Space, Cruyff and Scroobius Pip

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0:54Ryan Hunn: hey everyone how you doing it's ryan here with something a little special for everyone on the free feed as you know since we went independent at the beginning of the season we moved to patreon and all the monday episodes are on this feed for free that you get and that will stay the same but all the rest of the episodes are on our patreon available to members along with ad free versions of the monday show so every show is on our patreon ad free in full plus all the bonus episodes and stuff like the newsletter and the stuff that we shout out on on the Monday. We wanted to put together a bit of an episode for you just to hear some stuff from the last couple of months that has been on the Patreon episodes.

1:35Ryan Hunn: And so we've got three parts from three episodes all in this episode for you today. If you do like what you hear and you want to sign up, help support Stadio, patreon.com forward slash Stadio. You can pick your membership just for the podcast. If you want to get a little extra access to the Stadio Social Club Discord, all of the other perks that we shout out on every Monday episode, you can select that tier. So today, the first thing you're going to hear is from an episode last week on Thursday where Moose and I started by talking about the Artemis 2 mission that I think it was just about to return the following day.

2:14Ryan Hunn: So you're going to hear that first. The second section you're going to hear is our episode that we did on the anniversary, the 10th anniversary of the passing of Johan Cruyff. did a whole episode just about Cruyff that was from March 26th so you're going to hear a section of that in the second part and the final part is a section from our chat with Scroobius Pip from March 12th so those are the three sections of episodes that you're going to get today and we hope you really enjoy them and again if you do and you want to sign up and hear all of these episodes ad free and in full you can go to patreon.com forward slash salio.

2:49Ryan Hunn: Cheers Can we talk about some non-football stuff for a sec? Yeah let's do it. This Artemis mission oh my god it's got me thank you yes yes it's really got me and i know that you know there are ethical financial and all kinds of debates about space exploration and stuff like that some of which i you know i understand but i kind of fall on the side of i actually think it's quite crucial i think we're so used to seeing space exploration in recent years just be done by like billionaire tech bros who are just like let's go to space yeah yeah we forget that actually when you when you see stuff like this happening how kind of unbelievable and important and do you know what i think it is i think it's weirdly a reality check in a way yes there was a lot of the stuff just a lot of the stuff that i've seen this week i feel like has come at um quite an quite an amazing time.

3:45Ryan Hunn: And anyway, the reason I wanted to bring this up is because I'm thinking about applying and seeing if I can just be an astronaut. That's my, I'm thinking, can you do the podcast in space?

3:58Musa Okwonga: As long as you get good reception up there. I don't mind, go for it.

4:00Ryan Hunn: They had iPhones up there now, man. Times have changed. This isn't like... Imagine the data package you'd need. The most relatable thing happened where, I think it was Reid Wiseman, the commander of the mission. Couldn't get his outlook to work. It's so relatable. Had to call IT. I know that space freaks a lot of people out, right? Everything I've seen from this thing this week, I've just been... I haven't had FOMO like this for a long time. I think it's because... I was just like, do you know what? Being on the far side of the moon feels like the best place to be right now.

4:39Musa Okwonga: Can I say on the space stuff, it's philosophical. The reason why space has always been so compelling to me and I find this mission thrilling and I've always had a deep appreciation for study of the stars is that it reminds me of the scale of the universe, the small time that we're here and what we spend our time on this earth doing. and there's i've seen a lot of talk about look if we could have put the same energy into this that we put into you know sustainability sustainable living renewables we'd be laughing as a civilization i actually disagree i think that space exploration is the catalyst it shows us what's possible it shows us the ingenuity of which we're capable when we collaborate it is the blueprint for how we should live life is the radical answer to the question, how do we build a better collective society?

5:36Musa Okwonga: That's for me, the inspiration of it, right? And people that say there should be budget for this and that, look, there are people we are not taxing. There is budget. The money exists. We actually, it's one of the rare examples in life where it's possible to have both. It's possible to have both. And I know a lot of people, oh, well, actually 75 billion for this and then this and that. No, no, no, no, no, no. No. It's both and.

5:58Ryan Hunn: The amazing thing about it for me is that I think that at some point in their life, everyone has wanted to be an astronaut. Yeah. And I think the cool thing is is that it can say, astronauts can say some of the wokest shit around and everyone's just like, Oh my God, they're poets. That's badass. Yeah.

6:16Musa Okwonga: Everyone knows deep down that kindness and compassion is the way forward. Everyone knows it. Yeah, man. I was talking to a friend the other day and they're going, Oh yeah, like we should be like more selfish. we should be like this you know sometimes and i know that they were saying they were like look but look at where the world is and i said and that and how well is that working out for the world i said if you think about it oh yeah great okay we should all like the world is driving itself off a cliff environmentally socially financially because people are looking after number one we actually need more of that collective thought we need more people pulling together for something bigger than ourselves no no that's that's really and i i know i'm i'm broadcasting but no no no no i was gonna

6:52Ryan Hunn: I was just, I was going to say that I know that you'll probably, you know, you'll probably end up in Brazil one day.

