Luke

Every town, yeah. Fucking snake oil salesman.

Yeah.

That's the summer.

That's a fantastic joke.

Sure.

7, 22, 43.

All right, this one's from rarepimpfatfeatherless.com.

Current balance.

For you, which is bad.

You're my best friend.

Delicious.

Against you.

Not against you.

1997.

Wait, don't open the big one. I just said the little one. I just said the little one. These fucking kids don't listen nowadays. Fucking brat. You want to ruin Christmas? I guess that might be a little bigger.

That's not true.

Okay. 19...

Problem gelöst.

That hits good.

I can't get it.

Oh, whoa, whoa.

Trees dead. Ha, ha, ha.

This whole thing's a setup.

I got it!

Jesus Christ.

Love it.

Great.

Fuck you.

$17.99.

That's so fucking disgusting.

Selective cities.

$2,000 for an evasive driving course.

6, 6.15.

That's a 10-hour drive.

Eight hours, 20 minutes.

But you only get like 75 cents on those games.

They kind of had a famous racket, though, GameStop.

Playing life on hard. Yeah.

That's how they get you.

We were somewhere.

They're toll booth operators represented in union, yeah. Okay.

You know the playlist I'm talking about. I love the playlist. I don't want to hear Oreo whatever all day, all right? Oreo chaffer?

Are you holding anything?

I get to see the light on. iPhone full volume. I can hear all the Star Wars.

It's like you're selling Spotify right now.

Nobody ride for free. Gas, grass, or ass.

68.

Serene Lakes, Tahoe to Reno, Nevada? Yeah. 48 minutes. That's it?

It's in Tahoe National Forest, and then it gets you right to Reno, man. Do Serene Lakes, California. I'm in Serene Lakes. 38 minutes. What? Yeah, Reno's right over the border, man.

36.

You can go to Canada's Wonderland. I'd like to do the reverse. Yeah, that's their Disney theme park. Is it an actual Disney? No.

What about you, Twinkle Toes? Like 750.

I got Route 66.

AMX, baby. I think that's our card.

Yeah.

When I was like eight. You peed on them? Yeah, I was peeing. I remember me and my brother peeing in a bottle. Money or something? All the time. In a bottle? Yeah, in the car. I mean, we did it enough, yeah. We did it so much. I just weirdly remember that. And then you get scared when it gets to the top.

I don't think they sell them at Wawa. I can get them on Instacart.

Sure.

$2.50.

$10?

If you're in the right state, for sure.

Oh, dude.

I was worried when we were first doing car trips. He's great.

About 25 hours and 47 minutes. Jesus, dude. It went by like it was five. God. Over 1,500 miles. Woo! My dad in a Dodge.

Nah.

93.

97.

224 million.

Box office, 224. Budget was 75 million.

That's a nice return for the studio.

Google users is 84. Yeah, it is. It's mostly me.

Supper is typically described as a lighter, more informal meal eaten at home, while dinner often implies a larger, more formal meal.

Check Urban Dictionary. Yeah.

For sure. Dinner is sometimes the midday meal and supper being the evening meal. No shit. I think that's where you were wrong, people were saying.

Or nightstand or something. I thought you were playing stump. I don't know what that is. You have a hammer and you flip it and then you have your own nail. What, me and my wife in a frat party? What the fuck? It's a drinking game. Yeah, no.

Saving $150.

Yeah, you get cheaper ones. You should be selling them.

All donuts are not the same.

A couple of crawlers.

Gold bar. 50 pounds of loose change would be worth $600 to $800. That's not bad.

Luke? That's not what I'm telling you. Yeah. It is. And the green patina actually protects the copper from further erosion. So that's why they leave it.

Rocky Road gum. What do you got? Took about 30 years. Really? To go green.

What was the closest you've ever been to the Statue of Liberty? Houston Street?

All right. How many condiment bottles are too many if you're living in that studio setup?

It's true, but dorm style setup.

No, it wasn't. Hotcakes are pretty big.

Yeah.

Okay.

Buffalo Bill over here.

So much better.

So good.

I love it. A good chain of those. Oh, a nice link.

Man.

Steve Winwood.

He had a run in the 2010s.

Drank in my cup, keep it trill, work something.

This is a different Kevin.

It is. Whoa! Two-hour session for $8. That's pretty good.

The Guess Who? The Guess Who? The Guess Who? Off the album Wheatfield Soul.

Hall & Oates. Oh.

Luke, how do you make foie gras? Well, you need to stuff the bird first with a bunch of stuff. That's what I do. Stuff my bird all day. You need to stuff it with a bunch of all the stuff that's in it.

No, I was looking it up.

Give me a second. Because it's the liver. Well, you have to force feed it to abnormally grow the large liver.

You love my parents' charcuterie board. Is that right? Always.

Gross.

I don't even.

Eating goose. This is fucked up. They just feed them an incomplete diet, so they would just die off, the birds themselves, because they're so nutritionally lacking.

But they're slaughtered so young, it doesn't matter. Jesus Christ.

Damn.

Yeah.

That's what Rogan has on his watch all the time. Yeah, they do, like, wearable tech. Exactly. So it's like smartwatches to, like, big to run. Like, a lot of runners use them because they do all the Apple Watch tracking.

Because then it's easier to steal if you can screenshot it.

Also for AirPlay on Apple TV.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They're near the coast, but crocodiles can live in the ocean and some can even travel long distances by sea.

It's more in Costa Rica and Africa, I think.

Either one of them joints.

What are you going to do with the wood? Where were you two when they told you that?

They told you? Who told me?

Did you see the scars on him?

You still on the Sharks? No, I'm on Superhead now. Karrion Steffens.

Karrion. K-A-R-R-I-N-E. Steffens. Superhead. Yeah, she came out with a book.

They also got deals for like Uber drivers. You can get a discount on a car. That's pretty good. Yeah, it's interesting.

What? What do you got? I mean, no dishwasher. Rinse in hot water. Soak in hydrogen peroxide. Air dry. Store properly. Replace regularly.

Get out of here. A little Scooby snack.

S-A-B. Smoke a bowl.

Some of them seemed, I looked at like junior high, high school. Some of them seemed a little on the easy side.

All right, let's do it. Let's get into it. All right.

And then we're going to, Luke's going to read it out, and we're going to find out who got it right, who got it wrong. You can hold it up to the camera.

I'm bad at, I thought I'm pretty not great. I've gotten, I used to pride myself, not pride, but I was always a good speller. I'm, the technology's ruined me.

I might have to take a couple of whacks at it.

All right, I think I might be good.

I mean, we've got to have a clock. There's got to be a 10-second clock on it. It's just going to be him going, shit, fuck, shit. All right, I'm locked. Pen's down. Locked. Pen's down.

I missed the second S in the middle, that double S. Is there a double S in the middle? Yes. Let me see. I had the one S.

Getcha.

I got it.

All right, hold on. All right, I think I got, let me cut out my workarounds. Yep. Okay.

I know.

H-A-L-L-U-C-I-N-O-G-E-N. I thought it was hallucinogen.

I might fucking run away with this.

You found the list. And these are harder than the ones I saw. It's also like, you see, I was looking at the, like, just generic list. And you see, you go, oh, these are easy. But then when you have to actually write it down without fucking spell check, a little bit of ABC check.

Fucking bullshit. That wouldn't have got you there. Nah.

I don't have a corporation.

Ready?

C-O-R.

I think I'm close.

Yeah, I think I got it on my first take here. I got it. Okay.

Let me spell this one.

We got to... Should we grade this on a curve a little bit?

I just watched that again. Rude. Well, how can we make this a little, you know,

Wait, no, I got an idea. Long division. You can... All right, here's the idea. On the... Do it like Jeopardy, kind of. You get to wager up to five points on how confident you are. Okay. You know what I mean?

Well, you didn't ask me. That's a funny way.

All right, there, babe.

That's where you missed them.

Arachno.

Yeah, well, I mean, I'm trying to Google it.

Arachnophobia. Oh, fuck me.

I don't know. Is there a hyphen in there? No. One word. Is there a Y? There is a Y. Okay. I don't know. You might take it on this. Do you want to raise your points on this one?

But you can only bet two. Jerry Mander. You only have two points, but we're not going to penalize you, but you can only bet what you have.

Ugh. I'm only betting one.

That was fucking nuts.

Yes, it is. This one's tough.

I think I got it.

You ready? That's not it. No? I'm sorry.

Like I caught you going through someone's panty drawer.

You went back to elementary school there, big guy. Let me see what you had. Let me take a run at this. Let me see what you had. You're coughing all over yourself. We got to get a fucking humidifier in here.

Have a sip of water. That little Indian kid that passed out. Travis, cut through a video of that.

Hold it up. I have it crossed out. I can read it. Oh, that's pretty... Let me see. Yeah. Yeah, that's it. I think that's it.

How about I get me a look at a gazebo off to the side or something? Cooler beers in there? No.

You're like that kid from Big Daddy. I'm the fucking delivery driver.

You got the kid gloves, yeah. Fucking playing with bumpers on. Nine to four still.

Big money, big money. Playing coach pitch. Get the tee out for this kid. Remember that? I was bad in coach pitch. If you couldn't hit it, they had to bust the tee out after like four or five.

No, I'm not. No, I'm not. I got to. What do you want me to do?

14.

I'm icing them out. Give them the Cincinnati shift.

Making the bills. Hey, why don't you give me a fucking Cadillac right down Broad Street?

We have now entered...

Neither did I, but you got the other one.

Yes. Makes me think of Princess Di. Ooh.

Why, what happened?

Where's she from again?

You said this the other day. Being hot and Italian.

That Angela Rigatoni.

Okay.

Yeah. Yeah, a little math. Jazz it up a little bit. I don't like this sound.

Smoke me like one of your doobies.

No.

25 years. Yeah. Came back to me pretty good. Any more brain busters?

Okay. All right. Fair enough.

And we'll do four big words. Okay. Four tough ones. I got one. And here's the thing. Make them tough. Tougher than the ones we had before. Okay. Caveat. Kippy coming in. Changing the rules.

Sure. So it's a scale. Sure. You have to get kind of close.

Because if one of us gets it wrong, you're taking the choice of how many letters you got right or wrong.

Fuck.

Hippopotamus. Hippopotamus. Okay, so what is it? Potomus.

Fuck. Also, just strategy. Don't go adding letters if we're being awful at it. All right, yeah, damn.

I'd like to buy a vowel. Con-sequent-ly.

Okay. All right.

No, but it's anybody that asks Foley something, they're bad. I'm catching a rash. No.

You're what? Plus two. So you have four.

Well, you know how to spell central, right? How do you attack this? Okay, pause. How do you attack this? This? This one specifically. D. Okay. How do you attack this? D's nuts. It's just, this is like school for you. You give up and start fucking around. Giving me a ration of shit.

Tell me shit. I'm going to be a rock star. I don't need to spell this fucking word.

