Triforce! - Triforce! #291: We're all outta ghosts

Episode Date: June 20, 2024

Triforce! Episode 291! We've been travelling the world once again with Disney World, the Capital Ring Tour and UK Games Expo but did you know that the UK is running out of ghosts?! Visit www.katoskoffee.com and use code TRIFORCE for 5% off your entire order. Find something to suit your taste today! Go to http://mistymountaingaming.com and use code TRIFORCE to get 10% off your order. Support your favourite podcast on Patreon: https://bit.ly/2SMnzk6 Music courtesy of Epidemic Sound. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hick Axe. Hello and welcome to the Triforce podcast. Good morning. Joining me on this. I'm dying. I am actually. I have I thought it was hay fever, but I actually think it's just a travel cold. I got a cold whilst whilst traveling. En français? Yes. Une maladie?

Une maladie. Je rencontrais une maladie quand j'étais en Paris. I went to I went to Disneyland again. How was it? It's just the same as it was six months ago. ALICE Wow, that's crazy. KEV I know, I know. It was unprecedented. ALICE What's happening to you, dude?

How did this... What's happening? KEV My kids, the last time we went, it was like the golden time to go, in terms of their ages, and they really, really savored the experience so much that when we got back, they were so upset and we were all so bummed out that I was like, you know what, we got to go again, but we'll go again when the weather is a bit better. We'll go during the May half term, because it's like six months away or whatever. And they were like, yeah, okay, let's do that. And

we went and it rained every day. But it wasn't like pouring rain, it was just like drizzly kind of, it felt like we were in England for a week, you know? It was just grey and drizzly and just like a little bit windy sometimes, but doable, you know? Like it didn't ruin the whole thing. But it was fun. We went on Pirates of the Caribbean, I'd say like 500 times. And we went on star tours like 500 times and it was fun. It was actually a really good trip. We like staged it out a little bit more. So we spent more time in like Saint Malo and Rennes and stuff on the way up. And then when we got there, we maximized the time that we had in

Disney, like park tickets and stuff. And then we had an extra night in Paris before we left. So, it was a little bit less hectic than the previous time. And therefore a little bit more enjoyable. And they're all like that a little bit older too. So, I think they really enjoyed it. And the baby is like getting bigger now too. So, a lot less hassle, you know. We didn't need to bring like formula milk with us or anything like that. She's like, she's on the verge of being toilet trained and stuff, so it's like, it's a pretty good time, you know? Pretty good time in our family for these sorts of excursions.

And, um... Nice. Yeah, it was nice. It was good. It was good. Nice. I mean, I need a vacation now that I'm back, as usual, but it was fun. It was good. I want you to do that YouTuber-style Disney review. What's that girl who does those four

hour long Disney videos? Oh man, there's tons of them. Jesus. I went down a bit of a rabbit hole with a lot of that stuff while we were away. Cause it's just, when you're there, you're like, I wonder what other people think of this stuff. And I wonder what the other Disney lands are like. I've been to some of them and, but like I've never really like, you know, stayed in or near them.

You know, like it's always been, I remember some of them from being a kid or like I remember going to like the one in California when we were away for BlizzCon or whatever. And I was watching, I was watching ride footage from some of the Disneyland rides in Shanghai, which were all mad. It was insane. They just get a different Disney over there somehow. I don't know. I don't know, it's just mental. It just seems like crazier somehow.

I don't know, they have more fun with it. I don't know, like they have more fun with it. Their rides seem more exciting. I don't know what it is, but it's just, and it's all in Chinese too, so I can't understand a single word of it. The French one, I can understand some of it. Although, like Pirates of the Caribbean, some of it's in French and like I can't, because it's busy. All the pirates are all talking to each other and yelling and drinking and

yo-hoing and stuff, so it's like, I don't know what they're saying either. But the Chinese one is just like, impossible. Like, I don't even know where to start. So do your kids think the sort of idea of Disney is a bit... of Paradise is a bit French? You know, do they...? Yeah, I think so. Well, they don't... They've never been to, like, one of the American ones, which is obviously all in American,

in English. It's all in English. I said to them, I was like, do you guys want to try to go to one of the, you know, we can go to Disney World, it's huge, or we can go to the one in California, maybe in a couple of years for the next one. And they're like, no, no, let's just go back to Paris. Okay. They're kind of like set in their ways, you Kids, kids do like what they like, right? Like it's quite funny. Yeah, they like the, I think there's some comfort in the familiar, right? But I mean, the thing is it would still be familiar because I mean, Disneyland is Disneyland, right? It doesn't matter what country you're in. Like there'll be, there'll be little differences, but overall it's more or less the same, right? Park layouts and stuff.

They look similar, familiar, whatever, and I dunno. Do they? I dunno. I think so. I thought they were all quite different. Like, catered to their... Well, like, physical layouts are different. The one in Paris is meant to be one of the better ones, but, I mean, like, Main Street

USA is pretty much the same across all the Magic Kingdom parks, and the whole, like, you know, the center circle that spokes out into the different lands, like, that kind of stuff is all relatively the same, you know? I guess I've been to all of them, then. But you've been to the one in Shanghai? Well, not Shanghai. So, have you been to Tokyo DisneySea? Yes. The one in Tokyo? I have. Right. And you've been to the one in Shanghai? Well, not Shanghai. And have you been to Tokyo DisneySea? The one in Tokyo?

I have. Right. And you've been to the one in California. Yep. You've been to the one in Florida. I have, yeah. You've been to Euro Disney. Yeah.

So you're missing one Disney. I'm missing the Chinese one, yeah. Yeah. Which... I can't... I'm missing the Chinese one as well, I've been told. Yeah. Gotta collect them all.

Oh, fucks. It's sick. I think they're all quite different, though, feel and vibe. I don't know if... Yeah, they are, but they're still Disney, right? I guess they replicate a similar feel, so people could enjoy them. Just... I just find it so interesting. It is.

It's different when you go with kids, though. Cause, like, I don't know, there's just, there's times when you're with them and you're like, Oh my God, this is insane. Like how have they built this place? And how do so many people come here and know about it and do, you know, like, you know what I mean? Like sometimes you go somewhere and you're like, I wonder if it'll just be like kind of empty, you know, like time of year, whatever it never is. It's always fucking packed. Like it just to the gills. And you just think, damn, like how does everybody just have this, you know,

same idea to do the same thing I'm doing? And I don't know. You have moments like that, but then you have these sweet moments with kids too, where like, uh, at the end of the trip, it was our last day and we went on Pirates of the Caribbean, which is my daughter's favorite ride of all time. She fucking loves it. Like we went on Pirates of the Caribbean, which is my daughter's favorite ride of all time. She fucking loves it. Like we went on it so many times. And on the last one, I looked over and she was crying.

I was like, are you all right? She's like, I don't want to leave. I was like, oh, fucking hell. You just for that moment, you're just like, I wish that everything would just be frozen in time and we just lived here and did this forever, for eternity, you know what I mean? You have those kind of moments with your kids, which is really sweet. And heartbreaking too, because yeah, you have to sort of be the boring person who tells them, oh yeah, sorry, you gotta go to school in two days and stuff.

