Suggestible - The Rescue

Episode Date: February 17, 2022

Suggestible things to watch, read and listen to. Hosted by James Clement @mrsundaymovies and Claire Tonti @clairetonti.Complete Season of Suggestible and the City: https://play.acast.com/s/suggestible-and-the-cityThis week’s Suggestibles:01:55 The Rescue12:07 The Power of the Dog18:12 Moulin Rouge the Musical19:58 Hill of Content Bookshop20:44 A Very Nice Girl by Imogen Crimp31:40 Search Party Final Season36:55 How Tall is Jake Gyllenhaal? - Mystery Show PodcastSend your recommendations to [e-mail], we’d love to hear them.You can also follow the show on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook @suggestiblepod and join our ‘Planet Broadcasting Great Mates OFFICIAL’ Facebook Group. So many things. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Uber Teen Accounts. Invite your teen to join your Uber account today. Available in select locations. See app for details. Bing, bing, bong, whatever, bing, bing, bong. It's suggestible time, everybody. Hello. My goodness.

It really sneaks up on you, doesn't it? Every week. It's like life. It's every goddamn day. No, it's every week. Wouldn't it be good if life was every week? You just had six days of like infinite darkness and then like on the seventh, it's like the reverse of God resting or whatever that story is.

Yes, I see. You know what I mean? And then it's like, oh, I feel good because I've had infinite nothing for six days. I can function on this one day. Fuck the four-day work week. Six days, infinite darkness, one day. Fuck the four-day work week. Six days infinite darkness one day. Just whatever you want to do.

Yeah, look. It has been a week but also I feel like I can't decide if we're so exhausted and over everything because we're parents of small children and not getting that much sleep. Sure. Or this is just adulthood and it gets worse from here. Yeah, probably. I cannot decide. I don't know. I see a lot of boom it gets worse from here. Yeah, probably.

I cannot decide. I don't know. I see a lot of boomers like cruising around feeling pretty happy with themselves. They look pretty relaxed. And actually, I think people in their like later 40s and 50s look pretty well rested. That's true. And they seem to be enjoying a lot of lunch. All I need to do is stay alive until then. Stay relatively fit and healthy and active until I'm in my late 50s.

And then I can enjoy myself. Oh, God. Just hope you don't have a heart attack before then. That's right. Fingers crossed. Anyway, my name is Claire Twente. James Clement is here also. We are married.

And we recommend you things to watch, read, and listen to. This is Suggestible Podcast, a podcast where we recommend you stuff and also occasionally talk about our impending doom slash exhausted parenting. Yeah, that's true. Complaining. That's basically all this show is. So if you're not here for that, see ya.

Yeah. You've already left anyway. It doesn't matter. We're talking to nobody. No. We got the best listeners in the world, James. Wow. And I'll have no one saying anything else about them.

They're my favorites. You just made Joe Rogan furious. That's cancel culture potentially. But Claire, for suggestible, would you like to make a suggestible first this week? I would. I certainly would. Thank you very much for offering me to go first. I will.

Okay, I'm so excited. This is an old recommendation-ish. I know a lot of people already talked about it. We've talked about it, but I wanted to talk about it on the show because it's so good. Okay. So over the holidays, I watched The Rescue, which is on Disney+, the documentary.

Yes, yes, yes, yes. It chronicles the enthralling against all odds story that transfixed the world in 2018, which I'm sure people are aware of. I think you would have had to be under a rock to miss it. Or suck in a cave. Am I right, everybody? But he's really on fire tonight, guys. I don't know what's happened.

The daring rescue of 12 boys and their coach from deep inside a flooded cave in northern Thailand captivated the entire globe, basically, including Elon Musk even. Gosh. Academy Award-winning directors and producers Elizabeth Chyver-Sarhalai and Jimmy Chin keep viewers on the edge of their seats as they use a wealth of never-before-seen material and exclusive interviews to piece together the high-stakes mission. It highlights the efforts of the Royal Thai Navy SEALs and US

Air Force Special Tactics and details the expert cave divers' audacious adventure to dive the bush safety. Basically, in the end, it was a group of, I would say, amateur cave divers who were incredibly skilled, but this kind of rag bag. It was more of a hobbit. Rag bag? God, I love your expressions. It's my favorite thing in the world.

Are you trying to say rat bag or rag tag? Rag tag. Rag tag team. What is it? Was it rat bag? Did I say Rat Bag? You said Rag Bag, I think. Or maybe I may have misheard.

Anyway, it's this group of really nerdy guys who just happen to have this hobby of diving into incredibly dangerous dark holes. And they are exactly. Sounds like bloody marriage. Am I right, everyone? Am I right? Correct, yeah, exactly. At least in cave diving, you know, there's an end in sight. Very good.

