War With A Mate - Episode 75: In Case Of Emergency

Episode Date: May 9, 2026

What is going on at the airfields? What is going on with charity? What is going on with fruit? The guys are abuzz with questions they aren’t entirely capable of answering, but James demands answers from Andy following a sly and familiar tactical move emerging on the front lines, as the movement and truck segments of Turn Five, Op Stage One is wrapped up and sets the stage for the fleshy underbelly of Op Stage Two.

hello and welcome to war with a mate with me andy and me james you seem pleased with yourself for some reason andy i just thought i'd have a go at the intro all right well we'll we'll pause we'll we'll start again because how dare you steal my thunder and how dare you steal fort madalena for a second time you dirtbag spoilers spoilers spoilers you're a piece of waste how dare you how dare you welcome to war with a mate the only podcast where this scumbag steals fort madalena from me twice in one practice run i'm james there we go there's the intro we've been doing what we always do we've been playing the campaign for north africa and he's being a little shitheel and i'm i'm just here trying to survive i'm just i'm the underdogs struggling to keep his

head above water oh yeah real underdog aren't you yeah i am at this point i am sorry have i been giving off the false impression this has been going well for me sometimes well then i'm sorry then that's probably partially on me for misrepresenting myself let's just say entirely on you and move on let's say it's 70 30 i'm 30 fine okay i can live with that okay so what happened today today i got frustrated with you and that was within the context of your movement because last week i did my movement and it was uh i would say minor lackluster even i'd say it's fair to say it wasn't a symphony of movement no it was a single note i moved one guy it was one guy shuffling slightly closer to a shop i moved a guy one one hex down one hex south

it was the originally the bardia garrison and now they're just off doing side quests in the desert the side quest being try and stop the advance of the seventh armored division how's that going so far so good the seventh armored division well i suppose we'll get to it aren't really any further forward they're not really a threat okay they're not a problem at all actually i've not a problem at all okay so i i watched as you moved your guys around you you shuffled them did a bit of a rejig i did you in your movements have moved the oh right okay you're gonna have to help me out on this one who was it that you moved next to my guys in that little divot by the top that uh so we're going north to south we're going north to south okay that was the

second new zealand the second new zealand they encountered the little break off that i had from the trivoli regiment my armor guys who had who had no ammo and no water so they just promptly surrendered yeah it's bad for a group of tanks because without those two things they can't do anything about those two things they're just small metal houses yeah and they're the italian ones so They are really fucking small. And metal might even be a bit of a grasp. Yes, it's a tent. So you took my metal tents,

all five of them, and the men inside. They've been captured instantly. I presume you've taken the prisoner's prisoner, and the tanks are now just yours to do whatever you want with. I need to send them back for a refit, and then they become... Well, good luck with that, because they're terrible.

I might just turn them into points. Well, they'll break down on the way. i don't think now that they're a broken down convoy that doesn't happen they're not broken down though they're just captured on the vehicle prisoner tokens or whatever i'll need to double check yeah we'll double check it's not often that we actually take vehicle prisoners yeah they're a step up from human prisoners yes human prisoners i'm fine with ten a penny ten a penny at this point yes i've got a bunch of prisoners i actually uh i need a mark i'm actually mistreating i i am mistreat i mistreat my own men so god knows what i do to prisoners

i'm not a kind overlord i'm barely an overlord i'm a mid-level lord i'm glad you corrected yourself middle management lord that's aspirational as hell dude that sounds like the name of a like a real wanker middle management lord lord being the surname oh middle management is his first name is christian name middle management yeah that's sort of the opposite of nominative determinism middle management lord but my friends call me mid who is this guy he's not a great guy he's friends with uh with my dear friend uriel mandibles is that one of frank's personas from it's always sunny no that's um i know who you mean that's dr mantis toboggan that's it no uriel mandibles is the guy i made in sims years ago remember the

guy who had the goblins oh yeah yeah uriel mandibles was a fictional character i made in the universe of sims i'm in our house with with me you and some of our friends we lived a lavish lifestyle but next door there was uriel mandibles our dastardly neighbor with his goblin that lived in the basement who would paint stuff oh yeah i remember he was just a money farm yeah just mistreating a guy to sell oil paintings but uriel mandibles lives at a big okay and i wish i could be him i think that is really my sort of my inspiration to just have you want to i don't want to do what he did he did what he had to to get by i want to i want to have to are you not getting by i want to thrive like he ended up thriving okay and i'll get there pick a different

Moth picks someone else who's fried. He's my hero. The best part is he's also me, if you think about it. Cool, because I was just about to say he's in the Fritzl oeuvre. No. Of keeping someone in the basement to exploit them. That's a very,

very different vibe. It's what he did. Cool. I'm gonna move this on. Good. How dare you use what you just used to get rid of Uriel mandibles from the conversation, by the way. The audience wants Uriel mandibles,

but you've deprived them of them, so fine. I'll move on. Even the celebrity on the sofa is disappointed. The celebrity on the sofa is protruded by this. We'll tell him after. Yeah, we'll fill him in on the way. Actually, no. This is it. He's been misbehaving this week in particular.

Yes, he's a little naughty boy. So are you. And not in a cheeky way. Not in a cheeky way. Like, fuck you. Jeez. Come on, man. so we we continued your movement after you forced the surrender of some poor innocent men in the metal tents just out there backpacking having a jolly good time by the coast a day at the beach we then moved further south where you did a bit of a rejig i did i um so because you pinned some guys uh but i wanted to move the fourth indians forward detach the two guys you

pinned good that was the plan yep i didn't think it would go this way but um so yeah the fourth got rid of some of their dead weight left it at the supply dump i put at the start in the desert and then yeah they whizzed along skated around you blocking action and rolled into fort magdalena now this has happened before this this happened in turn one literally exactly i think you also had a guy on that track that i did the exact same move around i do remember you snaking around a bit and i do remember becoming increasingly angry at it now do you remember how this all concluded last time andy uh yeah your air force was fucked for like two thirds of the game yeah that's still that's still happening though that's still contemporary i'm talking about the consequences

of this yeah they were fine i scared off the seventh well i shook a big stick at them and it kind of worked but kind of worked i whittled them down they were actually in a bad state by the end of that but now they're not now they're not but the fourth indian are the ones who've done it this time yeah and they're in a good state right now they are but right now they're also in fort madeleine and cut off from all supplies there's supplies in fort madeleine i need to get off you there are but you'll be very underwhelmed that's fine it's like only just started resupplying it fairly recently and they've not used much well they've not used much no but it was all for fighters so it's not a lot of bombs and it's certainly not a lot of stores oh i was more

meaning my the fourth haven't used much oh okay fair enough yeah well i've also not used much there yeah because they're fighters yeah fair enough so what you'll find is an underwhelming supply dump and also this isn't an emergency no i'm just taking it because it's there yeah but you can't take the supplies out of there it's not mine i can just take them whenever i want no it says in in an emergency it says that do you think right and you be honest here because this sets a precedent is this an emergency i'm actually sidestepping this completely i think no no you can't sidestep this completely it's an important part of the rules debacle is this an emergency i think if you're taking something off giving me a politician's answer