So yeah. As they get older as well, they sort of, they enter that phase. I feel like you start off with a childlike enjoyment of pretty much everything. Like, I think of all the holidays I've taken my kids on and all the things we've been to, and they, when they're little, they love, they have a natural love of like, nature and animals and seeing cool things and everything, you know, the scale of a building or a gallery, they can take pleasure in even just the size of a room. The sound of their voice in that room.

All those little things. And that gives you that sort of wonderful sense of just exploring things with a child is very very different from going with another adult. But then your kids enter this other phase where they hate everything and they're like grumpy teenagers. Yeah. And then I guess you come out of that and you come back to our age and we're like, look at that flower.

So you sort of have this dip in the point of your life where you've got to be getting on with like, what are your mates saying on WhatsApp? And then you come back around to just enjoying a view or something. We had moments on the trip where I felt like we were not a family of five, but we were like a family of 15. Because every time we'd stop at a hotel or whatever, we'd just like hunker down for the evening. My son would just be like on FaceTime with all of his friends because like the new Fortnite season dropped. All of them were on vacation somewhere. So they couldn't really like, you know, play together, but they were all on

FaceTime watching like their favorite Fortnite YouTubers and talking about the battle pass and stuff. It's like, Hey, who are you on with now? And he's like, Oh, I'm on with Billy and Brian and Jenny. Okay. It's pretty funny. Yeah. And my kids fucking love a bit of Face Okay. That's pretty funny. Yeah, my kids fucking love a bit of FaceTime. It's funny.

I personally hate FaceTime. I hate like, I hate everything about it. I hate the delay and like it's awkward and fuck I hate it. I just, Discord works fine for me. Yeah, or just the phone. I don't ever call my mates up just for a chat. I never... I started doing that with a few friends, you could really just sit and gnat with them on

the phone or whatever, but I have not called someone in a long time. I mean, I call Lulu occasionally, if I can't get his attention otherwise I'll call him when I'm in Bristol or whatever, but it's like, we're not just chinwagging on the phone, it's like, we're gonna go for dinner and then we'll go to that place and then we'll talk. But yeah, it's funny in there. It's weird, eh? I had a different weekend, me and Mrs. F had decided we're gonna do something called the Capitol Ring, which is like a walk around London.

And it's not, it tends to be on the quieter, sort of more off the beaten track parts of London. So, we did the capital ring part from Richmond Bridge which is obviously right near us, we walked from there around to Brentford. Actually ended up in Boston Manor for any Southwest London fans. But you come across the Grand Union Canal just part way through Brentford and that canal goes from Brentford in southwest London all the way to Birmingham. It's the longest canal in the UK, very historic canal. So, if you had the means you could just get on a boat and go to Birmingham on this canal, which I thought was quite cool. And I've done some canal boat trips and stuff when I was younger, I did

one, with the locks and the lock key and the gates and all that stuff like that. And it's something I've been thinking about doing, but I don't know how you guys would feel. I am terrified of steering that boat. Um, because I can drive a car, but I've never driven a canal boat. And I just know that I'll be on the waterways with all these people who live there, and do this for a living. ALICE You're gonna Austin Powers that thing, right?

You can do that. JUSTIN I'm gonna smash this thing into someone's fucking Pride and Joy, or literally get it stuck sideways somehow and everyone's like, brilliant, now we gotta wait for the recovery crane to come and study it. Well, I mean, it's good that you at least have that awareness about yourself, because most of the people that end up crashing their canal boats into other people's property and boats don't have that awareness. They just think, I'm fucking going for it.

Yeah. Happens all the time. I mean, they steer from, I'm fucking going for it. Yeah. Happens all the time. I mean, they steer from the back. Steering a boat is very different from a car, because there's no traction. It's just momentum. And I'm like, I've never done this, so what the fuck? This is narrow as fuck. Like you can't be conking into the side all the time.

Go to, take your family to centre parks this summer and they have these electric, you know, paddle boat things that you can fit like five people on. How long are they? They're pretty long and you got to steer them from the back, so it's good practice. You can do this in like a big lake that has, it has like a cord that goes across the lake in the area that you can't go to lined with fake ducks. So, it's good practice.

I'm just thinking, because they do these holidays. They're like narrowboats is what they call them really, but it's like it is a very long thin boat. The engine and the rudder of course are at the back and you just have to sort of putt around on the canals and I mean you see, they park them in some quite sort of close areas, they're like, you know, cheek to jowl, sort of, really, that must take some skills to get around that thing. So, if I went on a holiday where we hired one of these things, maybe us and another family or something like that, do they give you lessons? Like, is that a thing? Can I go get canal, narrowboat driving lessons?

Well, I know a few people who live on these boats and I've been spending a bit of time on them lately, weirdly. As in you've been weird on them or it's weird that you're on them? Just, it's weird that I have been hanging out on these canal boats quite a lot. On like the Bristol-Avon sort of canal. There's this one place on it which has 16 locks in a row. Yeah, that's hard work man. It's like a famous hill, Cain Hill Locks, and it's 29 actually, but it's 16 in one big

line. I've done that hill. And it's, going through the locks is a pretty time consuming process. It's a whole day. Like, you get up in the morning and you set the whole day. Cause you have to queue. Like, that's the thing that people forget, is You gotta wait for other canal boats to go through before it's your turn. And you gotta wait for them. So if there's a few boats ahead of you, they've gotta lower the water to get in, raise the water, like, you've gotta wait.

And it takes time. Yeah, and there's a whole team of volunteers come out and we'll help you up and down them. So, first of all, yes, it is difficult to drive. You're at the back and you can't really see. That's the big problem. Oftentimes people have a lot of stuff on their boats, and you know, like plants and things on the top and solar panels and all that adds to the top of it, it means it's difficult to see where you're going. Yeah, no doubt.

That's like, number one problem. You're quite tall though, so I think it wouldn't be too bad. Plus you can get a box. The other big thing is it's difficult to do on your own. Because there's a lot of swing bridges you have to open on the way, some of them are on an awkward side, so you have to jump out of the boat, or pull up to the side, jump out, climb over the bridge, open the bridge, go through, close the bridge and then get back on again. And so you're constantly pulling over to the side. But actually, and yes, they do park really really tight, but you can kind of just drive in... If someone's with you, they can jump up and pull the ropes to pull you in, do you know what I mean? And you always have to hammer your boat down with these pins to the side of the canal.

So when you stop, you're not just tying... You're hammering it like a tent. Very rarely are they actually concreted in rings or anything. Interesting. So originally I don't think the idea was that you would stop all along. There are like stopping places and permanent mooring spots, but most people going up and down the canals are just tent pegged in to the side. But yeah, I think you do have to have a lesson, and I think it is pretty frightening to do it, but I think actually, if you've got someone helping you at the front,

you know, telling you, I'll go left a bit, go right a bit, it won't be too bad. But then I'm relying on, like, my children to steer the boat, to guide the boat. Yes, you are. I'll be honest with you, even now, left from right is a thing that they struggle with. These are Gen Z kids who never had to give directions. They still have to kind of hold up their hands and whichever one makes an L, if you stick your thumb out, that's left. So I can imagine they'll be like, go left!