Anyway, so I guess it all happened. You're happy with that? I liked it. It was good. Thank you. I stumbled a little, but I got there in the end. Hello, podcast dog. You're back.

She's back in action. She's just been barking so much recently. I know. I didn't get to take her for a walk. Insane. You went for it. Anyway. I had too many things going on.

I had to go shopping. I had a baby with me. We went to the park. There was a lot. Like the playground. It's a lot. You know what I mean? There was a lot.

If you take the dog to the playground, you can't let it off the leash because it's a playground. I don't really have a problem with that, but you don't want to spook anybody else. And if you do that, then suddenly you've got to tie up the dog and then the dog gets like, why am I tied up? I'm at the park. And the baby's running around everywhere, you know what I mean? Then I'm like, oh, I've got to get a shot.

I've got to get a shot because I've got to go to the chicken dinner. I've got to make that dinner. But before that, I've got to pick up a kid from school first as well and get him home. But he got up at 4.30 in the morning, so that's going to be interesting when I see how he's feeling about that. Anyway, you were saying cave diving, Elon Musk. Parenthood. Yes. So what's really interesting is really it focuses a lot on the team of guys, those divers. And so yes, the Navy SEALs and all of the military people, but really it was

this small team that really did it. And that's what I think is so astonishing and really remarkable. And it really paints an amazing picture because it uses real footage from the time, but also reenactments within the caves with those cave divers that did the rescue. And it just shows you how precarious the whole thing was. I mean, particularly, I think what's really interesting is the guy, Richard Harry Harris, who was 57 at the time, gets roped in. He's an anaesthetist from Australia. Yeah. And he gets roped in when they come up with this plan to put the kids

under and take them back through the cave network while they're asleep, which it's incredibly dangerous to dive these as a fully grown man who has cave diving experience, let alone with a child who is ostensibly dead weight. And because I was asking you about this recently and I was like, how long did they have to put them under for? Like three hours. Yeah, and I thought it was like 20 minutes or whatever, but it was like a three-hour underwater.

In just like the most perilous tiny gaps they had to drag them through. At some point and also they had to suspend the kids face down. Yeah. So Richard Harris talks about the moment where he first has to submerge one of the kids and he said he felt like it was euthanasia. Oh, God. Because he really genuinely believed they wouldn't survive. But at that point they'd found out that the caves were going

to completely flood within a matter of days. So it was really the only way they had to even give it a go. The other thing that's so interesting, I didn't realise this, but the Thai legal system is such that if something had happened to those kids, those men could have gone to jail basically, which I thought was. Even though like there wasn't another option. Yeah, exactly.

And they had to basically convince all of the Thai officials, because the whole world was watching this, that this was the best plan. And Harris talks about how he's in that room feeling like a used car salesman, selling this idea that he himself doesn't even think is really going to work, but is their only kind of moonshot basically to get these kids out alive. And so the miracle that they all come out alive is just unbelievable and it shows you just the feat of human endeavour and strength and what happens when you work as a team and what happens

when people are just so highly skilled in a particular area. And it's just so beautiful. And I thought I knew a lot about this story and I was, I could not tear my eyes away from the screen. They've done such a good job with this documentary and it's so moving and heartwarming and also terrifying. Even though you know the outcome, it's still terrifying. Yeah, absolutely. I can't believe that was in 2018.

If you were like, that was six months ago, I'd be like, yeah, probably. Yeah, I know. It's so strange, isn't it? What's really interesting too, I think, is that Chin, who is an accomplished climber with a North Face kind of sponsorship, he was one of the directors with Elizabeth and he said one of the reasons he really enjoyed making the film was because he felt an immediate kinship to the divers despite their differing disciplines.

As he said in an interview, big wall, high altitude climbing only draws pretty specific people and personality types. Yes. Freaks. Yeah. Sorry, go on. Because he and Elizabeth created Free Solo. Did you see that?

I have seen Free Solo. I love Free Solo. Yeah, that documentary about the wall climbing, which, you know, it's just as good as that, I think. And so he says cave diving, because of its specific discipline, with such high stakes, attracts very similar people. Freaks! The problem solving, the ingenuity required,

and the amount of risk assessment, those aspects make it really appealing to a certain mindset because you have to make perfect calculations, otherwise you'll die. Yeah, absolutely. And these guys are the kind of people that you just feel like a lot of them had trouble at school fitting in, very nerdy, and they've got this ability to shut off their emotions because most people I think would panic.

Oh, I would panic immediately. Or even the physical endeavor of it. It's the panicking that we really get. And that leads to like you lose more oxygen more rapidly and whatever. It's just a – I have to watch this. Now I can't because you've talked about it on the show, so there's no point. It's just wasted time for me.

