Triforce! - SPAGHETTI ONLY | Triforce Mailbag #66

Episode Date: December 24, 2025

Triforce Mailbag Special 66! We get mail from an award winning classical composer, discover the cooking bot (that only makes spaghetti) and we try to find film plots that are eerily similar to each other! 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. Get to know yourself and your roots better with Ancestry DNA. Want to know where your family comes from in northern France? Maybe you'd like to see how your genes influence certain traits like diet, fitness, and allergies. There's so much of you and your heritage to discover. Visit Ancestry.ca and get started with an Ancestry DNA kit today. Hello, Amigos and Amigas, and welcome to another Los Melbaeges del Triforce. Amigos?

Yeah, that's the female equivalent of Amiga. And hello, Commodore 64s, hello, Commodorettes. Sega Mega Drives, SegaMast systems. And everyone from all across the spectrum. Genesis and Jenna Braillebrose. spectrum. Nobody gets it. Okay. No, we'll move on. I thought it was a good one. Thank you to the listener who sent me a copy of the book Super Nintendo, which I will hopefully be reading over Christmas. That was my original console, so it's my... Super Nintendo was your original.

Very nice. Well, my neighbour had a Nairz, and I did play that, but the first one I ever got given, oh, such a, such a core memory going to Colchester Town Centre and buying a Super Nintendo for Christmas, picking it out. We're heading to the big city today, young Lewis. to pick up your Super Nintendo. The Super Nintendo, Mom. Yeah. It was a rare time when my parents listened to me about the thing I wanted

and just get what they thought it was that I wanted. Do you know what I mean? Oh, actually, I'm from Essex, aren't you? Mom, Dad, I want a fatty Super Nintendo. You would. You would be good at playing with your regular fucking Nintendo, you little guy. So you joke, you joke, but my partner...

Oh, what a show you have I didn't intend? No, right there! You joke, you jest. But I used, in the early yourselves videos, I was so much more Essex than I am now. We'd love to hear that. It's so crazy. Well, you could watch us to watch the old videos. I sound completely different.

And my partner was like, this isn't you. This can't be you. You got to watch something, I don't know. He's gone on challenge or something. He's gone completely posh. He's got one million subscribers, and I became posh. It's a lot more than that. now and every million to subscribe

plenty more where that came from makes me a little potter with every subscribe. My mom did send me a copy of some video of me when I'm, you know, like 14 or 15 and yeah, I can sound completely

different. I'd love to see this. It's crazy, yeah. Maybe I'll get it. Maybe we can get the audio. Just get the audio of you going, oh, I go on it like that. That would be hilarious. I'd love to hear that. I would love to hear that too. I'm very embarrassed by it, though, so it will have to take one of those.

I'll have to try and, I don't know, it's funny. It feels like I am a different person, right? And it's a different world. I can't remember what we didn't talk about in the podcast that we did yesterday, that alone. Not me neither. I'm trying to blank. I'm 20, 15, 20. Did we do one yesterday?

We did, right? Yeah, we really did. The regular episode. Yeah. We did. We did. I think, again, we won't have got the mailbag for. it. I am concerned about this mailbag because, Perian, you posted on Instagram a screenshot that

you had been inundated with mail about squirrel murder. Now, I am not kidding. There's only so much squirrel murder I can take. And I know you said to me, Lewis, we could do an entire podcast on squirrel murder. I didn't, I don't want to. You said it in quite excited tone. No, no, I was just joking. I'm not kidding. I have not had a single email saying that I I did the wrong thing killing that squirrel. That is no exaggeration. Really?

So you feel like Donald Trump right now, do you? They love it. They love it when you kill the squirrels. Kill that rodent. They're an invasive species. You're being enabled. You've been emboldened. You've just got yes men.

You're in your little bubble. There's no balance. There's no balance. Well, the balance is that I was right. I just honestly, I mean, I don't know what else to say. I was just correct. You're right.

No, absolutely. Like, that's like an overall balance. Like this one thing you were right on. Like that, it's like an overarching balance, not, not like a balance to do with just like squirrel murder and, uh, and the whole culture around killing squirrels. So the story is, there was a squirrel that was, if you're just joining us, there was a squirrel that was massively overstepping its bounds about 20 years ago. And this squirrel was coming into P-Fractor's house.

It was wearing his clothes. Yeah, it was like going on his nuts and everything. It was like playing on his phone. Can I bum a little doom scroll? That kind of squirrel, right? It was taking advantage. It was out of order, and it had to be dealt with. And now it's sleeping with the fishes, maybe in the pond.

It's dead. The piran shot it with an arrow. The squirrel sleeps with the fishes. So this was something which we felt would be very polarizing. But it turns out that no one is, there's no animal lovers out there who listened to this podcast, who felt confident enough to challenge Perian's position. I'm trying to provide balance. Do you know, this whole time you've been talking,

you've been like full on robot cutting out everything. Oh, good. It's like two solid minutes of that. This is, this is sorry, Pfex. Luckily, it's fine on the recording, but it is like trying to talk to someone who's on another planet. I'm just trying to catch the audience up where... Yeah, exactly right.

Do you have enough food? This is a song from Josh May, who was sent in a song. I'm running out of oxygen. Sorry, Josh May. We got a song. All right, here is a song. This is from Josh. This is actually for Lose News, but I thought, since it is technically a mailbag entry,

we'll play it here. If you guys like it, this could be the new Lose News segment. Now, I don't know if this is copyright. I think it's changed just enough. But it is based on Huey Lewis and the news. And this is Loo's News as done by Huey Lewis and the News. Hughie Lewis and Lose News. Yes, Huey Lewis and Luz News.

All right, so we're going to play this in three, two, one, play. It's like instantly DMCA. I don't want liars, I don't need clues. I just want Lewis really telling me. This is amazing. I love this I love that's the power of those nose I love this

God I love that so much It's incredible Josh good job Yeah really good job I don't know if it's just different enough I don't think it is But man it just reminded me how great Huey Lewis and the news were.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, they were a lot of fun. Absolutely. You know, dude, I feel like there were a lot more bands that were popular that weren't just the same thing. Yeah, I feel like bands used to get popular because their music was good rather than how they looked or who they knew or whatever. Like there's like a whole, the industry's just, I think, changed a lot, you know. Yeah. You look at artists from like the 70s and the 80s.

particularly and those people I don't think would be famous nowadays you know they just didn't look no they don't fit the bill they weren't they weren't like attractive people they weren't you know but they were so enormously talented and that's what used to used to shift all the records and stuff but now there's there's a culture shifting all the all all the music and the records and stuff I mean did look at Celine Dion right who was a huge artist like Mass She was so popular. Yeah. In her early days, she didn't look like she was going to amount to shit.