I don't know. The guy's got bad butt. I don't know.

That's wrong.

Here, ready?

Okay. All right. I'm sorry. Maybe you had mentioned it, and I apologize.

Yeah, you're treating me like I'm the goddamn help out here.

I thought you spelled that wrong for a second. Henry. This is my friend. Hold on. Would you prefer?

Well, don't make me do this. I don't know. I don't know. Put me at whatever table works for you. Apparently, it's your day.

Is that for Kevin? You guys are dancing. You guys are doing your sweetheart dance. Are you doing a sweetheart dance?

Well, it's a nice day for a lot wedding.

We talked about this.

Like a long-came poly.

Get up, yeah. Bar with the bar, bang, bang, diggy, diggy.

I think he listed three to begin with.

Okay.

I just find it weird that I haven't been asked.

Yeah, right. I don't know. He works with me. He cuts the clips or something. You're telling everybody.

Mainly the homies. What are we talking about here?

Hello. It's nice to meet you.

It is my wife's. We are in my daughter's closet. You guys did the impossible. You got my daughter to clean up her closet.

Just so I can talk to you.

It is an impossible task, as you probably know that.

I have two, just like you. I've got a ninth grader and a seventh grader, so I'm a couple of years ahead of you.

They are. Where are you at, Hal? I am in Lloyd Harbor, New York. It's on Long Island. Oh, how far from the city? About 40 miles or so.

I'm on the north shore of Long Island. Montauk's on the south and all the way out east. So it's a good hour and a half, two hours from here.

Exactly. Although I'd say where we are is pretty Edenic as well.

Oh, you can set the fuck out of the stage, Hal. All right. This is about 2002. I'm a couple years younger than you, Dax, but basically the same age. I was in law school. It's our second year. And if you know anything about how law school works, after your first year, which is super intense, you try and get an internship in the fall of that year for the following summer.

And so my friends and I, we all got our internships. So this was spring break of our second year of law school. And we're feeling pretty good. We're less stressed. We want to blow it out. So we book a cruise and it's for spring break. So it's on a party cruise line. For me, this is a big deal. I didn't get to go on many vacations growing up. I was on loans.

Do you want to sing a tune or something? Or a theme song? Oh. Okay, great.

That hurt a lot. I didn't realize that was going to be a thing until the end of the cruise when you get that bill. I get really sick the week before. It's a couple days before we're supposed to leave, and I don't think I can go. I've got fever. I can't swallow. I've got congestion. I'm just horrible. My buddy describes it. He came over to drop off a sandwich for me so I could eat.

And he said he opened the door and it smelled and felt like death. So it was basically that kind of situation. He immediately drops the sandwich and basically runs out. He goes and calls my other friend. And you know when you have that friend who's kind of like the party guy, the motivator, the guy who's going to get you to go and do something? He was that guy.

And he called me up and just gave me some tough love. He's like, you're going. There's no chance you're not. Fix yourself. So I go, I grab some antibiotic. And it kicks in about a day and a half later. I'm feeling a little bit better. If you take antibiotic, those labels on it tell you no sun, no alcohol. No cruises, basically. Cruise may be not the best choice, right? But I'm good to go.

I'm going. We get to the cruise. You get on the first day. And if you've taken a cruise, you're going to go up to the top and you're going to watch it disembark.

We're taking off out of Miami and we're going down to the Caribbean. So we're going to hit like St. Thomas and St. Croix. Classic cruise. On the Carnival Cruise Line, so the classic cruise line as well. So we're up on the top and we're watching it leave and we've already got our first boat drinks in our hands. But remember, I'm not supposed to be in the sun and I'm not supposed to have alcohol.

And first day, I'm out on the deck drinking alcohol and in the sun. I didn't realize this, but you don't feel the sun on the cruise, right? Because you get all that wind from how fast you're going. So it feels pretty cool even when it's hot. But you see my pigmentation here. I am not somebody who tans easily I burn almost immediately, which started to happen.

But I realized I said, all right, I better put some sunblock on. And at this point, I'm in that phase where I've had enough drinks where I think I'm pretty good at everything. So I start putting my sunblock on. I think I've got good coverage. But the next day I wake up and clearly I had just smeared sunblock kind of down the center of my chest. Oh. And now I've got the worst sunburn I've ever had.

And I think Wobby Wob has a picture.

And it's a really flattering picture, too. It's everything you want. We'll get to where that picture takes place because that's two or three days later. Oh, wow.

I've got a beer in hand again. And at this point, you know that, first of all, my friends are giving me so much shit. I'm also the guy on the cruise who has this ridiculous sunburn. Right. And so everybody's starting to know me as that guy with the sunburn. It also hurts, right? So I have to kind of shield myself from sun wherever I can. I'm in the shade. But two days later, I'm okay.

I'm going out. It hadn't blistered yet. It hadn't started peeling yet because that happened later. But we get to the beach on, I think it was St. Croix at this point. And... We're feeling good. We're on the beach drinking a beer. You know, we start chatting up this group of women. We go into the water. This is all going super well. I'm feeling good. I'm in the water. I'm out of the sun, right?

It's not hurting anymore. My antibiotic has taken care of everything it needs to take care of. And I'm talking to this pretty woman. This was long before my wife. And I stubbed my toe. In the water? In the water. Oh.

And it hurts, but I try not to think anything of it. And I just keep chatting up this woman and it starts to hurt some more. What is this? This really hurts. Now I'm kind of walking away from her and my buddy's chatting her up. And I pick my foot up out of the water, kind of trying to see if there's anything there, holding my toe.

And my friend looks at me and says, what's all that black stuff on the bottom of your foot? And I said, I don't know. And then at that point, pain sets in like I've never felt before. I am writhing around. I'm screaming. Now I'm also scared because I have no idea what this is. So I started trying to get out of the water.

It's a stinging, searing pain.

So I go hopping out of the water. And if you've ever tried to get out of the ocean on one foot, it's actually really hard. So now I'm like army crawling up the beach. My buddy tells me later that one of the girls I was talking to says, oh, does your friend always cry this much?

I get up onto the beach. I'm holding my foot. I'm still kind of screaming about it. And a guy walks by and he looks down at my foot. He said, oh, yeah, you stepped on a sea urchin. So I had kicked a sea urchin and it was... It's extremely painful. I don't know if you've ever done that or have heard of anybody.

Yeah. So you found out that you kind of just let them dissolve.

So I'm with my buddy. He's that overachiever. He's a doctor and a lawyer. And he was ER trained. So he says, I'll go back with you to the cruise ship and see what they'll do for it. Because the guy that walked by said, I have to get him taken out, which, as you know, is incorrect.

So I'm waiting in the taxi. He's also the person who's going to give you the most shit about anything and loves to tell stories. So he's telling everybody on the beach what happened to me. And then we go to the cruise. They told me I don't take any of them out. So then I just limped around for the next few hours. So that's sort of the end of sea urchin part.

Now there's a third part to this. So I think I'm in the clear. I'm starting to feel good later on. And I'm like, all right, no more mistakes. Nothing's going to happen anymore. I'm sitting at a table in a bar. Another one of my friends comes over with a couple of girls and they sit down and we're just chit-chatting away. And I lean over to say something to her and I put my hand behind her chair.

And now I feel something in my hand.

And so I pulled my hand out and it's covered in splinters and it's bleeding. It's everywhere. But now I am at a point in this cruise where I can't show any pain. I can't do anything that's going to bring any more attraction. So I kind of just hide it away. But I wasn't fast enough because my friend saw it. And he then goes, jumps up and goes and grabs all my other friends. Oh, my God.

They come and look at me so that they can then have another laugh at my expense for the rest of the time.

Yeah, it was just beat up on the back and I didn't know it and just bad luck.

Yikes. They probably have over the last 25 years.

It was tough. Thankfully, nothing else really happened on the rest of the cruise that was bad, but it was enough that I took shit for the rest of the time. We repeated the cruise the next year. Thankfully, nothing happened.

I'm not that slick. Maybe I could have played it better and played it up a little bit. But I didn't play the pity card very well. Oh, wow.

Oh, let's not say that. Oh, okay, great. Okay.

Okay. It was still a fun cruise. And it was still spring break. You know, things happen. Great, great, great, great.

Net win, and I'm talking to you guys. So that's a definite positive. And actually, Dax, I thought we weren't going to hear from you guys on this story. And then I heard from Emma. I was in White Lake, Michigan. No! It's the first time I've been to Michigan in maybe 16 years or so.

I didn't know that, but one of my good friends from growing up lives there. We see each other fairly often, but I had not visited him there. Emma reached out when I was actually visiting him for the first time in 16 years. Does he live on the lake? He does not. His in-laws do, though. Okay.

Totally. I think if it happened now, I would kind of take it like you do, Dax, and say, oh, this is going to be a story one day. At 24 years old, I wasn't taking it that way. I took it pretty hard during the trip. So if you don't mind, my family's waiting right out there. My older daughter was the one who encouraged me to submit for the prom. So they'd love to get on and meet you guys. Absolutely.

Oh.

How about this? Would you want to go back to talking online? I'm better online. Oh, there we go. That's an idea.

Okay. Okay, guys. I could do that.

Look, my friends are my best interest. And if you don't see that, then I don't know. Maybe you don't deserve me. Good.

Okay, fine. That's cool with me. I thought that would work. Have fun with the other Luke then.

Listen, Claire, I apologize. I honestly, I would actually like to go out with you again.

She's really hot, though, and I'm telling you, man, the online dating scene is rough. Okay.

Second Date Update.

Y'all, this is great. I haven't felt this welcome in a long time.

Oh, I don't want to pat myself on the back, but she's pretty hot. I had to riz it up.

Or would you want to be more vague with us about it? Well, she asked me, like, what I was up to, and I'm like, I don't know, saving a cat from a tree, no big deal. Oh.

Yeah, it got a laugh. It got a laugh. Oh, okay. And I told her a couple other things, like, oh, I had to deliver the cat to an orphanage.

Don't give away my trade secret. Okay.

Trust me. I was as shocked as anybody else that she actually gave me her number and showed up to the date. I was expecting to eat sushi by myself. Oh, okay.

I love that. Yeah. We went to sushi, and she's pretty hot in real life, too. I thought I might have been catfished, but nope.

regular stuff you know we talked about like enjoying like hiking and work nothing too fancy but okay i gotta imagine my riz must not have been as good in person as it was online because she hasn't been calling me back that's interesting because you i mean just talking to you in this amount of time you seem like a fun playful like good personality type of guy yeah don't forget good looking and uh yeah i'm gonna come clean now i don't want you guys to tell her this but

I actually brought a friend to the dinner with me.

Kind of, yeah.

No, but look, look, you got to think smart about this. It would be weird if just one dude was sitting by himself at a table next to your table. Oh, you couple.

Trust me, she did not know. Girls always know.

