Triforce! - Triforce vs Script Writers | Triforce #364

Episode Date: August 19, 2026

Triforce! Episode 364! We're trying to figure out who actually cares about Star Wars any more and dive deep into TV adaption flops, talk about the strange immersion breaks of The Odyssey while trying to figure out what the hell Sips ever watches. 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

Hickax. Okay, you're ready for this? Yeah. You all ready for this? Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do. The Travels podcast, it's tight. Oh, is that it? Oh, wow.

That was my dream to do an intro like that. But it's like an American, North American sports-style intro. They always use that song at NA sporting events, don't they? You all ready for this? Yes. That and also, woo-oo. That terrible song by Blur, which is... Yeah, they love that one, yeah.

There was a time... There was a time in the very early 2000s where, like, that song and that Superman is dead. And there was, like, a bunch of, like, old rock songs that were really big. Yeah, I can't remember the... I can't remember the artist that made that song, but there was, like, a bunch of radiohead songs that were big. I think, like, Karma Police was big at the time. Yeah, there were a few like that.

Yeah. I don't think they were playing that one at the stadium. though. Wait till the half-time show, guys, the Triforce Half-Times show. It's coming. With the cheeky girls' dancers. We get a house. Forget about the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders. We got the cheeky girls all lined up for our big live show.

The halftime show, it's going to be crazy. They're going to do a Madonna medley, which is going to be really insane because we know that most of the people that listen to this podcast love Madonna so much and just love of all. Of course. She's a very current and relevant pop star. that all the young audiences can't wait to hear more about. Absolutely, yeah.

And the whole thing is being arranged by Chris Martin from Coldplay, which is really exciting too. Chris Martin. Yeah. I could have sworn that I was talking about, is Kathy Dennis? Is that her name? Yeah, so I was talking to my youngest the other day about pop stars, and she was complaining about how sometimes they have like a drop-off.

We've spoken about this before, I'm sure. Like Katie Perry was enormously successful and now she's kind of a laughing stop and people think she's a bit of an idiot because of the rocket thing. But loads of her songs were not written by her, right? Like they're written by these songwriters. Have you heard of Kathy Dennis? Kathy Dennis. I've never heard of Kathy Dennis now. So she had a brief 1990s pop career of her own.

Right. But she's written a ton of songs for a ton of famous artists. Right. So if you look at, she wrote wannabe, for example. If you want to be my lover, she wrote that. Wow. Yeah. Sorry, sorry.

She wrote bumper to bumper, which was the B-side to want to be, my bad. Oh, sorry. What? And she wrote, Can't get you out of my head by Kylie Winoke. I can't get you over head that way. I feel like I've just been majorly fucking rubpled. Listen, I kissed a girl by Kay Perry.

She wrote that. No pop star has written their own stuff, apart from lovely Taylor. Yeah, Britney Spears had a bunch of songs written by like some old Swedish guy, apparently. Yeah. Some old Swedish guy. Yeah, probably right. Yeah, it's like the, it's like the, it's like the pop idol, American Idol kind of era of like, you know, yeah, this is how we've, how we've made music. Like it's, you got a chance to see

how the sausage was made sort of thing, you know? Right. Well, more so at least. But then, yeah, it turns out that a lot of stuff is, is done behind the scenes for these, for these people that are then just catapulted into the spotlight and expected to, you know, act a certain way or whatever. But there's so many horror stories that come out of the off the back of this stuff, though, because these people are never ready for it. Simon didn't write diggy diggy hole. It's just the nature of things, really. Who did?

God, I thought he was down in a cave somewhere with his helmet on and he was, it was writing, that song with his pen, injecting it with, yeah, with a pen, injecting it with so much love and passion. Like when I wrote Big Girl and Fairy Tales Sipsco, you know, those two times I wrote those songs, amazing. Yeah, it came from the heart. You had to like crooning. Deep down in the heart.

Yeah. Yeah. With your cowboy boots on your truck. I mean, I'm just looking at Beyonce. The track listing for her 2013 album, Beyonce. Yeah. Basically, she's, they do this a lot. They'll contribute to the song as a writer.

but like Mrs. Yeah, mostly it's done by someone else. Robbie Dickett. He did Angels and all that. Robbie Williams. Robbie Williams. Change a word, take a third. That's what it is.

So you just say, change one word, and then you count as a writer on the song, and you take a third. Exactly. So, yeah. But yeah, looking at this album, she's like contributed, but it's like all different people.

Forrell Williams coming in, writing a song. Like, I just wonder how much of it then is, Oh, you can sing and you look good? Cool. Here, I've got a song for you because you'd want to do that because then you get a cut, right? Yeah. It's interesting.

Well, it's the name, isn't it, though? Sometimes you're only even going to be popular if you go off the back of a big name. You know, it's why we're starting to see, I was looking at Deep Rock Galactic, you know, which is obviously a big big big, successful game. Yeah, I loved it, you know. But there's like a bunch of spinoffs,

which I think it's something we've not necessarily seen in games before, but the guys at Ghost Ship Games are doing a clever thing where they've got like a, they built like a vampire survivors kind of Deep Rock Galactic, but they're also doing more kind of, not sequels, but like kind of half sequels to it, where they're releasing different games than Deep Rock Galactic rogue, you know, rogue core.

That's the latest one, right? Yeah. In the universe, in the cinematic universe. It's clever. And I, you know, would that game do anywhere near as popular if it wasn't piggybacking off the success of a previous thing. I mean, you're talking about any, any games workshop, anything. I'm talking about anything.

I'm talking about anything. Like, think how many games there are that come out where it's just a bog standard RTS and they just stick some space marine skins over the top of it. Like, it's just like that. Well, this is partly what they're sort of saying with the new XCOM, which we're all very excited about Star Wars. Yeah. Yeah.

Which is coming out in about a month's time. So probably when this podcast goes out. But, you know, I think the idea. is again, they found on working with people who were making, because it's EA. And I think they've borrowed some of the people who worked on Excom from for Axis or Left or whatever. And they found, I found a bunch of people who were like, we wanted to make an Xcom like game. And then we had a chat with Star Wars. And then we just Star Wars skinned it.

And now it's like, it's the Star Wars skinned. Because I think, you know, that's the power of these big brands that the game will do hundreds of times better if you have a recognized. There's so many great games that have crappy universes attached to them. Don't you think that it's kind of shit to say, you know what's hot? Star Wars. Because it's not, is it? Like at this point, if I see a Star Wars game, my heart sinks because I think, oh, I was really looking forward to that.

And now I find out it's set in the prequel Star Wars universe, the old Republic or whatever. I've lost a lot of interest in the game because when was the last time there was a good Star Wars game? It was also so there was a good Star Wars anything. But, okay, I think a little bit like Sips has got something to say, but the thing is, I don't think Magic the Gatherings are very good game either. I was hoping. I've been playing that a bunch. You're wrong.

