Decoding the Gurus - Triggernometry's Big Moment: Entering the Guru Galaxy

Episode Date: October 3, 2023

In modern online ecosystems, attention and download metrics reign supreme. Sadly, the gurus are not immune to these incentives, with even the most successful, *cough* Jordan Peterson *cough*, regularly referencing how many people watched their latest video or how many subscribers they have on their 'brave freethinker' tier.Alongside the attention metrics, you also have the interpersonal networks (and dinner opportunities) that matter so much to the guru-sphere. Celebrity interviews, cross-promotional content and collabs, a PragerU video, a shoutout from Joe Rogan, a long-form discussion with RFK Jnr, dinner and a phone call with Eric Weinstein... such are the untold wonders that await anyone who dares to challenge the 'mainstream' orthodoxy by endorsing some element of the contrarian canon (vaccines are dangerous and public health measures were authoritarian, Biden is terrible/Trump isn't that bad, the mainstream media is afraid to discuss paedophiles, etc.). It's very easy to see the impact of the financial and interpersonal incentives in the guru-sphere but what is not as common is for those involved in the hustle to talk transparently about how it all works. Enter Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster, the hosts of Triggernometry. In a recent episode, they lay all of this bare by discussing how Konstantin's viral rhetoric-heavy speech at the Oxford Union (decoded in a previous episode) led to very tangible attention and financial rewards but, perhaps more importantly, the newfound respect of a class of celebrity commentator they had always aspired to belong to. With the encouragement of these intellectual heavyweights they now have BIG plans for a Triggernometry media network!So join us for this refreshing look at the inner workings of the Gurusphere through the hungry eyes of the Triggernometry boys!Also on this episode: some updates on previous gurus (Russell Brand & Ibram X. Kendi), discussion of good(!) alternative media content, personal reflections on what Orwellian governments look like, and the psychology of riding roller coasters. Something for everyone!LinksWhat's Next for TRIGGERnometryOur previous decoding of the Oxford Union speechChris' Twitter thread on Konstantin's origin storySurfing the Discourse: Analysing the Right-Wing Reactions to the Russell Brand Scandal (feat Ben Shapiro, Dave Rubin, and more!)NY Times: Ibram X. Kendi and the Problem of Celebrity Fund-RaisingRussell Brand accused of rape, sexual assault and emotional abuseBBC: Pat Finucane: A murder with 'collusion at its heart'Why They Hate Jordan Peterson - Konstantin KisinWhy Communism is Even Worse Than Fascism - Konstantin Kisin

Hello and welcome to Decoding the Guru, It's the podcast where an anthropologist and a psychologist listen to the greatest minds the world has to offer and we try to understand what they're talking about. I, as always, am Matthew Brown. With me, as always, is Chris Kavanagh. I'm too close to the microphone and that's okay. Are you okay, Chris? Are you good? Yeah, you identify as someone who can be close to your microphone. That is okay, yeah. Society thinks otherwise, but yeah. Yeah.

Yes, I'm okay. I'm okay. I had a busy weekend celebrating the birth of one of my kids. So that was enjoyable. You went to a theme park and you you communed with the sea creatures the aquatic wildlife sea creatures yes i did yeah i i shouldn't throw stones at that glass house but the um yeah i did we were at the aquarium with an attached amusement park in Yokohama. And yeah, that was fun.

I'm not a big scaredy cat. I went on the roller coaster. Yeah, I know. Two times. Two times. You did mention that briefly earlier. And we agreed that neither of us are roller coaster people. Some people are.

It's not us. And furthermore, the scariest part of the roller coaster is not the loop-de-loops and the hurtling through space, but rather it's the going up. Yeah, the tic-tac-tac-tac-tac-tac-tac. Yeah, yeah. Staring into oblivion and that feeling of vertigo. I hate that. I won't go on one again.

Actually, what I didn't get a chance to tell you, Chris, the first time I went on one of those scary rides, because you went on a few, you went on lots of them, i went on a thing called an octopus which was radial levers spinning around and on the wheels there are other wheels and they're also spinning around in random directions and you sit in the little thing and i was quite small and i went on with my dad at about 10 seconds after it started i just totally lost it i was. I was trying to get out of my seat and launch myself off the thing. My dad's just holding on to me and laughing. And every time we went round close to the operator guy,

I was screaming at him to turn it off, making stuff. The worst bit about that was you were 35 at that. I will say that whenever I'm feeling nervous about roller coasters and how unnatural it is to be going at those speeds and slowly inching up the line, the fact that there are a significant number of young children and small Japanese women who seem perfectly fine, it does help because you're just like,

okay, I'm not saying anything disparaging around Japanese schoolgirls or whatever, just saying that it fortified my spirit to see all those. You're like a living example of one of the classic studies in social psychology, which obviously has been debunked by now. But this is the studies of group conformity. Yeah, people are in a room and you have a whole bunch of confederates who are acting like everything's fine, even though there's like smoke coming in through the doors and flames outside the window i know that but i can i

can see people so much i know they were fine they were right and they helped me so that was that was all good but uh you know that's our allotted time for personal banter but the buzzer is gone. That's our indulgence for that. We now have to move on to gurus. It's mandated. It's part of the contract that you signed. I'm sorry.

I've got an option for you. I'm like Morpheus. In my hand, one side is a tasty cupcake and in the other, it's a rotten banana. So which would you like to consume first? I guess I'll go for the cupcake. Well, that's all right. So we discussed that we wanted to correct an error that was out there in discourse land, a misperception,

if you will, whereby we are occasionally mistaken for mindless automatons, defenders of the orthodoxy, the men that will stand for any institution, no matter how flawed, as long as it has a mainstream media stamp of approval on it. How wrong they are, Chris. How wrong they are. Yes. They're all wrong. Terribly, terribly wrong.

What errors they've veered. How would you describe it then? Well, yes. How would I describe it? That's a good question. I think I would put it that my message in general is be appropriately critical consistently across the media or other sources that you consume. Whether it be academic studies, some investigative journalism report, or whether it be some mad

podcast that you've downloaded. All of them, you have to approach them critically, right? But with a spirit of enjoyment as well. It depends what you're listening to, Scott Adams, a bit harder. But yes, so just consume things with your critical mindset on and that's fine. It doesn't matter what type of content it is. I mean, in general, books, articles, whatever it is. Yeah.

Yeah, well, this came up when you and I were talking about stuff that we liked and I'd got you onto some history podcasts, which was good. You're broadening your mind and deepening your understanding of human nature. And then we were talking about Daniel Larkins, I think it was. Larkins. Larkins, yeah. Well, I probably corrected you to the wrong pronunciation. But yeah, he's a psychologist who has a podcast,

but also produces online courses and statistics and has kind of been active in the open science movement. Yeah, exactly right. And then, so that's Alternative Media, right? He's got his own independent podcast. Paul Bloom does a whole bunch of independent work. Including with Dick Pizarro, another independent podcast alternative media figure. Yes.

From his sister show, The Very Bad Wizards. Yep. And you can look at a lot of the stuff in the mainstream media, like the documentaries. And you can look at a lot of the stuff in the mainstream media, like the documentaries. If you just take history as an example, on a venue like Netflix, produced by whatever, the mainstream people who produce history documentaries. I don't know who they are, but somebody makes them.

National Geographic. You can tell us about them, man. I mean, National Geographic's okay maybe, but a lot of it is pretty shit. Obviously, the extreme examples is the, you know, in America, they have the history channel or something. Oh, ancient aliens. Ancient aliens, ancient civilizations where there were absolute nonsense, Atlantis and so on.

On the other hand, you compare that to these podcasts that are made by these just random people, not even historians. Some of them are historians. Some of them are historians. Some of them are historians. Some of them are indeed historians. That's true. Another good example to cite is a young Australian guy called Perun, who I've mentioned before.

Young guy who has been shouted out by lots of very respectable figures for the excellent YouTube video he makes on global affairs and international politics, that kind of thing. And the content is often just so much better than stuff that you would find that are made more for the mainstream. So you and I are not saying don't consume independent content. Just for heaven's sake, there is so much good stuff out there. You don't need to have Wormtong tongue whispering into your ear and the guys

yeah like history podcasts we're not saying you all have to take up history podcasts you know but hardcore history is good the rest is history is good there's other podcasts but there are podcasts that do you know like 20 part series on the celtic tribe in i don't know seventh century france or whatever there probably were no celtic tribes and that reaches at that time but you know they that's the kind of depth that you can't get elsewhere or in in the case of like daniel lincoln's podcast they just did an hour in the bed on snobbery in academia and their experiences, like a kind of interesting discussion about that. That's not really going to come up on Channel 4 or, you know, whatever your equivalent is, a one hour discussion about this roller niche

academic topic. So yeah, just to say like, there's plenty of deep dives. So there's lots of very good alternative media. We've spoken to a whole bunch of people in it, like CoffeeZilla, Conspiratuality guys that we just spoke to. They're independent media. So the message is not just completely trust everything in the mainstream media, throw away everything in alternative media. It's stop consuming crap alternative media or like consume

it if you want but just consume it critically that's the message and yeah so yeah i think we've clarified things and i don't mean to be boosting history podcasts all the time listen to whatever you like listen to a physics podcast listen to history physics the two things math never mentions. His range of examples is limitless. No, you can listen to the Always Sunny podcast. There you go. That's not physics. That's a good one. That's true.

Look, these are just ones that I know. You can find your own. You don't need to listen to them. Is the Foundation podcast mainstream media? Because it's made by the creators of the show. That's mainstream media. I'm classifying that as mainstream media. But before we get off this topic, Chris, you were listed in history,

and you blew my mind because you told me that no Christians were sacrificed in the Colosseum by the Romans. You shouldn't repeat that. Because it might not be true. It's me repeating a factoid that I heard in the history broadcast that I believe it's probably true.

It's built in true. Let's assume... We don't know whether it's true, but Chris is certain that the people who were saying it seem pretty confident. That's fair to say, isn't it, Chris? That's fair to say.

But it might have been my misinterpretation of what they said. But nonetheless, just imagine there is a fact which is true. If this wasn't true. In fact, it could be a different fact. Use your imagination. Yeah. So carry on with that caveat. caveat so i told you a fact whatever it is doesn't matter and it blew your mind because my comment doesn't make sense if

it's just a generic fact so we'll try try let's see what were you gonna say i'm just gonna say that blew my mind that's all it was i didn't know this is the kind of thing you could learn potentially if it's true from well that's a good illustration right you cannot critically accept secondhand reports of history podcasts even when they come from the alternative media so look, look, we've illustrated our whole saga about facts there. And it could still be true. The fact that it could even be true is astonishing.

Okay, okay, good. Well, I'm glad we've clarified that. A lot of people... Yeah, we can put that to bed. It'll never come up again. Emails about the Colise about to call us in. To Matt, please. He's the one to reference that.

What was it? Excellent segment. Good job, Chris. Well done, Matt. We've done that. We've done that. But so we have that. Then that was your tasty cupcake.

The rancid bananas. There, Matt. You got to consume it. All right. It was not like one or the others yeah like i had to have both it was just the order i got yeah okay all right let's have the rancid banana russell brand uh yes yeah we just look we're not gonna dwell on this not because it isn't significant but just because you know it's a guru discourse thing they've all lined up with their predictable opinions in most places about russell brand has been accused of a whole range of crimes as well as misdemeanors whatever they are

rapes sexual assaults grooming things which aren't crimes but are just extremely skeevy grooming a 16 year old when you're a 30 year old celebrity and and so on and he framed this as a mainstream media attack because he's daring to challenge the orthodoxies and then predictably tucker carlson ben shapiro the a range of right-wing bobbleheads came out in support. Elon Musk came out in support and saying, this all looks very suspicious. And then you had some other people, some surprising cases like Megyn Kelly and Candace Owens, I think, coming out and saying, actually, there might be something too. These accusations shouldn't dismiss them.

And Konstantin Kissen from Trigonometry wrote an article where he basically lambasted people for deciding the issue based on their tribal thing. He said, we don't know either way. So people shouldn't be assuming he's guilty and they shouldn't be automatically assuming he's innocent in line with tribal biases so there's there's been those reactions and of course there's been the people outright condemning him and you know condemning anybody that associated with him at any time in the past and pointed out a lot of hypocrisy around people claiming to be concerned about

women's rights and so on. But they were happy to appear on stage with this figure when all these rumors were apparently swirling, well-known, and like kind of an open secret in the industry, so to speak. So, yeah. Yeah. Well, I guess you're right. We covered Russell Brand. He is up there in the Guru Pantheon. It would be remiss of us not to mention

this significant development in the russell brand story arc however i don't think there's very much to say apart from read the times article and other articles about it i mean the investigative journalism seemed of pretty good quality the The reports seem credible. And I think everything apart from that is just commentary, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, that's it. So like, you know, the Dispatches was the documentary, which is quite well regarded documentary series.

