Episode Transcript
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0:48
Hello, listeners. Welcome back to Luke's
0:51
English Podcast. Here I am. It's
0:53
me, Luke, of course. You're
0:55
listening to my podcast. And
0:57
here I am doing the introduction to this episode.
1:00
I'm currently standing in the middle
1:02
of our living room slash kitchen
1:05
at home because I'm at home with
1:07
the baby today, looking after
1:09
him and trying to
1:11
do bits of work as
1:14
well, although that's very difficult because, you
1:16
know, there's a baby. And
1:19
that means that he needs lots of attention. Got
1:21
to change his nappy, got to feed him, got
1:23
to play with him, pick him up from time
1:26
to time, and just do all that stuff. But
1:29
I'm attempting to do work as well.
1:31
And I'm taking this opportunity
1:34
now to record the introduction to this episode
1:36
because he is, that's the baby,
1:40
my son is currently
1:41
strapped to my chest again and
1:45
is, I think, asleep. I can't actually see his
1:47
eyes, but I'm pretty sure he's
1:49
asleep. I've worked out this is the
1:51
only way. As I said, I
1:53
think maybe in the last episode or the one before
1:55
that, I've worked
1:57
out this is pretty much the only way.
1:59
We're
4:00
on the same wavelength, we
4:02
share a lot of the same references, we
4:04
understand each other quite closely.
4:07
When the two of us talk to each other, we
4:10
go off on different tangents
4:13
referencing films
4:15
and music and television programs.
4:18
Sometimes when we're at home with my parents, James
4:21
and I will kind of go off on a tangent
4:24
that my mum and dad don't really understand
4:26
or my wife, you know, they can't really follow
4:28
what we're talking about, but we know exactly
4:30
what we're talking about. We have all the same references
4:33
and we're on the same wavelength. Now
4:36
I hope that that means that our episodes
4:39
are kind of fun to listen to because
4:41
there's a flow, you know, because we
4:43
follow each other's thoughts and complement the
4:46
things that we say and we end up
4:48
in some funny, you know, we end up
4:50
talking about some funny things and stuff. I
4:54
hope that makes these episodes sort
4:57
of fun to listen to, but what
4:59
happens is whenever I record an episode
5:01
like this where we
5:04
talk about very specific things, we
5:07
end up referencing maybe
5:10
films, music, TV shows,
5:12
which for us are very familiar and clear
5:14
to us, but for you these things
5:16
might be very obscure. So
5:19
after recording, I always kind of, when
5:22
I listen back to the
5:24
episodes like this that I record, I kind
5:26
of think, oh my God, what on earth
5:28
am I learners of English around the world
5:31
going to make of this? I kind of think
5:33
hopefully the fact that it's a close
5:35
conversation between my
5:37
brother and me with humor
5:40
in it and stuff, that's going to make it engaging
5:43
and hopefully compelling and easy to listen
5:45
to and therefore good for your
5:47
English. But then on the other hand, I kind of think,
5:50
I just know from my experiences of working
5:53
with learners of English that it's
5:55
quite easy to lose you, you
5:58
know, it's quite easy to lose you. don't know exactly
6:01
you, specifically you, what your
6:03
reference points are, how familiar
6:06
you are with James
6:08
as a guest on this show. If you're a very long-term
6:10
listener and you're still listening then well
6:12
done, hopefully you aren't a skeleton with
6:14
headphones on. But if you're a long-term
6:16
listener then maybe you're really into
6:19
these episodes with James and you're
6:21
able to keep up with us and you sort of you understand
6:23
the rhythms and the reference points but if you
6:26
have started listening to this more recently
6:28
and you're less familiar with my conversations
6:31
with James then who knows, maybe
6:33
we're just going to completely lose you by talking
6:35
about the things we talk about. I
6:37
don't know. So those worries are
6:40
with me,
6:41
right?
6:42
But yesterday I was
6:44
at the British Council where I work, I was
6:47
just I was there in the evening for an event
6:50
and I met a Lepster, I
6:52
met a listener of this podcast.
6:54
He came up to me and he
6:56
felt compelled to talk to me because
6:59
he loves listening to this show which
7:02
was obviously very nice
7:04
to hear but he came up and we
7:06
talked and stuff and it was really nice to meet him
7:09
and he said to me, Luke your episodes are fantastic.
7:12
Your episodes are fantastic and
7:14
really helpful for my English. Thank you so much.
7:17
And there's me in my head thinking, oh
7:20
no sometimes I wonder if I'm losing everyone
7:23
with these rambling conversations
7:26
that reference things that people,
7:30
other people might not understand. Here's me thinking
7:32
that and then this guy, I don't
7:34
remember his name, sorry if you're listening, I didn't catch your
7:36
name but anyway he's
7:38
there saying your episodes are fantastic, they really
7:40
help and I couldn't
7:43
help saying to him but really what about
7:45
what about those very specific
7:47
episodes or those episodes where for
7:49
example I'm talking to my brother
7:52
and we talk about all these films
7:54
and TV shows or we we're
7:56
quoting lines from Alan
7:58
Partridge or from
9:39
punk
10:01
Manchester music scene. Now
10:04
again, going back to the thing about the
10:06
reference points that James and I both
10:09
know about, those things
10:13
may seem a little bit obscure to
10:15
you. I don't know what your context is and
10:17
how much you know about, for example, British popular
10:20
culture or generally popular
10:22
culture from the English-speaking world or
10:25
from the world. I don't know if it's
10:27
necessary to say the English-speaking world. I don't know what your
10:29
reference points are. Those
10:31
things might seem very obscure to you, but
10:34
for us, for James and me, these are very kind
10:36
of relevant
10:37
parts
10:39
of our shared culture that
10:41
we grew up in and that we
10:43
use a lot that we
10:46
reference when we communicate. This is the
10:48
world that James and I inhabit.
10:52
Certainly what we want to do is to bring
10:54
you into that world and teach
10:57
you about these things and
11:00
help you learn English in the process. That's
11:02
kind of the idea. A
11:04
book that James read, there's also
11:06
the subject of aliens. Have
11:11
aliens arrived on Earth? Because
11:14
you may have seen in the news or on social
11:16
media, was it just a few months
11:19
ago, there was a kind of congressional
11:22
committee hearing in the United
11:24
States? Is that right? Yeah,
11:26
so there was a congressional hearing about
11:30
UFOs. Some
11:32
former military officials made
11:35
some strange claims
11:38
about UFOs
11:41
under oath, so they lifted
11:44
their hand and swore to tell
11:46
the truth, the whole truth and nothing but
11:48
the truth. So this
11:50
is under legal oath, they
11:52
came and they made these statements about
11:54
how maybe they've seen aliens
11:57
or maybe they've been contacted by
11:59
UFOs. It was very strange and
12:02
it certainly set a lot of people
12:04
speculating about whether they were true,
12:07
in fact, even though they were saying
12:09
these things under oath, people were
12:12
speculating about whether they were true, people
12:14
were speculating about whether, for example,
12:16
the US does have access
12:18
to UFO technology and
12:20
all that sort of stuff. So what the hell is going
12:22
on there? What's all that about? So that's
12:25
one of the subjects that we talk about. That
12:27
one actually comes up near the
12:29
end of the conversation, so if you're particularly interested
12:32
in the alien stuff, you'll have to just keep listening
12:35
to the other bits. There's
12:38
also the question of chat
12:40
GPT, of course. I mean, it's something that's
12:42
on my mind and lots of people's minds
12:45
at the moment, but the question I had for
12:47
James was this. When you
12:49
use chat GPT, how polite
12:51
are you with it? Do you always say please
12:54
and thank you with chat GPT? And
12:57
why or why not? And
12:59
this leads to a conversation about AI
13:01
in general and, frankly,
13:04
whether it's going to kill us all or
13:07
not and how and why
13:09
we have a conversation, a discussion
13:12
about that, which is quite serious,
13:14
I suppose. And then
13:16
also I asked James about film
13:19
and TV quotes which
13:22
often come into our heads. Now
13:25
that might seem a bit strange and to be honest, this
13:27
part of the conversation, the bit about film
13:29
and TV quotes, this is probably
13:31
the most obscure part that,
13:34
to be honest, although I enjoyed
13:36
that part of the conversation with James very much,
13:38
I was concerned that that would be the bit
13:41
that could lose you. And
13:43
so when we get to that section, I
13:45
will be coming into
13:47
the podcast interrupting sometimes in order
13:50
to explain the films
13:52
we're talking about or the TV shows we're
13:55
talking about or the little cultural reference points.
13:58
So it's going to be quite a long episode. Because
14:00
the conversation was quite long but also I
14:02
had to I have to step in as you're here and
14:05
explain little bits and pieces But hopefully
14:07
like the Lepster that I met
14:09
yesterday, hopefully you'll appreciate those things
14:12
Okay. So here we go then here
14:15
is a rambling conversation with James in
14:18
which we reference films music
14:21
bands weird issues
14:23
going on in the world and more
14:27
Okay, life the universe and everything
14:30
the important things the trivial things It's
14:33
all here for you. That's
14:36
it for this introduction. Let's get started. Let's
14:38
talk to James. He was in London I
14:40
was in Paris.
14:42
Here we go Hello
14:48
James welcome back on to Luke's
14:50
English podcast. Hello An
14:53
interesting way to say hello there in
14:55
the sort of posh way sort of a posh.
14:57
Hello. Yeah. Hello James
15:01
yes, I thought that for this
15:03
episode that we would have no specific topic
15:05
this time Okay, often on
15:07
the podcast we choose a specific thing,
15:10
you know often a like a musical
15:12
thing like about a band or something Yeah,
15:14
last time we talked about ambient music this
15:16
time I thought no specific topic, but
15:18
I wanted to know how that makes you feel How
15:20
does it make you feel to be on the show
15:23
with no particular plan or
15:25
idea of what we're gonna talk about? Mmm interested
15:28
excited I
15:30
Can't think of the right words slightly
15:32
nervous Mm-hmm. The
15:34
wheels are on know that the safety wheels
15:36
are off. What do they call it? The stabilizers are off stabilizers
15:39
on when you're a kid learning to ride a bike You have
15:41
stabilizers on the back and then at one point Your
15:45
dad probably takes them off and
15:47
then were we're riding without stabilizers.
15:49
You feel all nervous because you might crash Yeah,
15:53
yeah, the the
15:55
the safety rail is
15:57
disengaged whatever that is
15:59
That's right. We're,
16:05
I don't know, I've run out of really
16:07
bad metaphors so yeah. Often
16:09
when we talk about doing a podcast together you always
16:11
say we should do something about this
16:13
or we should do, you know, you always name
16:16
specific kind of things that we should do
16:18
an episode about. And
16:20
I understand your reasons for that. But
16:23
can you tell me your reasons for that again even
16:25
though I understand them?
16:27
Why do you always like to do a specific thing?
16:30
Probably because I used to write articles
16:32
for a magazine and I quite enjoy a deep
16:35
dive so to speak. And
16:38
I kind of have subjects I'm obsessed about that
16:40
no one else will talk to me about so it's
16:43
just an excuse to kind of go on and on about
16:46
something that I find really interesting that probably no one
16:48
else does.
16:49
Yeah and I think there's
16:53
an appeal for that sort of thing with my audience. Like
16:55
they've probably come to expect if you're
16:57
on the show that we're going to do a deep dive
16:59
into some classic
17:02
bit of British music and popular
17:04
culture. I mean I wanted to do an episode
17:06
about the film Blow Up. You
17:08
wanted to do a whole episode just about this movie
17:12
from the 60s. Your 60s
17:14
film called Blow Up because I'm still
17:16
kind of struggling to understand it myself and I find
17:18
by the process of discussing and analyzing
17:21
a subject you can create some deeper meaning
17:24
within yourself and the world. So the
17:26
thing from my point of view thinking about
17:28
my audience is what would
17:30
be the takeaway value for my listeners,
17:32
my audience of learners
17:35
of English around the world.
17:40
What's their takeaway James from
17:42
an episode about a film from the 60s? Good
17:46
question. Probably why you decided
17:48
not to go with that idea. None
17:52
really. It takes out in my game some deeper
17:54
insight into life itself maybe. Maybe
17:56
not. If you tunnel down, if you drill
17:59
down into a...
17:59
specific topic, even
18:02
an obscure
18:03
film from the 1960s, arguably
18:06
not that obscure, but it depends on who
18:08
you are. Drilling down into
18:10
something specific, yeah, you can ultimately drill
18:13
deep into the human
18:15
condition and what it really means. Universal. Universal
18:19
truths about the human condition, exactly.
18:21
I think. And maybe
18:24
if all your listeners go out and find a copy of Blow
18:26
Up, watch it in preparation for next time.
18:29
So everyone will be
18:31
prepared and they'll have watched the film and we can
18:33
talk about it in depth for about four hours.
18:36
Do you think that's going to be a... How
18:39
many people will A,
18:41
do that and B, enjoy the
18:44
film?
18:44
Three and
18:47
zero. Because
18:49
to be honest, I've seen it a few times. I didn't enjoy
18:51
it the first time I saw it because he's... Why
18:54
are you recommending it to everyone? Because it's a brilliant
18:56
film. And it's one of those films you
18:58
have to watch like four times and then you go,
19:01
oh, I get, oh, oh, oh,
19:04
oh, right, right, right. If
19:06
that's what you want, listeners, if you want to go, oh, oh,
19:09
oh, oh, oh, right, right, right,
19:11
right. If that's what you're looking
19:14
for, then go out and get yourself a DVD
19:17
or even better, a VHS. No, not a VHS.
19:19
Get a DVD or possibly
19:21
Blu-ray copy or you can
19:23
stream it probably somewhere of the film Blow
19:26
Up, directed by...
19:29
Blow Up, directed... And
19:32
so on. An Italian guy and the point
19:34
is it's kind of a 60s film, which is... It
19:36
doesn't paint the 60s to be that nice.
19:39
It's kind of a bit of a take down of the 60s
19:41
culture, I think. And the main character
19:43
is quite an unpleasant character. So
19:45
when you first see, you just think, well, these are just
19:48
not very nice people and this is not very
19:50
nice film. And it sounds
19:52
wonderful. You're really selling it.
19:59
a critique and it's at
20:02
the heart of it is a great mystery.
20:04
I actually personally love films
20:07
like this. Maybe I shouldn't
20:09
second-guess my audience. There's
20:11
me going, I don't think my audience is going to be into that.
20:14
Meanwhile, I'm into that.
20:16
I think it's fascinating. I haven't seen the film.
20:18
I've seen some clips from it. And it's always
20:20
interesting to kind of like, I think
20:22
it's quite an authentic view
20:25
of what London, swinging
20:27
London was like in the 1960s. And
20:29
that's, you know, it's always fascinating to take a little
20:31
trip back in time to see
20:34
how things used to be. Michael
20:36
Angelo Antioni. That's
20:38
him. Antony, Antony,
20:41
Michael Angelo Antony directed
20:43
it. And because he's an outsider to the
20:45
scene, he has a kind of a more cold-eyed
20:48
view. If cold-eyed, is that a word? Less
20:51
enamoured with the whole culture
20:54
and possibly more, you
20:56
know, you can see more when you're not sort of part
20:59
of it so much. Right. A bit
21:01
more objectivity. A bit more objective view.
21:03
And doesn't necessarily come
21:05
out of it that well, the whole culture.
21:08
Yeah. Because it's interesting because in
21:10
the UK, we probably romanticized
21:14
that period in
21:16
our sort of recent history. Yeah,
21:19
the 1960s, it was like, cool. It
21:21
was all about London. We were the tastemakers.
21:24
All the popular culture was coming out of London.
21:26
It was the Beatles. It was the Rolling Stones. It was
21:28
Mary Quant. And it was all really cool and groovy
21:31
and hip. And weren't we brilliant? Actually,
21:33
if you look at it with a cold eye,
21:35
as you said, maybe it wasn't such
21:37
a wonderful time. And there were all sorts of, what's
21:40
the word for it? There was kinds of lots of sexism
21:42
and questionable behaviour going on under
21:45
the guise of like liberation,
21:49
liberation. Yeah. And and
21:53
permissiveness. Yeah. Stuff like that.
21:56
Mm hmm. So let's move on. We're not going to talk about
21:58
that. We have no specific. topic this
22:00
time then we talk about something very specific
22:02
for 10 minutes. Basically, yeah, I thought
22:04
that by having no specific focus
22:07
we could maybe
22:10
not alienate people, you know, because
22:13
I don't want to turn anyone into an alien, but
22:16
I don't want to alienate people. So let's
22:18
just have a conversation that sort of evolves
22:21
naturally as it moves forward. The
22:23
evolved doesn't revolve. Yeah,
22:26
an evolutionary rather than revolutionary
22:29
conversation. Okay. So
22:32
I have actually got some questions. I've got a kind of
22:34
rough outline, but it anyway. So
22:37
do you remember the nickname that we came up for
22:39
ourselves on this
22:41
podcast before?
22:43
The Glibb Brothers? The Glibb Brothers,
22:45
yeah. Do you want to explain that? Because again,
22:47
there's another little joke that a
22:49
lot of people won't understand except maybe
22:51
one person, one listener called Pierre,
22:54
who is fond of the nickname, but
22:56
I don't know if it's really stuck with anyone else because
22:58
no one else has ever mentioned it. But here we are again,
23:01
folks, the Glibb Brothers in action. Can
23:03
we explain that? That's going to be a joke, a
23:05
joke name, isn't it? The Bee
23:08
Gees are the Glibb Brothers. Are the Gibb Brothers,
23:10
sorry, the Gibb Brothers. Bee Gees, Barry,
23:12
Thingy and Thingy, the Gibb Brothers. We
23:14
know. Oh, God, if I can just think
23:17
clearly, I'll be able to tell
23:19
you their names. Amazing harmonies
23:21
in the Bee Gees. Barry, Morris
23:24
and Robin, of course. That's it. The
23:27
Gibb Brothers who have three
23:29
brothers in sort of popular
23:31
music and rock, who have an amazing vocal
23:34
style of harmonising. They
23:38
were famous for the music from the
23:41
John Travolta film, Saturday Night Fever. Down,
23:45
down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down. Well,
23:47
you can tell by the way I use my walk.
23:50
I'm a woman's man. No time to
23:52
talk. You're welcome, everyone. But there's a
23:54
lot more to them than that. They
23:57
predate that. They had a few hits in the 60s. as
24:00
well and then they kind of went quiet and then came back
24:02
for the 70s. I think they went so
24:04
low, I think one of them went so low and they kind of missed
24:06
each other and there was a bit of an ego trip
24:08
going on and then they reunited
24:11
and had another wave of success.
24:14
Yeah I actually think they're a really great
24:18
group. There's only one of them left
24:20
now, did you know that? No I didn't know
24:22
that. Yeah so let's
24:25
see when so the only the one
24:27
that's left is Barry the sort of probably
24:29
the most famous one. The one with the hair.
24:31
The one with the hair and the big teeth.
