0:00

Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. With the

0:02

price of just about everything going up during

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inflation, we thought we'd bring our prices down.

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So to help us, we brought in a reverse

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auctioneer, which is apparently a thing. Mint

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Mobile unlimited, premium wireless. How did you get

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30-30? How did you get 30-30? How

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did you get 30-30? How did you get 30-40? You bet you get

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20-20, you bet you get 15-15, 15-15, just 15 bucks a month. Sold!

0:33

This is just a reminder that Continental Garbage is

0:35

ever so slightly different to sentimental it's

0:38

sort of part postcard and part film club. So

0:40

if you want to sit down and read the

0:42

postcard you can start listening from now but if

0:44

you'd prefer to just skip to the film discussion

0:46

you can look at the timestamp in the episode

0:49

notes and skip straight to there. Okay,

0:51

enjoy! Hello

0:59

and welcome to Continental Garbage, the podcast where

1:01

we will not be trading blowjobs for water,

1:03

but somebody will. My name is Caroline

1:05

and have you ever dreamed of swimming with

1:07

pigs on a private island? Joining

1:09

me is Jarrul's financial advisor, it's Jen

1:12

County. I've actually definitely dreamed of

1:14

swimming with pigs on a tropical island. I've

1:17

heard it's quite overrated as an activity

1:19

because the thing about baby pigs is

1:22

that they shit constantly and so you're

1:24

swimming with them in the islands and

1:26

they're just shitting in the water and there's shit

1:28

everywhere. Okay, no, you're

1:31

right. I

1:33

have seen pigs in my life

1:35

and they are like that. Although

1:38

I also have a lovely pig story. Go

1:40

on. I have a lovely friend called

1:42

Jenny and she runs this thing, I have a, no,

1:44

take a new to

1:46

it. I haven't heard of this friend called Jenny.

1:49

Well, she's great and I went for a drink

1:52

with her this week and she runs this thing

1:54

called wildlife drawing which is like life drawing except

1:56

rather than nudes, it's animals so you can go

1:58

and like draw some out. or a

2:00

parrot or like a sugar glider or tiny

2:03

piggies. Oh nice. And she

2:05

also does like corporate ones. So one day

2:08

in my office at random, there was an

2:10

email saying like, there's gonna be some life

2:12

drawing of pigs in this office because I

2:14

work in advertising and that's a normal thing.

2:16

That's a normal thing. And so yeah, loads

2:18

of my colleagues just went and rushed little

2:21

piggies at work and drew

2:23

pictures of them. So I think that's my

2:25

main association with piggies. I didn't think about

2:27

your right swimming. Swimming. I think

2:29

I did like plastic sheet down when

2:31

this brushing in my office was going on. Yeah, was

2:33

there a lot of pooing? I

2:36

actually couldn't make it up to that one. I think I

2:38

went to the morning session. I went to the morning office brought

2:40

baby pigs into your advertising agency. Well

2:42

Jenny brought them in because she does wildlife drawing

2:44

and then my office presumably.

2:47

No sure. The thing is I understand. She did all the

2:49

steps. I understand all the steps and I love the sound

2:51

of Jenny even though not a fan of you having private

2:53

friends who haven't been cleared by

2:56

me. But it's like, I understand every

2:58

step and why all of it's good, but the full

3:00

picture at the end is very day beggars the

3:02

circle. I mean, that's advertising,

3:04

right? Yeah. They give you pizza

3:06

and then they're like, oh, we've put a little burger

3:08

shop up in the office today. And then they're like,

3:10

nope, baby rises for anyone. Nope, baby rises for anybody.

3:12

But there are pigs. So

3:16

yeah, so I'm imagining already that swimming with pigs

3:18

is not being in my workplace. Although in some

3:20

ways it might be because it's all of advertising

3:22

a little bit like fire festival. All

3:25

of advertising is a little bit like fire festival.

3:27

Yeah. Am I gonna find

3:29

this film very triggering? So what do you know

3:32

about fire festival? Very little. Well, I

3:34

thought it might be- I mean, I know what it was.

3:36

It was a triumph of advertising. It

3:38

was a triumph of advertising and a failure of

3:40

absolutely everything else. Yes, and famously you cannot advertise

3:42

your way out of a bad product is the

3:44

thing that I've had to say on a number

3:46

of occasions. Yeah, when I suggested this fire

3:49

festival to you, I thought it just felt like

3:51

it made sense because we were at Wilderness Festival

3:53

at the weekend. And like

3:55

Wilderness Festival has developed a real

3:57

name sort

4:00

of British cultural sort of press as

4:02

being like the bougie as festival in England. It

4:04

is, I reckon, the bougie as festival in England.

4:06

Yeah. But to be honest, I don't

4:08

know whether, like, are we

4:10

splitting hairs there? Haven't they all become pretty fucking

4:12

bougie? Unless you're talking about like the festival or

4:15

something, which is just for like teens. I

4:17

mean, they definitely have become more bougie, and

4:19

certainly when I say I'm going to a

4:21

festival to anyone whose only experience is like

4:23

Reading in the years of sort of the

4:25

early 2000s, which is when I used to

4:27

go to the Reading Festival, where it's like you can buy

4:29

chips, you can buy cheese, and on the

4:31

last night you had to sleep half in, half out of your tent

4:33

to make sure no one sets you on fire. Like,

4:37

that's not some urban legend. Like, that's truly what

4:39

you would do. You'd be like, there are people

4:41

here. No big voom voom for

4:43

you. Wow. Everyone's been to Reading

4:45

knows that. But then the first- That's fucked.

4:47

It is fucked. And then you'd leave and it would just-

4:49

People talk about Notting Hill Carnival as

4:51

being like a kind of a, oh, it's

4:53

a dangerous thing. It's like, no, that's racism

4:56

talking. Every festival, every gathering of people around

4:58

music, drugs, and drinking is inherently dangerous. It's

5:00

just how we package it. Exactly. And the

5:02

Reading Festival was people being really drunk

5:04

and then setting tents on fire. Wow.

5:08

And then just leaving seas of rubbish. Obviously, that's

5:10

not the kind of festival that you and I go to, but

5:13

I do go to a solid collection

5:15

of the more bougie ones on account of being

5:17

a performing tarot reader and work shopper. And I

5:19

would say Wilderness is the bougiest because it's the

5:21

only one with a vertically coat tent and

5:24

also a swimming lake. And also a morning

5:27

run club. A morning run club

5:29

and- You know you're not in

5:31

Kansas anymore when you're doing a morning run club at

5:33

a festival. Yeah. It's, I

5:36

find it really fascinating because I was never at

5:38

Reading Festival on account of not growing up in

5:40

this country, but I was certainly used

5:42

to going to Oxygen and Electric Picnic in Ireland, which were

5:44

the two big festivals when I was growing up. And

5:46

like, same vibes. It's

5:48

like carrying around a bag of lukewarm

5:50

cans. There were no showers.

5:52

No showers. Oh my God, the idea. I remember

5:54

like being, you know, probably 22, 23 at maybe

5:57

Hopf festival

6:00

in Kent and there was like her tail

6:02

kind of like whispers on the wind that

6:04

there were showers somewhere and you might find

6:06

them and like it might be because you

6:08

were still up from the night before it

6:10

was five in the morning and like you might

6:12

say oh wow it's the queue is only 17

6:15

people long maybe I'll go for it now

6:17

and it was just like this weird myth and now like

6:19

I haven't been to a festival in years where I haven't

6:21

showered every day. Yeah it's so easy to shower

6:23

every day these days at festivals and to also

6:25

have clothes that aren't just a

6:27

nightgown you found in the Oxfam charity shop that

6:29

you've been wearing for three solid days with a

6:31

silly hat. Yeah. In some ways we've

6:34

lost a lot of culture. We've lost a lot

6:36

but we've gained a lot and what I kept

6:38

thinking about when I was at the festival this

6:40

weekend was that like which we had the best

6:42

time. Oh we had such a marvelous time. Like

6:44

we're saying bougie in a very fond way. We're

6:47

bougie. I love being bougie. I'm

6:49

not gonna pretend I'm not bougie. I worked very

6:51

hard to get this bougie. I

6:53

don't want to be back in the mosh pit at Redding in the year 2003.

6:56

I don't want that at all. Don't make me. No.

6:58

I want to be sitting on the ground drinking a

7:00

nicely chilled wine whilst watching something beautiful

7:02

be played. Yeah you and your organic skin

7:04

contact orange wine. I want my organic skin

7:07

contact orange wine which I could get at

7:09

wilderness and a lovely delicious

7:11

I don't know vegetarian

7:13

sushi roll. Yeah it

7:16

was again this was the refrain of

7:18

the whole weekend was I'm eating so

7:20

well. I

7:22

mean every two seconds one of us turned like

7:25

we're eating so well. Honestly like a rainbow diet.

7:27

Yeah and then like and then as it got

7:29

later the night we go oh my poos are

7:31

fantastic. Such

7:34

a high fiber diet. The whole life cycle

7:36

of a high fiber diet was

7:38

like spoken about at length. Just like it

7:40

was it was glorious. I'm eating so well and

7:42

then I'm pooing so well. So well but I

7:44

guess if you are a person who as

7:47

I imagine the people who went to fire festival were

7:49

expect a modern

7:51

festival. Yeah. And from what I

7:53

understand that they were going to be heartily

7:56

disappointed. What

7:58

little I know. of the

8:00

fire festival advertising triumph product failure. There's something,

8:02

I mean, we probably should like save all

8:04

this festival chat. We should, shouldn't we? We

8:06

don't have a lovely time at Wilderness. We

8:08

have a lovely time at Wilderness and more

8:10

on that later, I guess. But

8:14

what else have you been up to? I

8:17

came in the door to your house and we've both been

8:19

for haircuts today, which I find very sweet. Caroline looks

8:21

amazing. It's the best haircut I've

8:24

ever had. It's a really good haircut. Yeah, thanks, man.

8:26

Really good. I was like, wow, what's happened here? Mine's

8:29

fine. I had a fringe trim, which is just a

8:31

thing that one has to do, one has a fringe.

8:33

You wouldn't know. Me and Taylor Swift do know.

8:35

It's very boring. And you

8:37

know, it's fine. But when I came home, I washed my

8:40

hair and went to the gym, washed my hair, trimmed

8:43

my fringe and came back. And I've got, actually I do

8:45

have very similar hair texture to our dear friend Taylor Swift,

8:47

which is like, it's kind of wavy, but it's also kind

8:49

of fly away. And like any humidity is going to fuck

8:51

it up. And I looked at it and I was like,

8:53

ah, it's gone a bit fuzzy. It's quite nice and soft

8:55

and clean. It's gone a bit fuzzy. And I just put

8:57

some of that wave holding spray

8:59

on it and that all sorted out. And

9:01

I was spraying my hair liberally with wave

9:03

holding spray. And I was like, God, this

9:05

wave holding spray does not have the usual

9:07

texture and scent that I expect it to.

9:11

And that's when I realized I just sprayed a lot of

9:13

SPF 50 into

9:15

my hair. Oh

9:19

my God. Like a lot of SPF 50.

9:21

No. And my SPF 50, which is great.

9:24

I thought your hair was doing that.

9:26

It contains yogurt as well. So

9:28

yeah, I

9:31

looked at it and I was like, oh no. Oh no.

9:33

This is about 10 minutes before you got here. I checked

9:35

your location. And I was like, I don't have time to

9:37

wash all of my hair. I've got loads of

9:39

hair. And so I thought what I'd

9:41

probably do before it went crunchy,

9:43

which is going to happen, is

9:46

I would try and do the thing that the

9:48

people on the internet do with the heatless curls. So I

9:50

turned it into a sort of head quest on. Is that

9:52

what you're doing? In the hope, because it's clearly going to

9:54

become solid. And I was like, well, I need to make

9:56

it solid in a shape that's not just.

10:00

because we're going out after this. We're going out after

10:02

this. Straight after this. And so

10:04

this is basically, I'm

10:06

gonna take my yogurt hair out of this

10:08

croissant roll and we're gonna hope that it

10:11

doesn't just snap because it's full of SPF.

