Triforce! - Triforce Introduces - The Comfort Zone feat. Lewis Brindley

Episode Date: October 29, 2022

We thought you might enjoy this episode of The Comfort Zone featuring Lewis. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to give them a follow https://www.pickaxe.uk/comfort-zone ------------------------------------------------- Kirsty and Briony are joined by Lewis to discuss an exciting new card game, the Antiques Roadshow and hot air balloon rides! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Pickaxe. Now through April 15th, get 30% off all Sephora collection. Also, for beauty insiders, get 10% off the rest of your purchase on brands like Glow Recipe, Rare Beauty by Selena Gomez, Amika, and more. Don't wait. Shop at Sephora today. Exclusions and terms apply. Discounts not combinable. Earn the points. Share the journey. With the TD Aeroplan Visa Infinite Card, earn up to 50,000 Aeroplan points. Conditions apply. Offer ends June 3rd, 2024. Visit tdairplan.com for details. Hello and welcome back. We're all away this week,

actually. So this is an episode of the wonderful podcast, The Comfort Zone, featuring me. So I thought we'd put this out for you guys to enjoy and we'll be back to the normal normal stuff next week actually there might be a mailbag episode going out anyway this is for you it's great hello hello everybody And welcome back! Hi! Jump in straight in! I'll introduce you! Needs no introduction! Welcome to Comfort Zone, where we dive into each other's brains and try to work out what on earth is going on in our dreams. But today we have a new brain, we have new prey, new squishy matter for us.

We have Lewis here! Hi! Welcome. We have new prey, new squishy matter for us. We have Lewis here. Hi. Welcome. I jumped the gun, Bryony. That's all right. Thank you for probing my brain. Are you aliens? What is this? Do you get electrodes? Yeah, welcome. This is the Alien Podcast. I thought this was supposed to be comforting. I didn't want to have holes drilled in my head and

be strapped to like one of those weird metal jaggedy chairs want to have holes drilled in my head and be strapped to like one of those weird metal jagged chairs and have a light shining in my eyes i wanted to be like snuggled up under a blanket well we'll um we'll tuck you in and we'll read you a nice story yeah we'll give you a blanket on the on the jagged metal chair how's that i feel like i'm being beamed up right now do you like talking about dreams or do you find it like because i know a lot of people they're just like oh i don't want to hear about other people's dreams oh i think tom's a bit like that isn't he unless he can unless he's in the dream he doesn't want to know that's the old meme isn't it that you know don't tell me about your dreams unless I'm in them or someone's having sex.

But I think, I think, I don't know. I always, dreams are interesting. All I really know about dreams, which is probably stuff you've already gone through on this podcast, is there ways to process your filing cabinet in your brain right the idea is i think that it helps you categorize things or at least sort things out and but also it's it there's a lot of subconscious stuff that goes on with dreams because there's there's something weird where you forget them very quickly uh if you're if you're not careful and so they must this they're just very strange they're a very strange phenomenon that we we have they're a big part of of stories as well like especially sci-fi and fantasy the idea that dreams are this thing that you can connect with other people in and or that there's some sort of window into your mind yeah i think as well in like in greek mythology because i've been reading the iliad at the moment basically if the gods want

to tell you something they'll be like just shove it in a dream exactly i don't want to talk to them just put it in a dream they can figure it out themselves so so i did this thing which they always tell you to do with lucid dreaming is to as soon as you wake up you write down what you dreamed because otherwise it just slips out of your mind and even as you're writing it down details are going and you could feel them going yeah it's a really strange experience honestly so yeah i did i did write a bit down on my phone it's sort of like um so when you get those the floaty things in your eyes and when you try and look at them they bounce away i think dreams are like that the more you try and focus on them they're just there hiding in the corner like do not perceive me yeah that is it isn't it and i think the other thing about dreams is that sometimes

something will happen in a dream and i'll be angry about someone or something and that i'll take that through to my day subconsciously um and i'll be irritated with like someone for no reason why are you so why are you like this today and i have to i'm often like i must have had a bad no well it depends doesn't it? Like, I think this is why things like meditation are good for you to help clear your mind as well. Because often it's like go, go, go for us. Like, you know, we wake up, we're jolted awake and then we're, you know, suddenly in the ferrari of getting ready and getting a shower and getting outdoor

and everything's go, go, go all the time. And you're constantly listening to a podcast or watching something the whole way it's going you don't ever have like a couple of seconds to like actually turn off which is healthy yeah that's good i guess that's true like you you like overload your brain so much with all these like stimulants throughout the day and then i really thought about how full your head is during the day i tend to think of mine as being quite head empty but i guess there is a lot going on i'm stuffing my head full of things from like bananas and snacker jacks and podcasts the thing is the it's like you said like dreaming is a way for your brain to sort of file everything away and just sort of decompress and think about what's been going on.

And in a sense, I think, as you say, like you're spending all day shoving all this stuff into your brain. And the amount of people we've talked to that have just said, oh, my dreams are all just stressful. It's just stress in one form or another. And I think, like you say, like meditation is a really good thing to think about, I think that's like a more positive way in a way to like decompress because you sort of have control of it. You know, whereas in your dreams, it's like, oh, you know, you're stressed. OK, here's a stressful dream. Here you go. Enjoy.