7:00Ryan Hunn: Kind of fancy a stint on the moon. I'm sure we could still make it work. Branch out. Start a league there. As long as it's not like, I don't want anything like ropey to happen. As long as it's just like, let's just, you know, keep it positive.

7:13Musa Okwonga: Keep positive. I mean, I'm low-key obsessed with the cosmos. Anything sci-fi, I watch it and rinse it. like I think I'd watched all anything sci-fi related I'm on it like anything space like Carl Sagan all of that stuff I'm like locked in I'm obsessed with space but I was never good enough at maths to even for that to be a possibility so I've got to just like speculate listen to the music watch the movies be inspired by the discourse and use space as inspiration for

7:44Ryan Hunn: you know what we're doing down here the thing that I found quite interesting over the last week or so is how much awe is created in just so many different kinds of people yeah and i think that that's actually quite important as a fundamental thing in humanity just like sense of wonder and awe and i know that might sound like really naive and childish in a sense but like i think it's really important to keep that because the older that you get and the more cynical you get and the more you can feel that things aren't achievable and i think that actual space exploration of the kind that we've seen this week yes the trickle down feeling i think is i think it works i agree it kickstarts the imagination of so many different types of people across so many different demographics and also i think it gives a lot of people in an educational sense a really really tidy nice route into something that is a bigger picture i think a lot of people start to understand bigger picture concepts through something like space exploration yeah i think that's what happened this week like if you look at some of the stuff that the the crew have said and some of the communication and some of the things that they've done if you'd said that on a various social media platform just as some dude but the reason why

9:03Musa Okwonga: yeah but you know because the reason it's so powerful is because look we're in a world right now that is being run into the ground by arrogance and the thing that space will never allow you to be as arrogant right it's permanently trying to kill every every day you wake up in space the vacuum is trying to kill you right and every day you wake up in space you're reminded of your place in the scale of things and what is that then that you have an eternal you have an infinite relationship an eternal relationship with humility which is the best thing you can possibly have and the reason why people are saying stuff that might be dismissed otherwise is woke nonsense is because it's coming from that place of humility and wonder.

9:41Musa Okwonga: And if you're an astronaut, you literally cannot afford to get jaded. You can't afford to get jaded. And I think that, and also, frankly, I think as well, the group of people that become astronauts, the self-selecting group of optimists. We talk about something like Mamdani in politics, right? And the reason why it's something like that, beyond his political positions, is inspiring is because he loves doing his job and he's excited about the possibilities. He's imagining possibility like in a world where a lot of people are like, actually, I can't see things getting better.

10:18Ryan Hunn: Can I just jump in there? You can tell Mamdani's an Arsenal fan because his equivalent of winning the jewels is filling the potholes. Yeah, fixing, you know what I mean? Fixing the stuff. Like, if I don't fix a pothole, I'm fucking angry.

10:33Musa Okwonga: i imagine that to round this off like have noticed how the movies about sort of sci-fi and like fixing stuff always fly at the box office pretty much yeah about actually like people want something to believe yeah they do and they've and i think i think look i firmly call me naive we were talking about this before we got on the podcast call me naive but i think that stuff is the future i i absolutely think it's the future the reason

11:00Ryan Hunn: why I think it's important as well is if half of the entire Earth's population or whatever more people than get to experience it I think as many people as you can try and expose to the overview effect I think you would genuinely have like a completely different world. I think so. You get it second hand or I think a lot of people have got it second hand right so for example that really unbelievable photo of Christina Cook the picture of her looking out the window at the Earth is mind blowing. It's incredible. incredible if i'm getting that experience seeing someone looking at a window can i can i say as

11:36Musa Okwonga: well can i say as the kids would say that is that's all reforming this is the ultimate the

11:41Ryan Hunn: ultimate i saw a thing that someone posted of asking her that if she went to the moon this was a few years ago before she was on the artemis crew what her first words on the moon would be and she said mom is this enough for you that is incredible that

12:04Musa Okwonga: anyway

12:08Musa Okwonga: sorry every every every child of immigrants no exactly yeah yeah yeah i mean dude also not just

12:15Ryan Hunn: immigrants don't worry but with everything else that is going on on the earth and maybe i'm just a little bit naive naive still or whatever. We could do with a bit of naive. It was just nice to see. We could do with a bit of that. It was nice to be shocked and awed in a positive sense. Yes. For a change. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was just cool. It was amazing. I was all in. I was like watching live streams and just being like, this is sick.

12:41Musa Okwonga: Oh, it's absolutely amazing. No, I'm glad we started with this because space is the great inspiration for me. I know I don't, you know, I don't talk about that stuff that much necessarily even online, but I think it's... It's the air of my life from which I've consistently derived the greatest sense of all. I find it deep. I was literally, the other day I went on a rant, I was talking to a friend, and I went on like, not a rant, like a half hour discussion about like super clusters of galaxies and how they blew my mind. How you have like clusters of galaxies, like orbiting, like just floating through space together.

