Triforce! - A confused American in England | Triforce Mailbag #59

Episode Date: August 20, 2025

Triforce Mailbag Special 59! How much would you pay for a pair of Sips' pants? Would you hire the Cheeky Girls? We get a trip report from an American in England and more in a fresh new mailbag! Go to http://auraframes.com and use code TRIFORCE to get $20 off their best-selling Carver Mat frame. Support your favourite podcast on Patreon: https://bit.ly/2SMnzk6 Music courtesy of Epidemic Sound. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Pickax Hello, friends, well wishes, and everyone in between, we are mailbag time. It's mailbag time. I love the mailbag. I do love the mailbag. Do you guys love the mailbag? I love the mailbag. Well, it sounds like you don't love the mailbag. Sometimes I have to listen to stuff like. what I'm about to play you.

And this is the two sides of the podcast coin of a mailbag. All right. So I'll play you two songs. This one is quite long, but it's quite good. This is called The Mail Sad. It's a sad mailbag song. Oh, right.

Sent in by Michael. It's a minute 42. It is a minute 42. We can get the gist of it and tap out at any time. Okay. But this is not an AI song. And I appreciate the fact someone's taking the time. to make it.

I don't think it's a bad song. It's just it is quite long and it is quite sad. So we'll listen to it. Ready? In three, two, one, play. That's like a radiohead song, isn't it, basically? The male.

The male's sad. I like that. It's quite sad. It sounds like a 90s song, doesn't it? I think it's actually pretty good. I like it. It is very good, yeah. I would very happily watch these guys at Glastonbury with a pint of cider in my hand in a nice sunny weather.

I mean, I don't want them singing about the mailbag, but if they were singing about so, if the lyrics. I don't know what that was, just breathing. This is good. I think it's pretty good. I think it's good I think it's well done hang on it's that you your voice you flex

no sounds like it could be you singing this it's not it probably is it is not he's doing a joke on us he's like hey guys listen to this song by I can't sing like this

Steve from it might be you at being auto-tuned it might be you it's him he's using us as a guy a test bed for his material. This is pure Michael. Michael, I really like that. Is that Michael vocals or was that your vocals? That was not me. People could do some clever stuff with the music stuff these days. That did not sound like me. That did not sound like my

singer voice. It did not. It did. It's just an English man singing. You're like the guy who confuses you and me because we're both of you. This is a P-Flax talking. I was quite when you, I was quite confused. I thought I'd said something really offensive and you wanted to make sure that. No. But not offensive to me, it's not offensive to me. You said something I agree with, but there are a lot of bootlickers out there who do take offense when you criticize their precious billionaires. So just bear that in mind that you said those things, not me. This is the other jingle. This is the first time we've recorded two episodes back to back in a long time.

And the reason we're doing it is because you're going away to Japan. We're fresh off of one right into the other. So they're quite different. Mailbag's quite different. Yeah, they are. I mean, it provides the information. This is from Rory. Now, no offense, I fucking hate this, Rory, all right?

I would recommend truing the volume down to like halfway because, A, it's loud and B, it's bad. No offense. Okay, well, thank so much for making it quieter. Can I just shout out the first guy, Michael, for using the dot flak file format? I know, I know. You never see that. Also, can you shout out Discord for being able to play it as well? Because that is nuts.

Can we also just unshout out the fact. that it's fucking 18 meg because it's dot flack Rory's submission is 228K because it's M4A okay so let's just listen listen if you ever wanted to know the character of this podcast

we shout out file names and file types you don't maybe you don't get that very often it's a juice file format the free lossless audio compression from plea or something like that but it's not very compressed

you don't see it you don't see it It's used by pros. Yes, that's what I'm saying. This guy knows what he's doing. This guy must be a pro. I want to link to something you've done because I thought that was a really good song. The lyrics were terrible

because of course you're stuck with the mailbox. I want to hear some of your music where it's your lyrics, brother, because I really am impressed. Here is a jingle from Rory. God help us, we're going to play it in three, two, one play. Welcome to the Traffles podcast. Is this you, Sips?

No. Yeah, that was me. I'm wearing my really tight undies. It's Louis Simpson, Perion. The breathing. I can read your mail today. It's like a reverse chocolate rain. It's like, it's like, just a bit of the end.

He just goes, I hated that, Rory. Thanks for sending it in me. So, Rory, that is, do you know what? That is not made by AI, and so therefore it gets a stab for approval to me. That's why I've played it. I hate it, but I'm playing it because I appreciate human endeavours, so well done. We are limited in how long we got until they take over, and so let's enjoy it while it lasts, everyone. Yeah, there is a limit.

There is definitely a limit. We need to go back to base. It's happening fast. We might have to start sending this podcast out on tape, what I'm saying? Do I mean? We need to stay away. What's wrong with vinyl, mate? Send it all gramophone.

well hello there you're listening to the Trifor's podcast Add some crackle Add some crackle Hello and welcome to the Triumphs podcast London darling This is Typhor's calling with an update We've conquered Africa Those nations have been subcued

Joy well by our boys Our brave boys Put the bay in it right up All right anyway Oh shit there's a huge wasp in my office Oh, fuck me, that's funny. And if you can't open the windows, because the pidgeies were flying. No, that's how he got in was via the window.

Get out. Maybe he followed the pidgees. No, it's all right. We're good. All right, this is a, this is, so my partner was, was stung yesterday on the, our top lit by wasp. Lewis, I'm going to stop you right there. This is a mailbag episode. Sorry.

All right. I'm writing that shit for a regular episode. Dear period, should we to write the, write your email. Email me in. I'll read it if it's worthy of reading. I've already given up. That's the whole story. There you go.

This is Jack emails in. This is a three-parter. All these emails were sent within a minute of each other. Okay. And are they angry in tone, I need to know. Do they get progressively angrier as subsequent emails come in? There's no anger. All right.

I'll read it out neutral and you decide for yourselves. Hi, this is a subject, Europeans driving on the right-hand side. Hi, it's because Napoleon was left-handed. Please disregard. As Lewis is now mentioning Napoleon, please. He's re-regard, as Lewis failed to mention Napoleon's left-handedness. Right. That's the triple from Jackson.

Paulian was left-handed. Apparently. Napoleon was left-handed. How does that affect whether you're driving on the right or left? I mean, he didn't have a car, so, you know, I don't know. Did he hold the reins with his left or right hand? There's a scene in Bill and Ted's excellent adventure where Napoleon is bowling, if you remember, and he misses all the pins.

It jumps up and down. He, no, he hits the deck and he's slamming the deck with his, with his hand. Now, I wonder if you were left-handed, if you would be using your left hand to slam the floor whilst yelling meld, meld, meld. If you're angry, do you immediately hit with your left hand? Or do you think that maybe Bill and Ted's excellent adventure, they didn't do their research and they might have had him using his right hand. Well, that's why I'm definitely, I couldn't get off of that.

angry with my right hand guy. You're left-handed, but angry with your right? That doesn't make sense. I don't think you can't. Wait, you're left-handed, Lewis? No, but I'm angry with my right. Yeah, but Sip said you're left-handed. I don't know many lefties, actually.

You don't know any lefties. My dad's a lefty. Famous lefties. If you're a left-handed person, just learned to do it when you're right. I think Jimmy Hendricks was a lefty. I'm pretty sure Kurt Cobain was a lefty as well. I saw a thing in the office. So we were sending out these

birthday auction things the other day and Simon is left-handed. What? Do you want me to write it in? Oh, my God. This is not a mailbag. Oh, my God. I want to be...

Can I not tell a boring anecdote? This is still the TriForce podcast. All right. Go on. Go ahead. Syphor. Let's carry on. You carry on.

I just say, it's a story about Simon being left-handed. How interesting can it be? You know what? You go ahead. The thing is he writes like with his... He's been taught to write with his right hand, but he writes in this sort of curled over way

where he sort of sneers the ink as he goes by. Oh, yeah, that's... Because he's of our generation where they were like... Yeah, where they basically just... If they saw a left-handed person, they just whipped him with a slipper until he wrote with his right hand. Yeah.

