Triforce! - Triforce! #254: In defence of Luton, worst town in Britain

Episode Date: April 19, 2023

Triforce! Episode 254! Sips wants to bring back Trial by Combat, Flax has been getting intrusive, evolutionary thoughts and we get an email from someone from Luton who really doesn't sell it to us... Go to http://expressvpn.com/triforce today and get an extra 3 months free on a 1-year package! 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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available as a mild hybrid inline six turbo or as a plug-in hybrid, crafted to move every part of you. Good morning, everyone. Welcome. Welcome back to the Triforce podcast. Sips. Yeah. Hello. How are you?

I'm great. How are you? Great. P-Flax. How are you feeling? Oh. He's upset. He's upset because Donald Trump got arrested.

That's why he's upset. Right. It really upsets me. Yeah, it's really upsetting. He's really upset about that. It is the news. This is, what, the third time he's- The first time he was arrested was for the Hunter- Asking the Ukraine guy to check out Biden or whatever, right?

Yeah. Was he actually arrested for that? No, I think there's a difference. Well, that was the indictment, right? That's an indictment. And there's also, when you're the president, I don't think a sitting president, I could be wrong, but I don't think a sitting president has ever been arrested. No, but he's the first former president to be arrested.

Yeah. But then the second time he got in trouble was for the insurrection which felt like a big one uh and yeah he sort of managed to get away with these with a slap on the wrist and this one again feels like to me like he's just gonna say uh well you know my legal advice this is what i was told you know my financial people were dealing with it wasn't me you know i didn't i didn't know i was breaking the law you know poor poor me he will throw he will throw people under the bus all day long he yeah he's just gonna gonna i mean the thing is like yes he's been arrested but looking at the charges it's like for financial finagling you know it does feel like he's not gonna see a jail cell ever and you know um god it's the ongoing saga of trump

isn't it like do you know what it does feel a little bit nice because of the whole his whole angle was like from 2016 it was like lock her up lock hillary up lock her up right 2017 2018 lock her up and then like 2020 it's like lock up Biden. Like, lock him up. Like, the whole time he's been clamoring for his opponents to be arrested for their sort of minor... I don't even know what he was saying they'd done. Was it emails? God knows, right? So, as I understand it, Hillary Clinton had a private email server and sometimes work emails, so government emails, in other words, potentially sensitive material, was on her servers.

Right, and that's why Trump took all those boxes of documents home. Where did she just have, like, a Linux server in her garage? I don't know. I mean, did she just have a phone? First of all, there's no way she set it up. Like, there's no way Hillary's there in the garage setting up a Linux box. Well, we don't know. She just had a phone. There's no way she set it up. There's no way Hillary's there in the garage setting up a Linux box. Well, we don't know that for sure. I'm going to go out on a limb and say.

That's true. Maybe she's into Linux. Maybe she's a big time hacker. Maybe she likes Ubuntu. Yeah, maybe she does. OpenBSD. Maybe that's her favorite flavor. She's booting off a USB thumb drive and grepping

with the best of them. Just grepping left, right and centre. Old Hillary. These are references to our only programmers. The problem is if America have got problems with that, we've got problems with fucking gropers.

That's how old our boys got kicked out, wasn't it? With that pincher oh that's right yeah the uh the uh the the the butt pinching guy yeah so well he boris knew it because he made a joke he said picture by name picture by nature and then he put him in the fucking cavity or whatever yeah it's crazy all of these people would have been booted out 30 years ago i'm convinced of that like all a lot of this stuff you look at the political scandals that there were not that long ago people will first of all politicians had some fucking dignity and resigned when they did shit like this well they would certainly resign before they got to the point where they were going to be

like uh properly impeached or arrested or whatever yeah i feel like they at least had a little bit a little bit of fucking dignity and a little bit of respect for the system but that's gone out the window that really it's just oh it's all gone it's all just a fucking sham and uh it feels like uh they just want to destroy any interest that that anybody has in politics it's kind of it's kind of funny though i. I think that the real thing is that people watched him on telly. And so they feel like it's like the Jeremy Clarkson effect, you know. You know he's a cunt, but it's pretty funny to watch on telly sometimes. I suppose so, yeah.

In Clarkson's case, yes, because he's just an entertainer. But it is worrying when it's like the, you know, so-called leader of the free world. You're right. It's very stressful. Anyway, we won't talk about politics too much because otherwise we get into dad mode and get all salty. True, true, true. Man, I have been dadding up a storm recently. I've had like lots of dad stuff to do generally but there's a whole

bunch of work going on in my house the driveway's been torn up they've laid some new pipes the plumber's been in fucking drywall is going up like oh my god it is just it's chaos in there but in a weird way i'm just loving it you know like uh i just i have people to talk to all the time you know and i can really just stand outside and like, you know, cross my arms and talk about really important things or like really serious things as well. Like what kind of drywall are you using? What sort of screws will you be screwing it in with and all that kind of stuff? It's great. So it's a real outlet for me, you know, like I don't get to do this stuff that often.

So it's like, it's pretty great. It's like a real life version of the kind of games that you play like the it is yeah my wife and my kids though are miserable as a result like the baby is just crying all the time because they're drilling stuff like into the walls it's like shaking the whole house and stuff and my kids are just trying to enjoy two weeks off of school for easter and it's like no they these guys turn up like seven in the morning they're drilling straight away like just non-stop drilling all the way to like five o'clock sometimes even later they do shift patterns so like two guys will come turn up at like three o'clock and stay

till eight just drilling all the time like oh man it's crazy it's good though it'll be nice to my it'll be nice to have somewhere to park my uh 55 extra ferraris like uh because that's the problem right now they're just they're just in a field so i need uh i need a gold-plated elevator they're just all on the road super stacker yeah yeah yeah well i mean the stacker system are terrible do not even do not even get me started no on the stacker no well it's uh it's confusing i don't know where my favorite fer is in the pile. It's hard to find, so that's my big problem. That's a big issue I've got. Maybe I need a computerised system or something, I don't know.

