It Could Happen Here - Lord Miles Routledge: The Stirring Journey of an Asshole

Episode Date: April 20, 2023

The gang discusses a 'dark tourist' who endangers other people for the sake of social media clout and is currently incarcerated by the Taliban for reasons that are, trust us, quite funny.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Oh boy. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about things falling apart and sometimes stuff that's less depressing than that. This is going to be a mix of both of those things. I'm Robert Evans. My co-hosts for today are James Stout and Mia Wong. How are we both? How are we all? How's everybody? How's everybody feeling? I'm anticipating eagerly the topic of today's episode, so I'm excited. Like a kid at Christmas.

Yeah. So, James, that answers my question for you. But, Mia, have you ever heard of Lord Miles Rutledge? I have seen him on Twitter. I cannot express how excited I am for this. So we are talking about a real piece of shit today. This is kind of relevant to our... for this. So we are talking about a real piece of shit today. This is kind of relevant to our,

I try to always justify, you know, our purview is, broadly speaking, collapse, you know, what we call the crumbles. And Miles Rutledge

is a perfect example of the kind of grifters and con men who sort of seep in at the edges of war and disaster and calamity and have for forever you know during behind the bastards um we we've done a couple episodes on like different uh white people who tried at various points to like conquer latin american nations and like the the 17 and 1800s

um just kind of during these periods of of there would be a bunch of rebellions going on and so like some group of mercenaries would be like i I bet we can like steal Nicaragua, right? Let's go. It's worth a shot. You know, you get these kind of like these kind of people. And Lord Miles Rutledge is sort of the lower body count end of that. But in some ways, a lot more frustrating because at least look, there's there's something respectable about trying to violently conquer another country and then getting murdered yourself. There's at least like a degree of honesty there. This guy, Miles Rutledge, is like purely like doing war tourism in order to like pump his his tick tock and his Instagram and his YouTube.

in order to like pump his TikTok and his Instagram and his YouTube. Yeah. And I find that worse than like, I don't know, those guys who tried to overthrow Venezuela and got captured by fishermen. Yeah. So.

They were great. Yeah. And then laid in their own piss on camera. Beautiful story. Perfect story. Yeah, took a BB gun with them. Such a good story. That was the best part um and this one has a similar this story thankfully miles's story has it has a is an ending almost that satisfying so miles rutledge was born on

james actually i'm gonna i'm gonna bring you in for a second how do i spell this last name r-o-u-t-l-e-d-g-e he's british as hell routledge unbelievableledge? Really? It's Routledge? If it's the same as the academic publisher, which is spelled the same, then it's Routledge. And look, I don't give a fuck about how this guy feels, so let's just say it however we want. Yeah, okay. So, Miles Routledge

was born on September 14th, 1999. Probably somewhere near Birmingham. I don't think we have like, it's just kind of based on shit he said, but I don't see why he'd lie about that. I don't think people brag about coming from Birmingham just for like the clout.

Yeah, it's not one of the more glam detentions. So unfortunately, thanks to generations of medical advancements, he survived to adulthood because he does strike me as the kind of person who wouldn't have done that in like the 1800s. He got into the university of, I'm going to need your help here again, James,

Laubero? Loughborough? Loughborough? Unbelievable. Amazing! That sounds like an incredibly obscure World War II German aerial division or something yeah yeah the luff bro yeah yeah yeah that's like the very bro-y section of the luff bafa yeah so uh he gets into the university of luff bro as a fucking physics student um or so he says

and sometime within the last two years he got an internship at an investment banking firm oh this is a kind of guy a kind of guy he's emerging he's laser targeted on a career as a giant piece of shit yeah but i haven't found much in my casual research about his financial situation or how much money he was born into. But I think he was like, I'm going to guess his parents were at least comfortable because as a young man still in college, he had the funds to travel pretty extensively, starting in 2019 when he visited the Chernobyl exclusion zone. Now, this is one of the most popular destinations in the world for what is called dark tourism. And this is largely, this is people who live kind of

boring lives, otherwise traveling to places that sound scary in order to impress people on like the TikTok or whatever. Now I just said that, but like, I don't think there's anything wrong. Like now there's like a lot of problems with getting to Chernobyl because of the war, but like prior to the expanded innovation,

