Summary
Ducks turn dodgy and start hunting other birds, a man survives being crushed twice in a garbage truck, plus finger-ripping hydroslide accidents and teetotal sailors in the Royal Navy.
Links
Whangarei Lawyer with Ultra Marathon World Record
Man survives being crushed by garbage truck, twice
Man loses finger on hydro slide
NZ Rural Games
Ducks killing other birds
Safety at the British Royal Navy
Clean fusion gets funding
Show Transcript
This transcript was generated by an AI and is probably not 100% accurate. It pays to listen to the podcast, but if you have questions about any of the information found here, please reach out to us.
Sam [00:00:21]:
Hello, and welcome to episode 566 of the Chris and Sam Podcast.
Chris [00:00:26]:
I’m Chris.
Sam [00:00:26]:
And I’m Sam.
Chris [00:00:27]:
And we’re continuing our March towards episode 600. Do you think there’ll be a world war before we get there? Do you think we’ll survive till episode.
Sam [00:00:36]:
600 if there is a world war? I’m glad, knowing that there is a whole bunch of content out there to keep people occupied and distracted from while they’re in their.
Chris [00:00:46]:
Nuclear buffers.
Sam [00:00:47]:
Yeah, I mean, nuclear bombs or drones with, you know, Fibrosis Dragon behind them should be good.
Chris [00:00:53]:
So how’s your week been?
Sam [00:00:55]:
Uneventful and busy, but it’s okay.
Chris [00:00:59]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:00:59]:
I do find the weeks, the weekends do appear out of nowhere now and then they go away very quickly.
Chris [00:01:06]:
Now you’re a man of responsibility, running your own team and all that sort of thing.
Sam [00:01:10]:
Something like that. I’m doing something.
Chris [00:01:12]:
Yeah. Yeah. No, I’ve been struggling to get the hours up to, like, what you would call busy.
Sam [00:01:21]:
Above 20.
Chris [00:01:23]:
And it’s not because I haven’t got the work, because I really do have the work, but I have been doing lots of other bits and pieces. So I’ve been catching up with lots of interesting people around the world, actually, in these. What do you call it, networking events.
Sam [00:01:35]:
Actual people that he’s talking to.
Chris [00:01:37]:
Actual people, yes.
Sam [00:01:39]:
So it’s going to hopefully lead to some good stuff. Hey, I’ll tell you who’s been busy. Who puts our week to shame as the Whangarei lawyer. She’s run an ultra marathon every day for more than two years.
Chris [00:01:51]:
Oh, okay.
Sam [00:01:52]:
So more than 50 kilometers every day for two years. So they reported on this like a year ago when she got to 500. She’s at 750 days now, if not more. She said she’s gonna stop when she gets to a thousand. She’s 47 years old. She’s a lawyer. She still has a day job.
Chris [00:02:14]:
That’s mental. That just makes me feel so inadequate and it makes me question why I have to have a nap every day.
Sam [00:02:20]:
She has to sometimes. Yeah. She sometimes has to get up at 2 in the morning to start her run. Cause most of her to do that distance is about five and a half hours. And she’s done it when she’s overseas. She’s done it one or two in the morning later on. She’s done it when she was sick. She went to, like, Bali I think, and got really sick and was just like, I gotta keep doing it.
Sam [00:02:42]:
And I was talking to some people at work and I was like, at what point is it some sort of craziness and her stopping? How will that affect her?
Chris [00:02:51]:
Yeah, yeah, it’s. Look at my little two minute mobility exercise. And I’ve skipped that for two days in a row.
Sam [00:02:59]:
Exactly, exactly.
Chris [00:03:00]:
It was not two minutes. It’s more like 45 minutes. To be honest with you. I just, I wanted to. This is amusing. I, I find this amusing in a couple of different ways. So I saw this, this story. It’s in Alabama.
Sam [00:03:17]:
Yep. All good stories are.
Chris [00:03:19]:
Yeah. So a man was crushed in a. In the local garbage truck.
Sam [00:03:23]:
So, you know, was he working or did, Was he hiding in it?
