Why Are We Glorifying Insanity? - Konstantin Kisin (4K)

one of the things that we've spoken about privately that we haven't yet spoken about publicly is victimhood and James Cantor came on the show he's a sex researcher he gave me this really interesting quote I wanted you to react to shifting from aiding victims to aiding everyone who claims victimhood has led to an awful lot of charlatanism shifting from doing good to looking good has led to an awful lot of virtue signaling their interaction is now Western culture at least online what do you think about that I think it's true and if you think about you know I believe people respond to incentives that's fundamentally the driving force of all human behavior we're respond to incentives if you incentivize victimhood you're going to get victims uh and I think online is really the the shift that happens because the online World rewards it and it also allows people to fake victimhood in a way that in person you can't really like if you see someone living in a massive house you go well you may be in in some ways but you're actually well taken care of here but online you can create any Avatar you want and that Avatar can be projected onto the online space from a mansion that's kind of where we are yeah the fact that our opinions are more important than our deeds and our words are scrutinized while our actions are done in private you know how many people have we seen over the last few years Ellen degenerous lizo uh who's that late night host that just got popped for apparently being Jimmy Fallon I think uh allegedly has these people that outwardly are supposed to be Champion for the underclass like I'm supporting women of all sizes or I'm supporting people that have different sexual orientations or I do the whatever and then you find out behind the scenes that they can't even treat a PA with dignity I don't know it it seems to me like being someone who out front prozes about standing up for the for the under class is almost becoming a red flag to go I probably should scrutinize what's actually going on behind the scenes here when I was a standup comedian in the comedy world there's a golden rule of this the more a comedian talks about how he's a male feminist on stage the sleazier he is backstage that's it's like a golden rule never fails always the same so anyone who goes on stage and talks about how brilliant they are they're always always always Sleazy and evil behind the scenes it's just how it works and I think it's actually it's a kind of compensat mechanism people who are hiding a bunch of [ __ ] have to go out and then pretend to be something they're not the morality sort of stands on the shoulders of this performative [ __ ] is there a solution to this is there a way that we can scrutinize given that people's deeds and their actions and their words and their opinions are always going to be far apart I think that we are living through a digital Revolution for which we're not prepared uh naturally that's what Revolution is right it's a change in in the Paradigm of how we exist so I think that 10 15 20 years from now we will look back at the way we use social media now and be horrified by it you'll you'll be a little bit like you know tobacco companies promoting cigarettes as a healthy thing to do and then we'll be like whoa whoa whoa this was actually causing a lot of damage so I think the answer to this is is a healthier relationship with the online World in particular uh My Hope Is that we get past this stage and work out how to use all of that stuff better I see it in myself like the way I use social media now is very different to the way I would have used it even two years ago so um I'm much more responsible with the way I use it and I mean in terms of my own life in terms of how much time I spend on there and what I do but also in terms of the way I act on social media because I am trying to be more responsible in what I say you know it's very easy and I think especially on on X or Twitter whatever you want to call it to get clicks and I know exactly how to do that which is dunk on somebody and I spend less and less of my time doing that now because I just I don't think that makes the world better I don't think it makes me better there's very rare it's very rare on Twitter to have someone uh break the fourth wall and say that was out of order you're not allowed to say that everybody plays this sort of permanent game of sardonic tennis right here's some Blas comment about how you suck or some smart snipe back at what you said and oh I hit it back across the net with something else no one actually says what they should say which is that's [ __ ] out of order and then you're approved if you do this is why this is why it's disincentivized this is coming back to the point about incentives social media rewards certain types of behavior and punishes others so if you're the guy that says maybe we shouldn't you know pile on this person if your team is doing the piling on you're like the the one who's not willing do you know what I mean not willing to join in with stoning somebody and that's why you're a loser that's the the model that we operate in so being responsible is disincentivized yeah the um I love this idea that an absurd ideological belief or an extreme ideological belief is a show of fty to your own side and a threat display to the other right and the more absurd or extreme the belief the more likely it is that your own side can trust you and that the other side should fear you m do you know what I mean that if it's if you have to put reason and Sensibility and common decency to one side in order to like here I am holding my hand in the air for whatever the current thing is your own side sees you as a reliable Ally and the other side sees you as a formidable foe mhm it's Tribal mechanics but multiplied by a thousand correct because it's online with everyone scrutinizing you yeah and so you have these weird pathologies like you've got and it's not comment on him personally but you've got like a guy who lives in Malaysia commenting on American culture War issues and getting like millions and millions of views for his commentary and whatever and he just go I see what you're doing there but are you actually contributing to anything do you know what I mean uh because it's just flaming Fanning the Flames of whatever is going on um and I see that as a you know like I say it's a period it's a transitionary period I hope that we get to a point where we start to use social media in a different way and actually you know this is unpopular thing to say but I don't envy the big Tech Executives uh because it's a really hard job because the on the one hand you incentivized to encourage engagement and on the other hand the engagement is achieved by amplifying anger and Division and all of these things so I I hope we can work that out as a as a society how do we move forward with social media what about the victimhood side of things then you know like it's kind of it's almost like old Trope to talk about snowflakes and all this sort of [ __ ] it feels you know five year ago culture Warrior hor [ __ ] but the underlying Dynamic is still there that we've got this sort of tyranny of the minority in some regards that fragility is something to Aspire toward or at least it's something which is rewarded in a variety of different ways what's your sort of conception and and framework of this with a little bit more perspective that we've got now well I'm going to be speaking at ARC Jordan Jordan's thing later this year and one of the things I want to talk about is that I think everyone's embraced this now we all now do it I feel like those of us who've been concerned about wokeness have sort of got into that place where we are like I'm a victim I've been canceled I've been this and I've been that and I think it's time actually for us to step into our power now and go okay well we've created these New Media organizations we've created alliances we've created Community we've created things and the question really for us is now we know what we're against but not enough people are willing to say what are we for exactly and that's cuz it's much harder to do but that is the mission now is how do you get past woke anti-woke into the future and the future has to be about offering people a better alternative to that victimhood uh because it's it's more rewarding for the individual to to see themselves in that way I think um and this is you know this is why Jordan Peterson was so successful when he broke through because he was saying to people take responsibility and I think we all actually now are in a position where we have to say it to ourselves yes the right-wing snowflak a sphere that nobody really ever talks about I'm pretty sure that you hate that even more than you hate leftwing snowflake as feere like it's it's so yeah the using the callout culture to say this is something that shouldn't be happening this is pedestalize about that remain extremely unanswered like where do you get meaning and purpose in your life now in a society that has few and fewer children in which young people are delaying adulthood longer and longer and longer um where do you get meaning and purpose exactly for now for some people that's you know online activism but actually how fulfilling that is I don't know so the big questions remain unanswered and perhaps increasingly so actually I think there may be there could well be an argument that 80 years ago people had way more meaning and purpose readily available to them at you know just through the course of normal life you know get married have kids whatever now obviously that wasn't universally and available to everybody Etc but I think in the modern world actually way more people are lost they don't know what they're supposed to do exactly so in the past we had a kind of like set trajectory you're supposed to follow which hurts some people because because it wasn't the trajectory for them well when you take away all trajectory then everybody's lost and I think a lot of people are in that position now so we and and as I say I think it's way harder to think about what the positive vision of the future is but that I think is the task now that's the mission that's you know what is it that if you think wokeness is stupid and dangerous and harmful which I do well what do you think in addition to that what do you think beyond that what is it that you think people ought to do if they ought not to be victims what ought they to think about with their lives right um and that's a very difficult question uh that I have more questions than answers about actually it's way easier to identify problems than propose Solutions right and you almost see this on the internet that if somebody identifies a problem it's kind of hard to criticize a criticism it's possible Right but it's way easier to criticize a proposal and it's almost like a defense mechanism that people have to frontload or front run avoiding the criticism that they know will become will be incoming you know it's the caveat it's like I'm not saying that we don't need to care about such and such and I'm not saying that this isn't a big deal but maybe we need to think about this thing it's almost like a a conceptual equivalent of that yes and I find myself doing that all the time fortifying with caveat all the time man because I think the the other aspect of the online the way the communication happens online is like if you make a statement a generalized statement you might say exercise is good for you and somebody will be like yeah but what if you've got an e injury and before you know it like you hate disabled people like that's kind of how the conversation happens but we I think when when we stop being able to make normative statements everything else breaks down right we have to be able to say for most people most of the time pairing up with some of the sex that they are attracted to and and building a life together is better than not doing that we have to be able to say that without the one person who was in an abusive relationship what about me right yes we understand you but we're talking about the 95% of people right uh and you feel free not to go along with whatever we're putting on the table it's like if we put a menu of things on the table you don't have to eat everything no one is making you eat the gluten it's the Ricky jaice guitar lessons thing right no Want guitar lessons so I think we have to be able to say all other things being equal family is good well this is the the tyranny of the minority I [ __ ] love that phrase I think it's so smart to optimize for the edges of the bell curve rather than the middle and as you said before there is a it is important to recognize that there are people who fall outside of the the Norms of normality and that they need some care as well and if you didn't have that sufficiently broad perspective view these people would just fall through the crack that's [ __ ] [ __ ] and nobody wants that to happen but when you optimize for that you actually end up if you were to net out what happens you end up with more suffering because you neglect all of the [ __ ] fat bit of the middle of the distribution that's right and we've we've stopped being able to make that point because we and also I think a phrase that I came across and I didn't come up with this but somebody was saying to me the other day that we live in a world of trade-off denialism what's that mean every decision has tradeoffs it has positives and negatives and if you go well we should do this and someone goes yeah but what about the thing that and then you can never really acknowledge it's like the climate catastrophe right no one wants to talk about the fact that many of the solutions that are being proposed would be worse than the problem so it's like if you say anything about how we're approaching that issue you are denying that climate change is real or you are denying that it's a problem or you're denying that we should address it no I just think your idea how to fix it is stupid right and we've lost the ability to have that conversation as well and I think we really need to reintroduce that it's one of the things I talked about in my Ox speech which I think is why it did well is because people want oh yeah all right because because if we just do the stuff that we're being told we need to do that's actually worse and that sort of opened it up I think we've totally forgotten that every there are no Solutions only trade-offs my favorite quote ever from Thomas sa yeah it's lovely and that the difference between maximizing and satisficing from behavioral economics is an interesting one so maximizing is everything must be 100 100 100 100 satisficing is hitting an acceptable level across everything and what the satisficing allows you to do is allows you to iser rate much more quickly and as you say you can imagine you can do it in your own life it's like how many times have you done it going to go away on holiday with the misses and we're going to have a [ __ ] Airbnb or booking.com favorite list with 30 hotels or 30 places in and by the time that you get down to choosing them the choice has been made for you because all of the nice ones have gone and you're now two days before you leave right that's maximizing yeah and you're so stressed you need the holiday [ __ ] yeah it was awful you didn't even enjoy the experience of it as well yeah yeah I understand man like you know people feel like they're being left behind they feel like life is happening to them or happening for other people and they're not a part of it and I I get that like I you know [ __ ] it's disquieting life is going on my friends are moving on the world is changing and I'm all confused but I suppose this sort of information ecosystem conversation which you guys have had a good bit and I've had twice over the last few weeks first with Sam Harris and then with Eric Weinstein what do you make of this like the heterodox sphere has its problems the Legacy Media sphere has its problems independent creators that just get to [ __ ] post anonymously on Twitter and Reddit also I like very unreliable what's the do you think about this like how all of this comes together and how you move forward through it I I see a lot of problems with New Media too I mean and I've said this from day one in terms of what we do at trigonometry it's uh we don't have a budget to employ a bunch of people to do extensive research on things or to do factchecking for us so we can't do certain things that the mainstream media can do and should do the problem is the mainstream media isn't doing it either right uh but there's a there's a really important role for the mainstream media I just wish