The Luke and Pete Show - It's too windy for my turbine

Episode Date: July 16, 2020

What's the point of a wind turbine that blows over due to excess wind? Absolute rubbish. Shouldn't be allowed. We discuss that today, as well as getting the latest on our quest to learn as much as we can about glass, before going big on graverobbing and traditional funerals. After that there's a deep dive on endangered species, with Pete being particularly concerned about the plight of the humble lemur. And, before we chip off, there's just enough time to take in some of your emails too, so don't miss that.If you want to join the celebrated ranks of those who have sent us an email, you can do so here: [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

all right then it's the luca peach shot it's thursday i do hope you are keeping well we are hurtling towards the end of july luca i'm a little bit scared it's mad how quickly it all goes when you get older and that's an old cliche thing that old people say. If you're 18 years old and listen to this, you're thinking, I'll give it over, granddad. But it does get really fast the older you get. It does indeed. It does indeed. Did you read this morning that the super rich,

sorry, not 8.3, 83 millionaires, it would be weird to have an 8.3 amount of millionaires. I'm a third of a million. 83 millionaires have signed a letter asking for higher taxes on the super rich to pay for COVID-19 recoveries in the US. I mean, I think that is very much people getting in front of a story rather than a genuine need for them to jettison revenue and money and cash. Well, some people would understand if they're clever

that if they give away a load of money, it's going to make them probably – particularly if you're somebody who relies entirely on kind of PR for your wealth and what I mean by that is you maybe sell some kind of product or you have some kind of business that rolls around goodwill from the public. It really – I mean, I'm going to be less cynical than you here, Pete. It really is a win-win, right? Because you give away a load of your money, which obviously gets hopefully used for the better,

for the greater good. But it also sort of burnishes a reputation where more people are going to want to consume your shit. So I perfectly understand that. It makes sense to me. No, I completely agree. Well done them, I guess. How much of your wealth are you giving away, Peter?

I mean, everything's tied up in a lot of Bitcoin. You've got a lot of it tied up in a business internet account, haven't you? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's not good. I reckon I have spent over the last four years something like cracking in for like sort of 10 grand's worth of business internet. It's not even that fast. I went around a mate's house recently. The internet was insanely quick.

I managed to download a video game in about 10 minutes. It was insane. And I've got to put with a 15 megabit line. We're not going to talk about technicals on this podcast. I'm fairly certain that a lot of you aren't that interested in that kind of caper, but I am. And I'd like to apologise for submitting it to the show all the time. Pete, the other thing that's worth mentioning when it comes to,

I mean, I haven't seen this letter. I don't know who these people are. But it is worth at least acknowledging that if you take someone like Bill Gates and his foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Oh, what, the George Soros co-funded plan to make us all patsies? Yeah. The Chinese disease, et cetera. What's a patsy?

A patsy. What's a patsy? Like a pucks, like a mark. I thought it was a burger before it was cooked. A patty. But anyway, regardless of all that, that foundation has given away $47 billion. Yeah, it's the kind of amount of money that you can't say that you can't.

That's why I don't sound like, obviously, he's been very vocal on the need for vaccinations and discovering a COVID-19 vaccine. And he has, for the last 10 years, been going on about the greatest single threat behind climate change to the human race is viruses and disease and things like that. So it's not like it's out of character. But to characterize his good nature and his charitable works as being somehow a plot to take over the world, he's putting so much money into this. It's impossible to think of it as anything

other than completely benevolent. It's such a ridiculous amount of money. I don't care how much PR he thinks he's going to get out of it or how much his foundation is going to get out of it. It is an obscene amount of money. And this is the sort of money that probably other people, you know, Jeff Bezos, for example, makes in about a day, fair play. It's still a ridiculous amount of money and this is not the sort of money that probably other people who you know jeff bezos for example makes in about a day fair play it's still a ridiculous amount of cash there have been some i don't know enough about the issue and we haven't planned this so i can't

go out of time to go and research it but have a stab okay there's just some a couple of bits of it are problematic probably and he's attracted criticism for investing in some controversial stuff i expect because okay partly because 47 billion billion is a lot of money to keep track of, I imagine, and it probably permeates everywhere, I expect. That's the reason, probably. Have a stab is the pro-vaccine. Have a stab. Have a stab.

