Kitbag Conversations - Proto Kitbag 13: Popular Front's Sam Black

Episode Date: May 2, 2024

I hope you enjoy the intro and outro music for the Croatoan Report Podcast because this week I talked with Sam Black (samblack.jpeg), the man responsible for both the sound for this podcast, and the soundtrack work for Popular Front. This week we talk about  - Music in relation to identity  - Sam's music hobby  - The outcome of the Russo-Ukrainian war  - and a melting pot of culture 

Hello everyone, I hope you like the music that you hear at the intro and outro of every single episode from the ProTome Report because this week we are talking to the man who created it, popular funstone Sam Black. Sam, how you doing? Not bad, mate. How are you? I'm doing pretty good. Popular front zone, Sam Black. Sam, how you doing? Not bad, mate. How are you? I'm doing pretty good.

I'm what doctors would call hungover today, but it was a, had a pretty good night. That's, that's all, that's always a good way to start morning. Yeah, Saturday morning, just rolling into the weekend, perfect. Exactly, you know, it's just, it's a sign of things to come, I imagine.

It just means you have to stay up later tonight to feel better tomorrow. Well, no, what you need to do is have more alcohol for breakfast and then that'll, you know, that'll keep you ticking over for the rest of the day. And we run it with some mimosas or Bloody Marys? Oh, need a drink, proper alcohol. Just jump right into it. All right. Not even nursing it. Yeah, Just straight to the bourbon.

Man, Jesus. But man, so I mean, this one's going to be a little different since you're more of a music guy than a conflict journalist or an intelligence analyst. So I think the big elephant in the room before anything is popular front and your work with them. So what is the story with how you get involved, how your relationship with Jake, hand or hand those guys? So I've been friends with Jake. So I saw one at the door. Fuck off. Sorry. I've been friends with Jake since I was, I want to say 13 years old. I've been friends with Jake since I was, I want to say 13 years old. Um, we grew up in a similar part of the country. Um, he's a little bit older than me. I think he was 16 when I started hanging around with him. I was 13.

We had a similar sort of group of friends. We met each other through, um, like mutual friends and just always like just kind of got along and just been friends. And then when he started working for Vice, well sorry, stopped working for Vice, he mentioned to me that he was going to be doing his own podcast, his own, he didn't even know what it was going to be at the time. It was going to be called Popular Front. There were some other names that got bounced around. And he was making music at the time anyway, just messing around just as a hobby. And I said, well, if you want any music, you know, you can, you can use some of mine.

And that's kind of how I got involved with it. Really like the diversity when it comes to the, the work you do with the, the documentaries, like Plastic Defense, then the latest one with the Frontline Hooligan. It's really interesting to see how you just incorporate almost like, I may not say a proper film soundtrack, but the music complements the location very well. And so it's like you're doing your homework. Well, it's weird, you know, because I never Well, it's weird, you know, because I never set out to make anything in particular. Jake will tell me, we're going to Ukraine, for example, and he's like, we're going to do a documentary, it's going to be this long. And every now and then he might say, can you make me something that sounds like X or Y, or he'll show me a song that he likes and say, can you make something similar to that? But generally I just like, oh, it's going to be a Ukraine documentary. I'll Google like Ukrainian

folk music and look for samples in that. And then just, just mess around. And, you know, for each documentary that people see, they might hear three tracks, four tracks, sometimes a little bit more, but I'd probably make about 20 or 30 30 and then they just get like cherry picked for whatever fits you know the the scenes that make the documentary you know what I mean? Gotcha so is that just you and him together saying this one compliments the scene or is it it doesn't give you free reign? Sometimes it's like you like cut something together and then you'll like say oh have you got anything that fits this and then I'll send a couple of something together and then you'll like say, Oh, have you got anything that fits this? And then I'll, I'll send a couple of beats over and then we'll, we'll

try it, see what works. Sometimes it's literally just I've made, you know, 10, 15 songs and then himself and whoever else is working on the documentary or pick them, pick what goes where, you know what I mean? I tend not to, I try not to get too involved in like any of that. One, because I'm not very good at that sort of stuff anyway, but also like music is a hobby for me and making music is a hobby for me and I don't want it to become a job. Like it's my zen at the end of the day when I come home from work. So the last thing I want is to, you know, feel any pressure on making, making music, if that makes sense. That makes perfect sense.

It's like most people go, oh, if you do something you love, you'll never work a day in your life, but you seem to just want to do that. I don't even know what you do for your day job or anything, but I think everybody has that kind of like niche area where they're like, if I get put into a corner and have to do this for a living, I'm going to hate it. So exactly. Like, so I mean, I work, I'm not saying who I work for anything, but I work in cyber security and I like computers before I did it for a job now I get home and the only reason I turn a computer on is to make music you know I do not want to deal with it and the last thing I want this for that to happen with music don't get me wrong like if someone wants to

pay me 10 million pounds a year to make music I'm more than happy to do it but like just putting the feelers out there but um but no I couldn't I couldn't do it as a job. So your day job allows you to travel a lot don't they? I saw you were in the States a little while ago. Yeah so I travel a fair amount not so much since uh COVID but I get to go, you know, I've been to the US a few times, I get to go around Europe a little bit, a little bit of travel in Asia. Again, that's another thing, it's like people are like, oh, it must be so like glamorous, glorious to travel for work.

It's like, mate, it's really not. It sounds cool when you don't do it, but when you have to get up at 2 a.m. on a Monday morning to get to the airport, to catch three planes, to get to a meeting that could probably be done on Zoom, then fly back the same day and then be in the office the next day, it's not glamorous, believe me. It's physically exhausting getting up. And especially if you do it for weeks on end where you're at your house for a week and you're in the office and then you go to say

like a different state or a different area in the country and then to come back for a week. And then you do it again. And then I did that earlier this year. I spent two months hopping across the US and by, it was from like late February to early May and I was just I was tired I was like physically drained of yeah moving because you can't get comfortable because you can't you don't have that frame of I can go home and sit down and do nothing

it's going to a hotel and I'm just no one's comfortable at a hotel so exactly like and there's cool things that will come from it. Like you get to meet people or whatever, but you know, meeting people's overrated as well. You know, some, sometimes you just want to switch off and when you're traveling for work, you can't do that. You're in work mode the whole time. It's yes, that's pretty much, this was kind of, I don't want to say counter counter of productive or anything about working from home because, excuse me, it's almost like you're always in work mode because it's not like you actually leave your home and you go to the office and you're like, all right, I'm here, I'm actually, it's time

to work. And then you work your eight hour days or whatever. And you go home. It's my office is my desk is five feet away from my bed. So it's you kind of stuck in that quasi stress state. Exactly. And like when, especially like if I'm in the States or whatever, if I fly over that way, the shit that I've got, can I swear on this podcast? Where you want it. Cool. The shit I've got to do like during the day because of the time difference, you know, everyone's kind of already been working before I even woke up.

