Decoding the Gurus - Interview with Konstantin Kisin from Triggernometry on Heterodoxy, Biases, and the Media

Episode Date: October 15, 2022

An interesting one today with an extended interview/discussion with Konstantin Kisin co-host of the Triggernometry YouTube channel and Podcast and author of An Immigrant's Love Letter to the West. Topics covered include potential biases in the mainstream and heterodox spheres, media coverage in the covid era, debate within the heterodox sphere, the dangers of focusing on interpersonal relationships, and whether the WEF is really using wokism to make everyone eat bugs and live in pods. It's fair to say that we do not see eye to eye on various issues but Konstantin puts in a spirited defence for his positions and there are various positions where a two-person consensus is achieved. Matt was physically present but he preferred to occupy the spiritual position of The Third for this conversation, given Chris' greater familiarity with Konstantin's output.Prior to the interview, we have an extended, somewhat grievance-heavy, opening segment in which we discuss 1) the recent damages awarded in the 2nd Sandyhook court case against Alex Jones, 2) Russian apologetics and the heterodox sphere, and 3) Institutional Distrust and Conspiracy Spirals. Dare we say this is a thematically consistent episode? Maybe... in any case, there should be plenty for people to agree or disagree with, which is partly why our podcast exists.So join us in this voyage into institutional and heterodox biases and slowly come to the dreaded conclusion that philosophers might be right about something... epistemics might actually matter.LinksBloomberg article on Alex Jone's almost $1 Billion damagesJRE: #1848 - Francis Foster & Konstantin KisinTriggernometry episode with Sam Harris on Trump, Religion, and Wokeness (Featuring Epoch Times ad read)Triggernometry episode with Harry Miller on excessive policingKonstantin's appearance on the Dark Horse PodcastNew Republic article on the Heterodox figures touring for Orban's governmentInvestigative Atlantic Article on the Epoch TimesTwitter Thread by Konstantin on a recent speech by PutinTwitter Thread by Konstantin outlining why he thinks many have grown to distrut the mediaA Special Place in Hell: The Adventures of Baron Munchausen By Proxy

Hello and welcome to Decoding the Gurus, the podcast where an anthropologist and a psychologist listen to the greatest minds the world has to offer and we try to understand what we're talking about. I'm Professor Matt Brown, with me is Chris Kavanagh. And so, good morning, good afternoon, Chris. How are you doing? Hello, Matthew. How are you on this fine, indeterminate morning when people are listening to it as if it's today? I'm all right. I'm all right. I've got a thousand things to do.

Halfway through a grand application, which is very boring for me to do, but I have to do it because it's my job. So this is a welcome relief from that. That's right. Well, we'll try to be efficient so that you can get back to your grind and you're increasing your references, your output markers, your engagement stats, all of those things, you know,

the metrics that guide your life. You should be watching closely. You should be taking notes. You know this this is how you you get that brass ring my son i don't even know what that means it sounds sounds like sexual in your head though so um but i'll i'll just get over it so today is not our d'angelo episode that will be the next one that people hear. That will be our next decoding one. This is an interview episode. I'll talk a little bit about the interview after some other

things that I wanted to re-issue. And the first, there's a bit of a rant, Matt. There's a bit of airing of grievances, you know, that, that kind of thing that happens from time to time on the podcast. But before any of that, I, I did want to mention that there's news about the second trial of Alex Jones, um, with the Sandy Hook parents, and they were awarded just under in total uh just under one billion dollars um which is any way you slice it a hefty award in damages yeah that's that's more than walking around money um yeah no they obviously are not going to get that right my understanding is that it gets appealed and then it gets revised well you know so i think obviously he will appeal that some obvious not obviously but

potentially it will get capped down or there'll be some reduction but but it's starting from such a high bar now that at the very least it looks like even if it came down 80%, it's still a huge blow. And even in that case, the thing which I don't think is a foregone conclusion is that Alex's trial team have consistently performed in an extremely incompetent fashion. They've delayed proceedings. They've refused to comply. And the two court cases that are complete, he had the chance to defend himself. He had years to submit materials and to build the case. And his side failed to do so in both cases to such an extent that there was this rare thing where the trial judge said, you've so utterly failed that you lose by default

right so the the only thing we're gonna ask the jury to decide is what the damages are and that doesn't bode well for his ability to successfully appeal judgments you know so i i don't think it's a foregone conclusion that he will have successful appeals now what he will try to do and what he has already tried to do is declare himself bankrupt, but he's still running a show. And a lot of the court proceedings were detailing that he has, you know, all these shell companies and so on, where he's trying to hide his finances. But I also don't think it's a foregone conclusion that he'll just be able to hide the fact that he has millions, like if he's traveling around in jets and releasing the show.

And this is just the second, I think, out of four court cases that are ongoing with the parents. So there's two more to come. So, I mean, it's just great news. It's not everything he deserves. He's still going to wiggle about on it, but it's just great news. It's not everything he deserves. He's still going to wiggle about in it, but it's something. Well, it does feel like endgame. The endgame could take some time, but it does feel like endgame for Alex Jones.

It's a sad day for his bitch. That's all I can say. Look, the thing that keeps striking me about this is, and I genuinely was thinking about this when I heard the verdict, that, you know, it's a lot of money, right? Hundreds of millions awarded to people in damages is like a huge amount. But at the same time, what Alex and InfoWars did to these parents was they had the worst thing I can imagine.

Like kids, you know you really young kids brutally murdered and then an unhinged conspiracist set his hordes on them that alleged the kids didn't die or in some cases that they killed them you know parents had to have open casket funerals for their children who were shot to show the bodies to try and stop the conspiracists from claiming that nothing happened and those parents it's been a long time since sandy hook they have to re-litigate this event over and over just to try and get something right some punishment for alex and what he did and it like it's no matter what happens with a payment or whatever it's vindication that what he did was wrong and and

harmed them and they've had their chance to talk in court and he's still on this show saying it's a synthetic event and this is all a plan to take him down and i just i just think the more that that becomes apparent and the bravery of the parents the more that that's shown it must at least on some respect feel like they're being vindicated in the fight against what he did yeah like there's external vindication and of course it sounds like a lot of money and he almost certainly is going to be unable to pay all of it probably most of it but there are a lot of affected people there's a lot of people that were hurt by this so i think in that context it actually doesn't seem that excessive at least in terms of specifying what he ought to pay, even if ultimately it can't work. Yeah. So in any case, it's good news, a little bit of consequences for promoting

really some of the most vile conspiracies possible, targeting the parents of dead children, murdered children. So it's just nice to see. So that was good. And there's more to come. And if it does take InfoWars down, that's on Alex. That's on Alex and all the people there. They did it. And, of course, Alex, for the last however many years,

has been soliciting donations and sales to help him defend himself against the globalists who want to shut him down and i've heard that he's he's up to his um grifting in response to this yeah i mean he was doing it during the court case he said it in speeches in court referenced you know websites and stuff where people can donate. He's a scumbag of the highest order. And the other thing that will happen is various figures in the heterodox sphere will wring their hands about what message this sends. And none of them will ever take any time to look at his content or what he does day in

and day out. take any time to look at his content or what he does day in and day out they just knee-jerk react to it and they don't look into the details or any of the circumstances but they're very strongly opinionated about what's proportionate and what's you know reasonable in the case that's probably one of the more frustrating things isn't it the way these very particular issues which have an awful lot of details to them and are their own thing right it's not a two-dimensional talking point for if you're on the free speech side anti-censorship or whatever it's its own thing it reminds me of how the american culture war figures jumped on covid and the australian response to it without knowing anything about it, without looking into it.

No. Just because it was a convenient two-dimensional thing for their culture war talking points. And that is very irritating. And, you know, people like Candace Owens do it, but people who should know better also do it. Yeah, yeah. It betrays the fundamental lack of interest in the topic like

there are different positions that you can take on tolerance of unhinged conspiracism even like abuse directed at individuals and all that there there are various positions that you can take about where the balance and where the red lines should lie. But what strikes me is how often the people staking out positions on that and using Alex Jones as a reference, they don't know any details about the specifics, right? They just know maybe what Alex has said, some very superficial engagement. And it means that they're not actually dealing with the reality of the situation, or they don't know anything about the court case, right? They

just have their intuitions and vibes. And that's what they go on. Joe Rogan and so on is exactly like that. Joe Rogan is someone who has been friends with Alex Jones for decades, and I would bet money, has not watched a single episode of InfoWars in maybe a decade, if he ever did, right? Like, he went on it and he appeared there, but he has never shown that he actually knows what InfoWars is about. Like, he thinks InfoWars is a centrist, you know, taking shots at Republicans and Democrats. And it is not. It is an extreme far right John Bircher conspiracist group. The criticism of figures like George Bush and stuff was typically directed at them not being them not being properly right wing enough and the kind of insular you know isolationism stance that is not something that makes you not a right-wing figure that's very common in american

militia communities and stuff so yeah well anyway good hopefully justice will be served yes yes and uh there's more to come for old alex so let's let's see what happens in the next coming court cases so from that good news matt this is the this is the little grievance component what's been what's been tweaking your style chris what's been grinding your gears recently no well look it actually it kind of relates to what we were just talking about. And I'm sure you're saying you have been following the conflict in Ukraine, right? The ongoing invasion from Russia and the quite impressive defense that Ukraine has been mustering to that. And in recent days, there was an attack on a strategically important bridge by Ukraine, which I think damaged logistic capacities for Russian forces. And Russia retaliated by bombing

a lot of places, including civilian centers. There was a playground that was hit, there were other facilities and there were casualties. But just the targeting of civilian centers was the dramatic thing and it received widespread condemnation. And it just, it put into stark relief for me that all of these contrarian hot take machines, especially the ones that present themselves as the defenders of the West, the principled figures who are standing up for Western values in the face of the onslaught of wokeism and communist values and all that, they've been utterly useless. And if anything, apologetic for Putin. Like Putin's regime, the strategy seems to be that they want to weaken public support in the West for sending arms or sending resources to Ukraine by putting the squeeze on with gas prices and that kind of thing over the winter, right? And a lot of strategists

are saying that, you know, they're hoping that this will dwindle the public support for Western governments supplying aid to Ukraine. And then those they're on the they're on the front lines for putin like saying that we should capitulate to his regime reducing support kind of blurring the lines about who's actually responsible and these are supposed to be the people who value western democracy and who stand up jordan peterson you know and those kind of figures but yeah it just they're as useful as a you know a chocolate teapot that's that's how i feel yeah no me too i know it is it is ironic that these guys that um project themselves as these muscular robust defenders of of Western civilization or the

neoliberal world order, whatever you want to call it. The moment that an actual real enemy comes along, they roll over. They roll over like a puppy dog because Putin is scratching their belly talking about how he's fighting against wokeness and, you know, Western depravity and restoring traditional Christian old-fashioned values. I mean, it's such nonsense. It's so ridiculous. It wouldn't work on a child, but with these guys, it seems to work just fine. Yeah, absolutely useless. And it's that contrast between the claim that they've spent so long, they've read so many books, they understand the psychology of authoritarian regimes so well. And yet, when faced with a clear authoritarian regime and engaged in an aggressive invasion of a neighboring country, they're completely befuddled, right? They're falling for propaganda. They're repeating it. Elon Musk is out repeating Russian talking points, right? Like, all of them present themselves as these great independent thinkers, and they're not. They're absolutely susceptible to the base propaganda coming from an authoritarian regime.