I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to like see Chernobyl. My thinking on like the ethics of going somewhere dangerous or whatever is, like, are you increasing the odds of, like, causing a problem that diverts medical resources or other resources in a way that, like, harms people who have no choice in being there, right? And visiting Chernobyl, whatever. You're not really putting anyone at risk, so that's fine. But in May of 2021, though, Miles Rutledge made the decision to plan a trip to somewhere that was distinctly not fine to visit as a tourist, Afghanistan. Now, he decided to head over there during kind of the end stages of the war, although

if you guys can remember back that far, the collapse of the end stages of the war. Although if you guys can remember back that far, the collapse of the Afghan government that the United States had backed happened more rapidly than most people had predicted. So it was kind of like less clear, I think, when he booked his trip that things were gonna fall apart quite that quickly. Yeah. A few Marines who feel the same way about that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, it's one of those things Yeah. A few Marines who feel the same way about that. like he really does frame this as just he wanted to go on vacation and he wanted to go on vacation specifically for what I think is probably like the dumbest reason I've ever heard of anyone choosing a vacation location, especially choosing fucking Afghanistan as a vacation location. I'm going to play a clip from one of his YouTube videos now. Why am I in Afghanistan? Well, that's a really good question. During COVID lockdowns, Afghanistan was the only country open without a vaccine mandate. So I just went.

I've never heard his voice before. I'm more angry now. He goes to Afghanistan because they don't have a fucking vaccine mandate. Oh my fucking God. Yeah. Real warrior for God. Yeah. Yeah. Real,

uh, warrior for freedom. Yeah. Just, just the, just the dumbest idiot. I, I,

I, I hate him. Um, so anyway, as a result of wanting to avoid the vaccine mandate, Miles joined the long and historic line of young British men who have gone out to Afghanistan on a lark. Unfortunately, unlike many of them, Miles would survive his adventure. He does not seem to have a regular Wikipedia yet, but he does have an entry on something called Everybody Wiki, which, yeah, yeah, which I hadn't heard of that one before, but it very hilariously lists his occupation as, quote, posting online during the 2021 siege of Kabul.

That's great. That's actually pretty funny. Him and Tim Kennedy. That's great. So for obvious reasons, he encountered difficulties. He wound up sleeping by the side of the road one night. He was taken into Taliban custody. While he makes a big deal out of this, I actually don't think he was ever in serious danger, particularly not compared to, for example, the people fighting and dying or the civilians in cities taken by the Taliban who had to endure an often violent change of regime. endure an often violent change of regime. When the Taliban was taking over here, obviously, there's the danger of accidents on the road, which is always a significant danger in a place called Afghanistan. There's the danger of being caught up in a fight or something potentially.

But the Taliban, in this kind of late stage of their takeover, had no desire to harm a British citizen like Miles or to harm Americans, you know, Americans who were in the country. And in fact, we're working kind of in the later stages of the U.S. evacuation to try to make sure it happened peacefully, not because the Taliban are such good guys, but because like there's no geopolitical benefit to them from like a random British traveler dying. It's just going to cause problems for them. Yeah, it's just not worth the stress and bother.

Yeah, like they didn't have, like, I don't believe they were, the Taliban was ever like, threatened his life in any way. Miles, though, posted through it, reporting that he was stuck in a pickle and giving details of his experience to fans on 4chan and Twitch.

He started using the name, James, you had asked about this, he started using the name Lord Miles due to the fact that he had purchased a 15 pound lordship certificate as a bit. I knew it. I fucking knew it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not that surprising, huh? What a cunt.

I can't say that. Sorry. No, you can. You're British. It's fine. Okay, Dan, I'll leave that one in. That is my sincere conviction. What a twat. Sorry sorry what an absolute prick because he's what's really fucking frustrating everything about his

existence is frustrating right but like so is what's so annoying is he's playing this fucking twee parochial version of britishness for an exclusively an american audience right if you're born near fucking birmingham, we're not all, we are not all pride and prejudice people. And if you move to another country, you will constantly

encounter people thinking you grew up in Harry Potter land. But like, we're not all TERFs either. But like, he's fucking doing it. Like, and he's doing it

like a naive American. Like, there are, like the Scottish Parliament has made statements about not buying these stupid scottish titles and yeah here's a prank yeah yeah it's it's very silly he justified this by saying because i think he buys it while he's in afghanistan he explained to his followers

