War With A Mate - Episode 45: Dog Days

Episode Date: October 10, 2025

Wow, look at James being ambitious! A huge Eastern push shows he has the moves it takes to make the push, while Andy is busy posturing about his grand air tactics for the next turn. The 4th CCNN and 7th Armoured finally part ways, and a mystery celebrity guest makes an appearance! ABC has a much more successful war effort than the guys in the history segment, and Common Ground looks to a future where poets and brats alike can all speak their mind.

hello hi welcome to war with a mate yeah that's what we're doing here it's war with a mate with me james me andy and we are in war with the mate headquarters andy how do you how do you feel here in the headquarters i mean pretty comfortable because it's my living room ah yes you've really destroyed the magic on that one from from go uh we've been pretty open about where we play i thought this was the soft reboot i'd love to get a studio or an extra room on my house i don't know that you're allowed to you i also don't know there's room i don't think there's room for an extension here crudely built extension you rent you can't you can't just build you don't have the rights to that i reckon if i add a podcast studio to a rental that'll increase the no it

won't increase the rental value when i leave you're not allowed to just stick a podcast studio on anywhere what's what's the podcast andy warver mate we're playing uh all of the campaign for north africa the longest most incomplete board game ever uh we're currently having a little practice scenario six turns which we've flown through in nine months we're up to turn two up stage two wow i thought you'd put it in uh in more hopeful terms i really didn't think you'd be putting it in the stark reality that we live in we've really seen the harsh light of day with that one haven't we yes unfortunately that is the state of things the campaign for north africa is a really long board game and yeah we're playing it all but the practice run's going so far it is

certainly going yeah that's all i can say for it it's going well we had my finish up my movement in combat today yeah uh the fourth didn't want to fight because i think they had one bullet between them all yeah so those who were here before the soft reboot um i don't know why we're doing a soft reboot at episode 45 i guess we'll just scrap that idea yeah why would we do that we're gonna rebrand it's gonna be beautiful no we aren't uh doing that we're sticking with the same reality of the fourth black shirts are absolutely fucked they were boxed in by the seventh armor division and friends and when they were approached i had one ammo point between them all which put me in a fairly unique position one that i'm kind of pleased about so the rules are if you have no

ammunition whatsoever and you're close assaulted then your forces surrender en masse which would mean all of that division just give themselves over however if you do have ammunition and you choose not to assign any units to close assault which is what i did then they can simply retreat that's what i did i retreated a humble three hexes away which is what i was allowed to do and then i retreated that little bit more so that meant i was able to dart all the way back west to a bit of a blast from the past the airfield at fort maddalena indeed you remember that one andy filled with the wreckage of five dead sgs that's where this all started fort maddalena that was the flashpoint that was the franz ferdinand being shot that's where this all started we were at war

before that no we could we could have been friends this didn't have to happen uh yes you made this happen if you stayed away from fort maddalena we'd be sapling carcass on or some shit right now we'd be fine we could have signed a peace treaty and war with a mate would be done it would have been a nice tidy chapter of like 25 episodes and then we could have shut the door on that and started a new endeavor well i'm glad i attacked it then i'm not i didn't want this to keep on going i wanted this to be done by christmas i wanted to be home by christmas that's never happened once no conflict has ever finished just in time for christmas no sometimes they break briefly for

christmas yeah have a little kick around play some football yeah i think that's only happened once actually did they not no i don't think they repeated it did they i don't think that's a world world war ii did not have that vibe did they do that at the start or the end of world war one oh that's a good question actually because they had a few christmases yeah is that the flu roll for christmas christmas ease yeah yeah they had well 14 to 18 they would have three i think well hang on a minute this is bad we're doing a podcast about world war ii we should at least know a bit about world war one when in 1914 did it start i guess not december 26th so they definitely have that one i think september and there's no way it finished oh god well no it

didn't finish um before it finished before december in 1918 yes it finished in november yeah of course 1918 to july remembrance day yes yeah that's probably why they have it then i always forget that yeah so you forget remembrance day unfortunately i guess that speaks to your your caliber of memory but going back to what you do remember you probably remember that the fourth black shirts retreated back to fort madelena yes where they found a little brucey bonus hidden away because it turns out at fort maddalena what was left behind no sgsus some planes yes but definitely a shit ton of ammo which i should have just taken when i was there i forgot airfields were also supply dumps i guess while i was there they are and we we check the

rules and it does specify that land units are not to use the supply resources at an airfield unless in case of emergency and it then goes on to say it is down to the players to define what an emergency is and you said it was an emergency and i didn't fight you i would define this as an emergency the fourth black shirts are in an emergency situation they've been out in the boonies being absolutely destroyed by your guys they had a single ammo point which i think is i think it might be four tons you know because i think the conversion rate for shipping yeah i I think it's four tons of ammunition. It doesn't quite make sense, the ammo,

in terms of what a tank and an infantry battalion and a plane are all using. Yeah, so I had four tons of ammunition, which I didn't use, but I went back there and there's a lot more than four tons of ammunition, I can tell you that. Because my planes were defeated. They were destroyed, not literally destroyed,

but they were made completely defunct by your arrival when you massacred my SGSUs and walked out. I can only describe it as a war crime. yes yes is the word you're looking for they're combatants they are not combatants they're engineers i think that counts then why didn't they fight back military personnel why did they just die they tried to but it was like five guys who fixed planes sharing a pistol fighting a tank division five guys who what share a pistol no the bit you said before that fixed planes yes that's their job yes and you murdered them yes they would never kill a man the gun was there for show

i you you try to get up on a like a moral high ground that doesn't work i guess yeah while i'm talking about where the um black shirts went i probably shouldn't be trying to take a moral high ground no yeah i'll walk away from that one so those fascist elites who beat people up with fish did they have that was one guy and his friends and his message all right fine you've walked me into a corner pigeonhole me why don't you fucking hell yeah okay the black shirts are bad guys and the sgs use i guess maybe by association were not pleasant guys whatever they're dead they've been dead for months in real life in the game they've been dead for like four weeks they were the first casualties they were uh twice i think i don't think it was a

different one that we did the erroneous one on um so yeah they've they've been killed which left a bunch of ammo behind because i couldn't put that into my planes so now the fourth actually have a shit ton of ammo no food though well yeah yeah i guess if we're going off that then they are resource shy ah but truck convoy is coming up because we wrapped up all of the movement today yes so i guess before that what did you do on your movement uh not much no you didn't have a page full of stuff no no no no i'm just finding my notebook where did i where did i put oh it's down here ah look a hastily written down common ground idea um that will come in handy later i'm gonna have to lose that page by the way so i hope you like me making up a common ground on

the spot because i've had to turn page to somewhere else that's fine yeah so i had what's that one two three four five six seven eight nine ten bits of movement goodness me so shall we fly through what that movement consisted of uh i guess a general overview you were moving stuff east yes um as is the game i've pushed the wall east you have i decided to do a bit of a blanket movement really pushed east um for those that remember uh last time i started to make a little push along the northern road that little push has continued and it's a fairly sizable push so i moved that group of three pretty sizable groups further east which includes an entire team of tanks and two more or less division sized yeah one actual division and one sort of junior division is

your tank one set up nicely or not it's set up nicely for combined arms it's ready to go it will not feel the detriment of the combined arms effect. You will not be fighting them in a situation where the combined arms is going to detriment me. I will promise you that. So they've moved along. They've made a wall three hexes wide, covering

the northern coast hex down three. So that puts you in a tough position. You'll either have to move through rough and then try and get around a zone of control, which is just a bad idea anyway. Or just let me continue to march forward. Or fight them? well no you wouldn't do that that's crazy talk Andy come on we're sensible men indeed so they've

pushed forward I also decided it would be worthwhile bringing along the first Libyan division I mean makes sense they're one of your biggest divisions correct they're definitely up there are they they're not very good there's a lot of them but they're not very good right they're not specifically talented compared to others. Their close assault ratings aren't super high. Yes. It's the toe points that they bring. It's not the close assault rating that

they bring. Yeah, it's also my understanding of the Italian bad supply situation overall. It was supply Italian people first. Sort out our locals. Soldiers second. Ah, I see you say that because I've taken a different approach of supply nobody.

