Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / "American Oddities" with David Farrier

Transcript

"American Oddities" with David Farrier · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  This episode was recorded in early January before my summer vacation and it includes a conversation about living in Los Angeles in which I make fun of that city in an affectionately cynical way.
• 0:15
  This was before the L.A. fires it would certainly seem tackless if we had known what the town was about to endure and I considered cutting that exchange but it is a tribute to my faith in the greatness of Los Angeles and the resilience of its people that.
• 0:31
  For the sake of posterity I'm including my now tin-eared joshing about Los Angeles' failings L.A. will quickly I'm sure resurrect itself to greatness and my jibes will once again be taken in the spirit of affection for L.A. with which they were intended enjoy.
• 1:01
  That Americans use shower curtains so much instead of enclosed glass shower stalls as much of the rest of the civilized world has chosen to do.
• 1:14
  This is one of the many conundrums that David Farrier has encountered and wrestled with as a New Zealander living in Los Angeles.
• 1:21
  He has a podcast called Flightless Bird. It's produced by Dax Sheppard's podcast production company of Armchair Expert Fam and he wrestles with the incongruities of American life from shower curtains to the baffling popularity of the olive garden chain of restaurants.
• 1:38
  He and I get into all of that along with questions about whether or not Los Angeles is truly as foul as I claim it is.
• 1:44
  He's a big advocate for the city of angels.
• 1:47
  David premiered at the Sundance Film Festival with an amazing feature length documentary that he made called Tickled.
• 1:53
  I highly recommend it. You should check it out streaming wherever you can. He's a frequent collaborator with Reese Darby from the Flight of the Concords.
• 2:00
  He recently stopped by the uncomfortable conversations studio to delightfully whimsically muse on the oddities of American life and where he and I as friendly foreigners find ourselves in it.
• 2:13
  Please enjoy the one and only David Farrier.
• 2:16
  All right, well now that we can actually talk about things we want to add to talk about.
• 2:20
  Yes.
• 2:21
  How are you? Welcome to our fine city. How long have you been in this town?
• 2:25
  I've been here for about a week.
• 2:26
  Great.
• 2:27
  I like it. Are you a Sydney sort of? Are you a regular Sydney?
• 2:30
  No, I've only been here a few times in my life.
• 2:33
  So it's been nice. How does that happen? How does a Kiwi only come to the local regional big smoke?
• 2:40
  I don't know. I feel like Australia is probably deeply offensive. I just feel it's a big in New Zealand.
• 2:44
  I don't go. Wow. I must go to Australia. It's just like New Zealand but more.
• 2:48
  Yeah. So I feel like if I want to travel, I want to go somewhere that's not Australia.
• 2:52
  Yeah.
• 2:53
  It's being like lovely. It's being like a good time.
• 2:56
  But that's why all the Kiwis come here because it's not different.
• 2:59
  Yeah.
• 3:00
  It's the same. If you want New Zealand.
• 3:02
  Yeah.
• 3:03
  But ten times the energy, pace and size and culinary, you know, adventurousness.
• 3:08
  Yeah.
• 3:09
  And you come here.
• 3:10
  And I think I'm getting that.
• 3:11
  Right.
• 3:12
  But I, it's been really fun for me because in my neighborhood where I'm in the States,
• 3:17
  there's members of Crowded House that live there.
• 3:20
  Oh, what?
• 3:21
  And members of a British band, the Colts. And I love both these bands.
• 3:24
  Wow.
• 3:25
  And they've both been playing shows here all week.
• 3:27
  And so I've, and Sydney.
• 3:29
  Yeah. So I've been here just going to shows.
• 3:31
  And do they know you?
• 3:32
  Yes.
• 3:33
  Right.
• 3:34
  You're in the, you literally moved to America and became part of the Hoiti Choiti.
• 3:38
  No, not at all.
• 3:39
  I just happen to move close to some of these people and we became friends.
• 3:43
  And then here I am.
• 3:44
  Right.
• 3:45
  So it's been a blast. It's like every night it's a new show.
• 3:47
  We're in the state theater of the Colt Play.
• 3:49
  Wow.
• 3:50
  Which is beautiful.
• 3:51
  Great theater.
• 3:52
  It's been in the Opera House tonight for Crowded House.
• 3:55
  Well, an outdoor show, which I'll give a number for.
• 3:58
  Crowded House are a big New Zealand band if they're Americans who don't know them.
• 4:01
  They're giant.
• 4:02
  Giant.
• 4:03
  Don't dream it's over.
• 4:04
  If you don't know them.
• 4:05
  You can listen to don't dream it's over.
• 4:07
  Yeah.
• 4:08
  Right.
• 4:09
  Now.
• 4:10
  Don't dream it's over.
• 4:13
  Okay.
• 4:14
  So that was don't dream it's over.
• 4:16
  Beautiful.
• 4:17
  And so they live in Losfielders.
• 4:19
  With you.
• 4:20
  I'm imagining it.
• 4:21
  Yeah.
• 4:22
  Am I not supposed to tell you what part of Los Angeles is?
• 4:24
  No, it's fine.
• 4:25
  No people live everywhere.
• 4:26
  But yeah, we're all kind of like neighbors.
• 4:28
  So it's a good vibe.
• 4:29
  It's a truism that people live everywhere isn't it?
• 4:31
  You can put that on a bumper sticker.
• 4:32
  I say it all the time.
• 4:33
  It would always be true.
• 4:34
  And it would always be true everywhere.
• 4:35
  People do live everywhere.
• 4:36
  Yeah.
• 4:37
  Which is this.
• 4:38
  Not the bottom of the ocean.
• 4:39
  No.
• 4:40
  Not a top various mountain.
• 4:41
  Not that we know of.
• 4:42
  No.
• 4:43
  Like don't get ahead of yourself.
• 4:44
  Like we don't know.
• 4:46
  A landest thing.
• 4:48
  It wasn't a thing.
• 4:49
  But it was a thing that people said.
• 4:50
  Well, yeah, yeah.
• 4:51
  And I'm an Atlantis believer.
• 4:52
  I am.
• 4:53
  I embrace it.
• 4:54
  Yeah.
• 4:55
  Are you partial to an odd conspiracy theory?
• 4:58
  Yeah, I like.
• 4:59
  I the very first podcast I did was called the cryptofactor and I did it with Ristabi who's a New Zealand
• 5:03
  comedian and.
• 5:05
  Yes.
• 5:06
  And many people were in that.
• 5:07
  show was just about cryptosology and UFOs and mysteries. And I just kind of that whole idea of
• 5:13
  that show was just going in with like a very open mind and just having a good time with those
• 5:18
  things. And so I'm still partial to some of the non-racist, terrific QAnon-style conspiracy theories,
• 5:25
  the old days. And it just me represents like a real time one. Yeah, it's a good old one, isn't it?
• 5:30
  Yeah, it's sort of the JFK assassination. Yeah, you know, back when things were pure. Yeah,
• 5:37
  not nearly 11 truth and all that. Nine and eleven. Well, that may be that's in between. Yeah,
• 5:42
  that's probably a juncture point. No, it's where it went. We're it's where it went dark and bad.
• 5:47
  Right. I think it was like nine and eleven truth is I feel like the assassination of the US
• 5:52
  president in the 1960s wasn't dark or bad. No, the assassination is bad, but I feel like the
• 5:57
  dialogue around the conspiracy wasn't coming from a place that was like rooted in like weird racism
• 6:05
  and weird old school like state films. Yeah, yeah, or any assumption that there's a super powerful
• 6:14
  cabal of evil doers. Yeah, the second, yeah, the second you hear the cabal, you're like, oh god,
• 6:19
  you know, yeah, yeah. And saying that, there probably was mention of a cabal back when it came to JFK,
• 6:24
  but I like to think there wasn't no. And so the and so why then was your podcast less successful
• 6:31
  than the Joe Rogan experience? That's a good question. I mean, the Joe Rogan thing blows my mind
• 6:37
  continuously. I remember when that started and I sort of remember listening to him and it was
• 6:42
  I got the appeal because it was just he's really he was one of the first people to do these really
• 6:47
  long conversations, right? And he just let people talk. And he was less in my mind like less
• 6:52
  and sufferable back then. So I kind of get it. Yeah, but it drives your question. He's charismatic
• 6:57
  and he's people like him. He's not for me. Right. Why not? Uh, he's I think he platforms some pretty
• 7:04
  terrible people and he has some pretty terrible ideas and he's got that whole thing going,
• 7:08
  oh, I'm just putting it out there, you know, but he didn't back then. I mean, he was just putting
• 7:12
  things out there back there. No, it was offensive. He's lean more down those. Yeah, roads.
• 7:17
  Or it may have been more offensive back then in a strictly literal sense of like they might have
• 7:22
  been talking about monkeys, vaginas, a bit more silly. Yes, that's right. It was silly fun. That's right.
• 7:28
  Yeah. So is that a metaphor for the whole of culture and society in some way going from silly
• 7:35
  fun to like dark question? I feel like, yeah, I feel like it's a really good question. I feel like
• 7:42
  in general, everything's getting worse and people's intent is worse. And I think for whatever
• 7:51
  reason, the people with the biggest audiences have some pretty terrible ideas. I'm not quite sure
• 7:56
  why people are embracing them, but that's where we live in right now. It's funny. I recently did
• 8:01
  an interview on ABC radio, the public broadcaster here for whom I used to work about Rogan because
• 8:07
  the chair of the public broadcaster here recently said some insulting things about Rogan when he
• 8:13
  was asked about it in a press conference. And so I was sort of wheeled out as like the
• 8:18
  Joe Rogan whisperer or who can articulate to the 60 plus audience. Yeah, the significance of
• 8:25
  this person. Yes, who he is and what and yeah, I don't think that the framing of his work as being
• 8:33
  malicious or like even demonstrably false gets to why he's popular. You are on show, right?