the taliban may see that as a reason to keep me alive thinking it may hold some negotiating powder power as they'll think i'm important they don't care they don't want any fucking westerners dying in the country because it'll fuck up their chances of like you know they want to get integrated to the like fucking global economy they want to qualify for like loans and shit like they don't want to they don't want the problems that you dying bring like you being a lord is not going to impact this in any way. I don't want the British government deciding, oh shit,

they killed someone, now we need to just bomb Kabul for eight months or whatever. Now, I don't want to say in his defense, because I would not like to speak in his defense, but I will say that the one person who might be conned by a lordship you bought online is Boris Johnson. Yeah.

That might have an impact. Yeah, you're right. That could have an impact on Bojo. Yeah, but it is not defense. It's not like Bojo is going to be sticking around for very long, right? You have to like, every like seven weeks, you are rolling a dice as to whether the conservative PM is someone you can con with a lordship title.

Yeah. Well, none of them in the last few years have been what i would call intellectual titans that's true but but but hope springs a turtle rishi sunak's in trouble too so they they might i don't know put well we might get swell a braverman or some shit you can just really go down the uh the fast road. I really, I feel sorry for you all across the pond. I can't imagine what it would be like to have your politicians be national laughingstocks. I mean, that's just gotta be,

that's just gotta be hard. No American will ever know what that's like. Yeah, we are ruled by the hero of Ireland. Yeah. Oh, I was gonna talk about, you know, my hero, the governor of Florida and his best friend, the pedophile who just committed suicide.

Wait, hold on. Is this a different pedophile? No, this is the pedophile who like backed Santas' like early political rise and now just killed himself after he got exposed. Oh, so this isn't Ali Alexander.

Okay, never mind. No, no, no. This is a different pedophile. I'm losing track of the GOP pedophiles. There's too many. Every day there's a new one. I can't keep track. It's not Matt Gaetz, his other friend,

who's also a pedophile. Just to be clear. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories

inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters. To bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming. This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award. Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it. Doing all that talking, it's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards.

Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong,

though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Now, you know who I cannot prove at this point is a pedophile? Miles Rutledge.

So let's get back to his story. Please. So he also claimed during this period where he's kind of like, quote unquote, on the run, that the 4chan users he was posting with kept him alive by giving him updates on Taliban progress through OSINT as they advanced through Kabul. That's broadly speaking, not impossible. So the idea that Miles, again, I don't believe he was ever threatened by the Taliban. They are, again, not nice people, but they're not like unhinged. They're not ISIS, you know, they are a government.

They don't have a benefit in something bad happening to someone like him. So Miles, though, played up the idea that he was something between a tourist, a journalist, and a philanthropist. Billing his trip to Afghanistan as a, quote, little charity thing, at the same time as he said

that he was prepared for death when he couldn't immediately secure a way out of the country. Eventually, a United Nations safe house took him in, and he was given a seat on one of the last planes out of the country. Now, this is an actual act of evil. Yeah.

That's frustrating. Because, like, there are people in danger from the Taliban who couldn't leave, right? Like, he took one of their spaces. Somebody didn't get out who is in danger because of him. Yeah, like, very good friends of mine. Like, I spent much of that time, like, I've written about Afghanistan. I've worked with translators. And, like, good friends of mine, I've written about Afghanistan, I've worked with translators.

Good friends of mine, some of them left Afghanistan, but many of them still have their families there. And every single day they have anxiety about whether their families are okay, if something terrible has happened to them. And this twat is just sitting on a plane, posting on 4chan. That makes me properly angry. Yeah, and that's again what i was talking about like if you're going to if you're gonna go to a place that is that is beset by conflict you know by civil war by violence or anything like that number one you have responsibility to like have a reason to go beyond i wonder what it's like um and you have a responsibility to not make things worse for people who don't have a choice about being there. And he did.

