War With A Mate - Episode 82: If It’s The Last Thing I Do

Episode Date: June 27, 2026

The end is near. In an audio-issue filled episode, the guys commence Turn Six, with some unexpected last minute obstacles appearing for Andy, giving James an opportunity to (possibly) pull things around. Sales tomfoolery is afoot in the Mailbag, the History Segment touches on surprisingly positive British decisions and Common Ground has everyone feeling a little boxed in.

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Because we have your number. Hello. It's about to be time to start the episode, but we just wanted to stick out a quick disclaimer that the audio in this one is subpar. A little janky. Something went wrong. For some reason, it sounds like Andy is dialing in remotely,

but he was there in person. We were both there in the room. So just bear with us for the audio here. Still a jolly good time. We were sweating like it was no one's business. Yep. uh enjoy sorry about the sound quality hello one and all welcome to war with a mate with me james and me andy really sweaty versions of us

boy it is toasty today yeah it's i mean it's horrible actually it's just very muggy i've had a bad day it's a we've had a bad day yeah i've not enjoyed it too much no oh i'm sorry to hear that man is it just the weather or something being weathering you it's just the weather the weather's been weathering you yeah god that's that's poetry and it's sweaty yeah two bad things for you because you're not big into poetry are you not really no or really muggy heat two things i'm not a huge fan of yeah yeah those are on your your hate list your hit list and yeah the uk is being absolutely battered by temperatures that we don't have the infrastructure for i'm not equipped for this and i don't want to hear any of the the international audience and i'm

talking to you australia where our core listener base seems to be yeah i get it it's hot there but our country's designed to keep heat in our buildings are made of brick and insulation we don't have air conditioning in most places everything is the trains have stopped they've advised people this week to not travel because the train might not run on the tracks anymore the tracks might buckle now that one doesn't that one feels like we can take some place where it's like i don't know i reckon at the time that's a steel girder like but when they were building it they probably thought temperatures would be kind of static because train companies are as everyone knows climate change deniers that's yeah that tracks that makes that tracks hey i like that

but i guess they kind of have to be because of the fact that they run on things that actually cause climate change and decay well i mean they're kind of the one of the possible answers to climate change so they're gonna be believed in it oh god what a what a duality that those trains are yeah stuck somewhere between but we're not here to talk about trains no not this week duck somewhere else we are stuck in the deserts of north africa in the past but in the present as well in this instance the past only stretches back to 1979 when the campaign for north africa was published by spi and now all the way in the future we're playing it to completion but first six turn practice run that we are in the final turn of we're officially here we're in the final

turn of this god-forsaken practice run. Andy, how do you feel? Deflated? I have no energy for the game this week. It's too hot. I'm sweating so much, and for some

reason I've decided to make a coffee. And I can't sleep. I'm tired and hot. I'm having a horrible time. Oh my god, you're really falling apart at the finish line here you made it all this way and you've been you've been the positive voice for this whole thing and a bit of hot weather is what's fucked you up it's completely destroyed is that all it took you you're a shell of a man look at you you can't even breathe off to drink your

flagon of water i just want it to hold it you brought it to you to your mouth and then you just stopped you got rabies as well when the symptoms kick in you're done for man that's as far as rabies goes at that point you're a dead man you're just a dead man with a frothy mouth you can't don't fucking lie that doesn't stop rabies a very a very proactive vaccine stops rabies i think there's like several different shots you need to take tequila whiskey yeah just drown the rabies no i don't think that'll work i don't think getting drunk when you get bitten by a rabid animal is the way to tackle that i think there's medical sciences that have looked into it and alcohol probably not the way around it no i agree i disagree although having said that if i

have too much alcohol i also can't drink water there you go you find me really drunk and someone offers me water i'll say probably in slurred words no i don't want that water i want to keep drinking yeah that's a problem yeah but we'll we'll cross that bridge into the time for now i'm fine hi i'm having a coffee at half eight in the evening i've got a late start at work tomorrow it's fine i can be up late tonight yeah well later than usual again we're going off topic we've got a game to talk about here we've got the final turn of the practice run and i am giddy andy because when we get to wrap this up when we finally finish it we get to have like a few weeks hiatus in between while we get the

spreadsheet sorted. Yeah. It means that I'm not technically playing the game for the first time in 18 months. But you are. I'm getting ready for it, but that's how it was at the start. I'll have that sort of feeling in the back of my head where I'm like, I could just not turn up anymore.

Don't do that. I could though. That's always an option. Not really. I feel like it's a bad thing to do part way through. That feels uncouth. but when we finish the practice scenario when we've got that bookend there I can just fucking drop this thing like a hot shit

maybe I will okay but let's keep positive Andy you're bringing me down with all this heat and this sweat I didn't do that you did you are the celestial body that provides light

to my photosynthesis thank you i don't mean that those were hollow words i'm just trying to make you feel a bit better because god you look at state it works and then you said you took it back now you're gonna spiral so store expenditure yeah we did all of the all of the markings of the start of a turn for the last time and it was pretty positive on my side i was i was very happy with how today went yeah I didn't have anyone... Everyone got the grub

for me. Yeah, you had a bit of a bad run, which I think, based on your mentality approaching today's session, probably didn't help. No, it's a bad session type as well that Bootkeeper wants for when you can't be bothered. Yeah, because there's no

excitement. There's nothing to grasp onto. Not a single ounce of dopamine in this building. I didn't make a decision today. Oh, God, no, we didn't. I made one decision, which I guess we'll get to. But initially, it's just store expenditure.

And how are your guys looking for food, Andy? They're good, actually. Yeah, they all fed up? Yeah, I've got them all sorted for offstage two last turn. So they... A couple of them went to many stores, but I could have taken that down a bit. But I probably shipped ammo instead.

but yeah they're all fine mine are for the most part okay i've got my my core guys my guys i've been doing some offensive moves with that i've been keeping on top of their supplies they are fully fed yeah i was both uh amazed and disappointed because when i had to look through i realized just how accessible stores are if i just have a supply line that kind of works just even to a small degree, I can feed my men. So I shouldn't have been having so many starving men for so long.

That's good you've worked this out with the practice scenario. It's sort of what it was for. It's just a shame that it's so late. Even now, I do have some men starving, but that's just because they're kind of behind enemy lines. I couldn't really get trucks to where they are.

Oh, there's that... That, like, cluster. So where I've kind of pincered you in. Cluster? The one around your guys now? Oh, those guys didn't get fed. Some of them did. Some of them got supplied early on.

But the guys, the 32nd, I think it's the Bardia garrison, the ones who are quite low down. I think they're the most southern unit that I have there. They are, I'll just tell you now, they're hungry. Okay, cool. But I've got a few other ones that are hungry around there. Good thing is, hunger doesn't mean that they're non-functional. It just means that they can't be on the offensive.