People kind of responded to that as if it's all hearsay. Nobody's done any proper fact checking. And that's not the key. It's like if you watch the documentary there are people visiting we have crisis centers there are records that investigative journalists have kind of done their job of laying out evidence and checking from independent sources and there will always be elements where people disagree or argue against cases. And the other mistake that was generally going on

was that people were saying, you know, innocent until proven guilty and blah, blah, blah. But you can take that position that that should be a standard in the court of law, which it should be, but that doesn't mean that you have to treat every allegation as if it's equally plausible right you don't you cannot issue any opinion until a court has ruled one way or the other because yeah yeah that's not a

standard that people apply consistently in any case like just think about all the people talking about this then their views about hunter biden's laptop or something right like they they don't say well let's wait till the court cases is finished before we assign any guilt or or that's right it's not cancellation to read a pretty good piece of investigative journalism and then to form a private opinion on the matter. Yeah, Russell Brand is, you know, regardless of any of the accusations or whatever, if they had never came out, like, he's somebody who has been a public narcissist, a self-declared sex addict, and paraded around for years about his various sexual adventures and all that kind of things plus on top he's always been a conspiratorial narcissist right and so

none of it like his reaction the accusations all of it it shouldn't be surprising and nor is the claim that now he's been targeted because he's criticizing the mainstream russell brandt has had an anti-establishment thing for quite a long time you know he even had a separate youtube show called the trues which he presented as the true news and you know if it was a targeted campaign to discredit them you would imagine they might have started it a couple of years back and there are heaps of people who have been called to account shall we say for the the behavior in this regard that haven't been challenging orthodoxies or you know the conventional

narrative on ukraine or whatever so that doesn't fit but so chris what do you think though about these so there was what demonetization on youtube oh and then there was a letter to rumble i think oh yeah that's stupid yeah yeah give us give us the gist i've forgotten yeah so youtube demonetized his channel which they they sometimes do when somebody gets into controversy, right? And people pointed out that that's, you know, there hasn't been any accusations proven, but they've just taken away his ability to monetize his content. And it's true. I think that is a kind of heavy-handed step from YouTube,

but they do this. And also Russell Brand, anyway, had tried to move all of his content to Rumble and other platforms beforehand. But it doesn't mean that, therefore, YouTube being the arbiter of the concern that this will be another Jimmy Savile or Harvey Weinstein case. So they don't want to be left holding the serial rapist on their hands. So that's what they're doing. And that makes sense from the point of view of well they're they're independent platforms they get the side and somebody decided so so that was one thing yeah yeah so that's right and on that

thing like youtube demonetizes heaps of channels for all kinds of random reasons some fair some not so fair so like i think if you've got a problem with that and it's quite reasonable to have a problem with that maybe just don't quite reasonable to have a problem with that, maybe just don't start with Russell Brand. Maybe start with one of the more worthy courses because it is pretty arbitrary, but Russell Brand isn't exceptional in this regard. Yeah, they do.

Like YouTube is incredibly bad about being clear about demonetization and stuff like this. There's all these controversies in the anime youtuber world a while back about like copyrighted content which revolved around big media companies making claims against independent content creators and and fair use standards and stuff but the the second part of this controversy was that there was a letter from a representative of the Culture, Media and Sports Committee of the UK government on headed paper that went to Rumble and a bunch of other platforms, TikTok and thing, I think as well, which basically asked them what

they were doing about Russell Brand in the face of this accusation. They wanted to know, does he still have the ability to make money on these platforms? They pointed out YouTube has demonetized them and they wanted an accounting of what's being done in response to these allegations and so on. And Rumble published the letter and basically, I think i think took the stance we're not doing anything and a lot of people then went on saying this is orwellian that the you know the british government trying to shut down through these threatening letters that they're they're sending out to platforms right the very definition of censorship but my understanding chris is it's not it wasn't an official letter from in capital letters the government it was from an mp well it's so this is one of the like i did a little bit of research and the little bit i did i think is vastly more than almost everyone commenting on this because the letter it was written

were by an mp but it referenced the culture media and sports committee a committee that we all know and love and otherwise respect right like no no one knows what that committee is but it was on headed paper and whatnot so i went to look what that committee is and what it is is let me read the description it's a common select committee right so this is our key in british kind of thing welcome to the cross party culture media and sport committee it is our responsibility to scrutinize the work of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and its associated public bodies, including the BBC. We examine government policy, spending and administration on behalf of the electorate and the House of Commons. You can follow us here.

The committee also has a subcommittee to inquire into online harms and disinformation. Find out more at the CMS subcommittee. So the subcommittee, right? It's fascinating. This culture, media, and sports committee has the ability to generate one subcommittee. This is one of their powers. And they generated one about online harms and disinformation. And they have the ability to create inquiries that consider oral and written evidence on a particular topic, and they usually

result, Matt, in the publication of a report. That's a surprise. What this is, as far as I can make heads or tails of it, is a department which isn't actually the conservative government body. It is a committee which issues reports on the activities of a part of government, right? The Department for Culture, Media, and Sport. And I checked and it issues reports

which complain mainly about the government not doing what it said it would do. And it's a cross-party thing, which makes sense. And it basically issues reports and sometimes makes recommendations. That's it. So when this online event happened, they did the usual thing of, I guess, sending out comments about things. Now, do I think they were being heavy-handed and implying that they want the platforms to take action?

Yes. But is this the British government cracking down to censor and threaten all the online platforms? You can take the perspective that you shouldn't be sending threatening letters like this, especially if you are going to give the impression that the government is potentially forcing the platform to take action. And they did do that. But it isn't an Orwellian government nightmare. Right. And I had this interaction with someone on Twitter who was saying this is the most Orwellian thing nightmare, right? And I had this interaction with someone on Twitter

who was saying, this is the most Orwellian thing they've ever seen. And Matt, I just want to mention, like whenever I do this or make this position, sometimes people say, well, oh, look, you're just defending the government because you can't imagine the government doing anything wrong, right?

So on the one hand, I'm saying I don't agree that the committee should do this. But on the second hand, the reason I think this is like a hyperbolic, catastrophic overreaction is because I'm very well aware of what Orwellian overreach by government looks like. Orwellian overreach is things like a government colluding with its military and secret services with paramilitaries to execute civilians during a civil conflict, like say happened in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. It's things like prohibiting the voice of Republican leaders to be heard on British television for six years during a conflict, right? That would be stuff like Orwellian overreach, including things, by the way,

like civil rights lawyers who had successfully opposed the government being killed. And this being a case where there was evidence of collusion. And even still, in a lot of these cases, there still were eventually inquiries done and results published. So it's just to say that was the British government doing that. I'm well aware of it. And I think that kind of stuff deserves criticism, but also is Orwellian actions by a government. But they also did publish inquiries and stuff like that. It's different, Matt. It's different than living in a totalitarian authoritarian state because they don't publish inquiries into their actions.

I think I follow the argument. Colluding with paramilitary death squads, somewhat Orwellian, a sternly worded letter to Rumble, which they subsequently laughed off and published not orwellian yeah doesn't that tell you something like that's it's almost illustrating actually that it isn't because like if you're a media organization in russia and the state media or the secret services come and pay your visit to warn you of covering a topic, I don't think publishing their letters is going to go down well for you. So that's all.

So this was something. But it was just the fact that nobody, so much tweets and ink spilt around this topic, and so few people just even check what the culture media and sports committee is right like it's almost like it doesn't matter but it does matter if it has power or what its function is okay well said well said all right well that's that's the story with russell brandt um i told you it was a rancid banana it's it's done but there was one other update on a guru that we covered that we shouldn't overlook um okay yeah i know we're on some time already but yeah the so on on twitter and across the internet, many people were happy to see Abram X. Kendi's

Center for Anti-Racist Research at Boston University go down in flames, or at least enter into significant controversy because it laid off more than half its staff and it doesn't seem to have been very productive the research has not been as impressive as claimed and uh yeah and there were various it was profiled across like various media sites i think there's a an article on the new york times ibram x candy and the problem of celebrity fundraising and so on and

i think they're launching an inquiry into potential scandal is that there's kind of very little to show for that in terms of i guess intellectual outputs academic outputs maybe right yeah so people are using this to illustrate well this shows what they've been saying all along but like candy is a intellectual lightweight he's a grifter you know that he he hasn't achieved anything and you know with some schadenfreude said if you know economic disparities being caused can be labeled as racist right like you know if you take money because you know the candy's whole framework is that anything is classified as either racist or anti-racist so is squandering a huge amount of money is it racist

oh dear yeah well and so i think candy's one of those people that people often re-is whenever they want to say how you know terribly biased we are because we we didn't go hard enough yeah we didn't trash them but i keep pointing out the the people that that this, that they're almost always not talking about the content that we looked at. We explicitly multiple times said he's done X, Y, and Z, and these are bad, you know, like the article that he read about the anti-racist Overwatch unit or whatever it was, right? We highlighted that that is a bad idea and has dystopian, authoritarian ring to it. But he wasn't giving those kind of hot takes in the content that we

looked at. And so, yeah, I think part of that delta is, you know, the difference between people following him on Twitter or the culture war feuds, which he does get into and saying, well, you know, you said he didn't engage in grievance mongering, but look what he does all the time on Twitter. But that's right. That's because we weren't basing on that. And we actually expected him to do much worse,

to be more like a kind of grievance-filled rage monster in the interview, but he wasn't. So yeah, that's part of the reason for the discrepancy. Yeah, yeah, that's right. We'll never be able to stop explaining this, Chris, but there's obviously a million different ways

in which people can be of good quality or bad quality, and the groundwater captures just one specific way in which people can be not good so you know i don't really i i don't get the complaint that much because if you had asked me before this event do i think that candy is a good manager of projects and large amounts of funding? Do I think, you know, he's going to produce stellar output? I would say I have no freaking idea. I don't like if he's managed projects like that before, then probably. And if he hasn't, then I wouldn't hold out hope because you know if you've got a huge amount of money and

you're primarily just an academic style pundit yeah i wouldn't anticipate that you're going to be very effective at running a research center so yeah i also wouldn't think just just to give an example you know i'm i quite like stephen pinker but i i wouldn't automatically assume that pinker could run a multi-million pound project to investigate things i don't know maybe he has done that and i'm unaware of it but you know he's more of a charismatic academic pundit type yeah your default assumption for an academic being a good manager of large amounts of money is should probably be no it's not it's not very surprising yeah um look money you know candy obviously has got that celebrity status obviously attracted a large amount of

funding based on i mean jack dorsey give him 10 million yeah just now yeah so if if you're somebody who's writing you know viral books that are on the cusp of a big cultural reckoning thing and you have billionaires dropping tens of millions of dollars in your lap it's not terribly surprising that it no but you also i also think people should factor in was like did did dorsey i mean dorsey's an idiot but let's just set that aside for a second but like did dorsey anticipate that kendy was gonna dramatically change the racial disparities and and discrimination in in the u. US through his donation to the center? Or was Dorsey looking to make a public donation for an anti-racist organization in the wake of the

George Floyd events? And I think Dorsey's not the only one who would be doing that kind of activity. So yeah, just, it is not surprising, but it was pointed out to me on Twitter by a guy, Preston Bounds, that were the University of Austin to unceremoniously collapse under the weight of the Eagles running running at that we would likely mention it on the podcast and we would but also be also be not surprised yeah i also won't be surprised when that occurs but the one possible difference here and i again i'm not saying this to argue that, oh, I'm really impressed by Kennedy's output in general. It's just to say that the University of Austin thought that prioritizes freedom to think and the right to hear opinions that you might disagree with.

And so that's right to challenge students. Now, I'm sure Kendi made some extraordinary claims for his organization because all people's launching projects make big claims about what they're going to produce, some database or whatever. But all the things that I've seen mentioned appear to be the kind of things that you find in academic funding proposals.

We will produce this database which will be able to track racist incidents in a much more fair way than other places. incidents in a much more fair way than other places and that's a different kind of claim in terms of the like scope or the significance than what the university of austin is claiming so there's a possible difference to defend why just like why one would be likely to grab more attention plus yes barry weiss bogossian all those people they're annoying well yeah that's right i mean there are there are countless examples of failed research projects i mean you go to the go to anything funded by darpa you know you could find a lot more than 30 million dollars wasted in and so that in itself is not the interesting thing right the interesting thing

for us is what like you said the the claims and stuff around it and something like that university of austin scheme and and framing is very much on point for our show whereas candy's thing you may hate the idea of sociological social justice oriented research center and experience schadenfreude at it being a colossal waste of money. But it's just not on topic. I will say one thing that was on topic was that he responded to the criticisms. He did the classic PR management speak of,

we're deeply disappointed that we are forced to, and we are doing everything in our power to keep the people that we've just let go you know allow them to transition to the next stage in their careers and all this but he also classified it as if you're critiquing him and taking enjoyment from this that this speaks to the the kind of yeah racism of right-wing campaigns against them and stuff and like it is possible to be critical of kendy mismanaging the center without it being a campaign to promote white supremacism in the u.s yeah well in an article in Inside Higher Ed that just came out two days ago,

he defended it. You know, he defends his decision to take the long view for Carr, especially when racial and social justice organizations are under attack, adding that, yes, we made missteps, but leaders of color and women tend to face heightened scrutiny.