So my mornings are spent catching up with stuff that I've normally got to do. Then I've got to spend my whole day doing my work as well. So like you end up working longer and it's just not fun. Let's say you do a full eight hour day and you're traveling. Do you just go to a hotel if you're out of town and just pop on the computer and just make some beats or you're just walking down the street going like, Oh, that sounds pretty cool. Let me just incorporate that real quick and put a pin in that thought.

Sometimes. Sometimes. Yeah. You know, a lot of the frontline hooligan soundtrack was made without like all my normal stuff. I made it on my work laptop. So I made some of the tracks that were in the frontline hooligan soundtrack on the, on a trip to, I can't even remember what city I was in. I was in the UK but I was basically staying over for a week. I was on a training course and yeah so our training

course would always finish early about 3.30 in the afternoon. I would always have a late lunch and then I'd go back to the hotel for a few hours make some beats go and get dinner go back to the hotel make some more beats and I think three of the six that are on the front line hooligan soundtrack were made in that hotel so that hotel was like a little piece of popular front history. Very nice. Give a certain program you like to run with or do you like to diversify them? So it's like a running kind of meme like within like some of the people that work in Popular Front. I make all of the Popular Front music with a 2010 demo version of FL Studio. Very strange. Yeah, but yeah, I know it's strange. So the reason I do it is because I have a bit of like, like ADHD. So I can't, I never like go back to a project.

So I like, I like to just start something and finish it in, you know, as short a time as possible, then move on. That sounds like the Ian Fleming way of writing where he would never proofread, he would just write him and he's like, Oh, I just finished Casino Royale in three weeks. It was just, that's it. Yeah. Not that I'm comparing myself to Ian Fleming, but you know, like,

I like to just, just get it out of the way. Um, if I, if I, if I have to go back to something and carry on working on it, but it's not going to sound good good I'll end up ruining it like and the moment passes you know it's like I'll be screwing around with samples and and you know synthesizers whatever it I'll come up with something I think oh that's great if I spend too long on it I'll ruin it and I'll just have to scrap it. Yeah, so I don't want to be doing that. So I use a demo version of FL Studio. I use free sample packs for drum sounds that I find on Reddit, reddit.r slash drum kits,

if anyone wants to, you know, do what I do. You know, free sample packs that people put together and that you can download for your kick drums and snares and hi-hats and all that sort of stuff. I use free VSTs for synthesizer sounds so I've got it open at the moment. I can tell you exactly what I use I've got it open at the moment. I can tell you exactly what I use If my computer decides to wake up anyway, yeah, I use free free everything pretty much. The only thing I've paid for To do music is I paid for a VST. That's like a virtual synthesizer Called Omnisphere And Yeah, but other than that, it's all freebies.

Not that we wouldn't pay for it or not that I wouldn't pay for it. So like Jake said, well, anything you want to buy to do music for the podcast, we'll buy it. But if we don't need to buy it, then I don't want any money spent on it. It's remarkably smart considering how crisp and actually dialed in the sound is. I wouldn't have guessed that it was from a demo 12 years ago. Because even listening to the track you put out yesterday, what was it? Epstein's favorite H? I was like, this is good. It's like, yes. Yeah. I mean, I jump on SoundCloud periodically and I'm like,

I see what Sam's up to. Yeah. So I must apologize to anyone who actually likes my music because I'm very bad at uploading stuff. Genuinely, I'm just a bit lazy. So I don't upload as frequently as I'd like. Or some other people might like. Every now and then there'll be something I'll make that will be used by Popular Front or H11, which is something else. Or someone else. Just to put a pin in the conversation, what is H11? is something else or someone else. Just like I put a pin in the conversation. What is age alone?

Oh, so that is a production company organization. I don't fully know the best way to describe it, but it's something that there's a production company that Jake started a while ago. I just thought it was in your Instagram bio and I haven't seen anything regarding the topic since it kind of dropped. So I just, yeah, I mean, just to keep everyone dialed in what's going on there. But yeah, yeah. So again, it's one of those things I can't speak on it too much because I don't run it. I am genuinely just the music man.

Me and Jake are friends, but when it comes to Popular Front and that, it's just, I do the music. I don't do too much else. I don't really have much creative input beyond that. My other main role is upsetting people in the Popular Front Discord. Very nice. If they offered you like a, hey, we're going to, I don't know, France for two days, would you want to go? Would you just jump on it? Or you want to keep on the same process because it's tried and true? I think I would keep the same process because there would be no utility in me going to France or Ukraine or wherever. Some of the people involved in documentaries, I do get to, I won't say get to know them, but I speak to them on Instagram or whatever, whether that's a subject or a documentary or people to help with it.

whether that's a subject or a documentary or people to help with it. Um, and people in like, I guess what you want to call like popular front sphere, if that's the words, um, I will, I will like help them with stuff if they want music or whatever. Um, but yeah, there'll be no utility amigo and I'm not a journalist. I don't, I don't have that creative side to me. Um, yeah, I, I don't get me wrong. I'm very interested in it. And some of these places I would love to go and experience, but at

the same time I'll be a hindrance, not help. So within the instant, not Instagram, the like soundtrack community, do you ever follow like orangey from a few years ago or or Brian Ellis because they seem to also do the same thing. Just like what are you kind of, I don't know, what are you a fan of? It sounds weird, but I don't really like them. You're going to say everything? Stop responding? No, no, no, no. I genuinely, I don't tend to like the music I make, if that makes sense. I don't really listen to much electronic music. I don't really listen to like, like soundtrack type music. I just like my music of choice is black metal. You know, I like black metal. I like, like, metal. Yeah, stuff stuff like that. You know, things I don't make,

I mean, I do make them, I don't put them out there. But yeah, I'd say one of the bigger like inspirations musically would probably be to pick one to be honest. Maybe... You know the top five where it's like your Spotify top five from the last 24 hours that probably is a pretty good... Yeah, so my Spotify top five from the last 24 hours would be really weird. So I've been listening to a lot of the Rina Harvey band. My missus put me onto it. It's like kind of like Irish folk type

music. Then Bersim, I'd listened to Bellus the album yesterday. There's another guy I've been listening to a lot of recently, a Ghanian drill rapper called Black Sheriff. Really, really cool music. It's, you know, it's drill. I mean, drill is pretty standard, but yeah, he's really good at it. Yeah, and then other than that, I mean, as far as like individual musical, like role models or whatever are concerned, I don't really have any, you know, pretty boring response, I'm afraid. But you know, it's, you know, I do like a lot of different music, and maybe I do pull some inspirations from some of it.