You know, that's like fundamentally why I hate this guy is he absolutely took an opportunity to escape from, I don't know, some woman's rights activist or something. You know, somebody who or some terp or something, somebody who didn't have a choice about fucking being stuck in Afghanistan. Yeah, just some fucking person who wanted a fair crack at life and and isn't a prick yeah yeah i mean it's yeah and he could have stayed i have friends who stayed yes through that time and covered it like your concern is for your sources not yourself yeah yeah yeah or you could have done the thing that his ancestors did and just walk across the border in pakistan. Like, your ancestors did this. This is the one thing I'll give them credit for is they ran like hell.

Hike through the Khyber Pass and then become Sherlock Holmes' best friend. You know, that's a proud tradition. I thought you were going to go with dying there, which would have also been a very acceptable moment. Well, that's another proud tradition, getting sniped by a gazelle in the fucking Khyber Pass. Absolutely. I thought you were going to go with Daimir, which would have also been a very acceptable. Well, that's another proud tradition, getting sniped by a Giselle in the fucking Kyber Pass.

Absolutely. So he had a marvelous time in Afghanistan and immediately pivoted because he built up a big social media following around his posts there, pivoted to a career as a dark tourist influencer. He traveled next to an Ireland, not an Ireland. He traveled next to an Island in Brazil. There's this Island off the coast of Brazil that like, like you're not allowed to go to.

Cause there's so many fucking snakes. Like it's just, it's extremely dangerous to go there. Cause it's covered in fucking snakes. And he like went there wearing armor, but he didn't actually run into any snakes because snakes don't like, you know, they're,

they're not generally aggressive, most of them. He got arrested in Kenya for, as best as I can tell, being a prick near a refugee camp. Jesus. And then he traveled to Ukraine right after the expanded invasion to Ukraine to try to make the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people about him. make the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people about him. The highlight of that trip was he claims that he drove a woman and her kid out of the country and rescued them and also brought people snacks. Whatever. Miles has always been two things.

He's deeply enmeshed in right wing meme culture, and he is at least superficially committed to Christian extremism. He is like kind of a, at least it like signals as a fundamentalist Christian. He's like, he's super fashy, right? This is not like a hidden thing within his videos and stuff. I found one write-up of him on a right-wing religious news website that gives you an idea of how he bills himself to his ideal audience.

Miles Routledge is a self-described Catholic independent war journalist and charity on the ground. At just 21, he headed to Afghanistan when the Taliban seized control, and now he's in Ukraine giving refreshing updates that are peppered with humor, reality, and a little naivete. In the past, Routledge went to war-torn countries

and into areas no NGO or charity dared to go, according to his GoFundMe page, so he can hand out Bibles, food, medicine, and money. Well, there's a special place in hell for some type of giving a starving person a Bible. And also, like, he never went to places other people wouldn't dare to go. I will guarantee you, everywhere he went,

there were already, like, people like the Free Burma Rangers or even Medicine Sands Frontiers or Journalists Without Borders. Like, there were people there. He was in trouble! the Free Burma Rangers or even Medicine Sands Frontiers or Journalists Without Borders. There were people there because he's not... I've seen his videos. He's not going anywhere special. How many people are

in Kabul? Like 10 million people? Yes, these are big cities. 4 million people, sure. He's playing off of the provincialism of his audience and the fact that most people in the West, when they hear Afghanistan or now Ukraine, when they hear or like even like a place like Kenya,

which is like a massive country with major cities and all sorts of stuff like that, like, oh, these places are just death traps and you don't go there. And like, no, I mean, even like I would get this when I'd go to I've spent a lot visited Iraq seven or eight times. And it's like, no, man, it's like most of it's just a country

like yeah, there's specific things you have to keep in mind that are dangerous but like it's just a place, like millions of people live there and don't die every day Yeah This is ludicrous to suggest that he was in any, yeah like, you could go to all these places and stay in a five star hotel

and like, you're not in any danger, especially as a rich white british guy parading around yeah to the extent that he's like in ukraine and traveling near the front where there's like random missiles and shelling yeah there's some danger but again it's danger that he is exposing himself to unnecessarily and then creating a situation whereby if he is injured that's a a bunch of morphine and antibiotics that can't go to a fucking civilian who had no choice because they were raised in constantin ifka or whatever you know like yeah fuck yeah yeah like he's a prick yeah yeah just

morality free i mentioned a little earlier he's definitely a fascist. And, you know, when I say that, sometimes people do the whole, oh, you lefties will call anything a fascist. Don't worry, I have some receipts on this one. in the country. This book included some interesting claims, like that he was the last person to enter the country on a tourist visa before the fall of Kabul, and that his visa

had required a personal statement explaining his reasons for visiting. He wrote, quote, My response was simply an A4 sheet of paper with only the word fun written on it. It was accepted without question.

