Julian Dorey Podcast - #337 - Meeting Bin Laden’s Neighbors, Holy Land Prophecy & Enclave of the Elites | RocaNews

Starting point is 00:00:00 You go around the world and, like, you've got all these different assassinations, political figures, we seriously die. The most notorious one back in the 80s, right when the war was ending in Afghanistan, the dictator of Pakistan, he got on a plane with the U.S. ambassador and it exploded. To this day, it's never been solved. No one knows why. It's just a crazy place politically. But you were going to talk to the people who live right by where the Navy SEAL took down Bin Laden. What was that like? When we got to Pakistan, no one believes that bin Laden was killed. On the one hand, like, they're hardcore al-Qaeda sport. The guy was like, yeah, we think Osama's a hero. He's like, you want tea? They don't believe that any of these people who blew themselves up were actually designed. What do they think?

Starting point is 00:00:33 Jewish Indian CIA. It was wild. How do you guys go about covering topics like the Gaza War right now in Israel? This one is the most difficult issue to cover. We always try to go to source material, hard, verifiable data to we can base their stories off. We've also interviewed people from both sides. Hey guys, if you're not subscribed, please smash that subscribe button and hit that like button on the video. And if you don't have time to watch this episode right now, no problem, but I'd really appreciate it if you would save it to your watch later playlist.

Starting point is 00:01:04 Finally, if you'd like to follow me on Instagram and X, those links are in my description below. Thank you. It's cleaner than people, then crack it. Then it's the sodium by carbon. Yeah, sodium bicarbonate. By carbonate. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was just, I'm listening to that and I'm like,

Starting point is 00:01:28 you know he might be the next president no you know in our media landscape you truly never know you don't know it's strange times we're living in but you guys are covering it and i love what you're doing we're going to talk all about it today but max and max we have two maxes here so it might be frost and tea we'll see what happens but i was watching the the first video i saw you guys was beautifully called interviewing bin laden's neighbors great title by the way but you were on the ground because you guys go out like we'll get into everything but you go out and do videos like at the same time in different places which also i think is really smart so each of you goes one-on-one but you were going into pakistan specifically to abadabad for this video of the many you made out

Starting point is 00:02:13 there to talk to the people who live right by where the navy seals apparently i have to say allegedly allegedly took down bin laden what was that like when you walk up to that moment of truth area I mean it was surreal it was funny all over Pakistan no one believes that bin Laden was killed and we didn't meet I don't know if we met a single person in all of Pakistan who believed bin Laden

Starting point is 00:02:37 was actually killed no but you know there it's like the I mean they don't believe anything the government's so corrupt there's been so much meddling in the country so it's just like natural they don't they don't believe anything going there I mean the honestly it's disappointing we thought it would still be there and we later just drove in and got out

Starting point is 00:02:52 the compound's just gone yeah yeah they didn't want to become like a pilgrimage site. It's like, fuck, I thought this was, we wanted the house store. We were going to try to climb over. We're going to do the whole thing and it didn't work. Imagine you walk in there like, welcome to a but-a-bad. Right, right, right.

Starting point is 00:03:06 The gift shop in the front. By the way, just went to Jeff Epstein's compound in Palm Beach. Same thing, obliterated it. Yes, I did know that. But yes, back to Osama. Yeah, it was wild. It was cool. And the people there are super friendly.

Starting point is 00:03:20 On the one hand, like, they're hardcore al-Qaeda sport. They ride for al-Qaeda. Ride or die for Al-Rider. But like, in the same. Same breath, the guy was like, yeah, we think Osama's a hero. And he's like, you want tea? Sure. And you're a white guy, which they also had to respect the fact that you speak their language.

Starting point is 00:03:34 You speak Urdu. Yeah, they appreciated that. Did they teach you that at Langley, or was that before? That was actually at bin Laden's compound. They taught you right there. No, actually, my first job out of college was in India. So I lived in India for a year. I lived in a Muslim neighborhood where they spoke Urdu.

Starting point is 00:03:49 No kidding. So I learned it there. All right. What was that job specifically? Or you're not allowed to say. CIA, no. It was just a media. It was like a media thing there.

Starting point is 00:03:59 Essentially, like the UN would do research about whatever projects are doing in India. And then they would give it to our company and we would turn it into like brochures or books or whatever kind of thing. Very cool. I just want to live abroad, hence the job. Yeah, that's the good excuse to get there. And then you get inside the culture. You get broadened your horizons, as they say, and somehow you end up landing here, which we'll get to. But basically, I didn't know this.

Starting point is 00:04:22 And you mentioned it there in the beginning of your answer. answer that Pakistan is a country where no one believes anything. It's basically like a giant 4chan, but you know, right. If a country were 4chan, Pakistan would be it. So like why is that specifically? You went into it in this video, which we'll have your guys channel linked down below. Everyone check it out. It's great. But why is that? Like what's the history there with them thinking that nothing is true? Okay. I mean the first, the country was founded in, I might get some of the exact things wrong, but found in 1940s. If you do, they're going to hit you in the comment. They will. Also, Pakistan, they go deep on YouTube.

Starting point is 00:04:56 I think 1947, it was founded, split off from India. The founding father, Jinnah, died right after. And then the first president, I believe the first president, was assassinated. No one knows why. Since then, no leader of the countries finished their term fairly. You've had all these different assassinations, political figures, like, mysteriously die. And I think the most notorious one back in the 80s when we were, when the U.S. was doing the whole jihad in Afghanistan against Soviets, you know, and that was going on. The dictator of Pakistan, right when the war is ending in Afghanistan, he got on a plane with the U.S. ambassador, and it exploded.

Starting point is 00:05:31 To this day, it's never been solved. No one knows why. And it's happened over and over again. Turbulence. Plains just, turbulence. Plains just go down. That's a thing. They do.

Starting point is 00:05:40 So, yeah, it's just one thing after another. I mean, people there, they die. And whether, I mean, you have CIA meddling for sure, but you also have Taliban, al-Qaeda. I mean, there's so much stuff going on. It's just a crazy place politically, so. Yeah. Now, what was the... Obviously, you had spent time in India, you speak the language that would help you go there.

Starting point is 00:05:59 But what made you want it? Like, where did the idea come from? Like, you know what? I'm going to go to Abadabah. Let's go to the scene of the crime. Talk to Osama's, you know, been people. So that trip was the first one we did for the channel that was – we did some stuff in the UK early on. But really, that was the first international trip we'd done.

Starting point is 00:06:17 And we wanted to broaden out from just doing the kind of political type stuff we're doing in the U.S. to getting more out there and doing that around the world. when we got to pakistan we did a few things we did a number of videos are kind of more like cultural and we're awesome i watch them i think they were cool but we didn't feel like it was really what we set out to do you know like like we love the we love the newsy angle of things so we went to peshawar on the border with afghanistan and there we you know there everyone talks about al qaeda talked about the taliban and we just got the idea go to babadabad so drove up there did that um it was it it was honestly of all the videos you shot on that trip it was the easiest to do we

Starting point is 00:06:53 just drove the car up people are just in pakistan people are just doing nothing everywhere so you pull up and get out the car and some guy walks up and he's just like he's like what's up guys and it's like oh i hear about bin la he's like oh bin laud is a hero and then the conversation goes from there did they find did anyone find it interesting that that you believed he was actually killed there did they ask for your take on it or were they just nobody they took for granted that i would think he wasn't killed uh-huh um and to be i don't i mean i think i certainly think he was killed. I think if I had my money on it, I think he was killed it. The fact that they never put a picture out is like, I mean, it's fodder for this kind of stuff. And that's a big

Starting point is 00:07:27 mistake. And that's not even new, right? I mean, from the time they did it, I think everyone was like, at first, everyone's like, oh, yeah, they killed him. But then when people started asking questions, it was like, well, there was no picture. There was no evidence. Right. But you know, you do have the Navy SEALs coming out now and, you know, writing the books and doing all this kind of stuff about it. Yeah, which they even argue over that, by the way. And they're like, who killed? I'm like, guys, I'm not. I'm from Jersey. I'm not getting involved in this. I don't care who killed him like's dead. But I think they were so, I mean, it's hard to put yourself in their shoes, but they were so afraid that anything would be used as political fodder

Starting point is 00:08:00 that they did things to not let that happen that creates political fodder. Totally. You know what I mean? What's funny is hearing the dudes in Pakistan having like their own Obama conspiracy theories. Oh no. Like they say that Obama made up the killing to get reelected and, you know, they have like all these different, you know, again, everything there, nothing is simple. Like You talk to people there, politics. Nothing is as it seems. Everything, everything is whatever. It's like if you took any kind of conspiracy type thinking in the U.S.

Starting point is 00:08:25 and just extrapolate it 100%. So nothing is actually. The people there, they say the Taliban are actually pro-women's rights and they're only doing this to negotiate with the U.S. It's great. I mean, everything is, nothing is as it seems. And some of it's probably true, but a lot of it's definitely kooky. I don't know.

Starting point is 00:08:43 You keep in a straight face, though, was really, no, no, seriously. Like, it's funny. But it was really impressive to me because I'm seeing, and you know what's being said live, because you speak the language. I'm seeing the subtitles come up. We're saying, Joe, we're sitting there watching. I'm seeing the subtitles come up. I'm like, laughing the whole time. Because you'd be like, yeah, so what do you think of 9-11?

Starting point is 00:09:03 They're like, didn't happen. Oh. And then you like do the cut to like them holding up Oriental rugs with like the towers getting it. I'm like, oh, my God. But they're so, it wasn't. it struck me as not your typical what you'd see on the news of like people burning effigies in the street and screaming, you know, death to America or something like that. These look like the guys who run your bodega.

Starting point is 00:09:30 And I'm talking about the one that they're actually friendly at, right? They were like, hey, yeah, you want some tea? Yeah, no, I don't like America, but you're cool. They're like, what? Do the anti-Americanism is so much different than people think, right? Like, you go around the world and like, I mean, a lot of places they do love America. I think that's also a misconception. like that everyone hates America it's not true like again I lived in India you go to India

Starting point is 00:09:49 everyone they just want to come here I mean everyone a lot of places like Pakistan Serbia Russia they all hate the American government yet they love meeting Americans right and and it's not this outward hostility it's they don't really give a shit I mean you know but there's like a latent thing in their head of like oh the US runs the world yeah and they just kind of think that yeah and the US you know whatever whatever kind of thing they have come out of that but it's not like it's hostility and when they always show those videos of flag burnings and the you know burning the effigies that happens but i mean those guys the people who do that are not representative of the average person in pakistan who is anti-american i mean

Starting point is 00:10:24 intensely anti-american but to your knowledge i didn't check this before had anyone really ever done a video like that where they went to the neighborhood and talked to people who were there vice went right when it happened right after it happened vice pre sorros pre-soros vice i throw that out there um yeah watch this underground sex party at bin laud compound blurred out what did they have drugs it was like bin wanking osama bin wanking when they found all that yeah they went they went there but they got it was in the compound i think it must been weeks after it happened if that and they got kicked out i mean the compound is still there the security told them to leave and then they went to like the university and about about and talk to people

Starting point is 00:11:05 that was all i've seen um i don't know anything else was gone were you on twitter that night when that was happening either of you guys not really was i remember this because the phillies When you went down, the Mets on Sunday night baseball. And they announced it live and everyone went crazy. Yeah. And there was a guy who was like that he looked like your neighbor, like this perfectly normal, like kind of friendly.

Starting point is 00:11:27 Like his profile picture was like a selfie of someone who's a boomer and doesn't know how to take a selfie. Who was like live tweeting the whole thing. There are helicopters above. And then like the next tweet like, they have landed. One just exploded. And this was going on for like 40 minutes or something like that.

Starting point is 00:11:44 like there are men getting out and I'm like no one's no one thought to like they're they're a mile from like Pakistan's West Point I'd say they're not West Point and do well up there yeah yeah yeah yeah you know right do the one of the interesting things when you talk to people who are more educated in Pakistan the really interesting question is the role the Pakistan's government played in what went out and that when we talked to a guy who is he was a pretty respected journalist there and author record he told us that he knew people in the Pakistani military who told him that they were working with the Americans on the whole thing thing. They had him there. They were keeping tabs on him.

Starting point is 00:12:17 And then they gave the Americans to go ahead. That goes against what I've heard from people in D.C. and everything in the U.S. I find it kind of hard to believe. But that's like the more interesting debate, I think it's almost certain that he was, he was either killed there or died before. But that discussion of like whether or not a lot of people think that too, yeah. In Afghanistan, the mountains, you know, hiding out. No one saw him forever.

Starting point is 00:12:41 And then everything we know now is coming through what the government puts out there. So I think he likely was killed in Abidabad, but it's also possible that something else happened. Who knows? The thing that, you know, obviously you can't trust what the government says on a lot of stuff. I think we know that, however. And it's right to question a lot of things. This is one I've never bought into, though, because you had literally the dev crew guys there. They're all there.

Starting point is 00:13:05 Like these, have you met these guys before? No. Hard, okay? Like, they weren't voting for Clinton in 2016. I'll put it that way, right? Right? So I think if something that big went down like that, look, it's, you know, maybe you could blackmail every guy there, tie their kid up in a basement and tell them they're never going to see him again. I don't know. But something about that, just the way they are. I doubt that so much. I really do think we got him there. I think we just, like I said, overthought how to do the aftermath. I mean, the biggest thing, we didn't mention this, but the burying him at sea, that was dumb. That was, there was no, like, I've replayed that one in my head a million times. I'm like, I don't know. know who thought of that one bad idea like what was the rationale they didn't want a gravesite huh so i'm like you know couldn't you bury him under langley or something right right right

Starting point is 00:13:54 you know like pick a better spot yeah put him right next to the forgotten soldier arlington cemetery osama been lauded maybe not that close but you know what i mean well where that no one's going to make a shrine right right one thing that's funny about is they say like the u.s is like they gave him a proper Muslim burial yeah yeah okay like they went in they killed him they took his body They did the whole thing politely and they dropped them. No, that's definitely not. Yeah, and zero dark 30, they're like showing the imam like doing this. Exactly.

Starting point is 00:14:19 He's going down. I'm like, who wrote that at CIA? I feel like, yeah, make sure you have the imam bowing properly. Yeah, okay. This episode is brought to you by prize picks. You and I make decisions every day, but on prize picks, being right can get you paid. Don't miss any of the excitement this season on prize picks, where it's good to be right. Another week, another eagle's victory.

Starting point is 00:14:43 This time, rematch against the Chiefs. Doesn't matter if it's on the road in Arrowhead. You know we getting that dub. And Sequan's just getting started around here. He got into the end zone once against the Chiefs. I'm feeling like he's going to have a multi-td game coming right up. Either way, you can decide for yourself. Select whether Sequan's going to have more than one touchdown or less than one touchdown.

Starting point is 00:15:02 If Lamar Jackson is going to have more or less than two passing touchdowns. Or if Justin Jefferson is going to take one or more to the house. You can do all this on prize picks. Prize picks is simple to play. Like I said, all you got to do is pick more or less on two to six different player stat projections. And if you get your picks right, you could cash in. Price picks even invented the flex play, which means you can still cash out even if your lineup isn't perfect. That's right.

Starting point is 00:15:26 You can double your money even if you don't get all your picks right. So download the prize picks app today and use code Julian to get $50 in lineups after playing your first $5 lineup. That link is in my description below and you can download the prize picks app in Apple's App Store and Google's App Store. Once again, make sure you use Code Julian to get $50 in lineups after playing your first $5 lineup. Prize picks, it's good to be right.

Starting point is 00:15:51 It's, you know, it's strange because that feels like so long ago, so much has happened. And yet, you know, it's only 14 years ago. A little over 14 years ago that that happened. And this guy who had perpetuated an attack right here, you know, hypothetically, I guess,

Starting point is 00:16:07 was, if we're going to talk like that, was on the run for 10 years. And it's an insane manhunt. And then finally you get them and you get them in a different sovereign nation where to your point about some of the guys you talk to in government, yeah, there could be some hindsight 2020 there. But also like you probably had a lot of people in there working against the United States as well who might have been pro him, which doesn't mean the whole government was, by the way. I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. But geopolitics is very complicated. Yeah, it is. Totally. The 14 years. year ago thing is spot on. I, and it's also one of those moments, one of the few in our lifetimes, obviously of 9-11 was the chief one, but where it united the country. I mean, there, it sent chilled down your spine watching the compilation of the different venues reacting, including Sunday night baseball, to the announcement of his death. And I remember in school,

Starting point is 00:17:04 your conservative friend, even though it was a big win for Obama, everyone was pumped. And it was like one of those moments where, you know, without turning into some feel-good sport, like, it felt great. Like that moment of unity, these are so rare, so rare. So there's also that side of it. And then it was just, what, seven, eight years later when they killed a beg daddy. Yeah. He died like a dog. He just dead. Died like a dog. Slightly different style, you know. That's one of my favorite cut-up compilations ever. The Obama and Trump, it's better than any rap song you'll ever hear. It's unreal. He died like a dog.

Starting point is 00:17:41 And as Shane Gill said, he was doing the commentary as if, you know, like, you can imagine him in the situation room and it just being like the most epic, like immersive experience and just seeing it play out, just no clue. But yeah, that was that was quite an experience. There's a book. Have you heard of a book called The Exile? No. It was written by these two British journalists and like investigative journalists.

Starting point is 00:18:04 And they essentially wrote this real, they've done a few amazing books on like Pakistan type stuff, terrorism, nuclear stuff. The exile. The exile. And they track Bin Laden's family in exile like the whole time from 2001 through 2011. It's fascinating. It's just like if it's right up my alley.

Starting point is 00:18:21 Yeah, it's great. It's long, but it's like, I mean, it's a page turn. It's awesome stuff. He has one son in Britain who's married to like an older lady who's like a doppelganger of him. You ever seen this guy? Really? No. I knew he had one of the, he had a lot of sons.

Starting point is 00:18:35 Yeah. He didn't like rubbers, but put up number. I don't know. Can we type in Bin Laden, son, Britain? And I'll know when I see a picture if it's him, because, you know, he's got 40 sons. I don't know if this is going to be enough. Did he change his name? Is he like Tommy Bin Laden now? He just changed his name and some. No, but that's him. Wow. Yeah, you see the resemblance. Yeah. Him with the perm or whatever he's got going on. I know. He looks like a Dodgers fan in the top right picture. He's kind of got a unique look. I love this It's ready to throw hands Yeah yeah yeah No he But he wasn't

Starting point is 00:19:14 He left his father when he was young And was like I want nothing to do with this And you know what I got a lot of empathy for that You don't get to choose Where you're born Yeah

Starting point is 00:19:22 Who you're born to I mean Woody Harrelson's dad Was like a f***erial killer Yeah I love Woody Harrelson Insane You know Insane

Starting point is 00:19:30 It's crazy But also How much of you guys Pulled on the thread of like Osama's dad Muhammad bin Laden You ever looked at that? I've read some stuff about it

Starting point is 00:19:40 I mean he was big time I mean in Saudi they're like the family Yep They're like I mean I know in Mecca they built They built the huge complex The most luxurious hotel in Mecca's them

Starting point is 00:19:53 And all over the country And then he went to Did he go to Oxford He went to one of the prep schools in England Right Osama did Did he really? I don't think I'm mistaken Okay

Starting point is 00:20:04 Possibly not kids probably did okay maybe it was osama bin Laden's son i could be i could be mistaken education yeah i mean he was a nepo baby let's call it what it is you know osama didn't have to go get it maybe not maybe it wasn't you know i could be education in cabul al aziz university i'm gonna guess that doesn't sound british that could you know who i'm thinking i'm thinking of sit off and saying that there might be it honestly i don't think so bar shah al assad that's who you're thinking enough. Yeah. Bishar was there. Yeah, Bishar was in

Starting point is 00:20:39 Britain and then he met his wife. She's like a British like eye doctor or something. She worked for a... Can I make that up, Joe? Is that Asma al-Assad? Can you go to Asma al-Assad real quick? Osma was a banker and Bishar was an eye doctor, I believe. Yeah, King's... Okay. I didn't totally make it up.

Starting point is 00:21:00 Now known as King Abdullah's... Right, yeah, exactly. King's College is now. There's an alma papa. Anyway, so it's interesting, though, because I think Muhammad had, I want to say he had like 50-some kids or something like that. And Osama was just one of them. Yeah. I mean, if you have 50 kids, you might have one that's a serial killer.