Get Hillary round, maybe. Yeah, yeah, maybe she can get some over... Maybe she could do a couple of grep pipes and stuff and figure out where my favourite Ferrari is. I've talked about this before, but I live in my apartment place. We've got a stacker system with the cars. And, you know, the idea is that I guess when it was built 20 years ago, 30 years ago, it was just a great way to save space. And it actually breaks all the time. It's incredibly expensive to maintain.

It's like a piece of shit. And the other thing is that everyone now has cars that are too big, right? Yeah. I mean, this is a problem in America in particular, in that, you know, everyone's driving a fucking SUV in a light truck or the fucker fucking- every car, even like normal cars are twice the size, right? It's like that over here now, though, too. It's not as bad.

The Land Rovers and Range Rovers and stuff, they're huge. It's not as bad, but it is happening. Sure, there's this idea that like, they're safer. Like, there's this whole problem i watched a video on it on youtube yesterday by this fairly compelling guy but he was just talking about how a bunch of situations where it's it's cheaper to like sell these cars because there's no tax on them because they're like technically business things and you know all this stuff and they don't share the same rules and ground clearance and all this stuff right so they and also they're in their own category so it's kind of like this arms race where parents are being told that in order for their kids to be safe they have to be in one of these

light trucks effectively obviously that's like massively disproportionately affecting people who can afford it and so it's just one of these and and you know car acts like pedestrian deaths have gone way up because they have this higher, they don't see kids in front of the cars anymore. Anyway, it's a huge problem. But it's to say it's obviously anything that happens in America also affects stuff here. And as a result, car sizes have gone up. And so everyone in my fancy apartment complex where I live has a massive fucking Land Rover, right? And they drive it onto the stacker and it's just too heavy.

And it instantly fucking breaks it, right? Every day. But they're not going to stop using the stacker because that's the only place to park right so yeah it's just you live in a city as well right there's nowhere to park you can't most importantly it's bristol which hates cars and there is very few places to park have it whenever i come down it's always like where the fuck am i gonna park? So I think maybe it would be good if it wasn't for this like issue of of Giganto cars everyone has but Was intrigued that you described him. Well, how did you describe the the fella? The YouTube you'd watched as a reasonably compelling

Yeah, I thought that was interesting. I've been like in a sense that I kept my attention was interesting i've been like in a sense that it kept my attention it didn't compel him to the max but there was a little tiny bit of i was mildly compulsed there's hundreds and hundreds of fairly generic youtubers making fairly generic videos but they got the ring some of them are actually pretty good yeah they got the ring light it's all very edited to drop a meme in now and then it's a yeah some of them I absolutely can't fucking stand. And they irritate me so much, like, with their take on things. But some of them are making really good content, mainly when they don't focus on themselves too much. You know, they're just a narrator.

And they put together- I've watched a really good one about- Because there's this long documentary on Netflix about DB Cooper, right? Which is really not that interesting a story. It's not at all. It's not. It's really dragging it out. And the other one on Netflix is this MH370 Netflix- Is that the plane that got shot down by the Russians? No, that's MH17. The one that- the 370 is the one that disappeared.

Oh, yeah. Or in Malaysia, the 370 is the one that disappeared. Oh, yeah. Or in Malaysia, the Malaysian one. Yeah. But it, but it was obviously an interesting story at the time and it's still

an interesting story now but the Netflix documentary drags it out way too much and not only that but like it talks to all these conspiracy theorists

who think that the Russian, some Russian agent got on board and crashed it in, you know, Kazakhstan or something. And itstan or something yeah it's absolute nonsense but it's sort of presented as as fact just because it's done lazily and oh god

like i think that that i mean i think basically like that i watched um there's a db cooper thing on on on youtube it's like half an hour yeah that's all you need for db it's like honestly half an hour it's on a channel called lemme know yeah it was it was 27 minutes 27 and and i loved it it was like gave me the whole thing yeah like a really concise form yeah and like i was like damn why why aren't more stuff like this i agree it was nice and concise here are the facts here's what's happened since here are some theories we don't know like yeah story and it was it wasn't like it wasn't like scattered with unnecessary i don't mind a little bit of talking to the people related to the to the story like you know like but it does feel a bit like sadness porn sometimes when you go through all the crying friends of people who you know some of which are genuine sufferers and some of which are just fucking random people who want to have a bit of screen time yeah anyway

we were talking about politics just this might be interesting this is an email from from andrew a long-time listener but after episode 251 he felt like reaching out uh while listening to the podcast i was applying for a summer internship in washington dc. Nice. When Lewis brought up young people in politics today. You must have done that at some point. We won't remember it, Lulu. I apologize. That seems like a very Lewis thing to mention. And I felt like sharing my experience as a young person entering politics.

He's not going to talk about whether he's on the left or the right, but maybe the podcast will find it interesting to hear about the day-to-day of a Berkeley student trying to break into DC politics. Most of the time working in politics is exactly what Lewis talked about, frustrating. The day-to-day of young people in politics can be quite tedious with essentially unending administrative work and research assignments, but some of it can be interesting. I've had the chance to sit in on congressional and Senate committees about foreign affairs and US defense policy, but Andrew says it's extremely competitive.

Everybody's clambering over each other and you have to work over 50 hours a week just to show your commitment. And that's for the interns as well. But he's made some good mates. And, you know, I guess a lot of people will progress through politics at a similar kind of pace.

So you'll know people that are also on their way up. I think the interesting thing is if you think about, I mean, I know that one of the things that people assume is that MPs over here and politicians in the US, that they're perpetually at odds. But they'll go to the pub and they'll hang out and they're mates and all the rest of it, and they get on perfectly well.

It's just the job is what sets them at odds. But if you've been working around someone for 20, 25 years, you both started off as junior whatever's making your way through politics, you're going to have friends on opposing sides of the aisle. I just find it interesting if you're starting off in this field. I've got some follow-up questions, which is, if this doesn't work out, how likely is it for you to just be able to leave and go to a business and say i've been working in politics for the last 10 years you know i don't have any contacts i don't know i can't

call up a senator and say hey can we knock down that forest or whatever um you know it's more like what what does this go on to if the politics side doesn't work out and what can it lead to eventually i guess would be my question yeah it's interesting i guess you got to be really dedicated to the whole thing i mean maybe you don't need to be big time like dc politics you know you can maybe get involved like with local politics or something once you have some experience i don't know i'd honestly be shocked if if politics didn't set you up for like it does sound like woolly now i'm saying it but i feel like it's it's it's it's not actually that bad right it's not like you probably be a pretty good like account manager or something

off the back of being in politics right because you i imagine most of your days are spent just dealing with people but dealing with tricky people as well you know like you're not dealing with normal people yeah i guess i i guess it's like studying a subject that's quite hard, and then people will recruit you just because they know that you're able to learn and deal with complicated issues and figure stuff out. It's like a shorthand for being smart or competent, isn't it, really?