they'd play that role uh but you know I I think where I agree with Sam even though I disagree with him on covid and and to some extent well to a large extent Trump and all those things is there not everything can be fixed on a podcast that is absolutely true there are certain things that are a matter of research and deeper study and it it's not not everything can be sort out in 3our conversation between two podcasters it's that's not how how that works and I think uh New Media has its own problems um it over rewards Charisma it over rewards passion it it massively under rewards any attempts to uh cling to truth it encourages people to go off in the pursuit of the most uh exciting t take and Truth isn't always exciting yeah you know so I I think the truth is we need a vibrant ecosystem in which all of these different pieces play their own different roles um which is why I'm in favor of Maximum freedom because that's where you get everybody doing their thing and then you know over time people this people who want wholesome content if you like when it comes to facts or information or whatever can seek it out because people aren't stupid they they they can see through um they will eventually see through someone being super charismatic or whatever they'll get to a point where they go actually what I'd like to do is have a look at what different sources are saying about this and make up my own mind you saw with Co you know the mainstream media really suppressed a lot of very legitimate points of view uh a lot of important information but then you get the response to that which is to go quite far off the other end and I've ended up somewhere what I hope is a kind of reasonable Middle Ground between those two positions there's a really great blog post by window Bogle gosub stack.com one of my favorite writers why you are probably an NPC and he frames out five different types of NPC and the the most obvious two you know like sort of the mainstream NPC and the contrarian NPC he makes this really great point which is that the contrarian NPC is no deeper thinking than the mainstream NPC they're just the inversion of it yes and he uses the the line of um being a black sheep might make you different but you're still a sheep and that Allure this sort of Romance of being the independent thought leader maker sense maker person I understand why it happens but yeah reflexive contrarianism is no more nuanced than reflexive belief of the hemony yes and um you know I don't judge people for that because I I think that's an element of my thinking you know a kind of I think it's very understandable the disillusionment with the way the institutions have been captured or have been corrupted or perverted or what whatever it is that's happened to them um it is natural that that would produce an equal and opposite reaction um I encourage myself and other people to go beyond that I try as best I can and to go okay well we're reacting to this this is how we're behaving what's the actual what's the actual truth because that's where we started we started from the position that we cared about the truth that's why we're so annoyed with the mainstream uh can we can we find somewhere in between those two positions that actually is an attempt to find that truth um and it's it's the case with everything you know we've had a bunch of we just had the the co-found of Navara media on trigonometry the far-left YouTube no maybe not farle is it kind of corista supporting kind of people and others because we're trying to speak to different people from different uh places and really get to to what the bottom of is of different issues because those perspectives are valuable too one of the things that Sam brought up on the episode with me was his Infamous Twitter clip with you what was the experience of that particular 180 seconds Catching Fire like you know I felt terrible when that happened really really terrible because I've never been on the end of a Twitter [ __ ] storm to that extent but it it's not pleasant no matter how strong minded you are whatever there's a reason that Rogan always says don't read the comments right like like the great man Joseph Stalin says quantity has a quality all of its own so there's only certain number of negative comments you can ignore until just the volume of [ __ ] becomes overwhelming so my primary concern actually not I don't know Sam well but uh was for his well-being actually I just I just worry how he would experience that more than anything that was my concern because our approach is always about giving a guest an opportunity to reveal themselves in the best light possible and for some people that light shines very brightly and can burn um but that's not our intention we never go into an interview with a desire to out somebody or expose somebody it's not a got you it's not a got you so I was worried about him and I emailed him straight away just to you know check up on him and and you know also we didn't put that clip out we could have done because we obviously understood that it was a controversial thing he said and actually uh most people don't know this but that was not the most controversial thing he said in that interview in my opinion we talked about covid on locals which was the paywall section of the interview and what he said there I found quite what did he say I don't remember the wording and people have to go and watch it but it was you know I came away from that thinking that you know he's overestimating the threat and as a result of that is prepared to do some pretty drastic things or or demand drastic things to be done um so first and foremost as somebody who interviews people for a living I was concerned for him but I also felt that you know what he said was wrong I didn't agree with it um and I I I my view on it is that if you overestimate the nature of the threat all else follows and I think on Trump and Co that that is where Sam in my opinion is is that's why he's doing what he's doing and saying what he's saying because if I thought Trump was as bad as Sam thinks it'd be very tempting to think along the lines that Sam thinks along and likewise with Co if I thought this was like Eola that spreads I'd also be you know we should also be honest you know the conversation people like well there's never ever ever any reason for for the government to mandate vaccines and I broadly agree with that unless the disease is really like dangerous and deadly I I said this at the beginning of covid like imagine that the disease had 100% mortality rate for all women or it was 100% mortality right for all people under the age of 10 there'd be some people who'd support it well yeah but I I think that the the fundamentally it came down to a risk and reward yeah equation and most people considered that the risk of getting covid was not greater than the risk of either getting the vaccine or of opening up mandated vaccines as a pathway overall right and it's just where do you sit on this equation there's lots of other things but broadly I think it's where do you sit on this equation and Sam I completely agree with him that I think CO as an event was like the worst kind of vaccine that we could have given our epidemiology our medical system the view of vaccines overall vaccine skepticism at large I bet has gone through the [ __ ] roof it has it has have you had a look at this yeah of course it has I know anecdotally just speaking to people how much that's that's the case yeah so if we are to have something that comes around the next time and it does kill [ __ ] all children under 10 or all women or whatever the [ __ ] it's got some incubation period of 28 days and a mortality of 40% it's just a scop it's another scop this is CLA Schwab doing it again this is the wef and it's like oh God God like that's that's it literally would have been better if Co hadn't happened right yeah sure enough we can get masks out of the way more quickly and we've got like some some inefficiency in in the system we're opened up but if you were to look at covid as a like operational logistical vaccine our response to it failed us way worse than if we'd never got it at all and we got a vaccine injury from covid yes yes we did and and I also think the one thing that is sort of inexplicably neglected and all of this is I'd really like to know where Co came from I'd really like to know don't you think that's important don't you think we should know where it came from because there are some credible assertions about its Origins that would suggest that we may have another pandemic soon um is that right haven't seen this well if this came from a lab in Wuhan because of gain of function research and we are not willing to be honest about that and gain of function research continues why wouldn't we have another pandemic I never looked into this much I know that uh Sam had Matt Ridley and somebody else somebody else on his show we've had Matt on to talk about this as well yeah and the truth is we don't know yeah uh but I I'm using the kind of the smell test here because I grew up in a in a in a communist Society um and what communist societies do when there is something and all societies do this to a Lar extent because people don't like to to expose their own flaws and no one wants to be like oh I was responsible for killing millions of people you know but they will cover it up in a way that you know that is proper and Matt actually gave this example of there was a leak somewhere in the Soviet Union which was a radioactive leak I think or maybe it was a biological uh and they covered up for ages and then you know when the Soviet Union collapsed we finally find out no no it was actually a leak so if this is a product of uh gain of function research getting out into the real world which is credible that there's there's very credible assertions about that the world needs to know and this type of research needs to end but if we are unwilling to have that conversation honestly and do the proper investigations which would be difficult because the CCP wouldn't want that and on top of that you've got all this other [ __ ] about how it's racist and all of that uh we've got a problem so the I I think my worry with everything that's happened with Co is not only have we not learned the lessons I feel like like you said we've got a vaccine injury from the experience and everyone is sort of stuck in their corner and like Sam said to you everyone's got their own facts about it now correct yeah um that's that's a problem it's interesting what you said about the felt sense of being in the blast radius of Sam's online experience I noticed it is someone called it Sam Harris's World embarrassment tour because he did my show he did Steven's show and he did Tom Billy's show and I don't know man like there seems to be something it's almost like there was resentment sat on the internet latent resentment sat on the internet waiting for Sam to [ __ ] up and then he did a thing oh maybe maybe it's right I don't think it was personal that was my the reason I paused there I don't think it was personal to Sam I think particularly on his Trump comments there are a lot of people who were like this is what we always knew the Trump haters think deep inside and Sam was willing to vocalize it which is I don't care how big the transgressions are on the other side I don't care what Hunter Biden has done I don't care what Joe Biden's done no matter what they do it can never be as bad as orange man bad and that's sort of how he came across and so the people who who fell gasl this entire time about um you know the overestimation of the threat of trump they they were Vindicated in that moment and I think Sam just caught him was caught in the Rage of people feeling like the kind of like the perfect timed storm with the perfect Pebble in the perfect river that directed it yeah yeah yeah yeah it's so interesting man you know we I had this conversation with uh a fitness influencer called Sarah Safari in La a couple of weeks ago uh I'd be interested to get your thoughts on this I think it's anous the Sam situation a lot of people especially right of Center say things like you can't judge somebody on just one thing that they say yet when it came to a six-pack of Bud Light being sent to Dylan mulany by some marketing intern somewhere deep in the annals of the anheiser Bush thing or millerite released one video the millerite thing felt a little a bit more produced it's probably gone through a few more layers but largely I just wondered I thought it was interesting that the charity that a lot of people right of Center ask to be given to their commentators or you know their Champions that are cancelled for taking out of context points there was that uh Rosanne bar bit with theovon where she made a joke about the Jews which was the most egregious clipping that I've ever seen from anything ever the end of a three minute long bit and they took the final 30 seconds and put it up as if it was representative of the whole thing it was so [ __ ] bad but I did notice nobody decided to use that same idea about well hang on a second maybe maybe this is just one small Department in one small corner of one small Brand's marketing push and they gave this person who is very unpopular on the internet a sixpack of Bud Light and before you know it Kid Rock's got an AR-15 pointed at a few cases of your drink what do you think about so so I think I would separate those two out so Sam I think is that point applies very much and this is what the angle I'm coming from and by the way we're about to go back to America and we'll interview Sam the sequel so we'll see how that works out I'm looking forward to it uh but with Sam what I felt was for me I don't know if it's true of other people but for me Sam has a lot of credit in the bank with me and so and so I felt that while I strongly disagree with what he said I think that was clear in the interview um he has enough credit in the bank with me that I'm willing to have a lot of understanding and a lot of Grace with him and I I like and what I would say as well is you know we were having a lot of tech issues on the day that we interviewed Sam and he sat there for like a good hour while we were trying to scrambling to get the microphones to work and he was the most decent human being that we've had on the show who someone really is when the cameras aren't rolling that seemed to me like a really important thing that other people obviously wouldn't have seen so um I have a lot of time for Sam and respect for him I don't have the same relationship with Dy malany and I also think you haven't taken a world of wisdom from Dylan milany over the last you'll be surprised man you'll be surprised and so um I think look Dylan m is a symbol in to many people like Sam is a symbol to many people for different things but I I think it's a slightly different issue because you I don't know if you saw but immediately after the the dill mulvania controvery the marketing executive who was responsible for this there was there was a video of her talking to I think a reporter about the thinking behind what the idea there was it seemed a little bit more thought out it was thought out and her her angle was our our customers are [ __ ] that was her angle are [ __ ] yeah what's a [ __ ] customer well it was just uh it's just these guys who've got like a you know old-fashioned sense of humor and they don't do you know what I mean like we're going to educate our customers and I'm like you sell beer that's not your job sell them the [ __ ] beer and shut up right um and look the trans issue for reasons I actually think are quite understandable and obvious is the lightning rod of our time um so I'm not surprised that that caused the reaction that it did and and I understand it I I do think and I said I wrote a substack on this at the time um that perhaps the giving so much attention to it is what prompts these Brands to to go down this route obviously with Dyan malania had backfired for sure it's a role of the dice for attention it's a role of the dice for tension that I don't think they'd considered and I think that executive ended up being fired I do understand why people got as fired up about as they did because your rewarding behavior that a lot of people would feel is the wrong Behavior to reward in the public guy Dylan MH but that woman is one lady maybe maybe in her interview with the reporter she said this went all the way up and the director CE the [ __ ] Chief marketing officer or whatever was involved in this but if it wasn't the case I don't think if if it turned out that it was one small group in in the corner as I like guessed or whatever I don't think that the internet would have given budlight any more leeway I don't