Exactly. And they have a lot of money and they keep putting it back in and they've got great promotion. And for some reason, they're still getting people to play it. And it's kind of a grind. The same thing we all have a 40,000. It's not a great board game, miniatures game. But it is the most popular one. and they have loads of money and they put it out there as,

I think things that are popular, stay popular. And Star Wars, yeah, like, you might be bored of it, but it's popular. It's always going to be popular. And the more things they do around that universe, the more it kind of snowballs, right? Like, it will be a huge successful game. And I'm excited that there is a tactics game coming out,

because it's the kind of game I play. I don't want to play like a fucking Overwatch. Whatever the Star Wars Overwatch was, you know, whatever the Star Wars, Star Wars, you know, the other ones were. Dark forces, I mean, that was Star Wars, Overwatch. It was some sort of, yeah, pay to win thing, wasn't it? Anyway, it's, it's, this feels like the kind of game I might play.

Dark forces, too. What you got to say, Sips. Well, the thing is, you would play that game. You would play that game regardless, though, because you're an older man. You like tactics games. No, but you would, you don't need it to be attached to a big IP. like Star Wars. It happens to be Star Wars fine,

but it could be anything. You would play that game because you like that genre of game. When you get older, you're more interested in like a genre than you are like of the nostalgia of like an IP or whatever. I feel like Star Wars is at the point now

where it needs a game like World of Warcraft for people who just are obsessed with Star Wars to live in every day. You mean Star Wars online? Yeah. Well, I mean, they have what is it? the old Republic or whatever. They have like an MMO,

but I don't know if it's like as big as it could be. You know what I mean? Like I feel like if there was something like, there was a place where there was like an evolving Star Wars, you know, take over my life game. That would be good for Star Wars. That would be good for Star Wars.

That would be good for Star Wars fans. No, so I think you're absolutely right that Lulu would and I would as well. If I see a turn-based strategy game, made by some of the guys who made X-com and it looks the same and plays the same. I'm fucking playing that, 100%. Yeah. So my question is this. Is this whole, it's Star Wars thing meant to bring people who wouldn't play this game on board?

Yeah, partly. Because who is that? Partly. Who out there is like, oh, I would only play this game if I can be some random dude in the Star Wars universe. I don't think that person exists. I really don't. I think that's the hope.

But I think at the very, very, very, very, bottom line of all of it, it's, well, people love Star Wars, so they'll buy the game. It doesn't matter, like, what game it is, you know? My question is, who still loves Star Wars? There's loads of people. Old Star Wars fans like me are really bitter about how it's started now. Here's the thing about it. Here's the thing about the world, P-Flax.

There's constantly new people being born and growing up and becoming kids. There are? Gee, Wilkins, mister. And so there's this, so Minecraft is bizarrely a strange thing because it's constantly filled with brand new players. Yeah, but that's the best game ever made. But those gamers have had Minecraft for 10 years and Fortnite for 10 years.

They're growing up, they're growing old. They're going into their 20s now. I mean, we're progressing through our 40s and 50s. All those generations of kids who have grown up with Star Wars in a very different Star Wars universe. to what we grew up with. I remember taking my McDonald's into the cinema in like 2001 to watch Phantom Menace. I mean, I thought it was great.

You know, I was like 17 or something. You know, it was, for me, that was actually supposed to be the Star Wars for our generation. I didn't really think it. I thought I had a good time. I was a big Star Wars fan. I remember getting the, I asked, I think I'd asked in the late 90s for VHSs of the Star Wars special editions. Yeah.

And my parents had got me those. And I enjoyed it. I was a fan, but again, it was seen a little bit back then as, I think the episode one, two, three were a chance to remake Star Wars is this cool new thing. And it's kind of worked because before then it was seen as a bit of a nerdy cult, classic-y thing, Star Wars, right? And it's taken on this whole new popularist thing that it's cool to like Star Wars, even if you're not a nerd. Everyone likes Star Wars. It's fun. And I think these tactics games are for this new audience that's coming through and never played X-Com 2.

the idea of this star wars double republic star wars zero company is that it's for people who have didn't even hear about xcom and no idea and they oh i want to play a new star's game what's this like and that wow it's a it's a cool new game of a tactics game i've never played this before where i have a squad of four guys and they go on missions and one of them's and they go you know one of them's a stealth one of them's a swordsman or jedi even one of them is a droid you know one of them's a And he does like the Mandalorian show that I watched when I was a kid. But just to be clear, the original movies and the Force Awakens and that trilogy, so the Force Awakens is the best performing Star Wars movie of all time.

Yes. Because it had a huge amount of buildup, a huge amount of marketing. Yeah. And it was like, you know, whatever. It cost half a billion to make. And it put $2 billion. The Mandalorian and Grogu, which just came out, was not well received. He didn't do well compared to what they, it's the,

It's the lowest grossing. Most of these TV shows like the Ackleit and Canova. Yeah, yeah, that's the most recent one. Right. What I'm saying is this idea persists that the Star Wars IP is so big and so beloved that if you make it Star Wars, people would just come flying out of the woodwork to look at it. But I just don't think that's true anymore. I think they've milked that cow until its odors have completely inverted back inside its body.

And now when you squeeze it to get some milk out, rotten cow shit comes flying out. I know. They do not know what to do. It's double whammy, though, because this is aimed at gamers, and Star Wars, people will be like, whatever. It's a Star Wars game, but then the genre will matter as well. So if it's a tactics game, it's a double whammy. What are you, what things, sorry, what things came out that were bad? What Star Wars things?

Mandalorian and Grogo. So even just, they've had that since ever. They've always had bad stuff from Star Wars coming out. Yeah, but, but since Disney took over, they have put out so much Star Wars. was stuff and a lot of it has been really expensive and really shit. Yeah, but I mean, Disney are doing that with their own stuff as well. All the live action stuff is flopping and tanking pretty hard as well, isn't it? Well, but, okay, the Mandalorian and Grogu made, you know, 345 million at the box office

or whatever. Yeah, for a Star Wars movie, that's not like a bad outcome. You would expect, well, that is a bad outcome. Well, you expect like 10 times your normal, your return to you. Disney do. Well, of course they do. So the point is that the cost of those teams, you would expect. shows. Like, did you watch The Acolyte? Did you watch that show? No. No, no, but nobody did. Most

people I know have never even heard of that show. I haven't even seen Andor, which is apparently really good. That's a very, very good show. That is the least Star Wars, Star Wars thing ever produced. And it's also the best. Yes. But I haven't even seen that. So, like, I'm, I'm, I'm, the, the people that you're describing, I'm like beyond those people. Like, I'm, I'm so uninterested in Star Wars that, like, I'm not even seeking out. the good stuff. I'm like, I'm just done with it, you know, like, I have nostalgia around it. But like, I would still probably, if, if a turn-based tactics game in Star Wars was good, I would still pick it up. I wouldn't care. I would enjoy it because it's this familiar

setting. You know, of course, it's Star Wars. It has all the music and it has some of the ships that I remember or some characters that I remember or whatever. Fine. But like, you know, like, I wouldn't be, I wouldn't be picking it up because it's a star, You wouldn't have heard of it at all in the first place. It wasn't stuck. Of course. Because a lot of people, think about this. Like, the Force Awakens was 2015.

That's 11 years ago, right? That's 11 years ago. That's old enough for the teenagers who were watching it at, you know, that age, to be in their late 20s now. Do you mean, that is a bit, it's a generational gap. And that, in cinema terms, that's a huge amount of time. You know, they're probably planning the next trilogy right now to rebuild it again. without any of those characters.

