BudPod with Phil Wang & Pierre Novellie - Episode 3 - Obseeeesssed!

Episode Date: March 13, 2019

It's the triple! More Most Authoritarian and Most Libertarian. Phil Wang and Pierre Novellie discuss Mel Gibson’s first antisemite, South African zombies, hating phonecalls and all the mad videos Phil was made to watch as a child: “Two thoughts went through my head as I watched fluid gush out of a man’s balls”, as well as some late analysis of the David Lammy vs Stacey Dooley battle. Email us at [e-mail] or find us @thebudpod on Twitter! Don't forget to subscribe and rate us on iTunes, it's a big help! Get bonus BudPod on Patreon! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello! Hello everyone! Sorry if that was loud. And welcome to episode 3 of Budpod. Thanks for sticking through. There are three whole episodes. The trinity of Budpod has been established. Yes. This is the first recording we've done where we can reflect on the response to the first episode of Budpod. Yep. And the response has been not negative. It's been broadly positive and in many ways, extremely positive. And thank you for engaging people who are making little pictures and shit on Twitter and telling us things about the Louie scale.

Yes, yeah, the Louie scale is really taking off. People have really started ranking their blowing with the Louie scale. But do send us in anything that you're doing. And remember that Louis aren't just for blowing. Louis are also for just effort or stress, like really you're trying so hard. Like your cheeks are popping out.

Blowing out like Louis Armstrong. Yeah, you're trying as hard as Louis Armstrong. Scale of 0 to 10, Louis. 0 being absolutely chill and 10 being your face is red with effort. Veins popping out. Veins are popping. So, Pierre, how have you been?

Not bad. I think I'm starting to get caffeine headaches. I have caffeine fog all the time. Yeah. I wake up sleepy and I have a coffee because I go, that'll make me awake. No, it makes me sleep while standing. It makes me sleep inside my brain.

Yeah, it's sort of that thing where you go, okay, the coffee will wake me up because we've weirdly absorbed this quite a lot from cartoons. There's a lot of giving characters coffee in cartoons and things. As a child, I was always like, well, it's like this magic liquid. And as you say, it makes you dumb and tired but faster. Yeah, it makes you make mistakes.

It helps you make the mistakes you're already making, but at a higher rate. And very decisively. You fuck up just as much, but you seem like you really know what you're doing. I had a really fancy coffee, like a real hip coffee yesterday. And like a single origin bean from Ethiopia.

This guy was telling me everything about it. And you know it's going to be good when they tell you the name of the guy who picked up the seeds. and like a single origin bean from Ethiopia. This guy was telling me everything about it. You know it's going to be good when they tell you the name of the guy who picked up the seeds. Holy shit. Who picked up the coffee pods. Brian. And I did not know coffee could make me want to shit that quick. That's when you know you're onto a good thing.

Before you're done with the first sip. They say there's bean to cup cup and then there's drink to shit this place was bean to cup and it went in me drink to shit in a matter of seconds I imagine that the coffee was so strong that your physical poo went faster down the drain

you know like you'd caffeinated the loo somehow it had wheels on it and drove away but yeah otherwise fine how about you man yeah okay um i'm starting to get and this is a classic annoyance but actually leads into my most authoritarian thought of the week oh yeah my most authoritarian feeling of the week it's not groundbreaking but i think cyclists who skip traffic lights should go to jail. Yeah. I've had enough. It's so irritating when you see them,

and they nearly knock you down when you're walking across. Yeah, it's so dangerous. And they have the temerity to look behind you like, look, they look behind at you as they cycle off. Yeah. Going like, look around you. I've shouted the word prick in someone's ear as their ear cycled past my face.

No way, really? Yeah, it felt great. Well, did you time it to whisper it perfectly in their ear? You just went, prick! I shouted it, but I did time it really well. Did they look around at you? I think so. I don't know.

I think they looked ashamed as they were coming towards me, though, so I think they knew they were being a little shit. But they weren't changing their course. No, they were just like, yeah, I'm a piece of shit. They were so accepting of their own folly. But, yeah, and you see all these, like, horrifying cycling stats and, like, guys who drive vans and, like, look, a lot of the driving in London is unbelievably shit.

Like, really bad. Keep up places to be. Yeah, but even, like, in Palmer's Green, where I used to live, you just have these tiny little Greek Cypriot nannas who can barely see over the steering wheel of the massive four-wheel drive Range Rover their successful

son has bought them. They take corners. You're supposed to slow down and give way before you turn left or right on a give-way street. They take those corners like fucking go-karts. I've been nearly killed by Greek Cypriot nannies so many fucking times. But yeah, cyclists

who do that shit, you're not helping yourselves. Also, if you cycle towards me on the pavement, I should be allowed to just kick the wheel from under you. Yeah, it's a road vehicle. It's a road vehicle. If you want to be treated like a vehicle, behave like a vehicle

none of this pavement business and it's but they're sort of bolstered by the innate uh superiority of traveling in a way that is good for the planet they're the vegans of transport that's exactly what they are that's exactly what they are they're the vegans of transport. We all agree you're doing the right thing, but there's a bit of an attitude problem here. Yeah, could you just give it a rest here and there? And it doesn't give you the right technique or other rules. And don't shove it in my face. Yes.

