Triforce! - Triforce Mailbag Special #7: The Convict, the Cheater, the Gamer

Episode Date: November 2, 2022

Triforce Mailbag Special 7! We're opening up the mailbag with someone in prison, delve deeper into cheating in Chess and Poker and discover the sexy world of locomotives! Support your favourite podcas...t on Patreon: https://bit.ly/2SMnzk6 Music courtesy of Epidemic Sound. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Pickaxe. Now through April 15th, get 30% off all Sephora collection. Also, for beauty insiders, get 10% off the rest of your purchase on brands like Glow Recipe, Rare Beauty by Selena Gomez, Amika, and more. Don't wait. Shop at Sephora today. Exclusions and terms apply. Discounts not combinable. Earn the points. Share the journey. With the TD Aeroplan Visa Infinite Card, earn up to 50,000 Aeroplan points. Conditions apply. Offer ends June 3rd, 2024. Visit tdairoplan.com for details.
Starting point is 00:00:59 Oh man, Dota's been so hard lately. I know. I haven't played too much. I've been staying up late playing. I've seen you on there. Sorry, this is a mailbag episode. This is a mailbag episode. Welcome to the mailbag. It's the mailbag. It's the one and only mailbag.
Starting point is 00:01:15 Tom just told us that there's some drift in our podcast so our audio feeds can go down. I don't know why. Drift? That's a nice term. I like it. How many Pentiums do you guys use to record the podcast? Seven. Oh, right. Okay.
Starting point is 00:01:29 Well, I use nine. So maybe that's the problem. Maybe you're ahead of us. Yeah. Because of that Pentium power. A Heptacore A342 quad chip nanometer chipset. All right. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:01:44 It's become hard. I don't know if you've bought a computer recently or at all it used to just go up in numbers right yeah but now it kind of goes sideways and everything has like a very difficult or something at the end of it an ag or like an x and everything has like more cores or more like i I don't know, it's just hard to tell what is better. I think they like to switch it up sometimes, you know? Like, we were just so used to just the numbers going up that they just thought, let's make the numbers go to the side now.
Starting point is 00:02:14 And like, once they're done with the numbers going to the side, they'll go up again. And maybe they'll go down, you know? They'll do a stat squish on the stuff as well. I understand why. Because I think they're reaching they reached like some miniaturization limit you know where they couldn't fit more transistors in the same area so instead they're just piling cores on top of each other but i think that could increase the chance of one of those cores failing yeah so i feel like this is just less robust it is quicker
Starting point is 00:02:43 but less robust i'm sure quicker but less robust maybe i'm talking out my ass pretty sure if a if a core breaks i don't know maybe it just they just move around it you know maybe like having a lane closed on the motorway you don't shut the whole motorway you just put an x in that lane that's true that's true right let's get down to it i've got probably this guy is ready to bag i'm ready to bag i've got my you want to get this mailbag episode done in the next five minutes no i i've i've been reading through these this morning i spent an hour reading through them handpicking the ones that i think are worth reading i want to say first of all several people have asked where it's not in the not in the mailbag but
Starting point is 00:03:18 have asked on twitter where do we send our mailbags um submissions it's perianflax at gmail.com. That's the email address. I didn't set up a Triforce one. I probably should have. But in fact, maybe we should do that. But either way, just send them to perianflax at gmail.com and I will read them. I respond to some that don't get read out, which are not suitable for going out because they're just a bit, they're very, very personal and sort of very sweet. Or they're just something that would be a massive buzzkill in all honesty so i just thought you know i'll respond to those ones personally and just be like you know cheers and good luck and all the rest of it and quite a few of them are people saying that oddly enough this stupid podcast of us helps them out get into some tough times and i think you know i don't want to read those out because it feels like wanking
Starting point is 00:04:02 yourself off a bit but i think think it's nice to hear. And I want you guys to know that it certainly motivates me to keep doing the podcast as much as, you know, hanging out with these guys. It is nice to know that in some small way, we're helping people in either their boring filing job. And a lot of people email in to say they are currently filing. So we were dead wrong. The filing is a thing of the past. I apologize. Yeah, no a thing of the past i apologize yeah no half of the podcast there will always be filing you gotta keep the gotta keep the workers
Starting point is 00:04:30 at work and uh sometimes you need really easy jobs for them too because if youtube doesn't work out i think if this i'd love to go back to do some filing you know i'm yeah it's a relief to know that's out there something that you can handle out there yeah i've got a couple of references to filing in this week's mailbag but let's get to it this might be the best i'm not looking for a job actually this might be the best opening to any triforce email that we've ever had uh you guys can be the judge this is the first sentence for the email. This is from Miles. I am in prison. Nice. That's the opening sentence. I live in an open prison, which means that once a month I can
Starting point is 00:05:11 go home and catch up on what's happening in the real world, including listening to as much Triforce as I can. Having been in closed conditions for almost four years and hearing your interest in prisons and the justice system, I thought I'd send you a quick email about gaming in prison. Wow. According to your behavior in prison, you can be categorized as basic, standard, or enhanced. Enhanced means you don't break the rules and you behave well. If you're enhanced, you can purchase an Xbox 360 or a PS2
Starting point is 00:05:39 from the prison supplier. Their consoles have their innards ripped out, so there's no Wi-Fi capability. Right. It's 100 quid for an Xbox 360 and 90 quid for a PS2. No 18 rated games or DVDs are allowed in prison, so the selection of games is limited and old. Many of the PS2 games are so scratched they're basically unplayable. They are a great way to keep the prison population compliant and not bored, and although they
Starting point is 00:06:02 add to the stereotype that prisons are like holiday camps bear in mind the average prison salary is 20 pounds a week which is mostly spent on food and tobacco or vapes so it takes a long time to save up for a console oh my god games if you want them i don't even think i bother with the console i just buy tobacco yeah that's all i would buy i've kept this short so if there's anything specific you'd like to know please let me know i'm home once a month so there may be a delay oh and for what it's worth my crime was financial it was related to insurance which is why i'm trusted enough to be able to go home while still in prison so miles is not a danger to uh good to anything in particular good that's well that was gonna be my first question because i don't really want to you know talk to or entertain like uh somebody who's done something horrific you know question because i don't really want to you know talk to or entertain like uh
Starting point is 00:06:45 somebody who's done something horrific you know right financial crime don't get me wrong there's some knock-on effects and stuff somebody along the way is getting screwed maybe big time as well but at least it wasn't like gbh or like a rape or something like that you know those are far worse also you know what i'm not funny, but this lad's in prison for financial crime. What about those fat cats on Wall Street? They don't get imprisoned by a PS2. There is that as well.
