Pod Insights Fin vs History Say That To One Of Their Seven Faces | Chernobyl (Part 3/3) About this episode Have no fear, we're monitoring the situation.
Chernobyl (Part Three)
The show for people who like history but don't care what actually happened.
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Chapters:
00:00 - Every Dad’s Fantasy
06:56 - Radioactive Sheep
09:32 - Destroying the Dogs
15:04 - All Legs Are Off
19:29 - Fattest Man Ever
27:05 - The Second Collapse
31:07 - The Chernobyl Growlers
34:39 - Situation Monitors
38:01 - Am I Tuss Enough
42:10 - Absolute Foxes
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Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 Welcome to the 50th Hunger Games.
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1:27 Speaker 05 Welcome back, fatso's to the final part of our epic Chernobyl series. I'm with Horatio Gould.
1:35 Speaker 06 Hello there.
1:36 Speaker 05 And we, listen, it's all gone to shit.
1:38 Speaker 06 Yeah. It's all gone to hell in a handbasket.
1:42 Speaker 05 A massive nuclear core has exploded in Ukraine.
1:46 Speaker 06 The biggest bust of all time.
1:48 Speaker 05 Oh. The pr- pr- city of Pr- Milton Keynes has been evacuated. Only two people have died at this point, which is actually fine.
1:58 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:59 Speaker 05 But they have, many firefighters are suffering from ARS.
2:02 Speaker 06 Yeah.
2:03 Speaker 05 Which is acute radiation syndrome. This is in 1986.
2:08 Speaker 06 Yeah.
2:08 Speaker 05 We haven't done any soundscapes. It might be nice just to do a soundscape of the actual events of the evening on 5th of April. Charlie, you could be the actual, the reactor. Yeah. And then you be the Geiger counter. And I'll be some Russians, or what, Soviets, whatever. Okay?
2:26 Speaker 06 Yeah.
2:27 Speaker 05 Um, what's happening in number four? Oh my, oh my, oh my lord, no, no! The reactor is looking unstable! Stop the test! Oh my, it's exploded! Mr. Tieto, it's exploded!
2:50 Speaker 05 Sir, the reactor is behaving very dangerous! It seems to be playing a take on me by AHA! Sir, the reactor is emitting really sick beats! Why are these beats so sick?
3:04 Speaker 05 It's the world's first nuclear beatbox, dude, that's all.
3:10 Speaker 05 So, that was, uh, we were in Control Room 4 there. And, um, well, they're having a great time, it sounded like.
3:17 Speaker 06 So it wasn't too bad?
3:18 Speaker 05 No, it sounded like they were having a great time and it's nice to know that even under the most stressful of conditions, people can still enjoy "Aha!" That's what, that's what they said, is the thing, "Aha!"
3:28 Speaker 06 It's the Geiger Beatpad.
3:30 Speaker 05 The Geiger Beatpad. In all seriousness, people's skins have, skin have fallen off.
3:35 Speaker 06 The world could have genuinely been wiped out.
3:38 Speaker 05 But there were some burly men from, uh, the Donbass who came in, and in the series, they all looked like Red Richardson, and they built a massive concrete slab underneath, uh, the power plant to stop Jaina Zindrome.
3:52 Speaker 06 Yeah.
3:52 Speaker 05 So, by the summer of 1986, the fires are largely out. The worst of the immediate submissions have subsided, but there is still a risk. Reactor 4 remains shattered. A shattered, unstable mass of fuel, graphite and twisted metal. Am I talking about Charlie's toilet on holiday?
4:09 Speaker 06 Yeah.
4:10 Speaker 05 No. Uh, it's still dangerous.
4:12 Speaker 06 Twisted metal.
4:14 Speaker 05 A shattered, unstable mass. Dangerous hot and leaking radiation. It does sound like your toilet.
4:21 Speaker 05 Your ski shallow.
4:22 Speaker 07 I don't want to talk about it anymore.
4:23 Speaker 05 The reactor needed to be entombed to seal off what was left of the core.
4:27 Speaker 06 Yeah, so after our ski holiday, the cleaners had to be on a shift pattern where they could only be going to the toilet for 40 seconds at a time.
4:34 Speaker 05 It's clear.
4:35 Speaker 06 And 4,000 cleaners had to be used.
4:37 Speaker 05 Yeah, for 90 seconds at a time. And they nicknamed the toilet after a Russian woman called Masha.
4:43 Speaker 06 Yeah, and what they found in there, they called the elephant's foot.
4:45 Speaker 05 Yes, and they needed to build a structure called sarcophagus over the toilet because they're like, we cannot flush this. It's still emitting radiation.
4:54 Speaker 06 We've just got to write this whole room off.
4:55 Speaker 05 We can just contain this room, contain the toilet.
5:00 Speaker 05 The official name for the sarcophagus is object shelter.
5:03 Speaker 06 Yeah.
5:03 Speaker 05 Now, in theory, this is to encapsulate reactor four in concrete and steel structure to reduce the radioactive release. In practice, it became one of the most complex engineering operations of the late 20th century.
5:16 Speaker 06 Fuck me.
5:16 Speaker 05 Until the situation at Charlie's toilets in the ski shallow.
5:21 Speaker 06 This is beef to the dads right here.
5:23 Speaker 05 This is, yeah, this is engineering red meat.
5:26 Speaker 06 It's like a man of a certain age, you're viewing yourself, when you read about this, you're thinking of yourself as the guy who sorts it out.
5:32 Speaker 05 Yeah.
5:32 Speaker 06 That's what every dad has a fantasy, that something like this happens and they have to work something else.
5:37 Speaker 05 Sheila, I've got to go. I'm needed. They need someone to...
5:42 Speaker 06 With my sort of brains.
5:43 Speaker 05 My brain.
5:43 Speaker 06 My practical approach.
5:44 Speaker 05 Finally, my brain, that is always at odds with yours.
5:47 Speaker 06 Yeah, my brain that's, you know, caused a lot of strife.
5:51 Speaker 05 Yes.
5:51 Speaker 06 Socially.
5:52 Speaker 05 Finally, the fact I've ruined every Christmas might save humanity.
5:56 Speaker 06 Yeah.
5:56 Speaker 05 The interior of the core, the blown out core, is too radioactive for prolonged human presence. The actual blueprint of the plant are way out of date. No one actually knows the measurements.
6:08 Speaker 06 Yeah, it's of a different place.
6:10 Speaker 05 Yeah.
6:10 Speaker 06 It's just, yeah, sort of a beach shack.
6:12 Speaker 05 Yeah, so they just, they build a massive sort of structure. Do you know what? It's a babushka doll.
6:18 Speaker 06 Yeah.
6:19 Speaker 05 They need a bigger one around.
6:21 Speaker 06 Yeah, and they put another one.
6:22 Speaker 05 Another one on top of that, in his eyes.
6:24 Speaker 07 To contain all the radiation.
6:25 Speaker 05 Yes.
6:26 Speaker 06 So do you think in the film, they're all scratching their heads and then he just sees a Russian doll and he's like?
6:33 Speaker 05 Of course.
6:34 Speaker 06 It was so simple.
6:35 Speaker 05 The answer was there all along. Many operations are limited to seconds or minutes.
6:40 Speaker 06 Yeah.
6:41 Speaker 05 So it's like a colony of ants.
6:42 Speaker 06 Yeah.
6:43 Speaker 05 Basically having to do it in shifts. He's passing a bucket of water along a line to put a fire out.
6:47 Speaker 06 Yeah.
6:48 Speaker 05 Equipment breaks down under the exposures to the radiation. So you've got men who are like erecting supports, pouring concrete, welding, but they can only do it for a few seconds and then they have to tap out. There's this thing called the elephant's foot. This is the name given to the infamous mass of core beneath reactor four. So that is, that's like a lava like mass that flowed from the core and solidified into the shape that we're looking at now.
7:17 Speaker 06 Which does look like an elephant's foot.
7:18 Speaker 05 It does look like an elephant. I mean, yeah, but an elephant.