Starting point is 00:21:24 It's high odds at that point. You know what I mean? Didn't get a lot of paternal attention at home. No. I mean, a lot of the guys who were engaged with Al-Qaeda and that stuff early on, they were wealthy. I mean, like, God, what's a guy's name who took over after Osama, the Egyptian doctor? Oh, Al-Sawahy. Yeah, he was a doctor.

Starting point is 00:21:41 I mean, these guys, there were people who knew that they saw stuff going on in the world they didn't like, and they had the money and the means to do something about it. You know, a lot of people sympathize of them were too poor or two whatever, whereas Osama was sitting there with all his money and nothing better, a nebo baby, and nothing better to do. So he went out and did it. We just got Zawari two years ago. Yeah, it's crazy. about that. That was the cockroach, then all cockroaches. He lived through every era. Like, I was talking about it on this podcast. Like, we never got Al Swari. Like, that's kind of crazy. He was a, you know, obviously all these people have some sort of religious dogma where they bastardized

Starting point is 00:22:18 the religion for their own means politically and whatever. That's a whole separate thing. But once you remove like the crazy gene in there, as like a, as a thinker and strategist, unfortunately, he was very effective and we could not get him and he was able to navigate for al-Qaeda that time period when ISIS really took over yeah because you know al-Qaeda that you know bad as they were ISIS came up they're like yo yeah listen yeah we ain't like that right you know they're a little crazy for us so you had the the most extreme dogma reaching so many people around the world and al-Qaeda was able to survive through that and continue and now obviously we've seen the remnants of that come through in syria yeah what's happening there and that unfortunately is because at some level

Starting point is 00:23:06 they have some people that are bad but they're unfortunately effective leaders well and when they in each these places it's a power vacuum right and it's like what do people want they want authority i mean talk to people in pakistan and the tribal areas along the border with uh with afghanistan all they want is safety and they are deeply religious but their number one priority is having safety and not being by the police on a daily basis, whatever happens. And then these guys come along and say, oh, well, we have our own justice system. We're not going to take your money. And for whatever you want to say about the jihadists, they're definitely not in it for the money.

Starting point is 00:23:40 So that's, you know, I mean, they're, they're, but in these places, Somalia is the same thing. I mean, there's still al-Shabaab runs half the country there. Yeah. So, like, it's West Africa, Mali, all these places is the same kind of thing, lack of authority, horrible governance, tons of poverty, and then these guys take over, and it still happens. Did you get to ask these guys at all about the fact that it's never the leaders who strap on the suicide vest or do the missions? They just always send them. Dude, in Pakistan, everyone we talk to, they don't believe, and I'm not exaggerating, they don't believe that any of these people who blew themselves up were actually Islamic terrorists.

Starting point is 00:24:20 What do they think? They were Jewish terrorists? Jewish. Come on. Jewish. No way. Jewish, Jewish, Indian CIA. If you look up now, so like right now there's a big issue in Pakistan

Starting point is 00:24:31 with like the Beloche insurgency, Blochistan. They want to carve it out, make their own country. They don't believe that they don't believe that they're all funded by India. There's some evidence that India's involved with this little bit. But they believe Israel is in there blowing shit up in Western Pakistan, whatever. And you ask people like, why would they do that? All of them. They think for all of them.

Starting point is 00:24:50 Not, dude, not one person we spoke to. And we talked to, I mean, hundreds of people across the country. ranging from educated to not. Now, I don't want to say, obviously, if you go and talk to, like, really Western-minded people or not even Western, educated people over there, you're going to, I'd say, I don't know what percentage, a large percentage of them isn't going to agree with what I just said. But, I mean, most people in Pakistan are not educated, right? You're talking to the people on the ground.

Starting point is 00:25:12 That's important. Yeah. And that's certainly, you ask them, well, what about that? And they'll say spies, they'll say CIA. I mean, you just name it. I mean, it's deflecting on everything. And then when you say, well, don't you think there's an issue with radical, Islam. Well, they're not Muslims. They're CIA, Indian, Israeli. I have no doubt, by the way,

Starting point is 00:25:31 that there are false flags by organizations like this, the ones you mentioned, and other ones were missing from around the world that include using allegedly like Islamic terrorists that really aren't. I have no doubt about that. Yeah. But when you're like, oh, that's all of them every time. It's like, man, can I play you some tape at the Hyatollah talking about, you know, all these people are sending out there to fucking blow themselves up? Like, that's not fake. It's just strange because That's why I love channels Like what you guys are doing because you're actually going there on the ground

Starting point is 00:26:04 And like I said, you speak their language too You can really understand it And you do a great job of like bringing some of it home to us Where you know you try to put yourselves in the shoes Of someone who has never been to school before Or lives in the mountains and doesn't have a TV Or and or all these things right That has grown up

Starting point is 00:26:24 maybe they're 18 years old and they've grown up in the post 9-11 era and this is what they hear and then you see how normal they are as a person you have to think to yourself would i be the same way maybe totally right totally i think also hearing the history is fascinating someone who knows virtually very little about pakistan's history but that had to create some sort of psychosis in your mind where you are just so fundamentally so instinctively distrustful of any western narrative Even the most basic truth, even something captured on video, it's all sort of some elaborate scheme to frame you. And you just have no reason to believe them. You have resentment.

Starting point is 00:27:04 You have all these underlying feelings that would make you viscerally say, this has got to be fake. Anything that makes us look bad, we're framed. But that does sort of also undermine anyone who's having this holy shit moment right now of, wait, can we trust the accepted Osama been a lot of narrative given that everyone on the ground is just, it does sort of undermine their worldview, not to suggest that there aren't. A lot of false moments, but that does sort of show that, no, this is like a fundamental, this is not fact-specific. This is very much generalized distrust. Totally. And I'd say that, I mean, the other thing you deal with there is people refuse to or are terrified to criticize Islam. So they think that talking about this stuff and believing it, I mean, a lot of people definitely there's a little bit of an, I want to comment too much up.

Starting point is 00:27:52 But one way to look at it would be like a bit of an insecurity about it. it where if you acknowledge these issues, you're then saying it's not a perfect faith and all this and that, and you're opening yourself up to either a lot of trouble or they don't want to go there with their own faith or whatever it is, but there's that whole, like, faith aspect of it that complicates it. And it'd be the same thing. I'm sure if you went to some like extremely conservative Christian place in here and you said, what about this, this and this? You know, when people, when people have, or in that kind of world, it's very difficult to criticize it at all. Like, and it's no different there. I mean, it's the same thing.

Starting point is 00:28:24 Yeah, and I think any, I think a lot of people in the world use religion, whatever it may be, for good. And I think that's a great thing. There is then a subset percentage. You pick your religion where people bastardize it and use it for power. And then sometimes they will get the people who are trying to use it for good to then have to fall in line under whatever this is right here. And whether it's Islam, whether it's Judaism, whether it's Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, I don't give a fuck what it is. Like it makes it so self-defeating to me.

Starting point is 00:29:00 And it makes me cynical about it because it's like, you know, we all got one thing in common. We're all going to die at some point. And the second thing we have in common is we all don't fucking really know what happens afterwards. So why can't, why do we have to have these ancient texts that just you're either fully on the team or not to divide us? You look at world history. That's what causes the majority of wars. It's a crazy thing that we're talking about this in 2025, but we are. Well, also, whenever it interweaves with government, that's when it becomes especially bad.

Starting point is 00:29:31 And you even look at the worst sins in Christianity's resume, when you sort of think of the major critiques of Christianity, and they're almost all related to sort of governmental claims to religion that are just, whether it's Constantine and the Roman Empire, whether it was the conquistadors, whether it was the Crusades, every sort of ill committed. in the name of Christianity was done by government. And even in Jesus, I always think of the fact that the groups he went after the most were the Pharisees and were the clergy, essentially anyone who was in position of power, who was in the temple, who did he go after the most? It wasn't the Roman centurians. It wasn't the Samaritans. It was the people who held positions of religious power that had governmental authority even.

Starting point is 00:30:17 And so you think about today, if you think about, for example, this is a hot topic, but sort of attitudes of towards. Judaism or anti-semitism or whatever, a lot of it's really directed at a government. And similarly, I think with Islam, where it gets tricky as when it's a theocratic state acting on behalf of Islam and not the individuals who, you know, many of whom we traveled, like we went to the Arab majority community in Dearborn, Michigan. And there's no place I'd rather want to keep my bike unlocked in America, you know, or it's up there. Like I would not, now would I want to raise a daughter? That's where I guess is. But like, there is. There,

Starting point is 00:30:54 is definitely an element of like whenever it gets interwoven with power that's where like the crazy shit yeah and you should be able to criticize some things too like different cultures around the world are different and i have to understand that i don't understand all of them but objectively yeah would i like would i like to see a world where you know you don't force a 10 year old girl to only see her eyeballs outside every day and she can actually go get educated yes would i also like to see a world not taking away free markets but would I like to see a world where you know a fucking 18 year old isn't

Starting point is 00:31:30 shaking her ass for $5 on the internet you know naked on only fans yeah I'd like to see that too but the slippery slope of stopping that is now free speech so I understand how complicated it gets it's just we should be able to have these conversations like yes Saudi Arabia

Starting point is 00:31:46 women should be able to drive you know and it shouldn't be like totally hateful this religion or Islam phobia it's like no I'm being 2025. Totally. And this isn't the first insight, the first time this insight's been made, but I think especially some of those cultural critiques that you brought up, the people who often defend those cultures most fiercely are the ones whose values are most contradicted by that culture. I think the elephant in the room would be sort of like the way women can dress and

Starting point is 00:32:17 some Muslim cultures across the world or whether they can get educated or how they're like, you can't interview people and each of like the Arab majority place we've been. And so it's interesting that the people who defend them are often people who also hold dearest to them ideals of feminism and whatnot. So I'm always like that's kind of a contradiction that's been pointed out for a while. And I don't think everyone's ever like solved it. Or I don't know, I don't know how much self-awareness there often is. I think it's almost like the enemy of an enemy is a friend in some cases where there's like this alliance where they don't like the OG, you know, order, white, man, old, all that.

Starting point is 00:32:58 And so they're kind of like, you're not on that team. So even if we don't agree on core things, you're not them. Fuck the patriarchy, but we love this one. It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Run that again. Yeah, run that again. You know, my favorite's like the Nike hijab ads. I'm like, great.

Starting point is 00:33:17 You know, I, yeah, you can make them, but maybe think about some of your other values that you supposedly have or is that just a business decision? Totally. And I love Nike. I rock Nike all the time. I'm not one of these people that gives a fuck about that stuff.

Starting point is 00:33:30 I totally agree. I'm watching it and I'm like when all the people are going to get angry about that out here are the people whose job it is to get angry on the internet. It's like, all right, yeah, you could have seen that one coming.

Starting point is 00:33:41 You know? Totally. Falls here, guys, football season, yard work, maybe even some hunting trips. But let's be honest. Staying fresh can be a challenge. That's why you need to hear about Mando deodorant.

Starting point is 00:33:51 From your pits to, well, everywhere else. Mando has high-performance odor control and sweat control that actually lasts all day long. Forget those colognes that mask the stink. Mando blocks odor before it starts. It's one stick, two jobs. That's covered through double overtime games, that weekend project, and even those long pre-holiday shifts. You're good. It's not magic.

Starting point is 00:34:12 It's science. You know, I've talked about it in the past. I'm always worried that my deodorant's going to wear off. When I throw on my Mando in the morning, I know I'm good throughout the day. and that is a very comforting feeling. This isn't your typical deodorant. It's clinical strength, two times better at controlling sweat than the standard.

Starting point is 00:34:27 Mando's been proven to control both sweat and odor for up to 72 hours, and after just 12 hours, underarm sweat is reduced by 92%. This stuff works. Unlike other deodorants loaded with chemicals, Mando uses only premium ingredients like gentle mandelic acid to keep you fresh and dry.

Starting point is 00:34:45 Mando's starter pack is perfect for new customers. It comes with a solid stick deodorant, Cream tube deodorant, two free products of your choice, and free shipping. As a special offer for our listeners, new customers are going to get 20% off sitewide using our exclusive code. So use code Julian at shopmando.com, that link is in the description below, for 20% off sitewide and free shipping. That's S-H-O-M-A-N-D-O.com while using code Julian at checkout. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. Mando's got you covered.

Starting point is 00:35:16 With deodorant plus sweat control, say goodbye to sweat. and hello to long-lasting freshness. I think it's funny that people talk about now in the U.S. all the time, right? Or like Canada, any of these Western European country, Western countries you hear now, it's like the, you know, kind of like the Leftist-Islamist alliance. Like you hear people talk about this kind of stuff. It's not new, though. I mean, like Iran, when the Iranian Revolution happened, it was exactly that.

Starting point is 00:35:37 I mean, it was it was leftists and Islamists. And then the Islamists killed the leftists, that they took power or sent them abroad. That's why a huge number of the Iranians in the U.S. are leftists, communists, whoever, who fled, after the Islamist turned on them back then. So it's, you know, it's not, it's not new. And it's interesting why that happens.

Starting point is 00:35:55 I guess both are, I don't know, if you, on either end of the spectrum, both are kind of like revolutionary forces. And then in the middle, it's, you know, you could say that like Islamists and Iran, revolutionary force, leftists, there they're real Marxist, communist, revolutionary force, and then both going against the status quo,

Starting point is 00:36:14 which was embodied by conservatives. So it's the same thing. It's a great point. know it's a similar thing that just plays out in each place after each place we just got back um my our videographer and i just went to canada last week they're talking to people there's already hear that do canada it was she katie pair while you're there no she was out with justin trudeau in it at the time yeah god people hate trudeau it how did he win again like last time i know he resigned now but how how does he win that's what i kept asking i'm like frost i it sounds like do

Starting point is 00:36:46 people despise him, how did Pierre Poyleev lose in the liberals one? I mean, I think the short answer is Trump. Yeah. Like what Trump did. In Canada, patriotism is on the left. It's not like the U.S. where it's on the right. Like here, like if you wave a flag, you're probably conservative. In Canada, that might be, you know, you see someone out there like put on their American flag t-shirt.

Starting point is 00:37:11 It's like a safe bet. We got to go rid of that. That needs to not be a political statement. I know. Crazy. But, you know, it's... Apologizing on the 4th of July. If you do that, it's typically from the left.

Starting point is 00:37:21 That's true. Yeah, I mean, and I do think it's shifting a bit now because a lot of people on the left, I think, have kind of realized you don't want to give away that to the right. But in Canada, it's like, I was talking to someone recently, a couple months ago, it was like a professor from Canada. And he was saying that, well, you got to understand, I interviewed him for a story you wrote about the election in Canada and how Pierre lost. And he said that you got to understand in Canada, people, like, the national, you know, the national. national idea is largely like we're a more progressive version of America so therefore when you wave the Canadian flag you're waiving it for a bigger welfare and it's you know bigger for more a more left version of the US so when Trump did all the stuff saying 51st state this and that the people

Starting point is 00:38:01 who benefit from the flag waving is is on the left there and I will say it's crazy everywhere you go in Canada the number of Canadian flags the we are Canada the proud Canadian it's everywhere I mean you would think someone there is saying they're like you know you guys are in a fascist state right now, they keep saying this kind of stuff to me. I was like, well, you see way more flags in Canada. Like, if one sign of fascism is like the amount of flag waving, it would certainly be Canada, everyone, we're the best. We heard it over and over again.

Starting point is 00:38:26 We're the best country on earth. We are this. We are that. Canadians, this, Canadians, that. In a way, like, you don't really hear, I mean, Americans, a lot of people, you know, they say, we're all, we're the best, whatever. But you don't drive down. There, you go past a dollar store and having big letters outside of it,

Starting point is 00:38:40 stand with Canada. Yeah. It's also, do you think a piece of it is, the fact that there's, I don't remember, there is a term for this. I can't remember it, but there's like a bias of, of the monotony of having been the top dog. What I mean by that is there's a way better term for that. But what I mean by that is America's been like number one GDP, economically, world power for so long that generationally as it goes on, you tend to turn inward on yourself like every quote unquote empire has. Whereas Canada, you know, they've been doing fine, but it's not like they've been.

Starting point is 00:39:15 the world power so there's a piece of them that's looking up and trying to go up and so they feel that national pride regardless of what side of the aisle it's on versus in america there's people who and this can be the right and the left by the way but who are looking inward and go i don't like anything i see here and they feel less of a sense of nationalism because we've been on top for so long that now we only have something to attack the is ourselves i think that's definitely part of it also i should say before when i say like waving a flag means you're i don't think it but to someone who says they're a nationalist in the U.S. is probably a conservative.

Starting point is 00:39:46 And I'd say in Canada, I don't think that's necessarily true. Yeah. But I think one thing that Trudeau did, and one of the reasons that, you know, he was able to keep winning and stay in power for so long despite the fact that he was so unpopular, is because he tapped into this Canadian national, what you just said, I think the image that he put forward, even though a lot of people didn't like his policies and stuff like that, it was like, we are this, like, suave, cosmopolitan country that takes care of people, And everyone wants to come here and look at Trump in the U.S.

Starting point is 00:40:14 And look at those backwards Americans and even Joe Biden, this old whatever. And we've got this. And I think for a lot of people there, it made them. They were the outward-looking country and they felt that. But you go. We were only in southern Ontario. So I can't talk about all of Canada. But man, some of the stuff you saw, you see that.

Starting point is 00:40:32 We're working on the first video right now from the city, London. We went because a bunch of our readers DM'd us on. Oh, like the Canada, London, London, Ontario, which is a big stage. hundreds of thousands of people are readers DM does so you guys got to come here and see the open drug use so it went and it was i mean it was like kensington it was it was like kensington dude every downtown in southern ontario looks like kensington no way i mean the video is a scale there in the ones that are big enough yeah i mean i went for a run we were in this we were in other city hamilton it was like the pittsburgh of uh ontario and checked in the rbmb is getting dark i went for a run

Starting point is 00:41:06 do i the whole time i was running i was getting screamed at i mean people people people People were just on the street, like, screaming at me as I ran by. I mean, it was, it was weird. Were they just, like, get away or were they like give us? It's like, it'd be like going on a run through Kensington. Yeah. You know, like people are just. Not a great place to go for a.

Starting point is 00:41:25 Not where you want to be. It not, I can't say it was, it wasn't that bad. I mean, it's a smaller city. Although you wouldn't want to slow down. That's the one good side of running there. Like you would not, you know. No, you're going to get your miles at a good pace. Your miles in.

Starting point is 00:41:38 I told us in the next day I did that. You carry your knife with each with each stride just you're a run club there. That would be great place to meet someone. That's where we're going to, we're going to have Zach Pogrob go to Kensington to do an ARA app, you know, like actual event. It's all to spread the word of the app. Shout out to our boy, Zach, for making a great app. If you like running, get the R app. But anyway.

Starting point is 00:42:04 Yeah. So that's wild. Like, you wouldn't think that Canada would be like that. if it's a place that was voting for Trudeau so much. But, you know, at the same time, you have to look at the built-in culture considering how long a guy like that was in power. There's something underneath there that has led, like, even people to be like, well, all right, all right, what the fuck, we'll hit it, you know.

Starting point is 00:42:28 Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they keep putting him in. But now, what was this? So he stepped aside and then they had an open election and his, like, the guy who came after him on his side won. Mark Carney, yeah. was that right who is the former he was ahead of both i believe canada central bank and uh britain central bank that's but that's what that's what i mean you talk to people there though and you're

Starting point is 00:42:50 like why why did pierre win and they say well because we needed someone or why didn't pierre win and it's like well because carney was you know a stable voice and we wanted stability and we trusted him and it was i mean it's a brilliant political move to put him up i mean he he was and the first thing he did he got in he got rid of the carbon tax which trudeau put on which really pissed a lot of people off all right um but yeah it's just a different political environment in the U.S. It was interesting to learn about for sure, for sure. But even in the U.S., every state you go to, you realize this, too, like the politics are so different, right? You go to Florida, too, we just got back from Florida, and you go to California, right? It's like, you're

Starting point is 00:43:22 dealing with totally different. I mean, they are. They effectively are. Their politics are so unique. Each place you go in the country, but. Yeah, I take a passport to Florida. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, what was the, we don't read that, so we're like, the picture looks good, but, uh, do you go ahead, buddy. What was the travel advice, the Florida the travel advisory? Oh, yeah, the NACP. This is, this is when you, we think of examples of the media's out of touchness, the establishment's out of touchness. One that just we come back to is the NAACP issued a travel advisory to Florida. And I think it was for black people and gays at one point. It was, it was certainly, and so you look at this and you're like, hold on,

Starting point is 00:44:04 have these people been to Miami? Have they been? I interviewed a drag queen in Brooklyn who said, Her favorite place to go, it was a date. No, but it was, I interviewed her. And she said her favorite place to hang out in the country, no joke, was Miami. That's where they said the, so it's like this idea of, you can put it with you, it's like if you think you can put this blanket over a state as complex as Florida. And yes, it's moved red. It's no longer the Bellwether state. It is more safely Trump and DeSantis territory.