Starting point is 00:07:13 They're professional financial criminals, though. They're like sanctions. Yeah, they're allowed to be. They're like the economic hitmen of the world. They're big big boys they're hard to take down you know like uh what are you going to do they can pretty much do what they like but luckily for us the loophole exploiters you know yeah i also think that the those those banks and those guys are so important to the economy that if they all got taken down the way they
Starting point is 00:07:40 they should be they know they're basically above the law i mean they basically go back to having like a potato and carrot economy right like we just be back in the medieval ages i mean i'd be in big trouble i don't have anything that i could trade no my precious young body i guess would be not only not only do i have nothing that i can trade i also don't have any real skills um yeah of any description really so we'd be fucked yeah i be fucked I'd be extra fucked do you know what one of the things when my kids go to a horse riding club one of the things they have to do there is a giant heap of horse shit and they call it
Starting point is 00:08:15 you make them eat it? no they have to shovel the horse shit onto the top of the pile horse riding club what are you the queen? eat that shit you all have to eat two steaming lumps both of those piles need to be gone by the time we get back and if they're not you're having them for breakfast tomorrow yeah and lunch and dinner until it's done yeah no they have to introduce
Starting point is 00:08:41 some hardship onto a pile and there are two roles There's one at the foot of the pile. And then one person has to stand on top of the horse shit pile, like patting it all down so it doesn't roll back down. It's a pretty grisly job. But hey, they do that for one week. And then the other week they get to ride horses. Nice. So you drive them over to the horse riding place
Starting point is 00:09:02 and they spend the entire day shoveling horse shit. Yeah, cleaning the horses. So cleaning the horses so brushing the horses cleaning the horses okay shoveling shit this is a huge uh component to horse maintenance though you know they don't they're not self-sufficient you know they don't just go around and have a bath when they need one and or take a shower and eat their lunch and you know read the paper and then oh katie is coming to ride me for an hour you know what i mean like there's a lot of work that goes into keeping them in tip-top shape they've got a lot of horses there too yeah and i mean they can get so many diseases and stuff too if you're not keeping up on it yeah it's crazy so i think it's actually pretty good i also think it's teaching them a good life lesson
Starting point is 00:09:44 your girls are learning. You don't get to fuck about and just have fun. You know, you've got to put some fucking graft in there. And shoveling horse shit is a great eye opener. Also, because of all the tasks I had to do, my eldest, her hands and her grip are unbelievably strong. Like she can open, she's popping the lids off jars I can't open. No problem. Holy crap. Because it's like years all that that hard work with your hands so i'm hoping it's going to toughen
Starting point is 00:10:10 up the younger one yeah and i think it will uh either that or i'll feed it to the horses she's got like calloused old cowboy hands she's got cowboy hands yeah for real this is all right this is an email from jesse if other things we gotta keep going lewis we got like i got like 20 lewis is trying to to provide us with a quick anecdote before we move on we've done one email let the man finish his waffling i mean the amount of effort that you have to go through for a horse imagine like if your car took a shit you know you had to like fucking tidy all that up and every week and clean you know groom it and like you know look after and talk to it imagine your car just took a big messy shit like all of a sudden just sitting there on the driveway and
Starting point is 00:10:51 you felt really sorry for it like oh fuck poor guy he's just taken to the car that just evacuated everywhere and he doesn't even know he doesn't know what to do you know he's like the headlights are like uh angled down to like to make sad eyes he's upset anyway sorry all right this is from jesse jesse is a wedding photographer uh do we have any at the end of this we have to think of any weird exciting or awkward wedding stories that we've got uh but as jesse is a part-time wedding photographer there's a list of things that they've seen that that's pretty bonkers. A truly ancient grandpa getting figuratively and literally too tipsy and falling over and banging their head. That's fair enough. But this one's my favorite. A drunk uncle giving a speech at a wedding, which was going south very quickly due to feuding family
Starting point is 00:11:38 members. He was a part-time magician and thought it'd be a great trick to grab hold of the bridal party's tablecloth and yank it super hard, leaving all the plates and cups standing. Except he balls it up, spilling food and booze everywhere. He looked at his mesh shrugged and said, at least everything was fucked already. And apparently the couple only lasted three weeks before. Oh, come on. That's crazy. Have you guys been to any bad weddings i have i've i've only been to a handful of weddings because
Starting point is 00:12:05 most of uh most of the weddings that my friends had were were in canada around the time when kids were like my wife is pregnant or kids are being born or whatever so i actually missed like a ton of weddings which i'm kind of thankful for because the the the ones that i've been to have been really fucking dull so having to go to more of them would have been yeah i love weddings i love weddings well someone's got to love them i guess the issue is if you don't really know the uh the people involved that's those are the bad weddings i've been to i've been to a few weddings where i only knew like two or three people there and one of those people was either the bride or groom. So they're busy. And then you're basically, I'm with Mrs. F.
Starting point is 00:12:46 So it's just us and like people I do not know. For the whole length of a wedding is a long time. And you end up having the same boring, oh, how do you know the bride and groom conversation? And what do you do? How did you get here? They picked a good day for it. Because the weather is nice.
Starting point is 00:13:02 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Lucky. No, it was meant to rain later, but apparently it's cleared up. Yeah, no, it's good, isn't it? Don't they look lovely? Oh, they look lovely. Yes, yeah. I can fill two hours with
Starting point is 00:13:11 weather talk so easily, you know. Oh, it's the British way, mate. That's why we're amazing at it. We are amazing. There was a lot of that at Dr. Simon Clark's wedding. Did I tell you I went to that? No. I went down to Devon for the for the on saturday lovely summer day nice to go nice um and yeah he he had a whole whole mix of people there i think
Starting point is 00:13:35 this is what you get when you are more socially inclined a doctor than me and and yeah and and so there was just tons of tons of interesting people there to talk to and i i wasn't like it was a young meteorologist there were obviously the standard family members right um but but i don't think either family was too extended with guests that god you know all the people who are like oh who are all these you know you bring in all these extra hangers on that you don't really know i'm not a fan of that really the the the extended family that you haven't seen ever so oh my god yeah i'm not going to invite someone to my wedding that i've never met my cousins that i've never met and i have uncles
Starting point is 00:14:24 that i've only maybe met like once or twice in my life and stuff as well. Yeah, if I can't picture their face in my mind, I don't think I want them at my wedding. You've got to be crazy. Yeah. On the topic of Dr. Simon Clark, I saw him recently. He was in Jersey for a couple of days. Oh, yeah? And I went to meet him at the zoo. I mean, I took my family to the zoo and uh had a chat with him for like 20 minutes and then i carried on with my fun packed day of uh you know hurting hurting children having his own family or not no i don't think so i didn't really i didn't really expose him too much to uh to the old family you know like i just uh just gave that knowing nod to my wife like
Starting point is 00:15:03 have fun i'll be back in 20 minutes. I'm just going to do something that doesn't involve children. And she looked pretty jealous. And then I went off and talked to him while he was, he had to go around and take some pictures of like animals and stuff. Because he was doing, he was working. He was like doing some stuff up there. So, I just was asking him about what he was doing and stuff and asking him what he thought about Jersey and everything. And then I left. That left that was it sorry the story is not exciting but if this i think i think he's like one of the first people i've seen since um since covid well i mean i've seen you but i don't think i've seen anyone else from like the network or the office or anything he's such a genuinely nice man he is
Starting point is 00:15:42 yeah he's really nice yeah yeah so i had to really the wedding was like super super well done i've been to a lot of weddings partly because i used to work at a hotel that did weddings right so i would i would be a waiter and we do like four weddings a weekend you know two on friday two on saturday kind of thing and they were all like carbon copies basically of each other well i think there's kind of a playbook for weddings right most people yeah know that they want roughly the same thing as the next person like people don't change it up that much right but that's why i think that the people that are there is what's most important i mean i know that all the weddings i've been to it's the people like you can be in a wedding with the most unbelievable setting.