I struggle with the meditation thing. I've tried it before. Maybe I've just not found the way for me. But I find as someone with aphantasia, which is basically I can't imagine things. So when you're listening to a thing and it's being like, you're by the sea and in my head is literally just the void. I'm not by the sea. I think it's the opposite, Bryony. So a lot of people, when they meditate, they try and clear their mind.

They're trying to look for emptiness and try and think of nothing. A big part of it is to, as soon as your mind drifts onto thinking about something, it's to try and bring it back and focus mostly on breathing, actually. So in fact, you might be a Zen master. You might actually be powered up. You might be the next reincarnation of the Buddha. You oh my gosh you never know i think meditation a lot of people meditate and they don't know it though a lot of people have a walk to work or a drive or they do something where they're waiting for someone and if they're not on their phone or they're not yeah i think it's happened it happens less nowadays because everyone does

you know you go on the train and you look down the train everyone is on their phone right there used to be just people staring out the window blindly thinking about stuff and that was quite meditative in a way i'm not saying that people are more irritable now and maybe in fact people are less irritable now because they're distracted by their phones the things that bothered them don't roll around in their head and get them all amped up so i don't know maybe in fact in some ways it's not meditative it's in fact harmful to try and like if you're not if it's uncontrolled you know if you're not actively trying to clear your mind and categorize things and put things away i think it could people can get stressed out by

these things but yeah i can see why people think dreams are stressy because thinking about them they're weird yeah the other big problem with why dreams are sort of not interesting is because they don't have a coherent story. Yeah. I mean, we watch a lot of crap on the telly that's kind of a bad story, but at least it's kind of got a beginning, a middle, and an end. The dream, you just start in the middle of something weird with all these rules that have already established and they're weird,

but you just sort of don't even notice that they've got these odd rules. And then it just sort of ends all very abruptly. And part of the reason is that is that you wouldn't remember it i guess it's not crafted it's not it's not like some sort of thing it's just it's just like a hallucination i guess in a sense i think that's the other reason they're deeply unsatisfied it's like it's like trying to tell them is like telling people an anecdote with no reason and sometimes they don't make any sense and they don't have any meaning i think there's a lot of meaning ascribed to them yeah even from like greek times i think people assumed that the things that you dreamt were the things that you you wanted you know like oh your dreams

the what even today we say i dream of being a an astronaut right no one fucking does that do they i don't think i've ever i've never actually dreamed of something that i would like to happen yeah yeah yeah it's funny how like dream and aspiration have just become one and the same sort of thing when really if your dreams really did come true it would just be terrifying yeah i find my dreams are very much sensible things that when i think about it it's like oh okay this does make sense because the people in the dream are usually the people i'm hanging up hanging out with that day or the other thing as big video gamers is that if you've been playing a game for

12 hours that's all you're going to dream about yeah yeah i've had that 100 and it's gonna it's gonna go round and round in your head and sometimes be very kind of unpleasant actually because it's kind of fucked up yeah i've found a lot of the time when i've binged a game and i end up dreaming about it i almost feel like i'm not sleeping like i just feel like i'm still playing the game and i'm not getting any rest yeah you do that sort of like half awake thing where you're just like oh i've got it no wait i'm gonna be seeing the guy about the chickens i collected or something you're like what no you should be asleep please yeah i i remember when minecraft first got released and i played it non-stop i was dreaming in cubes it was it was awful when i had covid and i was like i couldn't sleep because i was like oh

phlegmy i was like in this kind of heart i was so tired but i was like in this half light half like half awake half sleep i had these terrible like vivid dreams about just frustrating nonsense it was like it was like i was reading books but they there was nothing on the pages and i was like trying to play a board game but but the rules didn't make sense and it was just going over and over and over again as well it well. It was like reliving this same couple of moments of frustrated confusion. It was horrible, actually. So, yeah, I can see why people would do without them, if they could, certainly sometimes. It'd be nice to be able to fucking turn them off.

It's like the last thing you need is to be mentally ill on top of your being physically ill. Would you say your favourite kind of dream then is more of an ordered quite normal dream like not not particularly left field or anything just i don't hate dreams but i think i'd i'd hate them more if i remembered them like for example if i wake up in the morning and i've had like a bad dream i'm not gonna fucking write that down yeah i mean i'm just i'm just gonna be like yeah let's just forget that one and then i do i

can't actually tell you really anything particularly detailed about any of this stuff because even you know even when i had covid i had these these awful nightmares i know i had these terrible i can't really remember even like i said what it was about you know i can remember like very very loose snippets but i just it's kind of gone and i should know because i spent hours and hours it felt like it going around in circles with it. I'm not one of these people who wants to fly in dreams or lucid dream or, I don't know, have sex with supermodels or whatever people want to try and do in dreams.

A lot of people talk about this as if, oh, I've taught myself to do whatever I want. I'm like, okay. I don't look forward to dreaming, I guess. I feel like it's not particularly restful if you end up lucid dreaming all the time. Yeah, but we already have to be in charge of what we're doing in the waking hours. I feel like sleep should be a bit of a time off. Just let your brain go about its nonsense and do whatever it wants.