trying to answer the question we're not that kind of we're not that kind of podcast arnie you don't get to just fucking dance around the issue i'm not i'm trying to answer a direct question i'm gonna say is this an emergency and you start this answer however long it may be with yes or no comma and then the rest of it is this an emergency yes no don't lie don't lie as part the answer why ask if you're not gonna let me say my piece because i knew you were gonna fucking lie in this answer i haven't said anything you said yes and that's a lie sorry okay i will let you explain to me why you're lying okay i think if you're taking something out of enemy control you can just take it it's like sidesteps the emergency oh cool we gotta make up rules now

that's so cool it's okay we can go back to the book but i think taking stuff from something you've captured is fine i'm sure you do think that also fine they're behind enemy lines and could potentially run out of supplies one day it's an emergency one day yes right do you know what an emergency is do you understand that it requires an aspect of urgency and and threat yeah so what which of these two things are in play they're constantly the the harsh sun is beating down on them taking that precious water that's an omission stop with the fucking prose all right just for a moment be real be an actual person instead of this shallow shell dressed as a friend of mine how dare you i i mirror that sentiment to you okay where's the

threat all around sorry no i'm going to correct you on that it's the guy you just sidestepped who's badly wounded and it's a bunch of guns by the way with like five guys there guns if anyone brought a gun out in any situation in my life it would be an emergency you know how many miles away they are from your men what like 5 40k so somebody pulled a gun out 40k from you okay you're just a paranoid scared man yeah fine i'll leave them there okay good see that's all it took a little bit of negotiation though this and this is how the geneva convention worked no it isn't they had a bit of like a fun back and forth where one of them did get chewed out a little bit but then eventually they decided

Well, actually, these are the rules. Right. And here we are, titans of rights. Okay. And you're a doer of wrongs. So I've gone for Magdalena, I've executed the SJSU, and then I've left all of the supplies. Yes, all of the telltale signs of an emergency is going in

and committing a war crime-style execution. Oh, what an emergency I've suffered. we need to get out either fast before the cops arrive you know i'm mad i would be if i was at an airfield and i got like put down on my knees and like executed in the desert all while the guy's doing it like oh god this is an emergency you know what might piss me off more they ride in murder me and all my friends but leave everything else there and it was completely pointless yeah but i think it's not pointless first of all because now i can't take off planes from there okay and i believe that was the plan i don't think it was

to get supplies and if it was make better plans twofold it needs to be better than that it can't be twofold okay we're looking at three foot four folds we're in the penultimate game here this is it turn five out of six i'm all then start acting like it i am act your game age five it's different it's like dog yes 35 yeah campaign for north africa yes they age you like up here right in there yeah this has clearly gone wrong And then after you did that You'd shuffled the 7th up Yes

To pop into that supply dump Where you left some of the Indians Yes Because the infantry I attached To The 7th I willed them down first on the tow stuff Yes

So it got rid of the 2 extra And I've replaced the 2 extra Okay So all in all a sound, if not a little bit cruel, and for a moment backing up an incorrect strategy. I mean, yeah. I see

how you react to it. It'll be interesting, but... And then I sort of move the sixth Australian up to where the seventh would be to keep a bit of that. Yeah, I notice you're keeping that continuity going. You've got a bit of a through line there. But the good thing is, the Australians are the last ones coming in.

Yeah, probably. I mean, realistically, yes. You've got one more division? No, I think they're all here. I think I've got a couple of fairly well-stocked battalions. Yeah, it might be a shell or something, but it does have a... There's one with a strip on it. The Polish Brigade.

Squid? Strip. Yeah, the Polish one is... I think it will become a division at the minute. It's like four guys, though. That rings a bell. I'm sure you've got a guy who is a shell, but will at some point in the future become an actual thing.

Yes. So they are off on the ways. They're to the east. they don't really matter and on the back of that we only had that combat which was my instant surrender you didn't then push further forward which means we got to do our truck stuff as well yeah this was quite a my truck stuff went pretty smoothly my new supply line with the supply dump at city barani yeah that to the southern supply dump now works quite nicely yeah you have really shorten the distance on some of that yeah i mean i i for my truck stuff didn't do a whole lot that

was revolutionary i did the usual loop round along the north to my airfields my map a airfield distribution network is is fully fledged now it's all going well i moved a truck convoy that was right next to your guys who showed up because they were causing some real trouble i thought when you took out those tanks if you went into the hex that they were at you would have been adjacent to the trucks you could have taken them i would have been to take the trucks i would have had to move in and then they would be the guys on top of the escarpment would be able to shoot down i think i think that you had a hex of safe space oh okay but either way seeing what was coming keep it i'll just move them out yeah there's not much they could go from there i guess

so i'm sort of fine with them where they are and as retaliation i moved those trucks back i pulled them out they went back up that little hill near halfire pass and resupplied all my guys around that area and then they popped into bardia yeah to nestle themselves away meanwhile in bardia the one thing that did deviate from the usual truck process for me is that my biggest convoy convoy 15 the one that traveled all the way from the far reaches of tripoli yeah they showed up and they split in two yep half of them hanging around doing their usual thing half of them went down to meet the second black shirts yeah now they're part of my little makeshift barrier yes down towards the south of the escarpment they are busy trying to hold off the advance of your guys the seventh

and the fourth. Now, the fourth are further west of them now. Yeah, the fourth are sort of looped behind your line now. Yeah, they are, if we're looking at just the vertical, they are further west than like half of my guys. Yeah, possibly all of them. Because all that Bardia line is to the east of it. Yeah, good point.

I think they might actually be further west of any division. Oh, no, you've got Blackshear's division in Tobruk. They're not actually a division. Oh. Yeah, they're one down. there are three I think it might be regiments?

maybe, I mean it's brigade whatever they are, there are three I can reinforce Tobruk at a moment's notice so I'm not too concerned yeah, that road is probably what, 10 CPA? well for me, yeah for you to get up there, it's looking like

I think it's like 30 or something from where you are yeah, to go all in one go up the fracks and then onto that road and along yeah so i'll have notice if you start making that journey oh yeah definitely or you can show up there completely pooped and exhausted lose a fight to try and drive me out and then i come up behind you and fuck you yeah they do have a 10 go fusion so i could burn them oh well i know you can't burn that but it means that you've then lost that and you can't get rid of them from to brook in one

offstage no which means the the following offstage they get reinforced and it goes badly for you so with that being the case i'm not too concerned don't like that they did that to fort madalena and i don't like that this time it's a full division that did it yeah that feels bad when i saw that it was because you mentioned detaching units and in the sort of sleight of hand blur that you did oh i think you dropped a few pieces i lost track of what was going on for that moment and thought you were just taking one guy from the fourth yes and looping them around another truck banded situation yeah and then when i did a double take and realized that it was in fact a full division my heart did sing a little bit however we live and learn and i'm fine with that

i'm fine with them being there because it just gives me a bigger target to hit yeah i guess it does i'm gonna hurt them i mean you go for it and now that i've got my second black shirts filled up with other trucks that opens up the doors to possibilities you're gonna i think you're probably gonna motorize them and like learn gist possibly yeah this second black shirt division by the way fully supplied haven't taken a lick of damage i think apart from maybe a strafe or two too straight i think there might be on two infantry tow that yeah i think is probably I think I strafed them this upstage and you were like, why is this already missing a toe?

So it's two toe down. Yes, so they're two toe down. But I'll take that. Happily take that. Yeah. So I'm fine with what my plan is next. And that was made all the sweeter by the fact that my plan hinged on me going next.