10:13

Okay, wow. I guess it won't burn. Do you

10:16

know what? I actually quite like the croissant roll

10:18

as a look and we could do the rest

10:20

of you in this kind of wartime

10:22

blitz spirit. Like, let's

10:24

do a red lip and some bisto on your

10:27

legs or whatever the fuck it is to do.

10:29

I think I will take it. Because in theory,

10:31

when I take it down, I don't know because

10:33

I've never bothered doing heatless curls. In theory, if

10:35

the internet's to be believed and I suspect it

10:37

isn't because I suspect that's another triumph of advertising,

10:39

it will be nice waves and

10:41

absolutely solid because of all the yogurt.

10:45

Your face is disgusted. So we're going out, out.

10:47

We're going for dinner and then we're going dancing

10:49

and you're gonna have SPF yogurt all over your

10:51

head. Like the 50 SPF yogurt in my hair.

10:53

We're actually, we're going to Swift to Get In

10:55

tonight as well. So like, we're

10:58

gonna, if there's one place where

11:00

like people are gonna walk up to you and like

11:02

be like, oh wow, love your work, it's here. Yep,

11:05

yeah, it's gonna be good. So great. That's phenomenal. Okay,

11:07

well listen, if you see me, if you saw me,

11:09

because it'd be past tense now at Swift to Get

11:11

In, you thought, the fuck is wrong with that woman's

11:13

hair? Now you know, full of yogurt,

11:16

yogurt and SPF and because it's my own stupid

11:18

fault. It's gonna like hold like a 19, four,

11:21

like your people are gonna be like, oh,

11:23

I met Chen County, she was really nice.

11:25

I didn't realize she was one of those

11:27

vintage dressy ladies, rockabilly bride with a victory

11:29

roll in her hair. I didn't realize her

11:31

hair would be so crackly when you touched

11:33

it, like why? You're

11:35

just gonna be thinking about it all night. I am, yeah,

11:37

and the snow is quite strong. You're gonna be singing the

11:39

Bridge to Cruel Summer and only thinking about your hair. I

11:41

feel really bad for you about that. Thank you. I'm

11:43

glad I could share this with you because that's the main thing that's happened

11:46

to me this week is I put this in my hair and

11:48

also went to work a lot. Yeah, well

11:50

on the subject of terrible maintenance of

11:53

the self, I finally

11:55

got my Invisalign retainers fitted. You did.

11:57

And it is the worst thing in

11:59

life. whole world. It is the worst thing in

12:01

the whole world. Yeah.

12:05

I feel like Invisalign is like a reverse pyramid scheme

12:07

because every time anyone I notice doesn't think I'm getting

12:09

Invisalign I say don't do it because I did it

12:11

years ago. But you've got

12:13

perfect teeth. They're all completely straightened in line. Yeah,

12:15

they're more or less there. I don't do my

12:18

upkeep so they're going a bit funny but yeah,

12:20

they're there and I say to everyone just get

12:22

train tracks, it's quicker, it doesn't hurt as much

12:25

and everyone gets Invisalign and then everyone says it really

12:28

fucking hurts. And also it's not invisible. I

12:32

mean it's not noticeable. No,

12:34

it's not noticeable. So I

12:37

didn't realise that like that. Yeah. So I

12:39

had them for the first

12:41

few weeks because my orthodontist said everyone

12:43

gives up on Invisalign because they hate

12:45

the little glue sort of buttons that

12:47

they put on your teeth. So

12:49

I'm going to start you off with just the retainers and then

12:51

you're going to get used to those and then we're going to

12:54

build up to the glue buttons. I

12:56

didn't realise well then she said buttons. Yeah. I

12:58

felt just like little tabs or whatever, maybe

13:01

little pressure points which I guess is what

13:03

they are but they are fully fucking fans.

13:05

It's like extra teeth in your mouth. They

13:07

are extra teeth in your mouth and it's

13:09

so painful. Every time you like take them

13:11

out it's a fucking ordeal. Yeah. I'm

13:14

in misery. It's going to be okay. You're going

13:16

to buy the little igloo stuff. Yeah. Okay, the

13:18

igloo stuff. So what am I doing with that?

13:20

Because I'm sure other people are going through an

13:22

Invisalign journey. I assume they still make it but

13:25

back when I had my Invisalign journey many years

13:27

ago it was like a kind of mouth ulcer

13:30

treatment like bongella but you put it on the part

13:32

of your mouth that was sore and it would numb

13:34

it but it would also create this little kind of

13:36

fun little barrier out of like what felt like wax

13:38

so nothing could rub on it more. Okay, we're stopping

13:41

by boots on the way out. We're stopping by boots

13:43

on the way out so we can try and find

13:45

some igloo for you or whatever it's now called but

13:47

it was great. Okay. I literally just didn't leave the

13:49

house without that in my bag for seven months. Okay.

13:52

But now my teeth are straight. They look

13:54

great and I want to have teeth this straight because I

13:56

just. You're gonna. Yeah. It's going to be great. It's

13:58

going to be fun. You're going to buy. apples and like

14:00

everything will meet in the right place it's magical. Okay

14:04

so you've had that you know you've got

14:06

your mouth pain yeah I've

14:08

got my... She forms now, can't

14:10

we? You've got manky hair I've got

14:12

manky mouth. She forms. Well,

14:16

ironically your hair is great and my teeth are very straight.

14:19

Together we're one attractive woman. Just

14:23

stick us in Frankenstein us into one and

14:25

everything's working no one's got your girl buttons.

14:29

You've also done a great thing this week which I think

14:31

you should mark. That's true. A very important

14:33

thing. That's true actually do you know what last time we

14:35

did an episode because we had a pharaoh week when I

14:37

am a phallo week rather but

14:40

when we were on the ear as one and

14:42

we spoke about why I spoke about I got

14:44

quite emotional and actually I had lots of lovely

14:46

messages from from the parish basically

14:49

saying that like I just felt really crazy because

14:51

I've been like working for the last couple of

14:53

months on the final kind of pass on this

14:55

book that I'm working on and

14:57

then I finally submitted it last night

15:00

and it felt like it's so crazy because I've

15:02

just been feeling like

15:04

I've just to be I would

15:06

describe it as just like total

15:08

madness but madness as

15:11

like imagine a wild rabid dog

15:13

on the horizon that's running toward

15:15

you and the closer it gets

15:17

to being finished the closer

15:19

the rabid dog gets I just feel like I'm

15:21

getting madder and madder and madder and just I'm

15:23

scared of the dog. The dog's gonna bite me,

15:25

the dog's gonna kill me and then

15:27

submitting it is like the dog just ran

15:29

past you. It's a dog! He's gone in

15:31

the other direction. He's like bye dog. Bye

15:33

big dog. I haven't had that feeling lately

15:35

but I know that feeling just like the

15:37

relief. Yeah the mounting. And all the tension

15:39

just suddenly evaporates and you're like wonderful. Yeah.

15:41

I'm free. I've never been free in my

15:43

whole life. I've never had free in my

15:45

whole life. I've had a lovely day. In

15:47

your whole life. And like yesterday so Gavin

15:50

was out on a friend date which I

15:52

find very cute. Yes!

15:54

He was out at friend. So I had no one to celebrate with

15:57

so I celebrated by... opening

16:01

some whiskey, and putting

16:04

up a playlist, building a

16:06

karaoke playlist of all the most

16:08

emotional folklore and evermore bangers. She's

16:10

now an evermore stan, she's really

16:12

discovered it. That's another thing that's

16:14

changed in the last week for me, I've become

16:16

a massive evermore stan. You persisted and it paid

16:18

off. I persisted and it paid off, and so

16:21

I just put all my favorite songs from folklore

16:23

and evermore together, built a playlist on YouTube, I

16:25

have a karaoke machine at home, and sang karaoke

16:27

and drank whiskey by myself until my voice gave

16:29

out, and then I watched the long part in

16:31

sessions. What

16:34

you also did, which I really appreciated, was

16:36

the kind of the marginalia of continental

16:38

garbage where you voice-noted me, basically fan fiction.

16:40

Yeah, yeah. About Taylor Swift. Truly, like the-

16:43

And I mean, I'm not in a

16:45

kind of like, I was just receiving it,

16:47

I was fully participating. Oh yeah. We've

16:49

built a whole imaginary world there, and perhaps one day we'll

16:52

tell you about it. No, I messaged you and I was

16:54

like, do you think when, I

16:56

was thinking about all

16:58

of Taylor's ex-boyfriends have been, have never spoken to

17:01

the media, I was like, oh, they've definitely

17:03

been given a parting gift. Like,

17:05

I was like, I was imagining that like, you

17:07

know, former stockbroker, Papa Swift, big Papa

17:10

Swift, like that he has an office

17:12

where like, the boyfriends are called in

17:14

at the end of their tenure, and

17:16

like, he gives them a really, like,

17:19

he stands up and gives them a really respectful

17:21

handshake. He slips a

17:23

check for a cool meal into their top

17:25

pocket. At least minimum. And

17:27

then he puts his big hand on top of Joel with

17:29

his small hand and says, well, Jo,

17:32

been great having you around. Been really,

17:35

and then you immediately, within a

17:37

minute, came back and you were

17:39

like, yes, and I bet the

17:41

office has been rebuilt and redesigned

17:43

by Taylor Swift of his original

17:45

80s stockbroker office. And

17:47

then she's like recreated it from photographs, and she gifted

17:49

it to him. She gifted him a whole 80s office.

17:53

I believe it so strongly. It feels so true

17:55

that I, it's now canon in my

17:57

mind that she has done this. This

19:01

season, Instacart has your back to

19:03

school. As in, they've

19:05

got your back to school lunch favorites

19:07

like snack packs and fresh fruit. And

19:10

they've got your back to school supplies like

19:12

backpacks, and

36:00

we have jumped to the end, but definitely we're fortunate we've

36:02

not seen it. They say, well, the real fire festival wasn't

36:04

actually the fire festival at all. It was the production. It

36:06

was the promo

36:09

film shoot. Yeah. That was the amazing fire fest,

36:11

where like 60 people had an incredible time. And

36:13

I was like, no. No, they didn't. We saw

36:15

the footage. Twenty men had an incredible time and

36:17

40 really hot women. Looks

36:19

a bit frightened and uncomfortable. Terrified. And were

36:21

made to do things they weren't comfortable with.

36:23

Like leap around in the sea in the

36:25

night and pose in bikinis and did the

36:27

little tiny choir acts of protest that they

36:30

could of like not tagging fire festival in

36:32

videos. That is not looking particularly happy. It's

36:34

probably not swishing their hair either. Not

36:37

swishing their hair of political acts? A political

36:39

act. For the imprisoned, beautiful woman. That's

36:42

actually fascinating when you think about it. And

36:45

you know, now that the fire festival has

36:47

passed into law and will be a myth

36:49

of the ancients, like analysing these bits that

36:52

didn't necessarily get picked up on in the

36:54

first round of, you know, publicity,

36:56

which is that this festival was entirely

36:58

built on the images of these women

37:00

who went on this press trip. And

37:03

they do look in this footage,

37:05

in this behind the scenes footage, incredibly uncomfortable. Jarrul

37:07

is yelling at them to get in the water.

37:09

They don't seem to have a sense of like

37:11

when they're on film and when they're supposed to

37:14

be just enjoying themselves and whether they're enjoying themselves

37:16

as part of the film. And they don't seem

37:18

to have any control of that either. And they're

37:20

just making like very panicked eyes at one another.

37:22

Like they don't feel very safe. What's the thing

37:24

is if you actually ever work with any

37:27

kind of talent in that respect, like creating

37:29

commercial footage, and again, I'm not a production

37:31

person, but I very much work in that

37:33

building. And particularly if it's high

37:35

profile talent, like the likes of the Bella

37:37

Hadids of the world, they are used to

37:39

incredibly like structured lockdown sets where they know

37:42

exactly where they've got to be. They've got

37:44

cool shoes, they've got cool times, they've got

37:46

agreed working hours, they've got riders, they've got

37:48

like a whole thing about what you

37:50

can do and what you can't do and what trousers

37:52

they do or do not want to wear. And like

37:54

they're allowed that. And then they were just literally thrown

37:56

to the walls by looks of things. Like this, and

37:58

you could see again. And there were so many people,

38:00

particularly in the early part of this film, who were

38:02

very politely

38:04

trying to mask the horror and panic in their

38:07

eyes at the production company basically going, we

38:10

were not really given any power to

38:12

actually produce the

38:14

way that we are supposed to and that we

38:16

know is a good thing to do. And yeah,

38:18

it was just madness. But there are

38:21

still people who were there

38:23

who clearly thought, that was good. That

38:25

was a good ad shoot. It wasn't a good ad shoot.