Exactly. I like the idea of curating it a bit or at least having control over it so you're not upset or scared. But I don't know, I feel like it's almost like having a general anaesthetic sleeping a little bit. Like, you know, it's happening to you, but you don't know it, you know. There's a few of the anaesthetics which are quite scary. Like when I had my wisdom teeth taken out, I had this anaesthetic

that you're awake for the whole thing, but you don't remember it. It's like one of these sort of, I can't remember what it's called, but it's a specific type of anesthetic where they still want you to, you know, they don't want you to be completely like asleep. Yeah. But you wouldn't remember any of it. And I feel like that's a lot of what dreaming is like. But it's a terrifying thought, isn't it?

That you might remember someone, you know, pulling your tooth out or whatever. Yeah. I have a friend who swears he had surgery and he swears he woke up in the middle of it and was conscious and i'm i'm pretty sure he was just dreaming it he had a dream because obviously that was what was on his mind but he he's just like no no i woke up i remembered what was going on sort of thing but i've never really thought about if people dream under like because i've never had a general anesthetic. Do you know if you do still have dreams under it?

I don't really remember very much at all. You know, I remember them like counting down. It's like count down your head from like 100 and I was like 199 and then that was it. I was like gone. It was like one of those types of things. It's like that sometimes when you fall asleep, people usually have something reliably, not everyone, but someone usually has something reliably that knocks them off, I find.

Yeah. There's a couple of things that if I think about, if I start thinking about this thing, I guess it's like the counting sheep thing, right? If I start thinking of a chessboard and then any move on that chessboard and I'm asleep, I think it must be that part of my brain that just wants me to, like, is keyed in with, this is boring. I accidentally did that with Paul McCartney because...

I beg your pardon? My mum won tickets to go and see Paul McCartney. Does Alex know? She won tickets to go and see Paul McCartney at the Royal Albert Hall. And I went straight after work after a really long day. And I just fell asleep throughout the whole thing. I would wake up at the end of every song when people applauded and then I would fall asleep again.

And to this day, if I hear Paul McCartney, I'm just like nodding off. Oh my God. That's cute. It's like a hypnotic trigger. That's amazing. It's like you've been hypnotized. I've been conditioned, yeah. It's the same with Tony like you've been hypnotised. Been conditioned, yeah. It's the same with Tony Robinson because I used to have trouble sleeping as a child.

So I used to rent audio books from the library and it would always be Terry Pratchett books read by Tony Robinson. So he makes me go to sleep as well. That's good. He's got a very restful voice. Does. That makes sense. That does. I wish I had something like that. Good old Tony. Paul McCartney very restful voice. Does. That makes sense. That does. I wish I had something like that.

Good old Tony. Paul McCartney to go to sleep. Yeah. I tend to just do sort of like the meditative thing where I just imagine that I'm in a completely empty room. And if any thoughts try to come into my brain, I'm like, nope, I'm in an empty room. I'm not thinking about anything. And then eventually I do just go to sleep. That's boring compared to Paul McCartney.

I bet it can be a good thing if you do the like, you squeeze, like you tense your toes and then you release and then you tense your feet and release and you work all the way up. I've heard that can be a good thing. Yeah, I've tried that as well. That's pretty good. Oh, yeah, that's like a relaxation technique. So you sort of bring your

consciousness down to your to your toes and you try and relax every muscle in your body like working your way up one thing at a time yeah and you'll find that like it shakes out a lot of tension because you're always i don't know i'm always like i always sleep super weird as well like uncomfortably i find it difficult to get like a good comfortable position and then and wake up and i'm like twisted around like the exorcist or something you know but yeah i don't know about dreams if i want to remember them i guess i don't i guess generally i don't i'm happy not but i'm also just keen to to make sure they don't affect me yeah as well i don't want to don't want them to mess me up or make me behave in a way that is irrational.

Yeah, we've talked about this previously, like how people are affected by their dreams in the sense that they might get angry at their partner or they might get angry at a friend because they dreamt that they did something awful. And it's just, it's so bizarre how it affects, like, I don't know, our perception of them. I think it's all very subconscious too. I think some people genuinely do get angry about people who have done something in their dream. Like you cheated on me in your dream.

And it's like, as soon as you think about that, it just falls apart though, doesn't it? Like a dream, I guess. Where's like, I got wound up yesterday because I was walking to the cinema and on the way I bought a bag of hamster food. And then there was a sign on the cinema door that said, you can't bring food in.

And I got this, you know, when you just have an argument in your head I had this daydream about them trying to take my hamster food away and me being like that's ridiculous it's hamster food I'm not gonna sit there and eat these biscuits and peanuts during the cinema and I was like why am I getting into this argument in my head that's just making me really grumpy for no reason it's not even happened it's not going to happen i feel like dreams can sometimes just be a big extension of of that i think i think that is part of who we are i'm not an expert on this sort of stuff at all or i'm just a sort of casual observer but i feel like we as humans have this higher brain capacity to envisage these scenarios,

partly to protect us or make us prepared for if that were to happen. You know, you've played that scenario through in your head. It doesn't sound like it really was very helpful. But if it did happen, if someone was like, you can't bring that hamster food in here, you'd be like, this is hamster food. It's not for me. I'm not going to eat it. Where am I? I'm not going to fucking start chowing down a load of these like whatever they are

peanuts or whatever whatever hamsters eat what do they eat like bits of lettuce i don't know lots of different seeds and stuff they tend to have okay a little flat peas and corn and i don't know if dreams are necessarily extension of that but certainly they even now, even now, like they're weird, aren't they? It's nice. It's nice. They're just weird. Yeah. It's like a forgettable thing about humans.

