Modern Wisdom - #697 - Konstantin Kisin - Why Does It Feel Like Everyone Is Losing Their Minds?

Episode Date: October 23, 2023

Konstantin Kisin is a podcaster, a speaker and an author. Despite living in objectively the best time ever, there is a common trend of people believing that the world is getting worse. Is this an accurate assessment of the existentially unfulfilling modern world, or is it fragile victims whining about nothing? Expect to learn the danger of pedestalising victimhood, Konstantin's thoughts on Theo Von being screwed out of thousands of dollars, his reaction to Sam Harris' viral clip on Triggernometry, why people still won't shut up talking about Brexit, his advice for young men, the problem with climate change discourse and much more... Sponsors: Get 10% discount on all Gymshark’s products at https://bit.ly/sharkwisdom (use code: MW10) Get the Whoop 4.0 for free and get your first month for free at https://join.whoop.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Get over 37% discount on all products site-wide from MyProtein at https://bit.ly/proteinwisdom (use code: MODERNWISDOM) Extra Stuff: Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello friends, welcome back to the show. My guest today is Constantine Kissen, he's a podcaster, a speaker, and an author. Despite living in objectively the best time ever, there is a common trend of people believing that the world is getting worse. Is this an accurate assessment of the existential unfulfilling modern world, or is it fragile victims whining about nothing, or something in between? Expect to learn the danger of pedestalizing victimhood, constant in thoughts on Theo von being screwed out of hundreds of thousands of dollars, his reaction to Sam Harris' viral clip on trigonometry, why people still won't shut up talking about Brexit, his advice

for young men, the problem with climate change discourse, and much more. Next Monday, we have one of the biggest guests on the planet returning to modern wisdom, one of the most requested guests that's ever been on, and I cannot wait. I just got back from filming in LA, which was frankly super intense, very fun, but so long and tough, but we got it done. We got some phenomenal episodes recorded four episodes in 27 hours while we were in LA and then we flew to Miami and we did some stuff in Fort Lauderdale too. So yeah, the next few weeks are just beyond stacked. I'm really, really fired up to get some huge episodes out and finish this year strong

with some great guests, some really fascinating conversations and I'm back in the UK this weekend at ARC in London so I'll be recording again there and then we get back and we go to Arizona so yeah long story short there is lots of cool stuff happening over the rest of the year and I really appreciate all of you guys for tuning in supporting the episodes, sharing them and all of that stuff. It really does mean an awful lot to me while I'm on the road. It's nice to feel like I've got the support of everyone that's listening. So thank you. This episode is brought to you by Jim Shark.

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site-wide and worldwide. So head to bit.ly slash protein wisdom and use the code modern wisdom at checkout for at least 37% of everything site wide. But now ladies and gentlemen please welcome Constantine Kissen. One of the things that we've spoken about privately, that we haven't yet spoken about publicly, is victimhood. And James Cantor came on the show, he's a sex researcher, he gave me this really interesting quote I wanted you to react to. Shifting from aiding victims to aiding everyone who claims victimhood has led to an awful lot of charlatanism.

Shifting from doing good to looking good has led to an awful lot of virtue signaling. Their interaction is now Western culture at least online. Hmm, what do you think about that? I think it's true. And if you think about, you know, I believe people respond to incentives That's fundamentally the driving force of all human behavior. We respond to incentives

If you incentivize victimhood you're gonna get victims and I think online is really the the shift that happens because The online world rewards it and it also allows people to fake victimhood in a way that in person you can't really. Like if you see someone living in a massive house, you go, well, you may be in victim in some ways, but you actually, well, taking care of here, but online you can create any avatar you want, and that avatar can be projected onto the online space from a mansion. That's kind of where we are.

Yeah, the fact that our opinions are more important than our deeds and our words are scrutinized while our actions are done in private. How many people have we seen over the last few years? Ellen DeGeneres, Lizzo? Who's that late-night host that just got popped for apparently being a Jimmy Fallon? I think allegedly has these people that outwardly are supposed to be champion for the underclass. Like I'm supporting women of all sizes or I'm supporting people that have different sexual orientations or I do the whatever.

And then you find out behind the scenes that they can't even treat a PA with dignity. I can't even treat a PA with dignity. I don't know, it seems to me like being someone who outfront proselytizes about standing up for the underclass is almost becoming a red flag to go, I probably should scrutinize what's actually going on behind the scenes here. When I was a standup comedian in the comedy world, there's a golden rule of this.

The more a comedian talks about how he's a male feminist on stage, the sleazeier he is backstage. That's, it's like a golden rule, never fails. Always the same. So anyone who goes on stage and talks about how brilliant they are, they're always, always, always sleazey and evil behind the scenes. It's just how it works.

And I think it's actually, it's a kind of compensatory mechanism. People who are hiding a bunch of shit have to go out and then pretend to be something they're not. The morality sort of stands on the shoulders of this performative bullshit. Is there a solution to this? Is there a way that we can scrutinize given

that people's deeds and their actions and their words and their opinions are always going to be far apart. I think that we are living through a digital revolution for which we're not prepared, naturally as well as revolution is, right? It's a change in the paradigm of how we exist. So I think that 10, 15, 20 years from now, we will look back at the way we use social media now and be horrified

by it. It'll be a little bit like tobacco companies promoting cigarettes as a healthy thing to do. And then we'll be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, this was actually causing a lot of damage. So I think the answer to this is a healthier relationship with the online world in particular. My hope is that we get past this stage and work out how to use all of that stuff. Better, I see it myself, like the way I use social media and I was very different to the way I would have used it even two years ago. I'm much more responsible with the way I use it and I mean in terms of my own life, in terms of how much time I spend on them, what I do, but also in terms of the way I

act on social media, because I am trying to be more responsible in what I say, but also in terms of the way I act on social media because I am trying to be more responsible in what I say, you know, it's very easy. And I think especially on on X or Twitter, whatever you want to call it, to get clicks. And I know exactly how to do that, which is done on somebody. And I spend less and less of my time doing that now, because I just, I don't think that makes the world better. I don't think it makes me better. There's very rare, it's very rare in Twitter

to have someone break the fourth wall and say, that was out of order. You're not allowed to say that. Everybody plays this sort of permanent game of sardonic tennis, right? Here's some Blase comment about how you suck or some smart snipe back at what you said. And oh, I'll hit it back across the net with something else.

No one actually says what they should say, which is, that's fucking out of order. And then you're approved if you do. This is why it's disincentivized. This is coming back to the point about incentives. Social media rewards certain types of behavior and punishes others. So if you are the guy that says,

maybe we shouldn't pile on this person, if your team is doing the piling on, you're like the one who's not willing, do you know what I mean? You're not willing to join in with stoning somebody and that's why you're a loser. That's the model that we operate in. So being responsible is disincentivized. Yeah, I love this idea that an absurd ideological belief or an extreme ideological belief is a show of feel to your own side and a threat display to the other. And the more absurd or extreme the belief, the more likely it is that your own side can trust you and that the other side should fear you.

Do you know what I mean? That if you have to put reason and sensibility and common decency to one side in order to like, here I am holding my hand in the air for whatever the current thing is, your own side sees you as a reliable ally and the other side sees you as a formidable foe. It's tribal mechanics but multiplied by a thousand because it's online. With everyone scrutinizing you.

You have these weird pathologies. It's not a comment on him personally, but you've got a guy who lives in Malaysia commenting on American culture war issues and getting millions and millions of views for his commentary and whatever. I see what you're doing there, but are you actually contributing to anything, do you know what I mean? Because it's just flaming, fanning the flames of whatever is going on. And I see that as a, you know, like I say,

it's a period, it's a transitionary period. I hope that we get to a point where we start to use social media in a different way. And actually, you know, this is an unpopular thing to say, but I don't envy the big tech executives because it's a really hard job because on the one hand, you incentivize to encourage engagement. And on the other hand, the engagement is achieved by amplifying anger and division and all of these things. So I hope we can work that out as a society. How do we move forward with social media?

What about the victimhood side of things then? Like it's kind of, it's almost like old trope to talk about snowflakes and all this sort of bullshit. It feels like five years ago, culture warrior, horse shit. But the underlying dynamic is still there that we've got this sort of tyranny of the minority in some regards that fragility

is something to aspire toward or at least it's something which is rewarded in a variety of different ways. What's your sort of conception and framework of this with a little bit more perspective that we've got now? Well, I'm going to be speaking arc Jordan's thing later this year and one of the things I want to talk about is that I think everyone's embraced this now. We all now do it. I feel like those of us who have been concerned about workness have sort of got into that place where we are like, I'm a victim, I've been cancelled, I've been this and I've been

that. And I think it's time actually for us to step into our power now and go, okay, well, we've created these new media organizations, we've created alliances, we've created community, we've created things, and the question really for us is now we know what we're against, but not enough people willing to say what are we for, exactly. And that's because it's much harder to do, but that is the mission now. It's how do you get past woke anti-woke into the future and the future has to be about offering people a better alternative to that

victimhood? Because it's more rewarding for the individual to see themselves in that way, I think. And this is, you know, this is why Jordan Peterson was so successful when he broke through because he was saying to people, take responsibility. And I think we all actually now are in a position where we have to say it to ourselves. Yes, the right wing snowflakeosphere that nobody really ever talks about. I'm pretty sure that you hate that even more than you hate left-wing snowflakeosphere. Like, it's so... Yeah, using the call out culture to say, this is something that shouldn't be happening, this is pedestrianizing, victimhood, so on and so forth,

whilst some people waving that exact same identity flag themselves, it's like, I don't know, and that doesn't seem like the way to go. No, it doesn't. I understand it, though, and I think people on the right could quite credibly say that, well, they did this and now, not for tat, now we're using the weapons

that they forged against them. It's understandable, but I'm interested in how do we move forward? How do we move forward? And I think there's a hell of a lot of questions in modern society about that that remain extremely unanswered. What, like, where do you get meaning and purpose in your life? Now, in the society that has fewer and fewer children in which young people are delaying adulthood longer and longer and longer, where do you get meaning and purpose exactly?