38:27

No. The lesson you learned from

38:29

the real fire festival happened at the promo shoot.

38:31

Yeah, for maybe 30 guys. Yeah.

38:34

Who didn't, who in a tale

38:36

as old as time didn't realize that

38:38

all of those women were just doing

38:40

fake smiles for money. Right. Totally.

38:43

And it's just really fascinating when you reanalyze

38:45

that footage and be like, because almost every

38:47

single person who is a talking head

38:50

is, I think there's two women. There's

38:52

one woman who is like, I think she's on the

38:54

digital side of projects. She was a product manager or

38:56

product designer. Yeah, and she talks to camera. Yeah. And

38:59

another woman who was a Bahamian restaurant owner. Yes.

39:02

And who was such a really winning and really

39:04

beautiful and she made all her money back through

39:06

crowdfunding, which is good. Thank God. Because

39:08

we did check that immediately when we heard that she'd lost her

39:10

life savings. Yeah. We were like, please tell

39:12

me someone GoFunded her. And they did. Thank

39:15

God. And but the whole thing of

39:18

like, but they keep coming back to

39:20

the promise of women or something. The

39:22

number of just snapshots of them just

39:25

on lots and in bikinis and touching

39:27

pigs. They were no pigs in

39:29

the real festival. They sold these tickets because of

39:32

the images and idea of that. Like people would

39:34

get to hang out with Kendall Jenner or Gigi

39:36

Hadid or at least people who looked like them.

39:39

And like, it was just really interesting to be

39:42

like, oh, they had no, it

39:44

was, yeah, I keep quite a map there. It was

39:46

sold off the back of them, but they had nothing

39:48

to do with it. And they were almost the first

39:50

victims of it in this journey. Not victims in a

39:52

real way, but victims in the sense that they had

39:54

an uncomfortable time with weird people. Yeah. Like they had

39:56

an uncomfortable time with weird people. And so actually, in

39:58

some ways, the true life has to do with it.

40:00

was just like the Big Fire Festival. Because those people

40:03

had a comfortable times with weird people around them. And

40:06

there was lots of footage of it. What did

40:08

you think of this whole, and this is very

40:10

men, men. This is one

40:12

of, we're on our most misandrist podcast episode.

40:14

I really think if someone were to take

40:18

my and our whole body of work, I'm

40:20

a huge fan of men. Oh yeah, love

40:22

them. Whatever. But like the

40:24

worst aspects of masculinity are on

40:26

display in this documentary.

40:28

And I think part of it is

40:30

like the

40:33

sort of the idea of the investor and

40:35

the visioneer and the one person, the

40:38

insane individualism of the idea that there's

40:40

one guy who has the knowledge and

40:42

the vision that everyone is really keen

40:44

to sort of fall behind. For

40:46

what seems like no reason. It's

40:48

a bit like when people say that like Ted Bundy

40:50

was so charming and attractive and you're like, no he

40:53

wasn't. No. I wouldn't, no he wasn't. No.

40:56

Or men love talking about how hot

40:58

JFK was. No he wasn't. Yeah,

41:02

I'm trying to put my

41:04

finger on this because I feel like, I

41:07

don't know why. I was thinking about this the other day, but there are

41:09

many personality tests you can do out there. And I think I got made

41:11

to do some work by some

41:13

colleague thing recently. And one of the

41:16

axes I believe for one is agreeableness, which

41:18

is basically like how prepared you are to

41:20

just sort of go along with things and

41:22

be like, oh yeah, cool. And like keeping

41:24

the peace and like

41:26

collaborating and being like, you know,

41:29

sometimes a fantastic energy to have like poor oil and

41:31

troubled waters. I think there's definitely one of these in

41:33

this film and I love him. And

41:36

then the other end, there's kind of like the

41:38

less agreeable people who are more the, know

41:40

the emperor is naked, he's not wearing any clothes.

41:42

Yeah. And I- I think there

41:44

are a few of those people who are not made to agree. There are a few of those as

41:47

well. And I think, I know from doing

41:49

personality tests and also from being a person who works

41:51

that I sit very much at the less agreeable end.

41:53

Like if someone says something that I think is stupid,

41:55

I've been told too many times in reviews that my

41:57

face has subtitles. And even if I'm trying to smile,

41:59

someone- I was like, you can tell that she thinks

42:01

it's really stupid because I'm just like, what the hell

42:04

are you saying? It's probably the reason I'll never get

42:06

promoted. But I

42:08

watched this and I was like, they really did a really

42:10

good job of kind of basically weeding

42:12

out anyone who would do that and

42:14

creating a strange island of men

42:16

who said, yeah, sure, absolutely.

42:18

And of course you're right, there were some who were trying

42:20

to like, trying to

42:23

put the brakes on. But what they

42:25

needed was some real no men, you know? They

42:27

had all the yes guys there, all the yes

42:29

men were there en masse. They needed a few

42:31

absolute no'ers who were just saying,

42:34

yeah, yeah. Get a

42:36

fish it. And there's a bit, so there's one of

42:38

the like, I think one of

42:40

the reasons why this documentary works so well and why documentaries

42:42

that are similar to it will never, will not get remembered

42:44

in the same way I rewatched. Because I think I will

42:46

end up watching this again. Oh yeah. Is

42:49

that it has like some genuinely wonderful characters in

42:51

it. Of course it will. Like we

42:53

mentioned the restaurant earlier a minute ago and like, but like,

42:55

I think his name is Andy? Andy. Who

42:59

I think went kind of viral

43:01

himself after this documentary because he's

43:03

like. Deservedly. The father everyone

43:05

dreams of having, like he's just so soft and

43:07

gentle and he but he has a very competent

43:09

and good at his job. And

43:12

just very funny and the

43:14

reason he went viral is because Billy, who was

43:16

the visionary of Billy McFarland, asked

43:18

him to suck off the head

43:21

of Bahamian Customs in order for him

43:23

to release their water. And

43:25

which is like an ins and like he, and

43:27

the thing is like. He's like, yeah, I was prepared to do

43:29

it. I was prepared to do it. I was gonna do it.

43:32

Cause like I knew from our intro that that was it. That

43:34

was a thing that happened. And you were just trying to, you

43:36

were kind of like stop the, the cocksucker. I literally was like,

43:38

and he was gonna be the person who sucked a dick for

43:40

the water. And when it

43:42

was Andy, I literally wrote in big, I have

43:44

to have this across half a page. Andy was

43:46

the blowjob man. Exclamation point. Exclamation point. I

43:49

guess I did not see that, can't I? I did not

43:51

see it and he didn't do it in the end. He

43:53

didn't have to. Just like this gentle man in his sweater

43:55

vest. Just being like. And he clearly like really reflected on

43:57

his role in this at the end as well. And was

43:59

just like. I realized that I

44:01

was somehow complicit in, you

44:03

know, he kept telling people to believe in

44:06

Billy. He was a lovely yes

44:08

man, but he was a yes man all the same.

44:10

Yeah, and something he said, which I really, I was

44:12

like, wow, this is a lesson that's actually very

44:15

useful for the rest of life, of like, when

44:17

you solve problems for people who

44:20

are incompetent, will

44:22

you write it down? I wrote it down, by

44:24

solving problems, we were enabling them to continue creating

44:26

this monster. Right? Oh,

44:28

doesn't that hit home? It really does. I'm not

44:31

sure exactly where or how, for my specific life,

44:33

I just know it matters to really.

44:35

Really exactly where I'm at. But there are so many people,

44:38

and I'm really thinking of women here, who

44:40

will, because like, who are socialized

44:43

and taught and praised for being

44:45

helpers. Yeah. And for easing

44:47

situations, that if you actually let them

44:49

crash and burn sooner rather

44:52

than later, you will actually save a lot.

44:55

Totally. Of people, you know. Yes.

45:01

As an unagreeable woman in the workplace,

45:03

I've definitely done that. Yeah.

45:06

It's like, it's not like, you don't get a lot of

45:08

praise for it, but you're like, I am not going to

45:10

be the person who ruins

45:13

my entire life. Yeah. Because

45:16

no one will say no to this almost always senior

45:18

man. Holding a

45:20

huge cigar. Saying, just make

45:22

it happen. Saying things like, we're not a problems focused

45:24

group, Jan, we're a solutions focused group. And I'll be

45:26

like, well, perhaps you could find the solution name. God.

45:30

Yeah. It's funny. It's not fun.

45:32

We keep like, I mean, this is what makes

45:34

the fire festival a biblical text, which is that

45:36

we're barely even taught. Like, it's a bit like

45:38

if we were talking about the sort of, you

45:41

know, the long-term relevance of Noah's

45:43

Ark. We'd almost not talk about the

45:45

flood because everyone knows about the flood.

45:47

It's like talking about like getting the animals two

45:50

by two. You know, it's like, we've lived with

45:52

the fire festival in our heads for so long

45:54

now. It's almost like I'm extracting it for other

45:56

lessons and myths that aren't just, don't

45:58

put on a festival in the place. that has no resources

46:00

to have a festival, you know? It

46:03

genuinely feels like a powerful text

46:05

around, yeah,

46:07

around the dangers of enabling

46:09

people and not holding accountable for

46:11

their own things. Like the whole film is basically the

46:13

story of man and goes, here's a lovely idea, I'm

46:16

sure someone else will do it for me. Yeah.

46:19

And doesn't actually take any responsibility for

46:21

his own stuff at any point. At no

46:23

point in this film do we see Billy

46:25

MacFarlane actually go. No. Yeah, fuck,

46:28

I probably do need more than just these

46:30

hurricane tents. Yeah. It's

46:32

horrifying. And like, okay,

46:35

so let's go back, let's go to Billy MacFarlane who

46:37

is the sort of like, I mean, obviously he's not

46:39

interviewed because he has some level of self-preservation, I'm sure.

46:41

And also it turns out he was in prison. In

46:43

prison, which, love that. So

46:47

what was your psychological profiling of Billy

46:49

MacFarlane, the Imagineer behind Firefest? I mean,

46:51

my psychological profiling of him turned out

46:53

to be the same thing that they

46:56

kind of concluded at the end. I think in the first

46:58

few minutes of this documentary, I was like, oh, this is

47:00

one of those kids who had a shit time at school.

47:03

Yeah. And just really wanted to hang out

47:05

with all the rich, beautiful people. And so he's just hoping

47:07

he can make that happen. And at the end, the whole

47:09

kind of conclusion is,

47:11

yeah, Billy just thought he belonged with the private jets

47:14

and the fast cars. Like he just, he was clearly

47:16

a very, there's some deep wound in him that

47:18

he tried to fix with fraud. Yeah.

47:21

And he was friends with Anna Delvey. Yes,

47:23

yeah. And similar vibe, kind

47:26

of like, I belong in this set

47:28

and had really drunk the

47:30

Kool-Aid, which is of course a reference to

47:32

a cult, and

47:34

decided that the

47:36

most important thing in the world was to hang out

47:39

with famous people and to be seen to be hanging

47:41

out with famous people and to be making money. Yeah.

47:45

And nothing else. And also this thing of like, this

47:48

absolute faith that everybody else in

47:50

the world felt the same way.

47:53

God, yeah. That to create

47:55

this monster, that would

47:57

attract people who want nothing more.

48:00

than like an experience that looks

48:02

beautiful and that is adjacent to fame. He's like

48:04

yeah everyone wants this, this is what Joe Blow wants.

48:06

What he means is this is what I want more

48:08

than anything. I want to look like I'm adjacent to fame

48:11

and talent and specialness but like

48:14

and I guess that's what everybody who bought a fire

48:16

festival ticket. It's not everybody. He's

48:18

not he's wrong in sense that not everybody wants it

48:20

but there are quite a lot of people who want

48:22

that. Yeah. And that's

48:25

what's quite satisfying about when it goes wrong.

48:29

Isn't it? Because you're watching and you're like

48:31

yeah oh no. Oh dear.