Starting point is 00:44:37 But at the same time, it is unbelievably diverse. And you could break down Florida into multiple states. The Panhandles, Alabama, Miami's Little Havana. And then you go to Naples. That's the Midwest. And then you go to a world country. So anyways, I just think that anytime they simplify and give this general view. So that was just one of those examples of the travel.

Starting point is 00:44:58 And you're just like, you've got to be kidding. You are so painfully out of touch. You know nothing. And you probably issued this travel advisory from Vermont, which is 99% why. Because Florida is one of the most diverse states in the country, one of the most diverse places in the world. So you just see that and you're just like, you're out of touch. And it's a disservice to everyone who's, you know, it just so misunderstands the country. Hey, guys, if you haven't already subscribed, please hit that subscribe button.

Starting point is 00:45:21 It's a huge, huge help. Thank you. You know what one of my least favorite maps ever to look at is? Which one? When they do a map of the electorate of the entire country with the red and blue dots for a presidential election. Why is that? Because if a county goes 5149 Democrat or 5149 Republican, it's not like a mix of reddish and blue, it's full red or it's full blue. Yeah. And they use, they simplify this into a binary color code so that your mind goes to, oh, yeah, that county in Kansas, there's not one Democrat that lives there.

Starting point is 00:45:55 Oh, yeah, Philadelphia. There's not one Republican that lives it. These things aren't true. This is a complicated, complicated thing, but we try to. we try to I guess over simplify everything usually I like simplifying things but not not on that front and when you guys are out there getting these videos that's the nice thing like I want to get into your backstory in in a minute here but you know the thing that made old like pre sorrows vice great was that they were going on the ground just to capture what was happening this is it might be

Starting point is 00:46:28 crazy might be normal might be somewhere in between but they're going to capture what's happening and you were learning about all these different cultures and subcultures across the country and why people might have a fucking different set of beliefs living in Kansas than me living right here, you know? And that's what you guys are kind of capturing now. Like I see some of that magic happening and I see it on some other channels too who have clearly thought about the same way you guys have, which is like we missed that. You know, and it's it's great to see. So just to get to it so that people, you know, they've been hearing you talk now for a while. and get an idea.

Starting point is 00:47:02 But you guys are Roca News, ride the news. You started off on Instagram. I'm going to have you tell the whole story, but you got $1.7 million over there where you do a lot of news content. And now over the last year, you've also moved over to YouTube where you're doing some great, hard hitting

Starting point is 00:47:16 on the ground documentary contents. You've been at this for five years. Congrats on that anniversary. That's awesome. Thank you, brother. Where'd you guys come from besides Delco? Yeah, and Langley. Yeah, Langley and Delco.

Starting point is 00:47:30 By way of Langley. Where'd you guys come from? How did you end up here? What's the story? Do you want to take it? Start off? Sure. I mean, we worked together in D.C.

Starting point is 00:47:40 Worked to a think tank that a lot of your... Think tank. That a lot of your viewers are likely to know at the American Enterprise Institute. No. So... We pull up the board of the American Enterprise Institute. Let's play game real fast before you go on. And make sure to hit the Reptillion section, just so we get them.

Starting point is 00:47:55 That's what I'm saying. I feel like I'm going to see a lot of names I know. I don't even know who all is on the board. That's exactly what you would say. All right. Peter Coors, Head of Molson Coors. Harlan Crow,

Starting point is 00:48:11 sounds like he's got old family money, Crow Holdings. He's a Texas guy. Ravenel Curry. I just respect him for going through life with that name. Dick DeVos, all right. So I imagine that's one of the DeVoses.

Starting point is 00:48:24 It's probably, that's, what's her name? Betsy DeVos's husband. Maybe. Okay. Telling Friedman, I think he's a private equity guy. Yeah, a lot of, a lot of capitals in here. A lot of hedge fundies. The retired CEO of American Express. Yeah. Bill Haslam, former governor of Tennessee, whose brother owns the Browns, does a terrible job. Oh, yeah. Jimmy and D. Haslam. Yeah, I forgot about that. Yeah, it looks like a who's who here. I'm not seeing horrible ones jump off the board, but definitely. Definitely a who's who. Well, AI is interesting because... Ross Perrault Jr. I didn't know who you. Staging the third party round.

Starting point is 00:49:10 We're going to do this time. It's AI as an interesting place. So we met there and we hosted... It was our... Well, you worked in India, but then you came there, you applied to think tanks and then ended up in India. Why did you apply to think tanks?

Starting point is 00:49:24 I wanted to do foreign policy work. And when I was in India doing... I mean, whatever I was doing. I just want to go over there and get the experience living abroad, right? And while I was there, I actually did some, I did some, like, writing and stuff like that. And then I wanted to come back to the U.S. and just get a job. And it's like, if you're interested in doing foreign policy work, I don't want to work for government.

Starting point is 00:49:42 So I just applied to everything I could find in D.C., which is think tanks. And I applied pretty much all of them. And AEI was the one that took me. Okay. Do India research. I was in, so I was graduating college, 2018, and I didn't really know what I wanted to. I had a weird political history to my, and this. is one thing that inspired Roka, where it's nonpartisan news. And part of it's my own background,

Starting point is 00:50:07 my family, my send family, it's very bipartisan in college. I was a Democrat, but by the end of it, the campus free speech stuff had fired me up. And so I wasn't really Democrat. And I was always into news and politics and everything. And so I applied to a few different places in D.C. as well. And I loved AI's president at the time, Arthur Brooks. He's now like a happiness guru. You'll see him on reels. He'll do stuff like, in your 30s, you should be doing this and treat your life is a startup. He's changed his tone. It used to be he was like, he thought he was a big free market advocate. And he was like, free markets have made the world a more prosperous place. We only hear about inequality. And I don't know how much. Oh, I've seen this guy.

Starting point is 00:50:44 Yeah, this guy. Arthur Brooks. He's, and he was the president at the time. And then he left six months in. But, uh, got off the sinking ship. Yeah. He, but AI was in a weird spot because it's very establishment, which was itself eye opening for us, seeing a little more how DC works. it's very much but it was also stuck in this in this in between land of it was conservative and it was also the place where the architects of the Iraq

Starting point is 00:51:11 war sort of worked and also which you know it's a little bit like being part of the Cracker Barrel rebranding agency now in terms of popular so it's not a great look but I do believe in a lot of their you know it was kind of like this more moderate think tank and now

Starting point is 00:51:27 it was kind of never Trump and so it was in this weird land now and it's lost its influence in many ways but yeah so we were hosting the podcast so that's not the best ad for a I would just gave but we have frustrations there there are good people there but like

Starting point is 00:51:41 good people all neocons sent them all to prison anyway continue I mean there's certainly you built the podcast there is that what you were just saying so we took we took it we both had like our day jobs essentially and then um awesome a third guy um one of our best friends still to this day he the three of us essentially got tapped to take over their podcast so they had this podcast that they were doing for a while

Starting point is 00:52:02 and no one was listening to it and we took it over it was like they just good they didn't even care they didn't care about it so yeah they wanted they wanted someone to take it over the people who were doing it were leaving or something so we just started doing it having on guests you'd have a lot of authors that we liked

Starting point is 00:52:16 and stuff like that anyone who was around the DC area wanted to talk to we bring them in were you doing in like the conference room AEI no they had a nice studio actually they're not lacking for money you know but the you saw that board yeah uh so we did that and it grew i mean it went from like i think like no i mean

Starting point is 00:52:35 like 500 listeners like 5 000 listeners in span of like two months and we and we were we were starting to get fired up and actually we were super fired up we were like i mean we were ready to go with it and then essentially had some guests on that people in there didn't really like like who who are the i mean the mooch we had a couple the mooch remember the guy who was fired from trump after 11 days he was like garamucci oh they didn't like him uh we had on andrew sullivan who is a gay British writer who read every week and he was also

Starting point is 00:53:03 very critical of the Iraq War and he smoked weed in the studio which I don't think has been public until now and he drank Yeager so he like I think he wanted to kind of shoot a bird he was like I'll come to AI

Starting point is 00:53:12 they hate me there but I'll go to the basement we'll do it and then I think he kind of wanted to shoot a bird he's like bring some drink and weed anyways he's great

Starting point is 00:53:21 anyways we interviewed people and they were kind of and AI is a place in this chair of D.C. in general where even though we weren't, like, ranting on it. We were simply asking questions. Like, if you listen to the old just asking questions in popular free today. But, but we were part of the, but no, in the sense that we were not giving opinions, we were not spouting anything. It was just, they did, they were like

Starting point is 00:53:42 these young kids. You're platforming all these people. You get the platform verb, but it was also like these two shouldn't have a platform. Yeah. And we were, we were the problem. I think all like bigger politics aside or whatever that comes with that, it was, I mean, dude, everyone, the people there academics, right? And academics are notoriously, like, they want to protect what's theirs. They want the credit. They want this and that. And what happened with us, honestly, was they wanted to get their hands in it. And we, this happened in, like, February. We were supposed to go to the, what was it, the Iowa, we were going to the Iowa caucus. Yeah. In February 2020. Or so, yeah, the Iowa Congress. Of February 2020. Yeah. We had set up meetings, ironically, it paved the way, this is what we

Starting point is 00:54:21 ended up doing later, with mayors across the country on the way out there and back and, like, places like Cleveland and Pittsburgh, me, all these places. And then right within a week of us supposed to go, days before we were going to leave, we got essentially told it wasn't ours anymore and other people wanted to take it. So then the pandemic hit and we essentially put our heads together like a month after that and we're like, what are we going to do now? And we on both of us were also thinking up from this for like there's no, there's a ceiling here, there's ideological constraints, there's all sorts of stuff. So then that's when the idea for Roka came was April 2020. What does Roka mean, by the way? So I got to give a shout out to our third co-founder, Billy Carney.

Starting point is 00:54:58 who is my best friend from college. He was doing banking here at the time, didn't love his job, was in the pay. And we always wanted to start something. And he's less of a news junkie than us, but he's got like great instincts for media and all that. And he's also half Brazilian. And so we originally were going to be Pluto because we wanted this like outside the establishment. Rejected by the establishment. And sort of we love this symbol of a planet.

Starting point is 00:55:23 Turns out the Disney lawyers aren't the nicest people. And they have a trademark for anything. if you have anything in entertainment with Pluto you go after it infringes on there Pluto the dog trademark this oh dude literally the dog and so what if I say Pluto the planet

Starting point is 00:55:40 I know you're done for you're done no but if you're in media entertainment that's where the trademark so our lawyer and we got we found him for anyways trademark lawyer shout out Jake Ward he was like you got to get rid of this name and so we start panicking we're going to launch

Starting point is 00:55:56 in a month we all just quit our jobs our parents are like what are you doing and then we um you know we go to this billy's uh remembers this wave that goes up the amazon twice a year called the poor roca and we liked it because it was also a symbol like a planet instead of a planet it's a wave it goes against the current and it unites people around the world and we just like the symbol of something nature related so we go with it poor roca is a little clunky we go with roca and so that's the name and that's still our thing ride the wave and that's where it comes from that's where it comes from it's the it's the roca wave so but with i think the other thing too so in this period when we

Starting point is 00:56:35 april 2020 we had the idea for this the first thing we did uh like a few weeks later we got in the car we did a road trip around um i mean it was early june it was yeah george floyd time yeah hell of a time hell of a time june pandemic hell of a time take a road trip and we went to Pittsburgh, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. And we just went around just talking to people. And we're like, what do you want from news? What do you want? What do you want here?

Starting point is 00:57:00 And, I mean, that part of the country has become kind of like our, I mean, our North Star in a lot of ways. And we go there all the time. We love shooting videos in that part of the country. You're North Star. Because you look there, it's totally undercovered by the media. It's totally stereotyped. The issues in the country that really matter, a lot of them are playing out in those places,

Starting point is 00:57:21 right and everyone's like oh it's west virginia they have opioids okay now i mean the opioid issue subsequently became a national issue one of the biggest i mean more people die from you know opioids now in a year then how about who fucking put them there exactly yeah you know exactly so going going out there i think was eye opening for us i mean just to talk these people understand like essentially what they wanted from news so then we got back from that trip we essentially like okay we got to figure out how to deliver news to the people in pittsburgh and columbus not to the people on D.C. So that was and for us, I mean, I'm from like essentially

Starting point is 00:57:55 like a, I'm from a small town upstate New York like four hours north of the year, not exactly a coastal place. And two, he grew up in Tallahassee and other places Western Pennsylvania. Well, that's what he says. Delco. I really think those accents all came together. Sometimes the little southern twang will come out, but I think it just

Starting point is 00:58:13 merges and I'm a Delcoe, even though I do not approve these coasters. You don't like those coasters? I'm a Steelers guy. Yeah, you're in an Eagles household Yeah, I'm sorry about that But anyways, please proceed Yeah, no, so in essence we wanted to get back to our roots

Starting point is 00:58:27 And like do news for that And that's what Roka came out of So August 2020, we launched it, launched it We put up a website that no one went to But then after like five or six months We started to figure out how to do Instagram And we put up a story in January 2021 On the GameStop trading frenzy

Starting point is 00:58:44 Oh, interesting. So you were doing all like Through old school through the website Yeah, first five six months We basically imitate. We were basically like we, I think the combination of COVID, our experience in D.C. And our fresh, longstanding frustrations with the news landscape. We were kind of fired up against these, I would say the least. So we, but the irony is when we launched, we essentially imitated every legacy media company.

Starting point is 00:59:15 We hired a small staff of writers that were all over the spectrum. we like we literally which one what was that um oh oh they're all autistic they were all i'm a little slow you heard tallahassee i'm a little slow um i'm still figuring out who bin laden is and whether we went to school in england i don't know what i was thinking of i swear i saw him as a kid in like english summer camp but anyway uh i mean i don't know who that was anyways um but so we we were kind of peak frustration with the establishment so we had this tone that was anti-establishment, but we didn't really, we hadn't really reached the people we were trying to reach. And our target market was people who are just sick of the polarization.

Starting point is 00:59:57 They don't really like the establishment. They don't really trust either side of the media. And they just want to live happy lives. They like going out with their friends or normal people. The kind of the people who have no home in certainly the media landscape of 2020, where I was even more dominated by newspapers and cable news. Now it's, there's more options. But we've kind of forget, dude, at that point, I mean, during COVID, Fox and CNN, and some people went to Twitter, but it had different ownership then, more limited in terms of the range of narratives you could get. So anyways, we had this whole vision, but we initially started distributing it in traditional ways. And then we kind of had a breakthrough on Instagram, reaching that person who's 28 who, like, we had a persona early on. And this came from also going to Columbus of like being on Ohio State.

Starting point is 01:00:43 It's like somebody who went to Ohio State. It's good school, very good school in the Midwest, but it's also like a national brand. You have a lot of normal people go there and, you know, where are they getting their news a few years after graduating. That was our target market. And you know what else is interesting? You're coming up, you're coming into this at a time. I don't know. I just relate to this a lot where you were coming from the establishment world, literally being a think tank.

Starting point is 01:01:08 Yes. And seeing like some of the cool kids playing on stuff on the outside, not necessarily. straight up news but with this kind of independent streak and you're like oh now how can we turn that into news and you're doing it at a time where like morning brew had just gone to sell their company they had invented this very simple three to five minute newsletter that you know a fucking kindergartner could read that gives you an idea about finances a little bit more gen z millennial focused and you're like okay let's do that combining cnn and fox totally that's interesting totally you know it's so funny our experience in dc was

Starting point is 01:01:44 one of the most informative things for us. And in one sense, I don't think that, you know, a lot of the people there are, D.C. can be corrupting and also intoxicating, which isn't probably been a big surprise. There are people, I think a lot of people don't go in there. And I think you also see the humanity of a lot of the people you read headlines about and then probably less as supervillains or maybe they're really good at hiding it. I don't know. But the incentives of D.C. and the way it works, it really is one giant cocktail party in many ways. That's a great way to put people want to be invited back

Starting point is 01:02:16 they don't want to upset these dollars and frankly we occupied a world that not directly and again they didn't do as some cynical master plan or at least most of the people but they created the void that we saw in the rust belt or certainly that consensus and they didn't really

Starting point is 01:02:32 think about it you know they didn't really care that in 2023 108000 people died of drug overdoses in the US three quarters of which were opioids and they're concentrated in states where industry fled because they can't see it they can't see it and again i think some people in our new independent media get wrong is they probably make the people in dc into more

Starting point is 01:02:57 of a disney villains than they are i think a lot of them are more like model u.n ambitious they just got into these positions of power some are bad i think there are some don't get me wrong i'm i also am not taking this naive world of oh they're just all nice and they shake your hand and they're smiled and therefore they're good. But I don't think they're the people who created messes and benefit. I think they're self-interested and look at the incentive system. Look at the blow to DC. Look at the think tank world. It's a comfortable world. People get paid well. Five of the seven wealthiest counties in the country by median household income are bordering DC. That's insane. And because it is such a comfortable ecosystem, nobody wants to challenge the status quo. Nobody wants to upset it.

Starting point is 01:03:41 Do you agree, Max? Yeah, I think, I think there's two other, you know, interesting things at play here. Like, to get there, I mean, a lot of these people, for context, like a place like AEI, the average junior staffer, you know, people that we were, you know, having lunch with each day, they're mostly progressive, like, they're mostly progressive, like, it's just like young people anywhere. I mean, it's not, like, most, very few, it's very few people go there because they're like, I'm a young libertarian, so I'm going to go to this conservative think tank. Yeah. It's much more like, I want to get to D.C. I want to, I'm interested in this topic. I want to spend all day reading about what's going on in this place or with this field so they go. But if you think about like the two main, so like the term neocon, right, or like with econ, you know, kind of like the classical economic stuff, there's like this, I studied foreign affairs and I studied economics in college, both those things.

Starting point is 01:04:27 The classical theory for both of them is essentially the same. I mean, if you go through, I went to the University of Virginia, if you went through the University of Virginia and you tried to put forward an alternative economic theory, or an alternative foreign policy theory, you're not going to do well in school. If you don't do well in school, you're not going to go get a good job in D.C. So it self-selects for people who really believe this stuff.

Starting point is 01:04:47 And then you believe it. So say you major an econ, you go get a job as an econ researcher at a think tank like Brookings or AI or whatever. And then you go through, you start churning out op-eds, articulating these things. You get promoted.

Starting point is 01:04:58 You move up. You get tapped for government. You go through the whole thing. If you start writing about how, like, manufacturing needs to come back through tariffs, you're gone. And it's just because that doesn't align. And that's not the way you get forward.

Starting point is 01:05:09 So I think some of it is, and it's the same with foreign policy. It's like if you want to start talking about how, you know, the U.S. shouldn't be involved in Israel, Ukraine, or whatever, same exact thing. I mean, you're going against this, like, really rigid, intellectual thing. And it's also, I mean, this is where you get to, like, the concept, like the blob and foreign policy and other stuff. It's left, it's right. It's just this whole thing. And this is what's really shattered in the last few years. I think it started to really change.

Starting point is 01:05:34 When we were there, 2018 to 2020, it was starting to change a little bit. Like, by the time we left in 2020, you did hear some people giving Trump some points and stuff like that. But really, it was, it was, they just wanted him gone. There was no real thing in D.C. lobbying on his, or like, think tank trying to advance alternative ideas. That's not the case today. You have the Quincy Institute, which is libertarian kind of foreign policy. You have a Orrin Cass, American Compass. So it's changed.