For some people that's online activism, but actually how fulfilling that is I don't know. So the big questions remain unanswered and perhaps increasingly so actually, I think there could well be an argument that 80 years ago, people had way more meaning and purpose readily available to them at, you know, just through the course of normal life,

get married, have kids, whatever. Now, obviously that wasn't universally and available to everybody, etc. But I think in the modern world, actually, way more people are lost. They don't know what they're supposed to do, exactly. So in the past, we had a kind of like set trajectory, you're supposed to follow, which hurt some people because it wasn't the trajectory for them, or when you take away all trajectory, then everybody's lost. And I think a lot of people are in that position now. So, and as I say, I think it's way harder

to think about what the positive vision of the future is, but that I think is the task now. That's the mission, that's, you know, what is it that if you think workness is stupid and dangerous and harmful, which I do, well, what do you think in addition to that? What do you think beyond that? What is it that you think people ought to do? If they ought not to be victims, what ought they to think about with their lives?

That's a very difficult question that I have more questions than answers about. It's way easier to identify problems than proposed solutions. And you almost see this on the internet that if somebody identifies a problem, it's kind of hard to criticize a criticism. It's possible. But it's way easier to criticize a proposal. And it's almost like a defense mechanism that people have to front load or front run avoiding the criticism that they know will become, will be incoming.

You know, it's the caveat. It's like, I'm not saying that we don't need to care about such and such, and I'm not saying that this isn't a big deal, but maybe we need to think about this thing. It's almost like a conceptual equivalent of that. Yes. And I find myself doing that all fortifying with caveats all the time, man, because I think the other aspect of the online, the way the communication happens online is like, if you make a statement, a generalized statement, you might say, exercise

is good for you. And somebody will be like, yeah, well, what if you've got an knee injury? And before you know it, like you hate disabled people. Like that's kind of how the conversation happens. But I think when we stop being able to make normative statements, everything else breaks down, right? We have to be able to say for most people, most of the time, pairing up with someone of the sex that they are attracted to and building a life together is better than not doing that. people most of the time pairing up with someone of the sex that they are attracted to and

building a life together is better than not doing that. We have to be able to say that without the one person who was in an abusive relationship, what about me? Yes, we understand you, but we're talking about the 95% of people, right? And you feel free not to go along with whatever we're putting on the table. It's like if we put a menu of things on the table, you don't have to eat everything. No one is making you eat the gluten. It's the rickidje vase guitar lessons thing, right?

Exactly. I don't want guitar lessons. So I think we have to be able to say all other things being equal, family is good. But this is the tyranny of the minority. I fucking love that phrase. I think it's so smart to optimize for the edges

of the bell curve rather than the middle. And as you said before, it is important to recognize that there are people who fall outside of the norms of normality and that they need some care as well. And if you didn't have that sufficiently broad perspective view, these people would just fall through the cracks, and that's fucking shit, and nobody wants that to happen.

But when you optimize for that, you actually end up if you were to net out what happens, you end up with more suffering because you neglect all of the fucking fat bit of the middle of the distribution. That's right. And we've we've stopped being able to make that point because we, and also, I think the phrase that I came across and I didn't come up with this, but somebody was saying to me the other day that we live in a world of trade-off denialism. What's that mean? Every decision has trade-offs.

It has positives and negatives. And if you go, well, we should do this and some goes, yeah, but what about the thing that and then you can never really acknowledge, it's like the climate catastrophe. Right? No one wants to talk about the fact that many of the solutions that are being proposed would be worse than the problem. So it's like, if you say anything about how we're approaching that issue, you are denying that climate change is real or you are denying that it's a problem or you're denying that we should address it.

No, I just think your idea of how to fix it is stupid. And we've lost the ability to have that conversation as well. And I think we really need to reintroduce it. It's one of the things I talked about in my Oxford speech, which I think is why it did well is because people went, oh yeah, all right, because if we just do this stuff that we're being told we need to do, that's actually worse. And that sort of opened it up. I think we've totally forgotten

that there are no solutions, only trade-offs, my favorite quote, ever from Thomas Sol. Yeah, it's lovely. And the difference between maximizing and satisfying from behavioral economics is an interesting one. So maximizing is everything must be 100, 100, 100, 100, 100. Satisficing is hitting an acceptable level across everything. And what the Satisficing allows you to do is it allows you to wish or rate much more quickly. And as you say, you can do it in your own life. It's like, how many times have you done it? You're going to go away in a holiday with the misses and we're going to have a fucking

Airbnb or booking.com favorite list with 30 hotels or 30 places in. And by the time that you get down to choosing and the choice has been made for you because all of the nice ones have gone and you're now two days before you leave, right? That's maximizing. And you're so stressed, you need the holiday. I just fucking, yeah, it was awful.

You didn't even enjoy the experience of it as well. Yeah, yeah. I understand man, like, you know, people feel like they're being left behind, they feel like life is happening to them or happening for other people and they're not a part of it. And I get that. Like, you know, fucking it's disquieting. Life is going on.

My friends are moving on. The world is changing and I'm all confused. But I suppose this sort of information ecosystem conversation, which you guys have had a good bit, and I've had twice over the last few weeks, first with some Harrison, then with Eric, Weinstein. What do you make of this? Like the heterodoxosphere has its problems, the legacy media sphere has its problems. Independent creators that just get to shit post

anonymously on Twitter and Reddit. Also, I like very unreliable. What's the, do you think about this, like how all of this comes together and how you move forward through it? I see a lot of problems with new media too. I mean, I've said this from day one in terms of what we do at Trigonometry.

It's, we don't have a budget to employ a bunch of people to do extensive research on things or to do fact-checking for us. So, we can't do certain things that the mainstream media can do, and should do. The problem is the mainstream media isn't doing it either, right? But there's a really important role for the mainstream media. I just wish they'd play that role.

But I think where I agree with Sam, even though I disagree with him on COVID and to some extent, or to a large extent, Trump and all those things, is there not everything can be fixed on a podcast. That is absolutely true. There are certain things that are a matter of research and deeper study. And it's not everything can be sorted out in three hour conversation between two podcasters. There's not how that works. And I think new media has its own problems. It over-rewards charisma, it over-rewards passion, it massively under-rewards any attempts to cling to truth.

It massively under-awards any attempts to cling to truth. It encourages people to go off in the pursuit of the most exciting take, and truth is always exciting. So I think the truth is we need a vibrant ecosystem in which all of these different pieces play their own different roles, which is why I'm in favor of maximum freedom because that's where you get everybody doing their thing. And then, over time, people who want wholesome content, if you like, when it comes to facts or information or whatever, can seek it out because people aren't stupid.

They can see through, they will eventually see through someone being super charismatic or whatever. They'll get to a point where they go, actually, what I'd like to do is have a look at what different sources are saying about this and make up my own mind. You saw with COVID, the mainstream media really suppressed a lot of very legitimate points of view, a lot of important information. But then you get the response to that, which is to go quite far off the other end. And I've ended up somewhere, what I hope is a kind of reasonable middle ground between

those two positions. There's a really great blog post by Gwinderbogel, gowinder.substac.com. One of my favorite writers, why you are probably an NPC, and he frames out five different types of NPC. And the most obvious two, you know, like sort of the mainstream NPC and the contrarian NPC, it makes this really great point, which is that the contrarian NPC is no deeper thinking than the mainstream NPC. They're just the inversion of it. And he uses the line of being a black sheep might make you different, but you're still a sheep. And that allure, this sort of romance of being the independent

thought leader, maker, sense maker person. I understand why it happens, but yeah, reflexive contrarianism is no more nuanced than reflexive belief of the hegemonic. Yes. And I don't judge people for that because I think that's an element of my thinking, a kind of, I think it's very understandable. The disillusionment with the way the institutions have been captured or have been corrupted or perverted or whatever it is that's happened to them. It is natural that that would produce an equal and opposite reaction. It is natural that that would produce an equal and opposite reaction. I encourage myself and other people to go beyond that. I try as best I can and to go, okay, well, we're reacting to this.

This is how we're behaving. What's actual truth? Because that's where we started. We started from the position that we cared about the truth. That's why we're so annoyed with the mainstream. Can we find somewhere in between those two positions that actually is an attempt to find that truth? And it's the case with everything.

We've had a bunch of, we just had the co-founder of Navarra Media on Trigonometry, the far left YouTube, but not maybe not far left, is it kind of co-beneasted supporting kind of people? And others because we're trying to speak to different people from different places and really get to what the bottom of is or different issues because those perspectives are valuable too.