The moment where one of them gets like turned around in the cave and it's just like – Oh, yeah, that is – I don't want to spoil it for people, but there's just this – anyway, this is a spoiler. I don't want to spoil it, but listen. But there's a moment where they've got almost all the kids out and this is like I think it's the 11th kid and the diver is taking him through the cave and they have to hold onto this rope with one hand

and the child with the other hand because it's pitch black. They can't see anything and the rope is just leading them out of there. There's no other way that they can really get their bearings and he loses in this very tricky part of the cave. It had flooded with water even further on that day and so he has to push the child first and then sort of make sure he's got, you know, a control of the child while also pulling himself through and he has to hang on one with one arm

off the rope and he just loses the rope and then he cannot find it and he's you know round and round hand flashing can't find it and then eventually he grabs onto something which he realizes an electrical wire and decides that'll lead him out of the cave it goes somewhere and he comes out in this beach of you know that he does not recognize because one of the other things I didn't realise is they have to come out and re-inject the kids. Yeah, you can't keep someone under for three hours. No, for three hours you have to keep administering the drug and they've never done that before either.

So he's on this beach with this child who's unconscious and who's starting to wake up and he administers the drug again and then realises I have no idea where I am. We're probably both of us going to die. Yeah. And then Richard Harris pops up who's the anaesthetist who was the last one out with the life. Richard Harris from Top Gear.

Is that his name? No. Richard Harris from Top Gear? Yes, correct. Maybe? No. No, Richard Harris is the actor who played the original Dumbledore. I'm thinking of Richard something else.

Someone else. Anyway, it turns out he. I'm thinking of Richard something else. Someone else. Anyway, it turns out he'd just gone backwards. Richard Hammond. There you go. He went backwards. Yeah, he'd gone backwards in the cave network. Anyway, fascinating stuff. The Rescue, it's on Disney+.

Highly recommend. Oh, my God. Yes. Well, that sounds awful and I do not care for it, quite frankly. But what an amazing feat of human achievement and ingenuity. And it's also good they didn't bring up Elon Musk in it, don't you think? Yeah. Because he kind of made a lot of that about himself.

It's like, hey, can you just stay out of it and continue just digging holes under the ground for nobody? Correct. Exactly. I will just say. And murdering monkeys. Oh, my God. I should mention the three men who were focused on mainly are Rick Stanton,

John Volothin, then Dr Richard Harris. Thank you for bringing that up because they don't actually mention their names in the documentary, do they? I feel like they don't. Really? No, they do. Oh, you're so annoying. Anyway, I just wanted to highlight that.

Don't know why. What's your thing? Well, this is actually a Netflix movie that actually got nominated recently for a bunch of Oscars. It's called The Power of the Dog. It's based on the 1967 book of the same name. A domineering rancher responds with mocking cruelty. This is the synopsis.

Cumberbatch. Yes, yes. When his brother brings home a new wife and her son until the unexpected comes to pass. So it's Bendit Cumberbatch. It's Cody Smith McPhee who's Australian. He was in The Road. He was the new Nightcrawler in the new X-Men.

You know, he's the kid in The Road. He's in a bunch of stuff. Yes, yes, yes. Kirsten Dunst. She hasn't been in a lot for a while so it's really exciting. No, because she made a bunch of money. Why would you? And she's also.

I think she also had some children. Yeah, because Jessie Plemons is in this and they're married and I think they've had a few kids together. So, yeah, Benedict Cumberbatch – well, actually, I just want to – before I get into that. So Jane Campion, who's a New Zealand director, she writes and directs this and it's basically – so this – it's a Western but it's without all the –

it's just like running a ranch it's not like the shooting of guns and outlaws and whatever it's just like a horrible man who's benedict cumberbatch who's clearly got some underlying issues that uh that are revealed as the movie goes on is just being a terrible person all around and you kind of find out you know the reasons why he is that way and you know and how people react to him and the kind of find out, you know, the reasons why he is that way and, you know, and how people react to him and kind of the way he sees himself and the way he sees others. And so it's basically about kind of like masculinity and sexuality and marriage and grief and jealousy and all of this in, you know,

in a very harsh time, you know, when you're working off the land. If you're like a more sensitive person like uh cody smith mcfee plays in this and he's kind of more like he likes birds and art and science and all those kinds of things and that's not considered like very masculine you know what i mean when this is in a point in time when the world is changing it's like the beginning of like automobiles and you know universities are kicking off and you know literature is becoming more prevalent and all of these kinds of things. So it's these worlds that are like the world is shifting and, you know, one part of it is dying or kind of like or changing and, you know,

some people are trying to hold on to that and some people are happy that it's going in a completely different direction. Look, and everybody's excellent in it but Benedict Cumberbatch and Cody Smith McPhee, like they're probably in it the most and I would say like they both give off, you know, excellent performances because they're both terrific actors. This has actually been nominated for ten Oscars. I heard Kirsten Dunst is amazing.