By cycling in front of me when the green man is green. Yeah, or even when it's doing the little creepy countdown. Mm-hmm. Four, three, two, one, keep walking. And they're revving up like Mario Kart. Yes, yes, yes, one, keep walking! And they're revving up like Mario Kart. Yes, yes, yes. I slow down when I hear someone rev. Like while I'm

walking across. I slow down, I turn and look at them like, yeah, you're gonna run me over? You just slowly start to climb onto the bonnet. The bonnet and just eat through the windshield with my teeth. Like a sexy lady on a piano. You just ride around on the bottom. I get really dusty.

What's your most authoritarian thought? There should be a tax on social media. A tax on all your houses. A tax on all your houses. I read, I didn't read the whole thing, I just read some little update-y thing. I think it was on, you know, you get those emails from news websites, like,

little news of the day summarized or whatever. Oh, yeah. I think it was. Yeah, this is what's happened. Yeah. It's your email from the BBC. Hi, Pierre, it's the BBC. This is what's happened.

Hi, Pierre, it's the BBC. Here's the deal. Okay, good luck. Apparently, I think it was Uganda introduced some sort of social media text and just, like, everyone quit Twitter. And that sounds great. So every tweet you send, you have to pay a certain amount? I think it was just, like, to get access to it or something.

And it just turned loads of people off the internet, which I think is good. That's great. Because the internet's awful. You know what? 10p a tweet. And for each time you send a tweet that a certain number of people think is trolling,

it's like a quid. I think 10 pounds a tweet. i think 10 pounds a tweet i think 10 pounds a tweet so it's like a phone call from 1903 let's go scandinavian with this yeah 10 pounds a tweet and i think the world's problems will be solved we can use revenue from that to fund uh hit squads who track down assholes from twitter in real life and reveal who they are. Or, if you don't want to tax Twitter or tax social media, make it illegal. You can't... Oh no, but dictatorships would abuse this.

Oh no, dictatorships would abuse this. But just like something where you can't have a Twitter account if your name is just like fuckpig83. It's got to be like Steve Johnson. What if it's like the German village of fucks, pig-raising society?

Found in 1983. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you know... That'd be unfair. Then they will have the documentation to prove that. Okay, maybe not that, but definitely taxing the shit. Because they don't pay tax on it anyway, so we're going to have to invent a new kind of tax

because otherwise they will very soon own us all. But does this raise problems of accessibility? So it would be very much the case that social media would become a privilege for the rich.

Or is it means-tested? We'll tax the company, not the user. So they'll want more users so they'll make it a flat rate or they'll do it Or is it means tested? We'll tax the company, not the user. Oh, okay. So they'll want more users, so they'll make it a flat rate or they'll do it means tested. Or we means tested, but yeah, either way. Right. But does this lead to the de-democratization of...

It's a private company. Fuck them. But not from the user standpoint. Yeah, fuck them. It could be there's a de-democratization of pubs because there's bouncers and a guy runs and kick you out it should be the same it's a public space i think um what's your most libertarian my most libertarian thought is what kind of damn long hair thoughts you've been having phil i say bring back duels i really think the deal wasn't a good idea duels blackmail.

You just want to live in a late 1700s drama. I just think there are some things that you can trust society to handle. If two adult parties think the best way to solve their differences is to walk a few steps away from each other, spin around real quick and try and shoot the other person. Yeah. Fair play. Would you accept some kind of like non-lethal

version where it's like, it's still like hard because it's like maybe like some really tough boxing match, like a grudge boxing match. Well it's really painful, like taser. Tasers would be better because then that evens the playing field. Whereas boxing, it would just be big people winning all the time. Oh no, I mean this to guns.

Lethal. No, but that model. So not close quarters combat, but... A flintlock pistol. Yeah, yeah, yeah. At a distance of 40 paces. Yeah. So by and large, everyone misses.

Sure. Okay. But you can keep going as much as you want. You go to the centres. You have to... You go to the centres. You could be there all day. It's like batting cages, right? You go in and...

They're shooting ranges, basically, but... But with people at both ends. People at both ends. So is it going to have like a sort of okay but quite shit cafe outside? Like a swimming pool. With soleros and... Yeah, yeah, yeah loads of loads of kids are there with towels over their head to towel the blood off going like wow what a big day we've had

at the dueling center it's like oh the kids are so hungry when they come out of there yeah and you like you pick your your gun it has to be the right size for your hand and like your fingers have to fit into it and like oh there's no size 10s left uh they always run out of size 10s like bowling shoes yeah and it's like oh you do actually size 10s left they always run without size 10s it's like bowling shoes yeah and it's like oh you do actually have to bring your own padlock for the locker

yeah sorry about that someone steals your gun and they can just and you're like well I thought it was like a quid and then you just

turn it and you keep the keys around your on a wristband and they go no that's a most yeah most you

that's how it used to be and then a different company bought us and now we're doing the coin based thing it's annoying we can give you change if you brought any and you didn't bring any cash.