No, I didn't think so. I mean, listen, all I would do is if I felt like I was kind of running out of some riz, there was a little bit of like a lull in the conversation, I'd just...

No, no, no. No, you're just on your own. Okay. It's just me for now.

Mine was also for safety. It was for conversational safety.

Which is equal in my eyes, I think.

I went four times. Oh, no.

It's a big deal. I mean, it seems helpful. It fueled me up. You know, I went back out there and kept making her laugh.

And how did the date end? It was a little kiss. It was a little peck on the cheek.

At this point, I kind of feel like if I don't get a call back, we all lost.

Second date update.

They were like, yeah, man, she's all about it.

No, no, that's what they told me after the date.

Oh, no, they weren't in the bushes. They were in their car in the parking lot.

I know. I appreciate that, and I appreciate them. I really want you guys to do whatever you can to help get me the second date, and if you could, please don't mention that my friends were there. I don't want her to know that.

A little eavesdropper over there. Lukey there? Oh, my gosh. I cannot believe he said that. What an idiot.

I... Oh, my God.

Listen, I'm sorry. You're really attractive and you're really cool and I was just nervous and I wanted to have some buddies there to kind of just help me with the date. I'm sorry. I didn't tell you. I thought it would be uncomfortable and weird. So those guys were like your training wheels.

I guess you could say that.

It would have helped us if we had known your parents were there.

Well, I kind of set it up like a performance restaurant kind of thing. They were just there to help.

Uh, okay. Lisa... Did you not like Macklemore?

When I was singing, did I have the music up a little bit too loud? Because I wanted it really up high for energy. Good question.

I'm going to pop some cash. Hey, what's up with that voice? So enthusiastic.

That was a little too harsh for you to ask me. What if I play a different Macklemore song?

Luke, you're in a better place though now. Leave it up to him. Yeah, I am better now. I didn't think it was going to be that big of a deal, but I am not going to make that mistake ever. Okay. That's good.

And lately I've been trying a new strategy. I try and let the person know who I am. I mean, because if they know who I am, then it'll be a lot harder to ghost me. At least I would think.

I mean, because you know how, like, first dates are.

Well, one of the things that I like anybody that I'm dating to know is that I used to be in a band.

Yeah, I mean, I try and do like a funny lead up into the day and give them hints about my musical talents.

I mean, that's not really fun. I mean, there's no mystery behind it.

Okay, so what I did at dinner when I was with her was that I drew a picture of a microphone on a napkin.

Oh yeah, that could be rude. It wasn't like I was completely ignoring her. I mean, you know, I can walk and chew gum at the same time.

Um, she didn't really say anything. She just kind of gave me a look.

I tried to put, like, dots on the top of it to show it was a microphone. Okay.

No, I didn't want to blow the surprise, honestly.

Pictionary. You're right.

So then later on, I played something for her on the jukebox, a little Macklemore. I'm going to pop some tags.

Thrift shop. I don't want to hear that song.

Well, I thought it would be, but I just kept telling her, do you like this? Do you like that?

Oh, no.

Okay, well... We finished our drinks and I was like, I have to take you somewhere for dinner. Do you trust me?

What did she say? She said no.

She got in my car anyway.

Where'd you go for dinner? I drove her to my place, and, you know, I had dinner there waiting. I also had my karaoke set up.

Oh, this is another hint.

So I wound up singing the Macklemore song to her while she ate.

Okay.

She did clap after the song.

Um, no.

When I was driving her home, I did try one more hint, and so I did try and play another surprise song, which was Macklemore again.

I mean, I really like thrift shops.

I probably should just follow through.

Wow. You're not far off.

Yeah. Hey, Lisa.

Hi. For the record, it is my place. It's just that because we were already out, I asked my parents to make dinner and have it ready. No. So how else was I going to make sure that everything was ready for you? Okay.

I didn't lie. They have a cue to my place and they come over and make dinner all the time. Oh, that's nice.

y'all it's luke from texas and let me tell you what i fucking had it with i fucking had it with men just in general trying to be overly macho and as a gay person it just pisses me the fuck off but now i just decided i'm just gonna start fucking with them so i was talking to this one guy one of my friends and he was like We were talking about our favorite foods. And he just goes, oh, I love sushi.

And I was like, oh, that's pretty gay, you know. And he's like, wait, really? And I was like, yeah, chopsticks are so cunty. So that's just what I'm doing. And it's the best way to cope, in my opinion, because now he was like, oh, thank you so much. I'm just not going to be eating sushi anymore.

But how fucking stupid do you have to be to just not eat your favorite food because one person told you it looked gay? But that's what I've had it with. Y'all have a great day.

Das ist das erste, was mir in den Kopf kam und dann bin ich direkt dorthin geflogen. Aber was war die Neun? Die Neun war die eine, die ich hatte.

Dass es nichts auf dieser Insel gibt, oder was auch immer die Geschichten waren. Dann sind die Leute auf der Insel damals einfach verrückt. Ist das das, was ich verstehe?

Okay. Interessant. Nun, was haben wir verpasst? Was haben wir verpasst?

Auf jeden Fall, auf jeden Fall.

Ja, interessant. Ja, meine Meinung geht in vier verschiedene Richtungen jetzt. Aber die Pyramiden, wo sind sie und wann wurden sie gebaut?

Es hatte ein Interieur?

I guess that we know about.

Ja, diese Mäuse, die in Florida existieren. Luke hat darüber gesprochen. Wir werden darüber sprechen. Er wird in ein paar Wochen zurückkommen. Wo existieren die? Und ich denke, sie könnten überall in Florida sein. Und wenn sie existierten und ein Entwickler die Lande verkauft, dann würden sie das einfach zerstören und wir würden nie wissen, dass sie existierten, richtig? Ja, ja, ja.

Und ich bin mir sicher, dass das jahrelang passiert ist.

Nun, wir müssen dich loswerden, Mann. Du hast einen Plan, den du fangen musst. Okay, ja. Ich habe Spaß gehabt.

Ja, es war eine tolle Gespräche. Es war ein Vergnügen, dich zu treffen.

Sehr gut. Wir werden dich auf den Weg bringen. Wir haben es wirklich geholfen. Wir haben deine Zeit geholfen und ich habe viel gelernt.

Okay. Du hast das Carbon-Dating erwähnt und dass es über 100 Instanzen gab, wo das Carbon-Dating immer wieder zurückkam. Wie wird das gemacht? Und ist es überhaupt möglich, dass das irgendwie falsch ist?

Ja, also keine Angst, dass dort Menschen lebten, während dieser Zeit. Ich meine, wir wissen das, aber ich glaube, die Frage, die wahrscheinlich für viele meiner Publikationen ist, okay, das ist großartig. Wir wissen, dass wir diese Strukturen haben und sie verabschiedet wurden und das ist wahrscheinlich akkurat.

Aber ist es möglich, dass es Menschen auf dieser Insel gab, du weißt, tausende Jahre vorher, dass wir einfach die Strukturen nicht mehr da sind, du weißt, es gibt nichts zu Carbon Date. Könnten die Statuen ein Teil der vorherigen Gruppe von Leuten sein? Haben die Statuen getötet? Nein, ich glaube nicht, dass wir Statuen getötet haben.

Ich meine, während der Eiszeit, mit Gletschern, die viel mehr von der Norden-Hemisphäre beobachten, wäre das Band um die Äquator, das prime Real Estate für das Reisen, wenn man eine Gruppe von Leuten hätte, ich sage nicht eine globale Zivilisation, aber eine Gruppe von Leuten, die sich auf einen technologischen Niveau eingeladen hätten, wo sie komplexe Boote machen könnten und die Fähigkeit haben könnten, um zu fliegen, und die Astronomie nutzen könnten, um sich zu navigieren und so weiter.

Why is that a stretch of the imagination?

Yeah, it's difficult when you go back too far in time to really, you know, to say much of anything with any kind of, you know, definitiveness.

Wann war das letzte Mal, dass es aktiv war?

Yeah, one of the more interesting things, you were on Graham Hancocks second season of Ancient Apocalypse in the Americas. And really, really cool. I want to get into the Maya calendar and the math, the system of math that they use. It was fascinating for me. But one of the interesting things that Graham brought up was, was Bananas?

Möchtest du ein bisschen Hintergrund und Vorstellung geben, wer du bist und was du tust?

Well, yeah, I thought that was a fascinating conversation.

Und das ist ziemlich interessant, weißt du, wie, wie, ich glaube, die Wand da auch, die, die Wand, die genau wie die Wände sieht.

Und wir finden den gleichen Stil in Südamerika, in der Cusco Valley, überall. Was ist die Erklärung dafür? Ich glaube, wir haben Theorien, nicht unbedingt eine Erklärung.

So what are the possibilities? So I mean, it's basalt, right? So that wall is made out of one of the... Yeah, I'm a terrible geologist, but I think they are all basalt. Yeah, that wall is definitely basalt. And that's one of the hardest stones on the planet, of course. And it's just, it looks... Es ist wie ein 7, glaube ich, auf der Moe-Skala. Und die Moei-Statuen sind vulkanische Asche, richtig?

Also, ich meine, viel, viel leckerer, leichter zu schütteln und zu schneiden.

Leicht zu machen, aber es funktioniert nicht mit Basalt. Also es ist wie, wo, wie ist das überhaupt möglich? Wenn es nicht... If the dating is right, it's just that one for me jumps out as like, you know, and Ryan's pulling up the, you know, Sacsayhuaman, same thing, looks like it was done by the same people, you know, or the same technology at least.

Ja, es ist schwierig. Es ist schwierig. Ich meine, ich glaube, die Sache, die diese Wälder von Dingen wie Schuhen und Häusern und Ceramiken unterscheidet, ist, dass wir wissen, wie Schuhe und Häuser und Ceramiken gemacht werden. Guter Punkt. Guter Punkt.

With the lack of mortar, the basalt.

Ja, ich denke, viele Leute, mit denen ich gesprochen habe, versuchen, einen offenen Kopf zu halten. Wie könnte das möglicherweise gemacht werden? Und ich denke, viele Leute, wenn wir erkennen, dass wir nicht wissen, wie es gemacht wurde, sagen viele Leute, Das bedeutet nicht, dass es Aliens sind. Das bedeutet nicht, dass es Magie ist. Und natürlich nicht. Und niemand sagt das.

Ich denke, wenn es einen Punkt gibt, dann ist der Punkt, dass wir einen offenen Geist behalten. Und das ist, warum ich dich und deine Arbeit so liebe. Es ist, weil du einer der mehr offenen Geisten bist. Und das ist das, was ich...

Ich freue mich wirklich auf dich und deine Arbeit und die Art und Weise, wie du dich führst und wie du dich umschlägst, als du einige dieser unglaublichen, unglaublich alten Geheimnisse besuchst. Aber für mich ist es so, dass wir natürlich nicht zu Extraterrestrialen springen werden. Natürlich werden wir nicht zu etwas springen, das nur Magie ist.

