... burn that out there

... is that as he's doing that, and maybe just coincidentally as he's in the gymnastics, uh, one of the scientist guys is like, "Wait, stop there and move forward at half speed." So they kind of [laughs] like slowed down the memory, so now they have control over how, like how quickly, uh, Duke is coming up with all these different memories.

And then [laughs] they see Selena the slave girl.

So then they're like at, they're outside observers looking inside of Duke's head essentially, and they go, "Wow, look at her." And they're, it's, it's funny 'cause they're catcalling a memory inside of Duke's helmet.

So as they're using MKUltra to like, you know, look through his brainwaves, they're catcalling the lady in red, so to speak.

Someone's like, "Woo, look at her," and someone, like, whistles in the background.

[laughs] So I just thought that that was kind of funny.

Of course it did.

Bienvenue dans Passage.

Nous sommes en novembre 1987.

Euh, j'ai vingt-six ans.

Je suis interne, euh, en médecine, interne des hôpitaux de Paris et, euh, je suis en formation pour devenir pneumologue.

Et donc j'arrive, euh, le deux novembre 1987 à la Pitié-Salpêtrière, dans le service des maladies infectieuses, interne dans un service où on prend en charge à quatre-vingt-quinze pour cent des patients atteints de sida à une époque où il n'y a pas encore le moindre traitement médicamenteux efficace sur le virus.

Donc une époque un peu, on va dire, houleuse, agitée, chargée émotionnellement.

Alors, la Pitié-Salpêtrière, c'est une véritable ville.

That's fair

...

if this team was closer.

To me, I wanna feel like I have a chance to win the Cup.

I, I've been to so many playoff games now.

I have no interest in what the Flyers did this year, where you get in, you beat Pittsburgh, and then you get your doors blown off.

I, I wanna watch a team that has a chance to go to the Cup.

Um, next is Maxim Shabanov.

Up next we have Thomas.

What's up? I'm Thomas.

Since 2019, I've been managing the, uh, main social media accounts for Catholic Answers, so if you've seen something in that time span that you liked, that was me.

If you see something that you didn't like, that was my boss.

And, uh, it was around that time that I started that job that I encountered Game of Favorites for the first time, and I'm excited to be on for the first time.

You should vote for me because I asked my wife to take the children out of the house for this, and also, you don't want their dad to be a loser.

Up next is Thomas.

Oh, shoot.

Oui.

On a constaté sur place qu'il n'avait pas terminé alors qu'il l'aurait dû terminer bien avant.

Allez Athina, que voyez-vous à l'adresse de l'entreprise demande Stan ?

Alors l'entreprise de ce monsieur se trouve dans une maison.

Je suis devant.

Alors pour tout vous dire, euh, il doit y avoir quelqu'un ou en tout cas, il y a eu quelqu'un il y a peu de temps parce que c'est tout vert.

Mais alors étonnamment, il n'y a pas de porte d'entrée.

Je ne sais pas trop comment vous décrire les lieux.

I'm like, "Oh, this goes in that barrel, too, I think." Uh, what do you think? [laughs]

The, the coolest occult highlight, you already beat me to it, was the 237, which is obviously the Stanley Kubrick reference.

So maybe there's some Shining reference, because Danny's also supposed to be magic, and he doesn't know how to wield his power.

So I kind of feel like Ian and Dan- There might be an Ian and Danny thing.

There's twins.

So that, that was one angle, but the other big one, too, is the, the concept of bringing someone back to life, specifically a parent.

Well, that, a- and topical because the new Odyssey movie is supposed to be coming out from Nolan, right? Well, that's one of the main, um, stories inside the Odyssey.

I liked that.

Enjoy.

My name is Thomas.

I, uh, sell roofing and exterior remodeling.

We do, uh, close to 6 million this year.

I would like to be at 100 million.

What's stopping me, and I'll, I'll be a little bit vulnerable, I would say it's comfort, distractions, and fear.

Sure.

And the distractions are, uh, my other...

Uh, but, you know, people are getting better.

Let, uh, let me, uh, Fred, let me jump in and offer a, a, a dual perspective here on seven- 1971 compared to now.

