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(Auto-generated)Welcome back, you wonderful people who matter so very, very much.

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Really sorry about that last episode.

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I was so very, very tired and recorded that at 5.30 in the morning, having not been to

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bed yet, and 4am is when my voice takes on that really put anyone to sleep tone to it.

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And not in that like really cool Sam Elliott and Rodehouse intriguing kind of way.

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Or even a Steven Wright kind of way.

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But more like Ben Stein, dry eyes kind of way.

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Now hopefully today's episode will be a tad bit more upbeat, and to kick that off, I thought

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I'd offer some slightly more quirky help on the outset of today's episode.

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And to be perfectly honest, I have waited a long time for the right moment to share

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this one with the world.

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You see, I have discovered a treatment for the hiccups that works.

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Science based.

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Not these old remedies and superstitions, but something that deals directly with the

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problem on a medical level.

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Yes, it is true that we do not fully understand what causes the hiccups to occur in the first

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place, but we've pretty much determined that the main mechanic involved in the hiccups

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is the spasming of your diaphragm.

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Which for those who don't know is a large dome shaped muscle that causes inflation and

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deflation of your lungs.

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It's the muscle that does all of your breathing, and it's just below where your rib cage comes

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together as your sternum and just above your abs.

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So let me ask you this.

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When you have a muscle that suddenly starts to spasm, what do you instinctively do first?

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You add pressure, you clamp your hand over it, you massage it a bit.

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Now with my method, we're going to add pressure to the diaphragm on both sides.

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Front and back.

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Have you ever held your breath and felt like you were not swallowing your breath, but pushing

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your breath down towards your stomach somehow?

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Kind of the same feeling that you do when you push your stomach out to pretend you're

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pregnant.

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In this method of the hiccup cure, after the hiccup, you're going to start by taking a

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deep breath in, pushing it down and pushing your stomach out as if to pretend you were

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pregnant and hold it there.

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That will take care of the pressure on the backside of the diaphragm as much as we can

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anyways.

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Then take your fingers, curl them all over once so that they touch the point where the

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palm extends into the fingers, and massage the diaphragm.

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Knead into it with your knuckles, and hold your breath for about 30 seconds while you

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do this, and then stop the massage.

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Slowly blow out half the breath gingerly.

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Take a tentative and somewhat hesitant half-breath in, and then slowly blow all of it out, and

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breathe as normal.

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I've gotten rid of the hiccups over 40 times in my life this way, and I've never experienced

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a hiccup fit that I was unable to cure with this method after I created it.

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So uh, yeah, enjoy not having hiccups that last more than a minute for the rest of your

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life.

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My gift to you.

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Right, so next order of business.

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I want to point something out that I found recently that really reinforced something

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else I've been thinking about.

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Now I've noticed that there are books and speeches and media that have said some of

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what I'm proposing, but it's a bit more like they're talking about the footprint

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rather than the foot that the breaking laugh and being made of God are.

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They don't directly say what I'm saying in the book, but you can see what I'm saying

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in what they're saying if you know what I'm saying.

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And the other day I was singing along with this song that I've known my whole life, and

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that I've loved my whole life, and only just now looked up the lyrics to it.

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There was one lyric that I've never known what it was, it's just kind of slurred out

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every time I do it, and I really want to speak to what I see in that song now.

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So one of the main focuses is a pressure that's placed on all of us, that permeates our lives,

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that no one asked for.

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This pressure not to love all of them, to create further removal of our compassion,

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to distance ourselves, this pressure not to trust one another.

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It's a pressure that results in systems that take homes from people, and that seed distrust

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in families.

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This pressure to put oneself first and foremost, and to get mine, doesn't condemn love, but

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also doesn't encourage it, and does not welcome love as a motivation.

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Anyways, so here's the first set of lyrics.

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Pressure, pushing down on me, pressing down on you, no man asked for.

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Under pressure, that burns a building down, splits a family in two, puts people on streets.