13:14Ryan Hunn: Like the kind of Tim and Eric meme, just like. So much is terrible and awful and makes me feel... worried and angsty and angry and it's sick feeling like something that's just so i like that it's so huge and cool i love it i love it and that's it and it's like doing well it's cool man it's it's

13:38Musa Okwonga: just nice being so in awe that you're overwhelmed by the beauty of what is out there and what is and the unknowable beauty of what is out there you know if you look at like instant gratification like space doesn't offer that that's why it's so amazing it doesn't offer you you doesn't no quick answers you know no no quick resolution no obvious plot points it's it's infinite wonder

14:03Ryan Hunn: and on that note who do you think has strayed further from their origin point this week the crew of artemis 2 or the stadio podcast i was gonna say barcelona's back line actually they're exactly i was gonna be really i was gonna say something really mean that i stopped myself which was that the milky way is like it's kind of the film of galaxies it's like a mid-size it's not like even the biggest wow wow saying there's a ceiling there's a ceiling from the milky should we do a galaxy 11 at one point we should we should if we ever get a physicist on that'd be incredible that'd be incredible an actual galactic 11 yeah yeah and that's like who's the kind of sturdy big center back of a galaxy probably andromeda oh my god

14:52Musa Okwonga: this is this is we could literally do galaxy brain we should

14:54Ryan Hunn: we should oh the moosa would just vanish like Luke Skywalker at the end of the

15:00Musa Okwonga: this would be my favourite this would be my favourite like podcast ever it'd be my favourite podcast ever

15:07Ryan Hunn: alright we're gonna do it we're gonna find a famous physicist who's into football yes and we're gonna discuss the traits of galaxies come

15:15Musa Okwonga: yeah exactly Ha, ha, ha, ha.

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15:54Ryan Hunn: should i should talk about some football now let's do it we're going to talk about johan cruyff we are because this week was the 10th anniversary of his passing in what was a horrible year 2016 oh god yeah yeah think about it please don't i don't think the world seemed to shift off its axis the amount of legends that passed in fact i remember do you remember at the time it It felt like everyone started freaking out a little bit. It felt like the first, and I'm sure it wasn't, but compared to now, that felt like the beginning of the really, really wild decade.

16:24Musa Okwonga: To be clear, Prince, George Michael and Bowie and Cruyff, all in the same year. All those shifts happened. That's the thing that's funny because I think we drew the comparison before, but Bowie and Cruyff, the closest analogies to each other in their own fields, I think, in terms of creating myths myths and forms of conducting yourself in the world, their cultural impact, I think was overwhelmingly progressive in terms of pushing boundaries, I think creatively in terms of transcending their art forms. But yeah, Bowie, we'll, we'll, we'll park that conversation.

16:58Ryan Hunn: Bowie in January, Cruyff in March, Prince in April.

17:02Musa Okwonga: And then I think George Michael in December.

17:04Ryan Hunn: In December.

17:05Musa Okwonga: Unreal, unreal, unreal. Just when everyone was like, the year can't get any worse. And some of those dudes are young as well. Yeah. Anyway, but. Yeah.

17:14Ryan Hunn: But all part of that like generation who, General Arsene Wenger talked about Bowie when Bowie passed away and about how people of Arsene Wenger's generation, because they were all born around a similar time, I think, a lot of those guys, you know, coming out of the Second World War. And it gave them kind of hope and, you know, almost like pushed their progressive politics as well, I think. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, very much so. You look at Cruyff. Cruyff has said that as well. I think, you know, his move to Barcelona is so laced with politics. The fact, you know, I mean, we can go there now. We're going to probably dart all over the place.

17:50Ryan Hunn: But one of the things, one of my favourite growth stories is, well, first of all, Ajax tried to sell him to Real Madrid and he basically threatened to quit unless they let him go to Barcelona. And he goes to Barcelona and then obviously the whole famous story about naming Jordi, which was a Catalan name and the patron state of Catalonia and outlawed by Franco, Catalan names. Catalan names, sorry. So he went back to the Netherlands and registered Jordi's name and then came back just in this clear defiance of being like, fuck you. Actually, I like this name.

18:29Musa Okwonga: I'm going to use it. Yeah, I didn't realise this was banned. Actually, it's good timing for this because while you mentioned the Jordi naming, I just want to quote the Wenger tribute to Bowie after his death, because I feel it's relevant in this context. So when Bowie died, Wenger said, I must say the message he gave to my generation was very important because it was after the Second World War, and it was basically, be strong enough to be yourself. That is a very strong message and very important for my generation. And that could have been said about Cruyff as well, I think equally in that context.

19:01Ryan Hunn: Tell me about your relationship with Cruyff. Can you remember the first time you became really aware of Cruyff?

19:09Musa Okwonga: I think it was actually, so I played a lot of football growing up, as you know, we both did. And one of my formative experiences was going to Holland for a football tour, the Netherlands for a football tour, when I was 11. And there were these two Dutch brothers, Ryan, who'd been at my school and they were amazing, amazing footballers. and they now went and they were in, they went back to a town near Amsterdam and they ran a kind of little sort of pension. It's like three star hotels and they would help organize football tours for our school. So we'd go and we'd play. You'd play three matches every kind of winter after the end of the wintertime.

19:47You'd go up and play three matches in and around Amsterdam.