• 8:45
  Seven times. Yeah, yeah. So how did that work? So I should know this, but that's what I
• 8:49
  should know. No need. How do you like to get obsessed with certain people? Yeah. How did that happen?
• 8:54
  That happened because I was living and working in New York City and I was hosting a, I was one of
• 9:00
  the hosts on a streaming channel, Huff Post Live, which they're having and posted created and I
• 9:07
  did an interview with a very woke activist in 2012. Okay. Sort of derailed and spiraled off and
• 9:14
  momentarily went viral and he saw that. He played it on his show. Right. Someone told me that he
• 9:19
  played it on his show. So I just DMed him on Twitter and then he was like, if you're an LA,
• 9:26
  come on by and I was like, well, I just happened to be in LA in a few weeks time and then we
• 9:30
  hit it off and then every, I sort of had a standing invitation for the next. Do you still exchange
• 9:35
  messages? There are fewer and fewer coming back. Okay. I got to tell you as the, as the
• 9:41
  stratosphere has like. And did you notice going his show, did more people come and find you?
• 9:45
  That was a, did you see his influence? Oh, it's absolutely. It is completely real and true.
• 9:53
  Like at the same time, I had a segment on the today show in the States, which everyone thinks of,
• 10:00
  you know, people have seen Morning Wars or the Morning Show on like Netflix or Apple or whatever
• 10:03
  it is. And like it's like, it's, it's true that there's this consensus in American Broadcasting
• 10:09
  that these breakfast television network institutions are the most important and valuable assets
• 10:16
  really in the whole pantheon of American Broadcasting. Not anymore. Right. And yet they still
• 10:21
  behave as if they are. So I would go on and, you know, ostensibly be on the air for eight minutes
• 10:28
  with Al Roker and Kathie Lee and whatever. And supposedly in front of a hundred million people
• 10:36
  or 50 million people or something. And crickets. Crickets. I would get, you know, three texts from
• 10:44
  people who are over 60 who, you know, knew me, who could be at a bar mitzvah once or so.
• 10:50
  Totally. And I would go on Joe's show. And every time the net for the next two days, my podcast
• 10:56
  would be number one on the iTunes. Yeah. Like people listen to that. And then they instantly go
• 11:01
  and find you instantly go, who is this? And they go and search for it. It's funny. It's weird.
• 11:05
  It's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because I, I was in New Zealand, I used to work on like the late
• 11:10
  night news in New Zealand. But it was at the end of TV kind of being something people watched. And
• 11:15
  so when I'm so lucky, I feel lucky. I worked in it then because I got the response. And it's
• 11:20
  like my God's like, you've got a segment on TV. Wow. Yes. That's the average. I saw sort of the
• 11:26
  mouths of like, we're just people started doing other things. Yeah. The feedback stops. And it's
• 11:31
  kind of like you're eventually broadcasting to no one. That's right. Your mum might watch. My
• 11:35
  mum didn't watch. But there's something, there's something else going on, David, which is also the
• 11:39
  amount of attention that people are paying when they do watch. Like I don't think that the
• 11:43
  Nielsen ratings are lying when they say that 50 million people watch the today show. Yeah.
• 11:49
  But what that means is it's on in the background while they're making breakfast for their kids.
• 11:53
  Yeah. They're on their own. They're doing other things. Yeah. Exactly. But it's on. Yeah.
• 11:58
  Or it's on in an airport lounge. Yeah. It's like the background music in a
• 12:02
  lot. That's right. Exactly. Exactly. But the good thing about independent media is people,
• 12:08
  the people who are listening to us now are choosing to listen in a proactive and dedicated way.
• 12:14
  Yeah. They're focused. Yeah. And they're interested. That's right. And they want to know things.
• 12:18
  So Lee Harvey Oswald is innocent. Listen to me right now. And understand this. It's what David
• 12:26
  wants you to know. Yeah. It's my main reason for being here. Exactly. This entire time. Your whole
• 12:33
  career has just been building up the whole. The whole. I mean, I'm fascinated by podcasts in
• 12:38
  general. It's mad to me that people will watch this, like sit and watch us talking that's weird.
• 12:43
  And we've started doing a video for our podcasts. And it's still mad to me that people will watch
• 12:47
  and be dedicated. Especially when you've got one side of the internet, which is TikTok videos and
• 12:52
  Reels, which are, you know, these 30 second things where you've got to grab your attention within
• 12:57
  the first two seconds to scroll on. So does that happening where people's brains are turning to
• 13:01
  rot because it's just like these shorts stimulating things. Yeah. And yet there's also another side
• 13:06
  where society wants to watch, you know, Rogan talk to someone who you talk to someone for three
• 13:11
  hours. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know how those two things don't line up and I don't quite understand
• 13:16
  that. I mean, that is actually one thing that I said on the ABC interview that I was giving,
• 13:20
  which is that people these days only want to consume media that is either 15 seconds long or three
• 13:24
  hours. So that's it. They don't want anything. They don't have enough on them. The two minute
• 13:28
  story is like the nightmare. Why would you want to watch that on TV? But I agree. Yeah. I feel
• 13:33
  that. I feel the logic of that. I don't think there's anything inconsistent about wanting something
• 13:37
  15 seconds long and three hours long. I think there's something deeply irritating about something
• 13:42
  that's eight minutes long. You want more or you want it to be over quicker? Yeah. Either tell me a
• 13:48
  story and take me on a ride or give me a little nugget, you know, just inject some dopamine into my
• 13:55
  prefrontal course. Yeah, but the thing is it's interesting as well. The thing I want to do in my
• 14:00
  life the most is make feature documentaries. Yes. Like I love that idea of a 90 minute thing.
• 14:04
  But I feel that's becoming that's this old fashioned format almost. This idea of creating a 90 minute
• 14:10
  thing that people will sit down and watch on a streaming service or in a theater when I don't
• 14:16
  know just the audience you can get on like a three hour conversation you have with someone or a
• 14:21
  viral. I don't know. I just I feel that the format of documentary feels to me old fashioned.
• 14:25
  It is. It makes me feel old. It is. Because I am. It's like what your interests are.
• 14:30
  But, um, allow me to assuage your concerns. Old formats can still be worth doing even if they
• 14:37
  don't necessarily have the widest as wide an appeal. No, there's worryliness to that type of
• 14:42
  story. Like porn hub gets a hundred million, you know, whatever. I think I've got the statistic
• 14:47
  from your podcast actually. It's big, right? And there's a very funny episode of your podcast where
• 14:51
  you go to a tour porn shoot in L.A. The people should listen to it. But the, I mean, the benefit of
• 14:58
  something like a 90 minute feature film documentary or the benefit of a book is that it's a it's a
• 15:04
  thing that has a context and a known role. Completely, right? And people can go to it. It doesn't
• 15:09
  need actually need to be the most important. No, almost watched thing. No. Because it's something
• 15:14
  that you can hang your hat on that you can say, this is my calling card. This is the thing that I
• 15:18
  and potentially has more cultural impact and it's in a more niche way. Yeah. That's the aim of it.
• 15:24
  That's right. And it also is long enough to tell a story. Oh, yeah. You know, it's not like the eight
• 15:28
  minute chat or something. Well, that's good. That I just something I've been thinking of recently
• 15:34
  just thinking is this a does this format to disconnected from what we should be. No, I don't think so.
• 15:41
  I mean, the other benefit of it is that it's cheap in comparison to all the things that a streaming
• 15:47
  service could spend, you know, in terms of the, the per minute cost of job still pieces comedy or
• 15:52
  whatever. Doc goes of cheap. So there's something of a renaissance in some ways. Yeah. Thank you,
• 15:57
  entries. Yeah. Okay. I want you to see it. Pretty little ahead. Okay. I'm just worried. Don't give up.
• 16:01
  Sitting in this podcasting studio, I'm just worried about the future of documentary.
• 16:05
  Do people watch your podcast or they just listen to it because people don't watch, we, we film this
• 16:10
  and then everyone goes away. And then everyone listens to it. Yes. And I keep telling them come and
• 16:16
  see David's beautiful face, even when you're not on the show. Yeah. Yeah. Come and see David's beautiful
• 16:21
  face. Yeah. Straight. Yeah. Same as the first show. Come and see David's beautiful face. And
• 16:26
  know me comes. People seem to enjoy it. I mean, I kind of, I have no interest in, I mean, we've
• 16:32
  put so much effort into it. And I, the documentary I make. So the podcast I make flight this
• 16:38
  boat is cursed because we created the worst, most difficult format of all time. So we deliver it weekly
• 16:44
  each episode consists of chit-chat like this. Right. Which is a dead easy. You just sit down and
• 16:51
  you talk. Yeah. And then we created this cursed 20 minute audio documentary, which is like
• 16:56
  pre-produced and scored. Yeah. And that is a huge effort to get out every week because it's just
• 17:01
  me and an editor and a producer and we're doing this every week. And then when we switch to video,
• 17:05
  it's like, Oh, God, I mean, we can do this bit. We can film me and my co-host Rob talking.
• 17:11
  Then we've got this 20 minute bit of audio. And so now we've figured out a way to illustrate
• 17:16
  that graphically and that's just whole production. Right. You know what you should do during that
• 17:20
  bit? You should just hold on the two of you. I suggested it in the studio. No, this is watching
• 17:24
  because I've played the documentary in a Rob every episode. Yeah. No, but we, I mean, I'm really
• 17:28
  proud of what we're made. There's a really beautiful graphical story that we have for this 20 minute
• 17:33
  thing. Right. But it's a fucking production. And what fraction of the audience watches it versus
• 17:37
  listening? We get we our first episode. I mean, we're little. We're like a very niche show. I think
• 17:42
  we had maybe like 12,000 views on one episode. So yeah. And it's a lot smaller than our audio group.
• 17:50
  But it feels like enough to maybe do it. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Why not everyone? They're not
• 17:55
  rogue numbers. They're not rugged numbers. But the reason we're doing the reason we're doing it is
• 17:59
  we want new people to find the show. Yeah. And I think the logical place to find new viewers is to go
• 18:03
  on YouTube because it's a whole audience there that would never know about the show otherwise.
