Kitbag Conversations - Episode 7: Book Talk with Meridian News

Episode Date: April 25, 2022

Welcome back everyone, this week I sit down with Meridian News (@meridiannews). Meridian is a project dedicated to sharing and aggregating open source intelligence, stories from individuals experiencing history, and amplifying underreported global news. As an avid reader on both ends, we discuss multiple books that we have read and recommend, as well as several geo-political topics such as:  - China's indirect colonization of Africa and Asia - How armchair news agencies stay relevant in a increasingly censored world  - A peek into the Russo-Ukraine conflict through both Aiden Aslin (Ukrainian Marine, @Cossackgundi) and Anatoly Dryomov (Russian Solider, @Drema_Di)

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the Croaton Report, a podcast dedicated to delivering quality information at the community level. This week I'm joined by Meridian News, a page that I'm a big fan of who I talk to quite regularly and I was very interested in seeing to what he had to say on certain topics as well as honestly just have a conversation for the sake of conversation. So how are you doing, man? I am doing fantastic. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. I'm an avid listener of the Croaton Report podcast. So it's a dream come true to finally be a guest here. Yeah, episode seven, big numbers here. All right, yeah, so just let's start off with your background. I mean, you're a news page, but what is your experience? What's

your background, I guess, if you just want to build on that and take it from there? Yeah, for sure. So basically, I started the account, I don't even know now. I guess it would be probably four or five months ago. I actually had the account for a while. I made it and didn't do anything with it for three months while I milled around and tried to decide if it was actually something I wanted to try to build. But more, I guess, about myself and what happened before that. So basically, born and raised, I live on the east coast of the US in Florida, specifically, and grew up with a family who's super into history, specifically, and always kind of in the background. Obviously, news is always on seeing stuff around that and like that in the

house growing up and just kind of wondering specifically why we were in the Middle East and North Africa, we being the US military. What was so prevalent? Because that we had to be there for such a long time. And it was always kind of something that interested me. I remember when I was about, I guess, around 15 at the time, 2010, when the Arab Spring first started, over in Tunisia, kind of watching as different countries had these, well, basically had revolutions all across North Africa, all across the Middle East. And it kind of snowballed from there. That was really one of the first pieces. I don't know how much you know about the Arab Spring, but I read up on how that went down

and everything about it. And you know that a lot of it was driven by social media, essentially, from organization to everything between. And I'd kind of realized that as a young person with unfettered access to the internet, I could sort of follow along in real time, which was a bizarre thing being a teenager in Florida, being able to follow along with revolutions in North African and Middle Eastern countries. And there, basically, life continued for me and sort of kept an eye on the region. And then once everything started in Syria specifically, and I learned more about the YPG and the Free Syrian Army and the ISIS and the dynamics there, I was blown away by the boom.

I can't hear you. I'm going to be straight up. Is it working? Okay. All right. Yeah, you're back. All right. I'm back. Sorry about that. I don't know what that was. Not a problem. But yeah, so it was basically as everything started happening in Syria in around like 2012 to 2015 with ISIS and Iraq and watching everything, well, the horrible basic crimes against humanity that were being committed. I was bothered by the lack of coverage that everything received and read more up on that comrades in the region as well and just kind of

built from there. Went to college, got an English degree, which I'm very proud of as well as the fact that I had so many credits in basically history and I took Arabic in school as well, that I earned myself a Middle Eastern North African Studies minor and graduated and basically just kept reading more and more about the region and as well as just everything in general about the world and need an outlet for it. So Meridian News was formed and it's just kind of grown legs at this point and have a really cool community and happy to be doing it. Sorry, I hope they're a little bit rambly, but that's how we got here. No, no, no, that's totally fine, man. Why did you settle on the name Meridian? Is there any kind of lore behind that?

Yeah, so I said this earlier, but my father is a huge history buff specifically when it comes to naval history and I don't know what you know about like cartography or navigation, but Meridian is essentially like a bisecting line on a map and on the globe. So I felt it would be a really good name essentially because it functionally means right down the center, which is my goal to basically be unbiased or when I have opinions on things to just make them known as I share information around. So that's where where the name came from and news and we'll be honest, I do miss your picture of your original picture of the the slob dog with the tracksuit on tracksuit doge. So yeah, it's pretty cool. I was like, yeah, every time I saw

that little pooch pop up, I was like, yeah, I know exactly who's posting, but so I've gotten that feedback a lot and I think I might actually have to bring it back. I'm was working on getting like some actual branding stuff built for the page because I'm having a blast with it now and I know a few graphic designers, so I was working with them. I might have to reach out and ask that the slob or the tracksuit doge is built into everything from there on because I get DMs way more frequently than you would think about how people miss the old profile picture. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, Ukraine's cool. Where's the dog? Where's the dog in the Adidas tracksuit? That's what I came here for. That's fun, man. So what's your end state? What's the goal here?

Because I know a lot of different pages on Instagram or Twitter have. They do this passively. I don't think it's mostly a part time or a full time job for them. But what's your end state? What are you trying to do with this? That is a great question. And something I think about because I don't know, you're probably in the same situation. So I'll ask you this question next. I'll turn it on you. But for me, it's like I started the pages kind of like I said just an outlet because my friends were tired of hearing about me being like, oh my god, did you hear about what's happening in Ukraine or South Africa or in the Congo? So it's kind of where it's starting. It's definitely a hobby for me. It's part time. I mean, I love doing it. And it's things that I'm

coming across anyways. But I'd love to take it as far as it wants to go. And of course, that's somewhat nebulous. But whether it means starting to do more video content, maybe narration, maybe analysis, things like that. But at the end of the day, all I want to keep doing and whatever state this comes through is I'll be very happy with is I want to keep sharing what's going on around the world as best as I can. I should say another, I guess, impetus for starting the page was I was bothered by lack of coverage for a lot of things. And being able to share things to my community and because we have a really great community of other paid administrators that share everyone's content, it really helps get the word out there. For example, the flooding in

South Africa that's happening right now. I have not seen a single mainstream news source have any type of airtime for it, I'll say, on on television or on those channels. Whereas being able to basically share that's happening. I think we're at like the death cancer, like 300 people with an estimated 40,000 displaced last I saw. And obviously, that's a huge deal. People's lives are being upgraded. So being able to share information like that, I think is just a really beneficial thing. As long as I can do that, I'm happy, happy as could be. But how about you? What is your and say, where are you moving with it? Oh, my end state. Well, like I said, offline. But I started this when I got out of the military, just because I wanted to keep my analytical writing up. I was an