Okay. Can you shoot each other another day maybe? Yeah, so I think bring back the duel. Oh, wow. Who would you duel? Would you duel or would you just want to bring it back almost as a way of getting rid of people who are willing to do it? Yeah, the latter. I don't think there's anyone I know.

I think a lot of your libertarian beliefs boil down to not letting the law get in the way of reckless and stupid people. Yes. Maybe it's about reintroducing some element of natural selection into our society, which is also very authoritarian. This is where it starts to get a bit. In an indirect way, though. Yeah. But it's a cunning way because it's like, if the people want dynamite, who am I to stop them from... If they want dynamite candles, let them.

I think they glow brighter too. Merry Christmas. Yeah, so bring back the duel. Who would I want to duel? If anyone. I would like to duel Jeff Bezos. That's good.

For his money. I guess he probably wouldn't agree to it. Oh, but if you... Or maybe he can have my young blood. If he wins, he can have a vial of... Well, as much of my blood as he wants. So he can have a medical team on standby to harvest my plasma.

And organs. And organs. Possibly. You know? Jeff Bezos, as he gets richer, increasingly becomes like a sort of a kind of central European vampire myth. He's looking more and more like Lex Luthor every day.

Yeah. It's ridiculous. Yeah. Okay, well, that's pretty good. Okay, so that's my libertarian thought. Bring back the duel. What's your most libertarian thought? I think that if you do a normal office job,

normal office jobs are marketing, advertising, consulting, data entry. And like your company has got nothing to do with medicine or engineering or high-stakes stuff. You should be allowed to have tinnies. Tinnies on your desk anytime. Tinnies at the desk. I mean, I would say, okay, if I'm going to be really libertarian about this, leave it up to the boss.

It's your company. It's your company. It's your rules. But in theory, there's nothing illegal about having an ice-cold tinny at 9 a.m. before you start talking to clients. Is that illegal now? It's up to the employer now, isn't it? It must be illegal. I don't know if it is illegal. I think it is illegal. I think barring something like medicine.

Okay, then I want it to be a right. Okay. That's the libertarian thing, isn't it? You have a right to bear arms. You have a right to a cold tinny. You have a right to bear Stella. You have a right to bear cans. A right to bear cans.

I like that. You will take this can from my cold, dead hands. And they're only cold because I've really chilled the hell out of this lovely tinny. Because I've got a cooler under my desk. And it's time for cans. Yeah, that's fun. Hey, are you using the photocopier? I am, yeah.

I'm going to be quite a while. Oh, I can wait. Also means when you visit the offices, instead of them just going, would you like a cup of tea they have to go would you like a tea coffee Cronenberg

ice cold Cronenberg tea coffee cans cans what's funny about cans cans what's so funny

it's just a really funny tea coffee cans I think it's a plural of it tea coffee cans

oh can I have two cans of Stella of course how do you take it oh a plural of it. Tea, coffee, cans. Oh, can I have two cans of Stella? Of course. How do you take it? Oh, ice cold. Of course, of course. Two sugars? Yes, thank you. Lovely tinnies.

When my husband first suggested going on holiday to the sun, I was sceptical. I thought, Henry, won't all our skin and bones and flesh and hair be burnt away by the power of that glorious orange circle in the sky? And he said, no, because sun tours are offering a new asbestos-proofed version of a sort of cruise ship, but for space. And I said, really? And he said, yes, I'm not lying. I'm your husband. Why would I lie? Why would I lie about this, of all things? Why would I lie?

And I said, all right, Jesus fucking Christ. We'll go to the sun. And we did, and it was great. There were flames and sort of lava or something. Couldn't see it, not allowed to touch it. Space was big and cold, like an arctic cruise, I suppose. And on board, there were so many games and activities, like desperately plug the hole in the hull was a good one because the stakes were so high everyone got involved and baccarat classes you couldn't actually play baccarat something to do with anti-gambling space law but the baccarat classes you could learn how to play baccarat which

is actually james bond's favorite game and they had to make a texas hold'em to make it modern and all the recent ones which i think is shit now because I can do Baccarat now. And also there was orgies as well, and they were compulsory. That was part of the ticket price. That was why it's so cheap, because it's run by one of those billionaire perverts. Okay, so I just got a phone call out of nowhere with no warning from a number I did not recognize.

Was it a landline? No, mobile. Okay, that's even worse. Yeah, because if it's landline, you can just go, oh, this is some cold call. I can just hang up. But mobile, you don't know. It calls you out of nowhere my mind

goes some my my sisters have died and someone's found them yeah and um that's it i've got to say bye to my family it wasn't it's just a work call but who doesn't warn you this is not the 80s you can't just call people out of nowhere it's like if someone said i thought i'd just come to your home address yeah just confirm something with you. It's invasive. Let me climb inside your ear. I just thought I'd write this on your arm without telling you. I haven't warned you about this, but I expect you to let a stranger climb inside your ears.