But it's hard to really hard to really identify any. One of the ones I can identify actually thinking about it is the frontline hooligan soundtrack, a couple of the tracks on it. I was really inspired by an artist called Nate No Face. That's N8 No Face. And yeah, so he does some like cool, I don't even know what you would call it, like synth punk, post punk stuff. It's really, really cool. I remember interested in almost like localized music

that comes out of like certain parts of the globe where it's like, like Polish gypsy music or like Indian kind of like quasi folk. Because I know you might have already seen this but like a couple years ago, Johnny Greenwood, the guitar player from Radiohead went to India for like a month and made Junun. And it was fantastic of those where it's like, yeah, this guy makes a there will be blood soundtrack, the guitars for OK Computer and always hanging out in India going full Beatle. So it's Yeah, I love stuff like that. I mean, I love folk music.

A big kind of interest of mine for a while has been Chechen folk music, like Les Ginkga music, the dance that they do, I like some of that, not the newer electronic stuff, but sort of the old accordion and a hand drum, Les Ginkgo music, but also kind of more related to what I do, I suppose, was you had a lot of Chechen folk singers during the first Chechen war. And to a lesser extent, the second one, um, who really put out some amazing music. Um, I'm going to butcher their names, but you've got the likes of, uh, Tim or Mutsa Riav, you've got, uh, Imam Alim Sultan of, um, and they did kind of like acoustic, angry, acoustic music, you know, where they're, they're shouting about the war and it's just, it's something else.

You don't really get music like that in any other scenario than either conflict or hardship, which is interesting to me. Especially in the United States, like Vietnam has a soundtrack. Everyone just goes like, Oh yeah, CCR that's the Vietnam soundtrack. And so kind of like more on my side of the house where you're doing conflict reporting and analysis and you got to really dial it into, instead of talking about how there was an explosion at fruit loops factory and you know, Chechnya, you're going to go, well, why, and then you have to listen to the, like, what are the people watching TV? What they listen to?

Yeah. You know, what kind of books, what literature did they read? Put yourselves in their shoes to understand the reasoning. And gone to my head, music's probably the best one because anyone could grab a guitar with three strings. You don't even need all six and you can make some music with that. And then it really just latch on to kind of like the cultural identity of any certain conflict. Because if we look at like, I'm gonna start East, that's a Russian, like it's a Russian esque,

Cold War music page on YouTube, which is kind of collects all these like really, really rough recordings of like Soviet era folk songs. But they're all from most of them are from the Afghan War. And so you're like, wow, yeah, that conflict was insane. And if you read that in comparison with a book like Ziggy Boys, which is a collection of them are from the Afghan war. And so you're like, wow, yeah, that conflict was insane. And if you read that in comparison with the book like Zinky boys, which is a collection of diaries from all these soldiers and mothers who were in the Cheshman or the Afghan war, it's, it's putting yourselves in their shoes to better understand the situation. So then if you watch something like the war in Ukraine, you're going, yeah,

they're trying to, it's like the American Vietnam after like the Gulf war. It's like, they're trying to, it's just easier to Vietnam after like the Gulf War. It's like they're trying to it's just easier to understand what's going on and yeah, something like Chessian folk music, like everyone goes Chessians are hard motherfuckers and you go, well, what do they listen to? You're like, I would not have guessed. Exactly. Yeah, you know, they're like the hardest nation on the planet. Yeah, they kind of that war music was like a guy singing about pain with an acoustic guitar. It's, it's, it's kind of incongruent. But you make you raise an important point though, but music, as well as like being a way to explain and understand war and conflict and people who

are involved in it's like, I think not enough is written about how it's like it drives it as well. So like the sort of Chechen songs that I'm referring to, they were like, they really drove morale for Chechen soldiers and they really drove down morale for Russian soldiers during the like really brutal invasion in Chechnya but also I mean you'd probably get a smack or stabbed by them for saying it's music but like the likes of like Islamist Nasheed you know for people who don't know like religious chants very musical very very musical, very, like, you know, they've got a sound that is unique and hard and almost, I genuinely, some of it reminds me of like metal and the in its cadences and stuff like that. And I genuinely curious as to like, there's got to be like some, you know, kid out there fighting with like HTS or ISIS or whatever. It's like, one of the primary

reasons he did it was because he had this really banging Nashi, you know, when he thought, God, that sounds cool, you know, and it's almost a, yeah, exactly. It's almost an abstract thought to think about today because, you know, there's just a few songs and everyone, it's kind of like a cultural melting pot of everyone listens to this music. But if we dial it back 200 years ago, post Napoleonic War, those music, the music pieces that were written for like regimental marches and whatnot are still incorporated in militaries of Europe today. And so they're just like, Hey, you know, it's just that it's that cultural identity of what's going forward. And then you can look at something like,

you know, the world war one, those very just depressing songs about being in the trenches were being sung by the soldiers who were the grandsons of the First World War and the Second World War in France, they're like, I'm pretty sure my dad was here, like, 20 years ago. So it's like, it's just keeping that identity moving forward. And yeah, and yeah, just as a rev. So militarily speaking, it's, oh, yeah, no worries. Like militarily speaking, it's, everyone kind of has to have something to latch on to because in the military, it's a unit. And so if you're an insurgent or a, and a line company in the British Army, or, you know, freedom fighter, Burma, you're,

you're like, we need a soundtrack, we need everyone to go, if you hear this, you know, who's this with. So, yeah, that's it. And there's another like, there's something it's kind of taboo to say, but there is, I mean, war, don't get me wrong, when I say this war is awful war, it's horrible, it shouldn't happen. But there is something cool about war. And it's not very, it's not very like pc in many ways to say that you know the some stuff about war is cool you know there's like actions there's camaraderie there is you know you get to blow shit up sometimes and you know there's a lot of awful bits as well but but the

cool shit needs a soundtrack and the cool shit has a soundtrack. And the cool shit has a soundtrack. You know, I remember like the early days of YouTube when, you know, the Iraq War was at its height. And every other like YouTube video would be some like compilation of airstrikes and raids on houses. With like dead drowning pool, let the bodies hit the floor in the background. And, you know, I don't think enough attention is really given to that. So compliments how the country is viewed internationally, because if you listen to Hino with Victor Stoik, you're going, wow, this music's depressing. This is probably what Russians are. And it just compliments like a, the stereotype that's been built up around

Russians, I guess. And then from there, you could just go like, excuse me, but it just helps complement what's going on. So if you listen to a very generic action movie and the Americans walk in the room, it's just going to be metal and guitars. And then if it goes over to are you playing a video game? I think a good, good example is and it's one of my favorites, the call of duty world out war soundtrack.