So he's hinting there at um yeah yeah that's a that's a bit of a yeah that's a guru move isn't it it is a guru move so just highlighting that so yes the car institute will continue and and let's see what happens in the years to come but just to clear i don't hold out any you know they're not waiting on bated breath for their next exciting article to come out like i don't care and and the attention that candy does get from you know the right wing ecosystem a like they both feed on each each other so that's the thing. I hesitate to even read too much into what he's saying there because it's like two sides of the same coin, right?

On one hand, he plays that card, which is people are just waiting for us to fail or setting us up to fail and putting us under this heightened scrutiny. But they are under heightened scrutiny. And, you know, it is. So, yeah, screw them all um i'm not interested it's it's cultural political stuff well rancid banana in general the whole thing the smorgasbord russell

brand uh well obviously just just to highlight i i don't want to put like an equivalence there between the sexual assault and re-applications i'm just saying they're they're in the same category of bad developments for previous people that we've covered but yeah i just realized i was classifying them as the same right for that analogy and like that's not really fair no no differing degrees of rancidness. Yes. All right. We'll leave it at that. I think that's enough of an unpleasant fruit for people that have been forced to consume. So we'll get the more unpleasantness next time. Yes. Yeah.

I'm sure the main episode will be a palate cleanser after that. Or will it? That's right. Or will it? So what are we here for today, Matt? Well, we're here for a decoding of sorts. It's not an interview. We're going to look at some content. This content is from Trigonometry with Constantine Kissin and Francis Foster. Exactly. That's correct, isn't it?

I think his name is Francis. Yes. that's correct, isn't it? I think his name is Francis, yes. Yes. Okay. So yes, they did an episode about what's next for trigonometry. This was a couple of weeks ago now, but the reason we're going to cover it here is not because we really thought that we need to get into the deep philosophy of Francis and Constantine and their approach to things. But rather that this episode illustrates something which sometimes we are sometimes accused of ignoring, which is the kind of ecosystems, media ecosystems, which surround the secular guru content that we look at and the dynamics that are at play there. We debated a little bit about whether or not this warranted a full episode because it is a little bit light but on the other hand our other options would have involved quite a bit of work so that probably did steer us a little bit

more to this one it's a it's a shorter piece of content and you mean the other people that we might have covered this week yeah so that's that's true they would have took more time yes so there's that there's that reason which is a good reason to cover it but it also does illustrate uh yeah as you said the priorities and the incentives behind the alternative media system and it also is i guess something of like a manifesto a statement of their philosophy and priorities and goals which is interesting interesting to hear. Yeah, it is. I suppose it is that, isn't it?

Well, anyway, consider this a second part because we covered Constantine's Oxford Union speech, his viral Oxford Union speech. And this is very much an episode focused on the earth-shadowing impact of that speech. And our analysis of that speech was that it was extremely soft. The rhetoric was very strong, but the content was very light. But that is not how Constantine frames it here. So I would encourage people, if they want to see our take on that particular content afterwards we have an episode which is just about the speech and the persuasiveness of the arguments presented

therein yes it's a bit of helpful context for this but it was a very big deal for constantine and francis yeah so let's let's start off with the framing of this episode. Actually, it turns out trigonometry was in a little bit of problems. People didn't know this, but here's them highlighting the issues that they faced. Today, we're celebrating the fact that we've just hit 600,000 subscribers on YouTube. And of course, it's been an incredible first half of the year, Francis, hasn't it? It has been an incredible first half of the year. It has been, I think, what is euphemistically called a journey. It has been a journey, mate. Well, I mean, one of the things people won't know from behind the scenes, but actually at the end of last year,

the end of 2022, we were having kind of a rough time of it. Oh, yeah, we were having a really rough time of it. I mean, we were rapidly running out of money. We were. Well, what happened was we had to leave our previous studio, as is our nature. And we decided to use that as an opportunity to build a proper studio from the ground up, which is where we're sitting now. And we ramped up our studio cost by about 400%. And then immediately got COVID and couldn't work for a month, basically, towards the end of last year. So as we were breaking up for the Christmas period, I was sort of looking at the accounts going, this is actually really, really difficult. And we had

to cut the two of our salaries, are not huge anyway uh anton as well um uh and then we came back and we were like we're really gonna have to have to pull pull a rabbit out of a hat here yep yep so tons were tough for them financially and chris i imagine it it is a tough gig isn't it it would be just as hard as being a comedian or something to be like, this is your job. You're an independent content creator. You don't have some day job to go to. This is how you make your living. I think this is a thing that's worth emphasizing here.

And it's probably obvious, but just to say, you talked about it on the interview we did with the Conspiratuality guys, but a lot of the people that have podcast shows or YouTube shows, they're independent creators and that's their main job. So in cases when they become successful, they end up supporting little staffs or big staffs in some cases. So yeah, it's just worth bearing that in mind that then things like subscriber numbers and so on, that becomes a concern, right?

Because that's how you're able to generate income. And if you are doing this in the way that you and I are, for example, then we don't really have the same concerns, right? We're not supporting anybody's pension or anything like that. So yeah, just the struggles of being an independent content creator. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Applies as much to CoffeeZilla as it does to trigonometry. So anyway, that was the trouble, but you can see there, I kind of focus on metrics, right? That's what is of concern. And they mentioned their goal in this regard. When we sat down at the beginning of the year, Laura, who's our chief operating officer now,

basically runs everything. We had a planning meeting. We were like, well, wouldn't it be amazing if we could get to 500,000 subscribers this year? That was our stretch goal. That was our stretch goal because we were like, we're probably not going to make it no but that would be great because that would represent nearly doubling the size of the channel in a year which is a huge achievement absolutely it is and that is what we were talking about and that was the big pie in the sky the stretch goal and i think it's fair to say we've exceeded the stretch goal well we, we're on 600,000 now. Yeah.

As we're going to hear, it was largely a result of that Oxford Union speech, right? Yeah. So there's been an explosive growth in the content. They smashed their goals. I was actually surprised they're sub a million because I thought their youtube channel was bigger than that like i i watched this youtube channel legal ego because legal breakdowns and he's like three and a half million or abroad in japan this like japan expat uh channel i think is that like two million or something so yeah these are probably really big youtubers that I've been unfair in comparing. But I'm just saying, I actually thought they had more than that.

So in any case, the Oxford Union speech, this is the introduction to the role it played. But, I mean, talking about the rabbit out of the hat, the Oxford speech was the ultimate rabbit out of the hat. Well, for a start, it made a shit ton of money. That was the biggest thing. It's like we could actually afford to pay everyone a salary, which was a shit ton of money. Yeah. That was the biggest thing, is like we could actually afford to pay everyone a salary. Yeah.

Which was a relief. Yeah, it was. It was, because it gets a bit awkward and you're going to people and you're going, you know that work you've done, which has been outstanding. Yeah. Well, not in every case.

Not in every case, but in the majority of cases. Yeah. How about exposure? Would you like to get paid for exposure? That old classic. We're not in the comedy industry now, right? Yeah yeah so the i mean so what was it like for you to see that speech so again the discussion of the financial impact that that had the welcome one and again completely understandable like we said this is essentially a small business i gotta say matt

maybe this is just my failure of imagination but when i saw the oxford union speech and it went viral and all that i mainly saw on twitter right so i wasn't actually wasn't thinking about the potential monetary benefit of it like that that just genuinely didn't factor and like i know that constantly wanted to go you know viral and promoted and stuff but i was thinking more of the attention metrics, but they say 16,000, right. Which presumably is from their channel, the clip that they host of that on YouTube. So if you just make a little viral culture war outreach video, but you can meet 16,000. I guess this is why all these people are doing this

isn't that like uh yeah yeah i well i think so yeah i didn't know either and i yeah i like i don't understand how it all works but like just checking here well look it's actually the original video constantian kiss and work culture has gone too far at the oxford union that's on the oxford union account yeah so that's that's what i thought but obviously they've re-hosted bits of it or you know the the spying d of being like maybe they played clips of it and stuck it up on their channel because they said they got like 16 grand from video content and you would imagine that has to be from their content the union isn't going to be sending them dividends no no so yeah i don't really understand that but

look as you know chris before i came back to academia i was working in small business myself and helping run one and you know it's your absolute number one priority which is paying the bills making money and being able to pay your own salary and other people's salaries and the rent. So I think it's very natural for them to be ultra focused on revenue and the attention metrics are really just, you know, it's just a pathway to more revenue, right? Yeah, I think here's another clip that underscores this point. It was a big relief. Because I think when we put that clip out on our channel, it generated about 16,000 pounds, which meant that actually, as I say,

first of all, our financial problems were sort of taken care of. And then you just saw this video get 5.5 million views on the channel, bringing a huge number of subscribers. So for me, first of all, it's just one of the two people leading this. It was just a big weight off our shoulders more than anything. And really, beyond, you know, I went on Tucker again. I did Question Time again. I had some in the immediate aftermath, some opportunities that I'd had before,

but again, big ones um you went on jbp's pod i did yeah yeah which matt like you said there you got the metrics you got the finance you've also got the additional attention from other culture war players figures right tucker important players right the network of personal connections among the various influences and media personalities is crucially important everyone's aware of how big everyone is and that determines how important they are in the network so this immediately elevated constantine not so much francis but which i'll talk about but it immediately elevated him to the level of playing with the big boys yeah and there's also there's some like cringy parts of

this but constantine is talking about when the significance of the event started to dawn on him and again the event being him giving this Oxford Union speech and getting attention. He says this. But really, not much had changed in my day-to-day life because I don't live in a big city. Most of them, I'm a very boring guy. When I'm not in here working, I'm at home with my family going for walks in the local park or whatever. going for walks in the local park or whatever. And so the only thing I noticed is I said to my wife, like, you know,

when I used to go out in the local, in the small town that we live and maybe get recognized once a week. Yeah. Now, I said to her, I'm sort of starting to get recognized every day. But, you know, it's one person recognizes you when you go for a walk. It's not a big deal. Someone says, oh, I love your show or whatever. Yeah. one person recognizes you when you go for work it's not a big deal someone says oh I love your show or whatever

and really it wasn't until we went back to the US that I started to gather the significance of what had happened so he was keeping it real when he was in the UK

and again Matt there's this like this thing about the attention economy right he basically describes it there i went from someone that you know maybe got recognized once a week started to happen once a day but i didn't appreciate the significance of my viral speech until i went back to the u.s and we're going to hear what happens in the US. But, you know. Yeah.

You know, one way to put it is that Constantine is refreshingly frank about how he feels about it. But it is, I don't know. Yeah, it's usually not the kind of thing people would. It is the kind of thing gurus do, right? Like Jordan Peterson will always talk about how many views his video gets how many subscribers he has and and very often all the different types of gurus we cover they do this they highlight how many people watch the videos how many people subscribe so so in that respect this is very typical we've talked a few times about how like people like brett and eric for

instance are just fixated on their metrics like they clearly monitor them on a daily basis and at least for them having these conspiracy theories when their metrics aren't trending upwards in the way that they expect so so yeah that's that's notable that is consistent yeah and and so i will also say matt just before we get off this point, that so had an impact on subscribers, had an impact on finances, had an impact on subscribers, also had an impact on book sales, something else you might not have considered.

For the show, because we pretty much, I don't know, we would have got 150,000, 200,000 subscribers from the speech itself. Yeah. And then the follow-up hits that I did on various podcasts and TV and stuff like that. But also for me, it really changed how I think I see what I'm doing and how other people see what I'm doing.