She is. She's in it a lot. She's in it a hell of a lot, yeah. She kind of like spends a lot of the movie like being traumatised and she's very good at doing that. But, yeah, so it's ten nominations. Jane Campion is also the first woman to be nominated twice for a Best Director Oscar and the last one was like The Piano,

which was like ages ago. So I think it's also one of those things where, you know, the Oscars, I know there was some talk about if things go to Netflix, you know, they don't count as movies that can be nominated, but I think it did have a very brief like theatrical run. And I'm glad it did because it's very good. And, look, you don't, you're not a big like cowboy shooting each other and whatever kind of thing.

And, you know, and I think there are, there's a lot of terrific Westerns who like that are in the vein of that, but this is like not that at all. It's more like a character study. And again, all the other things that I said in the lead up to this, it's on Netflix. Does it, is it kind of paralleling what's happening at the moment culturally? Yeah, I think so. There's a little bit of that and what it means to be a man. Cause I think now people are confused or, you know, because there's mixed signals

about like you're supposed to be masculine but like all those but now there's all these genders and I'm, you know, whatever and I'm confused or not even I'm confused. Like people are upset. Not even upset but I don't know. I just feel like there's a cultural shift happening again and there's people who are clinging on to old ways of thinking about gender and masculinity and femininity and sexuality,

even all of those things and even the way that we think about and treat our planet. Yes. Which we all are going to be faced with. But I feel like there are people who are clinging to the past way of thinking and there are people who are trying to move it forward. And you can see that kind of tussle happening everywhere.

Everyone's having that argument. And for me I think it's like, you know, it's a lot of these things around gender and I'm certainly not the first person to say this. It's a construct, you know. Did we talk about this last week? We did, correct. Maybe we did. So like I think it can be whatever you want it to be, you know what I mean,

if you're not hurting anybody else, what does it matter, you know? Do whatever you want and shut up about it. Anyway, I think that would be really interesting to watch. It is good but you can't watch it because I've watched it. All right. No, I actually do really want to watch it. The only thing that's stopping me is I feel like it might be very gloomy. Yeah.

No, it is. Yeah, it's gloomy but I wouldn't say like you won't walk away from it being like, oh, man, that really like scrambled my brain or whatever. You know, it's gloomy but I wouldn't say like you won't walk away from it being like, oh, man, that really like scrambled my brain or whatever, you know. Okay, yeah. It's good. I think it's. Compelling.

Yeah, and it's also like it makes you think, you know, one thing about certain characters, a number of characters in this that then like change towards the end and people kind of reveal themselves in ways that, you know, are unexpected and have a lighter or a darker side than you might initially think, you know. That's interesting. Again, not to get into spoilers but it's just, I mean, I haven't read the book.

I don't know how closely it is to it but if it is close, it would have been a pretty like forward thinking kind of narrative. Here's a question. Is there a good dog in it? Well, it's not. Are there other dogs in it? It's more about the setting which, again, is sort of a spoiler, not really. I see.

Of the dog. No. Is it set within a kennel? It's set within a dog. Within an actual dog. Set within the inside of dogs. Is it about a dog with superpowers? A dog has superpowers, yeah, and it's a cowboy dog.

It's got a little neckerchief. I love it. All right. I mean, you've sold me on it. Okay. Happy to sell you on it. Excellent. What's that, Claire? I've got another bookie. A booker, a booker. I'm in. You've sold me on it. Okay. Happy to sell you on it. Excellent. What's that, Claire?

I've got another bookie. A book-a-da-book-a. I'm so excited. I'm back in my book room. You bought a pile of books the other day. When we went and sold Moulin Rouge! The Musical. If you ever get a chance to go and see Moulin Rouge!

The Musical. I did get a chance. I saw it already. I know. I'm talking to our listeners, our wonderful, amazing listeners who we love so dearly. If you get a chance, oh my goodness, you should see it. Wasn't it fabulous? It was really good.

It was like the best antidote to the gloom of the pandemic I could have ever conjured up. It was just colour and glitter and sexy fishnet costumes and, like, amazing dancing and, like, incredible music that's kind of juxtapositioned with all these cool pop songs and, you know, mishmashed into this like amazing script. And you see that the staging was just amazing, the choreography was so incredible, but also the way they've done the sets

and the way they move in and out, they look like paintings, like the depth and perspective. My God, was it good. It was just and everyone in the cast was brilliant. Claire, let me just say this. I agree with you. It was very good. And I liked the things that it changed from the movie as well.

