War With A Mate - Episode 73: Reading Out Loud

Episode Date: April 25, 2026

Following their return from the War With A Mate company retreat, Andy and James embark on the beginning of Turn Five. There’s no holding back this Air Phase, and with their well supplied positions there’s no need to! The Ottoman Empire, Oceania and medical sciences all appear as guests on an episode to be remembered.

Stop wasting your nights on a mattress that doesn't get you. Experience the most comfortable mattress in the world. The Sleep Number Smart Bed. At the touch of a button, you can personalize your comfort. Choose firmer or softer. Adjust cooler to warmer. And right now, save up to $2,500 during our massive Labor Day event. Hurry into your local Sleep Number store today.

Because we have your number. Welcome to War with a Mate with me, James. Me, Andy. We are the only podcast out there, you can search, trust me, I've tried, that are playing spi's the campaign for north africa the infamous board game it cannot be defeated it will definitely defeat us we've got another 50 years on the horizon but that won't stop us that won't slow our moxie i'm james i'm andy and we're doing this thing we are we've been doing it we've been doing it me and you we've been doing it here in your living room we are

starting turn five turn five of the practice run here we are andy the penultimate turn i never thought we'd make it i never thought we'd get through turn one when i read those rules i thought we were absolutely done for lost souls in amongst the void but here we are all the way to turn five it's worked out it's worked out in in so many ways we've managed to figure out how to play the game we've stuck all the magnets on the board that wasn't that was optional we did that for semi I guess if we wanted to play it we'd have to do that and it's been a dream, it really has

a dream that sometimes I wake up from in sweats in the night screaming for my parents Mummy! Save me! Save me from Richard Berg! I don't want to go back to him Mummy! Horrible

I know, but I didn't do that I didn't do that that was simulations publications inc they did that to us that wasn't my design but our design is this every week we play the campaign for north africa bar last week that's a rare occasion sometimes we have to do that sometimes we go on holiday sometimes we well that's it it was a holistic view because we had a few things going on last week we were looking at putting some stuff together because one thing we've got coming up really exciting our first live show yes the uk games expo in birmingham it's going to be great it's first ever live show it is free for anyone

who's already going to the games expo i guess if it's the case you're not going to the games expo and you want to come along buy a ticket to the expo do a lot of other fun stuff and see us for an hour that'll be good you will have to miss the carcassonne is it world champions or the carcassonne uk championship which we were looking at today now that we've got our times confirmed which by the way it's half four till half five p.m it'll be a lot of fun for well i don't know that'll be a lot of fun for anyone we can't make these kind of promises but you're gonna if you show up you will miss the uk championship of car but we can't guarantee we can promise you that uh we we wanted to do that and we can't now yeah uh if you want to be part of the uk championship for

carcassonne entry is 17 pounds a ticket uh it'll be great it's like an all-day thing uh it just means you miss us but you know it'll be it'll be a bloody good time or get out early or get out early drop out the championship throw your towel in come see us so we we put that together uh some of the stuff for that we're still we're still trying to figure out what this looks like as a live show so that'll be fun we also like you say we had a holiday this is the first time i've seen you since we got back yeah how did you find the trip good overall there were some eventful things happened we uh the first day in particular was an experience from literally start to finish an centric time we had a little jaunt um we we traveled from our humble war with the maid

headquarters to the lovely seaside of yorkshire where we went on a nice 10 mile trek to go stay somewhere me and my my girlfriend we we had a lovely time it was great played some dnd some poker quite a bit of poker yep lovely time great um that walk though that walk nearly killed you in the first stretch the the hill at the start i think once that hill was over i was kind of all right yeah that that first stretch i thought you were gonna die i thought the first 300 meters were gonna end the whole thing well there was there was that first little stretch of walk and then also we got waylaid on our journey and walked past a primary school like twice and one of the teachers i presume a teacher came out or caretaker deliver i don't know who she

was but she saw us walking around looking these huge backpacks i had a a bag carried as well i had a backpack with my laptop in a duffel bag swung around that and then a bag full of dnd paraphernalia and she asked if we wanted a trip to exactly where we were going and we said no we're gonna make the walk and she sort of had a sort of i don't think you know how far that is yeah she said you know how far away that is and we were like yeah we know how far away that is we got there um all was all was well we were a bit exhausted we had we had some drinks we had a great time some poker and then a late night hospital trip was was also on the card so that it was a lot of fun it was a lot of hectic stuff everyone's fine no one's got any lasting damage

but trust me going to a and e at four in the morning when you've had quite a bit to drink is not the fun that you think it is especially since that trip took us exactly back to the starting points that we set off on from the walk it is a nice loop nice loop i don't know uh that that is the case but i certainly sobered up waiting in a and e for that long but we're here we're alive everyone's happy everyone's comfortable we also will not get too much into it because we need to keep the mystique but there was another reason for that trip to an extent we have something in the works which will be it's not coming anytime soon yeah let's not actually because i hate when people do this yeah yeah yeah something something's happening at some point in

time yeah don't be excited about it yet yeah we'll just put it out there this is the very first instance that we've mentioned it and forget about it for a few months but it's it's going to be great but i suppose what we'll do is we'll we'll we'll disseminate all of this down into the core of what it is today we played the campaign for north africa yes we kicked the turn off um as almost all turns do with me not finding your convoys yes a lovely start for me i rolled up first of all my convoy for next turn very happy to see that i rolled the maximum result for the final turn because this convoy that's coming up that i've rolled for will be at the start of turn six the final access naval convoy of the practice scenario and i rolled big old sixes or as i like

to call it three snakes worth of snake eyes it's a little clumsy but i won't allow it so those Fnakey guys They're going to be bringing me a lot of supplies A total of 16,000 tons That's pretty nice That will pay dividends Well actually not dividends, it's just capital It's all capital

Oh they're just sending cash It's all solid cash It's hard, cold cash In the form of a cache Of ammunition, of stores Will it help you if it arrives On turn 6 do you think? Will you have enough time to get it out

and do stuff with it i will be gearing stuff up for that oh so you're gonna spend like off stage three or turn five getting all your convoys ready to like grab stuff when it unloads yeah i think what i'm realistically going to do is hold off a bit of a spoiler i guess yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna hold off on my air stuff i think in turn six and all of those trucks that i've had doing supply runs for my air fields and air strips i'm gonna pull them back and just have them ready for one real hard push of supplies in terms of ammunition, realistically. Ammunition and fuel.

I'm going to have that all pushed to the front line. Oh, nice. That's my idea in essence. I don't know what that will actually look like. Probably something very different. But that's the hope. That's the dream. And I'm nothing if not a dreamer, Andy.

This world is a swimmy, hazy, lucid dream for me. A lucid dream in which I can do anything I want. I'm a god on those tiles. and i only say that because i'm coming hot in the heels of the hubris of a few things first of all store expenditure i have filled the bellies of all my men i want to fill thank you thank you a momentous achievement and it's come yes in the penultimate turn but my god it's finally here i'm so happy that i've figured this out so you have no starving don't have time um no well i do i do i'll i do but they're garrisons so they don't really count

okay they aren't they aren't real units certainly not for the purpose of this practice scenario yeah if i'm having to worry about you getting onto map b and taking on some of my garrisons up along the coast then the game's over fair assessment that's not a practice scenario at some point we stop talking and you just play the game on your own that's what that looks like okay but instead i've filled the bellies of all of my important men the fighters and that's not the only part that the hubris comes from andy because there's the full bellies of my men there is the normal weather yes normal fucking weather thank god there is the fact that i got to roll the weather because you've given me initiative i have given you initiative you you let me go first yeah

you rolled for initiative you got it which meant normal weather because that's how i roll that is a pun and as well as that i also have air stuff that i'm able to do yes because your air force has sort of come back in line a bit this turn hasn't it it has absolutely it has which is fandabby dozy i'm so thrilled to have my air force back online because it meant i was able to prepare a pretty hefty bombing run yeah you got well yeah because next up we planned our air stuff we didn't do it but we planned it yeah so you planned three missions i did i planned three missions you planned six yes you doubled up on me i have you saw what i had you raised the pot is what you did i'm not to be outdone well you say that but i think what i've done