I guess it's it's a different and more complete kind of evil yeah but it's not evil it's negligence i don't think negligence is evil i think it's it's bad but it's not evil because if it's willful neglect then yes i guess it's evil if you neglect you know if you don't feed your dog for two weeks that's evil yeah if you're choosing to do that if you're incapable of looking after it that's not really on you it's really bad you've got a dead dog so it is end points the same the end point is bad situation yes i didn't do this on purpose why would i do this on purpose i didn't understand the rules of the game andy so that was not on purpose however the first libyan they were

refreshed refreshed refreshed i've got flesh on the mind andy doing a cannibal thing cannibal hector so i have replenished their food a couple of turns ago a couple of stages ago so they actually have a bit of food so when they're marching over there they're actually going to be able to help that's always a positive for a turn yeah that's all i need okay i can i can get them to do all of turn three and then after that they can start a staff oh okay that's all that needs to happen so less of that um so they've joined along whereas some of the others in the area the 62nd mamara or mamaria never get that right uh the first black shirts the areska um they've all moved east which is pushing that northern portion from the front or are they

or is this group the ones up at the coast and that where the road's missing so these are the ones a little bit further down those are the ones around that little cluster north of madalena but south of the northern coast at the northern road yes the sort of gap between yes yeah the area that i've been holding quite steadfast so they're pushing east as well that's creating a bit of a horseshoe around the seventh armoured because now i've got the black shirts at a little further down kind of puts them in a difficult position some other interesting movement that i put forward was uh five guns that are motorized indeed i've moved along to find your bandits the ones that have been running amok with my trucks yes the ones that you've pushed real far west

that are now lingering dangerously close to the brook i've moved that gun group along and we had a bit of combat actually involved we had a brief skirmish we did in which i fired some guns i barraged and i pinned the king's royal rifle company yes the king's royal rifle company they were pinned and the northumberland fusiliers that's it they weren't pinned but i did go after them however they lost zero percent and you lost five percent god those guys are good well i pinned your guys i pinned your other guys so they're they're pinned currently oh yeah and it is the end of the the op stage that doesn't really matter now but another thing i did move was the libyan tank command yes that's that's hovering just below to brook it is and it's a division yes

it's a tank command division and uh i know something you don't know about them what's that i'm not going to tell you but they are moving south and they are heading towards that conflict oh they are they are yes that's why they moved close they moved within two hexes of you when they ended their movement so that if you did you know try to dart off and retreat kind of like i with the fourth today i would just follow them okay but i decided not to since you've stuck around and i pinned them i'll just keep that going with the guns for a bit but they're they're not pinned anymore they're not pinned anymore but they are in a zone of control uh not engaged they're in contact so there'll be two two two cp yeah uh a to leave yeah and they have to pick a

direction to go as well oh i know where they're going do you yes are they going to dubruque okay then they're going to their death then whether it's in the desert or whether it's walking into a zone of control james they should have died three off stages ago everything they do now is a bonus if you do what i think you're going to do and i'm going to say it now so that if people find out the consequence of this next week then it's fair game if you go after more of my trucks, I'm not going to be a happy duck. Yeah. So you're laughing now.

It's truck convoy phase. I'm moving the trucks away. They're not getting any more trucks. There's no trucks in your room. Yes, there are. Into Brook? No, there's other trucks around. Not close, actually. Well, you know that my trucks are coming from

Tripoli. Wait, what? Yeah, don't fucking play this. You know that they're coming along and you know that you're going to try and go to the road to intercept them we'll see what i'm not stupid yeah you might be let's i'm not stupid i'm glad you've said this i'm so close by the way today i genuinely had the thought in my mind of moving that fucking garrison from tobrook the massive one the only thing defending tobrook i was so tempted to march them out of tobrook to just blow these guys out the water then they're doing their job they're not their job is to defend tobrook not abandon tobrook oh no sorry i mean

my guys are doing oh right sorry i thought you'd misunderstood my guy's job if they dislodge free divisions i think they're collectively 800 guys so if they're dictating the movements of like 20 to 30 000 people they're doing something right i'll tell you what they are they're the real long range desert group yes because your actual long range desert group have done fuck all this game awful i literally when we start again i'm not you're not making them i'm not making them until i have special forces to go with them that's fair i'll be making mine immediately because i've not felt the cold sting of them not being effective and i feel like i don't know there's some sort of karmic magic going on in this game where if i make them they'll work perfectly

from go you can't make them till the german show up you can't make them till the german show up are you are you saying that that way so you hope i edit that bit out oh yeah yeah good luck buddy uh we don't edit anything on this thing Not a single bit of editing goes in. The music, like the intro, that's played by the band in the background. It's all diadrack. Of the War with the Maids studio. But it's not, we don't know it's there.

Okay. I've really confused the meta. And the last little bit of movement that I had, which was actually the first one I did. These little tinkers. The Saharan Detachment, Andy. Don't like them. They were in the Siwa Oasis at the start of this op stage. Yes, they were.

they're not anymore no they've headed towards the qataran depression they're on map d yeah they're in your territory this is the first time bar the long range desert group because i don't know where they've ended up in the past because i know they dip around all over the place and they're hidden but this is the first time that one of us has passed into the other one's map uh i didn't dip the long range desert group into your map just to feel the thrill of being on your map but not do anything so they are yeah i thought that i don't know that's in your character to do i thought you might have well i guess you guys you move these guys up the only other time i've had stuff on your map is the fleet yeah i guess you got the fleet i don't really count them though because

they can zip up and then disappear they just go there instantly and then leave they're kind of like the long range desert group in that way except much scarier yeah they have so many cannons on the side of them they can just blow me to smithereens along the navy ships are so scary in this time period it's the only thing that really scares me about having those guys along the coastal road is that a fleet could show up well it's that a fleet will show up oh it will but i don't need to worry about that yet do i they can't go again next upstage uh no they were one more upstage in port yeah i thought so so they will be my guys will be moving away from the coastline before that happens of course again very happy with that if they deny you the whole coast oh it's because