Intel analyst in the Marine Corps and thought like, yeah, I spent all these years getting really dialed into what's going on in Russia, what's going on in China, what's going on in the Middle East, what's going on in Africa. And then I got out and thought, well, now I have all these skills and nothing to do with it. So it's almost on one hand, selfish to keep this information close to the chest, where if everyone's going, why is Russia invading Ukraine? I went, well, they've been doing that for eight years and everyone just kind of forgot. But it's stuff like that. I thought was really interesting. And I've been, I've been following Atlas news since he was the war blog in 2014. Like he had like 10,000 followers and I found him real early on. And then a big fan of

Jake Hanrahan for a few years now, I thought like, I really like what these guys are doing. But I think it could be taken a step further. I think it could be not so much news, but more like analysis for the average person. Because if there's a war in Ukraine, everyone's going, well, why? Like mainstream media is going to build it in this real big sexy narrative. So they get likes and subscribes and all that bullshit. But also, some people are just very, they want, they call it the bluff. They're like, they just want the info right up front in one sentence. And like, I think I could do that and then put an analytical twist of, okay, well, this is why we're here. And this is what's going on. And this is where it's going to go next. What I think is going to happen next.

So it's, maybe it's a storefront, maybe it's a YouTube page, maybe it's media empire, I don't know. I've been doing this since about October, the, I started the page when the withdrawal on Afghan was going on. It was like July last year. But like I said, it was a way to just kind of write and just store my information somewhere. But the withdrawal on Afghan happened. And I thought, yeah, I know, I know people there. I know what's going on. I know why it's so disaggregated and uncoordinated. And I thought, yeah, I might as well just write about this because I know the average American or the average Western or the average reader anywhere really wants to know what's going on in a real simplified way. So they have both the

background, the context, and then the projected future all in one little package. So it's, I'm not really sure where this is going in the big term, but yeah, it's pretty fun. Well, you're doing a great job with it. And it's, it's interesting that you bring up basically the pull out of Afghanistan. And I, I only say this because first off, I think I would bet you money, a large amount of money that in every single person you have on this podcast, maybe make this a running thing if you're into it. I don't know. If you ask them who helped them, inspired them to get their pages started, Jake Hanrahan with Popular Front and Atlas News are probably going to be on everyone's list with a few other names. Yeah, it's one. Yeah, you're

absolutely right. And then you ask them in the other pages, like, like, just like, hey, yeah, we're in a group chat. Let's ask these other pages why they started the page or their own little community. And they go, yeah, I was really bothered by the withdrawn Afghan. It's like, that seems to be a catalyst for a lot of why people jumped on the bandwagon. Yeah, absolutely. And it's, I wonder what's going to go back to that. So one of my, I guess, personal heroes is a journalist named Ben, Ben John Anderson, who, I believe he's still working with Vice right now, but he was previously BBC and filmed a phenomenal documentary in, I'm going to get the date wrong, probably, but I'll just say it's called This Is What Winning Looks Like. And it's about Afghanistan and what

it was like working with partner forces and basically navigating that. He wrote a phenomenal book as well called No Worse Enemy. And on the, it was published in, if I'm really correct on that one published in 2011, he ends the book by saying that it seems pretty clear that the Afghan army won't be able to last a few weeks, let alone a few days against the Taliban, which published in 2011. And I just think that that is something worth calling out about that as we watch the pullout happen at the end of, what was it, 2021 here. So that's real interesting you mentioned that because there's a book that was written by a Afghan advisor to the US military in 2000, like in the late 90s, but he worked with the CIA back in the 80s when they were fighting the Soviets.

And he was talking about how to understand the Afghan, how to win a war in Afghanistan. He's like, you don't, you just leave them alone and they'll figure it out. And this book can, it kind of goes in different directions, but it talks about how to win a populist and they're like, well, there's the Indian method where you could go peaceful after, you know, independence and you could sit down and go, yeah, we got to get, we have to have a central cause and then we have to get the people behind the cause and then we can take that into a new direction for the future of the government. And then there's the Chinese method where after the communists took over, they did the same thing, but opposite. And he's like, their central figure was Chairman Mao and

took that and they were like, we just got to retake Taiwan. That's our issue. But they were like, you can't apply any type of government oversight to Afghanistan. It just won't work. And this book could have been written in 1962 and 1992 and 2002 and 2012 or 2022. And everything I've seen is this book is the most dialed in focus of how the war should have gone. And it was published in like 2001 or 2002. And it came out right before the US started going into Afghanistan. He's like, don't do it. It's not going to work. And then it was like, of course, he worked with the US. He's like, I know how you work. You guys really want to be this little peaceful policeman, but it's not going to work. And then, but yes, it's funny you mentioned that

because it's one of the best books I've ever read. And it's just so in your face and direct. It's like, this is how Afghanistan is. Yeah. And it's one of the most interesting things as well is as you sort of work through getting an understanding of all these different regions that have been unstable, like unstable for so long or under authoritarian political regimes or basically far left political regimes. There's all sorts of different dynamics, but you can still draw these. You can still draw parallels between all of them. So and how everything works. Last book I'll call out, I'm a huge reader for all the listeners. So I apologize that I just keep referencing books and saying that you should go dump 12 hours into reading. Actually,

I'm not sorry for you should read more, but I did read today. I'm actually reading a book about the Taliban right now. But the last one I'll call out is called The Accidental Gorilla by David Kilcullen, who is one of the most decorated basically gorilla warfare experts in the world. He's Australian worked for the US government for a long time and has worked for different militaries around the world. Phenomenal book on basically theory for how large states create guerrilla warriors and guerrilla militias just by their presence in different regions and how essentially how every action you take is going to have two, three, four, five implications down the road. And I'm sure that's something you dealt with all the time in your position in the

Marine Corps. But incredible read, highly recommend it. We can move on from books now, though I'm sure I'll find a way to to worm them in. Not a mind sipping over books for the next 40 minutes. We can continue with it. I can draw draw parallels everywhere with them. If you I guess the we can start you want to jump into Ukraine and kind of what's what's going on there. Yeah, it's so I talked about this with Daphne Wesdorf. She's a Dutch journalist on episode three of the podcast and then again on episode five with Carla or she runs those in peril the Instagram page and we talked about how the worst thing going on for almost for over 50 days now and it seems like media attention is really sort of looking somewhere else. They're like, oh,

the war in Ukraine is not sex anymore. We don't really want to talk about that. Let's talk about something else. And so it's I can see it just based on the analytics of the page itself where war porn essentially is not really like nobody cares. And so I thought it's it's some kind of like cultural zeitgeist where it's almost like a timeline of the viewership's attention span to certain conflicts. They're like, wow, oh, yeah, there's a war in Ukraine. Anyways, yeah, that's been going on for how long? Yeah, we know this already. So it's on one hand really annoying because it's the largest war in Europe since World War Two. And honestly, if you want to pull some strings is largest war in Europe since the 90s because the Yugoslav war was a mess.