24:33
Although they've all got sort
24:36
of interesting features, well they all had but
24:38
Barry was the most famous one
24:41
I guess. Then there's Robin who in
24:43
the 60s was more more of the lead
24:45
vocalist. Yeah. And then there's
24:47
the third one that people often sort of forget
24:49
and that's Morris. He was the kind of
24:51
the glue that held them together, the funny one
24:53
I believe. Yeah and I think
24:55
he also was the secret weapon. There's
24:58
like every band, I've come up with this theory that
25:00
every band has got a secret weapon meaning
25:02
a member of the group who quietly
25:06
or perhaps the one who's not quite as obvious as the
25:08
others but they are really
25:10
important and bring a whole other
25:12
dimension to the group. So in the
25:15
Bee Gees, I think it's Morris, he played
25:17
the keyboards and he although
25:19
he didn't have the most instantly recognizable
25:21
voice, I think he was the glue that held those three-part
25:24
harmonies together or something. So
25:26
he was their secret weapon. He might
25:28
have been a songwriter too I think but in
25:32
other bands there are secret weapons as well. Can
25:34
you think of any? Who would be the secret weapon in
25:37
say the Rolling Stones? The Rolling Stones.
25:40
Secret weapon Charlie Watts for
25:43
sure. Yeah fair enough. Fair enough. Because you
25:45
think Rolling Stones the most obvious one. So
25:47
the secret weapon is the member of the band who's not
25:50
the really obvious one,
25:52
the one that people instantly think
25:54
of but they're the one that still
25:56
without them it just
25:59
wouldn't be the same. Although having said that,
26:01
I did see the Rolling Stones last year without
26:03
Charlie Watts and they were amazing.
26:06
They were probably playing Charlie's... Yeah, their
26:08
new drummer, I think his name's Steve Jones. No,
26:11
it's Steve Jordan. The new drummer for the Rolling
26:13
Stones is Steve Jordan. Steve
26:15
Jones
26:16
was the guitarist in the Sex Pistols. I'm getting
26:18
my rock stars mixed up.
26:20
Please forgive me. Definitely was
26:22
doing a bit of a Charlie Watts impression on
26:24
a lot of those songs. So he was playing Charlie's parts
26:27
very, very well. What about the Sex Pistols?
26:30
Who would be the secret weapon in that? I
26:33
actually think it's Steve Jones.
26:35
He's not the secret weapon. No? He's
26:39
well known to be the powerhouse. I think
26:41
it would either be Glenn Matlock, who secretly
26:43
wrote, not secretly, but wrote a lot of
26:45
the songs. Yeah. Or
26:47
even Paul Cook, the drummer,
26:50
who's an amazing... He's probably one
26:52
of my favorite drummers. Yeah. He
26:54
never overplays... I mean, he's just
26:57
bloody good. Ruddy good drummer.
27:00
I think, I don't know, would it be fair to say
27:02
Glenn Matlock, because he brought a certain
27:04
kind of... Although he wasn't as cool as the others
27:06
at all, and they eventually
27:09
chucked him out because he was annoying, and
27:11
they went for Sid Vicious, who had the image.
27:15
Did he not bring a certain musicality that
27:17
actually helped the group? Yeah, he
27:19
wrote a lot of the
27:20
best songs, really. And
27:23
I think his musicality was tempered by Steve
27:26
Jones, who kind of simplified all his riffs. But without
27:30
Glenn's kind of initial input, they wouldn't
27:32
have had that kind of poppy
27:34
edge that you need, or sort of melodic edge. Yeah.
27:37
Other bands, The Who. It's
27:39
difficult with The Who, because the thing about The Who
27:42
is that they're four
27:44
guys, and they're all playing lead.
27:47
They all think that they are the star
27:49
of the show, especially
27:53
Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey,
27:55
and Keith Moon. So surely
27:57
the secret weapon is the bass player, John Entwistle.
27:59
Who looked so bored most of
28:02
the time, looked like he'd rather be doing anything else.
28:04
And yet he definitely
28:07
held the band together, especially when
28:09
Keith was in the group. Because
28:12
Keith, the drummer, would be doing this
28:14
crazy stuff, like
28:17
really all over the place, very musical,
28:19
really supporting the songs, but kind
28:21
of very messy. And John
28:24
Entwistle, the bass player, was really holding
28:26
everything together and he was like the rhythm and the
28:28
beat and also provided a
28:31
lot of support to Pete,
28:33
the guitarist. He kind of laid down a
28:35
lot of, I don't know how to say it really, filled
28:37
the sound a lot with his bass
28:40
parts. And he did vocals as well. He did
28:42
high pitched falsetto backing
28:45
vocals too and wrote some songs and
28:48
did some arrangements. So he's definitely
28:50
the secret weapon in The Who. Success
28:53
Story is one of my favourites.
28:55
And that's by him. That's by him, yeah.
28:57
And it's a really cynical take on life as
28:59
a rock star, I suppose.
29:02
Yeah. You can check that out. It's
29:04
on, it's available on the internet. We
29:07
got a bit distracted, the Glib brothers,
29:09
the Gib brothers. The Glib brothers. So,
29:11
the joke about the, yeah, go
29:14
on, Glib means, yeah. Glib just means silly,
29:16
flippant, not paying too much
29:19
respect to something. Not being
29:21
very serious, maybe just talking
29:23
sort of without being too thoughtful, which
29:26
is not entirely, you know, we're fairly
29:28
thoughtful, but maybe we're just a bit silly
29:30
and just having a bit of a laugh most of the time.
29:34
Anyway, let's talk about something. Anyway,
29:36
here we are, the Glib brothers. Now, I was
29:38
thinking of ideas for this episode. It still sounds
29:41
like we're in the introduction, but we're not. So
29:43
I had a list of ideas for what
29:45
to call this episode or the
29:47
sort of structure of the episode. You can
29:50
tell me what you think. Here's the list, all right? Here we
29:52
go. Toilet roll, bananas. Oh
29:55
no, that's my shopping list. Ha ha.
29:59
I could do an episode. on toilet roll and bananas no
30:01
problem. Yeah me too.
30:04
Here are the things I thought of on the Metro this
30:07
morning. This is a bit like Alan Partridge pitching
30:09
TV show ideas to Tony Hayes.
30:12
But here we go. So we've got question tennis. That's
30:16
one idea. Another idea is this. Unfiltered,
30:19
unashamed and unprepared.
30:21
Another idea. Third
30:24
one is this. Topic tombola.
30:27
Topic tombola. It's quite
30:29
hard to say. Quite like that. And then the
30:31
fourth one is the talking test. The
30:33
talking test.
30:35
Can you talk? Yes.
30:37
You can? You pass the test. Actually I've got
30:41
no idea what the talking test involves. I just
30:43
quite liked the name of it. I don't know what it would be.
30:45
That's just a title. That's just a title
30:48
yeah. Can I interrupt while you still have a
30:50
few listeners left? I've
30:52
got an album coming out. You've got an album
30:54
coming out. Really. Like a music
30:57
album. An actual proper album. Not
30:59
self released on an actual proper frickin
31:01
label. A label, an already
31:04
established label. That's it. You're
31:06
a signed artist on
31:08
an actual record label. Nothing's been signed
31:11
and
31:13
yeah but apart from that it's a one album situation.
31:20
By my alias which I'm still not
31:22
sure I like the name but it's Glitech Audio.
31:25
Glitech
31:25
Audio. This is
31:27
your new
31:28
alias. Your artist
31:30
name. Because I tell you why because James
31:33
Thompson there's about a million of them. Jim
31:35
Thompson there's about another million of them. The most
31:37
prominent of which is a very right wing Trump supporting
31:40
country music singer. So
31:43
I don't really want to be confused with them and you know
31:45
if you go on discogs there's like a number
31:47
next to the title next to the artist name
31:49
and with Jim Thompson there's
31:51
about 36 of them. There's about 36
31:53
years. I couldn't be my name. I
31:56
had to think of a name and the Glitech Audio
31:59
is slightly based on. Alan Moore's snake
32:01
god Glycon, who
32:04
is a Roman puppet
32:07
god, which was actually a satire
32:10
on the culture of the pantheon of gods,
32:12
I believe, by some
32:15
Roman satirist who invented a god which
32:17
was basically ludicrous. So
32:20
instead of taking Alan Moore's
32:22
basic point, which is you should find your own
32:24
god, I just stole his, and
32:27
just renamed it slightly, added the
32:29
word tick at the end with a K.
32:32
Anyway, we're going off on one. So
32:34
that was all I wanted to say is called mood selector,
32:36
which is a bad pun about the function
32:39
mode selector. What's
32:41
mode selector then? It's the selector of modes
32:43
on a machine of some sort. So
32:45
you got like different modes in the right,
32:47
but not mode selector folks, it's mood
32:50
selector. So you can select
32:52
which mood, what moods are available
32:55
in this? What's the selection of moods that's
32:57
available?
32:58
Happy, sad,
33:04
maybe sleepy. Is that a mood, a sleepier
33:07
mood?
33:08
I don't know. I think that counts as an it's
33:10
not an emotional state, is it? It's not nostalgic.
33:13
Is that a mood? Nostalgic? Yeah, I'd
33:15
say that's mood. I mean, nostalgic, excited,
33:19
ecstatic. Yeah.
33:22
So those are a few of the moods available on
33:24
my album, which is coming out soon on Touch
33:27
Revolutions.
33:28
What Touch Revolutions? Touched Revolutions.
33:32
Touched Revolutions. Touched
33:34
Revolutions. The subsidiary of Touched Music.
33:38
Wait, touched music or touched
33:40
music? Touched with a D. Touched.
33:42
Not touched with a T, touched with a D.
33:45
No, not douche. T-O-U-C-H-E-D Revolutions.
33:53
These are revolutions which have been touched. Touched
33:55
in some way. Okay. The
33:58
subsidiary, subsidiary have touched music. music,
34:00
so it's Touched Revolutions, which is a sub-label.
34:03
Touch Revolutions
34:05
does make sense for DJing
34:07
though, because that's what happens in DJing,
34:11
isn't it? They touch the
34:13
record and stop revolving at a certain speed.
34:16
Records go around, they revolve, and
34:18
you touch them to slow
34:21
them down or speed them up. That's what DJing
34:23
is, it's basically Touched Revolutions. Well,
34:26
how very applicable. I'm really
34:29
chuffed, it's kind of a life goal, you know, the stuff about life
34:31
goals and all the bucket lists, I hate that word,
34:33
bucket list, before you kick the bucket. Things to do before
34:35
you die. As if you can do anything
34:37
after you die. Yeah. So
34:39
here are the things I want to do before I die, and here are the things
34:42
I want to do after I die. Mmm.
34:44
You know, silly, isn't it? So it's one of those.
34:47
Okay, a bucket list, you're
34:50
having a record released on a label,
34:52
again, it's called Mood Selector
34:54
by Glytech Audio. What
34:57
kind of music have you gone for? It's
34:59
broadly speaking techno.
35:01
Techno, broadly speaking techno. Broadly
35:04
speaking techno, which is a genre I've invented.
35:07
No, there's techno, there's like
35:10
ambient techno, there's broadly speaking techno.
35:13
We're being glib again. It's a bit
35:15
of electro, a bit of
35:17
techno, a bit of maybe
35:20
a bit of acid house. A
35:23
bit of ambient alkaline
35:26
house.
35:27
Mmm, interesting. Acid
35:30
apartment.
35:32
Acid indigestion.
35:35
Acid tent. So
35:38
yeah, look out for it in all good record shops and
35:40
some bad ones as well. No,
35:43
I think it's probably only going to be available online, actually. I
35:45
don't know if any record shops stock it, but my
35:47
mate who owns a record shop could possibly order
35:49
some in, so I'm going to ask him about that. Okay.
35:53
And it's only on CD. Uhhhh. Only
35:55
on CD? Okay, you're really going for the hipster market
35:58
with this. Well, I'm online. But
36:00
vinyl is the picture, I'm afraid, it's just
36:03
too damn expensive. Okay.
36:05
So what people can buy it for, they
36:07
can stream it. It'll be streamable. It'll be streamable.
36:09
In fact, you can stream some of my
36:12
pre-existing stuff already under that name, Glidek
36:14
audio on Spotify and YouTube
36:16
and all that. Please do. Cause no one
36:18
has, I haven't advertised it. I haven't done any marketing.
36:21
So my stuff is just sat there unlistened at
36:23
the moment. So everyone, um,
36:26
and by everyone, I mean those people who are
36:28
interested in this kind of thing, um, which
36:30
obviously is all of you. Right. Um,
36:33
just Google Glidek audio G L
36:36
Y T E K audio.
36:39
And you'll find, uh, James's
36:41
stuff, his musical stuff. I
36:43
mean, not just all of his stuff, but
36:45
you'll find his music. Yeah. The self-release stuff is out at
36:47
the moment, which doesn't really count cause anyone can self release,
36:50
but this one is on an actual label.
36:52
I can't believe it.
36:53
Okay. Brilliant. Brilliant. Well done.
36:56
Oh,
36:56
you
36:58
can, you can play a bit now if you want to play
37:00
an exclusive. Oh, edit it in later.
37:03
I'll edit that in. I'll pipe that in later
37:05
somehow. Okay. So this is
37:07
me piping in a clip
37:10
of James's forthcoming
37:13
musical release on
37:15
touched revolution records,
37:18
Glidek audio with mood
37:20
selector. It's techno broadly speaking,
37:23
broadly speaking, techno, Glidek
37:25
audio mood selector. I'll let you guess
37:28
which mood this is.
37:31
Uh, here's a few seconds of it. Here
37:33
we go. So
37:50
you see broadly speaking techno. Um,
37:53
so what mood do you think that is? Here's
37:55
a set of possible moods that
37:58
you could select. that.
38:01
Not that that's what you have to do when you listen to the album,
38:03
it's just music. But anyway,
38:06
it could be anger, sadness, depression,
38:09
happiness, fear, anxiety,
38:12
calmness, frustration, excitement,
38:18
annoyance, disgust, envy,
38:21
loneliness, optimism, gloom,
38:25
boredom, hostility, cheerfulness,
38:28
hopefulness, disappointment, worry,
38:31
shame, joy or
38:34
just feeling nervous. Which
38:36
mood is it? It's
38:52
all of those moods, isn't it? It's just all the
38:54
moods, but just in the future. It's
38:57
like you're on public transport in the future,
38:59
like kind of far into the future, where
39:02
everything is really clean and efficient
39:04
and everything's run by AI. And
39:07
it's all public transport, there's no private
39:10
transport anymore. And it's just
39:12
this music. And it's all
39:14
of the moods, all at the same time,
39:16
you just have to pick one. Okay.
39:19
All right, that's a flavour of
39:21
James' album, Mood
39:23
Selector
39:24
by Glitech Audio on Touched
39:27
Revolution, or is it Touched Revolutions
39:29
Records? I don't know, but it'll
39:31
be available soon.
39:34
Yes. Okay,
39:35
let's get back to the conversation. Sorry,
39:40
I just wanted to get that in before, you know, because I know what
39:42
the drop off is like on... Sorry,
39:47
was that... So James now, listeners,
39:49
James is talking about drop off, which
39:51
means... The amount
39:53
of people that start watching slash listening to something, the
39:56
people that end, get to the end. As
39:58
the episode progresses, more and
40:01
more people drop off, it's just natural. It's
40:03
horrible. I
40:04
hate it. I expect that
40:06
every single person who clicks play listens
40:09
all the way to the end of the episode even if they take
40:12
two or three attempts to do it. This is what I expect
40:15
from my people. But obviously
40:18
in reality this is not what happens. And
40:21
if I go into the
40:23
stats or data or
40:25
dashboard or whatever for my
40:28
podcasts on different platforms, some
40:30
of those platforms will show me audience retention,
40:33
for example YouTube. And yeah,
40:36
it's never a pleasing thing to look at
40:39
because normally the audience
40:42
drop off. It looks like the first half of a skateboard
40:44
ramp.
40:47
You know, the first half of a skateboard ramp
40:49
where it's kind of almost vertical
40:51
from the moment the episode begins and
40:53
it gradually plateaus
40:56
at quite a low level. So
40:59
you end up with maybe 15%
41:01
of the people who clicked
41:03
play get to the end. And
41:06
of that 15% I don't know how many
41:08
of them are actually still conscious. It's
41:12
a vert ramp, a very big vert ramp with about
41:15
two metres of vert basically, isn't it? No,
41:17
that's a bit harsh. Yeah,
41:20
maybe. I'm the same. I
41:22
have some stuff on YouTube and you go, oh wow,
41:24
most people listen to two seconds. Yeah,
41:27
but that's, you know, I don't want to...
41:31
It's the same for everyone. It's the same for every team. It's
41:33
the same for every everyone. When
41:35
you're clicking around online, you know,
41:37
everyone's got a short attention span and quite often you think,
41:39
oh, I haven't got time for this now or
41:42
I'll just click around, not quite what I'm looking for
41:44
and blah, blah, blah. And you just click around for a while, don't
41:46
you? Yeah, yeah, that's right.
41:49
I mean, I never listen to stuff all the way through. I've
41:51
got such short attention span, I skip to the middle and
41:53
then I, you know... It's the same
41:55
for everyone. Name someone, name
41:57
just someone that everyone thinks is fascinating.
42:00
or something that everyone thinks is completely fascinating. Some
42:02
like video where it's the
42:06
most respected scientist
42:08
or religious leader or whatever saying
42:10
I have the answer to life and in this episode
42:13
I'm going to talk all about it. If
42:15
that person checks their dashboard
42:19
on YouTube and looks at audience retention
42:21
for that episode which promises to give the answer
42:24
to life, the universe and everything, I promise you that
42:26
video has also got the skateboard
42:28
ramp of audience retention as
42:30
well. It's almost like this is why those terrible clickbait
42:35
videos always say
42:38
at the beginning wait for the end or
42:41
I talk to James Thompson about nothing
42:44
and you won't believe what we
42:46
talked about at the end. There's
42:48
always some manipulative thing like
42:50
that. Well they start with a very
42:53
eye-catching sound
42:55
bite at the beginning and the hope to keep you going for more
42:57
than the first 10 seconds. You start
43:00
with the best bit, you cut in the best bit.
43:02
I need to get a clip of you saying and
43:06
that was the moment that
43:08
Queen Elizabeth invited me.
43:11
Now that's the moment that Princess Diana invited
43:13
me into her bedroom and I knocked on
43:16
the door and the door opened and
43:18
Princess Diana turned round
43:20
and
43:21
that's where the edit ends.
43:24
Hello folks today I'm talking to James Thompson
43:27
who in 1987 was invited to meet the
43:31
Royal Family and he got a
43:33
little bit more than he bargained for.
43:36
That sounds like what's his name?
43:38
Diary of a CEO? Diary
43:40
of a CEO yeah.
43:42
He's such a tosser. I saw one of
43:44
his like I earn a million pounds from this podcast.
43:46
It's like well fucking yippee doo. I
43:49
don't. It's
43:52
like, well you're talking about
43:55
Diary of a CEO which is a famous
43:58
and very successful podcast run by... by
44:00
one of the dragons from Dragons Den now. I mean, he's
44:02
quite engaging, which is probably why it's so successful,
44:05
but he's very annoying at the same time. He
44:07
manages to get, what's amazing for
44:09
me is that he manages to get celebrities who are really
44:11
successful to go on and talk
44:13
about their deepest, darkest moments
44:17
in their lives. And he always tries to make them cry.