Humans. Humans. Humans. We will analyze humans. Beam up Lewis and examine his dream. There is a thing, though, where these sort of daydreams, they relate to your conscience in a way so you think of these arguments that you'd have and i think there's a a thing where people might think of like a really terrible thing like oh there's someone standing at the edge of a cliff

over there what if i kick them off and you your brain would never act on it but these thoughts are there so that you think no that's a terrible thing to do. Why would I do that? And I don't know, that is like a normal thing. You're right. It's that part, isn't it? It's the call of the void as well, isn't it? Yeah. And it's like, what would happen if I just fucking jumped off right now? Or, you know, when you're driving a car, you're like, what would happen if I just fucking drove off the road?

You know, you get these stupid things that you you're not gonna do but your brain just goes there yeah it's like literally anytime i'm holding a baby my brain's like what a lovely baby what a shame if i dropped them and i'm like no why would you think this yeah yeah your brain does go there i have to put my phone in my pocket anytime i go across a bridge because it's just constantly like what if you threw your phone off? And I'm like, that would be so stupid. And I'm like, yeah, but what if you did it? Just do it.

I find that that is constant. Like, you know, I'm on a bus and I'm like, oh, what happens if a guy came in with a gun onto this bus and I had to escape out the window? And I was like, you go through these stupid scenarios in your hand that just stress you stress you out for no reason I think I do that but it's mostly what if I suddenly really thought I was gonna shit myself what would I do I don't know if it just comes from having IBS so I'm always planning where the nearest toilet is and the thing

is I think that triggers it as well because then it's anxiety of like oh geez i hope i don't need to now but what would i do if i did yeah i should probably prepare for something more serious like an attack i mean that's pretty serious i guess the thing is i i feel like that a lot too like i I'm only minutes away from shitting myself in public, right? You know, I'm in the middle of town and I suddenly really need to poo and I'm like, oh, where am I going to go? And there's like, I've never actually shit myself in public, but I know it's only a matter of time. And if I was unlucky, if I was unlucky, it would have happened a lot more.

The chances of shitting yourself are never zero. You're not alone, Bryony. See, the chances of it would have happened a lot more. The chances of shitting yourself are never zero. You're not alone, Bryony. See, the chances of it happening would be a lot higher if you didn't have these thoughts. This is true. All humans, I guess, are moments away from shitting themselves in public. Yeah. That's what you've got to think. Even like Bob Geldof and, you know, President Obama,

all these people, they're like us. The Queen. It's like Alex got bought for his birthday, he got bought tickets for a hot air balloon ride and I had to say no because I just kept on thinking, what if I'm like however many feet in the air and I suddenly really need to go and I'm in a basket with 12 people. What do you do?

I see. So he ended up going with his sister instead. Aww. They're not that good. You don't even miss out. Yeah, you're very cramped in a hot air balloon. I've been in one and, God, there's so many people in that little basket.

Oh, so I could have blamed it on someone else. If you shit yourself in that basket, you're in trouble. I don't think that's the reason, though. I don't think that it's so cramped that it's going to squeeze you that hard. That's not what I meant, but that's another issue. It's so cramped that if it had have happened, I could have just turned around to the person behind me and been like,

did you just put shit in my pants? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're that close. You could have done that, actually. Did you just? I can't believe it. I can't believe you've done this. Throw them off.

That probably would have been another thing. I would have worried about pushing someone out the basket as well. Well, that's just another thing I'm now worried about, shitting myself in a hot air balloon. Thank you, Briony. I didn't need that, but now I have it. New fear unlocked. It's like when you're doing an escape room or something.

And you shoot yourself. They let you out pretty quick. It's my gamer plan. I think my body's pretty good. Every time I go on stage, I feel like I'm scared beforehand and I need to poo. Like almost every time I'm on stage, I feel like I'm scared beforehand and I need to poo. Like almost every time I'm on stage at any point. So I think if I was going in a hot air balloon, I would be able to poo before the ride.

Do you know what I mean? Yeah. This isn't the IBS podcast. Sorry. Milestones aren't for looking back. They remind us to keep moving forward. To turn what we've done into what we can do. Turning everyday necessities into electrifying possibilities.

Turning a new vehicle into the new standard. Introducing the first ever Mazda CX-70. Our largest two-row SUV. Available as a mild hybrid inline six turbo or as a plug-in hybrid. Crafted to move every part of you. FanDuel Casino's exclusive live dealer studio has your chance at the number one feeling, winning. Which beats even the 27th best feeling, saying I do. Who wants this last parachute?

I do. Enjoy the number one feeling, winning, in an exciting live dealer studio, exclusively on FanDuel Casino, where winning is undefeated. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca.

Please play responsibly. Oh yeah, should we get back on track? Should we hear your dream? Because you said you wrote one down for us. Yeah. It doesn't make any sense oh they never do okay so in my dream i had a phone call so it starts with a phone call of asking me if i was coming to this thing now that happens to me quite often people say to me lewis you coming to this thing and i'm i don't know whether that means immediately that i've i've forgotten about it do you mean yeah because then how what do you say to that because i don't want to say what thing

because it might be something that you know it's like oh it's it's my birthday party that i invite you to or you know duh and i'll be like oh no i don't have a present do you mean or it might be some i don't know like even like this podcast recording you know some i will have just forgotten because i constantly do this. I've got a Google Calendar and stuff and I'm organised, but I still get people occasionally asking me, are you coming to this thing? And so it put me on edge.