Starting point is 01:06:00 But so a lot of it is this intellectual merit, you know, meritocracy. The way you rise through it, it's by, it's something. selects for people who either believe this stuff or are willing to believe it. That's why people always wonder why college professors are so liberal. And this is the answer, you know, we've interviewed a lot of people about, we've thought a lot about. And academia is important because these are the people who end up on the Council of Economic Abidges in the White House. These are the people who educate the next generation of influential people in business and everything. And if you think about it, okay, number one,

Starting point is 01:06:31 academia is always going to attract more open-minded and liberal and non-practical type. that's just academia it's the nature of it the personality traits that correlate with being conservative and liberal academia more feeds and welcomes the liberal traits so it's already has that bias and now there's this whole cartel and you talk about foreign policy and economics science and this is one area where alternative media i give a ton of points to personally they have upended a lot of the narratives about science and this grip that big pharma has on dc it's insane it's insane and i think people in D.C. don't really care about how bad it is because they're all taking care of. And one of the comment on Trump that I imagine you might find interesting is he upset their

Starting point is 01:07:18 egos so badly by simply not giving a shit about places like AEI. And there is such an air of self-importance in D.C. where it's like, but, but we're part of Brookings Institute or we're part of this. I don't know why British Axon, very few of British accents. I do that all the time. It's so true. It just, it feels right. It feels right. Exactly. We love our British fans, but sorry about 1777. You'll get him next. By the way, you know where all the losers went?

Starting point is 01:07:45 Canada. Just saying. H.W. Brands, if you don't believe me. Go ahead. Shout out. His son. His son's an AI guy. I worked with his son.

Starting point is 01:07:52 How do we get H.W. in here? I don't know. His book on the American West. He's the goat, bro. He's the goat historian. That guy's written like fucking 70 books. Yeah. On United States.

Starting point is 01:08:04 Sorry, I got you off your point. No, I was just going to say they had such. self-importance. And so the fact that Trump comes in and everyone's like bull in the China shop, he didn't even, he didn't know what the China will, in DC, you know, and the people who do well there suck up to places, they go through all the motions. And the ecosystem, in my opinion, is pretty evil. I think a lot of the people in it, there's self-interest. It's not like, what do you think of that take? I think I've been loving your guys' takes on it because you also lived And I want to get more inside the think tank in a minute.

Starting point is 01:08:38 But what I keep hearing is a theme here. And please correct me if I'm wrong because I have spent two days of my life in D.C. Thank God. Two days, too many. January 6, 20, 21. New. In my hearing. Yeah, no, I was not down there on January 6.

Starting point is 01:08:55 I'll put it that way. But I think, first of all, let's state the obvious. In any subset of population anywhere, there are evil people. It is no different in Washington, D.C. There are some people there with a combination of power and straight up evil, even if they think they're the fucking good guy. So did it. You know what I mean? So there is evil there.

Starting point is 01:09:16 Let's not lose that point in here. But I think a lot of the machine is what you guys both pointed out in separate ways, where Max, you were going through how people have to rise through the chain and they kind of got to like say the right things or do the right things. and they're a 22-year-old, 23-year-old self-interested to make sure they don't ruffle feathers because they're trying to be respectful of the place they're coming into and I get how that then devolves in a certain way. And then what you were saying about the concept

Starting point is 01:09:45 that the people themselves aren't evil, but the system is there was a term that was coming to my mind that is like, you ever just have those things where you learn about something for the first time and then it just plays in your head like a movie over and over again and you're like, oh, that explains everything. I remember freshman year, management 101 in college

Starting point is 01:10:04 they were like the first day of class they were going through the three important things in a business and it was like efficiency effectiveness and no group think I didn't know group think was a word I thought it was a term the professors I was like oh that's interesting I thought they had invented that

Starting point is 01:10:19 it's an actual word like in the fucking dictionary and group think to way oversimplify it is like when people kind of conform around ideas because the madness of the crowd say that's what it is and when I look at it DC it is the ultimate example of group think through conformity and through a

Starting point is 01:10:37 through a I guess like pecking order system if you will and the pecking order has different levels to it on one part you got the government which is your Congress and all that show and the other part you got the think tanks on the other part you got the lobbyists right who you know sometimes the same thing

Starting point is 01:10:51 yeah but like that from the outside as a pure outsider that seems to me like what you guys are saying totally yeah I think that I I totally agree there's such group thinking on certain issues especially the attitudes toward for example transactional organizations or any like the u.n the people on the left and the right are going to agree on think tank row they all agree the people in congress i think you also i not to be i i i it always

Starting point is 01:11:21 frustrates me when people over simplify things but incentives here are important it's why like when people talk about the uniparty and how each side spends just like drunken sailors There are elements where there is a group thing. I think they're just looking out for themselves. I think they know that you're going to get primaried if you are the person who cuts spending on issues on social services. Because that's a losing issue. Look at what happened when they went after. And you have Josh Hawley, a Republican senator and other people saying, like, if you cut these benefits for our older people, you know, they criticize them from a political perspective and a policy perspective.

Starting point is 01:11:57 But it's really their own self-interest, I think, that kicks in. So I think it's always important to understand. that no being, no entity is going to like attack itself. And so that's why I think that's where I think the people need to check. What we have in D.C. is clearly not working. It's not working. I think that's fair to say. The level of wealth in the area, the whole ecosystem, the lobbying ecosystem is absurd.

Starting point is 01:12:23 There's been an enormous explosion in spend, the revolving doors between the Pentagon and then big defense. and then you also have the same thing with all of our health officials and big pharma it's insane it's its own ecosystem they benefit at the expense of the country in many ways so but I don't think it's yeah

Starting point is 01:12:42 so I agree some people are evil in that ecosystem but a lot are just self-interested like in any ecosystem I think it's also when DC's a huge part of the problem but it's also not just DC I mean you look like when Obama came in he hired dozens of people from city

Starting point is 01:12:55 oh yeah it was the city bank cabinet so so you know it's and then you have you have these ideas is, and I think this is where academia is such a vital part of this, because it's the same with tariffs. You look right now at the tariff projections. From the beginning, the warnings about inflation, that no money's going to come in, all this stuff is going to be a disaster. The fact is, we don't know what's going to happen yet, to be clear. I've got no idea. Consistently, the projections of date have vastly overstated the problems that were going to ensue

Starting point is 01:13:22 from Trump's policies on tariffs specifically. And now you look at it, I listened to an interview the other day, as your client had on the head of Yale's Budget Lab, talking about about Yale's Budget Lab does like the, they're like the definitive source. You open the New York Times talking about, you know, the average tariff rate, the impact of this. It's always Yale Budget Lab. And they had on the head of that, Ezra Klein, on the head of that in his podcast. And even she was saying, you know, we keep, we keep misstating it. But now we have this. And now we have this. And you just realize it's, it's all the same kind of thing. The people in government, you know, who have been promoting this, like, aggressive free trade policy for a long time, the people in media who then, you know, Okay, you have the people in government promoting these policies. You have people in academia coming with the research, supporting the policies. You have people in media interviewing the politicians and then getting their stats from people in academia. So you have this really three-way thing. And then you have, of course, the corporations who benefit tremendously from all this kind of stuff.

Starting point is 01:14:16 So you have all these different things. And then left out of it is the average person who's like, well, where are the middle class go? And that is the issue. And again, I don't know terrorists are the way to deal with it. However, like, that person is certainly left out of that whole equation right there. And to go just to bring this back to the idea of like these cartels that exist in academia. Love that term. Great.

Starting point is 01:14:38 It's true. The scientific cartels where if you disagree, you're not going to be in a position of authority that can then challenge the cartel and it creates this bizarre. You saw this in COVID, right? Anyone who wanted to be part of a major organization or group or part of signing a, if you had some contrarious. in view, not only were you not part of that organization, you, you lost a voice. I mean, we interviewed Martin Coldorf, who was, uh, perfect. Why do I know that? Because he was one of the three co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration along with Jay Batacharya, who's now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so he's his boy and he just got a position in government, but he was early on. He was, he basically, he's, uh,

Starting point is 01:15:23 from Sweden, right? And he said, uh, he saw how Sweden handled COVID. And this guy's not political at all. He's like, wait, why are we locking down? Are we sure this is smart? Are we sure it's good for people at the social level? Are we sure it's even saving lives? And so he spoke out against it. And he was banned from YouTube, interviews taken down from Twitter. So it became a thing where as part of that landscape,

Starting point is 01:15:45 and I think that's a great way to look at it because people do always focus, zero in on DC, and it is a huge problem. But if you look at the broader landscape, everyone, including big tech at that point, wouldn't let him speak. So he had no authority. Those positions had no grounding where you could say Harvard says this or I read this on NBC. They were outcast. They might as well have been the guy on the corner with the half drunk bottle of Hennessy saying,

Starting point is 01:16:12 yo, lockdowns are shitty because they had no backing at that point. Got fired from Harvard. And then all of a sudden this otherwise legitimate view sounds fringe and dangerous and stop saying it or else we're going to ban you too. That's where it gets scary. when you start saying that asking questions on anything is dangerous because there's a couple human elements that we just can't fight because it exists. It's in our DNA and it's what it is. One of them I talk about all the time, which is, you know, we got this universal law of physics, one of them that says for every action, there's an equal but opposite reaction, which forms

Starting point is 01:16:48 equilibrium. Now, no one's ever going to agree perfectly on everything, nor should they, then the world wouldn't be interesting. But you want those actions and reactions to be in this kind of zone. right yes when it starts to get out here yes just to get to equilibrium those actions and reactions get violent and more violent and more violent and more violent and more violent and what i see is that people sometimes and we'll talk about this later with some other topics too that oppression but people will become what their enemies call them because they're called it as a lie for long enough that they get so pissed off that their reaction is like well you know what yeah fuck that and it and it and it and it throws the baby out with the bathwater because you may have and not the guy you mentioned now i'm gonna make up just like a

Starting point is 01:17:37 random person right now from the covid era right these ridiculous things that were like against actually scientific evidence were coming out and they're telling us to do it and you had some people stand up and say scientifically this is wrong here's why can we please talk about this no you're cancel get the fuck out of here. And two years later, they're like, you know, the chemtrails of Bill Gates were injected in me with Jeffrey Epstein's DNA and, you know, that's why I'm now gay. It's like, you know, it couldn't just stop it like, hey, this didn't really work, right? It graduated to that and it's because you get pushed that way. And Joe Rogan has a great bit he always talks about with where he's like, before COVID, I would have told you vaccines are great and blah, blah,

Starting point is 01:18:23 After COVID, I'll tell you, they don't work. We didn't go to the moon and reptiles are real or something like that. And there's an element of truth in that because that fucking guy got attacked so hard by the worst people in the world for being the majority right, way more right than they were about stuff. Like even if Joe was like 75, 80% right, that's fucking great because he was speaking up for people who didn't have a voice. So much so that they have now pushed him, I think, and I don't want to. speak for him i don't know the guy yeah but they probably pushed him farther on questioning things that don't have to do with that and actually thinking oh maybe this is true on stuff that might not be the case and that he would have never even entertained five years ago and as a human being i fully

Starting point is 01:19:10 understand why he's there i would love to see someone trade places with him and take the attacks that he took and say you would have handled it well you know this is i was just talking to some about this last night the to me one the biggest issues in i mean if not the biggest issue in the country right now is we essentially have one party and the Democrats have no idea what they're doing they don't know what their platform is they don't have a leader they don't have anything and the issue is whenever you go against when whenever you highlight the actual issues this is why this is why they lost in 2024 this is why they keep getting crushed for a lot of reasons whenever you highlight the actual issues they say you're right wing and whether that's you know drug stuff whether it's

Starting point is 01:19:48 you know, homelessness, whether it's, you know, the trans kids type, whatever, they say that you're right, they say that you're right wing. And at one point, the result of that is you become right wing. And you just say, all right. So as long as this is happening, like this, I think there needs to be a serious recalibration where they just look at it and they're like, okay, look, we're out of touch with, you know, the large, because even a lot of people who vote for them don't like half the shit they're putting forward. It's just, they're scared of Trump. They don't like this other stuff. But, like, in order for them to actually be competitive, they need to get in touch with, like, the populace. And the, and there's still, there's no indication they're doing that.

Starting point is 01:20:25 We see it. We see it all the time when we write stuff. When we, you, you write, what was the article? The one you wrote last week about, uh, Susie Wiles. Yeah. It was literally just an article about how Susie's the cheapest staff. Yeah. Under her, the turnover's been effectively zero. I mean, versus. Remember the first term? It was every week. Someone's out, yeah. Tough bitch. I mean, she's, she's, she's running like such tight ship. And the whole story was just saying how she's done this. And we get these emails with people, and they're saying, you're normalizing Trump. That we ran a whole thing about this weekend featuring the response.

Starting point is 01:21:00 He's the president. He's pretty normalized. Yeah. He's pretty. I think he's made it to mainstream at this point, you know. If you're still in, if you're still in the thought process of being like you can't normalize him, you're going to lose. You're going to lose the argument. You're not going to.

Starting point is 01:21:14 One thing that ties the last two things, uh, together is I looking at young men and how they've moved to the right so drastically and so quickly is often a product both of the Democrats failure to offer an alternative for them and the constant name calling but to your point if they've been told they're this fringe and I know people are like oh so we're not allowed to criticize men at all me too shouldn't have happened that's not what happened in most people's experiences that's not the they get from most TV shows or movies or from their favorite celebrities. They've been told that toxic masculinity is a very broad thing and that being into lifting

Starting point is 01:21:57 and that being into all this, that spiritually, culturally, this is not natural. And all the little stories that might seem minor, but they add up of the kid who gets suspended from kindergarten for making a play gun or everything that happens at every freshman orientation in the country about how men are the perpetrators of all this. And then you look at the stats and it's like, men are losing. in every facet of life right now, young men, they are, and it doesn't mean that there should be this victim complex. I think that's counterproductive, actually, I think, but if you look at high school graduation

Starting point is 01:22:28 rates, college graduation rates, incarceration rates, suicide rates, mental health rates, every single facet of life, they're not performing well, but they were told that they had male privilege and that the patriarchy runs the world and that their biological instincts to protect and this and that and be strong and whatever else are toxic. And so when you hear that long enough, you're going to eventually become that caricature of male that they told you not to be. And just you have this sort of core thing of fuck you, hall monitors who are running this world. I don't want to live in a hall monitor world. And you guys all seem like a giant like the hall monitor side of the world and how they police COVID.

Starting point is 01:23:07 Anyways. So I just felt it just, and I mean this seriously, it felt gay after a while. Like the way that they would talk to guys. like you think they're going to vote for you know powder blue colors saying yay to every fucking thing like after a while they're going to be like this feels i don't know oh is that my testosterone tingling that feels a little off oh this guy's saying we're going to lock down the border with a bunch of red signs they're like all right that feels a little more i get it i totally get it and like when we were coming into biden's presidency my expectations were low because i could see he wasn't there yeah and i think a lot At the beginning of the term, you saw that. Oh, I saw it. So I used to caddy for someone very close to him at Wilmington Country Club all the time. And I've told this story on the podcast.

Starting point is 01:23:55 I apologize for people who have heard this before. But back the last time I saw him in person, I never caddy for him, never met him. But the last time I saw him in person was July or August 2014. And I'm walking out of the caddy shack to go down to the practice tea at Wilmington Country Club to caddy for someone different. some other guy, but I see all the golf carts with Secret Service, so I know he's there. And I'm down on the practice tea, and a couple minutes goes by, and suddenly I just hear, Hey, Jim, how's your ass? Bob, how you doing? I'm like, oh shit, it's the vice president.

Starting point is 01:24:29 And he fucking, you know, like kind of yoped, like, busting everyone's balls, walks up, like takes out a driver, 2.45, 250. Hey, Frank, how's your wife? Like, and I was like, damn, like, this motherfucker's like 70, 71? Like, he's got, yeah. Maybe he could run. Then I saw his first speech in March 2019, which was less than five years later when he announced he was running in Philly. And I said he must have had fucking 40 brain aneurysms.

Starting point is 01:24:56 Like that's not the same guy. So my expectations were low. And then it got worse when it got in there. So let's just be clear, objectively speaking about that, and he wasn't running the country. He couldn't fucking pull his own pants up. That said, because the bar got set even lower after that, my expectations for Trump on a basic level, were high that included like day one he gets a victory when he gets to say there's now two genders here's an executive order it's like wow we really we really got out of whack here but he has

Starting point is 01:25:25 been so disappointing on so many levels with breaking promises that were more I'm talking about the stuff that wasn't really conservative liberal is more like oh we're going to release step steam files oh we're not going to fund foreign wars over and over again oh we're going to try not to raise the national debt fucking another three to five trillion and he did this like there was a two-week period, funds Ukraine with their freshest round of funding ever after fighting with Zelensky, like a few weeks before in the office. Does the big beautiful bill, which remember Edward Snowden's law about when a bill sounds like it has a nice name, it's fucking terrible. It's going to up the national debt three to five trillion over the next 10 years.

Starting point is 01:26:01 Fucking bombs Iran. We'll get into that because another country fucking wants them to and then says no such thing as the Epstein files. That was the worst two weeks I've seen on a president forever. and unlike Biden, like he's with it. He's here. And so when I see that, I bring this all up because to bring it back to your point, I've talked with a lot of young men, like since then, and my content guy, Alessi, has talked with a bunch of them as well. He's about 25. And they all say the same thing. They're like, fuck this guy, broken promises, can't stand this presidency, whatever. But like, just give me a normal candidate on the other side. Because they're like, if the election were tomorrow with whoever

Starting point is 01:26:42 the fuck, you know, whatever the messaging is on the left right now, we'd still have to vote for Trump. We wouldn't like it, but like we'd still have to do it. And I fully understand that because there's just some common sense things here, especially like, you know, turning people against their own biology. Yeah. That has reached a point where it's like, yo, reset. This is like, it's worse to me than the Republicans in like 08. And to put that in perspective, endless wars, crashed the entire economy, social unrest, couldn't even get Hurricane Katrina right, George Bush, Dick Cheney. I don't need to say anymore. If it's worse than that, you have really fucked up your messaging. Well, I mean, a lot of thoughts on that. Number one is, I think this

Starting point is 01:27:22 speaks to the Epstein issue, which is impressive. I should have started a time before we mentioned his name. 212. We got it. But I personally, in general, take a view. of almost an agnostic view until we learn more because I think that the unknown unknowns to quote a George Bush official, Donald Rumsfeld, are always bigger than we realize. I think they're always bigger. And I think it could be a small reason.

Starting point is 01:27:52 Maybe it was the birthday letters in the files that Trump, who's, you know, has a bit of an ego. I don't know if anyone's noticed that, but he has a bit an ego. Maybe that was enough for him to not want them out there where he just didn't want anything. Maybe it's something much more cynical. Maybe it's something.

Starting point is 01:28:06 But the fact is, Biden didn't really. them. And you could argue it's damning for the deep state and other people were implicated, but they could have, they could have redacted. They could have done some moves if it were that bad. So I'm kind of like, I think, so then you have Cash Patel and Dan Bongino, who talk a huge game, who made their bones off being anti-establishment. I mean, this would be like Dave Smith going into the State Department and becoming pro-Israel, like basically what's happened. Like, that's the equivalent of what's happened. And so all of a sudden you're like, do they take a drug? Does someone choke to their apartment and hold a gun to their head? Or is it simply that

Starting point is 01:28:42 the incentives and politics of D.C. are so intoxicating and complicated and people taste power and they want more of it. And all of a sudden, they're like, yeah, we're not releasing them. And believe me, there's nothing that bad in there in Dampongino, who was, again, it literally, it would be like Tim Dillon getting in there and saying, you know what, I want BlackRock buying more homes. Like, they have done 180s on everything. And I think it's, I start to wonder if it really is just this system is so, and I've heard people talk about, they go to D.C. And these are like decent people. I mean, maybe they have some problems who knows. But like, I've met some people who've been pretty influential in D.C. and they go in

Starting point is 01:29:24 for a position and they are just neutered when they get in there. And I don't know how nefarious it is or if it's just more boring and it's lawyers and it's that this giant bureaucratic blob and that also So there's this rule of law and this complicated like patchwork of laws where you try. There's all this shit going on and it's just like you can't really do anything in government. So I think this is what's your take on this? Because I'm seeing some disagreement over here. I think Trump's proving you can do things. I mean, I mean, he's going through.