I'm going to get onto the road and I'm going to go to Mersa Matruh. I'm going to go to Mersa Matruh and then I'm going to go south. Oh, okay. But that's only after the Saharan Division takes Mersa Matruh because I illustrated very clearly today as a show of force that the Saharan Detachment can indeed get to Mersa Matruh

next offstage. Yeah, for a fight, I think they'd lose, to be honest. I don't actually know anything about the garrisons you have. They're fairly robust and it's fortified and stuff. Yeah, because we've not actually had a fight at a major city yet or or any settlement no the closest we've come to terrain

being involved is uh you got a boost last off stage uh because i was fighting into rough yes yeah to rough of course is um the sister town of tabruk what i thought i'd get a bigger laugh why i don't know i thought we have like a live studio audience no is that not part of the soft reboot no live studio audience we should bring in like a mystery celebrity guests every week and have them sit on on the sofa over there i'd love it if we could have a guest every week not even a guest we use if we're big enough to disrespect a celebrity once a week well perfect we've got one here now look at him you see do you recognize who that is no you don't know who that is i'm disrespecting you oh yeah that's that's it's called it's called

negging isn't it yeah yeah come on have a seat down have a seat down you know what actually for the budget we'll just keep the same celebrity here each week okay so you can sit over there we're not going to talk about your job or anything no no don't get up it doesn't matter if you need to need the toilet you need the toilet all you want sit over there there we go we'll keep him over there we'll get back to him later he's always trying to go to the toilet it's not jeff goldblum let's not let's not over bloat this we know it's not jeff goldblum you wish you were jeff goldblum buddy anyway you sit over there be quiet don't say a word we'll keep them over there um so now that that's over that distraction um that was the last bit

a movement I did. The Saharan Detachment can reach Mersa Matruh next offstage if I want them to. Yes, which is a big worry. I don't think I will just yet, not until your division. Which division is it you've got up there? That's not the 4th Indian. You've got another one that's sitting around.

The 2nd New Zealand. 2nd New Zealand. I, at the minute they are kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place. They're stuck between you know, defending Mersa Matruh and they're stuck between reinforcing the 4th Indian and the others when it comes to

my guys just showing up on that road. Yeah, they're in a bit of an awkward spot. The Saharan detachment showing up there is actually my proudest part of my movement stage. It has completely changed the... I didn't realise I could go that far.

The thing is as well, they... I thought they were going to sort of chug up slowly and be less relevant than they suddenly have become. Because they're also not nothing. Like, they actually have a decent combat capability yeah like they're not just a single toe point they've got infantry they've got more than one infantry and they've got is the infantry motorized uh the infantry is all right cool yeah

yeah just oh yes no no it's all it's all motorized it's got more than one infantry and the infantry is more than one toe point and they've got more than one attack and defense point so they're fairly compact but they actually are quite hard hitters which is why I'm now more pleased than ever that I have motorized them because this is the first time I've motorized a full group

yeah I motorized those two little harassers I've sent off the fusiliers and the king's rifle company but yeah your truck this is like a division that can move fast which is to be fair they're not they're only their stacking point is parenthesized too so I'm not

sure what that means it's not is it it's not company it's bigger battalion company's the smallest company battalion um oh i can't remember what it is after that brigade not brigade i think brigade's even smaller maybe i think company's the smallest than brigade than battalion than division but so somewhere between doesn't help that the organizational structures in the game are not the name of anything yeah it's all based on like an esoteric description because both sides describe them as different sizes and different structures so there isn't a definitive measure

of what these terms actually mean Yeah, because in the game they're locked down but you have things that aren't that have like company in the name that aren't a company or whatever because the allies will the Axis weren't

that bothered about naming stuff correctly. Case in point, Saharan Detachment Yeah. That does not inherently describe a particular size detachment isn't something that's used in the game as a terminology for size so i don't know whatever size they are they're kind of formidable i'm glad they're behind enemy lines and i can get them to mercenary or if i wanted to go really all for broke i could go further east because there's another bit of track i could go over the depression you the depression would be rough to get through um well i what i guess a big thing to mention now

is I haven't done the breakdown rolls for any of these guys that have moved yet. Yes, that's how we're starting next time. So that could throw a wrench in your plans. That could change everything because I've moved a lot of tanks along the northern road and their breakdown shifts. But they've not moved along roads so far. They've moved along

incomplete roads. Oh yes, of course. So they have a good likelihood of breaking down. You could lose like 50-75% if you roll badly. Yeah, that's actually why i moved the libyans my thought process was if i lose a bunch of these tanks these guys step in yeah i don't want to have them drop out the fight completely i'd rather have some more guys show up

the only saving grace i have is if they break down i have more tanks on the way that are being repaired and it's the same type of tank oh fits in nicely and i can also move those guys along the road back to tabrook and they can get repaired relatively quick yeah because it's tabrook a repair station yes it's considered a temporary one though or a minor one yes whatever the small one is fix it temp it doesn't it it fixes a smaller number i believe yeah so it's like three quarters i think yeah i can't get a whole lot back but overall i i've decided to garrison this group with the first libyan so i've got a lot of breakdown i need to roll it can cause real trouble for i guess them the tanks it can cause real trouble for the saharan detachment

because they haven't had to use any stores yet because they've been in oases so far but if they break down with trucks now they're motorized and they don't have a whole lot of extra trucks so if the breakdown starts to kick in I'm going to have to choose who I'm leaving behind

oh because would you leave infantry behind and take supplies or would you leave the supplies and like make a lunge for a supply point I think and this is very candid it's the practice game which is why

I'm comfortable saying this I think I would to be honest send infantry in for a mad dash try and grab some of your trucks I'm going to do what you're doing on my side but a lot more a lot more bold yeah I mean the advantage

I have compared to you is I mean I've got a lot less stuff which means my supply stuff is spread I can go city to city yes um which is a big boon and then go from city with my last line of second line trucks go from city to unit and back most of the time uh so i don't have a lot of particularly exposed trucks well you do have one particular convoy of exposed trucks it's the one that's actually around mercer matruh no it's in mercer matruh i think well um i know it's definitely

around there i think it might be off the actual tile because it's in one of the like sticky note bits maybe oh that is missing a true yeah yeah so i knew it's around that area but what my thought process is when it comes to the saharan detachment is you need to move those trucks to reinforce and resupply your guys to the west so if i can get the saharan detachment on that road it causes a huge problem because what i can do break some guys off zip them along the train line which i can use any point further west, I just zip them along the train line to where your trucks are and then I just hop up and get your

trucks. The train line ends at Mersa Matruh. Does it not go further west? I can build it. Ah, right. In that case, scratch that. That's not a plan that will work. It's a nice one in theory. Okay, I'll have to bear that in mind then.

Okay, fair enough. I can still stop you from getting stuff to Mersa Matruh if I get further east, but that's going to be difficult. But, I guess, it's by the by. It's all hypothetical. But... I think it'll be a very interesting offstage next time.