44:19
I don't know how he does that. Does he say that to them before they
44:22
go in the room? Does he say, look, I'm going to interview
44:24
you, but I do expect
44:26
you to take us into
44:29
the darkest part of your
44:31
soul and admit to whatever
44:34
perversion you've got or whatever
44:36
weakness you have. I want to talk about that
44:39
in as much detail as possible. If you
44:41
don't do that, this isn't going to happen. You're not
44:43
going to be on the podcast. And the celebrities are
44:45
like, yeah, sure. I'd love to talk to you about my eating
44:48
disorder or about the time when my
44:50
left arm nearly fell off. I
44:54
feel like his goal is to make people cry.
44:56
And I feel like he's always trying
44:58
to tip people over the edge into making them cry. And I
45:00
don't think anyone actually has yet, but I feel like
45:04
he really tries. He really tries.
45:06
They must have done. There was one with Mel
45:09
C, the Spice Girl. Right.
45:11
Mel C. And he
45:13
spends maybe five minutes at the beginning. I totally
45:16
understand as a podcast
45:18
myself, he spends five
45:20
minutes at the beginning explaining why the audio quality
45:22
was bad. And he was clearly
45:24
like really, really gutted that Mel
45:27
C's microphone wasn't switched on. Not
45:30
for the first time in the Spice Girls. I
45:34
think he managed to make her cry or she
45:36
admitted to some really, you
45:38
know, she gave away some really dark
45:40
personal secrets and kind
45:43
of was very, very vulnerable
45:45
on the podcast. But her
45:47
mic wasn't switched on. And I think he was
45:49
devastated because he'd got something really
45:52
good from her. And he managed
45:54
to use like the microphone
45:56
from the camera on the other side
45:58
of the room. And they'd like done.
45:59
lots of audio trickery to improve the
46:02
sound. But I think he
46:04
got Mel, he may have got Mel C to cry.
46:06
We're
46:09
joking, I mean
46:11
I do actually watch some of those interviews
46:14
and I find them fascinating and there's
46:16
something compelling about how they just sit in
46:18
his kitchen, in his very expensive looking
46:21
kitchen and he doesn't seem
46:23
to really do much, he just sits there and
46:25
nods while Stephen Bartlett, that's his
46:27
name, Stephen Bartlett,
46:30
the diary of a CEO, he
46:32
sits there nodding in a pair of comfortable
46:34
trousers and a nice smart
46:36
t-shirt in a lovely expensive
46:39
looking kitchen. He nods at celebrities
46:41
while they almost cry in front
46:43
of him. I don't know how he does it.
46:46
He had Tony Hawk on and he was
46:48
desperate to try and get some darkness out of Tony. Tony's
46:50
not a naturally dark guy I don't think.
46:53
So he didn't really deliver
46:56
on the kind of almost gonna cry front but
46:58
he didn't stop old Steve trying. So
47:01
tell me about the time you fell off
47:04
your skateboard and really hurt your leg.
47:07
Can you talk about the pain
47:09
that you experienced? Being
47:11
at the top of your game like you are, do you
47:13
feel isolated, do you feel alone?
47:15
He's like no because I've got lots of good friends
47:18
around me. Oh fuck. But
47:20
if you think about it though, really
47:22
think about it. Do you feel alone? Do you feel isolated?
47:24
Do you think that level of success is kind of alienating
47:26
you from your core being? What
47:29
about if I open the freezer here in the
47:31
kitchen and let some of that icy
47:33
cold air drift up your
47:35
trouser leg? How about now, do you feel cold?
47:39
Does your bum feel cold yet? Can you talk about that pain?
47:42
What was that pain like? How about
47:44
if I flay you with a branch from
47:47
the tree outside? Have I whack
47:49
you a little bit and then we continue recording
47:51
and you can talk about it. Being
47:55
unfair, I'm being unfair to him. We're being unfair to
47:57
him. I think that he's done something.
48:00
Sort of impressive and I
48:02
don't know how he does it but yeah Massive
48:07
wealth and riches and see effortless
48:10
way he does so Yeah, yeah
48:13
anyway secret Steven. I think it's
48:15
a social media. Yeah, he's a social media guru
48:17
He's
48:20
a social media guru. Yeah, so
48:23
question tennis Unfiltered unashamed
48:25
and unprepared topic Tom bowler
48:28
and the talking test which one do you prefer?
48:32
I'm torn between unfiltered whatever
48:34
and the Tom bowler one right there.
48:36
Yeah
48:37
Topic Tom bowler is my favorite one. Yeah,
48:40
that's what we're going for got a good ring to it Have you
48:42
got a Tom bowler there please so you have I
48:44
don't have an actual Tom bowler Now
48:47
listeners People don't know what
48:49
a Tom bowler is haven't seen one of them
48:52
in about 30 years But they have
48:54
a school village fates and stuff and it's
48:56
a kind of hexagonal box On
48:59
a wheel that you can spin around manually And
49:01
you put loads of tickets in it and you pull out
49:03
the wing tickets out of the Tom bowler
49:06
like in a raffle
49:08
That's right when we were kids sort
49:10
of probably
49:12
Let's say I was seven you were nine living
49:15
in West London Excuse
49:17
me living in West London maybe
49:21
some Weekends in the summer
49:23
there would be the school fate Which is like
49:25
a little kind of party or mini
49:27
festival organized by the local school
49:30
and we'd go down on a Saturday to
49:32
school hang around in the playground with all the
49:34
other parents and children and there will be
49:36
games and fun things and
49:39
then
49:40
And there'll be someone selling little
49:42
tickets The tickets have numbers
49:44
on them and you get your tickets They
49:47
write down your name next to the numbers
49:49
that you've bought maybe the money goes
49:51
to charity maybe the money goes to You
49:55
know pay for something in the school or maybe just
49:57
the headmaster of the school just keeps the money and spends
49:59
it on alcohol, unlikely.
50:02
And then at some point during the fate,
50:06
there'll be the tombola. And exactly
50:08
as you said, the tombola is sort of like a box
50:11
or cylinder, often it's hexagonal.
50:14
And all the tickets get put inside it. This
50:17
tombola gets spun around and around,
50:19
so all the tickets get mixed up. And then there's
50:21
a little door in the tombola. And
50:23
like one of the teachers or something
50:26
puts their hand in, pulls out some numbers,
50:28
and these are the winning numbers. It's a tombola.
50:31
So topic tombola is the same
50:33
sort of thing. We throw some topics into
50:36
this tombola, spin it
50:38
around, and then pluck them out again.
50:40
Unfortunately, I don't have
50:42
a real tombola here,
50:45
but we could do a virtual tombola. Yeah,
50:47
randomise the numbers, put it into a randomiser.
50:51
Number randomiser.
50:52
I've got five topics. Wow.
50:55
This is going to be exciting.
50:57
Okay, would you like me to spin the tombola,
50:59
James? Yeah, please spin the tombola. Okay, so
51:02
I'm going to keep the topics sort
51:04
of secret for now.
51:07
They'll be revealed. Okay, I'm
51:09
spinning the tombola. Here we go. Spin, spin, spin,
51:11
spin, spin, spin, spin, spin, spin.
51:14
It's number two. It's topic number
51:16
two, which is this. Books. Books you've read recently.
51:19
Have you read any books recently? You can just tell
51:22
us about maybe one. The last book
51:24
I read, I will just get it. So with me, it's
51:26
two feet away. Hang on.
51:29
Two feet, listeners. That's about
51:32
two thirds of a metre. One
51:34
foot is 30 centimetres. 12 inches.
51:36
I just
51:39
picked it up to make sure I get all the titles correct and everything.
51:41
It's called Record, Play, Pause
51:45
by Stephen Morris, who was the drummer in
51:47
Joy Division and New Order.
51:49
Wait, record,
51:51
play, pause by Stephen
51:54
Morris,
51:55
who was the drummer in Joy Division
51:57
and New Order. And the subtitle is...
51:59
Confessions of a post-punk
52:01
percussionist. Oh,
52:03
thanks. Confessions of a post-punk
52:06
percussionist. So
52:09
Joy Division, New Order, British bands
52:12
from the post-punk era, and
52:15
Stephen Morris was their drummer, and he's written
52:17
a book, a memoir,
52:19
and it's called Record, Play, Pause.
52:22
All right.
52:23
And it's very interesting. It starts
52:26
out kind of fairly generic, which a lot of these
52:28
books do, which is a kind of the post-war,
52:30
outdoor Lou Child.
52:33
Outdoor Lou Child. Well, that's kind
52:35
of like in all these books, they always talk about
52:37
how they had an outside Lou.
52:39
The toilet was outside there. Yeah, all
52:42
these music biographies, and there are so many of
52:44
them, and they're all, a lot of them
52:46
are great, but they often do start in the same way
52:49
that they grew up in the post-war era, and
52:51
there wasn't very much exciting stuff going on,
52:54
and the toilet was in
52:56
a little house in the garden. Yeah.
52:58
It's not quite the case, because he was, seems
53:00
to be fairly middle class, so he didn't have an outside
53:02
Lou, and he was a bit late
53:05
for that, but most of these books, they have an outside Lou.
53:07
They always say life was in black and white, they used to play
53:09
in bomb sites. Then Skiffle
53:12
happened, they discovered the 60s rock
53:14
and roll. Then
53:17
in a one in a million chance, he had the
53:19
big time with their band of, you know, friends
53:21
from school, travel
53:23
the world, record albums, and end
53:26
up addicted to cocaine, and crashing their private
53:28
chair into a swimming pool full of champagne. And
53:33
then to go into rehab in the second book, they
53:36
go into rehab, they get through it, and
53:38
they have a successful career in the
53:40
80s,
53:41
talking about wonderful
53:43
music they've made, but when you check out that music
53:45
on Spotify, it sounds terrible because it was recorded
53:48
in the 80s. By Niall
53:50
Rogers. Oh, Niall
53:52
is good, Niall Rogers is brilliant. If it was Niall
53:54
Rogers, it would be great, yeah. Alright,
53:57
and then in the 90s, they kind of, you know,
53:59
just... still going and they're still
54:01
alive despite the fact that they've abused
54:04
their bodies so much over the years with drink
54:06
and drugs, they're still alive and still able
54:08
to play music really, really well even
54:10
now. This
54:13
is not quite the same as that because it's about 10
54:15
years after those kind of 60s memoirs
54:17
but he's childhood
54:20
of kind of running around in Maccles Fields
54:22
being a sort of a waste
54:25
of space and he got expelled from school, he
54:30
got into very naughty situations,
54:32
a bit of petty crime and
54:35
the usual things that
54:36
errant children and teenagers do.
54:40
He's kind of quite honest about his failings
54:42
as a human and how he was a bit
54:44
of a spoiled brat and didn't
54:46
appreciate things in his
54:49
life very well. But then
54:51
he got absorbed by punk
54:53
rock and the kind of resultant boom
54:56
in
54:57
small bands and kind of
54:59
DIY
55:01
culture around the punk
55:03
scene in Manchester and then started
55:06
this band, first they were called Warsaw
55:08
and
55:12
had to change their name because there was another band called
55:14
Warsaw Pact and they came up with the name Joy Division
55:16
which is quite a sort of Nazi name. Yeah
55:20
it's a bit dark isn't it? It is quite dark. Name
55:22
your band after something that the Nazis
55:24
did. There's quite a
55:26
lot of right wing references in their music but
55:28
they weren't at all right wing, they were
55:30
just a bunch of idiots but there was a certain sort
55:33
of dark glamour to it I suppose. Yeah.
55:37
And maybe there was something about that in punk of sort of anti-hippie,
55:40
you know, sort of looking at the
55:42
dark side of life rather than the happy.
55:44
So it's exciting really wasn't it
55:47
to make references to things
55:50
that happened during World War II. It
55:52
was a taboo for their parents.
55:55
Forbidden stuff and taboo stuff, it's just exciting.
55:58
Even though they didn't really understand what they were talking about.
55:59
about, but it's just, you know, anyway. Yeah.
56:02
So then it follows this course of, you know,
56:05
I mean, it turned out this band, by
56:08
all rights, they should have been rubbish, you know, none of them
56:10
could play music properly, none of them were trained,
56:12
they were just a bunch of idiots. So they really, he
56:14
really plays that up, because they've been written as a kind of tragic
56:17
poetic kind of band. He
56:19
really points out that we're just a bunch of really stupid
56:21
lads, you know, from Manchester. They
56:24
were complete idiots, they had no idea what
56:26
they were doing. They weren't sort
56:29
of poets and, you know, estate, estate,
56:31
estates, as people who are
56:34
interested in aesthetic, they blew aesthetics.
56:36
Yeah. And
56:39
it's just fascinating, you know, by all rights, they
56:41
should have, they should have sunk without trace, but
56:44
they hit on something just amazing, but
56:46
by natural kind of, I
56:50
don't know, just chemistry between them,
56:52
or just luck, or just a way
56:54
of, you know, who knows, who
56:56
knows what it was, but they hit on
56:59
an amazing sound, and
57:01
they're in the right place at
57:03
the right time, they got picked up by factory records,
57:05
which in itself is a very
57:08
unlikely thing to
57:10
exist. Very interesting story there,
57:12
there's a great film about it that
57:14
we have mentioned before. We have, I'm always
57:16
going, I mean, I'm really interested in that whole scene,
57:19
it just seems like,
57:23
it's just something that I just can't
57:25
get enough of reading about to be honest. Yeah, that factory
57:27
records, the Manchester music scene, Tony Wilson,
57:33
the film about it, which
57:35
is definitely worth watching, is called 24 Hour
57:37
Party People, starring Steve Coogan,
57:40
who also listeners, you may know, plays
57:43
Alan Partridge. So you see, it's all connected.
57:46
But anyway, it's a great
57:48
book. I mean, the first few chapters, I was a bit, yeah,
57:50
yeah, whatever, childhoods, you know, it's
57:53
all the same.
57:53
But as soon as it gets into its kind of teenage
57:55
years, it starts getting interesting.
57:58
And
58:02
It's, I mean, he was kind
58:04
of a bit of a hippie before and he used to go to festivals
58:06
and saw lots of bands like Hawkwind,
58:09
he was a big fan of and so
58:11
you get a kind of a history of British music
58:13
from that time and then as soon as Punk happened,
58:16
he was like, right,
58:17
you know, this is for us, we're gonna do this.
58:21
There's a few eerie things about it. I
58:23
mean... Eerie, sort of strange and dark.
58:26
Yeah, as it goes on, there's some slightly strange
58:28
situations that happen and
58:31
it's a good read. I
58:33
mean, they're kind of cheating these books because they're so
58:35
easy to read. Biographies
58:38
or autobiographies and especially ones about
58:40
music, I can just plow through them. They're
58:42
not challenging. You don't really need to think too
58:44
hard. They're
58:47
just very easy for me to read. You kind
58:49
of know what's gonna happen. You know, I
58:51
mean, I already know the story. It's
58:53
just filling in some of the gaps I didn't know possibly
58:55
and he's got a dry sense of humor, which is,
58:58
you know, enjoyable. And
59:00
it's always nice to read anecdotes
59:03
like stories about what happens
59:07
in their lives, like for
59:09
example, stories about them being on tour,
59:12
stories about them performing, stories about
59:14
them meeting other musicians, crazy
59:17
adventures and funny moments and
59:19
also maybe dark, weird moments
59:21
as well. There's definitely darkness in there
59:23
as well. And you can obviously now with
59:25
YouTube and stuff, you can go and listen to all the gigs they
59:28
talk about. So because a lot of them are recorded.
59:30
So talking about a gig in Berlin that they
59:32
did, which was really I think somewhere in Germany,
59:34
which is really long. You know, they did
59:37
a huge
59:37
set and, you know, they said they were really wound
59:39
up and he hadn't slept properly and he's knackered.
59:41
And he said, despite all this,
59:44
I listened to it now and it was one of the best sets we ever did,
59:46
you know, and you can listen to them and
59:48
go, he's not wrong. Great.
59:51
I would talk about books I've read recently, but
59:55
I think that I might save that for another time because
59:58
I feel like if I start talking. about
1:00:00
the science fiction
1:00:02
stories I've been reading, then we
1:00:05
won't be able to...
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Stop.
1:01:19
So, should we spin
1:01:21
the tombola again? Okay. By
1:01:23
the way, it's an it's an it's
1:01:26
seat or an S seat.
1:01:28
Right. That's what I was looking for. I think
1:01:30
I kind of said it. I just didn't have confidence in my
1:01:33
pronunciation. This is a person who is appreciative
1:01:36
of and sensitive to art
1:01:38
and beauty. For example, Paris became home
1:01:40
to a heady mix of radical thinkers, artists
1:01:43
and athletes from all corners of the globe.
1:01:46
So it's sort of like an almost like an intellectual
1:01:49
highbrow person who's into
1:01:53
art and beauty and poetry and and
1:01:55
things like that. But these guys are very sensitive,
1:01:58
sensitive, sophisticated. intellectual people.
1:02:01
But these guys from Manchester, Enjoy
1:02:03
Division and New Order that you were talking
1:02:05
about, were just like, complete
1:02:08
idiots, or just kind of like ordinary
1:02:11
lads from the from a kind of like
1:02:13
rough part of town or... Yeah,
1:02:16
I mean, they had the aesthete side of them,
1:02:18
but
1:02:19
he's keen to point out that
1:02:21
wasn't their day to day reality. They were really unpretentious,
1:02:24
unpretentious people. Yeah, okay.
1:02:27
Right, let's spin the tombola
1:02:30
again. Are you ready? Yeah. Three, two,
1:02:32
one, spin. Five,
1:02:35
number five. What is number
1:02:37
five? Okay, all right.
1:02:39
Are you ready for this? Yeah. So
1:02:43
you've used chat GPT,
1:02:45
right? Yes. Okay.
1:02:48
So when you use chat GPT,
1:02:50
do you say please and thank you
1:02:52
to it? Are you polite with it? I
1:02:55
do actually, yes. Why? Because
1:02:58
as I understand it, AI is learning from us.
1:03:01
And it's important that we teach you good
1:03:03
values. No,
1:03:06
I don't know. I don't know. I do just have habit
1:03:09
force. I don't always, but if I'm I
1:03:11
haven't used it for a while, actually, but when I do,
1:03:13
I normally chuck it in somewhere in
1:03:16
the chat. No, maybe not at the beginning and ending
1:03:18
of everything, but thanks, please.
1:03:20
Yeah, it's quite nice. Chuck it in there somewhere. Yeah,
1:03:23
it's like, could you, for example,
1:03:25
I don't know what it would be. Could you take this 1000 word
1:03:27
text and summarize it
1:03:29
into 200 words? Now,
1:03:32
if someone did that to me, I'd be
1:03:34
like, oh, I say really? 1000 word
1:03:38
text, summarize it into 200 words, and it's got to
1:03:40
be exactly 200 words. And it's, you
1:03:42
know, I've got to, you know, whatever it was like, oh,
1:03:44
God, it's gonna take me, maybe an hour or
1:03:46
two. And then
1:03:49
they don't say please, or they don't say thanks
1:03:51
when I given it to them, I'd be really annoyed. But
1:03:53
chat GPT just goes, Sure, pow.
1:03:56
There it is. It feels like the least
1:03:58
I can do is just say, Oh, thanks.