Have a stab at it. So how much, if you made a billion dollars, how much of it would you give away, Pete? I mean, just through bad investment, I'd lose so much of it. So you may as well, you know, if you know me and you've got any foolhardy, stupid ideas, I mean, you know, get your plan for a massive investment of money if I was a billionaire because I suffer fools gladly. Yeah, suffer fools gladly yeah suffer suffer fools

willingly uh encouraging right but you know the deal jeff bezos thing there's a there's a little known fact about old bezos that he didn't he get a four hundred thousand dollar loan from his parents to save amazon at one point yeah yeah he's operating out of his garage or something and he obviously that helped him on his way so he's had a little bit of help he's turned that into a lot of money just a little bit like how much He's turned that into a lot of money. Just a little bit. Like how much, if you went to your mum and dad right now, how much money could you get out of them in a day? Like how much cash?

None. Probably none. I reckon they've probably got five grand. I reckon they've probably got five grand somewhere. Jeff Bezos has got 189 billion dollars. Which is absolutely incredible.

It doesn't even make any sense. I was sort of saying that his friend, he's waiting for his parents to sadly pass on. And when they do, he will inherit a ridiculous amount of money and a pretty decent country pile just a friend who's kind of waiting for not waiting but he's expecting a bit

of a windfall once his parents sadly depart this plane and yeah a ridiculous size house in the middle of nowhere, near London, though, is clearly worth a lot more than houses up north. But my mum and dad's house is like 100 grand.

And in this world, that's not even a deposit for a house near London, is it? 100 grand? You get a deposit for that, yeah, but it's not going to get you a house, is it? No. No, no. But I sort of go, I don't know why anybody should be expecting any money from their parents. They've done their bit.

I agree. Let them sell a house. The problem is with my mum and dad is they don't do anything. So I don't know what they'd possibly be able to do with £100,000. How's Stuart doing? He's all right, yeah. He's made some – I think he may have made some medical masks. The family WhatsApp is abuzz with noise because my sister's just had a new baby.

And so my dad's kind of Photoshopps and daddy uh forwarding uh it kind of fall by the wayside to next to um cute pictures of the two bens uh hanging out with each other but like yeah my dad i think he made is that how we stop that groups pete is that how we stop this really insidious dad's app groups endless grandchildren yes and we just got to get fucking that's what we got just get fucking and so that the dad's app just feel like family WhatsApp groups aren't the place to put their naughty little frequently a bit sexy WhatsApp pictures. But, yeah, I think he may have made some masks out of his pants. I think that was like – that's the funniest thing I can think of.

I think he made it out of some old boxer shorts. Old pants. Some medical masks, some old pants. I'm fairly certain. I'm 99% that um there's a bit of a joke uh my dad made some medical pants medical masks out of his own pants so uh level that that's kind of what's happening in this can't use like a less potentially contaminated item of clothing like a shirt or something yeah yes he could is the answer is the short answer yes he

could but i think in the same way he's got a bone hanging around his neck uh that was taken out of his foot i think he likes the danger i think he likes the problems fair enough um when i went back to see my parents my last my dad was fiddling with the circuit board from a electric toilet from a caravan nice Nice. Lovely old job. My dad loves looking at circuit boards. It's like his thing. Nice. Did I tell you that he also rusted down a massive anvil as well?

Yes, yes, I did. It sort of like dremeled it until it was beautiful and shiny. Just cleaned it up, yeah. Lovely old job. Peter, have you heard the, frankly, troubling news that we are very close to losing the European hamster? It's now been added to the critically endangered list. How did that happen?

