- Pre-record chat discussing pros and cons of streaming platforms. Disney+ going well, nobody would say Prime Video (it would be chilling).
- Henry has an idea for a centralised streaming app (Paker App). Ben suggests this already exists, which Henry sees as a "huge rubber stamp" (bigger than the paper stamping on, makes you feel powerful, use the supplied asbestos desk doily), another one of his ideas.
- Henry lives in a serviced apartment and bemoans the constant presence of workmen to justify the service charge. Ben and Mike liken this to Succession, where he is complaining of having too many gardeners.
- Weird buying "produce" on Amazon (a step too far). Henry has been into an Amazon Fresh, cold and empty like a tomb (but with brocoli). Fruit floating around you in a type of amniotic fluid, put your Speedos on and plug something into your spine. Does veg need a future? Ben still likes going to a grocer who tells him he has lovely strawberries even though it's "bollocks" and they are the same strawberries as last time.
- Henry gives his marketing masterclass - "what matters is core belief" and brand umbrellas. Odd that you are buying charger cables and mince in the same delivery.
- Jeff Bezos has booked out the whole of Venice for his wedding. Hope that Roy and Angie, a couple from Birmingham, somehow manage to get through with their third marriage (to each other). Bezos has to listen to Derek's best man speech (absolute filthy, used up all his clean material on the previous speeches). Angie will be telling everyone her one fact which is that there are more canals in Birmingham than there are in Venice.
- Henry returns to talking about his app idea, which had been shouted down (by Ben) and stomped on (by Mike) earlier - the classic shout and stomp. You write suggestions into your "module database system" which then manages and curates your subscription details for you. Henry becomes the recommendation King, controlling your recommendations. It has a CCTV element, there is a van full of ex-CIA staff outside (they are angry but have great conversational Spanish and are fed hot cooked mince delivered by drone). Ben is nodding - his frontal cortex says no but his primate brain agrees. National Trust membership included. The code for the app is currently "password123". App will be called "Papp" - "just Papp it".
- Hopefully Dr G is not an old chemistry teacher from Ben's old school.
- Seagulls have the attitude of a coked up doorman at a dodgy nightclub, and are always bigger than you think.
- Ben doesn’t think evolution is real. Henry starts talking about how no process could create something as perfect as a lemon. Ben was thinking about this after eating a plaice, surely there was a time the eyeball was dragging along the floor? Same with human nostrils, which have migrated from the sides of the head to the middle.
- Ben saw a wolverine ("like an angry badger") at the Bristol Zoo Project. Wolverines became extinct due to deforestation. However, the natural habitat of seagulls has been destroyed but they have adapted to live in bins. Mike also suggests that the beaker people (or whoever came before them) were wearing snazzy wolverine hats which may have contributed to wolverines becoming extinct. Also, Hugh Jackman is not going to audition to play the superhero "The Seagull", who when angry has a beak grow out of his face, he steals your chips and shits on people indiscriminately.
- Ben pulls up Mike for bringing up people living in Britain pre-beaker, which is heresy in the religion of Pakerdonia. Britain needs to revert to its beaker past - Britain dripped out of a golden beaker in the sky, which was from the mouth of a crocodile.
- At the Bristol Zoo Project (sounds like a band from the 90s that Mike would pretend to be into), Ben went to see the red panda who was too hot in the 33 degree heat. Do you think British zoos should just be British animals - for example Pigeonworld, Muletopis, The Shrew Kingdom, Donkerama? Ben is pretty sure donkeys aren't native to Britain, but it is too late - their hooves are already magnetised so they can walk across the ceiling of a planetarium (now called a donkenarium). Tragedy when the roof demagnetizes and both donkeys and visiting school children are turned to mince.