But it's everyone completely overlooks that. But and honestly, since we mentioned the Yugoslav war, it's I think the fact that NATO and the UN have drugged their feet so much on addressing the situation in Russia and Ukraine is because they fumbled it so bad in the 90s that they indirectly supported and promoted ethnic cleansing between various groups and they armed the wrong parties on several occasions. And they were like, yeah, we'll just figure it out. So what do you think? Let's see what you guys say. So I want to turn back to the first part, which is how it seems like things are kind of dropping off with coverage on Ukraine, which is I think you're definitely right. First off, I'll start by saying that. But it's interesting because it seems like

it's kind of coming in phases, phases of interest when there are large, I guess I'll call them developments. So when the initial troop buildup was was starting on the borders for the this is a podcast, a quote, military exercises in Belarus and Russia, end quote. I think there was something that initially everyone thought was extremely interesting, both online and then when it comes to the more mainstream media. But as that built up continued over weeks and weeks, all that kept happening is that the number of troops on the board was it would get announced that it was increased by 10,000, 20,000, whatever at the time. And people basically got tired of seeing videos of APCs and moving around Russia and trains carrying group and

or trains carrying vehicles and kind of moved on from it. As soon as the invasion started, everything snapped back and was looking at Ukraine. And I think we've had moments throughout the conflict. I should call it a war throughout the war in Ukraine. Yeah, it is a war. So I should call it what it is. Where that basically happens, where public attention, you and I live in this world. So we're watching everything. And I would imagine a lot of people listening to this are similar, where they're watching everything and searching through everything at a magnified level. But the biggest pieces that capture the attention basically of mainstream and more the overarching audience are those giant movements or moments where Putin's talking about using

thermobaric weapons and actively using thermobaric weapons or threatening nuclear weapons when you have civilians massacred in Bukha. And I think we'll see if the sinking of the Moskva has any effect on that. That could be another major moment where it kind of snaps things back to Ukraine. But I would hate for, I shouldn't say I would hate it, but I would also be really disappointed if it just becomes another war where people essentially lose interest in what's happening over there, especially after the massive support that we've seen for it. The war in Afghanistan, I'm pretty sure that a majority of Americans specifically thought the war was over and they went, oh, we're still there. Oh, there's a withdraw. It's been how long? It's

been 20 years? It's like I said earlier, there's probably like a timeline on how much focus people have for certain areas. And on one hand, they probably just don't want to see it anywhere where it's gore in the streets of Ukraine. Nobody wants to see that, but it's real, but nobody wants to see it. So they're just going to turn a blind eye and go, yeah, we'll get back to that. Or on the other hand, they're really focused. They really want to talk about it, but they're probably going to get told to shut up. So that's really interesting. Like I get it, people only have so much time in their day. You only have so much bandwidth to taking information, especially if you've got a life, you've got kids, you've got a job,

you've got friends, you've got to cook dinner, take care of yourself, everything between. It's hard to tune in and pay close attention to that. But I will say, I think that's actually where our community does really, really well, because you don't have to listen to a talking head. You don't have to listen to Don Lemon talking about the war in Ukraine, knowing that you have to sort of through what he's saying. It's probably not true or probably a half truth might be a better way to phrase it. You can go online and scroll Instagram and alongside pictures of your friends and family and other things you're interested in, you can get flash news updates, which I think is a really, really valuable thing. And something that, like I said, makes me really proud to do

what we do. And I think we do a good job at it. So I really appreciate our community. It's definitely, like we said earlier, like Jake, Hannah, Hannah Natlis news are definitely the catalyst for why most of us start reporting on what's going on. But it's the way I'm probably going to touch in a different area here, the way censorship works on Instagram, where if you, you could just get reported very quickly and just take it out where I mentioned this before, but I kind of want to focus on this a little bit where we talked about the Afghan withdrawal earlier. And you couldn't say anything about that on Instagram, because Rose Warfare got banned, I think twice and got his account back, Atlas news got flagged, our worst day got flagged,

filthy Americans account was deleted because he was talking about the warrant or the withdrawal in Afghanistan. But now the narrative's completely changed. You're like, you can't say anything bad about Ukraine, but you want to talk about a burnt out Russian BTR go right ahead. It's, it's, it's kind of weird to see how the focus for our platform has really dialed into these certain areas going, yeah, it's okay to talk about this, but not about this. So yeah. Yeah, it's, it's the censorship problem is a really interesting thing. I'm fortunate in the sense where I haven't had to deal with it yet. And I should probably knock on wood as I say that. I haven't, nothing's been throttled. I don't think I've been shadow banned. So

I haven't, I'm not as close with it as a lot of others, but I have seen a ton of other basically pages that I talked to that are massively affected by you include it. It's really interesting how the, I guess it's some combination of the like court of public opinion alongside Instagram kind of trying to figure out what is okay and what is not okay to talk about. I'm extremely anti censorship as an individual. I think it's, I don't think there are situations where censorship is a good thing for, I would say almost without exception. And I think, especially alongside the news, that is one thing where you want to show the realities. Buka is a great example where you're seeing the bodies of civilians who were executed essentially.