7:20 Speaker 06 So is that one of the most radioactive parts?
7:23 Speaker 05 Well, that's the core, isn't it?
7:24 Speaker 06 Is that the core? Right.
7:26 Speaker 05 So that, that is molten nuclear fuel, graphite, concrete and sand fused together.
7:33 Speaker 06 Christ.
7:33 Speaker 05 And that's what they found in Charlie's toilet at the ski shallow.
7:39 Speaker 05 Because he was trying to put it, get the smell of the smell by just pouring sand on, but he couldn't get over the smell.
7:43 Speaker 06 That's all the noise BB was hearing.
7:45 Speaker 05 Helicopters flying, but they kept missing because you can't get over it because it's too smelly. He's pouring boron on it, you know, I don't know where you got that from. But yeah, so this was first identified in late 86 and it's so lethal. It's lethal if you get anywhere close to it. So people to take photographs would like run in quick.
8:03 Speaker 06 Yeah.
8:03 Speaker 05 I don't know why they need to photograph it like that, but anyway. It's one of the most dangerous things on earth, that elephant's foot there. And so they create this exclusion zone. Now we're looking at this map of, this is a map of radiation from Chernobyl. It's very, very, very bad in Ukraine and Belarus and bits of the Eastern Russian Federation.
8:24 Speaker 06 Yeah.
8:24 Speaker 05 It's pretty bad in parts of Sweden, Norway and Finland and Austria.
8:30 Speaker 06 And also Northern Wales, like where Wrexham is. Wrexham's getting fucked.
8:34 Speaker 05 Well, that would make a lot of sense. Like if you went to Rill.
8:37 Speaker 06 No.
8:39 Speaker 05 Chernobyl is what it should be called.
8:42 Speaker 06 Is it because the higher ground catches it more? Because why is things further away? Is it maybe because there's more, more air currents coming higher up?
8:51 Speaker 05 Yeah, I don't, well, no, is it because of the curvature of the earth? Because we're looking at a, I don't know, but.
8:59 Speaker 06 Maybe because it swirls.
9:00 Speaker 05 But I love that, I love that the southeastern mainland's just completely fine. Just fine.
9:05 Speaker 06 Done it again.
9:06 Speaker 05 Done it again. How have they done it again?
9:09 Speaker 05 Wales and the North West. Liverpool's fucked.
9:16 Speaker 06 All the Celtic regions, actually, the most Celtic regions.
9:18 Speaker 05 It's almost like they were asking for it. What were they wearing? Can you, Charlie, can you Google why, like, North Wales has more radiation from Chernobyl than London?
9:28 Speaker 06 Is it because of the rain? Interesting. So the rainier parts of the country have acid rain.
9:33 Speaker 05 Heavy radioactive rain coincided with the cloud passing over the region.
9:38 Speaker 06 Right, so it's clouds are taking it over.
9:40 Speaker 05 Right, so this rainfall forced cesium-137 onto the upland pastures, where peaty soil allowed the radioactive material to be easily absorbed by grazing sheep. Oh, and then they fuck the sheep and then they get radioactive. So there you go. We've cracked it.
9:57 Speaker 06 The dangers of sheep shagging.
9:59 Speaker 05 Their compound, it turns out. So...
10:01 Speaker 06 But it was up until, I think, 2012 was the last time they, like, got rid of a radioactive sheep from Chernobyl.
10:07 Speaker 05 Really?
10:08 Speaker 06 It was literally the coalition years is when it was the last sheep that was destroyed because of radiation or something.
10:13 Speaker 05 So obviously the worst of it is around Chernobyl and Pripyat.
10:16 Speaker 07 What sound does radioactive sheep make?
10:23 Speaker 07 Bowch.
10:25 Speaker 05 Bowch, yeah, that's probably it.
10:27 Speaker 07 Bowch.
10:28 Speaker 05 Bowch.
10:29 Speaker 06 Bowch.
10:30 Speaker 05 Bowch.
10:34 Speaker 05 Yeah. You know when you hear a sheep go, "Bowch", something's not right with that, so something's happened there. So obviously the heaviest contamination is around the city of Pripyat.
10:45 Speaker 05 It extends across Europe. This becomes the exclusion zone, which do we know how big it is? Like, in 30 kilometres in radius originally. It's about 1,000 square miles. How many football fields or whatever is that, Charlie? The people are thick. They don't know what 1,000 square miles is. Give us some kind of reference.
11:07 Speaker 07 Okay. How tall is Wayne Rooney? Wayne Rooney height? So 1.76 metres, how many miles is it?
11:16 Speaker 05 1,000 square miles.
11:17 Speaker 07 So that is... How many square Wayne Rooney's is that?
11:22 Speaker 06 He's already pretty square.
11:23 Speaker 05 Yeah, but that's still...
11:24 Speaker 07 That is, that's fascinating.
11:26 Speaker 05 You're getting a calculator up!
11:28 Speaker 07 That is 568 Wayne Rooney's, square Wayne Rooney's.
11:31 Speaker 06 Not at all, is it?
11:32 Speaker 05 It's not.
11:33 Speaker 07 Yeah, it is.
11:33 Speaker 05 It's not.
11:34 Speaker 06 It's not 568 Wayne Rooney's.
11:36 Speaker 05 No, because Wayne Rooney is not 1.76 miles tall.
11:39 Speaker 07 Oh shit, okay, wait, wait, wait, so... If Wayne Rooney is 1.76 metres tall, how many square miles... How many square Wayne Rooney's is 1,000 square miles?
11:53 Speaker 06 I think the square Wayne Rooney's is gonna take away from the...
11:55 Speaker 07 So it's 836 million Wayne Rooney's lying flat in perfect squares.
12:00 Speaker 05 That is a lot.
12:00 Speaker 06 That's a lot.
12:01 Speaker 05 To be fair, you've nailed that. I get a real sense of... I mean, it's incomprehensible.
12:05 Speaker 06 Yeah, 836 million Wayne Rooney's.
12:08 Speaker 05 Do you imagine that many... Do you imagine that many Wayne Rooney's? I mean, it really gives you a sense of the scale of the disaster.
12:17 Speaker 07 That's a lot, yeah.
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13:33 Speaker 05 So we're in, we should just place this.
13:35 Speaker 06 And also Chernobyl made a lot more Wayne Rooney's.
13:37 Speaker 05 Yes, big heads. Yeah, flat heads. 1986, would you like to place this for our smelly, thick listeners?
13:45 Speaker 06 It's after the films Stalker by Tarkovsky. And it's before Transformers 2. I assume you haven't seen Stalker.
13:53 Speaker 05 No.
13:54 Speaker 06 Is, it is based on a Russian kind of psychedelic novel. It's about this, this is written in the seventies. It's about this zone in this mysterious dystopian Soviet land, which you can't go, because once you go into there, weird things start happening.
14:10 Speaker 05 All right.
14:10 Speaker 06 And people don't end up leaving. And there's these people called stalkers who are guides who break in illegally through the fences. And like, there's loads of army patrols and they'll take people who are fascinated by it via like dark tourism. And he takes a poet and a scientist. And it's like this amazing film where they're just entering, going through this. And everything's sort of in black and white until they get into the zone and it sort of bursts into color. And there's just these strange kind of things happening and visions. But that happened 10 years, like six years before Chernobyl. So it's really strange that basically, and now when we went to see Pripyat in Chernobyl, we had a guide who was basically our stalker.
14:50 Speaker 05 Right.
14:51 Speaker 06 So it's just really, it's odd.
14:53 Speaker 05 So it's after that and it's before?
14:55 Speaker 06 Shark Tale.
14:56 Speaker 05 Shark Tale. Okay, great. And Shark Tale, if you don't, is this amazing film that I've not seen.
15:02 Speaker 07 It is amazing.
15:03 Speaker 06 Well, Shark Tale is what ended up with the people who lived in Pripyat. They ended up looking like they were.
15:07 Speaker 05 Well, it's a documentary about the, the dogs that survived the explosion and they're who are now sharks essentially.