And they'll be like, are you sure? And they'll be like, no, I mean right! And it's like, oh shit, and now we've hit someone's beloved narrowboat and smashed it and... meh, just scraping. Like in Galaxy Quest where they're trying to get the ship out of dry dock. That would be me. I don't think you should be frightened, especially. I think it is really nice, in nice weather, it's a beautiful place to go, these canals on the countryside, lovely places around.

Oh, I'm sure. It is, like, living on one is a whole different kettle of fish, I think, because you kind of have to bring down to the canal all of your water, all of your fuel... Yeah, don't drink canal water. Don't even filter it. You can't, it's gross. It's, oh, the canal water, because a lot of showers and stuff and washing machines just dump directly into the canal. Just they're not like sewage. So... But I could go on a canal from London to Bristol.

I could come and see you by boat. I mean, it would take a while, I guess. It would go down those locks, though. I don't mind the locks, they're locks of luck. Takes a long time. A lot of them. I think there's like 105 locks you have to do to get between Reading and the Thames. Oh my god.

I know, it's pretty nuts. That's how they used to, before trains, that's how they used to ship a lot of goods across the country. Oh yeah! I mean, that's why there's this huge network, is because that was our... that was the, y'know, how shit got from place to place. I mean, jeez. What a pain in the arse.

It's stunning. The history is really interesting, there's a bit near Bath called the Dundas Aqueduct, right, it's a really beautiful place, but it's kind of one of these little river valleys where the river... Because the canal kind of needs to be built near to the river, because that's where the water comes from, right? So you have these pumping stations occasionally which help keep water going into the canal. But then, at other times, you need to cross the river,

so they have to have the canal not touch the river, but it has to be built over it, or around it somehow. And then also you've got, because other people like to use that flat valley that's already been carved out, so there's a railway station, sorry, railway line, and a motorway weaving through. So you've got this junction of four different things. Of like, river, canal, railway, and main road. And they're sort of spaghetti'd together somehow in this kind of modern way. But yeah, there's like, like, Bathampton is particularly a nice place to walk along the canal side. And most in fact, weirdly, okay, so living on a narrowboat or going through a narrowboat, you need to, you really kind of need a car because annoyingly,

every couple of weeks you have to move a bit further down the canal and you need a car to sort of get the stuff you need to, the canal doesn't have a lot of the, you know, resources along it necessarily, but also there's a lot of lovely walks around there. So in fact, you think, oh I'm going to go on a boat, but actually you spend most of your time walking up and down to Civilisation, getting in your car, and driving back to places that actually have shops and supply water and stuff. So it's, I think if you just wanted to hang out for a couple of days, I would advise it, because it is really, really nice. But it's not what you would... It's not as idyllic, right? As many people would expect.

Well no, I mean, I certainly, having been around canals, they're pretty grim. I mean, it's not like you go to a canal and think, oh it's so pretty. Yeah, oh my god, I saw like a dead deer floating by the other day. They're pretty grim, yeah. I mean, they tend to be in a more abandoned part of the city because you can't build shit there because there's a fucking canal. Obviously people don't necessarily hang out down by the canal. The one in London, there's one in Camden, there's a canal up around there. It's okay, you can go for a walk along there, it's not too bad.

The one over in Brentford, it's nice enough. But it feels a bit eerie. Because you're kind of off the beaten track. You can hear roads and things around you, but you kind of feel like you're in the countryside, so it feels like you're in a weird maze. ALICE Well, you often are. Yeah. It's kind of weird.

It's kind of cool though. It is remote, but not... RILEY Yeah, but you're gonna see some dodgy shit going on down by the canal. And you sort of cut off from everything else. It's kind of private down there. It's a bit secretive. I'd be worried about getting mugged. How do these boats not get broken into all the time?

ALICE Well they do. There's one guy- SEAN You'd be crappin' yourself sleeping in one of those too. ALICE There's one guy who, like, steals generators and stuff off people and sells them on Craigslist and Facebook marketplaces. SEAN One guy who's known to... why don't they just stop this madman? ALICE Well, because they all, you've got all the WhatsApp groups and all the local people all know who he is, and keep an eye out for him. And there's a few kind of... it's got a few sort of hippie kind of community people as

well around there. The people who live on narrowboats tend to be... like, the kind of people who live in vans almost, because that's really what they are, like floating vans. Mm, van life, yeah. And so you've got a few people who are kind of very peace, love, and smokey weed, kind of very... yeah, very heavily that kind of... Kinda hippie, commune thing. Hippie hippie dreadlock people.

Which is fine, you get those people everywhere, but I think it's a higher proportion in that. That's true. You've also got the enthusiasts, right, the boat everywhere, but I think it's a higher proportion in that. That's true. You've also got the enthusiasts, right? The boaters. The people who have wanted to do this their whole life and love the tedium of going and pumping out all your sewage every couple of weeks and all this stuff. Some people love that, and god knows. Yeah, I mean, the horror stories though, of like, the boat floating away, y'know, and like all these things you hear like so many... and like having the... most of the time the toilet has like

a macerator and you can't put anything down it and if you do, y'know, it'll start spraying food back up at you. Jesus Christ. There's like a lot of exciting problems that can happen. Some of the riverboats are really really fancy, really nice. Some of them I've seen down the canal look like a flippin... one of them is like, looks like, what's it called, one of those metal lorry packing containers, what's it called? What do you mean?

The cargo container, it's called. Okay, okay. The big metal cargo container. Looks like one of them, except it's like, wood-paneled, and it's like inside, it's like really high ceilinged and open, because you'd expect the narrowboats to be really, kind of, um, cramped. Especially for you, you're like over six foot, you know, that's headbanging territory in a narrowboat. I think Zipz is. I am, yeah. You both are, aren't you? Yeah.

No, I'm not over six foot. You look, you've got six foot energy. I have the aura. Wait, how tall are you? Six. But I'm not am, yeah. ALICE You both are, aren't you? Yeah. JUSTIN No, I'm not over six. ALICE You've got six for energy. JUSTIN I have the aura. ALICE Wait, how tall are you? JUSTIN Six. But I'm not, like, over. ALICE On the dot. JUSTIN Oh.

Okay. Well. Anyway, that's still headbanging, Terrence. ALICE Are you like, six two, I think? JUSTIN I think you're maybe six two, six three, yeah. ALICE Yeah. I'm pretty tall. STORM When we go to the pub and it's like, Harry, Tom, Sips, and then I feel short, and then

like, someone like Lulu is there, it's like we brought our son. That's how it feels. Yeah, take me to Disney with you. So I was thinking, well, because obviously, yeah, it was Jenny Nicholson is the YouTuber who I watched the four hour long- Oh, I know Jenny Nicholson. Yeah, yeah. She did a great video of, I watched the Avatar, what she did back in the day, and I think she has a huge following.

Yeah, she's really funny. Anyway, the latest one she was talking about was this Star Wars hotel at Disney, which was... The Star Wars hotel thing. Oh yeah! I don't know if you saw it or heard about it or anything. It's gone now. The video's so interesting.