How did that happen? We've got so many houses in our houses. No, it's a little bit of a misconception, chiefly because if you think of a communal garden pet hamster, that's generally a Syrian hamster or a dwarf hamster. European hamsters are much bigger, but they could sadly go to

the wall, so to speak, get extinct in the next 30 years due to deforestation. That's insane. Some parts of the world, I think they're quite voraciously hunted as well um and also on that um type something a bit closer to home for you um 33 species of lemur

have now been added to the critically endangered list which now means that 103 of the 107 different types of lemur in the world are now threatened with extinction how do you start like where do you start like if you've got that many uh kinds of lemur in the world are now threatened with extinction how do you start like where do you like if you've got that many uh kinds of lemurs on your on your list where do you who do you start with like which ones do you prioritize because they're on the same in the same like classification lemurs are the ones that you only find in madagascar right yeah they've evolved um independently of anything else or endemic to Madagascar, right? So, I mean, I guess that you could probably try and conserve them there.

But the other thing is they've just finished, scientists, biologists or whoever they are, I guess in this case marine biologists, have just finished a massive study on the North Atlantic whale, which started in 2018, i think and apparently they could only find 250 of them so um that they're about to go they're about to pop their clothes as well and finally for now peter if you want to ask a real question about the european hamster is surprise surprise they're used in chinese medicine to treat kidney and lung diseases so of course yes yes i mean which is mad so um sadly the news from the natural

world i know you're not that bothered about the natural world unless it involves chimps um it's not it's not good news not ideal not ideal you would say yeah um i mean again is the ringtail lemur in there i imagine not because you see a lot of them if you sort of think of lemur you just think of like a black and white evident don't you they always use the ringtail lemur as the um as the photo accompanying the story yeah because it looks the best um and i think it might be one of the biggest as well they're listed as endangered not critically endangered um but maybe that'll be updated but it's kind of weird to think of because, interestingly enough, I know there'll be a lot of lemurs in captivity around the world and stuff,

but for 107 different types of an animal to only be present on one island, which relatively speaking, compared to the rest of the world, isn't that big. I know Madagascar is quite big, but it's not that big. It's incredibly dangerous. If anything could happen to that island or anything, you know, whether it be politically or naturally would happen to that island, then they're all completely, they're in big trouble. Who's going to save the lemurs?

Who's going to save the lemurs? But you would argue that, I mean, if you're going to look at the animal kingdom as a whole, they've had their time. They've grown weird snouts because they've had no natural predators. They don't look like any other primates. That's why they look so strange. So they've had their time.

Humans have come along, fucked it all up. Get rid of it. Get rid of them. Weird, weird goths. Weird primate goths. Weird, primate goths. And the pandas. They're the most gothic. Pete, we always talk about the animal kingdom.

Who for you, if someone said to you, it's an animal kingdom, you have to bestow the status of king and queen on the animal kingdom using a certain species. What species would you pick? Well, I'm getting to the sort of age where I sort of respect my elders and I never thought I'd get there. So I would probably go for the oldest looking animal. It'd probably be like a tortoise or an old lizard.

A giant tortoise? Yeah, a gecko, a gecko. Look, if you cut, there's a lot of animals. Can't get anything done. Can't get anything done. What if you, yeah, if you can't respect an animal that can sort of magnetically stick to what appears to be a sheer surface on an atomic level, I think you've gone a little wayward, I think, my son. Yeah.

I think people who cite the old um the old tortoise because they live so long isn't it the greenland shark that lives like they definitely the scientists have been able to like confirmed using radiocarbon testing a greenland shark that was at least 272 years old lobststers? Oh, squid. Squid are technically immortal, aren't they? I don't really understand all that. There's a couple of animals

that can endlessly replicate, I think, yeah. But I would probably give it to the humble elephant, Pete. Yeah. They've been hunted for long enough

and they've got... Symbolically, they resonate a lot, don't they? They do. They've got lovely little trunks and their ears

are the same shape as continents, inexplicably. Give them that. Good name recognition. Everyone knows what an elephant is. The last thing you want... Very easy to draw. Yeah, exactly that, so kids can get involved. The last thing you want when you're bestowing the title of king or

queen on an animal kingdom is large parts of the world to not know what it is. Are you not going to have that for an elephant? Well, once they kick the mammoths to the curb, they've got free reign now, haven't they? It'd be good if mammoths made a comeback, actually. There's a lot of talk about that.

Look, they've been away for too long, and I for one would like to see another album from the mammoths. The most overly hyped thing in the world, possibly, is the talk of reintroducing the woolly mammoth. Never happens. Always talked about, never happens. Not in a single one. No, exactly.

