The Bechdel Cast - Babe: Pig in the City with James Stout

Episode Date: September 24, 2026

This week, Jamie, Caitlin, and special guest James Stout are leaving their farm to head to the city and discuss Babe: Pig in the City (1998)! Check out James's podcast Natural Causes, and visit his website at jamesstout.net See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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You can buy tickets at Linktree slash Bechtelcast. All of our ticket links are listed there. We will see you there, Northeast, and see you rest of the U.S. and also Canada very soon. See you there. The Becdocast. That'll do pod. That'll do. Yeah, that's me talking to our podcast. That's good. I mean, I'm always feeling that way.

I'm like, that'll do. That'll do. That's quite enough pod for today. I, God, honestly, to have, to have that line close the movie is borderline insulting after breaking every bone and far along its body. Two minutes in, they're like, let's just bring it back, have them do the line, have them do the line. All right. You got to.

You got to. Oh, gosh. Oh, my gosh. Welcome to the Vettel Cats. Yes. The Babe Tollcast. The Babe Tollcast voiced by, I think, like, I could, Babe is voiced by Tommy Pickles in this one. And you really, once you realize it's Tommy Pickles, it's very hard to unhear.

Sure. Yeah. Yeah, we're talking about Babe Pig in the City. We've already covered Babe on our Matrion. Mm-hmm. And we're doing Pig in the City. Huge, huge. We are the Bechelcast.

My name is Caitlin. My name is Jamie, and this is our podcast where we talk about your favorite movies using an intersectional feminist lens and the Bechtel test as a jumping off point for discussion. But Caitlin, what the hell is that? That is a medium metric created by friend of the show, Alice and Bechtel. There are many versions of it. The one that we use is this. Do two characters of a marginalized gender have names? Do they speak to each other?

and is that conversation about something other than a man or perhaps a male pig, maybe. Hard to say. But also pigs don't have gender, so. Pigs, I mean, yeah, and I think that these movies have a pretty loose approach to gender, which I appreciate. Yeah, I'd say so. And this movie does, I mean, well, for those of you listening for the first time, wondering if we spend the whole show trying to figure out if the movie passes the Bectle test, first of all, get a life. That show would suck.

Second of all, this movie does sort of, I mean, this movie does pass the bacterial test. And it has like a, I don't know, it has a lot of interesting sequel things going on. Where people love in a sequel to be like, now we're going to the city. A classic thing to do in the second movie. We're switching our main character to, there's a lot of women driving the story this time, which is kind of fun. pretty Hoggett-centric first movie. Did we need to break all of the bones? I can't get over it.

Did we have to break all of the bones in Farmer Hoggitt's body to get Mrs. Hoggett in the story more meaningfully? I don't know. I don't think so. I like Arthur Hoggett, but I'm not mad about this. He survives. He's fine. He was supposed to die. He was in the original version of the script.

George Miller was like so minute to he dies. I'm so excited to talk about what George Miller wanted to do with this. movie because what he manages to do anyways is still really fascinating. But we have, we've got, we've got to just, we've just got to get into it. Yes, we have an incredible guest joining us. He is an investigative journalist. He's the author of the book Against the State and the host of the new podcast, Natural Causes. It's James Stout. Hi. Hi. Welcome. Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to talk about this film. It was, it was wild. Yes. Truly. impossible to predict anything that's going to happen in this movie at any time.

What's your relationship, your history with this movie, James? I think it parallels my own experiences moving from the rural United Kingdom to the United States into a homogenous. Not so much, but what's my relationship? I loved the first book called The Sheep Pig in its literary form. Like Dick King Smith's books generally were a big, hell of a lot. name I think of it. I'd never really put those two together until they said it out loud. But I used to love those books when I was a kid. We had sheep growing up, so I've been around sheep a lot.

Not so much pigs. My mum worked at an agricultural college and they had pigs, so I'd see them. And, you know, my mom would have to muck them out and stuff. So I'd smell them. But got so much time around pigs, I guess, plenty of plenty of time around sheep. I used to watch sheep dog trials. As you do, enjoy a sheep dog trial. Who doesn't want a good sheep dog trial? And when I was, this is me, like an old man. On Sunday afternoons in the UK, there was a program called One Man and His Dog, which I hope they have, like, removed the gender limitations from.

But it focused on, there are definitely women who do it. It focused on sheepdog trials. This was like, you know, there's four channels on TV, and one of them is competitive sheep herding. So we'd always watch that and just, being around a lot of sheep dogs, it was always good to see someone who was shit hot with herding sheep.

So I've always enjoyed competitive sheepdog games. Apparently it's a thing in the US too, but I've never witnessed it here. I don't know anything about it. I love an agricultural show. So if you like, please reach out. When I was a kid, I used to go to the market a lot,

like where you could buy the animals, you know, and I'd save up my money and buy like different poultry, like different types of bird, just because that was a thing that was interesting to me when I was a kid. So like going to an agricultural show and seeing the, you know, where they compete, right, to be like, to be the best example of the breed, I guess. It's a bit problematic when you look into it further, but I'd love to see, I'd love to see like a variety of sheep in one place. So it is, like, like, agricultural shows are so fascinating because it's like, yes, they are, there are eerie for the reasons that you would expect.

There's an ominous nature to them. But the pageantry, I did not grow up around that. And my cousins moved to a more rural area. And we went to an agricultural fair. And the like, I don't know, it was, there were teenagers like giving these incredible speeches, auctioning off animals. They were like wearing prom dresses. I was like, this is, this is completely foreign to me.

I think I love it. I need more information. Yeah, the American ones are fascinating because you have that whole, is it 4H thing where the kids raise an animal? Yeah. Yeah. Did you guys see this one a couple of years ago where the kid wanted to keep the animal and then they sent the cops to seize it? No. No.

Yeah. One might argue that that young person received an education much more valuable than they would have received if they'd sold off that animal. But still, absolutely fucking tragic that, like, they mobilized state violence to take this animal away from someone who cared about it. That is ridiculous. I mean, that sounds like the third act of a babe movie. Because the animals are removed by the Gestapo. Yeah, seriously. I don't think it's New York.

I think it's many cities in one. But yeah, the animal control. It has a strong, like a strong ACAB theme going through the film, actually. Totally. Really surprising for me. Yeah, I was really struck by that on this rewatch. So wait, you were a fan of the book. Is Babe Pig in the City also adapted from a book or is this?

I don't think so. I don't think so. There's too much happening here for a book. There's not enough plot for it to have been about it. So you're a fan of Babe the book that the first movie was adapted from. Had you seen Babe Pig in the City before? I had not. I thought I took this as an opportunity.

I'm not like a big movie watch at my free time. It's not good at sitting down that long. So, like, but this one had been on my list. So when we were talking about what to do, I thought, let's watch Babe 2, Pig in the City. Incredible. Oh, my gosh. And then, Jamie, what's your relationship with this? I really thought I'd seen this movie.

But watching it back, I don't think, I think this movie would have had a stronger impression on me if I hadn't seen it. Difficult. Well, I mean, it's whatever. I'm old. I can handle it. But I have a feeling the reason I didn't see this when it came out because I would have been like the right age to see it. But I was famously terrified of movies where it's real life animals and their mouths are digitally manipulated, but they don't blink. Kind of really my personal childhood nightmare fuel.

And so I think it makes sense that maybe I wasn't brought to this movie. Boy, if that makes you uncomfortable, this is going to be a fascinating watch. Yeah. No, so I guess I hadn't seen it before. I consider myself a fan of the original in spite of it all. It is like such a beautiful, gentle story. And this movie is so weird. I don't, I haven't, I haven't, there's a, Mickey Rooney plays a character named Fugly

the Cloud. Like, like, I really could not get my head around what was going. on in this movie. And I will say it still does kind of bug me to this day. Especially because in the Babe movies, this movie is both very loud and very quiet at the same time in a way that I was like, this is just, it's bizarre because all of the animals with the scary mouths are very soft-spoken. Like they speak very gently.

They're not doing cartoony voices at all. Stephen Wright voice is one of the chimpanzees. I'm like, I guess why the hell not? I just really cannot get my head around how I feel about it. I'm excited to figure it out with both of you. I also found out just a fun fact of if either of you happen to be a Tom Waits fan, this is his favorite movie. He's said it many times.

Yeah, that he just, something about it. Something about it really sticks with him. But this movie was a kind of a famous flop that did. I think like just like many George Miller sequels, Mad Max Fury Road kind of being the big, big, big outlier. But like a lot of George Miller sequels, it just, it was too different from the original. It was too weird. But I appreciate it. I have no idea how this movie managed to get a G rating.

It makes no sense. It should be rated R. It did. Yeah. So I'm pretty sure this was. my first viewing and I had a hell of a time. It is the, it is a movie I would describe as unbearably loud and extremely quiet at the same time. Very few movies like it. Yeah, Caitlin, had you seen this before? Oh, yeah. Really? Oh my God. This is one of my favorite

movies. What? Yeah. Okay, you and Tom Waits have so much in common. I've always said that. Kindred spirits, me and Tom Waits. Yeah, no, this and the first babe movies were huge movies. I know movies of my childhood. Wow. They came out, this one came out in 98, so I would, I was 12. So I was like on the cusp of aging out of movies like this. But I was like, I don't care. Babe rocks.

I love him. I love his movies. Yeah, I've seen this dozens of times, but not very much as an adult. I mean, I guess that makes sense. I've only seen each of the Babe movies. as an adult, probably a handful of times total. So there was a lot that I did not remember about this movie. But I'm so excited to talk about it.