I was ready for my very own white boy summer. He also notes that the last... Oh, yeah, right? Which was at the time kind of like a meme in, you know, fashy online Nazi circles. It was all over Telegram. He also notes-

Chet Hanks. Tom Hanks is a very problematic child. Yeah, although not problematic in this sense. Chet did not, I think, mean for that to happen. He's just problematic in this sense. Chet did not, I think, mean for that to happen. He's just problematic in other ways. So he also notes that the last thing he did before leaving was rewatch American Psycho, which he described as a sacred male experience. I will remind you all that that is a movie directed by a woman.

He also writes about the fact that he ordered a meal at the airport before leaving, but decided not to eat it because it was likely filled with soy. He goes on like a whole diatribe about how Afghanistan is probably safer for him because there's no soy in the food. Just so the weird right wing memes and signaling, all of which are like he's always like a year or two out of date on his like far right signaling and stuff too, which is weird. All of it makes a little more sense when you realize that the book that he wrote about Afghanistan was published with Antelope Hill Publishing. Oh, yeah. Yeah. James, you recognized that, didn't you? It's coming in from the far right of the publishing sphere. Yeah. It is an explicitly fascist publisher. So on the antelope hill page for his stupid book, the recommended books beneath it, you know, you've got the main book and it's like, if you like this book, read these books.

right-wing activist who was formerly a Maoist but is now a white nationalist revolutionary advocate who supports total racial war against asylum seekers and immigrants. He advocates for an uprising in the UK in which all university staff will be executed by death squads. So he hasn't gone that far from the Maoism. So not that far from the, like, look, there's still pieces of it. So the next book that's recommended, if you're interested in Miles' book, is The Death Company, which is a firsthand account of the Italian Arditi in World War I that was very influential

among early fascists. And then there's Let Them Look West by Marty Phillips. I found a review of this book on a website called the White Art Collective, and I'm gonna read a quote from that now. So this is a Nazi reviewing this book by a Nazi, right? Good stuff. Yeah.

Here's him describing the book. Rob Cohen is a big city writer sent on assignment to interview James Alexander, the governor of Wyoming, a fundamentalist Christian who has revived his state with, among other things, a Christian-themed public works program and Mount Calvary,

an artificial mountain which villagers climb up and pass the Stations of the Cross, then view a live-action recreation of the Crucifixion with music by a live choir. The first few chapters, until Rob meets Alexander, feel like a deadpan satire of Apocalypse Now. Rob didn't want a mission, but for his sins he was given one. He's a fish out of water who has to navigate and improvise his way to the goal. There's a magical realism vibe to the book, despite nothing overly supernatural occurring. And maybe this is why Phillips calls it a mundane fantasy. But it's also a mundane fantasy for the simple reason that the America and Wyoming described in the book are so far beyond what is possible that suspension of disbelief is required.

Even the Nazi seems like to think it's kind of a shit book, which is very funny to me. So again, if you publish your book with antelope Hill, like you are comfortable at the very least comfortable with having your book advertised next to explicitly Nazi power fantasies. Yeah. I mean, you're not going to antelope illness,

you know, like we've both published books. Like, yeah, it wouldn't have occurred to me to even try. Yeah, they are the Nazi, one of the Naziist publishers out there. In April of 2022,

Miles attempted to reenter Afghanistan. He claimed in videos that his goal was to rescue a tour guide and his family who were threatened by the Taliban. But he wound up stuck in Pakistan, claiming that this guide had lied to him and claimed that the border was closed to British people. I mean, to be fair, I have no issues with this. No, that would be fine.

And he gets like, he starts like freaking out in the video. He's like near tears and stuff. He claims that he'd spent 15,000 pounds on the trip and now he was broke. So obviously he uses it. He has to beg for money from his followers, which I kind of wonder if that was just the whole point of the trip.

He also posted whiny status updates claiming his life had been ruined by the failed trip. Quote, this means I can't go on a date with a girl I really liked. It means I can't sponsor a joint adventure with my friend. I will go home to an empty room. I am at my end. But, I know, big baby.