Boring. Bore off. But then you sort of think, oh, maybe they just all went back to the sea, because we've only mapped like 20% of the ocean. So let's have a bit of that probably just went back in i i had a go the coast of hartlepool yeah part of a wind farm wind farms near my house exactly well how do you where do you stand on wind farms where do the people of hartlepool stand on wind farms i don't know i don't know we haven't got many but we should have i guess because it's very windy up there but i think they look fucking cool i think they look fucking cool i think they're um have you ever seen the ones in like um in america

where you sort of like drive through a state and out in the sticks you'll just have this hill um where they'll just be like it's like they've kind of sprouted up they're like trees that have sort of sprouted up they look so cool and sometimes they the sheer force of the wind strips the legs off them sometimes they fall over, lovely old job exciting, if anything that's embarrassing for them

they're specifically put there to deal with the wind oh too much wind oh too much it's like working at McDonald's and going, oh, it's just too many burgers. That's what you signed up for. Count me out. What you signed up for.

If a wind turbine is falling over due to wind, that is, I'm afraid, quite poor. Pistic. On that note, Peter, let's have a little break. And when we come back, we'll do some emails. I've got a brilliant one here about an old lady being buried. Oh. Oh. Own each step with Peloton.

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that nobody knows about. To the bizarre... When I moved into my new apartment last year, the police guy came to my door. I was knocking on my door. I opened it. It was a policeman. And he said to me, in English, I am Japanese policeman. That's the best

introduction you could possibly do as a Japanese policeman. To the downright filthy. And for those of you who don't know what a Tenga is, Pete and I did discuss how to describe it best before doing the podcast. And I'll let Pete describe what a Tenga is, Pete and I did discuss how to describe it best before doing the podcast and I'll let Pete describe what a Tenga is. What is it, Pete? It's a solo, male,

silicon-based, ordinary aid, so to speak. Brilliant. New episodes every single Wednesday. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. A Road in Japan is a Takano production. And we're back as the Luke and Pete show, part two of your working week. I do hope you're having a cracking Thursday or whenever you manage to catch up to us.

I'm Pete Donaldson. I'm joined by Luke Moore. Luke, you promised me a harrowing story about an old lady. Yeah, I've got one here. Before I get into it, though, I want to tell people in no uncertain terms that just because their work situation might have changed, i.e. they're not commuting as much, that's no excuse not to listen to this show. Find the time, okay? Yes.

We find the time. You should also find the time. It's not acceptable. Don't want your excuses. Stop telling off our listeners. Sorry. Here we go. This is from Kieran who says,

Evening, gents. Listen to this week's, which I guess was last week's, fairly grim discussion on graves and the prevalence of cremations. And I thought I'd be able to add a few topics to the discussion. Okay. Number one, grave burials are very much still a done thing in Ireland and the Irish wake

is very much still part of the Roman Catholic process. If you're not familiar with that, essentially it means in the three days before the funeral, the coffin sits in the person's house open and everyone in the community essentially goes in says their goodbyes and has tea and sandwiches it's exactly as mental as it sounds um number two next as a random cross-section of the two topics preserving of preserving life and grave robbers i'd like to draw the story of Marjorie McCall of Lurgan, Northern Ireland, to your attention, who was buried twice but only died once.

In 1695, Marjorie caught a fever and believed to be dead. Her family held her awake and promptly buried her. Soon after she was laid to rest, grave robbers who regularly ransacked newly buried coffins back then dug her up and attempted to steal a valuable ring she was still wearing. Unable to remove the ring from her finger, the robbers decided to cut the finger off. But as soon as they began their gruesome task, the lady awoke. And as the story goes, she scared the devil out of the grave robbers who then skedaddled.

Keep up the good work, Kieran. I mean, is this like a situation where I remember when I was at Cub Scouts and quite apart from the horrors I experienced elsewhere in that particular organisation, I remember a ghost story situation kind of happening around a campfire and somebody doing an amazing rendition of a who's got my middle finger, who's got my middle finger, who's got my middle finger. You know,

Grave Robbers has stolen, stolen the middle finger of a woman and, and she was out for revenge. And, oh man, that, that takes me back. That,

that kind of story. It's quite frightening, really. It's a little bit. I mean, the most frightening thing that happened to you at the Cubs, we can't get into, can we?