It does feel like that to me, even though we have a pretty heavy disdain for politics. Yeah, they all do seem like dumbasses somehow. I mean, I know a guy that i was at school with um was in was in politics um he was part of the i think he was he was fairly senior in johnson's government as one of the sort of underling lads if you like the the analysts or whatever advisors and uh he was yeah i think um i mean he's a good lad so i think he i think he

may have stepped down, I'm not sure, because of all the shit that's going on. But yeah, I mean, you know, most of the interesting stuff, he can't really talk to you about it. But it's amazing how much is decided by just a handful of people. I guess it was such a long time ago as well. I mean, Lyndon B. Johnson is what... He was the... Oh, he died in 1973.

Yeah, I'm that old. Johnson. He died in 1973. I'm that old. He was president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. Yeah. Well, my friend obviously was not a American. Oh, right. My bad. Yeah. No, that is easy mistake to make. When I i talk about my childhood people go back to the 50s i can't place your accent i always think like could could be cajun i don't know it could be yeah uh oh uh i've also had an email this isn't a mailbag but i want to chuck a couple of these in this is from uh a lad called stroby this is a defense of sips at the zoo you might i thought

you might appreciate this at last yes okay i wanted to get in contact as this had been bugging me every time it comes up while i do not profess to know anything about sips's financial world i assume as a channel island resident he pays his tax there yes and therefore is not a uk taxpayer no this means he is not eligible to gift day no so when sips told the right honorable listener he couldn't use gift day was buying on the money and the listener can just pipe down so there you go sips you can consider yourself exonerated at last strobe free there you go god justice is served oh man it feels great too holy crap it's a it's a dish best served yeah no. No, thanks so much. Thank you. Best served. Yeah.

Just serve it. Oh, man. Jeez. Yeah, it's true, though. I do pay tax here, but I don't pay you pay tax. I remember, this was a long time ago now, but wasn't there, I think it was Belgium who didn't have a government for like two years. That sounds about right. That sounds like a very belgian thing

to do right and i don't know whether they were fine or not but i guess what i'm saying is a lot of the time the government is doing stuff putting forward laws put it forward you know put forward other stuff it feels like sometimes as many good ones are put forward as bad ones right like you know a lot of them just slip through the crack right like you know a lot of them just slip through the crack as well you know a lot of laws go in there so boring that nobody even cares or reads about them you know what i mean and it's and it'll only be like years down the line when it affects something that's exciting or fun that people are like how did we let that spice up i need to spice this stuff up right yeah because i don't know what laws are going through parliament at the moment i know maybe because they're just but i think it's because they're

boring um and i'm not saying that i'm not saying that we should make up laws just for the fun of it but that's how our media is set up right legislation always ended with interesting shit with a death match in a cage you know so like the the lead the lead person who wants to not pass the legislation has to physically to the death fight the person who really wants to pass the legislation right yeah for that so more like wrestling we get more wrestlers in government yeah but it's but it's the the person the person who wins gets their ways in there that's right yeah that's true if they don't really believe in their side they they're not going to have that rocky spirit, are they?

Yeah. And there'd have to be some rules around, you know, like in Game of Thrones, how they can like, you know, nominate, you know, a big fucking brick shithouse of a man in their place or whatever. I see. You're very quickly returning to- You can't do that either. You have to fight it for yourself.

So, you got to put your money where your mouth is so if you come up with some stupid legislation and somebody wants to wants to burn it down but that person you know like jogs every day and lifts weights and stuff and you're you don't well you know what i mean maybe you'll think twice you're saying that donald trump should ask for a trial by call he could uh a burger eating contest. The man eats a lot of burgers. You were talking about big guys.

I've been watching, I think it's Peacemaker. The John Cena DC thing. It's good. It's fun, isn't it? James Gunn. It is. I realize this is a very typical criticism that people have these days of these kind of shows, and I'm not against it. I think it all started with Tarantino, but I'll make

my point. A lot of the dialogue that comes out of the mouths of the characters feels like it's been shoehorned in to make some kind of pop culture reference for an argument. Yeah, it's like maybe it's all AI generated. I'm not kidding. It feels like it. Because it like there was a bit and there was a scene last night. They're on a stakeout in this van. And one of the characters mentions the Berenstain Bears. Oh, yeah. And it's actually the Berenstain Bears.

The Berenstain Bears. They used to have those. They used to always have those those cool parts of the book where they would like go into a tree. But it was like this massive underground maze complex. And'd get like the side view i love and it had all the furniture and shit and you could see them like running down all the holes and in the hallways and stuff that was literally i mean that that and richard scary books where you could look at like like i liked looking at a huge panel with loads of detail yeah like like you said the cutaway of a house so you see their

treehouse loved that and i remember when my mum would read it to me i would i would stop we'd have to stop on those pages so i could just my eyes could take in everything i don't know why i could i could have just looked at my own time but it was when i grew up no well you want to read with your mum though when you're small're small. Yeah, yeah, of course. My parents got a book called Stephen Beatseed's, I can't even say his surname, Incredible Cross-Sections. Right. It was this huge book, and it was like, it would show like the Titanic cut into cross-sections. It would be just like, it's like a Where's Wally, only there's no Wally in there. Right, right.