15:15 Speaker 05 So the exclusion zone, managing an exclusion zone, as I know and as you know from sharing a toilet with Charlie, it's a major administrative task. The military have to establish checkpoints to prevent illegal entry and looting.
15:31 Speaker 06 Yeah.
15:32 Speaker 05 Infrastructure is just left to decay. Schools, shops, playgrounds and apartment blocks are abandoned. Evacuees are then housed in temporary accommodation. They're promised new employment. Soviet cleanup authorities have to send armed squads into the exclusion zone to destroy animals. I think there is a level of disaster. Like if you have to, if you have to leave your dog, it's not that bad. If you have to put your dog down, it's very bad. If you have to destroy your dog, it's very, very bad.
16:04 Speaker 06 Yeah.
16:05 Speaker 05 Like destroying an animal.
16:07 Speaker 06 Because I mean, the dog Holocaust of the Blitz.
16:10 Speaker 05 Allegedly, allegedly, allegedly.
16:12 Speaker 06 That's the middle tier, right? That's amber warning.
16:15 Speaker 05 Yeah.
16:16 Speaker 06 That's just putting them all down. Because they didn't destroy the dogs, did they?
16:18 Speaker 05 No, they didn't destroy the dogs.
16:19 Speaker 06 So this is the code red.
16:20 Speaker 05 So there's no way they could admit how bad it is.
16:23 Speaker 06 It's all about the noble lie, right? But to the point where it just keeps bending on itself.
16:28 Speaker 05 The Chernobyl lie.
16:29 Speaker 06 Yeah. It's pretty good.
16:31 Speaker 05 Ian, Paul, I'm here. Have I got, have I got quips for you?
16:35 Speaker 06 Yeah, very quippy.
16:36 Speaker 05 The Chernobyl lie. Come on.
16:39 Speaker 06 Come on.
16:40 Speaker 05 Come on. Not been on for some time, it's probably because I.
16:42 Speaker 06 Would you go back on?
16:43 Speaker 05 No.
16:44 Speaker 06 Would you not?
16:45 Speaker 05 No.
16:46 Speaker 06 Really?
16:47 Speaker 05 No. I don't want boring cunts coming to my tour show. I want Men in Fedora 2 3D print katanas.
16:53 Speaker 06 Yeah, fun guys.
16:54 Speaker 05 Fun guys. I do not want, you know, fucking boomers, rye boomers.
17:01 Speaker 06 Yeah, you don't want a rye boomer.
17:02 Speaker 05 Beethoven's Brothers, 60, at my tour show going, huh, huh, bit too much about paedophilia, but yeah, I enjoyed the stuff you said about Kuzdarma.
17:11 Speaker 05 My father-in-law's review last, last tour.
17:14 Speaker 06 Well, is that exactly what you said?
17:15 Speaker 05 Yeah, a bit too much paedophilia stuff, but I enjoyed the stuff you said about it.
17:19 Speaker 05 Fuck off.
17:20 Speaker 06 Fuck off.
17:21 Speaker 05 Fuck off.
17:21 Speaker 06 I get, get rid of the Keystarm and stuff.
17:23 Speaker 05 Yeah, that's why I said, oh yeah, it's a preview and get rid of that. More pedo stuff.
17:28 Speaker 05 Yes, no, you're right. The, the Chernobyl, well, it is, you know what? It's exactly the same as the production team of I Got News For You. They cannot admit the systemic rot at the heart of it.
17:39 Speaker 06 Right, the bureaucratic failing.
17:41 Speaker 05 The bureaucratic failures of the show. I mean, how, Paul Merton is a sunken reactor core. You know, if you're not, if you tag his joke, you, you, he tells, he says he doesn't want you to do it again. It's probably what happened to me because I probably tagged his joke.
17:56 Speaker 06 You can't be tagging Paul's joke.
17:57 Speaker 05 No.
17:57 Speaker 06 You're in his playground though.
17:59 Speaker 05 That's what I mean.
17:59 Speaker 06 Yeah.
18:00 Speaker 05 So the, the, the security service, the KGB, they basically, they treat all the RBMK reactor design flaws as classified. So all the engineers they've asked to help, they don't know any of the vulnerabilities. So there's no like sense of how they work out what happened because it's like, what do you mean what happened? It was all fine. So in August 86, the Soviet Union holds the Vienna Conference on Chernobyl, which is the first international explanation of what happened. And during the conference, our friend Valerie, Val, is it Valerie Legasov? Is that his name?
18:34 Speaker 06 I don't know.
18:35 Speaker 05 Legasov, Legasov, Legs Off.
18:38 Speaker 06 His legs off, well, lots of people's legs were off.
18:40 Speaker 05 Lots of people's legs are off, yeah. All legs are off. He delivers this technical account that frames the disaster purely as a result of procedural violations and operator error. So he does not frame it as a design of the fact that it's a shit kettle.
18:57 Speaker 06 So is it Vasilny? What's his name? The guy, the operator, the Paul Ritter's character?
19:02 Speaker 05 Dyatlov.
19:02 Speaker 06 Dyatlov?
19:03 Speaker 05 Yeah.
19:03 Speaker 06 So he's the guy who they're putting it all on?
19:05 Speaker 05 Yeah.
19:05 Speaker 06 Yeah.
19:06 Speaker 05 And the, and Akimov and the guys that are dead.
19:08 Speaker 06 Yeah.
19:08 Speaker 05 You know, the, the guys who Michael Douglas to death.
19:10 Speaker 06 Yeah.
19:11 Speaker 05 So Legasov then gets publicly honoured by the Soviet state.
19:16 Speaker 05 For basically holding the line and saying, oh, it's just all the Atlos fault. So the USSR then has an official investigation, which tries to allocate blame to individuals rather than take any ownership as the fact that it's their fault. So they say it's poor discipline, mismanagement.
19:34 Speaker 06 Mandatory redistribution of blame.
19:35 Speaker 05 Yes, exactly. It's not ours. We own the blame and we give it to you.
19:40 Speaker 06 We seize the means of blaming others.
19:42 Speaker 05 Yeah, we seize the means of blame. The criminal trial takes place in July 87 in Chernobyl. Six officials are tried. Brukharnov, the director, Diatlov and Nikolai Fomin, who's the chief engineer.
19:56 Speaker 06 And he's foaming at the mouth of this.
19:57 Speaker 05 He is because of the radiation. Yep, he's foaming out the arse as well. His liver's fallen out of his arse. He's never told us.
20:03 Speaker 06 He's confused.
20:04 Speaker 05 Don't know why they're trying him. Something's not right here. And they each get 10 years in prison, which I think is a bit of a shock to have one there. Cause they were like, well, hang on, you did, you did make it. Why, why is there like a fuck it button? If I'm not meant to press it.
20:19 Speaker 06 It's either too, it's a weird time period because it's either too little or too much. Do you know what I mean? Cause either they are the ones who caused it, then it's like, it should be life imprisonment, right?
20:31 Speaker 05 Yeah.
20:31 Speaker 06 Or they weren't and therefore it should be like two.
20:34 Speaker 05 Yeah. But again, this would, this would mean that the USSR would have to like shed the illusion that, you know, it's just a bunch of knackered fucking microwaves or whatever. What are you?
20:48 Speaker 07 You're seeing if there's quite a unique example of people going to prison for mismanagement. Does that actually happen much?
20:56 Speaker 05 Post Office Horizon scandal.
20:57 Speaker 07 Are they in prison?
20:58 Speaker 05 I think they are, yeah.
20:59 Speaker 07 What treatment are you getting if you're, if you're one of the Post Office Horizons?
21:01 Speaker 06 I don't think you're getting killed like a paedophile.
21:03 Speaker 05 No, you're not getting, you're not getting Watkins and Huntley's. Ian'd. You're not getting Ian'd. I don't imagine.
21:11 Speaker 07 They're taking your food, I think.
21:12 Speaker 05 Hey? I don't think, do you know what? I don't think, I think they're coming, they're the bullies, I think.
21:17 Speaker 07 What, the Post Office Horizon?