There's so much like, I don't know, the allegories you can draw from this movie. This movie's parallels to Paddington One are, I was thinking that. Yeah. It's, oh, I love this movie. It makes me cry. so hard during the scene when they like they come in and raid the hotel that is very sad i feel like they're they're really putting a lot of trauma on the pig in this one it's and it's and it's and it is to a narrative end but i'm like whoo whew we just have five-year-olds uh going through it yeah well i

guess so to to both of your points of like not expecting what ends up happening in this movie when you see this for the first time when you're 12 you don't really question it you're just like, oh, of course, yeah, babe goes to the city, and then he stays in a hotel for dogs. The hotel gets raided by animal ice agents, like, and he becomes this, like, Christ, like, figure partway through the movie. Like, of course all of that happens. I know. I think I was just, I was prepared for a very different movie. And because it's the George Miller movie, of course, it's like, there's a lot more going on. It is ACAB. It is, like, critical of the state in a way that you're kind of, I sort of thought he was going to like go to a baseball game or something or like go to school.

Certainly not. Certainly not. Oh my gosh. So I guess shall we take a quick break and then come back for the recap? Let's do it. The music you love. Your favorite radio stations. Everywhere you go.

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The WNBA playoffs are about to begin. The talent is insane and the personalities are giving main character energy. And of course, the fans love it. But 30 years ago, when the league first started, it was a different story. I remember sitting with a couple of male writers all whining about, oh, what are they going to do

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I'm Nancy Grace. On crime stories, we go beyond headlines to examine evidence, challenge the story we're fed, and pursue justice for victims and their families. Please join us at Crime Stories with Nancy Grace on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you find your podcasts. Hope you join us. I'll see you there, friend. So I'll give a really quick recap of the first Babe movie.

So Babe is a little pig that gets rescued from a slaughterhouse and ends up on the farm of Arthur and Esme Hoggett. Babe befriends the other animals on the farm, particularly a sheepdog named Fly, who sort of becomes his adoptive mother. Man, I missed her in this movie. I like her. She's only there for a little glimpse. And Fly eventually reveals to Babe that pigs are eaten by humans and that that's typically all they're considered to be good for. But then Babe discovers that he has a knack for sheep herding, though he approaches it differently than the sheep dogs do because Babe simply politely asks the sheep to do what he needs them to do and they are happy to comply. So Arthur Hoggett is like, whoa, maybe I should enter my pig into the sheep dog, sheep herding competition, which he does.

And against all odds, Babe perfectly herds the sheep and wins the competition. And then Babe Pig in the City opens pretty much right where that movie leaves off and heads into an absolute nightmare scenario. I'm so excited to hear you try and summarize this. Oh, I'm ready. The fact that they don't even have a weekend to sort of bask in the success of the events of Babe won. No. Immediately. Immediately.

Well, I'll let you take it. But I was like, oh, my God. Yeah, no, it's wild. So Babe and Arthur Hoggett, played by James Cromwell, return home after this victory at the competition. And the community is cheering them on. Babe receives all of these invitations to participate in various fairs and other sheepherding competitions. But Arthur just wants a simple, quiet life on his farm. So he and his wife, Esme, kind of just ignore those invitations.

But then one day, Babe causes an accident that leaves Arthur badly injured. At the bottom of a well. Yeah. Okay, no, we have to pause there. I'm sorry. We toss the human protagonist, beloved, nominated for an Oscar. Two minutes into the sequel, he's at the bottom of the well, every bone in his body's broken. Shattered.

I'm going to quote from a Lit Hub article that kind of exhaustively explores the production of Babe Pig in the City that was published in 2024 really quickly. Because just in the opening sequence, in early drafts with the script, Farmer Hoggett was actually supposed to die at the bottom of that well. One of the nosy neighbors was originally murdered by Esme and Miss Flume as a comeuppance for being a snitch. Wow. Beyond dark punchline, they actually shot, but later cuts. Oh my gosh.

So multiple people died in the original draft of the script. Okay. Yeah. Incredible. Yeah, no one seems to die in this version. No. It's still pretty brutal, though. Yeah, he goes up and down the well.

He doesn't just fold down the well. well, right? He goes down, comes up, gets waxed by a water pump and then falls down again. Like, it's, it really goes through it. Yeah. That does kind of feel like unique to George Miller where it's, it's like a loony tunes injury, but then you're shown the real life consequences to a loony tunes injury. Where it's like, well, he's not going to be in the movie because he got like a wily coyote style injury. Yeah. Yeah, right. And then he's, but now he's in a full body. So this happens. And Babe feels really bad about it.

He feels so guilty and he wants to redeem himself, especially after the Hoggitt's bills start piling up and men from the bank show up, presumably threatening to foreclose on the farm. So Arthur's wife, Esmey Hoggett, played by Magda Subansky, goes back to those invitations that Babe had received and decides to accept one for a state fair

where they will receive a generous appearance fee, which could save the farm. So Esme and Babe board a plane to head to the fair, but after a mishap at the airport where a drug-sniffing dog inadvertently accuses Babe of smuggling drugs... Already. A-Cab includes Snoop the dots.

Yes. So Esme gets detained, which causes her and Babe to miss their connecting flight and miss the state fair. What's more, it's a few days before the next return flight home. So now Esme and Babe are stranded in the titular city. And it really is the city. like if you're with which i kind of like because i i thought especially with the like the the drug airport incident i was like okay this is going to be like a scathing critique of like american culture specifically but it's really the city every every city and the state violence and surveillance

that comes with living in most large cities yeah the production design of this movie i think is awesome and when you see like a city scape there are structures and buildings and landmarks from like a dozen cities across the world. Yeah, it's crazy they got Venice in there. Like they got like casino Venice in there. That one really hit me hard. Yeah. It is fascinating.

And it's lit. It kind of reminded me of cats the way that it's lit. But it's lit. I don't know. There is like a kind of, it's beautiful, but also, again, just feels a little bit ominous. There's like some of my favorite cities in movies, very few people seem to be there. It's like the population in the city is 95% cats and dogs, which is fun. Yes, yes.

So, Asme and Babe are stuck in the city and they need a hotel that allows animals. Asme eventually finds one where she and Babe can stay. the hotel manager played by Mary Steen has to pretend like they don't allow animals because of all of these like strict city rules and regulations. But she welcomes them inside and shows Asma and Babe around. We see that the hotel is full of a bunch of animals. Doesn't seem like humans really stay there. It's mostly just animals. Cats and dogs particularly.

And she warns Esme about inspectors who might come snooping around the hotel, especially because she has these nosy neighbors who they have to be wary of. And then Esme steps out to make a phone call. And while she's gone, a capuchin monkey comes into the room and steals her suitcase. So Babe runs after it and ends up in the room of a family of chimpanzee. of chimpanzees. And at this point, I'm like, mm-mm, mm-mm, mm-mm.

The way that the chimpanzees mouths are moving is not of nature. Yeah. Honestly, though, for 98, the CGI that they're doing is pretty good. Absolutely not. For 1998. Absolutely not.

Anyway, these chimps are easy, Zudi, and Bob. Bob is the one voiced by Stephen Wright. And then there's also an orangutan there named Thelonius. And these apes are all pretty dismissive and unkind toward babe. And then their handler comes in, a human man named Uncle Fugley, played by Vicky Rooney. What a fascinating choice. Yeah, there's so many names in the world.

That's a... Each word of that sentence more interesting than the last, because it's like, Not just a weird decision to make. It's also very obviously a very expensive decision to make. For somebody who, he doesn't really speak and is not in very much the movie. I guess because a lot of the stuff shot was like too scary to kids. There was more Uncle Fugly and people were like, we're not interested. And that's wild because what ends up in the movie is also pretty scary for kids.

Yeah. Oh my gosh. And also the way Uncle Fugly. Fugley is characterized. He only like murmurs. You can't really tell what he's saying, but that's like intentional. He only seems to eat junk food. He just has like jars of jelly beans and like ice cream all over his mouth.

And also he's a circus clown. And like I guess semi successful. Unclear. Right. I would say I don't have enough information to know what Uncle Fugley's whole deal is. But don't worry. he won't be around for long. No.

So he comes in and he locks Babe up in a chest. Oh, I was forgotten about this. Yeah. He like kidnaps Babe more or less. And then Esme comes back to the hotel and discovers that Babe is missing. And Uncle Fugly lies and tells her that he saw a pig leave the hotel a few minutes prior. So she heads out to search for Babe. Yeah.

But she's a fish out of water in the. city and accidentally causes this big chaotic raucous in the middle of the city and she ends up covered in goo and then she gets arrested she's covered a goo for the rest of the movie yeah the goo hardens and she has to deal with that yeah listeners should know that they don't call babe babe they call babe pig right which which is what leads to a misunderstanding with the police oh that's true she goes out into like like what seems to be Venice Beach. Yeah.

In L.A. As opposed to Venice, Venice, which is also there. But yeah, Venice Beach, she goes out and starts being like, pig, pig, and there are cops around. And then they're also like rollerblading goths or something. Yeah. And they all think that she is talking to them.