Chris [00:03:26]:
No, no, he was a homeless guy sleeping in a dumpster for warmth.
Sam [00:03:32]:
Yeah. Okay. Yeah, Yep.
Chris [00:03:34]:
He was, he was crushed in there twice.
Sam [00:03:36]:
Oh, like, did the machine do it twice?
Chris [00:03:39]:
A man was crushed not once, but twice in a garbage truck in Jackson, Alabama.
Sam [00:03:43]:
Okay.
Chris [00:03:44]:
In all of Fire Chief John Brown’s years serving Jackson, he said this incident was a first. I’ve been associated with the fire department 40 years. We never had a situation like this come up. Emergency officials responded to a call of a person being compressed in a garbage truck around 5:30 Wednesday morning.
Sam [00:04:00]:
Yeah.
Chris [00:04:00]:
And believe the man was compressed twice. So basically what happened is they hooked it, it dumped it in. He pressed the compressed button, boom, boom, hooked another one.
Sam [00:04:11]:
Oh, okay.
Chris [00:04:11]:
Yeah, hooked another one. Then he had to stop at a gate. And it was when he got out to open the gate, he heard the guy yelling and they reckon he. So he’d been compressed twice in there.
Sam [00:04:21]:
Is he okay? Is he stuffed?
Chris [00:04:23]:
So first then, yeah, first off of the kfc, blah, blah, blah. When the driver arrived at Popeye’s, he heard the man calling for help. Quote, it’s really a fortunate thing that the gates of the Popeyes were closed. The drivers had to get out. When he exited the dump truck, he could hear the man in the back needing help. That’s. Oh, help.
Sam [00:04:44]:
Yeah.
Chris [00:04:44]:
And that’s when he shut everything down. So then they got firefighters in to get them in. Mindy Bolden, one of the first responders on scene, was expecting the worst. She was surprised at what she found. We were all shocked because we thought, well, we’re going to have to get down there and do some tricks, trauma assistance with him to get him out. But he was fine. And of course, the very American. It was a God thing.
Sam [00:05:09]:
I think it was lucky that whatever he Was putting in. Wasn’t like if he had a thing full of concrete blocks. I don’t know if he had more solid stuff. Yeah, that’s gotta be lucky.
Chris [00:05:20]:
Yeah, yeah. So obviously.
Sam [00:05:22]:
Hang on, so how.
Chris [00:05:23]:
Food waste thing.
Sam [00:05:24]:
So the dude just climbed into the truck at some point.
Chris [00:05:26]:
Experts believe the man was homeless and sleeping in the dumpster, trying to escape the cold as he passed through town. So he’s taken to a mobile hospital for treatment and now he is probably living a life of indentureship to pay off his treatment.
Sam [00:05:41]:
Oh, no doubt, no doubt it’s a merit.
Chris [00:05:46]:
That’s probably how he got home in the first place. He had a cold or something. Couldn’t afford the flu shot. The reason that stuck in my head was after I just watched Outrageous Fortune. Have you watched Outrageous Fortune?
Sam [00:05:58]:
Oh, when it first came out and.
Chris [00:06:01]:
The second or third episode, one of the boys got killed from doing this. He was running away from a cop, jumped into a bin like we’ve got now and went. And you could hear the person go past. He goes, yes. And then it goes. Next thing, they’re in a funeral.
Sam [00:06:18]:
Oh, okay.
Chris [00:06:19]:
And so I mentioned that because I started watching Outrageous Fortune because I. If, you know, I hated it back.
Sam [00:06:26]:
In the day, but for no real reason.
Chris [00:06:28]:
For no real reason. Probably because I have a weird thing about sex and there was just too much sex in it and I was just. It creeped me out, probably that, okay, I would only see bits of it. So I didn’t get the. How everything was going together, so it didn’t make a lot of sense. So I was. I just got. Found it frustrating.
Chris [00:06:47]:
So I started watching it from the beginning. It’s actually pretty cool.
Sam [00:06:50]:
Yes. It’s very good for a New Zealand show, if you want to check that out. It’s called Outrageous Fortune. Whole bunch of Kiwi stars now are in it.