Yes, which I have done. You have given me first go in upstage two. I have, yes. Which meant I had to roll the weather. And you got... Hot weather, which isn't great because if I'm doing anything that requires long distance travel, which some of my plans do, that is going to be costly and taxing. Yes, it's going to bump the breakdown up quite badly.

Yes, water consumption, evaporation and breakdown are all going to be problematic. Yeah. And I don't like that, but I do have to live with it. So I rolled that. I'll take the responsibility because I'm a grown man. Yeah I don't feel like you ever take responsibility for the weather that you roll

I shouldn't have to You should It's not my problem Well regardless of whose problem it is which is it's both of our problems coming up We've got our air stuff coming up next time Yep

But we've wrapped up the first op stage of turn 5 We're coming up to the halfway point of the penultimate turn Yeah we'll probably Well, based on our current sort of pattern of play, we'll do the air stuff and our, like, organisation stuff next time. Yes, we'll be poised to wrap up Turn 5

around about the time we have our live show at the UK Games Expo. Yeah, we'll either be... Well, we'll definitely be in Upstage 3. Yeah. It'll just be how far through we are. So that'll be a fun position to be in when we bring it to the masses.

We hit the boards. We can let them know what's going on. Hit the boards. Yeah, that's what they say. Who says that and where? Doing a stage performance. Oh. Well, if that is true, then that is what we're doing.

And if you're trying to trick me, then I'm not responsible for you tricking me. Okay. You've got a real responsibility issue this week. I do. I do. I don't want to take responsibility for anything this week. That's good. You know what we did have?

something that that came to us which is which is worth bringing up oh what's this it's that we remember a couple weeks ago we mentioned the fruit segment we should introduce a a segment in which we we just rank fruits and create the hierarchy of fruits and determine which go where yes well we did get an email in and the the email was from from alex alex liked the idea and submitted a a little jingle for the fruit segment. So I was thinking maybe we try out this fruit segment. Alright, let's do it. Okay.

The fruit zone. I'm going to go for coconut or apple. Apple. Yeah, I'm with you on that. The fruit zone. There we are. That's it. That's the fruit segment. That's pretty good.

Yeah, that'll be a mainstay. Yeah, that's got stopping power. So emails? Yeah, let's, speaking of emails, let's do just that. Let's delve into actual emails, not just the jingles. Into that mailbag. That dastardly bag of wonderful things. Yep.

It's usually lovely emails from people who listen to the podcast. If you're listening now, it could be you. I think that's the lottery's slogan, actually, in the UK. So let's not get sued? Yeah, they're not going to sue. No one from the lottery listens to this. And also, of all the people who have a lot of money already, they don't need more money okay maybe we won't get sued let's steal all of their branding but

before that let's read this email from neil's all right what do we got i absolutely uh dear mates with a war and comrades james and andy that's us i absolutely love the common ground about the mint of useful objects and i have some notes as you have discovered towards the end of that segment yes this is literally just a model of how communism could work in a future society and yes you aren't the first people to come up with this model albeit by another name the library the library economy or the library of things damn it i thought we came up with a first hey at least we're we're running into ideas people have had i guess yeah we're just going into different areas of politics rather than creating something revolutionary

generally distribution works by having everything in a sort of library where you can rent it for however long makes sense you might rent a bike for two hours a step ladder for an afternoon a workshop with tools for a weekend or a house for a lifetime and so on and for things where lending them doesn't make a lot of sense like food or sanitary products there are dispensaries instead where you can get what you need also these systems don't have to be hierarchical so there is no chance so that there is no chance for dominion so i believe that are oh sorry uh i believe there are ways it could be set up to ensure non-dominating relationships between the managers of the library and the people lending from them oh so the opposite of banks yeah

e.g by making it so that they can be recalled from their position instantly of a certain portion of their constituency uh if that's the right word for that once to or by rotating who does the job among everyone who this library serves that makes sense yeah you can't you can't have one guy who becomes the library czar yeah i feel like that goes straight to your head that's kind of a fun to take this in a dystopian direction where all the like leaders are the librarians yeah although would that be the highest point in this dystopia would that be like the the figurehead i guess maybe the the library that distributes things to smaller like it'll be almost a feudal system of librarians this this feels like it's getting worse yeah this is if this

was the dystopian yeah i feel like we're actually making the system objectively worse yeah by having a hierarchy in a situation where we've just had it described to remove a hierarchy if you want to learn more about this model i would recommend the youtuber andrew wisdom uh he may made two nice videos about that topic also side note i found it really funny when you guys brought up the toothbrush as the communal toothbrush is a common in joke in socialist circle when someone misunderstands or misconstrues what is meant by the abolition of private property ah fantastic i'm a joke in socialism circles in joke that's true you're gonna be involved in a joke it's one of the better kinds of jokes i'm in with the guys

yeah i'm real tight with the socialist circles yeah we go way back to be fair also my idea was you know you you just get a free one it's not to share it so if anything i i really get the joke and i'm glad that the guys invited me in on it that was real real chill of them minor correction during the second part of the history segment about the italian king the russian revolution wasn't in 1912 before world war one like you said uh but in 1917 and is what ended russia's involvement in world war one oh there we go that's that clarity that we needed good to be correct thank you for getting us back on track with history our timeline was warped stop spreading misinformation we're just liars with microphones

that's the most successful business model in the world right now another thing you theorized about is what would happen if mussolini took power as a socialist instead of a fascist whether he would completely change what socialist socialism means i don't think so as there was already a lot of socialist political theory by the time mussolini rolled around some of it quite at odds with others see libertarian socialists anarchists this state socialists whose conflicts goes all the way back to the international in 1872 arguably even further at most what would have happened is there would have been um something like marxism muslimism instead of what we have now uh with marxism leninism and stalinists from the ussr or maybe

they would both exist either way yeah i think my yeah that was the way i was thinking it would be more case of he becomes the dominant representation of socialism in a sort of sub-branch and that becomes what is kind of known as socialism yes that becomes like the the examples he has and then also like maoism yeah it's like it just gets like plastered over as that is what socialism is to the everyman yeah and that is what people look at for the the paradigm of socialism but yes that that is a good point yeah there's also a lot of branches of it already it could have just been a fad yeah because god knows what would have happened to him afterwards well yeah so as he points socialism has like a tremendous amount of literature to it whereas fascism is

more like authoritarian jazz it's sort of making it up as you go along authoritarian jazz now i like that a lot oh good nice big fan of that uh i highly doubt uh mussolini would have been able to absorb the entire label of socialism into only uh describing his ideology there's just too much diversity for all calling itself socialism if we're lucky the anarchists might have been able to establish a foothold if mussolini were to rise to power as a socialist maybe a bit similar to what happened in spain before the rise of franco i'm a bit sad i didn't listen to episode 68 sooner so i could have contributed to the contribution but now i just have more to contribute so uh that could be seen as a plus anyway i wish you the best of luck crossing the desert of your minds

subtle humbly and bravely your anarcho-communist comrade neils uh p.s you pronounced my name wrong last time it's pronounced neil's yes um well really good email thanks for the uh thanks for the correction the timing on the contribution because i think it was good to have our all our stuff in before yeah i feel like if we got an informed opinion halfway through it would throw off it through if we go into common ground well informed it will definitely strip back the nature of it because one of us will come in too well armed for the other one to be able to defend themselves and it just becomes a bloodbath but now after the fact we get to look back and we get to make those corrections to it we get to reflect positively so thank you for that niels for for

that correction and also on the pronunciation of your name and also the exposition on the mussolini thing i think that was an interesting thing to keep in mind about that little mini history segment yeah it's great it comes in mailbag form and it comes from our listeners which makes it that much more special but good good luck on your uh your anarcho-communism niels and thank you for the luck crossing the deserts of our minds because God knows it's a slow journey. And we need it. We need more than luck.

