Triforce! - Triforce! Mailbag Special #50: The Year of New Experiences

Episode Date: February 19, 2025

Triforce Mailbag Special 50! It's the year of new experiences when Flax discovers a new love for Marmite then tells some boring story about some boring place in a boring sport (I wasn't listening) and we talk about weird phobias! 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

Pickaxe. Ah, gentlemen, we are here once again for the mailbag. Are you guys ready? I am. I'm always ready. All right. I have composed another intro song for the mailbag. I did it this morning.

Let me know what you guys think. All right. Well, we'll we'll cue it up as usual. It's a minute long. Are you ready? Yeah. Oh, my God. All right. Three, two, one play. Oh, my God. Mailbag is here. Once again. Man, how are you doing this? Oh my god. Man, how are you doing this?

Oh, flex. How many recreational drugs are you taking before you compose these beats? these beats. This is incredible. Oh, that was, that's my main thing. You've done it again. Okay. So did you record the vocals this morning for that? I did it all this morning. Yeah.

Yeah. But I will say it's 10 o'clock in the morning guys. If you've, some people are just that's first thing in the morning. That's like a chart topping song. Yeah. Like this is how Gary Barlow did it time after time after time. So if anyone's interested, I'm just using something called band lab, which is like a free thing you sign up for.

But yeah, it's got it's got all little synths and beat makers and you can just record audio in audacity and drag it straight in. And if you want, if you're clever and you've got instruments and you can play them, you can plug those in as well. So that's what I just, I love mucking about and making beats and stuff. It's fun. Yeah, that's good. And now I've got an excuse to make stupid mailbag songs. I'm going to keep doing it. Nice. So shall we start with the mail? It's going to start turning into like an hour long full album of mailbag nonsense though. I don't think so. Yeah.

I'll get you in touch with Sparkles. He'll set you up with like a record deal. Oh, of course. Yeah, of course. All right. This is from a trainee teacher. I'm a trainee teacher and your comments about teaching and teachers were really appreciated in the last mailbag.

Teaching is a really hard job even for trainees. Having students with special educational needs is a massive part of learning how to teach, with inclusion having these students in the mainstream often being the best option. And whilst these students can be really trying, you can break through and receive fantastic results from them. In my first school I had a student in my class with severe ADHD and a big motivation for me was working alongside them to think of new strategies to keep them engaged and focus on tasks, which led to some really fun and innovative teaching moments. Trainees are expected to work in school for free for a majority of their teaching

year. Very luckily, I teach a subject that receives a bursary, but those teaching history receive nothing. So it's especially hard for them. Some funny stories from my trainee side of teaching. I used to work with a teacher who told his students he'd gotten another member of staff pregnant when she went on maternity leave. The students proceeded to spread the room all around the school. He's done this multiple times. The same teacher had students bring in cake on their birthday just for him. My last name

is quite odd and I've been accidentally called Mr Arouse a few times. Great name for a porn star, terrible for teaching teenagers. Absolutely. I used to work for a Mr Hunt. Fill in the nicknames here. Teaching is a really hard profession. So your nice comments are always encouraging. Thank you, trainee teacher. Follow up, follow up.

This is from C. I was listening to the podcast, namely episode 308, where you spoke about the issues faced in teachers of today. I used to have, used to have, an immense respect for teachers and the job they do. That was until I started a cleaning job in a secondary school. One day I walked into a classroom and saw written on the whiteboard, 18th century Edwardian Britain follows France, which is clearly two centuries out. Other things teachers seem to struggle with, how a bin works. The fact windows also close as well as open. This also applies to cupboards and drawers. Electrical sockets and lights have an off function. Toilets actually flush.

How a dustpan and brush works. And that the sink is not a giant used teabag receptacle. I clean the design technology department, which has a power shut off button in every classroom. Once I was in a classroom vacuuming when a teacher strode in and shut off the power. I looked at her and she said, oh, do you need the power on to Hoover? Fucking no. I'll just her and she said, Oh, do you need the power on to Hoover? Fucking no. I'll just make vacuum noises with my mouth. Anyway, teachers do an amazing commendable job, but they drive me bloody crazy. Well, sorry to hear that.

Yeah. God, that does sound like there's always going to be a bit of friction. If you're if you're if you're if you're doing a job that either supports or, you know, come, you know, comes comes across other professions or whatever, there's always going to be a little bit of us and them. I think that's just natural. I mean, certainly, sorry, Lewis. I don't think it's any different in any of the profession. If you're a cleaner, God bless you because I'm sure everyone else in every other office is exactly the same, including ours.

Well, we've had many mail bags about people cleaning hotel rooms and people cleaning at center parks and, and, and, and God bless all of you because I would not ever want to do that. No. I don't want to find a log of shit in a mug hidden under a bed. I mean, essentially the only time you notice that a cleaner's done that is working is when they haven't done their job. Yeah. Like essentially the ideal for a cleaner is that is when they haven't done their job. Yeah. Like essentially the ideal for a cleaner is that you don't even think about what they

do. You don't even notice. Yeah. So I think they are in many ways, if you're a cleaner and you listen to this, I'm sure most people cleaning stick a podcast on, God bless you. Thank you for your service. We are a family who notices cleanliness. We walk into a place and we'll notice if it's clean and we will say they've

done a really good job cleaning. So, you might not hear it all the time, but we've got your back. We're saying, we love that. We love the cleaning and the cleanliness for sure. And we notice it and we appreciate it as well. There you go. We gave a shout out to teachers last week. This week, cleaners. Hell yeah. Yeah, they should get one. They should get an even bigger shout out. I think it's even more, it's a teacher's important job. Don't get me wrong.

Cleaning even more so. Oh my God. Can you imagine? Well, a shout out to, absolutely shout out to my cleaner who I've, who I've had the same cleaner for, I'd say I think probably 12 or 13 years now. She does other things, of course, because that's not her only job, you know, does loads of other things. Honestly, multi-talented, and has set up her own little office, and was, it's so lovely,

honestly, to me. And was like, oh, can I, I need some new art for my office, can I have some of the ones that you've got lying around that seem to be doing anything? And I was like, absolutely, take whatever you want. And so, because it's almost honestly flattering. So she's got like a, it looks like a 12 year old boy's bedroom with Minecraft posters everywhere. A Minecraft pencil holder, and she's got a Minecraft notebook and stuff at her office. That's good. Now I think sometimes you do only notice that the cleaner has been... sometimes you get

immu... like in the office, certainly, it's always spick and span, right? But then sometimes things are broken and you're like, oh, flipping cleaners broken my mug or knocked this thing off, right? But that was probably my fault for, like, you know, leaving it just haphazardly perched around. So I never feel like an actual grudge about it or anything. Yeah. The cleaner we've got now, our old cleaner left, she was not very good. We're now realizing.

Like she was okay, but she did a bunch of stuff that was kind of bad. And in the end, I think we spoke about this, we had to let her go because she ruined the front of our oven. So then we got a new cleaner in and she is fantastic. She's really nice. She's excellent. She's always on time and she's just like, I gave her a Christmas tip and she came and tried to give it back. She was like, Oh no, no, no, don't tip me. I made her take the tip, but she's, she's that she's that kind of lady. So yeah, big, big fan of our cleaner. And she's from Lithuania. What about, what about bin men? Do you ever tip them at Christmas?

No, I don't know about that. Um, I don't. That's something I've never done. Maybe I should miss tippers for. I think about that. I'll do that. Because God bless those guys as well. I know it's a shitty job and it doesn't pay well and everything.