It's just detail. Wally is the person reading it. I was fascinated by these these books but yeah like like there's something about that that i don't know it was just it was it was like trick educational for me right like but man i think those those work great yeah yeah yeah i still still got that stuff i've got um thinger, which is Randall Munro's... The guy who wrote XKCD, he wrote a book called Thing Explainer, which is basically... It's a really cool concept. So the idea is that he's only using a vocabulary of the 1,000 most common words, right? And so,

for example, a microwave isn't that. It's a food heating radio box, right? And a bridge is a very tall road. And a data centre is like a computer room, stuff like this, right? So, it's very clever. The solar system is like the other worlds around our sun, right? So, he doesn't have to use... So, he has to try and find ways to explain incredibly complicated things and how they work in a way that us morons could understand and in a sense like actually it's kind of funny but also silly but also kind of hard sometimes to work it out work out backwards what he's what words he's used because it's almost too used to seeing like you know these complicated words that when you try

and break them down you almost have to like do a little bit of like well i do anyway have to like be like what the fuck does this mean even though it's like really simple right like stuff inside us right how do you how do you explain like cells or whatever you know yeah like tiny small living things inside us it's it's yeah it's like kind of really interesting um but yeah someone sent me a copy of that i've got that's kind of a modern i don't know that's just reminded me of the old the old book i used to have when i was a kid yeah i loved i loved that steven beats it's a very science museum purchase did you put your beanie cap on and fill a briefcase full of jelly beans poop your pants and go to school as well what is that a reference to no i'm just trying to get it inside of the louis's childhood i had one of the five one of those spinny little beanie cap with the propellers

yeah propeller on top yeah yeah i like those you know what i was thinking about um i i've been i've been struggling to get to sleep at night, as usual. Why? Are your thoughts... Is your mind occupied with too many thoughts? Yeah. Oh, man. So, we've got a...

I've mentioned this before. We've got like a white noise machine in the bedroom. You turn it on and it goes like... Like that. And it helps me to... If I focus on that noise, I go to sleep quite quickly. But my brain is quite intrusive. And it's sort of, you know, and I'll get thinking about something and then I can't stop thinking about it.

It's very common, I'm sure. Anyway, I was thinking about how the first cell like evolved. Right. And we'd, we'd watch this thing. I think it was, it might've been an Attenborough or no, no, it was Ramesh. I can't pronounce his last name ranga nathan it was his um uh travel show and he went to i think he was in ethiopia he was in somewhere else as well and they come across this um sort of area which is just it looks like a primordial part of the

earth it's like all these crazy little hot springs and bubbling there's all like a myriad colors very strong smell of very very base chemicals like sulfur and it's quite acidic and there's all this stuff going on uh and it's warm and it just sits there and it's like there's not much wind it's in this little sort of valley area and i'm thinking that people wonder about how how it's possible that something could go from being alive to not being alive, because it would have to be a moment where you could define this clump of amino acids that's formed to go from that to a definitive thing that then replicates itself. That leap was the biggest leap in evolution, much bigger than the leap that resulted in

us, because you've gone from nothing to something alive. I'm not saying nothing, but like clumps of chemicals and amino acids and all this kind of stuff, and eventually somehow this congeals over a ridiculous period of time. Man, how are you not falling asleep when you're thinking about this? Because it's amazing! That would send me off immediately. I was thinking, you wouldn't have a cell wall forming just for something that didn't need it, but something might benefit from it.

So what is the chance that it was like bubbles, like some kind of very, very small bubbles and foam that resulted in things living in those pockets? resulted in things living in those pockets. And that was the initial cell if you like that they relied on bubbles in the whatever they were living in, that that was where life form was in this foam. And then those creatures if you want to call them that could the ones that persisted with the ones that perhaps excreted something that helped to build up the wall of their bubble so it didn't pop. But then I got confused. I didn't know if that was the case. If anyone out there is an

evolutionary biologist, I would love to know more about it. Maybe the excretion was the world's first ever cum bubble. Oh my god. Lovely. Just throwing that out there. Don't say this podcast doesn't cover all oh my god

we went from evolution of proto life forms to cum bubbles like that like that this is the hard hitting science journalism I'm signed up for today's sponsor is ExpressVPN.

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I'm going to change the subject. This is from Josh. Good day, lads. Writing to you from the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I'm currently sailing from the- I'm currently inside a massive cum bubble. Cum bubble? Please send help.

James Cameron's here. James Cameron. James Cameron presents cum bubble. Cum bubble. Pacific Rim. I'm currently sailing from the west coast of Mexico to Hawaii by myself. Holy shit. Whoa.

On my 40 foot sailboat named Atlas. Oh, nice. Which is a terrible name for a young girl, but I feel it's an acceptable name for a good stout boat. Okay. Elbows deep rebuilding the ship's head, or better known to land lovers as the toilet. I figured what better way to procrastinate the nasty bits than to write into my favourite plumbing and handyman podcast, The Time Force. Yes.

Did you put an S-bend on the... You gotta get the S-bend down there. It's no good otherwise. Listen to you guys all the time out here. Thank you for keeping me company. I think it was Sipsy said, it would be cool to pack up everything in a boat and go somewhere and be self-sufficient. Yes, I did say that.

I can personally confirm it's very cool. Sorry for the long-winded message, but I leave you with this one cool fact. This email was sent via MF slash HF radio, which is an outdated but very neat way to communicate from the middle of the ocean with no wifi. All the best, Josh. Wow. So this email came from the middle. This was 21 hours ago.

So he is actually there in the middle of the Pacific, alone in his sailboat, the Atlas, and sent this email via medium frequency, high frequency radio. Best of luck to you, Josh. Man, good luck, and safe travels, and drop us a line when you make it to Hawaii. I can't wait to hear about it. Yeah, do that. Keep us up to date. Maybe a picture of your boat as well. Yeah, could you not just poop off the side? That's disgusting.