No. She looked like a crazy French exchange student. You know what I mean? Yeah. She really, and, you know, a lot of people that were very famous by then, like, you know, Lewis in the news, they looked old even when they were young. They didn't look like marketable. No.

But I just feel like if the song was good, people were like, hey, you know what? This is good. All right. Look at Barry Manilow. Right. Yeah. Jeez. Barry Manil.

He's a great singer. This is from Joe, who emails in, I don't know if you remember, but a few months ago, you guys talked about that ship that collided with that bridge in Baltimore. Do you remember we talked about this? We talked about it, yeah. It was big news at the time. It was big news at the time. And there was people stranded on it.

Exactly right. And we complained about them being kept on the ship before someone had sent in some corrections and said, you know, they can't let them off, blah, blah, blah. So there's now been an update that apparently this whole thing was caused by a loose wire. A loose wire So I looked up the article This is on the BBC A loose wire on a cargo ship

caused a power outage that may have led to the 2024 deadly collapse of Baltimore's Francis Scott Giebridge So it was literally just one loose wire And the whole fucking ship Well I mean if you Like a lot of things

You just trace back to like What the root cause in it And it usually is just something Like a loose wire or something A little fault somewhere But that it's caused like a catastrophic You know Chain reaction of

failure or whatever. Yeah. You know, like, there's probably lots of instances of that. But, I mean, in this case, they were lucky enough that the, uh, the boat didn't sink and, uh, and stuff so that, you know, they could do a full investigation and find out what, what actually, um, what happened. You know, in some cases, something just blows the smithereens. It's like, well, you're probably not really going to in a reasonable amount of time,

find out exactly what happened because you're just, you know, you're dealing with like little, little bits and gubbins and stuff all over the place, you're never going to, you know, it's a tougher one to solve, you know, like, like the challenger, like, you know, how, I guess they figured it out, but like, man, there was, you know, it blew up like over the ocean. Like, like, how the fuck are you going to solve that problem? Like, it seems like impossible. I mean, I'm pretty sure that for those things like NASA and those kind of super advanced things, they have computers that keep track of how everything's working and loads of telemetry

feeding back to ground control, saying, this is fucked. And then, you know, they'll measure this. And it's like, okay, why did this spike? There's only one reason for it. And they know exactly where it went down as well, right? So, but yeah, Lewis, have you rejoined us? I'm back. Hi, guys.

Wow, he's back. He sounds so clear. I don't know. I've changed over to my phone into it. Oh, he's on, he's on his phone. You know, it's probably going to be more arrival. It's cold, guys. I don't want to go into the office.

It's freezing out there. No, I don't blame you well. Well, I mean, it's going to be even tougher for you go in the office once you've moved, right? Because you're moving... And everyone talks to me when I go in there and asks me questions. You're moving like far away from the office. I'm like, use your initiative, guys. You could manage without me.

He's getting... Sorry, I'm eating a chocolate bar. He's laying down the groundwork for his transition. Let me tell you, this guy is the fucking pits. Yeah. You are the pits, sir. You turn up to the podcast with shitty internet. Yeah.

Right? Turn out late. Because you insisted on making a cup of tea. You won't go into the office. that is five minutes away because people might speak to you and now you're eating I'm not going to eat a polo mint

and go fucking chill I'm not quite any news he's jamming corn nuts that guy's done that lovely jingle I haven't got nothing for him Oh did you listen to it? Yeah finally he played off for like 10 minutes

for some reason fuck me It's good All right this is from Robert Lewis Brinley in the news This is some email okay This is probably the snaziest job

We've ever had email in This lad is a classic musical music composer. Right. Wow. Okay. I found of the podcast, and I think I have an unusual job. I'm a composer of classical music.

I write music that is performed live by orchestras and classical ensemble. Not for film or other media, purely for concerts. A lot of the time my job is just like everyone else is in that I sit for hours in front of a computer, though there are some ultra-traditional types who write all their music up by hand. Obviously, he's not one of them. Gradually putting pieces together bit by bit. 95% of my working life is that.

The exciting 5% of it. comes when there's a performance, travel to meet the orchestra or ensemble somewhere in the UK, attend a rehearsal or two, give feedback on how they play. People often assume that a composer always conducts their own music, but is actually very rarely the case. The two jobs are quite specialized, so every orchestral performance of my music has been with a different conductor. You earn money as a composer through a combination of commission fees, where the orchestra pays you to write a piece for them, prize money from competitions, hiring fees where the orchestra pays you to hire the sheet music so they can perform your pre-existing piece, and royalties, which

work in a similar way to popular music. Happy to answer any questions. You don't need to read by out my name, as I don't want it to seem like I'm self-promoting to the thousands of orchestra directors who listen to the TriForce. Right, yeah, no, good, good thinking, good thinking. Robin Haig.

What is your... He's got a Wikipedia page. Okay, I wonder what his most popular piece is, and it'd be interesting to know how many times it's requested to be played by an orchestra used or like the the royalty side uh definitely interests me because i feel like you know you've got you're you're creating all these these arrangements ensembles and and pieces and you know people

are then you're promoting them somehow through a network or whatever and people are finding out about them and they're thinking yeah this i would love to perform this or we would like to use this in a film or whatever so i don't believe any of this stuff has been used for movies so far His Wikipedia page does not say that. He has won two Ivan Novello Awards in the Chamber Orchestral Category. This guy is the real deal. That sounds like a... Yeah, he's an actual...

It sounds like a really cool job, yeah. Actual, classy, successful person listening to our podcast. The rest of you, take note. Yeah. Buck up your ideas. Yeah, we're going to have to... No, no, no, this guy's messing up the media. Let's get rid of this guy.