48:33

Like obviously last year

48:38

Burning Man got rained out and it was yeah

48:40

I found that I was really enjoying all of

48:42

the content coming out of Burning Man last year

48:45

for much the same reason there's fire fest. I

48:48

was like oh really rich people

48:50

who were gonna send through smug posts

48:53

for the next three weeks and now stuck in

48:55

rivers of poo. What

48:58

a shame. What a pity.

49:00

Let me click on this

49:03

hashtag, get out my popcorn

49:05

and scru-ho. And this

49:07

kind of gets me excited. I thought about a lot

49:09

when we were at the festival last weekend which was

49:12

that so as

49:14

we mentioned at the top of the podcast and you

49:17

and I came of age during this time

49:19

in festivals where it was accepted that not

49:21

only would you behave disgustingly you would look

49:23

disgusting. Yeah and no one would ever see

49:25

it because you'd have got a little polaroid

49:27

camera out there. Yeah exactly. Yeah I still

49:29

have some disposables like around from my first

49:31

festival I have treasure and I look horrible

49:33

in them. But there's

49:37

obviously been a shift we all know that in the

49:39

last decade or so where festivals have become more and

49:41

more a place to like obviously it's

49:43

a social place you go with gangs of friends you

49:45

see you meet other gangs of friends you make new

49:47

friends but you're also there to be seen it's like

49:50

a place where people are taking a lot of photographs

49:52

there's a lot of like cool outfits going on and

49:54

stuff and like I thought it was so interesting when

49:56

when you know we were there with them a bunch of

49:58

our friends and like hello looking around at

50:00

all of us. And we all looked fine, but

50:02

like not one person was like dressed in it.

50:05

Like was talking about the themes of the each

50:07

day or whatever. And it was interesting to me

50:09

that like dressing up for festivals kind of seems

50:11

to run in packs. Yeah,

50:13

you either do or don't show on

50:15

that. Yeah, yeah. You're either in a

50:17

group where you're like, we're all gonna dress

50:20

up as like, you know, birds this day or

50:22

whatever or not. Yeah, and I kind of love that.

50:24

I love that for them. I don't wanna carry that

50:26

to the festival. No, I don't wanna carry that. But

50:28

I also kept thinking about like, how are

50:31

we sort of at the beginning

50:33

of the end now with festivals? And by that,

50:35

I mean, we have

50:37

changed the meaning of them so that they

50:40

are becoming glossier and glossier, right? And so,

50:43

and which is great. I love being a part of

50:45

the Boogie Festival experience. It's very fun, like

50:47

hot tubs and rivers and, you know, great

50:50

food and champagne tents

50:52

and stuff. But like the

50:54

further and like the more that

50:57

festival will set the standard for themselves to be

50:59

higher and higher, it becomes more

51:01

and more intenable because ultimately these are like luxury

51:03

products happening in rural settings.

51:05

So it gives higher and higher drinks to achieve.

51:07

That means in order to do it, you have

51:09

to like get more and more influencers who are

51:11

shown to be there, like enjoying

51:14

the spoils of the festival. That means you have

51:16

to lose more and more money. And

51:18

so it got me thinking like, well, is this

51:20

like a race to the bottom of making, the

51:22

expectations will keep going up. It'll get more and

51:24

more intenable. People get disappointed. It will crash and

51:26

our kids won't go to festivals. Or maybe it

51:28

will reset back to zero and be ready again.

51:31

I think more likely to reset back to zero. Yeah.

51:34

I think it's much more like you'll see a festival, which

51:36

is like phones a band. Really?

51:38

And there's no luxury tent camping. I just

51:40

think someone will do it. Yeah. And

51:43

I do think, because

51:45

it still isn't universal. Like, you

51:47

know, as long as there's still one woman who's showing

51:49

up in some old harem pants and a shirt. Which

51:52

is me. And you are holding that line. Because Becky

51:54

D cups took so many photos and posted them on

51:56

the internet. And I was like, God, thanks Becky. I

51:59

love that she does that. I love those things. But equally,

52:01

I'm just like, la, la, la, la, sunburnt with

52:03

the bucket hat on. We roll like that. Like

52:05

someone's grandmother who's been brought along for a day

52:07

trip. As long as there's someone there. And as

52:09

long as there is, and I think I also

52:11

saw at Wilderness, a man who's mistaken, a little

52:13

barrier, you know, the little barriers that are around

52:16

the edges of food trucks stop you from going

52:18

around the back. A man who's so deep in

52:20

a K hole that he thinks he's at the

52:22

front of a main stage and is just like,

52:24

yeah. Oh, my God. At

52:27

the back of a chip shop. As

52:29

long as those people are still there, the Spirit

52:32

of Festivals is not dead. Oh,

52:34

that really is the Spirit of Festivals. One

52:36

lone man. Yeah.

52:39

Scary. A catering

52:41

fan. Convinced

52:43

he's at the front of the main stage. I love

52:46

that so much. The most beautiful things

52:48

I've ever seen. That is genuinely

52:50

very beautiful. I just

52:53

sat there and watched for a bit, like, oh, wow.

52:57

Wow. True British eccentricity will never die. He

53:00

never. He seemed fine. Festival was fine

53:02

then. He was not given a water. He

53:04

was all right. So, yeah, I think festivals are going to be okay. I

53:06

think they might go back around. I think, you

53:08

know, us true pioneers.

53:10

Yeah. True pioneers. True

53:13

pioneers. We're like three more of the dudes. We'll keep

53:15

the old ways. We keep the old ways. We practice

53:17

the old faith. We

53:21

will continue on and festivals will be fine. And

53:23

firefest. I mean, firefest is coming

53:25

back, apparently. So fire festival two. When

53:30

really, it should be fire festival one because

53:32

the initial firefest never happened. I

53:34

just, it's like you can

53:36

buy tickets now, can't you? Yeah. You can buy

53:38

tickets now. They haven't got a date locked down.

53:40

They haven't got a location locked down. But it's

53:42

happening. Do you think people are actually buying tickets

53:45

to it? I don't know.

53:47

Because people, like, I mean, this kind of

53:49

brings us back to, like, the summer of

53:51

scam, which was like Anna Delvey, Caroline

53:54

Callaway, like the idea that, like, people

53:56

would keep, I think actually, Caroline Callaway

53:58

has become much more reliable in her life. her output these

54:00

days and she's just writing stuff and self-publishing

54:02

and I think that's fucking great and I

54:04

think she's cool but like there was a

54:07

time where she was like I'm selling my

54:09

like literally stuff called snake oil I am

54:11

selling paintings that I don't send to people

54:13

and people still keep spending money because they're

54:15

almost like this they're so like darkly curious

54:17

as to whether or not they'll receive their

54:20

thing or what even the process of buying

54:22

will even feel like. People

54:24

love being part of it with their cash man. What else

54:26

was in this documentary? I do. Sorry

54:29

I'm just like just sitting there just marveling at

54:31

how much people like to be scammed. They

54:34

like to be scammed. There's just

54:38

some level. What do you think

54:40

it is? I don't

54:42

know. I'm a very untrusting person I think. Yeah.

54:44

Something comes into my inbox and it's a bit

54:46

off I'm like oh I don't trust that. I

54:48

think that's true. What's the hardest you've ever

54:50

been scammed? You've

54:55

never been scammed? I honestly don't think I've been

54:57

scammed. I honestly

55:00

think I'm just I'm too

55:02

rude. Yeah fair enough. I

55:04

imagine I am scammed

55:06

far more than I think I am being scammed. Of

55:09

course I've been scammed. I'm the most trusting earnest

55:11

fucking piece of shit ever. I think I overpaid

55:13

for someone to clean the gutters of

55:15

my house because they knocked on my door. That's not being scammed.

55:17

And they were like it'll cost you this money and I was

55:20

like it would cost me less if I could actually be asked

55:22

to call someone up and get them to come around but you're

55:24

here now and you have a ladder so sure. I'll pay you

55:26

a hundred pounds. I don't know that's a scam. I think that's

55:28

just me paying above the market right? For

55:31

convenience tell me when were

55:33

you scammed? When I got scammed I

55:35

was actually not far from here.

55:38

It was outside Stratford Westfields. Why?

55:40

I've been scammed loads of times

55:42

I think. No. Do

55:44

you know what I do believe it? I

55:46

know. Very trusting, very open. You are very

55:49

trusting. I just I would just

55:51

rather take a chance on yeah I would

55:53

rather do the side quest you know what

55:55

I mean. I love that. That's for you.

55:57

Yeah so I've been scammed in the way

56:00

of like people coming up to me and be

56:02

like I'm on my way to a job interview

56:05

and I got mugged or whatever and like they

56:07

have a huge convincing story. Yeah. And like I

56:09

have very often like. That's not a scam. That's

56:11

not obvious. It's not obvious. I know

56:14

because it happened to me with the same person twice.

56:16

But given the obviousness of the scam is that not

56:18

just one of those like polite fictions where they say

56:20

the thing. Yeah. And you and you almost are like

56:22

well I know that you just want money. And they

56:24

take your phone number and they talk to you about

56:26

how they're gonna get the train and then they're gonna

56:28

call you and like yeah. No I haven't got. No

56:30

I. Oh no I've gotten deep in with these people.

56:33

And I also had a thing where

56:36

somebody was pretending to be a Mac representative.

56:38

Like Mac the makeup brand. Right. And they

56:41

had the branding and everything like that. And

56:43

they were like oh do you want to like

56:45

like give us your email and

56:47

phone number and you came

56:50

with a chance. I say Westfield's. Like you know it

56:52

was a chance of winning like 500 quid worth of

56:54

Mac stuff. And I was like absolutely I'm 20 years

56:56

old. That's great. Sure. And

56:58

then and then I got

57:02

a call from them saying like you won. I was

57:04

like that's incredible. I never won anything. You won? Me?

57:06

Never. And they were like yeah you've won the gold

57:08

package. I was like the gold package? Doesn't

57:12

sound like Mac branding but okay what's the gold package? They're

57:14

like oh so you're getting on the makeup but you're all

57:16

we're also like we're doing a photo shoot with all the

57:18

winners. I was like cool. And

57:21

they're like and we were going through it and so like

57:24

you know and there's like 20 or whatever and they were

57:26

like yeah we do photos and you have a pampering day

57:28

and and then you'll go away with your big thing of

57:30

Mac makeup. It's like this sounds wonderful. I love this. And

57:33

they're like yeah so um where are you based

57:35

and we'll just we'll do it in the studio that's like convenient for you.

57:37

And I was like oh I think I was living in Elephant and Castle

57:39

at the time. And they were like oh

57:41

great so we're gonna call you back and when we

57:43

have the studio and I was like great the studio.

57:46

They were like we found a studio but we need

57:48

a hundred pounds. To

57:52

reserve the studio?

57:54

And obviously you'll get that back. Did

57:56

you pay them? I was 21 years

57:58

old. of

58:00

course I did. Of

58:03

course, it's the stupidest thing in

58:05

the whole world. So elaborate! Oh,

58:08

that open! To

58:12

get 100 pounds! So many

58:14

stages, the scam. But I guess if you

58:16

think about Stratford Westfield, how many teen girls

58:18

and their girls in the early 20s are

58:21

walking in and out every day. That's

58:23

still a lot of effort. It's a lot of

58:25

effort to get the branding and everything. Because not

58:28

everyone's gonna go for it. Some people, there's gonna

58:30

be a real dropout there. Yeah, of course. Yeah,

58:32

I think it's, you're developing a

58:34

rapport with people over several phone calls, and you're

58:37

like, well, I've already thought about all the makeup

58:39

I'm gonna have. Oh

58:41

my God. Yeah.

58:44

So listen, you've bought

58:46

tickets for Fire Festival 2017. Yeah.

58:49

You've paid. So it's impossible for me to imagine,

58:51

but sure. Put us up and say, well, we've

58:53

done that. We've both bought tickets. It's gonna be

58:55

like, fantastic. I wanna go to a private jet.

58:57

To a private island and hang out with all

58:59

the sexy celebrity women. And

59:02

as you get close to the time, they email you and

59:04

they say, you should load up

59:06

your wristband with 3,000 American dollars.

59:08

What do you do then? I ring you.