21:18 Speaker 05 I think they're the Alphas.
21:19 Speaker 06 Were they beating up serial rapists?
21:21 Speaker 05 Yeah, I think they're, I think they're bumming paedophiles. Post Office Horizon IT scandals. They're like, aye, sweet cheeks, fucking jailbait over there. What am I in for?
21:32 Speaker 06 Don't look at me like that if you don't want to get bombed.
21:34 Speaker 05 Ever heard of a thing called the Post Office Horizon scandal? Masterminds.
21:40 Speaker 05 Now, pick up my soap, you motherfucking jail bitch.
21:43 Speaker 06 Well, they got Charles Bronson bent over.
21:45 Speaker 05 Yeah, yeah. I reckon before his untimely death, Ian Huntley had a, had a big wig and he was like their prison wife to the post office, surprising lads. Yeah, they're living large that lot. Anyway, so Legasov is one of, I mean, this is one of the most tragic stories.
22:05 Speaker 05 No, it's not actually. No, it's not. People were born with fucking seven heads. He becomes isolated within the scientific community. It's not that sad, actually. I made a big swing.
22:16 Speaker 05 I just really liked Jared Harris. I think he's a phenomenal actor and he's sort of the main character.
22:19 Speaker 06 A lot to that role.
22:20 Speaker 05 Yeah, iconic performance, but it's not the worst thing that happened.
22:27 Speaker 06 There's worse things than being isolated from the scientific community. We're isolated from the scientific community.
22:31 Speaker 05 Yes, well, yeah, some parts of the scientific community. I'm deeply embedded within the pseudo-scientific community. I will be, I will be a guest speaker at the London Excel Centre's Phrenology Conference in 2026, to which I hope I will see, meet many of you there. I will be sending, I will be selling branded callipers.
22:51 Speaker 06 Literature.
22:51 Speaker 05 I'll be sharing my own research. Anyway, so yeah, Legasov, he sort of becomes the public face of the response. And he's like, well, certainly in the mini-series, he's the one that is always trying to, he's the one that is portrayed as fighting against the Soviet machine. I don't know how real that was, because as you say, it's like 30 people that they put into one role.
23:16 Speaker 06 Yeah.
23:16 Speaker 05 Two years after the explosion, almost pretty much to the day, he hung himself. Why are you laughing?
23:24 Speaker 07 I was laughing.
23:25 Speaker 06 What do you mean?
23:26 Speaker 05 You mean he was laughing?
23:27 Speaker 07 You guys are really funny.
23:29 Speaker 06 Charlie.
23:29 Speaker 05 Can you hear what we're saying?
23:31 Speaker 06 Fucking pet peeve.
23:32 Speaker 07 You guys are really funny.
23:33 Speaker 06 Are you watching something on your phone?
23:35 Speaker 07 You two are some of the best, genuinely.
23:36 Speaker 06 What were you laughing at? What were you laughing at?
23:39 Speaker 07 This.
23:40 Speaker 05 The guy, the guy who's hanging himself.
23:42 Speaker 07 Yeah.
23:43 Speaker 05 You're laughing at that?
23:44 Speaker 07 Well, just how you said it.
23:45 Speaker 05 How I said it?
23:46 Speaker 07 You got real away with words.
23:49 Speaker 06 Anyway.
23:50 Speaker 05 So, two, two years after.
23:54 Speaker 06 So this is the 38th birthday.
23:55 Speaker 05 Well now I'm laughing. That's one of the saddest parts of the story.
24:00 Speaker 06 I know.
24:00 Speaker 05 You've been isolated.
24:01 Speaker 06 He's fucking slapping his knees. He's rubbing his belly.
24:04 Speaker 05 Absolute idiot.
24:05 Speaker 06 Giggling.
24:06 Speaker 05 Chimp.
24:12 Speaker 05 A good man who was trying to fight against the bureaucracy of the Soviet state.
24:15 Speaker 06 Killed himself.
24:16 Speaker 05 Killed himself.
24:16 Speaker 06 Out of guilt, out of shame, out of isolation.
24:23 Speaker 05 He's crazy. But he records a series of audio tapes called the Legasov tapes.
24:29 Speaker 06 Yeah. Which are on the Patreon. We've got our own Legasov tapes.
24:32 Speaker 05 We've got the Furman tapes. They're not quite the same. They're not quite the same. He didn't just spit the N-word into his own recorder and then kill himself.
24:41 Speaker 06 It's another way to do it.
24:42 Speaker 05 What an audio suicide note this is. He's just said the N-word for seven hours.
24:46 Speaker 06 Well, I guess we can't cancel him.
24:48 Speaker 05 No, I guess, well, I guess he killed himself. I guess he got it out of his system before he went to the afterlife. But he sort of, yeah, he reflects on the failures of the Soviet system and the need for truth about the incident. And these get published in Pravda.
25:00 Speaker 06 Our old friend. That was a lot in the Russian Revolution, Pravda.
25:03 Speaker 05 Oh, is that the, is that like the state magazine?
25:06 Speaker 06 Yeah. Well, it was the revolutionary magazine. Now it's the state one.
25:09 Speaker 05 And years later, in 96, Boris Yeltsin, fattest man ever.
25:15 Speaker 06 Pissed.
25:16 Speaker 05 Pissed, fat, red-faced.
25:17 Speaker 06 I mean, he was kind of amazing.
25:18 Speaker 05 He is amazing.
25:19 Speaker 06 Boris Yeltsin drunk, like, he would walk into, like, key, like, diplomatic conferences with, with the US president. And he would just be pissed.
25:29 Speaker 05 Yeah, battered.
25:30 Speaker 06 So it's like, sort of, a lot of press ops that you're meant to be doing to sort of get photos of you being, you know, a man who cares about the people. But he'd always be just a bit too pissed. It does make it look fun being president, though. Just doing all these things and this fucking, woo.
25:46 Speaker 05 It makes you think Boris Johnson could have gone further, really. Oh, this is, this is brilliant dad dancing.
25:54 Speaker 05 But this is the first, this is the first Russian president after communism, isn't it?
25:58 Speaker 06 So they didn't know what they're doing.
25:59 Speaker 05 No, it's like, fuck it. Is this what you're meant to do? Is this capitalism?
26:04 Speaker 06 Western, western head listen?
26:05 Speaker 05 Hello? Hello?
26:08 Speaker 06 Get him falling down the stairs as well. Yeah, there we go.
26:12 Speaker 05 Battered.
26:19 Speaker 06 So good.
26:20 Speaker 05 Yeah, so he, Boris Yeltsin, awards Legasov Hero of the Russian Federation, posthumously, in 96. But, basically, Chernobyl, well, it essentially kills the Soviet Union.
26:36 Speaker 06 Yeah.
26:36 Speaker 05 You could argue.
26:37 Speaker 06 That's what Gorbachev.
26:38 Speaker 05 Gorbachev said that.
26:39 Speaker 06 Yeah.
26:40 Speaker 05 I would say it's because he had an egg on his head. I think he was deflecting.
26:43 Speaker 06 Deflecting eggs with his head, that was the problem.
26:45 Speaker 05 Yeah, he missed one. So, nuclear power stations were like, you know, a symbol of modernity and stuff.
26:51 Speaker 06 Yeah, so nuclear power's gone down since Chernobyl, because this is the big con for nuclear power, right, is Chernobyl.
26:57 Speaker 05 Yeah.
26:58 Speaker 06 Because Chernobyl could happen.
26:59 Speaker 05 Yeah.
27:00 Speaker 06 Apart from that, they're the best source of energy, right?
27:03 Speaker 05 Well, it gets risk reward, doesn't it?
27:05 Speaker 06 Yeah.
27:05 Speaker 05 Is it?
27:06 Speaker 06 Well, if you can afford to do nuclear energy, it's the most renewable and, like, once it's up and running.
27:13 Speaker 05 Would it be interesting to see, has the CO2 emissions, or, well, other emissions, the bad emissions, the nuclear emissions, is that worse overall than all the fucking coal-powered ones that Greta goes on about?