think they would have said we need to separate the art and the artist here you know they've made beer for three decades for however [ __ ] long it's been around and maybe maybe a try maybe it it shows their woke bonafides it shows that they're the man-hating like left leaning bluehead cucks that they always were but I don't know like it seems like a lot of the time people want it's a it's a smart idea to be able to say Rogan has been in a few controversies over the last few years most people said I have faith that you're telling me this is the tip of the iceberg I've seen the whole Iceberg right I know that there is nothing lurking deep down in the depths massive Advantage he has is he's published like 5,000 hours of content over the last decade which means that you have a pretty good body of evidence that sits on the other side of the scale but light you don't know much about what's going on inside of the marketing department but I just thought it was interesting I thought that maybe this is a time where it would be illustrative and you should be careful about trans transgressing rules that you want to be enforced so if you want the don't judge somebody by one single occurrence rule to be enforced and then you don't enforce it that as you said before that tiit fortat game it opens up what they did it so this is playground mentality I understand what you mean but I think I disagree actually I think the reason that people uh were as upset about as they are is while it's these are different companies the sense is imagine it wasn't just Rogan who said something but it was Chris Williamson and trigonometry and all the other podcasters who do what we do all at one point said the same thing and then there was yet another example of a podcast saying it so when you look at the Gillette M toxic masculinity ad if you look at all the other instances where corporations put Pride flags all they replace their brand with not in the Middle East not well obviously not yeah did they do it in Russia they can't do it in Russia I doubt it I doubt it I can't imagine why in Mother Russia gay has you yeah exactly so I think what people felt was here again we've got a corporation just absolutely taking the piss lecturing the ordinary public and thrusting these very Niche issues onto what is a very very like normal household beer and you just can't escape this [ __ ] that's what I think people feel it's kind of a straw that broke the camel's back Corporation overall that's interesting cuz what I was doing was I was taking budlight as a individual instance on its own what you're saying is this is more endemic of a broader Trend among big corporations well broadly speaking if you think about what the anti-woke narrative is the anti-work narrative is and I agree with very large part of it is that most of the major institutions whether that be media whether that be the Civil Service whether that be uh the political systems the parties the uh the corporations the education system they've all been captured or corrupted or through some other mechanism become uh the projectors of a certain world view onto the public who do not share that world viw and so when you see the toxic masculinity Gillette ad which is like hey you know you you're you're a man you're a piece of [ __ ] buy a Razer you know hey you're a piece of [ __ ] buy our beer yeah Etc it sort of builds up to a point like why is everyone telling me I'm a piece of [ __ ] um and it gets old and you know and I actually you know particularly this anti- mascul anti- masculinity narrative that you see everywhere in movies uh in advertising in in all sorts of different genres uh I think it's really really dangerous because if you think about Gillette ads in the '90s you were a bit younger than me I don't know if you remember them but they were best man can get and it's like some blonde hot chick in like a whatever she's like on shoulder actually actually that wasn't the '90s Gillette ads the 90s Gillette ads were a bunch of men being healthy masculinity it was a man putting his tie on as he holds his baby up before he's going to work he was a man uh hugging his son on his way to his wedding he was a man protecting his wife or you know it was a it was a healthy view of men and relationship ships and men and women and so on um and I I sort of say you know healthy masculinity is the '90s Gillette ads that's what it looks like um men being responsible men in relationships with women being respectful being kind but also being strong looking after their children teaching younger versions of men how to be men Etc right um and I understand why people men and women are [ __ ] tired really really tired of this idea that men are bad and evil my wife who's complet I always say my wife is completely apolitical and as a result of that extremely based right like she hates this [ __ ] and I can't tell you how many women I speak to who are very very tired of men being demonized in this way and so am I well especially given that a lot of those women will have sons and they want their partner to be good and healthy they don't want them to be feeble you know um so I actually I understand the push back against that I really do and I think it's necessary yeah yeah the I mean I've spent a lot of time talking about modern masculinity and and the challenges that everybody is facing what do you think like looking at it from your perspective growing up where you did in a communist country coming here 13 remembered it coming here at 13 what's what do you think the conversation around modern masculinity from both sides of the fence is missing like what what don't they understand about being a man in 2023 and the challenges and the way that the culture sees them I think we should zoom out more even more than that and ask the question what is it that we want as a society and I piss both sides of the spectrum off by saying what I'm about to say which is any ideology and I mean any ideology that pits men against women or women against men is toxic and damaging and dangerous and unhealthy and that includes some forms of feminism and that includes you know the incel worldview and all sorts of things so the thing that we're really missing is a reminder of the fact that I'm going to do the caveat thing we talked about yes some people are not heterosexual but for the vast majority of people the single most meaningful thing in your life is going to be the relationship you have with your intimate partner almost always of the opposite sex right and we need each other men and women need each other we've been working together for Millennia and any anyone who tells you that your enemy is the opposite sex that person is your enemy yeah that person is your enemy that person is my enemy and that person is our society's enemy um they are destroying or attempting to destroy the very building block of our society that comes from both sides of the advice as well the red pillar sphere teaches men that women are adversaries to be avoided or res resources to be used and discarded those are the only two ways and you know that's black that's the entire manosphere actually that's black pill mtow incels pickup Artistry red pill Sigma male all the way like the full that's the the entire gamut for anyone that doesn't know the memes that's the entire mosphere of the [ __ ] manosphere and uh yeah there's no one in there very very few people in there who say You're supposed to be a collaborator with the opposite sex most of your competition is intrasexual not intersexual men and women have worked together for eons you need each other to survive just because you've outsourced protecting and provisioning to the police department and the local supermarket and you women have outsourced the resources and uh the company to your ability to gain education and employment and Netflix like still broadly like we're not going to be able to out technology ourselves from the last 120,000 years of humans being the way that we are so there's more to relationship than dildo right like you're not a dildo to your partner there's more that you bring to the table sometimes well I'm speaking for myself maybe I'm I'm not sufficient in that department but my point is let's frame this in a positive way what is it that we're trying to say what we're trying to say is men and women need each other men and women need to work together uh men and women are not enemies that the most powerful you are ever going to be is with a good woman by your side what do you say to the people that go this is Trad pill nonsense like tradcon talking point 101 like this is just another NPC meme but coming from like someone that's steeped in a type of relationship that men or women don't need anymore well you know how Bitcoin is say have fun staying poor have fun being a loser you you want to spend your life uh being unhappy with opposite sex whether you are a feminist or one of these people go go for it I'm not going to tell you how to live your life but I don't think it's going to lead you to a good place um you know I'm I have male friends re who've recently found their like soulmate or their partner and they blossom they blossom the moment that it happens uh because we evolved to be together we evolved to work together we evolved to drive each other forward in really powerful ways I would not I wouldn't be a tenth of the man I am without my wife did you read the post I put up a couple of weeks ago about the [ __ ] you family no I didn't see that so [ __ ] you money right you're able to become oh I did see that yes sufficiently financially independent that money you you don't need to do things you don't want to do [ __ ] you Freedom you don't need to do things that you don't want to do but then the final stage I see amongst my male friends who are you know 30s and 40s is the [ __ ] family which is a all that I fundamentally care about in the end is me and the people that are a part of this nuclear pod and everything else can go to hell everything else can fall apart Jimmy Carl has just sat in that seat he's been through his fair share of like roller coasters and he's been with his partner like a decade and a bit like [ __ ] forever maybe even 20 like something years and now he's got a son and a daughter and yeah the coming home to know that as long as that's okay as long as that's set i'm presuming that you've stacked the [ __ ] you money with the [ __ ] you freedom and then you had the family on top it must be kind of similar to being indestructible I'm still working on the [ __ ] you money yep still a long way to go on the [ __ ] you money the freedom and the family the freedom and the family yes uh and my wife and I we we met by complete accident when we were 18 married by 20 and been together ever since and the just on a very practical like what did I get out of it level it's it's been the single most beneficial source of inspiration comfort you know pick each other up when you're down all of that I I I I mean I admire people who don't have that and still do lots of stuff in the world but it would be so much harder so so much harder um so again I'm not telling other people how to live their life I'm just saying this has been one of the most tried and tested solutions to various problems that human beings experience throughout history we evolve to be together uh and if it's a TRD talking point then maybe that's right maybe maybe that some TR talking points are correct getting back to the masculinity conversation why do you think it's so difficult for people to publicly advocate for the problems of men and boys uh because victimhood doesn't work for men the way it works for women we don't feel sorry for men and rightly so by the way rightly so I mean biologically men are disposable the way the women aren't for the obvious reasons if you have a tribe of 10 men 10 women you send the women off to war you're screwed you send the men off to war one comes back you can still replenish the population so men are disposable always will be much more than women uh and so we are we don't feel sorry for men in the same way and I not advocating that we feel sorry for men because I don't believe that's a solution to men's problems uh the solution to men's problems is for men to be better what's that mean uh it means uh you know what I mean look at you this is what your entire life has spent on bettering yourself physically emotionally psychologically mentally you're obsessed with performance you're obsessed with being better you're obsessed with being happier more fulfilled all of these things it's a pursuit of your own greatness there are structural disadvantages that are faced by men as well right that very few people are willing to accept at the moment socioeconomically men are falling behind education employment mental health work currently suicide awareness Suicide Prevention Week in the UK the according to one of the guys I was literally talking to half an hour ago if you are a man the single biggest threat to your own life is yourself you are more likely to die by your own hand than by any other way are you am I I've got suicide I've got suicide in my family so I know but I don't think you are the greatest threat to you that's true but and I'm not of the greatest threat to me and why is that not everybody has the same genetic predisposition sure but you just said you do and yet you are not the greatest threat to you why is that because you're fulfilled because you're successful because you're striving and achieving because you have in life what you should have in life uh the meaning and purpose and the pursuit of a goal right and for men this is one of the problems with you know this mental health conversation one of the reasons that men's mental health is not as good as it could be is that um a we do live in a society which discourages them from being men and being the way that men are supposed to be um but the other reason is that most of the personal development um and psychology fields are geared towards female ways of being and most of the the ways that we treat for example depression men don't need the same thing as women do when it comes to that what men need is to feel powerful uh and capable right the reason you don't you are not the greatest threat to you is that you feel in charge of your life right and that's what men need to pursue with every fiber of the being that's what I mean when I say better uh you need to struggle and you need to fight and you need to achieve and then all of this other [ __ ] Falls by the wayside and it's always been like this you know I'm someone who's been depressed at points in my life and it's not because I was having a mental health problem it's because my life was [ __ ] and I was [ __ ] that's why right so what need is to pursue their dreams to fight and struggle and to achieve there was a a point that you brought up earlier on about how no guidelines is liberating and terrifying altogether and I think it's it's interesting to talk about how there isn't only one way to be a good man but there aren't an unlimited number of ways either and the problem of breaking open the expectations around men means that guidance for men and boys also largely dissipates I had this conversation in qar and the guy I was debating had this conception of the manbox and he said if you're inside of the manbox it can be constraining because he was a a member of the LGBT community Kuwaiti American grew up in the Middle East and wanted to be a dancer as a boy I'm like I imagine it's pretty [ __ ] difficult for you to find a manbox that fits that conception of you in it sure but if you completely blast it open and you can be anything that you want to be there's no guidelines at all there's no guidance so how [ __ ] hard is this going to be you got to you got to reinvent from first principles what it means to be a man and Ian you've heard this from Mary Harrington and Lise Perry but a lot of the guidance that was given to men previously around chivalry it is simply a difference of degree not a difference of kind to go from men should hold the door open for women and make sure that she gets to the front door safe at night to you shouldn't hit your wife it is one one single thread between those which is women are more vulnerable and should be protected right lovely conception that Mary in classic Mary style said the bouro rules that benefited women who had had a partner that grew up in a two parent household that went to some high futin institution was around people that had good good male role models yeah sure you can break open the doors of chivalry and maybe pay for the first date or maybe you can drive yourself home or get the taxi on your own or whatever it is because the environment that you're in is