We were at the tail end of that real mistreatment of children in schools. Yeah. Did you guys ever have that, like, rubber triangle on your pencil to teach you how to hold the pencil right and stuff? Well, I saw it. I never needed it because I knew how to hold a pencil. But a lot of kids didn't, because they'd never had them at home.

Yeah. It's the same with books. A lot of the kids I was at school with didn't have any books in their house at all. Not even kids' books. The adults didn't have books. The kids didn't have books. So when they came in, a book was, and reading was a complete mystery to them. Which is kind of scary to me.

But equally, they were never given crayons. They were never given pencils or pens. I don't know what they did with their time. They're probably all professional footballers now in making a fortune. But what do you know? Yeah, but back then, back then that wasn't the case. No, indeed. You didn't have crayons.

Indeed. bitches. This is ex-Hooters employee part two. We had an email about an ex-Hoother's employee previously. Yes. So, when we were working one weekday, we had a customer come in by himself in one of our more bubbly and gorgeous waitress sections.

After he'd eaten and was paying for his bill, he asked the waitress, how much for your panties? Because she was nice and was sadly used to this sort of behavior, she joked around and said, oh, these are there $1,000? To which the customer replied, works for me.

He then proceeded to pull $1,000 out of the ATM and handed it to her. So it's sort of blown away. She ran back to the kitchen, talking to me and the other cooks about whether she should take the money or what. I told her should because it's like an easy grand. But she didn't want to give her panties to him. So she went to the changing room, took hers off, grabbed a clean pair from her locker, and handed him the clean pair.

It was sort of strange because everyone in that day, everyone was clued into this happening and there were lots of other customers. He was just sitting at the table. Everyone cheered and clapped for him as he got his clean, unworn panties. Isn't that utterly bizarre? How disgusting, man. A thousand bucks. Well, I mean, I'm not kidding.

When I go to Japan this week, I'm going to get some from the fucking vendor machine like a real person. Man, nobody would want to buy my underpants for a thousand bucks. Someone would even one buck. Someone would. No. Yes. I will bet you 50 quid. There's no way.

If you did a charity auction for a pair of your underpants, a jingham, you would easily raise a thousand dollars. Is that it like getting Homer Simpson's underpants basically? Yes. In an auction. I guarantee you, someone out there would pay $1,000 for Sipses underpants. Oh, I don't think, I don't think that is... Well, not for a, not in a sexual way. I'm sure they just want it for fun.

It's just a funny piece of, yeah. It didn't even have to be worn. It is to do what with? Like, frame them? Yeah, for just having them. There you go. Hang them on the wall. Seriously, seriously, though, like my advice for people generally is to... So we were doing this Yorkststst birthday auction, right?

And after I'd made all these listings and put all this stuff in, I had a couple of people come to me and say, oh, can we not do this because it's too big or it's not going to work. And the auctions, they'd, like, removed from the list were the joke ones, like the funny ones, like the skeleton of Wheelboy. And I said, like, that's not, you know, I know it's a fath to send, to send it out and deal with it and it's silly and it's, and all this stuff. But it's, it's funny. We've got to have the funny stuff in there as well as the serious stuff, right? You've got a, it's important. Like, so many games don't, and movies and things, they need comic relief.

Even Shakespeare knew that you needed a comic relief character, right? You needed this. And I think that that you look at any successful, anything, any success. And then usually, they usually have some comedy in them, right? Yeah. Somewhere. Look at Marvel and like some of them, sometimes they went too far with the comedy. You know, I think that's what people say about some of the later Thor movies, right?

But like I think you've got to try and inject humor in whenever you can. A little bit, yeah. And so, yeah, like, I think that's, but I don't even think it's all that bad. Like, you're in Hooters, right? And a joky, laddy thing to do is to. Yeah. And you're rich, maybe you think, look, this would be funny. So give the gals a kick back in the hooters.

There's almost like a little bit of joke chicken going on there with like the, the waitress. That was a great answer. A thousand dollars, you know, that like put off the guys, right? But then the guys like, she got to the back room, she's like, man, I should have said a million. Like, she's just said a million bucks. But I think that's not funny, though. That's like shutting it down, you know, too much. A thousand is the perfect amount because if he's just crazy enough to do it, he'll be like, sure.

And then it's almost he's just crazy enough to buy that for a story. And it's just about affordable. Right. And like, I think the whole thing kind of works as a nice anecdote, right? And I don't think he can even, he can like, yeah, I just went to a hooters and bought a waitress's panties for $1,000. Like, that's not even that bad of it. It's not even that cringe of a story. It's just kind of fun.

It depends on who's telling you, right? The story, though, I guess. Yeah, if it was Michael Portillo. Yeah, if Michael Portillo was, like, eating a sausage in a very posh way on a train and told you that, you might switch over to another show. While he's cutting the sausage and applying mustard, I once bought a pair of underpants for my young lady in Hooters. Cost me $1,000. No, just eating sausage.

What the hell? By the way, we talked about Michael Portillo on this episode and the previous episode, keep your eyes on the news for micro-portillo-related developments, I guarantee it's coming. I've had some odd thoughts this week. Let me share two odd thoughts I've had with you this week, okay? My first odd thought was we've had a lot of building work done on our house. We've had a lot of builders around. I was trying to, I was having a conversation with my wife and we were trying to think of the least gay person that we know. And this builder came up because he's really a burly man. And we're talking about it.

And I was like, wouldn't it be funny if, you know, this guy is like, you would never, in a million years, guess that he was gay. But then what if he went down to like, like, you know, pride parade and he's just getting sucked off by like three dudes? Right. I don't think that's, you're right sure. I know they don't do that. But I just thought it's a funny thought, you know, like this guy. The gayest man at the private parade. I just think it's funny to me that you see a burly guy and think, he'd never be gay. No, he's just everything about him, you know?

Like, he's just, he really is just like a guy, but like just like, not like simple like in a dumb way, but, you know, like he's just very like. Straightforward land. I totally. Yeah. Yeah. I totally get where you're coming from. Yeah. There was this guy doing some painting around the office and I sort of, I think I said to someone like, oh, he's nice looking guy.

And they just said, oh, you should see the aircon guy. And then all the, all the ladies in the office like turned and were like nodding frantically. You know what, that is so funny because that happens where someone, like someone you know or work with or like meet occasionally, like I'm not being funny. I can see that like Ryan Gosling is a good looking guy. But sometimes there'll be a guy that a lot of women are like, oh my God, he's such a dream. Oh my God, he's so gorgeous that a lot of straight dudes are just like, I had no idea that he was this, this unbelievably dishy dude. But all the women know, like you were exactly, exactly right. right like no that man

can't even no listen my other my other thought was you know in uh you know in movies when you have like um you know somebody's holding like a gun to somebody's head and they're like really threatening and they're like just fucking give me the fucking money or whatever you know they got the gun right to the head okay imagine

you can't you can't get a boner okay and you but you're holding the gun to your dick and you're saying fucking fucking grow you know like like in the movies, like to say give me the money back, but like, you know, you're threatening your own dick with with the gun, like to say, like, you better, you better fucking get hard or I'm going to fucking shoot you, you know, like you're, you're threatening. What if that was your thing? What if being threatened with a gun was your kink?

I want, I just wanted to see that in a movie or something. Like, I just think like the physical, uh, comedy of that would be great, you know? That's just another, just another random thought that I had. It's a good thought. Your brain is full of good thoughts. Yes, as evidenced by that one. One of the goodest thinkers out there, I'd say. Indeed.

Here is an email from Scott. So he's talking about the pronunciation of the letter Z, or if you're from North America, the letter Z. I recently heard an American call the 8-bit computer the ZX spectrum. Even though I'm an American, it sounds wrong, since I've typically heard Brits talk about it, and it was by a British-made company. Of course, this is the Z-X spectrum.

Yeah. On the flip side, Would you find it weird if you heard someone call the band Z Z-Z Top, which I know some people have done. My father-in-law loves to do that as a joke. If something has a Z in its name, should it be pronounced the way it would be in its country of origin? I think very simply, yes. End of story. Thanks, Scott.

Yeah. We cleared that up. It is tough. I'm not too strict on that. I feel like whatever the popular way to say it is just the right way to say it, you know. But it'll be popular like that. Well, like GIF, indeed. So the reason it would be ZZ Top is because they're an American band.

