¶ Opening Chat
Kinder Bueno and Kinder Eggs. How the prizes inside are now dross, but 40-year-old men are not their target market. Open one now and it contains a little Harry Potter. Or a statue of Gretta Thunberg made from single use plastic.
Henry had a call centre sales job selling personalised M&Ms. BAE systems could use them to sell F16s to the Saudis.
¶ Topic Chat
Ben activates The Bean Machine inside him and thanks his nurses Jackie (and now Desmond), and the Chesapeake 5000 – the robot that keeps him alive. The Beans comment that his skin looks lovely, but it’s a shame it's no longer on his body.
Discussion of asteroids as an extinction level event. Armageddon and Deep Impact – the films that explain why we need to keep nuclear weapons. Perhaps this is how BAE systems do their marketing and why they can’t afford M&Ms.
The chances of earth getting hit by an asteroid are like going to a supermarket, throwing a snooker ball and hitting Steve Davis. Is Steve Davis in the supermarket? It makes a big difference to the odds.
We’ve had some near misses, but this is on a scale of thousands of miles that we cannot comprehend.
Henry says he’s had a recent realisation that, close up, everything is social/cultural/political stuff but as you zoom out, we are just big circles moving around. This may be Michael Collins’ perspective (he’s probably not thinking about Steve Davis’ 1988 snooker championship. But we’re just on a celestial snooker table and Steve Davis is god! Steve Davis begat himself from the pocket of a snooker table, buffered by an umpire but did not weep. The world ends with Steve Davis in a snooker cue shaped spaceship hurtling towards earth.
The Beans argue about whether centre parks would be empty on doomsday.
Ben says that Deep Impact has the worst ending (Elijah Woods and his girlfriend ride a motorbike up a tree). Henry confuses Armageddon and Deep Impact (as they are essentially the same film). But Armageddon has the soundtrack. Is the song about an asteroid? Is it a father and daughter song or is it about shagging? Its about Liv Tyler, by Steve Tyler, that he doesn’t want to miss her upbringing, but he oozes sex appeal! The Beans agree that “Love in an Elevator” is an embarrassing song for a dad to sing.
Asteroids suit a rock sound track (but not because they are rocks). Has there been a British film about asteroids?
“No son of mine will go an' fight a fancy-pants asteroid”.
The hero is always someone who has never done the job before (although astronauts don’t do it often anyway!). Centrifuge machines are not used in real life – only in montages as a story telling device to show training. Same for the scuba sequence... Or maybe NASA has a scuba club?
Ben likes the Florida barbecue scene "we'll be having ribs on that asteroid" – the astronaut who's going to die will have a monolgue about his son, 'Rob-bert', watch him grow old, make love to his wife, die; don't want to miss a thing ("take it away Steve Tyler!").
Comets and meteors under the same mental banner. Comet at Battle of Hastings – harbingering – Mike disputes the Bayeux Tapestry depiction (Greg Jenner in fact disputes it).
"If you were at the Battle of Hastings, please send us an email" – Henry's experience of the full '99 eclipse: he looked directly at it. Permanent retinal damage (squiggly amoebas swimming around).
80s computer game 'Asteroids'. Henry's brother bought a table game of it, became useless annoying object. Mike: "quite a story" – an example of what an anecdote isn't.
Kelly Vivanco's Show Art
¶ Emails
Octopus combi-mouth/anus beak not true, and also some believe octopus came from space. Octopus only thing on Earth not on the path towards crab. Half remembered email by Ben (can't find it); three emails with 'anus' in Ben's search. Mike finds the email – 'legit' scientific papers (Henry thinks use of 'legit' makes it less legit). Ben asks for complete bibliography for any references
Ross McLean (Vancouver): macadamia nuts come from aunties on vacation in Hawaii (not fudge from the south-west of England).
Melissa (Canada) – Pompidou – too many mentions of anuses (anusii) and poop (strong reaction from Ben) but her topic suggestion is Bums & Poop.
Beans' nearest and dearest flagged that they "lurch anuswards with great ease". This proves they're not repressed. Ben worries this will stop them becoming the World's No. 1 podcast.
Top 3 podcasts in the world, as Henry reminds the Beans, are:
- Arse Talk, with Dr Geoffrey Bumstead;
- Captain Flatulence and his Five Lovely Daughters (daily); and,
- It's a Bum Deal: Bumming Around with Brian Bumster
Doesn't even include TurdWatch (more of a YouTube thing).
Yulia (Russia): in Russia, the beans boil them!
A 3-Bean Salad Presents podcast got in touch. They analyse the Mr Bean and Mama Mia movies. They suggest a feud. The Beans asked to be friends instead and encourage the listener to "give them a punt". Henry has asked the Beans' lawyers to "fire a shot across their bows" as well as ring-fence/freeze their assets, and those of their families, and there's a trial in Geneva coming up. Henry reassures that they're not going to deploy a helicopter gunship or involve the 'trigger content' retired colonel from former Rodesian army.
¶ Jingles
- 33:50 - Pompidou
- 35:07 - Digestive Tract Talk
¶ Notable Quotes
- "And lo he did not weep upon the buffing"
- "And they put the triangle around Steve Davis’ head and he looked sweet"
- "Whenever Steven Tyler does anything it has a sort of a horny aura that you can’t really get rid of"
- "No son of mine is gonna go and fight some fancy-pants asteroid from space"
- "You’ll be a cobbler, like I’m a cobbler, and your father’s father, and father’s father’s father was a cobbler; the whole village is cobblers"
- "We’ll be having ribs on that asteroid"
- "Save some coleslaw for me!"
- "Be good to your mother Rob-Bert!"
- "I don’t wanna miss a thing. Take it away, Steve Tyler!"
- "If you were at the Battle of Hastings, please send us an email"
- "You would have been rubbish in telemarketing. You couldn’t have sold a normal M&M"
- "I searched for the word “anus” in our Gmail, and three emails came up!"
- "In a way that would good example of what something to use to show someone what an anecdote isn’t…"
- "It had been flagged up that we lurch anus-wards with great ease"
- "There’s Captain Flatulence and his five lovely daughters"