It was someone, I don't even know who on the phone, but it was at the local coffee shop. And that was all the information I got. And this was in somewhere where I don't live. I think it was like, it felt like an American, like an LA. It was sunny. It was nice, which is obviously not what we've had in the UK for the last nine months. So I'm instantly thinking, am I myself? Sometimes when you're in a dream, you're disjointed and you're sort of playing someone else. Because we do this a lot, right? In terms of video games, we get into other characters or we role play or we

we watch tv and we put ourselves in the minds or bodies of these characters especially in books too you're you know you're you're reading a book and you're trying to get into the into this character so that's the other thing about dreams like i'm never quite sure whether or not i'm actually me but in this case i assume i was and i went to this coffee shop and ben's there of course so obviously someone i hang out with every day but he wasn't ben he was like a cool version of ben he was like cool ben the cooler ben he was like leaning against the wall of the coffee shop in like a fancy um long trench coat and smoking and occasionally people were like asking him for autographs it turned out that this was a reveal

event for a new card game okay like imagine the gathering i guess like type card game and ben was obviously i don't know a celebrity in this card game in this universe i was thinking of i wrote down the name of the card game was called a quilly, which doesn't sound very good. But they had like one big table in this coffee shop with all of like, I've been to a lot of these types of events where they rent out a place and they put computers in there or they get some tables with the game on. You know, you go to like an event like Comic-Con or whatever and people are showing off their board game.

Yeah. And they have a few tables with their board game on it. It had one big table, and it had these cards on it. And there was no one else there, really. It was just an ordinary coffee shop. And this is the point at which the dream went a bit weird. This coffee place was a Costa, like a normal Costa coffee place, except everyone had set up their own franchised coffee shop on each table.

set up their own franchised coffee shop on each table right and you could go and get like a very weird specific like shortcake coffee from this specific woman who was running her own business it's like the gig economy but the thing is these coffee shops all functioned like mobile idle games so when i got to this fucking shortcake coffee i asked for it and like a little timer started counting down it was like 14 minutes 59 so i'd have to wait for the coffee amazing and i could see there were like other timers like this one was like 48 hours and he he only had like half of his coffee restaurant built yet he was still like getting cups and stuff do you know i mean it went sideways it didn't have any coherence at that point and it went into like weird weird land so i looked around and they

finished the reveal event and everyone had left and they pushed the big table to one side but they kept all of these cards on it and they were just they just left it there in the coffee shop so i thought oh these cards might be worth something one day. So I went around gathering them all up like some scavenger. Like a little loot goblin. Like a little loot goblin. And I was like snatching up all of the cards. Then I woke up and that was it.

That's all I have what was uh what was cool ben doing all this time i didn't see cool ben again no oh he's too he's too cool he's too cool that's all i got it was short and weird it just i don't know like it just it was so i don't even know where to begin like trying to unpack stuff because i don't particularly play any of these mobile games i know all of them yeah i know how they work i guess like in my mind i'm just trying to put together the idea of like people running their own businesses but it just being this artificial or maybe it's fun maybe people enjoy running their own coffee shop in a coffee shop it almost sounds like an episode of the apprentice where they've had to go off and make their own coffee franchise and

yeah they never act like normal human beings no they don't they don't apprentice is a wild ride no they act completely irrationally and have this this terrible idea because they in their specific life or family have had an experience where they, in their specific life or family, have had an experience where they particularly enjoyed this one thing. It might be like, oh, Wattleberry Jam. Everyone knows about Wattleberry Jam. My family in our village all love Wattleberry Jam, so surely everyone's heard of it.

And they're not going to be completely weirded out when I suggest Wattleberry Jam jam tart uh you know as the next big thing but no no one's ever heard of that it's just you and everyone else now thinks you're weird oh my gosh i can't believe you're gonna crash the aquila market yeah are you planning on selling off all the cards super expensive keeping some of of them back? I don't know. I don't know what I was thinking. I think I just assumed that in my mind, like, I just became very greedy. I was like, oh, yeah.

Something about, like, originals. I just, in my mind, it was like, you know, like, the Superman comics or number one or whatever are worth a lot more. Yeah. To the point where you start making more of those. You just start making number one of this, number one of this, number one or whatever are worth a lot more yeah yeah to the point where you start making more of those you just start making number one of this number one of this number one and you never do a number two every comic is something number one right because it sells more because people collect it because they want to have the number one because they know that comic number one is worth more yeah in the same way with collectible cards, what used to be a kind of collectible card game has become a parasite on the sort of investment-y loot industry, right?

