Three Bean Salad - Asteroids
Episode Date: June 2, 2021Someone called Michael suggests that the beans talk about asteroids. With this episode, the listener probably benefits from a working knowledge of six-time world snooker champion Steve Davis (also kno...wn as The Nugget, Steve "Interesting" Davis, The Ginger Magician, The Romford Robot, Romford Slim, Master Cueman, Golden Nugget) but crucially, it's still enjoyable even to a listener with no knowledge of this snooker titan. You'll really love it if you ARE Steve Davis.Get in touch:threebeansaladpod@gmail.com@beansaladpod
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I've got myself a kinder bueno. Nice. We went to Tesco today and there's a new section
called bulk buying. And Catherine bought essentially a palette of kinder bueno.
Those are great moments. Those are moments when you're being the grown up you promised
yourself you would be when you're a kid.
What's the latest on the kinds of surprise you get inside kinder eggs? Because they've
been around for so long now that the toys evolve and what happens is every few years you'll get one,
you can also be a trip down memory lane and you open the yellow inner egg and you're like,
what the fuck is this? They've changed it. It's now like a short play in a little mini scroll
and a magnifying glass. It'll be something different. Do you know what I mean?
Yeah. I mean part of the problem is they're not really aimed at men in their mid-40s.
No, that's not their target market. But what kind of thing is it now at the moment?
We haven't had one this end for a while. It tends to be dross on the whole from memory.
Like it'll be a tiny car that will assemble from two parts or something and just falls apart in a
second. Now these days it'll be something like Harry Potter. I mean, oh Christ. I think they wish
it was Harry Potter. It's bloody these days. It's probably a little statue of Greta Thunberg.
Yeah. Kids these days in single use plastic.
The ultimate snub.
I once had a job where I had to call up people at random and try and sell them the idea of buying
personalised M&Ms. And they felt you were the silver-tongued salesmith.
I thought I was the guy. I thought if anyone. So that was a job when I was,
yeah, it was a call centre job. And things I remember about that job are
it coincided not coincidentally with a very, very, very deep depression.
But I remember that job. When I was first brought into the office, I couldn't believe how small.
Everything was really small. It was really weird. My chair was just too small and too low down.
The desk was really small. Everything was really mini. It was tiny telephone.
Everything was tiny. But what I had to do was I had to call up companies
at a bunch of numbers. And I had to talk to people as high up in the company as possible.
Get me the CEO of BAE Systems now.
Yeah. So basically M&Ms and you can have your logo put on them. You can have BAE systems.
Be a nice little snack after you've raised the village to the ground.
Sweeten the deal when you're selling some F-16s to the Saudis.
Yeah. So really, I was stuck between, I wasn't sure whether to get the,
which F-16s to go for because they were both, well...
Have you got any with a bright yellow shell?
There was some great F-16s which had really good machine guns and they had an extra ejector seat,
which I thought was really good.
In case you'd forgotten your bag.
In case you'd forgotten your bag.
So the pilot could eject, and he could eject his stuff if he'd left it behind.
That's a nice touch. It had extra machine guns front and back.
It had bombs that went down, but also bombs that went up.
So you could bomb someone above you, which was quite unusual.
If there's a plane above you, you could bomb it.
Or... Very risky man over there.
You gotta be quick.
You gotta be quick, but still, it just had all the options.
DAB radio.
And the other F-16, so yeah, there was two of us between.
And the other one had the...
Toe bar.
It had the toe bar.
So you can bring your caravan along.
The internal mechanics of a VW Polo.
Yeah, basically, they'd taken the internal mechanics of VW Polos,
you had glove compartment, you had CD player.
Surprisingly good boot space.
Surprisingly good boot space.
And a little triangle if you broke down.
But what really swung it for me was, there were these M&M's.
They were just on the table during the meeting.
And I picked up one of them.
I was about to toss it in my gob, and it had a picture of me and my family.
Going on holiday in an F-16.
Bike rack on the top.
All going on holiday in an F-16.
And bombing the resort.
And a little speech bowl going out of my mouth saying,
I wasn't happy with the service.
Take that.
I thought it was a lovely touch.
I bought 500 F-16s off them.
So Henry, did you...
How many of these...
Like, I can't imagine a business on earth that would actually buy this thing.
So did you manage to sell any?
Yeah.
Well, okay.
So when it comes to sales, it's a numbers game.
And zero is a number, isn't it?
Let's not forget that.
Zero is...
Well, put it this way.
Add a zero to it.
I reckon we should activate the bean machine.