One of the things that Sam brought up on the episode with me was his infamous Twitter clip with you. What was the experience of that particular 180 seconds catching fire like? You know, I felt terrible when that happened. Really, really terrible because I've never been on the end of a Twitter shit storm to that extent. But it's not pleasant. No matter how strong mind did you are, whatever. There's a reason that Rogan always says, don't read the comments, right? Like the great man Joseph Stalin says, quantity has equality all of its own. So there's only certain number of negative

comments you can ignore until just the volume of shit becomes overwhelming. So my primary concern, actually, not, I don't know, Sam Well, but was for his wellbeing, actually. I just, I just worried how he would experience that more than anything. That was my concern because our approach is always about giving a guest an opportunity to reveal themselves in the best light possible. And for some people, that light shines very brightly and can burn. But that's not our intention. We never go into an interview with the desire to out somebody or expose somebody. It's not a got you. It's not a got you. So I was worried about him. And I emailed him straight away just to, you know, check up on him. And, and, you know, also, we didn't put that clip out. We could have done because we obviously understood that it was a controversial thing.

He said, and actually, most people don't know this, but that was not the most controversial thing he said in that interview, in my opinion. We talked about COVID on locals, which was the pay world section of the interview. And what he said there, I found quite, what did he say? I don't remember the wording and people have to go and watch it, but I came away from that thinking that he's overestimating the threat and as a result of that, I was prepared to do some pretty drastic things or demand drastic things to be done. So, first and foremost, as someone who interviews people for a living, I was concerned for him, but I also felt that what he said was wrong. I didn't agree with it.

And, I, my view on it is that if you overestimate the nature of the threat, all else follows. And I think on Trump and COVID, that is where Sam, in my opinion, is, is, is, well, that's why he's doing what he's doing and saying what he's saying. Because if I thought Trump was as bad as Sam thinks, it'd be very tempting to think along the lines that Sam thinks along. And likewise with COVID, if I thought this was like a bowler that spreads,

I'd also be, you know, we should also be honest, you know, the conversation people like, well, there's never ever, ever any reason for the government to mandate vaccines. And I broadly agree with that, unless the disease is really like dangerous and deadly. I said this at the beginning of COVID, like imagine that the disease had 100% mortality rate for all women or is 100% mortality rate for all people under the age of COVID. Like imagine that the disease had a 100% mortality rate for all women, or it was a 100% mortality rate for all people under the age of 10. Maybe some people would support it. Well, yeah, but I think that the fundamentally,

it came down to a risk and reward equation. And most people considered that the risk of getting COVID was not greater than the risk of either getting the vaccine or of opening up mandated vaccines as a pathway overall. And it's just where do you sit on this equation? There's lots of other things, but broadly, I think it's where do you sit on this equation? And some, I completely agree with him that I think COVID as an event was like the worst kind of vaccine that we could have given our epidemiology, our medical system, the view of vaccines overall. Vaccine skepticism at large, I bet has gone through the fucking race.

Yes, it has. Have you had a look at this? Yeah, of course it has. I know anecdotally, just speaking to people, how much that's the catch. So if we are to have something that comes around the next time and it just kill fucking old children and a ten or all women or whatever the fuck it's got some incubation period of 28 days in a mortality of 40%. It's just a sire. It's another sire. This is called Schwab doing it again. This is the WIF and it's like, oh god, like that's, that's

really, it literally would have been better if COVID hadn't happened, right? Yeah, sure enough, we can get masks out of the way more quickly. And we've got like some, some inefficiency in the system were opened up. But if you were to look at COVID as a, like, operational logistical vaccine, our response to it failed us way worse than if we'd never got it at all. And we got a vaccine injury from COVID.

Yes, yes, we did. And I also think the one thing that is sort of inexplicably neglected and all of this is, I'd really like to know where COVID came from. I'd really like to know, don't you think that's important? Don't you think we should know where it came from? Because there are some credible assertions about its origins that would suggest that we may have another pandemic soon. Is that right? I haven't seen this. Well, if this came from a lab in Wuhan because of gain of function research and we are not willing to be honest about that

and gain of function research continues. Why wouldn't we have another pandemic? I never looked into this much. I know that Sam had met Ridley and somebody else on his show. We've had Matt on to talk about this as well. And the truth is, we don't know. But I'm using the kind of the smell test here, because I grew up in a communist society. And what communist societies do when

there is something and all societies do this to a large extent because people don't like to expose their own flaws and no one wants to be like, oh, I was responsible for killing millions of people, you know, but they will cover it up in a way that is proper. And Matt actually gave this example of there was a leak somewhere in the Soviet Union, which was a radioactive leak. I think, well, maybe it was a biological and they covered up for ages.

And then when the Soviet Union collapsed, we finally found out, no, no, it was actually a leak. So if this is a product of gain of function research getting out into the real world, which is credible that there's there's very credible assertions about that the world needs to know and this type of research needs to end But if we are unwilling to have that conversation honestly and do the proper Investigations which would be difficult because the CCP wouldn't want that and on top of that you've got all this other bullshit about how it's racist and all of that. We've got a problem. So I think my worry with everything that's happened with COVID is not only have we not learned the lessons, I feel like like you said, we've got

a vaccine injury from the experience and everyone is sort of stuck in their corner. And like Sam said to you, everyone's got their own facts about it now. Correct. Yeah. That's a problem. It's interesting what you said about the felt sense of being in the blast radius of Sam's online experience. I noticed it, it's someone called it Sam Harris's World Embarrassment Tour because he did my

show, he did Steven's show, he did Tom Billion's show. And I don't know man, like there seems to be something, it's almost like there was resentment sat on the internet, latent resentment sat on the internet waiting for Sam to fuck up. And then he did a thing, maybe it's right there. I don't think it was personal, that was the reason I paused there. I don't think it was personal to fuck up. And then he did a thing. Oh, maybe, maybe it's right. I don't think it was personal. That was my, the reason I pause there. I don't think it was personal to Sam. I think, particularly on his Trump comments, there are a lot of people who were like, this is what we always knew. The Trump haters think deep inside. And Sam was willing to vocalize it,

which is, I don't care how big the transgressions are on the other side. I don't care what Hunter Biden has done. I don't care what Joe Biden has done. No matter what they do, it can never be as bad as Orange Man Bad. And that's sort of how he came across. And so the people who fell gaslit this entire time about, you know, the overestimation of the threat of Trump. They were vindicated in that moment. And I think Sam just caught him, it was caught in the rage of people feeling like the perfect time storm with the perfect pebble in the perfect river that directed it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's so interesting, man. You know, I had this conversation with a fitness influencer called Sarah Safari in LA a couple of weeks ago.

I'd be interested to get your thoughts on this. I think it's analogous to this same situation. A lot of people, especially right of center, say things like, you can't judge somebody on just one thing that they say. Yet, when it came to a six pack of Bud Light being sent to Dylan Mulvaney by some marketing in turn, somewhere deep in the annals of the Anheuser-Bush thing

or Miller Light released one video, the Miller Light thing felt a little bit more produced. It's probably gone through a few more layers. But largely, I just wondered, I thought it was interesting that the charity that a lot of people right of centre ask to be given to their commentators or, you know, their champions that are cancelled for taking out of context points. There was that Rosanne bar bit with Theo Vaughn, where she made a joke about the Jews, which was the most egregious clipping that I've ever seen from anything ever, the end of a three-minute long bit. And they took the final 30 seconds and put it up as if it was

representative of the whole thing. It was so fucking bad. But I did notice nobody decided to use that same idea about, well, I'm gonna second, maybe, maybe this is just one small department in one small corner of one small brand's marketing push. And they gave this person who is very unpopular on the internet, a six packet bud light. And before you know it, Kid Rock's got an AR-15 pointed it a few cases

of your drink. What do you think about? So I would separate those two out. So Sam, I think is that point applies very much and this is what the angle I'm coming on from. And by the way, we're about to go back to America and we'll interview Sam the sequel. So we'll see how that works out.

I'm looking forward to it. But with Sam, what I felt was, for me, I don't know if it's true of other people, but for me, Sam has a lot of credit in the bank with me and so and so I felt that While I strongly disagree with what he said, I think that was clear in the interview He has enough credit in the bank with me that I'm willing to have a lot of Understanding and a lot of grace with him and I, and what I would say as well is,

you know, we were having a lot of tech issues on the day that we interviewed Sam and he sat there for like a good hour while we were trying to scrambling to get the microphones to work. And he was the most decent human being that we've had on the show. And you see who someone really is when the camera's on rolling? That seemed to me like a really important thing that other people obviously wouldn't have seen. So I have a lot of time for Sam and respect for him. I don't have the same relationship with Dylan Mulvaney. And I also think you haven't taken a world of wisdom from Dylan Mulvaney over the last few years. You'll be surprised, man. You'll be surprised. And so I think, look, Dylan Mulvaney is a symbol to many people, like Sam is a symbol

to many people for different things. But I think it's a slightly different issue because I don't know if you saw, but immediately after the Dylan Mulvaney controversy, the marketing executive who was responsible for this, there was a video of her talking to, I think, a reporter about the thinking behind what the idea there was. Because it seemed a little bit more thought out. It was thought out, and her angle was, our customers are shit.

That was her angle. Ah shit. What's a shit customer? Well, it was just it's just these guys who've got like a you know old-fashioned sense of humor and they don't you know what I mean like we're going to educate our customers and I'm like you sell beer that's not your job sell them the fucking beer and shut up. Yeah, right. And look, the trans issue for reasons that I actually think are quite understandable and obvious is the lightning rod of our time.