• 18:07
  Yeah. That's true. So it's less it's more about awareness as opposed to we need everyone watching
• 18:12
  this video. Right. But then following that logic, there's also this like exhausting kind of race
• 18:17
  for clicks where you go. All right. Well, I mean, now that you're there, you want the algorithm to
• 18:21
  pick it up. So you have to cut clip the bit that has the porn star in it. That's what we're figuring
• 18:26
  about the adjaculation. And then there's the YouTube short. Then, you know, maybe that'll get caught.
• 18:31
  I just hate hate. Oh, you're saying all that. It's maddening. It's just shady. I don't know.
• 18:40
  Like I don't know. I don't want to try to play the game to get to sort of get people on board. Do
• 18:44
  you mean? Yes. Also people like the thing the thing that I've found so funny people are so
• 18:51
  people don't know how to use the internet. They don't know how to find things. Right. And
• 18:58
  sit with this with flightless bird, right? We'll be making this for so long. Getting people it's
• 19:04
  still hard for people to like go people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Like I see we have a
• 19:09
  link tree, right? We've listed all the main platforms. Here's Apple. Here's Spotify. Yeah. Every
• 19:14
  week I'll get an email from someone going, oh my god, is it on Pandora? Yeah. Or something. And
• 19:19
  it's like, yes. Yeah. I'll check. I'll be like, if we fucked up, it's not on there. And I'll
• 19:24
  go and look, I type in flightless bird. And there it is. And they haven't bothered to do that.
• 19:28
  They're just asking you to find things. It's why the people that look and with like tickles,
• 19:34
  this documentary I've had out in the world for since 2016. Great feature film. I saw it in the
• 19:38
  movies. I loved it. Thank you for going. I loved it at first sight. People still want to know
• 19:43
  how do I see tickled? And I don't know where they're messaging me from. Are they? And I mean,
• 19:48
  because that defines where they watch it. Right. In any country, anyone watching, if you want to
• 19:53
  find a thing, right, you get the name of the thing, you use the keyboard, you type it in.
• 19:59
  You don't have to use the keyboard. And then the internet will grab that and it will run it past
• 20:04
  and find the thing. And it will tell you. Yeah. Tickled movie. You type in. You type it in. And
• 20:10
  it might even tell you where it might even have to type in. How do you watch tickled movie in?
• 20:14
  And then you put your country in. Yeah. But it'll return a fairly reliable result.
• 20:19
  And I know Google sucks now, but it'll still do that for you. Yeah, even Gemini.
• 20:24
  Well, actually, Gemini, I won't. Gemini, I will tell you that some night will suggest alternate
• 20:28
  reality. That's right. But yeah, it's, it's, no, I know what you mean. But it's also, you might
• 20:32
  be being a little unkind. No. Okay. Maybe you just have a stupid audience. I mean, maybe the
• 20:37
  types of people who like your things are dysfunctional. No, I mean, the people who find it are great.
• 20:41
  The people looking, I'm not sure. I'll listen as that have found it a great. Right.
• 20:47
  Because I find, but I feel this in myself in the sense that there are podcasts that I would
• 20:52
  like to subscribe to the premium version of because I get irritated that I don't get the full
• 20:58
  feed, the ad free feed. And every other episode, I'm like, I wanted to get access to the premium one.
• 21:03
  Do I know how to do that? Absolutely. Would it take more than three minutes? Absolutely not.
• 21:09
  Can I afford it? Yes. Do I ever do it? No. Never. Never. Well, I do that. So if you're listening
• 21:16
  to this and you're sick and tired of me badgering you about joining Substack, I feel your fucking
• 21:23
  I don't blame you for not signing up to my substack. On the other hand, just fucking do it.
• 21:28
  Just do it. Just do it. It's not hard. And now I'm talking to me, not to listen up. I'm saying me,
• 21:33
  I'm going to go and I'm going to sign up for the premium version of the thing that I want
• 21:37
  because it's not hard. It's not hard. Actually, but there's a tremendous resistance to this barrier.
• 21:43
  I know any barrier to anything, and I get it, people are used to listening in a certain way,
• 21:49
  and when anything changes, it is a big panic of behavior. But that's the other thing that I've
• 21:53
  learned with doing a podcast is it's just so important to have that week like to have the same
• 21:58
  time, same day, the second you miss out and that becomes inconsistent. People just they'll leave
• 22:04
  because they want that thing. I know the podcast I love. I know it's held on a Monday at this time
• 22:09
  and it's there and it's comforting. Uncomfortable conversations with Josh Saps, not only Monday,
• 22:14
  also Thursday. There you go. Twice a week. As you know, that would give me and brain
• 22:19
  aneurysm having to do twice a week. Well, we don't score it for fuck's sake. We don't edit it.
• 22:25
  It's just this. I regret I permanently regret ever pitching Flightless Bird as an idea. Just change it.
• 22:30
  Yeah. It's we're doing it now, you know, I'm in the flow. My brain can't, like that's what it is.
• 22:36
  You can't just pivot. No, I feel proud. No, I feel proud of what we make. We make a really cool
• 22:40
  podcast. We put effort in. I think it's really good. So we'll keep doing it. It's just slowly
• 22:44
  killing me. Yeah. That's the downside to me. I mean, on the promotion also, just to finish the
• 22:51
  just to tie the bow on the question of like, what's going to work in the YouTube short,
• 22:55
  that's going to get the algorithm to pick it up, that's going to put it in front of other people
• 22:59
  who are also googling about Atlantis. The thing that I find unsimely about it is
• 23:08
  I feel like in most, I feel like in many creative industries, there's the creative product
• 23:13
  and then there's the marketing and sales. And they're quite separate. Yes. It's like running
• 23:19
  an airline or something like they're the people who fly the plane and they give you the
• 23:23
  in flight service. And then there's the sales team. They're back at HQ. They're in Tallahassee.
• 23:28
  They're on arm and the phones and they've got their PowerPoint presentations to each other.
• 23:33
  And never the twain shall meet. They're entirely different jobs. Yeah, but here. Yeah, it's
• 23:38
  and also the content that you produce is supposed to, or maybe not supposed to, but invariably
• 23:44
  does get contaminated by considerations about its sellability, its algorithmic potential.
• 23:51
  So I know people, colleagues who have podcasts who are much more successful than yours or mine,
• 23:56
  whose success is entirely attributable to the fact that they pay a lot more attention than we do
• 24:01
  to what types of guests are going to serve particular audiences to how to cut it in such a way
• 24:07
  that it's going to go past the 31 second mark so it gets counted as a view or listen,
• 24:13
  and therefore triggers like the algorithm to notice this and that the way that it's commented and
• 24:18
  shared like there's a whole science of this that then is bleeding back into the airplane and
• 24:24
  is flying is like the pilots are now doing the completely sales completely. And yet I have no
• 24:30
  interest in doing any of that. I think I know I mean, I grew up online. So I feel like I have a
• 24:34
  rough idea of how to promote a thing, but obviously I'm not at Rogan numbers. So I'm not doing it
• 24:39
  as well as it's a high bar. It's a high bar. You said it is a high bar. Yeah. But I was
• 24:45
  in podcasting as such a weird space because you have these you have these the Rogan's and like
• 24:50
  the armchair experts which have these big deals and giant audiences. And then I think the gap between
• 24:55
  those big ones and the little guys is so vast and so huge. And I think it gets very scrappy when
• 25:02
  you're a smaller product trying to get out there because it's just it's a busy marketplace.
• 25:07
  Definitely is. I mean, there's a huge incumbent advantage that I was lucky enough to get
• 25:13
  just ahead of I think. Just you're in about a few years old like yeah. And there's this mid-tier
• 25:19
  that I'm on that is like sufficiently lucrative. Mid is good. I'm not sure of course I'd like
• 25:26
  in Rogan's numbers, but I'm not sure that I would like Rogan's life. And I mean, it's like
• 25:31
  a certain amount of yeah, a certain amount of under the radar and on your mid-years also. Yeah,
• 25:35
  totally is also yeah. But let's talk about America because I think your insights in America is
• 25:40
  what I will clearly what make the podcast so interesting and what make you an interesting
• 25:44
  figure to our guests as well. How long have you been there? About three and a half years.
• 25:49
  Right. And only in Los Angeles? Yes. Live there. So I went over to work on a documentary project
• 25:56
  during the pandemic. It was sort of saying to ease that restrictions were lifting in L.A.
• 26:01
  so masks were coming off. And I mean to come over here for three months, but then
• 26:06
  here on New Zealand. America. So I left New Zealand. Went to America and went to the dock.
• 26:12
  Yes. And then when I went to fly back to New Zealand, they had closed the border to keep
• 26:16
  COVID out. And so I couldn't get back in. Oh, you couldn't go back into New Zealand or
• 26:20
  you couldn't leave New Zealand. I couldn't get back in. So okay, I'm explaining this better.
• 26:24
  This is terrible with the New Zealand, right? Yeah. There was a documentary in America.
• 26:28
  You went to America? I flew to America. We're there for three months. Yeah.
• 26:31
  We went to go back to New Zealand. But they slammed the gate. We can't let COVID in.
• 26:37
  Yeah. So you've got to apply in this lottery system online. Right.
• 26:41
  And so I tried to do that for about six months and just kept losing and didn't get a space.
• 26:45
  Right. And so it's incredible, isn't it, in hindsight, they just would not. You're a citizen.
• 26:51
  Yeah, it wasn't you own the country. You own your share of the country.
• 26:54
  It wasn't a wild concept. And they're just like, no, you're not allowed to come.
• 26:57
  You're like, but I have the document. My papers are all in order. They're like, no, no, no, no, no.
• 27:01
  You have to stay like, but I don't have anywhere to sleep over here and I don't have any money.