largely very different the guy that grew up or the the woman that grew up in a relationship with a man who comes from a single parent household whose mom or dad was addicted to alcohol or drugs or there was multiple partners coming through the house they never got taught not to beat your wife let alone not to hold the door open and like the rules for thee but not for me it's like the rules for us protecting everybody not just me and yeah I I think it's a really interesting frame to think about where the cultural changes come from a lot of the time they come top down but the environment can be so different that getting rid of something that seems quite innocuous up here can actually Cascade down to the bottom and the same thing goes for this tyranny of the minority again absolutely there are people that will be outside of the manbox and maybe we should expand it so that they can fit in it but if you blow the doors open Where's the guidance like what does it mean and this is also a consequence of luxury beliefs which is Rob Henderson's term I'm sure you've had him on the show um and the the principal luxury belief of our time is there's no difference between men and women that's a luxury belief there are people who can afford to have it but most people can't afford to have that belief and then all else follows from this uh because if you accept that there are differences between men and women then men and women should act differently and that also means that it's okay for men to be men and it's okay for women women to be women one of the things that I find really [ __ ] weird man since we had our son is people will go to my wife oh you're just you're just at you're just you're just at home and I'm like what do you mean just at home are you [ __ ] insane she's she's raising our son and and providing everything that we need as a family and that you're calling that just a thing so but but a lot of women will judge other women for just being at home yeah and actually I think it doesn't apply to everybody caveat but for most women the greatest gift their partner can give them is opportunity if they want to be at home with the children to do that about 80 85% of women say that being a stay-at-home mom is an opportunity that an option that they aspire to have yes and financially for most people it's very difficult yeah right now so it's it's it's the greatest gift and so it's not just like men are treated badly or women it's it's this whole dynamic hurts everybody um and so men and women need to work together uh dads need to be involved in their kids lives these are some yeah look their Trad points one one if that's what you want to call them but it's what works it's what works for the kids it's what works for the family did you read the uh men are lost can we find a way out of the Wilderness article by Christine Ember who was in The Washington Post a couple of months ago was Washington Post in there something anyway she had this beautiful conception in it that said um many young men feel their difficulties are often dismissed out of hand as whining from a patriarchy that they don't feel a part of it seems like a lot of modern men are being made to pay for the sins and advantages of their fathers and grandfathers and I thought that that was very interesting that um kind of like in comedy right you're allowed to punch up but you can't punch down and because have had it good for so long you have this this concern in giving them any sympathy and even though largely pick most of the extreme negative outcomes that you want in life apart from sexual assault and it's you're going to find a man on the receiving end whether it's homelessness drug addiction violent crime mental health being in jail suicide like all of it and there was this video of um uh I think it was a trans so a woman who became a man or looked like a man or whatever who was absolutely horrified by the lack of attention oh people crossed the street when they were walking towards it wasn't even just that it's just like people ignore you when you're a woman you get attention and people just ignore a guy most of the time for most intents and purposes but that's you know those are in my opinion in a radical differences between the Sexes the way the our biological roles are when women are going to get more attention I think you can definitely see like listening to your like pull yourself up by your bootstraps kind of mentality especially when it comes to men you can definitely see that sort of Soviet like man beard man lift thing man protect woman like I that was actually money Ander thr but that's that's the best Russ you getting out with me um yeah I I I think that you can see that and this is why you know there's a multiplicity of opinions about how to do this and I think it's why it's interesting that everybody can contribute you know in it okay give me a critique of what I'm saying I'd love to explore that with you no but there's nothing that I would disagree with massively I think that it's important to recognize the structural disadvantages faced by men and boys at the moment going from a brwn based to a brain-based economy when you have a disposition to be less conscientious where you are put into an education system that doesn't suit the disposition of boys but you're graded in the same manner as an entire sex who does boys and that going to fall behind and I think that you're seeing the outcomes of this in the way that schooling and between the ages of 21 and 29 women earn a grand and a bit more than men do right the the the gender pay Gap isn't a gender pay Gap it's a mother pay Gap right that's the the the penalization comes to mothers I don't disagree with any of that but the question is what's the answer what's the solution to that I think that creating a positive view for masculinity creating and this is again why you know Peterson and Andrew Tate as well have been so successful because they said you can be something you can actually step out there and Wrangle the world and I believe in you and I'm proud of you and it's not wrong for you to try and want to get Mastery or conquer something or achieve something have ambition to be able to make decisions easily and stand up well under pressure like you know these are all [ __ ] good things that are not only good for you but they're good for the world as well I think that there needs to be a positive Vision that would be one I think that that creates a positive feedback Loop for men I do think that there's some Manning up in the most Transcendent include uh like Wilbur and way that we can but I also think that you know we need to look at structural initiatives that can help boys and men because there's no other group on the planet who when they fall behind are pointed at and said this is your problem you need to sort it out every other group we would spend billions in taxpayer funded money to create committees and Charities and initiatives that actually work out what going on and help them boots on the ground to be able to do this I don't think like if a man has a problem or if a woman has a problem we say what can we do to fix Society if a man has a problem we say what can a man do to fix himself now maybe that's the fundamental asymmetry at the heart of the sex difference but in a society that has Surplus resources that can help I don't see why we wouldn't afford the why we would make men unnecessarily swim upstream if that makes sense it does make sense however I think that my view is what you said earlier it's the fundamental asymmetry between the Sexes now it's true that all groups face various structural inequalities for example I'm 5'9 barely and you play basketball not very well I should say for for for that reason alone actually if you look at the evidence heightism is one of the biggest openly available forms of discrimination that isn't condemned or dealt with in any way and one of your team is scous so that must be he's even shorter than me awful yeah yeah so what's the answer to that my answer to that has not been to get leg extensions uh or to complain about structural heightism do you know that like structural heightism you you joke but if you want to play this [ __ ] game this is my point I'm not laughing at that I'm just it's structural heightism as a term that I haven't heard before so if you look at the CEOs of the top Fortune 500 companies like 90% or something like don't quote me on it you can look it up like a very very very significant portion of them are over six' tall almost always the taller president wins I think as well right now is the answer to that not in Russia by the way in Russia you don't need h so is Do We complain about that should we complain about that should I sit here and be like oh because I'm 5'9 I don't get the that it doesn't help anything it doesn't change anything right and I remember it's so funny because I have a a friend of mine who's like a green Party voter voter the the most woke person that you could possibly imagine and he's like 55 and I made this point to him I said yeah but you you know you talk about these structural issues with like this group and that group and whatever and you're five did you know about you know hitis and whatever and he was like yeah but being 55 has just made me who I am I like yes yes you are what you are the world isn't going to change to you right my favorite scene in Game of Thrones have you seen game of thron is Tyrion when he's talking to Jon Snow and he calls him a bastard and Jon Snow takes offense and he goes have I offended you bastard he goes let me give you some advice bastard never forget what you are the world won't wear it like ARMA and it can never be used to hurt you that's the answer to all of this right and you're right about Peterson and Tay who I think very different figures but nonetheless their success is based on the fact that they're telling men what men do need to hear in that respect which is it's okay to be a man it's okay to have drive it's okay to have ambition it's okay to have aggression it's okay to want things it's okay to want status it's okay to want money it's okay to want Power these are all things that are okay they have pathological side effects when not handled properly but the drive to achieve the drive to succeed the drive to dominate the drive to win these are good things and pursue them and by the way here's the interesting bit those woke women they love that [ __ ] this is what I'm going to teach my son right whatever the society tells you about how it's wrong to be a man at the end of the day they're all going to reward you for being a real man this is the best time in some ways to be a real man because you clean up the competition is is outing itself is taking itself out of the picture if you act like a man you clean up that's the position we're in well there's a number of uh left leaning women who are lamenting the fact that they can't find a man who meets both their political preference and also will woo them appropriately on the on the date right it's like why are all of the men who do the things that I want from the other political party I think it's 30% or 40% of Democrats and Republicans fear that their son or daughter will marry somebody of the opposite political belief so you know this tribalism that we spoke about earlier on speaking about toxic masculinity as part of that debate I did a little bit of preparation and I found some of my favorite headlines of things that are toxic masculinity mass shootings gang violence climate change the financial crisis is toxic masculinity brexit the election of Donald Trump not wearing a mask eating meat physical fitness fast food capitalism is toxic masculinity and communism is toxic masculinity hip hop smelling of Axe Body Spray which is Lynx for the British people being stoic risk-taking religion but also secularism and Atheism playing board games being interested in cars and saying hello or have a nice day all toxic masculinity man say hello is [ __ ] atrocious mate is it yeah the that's sort of I think that's part of the male gays you know there was this um I think it was a rule was it not put on the London Underground for a while that like the men's like wandering eyes are something that was a concern but here's another thing right I'd be interested to get your take on this I brought this up with that same uh Fitness influencer a couple of weeks ago Sarah really good response as well internet incidents big ones people in the real world use the response of the internet they crowdsource their sense making to how other people responded so you'll have seen these gym Tik toks of girls videoing themselves working out and sometimes there's a guy in the background and if the guy looks over a bit much because for whatever reason he's looking at her he's looking at the camera he's looking at himself he's doing whatever sometimes they make a big song and dance about it the first big one of those that happened it could have gone either way you could have tossed a CO and I would have said I don't know the internet may say that this is reprehensible I didn't I thought it was fine but I could have seen the internet going on the other side of the fence and saying yeah sure should find this guy like docks him shoot him blah blah blah it didn't and that now has created a new uh bar of behavior expected Behavior both for men and for women the interesting thing that it made me realize is the women who saw that Tik Tok had it have gone the other way and had it have been completely reprehensible and and totally not allowed would then have reset their worldview expectation way more sensitive their radar is now looking for did that guy glance over three times or more in the space of 90 seconds if so this equals a dangerous situation because the internet told me so and it's a a very sort of slippery slope in One Direction only it only moves towards more sensitivity not more robustness right I thought that was interesting perception is projection what's that mean it means that you see what you expect to see you perceive your own projections of the world uh you had that [ __ ] hyperv viral moment about the scar makeup tell tell it again for the people that don't so they did an experiment where they told a group of women that they're going to put scarring on their faces or visual disfigurement of some kind and then they would go in into an interview and the purpose of the experiment is to work out whether the interviewer is going to treat them differently because of their fysal facial disfigurement what they didn't tell the women is as they were leaving to go for the interview they touched up their makeup and without showing them the F facial disfigurement removed the scarring so they went into the interview thinking they're facially scarred but they weren't and they came back reporting massive levels of discrimination specific comments that the interview had made about them that they perceived so you you you see what you expect to see this is why teaching people victimhood is so dangerous because it makes them victims it makes them expect certain things and then they will react differently I mean you know police interactions are a good example of this if you expect that the police are going to treat you badly because of who you are you're going to act in a different way and therefore cause more problems and I say this to somebody you know I was a very angry young man and I and my wife used to piss me off so much she would constantly say like I'd get into an argument with somebody and I'd be like that guy's a prick he did this and she'd be like you creating those situations you know that right and I was like No And it took me like a good 10 years to work out absolutely I was ABS [ __ ] lutely I was right so we we perceive the things that we put out into the world and this is you know Peterson talks about this is you can't see without hierarchy because your brain has to know what to focus on and what you focus on is a function of the filter that you project onto the world I'm focusing on you now instead of the bookshelf behind you I could have been sitting here picking out a good book this entire time it's been a waste but so that's that's what's happening there but it's interesting I mean I said something at the time I was like look these creepy men need to stop staring at women in gyms otherwise they're going to stop wearing lingerie to go there and then when everybody loses and and what I'm the point I'm trying to make is that like you know this is a very I'm GNA say something very controversial here Chris you ready men are attracted to women I've heard about let's sit with that for a moment I've heard about that so you know this idea that you're going to be barely clad