Starting point is 00:16:27 But if you and you know that if I knew all these people, it was my family. This would be amazing. So I think that although weddings are very similar and when you go to them, you know what it's going to be after a while. And, you know, it's nice when the weddings deviate too much from that. You feel like, yeah, it's like you're in some weird experiment and you're not sure how it's going to turn out. You just hope it all ends up well. But I think just keep it nice and normal
Starting point is 00:16:48 because the main thing isn't, I mean, once you've done the ceremony, all that kind of stuff, it's like those details are so minor. The main thing is hanging out with family
Starting point is 00:16:55 and friends and celebrating the day. That's the big thing. Don't worry about all the fucking details. Like, oh, I want the flowers to be exactly the right shade of red.
Starting point is 00:17:03 No one's going to give a shit. You're not going to give a shit once the wedding starts. The food has to be good and the people have to be good it'd be cool if yeah it'd be cool if they could uh use technology to just like superimpose the groom and the bride's bodies onto say like some old footage of like you know uh charles and diana getting married or whatever right then broadcast it on TV as well. So you could just watch it on TV. So you feel like you're watching a big fancy royal wedding, but actually it's just like Pete and Debra from down the road getting married.
Starting point is 00:17:34 But you know what I mean? But you get to watch it from the comfort of your own house. You know, you can phone people who are also watching it. If you want to say like wow have wow did you see veil or whatever people talk about you know what i mean like i feel like i feel like that would be the most miserable dystopian version of way for this for this upcoming generation though they're gonna want something like that for sure how terrifying people don't want to socialize much anymore people don't really want to meet up with each other in public spaces anymore either i don't want to socialize much anymore people don't really want to meet up with each
Starting point is 00:18:05 other in public spaces anymore i don't think that's true dude i don't know man i saw some footage of people going to a disco and listening to headphones and it was all quiet in the disco that's because they have a silent disco so you can listen to what music you want you can do that the thing is that those people are quite outgoing they've actually gone outside to a disco i mean it's only us that are the shut-ins i was out last weekend okay i went out on last weekend i don't think that those people took it in their stride leaving their house to go to that somehow i bet you it was like fucking you know a seat of their pants like fucking anxiety overload everything you know what i mean like yeah you're right they are there's probably finger marks like on their door somebody had to like pull them out you know like people are getting married later now
Starting point is 00:18:50 people are getting married in their 30s and by the time they're in their 30s they've come out of their shells enough to do a wedding that is probably low-key but yeah traditional the thing is like it's not usually people it's it's rare to find a couple that are both completely introverted, you know, because how do they meet each other in the first place? Well, exactly. It's like a two million to one chance that they'll go outside and meet someone. I don't think me or my wife are particularly extroverted either, but I think we had the benefit of meeting when we were younger. But I think the social pressures of family and friends and other things force you to do a normal wedding right because most people have normal lives normal jobs normal family and this we had a we had a pretty normal wedding flax i'm assuming
Starting point is 00:19:35 you probably did too right did you get married like in a church yeah i mean we were 25 when we got married it was uh not a church wedding because we're not religious people. No. So it was a town hall in Wimborne in Dorset, and we got married 2001, September the 1st. Oh, nice. Just before 9-11. That was when we were on honeymoon. Oh. So the world changed.
Starting point is 00:19:57 Before the world changed, yeah. Yeah, I feel like we were partly responsible. Do you recall, were you able to take, like, a two-liter bottle of Coke onto the plane with you? Were you a were you able to take like a two liter bottle of coke you remember al-qaeda no no but the security about them was very light it was like it was pretty lax compared they were just like do you have a ticket and a passport yes well then get on yeah it's like very little in terms of searching please don't smoke too much on the plane we um we actually got married in a church but it was it's – because it's such a small place, it was like – we're not religious either, but it was a bit symbolic because my wife's family, like previous generations of her whole family are all buried there. Oh, right.
Starting point is 00:20:36 It was just like, you know, yeah, it's kind of like a family church, if you like, but none of us are religious whatsoever. Right. church if you like but none of us are religious whatsoever but right occasionally we will go up and just like you know see some of the uh the headstones for like you know her grandmother grandfather and their their parents and whatever like there's a whole whole there's a whole bunch of them up there it's not like it's not like a tomb or anything they're just out in the open but you know what i mean it's like yeah i think because it's a small place you get you get an element of that so we got we got married there but it was nice though it was it's a nice setting to get married in like i wouldn't want to go there every sunday and sing
Starting point is 00:21:13 songs and shit like that but you know for for a wedding i think oh it's very church is pretty great it's an old ass church too really old and it was such a hot day it was kind of nice to be in the church it was nice and cold inside it's like you don't even need air conditioning in those bad boys right there you go yeah all right we got an email here this is about the we we really opened a can of worms when we talked about jury duty oh because i've had so many emails about jury duty people take justice very seriously they do but also because obviously so many people get called up for jury duty and it's it's an interesting thing to be called up for although for most of the emails i've got about it it seems like it's also incredibly boring most of the time and there there haven't really been any positive
Starting point is 00:21:53 yeah there's been a couple of positive emails about jude but most of the time you're not uh you're not like this you're not doing the oj case every time you're getting called for jury duty but even if you were that's months and months and months of your life sequestered and all the rest of it anyway this is from i don't know if it's taylor or tyler but it's it's t-a-y-l-a right as emailed in um so uh this is about three years ago right to the courthouse at email three years ago holy crap no this is the jury g you've been hanging on to that one yeah i really i was waiting for just the right the right episode i arrived at the courthouse at 8 a.m went through the security checks and metal detectors ushered into large room with other potential jurors they called the first round of jurors to get screened and the remaining jurors had to wait in case they were chosen
Starting point is 00:22:34 everything had been going as expected until a bailiff who i can only describe as a jolly hugh babineau and he's the big lad on better call saw yes yeah right had walked out looked around and said okay let's get some entertainment for you guys while we wait he then proceeded to play an episode of seinfeld nice amazing after the episode ended the bailiff returned to say okay everybody likes dinosaurs and then put on the jurassic world movie at this point i became very enthralled with the movie as i'd not seen it yet about three three quarters of the way through, at 11.45, the bailiff returned again to say they were all set and we could leave. I was quite annoyed, not only because I'd had to eat a parking ticket
Starting point is 00:23:11 by knowingly parking where I knew I'd get a parking ticket, sitting in a room full of strangers who were essentially wasting four hours, but for the fact the movie was cut short and I had to purchase the movie later to finish it as I needed to find out how it ended. That's ridiculous. It is ridiculous. I guess it's like treating them like little kids like frozen on the way putting a movie on yeah it's just hilarious i
Starting point is 00:23:31 mean but seinfeld into jurassic world like if you know in the old days when my mom always tells me you'd go to the cinema and there would be three movies like when people talk about a b movie and stuff like that that's what they mean is like you'd have there'd be like some kind of little serial like a 20 minute bit like the lone ranger or something uh or some little you know batman-y kind of um you know kick crusader thing then they'd have the b movie and then the main event the big picture at the end so you'd go in and you'd pay your money you'd be there for fucking hours you'd be watching like three separate programs yeah uh when you would go to the to the movies which is fucking amazing
Starting point is 00:24:05 value for money there was fuck all to do back then though to be fair so i think people were quite happy to do that right i get the sense and you could smoke in there and everything right these guys are bored in the jury room you should keep them entertained but i would bring a book with me to these things i wouldn't want to have to be forced to watch jurassic fucking world they should spice it up a little bit like you they should do like some of those kind of old fallout style infomercial things like so you've been selected for jury duty and like uh it takes you through like uh are you ready to administer justice and and stuff like that do it for your country they should do one of those yeah that
Starting point is 00:24:45 would keep you perfect for those actually thank you thank you very much i say get troy mcclaren hi i'm troy mcclaren welcome to the do's and do not do's of jury duty yeah and then do do like that exactly why why limit yourself to just like the courthouse as well? Like you could have one like, so you've been incarcerated, you know, like a nice introduction to like your new life. Welcome to your new life behind bars. You could have those things everywhere. I think you should. I think it'd make life a lot more interesting.