Then everyone else can be hopeless. We want to elevate the Triforce. Robin Hanks, don't listen to the point. You're banned. No, Robin, you are not banned. You're the opposite of band. You're not. It's a head listener.

We need more people like you. Do you have any colleagues that want to listen to the podcast as well so that we can start? Hang on a second. If this guy's such a prestigious composer, where's his like little music that he's supposed to send in, huh? Yeah, Robin. That's true. Where's your old 30 seconds, stupid, hilarious, dumb clip thing. Good point.

We want to hear. We're not going to pay you. I don't care if you're busy. Live you're such a good composer. Where's your classical Chyphor's introduction? You can't you fucking send that idiot. Do you know what? I bet you I know where it is.

We'd probably have to pay him like a thousand pounds. He won't. Oh, he's got plenty of time. 30 seconds. It's not going to win an I've a nobelo award, is it? Just fucking send a 30 second jingle. Yeah, but he can't do some, he can't do some things. It'll make him, he's got to keep his reputation like award winning.

This is reputable. This is award winning as well. We won an award, didn't we? What did we win? I don't know. It sounded so good when I was saying it, but... We don't even need 30 seconds. Give us like one toot.

Give us a like a toot. Yeah, just a honk. One honk. And that'll be plenty. Because if you do it, it's an award-winning honk. Exactly. Happy with that. Did you do the...

Were you the composer, the strings bit for 50 cents in the club? The boom, boom. Like, maybe that was him. Boom, boom. I was just wondering He said if you have any questions That's a fair question He was 10 years old when that song came out

Was he? It's impressive How do you know how old he was Because he's on Wikipedia page Oh, how old is he? Ish, early third God, he's so accomplished already I know

It makes me feel like fucking shit We've had an email Hello! I am former president of Syria Bashar al-Assad I understand you have question about my video games on the internet

I mostly play cabb chefs and power watch simulation too and answer no further questions that's an email from Syrian

former president Bashar al-Assad thank you see he's in hiding yeah he's in hiding he's probably in Russia somewhere he's probably just gaming a lot

he doesn't have anything else to do so we spoke about this previously apparently we were talking about that which is I think the origin this email, so yes, I believe he is. Yeah, which, honestly, I think he's probably a lot happier.

You know, he's probably already completed the Battlefield 6 battle pass. I think we should send more awful dictator war criminals into hiding to play video games. I think it would be fun if they ended up in low priority docket queue. I wouldn't mind that. Either that or just hang them. You know, I don't mind either. Be cool, too. This is from J.T.

Greetings, Trifor. In episode 337, God Almighty, you discussed computers past and present. I used to work in a museum of computing. Appearan's remarks that the IBM 7030 was the size of the sideboard in your granny's house reminded me of a story I thought I'd share. Neiman Marcus' department stores once offered a machine called the Kitchen Computer, which could store recipes, plan meals, and help control family finances. So far, so iPad, except for the fact that this was advertised in 1969.

The computer was a lightly modified, Honeywell 316 pedestal, weighing 45 kilograms and cost $10,000, complete with the two-week programming course. Advertising for the machine began with the slogan, if only she can cook as well as Honeywell can compute. On the plus side, the program storage being, with program storage being in a premium, I bet you didn't have to scroll past the chef's endless musings on a dish to get to the recipes. God, this is so funny.

The two-week programming course that it comes with, this thing, I've looked at pictures of it, It looks like something out of Star Trek. A two-week programming course that comes with it, that's insane. Well, again, here's the thing about this computer. It's literally like 25 light switches on a board. It looks like a cockpit or something. It's insane. Is there no screen?

It's no screen. It's absolutely nonsense. Oh my God, look at that. It looks like a piano, except instead of keys, there's a load of light switches. It's, I, I am complaining daily to Bree because I have to figure out how to use some menus in unity that someone's made, right? I'm not even having to do any code. The thing about, so I'm making this game terrible. I haven't made any progress. Me and Bree is having a disaster of a time.

It's quite fun, though. It's going to be years before I ever have anything to show for it at this rate. Man, you should pivot and start working on dudes in Alaska instead. And then at least it'll be underway, you know? I think, Bree is obviously doing the coding, but he has spent more. more time, like, wrestling with other people's UI. So what someone will do is they'll make, like, a module, it'll be like, this is how you make your terrain in Unity.

But they'll build their own unique user interface in Unity for YouTube user, with drop downs and menus and things. And, like, it's such, it's so, you know, I'm not having to code, but it's not any easier. And I'm having to learn this new stupid system every week. It's driving me up the wall. But could you imagine housewives in 1969, going on a two-week programming, course, to learn how to turn these, use the light switches.

I've finally mentioned the programming. To do what? You're having spaghetti every night until the day that we die. To do what? What's going to be in there? It's mental. So there is a small screen. I've just looked at the picture of it and there's a video of it.

It doesn't work anymore. They didn't sell a single one of these things. I'm not surprised. Computer, make me a stake. Are you sure you want spaghetti again tonight? I want a steak. Making spaghetti food. I have been pre-programmed to make spaghetti only.

Oh my goodness. But it's got a built-in chopping board, which is hilarious. That is good. You're going to do your food preparation on your computer. Old computer shit was always like roughly Jetsons themed, wasn't it? Very much, yeah. There was always like this sort of like Jetson's vibe to the whole thing. Like, how, how, please give me a recipe for.

for cooking steak. I can't do that, Dave. It's spaghetti all day every day. It's spaghetti Monday. All the way down. Okay, but what's Tuesday? Spaghetti. We don't want spaghetti. How I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave. It's spaghetti again on Tuesday and Wednesdays. I hope you like spaghetti, Dave. Howe set self-destruct. I can't set self-destruct, but I can deliver a delicious plate of spaghetti. Oh, man. This is making me want to eat a plate of spaghetti. I'm fucking starving right now. God, geez.

I ate so much spaghetti the other night and like nobody wanted garlic bread so I ended up eating all the garlic bread as well. That is such a dad

move. Fuck, I was so full. It was like bursting. Like I was just like But you can't possibly not do it.

