Triforce! - Moral Ambiguity of the V Curious | Triforce Mailbag #68

Episode Date: February 11, 2026

Triforce Mailbag Special 68! Pyrion prepares to open his bistro (not a brasserie), we want to understand Charity Shops and we're asked to be the moral compass for the Vegan Curious! Go to http://shop...ify.com/triforce to sign up for your $1 per month trial period. 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

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Starting point is 00:00:03 Pickax. At Medcan, we know that life's greatest moments are built on a foundation of good health, from the big milestones to the quiet winds. That's why our annual health assessment offers a physician-led, full-body checkup that provides a clear picture of your health today, and may uncover early signs of conditions like heart disease and cancer. The healthier you means more moments to cherish. Take control of your well-being and book an assessment today.
Starting point is 00:00:30 Medcan, live well for life. Medcan.com slash moments to get started. Hello, chums, and welcome back to The Mailbag. No jingles this week. Oh, no. We had a jingle marathon last week. We don't have any jingles this week, but that's fine. We had some fantastic songs.
Starting point is 00:00:58 Remember them. Love a mailbag. I'll just do one. I'll just do one. Hang on. The Mailbag is where friends come together. Nice. To listen to the messages from all of the
Starting point is 00:01:11 Angry listeners. Classic Hitler youth song. Well done. It does sound like a Hitler youth chant. That's not what I was going for. Yeah, that's where it's the reform. I'm in reform now.
Starting point is 00:01:27 Yeah, I'm in reform now. Hello. Before we start, before we start opening the bag, can I just say, I came across a term just yesterday that I'd never heard before.
Starting point is 00:01:41 I've lived in the UK for like 23 years or something like that. And I feel like this is like this is my home, you know, like culturally everything. Like I feel like I'm in tune with the UK, British culture, whatever. I'd never heard the term budgie smugglers before. And I just thought it was hilarious. And I went down a rabbit hole too.
Starting point is 00:02:04 There's a lot of budgie smuggler content on the internet. It turns out. Buggy smuggler is a very 80s. Very. Um, me budgie smugglers. Yeah. It's so funny. It's talking about speedo swimming trunks, isn't it?
Starting point is 00:02:20 Yes. So just for anyone that doesn't know what a budgie smuggler is, that it's 80-style French beach speedos. I mean, Britain does produce some very funny terms, but. Well, I think that one's actually Australian, I think. Because budgies are Australian, aren't they? And I think it's more of a, there's a lot of these. these lovely Aussie slangs that have made their way over here. Right.
Starting point is 00:02:45 So it originates from Australia. I'm pretty sure. Buggy smuggler is also an actual brand of swimwear. Yes. Oh, is it now? Now, yes. That's fun. That's fun.
Starting point is 00:02:56 That's good. In Australia, we're call a budgie smugglers. Only the Aussies would have a company called budgie smugglers. You have to call them up. You have to call them up. Bungie smugglers. Yeah, we sell. We sell.
Starting point is 00:03:08 We sell. We sell. speedo with like tons of lumps in it. I just gone to the website and they got this guy with his huge gut and he's reading the financial review in his budget smugglers. Yeah. So I just thought I just wanted to, I put that one in my pocket yesterday. I thought I got to mention it to the guys.
Starting point is 00:03:27 I want to see what they think. I thought it was really funny. It just such a weird term. But yeah, there's a lot of stuff like that from like the 80s and the 90s. and the 90s, I guess. There's a lot of classic British slang. You don't hear so much anymore, but, you know, some of it is quite funny. Send us your favorite slang.
Starting point is 00:03:49 Yeah, send us your favorite, your favorite weird sayings. And hopefully they're all as funny as budgie smugglers. Indeed. There you go. Bajy smugglers. I love that. Yeah, I love that. Let's go with Lewis's DIY woes.
Starting point is 00:04:06 Right. Calmed by a builder. Right. Okay. All right. This is from Hunter. Congrats on the new house. On a recent episode of the pod, you talked about how much shit needed to get done around your house. This is directed at Lulu, obviously.
Starting point is 00:04:19 And how stressful the whole situation is. This is not uncommon. My best advice is to pay for the work to be done and spend some time with the guys who come down and just ask questions. I know this is easier said than done, but trust me on this. I work in project management and construction. While I have a fancy engineering degree, when I first started, I couldn't tell you how a wall is framed. or how concrete worked in real life. All that wisdom that they have is from their life's work.
Starting point is 00:04:43 And 99% they would love more than love to tell you about it. Yes. Also, heard Pflax's advice, don't touch electric. It's black magic and no one knows other than the warlocks that call themselves electricians. So it's not worth knowing about how the electrics work because you're never going to touch them yourself. Unless you're a certified electrician. Well, yes, then you're permitted to be an electrician. But anytime there's anything
Starting point is 00:05:09 happening, I have always found... Yeah, the builders will happily tell you what they're doing because it's your fucking house. Like, you know, they're like, here's what we're doing and why.
Starting point is 00:05:18 And any questions you've got, they're genuinely... This is a secret. You need to join the builders cabal to learn how to... It's a low-bearing... It's always a low-bearing wall, isn't it? Every time.
Starting point is 00:05:30 There's a load-bearing wall. Yeah. It could be a freestanding wall at the bottom of your garden. What about this wall? Load-bearing. Yeah, it's always load-bearing. That's low-bearing wall. They don't want to take down a wall.
Starting point is 00:05:40 It's accidentally, though, bearing, so your house come down. What they've done here is when they put this in, they didn't squanch it. And if you haven't squashed it proper down the roots, you're going to end up with a flanching. And that flanching's going to come out and right right over the squashed bit. And then if you haven't tuffled it just right into the corner, it's going to get nipped. You're just talking like that, and your ass is going to bear my load in a second. Basically, you know, that means between six and 18 years time. I'll have to come back in here and look at it.
Starting point is 00:06:09 It's threateningly gay. Yeah. Threateningly gay. Yes. That's like there's a spell in Dota that Litch has called Sinister Gays. And if you read it wrong, it's it's G-A-Z-E, but if you read it wrong, it sounds like, you know, he's maybe, he's someone who'd be on a Joe Rogan podcast. Anyway, annoying groceries. They are. They are.
Starting point is 00:06:32 The gays. Do you want to hear this one? It's called annoying groceries. Yes. I'll tell you what's really annoying about groceries these days. The prices, am I right? Oh, my God. Every damn day.
Starting point is 00:06:43 A family of five, trying to feed a family of five. I mean, we're going to be living in a box on the street in no time at this rate. It's insane. I don't know how they can make. And then they're like, oh, yeah, the prices are going up again. What? How could they possibly? It's insane.
Starting point is 00:06:58 Like, there's no way they can go higher than this. Like, it's not sustainable in my eyes, but we'll see, I guess. Anyway, sorry. That's all right. On a recent mailbox, a listener revisited a list of annoying things, and I wanted to share an annoying experience that is quintessential to the American South. I've lived in the southern U.S. all my life. Don't worry.
Starting point is 00:07:16 I'm not a maga cultist. And I love to cook as many Southerners do. Part of cooking. They love to eat. They love eating. Part of cooking is, of course, the acquisition of groceries. I usually try to get my shopping done on Saturdays, but sometimes I need to make the dreaded Sunday grocery store trip.
Starting point is 00:07:32 What's so bad about Sunday? Well, if you arrive at an otherwise reasonable time, say anywhere from 10 to 3, you encounter the after-church crowd. As you likely know, religion and church attendance is a huge part of the culture in the southern US, and going out to eat or running errands such as getting groceries, is often done after Sunday service attendance, meaning almost every restaurant, retail, or grocery store is packed to the gills with oversized trucks. This surge of these oversized toys convert typically spacious parking lots into a cramped
Starting point is 00:08:01 game of survival, where two car-wide lanes are squads. into single language to poorly parked and unconventionally extended truck beds. Essentially, all the typical nuisances of grocery shopping hopped up on rural steroids. Oh, there's also children running around and people standing in the aisles buying jumbo bottles of barbecue sauce. It's Sunday, I don't know of any way to be attitude, strips any kind of urgency from shoppers, meaning aisles are filled in the brim with folks just standing around. The phenomenon of the big southern family means that families with four, five or six kids
Starting point is 00:08:31 who are already bored from sitting still in silent for over an hour in church, are running wild with siblings, loudly tormenting and teasing each other or just being loud. It's a tough one. That's a tough one, yeah. We don't have a big church thing in the UK on Sundays. No, and I feel like still the culture in the UK is not like doing a big weekly shop either. I think people tend to. Oh, really?
Starting point is 00:08:52 Maybe, well, maybe some people do, but I know, like, I know we, me and, like, our family and most of the families I know just go every day. Like, you know, like you just incorporate going to the store and getting things into your, you know, dropping kids off at school or whatever. So like we, we, I seem to be at the grocery store every single day, but like buying like two, two or three things, you know, just to keep topped up. But it's very rare that we go and do like a really big shop, you know, with everybody. We certainly used to. We definitely used to. And the kids did enjoy it because, you know, they get to sit in the trolley and everything and they get to choose some things. People order groceries now, too.