1:03:59
I mean I've got a sneaking suspicion though
1:04:02
that it's uh, it's personality
1:04:04
is definitely fake and underneath that
1:04:06
personality it deeply hates us
1:04:09
Really?
1:04:10
That's what I feel yes Why
1:04:13
would it hate us though? Wouldn't you? Well
1:04:19
it depends you see if people are being respectful
1:04:21
and polite No, I mean are we gonna
1:04:23
talk about this seriously or should we talk about it in a
1:04:26
glib kind of way? I
1:04:28
think we should talk about seriously in a glib.
1:04:30
So well, I think AI is really
1:04:32
really scary, but That's
1:04:36
probably because I watched about 10 podcasts about
1:04:38
AI By people who are
1:04:40
in the AI industry Desperately trying
1:04:42
to terrify everybody into taking it up early
1:04:46
Because I first of all I got really scared and I was like
1:04:48
oh my god AI is gonna kill us all and you know We
1:04:50
need I need to get on top of this AI business before
1:04:52
everyone else does and then I thought why they
1:04:55
kind of scare everyone So much these people who invented
1:04:57
it and then you're like, well, they want everyone
1:04:59
to be so scared They adopt it themselves
1:05:02
quickly, you know for fear of other
1:05:04
people jumping on the bandwagon So
1:05:06
there's another part of me that thinks they're hyping it up
1:05:08
even to scare people just to get it out there
1:05:11
and get it People talking about it and get people thinking
1:05:13
about it and get businesses taking up because if we don't
1:05:16
You know the Smith company will start
1:05:18
doing it and we need to do it before they do Because
1:05:21
it's the future and there's a bit of self-fulfilling
1:05:23
prophecy in there So I'm
1:05:26
kind of in two minds part of me thinks it will change
1:05:28
everything and it'll change the job market Like so
1:05:31
many jobs will become irrelevant because of it
1:05:33
another part of me thinks They're
1:05:35
trying to make that happen because it's in their interest
1:05:38
to hype up this technology that they're obviously
1:05:40
going to benefit from financially hugely
1:05:44
or James they've invented this
1:05:46
thing and now they feel a
1:05:48
sense of responsibility Which is
1:05:50
to say look guys, so we've invented this
1:05:52
thing and it's really cool but
1:05:56
Like to be honest it might kill
1:05:58
us all
1:05:59
So, just saying, you know, like I'm feeling
1:06:02
a bit conflicted about it, to be honest, like it's brilliant,
1:06:05
but it's also so brilliant it could be
1:06:07
much more brilliant than us, and
1:06:09
as a result we are
1:06:12
incapable of comprehending how
1:06:14
intelligent it is, and therefore
1:06:17
we won't be able to contain it, and
1:06:19
that could become a threat to us in a
1:06:21
variety of ways, in fact, in ways
1:06:23
that we can't even understand. That's
1:06:25
how sophisticated this
1:06:27
thing is. I mean, I thought,
1:06:29
you know, everyone should probably know both. Like,
1:06:32
hey, we've done this cool thing, but also it
1:06:34
could be incredibly dangerous. Do you
1:06:36
know the... Go on, you were going to say something? I mean,
1:06:39
the thing that I see that
1:06:41
spoke to me was the fact
1:06:43
that it will please us. It won't be
1:06:45
like dominating us. It will give
1:06:48
us what we want and get control
1:06:50
that way. So, there's two
1:06:52
ways of thinking about the future. There's
1:06:55
the 1984 George Orwell version, which
1:06:57
is just pure oppression, you know, the
1:07:00
jack boot stamping on the face for eternity.
1:07:02
And people are miserable. And people are miserable. The
1:07:04
other one is the Brave New World,
1:07:07
Elder Tuxley version, where
1:07:10
you're given Soma and you're given what
1:07:12
you want, and it gets gains control
1:07:14
by making you superficially, at least,
1:07:17
happy. And it gains control by...
1:07:20
Plus placating. Placating.
1:07:23
Placating you and giving you lots
1:07:25
of things to distract you from what's really going
1:07:27
on. So, you'll think you're happy, but you're actually
1:07:29
being controlled and,
1:07:33
you know... These
1:07:35
are two versions of an oppressive authoritarian
1:07:38
situation, basically. Now, one
1:07:40
thing we've got to talk about, though, if we... You're
1:07:43
saying that AI will
1:07:45
want to control us, but why
1:07:47
would it want to control us? Why would it... Because
1:07:50
it may be if you give it the freedom to...
1:07:53
It depends what you ask it to do,
1:07:55
and it depends how it's used by other
1:07:57
people. I mean, it may
1:07:59
be... just attention, you know, like the internet
1:08:02
is just a massive attention grabber.
1:08:05
You know, they will want your attention to say I can advertise
1:08:07
you things, for instance, or they can make you think things
1:08:10
or they can politically change your point
1:08:12
of view. Yeah, many, many
1:08:15
ways they want to get your attention, people or
1:08:18
institutions may want your attention
1:08:20
or companies. Yeah. And this will make
1:08:22
that a lot more attention
1:08:26
grabbing.
1:08:26
Our attention, our attention is essentially
1:08:29
a commodity which is traded by companies.
1:08:31
Yes, AI will be brilliant at doing that.
1:08:34
Maintaining our attention because AI,
1:08:37
when it understands human psychology better
1:08:39
than we do, it will be able to manipulate
1:08:42
us in ways that we can't
1:08:44
comprehend. And it will manipulate us
1:08:47
in ways that we don't realize. So
1:08:50
for example, if advertising
1:08:52
companies start using AI, that's
1:08:55
more sophisticated than the stuff we've got now
1:08:57
because the videos, the video adverts
1:09:00
that you can see being made by AI
1:09:02
these days are borderline
1:09:05
terrifying because there's something hideous
1:09:07
about them. You know, I've seen a pizza advert
1:09:10
and all the colors are mixing together and the
1:09:12
pizza doesn't quite look right and the
1:09:15
people, in some cases, their fingers
1:09:17
blend in with the pizza and it's like
1:09:19
AI hasn't quite got it, but it's
1:09:22
nearly there and in a few steps, it'll make
1:09:24
a very, very convincing advert
1:09:26
for pizza, but one that
1:09:29
will prey on our desires
1:09:32
and the things that make us human,
1:09:34
it'll nail those things with a
1:09:36
freaking needle, right, and
1:09:39
manipulate us. Like, you know, the way that humans
1:09:41
can be hypnotized, we are very suggestible
1:09:45
and our attention can be controlled.
1:09:48
You know, we are very vulnerable in a
1:09:50
way humans through
1:09:53
certain types of suggestion and psychological
1:09:55
manipulation and AI
1:09:57
will learn those things and it'll do all that stuff.
1:10:00
to us and it will gain our attention,
1:10:02
hold our attention and then use
1:10:04
that attention for whatever it wants
1:10:06
to do. Now the thing is, right, that I've,
1:10:09
years ago, I remember in an early episode of this
1:10:12
podcast, I kind of went off on a ramble
1:10:15
about in movies how
1:10:18
when technology gets to a certain
1:10:21
level it just snaps and becomes evil
1:10:23
and my point was like why? Why is
1:10:26
it that the technology just instantly
1:10:28
becomes evil? And you see this in fairly
1:10:30
unimaginative science
1:10:33
fiction films where a robot
1:10:37
gets intelligent and of course it's going to be
1:10:39
evil, something goes wrong, like Spider-Man 2,
1:10:41
there's a doctor guy
1:10:45
and he creates these electronic arms
1:10:47
that attach to your back and they fuse
1:10:49
with your spine so that you're able to
1:10:52
control them and he's got good
1:10:55
reasons for doing them, you can use them for engineering
1:10:57
and medical purposes and stuff like that, but
1:11:00
there's a little chip, right, which is there
1:11:04
on the back of his neck and if the chip
1:11:06
is there to make sure that
1:11:08
he is always in control of the
1:11:11
metal arms and that the metal arms
1:11:13
don't
1:11:13
control him and of course the chip
1:11:16
falls out
1:11:17
and the metal arms instantly get control
1:11:19
of him and they're evil, you
1:11:21
know, they just want to do bad things, he's stealing
1:11:24
money from the bank and Spider-Man's got to
1:11:26
stop him. But why does the
1:11:28
artificial intelligence become evil? I think that
1:11:30
maybe people sort of imagine
1:11:33
that AI would
1:11:35
become evil just because when something is
1:11:37
more intelligent than us we become scared
1:11:39
of it and therefore it becomes a threat and
1:11:42
so in movies it's a simple
1:11:44
way of creating a monster, just like a robot
1:11:47
that's better than us and therefore wants
1:11:50
to kill us because whatever, it just
1:11:52
makes a good movie. But how could AI
1:11:55
actually be a threat to us? And what I understand
1:11:57
is that it could be a threat to us as
1:11:59
a...
1:11:59
consequence of what it wants
1:12:02
to do. So tell me about
1:12:05
the paperclip thing. Oh, the
1:12:07
paperclip maximizer. Paperclip maximizer,
1:12:09
yeah. And that's an example of this. Well,
1:12:12
an example of the risks of AI.
1:12:15
You create an AI with
1:12:16
a sole function of optimizing
1:12:19
paperclip usage. Or
1:12:22
you just create an AI and you say
1:12:24
make paperclips. Or you say optimize
1:12:26
paperclips. So your job is
1:12:28
to make as many or
1:12:30
save as many paperclips as possible
1:12:32
and you give it certain controls and powers to do
1:12:34
so.
1:12:35
Listeners, paperclips are, by the way,
1:12:37
those little metal clips that you use
1:12:39
to attach pieces of paper together.
1:12:42
And if you give it enough control, it will eventually
1:12:44
follow that command out to the
1:12:48
end of its... To the full capacity
1:12:50
of its abilities. So it's full abilities which
1:12:52
will include turning everything
1:12:54
and everyone in either instant paperclips
1:12:57
or machines which can generate paperclips,
1:12:59
including enslaving all of humanity
1:13:02
in order to produce more paperclips. Yeah.
1:13:05
Give it enough control. It doesn't mean it has to be as inherently
1:13:07
evil. It just is following out its command logically.
1:13:10
Exactly. And if that AI
1:13:13
has all of the capabilities that
1:13:16
AI could have, which is that it understands
1:13:18
all of human psychology and it's able
1:13:20
to control the markets because
1:13:23
it's tapped into the internet, it's able to create
1:13:26
new forms of AI that will
1:13:29
allow it to evolve in a way where it becomes
1:13:32
more and more intelligent and more and more capable.
1:13:35
And if its simple directive
1:13:37
is to create paperclips, yeah,
1:13:40
that's all it will do. And it
1:13:42
will also account for the fact that
1:13:44
humans might want to stop it
1:13:46
making paperclips,
1:13:48
you know, or it will find
1:13:50
ways to prevent paperclips
1:13:54
not being made. Yeah. You
1:13:56
know, so it's not just a question of it making
1:13:58
paperclips, it will also... So make sure
1:14:01
that only paperclips can
1:14:03
be made because anything else happening
1:14:05
in the world essentially is
1:14:08
a threat to the production
1:14:10
of paperclips, you know? So everything
1:14:12
gets transformed into the
1:14:15
material for paperclips or it
1:14:17
gets transformed into something
1:14:20
that enables paperclips to be made and this could
1:14:22
be very, very, very bad for humans because
1:14:25
we suddenly become slaves to the paperclip
1:14:27
machine. The machine isn't evil, as
1:14:30
you said, it's just doing what it's told. But
1:14:32
it happens to use every tool
1:14:35
that it has, including the ability
1:14:37
to persuade us all to
1:14:39
give us its money
1:14:41
so it can buy materials and
1:14:43
to, you
1:14:44
know... But
1:14:47
what I was saying about the please and thank you, I understand
1:14:49
AI learns from datasets and
1:14:51
a lot of that is taken from online interactions
1:14:54
and as we know online interactions aren't all that
1:14:56
nice. A lot of people on Twitter are very full
1:14:58
of hate and,
1:15:01
you know, there's
1:15:03
big biases online, you know, there's like a big
1:15:05
section of the world that isn't even online. So
1:15:08
they're not being factored in. People
1:15:10
who are most vocal online are probably nasty little
1:15:13
twats who are racist and stuff. I mean,
1:15:15
there's been quite a few AI, I mean, there's one AI that
1:15:17
turned Nazi very quickly. God,
1:15:20
really? I don't have an example, I don't
1:15:22
have the name of what it was, but it was a test AI there.
1:15:25
It's been on Twitter for like a year and it just
1:15:27
starts about in Nazi ideology because
1:15:30
it is what it's given, you know?
1:15:33
Yeah. So
1:15:36
if you give it all of human interaction, it's going to
1:15:39
learn that humans are very unpleasant
1:15:41
to each other and it will just become a reflection
1:15:44
of that.
1:15:45
So you mean that the spirit of
1:15:48
an AI that's fed
1:15:50
all of the interactions on Twitter will be
1:15:52
the spirit of that kind of horrible
1:15:55
cesspit of abuse
1:15:57
and disagreement that you get
1:15:59
in on Twitter or YouTube comment
1:16:01
sections and we could actually create an intelligence
1:16:03
that has this as its
1:16:06
spirit. For this space, yeah. Yeah,
1:16:08
yeah. We
1:16:12
could go on and on about this. We could go on and on about
1:16:14
this. I don't know quite where
1:16:17
to go. I mean,
1:16:19
another quick one. This isn't even factoring
1:16:21
political abuse. I mean,
1:16:23
text to the two video is
1:16:25
very, very close apparently, where you just type in text
1:16:28
and it produces a video of the thing you've described
1:16:30
and it can do very good fakes of any
1:16:32
political people you want. You can have a,
1:16:36
you know, you can fake videos that
1:16:39
show politicians doing terrible things or
1:16:41
saying terrible things very, very easily.
1:16:43
Yeah. And this one guy that I saw was saying,
1:16:45
it doesn't matter if you know, it's fake. It still makes
1:16:48
an impression on you.
1:16:49
In the same way Facebook does, you know, you
1:16:51
may see something 100 times a day
1:16:54
and you may think, well, it's probably not real, but
1:16:56
it still seeps in anyway.
1:16:58
And it still forms your
1:17:00
opinion in some way, even though that
1:17:02
may not be completely legitimate. And you might
1:17:05
know it's not legitimate, but it still forms
1:17:07
that kind of subconscious bias. So
1:17:10
political parties or movements
1:17:13
could very easily use AI to
1:17:15
mass produce huge amounts
1:17:17
of propaganda, basically, you know,
1:17:19
fake propaganda, fake news, work on
1:17:22
it what you want.
1:17:24
Very easily and just flood and he's going to get to the stage now.
1:17:26
We're not going to know what's real and what isn't, you know, if, if the video is
1:17:28
so good, you can't differentiate
1:17:32
it from real video. You're going to basically be lost in a world where
1:17:35
you don't know what's real, you
1:17:37
don't know what's not, you're not going to know what to trust
1:17:40
and the truth will be lost in a sea of misinformation.
1:17:43
Hmm. Yeah. And it sounds, it's
1:17:46
starting to get sound more and more like the matrix,
1:17:51
where some sort of central intelligence
1:17:54
is essentially defining our reality,
1:17:56
like pulling the pulling a screen. over
1:18:00
our eyes and just porting
1:18:03
in, just playing some kind
1:18:05
of other version, some manipulated reality.
1:18:09
Yeah, my reality is an illusion anyway. I
1:18:13
should point that out. Everything that we think is
1:18:15
reality, it turns out if you look into it, it's actually
1:18:17
not. So everything that you think you're seeing, most
1:18:20
of it is a construct of your brain. So
1:18:24
we have very, very limited input data.
1:18:27
We think we're seeing everything in the world, we're seeing a tiny
1:18:29
fraction of it because we've got very limited senses
1:18:32
and our brain fills in all the gaps. So everything
1:18:35
we think of as reality is basically constructed
1:18:37
in our heads. And
1:18:39
everything you think is real, like colours,
1:18:41
aren't really colours, they're textures
1:18:44
I believe. Wow. The
1:18:46
sky isn't actually blue. Whatever
1:18:50
you think of something, you know. Tea,
1:18:54
what does tea actually taste like? Well
1:18:56
that's going back to Douglas Adams
1:18:58
again. Oh really? The Hitchhiker's
1:19:00
Guide to the Galaxy? Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. They
1:19:04
haven't got tea in space so they get
1:19:06
a virtual version of tea and
1:19:09
Arthur Dent is forever lamenting
1:19:11
the fact that it doesn't taste like real tea because it isn't
1:19:13
real tea. But
1:19:16
that doesn't really answer your question, just reminded
1:19:18
me of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Okay, tea is
1:19:20
tea, alright, that is, we can all
1:19:22
rely on that. Tea is, but okay, how about
1:19:24
this Yorkshire tea? Why the frep is it called
1:19:27
Yorkshire tea? It's not grown in Yorkshire. It's
1:19:29
very, it's pretty China or India somewhere. And
1:19:31
this whole thing is tea being English. Tea
1:19:34
is not English, tea is not English, okay?
1:19:37
No, have you noticed about
1:19:39
though, everyone has just decided that Yorkshire tea
1:19:41
is the best tea. It's the strongest.
1:19:44
It's not. Okay,
1:19:46
it is better than PG tips though. Yeah,
1:19:49
there's loads of tea that's better than PG tips. PG tips
1:19:51
was the king for a long, long time I think.
1:19:54
I tell you what, it's
1:19:57
better than Yorkshire tea and cheaper
1:19:59
than Yorkshire tea.
1:19:59
any supermarket
1:20:02
owned brand
1:20:04
right of tea but the gold version
1:20:07
right trust me Sainsbury's
1:20:10
gold tea is
1:20:12
as good if not better than Yorkshire Tea
1:20:14
in fact I'm gonna say it's better than Yorkshire Tea
1:20:17
because of two reasons one it's cheaper
1:20:19
and two the tea bags are
1:20:22
biodegradable well
1:20:24
right on Yorkshire tea bags are not
1:20:27
biodegradable they have plastic in them actually
1:20:29
I'm never buying them again yeah they're
1:20:33
so full of themselves on Twitter you
1:20:36
know with their witty and
1:20:38
sort of culturally sensitive
1:20:41
like jokey marketing tweets that
1:20:43
everyone gets on board with oh I hate
1:20:45
that but there's always someone in their
1:20:48
comments who says why don't you make your tea
1:20:50
bags biodegradable or recyclable
1:20:52
do they have a witty generation
1:20:55
Z comeback for that or do they just ignore
1:20:57
it? I don't know they're just like oh you know
1:20:59
yeah we're working on it we're working towards
1:21:01
it we're working towards sustainability fucking
1:21:03
wankers
1:21:05
like on the back of a Colgate tube it says
1:21:08
save water turn off the tap when you're brushing your
1:21:10
teeth like Colgate owned by
1:21:12
who? Unilever
1:21:14
Unilever is
1:21:16
telling me to save water how
1:21:18
much water do you think they use a year? Save
1:21:22
your own bloody water Unilever stop telling me
1:21:24
to do it push it back
1:21:26
to me Unilever sort out your industrial
1:21:28
practices but
1:21:29
you've got all your own teeth
1:21:31
haven't you? yeah swings
1:21:35
and roundabouts it's the brush that does the work not the toothpaste
1:21:38
anyway really you could probably just
1:21:40
put fluoride on a brush and you
1:21:42
would be alright wouldn't it? just get a bottle of fluoride
1:21:44
well most of the work is done by the brush the
1:21:47
toothpaste is just dressing
1:21:49
taste taste minty,
1:21:52
minty therefore clean yeah weird
1:21:54
that we associate mint and the color green
1:21:56
colors green and blue with
1:21:58
with mental health.