And you just, yeah, it's just, it's so striking. The one thing that they theoretically are good at is riling people up to cheer for like the values of Western society and democracy and so on. And they can't do it. They cannot. No, it reminds me of COVID and vaccines and all that stuff. I mean, because there are exceptions, yeah? Some of our cast of characters, you know, were pretty good on that issue.

Many of them weren't. I think the same is true with Ukraine. And another thing that comes along, it's got nothing on the surface to do with the culture war fixations that people have. It's something if you really are a polling mass and somewhere in the future, who can generate good takes across different fields, then you should be able to say something useful. The majority of them have failed on those two topics. And, you know, but there's been a few notable exceptions, both times. There are exceptions, you know, like Sam Harris and

Claire Lehman on vaccines, for example. And in the case of Ukraine, the guest that we interview later in the episode, Konstantin Kisin from Trigonometry, has been quite strongly condemning the various heterodox figures, James Lindsay and whatnot, that implied that it's all a UN plan and Zelensky is a puppet ruler and all these kinds of things. So yeah, there are real divisions, but it's just how many of the figures that are presenting themselves as independent, critically minded, strong thinkers. And they're just weak and easily manipulated. And I think a lot of it comes down to their need, their narcissistic need to be presenting an alternative perspective. Contrarian.

Yeah. So that's a grievous. That's a grievance. That's a grievance. All right. Got that one off Now The last The last thing Before we switch to the interview

Which has no disagreements Or Grievous is just a friendly exchange Of views Is I wanted to talk about This thing that I've observed And I think lots of people have observed it In a variety of contexts is I wanted to talk about this thing that I've observed. And I think lots of people have observed it in a variety of contexts. But it's this thing about where people become disillusioned with institutions. And from there, you know, there's a specific topic that they see covered in the news

or they see covered on some i don't know some newspaper and then they feel that it's been covered very badly right the examples are legion you can point to the what was that the the school with the kids being shouted at by the protesters all the covington kids yeah okay there we go the covington kids or you know there's the interview with the who person who hangs up when somebody's talking about taiwan these cases or or just you know where the media actually i think they did do a bad job with the covington initially but also there are cases where they do cover scientific issues badly, right? Like they may present false balance on vaccines or global warming or so on and so forth.

Chris, you know, Einstein articles, which claim that like eating chocolate every day will cure cancer. And that's, that shattered me when I've been eating chocolate consistently. And yeah, apparently wine cures cancer though. you're fine like it depends which day that you read it um whether it cures or causes cancer but yes so this thing about the media being bad and the ideological capture of the media it's a common refrain and to travel in the depths of time to a previous conversation that we had on this podcast. See if you remember this exchange, Mark. Because this actually explains it. The reason why there's an asymmetry here is, culturally speaking, the institutions we're losing, right, the institutions that are no longer trustworthy, the institutions where you have to pause before believing the article where you never had to before because you understand how

much ideological capture is working in the background. We're talking about the most important sources of information humanity has. We're talking about Princeton and Harvard and Stanford and the New York Times and Nature and Science and The Lancet and New England Journal of Medicine. But they're not lost. And JAMA. We're talking about all of it, all at once captured by a moral panic, right? Now, if you don't perceive that to be true, you and I have a disagreement about the nature of the problem. But just grant me that I perceive it this way. Sam Harris, that is, and he does perceive it that way.

Yeah, so the one thing there is like, you know, I can't remember if I said this at the time, but I don't doubt that Sam perceives it like that. And I know that many people share the perception, right? But he did go on to clarify that he didn't think they were completely captured just on the way to being captured. So that's at least a step um down from there but the one of the things about that that struck me is

that notion that you could previously just trust the you know nature and and the new york times to like you didn't need to critically examine what they were reporting because they were so good that there was never an ideological concern. And just that was never by read like of anything. You know, as soon as I learned history in secondary school, the thing that they emphasized was look at the lean of the source. Journalists have always been journalists. They always have their blind spots. The JAMA or The Lancet published Andrew Wakefield creating the modern anti-vaccine movement. So, you know, like I don't buy into this previous gold in the age where there was no

concerns that you didn't need to critically consider the information you were receiving. Yeah, agreed. I mean, to throw in a point, people have noticed that the New York Times has become more partisan, I suppose. That tended to happen sometime during or after Trump's initial election, as the rightly mainstream media was going full ball in the other direction. If we take Australia, like our principal newspaper, our equivalent, we don't really have an equivalent of the New York Times, but if you had to pick the biggest one, it would be the Australian newspaper. Now, that has a heavily centre-right slant to it, heavily,

and people know that, and it's been like that for ages. And I think all through time you know newspapers and so i've always had their angle and so i think he is imagining a a time golden age a golden age didn't didn't exist and also is a bit fixated on left-wing ideological capture as if there hasn't been all kinds of ideological captures happening in every direction from forever yeah no i didn't play this just to relitigate the debate with sam but because i noticed it cropping up i mean i have been noticing this narrative cropping up endlessly for years but recently there were two examples in content that I came across,

and it seemed worth discussing. So one is Graham Linehan, the writer for Follow Ted, who has become like an anti-trans activist of sorts and been kicked off Twitter, is a very controversial figure, I think, for lots of good reasons. But in any case, listen to this clip of him being interviewed recently on a YouTube channel. Well, maybe there's an argument, like if you're talking about COVID misinformation, but then again, what is COVID misinformation? We don't know anymore. One of the big problems with where we are at the moment as a society is we literally do not know who to believe if if if another massive pandemic happened good luck to the government trying to get anybody to do anything yeah because

because no one knows whether they were all just conned for a few years or whether their life is life expectancy is being shortened as some some uh people like brett weinstein have said about um some of the uh vaccines no one knows we don't know i don't even know i'm not even sure i'm 100 on climate change anymore because i'm being i've been lied to so conclusively by all the people i used to trust you know yeah so you get at the vax with a hat tip to Brett Weinstein and you get climate change skepticism even coming in. And that's Glennor kind of drawing that. That's his nickname, by the way, Gremlin and Glennor.

From his view that trans stories are completely misrepresented in the media. Therefore, you know, we can't trust them on anything else as well. Yeah. Yeah. So you see the theme emerging here, which is that when people don't like a particular thing, they might be convinced of one particular point of view. It could be about ivermectin. It could be about trans rights issues.

It could be about something else. Could be about the Iraq war. Could be about anything. And then they generalize and decide that they cannot trust institutional narratives on any topic whatsoever. Yeah. Yeah. And so Glenn is a bit of an extreme figure, even in kind of gender critical circles, I think he's regarded as extreme. So him leaning towards anti-vax and climate skepticism is perhaps just like he's already quite far down the conspiracy spiral. But the next clip I want to play, Matt, I want to highlight is from what I consider a more

reasonable source. I listened to this podcast, A Special Place in Hell with Megan Dome and Sarah Hayter. And I've been on Megan's podcast. I enjoy their podcast, but I am blocked on Twitter by Sarah because she got annoyed with me making various critical comments. But part of what I was commenting on was that I observed similarities in the rhetoric that she was presenting and where I've seen similar spirals amongst anti-woke people like James Lindsay and whatnot. And I listened to a recent episode and there was a part, again, talking about media bias and where it leads. And I thought this is a good illustration of a more moderate presentation of distrust of institutions. But to me, it's very much of a piece with where Graham Linehan ends up. so with that said i'm not saying they are equivalent no need to take it you know like as a huge dunk just just listen to the argument made hopefully that's enough to make people not be

extremely sensitive let's see it's yeah i i running i it's a big part of my like black pill pessimism. Just watching this, watching the insanity take hold of on on institutions that I respected and I trusted. And now I don't know, you know, if you can be so wrong on something and you can show yourself as being capable of being that wrong um i suddenly began to feel skeptical of you know a hundred other claims oh see but oh you go crazy that's so bad that's bad yeah it's so bad it is crazy i mean that's how you that's how you get to a point you don't trust anyone or anything, and start watching bizarro YouTube channels that lead you down some weird path. And I can't, but I just don't know how to avoid it. You know, once you lose faith in something,

it's very hard to force your brain to say, no, no, I'm going to trust, I'm going to continue to trust them, despite knowing here's this scenario and this scenario and this scenario in which these institutions or organizations are, you know, simply they're hiding the truth. Strong themes there, Chris. Did you want to go first? What pattern are you seeing here? What pattern are you seeing here?

Well, it's so two things that I would say in response to that is one, I think it betrays this binary perspective of either complete trust in institutions and sources of information or absolute lack of trust, right? You simply do not believe them. Everything that they say is questionable. And to me, there's a very wide range of positions in between that. And the appropriate one, from my perspective, is skepticism of all sources correctly proportioned to the biases of the outlets that you're covering, right? If you know that an outlet is not good on a specific topic because of ideological reasons, then be skeptical of the claims there. But if you know they're reporting about war and

conflicts, it tends to be well-sourced and verified and they have fact checkers and stuff, then you proportion the skepticism appropriately. So like, I would not encourage anyone to take on pure faith anything that they read, be it academic or media-based. But the stance that everywhere is equally untrustworthy and that you find some bad coverage in some place, and this basically means that you can't assume that there are any standards, seems to me to go too far yeah it reminds me of a certain kind of um that psychological term which is around attachment styles helping and there's this insecure attachment where you become extremely enamored of someone become extremely clingy they're just the best thing since last bread and then they do something that doesn't live up to your expectations for this extremely deep ultra high trust relationship that you've got and then your heart is broken and you repeat the process again with somebody else i mean that's the unhealthy way to have relationships

as you say these things are not black and white. Every source of information that's ever existed at the dawn of time has always been colored, infected, biased, whatever you want to call it, by a lot of presumptions and assumptions and just ideological frameworks that exist. Like I, for example, believe that Western media reporting on Ukraine is a hell of a lot more reliable than the Russian media at the moment. But I don't think it's perfect. There's always assumptions and biases that come into play, and you do your best to keep that in mind. So if you read an article in the New York Times, which is saying something that you feel is ridiculous and silly on a particular topic,

as you say, Chris, the solution is not to walk away from the New York Times and start watching crazy videos on YouTube. The solution is to cultivate an appropriately skeptical trust network, not the kind of skepticism that is basically paranoia and conspiratorial reasoning. Yeah. So the issue for me in part is that we've so many illustrations of where this thinking goes when you know you take it just a little bit further down that road and just to illustrate i happen to have another clip handy from a previous episode so see if you remember these figures and then you get on the institution one, which is that nobody, as you know, nobody in an institution now can tell the truth. And it's slightly worse than that,

which is that... I'm used to my saying stuff like that. And then people calling me an extremist. Do you believe what you just said? Yes. I mean, I don't doubt that there are some. My phrase is almost everybody, particularly in an institution, is lying about almost everything, almost all the time. That's where I believe we've gotten. Right. Yeah, so that's where it leads. That's where it leads. Douglas Murray and Eric Weinstein,

for anybody that might be lacking the concept. You could tell by the plummy voice. Yeah, that's where it leads. And, Chrissy, I mean, I get it. It is like a tempting place to go, isn't it? This like total skepticism. It feels like, I can see how it would feel like the right move. Yeah, and psychologically satisfying to go there, right?