So that's why this whole kind of fight breaks out. out and she gets arrested. Meanwhile, Babe has been roped into the mini traveling circus that Uncle Fugly and his apes put on. And Babe is willing to do this because they told him that they will pay him. And again, he's trying to redeem himself and save the farm that he knows is in jeopardy. But Babe's accident-prone-ness strikes again. Well, it's his first day working for Uncle Fugley.

circus, Caitlin, give him a break. He wasn't signing up for this. No, he wasn't. But that's one of the ways that he's similar to Paddington is that he's a little clumsy and he's always causing big mishaps with his clumsiness. And so Babe messes up

the performance that they're doing in a hospital. And he causes Uncle Fugley to trip and fall. The set catches fire and comes crashing down. The sprinklers are on like everything. is chaos there.

Really quick. So that scene was also, I guess, heavily edited to get a lot of scarier stuff out of that sequence. I read somewhere that George Miller's favorite children's movie is Pinocchio, which I think kind of helps this sequence make a little more sense because it is pretty similar to like the scary circus thing. But there used to be, okay, so I'm quoting from the Lit Hub article again, Babe nearly got pushed into the fire during the hospital inferno until that scene was rejigged. He was also sadistically tricked by the chimps into clambering up a pyramid of junk and tumbling into the canal, which is like another Uncle Fugly scene that went away. When the animals are impounded, there were rabbits smoking cigarettes, hair products being tested on cats in all sorts.

James Cromwell says that's a vivisection laboratory. There were animals with posts drilled into their skulls and sores cancers. It was, oh my God. What? That is wild. I don't even know what... Does they respond to that? Present it without comment.

I don't know. What a dark place to go for a children's movie. I know. Which I guess it's like the dark stuff that remains it, but they may just have had nothing else to cut to. They only had shots of a rabbit smoking cigarettes. It was the 90s. People did stuff back then.

I'm now wondering, like, was that early CGI? Or did they train a 90s rabbit to smoke cigarettes? Well, surprisingly, I think we talked about this in our first episode on Babe of just like the history of animals and movies and how did these movies fare with the Humane Society. And both Babe movies are humane society. They've got the seal of approval. But that's also complicated. Yes, which we discuss in quite a bit of detail in our episode about the first babe movie.

And we'll touch on that here as well when we get to the discussion. But yeah, from what I understand, there's a lot of like fake prosthetic animals. There's CGI. There were precautions taken to keep animals out of danger. But I also have some questions. Yeah, there are certain. things where it's like how how do you do this safely?

Yeah. But anyway, the performance at the hospital goes awry and defeated the animals plus Uncle Fugly returned to the hotel. And then kind of randomly, Uncle Fugley is carted off on a stretcher. He seems to be lightly dead. Yeah, they do go through the trouble of,

I'm like wondering if this was like, I kept trying to spot. studio notes. I love trying to figure out like what was changed because they add a little sound of the, what is it? Like the boop, boop, boop. I'm guessing that they added that to assure you that he is not dead. But he doesn't come back. So my theory is he's supposed to be dead, but they were like, you can't kill Mickey Rooney after one scene. No. Also, it would have made more sense if whatever caused him to have to be taken to the hospital happened during that fiasco, the hospital during the circus thing.

During the fire at the hospital that he calls. Right, right. But it's an unrelated. It's an unrelated thing back at the hotel, which must be like something happened that was cut out of the movie. Yeah, the Wikipedia page, I think, kind of does some backflips and says it's a food coma, which it just suggests like he ate too many jelly beans at home. Like a literal food coma. Yeah, I guess so. I mean, maybe he's a D.K.A. Maybe, uh, maybe he's a, maybe, uh, maybe he's a if he has diabetes and we don't know.

But so many holes in the plot here. They went to such graphic detail to take Farmer Hogget out the plot earlier and then Uncle Fugley just drops. Yeah. Off screen and then we see him get

carted off on a stretcher. It's very bizarre. But the point is now there are no humans in the hotel because the hotel manager woman, she fucked off to somewhere else. So it's just a bunch of animals and they're all alone. Babe has no idea

where his human, Esme, Hoggett, is, and he's really hungry. And so are all the other animals. So the apes go out into the world in search of food and Babe follows them. But the apes continue to be pretty dismissive and deceitful toward Babe. And they trick him. And Babe and Babe and ends up face to face with a couple of vicious guard dogs that start chasing him around the city. Ooh, and then there's like a really powerful moment in the middle of this scene. Wait, which part? I think the part of this movie I was most affected by us when Babe turns to the dogs that are chasing him and says, why? It's like, exactly.

Yeah. Yeah, this is where things start to get really emotional for me. So during this chase sequence, this gets the attention of a bunch of street dogs and cats who start following the chase that's unfolding. Eventually it's just Babe and the one dog whose chain gets tangled up in something and he's now dangling from a bridge. And his head is submerged in water. And even though this dog was about to kill Babe, the little pig swims over and saves the dog's life. He like pushes a little boat under the dog. And all of the animals witnessed this, including the crowd of street animals who now revere Babe as a Christ figure.

Including the dog who was just chasing Babe, who declares that whatever the person, pig says goes. So Babe invites the group of cold and hungry animals into the hotel and distributes whatever food they have, which is just a jar of jelly beans. And so the animals are like kind of fed. Babe also decrees that cats and dogs have to set aside their differences and try to get along. I like that Babe does accept being elected God, but he's a fair God. Yeah, he dives right into like benevolent totalitarianism with gay abandon. It's remarkable to see. It's like a platonic philosopher king, you know.

He was like he was ready for it though. He stepped right into that role. He was. He was like, you do need my small town wisdom. You city heathens. Yeah. Yeah, he really rises to the challenge. And so he's like making different decrees.

Then the female chimpanzee Zudy reveals that she is extremely greggnant and then gives birth that night to twins. I have to say, if I did not that whole that scene, their mouths are moving and then she reveals she's very pregnant, which is maybe anti-animal of me, but I was like, that's gross. And then she kind of goes into, she quietly goes into labor. screen and her chimpanzee husband is kissing her pregnant chimpanzee stomach and I'm just like this is not rated G I don't know what it's maybe I'm I'm likely the problem here but I don't want to see all this keep that to yourself it also just happens out of nowhere like it was not established that she was pregnant so you're just like how she's at work until like uh it's doing physical labor I mean, it's rough.

Animal rights abuses, workers, you know, labor abuses, all this kind of stuff. Genuine question, do chimpanzees look pregnant like that? Do they look like pregnant people like that? I would imagine so because humans and chimps share 98% of their DNA. So I feel like they probably get, yeah, like pregnant bellies. James, do you know? You're our nature experts. Do you have a pregnant chimpanzee?

Growing up, I wasn't around that many chimpanzees. I'm guessing. I mean, other animals, you can tell when they're pregnant, you know, they need more food and stuff. And especially when they're, like, you know, getting ready to have their calves, you can or go lambs or whatever they're having. I don't know what a baby chimpanzee is called a chimpling. Oh. I'm making that up. I like it.

Okay. But I will, but again, sorry to continue being. I love animals. Don't get me wrong. But these ones are scary looking. and she quietly goes into labor in the middle of a scene. No one reacts. She's like, yeah, I think they're on the way.

And then you see talk about Fugly to the scariest looking like. Those are like puppet chimp babies. Yes. I mean, you can tell. But they look. I think my parents made the right call by not for me to see. They remind me of the baby from Twilight. They look like Renezme. Oh, my.

Like the big eye They're pretty creepy looking I'll give you that Yeah But it's it's supposed to be nice That Zudy gave birth And so Babe Leads all of the animals

In a song Which Ferdinand The Duck Overhires I forgot to mention him earlier Oh yeah shit He's yeah he's the only other Carryover animal

From the first one right Yeah that Because you see Fly and oh, I forget the Hugo weaving dog's name. Just glad he's there. Just glad there is a Hugo weaving dog. They're in one scene at the very beginning.

They basically encourage Babe to go and try to redeem himself. But other than that, you don't see most of the animals from the first movie. But Ferdinand the Duck is there. He flew to the city. He followed the plane that Esme and Babe were on. And so he has finally made it to the city. and he overhears the song, and so he shows up at the hotel and reunites with Babe.

And everything seems really nice. But the neighbor lady across the way narks on the hotel. She's a NIMBY. For sure. Yeah. And so just then a group of officers from the Animal Regulation Authority burst in and start raiding the place, kidnapping animals to take to the pound.

this is the part that really makes me ball my eyes out and then they try to take Babe away but he gets loose so that he can save a goldfish whose bowl had shattered is so

and and then the inspectors leave with a truck full of animals that they have abducted. There's a part where a little dog named Fleelick who uses and like assistive wheel apparatus to help him walk.

He latches onto the truck and gets dragged along beside it for a while. And then he gets flung off and nearly dies. And he's about to go to like doggy heaven. But then babe kind of like calls him back like a god would. Yes. And like rescues flea lick. And so the two of them, plus Ferdinand the Duck, set off to try to save the animals who were just taken away. It is interesting that, like, the heaven that Flalik goes to kind of looks like a David Lynch movie a little bit.

It's like a very, it looks like the beginning of blue velvet. I could see it. Yeah. It's kind of fun. I love, I think Fleelick is my favorite new character. I love Fleelick. voiced by Adam Goldberg

fascinating why not yeah exactly as with all the voice castes why not every point in this film why not is my prevailing at no point

if you if you took a note of where you're at and then went on 10 minutes at no point could you ever predicted where this shit was going no it's wild

absolutely not but I don't mind at least not with this movie it's beautiful so the So the animals have been taken away in a truck. Babe and friends are trying to figure out where they went. And so Babe uses his nose, which the drug sniffing dog taught him to do earlier on.