I was trying to explain this to my girlfriend where I was like, she was like, why do you hate phone calls so much? She just thought it was really weird. She was like, oh, maybe I'll just start calling you. And I was like, she was like, why do you hate phone calls so much? She just thought it was really weird. She was like, oh, maybe I'll just start calling you. And I was like, please don't do that. Because every time I get a phone call, as you say, you just go, you make a phone call when it's too rude and efficient to tell someone via text that someone's dead. Yeah.

It's bad news. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Phone calls should only be for messages that emojis would make inappropriate there's no level of good news that needs a phone call right right unless it's like really medical for a family member or something or about yourself maybe like i'm cured you know maybe you'd call that but even then you want that in a message to

raise ambiguity yeah well I mean we have also like so actually and we've just I did while you were on that call I got a message from a very good friend of ours and friend of the pod and very talented comedian Ivo Graham yes and he's texting and he's saying he's enjoying the Bud Pod.

Oh, that's great. And he's saying he's having a nice time. And he sent us a video, you and me, of him blowing out his birthday candles at the age of three. And he says he reckons he's at least at about eight Louis. And I've watched the video and I can confirm that's like eight Louis at resting point. Bare minimum.

Really? He's really blasting out those candles? Jesus. Wow. Astonishing Louis. And that's why he He's really blasting at those candles? Jesus. Wow. Astonishing, Louise. And that's why he's going to make a great father. That's right.

Well, that's it. So he's just had a child. Yeah. Well, his wife's had a child and he was there as well because he helped make it. He played his part. They both had a child.

Whatever. But I texted him congratulations because I saw him post on social media. He's like, here I am with my newborn. Yeah. And I go like, well, you better He's like, here I am with my newborn. Yeah. And I go like, well, you better save up one of those hands for a phone call.

I'm going to want to talk to you on the phone. Put that baby down. Pierre wants a chin wave. Exactly. Because I know you're extremely busy with a human that you've made with your body. But also, I want to be like, so what's it like in the hospital? Nice.

Like, fuck off. Fuck off, fuck off, fuck off. No, just efficient. I texted him some nice stuff. He texted me a nice thing back, and it was nice, nice, nice, and he could get on with his life. And you know what? He could text me back at his leisure.

I wasn't demanding off-the-cuff response like an improv show called Let's Socialize. No. Unacceptable. Life is one improv show, yeah. Yeah, unfortunately that's true. Molten brown, that soap's cheaper than it looks. Looks like glass, but it is just plastic.

Easily found, the bottle is round. It costs just a pound, it's molten brown. Tupap, tupap, tupap, tupap, tupap, tupap, tupap. Pierre, you are from South Africa. That's true. Controversially. I don't know if you've seen this news from South Africa, but there's a pastor in South Africa who is finally...

Pastor O.R. Pastor. Pastor. Pastor. Not the food. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's not a big amalgam of wheat and flour and water. He is a

pastor, Alf Lukau. Alf Lukau. Alf Lukau? Alf Lukau, that's a name. That's a good name. But he is claiming to be able to resurrect people from the dead. This is the man who, he's trying to

Lazarus people. And there's a video here on Twitter of him doing it. So I'm not seeing this. I'm going to watch this now. All right. Okay, so there's an open coffin and there's a man inside it who, to my eye, doesn't look dead. His mouth is wide open.

Yeah. Like he's shocked by his own death, and his family have not bothered to close his mouth for an open coffin funeral. Is the video like the screenshots where the grieving family around the coffin look visibly bored by this exercise? Yes. They look bored. No one looks sad that this guy is dead.

They look bored. Yeah, they look like this is take 30. This is take 30 and they're hungry, they've not broken for lunch yet. Phil, if you're gonna film a fake corpse resurrection scene as part of a piece of religious propaganda,

then you'd really hate to be stuck with the Stanley Kubrick of fake religious propaganda. Again, just 91 takes. But he's got a vision. He's got a vision for fake news. That's just reminding me, when I was a kid in Malaysia,

we had RE class, religious education class. And because, you know, there's not really much by way of standardization in Malaysia. If you have a class in Malaysia, you can teach whatever the fuck you want. Yeah, yeah. And show them whatever the fuck you want. And it's just like you're the teacher. Yeah, you are the boss.

Every teacher is a dictator of their class and they do what they like. Our religious education teacher, she was quite cool, but she was also nuts. When we we were all 13 she made us watch passion of the christ oh my god like a grainy passion of the christ with those like yellow subtitles yeah yeah of like cantonese like from the hong kong movie industry it was honestly someone had filmed it in uh in a cinema loads of coughing yeah gra. Grainy. But we could still make out all the horrible shit of Jesus' flesh getting ripped off. And we're 13.

Yeah, and none of which is in the Bible. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is all Mel Gibson embellishments. Yeah. I don't know if you've seen a class of Malaysian kids

turn anti-Semitic in one afternoon. But this teacher found a way to do it. That's also amazing because I'm going to assume that in Malaysia, there are two Jews? And so it's not like there was a way you guys could be like, but Steve's not like that.

You were just a bunch of kids in Asia just going, well, it would be like if there was a classroom full of kids in Yorkshire, just going like, those fucking Tamils seem unreasonable. Like really strong opinions on a minority group in a completely different place. Like no context. Even at that age, I thought this is not appropriate for kids our age.