27:30 Speaker 06 Well, they're just, they're worse in different ways, aren't they?
27:32 Speaker 05 Yeah.
27:33 Speaker 06 A generation of people get cancer, but then it's not like a slow destruction of the global warming, right?
27:38 Speaker 05 Well, say that to their face.
27:40 Speaker 06 Well, which one? Which one of their faces?
27:42 Speaker 05 Which one of their seven faces? You can take your pick. They've got a face on their arse, they've got a face on their leg. I mean, you know.
27:50 Speaker 06 Instinctively, I'm for nuclear power, and I think, just do it, just don't be an idiot with it.
27:56 Speaker 05 Right.
27:57 Speaker 06 Is my genuine instinct.
27:58 Speaker 05 That's your big takeaway of this series. Fucking idiots.
28:01 Speaker 06 Are you like, woke nonsense? Surely, isn't nuclear power not woke nonsense, is it?
28:05 Speaker 05 No.
28:06 Speaker 06 Wind turbines are woke nonsense, right?
28:07 Speaker 05 Oh yeah, I think they are. I think they are very woke nonsense.
28:09 Speaker 06 So I guess the straight, the most Clarkson form of energy is coal, right?
28:12 Speaker 05 Yes, 100%. Burn coal.
28:14 Speaker 06 Fracking, I guess it'd be fracking. Fracking's very straight.
28:18 Speaker 05 But then, you know, I'm biased, you know, my mouth, my mouth is like Jeremy Clarkson's bin, in that anything's going in there. I'm just eating packaging, I'm eating plastic. He's just shoving anything in my mouth. He's not separating any of his things. All in one bin, fuck it, that's my mouth when I open the fridge. At the end of the day, I get the five o'clock, that's my most dangerous part of the day, five o'clock.
28:42 Speaker 06 It's five o'clock somewhere.
28:46 Speaker 05 That is, that's my, that is my worst, you know, I can be quite disciplined until five.
28:50 Speaker 06 Pickles, Nutella.
28:52 Speaker 05 All of it, all of it's going in. Fucking peanut butter, smoked salmon.
29:01 Speaker 05 My stomach at this point is like, what are you doing?
29:03 Speaker 06 What the fuck are you doing?
29:04 Speaker 05 If I push shuffle mode, why the fuck are you eating this? Yeah, I'm very, if I can eat, if I can eat dinner at five, I think my health would be in a much better state. But I do so much damage between five to seven, waiting for dinner. So obviously it's very expensive, all this stuff, as you've said, it's 700 billion dollars. The exclusion zone is a permanent liability.
29:28 Speaker 06 832 million Wayne Rooney squared.
29:30 Speaker 05 Yes, thank you, thank you for, yep, I know exactly what that looks like now.
29:34 Speaker 06 R W squared.
29:35 Speaker 05 And Gorbachev had recently launched all these policies of Glasnost, as I said, to ease tensions with the West. But the disaster completely accelerates the end of the system because.
29:46 Speaker 06 Whereas all the flaws of the Soviet system at its most creaking, at its worst, all come out in this. It's like all of the problems that have been building up for many years are the most at the surface with the Chernobyl disaster.
29:58 Speaker 05 The lack of sort of competition, the, the, the culture of no accountability, of middle management.
30:04 Speaker 06 The problem with just having party men who are just looking out for their own betterment.
30:08 Speaker 05 Yeah, it's a great, it's a great irony of communism on that scale where everyone is looking out for themselves, but can't admit it.
30:13 Speaker 06 Yeah, and also the hiding information, it creates just a fake reality.
30:19 Speaker 05 Yeah.
30:20 Speaker 06 Where truth is completely alternative, basically.
30:23 Speaker 05 Once citizens start questioning nuclear safety, all the other pillars of the system are up for questioning as well. So a lot of like, I think the thing I listened to was that the Ukrainian nationalist movement, or certainly, or maybe the Lithuanian one, that's the first republic to go independent.
30:39 Speaker 06 Ping, first button to ping out of the.
30:41 Speaker 05 First button to ping out of the fly, oh, Christmas Day, Lithuania have gone.
30:46 Speaker 05 Their nationalist movement sort of starts on the basis of the CND or the anti-nuclear, the anti-Chernobyl.
30:53 Speaker 06 Oh, interesting.
30:54 Speaker 05 Let's get to Chernobyl today. The containment operation is still, as with Charlie's toilet, it's never finished. The work is never finished.
31:06 Speaker 06 The half-life coming out is millions of years.
31:09 Speaker 05 Millions of years.
31:10 Speaker 06 So it's just that you'll never be finished.
31:12 Speaker 05 No, not in several lifetimes, will that toilet ever be usable again? By the early 21st century, it was clear that the original 1986 sarcophagus overreactor four was deteriorating. Cracks were appearing in it, steel supports were corroded, parts of the structure were weakening, and engineers feared a second collapse could release-
31:36 Speaker 06 A second collapse.
31:37 Speaker 05 A second collapse, terrifying, could release radioactive dust into the atmosphere. So the answer is what they called the new safe confinement, the NSC, which to enclose the reactor and the original sarcophagus. So it is a babushka doll.
31:50 Speaker 06 Yep.
31:51 Speaker 05 It's an even bigger one on top, which you must have seen this.
31:56 Speaker 06 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
31:57 Speaker 05 I suppose it's fucking massive.
31:59 Speaker 06 It's huge, yeah. I mean, of course, you hear so much about it and then you get, we've got right up close to it as well.
32:06 Speaker 05 Yeah, how much, how close do they let you get?
32:07 Speaker 06 Like about where-
32:09 Speaker 05 Touch it?
32:10 Speaker 06 About where the photo on the left is.
32:13 Speaker 05 Right, okay.
32:14 Speaker 07 Looks like Bryce Norton.
32:15 Speaker 05 Bryce Norton?
32:17 Speaker 07 Yeah.
32:18 Speaker 05 Do you know RF Bryce Norton is right by Crocodile Land? Yeah, big crocodile land?
32:22 Speaker 07 No.
32:23 Speaker 05 So just in West Oxford, in West Oxford, there is a private collector of crocodiles who's formed, who's started this thing called Crocodile Land, and there are hundreds of crocodiles. Crucially, it's genuinely seconds away from RF Bryce Norton because if the crocodiles ever got out, you could just carpet bomb them within a minute.
32:40 Speaker 07 Is that why?
32:42 Speaker 05 No, that's not why, Charlie, but-
32:44 Speaker 06 Have you ever been?
32:45 Speaker 05 Yes.
32:45 Speaker 06 Is it a good day out?
32:46 Speaker 05 I went to Crocodile World, but a month ago, with my kids.
32:49 Speaker 06 Is it a good, good day out?
32:50 Speaker 05 They've got a lot of fucking crocs, I'll tell you that much.
32:53 Speaker 06 But if you're, if you're not looking for crocodiles?
32:56 Speaker 05 You'd hate it. My mum didn't come, even though it was her birthday, because she really hates crocodiles.
33:02 Speaker 06 So were you celebrating her birthday without her at Crocodile?
33:05 Speaker 05 Yeah, innocent of it. When this one's for you, mum, and she was like, "I'm just over here", and we're like, "No, my son really wants to see the crocodiles." They've got, they've got loads of them. And what's terrifying is they're all, they all just like lie on each other, like a big sort of crocodile lasagna.
33:18 Speaker 06 Yeah.
33:19 Speaker 05 And there's hundreds of them.
33:20 Speaker 06 Like a rat king.
33:20 Speaker 05 It is a crocodile rat king. Disgraceful, what?
33:23 Speaker 07 Apparently they bark. Apparently crocodiles bark.
33:25 Speaker 06 (growling)
33:27 Speaker 05 Yeah, listen.
33:27 Speaker 06 They came bounding, going (growling).
33:30 Speaker 05 Yeah.
33:30 Speaker 07 Listen.