And so Babe kind of sniffs out and, like, kind of tracks the animals who were taken away. And so they eventually... Babe is always learning new, like, dog qualities. True. That's something that's consistent. Yeah. Yes. But then I remembered that pigs...

at least certain pigs are like really they do have a really keen sense of smell and then I was reminded of the movie called pig that nicholas cage is in has anyone seen this i haven't seen it now it is such a bizarre movie it's a movie about so nicholas cage has a pig that he uses to like sniff out truffles and then he sells the truffles to chefs that have like really expensive you know five-star or Michelin restaurants, whatever. In the city, the pig gets abducted and taken to the city. So basically, the pig is also about a pig in the city. Anyway.

We love a pig in the city. We love a pig in the city. But anyway, I think pigs smell well. They can smell a truffle. They can smell a truffle for sure. Yeah, I mean, that's what we know. That's what we know, yes. If there are any pig experts as our listeners, let us know some pig facts.

if you would. But please. Anyway, they eventually arrive at the pound, Babe, Ferdinand, and Fleelick. They sneak inside and they release the animals from their cages. And speaking of getting released, Esme gets released from jail and returns to the hotel only to discover that Babe and the other animals are not there. But the hotel manager woman is back and she's devastated about. the animal is missing and also her uncle Fugley is dead maybe really really lovely

scene between the two of them here I think and it totally passes the back til test yeah just a lady who owns a hotel have a name I don't think so oh right she does I halfway through I was like okay we're good and then I was like but does she has a name and then I had no one referred to her by name from thenceforth so I didn't go back and rewatch. It's a technicality from what I can tell is because she's credited as Miss Flume. We don't get a first name, which I feel like is a red flag. And we might only know she's Miss Flume because she is fugly Flum's knees. So that is, that's a good point. I didn't, because she's credited as having a name, but I don't know if we ever hear it in, in. That's a

professional touch that. You check the credits. You didn't think to do that. but also on on on iMdb she's credited as the landlady but also i think the caveat of the bechtel test that is like okay is it a named character that implies like is it a character who has like a decent amount of screen time who's an important character versus like a tertiary character who's in one scene and we never learn their name or never learn anything about them but but i do think that like it is it is a valid critique to be like she's she's in the movie so much for us not having a clear first name for her.

They're having a lot of fun with names. Like it wouldn't have been, it wouldn't have been hard here. Yeah. It's true. Yeah, we've got Zootie. We got Fugly. Thelonius. Thelonius.

Yeah. I love, I like Thelonius a lot. Fleelic. Right. Yeah. Yeah, give her a name. Anyway, she, whatever her name is, and Esme, set off to try to retrieve the animals. Back at the pound, the animals.

the animals sneak out, make their way through a hospital, perhaps the same one that had the circus mishap at, not sure. And then through a restaurant kitchen, which is where Esme and Miss Flume link up with the animals and then chaos ensues as the animals and the kitchen staff and Esme who is now wearing Uncle Fugley's clown costume. For reasons we can talk about later. Yes. Yeah. But they all kind of like crash this fancy banquet that's happening and they're bouncing around.

They're bungeeing around. A chef is trying to steal Babe to, I think, cook him and eat him or serve him or something. At some point in the course of this movie, Babe has acquired kind of like, a punk toupee and he's got a spiky collar and spiky collar

it goes hard yeah yes but after a lot of chaos Esme saves babe and then they all

return to the Hogget farm which they were able to save via the hotel manager Miss Flum she rents out her hotel, which gets turned into a nightclub.

I think this confirms, for what it's worth, I think this confirms that Uncle Fugley has passed. Right. I don't think he's with us anymore because she leaves the country. Right, because she goes to the farm with them, and she brings all of the animals that were in the hotel to the farm and lives there with the hoggits, and I guess shares her money with them.

I was like, I don't really understand the dynamic here, but... It kind of seems like a communal living situation. I don't know. Yeah. It's nice. And then the movie ends with Arthur Hoggett saying the famous line, that'll do, pig, that'll do. Begging in the question, how long was Babe in the city and how far is this flashback

that his whole, every bone in his body has recovered? Well, okay. How long is I didn't even think about that? because they say that the next return flight is a few days away. So it seems like they're only in. But we do flash forward to, it's like we've had time for the hotel to be sold and stuff. Like we could be flashing for a year.

They've built a nightclub in there. Right. Okay. Right, right, right. But I do like that we confirm at the end. He's good. He's good for Babry, which will tragically not happen. No.

Maybe they're still arguing about how many really creepy, scary things. they can have it. Maybe they made it. It's just got too much goal. Oh my gosh. Well, let's take another quick break and we'll come back to discuss. The music you love. I heart radio. Your favorite radio stations. Everywhere you go. The podcasts everyone's talking about.

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No subscription. Always free. Grab the free app. I heart radio. Download the free. Is there an epidemic against literature? More specifically, black literature. Our books are being banned, scanned by AI, and destroyed.

I'm Jack Quees Peace Thomas, and on this season of the Blacklit podcast, we're outside asking some of the custodians of our stories, teachers, and our modern day writers. and our modern-day writers. Why? They don't want a whole bunch of little Ella bakers, Michael Maxes and Martin Luther King, running around. They want to build children who have no empathy.

That's really the ultimate goal. We want books that don't make white kids feel bad. So is the war on literacy and information or our ability to connect? We want people to know how sexy reading is and how fun they could be and not always associated with education. It could be an escape.

It could be entertainment. And that is the beauty of reading. It can be all of those things. And considering this is Black Reading Month, the only real question is, what are you reading next? Listen to Black Lit from the Black Effect Podcast Network on our iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hi, it's Alec Baldwin.

This season on my podcast, here's the thing I'm speaking with more artists, policymakers, and performers like actor Stephen Root. I think for me to be any good or for any character act to be any good, you've got to put enough of yourself and your empathy for people in it. I'm a people watcher. You see that guy going down the dream and go, yeah, I can use that. Open Igloo co-founder, Alia Mohamed. I love staying on top of what is going on in our city, what is going on in city politics, what is on renter's minds, and taking all of that knowledge to build a platform that hopefully is going to make New York City better in the long run. And actress and singer Melissa Eriko.

Partnership took on a whole other meaning when I started making my own work. It's like you with a great actress or actor. It was best to come out of your trailer, full of life, and just face another person who's full of life. And don't talk. Listen to Here's the Thing on the IHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Bobby Bones. Join me and former NFL quarterback Matt Castle every Wednesday on our podcast, lots to say with me Bobby Bones and Matt Castle. We also bring in friends, they're mostly Matt's friends, who are current or former NFL players, some of the biggest names in music and entertainment,

and then we have some really great conversations that can pretty much go anywhere. The great Pac-Man Jones. After the game, the whole national task force for police officers was at the stadium. Like, hey, buddy, yeah, you, Adam. Come up. And one of my favorite segments we do is called Situational. awareness where Bobby and I give each other real-life situations and figure out what we'd actually do. You're in training camp and the rookie quarterback has one good throwing session in front of the media.

Suddenly everybody online says he should start over you week one. How do you handle this? You just go back out to practice the next day and wait for him to mess up. Listen to lots to say with Bobby Bones and Matt Castle on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The WNBA playoffs are about to begin. The talent is insane and the personalities are giving main character energy. And of course, the fans love it. But 30 years ago, when the league first started, it was a different story.

I remember sitting with a couple of male writers all whining about, oh, what are they going to do if they break a nail? No one's going to show up. But from the very beginning, there were two teams that captured everyone's attention. The comments were the real deal. I mean, come on. Liberty never gave up. They never stopped fighting. I knew that rivalry was going to be amazing from the beginning. I'm Kerry Champion, and this is biggest rivalries of all time, season two.

The New York Liberty versus the Houston Commons, the very first rivalry of the WNBA. They picked us to finish last, and they picked them to finish first. That's all you need to know. I remember looking around thinking, this is going to change things. Basketball was going to have this fundamental impact on the way people, viewed women athletes. Listen to biggest rivalries of all time on the IHard radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Is there bad blood between you in the comments as you guys meet again in the championship? Oh, we're coming back to win. Back to school is here and you know what that means. Dirty Rush is on. As campuses come back to life and Rush Week kicks into high gear, we're taking you inside the mysterious journey of a sorority girl from play. pledging to initiation and just about everything in between. Joining me, Gia Judice, Daisy Kent, and Jen Bessler.

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Listen to Dirty Rush on the IHard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Every case has a story. Every victim has a voice. But will it be heard? I mean, is he grace? On crime stories, we go beyond headlines to examine evidence. challenge the story we're fed and pursue justice for victims and their families. Please join us at Crime Stories with Nancy Grace on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you find your podcasts. Hope you join us. I'll see you there, friend. And we're back. James, is there anything that sticks out to you that you... How do you want to kick off the discussion? There's so many things to choose from. Yeah, I don't know.

This was a wild one. I did not expect this at all. I expected like pastoral, idyllic, contrast with city. Didn't get that. As soon as they arrived in the United States to stay in the casino which pretends to be Venice, I knew shit was going to be weird. I genuinely don't know where to begin. I enjoyed the anti-police, anti-capital theme, or the anti-state violence theme, I should say.

Like, I thought that was nice. Like the animal inspectors were the bad guys. and the bank. And the bank? The bank. Yeah. Yeah, there's that quote from the narrator that says, men with pale faces and soulless eyes show up at the farm.