Starting point is 00:25:22 There's that Finnish video you can look up where it's how to open a door correctly have you seen this one no i have not oh you gotta look it up it's like a finnish instructional video on how to use a door because apparently most people are doing it inefficiently so this is like a video about how to use a door i cannot tell if it's a parody or not because i was laughing too much even when you go to like the to the lawyers like so that hussy cheated on you again. Right. It could be anything, right? You could go to the car mechanic, so that piece of shit broke down again.
Starting point is 00:25:54 You could just be so good. There's a whole industry. I'm sure there are tons of them. There's a whole industry around these little infomercial things. Maybe I should look into this. So you've had a good time riding a horse, and now it's time to shovel the shit now it's time to get real horses cannot take care of themselves oh man that was so good all right here's one here's one we didn't sorry just we didn't have any questions for the guy in prison first of all i'm interested in did i guess he must have had some sort of trial yeah and yeah what are the level of the other do you know what crimes other
Starting point is 00:26:30 people other kids i was gonna say so yeah here's a couple questions do you ask is it is it the done thing to talk to other inmates about what they're in for right um how given that you're in an open prison is there any violence are there are there still a few nutters about i mean because i assume if you if you're in the open prison you fuck somebody up or jug them or something you're gonna leave the open prison like in a way by having an open prison you're you're you're making yourself uh you're putting yourself into the frame onto the grid right you if you do something like that then people will notice you and i think you want to be not noticed but this leads into another thought i had how do you think uh wearing a kimono full-time in prison would go down for you personally like do you think people would think that you were insane and leave
Starting point is 00:27:15 you alone or do you think that they would just beat the shit out of you all the time because you're wearing a kimono i don't think they get to choose what they wear mate i think they get prison uniform to wear well what about like yeah you can have the prison uniform but surely you should be able to drape yourself in some silk i think only the leader of the biggest gang will be wearing a kimono yeah i mean come on like you gotta get a house coat or something right like it would make practical sense to have a house coat in prison because they could save on the heating bills right i don't know what a house coat is brother i'll be honest with you you don sense to have a house coat in prison because they could save on the heating bills, right? I don't know what a house coat is, brother. I'll be honest with you.
Starting point is 00:27:47 You don't know what a house coat is? Is it a dressing gown? Yeah. Oh. Yeah. House coat. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:27:53 Look that up. I've never heard of it. It's a dressing gown. It is. The context clues were there. Yeah. I'm just interested in knowing like- House coat?
Starting point is 00:28:02 We obviously get like this very- It's like an N.A. thing, I think. I always do it as a house coat. First of all, are you in and what level of prison is i assume the lightest one and i and then like what jobs yeah if you're in like norway or something like that what's the food i don't think that prisons in norway are particularly bad right how military is your average day what your hours yeah i feel like in in Norway if you're in prison all you're doing all day is making like
Starting point is 00:28:27 spaghetti bridges and laughing at somebody's for their spaghetti bridge breaking under too much tension. You know what I mean? It's like some
Starting point is 00:28:35 it's like some intellectual battle or something there whereas like you know in England it's like just like jugging and like mate you
Starting point is 00:28:42 you want me Nigel like it's you know it's it's rough i've had like eight emails about the name nigel as well by the way we'll get to those in a bit although i think we're gonna run out of time do you realize we had a lot of nigel's listening so many so many that's today's nigel's fanduel casinos exclusive live dealer studio has your chance at the number one feeling, winning. Which beats even the 27th best feeling, saying I do.
Starting point is 00:29:09 Who wants this last parachute? I do. Enjoy the number one feeling, winning, in an exciting live dealer studio. Exclusively on FanDuel Casino, where winning is undefeated. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Please play responsibly.
Starting point is 00:29:30 Milestones aren't for looking back. They remind us to keep moving forward. To turn what we've done into what we can do. Turning everyday necessities into electrifying possibilities. Turning a new vehicle into the new standard
Starting point is 00:29:46 introducing the first ever mazda cx70 our largest two row suv available as a mild hybrid in line six turbo or as a plug-in hybrid crafted to move every part of you uh here's a here's a quick one from joshua or josh right in san francisco oh uh has a problem for us to solve it's a quick one from Joshua, or Josh, in San Francisco. Oh. Has a problem for us to solve. It's a simple one that I think we can all relate to. How can it be that I simultaneously love video games yet can never find anything I want to play?
Starting point is 00:30:15 That is the story of our lives, I'd say. You're spoiled for choice at this point, my friend. It's the exact same sickness as browsing through Netflix or Amazon Prime. We've never had so much stuff that we can do. And it's impossible to then find something to do because there is just too fucking much stuff. You know, back in the day, you rented an NES game for the weekend and that was the only game you had. So you played it. And if you hated it or were sick of it, you went outside.
Starting point is 00:30:44 The life was so much simpler then. Now it's just like, I hate this one. I'm just going to browse my library of 10,000 titles, see what I feel like playing. And it just becomes like the pirate memory game. You know, I want a colony sim builder, but I want something that, you know, has some RPG elements to it. And so then you're whittling down this list of games and then suddenly you realise, hang on, nobody's made this game yet, but you're too lazy to make it yourself.