might well outdo your your little plan here because what i have once again and this has been a rare occasion for the last two turns is air superiority i do and you might be thinking andy i love that you've just assumed that you might be thinking but james you don't have don't make the subtext text don't don't read between the lines and translate okay i'm sorry go on i don't have a lot of fighters and i'm fine with that i don't have a lot of fighters that's okay that's normal for a guy of my age that's not have a lot of fighters it's normal for an air force of my age what i do have are a lot of bombers you do i've been stacking those bad boys up with with bombing points and i was so joyous when i looked at my airfield table today and

realized just how many bombers i had sm79s they carry 12 bombs each oh they're nasty and i have 30 of them so i've split that directly down the middle 160 per mission oh so you've sent 30 planes overall yeah oh okay so 15 a piece yeah and those guys have been split between the seventh armored division and the stop doing maths in your head stop trying to figure out how to take me apart oh i've just realized i only need to kill two planes to knock them down if they're 12 knock them down one of the tiers but i'm fine going down two tiers okay so i just need to knock out five planes yeah it's like five or six it's not impossible well that's part of where the tactic came in because looking at this bountiful horde of bombs that i had i realized all right we can

do something clever here james you can do the thing you've been doing where you kind of scatter dust into the wind and hope it gets in someone's eye or you can do something committed and smart and that's what i went for i went for committed and smart i dedicated i used conviction and i split it between two attacks two missions for those guys so 160 bombs on both the fourth and the seventh yes you can chip away at my bombers right now they are guaranteed to take out i think it's at least two of your yeah of your units of your groups if you take it down another tier it's one take it down another there's a chance of zero a chance but i'm willing to take those odds okay i'm not spreading things thin anymore i'm not doing any of this well usually it'll be zero

but if you roll an incredible roll you'll get one guy no I've got air superiority Andy air superiority means that I'm fine in myself going to bed at night that's not what air superiority would mean I'm glad you've got some self esteem

but you don't have air superiority that's what I meant self esteem I've got that I've got air self esteem that's fine because you don't have air superiority I have air self esteem I'm dropping more bombs than you and I have fighters and I'm strafing stuff.

You don't know that you're dropping... You just told me how many bombs you're dropping. You probably will know, exactly. Yeah, good point. But if we're to abstract things for a moment, I'm dropping a lot of bombs. Same. We're not talking about you, Andy.

Oh, sorry, we'll get to myself. This isn't the Andy show. This isn't Andy Drops Bombs show. This is me dropping bombshells. I'm sorry, keep boasting about your small thing. oh it hurts i also have a strafe mission yes you're strafing some trucks i am the guys over at fort madelena that you rude or will rue will ruth you will rue them no they are going to be strafing the heck out of your cut don't what are you doing don't act as if this isn't impressive

because every time you've done this to me i've been deeply wounded by it it's been a deep cut yeah so don't just shrug this off as if it's nothing because if it is then i'm i've been overreacting for a while now i i've said that since before the podcast started i know it's a character flaw but still it makes for good entertainment doesn't it so i'm strafing your supply convoy the one that has sat with the australian division up along that north road still they've not quite come into the fray they're at city barani at the minute they are my my favorite place to hold to try and win the game so they are they're gonna get strafed i'm looking forward to that because with it being a strafe against a convoy i move the table the column over

one yeah you get one extra so that's perfect um but that that's my air missions yeah and what you got going on over there i am bombing and strafing the second black shirts yeah we have i I think 263 bomb points. Overall? On them. Overall? I guess overall on them. Okay, so you're splitting it between those.

No. They're both on the second of both the things I said. Wait, so they're both... You're getting a full strafe on the second. Oh, I see. And 263 bombs, I think it is. Okay. and then you're getting a full strafe on your supply dump

on the coast I don't care about that anymore okay that's good I don't mean that the planes are in the air there's nothing you can do I'm trying to posthumously bluff and the fourth mission

I'm also bombing the fourth black shirt fine try it I am with 275 bombs that's far too many well you were excitedly going i've got my air force back and i'm like i didn't lose it but i do have the sgs use back hold on i never said that yeah you were you were very happy you were supplying your air force no no no i've never said that okay also funnily enough um just let everyone know weird glitch we've lost four episodes when how do you delete

them from the rss feed i'll do it after don't worry you won't you sly dog i know you won't this is all lip service uh yeah and then two close combat patrols to your bombings on the fourth and the seventh well try as you may they will stand strong complete wipe coming up i'm genuinely confident that you won't be able to do enough damage to wipe them out oh no you i won't uh air combat seems to not be like particularly we're not seeing a huge amount of uh deaths in it at the minute or not even in terms of like immediate attrition i mean i don't think what you're going to do is going to impact them enough that your land units can have a significant impact on them probably not they're probably well they're gonna have pins they'll be pinned

some of them will definitely be pinned by the nature of the table yeah but that's about it that's that's life yeah yeah cool i guess we go it looks like what might happen is they're just pinned up there and you don't move those two divisions and i don't move my two yeah but my guys being pinned up there is fine because the fourth are they're in a position that i put them in to be a little barrier a waypoint for your guys to have to pass through yeah so they were always going to wait there them not being able to enter an enemy zone of control or initiate combat is fine by me oh okay because they were already not going to do that probably a waste of bombing right now yeah oh well you said it yeah so maybe i'll get some actually i can't i'm not strafing

them so yeah you're not wiping out two points painting things that are going to move also the second... I always get my black shirts mixed up. Which ones are the fascists? Black shirts. Oh, that's it, yes. Just all of them. If their clothing is dark, they are fascist. Unless you're, you know,

just a trendy guy wearing black clothes. Just a goth. They're either a goth or a fascist. Well, I did a lot of that walking a black jumper on our little trip. And I did think that was pretty sus. Yeah, it did have fascist Italian vibes.

I thought it would be colder than it was that walk got sweaty yeah so your attack on my guys your bombing run doesn't really put me in a worse position it just means that they are stuck in the defensive position they were always going to be that's fine I guess my

worry was them getting active so yeah which I get yeah the second being strafed I guess it depends the second or fourth, I can never remember which way around they came. If they're the old ones, then

fuck them, I don't care, but I'm pretty sure they're the new ones. The second? Yeah. The ones for the South? Yeah. Yeah, they are the new ones. Yeah. Okay, fair enough. So I've not been doing anything to them, have I? I don't think you've taken anything off them. No, we've not fought them.

You've ran away from them, is what you did last time. Yes, I did. You backed off from them. That's also why I've got up on them, just a morale issue. Yeah. You want to spread out the morale difference. So that is, that's what we've left off. Yeah.