So I'm not surprised that that caused the reaction that it did and I understand it. I do think, and I said I wrote a sub-stack on this at the time, that perhaps the giving so much attention to it is what prompts these brands to go down this route. Obviously, with Dylan Mulvaney at Backfire, for sure. It's a role of the dice for attention. It's a role of the dice for attention that I don't think they'd consider. And I think that executive ended up being fired. I do understand why people got as fired up about it as they did because your rewarding behavior that a lot of people would feel is the wrong behavior to reward on the public eye. Dylan Mulvaney.

But that woman is one lady, maybe in her interview with the reporter, she said, this went all the way up and the director, see the fucking chief marketing officer or whatever was involved in this. But if it wasn't the case, I don't, if it turned out that it was one small group in the corner as I like guest or whatever, I don't think that the internet would have given Bud Light any more leeway. I don't think that the internet would have given Bud Light any more leeway. I don't think they would have said, we need to separate the art and the artist here.

They've made beer for three decades, however fucking long it's been around. And maybe it's right, maybe it shows their woke bonafides, it shows that they're the man hating, like left-leaning blue-head cucks that they always were. But, I don't know, like, it seems like a lot of the time people want, it's a smart idea to be able to say,

Rogan has been in a few controversies over the last few years. Most people said, I have faith that you're telling me this is the tip of the iceberg. I've seen the whole iceberg, right? I know that there is nothing lurking deep down in the depths. Massive advantage, he's published like five thousand hours of content over the last decade, which means that you have a pretty good body of evidence that sits on the other side of the scale.

But like, you don't know much about what's going on inside of the marketing department. But I just thought it was interesting. I thought that maybe this is a time where it would be illustrative and you should be careful about trans-gressing rules that you want to be enforced. So if you want the don't judge somebody by one single occurrence rule to be enforced, and then you don't enforce it. That, as you said before, that tit for Tat Game, it opens up what they did it. So it says playground mentality. I understand what you mean, but I think I disagree, actually. I think the reason that people were as upset about as they are is while it's these are different companies, the sense is, imagine it wasn't just Rogan who said something, but it was Chris Williamson

and Trigonometry and all the other podcasters who do what we do. All at one point said the same thing and then there was yet another example of a podcast saying, so when you look at the Gillette, Matt Toxic Masculinity ad, if you look at all the other instances where corporations put pride flags, they replace their brand with pride. Not in the Middle East. Well, obviously not. Yeah. Did they do in Russia? They can't do it in Russia. I doubt it. I can't imagine why.

The mother Russia gay has you. Yeah, exactly. So I think what people felt was here again, we've got a corporation just absolutely taking the piss, lecturing the ordinary public and thrusting these very niche issues onto what is a very, very like normal household beer and you just can't escape the shit. That's what I think people feel. It's kind of a straw that broke the camel's back. I agree. Big corporation overall. That's interesting because what I was doing is I was taking Bud Light as a individual instance on its own. What you're saying is this is more endemic of a broader trend

among big corporations. Well, broadly speaking, if you think about what the anti-woke narrative is, the anti-woke narrative is, and I agree with very large parts of it, is that most of the major institutions, whether that be media, whether that be the civil service, whether that be the political systems, the parties, the corporations, the education system, they've all been captured or corrupted or through some other mechanism become the projectors of a certain world view onto the public who do not share that world view. And so when you see the toxic masculinity gelatad, which is like, hey, you're a man,

you're a piece of shit by our razor. You give, you know, hey, you're a piece of shit by our beer, et cetera. It sort of builds up to a point like, why is everyone telling me I'm a piece of shit? And it gets old. And I actually, particularly this anti-masculinity narrative that you see everywhere in movies,

in advertising, in all sorts of different genres, I think it's really, really dangerous. Because if you think about Jilla ads in the 90s, you're a bit younger than me, I don it's really, really dangerous because if you think about Gillette ads in the 90s, you're a bit younger than me. I don't know if you remember them. But they were... First of Mankingert and it's like some blonde hot chicken, like a whatever. She's like totally older. Actually, that wasn't the 90s Gillette ads. The 90s Gillette ads were a bunch of men

being healthy masculinity. It was a man put in his tie on as he holds his baby up before he's going to work. It was a man hugging his son on his way to his wedding. It was a man protecting his wife or, you know, it was a healthy view of men and relationships and men and women and so on. And I sort of say, healthy masculinity is the 90s gelat. That's what it looks like. Men being responsible, men in relationships with women being respectful, being kind, but also being strong, looking after their children,

teaching younger versions of men, have to be men, et cetera, right? And I understand why people, men and women are fucking tired, really, really tired of this idea that men are bad and evil. Like, my wife, who's complete, I always say my wife is completely apolitical and as a result of that, extremely based. Right?

Like, she hates this shit and I can't tell you how many women I speak to, who are very, very tired of men being demonized in this swerve, so am I? Especially given that a lot of those women will have sons. And they want their partner to be good and healthy. They don't want them to be feeble, you know. So I actually I understand the pushback against that. I really do and I think it's necessary. Yeah, I mean, I've spent a lot of time talking about modern masculinity and the challenges

that everybody is facing. What do you think, like, looking at it from your perspective, growing up where you did in a communist country, coming here at 13? Remember that. Going here at 13, what do you think the conversation around modern masculinity from both sides of the fence is missing? Like, what don't they understand about being a man in 2023 and the challenges and the way that the culture sees them? I think we should zoom out more, even more than that, and ask the question, what is it

that we want as a society? And I pissed both sides of the spectrum off by saying what I'm about to say, which is any ideology, and I mean any ideology, that pits men against women or women against men is toxic and damaging and dangerous and unhealthy. And that includes some forms of feminism, and that includes, you know, the in-sale worldview and all sorts of things. So the thing that we're really missing is a reminder of the fact that I'm gonna do the caveat thing. We talked about, yes, some people are not heterosexual, but for the vast majority of people,

the single most meaningful thing in your life is going to be the relationship you have with your intimate partner, almost always of the opposite sex. Right? And we need each other, men and women need each other. We've been working together for millennia and anyone who tells you that your enemy is the opposite sex. That person is your enemy.

That person is your enemy, that person is my enemy, and that person is our society's enemy. They are destroying or attempting to destroy the very building block of our society. That comes from both sides of the advice as well. The red pillosphere teaches men that women are adversaries to be avoided or resources to be used and discarded. Those are the only two ways. And that's the entire manosphere actually. That's black pill, meek towel, in cells, pick a part history, red pill, sigma male, all the way.

Like the full, that's the entire gamut for anyone that doesn't know the memes. That's the entire memeosphere of the fucking manosphere. And yeah, there's no one in there, very, very few people in there who say, you're supposed to be a collaborator with the opposite sex. Most of your competition is intersectional, not intersectional. Many women have worked together for eons. You need each other to survive just because you've outsourced, protecting and provisioning to the police department and the local

supermarket, and you, women, have outsourced the resources and the company to your ability to gain education and employment and Netflix. Like, still, broadly, like, we're not going to be able to out-technology ourselves from the last 120,000 years of humans being the way that we are. So there's more to relationships and dildo, right? You're not a dildo to your partner. There's more that you bring to the table. Sometimes. Well, I've been speaking for myself. Maybe I'm not sufficient in that department, but my point is let's frame this in a positive way. What is it that we're trying to say? Well, what you're trying to say is, men and women need each other,

men and women need to work together, men and women are not enemies. The most powerful you are ever going to be is with a good woman by your side. What do you say to the people that go, this is Trad Pell nonsense, like Trad Con talking point 101, like this is just another NPC meme,

but coming from someone that's steeped in a type of relationship that men or women don't need anymore. Well, you know how Bitcoin has faced, have fun staying poor, have fun being loser. You want to spend your life being unhappy with the opposite sex, whether you are a feminist or one of these people, go for it. I'm not going to tell you how to live your life, but I don't think it's going to lead you to a good place. I have male friends who've recently found their soulmate or their partner, and they blossom. They blossom the moment that it happens because we evolved to

be together. We evolved to work together. We evolved to work together. We evolved to drive each other forward in really powerful ways. I would not, I wouldn't be a tenth of the man I am without my wife. Did you read the post I put up a couple of weeks ago about the fuck you family? No, I didn't see that.

So fuck you money, right? You're able to, because I did see that, yes. It's sufficiently financially independent. The money you don't need to do things you don't want to do. Fuck you money, right? You're able to because I did see that. Yes. And it's sufficiently financially independent that money you don't need to do things you don't want to do. Fuck you freedom. You don't need to do things that you don't want to do. But then the final stage I see amongst my male friends who are you know 30s and 40s is the fucky family, which is a all that I fundamentally care about in the end is me and the people that are a part of this nuclear pod. And everything else can go to hell, everything else can fall apart. Jimmy Carl was just sat in that seat. He's been through his fair share of like roller coasters. And he's been with his partner like a decade and a bit like fucking forever. But maybe

even 20 like 20 years and now he's got a son and a daughter, and yeah, the coming home to know that, as long as that's okay, as long as that's set, I'm presuming that you've stacked the fuck you money with the fuck you freedom, and then you add the family on top, it must be kind of similar to being indestructible. I'm still working on the fuck you money. Yep.