Aber wenn wir dort springen würden, würde das viele Klicks verursachen, würde es nicht?

Ja, ja, ja, ich meine, alte Aliens, du weißt, aber sie sind essentiell, sie fragen Fragen, natürlich, du bist Teil dieses Shows.

Ja, ja, ja. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So, you know, I think we just got to be open to like, you know, what are the possibilities? Could a lot of this stuff be a lot older than we think it is, you know? I for one sure hope so. I hope so too. Yeah, I mean, you know, I think it's just, I feel like we don't know much about anything and, you know, a lot of people oftentimes speak in terms of,

Like, no, impossible, can't be done, or yes, 100%, this is how it was done. And those are the people, regardless of what side they're on or what their belief is, because a belief or a negative belief is the exact same thing. It's the exact same thing, you know, to say 100%, I know how this was done, or to say 100%, it wasn't done this way, is a belief. We really don't, you know, we're just...

Wir vermuten. Das ist alles, das ist wirklich nichts. Das ist nicht die Realität. Also, eine offene Meinung zu behalten und zu sagen, ich weiß nicht, weißt du, ich denke, das ist eine Teil der Brillanz. Ich glaube, ich denke, einiges von dem, was du darüber sprichst, weil du dir bereit und offen sagst, wir denken, du weißt, das ist so, wie es gemacht wurde, aber... Shit, man.

It could be a hundred different things that we're just not thinking of. And for me, those walls are one of those big ones that's like, gosh, that's a huge mystery. And to just try to keep an open mind on who did it, when did they do it, how did they do it, those are the questions. It doesn't feel like we really know the answer to that.

Das ist zumindest mein Ziel. Und was ist es mit dem neuen Map, das anders werden wird? Der Ort ist noch nicht gemapert?

Wirklich? Ja. Ja, ja. Also gibt es keinen legalen Weg, das zu bekommen, um Samples da zu bekommen.

Wenn man sich das anschaut, und für die Leute, die nicht wirklich wissen, worüber wir reden... Oh, da ist eine wirklich gute Frage.

Ja, ich habe ein paar Videos genommen.

Oder ist das dein Video? Ja, ich habe ein paar Videos genommen. Ich glaube, das ist mein Video. Ryan muss es uns erzählen. Aber es sieht aus, als wäre es meine Frau. Okay. Ich habe viele Videos genommen, weil es so offensichtlich wurde, dass all diese Wälder, ich meine, wo auch immer du geschaut hättest, und es war nicht wichtig,

If the stone was andesite, if it was basalt, if it was granite, if it was limestone. You see that red tint right there. That's exactly what you're talking about.

wall bulges out but that i mean yeah that looks like traveling it's it's everywhere that orange reddish stuff right there is everywhere in between the seams of all of these rocks in the sacred valley i mean between cusco machu picchu alante tambo you know you go to any of the small the smaller sites that are kind of off the beaten path and you look to see any time the rocks have have separated um and you look in where where the rocks used to be touching

Es hat dieses orange-redige Filament.

Ja, sie sehen alle so aus.

Ja. Nobody pecked that. No, no. And the thing, you know, the hammer and chisel theory, which is, I guess, the theory that we're operating under today. Yes, it is.

Right. And sure, that's possible, I guess, you know, but it seems very unlikely.

Ja, das ist vielleicht das Vandalismus-Video, das Ryan aufgenommen hat, ist das richtig? Ja, ja. Oh mein Gott. Das ist vor zwei Tagen. Sie brach ihren Hammer, oder er brach seinen Hammer auf dem zwölfseitigen Stein.

Es sieht aus wie eine Frau, aber ich glaube, es war ein Junge. Aber ja, sie wurde verhaftet.

Okay, ich sehe ein paar Wurzeln da, aber ja. Also das Interessante an diesen, und wieder zurück zu dem, wie sie potenziell mit Acid hergestellt wurden, ist eine Möglichkeit. Ich bin mit dir. Ich denke, für mich ist das die wahrscheinlichste Möglichkeit, wie diese hergestellt wurden. Ist das, wo du bist? Ja, ja. Ich bin auch.

Aber es ist die gleiche Bautechnik, egal wie hart der Stein ist. Es zeigt einfach, dass sie es in der gleichen Weise gemacht haben, auch wenn es Leimstein war. Sie haben es in der gleichen Weise gebaut, wie sie es mit diesem Andesit gemacht haben und sogar mit dem Basalt, den wir auf Rapa Nui sehen.

Aber das Interessanteste für mich, wenn ich diese Steine schaue und diese Steine fühle, war, wo sie zusammenkamen. Wenn du sprichst, dass du diese Dinge knusselst und knusselst, damit sie perfekt zusammenstehen und dass sie auf jeder Kante verabschiedet sind und du hast einige Steine, die an einem 90-Degrees-Anglein wenden, aber wo sie zusammenkommen, wo sie tatsächlich zusammenkommen,

Das ist super interessant, denn wenn sie mit einem Hammer und einem Schlüssel geformt wurden, dann würde man erwarten, dass man auf der Innenseite Indentationen sehen würde, wo die Steine sich jetzt bewegen. Man würde erwarten, dass die Remnanten von diesem Hammer und diesem Schlüssel funktionieren, aber das gibt es nicht.

Sie sind komplett flach, sie sind komplett sauber, sie sind komplett verpolstert. Wo man die Remnanten des Hammers sieht, ist auf der Frontseite. Man sieht in vielen Fällen diese kleinen Indentationen auf diesen Dingen,

Ja, die rektangulären, die kannst du perfekt sehen, wie sie die Puffigkeit mit dem Hammer und der Schüssel verklemmt haben. Und so siehst du all diese kleinen, kleinen Löcher, aber du siehst sie nicht, wo sie sich bewegen. Und für mich, wenn sie von Hammer und Schüssel gemacht werden, siehst du sie, wo sie sich bewegen.

Und das ist einfach, das schießt das Hammer und Schüssel-Ding fast komplett aus dem Fenster. Ich bin offen zu jeder möglichen Erklärung, wie es gemacht wurde, aber es scheint einfach so unwahrscheinlich zu sein.

Richtig, richtig, richtig. Bringen sie neun zurück. Ist das es? Oh yeah, that is it, that is it. Yeah, I told you Ryan's a genius.

Got in trouble. He was there the same day I was.

Yeah. Yeah, it was... Entschuldigung, es war die, äh, die, die, ich meine, du hast diese orange-grüne Sachen überall zwischen den Ecken gesehen, aber, aber wo es wirklich für mich herausgekommen ist, war, ähm, überall. Aber, aber, aber einer der Spots war, äh, die, die, äh, die, die Tempel der drei Fenster. Ja. In, äh, Machu Picchu. Machu Picchu. Ja.

So anyways, it looked like an earthquake had separated two stones, and Ryan, you might be able to find this one, but the stones on the Temple of the Three Windows were massive. They were eight feet tall and six feet wide, just estimating from memory.

Oh, ich liebe diese. Aber wenn es Lichen war, ist es super einfach zu sagen, dass das Lichen ist. Wir testen das, wir sollten das sofort wissen können. Aber man kann es nicht entfernen. Man kann da sitzen mit dem Fingernaht und versuchen, es zu entfernen. Es geht nicht irgendwo. Es ist auf dem Boden. Es ist wie ein Teil der Steine. Es ist so tief eingegrenzt.

Ich kann mir vorstellen, wenn man es mit Metall entfernen würde, würde man eine schwierige Zeit haben. Es ist sehr viel... Es ist ein Stoff, anstatt eine Oberfläche.

Ja, wir bekommen ein Bild für dieses Episode und du wirst sehen, was genau passiert.

Wie in dem kleinen Mann, den du gesehen hast. 100 Prozent. Und es sieht so aus wie das rote Zeug, das wir ein paar Minuten vorhin gesehen haben, auf dem Wall.

Genau, genau. Ja, das ist für mich, Mann, es fühlt sich einfach wie die wahrscheinlichste Möglichkeit an.

Ja, es hätte natürlich irgendwo hervorgehoben. Ancient Architects hat ein wirklich gutes Video, von wo sie es vielleicht bekommen konnten. Und es ist von etwa fünf oder sechs Jahren her, aber es ist er, und er verurteilt sogar, dass es nicht seine originale Theorie ist.

Ich meine, wir sprechen über eine Theorie, die manchmal zurückläuft, also ist es nicht so, als wäre das ein neuer Art von Theorie, aber er hat einen wirklich schönen Job gemacht, wo sie es bekommen konnten. Was war also seine Theorie? Ryan would have to pull it up to find it. I haven't watched it in about a year.

But basically that the acid was obtained from naturally occurring geological processes.

Yeah, this is a video that is worth watching if you're interested in the acid theory, because I think this probably does the best job of summarizing how it could have been done.

We should be exploring all possibilities and the hammer and chisel possibility is so ridiculous, it seems like, that's so unlikely anyway for me that it's like, you know, we have to explore other possibilities.

Ein bisschen auf der Straße. Auf der Heide? Auf der Heide, ja. Es gab eine aktuelle Erfindung. War es eine aktuelle Erfindung oder war es nicht eine aktuelle Erfindung aus deiner Perspektive in Bezug auf die Tunnels, die unterhalb des Cusco-Valleys zu Sacsayhuaman gehören?

Und so würde es von woher aus gehen?

Und wir sind sicher, das sind Sieger-Systeme.

Es geht um den Wasserverbrauch. Es geht um den Wasserverbrauch. Es geht um den Wasserverbrauch.

Und was ist der beste Ausgleich in Bezug auf die Geschichte von Rapa Nui und die Zeit davon und wer es in welchem Zeitpunkt in diesen Häusern besitzt hat? Wann haben sie existiert?

Okay, verstehe, verstehe. Interessant. Okay. Zeit wird sagen.

Wäre das Wasser trinkbar gewesen?

Was sind die größten Geheimnisse für dich in dieser Welt des Heiligen Waldes? Sacsayhuaman, Cusco, Machu Picchu, das ganze. Was sind die größten Dinge für dich, oder die größte Sache, die völlig unerklärbar ist, die dir in den Kopf kommt?

Das macht total Sinn. Ryan, nimm mein iPad für einen Moment. Ich möchte zurückgehen. Das ist ein Video, das ich in Elantetumbo gemacht habe. Und so ist das Quarry. Das ist, wo wir denken, dass alle die... Oh ja, du bist auf der Topf.

Yeah, so they got all of the stones from on this mountain, right? That's the best theory that we think that it came from over... That's what the books say.

Proximity. So where is it on this image? Is this it right there?

Yeah, yeah, right. I couldn't see it when they were trying to point it out to me.