Chris [00:06:59]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:06:59]:
And. Yeah. Okay. Talking about accidents and freaky stuff, if I said to you a man ripped his finger off on a hydroslide in Auckland last month, how do you think he did it?
Chris [00:07:13]:
Had a ring on it.
Sam [00:07:14]:
He did, Yep. And he was swinging at the top. So it was at the top of hydro. Oh, do you like Hydra slides?
Chris [00:07:22]:
Yeah, I love hydro slides.
Sam [00:07:23]:
Good. But at the top, there was obviously the top bit. It must have had a sign on it saying, you know, don’t go head first or whatever. I think he was holding onto that and he was sort of swinging backwards and forwards to launch himself down the Hydra slide as fast as possible. Ring got caught. Somehow his finger got Ripped off. They keep saying ripped off, so I don’t know if it was de. Skinned or what.
Sam [00:07:43]:
But you imagine you’re like, yep, gotta go down this hydro slide. Next thing you know, your finger’s missing. Ah, blood everywhere. What a time. What a time. Yeah, he was in his 40s too.
Chris [00:07:54]:
And the reason I say that because I knew a guy, I worked at the pub, one of the regulars. He owned the bar Swing. Do you remember Schwing Town?
Sam [00:08:02]:
Whereabouts was that? It.
Chris [00:08:04]:
It was. God, I don’t know what it’s called now. It was where the Irish bar was for a long time, right next to the bank Y.
Sam [00:08:13]:
And it’s a 24 hour cafe now.
Chris [00:08:17]:
Yeah, but back then it was a. They were all wore spats and they had the A. Or it was really flash called Schwing. And it took off really, really well. Although he got screwed so badly, like, because he went partners with the owners of the building. Yeah, the owners of the building just kept putting the rent up to ridiculous amounts. So he was making no profit and the owners were. Were making bank.
Chris [00:08:43]:
But anyway, he played soccer and he was a goalie and he had a finger missing.
Sam [00:08:49]:
Oh, right.
Chris [00:08:50]:
And it was exactly the same thing. He dived for the ball, he had his wedding ring on. And just the way it ended up, he came back down and the edge of the metal net thing.
Sam [00:09:03]:
Oh my gosh.
Chris [00:09:04]:
Caught the ring, popped his finger off.
Sam [00:09:06]:
Whoa. Yeah, what a story.
Chris [00:09:08]:
Crazy.
Sam [00:09:09]:
This guy got his finger reattached.
Chris [00:09:11]:
Oh, wow. You imagine trying to find it in the Hydra Slide.
Sam [00:09:15]:
At the bottom of the Hydra Slide. Whereas apparently he should be making an okay recovery.
Chris [00:09:21]:
Yeah. Holy crap. Yeah, so you gotta watch when you’re wearing rings. I gotta say.
Sam [00:09:27]:
Apparently so.
Chris [00:09:28]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:09:28]:
Yeah. Seriously, I saw this thing, the New Zealand Rural Games is happening. Didn’t know it was a thing. It’s happening on the 15th of March. You’re gonna ask me where and I can’t remember. Once I. Down South.
Chris [00:09:40]:
Howrah.
Sam [00:09:41]:
Oh, no, Palmerston North. Okay, that’s right. I remember now. It’s one of the biggest things down there, apparently. I don’t know, they got a bunch of stuff going on down there. It seems pretty cool. This is sponsored by Ford Ranger. Ford Ranger does not sponsor us on the podcast.
Sam [00:09:55]:
But I’m open. I’m open to them giving us a ute for a little bit. They’ve got. So they’ve got all these different activities and for some reason this was shown to me, I think on a Facebook ad or something. And it’s the new Zealand Coal Shoveling Championships. Okay. And it’s how quickly you can shift a ton of coal into a hopper. That’s the gist of it.
Chris [00:10:19]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:10:20]:
And I’ve got a stat here which I have not looked any further into. I just wanted to let you know what it was. It’s broken my brain a little bit. The world record for a team of.