Okay.
The bean machine is ready.
I just want to say thank you again to my...
The pair of personal nurses who look after me and...
Jackie and?
Jackie and Shirley.
Shirley's been sacked actually this week after the bullying.
And you've got Desmond in now, haven't you?
Got Desmond and we've got a little...
Got a little robot actually called the Chesapeake 5000.
Which does a lot of the kind of just day-to-day stuff.
Keeping me alive while the bean machine turns within my lower colon.
And your skin's still looking really good.
Thank you.
It's not on your body, but you hung it up very nicely.
But I can see behind you's got a lovely sheen to it.
And I didn't know how many muscles had hid directly to the skull.
You sort of give the lie to the idea that, you know, skeletons can be
quite fun things on a key ring or can be, you know, in a children's film.
Because the human skeleton is absolutely horrific to look at.
Yeah.
I just probably put a jumper on next time is all I'd advise.
Yeah.
On a wetsuit.
Yeah.
You stop all the birds pecking at my flame.
That's true, yeah.
Right.
I'm going to press the generate number on my chest that starts it turning.
I'm not really sure.
Okay.
Number 61 is, and thank you to Michael Ronson for sending this one in.
Asteroids.
Asteroids.
They will, it will be our end.
Will it?
Is that where you go first to the sort of extinction level event?
Yeah.
The planet killer.
Yeah.
The old, what's that film with them?
Well, there's loads of them.
There's Armageddon and Deep Impact.
Deep Impact.
That's the one.
There's tons.
There's quite a lot of, there's a whole genre of movies where it seems that the
take home message is it's probably best if we don't get rid of our nuclear arsenal.
Because actually we really need them just in case a bloody great big asteroid comes along.
And we need to blow it up with some brave boys and girls.
I've not considered that.
So do you think there's potentially those films are funded by?
I think they're entirely funded.
Yeah.
That's right.
By Arms Industry.
By Space Force.
Yeah.
Or whatever the better.
Precursors.
BAE systems.
BAE systems.
Yeah.
That's why they couldn't afford the personalised M&M.
That's right.
Because they've given it all to Ben Affleck.
Yeah.
There is the tacit agreement that, you know, obviously it might kick off on a nuclear level,
you know, between nations.
But as long as we can convince the people that we actually really need these
bad boys, just in case there's either an alien mothership is the other reason,
of course, if you get into the middle of the mothership.
Yeah.
But mainly because one of those cheeky old asteroids might come along any minute.
I mean, the thing is though, realistically, I think the chances of Earth being hit by an asteroid
is like if you went to your local big supermarket.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And we're hit by an asteroid.
Got hit by an asteroid.
Do you know what I mean?
It's never happened so far.
Sorry, Henry.
It probably won't happen tomorrow.
I dwelled you around energy there.
Well, it's like going to a big supermarket.
Well, no, what I was going to say was it's like going to a big supermarket,
taking a snooker ball and just chucking it up in the air and it hitting Steve Davis.
It'll be somewhere in that region in terms of the chances.
Steve Davis.
Steve Davis is airborne in this.
No, Steve Davis is just he's in the fish aisle or whatever.
He's definitely in the supermarket you're in.
Well, no, you'd have to be, what I'm saying.
Because that ups the chances quite significantly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, but that's what I'm saying.
So you're talking about one in seven.
Is that what we're talking about?
Also, if he sees a guy walking around the supermarket holding a snooker ball,
he might sort of hang around him, you know, just because he might think,
I could probably butt in here and say hi.
He'd be drawn into that, wouldn't he?
He'd be like, yeah, the pike to the maggot.
So actually, you're saying that it's pretty likely we're all going to die in an asteroid hit.
No, I just think it feels unlike, because you think about the earth feels big when you're on it,
but from a spatial point of view, it's absolutely tiny.
It's smaller than a snooker ball even.
I think it's absolutely puny.
You think it's a hard target to hit, is that your point?
Yeah.
We've had some near misses, though, haven't we?
Haven't we in terms of astronomical terms, we've had some fairly recent near misses.
Well, they say near misses, but then you realize it's 400,000 million light years away.
But as far as NASA's concerned, it was a close run thing.
It's also abstract, isn't it?
All those numbers.
Like one thing I've noticed right about things is that when you're on earth,
things are up close.
It's all about things like, are you hungry or not?
Who's in charge politically of the country?
Is that Steve Davis over there by the fishmongers?
Did you remember the snooker ball?
It's that Steve Davis.