So, instead of luck, how about a second email? An email that comes in from, oh, before I go to that email, just a quick mention of the subject line from Niels which is common ground in episode 68 and 69 brackets nice and a little note on the history segment

of episode 69 nice. Which I like. I wonder if anybody picked up on the joke of the episode named for 69. What was it again? It's coming together. Probably. It's not

particularly subtle. It's not subtle. It's not very humble either. No. It might be brave. But the next email comes in from Nicholas. And Nicholas says, Hello Andy and James. Long time fan Nick from Australia. Of course. Of course it's Australia.

Sending another fine email through the interwebs again with a couple of questions that will once again boggle your brains and have you question my sanity. It would help if I read it properly. Anywho, on to the questions. This question has been brought up due to recent events in history

and that is, when shall I and the rest of us perverts great that that stuck as a name for everybody be expecting the first round of CNA or first episode of the podcast recorded in zero and or low gravity? Would it be episode 104 or 156? reckon that feat will be in the history books for all time now andy maybe you've got your finger on

the pulse of pop culture more so than i do yeah this was early april nicholas sent us is there something i've missed to do with low gravity in early april yeah they did do that flight around the moon to scope out going back yeah it got like completely sunk by other news stories yeah that's what i'm thinking is that that must be what he's referring to yeah because i can't think of any other spacey stuff that's been going on yeah so if that's the case nicholas we'll reach out to nasa we we broaden our horizons we reach out to those that we can we get our we get our foot in the door we get our foot in the capsule although we did actually have a conversation around the time of this launch where i was talking to you andy about my complete fear of getting into a

space shuttle oh i'm entirely on side of that because i would i would i would have such a panic attack as soon as the countdown begins to go into space there's no also there's currently no reason to be in space if you're a normal person exactly there isn't so if i was if i was in that shuttle i would as soon as the countdown starts i'd freak out about no you need to stop the shuttle and i know that they would because they don't want someone freaking the fuck out going up into space in an enclosed environment yeah because you can't do the like oh the person's freaking out on the plane flat land at the nearest like airport and like restrain them and then continue it's like you've got to do the whole thing freaking out and that's going to be nine months you've got to do

the whole voyage with a guy who's freaking out who's either locked away somewhere and you can't really have dead weight on a space shuttle they all kind of need to be important people doing important things well aside from dead weight i think it's something it's multiple like tens of thousands of pounds to put a kilogram in space so it's like we've wasted like half a million quid getting this guy in the orbit you're worse than dead weight and then he's jeopardizing every other dollar or pound spent for the rest of that journey did you see the guy who uh took the gorilla costume up the international space station and pranks the other yeah that i wonder how how legit that was it i feel like every grams accounted for i think it was like a bit of fun but not like

they didn't know yeah because also you don't want someone to be like oh my god bigfoot's gone to the space station and they're like opening a door out of panic or something because that's it you do like psych evaluations of the people who go up there but you don't want to risk that there is just that slight chance that seeing a gorilla on board won't send them over the edge also in the like nasa psych screening you can't be like how would you react at a bigfoot attack without i'm trying to stifle laughter as you're asking the question they're like why it's like just in case you know who knows i would attack bigfoot you can't go on this trip you can go on the next one because we reliably informed bigfoot will just be on this one you you can you can go on

the next trip or you can go on this one but you do have to sign this waiver that says you won't tell anyone about the joke you can't give spoilers on the space station you have to swear to god not to fight bigfoot even in the moment when when the adrenaline runs high you can't hurt bigfoot because it is your friend and then they just have bigfoots attacking him constantly on land leading up to the launch to make sure his nerves are like they're gonna give him an adrenaline overdose of bigfoot encounters he's just like at a drive-through and a bigfoot just dives through the window into his car and it just attacks him i feel like this might stop him from attacking bigfoot on the space station but when he does return to earth he will have permanent trauma

he's heading out to the pacific northwest with a high-powered rifle and he's not coming back without bigfoot now that's a program i'd like to watch that's a good hbo max show uh sorry nicholas we went on a tangent there next question is there any special ritual that you guys do before the weekly session of playing campaign for north africa either being the occasional blood sacrifice to ensure good weather or bad weather depending on what you need that week well in that case the ritual fell flat today or something as simple and what i plan of doing and that is consuming era appropriate food for example i've bought reproduction k rations which were rations made by the u.s from 1942 to 1948

meant for paratroopers and later provided to regular troops when a regular military kitchens meal was not available that i shall consume on the days of play and i've also gotten my hands on copies of 1940s army and navy cookbooks from both the u.s and uk forces and plan on having a few meals from them while finding my way through north africa okay well first of all you're more committed than us and you should probably be the one playing our game nick uh that is that's very cool though yeah i think the issue part of that for me is and andy you can attest to this my diet is limited the stuff i eat i have the you are a bit of a nuggies guy yeah i am a i'm a beige boy yeah uh you know chicken tenders margarita pizza all very bland plain food you have been expanding

your palate a bit recently i've tried it would be very funny if you like tried an mre and you were like this is what i've been looking for my entire life if my new hyper fixation food is military rations i wouldn't put that out in the realm of possibility for me as long as it's salty and it's kind of bland then i'll probably love it yeah i think that might be what mre's are in that case sign me up nick send me some mre's little foil package shall we see if we can find some reproduction i think we should or at least what was in them and put them put them together do a little um let's eat kind of vibe yeah yeah i think we should give that a go sometime i'd also like be very interested to see those cookbooks because i feel like unlike any other cookbook

it's like this all the portion things are like serves 140 people like it's not gonna be four portions for the thing yeah it's gonna be it i just i feel like it might be completely normal stuff but i still won't like it like you'll be eating it like oh this is actually quite normal stuff and i'll be like no i don't like this and i wouldn't like this normally outside of ration context this is bad food for james so yeah i mean what i what i did do so what in terms of our ritual so i'll come around to it it's usually after work that we play this yeah sometimes we're lucky we manage to score a weekend day and we can do a longer one with a bit more flexibility and better yet earlier in the day so we're not tired after a day at work which helps really helps so i'll i'll

usually show up here with some sort of frozen food stick it straight in your oven i'll i'll eat that while we're getting the the game set up and we're planning out whatever is happening for the day i'll uh i'll eat up that pepperoni pizza or whatever it is we'll do a bit of like a real life debrief yeah we'll usually catch up what's been going on in our week because we'll we do that again when we play dnd at the weekends but it's usually with our other friend here so we get to do it all again but we'll catch up on yeah what's been happening at work what's been happening in personal lives bit of bit of friendly catch-up while we're getting our spreadsheets organized doing any of the admin bits in between we'll stick on it'll either be 1940s music which will