I was trying to like a creaking old ship you know, like I was like like the whole integrity was affected. Like the over din the ship in the

you got like a steel band around your waste. Absolutely. Yeah, it was just about to burst. Yeah. So I did, uh, I did fried chicken last night. Sorry, Lou. Go ahead. No, it was my youngest birthday. She was 14 yesterday. So I want to give her my shout out, which I have, I don't do shouts very often. Big up. Shout out. It's a big up. Happy birthday. That can be this week's big up. I'm okay with that. Oh, thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. She's never going to hear it. Her favorite is when I do fried chicken. Nice. So I get the, I get, I do it with wings. I do it with drumsticks and I do it with like fillets.

and everybody just likes the fillets. So they're basically just like chicken tenders, so I just do that. And there's a real art to it, to getting it all just right. I'm improving every time. But I want to do the Korean style. And I want to, that's the double fry. Yeah, the Korean style fried chicken. Korean fried chicken.

Yeah. Nice. Well, indeed. But no, this would be, that would, yeah. But either way, I just want to say, I just want to say, I eat a hell of order chicken. I'm still suffering today.

Both of you are, like, bloated off of the estate. That's great. No, my spaghetti fiasco was like a couple of nights ago. I've recovered since. It's true. I was the same. I went out for dinner last night because it was the finale of the Yog Labs series that we made. You guys actually went out for dinner to like celebrate that?

We watched the finale in the office together. Oh my God. And we had a drink in the office. Everyone involved on the project came in, which is really nice. Did you guys do that thing where like somebody. falls backwards and they trust you to catch them and stuff? Were you doing... In the Yog's office, I wouldn't fucking trust anyone to catch me in the Yogs.

I wouldn't trust them either. Actually, I would trust Dav. He'd have a way back. He'd have a pretty strong guy, yeah. No, more, I would just trust him. I wouldn't trust any of the rest of them. We don't like physical contact with that kind of people. So we're not going to be touching other people.

Right. It's, we had a nice time. Then we watched the outtakes. So it was obviously everyone who was involved in the series. It was Tom Hazel and me and Harry and Nick and everyone. And a few other people came along. And then Sparkles was there as well, and we went out for a dinner, a little dinner. We were going to go to fur, but we ended up going to have a curry instead because it was just packed in there.

We didn't book or anything, you know, because it was kind of random. And both of us were with our partners who had said that, you know, they could eat. And then there was all this, there was way too much food left over. And I was like, I can't let all this go to all right. That seems like such a waste. I better shovel it all into my. In my pie hole. It's the right thing to do.

It's the right thing to do. I feel so bad, wasting all this food. Can't waste this food. Better stuff it in my fucking thing. Get right down my cake. On robot food press processes, have you ever heard of the Magi Mix? Because everyone seems to swear by it every now and then.

It's like 500 quid of overpriced blender. It's a very good one. Apparently, everyone's like, the magic mix will make the rest of your kitchen redundant. That's how I told when I speak about it. They've got a mouth full of marbles when they're talking about it. The Maddie Mix could not break down the marbles in my mouth. And it's not fucking 20 marbles in my mouth.

So it's got like, I don't know, it's got this like 30 year warranty or whatever. It was going to last you for a lifetime. And it's like, it's supposed to shop and cook and do fucking everything. And I don't understand. Can you explain to me? why I would spend 500 quid on a magic mix. Well, first of all, it's got a really cool name. Allow my attorney to answer for me.

Objection. It's got a really cool name, which probably makes you feel really good about using it. And I mean, okay, just imagine when you're, next time you use it, if you have the opportunity or the pleasure, I should say, if using one. Objection, a little too saucy for this.

Imagine how difficult it would be to do what you're doing with the Magi Mix, without the Magi Mix. Imagine having to blend all that up with like your hands or your teeth or something. And then think about how lucky you are to own a Magi Mix and the convenience and how easy it's making your life. So we do have a Magi Mix and we've had it for fucking years. And it's a tank. It really does last well.

You can easily get spare parts for it. The power of it is, in my opinion, it's not just a blender. It's, first of all, it's a very big, oh, that you get. So you can really cut quite big things, get a decent volume in there. It's not like a little brand or like one of those Nutri Bullet things. It's a proper food processor. Like how much quack can you make in that thing? Oh, so much quack.

You could fit so much quack in this, but, okay? That's all I needed to hear. But let me tell you something. If you want to finally slice any kind of vegetables, do anything like that, it's got all these different attachments so that you can have like those really perfectly sliced ultra-thin potatoes if you wanted to make, you know, any kind of gratin, right? You wanted to make some actual crisps of your own. You could do that, you can slice them that thinly.

It's excellent. And it'll great stuff for you. It'll do, it'll absolutely pulverize stuff for you to, if you wanted to make like a saffrito or something like that. I use it. I love it. It's excellent. He even has a dough needing attachments.

It'll need dough for you. It's very good. They're very, very good. And they're very reliable and they're very cool. Well, I personally don't need Imagine makes because I don't cook, so there you go. I like cutting my own

fingers instead. Oh, I like Spedged ages, peeling carrots. Spingery again, please how? I like buying pre-chop lines from white clothes. Like a little gremlin. A little spaghetti Grimlin. Red like spaghetti. I need to write this. Where's my spaghetti? Oh, God.

he's back out he's come out from behind the cupboard where he's my spaghetti get him his fucking spaghetti and some garlic break this time oh Christ

oh man the visuals of the spaghetti spaghetti he can't eat that he just comes out oh you pay to me have to be a spaghetti

there's way too much here to waste I better eat at all better eat at all better eat at all All right. This is, Matthias asks a question. He says, from what he's heard, English and British people tend to distinguish themselves from Europeans.

For me, as a European from Denmark, I find it a bit confusing, as I will consider the UK very much a part of Europe, both geographically and culturally. Yeah. Do you and the others think that there is a fundamental difference between the people from your island and the mainland, or do you think it's just a historic relic that has lived on? Interesting question, Matthias. I think about this quite often. In a post-Brexit world, it feels like it's easy to say that English people and British people really don't see themselves as part of Europe, because obviously that's apparently what a narrow majority of people voted for. But that was like an economic thing, you would hope. But in terms of culturally, I don't think that British people do consider themselves European.