19:51Musa Okwonga: And from an early age, I associated the Dutch because of Cruyff with everything futuristic in football. Like I was in awe of them. So you'd go there, you'd go to the Netherlands and this incredible like super flat like you know obviously very flat country the pitch just looked stunning everything about it was just like this feels like the year 3000 like everything felt state of the art and even the football that was played against you like watching these triangles right watching the way you had teams playing against you in a 4-4-2 but the way they moved they always had a spare player and this was the age of 11 like playing this and I was like this is like science fiction so I go back and start hearing more about the Dutch I start reading about the the Dutchman at Milan.

20:32Musa Okwonga: And then you start finding out who their, who their ancestor is. And they all have this incredible connection. Like, and Cruyff was the high priest of all of this. So it was almost like a process of discovery first in the football field, and then through reading football history, then through watching games and eventually going, Oh, this guy is a connective tissue. So actually it took me about three or four years to kind of start understanding who Cruyff was. But by my mid teens, I started reading like some of the great books. like Simon Cooper and the rest of it. And by that point, like, I'm hooked.

21:03Ryan Hunn: Yeah, I think discovering Cruyff when you're younger, it's similar to discovering the Beatles, I think. Because you find out, you're surrounded by football. My first memory of Cruyff is the 92 European Cup final. And discovering Cruyff and who he was through management. And then, you know, my dad and my granddad starting to tell me about who he was as a player, right? And I think that happened quite a lot. I think that's quite a constant way of explaining or finding out about players who had retired before you were born or before you played football, and seeing them in management and hearing people who watched them play talk about them, what they were like as a player.

21:44Ryan Hunn: And I just remember Barcelona, I just remember that orange kit in the cup final, in the European cup final, and I remember the free kit against Stradaria. And I remember just Cruyff being a manager and being like, I don't know, I think it was the tie maybe and it was at Wembley as well, that final so it felt very there was something about sporting events that happened in England when you were living in England and you were at an age where you don't really understand what it is truly you understand what it is we're not as old as we are now where you understand the context and the history and the background of the clubs and the path there and who is involved and everything you know you're just a when you're a kid it's just football everything is just football that's why i constantly talk about how italian 90 was the first time i had a sense of football being like a global thing yes i didn't know and it looked different and it sounded different and it felt different on tv um you know much like when basketball started to be shown and just other sports like you it's hard to explain but you because you don't know what it is but you start to it's like your brain your child brain is starting to piece things together and be like okay this is a thing that is this is a bigger thing than just like arsenal and back garden and school football team yeah totally and i remember growing older and gradually learning more about croif and then going and watching just anything i could watch you know just anything especially when youtube became a thing and a lot of you know you could find clips and videos of old things and you know god bless footballia you know for going back and watching some full games of some of these players there were a lot of players who have been amazing through history but there's something about Cruyff that i think can i get can i can i jump in there because yeah

23:36Musa Okwonga: yeah go for it yeah there was put it this way so my process of discovering Cruyff a bit different to yours but i think there's some similarities where first of all that final is a big deal right because I was at boarding school and you were only allowed to, you know, apologies for my, the repressive sound, the repressive nature's anecdote, but you're only allowed to step and watch those games. If you were good, if you've been behaving yourself and we got to watch that, that 92 final. And the thing about it was it felt like football from the future, even the orange kit, right? Even then that was quite a dramatic thing as a statement.

24:09Musa Okwonga: And the other thing as well was Wembley looked huge. I don't, I don't know if Wembley is actually that big, but it looked absolutely vast on that screen and the scale of it. And then look, the thing about Cruyff was it was almost like, um, you know, those movies where you don't see, was it Lord of the Rings where you don't see Aragorn? He gets talked about, you get those characters in those movies, they're talked about, and then you finally see them. So before they even on screen, they're kind of hyped. And then you finally see them. It's like, Oh my God, this is like, it's like this buildup. And I think Cruyff, you think of all the footballers that existed at that time that were incredible, right?

24:45Musa Okwonga: Cruyff was the only one that had an actual move named after him. And this is before the age of social media, right? So you're like, oh my God, like how good is this guy that he literally has a move that is named after him? Like you do a move in training, they'd be like, oh yeah, Cruyff turn, Cruyff turn. And you would know it and you wouldn't even know where you'd learned it from. So when you finally start seeing clips of Cruyff and start reading about him, like Simon Cooper's book, Football Against the Enemy, Fritz Barrington, Henk Van Dorp, their work about him, their interviews with him, Ike's Barcelona Cruyff, you're like, he's like a character from a novel.

25:14Musa Okwonga: like I was reading a lot of Dickens at the time right and Cruyff is literally one of those characters from like Mark Twain or Dickens he's this kind of like Huckleberry Finn character who just kind of like floats everywhere does what he wants bunks off school early is having jokes with everybody in town everyone's his mate and he felt like a character from the fiction that I was reading around the same time and to your point about the way that Cruyff played like you know I was talking the other day in the chat about this, about like when you watch Mbappe sprint, right? When Mbappe opens up and accelerates, there's this amazing thing he does.