I do too. Kind of updated a bunch of the songs. It changed elements of the story to like simplify it or streamline it for the stage. Exactly. And like just talk about diversity. The casting was so refreshing in a theatre show and I think we're seeing a lot of this more,

particularly with things like Hamilton, that there's just a diversity of skin colours and body shapes and, you know, sexuality and just a whole lot of stuff on stage. It's just lovely to see, particularly women, a diverse range of women's bodies even on stage in really sexy, cool outfits but they don't have to be fitting into one body type, which is just so refreshing to see. And the vocally, my God, was it good. Anyway, so that's one thing I'd recommend. But while I was there, we went to Hill of Content,

one of my favourite bookshops in Melbourne. Yes. So good. Plug for a bookshop. I'm getting back into bookshops because I especially during the pandemic, I think, you know, that everyone did it hard and if you can support small businesses wherever you can, bloody do it.

I say let them all burn down. And also I feel like I looked at screens so much over the last couple of years. Oh, I know. I feel like I'm just looking at my phone all the time. I'm so annoyed. And I think that's the problem with society. I just want like hard copy books.

Anyway, pipe down over there with your quips. That's a soft cover. All right. You know what I mean? An actual book with pages. I just like being annoying. I'm not even contributing. Can I please just recommend my book?

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Invite your teen to join your Uber account today. Available in select locations. See app for details. This book is called A Very Nice Girl by Imogen Crump. Now, it's just really compelling. If you like Sally Rooney, who wrote Normal People and Conversations with Friends, it's very much in that vein. It's from the perspective of Anna who's in her sort of mid-20s

and she's struggling to afford life in London and she trains to be an opera singer. Oh. Yeah, so during the day she vies to succeed against her course mates and there's a lot of like competition and huge amounts of, you know, kind of backstabbing and there's a huge amount of work ethic and you really get to see just what goes into trying to make it as an artist and a singer and the sacrifices she's had to make financially because when you're studying

at that level, you can't work for, you know, you can't work a full-time job. Yes. It is a full-time job. And so she then has to sort of scrimp and save and live in this horrible boarding house with one of her really close friends. And she sings in the evenings at a jazz bar in the city to make ends meet. And that's where she meets Max, who's a financier, who's 14 years older than her. And so it kind of tracks their relationship over the course of one winter where Anna's intoxication with him kind of I guess he becomes controlling in a way their relationship dynamic is quite difficult

because he's obviously very wealthy and older than her. He's recently separated from his partner. He lives in this flat that he kind of rents out while he's working in the city and then has a house in Oxford. So she only really sees a small part of his life and he kind of hides her away from the rest of his life and subtly undermines her. So at the start where you see that singing to her is everything and she sacrifices everything in order to do it and lives

in not complete poverty but a very, very simply scrimping and saving every penny whereas he works in a job that he kind of hates for a bank and he's clearly kind of miserable but has a lot of money. Yeah. And it's interesting how he slowly over time erodes her sense of self and her sense of vitality and confidence in her voice and she loses her all perspective and he kind of cuts her off

from her friends. He starts to loan her money and over time. So she becomes like dependent on him. Yeah, and so even though she becomes more comfortable financially, she loses her ability to be, I guess, what's the word for it? She loses her. Yeah, creative. Yeah, and to commit to all of her singing in the way that she had.

And she just loses herself completely in him. And it's a really interesting, I think, exploration into sex and money and coercive control and also just what happens in that time period in your life where we've seen it constantly where people go through different paths and you kind of sometimes have to make a decision as a creative or an artist whether you want to pursue that or whether you need to get a proper job in order to make money and survive. And do you go and get married and have kids and go that traditional path?

Cages or wings, Claire. Yeah, exactly. Which do you prefer? Ask the birds. Yeah, exactly. Which do you prefer? Ask the birds. Ask the birds. What do they say? Give me some bird seed. That's what they'd say.

Give me some birds. I'll kill you. I thought they'd just say squawk. Squawk, give me some bird seed. Polly want a cracker? I'm a talking bird. Give me some bird seed. Yeah, and, you know, I think and it's not always the case

but like having a 14-year age gap and how old is she? So she's in her, I'd say, early 20s, like 22, 23. And, look, I know people have done this and made it work or whatever but that's a very big difference. And not only that, it's very different points in time, you know. Like me 14 years ago to now was like a like a just a completely different person thank god but i miss him where is he no but um yeah but you're absolutely right that's what's interesting about it too because he's kind of not always a bad thing but you can use that you're

better at manipulating people i guess yeah definitely And it's sort of unclear in the way that she writes that whether or not part of it is Anna's own sort of built up picture of him. Cause he's very upfront about the fact that he doesn't want a full relationship and he can't have one. He's got a wife he's separating from. He doesn't have time for her in his life in that way. So he's very upfront about it, but in this way that where she never knows where she stands with him and he does erode her sense of self over time and there's some sort of bordering on violent sex scenes and things where it's still kind of murky and so I think that is the problem with emotional abuse and coercive control. So it's written in a way where even though like you side with her,

you kind of feel the same way that she does is like, is this okay kind of thing? Exactly. You're sort of made to feel confused, which is exactly, I think what happens. And also she falls in love with him, which is also complicated. And you're right because it's 14 years. She's at that point where she's so wide eyed and passionate and got this massive amount of drive and has to have this huge amount of self-belief to get up there to sing.