we'll stick a playlist on while we play the game or we'll just stick on my spotify dj it's well there's three things there's 1940s music spotify dj or girly bar well that's it sometimes i deviate from the spotify dj or sometimes that is just what the spotify dj will give me based on my recent listenings and i do have those moments yeah i do have to delve into to that kind of music from time to time it lightens my spirit and lightens my mood i listen to good stuff in there i listen to some heavy stuff usually you know i like to have that little break that oasis and then we then we just kind of sink into it i think one of us it depends how moods

are on the week. Eventually one of us will go Should we get started? Yes, there is always a point where one of us has to do the call to arms and we start playing the game. Which tends to be a good indicator of who's in a better mood about the game. Yeah, because

would you say it's the person in the worst mood that usually instigates it? I'd actually say it's the, yeah, actually it's a bit of let's get this over yeah that's how i usually feel with it so we'll we'll do that we'll get the game going we'll yeah we'll just we'll play the game that's it we get very very into it we we involve ourselves greatly with it and i get angry at andy this is the ritual every single time you don't really get angry with me during it no maybe that maybe that speaks to

some issues i have certainly but it's what happens and i'm not going to change great i just thought we'd get that out of the way and that that's really opened up the next 10 years it's a yawning abyss that that is that is the ritual nick and you wrapped up your email with anyway after that little bit of rambling i shall bid you both a good morning good evening and good night stay subtle and brave no humble in there nick just subtle and brave well i guess yeah give us a bit of permission to be braggadocious well what i've just done there is brag about my flaws so i guess i've taken a leaf out that book there nick and uh and i've done so but thank you very much for the email both neils and nick neils and nick nick and neils i like it i like it rolls off the

tongue so if anyone else wants to join him with that and become part of the zeitgeist that is the mailbag you can do so at info war with a mate.co.uk or our website war with a mate.co.uk or the instagram just war with a mate we accept messages through all of those mediums and we also as you may have heard have our first live show coming up at the uk games expo on the 30th of may 4 30 it's included with your tickets if you're already going it's a must-have it's just don't go to the carcass on uk championship don't go to that go to this or if you do just bail out at the finals yeah so you've got somewhere to be and then have a dramatic moment then you'll run through the convention halls with some dramatic music playing like you're in a rom-com and then you'll get to

outdoors and you'll find it it's full to the brim already you can't get in or just someone who just played really fast that yeah that that would the whole thing's done after like two hours come on come on come on and some people have you and you count the points for the end while we're getting count ahead start counting out the leader we've had a few people already get in touch saying that they're coming along to come see us so if anyone else is please let us know we'll uh we'd love to hear from you and we'll we'll organize a little something should you let us know that you're coming in advance so hit us up with an email and other than that i guess we have nothing else to talk about in the present andy we've just got to go backwards we've got to go back we've got to

devolve we've got to become what we were in the past which is observers of history because we weren't there no thank god the men of the long-range desert patrols were quite a sight on their return to cairo from a the contrast between the east and west of the nile is very marked in the east we are absolutely not qualified to share views on history all right andy when and where are we we're continuing with the italo turkish war all right let's keep this conflict going yeah i believe that this is not real war but little attacks and soon we shall overcome overall i'm very happy and you'll see that it will be finished

very soon enoncio uh bianchi an italian soldier uh in a letter to his father on october 20th 1911 he was killed in action just six days later oh that's a yeah that's a bleak one it is but it sort of highlights the italians attitude and then the result yeah that has been a through line in the the north african campaign as we found that it did not go particularly well but they they had some real zest behind it yes a quote from a description i read in a book recently uh desert commanders um about this was uh might be paraphrasing slightly but roman ambition italian execution which is yeah it seems to put down the the nature of the italian military force in that part of history yeah and pretty succinctly yeah i think rightly so based on the results yeah

so the italian force was able to capture tripoli tabruk dirna benghazi and homs between the 3rd and 21st of october 1911 but was confined to the coast they were feeling good as the ottomans appeared to have fled the field uh the italians are equipped with the kakano rifle modello 91 which is a magazine and also uh they have new modern uniforms at the time which will be the same equipment they're using up until 1945 so this is sort of a field test for the equipment they're going to use in the actual desert war okay yeah the ottomans and their allies were using the 1893 mauser which was actually considered superior due to being a higher caliber british dr ernest griffin who was with the turkish red crescent in libya like a medical aid organization

described um the wounds from the italian rifles this way the injuries produced by the small 6.5 meter conical bullets used by the italians were scarcely ever severe and if the wound had not been infected we have the satisfaction of soon sending our arab patients back out to their duties in the field so not great uh stopping power on that rifle or yeah that sounds like a pretty inept piece of weaponry although it does have a special place in history i feel like you're going to give me that special place it was because incidentally the kakano modelo 91 was the gun used by one Lee Harvey Oswald to kill JFK.

Did you just air quote kill? Maybe. Are you throwing out conspiracy theories? No, I won't. But I did find it interesting that he literally ordered the gun from a magazine and it was one of these arrived. That's a way to do it.

Yeah. You do a mail order gun, which is crazy, by the way. That actually, they did introduce laws to stop you buying guns by mail after this. i don't know if they're still in effect but they did briefly i'm i'm glad yeah i feel like you shouldn't be able to mail order a gun no that feels like it's not on the like prime get it

tomorrow at least it's not that because you know if if lee harvey oswald hadn't done that maybe amazon prime would be shipping rifles but probably not no we'd probably be safe in most alternate realities so as well as that disparate disparity in the actual rifles both sides are using german built artillery but nothing the ottomans have can match the italian naval guns the italians start building trench systems within covering range of those guns uh around building defensive circles around the city they've claimed but like within the range of the guns they're still nervous about expanding yeah you got to be careful when you're doing that don't want an opportunity attack no however the ottomans saw an opportunity near tripoli the trenches didn't run through didn't

run the entire time through like barren ground they looped around slightly through the oasis near tripoli and then through houses and stuff so they couldn't build a proper defensive fortification on the east of tripoli or they could have but they would have had to dig the trenches further to go like out and they didn't okay yeah really restricting themselves on that Yeah, and there's also plant cover that could hide in the vans, homes, and buildings. It's just they just didn't really set up a defense properly there. Plant cover like in Fortnite when you go in the bush. Actually, yes.

Yeah, exactly like that. Yeah. So after a series of diversionary attacks to the south on the 23rd of October, they attack this weak point, a six-kilometer stretch between the sea and a fault. so around 1 800 men of uh the italian 11th regiment are awakened at 7 a.m by the sound of gunfire and dogs barking as the italians scramble their positions local arabs come out over near my houses and attack them as well the italians managed to repel this attack but it is costly they lose 482 men killed 250 of which are killed as they're trying to surrender they also

lose 21 officers the italians downplay the attack in the media while also responding brutally they kill 4 000 locals by firing squad over the next few days and while also claiming this isn't us this is a small attack and not an issue they up the number of soldiers from 20 000 to 100 000 okay that's yeah that's a big increase quite quite the admission like oh we need five times more guys yeah that is you can't really brush that one under the rug that's not a slight reinforcement that is we've completely misjudged the situation whoopsie yeah they're also like pulling local colonial troops from eritrea and somalia uh many of whom like won't return until the ethiopian war uh so they're like pulling things in from there like fairly small but

they're pulling things in from like everywhere yeah they i mean yeah that is that is an admission of failure yeah that's absolutely someone saying we've we've completely mucked this up yeah because what really i think they went in with too few troops and then they've over corrected maybe yeah and then yeah because that that seems like it if you went in with 20 000 and now you've changed that to a hundred thousand do you have the infrastructure for it at that point that feels too rushed too big x five times more cost wise like well more than five it's five times salary and then like x amount more supplies and all that stuff it's it's a big investment for italy at the time and as i've learned supplies are hard to manage let alone get a hold of thankfully