Chris [00:10:29]:
Two to do it was a ton of shoveling.
Sam [00:10:32]:
Half a ton.
Chris [00:10:33]:
Half a ton.
Sam [00:10:34]:
14.8 seconds and it’s some guy. It’s Brian and Piet from the west coast, which. Hold it.
Chris [00:10:41]:
How big are these shovels?
Sam [00:10:43]:
Grief, I don’t know. Like they. I want to see these dudes in action. The link they’ve got here goes to Guinness World Record page. But it’s a broken link, so I can’t even tell you anymore. But you can register your team if you want. There’s a whole bunch of different activities you can take part in.
Chris [00:11:01]:
Do the like lumberjacking thing and all that sort of stuff.
Sam [00:11:03]:
Yeah, definitely got the lumber sports or timber sports is what they call it. And you’ve got. Oh, yeah. Axe Woman Shearing Champs. Clash of the Colleges Chainsaw Sculpture exhibition.
Chris [00:11:17]:
That’d be cool. That’d be cool.
Sam [00:11:18]:
They’ve got a bit of a tractor expo. Oh, New Zealand gumboot throwing champs are held there.
Chris [00:11:21]:
All right, good.
Sam [00:11:22]:
The speed fencing champs is held there. Sheepdog Trials. And they’ve got the men’s champs for the Timbersports which is sponsored by stihl. You can have a go at cowpat throwing, haystacking gumboot throwing, a stock whip, kids self drive diggers, tree climbing for the kids, kids carts and yeah, there’s a whole bunch of stuff happening. Sounds like a good event. We have just given them free advertising. You’re welcome.
Chris [00:11:48]:
Yeah, no, does that actually sound good? I’d love to see ice sculpt. Well, Tim, Chainsaw sculpture.
Sam [00:11:55]:
Yeah, they’re pretty clever because.
Chris [00:11:56]:
Yeah, that’s. Yeah, that’s amazing that stuff. When you look at that talk about amazing, it’s not really amazing. That’s my segue. Talking about amazing. Did you see this thing with Trump this week?
Sam [00:12:11]:
Which one?
Chris [00:12:12]:
There are so many. The code brown.
Sam [00:12:16]:
Yes. They cleared out the reporters.
Chris [00:12:19]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it seemed so. So I was like, is this for real? And I think it is because the.
Sam [00:12:27]:
Footage is for real.
Chris [00:12:29]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:12:30]:
So the gist of it is so.
Chris [00:12:33]:
Yeah, he’s seems like he’s sitting there at the desk. There’s all these people behind him, you know, like he normally does photos and then there’s all the journalists in front of him. And you’re looking from the journalist point of view, so you don’t see the journalists so much. And then this woman standing behind him starts just holding a nose a bit like involuntary reaction. And apparently you could hear the sound.
Sam [00:12:58]:
Oh, okay.
Chris [00:12:59]:
But I, I didn’t hear anything. But somebody said you could hear it. And President Trump crapped himself. And then the staff went into overdrive, like, straight away. They were like, okay, everybody out, everybody out.
Sam [00:13:16]:
Everybody out. Or press out. Or press out.
Chris [00:13:17]:
And they moved the press out. Like, really?
Sam [00:13:19]:
He was just sitting there, right?
Chris [00:13:21]:
He just sat there. Yeah. Probably didn’t want to move. Get.
Sam [00:13:23]:
No, no, but he was just sitting there. Like, it was real weird.
Chris [00:13:26]:
And, yeah, people behind him didn’t look that comfortable. And code Brown. I mean, I don’t know, the guy’s just so.
Sam [00:13:39]:
It’s bizarre.
Chris [00:13:40]:
He’s so mental.
Sam [00:13:41]:
That’s like the least of his worries.
Chris [00:13:43]:
Oh, yeah. I mean, if you’ve heard some of those stories from. From the new Epstein drive.
Sam [00:13:48]:
Oh, okay, I will. Okay. Interestingly so, I don’t know. Take this with a grain of salt as well. So they’ve said some crazy stuff about him and other things. Now those reports are from the FBI and it’s every single thing that got reported to the FBI.
