TRASHFUTURE - It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a nerd with a messiah complex!

Episode Date: July 20, 2017

James (twitter @raaleh) Milo (insta @milo_edwards), and Charlie (twitter @cfppalmer), talk about the wave of megalomania among billionaires, introduce some new characters, and make a serious number of digressions that nearly pre empt us from doing much of our stated mission. This one was remotely recorded in mid July because I was in Berlin for basically no reason. We talk dumb hygiene equipment, neofeudalism, and other fun things.

Um, that would have been a lot easier if you could count to 3, 2, 1 at a regular pace Ronnie, I'm not gonna lie to you. Yeah, well, I'm not in the podcasting game because I'm good at counting, you know, if I was good at counting I'd be a banker. I didn't get into the podcasting game to count boys. I came here to drink my milk and make a podcast. I'm pretty much done with my milk. The milk's off.

The milk's off. Yeah. The only alternative is to make a podcast. The milk's been in this flat for weeks, the milk's definitely gone. It's terrible when that happens. All right, so there's no milk, shall we make a podcast instead? Yeah, or I could go get some milk. Yeah, there is always that option.

Get drink milk and podcast simultaneously. Yeah. God, you guys sometimes, I don't know, I think you guys have some wacky ideas. I love the way, right? It comes across even more when we're doing it remotely. The way Riley's like, oh, you guys, what do you like? I feel, I feel more, more than when we all did it together that we're being kind of supervised. Now you jokesters, don't forget to be socialists.

Welcome to Trash Future, Episode Two, Gangs in Full Effect, your consumer's guide to the dystopian hellscape of late-stage capitalism. I'm tentatively titling this episode. It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a nerd with a messiah complex, and we're going to be talking a little bit about all of the ways in which tech billionaires think they're going to save the world when really they just invented a way for your racist aunt to send you memes. But before we get into that, I want to play... And we will get into that.

Oh, we will get into that. We totally will. My aunt is waiting with bated breath. Yeah, I really want to hear what kind of memes your aunts are sending you. What sort of aunts do you have who are like racist yet into memes? Yeah. Okay, Riley, what are we doing? What's the podcast?

We need guidance from Berlin. We need guidance from Berlin. Segment one of our little thing is we are reaching in to Riley's shopping bag and we're seeing what dumb bullshit he pulls out. Today I'm pulling out a little piece of technology called the AMMA brush. Is it like a brush that you use to drive nails in? Yeah, it drives the nails in very cleanly. Yeah.

So you're saying that this technology is a brush that's also a hammer? The AMMA brush, yeah. Oh, now I see. Now I see. It was... It's like some cockney London pronunciation is so far from Charlie's usual sort of diction. Yeah, half the country could have told that joke and you would have got it instantly. I thought you were just being really, like, really surreal.

Oh, I see. No. No, it's straight down the middle with Charlie Palmer. Well, is it maybe a brush with a very strong sense of self, like, AMMA brush? It's a brush with a self-aware AI. It speaks in the voice of dogs from memes. AMMA brush, Liz Halp. I AMMA brush, ask me anything.

But surely it must be something romantic. Is it like a brush that you use for nefarious genital purposes? Cleaning your partner's anus. It is nefarious. For meals. All right. For meals. I'm going to go ahead and divulge what it actually is.

The AMMA brush was released on Kickstarter a while back and it raised a shockingly high amount of money. I'm going to say what exact amount later. But what they've done, they being tech idiots, is they've decided that they want to revolutionize brushing your teeth. And so they have created what is essentially a piece of a bit of rubber dentures that has a big circle you stick onto it so it looks like a giant goddamn baby pacifier. And then you turn it on and it brushes your teeth in 10 seconds.

That's amazing. I know it's supposed to be stupid, but I really want one of those. I need to be pacified as much as possible. Charlie's anus needs to be cleaned before meals. I didn't say that. With a magnetic connecting point. But it does. I mean, your anus should be clean all the time.

Yeah. Can actually, can someone invent a decent piece of tech for that? Because in the UK and a lot of the world, we still just use paper. Wait, wait, hang on, hang on, hang on. So you're saying you want a decent piece of tech to clean your anus after I told you this is something that you put in your mouth and it vibrates. We've got those. Those exist.

It's called a vibrator. So yeah, that's what this is. It's a big pacifier that you suck on before you go to bed for 10 seconds because it'll clean your teeth. And the incredible thing is that what they've done is they did the math, there's a little marketing on this, is they said, look, if you can brush your teeth in 10 seconds, you'll save a total of like 104 days of your life that you'd otherwise spend brushing your teeth. And so you can get 104 days back by using the AMMA brush.

Yeah, but you're not going to do anything useful with your extra two minutes before you go to bed. It's a 104 days, but it does not come in chunks of whole days. No. It comes in chunks of like you get two minutes extra sleep or you get two minutes extra, like you might watch one more YouTube video before you go to bed. That's it. That's all you're going to gain.

You might have time to clean your anus also before you go to bed. Yeah, actually, I'll give them that. That's key anus cleaning time. Because that's just time I don't have at the moment and it's time I wished I had. In the modern, in the busy world of modernity, you've got to make time to clean your anus. Yeah, anal hygiene has been neglected by capitalism thus far. It's everyone's been in the pocket of big toothbrush. And so, you know, all of our anuses are going unclean because we just don't have the time

in our modern go-go world. No one's in the pocket of big anus. Yeah, I don't want to be in the pocket of big anus really, do I? Can that be the quote of the show? Yes. How much do you think it costs on Kickstarter to get yourself an AMMA brush? I reckon, so actually some toothbrushes are like 80 quid, aren't they? Quite.

So I think this is more than that. And I think because it's like funding as well, I reckon this could be like a 200, 300 quid job. Mm-hmm. Well. Well, I don't know if it's, I don't know if it's that, maybe I'll go 150 quid, but I reckon that there are, I reckon there are consumables. I reckon they're really excessively expensive consumables.