Um, it's true that the people will say that people could l- have a middle class lifestyle on one income, the classic nuclear family, mom stays at home, dad works, two kids, you know, the small house with the car and the two...

And the vacation in the summertime.

You know, uh, almost, we've almost romanticized that, that paradigm, and that's true.

It, that, that, that was true, but that is on a...

Th- So think about that in a relative term.

Sorry about that, everybody.

Mm-hmm

...

Laxman and Dravid batting all day in Final Frontier and everything, and I've watched like highlights and stuff, and you get a bit of an idea.

But to see the, see the full thing, like, yeah, unfold in front of you, you don't get a better picture of, of that, of, of how it all unfolded.

And, um, yeah, so I just, I, just for fun I was just watching and scoring it, um, 'cause, yeah, I knew obviously there'd be, it'll be some pretty iconic wagon wheels, um, once it was all done.

And, um, yeah, like Gideon, I was unfortunate, I didn't, I wasn't aware exactly what the dates were, um, and I just started watching.

And Gideon actually put a, um, like a post up on the 25th anniversary of Kolkata, and I sent him a message saying, "Oh, um, I've just started watching the, the Mumbai test, the first test, and I plan to like watch and score it all.

Mm-hmm

I was like, "This is very interesting," because Australia is not known for white briefs

Not as much as America.

Like, you guys really have like, I don't wanna say a monopoly, but like the m- like the, you have the conduit of that kind of subsect of this thing we all have to love and enjoy.

Um, but, and even the UK has more than us, I think.

Um, we, we definitely have like, have them, and we have them represented in some shape or form, but like there's just not anywhere near as close as like, um, you guys.

Like, we can't walk into a department store and see them.

Like we gotta like, you gotta go looking-

Yeah

[laughs]

Also, I was so excited because I opened the little wardrobe, and I saw we both had purple clothes.

[laughs]

"And, like, if you see the iceberg, I don't know if we have enough time to move out of the way."

All right.

Yeah, so, um, it was spring of 2024.

I was in Nashville.

The, the rest of the guys hadn't moved there yet.

Um, I was actually walking to go and meet with a booking agent for the first time, so I was already pretty scared about that.

Um, and I got a call from my friend Jenna Love, who, excuse me, actually works with C3 and, and hangs out at a lot of these festivals.

We get to see her all the time.

... what does it feel like having a homecoming here?

There's s- there's some Van Damme doing something like that.

Well, it's, see, it's a motif that goes back thousands of years.

And even though this isn't technically a folktale, um, based movie, the doppelganger concept, it has an ATU entry.

It's ATU 403, uh, which, which by the way, what is this? The, uh, oh, I've always forget.

The, like the Adler Thompson Uther Index or something.

Um, so they, they have a catalog of every different type of ancient, usually European, Western folklore, and they catalog all the different motifs.

So this one has a few different names, but they all fall into the same category.

It'll come out pretty quick.

In the home he was taken to, the infants received little in the way of personal care and attention, and that held back his development.

By age six, I was at the level of a three-year-old.

I simply couldn't keep up at school, and then I went for a psychological examination, and then apparently I was diagnosed with feeble-mindedness, a total misdiagnosis as it later turned out.

At eight years old, Thomas was sent to a special home for children with disabilities, the Franz Saller's house in the city of Essen.

I remember that I cried continuously for at least two weeks.The whole spectrum was used there for decades.

Medications, some kind of tests, corporal punishment.

I was given two tablets.

Like-

If he wasn't dead before, he's dead now

So anyways, I hold him down, grab his, grab his feet, grab his head, and then, you know, he's, he stopped moving.

Man, you about caught a spur to the jugular.

What's the state of your finances?

Pretty good.

Um, I mean, I, I don't know how in-depth I should go, but, I mean, I'm 21, uh, my wife is 22.

We've done pretty well for ourself.

We're very, very thankful to God for that.

Um, I can't even point anything out that, like, we're struggling with right now.

We haven't bought a house yet, but, you know, we're working on that.

... "I'm obsessing over our finances," what does that mean?

Thomas?

Yes, I... two quick things.

First is, um-

um-... didn't Google just recently, uh, was it Google or ChatPT, Chat, uh, GPT? Or I think it was OpenAI who does Chat P-...