But where would we be without you? Yeah, because we would just be we would be like the time there was that garbage strike in London and they had all the garbage bags everywhere. Yeah. No thanks. With all the rats and all the shit everywhere. No thanks. It's the foxes is the big one around here. Yeah. So, incorrect language in a pirated movie.

On Mailbag episode 47, Perian mentions pirating movies, apologies, and then sometimes being in the incorrect language or not having subtitles. I had a similar experience in the past. When I was younger, my dad would sail the high seas and would burn DVDs for me and my sister to watch. I think that means he would pirate things. I thought it meant that he was a sailor, but no, I just realized what that means. One time we were flying for a family vacation and my dad and I decided to watch a Harry Potter movie on the laptop. Halfway through the film, a scene begins with a large snake slithering down a dark hallway. The voiceover of the scene began speaking in what I thought was the snake tongue from

the actual movie. Then the scene began and it turned out the movie my dad had acquired changed languages to Spanish halfway through. So we couldn't finish the film since neither of us can speak parcel tongue or Spanish. Unlucky Sam. Unlucky. Okay. So that's, I like that. but it is odd that it's happened. Partly. Do you

not think that one of you might have accidentally pressed a button that changed it? Cause sometimes they have multiple audio tracks. That does seem like that feels like it might've happened. Do you mean during a pause or something or like a little misclick? I've done that before. Oh yeah. All right. Here's a, here's one about estate agents being cunts. Are you ready, Lewis? Oh, good. Oh, my God. Very, very dear to your heart. Dear to Lewis's heart recently, but I'm sure dear to most of our hearts at some point, right? Indeed. Yeah.

This is from George. Just heard Lewis is starting to view houses to buy, and I wanted to warn him about the well-known fact that all estate agents are cunts. We spent nearly a year looking for a house and ended up seeing 20 from this one agency. They had a young estate agent about our age who initially was extremely friendly and relatable. What a fool I was! We eventually had an offer accepted on a house and began the proceedings of getting a survey done. Said survey found some signs of damp and recommended a specialist damp survey.

We scheduled it for the following week and the estate agent agreed to let them into the house but ran up a few days later to say they had to cancel. I rebooked and the same thing happened. On the third attempt, the estate agent told us that they hadn't shown up. He then proceeded to tell us the owners had told him that if we didn't finalise their sale in the next five days they would pull out and put it back on the market. At this point it was going to be nearly impossible to get everything done in time and the estate agent just kept piling on the pressure. We knew it was a scare tactic,

but we were young and naive and he took advantage of that. I ended up taking multiple days off work after several panic attacks and fits of stress-induced breakdowns. We managed to get everything in order. Our solicitor, who was incredible, Lewis, whatever you do, don't skimp on a solicitor, contacted their solicitor to arrange the date of exchange and it turns out the estate agent had fabricated the entire deadline so that he could get his commission for Christmas. Yeah. Absolute cunt. Nevertheless, we got our house, but it turned out the damp was worse than we could have imagined.

The light bulbs upstairs were full of water and there were mushrooms growing through the plaster on the kitchen ceiling. Oh, my God. Everything has been dealt with now and we love our home. But the whole thing was possibly the most harrowing experience I could imagine. They are known turd polishers, estate agents. They will try to sell you anything.

Sorry if you're an estate agent right now, but honestly, just get the fuck... No, no, not sorry. You know exactly what you're doing. Turn this off. Turn this podcast off right now. Yeah. If you're an estate agent, we've decided not to sell you this podcast. Uh, we've, we've presumptive for non-podcast.

I mean, there's some, some of them, some of them are all right. I actually have had a couple of systems from within who, uh, have just been normal, reasonable people, not pushy, you know, open to like, you know, feedback and criticism and or concerns or whatever. And they've been absolutely fine. But having said that, we've, we've, we've met loads of really awful ones as well. I think some of them are very, very mind gamesy, right?

They're just, they're trying to get them, they're trying to get as much money as possible. One said to us one time we were looking at, we were looking at buying a flat. Okay. We were looking at buying a two bedroom flat. This is before we had our first, uh, kid. Cause we thought if we have two bedroom, we could have a kid, you know, it's not, it's not ideal. It's, you know, but it's, it's perfectly fine, you know, to have a bedroom, have one child in there, you know, that we could, we can start a family easily sort of thing. So we were looking, we were,

we were in a one bedroom. It was like a one bedroom, but it was almost like a bed sit. And this, this was like our first sort of like, you know, house upgrade or whatever. We were looking at two bedroom flats. We looked at this one and this guy took us in and he took us into the first room and we thought, oh, okay, you know, this is fine. This is, this is clearly like, you know, like the the the spare room. And then, you know, we'll go in and see the bigger room. Takes us in the other room. It's even smaller than the first one.

And we're like, what's going on here? Is there not like like a master bedroom and then a smaller bedroom? And he's like, oh, yeah, these these ones are a bit small. But like what some people like to do is they get bunk beds. It was like in the master bedroom bunk beds. And he's like, yeah, it's like, OK, man, like, I'm not I'm not buying this place to turn it into like, like, you know, like, like do like a prison cosplay with bunk beds. Like, you know, what is with these rooms?

Like who? I don't understand. And he's just like, he just kept going on about, oh, you know, you could do this. You could you could have one of those beds that it comes out of like a wardrobe that you could pull down and stuff. It's just like, fuck you. You fucking live in this place. If, if, if, if you think that you can turn it into this gem or whatever, like, it's so frustrating.

There's, there's so fucking out of touch. It's like some of them, uh, it's, it's unbelievable bunk beds. To like provide like the bare minimum of information. The other thing about this place I went and saw was that it is grade two listed, right? But it's not, it doesn't say on the listing anywhere. And when we were walking around, the guy basically was like, I think this place speaks for itself. That's all he's saying. It sure does.

Can we leave now? You know, so very non-committal, never wanting to highlight anything that might be negative, so not saying anything as a result, which I mean, and kind of just being like, yeah, I don't know. We saw another place, this is when we were looking for a house. We saw a house and it was attached on both sides. You know, like this, it's fairly common in like England and in Jersey as well. You get houses that are like in like a row, right? They're attached on both sides, but these ones are, I guess they're semi detached because they're like attached fully on one side to another house and then attached

by garage on the other side. Right. I see. Right. Sure. But so what they've done is, what the previous owners had done is they converted the garage into like a little office, but it wasn't, it wasn't done properly. Like it wasn't properly insulated. It was like 10 degrees colder than the rest of the house when you went in there, like it felt like they hadn't put insulation or some, there's something weird about it, but, um, they had this huge backyard. It had like a fish pond in it. It had everything. Like it must've just taken years and years and years to get this,

this backyard. Like it was huge, this huge backyard. We were like, really like, Oh my God, look at the size of the backyard. It's insane. Whatever. But then as we looked around, looked around, looked around, was like, if we ever need anything done to the backyard, substantial, you know, like if we have to get earth or anything in, there's no access to it. Like you could not access the backyard except for going through the house. So you'd have to because they'd converted the garage, the garage used to be, you know, you used to be able to pass through it and then get into the back garden.

But because they converted it into like a part of the house, it's like a little studio or whatever. It would mean that if you ever wanted to do anything with your garden, you would have to lug everything through the front door of the house and then through like the kitchen or the living room or whatever to get into the backyard. And so we're like, that doesn't even make sense. Like, I don't know what they were thinking. So we met, we mentioned it to the estate agent and he's like, Oh, Oh, I

would have never really thought about that. It's like, no, of course you fucking haven't. Like you just, you know, you've just got a million houses listed and you're just desperately trying to sell them. But like they, they don't look at any details. Like there could, there's, there's probably like a dozen things wrong with most of these places. They never look like they just, they're just, all they want is commission.