25:50Musa Okwonga: His arms go out and it's like a swan. It's like so majestic, right? It's like watching a swan landing on a lake. Watching Cruyff run in its own way, it's one of the most beautiful sights in football. It is like figure skating, isn't it? It's the way the ball, if you watch Cruyff dribble, there's old design balls with the kind of really big hexagons and the pentagons on them. so you can clearly see the actual rotation of the ball in a way you can't with a lot of the kind of the mid-earth 90s footballs that only had the nike swoosh you couldn't see so well like how the ball was rotating but croif dribbling the beauty of those footballs was you could see the rotations as the ball was on his foot and there's something about that sort of symbiosis of player and football that like almost nobody else has looked like that when running at full speed it's

26:33Ryan Hunn: yeah yeah yeah i think running a slow motion is just a thing because he's deceptively quick he You have to glide and there's a change of pace there that I think is so evident. I went back and re-watched the 1974 World Cup final in full for the first time in, maybe since he passed away. I think I watched it around then. And a couple of things I think are really wild about that game, which I think because of the amount of football that we have to consume, it's quite easy to forget certain games from the past. And then when you go back and watch them again, people talk about how different the game is, but it's striking.

27:06Ryan Hunn: The similarities are striking. It's refereed fairly similarly, actually. And the wild thing about this game was Gerd Müller, very divey. I think the penalty, the German penalty, the West Germany penalty was very soft. Müller gets kind of pushed a little bit and throws himself to the floor and does a little roll at one point. There's a few divey bits, but also the thing that I find is really interesting, it's very fluid. and I know that this is you're at the kind of height of total football and this Dutch team took the world by storm and people still remember it but it's even some of the West German play and the thing that I found really interesting was the role of the keepers because the keepers could do that whole thing like the pass back rule wasn't a thing then but actually the restarts very very quick like very quick restarts and a lot a lot of outside the foot passes and free kicks.

28:08Ryan Hunn: So for example, Beckenbauer takes a free kick, a direct free kick in that game with the outside of his foot. And there are way more outside of the foot passes. It's a lot more, it feels a lot more kind of...

28:20Musa Okwonga: I think that's Cruyff's influence. I think that's him.

28:23Ryan Hunn: Well, yeah, maybe. I don't know. It's weird. This is the most important game in the world, right? And yet people, it still felt like there was some vibes there. But my point was, I was going to say, there's a thing in there where Cruyff's turn of pace is so devastating in his change of pace because it always it always surprises me I don't know why I just constantly forget how deep he is when he picks up the ball for the run where he gets the penalty at the beginning he's the deepest player and then he goes and spends a load of time for like 20 minutes or so out on the left wing very high and left but he's down on the team sheet as a number nine and if you look at his heat map this is what's so wild about it he will drop he's literally everywhere

29:03Musa Okwonga: that's Messi in the 2015 Champions League final Messi does that. Yeah, it's not far off, actually. Well, he's meant to be more central, but he pulls all the way back to the touchline, and he's deep, and he's prompting. The thing about Cruyff starting the dribble where he does is that he's most dangerous when he's there. If you look at a lot of Cruyff's highlights, as well as we both have over the years, that is where he builds up the speed from. And by the time, it's such a dangerous position because no one's going to come out and mark you out there, right? You're going to pick up the ball in neutral space.

29:32Musa Okwonga: But then what you find very often is players think oh yeah when he builds up some speed we'll just get him but they never do like they never he they will either let him past or they'll concede a free kick and to his turn of pace i want to throw in one more quick story about this i was watching an interview with with um i was watching with rude hulett i think it was on the overlaps to football and he played with um croif for that single season at final which we'll probably mention in a bit and he said it was unbelievable how fast croif was over the first five yards even at the age of 38. Like he said I'd be in training and think oh I'll get him and you couldn't.

30:10Musa Okwonga: And he was 38 Ryan. He was 38. So wild. Yeah yeah unreal.

30:15Ryan Hunn: The other thing about this final I want to shout out quickly before we move on is that it is arguably like the Netherlands in 1974 is arguably the most stadio team of all time and the reason for that is they did their squad numbers alphabetically. So Yang Yongblood is in goal wearing the number 8 shirt. It's so weird. it's so weird apart from Cruyff Cruyff's the only one who gets 14 and two stripes there's the two stripes story as well

30:38Musa Okwonga: Cruyff broke shirt numbers actually at a certain point because I think at the time when he insisted on the number 14 shirt people were mostly still going 1 to 11 but he was like no I'm just wearing this

30:48Ryan Hunn: well you know the story behind that was that it was a teammate forgot a number 7 and Cruyff just chucked him the number 9 and took a random shirt

30:56Musa Okwonga: no way that's so funny

30:58Ryan Hunn: and got the 14 apparently and then he just kept it but there was a thing about when there's a quote as well when Ajax retired the number 14 shirt um and Cruyff didn't like it I don't think I think the myth building yeah so basically I think he uh Cruyff said something let me find it right I've got it here so there's a list of there's a list of Cruyff quotes I was reading from 442 yeah so here's the story ahead of a game against PSV Jerry Mourin couldn't find his number seven shirt so Cruyff handed him his number nine and picked up a spare one from the basket. It happened to be the number 14 and after the game went well, Cruyff suggested that they keep the same numbers.