Big card game manufacturers, especially in America, now lean into the idea that opening a pack of cards is like a loot box. It's like a lottery ticket right you might find in your pack of baseball cards the one card that has a lock of you know whatever baseball i can't even name a single baseball man or woman baby ruth was baby ruth a baseball baby sure it's got a lock of baby ruth's hair signed by baby ruth in the card they actually make these cards that are golden tickets right and it never used to be like that it used to be yeah there was a collection there were 52 cards it was randomized and you had to kind of collect more you traded them with other people but what they've realized now is that they can sell more if they can make it gambling and so that's happened in digital

card games sure it's happened in real card games, to the point where it's kind of evil and shouldn't be allowed. But it's a thing that we just experience. And so I think in my mind, I'm a suckerdin as well, right? Like I believe that the first edition will be worth something. But weirdly, like actually it's not necessarily that. Like you'd be surprised what people put value on. So for example, like Pokemon, right? Barry bought this big sheet of uncut Pokemon cards. Yeah. that like you'd be surprised what people put value on so for example like pokemon right barry bought

this um big sheet of uncut pokemon cards yeah you've seen it in the office i have seen it it's like i don't know 50 shinies from second edition or whatever and they gave these cards away and it seems like it would be a pretty rare thing right but it isn't i mean it's worth good money but it's not worth a lot even though it's a pretty unusual item. You see this too with movie props and movie things. Sometimes a prop from the original movie will be worth a huge amount of money, but the original script won't be or something like this. And I guess it's worth what people will pay for it at the end of the day.

But I think that you see some games that are clearly much rarer than pokemon be worth nothing at all yeah and others others be worth a huge amount because there's a collector's market my parents bought like a um a stamp set of the millennium you know a collectible millennium stamp set but of course it's worth nothing because everyone bought the collectible millennium stamp set thinking it would be worth something. And they made a hundred thousand off of them. Whereas actually the year after the 2001 stamp sale or whatever, he made fuck all.

No one bought it. And it's actually worth quite a bit now. Do you know what I mean? Because stamp collectors actually want, they can get that fucking Millennium one from any old fucker. Whereas the newer one is, which wasn't printed as much it's it's odd that that somehow has more value it's like the beanie baby thing you know yeah i had so many so many it was like a mania everyone was like beanie babies were changing ads for hundreds of pounds um and now they're obviously absolutely

none of them worth fuck all nope don't i it. Or maybe they're worth something nowadays. I don't think they are. But it's very strange, isn't it? I'm not saying the Pokemon card market's going to crash, but it is odd. Yeah, I think a lot of the time it's very specific ones that end up becoming rare with that sort of thing. Say with the Beanie Babies, there are a couple of really rare bears,

whereas all of the other just junk Beanie babies, nobody cares about like at all. And very few people care about the very special bears either. And it's the same with Pokemon cards like Charizard. Everyone wants a Charizard, but like give me a, I don't know, an Ivysaur. It's like, oh, I don't really care about that. Yeah. What's your favorite Pokemon? Mine is Totodile from Gen 2.

Totodile? Totodile. I'm going to have to look that one up. He's a very sweet little crocodile boy. Totodile. Mine's Wattleberry. Wattleberry. He's a posh little boy with a top hat.

Oh. Wattleberry. Wattleberry. Bidoof reminds me of Jerry, so he's my favourite. Bidoof is a very good choice. Totodile is an overly happy cartoon crocodile. He is, and I love him. See, that's the thing as well.

I would happily collect every Totodile Pokemon card, and it's like Harry with his Mr. Mime Pokemon cards. I think everyone has their favorite and people might monopolize on that. They all be like, oh, everyone loves Pikachu. A lot of people's favorite Pokemon is Pikachu. Pikachu cards are very expensive. Yeah. Luckily, not as many people know Totodile.

Totodile's a good one to collect. You should collect Totodile. He's a big jaw Pokemon. That's what he's called. Yeah. I love him. I've had Nalzi send me a few Totodile's a good one to collect. You should collect Totodile. He's a big jaw Pokemon. That's what he's called. Yeah. I love him. I've had Nalzi send me a few Totodile cards. I'd definitely be up for collecting more.

Bidoof Briny is plump mouse Pokemon. Aww. It's very strange. He does have a very good booty. He does. Plump mouse. Very good booty. Very plump.

This reminded me of, there's this ongoing thing in my family about this board game that it must be about 30 years old now that my dad got given for christmas one year called legend of zegor it's like a ian livingstone board game and it's still sealed and my parents won't let me open it and i've been asking to play this game for years at first my parents were convinced that it had a vhs and i was like it doesn't have a vhs we can play this and they're like oh no no no like they just leave it just say and i'm like please let me have this game i want to play it so bad i would literally just go into my parents room sometime and just open the cupboard and look at it and want to play it it was just on the top shelf of the cupboard it got to the point where i was like maybe i'll just buy myself one but it's like 300 pounds oh god am i pleased parents oh it's actually worth it is it it's worth money

well i think i could probably get it cheaper used but if it was a still sealed one i was saying can i sell the sealed one and buy an opened one odd game based on the RPG-like mechanics of the fighting fantasy books with exploration dungeon crawling of a game called Dungeon. The game was not much of a success in large part because it came out a bit too late to benefit from any HeroQuest hype. And no one's parents would let them open it. It was like a post-HeroQuest fighting fantasy-based board game. How odd. That sounds fun.

Yeah. It does sound fun, doesn't it? Thank you, Kirsty. Yeah. It does sound fun. Oh, my gosh. Tell your parents I want to play it too. Why?