It's so diverse because it's Eastern Europe has this one sound and it complements what everyone would suspect Eastern Europe would sound like, but it tweaks it a little bit. But then when it comes to the Americans, it's more like heroic and triumphant, but then it goes to Japan and it sounds almost alien because it's like in the shoes of those Marines in the Pacific in the game you're playing, they had no idea they were in an alien world. So then that music is kind of complementing the idea of it's strange. And then it's also like the final days of the or the final campaign missions where you're in Berlin and it's just the music's not triumphant at all. It's like that's just the most grotesque in your face, six string or 12 string guitar. It's like, yeah, doom's really cool. But if well, that word did that first and it's just not in your face, aggressive. It's, it's horrific. And it's like talking about cultural stereotypes and association with music. I think the best way to associate it today is like video games and TV, because like, Hey, Americans are always going to

be like Let the body hit the floor for watching a movie about Iraq yeah, yeah, exactly and it was just and I don't maybe That's a bad example because it's kind of in bad taste like, you know rolling around Iraq sing let the bodies hit the floor But you know, there is something that I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing that you know America has this kind of I don't even it's hard to even articulate but you've got a good example actually I was watching a YouTube video yesterday and it was

of I think it's called GBRS group. It's like they're like X Navy Seals and they do all this like tactical stuff now and like it was like a compilation and it was they had the Doom soundtrack in the background and it's like yeah this fit it makes total sense that these guys these big fucking hulking muscle bound ex Navy SEALs would be clearing rooms and running through the woods with machine guns to the doom soundtrack. But if you had like a group of Taliban doing that, you'd be like, what the fuck? This doesn't work. This doesn't make sense. Exactly. And which brings me back to the opening conversation of associating the music with say the art that it's being attached to,

where it's like frontline hooligan has more of like an Eastern European sound, because if it was, if it was, you know, flutes and symphonies, you're like, this doesn't really make any sense. Why is this over overlaid on top of, you know, Mary myriad of things. So... Yeah, absolutely. And there is a kind of a weird kind of like side note to that. The 3D printed... I can't even remember what the documentary is called now. The JSTAR documentary. Plastic Defense, that's the one, thank you.

I can't believe I didn't know that. Plastic Defense, that's the one, thank you. I can't believe I didn't know that. Um, Plastic Defense, um, some of the sounds, uh, some of the songs that were used in that, uh, I actually ended up taking samples from, uh, a Creality Ender 3 printer, um, which is what, uh, Jay Stark was using to make his guns. Rest in peace. Um, yeah. So like like it was just like weird little background noises and that one, you know, 3D printing guns, it's very like futuristic cyber kind of, you know, vibe. So it was like I sampled like old PlayStation one loading screen sounds and uh,

quake sounds and all sorts of stuff. Just because, um, you know, what Jay start was doing, he, he, it was, it wasn't a kind of a war documentary. It wasn't about conflict. It was philosophical for him and the world that he grew up in. He grew up with video games. He grew up with, you know, stuff like that. So that's what the soundtrack had to incorporate. I love that documentary. It's really good. It's so good. Is that the one that was on a, I think Joe Rogan talked about it a few times, I know at least once it was brought up and, uh, it's just cool to see that I'm pretty sure don't quote me a hundred percent on it, but I'm pretty

sure it popped up once over the last, you know, within the last several years, cause he does six hour podcasts twice a day. So couldn't tell you what, but, but yeah, man. It was good. Yeah. Big picture. So I know you said you don't want to do this for a living, but do you have any like personal side projects you're trying to like dive into or I wouldn't go so far as to say side projects. I've started making these little music videos to put on Instagram, just for something to do. I've got all these beats, all these little bits of music that are never going to get used by Popular Front or anyone else for that matter.

So I've got to do something with them. So I've just started screwing around with video editing a little bit and just grabbing some scenes from documentaries, some news clips and all that and putting music to them. That's just a hobby. Then I've got a project I've been working on on and off for a couple of years now which is a black metal project. I don't... So are you the one screaming or you're gonna hire somebody? There is no decision yet on who's gonna be screaming. It probably won't be me, you know, I've got a nice pretty voice I don't want to keep it that way and Through Popular Front we're doing a limited release on a tape release of just a selection of songs, some from the soundtracks, some new tracks that are unreleased and are only going to be available on the tape. That's coming soon. My understanding is that we've had like a test copy of it and it's cool, it's very niche but it's cool and that'll hopefully be coming soon, it's going to be pretty limited I think, I don't know how many copies there's going

to be but there's not going to be many and yeah, other than that related to Popular Front, I mean I'm just going to keep lying in my bed in the evening, making music. Yeah, man, you're killing it so far. Just keep it up. It would be really cool to see the Black Metal Side project actually roll out and get some viewership. That'd be based on everything you've done so far, it's probably going to be good. So I guess segueing into, I guess, Away from Popular Front and whatnot, it's, have you ever listened to like post-rock at all or progressives? Post-progressive.

So post-rock, I would, I used to like bands like God is an astronaut. Um, stuff, stuff like that. Why? Who? Sorry. Mogwai. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Mogwai. Yeah. They've got a great song called Kody. But yeah, some post rock. I like some like shoe gay stuff. What was the other, who was the post rock band who did the soundtrack for 28 days later? Well, God, God speed you Black Emperor. That's the one. Yeah. I'm a huge fan of that album.

Yeah, I feel like 25 minutes. Just listen to one song. Yes, but it's a good 25 minutes. If you're like driving at night, like there's no one else around, that is the soundtrack for it. That is definitely the soundtrack for it. The size definitely the soundtrack. If you definitely want to go on a run and test your, uh, your endurance, just put on, uh, in the home and a heartbeat from 20 days later and just kind of just one pretend the zombies behind you. Oh, no. So I've, um, like I don't like lift weights or anything, but I do like calisthenics.

And every couple of days I do a Burpees routine. And when I do my Burpees routine, like I've been trying to find like the best, like soundtrack for it. That's the easiest way I can describe it and The best I've found so far like sort of sort of right amount of anger and the right speed is Nate no face don't dial 9-1-1 It's like it's weird like post-punk synthpunk

Screaming angry mess of music, but it music but it's not very long it's only it's a quick EP it's only about 10 minutes or so but you know temp I can guarantee you 10 minutes non-stop burpees is killer you're good for the day good for the week to be honest. Burpees are their own beast. I would rather do an elliptical of the Jacobs ladder for an hour instead of doing burpees for 10 minutes. Me too, but you know, I'm training for if I ever go to prison.

I'm training for if I ever go to prison. So... I mean, just... We've still got like 20 minutes here. I guess, what's your background? What's your family in the military, anything like that? So, I am from the East Midlands of England. Pretty dreary place, to be honest. All those beautiful weather out at the moment. Yeah, so, like, kind of working-class background, both my mum and dad, factory workers. My grandfather on my mum's side was in the Navy. He ended up in military prison. I don't know the full story, something about kicking the shit out of an officer.