31:36Ryan Hunn: In 2007, Ajax announced the decision to retire the number and responding to the tribute, Cruyff quipped, that is no honour is it? You must let your best player play with the number 14.

31:48Musa Okwonga: Oh god, you couldn't please that guy.

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32:58Musa Okwonga: shall we get onto our chat with scroobius pip today we are joined by the great scroobius pip man about town man about every town it seems scroobius great to have you with us man great to have you it's it's great to be here and it's a great honor to be here so thank you for having me on the honors all hours man you've entered the marble halls you see you you see i've i've not told my mates jordan and ad that i'm coming on because i want them i want it to just come up in their podcast feed and go that's amazing excitement i've held off i've held off can i say that can i say this it's a funny thing actually screw talking to you because you're like the ancestor of this podcast right like you and that sounds like i'm saying you're like super old but this is not fair i mean by that remember this you're the thing that's amazing about you right and we'll get to how you describe yourself in a second is that every single stage of your career i'm like this guy is like 10 years ahead of everyone else like in everything whether it was like you doing music with spoken word the way you did or doing podcasts the transition to acting all of it i mean you got there ahead of common for goodness sake you know you were like everyone making the you know you're like the musical transition to acting and all of it and doing it like yeah apparently like seamlessly so like how would you describe yourself at this point like how when people ask you what you do what do you what do you tell them like genuinely my outlook from day one and as as you guys all know as well things when you look at it under a microscope or in hindsight look far more planned out and and and and and guided than they actually are but i've always just thought and this is going to sound really basic but my goal has always just been to do cool shit it's as simple as that it goes no deeper of philosophy um and that was it the the music was always the it's like i i learned about spoken word from people a lot like you moose i started spoken word as just because i didn't have any anyone to make beats for me so i was a rap fan i wasn't particularly a poetry fan or a spoken word fan and it was going to events and meeting yourself and kay and poland people who were far more versed in almost the history of the of the form that that i learned there and it was just purely i was like right i want to i want to rap i want to write but i live in a small town in essex i don't know any producers i can't make beats myself um so yeah it was all that and then yeah it's it's been continually along the way and it's interesting because it comes it it brings in football because an example i always give is i was asked to do a photo shoot at millwall for either loaded magazine or one of those lads mags which i wasn't particularly on board with but they asked me to do this shoe it was a fashion shoe and my mate chris had just launched a fashion brand a clothing brand called redshift i said i'll do it if i can wear some redshift because it was like it was as simple as that it's like if i didn't have a career if i was still working in hmv and someone said are you up for doing a fashion shoe in loaded you'd go yes without thinking about it because you're no one as someone who has a profile i was then thinking well what does that mean am i endorsing everything in this magazine i am am i endorsing all of the culture around it it's like well no i'm just doing one thing that seems like a cool thing and that's kind of always been the aim is to kind of think would if i still work in an hv would i jump at the opportunity to do this and if the answer is yes then stop overthinking it such a good that's such a good dude it's amazing

36:49Ryan Hunn: yeah I love that can we talk about the acting yes oh my god yeah I'm glad you got that yeah please please go for it first of all I wanted to ask like how that came about and I think the only thing I would say and I'll probably echo a few people here is just like I really want to see more stuff oh mate I'll echo that because there's I was so I hadn't watched it for ages but I was thinking about Taboo the other day yeah and And you cannot be on that set in half-step. If you go and look through the cast again, it's absolutely insane. That was a game-changer for me, mate, because the fact that on that set, Stephen Graham and Tom Hardy were taking my opinion on things.

37:36Those two proper took me under their wing. I've worked with Tom once since then, and Stephen three times, I think, since then. um but yeah that was the first time i met tom properly and me and steven i met steven in this is this is this brings it back to football me the first time i met steven graham me and my mate kelly were outside a comedy gig in soho um and we looked and went i think that's steven graham walking up the street and he walked past and then he got a few steps past and turned around and came back and went sorry mate i just want to say i saw you on soccer am and me and my wife got your album and we love it and i'm like okay so series five of boardwalk empire the last episode where you're just literally unleashed cancel all your plans for the next three hours you shouldn't have said that so and we kind of yeah we kept in contact then but then taboo was the first time we obviously work together but i mean to get to how the acting came about i was finished with music i felt i'd done what i wanted to do just artistically my mum actually reminded me of something which i'd forgotten because everyone was surprised because i decided to call it a day when we were kind of at a peak like our last show was at best of all we had like over 10 000 people there and they all knew the words like we were our last album was our commercially most successful these kinds of things but my mum summed it up brilliantly because when i stopped it was like you shouldn't stop this is mad my mum was like do you remember what you said to me when you left because so i lived at home my mum's house i quit my job at hmv to go and do music i bought i spent the money i had on getting an album pressed and a 1987 toyota space cruiser so i could tour around the country and live in it and when i literally left that first on that first tour i did um my mom sat me down and said right what do you want from music because they're always mad supportive but they're also realistic they're like what is it you want from this and i said i don't remember saying this but she said i said i want the people that i respect to respect me wow and she said right that's a good goal if you want if you want riches if you want to be number one if you want any of this it's it's it's tough if if that's what you want if you want the people that you have respect for to respect you then cool go ahead and i think that's why it was so easy to leave because i said i ended up doing a track with with posta news of de la soul with sage francis incredible doing shows with saw williams just all sorts of other people all these people who i've got in my cds behind me yeah i have a gigged with or performed with or did tracks with and it was it was one of them it's like cool i've done what i wanted to do it was never about it so i stopped and i thought i'll try my best for a year to get into acting and i like i googled all these and how wait but had