We think that Kylo Ren and Ray Skywalker and the other one are all, you know, really new, interesting Po, really interesting Finn. But actually, they're old now. It's a bit like, they've all moved on. It's a bit like, I feel like when the Force Awakens came out in, when was it, 2015, you said? Yeah. I feel like that was like when Star Wars became almost like football, you know, Like it became like your dad selling you a nostalgia trip.

You know, like if you were a kid at the time, because I felt like a lot of the merch and everything that was around for Star Wars was like, it probably sold well, but I don't know if it was like popular stuff, you know. Like I don't know if like kids are going to look back on their Star Wars toys from when they were a kid in 2015 and be like, oh, those were the best toys. You know, I love to have. You think? I think they will.

I think they will. Yeah, because that's how it works. When you're a kid, you're a lot less picky about stuff. I don't know. It just didn't feel... We loved some real crap when we were kids. It's so easy. I promise you.

It's so easy to be like the jaded adult and feel like, you know, like look at it through that lens and forget to look at it through the lens of like a kid or whatever. But I just, I think that when Star Wars originally came out, there was like there was just so much like more excitement around it, you know, because it was a new thing. And now maybe it's just, maybe it's just an old thing that is harder. to get excited about or, I don't know, it's a weird one. But if you look at Star Wars now, like, let's say that when they brought out the FAST, the FAST Awakens and they had all the toys and all the merch and all the tie-ins,

that was almost a carbon copy of everything they did the first movie where they came up with this idea of releasing toys a little like the characters, which wasn't really a thing to that point. No. Like they kind of invented the idea of having this merchandise that goes with the movie. Like, toys. The 80s, the 80s was big for all of that. Obviously, we were, I was young, you guys were, I think Lulu was too young, so maybe remember

much of the 80s, but me and Sips definitely remember a decent amount of the 80s. I remember a lot of it, because that was like that and the 90s were the two decades. Yeah. I grew up, right? Like I was a kid and then I was a teenager and it was a man and everything. Yeah. So that I remember that distinctly and the toys, well, the, playing with toys was something we did a lot more.

I think toys were much more of a part of kids' lives back then. They were, and I think they still are, but back then it was toys first. So you'd have toys from a franchise that you'd never heard of. I had June 2 toys. You'd have these toys. How are June toys, I mean, not June 2, June toys. Yeah, no, but you'd have these toys. You'd have these toys in the toy store.

You'd go to the toy store and you'd be like, what the hell is this? Right, what is this? But it looked cool. But I want the toy, yeah. And then months later the show would come out finally because they knew that they needed to tie the thing together and try to sell more toys. And it worked. Like, I mean, a lot of like the big, you know,

the big sort of IPs from the 80s, you know, like He-Man, Master's the Universe, dude, I watched that movie. I watched that new movie. All of those big toy franchises that then went on to have like TV shows, movies and stuff off the back of them were humongous. But like it's crazy to think that the idea was for a toy first. Yeah. But that was He-Man.

I mean, we talked about the show a lot, but the toys that made us, they talk about He-Man and that. Yeah, yeah. Basically, the show was designed to sell the toys. It's so topsy-turvy, though. And it's incredible to think that they would have a room full of people designing these toys before there was even a show or comic or anything. You know, like these guys had to be, they needed to know what they were doing because these toys still sold well without that stuff. You know, like when the comics and the TV shows and the movies started coming out after the toys were made and sold, it, you know, it was like the ice.

on the cake sort of thing, but like it wasn't, these toys were still very well designed. Is my question for you? Who is? They've remade the Master of the Universe movie again. I thought that Kevin Smith reboot-ish the other year or whatever a couple years back. The cartoon was fine, you know, not really interesting to me. I didn't watch it, yeah. So the new movie, which I watched the other day, it's Amazon Prime, it's already on Prime,

you can watch it for free, it's utter dog shit. It's two hours long. It could be an hour and a half easy, and it would still be shit. Is this the one where Jared Lido or Leto is a skeletor? Yeah, he's Skeletor. Yeah. I only know this because I watched a documentary about him yesterday and about how much of... Yeah, he's a terrible piece of shit, yeah.

Piece of shitty. I mean, that's been an open secret for a long time. Right. So this is another movie that he's in, and it sticks. Right. And I don't know who this movie is for, because if you're my age, this movie's not for you. If you're young, He Man and the Master of Universe is a complete mystery to you. Who is this for?

If it's for my audience, my age, that grew up with this, you have to be far more knowing and you have to be for an older audience and the jokes have to actually be funny. You can't write jokes that are for little kids. You can't have this super basic dog shit jokes that you have in a supposed comedy. And you can't fool me by saying,

oh, he's just a regular guy when you can see that he's jacked, he just wearing a floppy shirt. And he's like scared but huge. Who at all of a sudden? Adam Prince of Attorney? Yeah, Adam, yeah. He gets sucked back to modern-day America, and he's like in Wyoming or something, of course.

Helping out on the farm and stuff. Yeah, no, no, he's working in an office. Fighting the culture wars. It's all that kind of shit. And then, of course, you know, he, uh, Tilo and Man at Arms come and save him and he goes back and kicks skeletal's ass. But it's just, I don't understand why they've called this He-Man of the Master's universe, other than to make fun of He-Man. The kids watching this don't remember Fisto.

Or ramman, or moss man, nor should they? Who is this for? And Fistos, they're like, why do they call you Fisto? Because I fist people is like one of the jokes of the movie. It's like, so is this for me or is this for little kids? It can't be for little kids because you're making fisting jokes, but it can't be for me because the jokes are so bad. It's baffling.

I don't know why, and it costs fucking millions and it's terrible. So that's where Star Wars is going to become. They're just going to be cranking out Star Wars films forever trying to reboot it. I never know who it's for. The audience has been lost. You need a new IP. I just wait to hear if something's good or not. And if it's not overwhelmingly, like, you have to see this.

I just don't watch it. You should see the Odyssey, dude. Let's pitch him. You should see the Odyssey. Let's pitch. You know, the Lord of the Rings TV show is terrible. Rings of Power. It's partly because it's written by.

Wheel of Time, Lord of the Rings. Like, none of those I would ever watch the TV show for. The guys who sort of came up with it and wrote it had no real previous experience of doing anything any good. Sorry, if you're listening. They won't be. You can hear them crying in the distance. They must have, it's amazing. Even Amazon were, listen to this.

So this is their sort of career list, right? This is J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay? Right. Yeah, they started off writing Deadliest Warrior. Okay. I didn't realize that was, I didn't realize someone needed to write that. Yeah, well, they did because it's a program, information on historical or modern warriors and their weapons to determine which

them is the deadliest. And they do tests to see whose weapons were scary. They wrote, in 2013, they were hired to write Star Trek Beyond, but their script was later rewritten by Simon Pegg and Doug Jung into, which means they didn't really write it, did they? So, no, they didn't write that. which was an all right movie, Star Trek Beyond. Then they wrote, they were hired to write the fourth Star Trek film,

which was not, eventually didn't get made. Of course. Because no one fucking remembers Flash Gordon. Sorry, they were hired to reboot Flash Gordon, which didn't happen. Yeah, but they're like, why? Why didn't Flash Gordon come up with something else? Well, it's because they can. And again, the people who pitch these things are no good.