They've closed it, right? Yes. They have. So it was... I mean, if you haven't watched the video, like, honestly, it's worth a watch. Just because she's so interesting. If there's a Rolling Stone article about it. Like, this video blew up so much, people are writing articles about this video.

Like, that's just the way it is. She is pretty famous. And it turned out that, I think, it went a bit viral on YouTube and me, and I mentioned it once and we were at the pub, and Tom, Ben, just about everyone had also watched it all independently and we had a really good chat about it, so... But it's kind of like, the hotel was this... it didn't really quite know what it was, it was supposed to be super immersive, that was the word they were using all around the whole thing, it was basically kind of like, lapping. You know how Disney wants to immerse you into

their world, to make you feel like you're part of it. I think they sort of went a bit too far with it, and tried to make it, you know, like this full-on role-playing experience, except without the budget to make it actually that. Without really knowing what they were doing, and also charging the hearts of people for it. Every cupboard you open in your room, Admiral Ackbar comes out and says, it's a trap. This is too immersive for me. I didn't sign up for this shit.

Similar to that. I don't know how I feel about this stuff. I mean, I was, um, so I went to the UK board games expo at the weekend. Where was that? And it was in Birmingham NEC. And I haven't been there since. Was it as shit as the Lego thing that was in the news recently at the Birmingham NEC? What was the Lego thing?

This was, I think, a couple of weekends ago, or maybe even just last weekend. And it wasn't as bad as that grotto, the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory thing in Glasgow. This was some Lego thing. And promised all this stuff, like, oh, there'll be all this Lego and builds and all this cool stuff. And it was dog shit. This con. So it was a con that was genuinely a con.

Yeah, it was a Lego con. It was a con. And everyone's saying this was awful. So this was just a board game convention. It was apparently a complete rip-off. The UK's biggest Lego festival was a half empty room with a pile of bricks. Brickfest Live! It promised that children and adults would be amazed by life-size Lego models and visitors would be able to visit a marketplace where avid builders can find

rare collectibles. Oh, but the image of the event showed large open spaces in a hall with an inflatable slide and a colouring in area. Yeah. It's so tragic when an event like that is that shit. Because part of me thinks, god, these organisers must have been complete con artists. But another part of me suspects that they genuinely went in with good intentions. Things fell apart. The date is getting closer, they're starting to panic. They're running

out of money. What the fuck do we do? We've got to have something in this hall. And they put a bunch of stuff in there. And then if I was one of the organisers, I would be hiding in the back waiting for it, just praying somehow that people were like, yes, we had a great time. But you know what you're delivering is dog shit. I went to Comic Con a few weeks ago. Very slick, very cool, tons of stuff to see there, and it felt like a really slick, well put together convention. You could imagine it also being complete shit, and just all the problems are getting away from the organisers.

Some of them also are, of course, just con men, which is sad. But these tickets cost a fortune for these things. Well, luckily I got some giving it for free. Nice. Basically, the UK board games I suppose, we've been going for a long time, and I've lately been playing a lot of board games. There's a thing called Board Game Arena, where you can play games online. I basically got into it over Covid, and I sort of tried to set myself a goal to learn

a new board game every day. And I stuck to it for a while. But ever since I've been back, I've played a few really good board games that I enjoy playing, sometimes on Discord with folks. Anyway. But it was time to go to the Board Game Expo. Because we're doing Games Night, you know, Pflac, we do a lot of... we just did our Lego World War 2 video which came out on Games Night, it's done really well on YouTube actually. It was really fun. It's really fun filming things with you. With me?

Well, with you particularly, but also... I appreciated that, thank you. Well... Yes, thank you. But also just doing miniature wargaming, having an excuse to do it, I think for me, and this is the same I'm sure for loads and loads of wargamers who play Warhammer and collect an army and paint them all and have them on the shelf or whatever, it's almost sometimes a shame that these models don't get played with.

You don't get to play the game, right? And so sometimes it's so nice to just have an excuse to be like, I can feel like I've ticked that off, you know, I've done all this work, created all these models and put all this effort in. It's like having a classic car and never taking it for a spin. Exactly, you get to show it off to people, right? And I think that's, a lot of these cons are similar things, you know, people go to these cons to show off their games or to... So I had a great time. First of all, loads of yogs went, kind of independently

of each other. Ben went with some of loads of Yogs went, kind of independently of each other. And Ben went with some of his friends, Tom went with some of his friends, Mark Humes was there, Lollip was there, a few of my friends that I've met over the years just happened to be there, and I bumped into them all. It was kind of a, it was obviously busy, packed, absolutely packed, full of people, and it was like three days, you know. And some people just go to play board games with people they haven't seen for a while, you know, so everyone will meet up. The crowd is my age, which felt nice. I certainly feel like going to a gaming event like Gamescom, or going to Disney, like, it's a very different age group, right? It's families, or it's younger people. So yeah, lots of nerds there, but you kind of, because it's so packed, you kind of can't

be too shy. You know, I think you have to kind of brave the convention hall a little bit and get out there. But like I said, a lot of people don't... There were a lot of... It crosses over everything as well, so it crosses from war games, which is obviously at the far end where they're selling grass and polystyrene hills and things, through to D&D stuff, and even fighting fantasy

books. There's a couple of indie authors I read who write these fighting fantasy books. And I met Ian Livingston, again, who did the original ones, he was there signing copies of his new one. Do you say the same thing to him every time? Doctor Livingston, I presume? You see Karl Walker on any of these adventures, or...? I did, and I've never thought of that.

I'm sure he hears that periodically. I think he's a bit, kind of, if you know who he is though, he's a bit famous, kind of thing. He's a little bit, he's a bit of a star. You can't help but being polite to him and nice to him, especially when he's behind a booth at an event selling signatures, you know, you have to queue up to shake his hand, kind of thing, and say hi. But he remembered who I was, or at least he remembered Simon. So maybe Simon left a bigger mark on him. Because he, um, Neil Emerson, if you don't know, he was one of the founders of Games

Workshop, I think, and did all of this, you know, did all these fantasy books and stuff back in the day. And is still a big deal now. There are two Steve Jacksons though, right? There's this Steve Jackson, the British one, and Steve Jackson the American one. And both of them, I would say, if there were... Ian Livingston, the Steve Jacksons, the independent entities known as Steve Jackson, and Sid Meier were four of the most influential people on me when I was a kid.

In terms of the games I played, what I thought of games and the worlds that they created, enormously influential. Yeah, absolutely. And so, you know, it's hard not to be slightly starstruck around him in a weird way. Anyway, nice chat. So, played lots of board games, met lots of people, had a lot of fun. I thought it was like a really, really nice weekend, and it was pretty exhausting, y'know, sometimes you'd be playing a game... The thing is, board games encompass so much, right? From drawing a picture of a baby doing a poo, or whatever, to like, y'know, reading a fuckin' 56 page rulebook, y'know, and just like, sitting there going like, oh god, how do we move our tank forward one inch, you know. It's like, everything. From everyone

screaming at each other in some deception game, to flicking, you know, tiddly winks. And there's no... Or doing a bingo board. There's no, like, kind of very... there's not really very good consistency in what a board game is. It's so broad, right? Like, I obviously prefer things that are a bit deeper and you have to sit down and think for a while, but there's like, you know, there was like five different versions of chess. I played a game of chess against someone, right? It was like...

