Hello and welcome to episode 396 of the Speak Life podcast. My name is Thomas and I work at Speak Life. We're gonna jump straight in with the conversation, and I will catch you later on with Paul Feesey.
SPEAKER_02Well hello and welcome to the Speakeasy. My name is Paul Feesey, and as always, I am joined by Nate Morgan Locke.
SPEAKER_04And Glenn Scrivener.
SPEAKER_02Hello. Hello.
SPEAKER_04Well isn't always, you're not always just.
SPEAKER_02No, that's not true. Because it hasn't been the case for at least three weeks, I don't think we've all been here. Unshavense, you know, like fasting.
SPEAKER_04My my mother was, oh, you look terrible. Do you have long COVID? I was like, I'm on day five. That's not long. This is how I look, mother. Anyway.
SPEAKER_02But you're out of it now. You've you've come through.
SPEAKER_04Yes.
SPEAKER_02And we're all back. That won't matter in a few days. In a few days, anyway.
SPEAKER_04Whether you've got it or not, just unleash yourself like a biological weapon. Lookout world, here you come.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, it's good to have the three of us back uh on it again. Um uh hopefully uh we'll be able to have some good chat tonight. Um if you're well, I was gonna say if you're watching for the first time, even if you're watching for the hundredth time, um do remember that down in uh if you're watching on YouTube, you can find the live chat. You can always say hi down there and let us know kind of what you think about some of the bits we're chatting about. Um put your own comments in. I think as well today we're on Facebook for the first time in a long time. Um so we're not quite sure how that all works in terms of comments. We hope people's comments can be seen at this end as well. So if you're on Facebook and you're watching, say hi uh on the uh video there, and hopefully we'll pick it up and uh yeah, let us know your comments. Pete Thorne says hi. So he's there, but he's on YouTube.
SPEAKER_04He's on YouTube, so it doesn't count. We want we want some Facebook commenters, Pete.
SPEAKER_02Come on. Not you. Um so um today we're talking about uh something that's popped up in the news kind of well, it's been in the news um more in these last few days, but it's something that's running on for a very, very long time. And we're talking about this scandal surrounding the post office and their computing uh computer accounting issue, uh, which led to the wrongful prosecution of uh hundreds of members of staff. Um so between the year 2000 and 2014, 736 sub-postmasters and postmistresses were prosecuted of theft, fraud, and false accounting in branches of the post office that they ran. Uh their lives and the lives of thousands of others were torn apart. They were financially ruined, put out of work, uh shunned, driven into poor health and addiction, um, and some saw their marriages destroyed. And actually some said uh very sadly um even took their own lives as a result of uh the the kind of ongoing scandals kind of around it and the pressures. Um people were imprisoned. Um at least 33 people have kind of died whilst this has all been going on. I think it was four of those that took their own lives. Um so it's something that kind of hung over people and you know, had affected them right up to the end, it affected their families. Um and it's come out that they didn't do anything wrong. That actually it was all down to this system called Horizon, uh, which was a computer system that worked with the accounts for the post office designed by Fujitsu. Um and it's been described as the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British history. So it's a pretty pretty big thing. Um so what are our thoughts on this?
SPEAKER_04I mean, I I feel terrible that I'm only kind of playing catch-up on a story that's in some senses like 20 years old. Um because I I guess Horizon came in in 1999 and and some of the first complaints were happening in the 2000s. Um I guess it it they had their own Panorama program in 2015, and uh Private Eye, uh the satirical magazine here in the UK, um, has been covering it quite a lot, but it hasn't had a lot of kind of mainstream media focus. And when I first kind of got to grips with the the full extent of it, one of my first thoughts was isn't it interesting how technology was meant to come to the rescue and be this kind of infallible correction and a corrective to human error. And and what's proved so disastrous is that that has been the story. You know, the post office have kept on defending a broken system and saying, well, the program can't be wrong, it must be human error. And so actually, it's therefore humans using their cognitive biases and their self-justification and applying technology to a situation in order to kind of crush the little guy. And it it brought to mind in me kind of the abolition of man by C. S. Lewis and and his his kind of dystopian prediction of a of a future where what is sold to us is that technology will help us to um have victory over nature. And what C. S. Lewis said is no, actually, it will just help us to use technology to gain victory over other people.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And I I think that that's one of the things that's been been chilling about this is the using of technology in order to double down on some very human errors. That that's one thing that I thought.
