Episode 584: The Son Also Rises

Yung Chomsky (0:00)

São Paulo, 1st of October, 1992, 8 am. I must come to Brazil.

Liz Franczak (1:07)

I knew you were going to do that. Hello, everyone. I did know you were going to do that.

I thought about it. I was like, I know that that's going to make an appearance. Hello, everyone.

Yung Chomsky (1:17)

Hello.

Liz Franczak (1:20)

I'm Liz. And I'm producer Young Chomsky. And this is True Anon. Hello.

Yung Chomsky (1:24)

Hola.

Liz Franczak (1:25)

I am very upset because we just had a very illuminating conversation with our guest.

Vincent Bevins (1:33)

Yeah.

Liz Franczak (1:33)

That wasn't recorded. The, let me rephrase that.

Vincent Bevins (1:38)

Okay.

Liz Franczak (1:38)

We had a very illuminating conversation with our guest that was recorded. That was recorded, yeah. And that will be, you'll be able to listen to that in just a minute.

But then afterward, as we're saying our goodbyes, as we want to do, we had another illuminating conversation where Vincent explained how the British legal system works with wigs, the wig work of the British legal system.

Vincent Bevins (2:06)

Yeah.

Liz Franczak (2:07)

Which I found fascinating. So obviously my first, we should just recreate the conversation.

Vincent Bevins (2:15)

Well, first of all, though, I want to point out that podcasting is like jazz. It's about the conversations you don't record.

Liz Franczak (2:21)

Wow.

Vincent Bevins (2:22)

So chew on that.

Liz Franczak (2:23)

But having said that. I was going to say it's about the conversations you don't have, which is maybe even more psychoanalytic. We could go, this is deep. Yeah. But so I didn't, so obviously my first question, right off the bat with the wig is, do you wear the wig like a hat or do you like roll it on up and wear it as a proper wig? Turns out it's more of a hat trick situation.

Vincent Bevins (2:49)

But kind of depends on what the hair situation is of the wearer.

Liz Franczak (2:53)

Well, I think, of course, if you are a bald woman. You were a bald man. No, I just- I think bald men can be genderless.

No, no, I'm specifically thinking of women here because we were talking about female barristers. And so my question was about what women do with the hair, right? Because you would have to-

Yung Chomsky (3:19)

Barristers?

Liz Franczak (3:21)

No, because you would have to- You know, if you- Do you have to put your hair up and put it into the wig, or do you just slap that wig on like a hat? And then I was- when I said bald women, I was reminded of our dearly departed brace, who of course-

Yung Chomsky (3:35)

Has passed.

Liz Franczak (3:36)

Has, for some reason, slept with numerous bald women.

Yung Chomsky (3:42)

Yeah.

Liz Franczak (3:42)

Well, and also this-

Vincent Bevins (3:43)

Really the whole structure of this conversation is sort of an echo of the last episode talking about how do you wear prosthetic penis? Is it on top of the real one?

Liz Franczak (3:52)

Do you insert it? So it's- I think on this podcast, we're very interested in the- Well, people know that we're very interested in the mechanics of body parts, as it were. Listen, this is an audio experience. And so it's important for us to describe and enumerate all of these things for people's imaginations as they're listening. And you have to be very specific. So if you're talking about a barrister wearing a wig, it's important. Is her hair in a ponytail? Is it up in that wig? Is she wearing a skull cap?

Does she have beautiful barrel curls and a wig is just sort of flopping on there like a fish? Yeah. I mean, say what you will about True Anon. No one can say we don't paint a picture with words. That's what I'm trying to do. Anyway, it turns out they just throw that thing on. But that's not the interesting part. The interesting part was the second.

Why do I feel like I'm telling someone my dream? It does kind of sound that way. It does sort of feel that way.

Vincent said that if you don't wear the wig, the judge has to pretend you're invisible. Which is so cool. But also that's Harry Potter law.

Vincent Bevins (5:12)

I love that.

Liz Franczak (5:13)

Why is that the law? So it's not just ignoring too. It's like, no, you're invisible.

Vincent Bevins (5:19)

Right. You talk to the other barrister.

Liz Franczak (5:21)

And then the person has to go and get the wig in order to make their presence known. So it's kind of like a reverse invisibility cloak situation.