Like I mean, to be fair, their job is to sell the house. Yeah. Not to, not to talk you out of selling the house. No, but you think that they would say to the people that are trying to sell it, like this doesn't make sense. Like it's not, it's. Right. Yeah.

But I mean, that's essentially what you're hiring. Well, what you're dealing with is a salesperson. That's it. That's all they are. They're not actually there to help the buyer. No, I know. Any more than if I'm selling you a piece of shit secondhand car. I just want to sell you the car and get the fuck out. Like, I don't like them because they're dishonest.

What they do for a living is inherently dishonest. But I'm not I'm not a fan of salesmen in general. No. Yeah, because they're generally not out to help you know, you do get some good ones. But anyone that's trying to sell you something is automatically selling you something for more than it's worth. That's the whole point. So you know they're lying to you right from the off. Speaking of salesmen, the first episode of The Apprentice 2025.

It begins. It begins. Oh, it was a bad one. They've changed it up a little bit though. Now, like the first task, they send them off straight away to do like the, uh, like the holiday tour thing. I don't know if you guys remember these, but I haven't watched it in years. So they off, they, so they went off to Austria and one team had to do like a, like a, an e-bike through the forest tour and another team had to do like a,

a slaying down a mountain to like tour, you know, and then it always ends like in like a brewery or like a winery or somewhere where they can sell stuff and get like a commission or whatever. But I can imagine it's just, I've started watching a new TV series as well. It's not new, but it's new to me. Yellowstone. Have you heard of it? I've heard of it. I haven't watched it. I've heard of it though. Kevin Costner, he's like a landowner. I don't know what fucking state it's in. They're all cowboys and stuff. And it's them clashing with like the city folk and property developers and the native people on the nearby reservation, all that kind of stuff.

We watched the first episode last night, me and Mrs. F. I don't allow estate agents in this town. Exactly, that kind of stuff. It's set in the set in the modern day, but, you know, it's not set in the past. It's genuinely really fun. But these are, these are, these are real manly dudes. Yeah. You know what I mean? That's why I'm watching it.

And this, I'm already feeling a little bit, you know, emasculated by the fact that these guys are like riding horses and looking cool with cowboy hats and sunglasses. Did you feel, did you feel limp and wet? Wet? Yeah. Yeah, like a noodle. Oh, I see. Little noodle-y.

I thought you meant was I getting turned on? No, no, no. Sorry. That was Mrs. Flats. I just felt a bit flimsy. And then there's a line, there's the woman in the show, she's the sister. This guy hits on her at a bar and they're chatting for a bit and she turns him down and she says to him, no offense, Ted, that's the guy's name, but you look like a soft fuck and walks away.

Oh my God. And I turned to Mrs. F. I said, I feel personally attacked. Have you ever had anyone say that to you before with a straight face? What? Ted, you're a soft fuck. Yeah. Well, I hope not.

I mean, it'd be Mrs. F wouldn't it? I'm not. I suppose. Yeah. Which would be even worse actually. Yeah, that would be. I think she would have left me if that were the case. Yeah. Oh, right. Right. No, but maybe you want to be here. Maybe someone likes a gentle fucking, you know, sometimes they don't want it hard all the time. I'm not a wild man. I'll say right now. Somebody out there has got to want to have a soft fuck. Well, I think that's, you know, it's most people. I mean, you know, it's you're not you're not having sex like a porn star.

Although people think they are. Come on. The people doing porn. I think most people think most people probably think they are. You're not a porn star. Calm down. All right. Anyway, here we go. Try for school intruder drills in UK schools. Some may say we don't have that over here. Apparently we do.

Oh, I have this is an email from someone who wants to remain anonymous. Anonymous, anonymous, anonymous. I'm just listening to mailbag 46 about the school intruder drills. We do in fact have these here. I've recently begun working in my daughter's infant school and on the first day I was going through some policies and safeguarding details. I was then told that the school do in fact practice intruder drills. I'd never noticed before, but outside each classroom above the door is a key and a whistle.

You are told to lock yourself in the nearest room, stay silent and hidden, then await a certain number of whistles for the all clear. They tell the children that an unknown dog is in the playground, so they have to keep safe. A lot of schools will have a similar practice. Now I've just checked and yeah, there's the secondary schools around here have the same thing. So I was not aware. Obviously, this was not a thing when I was at school. So it's also not something my kids have ever mentioned.

No, we never had anything like that either at school. We never had like intruder drills. I mean, we had like fire drills every once in a while, but that's about it. Yeah, we did have bomb threats called in quite often. Really? I think that, yeah. I mean, this was during the troubles and stuff, wasn't it? In the 80s. So because Bournemouth always hosted the Tory party conference and was a Tory stronghold, it was considered like a target.

And certainly when the Tory party conference was in town, there was a lot of extra security knocking about, a lot more police, a lot of shops got bomb threats called in. And I know that I was working with W.H. Smiths one time and someone had planted an incendiary device in the W.H. Smiths. Just, but they, you know, more often than not, they'd call it in. Yeah. It was more of a sort of threat, but yeah, it was weird. Anyway, I had a ton of emails about the proposed trip to Japan this summer for me and the fam.

They are really long and really detailed, so I will not be reading them out. I will be reading them and I really appreciate all the help and they look like some really good tips in there. But I'm going to read this one. So they're all just much too long to read out for the podcast. Anyway, this is from Tiny Cock Will. I went to Tokyo a few months ago. Here's some things.

Number one, don't tip anyone. At least not a tipping culture. 7-Eleven shops take cards. Eat everything. I regret not having certain things like weird black eggs and shit like that. Take the love you train into the mountains. Dead cheap and cracking views. Don't convert your pounds to yen in England or in the airport.

Do it in Japan. You'll get a lot more bang for your buck. And go to a Don Quixote shop. There's cool shit everywhere. Those are simple tips. Nice. Don Quixote, yeah, it's like a it's like a pound stop shop. It's just a huge it's just like a huge

the Japanese people actually do go there to get like cheap. It's like a pound land type type vibe. Nice. It's got so much crap in there and it's all very wacky. Yeah, it's huge. Really interesting. Yeah. Good, good tips huge. Really interesting. Yeah. Good tips. I don't know what that elevator one is, but that sounds fun. Yeah. I mean, we're going to have like...

We're going to have like... We're going to do Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka. You can do... If you're in Tokyo, Flax, there's a... I think it's called like Roppongi Hills or Roppongi Towers or something like that. It's a skyscraper, but if you, you can go up to the top, there's a big viewing deck at the very top. If you go up at night, it's amazing. You get like an incredible view of the city. Um, you like, just go like, just like go at like, if you're there in the summer, go at like seven o'clock at night so that you, you get like a bit of day. And then if you're up there long enough, you get like

nighttime as well. It's fantastic. That sounds great. I wonder if I can get cider over there. That's my only concern. I don't know. Almost certainly not. Unless you go to a specialist place or somewhere that is like, it won't be at local places,

but it will be at, you know, it's such an overlapping culture. You'll definitely be able to find somewhere that serves it, but it's not just going to be on the menu. No, I realize that. All right. This is from Adam. So it's such an overlapping culture. You'll definitely be able to find somewhere that serves it, but it's not just going to be. No, I realize. All right. This is from Adam. I worked in a cinema for two years and you would not believe some of the shit we used to find. I presume he means after the screening is finished. Yeah. This is a list. Number one, an iceberg lettuce with one bite taken out of it. A butt plug. A full uneaten cucumber at at a screening of Fifty Shades of Grey. A half-drunk pint of skimmed milk.