SPEAKER_00I think what's so fascinating about it, and and I I had heard initially, I think maybe 2010, of there being these significant issues with these kind of low local post offices and people being kind of accused of things that they hadn't done. But it was never really it never really caught the attention of, as you say, of the mainstream kind of media in a in in the way that I think having re-looked at the story over the last couple of days, there it's not just the the humans versus other humans with the technology kind of uh story. You've also got this uh kind of uh big institution and its reputation and its kind of implementation of this system across all these tiny little, you know, like a post office inside a you know a little convenience store. And so you've got all of these issues going on. I'm and and just the phrase sub-postmaster, it sounds like or postmistress. There's there's such kind of archaic terms for most of us who probably have very little engagement with the post office on a day-to-day basis.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah. Like one thing it uh became clear about with the um with the horizon sort of IT package is that apparently they perform 12,000 incorrect operations every year. Um and in the in the Panorama program, which is quite interesting, we we might put a link in that um uh in the YouTube description. Um, but on the Panorama program, they got um some IT experts in, and they all said, you know what, IT systems, they all have glitches, they all have a lot of glitches. Your big problem is when you claim that you don't have errors. The errors you should expect. What what becomes unmanageable is when the whole system is set up to say, no errors here, can't be any errors here, and you double down and you self-justify, and and that's that's where it seems to be. You had an unchallengeable system that was sort of and you know, ever every every kind of institution protects itself, and that it's got that written into its DNA, but it seems like there was such a self-protection going on where nobody could get a good look at Horizon, no one could get a good look at that IT side of things, and so where else must the errors come from? It must be theft.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, but it seems that they became aware at some point that the s even though they had initially said, well, the system it doesn't make mistakes, at some point they realized it did make mistakes, but yet they still decided to cover that up and say, Well, we'll just go ahead with prosecutions, which you know, which we've said is it's around 700 over 700 people leading to you know the suicides of at least four people.
SPEAKER_00And again, part of that tragedy is that each of those individuals or you know, those families or whatever, they thought it was only them that had the problem. They were isolated and they weren't aware of the fact that there were you know hundreds of other people who were having the same struggle with the s the software telling them something they knew wasn't true. Yeah. And so they needed to deal with this and then all the stress that that brings, but not knowing that there's a whole group of other people who are involved. Right. Right must be, you know, I mean that it just feels if if you think that it's not just well, if if it's if it's lots of little guys against the big institution, that's a very different story to saying no, it's just us against this kind of behemoth of our, you know, like what are you going to do against the post office? Like we are a local branch of the post office.
SPEAKER_04And what often happened, like the panorama program is quite interesting. Uh uh of just saying, so what happened is at the end of the month, the the there would be the the accounts reconciled, and horizon would tell you that you're £2,000 short of cash. And in so many of these instances, these sub-postmasters were like, they they couldn't find out, and of course, first you suspect somebody who's working in the post office, maybe somebody does have their hand in the till, and yeah, so that sows seeds of doubt. But in the end, they were financing that £2,000 shortfall. And they and and people were like like remortgaging their house just to make up for like differences that that horizon had caused. And then what often happened is they would be so sure that actually they'd done the accounts right and Horizon was wrong, that they just clicked the button that said, you know, reconcile accounts and just yeah, the accounts are fine. And then that then got weaponized against them because that was false accounting. Yeah, but then what the legal team at the post office did was actually threaten them with being charged for theft, which is a more serious crime than the false accounting thing. And so with this big stick, you know, raised above people's heads, then they said, All right, well, we'll at least admit to the false accounting, and they were being advised by lawyers to do that. But then as soon as they say that they're liable for that, then the post office says, Right, well, then you owe us the 55 grand, you owe us the 75 grand, you owe us the 100 grand, you know, and then people are bankrupted, people do jail time, and it's none of their fault.
SPEAKER_00And bizarrely, there are so many British institutions involved in this story. So when you've you sent us the the link to the was it in publishing article, and that was talking about uh was his name, Nick uh um I'm gonna say Gattus Wallace. Nick Wallace was the first one. And then he was the journalist who who's kind of stumbled across this story working in a local radio station or something, and then and that article kind of reveals what we've talked about on the show before, which is that the journalist as hero, and so the one who is fine sees the injustice, hears the plight of the little guy, and then says, Hold on, let's find out more and more. And then he uncovered this network of of sub-postmasters who were all aware of the issue and raised awareness of that, and then tried to take it before I think I think he was the one who introduced it to Private Eye and to the Daily Mail, and then pushed to get the um the one show, did some segments. True. I think. Yep. And so for him, as a as a character in the story, and certainly the way it was portrayed in in the article, you're thinking, oh, this is a journal, a journalist as hero story. And you think, okay, so you've got the journalists, you've then got um the the post office or the sub-postmasters, right? So you've got the newspaper, the post office, you then have the lawyers are involved, right? And the lawyers, you know, cash out at the end of it, but then not only that, but the the woman who was in charge of the post office at the time is an ordained priest within the Anglican communion. Right. And you just think this this kind of list of characters is it's like the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker. It's it's this story is so kind of uh it it's so compelling because there are so many very nice, almost clear archetypal characters who are within it, and you just think it's just incredible.