Because then you enter another ecosystem where everybody is the brave truth seeker looking through the matrix and you know not not like the sheeple who are buying and the all those things and yes that's the extreme end of the pool but that is where a lot of the heterodox energy has got sucked as we've seen like in the covid pandemic and now with the Ukraine conflict. I think that there are times where you see things covered that you know well. I've had that experience of like being invested in a topic and I see mainstream media and coverage on the BBC or whatever, and they do a bad job. And I can see why they might have done a bad job because you know they have a particular they're taking account of a particular perspective or or so on or they don't have the relevant expertise and it can

disenchant you but like i just feel this is the same way with all the people who reacted to the replication crisis by being like this completely destroys all my faith in science. And you're like, no, that's the wrong takeaway. Like these are not new things. We've seen the consequences of them. But the appropriate thing is that you should always be skeptical of individual studies. You should always have a skeptical eye to things, even things when, you know, the evidence is there but that doesn't mean the climate change research is not dreamily strong in support of certain conclusions it's the misappropriation

of like doubt uniformly across all subjects when the weight of evidence for different subjects is different yeah in a nutshell i reckon try to approach your information network a little bit like you'd approach your social network that is not like an angsty teen like a mature adult and you know each to their own like yeah if i take climate change i could find articles about climate change that are kind of catastrophizing and exaggerating things or whatever. I can find articles which link climate change to aspects that are more politically sensitive around social justice and equality and so on that might be more arguable. You know, you can have your opinion about the discourse around things but if your response to reading an article that

you feel is a bit over the end is to go well now i now i can't trust i don't know anything about climate change now it's all a complete mystery to me then that's the wrong takeaway that's like the position of extreme skepticism is worse than the position of just total credulity because knowing nothing and going around the world as if nothing is known you're an empty vessel um so people just can't operate like that even if you could it would be useless uh what people tend to do of course is that they fill up their opinions with a bunch of worse sources like those youtube channels that sarah hada mentioned reference yeah and i i will also say that like like, I think

people are just, they're bad on this map when it comes to like COVID. Part of the thing that they've taken is that we basically don't know anything. If the vaccines actually helped and we don't know what are the likely long-term effects and so on. And that's wrong. We know that the vaccines were extremely effective, that without them, there would be many more deaths. There's so much empirical validation from independent countries, independent bodies showing that the vaccines helped in all circumstances. But apart from some media person, Rachel Maddow, or some politician over-egging it, the scientists didn't say that, right? The literature never said, we're going to get a vaccine that will completely solve everything. There was always recognition of limitations. And that's what's happened with every vaccine in history.

So things being imperfect, new strains emerging, this is what happens. It's not perfectly possible to predict these things, but I feel like people treat the information around COVID, around like debates about how long precisely you should keep schools closed and stuff as somehow also associated with, you know, the vaccines and whether they actually were useful and stuff and it's like no that isn't actually legitimate to be it the scientific evidence completely supports vaccines as an extremely effective treatment to reduce the severity of the pandemic and reduce deaths right there would have been yeah many more well this goes to your point about not approaching things as like an all or nothing proposition, not lumping, like there's a bunch of stuff we know about COVID, there's a lot of stuff we know about vaccines and alternative

treatments like ivermectin are the source of the virus. Some of these things are known with a huge amount of certainty, some of them with moderate certainty. Some things like exactly how many weeks we should close schools for, we know with relatively little certainty. But of course, in a pandemic, authorities have to make the best decision they can at the time. Now, finding out in retrospect or having your doubts about one of those things not being perfectly accurate in your view and then saying, well, that just destroys my confidence in the entire edifice. That is a silly way to approach your knowledge of the world, to be informed by science and journalism. Science isn't perfect.

Journalism, I've experienced science journalism, is even less perfect. And the political discourse around it is more imperfect still. But, you know, be an adult, adult grow up put on your big boy pants just to be clear mine is not directing that at any particular people it's just a general a general point but that part of people you know kind of referencing towards now they are skeptical and they've learned pessimism and stuff and and you know i kind of feel like you didn't like you should have been skeptical beforehand and you should be still skeptical

now and you shouldn't be like wildly swinging to these extremes and we've seen that often people when they become skeptical of mainstream authority they they become incredibly credulous to alternative claims and bad sources of information. So, like, just everyone be careful out there unless you end up here. Unless one gives up any attempt to believe any of this. And this issue about well i don't know what vantage point i want to pull back to to analyze this with you

the total collapse of institutional integrity across all sectors across the entire anglophone world almost maybe there's a pocket of integrity somewhere but it's very hard um wtf right yeah that's what's at the bottom of the spiral okay that's where you go so just i'm just saying i'm just saying. I'm just saying. Anyway, Matt, this was quite a long opening segment, but it's been cropping up so much. It has. I'd just like to emphasize, yes, like you said, my comments are directed at the material you played for me, Chris.

Not at anyone else, least of all the upcoming guests who you spoke to and had a good talk to. Oh, yes, yes. So we did have a conversation with the host of Trigonometry, a heterodox sphere podcast, as you can tell from the title. And we had a robust exchange of ideas, opinions about things to do with limitations of the mainstream media institutions and also issues with the heterodox sphere and Constantine's particular channel, potential biases or not, and COVID pandemic and stuff.

So kind of related to stuff that we're talking about. But in any case, let's not waste any more time and go and listen to Constantine. And one final thing to note, though, is Matt is very quiet in this. He was there. He was watching. But he's quiet. And that was by his choice because we had a limited time with Constantine. And he felt I was better prepared with the information.

Right, Matt? I didn't stop you. You didn't stop me. That's correct. And it was actually a good thing too because there was thunderstorms rolling in and um my power went out towards the end so it's all for the best you you did in the end have a robust exchange with constantine on on and in the aftermath so there is that you did have your moment to to yeah that was good yeah so that was that um and in any case

we'll hand over to chris and matt in the past take it away okay so today with us we have constantine kissin from the trigonometry podcast um so podcast host and comedian i guess constantine is that a accurate description as of now i haven't done stand-up since the pandemic started uh so a comedian in retirement or on a break or whatever it is i i still write a lot of satirical stuff so i sort of think of myself more as a satirist but yeah that that's my you're right about my background podcast a comedian satirist whatever you want yes and i think you're based in england right you're that sounds threatening that sounds threatening in your accent. But yes, I confess, guilty. Yeah, I lived in London for, I guess, about 10 years.

So I'm familiar with that neck of the world, but not based there now. So Constantine kindly agreed to come on because I think we talked a while back about potentially having a discussion about like areas that we might agree or disagree on. And then I listened to your recent appearance on Joe Rogan and some of the same issues that I thought would be useful to discuss came up and you kindly agreed to and broadly speaking i would say i don't know how familiar you are with our podcast but we we tend to focus on online gurus or secular gurus so this is people that fall into the jordan peterson nassim taleb we've also done ibram candy and uh who's that guy that we the the science writer matt that we like you're here not like i was gonna say no not elmer i gotta say you guys treat your guests with a lot of respect i love it yeah well so um just just to highlight that we we do try to range widely across the guru sphere

as it exists but we we do have a tendency to focus on the kind of idw heterodox sphere in part because that's where a lot of the most dramatic and bombastic style gurus are the Weinsteins, for example. But in any case, one of the things that we've come across quite often is that people within the heterodox sphere tend to see a much bigger concern emanating from the mainstream institutions and mainstream media sources and and have less of a concern about the the kind of alternative eco spheres and and guru figures that we talk about so i i thought it might be good to talk about the relative problems in in each of the spheres and where, you know, you might disagree with our emphasis and we might disagree with yours. And so maybe it would be useful just to start if you kind of outlined where you're coming from or where you see your position being, you know, in the online discourse

or commentary space or whatever you want to call it it's a very big and open question i suppose so the way i the way i self-identify as a is a kind of enlightened centrist uh i don't uh i'm not interested in partisanship or party politics at all in fact i can't really understand people who are party political. It boggles my mind. It's like how you could wed yourself permanently to one side of the political spectrum in hugely varying circumstances. I find strange that people are willing to do that. I'm certainly a fierce critic of a lot of the mainstream institutions and the direction they've taken. I hope that that hasn't prevented me from being an equally fierce critic of where the old media is going wrong. And the war in Ukraine and the way some of the supposedly heterodox people are

covering that is something I've been calling out from the moment that it started. Because that is an issue I understand pretty well being half Russian, half Ukrainian, having grown up in both countries, et cetera. So when I see people going off the deep end on that issue, I haven't been shy about calling that out. But yes, I guess that's my position. I see myself as being somewhere in the center, looking at both extremes and going, you're both crazy. In terms of the mainstream and the alt media, I mentioned some of the areas where I think the alt media can go wrong. I do think you have to be careful when you're comparing institutions or systems of communicating information. I'm going to sound very woke

here, but it's kind of like stupidity plus power. If a guy on a YouTube channel with 30 followers is saying something really stupid, I'm less concerned about that than I am about a mainstream publication saying something equally stupid because the reach is bigger. And so I do think the mainstream media, which for the moment still has a much bigger reach and therefore more influence, should be subject to more scrutiny. But apart from that, I don't know if that gives you enough to start sticking pins in me. Yeah. So I know, for example, that you had run-ins with James Lindsay over Ukraine

before his ignoble exit from Twitter discourse. And I think in general, you have been in the trenches over the Ukraine conflict. Even actually on the Rogan appearance, I noted that, you know, he was more skeptical about the validity of sending arms to support Ukraine or American involvement. And you push back a little which i think is to your credit um but so i guess from what you said the value of like being able to criticize people on on both sides of the political spectrum and including people that might agree with you is something that you would seem to regard as like an important