Well, I was about to ask, yeah. So, what are your thoughts for the next offstage in broad strokes? I know exactly what I'm doing. Wow, okay. That's... Yeah, fair enough. I don't want to mention it

because aircraft could fuck it up and that happens before movement again. Yes, I also rely on aircraft because what i have found is i can i was having a cursory look at my convoys i can do a bit of a hill mary um and i've got an aircraft plan which might change stuff but it's also of course depending on what you pull off i have an idea as to what you're going to do with your aircraft and i'm going to put the guess out there that i think you're going to go for the um that little wall i've built along the northern coast i think they're going to be hit with some sort of aircraft

um whether it's bombing or strafing i'm not sure and i also fear that you might try and pin some of my guys around fort maddalena and slip the seventh division behind them so that's kind of what i'm feeling maybe even if you're feeling particularly cheeky try and pin some of the guys around your truck bandits and then get them to start fucking around and moving all over the place yeah those are my three areas of concern i would say uh yeah i mean the seventh are in a tricky position for me they are because they're kind of in the middle of nowhere they've freed up now they i'd say they won their sort of conflict with the fourth well they came in they took out the guys the sgs use at fort maddalena

they drove off the fourth after skipping back out and going into combat with them the issue is now they are stuck in the middle of nowhere they have no supplies coming into them their current position does not really open them up for supplies they can't really push further west because you've got a wall of like four divisions to go up against if they go back up north they're getting involved in another fight when they're already kind of on the back foot supply wise they've got a full fight in them yeah but one full fight at the moment i've got a lot of guys that are ready for a lot of fights oh yeah so i don't think they're in a great position i think the seventh might be in a retreat or hail mary situation yeah they're kind of in a bit where if i push them forwards it'll be

like i did with those two units i sent where it's like they're not coming back they're getting their supplies by winning fights or not. Yeah, I think they have a situation of they either they either push well, if they push, they don't have friends to go back to like the fourth did. Yeah. The fourth CCNN, the

Blackshirts, they were able to fall back to a cluster of three divisions. You do not have that benefit. Not without walking into another conflict. No. But, yeah, I've got a plan for them. I think this third offstage... think this third op stage is going to be a real big one yes i'm getting more and more amped up

for that it feels like it's building to a climax every single op stage now i think this one is going to be a big um a big op stage to see how turn two and i think turn three is where this will really crank up to 11 oh yeah i think we're going to see some real real bloodshed um i think this i i think turn three will actually see the definitive path of what the rest of this scenario will look like. Yeah. I mean, it'll be probably decided. Maybe not decided, but there'll definitely be a momentum.

Yeah, I think that momentum's going to be won or lost on aircraft. Yeah. And it's all to come next time. It is. It's quite the... Because, yeah, we've got convoy stage, and then we're inter-offstage

free. Yeah, it's a big one. There are always big ones, though. Bit of a spoiler. Won't be giving you initiative. yeah i thought as much but what i can't hope for is bad weather i i wouldn't mind some bad weather i want bad weather just on your maps of course but well we may have a potential of bad weather but you know what we don't have bad company all we have is good company good news good correspondence good messages from our good good listeners so should we have a little look in that mailbag let's have a little peek so what

is in that dusty old mailbag i say that it's it's all digital so it's not very dusty at all if it is dusty we should probably clean it i should clean my phone my phone's so old yeah you need a new phone i need you i'm going to get a new phone soon actually this is big news for me because i don't get a new phone until like a five year span has passed and what i like i like to get an old phone like a sort of secondhand one yeah go sim only oh yeah i think that's the best way to go so i do it don't get locked oh you do that yeah i don't know you did that yeah what i do remember actually do you might remember this back when we lived together and you lost your phone somewhere oh yeah and it was i don't know if it was stolen or just felt in your pocket and then

someone got a hold of it and did you call it or did they call you i called it off someone else's phone i was like hey this is my phone can i go and meet you and get it and then there's like a long pause and then they're like pretended to be a restaurant that was it yeah and then it was just that i don't understand do you want to make an order and i'm like i know i'm bringing my phone then there was that solemn moment when the call ended of well that's it then you're not getting the phone back no but we do have an email from bev we do bev has been in touch hey guys i promised myself i would email when i got caught up and i've been caught up for about a month now i'm just lazy i learned you guys are english sorry to hear yama oh hi that looks like it's welsh so i'm very glad

that you were the one who decided to stop reading this one instead of me it's um it's yma space o space hyd we will absolutely butcher and you hear a struggle to pronounce stuff that's relatively easy in terms of you know pronunciation and structure phonetically like fort maddalena i was calling fort magdalena for half of the fucking podcast and that's spelled correctly i just got it wrong i don't know why you thought we'd get welsh right but we'll try our very best uh i found your podcast after talking about the campaign for north africa to some friends and one said someone has a podcast about playing it no clue where he learned about it not sure if he watches cam sandwich but does seem the type in a reversal of what you usually hear i started watching cam's channel

because of you guys it's good it's a good channel so enjoy this might be long because i've been noting down emails throughout listening firstly i can't remember which episode exactly you talked about it but i'm starting email strong with the 9 11 to 50 shades of grey timeline gerard way lead singer of my chemical romance is working at cartoon network as an intern and trying to get his show breakfast monkey made he witnesses the 9-11 attacks and decides to switch to creating music using mcr as an inspiration stephanie meyer writes the twilight books el james then writes erotic twilight fan fiction with a focus on bdsm published online under the name master of the universe master of the universe is then published as a real book named 50 shades of gray and then

he includes an image a fun flow chart of events caused by 9-11 yeah uh this image follows a lot of the threads you can evaluate how valid they are trivia side note gerald way and joe rogan are related didn't know if that fits into the pipeline but can't wait to see you guys on top of the podcast charts now fun anecdote here well not really anecdote uh i guess just very small fact bev i've actually seen this picture before um i saw this picture about two weeks before you sent this email in and i was already fascinated by it i was actually telling some friends about it when i came across it and i'm a big fan of it i don't think i showed you it andy uh no i'd seen similar but but it's it's what we will do is we'll put this in with the picture on the instagram

this week for the episode so everyone can have a little look at it you can probably find it if google it as well um but it does have some real interesting knock-on effects here from gerard way witnessing 9-11 um some of the end points include the ellen show ends which is interesting 80 plus pieces of david tennant michael sheen erotic fan fiction on a03 and portuguese children learn brazilian portuguese from his youtube channel and begin speaking it instead of the european dialect so some real butterfly effect and we always talk about how one small thing during the war could have completely changed the course of it oh yeah i enjoy a butterfly effect this is a very very good example of that so that's uh it's some choice

trivia so thank you for that part bev um you then go on in relation to the geomorphology book i think the first history segment it was mentioned yeah that was that sounds about right that'll be the long range desert group series so second or third maybe yeah i think i think it was the third because i think you did one i did one then you really took the reins and it was long range desert group from there you read a quote from the geology book that went something like it is not unthinkable that the stars not make that the stars not make noise when the men were out in the desert at night i couldn't find the post i was on about so sorry for that but it talked about deaf people hearing for the first time later in life and being amazed that the sun didn't make any sort of noise as they

thought it would have that's that's interesting yeah that's provoked a bit of thought in my head there because that's i guess you would yeah it's it's sort of a constant thing in your life and it's big it's just i suppose the idea that people who are deaf you have to constantly see the sun i guess why wouldn't you presume you have to constantly hear it as well yeah that is quite an interesting thought yeah that's actually left me with a little bit of a little bit of nuance in that actually i like that that thought i will actually have to look into that because that's kind of cool that that also just both fascinates and terrifies me the idea of of losing a sense yeah and what it must be like to not have a sense and then gain one oh