What are the other versions of chess? It was like, sideways chess. Oh really? So it was like, I was, you know, the way it worked is, it was just like, you know, imagine the X axis was one player and the Y axis was the other player, and the bottom player, the X axis, is going up, but the other player is going right. And so their pawns are all moving to the right and your pawns are all moving up. So it's kinda like, it just changes chess. And in it, obviously I avoid... The reason I don't like chess, and some other games, is because I get paralysed by analysis,

and there's too much complexity, right? I think it's a frustrating game, because I always feel like I'm not playing it to the best of my ability. You guys get this as well sometimes, I'm sure, when you play a game and you're like, man, I'm not enjoying this because I think I'm making the wrong decisions all the time. And so it's much nicer to have limited choice. Even though that game that you're playing with only three options every turn may well be more complicated. It just gives you the illusion that it's not. And so, yeah, we ended up staying up till like, 1.30 in the morning every morning playing some different game.

Heavens. The guys would be coming around in the hotel with hoovers, kind of thing, like, banging our feet, like, get us to leave. And it was a blast. I've gotta admit though, like, I did not eat healthily, or drink... You know, I pretty much woke up, had a packet of crisps and a flapjack for breakfast, you know. And some chips for lunch. And like a chocolate bar. Do you have anything with those chips?

It was bad. It was real bad. I had, you know, sometimes you'd get some... Do you have some potatoes on the side? Sometimes you get some loaded fries. A bit of bread? Yeah, like, some... I had some crisps on the side of the chips.

Yeah? Yeah. What, are you ten? Fucking idiot. Yeah. I did act like I was ten. And I suffer when I came back on the Monday and Tuesday when I was recovering. I was like, ugh, god.

I just felt absolutely rough. But no, I had a blast. And yeah, the world is really exciting, I think. I'm excited, I'd like to try and make my own board game. Yeah. Go for it, man! What would be the purpose of your board game? I still really want to make, like, a recycling themed board game.

Yeah! Don't make a board game, just make... Let's make a PC game! Come on! So exciting! I can't make... I think, though, but they say if you're gonna make a PC game you should just make a board game first, right?

Oh, fuck that! It's a good starting place, right? If you can pull off making a board game, then people could adapt that into a video game, can't they? A lot of video games are just board game adaptations. I know, but we're talking about a game like Satisfactory. You can't make a Satisfactory board game, the scale is too large for board games. I know, but that's too large for my brain as well, I can only handle like, putting your plastic in the right box.

Yeah, that's the bumpiest brain I've ever seen. Real bumper. This guy's packing a real bumper. It's very kind of you to say that, but, I dunno. So yeah, there's... I dunno, I just, I had a nice time. I'd recommend it to board game fans everywhere. And that's all I had to say.

So, I guess we're done with the podcast. Yeah. Thanks everyone. It done with the podcast. Yeah. Thanks everyone. It's a good podcast. Before we continue, I listened to a podcast called A Better Paradise, Volume 1, An Aftermath. It's written by the team behind Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto. Wow. Oh wow.

And it's really nice near future sci-fi. I love near future sci-fi. It's 12 episodes long, very, very cool. Like set in 2041 and it sort of talks about the ill-fated development of an ambitious, but addictive digital game world. I won't do any spoilers, but it's really cool. And I really, really liked it.

It's got an all-star cast, including Andrew Lincoln from The Walking Dead, Shamir Anderson, Rain Spencer, Patterson Joseph. Yeah. you may have heard of. All right, I'm going to listen to this for sure. It's called A Better Paradise. A Better Paradise.

I've got it downloading on Spotify as we speak. Wow. It hit number one on Apple's fiction charts at launch, so you might have already seen it. Wow. But yeah, check it out. I love the idea of free audiobooks in podcast form. Hell yeah.

So yeah, A Better Paradise, it's called. It's out now, it's available everywhere where you get your podcasts. So go and have a listen today and don't forget to follow A Better Paradise on your platform of choice to make sure you never miss an episode. Go and check it out. On with the show! On with the show! Hello there, fellow adventurers! Are you in need of some epic dice for your next gaming

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Me too. They're so nice. They're like super heavy. They're so nice. They're the nicest dice ever. I couldn't rhyme again. These dice, these dice have charisma 16, maybe even 70. And constitution 18, because mine are made of solid metal.

So Misty Mountain is the only dice company that offers a lifetime warranty on all their dice sets, including stone and glass. So if you ever smash them or roll them off the table you can get a new set they've got tons of other gaming accessories too leather bags leather books dice trays miniatures so what are you waiting for you can go to MistyMountainGaming.com and use code triforce to get 10% off that's MistyMountainGaming.com code triforce 10% off your order and with the show I got an appointment this afternoon believe it or not not, with the dog masseur, lads. I gotta take Aggie to get her back legs massaged.

No way. That is lovely. In fact, that ties in with today's sponsor, who is Kato's Coffee. If you like coffee and you love dogs, this isn't coffee for dogs, by the way, you should check it out at www.KatoesCoffee.com. You can elevate your mornings. It's premium coffee, roasted to order, ensuring you get the freshest cup possible.

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That's www.KatoesCoffee.com and you can use code TRIFORCE for 5% off your entire order. Find something to suit your taste today. If coffee isn't your thing, they have some delicious teas, and there is also some merch for you or your furry friend, find something to suit your taste today. Thank you very much, on with the show. ALICE That's great, that was a great podcast, thank you so much. JUSTIN We got some news, hang on. ALICE Oh, whoops. ALICE Got some... some... some news. Uh, Atari... JUSTIN Ancient company, Atari, who were big when I were a lad.

ALICE Filling up landfills with too many cartridges that they made that didn't sell. JUSTIN Yeah, famously, the ET cartridge. ALICE Famously warehouses and warehouses full of ET games. JUSTIN Yeah, they buried them all. And there's a YouTube video you can go watch of a guy who went and dug them up. Because it was kind of seen as a... I'm pretty sure I spoke about this in a previous episode. It was seen as a kind of a, whatchamacallit, an urban myth, an urban legend.

And he was like, I'm pretty sure they did it. And they found the place, and there were a bunch of fucking cartridges buried in the desert. Poor E.T. ALICE So, Atari, before my time, honestly, the classic games console. JUSTIN My first game console. Great name for a company. Atari.

ALICE You didn't have a Colecovision? JUSTIN Didn't. My friend did. I'm glad I didn't. It was a piece of shit. It was really bad. ALICE Yeah, the controller was unbelievable. ALICE Oh my god.

ALICE What about the Intellivision? JUSTIN No, I didn't have one of those either. I think my friend had a Vectrex. Let me check. It was had a Vectrex. Let me check if it was called a Vectrex. Did you ever have a friend that had an Amiga 500? Yeah, god yeah. Yeah. I never had one myself. And a Commodore 64?