I mean, it was a fairly good sort of start of turn. Yeah, really good start to turn five. The fact that we've now found ourselves in the last third of the game, well, practice run. Yeah. but it's also taken me into a really refreshing point of perspective where last time when we were in the war room and we we did a reflection on the rules and i got i got a little bit upset about the

rules again this is what takes me away from that it's when it's about the the game strategy stuff yeah it's when i'm against you i actually feel fine when it's that situation oh good i'm not thinking too big about the game itself it's fine when i'm thinking about beating you i'm actually okay with it okay when it's war with a mate title drop i'm fine with it when it's trying to figure out with a spreadsheet when it's war with the existential dread that i'm taking on by playing this it's a very different story so i'm fine with this this is good this is a good vibe i'm okay with this i'm happy i'm upbeat well are you sure i don't know do you have any idea what you're doing with your your turn um the fact you've given me initiative is something i hadn't prepared for

good but i did have a little look at the board today okay which i'm allowed to do i'll allow it and i do have some ideas i won't allow it you simply can't stop me it's part of the game it's it's part of the game that i play the game if you don't like that you shouldn't have started i know it was my idea but you shouldn't have started you shouldn't agreed don't agree i was gonna say never agree with me but i would like that to not be the case please agree on occasion no sod yeah i've got some ideas i need to i need to wrangle a bit more control around the area because you're starting to slink down along the south along that escarpment and i'm not super keen

on that because if you get too far west then you can just shoot up to the brook and i don't like that idea it's a lot of track to go over but i know you're motorized yeah so i need to bear that in mind i'm not motorized for the most part however i can zip a lot of guys around that road from bardia to dubruc and i can cut you off there and if that's where the game ends which i fear it may then so be it okay because i'll take that as a win i know that's a w for james i'll take anything as a w i know i've got that pma positive mental attitude don't say and then gulp the last dregs of whatever that was on that glass some lovely cream soda oh great drink yeah

love a cream soda can't even get angry at it what is the best soft drink handy maybe that correct I like a ginger beer but probably not as much Dr Pepper cream soda is incredible yeah I've not tried that yeah that is incredible the shop near yours they do it

I'm always wary of Dr Pepper because mainline Dr Pepper I don't like I don't get why why I don't like it because you're like fruit you like fruity tastes you love mango I mean mango's great yeah

I've never known anyone love mango as much as you yeah it's great mango's no one's favourite but it seems to be yours mango is people's favourite I don't know that it is oh what should it be like an apple or an orange

well yeah you know what you're the same kind of boring oh I'm a bit spicy my favourite fruit's a banana you know Hit the mic Apologies my condescending hand gestures have annoyed the mic

You're one of those assholes Thanks And cut That say you can't enjoy the most popular song of a band because it's the most popular song You've just done that with fruit

It's completely different Right I'm going to give you one minute to explain why because mango just has all this stuff of a fruit house but just better rather than it being some weird music analogy cool that was 10 seconds and it was just fucking bad i'll you sit in my point for another 50 seconds no let that let that meticulate over your brain pause how dare you try and enforce radio silence dead air in our podcast with that comment Of all the things

No The arrogance on you And that's coming from a hubris filled man Fine what's your favourite fruit I don't care I'll go You know what I'm partial to a blueberry at the moment A good choice

I'm fine with that Not going to give you too much shit Blueberries are great Just a nice little snack Second to that Strawberries and then third has been on I'll let you off

and that goes the minute so we're done with fruit talk I feel I've made my point oh well every week we'll now introduce the minute fruit talk where we rehash our hierarchy of fruits let's not make that a segment I don't have to make another segment intro it'll be longer than the segment

four minute intro to the fruit minute it's a full song i'm gonna release the fruit ep before the fruit segment overall we're in turn five andy we are we're in the the penultimate stage of the practice room we're further than we thought we'd get we're in the throes of deep combat things can get messy we're looking down the barrel of the end here what are you thinking about at all overall i'm still at a good place of the game i'm still enjoying it

sorry i hate to interject while i don't i'm gonna do it it's you love doing i love interjecting and it's also a good part for the podcast have you ever had a moment of doubt amongst all of this i don't think on the podcast no all right but that means you have i mean yeah it was mainly before we started have you never had a moment throughout this where you've thought what what are we doing i mean yeah but that's fine well talk about it i'm asking you to elaborate i said i'm feeling good about the game yeah but i want it's obviously a crazy thing to be doing and a big time commitment but the actual game yeah feeling good do you like the campaign for north africa at the minute yeah if you i guess if you had to abstract this and like say you live

a thousand years but ten thousand years let's really stretch it out you live ten thousand years okay and you've got a lot of time to to go if you had other friends that lived 10 000 years and this was a game that would be you know relative to what you would spend like an afternoon on now yeah with a an actual board game would you play this with someone yeah i'm feeling 10 000 years i'm no i've got no at best 80 years i'm doing it now and yeah i try to translate this so that it wouldn't become too much of an existential question. If this was a normal length game, and it is what it is, would you play it with someone again?

Yeah. Okay, that's interesting. I've mentioned we play it again as the opposite sides. No, we're not doing that. And you don't like that idea. Of course I don't. I'll be dead. Yeah, I'll be fine. I'll be dead before Rommel shows up.

The second time? No, the first time. The first time. So, like, the next two years. In what world do you think we're covering 25 turns in two years? This one. 27, sorry, because we're on turn five. We've just started turn five.

And it's taken us 18 months to get here. I feel like a month a turn isn't crazy. Then you're doing a different podcast. Oh, okay. That was this turn. Six weeks. Okay. Come on.

Okay. Okay. well i'm glad you're feeling positive about it i guess are you feeling bad about it well that's the weird thing i'm throwing all this shit out at you and i'm actually feeling all right about it there you go it's because when i'm not playing the game and when i'm not in this scenario and people ask me about it and i'm talking about it and they go oh so what's the podcast and i say well this is it and then i oh so it's going to take that long why has no one ever finished it before and now when people ask that question i know the answer i feel the answer

in my heart in my gut i know why people don't finish this because i know we aren't war gamers we aren't like experienced hex encounter board game players but i know that if you are this isn't the game you play well yeah because it's a bad use of time because there's probably you could play five or six other better games yeah like it's because that is the thing i'm enjoying it but it's not it's not a great game outside of the complexity it's not a bad one i don't think but i don't think it's like yeah i think if you have a bunch of other war games to compare it to uh this won't stack up necessarily that well if you have a bunch of other war games to compare to you're better men than us because we went in on the deep end for no reason other than whimsy

i think that's why we i think anyone who should be able to finish it because they're experienced war gamers knows better i think you need people who don't know what they're doing to do this yeah you have to you have to go in blind yeah you have to be the the plucky you have to be the the bruce willis on the meteor in armageddon they're not experienced astronauts they're minors. They're not kids, they're minors. So they go up with the astronaut to blow it up because they know how to drill. Which makes sense because it's much easier to teach someone to be an astronaut

than teach someone to use a drill. Exactly. Well, we'll actually explain that plot contrivance on this podcast. That's for a different one. But I know how to waste my time. So I thought, this game is for me. Just think of it

if we weren't meeting once a week and doing this recording. You'd just be spending this much time brain rot doom scrolling instead. You know what, you say that, I had a very productive social life before I started this.

I know that's not true, because I was part of the non-productive social life. Sorry, not productive, I had a very frequent social life. You're still good. I can't really. Not because of the game. Not because of the game, just because I'm in a comfortable

domestic environment. I just have a life I enjoy where I can relax Yeah, there's no shit on the game Stop defending the game, you dick I feel like I have to I don't like this, I don't like that the game is bonded to you like the black Spiderman suit

I'm its advocate No, you're a parasite Symbiote No, you've latched onto this game and you've decided this is your thing I should have never introduced you to this But you did you're not welcome okay but you know who is welcome andy fans all of our listeners are

welcome all of them all of every single one we've got them all here today i've sent them all your address oh good this is what you get for nearly doxing someone the other week i've doxed you i've hit reply all on all of the emails and i've just sent your postcode and a date and time and It's right now. It's a little surprise for you. It's not your birthday. But we do have some emails. Okay.

We've got quite a few. But we are just reading one, I think. Yeah, we've got a juicy one that we've come across. So I say we rip open that mailbag, we delve in, we grab something, we unfurl it, and we spread its joy right here, right now. Delving in to said mailbag,

we have an email from Matthew. matthew has sent an email with the subject line 28th maori musings his email reads kia ora james and andy it's matt here brit abroad telegramming in from new zealand hope you're both well again from that part of the world oceania they love what were they made in oceania even if they're brits in oceania can if somebody could please uh from i guess matthew you're a perfect example matthew or he does but he is a brit yeah but he's in new zealand i don't know if he if he lives in new zealand he may well explain in here but anyone in new zealand or any of our many australian listeners fire over a message and

remind us how you found us because a lot of you have come across this and i don't know how my last email was nearly a year ago now and i've been following along every week since y'all have accompanied love the y'all y'all have accompanied me on many bus journeys walks to work and dishwashing sessions and i've really enjoyed listening to how the format of the podcast has progressed the dishwashing for me that is that's such a core memory for me so many podcasts that i've listened to while dishwashing a personal highlight of mine has been andy's history segment on the 28th Maori Battalion. Same.