yeah i reckon gaining one is very confusing yeah well i mean you've seen the video haven't you of logan paul when he um tries on those glasses and sees color for the first time i haven't seen logan paul do i've seen videos of it and it does seem like they almost universally cry yeah it seems more profound when other people do it he does it i don't i don't believe it's um as profound as he wants it to be um but that is a really good thought um but uh but yes beth continues break up gaming society episode can't remember what was said that would made me think of this but once i got crisps for halloween when i was young we knocked on the door in the house with some very unprepared polish people who apologized to me and my friend and said trick-or-treating wasn't really

a thing in poland this might have changed by now as this would have been closer to 2010 anyway i chose Worcestershire sauce crisps Worcester I believe it is Worcestershire sauce crisps I'm so happy Worcestershire sauce crisps from walkers are back now yes Worcestershire sauce is a fantastic thing what is Worcestershire sauce all right no no no I'm not having any of that you put it in chilies soups sauces no I just what the word you're saying is not a word Worcester you know what I used to love those crisps when I was a kid and I tried them again recently turns out james does not like those crisps anymore but that is an interesting thing because there is um i think you're you're part of this um you're part of this counterculture aren't

you andy you don't like the idea of halloween you think it's an americanism that the uk is adapted kind of i don't have strong feelings about it i just don't participate really i'm a big fan of it i like the fair enough i don't begrudge people enjoying halloween i like a i like a bit of halloween stuff i like watching a few horror movies uh i like going to halloween parties you know i like to stick on a costume i like to not be myself i i like the i like the howl the whole halloween vibe is good but the whole trick-or-treating thing i agree for some people it's not a thing it's you i don't i don't imagine many people now in the uk i guess i don't see it anymore take their kids out trick-or-treating i guess it might depend where you live i don't

live in a particularly young family's area yeah this isn't like a sort of like suburbs for the family this is where the area you move out of when you have a family yeah i i think uh yeah when it comes to trick-or-treating it was a fairly big thing when i was a kid around where i grew up but even now when i'm around those parts for halloween you don't really see it anymore so i don't know maybe maybe you will have the same thing maybe you will just get more crisps bev maybe it's you've missed the bell curve completely now maybe 2010 it was the start now you're just at the other end of it 2019 that would have been it right before covid you would have got tons of sweets you would have got um not rizzlers they're they're filters you can't you shouldn't give them

again they're um yeah they're cigarette skins um oh what are they called sizzlers the the sweets fizzers fizzers or fizzlers they're great i love them uh just also a quick mention he mentioned uh breakup gaming society there uh he recently had his hundredth episode so yes i'd recommend people go give that a listen it was a good one yes people give uh give nate some love um breakup gaming society is very good it's uh for those that don't know a podcast in which uh the host Nate takes on board games, booze, and hip-hop. Yeah, it's a very good collection of topics to cover. And yeah, just did 100 episodes a few weeks ago.

Very good. We made a little cameo in episode 99. It was nice of us to have us on there. But check that out. Very good stuff. People eating in shops was the next thing you've mentioned. I don't work on the main supermarket till anymore, but eating crisps and having an empty packet put on your till is the worst i think people who do

this should be shot honestly um well i also have um negative feelings towards that i'm not sure not your execution is quite my way i feel like instead it's like the sort of parents catching you um smoking cigarettes thing i think you should have to eat a hundred bags of crisps at the till and feel ashamed for it and then be very sick in public i mean you should just be arrested for shoplifting ah i mean there should just be a thing of leave the shop a bit of common ground there but bev i suppose um i thank goodness none of them are going to be around you when you're at the shop you are you're quite the quite the justice committal fellow folk i don't know what you've said a few times we don't we don't know the pronouns of bev we've just presumed because

bev is i would presume short for beverly but i don't know all we've got to go off is bev and we're not going to pry further with surnames because that's just doxing and we try to stay away from that uh lastly in one of cam sandwich's videos he says one of the board games he covers i think wwb is more akin to a work of art would it be fair to call the campaign for north africa a work of art does uh it not setting out to make a statement hurt its artistic merit uh alternatively i'm sorry to john sbi here but is it just a bloated over budget endlessly delayed mess first of all um one of my favorite uh sort of jokes in there is john and then the name of a piece of media um john halo yes great one love that um so a great little reference there

i think it actually does set out to make a statement uh which is to mock over complicated it seems to be that part of its intention was to be like are you guys like complicated games i'm just going to do the most complicated so you can all stop i think so i'll be honest i think john sbi or richard berg as he's known to the common folk um i think he fell into the same kind of trap we have where it's a case of this game's a joke and then get too invested in it and go actually no i'm very now invested in finishing this game except he was finishing designing it we've went the other way we're finishing playing it yes i think we've got now to invest in it we're now excited about it so i think it has went to it's went to the boardroom with the intention

of being a statement and it's ended up being a statement is it art no i mean it depends how you define art i guess yeah rather than the game but yeah i don't know that i'm ready to call it art i think it's impressive but i think art needs to have a bit more how i was going to say more nuance but it does have a certain feel to it i don't know i'm on the fence on that one i will have to get back to you maybe in a year's time or so it's something yeah it's the reason for this podcast so i guess there's that it's inspired this we put this together because we found the game and it's caught people's imagination it has i can't imagine anyone's decided to listen to us on the premise that it's us talking and not the board game being the center of the project itself

yeah and it gets mentioned very regularly as people discover it and find out how crazy it is yeah so i i think yeah it it is it's something it really is something but i don't know if i can call it art in good conscience but you finish off anyways sorry for the long email love you guys lots and thank you for uploading on fridays it makes delivery day at the petrol station a lot better stay subtle humble and beef bev i love it a nice a nice callback to uh our good old meet friends and not meet face no no should we get to meet face i guess that's a perfect transition but thank you for the email bev very long um but very good we like a long one not as long as the last one either we we're getting a real stride of long emails but yeah they've

nothing but good but thank you for that great questions great points and great segue meat face abc andy let's dip back into the past heathcliff was the cat's name i forgot the cat's name from the meat comic heathcliff that's a throwback sorry that was that was playing on my mind now we can go into the history segment back to meat face good old meat face very disrespectful you better try and pass the examination he said it doesn't matter if you pass or not you won't leave the scorpion oh are they talking about the frog no they're talking about his new ship oh the scorpion which he's in command of oh well if if anything is to be learned of this tale of the the scorpion and the frog let's hope he's not a frog uh no he's not he's very much not

the scorpion's only three months old at the time it's a destroyer little baby ship yeah 900 tons one four inch gun three 12 pounders and a couple of torpedo tubes big birth canal what it's a baby ship what are you talking about if you were birthing that ship no one said that i said that i was making an analogy to childbirth what because it's a baby ship it's not okay you get on with your history hell uh it is coal burning because oil uh based ships are coming in at the time but britain's not making a bunch because they don't have their own oil reserves oh foreshadowing coal is worse than oil in most ways what a controversial political statement you've just made andy yes