Starting point is 01:29:52 He's smashing so much stuff that they said you couldn't do and all these, all these norms. And like, I mean, he's about to buy Intel. Like just do it, just to do it. Like there's also, but let's be honest here. And this is why I, when it comes like communism and fascism, I don't make any. distinction and I'm not saying he is either I'm saying there's always accidental slippery slopes with this stuff where it's like you have the right intentions and it's like wait a minute so buying a percentage of a public company that the government owns that is like kind of right you know what I mean

Starting point is 01:30:20 and I hear what you're saying and there is some positive to other things he's doing well I'm not even I'm not even defending it I mean to me it's like the U.S. government's about to take 10% of a failing company why like but you know I get that there's a national security interest in the chip stuff but they also put billions of dollars to that already hasn't worked it hasn't done anything but uh well i one thing one thing with trump you know the big beautiful bill is interesting because we spent a lot of time writing about this and it was the biggest series you ever ran in our newsletter we the 66.6.roca news.com you can check it out description yeah the biggest series you ever wrote which is breaking down what's in it and if you look at the coverage of it so all the headline

Starting point is 01:30:54 for one thing the headline numbers are are astronomical they're also kind of misleading because because baked into it is a lot of stuff about the extension the biggest chunk of what was in there was extension of existing programs. So it wasn't new stuff. It was taking the original Trump tax cuts from 2018, 2017, and then extending them further. And then they said that that's going to up the deficit. The fact is nobody was going to stop it. I mean, like letting taxes go out for everybody was not an option for either party.

Starting point is 01:31:23 And so it's kind of baked into it. What's interesting now, though, I mean, just on the same interview with the Yale budget person, she said that now their model shows the terrorists bring in $4.1 trillion. the next 10 years. So that would offset the bill. So I think there's a lot of stuff going on here. Like, whether it's good or not, you know, with all this stuff, I think some stuff, I'm in, some stuff I instinctively oppose. Some stuff I instinctively support.

Starting point is 01:31:50 And a lot of stuff, I think the cards are out. And it's like, I mean, the economy is the biggest one to me. I mean, talking about, we've seen this so many times. You go to, I mean, you could go down the list. Milwaukee, Oakland, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Cleveland. Lexington, you name the city, you go there, and you just have abandoned factories. Everyone's like, well, we're the middle class. That's where we got tortured in one.

Starting point is 01:32:12 There you go. There's an abandoned warehouse. Milwaukee. There's creepy. Newark. Who hasn't been there? Who hasn't been waterboarded and abandoned factories? That's what I'm saying.

Starting point is 01:32:20 Yeah, you know. Went in Rome, you know. Yeah. I mean, you go a few miles here to Newark or even Brooklyn, right? Brooklyn just happened to benefit from the bounce back of all the money in New York City. But like Brooklyn was a bunch of abandoned factors. Yeah, Joe's a squatter in one of them. Are you?

Starting point is 01:32:33 There you go. Yeah. So it's not all bad that the job's all one ever sees. That's right. But like, it's on glass shards. He's hard. Yeah, so when you look at, when you look at a lot of this stuff, it's the same story everywhere. And it's like, to me, we just don't know yet.

Starting point is 01:32:48 Is this stuff going to work? Is it not? So I think a lot of the stuff, the cards are out. The establishment, economic media establishment is so stacked against, is so stacked against them on some of this stuff that we just don't know. Other stuff, yeah. I mean, to me, the Epstein thing, I think he could just do it if he wanted to do it. I mean, he's so clearly.

Starting point is 01:33:03 And why he doesn't want to do it. do it, who know? I mean, there's so, there's so many reasons, you know, ranging from the what they have on him to what they have on everybody else to whatever. Yeah. But he, there's not, I mean, he, he does what he wants. Yeah, that's a good point. I do think that he is someone who, I guess this, this honestly probably feeds conspiracies. Trump is someone who worships at the altar of polls. He loves public opinion. He follows him closely. Everyone who's close to him says he is obsessed with polls. He's obsessed with them. So, and I've seen this anecdotally, as you point out, and we thankfully have a big insanely politically diverse audience. I'd say if there's one unifying

Starting point is 01:33:46 thread, they tend to be anti-establishment, but it's a very different. Burning Bros. Trump supporters is a center right. It's usually not people far left or super maga because they have their own media and we don't feed them enough fodder. But it's usually people who are like moderate, libertarian, anti-establishment, whatever. And these people are very against his, this. the Epstein handling. They think it's been a disaster. So if it's been such a disaster, then why not cover up? Because this Galeen interview is just total bullshit. You know, like she. Donald was great. He was wonderful. I never saw him do anything. Can I have my part in that, you know? Now, now it's like that that meme where the guy is smiling in the mirror and

Starting point is 01:34:27 then it shows the other side and he's got a gun to it. We have Colleen. It sounds amazing and someone's like holding a gun to her head. Exactly. So it's like, why isn't he releasing? Is there some, and I know, I, by the way, I think sometimes the mob can get a little crazy, like to release the files mom. I don't think there's a zero percent chance that like there are a lot of victim considerations here. If you really release the files, there's a lot, a lot of these people are out there. I wouldn't want all this information out there. Someone to live normal lives.

Starting point is 01:34:57 And they're entitled to that. So there might be some more generous readings, but it does smell bad. the letter was bad I don't even by the way I'm gonna defend him for a second on that I don't even know if the letter's real that seemed fake as fuck you know what's funny though

Starting point is 01:35:12 is someone did show a compilation of Trump because some people were like there's no way Trump would write enigmatic or enigma and apparently that's a big word Trump's been apparently that's like his favorite word like there's a compilation from the passage

Starting point is 01:35:25 enigma enigma exactly where he just did a ton of that he's an enigma but it's this you came actually I can't remember which one of you said it but it was really very well done but someone about like are you it was you Julian were you talking about like people afraid to

Starting point is 01:35:42 ask questions or getting in trouble for asking question one area where we see Roka's role is we see a lot of people in alternative media who've reached just insane conclusions on some shit and their brains are broken by establishment distrust that's right and they just have lost basic facts and they distrust they take like any sacred truth and take it to the inverse power and that's what they believe. And that's dumb. Then the legacy media is so out of touch, they're so self-interested

Starting point is 01:36:08 that they won't even ask basic questions. And they don't care to ask them. They don't care about what's happened to Ohio because they went to prep school in the Northeast and the Middlebury College and the New York Times editorial room and they're out of touch with this shit. They don't care.

Starting point is 01:36:21 So we ask some of those unholy questions and maybe the answers will disappoint the conspiracy theorists, but this is an issue we've been on for a long time because we know people care about it. They think it's like emblematic of establishment shooting a bird to people where it's like, we're going to have this ring, then we're not going to tell you about it, even though we have the files. And yes, it implicates a ton of us, but too bad you're still going to vote for whoever we put out there. So anyways.

Starting point is 01:36:44 I think the question is what's going on right now, too. I mean, like all this stuff, obsessing about Epstein and whatever. I mean, obviously everyone wants to know and should know. Like, we need to know. On the flip side, though, most of the people implicating this stuff, I mean, this was early 2000s. Like, a lot of people are dead now. Like, Bill Richardson. A lot of them are.

Starting point is 01:37:01 Clinton. I mean, a lot of them aren't. But you know, it's similar stuff. One of them's in the White House. Let's just be honest here, Max. That's true. True. But what's going on now? I mean, if this stuff was happening then, there's got to be something else going on now, right? Or not? Or is this like a one-off thing? So where's, I mean, where's all that stuff? And what do we know about that and what's going on there? I mean, that's something to me, it's like a lot of stuff. It's almost, I don't know. To me, just like, like the main question to me is, if you like looking at it is what's going on now what kind of stuff and what can we uncover right now given we have so many media platforms 20 years ago and someone came forward with a story about what geoffrey epstein was doing it probably wouldn't have gotten out there because powerful people control all the platforms people turn down that story over and over and over and over and then the miami herald woman uh we by the way emailed her a number of times to try to get an interview brown yes uh she uh she uh published it and it was so dangerous for her and people since then They were threatened over and over the post after he was convicted. Then the new wave of journalists, like it, oh, the, the, uh, interviewer of Les Wexner's victims later on who was, and then one went to like Epstein's Albuquerque ranch or New Mexico ranch. The, the White House one, you did a great deep dive on this where it was like, let me get everything I can on Trump's relationship. Trump's ties with Epstein are way more than people think, you know, like a lot of people like to play him down. Oh, he's not, he wasn't like that.

Starting point is 01:38:31 they just happen to know each other a picture together a few times you get the maria farmer testimony yeah they were tight i mean like they they they do each other they knew each other well but which doesn't here here's here's the thing because i listen you can run the tape on my podcast like even back episode 39 with mike spear where i pointed this stuff out in the first 30 minutes there i still always looked at trump and said there are things regardless of what you think of them politically there are good signs for him here related to this case as in how he got ties with Epstein, how he was the guy fucking yelling his name on national TV in 2015. Totally.

Starting point is 01:39:12 Like, you have to balance things out because the thing about Epstein and Maxwell is that they were excellent spies. I hate to say it, but they were excellent spies because they just knew all you had to do is take a picture with someone. All you had to do is take a picture and they're poisoned because you're always, like people are going to look at Stephen Pinker forever and say, why did you take a picture

Starting point is 01:39:37 with your Afri Epstein at a lunch table? We asked him that when we met him. What do you say? And I like Stephen Pinker, but he said he got very uncomfortable is the first thing. And then he said, he could tell he was mad that we asked it

Starting point is 01:39:52 because he's kind of like in his head like this again. And he was like, oh, I always thought he was a bullshitter and I was told to sit next to him but he had a few pictures with him and I guess the innocent reading is Epstein loved to be around smart people he'd love to be in the mix

Starting point is 01:40:08 he'd love to position himself as a Harvard guy even though he never graduated from college again job at Dalton school and then Bear Stearns but that's another story and but he always loved to be in those airs and so maybe they just rub shoulders and Pinker was there and he just saw a rich guy whatever that could have been all it is

Starting point is 01:40:25 that could have been all it is and I think I think I think the problem is there were people where it was much more than that and you make a great point and also Trump was the one guy willing to talk to

Starting point is 01:40:35 wasn't it was it Virginia DeFray's lawyer yes it's some one of the lawyers where in in 2008 yeah you talk with him exactly Brad Richard and the lawyer thanked him for it and said he was the only check that Virginia's lawyer Brad Richards for the record I should also say

Starting point is 01:40:49 I don't know what they're tight but there's way more of a relationship documented relationship than a lot of people like to think I was shocked myself and I had done like reading on this but you did that full like every single thing we can get on it what is it with it's verifiable who the guy with the black book went to jail that they I can't remember his name someone he was someone in Epstein's hat one of the workers there who he's the one

Starting point is 01:41:13 who kept the book and then he's the one man that they're going to jail it's always it's always the side care it's like who went to the the great financial crisis the one guy who went to jail was like the rushing quant traitor or something it's always like a fringe character in these major scandals the you know you you you need to have some um uh what's the scapegoat you need a scapegoat yeah now what no what do you guys in all that you've looked at one by one here your own opinions what do you guys think he was you know it's funny. I, uh, not to give like the most anticlimatic answer, but I, I have just, it's kind of like reading, you know, some of the, like some great Supreme Court cases where you read multiple

Starting point is 01:42:02 takes and you find several compelling. I would say that you have to think of it probabilistically because there's no foolproof case on for anything. There's likelihoods. There are coincidence that are hard to ignore. Um, I think he became an intelligence. asset over time, I think that it helped him escape the hands of justice. There's always that quote attributed to Alex Acosta and the Florida case. Yeah, he belonged to intelligence. That's why he's told to back off and give him the friendliest plea deal in history. I don't know how he started.

Starting point is 01:42:43 You know, the character I know better just from having done a multi-part deep dive series on him was Robert Maxwell. And it's a great case in Galane's father, who some believe introduced Jeffrey to Galane. And he did have, well, according to one source, but it was also possible that it didn't have, I mean, the timing is crazy from when he died to when Epstein and Galane first flew on the, I mean, it was the same, it was some months apart from when she was first on his flight logs and he died. And so was there a handoff? Or was it that in the criminal underworld of which they both? both had a ton of connections by this point. They knew Jeffrey was an expert

Starting point is 01:43:24 at hiding monies off shores, having done work for Stephen Hindenberger. Yeah, the Ponzi scheme. Yeah, who Epstein worked with and then somehow got off Scott Free. So it's likely he was an asset. I do think he was he an agent. I doubt

Starting point is 01:43:40 it. He just seemed to all over the place. I think he probably became an asset for which governments. I think the Wi-Fi just got cut off, but we just got it. We just got it. You know what's interesting about Robert Maxwell, though, is he had... Yeah, where was he buried? I say it's holy hell. But he did he was not given the proper overseas burial that, uh, been like that. No, but he didn't, no, he wasn't. He, he, well, they tried to and then they pulled his body up.

Starting point is 01:44:14 But they, he had ties to MI6. the KGB and Mossad and the CIA almost certainly he certainly did the KGB he's a terrible guy who's one of the greatest spies to ever live yeah and he was all and by the end of his life the greatest cause

Starting point is 01:44:34 philanthropically and otherwise was Israel toward the end of his now the thing that's debated and the funny thing is though is you want to put on tin foil hat sometimes you got to put on the tin foil hat to the people who make the claims so there were a couple people who sort of became edge lords who alleged that he was in Mossad asset much earlier than is believed to be the case.

Starting point is 01:45:01 I don't know how true that is because some of these people were already sketchy characters. Anyways, but I think a lot of these people were, I'm not giving a compelling answer because I think it's very complicated. I'm not sure what is established and I also hesitate to just give a strong case without it. but he clearly his his story has is doesn't make sense um and so for that reason i believe he was protected i believe he became an asset he would have been targeted um was he an agent i don't believe so i think he was too all over the place um but i don't know for i also frost knows more about i don't know i think the intelligence world's way murkier than people think and you know like we have the five eyes right it's like we we share intelligence with all these countries they run stuff

Starting point is 01:45:44 together they run assets together so i think the idea the idea that he was just trumping doing what everyone around the u.s is this israeli pawn i i think it's certainly more complicated than that it's it's not that simple yeah and also like we're living in this world now where everyone's just like the jews yeah i mean i saw they're trying to say oj didn't do it and the jews did it yes i mean like we are at that point in the simulation and it's and it's actually like yeah it's so beyond the pale And it's such a problem. Like we have to be able to talk about things objectively. We have to be able to talk about government subjectively. And that also includes like when the current Israeli government calls any criticism of them anti-Semitism, fuck you. Right. Fuck you. That's bullshit. Like, because by the way, we talked about you turn people into what what you don't want them to be. That's exactly how it happens. You are creating the next generation of people who will legitimately be anti-Semitic, whatever, insert every ism here. And that's exactly how it happens. You are creating the next generation of people who will legitimately be anti-Semitic whatever, insert every ism here. And that's. That's a huge problem that needs to be said. But if you're going to talk about things that maybe Israel allegedly did, you also have to look, I mean, not yourself, but you have to look in the mirror of your own countries because the fact of the matter is it is a fucked up world out there.

Starting point is 01:46:57 It is especially fucked up in the intelligence world. I completely agree with you, Max. It is way murkier than people think, especially when they come to very simplified solutions on things. There's all kinds of double, triple and quadruple work that goes on. Unfortunately, these guys are constant, and across all these different agencies are constantly weighing, you know, upside, downside. And if the upside cannot weigh the downside, it doesn't matter what that downside is. I'm not agreeing with this, by the way.

Starting point is 01:47:25 I'm just saying this is how they think. Yeah. So if you don't think that your favorite government is doing some fucked up things a la like what this Epstein thing was, you're wrong. Well, they do it. I mean, this is the thing that, one of the things that drives me crazy when you just look the like the media environment right now you know there's this kind of stream of like this uh i'd say like the reddit history types who they're like oh everything like a lot of it boils down

Starting point is 01:47:51 to everything america does is bad america's of course in a lot of bad stuff yeah spy agencies all the military whatever so has every every other government with power has abused it so if you if you want to be like yeah you know america's so bad and not a lot this kind of i don't want to simplify it too much but some people do say this that you know russia's good You know, the American government, it's like, it's like, no, just read anything about this stuff. The issue is power, and especially power in secrecy. And now I understand why we need intelligence agencies. Like, there's a, they exist for a reason.

Starting point is 01:48:23 But there's also, you have to have checks and balances. I mean, for a long time, the CIA was doing whatever. I mean, they were allowed to do stuff on American soil, right? And now technically they're not allowed to do it, but whatever. Oh, they break that rule all the time. They do. But, I mean, in the, in the early, I mean, when they, in the 50s, 60s, you know, was it the church? What was the?

Starting point is 01:48:39 The church committee in 1970s. I mean, this stuff had to come out first. People didn't realize at all what was going on. You know what happened to church, by the way? Was he killed? He lost his next election. A lot of money came in against them. There you go.

Starting point is 01:48:50 But to me, it's like the issue here, it's like, yeah, you know, it's incentives. I mean, you see this time and time again with all these different things, whether it's D.C., in the media, you look at it. Everyone's like, oh, it's like all these journalists are like, you know, either on the right, like, right-wing propagandists or like woke, you know, j-school grads on, like, the left. But it's incentives in place that lead to this kind of stuff. It's like, I mean, realistically, what you have in the media right now is, you know, if you're, if you're Fox News, your business strategy is to corner the right of the market. And if you're MSNBC, it's core of the left of the market. And what is it now? MSNs, what a horrible name? Oof. What do we want? But yeah, it comes down to incentives. Comes down to what's your incentive. I mean, we all know here. Like, there's certain things that we could go into certain topics and say certain things, rack up views, make a bunch of money. And it just then it comes down to, comes down to your own incentive structure. You know, that's why I don't trust people become. runaway narrative trains. If they, if they do that, like I, and I respect that about you, like, were you, except nuance. And I've also, I'm also wondering, some people have, again, had their brains broken by the establishment in the expert class that lied repeatedly was wrong

Starting point is 01:49:58 about so much. I mean, how many people, we talked about like the gutting in the rust, I wasn't around for the 80s and 90s. My guess is there wasn't a lot of research or thought leadership that suggested that we're about to utterly devastate the middle of the country. create a void that only substances and despair could fill. And I doubt there were a lot of people saying that. COVID. Do you want to look at the batting average of the expert class in terms of from outdoor transmission to the effectiveness of cloth masks, the effectiveness of the

Starting point is 01:50:27 vaccine, the effectiveness of lockdown, to the cost, socioeconomic costs for minority communities, to the cost for kids? If you want to look down at that boxword, that would be a great boxer to run down, even Ivermectin for Rogan. So like you see all these different areas where that's expert class is wrong again and again and again foreign policy wise. There have been disasters that were initially touted to be obvious. So you have this convergence of all these things that have broken people's brains. But then I'm also like, if you're hyper cynical about everyone and everything

Starting point is 01:50:56 and power and this and that, are you not ever a little cynical about some of the people who are making a fortune off of perpetuating some of these conspiracies or write books and become big people. Like there are grifters in this old media space. No. No. No. You will not. say that in my studio. You mean that there's people spouting bullshit, not from the mainstream. And it's tempting because you see... Oh yeah. And it's also fun. Dude, it's kind of fun to just go off. I'm like, damn, dude, that's crazy. But and I still do it sometimes. So I just

Starting point is 01:51:31 think, I think, you know, I remember this Conan O'Brien? Get this guy a Wawa Hoagie? And a fucking mad dog. I go back between two things where Conan O'Brien once had a line, he said, where he thought at the top, it's way more boring than people think. Whenever I get to know semi or mostly or entirely credible people who've been in high levels of power, I've seen it. I often get that sense. But then I also go to the other side of like, if you think about great scandals or frauds or corruption, they go on for a long period of time. I'll give you an example I'm a big Jordan

Starting point is 01:52:11 guys so I will just admit that up front but like LeBron not the country Jordan I've been talking about foreign policy an example of something about like LeBron I've talked to someone who played with him in L.A and I've heard this more and more since then

Starting point is 01:52:27 that he's a serial cheater now that hasn't been a narrative in the mainstream but people who know know that and so it goes on and on and on and he does an NDA thing and this and that But it's like that's the kind of story that you could only get through like some fringe reporting, if that makes sense. And similarly, people, Harry, whatever's name, Markopoulos, who called out the great financial crisis years before and wrote the letters to the SEC about Madoff. Or sorry, sorry, not the great financial.