Starting point is 00:09:30 That's what we do. So we get a weekly shop delivered. It's always on a Tuesday. I don't know why we picked Tuesday, but we did. And what we used to do was have takeaway on a Monday, and then the food would arrive on a Tuesday. But the cost of takeaway now is so obscene. And we've just stopped.
Starting point is 00:09:46 We just very rarely get takeaway. And now we'll just buy food. I'll pop out and get something on the Sunday that'll do Sunday and Monday. Yeah. Sort of made it, like going into Twickenham and getting stuff for Sunday dinner is really nice and yeah, I try to avoid takeaway. But we used to do a big weekly shop. Right.
Starting point is 00:10:06 I think honestly, the danger of a weekly shop, aside from if you are in the South and you run into hordes of people, is you do tend to buy more than you would. Yeah, I find, like on the occasions where we do buy a lot in one go, and for the week or whatever, we just end up wasting a lot. Oh, so much stuff. A lot of stuff just goes bad because you don't get around to it. or you bought it at the time and you were hungry and then you just, you moved on.
Starting point is 00:10:33 You don't bother with it. And it's like, we find it a lot easier to just like, you know, we know what we're going to have for dinner that night. So we just go to the shop, get two or three things that we need. And then we waste a lot less. But it's the overhead of having to go to the store. But the thing is like where I live, everything is within a five minute walk. So it's not, you know, like I get it. In America, sometimes you've got to drive an hour just to get somewhere.
Starting point is 00:10:58 You wouldn't want to do that every day. You know, like, you know, as part of like your commute with rush hour and stuff like that, it's set up differently. So I can see why people would do like a big weekly shop. But we don't find it that convenient. And again, with the wastage and stuff, too. What I do is I send Mrs. F a list of things that I want to cook or suggestions. Because I used the New York Times cooking section a lot.
Starting point is 00:11:23 And they have loads of good recipes on there. You can even click a button to convert it all to Metro. So it's not just cups and looking thumbs of things. It's like actual measurements. Yeah, thimbles. So I'll give her a list of recipes or she'll find one that she wants me to cook and then we'll just get the ingredients for all of those. And then it's like, all right, Monday night we're having this.
Starting point is 00:11:43 So, for example, last week I did slow cooker hoisin garlic chicken, which was really good. Rass el-Hanoochipi and spinach stew. That was really good. Sounds really good. Um, pasta Alan Norma. Have you thought about opening a little bistro in a little bistro? Pork and mushroom stir fry. Coivas rotos, broken eggs.
Starting point is 00:12:04 Where can you Pflux bistro? Can I take your order? A bistro. A brasserie or a restaurant. A brazery. My kids are all still so small that like we, even if we wanted to make new stuff, fancy stuff, they just wouldn't eat it. They're just like, they just want like pasta with butter on it and stuff.
Starting point is 00:12:22 Does the Gordon Ramsey critique come through in your own cooking? Is there any of your kids, like, turn their nose up at the stuff you've done, like, this fucking chickpeas is raw? Well, one of my daughters likes pasta with cheese on it. Doesn't like macaroni and cheese for some reason, which is just pasta with cheese. And is fussy about the type of cheese you put on. She wants grated cheddar cheese, but it has to be white. It can't be orange cheddar cheese. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:12:53 She's going to grow up to be in charge of Marx and Spruy. What is orange cheddar cheese? Well, it's just exactly what I say. It's just like, it's just a different color cheddar cheese. It tastes the same. It's just orange instead of white. Oh, I see. She's a visual eater.
Starting point is 00:13:07 That's the thing that can happen. No, it's different. You can get graded mature cheddar cheese that's orange instead of white. Orange cheddar cheese. Yeah, I don't know. I think they just, I think they just color it. I've never seen this before. Orange cheddar cheese.
Starting point is 00:13:25 To me, if it's orange, it's red lester. No, it definitely isn't. It's just grated mature cheddar cheese, but it happens to be orange. Bizarre. Yeah, we get it at the co-ops. They add vegetable dye anato derived from the seeds of the Akiote tree. Yeah. Fair enough.
Starting point is 00:13:41 Never seen it before. Yeah, it's got like a very, very, very slightly different taste, but that might even just be in my mind because it's a different color. So I'm like, well, this is better. But I tell you what, kids sense of taste. If you think back to when you were a kid, the intensity of flavor and the way things, some things taste to you as a child, completely different to the way they taste as an adult. Well, when I was a kid, I just remember constantly seeking out sugar. Like, I was a kid that was, that came home after school.
Starting point is 00:14:16 I had a key to my house. I let myself in. Right. And I would just raid the cupboards. Like, anything with sugar in it. They still do that. I was pounding back coax. I was eating Twinkies.
Starting point is 00:14:27 All of the school snacks. Like my parents used to go crazy. Like, where are all the school snacks? Where are all the lunch snacks? I would eat them all. This is the same thing we have, dude.
Starting point is 00:14:36 That's so funny. Yeah, it's funny. You get home from school and it's just like, I would never think like, oh, I'm just going to have like a banana or something. Like,
Starting point is 00:14:44 no way. It was just like anything. No, Christmas chocolate biscuits. And especially like if it was around Christmas or Halloween or Easter and there was like I had chocolate around. Oh my God, I would just go nuts. I would eat so much, so much sugar. Do you remember, like, when you get an Easter egg,
Starting point is 00:15:01 did you just eat the whole fucking thing as fast as you can? Because I always did. I ate it as much as I could stomach. I would just eat it in one. When I was a kid I did, I find now as an adult, I'm like, I get criticized for it too because a lot of people are like, just eat the whole fucking thing.
Starting point is 00:15:18 But I'll just have like a bit of it. Yeah, same. And then leave it. And then often forget about it. And then somebody else will just eat. eat it, like if it's in the cupboard or whatever. I can make an Easter egg last the year. As much as I love an Easter egg, I don't think I can eat a whole one.
Starting point is 00:15:31 Like, I think I'd feel a bit, I definitely get like mega heartburn. I'm not really into sweet things as much anymore. Do you find that you'd still want sweet things as much as you did? I've weaned myself off sugar a lot in the past like two, three months. Whereas I used to just be like, I'd come in the kitchen, I'd be hungry and I would just go like right into like the cookie jar or something, you know, like I would constantly just be eating all day long snacking on like sugary stuff. And then one day I was like, I have to stop doing this. Like it's just, you know, so now like now like I'll, I'll just eat like
Starting point is 00:16:06 nuts or like lots like breadsticks. Pumice. Like I've just replaced all the snacks with like stuff that isn't sugar like as sugary or you know just like sugar based. You know what I mean? So like yeah, I find now though, because I eat far less sugar. I'm not seeking it out. And I'm also like, you know, if somebody's like, oh, there's a cake left over. Do you want some? I would just be like, not really. Like somebody else can have it or whatever.
Starting point is 00:16:35 Yeah. Like it's you can wean yourself off of it. But I don't drink like any soda or anything. I don't really drink a lot of alcohol or anything. So like I think my intake of sugar is like pretty low now. You can't completely get rid of it because it's, it's in so many things like cereal and and other stuff. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:16:53 I'm chucking down sugar, left right sense. But extra sugar, I've pretty much completely cut out, which is great. I treat myself to a lovely little chalky bar or a cookie or, you know, some stuff in the evening. Yeah, and I drink a bit of, you be drinking a bunch to the last couple of months for sure. He's been pounding back to the ribinas, like crazy. No, I mean, it's not like I need it. No. It is like sometimes it does take the edge off when you're sitting down to the evening.
Starting point is 00:17:23 Yeah. It's self-medicating with our course. Not a good idea. But that's what I'm enjoying it. I'm going through. Do you know what? The reason is because partly I'm moving on Monday. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:17:35 You're stressed. I've got this liquor cabinet with loads of booze in it that's been like, I sat there for years. Yeah. And I always buy this stupid shit like chocolate vodka and salted caramel rum and all this stupid shit. Yeah. And because I think I'll, you know, you go around the Christmas market or whatever and you do a little test of it.
Starting point is 00:17:54 And the lady's like, oh, yes, it's brewed locally. And I'm like, oh, I have to support local things. And so I end up buying all these bottles and stuff. And then no one drinks it because my partner doesn't drink here. And then, like, I bring it to the office for Christmas and no one drinks here. No, it's awful. That's right.
Starting point is 00:18:09 And so I've been having, like, I've been working my way through. Because I'm like, some part of me now is this anti-waste crusader. I just desire to not have anything go in the bin. And it's a terrible thing, honestly. Like, it's one of the things that they say that if you want to lose weight or whatever or stuff like this, you just have to not finish, you know, not feel that way, not have that thing that my dad taught me, which was eat every single thing on your plate kind of thing. Because there's African children starving who'd love to have that bit of old broccoli that you're wasting. I was saying that to my kids the other day. I said, we live in in this world where some people will starve to death because they can't get food.