We see Europeans as this weird other entity that are far more similar than we are to them, I think. I don't agree with that, but I think that's how people see it. Yeah. I think, yeah, culturally, I feel much more linked to other English-speaking countries than I do any European countries. I think we... Australia, I would say, New Zealand. Even though, you know, America is so different to us, I feel like because of our shared

language and our shared content, we... It's much easier to feel aware of what's going on. We get the, you know, I think culturally we are so aware of American news and American what's going on. More so than we are about our own in many cases. And maybe that's just because we're on this internet generation. But certainly I don't even really know who's in charge of France or Germany, you know, let alone the smaller European countries. It's Emmanuel Macron. And what's that the Germans guy's name?

He's, I think he's a, they're not far. Joseph Goebbels sit his eye. Back one second. Likes a renegade master. Yeah, I know, I know you mean this. I love you, Germans, but I've just got to chuck a gerbils in there. You know, you guys earned that. I apologize.

I'm going to have to make references to the war. That's part of our duty as British people. And, you know, we just have to, every time Germany comes up, you do a funny accent, you mention the war. That's it. That's it. They love it. It's been the staple of British comedy for decades now. Yeah.

I'd say since about 1945. Yeah. I think, yeah, it's tricky, right? And I think that we don't, certainly, I think when you ask British people, you know, whether they identify as, what they identify as, like, first. So there's interesting, like, maps you can see of this, where people are asked, are they British or are they, like, English or are they European? And different places say differently around Europe as well.

So people in Brussels quite often say they're European, rather than Belgium. or something like that's because it's such a center of, seen as a center of Europe, I think people feel very connected to it. Whereas I think someone, you know, certainly in certain different areas of Welsh, Wales, people will say they're Welsh before British or, you know, it's about, I think it's about your area as well and language too. I think in these largely bigger Welsh speaking areas, they feel more attached. I just think language is such a powerful part of it, you know. I think hopefully the internet, you know, has given us such good powerful translation tools. It feels like we should be able-fish level, and maybe that will lead to a change in politics when suddenly everyone can, like, talk to each other freely and content can be overlapping.

But I think, you know, they certainly feel like French Germans, as close as we are to them here in England or in Britain, we don't watch any of their, really any of their TV. Sometimes we do, but we're certainly, I don't know, I can't think of the last time I watched anything that was subtitled. EuroTrans. Really? Do you mean? Euro Trash, which for anyone that is under 35, was a TV show we've spoken about before. I watched that off on the off chance of there being a bare breast.

Yeah, Tits. Much like The Word with Danny Bear and that other lad. I just wanted to see Norks, basically. But, no, I mean, I think that's, in a sense, like that's a problem, right? I feel like I watch a lot more. Korean or Japanese subtitled things, you know, and so in the set, I feel more like their culture is more influencing. I guess we did play Expedition 33 this year, which I thought was really, really great and has won all the Indy Games Awards.

That's a French studio that made that, wasn't it? Yeah. And that was very, very, very good. And it had little French names, a little French things. It wasn't obviously in French, and the voice actors were all mostly Americans, but it was, it was great. Right. So, hmm, I see what you're saying. same, though. I still feel, I feel, I feel, I feel like I prefer Europe to America, but I feel like I know America more than Europe. I really do, I've traveled all over Europe, and I'd say, if you compare the culture of, say, Portugal, and what it's like in Portugal, southern Spain,

with what it's like in Sweden, or if you compare even Sweden with Denmark, or you compare Italy with Germany, it's kind of silly to say that we are so different, and they're all the the same. Of course it's not true. Those countries are all as different as we are from them and they are from each other. We're all very different. We do have a obviously ridiculous amount of history together, both good and bad. I do think, obviously, geographically, we're Europe. That's all there is to it. But I think because of that little body of water, the English Channel, there has always been a distinct separation from Europe and England. And if you go back to when Henry the 8th told the Pope that he could fuck off

and that he was going to set up his own church, that was a huge schism because everyone else in Europe was Catholic at that point. It's like extremely, you know, divisive moment there. We fought wars against pretty much everyone on the continent forever. And we've been allies with a bunch of them forever. So it's a weird one. I can see why a lot of British people see themselves

as distinctly not European. I think Lewis is right. The language plays a huge part in that. And we are more drawn to, you know, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, North America, in general, really, because it just feels like those are our people, you know, and we relate to them more. We're culturally more similar, probably, of course, because they're related to us. Yeah. And those places exist. Because we took our language over there, and then we have an affinity with them. And let's move on

to the next email. This is from Sam recently watched Mad Max Fury Road. And then Water World with Kevin Costner. Right. And realized that they are basically identical movies, plot-wise, but essentially the opposite in their setting. Desert versus Water. Yeah. Searching for a promised land, crazy people on gas-powered vehicles, etc.

As a topic of discussion, I was wondering, if you guys could think of any other movies that are sitting opposite settings, but identical plots. Oh, that's a good question, yeah. Well, wasn't like, it wasn't Star Wars based on like an old, feudal Japanese story or something like that, where it's like, I think the stories are like functionally similar, but the settings are so completely and utterly different. Yeah, you're absolutely right. I think the, what is it?

The Seventh Samurai? I don't think it was Seven Samurai. No, but it's something similar to that, I think. But exactly, that is a movie. Was it Rashimon? I can't remember. Well, it's like a vulnerable community. don't they recruit like this samurai

to protect them like a town and that I think obviously yeah the original's worth I think it's magnificent seven and seven samurai really? The original two from back of the day

right? Something like that but I feel like what I'm trying to get at is I feel like this has happened a lot that there are identical because a lot of that a lot of movies

are follow a very the hidden fortress Akira Kurosawa's the hidden fortress right is what it was based on because it's about a bunch of lads

having to go and blow up this hidden fortress because it's like too much of a threat. So basically, like having to blow the Death Star. Yeah, so the Magnificent Seven was a Western that was a remake of Seven Samurai, about seven gunslingers hired to protect a Mexican village from bandits. And the samurai one was obviously that. But I think that's happened again in like things like Bugs Live. Yeah, and the three Amigos as well. Yeah, like there's a bunch of things that are that do that, right?

And again, I think what was it, Avatar that was dances with wolves? Oh, probably. They were the same movie, right, where they had like a corporate guy or like a guy who's part of the culture. But that's a very old trope. No, that's a very old trope. He was. But that's like the white savior story has been around since forever.