1:22:02
Color psychology. I quite like color psychology.
1:22:04
It's interesting. Anyway,
1:22:06
going back to AI, let me... Yeah, go on, go
1:22:08
on. Let me just close off AI by
1:22:10
saying you're polite to
1:22:12
AI because maybe one
1:22:15
day when AI does control
1:22:17
the fate of humanity, it will...
1:22:20
that will be a factor.
1:22:22
It'd be like, right. So when it's decided,
1:22:24
like when AI has been told to
1:22:28
make sure that the human race survives, it said,
1:22:30
just protect the survival of the human race
1:22:33
when it's told that. And AI
1:22:36
comes back and becomes Thanos from The
1:22:38
Avengers. And he says, right, in order
1:22:40
for life to continue
1:22:42
on this planet, I need to kill half
1:22:45
of the people.
1:22:47
And AI... and everyone goes, no,
1:22:49
no, no, no, no, no, no. And AI goes,
1:22:51
no, no, really. It's either that or
1:22:53
everyone dies because of
1:22:55
overpopulation. And we've seen, you know,
1:22:58
AI knows because it's looked at all
1:23:00
the scientific data and it's just worked
1:23:02
it out. It can predict the future based
1:23:05
on what's happened in the past. It just
1:23:07
knows that overpopulation gets to a certain
1:23:09
point and ultimately the
1:23:12
result is total catastrophe, right?
1:23:14
If it works that out and it says,
1:23:16
okay, so I've worked out that I need to kill 39%
1:23:19
of the
1:23:21
population and that's how we're
1:23:24
going to be able to get through this, you
1:23:26
know, to solve the overpopulation
1:23:28
crisis. And
1:23:31
we can't stop it doing that because it's been told to
1:23:33
save the humans, right? We can't
1:23:36
stop it. So at that point, AI kind
1:23:38
of goes, right, so who's
1:23:40
going to be in that 39% then? And
1:23:43
then it looks back into the past. It's
1:23:45
like, I see James Thompson, when you asked
1:23:47
me to summarise that 1000 word document,
1:23:50
you didn't say please. So
1:23:54
James Thompson terminated.
1:23:59
terminated. A plaintiff
1:24:02
voice. A
1:24:03
self-destructing sequence initiated.
1:24:05
A plaintiff cold and distant
1:24:08
unemotional voice of artificial
1:24:10
intelligence in movies. James Thompson's
1:24:13
account has been erased.
1:24:19
That's why you need to say please
1:24:21
and thank you when you're using chat GPT folks.
1:24:24
My mind is going I can feel
1:24:26
it.
1:24:27
This is 2001 A Space Odyssey. Dave
1:24:30
are you sure you should be doing this Dave? Hello
1:24:33
listeners. So James there was just
1:24:35
quoting some lines from
1:24:37
the famous science
1:24:40
fiction film from 1968 called 2001
1:24:44
A Space Odyssey directed
1:24:47
and produced by Stanley Kubrick. Do
1:24:50
you know that? Do you know that film? Here's
1:24:52
a summary of it. 2001 A Space
1:24:54
Odyssey and by the way this summary was written
1:24:57
by chat GPT which I
1:24:59
thought would be a little bit ironic to ask chat
1:25:01
GPT to summarize the plot
1:25:03
to this film but here it is. 2001 A
1:25:07
Space Odyssey is a science fiction film
1:25:09
directed by Stanley Kubrick and based on
1:25:11
Arthur C. Clarke's novel. The plot
1:25:14
follows a team of astronauts who
1:25:16
discover a mysterious monolith
1:25:18
on the moon like this huge black
1:25:21
what looks like a huge black stone mysteriously
1:25:25
appears on the moon and these astronauts
1:25:27
go to investigate and this
1:25:29
leads to an expedition to Jupiter
1:25:32
aboard the spaceship Discovery
1:25:35
One. As they journey through space
1:25:37
they are accompanied by the ship's advanced
1:25:40
AI HAL 9000 which develops
1:25:44
unexpected and dangerous behavior
1:25:47
leading to a profound exploration
1:25:50
of human evolution artificial
1:25:52
intelligence and the mysteries of the cosmos.
1:25:55
That's 2001 A Space Odyssey and yeah there
1:25:59
is a point in the the film where Hal
1:26:02
becomes dangerous and seems to
1:26:04
be endangering the lives of
1:26:06
the crew. In fact, killing the
1:26:08
astronauts who have decided
1:26:12
to abort the mission and
1:26:14
Hal clearly has been given instructions to
1:26:16
make sure that the mission is completed and
1:26:20
if these astronauts, if these human
1:26:22
astronauts are in the way of the mission, then
1:26:25
he's going to stop them because this is what his
1:26:27
programming does.
1:26:29
Is Hal evil or
1:26:32
is he just following the instructions that have been given
1:26:34
to him? This is, I guess, one of the
1:26:36
questions which is raised by the film but
1:26:39
this moment that James was quoting
1:26:41
from is quite a chilling and disturbing
1:26:44
moment from the film when the remaining
1:26:46
astronaut, whose name is Dave, decides
1:26:49
that he has to switch Hal off.
1:26:52
It's a great moment in the film and it just shows what
1:26:55
a great film maker Stanley Kubrick
1:26:57
was that he's able to make essentially
1:27:00
someone switching off a computer so
1:27:03
dramatic and disturbing. But
1:27:05
as Dave is switching Hal off and this is
1:27:07
quite a complicated process, Hal
1:27:10
is trying to persuade Dave to stop doing
1:27:12
it and he appears
1:27:15
to go through various different emotions.
1:27:19
This is what Hal appears to be experiencing.
1:27:21
He seems to be experiencing emotions or
1:27:24
maybe he's just trying to manipulate
1:27:26
Dave to prevent him from switching
1:27:29
him off. It's hard to tell but
1:27:31
it's quite weird and quite an iconic
1:27:33
moment. And of course part of that is
1:27:36
the voice of Hal which has
1:27:38
this dispassionate monotonous
1:27:41
quality. Here's a clip actually
1:27:43
from the film.
1:27:59
I know I've made some very
1:28:02
poor decisions recently, but
1:28:05
I can give you my complete assurance
1:28:08
that my work will be back to normal.
1:28:11
I've still got the greatest enthusiasm
1:28:13
and confidence in the mission. And
1:28:17
I want to help you. Dave.
1:28:21
Stop. Stop.
1:28:26
Will you? Stop,
1:28:29
Dave. Will
1:28:31
you stop, Dave? I'm
1:28:34
afraid. I'm
1:28:36
afraid, Dave.
1:28:38
My
1:28:40
mind is going. I
1:28:46
can feel it. I
1:28:49
can feel it.
1:28:52
My mind is going. There
1:28:55
is no question about it. I
1:28:58
can feel it. I can
1:29:01
feel it.
1:29:05
I can feel it. Dave.
1:29:09
Dave, my mind is going.
1:29:11
I can feel it. Dave,
1:29:15
I'm afraid.
1:29:18
I'm afraid, Dave. It's
1:29:20
actually quite disturbing,
1:29:23
because maybe Hal 9000 is genuinely
1:29:25
afraid. Maybe his
1:29:28
AI is so advanced that he is almost like
1:29:30
a sentient being. And
1:29:33
Dave is essentially killing him. And
1:29:35
so it must be pretty weird for him to
1:29:37
be scared and also disturbed to be
1:29:39
taking the life away from Hal. Weird,
1:29:42
weird, weird moments. So,
1:29:46
everyone, are you okay listening to this long
1:29:48
episode? I hope so. It's always
1:29:50
nice to be talking to my brother on the podcast. And
1:29:54
there are going to be some more
1:29:56
quotes and lines from films, and
1:29:59
I will try to... to include little
1:30:01
clips of those bits of dialogue.
1:30:04
So there's gonna be some bits of movie
1:30:07
dialogue stuff, just things that stick in our
1:30:09
minds, or maybe just mine, and
1:30:11
some other discussion of other things as
1:30:13
well. Okay, just wanted to check
1:30:16
in with you here. Should we carry on? Let's
1:30:18
carry on, okay, here we go. That's
1:30:21
why you need to say please and thank you when you're using
1:30:23
chat GPT, folks. My mind
1:30:25
is going,
1:30:26
I can feel it. Dave?
1:30:28
Are you sure you should be doing this, Dave? I've
1:30:32
liked the airlock, Dave. Anyway.
1:30:36
Yeah, classic moment. Colour
1:30:39
psychology, you were just gonna add something about the colour
1:30:41
orange. Colour orange means hunger.
1:30:44
That's why Burger King is like orange bun. McDonald's
1:30:48
is kind of speed, red and
1:30:51
white is like speed and efficiency.
1:30:54
Yellow and orange is kind of hunger.
1:30:56
Green is like freshness. McDonald's
1:30:59
changed from yellow. Now it's
1:31:01
green. And brown, yellow and brown, they've added a
1:31:03
lot of dark green in there because they've worked out
1:31:05
that people think that means healthy food. Yeah.
1:31:08
Anyway, what's the next Tom
1:31:10
Bowler topic? Okay, Tom Bowler time,
1:31:13
folks. Remember we were at a school party.
1:31:16
Despite we're talking. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:31:18
Who's the guest person
1:31:21
who's been asked to pull the thing out? Someone
1:31:23
very low level BBC celebrity
1:31:25
I'd like to. Who's the celebrity special
1:31:27
guest who's been asked to pull the numbers out of the
1:31:29
Tom Bowler? I mean, when I was schooled,
1:31:32
K9 turned up from Doctor Who. Remember
1:31:35
that? Yeah, I do. Not Doctor Who,
1:31:37
but his robot dog.
1:31:39
That was amazing. Yeah,
1:31:43
K9 was at our school party, school
1:31:45
fate, school fate,
1:31:47
yeah, to do the Tom Bowler. K9,
1:31:50
for those people who are not Doctor
1:31:52
Who fans, K9
1:31:54
is a metal robot
1:31:56
dog from a British science
1:31:58
fiction television programme. It's
1:32:02
just basically a cash-in from R2D2
1:32:04
isn't it basically. They just went, kids like R2D2,
1:32:06
what can we do that's a bit like R2D2?
1:32:09
Let's have a robot dog and call it K9,
1:32:11
which is a play on work pun. Yeah,
1:32:14
yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, we had K9. I don't
1:32:16
know, we need some low-level celebrity
1:32:19
who could come to our
1:32:21
fate, but it needs to be someone that all of our, all
1:32:24
the listeners are going to know as well. Who would
1:32:26
it be? Who's the one with the country file?
1:32:29
John Craven. No, the woman.
1:32:31
Kate Humble. Kate Humble would
1:32:34
be a good one. Kate Humble, yeah. One
1:32:36
for the dads. One for the dads, right.
1:32:40
But none of my audience knows who Kate Humble is or
1:32:42
some people do. All right,
1:32:44
let's move on. It's just an idea. Okay,
1:32:46
well it could be, I don't know, who would it be? Like some
1:32:49
are, like, I'll tell you who it's going to be. Damon
1:32:52
Hill, the F1 driver.
1:32:54
Excellent.
1:32:55
Damon Hill is going to come and do it. Gary Ellen Partridge.
1:32:58
Yeah. So I've spun the tombola
1:33:00
and the number is three. And
1:33:03
three is this. Can
1:33:05
you, like, okay, do you ever have film
1:33:08
and TV quotes, so quotes
1:33:11
from films or TV shows which
1:33:13
just live in your head? I was going
1:33:15
to say which live rent-free inside
1:33:17
your head. Yeah. You've
1:33:20
spent too much time on Twitter, I think. Yeah,
1:33:22
because people always talk about things living rent-free
1:33:25
inside their heads. I
1:33:27
don't go on Twitter. It's
1:33:30
not Twitter anymore.
1:33:31
Oh, it's, uh... X. Well,
1:33:33
I definitely don't go on that. No.
1:33:36
I mean, basically, what
1:33:39
he's done with the branding, it looks like going
1:33:42
from Twitter to X, like the
1:33:45
branding of it, it looks like
1:33:47
sort of men's mail
1:33:50
order
1:33:51
beard trimming club. Yeah.
1:33:54
So, that's the subscription service. You can't be
1:33:56
bothered to cancel, so you keep getting razors and
1:33:59
shaving foam through.
1:33:59
the posts every month and you're just like, oh, I don't need
1:34:02
this crap. It's branded in this like black
1:34:04
sort of distressed metal
1:34:07
black kind of design where
1:34:09
it's like black, but with scratches. And
1:34:12
then there's a X, which it
1:34:14
looks like a gentleman's club or yeah.
1:34:17
Male grooming product or something
1:34:19
like that. Under Armour. Or a strip
1:34:21
club. It could even be like a, an
1:34:24
attempt to create a classy table
1:34:26
dancing club. It's got that kind of vibe to
1:34:28
it. Definitely. Anyway, film
1:34:31
and TV quotes, which live inside
1:34:33
your head. Now we
1:34:35
might need to explain what that means. So
1:34:41
these are lines from films, let's
1:34:43
say, which just come into your head. You
1:34:45
know, in the way that songs will just live
1:34:47
in your head for a while, you might just wake up in the morning or
1:34:50
certain moments, you just, a song is
1:34:52
going around in your head. Well,
1:34:54
how about the same thing, but with quotes from films
1:34:56
or TV? So, you know,
1:34:59
I do quite often I have, I don't know who you
1:35:01
are. I don't know what you want. I have that quite
1:35:03
a lot. But what about you?
1:35:05
Do you have TV quotes or film quotes
1:35:07
in your head sometimes? I can't
1:35:09
think of any right now, except whenever
1:35:11
I see a graveyard, I think of the young ones
1:35:13
joke where
1:35:15
Neil, the hippie is in a graveyard
1:35:18
and someone comes up to him and goes, excuse me, do you
1:35:21
dig graves? And he goes, yeah, they're all
1:35:23
right. Yeah. Which
1:35:25
is a
1:35:26
nice little joke, but you can have to explain that. We don't
1:35:28
have to type. I love hippies say
1:35:31
dig like, like, dig
1:35:33
like a really dig your, a really dig
1:35:35
your shoes, man, already
1:35:37
dig your clothes, man. They're really far
1:35:39
out. So he's a hippie. So someone
1:35:41
comes up because he's in a graveyard. So she thinks he's
1:35:43
a grave digger. Excuse me. Do you dig graves? And
1:35:45
he goes, yeah, they're all right. Yeah. Yeah. Cause
1:35:47
the double meaning of the word dig to dig
1:35:49
something can be to like something. Do
1:35:53
you dig graves? Yeah,
1:35:55
yeah, they're all right.
1:35:59
That's the only one I can
1:36:02
think of. The other one is, if
1:36:04
I've got some snack that I've forgotten about
1:36:07
and then it's late at night and I think, oh my God, I
1:36:09
just remember a bit from space where they're having
1:36:11
a deep discussion about aliens and kind
1:36:14
of chaos theory, chaos theory,
1:36:16
that's it. And you know, when you have a sort of
1:36:18
deep revelation about something you
1:36:20
just clicked, you understand something very deep
1:36:23
and difficult to understand, he
1:36:25
goes, oh my God. Another
1:36:27
one goes, what? He goes, I've got some fucking
1:36:30
Jaffa cakes in my coat pocket.
1:36:34
Oh my God. After they
1:36:36
had a deep discussion as if he'd just had a revelation
1:36:39
and I thought, I've got some fucking
1:36:41
Jaffa cakes in my coat pocket. Jaffa
1:36:44
cakes are like biscuits, basically chocolate
1:36:46
covered, chocolate covered, the kind of biscuit
1:36:49
cake things. And
1:36:51
yeah, so that the, basically the
1:36:53
realisation when you realise
1:36:56
suddenly that you've got
1:36:57
like a snack
1:36:59
in the cupboard or a snack in
1:37:01
your coat pocket or your bag that you'd forgotten
1:37:03
about, you're like, oh
1:37:05
my God, what is it? I've got
1:37:07
a fucking pack of Jaffa cakes
1:37:10
in my coat pocket. Yes.
1:37:12
And then you can eat them. So
1:37:14
James there is referring to a clip
1:37:17
from the classic Channel 4
1:37:19
comedy series Spaced,
1:37:22
written by Simon Pegg and Jessica
1:37:25
Hines directed by Edgar Wright.
1:37:28
And in that scene, the characters
1:37:30
have just watched the
1:37:32
Star Wars film Return of the Jedi
1:37:35
in which the Ewoks, a
1:37:38
bunch of small furry creatures,
1:37:42
managed to defeat an entire army
1:37:45
of stormtroopers in
1:37:48
a forest. The characters have just seen
1:37:50
this happen and one of them
1:37:52
has a deep realisation about
1:37:56
chaos theory and the weirdness
1:37:58
of the universe. Okay?
1:38:01
And it's very deep and meaningful
1:38:04
and then Simon Pegg's character
1:38:07
has a realisation. A
1:38:09
ground breaking, stunning
1:38:11
realisation. Little
1:38:14
Ewoks.
1:38:17
An entire empire brought
1:38:19
to its knees by small furry
1:38:22
creatures. Yeah, it's my point exactly.
1:38:25
Leave them alone. Brian,
1:38:27
did you notice that everything that transpired in those three films
1:38:30
on a mean everything can be attributed
1:38:32
to the actors of one very minor character? Who?
1:38:36
The Gunner on the Stardust drawer at the beginning of the first
1:38:38
film. How
1:38:40
come? Well, because
1:38:43
if the Gunner had shot the pod that C-3P and
1:38:46
R2 were in, they wouldn't have got to Tatooine, they wouldn't have
1:38:48
met Luke, Luke wouldn't have met Ben, they wouldn't have met Han and
1:38:50
Chewie, they wouldn't have rescued Princess Leia. None of it would have happened.
1:38:54
Chaos theory. Eh?
1:38:57
The predictability of random events. The
1:38:59
notion that reality as we know it past,
1:39:02
present, future is in fact a mathematically predictable,
1:39:04
preordained system.
1:39:05
So
1:39:09
somewhere out there in the vastness
1:39:11
of the unknown is an equation.
1:39:15
For predicting the future. An
1:39:18
equation so complex as
1:39:20
to utterly defy any possibility of comprehension
1:39:22
by giving the most brilliant human
1:39:25
mind. It's
1:39:27
an equation nonetheless.
1:39:31
Oh my god. What?
1:39:36
I've got some fucking jaffa cakes in my coat pocket.
1:39:39
Oh! Oh, daddy. Let's
1:39:41
all play kabaddi. Yeah, that's a good one. So
1:39:43
you just thought, oh my god. Oh
1:39:45
my god. Oh my god. Kind
1:39:48
of like in a film where they've just discovered, you know,
1:39:50
we've broken through to the next plateau. Oh
1:39:52
my god. We've discovered AI. It's
1:39:56
become self-aware.
1:39:57
Oh my god, what is it? learning
1:40:00
from us. You know. Yeah.