Starting point is 00:18:48 and then on the other side, you have people eating themselves to death. It's insane. We live in an insane world. No, there's a middle ground between those two things. And I'm definitely erring on the side, weirdly, of not letting anything goes a waste. And it's getting a bit silly, really. I must have to catch myself thinking, you know, I've got to. I like it, though.
Starting point is 00:19:12 I actually do find joy in taking stuff to the charity shop instead of throwing it in the bin. I think throwing stuff that's perfectly good in the bin hurts me physically. Yeah, we try not to throw out too much stuff. I mean, some things you have to throw out. I always wonder, though, because I feel like there's nothing stopping me from just being incredibly wasteful. And I think if there's nothing stopping me, there's nothing stopping most people. And I know that most, not necessarily most people, but a lot of people are incredibly wasteful. And just don't really think about their impact, you know.
Starting point is 00:19:47 Just while I think about it, since Lewis mentioned his liquor cabinet, flax, I know that you play Zonboid, I don't know if you've been playing it as much recently. And I don't know how much you juggle your weight in that game, because, as you know, like there's some traits where if you drop below a certain weight, you become weaker. And you also don't want to be obese or whatever. But I found kind of like a sweet spot where if my weight is kind of like at around 78, 7. and then it threatens to start dropping. Okay.
Starting point is 00:20:21 I pound back a bottle of rum before I go to bed every night. The caloric content is insane. It's like eating three meals a day. So you get a bit shit-faced, but then you just go to bed. And when you wake up, you got like you're on the upward trend for weight. My guy is a consummate chef. I even have a chef's hat that I got from a zombie. and I will put on my chef's hat and apron and I will bake cakes.
Starting point is 00:20:51 And the cakes have high calorie content as well. My bistro. I'm not quite there yet. I'm more of a hard-boiled egg guy and rum. No, no, no. So if I've got a mission, I'll just drink a huge carton of cow's milk because my cow, milk the cow. You drink that, that does water and food and it's quite fattening. Anyway, in answer to your question, though, is my kids do review the food.
Starting point is 00:21:14 my youngest especially would be like I've got to say I give that a B minus you know and I'm like geez finish your dinner first before you start like you know Gordon Ramseying it come on dickhead let's say what's this rubbish it's raw what are you doing you put bread with that oh my God yeah close it down
Starting point is 00:21:32 she's not quite at that level close it down service is over I'm sorry everybody shut it down shut it down we're closed oh you said something about taking things to a charity shop Lewis that feeds nicely into one of the emails that received this week. This is from Kieran. He sent me,
Starting point is 00:21:49 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 8 pictures. Not really a podcast thing. You might want to use it, but whatever. I do want to use it. Thanks, Kieran. Chanty Shop near me has a full rail of Dota 2, T.I. Merch.
Starting point is 00:22:00 No way. I'm not that big of a Dota fan to know which one it is. I've attached photos for you to look at. As low as 2 pounds and as high as 10 pounds, these are all from TIE. These are all hoodies. These are like shirts.
Starting point is 00:22:12 These are Dota 2 chaps. Championships. Man, that's crazy. Yeah. It's just a whole rack of Dota 2 stuff. And I was like, if you don't want me asking, is this in the UK, which part? It might have been that someone who worked Dota events at the merch stand or whatever ended up with a bunch of stuff at the end of the event.
Starting point is 00:22:32 It was like, I'll just fucking take it to charity shop. So Kieran responded and said that they are, he's in Jaro in the Northeast, which is probably as dark as it gets relative to the glitz and glamour within the N-25. unsure if this stuff had any sentimental value. He hasn't bought it, by the way. South Tideside, okay. Isn't that weird that there's like... Somebody just ditched all their Dota merch.
Starting point is 00:22:58 I don't think it's that weird. All their Dota swag is gone. I think it's always difficult because, again, you decided that you don't need it for whatever reason, maybe you lost weight, maybe you gain weight, maybe you're not into Dota anymore, maybe you're trying to kick the Dota habit, and this is your, you know, ripping the Band-Aid off,
Starting point is 00:23:14 And I think like there's a lot of work that goes into trying to sell it online to someone to get any money off of it. You think it's like Toy Story when Andy finally goes to college and he puts all his toys in the box and he's just like, I don't give a shit about these things anymore. Maybe that Dota merch collector finally, you know, met like his soulmate and just thought, you know what, I don't need this stuff anymore. I'm getting rid of it. I'm not throwing a box. I think there's lots of things like that that aren't worth trying to sell on. and I think, you know, clothing is, is in this stuff. Yeah, give it to a charity shop.
Starting point is 00:23:47 I think the biggest issue you've got to run into is the charity shop is not going to know how to price it. But at the end of the day, regardless of how it's priced, someone's going to get a good experience out of that, right? They're going to be like, oh, wow, some underpriced Dota stuff. That's amazing. I mean, the number of people, the number of people going into that charity shop to buy clothes who know what Dota is is going to be one in 10,000. Like, it's not like if it said Fortnite on it, people would know. Dota is still, you know, although it's very popular within, you know, games and on Steam and everything, I think the public perception of Dota is almost zero.
Starting point is 00:24:24 What is the, so, I mean, I was thinking about this the other day, because I don't really have a good knowledge of how the charity sort of situation works in the UK generally. I mean, I was thinking of it in terms of jingle jam, which is obviously our Christmas event, that we have a sort of almost a give and takes. You know, we found that like people who donated to just a charity drive usually give about five quid or whatever. But if you can give away something in return, people are much more likely to donate and give much more, right?
Starting point is 00:24:57 And the average donation this year, I think it was something like 46 quid or something, which is crazy, really. And it means that people are being very, very generous. And I think that that comes in line with a good reward, right? I think if people think, oh, I'm getting really good value for this. Yeah, yeah. I'll offer a bit more. I don't know whether that happens in charity shops necessarily where someone's buying something
Starting point is 00:25:14 and they say, oh, this is good value. I'll offer a bit more. I'm sure some people do. I do do that. If they're like, it's $7.99, I'll be like rounded up to $10. Like, why not do that? It's just a couple of extra quid. Well, no, I mean, precisely.
Starting point is 00:25:28 But also, I think like they're in, again, the charity shop thing. There's charity shops everywhere in the UK. I don't know how it was like another country. I go in and I haggle. Man, 10? Really? this is worth eight pounds. Let's go in at five and see where we go kind of thing. Yeah, that's a very...
Starting point is 00:25:47 Meet me at five and we can have a conversation. It's a very like Turkish or Moroccan actually, isn't it? So like go in, they're expecting you to offer half. I wonder how much of that fits into other aspects of society, but that's a different conversation. I'm more interested in... Obviously, charity shops functioned like a little bit like that in that they give you something back in return for a donation, right?
Starting point is 00:26:07 there. And so they are sort of, they have an incentive for people to get something. It's not just a donation to charity. And in fact, the charity shops I feel, people are going into a charity shop with the intention of donating to charity. That's like a byproducts, right? Yeah, I think you're right. It's not the mindset of people to say, I feel like I haven't given to charity for a while. Let's go and see if I can get somebody in the charity shop. You know, it's not like, but I also think that there is a deep inherent joy in realizing that you have given to charity. And I think sometimes that isn't obvious in the charity shops either. I've bought various bits and bolts of church shops.
Starting point is 00:26:47 And every time I don't, I'm not kind of aware that I'm making that that is a sort of a charitable donation. Yeah, it doesn't feel like a donation like when you get the chuggers on the street and everything trying to get you to. My relationship with, with charities is, uh, is, is, more like a like a self-serving thing because I'm like oh yeah I feel so good I've donated stuff to charity but it's like at the same time I would have just taken all that stuff to the dump you know like I'm just glad that like somebody will take it and maybe somebody else can use it but I was
Starting point is 00:27:20 completely willing to just throw it in the dump as well like because we just have so much stuff and I'm just like forever trying to get rid of all this stuff or at least try to keep on top of it somewhat. But the fact that charities are like, oh, yeah, bring us all your unwanted stuff. We'll repurpose it and resell it or whatever. I feel good about myself for doing it. But at the same time, it's very selfish because like I said, I just need to get rid of this stuff and I would just dump it if nobody else was going to take it. You know what I mean? So it's like, it's a bit of a weird one. I'm not, I feel like not like genuine when it comes to it because I'm not doing it like out of the goodness of my heart. I'm doing it because all of this shit.
Starting point is 00:28:00 I don't think that matters. So much. Right. I don't think that matters. I have to get rid of it one way or another. They just want the stock. Yeah. The thing is that there's so three good things are happening when you, with charity shops.
Starting point is 00:28:11 First of all, people are recycling things instead of dumping them. Because instead of taking it to the dump to just fester, you're repurposing it, someone, the charity gets to sell it and maybe make some money. So the recycling is good. Yeah. Number two is the charity gets some money by selling it. They're given it for free. They sell it.