I think we talked, we talked about it before. I was touched by the Vicar. Let's not go into it again. But the thing is, Pete... Not below the trousers. Not below, yeah, not below the belt. No. Above.

That's the motto of this show. Nothing below the trousers. Nothing below the trousers. And we have to understand, though, Pete, with this story that Kieran has kindly shared with us. It happened in 1695 what's the veracity of it what's the veracity it was in the national inquirer yeordy national inquirer bullshit it was in the daily spot yeah kieran did include a bbc link i haven't clicked

on it so i don't know if it's true or not but it does make you think 1600s i mean how do you know what's happened what's the what's the statute of limitations here? Because I'm telling you now, if it happened before, basically with the age of the internet and everything being so confusing these days with deep fakes and all the rest of it, if it happened before last Tuesday, I don't even know if it actually happened. There's a – did you see that somebody found a mummy had been murdered? Not a mummy, like a body that had been murdered.

Doing the HS2 thing. You've murdered a body? They've murdered a body to bits. Yeah, there's like a skeleton that had been I think hit in the back of the head or something. But yeah, everyone was doing some kind of like... Because everyone's obsessed with true crime at the moment.

We're kind of doing our own literal and figurative digging about bodies that they're finding as they go through. But if you're like a person who's sort of digging the seam, so to speak, for this engineering marvel that is HS2, are you not sort of thinking we're obviously barring through a load of... Are you talking about Crossrail? Crossrail, yeah, yeah.

Not HS2. They've not started that yet have they um um yeah crossrail and yeah they they got this body but like can you are you not sort of thinking i might find like some roman coins i might find some like buried treasure is there not is there a statue are you legally allowed to keep what you you find or does it have to go to the queen or something? I think the general rule, this might be a myth actually, but I've read before that if you find something in a field or whatever and you have to dig it up, i.e. it's not just lying there, first of all, you need permission from the landowner, which I guess in this case would be covered.

And secondly, I think it's split evenly between the landowner and the person that discovered it. I think, yeah, I think that might be the case. Interestingly enough, on the crossrail thing, there was an article a while back about the things that had been found so far during those excavations. There was a massive plague pit found, wasn't there? Yes.

There was also a pair of medieval ice skates fashioned from animal bones what i didn't see that one yeah and a tudor bowling ball and the reason i know this is because there was an exhibition they found so much stuff that they actually did like an impromptu museum exhibition about it lovely old job a medieval bowling ball well imagine fashioning some ice skates out of a little monkey's head. Like in Indiana Jones. Very enjoyable. Yeah.

Oh, that's cracking stuff. I wonder if any of our listeners have ever dug something interesting up. Yeah, we've done gardens, but I guess people have jobs where they may do some digging. They may be miners or they may be this or that. But I guess if you're working for a mining company or you're working for your cross rails, you're working for London Transport there,

so you're on the clock. So whatever you find goes to old LT, doesn't it? I'd be shoving it straight in my pocket. Oh, mate, totally, of course. Yeah, I'd be definitely doing that. I wouldn't be telling anyone. The problem comes when you want to sell it or whatever. There was a guy on

the antiques roadshow actually on sunday who um had he basically had this this glass like yeah what could i had a bus like you're in the package 7.95 it was well 7.95 there's a guy who had a had a um he was a middle eastern guy and and it really it really made me sit up and take notice because of course on the luke and peach show recently we've been talking about the prevalence of glass and glass making you know in the early in the early years early ages and stuff and um he had this glass vessel this guy that he he had got from syria now apparently i didn't know this and this this actually plays into the chat we were having about far east and whether they had glass and what it was like in europe

well apparently that's the the world center of glass making in ancient times was in syria in damascus right that was the place right that was that was the place for it um and um i haven't researched further into that i don't know why but apparently that was the place and this guy had this glass vessel that he had bought for 800 pounds when he was in that part of the world and it was purporting to be i think like i think it was purporting to be from the 11th century so the way the guy the way the guy dated it is the expert was saying look if what you're saying is true this is the oldest piece of glass i've ever handled and it's from around the same sort of time as the norman conquest in in the uk obviously 1066 right and he said how much you pay for it and the guy said oh i paid 800 pound for it and he said okay let's have a look at it and