GPT, who reached a settlement with either artists or actors, uh, or authors, it was authors, who, uh, in a lawsuit claimed that they were, uh, and probably rightfully so, m- mining their works to, um, either give answers or to give answers about those books.

And I think they recently settled, uh, for a substantial amount of how about how they were, or their models were appropriating, uh, intellectual property with no, um, royalties.

Was that a case recently that that happened?

You know, what's the difference between taking a book and feeding it into ChatGPT to train it, versus having me read the book and absorb the information and then use that to do my projects?

You know where I'm going with this.

I mean, (laughs) one of the most iconic pieces of video game music of all time, maybe the most iconic.

It's very high up there.

I think it's close to a perfect composition in a way for Mario.

It's so playful and upbeat, but it also has this kind of rhythmic drive to it, and it really does suit the kind of action you're doing as the player, jumping and running and kind of dodging enemies and...

It works very well, which (laughs) it kind of has to 'cause you hear the song many times on loop as you're playing the game.

So, you know, there's a lot of pressure to be not only good to listen to once, but good to listen to 10 times, 20 times, 1000 times.

But within just a year, Kondo was working on Super Mario Bros, and it's there that his jazz fusion influences could really shine through.

[gentle music]

This still affects me to this day.

I'm not a normal dad.

I know the tendency of some parents to be helicopter parents and hover over their kid and, and be concerned for their safety, but I, I really live a good part of my life now feeling like doom is just right around the corner, that tomorrow something is gonna happen, it just all be ripped away.

The biggest thing that I wanna say is that that is the product of this.

Luckily, we have a beautiful baby boy, and he's as healthy as can be.

I don't know how long I can enjoy it as fully as I can without being scared that something's gonna take that away.

Thank you so much for taking the time and for everything you shared.

What were you doing, and what happened?

Well, we were, uh, we, we were at a family reunion up at my grandma's house and, and, uh, the whole family was there, of course.

Uh, and my sister, she was, I think she was six or seven years older than me, and she, she, she was smoking and she didn't want Mom to know she was smoking, so she used to take me with her so I wouldn't tell on her.

You know, I, I'm part, you know, make me a part of the problem.

We went and walked down the road.

My aunt, my grandma lived in a, she had a big farm there and, and she gave my aunt some property right next door, and we were, they were building a cabin, so we were walked down there to take a look at the cabin to see the progress.

And, uh, and w- walking down there, and Rhonda was smoking away, and, [laughs] and she's, you know, kind of a bigger, bigger girl at the time.

Later in life, did you ever get a chance to talk with your sister as far as her perspective and what she saw?

[in German] Wie geht's dir, Thomas?

[in German] Mir geht's sehr gut, Mark.

Danke.

Ich bin gespannt auf unsere neue Geschichte.

Ich liebe diese Geschichten.

Um, so it's pouring down, but can you tell us about the literal meaning of this?

Yeah.

It's pouring like from buckets, so it's not just a wee drizzle.

There is a NICU doctor on site, and I remember him coming into my field of vision and saying, "Ma'am, my name is Dr. Thomas, and I will be the head of your son's care when he is born." It's at this moment that I look at my nurses and I ask, "Am I gonna be put under for this? Because I don't wanna be awake for what's about to happen next." And they say, "Yes, you're gonna be put under." And it's right then that I have a mask put over my face and I go to sleep.

I remember Kristen calling out that she loved me, but, I mean, we couldn't even really see each other.

She was a few yards ahead on a stretcher as I'm pulling up in the car.

It was very cinematic.

It was like watching a movie almost, except for you're in it.

This was an OR that was immediate when you got in.

I imagine this would be used for car accidents and other high trauma type deals.

I assume you were working full-time as well.

So, you know, we can make these decisions together, but ultimately, I want you to choose where you're comfortable."

Hi, I'm Thomas.

I'm Kristen's husband.

We met in 2018.

We actually worked together.

2019 is when things kind of switched from coworker to, you know, dating, and our relationship moved really quickly after that.

We moved states a couple times.

The second one was, okay, we're treating possible infections with garlic? In 2021? I don't understand.