Good thing is, those guys are designed to be in a defensive position. They can still have a zone of control, they just can't willingly start marching into yours. But they're not designed for that. I don't want them to start a fight, I want them to be an obstacle. Is there no downside to defending, either?

No, not that I've come across anyway. Definitely worth double-checking if it comes to it. Any cover you're in there? No, I don't think so. Again, I'll have to double-check that, but I'm pretty sure on the first turn of hunger, you don't take any losses. Also, are they hungry or are they... Half-rationed.

Half-rationed. Yeah, they're half-rationed. None of them are... Full hunger. Sorry, I think one of them is fully starving. Right. But that was kind of by, not design, just ignorance. But I'm fine with it.

Okay. I came to terms with that ignorance a while ago, which actually makes it not ignorant. No. I decided to starve some men. Yeah, it was very much a decision. I decided you know if it's the last thing I do

it will be to starve more Italian fascists it's just putting the world right a little bit I think someone has to do it and history didn't do it well enough clearly because they still caused a real pain in the backside

for Egypt, for Libya I'm putting those rights putting those wrongs to rights that's what I'm doing, fixing history i'm like doctor who if he had some balls none of this oh it's a paradox uh you can't cross your own time stream yeah i can fuck you doctor who he also does it a lot it's just you forget yeah he does it a lot it's i mean you know it's a show about time travel you can't really have rules otherwise it doesn't work anymore campaign for north africa has rules too many rules some

would argue but today since they've worked in my favor and i'm a hypocrite i'm actually fine with them oh okay so at least that's a turnaround from a couple weeks ago yeah well i've realized that what bothered me is that it didn't work in my favor and i think i'm a petulant child oh so a bit of self-awareness yeah that's nice i'm growing see if that lasts yeah the first step to addressing a problem andy is recognizing that there is one and then denying it when it actually kicks in and causes consequences for years yeah yeah well it'll be for like half a century that we'll be doing this yeah so get used to that buckle in because i'm going to be insufferable whenever i'm not willing such a long time i know i know it's kind of a psychological warfare i'm

wrapping around the layers of gameplay okay i think we should have a bit of a meta fight not the zuckerberg medics i think that got shut off all that meta real estate Oh, the Metaverse, yeah. Not Facebook, I think that's still going. Yeah, that's still chugging along. I imagine so, anyway. I used it fairly recently. For the news.

Unfortunately, that's why I got a lot of news. You get news from Facebook. Not from a Facebook post, like news articles. Whoa, I'm not completely demented, come on. I don't search for news on there, it's just news articles will come up on Facebook, and then I'll be linked

to a semi-reputable newspaper. Will you? Yeah, I'm not going to say which one. I'm embarrassed a little bit as to which one comes up. The one with good headlines. Yes. It's not the Daily Mail, by the way. It's not bad in that way.

I think it's just kind of unreliable and stupid. It's not directly inflammatory, I think, anyway. I don't know. I've been kind of indoctrined. But that's meta. We're talking about the hero now, Andy. You're going off topic. You're feverish.

I am. I'm sorry. i've wandered off in the desert looking for oasis did you find one oh the candor is kind of disarming so store expenditure some men are hungry some men one group of men are starving anyone thirsty no i found that all the way through thirst has only been an issue for some of the guys who are off in the middle of nowhere to the west that you've just deliberately not well i could you know what the worst thing is i could have moved them because they're it's my um like paratrooper guys who i i for some reason i've just left them there

and they're like an actual like group of infantry and i've just left them there to die they can actually power troop as well no no that's just the name oh okay yeah they can't actually power troop okay because that's another fun part of the game they'll just give names to things that don't actually fit in with the rules because they decided we'll make rules that don't really pay attention to the historical names and designations we'll just create a separate system based on i think it's more that it was just a very confused naming convention by people in the wall yeah but you could have designed your game around that couldn't you i know because it's all contradictory that's the problem well they could have just added more rules

yeah it would have been more complicated but god at least it would have made sense that's all i'm asking for any bit of consistency it makes sense you don't need you don't always need verisimilitude it's the whole game no some of the game is about making friends no that's not in there right yeah it is i think it actually mentions ending friendships i think it does actually yeah but we're moving we've got common ground to to stay well when we release our addenda for the rules. We'll put Common Ground in there. Or 800-page hardcover

A5 addenda. We'll put that in. We'll put Fruit Zone in. Yeah. That'll be fun. No history stuff. No, no. They've already got a historical background that comes with it. Do they want more? Yeah, that's just silly. At that point, just stick it in a laptop and tell them to Google it. I'm not

doing the work for them. You can search all of the history stuff. You can't search the game stuff. That's true. I'm not doing the legwork. I'm not some I'm not some I said gooner some goon I guess I'm not a gooner

and I'm not a goon you just LA Nawami you fuck you just hit me with the fucking cool phelps son of a bitch you're lying it is hot isn't it

wow yeah that temperature is uh really doing things to the way that my brain processes information apologies if this one isn't very clear oh yeah compared to all the other ones where we are fucking dead on the money yeah when i was dialed in oh well at least we didn't have much to sort out today because after the store expenditure we got to move on to i guess we did this out of order technically because we did store expenditure and then we had you hunt down my ships my naval convoy didn't find didn't find them and that is your legacy jesus you have consistently been missing my ships i have i have a strategy for the main game though so that's fine find the ships

yes my way to do it more planes yeah right okay sorry i'm not giving you that as a strategy because that is just that's just turning up the number well you have to get the planes from so far. I mean, yeah, but it's not really a strategy. Come back to me with more steps, and I'll let you call it a strategy. Right. Right now, you may as well have just said, I will do better. There are more steps, I'm just not going to tell you this.

It's move planes from other locations. You don't have to give it all away. Okay. How was that water? Fine. Not even happy with the fucking water now. Come on, man. Gotta give some kudos to the environment.

Mother Earth gave you that. my own Northumbrian wallet yeah that's a good point they gave me a refund a few years ago that was like 5 years after we'd moved where's mine off? it was from one of the flats that I had my Walls End flat

don't stop Cole Phelpsing me I'll show you the receipts it's because we moved over and I moved over my account and then you got added into it so I think you've actually muddied the Northumbrian wallet that seems unlikely

that seems very likely also when it comes to our financial splits when it comes to moving we've had some issues in the past with deposits yeah we had one deposit that wasn't registered

by the landlord that one stung a little bit because he tried to make us pay for a new bathroom for him as well which, kind of a dick move the bathroom was fine by the way everyone uh the toilet seat was a bit loose because one of the screws had come off i don't really think that warrants retiling the bathroom and then there was uh the chest of drawers that you somehow destroyed yeah that one was fair and i think one of the bed frame like uh the

planks underneath the bed frame had come apart oh no there was some ink off that got like at some point a pad split i mean it went through the duvet and stained the mattress oh yeah so then they were asking as we were moving out and we had our friend was helping us with a car yeah so not big enough to fit furniture in and they're like well are you taking the bed and it's like well as generous as this is no we're not getting rid of the rubbish for you because you've already said you're removing the deposit you're trying to claim all of it in the sake of removing a bed and replacing a chest of draws, which, if the chest of draws broke, it's a bad chest of draws.