• 27:04
  It was stressful. You're still can't come. You know, because the job I was working on was over.
• 27:09
  And so it's like, I need to get back. Yeah. But yeah, they gave you a chance. You'd go to this
• 27:14
  website just to get a spot and manage isolation. And basically they had certain hotels. You'd go
• 27:20
  back to an isolated for two weeks, limited space. And I'd go and log in and I'd be number,
• 27:26
  you know, 41,000 in the queue. And it was like waiting for an oasis ticket or something when they
• 27:31
  went on sale. And you wait in that lobby. And then you get to, you get like 10,000 in line.
• 27:36
  And then it's like, oh no, shut all the spaces it takes. And it just got really depressing doing
• 27:40
  that. And so I just sort of thought, do I need to go back? It's not like I had kids or a partner
• 27:45
  stuck. It was just me. And so I thought, maybe I'll just see if I can stay. And then it was
• 27:51
  that pivot. I hate the word pivot. I hate saying that word. Then it was a pivot of like, okay,
• 27:55
  transition, transition is still bad. I need to get a social security number and find a place to
• 28:00
  live and try and get a job and that kind of thing. And you were still, you were there on a visa
• 28:04
  that allowed that. I was on a visa that let me say that for like another six months. But it was
• 28:08
  kind of stressful. Yeah, but yeah, so that's why I ended up living there. It's an interesting
• 28:13
  difference between probably says something about the different attitudes of New Zealanders versus
• 28:17
  Australians that in New Zealand, they did a lottery, which is fundamentally egalitarian, even if it is
• 28:23
  unfair. In Australia, we just auctioned off the hotel spaces to the highest bidder in the
• 28:28
  sense. I didn't know that. Yeah. I mean, in a in a in a in a in a in a in a with a bit of
• 28:35
  subterfuge in the sense that we put an allocation on we put a cap on the number of people coming in
• 28:41
  because of the quarantine hotel capacity and then leave it up to the airlines to determine who
• 28:47
  get who doesn't get bumped from the flight. So every day, the airlines would be given a number
• 28:52
  depending on the number of quarantine hotel rooms available as to how many passengers they would be
• 28:57
  allowed to discharge into Australia the following day. And they would all be booked out full, right?
• 29:02
  Yeah. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. Of course, because this is a limited number of Australians wanting to
• 29:05
  come back and during a crisis. Yeah. And they might have 18. They might be permitted 18 people. So
• 29:11
  the 300. So obviously the 18 who don't get bumped from the flight are the 18 highest paying or
• 29:19
  highest status. So my I had no idea this wild. Yeah. So I knew people who had to re-mortgage their
• 29:25
  houses in the US or UK in order to pay $40,000 for full fare first class tickets. So they would be
• 29:33
  guaranteed to be one of the people who wouldn't get bumped from the flight. That's insane. That's
• 29:38
  insane. Yeah. And why do things here? We're a bit more capitalist, mate. That is bonkers. I mean,
• 29:42
  it's no more bonkers really than a lottery. It's, I mean, both are quite annoying when you're
• 29:47
  trying to get back to your own country. I mean, and the thing is I support them doing it. Like,
• 29:51
  I think like a bunch of people didn't die because like New Zealand, we got our vaccination rates up.
• 29:56
  So like quickly before COVID came in and that was great, but just annoying in a selfish way.
• 30:01
  I mean, I don't support them doing it because they should have if it was that important,
• 30:04
  then they should have built a lot more quarantine capacity. And they should have gotten the vaccines
• 30:08
  much quicker. Like if you're going to be going for for such a dire human rights denigrating response,
• 30:16
  then do everything you can. Don't be like, oh, we've got a we've got a remada. We did pretty well.
• 30:21
  Like New Zealand did pretty well. Like if you exclude all the metrics of human rights,
• 30:25
  then they did well on a public health perspective, but it wasn't long time. They were long, long,
• 30:30
  long far too long without before vaccination. I'm okay with it. Yeah. I was like, it happened. I
• 30:35
  mean, I think like you should listen to the podcast that I did with an economist Steve Hamilton,
• 30:40
  who did who was written a book analyzing the various responses of our world. And he was pro lockdowns
• 30:47
  and supportive of Australia's New Zealand policy, but he says it's inexcusable how long it took
• 30:52
  to get the vaccines. Basically, like if you're going to do, you're going to put people through,
• 30:57
  yeah, what they what we all went through in terms of being locked out of the country and locked
• 31:02
  in homes and so on, then take it seriously, put it on a put yourself on a war footing and
• 31:07
  you know, build purpose-made quarantine facilities and yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I'm not
• 31:13
  not sure. I just yeah, it felt to me like things happened like as quickly as they could like,
• 31:17
  it seemed like the military. You're one of the sheep, you're one of the sheep all.
• 31:21
  Controversial, controversial. I just look at like the death rates being like relatively low in
• 31:27
  New Zealand and being like, that's great for it. Sure. I mean, you could get the death rate down to
• 31:32
  zero by welding everybody inside like they did in China. I mean, you know, I mean, I said that.
• 31:37
  I don't know. I think New Zealand had a pretty good run. I don't know. I got stuck overseas.
• 31:41
  It wasn't even to the world. No, I'm fine with it. All right. So there, you'll find yourself in
• 31:46
  Los Angeles, California. Hey, and you start making these observations in your podcast about
• 31:51
  things that you notice or that you, I mean, should we just address a couple of them for the
• 31:58
  yeah, absolutely. Yes, one of which is cow is shower curtains. Yeah,
• 32:03
  I haven't really noticed until you pointed it out to me, yeah, audio form,
• 32:10
  that the rest of the world doesn't really use shower curtains. Not like American does.
• 32:16
  What does the rest of the world use? I mean, they've got a variety. I mean, they'll have doors.
• 32:23
  I mean, mostly doors. It's mostly a frosted glass door. Yeah, which is what I have in my house,
• 32:29
  Sydney. Yeah, we're not faffin around with plastic blowing. Not us and sticking. No, no,
• 32:36
  I just I just noticed every row was whether it was a motel, a hotel, the apartment. I was in my
• 32:42
  friend's house, just shower curtains everywhere. And and I just found them. I mean, I've always found
• 32:49
  shower curtains like pretty great. Is that feeling of when they stick to a leg or something
• 32:53
  that they touch you? You wonder who else have touched and just the thermodynamics of a shower with
• 32:59
  like being hot in the inside and then cool on the outside, it'll sort of blow in and it will
• 33:04
  like end up actually like attacking you in there. And I just thought what the hell is going on. And so
• 33:08
  I talked to a sort of an expert about designs of bathrooms in America. And we just sort of went
• 33:15
  down a rabbit hole. That was a starting point. And it just like took us to another place.
• 33:19
  The thing that I mean, obviously it's a socio-economic thing as well, you know, shower curtains
• 33:23
  are cheap. And in America, basically, if you've got a glass door, you're rich. And so there's
• 33:28
  that kind of distinction. And I think that exists less in New Zealand in Australia. Yeah, but Americans
• 33:33
  are much richer than New Zealanders. They the rich ones are. Yeah. I mean, the median and the
• 33:39
  average are richer. Yeah, but there's so many people. I mean, obviously because the population size
• 33:43
  is so big, there are like millions and millions of people. Right. Just take the top half.
• 33:47
  Why don't the top? Why don't the top half? I believe me. I think everyone should have a glass door.
• 33:51
  Yeah, the economic argument of Megan, he sends to me. No, if a no, if a if a New Zealander in the
• 34:00
  like 30th percentile of income has a glass frosted door, then an American in the 30th or 50th or
• 34:10
  60th or 70th percentile of income can afford a frosted door. I mean, I'm just going on the
• 34:16
  feedback. When I put the episode out, I've got a lot of angry feedback. You know, people just
• 34:20
  make up bullshit on when they give you feedback. Never do that. They never do that. But it's this
• 34:25
  idea that like just I don't know. I think in America, it's like a to instance, like I don't
• 34:32
  sit up in a certain way where just glass doors weren't factored into like the design of a bathroom.
• 34:38
  I mean, isn't it just in a house? Isn't the answer? It is like getting in a glass door and it's
• 34:42
  like you'd rather spend money on something else than the glass door. So Americans just keep the
• 34:45
  shower. Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of stuff in life is just like random cultural artifacts of
• 34:52
  history, isn't it? Like no one ever, if there'd been, if some upstart plucky entrepreneur had moved
• 35:00
  into Minnesota with his glass door manufacturing plant in the 50s, then it would have all been
• 35:05
  different. Maybe history would be different, but like you go into your bathroom place and they
• 35:10
  don't have glass doors except for one really expensive Swedish one. The other thing, there's so
• 35:16
  many things about bathrooms that fascinate me as well. The water level and toilets being so high.
• 35:20
  Yes. Why so high? Why do you have balls after having to touch the water? It's to do with whether
• 35:26
  the size of the piping and whether when you flush, it's like sucking or pushing the water out.
• 35:33
  You need the weight of the water in the system. Yeah, it's the way it's basically like sucking that
• 35:39
  water out. Interesting. So it's to do with that. But I find it so awful because you know, there's
• 35:44
  so much water in there. You take a shit in there. It's all just fucking floating around like all
• 35:49
  over. Yeah, that's too much. No, I don't see it. I don't see it. Yeah, it feels dangerous sitting
• 35:54
  and I certainly don't want any part of my body accidentally touching the water. So we did a
• 35:59
  whole episode just about toilets and then that got into also another thing I find fascinating about
• 36:03
  American toilets and that is that in the cubicles, if you're in a public restroom, the gaps are huge.