They've joined the Godzilla versus Kong Writers' Room. I mean, the writer's room for Godzilla versus Kong must have been a real high point in a cinematic history. You know what? They had helped write a recent draft of Disney's Jungle Cruise,

which is a movie I've never heard of. Jungle Cruise. It's got the rock in. Based on the ride? We're having movies based on rides now, Sips. That is a dreadful, dreadful, dreadful film. Entirely CGI. As far as I can tell, because they've got that weird lighting that they have in these movies now,

where it's clearly just a green screen room, and they're just looking slightly up above the camera, and it's all the whole background of CGI, every character they talk to seems to be CGI, every set is CGI. It's terrible. And, of course, the story and the dialogue is fucking rotten. And it's got the rock in it, so it's guaranteed shit. Yeah, he's like...

So then... He's become like the... Like the carrot top of this generation, the rock. I feel like these guys were just literally budget writers, right? Like random guys in Hollywood doing random small stuff that doesn't, none of it's any good. And anything they do write, they sort of just provide a baseline for, right? And then someone else comes in and changes it and makes it better or at least not terrible. They're basically, imagine two monkeys with typewriters banging on that that's what they are.

It was the best of terms. It was the bluest of terms. That's these guys. Stupid muggies. So they were hired to write the Lord of the Rings series in the 2018, right? And they basically mapped out five seasons, five seasons of television that told the first five minutes that the Lord of the Rings movie used in the prologue, right? Because it was a load of boring old crap about war and they didn't matter to the, it didn't really, it was just crap. So they were like, let's make that five minutes of crap into five seasons of crap.

I like to think that the reason they did that, by the way, Lewis, is because they only watched five minutes of Lord of the Rings. They watched five minutes. They were like, fuck it, that'll do. This sucks. Let's just do that. That makes sense. So they had a pitch meeting with Amazon, and then they got a call to return,

and then they came back to pitch all five seasons of the show. And afterwards, they were called back, listen to this, for seven more pitches. Gosh. Wow. And so I think basically what happened is Jeff said, said, yeah, do it. I love these guys. You think that he's involved at that level? He pretty must be, I suppose, a lot of money.

Because he has basically personally said that he is going to make sure it goes to the whole five seasons. And he doesn't mind if it makes a massive loss. Right. He's kind of just, he has to, it's his Dota 2. If he was Gabe sort of thing, he's. I genuinely think it is. Because I heard that they, if they cancel a series, they, they, they, they've agreed the five series with the Tolkien estate or whatever. And if they cancel one of the series,

it's like a $20 million cancellation fee. Judging the talkie. It's payday boys. So they're getting, you know, they're getting a $20 million cancellation fee. Imagine what the actual fee is. But yeah,

it's, obviously it did terrible. Season three is coming out this year. I mean, actually, I mean, again, when you put that much money and that much effort

and that much passion into a thing that people love, I found it very watchable. I didn't, you know, I mean, that's the problem really, isn't it? But it's very mid, right? It doesn't capture the joy of the originals, you know, and it just feels like a soulless corporate cash in. I don't know, like there's elements of it that just feel bad.

And that's a shame because it's something we really love. I mean, it did feel like it was ripe for the reboot, especially given that it's 26 years since the originals, you know, first started. And they're so beloved. Do you have anything because I mean, do you have anything in your sort of library of things that you love or whatever where you want to just keep it pure? Like you've read the books and you've just thought, you know what? That's enough.

Yeah. Don't touch this. I don't want to touch anything else to do with this because I just like the book so much and that's it. Do you have anything like that? I don't know if I have anything like that. I wonder if there's some purists out there. No, that's a really good point.

actually because I think I would, even the things I really love, I would love to see and brought to life. Certainly, the first law books, which if you haven't read the modest, the audiobooks. Yeah. Law books. Nine lore. The first law. The first law. The first law.

The first law. The first law. The first law. It's Joe Abercrombie's nine book trilogy. They're brilliant. Really? I love them. Fantasy series written by Joe Abercrombie.

promy and fitch. The first lure is a title of the original trilogy. What's it easier for this series as a whole? What's it about? We're reading it on Wikipedia when I'm right here. Yeah, but it's concise. Remember years ago, Flax recommended Red Rising. The, oh yeah, Red Rising, that would be great.

The trilogy. Okay, for me, I'd love to watch it. Where's the TV show of that? No, I'm a Red Rising Purists, okay? I've read those three books. Right. I enjoyed the experience of reading those books when I read them and that's it. I haven't I haven't read the prequel or the sequel trilogy.

Same, same, same. I haven't seen the TV show. There isn't a TV show. Well, whatever. Like, if there is one, but that, that's, for me, that's an example. That, that's something where, even if there was one, if they were like, we're doing it, we're doing a red rising TV show. I'd be like, no, I'm not watching that. Have you read, have you read book six, Lightbringer that came out two years ago? What's that? Three years ago. What's Lightbringer? Is the book six in the Red Rising trilogy? No, no. I haven't. We read the first three. I only read the first three and I love them. I assume you get asked this question all the time.

Hey, have you read the latest Red Rising book? And I'm like, I haven't read any of them past the original trilogy. That was fine. Yeah. Finished, great. Me too. Don't need any more. Me too. Don't need any more. Yeah. Well, there's three more and one coming out shortly. Great. Good luck to him. It seems like a good one. Have you read them? No, no interest in them. No. No, no, I'm asking Lewis. I feel like. Have you read any of the other books? Yeah, I've read the first three. I think. Yeah, I've read any of the other ones. I liked him, but not that much. No. That's fair enough. I love the first three. Yeah, I love the first three as well as well.

I just thought, I think it's one of those things that at the time I needed that and it was just perfect. It was just a perfect fit. I liked reading them. Yeah. And they were just, uh, they were just great. They were bangers. Yeah. It's weird how the first book did feel like a rip off of hunger games. And all of a sudden it's like a galaxy spanning space. Okay. But the thing is, I'd never even seen the hunger game. So I don't know. So for me, those books are even better because it's just like, like, I know of the Hunger Games now. Right. But like I've never sat down and watched a Hunger Games movie.

So I have no idea. So if I may say, when we talk about whether people would consume stuff, yeah. I always think that you're atypical because you tend to say, never heard of it, never watched it, never would. Yeah. But I think most people are probably more like you than like me who has watched all of those things. Yeah. And watches things all the time that I even don't even think of going to be any good. though a lot of people, I think, I think there's a lot of like, like hype buy in and stuff.

And I'm not saying I'm immune to it because of course I'm not. I mean, I play games. But that's the thing with me. I mostly play games. Like I don't, I find like if I have spare time, I will just be playing some game. Like whatever I'm playing at the time or whatever. I always miss movies. And I just don't even know if I really like movies that much anymore.