To be fair, I think they were fair. They were fine to take my half. Yeah, I guess so. But, you didn't take my half. You didn't take my half of boats. You didn't take any of my boats. Not a single one. You don't even know they exist. So, really, you can't actually talk about the boats without it being

metagaming. I mean, I know they're arriving. You've been looking at the rules, then. Yeah. It's not metagaming. you've got to go through the game on vibes which actually we've done for far too much of the game we need to not do that

yeah we need to lock in so from there we went back into the cycle of gameplay in the order it's meant to we went to initiative we ruled to determine who gets initiative for this final turn and it's you surprisingly against the odds

I came in and I bloody won you got a 1 I got a 4 and with the differentials, it still means I come out on top. I get initiative for, I think, only the second time in this scenario. Yeah, I don't... Did you have one more?

I think at the very start. So, you know what? I think I might have got it in turn three. And if that is the case, I've actually had it half the time. You've actually done well. Yeah, that actually feels... Yeah. wow it feels like you've always had it yeah and i decided i will be going first this offstage

that's fair because i want to be able to reposition my guys a little bit rejig them to yeah i would of course i would i'm going to make them build a more defensive perimeter around my guys uh around your guys if anything kind of box them in and just really ruin your day just make it difficult for you to maneuver that's the general plan seems very sharp the issue is because I had a quick look at my guys on the map and I realized that

because of the hungry people I can't fully box you in because at first my plan was box you in from all sides at least one of your units try and force a retreat and then if you can't retreat you immediately surrender no you just lose 10%

I'm pretty sure if you can't we need to check this because otherwise we've been doing it that if you choose not to no choose not to I think is fine but I think if you're boxed in to the point where retreat isn't even viable because there's units

on all sides so if I box you in on every adjacent hex I thought we talked about this and it wasn't the case we've had it a lot where we've had to retreat but I don't think we've ever had it where we've been completely surrounded on every single hex.

Because I feel like that's noteworthy enough that I would definitely remember that, surely. I remember us talking a few episodes ago about finishing divisions. Yeah. Before we checked it then. We'll have another look. If it does work like that, it's good.

Because it does give us a way to get rid of it. If you just box them in completely. But again, it's not going to happen because I left my men to starve too much. If it's the last thing I do, those Italians will be hungry. so all in all my plan will be quite broadly

build defensive perimeter makes sense and because of that, me giving myself the first go, I also ruled the weather you did and it is the antithesis of what we're experiencing right now, it is a nice fresh rainstorm

better yet Lady Luck has smiled down on me and given me a little peck on the cheek and a shoulder rub and also a little cushion for me to put my feet up on because the rainstorm is on maps D and E. Your maps.

Yeah, so flip the sandstorm from last upstage. It's a very bad timing for me. It's bizarre. Like, all of these things coming together, the unlikely initiative, and the rainstorm. Those two are a nice combo. It's incredible because now it means I can roll

out my aircraft. I can strike you in places that I want to, leave you pinned in some areas i've got bombers that have been sat there for two upstages now yeah just stocking up on ammo so i've got quite a few guys that are ready to go yeah so this is going to be a big bombing run that you simply can't counter with any planes no this is going to be so if i can shut down some of your guys with bombardments from the air and then also box them in in a position that's going to be difficult to navigate i kind of remove an upstage from you if it all goes well i mean yeah you do so giving you only two upstages to play around with

i mean yeah you can shave down my guys on the ground with what's left but oh i'm i'm actually feeling hopeful about this next upstage the two that follow i doubt i'm going to get as lucky so i'm making the most of it while i can yeah it's a good chance to get some like swing the momentum for the last two upstages that's all i can wish for at this point I just need a good start for this final turn and maybe I can carry that momentum of excitement through over the next nine weeks

and see it out with maybe, not a smile on my face, but the ghost of a grin. That's all I need. So, yeah, I guess do you have a strategy? You don't have to divulge the full thing. This is such a big thing with the air stuff

and not having initiatives that I think it's going to be a see what the lay of the land is. Yeah, makes sense that you want to see how this pans out before you start saying something as bold as I have a plan. I mean, I'm definitely going to try and push, but I think

this offstage might have a big effect on how successful that is. Or I could roll absolute dogshit. That's true. And leave you in a position where nothing really changed. Yeah, it's just an offstage. Yeah, maybe I'll waste my offstage.

Maybe the excitement will get to me and I'll do something stupid, because I'm known to do that. Yes, help me. As soon as I find a way to get a quick dopamine rush, I'll do that. I'll spoil it for myself, I'll spoil it for everyone. So, we'll see how that goes.

Maybe I'll waste my planes. I hope so. I hope not. I'd quite like to not do that. I'm tentative about using too many planes now and then not having any for the last two op stages, because right now I've got a really good backlog of planes i haven't used i don't want to splooge all of them right now and then have really bad refit

rolls oh and then end up with like because my refit rolls are terrible the italian refits for planes you got like really low rolls oh yeah so i don't want to end up in that situation i have to temper myself i have to i have to be careful and i don't know that i can yeah do you add to your refit goals? I think I add yes, and I think that makes it worse. Yes, and you can't get 100%. No, I think the highest I can get is

75 maybe. Or 70 possibly. Yeah, whatever it is, it's never full. It's never 100. I think even when the Germans come about, I don't even think they get 100. I think they max out with the one below. Possibly.

I remember looking at my stuff for the future and being like, this is never going to be perfect. But the good thing is I get some really good planes from the Germans. Yeah, they have. The Messerschmitts, yeah. So that'll be cool.

But for now, that's it. That's where we left off. We've got the weather. We've got me going first. We've got one turn to go. Can't believe it. No, we've actually made it. Not the final

closing run, but a bit of it. Yeah, I just didn't, part of me didn't expect us to get to the end of the practice run. I thought something would go wrong. I thought something would break down irreparably where we just can't play anymore. Whether it's our minds or the board game itself or

I don't know, maybe we just start hating each other. Because when we finish this, we've finished, it's already a very small group of people who understand scenarios. Yeah. I've seen quite a few online people run fruit wait some of the biggest or not i've seen someone do the desert fox i saw i think yeah it was the desert fox when someone was doing it it was a board game geek where they were doing the

they did a couple like uh after reports yeah it was it was board game geek and also there was a thread on reddit yeah where some guys in a game shop in i think it was boston or something yeah maybe boston they were they were playing it and that seems to have dropped off or stopped because i don't see those posts anymore yeah and you know fair play to them i guess throwing in the towel isn't really throwing in the towel it's just realizing that life needs more if you've got a family if you've got a social life if you've got hopes and dreams this is a hard thing to sustain i do also give you a lot more than two people it's for you yeah you end up in a situation where how do you schedule that yes i'm just doing a quick uh