value, right? Well, Ukraine is just the latest example. So I've been very clear, for example, that even though because of some of the people that I've interviewed, there are a lot of people that think I'm massively on the Trump trend. And I have friends who are big Trump supporters. I'm good friends with someone who used to work for Donald Trump at a high level. But I'm very clear that what I was very clear on January the 7th, on the morning of January the 7th, when appearing on the Lotus Eaters podcast with Francis, that I thought what happened was a complete abomination and completely wrong to the, let's just say say dissatisfaction of many of the people in his audience um so i'm i'm not really ever hesitant to criticize either side when they're

doing something wrong uh i just see that the threat from the i don't like the word woke anymore because it was first it was co-opted and now it's been re-co-opted. But the threat from the progressive left, particularly in the reaction it will trigger from the right, is to me a far bigger concern than some of the other stuff. So that's why I've been a vocal critic of that because I think it's very, very dangerous. dangerous yeah so i i guess one of the points that i would raise is that whenever i listen and we listen to a lot of content where people are being critical about the you know institutions or or the the kind of social justice left or progressive left or however you want to frame it. And one thing that often seems to go unmentioned in those conversations is, first of all, that there is a very large receptive audience for critiques of those mainstream positions

and of social progressivism on the right. And those tend to be not what you're talking about with like small YouTube channels. You have huge media entities, you have national newspapers and you have like channels dedicated to pumping out right-wing takes. And I often see that if it is recognized,

like just kind of gestured out that there is right- wing media, but the right wing media is like a huge ecosystem. And in terms of disinformation, or, you know, kind of pumping out partisan rhetoric, it seems equally, if not much more guilty than the left wing media ecosystems. than the left-wing media ecosystems. You know, if you're looking at Breitbart or the Epoch Times or the Fox News, there's definitely a very strong tolerance there for partisan positions.

So I wonder, in those terms, I rarely see that, like on Joe Rogan, that's very rarely discussed, for example. And do you think that is a case of there being just more of a focus on on the issues of the left or why why does the right-wing ecosystem tend to get a pass in heterodox spaces I don't think that it gets a pass I just think to liberal people like me and Joe, the idea that Fox News is full of bullshit and is right wing propaganda is taken as given. I don't I've been on Fox News once, I think. I don't consider it to be an objective source of information, just like I don't consider CNN to be an objective source of information. source of information. However, when you talk about the ecosystems being equal, I wouldn't agree with that. I mean, look at, so I went on Twitter this morning and I saw a tweet from Joe

Biden talking about how he was basically criticizing the right. But what he was saying is we have a situation where people either, if there's an election, either they win or they believe that the election was stolen. And this is treated as a perfectly reasonable thing for Joe Biden to say, even though it's very clear that the mainstream media spent four years after the election of Donald Trump in 2016 lying endlessly about his election, the reasons for his election, claiming it was Russia collusion, Russia interference, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, to the point where at the time, even I believed it. And one of my reasons for being so disenchanted with the mainstream is how much they've been lying to us. So but nonetheless, Joe Biden can go out and say that

and no one is going to flag up his tweet for misinformation in the way that they would do with someone on the right if they tweeted something like this. So I think the idea that there's an equal and opposite echo chamber is untrue. I think the number of outlets and how seriously they're taken by the ordinary person is completely different. If I was to give a normie friend of mine, quote unquote, an article from Fox News, the way they would treat that would be very different to an article from The Guardian. Even though in my experience, they're both equally frequently, equally as inaccurate as each other. And in some cases, The Guardian is more inaccurate and the bullshit that they're peddling is worse.

And so I think that to present these as equally significant is inaccurate, in my opinion. In that case, Constantine, like one thing I'd push back on, though, I listened to Rogan's podcast, and we've covered him in a couple of episodes. And it's not accurate to kind of present Joe as having just a complete wide variety of perspectives in terms of political takes generally speaking he tends to be more in line in modern terms with the right wing positions like the conservative right i mean the politicians that he is in favor of are like DeSantis and Bernie Sanders. But if Bernie Sanders, Joe said that he would possibly vote for him in the primary. And then when it was presented as an endorsement, he himself clarified he wasn't endorsing, just saying he liked Bernie.

But he had Bernie Sanders on the show and he had Cornel West on the show, who's a radical leftist professor. I'm not, by the way, I wouldn't claim that Joe's show is entirely politically balanced. No show can be. And I am not pretending that Joe is a left winger. I think by the current conception in the current climate, I think he would be sent to right on most of his politics. Although I actually, I think I pissed him off a lot by saying that open borders is a really stupid idea. I heard him later talking about how maybe it's a good idea. So I don't know what his take is on that. But I don't think presenting him as conservative is at all the correct way of presenting his views. Yeah, I think that probably Matt and I have a slightly different perspective. although we'd agree with you. There are various issues where, you know, like people are complex. They have,

you know, different takes on Joe has a famous clip where he took the urban, the task about the need for regulation. Right. And Candace Owens on, on the green stuff and others. Joe is someone who seeks the truth and he's willing to challenge people when he disagrees.

So granted the, you know, no person, there are exceptions but like the not an outright polemicist but i think if you take a look at joe's content over time and especially during the covid period it's heavily leans towards the right-wing narrative and not not lightly so because we covered his his episodes with robert mcculloch and peter uh sorry peter mcculloch and robert malone and the level of kind of endorsement of conspiracism around covid it wasn't it wasn't a light asking questions it was not too far from Majid Nawaz. And those figures were introducing that the

pandemic had been planned by the authorities, that the amount of deaths were being covered up, that people with bullet wounds to the head were being counted so doctors could profit, that no doctors were interested in curing the disease and so on. And these were quite extreme no doctors were interested in curing the disease and so on. And these were quite extreme positions. And then Joe made it clear on that, that he saw it as his duty to kind of promote these people that were being silenced. And that to me is not taking, you know, I'm just going to see both sides and ask because when Joe had on figures that were pro-vaccine and there was much less of them, on figures that were pro-vaccine and there was much less of them, but when he did have them on, it was a grilling of, you know, taking them to task. And that is not what happened with the people who were anti-vaccine. So I know that's a specific example, but I think that

Joe and other figures in the heterodox spheres have a tendency to retreat to, in the heterodox spheres have a tendency to retreat to, we're just asking questions and having a debate when the reality is more advancing a specific narrative. And often that narrative is on the right. And I actually think it's perfectly fine for that to be the case, but just it feels like it should be acknowledged more than it is. So I agree with you on a lot of what you said, and I disagree on some of what you said. So what I agree with you is, I do think when we had the peak of lockdown and vaccine enforcement and talk

about mandates and all of this stuff. I do think during that period, the people that Joe had on and the way that he talked to them, he accurately described in that it was more to one side than the other. And the way that guests from one side were treated was different to the guests from the other side. Where I don't agree with you is first of all, I don't see those issues as being right versus left at all. There were plenty of people on the left who were leaning more in the direction of people like Robert Malone and Peter McCullough, and many, many apolitical people too. So I wouldn't see that issue as right and left, even though I agree with the premise of what you

say. And I said at the time, by the way, that I don't agree with Robert Malone and whatever, but I'm glad Joe had them on. And I'll tell you why. I don't know. I didn't discuss this with Joe. So I don't know why he made the choices that he made. But from my perspective, the biggest issue that was happening at the time was the idea that government must censor people for having these discussions, that we must prevent people from having these conversations. And to me, that's a very dangerous idea. I don't agree with this at all. And I was relieved that the most powerful podcaster in the world was forcing the government to essentially take note of the fact that they don't have that option, if that is what they're

trying to pursue. So while I disagreed with some of his guest choices, and I disagreed with the balance, you know, I actually when he said, I'd like to have people from the other side on, I suggested a couple of people to him that I thought would put the balance view. And, you know, it wasn't like he sort of like cut me out and never talked to me again. Do you know what I mean? Like he's open to hearing people's ideas. So the main point of disagreement with you is I don't think it's right versus left. And number two, I don't necessarily see the job of the alt media as always being balanced.

The job of the alt media is to provide balance. These are very different things. So if the mainstream media refuses to do something, then Joe Rogan or Trigonometer, whoever may do that thing. And then they both look unbalanced. But what we are trying to do is say, look, there's this other point of view that's not being represented. And I think it's important. And in the case of the pandemic, my big issue was, we mustn't force people to take a vaccine and we mustn't censor people who have even wacky, crazy ideas about the COVID, the pandemic or whatever, because at the end of the day, if we want to live in a real world society, we've got to be able to have these conversations

openly. And so I was simultaneously not happy that certain people were being promoted and also happy that they were not being censored. I know that's a complex position and it sounds quite difficult, but that, that, that's the way that I was coming at it from. So, uh, and I, and I think that that will happen on a lot of issues. If you look at the people we had on trigonometry during the pandemic, I think we were a lot more sensible about it. We, we had one guy on who I was dr sucharit bakhti uh who i think people would consider very problematic uh and really we we it's not like we were endorsing his point of view we just we wanted to hear what he had to say for himself youtube then banned that video and and

gave us a strike for that uh based on the rules, the way they updated them at the time, our interview did break the rules of YouTube, and we therefore didn't appeal it because we felt it was a fair thing for them to take down. And after that, you know, our own views on that issue evolved. When we had COVID, we put an episode out talking about how bad it was for both me and Francis discussing, you know, our updated views and all of me and Francis discussing, you know, updated views and all of this stuff. So, you know, we tried to, I certainly always tried to approach it from a position of honest inquiry. And my concern with all of this stuff is the mainstream media were not doing honest inquiry. They were, they became a propaganda wing of the government, governments,

which as we now know, were prioritizing public health over truth. And I don't believe that a government should ever do that. So there's a bunch of points that you made there, Konstantin. I know, I will say that I saw your episode where you discussed with David Fuller, you know, and he was critical about some of the ways that you covered COVID. And it was to your credit that you had that discussion with him. And he pushed back quite forcefully, I think. And also, the subsequent discussion that you had with Brett Weinstein on his podcast, just personally speaking, it was very nice to hear someone saying that I don't have the expertise, I don't think I should be commenting on this. And, you know, not everybody needs to

issue their takes on everything. People are not experts on every topic. So I acknowledge that, you know, you have had, I'm not saying that your position on this has been entirely, you know, like just endorsing right wing partisanship or that kind of thing. But some of the bits I'd push back on are when it comes to figures like Malone and McCulloch and the kind of thing but some of the bits i'd push back on are when it comes to figures like malone and mcculloch and the the kind of anti-vaccine movement although traditionally there's been opposition on the left and right particularly the kind of uh health and wellness left side of things and the anti-vaccine movement has traditionally had a lot of support from kind of mullers who link it to autism because of andrew wakefield and that kind of thing right so but but i would definitely say in covid