59:11

Yeah. I call you. That's a really

59:13

good choice. Yeah, I call you. Do you know what

59:15

I do? I

59:18

cancel my ticket to Fire Festival. Is that what

59:20

you do immediately? 100%, second I do that. Where

59:24

it's like, we recommend that you top up your

59:26

wristbands. 100%, that is immediately giving

59:28

cash flow issue. Really? That's giving, we don't

59:30

have money to pay our suppliers and we

59:32

need advanced cash from you now. God,

59:35

see, my mind would never even go there. I

59:38

know it's easy to say that it would go there

59:40

like after having watched a documentary and seeing what happens,

59:42

but like, I would've been like, oh, great.

59:46

I'd be like, oh, I'd be like, oh, this

59:48

is cool. I'm gonna be immediately canceling my ticket

59:52

to this thing that I've called. And I would

59:54

just do whatever you did. Okay, that's great. Like,

59:58

would you get onto the IOLs? Okay, let's say that you're not. So

1:00:00

I don't pick up and you're like, she's

1:00:04

not there, but she's still going. So as

1:00:06

far as you know, I'm still going. Okay. So

1:00:09

next you see... This is a good game. It's

1:00:11

a good game. So you've put your 3,000 American

1:00:14

dollars onto your RFID wristband and you've had a

1:00:16

look around.

1:00:19

There's no real information about how that wristband is going to work

1:00:21

or what infrastructure they've got in place, but don't worry about that.

1:00:24

That's fine. The next hurdle is the flights. The next hurdle is

1:00:26

the flights. So it's like a week out. Yeah. So

1:00:28

I know you've paid for this private jet, but you haven't been

1:00:30

told where the flight's taking off from or what time. Yeah. What

1:00:33

do you do then? And calling me is not an option. I've

1:00:37

disappeared into the ocean. I don't know. I'm living just

1:00:39

on my wits. You're living on your wits. You can't

1:00:41

call Gavin either. No, you can't call Gavin. You can't

1:00:43

call anybody. Surely you, just you on your own. What

1:00:45

happens then? Okay. Because we actually never

1:00:47

clear up what happens with the flights because like everyone

1:00:50

gets on a flight eventually. No, I guess eventually the

1:00:52

flight information comes out. Are you

1:00:54

messing them on Instagram? Are you calling? See the thing

1:00:56

is, at this point, I'm already how many thousands in the whole? Probably

1:00:58

70,000 at least in the whole. Yeah. Maybe

1:01:01

more if you put more in that wristband. Yeah. I'm

1:01:04

definitely going. I'm calling up. I'm doing

1:01:06

a lot of digital sleuthing. I'm definitely

1:01:09

seeing those comments. I'm getting very worried.

1:01:11

Yeah. You're getting worried. Yeah,

1:01:13

I'm getting really worried. However, Suncloth

1:01:15

Fantasy is a powerful motivator of

1:01:17

behavior. The last minute an

1:01:20

email comes in, it says, you'd be at Miami

1:01:22

Airport at 4pm on Sunday. We can't

1:01:24

wait to welcome you here. I'd be like, great, self. Brilliant.

1:01:28

Great, self. So you get to

1:01:30

the airport. Yeah. And you get

1:01:32

onto your private jet and it is in fact a

1:01:34

really shit old 737. Yeah.

1:01:36

What are you doing? Oh, I don't care at all.

1:01:39

You're so easy to scare. I know.

1:01:41

I'm just like. Oh my God, Caroline. Does

1:01:43

the one thing

1:01:45

I do, knock

1:01:47

it on the

1:01:50

fucking jet? Knock

1:01:53

it on the plane? I get this point. You've

1:01:55

checked. I mean, presumably at this point, of course,

1:01:58

you've checked the Instagram. You've checked around. no

1:02:00

pics of the site, maybe even found on this site.

1:02:02

Oh, I'm panicking the whole time. You found some information

1:02:04

that suggests that the site may not be built because

1:02:06

there is a whole website dedicated to debunking. Oh, if

1:02:08

I found that, then absolutely, that would be the color

1:02:10

of the point. That would be the one for you.

1:02:12

So you'd be out at that moment. But

1:02:14

I think- But you haven't found that, so you're

1:02:16

on the plane. I think realistically, their marketing team

1:02:19

has done such a good job, right? That they

1:02:21

have blanketed the internet with pictures of Kendall Jenner

1:02:23

and pigs that it would take

1:02:25

quite a lot of sleuthing, like quite

1:02:27

advancedly, to find the fire festival

1:02:29

is just hurricane tense and cheese sandwiches sort of

1:02:32

thing. And they haven't built the size, you

1:02:34

know? I love the Caribbean. I love the Bahamas.

1:02:37

Yeah, that's true, that's true. Yeah, so I'm like- I'm

1:02:39

wondering. So I think at this point, I'm like,

1:02:41

listen, maybe it's not everything that I think it's gonna

1:02:43

be, but the Bahamas are great. How

1:02:45

bad could the Bahamas be? Yeah. Do you

1:02:48

check the weather forecast? Yeah, I

1:02:50

definitely see about the rain. And

1:02:52

I'm definitely- This is a

1:02:54

great game. This is

1:02:56

like Myers Briggs for the new generation. Honestly,

1:02:59

someone should make the fire festival test as

1:03:01

a personality test. Like the game of life,

1:03:03

but like fire festival, and

1:03:05

it's like, you can like, you know, win air mattresses

1:03:07

or whatever. So you're right.

1:03:09

So thankfully, there's a knot in my stomach.

1:03:11

I have chronic IBS. I am so weirded

1:03:14

out. I am chattering constantly to everyone

1:03:16

on the plane because I have a

1:03:19

strong sort of like primordial sense of

1:03:21

having to make allies. Right, yeah. Even

1:03:23

though I don't know why. You'll

1:03:26

find out why soon. Yeah. Yeah.

1:03:29

And yeah, okay. So I'm on the jet.

1:03:32

I'm making pals, but I'm really worried. Okay,

1:03:34

okay. I keep refreshing the weather app. It's

1:03:36

bad weather in the Bahamas. A really important question. This is

1:03:38

where I think something will go right for you. What luggage

1:03:40

have you packed? The Fat Sister. And

1:03:42

nothing else? And nothing else. This is

1:03:45

gonna really help you. Yeah, so luckily,

1:03:47

Jennifer, I have overhead storage. I am

1:03:49

not checking my luggage. This

1:03:51

is presuming that I'm already in America anyway, that I

1:03:53

haven't like flown from London to Miami. Yeah, but

1:03:55

of course, you're already in America. I'm an American woman.

1:03:57

You're a rich American woman. Imagine what? American, unbearable.

1:03:59

I'm terrible. Rich

1:04:09

American Girl Doll Caroline. I'm Rich

1:04:11

American Girl Doll Caroline. Oh, Dada

1:04:14

Q. But luckily

1:04:16

you haven't brought a huge Remoa suitcase. Yeah.

1:04:21

That's good. That's going to serve you well when

1:04:23

the Hunger Games begins. As a result, it will

1:04:25

serve me well. As a result,

1:04:27

I am first off the plane. And

1:04:29

so I'm at the... And you know what I think is actually

1:04:31

going to happen to me? Because, Jennifer, I am easily scammed. But

1:04:37

the same reason that I am easily scammed

1:04:39

is also why I am... Like,

1:04:42

I get along quite easily in life because I've got

1:04:44

a big friendly phase. You do. You are so

1:04:46

lovable. I think I get off the plane pretty

1:04:48

quickly. Yeah. And everybody else is still

1:04:50

like futzing around with their luggage. I've got the fat sister. And

1:04:52

this is when I hope what happens.

1:04:55

I get to the airport, start chatting to

1:04:57

some lads who are maybe Bahamians or whatever. Yes. And

1:05:00

they're like, I don't know if you're going to

1:05:02

have a good time at this festival. And maybe I take

1:05:04

someone's number. Oh,

1:05:06

Caroline. I think what dooms me is also

1:05:08

what saves me. I love this. I

1:05:13

love this for you. I believe that. I believe you don't

1:05:15

end up on the festival ground. You go to a fantastic party. You

1:05:17

end up just staying in someone's spare room for a few days. I

1:05:19

think I get to the festival ground and then I call the lads.

1:05:22

Yeah. And then you're like, listen, it's me. It's

1:05:24

Caroline. Remember me from the airport? Irish Disney Princess,

1:05:26

you may recall. And

1:05:29

you just go and like, keep on someone's sofa for

1:05:31

a week. And you like drink cocktails and you like

1:05:33

maybe you swim with pigs. Yeah.

1:05:35

I don't think I'm that charming. I think

1:05:38

I'm pretty charming. I don't even imagine. But

1:05:40

I do think that I manage to avoid the

1:05:43

worst of the indignities. You

1:05:45

avoid the like that full on first night in

1:05:48

the hurricane tents. Yeah. Where

1:05:50

people create forts and actively

1:05:52

sabotage tents around them to prevent. Here's

1:05:55

something that didn't come up in the hurricane

1:05:57

in the first night, the sort of dystopia

1:05:59

that... rapidly. Do you think

1:06:01

a sex trade emerged? So

1:06:07

like when you said blowjob for water,

1:06:10

that's what I was thinking. You thought it was

1:06:12

like an influencer girl from somebody after water. Right,

1:06:14

right, right. And I was thinking how thirsty would I

1:06:16

have to be? I don't know. We

1:06:19

need to lubricate the mouth first, really. You

1:06:22

can't give a blazzard a dry mouth. That's

1:06:25

a non-stirion coming. That would just be

1:06:27

criminal. Hard, but for everybody. That's how you

1:06:29

get the water. You're like, well, if you want me to suck you off, I'm going to

1:06:31

need a Fiji first. Give me some water first. A

1:06:34

half a Fiji now and half on completion. Half

1:06:37

on completion! Sorry.

1:06:39

One for moistening, one for rinsing. I

1:06:43

don't think they'd get a sex trade in the first night,

1:06:45

but I think they probably weren't far off it. Right.

1:06:48

Because? Because they're all extractive people.

1:06:51

Yeah. With very few other skills, probably.

1:06:54

With very few other skills. No

1:06:57

one there would be like, oh, I can build a fire

1:06:59

with my bare hands. No one there would be like, I

1:07:02

can catch pigs and roast them. No

1:07:05

one there can douse for water. Not that

1:07:07

either of us can do either of those things. No.

1:07:10

But I wonder how quickly the bottom

1:07:12

fell out of the sex trade because

1:07:14

people were just offering too many handies

1:07:16

and blazzies. The

1:07:19

market was flooding. The value of

1:07:22

that currency just completely. Is

1:07:24

this when you talk about shorting? We still don't know.

1:07:27

We flood the market with handies and blazzies at Fire

1:07:31

Festival. This

1:07:34

is a fantastic critical analysis of the Fire Festival.

1:07:37

I'm actually loving it because I feel

1:07:39

like what's so great about a story everybody knows

1:07:41

is that you can make it your own. You know? So

1:07:44

it's now true that the

1:07:47

value of a handie crashed during Fire

1:07:50

Festival. Yeah, yeah. Like the

1:07:52

International Handy Stock Exchange. Just

1:07:55

plummeted. There were

1:07:57

too many going around. There were too many on

1:07:59

the market. It does none of that fight. Do we not get

1:08:01

into a few resources? I feel like I finally understand

1:08:03

inflation for the first time in my life. And

1:08:06

so many people trying to explain to me and now I get it. No,

1:08:08

you're like, oh, it's just what happened to Blossys. But

1:08:10

what's what happened to Blossys in the Handys during the

1:08:12

pirate festival? Oh,

1:08:17

look, there we are. We should make economics

1:08:19

teachers. Yeah. Good

1:08:21

my God. It's like, what's so

1:08:23

great also is that that's, that's just like the

1:08:25

last 20 minutes of the film where you just see

1:08:27

how bad it was. I know. Yes. It's

1:08:30

a beautiful payoff. So much of it is just

1:08:32

like the administrative

1:08:35

cult-like. The growing unease.

1:08:37

Yeah, the growing unease. And

1:08:39

like lots of people quit and lots of people

1:08:42

were replaced. The Flying Dutchman who's replaced.