i don't need to worry about the getting the supplies beforehand i'll go into the exact figures next time and like an after for the aftermath but i think at one point it had 47 percent of italian expenditure at the time is on this wall that's almost like 50 percent of the money the government is spending is on this that's insane 50 seems i don't know what it is for other wars but that seems that seems too much it's it is they never make money on this colony well they can't like up to like the 1950s when they lose it they never make the money back that doesn't shock me based on their approach with the previous situation going through towns and burning them to the ground yeah i feel like the approach en masse in history their approach is not conserve the

resources that you find no they they also like you thought well well this is an emergency we'll go to where the supplies are but then took my approach of this actually isn't an emergency so let's destroy the supplies and make them completely unusable yeah any illusions of this being a military war are just completely shied at this point although they're doing a good job on the propaganda locally like spinning small things as victories and like suppressing their losses and one of those things they do is on the 5th of november despite their losses then complete lack of progress uh they declare that they've fully annexed libya like they claim we've taken the whole country now it's ours that that sounds like a fragrant lie uh yeah because the war

doesn't end now if the war's still going you haven't won no if you can see the coast from literally every point you've captured yeah that at that point you you're still getting there you you've just arrived yeah you it's if like they did the d-day like normandy invasion and they just took omaha beach and were like we're done we did it we liberated the nation liberated france it's back guys we got france back don't worry about that bit in the middle yeah so as stalemate starts to develop towards the end of 1911 as the ottomans can't drive the italians back in at the sea but the italians can't make any decisive confrontations because the ottomans are doing gorilla and they're also in the desert so the italians just can't bring an end to this so to

get around this uh guerrilla war they're having a fight and their inability to push into the desert due to equipment training and mentality they decide to advance in small steps building trenches george francis abbott a british journalist describes it this uh like this the italians crept on digging trenches at every 100 meters admirable tactics for defense but for any advance purely imbecile yeah yeah they're moving literally 100 meters at a time like you could shout to the previous position like at what rate like maybe day like it's not fast like a trench takes a while to dig no that's a good point yeah it's trenches yeah sorry that's what i'm forgetting it's fucking trenches this is 1911 like world war one a trench war is about to happen

but not in this environment like the desert is for like open like that's why there's all the tank stuff in world war ii it's for like mechanism and movement and stuff yeah it's getting around that is the the real fulcrum of that conflict yeah it's not let's make small incremental steps because if you're doing that in a desert you know i'm also as well as that it's sandy as fuck in the desert oh so you do like it's not the full like great seat sand sea but there's and you like a sandstorm will probably undo part of like at least part of what you've been doing it's just the complete wrong approach for this type of warfare i also feel like it's a claustrophobic nightmare being in a trench when a sandstorm kicks in oh yeah because the place is

filling up with sand i'm not sure at what rate but it is filling up with sand and also if you pop your head out you're getting you're getting sandblasted and i'm definitely won't have equipped them with the right they found they were doing this like a week before they left yeah and that's if you're the first 20 000 what about the fucking 80 000 afterwards they don't have the equipment for this no they don't have the plan for this so while they're digging these trenches the ottomans are yeah just happy to retreat a bit but they can't part of their problem is because the italians have control of the mediterranean in terms of this conflict like their navy's better than the ottomans at least yeah the ottomans can't provide troops or equipment and they also can't use the

overland route because egypt although egypt at this point is technically part of the ottoman empire it's been under de facto british control since like 1882 so like yeah britain's just moved in i think because of the suez canal and stuff but it's technically on paper ottomans but the british won't let them send troops through that territory it's just a weird thing yeah this is such a strange point in history yeah it really is like i don't understand anyone's motivation yeah you know the like the fat past is of the past is a foreign country thing where it's like mindsets and stuff are so different in the past it's like hard to relate to yeah but you don't think of being this recent yeah when i hear that phrase i'm like oh yeah the romans like medieval

stuff not guys like just over 100 years ago but yeah a lot of this is just bizarre decision making it just it seems like it's i'm like weird structures and also i've not gone into it too much everyone's in like an alliance with there's the triple alliance and the another alliance of three people but also literally everyone is writing secret treaties with each other well that's part of it yeah it was that was the the league of nations stuff from a few weeks ago that really confused me where it's like you're on you're meant to be on the same team here what you're doing is not indicative of teamwork yeah and what's essentially happened here is they made the league of nations and then kept doing the shit they were doing before just in like

a nicer room like built for the purpose so yeah because they can't send troops through um they're sending officers in disguises through egypt um i'm sure that went swimmingly it actually did go quite well they were like disguised as like journalists and medical officers and stuff and they like traveled through can't do that anymore as yeah as officers and then like trained and led the locals one of the guys who did this uh i don't know much about him but he will uh mustafa kemel ataturk who will become the founder and first president of turkey okay yeah and he loses an eye in this conflict oh or like heavily damages it you don't want that but you got a cool eye patch he i just rocked the oh even more cool yeah no eye patch just rocking it out no cover

yeah but on the 4th of december the italians do try to force a battle at a place called anizar uh which is an ottoman base which is literally overlooking tripoli um to the point i was looking it up this is now in modern tripoli because like you know how like ponders end or whatever in london where villages that get moved into the and become regions in the city yeah that's how close this place is sorry i love the mention of ponders end because i know the exact context because ponder's end was a very important point in our dnd campaign which was a it was set after the war of the worlds hg wells conflict with the martians and then we picked up a campaign in that in that universe and we found like a real map of london at the time and just

used that as the campaign map and ended up living in ponder's end shout out david rumsey map collection that's the map that we used and ponder's end was the focal point of that area and we looked it up looking to do a like rent out an airbnb there and do the final session of that campaign in ponder's end and then we realized we thought it was like sort of like a like sprawling like countryside on the edge of metropolis area but it's got like a tesco express and like big blocks of flats by this time it's just in london like yeah it's been swallowed completely by london so that's how that's sort of a scale of how far this place they're attacking it you couldn't have picked a better way to describe that to me than that and i love it yeah so yeah it's a few so they

do attack successfully the italians and the ottomans retreat 40k into the desert but the italian cavalry doesn't complete the encirclement in time so the ottoman losses are just completely well not completely but are pretty minimal this gets spurned as a victory by the italian press of course whereas more neutral observers are like you could see that place from your trenches for like since you arrived you've not done much but this this war is not is a bit of a propaganda problem for the italians because as it sort of develops it from like a amphibious landing and like more dynamic into like a static trench war where they're doing badly all of that they've got unprecedented press attention because of all that airplane stuff we talked about last time yeah so

their war's not going well but the entire world is going oh this is airplanes being used for war and it is proving airplanes are like reliable enough to be used in warfare as a proof of concept but not enough that it's actually helping them in any way other than drawing headlines it's like oh they're using planes in this conflict and oh and well they're just using planes in this conflict oh cool so we can use planes we can build planes specifically to drop bombs and stuff but they're just like this isn't helping yeah it's not like oh they're a terrifying force it's like this is a proof of concept yeah also didn't mention last time because i saw it since you know that first uh flight i mentioned the first ever reconnaissance flight yes he filed