Despite his failure, he did not give up on his dreams of stumbling through Afghanistan again for the sake of content. He put together another trip for the start of 2023. In late February, as he geared up to go, he made some tweets to his followers that give us more unfortunate context as to the sort of person he is from february 27th a flatmate saw my bible and said that book is a fairy tale so i threw my empty mug at his head broke on the wall behind him this isn't the first instance and after a while you have to stop playing nice and defend your faith yeah this is a great guy this is the tweet that i remember seeing yeah that was a great one uh now people used to send me his shit so often he's infuriating yeah there's a worse one uh the most infuriating tweet i found from this guy came a bit further down and it's it's a picture of him i think in might be dubai i think it's Dubai. So he's like got his back to the skyline

and he's just kind of like looking off into the distance pensively and it says, friends say I space out all the time. My mind is having visions of North Sentinel Island. Now, if you don't remember, Sentinel Island is the forbidden island in the Andamans

which is part of India where in 2018, an idiot Christian missionary broke quarantine and endangered the lives of an entire tribe so he could satisfy his narcissistic evangelical fetish. He was thankfully shot to death by them via arrow before he could get too close and hopefully did not spread any diseases to them.

I'd wish Miles success in reaching the island and meeting a similar fate, but if he gets anywhere close to them, there wish Miles success in reaching the island and meeting a similar fate. But if he gets anywhere close to them, there's just such a high chance that he will spread deadly disease to the people there that I hope the Indian government keeps him away. Even though it would be very funny if he got shot to death by them. That would be quite a laugh. Yeah.

Truly living out the dreams of being a British Lord. Yeah. Yeah. Continue a real time-honored tradition getting fucking murked by the natives on an island yeah welcome i'm danny thrill won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonorum. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures.

I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming.

This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award. Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists

in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com.

So the good news is that friends of the pod, the Taliban, may have taken care of, you know, this guy for us. Shortly after making those posts, he re-entered Afghanistan. In a video posted several days later, he bragged about entering, while he's in Afghanistan, he brags that he made a fake visa in order to get himself into the country. So he breaks Taliban law, entering the country in a fake video, and then posts a video while he's in Kabul bragging about it.

So first off, genius brain. Unbelievable smarts there. about it. So first off, genius brain. Unbelievable smarts there. So the first video that he posts back is titled something like Shooting Guns with the Taliban. And it's all about him just like going to Jalalabad to see what kind of guns are available.

He talks a lot about how all these US guns and gear are available, but he doesn't actually really show any of it. Most of the video, he's in this fucking... I'll show you. He's in this fucking gun bazaar, and he's really awed by this giant AR-style Turkish shotgun.

Oh, we've seen some of those. We have seen some of those, James. They're terrible weapons. They are definitely... Obviously, the Taliban got a hold of a shitload of US gear. Nobody's questioning that. These shitty Turkish shotguns are not American weaponry. Well, that's that's probably why it's in the bazaar and not like in someone's like garage or something.

Yeah. Yeah. The Taliban have access to a lot of American gear. He is kind of just like looking at, I don't know, like a mix of like old Soviet weapons and like trash guns. So I'm going to show you a first clip from this video here. Taliban is sometimes a little bit dangerous. So there's a lot of Daesh there. If you don't know who Daesh is, it's basically ISIS. Now ISIS, they don't know how number three Taliban. However, the weapons market and maybe in some areas could be quite bad for me

So I'm gonna have to be a little bit careful. But if you're seeing this footage ended up, okay I'm just gonna take a moment to tell you guys about my sponsor Tendies What the fuck? This is not official medium but... Jesus Christ That is one of the most jarring ad like if you're not watching this he's like standing in the desert and like talking there's that brief clip of like a picture of some isis guys but then he's like back in the desert talking and then suddenly a shot like it

cuts very harshly to him in his hotel room doing like a fucking ad for an investment banking app it's so fucking or like a stock trading app it's so funny he has his bandana on yeah that's the has he got the shahada written on it yeah yeah

yeah it sure does oh for fuck's sake yeah I was gonna say people should watch this Yeah, yeah, it sure does. Oh, for fuck's sake. Yeah, I was going to say people should watch this, but just to spare yourself, like, God. Yeah, he's wearing his white headband, which I can't see it anymore, but it's something written in Arabic on it, I guess,