Quick check, yeah. So we'll have done 5% of what the full game will be when we finish this practice scenario. 5.4%. That's... I mean, that's alright. That's enough where it's like

some... you'd see it on the play chart. Yeah. We're not in the inverse sliver section. I mean, if you convert this to a 20-sided die... Yeah, we've rolled on that one. Put this in D&D terms, we've taken off one of the sides of the die.

that's good that's not measurable yeah that's a big die so if we can shave off one of those sides we can shave off the rest if it bleeds

we can kill it 18 months at a time 18 months at a time it has to get faster it will I don't want to die with this game unfinished nah we'll be fine

you can't promise that but we persevere we plod on, we few we happy few moving on from that, we shall instead, I guess move to happier topics, maybe some cooler

environments mentally yeah, they can't email us yeah, they can't email us ice or we can get cold emails because, just totally or like sales oh, we get a lot of that

well, funnily enough, this first email that we have here from laura it actually harkens back to the advertisement common ground that we had we had an email about this last week as well that we read yeah well we revealed that we are idiots yeah we're just sponges you show us something and it's like jangly keys in front of a baby we just need to have that common ground episode 74 would you like to buy a mattress is the subject line uh laura yes how about that we'll buy it oh you want a mattress we'll have the mattress thank you you're gonna put it on top of your mattress i have well i i did this fairly recently i think i might have told you this um we've rearranged the the house over the last

few months i say that it was around christmas time that we did this and in the spare room there was a a spare bed is that the one that's now in the downstairs toilet yes yes so yeah i forgot yeah you visited for some dnd sessions so yeah we disassembled the spare room spare bed to put some other furniture in and in doing so we realized ah now we have a bed frame disassembled we are both worried about moving it into the loft because we're not we don't have the coordination hand eye to get a bed frame a disassembled one even into the loft so instead we've put the disassembled pieces into the downstairs bathroom we've got three bathrooms it's a it's a fun layout because it's not a house that you would expect to be big enough to have three bathrooms and yeah

so you just you realize what you're doing there clicking a pen quite ferociously that's all right i don't think the mic picked it up it's not the loud music your neighbor usually plays so we've got the bed frame down there and then we've got the mattress and now it's just upstairs on the landing we don't know what to do with it and for a while we had the idea of well let's just put it on top of our mattress yeah and then we put it on top we realized how insane that is Because the bed is then really high Here's what the thing is All mattress, no bed

No Get rid of the bed And just stack mattresses This attitude is what led to you I think destroying the first bed in that flat This is Also hang on a minute With your bed

Your nest It's not a nest Your bed doesn't have The rungs Yeah, it does. No, it doesn't. It didn't. It didn't. I put them back in. You put them back in.

There was a period of time where you slept on the mattress on your floor in some kind of nest. The mattress was in the bed frame, but some of the slats on the bed were broken. So I just had taken that out. Yeah, so you had the bed frame still. So you had like walls up alongside you. Yeah. In a nest. That's quite nice.

You made a bunker. Yeah. i don't know i feel like that would be cozy but i just think there's enough social pressure for me to say it sounds stupid yeah i guess which means i'll never be happy no you won't as i'm a happy guy you you are a free spirit i'm not going to call you a maverick because it sounds too cool but you're a free spirit andy thanks man a sweaty free spirit so yeah i've got a mattress in my in my corridor um if anyone wants a mattress hit me up um laura but you're trying to peddle a mattress to me howdy gents your discussion on amazon's terrible practice of giving you the

least sensible adverts reminded me of a great john boyce video would you like to buy a mattress you may not be able to explain why the company is emailing you about purchasing something you already have but he sure can't explain what would happen if you follow their advice and actually did purchase it every time they asked wonderful nonsense to relax to you i'd recommend giving gonna watch and a link suddenly humbly bravely oars from the land down under laura laura another australian we are riddled with aussies yeah and that goes to would you like to buy a mattress from secret base which is a very good channel i've not seen that specific video but they've got a very good one on bobs disappearing from sports yeah because when you said bobs you

mentioned this right before we started um bobs disappearing from sports yeah and i thought you meant the haircut which is also probably not super common i'd expect not just guess this guy didn't break that down but it's yeah it's the people named bob yeah there's like none left in any professional sports or something or there's like one in mascot i feel like it might be more prevalent than darts i don't know if he did darts in it yeah is that a sport because i think it's also a thing of like people get robert now yeah that's a good point i feel like robert is i feel like something's happened with Bob where you can't. Bob's got like an

inherently friendly I don't know. It's not a very sporty name. I don't know. I think too many working class people have died and no one calls each other Bob anymore. Yeah. I think it's because of the culling of the working class that now Bob

still doesn't exist and everyone went and robbed it. Yeah, we should bring Bob back. Oh, Bobby? You don't need a Bobby. Fuck me. When was the last time you met a Bobby? Bobby Kennedy. You met Bobby Kennedy? Not physically Sorry, not physically In what way have you met

Bobby Kennedy? I feel like we've got a connection Fuck me I hope this is the heat I hope I haven't just pulled at a string here and found out there's something wrong with you Maybe Maybe it's the heat

I'll revisit this in a few weeks and see how you're getting on We'll put a pin in that one But thank you for that, Laura it and we'll you know i might even watch that tonight when i get back because this coffee will keep me up for a while if the heat doesn't the caffeine will also yeah i am also intrigued by if he's getting every time they say do you want a mattress he says yeah it sounds like it's yeah the suggested thing so it's like oh would you like this uh since you bought this other thing and i imagine is he the reason that because it works because it makes so much mattress money

well i wonder if it's um i wonder if it's the same thing as wikipedia where if you click on the first link on every page oh you eventually end up on philosophy yeah the page it takes you to so i wonder if it's the same thing where if you keep on buying related items it eventually cycles back to the most fundamental purchase you can make i'm not sure what the most fundamental purchase is mattress is out there i don't think it's the most fundamental you spend like a fair of your life yeah but i i mean yeah you spend a lot of time on that but oh god like a good mattress is probably, if you're going to invest in one thing, it's probably one of the things

worth investing in. That's a good point, actually. Yeah, maybe a mattress is the most fundamental purchase. Jesus. And sleep, if you don't sleep well, it just fucks everything up. I actually need that. Well, you found this out today. You said that you're tired because you didn't sleep well because of the heat. Yeah. Maybe a fan

should be the... Well, that's only for small portions of the year. What am I talking about? You're usually meant to fill in the blanks When I stop, you go I was so enthralled Oh god Adjacency pairs, follow them I don't think I'm just hot