40:42Musa Okwonga: it been a passion where where was the instinct or the impulse to come from what was that film has always been my number one passion so the first thing i made as scroobius pit was a film that never got released me and my mates shot it we've got the old dv tape somewhere um it was before i started doing music really but i said it was always that oh this is a cool thing to do like let's do this for a bit it's never a planned out thing so i was like riz ahmed um and a few others who i knew from music were all like anytime we talk all you never care about the rap stuff i'm doing all you care about is the acting stuff i'm doing it's like when you're gonna and when we did all the skits like all the skits we did were little film scenes really so a few others nick frost and paddy consadine and a few others were like when are you going to give acting a go wow So I decided to try and I looked up all these casting directors and I followed as many of them as I could on Twitter because I had a blue tick.

41:48And I thought, right, this is the first step to catch their attention, maybe. And there was one casting director, Reg Pua Scout Edgerton, who cast like Guardians of the Galaxy had just come out. Wow. And I was like, I want to try and talk to him because I'd email people. like i didn't have an agent i got my first three acting gigs with no agent i just i hustled meetings and going people i couldn't find a contact for for reg poor scout edgerton a really distinctive name genuinely the next day i opened my emails and i had an email from reg poor scout edgerton and i was like until yesterday i didn't know that name it's because i'd looked up who cast guardians of the galaxy who did this he was casting a new a new guy ritchie film and they wanted to see if i'd be up for auditioning and if i'd ever thought about acting which blew me away like guy and one of the producers ivan were fans of the podcast and the music and they were doing a thing called king arthur i've got a big beard and they were like i tell you you might be good for this scroobious pip so i auditioned i got it i filmed i did like a month or two on it when it came out i'd been edited out of it but it wasn't i've been assured it isn't my fault there was a whole story a line that changed but yeah that was the starting point it was just this mad thing of this really distinct name that i'd looked up couldn't find a contact and then all incredible that's a great film too it's such and it's so funny because you really belong in that film too actually yeah i love that but then but then the mad thing is as we sit here today the number one show on amazon prime is young sherlock which i'm in with guy ritchie is i worked with guy ritchie again last year so 10 years on basically i was like there's like nolan

43:46Musa Okwonga: actors you're such a guy ritchie actor yeah you could nail any because there's the thing i love about his movies is it's like the narrative strong characterization right like very and like narrative drive like absolute like seat of your pants like go like i love yeah yeah love that yeah so yeah it's kind of come full circle literally like it came out yesterday so this is perfectly timed for that story to to have a beginning a middle and an end and then yeah like on even though i wasn't in that in the end i i hit it off on set an impressed guy and charlie hunnam and he was talking about me at lunch with kurt sutter who did sons of anarchy the shield all these things and i got a dm off kurt on twitter saying i'm at dinner with charlie he's been playing me your music are you up for writing the theme tune on my new show and i dm back going respectfully no i want to be in it i'm an actor now so he said right well let's meet and you'll have to audition and i auditioned and i got in a show called the bastard executioner for fx and then yeah the taboo i'll honestly i'll stop rambling in the middle this is this is gold this is gold but the taboo one's funny because again it shows the hustle so another casting director that had caught my eye was nina gold nina gold cast loads of the star wars game of thrones everything again because i didn't have an agent couldn't find an email address and i've told this story a few times but so i wrote a big email and i bcc'd so they couldn't see how many i emailed info at nina gold.com nina at ninagold.com casting at ninagold.com nina.gold at ninagold.com and just about 50 different combinations of what an email address could be for their website and one replied and said all right we'll come in for a coffee and i went in for a coffee and she said like i could see you in she said i could see you in star wars game of thrones or taboo and i was like i've no idea what this taboo thing is fuck that off put me in Star Wars or Game of Thrones and then she sent the script through for taboo and everyone who was attached like it's a Stephen Knight script who did Peaky Blinders and all sorts of other amazing stuff it's Tom Hardy it's Stephen Graham it's

46:16Ryan Hunn: the cast of that thing is it's can I just read the cast go for it because I think especially now bear in mind this was nine years ago yeah the weight of the names in it I think are even heavier so you obviously have Tom Hardy Una Chaplin who was in big for Game of Thrones wasn't she? Richard Dixon David Heyman, Jonathan Price legend, legend, Leo Bill Edward Hogg, Jesse Buckley Jesse Buckley is one that that name has just it's aged so well she's just gone on to be one of the great obviously Stephen Graham, Jefferson Hall Jason Watkins Michael Kelly as well which is a Tom Hollander Tom Hollander yeah my god man ridiculous you know when you kind of when you go back and look at legendary football squads and you're like man they had who on the bench the cast of Tiberius it's like 2005