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And I know what you're thinking, he's reading way too into this.

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Just wait.

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We are getting there, just wait.

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David Bowie sings about the burden of the horror of seeing this for what it is, and

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what it's doing to us.

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It's the terror of knowing what this world is about.

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This burden of seeing it kill off that feeling of importance and connection and loved ones,

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to the point where they're screaming to be let out of all of it.

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Watching some good friends screaming, let me out.

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This burden is not only something that the singer carries with them, but that they request

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that they don't fall into that all too familiar to us situation that happens to us where we

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just unsee it for the sake of convenience.

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The singer prays that tomorrow he can keep it together enough to be better than this,

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to be above the pressure to disassociate.

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Pray tomorrow gets me higher.

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Now the lyric, Chipping around, kick my brains around the floor.

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Chipping around, kick my brains around the floor.

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These are two distinctly British phrases that I actually didn't know.

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Chipping around was a term that meant not doing much of anything at all.

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And to kick around means to have no definitive plans.

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Now I would say that the addition of kicking my brains around the floor kind of seems to

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indicate damage that's being done in the thinking.

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But you know, I might be reading too much into that.

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But I will say the next lyric is poetry.

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These are the days it never rains but it pours.

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These are the days it never rains but it pours.

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Rain is helpful, replenishing, aids in regrowth, nourishes and cleanses.

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But it doesn't rain.

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It only pours.

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That constant wet and discomfort and reduced visibility and danger and get back in your

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house and stay there kind of weather.

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In the next set of lyrics they lay out two of the popular options that have been tried

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by people in response to this pressure.

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Turned away from it all like a blind man.

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First they tried turning away from it all like the blind man.

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Just kept going under the pressure, kept turning their backs on their fellow human beings,

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choosing to ignore what we were doing to ourselves, ignoring that there is a better way.

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They tried that.

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And then they stated they tried having one foot in each camp.

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They sat on the fence but it didn't work.

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Now here's where it gets interesting.

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With both of those approaches real love isn't there.

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They keep searching for love there.

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But all that love that they come up with, sends a little bit of a kick back to the breaking

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laugh a little bit.

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You know, it's that faux love, that love that just isn't the good stuff, you know, the quality

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sustenance stuff.

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Anyways, the singer launches into asking why in disbelief.

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Why?

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Why?

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Why?

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And then... calls for and borderline begs for love.

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And as it builds, probably the most misheard lyric of the song happens, the one that I

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looked up in the first place.

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Insanity laughs under pressure were cracking.

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Honestly, I didn't know that was the lyric until I started singing along with it and

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pulled up lyrics to find out what the lyric was.

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Here they refer to it as insanity laughs, which could be exchange for the breaking laugh

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and that they both drive you further into the madness and actively destroy you.

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Under that pressure, we are cracking that connection between us.

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We are breaking apart from one another and in doing so, breaking apart ourselves.

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But instead of that, the singer asks us to do the opposite, and build up those connections

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to one another.

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He asks the listener two questions and makes a statement, and all three of these are made

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out of the first question.

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He starts by asking, why can't we give love one more chance?

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And then he shortens it, changing its meaning.

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Why can't we give love?

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He then pelts us with a barrage of the shortest, most important two words of advice you can

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give someone seven times in a row to ensure that we heard them loud and clear.

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Give love, give love, give love, give love, give love, give love, give love, give love,

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give love.

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For love is an old fashioned word.

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I kind of love this lyric because that is one of the biggest turnoffs to so many interesting

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people that don't put love in as their focus.

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I wish I could remember who said it, but love is the most boring thing when it isn't yours.

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But to those that have it, it's the greatest thing.

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It emboldens us to be better than we have been, and love dares you to care for the people

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on the edge of the night.

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And love dares you to care for the people on the edge of the streets, which was the

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original lyric before they changed it, edge of the night.

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And love dares you to change our way of caring about ourselves, and I think ourselves refers

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to all of us as in humanity at large and not just yourself.