I actually feel like I'm being strong Have you been in direct sunlight much? No It's just the temperature Are you dehydrated? I don't think I've been drinking a lot also sweating a lot so probably

yeah you're wiping your brow right now you do have a bit of shine to your skin like a silverfish well this is going to be the last episode of War with a Maid before Andy is either committed or dies of heatstroke one or the other but before that let's do one more

email we'll tick one more off before you go and meet Bobby Kennedy the subject is oh boy an email well that's generic hello lads hope you're doing well i started listening to the podcast a few months ago and after quickly catching up uh the new episodes have become a real highlight of my weekends thank you i was planning to send an email in during the first round of begging but by the time i got around

to it someone had beat me uh to asking my questions so now i'm very happy to be late for the second round oh god we have a second round of begging oh god oh yes it was when we oh so we've got two of them we've set ourselves two traps in the past that's good it means we'll keep coming so I wanted to ask if you're planning to go about less military

centric aspects of the war in later history segments or perhaps interspersed with the more classical subjects to switch it up yeah I think we'll be some slice of life stuff living in time as well as just the military

I mean, as you said, you've got 30 years to cover three years, so Yeah, I mean, it's very much your wheelhouse Andy, when it comes to history I'd be happy to dabble in there once or twice maybe throw my hand in the ring for another history segment at some stage, but

I'd have to put in a lot more prep because yours are very good and I feel like mine would pale in comparison, so I'd have to really find something that hooks me hard so maybe I'll find something non-military maybe something a bit more civilian That maybe really tickles my fancy

Looking forward to that But otherwise Andy it's you Don't hold your breath If so I'd like to nominate Swedish humanitarian Raoul Wallenberg As a civilian to cover

A man who along with his team Saved thousands of Hungarian Jews From deportation Mostly relying on pure daring do And good old lying to the fascist face oh it's a classic tactic i love it i'm underselling here i leave the most interesting bits for andy to cover if he so chooses but i do believe it would make a great segment uh definitely thanks for the recommendation it'll go on the list yeah you you've taken

up quite a few suggestions from males and they've turned out to be awesome history segments i think every time someone suggests something i put on a list and i've also not got into researching something someone suggested and gone nah and like shelved it so i think the thing is with all these like slices of history there's at least one interesting nugget that you can like blow up and make a full week's session yeah so i think it's difficult to give a bad suggestion that isn't a challenge by the way yeah although i am quite curious if you can find a really boring piece of history then you know see what happens uh i also wanted to note that as of the most recent episode when i'm writing this 75 there are officially more episodes after the end of

turn one, the leading up to it. Oh, yeah. I'd look at you now playing four turns in the same time span. Anyway, thanks for the last... I started a doctorate this year, and you keeping me sane during long hours at the bench, which I

think qualifies as you making a contribution to science. You're certainly humbly and bravely clear. We're scientists, Andy. Contributing to science as well. Oh my god, we're like Brian Cox or Stephen Hawking. We're not one of those non-contributing in science. Yeah, one of those guys

who's like a flat earther. Yeah. Are they scientists? Some of them, like, that's not flat, but in a documentary where they do all the experiments and the one guy at the end is actually just like, oh shit, we proved the Earth was round.

The thing is, though, I think if you do loads of tests and then you just deny the results, I don't think you're a scientist anymore. I think you lose. The one I'm talking about does change. Some of them don't, but he does actually change his mind. because i think i've seen it you might have shown me where at the end they get the test and it proves that the earth is round and they're like oh something was off oh the lens doesn't work

so i think there are there are instances where you can do tests and not be a scientist no that's true and apparently you can also sometimes do a podcast about a board game and be a scientist so uh yeah that's great lou i'm very much looking forward to us being credited on your your doctorate um send us a copy shout us out when you win the nobel prize yeah we'll co-sign it co-sign the prize yeah we'll sign yeah um thank us at the uh at the event and we'll be there of course we'll come support all of you if you've got like a like a rehearsal or like a nobel ceremony it's the only award ceremony i like

yeah we'll go along with that if you invite us to anything we'll we'll go you just have to pay for everything so it's all inclusive that is actually true yeah you know what if you're going to pay for us to come along to something we'll show up I promise we will come I've got a few days

holiday left to put in at work so you just let me know time and place and what I get for free and I'm there like a shot oh god I don't even know if I'm joking but no you know what Leo that is really encouraging that you've pointed that out at first when you were when you're going through that andy that felt really grim and i think i've glanced at this email before when it

first came through that it took so long to finish the first turn yeah i think so much of that was getting to grips with the rules setting up the game and i guess me panicking a little bit whereas now we get through it a bit faster yes we skip a few rules um by accident well yeah not intentionally I'm just not telling you about a bunch of rules I've pulled a few pages out of the book Evaporation? No Oh I don't think so, not in this fucking weather We need as much water as we can, fictional or not

So yeah Maybe when it comes to the full game it will go a lot faster I'd love to think so That would be great You know, 10 episodes a turn? That'd be fantastic That'd be fucking brilliant That means we'd be shaving through turns

It'll only take us 20 years no god it would be a lot less than that we'd be getting through 5 turns 5 turns a year oh my god yeah oh no oh I just realised it's still so long

oh yeah that's 22 years and then a little bit of 1 oh yeah wow I will be that long if you did the maths just the exact same

number yeah the yeah because that means if we get it if we if we play at that race when we finish our playthrough we'll be old enough to drink in america the actual podcast yeah no not the podcast just that main playthrough because the podcast at that point will be like 23 24 years old yeah oh no we have the cheap car and shit that's nearly the age i was when i started this oh at that point it will have taken up most of your life yeah fuck me it's not fun no you know it's not so don't be cute but thank you leo that uh there is a part of that that does make me feel a little bit better and we we love the emails we love uh history suggestion we love hearing about your odd hobbies what you're up to just get in touch fire something over it it helps break up

the day it helps make this more enjoyable you are not just an accountability tool you you started as that humble listeners you became so much more you brighten up the experience so if you've got anything to send over the email address is info at warwithamate.co.uk the instagram is just war with a mate uh we have a website warwithamate.co.uk which is going to be tuned up likely in the hiatus between practice, scenario, and full game, so watch this space for updates. And we have a TikTok, which the only thing on there is

the full live show. It's like a 50-minute video across two videos of the full live show. Just what with a mate. I don't know what we're going to do with that TikTok. I had plans. I had memes and stuff in mind.

I don't know when I'm going to get time to do that. I don't know. Maybe keep an eye on it Something might pop up one day We are going to put the video on YouTube We are, we're having issues with the file size It's a fucking nightmare because it's It's like an hour long

So we need to get it uploaded But every time we try and upload it to the Google Drive The upload just fails part way through Just conks out That's not fun When you go into hard storage we need to get a USB stick for it I think

We'll figure it out Oh, actually, you've got that hard drive, don't you? Yeah. Cool. I might take that along and then use that. Yeah, I think I'll just solve it. Wow, you just listened to a soft drop. See, that's what the play session's like.