You should see, but I so I saw The Odyssey at the weekend. Yeah. With Mrs. F. We went to see it. I saw this thing where. People were watching it in like a 4D theater and it looked like the floor and the chairs were moving around like the boat and stuff. Yeah, fuck that.

No thanks. Is that real? There's no way. How would you enjoy that? You can watch it into the immersive roller coaster where they spray water on you when the waves hit up and stuff. I can't think anything worse. That's insane. They like spray fart gas out into the audience.

Imagine if your attention is so small. I wish you could smoke in movie theaters again. And then these guys are like fucking. having a roller coaster in the movie theater. It's insane. Crazy. That's true. I thought the Odyssey was brilliant.

I'm sure there will be some people out there who disagree with me. I absolutely loved it. It was overwhelmingly shot, absolutely superb, but there were some funny moments. Right. Okay, good. One of them is there's a scene where, I don't know how much to give away. Is the story of the Odyssey spoiler-worthy? Like, it's kind of hard to say that.

Probably, to be honest. I doubt many people have read the Odyssey. You would have heard of these things. You've heard of the psychops and all of this. You know that he goes on a journey. Because that's where the word Odyssey comes from. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's fair.

So, all right, there's a scene where there's a big fight and people are getting hold of weapons to fight. And one character is just saying, get the swords. And then they all get the swords and they fight, but they lose. Then he goes, get the shields. And then they get the shields. But that doesn't worry. Get the spears.

And they get the spears. It's just kind of comical. He's just hiding behind a pillar, shouting at people to get the spears, get the swords. That was kind of dumb. And there's also a moment where Odysseus says, this looks like the collapse of our Bronze Age, or our Age of Bronze. Right, yes, that's quite a meme.

Quite famously memed, because the point is, how does he know he's in the Bronze Age? Yeah. That would be like me saying, this is the end of our information age. Like, I know what's coming next. Clearly you don't. They didn't know about bronze was the bees' knees. Yeah.

It was the best. Oh, yeah. But the weird thing is that the whole point of the movie is that maybe the reason that the Bronze Age collapse happened, which was a real thing. And they don't really know what caused it was we just stopped being nice to each other. That's basically, although the lack of the rule of law. The bubble burst. They set up, they set up too many refineries. They set up too many bronze refineries and they were sucking up all the water and they were stealing people's jobs and they just thought, fuck this.

Fuck the Bronze Age. We're taking it down. Yeah. Iron Iron! Iron! It was good anyway. I loved it.

A couple of Duff lines and people didn't like Mrs. F didn't like the way Tom Holland refers to his mom and dad which people thought was kind of silly. I think any kind of historical

thing you have to say mother, father and people buy that but they don't buy mom and dad for some reason. That is funny how British accents are associated with old timiness.

Yes, always. All American accents in it. It's the old world. It feels like the old world, yeah. But so they're kind of Americanized. Yeah, I think it has an uncanny sort of squint on it to have everyone with American accents in ancient Greece. They should have just done it all in ancient Greece. They could just been going around them to each other the whole time.

That would have been amazing. I would love that. But it's really good. I recommend it. It was quite a spectacle. I'm going to see it in IMAX. in a few weeks time, I think, when I'm in China. We'll go see it at the IMAX in China.

Okay. I want to see what it looks like on IMAX. It was very tense watching it. You're going to have to, when you're in China, don't think about us. Don't worry about like, oh, I wonder what Sipson Lewis is I could do. Can we do a podcast? I wonder, just experience everything. Yeah, just think about me the whole time.

Yeah. Guys, I don't think about you when I'm at home. Oh, man. What are you talking about? No, but what I'm saying is don't, yeah. My spirit's going to die if you stop thinking about me. If you forget about me, it's like Coco. It's like Coco, but real time, I'm not dead.

But if you stop thinking about me, I will, I will just disappear. I'll slowly fade away. Wait, if I don't think about cocoa powder, it disappears. No. No, the movie Cocoa. See, that's a movie I have seen. Disney's Coco or Pixar or Pixar's Coco. Yeah, it was good.

It was pretty, pretty sweet movie. Is it like back to the future? No, it was like, it was like, Day of the Dead. Day the Dead, like Cinco de Mayo. Oh, yeah. It was like he goes into the realm of spirits to find his family. But his family are like at, there's one that in order for like the family spirits to be alive, somebody in the in the alive world needs to remember them.

And one of them risks being forgotten about because they're like last. Last, last, last ancestor is old and about to die or whatever and she can't remember. That's the whole movie centers around that. It's a cute movie, though. It's a good movie. Yeah, it's sweet. There's a new toy story coming out. It's already out the new toy story.

It's out. It's out. It's out. I haven't seen it, but it is out. Toy story six. No, I haven't seen it. One of my kids are old and out. One of my kids went to see.

Toy Story five? Yeah, Toy Story five. Five. I didn't, I think three was the best one. I think most people would agree. That was the one with. Barbie and Ken. That was just, I think, a great storyline, great setting. I love the fact that they were, you know, they had the whole thing with Andy leaving the toys and going off the college

and giving the toys to a little girl. It was very sweet. That was the one. That was the nursery one, right? That was the, yeah. I think that was the most complete start to finish, just an excellent, excellent movie. It was a good one, yeah. Really, really enjoyed it. With Wausa, the purple bear. He was the bad guy. Was that John Goodman? Maybe. I can't remember. Toy Story 3. There's always actors in this that you think, who the hell is. is that. And then it's, uh, let me have a look. Tim Allen, Tom Hanks, Lee Unkrich. Michael Keaton was Ken. Michael Keaton. Michael Keaton. My Batman. My Batman was, was Ken. Your Batman. Robert Pattinson's. Robert Patterson is the other day. I was asked this the other day,

who's your Batman? And I said Michael Keaton. And there was a lot of, a lot of angry people in the, in the chat. I thought he was a great man. No. Christian Bayle, right? Christian Bale. I mean, those movies are good. You know, the Nolan Batman movies. I do like them, but they're also kind of goofy. I never saw. I don't think I saw them.

You didn't see them? No. What do you watch? Nothing, man. I don't watch anything anymore. I haven't watched anything in so long. I just don't watch anything. I just, I don't know what I do.

I just, I'm having like a cleanse. Like, I don't really watch anything. I don't really do anything. That's a very interesting thing with these things, like asking like who is your, Or who is, when you say Spider-Man or something, who do you think of as that? The Marvel Comics. Yeah. What do you mean movies?

Because it's been rebooted so many times. I've seen one Spider-Man movie and it was the first one that Toby McGuire was in. Right. So that's it. It's kind of an analogy. That's my Spider-Man. I think Tom Holland is the best. Tom Holland has been the best Spider-Man.

Well, somebody asked me the other day, do you know who Tom Holland is? And I said no. And everyone laughed at me because I had no idea who he is. I still don't really know who he is. I've never seen him in any movies, so I don't know. Whatever. I don't know. He's not in my house.

I don't know who he is. Well, fuck, yeah. I mean, it's not, you're not too far off here. Like, it's like, why should I know who this out, who he is? Like, I don't know who he is. Fuck, like, he's dating Zendaya. He's a big deal. Right.