33:30 Speaker 05 Oh my god, the Chernobyl growlers. My god, we haven't even talked about the state of the Chernobyl women's growlers, yes? Oh, that's the sound they make. A Russian, an old Russian woman opens her legs.
33:43 Speaker 06 This is what you hear.
33:52 Speaker 06 Michael Douglas says, "I've dealt with worse."
33:55 Speaker 05 Pass my bib. Hold my beer.
34:00 Speaker 06 I'm going in.
34:01 Speaker 05 I'm going in.
34:07 Speaker 06 You know when you're going, if you're going caving, you have to have your rope leading you to the, he, he does that when he goes in. So that he can always find his way back if he gets locked. He doesn't want a nutty putty incident.
34:18 Speaker 05 You cannot have a family nutty putty.
34:21 Speaker 06 A nutty pussy incident.
35:01 Speaker 03 The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. A Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive. Game and system sold separately. Game rated everyone 10 and up.
35:08 Speaker 04 LinkedIn is pretty amazing at helping you grow your small business. We cannot make your email response time faster. We can help you sell, market and hire in one place. We cannot help you find space for your three desk drinks. Why do you have three? And while we can't help you find the perfect volume for your presentation video, LinkedIn can help you find the perfect audience for your business. Grow your small business on LinkedIn. Learn more at LinkedIn.com/smallbusiness.
35:38 Speaker 05 The new safe containment is taller than the Statue of Liberty and it's big enough to span several football pitches, which again, it'd be nice for Wayne Rooney to lie on.
35:47 Speaker 06 Who'd fit at home?
35:48 Speaker 05 Yeah, he would. It's only designed to last around a century. Fuck, so...
35:54 Speaker 06 Before another one.
35:55 Speaker 05 Are they gonna have to genuinely keep building arches? I mean, that is kind of beautiful.
36:00 Speaker 06 Yeah.
36:00 Speaker 05 That they're safe, that they're... The only safe way to do it is to keep Dolly Babushka dolls. I mean, I love that.
36:05 Speaker 06 But there's also those amazing babushkas who have seen so much... Living in that part of Ukraine, if you're born in about 1910
36:14 Speaker 05 Yes.
36:14 Speaker 06 And you die in 2010, the shit that you've seen in your life.
36:18 Speaker 05 Wow.
36:19 Speaker 06 In the point where most of them didn't leave. It's like, I've been through so much of this stuff.
36:23 Speaker 05 Charlie, can you find the woman who still lives? There's a one old woman whose growl that we've just heard. She still lives in Chernobyl.
36:29 Speaker 06 Because she was there for the Russian Revolution, Russian Civil War, fucking fall of the Soviet Union, Chernobyl.
36:35 Speaker 05 The Holodomor.
36:36 Speaker 06 The Holodomor.
36:37 Speaker 05 Yeah.
36:38 Speaker 06 And now, some of them have lived through the Russian-Ukraine war. Like, the shit that they've seen.
36:43 Speaker 05 Yeah.
36:43 Speaker 06 Chernobyl, who gives a fuck?
36:45 Speaker 05 Yeah, she's there like, "I'm not fucking leaving."
36:46 Speaker 06 These are the most chewed up, toughest broads in the world.
36:48 Speaker 05 Yeah. God.
36:50 Speaker 06 Yeah, look at this.
36:51 Speaker 05 God, the barking crocodile growlers of Chernobyl.
36:56 Speaker 06 Yeah, no, I would, once the war ends, I would highly recommend going to Chernobyl. It was genuinely the best.
37:02 Speaker 05 Well, what happens, uh, because it got attacked, didn't they? Didn't the Russian forces in 2023 or whatever, they dug trenches in, in contaminated earth?
37:12 Speaker 06 Yeah.
37:13 Speaker 05 And so they're getting, they're getting in there.
37:15 Speaker 06 Yeah, but I don't know how dangerous, because I think there's a bit, it's a bit disputed how, I think it's like, if you spend a lot of time there, it's like smoking a cig.
37:21 Speaker 05 To go to Chernobyl for a day, for a day trip, like what am I, what's the scores on the doors?
37:26 Speaker 07 Yeah.
37:27 Speaker 05 Is it like, is it like a 20 pack?
37:28 Speaker 06 Because he had a Geiger canter the whole time and it just like, it went, it went up slightly. It's not, I don't think it's too, I mean, he's there every day.
37:34 Speaker 05 Yeah.
37:35 Speaker 06 And I guess we're all dying a canter anyway, so it's hard to.
37:37 Speaker 05 It's considered relatively safe.
37:40 Speaker 07 Similar to that of a long haul flight.
37:41 Speaker 05 Oh, right.
37:42 Speaker 06 Yeah, so it's really like.
37:44 Speaker 05 What, you get radiation from a long haul flight? Is that from everyone's farts on the plane? Because of the high altitudes and the atmosphere is thinner, which means you get less protection, radiation from space.
37:55 Speaker 06 Creepy.
37:55 Speaker 05 Oh, that's bollocks, I think we could ignore that.
37:57 Speaker 06 So it's like, yeah, that's why I mean, it's kind of like, nothing. If you lived there for 40 years, maybe a tiny bit.
38:02 Speaker 05 In early 2022, Russian forces occupied the Chernobyl plant and the exclusion zone, which is not cricket.
38:08 Speaker 06 No, come on.
38:09 Speaker 05 That's not a playing field. Don't be fucking about up there.
38:12 Speaker 06 Yeah, we're having a laugh.
38:13 Speaker 05 Yeah, we're all having a lot, it's all a bit of fun and games. You don't go into fucking Chernobyl.
38:16 Speaker 06 Yeah.
38:17 Speaker 05 And so they, uh, they hold scientists hostage there. And then, fuck, in last year, on Valentine's Day, a drone strike hits the new safe confinement.
38:27 Speaker 06 You can't, lads, what are you playing at?
38:29 Speaker 05 What are you doing?
38:31 Speaker 06 You were, both of you are the ones who fixed it.
38:33 Speaker 05 Yeah.
38:34 Speaker 06 You know what this is.
38:35 Speaker 05 Russians, man.
38:36 Speaker 06 They're always looking for it.
38:37 Speaker 05 They love it. They go, wouldn't, what, what happened if we fired a fucking drone at that massive toilet?
38:41 Speaker 06 So Chernobyl's in northern Ukraine, so I'm, uh, and that's where that, that primary assault came from. So they have it now, because it's on the Belarusian border.
38:49 Speaker 05 They withdrew completely, uh, March 31st, 22, after their offensive on Kiev failed.
38:53 Speaker 06 Right, yeah.
38:55 Speaker 05 Christ, why are you occupying that?
38:57 Speaker 06 That was, when the launch of that was, another great day to monitor the situation.
39:01 Speaker 05 Yes.
39:01 Speaker 06 I had about, I had about five weeks of monitoring the situation until it got a bit samey.
39:04 Speaker 05 Yeah, yeah, same.
39:05 Speaker 06 But when you had that big convoy of tanks heading towards Kiev.
39:09 Speaker 05 Especially with the, they're all building up on the border.
39:13 Speaker 06 Yeah.
39:13 Speaker 05 And I'd, I'd been monitoring that situation. So when war broke out, my wife was like, oh my God. And I was like, well, I actually, I've actually.
39:19 Speaker 06 Don't worry.
39:20 Speaker 05 I've been monitoring for a while.
39:21 Speaker 06 For a long time.
39:22 Speaker 05 I've been across the build up of troops. I had a similar thing when Trump attacked Iran because I was like.
39:28 Speaker 06 What's they, what they doing in the Red Sea?
39:30 Speaker 05 Why are they there?
39:31 Speaker 06 Venezuela, monitoring the situation in the.
39:33 Speaker 05 I'm monitoring every situation. I'm monitoring every situation. What are they do, it's costs them billions of dollars to get the forces there. They're not going to send them there and not use them.
39:43 Speaker 06 Well, that was what was awesome about Putin when he just like, he built up his forces and we're not gonna do it.
39:48 Speaker 05 Exercises.
39:49 Speaker 06 I'm not gonna do it.
