Bonus Episode 46 PREVIEW: 2011 Oban Fireworks Display

in the industry we call this an "oopsie doopsie" full episode on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/posts/119509129?pr=true

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00November Kelly?

  We have been fucking up. This is my fault, right? You you you asked me to help with the Catholicism bonus episode. It will take about 500 years. I'm sorry. What we have instead.

• 0:13Justin Roczniak?

  And that's just the recording time.

• 0:15Liam McAnderson?

  Also, the Sagrada Familia is coming, folks. Not an episode. It's just the Cathedral.

• 0:21November Kelly?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But so this, I guess.

• 0:25Justin Roczniak?

  Alan Parsons Project song?

• 0:27Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 0:28Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 0:29November Kelly?

  Now, that's the awesome lethality of the Alan Parsons Project.

• 0:32Speaker 03

  It's kind of like an invert. It's like an anti-Catholicism. I don't mean in the sense of like being against it, although it is, but like it's a kind of a Catholicism adjacent little tale we have tonight.

• 0:41November Kelly?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 0:42Liam McAnderson?

  Are we gonna do the Reformation here in this pod?

• 0:46November Kelly?

  I mean.

• 0:47Justin Roczniak?

  Do the counter.

• 0:48Speaker 03

  I summarize it with one word, which is, uh, uh, England got major divorced guy energy all of a sudden.

• 0:54November Kelly?

  And has kept it ever since.

• 0:56Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 0:56Speaker 03

  And has not shed.

• 0:57Liam McAnderson?

  Graham, Graham Linder, uh, who else you got over there?

• 1:01Speaker 03

  Well, he's not here anymore. He's gone to Alabama. We've lost him.

• 1:03November Kelly?

  He's Irish. Uh, like, that's, I mean, granted.

• 1:06Liam McAnderson?

  The trail of my people.

• 1:08November Kelly?

  Well, granted, he ended up making his career in in England, but still.

• 1:12Liam McAnderson?

  Sure.

• 1:13Justin Roczniak?

  It's the only reason Father Ted isn't cultural appropriation.

• 1:17November Kelly?

  I I have to, I have to say the thing about how it's the first episode of 2025. Unless, unless Devon has pulled off some miraculous feat of editing, um, and and decided to eat into their own holiday, which I, you know, would never ask them to do. This is the first bonus episode of 2025. Welcome to 2025. Uh, I hope you're enjoying it. We're not there yet. Uh, so.

• 1:43Liam McAnderson?

  Things have not gotten better. Um.

• 1:45November Kelly?

  Well, we don't know. They could have been. They could have been like, like, January 1st, 2025. Trump could have died. Elon Musk could have died.

• 1:53Liam McAnderson?

  Taken with him. Yeah, yeah. Murder suicide. Yeah. We're we're by the paywall. I can do whatever the fuck I want.

• 1:59Justin Roczniak?

  Welcome to 2025. Caution, the moving walkway is ending. Please hold on to the handrail. Welcome to 2025.

• 2:10Justin Roczniak?

  The moving walkway is end.

• 2:15November Kelly?

  What else is going on in 2025? Well, it's going to be the Jubilee year, which is why we have to, we had to put off the Catholicism episode in order to release it in 2025 for theological reasons.

• 2:25Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, we're doing Catholicism's coming. We're sorry. We are doubling up bonuses. Thank you for your patience.

• 2:31Justin Roczniak?

  That is an ecumenical matter.

• 2:33November Kelly?

  Yeah, it is. Yeah.

• 2:38November Kelly?

  Bang. This is the subject of the.

• 2:42Justin Roczniak?

  Wham, wham.

• 2:46November Kelly?

  Bang. It's a very quick one, largely the product of Garrus. But I'm willing to like interpolate and improvise.

• 2:58Speaker 03

  It's a total team effort. I put this together in a fever dream about about two hours ago. So, yeah, we're cooking. We're going to talk about an explosion and in particular, an explosion that happened in Scotland. Yeah, so that's exciting.