A homeless man sleeping behind one of the screens. A toothbrush. And insects. A man who owned a snake or some kind of reptile dropped his box of bugs so they were just insects loose. And a bottle of vomit. A bottle of vomit. Jesus Christ.

Probably movies are the worst for rubbish, apparently, because it's all young vomit. A bottle of vomit. Jesus Christ. Horror movies are the worst for rubbish, apparently, because it's all young people. A bottle of vomit? Yeah. Someone was obviously just sick in a bottle. I mean, somebody must have just brought it in like as a prank. No, I think someone probably was feeling sick in the theater and was sick into a bottle. It makes more sense, doesn't it?

Maybe. Yeah. Probably drunk. Maybe. Yeah. Oh, man. Fucking like, put plugs and stuff in the movie theater. Have we not learned?

Like, Peewee Herman got done for this. Like, a long time ago. You need to learn. It's not, this is not the way, you know? Do it at home. If you want to do that stuff, just do it at home. The privacy is your own home. All right, so what if, what if you don't have a home, not because you're homeless, but because you were

young and you can't go to your parents' house, you can't go to her parents' house. For a lot of people, this is a nice secluded place. Everyone else in there is doing the same thing. I'm just saying. Oh my God, man. That's why people do it. You would have to really find, I mean, it's not so bad nowadays, but to find like a movie that nobody wants to go see.

So you got the movie theater to yourself, but that would have been really hard to do that in like the nineties, for example, but there's not even a fucking projection. Imagine you're there at opening night for terminator two, trying to get your butt plugged in your fucking like front row seats. Sorry, sorry, sorry. I just need some privacy. I gotta get my butt plug in. Can you pass me that cucumber over there, please? As part of the theoretical, this is from Andrew. What do you say to people at 430am? I've had a

few early starts recently and seen a few people at 24 hour facilities and airports. When does good evening become good night become good morning? Should there be a phrase in between night and morn? What's the cutoff for these greetings? I think 430 is not territory. You're just nodding. You know, nobody wants to be talking at 430 in the morning. I don't think people are awake and chipper enough for a good morning. I don't think anybody would appreciate a good evening at that point. I think you're just nodding. I think you're just like you're you're you're making that sort of like you're almost like half smiling, nodding. And then you're done. Like, there's not much else to do at that time of of the day, I don't think.

I think I think it doesn't necessarily depend on the time of day as much as are you starting your work day or finishing your work? You'll be overlapping with people who are ending theirs at that time as well. But they will say, I finish at 4.30 in the morning. Yeah. Like if they have worked all night, they'll say, I work until 4.30. Yeah. Like I work overnight. I work till 4.30 a.m.

I think for most people, if you turn up somewhere at two or three, that's conceivably a time when people could still be out. I mean, 4.30 is morning. That's conceivably a time when people could still be out. Before 30 is morning. That's getting towards morning. I used to work nights and I remember when people would turn up at like five in the morning, you know, the people that worked in the bakery, people that worked in the deli and they'd start really early because they had to start baking bread or they had to start cutting meat and stuff like that. And we, all of us, cause we'd all, we all been up all night and we'd been working all night and stuff.

We were never like overly enthusiastic to see these people in the morning because we were fucking tired. And we just thought, Oh, you fucking day crew losers. Like, fuck you. We've been working all night. So, you know, we, it was just mostly like a nod or a grunt, but they, they were the same. They, like these fucking weird weirdos working all night. Like why don't they work during the day? Like normal people. They didn't want to talk to us either. So I always, I always hated working overnight. So it just fucks you up.

Totally does. It's not good for you either. I think long term it can like shave years off your life and stuff. No, it literally literally does. It fucks with your circadian rhythms and just not getting sunlight and not seeing daytime. Really bad. The sun is our God. I tell you what, I played a ton of Starcraft during that time though. I worked nights for a year to save up money and I managed to save up tons. But I would play Starcraft. Starcraft had just come out and I was in a clan and we had build orders and everything. And all of the guys in my clan were named after hip hop artists. So I had like Havoc, Prodigy in my clan.

I had a Method Man. Like it was insane. It was so much fun. I would just play Starcraft until like noon, go to bed, wake up at like 7pm, have something to eat, go to work at 10 and then get back home at like 7 a.m. rinse and repeat. I did that for like a whole year. It's nuts. Man, the golden years. Yeah, I would be able to do that now. I'd be dead. I think if I did that.

This is from Ryan. This is a weird way of eating food. When I was a child, I would eat mozzarella sticks in a very specific way. Anytime I would be given a chance to eat mozzarella sticks, I would wait until they cooled enough to stay cohesive while still able to stretch. Then I'd bite into it just enough to break the breading and swallow half the stick. But the cheese from the other half would stretch as a safety line back to my hand, which I would then use to pull the other half of the stick back up my throat and into my mouth. I'd do this again and again until the cheese broke and I have no other choice than to finish it. I have very fond memories of this, all involving a disgusted second party, usually family. Now I'll only do it in the privacy of my own home,

alone and isolated from a world that doesn't understand. Or why not go to the cinema, like other people seem to do? Just pick a movie, get your sticks and fucking away you go, man. You're gonna have the best time. You'll be in there with all the people shoving butt plugs up their butts and cucumbers and watching Fifty Shades of Grey. So great. Oh, grief.

I mean, like, it's fine. Just again, just, you do you. Find your own fun. Yeah. Find your own happy. Find your own innocent... Work it out. ...fun that isn't impacting other people.

Just keep it secret. Yes. Don't let anyone ever find out. Oh! Speaking of food, something crazy happened yesterday. Alright? This is bonkers. I have never liked Marmite.

Tried it yesterday for the first time in years, and I fucking love it. Yeah. You know why? It's the same reason why I, normally we have chocolate chip muffins. Okay. My kids just like chocolate chip muffins. We always get them. They love chocolate chip muffins. They didn't have any at the store. So I bought lemon muffins, which are pretty good and blueberry muffins because they're pretty good too.

And I thought muffins are muffin and these are all great flavors. It'd be fine. Get home. Kids are like, no, I don't want those muffins. They don't want lemon muffins. They don't want blueberry muffins. They only want the chocolate chip muffins. And I said to my wife, you know why? It's because we got mature taste buds. That's why. And that's exactly what's happened to you with Marmite. Your taste buds have matured to the point where you're ready to try something that you hated as a kid. I think when you're a kid, you just want really sweet stuff. And then as you get older and older, your taste buds change a bit. They mature. You're ready to try some new stuff. Interesting. You've reached a point where you're ready to try a new thing. Yeah. Well,

I mean, I tried to new stuff all the time. There's not much I don't like in all honesty. Okay. Well, Marmite was always something I couldn't stand. I was eating it out of the fucking jar. Well, if you like Marmite, let me expand uh, let me, uh, expand your mind a little bit. If you're ever looking for a snack, they do Marmite rice cakes and they're really nice. And probably not Marmite tortilla chips. Oh baby. Well, I just like it on a bit of bread.

Don't look until you try it. Flex. It's just so fucking umami. It's ridiculous. Oh God, it's so good. Lewis, are you alright? Yes. I'm trying to think why you would've changed your feelings about it. It's the taste buds.

They matured. I feel like I've kept on trying it and still hate it. His taste buds are... I have experienced a renaissance period. Was it with a very thin amount of it with butter or something, or was it the preparation? No, it was marmite straight out of the jar, and Mrs F had a little, like a flatbread, she had a little bit of butter on there and some marmite, and I was like, that's actually really good.

And then I dipped my little finger in it, took a big gob of it, and I thought, if I don't like this, I don't like Marmite. I went back for seconds. Loved it. Absolutely loved it. You know, this tale that you've just recounted to us just now is like a typical holiday tale, isn't it? You're in a good mood. You're ready to try new things or whatever.