At one point, a boy genuinely started shouting Jews to the moon, which I did not, I didn't really understand. What? Are you serious? Yeah, one of the boys said, we should send Jews to the moon after seeing Passion of the Christ. And I instantly thought this was irresponsible to show us. If you wrote that in a letter to Mel Gibson, he would frame that. It'd be like how those Americans always frame their first $1 bill that they made.

Mel Gibson's first anti-Semitic convert in Malaysia. First anti-Semitic child. He'd be reading it like shaking his head with like a single tear this kid gets it and like everyone else they would be like Mel is everything alright? he's like yeah yeah no I just sometimes the work is it's own reward

you know what I mean anyway back to this video of the resurrection we need to do something with Jews to the moon because you know if an Israeli scientist was shouting that, you could interpret that. That's celebratory. They did mount their first space mission recently.

Oh yeah. If an Israeli scientist did shout Jews to the moon, that's a pretty great slogan. Yeah. Yeah. That's a funny slogan. But maybe out of context an anti-Semite might see that and go, yes, and read further and go, no. Yeah.

Iran would be like, oh. Anyway. So this guy's trying to raise the dead. Another normal day in South African religious community. Yes. And I will say for context for the listener, just to be clear, South Africa as a country is so enthusiastic and happy to engage with evangelical religious nonsense of all kinds.

Oh, I love it. And I'm talking across every racial group as well. That's what I was going to say. During one of these mad religious education lessons, we were made to watch footage of faith healers in Africa. Yeah. I can't remember what African country it was. A lot of the really big hitters, as it were, are West African.

Like the really famous ones. They're famous across the continent. It looked like the Glastonbury of Christian African people. Yeah. And there was a guy with, I'm not kidding. The pyramid stage. There was a guy just standing in a field with, I think we were told scrotum cancer.

Wow. Not ball cancer. It might have been ball cancer, scrotum cancer. Wow. Not ball cancer. It might have been ball cancer, scrotum, whatever. Testicular cancer, I suppose. And this faith healer stood next to him and went, and liquids started gushing out from under his balls. We were kids looking at a naked man's balls gush fluids. Balls to the moon.

Balls to the moon. And two thoughts went racing through my head as I watched fluid gush out of a man's testicles. One was... What's for lunch? One was cancer sure looks different to how I imagined it. And the second was this is not appropriate. I mean, I'm 13 years old. I want to be seeing shit I shouldn't be seeing.

But even I'm going, no, steady on, teach. Yeah, even I'm like, no, what I meant was one boob. Not two testicles gushing fluid I didn't know testicles could hold. In a field. In a field. In a field! I love the idea of you sitting there as the only voice of reason in an insane Malaysian teaching complex. You're just sitting there, just tutting like your dad.

Just, this is no good. These VHSs need to be sent back to hell. Absolutely insane. So I will say, this is not atypical. Of South Africa. In general, yeah. And like even like I don't want anyone to think this is some kind of comment on any particular group because the number of, for example, white South Africans I know who make Texas Baptist Christians look like Richard Dawkins is huge. They're just they love it.

The more literal an interpretation can be, the more faith-healing, hands on a broken foot kind of gibberish. They just like that and rugby. Super into it. Malaysian Christians can be like that as well. Especially when you're in a country where your identity is,

in order to form your identity, you need to set yourself apart from the other religious groups. You can go really mental with yours just to prove how different you are to the others. Yeah, yeah. Sort of like the UK, which is a little more religiously homogenous.

There's not that kind of pressure. Anyway. Yeah. So I'm about to finish this footage of the resurrection. The guy in the coffin is in a pure white suit, nothing out of the ordinary there, but he couldn't look more alive. He's opening his mouth like he's doing a bad impression

of a guy who just got shot. Like, ooh, I'm dead. Yeah. Also, like, a really expensive suit, but the funeral home didn't see fit to wire his jaw shut, which is what they do to corpses. You know what I mean? And they haven't embalmed him

by replacing all his blood with not blood. Well, maybe they're just so confident about him being resurrected, they didn't want him to wake up like... With no blood. Okay, here we go. Jesus! Praise Jesus! Praise Jesus! Come on, G!

Jesus! What is his name? Jesus is the name of the dead guy. Come on, Jesus. Come on. Stop fucking around. Oh, Elliot. He's waving at him. He's like roasting this guy for being dead.

He's waving his hand in front of him. Jesus. Come on, Elliot. Okay, everyone's got their hands up I like the idea that resurrection comes in stages Like lift your hands Okay now the feet The preacher has a suit like he works in the city He looks like a banker

Yeah He's got his hands over him What are the hands doing Phil? Are they waggling? He's got his hands over him. What are the hands doing? Phil, are they waggling? He's stroking in the air along the length of... No, he's got his waist up! Here he comes! Elliot's up!

Elliot's up! And the crowd goes wild! He's back from the dead! Elliot's getting a real good sort of zombie impression now. What's Elliot doing? Does he look shocked to be back? Eyes at the back of the head. Oh, there's a lady fainting.