And which is, of course, a war crime. Things like that, despite the images being horrifying, they are something that need to be shown and need to be seen. And in the case of Ukraine, that's happening. But there's so many other places around the world where you don't get that accurate look in. And actually, I'll say this as well. This is why I'm a huge fan of photo journalists, specifically. And if listeners follow my page, I try to repost powerful images all the time, because I think an image can tell a story in a way that words cannot, which is a really cool thing as well. And power, great part of Instagram on top of it. Well, what's really interesting is because there's, and I, that's like my buzzword,

interesting. But we have mainstream media who have been talking about Ukraine since the invasion started. But almost immediately they went, yeah, this kind of happened overnight. There was no indication or warning that the Russians were going to invade. You're like, okay, one, the US Department State Department has been publishing information about how the Russians are planning this to the Ukrainians have been talking about this. Three, the Russians have been doing a buildup for nine months. You think 120,000 guys showing up on the border is kind of, you know, average everyday work. It's, it's just on one hand shows the incompetence of mainstream media, because they went, wow, this war just happened out of

nowhere. Who saw this coming? But on the other hand, you're like, okay, but it happens. So let's just talk about how bad the Russians are. So it's, it's fun stuff. And you're absolutely right about reposting photo journalists, pictures on Instagram, because those are the ones where they're on the ground. They're seeing what's happening. I think Jake Hanrahan said it the best where he said, fuck you, I'm on the ground. You're behind a computer. Like I'm here. So it's, there it is again, interesting. It's definitely interesting. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that being a buzzword. It's, it's a good one because it, well, it's a lot of what we do is basically, I don't know about

you, but I see something. And when it, I think that it's interesting. That's the type of thing that I want to share for the sole reason of, if I think it's interesting, I'm sure someone else will too. And there's some things that I don't think are interesting. And I still share that as well, because they need to be shared. But regardless, yeah, it's really interesting how now that word is going to burn a hole in my head every time I use it. But it's something to see when everything kicked off over in Ukraine. And a lot of mainstream media was saying, wow, this came out of nowhere. It exposes, I think a deeper issue in media as a whole, where the people that are actually sharing information on that scale, on that, like

or on the largest scale possible are not actually in touch with what's going on. They're relying super heavily on analysts, on producers, and also having to work in the basically entertainment portion as they're sitting as a talking head and sharing their 45 second sound clip of what their opinions are on something that maybe they've only received briefs about. An issue don't mean to cut you off, but I think that issue is because of the censorship on Instagram and censorship on Twitter and Facebook is because you have these massive corporations like CNN, Fox News, BBC, Al Jazeera, everyone knows what their bias is going to be simply by looking at the name. They're like, cool. And so almost at this point, it's degraded the quality

of the work they put out because they don't need to work hard to be right. Everyone knows they're going to get their listeners based on the stigma and the previous opinions of others. So if you have a CNN article, everyone's going to go, yeah, they're pretty left leaning, kind of like center left, anything they say, I'm probably going to listen to that. So they don't even have to try eat hard at all because they went, yeah, it's I'm CNN. And yeah, you know who we are. And so when it comes to smaller pages like ours on Instagram, trying to talk about what's really going on, they're going to get crushed because it kind of goes against the narrative of we can't really put you in a box because what you want to be vice news from 2000

doesn't really belong here today. So we really need to kind of shut that somewhere else. So for sure. And one of the other things that I think is important to touch on too is that these are giant businesses. And the thing that you do when you have a large, longstanding business, your job is to reduce risk, which I understand. But it also means I understand from a business perspective. But that also means that you don't get to post about things that may not fit whatever narrative is being shared. It doesn't mean that you have to self censor, essentially, which thankfully, I don't think that we really have to do, of course, we can risk losing our page was in our following. At the end of the day,

I think we have a strong enough community where when that does happen, because it will continue to I have no doubt, we can build each other back up and go from there. But we're also allowed to post things that they might not be able to share. Because a producer says either that it won't get enough views, or that it won't have viewership the same way that another story might, or simply because some things they just don't want to touch for the 10 foot pole, because of a PR myth, or it could be a huge PR problem for them. And that's also why a lot of times they're sending their correspondence to places that aren't necessarily as dangerous, or they're sending freelance journalists to places that are extremely dangerous. Because they don't have to take on the

risk the same way if they have a guy in Dnieper wearing a bulletproof vest, for some reason. Or if they're sending a young freelance journalist directly into Odessa, that doesn't have their name on it. It's risk aversion either way. And I won't go into what I think about it ethically. I don't think it's a great thing. Well, it's night and day compared to the O3 invasion of Iraq. That was constant coverage that was very dialed in focused journalism. And they were delivering important information that people needed to see. But that just to see them in 20 years just almost get lazy and just put themselves in certain corners. We're like, yeah, we'll just hire some freelance kid, whatever happens, happens. It's weird. It's interesting.

It's a bizarre thing. And I think we'll see kind of as time goes on how that dynamic shifts, because I think it is shifting. I think the reason that people are interested in following pages like ours is because they're tired of that. I don't know where it's going. I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing either way. And I imagine you will too as well as most of our community will, because it's something that I enjoy and that I'm really proud of. But I do think there will be changes and only time will tell exactly what those look like. Maybe this is a shot in the dark. Kostek Gundy was the only Western voice out of Ukraine for years. And everyone knew that when the war started, the Russians are going to look for him

first. So it's like, he's number two behind Zelensky. So I think people just might be afraid, because Kostek Gundy was just doing his job. He's like, I'm an Ukrainian Marine. I was in Syria and here I am talking about the war. And then I think people don't want that kind of target above their head. Journalists specifically, where it's like, yeah, if you focus so much on Armenia or Iran, you're automatically going to be known as the go-to guy. So on one hand, it's really good because like, yeah, you know what you're talking about. But on the other, sorry, man, we really don't want to directly contact with you. And honestly, it's, I'm sure you saw the video. Tesserine News posted it, the full RT News interview with

Aidan, but he was definitely reading a script. There was no way that, and what he was saying was his personal opinion, because they went, oh, Ukraine's the bad guy, right? Is it because you fought for Ukraine? You're a mercenary. You're a war tourist, right? He's like, the way they look at it, yes, he is. So they're definitely going to use him as a mouthpiece and a propaganda piece. And we've already seen it happening. So yeah, it's hard to speak directly on Aidan, I would say, just because I understand his situation. I don't know him personally, and I should make that, I feel like I should make that very clear. I followed his account for a long time. And like you just said, he's been a major source of information for basically everything

going on in the Ukrainian front lines for years and years. But watching that RT video is, first off, absolutely heartbreaking. I, for whatever good it does, I keep him in my prayers and sending my best to everyone who knows him, and him himself, of course. But it's disheartening to have to watch things like that. And it's unfortunate, I think, just a kind of reality of war and what has. Also, in a situation, I've seen a ton of people online, and I'm sure you've seen this as well, is people love to hit up the comments on any post about him saying that he would have been better or he should have fought to the death or things like that, which is an absolutely absurd thing to say, in my opinion, given the situation or the circumstance that he was in. And he's basically