Starting point is 00:28:27 They make money. That's good. And the third thing is, people who don't have a lot of money, lean very hard on charity shops to pick up toys for their kids, books for their kids, books for themselves, clothes for themselves, and you can get genuine bargains. And if you want to be smart about it,
Starting point is 00:28:43 you can go to a nice, posh area, and their charity shops will be amazing because people donate genuinely high-quality stuff. If you go to Felton, the charity shops are full of crap, because the people have got crap to donate. If you go to fucking High Street Kensington, the charity shops there,
Starting point is 00:29:00 you're like, holy shit, that's a blah, blah, handbag. Yeah, yeah. That's a so-and-so jacket. I don't know if you've ever looked in some of the, some of like the drop-off bins for charities. You know, like the Salvation Army ones there, like those big sliding sort of like, you know, receiver things.
Starting point is 00:29:19 So they're not good. You can't see, you can't see in them, right? So people will just put anything in there. And for you dropping stuff off, you're none the wiser. But some of them, you can just open them up and you can look in, man, some of the things
Starting point is 00:29:32 that people donate to charity, like, it's absurd. Like a fucking dirty ass vacuum cleaner. Like, that's just full of shit. And you're like, why would you disin insane? Nobody will use this. He's doing this. That's in using it as a dump.
Starting point is 00:29:47 As a dump, yeah, yeah. It's like, it's basically just fly tipping. Yeah. It's crazy. Because we also get people leaving stuff outside of charity shops just in the street. And it's worth of shit that's like, it's more work.
Starting point is 00:30:00 then it's worth to even sell it for whatever. I get it, right? Like, these people are like, you know, I'm giving my fucking things to share it in. What you want about, right? Or cherry shop is still open. Fuck it. I should leave it outside.
Starting point is 00:30:11 You know, I think there is a little bit of that mentality that, okay, some people are just not in it, you know, either they're moving house or they're in the situation or they need to get this thing. They just have to, there is an element of panic sometimes. Yeah. And then there's an element of laziness.
Starting point is 00:30:26 And then there's an element of ignorance, right? And it's some measure of all three, which leads to people doing this stuff. I read an article today about, because remember there was that road of trash that was dumped? Like, it's like basically in the UK at the moment, if you take a van to the dump, you have to pay. And so if you're getting rid of any building stuff, like maybe you've had a thing. Yeah, that stuff all needs to be weighed and sorted and stuff over here at least. It's not, yeah, it's very much like, I didn't really know this because I guess I'd never really been to dump in anything other than a car where you can just get rid of your shit for free. Yeah, you've been to a recycling center, not like an aggregate dump or something like that.
Starting point is 00:31:08 The thing is a lot of those clothes recycling stuff, they end up in, I think it's Ghana, might be Uganda. They box these clothes up into like these huge pallets that are like shrink wrapped. And then they just deliver them to, I honestly, I'm so sorry, it's been a while since they're read the article, it's a country in Africa has these clothing markets and all of the clothes for sale, you go as a shop owner, stall owner in, I'm going to say Uganda, you buy the Why, hey lad, it's a daughter hoodie. Why is he, whatever accent that was? Well, because he's in Jarrow.
Starting point is 00:31:46 He's found out. I'm talking about Africa. Is that a daughter hoodie? Exactly. He's delighted. Thanks for the translation. It's just stacks and stacks of old. They'll buy this box of clothes for like $10.
Starting point is 00:31:57 Yeah. And then they'll unpackage it, hope that they've got some good stuff in there and resell it and make money that way. And they call them dead white people clothes. Like obviously they've got a more catchy, it probably sounds better than the original, whichever African language. Dead white people clothes.
Starting point is 00:32:10 Yeah. Because they figured no one would just give these away. They must all be dead. They must all be dead. And they're sending us their dead clothes. But there's so many clothes being given away to charity and recycle that essentially we're just shipping rubbish. Yes.
Starting point is 00:32:24 to these countries and they end up with mountains of old clothes. I saw this thing not like overly recently, but it was a company that was trying to, they had this machine where you could feed old clothes into it and it would basically just break them down into like threads and reusable fabric sort of thing. Sounds like my fucking tumble dryer. But like it's impressive,
Starting point is 00:32:48 but it's so inefficient. For like one garment it takes like four hours or something like that. do something with it. And I feel like if they could speed that up, because I think, I think recycling a lot of like old unwanted clothes would be such a good solution for, uh, you know, especially like like what they call like fast fashion and, uh, and the need, uh, for that gigantic industry to have like cotton, uh, for example, which is like quite, quite damaging like to, to like some of the ecosystems and stuff. Like there's, there's been lakes. There's like a lake in, I think it was like Azerbaijan or something that's completely, completely dried out because they've
Starting point is 00:33:28 used all the water just to like mega grow like as much cotton as they could. But it's like it's pretty devastating when something like that happens. And it's happening like more and more everywhere. But if there was a way to an efficient way to recycle all this stuff and then turn it back into like new clothes, sure. That would be great. But like I don't think they're anywhere near that right now. like it's it seems like a very very far away so but but then again it's not it's not like uh it's
Starting point is 00:33:59 it's not seattle in the 90s where everybody just wants to shop at secondhand stores either people want new stuff you know especially because the new stuff is it is pretty cheap you know like you really cheap yeah like i don't know i think if you go to all these all these mega like clothing places that that deliver right but that's some people if you go to porta bea road close market, which is at the bottom end of Portabella Road. The number of young people there dressed very cool, and buying all kinds of retro stuff and like vintage clothing, they fucking love it.
Starting point is 00:34:30 The youngs have always loved that. I guess so, but these industries for new fast fashion are massive. So like there they are. Obviously, like tons of people are partaking. They've got quite good at marketing it now. What's that one? Brandy Melville. That's fast fashion dressed up as not fast fashion.
Starting point is 00:34:48 But it is fast fashion. Anyway, this is Apple. This is from Ed. In episode 330-something you were talking about apples, which reminded me of an event I went to last year, Apple Day. Nice. I live in the wilds of Norfolk. Insert Farmer and Inbred jokes here.
Starting point is 00:35:03 I'm not going to make those assumptions. Alan Parkridge. Yeah. A museum near me hosts Apple Day, an event that is exactly what it sounds like. People selling apples, Apple-based food and drink, people making things from apples, Apple-themed games, Apple-related crafts.
Starting point is 00:35:18 I honestly had no idea people were so passionate about apples. But apparently the highlight of the day is the apple identification. Nice. You present your apples to a team of Apple experts, which is made up of three blokes
Starting point is 00:35:31 in flat caps, who I assume are called Norman, Derek or Keith, who will take your apple, examine it, sniff it, cut little bits off and taste it and pass it back with a confident, that's an old Todgers cruncher
Starting point is 00:35:41 that is very good for coaching. An old Todgers cruncher. It's events like this that make me realize why Norfolk has a stereotype of being back a bit of a backwater and simple. It was a very nice,
Starting point is 00:35:51 wholesome day, though, the kind of event you take your nan to when you're eight. Oh, your nan takes you to when you're eight
Starting point is 00:35:56 and you have fond memories of. And I have, he's attached a bunch of pictures of apples. I will. Yeah, do you know what? Like,
Starting point is 00:36:03 this is very nice. And we had a very good year for apples this year, apparently. It was a very, very rich, very good seasonal. Look at these apples.
Starting point is 00:36:12 Plenty of apples. I'm going to get an apple tree planted in my garden. I mean, I love apples. I think I've spoken about it on this very podcast before. When me and Harry and Tom,
Starting point is 00:36:23 Oh yeah, you guys went to the Thatcher's brewery, we had not seen an orchard apple tree probably ever. And they've obviously been selected and bred to be extra productive. Yeah. You would not believe how many apples. Oh, well, I'll tell you what.
Starting point is 00:36:40 The one in my backyard this year could have given them a run for their money because I'm not even kidding. There must have been about 500 apples on that thing. And they're like bent over. The tree is literally bending over. I was the same. I had to, I had to lop it. I had to prune the whole thing.
Starting point is 00:36:55 It was insane. It was just, I've never seen so many apples before. I had three car loads full of apples that had all like fallen off and had holes in them and stuff that I had to take to the, to the green waste. It was insane. It was so many apples.
Starting point is 00:37:10 But like if I was, if I was actually like smart about it, I could have, you know, maybe preserved some of them, made some apples sauce, made some, come on.
Starting point is 00:37:19 Yeah. I'm so lazy. I could have made my own cider. I could have done so many things with all those apples. I would love to get an Apple Day. I fucking love Apple Day. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:37:28 This is from Sean, a loyal Australian Tri-Force. Nice. I mean, his budgie smugglers. In his budgie smugglers. But Sean starts off with high, Pery and Sipson Lewis. I think he means, gai. Godai, cunt. Got a quick story and question for you guys.
Starting point is 00:37:42 I remember you talking about Simply Reds Mick Hucknell at one point in a negative tone. Right. And remember the story to back those claims. In the 80s, my mum moved to Wigan from West Germany to teach Brits how to speak English, oddly enough. And frequented a pub, which turned out to be owned by Mick Hucknell. In this pub, there was a prettiest girl contest, which, yes, my mum was invited to participate in, but declined. And because Mick was the owner, he had to be a judge for the contest. Although being a judge would be kind of cool, it still makes him look like a bit of a creep.