Oh, yeah. In terms of the price is right rules, which I've decided apply to this. You want to get closest without going over, neither of you win because you both win over. It's 69 euros for the AMMA brush, but Milo, I'm giving you extra points on this one because you were right. Each pod of toothpaste, because Lord, forget that you can't possibly use your own toothpaste for this. You can't just squeeze some in.

That'd be crazy. You're on the Silicon Valley toothpaste. Mm-hmm. This is a pod of fancy technical toothpaste that you can't use on anything else, and that's completely useless otherwise, is like six euros. If you use it on your teeth with a regular toothbrush, it actually dissolves your teeth. You're trying to use it outside the AMMA brush, then yeah, it does just dissolve your teeth. There's not just 69 euros, which, you know, nice, by the way, it's a cool price.

You can also pledge 999 euros, and you guys want to do a quick guess what you get if you pledge 999 euros. Do you get it personalized? Do you get, like, one that's custom-made? That's the thing. No, but you're close. Everyone else's gets personalized to you. Your signature gets inscribed on every AMMA brush sold.

That's amazing. It's almost worth it, isn't it, for the sheer troll value? Just to know that my name is in so many people's mouths. Also, you could just sign, like, I'm a pedophile, as your name, and it would be inscribed on everyone's... That would be fun. Everyone's AMMA brush. I feel like that's the beginning of the worst prank anecdote of all time.

So I donated $1,000 to the AMMA brush, and now everyone who buys this weird toothbrushing device gets, I'm a pedophile, inscribed on their weird toothbrushing device. You had to be there. So I mentioned earlier that they've raised a quite high amount of money. Anyone want to price his right, do a quick guess on how much it is that they've raised, how much is that going over? I think they've raised 1.5 million euros. It's a little more.

I'm going to go lower. I'm going to go 150 sow. Okay. Oh, Milo, by a wide stretch, it's 175 grand. Oh, that's a good guess. I know. A company that has created a pacifier-shaped toothbrush for big adult babies that wear adult diapers and costs like three times as much for half as much toothpaste has raised

175,000 euros. And every one of them says Milo Edwards on it. What kind of deranged man would buy like the fucking AMMA, like inscribe your name on every AMMA brush? Like who is like, okay, so I could buy one for 69 euros or for a mere like almost a thousand percent more. Do you think advertisers are getting on this? If like Pepsi want their name on every AMMA brush, just as a bit of kind of cheap media.

Yeah. But ironic if Pepsi was written on a tooth cleaning device, wouldn't it? It would be a bit, wouldn't it? Yeah. Yeah. However, if it were written on an anus cleaning device. Yeah, fine. Absolutely fine.

I reckon you could use Pepsi to clean your anus. I reckon that stuff's probably pretty- No, you can't, Ashley. You can't. Would it burn a hole right through your duodenum? Yeah, it does. Charlie, have you doucheed with Pepsi? No.

Well, I'm pretty sure that, you know, the AMMA brush could save you a few seconds every night. But I think if we take into account the, you know, time value of money and all this, we could probably swap out every pod of stupid toothpaste with pure cyanide. And on average, the human gene pool would end up with a higher IQ. Oh, yeah. That's interesting. I didn't really, I never knew that you were a eugenicist.

Yeah, I suspected it actually. I did suspect it. Anti-natalism is bourgeois ideology. So, sorry, Riley, this seems like there was a decent pause there. Is there any way we can check that what we've done so far sounds all right? Or is that something that's going to have to wait until we've synced the recordings? Yeah, let's just go like we can go. I'm not the organizing force of literally anything.

You've never, you've never happened. I'm entirely parasitic to all endeavors. In fact, the snacks this evening is the most organizing you've done for some time. Decades. I know. I hate it when capitalism doesn't provide its usual fruits. Yeah. But I wish, I mean, Sainsbury doesn't have the usual range of taste of different cookies

that I require. Yeah, you guys ready to taste the difference of what makes some capitalism you fill in the rest? Good segue, Riley. I'd like to repeat a section from last week where we talked about how one of the wonderful things that sort of late stage capitalism loves to do is reinvent really obvious stuff that really exists and brand it as inhibitive. Absolutely.

And I found a few days ago just the best version of this. What Facebook has done, you assume Mark Zuckerberg was involved, is they have purchased a large parcel of land beside their Palo Alto headquarters and they are creating some hundreds, like homes, businesses, public transit, stores and so on on it for Facebook employees to live their entire lives on. Any guesses what they've done and what this is just a retread of? Is it like Bourneville where all the Cadbury workers live, where everything's made of chocolate?

That last bit might not be true. Or like 14th century Norfolk? Is it like the feudal system? Where like they're all like serfs and he is the Lord of the Manor. Mark Zuckerberg just invented feudalism. Does he decide all of the disputes in his hundreds courts? I don't know. Do the local nobility gather round and hear the disputes of the townspeople?

Does he occasionally hold trials by combat? I would totally be down with that. The combat is really effeminate in the way that techies would do. They're hitting each other with speciality cured sausages or something. I'd watch that. Can they televise it? Can they do it on Facebook Live? Yeah, I would watch that.

That's not the only thing I would watch on Facebook Live. Speaking of hitting each other with cured sausages, you guys see that David Brooks column the other day. What column? Whose column is like it's cured sausage? David Brooks is this like op-ed writer in the New York Times. They're all like fucking ghouls. David Brooks wrote a column about the educational divide in American society and said he went to take out his friend who quote unquote only has a high school degree for lunch to a restaurant that serves like prosciutto sandwiches or whatever.