Then I had no one else really in the military in my family other than my uncle Georgie he was in the uh Australian Air Force um never really had any kind of I didn't have a hard upbringing you know have both parents who weren't rich who weren't poor it's kind of a normal upbringing. I never really wanted to go into the military or anything. I always kind of wanted to be like a pilot when I was younger, always liked planes. You know, considered going into RAF, decided against it. And yeah, there's kind of, sometimes I feel like I picked the wrong dream and maybe should have pursued that but Not the way through time. I just the what ifs, you know Yeah. Yeah, I know. No, I'm not saying I regret anything But yeah, yeah, it would have been it would have been cool You know, you know zipping through valleys in a fighter plane, but you know, that's what that's what video games are for

But no, no that is kind of my My background really I've always been into music My granddad on my dad's side was in a quite a well-known band Called the size 7 group in the 60s They like recorded at Abbey Road and stuff. Yeah, a couple of like minor celebrities of for friends. They never really took off the story I heard was the band was supposed to go on a European tour to support another band from the UK. But two or three of the guys who are in the band,

their parents wouldn't let them go because they're supposed to go to Germany. And the parents are just like, no, fuck that. You're not going to Germany. Don't know why. But yeah, so that was kind of the end of the band. They stayed together, did some local gigs and then that was it really. But my uncle, my dad's brother, he was quite musical, he's very musical as well. He's quite severely disabled now unfortunately so he can't play his instrument of choice which was keyboard. But yeah, so I spent a lot of time with him and my grandfather when I was younger, playing keyboards, playing guitars and stuff. And that's where the music comes from really, is those two.

My dad always encouraged it as well. He was, you know, he bought me a guitar. He bought me keyboards. God love him. He even bought me a drum kit. The idiot. He had to put up with that for quite a while. God love him. He even bought me a drum kit. The idiot. He had to put up with that for quite a while. God love him. Yeah. He, he, he, he, he, he, he always encouraged me, which

was cool. Uh, my mom as well, of course, always encouraged me. And have you ever heard of me now? Oh yeah. Yeah, man, you're doing, like I said, exceptionally well. And have you ever heard of mental association when it comes to like associating music with Alzheimer's patients to kind of like hit that subconscious note, kind of like get them to remember? I'm swear like a way to calm, calm, like calm the mind to, you know, to like, because my understanding of Alzheimer's was like, is it like satiates that part of their brain that is like, you know, going back and remembering things. Like, and it gives it gives them the ability to retain you in for me or what supposedly gives them the ability to retain your information.

Yeah. I've read up about that. Um, it's always a, it's a, I'll go ahead. No, I was just gonna say a friend of mine actually is, um, she's looking into, uh, studying, what's it, it's like music therapy for people you know people with like trauma and stuff um children especially um they can get a lot out of you know not only listening to music but making music um and it's like music-based health intervention um she's looking into doing that um music based health intervention. She's looking into doing that. And yeah, I mean, it's a,

it's a, this kind of obviously music's just become background noise for people. And that's a shame because it is, it's, it's an important part of who we are as people. The music we listen to and making music and joining in with music as well I think is very important. It's something that's lost in the modern world I think is that element of sitting around with people you know, someone's got an instrument, everyone else singing along. It doesn't happen nearly enough because of the way modern music is. I think we need more of it. That was loopy. And just touching on what we talked about earlier with Chechen war songs or Vietnam war songs, that helps.

Music builds camaraderie between people and creates single units and regardless if it's a nuclear family in Georgia or an insurgent group in Belarus, the music helps build that cultural identity or like this is ours. And I was reading into it recently how the idea of subcultures seem to have died off because the world, the world is so integrated, there's so much hand over hand that there's no, it's really difficult to find like a niche corner where people can just identify with because everyone listens to, like you said, it's all in the background, it's not really a dedicated base, like in the punts in the

seventies and the eighties, that was a subculture, but then today everyone just goes like, Oh yeah, I in the background it's not really a dedicated base like in the punts in the 70s and the 80s that was a subculture but then today everyone just goes like oh yeah I like the clash they're cool that's yeah yeah yeah you don't dedicate your life to anything anymore the way people used to like it used to be like you know certainly when I was young uh like when I was like in school and that if you listen to metal, you were part of the metal crowd. If you listen to rap music, you were part of the rap crowd. Like, you know, if you listen to pop music, you're part of like the pop crowd, you know, and everyone kind of had that niche, you know, that's got it's got its downsides, you know, it also helps build that, that camaraderie between like, hey, you know, you're in the school

days or in the world, you're going, well, I listened to a lot of, let's say black metal, you're like, it's kind of like dialed down. But then if you find other people that listen to it, you're like, from there, you can just start building on like, have you heard this guy, have you heard these guys? Oh, this is their influences. This is what they read. And then just builds the identity. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'm fortunate, black metal is an awful example because there's so much shit in that subculture.

It's a pretty awful subculture. You know, obviously it's a lot better now. Punk is also a really bad example. Yeah, I suppose, yeah. I mean, every music subculture's got his shit heads, I suppose, but I think black metal, the got to like hold your nose when you listen to it and pretend it's not as awful. You know if you like the music that is if you don't like the music you're lucky. But yeah yeah oh I've got a question for you actually I responded to your poll about who I thought was going to win versus Russia versus Ukraine what What's your opinion?

It's changed since the war started. Based on that tactically, strategically thinking, you have 72 hours when you commit your offensive to gain as much territory as possible to kind of shock the enemy into buckling, you know, the conflict Ukrainians who spent eight years getting ready, but it's like they didn't really get ready. And it looked like the Russians were winning. But then after a week, there was the convoy north of Kiev, there was no ground being taken and the anti-tank weapons and the anti-aircraft weapons were working. And I thought, oh, maybe Ukraine's actually winning. Maybe they will win. But today it's just speaking to people I know in Ukraine and looking at a big picture I wrote about it the other day. But I'm pretty sure the Russians are going to win, not anytime soon, but it's just going to be a slow slugfest because in terms of population, the

Russians outnumber maybe five to one. You could have mobilization of the entire Ukrainian population, but at that point without any trading, it's just, you know, scared individuals with clubs, because if they don't have any ammo, you just got an expensive club. It's essentially what it is. And then big picture, there's a lot that's going into this, but the Russians are almost fighting for their own sense of survival because they started off in 1991 after the Soviet Union collapse with like 149 million people. And by 2000, there was like 145. And then by 2010, there was 143 and their population is a dying off because the very top heavy age wise. So are the Ukrainians, but also they don't have kids. And you could say that because hey, the economic situation is very bad. And the only people that seem to make money either a live in cultural centers like Moscow or St. Petersburg, but also

the farmers who contribute to the world's distribution of grain and fertilizer and whatnot. They're also dying off because being a farmer is not a very attractive job. And especially in Russia, where it's such a vast country. And so no one's actively pursuing the idea of like, Hey, let's go make food. So the population is just dying off rapidly. And they had the brain drain in the 90s. After the wall came down, they went, Oh, I'm just, you know, I'm an artist, I'm going to go live in Paris, or I'm a banker, I'm going to go live in New York. And so they lost a lot of their educated class. And so now it's just like a bunch of either a kids who have been indoctrinated for 20 years since Putin or 22 years since Putin became president, which is very similar to like Hitler taking over the Germans where the population of the youth were very like, yes, this is the way. And then the older population who either a just don't have the money to say no, they don't have the... Essentially, they're just putting this really tough corner in the way the

world is working globally. Global warming is really ruining the crop capabilities. The agricultural centers are shrinking and all the farmers are dying. Guess who has a lot of farms and a lot of good land? Ukraine. Then in July last year, Putin wrote an article called like a 5,000 word essay called, I'm the cultural unity of Ukrainians and Russians and said, hey, these are ours, we are one people, we're all Slavs, get over it, I'm coming to take this.