You can, but you don't know which way the currents are going. What if it does a roundabout and then comes back and hits you? Oh, right. What if it swirls? What if you're like- If you're saying it's too bumpy, that's even- I mean, doing it on the crapper is even challenging, right? Imagine you crapped over the side of the boat and thought that was the end of it. bumpy that's even i mean doing it on the crapper is even challenging right imagine you imagine you

did you crapped over the side of the uh the boat and thought that was the end of it and then the perfect storm hit and just as the waves are rising you're just outside on the boat trying to like you know control the rigging or whatever and all of a sudden boom just a giant turd hits you in the face right it comes off one off the crest of one of the waves and it's yours you recognize that smell anywhere all right well it's gonna be no one else it's no one else you can't uh there's lots there's lots of goes into uh to sailing on the sea lots of like little rituals and good luck dances and chants and stuff like that you know you gotta it's a bit they were very superstitious i think because you are you are at the whims of

nature oh you are absolutely there's no help it is i mean it's like it's you know we've definitely said before it's like it's the outer space of its day yeah you are literally casting yourself off into the void there's nothing above you there's nothing below you if your ship goes down you're fucked there's no no way to get food other than, what are you going to eat? Eat fish? Come on. Pull the other one. We need grog. No grog, no work. You can do a Richard Parker while you're out there. Just get the tiger on the

boat and the, um, you get the fish. I can't remember what he ate, actually. What the hell was that movie called? What was that movie called? Life of Pi? It was a book more famously than a movie. But yeah, it's alright. The movie was good though, that's the one, yeah. It was a book more famously than a movie, but yeah, that's all right. The movie was good, though. Sorry, I'm not well read.

The movie was popular, dude. The movie was nice. It was a very famous book. It was a visually stunning movie. I remember going to see it. Oh, yeah, you could say Lord of the Rings was much more well-known as a movie, but it was also a very big book. That's all I'm saying.

Okay. Yeah. We had an email. This is... I like this one. This is from Willow. Hi, Ted, Chris, and Lewis. That's very formal.

Willow. Very formal. Just wanted to let you know, your audience for the podcast isn't just dads. It's not. Get gamers and 13-year-old boys. That's a shame, because that's what we've been aiming at, is that. Yeah, that is what we've been aiming at. Our market research tells us that that is the case, but maybe you know something we don't.

Well, apparently- Well, that's what we are a blend of, you see. So that's what we assume. Yeah, we're both- Who brings which energy, would you say? Well, we've all got the mind of a 13-year-old boy, I would suggest. I suppose. It's true.

Anyway, Willow is a 20-year-old female textiles art student from Bournemouth. Wow. Get in. Yes. Just because she's from Bournemouth. Wow. Get in. Yes. Just because she's from Bournemouth. Yeah. I see. It doesn't mean she supports, but what if she supports Portsmouth? No, no, no, no.

Willow's from Bournemouth. She might be. Don't say Pompey. Oh, I had an email about Luton. If you guys wanted to hear, we were slagging off Luton the other day. When? I can't remember, but we were slagging off. I was actually slagging off Luton on stream, I think. And I did mention at the time, add this to the list of places where I'm an outlaw, like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

I thought I'd keep it closer to home this time and say that Luton was a bit of a dump, but maybe it's not. We've had multiple Luton emails, so we definitely must have mentioned it. I've never been to Luton, by the way, I'm just saying. I have, it was terrible. All right, good, okay. I'm glad you've been. Let me see if I can find a good one about Luton here.

You guys talk amongst yourselves. You'll be looking for a while. I don't think Luton's that great of a place honestly. No, I mean a good email. All right, okay. Have you ever been to Luton, Lewis? Luton, Lewis. Lewis and Luton.

Oh, here we go. Hey chaps, this is John smith he didn't want me to use his real name so this is john smith right um is he a lutein resident yes i presume by the time you read this it will be it will be much later i am however from lutein it's not as bad as it sounds this is a week ago we don't know what the state john smith is in now but right due to the tv show 24 hours in police custody it's put a spotlight on luton i'll say because i watched that show and luton looks like a dump the one thing to remember the luton does seem to get the fair share but the show is based in the three counties which we've had for some time a lack of police and social care leading to some people turn into crime however i'd say that this could

be the case for most rundown and underfunded towns or cities. Look, I think just in your first paragraph, I'm not having a go at the people of Luton. No, but to say that you have no police or social care and it's a rundown, unfunded city centre kind of contradicts anything you might say about it being a nice place at a surface level, I would say. In the past few years there has been a large effort to redevelop the city center with a plan for power court and green spaces power court i think is the football stadium i do feel at times luton has

become the butt of jokes by default however it's from this many people in luton try hard to improve things for all despite a few bad eggs i actually knew someone who appeared on the show from school so shows what a small town it can be oh wow slightly funnier note a favorite story of mine was from back in high school this is interesting the war of the fields this is just setting the tone for how luten is actually a great place he's then going to tell us a story about how there was a huge fight outside his school these two schools were very close to each other and they'd walk past each other on the way home through this large open field. On many occasions, both schools would divert into this field into battle formation. The larger units being the chavs, rugby and football players formed in the front of the force with smaller and more agile chavs behind shouting

abuse and battle cries. Behind this would be the regular troops throwing stones, traffic cones, etc. The most feared were our champions, aggressive battle-hardened leaders ready to fight even if you looked at them the wrong way. These battles would usually end with the arrival of teachers at full sprint heading into the battle at the cavalry, parting both sides. So again, Mr. John Smith, you're telling us the loot is not that bad. You're telling us that it's really run down. They're trying to redevelop it.

And that when you were children, your children have pitched battles on the fields after school. I say Luton needs to be written off at this point. Yeah, it's not sounding too great. I mean, maybe if you're into all those kinds of things, it's, you know, like some sort of mecca or whatever. But yeah, it doesn't sound great, honestly. It really doesn't sound great. If I want to visit there for a weekend or whatever,

is that what I can expect? Just lots of fighting? Pitch battles, yeah. Well, I think, again, it depends, doesn't it? There's definitely worse places in the UK. Blackpool is the worst at the moment, I think. It's a real place that's run down a lot of drug problems, a lot of major systemic problems, and the very low life expectancy for people living there.

In Blackpool? Yeah, it's like- Yeah, Blackpool is like- It's like the Las Vegas of the UK, right? How could they have let it get to this point? I know. It's- According to this Wikipedia article I read, it's-

They've got the Grand Ballroom there and Strictly Come Dancing is recorded there every year at one point. The average life expectancy- The national life expectancy for the UK is 79 for men and 83 for women. But in Blackpool, it's 54 for men and 55 for women. Why is it so low?

Well, I think it's just that it's just got a lot of drug problems. It would have to have a lot of drug problems to affect the life expectancy age to that extent, right? What's the population of Blackpool? Ten?