SPEAKER_04It's amazing, Paula Venels, because not not only does she like in terms of a villain, not only is she sort of the rich millionaire who came in and she was the success story because she turned away, she turned around a loss-making institution, you know, Royal Mail. Okay, and turned it into a £120 million a year profit, you know. How did she do it? Like through this. So not only is she the horrible capitalist, she's also a religious authority. You know, this Uber villain. And then, you know, when um in December 2019, um there was a win in a significant um sort of civil case that was brought against um Royal Mail, she she apologized. She said, I'm truly sorry that we were unable to find both a solution and a resolution outside of litigation and for the distress this caused. Which she uses the words truly sorry, but it's like I'm truly sorry that we were unable to find any other solution other than taking you guys to court. Yeah. We just we our hands were tied. We just had to like threaten you with jail time and cause such emotional anguish in you that your mental health suffers, you go bankrupt, people take their own. We just had to. I'm I'm I'm very sorry that we had no other choice.
SPEAKER_02I mean it's not it it's it's weird, isn't it? Because you as you say, the it feels like this archaic thing, you know, the the post sub-post office with the sub-postmaster, postmistress. But yeah, here it is being described as one of the greatest injust miscarriages of justice in British history. You know, and it almost sounds like a trite little story, doesn't it? But when you start to unpack it, you see just the the way it has this knock-on effect of like it's not just you know the guy who works behind the counter, it's his wife and his children and their families, you know, because you know, his parents are thinking, what's going on with our son, you know, because his family's falling apart, his wife's thinking, did my husband really embezzle this money? You know, the kids are wondering why dad's in court, and you know, it it has so it goes so wide, and that's one family.
SPEAKER_04And they were sending down pregnant women, like pregnant women to jail, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Like what was her name? Seema Yeah, and I think it was it was her husband who who happened to be on a call in to the radio show that Nick Wallace was working at, which alerted him to the story. Yeah. And yeah, and and her situation. I mean, I think I as I read it that you know ITV are planning to do a kind of a a d dramatization of it. Um I don't know. I mean maybe they'll do a do a great job with it, but it just feels it's it's still the Swinton as Paula Venels, I think. I've called it you better here first. But it's just it seems yeah, it's such a profoundly I think I would I would rather it had a kind of um I don't know, like a cinematic treatment. I think like the issues involved in this are so so deep that I mean you know I know TV shows are kind of you know incredible now and people have rather watch you know a box set of something or you know binge watch on Netflix. But I don't know, this this there's so much going on in the story. And like and you introduced it and said, okay, this is like the technology story. It's like, yeah, it's a technology story, and it's a corrupt corporate story and a local interest story and a journalist hero story and everything. Yep, yeah. So much.
SPEAKER_04Before we move on, it would be good to think about like how this kind of applies to churches and ministries because we've been thinking about sort of abuse scandals, and it's basically you know, one year since the Ravi Zacharias um kind of report the um that that that dropped sort of 12 months ago. And the there's just so much for I think the church to learn. Um so I think I think journalist as hero is something you know when you have foot in the foot in the door reporters who are shining an uncomfortable light on your institution, what is your reaction? Yeah, and my knee-jerk reaction is oh, they are enemies of the gospel, just trying to take down good gospel ministers. Um we need to have have a much bigger category for journalists as hero. Yeah, yeah. Um another thing is, you know, in this story with the post office, you know, the errors were not the problem. Errors always happen. Every IT system has errors, the errors were not the problem. Insisting that there are no errors is entirely the problem. Yeah, yeah. And insisting that you don't have a problem to deal with and and doubling down on that. So institutional blindness.
SPEAKER_02And that should be baked into what we do. I mean, given that we've said this before, that there are not many other organizations or any organizations where when you get together on a weekly basis, you confess that you have done wrong. Yeah. And you know, that should be baked into what we do, even on that level, not just kind of in the church service.