1:08:44

The Flying Dutchman. The Flying Dutchman who taught himself how

1:08:46

to fly. Yeah, I mean, I thought he was gonna

1:08:48

be a real bad guy in this when he said,

1:08:50

yeah, you can just teach yourself to fly with Microsoft

1:08:52

Flight Simulator. And look, I come from a family of plain

1:08:55

people and I was like, no, you can't. You simply

1:08:57

cannot. You simply cannot do that. I believe your parents

1:08:59

entire business is teaching the pilots to fly. People to

1:09:01

fly planes. Yeah, but I mean, fairness, bigger ones than

1:09:03

that, like, you know, commercial jets rather than prop planes.

1:09:07

I don't actually know if he's Dutch. I'm purely taking that off

1:09:09

his accent. And because then it's funny because you can call him

1:09:11

the Flying Dutchman. But he actually turned

1:09:13

out to be quite a, like a

1:09:15

little pillar of strength. An early, an

1:09:17

early no man. When

1:09:20

he tried camping on the island with

1:09:22

his wife and in his

1:09:24

very gentle Dutch, could be Flemish,

1:09:26

I don't know, tones. It was like, yeah,

1:09:28

it's not comfortable. I would strongly recommend against

1:09:30

tents. Yeah, there's no air conditioning. There's mosquitoes

1:09:32

everywhere. It's really loud with cicadas and things.

1:09:35

Like it's not comfortable or nice or even

1:09:37

really tenable. And they're

1:09:39

like, sir, you are fired. They're like, team

1:09:41

change out happening here. But

1:09:44

like that thing, all the no men were

1:09:46

fired at such an early juncture. Apart

1:09:49

from the ones who, like, there are some

1:09:51

people who go on a journey to become no men by

1:09:53

the end of the film. Yeah. One,

1:09:56

okay, do you know what? I don't know either of their names. Yeah.

1:09:58

One of whom I found a bit annoying. and one of whom I

1:10:01

think was a great character in this film. Slightly Annoying

1:10:03

Man was called something like... Mr.

1:10:07

Meister? He

1:10:09

had to like a... He said Walk. Walk... Meinstein

1:10:12

maybe? Oh, he was a Weinstein,

1:10:14

yeah, I remember thinking... I don't think he was a

1:10:16

Weinstein. I think he was a Meinstein. OK. I'm pretty

1:10:18

certain that he was. Yeah, he was kind of fit,

1:10:20

yeah. He was fit, but he's been a lot of

1:10:22

the early part of the film. He had climber energy.

1:10:24

He had climber energy and he also was really not

1:10:27

quick enough to say these people were awful, because quite

1:10:29

a lot of the early films, he was like, it's

1:10:31

a huge accomplishment to sell out your festival. And I

1:10:33

was like, no, it's not. Not if you've got fucking

1:10:35

Bella Hadid. Not if you don't have a festival. Yeah,

1:10:37

and then he was like, there was no internet and

1:10:39

infrastructure there. So it was really amazing that we managed

1:10:41

to do that. I'm like, that's not

1:10:44

a warning sign. Yeah, they were like,

1:10:46

it's amazing. We edited and made this commercial,

1:10:48

essentially, from this island in the Bahamas,

1:10:50

even though we had no internet or

1:10:52

infrastructure. It's like, well, that should have been...

1:10:54

And you didn't extrapolate from that a

1:10:56

little tiny bit. You

1:10:59

can't edit a video and send it

1:11:01

over WeTransfer. You probably can't. Do an

1:11:04

RFID wallet. Yeah.

1:11:06

No. He also was there when he

1:11:08

was saying that when the

1:11:10

festival was first announced, industry insiders were laughing.

1:11:12

And he was like, real resentment

1:11:15

in the end. People were, and I

1:11:17

thought, listen. They

1:11:19

know something we don't know. Either they know something

1:11:22

we don't know, or these men are geniuses. And

1:11:24

then he didn't immediately go, and it turned out

1:11:26

that they knew something we didn't know, which

1:11:29

is that you cannot put a festival on a remote island

1:11:31

with no funding and no... It's crazy that

1:11:33

not a single act played. We didn't hear

1:11:36

from any of the musicians. At

1:11:38

least some of them must have made the flight,

1:11:40

right? No, we did see. We heard from

1:11:42

one guy. I've forgotten who he was. Oh,

1:11:46

no. One of the guys in Major Lazer.

1:11:48

Yes. He came for a recce.

1:11:50

Yeah, and then was like, oh, oh. Ooh, and

1:11:52

ooh. Not feeling good here. Something great. But he

1:11:54

trusted them. He shouldn't

1:11:57

have trusted them. The trust thing. Trust. A

1:11:59

lot of trust. And where was the trust earned from? I

1:12:01

do think that everyone's had experiences in their

1:12:04

life where they've

1:12:06

fallen out with a friend or a

1:12:08

coworker or a boss or whatever, and

1:12:13

you find out that they were just not being honest about who

1:12:15

they were, or an element of their

1:12:17

personality became visible that was so

1:12:19

hidden from you. And I do

1:12:21

think that is a genuinely, more

1:12:24

than like physical discomfort or like people

1:12:26

threatening to murder you because you've not

1:12:29

paid their workers, you've been working nonstop for a

1:12:31

month. Jesus. I think almost the longer

1:12:33

lasting trauma is your own

1:12:36

character judgment. Yeah. When

1:12:38

you feel like your character judgment is off, I

1:12:40

think it's a really destabilizing process.

1:12:43

Yeah, and I think quite a few people in this film

1:12:45

speak to that and speak to the fact that, particularly

1:12:48

with Billy, like he was

1:12:50

incredibly charming and people were really drawn to

1:12:52

him and they believed that he could make

1:12:54

stuff happen. Yeah. Cause

1:12:57

he had made stuff happen to an extent.

1:12:59

Well he kind of had, was it Magnesis

1:13:01

or something? Magnesis, which was kind of like

1:13:04

halfway between an Amex and Yelp, it seemed.

1:13:06

Yeah, so it was like a kind of

1:13:08

members credit card thing. And I wrote

1:13:10

this down because I was so shocked

1:13:12

by it. It was again, some talking

1:13:14

head men talking about why Magnesis have

1:13:16

worked. And it was like, girls liked

1:13:18

the metal clank when the card was

1:13:20

put down, which is like, I mean,

1:13:23

you're just getting us so wrong

1:13:25

as an entire gender. If you

1:13:27

think that like putting a metal card on a

1:13:29

table might be like, oh, I'm wet for you.

1:13:31

Like I don't love the clank of metal. That's

1:13:34

so lame. It's so lame, but there are people

1:13:37

who genuinely believe it. And maybe

1:13:39

they're out there- But the profile for what like

1:13:41

so many men think are what we're gonna find

1:13:43

attractive is- A metal credit card.

1:13:45

Do you know, I've got a metal credit card.

1:13:47

Yeah. I'll just like my own

1:13:49

metal credit card upon the table. They're everywhere now.

1:13:51

Men are depressing. Men are very depressing because they

1:13:53

were just there. So Magnesis was successful in that

1:13:56

people paid money to have a metal credit card,

1:13:58

which was gonna give them access. of stuff

1:14:00

but it didn't give them access to anything.

1:14:02

I think it must have given them access

1:14:04

to some things. Not to many things like

1:14:06

reservations were cancelled. Yeah, yeah, but it was

1:14:08

also kind of a sell-home house thing. They

1:14:10

had a clubhouse where you could whatever. Basically

1:14:12

Billy McFarland, a man big on ideation, low

1:14:15

on feasibility, you know. Doesn't do much of the,

1:14:17

this is a great idea. Like we've all been

1:14:19

there again. A lot of my job is someone

1:14:21

going, I've got this amazing idea and me going,

1:14:23

that's lovely. I'm not sure that magic

1:14:25

exists. It's probably not gonna happen. Production person, what do

1:14:27

you say? And they say, no, kill it, Deb, we

1:14:30

can't do that, that's not physically possible. And that's

1:14:32

what happens in the world of business where you

1:14:34

have actual checks and balances and accountability. They're

1:14:37

talking to somebody who's literally

1:14:39

entire job is making things

1:14:41

up. Yeah. Apart

1:14:43

from this, this part of my job,

1:14:45

which is talking shit, my whole job is talking shit and

1:14:48

making stuff up, which was also Billy McFarland's

1:14:50

job. Let me please be the

1:14:52

first to say that ideas are

1:14:54

the most overrated resource

1:14:58

in any creative or any

1:15:00

endeavor. That we have sort of like

1:15:02

over valorized the idea of the idea

1:15:04

person to the point where it

1:15:07

makes absolutely no fucking sense. Like it's

1:15:09

like, I don't

1:15:12

even really speak to my own sort of like life, obviously. I'm

1:15:14

trying not to be self involved here, but like me,

1:15:16

I've written six, now seven. Seven!

1:15:19

The reason any of them have

1:15:21

sold any copies is not because I had

1:15:23

a great idea for any of them. All

1:15:25

of those ideas were achievable by other people.

1:15:27

When they are written down to two or

1:15:29

three sentences, they are basic. It's like a

1:15:31

combination between like work ethic and knowing

1:15:33

your marketplace and knowing your peers and like

1:15:36

knowing, like and doing all the bits of

1:15:38

work that aren't just like having an idea.

1:15:40

It is the most boring and least valuable

1:15:42

part of a process. One in every hundred

1:15:45

years, someone comes up with fucking cold fusion

1:15:47

or whatever. And like then everything changes or

1:15:49

like splitting the atom. Really

1:15:51

those ideas are quite rare. And the

1:15:53

idea that people think that like people are just having ideas

1:15:55

and then that's all and then they just hand them off

1:15:57

to somebody else to a reliable team. pam

1:16:00

off a load of money off them, and then they just

1:16:02

simply make it happen, and then we valorize that person at

1:16:04

the top with the quote unquote big idea. Right? Well,

1:16:07

I think even with spitting the atom, like you can't have

1:16:09

the idea for it. Yeah. You know,

1:16:11

Leonardo da Vinci thought you could probably fly, but no

1:16:13

one did it for several hundred more years. Yeah. It

1:16:16

takes work, and it takes, and that's why Elon Musk is shit

1:16:18

as well, isn't it? It's actually very, because we're in an interesting

1:16:20

week for Elon Musk right now. What's he up to now?

1:16:22

Oh, his daughter coming out and chatting shit about him, or

1:16:24

more? Or more, well, so the thing that's happened most recently.

1:16:26

Which I mean, not chatting shit, but chatting absolute sense about

1:16:29

him. And incredibly valuable, and

1:16:31

it's just great to see, and I want to-

1:16:33

Sensible high-fiber shit. Texted to my dad. But

1:16:36

I haven't seen what she says. She

1:16:39

basically just absolutely character assassinates him in a

1:16:41

quite hilarious manner. Well, that's what happens when

1:16:43

you have a ton of kids and you

1:16:45

don't spend time with any of them. But

1:16:49

he is Twitter,

1:16:52

or ex, which I will never

1:16:54

call it. No, it's gonna. Twitter

1:16:56

is suing, is basically taking

1:16:58

a class action suit against the biggest

1:17:00

advertisers in the world, because they said

1:17:03

that them not spending money on

1:17:05

Twitter, like post-Musk

1:17:07

taking over, turning it into a platform just for

1:17:09

hate speech, that it

1:17:11

was illegal boycotting. And

1:17:13

that they're suing them for not spending on

1:17:15

Twitter. And he said something

1:17:18

like, we tried the easy way and now

1:17:20

it's war. Oh,

1:17:23

phenomenal. Phenomenal. Because of course he's

1:17:25

very much one of the proponents

1:17:28

of unregulated capitalism, because

1:17:30

the market must decide. The

1:17:32

market must decide. The market must decide

1:17:34

that I was born with emerald minds in the family. Well,

1:17:36

but the whole thing is like, we don't regulate and

1:17:38

we don't want balances and we

1:17:40

don't want taxation because good

1:17:43

things will happen and people will put the money where the

1:17:45

good things are. And then when they would refuse

1:17:48

to put the money in bad things, suddenly they

1:17:50

don't feel quite the same about it anymore. Suddenly

1:17:52

you want to be a socialist about it, like,

1:17:54

hey. Yeah, suddenly when the market decides that

1:17:56

Twitter is a piece of shit for advertising,

1:17:58

which I probably shouldn't say. Which it always

1:18:00

was. But when the market decides that it's

1:18:03

not a brand safe platform and that it's

1:18:05

not a place that many people now want

1:18:07

to put their advertising. Now

1:18:09

yeah, now it's all like, oh no, but

1:18:11

I deserve to have adverts. Because

1:18:15

they do. Well, everyone gets some adverts, right?