You know what? You know what you're like? Have you seen as an old Saturday Night Live sketch with Charlie from only always sunny in Philadelphia and Jason Sudakis. where Charlie is like a Colombo-style detective who turns up at a crime scene. Right. And there's like a dead body on the sofa there. And Jason Siddakis is like the cop who's helping him out.

And he's like, doesn't this place kind of look like the Seinfeld apartment? And it pans out and it's like they've made the set look like the Seinfeld apartment. And the cop goes, Seinfeld, what's that? He goes, you never heard of Seinfeld? He goes, hey kid, I don't know on a TV. And he goes like that, but everything he's like, he doesn't, he's never heard of baseball. He's never heard of World War II. Like all of this stuff, you're like that guy.

I'm that guy, sure. I mean, I think I know about stuff when it counts, but I think there's a lot of stuff that I don't know about, that I don't need to know about. It's all pop culture. Most of it. It's transitory, isn't it? But it's funny to me that you clearly did have an era

where you were into that stuff. Yeah. Because all your references are pop culture from the 90s. Everything post 2000, no interest. No, I never heard of it. Or I'm like, like, I was like probably like a boomer before there were boomers, like, in that sense, you know? Like, I just, I, I fell off the wagon so early. I'd say probably, like, mid, like, it would, like, 2000, from about 2005, I have no idea, like,

what is big and what was going on. Again, it's, it's an age thing, right? His, I watched, somehow I did I watched an episode of Pointless the other day on, on Terry, and, and, and, and. Is Alexander Armstrong still, still, still, yeah, he is. Richard Odsman's left and they've got a new Really? He's like, he's too busy doing it. He's big time now. He's doing everything, man. He's got books, you name it. It's still the same format. It's on like season 36 or whatever.

They film like five episodes a day. It's one of these TV shows. Anyway, they get the idea of pointless, if you don't know, is that the whole point is they poll people, like in family fortunes or whatever, to get answers to these questions. And then in the studio, the contestants are asked to try and get the answer that is that no one said the pointless.

answer. Yeah. The answer, like, yeah. So there'll be a hundred people, the same question, and then it can have multiple answers, but you're, you're trying to find, you're trying to answer the one that, like, basically nobody's answered and the least amount of points you get the better. And some of the questions, like, certainly the final questions are always hard. Like, I think the one I watched was, like, name a word in a, in the name of a service station in the UK, you know, and the pointless answers were, like forest or whatever. No, because there's loads of them. There's loads of weird named service stations on the M6.

Oh, you mean, on motorways? Motorway service station like would be called, what's the one on the way to Bristol? It's like, Burnley Gorgeforth, something like that. They always have these names that somehow make them memorable, but they're not memorable places at all. They're just serving on stations. So obviously the idea is that if you're a contestant who happens to live near one,

then you can get a, maybe get a point answer to anyone else would have known, or stuff like this, right? And so it's kind of an accessible quiz. Anyway, I realized that the people who were polled are all old people, right? Because there is, you know, and the reason I knew this was because I think there was a question and it was some, the answer I think was like, because some of them are just actual questions and you get a number, right? So one of them was, the answer was Blondie. Okay, I can't remember, it was like, you know, 80s pop star, beginning with B, and it was like, the answer was blonde. Right. The amount of people who got the answer, Blondie, right, was something like 60 out of 100.

And I just thought that that says a specific generation. One of the other answers was Fortnite. And the question was like, you know, what video, which popular video game do you jump out of a battle bus and fight other players begins with F, right? And it was like, only like three out of the hundred people got that right. Yeah, no, it's just old people. It's just old people who sit at home all day being pulled.

And knowing that information, I think. How do you think they do it? Do you think they call you up? Or do you think it's the audience that they poll? I wonder. Oh, no, it's the, I think it used to be the audience. Isn't it? It's like a, there's like a, there's like a little agency who, who do this or at least pretend to do this.

By what mechanism? Like, are they emailing people? Are they stopping you on the street? Are they just cold calling? Or do the people that come to the studio to watch the recording, do they say to them, can you answer these 20 questions? Do you want the real answer? Yeah, no.

The real answer is, yeah. There's, there's a third party company who probably largely make it up, but they probably do do a little bit of, phone calling and polling of their friends and other people. I doubt it's done like a fucking government election. But that's not fair. It just has to be believable, you know, and they can get away with it. The makers of the TV show pointless are misleading us?

They better not be. Not on my BBC, they better not be. Probably, right? But I would doubt that, you know, right in if you've ever done answers for family fortunes or anything like that and how it works. But yeah, I imagine it's fairly straightforward. And it wouldn't cost that much to do it legitimately. But it's definitely done by, it doesn't really get a cross-section of the population, does it?

Although I imagine they try and promise to. Just, I can't believe it. I can't believe it. I won't believe it. What was I saying? I refuse to believe it. I think it just shows how. Oh, yeah.

So go back to who's your Superman? Yeah. Who's your Superman? Christopher Reeves. Christopher Reeves. Well, exactly. Weirdly, that's me as well. Has there been any others?

Yeah, there's been a hero. Did you mean how there are any others? Henry Campbell? There's another one, another new one. I don't even know. David Caw and sweat. I don't watch DC movies. They're almost always terrible.

Christopher Reeve was my Superman. That was the one I grew up with. And those movies were shit. Yeah, they were really bad. They were shit. God, they were bad. They were bad. They were bad.

They were bad. They were bad. Why are we making more of them? Fuck Superman anyway. Worst superhero else. It is kind of bad. Okay, what's, what's your, what's your enterprise? Fucking Picard.

NCC-1-1-D. It's Picard. No, I meant the actual ship, though. Oh, the Enterprise D. Yeah, the D. The TNG one. You didn't like the Voyager one or the, the Back in Time one. Never watched it.

The original one. No, it was, yeah. TOS was, it's a terrible show. Picard and Co. For me all the way to. I imagine there are people who's, who's captain and whose enterprise is Archers. Chris Pine or whatever his name is. Oh, Chris Pine?

Yeah, totally. That's the guy from Quantum Leap? No, that's Scott Becula. Scott Bacula. Scott Bacula. Scott Bacula. Scott Bacula. Scottie Bucula.

Don't break my balls, friends. It's him and Patrick Shewitt. Pat, don't break my balls. All right. One minute, we're over here. So now you get fucking fresh. Oh, keep him here. I watched Goodfellas last night.

My youngest loves that movie. Oh, it's a great movie, man. I like Goodfellas a lot. I like how you're watching it as if it's a comedy. What? Good fellas. Good fellas. Oh, he's got some great bits.

Casino is really good too. Remember Casino? It's a great. Yeah, yeah. So she liked Casino a lot, but she's like, it's not as good as good fellas. It's true. It's not as good fellas. Has she seen full metal jacket?

That's a good one. No, that's a bit much. I think she might like it. No, it's not that bad. There's one scene where the guy shoots himself in the toilet, which is a bit a ropey. I thought he shot himself in the head. He does. Yeah.

He shoots himself in the head on the head. He shot himself in the toilet. In the head, on the head. Yeah. It's pretty rough, dude. Yeah, it's pretty rough. I think she'd like it, though. But I watched that recently, and it's pretty dark.