Chris [00:14:05]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:14:05]:
And apparently a lot of it, including the real bad stuff with Trump, came from some Australian nutpot who rang the FBI all the time and has never been to America or met Trump or had anything to do with anything.
Chris [00:14:18]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:14:18]:
So I was like, oh, and there’s some things that people have cherry picked for different things, but if you see the whole context of conversation, it’s not. It’s still bad, but it’s not as bad as what they’ve cherry picked.
Chris [00:14:33]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:14:33]:
So you gotta.
Chris [00:14:34]:
And that’s the whole point, though, is that just because somebody’s name’s in the Epstein files doesn’t mean they did anything bad. Right. It just means that they’re in there. So John Stewart. John Stewart was named in there. Did you see that? He talked about that.
Sam [00:14:53]:
I didn’t see it, but I knew he talked about it.
Chris [00:14:55]:
Yeah, he talked about. I saw his little segment of the show. He goes, I’m in the Epstein files. But it was because Epstein was thinking about doing a show and put John and some other guy as potentially the people that could run this show, you know, like. So it’s got nothing to do with anything.
Sam [00:15:10]:
Bill Gates, on the other hand, though.
Chris [00:15:12]:
Bill Gates. Bill Clinton.
Sam [00:15:14]:
Well, no, because you’ve Seen Bill Gates’s wife? Eh? So Bill Gates got mentioned in the latest stash of files.
Chris [00:15:20]:
Yeah. And no, he got a sexual disease or something, apparently.
Sam [00:15:25]:
Yeah, that’s the idea. But his wife actually got interviewed. His ex wife. Sorry, his ex wife. And the two reasons she divorced him were because he was associated with Epstein and was infidelity. Cause I think he cheated on her with one of his employees. Cause he’s a creepy, creepy man.
Chris [00:15:45]:
He is a bit creepy.
Sam [00:15:46]:
He sort of doesn’t. Yeah, but he. So she did this interview. She said some stuff where she couldn’t. Cause she’s got obviously massive NDAs and stuff, I guess, and she was just like, I’ll just leave it at that, or whatever. He’s come out after the fact, I think, yesterday, and given one of the worst interviews in the world where he tried to say, oh, I would need. I was sort of talking to Epstein because I needed. Needed to like, network with other influential people with money or something.
Sam [00:16:16]:
Anyway, whatever he said makes no sense. It’s all bogus because at the time he was the richest man in the world. Could probably talk to anyone he wanted to.
Chris [00:16:23]:
Yeah. So the point I was going to make is that not everything that is in there, you should, you know, you should take it all with a bit of a grain of salt or a little bit more than that, because there are allegations that have never been unproven. But the question is, why weren’t they investigated? Like, that’s the question. Not. Not that all this stuff is absolutely true or not that they went, yeah, okay, that sounds bad, but they’re only girls. Who cares?
Sam [00:16:53]:
I think. I mean, I think at one point they said, the officials said, oh, we’re not going to release any videos that has torture or murder in it. So it sounds like they do have those.
Chris [00:17:04]:
And it’s like, okay, so don’t show those videos. But I assume you’re investigating those videos, right? Like what?
Sam [00:17:12]:
I don’t know. They’re just not.
Chris [00:17:13]:
I don’t know.
Sam [00:17:14]:
Other countries are, though.
Chris [00:17:16]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:17:16]:
And they’re not. Yeah.
Chris [00:17:19]:
But the one thing that makes it feel good about this whole thing. I’m sorry, I didn’t even mean to go onto this Epstein thing. But the only thing that makes me feel good about this is their total ineptitude. And the way they just put all these files on and go, oh, no, we didn’t mean to put those in. And of course, there’s people just capturing, archiving that as soon as it shows up. So, yeah, some of this stuff will come out. In the wash. But it’s like you don’t want citizen investigators, really.
Chris [00:17:47]:
Like that shouldn’t be.
Sam [00:17:49]:
No.
Chris [00:17:49]:
What you’re. You’re basing your, your country on.