Well, it's just gone down. It's going down. Yeah, it's going down big time, yeah. I think a lot of it as well is when you have an area that is uniformly poor, diet tends to be poorer. So, people tend to get things like heart disease and heart attacks and obesity and all the illnesses associated with that quite quickly. So a lot of areas that tend to be poorer tend not to eat as healthily as wealthier areas do. It says here it's only 72.3 actually, which is the same as some of the American states

like West Virginia and Mississippi. So maybe it's not actually that bad. Or maybe the American states are pretty bad. I think some of these American states have lower life expectancy than places like, you know, Columbia. I wonder out of interest, which state has the lowest life expectancy? It's Mississippi. It is.

Mississippi State. Yeah. And then West Virginia right next to it. West Virginia. 74.4. It is. Mississippi State. Yeah. And then West Virginia right next to it. West Virginia. 74.4. West Virginia. West Virginia. The highest life expectancy in 2019, can you guess?

Japan. It is Japan. Oh, Japan. I thought you were talking about states still. Oh, what state? Maine. I'd say California. It is actually. It is California and Hawaii tied. Oh, what state? Maine. I'd say California. It is actually.

It is California and Hawaii tied. Oh, my God. I don't know where Maine is. I can't. I've got a big bubble graph. It's like in the northeast coast. I mean, in the graph. Above New York.

I'm looking at this stupid graph. Oh, sorry. I thought you meant geographically. You weren't sure where it was. I was trying to pinpoint you there. Maybe it's too small for this fucking graph. It is a small little state. But yeah, like, certainly, the South US has more problems. Right.

I mean, there's a big problem with people getting obviously obesity and heart disease and diabetes and things like that is a problem in different parts of the States. That is becoming more prevalent just in the West in general now. It is, yeah. France is having problems with it. The UK, of course, has problems with it. You know, I don't know about Germany, but I mean, last time I went to Germany, fucking hell, everybody was just like young and in good shape, it looked like.

Maybe it was the place... I was at this huge park in Munich and it had this like really, really quite strong river that went right through it and people were swimming in it and stuff. And literally everybody there looked like they just come off of like a Calvin Klein underpants shoot or something. It was insane. It's the same in Stockholm. Everybody seems to be in great shape there as well.

Well dressed. It's crazy. This is a great email I've just had. This is from Pete. Alright, sorry. Just before we carry on, Mike. Sorry, no, no. You go ahead, bud. Talking about dying, but going back to birthing, what do you think about the idea of the panspermia cum bubble hypothesis from space?

Oh, that we were seeded by organic material from another world well no not necessarily even from another world i think when you have complex compounds on some of these um comets and other things they aren't necessarily even like um from another world that in space you can get this um these things called tholins which are like organic compounds that come from cosmic ray or ultraviolet irradiation of simple stuff like carbon dioxide and methane and nitrogen and water and so there's the idea that just comets themselves even if they didn't come from another world provided the complex that the start of the starting so they're like the incubator for the complex chemicals and organic chemicals that then crashes into the earth, lands in some area where it's like-

Yeah, but if it crashes into the earth, wouldn't it just get like nuked in the atmosphere, like while it was entering? No, you'd be surprised how much can survive, like especially bigger ones. And I mean, all it needs to do is deliver the chemicals. We're not talking about delivering living things. But they would have to be so heavily concentrated with the chemicals, like, so it wouldn't just be a surface thing. Like, it would have to be so heavily concentrated with the chemicals, so it wouldn't just be a surface thing. Not really.

I mean, like a virus, you only need one virus to trigger an infection. You don't need a lot. Yeah, the movie Osmosis Jones, he has one single bad germ in him. Of course, yeah, Osmosis Jones, I forgot about that. This is from Pete. I worked at Argos for a few years. For those of you who don't know what Argos is, if you're outside the UK, it is a shop. Bill Bailey famously described the catalogue in Argos like the laminated catalogue of dreams. Yeah, it's a catalogue. So it's like consumers distributing in Canada in the 80s. There's no shop.

You just go into, there's basically like a reception area with catalogs. You pick what you want and then you order it. And sometimes they can go out back and get it for you. Yeah. Otherwise, they'll arrange to deliver it to your house. So you don't browse around a storefront. You browse a catalog and then they get it from the warehouse. Yes. That's obvious. It was quite a thought experience when I was a kid. Yeah, and then they get it from the warehouse. Yes. That's, that's awesome.

It was a quite a fun experience when I was a kid. Yeah, I used to love that when I was a kid. We used to go to consumers all the time. Going into the shop with my parents, getting that little pen, writing a code, finding a code. Just look at the toy pages. It was like a fantasy. It was like, unbelievable.

Occasionally, they had like a couple of little bits and pieces. Like, it was a very small reception kind of like shop front. But they would have sometimes they'd have like a little jewelry cabinet with like watches in it. Yeah, they did. And occasionally they'd have like video games as well, like NES games in a cabinet. Yeah, I mean, and this was before you really had regular stuff being delivered to you. At least we didn't get stuff delivered to us very often. So it was almost like you go and get a present, right?

You put this code on this piece of paper you take it to the man yeah and you'd wait like excitedly for a minute while he rummaged around in the warehouse and brought you this present delivery was just not a huge thing back then i don't know why but but like even if you went in there and they didn't have it they would ask you to come back like they would phone you and say it's in and then you'd have to go back and pick it up. Like, they just almost did everything they could to not deliver it to your house. Like, I guess it was, I don't know,

maybe just not the done thing at the time. I mean, this is a long-ass time ago. Yeah, yeah. Well, Pete is still working there. He's worked in Argos for a few years. I'm amazed it's still going. I know. It's now, the only one I know is part of Homebase.

Yeah, they usually have the- It's in usually go into Homebase, it's in there. They usually have a little desk inside another big store, right? Yeah. Yeah. Because I went in, they had one in an Asda, we went into an Asda one time when we were in the UK- Really? And they had an Argos counter at the back, yeah. Which seems weird, right? Because like, Asda kind of has everything, but yeah, there it was.