Full Metal Jacket, yeah. It's also very depressing. It's very depressing. It's a great. But we watched Obsession. We watched Obsession. Have you seen that? No, I haven't seen that.

So that along with Backrooms. Remind me what that movie is. I haven't seen Backroom. They're like the two biggest movies of the year, I'd say that an Odyssey. But these were big stories because they were super indie movies. I think Obsession was made for 750. $50,000, something like that. Is obsession like about like a stalker or something?

No, it's about a guy. This is a spoiler, but it's the first five minutes of the film. He's in love with this girl. It's not reciprocal. He goes into a weird store. He finds this weird thing. You snap it and make a wish and the wish comes true. And he wishes that she was more in love with him than anyone else in the world.

Right. And so she transforms into this insane psycho girlfriend who doesn't even want to leave his side. Her performance is, first of all, as far as I can tell, none of these actions have been anything before. They're all excellent. No, the budget was less than a million. Yeah, it was made for nothing. That's very low these days.

Yeah. But it's an absolutely superb film. I recommend it. It's one of the best horror films I've seen in a long time. And backrooms as well, that was also very cheap. Did you know about this movie that it's inspired from a monkey's poor from Treehouse of Horror in Simpsons? Because as soon as he goes in and the shopkeeper's like, oh, you want to buy a wish?

I immediately thought of Homer saying, I wish I had a cheque. She's a turkey sandwich where the bread is not too damp and the turkey's not too dry. And he takes a bite. There's like one thing wrong with it. Like he realizes the monkey's poor is going to doom him. Whereas I think it works for Flanders, right? He gets the monkey poor and he's having a fine time with it, Brian member rightly. I don't remember that one.

I remember the concept of that one, but I don't remember the actual. Season three episode seven, tree has a great episode, one of the best episodes. love that one. The OG series were, yeah, classic, spectacular. Someone was talking to me the other day when I was streaming. We were talking about, so you know the podcast I do with Ben, Darmok and Jaladat, a podcast, right, where we've watched TNG. Yes.

Rewatching that works because it's, a lot of the time it's like comically bad. Or something will happen that's just kind of hilarious, hasn't aged well, whatever. Yeah, exactly. And someone said, you should do the symptoms. People were dreading the good episodes. Oh, the Simpsons would be such a slog. You'd hit a point in the Simpsons where it would be amazing, and then you would immediately hit this basically 15-year slog after,

and it would be awful. More than that. It's like 20 years of shit, if not more. That's how bad we're talking. So the thing is, when it's good, what are we talking about? We're just glazing that episode and saying, hey, this bit was funny, wasn't it? Yeah, yeah, this bit was funny. It's too good. And then when it's bad, all you're doing is saying, this is bad.

Like there's nothing to be drawn from it. There's nothing that you'd get back from like off the back of watching like the Mr. Plow episode, the B-sharp's episode. I'm just like saying, man, this was a great episode. All of these would be great episodes and then followed by like you said 20 years of just nonsense. It blends together. That's not funny.

Yeah. Although having said that, my son went through a little phase where he was watching The Simpsons and he was watching more recent episodes of the Simpsons. and I didn't enjoy them, but I did find myself occasionally laughing, which I was surprised at. Every once in a while, I'd be like, oh my God, that's actually kind of funny.

We watched The Simpsons with the kids all up to season 10, and I said to them, in this house, we do not watch past season 10. You want to watch it at a friend's house? You want to go there? When you move out, you can watch past season 10. Where have you been? But in this house.

Nowhere, what have you been doing? You were watching season 11, weren't you? You watched season 11 of the Simpsons. I didn't. You did, you scum. You got frown lines on your face. You've been watching season 13 of the Simpsons, haven't you? Why so blue?

Been watching season 15 of the Simpsons? Why so blue? No, it's nothing. Because it makes you sad watching those. I remember we were thinking about making an animation back in the day for Yorg Labs and, you know, Maker Studios or this, they were sort of thinking about doing a proper, proper nice animation of it.

And we had people, you know, we were even like, they were even like talking to actors about playing certain roles like Richard Iowardi and Adam Buxton and people like this doing like some of our characters. And I think the guy from, what's his name, the bloody guy from Stathlet's Flats,

he was in the running one at one point so much. Stathlet's Flats is an amazing. show, by the way. Have you seen that, Lewis? Steph Let's Flats? Yeah, loved it. This was great. And they were talking about different writers as well. And I was like, sure. And they were like, these guys, they wrote an episode

from, yes, what we do in the shadow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's very funny. And she's great. They're both great. Anyway, one of the writers was said, oh, you know, they wrote an episode of The Simpsons. And I was like, that isn't actually a good

thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's almost like it's almost like these same it's like, these guys did the rings of power. You're just doing it. They're doing yourself. Not really.

No, no thanks. It's a bit shit. Told me enough. It's, yeah, I think a lot of people doing it just for a job, not because they're any good at it, or they love it, or it's just a better job than working in the box factory.

Do you mean? I'm a TV writer. Tough times of the box factory, you know. It's not easy. Well, exactly. Being a boxman. You know, I, AI is replacing all those jobs.

I saw a talk today, this guy, he's talking about AI, and he's talking about regulation. He said that if you have lots of regulation, that's bad. No regulation, bad, but we need a sweet spot of regulation where we win. In other words, we need to have regulation that doesn't make us lose to the singularity. And I thought, why are we still making this shit? Surely we should collectively get together, like we did with nuclear weapon. and say, this is really dangerous and we should stop. But we're not.

We're just going to beeline towards it and we're all going to perish. These data centers, have you seen them? The things they're everywhere. They're mad. We are in a dystopia. Yes. Like the noise that these things make and the amount of water that they drink is insane. And it was just like, what's happening in there?

Like, genuinely, who's in charge of this? How did they build this so quickly? It honestly feels like the AI is already running the show. Because these things are just enormous, boxes to just power it. And give it another hundred years, that's all they'll be on the entire fucking planet. It's just gigantic solar panels and farms for the singularity. That's my fear.

Should we do lose news? Yes, please. Oh, by all means. By all means. Yeah, get... By all means. Get in there. Why'd you say that like a film?

By all means. By all means. Lovely Sam Morris has put these together for us. A rare Nintendo console... What's rare about? been discovered in an unusual location, a Japanese love hotel. Okay. Wow.

So, apparently, each room for this love hotel was set up with a Nintendo. But they found a fully functioning, what's called a Famicom box. Yeah, Famicom. That's what they call it in Japan. There was this. Super Famicom. Igniting rumors that a former Nintendo president dabbled in some after hours assignments.

Right. So there's some incredibly rare Nintendo products. And they look pretty nuts. It looks like a sort of server rack or something, like a Nintendo server rack. And I found it in a Love Hotel. Wow. It was a commercial use version of the home console introduced in 1986,

designed as like a pay-for-play system and tried to be sold to resorts and hotels. in order to put codes in or keys in or, you know, and its cartridges resemble the sort of NES front-loading design. And apparently, you know, it obviously never really caught on, but maybe it was, it's weirdly, again, weirdly it was installed in this Love Hotel. So that there's, because there's, there's, this rumours since the 1993, the former Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi dabbled in managing Love Hotel in the 60s, before Nintendo became a household name.