• 36:09
  So there's a huge gap under which is kind of what we have in New Zealand. But then there's gaps
• 36:13
  up the sides as well. And so I'd be at like LAX at the airport and I'd just be like, people can
• 36:18
  just look straight in and it's like, why is this? And so I talk to an expert on like the design of
• 36:24
  like public restrooms. Right. And then that went on a tangent about how there are less public
• 36:30
  restrooms now in America, which is like a huge thing. And Starbucks has become the place you
• 36:34
  will go to use the bathroom in America because they aren't. If they're willing to give you
• 36:39
  the code. Yeah, the code is. And that becomes a huge issue because suddenly people don't have
• 36:45
  access to toilets. Anyway. Yeah. So firstly, on the gap in the in the restroom. Yeah.
• 36:52
  Yeah. I've certainly not I haven't noticed a strip along the side gaps everywhere. But I've
• 36:58
  definitely noticed the height of the gap. Yeah. And Jerry Seinfeld had a whole routine about
• 37:03
  this, by the way. Right. Okay. Which why are they showing us this? That kind of vibe. You know,
• 37:07
  like, you know, we don't want to see this. This is the most undignified thing to be looking at.
• 37:12
  Yeah. A man's knees with his pants or rump all over his hands. My knees are out here.
• 37:17
  We need all full. Yeah. But the insinuation of the ainess also being involved is what is
• 37:22
  unseemly. So you don't you don't have that right now. So don't. Yeah. Okay. Unless you show
• 37:26
  any pants without telling me. And the other thing was there's a great podcast called Decoding the
• 37:32
  Guru's. I don't know if you know this one. But they basically just shit on people who are
• 37:37
  pompous and powerful. Mostly they're kind of right wing like conspiracy theory sort of like
• 37:42
  Joe Peterson universe. Yeah. And Matt was one of the hosts who's an Aussie has just been
• 37:48
  traveling around in the States and made exactly the same point about public restrooms. Right.
• 37:53
  About the incredible porosity of public restrooms in America. Yeah. And also pointed pointed out
• 37:59
  something that resonated with me, which is American faucets. So taps are all different. Yeah.
• 38:05
  And if you come there for the first time, not knowing them, you can be completely bamboozled
• 38:11
  because some of them like the tap that you twist is also the tap. It's the same thing that turns
• 38:16
  the water on. Yes. And so sometimes it's fun. Yeah. And so sometimes like you turn it all
• 38:21
  the way and that means scalding. Yes. And you turn it back. And that doesn't mean less water.
• 38:25
  That means colder. But at some point it turns into meaning less water. Yeah. Yeah. No deeply
• 38:31
  confusing. It's very confusing. Yeah. The plumbing is deeply confusing and practical. There are
• 38:35
  certain things in America. It's you know, it's such an advanced country like the thing that gets me
• 38:38
  as well. How obsessed they are with checks and like writing physical like money is crazy. Yeah.
• 38:44
  So difficult like you can't transfer money like to someone else's bank. So there's a secondary
• 38:48
  market of having these cash apps that do it for you. It's just money is hard. I pay my rent every
• 38:53
  week by writing out a check to mail like hosting it in. And that's the only way I can pay my rent.
• 38:58
  Yeah. And that to me is insane. It's so old fashioned. Yeah. Coming here, I had to pay my rent
• 39:04
  a month in advance. I had to write two checks and I date them for like a month in advance. Yeah.
• 39:09
  Host them in. Yeah. Chaos. What the hell? When I first got my apartment in New York,
• 39:15
  when I moved to New York, I went to that. I thought it was amazing. And this is 15 years ago now.
• 39:20
  Yeah. Right. That means so. Yeah. And this was and checks were already not a thing that I'd
• 39:23
  ever seen. Yeah. I'd never seen. I'd never had a check walk or use a check. And I know spring
• 39:29
  chicken. Yeah. But I moved there and I said and I paid I had been paying my rent in Sydney online.
• 39:35
  As you should auto payments. Yeah. That I set up on an app. Yeah. And I went to I couldn't
• 39:41
  figure out how to do it in my U.S. American banking app. So I called them all into the branch.
• 39:47
  I can't remember and said, can I do this? Can I do it? Can I pay went online because
• 39:52
  and they were like, absolutely, we have that functionality. So just pay it and they took me
• 39:57
  through how to do it. Pay it online. Fabulous. Few days later, landlord says, haven't got the money.
• 40:03
  I was like, okay, let me check on how long it take. How long it normally takes to transfer.
• 40:08
  So I get back onto the bank and they go, the check hasn't been cut yet. But I'll be in the mail.
• 40:12
  And I said, sorry, what? And they were like, the check hasn't been cut yet, but it'll be in the mail
• 40:16
  on. And I was like, what are you talking about the check? And they were like, we have to do the we
• 40:20
  have to print the check. And I was like, what do you mean? I did online. They were like, no, no, no.
• 40:25
  When you pay it online, what that does is it sends a message to your local branch that they need
• 40:30
  to print a physical check and put it in an envelope for you to send it to the person's bag.
• 40:36
  It's crazy. I was like, so there are whole plane loads. There are FedEx planes full of bags of
• 40:44
  physical checks in America. And that's how the back end of their Fintech. And it's accepted.
• 40:51
  Like Americans don't see that as being an issue. It's like, they don't know there's a bit
• 40:56
  away, which is insane to me. Right. Like insane. Why do you think that is?
• 41:01
  I think Americans think they're the best at everything. They just assume that they're the best.
• 41:05
  And like, why wouldn't they? So like, this system is the way we do it. It's obviously the best
• 41:09
  else we wouldn't be doing it this way. And they do. I think they're also quite deeply,
• 41:15
  I mean, on a meta level, they believe that the United States is the greatest country in the world.
• 41:20
  And we might all sort of have to agree with that if you think of greatest as being like with a
• 41:24
  capital G and all in capital, right? Even if it's not the best or something. But I think they're
• 41:30
  actually quite self-deprecating about the quirks of American life and have an inferiority complex
• 41:37
  in some ways. And a chip on their shoulder about Brits and Australians and Europeans being
• 41:41
  better at stuff. The Danes do healthcare better. The Canadians are better on this.
• 41:47
  I haven't run into that. You haven't? I honestly haven't. No, and maybe it's just the people I'm
• 41:51
  hanging out with over there. But like the number of, yeah, no, the Americans I know are just,
• 41:58
  oh no, that's actually I'm going to walk that back. I feel as two groups of people I have,
• 42:02
  some of them are like, yeah, clearly other people do it better. And then there's a louder group
• 42:07
  that is like, America doesn't the best. No, there's a reason like America is the best country in the
• 42:13
  world. I think maybe my view is contaminated a bit by the recent political cycles where a lot of
• 42:18
  people in the States, I think, are feeling like, why is this the best we can do? Why can't we be
• 42:23
  a normal country? Why can't we just, why can't we have elections the way the Brits do? And just
• 42:27
  have two normal people who for six weeks have arguments with each other. That is strong now.
• 42:34
  Yeah, and why do we vote the way we do? Why is the electoral college the way it is? Yeah,
• 42:38
  why were there dimpled chads on ballots in 2000 and all that? Yeah, the frustration growing
• 42:44
  around the election. Yeah, and the frustration around crime, like why do you go into a dwayne
• 42:48
  read and everything's locked up behind a, you know, you have to ask someone to come over and unlock
• 42:53
  it so you can buy some, if I can toothpaste, like why can't we get into the pool? It's very hard.
• 42:57
  Yeah, the other thing as well, like there's so many things that seem backwards that like,
• 43:02
  I have to get quarters out from the bank to use the washing machine. Yeah, and so like it's
• 43:08
  no tap and pay. No, so my apartment building has a little laundry downstairs and the machines
• 43:14
  are great, but they're all coin operated. And so to do my washing, I have to have quarters.
• 43:20
  And if I don't have quarters, I have to like go to the bank and withdraw, you know, quarters,
• 43:25
  and it's like, please sir, can I have some silver? Yeah. And everyone in the line knows what you're
• 43:29
  there for, like you're clearly off to do your washing. Yeah. And it's just stuff like that is just
• 43:34
  in the greatest country in the world is just so ridiculous to me. Yeah. So all those things make
• 43:40
  the podcast fun to do because there's just constant things to kind of look at and go, why is this
• 43:44
  happening? Yes. I have a more generous explanation for Americans, my OPR, on these things, which is
• 43:50
  just that the gravitational pull of living in a culture that massive,
• 43:53
  occludes anything else. So it may not even be positively or negatively balanced. It might just be,
• 44:00
  wasn't this just life? Yeah. Whereas when you live in a small or medium sized country,
• 44:04
  yeah. Then you sort of vague, you're aware, you're just aware of the way that other things differ
• 44:09
  in other places. Completely. Yeah. I mean, I'm there just for the diversity and just the
• 44:13
  bigness of it. It's like there's 50 countries available to you. Yeah. And that's amazing to me.
• 44:18
  Yeah. I love that. Yeah. What about flying in America? Have you done an episode on flying?
• 44:23
  I did an episode on airports and weird airports, not as flying specifically. What's your
• 44:28
  what the American plane, sort of the experience of airports do? Yeah. I think the traveling experiences
• 44:33
  is hectic. Weird in so many ways. Yeah. I mean security is intense. It's intense. All those
• 44:39
  things are alive. There's a whole language around flying. They call disembarking, deep
• 44:46
  planning. They have, you know, certain language things. Yeah. Plains. A lot of animals on planes.
• 44:52
  Yeah. A lot of animals at airports. The boarding processes are different. Yeah. People are
• 44:58
  highly strung there as well. Like you see people being much angrier at airports. Definitely.
• 45:03
  They seem like quick to bump flights and do things. Like they treat their passengers badly.
• 45:07
  Yeah. And the passengers respond in kind. Yeah. I mean, there's a reason there's so many
• 45:11
  viral clips of people using their shirt on planes. Yeah. And they're, and I think partly because
• 45:17
  you have to pay to check a bag, but you don't have to pay to bring a house onto a plane.