doing his best. So he will, I'm sure, continue to be used as a propaganda piece for RT, which is Russian state media, as the war continues. It's going to be, it's disheartening and disappointing, but I think it's just the way it is. And I understand why he's handling the situation as he is as well. Yeah, it was definitely disheartening watching that video, because I remember seeing the first, one of my followers sent me a picture through Reddit, where it was leaked on Reddit before it was even published on RT. They got him. And so it's, yeah, it was rough to watch. Yeah, and I will say another really cool thing that has come out, because he's been so vocal on social media about, first off, when he was in Syria, but also when after he left Syria and,

or I should say, when he was in Rojava, and after he left and went to Ukraine, super vocal sorts of, or form of information, before the war was starting, he was saying, if you want to enlist in the Ukrainian Marines or come join, he was sharing information on how to do that. And he's been, I would say, basically kind of found himself in the position of a modern day folk hero, as he's kind of 100% has. He's St. Johnny. They're already having those thrown around. He is definitely a folk legend over there. For sure. And the coolest part about it, too, is it's completely organic, in the sense that he's obviously doing, doing and has done everything he has, because he's a genuine, principled guy who wants the best for people, for himself,

but also for people that are under, whether it be oppressive regimes, or under massive instability, or he's a good dude. It's essentially what it comes down to, which is really, really cool to see. So certainly wishing him safety. Yeah, during, during the initial days of the war, and I was getting a lot of messages asking how they can support and how they could join. I would just refer him. I had his, his post about how to join the Ukrainian military, just in the saves. I would just send them, like, here we go. Like, this is what you need. Here's all the steps. It's better than I could have done. So yeah, it's a really cool thing. And I think that's going back to kind of what you were saying earlier about whether it's journalists that focus on a specific region or

people that have basically made their, made their focus around the world. I think that's a, while you do kind of gain that unwanted gaze of governments and states, you do a really, really valuable thing. And I think that's why people do it. Like Armenia, it's really, really hard, or I should say it was really, really hard to get good information out of Armenia. But then you have someone like Finn, Finn depends. Do the Lord's work. Shout out. He's helped sort of spread that massively. And I would bet you, despite I'm sure being looked down upon by certain states around the world, his information is, well, extremely valuable and it helps expose kind of what's going on, at least at the bare minimum, just give some light to it so that there is a

source if someone looks for it, which is a really, really cool thing. And I want to, I guess, clarify in no way was I saying what they're doing is bad. It's just in the bigger companies, your, your Fox news, your BBCs, it seems like they don't want to touch it because like they're, they don't want to put their journalists out there because they went, yeah, we don't really want our guys having targets. So yeah, for sure. Sorry. I definitely, I understood it is that I should have clarified as well. Yeah, they don't want targets. They don't want to damage. Maybe they have some business relationship with someone somewhere. And they don't want to damage that because it'll affect the long term fees or long term feasibility of the

business or their reach or whatever. And it's not being able to take risks like that, I would say is in the antithesis of journalism as a whole. If I can meet one person, it's Intel Slava. I want to talk to him. What would you say? I would love to know what top three questions for Intel Slava. For those of you who don't know, Intel Slava is basically an information aggregator on Telegram. I think he's on Twitter as well. He's on Twitter and Telegram. He had an Instagram, I think it was banned, but his Intel Slava, you know, Glory to Intel and then being up front going, I am very pro Russia. It's kind of an oxymoron. But yeah, I would love to know top three questions. Maybe that's too many top two questions, top one question, whatever. What is it you love

to ask? Top three, number one, can you overhead press your body weight? Number two, what's your go-to cheat day meal? And number three, what kind of mental gymnastics did you go to to train for this? It's so funny. Honestly, if I just want a good laugh, I go to his Telegram and I just start scrolling because there'll be an RPG that'll bounce off at T-72 and he goes, demonstrates the resilience of Russian engineering. He went, no, it didn't. It demonstrated a 327,000 followers or subscribers on Telegram and people think this is true. It's, I want to just sit down and go, like, have a beer and go, hey, man, where is your mental state at with a lot of these claims because every single day saying that

NATO is on copium and then the next day going, I never said that, but you could just scroll back and go, yes, you did. Hey, man, is everything okay? Yeah, it's really interesting to watch as a really pro-Russian source like IntelSlav is working through everything that's going on and in some cases, I think reading into it more, this is entirely my opinion, reading into things more, far more than he needs to, but I guess that's what happens when you're overtly, extremely pro one side or the other. Well, he also doesn't back up any of his, and this is more of like an Intel and journalist foundation. There's no source. There's nothing to back up what he says. He's shooting a foe out of the void and if you go, well, you're pro-Russia and you're saying

that you captured 135 Ukrainian soldiers, but there's no footage or source about this. What are you talking about? You have to back that up. Yeah, it's definitely a gold medal in mental gymnastics. He's doing a very good job at what he is. I would agree. He's definitely towing the line on, actually, I would say he's crossed the line on just being propaganda with more posts than a few at this point. There's also a Siloviki. It's a Russian page who reposts a lot of Intel Slava's content and it's Siloviki is like Russian for security forces, but that one's just 100%. We are the military. This is what we're doing and then they will repost Intel Slava. So on one hand, I think, is Intel Slava in the Russian army or is he just some basement dweller on Reddit because

there's different ways to look at it. While I'm talking about this, I just remembered another one where in the West, we had Kosset Gundy's Instagram account to be our portal or our lens into Ukraine. There's a Russian account called Doremiy, where it's a Russian soldier doing the same thing Aidan was doing just on the other side. He has a telegram and he has an Instagram and he has not been on Instagram. People found his VK and he's like some 20-year-old kid. He's like, what do you want to know? I'm in the trenches. Here we go. It's kind of fun to just honestly, I've sent him a few texts or messages. I'm like, dude, where are you getting this information? He does not reply, but I think he got wounded recently. I think he got blown up.