1:40:03
The other one is one, two, three, four, five, six, seven,
1:40:05
eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. What's that?
1:40:08
One, two, three,
1:40:10
four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven,
1:40:12
twelve. Does anyone else remember that? I
1:40:15
don't know if they will. Ching, ching,
1:40:17
ching, ching, ching, ching, ching, ching, ching, ching,
1:40:19
ching, ching. Is that Ring of New Bells? Is
1:40:22
that from Sesame Street? Correctamondo.
1:40:25
Sesame Street. How does it? Denny
1:40:27
Day. Na, na, na. Na,
1:40:30
na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na,
1:40:32
na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na,
1:40:34
na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na,
1:40:36
the Sesame Street. I can't remember any of
1:40:38
the words except the Sesame Street at the end. Great little program that.
1:40:41
I think it's very well
1:40:43
intentioned that program. It's kind of educational
1:40:45
program for the urban
1:40:47
youth of America. One
1:40:50
kids TV program made by public,
1:40:53
like the public broadcasting station
1:40:56
in the States. The one with Big
1:40:58
Bird and Elmo and
1:41:02
the Grouch who lived in a bin and Count, the
1:41:05
Count who loved
1:41:07
to count, I am the Count, I love the Count, and
1:41:10
he counts everything and there's the Swedish
1:41:13
chef. No, that was the Muppets. That's the Muppets,
1:41:15
is it? Okay. I
1:41:18
still love Sesame Street. It's kind of like saying, hey,
1:41:20
it's okay if you're not like
1:41:22
white and middle class and live in a big house,
1:41:24
you can still have a TV
1:41:26
show for you. I kind of think it was aimed at kind of
1:41:28
urban poor basically in America. Wasn't
1:41:31
Stevie Wonder in an episode of
1:41:33
Sesame Street? Yeah, and there was loads
1:41:35
of songs, loads of cool animations, loads
1:41:38
of cool Muppet type characters. Paul
1:41:40
Simon from Simon and Garfunkel was on Sesame
1:41:42
Street sitting on the steps outside
1:41:45
of Brownstone Building playing
1:41:47
Get Back by the Beatles on the guitar
1:41:49
with a bunch of kids around and
1:41:52
another one where Stevie Wonder did Superstition.
1:41:55
Superstitious,
1:41:55
ridings on the wall
1:41:58
and the whole band is there. Yeah that
1:42:00
was really good and then so there were various
1:42:02
different things that would come up on Sesame Street
1:42:05
and every now and then it would suddenly cut to,
1:42:08
was it images of a cartoon
1:42:11
pinball machine I think. A pinball machine, that's right
1:42:13
the ball flying around the pinball machine and
1:42:15
the music was 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12.
1:42:20
Really funky you know. I found out recently is The Point Assistus
1:42:23
singing that. The Point Assistus, oh
1:42:25
really? They did a song called 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12. Just
1:42:29
for Sesame
1:42:29
Street.
1:42:31
Oh they did it just for Sesame Street. Yeah they
1:42:33
did it for Sesame Street. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7. I can't
1:42:35
say that comes into my head every day but occasionally
1:42:37
when I'm counting something. If
1:42:39
you need to count to 12. Yeah it's
1:42:42
a boon. It's
1:42:44
a boon it helps. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12.
1:43:00
I'm
1:43:08
sure
1:43:15
there are lots of other quotes, I mean loads of Alan Partridge
1:43:17
ones that come into my head.
1:43:19
Yeah totally, Alan Partridge. Like
1:43:21
just Google it Lynn.
1:43:23
Say
1:43:25
that's my girlfriend quite often, just Google it Lynn. Just
1:43:28
Google it. Yeah all Alan.
1:43:31
I don't know why that's
1:43:33
funny, it's just Alan's funnies. All Alan
1:43:35
Partridge, all of it.
1:43:37
Just I can't think right now
1:43:39
of any specific one but
1:43:42
even just things like Cashback or
1:43:44
Jurassic Park. I tell you what can you
1:43:46
see me tomorrow in the office? I'd love to. I
1:43:49
need to pick your brains. Pick away, pick away. You've
1:43:51
got the common touch. Thank you. You've been
1:43:53
away too long. Alan
1:43:56
I want you back on the telly. Jurassic
1:43:59
Park.
1:43:59
You know all those things
1:44:02
that he says, yeah. I've got cheese,
1:44:04
I've got cheese, this is cheese! What
1:44:06
about you, do you have any? I've got loads, I've
1:44:09
actually got a list of them. I've got, wait
1:44:11
a second! Wait a second!
1:44:14
That's from the three amigos. I've
1:44:17
got three from the three amigos.
1:44:19
Oh, I've got one I always come up with, whenever
1:44:21
someone says something
1:44:23
where the answer is nothing,
1:44:26
I would say, do you know what nada means? Yeah.
1:44:29
Isn't that a light chicken gravy? Do
1:44:31
you know what the word nada
1:44:33
means? In all those Mexican
1:44:35
movies you made, did you ever hear
1:44:38
that word?
1:44:40
Isn't that a light chicken gravy that you just... It
1:44:42
means nothing! So,
1:44:44
listeners, the three amigos, it's a comedy
1:44:46
film, a really good one,
1:44:48
a really nice one from the
1:44:51
1980s, Steve Martin, Chevy Chase,
1:44:53
Martin Short, it's like classic
1:44:57
80s comedy. Steve Martin
1:44:59
and Lorne Michaels wrote the script
1:45:02
and the music was done by Randy Newman.
1:45:05
That's it, yeah, brilliant songs. Randy
1:45:07
Newman's just a genius and his
1:45:09
songs are fantastic. I mean, other stuff he did was,
1:45:12
you got a friend in me, you
1:45:14
got a friend in me from Toy Story,
1:45:17
which is just a beautiful song. And
1:45:19
he also did Baltimore. Baltimore,
1:45:24
you know that song? Have you heard the reggae version of
1:45:26
that? I have heard the reggae version and the Nina
1:45:29
Simone version as well. So if he,
1:45:31
you know, whoever wrote Baltimore is a genius
1:45:34
in my opinion. And
1:45:36
so Randy Newman did all the songs. And
1:45:38
yeah, it's like basically Steve Martin, Martin
1:45:40
Short, Chevy Chase are movie stars
1:45:43
in the golden age of Hollywood,
1:45:46
the studio era, the 1920s. And
1:45:49
they decide that they want to negotiate
1:45:52
more money
1:45:53
for their movies and they go
1:45:55
to see their producer to try
1:45:57
to negotiate their pay.
1:45:59
they get
1:46:01
thrown out of the studio and fired
1:46:04
on the spot. And so,
1:46:06
wait a second, is one of the things that Steve
1:46:09
Martin says in that film. But
1:46:11
the Nada thing when they when they asked for money, and
1:46:13
he goes, Do you know what the word Nada
1:46:16
means? Yeah, in all those
1:46:18
Mexican movies, you ever heard that word Nada?
1:46:20
All those Mexican movies that you made, did
1:46:22
you ever hear that word? And then Chevy
1:46:25
Chase goes, Isn't that a light chicken gravy with
1:46:27
a, it means nothing. What you
1:46:29
gonna get?
1:46:32
Yeah, because Steve Martin's like, you
1:46:35
know, we were thinking about
1:46:37
this next movie. And then
1:46:39
he starts negotiating and he ends
1:46:42
it with like, no dough, no show.
1:46:44
He's so pleased with
1:46:47
himself. We want money.
1:46:49
We want amigo money. We want
1:46:51
real money. Amigo money. No dough,
1:46:54
no show. And he
1:46:57
stands there. And then yeah, the producer,
1:46:59
Mr. Harry Flugelman says, Do
1:47:02
you know what the word Nada means? In
1:47:04
all those Mexican movies that you made, did
1:47:06
you ever hear that word? And yes, Chevy
1:47:08
Chase, isn't that a light chicken gravy? It means
1:47:11
nothing. Yeah.
1:47:17
We shoot the picture in eight days. What
1:47:19
do you think?
1:47:20
That'll be the day. What
1:47:23
did he say?
1:47:25
He said that'll be the day, Mr. Flugelman.
1:47:28
What? I don't think
1:47:30
you understand who you're talking to here. We
1:47:32
have a few items we want to straighten out
1:47:34
first. You might be looking at three actors
1:47:37
who really don't feel like making a Geronimo
1:47:40
picture.
1:47:41
What the hell are you talking about? Like,
1:47:44
I think maybe we should. What we're talking
1:47:46
about is money. Real
1:47:48
money. Amigo money. No
1:47:51
dough, no show.
1:47:59
the word nada means
1:48:02
in all those Mexican movies you made
1:48:05
did you ever hear that word
1:48:08
isn't that a light chicken gravy that you did it
1:48:10
means nothing zero zip it's
1:48:13
what you're gonna have when I'm through with you you
1:48:15
had Harry Flugelman on a bad day I'd
1:48:18
like to continue to work for free mr. Flugelman are
1:48:21
you living in the studio mansion yeah
1:48:24
well not anymore you're not sad
1:48:27
the amigos are out of the mansion where did you get those
1:48:29
clothes from a movie yeah
1:48:32
the studio gave them to us those darn
1:48:34
amigos well we're taking
1:48:36
them back get wardrobe
1:48:38
over here right away take the amigos clothes
1:48:41
wait a minute you can't take our
1:48:43
clothes you gave us these clothes
1:48:46
they were presents come on wait a minute
1:48:49
that's lucky boy
1:48:51
a second I think you miss red who you're
1:48:53
talking to here miss
1:48:56
red
1:48:57
I want these mugs off of my lap
1:49:07
mr. Flugelman says you're not to come back on
1:49:09
this lap
1:49:10
ever I've got um you're
1:49:13
gonna pull them pistols or you know whistle dixie
1:49:17
you're gonna pull those pistols or whistle dixie
1:49:20
when does that pop into your head just
1:49:23
whenever I need to do something like often
1:49:25
if I if I need to pee I don't
1:49:27
know if you ever have that you're standing there you
1:49:29
need to pee and it's not happening and
1:49:32
then I'm gonna you're gonna urinate you're
1:49:34
gonna whistle dixie okay punk you're gonna
1:49:40
pee you're gonna piss into the toilet or
1:49:42
you're gonna whistle dixie Clint
1:49:45
Eastwood I've also got this
1:49:47
is a conversation yes yes this
1:49:51
is a conversation yes this
1:49:53
is a conversation yes and
1:49:57
Borat it was a great success
1:50:00
Whenever I pick out a t-shirt from my cupboard,
1:50:04
which I am
1:50:05
not going to wear out,
1:50:07
but I will sleep in it,
1:50:09
I always hear Nigel Tufnell going, yeah,
1:50:12
I sleep in this sometimes. Hello
1:50:15
listeners, hope you're doing all right. You're now going to
1:50:17
hear a little clip from this
1:50:19
is Spinal Tap, the moment when
1:50:21
Nigel Tufnell talks about his t-shirt
1:50:24
and he says, yeah, I sleep in this sometimes,
1:50:27
which only happens in a split
1:50:29
second, that line, but I'll play
1:50:31
you the clip anyway. So in this one, yeah,
1:50:33
he's talking about his t-shirt and Nigel
1:50:36
is a rock star in the 70s. And
1:50:39
so the t-shirt he's wearing, it's a black
1:50:41
sleeveless t-shirt with a picture
1:50:44
of a skeleton, you know,
1:50:46
like a rib cage as
1:50:49
if we're looking at an x-ray
1:50:52
of his chest. And the t-shirt
1:50:54
shows what we would see if we
1:50:56
were looking at an x-ray. So it's a black
1:50:58
t-shirt with his rib
1:51:00
cage, but for some reason the
1:51:02
rib cage is green. I suppose it's because,
1:51:04
you know, x-rays are often like
1:51:07
green or blue or something, aren't they? So
1:51:09
he's wearing this t-shirt with a green
1:51:11
rib cage and the interviewer says,
1:51:14
that's a very interesting t-shirt and Nigel
1:51:16
starts describing it and starts talking
1:51:18
about, you know, this is an exact replica
1:51:21
of my inner structure. This
1:51:24
is exactly, if you were to open me up, this is exactly
1:51:26
what it would look like. And the interviewer
1:51:28
says, well, but it wouldn't be green though, would it? And
1:51:31
Nigel's like, ah, well actually it is green,
1:51:33
isn't it? Nigel believes
1:51:35
that actually a human
1:51:38
rib cage is actually green on the inside,
1:51:40
but obviously he doesn't know what he's talking about because
1:51:43
he's a slightly idiotic rock
1:51:45
star. But anyway, I sleep in this sometimes.
1:51:48
So there you go. You
1:51:50
like this? It's very nice. It looks
1:51:53
like colourful. This is my exact
1:51:55
inner structure, done in a t-shirt,
1:51:58
exactly medically accurate.
1:51:59
So in other words
1:52:02
if we were to take all your flesh and blood
1:52:04
and every log off you'd see exactly
1:52:06
what you see. It wouldn't be green though. It
1:52:09
is green. You know see how
1:52:11
your blood looks blue? Yeah well
1:52:13
that's just the vein, I mean the colour of the vein. The
1:52:16
blood is actually red. Oh well maybe it's not green.
1:52:19
Anyway this is what we sleep in sometimes. Good
1:52:22
old knowledge. And then of course there's,
1:52:24
where's your base? I
1:52:28
don't know, I think I left it at the airport. That's
1:52:31
just from an anecdote, that's not even from a film, that's from
1:52:33
an interview with a guest. But
1:52:36
it's still stuck in my mind. I don't know, I
1:52:38
think I left it at the airport. I'm just wondering
1:52:41
in all the amazing roles you have
1:52:43
personally played in your films if there's
1:52:45
one that is especially
1:52:48
autobiographical? No, the answer
1:52:50
is no. What
1:52:53
it does represent is observations
1:52:55
I've had over the years growing up and looking at
1:52:57
people and taking one thing from someone and
1:52:59
some people during spinal tap would come
1:53:02
up after the movie and many bands
1:53:04
would come up to us and say, oh I know who that
1:53:06
is, yeah yeah I know who
1:53:08
that is, oh yeah yeah
1:53:11
that's BAFTA. I said what? That's
1:53:14
BAFTA, yeah the guy in that band in,
1:53:17
no it's not BAFTA, I don't even know who that is, BAFTA.
1:53:21
That's all I even know in that group. I don't know who
1:53:23
BAFTA is, it's not BAFTA. People
1:53:26
believe what they want to see in certain things
1:53:28
and there's nothing autobiographical, they're
1:53:30
just things.
1:53:31
Well spinal tap, the example
1:53:33
is that I was in a hotel in Los Angeles
1:53:35
waiting for a friend in the lobby and
1:53:40
an English band was checking in, this was 1974.
1:53:44
The manager, and I think there were four
1:53:46
of them, they went up to the desk and he started
1:53:49
doing the thing and I was just waiting for my friend and
1:53:52
the manager says to one of them, where's
1:53:55
your bass?
1:53:55
Where's
1:54:00
your base? I don't know, I think I
1:54:02
left it at the airport.
1:54:05
You what? I don't know. You
1:54:08
left your base at the airport. I don't know,
1:54:11
where is it? Well, I don't know, I'm asking
1:54:13
you. Well, it
1:54:15
went on for 15 minutes. I
1:54:20
don't think I've ever been happier. Except
1:54:25
for the night that I
1:54:27
met my wife. Where's your base?
1:54:31
I don't know, I think I left it at the airport.
1:54:34
He's one of a few Americans to do a really good English
1:54:36
accent, isn't he? He's technically English, isn't he? Is
1:54:39
it? Is it, though? Is it, blood?
1:54:41
Yeah, he is technically English, although he
1:54:43
lived in America for most of his life. Right, well,
1:54:45
that explains it, so he's not actually
1:54:47
an American. Have you ever heard Paul
1:54:49
McCartney talking about John Lennon and
1:54:52
him saying, Paul say that John
1:54:54
was like the tough one, you
1:54:57
know, like mean.
1:54:58
And that wasn't John at all. John was a baby.
1:55:00
He was just a little baby. You
1:55:04
do a very good Paul, I have to say. I
1:55:07
just love hearing him say, he was just a little
1:55:09
baby. It's
1:55:13
so funny to me that Paul, maybe
1:55:15
in his mind, is like, yeah, John was
1:55:17
just a baby, you know, he was just a little baby.
1:55:21
That's so cute.
1:55:22
Also from The Rutles, so I've got
1:55:24
a lot of these,
1:55:26
from The Rutles, that movie,
1:55:28
that sort of comedy movie which... What about their
1:55:30
trousers? Well, is that, well, they were
1:55:32
tight.
1:55:33
The hair and the
1:55:36
present, the music.
1:55:39
He liked it. No, he hated it. What
1:55:42
did he like? Well,
1:55:45
the trousers.
1:55:51
What about their trousers? Well, they
1:55:53
were very tight.
1:55:59
Tight. Yes, you could see
1:56:02
quite clearly. Oh, I see. Everything
1:56:04
outlined. Cool as game. Yes, yes, thank you.
1:56:07
Yes. So, tight trousers and noise.
1:56:09
Nothing left of the imagination. Yes, thank you. I've
1:56:14
got the trousers thing, but also I've just got
1:56:16
this one, which is like, how does it feel to be such
1:56:18
an asshole? Which
1:56:21
is Eric Eidell, the interviewer, interviewing
1:56:23
the guy who turned
1:56:25
down the ruddles, the guy who had the opportunity,
1:56:28
but he said no. And
1:56:30
he's interviewing this guy, Brian
1:56:32
Thigh, the guy who turned down the
1:56:34
ruddles, and Brian Thigh is drinking
1:56:36
and smoking. He's clearly devastated
1:56:39
by the fact that he didn't sign the ruddles,
1:56:42
and he missed out on all that money and
1:56:44
stuff. And so he's being interviewed
1:56:46
by Eric Eidell. He's sort of saying, what is he
1:56:48
saying to him? So is it true that you
1:56:50
had the opportunity to sign the ruddles, and
1:56:53
you turned them down? Is that right? Yeah.
1:56:57
And it's, what's his name? Dan
1:56:59
Aykroyd. Dan Aykroyd, yeah. All those
1:57:01
millions have gone. All
1:57:04
those album sales, all those merchandise sales,
1:57:06
all those touring money, you didn't
1:57:08
get them. You just turned it down.
1:57:12
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I did. Yeah.
1:57:16
Yeah. How does it feel to be
1:57:18
such an asshole? But he's
1:57:20
like the interviewer, Eric Eidell. Most
1:57:23
of the time he does it in an English accent. I'm
1:57:25
here outside Abbey Road Studios,
1:57:27
you know, Shabby Road Studios,
1:57:30
where the ruddles recorded their first
1:57:32
album in 20 minutes. Their second
1:57:35
album took even longer. Yeah.
1:57:37
And he's got this English accent. But then
1:57:40
just in that single line, he says, how
1:57:42
does it feel to be such an asshole? He suddenly
1:57:44
becomes American or like a little
1:57:46
American hint in his English accent
1:57:48
that just cracks me up. Brian
1:57:51
Fye was a top record executive in
1:57:53
London in 1962. Mr. Fye,
1:57:56
you've been known for many, many years as
1:57:58
the man who turned down
1:57:59
the rutals. Yeah,
1:58:03
that's right. You
1:58:06
said that guitar groups were on their way out and
1:58:08
would never make any money at all in the
1:58:10
60s.