If you just look at the migration pattern of all the Russians from the central Russian federation, they're now all along the eastern or the western border of Europe. And they're all taught for 20 years or 50 years that Ukraine is theirs. And so the Ukrainians can say all the while that they don't want to be Ukrainian or Russian, but they better, they have to fight for it. And so all of their educated or not educated, all their trained military personnel from eight years of rotations with the US Marines and the Brit-Paras, they're dying. And so the Ukrainians are doing mass conscription, but like I said, without any proper training and corruption is really bad on both sides.

So if someone could say like, oh, you know, Ukraine's corrupt, but if they're outnumbered five to one, so it's corruption, Ukraine's bad, it's five times worse in Russia. But it's almost like that human wall application where the Russians can just keep throwing people out until Ukraine almost buckles because US midterms are coming up and both sides in the US are going, do we even need to support Ukraine anymore? Because, and so at first you're like, oh, stand with Ukraine for international support. And then after a while, they're going, oh, we get all our food from Russia. Hey, can we end this war right now? Ukraine, just give him what he wants. And so it's not a very easy answer.

It's not very easy to say like, yes, this is what's going to happen because it changes every single day. And the way that the Russians are strong arming Europe with the oil exports where Germany said they're going to wean themselves off, but then are buying more than anybody else in history. And they're also buying the oil reserves and securing those in Africa, which go into Europe and just going like, Hey, the Americans have a lot of, you know, NATO has bases in Egypt, Ethiopia, wherever all these countries, they're also the top 10 countries that rely on imported food. So the Russians could just go, Oh, I'm just going to cut off food for there. And I'm going to mine the black sea and I'm not going to play nice with Turkey. So it would create like a second front for the NATO and EU to kind of redirect their focus into keeping

North Africa and the Middle East from revolting and going to civil unrest. And so you don't want that because that's where another additional echelon of oil comes from. And so I think the Russians are playing 5D chess. And I think a lot of people underestimate the fact that the Russians are Russians. And I do believe that they did too. But it's one of those things. It's like, I don't see, I don't see Ukraine. I don't mind. I know fuck all about the military. I don't see Ukraine winning militarily like I They put up a far bigger fight when this all kicked off. I thought you know, the Russian military is gonna roll into key If they're gonna take every city

Subject the population to like, you know being a Russian like obviously that didn't happen and I Think Ukraine put up a far bigger fight than the even the US expected and Oh, clearly do not exist. It's like, it's like crazy. Everyone's worried about these like, futuristic tanks and now they're rolling out t 62 is it's insane. We won't have the tractor works in salingrad anymore. They just can't keep pulling these things out. But speaking of in terms of population, because I started thinking about that, like all the Russian population, they're dying off, you know, everyone, they're indoctrinated. And even though they're the estimate that came out of Ukraine ticket as well, they're pretty much fluffing numbers, but they said 40,000 Russians have been killed. That's insane. And that's a large majority of the Russian

military age population. But a day after that report came out, the Kremlin went, every Ukrainian is now available for Russian citizenship. So they intend to at least A, keep everything in Donbass. There's no way in hell that Ukrainians are getting Crimea back. That's just, there's no way it's happening. No, it's a fortress. The Russians put eight years worth of everything they had to make sure that was a secure facility. Looking back until like the Crimea war with the Brits and the French and the Turks invaded Russia to stop them from building their naval seaport. The French sent, I want to say 350,000 soldiers to take Crimea and they lost 150,000 and it's just a fortress. And in World War II, the bloodiest battle wasn't in, and that has something to do with

dysentery and poor logistics and whatnot, but combat was insane. And then in World War II, a lot of people go, oh, the Battle of the Bulge was a really bloody battle or Stalingrad was a bloody battle. The most intense was in Crimea because once you get behind that barrier, the invader has to go 10 to one odds to shoot south and actually secure the, or the, the little peninsula there. And the Ukrainians do not have the means and the Russians secure Kyrgyzstan very quickly because that's where the water flows into Crimea and whatnot. But there is that counter offensive. What was that? I was just going to say like it kind of kind of changed the topic slightly. Do you think there are many legs to this argument about Russia's S-400 being useless?

I don't know if you've seen this. There's a lot of speculation about the High Mars being so good that the S-400 can't intercept them and the heads are going to roll. So I wouldn't say it's useless, but based on military doctrine, the West is very decentralized. So you and I are sitting in an S-400, we see a rocket, we can shoot it down, that's it. But the Russian military is very top heavy. So you and I on an S-400 go, there's an impact, there's a rocket inbound, then you've got to call our boss and then that guy's boss and that guy's boss. And that's the Western military district going, okay, shoot it down. And so they don't have the retaliation time, which is not, it's not the beneficial at all. It's not a good doctrine, but also a lot of their experienced troops got killed. So they're just throwing all those like the new conscripts and the new guys

that are joining to go man these. And so it's just, they don't have any education on the system itself. And then for high Mars, it's, it's pretty simple. I mean, you get trained up in the UK and then they come back and they're like, I know how to man these. So yeah. And high Mars are no joke. Yeah. It's just that I remember scrolling a couple of days ago through Twitter or Instagram or

whatever it was. And it was basically a post basically talking about how the S 400 has proven incapable of intercepting high mars. And how it was likely that heads were going to roll. Uh, the, whoever, I can't remember the name of the factory that actually manufactures the S 400, uh, but, uh, I don't have enough experience on the S 400 to give like an educated answer, but I just know that the high Mar is very, very good. It's a very good tool. an educated answer, but I just know that the Highmar is very, very good. It's a very good tool.

And if that is the actual outcome, then the Russians better speed up their little operation because from what I've seen on like Institute study of war and whatnot, that the Ukrainian military is so stretched thin along the border in Donbass that they're throwing light infantry against tank columns. And you can say, Oh, well, they have anti-tank weapons. You only have so many vessels. And so once a hole gets opened up, they could just shoot south and like encircled Ukrainians and have another Mariupol on our hands. So there's a lot going into this and it's not just kinetic force on force. It's, Oh, do you want Africa to start? Do you want the Middle East to go into revolution? Oh, the Americans farmers are not getting, you know, Americans are not getting food. Western Europe's not getting oil. China's also expanding. It's,

it's almost like the world is moving into a new direction from the post Soviet post cold war era where it's pretty conventional. We're like play nice, I'll play nice. It's internationally, it's like the society's regression. I don't understand, like the Russian, there's like a, from my understanding of it and like what I've read, there's kind of a push on the part of Russia to kind of like bifurcate the world. this kind of push on the part of Russia to kind of like bifurcate the world. Like we don't, they want to live in kind of this post Western order world, but a post Western order world for Russia, they aren't going to be top of the totem pole in their half of the world. It's going to be China.