the report from that but it wasn't used or read so that entire first reconnaissance flight was not useful at all strategically it was purely a pr exercise and they didn't look at the report well it's lasted 100 years and you brought it up on war with a mate so i mean it worked for that yeah yeah if you're getting a war with a mate you've really made it from the past yeah so this is yeah this is where italy sort of realizes oh crap this is not going well in libya and we are at war with the entire ottoman empire so they sort of turn their attention to the sea and start trying to mess with the ottomans that way but do just leave these hundred thousand guys to try and salt libya oh brilliant uh and we'll get to some of the their naval adventures next time and also

some of the aftermath of this because we'll get to it but this is much like the ethiopian conflict a major stepping stone to world war one like if they hadn't done this world war one would have looked very different at the very least cool so we've got this to also put in the column of things to blame for the first world war yeah i think the which is the reason i'm doing the lead up to some world war one stuff is because the world war one is the big lead up to world war two well yeah world war one is you can you can very much definitively plot the points from world war one to world war two it's just a it's a straight road more or less yeah it's sort of two it's a two-parter it's the treaty of versailles yeah which is that that is the big one that is the

one where you think of you you go to school you learn about world wars one and two and you go oh so that is the through line versailles is the through line between the two through lines there's versailles and then there's the overall weakening of the league of nations by people doing stuff like ethiopia or and well yeah sanctioning and just proving all this stuff is completely toothless well that's it it's twofold it's sanctions and then lack of sanctions it's sanctions in the wrong place is i think the through line to world war ii yeah misuse of sanctions that in concept is the is the through line so i'm excited to find out what caused world war one in the essence of of italy's push well just a quick one it's this directly leads into the balkans war

which serbia is in the balkans the assassination of francis juker 39 kicks off world war one it's like two events it's like two degrees of kevin bacon removed that's not very far no it's i would say on the direct cause path yeah you remove one more and you just got a versailles situation yeah well thank you for another history segment andy another informative one another one that is just setting up the stage for the campaign for north africa eventually you'll need to do a history segment towards the end of this about our first play session of the game oh yeah because it'll have gone on for it'll need its own history segments throughout yeah it will be historical at that point it will be a 50 year old event what's the thing where it like goes from trivia to history

i know it's not probably like a firm thing but it's like 10 15 years it stops being i think after like 15 years it's you can sort of count it as history after like 10 years it's not general knowledge or something it's trivia yeah whatever the thing is but the podcast will definitely run long enough to cross all of them and land up in history yes it'll be it'll be contemporary general knowledge it will be trivia and it will also be history it will it will be on all branches of the trivial pursuit board game so what you got common ground wise well that's it Because you've been struggling with this one all day. Well, I was, and then I realized I wasn't.

Oh, okay. Because I was dancing around in my head. What am I going to do? Because Common Ground, every week, it's a chance to come together, to unite on a unified front where we're both allies again, where we become friends again.

Otherwise, we're not going to be able to see this thing through if we're at each other's throats. So I thought, what is it that can bring us together this week? and since it's my turn i've come up with what i hope to be something pretty easy and now for something nicer a little oasis in the war it's time for some common ground i'm trying to intro common ground i'm recording maybe so my common ground i guess the premise differs slightly from the usual positing question my common ground is what the fuck is going on at the met gala

yeah i've seen some images from it i also this is a yearly what the fuck is going on thing yeah well that's it because it's something i've only really become aware of really in the last few days in terms of what it is because the met gala i've always heard of the met gala i've never really known what it is and my common ground is for you also to agree that what the fuck is going on so i'm going to throw out a few things for you here andy okay first of all just a quick uh quick pop quiz yes all right so it's going to start with what do you think the most expensive thing worn

at the Met Gala is? Now, this isn't the full item. This isn't the full outfit. This is just one thing worn by a person. If you had to put out a sort of ballpark figure, how expensive do you think the most expensive thing worn at the Met Gala is

as part of an outfit? Okay, I've got two issues here. Okay. I don't know anything about high fashion. me neither so i don't know like do they get that stuff for free as like a this is a show like like a designer or give a celebrity something for free because it's like a very public event so to help out i think so based on the some of the things so one of the things is this how much it would be worth if they had bought it but they might have got it for free yes so this isn't

something they've bought necessarily because one of the things i know is a dress that was worn previously by i think it was marilyn monroe was worn by i think sabrina carpenter maybe or another right so that's probably got like a huge increase because it's marilyn monroe's dress yes so it's that kind of shit as well stuff that's like essentially like an artifact yeah so based on that i i presume i'm gonna go half a million that's interesting that's interesting so your guess is incorrect um quite significantly am i under you are under okay 3.7 million higher two higher no 2.7 that's a little bit oh sorry i thought you meant higher as in it's higher oh yes it is higher it's more than that fuck it okay 20 million higher what

no a hundred million on the money what do you mean on the money that's it a hundred million for what for the necklace that someone wore okay i'm guessing it's got like a shitload of jewels in it or is it like 480 carats of diamonds including an 80 carat center stone okay so it's like basically the british crown jewels but a celebrity wore it to an art gallery Well, it's inspired by a Cartier design and originally created for Indian royalty, adding historical significance to its value. Now, that's very expensive. That was worn by Isha Ambani. And from what I understand, she's involved with large global business.

So a business person is here at this event. So fair enough. now if you quarter that 25 million yeah uh now this is another diamond necklace uh bulgari laguna necklace um 25 million a necklace that featured an 11.6 carat blue diamond known for its exceptional color and scarcity now that was worn by rihanna okay just also just to point this out i think in ocean's 11 movies they're stealing like 80 million dollars yeah and it's it's crazy like some i want the low-tech version of a heist film where someone just runs into this event and grabs things off people's necks uh jennifer lopez 8.8 million jewelry uh jewel leaper

wearing a necklace worth 10 million now the first person i mentioned was a businesswoman the rest of them have been actresses or singers yeah and i and this is coming from as a disclaimer a very cynical viewpoint of someone who is disinterested in in fashion and someone who doesn't understand it particularly well so you have to take this with a pinch of salt however my objective is only to get andy to agree with me okay which i i am also very much in the what the fuck is going on perfect because i think there's definitely people out there who are invested and there's a reason this exists and fashion i think overall is fine however i do have a a hard point here a hard standpoint that i'm not going to budge from regardless of how passionate people are about

this which is that that is fucking crazy yeah because it has a theme every year right it has like this year was like they were it was like art which feels very vague but like also it's at an art gallery is that not every year but you know yes i feel like next year's the theme should be you have a budget of 500 now that would be interesting i'd actually that would be kind of like okay because i feel like if you can just throw money at it a designer will figure something out yes i kind of want like no you don't have any custom-made stuff 500 pounds for an outfit is on the upper end of what a normal person will pay for an outfit let's see what you can do with that and if you want to home make some stuff more power to you but let's put a price limit on

yeah a price limit would be good because there's something i find really disingenuous about this event now i think celebrity status and culture in general is i think it's got some question marks around it celebrities get themselves in all sorts of scrapes and they they you know get involved in bad situations a lot and people are complicated and people will do bad or questionable things they'll get in trouble things will be lost in time and resurface people do bad actions there and then and there are also just some genuinely bad people out there yeah but this is a tough one for people to reconcile with because if you're a celebrity and you preach for any kind of reasonable cause and then you wear something that's worth that much money