My book, I think, doubled sales in a week or something. That's amazing. I didn't realize that. Yeah, it did really well, particularly on the audio book, because people wanted to hear, literally hear from the person that they'd heard. So yeah, it was really, it was transformative. Yeah. So for Konstantin, it comes through, I think, in what he's saying, that those various metrics, they are the real proof. That is the gold-plated proof that you are doing the right thing you're doing something good you're doing something worthwhile and something meaningful so that's kind of a theme that goes on throughout the discussion this is validation of what they're doing yeah and like

you said the refreshing thing about this is kind of how open and direct that constantine and and francis are in discussing this. So here's Constantine reflecting on, you know, his insecurities and what the speech kind of delivered for him. You know, it took a lot of pressure off me, actually. Really? So it took some, you know, the truth is that I know that in the British context, this might sound arrogant, but it is true.

in the British context, this might sound arrogant, but it is true. Ever since I was a little kid, I always felt that I always had this weight on my shoulders. I felt that I was supposed to do something special. And all my life, I never, I was always good at the things I did when I ran my translation business. I, when I did comedy, I was good at comedy, but I never felt that I'd really slotted in. You found your thing. I never felt that I found my thing. And with trigonometry, I always did feel like I'd found my thing, but it was kind of like having to prove it to the outside world.

And I think what changed for me with the Oxford speech, it was like, I've proved it now. And the way that I feel now is like, I have so much left to do, but I have nothing left to prove. That's an amazing place to be. And it's such a relief. It's a real relief. And it shows up in the way that I am with other people, in the way that I'm with my family, in what kind of friend or husband or everything I am. the way that I am with my family and in what kind of friend or husband or everything I am,

it's really allowed me to just take that go, go, go, you know, thing off me. And I'm free to be very driven and passionate as I always have been, but without having this extraordinary feeling of like I'm supposed to be something and I'm not. Yeah. Once again, Chris, refreshingly frank. I hate to over-psychologize this, but I think it does perhaps speak to a bit of a sense of insecurity, just in Constantine's own words, that he had felt throughout his career up until this point and that this viral moment has finally taken that weight off his shoulders and proven to him that like he is doing something worthwhile and i think it speaks to the effects that those metrics have and the ultimate barometer by which a public influencer basically measures their worth it's insane man because like he's not talking about publishing his magnum opus for you know his his life work in something that he's not talking about publishing his magnum opus for his life work in something that he's poured his heart and soul into.

He's talking about, what was it, six to ten minute or six minute, like super polemical, hugely rhetoric speech given at the Oxford Union. speech given at the Oxford Union. And yes, it received like a very receptive round of applause from partisan culture war people because it was red meat. But you know, if that is the thing that now you can rest your soul easy, because that's what you've contributed. Now you've shown the measure of what you are like fucking hell. I'm sorry. i know this is mean but jesus christ like i'm i think that's insane like i guess it is the influencer mindset but it's just like i produced a piece of culture war drama culture war viral content and that's my you know now i can be relaxed around my family stuff and like yeah it is a pattern that we've seen with other gurus like brett weinstein i think his career maybe didn't tick any of the boxes for them they had very high expectations for

themselves they took a great deal of stock in their own ability to make an earth shattering contribution to the world. And it comes through that they didn't quite feel it. And then this path is a way of satisfying that need. I mean, he says in that clip that I have so much left to do, but I've nothing left to prove. On the back of the oxford junior speech now i i guess okay like trying to extend my charitable hat here maybe he is focusing more on his insecurity that

that monkey is off his back right but i'm just it's sort of amazing that you could get that off your back by producing polemical content and people leading it up but you know chris five million downloads i think that's the key thing right that's the unfakeable signal that you've done something special yeah they talked about it opening the doors and let's see who was there to welcome them into the big leagues. And then when we got to America, I suddenly realized that all the people that we'd been in touch with previously because they were guests of the show or we would have been guests on their show, whatever, they treated me very differently now. And it was kind of eye-opening really so that trip to america really changed everything for me because you know we arrived there and basically i was like all my heroes are there saying you know welcome brother yeah come and join us kind of it was it was a almost an initiation into a world

that i'd always aspired to be part of and you know the thing that really summed it up for me was when i went on bill maher's show eric wein, who's a guy that, you know, we'd been dreaming of having on the show for ages, so much respect for him, fascinating guy. He asked to come and be my guest with his wife and a friend of hers in the green room of Bill Maher. Whereas to me, I would have been honored to like have a coffee with Eric up until that point. We used to speak every now and again on the phone, but it was just like amazing. So it changed a lot, I think. There you go, Chris.

Five million downloads and Eric Weinstein is treating you like you're a player. Well, just on the Eric point. So Eric, who before they've been begging to get him on the podcast, he's a little hard, he's been friendly, but, you know, maybe not making the time. Constantine's welcome from Eric to take him as his plus one with Eric's wife and a friend to Bill Maher's green room.

It's just so Eric. It's so Eric. I think the really interesting point for me there is not about Constantine at all, but actually like that. The reception. Yeah, the reception, how that works. And I believe him. It was totally transformed in their eyes because the way they evaluate each other and status in that group is just totally about that kind of viral impact and how much of a reply you are.

And suddenly he had entered the big leagues and now he was someone worth talking to. and how much of a reply you are. And suddenly he had entered the big leagues and now he was someone worth talking to. This is the dinner, the IDW dinner problem that so many of them have. You know what he's describing? He describes it as an initiation into a world I'd always aspired to be a part of with figures,

like towering figures like Eric Weinstein. Finally, I was able to sit down and pick his fantastic mind but that is the thing right that we often criticize about that there's so much focus placed on this like interpersonal backdoor relationshipy stuff that goes on amongst the guru set and what constantine is detailing is that happens it's great now i'm being treated like a brawler by these people but it totally happens not because he's got the right politics or he's written a book that they've all found totally fascinating it's happened because his download metrics have reached a threshold where he's worth taking notice

of i think that's a really important point in terms of how the game is played in that network. Yeah. Although I think the reason his reception was so positive and he got the downloads was because of the- Oh, because of the politics. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

So, like, if you had a viral, like, speaking truth power by the Me Too man in Hollywood, you're not going to be welcomed by Eric and Bill Maher and stuff. Good clarification. You're completely right. A bit more on this entering the big leagues and the change is again, it's like Constantine in a way, James Lindsay did this episode that we never covered, where he talked about his road to Damascus moment where he basically completely decided that he needed to change and be more extreme and so on. And he just explains that. He just openly talks about these people are being nicer to me. And I was, you know, at first I was wary. And then I realized, no, but they really like me and so on. So Constantine, he's from the UK and is talking about the difference in culture there that we've talked on as well about people who big up and want to support people and the tall poppy syndrome, which predominates in UK, Ireland, Australia, this kind of thing.

So listen to some of these reflections. So that feeling of relief, I imagine, is just a sense of calm and peace that it brings. It is. And also, when we went to the US, we met all these incredible people. And the mindset over there, we talk about all the time, it's got we met all these incredible people and the, the, the mindset over there, you know, we talk about all the time has got downsides, of course.

Of course it does. But I really, you know, I used to think the sky's the limit. Now I just think there is no limit. You know, I'm just like, what, what can we do? Uh, how can we be more of ourselves how can we create amazing content how can we make a positive impact on the world uh i'm not embarrassed or shy anymore about having big dreams and big aspirations for what we're building here um and i just feel like we we put ourselves on the map yeah this year in a way that I think in the past, we just felt like we

were trying to. Now I just feel, I feel like there's no limit. And the thing is, it's not, I know it's not a delusional thing because I meet all these people who are hugely successful, who I respect, who we look up to, who tell us that. They look at what we've built here and they go there is no limit and so to me this is all you know all opportunity all upside all opportunity from here on in once again i want to congratulate and thank constantine for his frankness chris but it is incredibly revealing like a lot of the time the behavior of the various influences can be characterized as very calculating sort of Machiavellian stuff but like you said with James Lindsay and now with Constantine Kisson a lot of the time they speak to their personal insecurities and a kind of vulnerability and almost just a great sense of

emotional relief at the sense of being accepted at being respected and finally having being seen as someone who's accomplished something by people that matter and that's what constantin is relating to here and i think that those emotional drivers are as important as any other ones yeah and again i'm ones. Yeah. And again, I'm going to return to this point repeatedly, but what he's talking about is the sky's the limit because I had a viral culture war meme hit the content that we're going to put out. That's going to help the world. Like what's on their channel interviews with Bjorn Lomborg, Matthew Goodwin, Nigel Farage, Ben Shapiro, Dan Crenshaw, Dan Schellenberger, or Michael Schellenberger, sorry, Lawrence Fox. It's just, it's pure culture war. They're an interview show who do long form interviews with culture war figures. Occasionally,

they might do something with, you know, a non-celebrity, non-culture war figure, or have on a guest which is against type, but go to their channel. And it's just a deluge of absolutely predictable culture war content. So that framing that we're going to contribute to the world in a positive way, Like, does it perhaps involve another interview with Nigel Farage? That would be the sixth one on the channel. Like, yeah, it's impressive, I guess, how much self-belief they have in, you know,

their power to impact culture in a positive way. But again, that's the pattern we see with a lot of the gurus like Brett Weinstein, which is one taking what seems like a relatively small thing as a massive accomplishment. And the other aspect is portraying what they're doing as being on a mission to save the world, the highest possible motives. Yeah. And like you said, is that really accomplished by interviewing Nigel Farage six times, five times or whatever it is? Yeah, they've all got their own narratives, but it does seem out of step with reality.

Yeah. And, you know, when it comes to the big plans and that kind of thing, here's a clip talking to that. You know, people can already see that we are slowly starting to expand the range of what we do here. So in addition to interviews, you and I put out pieces to camera regularly. We've got other creators who will be coming through under our umbrella over time. And, you know, we are going from a YouTube show and podcast to a media organization, a new media organization.

And people are going to see some very big uh changes here over the next six months which is obviously very exciting they got big plans this is a lot isn't it that's transforming from an interview uh culture war podcast to becoming a media platform this has really been a shot in the arm for them yeah it's it's amazing how much this Oxford speech has done. But you know what, they're talking about switching from the focus being solely on them and their YouTube slash podcast series to a franchise of sorts, or some sort of umbrella term where presumably you would have other people under the Trigonometry brand. And given the standards that we've come to experience with the Trigonometry

main podcast and YouTube series, I can only dream of what that content will look like. But I guess they're envisioning a kind of daily wire except for people still claiming to be centrists. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

That'll be interesting to see how that goes. Yeah. So sticking a bit, Matt, in terms of the influences around them and how they're impacting on them, they are supported by the best people. I don't have time for it anymore, man. No. They are supported by the best people. I don't have time for it anymore, man.

No. And we are surrounded, the beauty of the work that we do is we're surrounded by incredible people. Yeah. You know, we've become very good friends with Winston Marshall over the, you know, the last couple of years, and he's such a great guy, and so many others, so many other people that we. Terrible taste in glasses. In glasses?

Yeah. I'm joking, Winnie. What's wrong with his glasses? It's got the kind of, it just reminds me of my dad's in the 80s. I'm sorry, Win. But no, you're right. You're right. Legendary comedic banter there, Matt, by the way.

Just had to include that. So surrounded by all the best people. example they give their Winston Marshall does that name ring a bell Matt I've got a feeling it won't no no who is he that would be the member of Mumford and Sons who left because of various controversies over and he wrote tweets promoting andy no's book and then ended up kind of getting semi-canceled and leaving the band and then he went on barry weiss's podcast and cried about it and now he has his own podcast oh yeah the martial matters podcast hosted by the spectator magazine oh yes the and so there matt the martial matters podcast hosted by the spectator magazine oh yes the and so they're mad the martial matters podcast so just have a little look there at the recent episodes what do you see

you see young me park the north korean dissident lee fang michael schellenberger now ferguson the conservative peterhossian, Louise Perry. These are all names that will be completely unknown, right? Another groundbreaking broadcast with completely random guests. So this guy, Marshall, is also making the world a better place by talking to long-form interviews with the same set of culture war figures. Yeah, a lot good on them the world's going to be fixed shortly i think with so many people lending a hand yeah the good thing is that they've all got these very different ideas it's not just people taking the same model and monetizing

that it's just all different angles that guy's a musician they were comedians though you know so there you go there's the difference well it takes a lot of courage to develop talk to people with different opinions they talk about that a bit later on yes i i do have a clip um that specifically speaks to the importance of what they're doing like why maybe we are finding it hard to understand what's so important. Here's the way that they see trigonometry. One of the things that I have to say I'm incredibly proud and excited about is some of the recent guests and the guests that we've got coming up. You know, we have got everybody from Nigel Farage through to Mark Steele, who's a lefty firebrand comedian, to Aaron Bastani, the founder of hyper lefty media organization, Navarra Media. And this is what we set out to do when we started.

Yes, we have our own points of view. Yes, we are not pretending to not have them, but we want to speak to everybody. We want to hear people's views from different sides of the political spectrum. And there's not many places that you're going to get that variety of conversation. What people think of, Matt, when they think of trigonometry is balanced, non-partisan content from a wide array of opinions and voices, certainly no skew in their content. You're just as likely to see lefties on there complaining about some element of the left as you are right-wing people complaining about another element of the left. Not at all an anti-work podcast. No, no, no, no, no.