Like it's going to be India. It's like, it's like, so you're caught, they're basically cutting off their nose to spite their face. Like from my perspective, you know, sitting here comfortably, you know, in England, it, it, it makes zero sense to me. Yeah. It's, it's, it's a big country. You've got a lot of natural resources, but you know, the industrial base sucks. Oh, 100% going into like the kind of like the unified zeitgeist of the Russian population is ever since, ever since they like the kingdom

of roost popped up and whatnot that Europeans view them as not European. And so the Russians were going, oh, we, we are European, we're in Europe, we want to be a part and Peter the great had his whole expeditions toured around, you know around Paris and London and all these big states. He was like, I want to modernize my country. But it's just generations of bias of the Russians are the bad guys. So then the Russians under Putin are being told that they don't want you. And so we need to make that sure that we are not playing by their rules, but think picture. And this is just me speaking. I don't understand how a population of 142 million is more intimidating than a population

of 1.4 billion who had five generations of just only having men. So it's like now you have all these horned up Chinese soldiers who are actively, you know, colonizing Africa and the Indian Ocean and making very, very slow and calculated moves. But like I said earlier, I think the Russians were put into a corner of we need to do this now and then say what you want about Western politics. It's like they, we, they called our bluff. We didn't do anything. And so, but yeah, the whole war is changing everything.

Yeah, I mean, it is the Chinese are definitely the winner out of all this. Oh, 100% like, I mean, I think they've made a very good decision by not being massively openly pro-Russian and the whole thing. I mean, obviously they are landing firmly on the side of Russia, but at the same time, you know, there was that big stink about them that, you know, the Russians begging them for food and rations and stuff. Um, you know, I think they've played it correctly for their part to constantly, you know, kind of within their own media, push the Russian narrative, but at the same time internationally call for peace, you know, similar to India.

Oh, yeah, they're walking a fine line of like, Hey, you know, we don't really support what they're going, what they're doing. But I mean, we have Taiwan. Can you see the reasoning here? But the CCP is definitely, they're undergoing a purge at the moment. It's very quiet, but they're definitely watching what's going on in Ukraine to go, we want Taiwan, we need it by 2049. That's our whole thing.

And so they're rewriting doctrine at the moment. So, yeah, I mean, I mean, that's a military that's never felt that in a long time hasn't fought a war, you know, talked about that with all conness to that even a little country like New Zealand spent 20 years in Afghanistan, but the Chinese have never fought a conventional war and their entire military is based on the Russian model, which isn't doing too hot. So it's exactly, exactly. I mean, there's a lot of things. Obviously, but new exchange everything. But at the end of the day, uh, you've got Western countries for all their faults and

for all of the silly military adventures that, well, from my perspective, silly military adventures with engaged in, in the last, you know, 30 years, um, fucking at least we know how to fight, at least we've experienced the problems found solutions. They haven't had that improvise adapt overcome where it's like, well, that's not working, let's change it, but it's yet like militarily, especially with like a five, I or, you you know the United States, Canada, Britain, Australia, New Zealand it's yeah they try it once ago that didn't work let's try it again a little different oh that didn't work let's change it but it's like like I said earlier that

the Russian whole strategy for doctrine is it's top heavy so the general has to make the decision not the the grunt at the S-400 system. So it's a completely different mindset. And so just, it makes me think that if war broke out in the Cold War, we would have absolutely demolished the Soviet Union. Yeah, absolutely. But also, I mean, the United States, you know, and others, we had our first year of wars where we didn't do too good. we had our first year of wars where we didn't do too good. You know, absolutely. I think the only Cold War era conflict and surgency whatever was the British and Malaysia. They were the only ones to be successful at stopping the insurgency. They really quelled the rebellions. They really got rid of the Chinese

influence and the Americans lost in Vietnam and the French lost in Algeria. But it's like that was that one like outlier of, hey, we won. So yeah, but I mean, the way they did it in the melee emergency though, people wouldn't have the stomach for that in 2022. When you know, you've got cell phone cameras, and, you know, you will see the brutality of what they had to do to win that against the communist insurgency it was literally you know I mean it was essentially massacres you know if you support these guys you are dying your family was the it was like that tried and true british method of draining the swamp they're like we're going to poison all the water we're going to poison all the water.

We're going to burn all the food. And if you give me a communist, I'll give you a bag of rice. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. You couldn't do that today. Yeah. I mean, obviously the Malay emergency that had like an ethnic component as well, where,

you know, the vast majority of the communist rebels were like Chinese, like Chinese Malayans. And then, you know, you had the other Malay people who generally weren't communist. It's not to say they didn't support Malayan independence either, absolutely massive contingent of them did, but, and ultimately, I think the thing that ended that insurgency wasn't, I mean, it was militarily, you know, you know, Britain's ability to crush the insurgency, but it was also right. It's clearly going to be a thorn in our side. Let's just give these fucking people independence on good terms. Today, like Malaysia is a very pro-west state.

Yeah, they don't like Singapore, but it's like they don't like the Chinese. And so like that, even though it was within the last 75 years, it was, it was like a 20 year long conflict, I believe, but it was, yeah. I was in Borneo a few years ago, you know, like in the Malaysian part of Borneo and it's a beautiful country and you know very even though the area I was in it was like a very Muslim part of the Borneo, you know still very westernized and very you know very developed and yeah it's a great country. Here's another one and I know we're kind of running out of time here but that's the sorry about 20 minutes. Oh perfect so since the war in Ukraine started the international

like I said food that's really impacting people Sri Lanka full-on like revolution the president left he didn't abdicate he just left and so he's still technically the president it's not like a Karzai or a president of Afghanistan leaving and abdicating into Kazakhstan or whatever. It's the president still identifies that he's the president. But the Chinese in Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka was the first state that the Chinese were like, Hey, build your railroad systems. Can I build your hospitals in your schools? I'm doing this to be nice. And so a report came out the other day that the Chinese CCP are going, can we just take one of your military bases to help stabilize the region?

We're going to give it back. There's no way they're giving it back, but they're just helping stabilize all these regions. Oh, 100%. And it worked. So it's very likely that the Chinese will start sending peacekeepers to Sri Lanka to help stabilize the region because the Indians don't like the Sri Lankans and then they have the whole thing with Pakistan and Bangladesh but those are also countries prone

to famine and drought and flooding. So you have that situation and then the Chinese and the Indians are very much always at odds and then then inside say Egypt, which has the Suez Canal, which a lot of the world's resources flow through, they have two weeks to a month's worth of food. And I think a loaf of bread is $20 American now, it's getting insane. And so looking at like the war in Ukraine, Europe, my force to go, we have to deal with what's going on in Egypt because we cannot allow this part of the world to go into revolution again like it did in 2011 because that just hurts everybody. So yeah, exactly.