Sure, sure. Amazing. It's good, and it cuts out there. Okay, so there's something from the funeral company here. They're called Kings and Queens Real Funerals. Real Funerals. Kings and Queens Real Funerals. No fake funerals here.

As Kings and Queens Funeral Services, we would like funerals here. As Kings and Queens funeral services, we would like to distance ourselves from the supposed resurrection of a deceased man by Hallelujah Ministries, who allegedly was at our mortuary. So this guy broke into their mortuary and started to bring people back to life. And also, I think there's like

three different funeral companies involved and they're all suing because they weren't told that they were going to be involved in this there's more than one funeral service working on the funeral when I skim read the article it was like one of them is called like Black Phoenix and one's Kings and Queens real funerals and then there was a third one and they're all like yeah

do all funeral homes in South Africa sound like gentlemen's clubs Black Phoenix and Kings and Queens and they're all like, yeah, because the one who provided the coffin. Do all funeral homes in South Africa sound like gentlemen's clubs? Black Phoenix and Kings and Queens. They really do. There was a big like schlocky article going around. Dead lace. I will say, though, what I like about Religious Miracles is that a large group of people, but not that large.

I mean, in the video, it's what, like less than 100 people in the video, praying really hard, like really wishing for the miracle to work and cheering and praying and waving their hands. That can bring this guy back from the dead, but it can't make your team score a goal. Yeah. Like if miracles work like that, then sports is like, I don't know, ghost battle or something.

But the thing with football is you've got people praying on either side for the opposite outcome. With the resurrection, no one's like praying for him to stay dead. So God's like, well, this is just a win-win. No one's going to be upset about this. This is a clear vote. Yeah. Maybe that's right. And maybe football games are like a kind of ghostly spiritual tug of war between two sides.

Like, ghost fight! Yeah. Do you think it's one ghost going, oh, who do I help? Or is it all loads of ghosts all fighting invisibly? I think it's like the battle at the end of Lord of the Rings. Loads of invisible green ghosts fly in and kick balls at each other. Alternately, kind of invisibly helping a footballer's foot. Or not.

With their hands, just... Rather than holding them. Skari, skaru, yeah. Are you listening to this thinking, wow, Pierre's great. I wish I could help Pierre avoid terrible personal and professional humiliation. Well, you can.

Because I'm doing a Soho theatre run from the 2nd of April to the 6th of April. That's right. It's starting three days after the Brexit deadline, which means that I will be accepting ticket purchases through food, rats, baseball bats, things like that. But if you want to use your useless English currency before then well, that would be an excellent decision so maybe you should go to the Soho Theatre website and buy tickets for the Piano Valley stand-up show from the 2nd of April to the 6th of April

because if you're a fan of me you don't want me to have to do my show legally to no one night after night like I'm in hell buy the tickets oh in similar Africa theme news have you

been following the whole David Lammy and Stacey Dooley thing oh boy that's the charity

Comic Relief right Comic Relief, right? Comic Relief. It's this classic so for those who don't know David Lammy Black British MP has to use a modern parlance

called out. He's thrown shade. He's thrown in shade. He spilled some tea about a white documentary presenter and maker Stacey Dooley. Yeah.

For working for Comic Relief. Not just for working for Comic Relief, but for going out to Uganda, I think specifically. She's gone out to Uganda to raise awareness of Africa. Because people don't know about Africa, Pierre. You know what? The look on people's face when they first hear about Africa is sometimes even when I just have to explain where I'm from. And I point on a map and they go, we thought there was a big smudge. We thought someone had spilt a coffee from Egypt all the way down to the Antarctic.

Really dirty maps. Yeah, I've never, you know, there's people out there who've never had a really sick-looking black child shoved in their face repeatedly every day for like two decades. Well, that's a central controversy with this is where does help stop being helpful? Yeah. And the picture that Stacey Dooley posted on Instagram is quite embarrassing. It's her holding a lovely chubby black boy in her arms. She's smiling at the camera. And the caption just says,

Obsessed! And then a heart emoji. It's super gross, isn't it? Obsessed is like... I'm obsessed with this foreign child that needs my help. It's that patronizing thing of like, they think the suffering is real enough to do something, but they're still just like,

but there's no reason it can't be a meme. And you sort of go, well, if you really grasp the seriousness of what you're saying, then surely it can't be a meme. Although sort of go well if you really grasp the seriousness of what you're saying then surely it can't be a meme although on the other side i saw lots of annoying tweets being like uh why is ed sheeran there and not uh you know a really well-known african and you sort of go well i mean they're looking to get white british people to give money and white british people don't know any famous africans yeah but they are obsessed, white British people, famously, with little ginger yodeler Ed Sheeran.

They love the little ginger yodeler. God bless white people and their inexplicable love of Ed Sheeran. He's going to get them to give so much money. Exactly. They're like, oh, I love that song where you go, a little fiddle in an Irish band and stand love in England, man. That's stupid,

fake folk nonsense. I love that. It's insulting using a name of an already pre-existing song that is much better. Yes. Yes.