And just, you know, even let's not consider the anti-work thing on COVID, Matt, recently. And just, you know, even let's not consider the anti-walk thing on COVID, Matt, recently. Consider that they've had on the independent journalist, I'm doing air quotations if you want, Rava Vora, the young guy with no relevant expertise who talked about what the title they put on the video. Watch this before you give your kids the vaccine. Dr. John Campbell, risk benefit analysis. He helpfully provided that codish arvin the right wing blogger how a bad idea led to covid this was tying in the lamb lake you know and jay badacharya it's strange there's such a diversity you know they're not afraid to

challenge their audience and the crazy thing is even if they balanced in scare quotes each and every one of those absolutely terrible insane figures peddling misinformation with reputable scientists with actual expertise in the field which they don't right no they don't but they do on occasion have like random counter people like richard dnokins or something but the point is on that specific issue covered they don't but even if they did that would still be terrible it's not a good idea to have one guest on who is a reputable scientist talking sense and then having absolute batshit crazy next on for balance to hear both sides that's stupid to begin with the second thing thing is that it's not balanced, right?

It's 95% lunatic, conspiracist, anti-government, anti-everything people. Yeah, well, we'll hear them talk about this a bit more, Matt. So the new media organization they're pioneering, what kind of content? I think that in terms of pioneering a new media organization they're pioneering, what kind of content? I think that in terms of pioneering a new media organization that is going to have a range of voices on it that you might agree with or you might disagree with, but they've got to be heard and they've got to be discussed in an open and honest way. We're really, really plotting quite a unique course, I feel. And that's something I think we should be very proud of. Absolutely, we should. And this is the thing as well. There are interviews that we know are going

to get more views. You just know that. You know that if you bring, and I love him to pieces, he's one of our finest interviewees. He's a brilliant mind he's great fun douglas murray if we bring douglas murray on we know it's going to crush on every platform it's going to be amazing he's a star he's a star but that's it you know douglas murray just regardless of whether your partner is or whatever he's a star right like every audience that is fair-minded will react to him the same. It wouldn't signal that you have a right-leaning audience if Douglas Murray is your go-to example. I think as well as that, Chris, it reveals the strong incentives.

This is a setup to a framing that what they care about is to talk about the real issues and have people on that are going to make the world better and help people and so on. But there's this long extended framing about how if they got Douglas Murray on then the downloads would crush because he's a star and obviously that would just be fantastic, like so great for us. And this in the context of talking so much about how happy they are

with their metrics and the new income and so on. Come on. Whether they admit it to themselves or not, clearly, this is one of the biggest priorities in terms of which guests they're booking and the editorial line that they take. No, no, no, Matt. How dare you? That's not their priority. Because I and neither do you want to be one of these platforms where we just talk to people that we agree with because number one and the most important thing about it it's just boring

yeah if you cannot sit down and have a conversation be friends have a relationship with someone that you disagree with then you're a child child. And it really is that simple. And I don't understand why we don't talk about this more. Yeah. Well, I think we've, we found ourselves in a very, very locked in world where, and look at it. It's very gratifying, isn't it? To just hear your opinion regurgitated back to you and this echo chamber thing, it exists for a reason it's good that they have not fallen to that you know that they so regularly are engaging with people that strongly challenge their positions and and also matt that point that we don't talk about this issue enough heterodox podcasts are not talking enough about how they are able to... Have the difficult conversations

and speak to people across the aisle. Yeah, you're right. Nobody ever mentions that. It's in the title of like fucking 20 podcasts. Just that notion that, you know, they would point to stuff like, look, we talked to the host of Novara Media or we talked to Destiny. And one that, if you were to quantify it, you would find that these things where you actually have a left wing person on, they're a significant minority.

But even if you ignore that, if you look at the stuff that they talk about in almost all occasions, with a few exceptions, it's very much focusing on elements that they can agree with and then pushing back against the people on stuff that they know will generate some controversy, right? Like have Sam Harris on, talk about stuff you agree on, then talk about some issues where you know it's going to cause contention. And you don't even have to be the one really strongly pushing back because you can just be presenting all the people will say. They recently had Neil deGrasse Tyson on. And obviously he's going to say

a bunch of stuff that will annoy their audience about COVID or science or whatever. But that's good for them. And they would frame that as, well, that But that's good for them. And they would frame that as, well, that's us having these difficult conversations. But as you can see, like on COVID, where are the figures where they're just having people on putting the contrarians on blast?

They don't have that. And the interviews with the contrarians are incredible. The softball question throughout, right? Yeah, I mean mean just it's almost become like a joke well i mean i'm sure people have parodied this just the incredible self-congratulation of the heterodox fear in terms of being robust and yeah i have these difficult conversations and really discuss the big ideas and you know to get outside of our ideological bubbles the kinds of things that everyone else is just too afraid to do we're such special people like half the episode is then patting themselves on the back one for

their metrics and the other half is patting themselves on the back for being so damn courageous and yeah non-partisan that's that's the immediate thing you get from their channel when you go and look there and they they make this point very clearly, Matt. And I think that's, again, another of the reasons for how far we've been able to come and how far we're going to go, because we are going to retain that attitude always. We are not going to get locked into a particular worldview and a side,

which makes it difficult sometimes. I think we all know that if we pick the team and started batting for that team, we'd probably be further along in terms of numbers and revenues and whatever. But it's just not, I don't think you can be successful being truly successful being something that you're not. Nigel Farage's sixth appearance coming up soon.

That's it, just as to mention. Chris, I think a fun little project and research would be to use gpt4 or something to just do a straight up text analysis of all of the comments of all of the people that follow them all the people that comment on the youtube videos which are all uniformly positive by the way and from that quantify the slant right quantify the tribe for want of a better word, that their audience fits into. And I think if you did that research,

I think we could show quantitatively that they have picked a side, that their audience is of a very particular bent and they are speaking directly to that audience. They do not have an audience from across the political spectrum. Yes. I think what they are probably referencing is like, they don't have as partisan an audience as Dave Rubin or Scott Adams. They're probably to the more center of outright partisans, but they are people that are very favorably disposed to sebastian gorka nigel farage and they would say we do that in spite of the political disagreements we we have

but where are the woke liberal people to balance those polemical right-wing figures that's right i mean to emphasize they're not some far right fringe position they sit where they are but the point is is that they are framing it that they are sort of losing audience by by talking to nigel farage again that there are people you know a significant portion of their audience unsubscribing in anger because they're so upset by hearing these conservative opinions and and Nigel Farage getting softball questions no I don't think that's true yeah well I I think they would kind of frame it the other way that despite their audience they you know they speak to destiny or they're not

afraid but yes they are also framing the controversial right-wing politicians as you know they must be heard as well but But like, yeah, but come on, who's following this? But I think they are honestly saying what they believe about themselves, which is, it's truly impressive. And in terms of how other people live and in comparison to the promised land that is trigonometry. There's a big contrast. When you are on the comedy circuit and your livelihood depends on people in the industry liking you, in a very punitive industry where if you have the wrong opinion, people will ban you from clubs or not book you or whatever. We had to really watch our steps all the time. And it creates this kind of eggshell walking experience. That's just,

it's the worst thing. It's not the worst thing, of course, but it's really, really terrible. It's a terrible way to live your life. And it's how most people live. And it's why this show is so successful. It's because we don't live like that. And when we have conversations, which are open and honest, in which we say what we think and we feel, that's, for people, that's revolutionary because most people in their lives, both in their professional and their private lives, walk on eggshells. I get people messaging me going, oh, I really admire your bravery. I'm like, what?

And they're like, yeah, I couldn't say that. He talks a little bit later on about um how most people live lives of quiet desperation yeah yeah the self-censorship that you and i we do all the time obviously we're we're used to it we're hardened to it but yeah quite a life of quiet despair i believe was the the phrase that he used and i have the clip, Matt. No, it's going to be tough and people are going to criticize you and people aren't going to invite you to things and people are going to misrepresent you.

But that is the path. And you have to accept that. And if you don't want to accept that, then you have to accept living a life where you're going to be inauthentic, which to me is the greatest punishment ever. Yeah, it's true. Because you don't want to do that. You don, which to me is the greatest punishment ever. Yeah, it's true. Because you don't want to do that.

You don't want to do that. I mean, we've both lived a life where we weren't everything that we could be. And as a result of that, I can't remember who said it, it's a life of quiet despair in many ways. Because you're not saying what you're thinking or feeling. You're not being true to yourself. It's profound stuff, Chris. And I think it would be good for them to take it to the next level

because I think the next level would be to not care about what the IDW big shots think about you and to not care about whether or not you get 5 million downloads or not, and to not tailor your decisions and your content. No, no, Matt, don't speak crazy. But in any case, Konstantin has transcended that ever since he achieved his career pinnacle of the polemical Oxford Union speech. But I want to just, you know, they spoke a little bit there about being comedians and the travails of that industry, which I think are well documented because there's a lot

of comedians who have podcasts and talk about it. But I just want to make one point here that Constantine emerged onto the scene, so to speak, because of this controversy, which was that he was given a comedy contract. You might not realize that this was Constantine, but it's part of his origin story. He was a comedian. He was asked to play a gig and they give him this contract, which demanded, you know, he doesn't say anything that would offend anyone. And it was a university that sent it to him. And this is an example of how lowly-livered and weak our society has become and cancel culture. And again, Matt, I did a little bit,

just a very cursory bit of research into this event. And would you like to hear about what actually occurred there? I would, I would. I would. Tell me. So what Constantine said in December of 2018 was, I just received an invitation to perform comedy, in inverted commas, at a university. The title of this contract nearly made me puke.

He then puts a screenshot, which is a behavioral agreement form, right? He then puts a screenshot, which is a behavioral agreement form. And it explains this comedy night. They want to put on a safe space and they want it to be about joy and love and acceptance. No jokes about racism, sexism, classism, ageism, ableism, homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, xenophobia, Islamophobia, anti-religion or anti-atheism. They cover all bases. So that's a cringy letter. And indeed, a behavioral agreement formed from a university. What Orwellian nightmare we live in where this can take place. However, it's not from the university. The university is SOAS, by the way,

my old university. And this does sound like something SOAS, I do. But in this case, they're not guilty of it because it's UNICEF on campus. That's the organization that sent this letter. Now, also to note, UNICEF on campus is not anything to do with UNICEF. It's an independent student organization to support UNICEF. But it's not an official UNICEF organization. So, you know, students unions, students can set up like the anime society. So somebody wanted to set up the UNICEF on-campus society, right?

Yeah. And they mentioned that given that UNICEF is a children's charity, they wanted to make sure the event had appropriate comedy for the cause. Whenever the controversy broke, they said, we never wish to impose that guests would have to agree to anything they didn't believe in, and we apologize for the misunderstanding. So as his union said said they don't require anybody to sign any form of contract and it's overzealous behavior the union believes fully in freedom of speech and the freedom to try to make people laugh wow so so not only was it not the university it was not even the student union which frankly for anyone who's been to university knows that they're full of insufferable twats so they acquitted themselves pretty well it was it was a student club that was organized around

children you know organized around a charity for children it was probably not you know going to be tons of children at the event but it's a stupid letter but it's written presumably by some random student figure in that random society and yet this event receives coverage in the bbc the guardian cnn the daily veal so that's just national media international media covered this event critically and uh chris i mean sorry to i don't want to break your stride but i mean just the thing that jumps out at me is like how common this origin story this being catapulted to fame jordan peterson brett weinstein like it's almost a thing isn't it like it's like someone who was relatively unknown not a big deal just chugging along doing their thing whether it's doing comedy or teaching psychology or teaching biology on some

campus no one's heard of them then this media event occurs in which they the brave courageous persecuted lover of freedom and freedom of speech wow it's perfect yeah and so what this actually is matt is like an overzealous woke type student at an obscure university club making an ill-advised content agreement document with no legal force right just a google doc or something that they send to a relatively low profile anti-woke comedian. The comedian uses it to generate attention. The media, including liberal outlets, dutifully agree his profile is boosted. I think so.

Instead of being an example of woke capture of the institutions, the institutions came out and condemned it immediately. There wasn't even a letter from them. The Work Academy condemned it. The Work mainstream media publicized it. And a star was born. So it's actually an illustration of how, like, rather than the media won't cover this,

no, the media will cover it. They'll cover anything if it has the right hook. And this, SOAS, is the most lefty university in the UK. It's the one Jeremy Corbyn went to give his first speech at. So like, that's exactly where you would expect to find the bleeding edge of social justice supporters and that kind of thing. So the whole thing is such a non-issue.

