Think Tankards

Our links and socials: https://linktr.ee/thinktankards

Chris picks four weird things governments have actually, really, properly done. All of these have paperwork behind them, which is mental. Australia sends two blokes with machine guns to fight 20,000 emus and loses. The Soviets spend 22 years drilling the deepest hole in the world, get 0.19% of the way to the centre of the earth, and leave it capped like a forgotten drain cover. Revolutionary France decides a day should have ten hours and a minute a hundred seconds, lasts seven months, and accidentally invents the bloody metric system. Imperial Japan floats paper balloons across the Pacific on the jet stream, one of which knocks out the power to the Manhattan Project.

All scored on weirdness, ambition, competence, and whether it should have left the meeting room.

Content note: civilian deaths, including children.

Music by Nathan Smith, Chris Cardill and Dave McGlen.

Socials: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://linktr.ee/thinktankards⁠

Nathan finally gets to talk about something he actually cares about: My Chemical Romance.

From Gerard Way watching 9/11 from a ferry, to a band that couldn't keep a drummer's hands out of the tour van, we follow MCR through four concept albums, a mariachi misprint, a wall of bottles at Reading 2006, and the Daily Mail's attempt to brand them an emo suicide cult.

Plus Umbrella Academy, the reunion, and a dystopian concept tour you'd need to follow round the world to understand. Chris discovers he's been an emo all along, Ian relives his student radio glory days, and nobody can agree who came first, Gerard Way's white hair or Gojo's from JJK.

Content note: includes discussion of self-harm and suicide.

Music by Nathan Smith, Chris Cardill and Dave McGlen.

Socials: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://linktr.ee/thinktankards

Music by Nathan Smith, Chris Cardill and Dave McGlen.

Socials: ⁠https://linktr.ee/thinktankards

Bugs Bunny is a beloved icon of animation and, on closer inspection, one of the most prolific criminals in fiction. Nathan has compiled a top ten of the worst things the rabbit has ever done. Chris has appointed himself defence of the accused and starts citing actual UK legislation (ignoring that Bugs is American). Ian files an amicus brief. Nobody involved is qualified to do any of this.

Over the course of the episode we get through fraud by false representation, a peeping Tom incident in Hurdy Gurdy Hare, the small matter of repeatedly tricking Daffy Duck into the path of a shotgun, and an Iron Maiden. We cover the smuggling of instant Martians onto Earth, the demolition of a Texas oil field, and the time Bugs sawed Florida off the mainland and set it adrift because he was insulted by the bounty on rabbits. We also talk about Fresh Hare, the Censored Eleven, and how Warner Bros handled that material afterwards. The number one crime involves a bomb disguised as an Easter egg.

Along the way: whether Ian is a tulpa invented by the other two, the legality of hanging a monkey in Hartlepool, out of date cider bought for a pound, and a Halloween costume decision from the North East that we are still not over.

Chris's client is eventually abandoned by his own lawyer. Rough total: four hundred years.

Ain't he a stinker.

Music by Nathan Smith, Chris Cardill and Dave McGlen.

Socials: ⁠https://linktr.ee/thinktankards

Today we're covering the Kennedy dynasty. Starting with how Joe Kennedy Sr. made his fortune on insider trading and market manipulation, then got made chairman of the SEC, the very body set up to police that exact behaviour. From there we trace how banking, bootlegging myths, and political muscle that beggars belief.

We cover the ones you probably already know like JFK's presidency, RFK running the Justice Department, a couple of assassinations, Chappaquiddick. But also the ones you probably don't, like; Eunice Kennedy founding the Special Olympics. Jean Kennedy Smith signing the Good Friday Agreement as US Ambassador to Ireland and horrifically, Rosemary Kennedy, lobotomised at 23 and hidden from her own siblings for twenty years.

Money, power, tragedy, and the occasional good deed. This is the full Kennedy story, Ireland to Boston to and on into 2026.