It's just usually a bit more drawn out and more frustrated. You're getting sweatier by the minute, by the way. Your hair is starting to, like, mat down because you've got quite big, fluffy hair, and it's, like, getting slick. It's looking like you've, like, oiled it back. your hair is shrinking because of the soaking wet

nature of it oh my god you could look like you're wearing a bald cap by the end of the episode and unfortunately Andy it's now time to put you in the dare I say hot seat there you go you're going to pass out during the history segment

sorry it's the history segment Andy yes The men of the Long Range Desert Patrols were quite a sight on their return to Cairo from a month's trip to Libya. The contrast between the east and west of the Nile is very marked. In the east, the country echoes everywhere. At this point I gave little thought to my future, but had always been interested in boats and the sea. I am more or less in the position of a campus in command of a ship

which is on the point of sinking because errors are present We are absolutely not qualified to share views on history So Andy, when and where are we? We're early 1900s in Britain Oh Is it hot there as well?

Well, maybe aptly this episode is largely about the Interdepartmental Committee on physical deterioration. Founded by you. I mean, it might be that you want to look into me. So, to start those off, these results

indicate the existence of a state of health which may fairly be described as deplorable. Ah, amen. Yeah. So, last time I briefly mentioned the medical screaming for volunteer soldiers

having a shocking rejection rate. Yes, I remember that. Yeah. An 1889 report had shown that 35% of Londoners were unfit while another report 12 years later of Londoners living

in extreme poverty while a report 12 years later described 50% of York as living in extreme poverty. So, not good in Britain at the time. no uh the town i mentioned last time was having a particularly bad rejection rate in salford where one 12 000 people volunteered 8 000 were immediately rejected yeah that is a crazy rate

after additional screening only 1 200 were accepted which is a 10 acceptance rate that's insane yeah well others across the country who did sign up had to go they were referred to as specials and they had to go through this trial period where they would see if um they could reach the required level of fitness after a few months of regular food exercise and hygiene hygiene yes i don't realize hygiene came into play oh it's yeah uh so as a result of this poor helped the british government create the interdepartmental committee on physical deterioration in 1903 which is tasked which is yeah tasked with investigating basically why is the working class so sick it's nice that a wall is what brought this about um so the original terms

of reference to the committee were to make a preliminary inquiry into allegations concerning the deterioration of certain classes of the population as shown by the large percentage of rejections for physical causes of recruits for the army uh so yeah uh they do identify a number of different problems and then provide a series of recommendations uh its first findings very important and sort of facilitates any good the rest of the report will do um so i'm going to jump back a little bit in 1883 francis galton who's half cousin to charles darwin uh coins the term eugenics and starts to push this as a science ah right okay viewed as somewhat legitimate at the time ah uh the eugenicists had taken the military recruitment crisis as a chance

to push their agenda they hoped the committee would prove their arguments to both validate eugenic science and also so they could pursue a course of negative eugenics okay uh negative there's positive and negative eugenics which aren't if they're good or bad it's the type it's all positive eugenics is where you like it's like selective breeding and animals where you like select for positive traits and like make them breed okay right negative eugenics is like anyone who doesn't meet this standard cannot breed. Okay, right.

See, I thought for a moment when you said negative eugenics, it's like, how do we make the worst guy? Oh, no. That's an interesting... I'm going to teach him about eugenics as a start. Yeah, because that makes them both

bad physically and mentally. But when the report was published in uh 1904 it didn't support a eugenicist view uh point and actually explicitly went out of its way to declare that there's no race degeneracy amongst the british working class and instead health problems are caused by social and environmental conditions uh and therefore would have been would be and could be addressed by social reform i mean it seems like they've got something right with this yeah this is actually quite interesting that's why i like

focused on it is like this is also I think an underrated like fulcrum moment in history where if it had gone the other way and they'd gone they wouldn't like what would the British population have looked like by 1914

and then what would it have looked like by like the 1930s what if they were hard eugenics but without addressing any any issues through social reform yeah it would have just been like no one would have been able to fight so

the Liberal Party wins an election in 1906 and starts to turn the report's recommendations into law so some of the major findings are, well urban housing is a nightmare many people are living in overcrowded slums, houses that

are full of damp and heavily polluted air, because they also didn't have zoning yeah so if you bought a bit of land you could put a slum house right next to a factory or a factory right next to a house or there's just no planning and that's not healthy no um well it's actually so but they also have these things called back-to-back houses so imagine this terrace and the one behind me no back lane or backyards the back of my house just butts onto the back of Another house.

Yeah, so three of the walls are... Houses. Yeah, which gives you no ventilation. So bad, in fact, that in back-to-back houses, tuberculosis rates are 50% higher than other housing setups. Oh, God. Like, yeah. I'm thinking about the heat.

Oh, yeah. Oh, no. So the committee's recommendations with town planning and zoning, so buildings uh you can plan things like roads and parks and also keeping residential areas separate from factories um they also ban those back-to-back houses let's talk just they're done we're not yeah get rid of those yeah and they also start to impose some uh penalties for landlords who i think the provision is literally literally uninhabitable uh they could get punished for but wow it's the start of a bit of like what we stopped being a slum log crazy that it took from

then to earlier this year for the redness rights to really start to gain some momentum yeah um but yeah this goes into more for a series of housing apps and then also they identify one of the huge causes of all these health problems is child poverty and neglect. Yeah, you want to get rid of that one. Yeah. Huge amount of issues caused by childhood malnutrition like Ricketts mentioned last time.

People are just short. They have bad eyesight. They've not breathed any fresh air their entire lives. You're just describing me at this point. I guess thankfully I'm not too short. Well,

the British working class diet that at the time consists of mainly bread, lard and potatoes with weak tea and sugar. Fuck, this is me. Occasional meat and no fruit at all. Oh my god, I'm gonna get

rickets. Do I have rickets? You might explain something. But yeah, that's so like meat is a luxury so there's no protein. Fuck.

So, they passed the Elementary Education Act in 1880, which required by law all children in English Wales to attend school between the ages of 5 and 10. This is raised to 12 by 1899, but the report correctly identifies another problem here, which is that you can't expect children to come in and learn and be educated when they're starving or like literally dying yeah how do you build that into the syllabus yeah so this leads to the education provision for meals act of 1906 which allows local councils to provide means-tested meals to children who can't afford to eat so they'll have at least one meal a day when they're at school very Jamie Oliver coded but in a way I don't hate yeah so it's up down to the councils

to implement um but six years later uh for the academic year between uh 1912 and 13 you've got over 350 000 children are now receiving free meals hey yeah that is solid progress yeah this is good also introduces a separate piece of legislation a year after the provisions of meals acts which mandates medical inspections to monitor the health of children alongside their education so keeping track of things like weight height things like that I guess if you're trying to get rid of

and I said abolish rickets no more rickets guys stop doing rickets makes it sound like some street name for a very weird legal high but yeah if you want to stop rickets you want to keep an eye on that sort of stuff

which is also another thing that Paul had identified which is they have no system or records keeping for like large amounts of data like health data for the population yeah I guess they didn't care