Starting point is 01:52:54 I mean, he did call out some bullshit there, but he said his returns are statistically impossible. And then you have people who called out the Epstein ring way before. Alex Jones has called out a number of things that pretty be true. credit on that. Yeah. And so all this is to say, like, I go back between these two things of the, there are so many grifters who just have become like schizophrenic connecting dots. But then there are a lot of crazy things. And I know less of it in the foreign policy realm. But that's an area where I'm like, I don't even know who to trust when it comes to like the Iranian revolution. Like, where do you go for a bit? It's hard. But actually, I want to give you a ton of credit. We got way off this earlier, Max. Your point about how Iran like used. the left and then killed all them spot on that was it that was a part of history i was unaware of until really recently when i talked to someone who was iranian and was there at the time but it's it's so strange how places like that you will have groups of people who get so worked up about something that might be objectively bad that they ignore all the facts in front of them as to

Starting point is 01:53:57 what their fight may be that they go into places thinking that they're controlling the trojan horse but they are the fucking trojan horse totally 100 percent I mean, not to just sound, not to just speak in platitudes, but like, what it comes back to with all these different things, dude, to your first point, it's not having group think. I mean, you have it, foreign policy. Yeah. Whether it's science, foreign policy, or economics, it's obvious, like, the key is having divergent thought and letting people speak freely and having a media that actually amplifies

Starting point is 01:54:22 voices that are across a broad spectrum. The issue is we've gotten to a point where everything, it's like, I mean, until, again, for Trump, for better force, you know, you look at, you look at the stuff that RFK is doing. he it's not like the vaccine panel i don't know if you saw the story when they there's a vaccine panel that we're getting rid of all the vaccines they all got to go it's just not it's not good for the the CIA that's a good controls please let me talk got to get this man the injection the the only thing you're missing are the jeans and then and then maybe a pull out yeah yeah he always just uptight like this job job job back back in

Starting point is 01:55:03 67 before my father was gunned down by the CIA. His father never dead. No, you, so there, I mean, this is the way the media distorts shit, though. With, there's this vaccine panel that I think there's 14, I might script, some of the details,

Starting point is 01:55:19 but essentially he, everyone on it, he had resign, and then he appointed a whole new panel, like 14 people. This is who makes the recommendations about vaccines for like the HHS or whatever. And the media headline was that so that

Starting point is 01:55:34 Trump or RFK purge the entire vaccine panel and stock and purge the entire vaccine panel and whatever and then you read the article it says he fired all 14 people and replaced them all

Starting point is 01:55:45 and it was a bipartisan panel and then you read in all 14 were appointed by Biden okay if it's a bipartisan panel how we're all 14 appointed by Biden and you read into it and it was this whole slight of hand the date in the last administration that was totally covered up totally whatever

Starting point is 01:55:59 you look at the people RFK put on there Some of them are definitely out there, for sure. A lot of them, like the guy Martin Coldorf, who we interviewed, he's on there. We talked to the guy, I mean, he is. Seems like a real straight shooter. So did a Sanex right afterwards. Yeah, no, he's the guy who got fired from Harvard med school for speaking out about the COVID stuff. And like, exactly, purges every vaccine.

Starting point is 01:56:22 And then look, if you- Democracy dies in darkness. Don't forget that. They, don't can we start in the Washington Post, but they, if you go down to you, I guarantee the word bipartisan is in here somewhere. 17 well damn it you caught that guarantee but look it look it up we wrote a whole we wrote a whole thing about this dude it's it's it's all over the place I get what you're saying I get what you're saying it just comes down it just comes down to what you need is healthy discourse and and the issue is when you have it so it's 17 rfk people I don't know that's better than 17 Biden people what you want

Starting point is 01:56:52 to have is a mix of everything and it's that's what's supposed to happen and you have it right now part of the issue is that again the media just wants to reinforce that if you're not with us you're against us and you're bad and you're dangerous dangerous and that that's the ridiculous because when someone's dangerous you have the right to shut up well i think rfk i don't agree with a lot of what he says and and i'm not knowledgeable enough to have meaningful thoughts on some of his claims he worked at visor for a couple of it's a great i'm getting my seventh booster i i i by the way i'm not going to go to my back status but uh but we um anyways we're going to jeopardize too much of the, but, um, but with this said, I'm always, to the people who just viscerally reject him

Starting point is 01:57:38 and everything he says, I'm always wondering what sacrosan thing they're defending that is impervious to criticism. What is this thing that is, that we can't go after? Is it the fact that we have the worst health outcomes of any developed nation on, on earth? Is it the fact that our obesity rate is what, 58% and then overweight, it's like, or maybe it's not that, but combined obesity over weight, it's 73% of the country, roughly around 73%. That's insane. And we have all these chronic illnesses and our life expectancy lags comparable nations that are economically comparable nation. And you've all these terrible issues and you have these are one of two countries in the world that allows pharma ads, us in New Zealand. It's crazy. We're one of the few, I mean, are the biggest

Starting point is 01:58:25 lobbying group in D.C. is pharma. And they just run, and you talk about AEI to go back to one. I think of this example often, of Scott Gottlieb, who was FDA commissioner, Banjewel goes to AEI, and then he joins Pfizer's

Starting point is 01:58:42 board, and then who's all of a sudden the Wall Street Journal's go-to columnist for COVID, who's on face the nation every single Sunday, who's one of the leading voices on CNBC and all matters COVID is a guy who's on Pfizer. bored. As if he doesn't have an ounce of conflict of interest. I don't think he's evil. I think

Starting point is 01:59:00 he's self-interested. And by the way, fun fact about Scott Gottlieb, Mr. Stay in your house, he wouldn't shake hands with people without getting hand sanitized over before COVID. Before COVID. That's who's running policy. So all that's to say, what, uh, yeah, I just, I'm always with RFK, I don't know why we got off in this chart. I guess I've just had that pened up, but like, I just, I just don't these, these, uh, you're weaving. We're doing the weave. We're doing the we I'm going to come back. That's my job. I'll keep you here.

Starting point is 01:59:29 So back to Israel. No. But so back to... But the fact that are... Where are they making the vaccines? But I'm just like this group think in the... I guess where I had this thought is these health issues never made it into the pages of the New York Times and Washington Post

Starting point is 01:59:49 or the airwaves of CNN MSNBC. And yes, their viewership and readerships are declining. not that New York Times are killing it, but they start the narratives that sort of trickled down and then establish alternative media critique, but they are still important as much as I hate to say it. And they never entertain any of this shit. They never explore any of these questions. You already said why. It's because all their advertisers are these companies. And it's like there's two types of people in this country and it's just psychologically in the world. There's people who have a complete disdain for being told that that maybe a lot of things they believed

Starting point is 02:00:30 were a lie and then there's people whose only good outcome and having a meaning in life lies in the fact that they can tell everyone they never believed it was true in the first place and so we are seeing that where you know you're talking about complicated situations where literally statistically by default anyone who talks on it is going to be some form of a mixed bag Now, maybe they're a mixed bag that's less mixed on this side and less mixed on this side, where they're a good mixed bag, meaning they're more mixed and it's actually in the middle and they're right about some things and wrong about other things. We just demonize any time someone's wrong about one thing, again, baby out with the bathwater,

Starting point is 02:01:10 kind of whatever, where it's like, well, therefore, we can't listen to this person. So there's people who are just so wired to be like, I don't, la, la, la, la, la, la, I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear it. That's not what it was. It was all good. I know my life is not a lie and then there's people who are like you know you know what the Jews are doing you know and it's like it's just yeah oh I live I live in that world where I see both ends of that spectrum all over the place and I have people I have people from all different angles on here but I don't go past here and pass here right I'd go 20 to 80 yeah it's uninteresting on these ends because I know what they're going to say before they say that's where I live and you know on Online, though, I see the zero to 100, and specifically I see the zero to 20s and the 80 to 100s because that's who gets the clicks. Totally.

Starting point is 02:01:58 And it's like, man, if I could engineer the disintegration of society, this is how I would do it. And, you know, I was watching your videos on the richest towns in America. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So the one you went to Greenwich and other places. Afterton, California. And then Atherton, California. We just did Palm Beach out at Epstein. Okay. So that video is common, I guess, right? All right. So to me, just the visual, I don't know why it just hit me watching this. The camera work was great, by the way. Thank you. So really, really good shots from Gus. But I was like, man, as you're driving down the lanes and there's just gate, gate, gate, gate, gate, gate. I'm like, if this isn't emblematic of like the fall of Rome, totally. You know what's funny, though, going to these towns.

Starting point is 02:02:51 And this is one thing. Again, I'm not deceived by simple smiles and pleasantries in public. I realize that a lot of these people have made money in sketchy ways. And I believe personally, I think this is taught many religious texts, ancient religious texts for reason. I think money can be corrupting. I think also if you're treated in such an elevated way over time, you view others as less than. Your currency is literally currency. And you sort of view people in this hierarchical way. And it's very dehumanized. But there are also a lot of people who aren't awful. And I get like their perspective when it comes to like zoning laws. And I know people who are already killing it financially, they'll probably want to move in a place with the privacy. But the reality is when you zoom out at America and see the concentration of wealth among small people, it's not good. Even for them, it's not good because what they have is temper. I mean, people are just getting anger and angry and angrier on both the right and the left when it comes to the concentration of money and income equality but i totally agree the gate thing is so emblematic and um why do you need all that you're not

Starting point is 02:03:57 like all due respect bro or the what why like i i just have such a disdain i i like i like people just as people right i like to shoot the shit i like living in a place where i live among many people right that's just how i am i i mean i'm a pretty simple guys you could see i'd probably get shut if I went actually I did go to Greenwich once and every security guard was looking at me funny I went I went there's a girl I dated who was not from there but like she had the kind of family where they could you know make a moonlight appearance in that kind of place and I'm just like what like do I can I touch can I walk on the grass or even able to do this it just feels so ostentatious so unnecessary and so out of touch and then when you roll back

Starting point is 02:04:46 the tape and you see a lot of those gates had like a black lives matter sign on them in 2020. It just reeks of complete hypocrisy. Well, they, it's the, um, so Darien, Connecticut is the wealthiest town in Greenwich jointly. They're the wealthiest two towns in Connecticut and among the wealthies in the country. Darien is 96% white. It's smaller than Greenwich. It's a higher concentration of wealth. It's very waspy. And it's a democratic town. So is Greenwich. So is Satherton, California. And it's been one of the most interesting political trends of the last 10 years or so is the class switch, where the Democrats are now the party generally of the wealthy. Now, you could argue that Trump does, has his 2017 tax cuts disproportionately benefited

Starting point is 02:05:39 the wealthy and that he himself is very nepotistic and he does a lot of crony capitalism moves, favors to friends and all this stuff. but that's just interesting and I do think it's like about luxury beliefs they have and they like to escape the oppressor class by having views where they're like pro trans and stuff like that and they pat themselves on the back so that they're not the evil you know white wealthy monsters but anyways I don't know that they remind me the the the BLM flag on the on the gated community so we're in east Cleveland Ohio East Cleveland I think it's it might be the it's third or fourth poorest town in America I think it's a it's a separate city

Starting point is 02:06:17 technically not part of Cleveland, but part of Cleveland. I mean, it's, it's bad. We made a video about it. I think it's called America's most corrupt city or something like that. It's just been one thing after another there. Mayor is going to prison, the police brutality stuff. Like one thing after another, just terrible. And it's a disaster of a place.

Starting point is 02:06:34 It started with deindustrialization, and you had that, the white flight, the whole thing that came after that. We were leaving there. So right, then you cross the highway, and you've got this be one of the nicest neighborhoods in Cleveland just on the outside of the highway. So we're driving through there. and you know want to talk to those residents how does it feel to live next to this place and whatever so you see this lady there's no one outside it's all gated community but you see we saw one woman walk in her dog so we pull over and say to her you know what's what's what's going on here like what's going on how's it feel to live here she goes well haven't you read i was like what and she goes she goes it's one word it's like what she goes redlining that's it's it didn't happen in east cleveland east cleveland was a white neighborhood right and they're you can get the right line stuff more but the fact is East Cleveland's decline was separate from red line, came after redlining, but to live there in a compound, you know, right on the, what lake is that? Lake Erie? I don't know. One of the Great Lakes. You know, some multi-million dollar estate. Same shit. Some multi-million dollar state. And it'd be like,

Starting point is 02:07:34 oh, yeah, the issue is racism from 70 years ago. Yeah. It's like, you know, that's the stuff people tell themselves, not avoid it. And, you know, the, another thing. Offload the blame, too. It's not like, it's not class issues today. It's something we did. and screw them, I'm one of the good people, have a nice day, also get off my lawn. And we hear that time, because every time we go to city, whenever we do like a video, we're trying to kind of like a profile video of a city, you know, you always want to paint, paint an accurate representation of the city, and it's hard to do. And the bigger the city, the harder it is to do. But like ones we've done it for like Cleveland or for Cincinnati

Starting point is 02:08:04 or we're working on one from Buffalo and Rochester right now, you're going to any of these cities, though. And the people always like to tell you the same thing, right? You talk to like the more like, well-to-do people and, you know, whatever, in any of these cities. They're all like, oh, yeah, you know, just got a, there's a few bad parts. just got to avoid and like you know the city's really nice and they want you to make a video where like you make buffalo or that's a bad example because buffalo is not not i love buffalo but say cleveland they want you make a video you make cleveland look like this really booming nice place parts of it parts hard to do parts of it are if you spend where do we go for that video

Starting point is 02:08:34 does anyone know yeah if you get in your car i mean again there's there's parts but if you get in your car and just drive around cleveland for a day you're just going to see so much dilapidation neglect poverty that to make a video where that's the thing is it's just dishonest but those people genuinely believe that they live in the real cleveland and that the place with a murder rate higher than bagdad is not representative of the city higher than bagdad what's true you know you are in the hood we got bagdad beat i mean this is this is the other one of the one of the other frightening truths is whether it's newark whether it's Cincinnati whether it's cleveland the murder rates these places are war zones oh my god it's it's it's it's

Starting point is 02:09:14 It's crazy. New York City is not. I mean, that's what's fine. New York City gets so much media attention. New York City is so much safer than any of these other places. And you know what? We got to say it like. Yeah, let's look up Baghdad's. When did you guys get to New York? We moved here. December 2021? December 2021. Okay. So you got with my cousin Jersey for that fall and then we moved. Yeah. You got here 10 months post bill. So that's the thing. Like Adams, I don't like any. politicians they're a separate category for me they're not welcome on my show but adams i'll admit is entertaining and they're all going to be corrupt i'm sure he's no different i think there's probably even evidence of that that said bill de blasio ruined this city to a level the likes of which it hasn't seen in decades and eric adams came in kind of old school no nonsense you know law enforcement Democrat. And what I would say to people, because I watched the city improve over the first couple years, and I started to say to people, don't listen to what the guy says. Watch what he does. Because he would say whatever cringy line of the week from the DNC there was. Oh, we're going to send

Starting point is 02:10:29 vegan chicken to Philly if the Eagles beat us, right? Like he would say shit like this and it's like, oh my God. But then his actions would be a little different. And so he always said the right things on the on the immigrants coming in on the buses being sent from florida and texas but you knew i mean this guy's a cop he knew this was a problem and the minute he said something wrong on that which he was 100% right about by the way i'm like he's going to get charged got charged like two weeks later and so you've now they they wrecked him from that and now you've opened up a void where you know it like in my opinion new york city can't be run by a republican and it can't be run by a socialist it's very simple. You need an old school, no nonsense, kind of blue-collar Democrat, right? Well, you have that. You ruined

Starting point is 02:11:15 them. Yeah. And now you got a socialist coming in to fill that void. And so, yeah, I agree with you. It's so much is overblown about New York at this point. Like, it looks way better than it does, but I'm very concerned about how it's going to look a year from now if this guy's in there. Totally. I mean, just one thing on Eric Adams is I think he's a practical guy. I think, you know, it's always cringy when politicians do like that. I grew up in this tough background, and I remember when we couldn't have cereal. But, like, he actually had a tough upbringing. And then he was Brooklyn Borough president.

Starting point is 02:11:50 He was a cop. He's seen, he kind of, I think, gets the thing. I remember going to San Francisco recently. And yes, it's coming up in their mayor. People like him. And apparently he's doing good things, even though he's like the heir to the Levi-Strauss fortune, a bit of a Nepo baby, whatever. But he, it's also hard to get worse in San Francisco.

Starting point is 02:12:07 Like, his approval rating's great. he's doing some obvious things like, I don't know, stop. He's no longer handing out needles, radical idea. But he, but he, I remember just as an another emblematic thing of like going to through the tenderloin, their rough neighborhood there, Kensington, although it's not quite as bad as Kensington. And you see all these like new benches that are new. And they were designed by people wanted to liven it up by giving these new modern benches and some plants above it.

Starting point is 02:12:35 People are smoking weed and going to the bathroom of those plants. they're sleeping on the benches which they tried to curve so that people can asleep there it doesn't it's those are the classic impractical people went to liberal art schools raised in wealthy neighborhoods they want to do score the moral points they come up with these stupid ass ideas they probably did the cracker barrel rebrand too and they just send it out and did san francisco not knowing at all how homeless so you talk to these business owners around there and they're like they didn't talk to us we have to clean off our front porch every single day and one thing i will say it's more optimistic there are some

Starting point is 02:13:08 so many good people around this country in these worst neighborhoods people who are just so humble they're so they're brave they do they sacrifice so much for their communities they've seen some shit they've risen above their great neighbors when the government fails them they rally together they pool together resource we sell this in rural ohio we see this in hoods it's unbelievable how the people always like what's the good news when you go to these places it's the people they're the good news. There are so many good people in this country. So honestly, like, I am moved by that whenever we travel. You guys are showing that, though. It's really cool. Look, in some places are actually coming up, too, you know, like, I mean, New York, New York's a great example. It just in the period

Starting point is 02:13:47 that we've lived here. I mean, three and a half, almost four years, it's gotten better. I mean, definitely has. And like, Buffalo, we just got back from Buffalo. Buffalo, it's just clearly, it's like doing well. It's, you know, you see it. And you're like, this is what it's supposed to feel like. People are moving back here. Businesses are opening up. And then when you look at other cities you know it's it's interesting to go all these different places and you realize too like yeah the politicians are also only part of it too everything talks about politics and the politics of this place or the leadership but in reality it's yeah it's most it's everyday people and then if they start doing something good then people move and they also know you go to a place you go to a place like

Starting point is 02:14:21 cleveland do they're not waiting for the government to do anything like they've given up you go to detroit they're they're like the government's not going to fix our problems we got do it ourselves yeah and then once people actually start doing that and they get a little bit of money to do it then it starts to come back and things start to improve and whatever so long as you have the people there with you know people there to do it still but pinker wrote a great book called enlightenment now i think back in 2018 you ever read this i've read parts of it and i i read the whole thing so he breaks down human culture around the world improving statistically over time across all these different variables he does a beautiful job and and it's it's a great concept

Starting point is 02:14:56 he's looking at things during a time where everyone's fighting as like hey it's more positive than not and almost every variable we're at the top of the line right now there was one spot it's like sometimes you take a little step back but like yeah there's i forget i haven't read it in a while there was like one or two spots where we took a little step back for a minute but he's like here's why it'll improve again and so that's all great and basic things so that less people are dying of things they would have died of a hundred years ago around the world that's awesome but there's one extremely concerning chart within the united states and it also exists globally and it's why we're seeing all these different political movements that happen i know you guys have covered some of the

Starting point is 02:15:31 stuff and ask people about it, but like the chart of the separation, the death of the middle class is what I'll call it, from the early 1980s until today is a fucking V. You don't want a V. And it's showing that the concentration of wealth is so high among a select few that the rest of the masses and population are getting into a more and more hopeless situation such that you guys, the videos of the neighbor, hoods really just puts an amazing visual on it. But that is when you look at, I mentioned earlier like the quickly the fall of Rome, when you look at things as to why empires like that fell, they fall in on themselves before there's any enemies at the gate. And a common thread there is that an elite class forms. Elite is very broad as a term there. And a main class gets left behind. And the main class gets bigger in numbers and the elite class gets bigger in wealth and tighter as a club. And if you can't see that that problem has not improved over the past decade, which is interesting because that's like post-Trump, whatever, I can't help you. It has not improved. And again, the people you're talking to on the ground, there's plenty of people in those neighborhoods. They're nice people. I don't want to like wave this one and say because you've got a gate on your house. You suck. That's not how it is. There's just a, there's a lack of thought on things and maybe it's just because I view the world very differently and and I I

Starting point is 02:17:03 don't gravitate towards people like that that like it especially pisses me off but I don't know man at some point you know putting your fucking 12th garage in while while kids are starving and their parents have college degrees that they're 40 years later still trying to pay for that's that's when people will go into the streets and I hope that doesn't happen but like that's where things go. I think traveling all these different cities, one thing that's really crystallized to me that I think is a huge misconception about what it means

Starting point is 02:17:34 about like the elite. Like you say, it's the broadly defined elite. Yes. People like to say it's the billionaires, it's the billionaires, it's the billionaires. I mean, like Bernie, Bernie to his credit, he's gotten it out there, he's that, whatever. I'm not here to defend billionaires whatsoever. But the issue of inequality in the country is so much bigger than billionaires. Yes, they're 900 billionaires. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:17:53 They are a drop in the drop and the drop the bucket the issue that i mean i'd say we've identified all over the country okay you're born and you go to whatever good private school they go to ever good college and you become a software engineer from microsoft dude you're on a path to making hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars and they don't realize how privileged they are to have that money right i hate to use the word privilege because it's so politically co-opted but like dude you go you go you go work as a as a developer for some big tech company for five years you're you know you're making 400 500 grand and you're probably a Zoron voter because you think the billionaires of the problem. It's like, well, no.