Such men could only have come from one place. The bank. Fun. Yeah. Yeah, there is a lot of, I don't know. Generally, like this movie falls firmly, like, anti-systems of power in general, which is great. The ways they choose to do it,

are often cut up. Bunkers. But I appreciate the sentiment. It is like, yeah, this movie is so wild where I feel like you get all of these big comedic set pieces and then you have to face very real world consequences for these big comedic set pieces. Yeah, it switched back and forth from like slapstick

to like hyper-real in a very odd way. I wonder how they waterboarded the dog without... Okay. So many things that we... we haven't discussed. They're really quick because I forgot to mention it during the recap. There is, there's just all of these, you can tell so much of this movie was like cut at some point in production because there's so many dropped threads that you're like, what the hell was that? And you just will not find out. I think one of my favorites was at the airport they encounter

a man who's half man half pig question mark. Yes. He becomes a judge later. He just, okay, yes, he does come back. That's a different guy. I think that's a different. Okay, they're just, they're just, several sharing the same face people. But he's like, oh,

I know a place where you can stay, a hotel you can stay with an animal. And then they reveal that he is, I think we're supposed to believe he's part man, part pig.

But again, it just goes away. Oh, did he just have an affinity for them? No. Perhaps because he slightly resembles a pig

with his kind of like turned up snout. I don't know. I couldn't tell if it was a magical thing, if it was like, a vaguely cruel joke. I really couldn't figure it out.

Yeah, I didn't know what was going on there. I did not expect that when the camera panned around to do your face reveal. I still don't know how to feel about it. No, I don't know. As with so many things where you're like, the intention is so impossible to guess at that you're like, I guess we just have to accept that that that made the final cut. Right, because the same thing happens later that you just mentioned that the judge who is a different, different character,

different, I think actor who plays him, is lenient with Esme, as she's like pleading her case to try to get out of jail. And she's explaining, oh, this is my, you know, this is our pig and I have to go find him and, you know, recounting the whole story. And then the judge who also looks sort of like a pig

is like, I love pigs. I understand. You can go. You're released from jail. So yeah, really bizarre thing. We don't really know what to make of it. We just don't know. Back to the treatment of animals and like how did they, like the dog being waterboarded

scene, the scene where Fleelic is like latched onto the truck and then he's being dragged along in his wheelchair-like apparatus. Which are real. I mean, my friend's dog, shout out Bonnie. Oh, yeah. Oh, definitely. has that same, yeah. Yeah, I've seen some dogs on wheels like that, yeah.

Definitely. So I tried to find some information about, like, these stunts. How did they do them? Because to me, it looks quite real and as if they were using real animals. So I found from the American Humane Society's website, just pulling a quick quote here, says, quote, according to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the Animal trainers, no animal was harmed in the making of this film. Animatronics, prosthetic animals, and SPFX, special effects, were used to simulate all

scenes, which seemed to place the animal in jeopardy, unquote. So they were using effects and puppets and stuff, I guess, I hope. I do think so. I mean, I also kind of struggled to, to, to, find like clear information about this. What we know is that there are about 800 animals in the production of this movie. It does sound like there is like, you know, the appropriate amount of trainers. Again, I'm just like so interested in how this stuff is made where I guess in post-production,

the editors of this movie have to edit out in every scene a million clicking sounds and like incentivizing sounds to help the animals behave. So all of the sound kind of has to be wiped out of every shot to get the animals to look somewhere, whatever it is. I read, wait, where is this, that there were certain, okay, this is again from the Lit Hub article, which is pretty thorough, but this fact isn't cited, so take it with a grain of salt. Okay, so the cast included 80 pigeons, 100 pigs, 130 cats, 120 dogs, more than half of which came from dog shelters around Sydney, and were subsequently rehoused by members of the crew.

George Miller took home a chihuahua. the half dozen mice who serve as a Greek chorus kept breeding like crazy there were more than a hundred within weeks until their frisgier tendencies were somehow curbed again not sure what that means what does that mean yeah what are we talking about here were they spayed and neutered can you even

there's a lot of mice tick and then no one had the fact that I was like oh I'm interested in the citation here. No one had any idea whether chimps would get along with pigs until they gave it a whirl. So there are like suggestions that like I hope that that's not true. I hope that the humane society wouldn't sign off on, I don't know, let's find out. Like that seems quite dangerous. For sure. I'm not sure. I had in this last year, I, because the humane society, they have come under controversy over the years and in fact, connecting it. to the Babe expanded universe.

James Cromwell has renounced his lifetime achievement award from the Humane Society of the U.S. because as we talked about in our first Babe episode, I guess it's not as relevant here because he's not really in the movie. All his bones are broken the whole time. But that being in the first Babe movie radicalized James Cromwell. He became a, like he goes hard with all of his activism, but particularly with with his animal activism. I think most recently he got arrested,

supergluing his hand to the counter at Starbucks in protest of, like, products that were being used, I believe. He is a hardcore activist. He doesn't fuck around. I admire it quite a bit. He's very involved with PETA,

which there's plenty of controversy there as well, but I used to live across the street from the James Cromwell Center, which is a PETA-owned building. But anyways, That's to say like with the Humane Society grain of salt, but they also do good work. I don't know. Well, right, because as we talked about on our first Babe movie episode, in movies that have animals on screen, you'll often see in the credits something like, no animals were harmed during the making of this film, the American Humane Society, like monitored the production kind of thing. but sometimes animals will be harmed during productions and sometimes even die and they just use really colorful language to get around admitting that in the credits.

What do they say? They'll say something like, for example, I forget which movie it was that we talked about on that other episode, but that animals didn't die while the cameras were rolling, but they did when, you know, when a take one. wasn't being filmed or something like that. So the language was like, animal activity was monitored. No animals were harmed during the filming of the movie. Oh, sneaky. Sneaky. I see what they're doing.

Stuff like that. So, and listeners, if you want to hear more about that, if you're already a matron, great. If not, you can become a matron and listen to that episode. Yes. I'm pulling up the article we were talking about at the time. This was published in the Hollywood. reporter back in 2013. The article is titled directly. Animals were harmed and the movies that are cited in the investigation are Life of Pie and The Hobbit. I worked with the Humane Society earlier this year

on your film. My movie and I don't know it's it's interesting to me and this is based on my very limited experience on um i mean the the supervisors themselves were completely wonderful and very helpful and like could not have ensured the safety of my cat flee better but what i do find interesting and i would want to know more about is we were talking to them about like well what is your kind of day-to-day like and they're like oh well you know like one day i'm like on set at your house watching your house cat to make sure, you know, no one kicks him or whatever. And then the next day, you're on set with, like, tigers, you know, like, it just seems like there is a wide range of...

Is this the feline expert, or is this person just operating across the animal kingdom? I wish I knew more, because I guess I assumed, and maybe this is true, but just based on the few folks that we, because we had people from the Humane Society on set for, I think, four days total. And it seems like there's, I'm curious how specialized their work is, not to doubt their credentials, but it seems like if you,

if the same person being dispatched to make sure my cat is okay, is also the person being dispatched to see if two tigers are going to be safe on set. I'm just, I'm really curious about the inner workings of it. And yeah, I'm not sure.

Sometimes the big cat's a little cat are like more similar. Like you've seen when they give a lion catnip and it just uses it shit. Maybe that's all they do. That person has a bag of catnip. They have exactly one intervention they can make. It's a tiger to eat someone.

They just sprinkle a little bit of catniff and hope it's the best. But again, going back to this movie, there are so many complex stunts and like just, I mean, the main cat, like, the protagonist of this movie is an animal. Most of the main characters are animals. There's so much animal. activity happening. A lot of it involves what seems to be very dangerous stunts. And I just, I, I wasn't able to find much information about it, except for that one quote from the Humane Society's website. But yeah, I just, oh, and then also, I mean, I think you can question the ethics of the use of really any animal in a movie, which we also talked about in the first Babe episode. But I feel

like especially with great apes because this movie has chimps and an orangutan and those animals again they're like our cousins they share 96 to 98% of DNA with humans they're like they're our kin and then to like have them in a movie and just make them do stuff I don't know I just I feel really weird about it it's weird when it's like like I've worked with animals right like my dad's never not had a job where his dog attends. It's different. I feel like when the, like, through, maybe we could, like, if we go back thousands of years and not selectively breed dogs to herd animals or to fetch dead animals, that maybe we could allow them more autonomy.

But, like, when the dog is, like, so wired to do that, it's kind of cool to be like, yeah, you're better at this and me. And together we're cooperating to do a thing that neither of us could do alone. That's sick. And we're, like, colleagues and, like, each of our different strengths makes it stronger as a group. That's not the case when you're making a chimp dress up in like a clown outfit. Right. Like I don't know. Yeah, it did feel a little gross. I know. I truly don't know how to, because like you're saying, James, there's like such a complicated, like, it goes back to how animals are bred and treated within society going back hundreds of years before cameras start rolling on baby in the city. But also, I don't know. I mean, I think

about that a lot where the saying is like, don't work with kids and animals. And it's like, well, maybe because kids and animals should not be put in the position to be the leads of movies. Maybe that's like why people feel that way. I don't know. Yeah, I wish that we had more information. I think it's some of it's like bizarre that we don't. In a movie where you can go five minutes without seeing a person. Yeah. Which is amazing. But also, I don't know.