um so a couple of notable events coming in uh the mention of him going back for training he has to go back to portsmouth briefly because um he's been on there for three years um and they set up a thing saying retroactively destroyer captains which he is now need to go and receive some special training he just tries to ignore that until like the admiral he sends him a direct letter being like go do the training um classic workplace training yeah also during this time he ends up in another court of inquiry because a civilian merchant ship crashes into the ship he's commanding the watchman mistook the lights on the that ship for a more distant convoy their ships kind of fine the other ship completely fucking destroyed but the admiralty does just pay

for it because it's on them is it just me or is abc going off the rails the more this goes on it seems like he's having worse and worse luck uh kind of yeah he's i think he he's not a stickler for rules he doesn't agree with i'd say yeah kind of reckless abandon towards anything beyond what he really wants to do wasn't his fault to be fair yeah yeah but it is it's happening around him bit like the train crash not his fault but he's there yeah another example of him getting around stuff is um the commander of the fleet at this point uh they're in the channel and the north sea here but the commander says they must walk uh a certain distance every week to like maintain physical fitness some may have cheated but we conformed by walking to ipswich on saturday afternoon

having a good lunch at the great white horse one of pickwick's inns uh and then returning by bus so that's how they're doing their mandates traveling training i mean yeah you know if you if you do what you love you'll never work a day in your life oh yeah there's another fun incident here which is in the part of a historic military tradition i'm starting to uncover which is unofficially requisitioning stuff from your own side so his ship needs paint at one point but they don't have it so he sends during dinner hour he sends 12 of his guys to this other ship to basically steal the paint as they're coming back um a dockyard constable comes up to them and it's like what's going on

here the pet the stoker petty officer was a man of ready wit that's all right sergeant he said without batting an eyelid it's like this these men are in the rattle they're defaulters defaulters the policeman said how do you mean yes these these chaps were painting the scorpions funnels they dropped paint all over the deck so as punishment the captains ordered each of them to walk around uh carrying a drum of paint for the dinner bell so his guy just lies to the police while they're taking all this paint yeah this is a punishment it's not a theft so they continue training until they're sent to the mediterranean for training exercise this is meant to last a year but um they're in the mediterranean in july 1914 when war breaks out

world war one so they don't come back but they do get a christmas at war we know that they do and they've been training very heavily for this uh just to give you a sense of this this is them refueling like describing them refueling the coal on the ship the undisputed record amongst the fleet was the scorpions 120 tons an hour from a collier every pound of which was shoveled into 200 weight bags by hand hoisted aboard and emptied aboard the bunkers on the ship 90 to 100 tons an hour was quite common for the flotilla they do this with a hundred men so they're moving a hundred tons of coal an hour through a hundred men yes i was i was going to ask because you were describing that how many men yes so each man is taking a ton an hour yes

which is just an insane level of yeah i'm trying to like figure out the logistics behind that and what that translates to sort of per man it's like a ton of man but it wouldn't be they're like shoveling it in the bags passing the bags along there's like chutes in the shot side of the ship to drop them in yeah that's a lot though manually moving yeah that's heavy and that's like every time that this is part of the reason coal is worse than oil for ships is they have to do that ah but what's heavier a ton of coal or a ton of oil you can put a pipe up to the ship and pump a ton of oil in and no one has to touch it i guess that's not the answer to the riddle but it works it's the answer to the problem so this is where one of the first huge major events of his life

that has like effects that ripple outwards massively he's involved in the pursuit of two ships the goblin and the brestula uh which are destroyer not destroyers sorry uh dreadnoughts which are basically like the heaviest ranking ship at this time that are making a lot of ships obsolete okay they need to pursue this one and i'll describe it from here they were expecting them to break through into the adriatic rear admiral tulbridge four armored cruisers were to the south of us and on the evening of the 6th the excitement began the two ships sailed south and were being shadowed by the gloucestershire after rounding the toe of italy they steered northeasterly towards the adriatic the dublin with two destroyers the beagle and the bulldog

bulldog were coming full speed from malta to and interstep it was about daylight that we had another signal to say admiral toolbridge had decided to abandon the chase i will not comment on this decision it later formed the subject of a court-martial i'm going to comment on this a little bit these two ships getting out of the mediterranean and getting to constantinople brings the ottoman empire into world war one yeah that's a big one resulting in among other things hundreds of thousands of deaths the war being extended the russian revolution the armenian genocide amongst others all basically come out of this event right so when you said it has ripple effects you meant it ripples through time to now yes it changes the way we live it's

a reason amongst others the ottoman empire doesn't exist anymore uh wow okay then so it's not a small rebel at all i guess for a very modern day thing as the ottoman empire collapsed britain took over their non-turkish enclaves which was the arab stuff for instance palestine and israel yeah so really contemporary shit going on right now you can trace a direct line from these two ships getting away oh fuck okay so like basically the state of the modern world so we're looking at over a hundred years of change based on this event yes okay so when we talk about butterfly effects earlier this is a big one there's a big butterfly yes so he's involved in that and this is another just a quick one this is a coaling incident they have like getting the coal

uh ships that deliver coal are called colliers our destroyers gathered at port vaffy ifica where our colliers uh had the last arrived she had correctly been ordered to port vaffia but instead of going to the place of that name in ifika on the west coast of greece she'd gone to port vavos in samos 350 miles away across the aegean off the coast of asia minor so just to make us feel better about the supply stuff the supply ship for this fleet just went to the wrong town with the same name they've all got similar names by the sound of it was that was that vamos and samos It's Vafi and Vafi, they're both, but one's in Samos and one is off the west coast of Greece So they're two towns with the same name 350 miles apart

But if your collier goes to the wrong one, it might as well be on the moon And this is where it gets big, he's involved in the Gallipoli campaign Okay, is that another board game? No, that is a major assault in World War I. You know where the Mediterranean goes up to the Black Sea? Yes. You know that narrow strip? Yeah, yeah. I know what you mean.

It's the battle for that. They're trying to take over it. It's called the Strait of Dardanelles. Okay. So at first it's a boring assignment to the point where some of the crews on the ships, they're just patrolling the entrance for months. Some of the crews set up a monthly newspaper.

uh called the tendos times which they print in the on the ships and distribute to the other ships one of the editors is charles dickens grandson oh wow okay we've got a lot of big characters in oh yeah i was looking for this online because i really wanted to see this as like a slice of life but i couldn't find any that you even needed to be like a member of the library or buy a sketchy book off amazon for 50 quid so if anyone has access to any of that please i'd love to see it but war's officially declared on october 31st uh against turkey 48 hours before that they are sent to investigate and stop a turkish mine layer they have a chat with the turkish officer which doesn't go well as he's rowing back to his ship he gives a hand signal and the ship they're looking at as a

for suspecting mining ship just burst into flame that's not subtle at all no they help it to the bottom with their own guns another amusing incident happened at a small place uh where the mosquito another ship went for some purpose or another and sent their whaler ashore a turkish officer came riding full pelt down the jetty pulled up suddenly and shot gracefully over the bars of his charger headfirst into the sea. He was retrieved by the Mosquito's wailer. So some guy just bowled

off the edge and ate shit. Yeah. So they're continuing to patrol this strait and it's a particularly bad winter in the Mediterranean as well. Visibility's down to like 25 feet. 25 yards, sorry.