- Back to the plaice and its eyes. One plaice would have been born with its eye slightly moved which would have been seen as "sexy". What advantage does it give until the eye is completely around the other side? Eyeballs would be a great present for a dad, Sony would have been involved in this. Henry talks about humans before their eyes worked, they would just be wet globules, which you would have to feel with your solitary suction-based finger or tendrils (a proto-cloaca). Once you'd had a shag, you could then see the other person, suggesting that Henry believes vision to have been sexually transmitted (always use protection). Ben suggests debate opened their eyes.
- To understand evolution, Ben needs to factor in time and the interference of an extraterrestrial race, The Quardons, from Gazpachoid 9. Darwin wrote about this in his other works ("Me and Mr and Mrs Quardon").
- Ben believes in evolution, he just doesn’t understand it. This is ok - Mike is interested by submarines but doesn't understand them. Henry doesn't believe in submarines but does understand how they'd work.
- Elephant in the room - industrial humming noise coming from Henry's room. Henry goes back to his point about living in a serviced apartment that failed to get him sympathy earlier (living like a little Duke does not deserve sympathy). It does sound fancier than it is, there isn't really a concierge or a chauffeur (Barnaby). The gardeners replaced all the plants with trees which died of blight, they went beige and crispy. It may have just been Autumn - "the annual blight".
- Will has emailed in about picking a nickname with his mum prior to moving to an Oxford prep school (the Beans agree this was a terrible idea). Did they pick Will.I.Am and start The Black Eyed Peas? They settled on "Will Scarlet". His actual nickname at school was "Syndrome" (from "The Incredibles"). Nicknames have no logic. Henry once "transferred" school and was bullied about having big ears. He went straight to the headmaster who made Henry point the bullies out in assembly. They were given certificates and everyone chanted "big ears" / they were took outside and shot.
- James emails. He had his hand drilled into (by a hand surgeon) whilst he listened to the podcast. James executes a superlative (and complimentary) switcheroo about the Beans and the NHS.
- Mike has emailed in. Creating the illustrator jingle has made Henry talk more about illustration. Have they considered a succinct and focused anecdote jingle? This sends Henry into attack mode and he tells him to fuck off.
- Hannah has been gifted a Bean t-shirt for her pregnancies. It has become her favourite piece of post-partum clothing, but has been the victim of this difficult time. It is now permanently stained with breast milk, nipple cream and blood. Her science husband was looking for meaning into the pattern of the stains. Not sure what this means, but will continue to monitor the situation. Did Hannah birth an onion child, or were they sired by a Quardon King (they do love to do the laundry)? Signs you are married to a Quardon King - they are blue and have perfectly cubic stools. Congratulations on your new baby Hannah!
- 7.29 - A View From The Marketeer's Chair
- 12.56 - Explainer for Non-British Listeners
- 20.11 - Bean Machine
- 27.51 - Beaker Treason
- 32.34 - Crab Bell
- 37.53 - Cloaca
- 43.17 - Piers from Bristol's version of the Email jingle (German Kraftwerkian version). The Postmaster sounds quite sinister. The relentless music made it bring home thoughts about mortality.
- 50.15 - The Old Switcheroo
- 54.52 - Patreon
- 58.45 - Megan's 70's Christmas Theme Tune
- No bollockings this week.
- "The one thing he cannot buy is the absence of Roy and Angie"
- "We're putting the ass and the best in asbestos"
- "How many broken buds lie scattered across the floors of my imagination"
- "Don't want mince? Sorry you're getting mince"
- "Nature always never fails to, certainly sometimes, surprise and delight with its capacity for adaptation"
- "Have you felt Dave's globules?"
- "So vision was a sexually transmitted infection?"
- "My golden cage!" "The bars are so shiny"
- "It was beige and crispy"
- "Nein, mein wunderschönes pferd"
- "Oh, was that too short and succinct for you?"
- Financial Crimes Amnesty.
- Megan has sent in a theme tune in the style of a boozy, 70's style Christmas song. Perfect time to play it as recording is happening close to the Summer Solstice.