Anyway, we're not here to talk about Galway Girl. Yeah. So the point is, like, Lammy's not wrong, but it also, like, it depends. Because there's loads of situations in Africa where charity money has made everything way worse.

And the money just, like, half the money gets nicked and the other half gets wasted kind of thing. Worse how? So, for example, you can use it to crush opposition. Sure. Militia groups can, like, it could prolong a civil war if in order to deliver aid to a militia-held area, the militia take half the aid. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a militia group that otherwise could have been starved out

or had no medicine or couldn't have sold the food for money to buy ammo, things like that. So it's very complicated and it depends. But there's also situations... That I would sponsor to watch Stacey Dooley go in guns a-blazing to take out rebel militia. Just to watch Stacey Dooley do a full Rambo.

Obsessed! Guys, just two pounds a month can fund a conversion course for these mechanics to turn this flatbed pickup truck into an anti-aircraft cannon. For only one pound a week, I can have all the high-velocity ammo I need to take out. And this is where I regret not knowing the names of individual African militia. The Lord's Resistance Army. Yes, of course. How can I forget the LRA? They're like the Manchester United of enormous, terrifying militia groups in Africa.

And then, yeah, there's Kony, the Jose Mourinho of... The special one. The special one. The shareable one. The shareable one. Is he dead now, Kony? Kony's still out there, buddy boy. Is he still there?

Kony 2012 just made him angrier, I think. It just made him more annoyed and you know on the other side of it you've got Al Shabab in Somalia and you've got the old Boko Haram knocking around they're all out there so I mean I would pay money to watch Stacey Dooley use charity money

to turn a group of quite sort of wet posh white English people into some sort of terrifying bush guerrilla force. Which of course would just add to the problem, but then that would be like a nice metaphor. But sometimes it's good.

Coming soon to Dave, Phil Wang's travels with his dad. We all know comedian Phil Wang, but did you know he has a dad? Well, join him on his fraught travels with his dad. Will they butt heads? Will they just look at stuff quietly? Yes, the second one. Hey, Dad, look at that! Look at that guy in his traditional outfit. We wouldn't wear that, would we? Huh? Oh yeah, that's okay.

Phil Wang's travels with his dad. Oh god, those cowboys are really going at this rodeo. Whoa, that's painful, huh? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I guess it would probably hurt. I think I... I want to go. Phil Wang's travels with his dad. A hilarious romp through the world with two men who are basically the same and don't talk

to each other very much. I mean, they love each other. They're father and son, but they've got no repartee, especially nothing television-worthy. Phil Wang's travels with his dad, coming soon to Dave. I think a really negative effect that this sort of performative activism can have is that it makes it look like the most helpful thing you can do not to give money,

but to go out and hold a little black child yourself. Yeah. And I went to an English private school for A-levels. No apologies. Yeah, fuck you. I went to an English private school. If it's any consolation, it was a waste of money. Absolute fucking waste of money.

I've never seen a greater waste of money than the incompetence of that school, beggars believe. But every year they would do this trip to Malawi. Oh, God, yeah. trip to Malawi. Oh, God, yeah. And all the kids, all these rosy-cheeked teenagers would apply to go on this trip to Malawi

to help out. Just vaguely... Just vaguely help out. Yeah. To build really shitty buildings they had no experience building. Yeah, and also to... To teach English having

no teaching experience. And also, as you say, they come and they build all these buildings but they don't... They might be African countries but they have fucking building codes. They have to bulldoze them because they don't meet standards. Exactly. This is the story that comes out. These white kids

from abroad come in to these African countries um go oh aren't you all so poor build them little horrible shitty walls and then in the night like african uh builders have to come and tear it down yeah because it's not sound it's not and then build it properly well and also african builders have had their work taken away by volunteers. So you go, hey, you know what's going to help the local economy? If we take everyone's work and do it for free and then leave. Do it badly for free?

Yeah. It's just completely lacking in foresight. You think you can just drop in, give everyone one present, and then they're done. Whereas the most helpful thing to do is to support the economy, get people working, get people paid for their work. support the economy, get people working, get people paid for their work. But, man, the kids at my school, if you didn't get on the Malawi trip,

they'd be crying that they didn't get to go to Malawi. And these guys were, these kids were not good people. They were fucking assholes at school. They were unkind to others. We had two black assholes at school. They were unkind to others. They, we had two black people in our school. Never saw them talk to either of them ever.

They weren't concerned with racial. They had to go to Malawi to have their first conversation with a black person. Yeah. It was just appalling. And so when I see

something like this, one of the Stacey Dooley photo going obsessed holding a little black boy, I can't help but go back to those memories, you know? Also like the whole thing with, I want to hold an orphan and stuff. There's like an artificial orphan business now as well.

Really? In a lot of places. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because parents will be like, well, our kid earns us money by pretending to be an orphan for white people. So like you can rent your kid out to be an orphan for the day in some places a very

good book for listeners by the way on this is war games uh i think by linda something but the book is called war games and it's about it's full of examples of areas of africa where heavy charity presence has created or continued to feed problems and it includes the creepy fake orphanage trade the militias making money out of it, things like that. Yeah, so it can go badly, badly wrong. And then you've got lunatics like fucking Bob Geldof.