and men aren't going to notice that yeah sorry that's that's not what our brains are for learned our brains are for looking at your ass that's what they're for that's what they evolved for I know it's crudely put I learned the term for this new style of gy short it's got what's called a butt scrunch right have you seen the butt scrunch yes right yeah you're a married man online of course yeah someone showed me a photo I tried to look away um yeah it which is for the people that haven't seen it and aren't training in gyms with like 20y olds in it's like a normal pair of shorts training shorts for a girl like kind of tight but then it's got kind of like a thong bit that separates the ass cheeks out um which has been normalized very quick do you remember when do you remember the first time that wearing just leggings became a thing cuz I do cuz it wasn't when I went to UNI so it was after 2006 it was after maybe it happened while I was at Uni so maybe before 2010 but I remember thinking wow that's like that's like everything on display that's kind of like kind of like no pants yeah but then also kind of not and then now it's like oh that's kind of like no pan well like that's kind of like just a thong but blue or like purple or Lilac I feel you've dedicated a lot of time to describing this accurately which which I appreciate I'm casual orthologist on the side um I wanted to tell you about this can I can I say something just on that before you move on because I think we we sort of like we're we're trying to pretend things all the time which yes men shouldn't be pigs right we can all agree on that but in order to not be a pig I first have to see your ass that you've shoved in my face right so I see it I am then after that not a pig right but I see and it's there and there's my brain isn't calibrated or designed or evolved I mean the the sole purpose of our genes is to reproduce right how is that you see what I'm saying well there's a female frame that's placed around this conversation specifically that I don't think fully I maybe go as far as to say like sympathizes with the male brain reward system there is an inbuilt reward system that men have for looking at sexually gratifying objects even things like two rocks that look a bit like boobs right right what's the first thing a boy does when he gets a calculator right boobs yep now is that because of toxic masculinity or is that because men evolved for millions of years throughout evolutionary history including preum animals to seek the opposite sex and the drive in males is just overwhelmingly strong now once you have noticed that how you act is where culture and society and civilizing Men comes in right just cuz you saw someone's eyes doesn't need doesn't mean that you allowed to go and stare at it or grab it or whatever but you saw it and you're not it's it's almost like it happens and then you're like okay I need to [ __ ] yeah yeah yeah yeah that's how it works now what do you want me to do about that what are you supposed to do about that I'm open to suggestions blinkers blinker men big some people would be in favor of that big Veil that goes over the top right little bit of inside baseball for people who aren't familiar with what's going on in the podcasting world and apparently this one's slipped by you as well Theo Von and other significant podcasters allegedly defrauded of approximately $4 million and then calls out the fraudster in a video in an unexpected turn of events Colin Thompson the man who is working under cast media and with theovon is is accused of orchestrating a fraud operation that cost Theo Von's podcast the this past weekend and potentially other podcasts an estimated $4 million theovon and his crew detected inconsistencies in their payments which is when trouble started advertisers allegedly paid Colin Thompson and cast media directly leaving Theo with less money than anticipated and I know from my side of the fence that there are quite a few other podcasts that were with this particular company and it seems like this gentleman has been living a good life meanwhile he's been robbing Peter to pay Paul to keep on cycling this through photos of Lamborghinis and nice houses allegedly and people aren't happy and then Theo did a 10-minute video that uh said sorry brother you messed with the wrong rat and this video I think within 24 hours it hit a mill plays photos of the guy all the rest of it so ructions ruction in the podcasting world I can't wait to be able to be defrauded of $4 million that's my dream goal to get to that position [ __ ] yeah you got to be careful man you got to be careful that's why what we're building trigonometry and we've got some big plans Beyond just trigonometry itself is um you know bringing cool people together but doing it under our own steam under our own umbrella having everything managed by us with the right values and the right team uh it's really important yeah for the people that don't know how podcast advertising works it's I handle almost all of my big Partners as well directly but a lot of the time there'll be an agency that sits in between you and them invoicing is kind of hard oh there's an IO and did the deliverables get done and how many numbers did that podcast hit and so on and so forth and also who's advertising at the moment oh there's a new company in town maybe we can increase the the cost or the the price that we're charging for this all that like it's messy and it's back and forth and whatever whatever especially if you're doing lot of little deals as opposed to how I have it which is a small number of larger partners and uh yeah you have these guys that sit in between you and them classic agency model it's like a modeling agency right like you have a model there's your talent you have clients that want models and you take a bit off the top take somewhere between 10 and 25% depending on who the partner is and how big the deals are but they hold the money like they get paid the money from The Advertiser and then less they're cut they'll pass it down to the podcaster these podcast are largely run I mean you'll get your YouTube AdSense Revenue which is not nothing but [ __ ] hell it's not what you're making from your proper partners and uh yeah if I don't know man I mean it's such a it's obviously you can chase these people down for like we're going to [ __ ] get in for fraud but he's just going to declare bankruptcy or [ __ ] move to the Cayman Islands or whatever so yeah I feel this is the first time that we've seen a big case like this which is slap Bang in the bullseye of the anal of of our world right it's the first time that this has happened and it's kind of surprising it hasn't done before but hopefully it's a formative experience that that's one other thing if you want to [ __ ] some people over for $4 million don't [ __ ] people over that have a combined reach of 20 million YouTube subscribers you know what I mean absolutely no it's not a smart move uh but look I I I think we're sort of living through a wild wild west of of the internet I mean actually the wild wild west of the internet is over but the podcasting world it's it's very new so there's going to be a lot of this [ __ ] going on I imagine this isn't an isolated incident actually um so yeah I think we all got to be careful and smart about how the way we build we build things that we build rule BR britania rule britan rule britan on you're actually British unlike me I'm trying rule britania at last night of the proms hijacked by activists waving EU Flags the sight of hundreds of European Union Flags the last night of the proms have prompted an outrage from brexiteers and a call for the BBC to investigate those waving the EU flag in the Royal Albert Hall appeared to outnumber those waving the Union flag at the event which is usually a patriotic display following a campaign by pro-europeans the spectacle of so many EU flags being waved as the whole belted out Rule Britannia provoked disgust from leading Euros Skeptics what's going on I I voted from the guardian I voted rain in the referendum and I've largely I don't know if I've changed my view of that how I would vote but my view of that issue has evolved so much precisely by seeing these [ __ ] morons who just completely incapable of understanding what democracy means democracy means that when you lose you accept it there's some other Parallels for that particular statement when you lose you accept it and we've had for the last s years these just absolute [ __ ] lunatics running around acting like what democracy means is they always get their way and they have to insert this into everything they've just become obsessed uh and it's it's mindboggling to me how how we're still talking about brexit is mindboggling to me I I I don't get it yeah that's insane it's insane that's like a On's old talking point now I think if you were still talking about brexit your brain is broken when do you think that rule gets applied to covid I think that with covid I actually said this before covid was over and it in this instance I get things wrong all the time but this was something I turned out to be right that people will want to forget very quickly and they have done even even I want to move on from Co we talked about it earlier but I don't have any great desire to talk about it most people have moved on without learning the lessons of the thing so I think the reason to still talk about covid is that there is a future pandemic coming and we ought to learn the lessons of this one while we still can with brexit it's a political decision that is not reversible unless you have another referendum which in which case you free to campaign to have another referendum if that's what you'd like I'm not sure showing up with EU flags and the proms is the way to achieve a second referendum just I'm not political expert but that I there is a like a Resurgence of activism occurring at the moment but it's always in criticism of stuff yeah so George Mack one of my friends highlighted that the last time that there was a ticket tape parade for someone that wasn't healthc Care Professionals in America for something not against something was Nelson Mandela in the '90s so you have a culture of activism and of public displays of passion however can only be against something or people are only choosing to do it against something and people respond to incentives what what's that um saying every great every great cause begins as of mov movement becomes a business and eventually degenerates into a racket and there are many people in this country who made a career out of being prominent remainers and when brexit was over what are you going to do so they just carry on and the people they feed this crap like having this crap fed to them so they just they keep going it's it's a it's a reward incentive based system because it's a pointless conversation you're not going to change the result of the referendum even if you succeeded in proving the brexit was a bad idea it's already happened so you can argue for a second referendum or another referendum if you want but that's it right but talking about how sh brexit is isn't about achieving a result beyond your own personal enrichment satisfaction status Etc and and you know FEI this Marina perkus woman there's a [ __ ] ton of these people on Twitter whose only thing that they do is talk about brexit and and get you know thousands and thousands of views it makes me sad to think about people who I know there's like one incident that occurs especially like public stuff like some catastrophe or News St like people that are still talking about meline mccan do you know what I mean like I understand [ __ ] terrible situation but there are people whose entire lives I want I mean they are her parents uh I once stepped [Laughter] into [ __ ] sake constant you was there you left an open goal it had to be yeah you can take the comedian out of Comedy um I once descended I got hit with the [ __ ] like blast radius of um these two investigative journalists I had them on the show when The Disappearance of MN mccan came out on Netflix and these were the two main people husband and wife and I brought them on I thought [ __ ] hell like these are the two these are the [ __ ] experts these are the guys that Netflix went to they must be like [ __ ] legit you any brought them on turns out there is an Ardent [ __ ] group of people who really do not like them on the Internet and I was a part of like meline McAn law for a couple of weeks because this guy has platformed these people that we know they're a part of the like whatever the [ __ ] cover up scheme and they didn't know the thing that went on do you haven't read the original police report from Portugal or wherever she was from and it's there's part of me that thinks like noble cause you're chasing after it there's part of me that thinks holy [ __ ] you've been captured by this one thing like this one incident has just completely controlled your life for forever I mean the one thing that doesn't get said of often enough is you know there's a certain proportion of society that's not mentally well massively over represented online right so I think a lot of people are just you know it's it's it's an obsession of theirs or whatever you don't get to see what's driving this is what I often think when I'm reading Twitter replies CU I'm like well the these people are like you know normal and right and most of them are of course they are but like you read something weird and then I sort of like go okay let's imagine what sort of circumstances I would have to be sitting in to write this and then I see that picture and I go okay this makes sense you know what I mean like when I see people saying really crazy [ __ ] I'm like so this I I just think what we forget sometimes is a lot of people are you know in that situation I was telling you about this preventative medicine place that I've been to in America so it's called Fountain life and I did a podcast with the founder forever ago and thought that sounds [ __ ] cool didn't really know what preventative medicine was although it's kind of encapsulated in the name and I ended up getting like everything done full body MRI CT scan heart angiogram brain angiogram I need to do that man full Works yes I will 100% link you in with them one of the things they do I think it's called contrast uh so you're hooked up to an IV which is uh like a mechanical IV so when they press a button just [ __ ] goes into you so they've got you in the [ __ ] canul or whatever it is they've got the the thing in there and then there's this this huge big wheel spinning around you unbelievably quickly so you kind of in MRI machine it's a little bit more open than this huge fuckof wheel that's obviously like scanning [ __ ] and then this they pump stuff from this machine into your vein and it lights up your heart it goes into the um ventricles of the heart while this thing's in a very specific position over you blah blah blah but the felt sense of it is Heat starting in your neck and going only through your torso doesn't touch any of your limbs going only through your torso and finishing in like your bladder and then it cools off around your bladder for about 20 seconds it is one of the strangest [ __ ] experiences it's not unpleasant strange not I would definitely wouldn't even say it's that unpleasant to be honest [ __ ] it's like must be what feeling like a dragon is like just [ __ ] heat moving around inside of you so yeah that was very interesting I can't wait preventative medicine though we were saying it before playing a game where you try to catch up to a disease that's already happened by Design is a losing fight right absolutely no I I think that that seems to me to be the future of the direction that we're going is like looking into genetic predispositions I know people who are having procedures because they know they have a certain risk Etc you know Chris Hemsworth found out on that disc Discovery documentary that he's got I think he's got um genetic predisposition to Alzheimer's so he's spending way more time with like his family and he's doing other thing He adjusted his entire life because I might not be able to remember this should learn a second language that's protective against Alzheimer's people who speak multiple languages are much less likely to have it oh I wonder might might which way the causal effect works I don't know but I imagine exercising your brain in multiple ways is helpful to protecting yourself against like that yeah I I don't know man you know there's a multiplicity of of um ideas about how we're supposed to live our lives and in some regards it's amazing you know the promise of free access to information 24 hours a day all