I had a 64. My dad was like, you don't need, you can't do any, you know, you don't need an Amiga. I was like, he's like, next thing you'll get is a PC, that way you can do programming. I was like, people do programming on Atari. He's like, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. So the Atari sold 30 million units, the Atari original thing. And it was released in 19... I wanna say 80... 77! 77! 87 is the NES in North America.

Yeah, but I remember having an Atari, and we didn't get it in the 70s, I think. I would have been about three. Yeah. Well, there is a big gap between the Atari coming out and then the NES hitting. The only other thing that you would have potentially had in between is, uh, Kleecovision. Yeah. Well, look up the Vectrex. And, uh, Commodore 64 and...

No, no, no, 64 was later. 64 was later. Was it? Yeah, yeah, that was the 8-bit era. Cause that was, that was, that came out at the same time as the NES, like, it was around that era. Oh, right, okay. The Vectrex. God, this thing looks like a piece of shit.

Mate. It looks like a little robot friend. It's really weird, it's literally a horizontal screen, right? It's really strange. Ben, do you remember Gyromite for the NES? The little robot friend? No, I don't. Gyro-mite. Gyro-mite.

Gyro-mite, yeah. He was like a little... he looked like, a little bit like, maybe Wally or something. Oh yeah! Oh, are you thinking of Bob Robb? Yeah. Yeah, the little... Yeah, so a friend of mine had that. A kid I knew at school had that, and we went and looked at it, and I was like, what does

it do? He was like, nothing. I was like, alright. Yeah, it really didn't actually do anything. I think the light gun for the NES was probably better value, right? There was a couple of games... Oh, the light gun looked like that light bazooka. No, that was the super NES one.

That was the super NES one. What were you saying about Atari anyway? So anyway, Atari... So, at the same time as the Atari release, the Intellivision release, and it was a big rival, it was like Xbox versus PlayStation, right? Yeah. They were clamouring to get all the big exclusives. They wanted to have Call of Duty and all the big ones, you know?

So that was forty... Forty-five years ago, right? That their rivalry was going on. Atari has ended this rivalry by buying out in television. That's right. Uh, it's... It's... Take it over.

This is huge news, guys. It's 45 years later. They finally did it., it's, take, take it over. This is huge news, guys. It's like, what if- Five years later, they finally did it. What if they did it? They won. They won the console war. What? They were playing the long game all along.

Intellivision still exists? Exactly, pflex, yes. And second of all, Atari is back? Atari's been, is still, is still around, yeah. They've been around. What have they been doing? Publishing. What?

They publish, they publish games. Atari-era games. Yeah, not big ones. But they're on Steam andlishing. What? They publish games. Yeah, what? A lot of big ones. Yeah, not big ones. But they're on Steam and stuff. They're around. I'm trying to see what they've done. They do bits and bobs, they're not a big deal. Had to cover all their debt, and then they slowly clawed their way back.

On January 27th, 2020, Atari announced a deal with CSD Group to build Atari Hotels. Yeah. I mean, they're not doing well. They launched Lunarland Beyond in April this year. It's got four user reviews. Yeah. I mean, that means it's sold approximately forty copies or something. Not many.

It's a very long drawn out fall from Greece. Yeah. Jesus. Yeah. Not fantastic. So, anyway, Atari have bought... Rivalry's over. It's done.

This is like when a Sonic game wound up on a Nintendo, it was like, you just appear on our consoles now as a character, like, that's it. Do you know what this is like? This is like two people who had like a rivalry when they were teenagers, and then one of them has died, right? Now. Because they're like 65 or 70. And the other one's like, yes I win! I win the grudge match! And then they die. Buys his house at auction just to stomp around in it.

I'm farting in your house you dead bitch! Ah! Oh, bad. Fuck. We've all been there before. I'm gonna do that when you guys both die. You gonna come fart in my house? Yeah, do it. I'm gonna do that when you guys both die. Fucking... You're gonna come fart in my house?

Yeah, do it. Yeah, I'll take a shit in your house as well. If you die first, I'm gonna shit in your toilet. Or my upstairs one. In any other world, people would see that as a good thing. I want you to promise me. I want you to promise me that you will. I'm gonna shit in your en suite toilet, and not flush.

Yeah, shit. Right in that... While I'm shitting in your en suite toilet, I'll be crying and looking at the photo of you. I'm gonna leave it in there to brew. I'll be... I'll be... I'll cry.

I'll let that shit brew for a couple of days. For my family to find. Yeah. This is his last shit! Oh my god, it's completely liquefied. I don't think I can flush it in these too many memories! How are we gonna preserve this? It's mixed in with all the toilet water. I don't think I can flush it, it's too many memories! How are we gonna preserve this?

It's mixed in with all the toilet water. We have to find a way to separate the water from this shit. So, alright, next up, IKEA has got a virtual Roblox store. Oh. Um, a digital IKEA store online, on Roblox, that will sell stuff. Tarkov's got one of those too, but you just can't buy anything there. Cause it's been looted mostly, but... There's never any graphics cards there or anything here. Bim. I see. But this is real. And as a result, they're gonna hire ten people to work in their virtual store. Right. And they're gonna be paid an hourly wage of 13 pounds 15 per hour, to work in different

sections of the store, helping people choose their furniture and serving meatballs. Oh my god, I could do that and stream it. Those are the kind of games I play anyway. It's just more money for me. Yeah. You would love to work- you should apply to work in the IKEA school. I think I will. Or maybe you could just dress up like an IKEA man and go and turn up, you know?

Just invite myself. Just pretend I'm an employee. Yeah, it's like the Wild West, this whole digital work or whatever. It is. Digital frontier, that's right. Just do what I want. So that's a thing that's happening, which I think is quite interesting. The Red Cross, you know them? Yeah.

They've partnered with, of all people, Tetris. Pornhub, oh. Tetris. I was gonna say, that's weird. Could you imagine. Yup. So you could get an exclusive Tetris plus Red Cross shirt, it's like a little plus piece, it looks quite nice, actually.

What an unusual tie-in, that is so odd. An unusual partnership that I think is nice. Donate blood. Why not? How many of you guys gave blood? I can't. I don't think I ever have. I literally can't.

I tried. I wanna keep it all. They were like, no Mr Forsythe, your dod, god. I literally can't. I tried. You wanna keep it off? They were like, no, Mr. Forsythe, your dodgy ticker means we can't do that. Really? Yeah. Is that because you, with like, your blood pressure would drop and your heart would start going crazy? Yeah, I think that's the concern, that there would be an issue with...

You'd go like old pruney and then deflate completely. Exactly. They don't have like a Hoover. So, in pop culture news, apparently there are hours of official recording, hours, inverted commas, of official recordings of Sonic the Hedgehog saying fuck. Wow. To what end? I missed another ring!

Fuck! I'm going too fucking fast! This fucking sucks! This fucking game stinks! Fuck! Sorry, when I said Sonic I meant Shadow the Hedgehog. So in 2005 there was like an edgier Sonic game that was lambasted at the time for having firearms and swearing and stuff.