But when they come to England, we don't go, oh, do you mean ZZ Top? Like I feel like you just say, well, no, they're American, so it's ZZ Top. And it's the ZX spectrum because it's a British-made computer. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's all. It's like rotten tomatoes, rotten tomatoes. This is the essence of mailbag for me. Please send more of these in.

I like this kind of, I love, I've talked about us before, but I love people's gaps in gap. Gap. There was this great clip recently where you like the Gaps. I love Look at that Gap on that look. Norse Gap, love. Nilesi did does this pub quiz and so he's very trivia knowledge, trivia heavy and he was

answering some questions on this pub quiz and so Zoe was running it and one of them was like what's the largest American island that was the question. And Nalzi answered Alaska. Not an island. And instantly like sort of was very confused because

I guess it was just a gap, right, in his knowledge. It's not, it's not like, it's like a blind spot. Oh, I know why. No, because it's not actually connected to the rest of the country, right? But when they show a map of America, they'll have it off to the top left just in a void. Exactly. So he thought it was an island with one perfectly flat side. Yes.

No, I don't think he thought it was an island. He was probably knowing Nilesie, he was probably, like, betting that this was like a trick question sort of thing. And he was being clever with it. Yeah. I mean, I think you could get away with it being a joke because, like, and I don't, maybe it was a joke, honestly, because Nilesi's always doing this kind of stuff.

But, like, it's a kind of a funny idea, because you do see it in that little box. Yeah. You could see a comedian make a joke about that, right? Especially when they do the voting and Alaska's there in the middle of the ocean, right? Right. On off to one side.

I would see Guam was the largest, but I don't really know. What is, or American Samoa? That's quite big, isn't it? Oh, yeah, we should pick it up. Biggest American island. Biggest American island Yeah

List of islands in the US By area It's Hawaii I would have said Hawaii It's pretty close though Because it's not that much bigger Than Puerto Rico Or Codiac Island

Which is in Alaska It's one of the islands And there's loads of Arns Alaska In fact 1 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 8 of the top 10 Are Alaskan islands And of course Long Island

Which is in Alaska It's not It's not It's not But it's just long. It's thin and long. Yeah. All right, we've got two emails here related to the cheeky girls.

Now, my Triforce Mailbag instincts, honed as they are over years of reading this, makes me think that this is a urban legend specific to the cheeky girls that for some reason comes around anyway, you be the judge, all right? These are both essentially the same email, but I'll read them. I'll pray see them. This is from Joe. My mom was a manager for a high street pharmacy. A few years ago, she interviewed someone who, at the end of the interview, said,

I should probably let you know, I am slightly well known for a group that I'm in. My mom asked which group, and she replied, I'm one of the cheeky girls. My mom then looked her up, and she was indeed one of the cheeky girls, and my mom did to hire her, but for a different shop location, and as far as I know, she still works for them. So that's one from Joe. We then have one from Joe, which is intriguing. Just want to add to the discussion about the cheeky girls, I used to do recruitment for a car dealership in the York area, and one of the cheeky girls applied that came in for an interview.

She was incredibly friendly and high energy. The sales manager walked by and did a double take so hard he nearly dislocated something. I ran a perfectly normal interview or tried to, but it's difficult to keep a straight face when you're asking someone about their sales KPIs after a quick bit of small talk about their live performances. We didn't end up hiring her, but honestly, not because of her previous job experience. She just wasn't keen on working weekends. Oh. So there you go. We don't know.

Joe and Joe Dee, I genuinely don't know if those are true, but I like the idea that they are. Good to know that the cheeky girls won't work on weekends. So if you're ever like thinking of, you know, renting them out for a kids party or something like that, you'll have to have it during the week maybe over the summer or like a half term or something. Yeah, I mean, I assume it's because they want to do performances and stuff. Like they want to do gigs or, you know, because they're still going to make a few quits. I'm sure if you hired the Cheeky Girls from performance, I'm guessing you'd probably pay a grand or something like that to have the Cheeky Girls perform. Really? Yeah.

For how long? In fact, just a half hour set. Hire the Cheeky Girls. Hire the Cheeky Girls. Here they are. They are available. Book the Cheeky Girls today. Right now. Oh, wait.

Hang on. Give me a price. If there's no price, that means it's more than a grand flex. No, that means that they negotiate. But I guarantee you. If I offer a grand for a half hour set, I bet I'd get it. You've got to, yeah.

Well, no, I don't know. A set. Well, how about, they're just got to play, they've touched my palms on. They're going to do a bit of crowd work and a way you go. So their fee range is police contact, which means they don't have a flat rate. Well, that's it. That means they're not big. That means they, no, no, that's the opposite.

I would say if you're expensive, you put out there a huge rate because you know that you will get it. Like, I know that if you want to hire bare grills, it's like, I think it's 250. K and you have to helicopter him there and back. Something like that is the fee. So that's like there because why would he say, oh, come talk to me? You don't want people to come in and try to load for you. You want to make up front, it's a shitload of money.

If you're contacting me, it's this much. It's a lot. And I'm announcing it and this is non-negotiable. That's the amount. Cheeky girls, they'll be like, if it's 50 quid and a free meal, we might do it if we start. You know what I'm saying? Fair Girls gets 250K and helicopter transport.

Cheeky girls get 50 quid and a meal if they're lucky and they won't do weekends either. No, no, they won't work weekends but they will do gigs at the weekends. That's what I'm saying. That's still work though. Yeah, but it's not work.

It's half an hour of telling people they can touch your bum and you eat in a nice hand back right on the back afterwards. I don't think people are touching the cheeky girls' bums. I would touch the cheeky girls' bones. Oh, yeah. I don't think it's hard.

I don't know if they're allowing you to do that. They have gone through life being, their bums being touched. touched by people who think they should be cool with it. I'm saying if I was offered the chance and it was part of the act, I would get up there. I think a lot of unsolicited bum touching goes on. Absolutely. Hey.

Like John Cena, I'm a big fan of consent, all right? I would never touch a cheeky girl's bum without permission. Oh. What kind of permission are you, where are we talking here? Like, is it like a written agreement or something? Hired them for the event. I'm the boss of the company. Right.

And they're like, they did did touch my bum. They're like, okay. It turned Forsy as I had us tonight to be the cheeky girls. Come up in a touch our buns. And I'm like, oh, oh, oh, I'd still find that. I don't know. And everyone's going to touch their bum, touch their bum. It would be all on camera, too, Flags.

Yeah, but that's the point is that on camera is them saying, get up here now and touch our bums. And I just put my hand on the top end of their deriers and I make a face like Benny Hill. You thought about this. And so it's not a bit of a picture. No, I don't. No, it just comes to me very naturally because I can imagine it. Which brings us to our next email, which is about A Fantasia, which is something we've discussed in the past. This is from Derek. Lewis mentioned A Fantasia in the podcast, which is the inability

to have a visual imagination for anyone that doesn't know. I see more and more Reddit posts with A Fantasia scoring quizzes. So, you know, it's a quiz about where you answer these questions at the end, it tells you whether you've got A Fantasia. Do you really buy that stuff? Although I believe some people are better than others at visualizing things in their mind's eye, measuring this in a test seems like absolute nonsense. I can imagine myself imagining things perfectly in my mind, but also not at all. It depends on how you interpret this incredibly subjective notion of imagining things.

Science seems to back this up, by the way, but people just love scoring themselves on things like this. I think it's something you can train, like learning to draw. I'd like to get your always informed opinions on this. It's complicated, okay? Like, Aphantasia is visualizing digital hair bits, also things like being able to think of a smell, and think of a taste and kind of, you know, there's a lot of complexity to it.

And I think it is different for everyone's brain is different. Everyone's experience is slightly different. And it's very hard to conceptualize and describe something which is only accessible in individual people's heads. And if you have very severe affatasia, it's almost like you kind of don't really realize you do. And it's almost this hyperchondriac type thing of, oh, do I have it? How would I know? Maybe I do. I can't watch telly in my head.