• 45:23
  You bring a small house onto a plane. So then there's no overhead baggage space. So everyone needs
• 45:30
  to get on the plane first. Yeah. So you get gate lights as we call them who just
• 45:34
  are really awful around, you know, they're right. They mill about in front of the gate,
• 45:39
  yeah, yeah, yeah, preventing everybody from getting on. And though there's different, you're
• 45:42
  boarding as a whole thing. I always, the thing that always trips me out is the the calls
• 45:46
  sort of in groups and like the the military always gets. Yeah. I mean, you get to go on first.
• 45:51
  Yeah. They love the military. Yes. There's thank you for your service. But that's the
• 45:55
  care. I don't know. I always like airports because it's just such weird people watching
• 45:58
  in chaos. And I kind of like, yeah, I love it as well. That's what that happens. Yeah.
• 46:03
  Yeah, I was flying out of Florida recently. And there was one of these gate lights guys
• 46:08
  who's like standing blocking. And he's in the like the premier one K, you know, exclusive
• 46:14
  concierge. All designed lane, right? Yeah. And he's got a dog and he's got a masses of luggage.
• 46:21
  Right. A colorful luggage. He's got a lot to travel with. A lot. And he has no idea
• 46:27
  that airline status exists is a thing that there would be different boarding processes.
• 46:33
  No, he's just there to get on a plane apparently never been on a plane before and never been
• 46:37
  an airport before. But he is a very large black guy. And he's intimidating to people,
• 46:43
  including the gate agents who start boarding. And people are trying to get around him.
• 46:48
  He's blocking. He's blocking the hallway. And he doesn't understand why he can't just get on
• 46:52
  the damn plane since they've started boarding. Right. He can't get on the damn plane because
• 46:58
  he has a basic economy ticket and no status. And that's not how it works. Yeah. And he starts
• 47:03
  talking to all of us, the rest of the people who are just milling around like we're on his
• 47:09
  side in all this. All right. What's going on? He's like, I mean, I got an allocated seat.
• 47:16
  Big American. I got an allocated seat. Right. He's not happy. And should the gate agent,
• 47:22
  the gate agent goes, sir, everyone's going to make it on this plane. And he's like,
• 47:26
  I'm making it on the plane, but I'd be no overhead bag space for their bags. You know that's for sure.
• 47:31
  Yeah, a lot of bags. And he's right about that. Right. Doesn't give him the right to block
• 47:36
  everybody's passage onto the plane. So basically, they just left and everyone just milled around.
• 47:43
  It just pushed around him. Right. Until it was his groups to group just ignore the entire
• 47:49
  group, not the situation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I didn't say what happened to his bag.
• 47:53
  I don't want to. You got on. Okay. I'm fine. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's not. I pride myself in being
• 48:00
  like very efficient through security. And just I want to be like an easy traveler. Yeah.
• 48:04
  That's my main goal. Pre-check. See the laptop. So I don't have any of this stuff. No,
• 48:09
  I don't know if you've got a USB. I'm bad with admin. Oh, tell me about it. Yeah. Yeah.
• 48:16
  Yeah. How do you run your life? Do you feel like grown up? Yeah. No, no, it's I'm I hate it.
• 48:21
  I'm like, I hate admin and I struggle to I just want to make things. And so the admin in
• 48:27
  between is like very very stressful. It's horrible, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I,
• 48:31
  you know, I'm hoping is that AI solves that. Yeah. I think it's actually possible. Right.
• 48:37
  In five years. A little too soon. It'll be done. It'll be good enough. But basically you'll
• 48:41
  have a personal assistant who can do everything. That'd be cool. Yeah. Yeah. No, I literally
• 48:45
  like you, it's what you raised about just getting pre-checked. Of course, I should do these little
• 48:49
  things. But there's so many things I just haven't done. I find it very hard just to get those
• 48:53
  little, it's just like a block in my mind. Anyone ever talked to you about like a list making?
• 48:59
  Listen, just making lists. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Getting it out of your
• 49:03
  brain. Getting it on your brain and onto your page. What do you do with your ideas?
• 49:09
  I have a lot of Google Docs and a lot of like Google Sheets. It's like just a lot of
• 49:14
  Google Docs and Google Sheets. And I do do lists. But then those Google Docs get so vast,
• 49:19
  I need like a list to like find where all those are and it all just gets very jarring.
• 49:23
  That's where your AI will come in. Manage all the Google Docs. Maybe. I hope so. I mean,
• 49:28
  I don't just don't have faith in I think AI is just such a overhyped nothing. I think it's just
• 49:33
  it's a bubble. It's like we're talking about like 3D fucking cinema for a while that was going
• 49:40
  to be a thing. I don't know. It's just overhyped. 3D cinema. That's a low blow. It's a low
• 49:45
  hash. They're just trying to push, you know, it's like it's just a marketing gimmick. I don't
• 49:49
  know. I have no faith in like what AI, this this generative AI stuff. Why? Why? That big
• 49:56
  here. Let me tease apart two things. What it could be, there two things could be true. One could
• 50:01
  be there's currently a bubble and hype and massive over investment in this space and something's
• 50:05
  going to pop and half of the people or more who are currently talking about how it's going to
• 50:10
  change the world. I'm going to end up broke or in jail. Yeah. And it could also be true.
• 50:15
  That it does some good. Well, not just does some good that it is the net that it will change the
• 50:20
  world as much as the internet or fire or the industrial revolution. Yeah, I know something
• 50:24
  it will. Why not? I don't know. I don't have a reason. It's just a feeling. I just I'm sick of
• 50:28
  it. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of it. You just bored it. You're bored hearing about it. Just like
• 50:32
  I am. I'm talking about it. I am like I don't ever talk about a part of it. It tickles his gym.
• 50:37
  Yeah. I don't have any big insight. But I'm also aware that I'm 41 and it's probably maybe
• 50:42
  that's a bit of technology where I like just get off the train. Right. It's like I'm not on TikTok.
• 50:47
  I've got off that train. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe it's just something that's going to pass me by.
• 50:51
  And I'm being an idiot. Yeah. I don't think it's like TikTok. And I don't think it's like
• 50:56
  certainly not like 3D movies. I think because I think there's an inexorable logic to it. Which is that
• 51:02
  if artificial systems can like integrate information faster and you know with greater output
• 51:14
  and a greater almost insight into their into what they're outputting than human brains can,
• 51:22
  there's going to be enormous change that will be wrought by that whether it's good or bad.
• 51:27
  Like I don't know how one could escape that. Yeah. I just think if we're bringing into existence
• 51:33
  of thinking creatures, whether or not it feels like something to be. Oh no. So the two different
• 51:37
  the two different things are I'm all for like bring on the singularity. I'm all into like
• 51:42
  machines becoming sentient and actually like so there's the air we're talking about now which is
• 51:47
  this generative shit where it's just like learning off what exists and like doing some calculations.
• 51:52
  Yeah that's how you get that you don't get to how without going through the early stages of AI.
• 51:57
  Yeah, but I just think we're worlds apart. It's like this is so early like it's we're so far from
• 52:02
  hitting actual intelligent thinking it's just this is just like crunching existing things in a really
• 52:08
  way. So you have not yet played around with it enough to have had one of those spooky moments
• 52:13
  where you go. I really don't really doesn't seem to be just. No, I mean, I have friends. I mean,
• 52:20
  no, I played around with it. I haven't been amazed by it yet at all. I have friends that use it in
• 52:24
  their day-to-day life like with tasks and it seems to help them. Yeah. But I think they're doing
• 52:29
  jobs that are sort of meaningless and useless anyways. I think like it's it's it's enabling people
• 52:35
  that are doing pointless jobs already. Right. You know, and I which sounds kind of mean. And I
• 52:40
  have other friends that have been like my friend in LA has like a chatbot that she talks to about
• 52:47
  all her relationships and it's just like giving her feedback on all these different things she's
• 52:51
  doing. That's stupid. And it's just wild to me. It's like I mean that's technically a friend.
• 52:57
  Like that's what a friend is supposed to be. Yeah and the answers are amazing. It's like it's
• 53:01
  obviously passing the data and it's giving these really like human answers to what this person's
• 53:07
  done or what that means or how she should respond to that thing. But I just I see that it's just
• 53:14
  being such a different care. I think we're so far away from and I don't know what I'm talking
• 53:19
  about. But we're so far away from like I just want to say I'm very supportive of
• 53:26
  sentient machines. I'm excited about all that. Right. Bring that on. I just think this is just
• 53:30
  such a vastly different thing we're dealing with now. But if it leads to that great. Yeah. I mean
• 53:34
  I think there's the only thing that will save us. You know, I think we're incapable of like saving
• 53:39
  the planet or getting our shit together. Yeah. I think like sentient machines will either like
• 53:45
  kill us all or like help. So it's worth a try. That's right. And I mean, even if they're not sentient,
• 53:50
  if they were functionally sentient in the sense that they like pass the Turing test and were,
• 53:55
  you know, we engaged with them as if they were sentient. Yeah. Then the question of whether the lights
• 53:59
  are on become sort of moot. Yes, fair. Yeah. They're creatures who either do or don't have
• 54:05
  conscious have like an inner experience. But I don't think you're being unfair to the current
• 54:10
  research, which is, which just started three seconds ago. And if at some point in the future,
• 54:15
  we get to sentience, it will be because of research like this. It's not going to be, it's not like
• 54:19
  this is a dead end of an arrogant bubble. And then over here in a completely different universe,
• 54:24
  it's going to be someone working on a sentient machine. This is the working on the sentient
• 54:28
  machine. This is that's what this is. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you know, you know, floor is it may
• 54:34
  currently be. Yeah. This is the path to getting to work. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah.
• 54:40
  Tell us about tell people who haven't seen tickled about tickled.
• 54:44
  I was a film I made released in 2016. But how did it come? I mean, what's the
• 54:50
  inciting? Yeah. The inciting incident was I was on Facebook when we were all on Facebook.