Well, Pete says the first story is, in three years of working here, no man has ever accepted help getting an item to their car if a woman is present. Really? I've seen a man punch holes in two boxes containing chairs in order to carry them. Another tried to carry a 67 kilogram washing machine on his own. Even if it's a 12 foot trampoline in three boxes, they will never accept help and instead will struggle on their own. There are no exceptions to this rule that I've seen so far. No, I know.

Some people just feel like they have to do it, you know? I feel like that is very common to people not accepting help. Oh, my God. I will offer it, but... I am forever seeking help. Like, I am not... I'm standing there and I'm like I buy something and if they're

Not like forthcoming with help I'm like what the fuck do you want me to do with this now Like I'm not caring it You know what I mean like I will get the help For sure I'll rope other people into it as well if I have to I can understand wanting to carry it Because I know this is going to sound sexist

But maybe it's just mrs. F She's always impressed when I lift something very heavy Yeah, she just is and it's nice to impress your woman. That's it So I think for a lot of blokes to chance to show off that they can lift stuff What if you lifted something so heavy that you shit your pants so like well that would that's the risk. That's the risky run It's pretty loose down there. Yeah, you're right. I'm at least probably farting if I'm bending over to pick something out.

I'm just saying, they're doing it because they want to impress their missus, that's it. Also, I think they like to think, maybe if they're single, that if a woman sees them carrying something heavy, they'll swoon and fall for them instantly, which is certainly what the movies have told me. If only it was that easy, eh guys? Women. The other thing is how some people are bare faced liars. Here's an example. Me. Have you used the phone at all? This is someone trying to return a phone. Them. Nope, I never even turned it on. Me. It's on and your mum just texted you.

Them. Actually, it's faulty and won't charge properly. So they're just trying to return a phone that they have been actively using and lying about it. Good one, Pete. Keep up the good work at Argos. I don't know if it'll still be around in a few years' time, but best of luck to you. What have I got? I've got some news articles, if you want to hear.

Go on, son. Yeah, let's hear them. So I heard a news this week about a new Mars mission, a new Moon mission, which new mission, new moon mission, which is cool. That's the first time in like 50 years, we're going to land some dudes on. First,

we're going to do a drive by. Yeah. Scope it out. Cause you know, moon might've changed. You don't know. They're going to do a little, I think they're going to test the,

the viability. It's not just dudes this time either. There's a woman. There's a woman on the team. Women could be dudes. I think that's fine. I think you can call a woman a dude. I'm just saying, if I say say if I say guys, I'm not referring to just blokes. I think what's up guys Yeah refers to everybody that's present. So there are astronauts going on a fucking mission. Yeah, which is high. Yeah, that is hype

That is high. I know that they think that they discovered Surface water on the moon in the form of like crystals oh yeah like pebbles that are like frozen water um i read that article the other day and they're thinking because the thing is if you get a moon base and you can first of all you can grow stuff there if you have water so you could eat you could also make fuel from the water so if you have water it's like the base level of a moon base obviously you'd still need materials and the rest of it no i think that yeah it's cool but i think the problem with making a moon base is that because there's no atmosphere on the moon it just gets absolutely shit on by every piece of crap in space right everything

hits i mean well you mean things impact with the moon all the time like with because we have atmosphere anything that that that is going to hit us just gets nuked before it can even hit the ground, right? So we don't have to worry about that. But on the moon, everything's just going to get pelted relentlessly and broken. You don't live above ground, I guess, is the point. Yeah. It's a lot of work, though. You could be underground.

That's one thing. Also, I suppose you'd have to hope that... I guess if you're on the side facing the Earth... You'd have to have some really strong solar panels on there. You would. But if you're on the side facing the Earth, I'd have to assume the most little things coming through space would hit Earth rather than the Moon,

because it's so much... It's right there and it's got more gravity. No, I mean, if you look at the surface of the Moon, it's been hit a lot of times. But has it been hit recently? That's just because there's no erosion. So, I mean, it's hit as much as Earth, but it hasn't gone away. Those craters are potentially billions of years old,

but they're certainly many millions of years old. There's got to be some new ones as well, though. I assume it gets sick, I think. But there's new ones on Earth, but again, they're covered up. If anything properly sizable hits Earth or the moon, it'll be a real fucking event. But it wouldn't take much. Something the size of a 50p coin traveling at great speed.

Yeah, that could rip up your... It's going to fuck you up. Your moon dome, easy. Everything's going to have to be sectional. You're going to have to have, I think, underground areas for people most of the time. You'd grow stuff above ground in a series of compartments that are... You know, if there's a breach, you can go and see them or whatever. If they make it all with Teflon, maybe it's okay.

I'm sure they'll figure it out. They're going to make it all with Teflon. No, but I think the idea is that they're going to stage a lot of their Mars missions from the moon. So, it's going to be like a first you enter space and then you go to what's going to be like a, I think they want to get a space station that is at the moon, like orbiting the moon. And then that's a place where craft can dock to refuel, crew can rest, resupply and stuff. And then from there, they go to Mars. I think that's the long-term goal. There's been a lot of interesting proposals.

That's a long-term goal. There's been a lot of interesting proposals. I remember, I don't know whether this is based on how much reality it's based on, but Artemis is Andy Weir's moon book that was looking at being the next Martian. I think it was optioned for Hollywood. I don't know what process it's along on getting actually made into a movie, but their idea is that they build this big aluminium smelter on the moon, right? And as a result, the oxygen is like a by-product, right? Because with water, you can cycle it pretty much permanently, getting it back out of... As long as you've got enough

water, you can just keep it in a cycle, whereas oxygen gets used up. So, they have to have this aluminium thing that provides oxygen for the colony. It's quite a nice idea. You could imagine that being used as like a low-cost staging base for building stuff in space, because it's a lot cheaper to get into moon orbit than into, like, Earth orbit. I mean, I doubt it'll ever happen because of the cost.

And I think to a lot of people... It's like a front for a crime syndicate or something. Oh, of course. There's some nonsense. Richard Branson's Virgin Space,'s Virgin Galactic, is it? Or whatever. Virgin Orbit went bankrupt this week. Yeah, they laid off like 80% of their staff.