So other people can watch telly in my head. There's a lot of this stuff like that moment where you realize you're like, well, I thought life was this way. But actually it turns out like I've been wrong all along. It's because I've been affected by this. Is that why people are like kind of obsessed with these things? Like they want that moment? Everything I thought was true is a lie because of this or whatever. No, I think they just, I think in general, in general, all of these online, take this online

quiz to see if you have ADHD, take this online quiz to see how autistic you are. They're all just, it's all just clickbait. And they advertise these things on Reddit, they push these things on social media because there's ads on it and people click on it and it's lots of engagement because it's always next slide, it loads another page, another ads, another impression. So anything that seems like this, oh, it's everywhere now. Everybody's got evidence. No, they haven't.

It's just these quizzes are everywhere. And they are not scientific. I wouldn't trust them as far as I could throw them. It's just, Aphantasia is a real thing. But all these quizzes are a load of wank. That's the way I see. I can probably throw a quiz pretty far. Yeah.

I think it's very difficult to, this is one of those things that you might feel that you're missing out short, right? Or like, I don't know. It's just so complicated. And you're right. These quizzes are all nonsense. But I think, like, it doesn't matter. I don't really think. The classic that I always harked back to is when, like, you know, Neil Gaiman,

who is being thoroughly cancelled, by the way. Who is that? He's a comic writer. The comic writer. And writer. Yeah. Who sort of, I think he tweeted something like, you know, oh, it's just, just think,

this is just think about a fairy in your head and all this stuff. Why don't, just use your imagination. And other people were like, we don't, we can't. Like, we don't visualize things in the way you apparently do.

And he sort of had almost no concept that other people might have a different brain, a different experience. But it turns out he's a bit of a sociopath of anyway. Yeah. That's why. What did he get cancelled for? Sexual assault. Just being a creep,

I think generally. He's apparently not a good guy. Right. Here's an email. This is from Jonathan, long-time listener, has come to the UK after various anecdotes about life from Bristol was excited to look around. So these are bullet points, things that an American noticed and thought about the UK, all right? So I quite like these. He travelled all over the UK. So the restaurant famous for where J.K. Rowling, another cancelled person, wrote her books in Edinburgh, had a fire in 2023. The tour guide said that the staff went into the burning building with one guy. which was to save the desk where she wrote the books. Everything else burned down. They saved the desk. I didn't know that detail.

It's quite interesting. Menus on the outside of restaurants. Apparently, is that a UK thing? I thought it was. I think that's a European thing more so than... I mean, you can go up and see what they're offering and the prices and go in or not. Wait till you go to Japan, uh, you'll be able to see a, uh, like a plastic version of the food. I love it.

I'm really looking forward to that. It's hilarious. Especially as a, as a, uh, a, of a, uh, a, a, of a, uh, I come in there. A lot of this stuff, I'm like, I've never heard of that before. I don't know what it looks like. Now I'll know. And I'll, you know, there's a giant eyeball in rice or whatever. I'll be like, oh, what or what are that? You can, you don't even need to be able to visualize it. You can just see it right in front of your damn eyes. No customization or limited customization on your food. I finally don't need to be quizzed just to get a burger. Yeah, I mean, it shows you what's in it,

and then you can say, can you hold the lettuce or please no tomato in that or whatever. But yeah, It's not a fucking 20 questions just to order a burger. No. Yeah. I think some things are more customizable as well. Like you're not going to be able to take the onions out of a curry. Do you know I mean? Right, right.

Built in tipping. Yeah, which is quite, it's just in the bill. The service charge is included. Yeah. And it's definitely reasonable most of the time. Although some of that Americanism is creeping over here. Tipping stuff. Yeah.

But it's creeping over here with the, I was in a pub last year, and I went to get around. and when he gave me the machine to tap my card on, I had to decide what percentage of tip to add in a pub. Yeah, did you put no? I just put no, but the guy, every other time anyone was ordering, he was just mashing no, and so it just comes off automatically. And we've had emails about this before, actually. Some people are saying the landlords are actually taking the tip

and not giving it out. It's really frustrating. I feel bad when I'm presented with something, which, and then I have to press no tip. If you're tipping tip in cash. Like, you have to tip in cash. But then the other thing is, like, don't carry cash. And sometimes I'll go to a place and they won't put service on the bill. And I say, can I add service?

And they're like, you have to pay cash. And I'm like, well, I don't have any cash. So how much does it tip you? This happened to me recently. At New Year's, me and my, was it my oldest or my youngest? My oldest, we went out into town to meet. I can't remember who were meeting. I think Mrs. F. and my youngest would go into a show.

And we were going to have dinner and then meet them afterwards. Anyway, we went out for a meal, like right around the Christmas New Year's period. And me being an idiot. Midweek, I'm fucking, I've just to be got it with, oh, my God, we haven't booked anywhere. All of these offices are going to be having their, you know, end of year. And I was like, shit, they're never going to get a table. Managed to get a table, went there, service not included. And I said to the guy, because the guy that served this was really, really good, really friendly, just helped a lot.

He was just really, really attentive, but in the perfect way. And I said, there's no service, because, yeah, they don't include it. I said, how can I tip you? He said, there's an app, and you can tip me through that. So there's like a little app that you can get, and you find him on there. So you go to search by restaurant, find the guy by name, and then you can tip him direct in there. So, you know, you can do it that way. So you can still do it electronically.

But what a fath. I did do it, though. Soda fountains aren't a thing. Most soft drinks come in a can. What is a soda fountain? It's like, you know, like if you go to McDonald's and it dispenses the soda into like the cup, you know, like from the... There's soda fountain in McDonald's, is that? You press the button and it just like, it comes out of like that.

Not anymore. Oh, like in five guys. They've got them in five guys. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Right, right, right. It's just not a thing, no. In nowhere you see those.

Mayo, that's because you know why that is? Because we don't do the infinite refills thing. No. You just buy a Coke and there's your Coke. You don't need to drink three gallons. In the UK or Europe, you very rarely find an all-you-can-eat buffet as well. They're not as prominent as they are in North America. Mayo on everything.

Dear God, I like mayo, but come on. I haven't noticed that. I like mail. I haven't noticed that, but I'll look out for it. I like Mayo. I do like Mayo. Every time a tour guide mentioned the name Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry the 8th, I kept hearing Amber Lynn.

Amber Lynn, who I believe is either a porn star or a Twitch streamer. She is a porn star, Amber Lynn. Yeah, she's 60 now, so, you know, this is going back away. The London Eye essentially had TSA to board. Is she still active? They searched you? Well, probably. Good.

So, Pod 13 was removed from the London Eye. It just says 33. It goes 11, 12, 33, 14. They don't have the number. Well, you know, that is a tourist thing, though. I think, you know, even in places like Japan, it's unlucky, seen as an unlucky number. Some big buildings in New York have the 13th floor. Yeah, there's no 13th floor.

removed, right? Or is that just on, is that like a TV movie thing? I don't know. No, it's true. All right. So this is related to Big Ben. Big Ben, this is one of the main reasons I'm writing this email. This is what, what he says. He got a bunch of different stories as to Wyeth's named Big Ben. Big Ben is not the tower. It's the Elizabeth Tower and the Bell is named Big Ben. That is true. It was renamed the Elizabeth Tower. It used to be something else. It's called Big Ben because the sister bell is the Liberty Bell and is a nod to Benjamin Franklin. I'd be very surprised if that's the case, but I don't know. It's Called Big Ben because the man who forged it was named Ben.

I don't know if that's true. It's called Big Ben because the construction manager of Elizabeth Tower was named Ben and a portly fellow. See, that's bullshit. So let's look up, Big Ben. Big Ben Bell. Big Ben on Wikipedia is a British cultural icon. Yes, it is. It's the Great Bell of the Great Clock of Westminster.