And his friend who totally doesn't exist got scared of the prosciutto and asked to go get Mexican instead. If I understood Riley correctly, some guy who writes to the New York Times took his supposedly working class friend for a lunch at some posh restaurant that serves prosciutto sandwiches. But his working class friend was so working class that he got scared of prosciutto and asked to go to a Mexican place instead. I'm pretty scared of prosciutto to be fair. It's raw pork. Yeah. Is it raw or is it not?

What does cured even mean? Doesn't mean it just doesn't, it used to have a disease and now it doesn't. Yeah, I don't want any formally diseased prosciutto. Yeah. This prosciutto used to have gonorrhea, but we sorted it out. Yeah, but they can't cure gonorrhea anymore. Oh yeah, shit. It's actually a big concern in my life that I might get incurable gonorrhea.

You've probably already got it. Yeah. Ladies, if you're out there. I for one will not be having sex with you this evening. You're not going to be able to, Mark Zuckerberg's going to come claim prima nocta. We can have a dispute about it and Mark Zuckerberg can chair it. Perhaps we can have a trial by combat. That'll be fun.

That'll be the worst trial by combat ever. Let's take one another with cured sausages and all of the village workers will run terrified. I might actually have some cured sausages in the flat. Should I just be? You're going to scare off all the high school educated listeners. Yeah, so what is the conclusion of this New York Times story? I don't know. I sort of, I rage closed my computer because it was so aggressively dumb.

David Brooks, David Brooks, his imaginary lunch companion is terrified of Gabba Ghoul. Yeah. What was his point? Was his point that like prosciutto is oppressive to the proletariat? I don't really understand. If anything, it's oppressive to pigs. I think his point was something along the lines of upper middle class people have used education to seal off privilege from everyone who isn't of their class, which is actually a very good point, just completely overshadowed by his histrionic lunch meat dramatics.

Yeah, he's made the point quite ham-handedly, hasn't he? You'd say he was quite sausage-fingered about it. Thank you. That's good, yeah. That's very good. I'm now just trying to think is there any other. He's made a pig's ear of it. No, that's good.

There's another good one. Yeah, so I'm sorry. We totally got completely distracted. We never do that. We're always very on topic from the Facebook thing. Yeah, they invented feudalism, and now you're probably going to have to use your Facebook paycheck to buy all your shit from the company store. It's like a West Virginia coal mining town. Yeah, I love that idea.

The Facebook workers coming out of the like mine at 6 p.m. with their faces all blue from the like dust. I'd like to see this happen the other way. I'd like to see mining towns in West Virginia start having like sort of funky campuses with breakout areas and weirdly shaped furniture. And table tennis. Bean bags everywhere. But everyone's just absolutely filthy because they work in a mine. There's like an iMac that's just covered in fucking soot. It's like minimalist, but sooty minimalism.

Like sooty, but without any of the surrounding characters like Sweep or the panda called Sue. Riley, I imagine you have no idea who's sooty, Sweep and the panda called Sue are. Oh yeah, no, those are references that are delicious. Delicious references. Basically, Riley, I'm going to explain British culture to you really quickly. There used to be a children's show called Sooty and Sweep where a man who has not yet been discovered to be a pedophile, but may have been. He's one of those ones who like, you know, when Operation U-Tree started, everyone started guessing who'd be next. I'm not saying he will be, but I wouldn't be that surprised.

Yeah, I don't even know what his name is. No. But yeah, he used to like do the puppets. Do we as a podcast just do our first libel? Oh yeah, yeah, we can be done for libel. Yeah. But I mean, if we just, everything is a joke. We've not even named him.

Yeah. So basically, yeah, there was this bear called Sooty, which was a pup. They were all puppets. It was like a dog called Sooty. Was it a dog? Yeah, normally. It sort of looked a bit like a donkey. Something between a dog and a dogkin.

More libel. Yeah, right. And so, and he did all the puppets. And when you were a kid, you genuinely didn't realize they were puppets, or at least I didn't. No, I did actually, because I was a smart kid. No, I mean, so do these guys work in a West Virginia coal mining town, or are they like, they're just doing on like a Facebook like Click Farm? Yeah, I forget which one we were running with. I don't recall, but...

That's what you say at your Senate hearing. I don't recall. But that's really hurt the Russian ambassador's feelings, right? That no one ever remembers meeting him. Yeah, actually, that's really, that's tough, isn't it? Maybe the Russian ambassador is just a really boring man. And that is actually what's at the heart of this whole case. Yeah.

So he just sits down and starts talking to you about how he's building a model ship and a bottle, and then he just won't shut up. Yeah, I know, and he just gets out photos of his kids and you're like, just go, just go home. Yeah. Just stop it. Your kids are boring. I don't give a shit what school play they're in. Wait, I have information about Hillary Clinton. He needs it. It's getting late.

There's another thing I wanted to bring up. I think that the comparison between mining towns and company stores and chits and so on, is actually quite comparable to climbing wall Facebook tech culture. It's the same shit. It's the same request that you devote your entire life to this company and its product and its whole lifestyle and that you merge yourself into it. It's got a much happier face on it. I'm sure everything's going to be on the Facebook app.

I'm sure that your TV is going to get streamed through Facebook. And then Mark Zuckerberg is going to know that you went back to watch all the sex position scenes in Game of Thrones five times. And he's going to go, nice. Nice. Nice. Now, would you like to buy some itchy and scratchy money? What's that? Well, it's money that's made just for the park.

It works just like regular money, but it's fun. Do it, dad. Well, okay. If it's fun, let's see you. I'll take $1,100 worth. Okay. I want to move on to a perennial favorite of ours in conversation. A young man with a name like a cologne.

That's right, everybody. We're talking Elon Musk. Very good. I like that one. Basically, this is a little old, but I wanted to bring it up because it's a perfect sort of delusion of grandeur story. There was this story last week about allegations of sexism surfacing in Tesla, shocking sexism in the tech industry. Who knew? I know.