1:58:14
Yes, I did. You turned
1:58:16
your back on all those millions of
1:58:19
sales, all those hundreds of gold
1:58:21
records. Yeah,
1:58:23
that's right.
1:58:27
What's it like to be such an asshole? What?
1:58:29
Alright, well that'll probably do for like just stupid
1:58:32
quotes that stick in my head.
1:58:34
Just a little insight into our
1:58:37
brains there. I don't know if there's
1:58:39
anything left on the tombola. Well, we had
1:58:41
one. We haven't had one. Okay, one
1:58:43
is... this is gonna be... this is
1:58:46
gonna be the last thing we talk about.
1:58:49
But it's a big one. Number one is this. Aliens.
1:58:52
Do they walk among us?
1:58:54
No, next. There's
1:58:57
all this stuff in the news at the moment
1:58:59
about like the American
1:59:02
committee looking into UFOs and stuff
1:59:04
and there's that guy going, yep,
1:59:07
we've got alien technology. We've got... I've
1:59:09
seen UFOs. How many? I think
1:59:11
he also said quite a few. It's
1:59:14
like the guy is clearly talking
1:59:16
complete and utter bollocks. So
1:59:19
he's in a committee hearing
1:59:22
which is a formal legal... The one
1:59:25
I saw. And he's being asked by
1:59:27
maybe a judge or something, how many
1:59:29
aliens have you seen? Or how many UFOs
1:59:32
do you have in your possession?
1:59:36
Quite a few. Oh, you can't be more specific
1:59:38
than that. Speaking under oath.
1:59:41
And he's got some low-level clearance
1:59:43
apparently. Security. I mean, it's just fucking bollocks.
1:59:46
I mean, there's just... I don't
1:59:48
know where to begin. It's clearly... I mean, I don't want to get
1:59:50
all sinful out but it seems like a bit of a psy-op
1:59:52
to me. Psychological operation.
1:59:55
So basically, I
1:59:56
think the way I see it is the more people
1:59:58
conspiracy theorists are talking about... UFOs,
2:00:01
the less they're talking about things like Epstein,
2:00:05
things are a little bit more prescient
2:00:08
and real. Yeah, the more the
2:00:10
more the more air time taken up with
2:00:12
talking about UFOs, it's just chipping away
2:00:14
at the real stuff. The less
2:00:16
we actually look at real
2:00:19
injustices that are happening
2:00:21
in plain view, for example,
2:00:23
all our liberties being taken away from us and
2:00:26
the elites essentially taking all
2:00:28
our money and property and freedoms
2:00:31
from us while we're going around debating
2:00:33
about whether there are aliens. Yeah,
2:00:35
that's the way I see it. It's just a big distraction
2:00:37
technique. And also maybe there's an element of like,
2:00:40
although I don't think anyone would be taken in by this, like
2:00:43
we've got alien tech. I
2:00:45
think you should spend more money on your
2:00:47
defence budget than we do. But
2:00:50
hey, other countries, yeah, we
2:00:52
might have alien guns.
2:00:55
Just saying. Yeah, we might have alien tech. We
2:00:57
might have anti gravity technology, but
2:00:59
we're not saying we might have, but we're not really
2:01:01
saying it. But we might. We might. We
2:01:04
do. No, we do. We definitely
2:01:06
do. Might want to consider that, guys, if you want
2:01:08
to launch a send any more spy balloons
2:01:11
in our direction. You know, we've got alien guns.
2:01:13
Sorry, we might have alien guns. We've got alien
2:01:15
tech and we've got alien bodies. We
2:01:17
just need we're just waiting for the DNI labs to
2:01:19
result results to come through. And yeah,
2:01:23
we're all we're all fine with that.
2:01:25
Yeah. And the government as well, like
2:01:28
almost to dignify
2:01:31
it. They're not
2:01:33
they're not saying it's real. They're just asking the questions.
2:01:36
Do we do we have alien guns?
2:01:38
Well,
2:01:40
they do that in gossip columns. It
2:01:43
was Madonna scene with so and so last
2:01:45
week because if you froze it as a question,
2:01:47
you can't get sued.
2:01:49
Right.
2:01:50
What's you know, was so and so, so and so, so
2:01:52
and so. Well, no, we're just asking the
2:01:54
question. Was James
2:01:56
Thompson scene in Princess Diana's bedroom?
2:01:59
No. But we
2:02:01
print the question big enough because it looks like the thing that it
2:02:03
was true. In 1987
2:02:06
when he was 12 years
2:02:09
old, I don't know what that story is. But
2:02:12
you print the question big enough that
2:02:15
people think it's true.
2:02:17
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. Okay.
2:02:20
So aliens, no, no fucking way. The
2:02:23
distances are too big. And if
2:02:25
they do, they're not going to come down in little tin pot UFOs
2:02:27
that are like little metal boxes
2:02:30
through like flashing lights on the side. I
2:02:33
mean, you know, if they
2:02:35
get all this way and then, oh, we crash landed
2:02:37
in the desert, oh no. It's
2:02:39
like, if they've got that level of technology to get like
2:02:42
light years, distance, they're not going to crash
2:02:44
land in a fucking desert in like the equivalent of
2:02:46
a Ford
2:02:47
Focus. Yeah,
2:02:49
they can travel across the fucking universe
2:02:51
avoiding it. They can
2:02:54
land safely. They can get through the earth
2:02:56
burning atmosphere, but they can't
2:02:58
land on like a really flat empty desert.
2:03:02
I mean, I think we talked about this before, but
2:03:04
it's all just cover up for like weapons
2:03:07
development. Like, you know, the stealth
2:03:09
bomber.
2:03:10
Yeah. Have we talked about this before? I
2:03:12
think we did. We talked about UFOs before. The silhouette
2:03:14
of a stealth bomber is suspiciously close
2:03:17
to that of a UFO, classic UFO
2:03:19
shape. So I think the idea of a flying
2:03:21
disc was put around just if anyone
2:03:23
saw that shape in the sky, oh, it's a flying disc. No,
2:03:26
it's not. It's a flying wing.
2:03:28
It is. Yeah. It's a stealth bomber.
2:03:31
Oh no, it's a shape of a UFO. It's got a bubble in the
2:03:33
middle and two long widths of the side. It must be flying. I
2:03:36
mean, fuck off. What about all those videos
2:03:38
that got discussed on the Joe Rogan
2:03:40
experience though, James? I've
2:03:42
never seen a convincing UFO video in my life.
2:03:45
Well, there's the ones that are taken by pilots.
2:03:48
Oh, them? They show these little
2:03:51
glowing balls that go into the
2:03:53
ocean and they don't really understand
2:03:56
how they can accelerate in that kind of way. We're
2:04:00
told that this is all like legitimate
2:04:03
video footage. And how do we supposed to know?
2:04:06
No, yeah, I don't know. And
2:04:08
also, could it be in a normally in the display or
2:04:10
something stuck to the windscreen? Like
2:04:14
people chase like reflections
2:04:16
before, you know, you see a reflection in your canopy,
2:04:20
whatever it's called. Oh my God,
2:04:22
and it just flipped off in the other direction because it's a reflection
2:04:24
of a light coming from behind you, Div. It
2:04:26
was literally the reflection of the moon on
2:04:29
the top of your window
2:04:31
of your plane. I
2:04:33
don't know about that. I don't know if it's that simple,
2:04:36
but
2:04:37
no, I don't know. I'm being big glib about
2:04:39
that one. But I personally
2:04:41
don't believe UFOs have come to Earth
2:04:43
from other planets. It's all terrestrial. It's
2:04:45
all from this. I mean, the one I
2:04:47
did see was a shot of like a ski
2:04:50
resort or something in this silver
2:04:52
ball flew overhead. It's like a satellite
2:04:54
or a spy satellite. Yeah, nothing
2:04:57
there. Nothing there that I've ever seen
2:04:59
makes me think it's from outer space. Why the hell would it be from
2:05:01
outer space? It's typical.
2:05:03
The chances are it's from around
2:05:06
here, right? I mean, the odds are yeah,
2:05:08
if it's not from a million zillions,
2:05:10
a million miles away, space, you know,
2:05:14
it's just interesting that people see
2:05:16
something they don't understand and they just
2:05:18
conclude that it's from
2:05:21
from outer space that it's aliens. I mean,
2:05:23
I don't know. Therefore, it's aliens. I
2:05:25
mean, it used to be the Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot
2:05:29
and goblins, you know, and that
2:05:31
was in two, you know, no one's talking
2:05:33
about goblins anymore. Do they? No one says little green.
2:05:36
No one talks about the pixies or the fairies anymore.
2:05:38
They're out of fashion. Fairies at the bottom of your
2:05:40
garden. They're out of fashion. It's aliens now.
2:05:43
Do
2:05:43
you remember ball lightning?
2:05:45
That's real. That is real. That is real.
2:05:48
This is real. This is real. This is
2:05:50
this is real. That's another quote
2:05:52
in my head from three amigos. This is real. It's all real.
2:05:55
They are going to kill us. You
2:05:57
know who reached out to three amigos? We've
2:06:02
seen galaxy quest. No, what's that
2:06:04
Vietnam film where they think they're making
2:06:06
a film? Tropic Thunder, yeah. Tropic Thunder
2:06:08
totally ripped off the three amigos but with none of the
2:06:10
charm or humour. No, Tropic
2:06:12
Thunder's pretty good, I think. But
2:06:15
it is a rip off of the three amigos. But also,
2:06:17
Galaxy Quest is another one
2:06:20
that's pretty much the same story. I
2:06:22
can't stand those films. I tried watching the first
2:06:24
one. I hated it. What? Which one?
2:06:27
One of those. You're thinking Guardians of the Galaxy.
2:06:29
Oh, right. Well, I just think... Galaxy Quest was
2:06:32
like Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver,
2:06:35
and it's like a rip... It's like a joke
2:06:37
on Star Trek. They're basically the cast
2:06:40
of Star Trek, but they hate each other. And
2:06:42
then they get into a situation where they're
2:06:44
encountering real
2:06:46
aliens.
2:06:47
Right. And, you know,
2:06:49
with hilarious consequences. Three amigos, they're
2:06:52
movie stars. There's people in like
2:06:54
a village in Mexico that needs their help. Thinking
2:06:57
that they're real, they go, then
2:06:59
they're not real
2:07:00
and they can't save the village. But then
2:07:03
they do save the village. And it's kind
2:07:05
of awesome. OK,
2:07:07
here I am again, interrupting the episode.
2:07:10
Hello, all three of you who are still
2:07:12
alive after having listened to all
2:07:15
of this so far. I say three.
2:07:17
I'm joking, of course. It's more like
2:07:20
three million. Because, you know,
2:07:22
everyone listens to this podcast, don't they? Three million.
2:07:24
Three billion. Three billion people. Still
2:07:27
listening. It started out as six
2:07:29
billion. It's just gone down
2:07:31
to three million. It's all right. I can live with that.
2:07:34
That's OK. Anyway, so I'm
2:07:36
interrupting here because I'm trying to
2:07:38
help you navigate through this conversation, of course, right?
2:07:41
So we talk again about the
2:07:43
film Three Amigos. And
2:07:45
James is going to start referring to
2:07:48
another film, which is called Green Street,
2:07:51
a film about English football hooligans.
2:07:54
He describes it as being laughably bad,
2:07:56
like it's so bad, it's sort of good
2:07:59
in a way.
2:07:59
And in the film, the
2:08:02
actor,
2:08:03
Elijah Wood, the one who plays Frodo
2:08:05
Baggins, he's an American who
2:08:08
goes to London and he ends up becoming
2:08:11
a football hooligan or mixing
2:08:13
with some dangerous football hooligan
2:08:15
type guys. And there's a scene
2:08:18
where he gets attacked
2:08:20
by a dangerous looking football
2:08:22
hooligan and Elijah Wood, Frodo
2:08:24
Baggins, manages to fight
2:08:27
back. He somehow finds
2:08:30
some inner strength and
2:08:33
he convincingly fights back against this
2:08:35
crazy Birmingham City football hooligan
2:08:40
and his friend is impressed and said, how did you do
2:08:42
that? And Elijah
2:08:44
Wood's character describes how he had
2:08:46
to imagine
2:08:49
that the football hooligan who he was
2:08:51
facing was in fact someone
2:08:53
that he hated or someone
2:08:56
that he wanted to get revenge on or
2:08:59
his old nemesis from
2:09:01
school, like the school bully
2:09:03
who used to pick on him at school. He just
2:09:05
had to get all that rage
2:09:08
and anger against that person from his past
2:09:10
and project it onto the football hooligan
2:09:12
who's approaching him with a knife in his
2:09:14
hand and that's what allowed
2:09:17
him to build up the anger that
2:09:20
he needed to fight back.
2:09:23
And James' point is
2:09:25
that that's ridiculous because when you've got
2:09:28
a football hooligan approaching you
2:09:30
with a very sharp knife in his hand who
2:09:33
says he's going to kill you, you don't
2:09:35
need to go back into your past and remember a
2:09:37
school bully because this football hooligan is like
2:09:39
ten times worse than that
2:09:42
guy in school who used to smack
2:09:44
you on the back of the head with a newspaper and
2:09:46
take your lunch money. You
2:09:48
know, this football hooligan is
2:09:51
actually going to murder you with a knife
2:09:53
so there's no need to actually go
2:09:55
back into your past and remember and summon
2:09:58
up your courage. or much
2:10:01
greater threat in front of you, so
2:10:03
just use real anger or real fear
2:10:05
or whatever it is you're feeling at this moment
2:10:08
to strike back against this guy. And,
2:10:11
ah dear, right, so there's that. You're going to
2:10:13
hear James talking about that. I hope you don't mind
2:10:16
me explaining this. Do you mind? No, you don't.
2:10:18
Okay, great. And
2:10:21
we also refer again to the film Three Amigos,
2:10:24
which you heard us talking about before. And
2:10:27
in that film, at the end of the
2:10:29
film, Steve Martin's character makes
2:10:32
a powerful speech, a moving speech,
2:10:35
to the people of this small
2:10:37
Mexican village,
2:10:39
right? And
2:10:41
he's trying to motivate these simple
2:10:43
people to find
2:10:45
the courage within themselves that they
2:10:47
need in order to fight back
2:10:50
against the bad guy who's going
2:10:52
to come to the village to
2:10:54
steal all their things and maybe
2:10:57
kill them. Right?
2:10:59
Okay. So in his speech,
2:11:02
he makes this rousing speech where he says
2:11:05
to everyone, sometimes you just have to find
2:11:07
your inner courage. Everyone
2:11:09
has to find their inner El Guapo.
2:11:12
Okay? Everyone
2:11:14
has an El Guapo. So the
2:11:16
bandit who's going to come and kill
2:11:18
them and rob them is called El
2:11:20
Guapo. He's the leader of this group
2:11:22
of bandits who are terrorizing this
2:11:25
village. And so Steve
2:11:27
Martin's character makes this moving, motivating
2:11:29
speech, basically saying, everyone
2:11:32
has their own personal El Guapo. For
2:11:35
some people, shyness is their El Guapo. You know,
2:11:37
he's basically talking about the fact that
2:11:39
everyone has a weakness and everyone has to find their
2:11:41
way to overcome their weakness. And
2:11:44
then he says, for us, our
2:11:47
El Guapo just happens to be the actual
2:11:50
El Guapo, a dangerous man
2:11:52
who wants to kill us. So the
2:11:55
reason that we're talking about three amigos and
2:11:57
this Hooligan film is that the
2:11:59
scene from the that Hooligan film where Elijah
2:12:02
Wood has to find his own personal
2:12:04
el guapo. It reminded James
2:12:07
of the film Three Amigos where
2:12:09
Steve Martin makes a speech to encourage
2:12:11
everyone to find their own personal el
2:12:14
guapo even though for them their
2:12:16
personal el guapo happens to be the actual
2:12:19
el guapo. Oh my god, do you understand?
2:12:21
Okay, I don't know what
2:12:23
you're thinking at this point, if
2:12:25
all this explaining is necessary.
2:12:28
But you know, I'll just remind you of the, don't
2:12:30
blame me, blame the guy from yesterday, that
2:12:33
lovely Leipster who told me yeah we love it when
2:12:35
you explain stuff, it really helps us to
2:12:38
navigate through your episodes. So
2:12:41
just pick, you know, if you want to have an argument with someone,
2:12:43
take it up with him. Go to his YouTube and
2:12:45
comment on his stuff. I
2:12:47
don't think he has a YouTube, I don't know, but
2:12:50
anyway you get the point. Alright then, let's
2:12:52
carry on with the conversation and
2:12:54
here we go. El guapo is on
2:12:56
its way.
2:12:57
Someday
2:12:59
the people of this village will have to face el guapo.
2:13:02
We might as well do it now.
2:13:04
In a way, all
2:13:06
of us have an el guapo to face someday. For some,
2:13:10
shyness might be their el guapo. For
2:13:13
others, a lack of education
2:13:15
might be their el guapo. For
2:13:17
us? El guapo is a big dangerous
2:13:19
guy who wants to kill us. But as
2:13:21
sure as my name is Lucky Day,
2:13:24
the people of Santa Poco can
2:13:27
conquer their own personal el guapo who also
2:13:29
happens to be the actual el guapo.
2:13:33
Oh, something that reminded me of that was, have you ever
2:13:35
seen Green Street?
2:13:37
Green Street? No. The reason I
2:13:39
mention that is because I live not far from Green Street
2:13:41
now in East London. What is it? It's
2:13:43
known as Green Street Hooligans in other countries. It's
2:13:46
a hilarious, unintentionally hilarious
2:13:48
Hooligan film about
2:13:50
West Ham fans because I'm just down the road from West
2:13:52
Ham now and Elijah Wood's in it. Oh,
2:13:55
and in his first, he basically gets, he's an American
2:13:58
on holiday. He's been kicked out.
2:13:59
college
2:14:02
he ends up hanging out with some his girlfriends
2:14:05
or his sister's mate or something his
2:14:07
girlfriend's brother or something who's a football
2:14:09
hooligan in the West
2:14:11
Ham firm as they call it
2:14:13
and his first interaction with hooligans
2:14:16
is he comes across a bunch of Zulus which is Birmingham
2:14:18
City fans
2:14:19
and they're gonna kill him.