So like ships are like almost bumping into each other. It's like really hard to keep position and stuff. But they do get some time off around early December for their early Christmas break. The respite was very welcome, though needless to remark, both officers and men ran a bit wild. The Palm went out to Sub-Lieutenant of the Grasshopper, an irrepressible young man who drove around the island half one night shooting at dogs with a service revolver.

His prank made him most unpopular with the authorities. That's not a prank. No. we just talked about earlier on not feeding your dog for two weeks is neglect shooting your dog with a gun is not that it's not his dog he's just driving around the island shooting dogs right that's for anyone listening who's confused by that um just for historical record that's not a prank you're just killing animals dick so they need to get through this straight but it's a nightmare it's very narrow it's heavily defended and they've filled it with mines these mines um

churchill afterwards called a recognizable part of the history of the great war like the fact they couldn't get the through this straight because of the mines again changes the trajectory of world war one it's crazy how many things are all yeah history is shaped by single decisions yeah on february 25th however when the weather was moderate the modern guns in the forts at each side of the entrance were successfully knocked out by deliberate fire at 12 000 yards by four uh major capital ships who then moved in closed into short range and just hammered the forts to pieces one ship was hit for trifling casualties so once these forts are gone they're trying to send small ships up the channel to get rid of the mines okay and at the same time they'd like

landing troops to move across the island to take out the forts so they can move ships up because they're in a sort of they need to remove the mines to get the big ships in but they can't remove the mines while the all the forts and stuff are there yeah so they're in a sort of catch-22 which is why they like land people so one of the landing parties uh was not seriously a port yeah this is a description of what it's like in the channel and just a naval warfare thing at first in the destroyers when we were fired at we instinctively moved quickly and thought the ships were certain to be hit but in very short time we came to realize that the percentage of hits to rounds fired was very small the straight the sailors became strangely climatic i remember

a leading torpedo torpedo man called love sitting on the upper deck reading a wild western thriller and the sun a shell from a big turkish gun landed quite close with an upheaval of spray and smoke he looked up and remarked another redskin bit the dust and continued reading just his wild west book completely ignoring that is desensitization to the max to like an insane level so they fail to capture the peninsula eventually um but before that just a quick mention they send troops ashore and they run into some problems uh and this is just a brilliant character i'm gonna mention who only gets mentioned twice but is insane our whaler was in uh in the charge of mr ww forogood who spent several hours sharpening a service cutlass to a razor edge and was further armed

with two revolvers when they reached the beach they found a nasty little sea which made things rather difficult the gunner ordered the crew over the side in the water to hold the boat off the shore one weak vessel demurred whereupon for a good seized and flung him into the sea which clinched the argument our boat pulled twice into the shore and a heavy rifle fire and brought out two officers and 11 men of whom two were wounded so she searched the beach for two hours this gallant piece of work earns for a good the distinguished service cross and eight of the people aboard the distinguished service medal so he went aboard of his cutlass and it's just an actual pirate yeah you're just describing a pirate here this one's a pirate so ultimately this is a failed campaign

they don't get through the strait and they don't capture the gallipoli peninsula uh and in december 1915 after eight months of fighting the order to withdraw total allied deaths include 41 000 british and irish 15 000 french uh 9 000 australians 3 000 new zealanders 1 500 indians and 49 uh newfoundlanders turkish deaths around 6 60 000 but he does get the distinguished service crossed for a service here and uh he also does get a promotion for after 1918 for the end of world war one and the interwar period which we'll pick up next time so you may not see it as a successful campaign but what he has done is been part of shaping history which has had a ripple effect to even now yes so yeah not a successful campaign but a very impactful one

and a very formative one for him he is basically excelling during all of this and like gaining attention uh and doing a good job of what he's doing yeah it sounds like none of that was necessarily a faux pas on his part he's actually made some real significant progress in that campaign it's just not enough to to win yeah going up this channel is just insane if you like look at the pictures of it it's like steep gorges with forts the entire length my it's narrow enough that guns can fire at the narrowest points at anything in it and then it's also full of mines yeah the mines really change the environment completely oh yeah you'll have to um see if you can grab a good picture of that and we could also put that on for this week's post yeah on

instagram i think he's actually got one in the book that he sketched so i'll dig that out and send you it yeah that'd be good we'll put that on because that i'm i can kind of picture it in my head but i feel like it's going to be much more horrifying seeing the actual imagery of that oh yeah so he sketches as well is this his sketch or is this just a sketch um it's of the map i think he like annotated a a map but there's a whole page of like pictures of the ships he serves on at various times and like sketches of maneuvers and stuff because with his crazy curriculum at school i would not be shocked if he's also an accomplished artist as well oh yeah well map drawing and cartography and stuff was part of the curriculum so yeah well yeah there was that and

electricity i believe was part of the curriculum yeah like a small yeah learn about electricity i learned about electricity when i was in high school and i've i've did very badly none of it yeah i uh i did not do well i got an e in my electronics exam e for electronics i thought you know a bit of onomatopoeia that's not onomatopoeia alliteration you don't get points for that christ onomatopoeia funnily enough i got the uh the english bit wrong there but i did do quite well in english a b it's not bad alliteration for binglish ah history what's it like it's eventful it's odd it's impactful what it isn't going to do andy is save you from my fury but what might maybe some common ground maybe maybe some agreement maybe some common ground and now

for something nicer a little oasis in the wall it's time for some common ground i'm trying to intro for common ground i'm recording maybe this week is my common ground and of course common ground is the segment in which we try to unite each other get past the quandaries and quarrels and war and we unite again as friends reach some agreement reach on a positive note that's what we try to do we've had some ups and downs over the last few weeks trying to do so but i've got one right now and i didn't put this one together drunk at a bus stop i put this one together about five seconds before we hit record we'll see which is better i think it should be mandated by whatever governing musical body there

is that all diss tracks require you to use the person's name you're dissing in the song oh there's no there's no side eyeing like implication you just have to come out and do it you can do that parts you know throughout the song but you also need to make it explicitly clear who it's about are you are you not understanding diss tracks are you like this is great but who is it angry at i i think that people they hide away too much they leave too much room for speculation they i think feed on it because i'd say the biggest diss track of the last while is not like and i don't think subtlety was ever involved it wasn't well actually in that he mentioned because that's a kendrick lamar song yes and which he performed at the superbowl and it has

it has drake's name in and it's it's it's pointed towards drake yes and that song is it works well i saw the uh the superbowl halftime show live at a pub in birmingham at like 1am after i went to a gig and i had a great time and first time i actually ever heard the song oh yeah and i i enjoyed it i thought it was good i thought it was it was very pointed you know he made some remarks i don't know a whole lot about the beef between the two but i looked into a little bit afterwards got a bit of the context i i thought great song great performance quite like that what's currently going on in the cultural zeitgeist taylor swift now she's under fire she released a a diss track pointed at charlie xcx yeah and apparently this is on the back of charlie xcx releasing a track

uh in her album brat which was supposedly um taking shots at taylor swift and and those who've listened uh to the podcast will know i don't mind a bit of girly pop from time to time i listen to a bit of bit of charlie xcx a bit of taylor swift but i think all of this the current discussion at the moment it's muddied the waters a little bit because it's a lot of it's a lot of a lot of position a lot of finger pointing is what's going on everyone knows who it's about well that's it so why don't we just say it because then then these artists don't have the the sort of line to hide behind of well oh but it wasn't actually about this person oh no sorry that's not what i meant no no no stop that if you're going to start ragging on somebody in