You try new food and then you're hooked for life. You know, you come home and you're like, this is a new me. This is the year of new experiences. I mean, I got the air fryer. Yeah. Air fryer. Now you just got to combine your experiences. Get some Marmite in that air fryer. Oh baby. Oh my God. I'll just put the whole jar in. Put it on a stick and get it all solid. Like, like, uh,

you could get like a Marmite popsicle or something. Oh, well, you know what? I am making chicken wings tonight. Maybe I could do a Marmite chicken wing or something oh well you know what i am making chicken wings tonight maybe i could do a marmite chicken wing and see how i bet you i bet you they got like a marmite uh like sauce that you can put on your chicken wing yeah i might try this there you go i'm gonna try one i'm gonna try it make i'll make a couple of these and me and mrs f can try them i bet they're gonna be fucking banging all right right, anyway. Hi, Perian. Sips brought up the toxicity of pigeon poop and I can confirm this. I have a family friend who was extremely sick with respiratory issues

and nobody could figure out what was wrong. The doctors were stumped. She somehow figured out when examining her ventilation that pigeons had made a nest next to the intake of her air conditioning. Yeah. She'd been inhaling aerosolized pigeon poop for months. Since identifying the issue, she's recovered. So PSA, clean your air conditioning units." So yeah.

And then Zach also says, "'PS, I love that you have developed a love of birding. What has been your favorite sighting?' So Zach, just to be clear, this isn't birding so much as a pigeon landed on my windowsill. So to date my birding career is... This is how they get you a fling. This is how they get you a fling. I saw a pigeon landed on my windowsill. So to date, my birding career is. This is how they get you in. I saw a pigeon. That's my favorite birding sighting so far.

Big Bird wants you to feel like you've taken part in birding so that you can continue the passion of birding. Yeah. This is about 3D printing, which is something we were talking about. Yeah. Because your son's got a 3D printer, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I am a 3D printing, which is something we've talked about, because your son's got a 3D printer, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, I am a 3D printing researcher, doing my PhD, and Trifors has brought up 3D printing

a few times. The time has come for me to become your liaison to the 3D printing world. Oh wow. Below are a few cool things we do in our lab. My thesis is on 3D printing robots using air, heat and humidity response instead of electricity to move. In my recent work, I've been trying to find a way to print using seaweed based material for biodegradable robots that are responsive to humidity.

That's crazy. We have a printer that can print down to 10 microns in resolution. So think about making a 3D model roughly the size of about a millimeter. That's the tip of a ballpoint pen in height. My colleagues are more focused on printing for living tissue, including cells that differentiate into kidney and heart cells. Isn't that crazy? Yeah, that's going to be like, what's, what was that fucking show?

Westworld. It's like Westworld 3D printing people. Yeah. Mad. That's crazy. Cool. Interesting. Yeah. 3D print me a,. Mad. That's crazy. Cool. Interesting. Yeah.

3D print me a, you know, we're old, we'll get 3D print some new hearts up. You know, you need a new heart, just go to your printer, print one off, pop it in. Bam. Job done. The future. Before we continue, do you live stream your most intimate moments for the whole internet to see? I know I don't, but if you're going online without ExpressVPN,

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your online privacy. Fire up the app and click one button to get protected. Protect your online privacy today by visiting expressvpn.com slash triforce. That's D-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash triforce and you can get an extra four months free. Expressvpn.com slash triforce. On with the show. On with the show. All right. This is I was asking about we asked about the Japanese economy last time and what had happened and how they recovered postwar and then what happened. They had a big crash and all around why it's in recession, everything like that. Yeah. They had what is sometimes called a war economy, a clumsy way of saying a planned economy. The government used the Ministry of Finance to define which industries got which loan rates. They intentionally built a productive, competitive

and healthy economy by making sure that advantageous sectors and businesses had access to capital. This helped them prepare for the war and it helped in their post-war recovery. To Western eyes today, it also looks like filthy communism. Around the turn of the century, a group of free market economists from the Western core and leadership of Bank of Japan conspired to create an asset price bubble and prolonged recession. Politicians said the only way to fix it was finance reform, as if the recession were not intentionally created, and put out legislation that would allow Bank of Japan to control loan rates without the Ministry of Finance regulation so that-

I've lost you. Oh my god. This is how they get you to finance people. This is how big finance ropes you in. I'm gone. I can't follow this at all. So what happened is, a bunch of free market economists created an asset price bubble, and therefore prolonged recession.

I know, you just said that. It doesn't- You just repeating the same thing with like a different tone. I'm about to break it down. But you're gonna let me give me a bath tub. Just give me just like five seconds after the end of the fit. You want to go robbing at a bathtub? No, just listen. What this guy is saying is that the economists essentially created a recession. All right. So they created a bubble that was going to lead to a recession. He told me you have a big bubble and prices, you know, stocks, everything inflate. And then it pops. There's a recession afterwards. Right.

Yeah. And so then they came in and they said, oh, we need finance reform. That's how we can save the economy. Then they pulled all this legislation. And now the Ministry of Finance is like, all right, you guys can do the regulation. We will hands off. And that just meant that all the bankers and free market economists made a ton of money and it was less controlled and more volatile. So now they have, and this as this guy puts it, an economy of suppression where private

finances and capture wealth and loans are primarily leveraged to make money rather than create a vibrant economy. So if you think about the way the economy works now with Wall Street and investments, it's all about just having value created by a company and then having loans off the back of that. It's all debt, debt, debt, right? So this is in a book called Princes of the Yen by Richard Verner, who apparently is the only reason we really understand what happened. This is according to Daniel. So he wrote a book about that. So that was kind of what happened. I think, or certainly that's one take on it.

If you have an alternative take, please do do right in. But yeah, it's, it's pretty crazy. I think we haven't really understood quite how badly the banks have fucked us all over in order to create jobs and wealth mainly for themselves. I mean, they seem to be doing fine. They're making a fortune. So who knows? I mean, Nvidia loses 17% of its value and, you know, apparently all with doom and gloom, but I don't see how it affects the everyday person, but it's front page news. You know what I mean? Yeah. Well, I'll tell you what else was on the front page yesterday.

Alan Sugar is saying that everybody should get their bums back in an office, which was a bit weird to be on the front page of the BBC news. Like, I don't know, there's not many sort of like opinion pieces on the front page of the BBC, but that for some reason is, I don't really understand. I mean, I don't think the BBC chooses as much as what's most popular gets auto sorted a bit like Reddit. Isn't that right? Maybe, but it just seemed weird that it was there.

Like, I mean, it's not... I mean, haven't you seen it sometimes where it's a really old article is on the front page? No, I don't think so. And it's because it's being shared a lot on social media? Oh, maybe. Yeah, but normally they have like a little section for that. This sort of popped up in business.

And I think it was, I think it was like a twofold. It was, it was advertising the fact that the apprentice was back. Oh yeah. But then he was saying, you know, just the usual, like, oh, all these lazy slobs need to get back in the office. And it's like, well, I don't know. I hate that. Yeah.

It doesn't make any sense. Like it's, it's, it's such a well, I don't know. I hate that. Yeah. It doesn't make any sense. Like it's it's it's such a weird, a weird thing. I get why he is doing it. Like he, you know, he owns buildings. He wants people in them, of course. But like, it's just such a weird thing to run as well. You know, like find the show and shut the fuck up. This old fucking boomer. Yeah. With with how young people should work now.