Ja, es ist einer dieser Dinge. Also, der Rock wäre... Die heutige Erklärung, die beste Theorie, die wir haben, ist, dass der Rock von dieser Berge abgeholt wurde, dass er von der Berge heruntergebracht wurde, dass er über einen Krieg ging, der in dieser Gegend irgendwo ist, dass er über diese flotte Gegend gedrängt wurde und dann auf diese zigzagge, windige Straße ging und dann platziert wurde.

So that would have come down there. And then this is the road.

Or just totally misunderstood. That's... Also, diese hier sind hier, weil sie nicht auf dem Rampen gekommen sind und die Zivilisation auf dem Rampen geblieben ist und sie auf dem Rampen geblieben ist? Möchtest du diese Erklärung mögen?

Ja, ja. Und dann würden die Steine hierher gebracht werden. Aber das ist, wie sie aussehen. Oh ja. Das ist, wie groß diese fricken Steine sind. Ich meine, das ist... Und wiederum so tief. So tief. So tie it together.

Right, right. Incredible. And all these are so, and it goes all the way up, you know, but these are just absolutely incredible.

Yeah, oh yeah, yeah.

Ja, eine der besten Erklärungen, oder eine der neuen Erklärungen, die jetzt für die Nubs erforscht werden, ist, dass sie verwendet wurden, sie wurden verwendet, als in einem Rennsystem, das aus der Quarie kommt. So that a lot of those like cart ruts that you see, that are basically unexplained at this point, cart ruts are generally found near quarry sites.

And so the theory is that these nubs would sit in the cart ruts and that's how these large stones would be transported.

Es gibt zwei Knöpfe.

Ja, ich habe nicht versucht, das zu entfernen, wie es auf den Fronten von diesen ist. Aber ich habe versucht, die orange Substanz zwischen den Steinen an verschiedenen Orten zu entfernen. Und es ist nur ein Teil des Rocks. Es ist wie, es gibt keine...

Eine der Dinge, die Luke mich wirklich fasziniert hat, ist die Olmec-Zivilisation. Und ich möchte auch über die Maya sprechen. Aber Olmec kam zuerst vor der Maya. Was wissen wir von ihnen?

Was ist es also, was sie dann unterscheidet?

Okay. So, I guess my question is, you know, when I ask what differentiates them or what separates them, like, so religion, you know, being one thing that makes them different, but the Olmec didn't call themselves the Olmec, right?

Richtig, richtig. Wenn du eine Gruppe von Menschen hast, wenn du Leute hast, die heute über Südamerika und Zentralamerika leben, und sie lebten in kleinen Wäldern oder Städten oder was auch immer, oder sogar in großen Wäldern oder Städten, und ein Städtchen kämpft mit dem nächsten Städtchen, der mit dem nächsten Städtchen kämpft, der mit dem nächsten Städtchen kämpft, weißt du.

Aber sie nannten sich nicht die Olmec. Die Maya, glaube ich, nannten sich die Maya, richtig? Nein. Nein, okay, okay. Warum separieren wir sie dann in diese einzelnen Gruppen? Waren es nicht nur Menschen, die in einzelnen, einzigartigen Städten und Städten leben?

Und was hat sie gemacht? Also, die Maya nannten sich nicht die Maya. Und du hattest diese individuellen Städte, die oftmals mit den Städten, die auf der Straße waren, handelten. Sie haben oftmals mit den Städten kämpft, kämpften mit den Städten, die auf der Straße waren.

Warum bezeichnen wir das heute als Zivilisation, eine Quote-unquote Zivilisation, wenn sie nicht zu... Ihre Identifikation war wirklich in der Stadt, in der sie lebten, und der Leiter, der König, den sie in dieser Stadt hatten. Aber es war nicht so, als wäre es eine zivilisierende Zivilisation für sie, oder zumindest scheint es in meiner Meinung nicht zu sein, von dem, was ich von ihnen verstehe.

Es waren mehr individuelle Städte und Städte, die von dünnen Mengen von Wald und Wald und Und die Kommunikation würde manchmal freundlich sein und die Kommunikation würde manchmal wütend sein. Aber wir schlagen sie in diese Gruppen von Menschen ein und nennen sie die Maya oder wir nennen sie die Inka oder wir nennen sie die Olmec oder was auch immer wir sie nennen.

Aber ist das wirklich ein fairer Weg, all diese Menschen zu betrachten? Oder ist es wirklich mehr so, dass es nur Menschen waren, die in separaten Gemeinschaften und separaten Städten lebten und von einander lernen und mit einander handeln, aber auch nur versuchen, zu überleben.

Aber ist es nicht ein bisschen anders als Griechenland aus dem Grund, dass Griechenland Alexander der Große hätte? Sie hätten von einer Person regiert. Sie hätten einen Ruhm und in jeder dieser Maya Städte hätten einen individuellen König. Ich verstehe es, dass einige der Stadtstädte größer waren als andere.

Und in diesem Fall gibt es zwei große Maya-Städte und sie entscheiden, wir gehen in den Krieg, wir werden kämpfen. Und alle Menschen, die geografisch nahe an ihnen sind, werden in diesen Krieg gedrängt. Aber es gab keinen Supreme Leader für die Maya-Zivilisation, oder?

Ja, interessant. Und wir kennen viel von dieser Geschichte, glaube ich. Oder wir haben Theorien über die Geschichte und die Kriege und so weiter.

Ja, das ist interessant. Also, ich meine, wir bekommen all diese Informationen von Hieroglyphen, die auf Stein geschrieben werden, ich glaube, richtig?

But it's got to be hard to piece this story together, you know, from really understanding the true history. I mean, history is written by the winner, of course, you know, it's written by one person. I mean, we're only getting a fraction of it. We're getting a fraction of a perspective and we're attempting to...

um eine Kultur, eine Gesellschaft und einen historischen Zeitraum zu verstehen, nur aus einer so geringen Anzahl an Informationen und Daten. Und es sind nur ein paar Dinge, die auf ein paar Steinen geschrieben wurden. Und wir kreieren diese ganze Geschichte, und es ist unser bester Wunsch, und ich verstehe, es ist eine Theorie und es ist das, was wir wissen, aber es ist so,

Es fühlt sich nur so an, als ob wir es überprüfen. Es ist theoretisch, es ist unser bester Wunsch. Es gibt so viele Leute, die es als Fakt überprüfen. Das ist so, wie es war.

Und wir wissen, wer diese Leute waren.

That's fantastic. Love it, love it. Gut, dann kommen wir zu Maya in einem Sekunden. Aber ich bin auf dem Weg nach Olmec gegangen und bin dann auf der Seite geflogen.

Help me out though, if the Maya didn't call themselves the Maya, then why is Maya or Mayan correct? Exactly, it's all academic stupidity. Got it, got it. So the Olmec then, I mean, what do we know? I mean, do we even know that the Olmec were the people who created the massive Olmec heads? Absolutely.

Es gibt so viel zu lernen dort unten.

Und das ist der Grund, warum du es mapierst, um zu sagen, wo diese Wälder waren, wo die Menschen lebten, was sie gemacht haben.

Großartig, absolut großartig. Also all diese Dürre wurde einfach gebaut?

Luke was telling me about the, uh, that, that, that the Olmec heads were, were brought from the known quarry, which I guess is known and nothing's really known. Right. But, but down a river on a, on a raft boat. And you did some math on this, on these rafts that they were using and that there's no way that they could have supported the weight of these Olmec heads. Is that, what's the story?

Right, right, right. So, percent chance for you, percent chance from zero to 100%, what is the percent chance that the Olmec heads could be 12,000 years old? More than 5,000 years old?

Aber man kann die Basalt-Hände nicht karbonisieren.

But what if the head was from a completely different culture that existed prior?

Ja, ja. Also ich meine, es gibt verschiedene Möglichkeiten. Es könnte von der Olmec kommen und du sagst, das ist eine 99% Chance.

Ich weiß nicht, was ich nicht weiß. Ja, sicher. Aber die Beweise dafür sind wirklich nur, weil wir wissen, dass die Olmecs existierten. Wir wissen, dass die Leute in der Zeit der Olmecs existierten. Sie nannten sich nicht die Olmecs. Wir haben sie einfach so genannt. Aber wir wissen, dass die Leute existierten in der Zeit der Olmecs.

Und deshalb betrachten wir diese Hände diesen Leuten, weil wir wissen, dass die Leute in dieser Zeit existierten. Aber das ist es. Ich meine, das scheint, das scheint nicht 99 Prozent für mich zu sein. Das scheint, du weißt, es scheint, okay, wo würden sie dann herkommen?

Also ist es, weil du versuchst, die Antwort zu haben, oder weil, ich meine, kann, kann, du stellst die Frage, was, wenn sie älter sind, was, wenn sie von irgendwo anders sind, richtig?

Aber das ist, was ich glaube, wahrscheinlich mehr möglich wäre, dass die Leute aufgewacht und sie gefunden haben.

Richtig?

You couldn't just have the people that were living there from 1200 to 1000 BC sort of move in, like move in and renovate the area and call it their own home?

Und wie viele Archäologen müssen wir glauben? Auf diese bestimmte Geschichte, wie viele Leute waren eigentlich verantwortlich für die Daten, die wir hier zitieren, die die Geschichte ausgebaut hat?

Ich glaube, ich kenne nur Leute. Nicht das hier.

Wenn du Leute kennst, ist es so, dass wenn sie in eine Situation gehen, dieser eine Kerl, der da sitzt, und er weiß bereits die Antwort, und er weiß bereits die Daten, und er weiß, wann die Leute hier lebten, er wird finden, was er finden will, und er wird es in seine Geschichte finden lassen.

Also kam der Spanier zum ersten Mal in den 1500er oder 15. Jahrhunderten?

Ja, sicher. Es ist eine wunderschöne Perspektive und es ist frisch und es ist klar und es ist sehr logisch und wir wissen nicht, was wir nicht wissen. Und es würden nicht unbedingt Lügen sein. Es könnte nur sein, dass sie unter einem bestimmten Glauben arbeiten. Und ihr wisst, wie mächtig Glauben sind. Jeder verursacht Glauben für die Wahrheit. durch die Geschichte der Menschen.

Wenn du die Wahrheit schon weißt, aufgrund deiner Glauben, dann findest du das, was du teilen wirst. Es ist eine der Dinge, wo es gut ist, dass du zumindest ein Prozent hast, dass das etwas anderes sein könnte. Es könnte, wie alles andere sein, wie alles, was wir überall auf der Welt sehen. Ich glaube, wir haben unsere besten Estimationen. Vielleicht sind es 99 Prozent.

Vielleicht sind es 90, vielleicht sind es 80, was auch immer der Ort sein könnte, es wird für jeden Ort anders sein, basierend darauf, wie viel Arbeit in ihn eingegangen ist und wie viel wir wissen oder wie viel wir denken, wir wissen.