I'm curious about it because this is the last, I mean, George Miller continues to make animal movies, but they get animated after this. He goes tap dancing penguins after this. Happy feet. Happy feet, too. Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

I, it's bizarre. But speaking of the humans that are in this movie, I think it's pretty significant that Esme Hoggett is the main lead character who is a human, because this is one of the only movies I've ever seen where the main human character is a middle-aged fat woman. Although I will say that the character is aged up. I think she's meant to... Yeah, she's in her 30s. Give her a break. Well, the actor is in her 30s, Magda Subansky.

the character, I think, is aged up to be like 50s, it seems maybe. Seems like, yeah. But even so, like, for this person to be the human that we are seeing most predominantly on screen, now could you argue that there are jokes and perhaps whole set pieces that are there at the expense of her body? Perhaps yes. But I also feel like the movie generally takes her pretty seriously. and while there are like other characters who are unkind to her,

I don't think the movie is especially unkind to her. Yeah, I think the moment that really stuck out to me, they're mostly towards the end, because I think it really is kind of case to case where there's a few, like when the goo dress cracks or whatever, I'm like, you know what, I'm going to give that one specifically a pass because that would be funny if it happened to any character. I think of any size.

But I think the thing that bugged me the most was her saying, like, do you have anything that fits me? And then she has to wear, you know, Fugly the Clown's clothing. And then there's like the inflation suit. And, yeah, that, you know, hopefully like, you know, Magda Savanski, who, I don't know. I mean, what I know about her is she's a queer icon. And it seems like a lot of her original comedy characters kind of play into this.

so I'm like if she's comfortable with it I'm not gonna you know say boo but yeah the the sort of like climactic set piece did feel like it was poking fun at her but I agree and that it's like we as the audience are not supposed to I don't know it feels like the bar is so fucking low but I think we're so like when we're we're looking at a woman who is not young and is not thin I think we're just like never encouraged to empathize with her or root for her or really think about her and yeah that this this movie

actively asks you and and centers her again I don't think we need to break all her husband's bones for that to happen but I am glad that she is the central the central character in this and that and that she you know like has a ton of agency she does kind of win the day at the end she makes a friend Miss Flume. Yeah, I think she's a great character. I agree. I think she gets a much better showing in this one than the first one, right? Yes, for sure.

First one not so great in that regard. But there is a little bit of carryover. The other thing I noticed that felt like a carryover where she is, she's portrayed as, if I'm remembering correctly, much nagier. Yeah. And I feel like the callback in this one is the like, no one had ever heard a woman talk. so much in court before or a person

talks like she's yapping yapping yapping yappy like they're definitely playing the hits but also asking you to like love and empathize this character it's I don't know right could it be worse question mark I don't know it's nice that the

the lady who owns a hotel his name is maybe Miss Flume like I was being like oh well they do a romance arc for this lady because she lives on her own with her animals and they didn't and I thought that was nice she got to just like be happy with her animal friends in her hotel yeah who all like and again she is like to your point james she is

like a single eccentric woman who lives with a bunch of animals and we love her and we're rooting for her and we empathize with her there's like i don't know i guess like george miller's working his way up to furiosa he's learning to empathize with women along the way there's definitely a misconduct mistakes here, but like they don't, I guess it's like, it doesn't feel mean-spirited, even though those mistakes are, are definitely there. And then we have the, I guess, the coded genders of the various animal characters, which are, again, this movie is so weird to talk about. Are we supposed to think the pink poodle, she, she's her deal. What are we supposed to think about her? That one had plot holes for me.

Who's grooming and dying this stray poodle? That's true. That's true. Yeah, she really... Because they don't come out like that. Like, I think maybe there's an ignorance there, but they just, like, they don't actually pop out like that. You do, there's quite a lot of effort.

It's, yeah, definitely some Looney Tunes logic. I wanted to read a quote from the poodle. From a poodle. From the poodle. I'm quoting the poodle here. Wait, where's my, sorry, let me find it. But yeah, like she is kind of portrayed as like Lady of the Night question mark. And then I like that she does bail on her pit bull husband and kids.

They go out of our way to let us know that. And you're like, okay. She says, please, sir, please, I know you're different from the others. Those that had their way with me make their empty promises. but they're all lies, lies. And you're like, what is going? And then Babe is like, well, where's your human? And she's like, my human left me for someone younger and prettier or something like that.

Oh, I forgot about it. And so she's like, she's supposed to be like a scorned woman. Yes. And then she gets her revenge question mark later by, I don't know. I've never seen a pit bull portrayed as a single father before. So, you know, that's. It's a very specific kind of representation that I guess. Why the hell not?

Yeah, this piece compares the dog to the pink poodle to Blanche Dubois. And I see it. But yeah, like I guess the animals are so broad and cartoony, but I would say in like pretty gendered ways. And the animals that tend to get arcs more or more or less aggressive. gendered arcs tend to be the male-coded animals. Sure. Because we do have, we have, who's the pregnant chimpanzee?

Oh my God. Zootie. Zootie. Yeah. Sometimes I'm like, what is our job? Okay. Zootie. Yeah, not Bob, who is the other one.

Not Bob or easy, I think is the little brother chimpanzee. Yeah. They had a theme with the chimpanzees and then they diverted for Bob, I guess. For Bob. It's kind of a classic joke for some reason. One, two, Bob. But Zudy, I think Zudy is, she has an arc, but I think it kind of takes a backseat to Bob and Thelonious,

and she's more defined by the fact that she's Jubscare pregnant. She's a mother now. Uh-huh. Yeah, I didn't know what to make of the apes in this movie because they're like, they're mean to babe. Well, they're, like, closer to humans in that they're exploiting other animals, right? Right. I felt like maybe that's what he was going for.

I mean, again, 98% of the same DNA. But don't we have like 96% with a banana or something? Like, I'm going to be honest here, not my area of expertise. There is something like that. I don't know the percentage. But yeah, it does seem like they are depicting the apes to have more of the same behaviors as a human than of the cats and dogs. But the humans, apes, and street animals, I guess, just to like separate are all dealing with living in a society. They're all dealing with class issues at every level.

He read Georgia Orwell at some point, right? And he's trying to do an animal farm thing here where he's like trying to portray that animals are stronger when they're in solidarity with one another against people exploiting them as opposed to like trying to get a little level about. the other animals to exploit the other animals. Maybe I love Georgia well, so I'm always going to, I can chew holl. Could be. But isn't, it's been like 25 years since I've read Animal Farm, but in that book, isn't it that the pigs are like the totalitarian? So he's like, I'm not going to do that because Babe is a sweet little boy.

Yeah, yeah. And then they have an enforcer, like Babe has his enforcer. Like they have a horse. Babe has his bull terrier. Right. Right. I wouldn't be surprised. Again, it's like with George Miller, any answer could be true.

They're just a little more. I know I keep pulling from this Lit Hub piece, but it is... It's wild the access these people have. I know. I was like, why just this one person know? But just speaking into like the tonal weirdness, which I think is why a lot of people love this movie, is because it is such a tonally weird thing.

both Siskel and Ebert put this on their best of 1998. They're like, this is a perfect movie. We love it. Although some critics, I feel like this was kind of more panned than it was praised. At the time, it has become more kind of cult-followy status in subsequent years. But also, if you look on Rotten Tomatoes, for example, the audience score of this movie is only 41%. So it seems like people by and large don't really like this movie. I can see people being like, I wanted to calm my eight-year-old.

down and now they're traumatized because they saw a dog get waterboarded as fuck this film. Right. Yeah. Well, I do feel like it's, if that's the case, I feel like it's because people are grading it on a curve of how comparatively gentle and not chaotic the first Babe movie is. Like, any people are, if you're, if you're going back for more Babe, babe, you get, bab's there, but like, the rest is, it's, it's so much coochier. Because it could, because I forgot that George Miller did not direct the first,

Babe movie. A different director named Chris Noonan directed the first one and that I guess George Miller and Chris Newton had a massive falling out between the first and the second movie. George Miller, would you believe this? A famous director is a bit of an egomaniac and he was like, I didn't get enough credit for Babe 1. Basically everyone else seems to disagree. They were like, no, part of why Babe 1 worked is because Chris Newton was so gentle and not insisting on water. boarding a dog but George Miller took over for the second one kind of barred Chris Noonan from being involved in this one and that is how we get a dog getting waterboarded and like all the chaos um that is in babe picking the city but I think that they just like it it's impossible to separate them but they're doing totally different things I also thought it was really funny that Babe's original voice, for those of you who watched Rugrats growing up, Babe in the first movie is voiced by Christine Kavanaugh, who played Chuckie Finster in Rugrats. And then in this one is voiced by EG Daily, who voices Tommy in Rugrats.

Wow. And I also like that it's usually, I mean, this is true a lot, I think specifically in the 90s, but just in animation pre-only celebrity casting happening. where there's kind of a complete disregard of gender with cartoon voices and just voice acting in general that I really miss because Christine Kavanaugh also voiced Dexter on Dexter's lab. Like, you'll often have like adult women voicing young boys and... Bart Simpson. Yes, exactly. Yeah, I think you cart right.

What is going on with the accents in this film, by the way? This is, at a point, Edsby Hoggett will just go Scottish. And then she breaks out, it's like, I don't know if it's a thing that can actually happen when you get a brain injury. But like, you know, there's like the apocryphal stories of the person who gets a brain injury and changes their accent, right? Like, what is the explanation there? Other than like, are they just like, are they just doing the whole UK? Because a few of the characters just switch regional accents. I...

Wait, say more, because I didn't, I guess I wasn't, I didn't notice that. This is something that I talked about on the Babe One episode. where growing up as a kid, I was like, all these characters are for sure British. This is the most British movie ever made. Meanwhile, it's an Australian production, but no one really has an Australian accent. People have American accents.