It's a long way to go on the fuck you money. But the freedom in the family. Freedom in the family, yes. And my wife and I, we met by complete accident when we were 18, married by 20, and been together ever since. And the, just on a very practical, like, what did I get out of it level? It's been the single most beneficial source of inspiration,

comfort, you know, pick each other up when you're down, all of that. I mean, I admire people who don't have that and still do lots of stuff in the world, but it would be so much harder, so much harder. So again, I'm not telling other people how to live their life. I'm just saying, this has been one of the most tried and tested solutions to various problems that human beings experience throughout history

We evolved to be together and if it's a trad talking point then maybe that's right Maybe that some trad talking points are correct getting back to the masculinity conversation Why do you think it's so difficult for people to publicly advocate for the problems of men and boys? Because victimhood doesn't work for men the way it works for women. We don't feel sorry for men. And rightly so, by the way. Rightly so. I mean, biologically men are disposable in the way the women aren't. For the obvious reasons, if you have a tribe of 10 men, 10 women, you send the women off to war, you're screwed. You send the men off to war.

One comes back, you can still replenish the population. So men are disposable, always will be much more than women. And so we don't feel sorry for men in the same way. And I am not advocating that we feel sorry for men because I don't believe that's the solution to men's problems. The solution to men's problems. The solution to men's problems is for men to be better. What's that mean? It means you know what I mean. Look at you. This is what your entire life is spent on bettering yourself physically, emotionally,

psychologically, mentally, you're obsessed with performance, you're obsessed with being better, you're obsessed with being happier, more fulfilled, all of these things. It's a pursuit of your own greatness. There are structural disadvantages that are faced by men as well, right? Very few people are willing to accept at the moment. Socioeconomically, men are falling behind, education, employment, mental health, where it currently suicide, awareness, suicide prevention, weak in the UK. The, according to one of the

guys I was literally talking to half an hour ago, if you are a man, the single biggest threat to your own life is yourself. You are more likely to die by your own hands than by any other way. Are you? I'm I. I don't think you are. I've got suicide in my family, sir. I know, but I don't think you are the greatest threat to you. That's true, but. And I'm not the greatest threat to me. And why is that? Not everybody has the same genetic predisposition. Sure, but you just said you do.

And yet you are not the greatest threat to you. Why is that? Because you're fulfilled, because you are successful, because you're striving and achieving, because you have in life what you should have in life. The meaning and purpose and the pursuit of a goal, right? And for men, this is one of the problems with this mental health conversation. One of the reasons that men's mental health is not as good as it could be is that, A, we

do live in a society which discourages them from being men and being the way that men are supposed to be. But the other reason is that most of the personal development and Psychology fields are geared towards female ways of being and most of the the ways that we treat for example depression Men don't need the same thing as women do when it comes to that. What men need is to feel powerful and capable. The reason you are not the greatest threat to you is that you feel in charge of your life. That's what men need to pursue with every fiber of the being. That's what I mean when I say better.

You need to struggle and you need to fight and you need to achieve. And then all of this other shit falls by the wayside. And it's always been like this. You know, I'm someone who's been depressed at points in my life. And it's not because I was having a mental health problem, it's because my life was shit. And I was shit. That's why.

Right. So what men need is to pursue their dreams, to fight and struggle and to achieve. There was a point that you brought up earlier on about how no guidelines is liberating and terrifying altogether. And I think it's interesting to talk about how there isn't only one way to be a good man, but there aren't an unlimited number of ways either. And the problem of breaking open the expectations around men means that guidance for men and boys also largely dissipates. I had this conversation in Qatar and the guy I was debating had this conception of the man box. And he said, if you're inside of the man box, it can be constraining because he was a

member of the LGBT community, Kuwaiti American group in the Middle East and wanted to be a dancer as a boy. Like, I imagine it's pretty fucking difficult for you to find a man box that fits that conception of you in it. But if you completely blast it open and you can be anything that you want to be, there's no guidelines at all.

There's no guidance. So how fucking hard is this going to be? You've got to reinvent from first principles what it means to be a man. I don't mean you've heard this from Mary Harrington and Louise Perry, but A lot of the guidance that was given to men previously around chivalry it is Simply a difference of degree not a difference of kind to go from men should hold the door open for women and make sure that she gets to the front door safe at night, to you shouldn't hit your wife. It is one single thread between those, which is women are more vulnerable and should be protected. Right? Lovely conception there.

Mary, in classic Mary's style, said, Mary in classic Mary style said. The bourgeois rules that benefited women who had had a partner that grew up in a two-parent household that went to some high-falutin institution was around people that had good good male role models. Yes, you can break open the doors of shivery and maybe pay for the first date or maybe you can drive yourself home or get the taxi on your own or whatever it is because the environment that you're in is largely very different. The guy that grew up or the woman that grew up in a relationship with a man who comes from a single parent household whose mum or dad was addicted to alcohol or drugs or there was multiple partners coming through the house. They never got taught not to beat your wife, let alone not to hold the door open. And like the rules for the, but not for me, it's like the rules for us protect everybody, not just me.

And yeah, I think it's a really interesting frame to think about where the cultural changes come from. A lot of the time they come top down, but the environment can be so different that getting rid of something that seems quite innocuous up here can actually cascade down to the bottom. And the same thing goes for this tyranny of the minority again. Absolutely. There are people that will be outside of the manbox, and maybe we should expand it so that they can fit in it. But if you blow the doors open, where's the guidance?

Like what does it mean? And this is also consequence of luxury beliefs, which is Rob Henderson's term. I'm sure you've had him on the show. Of course. And the principle luxury belief of our time is there's no difference between men and women. That's a luxury belief. There are people who can afford to have it, but most people can't afford to have that belief.

And then all else follows from this. Because if you accept that there are differences between men and women, then men and women should act differently. And that also means that it's okay for men to be men, and it's okay for women to be women. One of the things that I find really fucking weird, man, since we had our son, is people will go to my wife, oh, you're just at home. And I'm like, what do you mean just at home? Are you fucking insane? She's raising our son and providing everything that we need as a family, and that you're

calling that just a thing. So, but a lot of women will judge other women for just being at home. And actually, I think, and it doesn't apply to everybody, the caveat, but for most women, the greatest gift their partner can give them is opportunity if they want to be at home with the children to do that. About 85% women say that being a state-home mum is an opportunity, an option that they aspire to have. Yes, and financially, for most people, it's very difficult right now. So it's the greatest gift. And so it's not just like men who treat a bad little woman, it's this whole dynamic

hurts everybody. And so men and women need to work together. Dads need to be involved in their kids' lives. These are some, yeah, they're trad points, one-on-one, if that's what you want to work together, dads need to be involved in their kids' lives. These are some, yeah, they look, they're trad points one-on-one, because that's what you want to call them, but it's what works. It's what works for the kids, it's what works for the family. Did you read the men-a-lost, can we find a way out of the world in this article by Christine Ember, who's in the Washington Post, a couple of months ago, was the Washington Post?

It's in the something. Anyway, she had this beautiful conception in it that said, many young men feel that difficulties are often dismissed out of hand as whining from a patriarchy that they don't feel a part of. It seems like a lot of modern men are being made to pay for the sins and advantages of their fathers and grandfathers. And I thought that was very interesting that kind of like in comedy, right? You're allowed to punch up, but you can't punch down. And because men have had it good for so long, you have this, this concern in giving them any sympathy.

And even though largely pick most of the extreme negative outcomes that you want in life apart from sexual assault, and it's you're going to find a man on the receiving end. Whether it's homelessness, drug addiction, violent crime, mental health, being in jail, suicide, like all of it. And there was this video of a, I think it was a trans man, so a woman who became a man or looked like a man or whatever, who was absolutely horrified by the lack of attention. Oh, people crossed the street when they were walking towards us.

It wasn't even just that, it's just like people ignore you. When you're a woman, you get attention. And people just ignore a guy most of the time, to most intense on purpose. But that's, you know, those are, in my opinion, in a radical differences between the sexes, the way our biological roles are, when women are going to get more attention. I think you can definitely see, like listening to your, like pull yourself up by your bootstraps kind of mentality, especially when it comes to men. You can definitely see that sort of Soviet, like man be hard, man lift thing, man protect woman. Like, I I that was

actually money underthrowed, but that's the best brush of the get out of me. Yeah, I think that you can see that and this is why, you know, there's a multiplicity of opinions about how to do this. And I think it's why it's interesting that everybody can contribute, you know, in a, okay. Give me a critique of what I'm saying. I'd love to explore that with you. No, but there's nothing that I would disagree with massively. I think that it's important to recognize the structural disadvantages faced by men and boys

at the moment, going from a brawn base to a brain-based economy when you have a disposition to be less conscientious where you are put into an education system that doesn't suit the disposition of boys, but you're graded in the same manner as an entire sex who does. Boys are naturally going to fall behind and I think that you're seeing the outcomes of this in the way that schooling and between the ages 21 and 29 women earn a grand and a bit more than Mendo. The gender pay gap isn't a gender pay gap, it's a mother pay gap, right?

That's the penalization comes to mothers. I don't disagree with any of that, but the question is what's the answer? What's the solution to that? I think that creating a positive view from masculinity, creating, and this is again why Peterson and Andrew Tate as well have been so successful because they said, you can be something. You can actually step out there and wrangle the world and I believe in you and I'm proud of you and it's not wrong for you to try and want to get mastery or conquer something or achieve something, have ambition to be able to make decisions easily

and stand up well under pressure. Like, you know, these are all fucking good things that are not only good for you, but they're good for the world as well. I think that there needs to be a positive vision, that will be one. I think that that creates a positive feedback loop for men. I do think that there's some manning up in the most transcendent, include, like, Wilburian way that we can.