SPEAKER_04Yes. And therefore, like in the independent review is really important because there kind of was a review process for the sub-postmasters to make their grievances known to, and yet they were not independent at all, and and so all their complaints got sort of lost in the shuffle. So true independency, um, you know, and therefore expecting that institutions will have a bias and and will not be incentivized to you know market's own homework and and you know, and therefore outsourcing that. Uh, the idea of whistleblowers, because in the first instance, all the all the whistleblowers were actually people who um had made false accounting claims. You know, yeah, yeah. You know, at the end of the month, yeah, they in the end, they they clicked that they didn't know what else to do, so they clicked the button that just said, yep, everything is reconciled, it's all good. Yeah, um, and so and many of them pleaded guilty to and so they they're not straightforward heroes if you're just looking for, you know, like they are. I I don't think they did, I didn't think that was wrong that they did that. Yeah, but whistleblowers are always like out of the blue and annoying, and they're troublemakers.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And and the thing about the, you know, okay, so your whistleblower could be compromised, right? That doesn't mean they're not saying the truth, they're saying something true, right? Yeah, and you you would hope that as Christians we have a a good enough understanding of of total depravity in terms of it's you know, like it runs through every human heart and it's it's there all the time, but we don't feel like, oh well, if everyone's compromised, you know, we we'll just go for moral ambiguity and it's all a matter of perspective. And to say we actually but do believe in justice, yeah, and we do believe that people could be you know mad as a box of frogs, but they might have something true to say about the person we think is honourable and respectful, and just because someone's in a position of power and authority does not mean they're unimpeachable. Right. And and we ought to be able to pull apart, you know, what is good about someone and what is wrong about someone, and not feel that we're being disloyal or we're being, you know, um yeah, we're being revolutionary, or this is just a matter for troublemaking. So there's a lot to learn from these sorts of situations.
SPEAKER_04And the law aspect of things, law being leveraged against people, sort of high power lawyers were uh really cowing the the little guys. And you know, we've thought before about non-disclosure agreements and how they can often be used, and people, you know, here's here's a payment, here's some hush money. Yeah, yeah, here's a yeah, here's here's a contract our lawyers have drawn up, just sign it and it'll all go away. Um so yeah, there's so much for the for the church to learn.
SPEAKER_00And who who'd written the article? There was someone uh uh linked to it on the Twitter announcement that we were going to be going live tonight, and it was by the Fergus Butler Gellley?
SPEAKER_04Yes.
SPEAKER_00And I was really interested in his um his discussion of is it Paula Vennells? Paula Vennels. And the the sort of management speak that she seemed to hide behind that you mentioned earlier, and the tendency for institutions to to kind of retreat into respectable oh well, let's everything is about remaining calm and thinking things through. And that almost always means speaking with a you know a fork tongue and you're saying one thing because it will be a measured response. Yes, and yet you know that people aren't talking like that behind you know, when they're off the stage from a big conference or something.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, you know, it there's a great there's a great line from Fergus, actually. Um he says the very worst thing of all is that these effects rarely proceed from actual malice. He's talking about the institutional, you know, system that grinds away. These effects rarely proceed from actual malice, but rather a blind devotion to hierarchical managerialism. Um so yeah, just an institution doing what it does, it will. protect its own interests and then the little guy gets grounded in the gears.
SPEAKER_02Well there's lots of stuff there for us to kind of reflect on. Obviously a tragic story, but you know, um as you said, it does make us think a bit more widely as well about the church and how particularly given the events we've seen in the last kind of two years. We'll just dive into the mailbag and look at some bits from uh previous weeks. So I wasn't here last week but uh you guys had a uh chat and there was a comment afterwards from uh Robert I'm gonna say Robert Paiser um and he asked this question he said how come the Christian sexual revolution had to come with Christ and not during the days of the Old Testament David and Solomon were able to objectify women and are still deemed holy question mark no I don't quite know the context of that because I didn't hear what you talked about last week.
SPEAKER_00So we're talking about love and marriage we yeah we we talked was it love uh because it was Valentine's Day we're discussing um love damned love and statistics that was that was it so we looked at some stats with regard to happiness within relationships and the Christian sexual ethic and we talked about the the revolution that didn't happen in the 1960s but in AD sixties when you know the gospel started to really spread the church had been established and yeah it's I think it's a really good question.
SPEAKER_04Glenn so we went to Matthew 19 in which Jesus sort of paints a picture in a timeline in which he says in the beginning God made the male and female and then what God has joined together let no one separate he also says after that edenic kind of beginning there has been a fall and Moses gave you some laws because of your hardness of heart but he has come to restore that sort of creation pattern so that there is this kind of thing and the Old Testament fits into this pattern in which there is legislation that according to Jesus is non-ideal and it is a response to the hardness of heart a response to human sin. So some of that is going on in the Old Testament also what's going on in the Old Testament is you need to learn how to read narrative because everything that is described in the Old Testament or in the New Testament is not to be copied in any way shape or form. And actually the way the Solomon story is set up is he is sort of the photo negative of what a king is meant to be if you read Deuteronomy 17. Deuteronomy 17 says don't get lots of chariots don't get lots of wives the first thing you learn about Solomon is as soon as his king is like well hey get the chariots get the wives and every instance of polygamy in the Old Testament is just a a story of exploitation and things fall apart and so you need you need to figure out what's going on in narrative as well. Just because Solomon takes all these wives does not mean it's a good thing.