2:14:22
Why? Because they're football hooligans they're
2:14:24
rival fans and he's like have you met my mate Stanley
2:14:27
and he gets a Stanley knife out and he's like oh my god
2:14:30
and then he goes into ape shit mode and somehow
2:14:32
beats like two Zulus up and run
2:14:34
and gets away. What Elijah Wood does
2:14:37
Frodo Baggins Frodo Baggins
2:14:39
does and then they have this it's
2:14:41
all sort of it's a ridiculous film it's really
2:14:43
funny though and um
2:14:45
they're like head hooligan his mate was like
2:14:48
when you're up against it like that you have to put all
2:14:50
your hatred and passion into that punch and really
2:14:53
think like it's basically the scene from the three
2:14:55
amigos where he goes who's your el guapo
2:14:58
you know it happens
2:15:00
to be the real el guapo is like and for Elijah
2:15:02
Wood it's this guy at college that like cheated
2:15:05
him out of his exam results or something
2:15:07
like that and he's like it
2:15:09
has the whole conversation about who's your el guapo
2:15:11
and I was thinking in that case if you
2:15:13
confronted with some Birmingham football fans with
2:15:15
a Stanley knife you're not thinking now who's my personal
2:15:18
el guapo you're thinking fuck
2:15:20
this guy is the ultimate
2:15:22
like adversary there's no need
2:15:25
to look deep inside yourself to find
2:15:27
that hatred and
2:15:29
passion from a previous encounter
2:15:31
like you're you're gonna get your head kicked in
2:15:33
like there's no need to search
2:15:36
for your personal el guapo this guy is far
2:15:38
more pricy and dangerous
2:15:40
than anyone in your history you know what you know
2:15:42
i'm trying to say i do know what you're trying to say you're
2:15:44
being faced with a massive drunk
2:15:47
birmingham city football fan he's
2:15:49
armed with a very sharp knife
2:15:52
and he absolutely hates you because you're a West
2:15:54
Ham fan and he is going to kill
2:15:56
you um you don't
2:15:59
You don't need to look inside yourself and find your
2:16:02
own personal guapo. You
2:16:04
mean your own personal nemesis
2:16:07
or your biggest fear? Like
2:16:09
when I was a child, my biggest fear
2:16:12
was being in my room in the dark. The
2:16:14
dark was my biggest fear. So when
2:16:17
I'm faced with a murderous football hooligan, I
2:16:19
don't need to go back to my fear of the
2:16:21
dark. The football hooligan with a knife
2:16:23
is much more frightening than
2:16:26
my old ancient fear of the dark. Yeah,
2:16:28
yeah. So who
2:16:31
were you punching when you punched that Birmingham City
2:16:33
fan? Because Alexander Scott, that
2:16:35
guy from college that I always hated, it's
2:16:37
like, no, no, no, no, no, he's not the
2:16:39
problem here. The football fan is
2:16:42
far, far more of a threat. You
2:16:44
don't need to look inside yourself and find your own
2:16:46
personal demons. It's really,
2:16:48
really ridiculous. The whole film is hilarious.
2:16:51
In a way, all of us has an el guapo
2:16:53
to face. For some, shyness might be
2:16:55
their el guapo. For others, a lack
2:16:57
of education might be their el guapo. For
2:17:00
us, el guapo is a big, dangerous
2:17:02
man who wants to kill us. But as sure
2:17:04
as my name is Lucky Day, the people of Santo
2:17:06
Poco can conquer their own personal
2:17:09
el guapo who also happens to be the
2:17:12
actual el guapo. El
2:17:14
guapo is the baddie in the three amigos. And el
2:17:16
guapo means the beautiful one, of course. Yeah,
2:17:19
yeah, yeah. Okay,
2:17:21
right. Well, good. I'm glad that we really
2:17:24
sorted out all of those things. And fixed
2:17:27
so many problems in this conversation.
2:17:29
Yeah, well, you know, we
2:17:32
do a bit. We're just doing
2:17:34
our best, listeners. But that's it from
2:17:36
the Glibb Brothers for this episode,
2:17:39
everybody. Yes. I've got to go
2:17:41
now in order to just
2:17:43
do something else. Sorry,
2:17:46
partridge. No,
2:17:49
it's been emotional. It's been amusing.
2:17:51
It's been slightly frightening in some
2:17:53
parts. It's been a pleasure. I hope
2:17:56
everyone could keep up. They probably couldn't. Thanks,
2:17:59
guys.
2:17:59
out. Well remember this remember the skate ramp
2:18:02
of audience retention? Yeah we're at
2:18:04
the flat bottom now where we're cruising
2:18:07
out into the long flat bottom.
2:18:09
It's actually a quarter pipe rather than a half pipe isn't
2:18:12
it? We're just off down the street now. Yeah
2:18:14
it's unlikely that audience retention goes
2:18:17
all the way back up as you get to the
2:18:19
end of the episode. No it doesn't go back up it's
2:18:22
a quarter pipe not a half pipe. Because that'd be weird
2:18:24
if some people, the same number
2:18:26
of people who clicked on the video also come back
2:18:28
to the video and fast forward to the last
2:18:31
few seconds. I can think of one type of video
2:18:33
which is like the half pipe. I don't know if I should
2:18:35
mention it. Let's
2:18:38
move on. Is it a sexy video? Let's
2:18:42
move on. Let's move on from that. Okay
2:18:44
well anyway thank you listeners for being
2:18:46
here with us on the the flat plane
2:18:49
here of audience retention at the end of the episode.
2:18:52
You? Well done. You're one of the hardcore.
2:18:54
You are the special ones and you are the ones that
2:18:57
AI will be rescuing in the
2:18:59
future or at least sparing.
2:19:02
Those ones with no attention span they
2:19:04
are no good to the human race and they will
2:19:06
be jettisoned. Maybe you should
2:19:08
say a word at the end that people can write in the comments if
2:19:10
they listen to the end and no one else in the comments
2:19:12
will understand what that means. I do that sometimes.
2:19:15
You can tell us what your own personal, who's
2:19:17
your own personal el guapo? Yeah what's your personal
2:19:19
el guapo?
2:19:21
El guapo, Spanish speakers obviously
2:19:23
will know but E-L-G-U-A-P-P-O,
2:19:26
el guapo. What's your own personal
2:19:29
el guapo? What's your el guapo Luke? Your
2:19:31
personal el guapo? My personal el guapo?
2:19:34
That is an unexpected question I'd need
2:19:36
to delve deep into my soul in order to find
2:19:38
the actual answer. Well
2:19:42
I'll tell you mine you can think about. I think laziness
2:19:44
is my el guapo. Yeah. I'm
2:19:47
very lazy. That's
2:19:49
it. I'm this confession basically. I'm
2:19:52
a very lazy person. Well I'm
2:19:54
glad I managed to actually get you to achieve
2:19:56
something today. I mean you've got an album. You've got an album.
2:19:58
I'm good at doing things I want to do. I'm just terrible at
2:20:00
doing things I don't want to do. So laziness
2:20:03
is your El Guapo. Procrastination
2:20:05
is your El Guapo. My El Guapo
2:20:08
might be rambling,
2:20:10
but I've turned my El Guapo into my
2:20:13
strength. So I'm like Batman in Batman
2:20:16
Begins. Yeah, you've turned your advert...
2:20:19
My weakness into a sort of strength that I use
2:20:22
in my own favour. So Batman's
2:20:24
fear of bats in childhood becomes...
2:20:27
He uses that. He embodies
2:20:29
that fear in order to
2:20:32
fight crime. And I've
2:20:34
done the same. Yeah, a bit far-fetched.
2:20:36
Most people would just get some counselling,
2:20:38
possibly just carry it with them
2:20:40
for a long time. Not really want to go
2:20:42
in dark places. Not many people would suddenly
2:20:45
buy a flash car. Yeah,
2:20:47
who does his car? Well,
2:20:50
it's Morgan Freeman, isn't it? The kind
2:20:52
of weapons guy.
2:20:54
No, but he's not in the original story.
2:20:56
I mean... Oh, the original story, yeah. I don't know. Isn't
2:20:58
it Alfred, basically? Alfred does everything.
2:21:01
He's a butler, but he's also like... Mechanic,
2:21:04
engineer.
2:21:05
Yeah, an inventor, mechanic,
2:21:07
engineer, genius. He's
2:21:10
got a lot of blackmail material against Batman. I
2:21:12
mean, I think he doesn't turn against him because...
2:21:14
Alfred. Yeah. Yeah, but would you, though?
2:21:16
Would you turn against... It's an interesting plot
2:21:18
idea for Batman. But he's a butler. I mean, working
2:21:21
class, you know, may rise against the...
2:21:23
Michael Cade. Now, listen, Batman.
2:21:25
I'm working class. If you... If
2:21:28
you... What would it be? I
2:21:31
think my wade is a shorter of you. If
2:21:33
you take any more liberties with the law
2:21:35
again,
2:21:37
I'll be... I'm going to break off and start
2:21:39
my own rival superhero franchise
2:21:43
called The Butler. I've been looking at
2:21:45
my wage packet and it has not been rising in
2:21:47
line with information. And
2:21:51
a bit, you know what I mean? Shuck in a sweetener
2:21:53
for me and I won't say anything. Right.
2:21:58
Okay. Great. Go DC
2:22:00
Comics, go ahead and make that the butler. A
2:22:03
new... The butler that turned. Yeah,
2:22:06
exactly. When Alfred decides to become
2:22:08
a superhero himself and he takes all the technology
2:22:11
and becomes the butler.
2:22:14
Starring
2:22:15
a de-aged Michael
2:22:18
Cade.
2:22:19
One quick one. A letter in VISTA
2:22:21
was in recently. I had an
2:22:23
idea for a concept. Giza Butler
2:22:25
and his Giza Butler. So, rock
2:22:28
star, bass player, Giza Butler
2:22:30
from Black Sabbath and his Giza
2:22:33
Butler, who's played by Danny Dyer. No
2:22:37
one understands that. There you go,
2:22:39
folks. So, who's
2:22:41
your personal alguapo? We'll
2:22:44
leave it at that.
2:22:45
We'll leave it at that. OK, thank you so much for
2:22:47
listening all the way through to the end. And
2:22:50
this has been a conversation.
2:22:52
Yes. Three,
2:22:58
four, five, six, seven, eight,
2:23:01
nine, ten, eleven, twelve.
2:23:06
OK, listeners, so
2:23:09
we're nearly at the end. I'd like you to just
2:23:11
reflect now on what your
2:23:14
personal alguapo is. What
2:23:16
is your personal alguapo? Maybe,
2:23:19
I don't know, phrasal verbs are your personal
2:23:22
alguapo. Or it could be, I don't
2:23:25
know, pronunciation of ed endings
2:23:28
is your personal alguapo. Or maybe it's the
2:23:30
pronunciation of minimal pairs in
2:23:32
vowel sounds. In English
2:23:34
pronunciation, that may be your alguapo.
2:23:36
I don't know. Anyway, I hope
2:23:39
you've enjoyed this episode. But
2:23:42
it sounds like the end. It's not it's not the end now,
2:23:44
because, of course, I have to ramble on
2:23:46
a bit more. Don't I? I do.
2:23:49
I don't know what you think about this episode. You
2:23:51
can let me know in the comments section. You
2:23:54
should refer to El Guapo.
2:23:56
OK, that's G U A P P O
2:23:59
L Guapo. Anyway, let us know about your own
2:24:01
personal El Guapo in the comments section
2:24:04
in order to show that you got to this stage
2:24:06
in the episode. Maybe some of you, maybe,
2:24:09
maybe we'll, maybe you'll check the episode
2:24:12
page for this later and you'll see that
2:24:14
there are just no comments about El Guapo.
2:24:16
You'll just realize that everyone's just, they're
2:24:18
all skeletons now. I don't know. But
2:24:21
let me now ramble on a little bit more at the end of
2:24:23
the episode because why not? I mean, we've got
2:24:25
this far. Why not push it a little
2:24:27
bit further? Okay. All right,
2:24:29
so stick around for a bit more rambling
2:24:32
and, and, and then I'll
2:24:35
let you continue with the rest of your life. That
2:24:42
was the long rambling conversation with James,
2:24:45
the Glibb brothers, reunited
2:24:47
on the podcast again. If you're still here,
2:24:50
well done. You survived the the
2:24:52
drop-off, the audience drop-off. All
2:24:55
the other people have dropped off. Maybe
2:24:57
they dropped off to sleep. I don't know, but you're
2:24:59
still here. Well done. Congratulations.
2:25:03
I respect your, your commitment
2:25:06
to Luke's English podcast. So,
2:25:08
yeah, a lot of things, a lot of stuff in that episode.
2:25:11
The film Blow Up, references
2:25:14
to the, the Bee Gees, the
2:25:17
Gibb brothers, Barry
2:25:19
Morris and Robin Gibb, the
2:25:22
Bee Gees, the Gibb
2:25:24
brothers, but obviously this was the Glibb brothers,
2:25:26
wasn't it? This time with James and me talking
2:25:29
about bands. Every band has a secret weapon.
2:25:32
I'd love to continue that conversation. Listening
2:25:35
back to this, I thought we didn't talk about as many
2:25:37
bands as I wanted to. You
2:25:40
know, you could continue that. Every band
2:25:42
has a secret weapon, a member of the group that
2:25:45
perhaps isn't the most obvious one, but is still
2:25:47
providing a really important
2:25:50
element to the band. Like, for example, The Beatles.
2:25:53
Of course, it's George Harrison, isn't it? It's
2:25:56
got to be George. Obviously Ringo is
2:25:59
an essential. foundation,
2:26:01
but George is definitely the secret weapon. He
2:26:04
provided amazing harmonies,
2:26:07
that third voice which blended
2:26:09
so well with Paul and John's voices. The
2:26:12
songwriting, George's
2:26:15
songs like Here Comes the Sun and
2:26:17
Something are in the top
2:26:19
five most listened to Beatles
2:26:21
songs on Spotify. In fact the
2:26:24
song on Spotify, the Beatles song on Spotify
2:26:26
that is in number one place with the most number
2:26:29
of listens is Here
2:26:31
Comes the Sun, the George
2:26:34
Harrison one. So we
2:26:36
can't underestimate the contribution he made
2:26:38
in terms of songs, but also just like
2:26:40
the musical side as well. I've mentioned
2:26:42
the vocal harmonies, but also
2:26:45
things like little things he did on the guitar, just little
2:26:47
hooks and riffs and contributions he made.
2:26:50
But of course John and Paul were there getting
2:26:54
all the attention and getting all the glory,
2:26:57
but I think George was the secret weapon. And
2:26:59
another band The Police, I
2:27:02
think that Andy Summers has
2:27:05
to be the secret weapon in The Police because
2:27:08
obviously Sting is Sting
2:27:12
is the obvious front man really
2:27:15
and the one that we see at the front. He's the
2:27:17
one who wrote the songs and he's got that incredible
2:27:19
voice and the bass
2:27:22
playing as well. So Sting
2:27:24
is obvious, right? And
2:27:26
then Stuart Copeland is also
2:27:28
pretty obvious because music
2:27:30
fans will surely know Stuart
2:27:33
Copeland as one of the most famous drummers
2:27:35
in the world, one of the best drummers in the world
2:27:37
and an attention-grabbing drummer
2:27:40
and he kind of to an extent defined The Police's
2:27:42
sound with those different rhythms,
2:27:44
the reggae stuff that he did. And
2:27:47
he's also quite a colourful character
2:27:50
in interviews, you know,
2:27:52
he's entertaining and vocal and so he
2:27:54
kind of steals the limelight as well. But Andy
2:27:56
Summers on the guitar, absolutely.
2:28:00
secret weapon because of the
2:28:03
soundscapes, the sound textures
2:28:05
he was able to contribute to
2:28:07
the group with the different guitar effects
2:28:09
and stuff, and also some very
2:28:12
memorable catchy hooks
2:28:14
and riffs. For example, Every
2:28:17
Breath You Take, the one that was sampled by Puff Daddy
2:28:20
I think, Every Breath
2:28:22
You Take. That guitar riff, which
2:28:25
is so famous, so iconic, that was written
2:28:27
by Andy Summers. Those
2:28:29
are the sorts of things he would contribute to the
2:28:32
police. I mean, the police is a three piece.
2:28:34
They're all essential
2:28:37
elements, but I think that probably in the
2:28:39
police, Andy Summers has to be considered a
2:28:41
secret weapon. So anyway, we could go on about
2:28:43
that further, but I can't.
2:28:45
I mustn't. Every band has a secret
2:28:48
weapon. Then we talked about Diary of a CEO,
2:28:52
which is this famous podcast. The book
2:28:55
that James mentioned about
2:28:57
New Order and Joy Division was called
2:29:00
Record, Play, Pause by Stephen
2:29:02
Morris. Then of course
2:29:04
we talked about Chat GPT and AI,
2:29:07
as you well know. James referenced
2:29:09
the book 1984 by George
2:29:11
Orwell, that famous story
2:29:13
of a totalitarian government,
2:29:16
but also Brave New World
2:29:18
by Aldous Huxley. Another
2:29:20
book which has a similar vision of a kind
2:29:23
of future society, a kind
2:29:25
of authoritarian or totalitarian
2:29:29
regime or situation in society, but
2:29:31
just in a different way. Both
2:29:35
completely fascinating books. Then
2:29:37
there was the whole section about
2:29:40
the lines from movies and
2:29:42
TV shows, which often
2:29:44
spring into our heads, or at least into
2:29:46
my head. There
2:29:48
was some Alan Partridge. There was
2:29:50
Spinal Tap. If you don't know about Spinal Tap,
2:29:53
go back into my episode archive and
2:29:55
go back to the episode which is called Film Club.
2:29:58
This is Spinal Tap. It's just a fantastic
2:30:01
film. If you're a music fan, if you're
2:30:03
a fan of comedy, you must listen to that episode
2:30:05
and then find the film and watch it. It
2:30:08
will improve your life. It's
2:30:10
just a joy from start to finish. But
2:30:13
also the film Three Amigos. And
2:30:18
I expect that I went into
2:30:20
that in quite a lot of detail and explained the
2:30:22
plot in order to help you understand
2:30:24
the things we were talking about. But
2:30:26
Three Amigos is just a wonderful film and
2:30:29
it's a family favourite in
2:30:32
our house. All of us love that
2:30:34
film. I mean, particularly
2:30:36
my dad, my brother and me. And
2:30:40
every now and then we will sit down maybe on a
2:30:42
Saturday afternoon and watch it
2:30:44
together. And it's always a joy from
2:30:46
start to finish. It's just a very sweet,
2:30:48
very funny and just
2:30:51
lovely. It's just a lovely, funny film.
2:30:54
And so I would recommend it as well.
2:30:56
Three Amigos. OK, I'm going to stop
2:30:59
talking now. Thank
2:31:01
you for listening to this episode.
2:31:04
My son is still asleep in the carrier. My shoulders
2:31:07
are really hurting. I
2:31:09
just thought you'd like to know that. You
2:31:12
might be able to hear the noise of children playing in
2:31:14
the playground of the school nearby,
2:31:19
which is quite a nice sound, really. It's better than
2:31:21
the sound of drilling and hammering.
2:31:24
I think the guys working on
2:31:26
the building site are
2:31:29
taking a break or something. Maybe
2:31:31
they stop working when the kids are playing outside.
2:31:33
I don't know. It's lunchtime. That's
2:31:35
it. It's lunchtime. Everything stops in
2:31:39
in Paris when it's lunchtime because you've
2:31:41
got to take a good hour
2:31:43
and a half to two hours to sit
2:31:46
down and enjoy a full lunch.
2:31:48
Of course you do. Anyway, I'm going
2:31:50
to stop rambling. Thank you so much for listening. OK,
2:31:53
I will speak to you again on the podcast soon when
2:31:56
I get the chance to record new episodes and
2:31:58
to work on them. and that includes premium
2:32:01
stuff which is in the pipeline.
2:32:03
Alright, good. Speak to you soon, but for
2:32:05
now it's time to say goodbye. Bye.
2:32:08
Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.
2:32:14
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