Sam [00:17:52]:
Anyway, we’ll see what happens.
Chris [00:17:54]:
Moving on.
Sam [00:17:56]:
They got elections this year. It’d be fine. Did you hear about the ducks? And Doc getting a bit shocked about it.
Chris [00:18:04]:
The ducks?
Sam [00:18:05]:
Yeah, some mallard. Mallard ducks?
Chris [00:18:08]:
No.
Sam [00:18:08]:
So two days ago, fourth of Feb, some rangers from Department of Conservation. Doc got reports and got photographic evidence and video of mallard ducks hunting down and killing freshly hatched native Putekiteke birds. Which is bird of the year that John Oliver published.
Chris [00:18:30]:
Do you hear that, John?
Sam [00:18:31]:
Yeah.
Chris [00:18:32]:
Cause John obviously listens to this podcast.
Sam [00:18:36]:
Yes. This is down past Lake Tekapo. Highly unusual because ducks don’t normally eat other animals. So the parents of these little ducklings or birds don’t think they’re a threat. So the video is the. The adults just standing there and these ducks are going up and eating them the hell so. And yeah, very strange. So they had to euthanize all the ducks, sort them out and then it had.
Sam [00:19:05]:
Here. They normally eat plants and insects and some snails. That’s what they usually eat.
Chris [00:19:12]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:19:12]:
And the other thing here, they have to check the other areas to ensure that no other mallard ducks have learned this behavior. Because ducks teach other ducks what to do.
Chris [00:19:25]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sam [00:19:26]:
And I was like, oh, cool. Yeah. Apparently it was documented in 2017 in Romania. Something happened there as well. So are ducks like a low key random killing machine that we just do not know about?
Chris [00:19:40]:
Ducks are dodgy. I’ve always thought ducks are a bit dodgy.
Sam [00:19:44]:
Why?
Chris [00:19:44]:
I don’t know. They’re just. They’re just a little dodgy. They’re great when they’re ducklings, but you grow up and you’re like, yeah, don’t trust you, man.
Sam [00:19:52]:
Okay. So anyway, they’re worried about it being spread through to other ducks. They might go, you know, we’ve had a taste of this other animal. We love it. Do it.
Chris [00:20:03]:
I got something here from the Royal Navy. Did you hear about this? They.
Sam [00:20:08]:
What are they up to?
Chris [00:20:09]:
They’re pushing this safety, workplace safety, just far too far.
Sam [00:20:14]:
This is the British Royal Navy.
Chris [00:20:15]:
The British Royal Navy. Yes. I think, I think that it’s. It’s this wokeness. It’s the woke. They’ve gone too. Woke.
Sam [00:20:23]:
I think I have a cousin that I’ve never met that is. Is in the navy.
Chris [00:20:26]:
Yeah. So sailors get a. Well, actually, I’m not going to read that headline. Because it’s actually bad. I think it’s terrible headline. But anyway, basically, the Royal Navy has made sailors go tea total two days a week. Oh. So alcohol consumption.
Chris [00:20:43]:
So the thing with the Royal Navy since day dot centuries was they get a portion of rum every day.
Sam [00:20:52]:
Okay.
Chris [00:20:52]:
Shot of rum every day or something like that.
Sam [00:20:54]:
How does that work? Do they just.
Chris [00:20:56]:
I don’t know.
Sam [00:20:56]:
Okay.
Chris [00:20:57]:
And I think it actually had a reason back in the day. Like helped against scurvy. I want to say back in.
Sam [00:21:05]:
Take your pick.
Chris [00:21:05]:
Yeah, well, whatever. So the Royal Navy’s cracking down on alcohol consumption by ordering personnel to go to teetotal for two days a week while on a ship. So when you’re off the ship, it doesn’t matter, but if you’re on a ship.
Sam [00:21:17]:
Okay.
Chris [00:21:17]:
The new rule affects all sailors, regardless of their rank. And a move to safeguard personnel and fit in with the government’s health advice. Further guidelines have been put in place to include no more than 14 units of alcohol a week, which. Which is around six pints of beer.