SPEAKER_00Things fall apart in terrible ways and actually his idolatry shows up in in those sorts of those sorts of things but that sort of ideal that is taught in the Old Testament too one man one woman for life is a beautiful ideal it's a Jewish Hebrew you know thoroughly scriptural idea ideal but there is that that Old Testament kind of um pattern going on and then Christ comes to restore it but it's he's he's restoring something that was already there in the Old Testament is what it's and I suppose it's worth saying in it he sort of says David and Solomon considered holy yeah so I'm still deemed holy yeah I'm pretty sure that when you know if you're looking at particularly the life of David his adultery with Bathsheba is not treated lightly as though it was somehow it was okay because this is this is how God's choosing to do you know sexual ethics right now. It's like no actually this has very serious consequences David you know will write one of the the the greatest psalms um I said greatest psalms who can tell which are the greatest psalms it's a good though. It is a good there is a number one though isn't it but um and yeah and and and thinking through yes not just what what happens but what happens as a consequence of those decisions and those choices and so it's it's almost that God is revealing the sinfulness of sin in those situations but then it is with Christ that we get the clearest picture or the picture of righteousness the righteous man.
SPEAKER_04And so like the only holy one in that sense yeah yeah yeah I mean you you were telling me a story just today about like someone who expected that when you read the Bible that of of course if you read about Solomon taking wives it's it's advocating for that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah it was a friend of mine at Union and he said oh but there's this bit in the Bible where it says about this woman who's like she's left out in the courtyard overnight this this servant and then the men come and they rape her to death and then they cut up the body and they send them out to people all over Israel and he's like it's terrible and we're like yeah it is terrible I mean I'm I'm glad I'm glad you see that that's the point and I think he genuinely thought that like the Bible was saying this this is good. You know you you can read these stories and go that's a bad thing.
SPEAKER_04You know that's a really obvious that's really liberating I I think I was like 22 23 when someone pointed out to me you know Jacob most of the time he's just a scumbag isn't it and it was just so liberating was something yeah because I I've been sort of twisting myself trying to say you know Jacob when he does that I mean it it sounds like he's a slime bag but surely not but I actually when you're released to see there is one hero in the Bible and it's Jesus you know that's that's liberating like unless the the you know the events narrated are you know completed with now you go and do likewise. It's probably not the thing that you're supposed to be taking away from that absolutely um another comment in last week um underneath the speakeasy uh which was directed at you Glenn so please can you explain to me what you meant on page 430 of your book Reading Between the Lines Old Testament uh when you said which I'm sure you know straight away 430 you've written a book with over 400 it's largely pictures the pop-out section is at least five pages uh but this person waited Monica said um what did you mean when you say that Jesus did not replace his old body in the tomb with a brand new resurrection body surely that's a contradiction in terms then she did say thank you apart from that I've been enjoying the book apart from that but well I think I mean it's it's a great question because the tomb is empty and and like I think I think again I I've been a Christian for decades and heard must have heard a hundred sermons where preachers had said the tomb is empty and I never really got well so what that the tomb is empty like I can understand why people would say it's it's um important that Jesus was seen again or it's important that there was an experience of resurrection that Jesus had post death but that the tomb was empty sort of passed me by. But what it means is the very body that went in on Good Friday came out on Easter Sunday it's not as though Jesus' corpse rots faded away fades away and then there's this different body I mean especially that's so so important because Jesus is pioneering the new creation like he takes Adam who is the earth man and he is the second Adam and he takes Adam to himself and therefore represents not only humanity man but also the earth the creation and he takes it through death and out the other side in order to pioneer this path towards resurrection life and it's very good that he doesn't leave the old in the tomb and then start something new. He's pulling everything through death and into resurrection starting with his own body and so it's it's not that Jesus dies and rots and that there's a different resurrection body. Jesus is like a seed and he says that in John 12 and Paul says it in 1 Corinthians 15 and it's not that the seed is replaced by the tree the seed becomes the tree by going down and then up the acorn is not replaced by the oak the acorn becomes the oak Jesus is not replaced by a resurrection Jesus through death he becomes that resurrection Jesus and good news is as the pioneer of the new creation he's the needle going through the black shroud of death we are the thread therefore this body is getting raised up this world is getting raised raised up none of it is going in the bin yeah it's all going to get passed through into resurrection glory so it's good news glory yeah that's helpful I'd never really thought about the the aspect of you know with the two being empty you could kind of just think of it as Jesus is alive that's what it means but actually that the idea of that it's that the body itself has his body is up and about.
SPEAKER_02The one that got those very wounds has survived more than survived been glorified great uh well um it's good to see people kind of been just chipping in saying hi um just we've had a little comment there from John I'd say John Hine Does anybody need any milk?