There's a lot of cultural stuff going on.
It's quite complicated, history and politics.
So that's one level of looking at reality.
But the more you pull out, the more you pull out, you pull out, you back off the earth,
and then it's just space.
I mean, all it is really just these big circles moving around.
That's it.
That's all there is.
You know what I mean?
So are you saying that if you were Michael Collins, for example,
on his own in the lunar craft going around the moon, RIP, you're looking at the earth,
and all you can see is the earth and the rest of space,
you wouldn't be thinking about Steve Davis winning the 1988 World Snooker Championships.
It puts it in perspective to the extent where you think, well, actually,
what's the point of snooker?
Yeah.
But for me, when I look at the solar system, it reminds me of snooker
because of the different kind of balls.
Well, that's the weird thing.
It does have similarities, doesn't it?
It's a sort of three-dimensional snooker.
We're just on a big sort of celestial snooker table.
That's three-dimensional.
And Steve Davis is God.
I think we've got close to the answer, guys.
I mean, of the big question.
Yeah.
So Steve Davis was born on earth.
In Essex.
He was probably, he was probably begat, I would say.
Yeah, he'd have been begat.
By Jeff Davis.
But it would have been a virgin birth, I'm guessing,
because he made the universe, so he begat himself.
He was born out of the corner pocket of the snooker table.
He popped out of the corner pocket of the snooker table.
He had to sort of cut the little string, and then out he came.
Yeah.
Cut the little string.
He was buffed by an iron player.
Buffed by an umpire.
But did not weep.
Lo, he did not weep upon the buffing.
And Lo, they finished the game.
And Lo, it was a good game.
And they put the triangle around Steve Davis's head,
and he looked sweet.
They did.
And it was perfect.
And then man was given free will.
And man, man did too heavy a break and broke up the triangle.
Oh my God.
Yeah.
And Steve Davis, as it was foretold, spent a lot of time in Sheffield,
winning a lot of top honours in the game.
And presumably, therefore, Steve Davis would also be a very natural choice.
He'd be one of the sort of first on the list for the bunker, right?
When the Asteroids, when the snooker ball of death comes.
No, I think you're wrong.
I think he's the first.
He's not in the bunker.
He's in the spacecraft going towards the asteroid,
holding a snooker ball.
And in a spacecraft designed like a perfect snooker cue,
not even the ones that you screw up in the middle,
just a one whole smooth piece of wood.
But exactly that because in Armageddon,
they try and find some miners, don't they?
Because they need people who are able to drill a deep hole in the asteroid.
So they're all miners who aren't astronauts.
Whereas in reality, it'll be all snooker players who can
very accurately get a tiny little ball into a little hole,
which they'll, you know, be like the Death Star.
There's a tiny little bit they have to get the nuclear weapon into.
And he'll just get it in with a snooker cue.
And who would be there for the guy who wanted to go on the mission,
but at the last minute broke his leg and had to remain on the ground?
That's John Parrot.
John Parrot.
So John Parrot, he would be,
but actually his role would be crucial in there because it turned out
he was constructing the biggest rest of all time.
It would be poking out of Uzbekistan straight up into space.
Because the craft was too long to launch out of the launch pad that we've got.
That's right.
And he comes out, he comes over the hill with a huge spider rest,
which they have to rest on the moon in order to get the,
and it's actually, he actually said, later he said, you know what,
that was still not as tense as competing in Sheffield.
Under the lights, they're pretty tense.
And then Steve Davis, why is he naked and completely covered in chalk?
Is that to do with the mission?
I think it was because it was foretold in scripture.
He always says that.
And because he, at the very last moment, is going to volunteer
to chalk the end of the ultimate cue because he has to clamber out,
even though it's a fatal mission.
There's no chalk in space.
Famously, that's what people say about space.
They can't hear you screaming, there's no chalk.
And meanwhile, Ronnie O'Sullivan's just in a bit of a mood.
He's in a center parks, just in a bit of a mood going, like, coming.
That would have cheered him up because of the impending doomsday.
Center parks is pretty empty.
So he's got pretty much free run of the place.
Hang on, Mike.
Sorry, Mike, to take issue with that.
You're saying that if the end of the world was coming night,
center parks would be empty.
I think it would be the exact opposite.
She thinks it would be rammed.
Poor people are taking their last chance to go to center parks.
Oh, God.
And that might actually save the world because as the entire population
crams itself into center parks, that puts the earth off its normal axis,
shunting it out of the direct path.
So even when they miss with the snooker cue, the snooker cue shatters, it's OK.