Having asked about their presence in the game in my first email, I was happy to hear another listener recommend some research into them, and even more so, that they got their own dedicated segment. Give me the Maori Battalion, and I will conquer the world, indeed.

Can you remember, Andy, was it, do you know off the top of your head? Probably not, because it's a while ago. Do you know if it was Matthew's email of mentioning them, or the actual recommendation that spurred on the history segment for them? I think it was both.

I think they both got a mention in a pretty short space of time, so I was like, I'll check these guys out. And then, yeah, as I was researching them, they're just cool as hell. Well, either way, Matt, I'm really glad that you proposed this because that may still be my favourite history segment. They are awesome. Fixed bayonets. Oh, what a guy, what a guy, what a group of guys.

with this in mind on a recent trip to the south island it seemed fitting to visit a couple of memorials to the 28th along my route the first was in picton and is poofanua a carved wooden marker that was unveiled in 2021 i've included a picture in this email which uh we'll look at pop that in the instagram because it's i've seen these pictures and they're really cool the figure holding the flagpole is Tumat Uenga, the Ato'u, God of War, and the plaques have names of those who served in the local area. The second memorial in Nelson is a wahora, or carved gateway, which acts as an entrance to Anzac Park, A-N-Z-A-C, or capitalised, I don't know if that stands for something maybe i think it's australian and new zealand maybe oh possibly yeah yeah because i

think australia have anzac day which is like their memorial day maybe okay might be completely wrong but yeah please correct me if i am it features the gods of war and peace some vehicles of war and farm animals presumably those that the men left behind and to which some returned with plaques of the names of all who served i've attached a picture of this one as well surprisingly though whilst we were there someone happened to pass by and tell us that his grandfather had served in the 28th wow wow really cool yeah that's that's a very cool slice of history i'd be fanboying a whole lot there i asked if his name was on the memorial but was told it was on one further north and he told us how his grandfather had actually served in both world wars he had

signed up age 14 for world war one presumably fought at either gallipoli and or the western front survived and then re-enlisted with the 28th for world war ii astoundingly really whilst i wish i'd inquired more i'm sure to have survived both world wars made for some stories well worth telling i was also reminded of a propaganda cartoon from 1915 that i saw in the national museum which i've also attached which i can see and that that propaganda picture is very cool because this isn't this isn't like the horrible propaganda that we saw from the italian ethiopian conflict this one is well it's not racist first of all which is nice it's a refreshing change of pace oh good it's not one of the most horrible things you've ever seen

uh yeah it's actually just really cool we'll we'll pop all these pictures on i'm um i don't imagine metal mines uh they're all just monuments it's not he's not got his face in that's cool so we'll pop those on that's really cool um yeah fighting both world wars and surviving both that's really very impressive because i don't i don't know what the sort of scale is of the amount of people who served in both because realistically there's a lot of people within the age window where they could have yeah the the draft conscription it didn't cover people who had served in world war one just by the time difference so you wouldn't have been called to arms i think a lot of people would have gone though well that's it that so it makes me think how many of them were

like officers or someone who worked in a more senior capacity and how many of them were like well i've done this before i'm i'm ready to go back into the fray i reckon you've sort of got two groups you've got the people who probably stayed in after world war one like a sort of cunning um stayed through a military career was through the peacetime and then was just still in the military when it started just advanced through the ranks or maybe stayed relatively plateaued but were like through and through a military man yeah and i reckon you've got a bunch who are like patriots almost who are like i fought in the first one it was horrible obviously but my like country needs me again a call to arms and like re-sign up i wonder and this is this is a very deep question

i wonder the vast majority which war they found worse oh my god because that is i there's so many factors though isn't there i mean yeah well for one i can imagine i don't know maybe not but i think probably a fairly good rule of thumb is like the higher rank you are in a war the less yeah the less atrocities you see first the less physical and like first-hand stuff you have but on the other end of that it's like i'm managing i'm killing a hundred thousand a million men i'm making decisions where it's like i'm killing my own men i'm killing civilians with every you have to sort of do the calculus of like spending your own people which is a completely different toll i think depending on who you are one or the other could be much worse i guess

yeah i guess it depends on the kind of person you are because if you're if you're the kind of person like an abstracted and you've you've got that sort of utilitarian fixed mindset you can maybe divorce yourself from reality a bit and yeah commit it as a loss of war that would happen regardless of who did it but then you've also got people who maybe being on the front lines and taking a life for them is more justifiable because they're they're fighting a soldier yeah also if your friend line it's like well world war one it's like you spent four years in a trench to get sort of move like five feet

like that trench fall brutal and it's like everyone I know died to move this trench like not far enough that it's even worth updating

on maps if you could pick which one would it be that you were if you were frontline soldier I think World War 2 that's my answer i mean there's something about trench warfare that seems just completely fucked the claustrophobia of it yeah chemical weapons being used and i think just the unknown nature of the conflict yeah it's also the first like great war well and the first like industrialized war on a major scale

that's the scary part it's that it's such an alien concept it's like if nuclear war came about now it's such a new thing we've not seen a nuclear war it's such a brand new concept in warfare that it's just what happens to give you a sense of like how fast it was

the first aerial reconnaissance in wartime from a plane I believe is 1912 you mentioned that not too long ago and that blew my mind I think it was on an episode I think it was when we were talking about Balbo and the flying stuff

first bomb dropped from it or like first explosive device dropped from a plane, I think 1912 maybe I would have put that in the 30s within 30 years you have a nuclear weapon being dropped from a

like four turbine jet bomb plane like a B-52 bomber the kind of thing that now is like an antique plane, but also the kind of thing if you'd shown it to someone in 1912 they'd be like oh you brought something from 2050 let alone the fact it's

carrying a nuclear bomb just the plane would be like this is a sci-fi plane carrying a world ending device and it's all that stuff it's like you know like it's like the generation above us like when the internet

comes and it's like everything about your life has changed because of this like technological advance you couldn't have seen coming yes it's that but all of the technological advances of stuff to kill people. Is the internet not killing us, Andy? I guess it is in a way.

Yeah, I guess less directly. Yeah, I'll let you finish off the rest of the email. So on a final bit of 28th Battalion musings, the New Zealand Film Commission have released a trailer for a film based around their actions

in Tunisia, 1943 called Sergeant Hayne. oh wow uh thought it might be of interest to add to your media review list if you can find access to it absolutely we'll be hunting that down because yes yeah um okay question time i've just come off the back of listening to episode 65 dungeons and dragon in which you described dnd campaigns and i was struck by how creative you get with it all i was wondering if you were planning to carry some of this over into campaign for north africa especially as you discussed giving names to and following the movements of

specific pilots and infantrymen you've created. For things like battle reports, first-hand accounts, documentation, it might be a cool way to chart the progress of the game along with photos of the map. Maybe a dedicated segment to the stories coming from your game.

