn't know.

So I didn't know that this was possible.

But if you open up the Steam client, not the website, but the actual Steam client, which I'm sure you've got running on your computer right now.

Yeah, I have.

You go to help

and click on Steam support at the top.

Yeah, I have.

And then at the bottom, there's like all these different options.

And you want to go to my account, which is the third one down.

Then at the bottom, data related to your Steam account.

Yes.

Scroll down.

And one of the options is,

where is it?

External funds used.

It's about halfway down.

Click on that.

And it will show you the total spend that you've had over the lifetime of your Steam account.

So do I want total spend?

Total spend is the one at the top there, yeah.

20,000 US dollars.

Jeez.

I'm on 17,000 US dollars.

But that's lifetime.

I mean, I've had Steam for fucking...

So long, and this is what I do for a living, to be fair.

And I'm not sure if it counts total spend as the value of games in my account or whether that's

you know if I'm gifted

about external funds applied to your account yeah I think I'm I mean that but would that also be oh that you that have been applied to your Steam account yeah

so yeah I don't know if it's if someone gifts me a game does that count no either way it's that'll be that would count onto their spend you see yeah it's a hell of a lot of money that's a lot of money Jesus Christ yeah I'm interested in sipses yeah I can't find my password I'm trying.

Do you not have the Steam app on your phone to log in with the QR code and everything?

Oh, yeah.

I do.

I need to sign in with my QR code.

That's a good idea.

It's all right, bud.

We'll help you.

Thank you for reminding me that that is.

I do have to do a lot of gifts, though.

We'll play a game.

I'll have to end up gifting like six copies out to people and then I'll claim some back on the company.

Of course.

But, you know,

I usually just forget.

I'm terrible.

Like, last year I claimed no expenses.

I claim expenses when I do something like buy a new PC.

Do you know what I mean?

Like if I, if I buy a new PC, I claim that as like equipment that I've bought for my job, which is true.

But I don't, I don't, I mean, I'm being self-employed, I can't claim things like mileage because I don't drive for work.

I can't claim

internet or electricity in my house because you need to have a certain percentage of your house has to be given over to your business.

And it's like, I can't remember what the percentage is, but I'm just in a tiny box room.

So I can't claim there's a whole bunch of things i can't claim but if if i'm buying equipment i will uh i will claim that um external funds used fourteen thousand three hundred and seventy nine dollars and thirty one cents wow i wonder how much of mine is buying fucking shit off a dota probably the broad yeah i don't uh i don't i don't spend that much on like in-game purchases another thing i'd say is i get given a lot of keys yeah we we do get a lot of keys

i wonder if i hadn't been given keys uh lulu you gave me a key just the other day.

Yeah, and you didn't need it.

What was it for?

I didn't need it.

Blueprints.

Blueprints.

You bought me Blueprints.

Which is incredibly good.

I'm getting on with Blueprints.

I am loving that.

It's a great game.

Man, I've solved so many puzzles, but every time I solve a puzzle, there's like two or three new ones to solve.

It's crazy.

Yeah,

it's really something.

I think it's

bad at it and I'm going slow, but I have not looked at the chat once while I play it because I don't want to.

It's definitely my indie game of the year.

If I get super hard stuck, I'll turn around and be like, all right, check, just give me like a vague clue, and they will.

Okay, he is.

There is

what did it for me was a puzzle.

And I talked, I talked to Pedgy about this yesterday.

Once you've got to room 46, which is the goal of the game, please know.

That's good place to end.

No, no, no.

There are no spoilers.

No.

No, this isn't a spoiler.

Once you've gotten to the room 46, you can pretty much say, put the game down.

Because after that, the puzzles are all so cryptic, so weird so impossible that yes maybe if if you're a real hardcore puzzler and you love these games then you love figuring stuff out like but but honestly perion some of them are impossible okay and i will say that right now um so

by the way i think it actually it did take away the experience for me a little bit because you thought you had to go on and do it all i felt like i'd had the rug pulled out of me a little bit like the game was really fun and a good level of difficulty and then some of these puzzles were just just what why why are they so

hardcore puzzlers?

And maybe it's just not for you.

You're not an immortal puzzler.

But again, I feel like it's right at the end of a game that I really, really enjoyed and was really approachable and acceptable.

And so I think, like, yeah, just I think once you get to the end, don't feel bad about stuff.

Right, okay.

By the way, you sent me two codes the other day.

Were they both for the same thing?

Well, I thought one of them might not work.

Oh, okay.

Well, no, thank you.

A copy of War Sim, The Realm of R.

Sloaner.

Oh.

Yeah, there's a fan.

A fan made this game.

It looks like one of these Dwarf Fortresses.

Yeah, yeah.

And he's like, he's a Welsh guy who has like a metal band.

He's just a cool guy.

Awesome.

Shout out to Hugh.

His name is.

Hugh.

Hugh.

Thank you, Hugh.

Thank you, Hugh.

Thank you, Hugh.

A shout out.

That's a shout out.

We did a shout out.

Shout out to Hugh for making War Sim.

It's like an ASCII dwarf fortress vibe thing.

And he just made it in his spare time.

Didn't even think he was.

What fucking was it?

And then it did well on Steam.

Did well on Steam.

It's done well.

Yeah.

And he made like a collect edition and sent me the DVD, which is kind of of cool.

Very cool.

Yeah.

Well, might not even have a DVD in it.

It's just a case.

I don't know.

It's like a prop.

It's nice on the shelf.

It's nice.

That's our podcast.

I think that's our mail.

There we go.

That's our mail.

Thank you.

Holy crap.

It was a real good.

I loved it.

I loved it.

Thank you for all the letters.

Not so much Lewis bullying this time as well, you'll be pleased to know.

I don't think we bullied him once.

Well, maybe we'll bully him more next time.

Yeah, next time.

Well, we'll get back on track.

Do a quick one now.

Do a quick now.

Yeah.

Bully me now.

It was really nice to see you.

And

once I've gone away for work this month, I'll try and come down again in June or July.

Oh, that's very kind of you.

And we'll try and do a games night recording.

We sat at the pub, by the way, me and Pyrian, the other night, and it was a really hot day, but we were by the water, and I was wearing this mustard yellow jumper, and it was like attracting every little bug in the entire region of Bristol.

They loved it.

I loved you.

I had like at one point I had like 12 on me.

I picked them all off, and as I was picking them off, more were landing on me.

It was unbearable.

You should have eaten it.

It was genuinely bonkers.

I think all the extra protein you could have gotten there.

I know.

Just get a spoon, and I would have been ham.

Nice.

Anyway, yes, I'll see you soon, and I'll see you everyone.

All right.

Thank you everyone.

All right.

Goodbye.

Bye-bye.