Yeah.
Because it's just a glancing blow that just takes out
Bolivia, but the rest of the world is fine.
Basically, we get scalped and that's it.
Well, that's what we're so bad about in the film Deep Impact, wasn't it?
Because in Deep Impact, they thought they'd dealt with the asteroid.
I think they sort of make it blow up, but then a half of it is still coming towards it.
They've made the ultimate sacrifice and thought they'd save the day.
But yeah, great big old, yeah, big old wazzak.
So then you think, oh, no, they're all going to destroy Paris or something.
Well, everyone gets ready to die.
The swathes of the Midwest.
And then there's a bit where Elijah Wood and his girlfriend,
I think I'm right in saying, are in this.
I mean, not his real girlfriend.
I think he rides a little moped up a tree.
And then he does.
He rides his moped up a hill and they go to Top Hill to watch the asteroid come
and wait for death to arrive.
And then it hits, but it's just not as bad as everyone thought.
And it just sort of lightly floods some areas of the world.
And most people are fine.
It's the worst ending of a film.
I don't even remember Elijah Wood being in that film.
I'm pretty sure.
All I remember is Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck and Liv Tyler.
No, that's Armageddon.
Oh, sorry.
I've been thinking about the wrong film.
To be fair, it is basically the same film, though.
Armageddon's better, isn't it?
Armageddon has the soundtrack, of course.
I don't want to go, it's my eyes.
Yeah, yeah.
So is that song about an asteroid?
Is that one of the songs that was...
About an asteroid.
So they wrote a song about an asteroid and then they weren't sure what to do with it.
I don't think it's about an asteroid in Hollywood.
It's about wanting to stay awake while watching them.
I think it's about the relationship between Liv Tyler and Bruce Willis, their characters.
No, Ben Affleck.
Is it?
Yeah.
Bruce Willis isn't the love story in that one.
No, but they're father and daughter.
They're father and daughter, aren't they?
Isn't... Yeah.
But that's the song Stephanie about Shagging, though, isn't it?
Is it about Shagging?
No, it's not because it's by Steven Tyler about Liv Tyler.
It's about not wanting to miss her upbringing because he's on tour so often.
Because he's...
I see.
Yeah, and Bruce Willis' character doesn't want to miss her growing up because he's
about to get absolutely mashed up by an asteroid that he's blowing up.
Yeah.
I see.
Directly under his boots.
I think it says whenever Steven Tyler does anything,
it has like a sort of horny aura that you can't really get rid of.
You can't help that.
Well, exactly.
I'm not saying...
Because you use sex appeal.
Exactly.
Lovin' an elevator.
Livin' it up when I'm going down.
Quite an embarrassing song for your dad to have sung.
Plays a lovin' an elevator.
Livin' it up when I'm going down.
But they do...
An asteroid does suit a rock soundtrack, I think.
I mean, maybe that's a bit of a root one because it is a massive rock.
But you couldn't have a bit of Laura Marling or something.
I mean, I don't think a bit of sort of trad English folk would quite fit the build,
necessarily.
Although maybe we should try it.
I don't think there's ever been a British asteroid film, has there?
Oh, I've been laid off at the steel mill, but don't worry.
An asteroid's coming soon to destroy everything I've ever known and loved.
No.
Look, all British films are the same.
So it would have to be, No Son of Mine is going to go and fight some fancy pants asteroid from space.
Eh?
You'll be a cobbler.
Like, I'm a cobbler and your father's father.
Wouldn't your father's father's father was a cobbler?
A whole village is cobblers.
With cobbled streets and shoes.
We've cobbled everything.
We've cobbled stuff together.
We cobble.
Yeah?
So, unless that asteroid has got a massive, great fricking foot and it needs a brogue,
then leave it be.
Why would NASA need a young cobbler in this situation in this film?
Obviously, he's been asked to go to the asteroid.
What skills does he have?
Is it because he can also cut keys?
You can cut keys.
You can engrave a trophy for an under-14s football tournament.
Or if you could stick two huge sort of trophy handles to each side of it.
Hook it up and out of the way.
Maybe hook it out of the way.
Hook it out of the way, give it a kiss.
Bob's your uncle.
No, it's good though in those films, isn't it?
They always need someone that hasn't done that sort of job before.
Even though no-one's done that sort of job before.
Yeah.
I think you're efficient enough out of water, aren't you, if you're an astronaut
and you've been asked to blow up an asteroid.
We've normally done some astronaut training when they put you inside a thing
and spin you around in a room and your face goes all squidgy.