Yeah. And I find that really interesting too. And even there's some lines in there about how even if you're the best singer in the room, people don't care. No. Not necessarily. She just has to go to audition after audition and some auditions. She can sing the best she's ever sung and not get the part.

Yeah. Because it's's you know there's so many of her there yeah but she has to do it because she loves it and and the idea of zipping into someone else's skin is so seductive to her yeah you know as as a character exploration it's really interesting and then i guess it's what happens because he's 14 years her senior he's had he's got married he's done the traditional thing and he's kind of broken by it. You almost see that he's just miserable from the decisions he's made in his life.

And I think, yeah, hanging out with people in their early 20s who haven't really experienced all of that yet and seen that side of life and are still so hopeful, I think he almost does it on purpose without meaning to. Yeah. Because he's almost. Because he's miserable and he wants. Yeah, and he sort of, he sees it as bringing her back to reality and, oh, but you need money and what are you doing living

in this like flea riddled room with one, you know, like a horrible landlady where you can't afford anything and you're living paycheck to paycheck. What are you doing? That's not a substantial life. And even if you make it as a singer, how will you ever really support yourself? You know, that kind of undermining. And though he may be right, he may be wrong as well.

And then also at the end of the day, as she sort of starts to explore, isn't it better to follow and pursue what you love and are good at and not live a life of security, you know, versus giving up on your dream? Yeah, I think it's also like, I was going to say something. I can't remember. What do you think about that? Well, I think like the way that I look at it and I'm, you know, I do a really obscure, bizarre thing for a job. But somebody has to do, somebody has to be a singer or a dancer

or an artist or, you know, whatever, you know. People do it. Yeah. And that's. They do. And often it's the people that hang in there the longest, right? Yeah, and not always but I think also like or what, like you do a thing that you don't like, you know,

which is also fine as well. Like if you just want to get, you know, just pay bills and, you know, be comfortable, good. Well, that's exactly right, isn't it? It's like, is that also that's, and having financial security, because she doesn't come from money, so she has no security blanket, but most of the other people in her course are very wealthy and come from wealthy homes, so they don't have to worry about money. are very wealthy and come from wealthy homes so they don't have to worry about money. And it also says a bit, I think, about class in that way that often the people that get to be the artists and the creatives are the people who can afford to.

Absolutely. Which sucks. We're seeing more of that now. But yeah, because if you have somebody who's willing to pay for your rent while you go do a variant, go do whatever. Yeah, and work on your craft. Go to school and work on your craft. Without earning anything.

And whatever. Like that's an incredible opportunity that not everybody has so then you're only getting art from like a very specific perspective. Exactly. And I think that is what's good about, you know, the internet in a lot of ways because, you know, you can be anybody essentially and climb that rung. But even then, even there, there's still steps in place.

Like even us, the reason I'm able to do this is because I had like an education which allowed me to do teaching and gave me skills in like various areas and all of those things and I was financially okay, which meant, you know, I could set up a different thing. Like I'm aware of that, like how lucky it is just to have those opportunities, you know, and I kind of also feel bad about that at the same time, you know, that other people who are probably way better than me, you know, don't, you know. Well, yeah, that's definitely true.

But also, maybe I'm the greatest person, maybe I'm the greatest artist of this generation. So it swings and roundabouts, you know what I mean? I do think, yeah, sometimes I think there's also this notion that it's all or nothing and she explores that to her. Yeah. She's going to be the world's most famous opera singer and she's got to be better than everyone or she's not going to do it at all.

Yeah. And I think there's actually a really interesting middle ground in that that if, I mean, obviously something like opera singing is so highly technical to really be incredibly good at it. You do have to devote hours and hours and hours and hours of time. But just because you decide not to be a professional doesn't mean you shouldn't still do what you love to do. Right.

And I think people are often really, and I'm the same, guilty of this. Our culture kind of thinks, well, if you're not the best, then why bother? Yeah. Where actually it should be. Maybe you just enjoy it. Yeah, and I was listening to a podcast actually today with Elizabeth Day and an artist called Self Esteem who's a singer and a songwriter and she was saying.

Yeah, she's that Nirvana song. Yeah. What? No, Offspring song. Sorry, I'm just, I'm derailing. You're derailing. Anyway, what I was going to say was that she said that finally in her 30s, she realized that it doesn't matter whether or not she's successful.

She has to make stuff. Yeah. She just has to make stuff. She has to create. It's part of who she is. And so regardless of whether or not you end up being, you know, incredibly rich and famous, whether she has to work, you know, another job and do this on the side, it's part of who she is.

She has to do it. And I think that is really helpful if you're someone who has that creative urge. It doesn't have to be the be all and end all. It just is something that you do because you love it and it's a part of who you are. That's right. Anyway, that's it.