Interesting. That is, well, I'll send you his page. I don't know enough about this, but I would love to learn more. I think he was banned. Hold on, I'm looking it up right now. Yeah, he usually does live streams. I'm sending it to you on Instagram right now. He usually does live streams and just talks about what's going on and it's pretty wild to watch because he stores all the live feeds on his telegram and it's wild to watch is the tone of his voice and just the way he looks in the first few days going, hell yeah, Slavo would see you and then today he's going, yeah, it's pretty fun. I'm excited to look over it after this. Yeah, actually, it's interesting that basically we still have access to this after

places like RT media have, I can't get access to RT media anymore, the same way that I did prior, which I guess this is back to that censorship conversation, not to jump too far back, but I don't know about you. I think that's a really bad thing. I would love to still receive updates from RT media because they're obviously extremely biased. It's Russian state media, but they're going to be almost entirely substantiated claims, which is going to be the opposite of someone like Intel Slava, which is really good because it allows you to see what information is there as well as to actually go in understanding there's a bias and building out from there. I think all information is good because it's going to allow us to work through and make

our own decisions essentially. So that's how I feel. I don't know if you have an opinion on it, but I think I've mentioned this topic on every single podcast so far, but banning Sputnik and TASS in RT news was such a bad idea because on one hand, and I always, that's like another trigger, on one hand, the Russians are only getting one source of info now. They're only getting Kremlin sponsored updates. We're like, we're winning the war, we're fighting Nazis, we're killing Ukrainians, we're like, hell yeah dude. And then, but for the West, we can't see what they're telling their people because we just closed off 143 million people from viewing the outside world. It's canceling companies in entire countries. I can see where they're

coming from, but it's not smart because if you draw the line in 10 years, all these Russians that have been for the last, so I guess like a little history lesson, the Russian education system has really put a hard sensor on talking about anti-Soviet and Russian ideas. And so, if they've been taught that for 20 years, and they're in the trenches in Ukraine right now, fighting for those ideas that they were taught, and then the West shuts them off from any sort of outside narrative, we're just going to have this for another generation. The Russians are going to continue to play the, it's everyone versus me, Slavoj Rusya. They don't like us, they want to keep us out of Europe, we're European, they don't like us. So, it was very dumb to cancel them.

I agree. I think it was a short-sighted approach. And like you're saying, I have no doubt the implications will be felt as time continues. So, we'll see, that's another one. I don't know, I don't love theory-crafting, so I don't want to say that it'll end up one way or the other. All I can say is that we'll see. Yeah, we'll see. I mean, it's been, Putin's been in power for 20 years and just kept telling everyone what he was going to do, and everyone brushed it off. So, maybe it really won't damage anything, because they'll tell you what they're going to do. It's completely different than how the Chinese run their media narratives. It's, the Russians are more direct, but... Far more. And I think that it's some combination of, I'm sure, culture alongside

well, actual intentions and everything. So, yeah, and it's especially considering the fact that they work, not only neighbors geographically, but work relatively closely together. I would be curious to be a fly on the wall for any meeting between Xi Jinping and Putin. You look at pictures of them standing side by side, and it's eerily similar to Stalin and Chairman Mao, standing there like, yeah, man, this is our side of the world. Eastern, you know, it's... I don't think they like each other, because I think Putin said, okay, I'll give you the Olympics. We won't invade another country during the Olympic season, as long as you help us some way. And the Chinese went, we'll see what happens. Oh, you're losing. I want nothing to do with this.

So, actually, something I'd love, if you have an opinion, I'd love to hear your thoughts. But as far as Chinese expansion, in terms of whether it's building islands in the South Pacific, or in Africa, building infrastructure in exchange for extremely, basically, high debt loans that will only be paid off by essentially giving up land, what are your thoughts on Chinese expansion? Do you think there is, like, obviously there's a master plan behind it, but I'd just love to know what your feelings are about it? It's the same thing the Russians were doing in the 60s, where they are essentially colonizing Africa, and nobody wants to use that word because it has such a nasty narrative to it. But, yeah, the Chinese have gone to poorer countries along

the Indian Ocean, is where they started. So, they went to, like, Sri Lanka and Pakistan, and Afghanistan, to some degree, and they were just buying up lands. They went, yeah, we understand that you have all these natural resources and you want to build stuff. So, we'll just give you the materials and we'll help you build a hotel. Oh, the ground you built it on is hosed home to oil. Oh, well, we bought this, so it's our land. And they, how am I trying to put this intelligently, the way the Chinese do it is they give out loans at 100% interest rate and enslave these little countries until they strong arm them into doing what they want. So, they already got Pakistan. You can kind of write Pakistan off for whatever you want, whatever corner you want to put them in,

but you have these smaller African nations who are still developing and they can't afford to pay back these debts. And so, I think it was Uganda. It was Eastern African nation that had to give up its only airport because the Chinese built the infrastructure and the runway. And so, they went, oh, well, we want this back because you can't pay your debts fine. And then, of course, we're just going to use that for a military hub here soon because they went to Djibouti and they built that Navy base when they said they wouldn't. But as soon as the election season was going on, they started pumping their Marines and their air force elements into that area and said, okay, well, now we have our first overseas base. And then a few months ago, it came out that they

also were talking about putting bases in Western Africa in, what's it called, equatorial gaining, I think the Times or the New York Post. One of those came out and said that the Chinese were in bed with one of these Western African nations. And essentially, they're just recolonizing the sphere of influence that the old NATO powers had for so long. But if France is getting kicked out of Mali for not winning their counterinsurgency with a Sahel G5, they really fumbled it. So, they started calling the Russians and said, hey, can you clean up this issue? And then, the Chinese are going into the bed economically. And then I think they're also probably going to start jumping over to the central and South American countries because like Venezuela,

100%, you know that that's a target, that's a money pot for the Russians and the Chinese. They just want to counteract the US narrative. The Russians, I think, jumped the gun. And Putin was definitely lied to about how we could win this war. And so he definitely fumbled the Russian agenda for the next, I don't know, probably 50 years. But the Chinese, they're more slow. I don't know if you read the book, 100-year marathon. But it just talks about how the Chinese, they don't want to win tomorrow because they know the US government goes through changes every four years. They just got to wait. They're like, yeah, I mean, I don't like the current president, but soon I'll get one that's more lenient towards my policies.

So Chinese are, they are very, they play the, I'm here to help card, but if you heal the layer back, one, maybe two layers, you're like, oh, wow, you were very, not good for this area, just economically ruining all these little countries and pumping in their own little, because they do it with companies. So they're like, well, we need to build this infrastructure in Western Africa. And we're going to buy it, put the infrastructure on the land where you make cell phone chips. And so we're going to have to put in our own workers, because we don't really trust your guys, because if you trusted your own workers, you would have used them. So that's kind of their logic. And then they also just

get into bed with Australia, New Zealand, and all these Pacific countries, because they go, oh yeah, the US, they're in decline. They just left Afghan and all of their friends for the last 20 years. They don't like you. Why don't you start talking to us? So they definitely have a lot going on. And it's interesting to see how shady they play their game, but they're also very open about what they want. So I don't know, do you have any opinions on that? If you read a little into that, the Belt and Road Initiative, as they call it. So I, I think we're pretty well aligned on it. So I won't go into too far depth on it. I do think it will be interesting if they get over to Venezuela, South America, and even maybe Central America, because it is so reminiscent of what

the basically banana republics went through with the US, and how we did very similar things in those countries, kind of building out infrastructure and slowly having these, at the time, large corporations taking over more land, more infrastructure. I should say, was corporations doing it not directly the US government, but at which point, US government did get involved and kind of gave them the support that they needed these companies to slowly build out and take over large parts of Central South America. So I'm wondering if those governments will be more sensitive to it, if China does try to make their way over there. That's the biggest piece. Sure, because South America is definitely a part of the world that nobody talks about.