How about he shuts the fuck up and sits down and just enjoys being rich? Yeah. I mean, he probably works from home wherever he wants to. The people are just slacking off. That's it. That's it. They're convinced that people work from home. But they're just doing it at the office as well.

I mean, they get fucking real here. Yeah, are they stupid? They don't realize the hoops we will jump through at work to look like we're busy. Yeah. Like it's even easier to look busy at work. Yeah. You just have to frown a lot and eventually sometimes walk around in a hurry with a bit of paper in your hand. It's easy. I did it for five years.

Yeah. Believe me. All right. This is advice for you, Lulu. From Dan. Okay. This is about home ownership. Oh, okay. So, this lad just bought a house in Bournemouth. Oh gosh. I hope it's a nice part of Bournemouth, Dan. First time buyer. All right. This is the five points of advice for you. This lad just bought a house in Bournemouth. Oh gosh, hope it's a nice part of Bournemouth Dan.

First time buyer. Alright, this is the five points of advice for you. If you don't have a lifetime ISA, set one up ASAP. The government gives you a bonus of up to a grand a year if you max out your savings before April. Find out if your mortgage advisor is closed or open book. If they are closed book, they'll only work with a small number of lenders and might not get you the best deal. Lowball your offer. Because the housing market is being flooded with pissed off landlords now that labour is in, you'll be very surprised how many houses are selling for way under their asking price at the moment. Get a survey done, get a plumber to look at the boiler, get an electrician

to look at the fuse box. It's an upfront expense, but it gives you leeway to ask for money off. And five, most importantly, in my opinion, make sure you have fibre broadband in that area. Amen. Amen. Yeah. Fibre broadband is a must. You've got to have it. There's actually a really good site I've been using called Fairy Godmover.

That's good. It's got like a load, it's got like basically every, it's basically a big checklist of every stage of the house buying process, right? And from like looking at, working out how much you can afford to like how to sort mortgage out to like actually things to look out for the viewing, like how old is the boiler and all this stuff. And it sort of, it ticks you through, takes you through all the stages. And honestly, it's been really useful so far.

So that's my shout out this week. Check it out. FerryGodMover.com. There you go. This is from another Dan. Alright, this is how the email starts. Right, Shaggers? Do you guys know how to respond to that?

No? Right? Yeah, you? Yeah, yeah. He's from Cornwall, so you've got to have a Cornish accent. Oh, right, I can't do one of those. Oh, he was just listening to the newest mail back, number 46, and you Mr. Flax mentioned that on Airbnb there are many people who live in London but own second homes in Cornwall

and rent them out. This is considered a hot button issue in Curnow due to the economic issues we suffer from the area, but in the area with many small fishing villages becoming unlivable for locals due to the amount of homes that sit empty for 90% of the year. And I was wondering how aware you lovely boys are of the developments in Curnow and the issues facing the only Celtic nation in the UK without its own form of parliament. If you're interested, I'll list a few below. A select few Emmets, that's non-Cornish people, will assume that everybody in Cornwall works

in the holiday industry and I've personally encountered many rowdy visitors saying things like I pay your salary despite the fact they're obviously not buying any clay. On the subject of clay, Cornwall still has a thriving China clay mining industry, mostly run by a company called Imeriz. Included in these China clay pits is the recently discovered lithium, causing a large amount of investment in the area. Cornwall has its own language that is being taught more and more because of an increase in local national pride.

All Cornish pasties are made in Cornwall. It's like champagne, if a pasty isn't made in Cornwall, it not a Cornish pasty it's just a pasty thanks for reading Colonel Bis Viken nice Cornwall forever thank you very much Cornwall forever thanks for writing in interesting big fan interesting Cornwall facts yeah I am a big fan of Cornwall went on a holiday to Cornwall last last last... last... well, I would say summer. Autumn. Yeah, I apologize for my Cornish accent. That's as good as going to Cornwall. You guys should actually make a huge wall out of corn though.

That would be cool. And it would fit the name. Cornwall featuring a large wall of corn. Build the Cornwall. Build it. Build the Cornwall. Yeah. You can tell from which continent Sip's haales from by the fact that he thinks you should

have a large thing. You can build a big wall. What's Cornwall next to? What, like, what, what, what, um... Devon. Is it Devon? Devon. Keep the Devonites out.

Build the Cornwall. There you go. Devonians. Devonians. Yeah. Keep them. They sound like aliens, don't they? Keep those filthy animals out of Cornwall. Greetings, Earthling. We are the Devonians. Devonians. Yeah. Keep them. Sound like aliens. Keep those. Yes. Keep those filthy animals out of Cornwall. Greetings, Earthling. We are the Devonians.

Oh, hi. What's up? We are come to see our mortal enemies, the Cornwallians. Yeah, they're just down the road. Thank you. This one's from Ben. This is a high period. Just wondering how you feel about Bournemouth challenging for a top four spot in the Premier League and potentially ending up in the Champions League is very exciting, Ben. This is a high period. I'm just wondering how you feel about Bournemouth challenging for a top four spot in the Premier League and potentially ending up in the Champions League.

Very exciting, Ben. Very exciting. Very nerve wracking, but very exciting. Have you just been losing your mind at the football this season then because of this? Losing my mind? Yeah. No, it's just been exciting. Oh, well, that's what I mean.

Like losing your mind in excitement. Like, is it every match just been like you're screaming and losing your voice and stuff or not really? No. And the thing is, I'm used to us struggling. And for most of the time I've been supporting the club, we've been a lower league team and it's been rough. The last few years have been incredible. And genuinely, the story of AFC Bournemouth and how we got to the Premier League is genuinely

remarkable and I'm honestly a little pissed off how little people know about it, because everybody talks about how Leicester City won the Premier League, having barely stayed up the previous year. And that was incredible. But to give you some idea of what Bournemouth did, we were so badly in debt. All right, we're in League One. So the third tier, you've got Premier League Championship, League One, League Two. We're in League One. We've been in there forever. Everything's going tits up. We're losing money. We're going to lose the club. We get relegated and we start the season on minus 17 points

because we got punished by the league for being broke. That's what they do. If you if you fuck up your finances, they deduct points from you. So we are bottom of League Two on minus 17 points at the start of the season. We have a transfer embargo, so we can't pay any money for any players. The club is on the verge of bankruptcy. We don't have a manager. We barely have a first team.

One of our ex players, Eddie Howe, we make him the manager. He's like 32. He's never managed before. We have a bunch of kids that we can get on free transfers or loan signings. We went from that position to the premier league under his management. That is insane. All right. No club has fucking done that.

I don't think ever. Do you think you would have done better with Wayne Rooney at the helm? No, no fucking wouldn't. He's not been doing too well. He's been, he's been fired. He's not a manager. He's been fired from a lot of managerial positions. Yeah, Plymouth fired him.

And then in my league that I was running, he was getting fired left, right and centre all the damn time. Yeah. I am just to clarify, I just told that incredible story about Bournemouth and neither of you said a thing about it. That is how Bournemouth is. No one cares. You could say that we discovered alien life in Bournemouth, and people are like, oh, did you see the weather in Kent last week? No, I fucking didn't. Where's the props for AFCB and Eddie Howe? Well, I think you just have to be... If you're going to discover something, you need to be in an exciting place to begin with.

It's like you're talking to me about French fucking cheese futures or something. I have no interest in football whatsoever. Right, but you can at least appreciate that story. On some level. So the team that you support has had an impressive season and done an impressive thing. In a game which quite frankly... With a 32 year old manager. I hate. I fucking hate football. I think it's a shit game.