era there is a strong right skew to anti-vaccine sentiment and that you can see this by the fact that most of the figures who you're talking about not getting a hearing in mainstream media are regular contributors now to right-wing media. Fox News, or in most cases of the people that appear in Joe Rogan's show, Infowars as well, which is like- May I pause you just for one second? I don't mean to derail you at all. I would agree with you in terms of the media that have these discussions, but that's not who's in my experience, who's watching that. I know loads of people in my life who would come up to me and go, thank you so much for talking about, you know, the vaccine mandates and all of this. And when I speak to them, my sense is

they're not political at all. And they're certainly not right or left wing. So I agree with you that the right wing media grabbed that as an issue, and promoted it because it aligns with some of their beliefs. I don't think that's who the audience are. Obviously, I don't have the empirical data to be able to prove this to you. But I'm just going based on my own experience. Sorry to interrupt. empirical data to be able to prove this to you, but I'm just going based on my own experience. Sorry to interrupt. No, that's fine. And I would take the point that there are plenty of people who think there are valid debates to be had about school openings or the length of lockdowns and so on. But I tend to think that, you know, I'm not saying there are no missteps or that there aren't cases where there's a skew towards the government's

position on like mainstream media or that kind of thing. But I do think there was a lot of debate about those topics in the media and like that the media is now such a fractured ecosystem that it was not difficult at all to hear. that it was not difficult at all to hear. In fact, if anything, it's more like it was very easy to hear the contrarian takes on things. And that when it comes to like stuff like vaccines, you know, there always has been a vocal minority anti-vaccine movement with Andrew Wakefield, RFK Jr., these figures, right? And typically, they're not given mainstream media coverage because their position is not equally well supported. And those figures are now, like for example, Brett Weinstein headlined an event with RFK Jr. and Dale Bigtree and a whole cadre of anti-vaccine figures in the UK. So the linkages between the modern kind of critical of COVID vaccines is very tied into the

anti-vaccine movement. And in the same way that we don't say we need to give equal hearing to the climate skeptics as the climate scientists, it does feel that you can create a false equivalence by seeking out, you know, the kind of meme is in Joe Rogan's forum, for example, that nine out of 10 dentists recommend this. Let's get that one dentist and see what he says. Right. So what about that? Yeah, I hear you. So first of all, I don't think the equivalency you're making between

vaccines that have been tried and tested for 30 years and the current conversation about COVID, well, not the current conversation, the conversation from around a year ago, are in any way comparable. I don't think they're the same issue at all. There's a big difference between a set of vaccines that's been around for decades and a new vaccine whose long-term consequences we do not by definition know. So that's the first point I'd make. The second point is, I don't think it's true that the contrarian view was represented in the mainstream media at all for the first year or so of the pandemic.

I mean, I remember the press conferences Boris Johnson was having where never a single journalist ever questioned him about, have you done some analysis on how many people lockdowns will kill, right? And that is a fundamental input data set that is necessary to make a decision. If you're making a decision between two choices, to go left or to go right, you need to know what are going to be the outcomes of the left one and what are going to be the outcomes of the right one, estimates at least. Otherwise, you cannot make that decision being fully informed. So I don't agree with you that it was well represented in the mainstream media.

fully informed. So I don't agree with you that it was well represented in the mainstream media. In terms of Brett and all of this stuff, the only issue I have with the way we're having this conversation and I'm really enjoying it is you're kind of getting me to defend other people a lot whereas I prefer

that you just attack me and I can speak for myself. Because Brett, I can tell you what I think about Brett, I disagree with Brett's approach to COVID. I also am not qualified to agree or disagree with Brett's approach to COVID. But I instinctively do not agree with the way that he's approached it. At the same time, Brett is a very good friend of mine. He is a man I respect tremendously. Him and Heather are two of the finest human beings that I've ever encountered in my life and fortunate to have encountered quite a few very high quality human beings.

So I believe in being able to disagree with people about important issues and still appreciate the good qualities. But yeah, if you want to have a go at me personally, I'd probably find that a lot more interesting and easier to to have that conversation so the uh the there's some interesting points constantine and i think the the point that you raise at the end about the personal relationships between people is a good point to to switch to from the covet. But I just want to respond to one or two of the things that you said, because Matt and I have spent quite a bit of time looking

at anti-vaccine rhetoric. And this has been an interest long before COVID. There's papers from, you know, 2012 and stuff talking about the kind of tropes that you see in anti-vaccine communities. And I can say with complete confidence that most of the rhetoric that is in the COVID debate is exactly the same as the anti-vaccine rhetoric that you would see 20 or 30 years ago with the same arguments about it's not all vaccines, it's these vaccines, it's long term consequences of triple dose MMR vaccines, and so on and so forth. And you're right that we we cannot know, with 100% confidence, the long term consequences of these specific vaccines yet. But billions of people are being dosed. And if there was a genuine danger, and the technology was very risky, there is debate about those kind of things.

Like the doctors are not villains wanting to mass murder people. So this would be the greatest controversy ever, right? If that in 20 years, hundreds of thousands of people are dying early and so on. So the clinical trials that were conducted were extensive and they're misrepresented by the anti-vaccine people. But I know, I'm not asking you to get- Sorry, but that is an argument I'm making with all respect. I was talking about lockdown, if you remember.

So in terms of the anti-vaccine stuff, I'm not saying I thought Andrew Wakefield was going to be pro the COVID vaccine. Of course he wasn't. And of course, all the people who are anti-vaxxers before are going to be against this particular vaccine. I'm not disputing that at all. What I'm saying is that there were a lot of people like me who were simply saying, is the lockdown the solution to this problem? And is having a second and a third one the solution to this problem and is having a second and a third one, the solution to this problem. I never got an answer to that. Nobody ever, ever. And I speak to people in government. I speak to ministers in the British government occasionally. None of them can answer this

question. How many people did you estimate that lockdowns would kill? And if you can't answer that question, how on earth could you have made the decision to lock down in the first place? And how on earth could you have made that decision to lock down further? And when I'm talking, by the way, about kill, I'm not talking about the vaccines going around killing people. I'm talking about we do have a record in excess deaths at the moment. It's not just suicides. It's cancer treatments that end up being canceled. It's whatever it is.

And it's going to run for decades, the consequences of these decisions. And all I wanted, number one, was to have a transparent conversation about that. Number one. Number two, I thought that in the desire to achieve their public health objectives, which is to get everyone vaccinated, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The government attempted in this country, I mean, don't even get me started on Canada and Australia and Germany and Austria, but even in Britain, the government went way too far in attempting to deny people their basic civil liberties and their rights and attempting to force people to take a vaccine against their will. I mean, I made this point on Joe Rogan, I'll make it again. Does it make any sense to anyone that you've got a health minister like Sajid Javid, who is not a medical expert, forcing doctors to have an injection that they don't want to have? Yes. Does that make any

sense? It makes sense to you? It does. Okay, explain to me why that makes sense. Because the public health procedures are not just decided willy-nilly and yes i've heard you in other contexts talk about how people with utopian worldviews about how you know the the world can be perfected and if we just get the right political system that one that's inaccurate representation of human nature and it can lead to very bad places, right? You're copying worldviews. So you have to price in constantly when you're dealing with government, when you're dealing with public health, that there will be miscommunication,

there will be inefficiencies, there will be like miscommunications, right? And so when you price that in, and my experience of the pandemic, it does sound very different to yours, because I did see not only in mainstream media, like politicians being questioned about policies, but also in podcasts with virologists who are very strongly pro-vaccine debates about what public health measures are appropriate and robust discussions about it. And it was presented as if that was never allowed, but I heard it all over the place. And I heard heterodox people endlessly complaining, Joe Rogan complaining every week about it. And the reality is that you weren't forced to get vaccines, right? Unless you were working in health services or education or government. But the reason for that is to avoid vulnerable populations being impacted. So there is a public health rationale for it.

And individual doctors saying, well, I don't want to do that. That is their right to do so. But you can't say that if you have a regulation where like, if a doctor says, you know, I don't believe that I need to clean my hands in order to stop viruses spreading. And he's medically trained. You don't say, well, you know, he's got reasons for thinking that. How many doctors are doing that, though? Well, yeah, but...

No, no, no, no, but this is the point. This is exactly the point. Because it wasn't 0.000001% of doctors saying, I don't want to have this vaccine. It was quite a lot of them. And we were going to lose a lot of medical staff when my son was born four and a half months ago, several of the nurses who are the midwives, rather, who helped to deliver him in private, told me that they were not vaccinated, and that they were going to leave the National Health Service if they were forced to do it. So I'm not just talking based on just, you know, something I invented in my head. I'm telling

you, there were lots and lots of people who were medically qualified, who did not want anything to do with this vaccine. Now, why they did or didn't is a different issue. My point to you is that in a situation where a significant minority of doctors and medical experts don't want to have a vaccine, I don't think it makes any sense for that to be enforced upon them, particularly when we don't have any evidence that the vaccine was hugely effective at preventing transmission from one person to another. Yeah, but the vaccine has proved extremely, like when we're talking about the impacts of COVID, right, you know, the death statistics and stuff make it very clear that this did lead

to excess deaths across the world, a large impact on public health services and medical facilities and transmission. The way that it's often presented in, I find in the heter sphere, is as if the vaccines are practically useless and do nothing. But when you look at the literature... I don't think that at all. Yeah, I'm not saying you specifically, Konstantin, but I mean that transmission relatively less effective with later strains, right? With the earlier vaccines. But in most cases, not on the par just less

effective and when it comes to stopping the spread amongst the population of the virus public health has to take something of a one-size-fits-all approach i mean you i'm sure you think that but i disagree with this completely. I mean, this argument can be used to push all sorts of tyranny onto the population because if the interest, hold on a second, let me answer your point. If the interests of the nation require some sort of health measure, I mean, you know, we've got to protect the NHS. Why don't we just shoot obese people? They are the real epidemic. They're the ones that are doing it.

How far do you take restrictions of people's civil liberties and forcing people to inject stuff in their body? Why don't we invent a vaccine for obesity and force fat people to take it? Almost everybody in our society would completely agree that that would be unethical. Forcing people to have an injection that they don't want to have would be considered unethical in any other circumstance other than when everyone shits the bed over COVID. So how about childhood vaccination for things like polio and tuberculosis,

which are not optional? I'm in favor of it and I want my son to have it. Why? Because I think those vaccines would be advantageous to him. But if they are not mandated, like childhood vaccination, and you choose not to have it for your kid and the polio virus comes back or your child gets polio and is badly injured. So your preference would be that we don't mandate any vaccinations for any diseases and allow them to return? Or is it specifically COVID? I think it's slightly different with children because children are incapable of making that

decision for themselves. We're talking about adults. So if we're talking about adults in the context of COVID, I don't think COVID vaccines should ever be mandated, no. But just COVID vaccines. So you do think there are circumstances where if the disease is infectious enough or debilitating enough that it could be right to mandate it in order to keep immunity and to protect children? I think for me, the issue is less about the disease, although obviously that's a factor. I don't think it'd be stupid to pretend otherwise if ebola had the the levels of spread of covid we'd be having a different conversation although i don't think you'd need to force a lot of people to take it

because they'd be taking it themselves but it's for me the issue is children children you know they have to have adults make decisions for them and that's a bit different so that that would be the difference for me but my my point is something else, which is the taking away of people all sorts of rights that people normally have during COVID. That was the thing that annoyed me. And those were the principles

that I thought were being violated that I thought were important to stand up for, which is why, again, I encourage you to ask me about my views as opposed to defending people who think the vaccine is, you know, a 5g plot or whatever the hell that is. Sure. So that leads, maybe we can leave, you know, the vaccines behind. I know, it's a topic that endlessly becomes a sinkhole for conversation. And I appreciate you responding about it as you have. But the point that you raised before that, Konstantin, was that, for example, with Brett,

you might disagree with his views about COVID and you're not responsible for his particular views and that you find him to be a very nice person, principled person, and his wife, Heller, as well. And that raises to me something which I hear a lot of in, again, I'm going to use the term like the heterodox space or whatever, but there seems to be an over-reliance on this heuristic.