Aber es gibt immer die Chance, dass wir einfach, wir haben dieses, du weißt, wir haben wirklich nicht wirklich ein gutes Verständnis und dass die Geschichte und dass die Geschichte einfach aus, du weißt, konzeptionellen mentalen Konstrukten gebaut wird, die wir einfach gebaut haben und gebaut haben und gebaut haben und, du weißt.

And so they reported, they wrote down and brought back the information that all of the Moai statues were standing at that point in time. And then they came back 20 years later and found that everything had been pushed down and the place was in a complete state of chaos.

Richtig, genau. Cool, cool. Was anderes ist interessant an der Olmec? Du hast Religion erwähnt.

So how do we know the statues that they weren't just drawn, you know, standing up and that they actually had been pushed down, you know, prior to that? Well, I mean, that's...

Vielleicht. Ich bin verrückt. Ich bin verrückt. Es könnte wahr sein. Ich habe mit meinem Sohn über die Giants gesprochen, als wir heute Morgen zur Schule gegangen sind. Ich habe mich noch nie auf das Thema geachtet, bis ich dieses Show begonnen habe. Und es gibt tatsächlich eine gute Menge Beweise, die die Möglichkeit unterstützt, dass es irgendwann...

Yeah, I don't know so much about dragons, but the giant thing, I mean, the Spanish chroniclers, several of them, and I mentioned this to you earlier, mentioned seeing encounters with giants when they came to South America, and they, you know...

Well, we found Denisovan bones that are extraordinarily large compared to regular Homo sapiens bones. And we're saying, well, this is, and we don't have a full skeleton, of course, we just have a couple of bones, you know, but I mean, people are saying that this is, you know, it's just, they had whatever the bone is, it's like a jaw or tooth or whatever the hell it is.

Wo ich mit dem Denisovan ging, wir wissen durch DNA, dass das eine andere Spezies war. Es ist nicht so, als ob es nur ein toller Homo sapiens war. Das war eine andere Spezies. Und der Bein selbst ist ausgestattet, als moderne Homo sapiens Beine. Und es ist wie... Die Theorie ist, dass sie nur größere Zähne hatten. Aber wir haben nur die Zähne, oder was auch immer. Ryan, kannst du es dir ansehen?

Ich glaube, es ist eine Zähne.

Ja, ich meine, Homo sapiens, Neanderthals, Denisovans, sie existierten alle für die letzten hunderttausend Jahre. Potentially up to 800,000, a million years potentially. But yes, they were all existing on different parts of the planet and the same parts of the planet over that period of time. And Denisovans, I think, went extinct about 40,000 years ago. Or did they? And were they big?

Were they these people that the Spanish and that other people are saying that they have encountered? I don't think we know.

Wir haben keine Skeletone von den Dinovian-Skeletonen.

Keine Skeletone, nur ein paar Böden.

Ja, aber es ist das DNA-Test, das wirklich, das ist konklusive, dass es eine separate Spezies war. Du weißt, du kannst, das ist die Partie. Es ist nicht nur wie ein kurzer Kind.

Ja, ich meine, ich glaube, es könnte nur sein, zu sagen, wow, schau dir dieses wunderschöne Gebäude an, schau dir diese unglaubliche Fähigkeit der menschlichen Ingenieurität an, und nur um es zu zeigen, in seiner, weißt du, in der Spitze ihrer Existenz oder was auch immer, möglicherweise, weißt du, wer weiß, aber es ist eine Theorie, egal wie, ich glaube, du weißt, dass wir nicht sicher wissen, was das Gebäude genau so aussah, als sie da hochgekommen sind, ist das fair zu sagen?

Ja, sicher. Ich fahre ein bisschen zu weit aus meiner Linie. Wir finden weiterhin neue Spezies von Hominiden.

Wo sehen wir Handtücher in der ehemaligen mesoamerikanischen Welt?

Und wie ist es bei Gobekli Tepe, die 11.000 Jahre her ist, eine sehr ähnliche Handtasche?

Just in my lifetime. Right. Well, that's why it's so important not to confuse beliefs with fact or theory with truth. It's like, we're going to continue to find this stuff. I mean, White Sands, the footprints at White Sands in North America, 22,000 years And you know,

Also könnte das gleiche mit dem Olmec passieren?

Aber wir fühlten uns so, als ob das auch vor der Erfindung von White Sands war.

Walk on your own for a little bit. I know my wife's feeling.

Just kidding. It's a joke.

Ja, ja, nein, es ist nur, es ist das, es ist ein weiteres, du weißt, Punkt auf, auf, bleib open-minded, du weißt, und, und, wie, nicht in dieses Dogma gehen und nicht, wie, diese, diese, die, die, du weißt, die Geschichte, die wir denken, die wir über unsere Geschichte wissen, weil wir so viele kleine Teile des Puzzles zusammengearbeitet haben, um eine Wahrheit zu kreieren, du weißt, dann kommt plötzlich etwas wie White Sands und es ist wie, oh, na ja,

Und hier finden wir uns.

Yeah, yeah. I think that's part of the problem, is that we don't have to be wrong or right. That's what the ego does, right? It attaches to this is my opinion, I'm right and prove me wrong. Well, that's a problem. That type of approach is a problem. But if we can stay open-minded and say, I think that there's a percent chance that...

Selbst wenn es eine 99%-Chance ist, bist du zumindest immer noch open-minded zu der Möglichkeit, dass etwas anders ist. Es gibt einige Leute in deinem Feld, die Hunde, die sehr laut lachen, die sind auf 100% und 0% auf jedem Thema. Das ist sehr, sehr zerstörerisch. Es ist sehr schlecht für das Lernen und das Übergreifen und das Fortschreiten und das Öffnen von neuen Ideen und der Wahrheit.

Wenn wir Dig-Sites machen und wir schon wissen, dass wir auf 100% und 0% sind auf alles in unserem Geist, We shouldn't be digging anything up. We should be waiting until we have some open-minded people that can come to those sites and start digging them up.

Es war interessant, weil wir mit Mike darüber geredet haben, dass einige dieser ältere Orte und Tempels, die wir heute sehen und sagen, das war es, das sah so aus, aber in Wirklichkeit, die Anzahl der Restaurationen, die in diese Orte eingegangen sind, um sie zu machen und sie zu erneuern, das ist wie die Pauze der Sphinx heute. Sie sehen nicht so aus wie in vielen anderen Orten der Welt.

Wir wissen nicht wirklich, wie sie aussehen würden, aber wir wissen, dass es nicht so aussieht, wie es heute aussieht.

Richtig, ja. Bist du dir mit der Rekonstruktion an diesem Ort speziell kennengelernt und wie es vor und nach ausgesehen hat?

I don't know. The thing that was mind-blowing about this one for me was that if it was rebuilt from scratch, which they're saying that it was, that that snake that appears on the spring equinox, that potentially could have not existed at the time that this pyramid appeared. was originally in existence, was originally constructed. Was that snake head at the bottom actually even there?

Als es sich zerstört und Bäume auf dem Gebäude wachsen,

Gut, also das macht mich ein bisschen besser.

Ja, das Teil, das ich nicht verstanden habe, als wir diese Episode gedreht haben, und das ich nicht wirklich verstehen konnte, selbst wenn ich mit Mike und Ryan darüber gesprochen habe, war, dass, wenn sie das Ganze von Anfang an wiederhergestellt hätten und der Schneekopf nicht existierte,

dann wäre es nur eine komplette Überraschung gewesen, dass sie diesen Tempel verabschiedet haben und einen Hühnchen am Boden gesetzt haben, ohne zu wissen, dass ein Hühnchen auf dem Frühling-Equinox erscheinen würde. Es ist fast unmöglich, dass es nicht existieren würde.

You don't think that that's impressive?

Ja, sicher. Das ist faszinierend. Also die beste Theorie, die wir heute haben, ist, dass die Deutschen kamen und dann alle fanden es f****** verrückt, und begannen, diese Dinge zu drücken und miteinander zu kämpfen. Und dann kamen sie zurück, und sie kamen zurück zu einem Ort, wo sie sahen, dass es mehr ein Zustand des Chaos war, als damals, als sie da für das erste Mal waren.

Was ist die Wahrscheinlichkeit, dass das ein Geheimnis und ein Unfall ist?

Aber könnte es heute potenziell weniger spektakulär sein, weil das Gebäude von Anfang an komplett neu gebaut wurde? Ich meine, vielleicht war es außergewöhnlich spektakulär, bevor wir es wiedergebaut haben.

Es gibt keine Angst, dass die Gleichung gleich ist. Ich verstehe das völlig. Aber die Form und die Struktur der Komponenten, der Außenwände, der Stahlkasten, der Räder auf dem Stahlkasten, Es könnte eine Kurve gewesen sein, aber es könnte auch in seiner Zeit unglaublich spektakulär gewesen sein.

Niemand hat gesagt, dass es eine signifikante Falschheit war. Oh, okay, dann habe ich dich verletzt. Ja, ja, aber nur, dass es komplett neu gebaut wurde.

Es ist fast so, als würden uns Aliens heute zeigen und unsere Lebensweise komplett zerstören. Es würde unser Weltbild in einen kompletten Stadion des Desastres und Chaos verbreiten. Wenn du ein paar tausend Leute auf einer Insel sitzt und du in neun verschiedenen Wäldern bist, Und du bekommst diese Leute, die, nach deiner Geschichte, deiner Oral-Tradition, nicht existieren.

Okay.

That's cool. That's cool. Yeah, it's a fascinating structure and a fascinating building.

Oh, good. Yeah, go ahead, Ryan.

And they're so fucking completely unselfaware. Well, they'll get on me in my comments about how you're just you're just angry. And then they'll proceed to call me just like a laundry list of slurs. And it's like, well, you're obviously pretty angry, too. Like, let's not let's, you know, pot meet kettle here, buddy.

I think it was spineless of him to act like he was going to stand up to him for a while and then back down the second he had a little fucking bite. I mean, the Democrats are routinely the party of hand-rigging, but they fucking – they gave me just a little bit of hope that they were going to do something for once. Whether it was a good choice or not, they were going to do something.

They had an action plan, and they had people – were firmly in support of it, and then he backed the fuck down. I mean, there were people at his office in New York. They were like, what the fuck are you doing? And he said, all right, whatever. And I can't stand that. If you say you're going to do something, fucking do it. Yeah.

Yeah, like the issue with me is not the choice. Like two bad choices, that's all you had. But you fucking wishy-washed it so it makes you look like you got no spine. Like just pick which ones you're going to fucking do. Say this is our plan with it and move forward. Like you had two bad options. No one's faulting you for which one you picked.

I mean some people are, but like the manner in which you did it is more of the issue for me.

Thank you.