So are your parents keeping it in case one day it's worth £300, which is now? Why have they not sold it? I don't know why they won't let me open it. Is it a family heirloom now? will they deny it when they eventually have grandchildren will they deny them to play as well is this the idea to torture successive generations of turners they have grandchildren they still still won't let me open it got to the point where i started looking up because it has like i think it's

meant to have like 200 voice acted phrases in this battery operated game sort of thing and it got to the point where i was looking up youtube videos just to hear the voice because i'd been denied for so long i was like what does zaygor sound like it has an electronic voice it must be one that's kind of automatic or is it is it like i guess it must be fixed right because it's from i guess the 90s 1993 i don't know has it got a tape it has two goblins two orcs two zombies and three skeletons a troll two ogres two chaos champions and a hell horn wow this is it's got a lot of pieces it has got like 300 pieces although most of them are equipment tiles and torch tokens and things i think that's why my parents could never be bothered

to get it out because they they just didn't like board games that were a lot of setting up and i think they thought you know we're just gonna spend ages setting it up and then you'll get bored and you'd want to go and do something else and i was always like no well it's actually a very low complexity it's only one out of five complexity rating well 1.7 out of 5 so so that doesn't seem like very high that's that's super light as it goes yeah well there you go i found a used one a used one for 140 pounds and this is sealed oh my god oh no i mean our one is sealed. So it must be that much more for the plastic wrapping. Double the price. Premium plastic. I think these things should be worth more as collectibles,

partly because it feels like it would be an incredible faff to fake one of these, right? I just feel like so much art and even Pokemon cards, right, are super easy to just create a counterfeit yeah yeah it's just a piece of fucking card with some foil on it like people are counterfeiting bank notes and shit do you know i mean like they're worth way less than a fucking pokemon card i mean if you're going to do that much effort to counterfeit like a ten dollar bill i'm just saying i like the idea of collectibles being more easily authenticated i've watched i watched a lot of

stuff and there's always like people art frauds and so hard for these guys to authenticate them in in some cases you know wasn't there a pair of like queen victoria's bloomers that sold for like thousands of pounds and i'm like firstly why would you want that and secondly how do you know that they're specifically her bloomers yeah i do remember that did she sew her name in the label i feel like the the the fakers you know all the knockoff people in india and china or wherever are not making knockoffs of victoria's bloomers though are they like that's true yeah they're focusing on more important factories dedicated to them pumping out the bloomers that doesn't like cross their mind so i think that to me is fine in a sense but yeah who

is where are you putting that you keep it in your wardrobe in a drawer in the lounge are you framing them do they get dusty what about moths i don't know it's complicated like i want to buy stuff that collects all like barry's pokemon because it's a good one it's like a thing that goes on the wall you know you have like a uv bit of filter on it so it doesn't get all washed out in the light the other thing is people are always finding like ming vases in their kitchen or whatever it's like oh yeah this is i usually let the cat poo in this and it's like oh it's now worth a hundred thousand pounds that always happens as well there's so much that is so specific you know it all turns out that another type of vase made exactly the same time is just as

rare but worth nothing it's very weird what's what's worth stuff it is it's really odd what do you want to collect what were you going to buy from the antiques road show oh god oh i always liked when they would buy little silver boxes but i would have no use for it whatsoever i used to watch bargain hunt with my parents and then when i went to university and i was homesick i would put on bargain hunt and i used to like when they would get the little like squishy eye telescope thing and they'd shove it in their eye and they'd look at the markings on silver boxes and be like oh yes it's birmingham and in 1653 or whatever and i i don't know why that amused me so much but yeah i love that i would just collect all the old jewelry like a dragon i'd hoard it all

all the ugly brooches and the big old like amber pendants and stuff just like this is mine now would you sleep on top of it yeah what how old though are we talking honestly most of the stuff probably not that old i i i would probably just collect it for the sake of collecting it rather than for the value of it just because it's pretty and sparkly i i'd like to think i would collect like some sort of coins or something i don't own a single collectible coin so i just i just daydream about collecting things and then i'm too daunted to actually buy anything of value i don't i think it's because i think i might lose it or i have to carry it around i'm scared to have a collection of things the things i actually end up with collections of

is things that i've been given like i tend to be given or pick up a collection of things. The things I actually end up with collections of is things that I've been given. Like I tend to be given or pick up a lot of pin badges at events or off games or off gifts. And I've always put them in an envelope and I've actually like built up this vast amount of pin badges that I've been given now, which I kind of feel like I want to give them all away.

But I don't know. I don't know how now. I've sort of accidentally started collecting something that I wasn't intending to collect yeah i have a plan to because i love pin badges but because i'm afraid that they're going to fall off of clothing or bags or whatever i want to get like a big quilt and put it on the wall and put them all on there so i can sort of display them so they're not hidden away but they're not in danger a quilt that's a good idea oh no you've got to put them in a book or something you know in a box under the stairs you can get they often do like bags that have a clear panel on them so you can just put the pin badges on them and they won't fall off oh they're quite

good too i reckon you could put them in like a there's probably like a frame with holes in it you know yeah yeah i have like a badge collection and it's got all the old ones like um were you ever in the tufty club they were like a thing when i was in primary school and they would teach you how to cross the road oh i've never heard of it i've never heard of it no i had just badges from like when i had a charlie chalk birthday the beef eater and all of this stuff. Oh my God. All these badges that I got given throughout all of my life and they're so completely no value to them whatsoever

other than for me, but yeah, I do love them. Honestly, same. The history of the Tufty Club. Ah, here we go. 1953, Tufty Fluffy Tail created. And it's a picture of a squirrel wearing yellow pants, a blue blazer, and he's kind of crouching in a position where he sort of looks like he's about to take a shit. He's kind of squatting.