1:18:18

No. Say something like, okay,

1:18:20

this might be straining far from

1:18:22

the beaten path, but I

1:18:26

can forgive my dad and your

1:18:28

dad's generation for believing in the myth of meritocracy. Because

1:18:30

at least they're... Because the idea... It worked for them. It

1:18:32

worked for them in a sense and like their idea that like, oh, you know,

1:18:35

if you just work hard and

1:18:38

you're smart and conscientious and like the right people find their

1:18:40

way to the right positions and

1:18:43

people who are poor are therefore lazy. I'm

1:18:45

not saying that my dad and your

1:18:47

dad believed this specifically, but like the...

1:18:51

There are certainly a whole generation of people who

1:18:53

do. Oh, 100%. And I can so believe

1:18:55

why they believe that because of the marketplace of ideas they were growing up

1:18:57

in and

1:19:01

the kinds of people they saw around them, the

1:19:03

kinds of presidential and sort of diplomatic people and

1:19:05

whatever, and sort of, I guess, dignified millionaires, I

1:19:07

suppose. But

1:19:10

now that we are in the world of like dystopian, like

1:19:17

hideous, shit-talking billionaires who are

1:19:20

so like classless

1:19:22

and dumb, how

1:19:24

can anyone still believe in the idea

1:19:26

of meritocracy? I don't

1:19:28

know. Right? I

1:19:31

think, as my therapist often

1:19:33

says, denial is a very

1:19:35

powerful coping mechanism. And

1:19:37

sometimes when the world does not look

1:19:40

how we think it's going to look, we

1:19:42

do have amazingly selective brains that just choose

1:19:45

to ignore huge swathes of information. Yeah.

1:19:48

And it's remarkable. It's

1:19:52

remarkable. Which is exactly what happened to

1:19:54

these people in this documentary. Yeah, they

1:19:56

could see that it was all going

1:19:58

very wrong. and they chose

1:20:00

to ignore all that information because it did not

1:20:03

tally with their pre-existing belief that Billy Mofallan would

1:20:05

be good. Yeah. And that he would

1:20:07

go do good by them and do

1:20:09

right by them and not

1:20:11

renege on his promises. Well there was a part

1:20:14

where our friend Andy

1:20:16

said, you know, I thought

1:20:18

of, in the weeks, in the days coming off the festival,

1:20:20

or I thought it was Woodstock, and about how nobody talks

1:20:23

about the traffic and the mud

1:20:25

and people dying of drug overdoses. Everyone just

1:20:27

remembers this enormous cultural event that like shifted

1:20:29

the consciousness. And

1:20:32

like, the idea that you would be telling yourself that

1:20:34

lie. Yeah, the idea that you'd be using that and not

1:20:36

also looking at the ways in which the world has changed

1:20:38

since then. For example, there

1:20:40

was no Instagram at Woodstock. Yeah.

1:20:43

Yeah. There

1:20:46

was no Instagram at Woodstock. And I

1:20:49

think for me one of the most beautiful moments of this

1:20:51

whole documentary was what I'd like to call

1:20:53

My Kingdom for a Sandwich. That person

1:20:55

being like, all that investment they'd put in

1:20:57

marketing, all the many models and influences and

1:21:00

famous people, who'd posted a sort of like,

1:21:02

I don't know,

1:21:04

beigey orange square. Yeah.

1:21:07

To my fire festival, all taken down by

1:21:09

that one guy with 450 followers posting

1:21:11

a cheese sandwich. Just,

1:21:13

yeah. Isn't that

1:21:16

crazy? It was lovely. And that

1:21:18

really adds to the Greek myth of it all

1:21:20

as well. The

1:21:22

tool that made you is the tool

1:21:25

that breaks you, you know? Oh,

1:21:28

the firing of all the caterers and

1:21:30

then just the little sandwich. The little

1:21:32

cheese sandwich. The little cheese sandwich. Which

1:21:34

in many other circumstances I'd actually find

1:21:36

fine. I'd do that cheese sandwich, but

1:21:38

not at fire festival. Not at fire

1:21:40

festival, no. I keep

1:21:42

thinking about that moment as well when they

1:21:44

drive all the guests in the school buses

1:21:46

to that lady's restaurant. I

1:21:49

think she called Mary Ann. Mary Ann. Yeah. She's

1:21:51

great. She's great. And I do think

1:21:53

she's talking about, yeah. Very winning presence. And the way that

1:21:55

she just is like, okay, I'm just going to try and

1:21:58

make this work. And she has so much, like... pride

1:22:00

in what she does and understands very much

1:22:02

the kind of potential long-term consequences of this

1:22:04

festival being a success for her and for

1:22:06

like everyone who lives on the island. And

1:22:09

the way that, like, you know,

1:22:12

the victims in this are

1:22:14

not actually the festival goers. Like obviously

1:22:17

they are the victims of fraud. The

1:22:20

true victims are the people of the island,

1:22:22

many of whom worked for a month unpaid.

1:22:25

And I think this is something like a quarter of a million

1:22:27

dollars worth of unpaid wages. By

1:22:30

the time the festival exited. Which

1:22:32

feels like a real under estimation

1:22:35

because they had like so many

1:22:37

people working. So many people, yeah. And those

1:22:40

people probably did not have

1:22:42

recourse to class action lawsuits with Stacey, the lawyer

1:22:44

from New York. And

1:22:47

just a real bit of structural racism going on there

1:22:49

as well. We'll touch on that. Yeah, it

1:22:52

almost feels like colonial. It did feel like it

1:22:54

is. It did feel like that, yeah. And

1:22:58

there was this bit that Marianne says where she is

1:23:00

such a small part but where she's like towards the

1:23:02

end of that country she's getting quite upset. Like you

1:23:04

can tell this has really stirred up a lot for

1:23:07

her and like how... Because she paid her stuff on

1:23:09

like Fire Festival. She paid them out of her own

1:23:11

savings and her own life savings. And

1:23:14

she sort of said like I have to live

1:23:16

here. I have to live with these people every day,

1:23:18

you know. This is a

1:23:20

real community kind of thing and I can't, even

1:23:22

if I don't want to, I can't not. And

1:23:25

so that's my life savings wiped out. And it really gave

1:23:27

me a sense of like, you

1:23:29

know, all these other marketing professionals and

1:23:32

events producers and whatever, they can just

1:23:34

start again everywhere, anywhere, whatever. They can

1:23:36

basically wipe a year off their LinkedIn

1:23:38

and start again. I think lots of them are also in the

1:23:40

hole for like $200,000 they said. Yeah,

1:23:43

they just like put stuff on their credit cards and

1:23:45

then left them with it there. Which is awful and

1:23:47

like obviously, but like the idea

1:23:49

that like, I don't know, it's something really

1:23:51

interesting about like the people who are allowed

1:23:54

to pick up and start again. Yeah, versus...

1:23:56

Blue cans. Like, and also don't want

1:23:58

to because this is their home and their plan. Yeah,

1:24:00

exactly. And she did so much work

1:24:02

and she fed all of the crew

1:24:04

members for weeks. And just, I'm

1:24:07

so glad that a crowd-funder was raised for

1:24:09

her. Yeah. And I hope that the other

1:24:11

people who are working on the island, because,

1:24:13

fucking hell. It does go to

1:24:15

show you, I think that people often try and

1:24:18

characterise the internet and social media as being wholly

1:24:20

good or wholly bad things. And it's a bit like saying

1:24:22

music is wholly good or wholly bad. It's just like a

1:24:24

form of, you know, a form of

1:24:26

expression. And it's the thing

1:24:29

of like within the fire festival, there are both the, the

1:24:32

sort of the nightmarish qualities

1:24:34

of the internet, but also the great

1:24:37

many fantastic things that come with it as well,

1:24:40

such as the memes. Crowdfunding

1:24:43

and memes. Oh my

1:24:46

god, the memes were phenomenal. Yeah, they

1:24:48

were so good. We just sat there

1:24:51

shrieking our way through that section of

1:24:53

the thing. They never grow old,

1:24:55

do they? I was promised arugula. And

1:24:58

like, yeah, the thing of like, people

1:25:01

talking about the internet as being like, oh, the internet went

1:25:03

crazy or the internet is that. The internet

1:25:05

is made up of people. And people

1:25:07

thought many different things about it. Many

1:25:10

of them thought it was quite funny. Because

1:25:13

it was funny, it was funny and

1:25:15

also not funny. It could be both things at

1:25:17

once. It was clearly an absolute tragedy for, I've

1:25:19

actually completely forgotten the name of the island. Yeah.

1:25:21

X something. Exuma? Exuma, I think so,

1:25:23

yes. We think we call it twice and I have

1:25:26

a bad memory for names. Tragedy

1:25:28

for that island and for the people living there. And

1:25:32

quite hilarious for people who like memes about

1:25:34

rich people getting cheese sandwiches. What

1:25:37

else did you write down in your notebook? Great question. I

1:25:41

wrote Chaver,

1:25:45

mindset. Because another

1:25:47

unsung hero of this documentary was the man who

1:25:49

for no apparent reason made it his mission. No

1:25:51

reason at all. He just was like, I hate

1:25:53

Billy. And I will take him down. And I

1:25:56

was like, I like you. We

1:25:58

would be friends. He

1:26:00

literally he was like some guy who

1:26:02

just seems to know him professionally or maybe worked tangentially with

1:26:04

him and he was like Yeah, this seemed like pretty

1:26:06

fishy to me and whatever it didn't seem like

1:26:09

they had the infrastructure and whatever They did some

1:26:11

interesting crops on the website. It's it so I

1:26:13

flew to the eye I

1:26:15

was like that is the Javert mindset that we

1:26:18

need to see more. It was amazing the way

1:26:20

he was just like, yeah, I Want

1:26:23

to understand all all cops are bastards unless

1:26:25

you're being Javert against Billy McFarland I

1:26:28

want the backstory of what went down between them

1:26:30

that he had this big of a grudge Because

1:26:33

we really benefited from this grudge. Yeah,

1:26:35

it's sizable But I bet he was the

1:26:37

one paying whoever was wiring the company meetings

1:26:39

as well Oh, yeah, he was a

1:26:41

fully he was fully the person who got the mole on

1:26:43

the inside. Yeah Okay,

1:26:47

let me do a reverse I Personally

1:26:51

test on there is how trusting a you'd

1:26:53

question. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, which is so

1:26:55

we know from the earlier test that I

1:26:57

am Highly trusting your height

1:27:00

trusting But

1:27:02

we know from your life that you are

1:27:04

highly competent And so if

1:27:07

you were somehow found yourself as like a

1:27:09

brand strategist marketing planner director or

1:27:11

whatever for Billy

1:27:14

McFarland at fire festival

1:27:16

you were hired. Okay, let's paint a picture What

1:27:18

was he spending his belief because I've somehow taken

1:27:20

this job. Yeah, I've taken this job. I've taken

1:27:23

this job You were hired in 2015. Mm-hmm. You

1:27:25

have since had a couple of promotions right, there

1:27:27

are some problems with the app, but ultimately it's

1:27:29

a cool app and Trying

1:27:31

work environment as we know it is a trying work

1:27:33

environment. You live in New York. Let's say

1:27:35

you're on a visa Mm-hmm, and it's been sponsored by

1:27:38

the company. That's in jeopardy in there and And

1:27:42

and Billy comes to you saying Jen we

1:27:44

need you on PR team for

1:27:46

a while you've been doing on this part of it and

1:27:48

they're doing this part of it and you're like great PR

1:27:51

What do you need and he's that well, we're going to a festival. Mm-hmm

1:27:53

and you're and you say How

1:27:57

are you doing that festival and he

1:27:59

says don't worry about it What I

1:28:01

need from you is some branding. What

1:28:06

do you do then? Oh my god, what

1:28:08

do I do then? Well it's actually interesting because I suppose 2017

1:28:11

me and 2024 me are different people in

1:28:13

some way. So maybe 2017 me would

1:28:15

be less of a

1:28:17

jaded, cynical, calcified grump at work

1:28:19

as I sometimes am although I'm

1:28:22

actually quite happy and charming in

1:28:24

my day to day life. I love when

1:28:26

you add like professional caveats. I

1:28:28

mean genuinely I think most people think I'm quite fun to work

1:28:30

with but I hope I find out.