Yeah, it's like the redemption art. Yeah. So I think in terms of thematically, you could have films that are similar. And that's, you know, there are only, what, seven different kinds of story. Obviously, you know, the going to help, helpless villages from a more powerful foe, a ton of films have done that. But I think the similarities between Mad Max and Waterworld are so similar. Like, even the direct plot is almost identical. I would like to know.

Mean girls, mean girls. Yeah. And Planet of the Apes, the original. Here's the plot. And outsider, give it to me. And outsider enters a rigid social hierarchy. rises within it then turns against its rules.

Okay, all right, I like that. Here's the next one. The Revenant versus cast away. A man survives alone in the wilderness to reunite with civilization and purpose. So yeah, obviously castaways on the tropical island, isn't it? And the Revenant is in the frozen north.

I'm not entirely sure about that one, but yeah. The Little Mermaid and Romeo and Juliet lovers from feuding or forbidden worlds Strung him to be together. Okay, yeah, sure. Yeah. Die hard versus home alone. Okay.

A lone protagonist must defend a building against intrudence using improvised traps. Yep. Excellent. Kevin McAllister's suburban home in Nakatomi Plaza. Finally, Nosferatu versus E.T. A strange being. You be a kai, motherfucker.

That was this. A cut from the Christmas release. Kevin. A strange being. Nostferatu. versus E.T. A strange being arrives in a small community, bonds with the lonely human, then causes panic. That's, we'll see it. Yeah, it's interesting. It is interesting. I love the idea that two wildly different settings for basically the same story. I mean, the setting, I don't think

the setting in Mad Max and Waterworld is, is that dissimilar, though. I think, I think Waterworld and Mad Max could exist in the same dimension, in the same reality or whatever, but are just geographically different, right? I see what you mean. Mad Mad Max. Mad Max might take place on an area of high land that has just become desert because like the world has changed so much and flooded and ended. And water world has elements of that in it because they do find a bit of land that everybody is looking for that just happens to be like the peak of a mountain because the rest of the world. I believe it's Everest. I believe it must be something like that. Yeah. So, So I don't think they're vastly different movies.

I know what you mean, but I think they could exist in the same universe. So you think that even though the whole point of water world is that the ice caps melt and science, let's put the science to one side, it wouldn't happen this way. It's now thousands of feet of water cover the entire planet. You think that it's conceivable you could also fit the entire world of Mad Max on the other side of the planet and people just hadn't know. Yeah, those wily Australians were the first to get to whatever high land was left and, uh, and they, and they picked it clean and it became like, it became, it became at the edge of Australia is now a huge wall that stops the water coming in. Yeah. How about that? Yeah.

Sorry, let me find another one. I've got so many. God, I'm trying to find a squirrel email. One that would be like a summary of. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. There's so many people agreeing with me. I had so many squirrel emails.

I can't find it. I'm trying to find one that's at least interesting because they're all like, yes, you're correct. I grew up in a rural area. This is a thing that happens all the time. Yeah. So here it is. This is from Tim. You guys talking about flying cars, I don't know when this happened, made me think of my old boss and his bonkers plans.

Well, flying cars, we've had the conversation before. Flying cars was promised when we were growing up, oh, the year 2000 will be in flying cars and all the other cool things that the future had in store for us. and now it's mostly just videos of Will Smith eating spaghetti instead of the flying cars. Exactly. Well, this guy's boss came up with this. I'm trying to think of, sorry, I was just thinking of Will Smith coming up from behind the cupboard.

You eat that? He's the spaghetti goblin. He's the spaghetti goblin. You going to finish that? Sorry. Um- yum- yum- yum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dab-dab. Don't you hate it? When you make enough for like a leftover portion, and you just put it to one side and then

you come back to the kitchen after finishing your meal and you notice it there and you have a little bite of it, then you realize there's too little left to have like a leftover portion because it wouldn't be, you know, until then you just have to eat the rest of it. If we have like that, if we if we have, you know, whatever for dinner, but there's the promise of, you know, like an apple pie or maybe like, you know, it's been Halloween, so there's chocolate or whatever. If there's any even like hint of a promise that there's going to be something following dinner, uh, and when I'm clearing plates, they're full of food. Like not, not touched. It's just like we like five, five plates basically. Well, no, I'd say five. It's three,

my, my three kids's food plates come back full of food because they're just like, I'm not fucking eating this. I'm, I'm having pie or whatever, whatever's coming next. Like, that's what I'm, I'm eating. So, um, but that's what that's what happened the other night with the same. I was, the other room with the spaghetti incident. Yeah, I was walking home the other night. And it wasn't a warm night. It was like, you know, three degrees. And I walked past scoop.

And this was like, a half five. And it's the ice cream shop. And I was just like, I really fancy some ice cream. So I went in and I fucking ordered like three scoops of ice cream. And I got home. My partner was like, what are you doing? I'm like, I'm cooking dinner. And I'm there like with all this fucking ice cream.

And I thought, can I put this in the freezer? And I was like, nah. I'm a grown man. I could just eat this. Did you have a sort of stomach after that for like three days? So basically, she's breaking up with me. Right. Long story short.

And I'm fucking crushed, but at least I had ice cream. Good for her. I've decided to marry Scooperella, the mascot for Scoop. Instead. We're getting hitched. If I fucking left it on the side, the fucking Will Smith would have come out and had it. He only eats spaghetti as well. So Tim had a boss who was obsessed with flying cars, and he had a business idea.

He wanted Tim to create a sort of navigation system that would divide the airspace into lanes that flying cars could use. I say sort of navigation, because whenever I asked him about this, he would just say the important part was dividing the airspace into vertical slices and the navigation didn't matter. I ended up not really knowing what it was I was supposed to do, essentially create a Google Maps-like website where you could draw layers. He was adamant that he could sell this product to the Saudis and make bill. billions of dollars. He thought that by us acting first, everyone would be forced to use our system,

no matter how shit it was. I'm a weak-willed programmer, and he was driving me regularly, so I didn't exactly say I'd work on it or not. Eventually, I moved to another company. I've attached one of his specs. So these are the specs for this guy's flying car, vertical, uh, system. We're rich. Uh, I've already looked at this because I, I couldn't, I honestly couldn't believe that, uh, that this was a thing, but. Oh, my fucking. God. Okay, so the first page says, business plan is shit. Business plan confidential.