It wasn't quite as bad as Conker's Bad Fur Day. But, they were considering making it M-rated. Mature rated. Which means, apparently there's lots of F-bombs. Apparently. Apparently Griffith, the voice actor for Shadow of the Hedgehog recorded hours of F-bombs. That is so strange. That is really odd.

So he said, they had me record two takes for every line, I swear. The version for the mature rating, they just had me say me record two takes for every line, I swear, the version for the mature rating, they just had me say fuck at some point in the line. It was just every sentence. I would be yelling, Sonic, give me that fucking Chaos Emerald! Or something like that. I had no idea what was going on, but I just went with it. God.

So, there's a hard drive somewhere with hours and hours of Shadow yelling fuck at Sonic. God. And Tails. That is so odd. I guess they get bored as shit, like in a recreation. There's about 12 years worth of archived YouTube and Twitch footage of me yelling fuck as well. That's true. Online.

That's been your life. That's pretty much been my life. Fuck! Fuck! A study showed, from the University of Essex, and god, you know, a study from the University of Essex, so take it with a pinch of salt, that people feel watching online stars such as Zoella, KSI, and PewDiePie... Who's Zoella?

Yeah, was this study done like, seven years ago or something? Yeah. It, um, these one-sided relationships that people have with YouTubers are more emotionally fulfilling than talking to casual friends. So people enjoy and feel happier watching people they don't know on the internet, and they also feel more liked, respected and understood by them than casual co- coworkers and friends. Why is that an... that's absolutely 100% believable. Yeah. Like, you could say that about anything.

I mean, if I watch a TV show I love, I feel way happier. I'm just quickly thinking of all the coworkers I've ever had, and which ones I've actually liked. Like, it's like a handful. Nobody goes to work thinking, I love all of my colleagues. No fucking way. You're stuck with these yahoos. Some of them are cool. Don't get me wrong, I made some good friends through work, sure.

You're probably right, actually, because it's like, you know, we give you this coiffered version of ourselves, right? And, you know, it's easy for us to be likeable because we cut out all the bits where we are at work. We don't cut anything from this podcast. But co-workers and family members, God, some of them are very annoying. Yeah. I mean, especially because, like, if you think about it... You can't choose them, can you? No. A, you can't choose them. B, you're generally... any company is gonna have a whole range of people. Like, if you think about... when I come down to Bristol or whatever,

we're all pretty like-minded. Like, everybody's pretty chatty, they've all got a good sense of humour, we're all into games. There's some commonality there and we just, we always, I always have a laugh. Whoever I'm out with, brilliant. Such a bunch of lovely people. That is super rare. Most other jobs I've been to are like real job jobs. You know, you've got a mix of people, fucking

Karen in HR, she's a pain in the arse, Tony the old griper in the corner who's been in the company for 57 years, complains, hates everything, there's someone who never washes, there's someone who puts too much perfume on, it's all... There's someone who's weird and hitting on you. All that shit. Weird, weird, weird. So, yeah, I fully believe that people enjoy watching their favourite YouTuber the same way I'd enjoy watching, you know, my favourite footballer or whatever. It's like the same thing. It's definitely me too.

There's a couple of people I watch almost every day on YouTube, and they're not necessarily big stars or anything, but I feel like I have a... You wanna do a big up? I like them. You wanna big up one of them? Yeah, you wanna big up? We got a big up, Tom, for a big up? You wanna do a big up? I like that. You wanna big up one of them? Yeah, you wanna big up? We got a big up time for a big up? You wanna do a big up?

I wanna big up Brian Kibler. Brian Kibler, look at him up now. Brian Kibler. You know Kibler. I met him at BlizzCon a couple times. He was a lovely, lovely man. I don't know. He was as nice.

He's always... He can be a little bit salty occasionally, but he generally has this relentless optimism where even if he's losing at a game, he will still laugh and joke about it, right? And I think that is a very rare trait in people. Wow, he's still making Hearthstone vids, fair play to him. I think he helped design the physical card trading game, the Warcraft one, back in the day. Oh yeah.

He's been in... well, he used to play... He's a magic... He's still a magic pro-tour guy, and so he's... but he just has this kind of good, positive energy about, even when he's losing. Which I just admire. Anyway. The UK, alright, is running out of ghosts.

Oh, I saw this. What a ridiculous article. What? Because they've been hunted? And contained? No, they're getting old! Oh, they're moving on. Yeah, they're just getting old. That's a good thing though, that means that they've finished their business in the moral realm, so somebody is completing a checklist for all these people. They had unfinished business.

That's how ghosts work. ALICE What's more likely is... I wonder if we could plot a graph... ALICE Ooh, I forgot to pay my taxes! ALICE The increase in phone ownership and the decline in ghosts. Pretty sure there's a big correlation there. Just like everyone's saying...

Was it a Tom Scott video or someone? Maybe it was Vsauce or something, I dunno. The rise of mobile phone usage has cut down drastically on the number of Bigfoot sightings, because you can't claim you haven't got a camera. You've got it, it's right there. It's right there. You fucking take pictures of yourself every time you have a meal, you know the camera

shortcut button, you know it all, it's right there. Where's Bigfoot? Just shoot a picture, let's see a picture of Bigfoot. You see a ghost? Just pop the camera shortcut button, you know it all, it's right there. Where's Bigfoot? Just shoot a picture, let's see a picture of Bigfoot. You see a ghost? Just pop your camera out, bam, film it, no problem, job done. ALICE Exactly. I don't know why, but...

ALICE At the same time, like, gone. KM When you said that about the ghosts, it reminded me of that scene in Ghostbusters 2, you know when the guy phones up and he's like, yeah, we're down at the port and you're not gonna believe it! The Titanic is just docked. All the fucking ghosts are walking off of the busted up Titanic. I don't know why. I love the way that was set in New York and all the guys seeing the ghost.

Mari look at this! Hey you finally made it! There's a fucking ghost! Oh! Where have you been? Hey you're running out of ghosts? We got a lot of immigrant ghosts right here! We got a bunch of fucking ghosts!

Where do you come from? We're shipping in ghosts! Look at this! Oh We got a lot of immigrant ghosts right here! We're shipping in ghosts! Look at this! Oh, we got a ghost! We got a whole load of ghosts here for ya! That's what you need. You need to go...

Apparently there are some... That's like bollocks, this. You can recharge them. Oh, what? So, yeah, sometimes there's a... it could be that a spirit had a natural source of energy to begin with. Fuck! So, let me get this straight. Not only are we running low on bees, but now we're also running low on ghosts?

Fuck the future science, man. Turns out the ghosts were helping the bees, secretly. We're not gonna have anything at this rate. At the heart of every hive, a ghost. Next thing you're gonna tell me, we're running out of Overwatch porn. We just finished a camp of... a week of streams called Camp Yorg. Which is good fun. Did you actually go camping?