it turned out that it was fake that it had been um aged um artificially it had been used a certain technique that wasn't around at that time so it couldn't have been real but it was quite funny because the antique expert was so encouraged and so excited that this guy had kind of tried to put his money where his mouth was and buy this amazing piece of glass he said do you know? I'm going to value this at 800 quid. He was like, all right, thank you. No worries, no problem. You can come back if I'm wrong and I'll buy it for 800 quid.

How about that? And he was like, all right, yeah, thanks. It was a very nice moment. So he thought- Oh, I like that a lot. Because Pete, the other thing was, I think he was saying that there are examples of in quite good condition because they've been buried for whatever reason, they've been discovered, pieces of glass from Damascus in that time, thousands of years ago, in this case, that have sold for, I think, like seven figures plus, like millions of pounds. modern archaeologist and a modern historian kind of looking at how you know these kind of trinkets

and bits and bobs have survived so much and such such a um such upheaval and and and looking at how places like syria iran are being treated and are treating their own people and treating you know how how they are perceived in the world um and and so therefore archaeologists can't come in and enjoy the rich historical history of the place. And they've seen generations of rulers coming in and going out and these places being one of the most important parts of the world, of the sort of proto-modern world. world of the sort of proto-modern world you you've got to be you've got to be pretty fucking angry about how modern politics uh has is preventing you from going into countries and and and learning more about your favorite subject imagine if you're like a middle east kind of expert on on that you know on pottery or glass and that and you literally can't access these countries because of tedious fucking tribal and international uh politics yeah i think I think it's a really good point.

I think, you know, there's a lot of hand-wringing and a lot of soul-searching around somewhere like the British Museum, as we talked about before. When you go there, it's actually quite apologetic now. All the signs are kind of a bit like, oh, this was taken by so-and-so at this point from this place, and now we're in discussions with the government of this country to talk about returning it. And it's like in discussions with the government of this country to talk

about returning it. And it's like all that kind of stuff. But the other thing that's worth bearing in mind is that I'm only talking pertaining to this country now because that's what I've read. I don't know about other countries. But in this country, the preservation of old stuff, whether it be a building or an artifact or whatever, is actually quite a modern phenomenon.

I think it only really started in Victorian times. The amount of things that have just been burnt to the ground, not considered, particularly in places like times like the Dark Ages, it's just unbelievable. The amount of stuff that would have been lost over the years is absolutely staggering. Think of something as well, like back in the day, something like the Bonfire of the Vanities,

where a load of stuff was essentially burnt because it was seen to be sacrilegious or whatever. I might have got this wrong, but I'm fairly certain that hundreds of what would now be priceless paintings were just burnt because they were seen as fake idols and stuff, and they've been lost forever. I like it it i like starting again control up delete let's start again i'm not saving it save as fuck off let's start let's let's make some new stuff apparently apparently yeah cosmetics art books and stuff in florence were burnt in the late 15th century

um as part of a festival as a dedication to one thing or another. Because I guess they were seen as sinful. I mean, the amount of lead paint they used to use back then, I would not want to inhale that. Can we burn some old episodes of this show,

perhaps? Can we burn podcasts? Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Anyway, if you want to get to the show hello at luke and pete show is the way to do it and where can we be found on um on twitter luke it's at luke and pete show i occasionally share pictures that people have sent me of different weird brands of batteries i reply to interesting stuff on there pete doesn't even know the password so you won't get anything from him on there. But you might get in touch with me

if you get in touch on Twitter, at Luke and Pete Show, yeah. Lovely old job. Well, I'm going to ship off and edit this podcast and probably put it up if you're really, really nice to me, Luke. Yeah, it would be a waste of time otherwise, wouldn't it? Take all the boring stuff out of there. It's a two-minute show.

Nice one. I'll see you on Monday for another two-minute one. Have a cracker weekend, everyone. Bye-bye. This was a Stakhanov production.