39:50 Speaker 05 Watch me.
39:50 Speaker 06 And then there was that whole period where every different leader gave him a call and said, please don't.
39:55 Speaker 05 He's like, I'm not.
39:55 Speaker 06 I'm not, no, seriously, don't.
39:57 Speaker 05 And he's going like this. I'm not, I won't. Yeah, I'm not gonna do that.
40:01 Speaker 06 But I do think he did invade on opposite day.
40:04 Speaker 05 Ah, yeah.
40:05 Speaker 06 Which is, which means that gives him an out.
40:08 Speaker 05 Charge, nuts.
40:10 Speaker 06 It was on national opposite day.
40:11 Speaker 05 Yeah, so fair enough.
40:14 Speaker 05 What did you always do, Charlie?
40:15 Speaker 07 I think the most striking moment, I've, I've been giving my all night as well.
40:20 Speaker 05 Have you, have you, have you been monitoring the situation?
40:22 Speaker 07 I have, yeah.
40:23 Speaker 06 Have you?
40:23 Speaker 07 And the thing that I thought was the most nuts was when the spy chief sort of crumbles in front of Putin. Did you see that clip?
40:29 Speaker 06 Yes.
40:29 Speaker 07 Crazy.
40:30 Speaker 06 Because that's when, when the war's going a little, it's not going to plan.
40:33 Speaker 07 Because that guy's, no, it was the start and this like terrifying guy who's like their spy chief. Goes up and Putin's basically asking for allegiance for the war from everyone. And then this guy sort of stammers through it and is like, well, maybe we shouldn't do it.
40:45 Speaker 06 Speak directly.
40:46 Speaker 07 Putin's like spit it out and the guy kind of like.
40:49 Speaker 06 Crumbles.
40:49 Speaker 07 Crumbles and this, you know, it's like that guy's terrifying, which the power balance is just.
40:54 Speaker 06 It was also dur, it was during Covid, so he'd, he'd be bollocking people on the longest table in the world.
40:59 Speaker 07 Yeah. He's just bollocking everyone and these, these are all nuts.
41:02 Speaker 06 It's like British aristocracy on a long, like a marriage that should have ended in divorce.
41:06 Speaker 05 Yeah.
41:06 Speaker 06 Where it's as far away as possible.
41:13 Speaker 05 Look at his smug face.
43:26 Speaker 05 The Syrian White Helmets, yes.
43:27 Speaker 07 Well, if you're chemical bombing kids, then say it with your chest. Is that what you mean?
43:32 Speaker 06 No, I don't think that's.
43:33 Speaker 05 Definitely not what I said, no.
43:34 Speaker 07 What did you, what were you meaning?
43:35 Speaker 05 I think Obama should have intervened in Syria.
43:36 Speaker 06 Basically, yeah.
43:37 Speaker 05 Or rather, or rather.
43:38 Speaker 06 If that's a line that you've got to start slapping people about.
43:40 Speaker 05 Yeah. I think, I think it.
43:43 Speaker 06 He was very, um, yeah, he was very sheepish on foreign policy.
43:47 Speaker 05 Well, he did a lot of drones. He loved droning a wedding.
43:49 Speaker 06 Well, that's what you always hear, right?
43:50 Speaker 05 Yeah.
43:51 Speaker 07 Glad I droned the wedding.
43:58 Speaker 05 Yes. Owen Wilson's follow-up, The Wedding Droners, wasn't quite as successful.
44:05 Speaker 06 I'd be excited to do an Obama series, actually.
44:07 Speaker 05 Yeah.
44:07 Speaker 06 I think it's time to pig back over the Obama years because it actually, it feels like there hasn't been enough.
44:11 Speaker 05 I'd love to know where he was actually born.
44:14 Speaker 06 And I'd also like to know the sexual, uh, the gender of his, his wife.
44:19 Speaker 05 Common knowledge, common knowledge. Nine inch schlong.
44:22 Speaker 06 She's called him not only.
44:23 Speaker 05 Common knowledge. That is obvious.
44:27 Speaker 05 I don't think, I don't know why we need to do a series on the Michelle Obama.
44:30 Speaker 06 She's called him nine inch.
44:30 Speaker 05 Fucking nine inch schlong, it's obvious. It's common knowledge.
44:35 Speaker 05 That's sort of pointless doing a series on that, really.
44:36 Speaker 06 Dad, the richest man in the world.
44:37 Speaker 05 Yeah.
44:38 Speaker 06 It's common knowledge.
44:38 Speaker 05 Yeah. Well, yeah, yeah. Common, common knowledge. Right, let's talk about the good, the goods, the upside to Chernobyl.
44:46 Speaker 06 So interestingly, you know, if you watch the Chernobyl mini-series, you get very sad for the dogs.
44:51 Speaker 05 Yes.
44:52 Speaker 06 Getting shot. It feels like, God, this is awful for wildlife. And also you think radiation, that must be terrible for, as a biological disaster. But since the humans left, it's been, it's turned into like a ecological miracle, right? It's rewilded, wolves, deers, wild boar, lynx. It's become this like amazing nature reserve. So what was the real virus? It was us.
45:16 Speaker 05 The humans. Go on.
45:18 Speaker 07 Well, I have a question. So you know in Covid where all the animals returned to the city?
45:23 Speaker 06 Yeah, yeah.
45:24 Speaker 07 Like the flamingos. Is there any, at all, to any extent during the daytime when we're all at work, do the animals come out a bit? Do they come back into the town? Do you think? Even to like zero point zero?
45:37 Speaker 06 When you say, "Do you think?", like we all know, like it's not like some fucking, it's not Toy Story. I know, we're gone, it's like, "Do you think?", it's completely knowable.
45:48 Speaker 07 Do you think?
45:49 Speaker 06 It depends. Some urban environments have animals that live alongside people.
45:56 Speaker 07 Do they kind of, do they bears and stuff, just like?
45:57 Speaker 05 No, no, no, they don't.
45:58 Speaker 07 Or do at least like a couple sparrows?
46:00 Speaker 05 You think we look out a window and bears and frogs are like, "Oh", and then, and then we look away at our computers and they're like, "Hey".
46:08 Speaker 06 It's like the Jungle Book as soon as we're not looking.
46:10 Speaker 07 And then it gets to five and they're all like, "For fuck's sake".
46:13 Speaker 06 No, I don't, Charlie. No.
46:15 Speaker 07 I guess we will never know.
46:17 Speaker 06 No, we will know. We do know.
46:18 Speaker 07 Well, I know, you don't know, nor do I.
46:20 Speaker 05 Yeah.
46:21 Speaker 07 But one day, one day we'll know.
46:22 Speaker 05 Well, so you think?
46:23 Speaker 06 There's a lot of animals in cities already, though.
46:25 Speaker 07 Yeah, but do they come out a bit more in the day when they're like?
46:27 Speaker 06 They come out at night.
46:29 Speaker 05 They come out, yeah.
46:29 Speaker 07 Well, that's what I mean.
46:30 Speaker 06 No, it's not you. Foxes, there's more red foxes in London than anywhere else in the world. Any city in the world.
46:36 Speaker 05 Hmm.
46:37 Speaker 06 And they come out at night because that's where humans are.
46:40 Speaker 05 More absolute, absolute foxes in London than any city in the world. Best city in the world.
46:45 Speaker 07 This is the best job in the world.
46:46 Speaker 06 It is the best job. Best job in the best city.
46:48 Speaker 05 Right, so, uh, yeah, the good news is that now it's a fucking safari park. Brilliant, brilliant.
46:55 Speaker 06 It's broken our world.
46:56 Speaker 05 You know, uh, fucking, a man's liver falls out of his ass and babies are born with seven heads.
47:03 Speaker 06 Yeah.
47:04 Speaker 05 But now you can see an elk in Ukraine. So one all, I guess.
47:10 Speaker 05 Brilliant.
47:11 Speaker 06 But you know, it just goes to show, you know.
47:13 Speaker 05 You know, the, the human spirit.