Yeah, that's true. I don't think, unless, you know, you know, Spanish or Portuguese and get really dialed into their local news and how they're doing things. But I don't know what their opinion on it is, because Brazil is also in bricks with the Russians and the Chinese and the Indians and the South Africans. And they have that big economic culture movie for where they want to take all the developing nations and bring them up and counteract the Western led way of running the world. But I'm not sure if, because I know a lot of the African nations have woken up and said, yeah, we really don't want to get into that with the Chinese because they're going to ruin us. But it's, I don't think the South African or South Americans have said much

about it. Venezuela is definitely one of those areas where, as soon as the revolution kicked off, the Russians were there with peacekeepers, and they just didn't leave. And so I'm sure we'll see some Chinese popping up here soon to check out the real estate to build a hotel or something. So I'm curious to see how, how everything develops there. One way or another, we'll, I guess it's another one, we'll see what happens with it. And on the topic of China as well. So we do know they kind of have a, we obviously the state is involved in pretty much everything on the business side. I know you're saying that we're talking a little bit about that. What is your opinion on that being, or if you even have one, is that healthy for long term, basically economic development

in China or abroad? But for Chinese-run companies, obviously it seems like they might have a bit of an advantage given the fact that, well, the state is working with manufacturers directly and producers directly to help basically push products abroad. Do you think that gives them an advantage? It's so fragile though. They are, they bought up all those companies that made toothpaste lids and you know, wife beater shirts and super expendable things that everyday Americans or Westerners or the world in general goes, yeah, I mean, I kind of need a light bulb. I kind of need a toothpaste cap. I kind of need a picture frame, but it's their economy is built on such a fragile system where if you built a factory in Pittsburgh or Colorado and decided to go, yeah, let's just

build these things here. It's cheaper. That would ruin the Chinese economy. So I think they may have some fortsite into what's going on there. And so that's why they want to start reaching out to these African nations going, okay, well, where are cell phone chips made? Oh, in the Horn of Africa? Okay, I'll just buy all the land in the Horn of Africa. I think they want to get ahead of the game. And they're definitely using those companies to be their voice, but you know for a fact that the Chinese companies are all in bed with the CCP. So, yeah, exactly. And that's, I guess, that's my biggest question right now is, so China's obviously playing the long game. And when I say long game, we're talking 50, 100 years out. I'm wondering if companies being in bed with the CCP

is going to be a short term advantage, basically, and not quite play out the way that they anticipate. If it moves them past as an economy, moves them past the USA, for example, or if in the long term, having the CCP involved is actually going to cause way more harm than good to just having running a free market. So, well, let's just look at how they treat Shanghai and Beijing. They got 20 million people just locked up in rooms and they're going door to door saying, give me your dogs. They have COVID. If that's how they're treating their people, I think they're going to be ruthless with all these international companies. It's, I don't think they give a shit. Yes. They're just looking out for, like I said earlier, they had that 100-year plan where they

went, yeah, we're going to be in charge in 100 years to the US. They can do their own thing. They're going to eat themselves and decline sometime soon. But yeah, we'll just wait. Oh, they left Afghanistan? Cool. We're going to go to Afghanistan. We're just going to be a peacekeeper. They're in, they mucked up Somalia. We're just going to send our guys to Somalia and be peacekeepers and really just help build them up economically. And it's definitely all in their favor and not for the recipient. So, yeah, it'll be interesting to see how it develops as a whole. And yes, when it comes to the way that they're currently treating everyone in Shanghai who's being aggressively quarantined for, well, for everything that's going on with the pandemic,

I don't imagine that people are generally happy with the CCP. I don't think so. And they also, they also know how to weaponize social media a lot better than NATO states where they do the same thing the Russians do where, I'm sure, remember the hashtag stop agent hate that came out during the pandemic? I do. Yeah. It was pretty big. Everyone was jumping on. And it came out around the same weekend of that huge joint Chinese US summit in Alaska where they were essentially saying like, Hey, here's President Biden's new administration. This is what we're doing. Everything that the last guy did, we're going to try to take it in a different direction. And the Chinese just ran through. But then nobody talked about that. Nobody really heard about how

that went down because the Chinese were like just flooding the market with hashtags. And they went, yeah, we know how short the attention span is for the Western. So we know how to keep them entertained. We'll make TikTok and we'll make it very entertaining and very addictive. So nobody will care if we, you know, buy Zimbabwe because, oh, it's just Zimbabwe. Everyone thinks that Africa is a mess. No one's really going to care. So it's, the Chinese are very mischievous. That's really interesting. I did not do that. 100%. Yeah, they, Russia does the same thing, or they did rather, where every time there was a NATO exercise in Norway or some kind of NATO exercise where it was supposed to be really big, they would just flood

the market with like laxative commercials and ads and just drown out all the activity that was being put out on Instagram and Twitter. So the world just didn't see what NATO was doing. Which is kind of, I don't really see the end state there because if it's a military exercise, that's kind of the military's business. But for a major geopolitical summit in mapping out the next four years at least and drowning that out by weaponizing short attention spans, that's very clever on their part. And honestly, hats off because they're doing a better job at that than NATO is. Yeah, and it's one of those things where it's hats off to them. I might be a little bit happy that NATO is not doing a great job at the same type of thing. But they're doing it well,

on the last. You can see that now on Instagram. Yes, they're like, you can say anything you want about the Russians, we don't care. And so they think the Russians or pro Russian pages started that, you know, stop hating Russians, hashtag, and it went nowhere. That just did not work. They went, no, we know what you're doing. Stop it. So it's weird. It's weird. There's so many interesting dynamics. It's literally impossible to keep up with all of them. But we do our best. Did you read the book Confessions of an International Hitman or Economic Hitman? I have not, but I would be interested to. I'll add that to it. It's really good. It's about a just like a low level businessman in an American businessman who was getting sent to