But I also think that, you know, we need to look at structural initiatives that can help boys and men, because there's no other group on the planet who when they fall behind, I pointed out and said, this is your problem, you need to sort it out. Every other group, we would spend billions in taxpayer funded money to create committees and charities and initiatives that actually work out what's going on and help them boots on the ground to be able to do this. I don't think like if a man has a problem or if a woman has a problem, we say, what can we do to fix society? If a man has a problem, we say, what can a man do to fix himself? Now, maybe that's the fundamental

asymmetry at the heart of the sex difference, but in a society that has surplus resources that can help, I don't see why we wouldn't afford the why we would make men unnecessarily swim upstream, if that makes sense. It does make sense. However, I think that my view is what you said earlier, it's the fundamental asymmetry between the sexes. Now, it's true that all groups face various structural inequalities. For example, I'm 5'9", barely. And you play basketball? Not very well, I should say, for that reason alone. Actually, if you look at the evidence, heightism is one of the biggest openly available forms

of discrimination that isn't condemned or dealt with in any way. And one of your team is scous, so that must be... He's even shorter than me, for a little while. Yeah. So what's the answer to that? My answer to that has not been to get leg extensions or to complain about structural heightism. Do you know that like structural heightism?

You joke, but if you wanna play this fucking game, this is my point. I'm laughing at that. I'm just, it's structural heightism is a term that I haven't heard before. So if you look at the CEO of the top fortune 500 companies, like 90% or something, don't quote me on it. You can look it up like a very, very, very significant portion

of them are over six foot tall. Almost always the taller president wins, I think, as well. Right. Now, is the answer to that, not in Russia, by the way? Ah! In Russia, you don't need to hide. So, do we complain about that? Should we complain about that?

Should I sit here and be, oh, because I'm five foot nine, I don't get the best. It doesn't help anything. It doesn't change anything, right? And I remember it's so funny because I have a friend of mine. He was like a green party voter, voter, the most woke person that you could possibly imagine. And he is like five five. And I made this pointer and I said, yeah, but you know, you talk about structural issues with like this group and that group and whatever. And you're 5.5, did you know about, you know, heightism or whatever. And he was like, yeah, but being 5.5

has just made me who I am. He was like, yes, yes, you are what you are. The world isn't gonna change to you, right? So my favorite scene in Game of Thrones, have you seen Game of Thrones? Is Tyrion, when he's going to change to you, right? So my favorite scene in Game of Thrones, if you've seen Game of Thrones, is Tyrion, when he's talking to John Snow and he calls him a bastard and John Snow takes offense

and he goes, have I offended you bastard? He goes, let me give you some advice, bastard. Never forget what you are, the world won, where it like harm I can never be used to hurt you. That's the answer to all of this, right? And you're right about Peterson and Tay, who I think are very different figures, but nonetheless their success is based on the fact that they're telling men what men do need to hear in that respect, which is, it's okay to be a man.

It's okay to have drive. It's okay to have ambition. It's okay to have aggression. It's okay to want things. It's okay to want status. It's okay to want money. It's okay to want status. It's okay to want money. It's okay to want power. These are all things that are okay. They have pathological side effects when not handled properly, but the drive to achieve, the drive to succeed, the drive to dominate, the drive to win.

These are good things and pursue them and by the way, here's the interesting bit. Those woke women, they love that shit. This is what I'm gonna teach my son, right? Whatever the society tells you about how strong to be a man, at the end of the day, they're all gonna reward you for being a real man. This is the best time in some ways to be a real man because you clean up.

The competition is outing itself, it's taken itself out of the picture. If you act like a man, you clean up. That's the position we're in. Well, there's a number of left-leaning women who are lamenting the fact that they can't find a man who meets both their political preference and also will woo them appropriately on the date, right? It's like why are all of the men who do the things that I want from the other political party? I think it's like 30% or 40% of Democrats and Republicans fear

that their son or daughter will marry somebody of the opposite political belief. So this tribalism that we spoke about earlier on, speaking about toxic masculinity, it's part of that debate. I did a little bit of preparation, and I found some of my favorite headlines of things that are toxic masculinity. of that debate, I did a little bit of preparation and I found some of my favorite headlines of

things that are toxic masculinity. Mask shootings, gang violence, climate change, the financial crisis is toxic masculinity, Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, not wearing a mask, eating meat, physical fitness, fast food, capitalism is toxic masculinity and communism is toxic masculinity, hip hop, smelling of axe body spray, which is links for the British people, being stoic, risk taking, religion, but also secularism and atheism, playing board games, being interested in cars, and saying hello or have a nice day, all toxic masculinity. Man, I'm saying hello is fucking a cautious man.

Yeah, that's sort of, I think that's part of the male gaze, you know, there was this, I think it was a rule. Was it not put on the London Underground for a while that like the men's wandering eyes are something that was a concern? But here's another thing, right? I would be interested to get your take on this. I brought this up with that same fitness influencer a couple of weeks ago, Sarah. I do really good responses all. Internet incidents, big ones. People in the real world use the response of the internet. They crowdsource their sense making

to how other people responded. So you've seen these gym tick tocks of girls videoing themselves, working out, and sometimes there's a guy in the background. And if the guy looks over a bit much because for whatever reason he's looking at her, he's looking at the camera, he's looking at himself, he's doing whatever, sometimes they make a big song and dance about it. The first big one of those that happened, it could have gone either way. You could have tossed a coin that I would have said, I don't know.

The internet may say that this is reprehensible. I didn't, I thought it was fine, but I could have seen the internet going on the other side of the fence and saying, yeah, sure, fine, this guy, like, docks him, shoot him, blah, blah, blah. It didn't. And that now has created a new bar of behavior, expected behavior, both for men and for women.

The interesting thing that it made me realize is the women who saw that TikTok had it have gone the other way and had it have been completely reprehensible and totally not allowed would then have reset their worldview expectation way more sensitive. Their radar is now looking for, did that guy glance over three times or more in the space of 90 seconds? If so, this equals a dangerous situation because the internet told me so.

And it's a very sort of slippery slope in one direction only. It only moves towards more sensitivity, not more robustness, right? I thought that was interesting. Perception is projection. What's that mean? It means that you see what you expect to see. You perceive your own projections of the world. You had that fucking hyper viral moment about the scar. Yeah. Tell it again for the people that they're not. So they did an experiment where they told a group of women that they're going to put scarring

on their faces of visual disfigurements of some kind, and then they would go into an interview and the purpose of the experiment is to work out whether the interviewer is going to treat them differently because of their facial disfigurement. What they didn't tell the women is as they were leaving to go for the interview, they touched up their makeup and without showing them the facial disfigurement, removed the scarring. So they went into the interview thinking they're facially scarred, but they won. And they came back reporting massive levels of discrimination, specific comments that the interview had made about them that they perceived. So you see what you

expect to see. This is why teaching people victimhood is so dangerous because it makes them victims. It makes them expect certain things. And then they will react differently. I mean, police interactions are a good example of this. If you expect the police are gonna treat you badly because of who you are, you're gonna act in a different way

and therefore cause more problems. And I say this to somebody, you know, I was a very angry young man. And I, my wife used to piss me off so much, she would constantly say, like, I'd get into an argument with somebody. And I'd be like, that guy's a prick. He did this. And she'd be like, you are creating those situations. You know that, right? And I was like, no, you worth. And it took me like a good 10 years to work out absolutely hours, apps are fucking loot, right? So we perceive the things that we put out into the world. And this is, you know, Peterson talks about this is you can't see without hierarchy because your brain has to know what to focus on. And what you focus on is a function of the filter that you

project onto the world. I'm focusing on you now instead of the bookshelf behind you. I could have been sitting here picking out a good book this entire time. It's been a waste. But so that's what's happening there. But it's interesting. I mean, I said something at the time. I was like, look, these creepy men need to stop staring at women in gyms. Otherwise, they're going to stop wearing lingerie to go there. And then where everybody loses. Ha, ha, ha, ha. And what I'm trying to make is that like, you know,

this is a very, I'm gonna say to me, very controversial here, Chris, you ready? Men are attracted to women. I've heard about that. Let's say with that for a moment. I've heard about that. So, you know, this idea that you're gonna be barely clad and men aren't going to notice that. Sorry, that's not what our brains are for.

Our brains are for looking at your ass. That's what they're for. That's what they're evolved for. I know it's crudely put. I learned the term for this new style of gym short. It's got what's called a butt scrunch. Right. If you've seen the butt scrunch, right. Yeah, you're a married man. Online. Of course, yeah, someone showed me a photo.

I tried to look away. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, which is for the people that haven't seen it and aren't training in gyms with like 20 year olds in, it's like a normal pair of shorts, who's training shorts for a girl, like kind of tight. But then it's got kind of like a normal pair of shorts, training shorts for a girl, like kind of tight, but then it's got kind of like a thong bit that separates the ass cheeks out, which has been normalized very

quick. Do you remember when, do you remember the first time that wearing just leggings became a thing? Because I do. Because it wasn't when I went to uni. So it's after 2006, it was after maybe it happened while I was at uni, so maybe before 2010. But I remember thinking, wow, that's like, that's like everything on display. That's kind of like, kind of like no pants. Yeah. But then also kind of not.