That said, perhaps you have enough on your plate as it is. We've mentioned something vaguely around this before. I think it would be very cool to do some didactic or almost audio play stuff to like zoom in and give some character and like yeah using uh names because people seem to be uh excited by that idea and like yeah it'll be almost like a fiction but we'll inspire it i

think could be a cool thing if we can work out how to handle that i'd love to do that i think like a radio play yeah we've talked a lot and people have sent in a lot of things where we've had people email in about you know would you have like you know names assigned could people pick names for the units and i think that that's something we're working on we've got like a rough idea as to what we want for that and we definitely want to incorporate some creativity into it because part of the game is you know well the game itself is just rules as written it's very sloggy it's just a long arduous game yeah and if we're going to do 50 years or however long it takes ideally less but however long it takes we want to add a spark of creativity into

it so being able to inject some of that our dnd campaigns are so much fun because we've built a world it's all homebrew yeah we don't even really play 5e at this point 5e dnd we we've homebrewed to a point where it's so different in a lot of ways yeah it's not even that anymore definitely based on it but there's too much stuff we've added yeah we've got like entire systems that work separately especially for the sci-fi stuff yeah um so we want to inject a lot of that into it we want to have a game that runs for a long time that we can enjoy and also put something out that's going to be enjoyable for everyone listening yeah so getting people's involvement is one thing so allowing people to name units and then also being able to create a bit of a

narrative around it a story would be really cool how we do that in amongst it tbc that will be part of the hiatus between practice run and main game i think as you it's time really like yeah because there's all this stuff like on my to-do list forever is update the website with the history segment stuff so there's like which it's just finding time

to like sit down and do it but that's definitely an idea we'll find the time to figure out and all of this you know everyone listening now you are listening to the the progenitor of what this will actually be what will the mate up to now is the dry run

yeah it's the practice go this is not the finished product this isn't even what the podcast will be although it we're not it'll be us adding stuff yeah not like gonna take common ground or something away when you start the main game it'll be adding stuff yeah yes we'll we'll keep we've made a pledge every email will be read common ground i don't think can go away it's it's the core of the of the show it's required and everything else will be added so all of this stuff we we want to put in so to answer the question matt yes we want to inject that creativity we're just we're figuring out how and the suggestions we get the emails we've gotten everyone who's gotten touch so far you've gotten the ground level these suggestions will build what war with the mates

going to be come the the fully fledged play we just need to make sure when we jump off to the full gameplay we've got enough structure to it that it can carry all the way through because injecting stuff like that five turns in 20 turns in becomes a very difficult thing so we want to make sure we get it right from go yeah but the fact that you've messaged us with this matt and that other people have means we get an idea of what people want or at least interested in how we could spin that and we want to do that i think we've got the chops for it andy do we have the time for it we'll figure that out we'll find we'll find it we'll find the time we found the time to play the fucking game even if it's the rest of our lives but it's a it's a good question

matt and you've um you've capped off as all do with anyway i'm sure i'll be emailing again sometime in the future but until then subtly humbly and bravely matt yep thank you very much for the email matt a fantastic email and anyone else who wants to send something else whether it's as incredible as matt's email or the other amazing emails we get or something something more subtle something more humble or something more brave that's entirely your choice you can get us at info at warwithamate.co.uk the website is warwithamate.co.uk

to get our web form or the Instagram is just warwithamate and as mentioned we will read everything, we will get through everything, we've got plenty of time on our hands, we've got the rest of our lives, so if you send it we'll get to it and

again just touching on other stuff that's coming up live show, Birmingham 30th of May 6, not 6.30 4.30 to 5.30 don't go at 6, we'll be gone we'll have left, we'll just go home

at that point but yeah send in your stuff, we love hearing it and thank you for everyone who sent stuff in we've got some incredible emails to go through still the mailbag is still packed but we'll get through it all

but that's the present gone Andy and it is a present it's a gift it's a present that we get to unwrap each week and it's always a bountiful one bountiful my my word of the week okay however i fear i must now go quiet i must now stay silent well not entirely i'll have my quips while i hand it over to you for your beloved Well, so, history segment. We are absolutely not qualified to share

views on history. Thank you. And we're part three of the Ottomans. Which is also, by the way, living up as one of my favourites. They're so interesting. It's not top of Maori, but the Ottoman are

again, it's the perfect mixture of stuff I want to learn about, but I don't have time to. But the fact I have to do this every week, and you've picked something to talk about i don't have an escape so i'm forced to learn something i'm really forced to do what you wanted to do oh god i wish my life was always like that but yes let's jump into it so the ottoman empire was an ugly affair but they had the right idea the rulers in turkey were fortunately so corrupt that they left people alone pretty much uh it's a quote from

known chomsky oh chomsky's in there yeah he's got some thoughts about the ottomans he's got some other thoughts but we'll not touch on those yep he's in some certain files yeah i wasn't even talking about that but yeah that yeah chomsky's not a yeah i used to think chomsky was a really interesting guy and now i think he's i think that's interesting but also problematic also allegedly i might have misread that so not to slander hey we don't know but all i do know is we've talked about worse people we've definitely talked about better people that's okay we'll put it there um the empire has reached its territorial height at this point um expanding from hungary in the west to uh of europe to persia in the east

crimea in the north yemen in the south and along the north african coast so they're covering a big chunk of the world at this point so after the death of suleiman the magnificent and a changing world they're suffering from some severe economic problems as well as internal systems like the dervisham system is starting to break down things aren't necessarily declining at this point but they are definitely stagnating in 1656 the corp rulu family uh take functional control of the empire uh by using the position of grand vizier over several generations and this is another this is giving them their vibe back a bit they expand up to modern day ukraine crete transylvania but it's also like the whole point of your dervisham system was to not have hereditary

stuff and only the sultan is inheritable yeah and now you've got multiple generations inheriting the second most powerful position in the empire this feels like a an omen yeah the fact this feels like it slipped a little bit how did this begin this sort of slip into the the second room um i think partially like the a lot of those like the systems break down as i mentioned so like it starts to be janissaries have enough power that they're like well i want to marry and have kids and my kid's going to be a janissary or parents are like trying to get their kids into it and it's sort of stopped being well it's weird that it starts as like abducted slave children yeah who are gathered to not because they're technically property so they can't own

the empire or have a power base and over time it sort of becomes this sort of unique hereditary nobility which is yeah and then they've also got a bunch of outer problems like the world is changing and they're not keeping up well that kind of thing it seems like in a vacuum like the system kind of works but it's yeah subject to the same kind of flaws where if you if you marry into it you have the same issue yeah you can't ever really i mean by the nature of having kids someone's coming into it yeah there's always going to be another family and there is the inherent thing i want what's best for my kids regardless of the system yeah so whatever system you're operating within yeah you are gonna push for it yeah so they are having a decent run um

under this cop rulu family because they're an interesting thing of competent fairly competent administrators and stuff but then yeah the signal of these issues but they've got their plan to take vienna uh which has been their target for a long time uh hapsburg capital they've tried to besiege it before and failed um so in the year leading up to this um the grand vizier cara mustafa pasha he's been like getting infrastructure projects so they're like fixing all the roads that lead to the border. They're doing like secret preparation basically

so that like when they need to the roads are all good and they can just go. They're not as worried. And all roads lead to Vienna. They do. Oh no, it's Rome, sorry. Vienna through Vienna to Rome. It's nearby, via Vienna.

Because this is, Vienna is also part of the Holy Roman Empire and the Habsburg capital. Holy Roman Empire are seemingly as impenetrable and bizarre as the Ottomans. I mean, yeah, they've got a foothold. I think we might get to them eventually because there's precursors to what will become Germany,

but way down the track. Wait, what? The Holy Roman Empire becomes Germany. I don't even know what the threat is for that. It's like the territorial land, and so Saxony, the areas of Germany all kingdoms in the Holy Roman Empire. Oh, right.

I think the Holy Roman Empire is the second Reich that Hitler's referring to. It's one of the Reichs. Like, you know how Hitler's like, we're the third Reich. I genuinely do not know anything about the Reichs. Me neither really.

It's something I learned about in school, but it is so far gone from my memory. I'm sure you will replenish that and I'll be back into it at some point. That I'm looking forward to. Yeah. Because that feels like a really cool part of history. But I'll let you get back to your actual cool part of history.