Well, I think their thing was not, that's not the galactic one. That's not the tourism one, but that's the one where it launches stuff into space from planes. Oh, right. And it did one, it had one satellite launch and it failed. And I think that was like, everyone lost all faith in it from then on. I mean, SpaceX had a lot of failed launches at first and they look at them now. I mean, I think the key is the space elevator idea that's been going around for a long time would be the one thing that would really make a difference, I think.

Because you just build this space elevator. Fuck, I would never go on that. You just winch stuff up to space. Like, that's much, much cheaper in terms of fuel and everything. And it's just so much easier. Imagine you got to the top of that and then you did a silent takedown on the guard at the top and then dropped them down the elevator shaft, the space elevator shaft. Holy crap.

Yeah. Oh, my God. I think that's basically like Ad Astra, which is the Ad Astra film. Oh. Take forever. Man, I love this stuff. I do love the sci-fi future stuff so much. I just want to-

I wonder how much of it we'll get to experience in our lifetime. None. It's like so slow. It's going to take forever. We're already like past it. Past the point of no return. I feel like- I don't think we're going to past it past the point of no return i feel like i don't think we're gonna i'm happy about that i feel like yeah you know like when people look back at the 80s or like well the 90s especially now people seem to like to look back at the 90s

and think it was so jivey but like i don't know i always feel like we're in the 90s somehow like every it always just feels so jivey right Like because we have this imagery of like really sleek, advanced sci-fi from books and movies and stuff like that. And then you look at where we like, where we live and how we do stuff and everything. It just seems like, man, it's not there yet. It's not even close. Like we're not, we're not, we're close to any of this stuff. Like it's all so far away.

I want you to go and look up on YouTube any film that's just like footage of, say, London in the early 90s. And then come back next week and tell me if you think that things haven't improved. Because I guarantee you. They have improved.

I know that they have. Stuff delivered by mail. I'm just talking about the build quality of the average thing. Oh, I know. I know. I totally agree. But it is so gradual and it's taken so long to do. The classic thing about space is like it's supposed to be inspirational, right?

I think I spoke about this before. But like the idea is that it's less about, I mean, it's obviously incredibly expensive and that money could go into caring for people who need it and all this other stuff, right? like the idea is that it's less about i mean it's obviously incredibly expensive and you know that money could go into caring for people who need it and all this other stuff right and improving society generally but it's this kind of more like a thing that energizes people in society and it helps through it's it's it's just desire this ambitiousness right it's desire to to reach out to the stars and have an impact beyond our planet and think beyond our planet, right? And look up and to something more important than, you know, our petty squabbles down here.

And it's sort of having a more awareness of your small part in a bigger universe is good for the culture of people, right? And so, doing these space missions is good to remind people that, you know, we share this planet not we fight over it right yeah it feels like there's a lot of people fighting over stuff i read an article this week about um some guys in brussels were playing monopoly right and they got in and one of them got angry pulled their samurai sword and they all ended up in hospital jesus christ which feels like a very monopoly thing rich rich just has a fucking samurai sword knocking about? Well, the 40-year-old virgin had a whole collection of them, as I recall.

That's true. Yeah, it's quite a neckbeard thing to have a katana. Sorry if you're listening and you have a collection of katanas. Yeah, some Triforce fan is looking nervously at their samurai sword collection on the wall. Sweating, fiddling nervously with their kimono, staring at their samurai sword collection on the wall. Sweating, fiddling nervously with their kimono, staring at their... I mean, I feel like that was a... It used to be a thing that you would see in like a James Bond movie, right? There'd be like a katana in a villain's house

and they'd get into a fight with it, right? But now it feels like it's just on a shelf with a load of anime dolls and stuff. The emasculation of the samurai sword is is complete it has really gone gone down here's here's a good email this is this is titled sips makes fun of a child on crutches no okay yes i am i am a fan of the poet i never remember wait for it and would like to share a funny incident that happened when i was recently listening to an old triforce i was out walking my dog while listening to Triforce number 99.

Oh, that is an old one, yeah. So, some time ago. And Sips says something about people who use two crutches being greedy. And that they should only use one. To Brian's agreement, I might add. Wow, what a take. At the exact moment Sips is saying this, and I finish running the corner, I see a young girl no older than seven with a

broken leg struggling to get up her driveway on two crutches. Hogging. Hogging both crutches. Oh no. Oh, that's really hilarious. Oh fucking hell. I can't believe that. That greedy, selfish bitch.

Well, PS, if I had the social sense of Lewis, I would have passed by and commented on how the greedy little shit could have gotten by on one crutch. That's from Henry. Thank you, Henry. Thank you, Henry. Fucking hell. Oh, man.

Jesus Christ. Need both of those do you oh man no i mean there's definitely some cases where you need to right but like i was i think i was referring more to people that like use them um you know when they're walking really fast and they look like they have ski poles like what are they doing right right right what are they doing with those damn things like that can't be helping that must be hindering i would walk so much faster without those poles in my hand yeah they're just gonna slip over and break their other leg you know know, no one's helped in that case.

Then they need two more crutches. Four. That's fucking bizarre, eh? What a weird world we live in. Waste of crutches. That was great. Thank you, PFlex. Yeah, thank you so much.

Let's put a pin in this. Thank you, everyone, for listening to the podcast this week. Thank you very much. And we'll be back. It might be a bit spotty over the next few weeks because Perrion's got a trip away. But we'll see if we can record some on the road. We'll see. We'll meet up. We'll try to do some on the roads, yeah.

It'll be good to keep in the loop. And I've got a few interesting things coming up as we move into summer. Let's get spring. Let's get spring underway. Oh my god, yeah. Just a little bit of sun and maybe like... It's 12 degrees out here today. I'm going outside in a sec actually i mean we we

parted everything when i get back from uh being away and power washing the the patio getting the barbecue out getting everything nice and man i'm gonna grow just a shit ton of strawberries this year i'm feeling strawberries this summer i want i Do it. I went out the other day to take the recycling out and I felt the warmth of the sun on my face for the first time. It honestly feels like it was such a long, cold winter. It really was a cold one.

When I do that, it's like Wizard of Oz, you know, with the witch melting. Right. I did melt. I'm not saying I didn't melt, obviously. That's enough. Thank you. See you next time. Bye. Bye.

Goodbye.