Music by Nathan Smith, Chris Cardill and Dave McGlen.

Socials: https://linktr.ee/thinktankards

It's a Chris episode. A Disney adult is not just someone who likes the films. They structure their year, wardrobe and occasionally, entire financial future around a theme park. This week we work out where the line sits between a nice holiday and a £26,000 timeshare that charges annual interest and you have to enter a lottery for...

We cover where the term came from in 2018, how COVID turned it into an insult (reddit, of course), the pillars the whole subculture is built on, and the civil war raging between collectors, bounders, pass holders, influencers and the resellers everyone else wants gone from this world.

Then the numbers, which are a doozy. One man visited Disneyland 2,995 days in a row. An Arizona couple were spending $125,000 a year before a lawsuit cost them another $400,000. People queued seven hours for a $25 popcorn bucket that was being resold the same day for $500. And roughly a third of everyone walking round Walt Disney World has no child with them, which works out at about 16 million adults a year.

It gets grim, too. Disney staff have an informal code for cleaning up the human ashes guests keep scattering on the dark rides, and the disability access scheme has been gutted because people faked it to skip queues.

Chris finishes on terror management theory, which argues that all of this is just a very expensive way of not thinking about dying. There's also a decent defence of the whole thing, a genuine question about whether Scientology works out cheaper, and an explanation of why Nathan has to wear steel toe caps at work.

Music by Nathan Smith, Chris Cardill and Dave McGlen.

Socials: https://linktr.ee/thinktankards

This week, we’re exploring the Terrifier movies and trying to work out how Art the Clown became a modern horror icon.

We discuss the series’ low-budget beginnings, its increasingly outrageous violence and the moments that made audiences feel genuinely sick. Is there more to these films than inventive gore? Is Art actually frightening, or has he become too entertaining to fear? And just how far can Damien Leone push things before even horror fans decide they’ve had enough?

Expect spoilers, strong opinions and far too much discussion about what can be done to the human body with a hacksaw.

Music by Nathan Smith, Chris Cardill and Dave McGlen.

Socials: https://linktr.ee/thinktankards

Was Perkin Warbeck the rightful King of England, or just one of history’s boldest scammers?

In this episode of Think Tankards, we explore the extraordinary story of the young man who claimed to be Richard of Shrewsbury: one of the missing Princes in the Tower and the true heir to the English throne.

Backed by powerful European rulers, welcomed by James IV of Scotland and pursued relentlessly by Henry VII, Warbeck’s royal impersonation became a genuine threat to the Tudor dynasty. But was he a remarkably convincing fraud, a political pawn, or could he actually have been the prince he claimed to be?

Expect royal conspiracies, suspicious disappearances, failed invasions and a truly astonishing commitment to the bit.

Follow the podcast for more strange stories from history, pop culture and everything in between.

#PerkinWarbeck #History #Tudors #PrincesInTheTower #HenryVII #BritishHistory #HistoryPodcast #ThinkTankards

Music by Nathan Smith, Chris Cardill and Dave McGlen.

Socials: https://linktr.ee/thinktankards

We get into the Memento years, the Batman films that made him untouchable, Oppenheimer somehow becoming a summer blockbuster about a physics meeting, and why philosophers wrote a book about him.

Also covered: How many Michael Caines are in his films? Why hockey pads are a bad investment, and which brother might be a Hitman.

Nobody on this podcast is qualified to explain the ending of Inception. That doesn't stop us.

Expect a fairly weak defence of The Prestige from someone who hasn't seen it since 2007.

Recorded in the North East. Filmed in IMAX in our heads.

Music by Nathan Smith, Chris Cardill and Dave McGlen.

Socials: https://linktr.ee/thinktankards

Chris gets his hook (hand) into the history of pirates. From modern day pirate stock exchanges where ordinary people invest in kidnapping, to ancient Chinese women who should really be the most famous pirates to ever live, the guys cover it all.

Music by Nathan Smith, Chris Cardill and Dave McGlen.