So, yeah, they had a previous attempt under Suleiman the Magnificent in 1566, so, like, just over 100 years before, and it hadn't gone well. But they set off for Vienna with 170,000 men, which is a big old army. Especially for those times. Yeah. and they begin the siege on the 14th of july 1683 uh and it's being held by 11 to 16 000 so there's 10 times more attackers than defenders the siege is massive so vienna sits in sort of like a y-shaped river cleft if that makes sense of two sides of it are yes blocked by river so

there's only like one front for the ottomans to attack them on and vienna have it's got its walls and they've also prepped for the siege building like a bunch of earthworks and defenses so due to cannons and defenses it's interesting we were talking about trench warfare earlier the ottomans are having to build trenches sort of towards vienna to give them cover from like cannons and artillery which is crazy that we're now talking about cannons and artillery at this stage yes this is this is sort of the you've got people with guns muskets cavalry people fighting with swords people with grenades it's sort of the like if you want to have the most eclectic selection of weapons from history this might be one of the battles to go yeah that's what i'm thinking like

when i'm trying to picture this conflict yeah it feels very uh sort of pirates of the caribbean yes it's kind of in that period where like there are guns but they're not good enough that you don't carry a sword anymore type yeah i'll always bring it down to a pop culture reference to try and analyze what it is because that's that's how i'm but if you want a pop culture reference for this siege the battle for helms deep might actually be a good one oh god no very good example yes because also some other stuff that will come in here because as well as the trenches they're tunneling the artmans are tunneling beneath the walls oh wow um so that i can like try and come up behind the earthworks and they're also trying to dig even further to put explosives under the

city walls so this this means that the vienna defenders they start digging counter tunnels oh so you've got a surface siege going on and then like an underground war where they're like similar to world war one trench combat they're digging into each other's tunnels like trying to like break the supports of their tunnel and get back into your tunnel accidentally breaking the the wall and you're just there fighting a guy in like no clearance also all by candlelight oh god imagine having to fight in a tunnel by candlelight you're fighting in a tunnel by candlelight carrying very primitive explosives it's just a fucking night because as well as like they're taking like barrels of gunpowder to put under defensive positions and then they'll like time

it to blow it up and then they rush into the gap is how the ottomans are gradually gaining ground and also throughout this they're both sides are using primitive grenades so the ottomans have grenades that are made of glass where you light the fuse and throw it and it like explodes like a molotov cocktail kind of yeah and the vienna have like the you know the sort of like cannonball with the string coming out yes though they've got them so they're fighting and also sometimes you'll pop into a tunnel and a guy has a grenade imagine that's that's the worst situation to be in yeah there's like literally like you just punch through into their tunnel oh cool no one's here i can hear their mining further down chuck a couple grenades in collapse the tunnel they're never

getting out like this is horrible you've killed a group of like a dozen or so men if not more yeah and there's things i'm like finding them people just crawling out of the grounds like a sort of zombie rising from the grave and then into a defensive position this this siege is genuinely like nuts um this sounds fucking nightmarish i'd hate to be in this so this siege lasts for like two months the ottomans are exhausted and starving because when they arrived they had these allies called the tartars who are sort of russian eastern european like tribe okay and they'd gone nuts and like gonna burn everything and then it was like oh shit we could have really used those farms to like keep our men fed also the ottomans are getting sent

at various type like bad stuff by the people they've conquered because they're sort of like are sort of sick of you a little bit so the ottomans have gunpowder they can't use when it's raining and also the thing is all of this is dirty gunpowder because they invited invented like cleaner burning gunpowder at some point and but this is all like every time you fire a gun there's just a cloud of fog coming like visibility is just dog shit yeah well yeah you're either in a tunnel or you're in a cloud by the sound of it yeah uh so this siege lasts for two months with the ottomans making slow brutal progress until a polish relief army of 80 to 90 000 men can arrive on the 12th of september they have a battle here which includes the largest cavalry charge in all

of history that's okay that's very interesting what year is this uh this is 1680 so 1683 has the largest cavalry charge in history yeah because this is the age of like gun and pike formations cavalry starting to go but yeah that's it cavalry starting to go in fact because it's the polish hussars who are one of the last cavalry because they had like incredibly long lances because they like worked out how to make them hollow so they could actually be long enough that like they longer than the pike formations oh so they can break it through without being hit first and still go so this is like some of the last effective cavalry and this is the largest cavalry 18,000 horses. The crazy thing is, the infantry for the Polish and their artillery won this battle. This cavalry charge is a, fuck you, we're going to kill as many of you as possible. Like, the battle's won. This is a charge into a rout.

there's two things in that one it's into a route that's insane the fact that that's where they've devoted that force to but also i maybe naively would have thought the biggest cavalry charge would be a lot bigger 18 000 horses i would have thought like maybe like 30 or something like 30 000 like i know it's a lot i know it's a crazy amount of people when i'm visualizing it i think you'll have larger cavalry like the mongol armies are bigger but they're not they're not doing charges they don't have as much heavy cavalry yeah so you might have like 50 000 mongols but they do that thing where they like just ride around you out of your reach just shooting you with arrows yeah like they're they obviously did do cavalry charges and stuff but yeah i guess this

is the biggest one that's crazy so yeah this is a massive blow to the ottomans at every level the sultan who was there manages to escape uh the vizier gets his head chopped off for this and this is really that turning point like it's all downhill from here so for the next 16 years they will lose something called the great turkish war uh where they lose their foothold and are in europe and are expelled from hungary and transylvania which leads up to a formalized treaty in 1699 that's like yeah we've officially recognized we've lost this territory so they're having some military problems at this point but they do have a brief cultural revolution called the tulip period they would see a sort of westernization of the elite adopting european styles and inventions

like the printing press okay um but this also causes like a conservative backlash within the ottoman empire because they're like you're being too westernized yeah but it's a printing press like it's it's one of those things you it's too useful yeah you can't really deny it you can say it's a cultural shift but you kind of need it but it's like the people who are like well you mentioned it before it's like a boomer using the internet yeah it's like well you kind of have to yeah because also they used to think there was a switch where it was like they thought people read everyone used to read aloud and there was a thing where like when people started reading in their head people were like

concerned i'm such a funny i don't know why that's tickled me so much but just the idea of someone start reading a book quietly and someone just like whoa which you monster so yeah they're trying to modernize here at certain levels and there's resistance to it for example they try to open a artillery school based on western principles that there's like a religious revolt against it and they have to close it and then they reopen it in secret and it's yeah this there's just this sort of resistance to new or foreign ideas that's slowing them down which is a really bad place to be because the industrial revolution is

rumbling towards them and uh that's gonna cause problems if you can't adapt yeah so yeah sorry so they fight on and off in eastern europe until 1739 and then they get a 30-year peace which is when this tulip period happens but then this peace ends uh in 1768 when russia wants to get bigger uh which leads to the russo turkish wars uh which lasts another eight years and also doesn't go well for the ottomans so they've not really had to deal with russia before this it was like the princes but then they get united and turned into like a country and then become a problem there's like a russian empire they have to deal with uh which will be like their main problem for the back half of their existence

so yeah their military is outdated and ineffective and at this point the janissaries are also just completely out of control to the point where they have a series of revolts against modernization up until 1826 when mahmoud ii puts an end to the janissaries after a brief rebellion they kill all the janissary leaders and go right the ones of you who weren't ringleaders you can go be officers in the army but you're not janissaries anymore oh wow this is done

like yeah because I also thought the janissaries were like just while the Ottomans existed they did yeah I thought it was like from what you said up to this point I thought that's just a core part that was like evolving and changing as it was

but you wouldn't get rid of it yeah killing them off yeah they like had a revolt and then yeah just get done um so while they're facing external threats and corruption at the very heart of the empire their long-term territories start to get restless as there's a rise in balkan nationalism so these countries start to go like hey we're not because there's never really like an ottoman

identity gets formed because they're happy to let all the like christian jews well that's it They've always had such a massively multicultural melting pot. And kind of hands-off. Yeah. Which means no one in North Africa would be like, I'm an Ottoman. Yeah, well, there's no Ottoman. Like, yeah, never built as a national identity,