Sam [00:21:32]:
Do we know if they’re happy with this or not? I guess they can’t talk about it.
Chris [00:21:37]:
This is from the bfbs, British Forces News or something.
Sam [00:21:42]:
Okay.
Chris [00:21:43]:
So probably it’s the propaganda side of it.
Sam [00:21:46]:
So maybe.
Chris [00:21:47]:
Probably will say everybody’s fine with. Also prioritizes the health of our people, which is paramount, and ensures they are ready to respond to the dynamic situations of naval operations while also continuing to enjoy downtime. And the story just has lots of black and white photos of people loving drinking rum, which is quite amusing. I thought so anyway. I thought that was funny. It’s just like, oh, imagine if your boss made you teetotal for two days a week.
Sam [00:22:19]:
But things always change. Cause at work, somebody on the staff intranet got a little shout out. Cause I’ve been there for 45 years, holy crap. Pretty much doing the same job or in the same department. And. But they had like. What I will say is, like, I think back in the day when you had confinements of taking photos, but you can only take so many people took. I don’t know, it was good.
Sam [00:22:43]:
Like, I think now my phone’s got thousands of photos on it. But if you said, hey, you got a photo from yesterday when you’re doing something. Probably not, but they had some cool photos of back in the day. And there was one where everybody’s smoking in the room.
Chris [00:22:55]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:22:55]:
And then another one that had these big old orange computers and they’re all typing in all their stuff.
Chris [00:23:03]:
I laughed because Rebecca from work. Had to go over to Rockhampton last week for work. They were talking to a company over there and she had to get a flight from Gisborne to Auckland. From Auckland to Sydney or Brisbane or wherever. And then I think Brisbane and then Brisbane to Rockhampton. Okay. Little plane. Yeah.
Chris [00:23:26]:
She goes. And she didn’t like. Doesn’t like flying. So she was like, four planes to get.
Sam [00:23:31]:
Sounds like the worst trip.
Chris [00:23:31]:
Yeah. Anyway, she goes, that, that plane to Rockhampton. We’re in the small plane, not. Not tiny plane, but, you know, still passenger plane. And she goes, what is that, the air hostess? And she goes, it’s an ashtray. But you’re not allowed to smoke. And I was like, oh, yeah, I remember when you’d get on the plane, it was like, oh, the first six rows are non smoking and the rest are smoking. There is no.
Chris [00:23:58]:
There was no air curtain back.
Sam [00:24:00]:
No, no.
Chris [00:24:01]:
Like it made no sense to say any part of the plane was non smoking because that was the dumbest thing ever. It was, yeah. And that. Oh, God, yeah.
Sam [00:24:14]:
Crazy. Yeah. No, so they. And then they had a picture of this person in front of the old mainframe IBM, I guess, data center thing. And then before that there was punch cards and they were doing all that sort of stuff.
Chris [00:24:26]:
Did you ever watch the TV show? I had it in the tip of my tongue then. I can’t remember.
Sam [00:24:34]:
What’s it about?
Chris [00:24:34]:
Gliding on. Gliding on. No, you should look it up. It’s in the New Zealand film archives. Like you can watch it online free. And it’s a soap. Well, it’s more comedy. It’s comedy of the public service.
Chris [00:24:52]:
Back in, I want to say the late 70s, early 80s.
Sam [00:24:56]:
Yeah.
Chris [00:24:57]:
And. Yeah, and they’re all smoking at their desks in the public service. And it’s so quintessentially New Zealand. And so absolutely what your dad or your granddad would have been like. And when I first entered the workforce in the early 80s, mid-80s, it definitely was like that. You’d go into an office and there’s just ashtrays on every desk and people are just puffing away while they’re working. And not where I worked, because fire hazards. We weren’t.
Chris [00:25:25]:
I was in a manufacturing plant. You couldn’t do that there. But when I went to customs, where my mates worked, we go for drinks. Yep. Everybody’s just puffing away at the desks. Yeah.
Sam [00:25:36]:
Different world, different world. We’ve moved on and now everybody’s got a podcast in the air. Welcome.