Starting point is 00:31:13 Yeah. This is the problem. There you go. There's your answer. My suggestion is just you have to create, like, some sort of artificial goal for yourself, right? Like, play a new game every day i feel like that one worked really well for me you did he did that for ages actually didn't you i think yeah you know what it's you know what's nice to have is like a filler game like a like
Starting point is 00:31:35 kind of a time waster game that you know you still get that like gaming fix if you like but it's not something you're massively invested in and then you use that to sort of ride through um before hearts of iron four other stuff try try to achieve different things grand strategy games are really good filler for that because there's tons of like especially the paradox ones like uh europa universalis ck3 hearts of iron all those games stelaris even there's so many different ways that you can see a game through and win or lose. Or there's achievements that you can try, the challenges. Set your own things, for sure. Really easy to just get stuck into one of those.
Starting point is 00:32:13 Agreed. Or take up chess. Like our next email is from Mikey. Don't do that. No, don't do that. The market is saturated. You're never going to get good. Wanted to supply some additional context as
Starting point is 00:32:26 to why hans nieman is assumed to be cheating this is the lad with the vibrating thing up his butt that was the suggestion right it really comes down to chess engines which are computers that analyze chess moves and determine how close to optimal a player's moves are a computer would of course always make moves that are 100 optimal and while it's not unheard of for grandmasters to approach or occasionally hit 100% optimal, it is very, very rare. Magnus Carlsenhom was around 70% to 72% optimal. Obby Fischer was around 75% optimal when he went on his legendary 20-match win streak.
Starting point is 00:32:56 Hans Neyman, or Nyman, has had multiple 100% optimal matches, including one where he made 45 engine perfect moves in a row also big surprise the matching question that cast an accusation of cheating during he had 100 optimal moves so but i don't understand how having a vibrator in your ass gives you the edge like i don't know if it was that what is somebody sending you a signal to say move your castle here like you know what like i don't understand where the cheating comes from like how how does this benefit you just described it what are you talking about you just described but you're just sitting there looking at the board and you're good at chess like can
Starting point is 00:33:33 you not you he's not that good right so he's not so good that he can beat magnus carlson i get the impression that it's like do you remember that stuff with dream or whoever who was getting like was it or that that with dream or whoever who was getting like was it or that that streamer who was basically doing minecraft but speed running yeah and they got like super lucky and they did the math and they said like you basically shouldn't be getting this many spawns of this thing it's math it's a mathematical impossibility it's like a one in a hundred million chance that this has happened for you because you know there's a mathematical impossibility it's like a one in a hundred million chance that this has happened for you because you know there's a one in eight chance this thing was born but you've got it
Starting point is 00:34:09 you know every time eight times in a row so it's just impossible right yeah um and so that was i guess i think that's a similar thing to this hands and even thing like is he's just too much of an outlier um with his move move styles um compared to like the optimal inverted commas moves but this is the world we live in now you know maybe play a game that you know um isn't isn't like solved you know maybe chess isn't solved but i don't mean it's um it's certainly something that is the computers are better at. So like, why are we bothering? Why are we interested? You know? Yeah. Play poker.
Starting point is 00:34:50 The machines aren't better at poker, are they? Well, isn't there been some cheating in poker recently as well? There was a girl that was apparently made a call that nobody else would ever make but then she won and the guy I thought we talked about that. Was just like dumbfounded at the play and it was most experts agreed that nobody ever would call there.
Starting point is 00:35:07 But she did. No, no. She thought they were cheating. They thought she was cheating. She basically didn't have a hand. Right. She had like jack high. And he had.
Starting point is 00:35:17 She was winning because she had a higher card than him. I think he had an eight, nine. I think. He had the components to make a straight or something he could have made it he was on for a straight flush actually he was on for it but she was technically ahead but only by like five percent right like it was it was a super super marginal hand now some people are saying she cheated but for her to cheat she would need to call him which she did on the turn i believe which
Starting point is 00:35:46 was when it when she called him so she still has more or less as much chance of losing as she does of winning right it's really not a good time to call and for it to be so such a big and obviously high profile hand it's televised it would be the stupidest thing ever to cheat in that spot for so many reasons not least because it would obviously look like cheating. If he had apps, if he just had seven high and she had eight high and called it and there was nothing out there potentially, then I would send this and she waited until the river to call this all in. 100% chance she wins and then she calls.
Starting point is 00:36:19 That might be considered cheating. But this would not only be extremely unlikely that she would cheat because it would be too obvious but also it's such a terrible spot to cheat that's the one thing that i think nobody's really noticing is why would you fucking cheat in a spot where you're still barely better than a coin flip it's ridiculous so no she was not she was not cheating this hands neiman thing looks far more like cheating if this engine stuff and 100% perfect moves. In that regard, I can see why there's actually grounds to suggest there might be cheating. So you think that this guy's dildo is hooked up to a computer and the computer is sending him Morse code vibrations via dildo to tell him what move to make?
Starting point is 00:36:59 Well, that was a suggestion, that it was some kind of vibration thing up his butt. So she had this big ring on her finger right and people are claiming that that is a vibrating thing but i think i think it's mad so what they did was they looked into this um scandal quite deep and they fact they did find one thing one of the um staff members actually stole fifteen15,000 of chips off of the table. Yeah, he was taking chips off the table, yeah. Oh my God. They found that, that was nothing to do with this.
Starting point is 00:37:30 But when they looked back at the footage, they were like, did he just take chips from the table? So they caught another, an actual crime taking place. An actual cheat, an actual criminal. Yeah, this is, you know- Stealing from her. They spent all this time rounding up the mafia and throwing them in prison and stuff. At least when they ran the casinos, none of this shit happened.
Starting point is 00:37:47 Right? Like, get them back in. Get them back in. Bust them out. Come on, guys. We need you. It's like when they incarcerated the Ghostbusters and then they realized, hang on a sec. We need these guys.
Starting point is 00:37:59 Let's get them back out. Hey, Bobby. And so, of course, the next theory that came out was that this guy who'd stolen the chips was actually taking them as payment for giving her the information about the other guy's chips somehow. Oh, bullshit. Bullshit. Because, of course, the internet is full of these people who are looking to, like, basically prove themselves as some sort of genius detective and have solved the case.
Starting point is 00:38:23 That's what I do on my stream every day. Every Reddit thread, you scroll down, there's some prick with a brilliant idea, you know, some sort of genius detective and have solved the case that's what i do on my stream every reddit thread i'm you scroll down there's some prick with a brilliant idea you know and then everyone is convinced of this like everyone jumps everyone loves a conspiracy theory yeah i'm just as bad coming up with them like you know these stupid sideways ideas for why stuff is but man do you think that there's a bias in the media lew? No, I think there's just bias in humans. Interesting. Well, then wait, because our next email might change your opinion.
Starting point is 00:38:52 Oh, man. What a segue. Holy crap. I know. Thank you. Well done. I can't reveal the name of this person or specifically where they work. I see an email, but I'm not going to reveal my sources on this one.