Elizabeth Tower originally named the Clock Tower and properly known as Big Ben was built as part of Charles Barry's designs for the new palace of Westminster and was large, after the old palace was destroyed in 1834 by fire. Although Barry was the chief architect of the Neo-Gothic Palace, he turned to Augustus Pugin for the design of the clock tower, which resembles early designs by Pugin, including one at Boscara's Brick Hall in Lancashire. So the design, blah, blah, blah, and Wright, prison room name. Journalist during Quiggin Victoria's reign called it St. Stephen's Tower, as members of

Parliament originally sat at St. Stephen's Hall. That's the story I'd heard. These journalists referred to anything related to the House of Commons as news from St. Stevens, a term that survives in Welsh language political reporting as San Stefan. The palace does contain a feature called St. Stephen's Tower, located above the public entrance. On the 2nd June 2012, the House of Commons voted in support of a proposal to change the name from the Clock Tower to Elizabeth Tower to commemorate Queen Elizabeth Second's Diamond Jubilee. The Commons confirmed the name change proceeded, and that was that. So that's the Tower. I don't know

why the bell is called. Oh, here, Big Ben, the Great Bell. The original bell was a 16-ton hour bell. in Stockton-on-Tees by John Warner and Sons. It is thought the bell was originally to be called Victoria, or Royal Victoria, in honour of Queen Victoria, but MP suggested the bell's current nickname of Big Ben during a parliamentary debate. The comment is not recorded in Hansen, so they just came up with it.

Really? There you go. Big Ben. What the hell? Was it like some sort of joke then? A little MP joke? They don't know. So, they don't know if it was named after Sir Benjamin Hall, Minister for Public Works, whoever saw the installation. They don't know if it was heavyweight boxing champion Ben Kunt, very close to a swear word, but no, Ben very clear from statements to the press of time, the name derives from the nickname of Hall,

who was very tall. So Benjamin Hall, who was the overseer of the building of it, they called it Big Ben. Apparently, that's called to Wikipedia. Either way, you can look it up. Stonehenge. Ahenge literally translates to ditch. So in a literal translation, it's Stone Ditch. Yep, that's how we used to name things.

And the same spot in Bath where the power station is, is the same place in which Mary Shelley's Frankenstein monster was supposedly brought to life. So some interesting takeaways from your UK trip. Thank you, Jonathan. It's interesting little bits of trivia. Longbendy Twizzlers candy keeps the fun going. Before we continue, have you been looking. Before we continue, have you been looking for a gift for someone, maybe a family member?

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on the best-selling Carver matte frame. That's A-U-R-R-A-Frames, A-U-R-A-Fram. names.com. You can use promo code or a 20 and support the show by using that code at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. I saw that, this is an interesting thing, that Emma Watson Yeah. Arrested for speeding. Yes. Got got her license taken away. Yeah. That is so serious speeding. Well, she only got, she was 38 in a 30 zone. No, no. They don't take your license away for that. She must have had a lot of points. Yeah, exactly.

So she had nine points. She's a bad girl. I always knew she was. And she got her license taken away on, from, from, on this particular day in Crown Court. And interestingly, on the same day, Zoe Wanamaker, who was also in the Harry Potter movies. Yes. I used to love Zaywomanmaker. Had her license taken away in the same court.

It's a conspiracy. The same offense of speeding, like doing. Were they racing each other by any chance? Is that what it was? I don't know. So we want to make her and Emma Watson routinely have races on a stretch of road near them and they both got caught at the same time. But it's a very slow race because they only get up to 38 miles an hour.

Isn't that interesting that she was in, both Harry Potter actresses got their licenses taken away in the same day in the same court? But that also, I'm not being funny. The most I got, I had six points on my licence. That's the most I had. Now I have none because you lose them over time. For anyone that doesn't know, in the UK, you get three points on your driver's license for going over the speed limit and getting caught.

And if you get up to 12, they take your license away, I think, for a year. And then if you routinely do that, they just take it away for longer and eventually you can get banned from driving, I believe. But certainly three points for us getting caught speeding. First time offence, you can do a speed awareness course. I've done the speed awareness course. It was very good. It did change the way I drive. But I did subsequently get caught by speeding cameras on a trip to Bristol.

Coming off the M4 and heading into Bristol, it very quickly drops down to, 40, and I think I was a few miles an hour over, and the same in Bournemouth. And I got done within a week, one week, my trip out of Bristol, sorry, into Bristol, and then my way down to Bournemouth, I got caught arriving in Bristol and arriving in Bournemouth and got six points. I put my premiums went up on my driving insurance, and now I've got no points. They've decayed, have they since then? To hardly last the points, like a year?

No, I think it's longer than a year, but I don't know. I think it might be three years. Points on license decay. It's very easy to get them. I remember back in the day, it was a thing where husbands would take the points for their wife or something, or say they were driving at the time. Yeah, you can swap them. And I'm sure that happens even now. But they usually have a picture of who's driving.

And if you get caught doing that, you can lose your license immediately. I mean, so you can actually get in trouble for it. When I had six points, a year later, or maybe a couple of years later, when I was really driving very carefully, because God forbid you go up to nine, because then you're one slip away. You won Emma Watson or Zoe want to make her away from them taking the license away. Another letter arrived from the DVLA. And I was like, oh, fuck me. There's no way I got caught speeding. I was so careful.

And Mrs. F was like mocking me and like, you idiot and all this kind of stuff. Check the dates. I wasn't even in the country, motherfucker. It was her driving the car. Oh. She had to do the speed of awareness course it felt very good. One of those. Yeah, that's one of those rare moments as a husband.

So do you have to, I guess sometimes you don't even. remember who was driving on that day. It's normally me. Mrs. F doesn't really enjoy driving. I do quite enjoy driving a little bit. But I imagine it can happen with a couple of share in a car that something happened a month ago. They genuinely don't know which one of them was speeding.

Absolutely. And you could probably even claim if you got caught lying and say, I'm so sorry, it was 100% honest mistake. They might even let you get away with it. They're quite reasonable, I'd say about these things. Anyway, don't speed. That's the lesson. First episode, Lewis Old, question mark?

This is from Tom. Just went back and listened to the first ever episode of the podcast. It's like eight years ago. The first ever one. Nearly 10, I think. I've been listening nearly since the start, and this is the first time going back. Very taken aback to hear Lewis calling you, that's me, the old man when I was 39. And now nearly 10 years have gone by.

What do you all think has changed about yourselves? And Lewis, do you now consider yourself an old man now that you've surpassed this self-inflicted boundary? Yeah. I think my viewpoint has changed when I reached 40 for sure. I think I am more grateful for still being so hale and hearty and healthy, given, you know, the things that could happen. I also think I'm a bit more like, I don't know, I have changed a lot. And it's, and I do consider myself older or middle aged at least and very, you know, I mean, the average person on earth, I think is 30, something like that. Or the midpoint.

Like, you can divide the population of the earth in half, and half are under 30, half are over 30, right? 30.9. Being 40 or 2 this year. Yeah, you're dead. You're basically already dead. It's getting old. I think that, yeah.

Wait, how old are you going to be this year? 43? 42. 42. Yeah. Oh, right. Yeah. So I'm going to be 50 next year, and that feels to me,

everything up to 50 felt like I wasn't old. I just turned 45, so... Right. I mean, you're not far off either. No. But the weird thing is, is that to me, 40s still felt viable because you get some footballers who play into their 40s. You get some golfers easily winning stuff in their 40s.

You even get some Formula One drivers driving that late. All kinds of, you know, young man activities, you'd think. Loas of singers, actors are in their peak in their 40s, 50s? Come on. I'm basically dead to the world at that point. No one's going to ever talk to me or look at me ever again. I'm just going to be so old and withered next year that it's basically all over for me. No, it's just a different phase.

You got to, you're, you're, you got to look forward to, you know, possibly grandkids, more dogs. Like, it's just life just, uh, it just is different. It slows down. Different to what you, you're used to, but you should be kind of ready for it as well, you know. I'm ready. It's a gradual decline, I'd say. Although this was my year, I set myself a goal this year, which I very, very, rarely. Actually, that's not true. I send myself goals all the time, but I never actually

followed through on them. This year, I was done things a little differently. I said at the start the year, I need to look after myself. I'm going to be 49 this year. I want to start taking care of myself mentally, physically going into the latter stages of my life. Sure. So I wanted to lose weight. I wanted to sort my teeth out. I wanted to sort my mental health out. Cut down on drinking. Do better. So you want to sort your teeth out? What? Like, you want turkey teeth? I didn't have bad teeth. I didn't have bad teeth or anything like that, but I had a little bit of a sort of continual problem with my bite down on the left side of mouth. Sometimes it would like hurt. I suspect that I had a crack in my tooth and my gums were okay, but the dentist would always

say you should look after your gums a little better. I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I really went to the dentist, I got work done, fixed the cracks, took care of my ginger vitus and everything. I do interdental brushing every day. I really look after them. Went to the dentist last week expecting a big panoply of disasters and he said it was a two-minute appointment. He said, your teeth are in excellent condition. Oh, great. Teeth are fine, your gums are great, no notes. I was like, fan fucking-tastic.