Well, no, we went and we read the Don't Starve Challenge, from back in the day, which was fun. But we did this one stream where Mark Humes was telling some ghost stories, and they were genuinely a bit convincing and spooky. Yeah, Mark Humes is probably really good at telling a ghost story, though. Oh, really good. Convincing. I mean, I think he's done a lot of this sort of stuff where he's stayed at creepy places,

and actually haunted, you know, places that are known to be haunted. And it is fascinating to me... Travelodge Guilford. ...how, you know, these places... I wanna know what it is. Have you ever seen anyone interact with Mark Humes before, though? Like, have you ever considered maybe he is a ghost? Oh, I see. Yeah, and only you can see him.

I hadn't considered that. I can see dead people. That would explain... I can see Humes. I can see Mark Humes at all times. I can see Humes. Is he here with you now? Walking around like non-Humes. In other shit news, paranormal experts say there may be a portal in an English forest that is letting in werewolves. Oh my god. When you say experts...

This sounds like some Twin Peaks shit. Paranormal experts, yeah. Is the portal in the middle of the woods linked up to the White Lodge, or the Black Lodge? Yeah. Are these good werewolves or the Black Lodge? Yeah. Are these good werewolves or bad werewolves? Are they here to kill ghosts? Bring us more ghosts? Or bring us me's?

Do they talk in reverse? And in slowed down time as well? Who is this a picture of, Lulu? You said it's a picture of a short bald man. It's an author called Lee Brickley, who has researched the area for two decades and believes there could be a door to another universe letting in werewolves. I wonder if he's saying that because he has a book to promote. He does. Canock Chase is known around the world as a place where people encounter entities such

as ghosts, phantom hitchhikers, and most famously, the black-eyed child. Do mushrooms grow wild there, is my question. He's also adding Elon Musk on Twitter, so, yeah, whatever, this guy's a crank. He's, uh... Elon, Elon, you'll never believe it, I found the black-eyed child! Finally! Elon, could you lend us a rocket ship to go look for ghosts on the moon, because we're running out here on Earth! We gotta import ghosts!

We need moon ghosts! We need moon ghosts! Space ghosts! We need space ghosts! The other thing that happened this week, before we go, which I thought was funny, was that North Korea was sending balloons full of poo over the border. Did you see this? I didn't see that. Got em!

So they got these inflatable... How? Okay, but... They sent 260 balloons, Gary. The little nozzle for a balloon is so small, how is somebody shitting into those? That must be really tough. You get some good muddy shit, and you pour it in with a special... You'd have to open up the nozzle with, like, a large donut shape.

Yeah. Well, it was actually like a little dog poo bag under a balloon. Like a little present. Well, the South Koreans are sending K-pop and leaflets critical of Kim Jong-un over by balloon. Yes, so that's what happened. So, some South Korean activists sent a load of anti- These are North Korean defectors, called the Free North Korea Movement.

Right. Yes. And North Korea responded with poop. Well, exactly, they sent a load of balloons back filled with poo. They were sending flash drives loaded with K-pop, little do they know, flash drives technology unknown in North Korea. You need to send over, like, parchments. Something like that.

Like, atari's. Yeah, atari's. They're like, oh, atari, huh, oh wow, they've got all the latest tech over in South Korea, haven't they? You said they were using the Intellivision. Yeah, well they don't know what a fucking flash drive is. They don't know the war's over. How many of them even have electricity all the time, I wonder? Like, I'm sure they...

Yeah, they must shut it off at a certain hour, they... Electricity goes off at eight. That kind of shit. You just know they're gonna do... Even if they could provide electricity to everybody, you make them feel... Like in 1984, you enforce scarcity to put people on a war footing and make them think, yeah, we're under fucking siege here, we need to knuckle down and, you know, we've all got to pull together. You create that siege mentality, you can get people to do whatever you want. True. Well, there you go. True.

That is that. What a fascinating... You timed it perfectly, Lewis. That was an hour when you said that is that. Fascinating. Well done. ...series of views. Well, it won't be once we trim out all of the guff. There is no trimming. Oh my god, this was flawless! What do you mean trimming? I have to trim shit! There's so we trim out all of the guff. There is no trimming. What's the point of trimming? Oh my god, this was flawless! What do you mean trimming?

Oh, to trim shit! There's so much guff. There's so much guff. Sorry. What, you're gonna do a five minute podcast? Fuck. You fucking dumbass. You're like one of those YouTubers that cuts out every breath and every pause. My kids watch them. It's just a stream of blulululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululululul Chocolate rain guy. Chocolate rain! Like, he has to cut out all the breathing in, or he stopped himself from breathing in,

or something. No, he moved away from the mic to breathe. Oh, that's right, he moved away from the mic. He cut out all the breathing. Man, I have not watched chocolate rain in a long time. Chocolate rain! Taze on there! Well, I played TF2 with that guy.

You did! 138 million views. He was in a Charity Team Fortress 2 game. I played TF2 with that guy. 138 million views. He was in a Charity Team Fortress 2 game. Why do you have to show off all the time? I don't know. I don't know. It was weird.

There you go, I have to name top people that I've heard of. Tey Zonday. He's 42 now. He's older than me. You wanna do a big ups to Tey Zonday? Has he been cancelled in some way? No. Okay, then big ups.

I think he's not, he hasn't been cancelled, he's just never topped Chocolate Rain. Which... Well, how could you? Understandable. Yeah. It is understandable. I mean, he looks, he's got a real baby face. He's 42, but he really does have a real baby face, this lad.

Apparently there was a TF2 incident while, while, while his, one of his Twitch streams ended in disaster after trying to fix an audio glitch, it's been dubbed the Tay Zonday moment, and has been synonymous with... there is a feedback loop on it. I assume it was some terrible feedback loop happened. It was absolutely devastating. Oh my god. So, it sounds like he's got... He looks like an eight year old, doesn't he? He does. But he's got the voice of a 57 year old heavy smoker.

I think that's the thing. Yeah. So watch this clip, and essentially... It's eight minutes long. It's not like a feedback like you'd expect from a guitar or something. It's just his voice echoing over his own voice, and he doesn't know. And so it just gets louder and louder and it echoes more and more and more and the echo echoes back, so it's just unlistenable.

And he's standing up wearing a suit, he seems to be standing, wearing a suit and playing TF2. Very strange. I respect that. Where is this clip? Oh, I'll post it. Hold on. Zip-a-zip-a-zip-a-zip-a-zip-a-zip.

There it is. Just google Taze on Day, play Fortress 2. Yeah. Everybody with issue of this, go watch that in your own time. Give it a listen, then you'll know what we're talking about. There it is. You can just google Tazonday plays Team Fortress 2. Yeah. Everybody listen to this, go watch that in your own time. Give it a listen, then you'll know what we're talking about. This could be how the Yogscast could be like this, you know? Yeah.

But fortunately we have a very high, I think, a very hardworking studio team. Do we? Yes. And editors. Cutting and trimming and making us sound great. Good luck with this one. Yes we do. Tom H. Tom H! Shout out to Tom H. That's my shout out. Yes, we do. Tom H. Tom H.

Shout out to Tom H. That's my shout out this week. That's our big up, Tom H. Thank you so much. Cut that, Tom. We'll see you all next time. Bye. Bye.