There's some English accents. There's, yeah, Esme is Scottish sometimes. I thought she was Scottish the whole time, but no, does she go in and out of it? She definitely, her accent, maybe she's doing the class signaling thing where she suppresses her regional accent when she's like trying to code switch. Oh, sure, sure.

It's quite possible. Maybe there's a more subtle commentary than I'd appreciated there. Yeah, it's actually incredible commentary. Yeah, every British person knows what I'm talking about, when you code switch the way you speak, unless you're like really, really posh. But like the other regional accents seem to swing around. Like the vowel sounds they make.

Like they're not fixed in one region, which I would expect. And then I was very, I was very, ready to be angry about being like, oh, you've done this accent from here and like this isn't really what that landscape's like. Those are the wrong sheep. Like, I was ready. And I still am. Like, I still have my feelings. But it's, it just seemed like the accents were even more fluid this time. And then all the animals have like, there's like, the Thelonius is from New York. It seems like. Snoop, the drug sniffing dog is like, I'm walking here. Yeah. NYPD dog. then there's like

I feel like I can't remember what the the bull terrier's accent maybe it's Boston oh it is it feels like kind of like working class New Englandy like northeast of the US

because they had the option to use a Boston Terrier for that and they did fascinating choice it's the the city of it all it's everyone's from every city all at once and so

the Hollywood sign pops out at one point. Exactly. It's an Hollywood sign. A bunch of New York buildings. The Golden Gate Bridge is there. The Sydney Opera House is there. I didn't see the opera house.

It's great. What's the in Brazil? The big Jesus statue. Rio Jesus. Come at me, Jesus. Yeah. Yeah, that one. The World Trade Center is there.

Oh, wow. Yeah. There's a lot of 1998. Yeah. Yeah, I didn't catch the, the Esme dropping her accent. Because, yeah, she's an Australian actress, too. Oh, okay. Yeah, no accounting for it.

I always forget that James Cremel is not, in fact, British. I know, that's always confusing to me. He's American. And then you've got Hugo Weaving, who is Australian, but I don't remember if he's doing his Australian accent or not. You only see him in that one scene. I'd have to go back and rewatch it. the first one. He's a dad dog. He's he's dog daddy. Yeah, adoptive dog father. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah.

Yeah. Wow. What an awesome movie though. I truly, it is like kind of it's, it's, it's fun how difficult it is to talk about because it's really hard to like put your finger on what the, what the hell is going on? What's happening here? It's very much running on vibes. One other character that I just wanted to shout out because and now knowing that there was some like gnarly or, stuff going on with the animals. We are introduced to a villain who's pretty promptly kind of, I didn't know what to make of her. She's like the lab technician. She doesn't get a name. Oh, right. But she's interested. She gets a real like villain intro. She's the one who's like coaxing the little chimpanzee with his like portable radio thing. Yeah. Yeah. And that's like one of the

many villains were introduced to is like, oh, this is the villain. And then a clear villain never appears. which is kind of the way the world works, I guess. I mean, Uncle Fugley is kind of a villain. But he kidnaps, babe, lies about it, and then forces him into a life of circus servitude. I agree. And then dies of a food coma, apparently. Dies of jelly beans.

Very Shakespearean. But there was a shot that I kept forgetting to bring up with Uncle Fugly that I thought showed him so much, like, empathy or like, I don't know if it's empathy or whatever it is, but like in the scene with the fire at the children's hospital, which we just blow past, hope they're okay. Yeah. But there's like that close up on Mickey Rooney and like his makeup is melting off. And I didn't think he looks scary.

I thought it looked really like, wow, his life is like he's fun. I thought it was like a weirdly like very empathetic shot to hold. It didn't feel like a villainous shot. It felt like, wow, this man's life is over. Like, I don't know. And then he disappears. Maybe this aligns with my, he was reading everything, Orwell wrote theory.

I'm thinking about, I'm developing this as we go. Like, he wrote this book called Burmese days, right? By like how participating in the oppression, oppression of Burmese people, he also kind of lost part of his soul by participating in this colonial machine. And he spends, like, the rest of his life somewhat reflecting on that, right? Like, by being a cog in the evil machine, we lose our humanity too by dehumanizing other people. Maybe that's what they're going for. Maybe that's a little bit generous of me.

No, I'm like, I'm, I'm in, I'm in. Well, speaking of comps to other works, may I talk about the parallels between Paddington I and Babe 2? Please. Thank you so much. Okay, both movies involve a disastrous event that causes a very sweet, polite, clumsy, perhaps nymph. naive little animal to have to leave his home and travel overseas to a big unfamiliar city

where a lot of people are cruel to him. But eventually some kind strangers take him in and give him a safe place to stay, though hijinks ensues anyway. And then I guess the rest of the plots are different. But there are also moments in both movies where the animal is in and attic room looking out of a circular window at a city skyline. It's undeniable. It's undeniable. Paul King saw babe pig in the city. I mean, I think that's that's actually safe to assume. Yeah, right. And then he's like, I'm going to kind of do that except with Paddington Bear.

And I also think that babe, chicken run, and sheep detectives all take place in the same universe. I haven't seen sheep detectives. People keep asking me about sheep detectives. I haven't heard a bad word about it. I've heard that our neighbor kid is obsessed with it. He loves those damn sheep. It was pretty fun. And Chicken Red, obviously, a sacred text, one of our best movies.

It's greatest films. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I guess the takeaway here is that the intentions of this movie are often quite confusing, and we don't really know what's happening. But I do think that, and we already touched on this, but a clear intention is the, like, anti-police state, anti-oppressive systems stance that this movie takes.

And I think, frankly, the anti-city stance, because it does, the resolution of the story requires a return to nature, basically. It's interesting. I don't know. I would be very curious to know how this movie, how George Miller conceived this movie ending. I would imagine it's different because in his version,

we can't have that'll do pig because Farmer Hogg is dead. Right. Maybe she says it at the end. Oh. You know what, that would have made more sense for this movie anyway. That would have been better. Yeah. Yeah.

Why does he even say it? He hasn't even been privy to what babe has been up to the whole damn movie. There's been there was one line that I was like you know what you know what let's tweak it when at the at the climax when she's wearing Mickey Rudy's clothes there's too much going on sensory overload but she she refers to Babe as my husband's pig I'm like at this point that's your pig that's your pig babe come on it's your pig babe that's your pig comma his name is babe not that not that she knows that unfortunately yeah they didn't he can understand them but they can't understand him

It's very tragic. Oh, I know. That is true. That that is like... That's how we live our lives with animals, right? Like, we think we can talk to them, but they can't talk to us other than with their little noses and tongues and things. It's true. You're like, wait, what is my animal's name?

Is it every day does Sunny think that's ridiculous? That's insulting. That's not my name. Quit calling me that. Yeah, my name is Uncle Fugly. That would be an iconic name for a dog. If you adopt a senior dog. Uncle Fugley is.

Yeah. Maybe the humane society should start doing it. Oh, my God. Wait, that really did get me. Wow. Yeah. Is there anything else that you guys wanted to touch on? There's so much going on.

I think ultimately for me, it's like this movie makes me feel nostalgic for movies that were chaotic in this way, where this movie is kind of like a big fuck you to. like structure and the comfort of children in a way that big budget children's movies rarely are. It was certainly a choice, yeah. But I love that about it. I mean, again, I saw this for the first time when I was 12 and I think it would be a very different experience for like a six year old or something seeing this. But I think when you're like an older kid, I appreciated movies then and I appreciate movies now as an adult that are directed toward younger audiences, children, you know, family movies that don't condescend to the children watching them.

And I feel like this movie does not condescend to children at all. Well, I think, okay, and then this is where I'm going to make my... Ultimately, like, I think it doesn't condescend to children because it also doesn't condescend to adults because maybe a lot of it kind of doesn't totally make sense. But I mean, like... I guess what I mean is, well, it doesn't condescended anyone. Slash or it doesn't make sense, but it also doesn't coddle children in a way that I think a lot more contemporary children's media. Yeah, it felt like one of those Fellini films where you're like, what is the drug that people took in this time period that one would have to be on to understand this?

Yeah, I would like to try it. Which in the 90s, I guess, is ecstasy and cocaine. I guess so, yeah. I do I do appreciate what this like it's a it's a it's a big weird swing I like and and speaking to Caitlin what you were just saying I am starting to call this I'm going to try to call this making peace with the iPad culture in in like children's media where yeah there is like a tamedness to a lot to not all but a lot of big children's media now that requires kind of like a conciliatory like reconciling yourself to systems of power,

which in Toy Story 5 is making peace with the iPad, empathizing with the iPad. And Babe Pickin' The City, that's not what it's about. We're not empathizing with the iPad. We're leaving the city and returning to nature. That's so true. And speaking of empathy, I guess my last point is,

and we talked about this in the first Babe episode as well, but the fact that this movie centers a very sweet, compassionate, gentle male character that shows empathy toward basically everyone the dog that the bull terrier that's about to murder him he's like he's drowning he's gonna die if I don't save him so

everyone except cops and bankers get empathy in this movie which which feels cool that feels right I know there is this movie was not nominated for as many Oscars as the first Babe movie but it wasn't nominated for no Oscars. Peter Gabriel wrote an original song for this movie called That'll Doe that was also written by Randy Newman. Yes. What?

I didn't even remember any of this. Is it during the credits? I think so. Okay. But that's just another, you're like, well, that is a very expensive, weird sentence. Yeah. But awesome. Great.

And then Tom Waits saw all of that. And he's like, exactly. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Let's read the Tom Waits quote. The Tom Ways quote is really fun. He told The Guardian in 2010, you know what one of my favorite movies of all time is? And if I'm at home with my kids and say, what do you want to see?