• 54:55
  And there was an ad for a competitive tickling shoot in Los Angeles, which was just like, it was
• 55:01
  like a little, you know, popped up on the side. It had these like a little image of these guys
• 55:06
  in a D to sportswear tickling each other. And it was like, are you ticklish question mark and like,
• 55:12
  come to LA and you click on it and, you know, it was your enter. And if you were picked,
• 55:18
  you'd get flown business class to LA from wherever you were in the world. And you would take
• 55:23
  part in a tickling contest and you'd be paid and then you'd be flown back home. Right. And so I
• 55:28
  was super curious what this was. I noticed some New Zealanders have been flown over to do it because
• 55:32
  there's some photos of some New Zealanders on the Facebook page. And when I emailed them about it,
• 55:38
  they I'd like a year before that, I'd been in a relationship with a guy and they'd,
• 55:44
  we see Googled me, seen that. And they came back to the request for an interview saying like,
• 55:49
  we won't deal with a gay journalist. Like very angry about it. Right. And the combination of them
• 55:57
  sort of like a very gay looking sport. And then coming back to me, yeah, being like your two
• 56:04
  gay. So like yeah, then really, really angsty email reply just unhinged. Right. And so when that
• 56:10
  happened, I was like, oh, there's definitely something weird going on here. Yeah. And I just
• 56:15
  kept kind of poking the bear and like more and more things sort of unfolded. Yeah. And you end up
• 56:21
  going fully down the rabbit hole, going to America. Yeah, it was mad. I just sort of discovered
• 56:25
  this world of competitive endurance tickling that was currently happening in America and all over
• 56:31
  the world. And then realizing that that stretch back, you know, over the course of the entire
• 56:36
  internet, basically, like as long as the internet had existed and message boards that existed,
• 56:41
  people were being recruited into these tickling videos. And I sort of linked them all together
• 56:46
  and then got to the person that was sort of behind them all. And it was just, it was a real
• 56:51
  unusual world to dive into. And it was about tickling, but it was also about
• 56:57
  a sort of power and control and manipulation. How did you know that it was going to be about
• 57:04
  any of that? I didn't know. I mean, we learned a lot along the way. I think I knew the scale.
• 57:13
  You know, once they sent a couple of people from New York to New Zealand to meet me to sort of
• 57:19
  mediate and try and get it to stop making the film, I was like, oh, there's money involved.
• 57:24
  Like it's not just this weird internet thing where people are emailing odd things to me.
• 57:29
  So I know they're flying. Physical human beings. And yeah, and it's just weird phenomenon that
• 57:33
  when something jumps off the online world into the real world, it gives you a little fright.
• 57:39
  You know, it's like you can people argue with each other online all the time, right? They say
• 57:43
  terrible things. But a guy shows up at your door wearing a screen. But if they're suddenly like
• 57:47
  flying to your house, then like, you know, this is a different thing. So once it happened,
• 57:52
  I realized there was a lot of money involved. And I realized there would be something compelling
• 57:57
  there. And then just the deeper we got in, we touched on those different themes and sort of
• 58:02
  figured out what it would be about. It's wild. Yeah, it's a great movie and people should
• 58:08
  It was a cool thing to do. There will never be a better story to like drop into my lap that
• 58:12
  will never happen again. It was just perfect time. Well, I mean, yeah, it's credit to you for having
• 58:17
  noticed it. I mean, how many of us would have just passed by that little ad for a professional
• 58:22
  tickling? I mean, it's so much bullshit online that doesn't yield a great story. Yeah,
• 58:28
  that wouldn't even know how to pass that. Yeah. And I mean, you and I would both stumble on so
• 58:32
  many things on the internet and just go, oh, that's weird. Move on without a day.
• 58:36
  This is why we need AI to do the research. To do all the research that I go. Is there anything in this
• 58:40
  Follow that now? I'm on board. Yeah. Now I know what you can if we can like sort that out. I'm on.
• 58:46
  Are you going to stay in Los Angeles, the city of Angels, California?
• 58:49
  For now, I think you'll see what happens when old Trumpy is. I'm hoping. Well, it's going to
• 58:56
  clean up clean up the place. Get all the deadbeat. Get all the dead beats out. Yeah, I mean, it'll be
• 59:03
  Yeah, I think I'll see how that feels. I'm not going to live there forever. Right. It's sort of like
• 59:07
  a weird. It's fun, but also stressful at the same time. I don't like my sort of taxes going
• 59:14
  to America that feels weird. Yeah, I'll see how bad it is under Trump. I think it will probably
• 59:22
  just be like, I'm hoping it's just slightly weirder than last time, but I think there's a
• 59:27
  world where it just gets really awful and for a lot of different people. What does that look like?
• 59:32
  I just as his sort of mess deportation plans. I think like, you know, suddenly like,
• 59:38
  oh, like my friends Nanny, they'll suddenly be gone, you know, like stuff like that. We're like
• 59:42
  the shape of the country is changing. And where people's, you know, I think it's going to be scary
• 59:50
  for trans people over there. I think that'll be fucking weird already with the abortion stuff.
• 59:57
  That's pretty insane. So I'll be fine. I'm like a white man in a nice area in LA. I'll be fine.
• 1:00:04
  But if it feels like there's just gross stuff going on because I think, you know, Trump has is
• 1:00:11
  a horrific person and surrounded by horrific people. And if that starts changing, what people
• 1:00:16
  are able to do in America, then it'll probably be time to leave. Yeah. Yeah. But you like LA.
• 1:00:22
  I like LA. I've got good friends there. It's a beautiful city. Is it diverse? Yeah, it's lovely.
• 1:00:27
  I mean, you can like this ocean there and then there's snow on the mountains there. Yeah,
• 1:00:32
  someone said to me, someone said to me in New York a few weeks ago that when you asked Los
• 1:00:37
  Angelina, it was what's great about the city. They'll always talk about things that are outside
• 1:00:40
  the city. You can go to the beach. You can go to the mountain. Yeah, not the actual city. You can go
• 1:00:44
  hiking. You can get away. You can go skiing one weekend. You can go to Santa Barbara another.
• 1:00:48
  Yes, but talk to me about this cluster of freeways and strip malls and homeless.
• 1:00:53
  Can I like that is Los Angeles itself? I like the strip malls. I like the dirt and the
• 1:00:58
  grime. Right. I think the way the unhoused population is treated as horrific and that needs to
• 1:01:03
  get sorted out. But as someone who is just like, I walk a lot and I like being out and about.
• 1:01:08
  Well, it's renowned for being a great city for walking. You know, really horrific.
• 1:01:13
  But I do like it. It's chaotic. I'd rather live in LA at the moment than anywhere else. I
• 1:01:20
  really, really like that city. I like the grime. I like how discussing it is. I like going to a
• 1:01:25
  strip mall and it's just like concrete and little strange stores that shouldn't all be
• 1:01:30
  schmussed together. I like all that stuff. There's a Taiwanese lantern shop and there's
• 1:01:35
  like a Mexican burrito place. It's chaos. Yeah, it's chaos. I like that style. Exactly.
• 1:01:40
  It's interesting to me. And plus you do have nature. But real cities like Chicago, New York have
• 1:01:45
  all of that chaos, but just you don't have to get into a car to get to it. You don't have to go
• 1:01:50
  from one strip mall where there are just eight of those shops and then drive from Ireland
• 1:01:54
  a half to get to the next one. You could just walk down a street. Which is nice. And have all of that.
• 1:01:59
  I don't know. I don't know how to explain it. It's just maybe it's that I have good friends there,
• 1:02:04
  but if I could pick between living in New York and LA, you know, New York has like a wonderful
• 1:02:09
  public transport system. You don't need a car. It's like LA better. Like the weather. I like the
• 1:02:13
  sun. I like the grime. I don't mind being in a car for a while. The sun might only like private
• 1:02:18
  time is to like sit and like listen to something in private. I like it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:02:23
  It's a disgusting city. And I think without friends and listen, listen, it's not that crime
• 1:02:28
  you were discussing in comparison to many major American metropolises. I mean, New York is not
• 1:02:32
  shiny and sparkling. New York is right. Very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very dirty. And I
• 1:02:37
  love the dirt as well. But I want my dirt with charm. I want my dirt. I want to see LA. You hate LA.
• 1:02:44
  I don't hate Los Angeles. Yeah. But you hate the city. And I love visiting it. I love a weekend in LA.
• 1:02:49
  But I've lived there twice in my life for up to a year. And it's, I don't, I like urban
• 1:02:54
  centers. I like walking. I want my hobos to be bumping into me in the street, not
• 1:03:00
  camped in tents under a freeway of the past. Right. I want to be able to smell the feces. And I
• 1:03:04
  want to be able to see the limousines going past of rich people, hobos, chaos, life, skyscraper,
• 1:03:10
  gutter, restaurant, cheap hot dogs, slice of pizza. It's all here, park, crazy people. Subway,
• 1:03:16
  this, that, you know, I don't want to be like, oh, there's a really nice strip on Franklin.
• 1:03:21
  If you get in your car and drive for an hour and 15 minutes, you won't be able to beat the
• 1:03:25
  rush hour traffic. And then there'll be four shops, which are really cool. Yeah. We're going
• 1:03:29
  on a Melrose. You can go to the vintage stores. You know, there'll be 15 of them and you'll be
• 1:03:34
  done in the spreads against you. Yeah. The fact that everything is like so spread out at such an
• 1:03:38
  effort to get from one place. Yeah. It's not a city. Yeah. Yeah. It's a collection of former
• 1:03:43
  towns connected by a freeway by ugly freeways, which are not ugly in a charming way. It's not like,
• 1:03:49
  it's not an old movie theater that's grimy, but hey, Woody Allen was here when he was five years old.
• 1:03:56
  You know what I mean? It's like, it's not like, it's not super great. It's so specific. I'm happy
• 1:04:02
  for my, I just want my dirt to have character. Yeah. There's so much character in LA. There's
• 1:04:06
  so much there. I think you're in the wrong places. I think you're in the wrong places. Yeah.