yeah but it's like that's why the recruitment thing was such a shock because it was like if you'd been tracking any of these figures wait how unhealthy oh my god everyone's fucking dying yeah so yeah part of gathering

they also set up a notification of births that, which means births have to be reported within 36 hours. Oh, I didn't know that was around then. Yeah. Yeah, that's when that comes in. Because also most people give birth at home at this point, I think, still. So you've just got a

shit ton of undocumented people as well, I would expect. Oh, yeah. Just tons of them. Like the census rolls around, it's like, whoa, there's a lot more people than I thought. So, yeah. This allows them to also send health visitors to provide education

for new mothers and stuff just has a huge effect on infant mortality. Wow, that's really early on. Yeah. The report made 53 recommendations of all, many of which would make their way into legislation between 1906 and 1940 and really

lay the groundwork legislatively but also mindset-wise for the welfare state and that there is this it sounds weird now, but it validates this idea that the state can intervene to help its people

and that's not necessarily a bad... David Lloyd George! Yeah. What a guy. The Prime Minister brought about national insurance and whatnot.

That was a segment of history I do know, because I studied law briefly and he was the main pillar of the history that we learned. Yeah. um so yeah this is the this is the domestic change that's come off the bow um so this is this is actually some positive stuff for why britain's going to be able to fight yeah you know what this this actually just sounds en masse really good yeah it was i mean it'd be

nice if you didn't have the like oh fuck we need them to fight a war to help them yeah but at least they did yeah yeah better late than never kind of situation yeah it's also crazy the whole like it's a hundred just over a hundred years old it's like any of this stuff yeah but it's also quite like knee-jerk where it's like wow we've really been pulled into fairly contemporary ideas just snapped into it out of nowhere yeah wet stuff now where it's like well this because parts of it i'm like this feels more modern than i expect it to be yeah like there's still people arguing about free school meals now yeah i don't get why yeah it seems a pretty easy feed kids yeah that really should if you're arguing against that you need to kind of assess why yeah and i'm not really sure i

could hear an argument that would make me change my mind on that because someone could say well it's going to be expensive so i guess raise my taxes then let's buy one less missile and feed all the kids yeah i'm kind of fine paying more tax and kids don't starve that that seems like a no-brainer but yeah but yeah it is crazy that it's well it starts here and then also some of it's like still going they're like the never-ending debate yeah um but yeah we'll get into that Britain's diplomatic goings-on after the splendid isolation that we've had a long, long

we'll get to that next time. Well, they're coming in as strong boys with fewer rickets. Yeah. Oh, they're going to be fit for fighting. Maybe. Maybe. We'll find out. I don't imagine it's going to work quickly

enough. My prediction is that this doesn't have the booming effect that they think it will. i don't feel like it's going to be a rather i also a lot of look at the rejection rates for world war one and also i guess did they change the standards because they just like need people yeah world war one and world war two i guess different kinds of war yeah but this is a thing of like this is 1906 like free school meals thing so you will have people who've had what's that eight years yeah like 20 year olds will actually have benefited from this

yeah well up to a point well the medical checking as well obviously there's the time before up to a point but yeah i think it probably would have actually had a noticeable effect oh okay well yeah i'm interested to see where this goes yeah well a very uh very surprisingly positive history segment I guess not a super military one yeah oh well there we go that's an answer to the email sweet well there we go

that's a fairly positive turn of events and that was in the past it was and now coming up to our final turn Andy and with me having for some reason all of the luck today maybe if I hand it over to you

you can bring us together with a common ground and now for something nicer a little oasis in the war it's time for some common ground I'm trying to intro for common ground I'm recording

maybe yeah oh and just before that it would seem you've invoked the fruit zone the fruit zone passion fruit or grapefruit uh grapefruit passion fruit the fruit zone cool so my common ground i'm looking for a bit of inspiration from the past for this one okay but not as far back as you might think mixing up the the segments here's my

here's my topic sentence for my common ground here let's hear it bring back cubicles uh Andy, they're still around Not in a lot of places I know they're still around Are you not in like an open plan office? I thought you meant bathroom Oh no, sorry

Office cubicle, right, okay Sorry, I thought Toilet cubicle From the moment that I thought you were doing open plan shitting we've lost our sense of community it's the only way we can bond it's how the romans used to do a big trough you know in a square room oh that's still a cubicle i guess just a very friendly cubicle so okay um you want to bring back the office cubicle so you want a bit of isolation

yeah i actually i think open or plan offices really came in uh like just before i was like yeah because i'm thinking about my first job which was which was an office job when i was 18 and that was open plan office but it was also kind of touted as like oh we've got an open plan office yes makes me think it was it was like fresh yeah i think around them because i also got that as part of my first two jobs where they're like oh we've got this nice open plan office yeah but i'm actually like no i think the open plan office experiment i think we should roll that back i think cubicles are actually a pretty good thing because i can work with this a bit because i i really like the idea of having an office yes like i would like an office the thing is with an office

comes you know a bit of pedigree or vice versa so i think maybe for me that's a bit of escapism because i don't want to be in the open plan i want to i want to have an office i want to be special you want a bit of your own space as well yeah so i think would i be as excited to have that space if that was the norm i guess we we will never know until i get my office so yeah having a bit of space that's cut off i guess right now you've got and i think if we're trying to tackle some of the the social issues around this is that the big question at the moment about working from home is are people too isolated are people too lonely and if you say remove working from home for example everyone goes back into the office but it's all cubicles is that not a similar issue

well no i think that's why they've got rid of them but i think the thing is you're in the shared space, so you can go chat when you're making a coffee or whatever. Yeah, the water cooler. Yeah, but then you can go back somewhere and have a quiet time. I don't know about your job, but

I'll go into the office and then half the team at any one time will be on teams meetings. Yeah, I've had those jobs. So they've got things like, have you seen those little like one person pots yeah yeah i've had a few places where they've got yeah like um

it's usually the ones i've seen like two people where you can like go in and have like a like a one-to-one with a manager or something but they've got them where it's just a seat and a tray it's almost like a plane setup yeah but it's soundproofed yes yeah not solving a problem you don't but cubicles i mean how soundproof are they really there's enough of it it's like there's not someone like two feet away from you on a call yeah and i i know for a fact personally uh because i'm kind of on board for this i think when i'm when i'm trying to weigh it up my head i know that i'm more productive when i'm not around people immediately because i can be distracted so easy yeah if you start a conversation with me i will stop working yeah i i can't i can't not do

that if you talk to me really about anything i'll at least learn in a year and if it's mildly interesting i will just start talking so if you put me in a cubicle you kind of cut off that possibility but by the same merit if you get me to work from home i will crash in productivity i will not work i will i will just become so distracted because i'm at home yeah all my stuff is here that i relax with i can i can go on my phone the tv is there i can wander around there's food that i want to have i it's just immediately like i'm not switched into work mode so if i'm in an office i've got the isolation so i can't be distracted but also everyone else is working and i don't have all my fun stuff yeah i feel like at that point i will be more productive