If somebody is interpersonally nice to you, that this is somehow indicative that they can't actually be promoting misinformation or actually be... Hold on, hold on, hold on a second. The very first thing I said is that I don't agree with Brett about COVID. Okay, so let me finish the point I want to make there, because I'm not saying that that that is the case sorry I mean more in line with like in most occasions I don't find it hard to imagine that people are able to have

positive interactions with someone so recently with your appearance with Rogan you talked about meeting Sebastian Gorka and him being a fun guy to hang out with to go to a shooting range to eat steak or whatever the case might be. And I find that to be like, when it's presented as a novel insight or something that we need to bear in mind, it strikes me as potentially rather than insightful and interesting to be obfuscating of the reason that that person's criticized. Because usually the reason is not that they are a fun person to have dinner with. It's because of the particular ideology or information that they're promoting that they get the criticism. And I see constant kind of refrain to personal relationships and the importance of them, as if that is something that we aren't considering enough. And that if, I mean,

if you could sit down, I know this is going to, I'm just, I'm using an extreme example. I'm not saying Sebastian Gorka is this, but I mean, if you could sit down and have a nice dinner with Viktor Orban and, you know, he can have a nice chat with you about the problems of woke culture, it doesn't mean there's any less repression of the media or authoritarian steps to control opposition parties in Hungary. And yet you have lots of people who are reeling against authoritarianism and the woke and going to Hungary, right? Have I done that? Again, you're talking to me about other people. I am not a fan of Viktor Orban, have never defended him, have never commented about him, not least because I don't know anything about Hungarian politics. But let me come back to your point about what I said about

Sepp Gorka. You're doing a disservice to what I said, because I didn't make the point that Seb Gorka is a good guy. And I went for steak and shooting guns with him and therefore, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. What I said is, not only that, we had dinner with him and some of his conservative friends. And what I said was, these are people who love this country. They care about this country. They're actually well intentioned, even if you may disagree with the way that they behave. And that is my point. My point is twofold. First of all, we have to get back to the idea that we can disagree with people without hating them. And I do think that is something that we've lost a lot with the emergence of social media. Would anyone disagree with that? Number one. Number two, when you talk to people whose behavior you

sometimes don't approve of or don't like, you may often find out things about them. So for example, Seb gave me a copy of his book and I read the first few pages on the plane as he gave them to me. And he talks about how both his daughter and his son were being, I think one of the newspapers called his 17-year-old son a traitor in a national newspaper headline, and his daughter was nearly kicked out of her university for, quote-unquote, being racist, for being his daughter and for being his son. Now, do you think it's possible that the version of Seb Gorka you see on CNN defending President Trump after he's constantly lied about for four years and his children are being attacked. Do you think it's possible that the angry version of him that you see on TV has something to do with those things as opposed to do with what kind of person he is? Because my four and a half month son is next door. And I can tell you, if someone was going after him in a national newspaper,

because he's my son, I would go fucking ballistic, right? So in some ways, the way that Seb behaves sometimes is quite restrained given the experiences he's been through. And I'm not saying that justifies his behavior. I'm not saying I agree with everything he says. I don't support Donald Trump in the way that he does. However, I do think that is important context that gets lost when we have these debates in this clip, clip, clip, this is the worst of Seb Gorka ever kind of way. And that was the point that I was making. It wasn't that the fact that I had stake with him means that he's a good guy. I think I'd push back that I sincerely doubt one, I would not automatically

accept the way that Gorka would present how he's been treated or it may be the case that he's had harsh media coverage and his family have been targeted, but I doubt that before those events that he was a very mild-mannered soul who was not a polemicist. I think that there's a culture of victimhood on the right, which is quite ironic because there's a constant complaining about it on the left. You yourself, Constantine, have mentioned in lots of the discussions that you've had with people that we shouldn't spend so much time feeling sorry for ourselves because things are pretty good for us. We've got big audiences and people listen to us and we have nice conversations, right? And I completely agree with that position. But I guess the point, one of the things that you emphasized at the start of the conversation was the importance of being able to criticize both sides and people that you broadly agree with. In some ways,

that's often more important than being able to attack the people on the other side of the political aisle. And that's part of why I am raising these examples, like people traveling in Hungary to Orban or the anti-vaccine stances. Because what I see, for example, is that when people in the heterodox sphere get together, they're often fine to talk about their collective enemies, the progressives and the woke and what they're doing wrong. And they avoid those topics, which might be... What have I avoided? This is a problem when you talk about Hungary. What am I avoiding?

This is the problem when you talk about Hungary, what am I avoiding? So, for example, Konstantin, would you, if you had Peter Boghossian on, are you likely to hold his feet to the fire about why he's in Hungary doing tours for Orban's government? When you've spoke with Douglas Murray, have you ever raised the issue of his defenses of right-wing populist leaders across the world because i don't think his support for right wing populist leaders around the world needs defending uh i don't know anything about peter bogosian stores i like i said i don't think about hungarian politics if i did i wouldn't hesitate to ask him about it at all no but in isn't there something where you can basically take that stance because you know you can prepare for interviews right and you can check what stances people have taken on things and if you choose to go with like let's say you had james lindsey on right and you and many people

have and discuss with him the issues of the social justice left, his kind of main focus, but they astutely do not discuss his conspiracy. Again, you're talking about other people. I had James Lindsay on my show with Peter three years ago, at which point we talked about the things that were interesting to us at the time. We haven't had James Lindsay on the show since since and one of the reasons is his Twitter behavior to me makes him a completely discredited person and so the if we wanted to have him on and talk about his Twitter behavior we'd happily do that the problem is a bunch of people have already done that with him he has his bullshit excuse which is Twitter doesn't matter that you know what what do you want me to do with that get him on for an hour and and and talk about that there's no benefit to that i said what i said uh about james both publicly and privately

i think i chose my words uh very carefully and uh described what i think he's become so my problem with this conversation i'm really keen for us to to have the robust discussion is you keep presenting other people as being somehow contaminating of me when I'm not connected. I'm not doing those things. It's not about contamination. It's about willingness to challenge and more if people are going to- Tell me, where am I not challenging people that I should be? Okay. So an example, you interviewed Brett and Heller about their book, The Hunter Galler's Guide to the 21st Century.

Yes. This was at the height of their promotion of anti-vaccine rhetoric. Sure. You didn't raise it at all. And other people have noted that when they were arranging interviews with them, their publicist asked them not to address that controversy. their publicist asked them not to address that controversy. You got a lot of criticism from your audience that I saw at the time for not raising that issue. Michael Shermer did the same thing. So that's a case where it looked a lot like you were avoiding a controversial issue to talk with someone about a position that you agree. That specific issue, that's not accurate

because what happened is we had Brett on like a couple of months prior. And so to talk about the COVID stuff again, would have been completely pointless. I think that publicists did say they wanted to talk about the book. I was much more interested in the book than talking about COVID. That's why we didn't talk about COVID. So but I don't see that as shying away from challenging people on difficult things. It's just we wanted to have a conversation about a different issue at the time. And as you saw in my conversation on Brett's podcast, I had absolutely no problem saying what my opinion was about the issue of COVID and what my disagreements are with him. So it's not an unwillingness to challenge. It was just an individual instance in which that was how it was. Again, if you've got other issues where you think I'm not challenging someone, I'm open to hear it. Okay. So another example then, that is specific to the podcast. So when you talk about enlightened centrism and an approach which is apolitical, the advertisements on your podcast, for example,

are for Nigel Farage's cryptocurrency. No, no, no, it's not cryptocurrency. Sorry, no. It's for an investment company that he founded 30 years ago that gives people investment advice. It's not a cryptocurrency. Okay, so Nigel Farage's... No, no, it's not Nigel Farage's.

It's an investment advice company that happens to have been founded by Nigel Farage. I'm not selling it as you love Nigel Farage, therefore buy this thing. It's useful information for people who want to make investment decisions. Okay, but would you not... So I think the branding involving Nigel Farage is incidental to that product. Suggested by the people, that's what they wanted, right? We advertise people who give us money. But that would be my question to you then.

So the Epoch Times, for example, is a far-right publication by most metrics that has promoted like anti-vaccine the big lie it's it's promoted q anon conspiracies and it's associated with the falun gong movement and it is not hard to locate critiques of it now when you have advertised for it it's quite a ringing endorsement and the point i want to make there is if the majority of advertisers for you are leaning in that particular direction. You have no evidence to make that claim whatsoever. You've picked out two examples and call that the majority. We advertise hundreds of different businesses every year. Would your contention be that those are unre represent my contention would be that the overwhelming percentage I'm talking 90 plus percent of our advertisers are apolitical in any way shape or form so in in that

case Constantine if a far-left organization wanted to promote on your show would you also read an endorsement what depends on depends on what it was i'd have to say i don't know what you mean by far left first of all we've had people who i consider to be uh you know weird lefties of the kind that i massively disagree with who are currently peddling the ukraine nazis bullshit and whatever people like aaron mate and jimmy door and whatever and if jimmy door wanted to advertise his YouTube channel on our channel, I'd say, you know, we'd have to have an internal conversation about that. But also, I don't know that your characterization of Epoch Times

as far right is accurate. That's certainly not been my impression when I've read it. So I don't accept that either. I don't think Nigel Farage is far right by any stretch of the imagination uh so again out of ukip yeah ukip were not far right nigel farage is a thatcherite economically and he was pro-brexit where's far right in that what what's well for example like during the Brexit campaign, the poster that they produced with the large crowds of people, colored people, anti-immigration sentiment. I don't think wanting to restrict immigration makes you far right. of joining the EU and there would be millions of Muslims entering the UK with visas because that was likely to happen. Politicians lie to embellish their case all the time. I didn't

think that was a good look, but I don't think it makes them far right. So what is far right? It's kind of neo-Nazi. Neo-Nazi, yeah. Or someone who's openly fascist that's what far right actually means remember these words have meanings so they have meanings so you would say for example the fact that the left-wing media has been spreading all this stuff calling these people far right doesn't make them far right these words have meanings my my ancestors were killed by far right people right so i'm kind of picky about these things it's important certainly so like Right. These words have meanings. My ancestors were killed by far-right people, right? So I'm kind of picky about these things. It's important. Certainly. So like Stephen Miller, for example,

in the Trump administration, you would regard him as moderate conservative. I've never met him. I have no idea who he is. I've never, don't think, interacted with him. But so you suggested,ine that like you know you wouldn't advertise something without an internal discussion and from your reading of the epoch times it's not far right it's you know it's maybe conservative tinged or that but yes i mean in your political spectrum so things like the big lie promoting that is is simply simply a moderate position. What's the big lie? The big lie is that the election was stolen by fraudulent voting behavior.