Starting point is 02:18:30 Like, like, it's that to me, like, like, it's this more, it's like a more of a, because the elite keeps growing. I mean, like, for a large portion of the country, like, things are great and they've never been better and they're only going to get better, right, under, under those conditions. But it's for all the people who before they would have gone and worked in a factory. Maybe they weren't going to be rich, but they would have been able to have a little house. They would have been able to take their kids on vacation. They, they believe their kids are going have a better life that's what has has been totally lost for a huge swath of the population and people are like oh it's you know it's fear mongering it's not things aren't that bad when we're so the

Starting point is 02:19:06 reason we started the youtube channel really last year it was when i had the election and we started going around to swing states talking to people and the juxtaposition of talking here and comla go up there and talk about joy joy joy joy and then you and then and then then then then then you go to Detroit or Flint, Michigan. And you're like, but somehow that's like they, I don't know. And that's what that's what Trump hit on. I mean, Trump, Trump, again, not to

Starting point is 02:19:30 one way of the- Trump spoke to those people. Trump spoke to them. A hundred. Listen, you can think he's a total liar. You can think it's total bullshit and he really looks on those people with disdain. There's an argument to be made there. Maybe that is the case. But he at least faked it really well. Just like Mom Donnie faked it really well and went to all the

Starting point is 02:19:47 neighborhoods that flipped for Trump, you know, in the last election, said, hey, I'm not judging you? Why'd you do that? And they went like this. Totally. By the way, I'm not an eat the rich guy, but I think your point is spot on that I, some people are so opulent, like so over the top with their wealth, so extravagant. That to me, I mean, to me it's a more, I think it's hard to judge because by the way, the way, the way we live in some places the world is already over the top and extravagant. They'd be like you could live more simply. So I get that it's relative, but there's like such a culture of flexing and

Starting point is 02:20:19 owning just these absurd things. invest in your communities. Maybe this is some part of history that people romanticized, but like, you know, invest in your, beautify your city like the Medici and Florence. Like I know that I'm sure the Medici's, if you've like read some, you know, underground or talked to some town crier, they would have been like, they're evil, they're pedified, they have sex slaves, whatever. Like, and we would have hated the Medici. But like just that ethic, whether a bit of a myth or not, that is important. Beautify your cities. Quit buying that extra lambo. It's absurd, especially when so many people are suffering

Starting point is 02:20:52 and yet you're not evil to go into private equity or work in McKinsey I know many people and by the way I don't think those are I don't think it's as simple as those are evil but a lot of places that have widened inequality like that is bad and so I'm not saying you're evil for getting a job it's understandable I have friends and both but yeah but even I mean even at the peak of the gilded ages

Starting point is 02:21:10 they did that in America I mean like Carnegie Carnegie libraries all over the place if you go to I don't know about New York well enough but if you go to Pittsburgh or Cleveland those buildings were built by people who wanted to their city prosper and it was like it was a sense of this and this is this is something that like you know tim dylan's talked about a ton where it's like being in america people don't even think about what it is to be an american it's like oh essentially it's like you know citizenship

Starting point is 02:21:33 this whole idea like they don't have any tied to their to their kin like to whatever they just want to make money and it's this thing that is taken form in so many different things where it's like people just don't they don't give a shit about anything and it's like and somehow they think that they're helping the public good you You know, again, just to get back to the BLM sign on the gated house, dude, that, that right there is such a problem. It's not just annoying and obnoxious. It's a huge issue.

Starting point is 02:21:58 It's like just, that's not the solution. You have the means, and they're not helping solve issues. It happens everywhere. They would call the, those same people, you know, would call the cops if someone of a different race showed up within a hundred yards of their door. Totally. And they're, and they're, and which, you know, just that's, that's a them problem, by the way, obviously in case that wasn't clearly obvious there.

Starting point is 02:22:19 it's like that's the kind of lecturing you're doing like do you see what kind of other planet you're living on i just i don't you know in my previous career when i worked on wall street i was obviously not a fit there but i had a chance to work on accounts of the ultra high net worth individuals okay these are people who quite literally made more money in one minute than i made in salary in a year I am so grateful I got that experience and it's not all for the negatives either. I got to see people who were wealthy and lived right and didn't have any problems and put their money towards good causes, quietly, wore off-brand clothing, you know, walked around in jeans, didn't give their kids fucking everything, made them go out and do shit on their own.

Starting point is 02:23:11 Like I saw examples of that. People who started businesses, employed a lot of people. And I would always point out, like, and I meet these people, I'd be like, oh, that's That's like, that's a hero. That's the one you want to look up to. So those people exist. Then I'd see the other side. And that phrase,

Starting point is 02:23:26 mo money, more problems is the realest fucking thing ever because the people would invent problems. They were miserable. They had to keep up with the Joneses. Oh, this guy bought this private jet that's fucking,

Starting point is 02:23:36 I don't know how many square feet, so I need to buy that one. And I'm just like, fuck it. I have an oil leak in my seat. Like, I think my life's fine. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:23:47 You know, I'm living paycheck to paycheck. I'm doing fine. Like, why do you have to be like this? You're not happy at the end of the day. So it's really a double tragedy in a lot of ways because a lot of these people drink themselves to sleep at night to tell them they're happy living in this fucking 15-room,

Starting point is 02:24:03 45 bathroom fucking mansion that they can't keep up with. And they're not. Dude, that is the one part of Stephen Pinker's general argument that frustrates me is I agree. And sometimes you do need to take a step back and in a world where everyone's critiquing everything and nobody's perfect and this figure is bad and mother teresa was bad and all of a sudden holy shit this you know it's like everyone's so picky now but at the end of the day uh if you if you think about we have like infant mortality is a great

Starting point is 02:24:33 example families used to have 10 kids and eight would survive and that was like par for the course like that is an awful thing to have two babies die and then life extension all these things that we have now the ability to have food from that's off season new nearby you or food that doesn't grow near you. All these luxuries we have today, life expectancy, the well-being, it's all great. America's also not that happy. And I think technology, we have to really reassess social media, how information is distributed, the toll it has on people's mental health. And so all these trends are going up and you point out the middle class. It's one spot on thing. And by the way, that's toxic for a community. If you lose that working class, if you lose those

Starting point is 02:25:12 iconic employers in your community, they flee. And then you have crumbling building. things, that screws up people's minds and the culture there. So we have the death of the middle class is connected to the declining happiness. Obviously, I think social media and tech are more to blame. If I had to guess, it's hard to know. I'm not qualified. But we, I think we've like self-imposed a lot of the problems and we need to fix them. I think the media has made people less happy. They've made the country so divided. They've broken apart families. They've broken up friendships. They've done all this shit. And they've benefited more than anybody. But yeah, so I think that, and I feel solidarity with people who are truth seekers, who unite, who have a positive

Starting point is 02:25:51 tone, who look for some uplifting things, call out corruption, because we need to fix a lot of these sort of broken systems. Some, I think, need clean sweep. Some needs tweaks. But yeah, there's a lot of, I, yeah, I mean, there are some billionaires, like Dan Gilbert in Detroit, people talked up big time. There are some places you go where people are helping out their communities. But the fact that he's so rare, and there are so many rich people, invest in your damn community that should not be that hard 100% you know

Starting point is 02:26:20 that kind of fires me up because it is true like seeing Andrew Carnegie and Braddock Pennsylvania where John Fetterman was mayor and it's so dilapidated and it's a ghost it's it's apocalyptic and but to see the old library that was kind of emblematic

Starting point is 02:26:37 of all the billionaires minted by taking away industry or that's a bit of an exaggeration but like you had Carnegie and Mellon built so many public institutions, beautified the city. Yeah, I highly doubt you go to Tim Cook's hometown is a nice library funded by him.

Starting point is 02:26:52 Maybe that's not true. But it wasn't even just a library. It was like, you know, those were institutions. This town, Braddock, PA, it's, I mean, it's the first time we ever saw this, I mean, I'll speak for myself. The first time I ever went to a place in the U.S. I was like, holy shit. Everything abandoned.

Starting point is 02:27:08 There's one steel, the steel mill there. It was the first, is Andrew Carnegie's first steel mill in America. It's still going, U.S. steel. But, I mean, the town just. has been through, I mean, it's, the population is probably like 20% of what it once was. Tons of crime, tons of violence, pretty much abandoned. And in the middle of this, you have this gorgeous building. There was a Carnegie Library.

Starting point is 02:27:27 And then there was also, I think this isn't there anymore, he built there a theater. He built there a swimming pool. He built everything. He brought all the stuff there. So people, and now there's like the leftist criticism of, well, he's doing that so he could exploit them more. Well, they're getting exploited either way, if you want to look at it that way. So he wanted them to live. better lives and it's like now when you have more money than even those people had it's not it's not

Starting point is 02:27:51 there but i think so much it comes down it comes down to your ideas and like i don't know are you a person of your community are you are you a person of your country and like this stuff i i hate that it's becoming like i mean like to bring it back to the earlier thing the flag waving me mean that you're probably on the right like it should not be that way the biggest mistake that the left made in the 2015-16 cycle i've said this before and i was really high happy to hear you guys said this earlier was they decided either passively or I don't know actively to give the flag to Donald Trump was a huge huge mistake and like I know when I look at a Twitter account that has an American flag on it I I know who they are before that

Starting point is 02:28:39 you know how dumb that is we have to get that back to being something that everyone can wave and I'm and I'm talking to all especially like all my liberal friends out there wave that thing high and proud you know what I mean like this is a this is a national symbol it's got nothing to do with these in DC you know it's just that one in particularly offends me so much and also the people who then try to claim well I support maga so I'm a patriot that's my flat no this is this is everyone's the reason this system works or is supposed to work is because we can have differences of opinions, because we can have different perspectives and ideas. And again, I'll bring it back to your guys' channel.

Starting point is 02:29:23 That's why it's great. You guys are out there capturing all these stories and all these different politically diverse places that are good, bad, and everything in between so that people at home can see, you know what, there is more than my neighborhood right there. You know what? People do vote on other issues besides the ones that are important to me. And I just, man, I get cynical about this stuff sometimes. it's hard not to in my job because you know i have on all these different people and i see how what the response is like when i did the israel week i was called a zionist and hitler in the same week now that's a successful that was a successful week but i'm just like yeah you know i found

Starting point is 02:30:02 it funny but then cynically like i was like that's not good for society so i represented both sides i had both different people on i challenged them where i needed to i let them talk where i needed to thought it did a pretty good job could have been better for sure but it's like I'm neither of those things so let's let's you know that's that's how bad the rhetoric's got

Starting point is 02:30:23 but to the point you made before you know the 20 to 80 we say all the time we're looking to get the middle 60% of America like to read our news and and it's a same it's that and the fact that you have such a big audience the fact that we have such a big audience it's it's just proof that that is still there I mean the fear

Starting point is 02:30:39 is that you lose that right I think we're not there I like I think I think we're still honestly quite a ways off from that but the trend is so unambiguously negative like that's why it's so important that people actually step up and fix the problem right like you can complain about it and like for us straight up the research sarah roca we were like we're just sitting there complaining about these news companies and their coverage of COVID and the whole thing and we're like fuck it let's just do something let's try it and then this is the beauty of of what's come out you know with the alternative media same exact thing for you like you can do it dude before to sit

Starting point is 02:31:08 there and get an audience like you or like we have before you would have had to have a degree from a certain place working at a certain news outlet and given permission to say certain things that's how it used to be and that's gone so like that is a huge step forward they hate you for it oh totally dude there's no there is no one there is no one who's more hostile to us than certain people in the legacy news industry when they just look down at you they look down at you so much even if they write and i was talking to someone not long ago who work for uh one of the big outlets in new york and they were saying how many hits their stuff would get and what they consider like a successful piece in line dude it was like in the hundreds hundreds of views on

Starting point is 02:31:47 an article was considered a success that's insane i mean for anyone in our business if you're getting hundreds that's nothing right like it's it's but it just it's but it just goes to show like the the power distortion the idea that someone without the credentials could outscore them 10 to one drives them crazy this they don't own mirrors hmm they don't and and i i think the more we've gotten to know some of the people and like i mean they don't like us at all so that they're not interested and we don't like them that literally

Starting point is 02:32:15 we started to do because we hate them but I go fuck yourself you ruin this place but like the New York Times again they're not cartoon villains

Starting point is 02:32:26 maybe the guy at the top A.G. Salzberger and his family like I don't think I'm not a big fan of theirs but they a lot of them are just helpless group think products of indoctrination factories

Starting point is 02:32:38 and privilege and this and that and they just sort of have all these assumptions about the world and disinterest in massive regions and types of people and they're so not uncurious and like I think of ourselves and people I respect the media they are deeply curious oh that comes across yeah that comes across like watching one video of your guys and again you guys are doing them separately I appreciate that but like you can tell

Starting point is 02:33:05 it's not you're not trying to get to a pre concluded answer yes totally that is unfortunately a rarity these days. That's why I invite guys like you on because when I see that, I'm like, yes, let's get there. And when people rip you in the comments because you don't agree with them on something, that's a good sign. Yes. 100%. Totally. We're surprised all the time. And I'm sure you are too. Real quick. Can I just get a quick bathroom break? Yeah. Yeah. All right. All right. We're back. So we were just checking off camera real fast because Max, you had mentioned about like the Baghdad murder rate. What do we find here compared to Cleveland? Cleveland's is 33.7 per 100,000. In 2022. Yeah. And Iraq's, we can't find Baghdad's, but Iraq's was, sorry, go back to the Wikipedia tab there, scroll up to Iraq. I think it was, where is it right there? 15. So Iraq's is 15.

Starting point is 02:33:56 Cleveland's is 33. So Baghdad, we can't find the actual number for. But it's worse than Iraq. Twice. Twice as bad as Iraq. Yeah. And East Cleveland's even worse than Cleveland. That's tough.

Starting point is 02:34:06 There you go. Now, one of the things that comes across branding-wise on your guys. is Instagram, which is how you launch this whole thing effectively, like, amalgamating the news and just trying to give it to people in a digestible way, simple, nothing but the facts. You know, like, how do you guys go about covering topics like the Gaza war right now in Israel and stick it to the facts and, you know, try to not have opinion or bias put into it? Like how difficult is that? Dude, it sucks. I mean, I mean, honestly, especially, you know, after a period of time, well, this hasn't really died out. People still care a lot.

Starting point is 02:34:50 But certainly, certainly in like the first weeks of the war, I mean, we lost friendships over it. I mean, on both sides, we have people texting us saying, again, dude, it's on a topic like that, if you're getting criticized by both sides, you're probably doing something right. And if one side is wholly supporting you, you're definitely doing something wrong. I mean, like, it's just, it's more complicated than that. that being said i mean you want to figure out what i here's an example famine right they just declared the IPCC the international body that declares famine is just a clear one uh on friday believe it's friday uh and then it's like okay you can now say that there's a famine there and that's the authority a lot of other people came out and said there's a famine going on in gaza

Starting point is 02:35:29 whatever uh we waited for them i mean typically that's been that's been the way that it's that it's happened i mean that's not certainly not an israeli controlled body right that's whatever So, you know, just trying to figure out whatever. Another one early on, though, it was probably second or third week of the conflict. There was a story that all these news outlets put out that an Israeli rocket hit a hospital and killed hundreds of people and whatever. And we waited to cover it. And then because there's no evidence, there's no proof yet. And subsequently it came out that it wasn't an Israeli rocket and the death hole is far lower.

Starting point is 02:36:00 It was whatever, one of the other groups. I know what one you're talking about. So it's just a matter of waiting on it. But honestly, for us, our brand is not breaking news. And that's a huge, huge advantage. we've structured that way for a reason because to verify something like that you need a lot of resources and a lot of time and you know for us we kind of do everything on a lag like essentially our biggest instagram posts the our main thing that we built that brand off of is every single

Starting point is 02:36:19 night we post you know run down the days four biggest news stories yeah so you got the day to digest the news and figure out the truth and also i would just add a couple things we've interviewed okay one is a shout out to frost of he wrote one thing we do that i think the legacy companies do an awful job of in in fairness i mean it's an area where bias can creep in is we provide context. The average person, even smart, educated person, you obviously read a lot independently, especially about global affairs and history. Most people even really like educated, they know so little about the history of the state of Israel. I mean, they've watched probably enough TikTok by now to know about the, you know,

Starting point is 02:36:58 UN's 1948 partition, whatever. But by and large, they know so little. So like creating context of the history of the conflict, which is itself imperfect because you're never. going to provide enough context nor enumerate enough of the grievances that either side has from history. But it was a great way to create context for the audience. We've also, by the way, when it comes to interviews, so that's on the creating context side. Daily reporting side, you wait, you verify, you also quote people instead of asserting yourself that it's a famine. Now that the IPC says you can, but like quote the groups that say it's a famine, give the number to the best ability you can. We've also interviewed people from both sides. So we've interviewed

Starting point is 02:37:37 Medi Hassan who's obviously been among the most vocal pro-Palestine voices. We interviewed a guy who's named Dr. Hassan as well, he was a doctor over there. We interviewed John Spencer, who's more on the Israel side, even though he's not Israeli himself, but like he's essentially the mouthpiece for like the IDF's military strategy. West Point guy. West Point guy. Exactly. And it's funny. I actually met him randomly in Colorado and he just, that's how we came in front of him and I didn't realize like

Starting point is 02:38:12 how controversial he was at the time and then he became but like we interviewed him so you try to get different perspectives and it's never enough. I mean like I remember the second we interviewed John Spencer we ended up having one other prominent propulsive and was kind of blanking right now

Starting point is 02:38:27 but we essentially had all these interviews But the second you do John Spencer, everyone's like, dude, you guys are a Zionist platform and all I'm doing this. And it's like, we just had a couple. So it's a, I think this one is typical. And this one is the most difficult issue to cover because of the history, the grievances. It's just, it's so charged. You know, that's why it's, some of these issues are more fun to parse because it's like you can really get in.