And what will they even gain by revolution? You know, overthrowing your government isn't going to make bread any cheaper. It's just going to make it more expensive. Exactly. Yeah. It's wild, man. Like I saw a funny post actually on Twitter and it was a picture of the Sri Lankan protesters inside the presidential palace. And they've got like their legs crossed and they're sat in like the conference room of the president there's like two chairs and right below it it's the uh q shaman during january 6th sat in the chairs and and it's like um it's only insurrection if you're

unsuccessful and it's like and it's like it's trucking hell it's the part of the world is getting very bad, very fast. And they have the situation in Ethiopia where that was a very discussed topic last year with the Tigray revolution and they were fighting the Ethiopians. And there was a whole war and Ethiopia is known for drought and famine. And the world really needs to keep a presence there. Well, that NATO countries really need to keep presence there because the Chinese have that naval base in Djibouti, which is literally five miles away from the American base. It's right there. They could see them outside every day, but the Chinese might just go like, oh, the US really didn't seem

to do a good job. Why don't we try? We've been here the whole time. We helped Djibouti. So it's Why don't we try? We've been here the whole time. We helped Djibouti. So it's a lot of moving pieces. Wasn't there something about the Wagner group in Ethiopia as well or one of the country's border in Ethiopia? I'm not great at my geography, but... Wagner have been in Africa for about five years and the French were fighting insurgents in North Africa because the French whole method is nobody copies us, we don't copy anybody. They're going their own method. They don't want to go fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, they're going to go fight insurgents in Northern Africa because in the French mind, Western Africa is still theirs. They still pump French education, French schools, French everything. So they went and fought but for 10 years because the localized

governments that held G5 were, they suck. They're not very unified. They're very corrupt. The militaries are very poor and the French foreign legion was doing a good job. But the government went, all right, let's try something new. So then they hired Wagner. But also in Libya, where countries like Italy and France got sometimes 15% of their oil, it's still in revolution, still in civil war. So the Wagner group was hired to go occupy oil fields and airfields in Libya. And then from there they jumped into Mali. And then there was, I want to say it was Nigeria where, I think it was Nigeria

where civilians were running around on motorcycles, waiting Russian flags. Or like, we like the Russians. So which is just completely backwards. And so going back to the initial question of, well, who's going to win the war in Ukraine? I was like, I don't think Ukraine is actually like the question here. It's because they put so much work into all these other countries and the Chinese question and then the US and the west or they have their own things going on. They're getting tired of war essentially. I don't think we have the stock for another one. So yeah I mean we've been I think in many ways removed from it

for so long and the recent experience you know, you know, for the society in general has been great, you know. World War One was 100 years ago. And so we had that and then World War Two. And then it's like the age of European dominance really came to an end. They're like, we're not fighting each other anymore. We're all going to be on the same page. And then just the idea of like a cushy, staying at your apartment, making music

is like so common for everyone. It's like, there's no stress outside of like, there's no threat of, you know, a bomb going off in your front room. It's, you know, it's gas $5. It's like, that's the kind of things we worry about, not like an outside invading force. And just that it's like,

it's the greatest period of human history, but it's also made essentially a lot of the world weak in the sense of like, oh, well, I mean, we have McDonald's in Moscow. Maybe they want to be West. Like, like, oh, I don't think they care. So it's like that dumb meme that you see online. Sometimes like it's only silly people share it really, but it's like hard times make strong main who make good times. It makes me weak man. And then it's like a circle, but you know but it's like hard times make strong main who make good times and makes me weak man. And then it's like a circle, but you know, it's not wrong.

Um, I want to guys that share that usually can't squat their own body weight. So I was just like, I see what the gym and then like, all right, then you can say like, you're, you're a strong man. Like, yeah, it's not, it's not wrong at all. The average Jordan Peterson fan that guy's been going he's in his super villain arc right now it's oh no i don't get it like i genuinely don't understand why people are so enamored by it it's like clean your room do you really need to

fucking die on the internet to tell you that if you do, you're a big, you're such a loser that I cannot comprehend how you're going to turn your life around. If you need a guy on the internet to tell you to clean your room, to make your life better. What the fuck, man? I don't understand the, uh, the cleaner room method. And it was, you know, earlier when he started off, it's like, yeah, clean your room. Like keep a clean mind. That's the first place, you know, everyone bases their idea of, you know, earlier when he started off, it's like, yeah, clean your room, like keep a clean mind. That's the first place, you know, everyone bases their idea of, you know, their self

worth based on like, can I keep my bed clean? One of those, but now he's just going, the Russians are justified, you know, ethnic cleansing. I was like, what are you talking about? It's like, how does this have anything to do with being an all meat diet? It's, it's just like, like I was saying earlier, it's just like, it's just, it's dumb. Like how do you like, it's bad enough him being like that, but it's the sycophantic following people like that get, you know, you know, they, people it's almost like a cult mindset where people find something, they

gravitate to it, then all of a sudden, they can never be wrong, you know, and it takes them to awful places. We can take that right back to where we started with like, music and community, where it's before everyone's like, they kept the community kind of strong, because they're like, this is our identity, blah, blah, blah. But blah but since there's so much just of a melting pot of anything everyone's going this fringe character that's mine that's what we're doing and then everyone's just trying to identify with something because back in the day it was religion and they had their own music and they had everything going into it and you could just listen to Gregorian chants and go like this sounds pretty orthodox to me

but then today that's kind of like falling out of the wayside so they're like yeah I guess the Russians are justified it's I don't know it's it's weird humanity's at such a weird point right now yeah it's like I listened to this idiot before I before he was well known before it was cool you know and then they gravitated that but yeah I wish I lived in boring times. But unfortunately, I don't. It's, yeah, everyone hipes up the 80s. And it was like, I think that was the best time across the board. I mean, hey, man, for us, it was. Yeah, for us, but the Russians like, or they talk about the 90s love. Oh, we had grunge music and it was a great time. And the Do you have anything you want to plug before we bounce? Follow me on Instagram, samblack.jpeg

Go to my Soundcloud, samblackpf.com Then go to the Popular Front YouTube channel Because it keeps getting like, you know, it's been demonetized And all the videos are age restricted,ricted. It's a pain in the ass, but I'm surprised I've got the The YouTube hundred thousand subscriber Stamp because I was like I didn't think it was gonna get it, but I'm surprised it didn't blow it up Mm-hmm, you know YouTube up in

Yeah, yeah, but man I really Cool. Have a good one. You too. So Thanks for watching!