of human civilizations knowledge at your fingertips that combined with the falling away of The Gatekeepers and this loss of trust in institutions actually makes for really [ __ ] like disquieting Journey for a lot of people because who do I trust do your own research [ __ ] I've got a Life to Live I've got to try and to the family and the kids and the house and the dog and the me and and you want me to I got to go and do my own give me the medical journal I'm going to go through this whether it's about health are carbs good is sugar good what about should we be eating more butter what about meat is meat killing me or should I go vegan what about paleo liver King says I need more testicle like you you know and it's everything and I'll see you and I'll raise you which is what if the way for you to live your life that's optimal is different to mine right my wife's very into aerobic medicine and that's the entire concept of it is the different types of people that need different food different uh different times that they eat they all sorts of different things um so a lot of it is experiential like um I when I found out that you could just eat protein and greens I was like whoa this is amazing and that's what I do I have carbs every now and again but it it fits how I am wired and my wife's the exact opposite she's water she's wind wind yeah you're fire I'm F I'm yeah I'm fire is the lead for me Anton Anton's wind Francis water knew it BL bloody water Prett obvious bloody water yeah water is great if you can get it off the sofa then it it's like a ball rolling down the hill you can't stop it it becomes Unstoppable but it's a [ __ ] hard it takes a lot of fire to get water off the sofa yeah I was fascinated he taught me about this in uh in Austin when we when we were hanging last time I thought it was really fascinating you taught me as well ambient water ambient not not refrigerated water should avoid drinking cold water yeah too much yeah yeah well just that's that's their way way that's how they say it and I'm by no means an expert but generally ingesting cold things is not good for you is is what yogurt love yogurts so much though they you also not great as I understand I mean look I'm not supposed to eat red meat and I eat mostly red meat so you know you break the rules sometimes yeah but no I I understand what you mean that different different sort of Strokes for different folks but [ __ ] hell like even if there can be Different Strokes for different folks I should be able to find a source that can I'm this kind of a person therefore I can do this kind of a thing and this is where if I was more conspiratorial I would say that the goal of a messy information landscape is not to convince you of any one narrative but to convince you that no narrative can be trusted and it seems to me that if I was maybe even a nefarious domestic actor wanting to make a sort of nihilistic fatalistic Placid com not compliant but just like surrendered populace well you know the rat electrification experiment right where they put a rat in a in a Cell where the floor gives them an electric shock and what they found was um in Psychology this is called what's the term learn helplessness yes this is the lone hel experiment where if the rat is able to end the electric shock by pressing a button then the rat will continue to do that if the rat has no control over the electric shock it will just lie down and take it right so I think this um you what you're talking about is a system that creates learn helplessness in people um which is one of the reasons while of course it's super tempting to bash the mainstream media and they deserve a lot of the bashing we need a IMM mediate ecosystem that's trusted we do need politicians who can be trusted I'm not happy with the status quo that we've got at the moment where we trust no one and with good reason but the solution to that isn't to trust the mainstream the solution is for the mainstream to become trustworthy yeah um do you think that's even possible I think it's very difficult in the modern environment it's very very difficult because um I just see that us we're running a small media organization to to you are too right it's like do you get everything right do you is your research always on point you know so it's very very difficult interesting what you said earlier about um there are certain things that they're able to do that we're not you know like factchecking and stuff they're also because of how they're incentivized and subsidized and the expectations like non-sexy stories you know digging into weather and accounts and stuff tell me which YouTube channel is going to predict tomorrow's weather no one M right not sexy enough too much of a cost to be able to do and no one's saying the [ __ ] Met Office they're captured by the woke although there was that thing this year right where they made most of Europe look like it had turned to Ash because anything over 35 degrees Celsius meant that it was like the blackened end of a cigarette so maybe there is a little bit incredible I mean [ __ ] going on yeah well there is a lot of [ __ ] going on what's interesting is there's no I find the climate issue absolutely fascinating it's genuinely fascinating to me because the the historical ignorance on that issue that is being deliberately spread is is like mind-blowing to me do you know the Romans when they occupied Britain they grew grapes on hadran's wall hadran's wall for people listening is what used to protect England from Scot from what is now Scot what is now England from what is now Scotland right one of the northern most points on the British Isles uh now if you don't know Scotland [ __ ] cold it's average weather in I used to live in Edinburgh for seven years average weather in Scotland in in August is like 18 degrees in rain at best right so uh the the what we are being told about that issue is absolutely mind-blowingly incredibly unhelpful and inaccurate wasn't the I think it's still around somewhere in London or somewhere in the South Coast 40 mil Inland from the coast there's ports py castle Yeah pavy Castle you go there and they're like Yeah The Sea used to be here I don't see the SE 200000 years ago yeah so this whole conversation is very very odd to me and uh after my Oxford speech went viral I I had a lot of invitations to go and speak to different people and I I was talking to this guy who works for the Indian government at a high level and he told me when when India became independent in 1947 average life expectancy was 37 years old in India and today it's I think 82 and that's because they burn fossil fuels now are we saying to a billion plus Indian people they're not allowed to do that anymore do you know what I mean like the way we talk about this issue just it it's it it's a cult it doesn't make any sense it doesn't make any logical sense the things that are being suggested that we do don't make any sense the way we're approaching it doesn't make any sense it's it's incredible to me the way this conversation is being had um and I and I'd love to understand you know Eric who you just had on he always says this like we're lying about the climate for the wrong reasons do you know what I mean like it's like his point is climate change is happening and it's a serious issue but we're lying about the way to deal with it and lots of other things around it um that's one of the most weird things to me about what's happening like bjon lomor during that oh my God Heatwave we're all going to die kept posting stuff about you know like actually the the number of forest fires is the lowest it's ever been then the number of hurricanes in America is etc etc etc and I would love to know what's going on with that [ __ ] I would love to know because you got any theories um well one thing that's interested me a lot is obviously people are familiar with the concept of group think but there's another thing which is um the the abene Paradox I don't know if you're familiar with it it's basically the idea that people will often do things because they think other people want them done um and you combine that with mass panic indoctrinating kids into being terrified Etc and I also think human beings love a doomsday narrative and a a portion of the sort of side that I've been arguing on which is this anti woke side is like The Barbarians at the gates now I genuinely think that's true I think we are undermining the founding pillars of our civilization but there is an appeal to that worldview and and if you look back NE neither of us are old enough but in the 1970s the planet was Cooling and everybody was terrified of global cooling terrified terrified of the population bomb absolutely now we're terrified of the depopulation it's it's what we love we love to think and I think there's a kind of like we live in special times oh like a mass solipsism yeah like look look you know the last 2,000 years you know [ __ ] has happened and you know you had Jesus and you had World War II and whatever but now is the real time when [ __ ] is happening you know and who knows maybe it is happening not on this issue I don't think but yeah the idea that we are living through a climate catastrophe seems highly suspect to me highly suspect but also somehow very sexy very sexy now that's not to say the climate isn't changing the climate is changing but the question I think we also ought to be asking is is the climate changing a bad thing well climate related deaths have decreased by 50 times over the last 100 years that's Alex Epstein has he been on your yeah we haven't had him on but yes oh dude you I mean you guys would [ __ ] love him I'm sure uh he's an interesting dude yeah uh climate related deaths have decreased by 50 times more people are killed by cold weather than hot weather yes way way way way more and we know that because this is the thing about the idea of pursuing n zero is it makes energy more expensive that's the method by which you achieve this to some extent uh and T you know pensioners freeze to death every winter in this country now that doesn't seem like a good thing to me I don't think making energy more expensive for poor elderly people and them freezing to death on their own in their homes in the winter I don't think that's what I don't think if we were setting out to improve the world that would be one of the ways that we do that but because we're trade-off denialist because we refuse to understand that actions have consequences good and bad um we ignore that uh and this hysteria it's cult-like and it it it's I find it very strange I find it very strange whatever you think about the climate issue in and of itself our response to it is is strange people are just looking for a cause yeah right and this is why Co was so captivating on both sides because it gave us a righteous War to wage uh and again when you've got a multiplicity of ways that you can go with your life the manbox has been blown open nobody says that you should be this to for masculinity maybe I don't even need to get into a relationship I can just boss [ __ ] or like Insel my way through the next however many decades of my life do all this sort of stuff ah he a single Vector along which I can move I'm no longer in an open field I'm on a set of railway tracks and yeah you know Peterson had the ordering chaos like Paradigm out there uh it feels like there's a [ __ ] hell of a lot of chaos and not a massive amount of order for people and then the people that live in chaos land and prefer that look at the people in order land as tyrants and the people in order Land look at the people in chaos land as [ __ ] Vigilantes and yeah it's it doesn't surprised me man you know and this is where I said to Eric I wish that I'd got Eric to watch the Sam episode before he sat down with me because it was difficult for me to portray a three-hour conversation in 20 seconds but I don't think that those guys are too far apart like Eric's saying we've lost faith in our institutions but we can't get rid of them Independent Media is both advantageous and not going away but we [ __ ] can't like Outsource our sense making to them as well how do we live in this new world what does success look like in this regard I thought it was [ __ ] interesting look I think we we're living in a this is a metaphor that is overused but it's sort of the invention of the printing press kind of situation that I mean that caused two centuries of religious War so I think what H what the social media in particular and the internet more broadly has done it is has broken our ability to make sense of the world and we are all reaching for a way to do that I think it's going to take some time uh and it's not going to be without consequence um you know and I it's it's interesting because the argument about free speech is made very complicated by the existence of social media because there are people who say they're free speech absolutists I've never called myself that because I don't believe anyone is a free speech absolutist what what's your conception on Free Speech Give me the give me the framework well think about this so Elon Musk says he's a free speech absolutist he buys Twitter and then the moment people trigger his personal preferences he shuts that particular form of conversation down right when it was about children or something like that right spreading something it was I think he said it about Alex Jones or whatever right anyway my point is X Twitter whatever has a moderation policy because it has to it has to because the technology is so powerful this is the I'll give you both sides of the argument right but the argument for moderation as an content moderation is that the technology so powerful if you can start an assault on the capital or an undermining of an election or whatever it is or a riot or a a mass shooting or whatever if you can start that from your phone the technology is too powerful to be left un uncontrolled uh and I have a lot of sympathy with that argument however let's flip it the other way around you live in the United States now a country for which I have a tremendous regard the history and the formation of the country is very interesting because it it it it creates a country that is fundamentally very different to every other country that's existed before do you get 1776 if there is Twitter and it's moderated I don't think you do because who would allow a revolution to happen you think King George would allow the spreading of misinformation right so we are stuck in this place where on the one hand yes free speech is absolute and is really super important on the other hand actually most people it's very easy to be a free speech absolutist until you are in the hot seat making the decision and imagine you are in the hot seat and you've got the CIA the FBI the heads of government the whoevers your friends coming to you and going if you don't do something people are going to get killed and they are going to get killed and that's on your conscience it's up to you right so it's a very very difficult thing with the power of the technology that we have that has the ability to multiply information narratives opinions whatever to in such to such an extent so we have not worked out how to handle that at all and everybody who says they has they have a solution to it I'd love to see them be in the hot seat for a day and then we'll see how absolutist they are about Free Speech or how Pro censorship they are because there's a flip s side to the coin which is you do moderation you're going to get accused of bias from both sides y right so I don't have no Envy for those people now I do think they've made a [ __ ] ton of mistakes I'm just saying I suspect I probably would have done too yeah Sam had an interesting analogy where he was saying if I spend five years building up the waking up social media platform and I want only Nazis to be allowed on it I should be allowed to only have Nazis on my social media platform or the inverse I should be allowed to kick Nazis off it's not my job to have people I don't want on my social media platform and this comes back to the like is it the pipeline versus Public Service ARG I mean there's a very strong counterargument to that argument which is the one you've just made which is once you've captured the entire Market you're a monopoly and we regulate monopolies for a reason which is uh to be kicked off to be kicked out of the local pub does not prevent you from going and having a drink in a pub to be kicked off Twitter prevents you from communicating in that element of the Public Square has there been any you know there's there's usually concerns around Monopoly has there been any of that to do with online platform is there such a big as such a thing as