and doing it as much for something called tendies. Yeah, something which is like, yeah, some sort of like stock trading app for, I'm going to guess, people to get their life savings scammed from them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's some version of... That's my apologies, Tendies,

if I'm getting you wrong, but you're sponsoring There goes that Tendies back at Rob. Yeah. Ah, damn. It's okay. We've got enough

sports betting companies that we'll be okay. We've got enough sports betting companies that we'll be okay. We'll get by. Ronald Reagan always sees us right. Yeah, Ronald Reagan, gold coins or silver coins will take care of us. So again, one of the things that's very funny about this is the amount of time he spends flipping out

over this dog shit AR style shotgun. For those of you who aren't gun people, the Turks make a number of different shotguns that kind of look like AR-15s. They're all very impressive looking to people who don't know anything about guns. They're terrible weapons. One of the reasons they're terrible

is that shotgun shells do not work well in magazines. The reason, most shotguns are tube fed because like shot shells are plastic and they have a weird shape to them. And if you stick them in a magazine like a normal bullet, they just tend to like jam and they have a weird shape to them. And if you stick them in a magazine like a normal bullet, they just tend to jam and misfeed a lot. It's just not a good way for it.

Yeah, exactly. It's the one gun, the one actual producer in a factory gun that I'm aware of that the folks in Myanmar are like, nah, fuck it, we'll just 3D print one dude this year. We don't need these. We are desperate desperate but these are just and he like he spends a lot of time like talking about how cheap guns are you can get guns

here cheaper than you can anywhere else because like this ar shotgun is 200 bucks like man i can get an ar shotgun for 200 bucks in portland oregon they're terrible nobody wants them yeah yeah um so he does eventually go out with what he claims is the Taliban. As far as I can tell, it's a guy who has an M-16 that he probably paid like 100 bucks to go shooting with. Right. Maybe the guy like a lot of people in Afghanistan are technically the Taliban. But that doesn't mean like much. Right.

Like at this point, they're the government. Like, you know, you get like your uncle, you know, gets you a fucking gig or something watching a road or whatever. I don't know. I don't know anything about this guy. He claims he's the Taliban. So I'm going to play you a clip of him shooting this guy's M16. No hearing protection.

Sweeping people. Just sweeps them again, pointing the barrel at them. Oh, bro! What is he doing? Fuck me! Thank you, my friend. The Taliban guy is visibly nervous

about him using the gun he's glad he got that back in one piece he's backing away he's just like shooting into the air I love how like He's just like shooting into the air. I love how like visibly nervous the Taliban guy is. He sweeps his legs with the gun,

like points the barrel at that guy's legs like three different times, shoots up into the air. He's just an incompetent asshole with it. He's doing all of these like 80s action movie poses. Yeah. Chuck Barrett. It's very stupid. He has no hearing protection in, so he like hurts his ears.

Yeah. It's just comprehensively stupid and sad. God. So this video was dumb. Shortly after filming it, Miles met up with two other UK citizens who were in the country, one of whom was, he's described in most of the news articles I read as just a charity medic. And this is all a little unclear. It seems like this guy was in possession of a firearm without a proper permit.

He claims that he has a permit, but that was lost or something, whatever. At any rate, Miles goes missing in early March. And after several days, the Taliban announces that they've taken him and these two other British guys and also two Polish guys into custody. And it's a little unclear why, but it seems to be due to like them breaking some laws with guns. It also may have something to do with the fact that miles broke the law entering the country. He seems to be being treated reasonably well at present. It's unclear what's going to happen to him. I hope,

I mean, honestly, like of all the people who deserve to be in a Taliban prison, miles Rutledge is, is the one. That's amazing. Like, yeah,

keep that, go ahead and keep that guy Taliban. Like, yeah, solid, That's amazing. Go ahead and keep that guy, Taliban. Do a solid. Very excited for whoever's in the prime minister's chair next week to maybe get around to start negotiating with the Taliban. I hope they don't. That's so funny.