SPEAKER_01Is that we could get you could pop out he said good comment on NDA's uh slash hush money agreements they're sadly alive and well in the church in the UK today yeah more than you would think unfortunately yeah we kind of discussed that quite a bit in the wake of the ravi stuff haven't we and um yeah kind of shocking really to think that that is still going on yeah non-disclose I mean Diane Langberg is great on this like non-disclosure let's think of other words let's think of synonyms for non-disclosure cover up with that a cover up agreement why don't you just call it that then you know yeah this conversation went out live on our YouTube channel you can watch it and all our other conversations at youtube.com forward slash speaklifemedia we're on the other social media platforms just search for speaklifeuk that will keep you posted and why not join us when we next go live you can also email comments and questions to infospeaklife.org.uk SpeakLife is supported entirely by the generosity of people like you especially through your prayers.
SPEAKER_02If you'd like to contribute financially regular or one-off donations are much appreciated and you can do that at speaklife.org.uk forward slash give. If you're a regular giver you can request access to our Discord server where you can join us for more conversation and exclusive behind the scenes content. Let's get back to the podcast and each week we've been doing a little section called movie tag where we've uh picked up a film and we've uh looked at it to see kind of what kind of messages are in there what things we can find and so last week you guys did was it the squid and the whale we did talked about we had quite a bleak time thinking about the squid and the whale the Noah Baumback film from 2005 just take a while guess who picked that's three that was good. And so the the the the link has to be through a member through a member of the castle crew crew castle crew so who's the link this week for this week and oh the other rule the there are two rules there's the movie tag link and it has to be older than ten years.
SPEAKER_00Yes yes it's got to be a it's got to be from further away so we're not chasing the trend pre-2012 basically it's got to have you know somehow had a value that makes it rewatchable a decade later.
SPEAKER_04Yes so Glenn has jumped to so it could have been it could have been Jeff Daniels and I could have gone anywhere with Jeff Daniels.
SPEAKER_03It could have been Wes Anderson or something live action remake.
SPEAKER_04Yeah uh Wes Anderson was a producer so I could have gone down that route but I I went down the Laura Linney route and uh we're gonna go with the Truman show.
SPEAKER_02Yeah classic classic film.
SPEAKER_04So she is Merrill Burbank who is married to um Truman Burbank which is a brilliant a brilliant name for him he is the true man but Burbank is the part of Los Angeles where all the TV is kind of made the dream factory for television and he and he lives in a TV show. He was born on a TV show there are 5,000 cameras in Sea Haven where he lives in this massive dome and having been born on the TV show everyone in his life is an actor and uh the world has been pulled over his eyes but uh yeah so that's the thing and and he he gets to nearly 30. So that's that's kind of dropped into the the true man gets to 30 right where and what's interesting is in so many heroes' journeys the first act okay you're in the Shire or you know the first the first act you're at home and then you've got to cross the ocean you're you're Moana and you've got to leave the islands you know um but the entire film yeah is kind of in Seahaven yeah and will he escape or or will he be in a in a very lovely prison cell you know overseen by Ed Harris's character who is Christophe but he's he's not he's not Christ on he's Christoph he's very much an anti-Christ if if you like yeah who presides over it and and like almost his final line in the film is he's he's trying to convince Truman one last time to stay and he says I am the creator of a TV show you know and you're the star.
SPEAKER_00So yeah yeah time for that I mean I w so I watched it with my my 12 year old son on Saturday afternoon. And it felt like a really good age to be showing him a film like this because it for so many people it connected with a philosophical idea of you know of of the self as the centre of the universe and you know what if I'm the only real one and everything else is is just fabricated. You know what if people disappear when you know um when they leave the room and it you know I'm the only place that I can be right it's a very kind of self-egocentric kind of perspective. And one that I think raises interesting questions not only about that but about the nature of media the nature of the portrayal of one's life on media we were sort of thinking that you know the idea of your life your from your basically from your birth through to how does it end in Sylvia's Sylvia's little pin badge um potentially through to his death this life is going to be lived on screen and certainly no one was thinking about about live streaming their you know their breakfast or anything like that at this time but now that's just a perfectly ordinary thing to do right you go on your travels and you tell everyone what you're doing all of the time we've chosen to do that and almost like the only problem was he wasn't aware it was happening.