Right. And it's got three pictures of flying cars that are from Google, I assume. Right, right, right. Now, sometimes you meet people, and I, this, one of my friends' dads was like this. He had, one time he told me he'd invented a warp engine. Deadly straight on his face. He's figured out a warp engine, and he's going to have a go, a building. it in his garage.

Right. Like, actually has, I don't, I don't think he has a brain tumor or something, but that's the kind of, that's what my immediate thought was. I was, I was almost like, is this a joke? No, you're deadly serious. So I think sometimes people just get it in their head that they can do this. Yeah. Oh my God.

So this is a 100 page PDF? No, no, no. It's not that long. It's like 20 pages. It is really, really not. It doesn't go into any great detail on any. I scrolled down to pages two and three are like the contents, so I thought it was going to be proportionally large. But no, a lot of these contents point to the same page.

Yeah. I mean, another thing is, I'll be honestly, having read this, I read it this morning, I browsed it at least quite a few spelling and grammatical errors. And he talks about how he's concerned that without such a system in place as his system, that the reality of flying cars will be chaos akin to the Wild West of America in the 1700s, but in the skies above us. So his time's a way off. That was not the era of the Wild West, the 1700s.

And the problem with the Wild West was not that they didn't have designated traffic lanes for horses. That was just a lack of governance and sort of wild lands. So I don't understand why he's bringing up the Wild West. And I also don't know why two lads can just knock up this system that apparently the entire world will use and that the salaries will buy for billions. Just imagine that this is just absolute bullshit. Just imagine browsing a

business spec that it's just absolute cobbler. Why us is one of the topics. The question is why us? Why would we attempt to do this when none of us are a pilot or have any real knowledge on such topics? This is part of the business proposal. Firstly, this is all a new field. Someone has to establish the rules. This leaves it open to free thinking, which is what I've done at some time in the future, may because of this. system, rules will exist. Right now, they don't. Secondly, we're building software that I know we can do. We have the ability to design and build software platforms. And if we look at what is required to create the VLS platform, I believe we can do it. Just gibberish, just absolute Jewish.

We're there. We're going to be first. Why not us? Why not you, mate? Because you haven't got billions of dollars. You're going to hope that someone funds this ridiculous system. And someone will do it much better. What is happening? This is what happens when people just get a little bit of a taste of success and they think all their ideas must be good. Yeah, it's weird. Our society does create people like this, and quite a few of them, actually. And it's, it is crazy to me that. I think this is a combination of delusion and scam.

Yeah. It is definitely rooted in some form of grift. He's like, guys, I've had this great idea, flying cars now. I know you guys are professionals, your engineers. I don't know shit about it, but I've had the idea, so I'm 50%. He thinks he'll bullshit his way into billions, basically. I'm the ideas guy. I've put together this proposal.

You know, if you look at the section where it's fucking hell, he's put a section of competition right down the bottom. It's literally a whole page screen grab of a Google search for flying vehicles. That's his research. Yeah. He's Googled it. He's typed in flying vehicles, copy pasted that. That is his research.

But in his mind, he's got a 20-page document, even though the, The 20-page document has nothing of substance in it. He's like, oh, but if he can knock out one of these proposals every, you know, five minutes, send them off to thousands of people, you know, and say, oh, it came up with the idea. It's my idea. I wrote this document. Look, showing the idea of the thing that you came up with, he can maybe ambulance chase or scam down some company, right?

Imagine you're an actual professional company developing something that's not as ludicrous as flying cars, you know, maybe something more realistic. He puts together this kind of fairly shitty proposal and sends it off. And then it's something they're either already working on or, you know, maybe they develop later on. He could say, well, it was my idea. So I'm manageable 50%. You know, he could sue them and he can say, I sent you this. There's a lot of this kind of stuff going on in, there's a lot of, there's not a lot cunts out there. So you have to be careful, because this isn't just a delusional idiot. This could be like a genuine ambulance-chasing psychopath, who is, who is, you know,

it's very strange. You know what? I do think if he had an actual system, then he would have a point, but he doesn't. He's just talking about dividing space into vertical lanes. That's not original. Look, these, in the world, in today's world, it's very difficult for an individual. to come up with a groundbreaking invention, okay? A lot of things rely on other technology,

especially, you know, with vehicles or certainly with like chips. You know, they can't be made by a single guy in a garage. No, but the hourglass pickle jar can be. And man, I wish I was the guy who came up with that. God, I wish I had the rights of that one. It's very difficult for people to come up with this type of invention. Like if you're inventing a new fucking coat hanger, great. Do you know what I mean? But like it's not, the world we live in does not allow this kind of

innovation. You know, we've moved, you can't do chemistry in your basement anymore. It's, it needs, you know, you need access to wind tunnels and things like this if you've got to do this thing. You know, it's not, it's not feasible, right? And it's, it's out of reach. And so corporations control this kind of thing. And innovation happens in a team. And it has done for a long time in most things. You know, I think, I think you'd be, you'd be hard. press to name something in the last century that's being invented by or developed by a single person. Even if oftentimes single people do wish to take credit for it, I think that's why the Nobel Prizes is in a sense quite flawed, because oftentimes, you know, it's not on a single,

especially for science, it's a team effort almost all the time. But it wants to acknowledge, it's from an era when individuals had large impact, right? The gentleman science. Yes. I have to I've invented the hot air balloon in that. Yeah, so I just did it in my spare time, in my lab. I have a chemistry set at home, and I'm quite knowledgeable and very poshous. I was bored one evening and I've come up with a cure for TB. Quite incredible. It's simply fascinating.

Long time, listener, first time caller. This is Nick from Oregon. Listening to Mailbag 64, this free harvest festival that you wanted since. Yes. It's called a potluck. No. And you have to bring something in order to get something, you freeloader. That's not me saying that.

No, I don't want to do a potluck. I want a state-sponsored harvest jamboree. Nobody wants to do it. Free hot chocolate for a wall, I believe. You don't know. It's a fucking hell. Just give the people a little bit of hot chocolate or something. I mean, come on.