No, to me, that's an extreme position that I disagree with very strongly, as I disagree with the spreading the big lie about the 2016 election, which the mainstream media comfortably spread for four years with absolutely no criticism, I imagine from people like you as well. Well, so the distinction there would be that while there's plenty that you can criticize about, for example, Rachel Maddow's position, if people came in that Russia completely decided the election for Trump. I would agree that's not true. But equally, the notion that there was no interference from Russia in leaking the emails from the Democratic Party or arranging various online campaigns to support Trump, those have been documented quite extensively to actually have occurred and at every step along the way, denied,

denied, denied. Yeah. And the people who peddle the big lie can give you lots of, lots of little bits that in their mind add up to influencing the election. The definitive answer on 2016 is Russian involvement did not decide that election. That's a fact. So, right. And that's the thing to just, sorry. But you see, you're, you're, you're not being fair to these two different sides.

I think they're both completely wrong and both deeply unfair and both shouldn't have been done. What you are doing is you're downplaying the behavior of one side and playing up the behavior of the other side to make it look imbalanced. To me, there were two big lies and one was peddled by every major institution in America and around the world. The other one was condemned by the very same institutions that spent four years peddling the first big lie. Surely an important difference is that the Democratic candidate conceded on the night and the party acknowledged the transfer of power. And also to speak back to your point that I would automatically defend a claim that the left wing would make. So in the

Brexit campaign, when people claimed that Cambridge Analytica swayed the election by targeted psychographics, I wrote two articles explaining why that was very likely not the case. And the Brexit vote was just won by, you know, standard political campaigning and I would say plain-up xenophobic sentiment. But in any case, you didn't need the psychographic explanation. It's just, you know, there was an anti-institution sentiment and dissatisfaction with the EU. So that's what you get but I think that that speaks counter to the point that I wouldn't be willing to criticize that but I definitely do not think there's an equivalence between the Trump and the Republican Party the

mainstream Republican Party stance on the fraudulent nature of the election and how many are willing to now endorse that stance versus the accusation that the Russians were responsible for the election. Because I don't think that is the same level of support. So let me take back the allegation that you might be unfair about it because it's unfair. I don't know. We were talking about media coverage. You started this conversation by talking about the Epoch Times. I don't see how it's any different for the Epoch

Times to suggest that the 2020 election was stolen after left-wing media spent four years suggesting that the 2016 election was stolen. Now, the behavior of Trump and his supporters, I've already told you my position on January the 6th, but that's separate to the issue of media bias. And so if the center right and the center left both want to lie about elections, I disagree with that very strongly, which is why I immediately said that this bullshit about the election being stolen, you know, shouldn't get all this attention. But I'm just not comfortable with all this pearl clutching about the epoch times when CNN are perfectly allowed and have and did for a long time, not only lied, lied, lied, lied, lied, but also then in 2020 participated in what was effectively an attempt to steal the 2020 election together with

the big tech companies by suppressing information about the Hunter Biden laptop, right? That was an attempt to influence that election. And we know from polling afterwards, the democratic voters, the people who voted for the Democrats, some of them would not have voted for the Democrats for Joe Biden, had they known about it, right? So all I'm saying is, I'm not comfortable with all this pearl clutching. Yes, the Epoch Times is right of center. I don't think it's far right by any stretch of the imagination, at least in my opinion. Do I agree with everything the Epoch Times published? God, no. Do I agree with anything any publication publishes? God, no. Do I agree with

everything guests say on Trigonometry? God, no. But i do think we need a media ecosystem where people are allowed to express their opinions yeah i'm fine i think i completely agree that you know there's there's a broad church for different opinions and political stripes and i would actually argue that there is a lot of space in the media ecosystem for for a whole range of views to me the apple times is quite clearly farler right than breitbart which i think that most people would recognize as being on the farler right of the spectrum but well i have to look more into it i haven't read everything on the epoch times uh my main contact with it is a guy called yanni kelek who hosts a program called american thought

leaders which uh uh you know again some people i agree with it, he hasn't, some people I don't. But my experience of him has been that he's very honest and very principled. So I can look into more. That certainly hasn't been my impression from a cursory look at it. Yeah. And I will say, Konstantin, I'm using that example purely because you asked me to speak to examples. No, no, no. Like I said, I'm very, very happy for you to challenge me. So let's just come back to the point, though, right? We started this conversation with you saying that the majority of our advertisers are right-wing or far-right or whatever.

I think we can agree that the majority of our advertisers are not, right? The majority of our advertisers are not right. The majority of our advertisers are apolitical. Nigel Farage's investment company, not Nigel Farage. You've got to understand this, right? We're not advertising Nigel Farage, right? Although we've had Nigel on the show a couple of times, I have absolutely no problem with, with, with Nigel Farage. I don't agree with some of the things he said. And the last time we had on, I challenged him very strongly, not least on Ukraine yet again, right? So it's not like I'm unwilling to challenge him, but we weren't advertising him. In terms of the Epoch Times, you know, we've talked about that.

That's one example. I don't think it's fair to deduce from one example that our advertising strategy is aimed at people on the far right or even on the right frankly i'll definitely concede that i haven't done you know an inventory of your advertisements this was just take my word for it yeah it was on the sam harris episode like you know there was quite a jarring yes from the conversation with sam to the epoch time so that's what it was that made it stick in my mind but in any case constantine i know that you had a hard out and you have a young infant i can do another i know i can do another i'm guessing another five minutes if you want and then i'm

really gonna have to run if you want okay yeah that's that's great i i just didn't want to uh no no no i really appreciate you being respectful but i i'm enjoying this conversation so much i'm gonna move something and uh we'll we'll do another five minutes go for it okay so uh now my brain wasn't you've been extremely quiet i feel bad if i don't at least give you the option if you wanted to chime in uh no by the way just being quiet so you guys would have room to talk in the time that you had. No, sorry, my brain was heading towards wrapping up as well, so I wasn't preparing something.

Okay. There was one last thing I wanted to bring up, and I wanted to see if this was your position or I'm presenting it unfairly, and it's a bit different from the things that we've been talking about, so I'll try to do it quickly. I listened to your conversation with the ex police officer talking about the overreach, you know, the police visiting people's house over yes, yes.

Uh, about tweets and Facebook posts and that kind of thing. Right. And I actually would agree with a lot of the points made about potential overreach from the police in those kinds of circumstances and how the balance between freedom of speech and the policing of offensive like hate speech right there is clearly trade-offs there um and the one thing that did strike me in that conversation was though that there was this concern expressed about graduates being preferred for the police. And there seemed to be a consensus, and I included you in this, and if I did it unfairly, please correct me, but that the view was the police

force is hiring graduates because they want people who are kind of drenched in woke ideology that will make it so that they can promote a progressive agenda. Did I say that? I mean, so I think Harry, was it the name of the guy that said that? Harry. Harry Malaya. said it? Harry. Harry Malaya. He talked about this primarily, but yourself and Francis seemed to agree with this assessment that like the emphasis on hiring graduates was likely to be because they wanted to instill a particular ideology. And I got the impression that in general, you viewed it as graduates being sought was an indication that an institution was likely to be captured. So

is that not a fair representation? I'd have to go back and see what I said. I certainly, I'm not conspiratorially minded. So I don't think that they're getting in graduates because graduates are woke and they want to wokeify the police. That's not really my opinion. No. Okay. That's good. That's good that's good that was part of what i wanted to check because and i guess that would be the kind of thing where i would say in my case and obviously i'm argumentative and have my little bugbears but i would tend to want to push back when somebody like a magic now Nawaz or James Lindsay introduces this notion of like a grand conspiracy to you know wokeify the world in order to introduce Chinese style communism and

I know that you are concerned about the far left and its its blasé nature to the threats of the far left but I wasn't sure if you found those conspiracies like the focus on the wf and claude shrub to be equally concerning or if you agreed with them i i just wasn't clear i don't agree with them i don't agree with them uh as you can probably tell from the conversations we've had on trigonometry have you ever heard anyone uh invited on to talk endlessly about the WF? I think one guest mentioned it in the last question we always ask, which is a complete free hit. And generally we don't tend to debate that one.

It was just sort of left as a free hit for them. With what Harry said, I have to go back and see what I said or didn't say, but it's not my view that there's a conspiracy to infiltrate the police with graduates. That does not mean that I don't think that the College of Policing, for example, wouldn't quite like to have as many graduates as possible because it makes their job easier, which is enforcing their particular views, right? I mean, the way that conversation might be is we've got to get the right people in, quote unquote, right? I mean, the way that conversation might be is we've got to get the right people in quote unquote, right? And that is people with the right mindset who are able to take the police into the 21st century. That may be the way that that conversation is being had. And it doesn't

seem to me conspiratorial to think that that might be possible. But no, I'm not really on board with most of that stuff. I don't find it particularly persuasive. And the more I learn about the world and the more I interact with people who are actually in government or actually at the head of the police or actually doing stuff or whatever, the more I realize how bloody difficult it is to get anything done. And so the idea that a few people in the room are going to get together and have this sort of conspiracy seems to me just, you know, impractical, factually inaccurate. I mean, I look at trigonometry, we have, in addition to the three of us, Francis, myself and our producer, we have seven staff, like, we can't get an episode to go out on time the way I want, like the idea that there's,

you know, people maybe, maybe they're that much better at conspiring than than we are but yeah i'm i'm not i'm not i enjoy it good like i'll happily go and listen to david eich for entertainment but i don't believe it no yeah so that that maybe that's an interesting point to round off on that i i find that there is a there's a spectrum of concern, right? And there is sometimes the presentation of all our institutions are captured. Science is no longer trustworthy. Governments are just purely getting ready to make everybody eat bugs and live in pods, right? And to me, that veers distinctly towards hyperbole

and kind of catastrophizing in the way that Jonathan Haidt would. And I kind of see, again, I know you're not going to like me doing this constantly, but I tend to see amongst the heterodox, I'm not necessarily saying you're a greater concern about the hyperbole and catastrophizing of the left. I agree. I agree completely. And I guess I have noticed in your content, a note of optimism that you think there is a greater tolerance for different opinions emerging

and there is a kind of pushback for different perspectives. So I might be giving you an undue note of optimism, but I've noticed when people are saying everything is going to shit that you do on occasion push back and say, well, you know, we are having this conversation and that kind of thing. So yeah, I don't know. I'm going to do a lot more of that going forward too. I'm going to do a lot more of that going forward. Cause I think it's important. We are, we are shaping the culture by the conversations that, that we have, uh, influencing it. And I think the doomsday scenarios from both left and right are completely unhelpful and actually very arrogant in some ways. There's a sort of hubris to this idea that we are the first generation of people who can't solve their

own problems. Actually, I think we can. That's a positive note to end on. And we often criticize the people that we listen to for undue and lengthy back padding about the conversations that they've had and how great it is that they're able to do these things. But I genuinely do appreciate you coming on and having the discussion robust as it was. And yeah, so if you want to tell people where they can find you, if they want to hear more of that kind of thing, please do. I'm not very good at doing the wrap up. No, no, I really appreciate it. First of all, I really enjoyed this. It was a lot of fun.