my viewpoint is well you can't actually make that standpoint anymore because you're a hypocrite yeah you can you can make millions of pounds you can do that as an actor as a singer you can do it in any medium you want you can become rich and that is through the funneling of wealth up into entertainment in whatever media it may take its form as but there's something about wearing something that's worth hundreds of millions of pounds in total of an outfit and then afterwards making some kind of statement about oh well i think i think everyone should have some aspect of wealth you know what i'd like to see a video of because i imagine a lot of the people in it would be in this kind of an event i'd like you know that imagine celebrity thing at the start

of covid the gal gadot imagine yeah and it's like we're all in this together and shit i'd love to just see that exact video but someone's just worked out like they've worn this much in total to just the met gala like as they're going like come on guys bring it together it's like the collective amount of money spent by these people for the met gala is like a billion pounds that's it's like the amount of money that went into that event and it's just for it's just for show it really has uh versailles just before the french revolution like let them eat cake vibe like especially as like i think it's not a particularly controversial statement to say things have been getting worse for a lot of people pretty steadily it really feels like

poorly timed and like tone deaf because i was just double checking there what the what the sort of fundraiser is that's part of it it's just for the museum right well yeah it apparently it funds exhibitions preservation and education programs and while i've again very cynical of me this is just off the top of my dome and looking at what it raises money for i think the arts are important i think as someone who's part of the arts right now this is art this is this is fucking art what we're doing right now this is lowbrow but high quality art i think the arts are important i think getting people interested in in music and film and expressing and reflecting the world through a another medium is very important but there's if you've got a

hundred million pounds around your your neck and you're raising money you've really gone past fashion yes like it's something else i'm i'm quite sentimental i i hoard stuff longer than i should yeah but if i had something worth 100 million and i'm trying to raise money for something i think i'd sell the thing worth 100 million and go well now someone still has it i've not destroyed the thing no someone else now owns it i've sold it and that money all goes into this fund yeah i can't imagine and again i don't know this this could be wrong i don't imagine that they raise more than a hundred million pounds or dollars per met gala and if they are it's for like um i know museums are expensive and you have to like get stuff but like it feels like this is

every year like and art as well part of my belief in what i've just said there about art being important isn't that art should be expensive no it's actually quite the opposite yeah i think it's art should be enjoyed by as many people as possible at as low cost as possible and it should be interpreted how you want to how you enjoy it and it shouldn't cost a bomb yeah it's just it's such a it just feels like i feel like i might be wrong again because i'm not into fashion but i feel like if you're really into fashion you're seeing like a lot of the stuff that gets worn at the met gala like one or two years earlier like in like i don't know paris milan london fashion week yes you're probably ahead of the curve so it feels like people really into

fashion it's not providing anything for them yeah you must see it beforehand if you're into it all of the the top dogs in the fashion world there's some custom-made stuff but i think it's also like a lot of like are this designer's like dress and then modify it to fit the theme or whatever where it's like so i don't know what fashion people are getting out with it and i feel like it would be less bad and this this might sound like a paradoxical point at first it wouldn't be as terrible if it were just fashion icons that were part of this but the fact that you've got actors and actresses i think um jacob alordi i think was there yeah it's not a fashion event from what i can tell it's a celebrity it's a celebrity celebrity fashion event not a fashion

fashion event yes so you get all these people who will have all of these sort of causes that they're part of in the public eye and then they they show up to this and it's because they're celebrities that you can dress them in this and go look at this thing but a 100 million pound necklace a 25 million pound necklace doesn't need publicity you're not being sponsored by something that needs brand awareness you're not trying to sell 25 million pound necklaces and no one's buying a ticket to go see that necklace either no and there's probably like less than a thousand people who can afford to buy it well yeah exactly you're looking at people who and weirdly most of them will be in the room but like exactly it's so self-contained that it feels

like dressing up these celebrities it's it's disingenuous and it's false and having a celebrity parade around in it and make any point other than i was at the met gala i wore lots of money it doesn't really track for me no and i think it's it's just my disillusionment with that part of celebrity culture in general that really informs this opinion anyway it is sort of the pinnacle of that type of celebrity thing like it seems like it's sort of a prime stomping ground for like kardashians well yeah i think kim kardashian was there this year with i imagine some sort of very elegant and intricately designed piece and when i'm saying peace by the way i know i did a common ground about peace being misused in business terms this is where it fits yes so i

can say piece this is what a piece is it's meant to be art and that is what i imagine in the fashion industry it is but the thing is i think this should be solely reserved for soulless fashion icons who don't care if you're if you want to be big in fashion and i get that fashion is a cutthroat industry and i don't want to be part of it if if you want to do that and the machine will continue to exist regardless of what i say into this microphone and rightly so i shouldn't have influence over it but i get to say it is the important part and they can have that but don't don't wander onto that place don't walk through those doors and then walk back out and pretend nothing happened yeah don't pretend you weren't there for that and that what you did wasn't weird

yeah i think it's just that it's just the level of like disconnection from reality like the fact that event happens in new york the fact an event like that happens in a city with a single homeless person and it is wrong it's like you want to do this you need to figure out the rest of this shit because it's it really is like this is the kind of shit where it's like sharpen the like i'm not calling for that but that level of disconnection between like wealth and poverty is what causes that like reaction yeah that's why you get the knee-jerk revolution mindset and like you say you know renaissance era that that's what this is it's it's it's before a fall yeah it makes you really ponder why you're doing that so yeah the common ground is what the fuck

and i fully agree what the fuck i don't understand how you can justify that and i would be interested if we have anyone who's like really into fashion yes like knowledgeable about fashion please enlighten us because but i actually this one might be just this is something i'm not gonna this is like old man yelling at like old man yells a cloud music type thing where i'm just never gonna get it but i like girly pop i like i like a lot of like mainstream artists who probably attend this kind of event but what it does make me do is and i think i'm quite good at this it makes me separate the art from the person and i'll listen to the music but anytime they come out with anything they make any sort of point

be it political or otherwise i will tune out immediately and just disregard it yeah because i don't believe that you have the standard of character to be worth listening to it makes me think someone lacks integrity also i think part of it this year is it was sponsored i think by jeff bezos so which like adds to the whole because i did see one of the thing of like um an actress with like money taped over her eyes being like money blinds people and like an anti one percent thing it's like that's kind of fine if you're not at an event hosted by like one of the richest men ever like you can't do that the kind of wealth resources and powers that makes a medieval king look quaint like well yeah in comparison it's terrifying levels of money

so i think we we just need to maybe take a moment and think what the fuck yes and we don't need to revolt against it but it certainly changes perspective for me and i'm glad it grinds the old years a bit so yes to to compliment your point andy if anyone can come and ground me with this i'm i'm gonna leave this open for anybody to come back if they want to go against me with this and if you can try and change my mind with it by all means please give it a shot i'd love to know if there's something i've missed with this because i can't find a way to respect someone's integrity when they make any point after this other than i love money but that is that is the common ground we just needed to agree with each other

and we did i think we agreed immediately at that dual rampage we did and i it's such an important part of the world is being able to disagree with each other and if anyone disagrees with me you're very welcome to you i think you're wrong you're objectively wrong and you're allowed to be that's how opinions work it's objective anyway thanks for listening stay subtle humble and brave and remain humbly dressed and subtly in those deserts of your minds good night We'll be right back.