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And time on this is running out.

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You don't have an infinite amount of time to make these decisions, to make these changes.

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This is our last dance.

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We get this one dance.

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And this is ourselves under pressure.

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I think just kind of a summation, honestly, of all the lyrics, that's the one I have the

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least speculation about.

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It just seems very matter of fact, you know, close out, this is ourselves under pressure.

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Or maybe that's to say, we haven't done this yet.

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This is still ourselves under pressure.

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We know this deep down.

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We understand this deep down.

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And yet, look at where we are and look where we continue to be.

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Before I hop off the topic, I'll answer a question for you that I had for myself jotting

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down the thoughts on this song.

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I guess one of the questions most likely to be wondered about given the nature of the

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discussion I brought up here would be, so who wrote the lyrics to the song?

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Because this famously was a collaboration between Queen and David Bowie.

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Was this Freddie Mercury's lyrical handiwork?

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Are they David Bowie's words?

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Did these lyrics indicate that Brian May was woke this whole time?

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Which by the way, Queen's legendary guitarist Mr. Brian May was a close second to Freddie

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for the person who wrote the most Queen songs.

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And as to who wrote the song, Brian actually answered that in an interview once.

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Apparently David Bowie couldn't resist the urge to drop in on Queen when he found out

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that they were in the same studio he was in, and sat in on them goofing off and playing

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songs by other people.

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And after a bit, Bowie stated that this was stupid and they should just write a song if

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they were going to jam.

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Now the rest that follows for a bit is going to be a quote from Brian May.

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It's pretty long, so I'll let you know when it's over.

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We felt our way through a backing track altogether as an ensemble.

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When the backing track was done, David said, let's each of us go in the vocal booth and

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sing how we think the melody should go, just off the top of our heads, and we'll compile

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a vocal out of that.

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And that's what we did.

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Bowie insisted that he and Mercury shouldn't hear what the other had sung, swapping verses

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blind, which helped give the song its cut and paste feel.

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Everybody goes in there with no ideas, no notes, and sings the first thing that came

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into their heads over a backing track.

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So we all did.

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And then we compiled all the bits and pieces, and that's what Under Pressure was basically

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on.

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All these random thoughts.

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End quote.

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Random thoughts, huh?

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That just so happened to be talking about this very specific issue.

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I'm going to be clear here.

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Let me just out and say it.

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I think that we were given a song.

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One that would rise to become possibly the greatest rock and roll hit in the history

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of man.

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I have always said that I believed Under Pressure was the greatest piece of rock and roll that

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had ever been recorded.

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It featured no repeating chorus, no repeating vocal section, period.

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And yet, everyone knows every part of that song.

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I think that we were given this tremendous, amazing piece of rock and roll gold, and that

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it was inspired into amazing musicians that opened themselves up to the very waters of

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music and became instruments themselves and brought forth a message that we needed to

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understand.

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That we need to change our ways and give love that one more chance.

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That we need to stop unseeing the separation.

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That we can't run from it.

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That we can't be blind to it.

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And we can't sit on the fence on this.

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It doesn't work.

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We have to try and make sure that tomorrow, that we are above that view.

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That we change the way that we care for ourselves and that we love and we give love, give love,

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give love, give love.

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So give love and be good to them and be good for them.

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And you're gonna be great.

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Be sweet.

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Bye everybody.

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And here's all the contact info.

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You can check out the YouTube channel at youtube.com slash could help.

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You can contact the podcast at willhelp at gmail.com with any questions or answers you

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may have come across.

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Come tell other people what you think and ask questions and hear what others think at

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r slash The Laughing Matters on Reddit.

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And you can stay up to date with the show's Facebook page at facebook.com slash I can

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help and of course, The Laughing Matters.com.

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And the r slash always looks wrong word of the day is gonna be environment.

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It's environment.

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Not enviro-ron-ment.

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It's environment.