Apparently, they were all invited to an essential oils meeting and all the female executives were supposed to go to a meeting about essential oils. And that was just a bit far. Fair enough. But it's essential. Yeah. Did they not hear the essential bit? This is an essential meeting for essential oils. They don't run on oil.

They're electric cars. It's a really, really important meeting. They still need oil for the moving parts. I'm joining the anti-war protest, No Blood for Essential Oil. To be fair, I reckon essential oils are one of those many pseudo-lefty products that are probably actually incredibly right-wing in the way that they're made. Everyone who's a fucking hippie owns a load of essential oils, but they're probably made using slave labor and a cut-down rainforest. Made from oil of candor. Yeah.

But really, the essential oils thing isn't the key part of this that I wanted to discuss. What I actually wanted to discuss was a throwaway line in this article, which is that apparently this lady claims, and I'm a client of Believer, but the company has since denied it, that on the first day you're given a t-shirt that depicts Elon Musk as a superhero. Oh, wow. Which superhero? I didn't say. Do we have details? Is he depicted as, like, a danger mouse?

I would totally allow him being danger mouse. Or rastamouse. Oh, yeah. Rastamouse isn't a superhero. He's just a DJ mouse. Don't tell me rastamouse isn't a superhero, Milo. Also, a mouse that DJs is pretty super. I mean, rastamouse's superhero is super, super power. It's, like, chilling out, man, which is, like, not a great superpower. I mean, it's fine as a thing, but... I love the idea, if someone's had the idea at some stage of, how do we make a kids' program that hints...

How strongly can we hint that the main character smoked loads of weed without making that clear to the kids? Why would you bother doing that? No, kids, this is just one of my silliest cigarettes. I don't know what that accent was, either. No. Mind you, rastamouse doesn't actually have that raster an accent, either. It's, like, it's quite mild. Okay, I know how to pull us back in. Do.

What superhero do you think Elon Musk is? Like, he's definitely Batman, right? Oh, yeah. He's obviously Batman, isn't he? That actually makes a lot of sense. That's not even a joke. He just is. Yeah, because he's super rich. Yeah. Do you reckon Elon Musk has a super old butler? I really... Yeah, to be fair, I think Batman has his moments of that, but it's, you know...

I'd love to see Batman where there's a Batman movie where he fights evil by developing a new range of solar energy panels that you can install on your house. Actually, he gives up on fighting crime and he just sends all the criminals to Mars to die. And then he goes and does a smug... And then he goes and does a smug Ted talk about it. I just, I think it's like he's a version of Batman, but whose main superpower was creating a way for us to buy used shoes online and then creating a really inefficient airline for zillionaires to go into low earth orbit. Not even to space, but... Wouldn't that be really fun if Batman just did that though? He like did it in the mask. Still did it in the mask, still did the voice, but just sold you shoes.

And then he also had like a villain opponent who was doing a similar thing, like nobody cared who I was before I sent people into low earth orbit. I like the idea of Elon Musk saying and being asked what he cares about. Like what do you care about Elon Musk? And he's like disruption. Where is the Mars? I fundamentally just, I think it's so creepy that these guys think of themselves as superheroes because like, yes, it's important that we replace oil in cars. It's probably good that we have like a distributed grid of solar panels. But the fact is like, A, we're doing it in a way that just incredibly redounds to the owners of capital, right? Like the people who benefit from this power grid are the people who can afford the batteries and the solar cells and shit. People who can afford the Teslas that'll start auto driving everyone around.

Like once again, it's going to be a massive upward transfer of wealth. You know, when we eventually go to Mars, you know, do you think it's going to be like an egalitarian democratic society or maybe that superhero Elon Musk might just have a bit of a say in how things go? Well, I think that maybe like, actually the whole thing is a great deception and that going to Mars is maybe the thing that will just get rid of the ruling class because they're the only people that will be able to afford to go to Mars. They'll get there and they'll realise it's shit, but they can't get back and they'll just die. Fucking Elon Musk and Philip Green and Richard Branson like just solely suffocating on Mars while remembering what it was like to live in Monaco for a bit. Can there be a Kickstarter to send Philip Green to Neptune? I tell you what, I reckon Philip Green weighs more than the planet of Neptune, especially when he's got his jewellery on. Tell him.

I want to tweet Philip Green after this. That would be the weirdest insult Philip Green will ever receive. You weigh more than the planet of Neptune. Tweet Philip Green right now will wait. Charlie and I will talk amongst ourselves. We call Philip Green a celestial dwarf. Yeah, let's call him that. I think we should all call him that. We need to all tweet him simultaneously.

I can't do it now because my laptop's recording the podcast and my phone is talking to Riley. Okay, I'll tweet him. I'll tweet him. What are we saying to Philip Green? That he's a cold, cold celestial dwarf. Does he have Twitter? I think he might not have Twitter. I haven't asked him. You could just tweet it about him. Yeah, okay.

Hashtag Philip Green. You could email him. I once emailed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi for a bet. Oh yeah, you did, didn't you? What did you have to say to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi? So I once said in conversation that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi probably has a lot on his plate, which to be fair, as the man in control of ISIS at that time, he probably did. I mean, imagine like running ISIS on a day-to-day basis quite a lot of admin.

Yeah, loads. And so one of my mates said, tell him. Great. So I had to email Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and tell him that I reckon he probably had a lot on his plate. As does Philip Green, probably. So some poor bloke who probably lives in Canada called Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has got actually probably, frankly, quite a reassuring email. Yeah, yeah. Probably quite comforting if he is busy.

You know, maybe he's a lawyer and he's just working long hours and he's just got a really nice email from some random bloke in England saying, I reckon you've got a lot on your plate. What a nice thing for him to get. Yeah, I just, I wrote it in a really friendly tone of voice in the hope that you might reply. Like, yeah, well, running the world's first Islamic caliphate is, you know, it's tricky. I wouldn't say it's the world's first. There have been a couple others. The modern world's first.