Maybe he's got IBS and he's been caught out. Yeah, hopefully he's not in public. Yeah. 1962, more than 60,000 children join the Tufty Club, which is expanded to include older children. 1966, 2,000 Tufty Clubs. 1993, he was restyled and modernised to bring him up to date with the 1990s. They gave him a backwards cap. Yeah, kind of.

And a skateboard. He's got like a cool shirt which has tea on it. And he's got like, he looks like a t on it and he's got like he looks like a 90s cartoon character i guess that's the era i would have joined it's cool tufty like cool ben but cool tufty big old trench coat on i've never heard of it her royal highness princess princess michael of kent who is princess mich? Is that a person? I've no idea. It's one of the lesser known royal members, I guess. She became the president of the Tufty Club and updated his image as well. A long history. The latest bit of Tufty news is from 2007, so a while ago. He is about

70 years old now, so maybe he's like retired. It's prime collectible phase now, right? All of those badges. That's it. The highly sought right all of those badges that's it the highly sought after there are going to be forgeries everywhere well no though because we've never heard of it that's the thing i reckon blue peter badges are probably worth a bunch right they must be like the old the old ones oh no they give those out to anyone these days they do but my my dad once uh was working for one of the presenters of blue peter he was doing a roof and he was up in the loft and he found a box full of blue peter badges that she'd obviously nicked from the studio okay so he just took one he was like oh thanks dad he stole it. Yeah, he did. From a Blue Prince Procedure presenters attic.

Yeah, he did. I don't think that's allowed. That's like you should have a Blue Peter badge removed for being a thief. Sorry, Dad's going to prison. Dad's going to prison. I'm so sorry. But weren't they for different things, like the Blue Peter badge for art and stuff? So maybe there was one for thievery.

Yeah, maybe. They were all different colors there was like the green one for for doing nature things and the blue one for doing something else and the white one with the blue ship was the regular one that was the one that my dad found that was for doing crime that was the crime badge and the gold one if you do something really special i bet they're worth a fortune. Maybe if he just waited, if he just waited and finished the roof and done a nice job, he would have gotten a gold badge. Yeah, she would have just given one. Do you think that's why?

I mean, she probably nicked them to begin with, to be honest. What are you saying? Because she stole them? Yeah, that's fine. He's like Omar from The Wire. He can't get in trouble because he was already stealing from thieves exactly i reckon she continually bumped into children who were like oh i recognize you from blue peter oh yeah she probably handed them out and she probably gave them to people you know as a nice thing dad how could you that was one less child who got one well no no because

i got it in the end so she gave the work to all of the community and there was just little timmy at the end and she was like rummaging around in the back like i'm sorry little timmy there's none left he gave it to you why did you deserve it what have you done i didn't you stole it? What have you done? I didn't. You stole it from him. No, I didn't steal it. He gave it to me. I was handling stolen goods. Yeah, to keep quiet. Now you've broken that promise. He's going to take it away again.

Well, it ended up breaking, if that's any consolation. It was rubbish. It was well loved. I'm sure we could get that mended. Probably. Oh, my poor Blue Peter badge. I think I've got a blue peter badge in there somewhere but it wasn't mine did you steal it i think it was my sister so maybe

i did maybe this is the only way you get them now they're hot property they are is blue peter sleeping going probably in some in some way it was very wholesome it needs to be rebooted that's what they're doing with everything these days it's a fucking beavers and butthead movie coming out so yeah i saw that oh god if they can reboot that they can reboot blue peter they did do up the blue peter tune they made like a i don't know like a dubstep version of it or something and i was i remember catching it on tv when i was babysitting and i was just like the heck this isn't my blue peter stop step it might have stopped not long after that i can't imagine why yeah apparently it's still going oh damn it's like the longest running british tv show or something right or it always used to be yeah it's very

popular it's had 5 000 editions or episodes or something oh geez i already told that story because i thought it had ended. Now they're going to be on my case. I'm going to have to repeat knocking on the door. They're going to send a load of red badge holders to come and put you down. Yeah, they'll take you to Blue Peter HQ and make you ride on an elephant or something. I don't know what they do. Discipline you.

Don't they every year when they put the tortoises in a box so that they can hibernate, you're going to be in there this year? Oh, no. Oh, shit. You're going to be in there this year. Oh, no. Oh, shit. You're going to be working in the Blue Peter Garden. Maybe I'll get a green badge for that, but probably not. I don't think I'm allowed any more badges. Just steal one.

Steal one, yeah? Well, I feel like we didn't really analyse your dream at all, but hopefully you feel okay. Do you feel comforted at all? Was that the point? Yeah. I had a nice chat. You know, we should go and do our own bargain hunt, Bryony.

We should go and look for little silver boxes. That is such a good idea. You know, find some pin badges. Kirstie can go around stealing things whilst we cover for her. Perfect. Yeah. Like Oliver Twist, like a little criminal gang of orphans. Going, oh, is that a silver box, me lad?

Hallmark Birmingham. A pocket hat. Well, thank you so much for coming and talking to us and telling us about your dream as well. It's a pleasure. Thank you for having me. Until next time, everyone time everyone bye bye for now