The big joke is, oh, dad, not pig in the city. But I love that movie. I'd see it anytime. He loves it. This movie is written, co-written by a woman by Judy Morris, who also co-wrote and co-directed Happy Feeds. So she's a frequent collaborator with George Miller. Animals Division.

Yes. So I just wanted to point that out as well. And I think we pointed this out in the first movie, also co-edited by a frequent collaborator of George Miller, Margaret Sixel, who works on everything that he works on. And I believe she won an Oscar for Mad Max Fury Road for editing. Hell you. So shout out, especially because post-production, there's just not enough women getting big opportunities like that.

So that's great. And this movie does pass the Bechtel test, as we said, especially that scene between Esme and Miss Flume. Although I do think, James, you're right to point out that we have to really, we have to sort of search for a name in a way that we don't for, you know, baby monkeys. Oh, Uncle Fugley. Uncle Fugley, who has a name that I couldn't forget if I wanted to, and I do. I guess if one has a choice between no name and Uncle Fugly Yeah

All the energy was gone from the naming machine Once they hit Uncle Fugger's Yeah they hit the jackpot There's nothing left I'm spent, I can't Yeah But I would still argue that Characters who

You know characters of a marginalized gender Who are significant fixtures in the story If they speak to each other about something other than a man I'll give that a pass and they're just talking about animals and that

you know like that character certainly has a like fully realized arc she moves she moves in with the hoggots yep yes now as far as our nipple scale the scale where we rate the movie zero to five nipples based on examining it through an intersectional

feminist lens. For babe pig in the city, you know, I'm just not too sure. I mean, here's what I'll say. Based on the movie's

clear stance of being anti-establishment, anti-bank, anti-state violence, anti-animal cops, pro-working-class, whether that's working-class people

or working-class animals, parentheses, I'm speaking. speaking allegorically here, based on these stances that this movie takes, based on the characters who we focus on being a male-coded character, a pig, who is sweet, gentle, compassionate, which are qualities that we usually do not see in a male character, and then a human woman who is also sweet and compassionate and, you know, a very determined active character who, unlike most women

in movies when a woman is allowed to be in a movie, typically we see a thin, young, rigid Western Beauty Standard Woman, but Esme Hauggett is a fat, older character who we are meant to root for and empathize with, which, again, is very unusual. So lots of refreshing representations of characters. Everything else is just sort of like, what the hell? What the hell? So with all of that in mind, I'm going to give it, I think, three nipples? That feels right.

Yeah. Three seems reasonable. Thank you so much. And I'm giving them all to babe. I think I'll meet you at three. Yeah, I think that this movie is just doing so many things. I would be curious what the original what the original like

conclusion was because I feel like we're given this whole charcutory board of things to consider and then at the end we kind of just go back to where we started and we start at the end of the previous movie basically by saying that'll do pig that'll do the exact same way with a character

who we haven't seen the whole time because his whole body was broken and maybe he was supposed to be dead we just don't know but I really appreciate and enjoyed the chaos I like that we're asked to empathize with such a wide array of characters, although there are some kind of gendered stereotypes along the way. I'll go three nips as well, and I'm giving them all to Mrs. Hoggett,

my good friend, Esme. Amazing. She, you know, she was put in an impossible situation, and she did about as well as you would think she would. James, how about you? Yeah, I think three seems fair. Like, it did some good stuff, it could do better. Like, I like that it, uh, I kind of liked that it ended at, like, where I would like my,

my little career journey to end, like, a collective living situation on a farm with sheep. Like, that's what I'm going for. That, like, biased me in its favor. The humans who spoke the most were both women, I think, right? Like, let's make Hoggett and Mrs. Flynn. Uh, not a massively racially diverse film. a whole ton of white people and animals

mostly animals yeah mostly animals to be fair again I like that the character is a sweet little boy we assume I think pig like that he has empathy and feelings like I think sometimes you know like men in cinema

if they are guys who care about things and they get to be the butt of all the jokes so I like that like him being a kind caring little empathetic pig wins even if he ends up also being a dictator of a small animal hotel kingdom for a while. A reluctant dictator, you know. These things will happen.

Like the, what's he called? The Roman General who they bought back from his cabbage packs to be dictator. Similar. Cincinnati. But it does make you wonder, because like the other character like that that comes to mind as far as like a really sweet, empathetic, polite, male-coded character is Paddington and that's also an animal so it's like can we see more human men real boys can't do it yeah not an option for us we're we're working on it I guess anyway sorry yeah no that was my

main thing it would be nice to see a human male be kind to other things on on a film I think we could do it if we really tried yeah I enjoyed seeing it in the form of a pig yeah I would like to see more. I like the first film a lot. Like, I just thought it's my point of reference for like that. And like when people ask what my childhood was like, I can go to Babe. I can go to, have you seen the documentary where they chase a cheese down a hill? It's very popular during COVID. No, I have not. Okay. Okay. Wow, really. Big, uh, okay, that's on your schedules. Cheese rolling. That's what it's called? Yeah, it's called cheese rolling. Yeah, this pub called the cheese rollers. And the cheese goes down.

a very steep hill you chase it you try and catch it uh people suffer life altering injuries uh it's very very steep that's exactly where i grew up so that those are the points from which you can triangulate my childhood i guess so it has a special place for me whereas this one doesn't have as much kind of sense of place i guess sure but yeah i think i think three is good i enjoyed it would watch again yeah and i'm sure i'd pick up some whole other subtext that they haven't know i'm sure you could watch this film ten times yeah Great one to assign to an undergraduate class. There's so much happening.

A rich text. Like someone please write the thesis paper. I want to understand. Maybe that's what that lit hub thing was. True, true. Someone had a deep level of access that no one else did. Yeah, it was like, what did they know and when did they know it? And yeah, this is like yet like the first paper movie, like starts an interesting conversation about animal performers and like what our responsibility is to them.

and how we talk about how they're treated in production, animals with jobs, discussing, you know? Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, James, thank you so much for joining us. And congratulations on the new show. Tell us a little more about it.

Yeah, thank you. It's called Natural Causes. It's wherever podcasts are given away for free. It is about going outside and the politics and practicalities of it. So our tagline is going outside. It's political. But we have talked about cyclospora, which is the, the diarrhea outbreak currently impacting the Midwest, right?

We talked about how maybe mega-capitalism is to blame rather than farm workers. We talked about fire, wildfire, and different approaches to taking care of each other. I really want to get into talking about how we can learn to live with fire, and that involves like listening to indigenous folks rather than attempting to suppress fire and treating it like we can just wipe it off the landscape. And this week we talked about the roadless. rule, which is a rule that impacts 10th of thousands of acres of national forest. The Trump administration is trying to do away with.

I want to talk more about ag. We talked about golf and how it's an affront to God. Yes, 100%. Love that. Yeah. And how the Havelina are leading the charge against golf and how I'm very proud of them. So if it touches going outside, we're going to talk about it once a week. You can get it for free.

And if you would like to subscribe to it, that would be great, because I want to keep going outside for work and maybe not spend so much of my life traveling to places that traumatize me greatly. And I think that that is, you deserve balance, James. You do. I'm trying to find it. I always go outside anyway, but now I can monetize it, which is great and also scary. Don't you love 2026? Yeah, isn't it cool? Whenever I go camping now, I take a little fucking voice recorder just in case I hear an animal to use for B-roll. What a cursed existence. We have to have Molly Conger on the show, too, because I just, anytime you guys are talking, it is just like the most delightful hour. Molly is wonderful. I learn a thousand horrible things, and I also am delighted and entertained.

Yeah, Molly is fantastic. She has her own show called Weird Little Guys. Beautiful. Yeah. You should listen to that one, too. And I also want more balance for her, too. Well, thank you so much for joining us, James, this was such a blast. Thank you for having me. Yeah. And then you can follow us on social media at Bechtelcast. You can subscribe to our Patreon, aka Matrion. We're going on tour.

Oh, wow. We will be in the northeast of the United States of America. Ever heard of it? We'll be in New York. We'll be in Boston. We'll be in Pittsburgh. We'll be in State College. We'll be in Philadelphia.

We'll be in Baltimore. I think those are all the places we will currently be with other regions and cities that we will be going to later in there. year for our 10-year anniversary. So if you live in that region, come out and see a show that they're super fun. Tickets are at Linktree slash Bechtelcast. And with that, I mean, that'll do. That'll do, pod. That'll do. Bye. Bye. The Bechtelcast is a production of IHeart Media, hosted and produced by me, Jamie Loftus. And me, Caitlin Durante. The podcast is also produced by Sophie Lichtenen. And edited

by Caitlin Durante. Ever heard of them? That's me. And our logo and merch and all of our artwork, in fact, are designed by Jamie Loftus, ever heard of her? Oh my God. And our theme song, by the way, was composed by Mike Kaplan. With vocals by Catherine Voskrasinski. Iconic and a special thanks to the one and only Aristotle Acevedo. For more information about the podcast, please visit Linktree slash Bechtelcast. Hi, I'm Michael Imperioli. I want to tell you about my new podcast, Underground Zero.

We're looking at the opportunity of a lifetime for us and the other families. It's about the aftermath of the 9-11 attacks. What's in the tunnels? Gold bars, Silver Ingech. It could be worth half a billion. Starring Steve Sharipa, Rea Abruzzo, and me, Michael Imperioly. How far you're prepared to go? Depends how far you are.

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