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Chapter 1: Why do we seek distractions in our daily lives?
We need distraction. I was reading there the other day that less and less people are engaging with the news. Well, the world's got hell on a handcart, so why would they? I don't want to know that Donald Trump is quoting from the Bible because it just gets me mad and annoyed on behalf of all the people who believe in the Bible. Just, it's annoying. It's annoying.
So people are searching out good news stories, fun stories to distract them from the reality. That's what we need. Some people claim, and Jenny will be one of them, that life is just one big long distraction. Why do we shop? To distract ourselves. Why do we exercise? To distract ourselves. Why do we watch television? To distract ourselves. It's all about passing time.
between the inevitable and the inevitable. The birth and the death. We'll talk to her about it later on. We'll talk to her about it later on. Anyway, a bit of distraction. I don't know what sort of sleeper you are, but I'm a tossy-turny sort of guy, and Jenny will attest to that. So I'll quote you this person, see if you can spot who it is.
If you can imagine sleeping and never needing to roll over, never being stiff, never getting too warm in one area, never having to flip your pillow over to the cool side, it's like that. I just feel like the whole time, by definition, your body goes into the exact position it wants to be in without any effort whatsoever. And it is just so peaceful and so wonderful.
I would take it a million times over. That's a description by astronaut Christina Koch about sleeping in space. It sounds dreamy, doesn't it? Excuse the intended pun. It sounds wonderful. Heavenly. Never needing to roll over, never being stiff, never getting too warm in one area, never having to flip your pillow over to the cool side. It's like that.
The whole time, by definition, your body goes into the exact position it wants to be in without any effort whatsoever. Oh, yeah. I want to be in space now just for that sleep. I'm not a good sleeper. I was trying to think after reading that, what was my best sleep of all time? I think it was on the Shannon. I think it was in a boat on the Shannon.
And maybe it was because I had read that you get a better sleep because there's that gentle swaying of the water. Not too much, just right. And it's like mimicking being back in the womb, you see. And you feel completely secure and safe. I need to get this lovely night's sleep. Yeah, they're drip feeding stuff from NASA. Lovely photographs, interviews, all that sort of thing.
I'm keeping an eye on it. And they described the whole Artemis 2 thing as a glorious distraction, which I agree with. I agree with it. I'll play you this sound, right. This is interactive podcast day. I'll play you this, see if you can guess what it is, what this sound is. There's a mad stereo on that, isn't there? If you're listening in your headphones.
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Chapter 2: What is it like to sleep in space according to astronaut Christina Koch?
That's a hot air balloon. Did you see this story? It's brilliant. A hot air balloon landed in a backyard in Southern California. I've seen the pictures, I've seen the video. It landed perfectly in a patch of grass in the backyard of Hunter and Jenna Perrin's California home. And they didn't have a big back garden. They had a fence.
And when they went out, there were 13 people in a basket attached to a hot air balloon. How do you react when you go out of a morning and there's a hot air balloon in your backyard? Well, this is how you react.
This is what happens. Hi, everybody. Look at that. Wow. Hi, everybody. How's your guys' trip so far? Just our house and then... Wow!
Hunter said, that's the man in the audio there, the pilot did such an amazing job just absolutely nailing the landing right in the backyard. Our backyard has this big hill next to the grass. So the grass part is pretty small and he set the balloon down just right in the middle. And it just brushed off the fence. Didn't damage it in any way, shape or form, just brushed off it.
You have to go and search out the video and see the 13 people standing there looking at Hunter as he came out to greet them. It's spectacular. It is. It's a distraction. That's what we're looking for. That's what we're looking for. Distraction. While we're on Great Videos, you'll have heard about this story now and the man from North Down Athletics Club and the Boston Marathon.
Aaron Beggs is the man from the North Down Athletics Club and AJ Haridas is a 21-year-old university student from Wakefield in Massachusetts and both of them were taking part in the Boston Marathon on Monday. And they were doing good times, sub-three-hour times, around two hours and three quarters. So that's pretty fast. If you don't know it, that's pretty fast. So you're going at it.
You're going at it for just under three hours. You're giving it your all. And it became too much for AJ. He'd just passed the 26-mile mark. He'd probably 200 or 300 metres to run. And he collapsed. And there's footage of him looking like a baby giraffe. He tries on a number of occasions to get up. Four attempts, I think. And eventually he just gives up.