Do you have another one? I do but I can save it for next week or I can do it now. Whatever. Let's do it now. It's called Search Party, the final season of Search Party, Claire. We're with Search Party. So it started in season one as a minor character and it went missing and then from there like an investigation unraveled.

So basically, I'll just quickly say, it's created by Michael Showalter, Sarah Violet Bliss and Charles Rogers. It stars Aaliyah Shawkat, John Paul Reynolds, John Early and Meredith Hagner. And so they're this group of friends and in the first season one of them, Dory, is like looking to find this missing girl, right? And that's what the first season is about. Yes, that's the one where you said it was really lighthearted

and funny and then I watched it and there was like a brutal murder. Yeah, there was a brutal murder going on. So, yeah, and every season it changes into like a different thing and this latest season is like and last season, season five, is no different. So this time around it looks at like cult figures and kind of religion and faith and putting your faith in somebody or a particular thing and enlightenment and it also does a lot of stuff with like social media

and influences and things like that. But it's insane. Like it's an insane show filled with like the silliest people you'll ever meet, but it's also very dark whilst also being very, very funny. And it definitely gets to the point at the end of the season where you're like, oh, yeah, that's definitely done now. Like you have absolutely ended this.

Well, maybe. You never know. Maybe it could continue down the line. But, no, I really enjoyed it. And if you're looking for something that like again changes like every time you tune in every you know again every i was gonna say every year but every season now if you haven't seen it then yeah it's really it's really interesting yeah and i'm glad it's not ongoing it's just like this is a good thing and it's done and that's cool i like that i feel like that's great you don't want to beat a dead horse mate yeah you want to leave the horse very silly i should point that out as well like i'm sure there'd be people who are like this has gone too far and maybe it has but i liked it like

that does not surprise me you love it when it goes too silly yeah you love a silly thing yeah it kind of breaks like a bunch of stuff yeah because it it's like set mostly in the real world and then it's like, oh, this kind of thing happens. We're not going to get into it. But anyway, I liked it. I liked it a lot. Where can people find it?

That is, is it on Stan here? I think it's on Stan here. I think it's a HBO series overseas, but I don't know. All right. And so I'm going to do that thing that I've decided to do now every week where I summarize what we've just recommended. Oh, I love it. Even though it's in the show notes as well.

Thank you, Colleen, as always for editing. But we recommended The Power of the Dog. Yes. Which is on Netflix. It is on Netflix. And I recommended The Rescue, which is on Disney+. I also recommended A Very Nice Girl by Imogen Crimp. Yes, yes, yes.

And you just talked about Search Party, which is on Stan. That's in Australia, but HBO Max if you are in another section of the world. Yeah, that's right. Dimension. Now, do we have a letter this week? We certainly do. Well, I'd love you to read it out before. I feel like every week I neglect to mention that you can actually review the show.

Can you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Are you sure? It's as simple as going in app, whatever app you're doing. Maybe you're using an iTunes. Maybe you're giving it a rating on Spotify. You should give it on Spotify because they gave us $100 million to put our podcast on there.

They gave us donuts. They're not looking to, I mean, they're looking for some kind of return on the investment to know people are listening. So if you could do that. By the way, yes, we are on Spotify, but fuck Spotify. Are we? They run ads on all our stuff and pay literally nobody, including us. But, oh wait, no, they pay certain creators and Taylor

Swift. Or Brene Brown. Yeah, that's right. But anyway, so this person called W Masculina says, this podcast convinced me to try kombucha. I ordered a bunch of kombucha the other week and it still hasn't arrived. Oh, I was going to say. Who can I ring? The kombucha man. I will. The kombucha woman, actually. Okay. Really great podcast. It's suggested a lot of great things to watch, read,

slash listen to, except for kombucha. Hands down the worst thing I've ever put in my body. Five stars. It's a five star review. I like this person. Excellent. Do you know what the name of kombucha woman is who scabie because that's the weird

gross thing that they make kombucha out of oh that thing yeah it's called a blob of scabie and if I've talked about it before on the show don't google it while you're eating a lot of people also

are like you know you can make your own kombucha yeah I could also build a house if I wanted to make something terrible you couldn't yeah

that's what I mean I could make a terrible house just like I could make a terrible kombucha or I could also build a house if I wanted to make something terrible. You couldn't. Yeah. That's what I mean. I could make a terrible house just like I could make a terrible kombucha or I could just buy it. I could make my own toothpaste. I could just put soap and pour in a bunch of sugar and then it would sweeten it up with maybe some mint and then, you know, there we go. I don't think you know what toothpaste is.