Well, tough shit. You're not going to. got to bring something. What are you going to bring? I'm not going to a fucking potluck, okay? I'm only interested if I can free load as it was stated. I only want to free load. Excellent. All right. This is one. You guys can read about this in your own time, listeners, if you want, because it's quite an interesting story. It's a little too long to get into just on the mailbag, but I thought I'd set the, I'd like the touch paper here on this little story. It's an insane story about a real corpse that was mistaken for a wax prop and was used.

It pissy did for decades. It was traveling around America doing various things. Well, they finally figured out it was a real body. Jesus. Okay. So, this guy is called Elmer McMurdy. I'm sorry, McCurdy. So if you're just like Elmer, like Elmer Fudd.

And then McCurdy, C-U-R-D-Y, he was an American outlaw who was shot and killed in 1911 after robbing a train in Oklahoma. Elmer McCurdy. Yeah. And he was then dubbed the bandit who wouldn't give up. And his mummified body was sort of put on display at an Oklahoma funeral home and then became a fixture on the traveling carnival and side show circus through the 20s and all the way up to the 60s.

Wow. After changing hands several times, because apparently it's not possible under US law to own a human cadaver, McCurdy's remains eventually wound up at the Pike Amusement Zone in Long Beach, California. And they were filming an episode of the $6 million man there and one of the crew members knocked the waxwork, an arm fell off, and they saw like sinew and bone and everything in there,

realized, oh shit, this isn't that waxwork, this is a real body, and then the story comes to an end as they actually fucking bury the poor guy. Holy crap. Holy shit. It's such a crazy story. The Wikipedia article is very long. It's too much for me to read here, but go ahead and look it up. They honestly, people just thought it was a waxwork.

It was just a preserved dead body, just walking around with this guy. There's picture of him, this body in the coffin, the bandit that would not die. It's quite an interesting story. Wouldn't give up. That is fascinating. Well, well done on the preservative. Apparently, it was an arsenic-based preservative.

So it was something that wasn't typically used afterwards, so toxic, I imagine. But it was so effective that it obviously, people just didn't notice. Do you know what? That story is so. He was unclaimed. So the undertaker decided to dress him up and, you know, and use him to make money as an exhibit. That's how the commercialization of Elmer started.

It's so fascinating. That is so fascinating. But I can imagine what happened was, you know, they have this back lot with all these old things in it. I mean, he's just one of them. Because we've got these big fallout vault boys in the office. People constantly bump into them and knock them and bash the arm off and constantly dropping its head to floor.

it's going to look like it's from the fucking video game soon because it's so beating up but that's exactly what I can imagine some clumsy cameraman needed to get into a shot you know shoved their way around

and knocked his arm off it's I could in my head exactly see that occurring fucking hell 1928 it's very ironic that it happened during six oh no it's six million dollar man

about a bionic man who gets implants they rebuild him they spent six million dollars rebuilding it So they, but there's, I think it's lead majors. No, but what I'm saying is that it's a bit weird that his arm got knocked off when it's a show about a guy who's got fake bionic bits, right?

This is insane. Listen to this. McCurdy's corpse and his travel was used in a traveling museum of crime, which featured wax replicas of famous outlaws such as Bill Doolin and Jesse James. So it's like just a traveling wax. Like, you just go city to city. You'd turn up with your with your, with your. traveling museum of crime and it's got all these wax figures of, that's insane.

I mean, I think a lot of that sort of traveling show stuff, obviously in the days of the Wild West, there was a lot of traveling around. People would go from town to town trying to make a name for themselves, trying to figure out, you know, what they were going to do, making money any way they could. But the interesting thing is then when you have the Great Depression, 1930s to 1960s, that sort of traveling, sort of hobo culture, that carnival culture was such a big part of America. It feels like, I don't know if it was, but it certainly feels like that's, when I think of that era of the 30s and stuff, I think of that weird carnival, traveling crime show, like such an odd thing. Such a weird thing. Imagine like getting excited about that, too.

Like, you know what's coming in town. Ma, let's go see the traveling crime show. Traveling crime show is going to be in town next week. Really? I want to see that McCurdy waxwork. What? Do you? God, I mean, this was a hundred years ago, this kind of stuff.

So I guess people were just bored out of their fucking minds. They must have been so fucking bored. Like, anything like this. No telly. No, telly. Most people didn't even have recorded music that they could play at home. You just had to fucking go and see shit. Yeah, you just had to like bounce a ball against the wall.

How trusting people are of what other someone will say to them. You know, it's like the provenal. of something, you know, they'll just, they just won't question it. It's like, oh, is this the real deal? Yeah, of course it is. Wax work. All right, cool. There's never any doubt in anyone's mind along that road, right? Especially, it's like, oh, we've had this for 40 years, you know, it's clearly, look at him. But I imagine it was in pretty shitty state, so it's probably in the back sort of lot, you know, at that point. Oh, God. Amazing. Thank you for that. Yeah, that's really interesting. That is, uh, it's interesting. If you want to hear more,

as too much for us to get into. It's quite a long story. And there's lots of articles and sort of quite long articles about it. So if you want to read more about it, go ahead and look up Mr. McCurdy's... Elmer McCurdy. That is... Elmer McCurdy. Well, he was a prolific criminal, though. A terrible one. A terrible one. A really bad one. They included... The young age of 31. He died at 31, but he was done for the worst train robbery in history. They stole about 46 bucks. It was just a disaster. There was nothing on the train. got the wrong train. I thought you meant they were like killing tons of people, but no, it was just a terrible

badly done job. They just didn't get anything. They got the wrong train. The right train had about half a million dollars on. Their train was just some people. They nicked a wallet from one of the drivers and a bit of whiskey. That was all he had. It's quite funny.

Anyway, that's our mailbag. Thank you for that. Thanks so much for listening to our mailbag. Thank you, for all. We mean it. We really meet it. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for listening to our mailbag.

mailbag. And keep those emails coming. You guys are fantastic. Let's put a, put a line under and over the squirrel killing thing. Don't need any more emails about that. I appreciate that universal support and that these two bozos were wrong for a change. I really did appreciate that, but I don't want to talk about it again. Because it'll upset the chaps, all right? So let's get on. Next topic, please. I'm crying and keep them coming. Love and the emails. Love you. Peace out. Bye. Bye. Bye.