Well, to start out, if you've seen my videos, you know the passionate rage that typically gets exhibited. Now, imagine that directed entirely towards a laptop here about 40 minutes ago because that's what was going on. I mean, these guys literally heard garbled fuck for about 45 minutes. But after that, the way I got involved is I got a message from Rich saying,

Wherein he saw my biggest video, the one about free lunch and said, hey, we'd love to have you come join this group chat. And I was like, well, okay. I don't really know who you are, but sure. And I joined this group chat and lo and behold, it's a bunch of old people. But I had a lot to learn. So I joined and I've learned like so much. I love it. I love it.

But the reason I started – I'm both the youngest in age and youngest in account of everybody that's on this. And the reason I started is I watched Democracy fucking die November 6th. Like I watched it from a laundromat and I was like, well, this is trash. And like the next three days, I bitched to everyone in my life constantly. And it got to the point where they're like, all right, we get it.

It sucks. And like – He's just bringing everybody down. So I said, fine, I'll go bitch to the internet. And it started out as just like a kind of a sarcastic critique of what was going on. And it's very much turned into rage, which I'm totally good with knowing being that guy. But anyway, that's how I got started.

Yeah.

Cool.

Hey Alex, my name's Luke. We run a firm similar to Acquired actually in Sydney where we buy majority stakes for all the businesses. We currently operate three of them. We want to be operating or at least contributing to operations for about 30. We've had a lot of success exiting in the past, so we've kind of got it dialed in, but we can't do more than a couple at a time. Our constraint is...

at the sort of venture studio level is talent, really. We don't really know what our org chart should be and who should be doing it. So I don't know if there's anyone better place to help with that than you.

Uh, one's a SaaS company at the moment, one's early education and the other one is a gourmet food e-commerce business. The one before that was a, you know, music industry stuff. We're really diverse. Well, we, we just had a lot of exits. So these three are quite small. The e-commerce one's doing three and a half million at the moment.

Yeah, they just started. So did this one. This one's only a year old.

In the current case of these current three, we've just bought them. And now we're the only operators of them. In the past, it's been slightly different. 100 case by case. Okay.

I want to have fuck it money.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes, I'm paying them.

All right.

Get it done. Well done.

He's closer than I am. Yeah, I'm a little closer. She's got three years.

Very cool.

I'm doing it. I'm doing it.

Are they here? Oh, they're here. They're here. Oh, they're with us. I didn't see them. I didn't know they were here. Oh, buddy. Look at them.

We're debt-free! Yeah!

Hey, thanks for having me on the call. I love the show. My question is 50% of my income is in my housing, and I have $190,000 in stock. So should I sell the stock and recast my mortgage to lower my monthly payment?

I owe $402,000. Okay.

I bring home $6,300 per month before 401K.

Yeah, yeah. Are you married?

So my parents and grandparents have been good to me, and I have some savings. But, yeah, we're not saving a whole lot each month. You're not breathing.

Yeah. Yeah, it is not a sustainable situation.

positively so i just got just got a new job and um now um i was making 85 now i'm going to be making 95 and so i'm that 6300 per month is from that 95 my new salary okay what what decision making framework or process allowed you to do something this stupid well um i mean you you you signed up for death here right right right so yeah my wife Yeah. Yeah.

So my wife had an income as well when we first bought the house. Her income was the same as mine. So it was much better. Then we had two kids and we decided that at some point we would have to either move or increase our income. And she wanted to, or we decided that she would stay home with the kids, but we knew that we would have to either move or increase our income for that to happen.

And so we're just getting to that point where... And you didn't do either?

5.25. Yeah, okay.

Yeah. Um, one other question is, um, you know, I had had questions about, you know, would I miss out on gains in the stock? And I kind of feel like I shouldn't worry about the gains and missing out on gains in the stock if, you know, if it's helping with my monthly budget. But how do you feel about that?

Yeah.

I want stability and a house. I don't really care about the gangs. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah.

one of our concept artists has sort of an engineering background so with all our mechs we tried to make them feel sort of tactile and sort of actually feasible if you know technology did go that way so kind of leaning on his kind of uh

engineering background and sort of a little bit of you know suspension of disbelief but also sort of real world things that we found and sort of were experimented with during sort of like that that period of war there's so many crazy things that people tried and sort of like new tank designs and that kind of stuff that we could kind of bring into these each of these um so we tried to do that a little bit with each of the mechs as well as sort of hit

uh like the shotgun mech is your standard big chunky mech big guns so try to appeal to sort of what your your your uh mech warriors enjoy and your world of tanks enthusiast kind of person

Oh, steampunk.

you sort of ended up wandering across a lot of cyberpunk and uh steampunk and that kind of stuff so um i think someone uh initially sort of described dieselpunk as the pessimistic cousin of what steampunk is where steve is looking forward to a bright future dieselpunk is we're mired in war everything's on fossil fuels um so that's kind of like the the flip of that and and yeah sort of

the mechs are a bit you know banged up and they're rusty and there's they're made for there's a strong sense of practicality over aesthetics with some of them as well um but i think they look i think part of that is what makes them look so good and sort of um what gives them that kind of more unique feel about them. They're not supposed to be sort of sleek like Gundams are or anything like that.

Things are, we need this thing to survive getting shot at.

This is probably, yeah. I mean, a lot of my background's in mobile stuff, so...

probably going very uh i mean like classic mobile style so being able to work on something like grip is much closer to probably my more personal tastes and preferences and that kind of thing as well but i'm sort of my bowtown army they're brightly colored but they're still in this grim dark future which kind of mixes these two things together um but yeah yeah i'm so to your point uh trying to make the visuals all consistent as well um

Yeah, I think it is. Everyone on the project, because it came from a game jam, everyone's very sort of

bought in and they've got a lot of skill in the game in terms of like how much they care about this project so from the ui feeling kind of clunky in that same way even though it's all sort of hand painted that feeling sort of tactile and like you're pushing metal plates in place to sort of trying to keep the clarity on those small maps and everything like that i think everyone's been really invested in sort of trying to preserve that and you know scott you can speak to trying to

I think it's definitely a mixture of things, but some of the key elements, I think we spoke about that real-time tactics gameplay. We've got quite a unique take on it in that we've got these small levels that take...

three four or five minutes to complete and that's a pretty intense challenge that you've got to focus on for those few minutes but then you come out of that and you think okay well what's the next one going to be and um the demo obviously covers the first region which is british isles and that kind of introduces you to some of those mechanics and the style of gameplay

But then we go into other regions and each one is completely unique. It's got a totally different look, of course, but we tried to add different challenges in there and different things for the player to get to grips with and master as well.

So I think in terms of the gameplay flow, the way that it works, we are controlling this squad in a real-time setting across these small levels is really cool. And then the other thing that I've not really seen too much is our command vehicle mechanic. So it didn't exist, of course, in the game initially. We just had these units and it was quite offensive.

So you were going out and having to take down the enemy and then move into the next level. And again, we were kind of like, I don't know if this is quite working. It's not really got that hook. So then someone just had the idea of what if you have this unit that can't actually attack? but it's absolutely crucial to the mission. And then you have to defend it at all costs.

So that kind of flipped the game around to the point where now you have this unit that you're in control of, that you have to think about, well, where's the line of sight? Who can attack this unit? Do I need to get in front of it and defend it? So I think this idea of defending the command vehicle as you're trying to take down the enemies has a really unique spin on that strategy gameplay.

I guess the idea comes from like if you're in a band and you were jamming to figure out what your next track was going to be or what your album was going to be and it's kind of you almost throw a lot of the ideas and pressures out of the window a little bit, start from scratch.

And just in our case, we'll usually do a few game jams together and we split off into really small teams where there might just be, say, a designer, a coder, and an artist. And we'll just be given some random themes. So it could be a dieselpunk theme. It might not even be...

Yeah, I mean, definitely from our point of view, we're kind of in a nice spot where we're sort of playtesting the game, trying to find any bugs, any good bugs, a dead bug. But yeah, I mean, honestly, I agree. Oh, no, Scott. Yeah, I mean, it feels a bit surreal still.

a theme it might be a genre like a racing game or something and then you've just got two days to make a project with that sort of theme or setting in mind um so it just creates the scenario where you really focus on what is a cool gameplay loop or what is an interesting unique setting um and a lot of those game jams obviously we might not get something that quite works it might be a bit too silly or it might just not have those hooks but i think because of

that nature of just thinking well it's it's not it's not a big problem if we fail this it's just two days that we've spent doing this so the game gem we might learn a lot from it um so i think we generally get some really cool and you learn what doesn't work too exactly and that's just as important so yeah we've done tons of game gems where it's not quite worked but you'll you then learn okay well that mechanic's a bit weird or

Yeah, it's playable. That's kind of the crucial thing is like, that's impressive. In two days. I mean, it's, I mean, they're not necessarily always the prettiest, but, uh, right. Yeah. I mean, I get it.

I think it's like trying to find the fun. Yeah, like, for example, with this game, I can't remember what the very first Game Jam version looked like, but let's say you take away a lot of the art because we don't have time to do much of that in two days. So it's this very rudimentary kind of square environment that you can control some units and some of the units come in.

And then we'd maybe tried out a few weapon types. And that's kind of where we're at two days in. And that gives us a good indication of what it plays like, because I think if you just design a game on paper, it might sound absolutely brilliant.

But when it actually comes to trying to do that in engine, you might have something that just is very difficult or you start making it and it just doesn't quite work. So I think getting something that you can actually get your hands on and play is really important.

I think when you're so close to a project like this and you spend so much time working on it, you talk about a release date like it's a mythical thing that one day it will appear. So the fact we're just a few days away is very, very exciting. And I think the game's in a brilliant place.

I think a lot of those things luckily started quite quickly from the game jam. So the idea of having these small level formats was something I think we had from day one. The majority of the games obviously developed over the last few years of development. But I think obviously that game jam team is quite small initially because we're all working in these little groups trying out different ideas.

but as we've pulled more people onto the project I think everyone's got that understanding that they can shape the game a little bit in their own way it's not just kind of oh here's exactly what the game is do this make this it's like you know try this out if you want and let us know if you don't like it or you think it could be different and I think that's the benefit of having quite a small indie team is that

It's very agile and quite malleable. So across the whole of development, really people have been able to have a say in things and, you know, we can take a step back sometimes and say, okay, this style isn't quite working or we need to add a bit of something to this or that. Hmm.

Well, I can't remember. I'd say about three years.

It's been a long time. Or I was working at the company. Maybe three years or so.

A LEGO first look. I mean, I'm going to have to say Cluster Storm just because it looks the goofiest. It looks like a tin can with some legs and like a rocket launcher. If you guys haven't seen it. But yeah, I mean, the smart choice would be the sniper. But yeah, I think I'd have to go with my tin can with legs just because I prefer things that look a little bit more silly. All right, I like it.