That's sort of the point, isn't it? Would it be the third caliphate? Would that be, is that... Can't remember. No, I don't know. Can only name two others. Don't add us. Good. Would you step outside for a second? Dear Lord, that's the loudest profanity I've ever heard.

Oh, you're a prick and this is all getting edited out. Can we just leave in your prick and this is all getting edited out? Oh, yeah, definitely. We're Schrodinger's bad people. No one knows exactly why or if we really are. I mean, I do. I know why and I know that we really are. So I think we can even use all that to circle back and say, what do we think? Do we think that Elon Musk and the rest of his guys should just, you know,

lead the charge, go live on Mars, die there and then we'll follow you if we think it seems cool. Yeah, go guys. Go live on Mars. It'll be great. Elon Musk is like, are you sure because you can come with us if you want? You're not a blick, are you? You're like, no, no. Stop saying Elon Musk's racist. I love that that is the point, this podcast has got to Charlie beseeching me to stop.

Please stop saying Elon Musk is racist. He might be, but we don't know. Because maybe where that sentence was going is, you're not a blick, are you? Although that would also be fine. Oh, fuck. It would be like, ever be like, God, Elon, you should really stop using such ambiguous grammar. It's always fine in the end, but the first half of the sentence always has us quite worried. He's like, yeah, I'd like all of the women in my company to go to this meeting about essential oils,

but actually not really because that would be kind of sexist. So Elon Musk is becoming more and more similar to my Arnold Schwarzenegger. Yeah, I was wondering where that was coming from. We need to go and live on Mars. We need to develop solar energy. I need you. Put that cool oil down. I want your clothes, your boots, and your self-driving car.

The Moon. For several years, she has fascinated many. But will man ever walk on her fertile surface? Democratic hopeful Adelaide Stevenson says so. I have no objection to man walking on the Moon. By 1964, experts say man will have established 12 colonies on the Moon, ideal for family vacations. Once there, you'll weigh only a small percentage of what you weigh on Earth. Slow down, Tummy. You're not on the Moon yet.

The Moon belongs to America, and anxiously awaits the arrival of our astro-man. Will you be among them? This is another way in which some rich-ass tech guys think that they're entitled to outsize political power. These rich guys who are in ass tech. Some rich-ass techs. Man, those are rich-ass techs. We were talking about the Central American Empire, and we were talking about the failed Pontiac. They had a lot of gold to be fair to them.

They did, yeah. They could afford it a lot of anal cleaning brushes. They could, and archaeologists are still searching for them. The fabled last city of... El Dorado. The fabled last city of anal cleaning brushes. It's actually Indiana Jones' next movie. Eldurainus. No.

The viewers, that's the worst part of the show, but Charlie's laughing at it more than anything else. What is wrong with you? I think we have a new episode titled, guys. I think we have found it. The last city. Wait, who's that? Who are you doing now? I don't know. It's not Indiana Jones. That's like Antonio Banderas in Zorro.

He's a Central American. No, he's not. Right. No, Zorro is. Oh, ish. Yeah. I thought Zorro was supposed to be Spanish and then goes to America. What were you getting around to, Riley?

I'd say, speaking of the US, there is a new political party in town. And again, this happened last week. It's a little old, but we'd really be remiss not to talk about it. Because the founders of LinkedIn, the only social network more annoying than Facebook, and the founder of Zynga, which is behind Farmville, the most annoying element of Facebook from 2013, both of whom are tech billionaires. Yeah, actually, Farmville was a really annoying part of Facebook because no one ever accepted my requests to play with them. I just wanted someone to watch my cows while I was at work. Yeah, I just needed someone to cow sit.

Which sounds like a weird actual thing that you could do. Like cow tipping. Yeah, cow sitting. You're just going to sit on a cow. It's like some other weird disability that cows have. Like, yeah, if you sit on them, they can't move. Some weird psychological thing with cows, you know? They just start milking everywhere. These two guys, these two guys.

Mark Pincus, or is it called Marcus Pincus Caesar's most inept assassin who slipped in the blood and cut off his own dick. Mark Pincus sounds like a guy who was kicked out of the Red Hot Chili Peppers for being too shit. And Reid Hoffman have founded a new challenger political party that's supposed to be like Silicon Valley's answer to the DSA, called Win the Future. I just like that Reid Hoffman sounds like an intellectually pretentious imperative, doesn't it? Like, oh, come on guys, you clearly don't know your stuff. Reid Hoffman. Yeah, that's like something many, many Cambridge supervisors have said to me in a supervision like,

Miley, you've not read the necessary Hoffman here. Yeah, fucking Reid Hoffman, mate. Well, guys, don't just Reid Hoffman, but look up Hoffman. Look up Reid Hoffman, because we really need to see what he looks like here. So it's Reid Hoffman and Mark Pincus, that's the guy. It's not the worst gag of the show, but it is the cheapest. Yeah, I'm pretty cheap, to be honest. If I wasn't a comedian, I'd be a prostitute.

And I'd be very cheap because I'd look horrendous and have an unclean anus. Oh, wow. He's quite an overweight man. This is the guy who founded LinkedIn. This is the, you know, professional network. God, imagine having founded LinkedIn. Being the most, like the social network that sends, like that emails more people than it actually has members. Like, oh, your friends are on LinkedIn and then you look at the list and it's like, those aren't my friends. Those are people who have no friends.

Those are the rest of my former friends. And that's why they're on LinkedIn. So these are acquaintances of mine who now work for JP Morgan. I make all my friends through LinkedIn. I keep getting epic notifications of people's work anniversaries and I'm like, oh, I couldn't congratulate you on that. Do you think, same job. Do you think one person ever in history has congratulated another person on their first work anniversary? On LinkedIn.