I'm glad we had it. I can be very passionate, particularly when I'm defending things that I believe in or defending myself or whatever. But I hope no one confuses my passion with a lack of respect or a lack of enjoyment. This is exactly the sort of stuff that I love doing. So first of all, thank you. People can buy my book.

It's called An Immigrant's Love Letter to the West. It's a Sunday Times bestseller. They can find my podcast, which is Trigonometry on YouTube and on all the podcast apps. podcast, which is Trigonometry on YouTube and on all the podcast apps. And I'm on Twitter and Substack, which is where I put a lot of more substantive pieces out at the moment. People can find me there as well. My name is Konstantin Kishin and thanks for having me. Cheers, Konstantin. And that was very professionally done. It was. That's how you do it when you're good at this kind of thing. So cheers for coming on and, yeah.

Well, that was that. That was that interview. How was that? It was good. I'm now casting my mind back to the ghost of Christmas past, remembering how the power went out. I listened to almost all of it enjoyed it i thought you both argued your corner pretty well and then what did i do afterwards i probably probably had a drink

well i i'll definitely say one thing to constantine's credit is that you know you can take whatever position you like about the arguments that myself and he made in the preceding interview but he did listen to the argument that i made and then allow me time to respond in full which i'm just saying that was nice that's nice to deal with that's you want. He was responsive to points and he did engage in turn-taking. So full marks to Konstantin as a podcast guest for that. And Andy also, you know, robust exchange. He wasn't walking away in a strop at the end and that kind of thing. So that's also to his credit.

That's right. 10 out of 10 for interlocutory skills. You too. you did well as well um you both took thank you fine thank you fine perfectly fine all right i did all right i did all right right well enough of that so we've got two things to do before we're out of here one of them is our themed review of reviews segment and the other is give our patrons a quick shout out so for the reviews ma i'm gonna keep it short this week and i i have i i like this this is a good review i'm gonna try and encourage more of this we have a review the title is terrible and trite um and it says two wannabe sense makers

fail to make any sense five stars that's from dad bod ryan um in canada so i i appreciated that right that's pretty good short and sweet yeah i like this etiquette by the way of the nasty verbal review accompanied by the five stars. Yeah, it's ironic, isn't it? That's irony then, obviously. Could be. Could be. Could be.

It is. I'm not sure. Well, okay, I am a little bit confused about this because here's another review. The headline is an unsmiley face, unhappy face. And it's by Anonymous6480. It says, they don't have the balls to take on the gurus of race,

Glenn Lowry and John McWhorter. Five stars. There's a pattern here. And listen, by the way, you can, I mean, you probably can, but you can't just nag us. We're not little Pavlov's dogs. You can't say, oh, yeah, I bet you couldn't beat up that guy over there.

Oh, yeah, I'll show you. If we cover Glenn and John, it would be because it's a good thing to do. Not because somebody goaded us. It's a good thing to do. Not because somebody goaded us. But, yeah, I wouldn't have any trouble, like, covering them at some point. Yeah, actually, yeah.

I mean, Glenn Lowry, isn't he? He's an opinionator and is probably one of the better spoken advocates for. Are you doing under Barack Obama? No, no, no. Oh, my God, Mark. No, no, no. I was not thinking that at all. I was thinking, like, he's smart, right?

And he's an academic. He's a professor or something. And he puts forward what is a conservative point of view in a way that is a lot smarter than how you often hear it. So I like a challenging guru someone that actually i knew what you mean i just didn't know all the people yeah yeah that didn't say i i realized i tripped over that triple okay move on let's move on well look so i i don't i think glenn lowry is like sort of center right, but him and Joe McWhorter are often discussing racial issues in America. It's not something that we love digging into. It's not a super fun topic to cover.

But, you know, we will do Robin DiAngelo next. So, you know, there we go. Yeah, you can't blame his Kenyan listeners for wanting to stay away from that. Who wants to go into American racial politics? Come on. Yeah. Come on. Americans, if you were an Australian and Irish,

and you had the option not to be embroiled in that, you'd be tempted. You'd be tempted. I mean, you guys have got that choice. You're stuck in it. You're going to be doing it forever and ever and ever. But, you know, we don't have to. We can do other things.

So, ha, did that. And there's enough gurus doing enough guru stuff. But, well, in any case. And here's the last one then. If we take those as the negative reviews, they're not really negative. You know, they get five stars, but they'll count. And the last one is, like an intellectual Abbott and Costello. Five stars.

This is from Feral Fluffy Bunny australia and these guys are quirky and opinionated which is fun chris is hilariously garrulous and matt is like his straight man they do seem to have a thing with eric weinstein but realistically who doesn't i enjoy their rambling discussions nice that's yeah that's nice're the straight man. I don't mind being the straight man. You know, we've both been watching It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and I did a little survey to see who we most resembled, and there is no straight man in that, but I got the highest amount of votes for who I was hoping for, and I forgot his name. Dennis Reynolds. Dennis Reynolds. Dennis Reynoldsnolds and then i asked

people and i think you did a survey too who you are yeah and and who won who won your survey charlie charlie yeah charlie charlie now look you know it's not a perfect analogy it's not perfect at all but i think i think you're you are the slightly hyperactive, intense one. Am I? Yeah. Am I? Well, yeah, for people that don't know, it's always something in Philadelphia,

they probably know the meme of the guy standing in front of the board with all the pins and red lines connecting, waving at them, that's Charlie. So that's who we're dealing with. red lines connecting, waving at them. That's Charlie. That's who we're dealing with. And Dennis Reynolds is a kind of sociopathic narcissist. So that's unfair for you, but you know,

there you go. That's the closest example. But he's smooth. So, you know, I'm happy with that. I think on balance, he can say whether he's good or bad.

Well, that's true. That's true. So that's our reviews. That was a nice review it was thank you for that and the other ones were we're okay too and um and now the last remaining thing is to thank our patrons and matt here i'm getting i'm getting the grip around the best way to do this with the patrons but there may be people who are thanked twice

as i switch methods and if that is the case i apologize it's a bonus no if i do apologize they're getting a bonus yeah that's right so here we go and oh also we may have new sound files thanks to a very kind listener i'll update on that later and give appropriate credit. But yes, in any case. Yeah. So not this time. Not this time. So who we have to thank in our conspiracy hypothesis category is Andrew Achilleos, Language Guy, Fia Elwald, John Colgrove, Rob Franks,

Christine Jenkins, Pavan, Michael Morenci-Freem, and Ramanas. That is our conspiracy hypothesizers for this week. Excellent. And I think I know John Colgrove from Twitter. Sorry.

Thanks to all of you. Me too. Me too, I believe. Not just John. Yeah, all of you me too me too i believe not just john yeah all of them all of them we know you're from twitter or not it doesn't matter we think equally yeah just might all single you out if he does anyway here we go every great idea starts with a minority of one we are not going to advance conspiracy theories we will advance conspiracy hypotheses okay we will brett weinstein now we will turn to revolutionary geniuses i'm looking forward though chris i've got to tell you i'm looking forward to an update to those sound files because i'm you know probably you're

bored don't say that i made those well but yeah i can. It's been a long time. They're doing up there. Nonetheless, our revolutionary geniuses for this week, we have Lucy, for asterisk, Joe Barbosa, Joe Barbosa, Jay Graves, Dan, Lawrence Nagel, and Kit McLean.

Oh, also Nalaya. Nalaya as well. And Helga. And Helga. And Helga. Great. Lovely. Thank you all.

Thank you very much. Yeah, thank you. Maybe you can spit out that hydrogenated thinking and let yourself feed off of your own thinking. and let yourself feed off of your own thinking. What you really are is an unbelievable thinker and researcher, a thinker that the world doesn't know. Yes, indeed. Now, speaking of thinkers, the last category,

the galaxy bringing gurus, the people who can join us for monthly live streams and whatnot. Here we have Simon Kruver, Adam Taylor, maybe for the second time. Taylor, Michael Moriarty. Uh-huh. My granddad's. Amber Howe, who definitely has been mentioned before paul dealer again there amber and jay i'm pretty sure we've probably thanked like 60 percent of them before but thank you again thank you anyway they're in the top tier they deserve to be double the triple thing that's it

so thank you all galaxy brains one and all you're sitting on one of the great scientific stories that i've ever heard and you're so polite and hey wait a minute am i an expert i kind of am yeah i don't trust people at all so there we go uh Not trusting people at all. That's relevant. It is. Oh, yes, it is. We're giving our intro segment. So, right, that's us done for the week. When we next meet you all, we'll be chatting about Robin DiAngelo.

So you've got that to look forward to. Yeah. And in the meantime, take care of your epistemic trust network. Prune it with caution and diligence. Stay away from black, red, or whatever, blue pills. Just stay. Don't take any pills. Stay away from those pills.

They're a bad idea. They don't lead anywhere good. Just say no to pills. Just say no. Yeah. And then avoid the Weinsteinian wormholes that are lurking out there in the cosmos.

Indeed. Indeed. But it's still important to consider the disc and... Note the gin. Note the gin, Matt. That's it. That is important. And thank you for mentioning. And thank you for being here. Without you it would have been hard. It would have been much much harder the interview would probably have been a lot easier

but the rest of it would have been much more difficult without me you'd be ranting and raving in an empty room people would think you're insane but i'm here so it's okay it's it's socially i wouldn't be doing that acceptable yeah i'm not monologuing. God, that would be horrifying. So, yeah. All right. So everybody thank Matt for the existence

of the podcast on Twitter or elsewhere. And we'll see you next time. Ciao. Thank you.