And if your face doesn't contort that much.
Great centrifugee thing.
Yeah, that looks like quite good fun.
That's mainly used in montages to quickly express that someone's being trained up for space.
Absolutely.
Do you think they don't actually exist?
I don't think they exist.
I think it's a storytelling device.
We've got a guy who works in Timpsons.
Yeah, he's a locksmith cobbler.
How are we going to get people to believe that he can actually operate a spaceship
before you've even finished the sentence?
You've booked the spinning thing.
Booked the spinning thing.
You've put in some scuba gear in a swimming pool.
Scuba gear, yeah, get a quick scuba sequence.
No one knows what that's about.
No one fucking knows.
I think there's just a really good scuba club down at the NASA base.
I think it's a good social scene.
I think if it's nice whether they go off on wreck dives and things and the Florida Keys,
I think it's just because you've got to unwind.
You know the scene I like in those films is the scene,
the night before they're about to go in the spaceship and they have a nice barbecue with
their family in a kind of Florida sort of holiday home they've all been moved to.
Yeah, and they have a little beer and they look up at the stars and obviously there's a
cloud of sky which they look up into and it's just the best scene.
They look at the giant asteroids hurtling towards them.
We'll be having ribs on that s-drive.
Save some coleslaw for me.
It's time for the ultimate barbecue.
Well, that's the guy, the one who's going to die always says that, doesn't he?
He'll say.
He'll have a monologue about coleslaw.
He'll go.
Yeah, I tell you what, Susan.
I'll be seeing you on April the 23rd.
Oh, it's that voice again.
It's back.
He sounds like he's coming down with something.
Probably shouldn't go.
And I can't wait till watch our son Robert grow old.
Not Robert, but Rubbert.
It's a hyphenated name.
There's two grandfathers, Rob and Bert.
Good old Robbert.
Oh, I love you, Robbert.
Be good to your mother, Robbert.
We didn't know whether to name him Rob or Bert.
So we split the difference and we called him young Robbert.
I want to watch Robbert grow old and
and play mini league.
Mini league.
On the 4th of July and cook his first pecan pie.
Pecan pie and pumpkin pie.
Oh, pecan pie.
Like his namesake, Rob, he'll combine the pies.
Like we combine the grandparent fathers in his name.
I want to watch him make love to his wife.
I want to watch everything in his life.
I'm going to invest in technologies and things that I can monitor him and
already scoped out a nice home he could settle into with the
secret passages around the bedroom bathroom.
Basically, it's essentially, well, it's one way glass.
Tubes, I have watched everything.
And then I want to watch him die.
I just want to watch everything.
I don't want to miss a thing.
Take it away, Steve Tyler.
How do we feel about comets?
Also meteors.
Oh, shit.
I've been putting them all under the same mental banner in my mind.
Yeah.
I think comets are biggest, are they?
Comets feel like they have, they do more harbingering.
Oh, that's right.
Because one turned up at the battle of Hastings, didn't it?
Oh, yeah.
In my mind, Harold was looking up at the comets.
And that's why the arrow went in his eye.
I imagine the arrow went in his eye during the daytime, I would imagine.
You don't do night battles back then, did you?
Not back then, no.
You'd be a fool to do so.
But didn't he got mashed up though, didn't he?
Really?
In real life?
Oh, Harold.
I think so.
I think the Bayer tapestry tells us he got a perfect little arrow in his eyeball.
You're disputing that, are you?
You think you know better than a tapestry?
It's not me that's disputing it.
It's Greg Jenner is disputing it.
I think.
I don't want to do a disservice to the right here because he puts out some awesome stuff.
This is kind of a lockdown listening to history podcasts and stuff.
Right.
Home school history.
Or sort of half listening.
So I could plug the kids into that quite easily and sort of get on with something else for a bit.
And so I'd hear snatches.
I think he just got mashed up with a sword or something.
It's definitely worth not listening to me about this and going to.
Going to the actual historian.
Going to the actual Greg Jenner himself.
Well, I think this is a, if you know, please get in contact.
Send us an email.
I think it's a three and a half pod.
Yeah, it could be that.
If you were there, if you were at the Battle of Hastings, please send us an email.
Or we do know, yeah, we are aware of somebody who already does know and has said it.
And it's on another podcast.
It's been covered.
It's been covered quite well.
Yeah.
So you're saying you don't think people are coming to us for the sort of last word on the
Battle of Hastings?
They might not be.