so sheer yeah sheer productivity wise i think this is great for me this means i'll be a much better employee i will do better work it means you get a bit of space i get my own space you hot hot desking in an open plan office it's like so you just go in everything's the same yeah also hot desking i've hate hot desking and i also hate also people just end up sitting in their seat yeah they've got a designated seat it's just like just let them have that seat then yeah you you got a pseudo designated seat and then you come in one day and someone sat in it and it throws you out of whack yes it's like well this is my routine now i sit here but you are meant to be now i have to sit in the seat that no one wants to sit in for whatever reason it's near

the the office chatterbox or it's in the corner out the way of everything yeah or it's by the toilet in some cases or it's position so your screen is just visible to the whole office which i always like it's not even to like do stuff i just don't this is also part of it it's not even to do stuff the words of a guilty man if ever i heard them yeah but it's not yeah it's not even like i'm trying to like hide just browsing in there or something i just feel like when someone's like looking at my screen i just like it's just distracting or like i do get a weird bit of like shyness like if i'm ever there and i'm typing but i'm like sharing my screen with someone next to me i just freeze up yeah yeah i get that in like in jobs where i've had like you know say some of the

some of the exec team have come in they're like oh this person's gonna shadow you for the day from the exec team just get a feel of the job like how it looks day to day on the ground level i'm like yeah sure that's fine i'm pretty confident my job i think i do a good day's work let's give this a go and i just become completely fucking incompetent yeah i can't type i forget where everything is i'm clicking stuff weird like i just feel like everything i'm doing is wrong it's the same way like you know you pass the police on the street and it's like i've done something wrong yeah you get the thing and it's like why are you yeah it's like i haven't committed any crimes i'm not doing anything suspicious yeah they don't even have a reason to think i might have done something

yeah because i look like just a fairly average guy dressed fairly normally and you know i'm not looking too flash i'm not looking you know sort of too rugged that you know something's going on but i'm like the police are gonna they're coming for me yeah i've done something and it's the same when i'm i'm doing work in front of someone yeah it's it's a performance all of a sudden so if you get rid of that i do like the idea of people not looking at my screen because again i'm not trying to do stuff it doesn't have to be like tiny one person cubicles you could have a cubicle with like two or three three or four maybe but they're like the people would work together and collaborate if you're on like a team often yeah like if you're working on

a project together yeah then you know you have that team where you're all in constant communication you know if you're having to talk to someone fairly frequently yeah you can cut out the team side of stuff teams is good in that situation to like you know document stuff if you need to send a file or a reference number or something like that, fair enough. But I think having that dialogue is much better. Yeah, for solving stuff in person.

I'm applying that to everyone but me because I can be sat next to someone and instead of talking to them, I will send them a message on Teams. Because again, I know if I start talking to them in person, I will get derailed immediately and just start talking about other stuff.

I'll talk about the campaign for North Africa. i won't talk about work but i'll also i'll check people's in the office i'll check their like little teams thing and then talk to see if they're in a call because they might just be sitting there staring at your screen oh i hate the inverse of that where i'm on a call and someone just starts talking at me yeah and i'm like and sometimes yeah it's an honest mistake but if i'm if i'm talking if you can hear me speaking and i've got a headset on then just presume i'm not talking to myself loudly in like a dialogue as well like it's it's not just sort of like hmm yeah let's have a look at this what's what's going on here because i could be mistaken but when i'm like

yeah so what you need to do is this or that or i'm like asking questions or like can i take your date of birth i'm not fucking saying that to myself so stop talking to me i'm clearly doing work i'm speaking to a client a customer i'm doing something so if i can cut out that bring back the cubicle yeah and it's a nice you want people back in the office after work from home give them a little bit of space that can feel like their own yeah i want that i maybe it takes up more office space you know i guess there's that because it gets presented as like a modern workplace it's definitely like it takes up less what it's slightly less of a footprint it's a battery farm it's just crown them all in and even in the more generous office spaces i've

been in where it is open plan you have a fairly cramped space to work because it's also like you know if you watch like weirdly one of the examples i'm going to use but you know like office space or um wanted wanted an interesting but you know the part where it's like his life's so horrible because it's like he works in a cubicle. Yeah. If you just lit that room slightly nicer, that would be better than my office. Yeah, you know what? When

you say cubicle, is that what you picture? Kind of that vibe. And it's just I think a lot of it is just they get lit to show that they're like bleak. The two cubicles that come to mind for me... Because there's also one in the Matrix. Yeah, I guess that's

a different vibe. The two that come to mind for me are the Incredibles where Mr. Incredible's working as an insurance advisor. Yeah, when it gets used as a visual shorthand for a dead-end soulless job. I don't know why.

I think it's the visual of being boxed in, isn't it? Yeah, it does work cinematically, I guess. And the other one is Chandler from Friends. Does he not have an office for most of it? It's specifically the bit when he's smoking at work, and he's got a little drawer, and he's pulling out the

fan and he's got like an aerosol spray and he's got a breath sort of breath spray and he mixes them up and sprays the air freshener in his mouth those are examples of cubicles but Mr. Incredible's cubicle I mean he can fit in and that guy is

jacked I mean he's a superhero whose power is being really big and strong so if he can fit in there I would have so much room I'm a scrawny guy I would live in that office space so if I can have Mr. Incredible's cubicle and you know what fuck it his job as well because he's clearly getting paid well they have a lovely

house and being a superhero does not pay well being an insurance that's gonna pay well so i'll take mr incredible's job and his cubicle and if i can have those then i'm on board for this okay i can't i can't give you mr incredible's job i can give you i guess a world where cubicles are more accepted okay and with that i guess i can put in the legwork and i can become an insurance broker and become i guess the scourge of humanity there you go don't work in insurance kids that's the common ground what so that's fine that can't be your attitude towards insurance from everything i know about you you can't be fine with insurance what part of insurance right quick side common ground what's good about insurance you've never had it no sorry it's not even that you're fine

with it being like bought or sold or the the commerce of it you've just never actually had insurance i mean maybe i like had it when you had it for like a holiday so you've not even had the beneficial side of insurance all you know is the parasitic side and you're kind of okay with it let's just have sidestepped it like you're aware of the dangerous they're just not part of my life don't play dumb don't put on the blinders what the fuck man well you know what before we derail this and get rid of what we found as common ground i guess we'll have to cut it there because otherwise we're going to disagree and we can't have that

that can't be the end point and we need to go our separate ways, we both need a shower we both need a hydrate we both need to try and get a good night's sleep thanks for listening stay subtle, humble and brave you want to jump straight in, just stay subtle, humble and brave

and just leave just switch off and go but yeah, do that and we unfortunately will be here swearing our balls off in the deserts of our minds and bodies. We'll see you next time.

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