Do you think that's happened one time? I bet that maybe, maybe that's how Reid Hoffman in Mark Pink has met. I love, I love like middle-aged people who actually like share and comment on stuff on LinkedIn. Like, I have a LinkedIn account because I went to business school once. And I mean, it was a dark time in my life. And it's really like, there are the people who like, like she's like a 45 year old woman who like works at JP Morgan or whatever. She'll genuinely like share an article from the economist on LinkedIn. Really interesting stuff, worth a read.

And then some guy with it, with his, where his avatar is him in a suit will comment, thanks for this Sandra. We'll read later once I'm done with this meeting. And it's like, who are you? Who are these people? I spend all day on Twitter where people are like, what if poop smelled like rain? Better than vice versa, I guess. No, yeah. That's what we got to do.

We got to start putting drill on like the at drill. We got to put him on LinkedIn and say really interesting stuff here from an interesting business thinker. Yeah, who claims he will never log off. Great news for LinkedIn. Guys, FaceTime culture is back. Drill is on forever. What if LinkedIn had Farmville and you persuaded people that it was a great way to network with other executives? Maybe it is a great way to network with other executives.

Okay, I'm going to tell you guys more about what these two clowns, one of them is worth three billion and the other is worth like 1.3 billion. These two clowns. Are doing. These couple of clowns, these clowns in Congress. They want to do, is they're creating a like a pressure group that is supposed to basically push the Democratic Party more centrist. Because this is what pink is, the Zynga guy said. I'm fearful the Democratic Party is already moving too far to the left. I want to push the Democratic Party to be more in touch with mainstream America, you know, like me, a tech billionaire.

And on some issues, that's more left, but on some issues, it might be more right. And just before you guess, their platform is pro business. So I think we can guess where they're more right. Nice. I like the idea of a program which is like completely anti-business. Like there will be no businesses. There will be no, like you will not be able to buy anything or sell anything. So I think it's easy to miss the wood for the trees on this story because I've been doing a bit of reading around it.

And I think there's been a lot of analysis of where the political alignment of the Democratic Party should be in the light of Trump and in the light of increased polarization of politics, et cetera, et cetera. It should be left. And I think actually the real point that everyone's missing is that this is a really glorious initiative because they've recruited the frontman of 90s one hit wonder band, Third Eye Blind. Oh, thank fuck for the way that sentence ended. Charlie, I was so worried that you'd actually done research. I'm going to make a serious point on this podcast. No. Because to a future reference, that is not what this is about.

Fully aware. I'm really glad. What's the name of the Third Eye Blind lead singer? I can't remember, but they had that one song, Semi Charmed Life, that was like not even a fun one hit wonder. It was like a fluke shitty one hit wonder. But Charlie, how does it go? I actually couldn't. I can't and won't sing it to you.

Such is my disdain for the song Semi Charmed Life by the shitty 90s one hit wonder band, Third Eye Blind. Such is my lack of surprise at the fact that this guy is involving himself in such a crappy initiative that I will not sing you his work. I want to run him as a senator. Don't be too hasty, Charlie, because that guy could soon be president of the United States. But here's the thing. This like these weird like business schools want to run the lead singer of Third Eye Blind as a senator, but Kid Rock is also standing as a senator. Kid Rock, who I saw wonderfully summarized today in something that said Kid Rock to drop words Kid and Rock from his name as neither is accurate. Kid Rock will just slowly fade into nothingness.

I'm changed. It's like Great Northern Rail. To be fair, it is northern. It's not. It goes to East Anglia. Oh, shit. So you could become Kid Rock could become like old repetitive pop. Yeah. That's catchy. I like it.

Then again, the name Third Eye Blind is also bizarre because no one has a third eye. Oh, no. I haven't very deformed people. Yeah. Who should be respected? You just started doing open mic jokes. Yeah. And what's with this name Third Eye Blind?

I never had a third eye. Am I right everyone? Anyway, that's my time. Good night. Oh, Jesus. You know, it would be so easy to do. But I guess it's not. So imagine having the joy of having like the massive evolutionary advantage of having a third eye and then it being blind. Been really ironic.

You're like an intermediary stage in evolution. You are. Yeah. What a let down. I wanted to quote something that that pink has said sort of more of the mission statement of this Democratic Party pressure group quote. I just feel patronized. Everything I get is like, hey, you couldn't possibly get it. It's too complex and sophisticated.

What really goes on? Hey, leave it to us. We'll go represent you and fight the good fight and just give us money. But I sent the Democratic Party five paragraphs of input and they just sent me a form letter and never got back to me. I don't feel represented. How could you ignore a man called Mark Pinkers? Who's a billionaire who's like, I'm not represented in America. My voice isn't heard.

I'm not powerful enough. It's really hard being a billionaire these days. No one, no one respects you. No one wants to hear what you've got to say. You know, especially when you're like a low billionaire, like 1.3 billion. Like even just to get listened to, he has to partner with a guy who's got 3 billion. And your surname's Pinkers. You can totally believe that loads of people in the Democratic office are just like, Mark Pinkers.

And they Googled him. They were like, oh, he's a billionaire, but still. It's the surname that's the closest to the name Pingu that I've ever heard. I can't even remember what noise the Pingu's made. Yeah, Newton was one of them, yeah. Farmville's whole model was getting people to trade real money that they get for their real labor in exchange for like, fake farm box. Sorry, Riley, we weren't actually listening to you because we were making Pingu noises.

No, no, no, no. I was doing socialism and you guys were making Pingu noises. Are you familiar with Pingu, Riley? Or do we need to explain that as well? No, I'm not familiar with that particular. It's class to see in penguins, let's move on. And they go, noot, noot. That's it.

Oh yeah, and the dad is always doing the ironing, although none of them wear clothes. So I hadn't occurred to me. To be honest, that is a bit like, you know, farm bucks. Like that 40-year-old racist aunt from Facebook I mentioned earlier, you know, mortgages her house to buy more farm bucks, which goes into Mark Pincus' pocket, which he feels entitles him to have a fucking voice in politics and to make the whole world more pro-business, as though it's not already fucking pro-business enough already.