too big of an online platform like [ __ ] Facebook and Tik Tok and and YouTube of like you know large portions of the planet as users so this is a new category in that regard absolutely the banks got so big that they needed to be split up you take large things and make them into smaller things right but you can't not with this cuz no one wants to be on the third best Twitter nobody wants to use the third best Google right you do it you split them off and then everyone just converges back on which the Monopoly is what makes it valuable the fact that it's on there is what makes valuable that's why Elon Musk bought Twitter rather than building his own from scratch yeah because he has the money to build his own Twitter but you just can't drag people over enough so the Monopoly is the point this is why it's such a tricky thing a new category yeah of business that's it's that's why it's the point with with sort of frictionless gravitation toward whichever thing you want to choose to use people will always Converge on the biggest the best the whatever one whereas yeah if Jim shark gets two and a half billion users or customers they say you need to split up into JY and shark right or Lloyds and TSB uh it's not quite the same you don't have not everyone's going to converge on this particular one it's interesting um one of the analogies I used to use from my nightclub days and Twitter's kind of like this in Nightlife events it's one of the only Industries where the other users of the product are the primary value of the product itself so if you ask one of your friends on you in your 20s mate how was last night and they'll say mate it was amazing so many girls in that club go hang no I asked you how your night was I didn't ask who were the other people that went to the event you know you don't say why do I use an iPhone I use an iPhone because David Beckham's got an iPhone so I use an iPhone because the camera and the apps and battery life and stuff like that but nightlife was very very interesting in that way which is why it was so mimetic the same reason why like I'll I'll open this up to you internet uh some industry Secrets here sometimes nightclubs hold cues and sometimes they make their cues thinner than they need to be so they look really long and then they take a photo because it looks like it was busy and we did that we did that all the time we still do the fresh as week next week in Newcastle it's exactly what every single nightclub will do but you have that same thing with regards to the social media as well the other users of social media largely determine your experience on it which is why you know Rumble is this and Truth social is whatever right is there a left leaning is there a left well they had one masteron didn't they I don't know what's happened to which tells you quite a lot speaking of masteron I had a guy called Ben Lamb on the show he's the CEO of this company called colossal he is using ancient genetic information to bring the woolly mammoth back to life within 20 years we will have actual woolly mammoths walking on this planet so they've found in the Arctic very good for preserving DNA they found bones and all sorts of other stuff uh Mammoth carcass remains from that they've taken I think it's maybe 40 or 50 different because you don't get a full DNA sequence in any one of them then they've brought them all together used AI to fill in the little gaps they're then going to implant a uh whatever it's called stem cell plur potent stem cell inside of the Asian elephant so an Asian elephant will give birth to a woolly mammoth and then after a sufficiently long amount of time they'll get placed up north and they can do all sorts of awesome stuff uh for helping to fertilize the Arctic uh and he also wants to bring back the dodo bird the interesting reason he wanted to bring back the dodo bird was the reason that the dodo bird was killed off was because of unsustainable uh hunting practices so you'd think that the mammoth has like a a real function right the dodo bird kind people laugh at it for being this stupid pigeon That Couldn't fly away but maybe it was because of the introduction of a particular a particular like predator or whatever yeah it might have been like ecological imbalance that was done by man-made and his point is Mammoth does a thing it's like the the farmer of the Arctic doo bird is like a symbolic representation of do you see all of the work that we had to [ __ ] go to to bring this thing back to life be more careful when you introduce invasive species into different uh different ecologies I was like [ __ ] hell and he's super fired up about it I found him really Charming so I had a conversation with him the other day I thought that was cool so they're gonna bring back prehistoric animals I I think I remember seeing a movie about that yeah I did say you know how far back can we go uh real problem bones bones and teeth don't hold much genetic information which is a [ __ ] massive shame but we can do stuff like saber-tooth tigers like particular types of saber-tooth cats um I was asking him what else did he want to bring back there was this huge [ __ ] sloth this massive thing it was like the largest marsupial or some they live like on an island where there were no Predators I think so yeah this gigantic [ __ ] sloth so there's like a laundry list of different ridiculous MEAP fora prehistoric an or prehistoric like deceased it's called de Extinction uh extinct animals that he wants to bring back I just thought like between that and preventative medicine and Ai and what your thoughts on AI how are you feeling are you uh [ __ ] scared that you're going to lose your job to GPT 6 or I'm not scared I'm going to lose my job no um it's going to make a very significant impact on the world but what that's going to end up looking like I don't think anyone really knows uh I think there's probably there's a lot of fear porn about it and it may be justified it maybe I don't have any profound thoughts about it I think um if you look at human history people always use technology for basically the same things right getting laid killing each other Etc right so you'll produce amazing porn you'll produce amazing weapons you'll produce amazing everything and then human beings are going to do what they always do I think is the truth right um like I remember I think it was Desmond Morris I I used to read a lot of his books I don't know if you're familiar with them but it's one of the things he talked about he said like when you dig up a clay tablet in Egypt from you know 4,000 years ago you read it is basically the same [ __ ] that we talk about now you know my son doesn't call doesn't write to me or doesn't visit me or whatever it's you know Human Condition doesn't change the tools we use to express it do I saw a report from an ancient stone tablet from I think Egypt or ancient Rome uh that was a justification for why this employee hadn't turned up to work it was a sick note that he'd written and it's this [ __ ] elaborate story about what happened and the the wife and there was the catastrophe and all this stuff and yeah you do realize that human nature is pretty [ __ ] resilient yeah over a long enough period of time but coming back here's another thing I'll say about the Free Speech conversation which is that we haven't made nearly a an honest enough case about Free Speech which is why we're having a a stupid debate about it because no one wants to say the truth which is Free Speech has consequences that are bad but like there are people who say atrocious horrific [ __ ] there are people who will use the opportunity to be on a social platform to mobilize and do Terrible Things um now there's a big conversation now about whether there's a lot of anti-Semitism on X and actually there is there is I have to block more people than I used to have to block to uh on Twitter uh but I am still in favor of that being AOW out uh because I'd much rather these people were in the open and people could see what they are and they can have their conversation instead of going off into a kind of like a private place where it's just them and the arguments are never challenged so I think one of the things people don't say enough about free speech is yes it causes harm but the Harm's worth it uh and uh we don't make that argument because it's too honest and you know complicated and unpleasant and whatever but the other side of the argument is terrifying to me I don't think I've told the story publicly but last time I did question time uh question time is this big discussion political discussion program here in the UK um before they do the show they do a warm-up question that's not recorded and it's not released so it's like a warmup and the conversation at that time was Donald Trump had just been unbanned on Facebook and they was asking whether that was okay and they went to me first and I was like look not that I'm his biggest fan but I do think the former or sitting president of the United States should be able to speak in public yeah I do controversial as that is and then they went around the table and whatever and then they went to the labor woman who was there very nice woman and she without batting an eyelid went I think we should have the safest internet in the world and and what safer than North Korea right this is come coming back to this point about tradeoff denialism like they think safety doesn't have a price and the other argument is freedom doesn't have a price and the truth is they both have a price and what we're trying to find is the right point in the middle between those two we want enough freedom and enough safety and that line is somewhere in the middle because if you think about it that that's true of any issue I can end murder outside of the prison system today I can stop murder wouldn't do you and rape do you want to stop murder and rape yes okay let's lock up all men between the ages of 15 and 40 until they age out of it you've ended murder right but we don't do that why not because there's a trade-off between safety and freedom and so it's the same of everything and it's the same with free speech you mentioned Trump what do you think happens in 2024 I I'm not an expert on it but um it looks like they're going to try and put him in prison and it also looks like he might win is that possible yeah can both things happen can you be president from prison yeah you can be president from prison yeah [ __ ] off you can't be president from prison look it up you can be president from prison oh my God and you can run from prison more interestingly I wonder may maybe maybe if you are I don't know maybe you can't be president you can definitely run from prison maybe you get elected and pardon yourself right so you're okay let's say let's say that there's no prison what what happens presuming that everybody is a but why would we presume that I mean I think it's pretty clear that that's what's going to happen okay it's the path that they're on it looks to me like they're going after him we just had Scott Adams on the show uh and this is he said Trump needs to win to stay out of prison that's what he thinks um and I also think that the other thing he said is like he actually interestingly said that he thinks Trump started this because when he talked about Hillary and he said I'm going to lock you up they were like oh oh you want to play let's [ __ ] play so I think they're going after him now and they want to put him in prison and I think they will but you also think that he I think he'll he'll win the nomination for the Republicans yeah and then it's I mean who the [ __ ] look at the last election who the [ __ ] knows what's going to happen but he can run from prison that much I know that's [ __ ] insan vivec ramas Swani playing tennis with his top off whilst Trump's in prison as the Trump ramas Swani 2024 [ __ ] thing that looks like what it's going to be right I think that's what vivec's going for yeah he's angling for it for sure yeah and who do you think gets nominated for the Democrats well he's got he's going to be Biden isn't it I mean they're not going to abandon him unless what he falls down a flight of stairs yeah and in his case it wouldn't even be a conspiracy it's just who do you think's the running mate any idea no man look I let's be honest neither of us is an well although you are now an adopted American so you probably an immigrant to that great nation I know even less than you yeah uh you know I try I the more I the more people listen to what I say the less I try and talk about things I don't know enough about I mean that was a Douglas Murray thing he was someone had asked him about two years ago had asked him why he hadn't written many articles he writes like four or five columns a week it's like 3,000 4,000 words every week and then his books and then his speaking on top someone had asked him something along the lines of why haven't you commented that much on Co he says I'm going to do something which is very rare in the modern world which is to not comment on something which I know nothing about and I thought what a [ __ ] beautiful and outlier philosophy to have but this is you know I see this I see this allure in myself and you know I have to check myself and probably fail almost all the time at doing it uh you people start to listen to you about a thing or for a thing and you go well why shouldn't I comment on the Ukraine maybe my maybe my take on the Ukraine is useful maybe maybe I maybe the world does deserve to hear what my thoughts are about immigration crossing the channel and then you realize I mean I've commented on both those things but thanks mate but you are from the [ __ ] region of the Ukraine and immigrants to the UK yeah right that's a lived experience yes exactly uh I know exactly what you mean your point is very very very valid it happens with comedians incidentally which is why comedians political opinions generally speaking are so demented because you stand on stage all day making other people throw their head back and admire you right or be enthralled by you or whatever and you're like oh maybe I do know something let me give you my opinion about brexit it's like no no just be the clown shut the [ __ ] up now that's why I don't do comedy actually it's one of the reasons it's like I always was I was more interested in making a point than I was in being artificially funny you know what I mean um and I always thought of myself more as a saturnist anyway which was a different thing but yeah uh being in front of a microphone use you with a level of confidence that is very often inappropriate right it's like permanently being on uh oratorial Viagra yeah if everyone's listening to me I must be worth listening to that's that's what happens in your brain regardless of what it is that I'm talking about regardless of the format or the yeah I've got these um these live shows coming up uh toward the end of the year November mid November um that's awesome thank you uh what's your advice for someone who I've touring comic played [ __ ] thousands of shows across your career what do people who haven't put that time in on stage not know about how being on stage works this is going to sound like a [ __ ] answer but actually it's stage time is just like air miles on the clock like with pilot you have to fly a certain number of miles um but you know I always think about you know whatever Charisma whatever else it is is really about a comfort with yourself in front of other people if you're and not everyone is equally charismatic naturally but if you're comfortable with who you are and you are able to do that while you're on stage or in front of a camera or wherever that's that's the the the magic ingredient it's like my favorite quote is the most important thing in Show Business is authenticity if you can fake that you can do anything right authenticity is the key ingredient which is why I think you've been successful I think it's why Joe's successful I think it's why Francis and I have had the success we've had it's I almost feel I don't know if you feel this but the longer we go it's like the more layers of the UND we peel off to reveal more of who we truly are yeah I would say so because you become more comfortable with things that you masked over before yes there's you know uncertainty or like nerdiness I suppose like unnecessary rabbit holes that you want to go down and I've never had this before obviously you had this and you may have had it before comedy I don't know but I never had a single Pursuit that I got to go as narrow and deep on as I have on having conversations with people and when you really really start to [ __ ] like drill down into okay what does what does Mastery begin to look like which