Chris [00:25:44]:
Well, no, everybody’s vaping and it smells like cherries.
Sam [00:25:47]:
Oh, some of those flavors are crazy. Sounding like apple pie and God knows what. But I don’t even know if there’s regulation about some of that stuff. I think you can just make whatever you want.
Chris [00:25:56]:
Yeah, yeah. And it’s. I don’t know if it’s much better than. I’m starting to sound like an old grumpy man now. So let’s move on to something else.
Sam [00:26:05]:
Well, we’re almost at the end of the podcast, so you’re going to have to wrap it up real quick.
Chris [00:26:09]:
Real quick. No, I don’t think I’ve got anything I really wanted to talk about that would leave us on a high.
Sam [00:26:17]:
That’s okay, we can just end it. Check out tcasp.com tcasp.com We’ve got all the show notes, info, whatever you want. We actually got transcripts for a lot of our podcasts. So even if you don’t want to listen to us, you can read what.
Chris [00:26:33]:
We’Ve said and it makes it easier to search some of that stuff as well. If you want to find. What’s that thing that they said at that time.
Sam [00:26:41]:
I do have something. Cause you just reminded me I didn’t talk about it back in episode 534, which was June 2025 labeled broken bike. It’s when your bike broke because you were just too good with it. We talked about that Wellington company that was looking at fusion power and you started, you went on your talk about is it thorium? No.
Chris [00:27:04]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sam [00:27:05]:
Theorem reactors. So anyway, thorium. Thorium, that’s it.
Chris [00:27:08]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:27:08]:
This crowd, OpenStar Technologies, Wellington based fusion energy. They’ve done whatever they were doing on that we talked about last year. They did their trial or whatever it was on the small scale one. They’ve now got $35 million in funding from the regional infrastructure fund to carry on.
Chris [00:27:26]:
That doesn’t. I mean you go 35 million sounds like a lot, but in terms of that stuff, it doesn’t sound like a lot.
Sam [00:27:34]:
The comments online are interesting. They said for that money the amount you could put into solar or something else is a decent whack. This is just pie in the sky thinking that that money will go nowhere. That might pay out a few people they said, if it is so wonderful and so amazing and so groundbreaking, why is the money coming from the government and not being easily funded from venture capitalists? Because it should be a no brainer. A lot of comments were like, no, this has been done before. This is nothing new. We will not See anything from this? Yeah, but we will see. We’ll see.
Chris [00:28:13]:
There’s something to be said for that because I think government does have a place a part to play in helping that funding going off.
Sam [00:28:21]:
They did get rid of, they did get rid of 350 scientists though, the government. So like the people are like you could have 350 scientists working on multiple projects or Shane Jones just gives these guys some money.
Chris [00:28:35]:
Yeah, that sounds very like this government.
Sam [00:28:37]:
Something’s going on.
Chris [00:28:38]:
But. Yeah, but I do think it should be almost a partnership because often what will happen is private investors will put some money in if there’s some funding already there. And so the government putting in the first little bit is not a bad thing, although it wouldn’t hurt if. And they might have a rider where they go based on the fact you get private funding equal or equivalent to this amount, you know, and it should have that. If it has that, I’m all good.
Sam [00:29:06]:
So the prototype, which I call Junior, is specifically designed for commercial scalability and they are drawing parallels. I don’t know if this is the reporter or the company to Ernest Rutherford’s pioneering work in nuclear science. So maybe we’re onto something.
Chris [00:29:22]:
Maybe this company, that’s the thing you just don’t note. It is a big gamble, but the big gamble can pay off like hugely. And energy is the biggest issue we’ve got. I know everybody talks about climate, but energy is a big part of that as well, you know, so it’s all intertwined.
Sam [00:29:42]:
If they do anything, of course we will update you on that. Maybe from a nuclear bomb shelter, who knows? Until next time. I’m Sam.
Chris [00:29:50]:
I’m Chris.
Sam [00:29:51]:
See ya.
Chris [00:29:51]:
Bye.
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