You're a bozo. I think it's always been shit. You're an absolute clown. I couldn't be less interested in a sport than football. Fuck you. It sucks. Right, let's move on. This one's from Matt. Hello. Just listening to... Oh, he said, hello Sir Flax of South East London. Southwest, Matt. Southwest. For life. This is a story about an Airbnb. This is why you should always lock your hotel doors.

I was in Mexico City for work. We arrived at about four in the morning. We were very lucky to stay at an insanely fancy hotel chain. I got my key from my room, made my way up, unlocked the door. So the room was a little messier than usual and there was a jumper left on the side. Didn't think much of it. Thought maybe a cleaner had left it there. Oh no.

And since it was 4am I wanted to get to bed ASAP. Turned on the lights, stepped further into the room and all of a sudden I saw two people in the bed. A man shot out of the bed in terror and said, who the hell are you? And I very quickly turned and ran out of the room saying very Britishly, oh shit I'm so sorry. I went down to the hotel said they'd given me the wrong room key. Oh no. Which is quite shocking and it's the reason why I always lock my doors at the hotel. I do too. I do too. Another reason. I deadbolt them. I put the bar, I'm deadbolting that shit every time. Another reason is this article below, this is an article from CBS News, a hotel manager

let himself into someone's room to suck on their toes while they slept. Whaaaaat. The victim woke up in a pitch black room to a man sucking their toes, that is so great. That is so fucking weird, man, Jesus. No way. Yeah. Oh god. The world is... well, Jesus. No way. Oh, god. The world is...

Just burn it all. Just give up. Bring old climate change. Let's just set this whole thing on fire. Do you know what? There was a thing in the news the other day that said there's an asteroid and it has a one percent chance to hit Earth in like 2030 or something. And part of me just thought, ah, you know what?

Fucking cares if it happens. Bring it on now. Like just as it's all over, it's just so far gone, you know, maybe it's for the best. Maybe that, maybe that thing hitting. Yeah. Just, yeah. Then with this guy sucking toes in the dark, I mean, come on, right? That's the final straw. in the dark. I mean, come on. Right. But where do you go? The final straw. That was the I was on the fence about it before. I broke the camel's back.

If this guy's sucking toes, kill the planet. Yeah. Reset. Oh, God. It doesn't take it. Sometimes it's just like, you know, a small thing that that tips it tips it over. You just think. Well, this is a poem that might cleanse the palate a little bit.

OK, good. Yeah, we need it. This is from Ryan. A while ago, you mentioned how if you can give your wife one good laugh a day, you consider that your job as a husband was well done. It was such a sweet sentiment. And when I carry into my relationship with my wife. Well, thank you, Ryan. That's very sweet. I teach English for a living and wrote this sonnet last year

during the poetry unit inspired by your words. I only just was reminded of it going through materials for this year's lesson. All of you, please never stop with the poetry. Your poems are wonderful except the AI ones. All right, this is from Ryan. The love of the jester. Of all the hats I have to wear, my jester's cap is for you alone. My husband's duty done with care for my dear queen upon her throne. If I can make you daily smile, I can say my job's done well. To share a laugh for a short while, I happily jingle my silver bell. I won't play the fool for most in my

life and I'm a statue of serious solemnity. Before my queen and lesion wife, I shelve that stony, bland identity. There is no love like Queen and Jester, who with humour does daily bless her." Very good, right? I like that. That's nice. Yeah. I do my, I do my, uh, my husbandly duty very well every day. I'm my, my whole family laughs at me all the time. Uh, and I'm not, I'm not. Yeah. It's, uh, yeah, that's a nice poem. Well done. That's really good. Really sweet. Really cute. Really nice. Here's a, here's one from Colin on the subject of odd food habits. If you're still doing those Colin, we're never going to stop.

No, no, keep him. Except for the mozzarella stick guy was a bit, that's a, that's odd. Like you're, you're basically gagging on half of a mozzarella stick and then pulling it out of your throat. I don't get it. Just, just, you know, I would say that that's worse than swishing diet coke in your mouth and all the food melting in there. Everyone's done something like that. Like with those long strawberry laces, you know, those you've swallowed those and pull them back up. I'm too busy eating them. Like just, you know. No, when I, when food goes into my mouth, what I do is I chew it and then I swallow it. I

know that's crazy. I know that's crazy. I know that's crazy, dude. Okay. So, on the subject of odd food habits, when I was in fifth grade, about 11 years old, I read a book in my school library about superstitions, two of which I have adopted myself. I did so more for entertainment purposes than out of actual superstition. Okay, that's really... The first was to never eat the very point of a piece of pie first, as that brought bad

luck. I would cut the point off. The piece of a pie? I don't know what he means by the point of a piece. Oh! You cut a wedge of pie. So you don't eat the pointed end. Does this make sense?

You just leave the pointed end? So he cuts that end off and moves it to the side, you eat the second bite first, or you just eat it backwards, crossed first. That's a superstition, you don't eat the point of the pie first. So what you cut a wedge of pie, and then you cut the point off of the triangle. You take the point off and leave it. What? You don't eat that first. It's a superstition. You don't eat it properly. Is that what you're saying? You don't eat the point, is what he's saying. That can't be the first bite. You just have to take a second bite. Well, you just, you can just take a bite out of the side and

then eat the point. Yeah. RILEY Right, so, he eats a bit of the crust. He just bites a bit of the crust. ALICE Oh, I don't like that. That feels weird to me. RILEY The second regards eggshells. The superstition was that whenever you discarded eggshells, you have to completely crush them

or burn them, as witches were fond of using an intact shell as a boat to cross the ocean. What? Using rituals to curse people. The superstition began with the Romans, but was adopted by sailors who would go as far as to ban eggs on their ships. Jesus. Goodness me. Those are some excellent superstitions.

I love a good superstition, me. These are nuts. That is nuts. Superstitions are weird. I've been watching the show. It's been on TV recently. It's called like, it's not called fear factor. It's called like, it's fear something, but it's about phobias.

It's UK people going to the Netherlands to a clinic to address phobias, but they're like, no, I wouldn't say odd because obviously these people are really scared of these things, but the therapy uses like beta blockers and you know, like they, so they subject them to these things and then they have these sessions. So they'll subject them to this thing and then they'll give them like a beta blocker and then they have to come back the next day and be subjected again. And I think throughout like this therapy, basically it just sort of removes the phobia for some people in the end. It can be quite effective, but some of the phobias are just like,

this one guy has like, he is, he is like shit scared of sausage dogs, just like you like little sausage dogs. You know, uh, there's a lot of people where it's like rats, uh, mice, you know, um, there's a woman, she's, a woman, she can swim in pools, whatever, but she's petrified of open water. So like just being in the sea, for example, she's like, she's just has like a complete, her brain just shuts down. She can't cope.

I mean, these all seem very rational fears. Well, I mean, yeah, but I mean, for most people, like, I think like a sausage dog, mice, rats, you know, like, I don't think anybody's gonna be approaching a rat or a mouse, particularly, but like I think most people can still function knowing that there's one nearby or whatever, you know? Yeah. But like, with the phobias, they're like crying and shaking and sweating and stuff. You know, like it's...

I think you can pretty much get through your life, like, not having... I can't really recall the last time I seen a mouse or a rat, but I think it probably did leave me a little bit freaked out. Yeah, I mean, sure. Like, ugh, what's that doing there? I don't know if I have any actual phobias. I don't know if there's anything that would leave me, except like a tragic incident or something like that, obviously would leave you shaken.

But I don't think there's much that would leave me incapacitated in any way. You know what I mean? Like... Yes. I think these are quite... I think people's phobias like that are quite debilitating. To the point that they worry there's a rat there, even when there isn't. Exactly.