Luckily, luckily for him, superhero Aaron Beggs arrives on the scene and decides to give him a hand. As does Robson de la Vera. De la Vera. from Brazil. Both of them get AJ up off the ground and they sort of run, trot, carry him to the line. And this is Aaron taking up the description of what happened at the Boston Marathon on Monday.
You see the finish line and everything and I looked at my watch and I was like debating. I was like, do I help you or not? Do I get a PB? And for some reason, my instincts decided to take me over. I was struggling to get him up, and if it wasn't for Robson to come over and help me, we wouldn't have been able to get there. 200 metres, roughly, is a long way to carry him.
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Chapter 3: How did a hot air balloon land in a backyard in California?
There was minor but significant damage to both the legs of the horses she had walked on. City officials put the cost of the damage 5,000 euro. Yeah, and they have pictures of that. And I don't know if it's worth it. It's that group thing, isn't it? It's that peer pressure.
And I suppose there's no greater peer pressure than on stags and hens, because you have the group mentality, the pack mentality, and you've usually got a lot of drink involved. And then you've sort of license to do it. Do you have license to do this mad... Because that's what people do on hens and stags. My stag night was slightly different. Met with a couple of lads in Dundrum to buy them suits.
The groomsman and the best man. And then we were surprised by a number of other mates and we went to see Hot Fuzz, I think it was. Was it a Steve Coogan movie? No, not Hot Fuzz. What was the name of it? He was a DJ. Anyway, we went to see a Steve Coogan movie in a cinema and we were the only people in the cinema. Mad we were, mad. Now you have to remember I was in my late 40s. So it's different.
It's different. So there, distraction, more distraction there.
Yeah.
I was going to talk to you about Michael Jackson. There's another documentary on at the moment on the BBC. We watched the first one and there's a few more of them coming. And we would have watched that back in 2019, Leaving Neverland. And of course, the biopic is in the cinemas now. And I doubt very much, I doubt very much that they go into the gory detail of his relationship with children.
But I read a piece by Ed Power yesterday about Michael Jackson's concert in Porky Queve in 1988, July 1988. And he's talking about the fact that Michael Jackson stayed in Jury's Hotel in Cork.
And he mentions in passing that Sam Smith and Eamon Dunphy, Sam Smith, journalist, broadcaster, Eamon Dunphy, journalist, broadcaster, football pundit, Millwall player, you know, that they were staying in the same hotel. And they had seen this young boy, James Safechuck, Coming into the hotel area on that day, he was shepherded up to a hotel room and a Do Not Disturb sign was put on his door.
They came in after the concert and they were having a couple of jars in the residence lounge. And they got talking about this 10-year-old and they worried about him. And they wrote a note which they gave to the hotel porter. to slip under Jimmy Safechuck's room, door, I should say, slip it under the door into his room because they feared for his safety. And sure, I'll play it out now.
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Chapter 4: What heroic act occurred during the Boston Marathon?
And you probably have done all of them because I was inspired by the Forbes under 30. Right now. Actually, I think it's a bit of a progression because I remember, like, you know, it used to be the 21 under 21 to look at. Now it's like under 30. It's kind of moving up a bit, you know. So, but like, yeah, so I'd realise obviously I'm closer to 50. And that does scare me.
I'm closer to 50 than I am to 40. So I'm not even within an ass's roar of the Forbes under 30 list. So, and I kind of got a bit annoyed for the first time ever going, where's the under 50 list? Like, are we, you know, are we done?
Yeah, but you're hardly going to say ones to watch under 50.
Why not? Seriously, why not? Like, what was your man, Kentucky Fried Chicken guy? He didn't start until he was in his 60s.
Colonel Saunders. Yeah. Was he the real man or was he a fictitious character who promoted it? He's a real guy, yeah. Oh, he's a real guy, right.
Because we were in the car the other day and my kid said, we've never been to KFC. And I went, I've never been to KFC. And I love chicken and I've had fried chicken and I really like it. And they were going, why don't we go? I was like, well, we've just had our dinner. Unless we walk in and say, listen, can we just look around? So we'd never been to KFC.
And then my middle fella, he's always going, is that a real person on the front, that guy? And then we checked it out and he didn't come up with the recipe. So this list is inspired by, not by KFC, but more by the Forbes list, 30 Under 30. Here are the 50 things that you probably have or should have achieved by under 50. Right.