And then now it's like, oh, that's kind of like, no pants, like that's kind of like just a thong. But blue, or purple, or lilac. I feel you've dedicated a lot of time to describe in this accurately, which I appreciate. I mean, casual onathologists on the side. I want you to tell you about this. Can I say something just on that before you move on? Because I think we're trying to pretend things all the time, which, yes, men shouldn't be pigs, right?

We can all agree on that. But in order to not be a pig, I first have to see your ass that you've shoved in my face, right? So I see it, I am then after that, not a pig, right? But I see it, and it's there, and my brain isn't calibrated or designed or evolved. I mean, the sole purpose of our genes is to reproduce, right? How is that, just what I'm saying?

Well, there's a female frame that's placed around this conversation specifically that I don't think fully... Maybe goes far as to say, like, sympathizes with the male brain reward system. There is an inbuilt reward system that men have for looking at sexually gratifying objects, even things like two rocks that look a bit like boobs. Right. Right? What's the first thing a boy does when he gets a calculator?

Right boobs. Yep. Now is that because of toxic masculinity, or is that because men evolved for millions of years throughout evolution of history, including pre-human animals, to seek the opposite sex and the driving males is just overwhelmingly strong? Now, once you have noticed that, how you act is where culture and society and civilizing men come in, right? Just because you saw someone's

asked doesn't mean that you're allowed to go and stare at it or grab it or whatever, but you saw it and you're not, it's almost like it happens and then you're like, okay, I need to... Fuck yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's how it works. Now, what do you want me to do about that? What are you supposed to do about that? I'm open to suggestions. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, in the world, and apparently this one's slept by you as well. TheoVon and other significant podcasters allegedly defrauded of approximately $4 million, and then calls out the fraudster in a video. In an unexpected turn of events, Colin Thompson, the man who was working under caste media and with TheoVon, is accused of orchestrating a fraud operation that cost TheoVon's podcast, this past weekend, and potentially other podcasts

and estimated $4 million. TheoVON and his crew detected inconsistencies and their payments, which is when trouble started, advertisers allegedly paid Colin Thompson and Cast Media directly, leaving Theo with less money than anticipated. And I know from my side of the fence that there are quite a few other podcasts that were with this particular company. And it seems like this gentleman has been living a good life. Meanwhile, he's been robbing Peter to pay Paul to keep on cycling this through photos of Lamborghini's and nice houses allegedly. And people aren't happy.

And then Theo did a 10 minute video that said, sorry brother, you messed with the wrong rat. And this video, I think within 24 hours it hit a mill plays, photos of the guy, all the rest of it. So, ruckians, ruckians in the podcasting world. I can't wait to be able to be the fraud at a 4 million dollars. That's my dream goal to get to that position. Yeah, you got to be careful, man. You got to be careful. That's why what we're building Trigonometry, and we've got some big plans beyond just Trigonometry itself is bringing cool people together, but doing it under our own steam, under our own umbrella, having

everything managed by us with the right values and the right team. It's really important, yeah. For the people that don't know how podcast advertising works, it's, I handle almost all of my big partners as well, directly, but a lot of the time there'll be an agency that sits in between you and them, invocing's kind of hard. Oh, there's an IO and did the deliverables get done and how many numbers did that podcast hit and so on and so forth. And also, who's advertising at the moment?

Oh, there's a new company in town. Maybe we can increase the costs or the price that we're charging for this. All that, like, it's messy and it's back and forth and whatever, especially if you're doing lots of little deals as opposed to how I have it, which is a small number of larger partners. And yeah, you have these guys sitting between you and them, classic agency model.

It's like a modeling agency, right? Like, you have a model, there's your talent, you have clients that want models and you take a bit off the top. Take somewhere between 10 and 25% depending on who the partner is and how big the deals are. But they hold the money. Like, they get paid the money from the advertiser and then less their cut, they'll pass it down to the podcaster. These podcasts are largely run, I mean, you'll get your YouTube ad sense revenue, which is not nothing, but fucking hell, it's not what you're making from your

proper partners. And yeah, I don't know, man, I mean, it's such a, it's, obviously you can chase these people down for like, we're gonna fucking get him for fraud, but then he's just gonna declare bankruptcy, you're fucking move to the Cayman Islands or whatever. So yeah, I feel this is the first time that we've seen a big case like this, which is slap bang in the bullseye of the analic of our world, the first time that this has happened. And kind of surprising it hasn't done before,

but hopefully it's a formative experience that that's one other thing. If you wanna fuck some people over for $4 million, don't fuck people over that have a combined reach of 20 million YouTube subscribers, you know what I mean? Absolutely, no, it's not a smart move. But look, I think we're sort of living through a wild, wild west of the internet. I mean, actually, the wild, wild west of the internet

is over. But the podcasting world, it's very new. So there's going to be a lot of this shit going on. I imagine this isn't an isolated incident, actually. So yeah, I think we all got to be careful and smart about how the way we build, we build things that we build. Rule Britannia. Rule Britannia. Rule Britannia. Come on, man, you're actually British, I'm like that. I'm trying.

Rule Britannia. At last night of the problems hijacked by activists waving EU flags. The site of hundreds of European Union flags, the last night of the problems, have prompted an outrage from Brexiteers and a call for the BBC to investigate. Those waving the EU flag and the Royal Albert Hall appeared to outnumber those waving the Union flag at the event, which is usually a patriotic display following a campaign by pro-Europeans. The spectacle of so many EU flags being waived as the whole belted out rule Britannia,

provoked disgust from leading Eurosceptics. What's going on? I vote from the Guardian. I voted to remain in the referendum. And I've largely, I don't know if I've changed my view of that, how I would vote, but my view of that issue has evolved so much precisely by seeing these fucking morons, who just completely incapable of understanding what democracy means. Democracy means that when you lose, you accept it. There's some other parallels for that particular statement. When you lose, you accept

it. And we've had for the last seven years these just absolute fucking lunatics running around, acting like what democracy means is they always get their way. And they have to insert this into everything. And they've just become obsessed. And it's mind boggling to me. How we're still talking about Brexit is mind boggling to me. I don't get it. Yeah, that's insane. It's insane. That's like a Eons old talking point now. I think if you are still talking about Brexit, your brain is broken. When do you think that rule gets applied to COVID? I think that with COVID, I actually said this before COVID was over and in this instance, I get things wrong all the time, but this was something that turned out to be right,

that people will want to forget very quickly and they have done. Even I want to move on from COVID, we talked about it earlier, but I don't have any great desire to talk about it. Most people have moved on without learning the lessons of the thing. So I think the reason to still talk about COVID is that there is a future pandemic coming and we ought to learn the lessons of this one while we still can. With Brexit, it's a political decision that is not reversible unless you have another referendum, which in which case you are free to campaign to have another referendum if that's what you'd like.

I'm not sure showing up with EU flags at the proms is the way to achieve a second referendum. I'm not a political expert, but that's not right. Yeah, there is a... Like a resurgence of activism occurring at the moment, but it's always in criticism of stuff. Yeah. So George Mack, one of my friends, highlighted that the last time that there was a ticket tape parade for someone that wasn't healthcare professionals

in America for something, not against something, was Nelson Mandela in the 90s. So you have a culture of activism and of public displays of passion, however, can only be against something, or people are only choosing to do it against something. And people respond to incentives. What's that saying? Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business and eventually it generates into a racket. And there are many people in this country who made a career out of being prominent remainers.

And when Brexit was over, what are you going to do? So they just carry on. And the people they feed this crap, like having this crap fed to them, so they just, they keep going. It's a reward incentive-based system, because it's a pointless conversation. You're not going to change the result of the referendum. Even if you succeeded in improving the Brexit was a bad idea, it's already happened, so you can argue for a second referendum or another referendum if you want, but that's it, right?

But talking about how shit Brexit is isn't about achieving a result beyond your own personal enrichment, satisfaction status, et cetera. And, you know, the Femi, the Smarrina Perkis woman, there's a shit ton of these people on Twitter, who's only thing that they do is talk about Brexit. And get, you know, thousands and thousands of views. Yeah, it makes me sad to think about people who, I know there's like one incident that occurs, especially like public stuff, like some catastrophe on Newstort, like people that are still talking about Madeline McCann. Do you know what I mean? Like I understand fucking terrible situation, but there are

people who's entire lives. I want, I mean, they I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not.

I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not.

I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I got hit with the fucking, like, blast radius of these two investigative journalists. I had them on the show when the disappearance of Madeline McCann came out in Netflix. And these were the two main people, husband and wife. And I brought them on, and I thought, fucking hell, like, these are the fucking experts.

These are the guys that Netflix went to. They must be, like, fucking legit. You know, any... Brought them on, turns out there is an ardent fucking group of people who really do not like them on the internet. And I was a part of like Madeline Mechanalore for a couple of weeks because this guy has platformed these people that we know they're a part of the, like, whatever the fuck cover up scheme and they didn't know the thing that went on. Do you haven't read the original police report from Portugal or wherever she was from?