which as the 19th century, that's becoming a big thing. like yeah you get the balkans like greece and serbia are like we're gonna be greece we're gonna be serbia we're not it's all defined but there there is no ottoman no like which i found like in a 600 year old empire that there was never really a forming in the same way because like there's no identity at the same time you've got like britain france spain like the the european superpowers seem to very much have like a national yeah you don't have an identity yeah which is a very corporate i mean even now yeah you look at a nation now you have a defined you know whether it's a cultural identity or a stereotype even you've got something that

sort of defines what a culture is yeah for right or wrong but i don't even know that if if the ottoman empire was around you know alive and well now what would that look like how would you how would you characterize that as a an identity or a caricature i don't even know what you would do to portray that i think if you were doing a caricature you'd end up with like a sort of sultan you'd just do the like ruling family but you wouldn't yeah because like the citizens of it are like yeah i'm a jew from northwest europe like they might even think like i'm transylvanian or wachovian or whatever or i'm an italian farmer that was kidnapped yeah i mean that's something yeah as well yeah there's there's no yeah yeah there's no core

structure to that generalization which is really interesting. So as that that's them losing chunks of territory now where you've got like internal revolts from would-be nations so this develops

something called the Eastern Question which is among the European powers basically there's this thing of like the Ottoman Empire's in trouble this is where the sick man of Europe phrase comes from so this is where like they get described as like a sort of sick and dying power and it's like very apparent to everyone um but the europeans are like we need to manage this we can't have it just like

completely fall apart because it'll like destabilize things and also we want to rip this thing apart for scraps like when this empire collapses we're moving in um so yeah that's That's what the Ottomans are looking at, like, in the end of the 19th, early 20th century. And that's what's waiting for the Italians when they declare war to conquer Libya on the 29th of September, 1911. So, yeah, that's a whistle-stop tour of the Ottomans. Is that the Ottomans done? for this I think I'm going to come back to them

because they're interesting you're teasing more Ottomans I guess the final because we'll have a bit of a going to do that like Barbary pirate Ottomans in Libya specifically and they'll also be in Ottomans in Egypt because the way they lose control

of Egypt is quite interesting as well oh well I look forward to that yeah wow what a journey it's been with the Ottomans oh yeah really interesting like empire uh well such an it's a weirdly liberal approach to yes to cultures yeah but then also they're almost like metropolitan in like the 15th century like like the one for liberal approaches but then also like towards the end weirdly cutthroat approaches yeah and weird well i guess

the thing is if you're a progressive and then you wait a hundred years you're probably not a progressive anymore like but it's also the weird thing is it's progressive even compared to cultures now yeah they're like religious openness and the sort of like if you can contribute come on over yeah it's quite a rare that well yeah there's like huge issues with immigration sort of globally well everywhere i mean i mean god the uk yeah i know it's a we're looking at like you know chalk and cheese sort of situation but even the uk now you've got you know rising powers that sort of decry the idea of differences yeah and they're not powers in control but you know could be yeah well that's it you know you've got these clashing ideas in the modern world of well different is bad

different isn't our identity our identity is this fixed identity yeah so having a whole empire where they're essentially their identity is built on well we're an eclectic mix we're a melting pot in the 15 1600s yeah is an insane thing to try and translate because i can't really think of anything else that i personally know of where and again this is someone who doesn't really know much of any history that can really carry that torch i i've yeah i don't think of any nothing comes to mind that's not that they're you know i mean you know they're taking slaves they're taking captives oh yeah it's it's not a welcoming uh because it is a thing of like making the most of it come in and you're useful you can come in like when they picked up the jews when they got

expelled from spain but yeah there is also the thing of like like kidnapping like 1.5 million people yeah off the coasts of europe but then some of those slaves become captains yeah like it's a bizarre like it's such an odd structure yeah i because also like they don't have agricultural slavery from what i was like on like a huge scale like you would see in the americas it was like house slaves and servants in a way rather than it's not labor it's not chattel slavery but yeah it's weird i'm not gonna like justify different types of slavery too much but yeah it's a it's a different time but it's a weird structure where you can like rise through the ranks so to speak and almost earn a like a living in a position and

like you could be the most second powerful man to the most powerful empire in the world at the time at various points and also be a slave yeah it's like the vice president of the united states being a slave kind of like that's yeah you can graduate from this position of captivity to be a figure of prestige yeah that's crazy it's a it's a really bizarre interesting just different system like yeah it has made me want to go a bit further like east in my research into like the sultanates and the caliphates because it's like i've mainly talked about how they like dealt with european powers because they were sort of mediterranean european but they were also having all these wars with like to the east with like the remnants of persia and

iran and stuff so i'm wondering like how much of was imported from that yeah it makes you wonder how much you know especially in the uk how much history that we're taught is just so centralized on sort of western europe yeah because stuff like this i'm like well i've known of the ottoman empire yeah but i've never known what the ottoman empire is and now i'm like well this is if anything if you want to get like kids engaged in school this is really interesting stuff yeah because it's also the kind of history stuff where it's like actually sparks some questions and thoughts it's not just listing dates it's like this is a different it's a different thing like how do you yeah look at that and think about it it's not just a conflict or a king in england it's not

henry the eighth it's not haystons yeah it's not something that's kind of like well i guess for me and probably you well trodden over and that might just be to be fair this is probably stuff that people in we have a lot of international audiences for some reason yeah they might not be as well equipped to talk about you know haystons or something like that but yeah crazy yeah wild stuff yes so but if we've got my wild stuff andy yes if you want to go wild have you got one for me i've got something that will ideally bridge this gap because we're talking about differences we're talking about cultures we're talking about the past the present the future we're talking about war with a mate we're talking about us being friends and every week

we have a history segment and every week we have a common ground segment and common ground is a chance for us to come together unite over a topic and be friends again amongst this enduring conflict that we have

for the rest of our lives and this week it's my turn and I have a topic and now for something nicer a little oasis in the war it's time for some common ground I'm trying the intro for common ground I'm recording

maybe yeah Andy, this week my common ground is that everybody should fake having a burst appendix so that doctors remove their appendix

okay okay um everybody i think if that's the case maybe we just you just get your appendix out when we remove the theater well you think that i do but if that were the case they'd already be doing it and they've decided for some reason en masse no we're not going to remove the appendix pretty expensive well you've got this thing okay you've got this thing in the world where there's different medical practices that are just carried out as procedure yeah you've got

vaccinations you've got in america circumcisions are very big it's not so big in the uk but circumcisions in america yeah it's just a sort of commonplace practice you've got you know we're dialing it down a lot here piercings you know okay you've got all these things where it's just kind of like well we'll do this thing we'll do this thing that's a bodily procedure Okay, yeah And then you look at the appendix And what does the appendix do? Nothing, right?

Well, what it does do Isn't it for eating grass or something, but we don't use it anymore Yeah, it kills you Yeah, it just randomly explodes and kills you Yeah, right now you've just got a time bomb inside you It's kind of like the wisdom tooth It does also mean there is the thing of if I get any lower stomach pain

I'm like, right, this is it My appendix is going to blow Well, that's it You get a really bad stitch out of the blue, and you think, well, my appendix has burst. Yeah. You get your wisdom teeth out when they become a problem. You don't have them out before they're a problem.

But wisdom teeth don't kill you. Appendices kill you. Is there, like, a thing where certain people are more likely to explode? Like, is it genetic? Well, the thing is, Andy, I didn't do any research before I suggested this. Oh, okay, cool, yeah. I just came into this with no background information whatsoever. Cool, that's fair.

Because I was thinking when they rolled out the COVID vaccines and it was like if you're in a... They had the various risk groups. Yes, well, that's a... Because if there was a way of doing that, it could be like, oh, you sign up if you want it, and then if there's no one in a higher risk group, you can go in and get it.