Starting point is 00:38:18 yeah, Mick is a bit of a creep. He should enter the ugliest weirdo competition. Well, give everyone else a chance. Yeah, come on. We can't be undefeated Mick Hucknell. No. Oh, my God. All right, let me just make, I want to talk about something here.
Starting point is 00:38:37 Sean, great email. Love that. But he's then asked if I could give information, a tourist information about visiting London. Listen to me right now. I am done getting emails where people are saying, I'm coming to London in two weeks. Is there anything I should see? I'm not the tourist board. It's a really boring city.
Starting point is 00:38:56 There's nothing there. Don't come here. Don't come here. It sucks. There's nothing on the internet about it. You definitely couldn't just research it. I mean, you're in the suburbs. I mean, you go into London once every three weeks.
Starting point is 00:39:07 So you think someone that's lived in London for over 20 years doesn't have a good idea about what to do. Yes. You're an idiot. Yeah. You are an idiot He doesn't He never leaves his neighbourhood He's got like a very small
Starting point is 00:39:22 sphere of influence He doesn't go to the big And I'm moving even further We go into London all the time I'm gonna shut down everything When I move I'm gonna have no social media I'm gonna have no instant
Starting point is 00:39:33 I'm just gonna be He's going off the grid I'm gonna do like What's that guy Who built the pond Do you hear about that guy Who's car broke down Like in the middle of nowhere
Starting point is 00:39:44 And instead of like seeking out help to get it fixed or whatever, he just decided I'm going to live in the wilderness for 27 years. Yes. No, no, you're thinking of the guy who deliberately went and lived in the wilderness. He drove his car to it. Oh, I didn't think it was deliberate. I was under the impression that it was not deliberate, but he just thought, well, fuck it.
Starting point is 00:40:04 I guess I live in the wilderness now. And 27 years later, he's still out there. There's a good story about him. He still know he got caught because he basically spent like 29 years breaking into people's cabins, but he was really polite about it. He didn't do any damage. He just took the food. I'm just breaking in because I just want a couple of peanuts and some...
Starting point is 00:40:22 Do you have any sunflowersies? Do you have any flax in here anywhere? He was very paranoid and eventually he got caught because they, basically technology over there, he didn't realize that they had these little cameras that sort of motion sensitive. And they tracked him back to, they've got got him on camera, tracked him back to where he was, where his little camp was. Right. But yeah, he was just a...
Starting point is 00:40:45 It's amazing story. I can't remember what his name is. But have a look. Have a look for him. Oh, that's what I'm going to hit me. That guy. You're going to do that. You just bought a house and instead you're going to live in the backyard.
Starting point is 00:40:54 He's going to go live in the bush. Yeah. Before we continue, starting a new business isn't just hard. It can be terrifying. What if no one listens to my podcast? What if I make a fool of myself? What if no one buys my products? Well, one reliable partner who always has your back is
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Starting point is 00:42:07 Shopify.com slash triforce. On with the show. All right, we've been asked to, we need to provide moral guidance for this next email. Okay. Oh, no. The question is, is this immoral, which is always, if you have to ask that, probably is. Well, let's just see. Let's have an open mind.
Starting point is 00:42:29 Okay. This is from Ronnie. This is a story I told some workmates at the pub a few nights back, and it totally divided the table in a way that I had no idea it would. I'm just wondering what you lot think, and if this was an okay thing, to do or not. I've gone off to university and knowing absolutely nobody there and being miles away from home and my mates, I looked at a few clubs to meet people and make friends.
Starting point is 00:42:50 Very normal so far. Eventually I stumbled onto a vegan cooking club where students get together and cook for and with each other. I myself am in no way a vegan. I'm quite the opposite. But I was enticed into the club solely by the fact that it was mostly girls and that they were very fit. Right.
Starting point is 00:43:08 Fortunately for me, I've always loved cooking from a really early age and was significantly better than all the other students in the group. I devised a sort of plan to join the group, knock out some delicious vegan food, and knock up something else too. In other words, have sex with the ladies. So I joined up, and it was actually really lovely. I made some cracking food for people, shared some actually nice recipes with them, made a bunch of great friends.
Starting point is 00:43:30 On top of that, my scheme worked, and my cooking had blown not only the socks off a couple of the members, so he's also had sex with a couple of the ladies. In case you're wondering, I was never rumbled for being a rampant carnivore, but it did get close a few times. I do also want to say that reading this back, it sounds quite dodgy and creepy, but it wasn't malicious, just more of a shot in the dark from a wide-eyed 18-year-old venturing out alone into the world for the first time. I think you could have just been up front and said, I'm not actually a vegan, but I'm interested in vegan and vegan cooking or whatever. And I think most people would have probably just been like, okay, cool, whatever. You know, like.
Starting point is 00:44:05 Yeah, well. You might have had a little bit of like, you can't join our club because you're not actually vegan or whatever. But I think you should have been upfront about it at least. Because it does make the whole thing creepier the fact that you weren't upfront about it. Well, hold on. Let's hear Lewis's take because this sounds like it's going to be a Lulu classic. Well, first of all, imagine, I think my advice on this previous podcast has previously been things like, you know, if you're looking for love, maybe join some clubs that are things you're interested. in like a book club or whatever.
Starting point is 00:44:38 It wasn't just in cooking. It wasn't the same level of fanny at those clubs. Right. But at the same time, I feel like vegans are actually quite uncomfortable sometimes with a partner who I see it a lot on the vegan subreddit. People really sort of struggling with the ethics of dating someone who eats meat. And in the same way, they struggled feeding their animals meat, you know, and things like this. But I think that it's a contract you've made when you sign up, when you get a dog or when you get a cat, you have to feed them healthily.
Starting point is 00:45:12 And if that involves giving them meat, which I think they require, you need to be careful. In the same way that you can't just feed it chocolate. Do you mean, there is a responsibility that you sign up to. And I think that has to overrule your thing. If you're sick, a lot of people say, oh, you know, I'm sick, but I can't take these pills because they have gelatin in. No, like your health overrides that, breaking your veganism for that thing. Now, in this case, I think it is one of those things that's a bit, it's a bit, I'm a bit uncomfortable with it. But I also, I'm on the fence.
Starting point is 00:45:44 Oh, God, I'm so on the fence about it, Pflax. I'm not sure. I don't. I don't know. I mean, look, the way I see it, the lad was lonely and he's far from home and he wanted to meet some people. Hey, wanted to fucking have sex with some hot girls. I get it. But I think you can just be, I think, I think especially if you're joining a club where you know everybody is there specifically because.
Starting point is 00:46:05 they all share the same sort of view or interest or whatever. I think you do need to be up front and just say, listen. I love cooking. I'm really interested in cooking. I'm interested in vegan cooking. I want to give it a try, but I'm not actually vegan. What difference does it make? It's not like he's joining a prayer group and pretending to be Christian just to knob some Christian girls.
Starting point is 00:46:26 That's exactly what he's doing. It's exactly the same thing. But this is a prayer group. This is just a dietary choice. It's not like some great betrayal. It's not like he's snuck in there and he's actually an atheist and he's just pretending to be a Christian or, you know, it's some political group and he's snuck in there. He's actually a massive fascist. He just wants to have sex with some hot liberal women.
Starting point is 00:46:47 It's just fucking diet. It's not a big deal. I am constantly confronted by things. There's no morality to what you eat really. Come on. So hang on. To some people there is. I've got something interesting to say.
Starting point is 00:47:01 Probably I would say that most of the people in that group there is some morality in their diet. choice. That's... You're right. You're right. That is a moral choice. To be a vegan, you're doing it for moral reasons.
Starting point is 00:47:11 But what I'm saying is, it's not a deep moral decision the way that your faith would be. I don't know. I think it is. It can't define you. It does define people, though. We are constantly surrounded by ethical and moral decisions,
Starting point is 00:47:24 and we have a little calculator in a head that tells us whether something's okay or not. And usually we have to just trust our own moral compass. And some people's moral compasses completely fucking out of whack, which is why they do. I think it's okay to dump shit on the side of the road or take a shit in a charity shop bin or whatever it's, right? Throwing litter out of a car.
Starting point is 00:47:43 I'm just kind of, I'm just trying to play devil's advocate here a little bit. I mean, I feel like it probably is, if you have to ask, it's probably a little creepy. I agree. Yeah, I think come back to whether you think you did something okay there. Yeah. I think I would be fine with it, though, if you were just up front. And you, like I said, just explain. But here's the deal as well, by the way.
Starting point is 00:48:05 The way you tell the story can really impact people's attitude towards it. So I see this a lot where someone has written this incredibly flowery. So this creepy guy infiltrated our healthy eating group and pretended, masqueraded as one of us only to sleep with. Just with everyone. Like a wolf and sheep's clothing. We would even be arguing about it. You could word it the other way. So I think there is this kind of like,
Starting point is 00:48:34 And, well, okay, one thing that happened this week was, as a guy who I watch on YouTube, and I'm not, I don't want to have a beef. I don't want to have a beef with him. I noticed, I was watching videos, and I noticed he did a surviving Mars video. And I was like, hmm, okay, so I watched a bit of it. I watched some of it.