• 3:12Liam McAnderson?

  Did you guys get 9/11?

• 3:13Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, this is Oban's 9/11.

• 3:17November Kelly?

  Scotland's 9/11. Well, Oban's 9/11, I guess.

• 3:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, Oban's 9/11. Yeah, you've got to get, set ourselves into the perspective here. This is, this is the worst thing to ever happen, probably to Oban. Since the ferry terminal opened and door closed.

• 3:31November Kelly?

  So, yeah, this is, this is going to be a real like philosophical quandary for me now because I've, I've been to lots of places like Oban, but I don't know if I've been to.

• 3:40Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, it looks very pretty. I know Oban the Scotch.

• 3:43Speaker 03

  We'll, we'll, we'll talk about Oban in due course. There's some, there's some very, very nice whiskey in Oban. As Liam is pointing out, it's very, very good. Yeah, you might know a bit about that. Yeah. So, wait, but it's a bonus, isn't it? So we just.

• 3:57Liam McAnderson?

  Crack on.

• 3:58Justin Roczniak?

  I thought it was a regular one, so there's news in here, but we're going to skip it and put it in the next free one.

• 4:03Speaker 03

  Okay, yeah, you're getting the fun news.

• 4:05Liam McAnderson?

  I like that you, you just zoomed. That was fun.

• 4:08Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 4:10Speaker 03

  But actually Roz is starting this one off because I needed, I needed, I needed Roz to give me a leg up. So Roz, you're kicking this one off. Tell us about what the fuck is going on in our screens. As many colors and shapes.

• 4:19Justin Roczniak?

  Here's my, here's my very lethargic explanation of fireworks.

• 4:24November Kelly?

  What are, what are fireworks? Fireworks are when bang and pretty colors.

• 4:31Justin Roczniak?

  Pretty much, yeah.

• 4:32Liam McAnderson?

  Potassium and also a pop punk band from Detroit who released Oh Common Life, which is a hell of an album.

• 4:38November Kelly?

  Weird encyclopedia checks that you make sometimes.

• 4:45Speaker 03

  It's all in there. It's all in there.

• 4:47Liam McAnderson?

  It's all it's all floating around in some sort of.

• 4:49November Kelly?

  Why do I remember the name of a boxer called Contact Mike? Like.

• 4:56Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, it's some kind of pyrotechnic. It makes a bang and makes a bright light. It's for entertainment. Here in the United States, you can buy them quite free freely.

• 5:05November Kelly?

  Yeah, that's that's insane to me, by the way, like I I remember watching Simpsons episodes. Where the availability of fireworks or illegal fireworks was a plot point and being like. This is this is the only time that I have felt like this is a foreign culture to me.

• 5:25Justin Roczniak?

  Back back when you could buy a quarter stick. You can't even get those illegally anymore. That's because of Joe Biden. No, that's actually earlier than Joe Biden, but you know.

• 5:35November Kelly?

  Change it to AFT for absolute fucking tyrants.

• 5:39Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

• 5:41Liam McAnderson?

  ATF should be a convenience store.

• 5:46Justin Roczniak?

  The yeah, I mean, you know, there's a fun thing we have in the United States where a lot of. A lot of states, it's illegal for residents of that state to buy fireworks, but you. And you can't bring them in, but it is legal for out of state residents to purchase fireworks. So there's just this.

• 6:04November Kelly?

  You have a bunch of like state line fireworks.

• 6:08Justin Roczniak?

  Yes, exactly. At every state border, there's just suddenly. You know, 50 fireworks stores right there on the interstate. And then, you know, you just have to make sure the cops don't see you drive back in.

• 6:22Speaker 03

  Freedom, baby.

• 6:22Liam McAnderson?

  It's like when PAC police used to pull you over for returning from New Jersey with liquor in your car that you bought out of state.

• 6:29Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, yeah, that and the Claymont Total Wine.

• 6:32November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 6:34November Kelly?