a song you need to start saying who it is because one it's confusing for me i need to look up a lot of stories i start listening to a song and then i mention someone i'm passing and go this one's catchy and then i get told oh well do you not know the backstory behind this and then i'm like ah i've been promoting a song that's that's you know bullying somebody else or that has no no basis and i'm getting caught up in these controversial debates with people at the pub at work on the street i guess not on the street i don't really have these conversations on the street but it's putting me into an uncomfortable position i want to know what's going on so if i can just listen to a song please and i can know immediately who it's about so i know who to google and they name

drop it yeah then i then i know what's going on it just makes my life easier and that's what music should be about yeah should be about my life being simple do you not think i don't i'd quite like a sort of veiled insult yeah like i know there's meant to be subtlety in art things are meant to mean something there's meant to be some sort of poetic meaning behind things and i love a bit of poetry but there's not really many poetry diss tracks not that i've come across anyway poetry or whatever it's called that's that's less that's more i think that's more akin to a rap battle of anything when it comes to slam poetry i mean it's got slam in the name it's it's more in your face okay when you're releasing an album and there's a song in

there and i come across it and it's like a few tracks in and i'm listening to it and i go this one's catchy and it turns out it's a diss track i don't always get that because sometimes when i come across these kind of songs i'm not big into the the background into the law so i sometimes end up liking a diss track and not knowing it's a diss track okay but you like the diss track but i'd like to know who it's dissing i need to know the story okay otherwise it takes away from it for me but you can find it i can but i have to do so much digging i'm a busy man andy okay well if it's not in the song but they've got to put it in like the description or something the description yeah what description i don't know

where is the song description that you talk that's the lyrics oh yeah that's what i'm asking for i wanted to be in the fucking lyrics just put in the lyrics so you wanted the song to basically be like this is about you charlie x and then the diss track so for example yeah so if we take the taylor swift song this is from her brand new album life of a showgirl no we're not sponsored by taylor swift but yes uh she's got a song in there music is available other music we do no um uh yes it's called actually romantic it's by taylor swift and it's um a sniper charlie xex who apparently released a song in her last album which i don't remember this song and again this is because i listened to it quite casually but apparently it it goes against taylor swift and and i missed all

of this because i i was i listened to some songs i had some friends who were into brat summer and they're like james listen to this so i did i listened to some of it and i quite enjoyed some some catchy songs in there and taylor swift releases a new album i'll give it a cursory listen and i like some of the songs that were catchy then i heard one of them and then i find out it's a diss track i i just i need something to be in there that points a bit more clearly just mention the name okay i don't think that's too much of an ask no i guess not i don't know why there's a body enforcing it i well that's i guess that goes to a bigger picture of we need to

regulate things more heavily. Especially art. I think art needs to be heavily regulated. Yeah, that earns well. That way, stuff like this podcast wouldn't happen. Which is bad. Do you know how much time I spend playing this game, Andy?

Yeah, the same amount as me. Yeah, are you not bothered by that? No. Right. See, I was hoping to transition this into being some sort of intervention. tough. You want to keep on playing the game? You're stuck. You want to keep playing it? Yeah.

I thought, you know, it's coming up to a year. Maybe we can stop. No. Shaking your head there. No, we're in. Right. I thought I'd soft launch it. I thought I'd try and use Common Ground as a way to wedge a gap here and... That's not what it's for. Right. Right. Okay.

Okay. Well, fine. We'll go back to the actual... We're going to do the podcast forever. And yeah, they should put... They should just explicitly name the people. Fuck. What you've done now is you've agreed on the Common Ground, which means we've wrapped that so we have to be friends again we have to continue next week indeed i thought maybe you'd push for a bit more nuance are you sure you don't disagree with this i'm encroaching on artist freedom i'm encroaching on the liberty of of singers and performers i'm stripping that

away from them i'm getting rid of all sort of subtlety in art is that does that not bother you no should we not argue about that what i'm saying is obtuse it's insane i'll be like you have it i think it ruins the beauty of it then the lyricism the poetry it's gone completely if we do that so we can agree this is a bad idea no i don't agree with that i think you should disagree with that you've seen my trap right okay yeah i've fallen into a bit of a bit of a hole with that one so so we're gonna regulate it then that's that's dystopian that's not nice all they should have to do are more like if you're gonna diss someone it has to be a whole album that's worse that's actually the opposite of what i want that's right i think kendrick

lamar did a full album oh i know i know because m&m of course is famed for it yes he's very big i think to be fair he mentions names quite a bit yeah i don't think he's i don't think he minces words but that that's that's sort of the the rap culture isn't it as well you get a lot of songs and rap where it is a diss track i think that is that the origin of the diss track i think it comes from battle rap yeah and then like leaked into rap rap rap rap not to be confused with rap rat a cursed board game i'd say keep your diss tracks out of pop music it's not what it's for that's a good point well i guess you know what that actually really touches on the focal point here it's meant to be pop music it's meant to be accessible to everybody and if i'm coming in there

and i'm blind and i don't know all of the the law in the background and i've listened to a song i deserve to know what it's about i shouldn't have to read between the lines if it's pop music okay so no diss tracks and pop music no diss tracks and pop music is i think probably the way to go for this get rid of them because it also means if someone does want to do it a pop musician wants to do a diss track they have to genre switch which is good because i'm only taking pop off the table if you want to write a brutally mean country song or like a reggae tone diss track i mean jolene is a great diss track yeah it's coming from a a smaller place you know dolly partner in that song is really on the back foot she doesn't want jolene to take her man away from

her yeah it's kind of a plea but it is a diss track it it paints jolene in a bad light as a bit of a bit of a homewrecker so i think yeah that if you're gonna switch genre then fine at that point i i need to climb into the law you've went to the effort of changing genre i should go to the effort of googling the law yeah i'll accept that okay that for me is a common ground i can go with so no more pop sound no more pop diss tracks no you have to switch genre or you just can't do it yeah it confuses the people who are dipping their toe into pop music and it scares us off. I want to get into accessible

chart music. I'd like to do that. But it's too complicated. But I try and do that. I go in with my hat in my hands and what do they do? They put a diss track in. I don't understand. I've been trying to figure out the whole thing about this

beef for like a week now and I don't get it. No. I don't get it. I don't understand. They just seem to not like each other. Maybe. All right, they should just all be friends. Why can't pop musicians just be friends?

Where's their common ground? Yeah, let's get them in a room. The common grammies. Hey, that's what they should do. That's good comedy. Well, before I start doing all of the good jokes and burning them all out now when we've got another 25 years to go,

I guess we'll just wrap it up there. I'll save some of the jokes for next time. Keep your powder dry. keep my powder dry don't want to wet my gunpowder like that pirate who clambered over the ship no just charging onto a beach of a cutlass

I'm going to keep everything that I need dry in the deserts of my mind and I would advise everyone else to do the same and stay subtle, humble and brave and we'll speak to you all next time have a good night We'll be right back.