Starting point is 00:48:51 I thought it was good. And then I was like, I wonder if this is an advert. And so I clicked on the description, and I realized it was a sponsored advert, okay? And it's a sponsored video. And it doesn't say in the title. It doesn't say in the description. It doesn't say in the title, doesn't say in the thumbnail.
Starting point is 00:49:05 That's very old school. It doesn't say anywhere in the video at all that it's a sponsored. Not at the start, not at the end, not in vocals. So I was like, how is this okay? And I think the rules are basically very different. I think in the UK, where we have a thing called the advertising standards agency, and they basically require you to make an effort to tell people that something has got sponsored content in it or is an advert. In this case, you know, we're used to paradox paying us to play a game and we're very upfront.
Starting point is 00:49:38 And morally, our choice is to, we feel like we should let people know. However, there is an inherent advantage to not doing that. Because like me, I don't think I necessarily would have clicked on this video had I known it was an ad and seen the ad in description or dumb, you know. And so what you get is, though, you get this kind of effect, right, where if you have weaker morals or ethics, and you're willing to do this, you're going to get more views on your video, which is going to perform better. And so the agency who encourages you maybe to not label your videos correctly enough, you know, if you can push it, it's always the way. If you can push it right up to the line
Starting point is 00:50:16 without going over the line, you're going to benefit the most, okay? And that is where morals always is on that tipping point, okay, because people gain advantage by having poor ethics and having poor morals. There is, and so if you can have just the weakest possible ethics and morals, you will get ahead. And that's why all these CEOs are giant cunts and psychopaths and assholes. You know, this is why we have Elon and Trump and everyone, because these guys have no fucking morals. And it's such a terrible lesson for society generally that you can get away with it.
Starting point is 00:50:48 And so I thought, I'm not shouting out this guy because, you know, again, I'm a fan. But it's like frustrating for me to see people in our sphere. like basically not playing by the rules not necessarily not playing by the rules but like playing so close and look we know this is the thing
Starting point is 00:51:06 from Spiff Spiff loves to game the system to exploit the system to like to trick and to finagle and to find a hole but his thing is more about like saying look at this thing
Starting point is 00:51:17 that I can do yeah it's like an exploit like in a game or whatever and that's very different to doing something that is like to literally
Starting point is 00:51:27 I feel like he will use an exploit to point out that there's an exploit. Some people would just use the exploit. I just couldn't believe it. You know what I mean? For so many years now, we've been putting ad in titles and thumbnails and being really obvious about it. And yet, apparently on YouTube, you can still, in games, literally that we're doing, you
Starting point is 00:51:44 can just still get away with not disclosing in this way. I'm just stunned. Yeah. This is happening. And I feel like it is probably the agency who pushed it forward, right? And told him what to do and what needed to be, exactly what needs to be disclosed, right? Because creators don't really know what they're doing. You know, they're like, I'll do what you tell me.
Starting point is 00:52:01 Yeah. You know, like we get a lot of ads on this podcast. And I've had to push back lately because one of the things I'm pushing back is they've started to write in the ads, stuff that from my perspective. So one of the ads which I didn't read was them saying like, oh, you know, I personally use this thing and do this thing. And I won't say that unless I have, right? And so it's frustrating to be, but I can see why a lot of creators would just be like,
Starting point is 00:52:27 I'm just going to read it. It's no problem. It's no problem. But that, for me, is a moral thing. It's an ethical choice, right? To be genuine. And because the only person, the person you're mostly hurting is yourself, right? Because you feel guilty and you feel bad about it.
Starting point is 00:52:42 You feel anyone with any moral compass can't make poor ethical and moral decisions without feeling bad about it. And again, that's the difference, I think, that we've learned that doing something bad feels bad. But these people who constantly do things that are bad don't feel bad. That's the difference between us and them, if you like, right? They're broken in some way. Or they've been conditioned to think they deserve it.
Starting point is 00:53:04 You know, it's like every time as a cheater, you see this in Magic the Gathering tournaments, they justify it to themselves in some way, right? They'll be like, well, I had bad luck for two rounds. So I cheated in the third round to even out my luck. You know, what's wrong with that? You know, they're like that fast. Cheating in games and stuff is insane to me. Like I can't, I can't, I've never even known anybody do it,
Starting point is 00:53:26 But I just don't know how anybody does it. I'm good. Everyone knows I'm good. You know, I got manor flooded. That's not fair. People that hack in like Tarkov or people that cheat in like online games and stuff. And you just think that what a loser. Like that's so sad.
Starting point is 00:53:41 Like it's just meant to be a bit of fun, you know, like. But they feel that they deserve it or they owe it. There's this feeling of entitlement. It's a very strange psychological thing that happens with that sort of stuff. And I think that, you know, what I mean the real world is. are gamified, you know, a lot of the time. You are trying to a gamify the system. You know, I'm, I'm like that with everything that I take on as well. We all are like, you know, you want to try and get your videos to do well, you know, we want jingle jams to do well. We're trying to find
Starting point is 00:54:08 ways to, you know, encourage people to, you know, doing matched funding and stuff like this. Like, all of these things are, you know, all the things I talked about, even earlier, like when I said, you know, the games collection, giving that away as part of jingle jam will massively increase donations. That's kind of gamifying it a little bit because, you know, we've figured out that this works better. And so everything is, everyone is learning and trying to get one over on everyone else. Everyone's competing. And it's so frustrating and overwhelming to deal with, honestly. Anyway, I just thought I'd get that off my chest.
Starting point is 00:54:44 Yeah. That's fair. I think, but so just back to this email quickly, though. I understand, like, where he's coming from, but I still would personally, I would have just been up front. I would have said, I want to hang out with you people. I want to learn vegan cooking and stuff, but I'm not vegan. Just we do. So you know.
Starting point is 00:55:02 We probably, I probably, the odds probably still do loads of things wrong. And I want to hear about them. Right. I, you know, anytime there's like, you know, I got a message yesterday saying like, you know, feels like theogs is like this, this. And I was like, well, tell me more. Like, I want to know what, what's changed, you know, what you think we should be doing differently. I'm not scared of it.
Starting point is 00:55:23 In fact, I want to know. You welcome the challenge with open arms and to meet it head on. His arms are so wide open. And I understand that I am in a very blessed position where I have the bandwidth and the, you know, I'm very comfortable. So I can afford to be better and many people can't. And I'm not, you know, I'm not judging those people, you know. So I understand that a lot of crime and stuff comes from a place of difficulty, not a place of, you know, some desperation. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:55:49 Exactly. And people feel very guilty about things they have to do. And that's part of the world we live in that we need to work to change. All right. Well, this is from Mitch. This is about cars. God.
Starting point is 00:56:00 On episode three, four one. That was heavy stuff. That was heavy stuff. It's all right. You were talking about your new house and your commute and purchasing a car. I believe you were purchasing a car.
Starting point is 00:56:09 Simon wants me to get a citrode Amy. I'd probably say that before. No, I don't think you have. Like an electric car. It's like barely a car. It's like a tiny fucking Lego box. Right.
Starting point is 00:56:22 Like a little. smart car sort of thing. Yeah, I'll put a picture in the name. There's nothing smart about it. I'll tell you that much. It looks a direct car. Oh, I've seen these. You know what they...
Starting point is 00:56:31 These little things, they use these to deliver food to lodges at center parks. They got, like, it's called restaurant runner or something like that. So if you order a quadru cycle. Yeah. They deliver it. They're little electric boxes.
Starting point is 00:56:47 Yeah, don't get that. I think Simon would like me to pick him up and take him to the office. see what of these. I think Simon's got this little old people village idea of the world he lives to live in
Starting point is 00:56:58 where you know I turn up and we go you know to have a drink by the river get yourself a Twizzy mate get yourself a Twizzi the Renae Twizzi yeah
Starting point is 00:57:05 I drove around Monaco The Renno Zoe is pretty small as well it's a little bit bigger than the is you Twizzy mate look A Twizzy oh it looks like an
Starting point is 00:57:13 absolute piece of shit Yeah those Twisies are I drove that is technically a seat behind the main seat It's like a go car So my youngest sat in that back bit
Starting point is 00:57:22 And I drove this thing. And I really, my knees were like up by my ears. This thing is so tiny. That thing, if I was on the road to Bristol and I drove in and I got hit by another car, I think I would literally be jammed. Yeah. Yeah, you would be turned to find a loser. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:57:39 I think I would fit in the recycling thing. Do you mean if that flipping got hit by a car? It would be ridiculous. Yeah. Holy shit. So here's the question in the email. Is that I said that I've only ever bought secondhand cars. and that I don't really care if there's a bit of a scratch on the bodywork or it gets a little dinged up or whatever.