Die on Mars, bitch. Get out of our fucking lane. He's very pro-business, except in the Venetuela. Is that your Antonio Banderas accent? Yeah, it's Antonio Banderas if he was playing Hugo Chavez in a biopic. I think there's one saving grace. There's one saving grace to win the future, which is that so far their only method of interfering in politics, 100% of it, is that if they get donations of $5,000,

they're going to do something really clever. They're going to tweet two different policy positions and allow people with Twitter to vote on it by retweeting it, whichever one gets the most retweets gets put up on a billboard. Because Twitter's representative of the real world. Yeah, Twitter's not completely full of insane people. And, you know, two tech billionaires with more than a billion dollars each, the best idea they could get is essentially something that they've lifted

from the plot of an episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. People forget that this is how Boaty McBoatface happened. Never ask the people what they want. Never. No. The people should be told what they want. It's not even that the people are stupid. It's that the people love fucking everything up wherever possible.

Like, we really love it. That's why in Subway it's much cheaper to order something from the preset menu than to compose your own sandwich. Because you don't know how to compose your own sandwich. Yeah. And they discourage and deter. That's it. That's the one I was looking for.

They deter that behavior. That's the one. And they're right to do it. I mean, you know, because we are all products of the university system, we all know all about sandwiches. But, you know, we couldn't expect most people to know about that. Yeah, we're part of the metropolitan sandwich elite. We are, yeah.

We fearlessly walk into delis in order to shoot out. Yeah. It's us and Antonio Banderas who explains all of the political concepts. The problem is that many of the people in the working classes are not sufficiently all fair with the political complexities of the day in order to make the decisions that are truly best for them. And I, in my opinion, egg mayo is underrated. Many people, they will go for the meatball marinara,

but I find this to be a slightly unsophisticated sandwich. I actually love that sandwich. I know you love that sandwich. I don't agree with Antonio. Egg mayo is good. I like egg mayo. In Subway, though? No, you don't have it in Subway.

Oh, no. I don't think that is even an option. I don't trust the sandwich artists with that. Yeah. I think in Subway, it's like the eggs of the people who work there. Oh. I mean, maybe. I wouldn't be surprised.

Walmart's got people driving to make deliveries after work hours. Subway is probably going to start harvesting human parts to make some of it. Yeah, labor laws aren't what they were. Welcome to Subway. What kind of bread would you like? What was that last bit? Nothing. Everyone else is automating their workforce.

Subway is just replacing theirs with chickens. Is it just me or does everyone sigh before picking the bread? What kind of bread do you want? You're looking at what they've got on the shelf. And you try and understand what the difference is between the different breads. And you kid yourself that there is a difference. That's the problem. You guys just didn't go to university enough to really understand the dynamics of ordering

at Subway. How much is enough? Clearly more than we did. You guys need some master's degrees in order to truly appreciate eating fresh. Eat fresh. Eat fresh. Eat fresh with me, Antonio Banderes. The freshest takes on modern politics.

I want to just to swing back a little bit to win the future and their thing. I think that the one thing we can be relieved by is that their whole strategy is completely stupid and they're never going to do anything other than waste some of their own money, which is totally fine. Yeah. I mean, I'm down with them wasting their money. I mean, I feel like anything Mark Pincus does is a waste of money and time. What I'd like to do as our first action as a podcast is I want to see if we can get

another thing put up on a billboard in DC with this extremely technologically advanced group of people. We just need to retweet something a bunch of times. I wonder how many ammo brushes Mark Pincus could get his name on for that kind of money. Literally all of them. Yeah. Be good. Be decent advertising that.

That would actually be a more effective. Do you reckon Mark Pincus is behind the ammo brush? And every ammo brush is actually going to have everyone's name written on it. It's going to have a series of like really pro business policies written on it. Yeah. He's actually submitted a cunning selection of names, all of which when you put them end and spell out a series of pro business policies. Lower corporation tax and bomb city award.

They are literally forcing pro business policies down the throats of voters. Yeah. Yeah. Why not? Literally into the mouths of voters. I looked up what the policies are and here is how just sort of melty and shitty these two policies are that they think are going to revolutionize the world. One is free college education, but only for engineering programs.

So basically they want the state to subsidize their future workforce. And the second one is to begin impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump. So, you know, these guys, they're very adventurous advocating STEM and a return to civility and politics. How could that possibly be an election platform? Because that is a policy that you could only implement if you lost. Like beginning because Donald Trump is the president. So if you won the election, he wouldn't be the president anymore.

And therefore you couldn't impeach him. This is some like weird liberal Democrat shit, like coming up with policies that are literally only possible if you're not in government. Like what is this? It's because that's the mindset of these guys. Like even though they're tech billionaires, like at their very heart of hearts, they are just losers. I mean, I think you have to be to become a tech billionaire, don't you?

Right. Like they only know how to mitigate other people winning. Like they happen to have invented like, you know, a way to swindle that on. I mentioned out of Facebook money and a way for your emails to get extra annoying and unusable. Like these are not necessarily smart people. These are not people I want to trust with not even running a country. I don't want to trust them with running a pencil.

How do you run a pen? I mean, the really cool people don't become billionaires. They become shemillionaires. They sang 2006 summer banger. Right in dirty. Yeah. Oh God. That's, that's, I think, I think trash future needs to start an American to be fair pressure

group where our only policy is to elect a millionaire. Yeah. Right in dirty. They see me rolling. They hating patrolling. They trying to catch me riding dirty. Trying to catch me riding dirty. We just didn't do that.

We're going to get, do we need to buy the rights to do this? Well, then it goes down. Trying to catch me riding dirty. Oh yeah. That's good. Yeah. I hope we don't need to buy the rights to that. What a song.