Scott? So this changes kind of day to day, but I've been playing the game a lot recently just as we're leading up to release. I've just fallen in love with the Steelhawk mech, which is the sniper one Luke's alluded to. So it's kind of got spider-looking legs to ground it. And it's got this giant cannon, like a big oversized tank cannon. So it fires these big projectiles.

yeah yeah i think you've been staring at it for so long sort of you just want to make sure all the niggly little details and that kind of stuff want to get sorted out um yeah i think we've got a good amount of time so towards the run-up to release so we'll get a lot of that stuff sorted

It's quite slow, so it's powerful, but has a low fire rate. But I've been running some builds recently where I just try and stack the fire rate as much as possible. So it ends up looking quite silly, but it's so powerful. So I'd choose that one.

Yeah, something we've been quite keen on from early on in development is doing a lot of internal playtesting, obviously with the team, but as early as we can.

Um, so we did our first public demo last summer. Um, and I think that was just on steam and anyone could access it. And, um, you know, this is like, we've had a few little closed tests, but this is the first time we'd let people go loose on it. And we kind of encourage them to stream and stuff like that.

So over those few days, we were just keeping our eyes on players and seeing the way that they were playing the game, which is

it's hilarious to see like the way that people approach it um and i think it was in particular reaching the first boss and seeing the different ways people tried to take it down um that was just so cool to see because i'm i thought i knew the boss inside out but then suddenly you've got people approaching it completely differently and teaching me things so that was pretty cool it's uh when people start streaming as well um

The first time people have the mortars fire on them or the bomb plane.

I mean, not to give too much away, but hopefully you'll find a little surprise with each region you get to.

Like you guys first, that sounds good. I think the, the jump jet ability, or it was called the map jump in the demo, I think. So you, you basically launch through the air, like a hundred, 200 foot in the air, leap down onto a chosen tile, and then you deal a load of damage to everyone around that tile. Um, and that's, you got to do that with the ironclad and the demo.

Yeah. It just feels so cool. And. it sounds cool the vfx are cool yeah it's pretty impactful yeah it's also quite good impactful you can use it offensively as i said to take to deal damage to enemies but also you can use it to get out of scenarios quite nicely as well if you get a little bit trapped or some mortars are going off you can escape with it which is cool Yeah. What about you, Luke?

Yeah, so I guess my first role on the project is the lead artist. So we have a fantastic team of sort of nine people. A couple of them have gone on the other projects we're working on as well. But yeah, like a hugely devoted sort of art team that have worked on this for a few years now. And I just sort of help be opinionated and talk too much about the art.

Yeah, I think this is something that you'll maybe find in the further release, but we've got one of the future pilots

I think we've got a slow mech as well to get out of dodge when you're just in a bad situation to leap out of there as well.

Sorry. We've got this mechanic, the high ground mechanic. So obviously it's all tile based. If your unit is above a target unit, an enemy, it'll deal additional damage. So it comes into play in the later regions as well where you can get additional damage.

high ground because there's a lot of verticality and so we had this idea of what if some of the mechs are just really tall so they've got this kind of built-in high ground advantage um so we tried making these mechs that were like the size of one two or three tiers of high ground

but then quite quickly realized that they still need to be like one tile wide to actually fit into the levels properly and be able to walk around. So we had these mechs that were just these giant skyscraper looking things. And we tried with them, but they just looked so silly. So it didn't quite work out, but it's something we kind of learned from.

And then eventually the bosses that we've got now are

absolutely some of them are humongous um because we were able to create a specific boss level and have them you know if that boss was giant then we know we can get it to move around because we've made the level for that boss um so we kind of kept the idea a little bit but the original total mechs were just stupid so do you still have some of that concept art somewhere i would love to see that man

I don't know. Maybe. I haven't seen it. I think we've got the prototypes of the tool mechs, which are kind of the mechs we have, but we've just made tool mechs.

Yeah, it was a fun one to play around with. One of the crazy ones I can remember is each of the regions have kind of themes. So the British Isles, like trains and train rails, the themes are that. And we really wanted to try and work this train boss in where you go off, come in, you kind of fight these carriages which have different things.

The problem is that as a mech game, you kind of want to fight other mechs. So how can we turn this train into a mech? And then we had the idea, we'll put legs on it. So we had this kind of centipede train

thing um and i think there's some in the art book that's with the uh deluxe edition um there's like some of the concepts for the trade and that kind of stuff in there um but yeah the centerpiece was definitely sort of the yeah probably but we've gone too far with this one

Yeah. I mean, I think that literally happened with those tall Macs. It was very much like, these are very silly. And then other people are like, no, these are awesome. Um, so I think, I think we're quite lucky. We've got a very good team that all know each other very well. And we kind of know if, if you've got something, if you disagree and then

we can tell each other stuff and shout at each other a little bit without it getting out of hand so yeah we've got a good rapport and I think in certain cases it's just a case of maybe just proving why something might not work when you put it into gameplay sometimes you might put it in and sit with it for two or three weeks and kind of prove it that way and say look it's been in the game a little while it's clearly not quite working and

So a lot of our ideas start off as prototypes. So if we want to put a new mech in the game, it's a very rough prototype that we haven't fully committed to yet. And then we'll spend a few weeks with it and see whether it actually works. And if it doesn't, it's not much work lost. So yeah, I think we kind of get around it that way.

I think when you have pitching multiple ideas, you obviously have a favourite in there, but on balance and where it sits with everything else. And it'd be prototyping. Oh, can we see that? Yeah. That doesn't really shake out how we thought it would. It does avoid a lot of those kind of points of conflict.

I always find it really hard to explain I think it's just it's being able to craft the experience right obviously the art is very visual and it's what you see and feel like tangible stuff and the code just makes it work so we wouldn't be able to live without that but I think the design is about figuring out exactly what players are going to find fun challenging exciting what's going to keep them coming back to the game so it obviously stems across the entire game and

That's why I don't know why you need taste with that because you're just wasting space on all the other good stuff.

How far away are they stalling?

There's too many cool stories about Dreadnaughts, unfortunately, that I think, you know, they'd pull some sort of Mary Sue, Spade Room rubbish.

Are they named Dreadnaught? Have they got, like, a title and everything?

I mean, just on sheer scale, it's got to be the Redemptor, hasn't it? I'm not really going to sell our game well here by saying that.

But also, our mechs are...

Besides the obvious. So many. I'm really excited for the new Doom game. Oh, yes.

I think it's another... indie title but i think recently i think it's coming out this year um he is coming um and it's like a real pixel art uh roguelite super simple graphics almost almost husky stuff um but it's just got really nice sort of combinations of all the roguelite elements and items that you can have um yeah i think that's probably a good one to watch out for

If it looks real old, then you're on the right track.

Okay, that's the right one?

But yeah, you're just trying to nail down exactly what experience you want players to have, I think.

Thank you so much guys as well. Yeah.

Kind of stay within it, but I think you're constantly trying to push those boundaries as well and figure out what's the craziest thing you can do and what would be really overpowered, what doesn't work. And you're constantly trying to stay within those pillars that you create initially, but also find new things and exciting things as you develop in the game as well.

Especially when we have, because you've had a few demos and sort of releases as well. So getting feedback from the community has been really good. All the Steam comments and that kind of stuff. So you always want to keep the process a bit malleable just so that you can see what people are really engaged with and what they want to see more of and try and do more of that. Yeah.

It's what we call a real-time tactics game. Again, as you mentioned, you don't have that turn-based type strategy. It's more real-time. You're in the moment. You're reacting to it. And it sits more in that sort of tactics genre. It's not like a big, vast strategy game in terms of the level-to-level experience. All of our levels are set on these very small sections of environment.

which is just a matter of tiles. So we see each level almost as a little puzzle that you've got to approach strategically. So we take a lot of influence, as you said, from games like Into the Breach. We all absolutely love that game and played the hell out of it and we're super inspired by it.

But also just taking elements that we like from RTS games, from other strategy games as well, and combining them. And I think over the course of development, it just naturally became something a little bit more unique as we took those different ingredients from those games that we like. Yeah.

I think it's generally got sort of like a much more Moorish kind of gameplay loop because of those small little compact areas as well where you're not stuck in this multi-hours or campaign that you're sort of slugging your way through or anything like that.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, for me, maybe one day I'd make a Warhammer game. That would be amazing. But to be able to kind of have our own spin on some of those elements is quite interesting as well. Obviously, we can create our own mechs, we can create our own lore and things and

explore a lot of those influences in quite interesting ways um so it definitely we took a lot of reference from that warhammer world especially the a lot of the setting for it that more dark gritty to use the words um because i think you've got different and valorous yeah definitely valorous um You have different types of mechs, right?

You know, you've got Gundams, which are a bit more sleek and sci-fi looking. And we wanted to go down that road of having something that felt more... Chunkier. Yeah, chunkier and smoggier and a bit grimmer. So that's where that whole kind of World War II theme came in as well, which was another big thing for us because I think we were all very interested in that side of things historically and...

this initially it started as a bit of a world war ii game and then we weren't really finding anything too unique about that that we were too excited by so we eventually stemmed into what if we had mechs to it what would the world look like if world war ii continued with mechs and it just went from there really so how long have you guys both been with milky tea if you don't mind me asking uh for me it's almost nine years now it's been a little while

And Luke? Yeah, I think I'm about a year. So I'm relatively, comparatively a new addition.

So for us, all of our previous games have come from game jams, something that we do occasionally, especially in between projects. We'll spend a week or two doing some game jams. It's very much just focused on what is a cool idea in terms of gameplay, but also some visuals that we could push.

um so yeah this game started where we tried to make some sort of real-time quite small scale strategy game and i think naturally we lent into the world war ii side of things just because it sounded interesting it was something that we thought was quite cool um but we're always flexible so we're always testing the game and i think everyone on the team has a decent say in what that game is going to become

And maybe in those early stages, it wasn't quite exciting everyone enough. We weren't really seeing where it was going and you compare it to other World War II games and we were a bit like, hmm, don't know. So I don't know exactly where the idea came from, but at some point it was like, hey, what if there's mechs in this world?

um and what if we control those mechs and maybe the enemy have them and yeah things just went kind of crazy from there so it was just a case of trying out really and it it started getting a lot more exciting quite quickly so we just went into it after that i think once you become a mech fan you're kind of forever a mech fan there's never enough mech based content that you can get your hands on i think um

Hello, everyone.

I remember the the opening cinematic to Dawn of War. If you guys played Dreadnought right at the beginning, just absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Like that was such a sort of iconic sort of memory for me. Like those kind of games and that stuff.

Yeah, I appreciate it.

It was a big sort of objective of the when we were designing the mechs as well, um, to try and get that sort of differentiation and sort of get the, what, what's this thing going to behave like from just the visuals? Um, one of my favorite ones is the cluster storm.

Um, like, because we found, well, so during the research, there was these, um, I mean, awful, but like bombs that, uh, the Nazis used to drop, uh, down on, and they had these sort of like spinners on them. And they were, we were looking for something to do sort of AOE damage and sort of clusters and sort of taking the idea of, well, how would you go about launching them, um,