First time I've ever been to the dentist and I had nothing recommended. No, do this more, do that, more, cut down on that. Great. So that made me feel really good. Mental health, I've really worked on that this year, and I've definitely seen improvements in that. And weight loss. I've been on Manjaro now for three weeks, baby.

Three weeks of Manjaro. Manjaro. Yeah, I've lost the equivalent of a small child in weight. Jesus. I've lost eight pounds. I've lost eight pounds. That's good. three and a half kilo.

So imagine carrying a baby, relatively newborn baby all the time. That's fallen off my body. I don't know, right, but it's worked. Be careful, all right? No, I'm going to be not careful. Do not follow P-Flax's lead. Be careful. I'm going to be uncareful.

That pidgey thing was, you know, was a disaster. I'm just saying that how is me losing weight back? Just be careful. I love the way your assumption is that I don't know what I'm doing. Because of his pigeon feeding. But it often gets proved like a couple of weeks later that you don't. I've lost weight. This is a positive thing.

Losing weight is a positive thing for your health, especially as you get older. And I've been more active now that I'm off the searcherlene, my anxiety meds. I'm cycling a lot more often. I'm up and about more often. I feel better. I am trying to do everything right. I'm eating better. I'm drinking less.

It's all good news. And you're like, no, no, no, no. Be careful. Be careful. Such a negative Nelly, aren't you? Unbelievable. Yeah. You got to have a negative Nelly in your life, though.

You can't just be surrounded by, you know, people are always like, surround yourself by positive people and stuff like that. No, you have to have, you got to have some counterpoints to you. You got to be realistic. You can't just have people around you who are just telling you what you want to hear all the time. Agreed. You're not going to be, you're not going to round out properly.

You're just going to be. Talking about negative, negative Nellys, how about this? This is from Logan, who emails in about the Quebec language police. Right. This is, because we've been talking about Jean-Gie Tupperware and Jean-Gie rubber boots, yeah. Exactly. And Joey Bagger Donuts and all those guys. Yeah.

So this is how the French, we spoke about how the French see their French as the true superior version of French and their culture is actual French culture. So the Quebec language police or the Office Quebec-Chebecue de la L'en-Francés. Yeah. Also known as the language police. Here are some of the crazier things that they've done to keep French as the number one in the language in Quebec. They send undercover agents into stores

to make sure customers are greeted in French and can find the stores between $3,000 and $30,000 if they don't comply. Jesus. Recently, they tried to ban and find stores for greeting customers with, Bonjour, hi, which is common in bilingual areas like the island of Montreal. They want people to just say,

Bonjour. Any signage or packaging must include French, and the French text has to be at least twice as big is the English text. New immigrants have six months to learn French and pass an exam to stay in the province. Any non-English immigrants are required to send their kids to French schools, not English ones. All government health services are in French only, meaning if your French isn't perfect, you're forced to discuss extremely sensitive medical information in a language you might not fully understand. As a rare primarily English-speaking person in

Quebec, it really feels like a purge of anything that's not French, which makes it tough for the people to live in an English-speaking country. We're not knowing, oh gosh, I think he's mistyped something here. Wunguswila could seriously hurt your chances of living or working anywhere else. Anyway, just wondered if you guys had any thoughts, especially Sips. Oh, and there's one additional fact before we keep going about Montreal. The entire city is controlled by the Italian mafia. Nice. Rodes bad and full of potholes. Yeah, I don't know. I was always told as a kid that it just never recovered from hosting the Olympics. Like, it's just been in so much debt and therefore all the infrastructure is bad and is never, never fixed and stuff.

But I don't know if that's true. That could just be one of those things that you just, you know, you hear as a kid or you misinterpret as a kid and it kind of sticks with you. Also, the whole Mafia thing could be just an urban legend. I mean, I'm not being funny, but roads around here are shit. I'm not going to blame the Mafia. It's just a bad governance, really. That's all it is.

Oh, over here, I hate, like, parts of it are nice, but, like, they rely on granite because they've just they've always used granite for a lot of stuff over here but like it just looks like shit like they they line the sidewalks with it and everything and it just looks so tired and old and it's like just make some modern looking sidewalks and roads and like fuck off with all this granite all the time like it's just so annoying but like I I places get into like a rut you know like they they have like an identity or whatever and you know people that come come and go in government, they just, they don't want to change things around too much. So you just end up with like this, this look, but it just looks so dated, in my opinion.

I'm sure other people would be like, no way, that's not dated, but to me, it just, it does. From the government's, from the local government's perspective, they've got a supplier who supplies the granite. They've got some contract. They know what it's going to cost. And everybody that lives there at the moment, no one's up in arms about it. Yeah. It's just rock, just fucking.

Whereas if you come in and say, bold new idea. People fucking hate bold new ideas related to paving if it's outside their house or their shops. So they're like, no, no, no. People just want things to stay the same. Of course. I get it, but it's, it's, it's so be nice if it was like, you know, just modernized a little bit. Yeah. Some of the, they're very pretty, it's a very nationalistic thing to be protective of your, of your language. Well, France itself is very protective of its cultural language. So it's not surprising that Quebec would be like a miniature version of France within a country or whatever. But France themselves like if you read about most things to do with France or foreign companies coming into France or whatever, there's all sorts of stuff.

Like Disney, for example, when they opened up Disneyland Paris, before they could even put a shovel in the ground, they had to agree that like 80. percent of the products that are sold there have to be made in France. There's a certain proportion of people that work there have to be French, like, you know, from citizens of France. Like, loads of stuff. Like, they do a lot to protect their culture, their people and everything. And to outsiders, it's annoying. I mean, probably especially American companies who are used to just like deregulating everything

to make things easier for themselves. they must find dealing with a country like France a total nightmare because France are very insistent on things being done very specifically to benefit them. But you can't have it both ways, though, either. You know, you can't just, you can't impose yourself on like another country and culture that fully either, you know, like, yeah, I get you want to have a resort, but, you know, I think the hosting country should be able to have some stipulations as well that you need to follow. Yeah, I mean, otherwise, it's like cultural colonialism, really.

Yeah, that's what they were talking. That's what they were saying. Originally, they were super opposed to it, even opening. It's just the homogeneity of everything to say we want to, like, I feel like a lot of these big American businesses that are consumer-focused, the whole point is the homogeneity. Yes. You want every McDonald's that you walk into anywhere in the world. the same, to feel the same, yeah, exactly. And that's their whole thing is it's this safe haven.

I'm sure that Disney and all these companies are the same, where it's just, no, no, no, no, no. It has to be like this. But by doing that, you do dilute all those other cultures. And it's like, we don't want you to come and stamp Americanism on everything any more than people should want Britain to tell, you know, Brazil. No, no, no, no, it's got to be British style. No, no, no, you can do it. Your company can exist within a different culture.

Yeah. It can still have. all the hallmarks of your culture within reason, but it should not be a replacement. It should be seamlessly integrated, I think, would be fair. I feel like there's always a push for independence movements, which I'm generally fond of small people self-governing themselves. But I think there is this element of the people who run these like independence parties kind of know that if they get independence, they're going to be the president of this new country.