SPEAKER_04Yeah yeah um on air unaware yeah um yeah it in in that regard I think it's kind of a it's a dystopian vision of a future that we've already moved past. So it was quite prescient about reality TV because um it I think it had been written by 1995 and I think it came out in 98 was it something like that um which I mean Big Brother came out in 2000 you know and what was the MTV um uh MTV had a the ri the real world okay they had a reality TV show that came out sort of right when the Truman show was was being released but it it it was a dystopian like vision of a future where this would be what life is like where the these poor souls would be viewed by the rest of us and I mean we there there are still lessons to learn there's there was still Caroline Flack you know with Love Island and the there's there's still there's there's something like 700 reality TV shows like that that are being broadcast on TV right now around the world. 700 different ones like so it it's in one sense we haven't moved beyond it and we still need the cautionary tales. But in another sense we have moved beyond it because we're all the broadcasters now like and we all willingly subject ourselves to this which is a a kind of a a fascinating kind of vision but um but but when you when you think sort of Princess Die would have just like been killed just as the as the sort of the the film comes out and that idea of the paparazzi are kind of all around her and she lives her life like a candle in the wind and and everyone is complicit in it. Right? Because we all buy the tabloid newspaper we we like the paparazzi right we will at least we prop up the industry of the paparazzi which leads to the pressure on her which leads to the car crash and um and I and that that sort of sense of pointing the finger at the voyeur within all of us.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And and we talked obviously earlier on thinking about the post office scandal about journalist as hero and this is kind of media mogul as demon you know it's like what if I lock you in a world and basically try to convince you try to manipulate you into staying for my own benefit and I was thinking about what kind of a film is um the Truman show and I do think it's a coming of age film and I think it's quite interesting to compare it to my favourite Disney princess film Tangled okay so in in Tangled you've obviously got Rapunzel who is locked in the tower by Mother Gothel and she's kept there because she has this magical hair which will give uh Mother Gothel eternal youth and in the Truman show you have Truman Burbank who is locked inside the dome he's locked in there by Christoph and what's Truman's magical gift it is the fame and the ratings and and all of this pressure that comes on and so that speech which they they the the cinematography around that that conversation that takes place as he looks up into the sky I mean just that single shot when the boat touches the wall and the shadow meets and you just think oh this is so gorgeous. It's such a brilliant thing and but when he's having that conversation it's remarkably tender yes and so you don't think oh look at this evil Christoph guy so awful and terrible you want Truman to go through the door you're desperate for him to break out and to know the truth but you hear this temptation oh stay in this gilded cage and everything will be okay here I can look after you and and that is such a an archetypal story for for the parent's journey at what point will you allow your child to enter into a world that is full of risks and at what level will you you tyrannically keep them inside nothing can harm you I've got you and I mean it's just so profound.
SPEAKER_04Yeah yeah yeah amazing and and it's a challenge I think to us who really like our gilded cages and who would much prefer the the sort of the simulation of just being entertained minute by minute hour by hour by yeah by being our own Trumans you know and broadcasting to the world and and being the center of of a very safe world in which we we don't want to escape. We don't want to get out you know I was I was in isolation for 10 days and there was a part of me that really liked it. You know there I was I was you know watching films and kind of finally got to see all of Ted Lasso you know and yeah and the and the hero's journey to you know to sail through the storm and come out the other side and live yeah like very few of us actually really want that you know which I think is why we hear the purr of Christoph and we we don't identify him as as the villain that he he is you know um because Christoph wants you dead.
SPEAKER_00I mean he like well that's the whole thing when like when he puts him through that storm and is it Paul Giamatti who's just like I won't press the button to keep this storm going yeah and he reaches over and he does it for him and you think you're going to kill him. Yes. And in a way if if if that's all that you have if the show is everything the ratings are everything right they talk about what it was like on your first step right how many people were there to watch as you had your you know you got married and all this sort of stuff it's like well you know hatch him match him dispatch him like that's the only thing that's that's left to do yeah is to kill this guy. Yeah um the the other thing which which from a a narrative point of view is fascinating within the film is because they kill his dad in the storm for Truman as a character he has Has to sort of pass through death. He has to face his own father's death, his own fear. And that's why when they're searching for him and they've got the search parties and they suddenly turn the the sun on. Yeah. And they go, Well, where is he? Well, the only place we know he won't be is in the ocean because that's that's the place of the place of death. Yeah. And yet there he is on the boat. And this, and again, it's brilliant. When Christoph says, Um, I'll go to the masthead or or whatever it is, there's a shot, and he's got the the I know I don't know how to put it. Yeah, and he's like, That's the hero shot, and he's directing the TV show all that time, and you just think, wow, okay, so even in this moment, yeah, you are looking for TV gold.
unknownRight?
SPEAKER_00That's what you want because that's that's all that you have with this guy. Yeah, yeah. That's how he exists to you is to be a TV personality.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah. He is he is very much Chris off. He's not Christ on, he is the antichrist. But then I love the last the last line is the the two security guards who are just watching the tiny little TV. Oh yeah, yeah. And because the because the broadcast is over, they're like, what else is on? I don't know. And they just turn they change the channel, and it's just like the locust of popular opinion. We'll just go to the next Truman and the next to suck the life out of them. But there is only one true man who sails through the storm to bring liberation. You know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_00I think that's wrapping it up.