Starting point is 00:39:04 Ted Forsythe from Twickenham. He's written it to himself to own the other members. Dear Perian, aka the best member of the Triforce podcast. Side Perian. I'm a university student currently interning with one of the major Sunday news shows here in the States. Last week,
Starting point is 00:39:20 I arrived in the morning and flagged that we had something wrong in the notes and script for the show. Specifically, we said, President Biden accused Russia of a deliberate act of sabotage in the explosion of the Nord Stream pipeline. In actual fact, Biden still had not said Russia was responsible and no other major news outlets were reporting it that way. When I brought this up to an associate producer, they tried to fix it, but the two top producers told me it was an editorial decision and not to change it. The associate producer and I were not happy with this, but
Starting point is 00:39:47 I haven't done anything else. Despite this instance, as a whole, the people on the show are care a lot about setting their biases aside and presenting things fairly. And he's asking for our thoughts on this. Still not sure how seriously to take it. And is it as grievous? It's not as grievous as other lies put to the press. I've been told I'll need to carry some dirty water sooner or later if I want to work in the press. But I'm not sure if I'm willing to. Any thoughts on how I should handle a similar situation if it happens again? So the news literally deliberately putting out something that they know is not the case.
Starting point is 00:40:19 Because what? Because they want to get a headline? They want to get some viewers? Yeah, they have their own agendas around not only that, but politics and stuff as well. They could be trying to like stir the pot or whatever. Like they're known to regularly do it and have done it many, many times in the past as well. So the question is, you get all these young people coming into work in journalism and in the media. I think they have one vision of how they hope it's going to be.
Starting point is 00:40:47 I think it's human nature in a lot of ways to go into something and think that you're going to change it or make it better, right? Like, I think a fresh young person who is becoming a police officer probably thinks that they're going to hit the streets and they're going to do it better than everybody else did it. They're going to do it different. They got a fresher perspective and stuff. And then, you know, a couple of years in realize, oh, hang on. Now I realize why everybody before me did it this way. Because some things are just the way they are. And it's really, really, really hard to change them sort of thing. Like,
Starting point is 00:41:25 the way they are and it's really really really hard to change them sort of thing like like change does come about but i i don't know if it uh you know i don't i don't know if anybody you know like we know or whatever is going to be the the the key proponent to that you know what i mean like it it'll happen but uh for every time that happens you know the hundreds of thousands of other people have to suffer through the the the garbage right to get to the point where something does happen so i think my advice would just be to know what you're getting into i mean it sounds like you do but maybe not fully aware of everything that you're you're getting into and just take it as it comes you know you might you might find a spot where you're not carrying the dirty water like comes you know you might you might find a spot where you're
Starting point is 00:42:05 not carrying the dirty water like uh you know like your colleagues have said to you or whatever you might find yourself in a spot where you are and it's too much and it's time to leave to go somewhere else within the same industry or people you know reimagine what you're going to be doing with your life like it's nothing set in stone doesn't it right i think when you're new and fresh like you said like and high-minded with your you know morals and your principles you've got these ideas that everything should be better and it should be because obviously every time you make lies in the press the that that that just justifies the the the rational that would the other end. You know, they're like, well, these guys are just lying.
Starting point is 00:42:47 So why don't we lie as well? And, you know, it exacerbates itself. A race to the bottom. A race to the bottom. And also, if you're publishing things, you know, that are wrong, that is wrong, definitely. And I feel like, but as you said, as the guy in the email said, it's not his
Starting point is 00:43:05 decision and he has to eat the shit and to some extent maybe you do but to some extent you don't want to be the fall guy right you don't want to be the guy that gets you know oh well you know we're blaming you know the scapegoat you know that the guy that because at the bottom that's what happens you know you're gonna you're gonna get the sack if it all is you know you're gonna be the guys who told you to do it aren't if it all is you know you're gonna be the guys who told you to do it aren't gonna get in trouble you know no because they'll be like well it was your decision you were the journalist you put your name on it whatever right so you gotta be careful i think always but that's why you just gotta keep uh folders on all the people that you interact
Starting point is 00:43:39 with you know follow them after work and see what they get up to and keep some some bribery material ready for when they do inevitably throw you under the bus and then you could say yeah but look at this and you can deflect you know you like you you have to have some spicy material yourself so so get gathering get out there some spicy material get your whistles ready and get ready to watch i watched this this this this documentary about wire card um which i should have heard about yeah the german thing right it was this german financial tech company who was sort of this big new german paypal type thing and they were really fin tech they called it yeah they were hugely the german government everyone was obsessed because the germans haven't got this but they don't really have any modern tech companies.
Starting point is 00:44:28 They're known for old school industry. And so when it sort of all came up, it was this huge thing that everyone was all excited about. And they didn't want it to be a scam. But of course it was. It was all a bogus accounting fraud. Maybe that's why that guy's in prison. I reckon. It was definitely like this
Starting point is 00:44:45 this thing but the thing is the guys who were running it had like ties to the international you know agencies you know they had like ex-russian operatives ex-ex-libyan secret agents you know all these kind of criminals effectively yeah who were on you know doing very dodgy stuff behind the scenes trying to keep people shut down and hacking people. And the Financial Times, their investigative journalism team, were like two guys. It was like two guys, and they had to have this sealed room in the Financial Times where they had a safe with a laptop
Starting point is 00:45:19 that wasn't connected to the internet. And once they got their documents, they had to go in there every day and stroll through hundreds of thousands of hours of stuff and they had to have a very small team and so it just took took forever and all the while they're reporting every bit of news that they're putting out is being you know poo-pooed and and in fact financial times was continually sued by wirecard so i think honestly the future in the most modern way possible, I think investigative journalism is the hardest place it's ever been, right? It's so easy to hide stuff or just spin stuff, you know, away from it being or just like them being attacked, like them not having the, you know, people not really seem to put money behind investigative journalism now, you know, or not being worth it. You know, everyone's like, oh, well, they'll take away your advertising like it's it's it's a tough job anyway like even some of
Starting point is 00:46:10 the people who revealed the panama papers were were killed in car bombs yeah it's terrible you know it's like it's a real shame so yeah if you're going into journalism and investigative journalism good good luck to you good luck man it's it's uh you're putting your you're putting your life on the line really crikey well i hope that's answered your question and cheered you up on a on a cold and windy morning on the way into your corrupt job kicking a can and staring at the ground wondering what to do next this is this is from jack uh uh old sips mentioned how happy he was to get a like from ricky gervais on not to piss on his cornflakes but i've had three likes from him in the space of a week you always know that somebody's about to piss on your cornflakes when they open up with not to piss
Starting point is 00:46:56 on his cornflakes but there's a choice line to describe how ricky gervais uh hands out uh likes according to jack here he hands them out like a pedophile hands out sweets. Wow. Interesting. So yeah, so Jack managed three likes from Ricky.
Starting point is 00:47:11 So I think he just likes everything. He's a liker. He's a liker. Oh well. This is from Jack. Can't believe I'm typing this email
Starting point is 00:47:18 but this is a serious issue that I feel needs to be addressed. Lewis, this email has nothing to do with you so sit back and relax, pal. All right? Are you sitting back and relaxing? No, I'm taking forward now. This guy's this email has nothing to do with you, so sit back and relax, pal. All right? Are you sitting back and relaxing?