The British Foreign Office just don't give a fuck anymore. I've had to contact them with when colleagues have been detained etc and like they'll literally be like now computer says no and just like tell you to fuck off like so hopefully they do the same for him yeah it doesn't I haven't seen anything like the most recent news

stories about him were like more than a week ago it looks like yeah I'm not seeing anything recently so it doesn't look like, I'm guessing there'd be some coverage if he'd been freed. The Daily Mail talked to his mom, who apparently was like,

yeah, he was there to try to find himself. Yeah, it's very funny. He says he claims at one point, like, yo guy's been taken by the by Afghan intelligence for taking like a thousand dollars out of Western Union. Suss amount. No Internet. No idea when this will end. Everything is good.

But please excuse my lack of communication. That was like March 8th, something like that. And he hasn't really been back on in a while. Like he's kind of been dark for for quite a spell so i don't know maybe something terrible has happened to him or what happened to him at which point or in which case like that would be kind of funny um fuck him yeah that's where i am officially yeah i mean he fucked around and found out. Yeah. Like you keep again, man, you want to like. Yeah.

You keep fucking around. You like go to a place with like a famously like dangerous authoritarian government who are actively hurting people and are like, I'm going to brag about breaking the law for a YouTube video. Yeah, man. Maybe they'll get pissed. It's like the same shit with like, obviously the Romanian government is not the Taliban, but like it's the same kind of shit with like Andrew Tate, where you're like, I'm going to go to this other country and brag about the fact that they're not stopping me from breaking their laws. That's a pretty good way to get them to fucking problems for you. Like, anyway. My favorite Miles post, if I'm remembering this right, I'm pretty sure, like, two weeks before he, like, got arrested, he posted a tweet about how, like, he's safer in Afghanistan

than he is in, than he would be in San Francisco. In Brooklyn, yeah. Oh, yeah. I forgot about this. He tried to be homeless for a day he spent no two days he spent 48 hours quote unquote homeless in brooklyn yeah um for again for content um and yeah it is it is funny that like he is in a lot of trouble now um yeah he tried to go to um uh mission texas as well i don't know if he ever went, but he was going to do something.

Oh, I missed that. Yeah, he was going to do something fucking horrific with people crossing the Rio Grande. Oh, God. Oh, you see. Look. That's where we get the base butterfly lady with her M4. You're not going to hear this often from me, but critical support to the Taliban.

Like, they're really fighting the good fight for all of us by keeping this guy behind bars. this often from me but critical support to the taliban like they're they're they're really fighting the good fight for all of us by keeping this guy behind bars i was it initially seemed like he had uh he had fallen into the hands of like uh the islamic state khorasan province there and uh i was gonna have to yeah you rarely have to hand it to islamic state but we may have and that one occasion i don't give isis a lot of credit but that that it is like um you know what i'll just i'm gonna go ahead and say this on behalf of the rest of the world taliban if you keep him locked up you know we will erase

one of those big buddha statues from like the list of taliban crimes we'll all agree to forget one of the buddhas like hold on i feel like that's fair i'm not signing on to this i'm still i'm still mad about the buddhas i just one of them come on we need all the buddhas anyway fuck this guy yeah he's fucking sad i hope they're feeding him tofu yeah i hope they're feeding him all of the soy in afghanistan yeah like fucking park a soy truck up to that guy's cell um anyway that's a story like there's these guys are like especially in the social media i mean they've always been a part of war and of conflict um you know, there's a degree to which like this is not a new story. Like this is actually kind of one of the older stories in human history is like dudes kind of stumbling into war zones in order to write about it or otherwise like make it about them.

So, you know, fuck these people and fuck Miles Rutledge in specific. Um, I hope we, I hope he winds up like those Venezuelan mercs or not. I mean, they weren't Venezuelan, but they were in Venezuela who are caught on video pissing themselves and then lying in the piss. Um, that's, that's my dream for Miles Rutledge. Um, spending some time lying in piss before he's sent back to the piss. That's my dream for Miles Rutledge. Spending some time lying in piss before he's sent back to the UK. Yeah.

That's what I got. Nice. Hopefully they revoke his fucking citizenship like they did to the British people. He did make a bunch of posts about how cool the Taliban were. So I don't know. Like, yeah.

We can dream. Look, man, you said you wanted to live there. Here you go. Yeah, I don't know. I think he's a dick, and I think this is funny. That's my official stance. It Could Happen Here is a production of

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