Because it's fairly quick. Well... Is it like an in and out, or is it like a, I'm not, I don't know anyone who's had it out, and like. Well, I've also not done the research. That's part of the issue here, is I've not done the research. But by the same merit, I know that it's in you, it's going to kill you if you leave it. Yeah. And, you know, put it this way.

Zombie apocalypse happens tomorrow. Nuclear war happens tomorrow. how many people are going to die of burst appendices how many people have died of burst appendices again we've not this is a question that neither of us can answer this is a question that someone would be shouting at their headphones as they listen to this would you bundle it because like you know how you don't like you know tonsils how you it's like you want to do a tonsil appendix package i'm getting all the unnecessary shit out that can just flare up get your tonsils out now and we'll also give you a free cut free circumcision and also we'll get rid of the appendix

yeah all in one cost-effective package because if you're worried about like the ticking time bombs or the stuff that like doesn't do much but can cause problems just get it all out now what we do have to contextualize here um for our international audiences we're in the uk we're under the national health service which means that our health care in general is free the majority of procedures are free there's hefty wait times for some things as a guy who was in a the other day for 12 hours uh that's that's an emergency ward as well yeah it's yeah you could you can wait there for a long time for what is considered an emergency yes this is this is sort of an idea where you need the rest of the

healthcare system to be taken along nicely and then you can this isn't step one yeah what I'm not saying is for like the American health service where it's all paid you have to pay for it the first thing they nationalise is

appendix but yes to an extent yes ideally yes what they do nationalise first would be something like you know cancer research or something that really will you know benefit the world but you can't really you know if we're starting small if we're starting with something if we're starting small let's remove everyone's

appendix well i guess the thing is you can't proactively stop cancer there's not a sort of like definitive point where you can go right this is where this person is in their health career They're going to get cancer We can do something about this What you can do is go This person's appendix may explode one day And they don't need it Okay

Get rid of it And I have a way to fund this as well Okay Because As part of this process When you're born Early on As soon as you're fit and healthy enough

To have your appendix removed You will have it removed so like a six month old i don't know what the age would be i've done no you don't know what i presume it's older than that i presume it's a lot older than six months because it is invasive surgery i presume it's again maybe maybe the scientists the doctors will have a look at when appendices burst but i imagine it's after like you know adulthood on average roughly okay and if that is the case maybe you're thinking i'm abstracting the point a little bit i am but what i think we should also do is take a catalog of all these people with an extra kidney

okay you know you get these you get these people i've known four people who've had a third kidney that's too many i know it's crazy that feels statistic again we've done no research that feels statistically unlikely it feels like an anomaly yes i'm going off the basis that it's not okay and if it's not that's a lot of kidneys and kidneys are worth a lot on the black market so i say that the world health trade gets in with the world black market and we hang on for a second we compromise we start selling the kidneys off these spare kidneys we use that money to fund the appendices removal

okay you can ask questions why involve the black market why not just set up a legal market for kidneys where are you going to sell a kidney to that's going to put money into the health service that isn't already being spent

in this cycle like a rich guy who wants a kidney no because the rich guy is part of the black market yes but if you if there's a legal market no we're not going to let him launder the money this way he's still criminally liable for his actions okay i'm just the world health organization are selling the kidneys yeah i'm not absolving rich people of their criminal actions okay i'm permitting briefly the world health organization to sell kidneys to the black market into the black market okay so this is kind of the equivalent of like you know there was the like

poppy field thing in afghanistan when they took it over yeah and it's if just the u.s army had well i guess they kind of did if the u.s army had as official policy sold the heroin to cartels to fund the war in afghanistan um no i'm gonna say no because i need you to agree on on this okay so i i think if we need to agree we remove the black market element well i'll put it this way andy so you're talking about the aspect of you know buying these expensive kidneys yeah if someone sells a kidney to the black market yeah who's buying that cannibals or rich people who can't get on the transplant clue like list okay cool so these are still bad people the ones who are rich are yeah yeah so no one who's getting this kidney is going to be a good

person okay the kidney's not going to a good guy that feels bad there are good people who need kidneys so they should yeah there are good people who need kidneys can we not give them the kidneys well that's where we need to figure out how many people die from kidney failure and burst appendix and i know what you're thinking it's definitely the kidney failure but as we've learned from existing in a world that we live in things aren't always perfect and we can't enforce a system where the kidneys will be given to the right people

otherwise they would have them but what we can do is use the money from these selfish bastards and we can save everybody from having a potential burst appendix we'll go after them by the way we'll go after the black market

they're next but we'll just do this first we'll get to them i only have one common ground a week so that's fair yeah we'll cover them guys okay but right now if if i had to if i had to you know sort of pose it to you as a high level broad idea we fund the money that we need to remove these appendices by having bad people buy the things they would usually buy and this isn't going to hurt anybody because this is getting rid of an organ they don't need and all we're giving to somebody is something that they

could use to live or i guess waste a spare kidney can't hurt anyone they can't weaponize it they can't turn it into nuclear fuel they can't stick it in a gun they can't turn it into poison It's just a body part Okay So they're spending Fortune On these spare pieces of body No one is at a loss

No one's going to be hurt from it And what we can fund is the removal Of an organ that for some reason You're born with that can just kill you That's crazy Who designed that? I guess nature Well nature in this case is bad

Okay so what do you make of that the most compelling point you had was remove stuff for when society collapses well yeah that's kind of what I'm kind of on board with

I guess it's not biohacking it's bioprepping yeah you're getting rid of the bad part you get rid of the appendix you get LASIK eye surgery if you need it okay I think the weird kidney black market thing

we might need to get to what about it just the just it remaining a black market for seeming for no reason well that's the thing Andy it's always for no reason isn't it but can we

really tackle that in this common ground I guess not I guess it's a side issue it's a massive issue I agree it's a fundamental issue with society as a whole but what what's the common ground to get rid of that get rid of bad guys i mean it's too broad it's yeah it's not actionable like this yeah this is i've given you uh i've given you an end point and i've given you the means to to get to that end point you've also

kind of given me the premise of like a dystopian sci-fi novel where the world health organization of selling organs. That's now. That's now. Organs are being sold. I've not invented the idea of selling organs to Black Lives Matter. You have introduced the

World Health Organization into being directly guilty. I don't know. Again, I've not done any research. I don't know how guilty or guilt-free the World Health Organization is in anything if they came up with something to just inject you and it would like diffuse your appendix are you fine with that well yeah if we live in a fantasy make-believe world okay

i guess we have i'm talking about the real world right yeah i guess we have to agree on something so appendix bad appendix bad removing them good yeah i'd like it if it was provided for me for free don't tell me about the organ stuff you wouldn't know oh then fine that's okay we're already talking about this on the podcast oh they wouldn't tell everyone about this then yeah that's fine this is a this is like a back you know this is like a behind the scenes board meeting okay no one knows about this yeah this is the bit where we don't take notes in case we get like subpoenaed yeah this is a big secret okay and it's a lovely secret because people get saved the average every man gets saved from their appendix their own body the bad guys get rich for

a little while their children get illegal kidneys that let them live long lives and by the time they're grown up their corrupt parents have been taken out by the thunderbirds okay you you are bringing in other common grounds here i'm invoking thunderbirds in this common ground. Which Thunderbirds are you used for hits? Thunderbird 1 and 2. Okay. And 5. Okay.

Okay. That tracks. Yeah. I guess by the nature of 5 being involved 3 also has to be involved. Because it delivers 5. Do you want to just let 4 in? No, no, no, no. There's nothing aquatic about this plan whatsoever.

Thunderbird 4 is not involved okay i'm in you're in i'm in there we go thunderbirds one through three and five are involved in a global anti-corruption process to tackle the corrupt process of the world health organization to save the world from the appendices i've been james i've been auntie stay so humble and brave and watch out for your appendix at any moment it could come for you and soak up the deserts of your minds good night We'll be right back. We'll be right back.

$2,500 during our massive Labor Day event. Hurry into your local Sleep Number store today because we have your number.