Starting point is 00:57:56 As long as it runs, it doesn't bother me. So Mitch says, as a Canadian, I find this interesting because in Canada or at least in Ontario, people care a lot about their car. It's general appearance. It's like your car is a status symbol. And I think his question is, is my take on cars typical to the UK, or is it just me? I'll be honestly with it. I think it's just me because, I mean, certainly around here, I see people, a lot of my neighbors at the weekend, they're out, hand washing their car. You see people taking the car to the car wash quite often. People,
Starting point is 00:58:27 you know, really do look after their vehicles. But I assume they're new to them. I feel like you and Jeremy would really suit a tandem penny farthing. And I posted an image in Discord for you. A tandem penny farthing. That looks very rustic. Yes. Yeah. It's got that old English village vibe to it, doesn't it? It does. Yeah, it looks like the men in the flat caps are eating their apples on it. Yeah. P-Flex, I think there is this weird thing in society where people do like things they're new. It's the same people who get new phones every year and get new cars every other year. I mean, we have all, versus the idea of the educated, informed purchaser, which I think is actually the vast majority of people who know that getting a car two years old is the sweet spot, right?
Starting point is 00:59:16 It's about knowing that sweet spot. But I think a lot of your peers probably look like, They've got a brand new car, but that car is almost new, and they're looking after it. So I'm not saying, I think the general thing is I don't, like, we don't take the car to the car wash hardly ever. Our car has moss growing on it. It has moss growing on it. I just don't care. Like, as long as it runs, I just don't care. It's also, it's just.
Starting point is 00:59:41 You're rewilding your car. Yeah, it's essentially there's a little environment. Spiders live in it, like all over it. Like, in the summer, when the spiders lay their webs everywhere, the, the, the, the, the, wing mirrors are just covered in web. So the point where... Your car's like, Shalob's layer. Yes, literally. It's like she loves layer.
Starting point is 00:59:57 It's covered in spider webs, covered in moss. Like the kids find it very funny that how shit our car looks. Because I just don't care. It's just a vehicle. It's just to get from A to B. And we only, like I said, only put 2K miles of the clock. So here is an email from Matt, who says that I only have, they never buy new cars because they only ever put a couple of thousand miles on it in a year.
Starting point is 01:00:18 And both Lewis and Sips seemed to agree. and think that was normal. I don't know if that's the case, but sure. Sorry. This is one of the... Sorry, don't worry. That buying a new car is silly. Yes.
Starting point is 01:00:29 And we obviously, we do have cars, but we barely drive them. Like, we're not putting 100,000 miles on a car. Oh, no, yeah, there's no way. I mean, where I live is so small. It's impossible anyway. So this is one of the most insane things I think I've ever heard on the podcast. And I'm not sure whether it reflects how big the US is or how shit our public transportation is. It is both of those things.
Starting point is 01:00:49 To put this in perspective, I live in a fairly rural town in New Hampshire. Yeah, it's not comparable. I put about 500 miles on my car every two weeks just from my commute to and from work. Yeah, yeah. On average, I'd say that it probably puts 26,000 miles on my car per year just from normal driving. Most of my coworkers agree they do the same. I'd be interested to know what the average mileage is on cars in the UK. My Corolla has 150,000 miles on it right now.
Starting point is 01:01:14 On the mainland, probably similar, depending on where you're commuting to. What in the UK? Yeah, maybe. Yeah. Like, it's a big enough, it's a big enough place where people don't always, you know, work directly from home or within a stone's throw of the office or whatever. So there's probably people racking up some mileage on their cars. Yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 01:01:36 But you can't compare it. It's not the same at all. The scale is so different. Yeah. And if you're living in the U.S. and you live out in a rural area, of course you're going to be clocking up the miles. Like, you have to. Honestly, I don't think you even need to be rural.
Starting point is 01:01:51 I don't think you need to be rural. I think in America, just pretty much everywhere you live. Even living in the suburbs going into the city every day, you'll be clocking up the miles big time. It's a vast place. It's also very little walkable cities in the States. There's hardly any public transport. I mean, whenever I've been out there, you're either taking a cab, being driven somewhere,
Starting point is 01:02:12 getting an Uber. There's no, people do not use the bus. No. People don't, there's no intercity rail. Yeah. It's all driving, driving, driving. Yeah, yeah. Which is terrible. I've said even in this episode, though, where I live, everything is within like a 10-minute walk.
Starting point is 01:02:29 Like, I mean, you're an exception. I can go to the doctors. I can go to the grocery store. I can go to the hospital, whatever. It's all within a 10-minute walk from my house. So it's not. So we use our car because we have kids and it's easier to get them to where they need to go or whatever. But if we didn't have kids, we would never use a car.
Starting point is 01:02:47 Like we would just walk everywhere. Like there'd be no point of having a car unless we just wanted to do like a big shop or whatever. But again, if we didn't have kids, we would never even do a big shop. Like it would just be, you know, wandering around for an hour, getting the food that you need, doing a couple of errands and then coming home. You know, like it'd be it's easy. But it's a small enough place. It's compact enough to do that.
Starting point is 01:03:12 So Lewis, I don't think you get that in the US. You're going to buy a car. Oh, Christ. Do you know what? I'm probably not. I'm just going to probably just like for a little while I was bedding in, I'm going to just leach off my partner and get taxis when she's not around. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:03:28 How far is it? It's like half an hour. Oh, cricky. It's like a train station like five minutes. It's closer to the bath, right? I will be. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or is it in Bath?
Starting point is 01:03:39 It's between Bristol and Bath. Right. Kinsham area. I'm not doxing where I live to all the audience. You just did. What is the? What's the postal code? King's big place.
Starting point is 01:03:51 Just so I can get an idea. People know where I work anyway. If you want to find me, come to my office. Oh, that's not that far from Bristol. Get the bloody train, you're lazy bummer. Yeah, that's what he said he's going to. He's going to take the train. Think of all the podcasts you can listen to when you're on that bad boy.
Starting point is 01:04:05 I know. Every Tuesday, every Tuesday, Wednesday morning. Temple Meads isn't even that far from the office. It's like over the bridge, walkable easy. 10 minute walk. Well, 15 minute walk. 15 minute walk, I'd say. Actually, maybe not.
Starting point is 01:04:17 Oh, you're only road. Bloody, buddy roads. I'll take the A of all. Yeah, but you've got to watch out for those rainy days. You know those rainy days? You get off the train and you're like, ah, it's only 10 minute walk to the office and it's like fucking boring. Traffic on the bypass.
Starting point is 01:04:32 Oh, don't want to take that way. Go through the busy road and skip the past the old, the old wood mill, and then there you go. That's the way you want to go in. You sound like Gerald off Clarkson's farm. Yeah, I don't. I can't understand a word that you just said. Here's a question.
Starting point is 01:04:49 If any band or musical artist, a live or dead could perform a concert again for one night only, which concert's tickets do you think would go for the most on the secondary market? This is from Oliver. His guess is Queen's performance at Live Aid. And he suspects that front row tickets would go for over a million pounds. I think that is wrong. I think it's a contender. I don't know if it's the absolute one.
Starting point is 01:05:15 I don't know about a million pounds. That's ridiculous. I think Michael Jackson would be. Probably Michael Jacks. I think you've got to look at... Possibly Elvis as well would be able to. You've got to look at who has the money. Yeah, Elvis.
Starting point is 01:05:24 Elvis. Who is the money? It's the boomers, right? And so they are the people who would spend these ludicrous amounts of money and can disposable income on these tickets, right? But then again, even like any concert tickets are so expensive. Oh, my God. Maybe Prince.
Starting point is 01:05:38 Maybe Prince's Super Bowl performance, the one where it was raining like crazy, but it's like regarded as one of like the greatest live. performances of all time. He was doing flips on a wet stage with a guitar. What about Nirvana? Nirvana, I don't know. I think Nirvana as big as they were and as popular as they were. I think that they're...
Starting point is 01:06:02 Oh, what about the Beatles? Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah, probably. So, Michael Jackson. It's a toss-up between Michael Jackson and the Beatles and Elvis, I think. Maybe Elvis. I feel like Elvis plays every night at L.A.
Starting point is 01:06:14 Las Vegas, if you want to go see Elvis. Yeah. He's always there. Yeah. And also, I would like to see Ugg play his log bashing band where him and Grug hit rocks on his big acts. I don't think you first musicians, the first man. Michael Jackson was just so huge, wasn't he?
Starting point is 01:06:37 Michael Jackson. Yes, he was. Oh God, Grug gets tons of cavewoman pussy. There will be no encore. I'm tired to go to cave. Oh, and then have one of the only. This is like, oh, then they come back anyway. Oh, we come back.
Starting point is 01:06:51 One more song for first time. Do you, oh, I actually think. This is a good question. I do like this. But I do think I do think Michael Jackson. For me personally, it would be Nirvana, though. I would say that's the ticket I would want to get. Like if, like alive or dead, a band came back.