Yeah. And it can really impact your life. Exactly. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. And it can really impact your life. Whereas, like, I know for me, I saw a rat outside just the other day, I wouldn't be like, oh, I hope the rat's not in here. I wouldn't even think twice about it after seeing it, you know? I'd just be like, oh yeah, there's a rat. I'd say I'm generally cautious and concerned about things that are worth being cautious

and concerned about. But I'm not... I think that the whole point of a phobia is it's irrational. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. Really, I would say. I mean, being afraid of the ocean, being cautious around the ocean and being concerned about drowning and stuff, that's one thing. But being petrified of it, that's another. No. And those people that are just afraid of large structures. And I think with some of these people, it's like, you know, they, they, I think this woman lives close to the, to the ocean and has kids. And she's like, I have to not be like this, you know,

I want to be able to just go with my family to the beach and enjoy it and not be a mess, you know, like when I go sort of thing. So like, for some of it, it's just like everyday stuff. And then for some of them, it's like, you know, I, this is like really impacting my life. So it's interesting though, if you like that sort of thing. I'll find a name so I completely forget the name of the show. It's good though. This is a good email from George and friends. All right. This is it. Now I want to say first of all that this starts Good Evening Virgins, right? Which is, you're off to a bad start, George. I almost stopped reading, but I was. Wow. OK.

Me and my friends have been having this discussion for the past few days and wanted your opinion on the matter. Right. Where do you think the back of the penis is? Not the base. The base is well established, but the back of the penis is in our eyes, as yet still unconfirmed and the cause of much debate. In their opinion, in other words. I've attached, this was the unnecessary part I enjoyed, I have attached a couple of MS Paint diagrams of where we think the fact could be. Why have you done this?

I'm going to save these to my hard drive. Oh my god. Reference diagram one and reference diagram two. We're going to get to see these are we? Okay. I'm gonna drag them into this. This is reference diagram one. Have a look at that one. Oh god. Okay. So, that is a person. And obviously the issue is that when the penis is not erect, the back of it is the bit that's facing your body, and the front of it would be the bit facing

the unfortunate person who I don't, I think back, I think back is the wrong term. I see what they're saying. It's top and bottom and it works. The key thing to understand here from this diagram is that when, when engorged, the penis points upwards. Yes. At which point the front becomes the back. It's like a car, like it's a roof and It's a roof and an undercarriage, right? This is to add to the problem. It's not a back. Right, but here's an issue. Or a front.

Not all of them. Go straight up. Some go straight out, some go to the side. It's still top and bottom. Yeah, it doesn't matter. It's top and bottom. It's not back and front. Right, but if you look at this diagram, diagram two, if I may, if I may draw your attention to diagram two.

No, Christ. Diagram two has a penis that's going straight out. It has a top and a bottom, but it doesn't have a back. Why is there like a pizza and a duck at the bottom of the penis? Don't worry about that. Don't worry about that. Right. So if we look at the image on the second image on the right, the flaccid penis, the front and the back are quite clear.

The back is the bit that's probably nestling against your nuts, and the front is the bit that's facing the outside world. I would say a cylinder having a back and front is tricky to consider, especially one that has a flexible angle. And could be pointing in myriad directions. So I would say we don't need to define the front and back of it, I would suggest. ALICE Right. This is nonsense.

I feel like I now have a phobia of penises. Stop this. JUSTIN Stop this. ALICE Stop this madness. It's out of control. ALICE You're gonna have to go to that clinic for your penis phobia. What do you call a penis phobia?

JUSTIN Lewis is not on board. Georgian friends, I'm sorry. We're trying to try. Scientific name for penis phobia. Let's see what this is. It is... It's a real thing. ... phallophobia.

Of course it is. Of course. Oh, nice. That makes sense. This is from Jim. Just listed the latest mailbag, you were discussing odd ways to eat things. Here we go. Whenever I go to the chippy, I'll get pie and chips.

With a knife, I'll then stab a little hole into the top, which I will fire tomato sauce into until no more can fit. I will then prise the lid off the pie with a knife. I will then dip that ring of pastry into the tomato sauce and pie filling mixture and eat it, doing the same with the chips, until I'm left with just pastry with no sauce, which I will roll up and eat. Does that sound weird? Man, don't you get hungry with all of this prep?

Like, I don't understand how you have the patience to do this. If there's food and I'm hungry, I'm just eating it. I'm not doing anything with it. I don't even want to cut it half the time. I'll just use my hands? I don't know why. It's half the time. Like I'll just use my hands. I don't know why it's like there's all it's like, it's like, it's like a ritual almost, isn't it? It's like a, it's like a ritual.

It's like those superstitions. It kind of reminds me of superstitions having a funny one. Yeah. I wonder if it is like, like not, not like serious OCD, but I wonder if there's like a little tiny, tiny bit of like OCD. Cause it does, it does seem like a bit of a ritual, doesn't it? Like some of these things seem a little, a little OCD. Although I know that people that have OCD get quite upset. No, I mean, by there are, of course. Yeah. But I think that maybe it's like a part of the same family of,

of, uh, you know, disorder or something like that, but like very, very, very like low key. I don't know. Maybe. I think it's just a weird habit. Yeah. It's weird. It's odd, isn't it? Yeah. I think most of them are habits formed in childhood. I'm always surprised at how odd these things are, but then the whole thing is odd ways to eat stuff. So I don't know why I'm always surprised. True, true, true, true, true. Do you want one more? Do you want to call it? Yeah, yeah, one more. One more for the road.

Let's get a palette cleanser. Let's get a real nice one. OK, I'll try and find a really good. You know what we should do at the end of these? Actually, instead of doing another one, Flax, you should do like a you like like Jerry Springer used to do. Do your final thought. Final thought. Yeah, I have a final thought.

Oh, Jerry Springer style. F thought. Final thought. Yeah. Have a final thought. Oh, Jerry Springer style Flax's final thought. Well, look, we've had a wonderful selection of emails today. My final thought now, sadly, for the rest of the day is going to be on what is the front and what is the back of the penis. And obviously, we've shared that in the Discord that everybody else records. And I could just see that Boba has responded. Interesting. Yeah. So apologies to Bobes and Anyone else that had to? Just for reference as well, you need some sort of tagline to end your final thoughts.

Okay. So that's, let's face front for the coming week and let's not look back too much at what was behind us because we are always moving forwards upwards with maximum aggression and a desire for victory. Okay. And now pause your tagline because Jerry spring used to like pause and they'd be like, be good to each or whatever he used to say. Oh,

have you watched the documentary about him or something? Yeah, yeah, I did. Yeah. It's a two part. It's really good by the way. You should watch it. There you go. And my tagline will be cheers.

Thank you. Cheers. it. There you go. And my tagline will be cheers. Thank you. Cheers. Wow. Thank you. Fucking iconic dude. It's like the new Oprah here. Thank you. She's a good one. All right. That's it. See you later. That's a good one. That'll be the end of the mailbag segment. Now your final thoughts with your tagline. Okay. Cheers. Such a good format. It's nice. It's nice actually just like evolving a format, you know, like in real time, isn't it? Yeah. Gosh, we've really changed things up this week.

Yeah. God. Feels good. I mean, it's New Year, so like New Year, you know. New Year, new to us. You like Marmite now, of all things. Yeah, I know. I mean, who would have thought? I never thought that in 2025, I would be hearing from your lips, I like Marmite. I know it's not.

I wasn't even vocally anti-Marmite. I just didn't like it. And now I do. In fact, I might have some for lunch. Holy shit. And on that bombshell, we shall end this episode. I will I will see you guys next week. Keep those emails coming. Cheers. Thank you. Bye.

Cheers. Bye! Cheers! Bye!