  Sometimes the American kleinstaaterei. Really like heads home, you know, to be like, yeah, you guys are global hegemon, but you're also like 50 little feuding Prince Bishop bricks, you know?

• 6:49Liam McAnderson?

  Think, think, think the whole, they're like princely states. Yeah.

• 6:52November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 6:53Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 6:53November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 6:53Liam McAnderson?

  Roz is prince of Pennsylvania.

• 6:56Justin Roczniak?

  Pretty much.

• 6:57Speaker 03

  You know, like, pretty, pretty, it's, it's very nice to look at, you know, look, there's, there's, there's what I believe is referred to as the Eiffel Tower.

• 7:03November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 7:03Speaker 03

  And it's, and it's native French.

• 7:05November Kelly?

  Yeah, be a cool bonus episode in itself, in its own right.

• 7:08Speaker 03

  Really would, really would.

• 7:09November Kelly?

  That'd be a fun one.

• 7:10Liam McAnderson?

  Uh, Gustav, you son of a whore.

• 7:15November Kelly?

  Let's get this out of the way now, eating lunch in the Eiffel Tower every day because it's the one building in Paris you can't see the Eiffel Tower from.

• 7:22Speaker 03

  It's a bit like Appleton Tower in Edinburgh, actually. I, I, a lot of lunches in Appleton Tower for very similar reasons. Shout out to everyone who knows where the fuck I'm talking about.

• 7:29November Kelly?

  Yeah, you see my lunch in the Boyd Orr for the same reasons.

• 7:33Justin Roczniak?

  Problem is now you, you see a lot of defence. And, uh, what's the other one?

• 7:38November Kelly?

  Tour Mophanus.

• 7:39Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, that's the one I was thinking of. Yeah.

• 7:41November Kelly?

  Hmm.

• 7:42Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, you know, that's where you go eat lunch, because I think that's the one.

• 7:44Liam McAnderson?

  Appleton Tower is a grim fucking building. Good God.

• 7:47Speaker 03

  I'm so pleased you've Googled it, Liam. It's just horrifying, isn't it?

• 7:50November Kelly?

  Liam, stack, stack Boyd Orr building on there as well. B O Y D space O R R.

• 7:58Liam McAnderson?

  Okay, but, oh.

• 8:02Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, okay.

• 8:03November Kelly?

  Uh huh.

• 8:04Liam McAnderson?

  All right, that's.

• 8:05November Kelly?

  And now, now imagine that you were paying thousands of pounds a year to be around and inside this.

• 8:12Speaker 03

  That building, chewing on the asbestos, et cetera.

• 8:16November Kelly?

  Delicious. Maybe the woman I am today.

• 8:20Speaker 03

  Oh, dear. Anyway, pretty explosions. Sorry, Roz, we're derailing you already and we're only one side.

• 8:27Justin Roczniak?

  We're gonna need some derailments because I didn't write down much because I'm tired.

• 8:31November Kelly?

  Seeking derailments, is that another thing?

• 8:33Justin Roczniak?

  Seeking derailments, yeah.

• 8:34Liam McAnderson?

  You've heard of seeking erasure, it's now get ready for seeking derailments.

• 8:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, we all collectively need to rest after the last mainstream episode where we, we were all cooking. So, uh, you know, it's time to, it's time to rest our little comedic chops.

• 8:45November Kelly?

  Absolutely. This is, this is like the pre-holiday one where like, it's, it's like last day of work before the office Christmas party.

• 8:54Liam McAnderson?

  We're trying not to phone it in, but like.

• 8:55Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, this is, this is sort of, uh, this is sort of, uh, I mean, well, that last episode, you know, we were all laughing so hard. We all have rock hard abs now.

• 9:05Speaker 03

  You joke, but yes, yeah.

• 9:06November Kelly?

  Who's that? Why? Okay.

• 9:08Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 9:10November Kelly?

  Just wondering where I got this from.

• 9:12Speaker 03

  Stole.

• 9:12November Kelly?

  Feeling like Darren Lyons.