Starting point is 00:47:26 No, I'm taking it forward now. This guy's about to piss his big cornflakes, Lewis. Oh, he's a cornflake pisser. He's pissing on me and Sips' cornflakes. Now, peering and Sips. Someone starts with now. Oh, no. When you two were discussing awful musicians to watch live,
Starting point is 00:47:39 and I have to agree with you, for the most part, I'd rather eat a pack of crayons than listen to Adele live. Excuse me. I said that I would be happy to watch Adele live. See, that's how I know this guy's email. No, you wait till you hear what Jack says. You guys discussed how horrible it would be to watch Canadian singer-songwriter Michael Bublé live. Now, this blatant slander against him is unacceptable.
Starting point is 00:48:03 All caps underlined. He is a saint, according to Jack. I agree with you, gentlemen, about most things. But to badmouth, Bublé is sacrilege. I appreciate everyone has an opinion, but both of yours is wrong. I shan't hear another bad word said about this man. And I demand that this week's big ups go to Michael Bublé. No, okay.
Starting point is 00:48:21 But listen, there's a rabbit hole that you could go down if you're interested, where Michael Bublé is potentially abusing his wife, like domestically abusing his wife. Oh my God. And there's been a lot of work to cover it up as well. Go have fun, is all I'm saying to you. Sips is secretly an investigative journalist. Yeah, he's lost like seals from the internet. Now that we've been speaking about it,'m not gonna say anything anything more i'm not accusing or whatever because i think
Starting point is 00:48:49 buble's got some pretty powerful people but if you're interested there is a nice rabbit hole for you to go down uh enjoy no big up for buble sorry yes no big up for buble indeed although jack then does say i'm willing to strike a deal with you gents if this week's big ups go to buble then he will donate 10 pounds to a charity of our choice all right i've got one for you how about 10 pounds goes to uh the survivors of domestic violence charity a women's shelter charity and then we'll give a big up to boobla there you go 10 pounds to that please not that i have any idea if that story's true no but you know what i fucking hate boobla so i can imagine it also jack sent that from his work email so you know he's serious
Starting point is 00:49:37 that's so funny god bless you jack thank you oh man That was a good one. That was a good one. That was good. That was good. I kind of, I'm watching these Bublé Instagram videos now. Yeah. A couple of years old. I've gone down the rabbit hole since. Oh, man. He's like, he's like doing like, he's like elbowing her. Yes. He says to her, I'm going to kill you at one point.
Starting point is 00:50:01 I don't know. That's not the kind of thing like you say to your wife. It's not very Bublé like behavior, is your wife. It's not very Buble-like behaviour, is it? I'm not feeling very Christmas spirit. I'm not feeling very jazzy right now with that. He's got a syrupy voice, but he's probably a prick.
Starting point is 00:50:16 Oh, no. Oh, my goodness. This is from a guy whose nickname, his name is Jacob Ducky. You never know anyone, do you? No. No, you really don't. This is Jacob Ducky Voicin. How do you think he got the nickname Ducky? Ducky. It sounds like an aristocracy thing, right? Like, that is kind of a nickname that they
Starting point is 00:50:37 would give to somebody, right? Well, he's on deployment in the British Navy. He's in the Royal Navy. Sorry, seven and a half months away. He listened to a fair chunk of our back catalogue while he's off deployment in the British Navy he's in the Royal Navy sorry seven and a half months away he listened to a fair chunk of our back catalogue while he's off he started watching Seinfeld it was a lot of time
Starting point is 00:50:51 on board ship I guess so he's watching Seinfeld loves it already binged the first season in a day busy are you Jake? the first season
Starting point is 00:50:59 of Seinfeld is like eight episodes though it's like a pilot season alright so here we go it's just a shout out for All right, so here we go. It's just a shout-out for the recommendation, but I thought that this was interesting.
Starting point is 00:51:10 Jacob Ducky Voicin. Why do you think it's Ducky? It's not because he's posh. Right. I'm at a loss, then. I don't know. Because Voicin sounds like hoisin. Like hoisin sauce. So that is such a weak reason to have the nickname ducky no offense ducky
Starting point is 00:51:27 but hoisin i don't get it i don't get it i just thought that was funny i in terms of bad nicknames that really don't make sense that's up there really really funny like i that is so loose loose voice in what like hoisin sauce what like they put on ducks we'll call him ducky so funny anyways uh hello peering lewis and sips i was listening to number 235 while on my mail route as usual and was fascinated to hear about
Starting point is 00:51:57 this gathering of the nigels that are pub hosts according to lewis the youngest nigel they found is in his 40s. This made me realise it may be incredibly rare as I am a 25-year-old American Nigel. I have never met or even heard of someone else knowing another Nigel, which I'd always attributed to just being American, but it sounds like that's becoming common even in the UK. So there you go. I mean, you're more likely to find a nigel in the uk i would say uh than
Starting point is 00:52:26 anywhere else in the world listen you should consider a name change you're young you know that's nigel's gonna follow you around your whole life you know it's not it's not it's not got good associations here dude i'm just saying like you know think out think you could be called anything you could be called like flash um well it's funny you talk about name changes, because allow me to continue. Dennis. I wanted to see if you guys would set this next bit up. It's perfect. While the most obvious problem with being an American Nigel
Starting point is 00:52:52 is that approximately every other person I've ever met in my entire life has asked me in a bad British accent, like, Nigel Thornberry. I don't know, who's Nigel Thornberry? Fucking Nigel Thornberry. Oh, he's from the host of Nigel Thornberry? Fucking Nigel Thornberry. Oh, he's from the host of Nigel Thornberry's Wild World. He's one of the characters of the Wild Thornberries. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 00:53:13 I've never seen it. Smashing. Nigel Thornberry. Is it a kid's show? It's a kid's show from the looks of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's got the big teeth and he's like, it's like a classic toffee-nosed kind of character. The rareness of my name has presented
Starting point is 00:53:26 another issue as nigel is a trans woman and you're all exactly right the nigella which is something we talked about is a horrible name many other trans women get to go michael to michelle joseph to josephine but my jella nigella is simply not an option for obvious reasons however i don't want to change it to anything else because i feel i have to carry the nigel torch so we don't what about just shortening it don't sacrifice yourself for this don't don't die on that hill just get we said that nigella was a bad name so nigel is going to keep the name nigel i think the proof is in the pudding with nigella how many nigellas have you ever met in your life well i only know of one me too. I think that any female version of a male name that's less... It goes the other way too, though, right?