47:14 Speaker 06 The real, no, the real Chernobyl is.
47:17 Speaker 05 Oh, is the, is us.
47:18 Speaker 06 Us, we're the real.
47:19 Speaker 05 We're the real problem. Yeah. If only we'd get out of the way so that all the elk could have fun in Ukraine.
47:25 Speaker 06 I do get the problem with, obviously, like, if you're like a planet Earth fucking botherer, tree hugger.
47:30 Speaker 05 Yep.
47:30 Speaker 06 It's always like, oh, I wish humans were dead because then animals. The problem is animals have no idea that they're living.
47:35 Speaker 05 No.
47:36 Speaker 06 So as much as it will make a more beautiful thing, it's only worthwhile if we've got David Attenborough. Yeah, only, it only matters if David, David Attenborough can film it.
47:44 Speaker 05 Yeah. Yeah. Because animals are nice for humans.
47:47 Speaker 06 And I think it's weird, like, a lot of people supporting climate change because they just don't, they want the next season of Planet Earth to be good.
47:52 Speaker 05 Yeah.
47:53 Speaker 06 They want their favourite show to be, to get picked up for another season.
47:57 Speaker 05 No badger is going on a safari going, oh, God, it's nice having all this wildlife here.
48:01 Speaker 06 They have no idea.
48:02 Speaker 05 That's their house. That's like us walking through Dagenham going, oh, there's just loads of tower blocks. A badger looks at trees and is like, bloody hell, a bit more imaginative with the trees.
48:13 Speaker 05 You know, it, it doesn't fucking care.
48:15 Speaker 06 Yeah.
48:15 Speaker 05 So.
48:16 Speaker 06 We do put a lot of human emphasis onto the animals and how they feel about it all.
48:20 Speaker 05 Exactly.
48:21 Speaker 06 They don't think.
48:22 Speaker 05 They don't, they don't, they don't think at all. So.
48:24 Speaker 06 And it is beautiful, but we're the only ones who see it.
48:26 Speaker 05 Yeah, we're the only ones who see beauty. I mean, badgers think badgers are attractive. They're fucking mad. Anyway.
48:36 Speaker 05 Don't think about it too much.
48:37 Speaker 06 What do you think badgers should be like? Fucking hell, I'm Robbie, I'm off Wall Street, you're fit.
48:40 Speaker 05 Yeah. Yeah, they should.
48:41 Speaker 06 I'm stuck fucking, fucking my ugly badger wife.
48:48 Speaker 05 Why have I got, why have I got to stay on my own lane?
48:49 Speaker 06 Commenting on AI images on Instagram. Wow, pretty princess.
48:52 Speaker 05 Show me your bobs, show me your bobs. Look at my, I've got stuck fucking eating badger growl.
48:58 Speaker 06 I'm fucking miserable.
49:01 Speaker 06 Miserable badger wife.
49:03 Speaker 05 My cunt badger wife won't leave me alone. You're wanking over fucking Margot Robbie. Christ.
49:10 Speaker 06 Yeah.
49:11 Speaker 05 Right. Shut up Googling sexy badger. I think, I think to be honest, well, that's what Chernobyl looks like now.
49:17 Speaker 06 Yeah.
49:17 Speaker 05 Badger in a fucking tutu.
49:19 Speaker 06 So we just posted, because we only just won the Chortle Award. There's quite a funny comment that I think described the three of us in quite a funny way.
49:26 Speaker 05 Oh, yeah. So if people who don't know, the Chortle Award is a man with a blog has bought some glass plaques and asked people to vote for the best. We won best podcast. We're very grateful for anybody who voted.
49:37 Speaker 06 Someone said, a Holocaust denier and effete liberal cunt and a barely sentient div walk into a Chortle Award. I mean, that's not a bad description of the three of us.
49:47 Speaker 05 Red handed, you got us there. You got us.
49:50 Speaker 06 A barely sentient div. And I guess I'm the effete liberal cunt.
49:56 Speaker 05 Yeah.
49:56 Speaker 07 I've never won anything. This is my first ever award.
49:59 Speaker 05 Yeah.
50:01 Speaker 06 It's my first award as well.
50:02 Speaker 07 Means a lot.
50:03 Speaker 05 I think it's my first award.
50:05 Speaker 06 Yeah, I don't think you've been decorated.
50:06 Speaker 05 I've been nominated for a lot, but.
50:08 Speaker 07 How does it compare to being a dad?
50:11 Speaker 05 How does winning the Chortle Best Podcast compare to being a dad?
50:15 Speaker 07 Yeah.
50:17 Speaker 05 Don't know, actually.
50:18 Speaker 06 I guess only time will tell.
50:19 Speaker 05 Time will tell. I suppose we'll see how the Chortle Award grows. Because obviously, you know, it's always a phase, what they say about parenthood. It's good for a bit and it's very challenging. And then it's nice for a bit and it comes in waves. The Chortle Award hasn't changed since we got it.
50:36 Speaker 06 It's going to be quite challenging for periods to hold on to this honour.
50:39 Speaker 05 No, I'm sure. Its needs will grow. But no, I suppose to sum up Chernobyl, now it's, now it's an absolute picnic down there.
50:48 Speaker 06 It's brilliant.
50:49 Speaker 05 It's brilliant. And you can go and see Elks with two pussies and, you know, I guess that's fun.
50:58 Speaker 05 Well, that's that. I think that wraps up our epic Chernobyl series. I think we've comprehensively dealt with the science. If you'd like more, we will be doing a bonus episode on Fukushima, Japanese Chernobyl. That's on the Patreon, where for £3 a month, you get early access to series and it's all ad free. What is it, Charlie?
51:19 Speaker 07 If you could have a mutation, but you customize your own mutation, what would be your favourite thing to have?
51:27 Speaker 05 No asshole.
51:30 Speaker 05 I don't want, I just, I'd love to stop.
51:33 Speaker 06 Where's it going?
51:34 Speaker 05 No, just stop. All that stops.
51:36 Speaker 06 You just don't need to shit?
51:37 Speaker 05 Yeah.
51:39 Speaker 06 That'd be pretty good.
51:40 Speaker 05 Imagine that?
51:42 Speaker 07 I think just ears, way more ears.
51:44 Speaker 05 More ears?
51:45 Speaker 07 Yeah, so I can hear, because I can't really hear very well.
51:47 Speaker 05 I think you just need to fix your ears.
51:48 Speaker 06 Yeah.
51:49 Speaker 07 No, but then if you just had like a couple, I just think you'd be...
51:51 Speaker 06 Spares.
51:51 Speaker 07 A few spares.
51:52 Speaker 06 Well, like having a spare mic backstage in case one goes.
51:54 Speaker 05 Spare tire, ear in the boot, one above the bum.
51:56 Speaker 06 Yeah.
51:56 Speaker 07 Yeah, you could, I think you'd hear, you'd probably just have a much richer life. And you'd be safer.
52:03 Speaker 06 One giant hand?
52:05 Speaker 07 Yeah.
52:05 Speaker 05 One giant, one small.
52:06 Speaker 06 Yeah, so you could slap, like a slappable hand.
52:09 Speaker 07 Like a French cartoon prank show.
52:11 Speaker 06 You can go like that.
52:11 Speaker 05 Well, like a big fine finger, a hand.
52:14 Speaker 06 That'd be pretty good.
52:15 Speaker 05 Anyway, sign up to the Patreon.
52:17 Speaker 06 For more excellent riffs like that.
52:19 Speaker 05 And also, you will be, you will be at home with a community of other fucking mutants. £30 a month, we're nearly at 30,000, you know?
52:29 Speaker 06 Come on.
52:30 Speaker 05 Come on.
52:32 Speaker 06 This is a fucking Nuremberg rally.
52:33 Speaker 05 It really is, in more senses than one.
52:38 Speaker 05 Anyway, thank you for listening. We'll see you next week for a round new topic. Goodbye.
52:42 Speaker 06 Goodbye.
53:38 Speaker 03 The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. A Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive. Game and system sold separately. Game rated everyone 10 and up.
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