• 9:16Justin Roczniak?

  So this thing gunpowder, right?

• 9:20Speaker 03

  Hooray, possibly.

• 9:21Justin Roczniak?

  In the early first millennium AD in China.

• 9:27Speaker 03

  China, China.

• 9:30November Kelly?

  The Trump, the Trump gets worse every time. It gets further and further and further from Donald Trump.

• 9:38Liam McAnderson?

  Trump's light.

• 9:41Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah. A series of pregnant pauses.

• 9:44Justin Roczniak?

  We got a, we got another four years for our Trump impressions to get worse.

• 9:47Liam McAnderson?

  Go fuck yourself.

• 9:49November Kelly?

  I really like, well, he's got another four years to get worse as well. Like he's gonna get older and weirder.

• 9:55Liam McAnderson?

  Baby, let's do it.

• 9:56November Kelly?

  Oh, when he gets COVID again and then gives all the Secret Service guys COVID again.

• 10:02Justin Roczniak?

  He's gonna get, he's gonna get H5N1 is what he's gonna get.

• 10:06November Kelly?

  Whatever pandemic two is, he's gonna be right there on the front lines getting it.

• 10:13Justin Roczniak?

  That would be hilarious if Trump has to do a second lockdown, um, you know, and.

• 10:18November Kelly?

  Second, second round of stimulus checks.

• 10:21Justin Roczniak?

  And yeah, and all the Freedom Eagle guys are like, Trump is the greatest president of freedom ever, you know?

• 10:29November Kelly?

  I, I really.

• 10:31Justin Roczniak?

  Once again, had all the restaurants shut down.

• 10:35November Kelly?

  I, I don't wanna do another lockdown.

• 10:37Justin Roczniak?

  I don't wanna do that either. Yeah.

• 10:39November Kelly?

  No, I think we should probably try and prevent pandemic two.

• 10:43Speaker 03

  I agree. Let's.

• 10:44Justin Roczniak?

  That's why we elected Donald John Trump.

• 10:49Liam McAnderson?

  It's kind of the middle name is John, honestly.

• 10:52November Kelly?

  I really like, um, figure five here where a guy appears to be hanging a big thing of mistletoe from a, like a big lampshade.

• 11:01Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, yeah. God, this is an early European depiction of, uh, Chinese fireworks.

• 11:08November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 11:08Speaker 03

  Oh, he's in the development. Well, understood. Yeah.

• 11:11November Kelly?

  Yeah, I mean, fireworks, fireworks been kicking around China for ages. Um, uh, one of the four great inventions is gunpowder after all, and

• 11:19Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 11:19November Kelly?

  It's like, sort of some military use, but it's, it's also just like, it's a lot of fun. Once you just have gunpowder ready to go, you can just like, make little firecrackers and like, uh, explode things for fun and profit.

• 11:34Speaker 03

  You can make people think you're cool. That's what you

• 11:37Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, exactly. That's pretty much the main

• 11:39November Kelly?

  This is the thing, I'm gonna, I'm gonna enumerate an anthropological principle here. About ninety percent of the shit that happens is due to the human drive to do something cool.

• 11:49Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 11:50November Kelly?

  Therefore, about ninety percent of the history of China is also due to the drive to do something cool.

• 11:56Liam McAnderson?

  Country shit, yeah.

• 11:57November Kelly?

  Yeah, thus, I mean, honestly, TikTok was great for that in the early days. It was huge for seeing like Chinese peasant shit, like

• 12:06Justin Roczniak?

  Chinese rednecks.

• 12:07November Kelly?

  All men are brothers.

• 12:09Liam McAnderson?

  Redneck shit is like war, you know, war changes, war changes rednecks, don't man.

• 12:15Justin Roczniak?

  You wanna, you wanna, you wanna see ten thousand videos of someone lovingly washing an animal and then slaughtering it?

• 12:24Justin Roczniak?

  I don't know why those things keep coming up on my feed. I really don't like them.