And we're not going through all 50. No, no, no, no, no. But you sent me the list and thank you very much for that. And I laughed out loud. Very funny. And there are a number that resonated with me, Bernard. A number that resonated with me. So I picked them. I have my own few as well. If you don't mind, I can add them. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. We do that at the end, do we? We do that at the end.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So it's four on your list. Said you too when a waiter told you to enjoy your meal.
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Chapter 5: What happened to the famous matador José Antonio Morante?
Shit, shit, shit. You know, I have about four or five of them a day.
Do you? Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, from... you know, not packing the right swimming gear to, you know, not fully understanding what time something begins at or ends at or from, say for instance, not booking summer camps in time. Like I did an Instagram reel this morning where I was talking about the year I forgot to do the book, a book, a bouncy castle.
And when I eventually rang like a week before him, I said, listen, some people have booked these back in 2014. It's like, oh Jesus.
Like,
it's stuff like that forward planning not my thing not my thing you know well there is there is no handbook you see for life or for adulthood or for parenthood you know like there are people who purport to write books self-help books and all that sort of thing but we are all making it up as we go along yeah but like why isn't it just like this is how you open a bank account
This is what an overdraft is. This is what, you know, all the financial stuff or like stuff like, this is how you know you've piles. I don't know what's in the book, but like, do you know what I mean? Like a fucking book that just goes.
I'm going to take on a doctor. Should piles be on that list, Bernard?
Well, do you know what, Ray? As a man who suffered from the piles, Jason's nothing as bad. There's nothing as bad. Honestly, you can't sit down, you can't stand up, you can't lie down. Oh, it's a nightmare. Me, and I had great affiliation down to the years with me and pregnant women where we were both talking about the piles. And it's awful. It's an awful, it's a scourge.
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Chapter 6: How do cultural perceptions influence views on bullfighting?
And I really want to do that. The problem is I can't get the time at the moment. Who asked you? A proper clinic. Yeah, a proper company.
And they asked you, would you be the face of our clinic? Or the head? Yeah, well, there's loads of people that do it.
And my wife said, would you not, like people say to me, would you not be conscious of people knowing you're getting it done or having your head on a magazine with a big... I go, absolutely not. It's not like I'm going to show up tomorrow and go, did your hair grow back magically? No, of course not. And the reason why with the head, and people don't believe me on this, but it's so true.
The reason why I would definitely look at getting the hair done, and I'm, you know, it's just the time, trying to find the right time to get it done, is I have the oddest shaped head in the world. Now, I'm looking at your head, Ray, and it's kind of all the one shape, right? I have a big bulge coming out the back of my head here, right? And I have an indent in here. Right.
And, oh, it is the oddest looking thing ever.
Now, I will say that I remember when I knew I was losing my hair or whatever, and I would say to the person who was cutting my hair, you know, how would it look, you know, if I shaved it all off? And they go, you don't really know until you do it and it depends on the shape of your head.
And what would follow was this person, a complete stranger, doing this and doing this, trying to get an idea of the shape of my head. And they would always say, I think you have an okay shape head for a bald head. In our family, we have what my sister calls a question mark. I'll just turn to the side, Bernard, to see if you can spot it. So you see it's... Yes! You see?
Yeah, it's like a question mark. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think... So I've no choice in the matter now. You know, whether it's the wrong shape or not, it's bald and that's it. But yeah, I see what you're saying. The only thing I'll say to you is that maybe you might be exaggerating. the dint, for example, and you might be exaggerating. No, I'm not.
And I'm telling you why I'm not because my mother said, yeah, you know, you do. You were pulled out with the tongs. That said, you're pulled out with the thongs and it's a really weird head. It's kind of like kids would be crying type weird head. And plus, you know, I don't know. I find I've always had the big lump of red hair and it was like, tell you what I'm considering.
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Chapter 7: What are the challenges of sleep in space versus on Earth?
That's because you're getting older.
No, no. I mean, they just are. I would think about it. It's such a... There's been movies made about it, right? The Hangover. That didn't end well. Your stag did not sound wild. It didn't sound wild.
What was the name of the movie? It was Alpha something. It was Alpha. I looked it up there and now I've forgotten.
Okay. It was that memorable.
Yeah. Steve Coogan played the part of a DJ.
I don't think I've seen it myself there in Nigel.
There was some sort of siege. There were guns involved. Siege. There were guns involved.
And you were in your private cinema. Private cinema.
Alpha Papa.
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