They particularly not the way it might sort of, sort of kind of Swiss cheese, brain,
half remembered bits of fragments of information that have been misremembered.
Can you please stop talking us down, Mike?
I could try.
Come on, mate.
I'm running down this podcast.
I can go silent.
Probably the best I can do.
You would have been rubbish in telemarketing.
You couldn't have sold a normal M&M.
And so why haven't we covered with asteroids?
So Comets meet yours.
Meet yours, I think, are small, aren't they?
Like little ones that I think they can kill you.
They can like bonk you on the head, but they're not going to extinct you.
And they have to go kind.
And we got an email actually about, because we were talking about octopuses a few weeks ago.
And someone, they had two points to make about the octopus.
One was that I claimed during the episode that they had a combi mouth anus beak.
Turns out that the beak is not also the anus.
The beak is only ingesting things.
Second thing they mentioned was that some scientists believe that octopuses are so
different from all of their creatures on earth.
That they may have come from space on an asteroid.
Because they can't work out the evolutionary path where you end up with an octopus.
Because they can't find it.
What does it start out as?
Oh, but so accidentally, so they're not suggesting that they were some higher
power creatures who crash landed and then kind of devolved into creatures of the deep.
No, I think it's like, I don't know.
They just happened to be on an asteroid that made it all the way on a watery asteroid.
Yeah.
Like a water bomb.
Like a giant balloon headling through space full of octopuses.
That's what a prank.
So they're sort of very different from crabs in that sense then.
Because we've established that we're all evolving towards crabs.
Well, the only thing on earth that isn't on a path to crab is the octopus, I think, is what this means.
They do look quite alien like.
If you picture an octopus in your mind now and put a sort of spaceman helmet on its head.
Put it in the cockpit of a spaceship.
Put it in the cockpit of a spaceship.
It fits in.
Give him a laser.
Give him a laser.
Much more than say, you know, if you just imagine him normally.
Yeah.
I can't find the email.
I think I might have made it up.
No, I think I've seen that one before.
Hang on.
I searched for the word anus in our Gmail and three emails came up.
Here we go.
It was from someone who called themselves Get Rich or Design Trying.
Yeah, so what did they say about them being from space?
They say their development is so radically different to that of the rest of the evolution tree
that there are legit scientific papers suggesting the possibility that the genetic material for
octopuses came from space.
That feels a bit like potentially an excuse for like, I can't work out with this animal.
They've done a crafty move there where they have written legit before scientific papers,
which does make it sound more legit.
There are no references, though, below.
We don't know.
In future, people emailing need to supply complete references and a bibliography.
I don't think that would suit.
I think people at the moment are quite obedient about Henry's demands about short emails.
So I don't think we want to see pages of references.
I think the word legit achieves the opposite of what it sets out to convey.
I think legit makes them sound absolutely dodgy.
Legit science.
I've got some legit science to keep me up there, right?
They're absolutely pucker.
I now bring forth my next witness, who is strictly legit, Professor Pompadou.
This guy is all above board.
Believe you me, he's straight as an arrow.
You know, like every so often, there'll be a thing on the news where they go,
and tomorrow, something will be happening in the skies that hasn't happened for 40,000 years.
So they always do that, and then it always seems to happen again in about five years' time.
The only time I'd ever taken part in one of those things was when there was like the full eclipse.
Yeah, the eclipse.
The eclipse.
1999.
Everything went a bit quiet and eerie.
It was quite strange because the street lights came on because it just got a bit...
The street lights didn't like it much.
The birds stopped singing, and I did the one thing you weren't supposed to do,
which is I looked directly at it and I got permanent retinal damage.
And to this day, I've got little squiggly semi-sea.
It looks like I've got little semi-sea through squiggly amoebas swimming around in front of
everything I see.
Is that true?
No, sort of.
Most of the time, I don't really notice it, but if I look at a white ceiling or something,
there are these like little things swimming around.
I'm pretty sure I got them when I looked directly at the eclipse.
Do you think they're made of the genetic material that later evolved into octopuses?
It's possible.
We didn't talk about the 80s computer game Asteroids.
Oh, great game.
You're aware of that.
My brother is into retro arcade games, or he was, and he once bought
an old edition of Asteroids, an original 80s arcade game, which was a table version.
So I didn't remember that.
You would sit and play it as a table, and then you could have player two opposite you,
and it would flip and you'd play against each other.
And he got that.
And there came a point where the Asteroids game itself didn't work,
and also you couldn't put glasses and things on it because it was valuable antiques.