• 12:28Speaker 03

  Just keep serving me stuff I don't want.

• 12:31November Kelly?

  The algorithm or whatever.

• 12:33Speaker 03

  If it's eighty percent wash and you're watching the wash because, you know, it's nice to see an animal having a I, I thought the sentence I just said, I kind of got to the end of it and thought, no, that's a strange thing to say.

• 12:42Liam McAnderson?

  You're doing alright?

• 12:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, we're, we're okay, we're okay.

• 12:45November Kelly?

  I'm, I'm gonna do one thing here, which is, which is find, uh, which is gonna, uh, like, read into the record two facts that I learned from Wikipedia. Um, yeah, because this is my research process. Uh, and it is now time for the first fact about Chinese fireworks, which is that, uh, there is one source that said, uh, that during a, a like large fireworks display, uh, in the Song Dynasty, a rocket propelled firework called, and I'm not gonna try and pronounce the Chinese, but an earth rat went off near the Empress Dowager and startled her. This was one of the earliest examples of rocket propulsion.

• 13:26November Kelly?

  So it's a straight line from earth rat startles the Empress to RPG seven.

• 13:33Justin Roczniak?

  Yep. This, this is also, um, it took a solid thousand years between the invention of gunpowder and figuring out how to make a, a little rocket with it. Um, so they did not move fast and break things back then. They probably wrote things.

• 13:50Liam McAnderson?

  Oh God, did they write "slow, boring"?

• 13:55Liam McAnderson?

  Ancient, can you imagine ancient Chinese managglacius?

• 13:58November Kelly?

  If you had to summarize Confucianism as a value system, I would say it tries very hard to be the opposite of move fast and break things.

• 14:07Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, be conscious.

• 14:07Speaker 03

  It's just dickhead.

• 14:08November Kelly?

  Move as little as possible and preserve things.

• 14:13Justin Roczniak?

  I should you try. Just get, just, just try and do really well on the civil service exam.

• 14:20November Kelly?

  Mm hmm. Flashing. Also, also you're never free of your like grandpa who is still judging you.

• 14:26Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 14:27Justin Roczniak?

  And then, then you get to be a eunuch.

• 14:29November Kelly?

  Hmm.

• 14:29Speaker 03

  I don't wanna be a eunuch, man.

• 14:32November Kelly?

  Well, you know, there, there are some who have born eunuchs, there are some who have made eunuchs, some have eunuchs thrust upon them. It's, uh, that's almost a Bible quote.

• 14:43Liam McAnderson?

  At the emperor's court, of course. Yes, obviously. It really does feel like last day before holiday break, the teachers have wielded the, the, the ancient CRT and have put in one of those eyewitness videos. Yeah.

• 15:00November Kelly?

  I'm, I'm really enjoying the like complex, objective, like ritual significance that also looks like a shitload of TV aerials and birdhouses.

• 15:09Justin Roczniak?

  I was about to say, yeah, this is.

• 15:11November Kelly?

  They've got the Milky Way on there.

• 15:13Speaker 03

  They do? Yeah, nice. Very good.

• 15:15Justin Roczniak?

  Some kind of early fireworks display before they had rockets. They just, you know, you gotta string it up and make a bunch of noise. Everyone gets excited.

• 15:24November Kelly?

  To be fair, if, if, if you lived in, uh, you know, a world that is lit only by candle light and the sun, uh, this, this shit's got to pop off.

• 15:33Speaker 03

  Yeah. Good point. Very good point.

• 15:37Justin Roczniak?

  I mean, at the, at the very least, they did have computers.

• 15:39November Kelly?

  Hmm. Yeah. The abacus guy moves one to the left.

• 15:42Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, no, they ran eunuchs.

• 15:44Speaker 03

  We'll, we'll get to those.

• 15:51November Kelly?

  That's punishable. Is this a kind of, is this a kind of like courtly punishment? We can like sentence you two for this?

• 15:58Speaker 03

  I think I had that in 2024.

• 16:01Justin Roczniak?