Starting point is 00:54:11 There's certain names that are more female, and then there's a male version of them. Right. Geraldine's a good name. I quite like that. It's a strong feminine name, isn't it? I think it is, yeah. wrong feminine name isn't it i think it is yeah yeah imagine a geraldine with like 10 children still does her fucking laundry on like a washboard can like bench press all of her kids at once if she needs to brooks brooks no argument and stands on stands except no foolishness next to a clothing
Starting point is 00:54:40 line with her arms crossed stern face for every photo that she ever has taken of her. Rolly hanging out the side of her mouth. I better get this washing in then before the weather turns to piss. Unbelievable. You kids pick that up after yourselves and tell me if that dinner's gonna be ready in 20 bloody minutes. If he's not here, if he's down purple fucking bookies again,
Starting point is 00:54:59 he's getting out. You tell him. Have you finished mucking out horses? Muck out that bloody arse. They call it shoveling up.'s what they call it shoveling up shoveling up i think i think it is like a thing where it feels like a lazy name right or or defeat like the nigella i guess i don't associate it with nigel too closely actually it's not too bad it's not obvious i think it's very telling though isn't it that a lot of female names are essentially I guess I don't associate it with Nigel too closely, actually. It's not too bad. It's not obvious. I think it's very telling, though, isn't it? That a lot of female names are essentially, they just stick a L or an U on the end or an E.
Starting point is 00:55:33 Brucelein. Because they're like, well, it turns out we've had a girl. Alanis. Call her Michaela. I think if they've got a different sound, they're okay. Like Louise is obviously the female version of Louis. For me, it's Christine or maybe Chrissy. Yeah. I don't think Christine is necessarily a bad one either.
Starting point is 00:55:53 Christal. Christal's okay. You are starting to sound like a stripper though. Yeah. Christal is a stripper name. I've got one here. I guess we're going to finish on this one because this will be the hour mark. And this is from Edward,
Starting point is 00:56:05 which is a cracking name. Well done, Edward. Please read this in your best British railway nerd voice. Okay. All right. Lewis recently talked about being of suitable age to love trains.
Starting point is 00:56:16 I'm 30 years old, dual nationality, and I love American trains. My great-grandfather on my mum's side worked for the Delaware and Hudson Railroad and my grandfather has a huge steam locomotive fan. American trains. My great-grandfather on my mum's side worked for the Delaware and Hudson Railroad, and my grandfather has a huge steam locomotive fan. My dad has a huge model railroad based on the Great Northern Railroad in the USA, so I had no chance of being cool way before birth.
Starting point is 00:56:35 American trains are gigantic. I recently visited a railroad museum in Portland, Oregon, and after chatting with the volunteers, they let me sit in the engineer's chair of SP4449, which is a beautifully restored steam engine in a very striking colour scheme. It still runs excursions and requires maintenance every day to keep it running. My partner and I stood next to the large drive wheels, and they're taller in diameter than me. I'm six foot tall.
Starting point is 00:56:57 This locomotive was also used in the 1986 movie Tough Guys with Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas. For some reason, the red hot chilli peppers are in it too, this movie. We also had a tour of a naval submarine called USS Blueback, which was used for breaching shots in the hunt for Red October, probably more interesting to you, period. Sips might be impressed by the feat of engineering of the largest steam train ever made, called the Union Pacific Big Boy, which has 16 gigantic driver wheels and a 4884 configuration. It's also very heavy at 350 kilograms it can bend a buckle railroad track and once fatally crashed at 50 miles an hour there's also a big fan club for
Starting point is 00:57:29 american model trains called the nmra my dad is a current president of the british region the mra and they desperately need young blood which is anyone under 60 many thanks apologies for the unusually dry email but i'll be doing the global train fan community a disservice by inserting humor no no good good for you honestly there's a lot of things like this like uh recently that like there's a snooker club close to uh like like a community snooker club like close to where i live and uh they just celebrated like a hundred years of being open a snooker club or whatever but their memberships are down big time because nobody wants to play snooker anymore so they're trying to get younger people in to do it much like you guys are trying to get people interested in trains or whatever a lot of this stuff is dying out right it comes back to what we were saying before about too many games
Starting point is 00:58:13 to play too many movies to watch too many tv shows to watch but so i think it's interesting when people think these things are dying out i will say this the key to things becoming cool again is that they have almost died out. And then some young hipster that's famous and has a million Instagram followers says, guys, have you heard of something called trains? They're unbelievable. Yeah, but I think I think with a lot of this stuff is interested in trains. There's there's a correlation to the changes in the way that we socialize, I think, with a lot of this. I don't think train enthusiasts socialize i think they do i think only with other train enthusiasts it's a physical thing that you have to displace yourself
Starting point is 00:58:50 and go somewhere to see somebody's setup or whatever or you'd have to go to like a model railway show or like a you know an expo or something like you know what i mean like these are all with other train enthusiasts that's my point sure but these people all have to gather up somewhere to look at these train model train sets right you can't just like you can't take your entire thing just round to jimmy's house and wait is this is this feeding back into your theory that people don't leave the house and as much as they used to i still don't think that's true definitely don't though like and i think it's the same with like uh like snooker and stuff as well younger people i don't think leave the house as much as i don't think that's true i really don't
Starting point is 00:59:29 i'd be interested to find out i'm looking at this if you try try leaving the house at the fucking weekend in london and you will not be able to move two feet without bumping into a horde of people i actually think it might be the opposite like when we think people are dying i think if we spoke to the world snooker people they probably say like snooker is the biggest it's ever been i think it's certainly very big in china it probably is but i'm i'm i'm more saying like i think a lot of things are the biggest they've ever been because these little niche things are up now and having a chance to grow like i think you can have these communities around like very small games very small and as much as we complain about it and there's like all the people conspiracy nuts have their own echo chambers where
Starting point is 01:00:09 they you know circle around the craziness but there's obviously like communities that have been been really fostered look at this wikipedia article for the union pacific big boy it's giving me like excitement it's got a four foot eight and a half inch standard gauge period it's got it's got a leading diameter of 36 inches and a wheelbase of 72 feet and five and a half inches which is 22.9 meters so close it's an axle load of 67 000 pounds which is 30,000 kilograms, is an adhesive weight of 245,000 kilos. Jesus. Of course, the total weight is 539,000 kilos. The fuel type is coal, converted from number four,
Starting point is 01:00:56 sorry, it's number 4014 coal, which is converted to number five fuel oil. A bit problematic in the current climate. It consumes 11 tons of coal per hour and 12,000 gallons of water per hour. That's why that thing has been sidelined. I see now why. That's crazy. It's got 150 square foot firebox
Starting point is 01:01:19 leading into a 95 inch boiler, which has got 300 pounds per foot per inch squared boiler pressure. Well, I'll tell you who's enjoyed this. Edward. This is fantastic. There you go. Get into it.
Starting point is 01:01:34 I have to go, Chats. I've got to make a phone call. I apologize. Something's come up. Best of luck. Keep the emails coming. These are some good ones. More train stuff.
Starting point is 01:01:44 More train stuff. Can we have a whole episode about train stuff? That'd be great. Oh my God. We'd have to get a specialist on. I don't know enough about trains. You guys don't know anything about trains. We'd just be reading train fucking specs off the internet. I see one of them was converted to fuel oil. What's a 4884? What's the White's notation for Steam locomotives wheeling? We're going to stop right here. This was this week's DriveForce podcast mailbag special.
Starting point is 01:02:12 I'm in hell. We will see you guys next time. Bye.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.