So it was just this really annoying object, which took up loads of space.
And eventually he shifted it.
Quite a story.
Yeah, I suppose it's, in a way, that would be a good example of something to use to show
someone what an anecdote isn't.
Isn't it?
You could use that as an educational thing.
For someone doing an anecdote, GACSEs?
Yeah, that would be quite a good helpful one to use, actually.
Don't asteroid it.
Whatever you do.
Don't asteroids it.
I think that's probably our cue to wrap it up, isn't it?
I mean, yeah, I think it is.
So that's Asteroids.
So do we want to do some correspondence?
Here's one from Ross McLean in Vancouver.
A macadamia looks like a giant chickpea with a seam down the middle that has been squished down a bit.
Helpful.
That is helpful.
Helpful.
He follows on by saying they produce a lot of them in Hawaii.
So if you have an aunt who goes on vacation there and feels they need to bring you back
something you don't want, you'll likely get a box of chocolate-covered macadamia nuts that
taste like wax.
That's a good fact.
I think we live in a part of the world where our aunts are very unlikely to go to Hawaii.
It's possible.
Yeah.
But they might, but they'd be pretty flash to make it all the way there.
You're more likely to get some fudge from the Southwest.
Yeah.
This is something, this is probably worth mentioning,
even if it doesn't make it into the final cut, just even for us.
This is from Melissa.
Is this a pompadou letter?
The mere fact that you've asked the question means that the answer to that is always yes,
isn't it?
As soon as you're in folk pompadou.
You've been folk pompadou.
We're in pompadou.
You're pompadou.
And now it's time for pompadou section.
Pompadou.
Pompadou.
So she said, Melissa says, wow, you guys have mentioned anuses, brackets anus eye,
and poop in each episode and not just in passing, rather with quite a bit of elaboration.
Is it a repressed British thing?
Here in Canada, we tend to avoid such topics of conversation.
You could say we poo poo them.
Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on.
Yeah.
Go on.
Who's repressed?
If you're Canadian and you avoid talking about it, then who's repressed?
Compared to people who do delight in invoking the anus.
There you go, Melissa.
So a strong reaction from BP already there.
She goes on, maybe you could try and get through a whole episode without doing that,
question mark.
Maybe if you end up doing my topic, you could try not to mention poop or bums.
Yeah, maybe Tiger Woods could try and play 18 holes without getting a ball in one of them.
Well, here's the stinger.
Here's the stinger, Ben.
My topic suggestion, bums and poop.
Sincerely, Melissa.
Oh, she got us.
She's laid us a saucy trap.
Nicely done.
Well, that will go in, that's going to go in the hat, in the bee machine.
So if it comes up, that means we have to do an episode about bums and poop without mentioning the anus.
That just a tracked talk.
She raises a flat, because even before we put the first couple of episodes out,
I think a couple of our nearest and dearests had been tested.
They'd had it tested upon them, hadn't they?
And it had been flagged up that we lurch anus woods with great ease.
I remember, I think the first three episodes, we basically went straight to toilets as well.
Toilets was a big thing within that.
Yeah, so she raises a point.
Do you think, I mean, this is...
Again, I agree with Ben, that's, yeah, we're not repressed, therefore.
Yeah.
We are pretty relaxed with who we are.
We're in a good place.
We feel able and almost compelled to talk about it.
I think she already knows that.
I think she knows that as she's right.
I think she's done a mini-spurbs there.
I think she already knows.
Oh.
She knows, she's riling you guys up.
And that made you see her little switcher at the end.
You didn't see that coming.
Yeah.
No, she got us.
She got us.
Even more as a result, because you were in turmoil.
As a true pompadou topic, do we mention Anas's too much?
Is it going to stop us becoming the world's number one podcast?
I don't know.
I don't think that's what will stop us, but I think, even as an experiment,
it might be worth seeing if we can talk about anything else at some point.
And maybe the answer to that is that we can't.
But also, Ben, in response to your worry about podcast ratings,
what are the top three podcasts in the world?
Ask Talk with Dr. Jeffrey Bumstead.
There's Captain Flatulence and His Five Lovely Daughters.
Daily.
Yeah.
And it's a bum deal, bumming around with Brian Bumster.
Yeah.
Those are your top three.
And that's like including Turd Watch.
Turd Watch doesn't qualify as a podcast because it's got the video feed.
Turd Watch is massive.
It's more of a YouTube thing.
But then, are we trying to enter a crowded marketplace?
Are we better to emulate these people?
Or are we better to try and sort of flank Brian Bumster by doing something else?