They're just a minor character. in, you know, a government politics until they get, you know, they manage to get through this movement and suddenly they are a big deal. And I think that, I think that applies to the world generally too, right? Like someone is invested in, you know, keeping French, you know, the French language going. They can, they can, you know, drive up some sort of nationalistic pride and some, oh, we don't want our language to die out. Look, people are using the word computer instead of ordinator to shut that shit down

and scare people and that scare tactic keeps them in a job, right? And that that's their livelihood. A lot of people are very defensive about causes that are quite frankly not worth worrying about because they

they're incentivized to do so, right? Man, I did watch a great documentary this week. It was the David Attenborough Ocean Oh, is it good? I mean, look, I love all of his work, and I love nature documentaries, but like everyone else, I am suffering from the absolute impending doom of climate change to the point where

watching a TV show about failing environments and dying animals and the agony and horror of it all is just not something I can sustain. Well, I think that's what everyone is expecting from this movie, and I put off watching it for a while. I had it ready to go, queued up, and I just wasn't feeling. like I could handle it because, quite frankly, I felt exactly the same as you. And I imagine people are fatigued and exhausted by seeing so much misery. And we know that the ocean is being fucked by humanity from dumping stuff in there to dredging,

to overfishing and climate change, destroying and bleaching all the corals. It's a fucking disaster. And it's really, really sad. But the takeaway of the movie is that there are these protected areas on the earth. that have been allowed, like there was a place off the coast of America that was fished so badly that it was made in no fish zone because there was no fish there. So it wasn't really a downside to making it a no fish zone. But then five years later, it had really recovered and really bounced back in a way that you don't see on land. Right. You know, when land areas are

fucked, they don't bounce back to the effect that the ocean is able to. Yeah. But they're a lot more static. Land areas will be fucked by construction and stuff. Or pollution. Yeah. Or pollution. There's a huge problem on land with national parks because so many national parks are privately owned and they're just grazed on and they're not natural. And there's all monoculture. It's a disaster.

Anyway, but land is a different topic. This ocean thing, it actually ends with this really positive message that if we can convince governments to sequester or protect, you know, significant, you know, I think they're looking at doing, and this is a global thing, which hopefully it will go through. There's this initiative to protect 30% of the world's oceans from fishing by 2030. And I think that that would effectively protect the whole ocean because it would allow these kind of these zones. They're kind of like, because the ocean used to be so full of life and so vibrant that when it's, that these protected zones spill out and actually provide overflowing amounts of plant and fish. animal life to the rest of the ocean from these seed zones. And so I think it's the real message of the documentary is that, yes, the planet, we're fucking the planet real bad at the moment.

And it's horrible. But actually, the solution is there. And also the goals are aligned, right? Like the people who want to sustain the ocean and the people who fish from the ocean, they have the same goals of more fish and more life. And at the moment, all we're doing is depleting. And the only, and there's a very easy solution and that is to protect a portion of the planet. And it's a really hope, it's a really hopeful message at the end of it. I might watch

it then. So, I mean, and David Aspera is such a fucking icon. He's amazing. He's 99. He's 99. Yeah, the dude is amazing. He honestly like because he's obviously been involved in this sort of stuff and he's lived

through the way that we've changed the way we use the oceans, right? It used to be this kind of, you know, infinite big blue bin of unending bounty, but now, you know, we realize that we have this incredible impact on it from these trawlers that go out and just, you know, destroy, you know, underwater landscapes, with no consequences and unregulated and it's terrible. So, yeah, by the way, so he's a middle-sex boy. He's from around here. He's basically a local lad. Yeah, absolutely loves.

Is he a bit of a cheeky chappy? Not at all. No, no, he's not. I'm less interested now. He's 1426. I was looking for a 99-year-old cheeky chapie. No. To develop a perissocial relationship with.

So, interestingly, he didn't do national service and he wasn't in the military until 1947. So he would have been, he would have been old enough to go to the, war? Right. Was he a coward? Well, maybe he was, maybe he was, maybe he had bones spurs, you know? Maybe, yeah.

What was he doing you in the war? What was his beef? I'm interested. I'm sure there's an incredibly good reason why. Maybe he was, maybe he was, maybe he was, while everybody was at war, he was studying the blade. He was only 13 when war broke out. Yeah, he was at home practicing to narrate nature.

That can't be right. He was born in 19, oh, 1926. So he was 13 when war broke out. He would have been... Is he fucker? My bad. My bad. Yeah.

So he wasn't actually old enough to serve during the war. That is absolutely fair enough. So when he was 21, he went into National Sith. He was a little bit young. That's fair. We don't want to send kids to war. And thank goodness, we might have lost Attenborough. You never know.

What a brilliant man, honestly. Absolutely brilliant. I thought the implication was. he hid, here under the stairs is my tiny hiding space that they've tried to make me fight in this godless war, but I will not be found. He's just hiding

eating insects and whatever. We've got a love of insects. These insects are delicious. I've been surviving on woodlice and mushrooms. Toad jam. I've been

living by own toe jam. For six years. For six years. Thank God the war is over. So this is a little fact check. Do you remember we talked about the grape lady? The grape lady. Yeah, this was a very early, I want to say meme, but widely shared video of a woman falling off of that wall. Oh, we talked about it recently, yeah, because I'd only seen the video recently for the first time. Oh, that fucking sound is awful.

So this is from Callum. Although I thought it was ironic that in the same episode you were talking about Google AI being unreliable, it looks like you may have fallen for it. After some extensive Googling, I found many people saying that the Great Lady broke several ribs and quit television due to the incident. However, there are no verifiable sources. The info comes from a radio show where they mock interviewed The Grape Lady as a skit. Obviously, it wasn't actually her. Right. The cameraman who was at the scene said in 2008 that she had some bruised ribs and a bruised ego, but was on her feet surely after and back to work within a few days.

She did leave the news station at some point within the eight years between the original airing and when the video was uploaded, but she got a job as a weather reporter, So she didn't break a bunch of shit. She just, I mean, she was just badly winded, I think, is what that sound is. I mean, yeah. I also think, like, this is the danger of AI, isn't it? The misinformation, it interprets repetitive, you know, it can't really distinguish between lies and or miss or mistrue. Or just misremembered. Like, a lot of the time people will say, I thought that, because they've misremembered it.

And then they tell someone, they tell someone that becomes a new fact. fact. But I think at the same time, we had a moment in this episode where you took all of the stuff from Big Ben, the Wikipedia page as fact, and we just all accepted it as fact. I mean, there was a time when Wikipedia was really considered to be very bad. That's because we didn't know how bad it could get, to be honest. But I think we are willing to accept a certain level of misinformation. Yeah.

And I think we've all accepted that Wikipedia feels like a pretty reliable source. It's pretty reliable. I mean, I know it's not per. But as a collective, essential, sort of grassroots-led encyclopedia movement, I think it does a really good job. Honestly, it's such a boon to humanity in a sense that it, think about if we didn't have such a reliable source, or if it was controlled by more of a corporate entity or by a government. I mean, didn't Elon Musk want to buy Wikipedia? I'm pretty sure that was a thing. If he did that, that would be the end of knowledge.

Yeah. It would be like Fox News. Do you imagine if Fox News had bought Wikipedia? Yeah, it would be the end. They're outrageous. There is, there is conservative media. I watched it, like, recently with some of the stuff going on, especially with, with Zoron, Mumdani in New York,

the, the progressive guy there that, that won the primary. Yeah. It is insane, the stuff that they say, that they're allowed to say. It is insane. It is mental what they get away with saying. It's propaganda. It is a propaganda tool. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's a propaganda tool.

It's literally of an unashamedly so as well. And it's not, it should be declared though, though, in a sense. Like, it really should be. Yeah, it should. It should be wild. It doesn't have to be. It doesn't have to be. No, it doesn't have to be.

Because they're not listed as a news station. Yeah, they're listed as entertainment. Yeah, they're listed as entertainment. Yeah. Let's talk about Nick Cage. I thought this guys might give you guys a chuckle. Right. Nick Cage.

Nick Cage. Nicholas Cage. Nicholas Cage. He's still going. Yes, indeed. He's still alive. Still making movies. With movies that are weird and wonderful and terrible.

This is the thing. I feel like Nick Cage set up the second, let's say the third phase of his career. He started off making independent movies that were very well regarded. Then he made absolute shit for like 20 years. And now he's finally decided to start making whatever the fuck he wants again. And he's making all kinds of weirdo stuff. Long Legs, I think was a film that he was in.

recently, he was superb. That was such a good movie. I haven't seen it, but I heard it was so a lot of people hate it. A lot of people... Oh, I loved it. I think it was terrible. I thought it was really good. Really creepy psychological horror movie. I thought it was really

on the border of people either love it or hate it. I thought it was really good. Anyway, give it a try. You can be your own judge. So this is about Nicholas, aka Nick Cage. Of course, that's not his real name. His real name is Piccolus Cage. And he's a pickle.