And I know it doesn't come up in this content, but it's just like you say indicative of this whole oeuvre of people that can emerge from these controversies in inverted commas yeah the attention economy and the oxford union speech obviously was the second big hit for constantine in terms of getting that attention over what is a culture war flashpoint yeah and you know matt at the beginning of this podcast we talked about how you could go and listen to good alternative media content you'll get worthwhile information out of it and all this and we're not just dismissing all alternative media listen to the way that constantine and francis talk about politics and the mainstream and this kind of thing.

Just to be around people who are ambitious and want to achieve things is such a tonic. Yeah. And, you know, something Eric Weinstein said when he was in here made me think a lot, which is he talked about how, you know, I'd never flown on a private plane until I got cancelled. Yeah. never flown on a private plane until I got canceled. Yeah. The truth of it is that all of the energy, all of the excitement, all of the really like stuff that makes you feel alive is in our space now. Yeah. You know that. Yeah. All the people that we, that we have on our show that we get to hang out with, that's where the interesting conversations are happening. Everything else is kind of stale. I mean, if you look at the party political system, in this country especially, we get someone on the right in here and we ask them what they think of

the conservatives. We get someone on the left in and we ask them what they think about Labour. No one's excited about any of it. But this space is exciting. This space is exciting. This space is where things are happening. but this space is exciting this space is exciting this space is where things are happening and this space is where interesting fascinating conversations are happening is it though chris who was it who said that they hadn't flown on a private jet until they got cancelled yeah i don't know that was eric saying he't, because I don't think he's been publicly cancelled. I guess he was telling Constantine that he had not flown on a private jet. But in any case, the message is kind of clear, right?

Which is, again, very frank and refreshing in that respect, which is admitting that being cancelled is pretty great. You know? I mean, it's the pathway to be part of fascinating people, success, flying around on private jets, fantastic stuff. Yeah, but that presentation, Matt, that this is the space where the exciting things are happening, like politicians, you know, mainstream,

they're out there talking about incremental improvements or disagreements over these issues but like what is interesting is all these firebrand figures left or right as long as they say absolutely everything's a shit show we need to tear it down that's where the really interesting energy is isn't it and you just like you can see the populism and kind of the mundane actual discussions about politics that you might see on the political show or whatever that's all boring matt what you need is somebody who's just going to say it's all a load of nonsense isn't it join my freedom party to restore the uk to where it should be or what's really going on with vaccines in ukraine yeah or speaking to

crazy young lady they spoke to you last time who was what was her name oh pearl pearl yeah that's where the energy is that's the real honest conversations and i get it i mean it is more interesting in a way than talking about some boring policy change that's being proposed or some platform for an election. I find politics pretty boring, but that's why I listen to History and Physics podcasts. But this is something else, isn't it? It's ranked populism, as you said. Yeah. On the subject of Perlmutter, you do remember they were willing to push back on her, someone palling around with Nick Frantes. But I think that's the kind of thing they're talking about when they say this.

And, you know, also we've become better interviewers. One of the things people don't realize is it's kind of hard in our game, in the new media world where, you know, you've spent months chasing a guest. Yeah. And then they come on and they say something you don't necessarily agree with. Initially, when you're starting out, it can be tempting to just let it go. Whereas now I think we feel much more confident about challenging people when they say things that don't make sense to us. And you've seen that in, you know, we go into every interview

with a ton of good faith. But also, if someone is saying something that's not quite true we are going to get to the bottom of it are you yeah well again chris before i commented on the framing like the extent of framing about how oh yes all the money and attention is nice but really what we care about is is producing quality content you know that's not what we care about is producing quality content. That's not what we care about. And again here, the framing is an understandable human motivation to suck up to the big-name guests that you've been trying to get on because they're big-name guests, right, and how they've become stronger and more courageous in actually putting harder questions to them

and not just yes-anding them all the time. But really, they doth protest too much because I just, how to put this, Chris, you can see the problem there. You can see the incentives. Like if you were feeling that, if you were chasing whoever it could be, maybe Sam Harris, for instance, he's a big name. You were chasing Sam Harris. We really wanted to get Sam Harris on the show.

And now we've got Sam Harris on the show. It's going to be good for our numbers. It's going to be harris on the show it's going to be good for our numbers it's going to be good for our profile to be good for everything chris so we're going to have to be nice to him you didn't feel that right and they're being very frank and honest here right because as we said at the beginning they are running ultimately a small business and their livelihoods do depend on those things. And they're being very accidentally, perhaps, honest, I think, about what is really driving the editorial line. Yeah. And they, just for an example, Matt, that we've covered on this podcast before, they

invested this guy, Jim Richards, a lawyer and investment banker, who's kind of mad guy, promotes like precious metals, golden metal, right? They're like a contrarian economist. But that doesn't matter because he went in depth about how climate change isn't real. And actually, even more so that, you know, it's a happening, but it's not a problem that carbon dioxide is actually good. My point is, they will, so you're an up-and-coming climate researcher or physicist or whatever.

You will not get tenure. You will not get published. You will not get research grants. If you deviate in any way from the narrative, which is that CO2 is poison, methane is poison, there's, you know, if global temperatures go up, whatever, 1.5 centigrade before a certain time, the oceans are going to rise.

New York City subways will be flooded. None of that is true. There is no evidence that shows conclusively that CO2 has anything to do with global warming, number one. You can speculate on it. It is greenhouse gas. It does trap heat. But the system is so complex that other factors come into play that tend to reverse, have

recursive functions that tend to reverse whatever it was that started it. The causes of climate change are actually very well known. Sun cycles, volcanoes, ocean currents, the location of the jet stream. There are a set of factors, you know, La Nina, El Nino, that, you know, oceanic subduction where... And then they clearly wanted to get off that topic. And if you remember, Constantine says, you know, oh, well, people are going to say, you know, they disagree with that. But then he frames

it as, and isn't it terrible that I'm feeling nervous about it because we can't even have the conversation? So, of course, the climate changes, you know, and say, you know, you're a climate denier. I'm not a climate denier. Climate change all the time. I just deny bad science. I deny your hoax. I deny your lies. That's, yeah. All right. Well, this video is not demonetized, thanks to you, Jim. But, you know, it's weird because matters of science, you could be completely wrong about this, right? I'm not saying you are, but you could be. And we should still be able to have the conversation. But it does feel like to me, I feel it inside of hosting the show right now. I feel like I have to sort of acknowledge the fact that you've expressed a controversial view that goes against what we all are supposed to believe.

No, I have not expressed an opinion. Everything I've said is based on science. I'd be happy to, pardon me, deluge you with the peer-reviewed papers. What's interesting is that the true experts, I'm talking about Princeton physicists, University of Colorado, by the way, they're one of the top research universities in this field. The guys and women, mostly guys, who are retired, who aren't worried about all the things, they're writing papers that completely refute the climate change narrative. I should call it the global warming CO2 narrative, because anyone who knows anything knows that

climate's changed. I lived 10 years on Long Island. Let's not spend too long on this, because I just wanted to point that out. But the thing I really wanted to talk about as well, James, is one of the things that defined the politics of the- That's the real issue here. So they didn't challenge him. They mentioned that others might not agree with

it and then they very quickly lamented the fact that they were not able to the way he framed it then is not actually true right the thing that is true is what he said before which is that they don't want to make high profile guests unhappy because they want to book more of them yeah so you mentioned sam harris so they talk about him a little bit. And if you remember, Sam Harris got in a hassle, right? Because he made the comments about Hunter Biden's laptop on their show, that viral clip that got him in a hassle in the conservative media sphere. For all the concerns we had about how that interview got spun and whatever, I interviewed Sam Harris last year as a good example. And when we go back to America, we're going to interview Sam again.

Yeah, and I'm really looking forward to it. So am I. I just got to say about this is because presumably they've agreed with Sam that they'll do that, right? Sam has an addiction to going and talking. Like he doesn't, the people that he doesn't talk, it's quite telling, you know, because he doesn't have this compulsion to go and talk to left-leaning media in general, but he just,

it seems like he can't resist Russell Brand or Trigonometry or whatever they are. So it's kind of inexplicable, isn't it? Because Sam Harris doesn't need to do it. It doesn't seem to be like, I don't really get it. Do you? No, I mean, so even if you take it that Sam is like a closet right winger, right, who, but the Constantine or the Trigonometry podcast just tend to generate him hassle,

which he describes in depth on his podcast right it's just people taking clips and dunking on them and their whole audience hates him so presumably it's not the interpersonal part was fine so yeah i i don't i don't fully get why but yeah no i'm not sam yeah so so there's that so matt there's there's one other element that we haven't talked about in this and i think it's better that we leave it deep into the podcast for some people will never reach because this is a little it's both i think a good point and also impossible not to find like a little bit cringy. Um, because right. All the things that we're talking about, it's mostly around Constantine.

Right. Clearly he is the front man. It's his speech that provided trigonometry the boost. Right. And, oh, and just to say that Constantine draws this bow about the speech being the thing propelling trigonometry forward. Oxford Union and I do that speech and it really wouldn't have the impact either on us or the world that it did because we'd put in the work to create the foundation to launch something like that okay so I I just play that this say you know he's he is doing his best to free him it does this was a boost for the platform.

And it was our joint efforts, Francis and him, in putting together a platform that meant those benefits could be realized. Yeah, and this comes out before. There's like a segment on this, which I've got some clips from. So here is Constantine being a considerate friend, I think, to Francis.

It's weird how I feel like all the success that you and I have had has always been because we always had the mentality that the only thing that could prevent us from being successful is if you and I were to fall out and not stick together. And that's not to say you and I have never had arguments or fallings out or whatever. But one of the interesting things to me was when my Oxford speech happened, so many people messaged me and they were asking me if you were all right. And I just thought that is such an interesting way of looking at it because, look, I understand people sometimes are resentful or whatever, but I just feel like everything we've built, we've always done it together. So when I wrote my book, you look through and you help me punch it up. When you write your monologues,

I look through it, I'll help you adjust it and whatever. We've always done things together. And so the success we've had has been together, but maybe I'm wrong. Maybe, you know, what was it like for you when that happened? Because a lot of people were asking me about this. A laudable sentiment. It is nice to say. I do feel that that's a fair reaction for people to have when one figure from a co-hosted podcast is suddenly getting lots of attention, primarily focused on them. So how's Francis holding up with this? And this is a difficult conversation, right, Matt? Because like, what's Francis going to say? Yeah, it was actually really annoying, right?

Like he can't say that anyway, but I think most people wouldn't, right? Like, so what Francis says is this. I know what it's like to be skinned. And whenever you're skinned, you carry that around with you a little bit because you know what it's like to be skinned. And whenever you're skinned, you carry that around with you a little bit because you know what it's like to, you know, have to bunker train because you've literally got no money. You know what that's like. So there was that fear. And then when it happened for you, I was so relieved. And I was just like, oh, he's like, he's absolutely smashed it. He's pulled out the bag. And I was was delighted for you and i remember people going to me and going oh are you jealous and no because this is what we built together this is what

this we're a team and i've always compared what we do to a band yeah we're a band you know and so the fact that you went and you did this amazing thing was incredible for all of us. It was something I was genuinely proud of. And also as well, it is completely what you should be doing. It's not what I should be doing. No, no, no. You know, if I went on there and I started banging on about people, about what you were talking about, people would be like, all right, it's a bit, because it's not what I should be doing.

Totally. I think jealousy like i understand the emotion of jealousy of course i do and the pangs that people feel and whatever else but on a deeper level i genuinely believe that everybody is on their path and what somebody is doing it's not your path so it's that was all nice and perfectly fine the only small bone i had to pick was just constant had been a little bit too quick to jump in with the yes and now of course i shouldn't be doing that no no no not you not you yeah a little bit too quick there but apart from that all fine but yeah a little bit cringe as there but apart from that all fine but yeah a little bit

cringe as well but again it's all very normal isn't it i mean look one of these days chris you're going to be off there debating destiny you're going to be twitter we're going to have this conversation we're going to have this conversation i'm going to be fine with it you're doing well you're there's no i'm very i'm very happy for him it's fine totally fine i don't i don't even care we we built this we built this together but that's the important i'm playing the drums he's out there on lead vocals we're a band yeah i'm gonna be i'm gonna be cool with it when it happens for you man i'm i'm gonna like so i will perfectly say that like just the human element is like this is two people navigating the situation constantine is trying to reconsider it and francis is like being what's

that word where you're supportive self-effacing i don't know yeah supportive self-effacing just you know in in general he's responding in the way... A good human would, yes. Yeah, and you do see, you know, so we pointed out that Constantine was quick to agree, but he does like big up Francis, right? He does. Here's an example of this. It's been amazing to work and spend time and share and grow and develop and just see you develop and to see you improve.