  I'm an American citizen. I will protest that.

• 16:05November Kelly?

  Just have you emulated?

• 16:06Justin Roczniak?

  No, I can't. They can't. They're gonna have to ransom me or something.

• 16:09Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 16:11Liam McAnderson?

  Great General Roz, will you return to the front? He's just like, one second, please. I have to go take a poop.

• 16:18Justin Roczniak?

  Fetch me my brown pants.

• 16:22Liam McAnderson?

  Fetch me my pooping pants.

• 16:24Speaker 03

  So wait, so we've had a thousand years from gunpowder to fireworks.

• 16:27Liam McAnderson?

  Rocketry?

• 16:27Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 16:28Speaker 03

  Okay, cool.

• 16:29Justin Roczniak?

  Rocketry. You know, initially, again, these are sort of primitive firecrackers. Develops over time into rockets, mortars with fancy colors with chemical additives.

• 16:41November Kelly?

  It's an outgrowth of alchemy in a lot of ways.

• 16:44Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 16:45November Kelly?

  I've seen one. You're fucking around with the salts that kill you and in the time before they kill you.

• 16:51Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, yeah.

• 16:52November Kelly?

  That makes a weird colored flame. And then you die and your notes pass to a guy who is trying to make fireworks. And he goes, oh, potassium. Yeah, sure.

• 17:02Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, no, there was presumably a Chinese guy who also boiled a vat of piss for several months. So, you know, and discovered, ah, I can change the color of the flame with this. Still haven't figured out lead into gold yet, but we'll get to that.

• 17:18Liam McAnderson?

  Who cares? Look at all the piss I'm boiling.

• 17:20November Kelly?

  Alchemy, alchemy is so funny to me, given it's like 100% fatality rate. Like, every alchemist of note until they started being chemists instead of alchemists died of like-

• 17:36Liam McAnderson?

  Potassium piss?

• 17:37November Kelly?

  Basically, yeah, of like incredible poisoning.

• 17:40Speaker 03

  Just, just stuff that we've talked about in previous episodes, but absolutely self inflicted and via, via skin.

• 17:48Speaker 03

  Just lovely, lovely, lovely.

• 17:49Justin Roczniak?

  Searching for the philosopher's stone and discovering.

• 17:52Liam McAnderson?

  HF.

• 17:55Justin Roczniak?

  Not, not every way, but enough ways to make the opposite of the philosopher's stone.

• 18:00Liam McAnderson?

  The opposite of the philosopher's stone is just a tub of HF. Yeah.

• 18:03Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, the opposite of philosopher's stone just kills you instantly.

• 18:08Justin Roczniak?

  We've invented the stone that kills you instantly.

• 18:10Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, you wanted immortality. Oh, I thought you said mortality, boss.

• 18:14November Kelly?

  I mean, it makes makes sense why like Chin Shih Hung would be like drinking mercury trying to prolong his life and stuff. That that was like the state of scientific like reasoning at the time is.

• 18:27Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 18:27November Kelly?

  Well, I haven't died of this yet compared to some of the other stuff I've been doing, you know?

• 18:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, compared to the caesium I rubbed on my skin earlier, this is great, right?

• 18:35Justin Roczniak?

  Exactly. Get like a cobalt radiation source.

• 18:40November Kelly?

  It's also funny how many like particularly like heavy metal poisons feel kind of good. Lead tastes delicious.

• 18:47Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, yeah.

• 18:47November Kelly?

  You you can like actually like arsenic, a really good foundation until you die.

• 18:55Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 18:56November Kelly?

  Antimony is a as like a food additive, you know, you get a lot of like.

• 19:02Speaker 03

  What? Yeah, Liam and I, for the benefit of for the benefit of the listeners, Liam and I are just shaking our heads in confusion at this point. It's, yeah, and timony. Oh, my God. Okay.

• 19:11November Kelly?

  You can you can just fuck around, right? And like until you actually die, a lot of a lot of poisonings feel pretty good. Yeah.