47:13Musa Okwonga: AC Milan it is it's wild man

47:17Ryan Hunn: it's been a while since I watched it so I can't remember obviously every scene but who were you in most with was it Stephen I was Stephen's right hand man so he would have been who you worked with and he had a lot of dealings with with with tom so it's like you three kind of it was us three for a lot of things my first day on set was a scene me steven and tom um and it's what got me in in favor with them both to be honest because the scene was me and steven's character are waiting and tom's character walks down the street and comes and talks to us now steven said well we wouldn't be waiting here in silence so he just threw improv at me every take wow every take he through different improv at me and one of the takes i proper popped the producer and the people on monitors because i just gave a response that made them laugh a lot and yeah it meant it i genuinely think that's what got me in extra scenes like i'm in more scenes than was in the script originally um and yeah it was that enthusiasm and that excitement like every time i'm on set it's a buzz to be there like i've told this a million times as well but particularly on taboo that that'd wrap me and i'd ask if i could just hang about and watch because again i didn't go to drama school and i'm getting to you've just read that that cast list off i'm getting to watch you're learning that's the work yeah and they're wanting to put me in a car and send me to my hotel room i'm like you're kidding what am i gonna do there let me stay here so because of that and because it's tv more often than not i became kind of the john a john terry's sat there in my full kid they'd go oh actually we're missing someone in this this scene oh pippy do you want to like there was particularly the scene i remember is there's a guy attacking a sex worker and someone has to drag her away and they were like oh we didn't like we've we've used all the extras and whatever i went should we get pip to do it like all right so i'm just grabbing drag someone away with a knife at their throat and stuff like that and i'm like hi mate that's amazing though man there's so many like so many you know so many like for example one of my favorite shows in the last few years is the bear right and you've obviously got like a huge ensemble cast there who were all especially in the final it's not the final season i think because there's another one coming but the last season a lot of them were working on other stuff so you can kind of tell for example like when jeremy allen white is popped back after doing the springsteen film you know yeah yeah yeah the amount of times that you see people talking about that who were just I would stay and watch takes without, unlike scenes with other people, even though it wasn't it.

49:55Ryan Hunn: Who else was talking about this recently?

50:00Ryan Hunn: Jack Loudon, talking about working with Gary Oldman on, what's it called? Slow Horses, yeah. And just being like, yeah, everyone would just hang around and watch scenes when they weren't working because you just learn and you just absorb. It goes back, it goes back to what I was saying earlier. If I was working in H &V and someone came in and said, do you want to come and watch Tom Hardy and Stephen Graham do a scene I'd be like yeah alright the HMV test is so good I wouldn't be like no I'm not meant to

50:25Musa Okwonga: the HMV is so grounding for you because it's like you know what it is it's like at any point I think people that have been famous from an early age I have an element of sympathy like a Harry Styles I read a really good interview with him recently he was talking about like running being liberating for him I've got a lot of sympathy because he's always been either famous or on the track to fame so you don't have that kind of hinterland where you're like you're just a member of the public you know you're from south end that's as down to earth as it gets right you're just a regular like and so that having that context i've worked in factories i've worked in kitchens i've worked in retail all these different things i do think that stuff helps and i think as i said i started my career really at 24 wow that kind of you've been that guy you've been like a regular like you know whatever just doing your thing the less time you've been who you are right you you so you're that is always it's such a big part of your sort of fabric and frankly it just also it improves your acting because you've been in scenarios where you know you know in a situation turns bad you haven't got to act from a script you can be in a situation where you felt the hostility impressed in any way so the story i yeah sorry this is not my podcast but i'm just gonna tell the story

51:36Ryan Hunn: because i love it you told me ages ago and it's literally your podcast man this was uh this was so lovely thanks for coming on really appreciate it it's been a joy thank you for inviting me and

51:49Musa Okwonga: you're welcome back anytime you know and i'm gonna be biased but the listeners man i think they're gonna like this one i think they're gonna like i love this one i hope so dude thank you guys go check all of his work everywhere check out all the stuff yes and wait wait wait till uh five years time when he's approaching his peak it's not it's not even it's not even begun to peek at lads get in there damn right

52:14Ryan Hunn: okay everyone so that was a little kind of three part sampler I suppose it's probably the best way to explain it and we hope you enjoyed it and like I said earlier if you want to sign up and listen to all of these episodes ad free and in full you can go to patreon.com forward slash stadio and we're going to leave you with this tune that we actually played out with on our Thursday episode on Patreon it's a track called Wonderful To Be Loved by Ice Cold Love and Tammy. So stay well everyone, have a lovely weekend and we'll see you back on this feed for the free episode on Monday.

53:10And that's what I found. Everybody loves somebody. And now I found it's wonderful to be loved. Oh, it's my vow to be loved

53:51Ryan Hunn: Girl, you gave me But you're feeling a