It's been a privilege. It's been a privilege because it's been a privilege to see you get better. And it also makes me want to get better and it makes me want to improve. And you're crushing it, man. I mean, you're doing lots of TV now. We've got your clips coming out on the channel that are doing really well. You done you've been doing your comedy monologues which uh are improving and growing over time as well so uh you know i'm really excited to see i've always said to you and people won't know this but i've always i've always pushed you along sometimes too much maybe or too forcefully at least but i've always really believed in you so absolutely chris jokes aside i was cringing a lot throughout because there was just so much self-congratulatory self-indulgent stuff

going on this was also a bit self-indulgent but it was them talking about a natural thing that happens when one of them is getting all of their accolades and all of the limelight and you know for these guys yeah in the attention attention economy, that's gold. And Francis isn't getting it. But, you know, they talk about it in a heartwarming way. So I might make a couple of little mean jokes, but it's perfectly fine. It's good. Yeah.

And there is the issue of, like, what Francis is supposed to be doing if he's not supposed to be doing the monologues that Constantine does. But they talk about that. They say he's got comedy and he's writing a book and hosting things. You might have missed it because you were playing at two times speed, but they were giving examples

of how it's important to swing and miss and it's okay to embrace failure. And they played a video clip of francis like totally fucking up oh did you miss that oh my god oh yeah yeah yeah i know what you're talking about they play a clip of him hosting event for gb news and but yeah it's it's one where it doesn't go well. And look, if it goes, and I'll tell this story. So I presented a show on GB News, which is Headliners. And they got me in and I was very happy.

And they gave me the clicker and I went to start and the clicker froze and everything went wrong. Let's take a look at those front pages. The Daily Mail are going with make coward Letby face us. This is to do with Nurse Letby, who is refusing to actually face the judge when she is being sentenced. The Times is going with, let be police fear that she attacked 30 more babies. So they're kind of highlighting, you know, sometimes there's setbacks and things that go easy well. But there was an odd choice after the segment where they were talking about consent and success

and Francis's being totally okay with that. And then the segue was to that time that Francis totally screwed up. But it was, I don't know. I felt sorry for Francis. But anyway, they seem okay with it. So that's, it's fine. Matt, we do also like to try and find at least one things where we agree with the

people right and you know we could say this bit but i would say this sentiment that constantine expressed i oh i find i know what you're gonna play oh really i know what it is well what is it this is how simpatico we are okay let's see's see. I haven't told you. You haven't told me. I know what you're going to play. Okay, let's see if it's what you expect. And the reality is as well, man, is, you know, I think people, I don't know if it was true for you, but for many people, I think we kind of live through life waiting for something to happen, for someone to come and save us somehow.

And the truth is no one's coming. No one's coming to save you. No one gives a shit. People are busy living their own lives. They're not sitting there judging you and wondering what your opinion is about this or that most of the time. And the other thing is you don't know when you're going to die, but when you do, all that's going to happen is they're going to put you

on the ground, throw some dirt on top and go and eat some food. Yeah. That's it. That's it. There's no big glory. Okay, look, you're famous, whatever. There'll be lots of people at the funeral. But that's it.

Nothing happens. And so you might as well make the most of what you've got. You might as well say what you think. You might as well be yourself. Was that it? That was it. And I think a little bit earlier to that, Constantine spoke about how it's okay to screw up

because in your mind, when you're screwed up in some way, you've embarrassed yourself. There's been some total failure. People are laughing at you and so on. Like, don't worry about it because in 10 minutes, they'll have forgotten about you.

Most people are thinking about themselves and they're not dwelling on the mistakes and stuff that you make. So it's a natural human impulse to dwell on it and beat yourself up. But just don't do that. And don't worry what other people are thinking about you, because they're probably not thinking about you very much at all. So it was very much a related point. And I thought it was reasonably profound, even. It was good. Yeah, yeah yeah agreed and the well i don't know if i'd say profound well i want to walk that back a little bit but it's not that's gonna be on the cover of the book yeah i'm walking that back everyone have read it sit down put away the

keyboard i just think that's something that kids for instance if you've got young children teenagers that's that's something it's a good message it is a good message and and before people on the reddit because i know what they're up to as well matt before they say focusing on that speech it was an oxford union speech it's not representative that's just like it's supposed to be full of rhetoric and stuff just listen to francis explain what the speech was made of. And that's why your speech worked, because you were absolutely you. It was you distilled. You weren't trying to be something else. You weren't saying something that you didn't wholeheartedly believe in. And there's a very famous playwright, and I say it all the time, David Mamet, words that come from the heart go to the heart. And that's why that speech connected. And there's a very famous playwright, and I say it all the time, David Mamet, words that come from the heart go to the heart. And that's why that speech connected. And that's why it was

brilliant. And that's why it worked. And I don't think people actually really understand that. So Francis himself says you can take the speech as indicative of Constantine. It's pure Constantine in its most distilled form. I think he could be right about that. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. That's exactly right. So, oh, Matt, and there was one other clip.

There's just one more that I feel we shouldn't miss. Is this like a Columbo move? You're leaving, you turn around. One more thing. So you said you were at the swimming pool. I actually had my various profile logins were Columbo because I just like this disheveled appearance and kind of underestimated. It was underestimated of Columbo because I just like this disheveled appearance and kind of underestimated that.

It was underestimated of Columbo. Yeah, I can see that. I can see your affinity with Columbo. As everyone knows, my online identity is Arthur Dent, a fictional character for whom I feel I share an affinity. You are Columbo. Yeah, I feel he's a much more successful version. And perhaps I'm slightly less disheveled than him slightly.

His dirty mark. Just wait. Give it a few years, Chris. Maybe. All right. So what's your stinger? I've got a little clip where, you know, we hear this a lot in the sense-making sphere,

in the alternative media ecosystem, about long-form conversations and the power they have, that unbelievable power they have to transform lives, spirits, the universe itself, the fabric of time. So here's Constantine and perhaps Francis, anyway, talking about, you know, the importance of long-form interviews. You know, there's so many things. And look, the impact that we want to make on the world is that we live in these very, very superficial times. This culture of everything being condensed into a tiny little tweet or whatever, that's not the way human communication is supposed to be.

And it's almost a tragedy in the sense that even in our own lives, you and I, the conversations like this that you and I have and the conversations we have with our guests are probably one of the few times in our lives, in all of our lives, that we actually get to sit down and connect with another human being for an hour, uninterrupted by phones or whatever. And that is quite extraordinary that we get to do that for a living and that we get to share that with the world and people can join in those conversations and see people who are actually communicating in a way that human beings are supposed to communicate, you know, in a world that really, really very rarely has the opportunity for people to do that. Beautiful. Like Carl Sagan's Peel Blue Dot and like Constantine's O ode to speaking to someone for an hour i mean by that

criteria chris the experiences that you and i have had together yeah what we've delivered to the world for this just the hushed reverential tone to conducting a culture war interview like one hour with laurence fox or sebastian gorka can you imagine like this is what humans are made for what we're made for this just the the privilege of being able to interact with you chris for literally hours at a time it's been it's been something i know it's been special people pay money people attend university courses to do that but yeah just like with the sense makers matt they talked about you know this entwined union a new entity emerging from their ability to have long form conversations with people a spiritual entity bigger than the

the individual components right something new emerges something spectacular i just feel that spirit here in this sentiment and oh my god i mean like you're right the sense makers have actually elevated this sort of worship of discourse into like a formal philosophical system where the process is a spiritual experience. It's really quite amazing. But the stuff that Constantine is saying there, it's really, you hear it from all of them, don't you? You hear it from Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan,

and all of them wax lyrical on just the specialness, the sheer feeling of just talking incessantly. Counterpoint, Matt. Could it not be indulgent in some occasions? Could it not be that by talking to someone in a way that just allows them to, with very limited pushback, present an idea or like a Scott Adams take on politics or whatever, that actually you're not doing something useful for the world. You're just giving a polemical, partisan, culture war-pilled moron

the chance to speak to a largely polemical audience, unmolested for an hour, like everyone else in the fucking discourse sphere is doing on their one million podcasts with the same guests talking about the same topics. Like, I just I understand

the annoyance. You know, we talked at the start of this episode about that it is good that alternative media gives you the ability to spend more time digging into history, going into niche topics. Yes, doing long form interviews. I want to hear Louis Faro

interviewed for two and a half hours about his craft or that kind of thing. And if your thing is partisan culture war pundits like Douglas Murray, you really love, you know, hearing him talk about all the issues that he identifies with the liberal media for three hours, then more bullied to you.

But don't kid yourself that that's something spiritual and transcendent. It's just a conversation with a pundit. And that's what a lot of trigonometry's output is. That's right. This long form format and unscripted and relatively self-indulgent, including us. Yeah, we do it. We do it. Don't make it fucking spiritual. Yeah. But how you use that time is up to you, you know, and if you're going to listen to whatever hardcore history or the revolutions podcast, then you're going to listen to whatever hardcore history or the revolutions podcast then you're going to hear somebody actually using that time and conveying as much information to you as they can or it could be like us where we use that time in a relatively

self-indulgent way to analyze the other discourse or you could use it for even more self-indulgent purposes but yeah don't kid yourself, and I will actually say that I've listened to trigonometry conversations sometimes that I've enjoyed. They're discussing something with somebody and there's a segment of it which is interesting. And, you know, it isn't like all of their content is just terrible and they never talk about

any relevant issues or that kind of stuff it's just the difference between what they are presenting what they're doing versus like what their channel actually is and i would encourage anyone that thinks we're being unfair just go look at the thumbnails on their channel and see is this really you know what the world needs more of so but it doesn't say if you ever enjoy trigonometry or any of their guests like what a what a fool you are then there's something wrong with yeah that's right and it's worth emphasizing that in the the pantheon of these heterodox figures trigonometry is not even close to being the worst the worst so no it's not like case in point would be the constantin's take on the rape allegations with russell brandt i mean his take was that both

side type thing i didn't love it but compared to all of the other heterodox ones it was okay compared to the more like elon musk style like or tucker carlson yes he didn't pander just entirely to it all being a stitch up he went the route of both sides are equally wrong to like respond the elo with finding the accusations convincing or to dismiss them it's all the same they're they're completely equal you have to wait until the court case that's court case. That was his take. Not a super profound take. Don't love it, but not... Yeah, exactly. Not as terrible.

So our point here is just trigonometry, not the worst culture or outlet in the world. You know, competing with Dave Rubin and Scott Adams. Give them time. We'll see how things go for them. Okay. Yeah, okay. So, well, why don't we finish

by just saying that, you know, where they're going, Matt, the journey that they're on, the rocket ship trigonometry, where do they go from here? Absolutely. I'm proud of everything that we've achieved. I'm excited. Oh, mate,

the next, the rest of this year is going to be absolute dynamite. We've got, I mean, the stuff we've got coming up is exciting as hell. Nigel Farage. In terms of what the media organization that we're building is going to look like.

We'll be talking more about that when the time is right. But also some of the stuff we're going to get up to in America, some of the brilliant guests we've got lined up here. You know, you and I are going to continue putting out comedic and satirical stuff. Oh, God, I've never seen anything comedic stuff. I will insert here for our audience one of their comedic ad reads just so that people can see their satirical chops. Oh, I did hear their satirical... Yes, yes, they should hear that.

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great Russian bear. If you're looking for a simpler and cost-effective supplement routine, AG1 is giving you a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. Go to drinkag1.com slash trigonometry. go to drinkag1.com slash trigonometry. I hope you all enjoyed that. But yeah, so just, you know, big things are coming for trigonometry.

The 10th interview with Nigel Farage, the 14th interview with Matthew Goodwin, from across the political spectrum, they've got guests from everywhere. So yeah, just weird. And the sad thing is, is matt they're probably right they probably are correct that the star will continue to rise and that they may become uh you know an umbrella organization putting out content um but it is already a crowded marketplace

and they seem to be wanting to focus a bit on american stuff but already over there you've got a huge amount of people doing what they're doing so yeah yeah like you say there's a big market for for this material it's a crowded market as well so who can say what the future holds for francis and constantine but i won't say good luck but um i wish them well yeah and then you can see like part of the strategy from that's being discussed here it's evident from constantine's feed because now he started putting out these videos which are monologues of him sitting in a chair talking about issues and they tend to be framed around culture war topics with a particular

controversy generating hoax such as the Nazis were not as bad as the communists in this way. Why communism is even worse than fascism. I'm aware that if you follow our channel, you understand nuance and complexity, I'm aware that if you follow our channel, you understand nuance and complexity, but sadly not everyone does. In view of this, I have to make this disclaimer for those who will inevitably attempt to misrepresent what I'm saying in the future. Nothing I'm about to say is intended to serve as a defense of fascism. I'm not saying the Nazis are not bad, but I'm just saying blah blah blah.