1:28:35

I now, now me. Jen, ask for my

1:28:37

email earlier. Are you good to be on

1:28:39

the brand planning team? Billie,

1:28:44

I have some significant concerns from what

1:28:46

I've heard already from the team internally

1:28:48

about this In inverted commas

1:28:50

at the fire festival, specifically

1:28:53

about the lack of infrastructure available to

1:28:55

actually deliver the festival. I

1:28:58

feel like I wouldn't be doing right by

1:29:00

you as your brand strategist and

1:29:02

now for some reason publicity head

1:29:05

if I were to not advise you to

1:29:07

at least do some feasibility and logistics checks.

1:29:10

Jen, totally understand your concerns Jen.

1:29:12

This is all in hand with

1:29:14

our production team who are already

1:29:16

on site on the island. What

1:29:18

we need from you is just great ideas and an

1:29:21

amazing brain of yours. I would love

1:29:23

first of all Billie to do that. I

1:29:25

would love to do that and I'm

1:29:27

excited by this great opportunity to prove

1:29:29

how much I enjoy working at this wonderful

1:29:31

company, Fire. Obviously

1:29:34

as you know the best branding and the

1:29:36

best ideas comes from a deep product or

1:29:38

service truth and it would be

1:29:40

really helpful for me if you could perhaps share

1:29:42

some key proof points about what will

1:29:44

be happening. So some specifics, I'd love to

1:29:47

see some imagery, who

1:29:49

are the brands I'll be working with, who are the

1:29:51

sponsors on the ground. Jen,

1:29:53

let me interrupt you. I have Kendall Jenner on the

1:29:56

line and she'd like to talk. Do

1:30:00

you really, Billy? I do. She will

1:30:02

be coming to the Bahamas. Would you like to come?

1:30:06

Yes, no. No? No, I would not

1:30:09

like to come. Really

1:30:11

enjoying this roleplay of just bullying you. Okay. I

1:30:14

think shortly after this, I go out

1:30:17

with some friends and I say, I think

1:30:20

my job might be a scam for

1:30:23

a money laundering fraudster. Even

1:30:25

though my visa depends on it, I think I might have to quit my

1:30:27

job. And they go, that's dumb. And I go,

1:30:29

no, I think I'm right. And then I quit my job and I'm fine.

1:30:32

Wow, you have great faith in yourselves. I do have

1:30:34

faith in myself. I trust my gut. Good for you,

1:30:36

man. I mean, it's been

1:30:38

a short game of the Game of Fire. Yeah, listen.

1:30:41

But I actually do think we have a good board

1:30:43

game on our hands here. I think we do. Yeah,

1:30:45

are you? Yeah. Yeah. So

1:30:48

in this brute rally, you are shipped

1:30:50

back to the UK? I'm shipped back to

1:30:52

the UK, but then imagine how delighted I am

1:30:55

when I see the headlines coming out of Fire Festival. Yeah. And

1:30:58

imagine how I then absolutely dine out

1:31:00

on that story for months. Would you, OK, would

1:31:02

you allow yourself to be contacted for the Netflix documentary?

1:31:04

For 100%. Not

1:31:08

only that. But they probably cut it because you got out so

1:31:10

early. Whereas I would allow myself to be contacted from

1:31:12

the Netflix documentary, but I would like get the whole

1:31:14

thing because I was actually there because of my trusting

1:31:17

nature. What if? What

1:31:21

if because I've thought that maybe some weird shit

1:31:23

was going down, and I've, I don't know, downloaded

1:31:25

all the files to Dropbox and all my emails. Oh.

1:31:29

Because I feel like, one, I need to have a paper trail in

1:31:31

case anything goes really badly wrong. That's very you of you. It is.

1:31:34

And two, I just think there could be some hot

1:31:36

tea in it later. Have you

1:31:38

done that with the client before? No. OK.

1:31:41

You obviously, if you've got difficult things to say, you make sure

1:31:43

it's an email so it can be found. But

1:31:45

I've never been in a situation where I've been like, oh, this

1:31:47

is so bad that we need to... But

1:31:50

I'm telling you now that I would if I felt like there

1:31:52

was going to be some. But also, I don't, I mean, I

1:31:54

don't work for those kind of shops. No, that's true. I'm

1:31:57

going to pass that time. OK, well... Lovely.

1:32:00

Basically, we've discovered that I

1:32:02

am incredibly untrusting and

1:32:04

cynical. And unswayed by quote unquote

1:32:08

charming ideators. I

1:32:10

think I've got an innate and deep and

1:32:13

seetered distrust of authority. And

1:32:15

men. And indeed, again, like you,

1:32:17

the thing which causes me trouble is also

1:32:19

the thing that saves me. That's

1:32:22

true. There are plenty of opportunities where the fact that I

1:32:24

am not like, yay, this is a great idea, does not

1:32:26

work well for me, but there are also a lot of

1:32:28

people who are trying to change what it does. And

1:32:31

I think we've got to play to our strengths. That's fine,

1:32:33

maybe this is true of everyone. Yeah, I think everyone's got

1:32:35

that thing. That's why we're the pony in the terrier, you

1:32:37

know? Like

1:32:39

I really don't like to be swayed by

1:32:41

other people's opinions. I

1:32:45

think that's nice, it's strong. I'm

1:32:47

not even worrying that I'm a terrible person

1:32:49

and everyone hates me. No! That's

1:32:52

my job though, to be like, no, I think that's

1:32:54

wrong. You escaped Billy's cult, I guess. I escaped Billy's

1:32:56

cult. Yeah, I really think

1:32:58

I escaped Billy's cult. Do you think the Fire

1:33:00

Festival workspace was a cult? Yeah,

1:33:02

fully, had all the energy. It's

1:33:04

like he'll start saying family, bad times. When

1:33:06

people start referring to their colleagues as their

1:33:08

family. You could also, I could just see

1:33:10

the people scurrying around stairs, there were videos

1:33:12

of them in the office and it

1:33:15

had, they were just that energy that you know is bad. Awful.

1:33:19

But again, it's the Sun Cost Fallacy. If you

1:33:21

haven't been paid, I can totally see it's very

1:33:23

hard to walk from things. Especially

1:33:25

those festival producers who got 70% of

1:33:30

their fee on day one. Yeah. They were

1:33:32

supposed to. Yeah, see I've never worked for a

1:33:35

little tiny start-up. Yeah. Mainly

1:33:37

because I think you have to suspend disbelief and sort of

1:33:39

embrace cult. Yeah. And

1:33:42

I don't think, I, it's

1:33:48

not for me, it's not for me, Caroline. Maybe

1:33:50

you would actually. Well no actually, because I was in a

1:33:53

cult. Actually, as I

1:33:55

said I was like, oh no. And

1:33:57

I did get out. But you did walk away.

1:34:00

Well, yeah, we're talking about thepool.com. I know

1:34:02

we are, yeah. Which, for listeners, which is

1:34:04

a women's media website that I worked for

1:34:06

for several years, and in many ways, you

1:34:08

know, just jump-started my career, and

1:34:11

is part of the reason I was like, you

1:34:13

know, able to build a platform of readers, which

1:34:15

is fantastic. They also scammed everybody out of their

1:34:17

money, stopped paying people, and the lights were turned

1:34:20

off. Yeah. And the,

1:34:22

yeah. You

1:34:24

cut your losses and walked. I cut my losses

1:34:26

and walked before it went that way, because the

1:34:28

vibe was turning. See, actually, see, there is a

1:34:31

bit of that in you, too. Once the vibe

1:34:33

turns, you gotta get it. So,

1:34:35

but I was still freelancing for them, so I was two

1:34:37

and a half grand in the hole. Jesus, yeah. But I

1:34:39

know some people who are seven or eight grand in the

1:34:41

hole, you know? So.

1:34:44

Yeah. And none of the people who were responsible

1:34:46

have ever really come to justice about it, and. They

1:34:49

sort of should. Yeah. Well.

1:34:53

So I feel like this has been,

1:34:55

actually, a very revealing documentary for us

1:34:58

both. Yeah. We've revealed

1:35:00

more about ourselves than we have

1:35:02

about Empire, yeah. And my

1:35:04

work prospects, which are probably even more greatly

1:35:06

reduced than they were before. You're

1:35:10

not going anywhere. Hire this disagreeable woman.

1:35:13

She'll tell you you're wrong. Just

1:35:15

Billy McFarlane's gonna reach out for Fyre Festival 2,

1:35:18

and I think that's fine. If he did, gosh,

1:35:20

I'd have a lovely time. I really hope that.

1:35:22

I actually think they had a podcasting tent and

1:35:24

they invited us. Okay, would

1:35:26

we go? Maybe. Yeah, maybe we would.

1:35:29

But we'd go knowing full well what to expect. I

1:35:33

think, I feel like, oh, the only

1:35:35

other person I really wanted to mention, just briefly, I

1:35:38

can't remember his name, but the one, the

1:35:40

other good man in this documentary, that little

1:35:42

fucking gen z'ed-er, who was 22, 23 years old. Oh,

1:35:45

I loved him! He was left to book stuff, and

1:35:48

he was just like, this is nuts, there are no

1:35:50

toilets. And he clearly was in that mode

1:35:52

of, when you are 22, 23, you've got nothing to lose, you

1:35:55

haven't got life savings, you haven't got any other jobs.

1:35:57

But he could clearly see it for what it was.

1:36:00

very beginning and I admire that strength of character.

1:36:02

Yes, he seemed very, yeah I admired him

1:36:04

too and like all but also I think

1:36:06

that what happens to people at that age which

1:36:08

is that they're told that work can

1:36:10

be hard and chaotic particularly if it's

1:36:12

like creative or you

1:36:15

know attached to entertainment and

1:36:17

then they're like expected to they sort

1:36:19

of take more than they should. Yeah

1:36:22

but I think I bet that that's been a real like

1:36:25

tempering like a sword in the fire moment

1:36:27

for him. I think he'll go on

1:36:29

to do great things. I've no idea in

1:36:31

what small avenue I don't think they become

1:36:34

famous but I think in whatever thing he

1:36:36

does yeah the experience of fire festival will

1:36:38

have forged him like a like a fine

1:36:41

steel blade. And I think that's true of

1:36:43

almost everybody on the documentary. Yeah, well not

1:36:45

all. What makes it a compelling documentary

1:36:48

and worth revisiting is that these people

1:36:50

do seem very legitimately changed

1:36:52

by the experience not in the sense that they're

1:36:54

rocking back and forth in a dark and ruler

1:36:56

so like deeply it's not like a cult thing

1:36:58

where yeah oh these people that are fucked it's

1:37:00

more like it's kind of the thing

1:37:02

you almost prefer to see in documentaries which

1:37:05

is like they probably still have their family and their

1:37:07

jobs and like things are different materially

1:37:09

a little bit but mostly it's something that's

1:37:11

happening inside. Yeah. I feel

1:37:13

like we really got an insight into. They

1:37:15

went into the fire. Yeah, they went to the

1:37:18

fire. And to kind of return to your

1:37:20

beautiful metaphor from the beginning of this podcast

1:37:22

of the rabid dog in the distance running

1:37:25

towards you yeah and then running

1:37:28

past this is a story of rabid

1:37:30

dog runs right into you

1:37:32

and licks you in the face yeah knocks you

1:37:34

over and there's something just quite and the owner

1:37:36

of the dog is like he's really a

1:37:38

bad boy. Don't worry. Wow. Yeah. Well

1:37:42

listen I have newfound

1:37:44

respect for anyone who puts on a festival. Yeah.

1:37:47

I hope I was just talking about wilderness earlier on because I

1:37:50

really had a great time. I had a great time. I know

1:37:52

I already had quite a lot of respect people who have festivals

1:37:54

on but now I'm like no it really is. A hard job and

1:37:56

they did a great one and I loved it. All

1:38:00

the orange ones. It

1:38:03

was such a good time. It was a good time, wasn't

1:38:05

it? Let's do it again sometime. OK,

1:38:08

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