Middle Eastern and just developing countries in the 60s, 70s and 80s. And they were like, it's the same thing the Chinese are doing, where the US said, oh, hey, hey, Iraq, I understand you have this real weird neighbor, Iran. Yeah, we're going to fund, we're going to give you these WMDs. And as long as we could just put up our oil refineries on your land, because we know you don't have the technology to do this yourself. Oh, okay. So Iran's out. You guys fought that little war. It's kind of crazy. So what we're going to do now is they just, it's the same thing. They just start economically enslaving, especially the Central Asian country or Central American countries with the, you mentioned the banana republics, but the same thing is one of those guys and it's

just his confession of here's how I fit in the cog. Here's how the system works. Here's how the CIA has been with everybody. So it's really good. I will absolutely be adding that to the list. It's, I'll shout myself out right now too. For anyone listening, every book that I read that's somewhat relevant to my page, I have a story highlight and they're all in there with ratings and you can see the cover. You can see the author as well as a like short one or two sentence summary of how I felt about it. So if I've shattered anything out and it's interesting to you, it'll probably be on there. And I keep that updated as I read. Yeah, that's definitely fun. I definitely look, look out for your, did you read today while you're sitting on a mountaintop or

something? It's, I think everyone should read. It's a, it's a cheat code for life is the best way I could say it. You are getting the distilled knowledge from someone who has done things or learned about things or knows about things at a level that they've decided to dedicate their part of their life to writing about it. It's been through who knows how many iterations and edits. You can literally get years of knowledge, if not decades of knowledge from a quick 150 page book that you would never get from anything else. That is why I'm such a huge advocate for reading, plus you better yourself. Reading makes you a better writer, makes you a better communicator. If you can communicate better, you can convince people to do things that you want, you can convince

them to do why or whatever you communicate effectively. So not to get on too much of a soapbox, but literally one of the most valuable things you can do in my opinion. So you should do it. Yeah, on that, I know if you, myself included in a few other pages like yourself for Tesseron news, has his lit tour, tour Fridays, where he would say like, yeah, this is the book I've been reading, and it's really cool to see that our little community, as long as like before we even started talking to each other, got to know one another, it was almost like a very similar thought process of, okay, we're talking about the news, it's going to be unbiased, we're going to have book recommendations, we're all going to the gym. Like it's, it's kind of cool. I haven't done one in

a little while, but it's, reading is definitely, would you call it a cheat code? Cheat code for life. If you had, all right, since we're on the topic of books, if you had one book to recommend to all the listeners right now, what would it be? Oh, that's, that's a tough, because my mind immediately goes to wanting to cheat and recommend multiple books. Just do one, like just a casual, what someone would get the most information out of in any walk of life. So I think one of the best possible things that you could read, I think it would be interesting, I think it says a lot about human nature, is actually a book called Dispatches by Michael Herr. It might be Michael Herr, I apologize, Michael, if I mispronounce your last name. Michael, if you're listening,

if Michael, sorry, who, he was a photojournalist in Vietnam, and it explores essentially his entire journey there about things that he saw, things that he did, and what it's like to be there as an individual, as well as the effects of war on people who, a lot of them, did not want to be there. And we're living in some of the most horrendous possible circumstances, due to the draft. So I would highly recommend that one. I am also going to cheat a little bit, a huge fan of Shakespeare. I think Shakespeare has figured out a lot of life already. If you can stomach the obnoxious language and take some time to really focus on what's being said, you can learn a lot about human nature from Shakespeare. So those are my two. That's good. What about you? Do you

have a recommendation, a book at the top of the pile? Yeah, 100%. It's A Spy Among Friends by Ben McIntyre. It's about Harold Kim Fieldy, the most notorious defector from the British intelligence who worked for the Russians. He was working for the Soviet Union for 30 years, and because he was so goddamn British, nobody suspected him. So we worked his way up from MI5 to MI6, worked his way right to the top. And the American director of the CIA, what was his name? James Jesus Angleton was half British, half American. So he was like, yeah, I really like the Brits, but there's something weird about this Kim guy. We really got to look out for him. And it's just, it reads like a thriller. The way Ben McIntyre writes a lot of his spy novels are, they are historic texts,

but he writes them like a James Bond novel, so there's no drive portion. And he talks about Philby's entire life and about how his father was in World War I. He fought in the Middle East with Lawrence of Arabia and helped draft the outline of the Middle East for how the British and French empires carved up the Middle Eastern countries and why the Brits got Iraq and why the French got Syria and those kinds of things. And it's kind of cool to see that these two individuals, his father and son, really directed the course of British history just by the fact that they were in the right places at the right times. And so after Philby got found out by the British intelligence, it was in Lebanon and he defected, went to the Russian consulate and then went over to

the Soviet Union and they sent him to Berlin to train the Stasi, the then East German top spy agency. And he said, to betray you must first go long. So that's something like a lot of, you'll see it if you go to the spy museum in DC, that's the slogan thrown right up because he figured out how to be a spy and he wrote his own book. I guess I'm gonna have to cheat here, let me look up the name real quick. He wrote his own book about the account and how he was getting caught by all these, he was getting caught by spies, but they were like, are you Russian? I'm kidding. No, you're not. It's crazy. It's called My Silent War and it's written by Kim Philby himself and it's like 120 pages, but it talks about how, yeah, I was in bed with the Germans,

the Spanish and the Spanish Civil War. I was a reporter for BBC and I could kind of do anything because everyone trusts me and I was very confident. So it's, you learn a lot about psychology, people, how the world works, geopolitics, how some countries will kind of turn a blind eye to what's going on in their intelligence agencies just because they know that this guy's pretty good. They're like, we're going to hold on to him. That's definitely my recommendation. Got it. It's going on the list. It's a really good one. It's Ben Macintyre is a phenomenal writer, but all right, unless you have anything else to plug, I think this is going to wrap up this episode. Oh yeah, we've been chatting for a while. I've had a blast. Thank you again

so much for having me. I guess the obvious thing for me to plug will be, please, if you don't, go ahead, follow me at meridian.news on Instagram. I would love to have you as part of my community, but also the greater community. And I've told Crotone to do this before and he never has, so I'm going to say make sure you follow him as well. If you don't, I know a lot of people share these podcasts around, but also go ahead and follow him on Spotify or on Apple, wherever you get your podcasts from, to help make sure that not only the podcast can grow, but so you can get every new episode and listen to the incredible people like myself. Okay, well, thank you for coming on and I'll see you around. Take it easy.