Check it, isn't it?
I'll tell you what.
I'll cleanse the palette with a message from Yulia in Russia.
Oh, yeah?
Higher Bean Masters.
You did urge the listeners from Russia to get in touch, so here we go.
In Russia, we don't boil the beans, they boil us.
Forever screaming externally into the dark abyss that is existence now.
Yulia Dmitrieva.
That's a great message.
I'm so pleased to have a message from someone in Russia.
That's very exciting.
We also, of course, we had a bit of contact from a Three Bean Salad Presents podcast.
We did.
Do you want to talk about that?
Yeah.
Yeah.
We did get a message.
It emerges.
There is a podcast out there called A Three Bean Salad Presents,
which we had managed to not realize existed when we christened our little podcast,
who got in touch.
Now, this is very different, to be fair.
They analyze in depth the three Mr. Bean movies,
and I think they've got a second series where they go through the Mamma Mia movies.
I think I've got that right.
They got in touch, too.
They made the very kind offer that they suggested, given that we then sort of
bolded in with the same name, that some sort of feud might be in the offing.
And we thought, well, maybe we're not really in the sort of feud frame of mind at our stage in life.
So we said, let's be friends instead.
And they very kindly agreed to basically not kick up a stink about the fact we've just
made a podcast that's got almost exactly the same name as their podcast.
Sort of basically missing a hyphen.
It's a word instead of a number.
They're going to be so angry when we start watching the Mr. Bean movies and critiquing it.
That would be infuriating.
So thank you to them.
Yeah, they were very nice.
Most definitely, if people are listening and are interested in those movies and want to hear
people, I haven't actually, I haven't listened to them yet.
I will, I will give that a punt.
But give those guys a punt.
I think give it a punt even if you're not particularly interested in the Mr. Bean movies.
I feel like it's exactly, I don't, I'm sure either way.
Yeah.
And also just a record, you know, legally, it's not a, you know, we don't make a big
deal out of it about it.
But we have, we have asked our law, instructed our laws to fire a shot across their bowels,
is the phrase.
Isn't it where we've, we've, well, we've, we've basically ring fenced their assets,
haven't we?
Yeah, we've frozen their assets and assets to their families.
We've frozen their assets.
Yeah.
They've had their passports taken away.
Yeah.
And they'll only be given back when they have to go to the Tribunal in Geneva that we're
setting up.
Which should normally take about seven years to set up, typically.
I think the phrase is judge led inquiry, I think.
Yeah, that's right.
But best, best, best of, best, yeah.
Goodwill.
We're keeping it friendly.
We're keeping it friendly.
We're just covering ourselves, you know, that's all that is, you know.
Yeah.
But, you know, obviously house arrest is a phrase that gets thrown around.
But yeah, legally, if, well, if they were to leave their properties from now on, there's a,
who's to say, you know.
That they wouldn't be eaten by dogs.
They wouldn't be eaten by dogs.
Yeah.
And also.
Who's to say that we haven't deployed, you know, rabbit dogs.
Yeah.
But it's not a fuse.
To be clear, it's not a fuse.
It's not a fuse.
Friend, it's friendly.
And people say things like, you know, let's deploy a helicopter gunship.
It's a turn of phrase.
It's a turn of phrase.
That's all.
It's not, it's not something that we, you know, would necessarily do, but, you know,
but we could, we're not going to deploy a helicopter gunship, are we?
No, deploy is a word with a lot of, you know, the way in it as well.
Deploy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There's deploy and there's deploy.
We just happened to know a very friendly old retired colonel from the former Adigean army.
And, you know, he's offered.
And he's looking for places to fly recreationally.
So he's getting on a bit now.
And he's trigger happy, sure.
He's trigger happy.
He's trigger, trigger content.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, put it this way, his list of ethical values is as short as his bazooka tubes alone.
So he, yeah, he, Henry actually met him
when he sold him some personalized M&Ms back in the, back in the 90s.
That's right.
That's right.
Well, there was, he had, there were RPs.
So, so half of them had R, half of them had P and it stood for Rhodesian paramilitary.
It was a bit of fun.
Yeah.
And there was a tiny illustration of an antelope being killed with an AK-47 wasn't it?
Yeah.
That's right.
Yeah.
It's rather netty.
So yeah, give him a listen.
Yeah, give him a listen.
And, and meanwhile, just listening to this.
And any emails, 3B inside pod at gmail.com.
We love your emails and give them a go in.
Bye.
Bye-bye.
Bye.