I'm not at but I can Glimpse I'm like okay what does that actually look like what does that feel like what does it look like to make rules and then break rules and then put them back in again and do things I'm talking to some of the guys now I want to start doing slightly more um scripted bits as a part of maybe some of our ad reads as a part of maybe some of the intros um and that's like if you actually look at that that's a very inauthentic way of doing what is supposed to be an unbelievably authentic relatable medium we're taking the rules from you know like sitcom Legacy Media to try and apply that to this but I actually think that that's breaking rules that have been made and the reason you can is because you've learned them unbelievably well right it's not not knowing the rules it's disregarding them purposefully yes and I'm just EXC I'm excited by by all of the different options and opportunities and and ways that there's Co stuff to do and it's [ __ ] awesome to see what you guys are doing at trigonometry the what I know about what's coming that more people will find out at some point over the next however long is [ __ ] amazing I think that the UK needs a nice movement a good conglomeration headed by people who understand this industry that can be a platform for others who have amazing and interesting things to say but don't yet have the platform that they deserve to be able to say them on well this is what we've been working on for a long time and I I can't quite say exactly the people in who are going to be involved other than to say they're going to be [ __ ] awesome uh but we want to use the platform that we've built uh to make it so that trigonometry is the main show on that platform but there will be other shows with other people and me and Francis interspersed with other interesting funny hilarious clever commentators Etc so rather than you know two trigonometry interviews a week and some raw shows and a bunch of we've started doing a lot of scripted stuff ourselves comedy uh you know my I re I often record my substack pieces now and we put them out as videos we we had a couple of really viral ones one I did about communism and fascism that you do one about Jordan Peterson recently I did yeah yeah that one's done very well surprisingly um yeah so uh but also we want to start thinking about how you know I'm thinking about us now as a media organization that's my frame for what we're doing want to bring other people through help them make exciting content that fits with the values of what we do that's going to be entertaining for our audience it's going to be informative uh and grow it over time into a real hub for awesome content um that to me is super exciting next phase with this because I think the media industry uh that we are in the New Media industry is is going to change rapidly uh and one of the things I see coming down the pipe quite quickly actually is consolidation uh this idea that you're going to give five quid a month to your favorite 70 creators it's not going to happen the admin alone will kill you right so people are going to want a place and you know obviously our politics are very different but the model of the daily wire is I mean they've executed it incredibly well went to go and see them I filmed on Brett Cooper show four five months ago something like that yeah and uh dude it's a it's a machine workshop for creating content yeah over there's the merch Team all they do is make [ __ ] tumblers and designs for t-shirts yeah here's an entire 3x10 row of editors all working away millions of meeting rooms and here's an entire different building with everyone's Studio it and oh here's a control center that allows us to edit anything at any time and I found this out [ __ ] I'll check that this is okay to say Shapiro has got some special [ __ ] landline thing some special type of connection that runs from where he is in Florida to where the Hub is in Nashville that allows them to cut his show live as if they were on site wow I didn't know that and I've been in that studio a couple of times now in in Florida well I've so I haven't been to that one but I've been to the pipeline where that [ __ ] ends up at yeah yeah yeah been there too it's impressive it's very impressive what they build say what you want say what you want but here's here's an interesting thing for you two two analogous stories that I'm sure that you've thought about before the sort of slow dilution or [ __ ] explosion of The Young Turks and Crowder daily wire that in a you know you're talking about congealing or bringing together meanwhile a lot of the groups and affiliations and organizations you know IDW largely disbanded that was like a loose affiliation that wasn't an organization though loose affiliation of people Young Turks you know you say the wrong thing slightly and downstream from that some people on the network don't agree with other things that you've said you know like [ __ ] apparently bencho was crowd as first ever lawyer or some [ __ ] as well and then you know they've split off and the big conservative and he turns out that he bought the URL only a couple of months after they spoke but months before he announced that he recorded these phone calls and all this sort of [ __ ] so I think that sometimes we're too quick to try and patent match stuff yeah and it's like oh all organizations devolve into you know fractured individual like groups or whatever or all you know power becomes centralized into one thing it's like maybe it's just flug maybe it's just Tides you know maybe there's like es and flows and and and stuff Happ well look I think you're going to be able to continue to do what you do uh whichever way you want to do it I'm interested in bringing uh people through who are very talented but who basically what we had to do with trigonometry and one of the reasons I haven't made their few money uh is that we have a big team as you do but we have we've always had a big team because we wanted to create the foundation for what we're about to do um and so Francis and I really don't make a lot of money from it because we're investing in the future and what I want to do is we've kind of created a factory for making content I want to bring people in who don't want to build their own Factory but who are very good as creators of making content yes exactly I mean car Carl Benjamin Lo yeah he's done that spanked it he's doing very well they they're playing a game of Monopoly around the [ __ ] some like transport police [ __ ] somewhere in the country and it's like they're slowly taking up the the transport people have got the corner office and got all of the ones on either side Apparently one of the guys was telling me that he had some incident that had occurred at the railway line he had some sort of stalker that followed him at the railway line and because it happened at the train station the transport police had pick up on it and he rang them and the guy rang him back and he could hear him through the wall he said mate should I just come through opened the door and was talking to the guy that was dealing with his case like [ __ ] hell that's interesting but yeah you know this it's cool man it's cool and feels way more cool to see it happen from Grassroots where you can watch episode one of some horeshit show thank you with terrible lighting and [ __ ] audio all over the place and no one knows what they're doing ugly host ugly H yeah that hasn't change and then you work to the stage where you're like holy [ __ ] like I can actually see the full trajectory of this entire thing laid out in front of me as opposed to like oh [ __ ] rert Murdoch and is it Shady M shade face invested a nameless [ __ ] like hooded figures drinking Adrena Chrome dancing around a pentagram yeah yeah that's where we want to go I understand no but closing uh closing the loop on all of that I I just think this is the next phase in terms of what we started with which is let's stop whining about how we've been canceled you know I think it's it's SP a thing of mine was like we keep saying well the mainstream media isn't doing this then well let's [ __ ] do it then make your own mainstream media if if you think that they're doing it wrong let's [ __ ] do it right let's do it uh and let's see who wins that's the thing for me is like I love the competition I love uh attempting to build new things the creating the challenge of that working out how to run a business with [ __ ] immigrant mentality man man to me this is the most exciting thing you know we were talking with a good friends of mine last night about how much money you need to be happy and I was like and and somebody said that the statistic are $70,000 a year maybe it's in like $29 but whatever beyond that point it doesn't really make any difference and I was like well for me it does make a big difference and then I thought you know what what if I made a million dollars a year which is way more than I make now but I wasn't having the experience of growing working with my friends all of that and then I was like actually yeah I don't think it is the money it's the it's the doing it it's the creating it's the building this is why of all the people that I love to watch I love Dana White interviews I was about to bring up Dana White [ __ ] I just I cannot wait to interview him it's you got him in America uh we are working on it so he's basically he's open to it but it's just about finding the right time as you can imagine he's a busy guy yeah um I [ __ ] love that guy I love listening to that guy I love the way he dealt with Co I love everything about it you've seen that clip it went super viral a couple of times where he says bet against me [ __ ] can bet against me tell me it's not going to work I love that [ __ ] every single time man like that energy I'm the same I really really enjoy it and I think that it's missing I think that there's not enough like conquerors in the world of personal development and business there is from a performative level but I don't look at Dana White and think that he's saying what he thinks sounds cool for people to hear no I think he's speaking his philosophy forward yes which is one of stand on this hill come and have a swing yes yes and uh I've always been like incredibly competitive I thrive on it I love it um and look one of the things by the way you've taught me I will say this is you were the first British podcaster who was in our space who when I've met has been from a who had a growth mindset which is why I said when we first started how unsurprised I am by the amazing success you're having because you've always had that attitude and it shows and that's why you're successful and that's why you're friends with everyone in the industry you know I I just um I think it's a natural con your Success is Not an Accident is what I'm saying at all it's a natural consequence of the person that you are and Dana why inspires me in the way that I'm inspired by your success as well because it's just like this is a guy who got his friends together they bought this thing for $2 million or whatever it was at some point there were 30 something million in the hole and they just kept going until they crushed and there's a lot of other things that they do very well I think as a if you just switch on the G the fights on a Saturday night you wouldn't see but they they make it entertainment they make reality TV shows out of the content they the the way they present the fights is like very well organized and it's beautifully sharp think about it this way think about what if you watch Boxing now how [ __ ] pedestrian unnecessarily ceremonial it seems this [ __ ] guy carries out a and dos' cap and [ __ ] a list of 50 people who've donated money to this thing we are here in the presence of the the by the Nevada state and the this this this you're like no [ __ ] just tell me the fight yeah show me the fight give me the tail of the tape get me amped up let them punch each other and also uh what they've done incredibly well is with boxing no one gives a [ __ ] about anyone on the undercard or the card They just care about the headline fight yep uh UFC the headline fight May very often isn't the best fight that actually happens on the night they will be the best fighters on the night but it won't be the best fight so fight of the night will I would guess only maybe 30% of the time go to the main car yeah and it's just they they and therefore they are building up other Talent this is what we're talking about with what we're doing they're building up Talent who are not the headline Fighters but you're seeing them from an early start and you follow them and you're like oh this person is getting better and they're fighting this guy and whatever so just from a business perspective I am so inspired by that attitude I think it I love it and I think we're probably going down very different paths in that you've gone to America where that attitude is prevalent I'd love to take it every time I go to America I come away buzzing but I'd love to bring more of that [ __ ] here that's how I see our future sat next to opposite Steven Bartlet yesterday and said if I could gift the UK anything it would be enthusiasm yeah you know there's just so much enthusiasm in America and there's [ __ ] there's also stuff that they're super [ __ ] at and I wish has I wish that I wish I could take some of Britain to America as well I went to LA man I spent three days in La sort of in the kind of like entertainment world you know doing bill Mah and stuff around that that is a different [ __ ] world my friend how so oh it's I am not a religious person not yet anyway but when I was there I was like I can see why people need religion this place needs God it [ __ ] does I'm serious man like the way people think about other people like if all you have is your success if your value derives from your status and success whoo that gets dark quickly wo that gets dark quickly [ __ ] disposable objects every oh man it's [ __ ] the way the way see people see each other is there's no Humanity there it's just like you're an object for for what I'm trying to get to um and that was eye opening to me it made it Hollywood makes sense to me now the movies they put out make sense to me now that I've been there a lot of it makes sense in a way that I'd never realized see I never realized how powerful Hollywood is at shaping our idea of what reality is because the movies like we in in Britain we think we understand America right because we watch their their content that's why but that's not the reality of America at all and the more you travel around America the more you are confronted by that fact you know the more time I spend in the US it it makes it makes me more right-wing in the in the American conception of like states rights because I'm going there's no I I had a fly from Salt Lake City to LA and you get on the plane in Salt Lake City and you arrive in La which is not that far and you go these are different [ __ ] these aren just different countries these are different worlds different Religion different people different way of thinking different philosophy different culture different everything and the values are completely different um you know America is an incredible place um I'm really enthused by it and there's also tradeoffs to to to some of the way that people are there as well so it's and it's actually you know we talked about masculinity and femininity and I think um I actually know what people mean when they talk about toxic masculinity and toxic femininity which is you need both you want to be thinking about it as raising both bars at the same time if you want to be a good leader for example right you need to be strong and you need to be able to say the thing that people don't want to hear and make yourself say the thing that you don't want to say because you don't want to upset people and other hand you also need empathy and compassion too like you want to be raising both up and I see that in the same way as culturally I want to take the best of the US stuff and the best of the British stuff and meld it together into into something really exciting [ __ ] yeah Constantin kissing ladies and gentlemen where should people go they want to keep up to date with your stuff uh the the best place to find my work is trigonometry of course on YouTube and the podcast and I write on substack which has got really blown up at the moment uh I'm excited about that as well so on Twitter you know Constantin kitchen everywhere hell yeah Constantine I appreciate you appreciate you my brother thank you very much for tuning in if you enjoyed that episode with Constantine then press here for the full length 3-hour conversation I had with Eric Weinstein