• 1:04:12
  But you're in Venice as well. I don't know. I wasn't Venice as well. People love Venice. I love
• 1:04:17
  Venetians if you can call Venice Beach residents that they love the place. Yeah. Everyone in LA
• 1:04:23
  loves LA. Everyone in their pocket of LA thinks their pocket of LA is the best part of LA. I don't
• 1:04:28
  think everyone is not there. I don't think you should go back. I don't think you should go back.
• 1:04:34
  I think when you go to America, you should be in different cities. I don't think LA is for you.
• 1:04:38
  LA is great. I love LA. It's just, you know, it is what it is. Yeah. It's not expected. I'm not
• 1:04:45
  going to be able to convince you otherwise. Just something about it. We don't have a leg to stand
• 1:04:48
  on. I love that city. You do. It's so good. Where do you go out? I don't go out. I just hang out.
• 1:04:54
  I go to friend's houses. I don't, I'm just saying I would like a friend because you don't do
• 1:04:59
  anything. No, I mean, no, I like going to shows and I like going to like music and like comedy
• 1:05:04
  and stuff like that. But I don't, I sort of not there to go out. I just have my friends and we
• 1:05:10
  have a nice time. Yeah. No, that's good. Yeah. Going out to the music and seeing live comedy as
• 1:05:14
  well. I went out to live comedy and LA went to the comedy store, which was great. See, wrong
• 1:05:20
  place. You're going to the wrong place. Comedy store. Mm-hmm. Like go to the Elysian theatre.
• 1:05:25
  Yeah. I could go to the Elysian theatre. I think you're going to the wrong places. It's entirely
• 1:05:29
  possible. Yeah. I wouldn't say I'm always going in the right places. Yeah. But I like the one
• 1:05:33
  thing that I do like about visiting the States and as opposed to living in the States is going
• 1:05:37
  and doing the big cheesy classics. You know what I mean? Like you live in New York, you're not going
• 1:05:43
  on the top of the Empire State Building. No. But if you have a visitor in town, you're taking on the
• 1:05:48
  top of the Empire State Building. Yeah. That's what the comedy store is for me. Yeah. If I was in New York,
• 1:05:52
  New York, yeah, I wouldn't go to Caroline's. I'd go to the cellar, which is more like the Elysian.
• 1:05:56
  Okay. Yeah. But I'd be able to get there in a short subway ride and I wouldn't have to get my
• 1:06:00
  car in my car for 40 minutes. But that's by the buy. I'm going to enjoy a nice beverage. Excuse me.
• 1:06:08
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:06:10
  Bebridge is so important. That's delicious. All right. Anything else you want to apply
• 1:06:14
  on before we wrap up here? What else would we have? No, I mean, I think it's having me here.
• 1:06:19
  Dining. Just before we leave, you have to tell Americans about chain dining restaurants.
• 1:06:27
  Because I remember you're all of Garden episode. Yeah. Where I hadn't realized that in parts of
• 1:06:34
  America, Olive Garden is perceived as high-end cuisine. It really is. Yeah, people love
• 1:06:40
  going to Olive Garden for their Italian food. Yeah. No, I love chains. In America, I feel like
• 1:06:46
  there's like going to a theme park almost. Yeah. Yeah. Whether it's like P.F. Changs or Cheesecake
• 1:06:52
  Factory, they just put so much rigmarole around it and they try and make it like an event.
• 1:06:57
  You know, the day core is so perfectly bad. And I love the whole chain. Who needs to go to
• 1:07:06
  Tuscany when you've got the painted tomatoes on the wall of the Olive Garden? It's best.
• 1:07:13
  I mean, people, there was a photo that we'd viral where a couple had their wedding photos taken
• 1:07:20
  out of Olive Garden and told their friends they were in Tuscany. And everyone believed them.
• 1:07:25
  Oh my God, this is amazing. And it was just all in an Olive Garden. And there's this whole culture
• 1:07:30
  around those places. Yeah. And in that episode, I talked to people that had Olive Garden
• 1:07:35
  tattoos and some people have eaten there every week for the last like 50 years. It's chaos.
• 1:07:43
  I love that. I love the chain. America does the chain well. I like you can be in different
• 1:07:48
  states. And if you go to this place, you'll know exactly what you're getting. There's like a comfort,
• 1:07:52
  like a weird comfort. Yeah, that's right. I do think if you're getting an Olive Garden tattoo,
• 1:07:57
  you're taking the piss. It's a lot. I mean, you're not doing that seriously.
• 1:08:02
  I mean, they sort of are. They love it. It's like, like, someone gets a tattoo of a band. They
• 1:08:06
  like, that seems kind of silly. But it's like, no, I like this. They're not doing it ironically.
• 1:08:10
  It's like, I love this place. It's that. And that's like, that's what makes America good.
• 1:08:15
  How bad does your taste have to be? There's a lot of, there's a lot of bad taste in
• 1:08:20
  here. I'm not saying it's good taste. If you got a tattoo of Los Angeles, I don't think
• 1:08:24
  about it though. I'm thinking about it. Yeah, freeway overpass across the forest. Yeah, just some
• 1:08:29
  rubbish and a freeway in the sun. Have you been to Las Vegas? A little bit. Because that reminds
• 1:08:36
  when you were saying about like the disnification, the impartification of like the American experience,
• 1:08:41
  it is incredible. It's like, it's so impressive. I love it. It's like, it's so tacky. It's no
• 1:08:47
  longer tacky. It's like cool. Vegas is a nightmarish, wonderful. So great. Love it. I think
• 1:08:54
  in any, spending more than two days there starts to get depressing and awful. I think you've
• 1:09:00
  got to get in and you've got to get out. Right. Right. But I haven't spent that much time there.
• 1:09:04
  But it's good people watching again. Right. Right. Watching. It's, you know, walking through
• 1:09:09
  casinos and you see those people parked up on like a mobility scooter, oxygen tank there,
• 1:09:16
  hoovering back oxygen, just trying to stay alive. I saw one. This is a little bit offensive,
• 1:09:22
  but it's true. 100% true. Mobility scooter. Very, very fat. She didn't look that old.
• 1:09:30
  Oxygen mask. Right. And she's got a giant, one of those giant novelty like hurricane cocktail
• 1:09:37
  glasses. Massive glasses. Masses and masses of boo of colored booze and about three giant straws
• 1:09:43
  and umbrellas and cherries and like pineapples and things for spilling out of it. She was living
• 1:09:47
  her best life. And she's got a cigarette in the other hand and she's smoking and she's pushed
• 1:09:51
  the oxygen mask aside out of her mouth so she can smoke whilst drinking alcohol in her mobility
• 1:09:59
  scooter. It's a lot. It's rough. Yeah. No, it's a lot. It's a lot. It's a lot. Yes, it's a bit
• 1:10:06
  easy. Yeah, maybe go easy on maybe the mobility scooter is is not a solution. Yeah,
• 1:10:12
  or not the most parsimonious solution to this particular problem. Maybe what else is more
• 1:10:17
  the smoking and the drinking? Yeah, it's you see so you see so much weird
• 1:10:24
  health stuff in the states. And I think it's like people fall through the gaps in certain ways
• 1:10:29
  and they'll end up in certain places where that's where they are. And I think a lot of that has
• 1:10:33
  to do with just your people fall through the gaps and just end up. Look gap has she fallen
• 1:10:38
  through. She's got a mobility scooter and a oxygen tank. I just think it comes back. I mean, I'm
• 1:10:43
  sort of obsessed with like health care and America and how that works. And I think it's just it's
• 1:10:47
  hard to get help sometimes and just end up kind of in these positions. Someone gave her a mobility
• 1:10:53
  scooter. I mean, that's good. But you know, it's just I don't know. I feel like people aren't being
• 1:11:00
  looked up to there in a way that they should. She has a mobility scooter. Yeah, that's cool.
• 1:11:04
  But in New Zealand, in New Zealand, you have to be actually handicapped to get yourself
• 1:11:09
  on that. She may wear it in handicapped like you don't know. No, she didn't look at. I don't know.
• 1:11:14
  She looked like it was good. It was going to be too much work to waddle around the
• 1:11:18
  cassette. But we don't we don't know. Are you saying there are no people in the situation
• 1:11:24
  that I'm describing? No, I'm sure there are. I mean, there's a
• 1:11:29
  dysfunction in American health care. But I think it's reductive to say that it's about people
• 1:11:36
  falling through the cracks. It's about there being weird incentives where she probably gets
• 1:11:41
  from Medicare a free mobility scooter. But at the same time, it doesn't have any support
• 1:11:47
  in eating properly. Right. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. I feel like I'm not doing
• 1:11:53
  this role very well. I agree. There's like a lot you look a lot of crazy shit going on. I love
• 1:11:58
  the smoking in the oxygen mask at the same time. Yeah. Yeah, it's a good one. That's kind of
• 1:12:03
  amazing. Yeah. Maybe you should do a movie about that or about American health care system.
• 1:12:06
  Health care is too complicated, too scary. Yeah, there's a lot. Yeah. All right. Okay. Well, David,
• 1:12:12
  thank you for being here. It's lovely to talk to you. Thank you. Where do people,
• 1:12:16
  where do people, if people can't Google your podcast? I think just your search for FlightlessBird
• 1:12:23
  that's the podcast I do. And I write a newsletter called WebBurm that I've been writing
• 1:12:27
  for the last four years. And I do weird sort of investigations and rabbit hole stuff,
• 1:12:32
  kind of in the vein of tickled. And that's just WebBurm.co because I couldn't afford.com.
• 1:12:37
  Yeah, great. And if you can't find it, or even if you can find it before you do go there,
• 1:12:43
  just shoot David a message and ask him how to find it. Because I love those messages. I love
• 1:12:47
  DMs saying, how can I find insert thing here? Yeah, I love that. It's my favorite thing in the world.
• 1:12:52
  And I'll hopefully answer you, not in the pests of the gris of way at all.
• 1:12:56
  Thank you, David. Pleasure.