Hitler wasn't concerned about thought control and so on. Because while fascism is nationalistic, totalitarian and collectivist, it does not aspire to dominate the lives of ordinary citizens to anything like the same extent. Communism, remember, rejected the idea of private property, private enterprise, or indeed a private life of any kind. In the Soviet Union, you were explicitly told to put the interests of the state above not only your own, but those of your loved ones. If you read my book, An Immigrant's Love Letter to the West, you'll remember the story of Pavlik Morozov, a boy who reported his own father to the authorities and was held up as a national hero. Fascism was almost as evil as

communism to be sure, but it did not attempt to achieve its aims by stealing and redistributing private property. The fact is, a powerful minority want men to be weak, incompetent and feeble. They don't understand that in doing so, they're sowing the seeds of their own and our entire society's downfall. The attempt to undermine, subvert and problematize healthy masculinity is guaranteed to backfire and already is backfiring. First, it makes us vulnerable to other cultures which raise men to be strong and capable. Second, suppressing healthy masculinity only leads to other, mostly unhealthy expressions of masculinity. But displaced masculinity can also come out in unhealthy ways too. This is where Jordan came in.

He reminded men what being man actually means. Responsibility, duty, sacrifice, courage and honour. And for this he was roundly attacked by journalists, mainly female ones, as being divisive and toxic, etc. for telling men to be better. Jordan isn't perfect. No one is. But his message was essential, especially for men, and they're trying to ruin his career for it. Yeah, that's it that's the only thing that they find objectionable about him but uh yeah so you can see it right because that's not their usual kind of content the more like little edited

piece controversy generating memeable it's attempt to get oxford union version number two yeah memeable content and you know who knows my work i mean jordan peterson's getting older and more frail and less coherent these days so you know we need a new generation of influencers um could be you constantin i will say it good luck good luck yeah yeah good luck look forward to it all right well that's uh and you know in terms of where they fall in the sphere of gurus they i think lack some of the qualities that we normally highlight in the grometer revolutionary theories and and these kind of aspects. And I think Francis in general scores lower on almost everything. He's got a score.

The more I listen to Francis, the more sympathetic I feel to him. Not to say I like him, but I feel a certain level of sympathy. You're allowed to like him. You can feel sympathy. It's all right. It's okay. But, yeah, I like to have a little guess because it's hard for me to tell actually until we do it what they'll score on the garometer but i i suspect constant

won't score that high i really feel like he's more of a grinding influencer you know with a political beat he didn't score that high matt we put him in oh that's right and he didn't there was you know middling it was kind of aspirational i think though he does have aspirations as you can see in this content right yeah very bigger things very much so so in that respect he does share something of the personal traits of some of the other gurus but he's already picked he's you know released his masterpiece the union speech so where do you where can you go from here yeah yeah that's it but you know just again matt the last thing i'll say is just this has all been around the successful viral video and it is just honestly astonishing to me that that carries such

personal professional like emotional significance i just it's it's astonishing it is astonishing and it's partly a reflection of the the media world we live in now and it's yeah but it's partly a reflection of the character i suppose and or which is linked i suppose because it's their business model as well but yeah it is amazing i i don't want to sound mean but i yeah it's hard to comment on it without sounding like an asshole but honestly i would i would hate to be in a situation in life where going viral viral especially a political red meat diatribe like that. Yeah, culture war thing. Was the thing that I linked my self-esteem to. It was the thing that showed that I'd made it, that I could actually look back on my life and my career with, yeah,

with any kind of respect. You could look at your wife. Anyway, like I said, it's hard to comment on that without being mean. It is surprising. It's all right to be mean sometimes. You would say that. Well, that's it. That's it.

So we're off now. We're not going to be back in trigonometry waters for a good while i don't care who they interview like just i wash my hands of the situation and uh that's it yep they're done are we going to do an outro do we need to do outros yeah we do we do do outros in this world that's one thing we do um we often go to reviews that other people have given of our content, and we review those in a review of reviews. Yeah. It's like an execution squad of reviews.

We've reviewed Constantine and Francis. It didn't go well. Now we get reviewed. It's our turn. Let's see how it goes. Yeah. So the negative one is quite specific the title of it is 13th january 2023 malone and mcculloch that's the title okay bodes well i think i know where this is going

already yes and tim of townsville from australia this is the person who has left this review from Australia. This is the person who has left this review. I'd love to hear a redo of this podcast and consider the release of the Pfizer documents, the acknowledgement that the vaccines cause myocarditis, the increase in all cause mortality in the USA, Europe, New Zealand, Australia, also the Australia TGA DAEN that details nearly 1000 deaths attributable to the vaccine, over 130,000 adverse reactions. The reason highly vaccinated persons were in hospital in NSW Australia before the figures were stopped being published. That's the end.

That is specific. Yeah, okay, okay. Yeah. Well, I can give it to them the Matt, a redo of the podcast. I'll give it to them in one minute. Malone and McCulloch are still absolute conspiratorial arseholes relying on misrepresentation of statistics, fear mongering, outright lies, and just bullshit. Waffle, right? Yeah.

So, yeah, sorry. None of that, all those things that you've said, it just shows that your media diet is absolutely poisoned, perhaps by them. So, yeah, there's your retake of it. No, sorry. Go subscribe to Debunk the Funk. That will help you.

That will help you. That's right. Every single one of those things you cited was nonsense in terms of being a substantive point. But we're not going to explain that here, are we? Because there's no time for this. come on we know how many people have died in the pandemic and and the endless point that you just have to return to here is don't compare adverse effects to not getting vaccinated compare it to getting covid it is always worse always worse the comparison is always worse. Yep. Even if you're a young man with very low risk, it's still worse. Yep. Okay.

Oh, okay. Now, positive reviews. Positive reviews. We have many, too many to choose from. And we have one where somebody released two of the exact same review submitted, and one had the title A- and the other had the title B. So I think they they were deciding our grade and they submitted twice so the more recent one is a minus so i guess we

went up well we'll take the more recent one that was the last one submitted so that's that's definitive yep so here's the five star positive one god you should be the one reading this this is from twee song 41.10 topsy-turvy accents here in iot roa new zealand iot roa do you know iot roa yep it doesn't sound like that though okay okay well there we expect the australian accent a tinny, whiny, evil version of our own, and the various Irish accents to be soft, lilting, and lyrical. These podcasters are doing their best to destroy these stereotypes. The content isn't as great as Pavlova, but is better than underarm bowling. There is disappointingly little swearing for an Aussie and an Irishman.

Well, we are academics. You have to keep that in mind. So I'm not a proper Australian. I'm a toned-down, soft version of a real Australian. That was very nice and from a New Zealander too. The last person you'd expect to hear a compliment from for an Australian. Yeah, they were casting aspersions my way. Yeah, but he's Irish.

Everyone likes Irish people. No one's got any. No, but, you know, the accents do a lot of work there, Chris. Look at what we've done. We've challenged stereotypes, New Zealand stereotypes. That's how strong our accents are. Yeah, yeah, this is true. And I think you come out the better for that but that's all right i do

that's okay i can take your slings and arrows yeah yeah some you lose that's it yeah no people say nice things about you occasionally can't remember the last time but yeah too few but that's all right just whip to my viral speech and you know might you contribute you might you you might be debating destiny one of these days i could see it in you yeah you've got the kind of obsessive energy you don't crave success enough you've got a self-sabotaging aspect to you but you are obsessive so i am obsessive but if i went I went viral for debating destiny, it would be destiny destroys cock academics. So that's, that's, that's my inevitable destiny. Well, in any case, we have people that support us Matt for this, for what we've just produced, what we've done, what we've delivered to the world.

And in many respects, we let people see through the bubbles they see both sides they don't just hear things that they want to agree with they've got guests from all over the political spectrum what's that worth to people it's well i know what it's worth to me it's extremely validating every time you reel off this long list of names it's proof chris it's proof that we're on the right track you know how many are there who knows i'm sure there's dozens of them somebody sent a message to say i got my shout out after two years thank you oh god so i i apologize and will you be the lucky person today? That's fine, guys. So first up, Matt, we have conspiracy hypothesizers.

And here we have, well, who should I mention? Let me just get this up. Yes, yes. Papers rustling. There they are. There they all are. Lovely people. Now, here we go. Here we go.

Ralph Kink, David Schmitz, Daniel Holmes, Tolesa420, Jeffrey Croft, Karen Weikart, David Biasotti, Carolina Sunshine, Alex, Scott, Joaquin Paul Fona-Cruza, Nick Marconi, Mark Grandebror, Nitz, Dustin Hull, Carolyn Fernavel, Amy Flynn, Julian, Peter Kerr, Phil Richardson, Matthias Larsson, Widget, and Borge Olsen. Borge Olsen. Borge, well, great names. That was a lot of work for you. I could see the sweat dripping up your forehead as you were pronouncing them. Well, well done, Chris, and thank you, everybody.

Yeah, thank you all. I feel like there was a conference that none of us were invited to that came to some very strong conclusions. And they've all circulated this list of correct answers. I wasn't at this conference. This kind of shit makes me think, man, it's almost like someone is being paid. Like when when you hear these George Soros stories, he's trying to destroy the country from within. We are not going to advance conspiracy theories. We will advance conspiracy hypotheses. And I'm going to thank some revolutionary thinkers. I'm going to thank David. I'm going to fight. I'm going to stop saying fine, because I know I say that with an F sound. I will send my gratitude to Raquel Rosenfeld,

Noah Mann, Michael McArthur, Louis Price, Jessa, Patrick Youngblood, Hello Sullivan, Janny Jelqvist, Ro Jogan, Hamilton Verissimo Benjamin Graham Clark and Michael Nelson

well that is good all good names you know the other word you shouldn't say because you don't say it right apart from apart from Fank Heller

Heller what's wrong with that Heller can you hear what's wrong with that Heller I didn't say that there what's wrong with that hella can you can you hear what's wrong with that hella there's uh i didn't say that there i didn't say that no there was nobody with the name hello hello again switch everything from the forehead i'm sorry no it's it's fine it's fine to say i

didn't thank anybody i did not send my gratitude to anybody called Heather. No, no, no, no, no. That's right. Thank you, Heather. Lovely name. Was there a Heather? Was there a Heather in that sentence? Yes, there was a Heather.

Unless the actual name was Heller, H-E-L-L-E-R, in which case I take it back. I'll take it. I retract it in that circumstance, Chris. I see. It wasn't random abuse. That makes sense. Okay. Okay. I'll accept it then. We will play a clip to thank you all properly. I'm usually running, I don't know, 70 or 90 distinct paradigms simultaneously all the time. And the idea is not to try to collapse them down to a single master paradigm.

I'm someone who's a true polymath. I'm all over the place. But my main claim to fame, if you'd like, in academia is that I founded the field of evolutionary consumption. Now, that's just a guess, and it could easily be wrong. But it also could not be wrong. The fact that it's even plausible is stunning. The thing that's stunning, Chris, again maybe maybe he will score higher if we rated him again but just that level of self-congratulation like just the degree to which with a perfectly straight face and no degree of cringe someone could say that they're that they're just brilliant right that they're a polymath that they're courageous that that they're trying to save the world.

Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, it is amazing. It's quite something. It makes it much worse when you know the context is Jordan saying that hospitals kill more people than they help. Yeah. So it's not even something that is, you know, possibly an interesting thought

experiment or whatever it's just something objectively wrong okay every edit but the thought that you could suggest it is stunning stunning yeah such an important conversation to be had but you know chris we need to have all the conversations we need to have all of them let no conversation be unhad deal with the big ideas have the robust disagreements that's the only way we're gonna make the world a better place so um yeah yeah thank you yeah well thank you too for this next week or whenever we'll we'll be on to some of those people that we mentioned will take longer. So look forward to that.

But yeah, that's it for today. That's all, folks. Very good. Nice to see you, Chris. I'll see you all in a bit. Bye. Yeah, go gravel at the feet of your muscle master, Matt. Remember that?

No, I remember that. Bye. Didn't work then, Doesn't work now. Donald Trump is in court facing 37 charges of mishandling classified documents and lying to investigators. And all the Democrats are rubbing their hands together thinking they've got him. Apart from Joe Biden, who's forgotten what hands are. Come on, man. All you're doing is making Trump even more insane. Vendettas to Trump is like cocaine to Scarface.

Trump is currently in his office now, feeding off vendettas. It's only a matter of time before he comes out with his machine gun and starts blasting away. Say hello to my little friend. It's not little, it's enormous. These aren't my words, this is what people have been saying about me. I have the biggest machine gun, the greatest in America. Trump is going to jail. But knowing him, he'll become the first inmate to become president of the United States of America.