His real name is Nicholas Kim Coppola, because he is, of course, related to... He's in the Coppola family, he's in France's... No way. I didn't know that. Oh my God. He used to choose his diet based on how the animals have sex. So this is... I can't do a Nicholas Cage impression, but I'll do one for the sake of this. I have a fascination with fish, birds and whales, sentient life, insects, reptiles.

I actually choose the way I eat according to the way animals have sex. I think fish are very dignified, so we're birds. But pigs not so much, so I don't eat pig meat. That's it. Nice. So he doesn't, this is from the Guardian in 2010 interview. He eats animals based on how they fuck. I thought that's quite interesting.

Thanks, Jonas. Okay. You have to have a, I mean, okay. So, hmm, it does mean you have, hmm. I don't like thinking about, I don't like, I mean, I'm glad I'm a vegetable. It's not one of the reasons I'm a vegan, but like, you know, I don't really like the idea of thinking about how animals are fucking when I'm eating them. You know, it's not a great way to go about having a meal, is it?

Right, it's Nicholas Cage, mate. Nicholas Kim Coppola Cage. Nicholas Kim Coppler Cage. I quite like how the fish spunk out all those eggs for me. It's quite dignified. Okay. Dignified, yeah. That's funny.

Do we want one more or are we done? Let's just do one more for the road. These people are just bonkers. One more? I'll give you some titles and you'll give you some titles. decide what you want to read, or you want me to read. Perian broke my heart, Islam and praying 50 times a day. Oh, my God.

Whether drinking strolls have one hole or two. Strange encounter. Oh, just give us a stuff and give us the heartbreak one. You pick. I want the heartbreak one. All right. If I remember correctly, around 2017, I was 16, my friends were asking pro CSGO players to sign their Steam profile.

I thought to myself, who could sign mine? Well, I had the bright idea to donate something like $10 asking Perian on on Twitch to sign my Steam profile, and I wish I had a clip of it, but the conversation went something like this. Pyrion. Sign a Steam profile. What does that mean? Someone in chat.

It's like when someone wants to collect internet points from online people. Period. Oh, fuck that. What a stupid thing to ask for. Issue a refund request. I don't care. Go away. Nice.

It's been eight years. And I do agree profile signings are cringe, but for some reason throughout the years, that moment is stuck in my brain. Apologies for that. I'll sign your profile, dude. Let me reach out. Next time he's streaming, you ask him. If you donate 10 bucks charity, I'll sign anything you want, fuck.

Strange encounter. Zoe was asked this, uni student here. Random middle-aged lady walking her dog came up to me today and asked if I knew anything about physics. I said no. And when asked, she said that she was wondering if the reason the universe expands and contracts is because it follows a figure eight orbit. I politely said, I don't know and left. As three middle-aged guys, can you explain this?

These people exist. They are out there. As judged from the Pyrion's Instagram posting shopping lists, sometimes they just have like dead dog on their shopping list or whatever. And it's like there's no rhyme or reason. These people are just fucking crazy. They're out there. They are just out there.

They just as some people have malfunctioning brains. Do you think they're ever holding on to their malfunctioning dick and just say, you better fucking play ball here, Buster. You're dead. That is some Quentin Tarantino movie shit. Do you know what I mean? You can see that, like, some frustrated business business, but it's like, I got to get it up.

You fucking, you fucking dick, you don't let me down again, you fucking piece of shit. Yeah, yeah. The final one is Google Trends. We swung the Google Trends for search topics. Someone sent me a link. So, I'll just go by the screenshot. Found this interesting, so I'd share. Just listening to the latest mailbag, Brittany Spears and the pido baiting surround her early career was brought up,

specifically the picture of her on a bike, Remember, I talked about, I sent me the picture of the bicycle. Figured I'd take a look at the photo and curiosity struck for the reach the podcast has. So here's a Google in on analytics review and a clear zero search results right up until the podcast release date, which carries on into the next day. And he threw in another topic as well. So these two search options had zero traffic prior to our podcast coming out. Brittany Spears' bicycle peaking at 59 on July the 10th. Nice.

Well, just after July the night, just after the podcast came out. Lembert Opec, 100 searches for Lembert Opec, the MP who dated one of the cheeky girls. 100 searches for him just after the podcast. So those are the two things that we caused a spike in searches related to Lembert Opec and Britney Spears on a bicycle. I want to know what else we can cause to spike in terms of Google Trends. Okay. I love that we did these things. It has to be very, it has to be something very, very niche that people haven't.

thought about in a very long time. Because Britney Spears is not niche, but Britney Spears' bicycle picture is niche because it's from like 20 odd years ago. I bet most people don't even know it exists. We've already done it. How much does it cost to hire out the cheeky girls for a half hour gig? There you go. Cheeky girls hiring rate.

They'll try and find it. Cheeky girls hiring. And their agent's going to go, guys or gals. We've had a sudden upticking people interested in hiring out the cheeky girls. Castle your summer hiring. We're going to be busy, busy, busy. It's going to be all the shit we talked about on this. There's been about 50 no searches for rates.

Oh, my God. Alongside Lembe, O-Pick, what? It's going to be, it's going to be fucking Amber Lynn. It's Amber, Amber, A-M-B-E-R, Lynn, L-Y-N-N-N-L-Y-N-N-N. The fucking, I don't know, just all the shit we talked about on this podcast. I think it was funny, though, because we did talk a load of shit about old shit, like Lembert Opec and the cheeky girls. So it's funny to see young people who have no idea what those things are.

Exactly. That's what I love. I love people because I love these kind of, I watched this clip yesterday, and it was some award ceremony. And it was, I'd tell you what it was. It was just recommended me on TikTok or something. And it was like Spike Milligan doing a bit where Jonathan Ross is up on stage, and he's giving Spike Milligan like a lifetime achievement award. And Spike's just cracking jokes all the time.

And there's this great bit where Prince Charles has written him a letter. Then Prince Charles saying how much he was a big fan, big fan of yours. And Spike sort of, you know, in just this moment of, you know, really good comic timing. But like just in a gap in all the laughter and conversation, Spike says, grovelling bastard. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's so, he delivers it so well with like this little wry smile. And it, you know, and everyone, you know, it really, it really.

kills the room kind of thing. And it's just like this, you know, he was really, I don't know, like obviously an expert comic spent his whole life trying to make people laugh, you know.

I think he was during the war doing that sort of stuff as well. Like he was kind of on stage of the players, you know, it was his whole thing. And you see these, but that room, that award ceremony, I was absolutely stunned by how many people,

how many faces I recognized in the crowd. It was like, you know, Ben Elton, who I probably, being cancelled, God knows. You know, and all these celebrities. I think he's, I don't think he's, I don't think he's been canceled.

No, but I feel like a lot of these people, I was like, oh, my fucking God, I was shocked by how many of them I referenced, I, I recognized, you know. And it was, because I'm from that, that generation, you know, when all these celebrities are on the end of the 90s, telly, I was watching so much telly, you know, in the 90s. Oh, God, what else can you do on the 90s? That's just all it was to do. Yeah. So I was just done by that every time they shot to the crowd.

I was like, oh, no, who that is. I've recognized all those people. And I could name them all as well. It's fascinating. Funny, isn't it? So, yeah. I know the mailbag in the barrel. What a wonderful world.

Anyway. Keep them coming. I had so many I wanted to read, but look, a lot of your emails I would read, but we don't do a mailback for a couple of weeks, and then I come back, and it's like, shit, this is talking about something that was two months ago. So keep them coming. I do go back. I do read them.

I read every single email. you send. I guarantee you, even the crazy ones, even the ones that are never going to get read out. I read them and I put them in the do not use bin, which I have a bin. He's got a bin. He's got a bin. I do not use. Um, so keep them coming. I love reading them. I read as many out as I can. I think the lads really enjoy hearing them as well. So, uh, and I hope you guys do too. Thanks for another successful email bag, bag, mail bag, email bag. Thank you so much. Email mail bag. An email mail bag. Thank you, everyone. See you next time. Bye. Bye. Goodbye.

Bye.