Starting point is 02:38:57 You can figure out the facts of it. And you can say, okay, there's a lot of noise. Here's the truth. This issue is so, so, so charged. that doing that it becomes just like you're walking through a minefield it's like everything is going to piss people it turns into like holy land prophecy talk immediately yeah and also you know people talk both sides you know harking back decade you know to a hundred years ago or the ottoman empire it's like well it's all history i mean at this point and history is

Starting point is 02:39:24 always written by different people different different different perspective so i think also like to get to this what differentiates us on we always try to go to source material hard verifiable data, widely reported events, things that we ourselves can verify that are sort of primary source that we can base their stories off. Well, this is one where right now there's very little reporting out of the Gaza Strip. And historically, the sources have been the gods of health minister of the IDF and both have proven to be. They're both bad. It's like, it's so it's hard to know on the core sources. I mean, I've found too that, you know, it's, it's just, it's so difficult to cover and so many people speak about it with an expertise like the tic-tock education thing is starting

Starting point is 02:40:06 to piss me off because i've seen it with they'll do like this so actually and it's like you don't know this and i said you every day and i so feel like like you know it way better the ends and out the history and this and that to me it's also just on some issues you have to admit to uh ignorance isn't even the word but just the complexity the complexity and also there is fault in every direction i have to build in it's not a set percentage it like moves based on the times but i have to build in a percentage of propaganda regardless of what direction i'm looking in is the propaganda coming out of the israeli government is insane the propaganda coming out from the gaza health ministry which is effectively controlled by hamas is also insane and what that doesn't mean is that

Starting point is 02:40:55 nothing's happening we we can see that there is a toll the fact that the israeli government still does not let the international media in there is a disgrace and you know where the mask really came off for me of just like wow there is there's something just so off here was with that rogan dave smith douglas murray thing because douglas murray i have the ultimate disdain for people like that here is a very smart man he is a very smart man he's someone who studied history he he knows things and in the past i've appreciated some of his perspectives but Douglas murray thinks joe rogan is an idiot and he always had and joe rogan's not an idiot Douglas murray's the idiot for thinking that he always has but here's the thing about the

Starting point is 02:41:52 Douglas murray's and the sam harris of the world when the idiot to them, their words, not their words I'm implying, not mine. When the idiot comedy cage fighting commentator decides to invite them on their show because he's going to agree with them on stuff and he has access to a lot of eyeballs that they can see, oh, they love him. They'll fucking, they'll give, they'll sing his praises publicly afterwards. They'll be like, Joe, this was such a pleasure. It's always great to see you.

Starting point is 02:42:19 The minute that that idiot is no longer useful to them and disagrees with them on something. well now he's a problem now he shouldn't have a platform you know and i heard someone who said this the other day douglas murray was talking about comedians shouldn't have this platform and all that two days later while he was sitting with fucking bill mar on his show but bill mar agrees with him and so the disdain i have for people like that who refuse to acknowledge anything wrong on their issue is so high because you are sitting across from someone in dave smith who is in the full opposite camp and Dave Smith seems like a great guy and he knows a lot of stuff. But Dave Smith never saw a war that was that was ever correct in the history of the world, which is also not realistic. That is

Starting point is 02:43:04 a utopatarian libertarian view. And that's not to rip him. I'm just saying he's extremely on the other side. He was remarkable that day though because he let Douglas Murray bury himself. He just kind of stayed more quiet and was like, this is crazy. And so you see a guy like this who then claims to be an expert he majored Douglas Murray majored in fucking Shakespeare or some shit and you know he's allowed to have access to Gaza because he gets to wear a press kit and he's sent there by Benjamin Netanyahu but I'm supposed to trust you this these are the people speaking for your cause that is why you have such a movement of people being like yo fuck these guys and it's not to say like oh Hamas is good Hamas is terrible you want to kill all of them knock yourself the fuck out but like let's not kill fucking 500 kids while we're killing two idiots in a tunnel well douglas murray i mean it was just so lazy it was to not when he got to talk about darrell cooper is evident he had never read or listened to any of his stuff it's it's i mean it's that was old media trying to co-op new media and and it happens all time i mean douglas murray is a shame his book on uh immigration

Starting point is 02:44:13 the europe the strange that the europe is pretty unbelievable like 10 10 years ago it's probably i mean he was kind of big before that but then but again you know these people they get they get in there and it's yeah he doesn't respect the people he's an old school guy and he's from the old school elite and he doesn't respect the new school and that's it was so evident i mean not not doing his research on this not actually looking into the way he talked to rogan the whole thing yeah but yeah he i mean the arrogance he displayed and also i don't even believe the way his defense of the expert class and credentialism didn't make sense given that his own critiques of the establishment over the years i was kind of like

Starting point is 02:44:50 He clearly has a disdain for Dave Smith. And I do think there is a level of classism that exists with that type of Brit. From a British guy? From a no way. From a guy who was born into a well-off British family and is... Joe doesn't like the Brits. Educated, I can see. No, Joe loves the Brits.

Starting point is 02:45:10 He just doesn't like the Douglas Merritt. But he sort of, you could see him disdaining someone like Dave Smith. And that came across. I think a sign of that is when you start to say things you don't even believe just to push them and to your point of like his lecturing of Joe Rogan at the outset so at the very least it was a disaster class

Starting point is 02:45:30 and second of all I don't agree with his defense of the elites I mean if he studied Western philosophy to understand that most you know classical liberalism you treat arguments by their merit you assess them by their merits not by those you know arguing them I mean

Starting point is 02:45:49 so all that's to say that was a disaster funnily enough if anyone in here still like i thought he had a point i thought on the darrell cooper thing i'm not a darrell cooper fan myself i i think that he even though he sort of always dances back from the line it's clear what he said like when he tweeted that picture the olympic opening ceremony in paris in 24 and then nazi invasion of germany of paris and he's like the nazi picture is infinitely preferable in virtually every way compared to the Olympic one. That to me is crazy. I think him going after Churchill,

Starting point is 02:46:23 even though he kind of always dances back and then refuses to debate Churchill, like if Douglas Murray had the humility to at least make the argument, not go, what's his name? The Cooper Fellow, which, and he knew the name, by the way. He just wanted to make him seem smaller

Starting point is 02:46:37 by saying he didn't. That was just... Like, dude, you're 5'3. Sit down. That to me was just ridiculous. And also him lecturing Rogan when Rogan invited him on for the debate. And, yeah, that one rubbed, that, that one was also just like this weird, um, it's funny, though, that that moment, like, I think when we're going to look back, we're going to keep talking about the debate, I think, in the future.

Starting point is 02:47:01 Yeah, man. I felt like that was a seminal moment for whatever reason. And you know what? He had such an opportunity to. Yeah, I know. Because I, I'm, I'm not a fan of Daryl Cooper. I think, I think, I think Daryl Cooper is what you get when, when you go so out of your way. to propagandize people and tell people that there's nothing to see here with anything you it's like we've talked about four times today yeah you turn people into yes thing that you actually don't want

Starting point is 02:47:29 them to be and with him you know when when i remember when he had that tucker carlson episode come out and everyone freaked out yeah i didn't know the guy said let's go look at his twitter and he wrote this was like september 3rd or september 4th 2024 he said is it time for a churchill thread it's time for a Churchill threat. And he wrote a fucking 65 thread written out fucking dissertation of his own on Churchill. This wasn't an out of context tweet or anything. And I read it. And by the way, the same people who all love the community note system apparently didn't love it when it was getting community noted on this. He makes it so clear. You can see who the guy is. And then when you go and look at all his other tweets and there's a lot more than the one you mentioned.

Starting point is 02:48:13 It's like it's like it's mad and then oh, he's talking. He's this amazing historian, but, yo, bro, I'm not a historian, so I shouldn't, I shouldn't debate this. You can't have it both ways. And so Douglas Murray was so cringeworthy that he actually improved that guy's status by trying to lecture Joe Rogan. And probably I can't speak for Joe, push Joe more into thinking like, hey, maybe Darrow Cooper's got a point without even realizing it. No bad intentions whatsoever. I don't know that. But it's like, fuck it.

Starting point is 02:48:44 We deserve him if this is what we're doing. like we deserve to have this happen and it's just god i wish we could live in moderation again it's so i get so worked up about this have you ever been i was going to ask you before you spoke about uh abstin i was going to say have you ever been to i've never been but actually i take people to fucking east 71st street number nine i'm like the fucking deranged tour guide in new york oh that's his townhouse yeah have you guys seen the guy in youtube who does the impersonations of people on different podcasts and he did the one of Douglas

Starting point is 02:49:20 Murray. I think so. Debating that debating Dave Smith. Is that the Tony Lapidus guy? Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's so good, yeah. He cracks me out. You've never been. You've never been. He's like, you know, no, I haven't, I haven't been. What's the big deal? It was a good, Dave Smith. I don't

Starting point is 02:49:38 see the point here. Yeah, he and Dave Smith is smart. I disagree with him on a very smart guy, man. So much, but if you don't understand the enemy that's on zoo shit here like you got it like if you're gonna debate him the thing is I do think that there is like this he's not letted you know like he doesn't understand Dave Smith is a smart guy he he maybe he's a bit of a Wikipedia historian in this and that but like he's good I've seen him now in a lot of context bro he's good he's good he's so quick on his feet

Starting point is 02:50:10 I mean the thing in Douglas the thing with Douglas Murray I mean it speaks to something bigger where everyone will just rest on whatever they have so like in this instance what he had over him was credentials. So it's like, oh, I'm going to use this. Yeah, he'll, what credentials, though. Just that he's educated, you know, that he went to Oxford. Not what he majored in. That he's been. That he's been to Israel. Yeah, yeah. But I'm just saying, you know, like, that's what that's what he had in this argument to use. And it's just like, so he'll go off and he'll blast the establishment. I mean, that whole book about immigration and just ripping the European establishment for allowing all this immigration and covering up the stuff that's happening. And then in this instance, it was convenient for him to leverage being part of the establishment against. uh day smith but this is how it always this how it always is you know everyone like especially talk about darrell cooper tucker it's like they're all they're just whatever they are like like they're going to be anti-establishment until they're in the until they're in the establishment and then they're going to flip and they're going to leverage whatever everyone just wants to leverage what assets they have to like improve their brand or to get reach and um

Starting point is 02:51:06 darrell cooper i mean i think he is you talk to say that that that debate will be emblematic in the future i think that the whole darrell cooper thing speaks to speaks to our time i mean it's it's When you talk about every reaction, equal opposite reaction, I think that the tyranny of the elites has been so, uh, it has, has, has prompted this sort of overreaction where people flock to Cooper because they're like, you know, all there's such rot at so many, at the core of so many institutions, including academia and high schools, not just, not just in the ivory tower. We're talking about curriculums and the people that come out of college. And so they're kind of like, shit, maybe, maybe, you know, threads guy is. right right and and that's the danger of what i did but before i say this i i i do i always want to say this because it's so clear i've done whatever i've done 300 and some episodes i have gotten some wrong i have gotten a lot wrong right like i don't like thrown stones from glass houses it is so easy to criticize people i really try to stay away from doing it when i'm looking at my whole space which there are many people way above me and i see a lot of things trickling down in my direction

Starting point is 02:52:15 and I'm trying to dodge rocks, I get a little upset about it. But, like, I don't want to label intentions on Tucker Carlson or Joe Rogan or any of these people because, like, I don't know exactly how they're thinking. I don't know what kind of attacks are coming their way. I don't know what context they've seen other people in that then they judge them differently than I do. What I can know is what I see and judge it as best as I can see it. And it's like the downs, what I was going to be saying is the downside in my industry. and this I you guys are no different you don't do the podcast like this but you're talking to all different types of people and you're getting on the level now you're doing a lot of videos as well the downside is that when you're with people especially in a longer form environment where you're conversating with them like a person especially if they know how to come across assuming the worst here they know how to come across as a normal like all shucks kind of like nice guy the way that they act can influence how you think about them to the point that the things

Starting point is 02:53:12 things they say don't come all the way through and you're like oh no that's my friend he seems really cool and then you you just if you wrote a transcript of the things they were saying you might read that and be like wait a minute yeah so true you know and I have work to do on that because it's like I've done that before and I and I actually want to give credit my friend Paul Rosalie was the one who really presented this idea and he has no idea who Darrell Cooper is he's about this from from a high level within podcasting and and i think i think he's 100% right dude i uh just as a separate i am someone i also think people are media trained versus those who aren't like you always have to pay attention to that the guy who sam altman uh i'm probably

Starting point is 02:54:02 betraying too much my personal views here but i cannot stand that guy like he he's the definition of his transcript is so carefully you know know, put together. He is so clearly media trained and like doing this so intentionally. He knows that he knows that people are afraid of AI. They've seen the legacy now of smartphones and social media and people aren't better off because of them and people are afraid of massive job displacement, all that. But anyways, when it comes to like the disconnect between transcript and how they act like Sam Oldman, oh my gosh. Yeah, some people, you know, that thing stands up on the back of your neck where you're like, wait a minute. Yes. Yes.

Starting point is 02:54:42 The fact that Sam Altman tried to run for governor of California, you know about that? I know nothing about that. It's why you're here. Let's go. Well, it's wild. And then he threatened to run for president at the time. He said in 20, and this is all in the, a new biography just came out about, it's like the first biography of Sam Altman, written by someone at the Wall Street Journal. And they got great access to all these different people. Well, this is recruiting candidates.

Starting point is 02:55:10 Look up when he ran. He went and he met with, is it Willie Brown? Brown. Was he the guy? Oh, yeah, the same frame. He met with Willie Brown. He met with Willie Brown at the time. Shout out Kamla too there. He uh, yeah, he floated it. He put out a whole platform. He spent six months on it.

Starting point is 02:55:25 Wow. Was this while he was building his doomsday bunker? It was 2017. It was and he was president of Y Combinator. Dude, also, I didn't know that, but then I, you obviously saw that quote of Paul Graham, who was the founder of Y Combinator and just like a

Starting point is 02:55:40 legend, he has awful takes on Twitter now, but like Legend in Silicon Valley, he said in, like, 2011, way before Sam Altman was anybody, he was just doing his first company looped and had raised $30 million and they sold it for like $45 million. So he's already shown himself to be a master fundraiser. But before he sold it, Paul Graham was asked, who are the most influential founders to you? And he's met everybody. He knew Steve Jobs, all the, he goes, Steve Jobs, he goes Larry Page and Sergey Brin from Google.

Starting point is 02:56:10 he lists another Titan, I think it was Steve Jobs, Larry, Patriot, oh, the founder of Gmail, and then he goes, Sam Altman. Nobody had ever heard of Sam Alman, but he goes, when I think of product, I go to Steve Jobs, when I think of strategy and ambition, I go to Sam Altman. So this guy is so clearly thinking of not just owning the AI market. He wants it all, and he's investing in nuclear energy and all these fishing companies. And he just reeks of insincerity. opinion but in like underlying ambition yeah could be right maybe maybe not maybe

Starting point is 02:56:44 this will be one of the takes because as you said like i've been wronging a lot personally he is he is a guy that i i've had those same thoughts about and i think there's a lot on paper that you just listed including some stuff i didn't know i got to look at more someone i'd be very interested in talking with them yeah to see that from that lens and i and i'm honest with people too i'd tell him before he comes like hey this isn't just going to be i'm not going to sit here and fucking CBS News you, but you know, I'm not going to sit here and be like, Sam, you have three hours. Give me your platform. You know, there's going to be a dialogue here because there's scary implications. I'm just sick of too. He makes himself more relatable by admitting the fear

Starting point is 02:57:25 about, um, I do fear that an apocalypse and he does like this ultra empathetic tone could could be coming, but I don't think it's probable, especially being bad. I'm like, dude, stop. The, the house sanguine these guys are about the potentially catastrophic stuff. I mean, obviously, Peter, you know, Peter, too, with the Antichrist. And, you know, are you going to his four-day lecture? It's going to be four days of, well, um, uh, well, but, Lord of the Rings. So, yeah, so there was a, basically. Antichrist.

Starting point is 02:57:56 Not quite that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, just to talk about this stuff so, so casually, I mean, the AGI house, the AI video, uh, they just put out. Yeah, I mean, it's just, uh, it's just frightening. I mean, you're talking about, you're talking about humanity altering complications. What could go wrong? Whatever. A great example, though. Again, this isn't to whitewash and say there are no evil actors, but that's an example

Starting point is 02:58:21 where we could look back of what happened in places like that and go, this was evil. They created the weapon that destroyed, whatever. And I don't think the people at that house are that, like, are looking to do that. I think they're only crime, if any, is that they're not considered enough of the implications for society or how dangerous or how wild but like it makes sense i have friends who would be in that position i like the people at that house i like the guy who took us there he was a roca reader great guy like he's a great guy but like just the uh someone at langley right now is like got him the little buzz in the back in the back of chair nice work

Starting point is 02:59:09 um anyways uh by handler he took us there but he yeah anyways but like what they're doing could be just awful anyways it's like an the cog versus the architect of a machine i think there's a big difference there's something there's something in the water though like i really do try there's things you have to look at cynically but i do try to take the optimistic long view on stuff not not in a way that's naive. I mean, you have to talk about things that are concerned and stuff like that. But there's something in the water with us being headed to internet 3.0 now where we've kind of, I don't want to say we've mastered 2.0, but we've had to live through that whole cycle of social media and everyone being able to type out what they want and put it out there and get their

Starting point is 02:59:59 beliefs. There's something in the water now of the people rising from that era. And I'm looking guys like you who understand that world understand how the language is spoken and want to translate that into a better era of just giving people facts as best as you can get it and i like that you guys know who you are in that you said you're not trying to break news because you don't have a 50 person team newsroom that can you know hit sources all day you know who you are right now you're trying to take everything that's put out there average it out make sense of it and educate the masses on a basic level to have a world view that then they can then interpret on their own and i think that's a great thing and you know congrats on all the success so far

Starting point is 03:00:45 i i certainly hope to see youtube continue to fucking blow it out of the water you guys are killing it there but it's awesome thank you man we're we uh we're excited we're and we're grateful to be on uh the show like this is awesome i feel i was talking to you about this that like the solidarity I feel with people who are really building in this space who are presenting a good, healthy alternative to legacy media while not, you know, having their brains broken like you, Peter Santonella, some of the other people who are in this space. And I just, I really do feel solidarity because I can, I know it's tempting to get off this path and go all into go grifter. And then legacy's awful. So it's like anyone who's on that track, who's curious, who's asking the right questions. um anyways i i just feel a lot of solidarity so i'm great man i appreciate you having us on and it's amazing to see what you all built so when you thank you and next time we'll host you at osama's house yeah yeah that would be awesome but no i i i think especially i like that you guys are here too

Starting point is 03:01:50 that you're constantly working on things so there's reasons to come back through here as you guys are doing stories around the world and we can we can talk about that but i want to Tommy jay and i talk about this all the time we want to build like a really cool cartel of people who are in this space curious and trying to do things that on the right way the the thing that i will caution myself and all of us on is we cannot the people who are kind of in that lane we cannot become what the other thing was and that is a real danger i see right now and i don't even see it voluntarily i don't think there's like this evil thing that's happening or whatever i think you can fall into short-term traps and start to get caught up in the moment i've

Starting point is 03:02:33 guilty of it too i'd like to avoid that you guys have avoided it five years in so keep avoiding it and doing what you do dude i totally agree about like stay with the mic sorry i totally agree about like stepping or not not stepping into the same pattern that they got because especially when you start getting money and you start getting the connections like you see it happen to so many people they lose what made them special i think there's also there's a kind of like a uh a myth about selling out where people think like oh you take the check and therefore you shut up i think what you know you see it with so many times talk about advice i think it's a much more like subtle you know once you start having big dollar advertisers the big brands and all of a sudden it's like well we

Starting point is 03:03:11 don't want to say that this might this might upset them and then you start it starts coming in it starts coming i mean the key honestly the key comes out to relying on your audience yep that's what we've found so many times like for us it's like subscriptions and that all that has changed our lives of the business like because it incentivizes you to be you whereas taking any money from advertisers depending on a platform for your revenue incentivizes you to do do what they want, even subconsciously. Whereas there, it's like, if you can just depend on your audience, I mean, that is, that's the way to do it.

Starting point is 03:03:38 Totally. All right. So we got Roken News on Instagram, Roken News on YouTube. Links are down in the description below. You guys have a newsletter. Just make sure I put that in there. Perfect. If I don't, just text me, we'll put it in there.

Starting point is 03:03:49 Daily Deep Dyes on every morning. Great work. Love what you guys are doing. Thank you so much. All right. I love it. Thank you so much. This was awesome.

Starting point is 03:03:57 Everybody else, you know what it is. Give it a thought. Get back to me. Peace. Thank you guys for watching the episode. If you haven't already, please hit that subscribe button and smash that like button on the video. They're both a huge, huge help. And if you would like to follow me on Instagram and X, those links are in my description below.

Julian Dorey Podcast - #337 - Meeting Bin Laden’s Neighbors, Holy Land Prophecy & Enclave of the Elites | RocaNews

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.