That he could come on stage at every rally to that. I wonder if off the back of his recent drive to get rich people into high powered cabinet positions. He just tapped Chameleon F secretary of state. He just thinks Chameleon is a real number. He's good. He's got a Chameleon dollars. We got to get this guy.

He's a born winner. He's got a Chameleon. He's going to, he's going to create Chameleons of jobs. And he inherited a small loan from his father of a Chameleon dollars. I've heard from this guy. This guy has come up from the bottom. He has been riding dirty. And he's not, and he's not, and he's not afraid of country of controversy.

They see him rolling. They hate him. They hate him. Folks. Yeah. So what do we do? Do we, do we, do we think the official trash future position on, on win the future? Could you ratify this is a Mark Pinkerton read Hoffman go die on Mars.

Stay out of fucking politics. You're already billionaires. I think we're looking at a part of that too. That we should neither elect the third eye blind guy or kid rock, but in fact chameleon air for president. Yeah, maybe third eye blind guy for VP. Yeah. I'd like, I'd like, uh, uh, chameleon air for president. Third eye blind guy for VP.

Also, also third eye blind guy will only be known as third eye blind guy. He does not get a name. No, I don't think he gets a name and I feel for him, but he doesn't get a name. That sounds like it could be a position on a film set. It's third eye for the blind guy. A bunch of clairvoyance. Have to guess which person in the room is blind. They make the blind people carry out basic tasks like making tea and stuff.

I reckon some blind people are probably way better at basic manual tasks than I am. Yeah, I think that's a certainty. Yeah, so actually it might be quite hard. Maybe if you get some blind due to a fucking stick at making like tea and coffee. Well, look guys, they don't need help making tea. They've got the teforia. Oh, call back to last week. Hey guys, what's our episode from last week?

Yeah, listen to it. I mean, you know, you can't. Yeah, or just watch it. Unless you have synesthesia. Speaking of callbacks, I think it's time. I think it's time to hop into our last segment. Do either of you two guys have a pitch? I was thinking of having an app for the modern liberal person,

which sort of tracks the moral fashionability of the food you eat. So you enter what you've eaten, which is like, I don't know, like three pounds of a dookie beans and some quinoa. And it's like, and it tells you like how many good, good lip points you have for the day on the basis of like, how much quinoa is, you know, disrupting the economies of Central American countries versus, you know, obviously your positive, you know, environmental credentials and the amount of cancer that you're not getting. And then maybe it could be voiced by Antonio Banderas. Really running with that. If this podcast produces nothing else,

it's going to produce a lot of job opportunities for Antonio Banderas. Yeah, can we get Antonio Banderas on the pod? Yeah, just looking for you to work on for the next time. What else are we doing? What else is that guy doing? Absolutely. They can't be making another Puss in Boots movie. Puss in Boots.

Can we get it? I want to see Antonio Banderas doing a sort of joint tune, a duet with Chameleonair. Yeah, let's make it happen. I want all of that. But I want that that's how the like Lib Smugness app, that's how it communicates it with you. Political Antonio Banderas and Chameleonair singing a duet of just how much your avocado toast addiction is actually fueling cartel profits in North Mexico. Is it just food or does this just kind of give you points throughout life for acts that you achieve? Like, you know, picking up some litter in the street in front of lots of people who are watching gives you lots of points.

Or, you know, it gives points for the earnestness with which you've shared a Facebook article about the damage that avocados are doing to forests in Mexico. Yeah, I mean, I think this has this has the potential to be so much bigger than food. It really does. And it can also remind you how much money you're not saving towards a mortgage because of the avocado toast you're eating. Yeah, I think I think actually a reminder of that would be really good. All right, I like that idea. I'll invest. I'll invest $1.3 billion in that because it was sure as hell would do more than just, you know, crowdfunding occasional billboards of like racist tweets and electing.

Is this it's definitely clean your bum as well for that. But I think before we go, we have we have something to hear from Milo. Yeah. So our new our new feature is called Steven Seagal fact of the week, because I think that only late capitalism could have produced the man that is Steven Seagal. And so you're you're I don't have this in front of me. So I'm doing it from memory. But your Steven Seagal fact of the week for this week is that Steven Seagal since I think 2009 has been producing his own energy drink called lightning bolt. What I really like about this is what I like to imagine is that Steven Seagal found that competing energy drinks were not giving him sufficient energy for his karate kicks and Aikido takedowns and smug comments.

The main problem is that he's like 65 years old and obese and does all of his fight sequences from an office chair. Yeah. To be fair, if you could if you could fight off legions of goons from an office chair, that'd be pretty good. Yeah, I'd be impressed. I also want to bring back the word goons. Yeah, can we use the word goons more often? No for next time. I'm going to cut in.

I'm going to cut in that Simpsons clip here. Who is it? Goons. Who? I had goons. I had goons. Yeah, do it. Listeners, if you're if you're listening, you can you can tweet us and let us know whether you would like more or less goons.

Yeah, more or fewer? More or less. Well, fewer goons, more goons the word. If you're referring to the word, I think it's still singular and countable. Well, I guess goons are countable. Yeah. God, this raises a lot of questions about goons. You can count.

You can count goons. I think that's pro. You can count on goons. If you couldn't count goons, how could you hire them? Yeah, make it make accounting difficult, wouldn't it? You don't want some kind of innumerable sort of liquid silver mass of goons, like the term like the T1000. The T1000 was a great goon. Yeah, really good goons.

You said you hire goon by the kilo rather than goons by a sort of number. Yeah, our goons are continuous variable. Yeah. Just pour a goon out of the truck. You have to weigh them before you get to the till, otherwise the cashier will be real. Shall we all go home? No. It was all goon out.

Okay, cool. Good night. Bye. Bye-bye. Thank you.