So Nintendo had a short-lived run in running, running, you know, love hotels. That's so bizarre. That is so bizarre. And they installed this incredibly rare machine. And I guess this love hotel, they found it abandoned in a cupboard or something like this. And yeah, just people love this retro stuff,

and that is pretty weird. That's retro. And hot. That's retro, baby. Man. This is a, really weird, really weird piece of news. Okay.

I'm not sure how to read it. Weirder than the last one? Yeah. So, a Russian plumbing company. Right. Okay. That sells toilets have recently held a competition where participants were required to drink out of toilets.

Right. Okay. They called the contest Game of Thrones. Okay. Very good. named, you know Does that translate? I don't know.

The game of thrones. You must drink from the toilet. Why is he fucking the count? I don't know what it's like that. People are required to drink non-alcoholic sparkling drinks from brand new toilet seats using large straws.

The person who emptied their container first was declared the winner. Gross. I don't know. It's very strange. In order to win a 100,000 Rumble Prize competitors

will split into groups of seven with the fastest the drinker are vensing to second round. Nice. Yeah.

In the second stage of the competition the seven winners from the previous round had to sit on a closed toilet seat for as long as possible

with the last person sitting being declared the winner. Apparently, after 10 hours of sitting on toilet seats, only two

people quit with the rest continuing to suppress their physiological needs. It does not say who finally won, as I assume, after 10 hours the reporters left, as they had better things to do. Interesting. That's that. That's that.

Jesus. Wow. Happy with that. That's good. I love that one. Finally. Good enough for you? Let's move on.

Finally. Not finally. One more. we'll talk to be more. So this is an article about Meta's AI glasses. Boo. Right. Yeah.

You know they're like basically spy cameras. Everyone's, yeah. Everyone's at being advertised spy cameras now to wear and just record everyone else. Like it's the biggest advance in pervert technology. You see it's the trench coat. It really is. And, you know, there's, there's tons of people wearing them and saying they're really cool and all the, all the hip, cool guys. But there's also advert.

that's like fighting back. And there's these guerrilla bus stop ads, okay, where I don't understand what this is. Basically, let me just share it with you and you can try and explain it. But it's an advert on a bus stop, basically. I'm holding on here. And as you watch it, it does,

do you remember the movie, which we talked about on this where they live? They live. Yeah, John Carpenter's, they live. the glasses. Rowdy, Rony Roper. Reality.

Rowdy, Roddy Piper, wow. And when they put the glasses on, everyone looks like aliens, right? Oh, yeah, this is really good. Oh, I love this. And so there's a fake advert, and the angle at which you look at it,

Kylie Jenner transforms into an alien when you're watching. Yeah, like specifically the aliens from They Live. That's what they looked like. Amazing. That's great. And it says meta, we're always watching.

That is really loud, by the way, that video. I feel like meta is, Possibly the worst of the big seven or whatever. At least like they all suck, but meta feels like just the most dystopian. Who do you think they are worse than? Who do you think is the best of the bunch? Who do you think is the? I mean, for people think that people think that these, there's this new AI bubble is going to go and knock everyone off.

But they're also diversified all these huge companies, right? like Google's diversified into phones and browsers and it's got its own Gemini AI and obviously you know it's got tons of things oh my Gemini oh my Gemini that's fucking world cup ads and Amazon's huge and it's I mean a lot of this one even just comes from web services you know and but obviously people know it for the shop which is huge and the Amazon Prime and all the other things it does tons of tons of things and you know they're all massively diversified so they can't, you know, they're all got their hands in. And basically, I think the idea is that any new thing that comes along gets snapped up, right?

Even like SpaceX, which is also AI and Twitter and everything. Everything's massively diverse right now. It's not just, the companies aren't just one thing. They do five things. So if one of them does badly, they can just pretend that they're carrying on fine and never go bust and never fail. And it's, you know, it's weird. But I feel like the only thing, meta have is WhatsApp.

Correct me if I'm wrong. Is there anything good they're doing? I genuinely don't know what their thing is these days. I mean, I think Facebook is still the biggest social media platform in the world. I guess they have Instagram. That's huge, right? Yeah, but maybe that's enough. Facebook is so big.

It's, we don't use it because we hate it. Well, that's it. Exactly. But I'm telling you, it's not just all people. That doesn't mean it's not. It's like Star Wars. It's like Doctor Who. You know, people will still,

There's the people who love that show instill and support it, even if it's bad now. In this country, I don't know anyone under 30 who uses Facebook. Like, I don't think I know a single person. But they're using Snapchat and Instagram. People still believe in, you know, Catholicism. That's still going. I don't know anyone who's under 40 who's into that. Massive in Southeast Asia.

Massive in South America. Like Facebook is big in a lot of places. Didn't they try to break into India? I think they tried to break into India. I think it's big there. as well. That's not the I've never heard of it.

There's a bridge in Greece. There's a bridge in Greece which collapsed. Oh, really? Years ago, okay. But because it's in Greece, people still keep using it. Oh, my God.

Look at that. It's so funny. There's a bridge that's collapsing. There's a land rover just driving over it. Yeah, collapsed in 2023. The Paleo-Pergos Bridge. obviously joining together some bit of an island

why did they just build it like that in the first place you know they just all they got to do is just get like a little bit of get a little bit of concrete into those cracks or whatever and then it would look good as new so it's been collapsed for three years it was never blocked off or barricaded any way

nor fixed so people who choose just not to well people just don't boat down there there's no boats going down there or you can maybe fit through the size It looks like there's like a big enough clearance maybe for like a small boat to get to get through the side there. If you were if you were navigating the rivers of Greece. I don't know. Could be.

Do you navigate the rivers? The rivers of Greece? Is there are many rivers in Greece? They must have some. I'm sure they've got rid of. That sounds like a great scene for the Odyssey. You know, you know, driving over a collapsed bridge. Oh, there's a symbol for the fall of the Bronze Age.

The Bronze Age has collapsed. This is the collapse of bronze bridge. Brilliant line. That's a great podcast. We did it. We didn't really do it. No. Today, but we did it.

No, we turned up to do it and kind of made it through it. Who's your Doctor Who? Mine is Christopher Eccleston. Yeah, is Christopher Eccleston. Tom Baker. Tom Baker. Yeah. Going back to ways.

Who's your James Bond? Oh, for me. Yeah. I want to say, Roger Moore because I did like It's Pierce Broston for me. Roger Moore, but it's probably Sean Connery, unfortunately.

Pierce Brosden. Interesting. I'm a little bit younger than you. Don't know. Have you seen my penis? This little gadget I got from Q, my little gadget from Q, it's called a condom.

You want to try it? Have a look at my penis. Sometimes you just have to slap a woman. She won't shut her. I don't think I will ever mention Sean Connery without talking about him saying how sometimes he's just got to hit a bitch He famously did say that, yeah

Pimpin ain't easy, you know So that's what they're saying is Sean Connery Is Sean Connery going to have to slap a bitch? Oh, man, fucking hell Okay, wow, good stuff we're done. Thank you, everyone. Love you. See you next time. Goodbye. Goodbye.