Did you know that toothpaste is actually black? Yeah, and they have to because they die because it's like, yeah. Yeah, because no one wants to buy black toothpaste. Didn't they used to use charcoal? Correct, yes, and they have to because they die because it's like, yeah. Because no one wants to buy black toothpaste. Didn't they used to use charcoal? Correct, yes. And now technically we all should be because it's much more sustainable and not wasteful with plastic tubes. Anyway.

Okay, I'll get a stick of charcoal. Here he goes. Yes. Maybe corporations. Okay, can I just read the letter before you go on another rant about the society? I'll stop. George Costanza. I'll stop.

He'll never stop. He can'll stop. He'll never stop. He can't stop. He won't stop. All right. How tall are celebrities is the title of this letter. Great question. And I love it. This is from Sarah James.

Hi, Claire. And James in brackets. Correct. You did it correctly, Sarah. Yes. Bing bong, bing bong. I already like Sarah a lot. After listening to this week's episode and your hilarious conversation

about how tall various celebs are, I remembered a fantastic podcast that I'm going to suggestable to you. It's an episode of a short-lived Gimlet show called Mystery Show. Each week the host solves someone's mystery. It's quirky and sweet and funny. They're all great, but the episode I'm thinking of has the mystery being how tall is Jake Gyllenhaal and it's a wild ride. Wow.

Keep up the good work team and thanks for the content. I'm totally going to listen to that. How tall is Jake Gyllenhaal? I thought he was like six foot, wasn't he? I have no idea, but I think there's like a real debate because I saw another tweet about it. Weirdly, another podcast I listened to that is not related to this one also brought up Celebrity Heights this week.

So I don't know if there's like something in the ether about Celebrity Heights. This is a burning question. It says, what if I stumbled into you? I know my goodness. So Jake Gyllenhaal found the answer to the burning question, how tall is Jake Gyllenhaal? Let's figure it out.

So he got measured on Conan and so he. Yeah, but he could have something in his shoes. Yeah, exactly. But they make him take his shoes off here and he's 5'11 and a half, so he's just under six foot. So he's half an inch shorter than he originally claimed. Right. So he said he was six foot, but he's not.

Oh, you just spoiled the episode for me now. Sorry. Sorry. Oh, no. It's the curse of Jake Gyllenhaal's height coming to get me. He's so funny, isn't he? Because he also has a scarf of Taylor Swift still kicking around. Just give her back the scarf, mate.

Does he though? Does he though? No, it's like innocence apparently. She's so weird. It's a weird thing to say and you shouldn't say that. I know. I know. It's all a weird thing.

Anyway, thank you so much, Sarah. And if you two would like to email in with a hilarious comment, we love hearing from listeners. It's our favourite thing ever. Well, it's my favourite thing. I don't know, James likes kombucha or something else, yelling about the state of the planet. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You can email us at stetsapod at james.com. We would absolutely love to hear from you. My goodness, would I ever. Would you ever. And also, if you want to do a voice memo, feel free, record it, email it to us and you might get your sweet vocal chords on the show. Record it on your cellular telephone. You can just straight on your app there.

I love it when there's a little bit of interesting colour, background noise. It's fun. Yeah, but don't fake it. We can tell. I can't tell. But also just know that every week I come in here and I never bring my headphones in.

And I come in and I go to Claire and I sit down and I'm like, oh, is there an audio email this week? And when she's like, yes, I'm like, oh, fuck, and I have to get up and I have to walk to the other room and get headphones. It's a real stretch for you. That if you send a voicemail and then I have to, you know, you've annoyed me slightly because I would have forgotten my headphones and I would have had to go get them.

Okay. It's not particularly hard to annoy you. Sparrow farting annoys you. Sparrow farted? God damn it. All right, everybody. Thank you, Colled? God damn it. Alright everybody. Thank you Colleen for editing this week's episode. We've been suggestible. Thank you Colleen. Oh one last

favour. What? If you have a friend who you might think might like this show your mum, your dad, your sister, your cousin, your neighbour please recommend it to them. It just is the best way for our show to be discovered and it's also just super fun to have a buddy to talk about a podcast with,

I feel. That's it for me. That's it. That's all. That's all I wanted to say. Bye. Bye. Bye.

Bye, bye, bye. Bye. Bye, bye, Birdie. Is that a song? What? Isn't Bye Bye Birdie a musical? Yeah, it is. That's not the right song.

Because of this. It's just a dance. No one can see you doing that dance. That's just a dance. It's not a song. No one can see you doing that dance. That's just a dance. It's not a song. No one can see you. All right, I'm going. This podcast is part of the Planet Broadcasting Network.

Visit planetbroadcasting.com for more podcasts from our great mates. I mean, if you want. It's up to you. We can wait for clean water solutions. Or we can engineer access to clean water. We can acknowledge Indigenous cultures. Or we can learn from Indigenous voices. We can demand more from the earth.

Or we can demand more from ourselves. At York University, we work together to create positive change for a better tomorrow. Join us at yorku.ca slash write the future.