Starting point is 01:07:08 I don't think I could handle being in the mosh pit. One show. I would definitely take Nirvana. I can't think of anyone else as huge as that. I want to see Bruce Springsteen and I want to see Neil Young. They're both still alive. I just want to see them before they... Yeah, well, you know, my wife and her brother and my mother-in-law went to see Bruce Springsteen two summers ago and they said it was amazing.
Starting point is 01:07:31 They saw him at Wembley. They said it was an incredible show. The thing is, I don't really like big gigs where you're that far from the stage. Yeah, but I mean, you're not going to see Bruce Springsteen any other way now. Like, he's too big. Yeah, that's the issue. At that point, I'm like, what do I want that? Like, would I go there and just be like, well, I'm not to do.
Starting point is 01:07:47 Well, I do it like a cozy little pub. I saw Blur at Wembley and it was an amazing experience. Like it wasn't like, you know, you couldn't, you couldn't see them very well. It was like far away and stuff, but it was still a great experience. I would say it was worth it for sure. I don't think I would want to go to a gig where they're that far away. What's the point? You're not really seeing them.
Starting point is 01:08:06 The atmosphere is insane. Yeah. It's so busy. It's worth it just for that. It might as well be completely different to, you know, seeing an actual musician play in a smaller venue. Like, it couldn't be, it's on another level. Yeah. Like, seeing like 80,000 people lose their minds, uh, because they all enjoy something is, is, uh, is an experience. Yeah, it really, it really is not the, um, actual music. I don't like crowds. So, oh, the noise is crazy.
Starting point is 01:08:33 It sounds like, uh, it sounds like the end of the world. Like when the, when the show is over and it's just a stadium with 80,000 people all chatting and leaving. It's like, it sounds insane. Like it's, it's so loud. It's like deafening. I can't even like eating waggonomas because it's too loud in there. I just don't like crowds, yeah. This is from Jay. I just want to cover this. This does happen quite often.
Starting point is 01:08:57 Okay. This is the email. Hi, I've sent multiple messages to the mailbag, but with no luck, is this even visible to you? Or are my subjects so shit they just never make it onto the podcast? That one. You said that you read all of them, but I'm not sure. He does read all of them, but... So if this is not visible for some reason, I can stop throwing my mails to a brick wall.
Starting point is 01:09:15 Second try. Is this visible? Am I on a spam list or something? I responded, I am reading them, Jock. I'm sorry if you feel shortchanged. I appreciate the effort, but so far, none of them have passed a P-Flax test.
Starting point is 01:09:27 This happens a lot. I am reading your emails. Right. And I did a search for emails from this lad. You're just boring. I'm going to tell you what you did wrong. No, no, no, no, no, no. Number one, stop sending corrections for everything.
Starting point is 01:09:42 Oh, no, I want to hear him. Actually, when you said so-and-so in episode, we don't care. All right, I'm sorry, but I'm not going to read just corrections out because it's a really boring podcast. Just too long. You are a no-it-all. Right. You're wrong. You're wrong.
Starting point is 01:09:57 You're wrong. I'm sorry. It's just boring. Jock's not being a know-it-all and maybe people would like you more, you know? Jesus. So far, I just want to say, like, quite often people sending in corrections, I'm not going to read them because they're just boring, unless it's like a big one. Or if it's just like, actually, it was 2.1, not 2.3.
Starting point is 01:10:13 It's like, well, I'm not going to read that. But if it's something interesting, then I'll, I'll, read it. It's not pedantic, is he? It's just... No, no, it's just, but I get a lot of emails like that. Or just the way it's written isn't very interesting. It's just like a mid-story that's not very well written. Also, if like five people send that correction in
Starting point is 01:10:27 then I'm not going to read them. I'll just say generally, last week we said X, actually it's Y, let's move on. Like, I'm not going to read that email. And just generally, if your email is not very interesting or it's like mid, we're just kind of I'm not going to read it. I'm going to try not to read it. Also... I think we should
Starting point is 01:10:45 I think we should make an effort to read a couple of mid ones. I can do that for you so easily. Do you want a mid one? Yeah. Let me find a mid one. Just I like the mundanity of it, you know. People pointing out that we could use free cycle to recycle stuff if you want. I have heard of exciting, really exciting.
Starting point is 01:11:06 Good, no, that's good. That's good. That's done. Like that. Like that. That's great. People talking about how the podcast has helped them and stuff like that. I'll respond to those personally.
Starting point is 01:11:16 I don't read them out as much. Oh, thank you for those. Thanks so much. We really appreciate it. Thank you. People saying, so here we go. This is from Lawrence. This is one that I didn't make the cut.
Starting point is 01:11:28 And I'll read it to you since you want to hear it. That's fine. You can tell me if you love this. Tiny penis have a here from Copenhagen, Denmark. In episode 343, Lewis briefly mentions he very easily gets fun of it. Okay, so Perion just read out amid email, and I don't think it should be in the podcast. It was like weird medical advice about drinking alcohol and taking antihistamines at the same time, which I don't think anyone should be doing. It was fine.
Starting point is 01:11:57 It was interesting enough. I just don't know if it's a big conversation starter for us. P-Flax, it wasn't a good conversation. But also, I respect your judgment. Thank you. Most of our listeners are dumbasses. No. And give us bad letters.
Starting point is 01:12:11 Fuck your ideas up, listeners. Stop using these words. Stop speaking. I'm doing a lot of beefs today I'm beefed on hard I'm beef cast I'm beefing with Trump and Elon I'm beefing with the listeners
Starting point is 01:12:25 I'm just beefing all over the shop except I'm not beefing with that vegan guy I'm not even not no I'm beefing with him too no don't know you need to be for them he just needed to be a little bit more transparent
Starting point is 01:12:36 to avoid being weird can I change it as well I'm not beefing I'm brockling with them yeah you're broccoli I'm vegan so I just want to another thing um We are not going to give you parental advice every week either.
Starting point is 01:12:51 So people email in and ask for advice as they're going to be new parents. We've given so many stories and talked so much about having kids over the years we've been doing this podcast. I'll be bugged if we're going to do me a mailbag every week where we run through a list of do's and do nots. Yeah, we're not perfect parents. There's so many resources out there on the internet where you can find information about tips, tricks being a new parent.
Starting point is 01:13:15 please stop emailing me asking for advice on destinations in London. We're not perfect parents, but my kids better think that I'm a perfect parent, or they are not having any dinner tonight and they have to sleep in the garage. So there's that. So here's another example of one. Three funny chaps of the podcast, when laughing about a Will Smith, Gremlin eating, wanting leftover spaghetti,
Starting point is 01:13:36 not one of you said, get my spaghetti out of your damn mouth. I must say I was disappointed. That is the kind of email that I don't read out. I like that one. That's good. I like the email where we should have made a joke but didn't at the time. Yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 01:13:51 Yeah, I like it. I really missed the opportunity there. But it's not even a good joke. It was pretty funny. I mean, I didn't think of it. It's too obvious. It is too obvious. But sometimes those ones are the funniest.
Starting point is 01:14:03 It's true. It's all in the delivery as well, you know. It's true. You watch Norm McDonald stand up sometimes and the joke is not funny, but his delivery is insanely good. You know what I mean? and the way that he kind of recovers from nobody laughing at the bad joke and stuff. Yeah. How about this one then? Mailbag, Sips is wrong.
Starting point is 01:14:22 Sips said he doesn't like motorbikes filtering. He says it's Shay's two minutes off a journey. My commute to work is one hour, but 15 minutes on a bike and while not breaking any highway code laws. Would you like me to have read that email? No. I don't mind that you read it. I still think that it's a bit dangerous, but I mean, if this guy is doing... Don't worry, that guy's dead already.
Starting point is 01:14:45 He's in a motoring accident. Yeah, he's dead. Don't worry, Sips. Let's move on. Do you want one more? One more, please. Well, I can take probably one more, yeah. Do you want one called Year of Horse Meat?
Starting point is 01:14:59 Do you want the filthy truths of Hotel? That, no, not that. Another reason why 6-7 sucks? No. No, no, the first one. The horse meat. The Year of Horse meat. Is it long?
Starting point is 01:15:12 It's a short one. Okay. Good, no, that's fine. Shorts even better. A note on the first podcast of the year, Perian declared it the year of meat. Right. I don't remember that. And there was a lot of horse meat discussion.
Starting point is 01:15:23 Is it the Chinese year of the whole? The Chinese lunar calendar, we're approaching the year of the fire horse. Right. Which we can extrapolate to me a nice horse meat. Slow cooked on a spit. Nice. No incidents, I think not. Flame grilled.
Starting point is 01:15:36 Meat year. Meat year. That's the end of the email. Right. Amazing. No, I didn't. I guess a lot of them are. Could be that way because the year the hogs is going to go to a vegan cooking class and just start chanting meat ear, meat year, meat year, and ask when are we going to charbroil horse meat in this class? So, okay.
Starting point is 01:15:56 And then he's going to say, can I fuck you all now? I'm not going to say my anecdote. It's too boring. Let's finish. Thank you, everyone. Goodbye. Great, great podcast. Love you all.
Starting point is 01:16:11 See you next time. Goodbye. Goodbye.

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