SPEAKER_02Um Rory Martin, oh yeah, friend of the show. He says the Truman show and Amadeus are good fighting film twins. He said the Truman show, Truman's journey leads to defying and breaking free of his creator, Christoph. In Amadeus, Salieri spends the entire film trying to thwart God's will by opposing Mozart out of jealousy. And he comes to see that true freedom is found in accepting one's fate or destiny from God. He says they are the Cain and Abel of film brothers. Wow. Wow.
SPEAKER_04Has anyone ever put those two films together side by side, Rory Martin? That's uh double bill.
SPEAKER_02It's uh an afternoon of Amadeus.
SPEAKER_00Can we get can we get to Amadeus from the somewhat I can't remember who on getting us to two films we haven't yet done, Legally Blonde and Dirty Dancing. Yeah, um, it's probably still on, but we are gonna take a break. We're gonna we're gonna be able to.
SPEAKER_02Oh, there we've had the time of our lives. We haven't yet. We are gonna take a bit of a break for movie tag um uh from next week. As we move into Lent, we're gonna have a little series where we uh look at the Apostles' Creed uh during that Lent time. So we're kind of giving up movie tag for Lent, basically. And then uh we we will probably return to it a little bit later. So um don't worry if uh you love this section, it will come back. Um but we'll have some great stuff lined up with the Lent stuff as well. Um let us know what you think about the Truman show. If you've not seen it, go and watch it. I think it's on Netflix, isn't it?
SPEAKER_04It's on Netflix only until the end of February. So you've only got like seven days, yeah. All right, well get in there then, get in. It's worth seeing.
SPEAKER_02And I just assume everyone's seen the Truman show, but I forget it's like twenty five years old. Yeah. So, you know, there's probably people watching or in this room who weren't born at the time of that. True facts over there. True facts who weren't born.
SPEAKER_01Hello and welcome to the final musings of the podcast. Hello, Paul, how are you doing?
SPEAKER_02Hello, yes, I'm okay, thank you. Uh doing alright. And uh yeah, I mean, uh I suppose having had a bit of time to to think about the uh the post office scandal that we were talking about last night uh a little bit more. Um I think you know, probably what struck me most was the things that got talked about just at the end of our conversation on that that Glenn was talking about, how the church can learn from it really. Um it's because there are just so many parallels, as we said, um, with a lot of what we've seen in the last 18 months in the church, with all the different scandals there. Um and uh it's it's sad that there are so many parallels, really, because you would think as you listen to the post office story and you hear the way people acted and responded to, you know, when when they were being told there's a problem with the system, something's not right, and they were just denying there were any problems, and then when they found there were problems, they just covered up the problems, and then they kind of actively went after people. Um there were kind of obviously prosecutions and lawsuits and you know NDAs and stuff like that. You that that seems strange even for the post office, because we think of the post office as with Postman Pat.
SPEAKER_01You know, it's Postman Pat in Greendale with It's very unassuming, isn't it? People taking photos with the red letter boxes and you know, it's sort of quite a quite a quaint thing there, the post service in the UK is you think of your local village postman kind of thing.
SPEAKER_02I mean, I know most of us probably don't live in a small village or anything like that, but you have that postman pat image of him in this the small village, the little post office, you know.
SPEAKER_01Stroking the cat.
SPEAKER_02Stroking this cat, helping Mrs. Goggins, the old lady, send a parcel somewhere. Um and I suppose we know the post office is this multi-million kind of corporation, but I suppose we don't really think of it like that on the whole. Um so it it seems shocking that a that that it would happen in the post office. Um, you know, we m we might expect it in in another type of business, I suppose, but there's no reason the post office should be excluded, but just our view of it as this quaint thing is quite surprising. But if it's surprising in the post office, it should be even more shocking to see it in the church, and even just admitting mistakes. I mean we we should be able to admit mistakes and say, look, we got it wrong, um you know, in whatever way.
SPEAKER_01That's it, isn't it? It's just kind of this call for transparency um and owning mistakes and you know, being willing to fall on your sword and say, Yeah, we did we did get that wrong. I always think I was I was very kind of inspired in a way when I went to Berlin and the government building there has a has a glass dome on top of it. Because obviously, after what happened in the Second World War, this idea that now from now on the government is gonna be completely transparent. You can look down on their meetings and stuff. The other thing we were gonna mention in this in this final section is that the foundry applications are still open. Yeah. Um so do go on speakflifefoundry.com if you're interested in in joining us in person as we make videos and podcasts about these exact sort of things. Any uh final thoughts, Paul? Uh no, I don't think so.
SPEAKER_02I think I've said plenty on here, so. Oh well, thanks for your time. Oh, it's always a pleasure. Thank you for your time. All the best.
SPEAKER_01Bye. Bye.