You're like, we solved Africa in the 1980s. And if you dare point out to him that it's basically been proven that a pretty sizable chunk of the money he raised in the 80s did go to militias and dictatorships. He's furious

even though at your most optimistic that's obvious like fucking come on one percent of it surely you know you've got to admit that to yourself yeah unless you think that you're a magic wizard that can just avoid all local and national government structures in a country. Live aid or live ammo. Banksy. Banksy's here. But yes, I... But David Lemme does have a point. He goes, when will we stop with... It's just so repetitive.

Every year it's the same photo of a little black child in a white lady's arms. Same video of black people dancing. Like villagers happily dancing to some drums. And I don't know what that's supposed to prove. Like, aren't they brave being happy even though they're African? What is the point?

What are you trying to say? But also it's trying to sort of say to people like, there's a certain type of person that you meet, especially in the UK, I've found, who if you explain to them that like the Maasai in Kenya, who they're sort of obsessed with because they're in that one BBC ident, you know? Yeah. You know the Maasai have pages and mobile phones and pickup trucks and stuff like they're farmers. They'd be like, no. up trucks and stuff like they're farmers they'd be like no they're a bit disappointed because they want them to be wearing their famous red robes every day even if they're driving into town for a meeting at the bank about a loan to get a new tractor or something and they go no but no do the

dance they want the exoticism absolutely and these are people who will sort of reject globalization as an evil act of imperialism. They want to deny people technology and medicines so that they can enjoy... A holiday. A holiday and their own preferred idea of diversity. Yes. And they want the world to be a cultural smorgasbord for them to enjoy. They want everywhere to be a fascinating backwaterasbord for them to enjoy they want everywhere to be a far a fascinating backwater except where they are yeah and sometimes even where they are and it's it's incredibly

tedious to speak to them about this kind of stuff yeah i mean the other problem is that like no one ever explains all this different successes that africa has had but like or just like the world in general like if you tell people that child poverty and poverty in general has been reduced by like two thirds since the 50s. No, people are like, no, that can't be true. Because if anything, there's more adverts on the tube for starving babies than ever. Because it's media saturation.

Things have improved massively. In a lot of places, things are going unbelievably well. Yeah. It just tends to be, you to be corruption and Swiss bank accounts, things like that, that tend to let the money bleed out of a country. I follow a Twitter account called Human Progress. It's very capitalist, but it's also a good palate cleanser because from time to time it will just post things going.

There's billions fewer poor people now than there used to be. Four billion more people have food and can read. Yeah. You'd be like, wow. And people are living to 160 now, so maybe things aren't quite as bad as they say. Yeah.

And someone just posts things like, by the way, solar power is now more efficient as a fuel than coal. And you go, fuck, that's great. And then you go on the tube and posts things like, by the way, solar power is now more efficient as a fuel than coal. And you go, fuck, that's great. And then you go on the tube and it's like, are you going bald? Look at this starving child. Do you need Viagra?

Your hair's dirty. Are you alone? That's horrible. Well, because advertising exists to solve problems, not celebrate successes. Yeah, exactly. It's just problems. It'll expand to fill the gap allowed to it.

Anyway, what I'm looking forward to is Comedy Central's Lammy versus Dooley roast. Oh, please. Yeah. If she doesn't get confused and try and pick him up, that is. Obsessed. Obsessed with this little member of parliament. Look at this this little member of parliament.

Look at this adorable little member of parliament. Member of parliament. Obsessed with his constituency. Hi, we're a terrifying company. We've finally formed out of an amalgam of Google, YouTube, Facebook, WhatsApp, Apple, Microsoft, and the U.S. Army. But not the Marines. We'll get you, though. That's right. We're going to provide everything that you'll ever need. And a few things you might not, that you might not know about yet.

For example, did you know you can outsource your skin? That's right. There's no need to provide your own skin anymore. What is it, the 80s? Wah, wah. Didn't think so. Just outsource providing your skin to someone else.

Don't worry about it. A drone will bring it. Put it on. Put it on. Well, that's it for this week's BudPod. Thanks for listening. Thank you very much for downloading it. We're on every platform.

PodBlob. Pretty sure. The ones I've never heard of. The PodCats. The PodFather. Podbin. Podulance. Castrop.

Castrof. Toilet Casts. And of course in Russia, PodBlat. Everything. We're everywhere. And although course in Russia, podblat. Everything. We're everywhere. And although, although, if you really want to help us and you're the kind of person who has ever used iTunes or Apple, if you have an Apple ID, do go on iTunes, log in with your Apple ID, and please give us five stars.

Five stars rating, please. Uber style. And subscribe and enjoy. rating please uber style and subscribe and enjoy and also please contact us

on twitter at thebudpod and on email thebudpod at gmail.com and let us know your most authoritarian thoughts of the week

and most libertarian thoughts of the week and also your most uncool cool thing and your coolest uncool thing and your louise

and yeah and how many louise you're on at the time. Yes, please. See you next time. Bye. Bye.