And it's, there's part of me that thinks like, noble cause you're chasing after it. It's part of me that thinks, holy fuck, you've been captured by this one thing, like this one incident has just completely controlled your life forever. I mean, the one thing that doesn't get set off and enough is, you know, there's a certain proportion of society that's not mentally well, massively overrepresented online. Right. So I think a lot of people are just, you know, it's, it's an obsession of theirs.

What if you don't get to see what's driving? This is what I often think when I'm reading Twitter replies, because I'm like, well, these people are normal, and most of them are, of course they are. But you read something weird, and then I sort of go, okay, let's imagine what sort of circumstances I would have to be sitting in to write this. And then I see that picture, and I go, okay, this makes sense.

You know what I mean? Like, when I see people saying really crazy shit, I'm like, so this, I just think what we forget sometimes is a lot of people are, you know, in that situation. I was talking about this preventative medicine place that I've been to in America. So it's called Fountain Life. And I did a podcast with a founder forever ago and thought, that sounds fucking cool. Didn't really know what preventative medicine was, although it's kind of encapsulated in the name.

And I ended up getting like everything done. Full body MRI, CT scan, heart angiogram, brain angiogram. I need to do that, man. Full works, yes, I will 100% link you with them. One of the things they do, I think it's called contrast. So you're hooked up to an IV, which is like a mechanical IV. So when they press a button, just shit goes into you. So they've got you in the fucking cannula or whatever it is. They've got the thing in there. And then there's this huge

big wheel spinning around you unbelievably quickly. So you kind of in MRI machine, it's a little bit more open and this huge fuck off wheel that's obviously like scanning shit. And then this they pump stuff from this machine into your vein and it lights up your heart. It goes into the ventricles of the heart while this thing's in a very specific position, over you, blah, blah, blah. But the felt sense of it is heat starting in your neck and going only through your torso, it doesn't touch any of your limbs, going only through your torso and finishing in like your bladder. And then it cools off around your bladder. For about 20 seconds, it is one of the strangest fucking experiences. It's not unpleasant. Strange. I would definitely wouldn't even say it's that unpleasant, to

be honest. It's like, must be what feeling like a dragon is like, just fucking heat moving around inside of you. So yeah, that was very interesting. I can't wait. I can't wait. Preventive medicine though, we were saying it before. Playing a game where you try to catch up to a disease that's already happened. By design, is a losing fight, right? Absolutely.

I think that seems to me to be the future of the direction of where going is, like looking into genetic predispositions, I know people who are having procedures because they know they have a certain risk, etc. Chris Hemsworth found out on that discovery documentary that he's got, I think he's got genetic predisposition to Alzheimer's. So he's spending way more time with his family and he's doing other things.

He adjusted his entire life because I might not be able to remember this. Should learn a second language. That's protective against Alzheimer's. People who speak multiple languages are much less likely to have it. I wonder which way the causal effect works, I don't know, but I imagine exercising your brain in multiple ways is helpful to protecting yourself against things like that. Yeah, I don't know, man, you know, there's a multiplicity of, um, ideas about how we're supposed to live our lives.

And in some regards, it's amazing, you know, the promise of free access to information 24 hours a day, all of human civilizations, knowledge at your fingertips, that combined with the falling away of the gatekeepers and this loss of trust in institutions actually makes for really fucking like, disquieting journey for a lot of people because who do I trust? Do your own research. Fuck, I've got a life to live. I've got to try to, the family and the kids and the house and the dog and the me and

you want me to, I gotta go and do my own, I can't give me the medical journal, I'm gonna go through this, whether it's about how our carbs good, sugar good, what about, should we be eating more butter, what about meat, is meat killing me or should I go vegan, what about paleo? Liver King says I need more testicle, like, you know, and it's everything. And I'll see you, and I'll raise you, which is what if the way for you to live your life that's optimal is different to mine. Right. My wife's very into Ayurvedic medicine, and that's the entire concept of it, is the different types of people that need different food, different times that the eat, all sorts of different things. So a lot of it is experiential. When I found out that you could just eat protein and greens, I was like, whoa, this is amazing. And that's what I do.

I have carbs every now and again, but it fits how I am wired. And my wife is the exact opposite. She's water. She wind wind. Wind, yeah. Your fire. I'm fire, yeah, fire's the lead for me. Anton. Anton's wind. Francis. Water.

You want? Bloody water. It's pre-obvious. Bloody water. Water is great if you can get it off the sofa. Then it's like a ball rolling down the hill. You can't stop it. It becomes unstoppable.

But it's a fucking hard, it takes a lot of fire to bowl rolling down the hill. You can't stop it, it becomes unstoppable, but it's a fucking hard, it takes a lot of fire to get water off the sofa. Yeah, I was fascinated, he taught me about this in Austin when we were hanging last time. I thought it was really fascinating. He taught me as well, ambient water. Ambient, not refrigerated water,

should avoid drinking cold water too much. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, just that's that's their way. That's how they see it. And I'm by no means an expert, but generally ingesting cold things is not good for you. Is what? Yogurt. I love yoghurt so much. Very awesome. Not great, as I understand it. I mean, look, I'm not supposed to read me and I mostly read me. So, you know, you break the rules sometimes. Yeah, but no, I understand what you you mean, different sort of strokes for different folks, but fucking hell, like even if there can be different strokes for different folks, I should be able

to find a source that can, I'm this kind of a person, therefore I can do this kind of a thing. And this is where the, if I was more conspiratorial, I would say that the goal of a messy information landscape is not to convince you of any one narrative, but to convince you that no narrative can be trusted. And it seems to me that if I was maybe even an aferious domestic actor wanting to make a sort of nihilistic, fatalistic, not compliant, but just like surrendered populace. Well, you know the electrification experiment, right, where they put a rat in a cell where the floor gives them an electric shock. And what they found was in psychology, this is called, what's the term?

Loan helplessness. Yes. This is the lone headlamps social experiment, where if the rat is able to end the electric shock by pressing a button, then the rat will continue to do that. If the rat has no control over the electric shock, it will just lie down and take it. So I think what you're talking about is a system that creates, learn, helplessness in people, which is one of the reasons, while of course it's super tempting to bash the mainstream media and they deserve a lot of the bashing, we need a media ecosystem that'shing. We need an immediate ecosystem that's trusted. We do need politicians who can be trusted. I'm not happy with the status

quo that we've got the moment where we trust no one, and with good reason. But the solution to that isn't to trust the mainstream. The solution is for the mainstream to become trustworthy. You think that's even possible? I think it's very difficult in a modern environment. It's very, very difficult because I just see that us, we're running a small media organization, just you are too, right?

It's like, do you get everything right? Do you, is your research always on point? You know, so it's very, very difficult. Interesting what you said earlier about, there are certain things that they're able to do that we're not fact checking and stuff. They're also because of how they're incentivized and subsidized and the expectations, like non-sexy stories, you know, digging into weather and accounts and stuff, tell me which YouTube channel is gonna predict tomorrow's weather.

No one, right? Not sexy enough. Too much of a cost to be able to do. And no one's saying the fucking meta-face, they're captured by the woke, although there was that thing this year, right? Where they made most of Europe look like it turned to ash because anything over 35 degrees Celsius meant

that it was like the black and end of a cigarette. So maybe there is a little bit. It's incredible. I mean, fuckery going on. Yeah, well, there is a lot of fuckery going on. What's interesting is there's no, I find the climate issue absolutely fascinating. It's genuinely fascinating to me because the historical ignorance on that issue that is being deliberately spread is like mind blown to me. Do you know the Romans when they occupied Britain? They grew grapes on Hadron's wall. Hadron's wall for people listening is what used to

protect England from what is now Scotland. What is now England from what is now Scotland? Right? One of the northernmost points on the British Isles. Now if you don't know Scotland, fucking cold. It's average weather. I used to live in Edinburgh for seven years. Average weather in Scotland in August is like 18 degrees in rain and best, right? So, what we are being told about that issue is absolutely mind-blowingly, incredibly unhelpful and inaccurate.

Wasn't the, I think it's still around somewhere in London or somewhere in the South Coast, 40 miles inland from the coast of this port? Pervancy Castle. Yeah. Pervancy Castle, you go there and they're like, yeah, the sea used to be here. Yeah, I don't see the sea. 2000 years ago. Yeah. So this whole conversation is very, very odd to me. And after my Oxford speech went viral, I had a lot of invitations to go and speak to different people. And I

was talking to this guy. He works for the Indian government at a high level. And he told me, when India became independent in 1947, average life expectancy was 37 years old in India. And today it's I think 82. And that's because they burn fossil fuels. Now, are we saying to a billion plus Indian people, they're not allowed to do that anymore? Do you know what I mean? Like the way we talk about this issue, just it's a cult.

It doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any logical sense of things that are being a cult. It doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any logical sense of things that are being suggested that we do don't make any sense. The way we're approaching it doesn't make any sense. It's incredible to me the way this conversation's being had. And I'd love to understand, you know, Eric who you just had on, he always says this,

like we're lying about the climate for the wrong reasons. Do you know what I mean? Like his point is climate change is happening and it's a serious issue, but we're lying about the way to deal with it and lots of other things around it. Um, that's one of the most weird things to me about what's happening, like beyond Lombog, during that, oh my god, heat wave, we're all gonna die, keep posting stuff about, you know, like actually the number of forest fires

is the lowest it's ever been and the number of hurricanes in America is et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I would love to know what's going on with that shit. I would love to know because- You got me theories. Well, one thing that's interested me a lot is obviously people are familiar with the concept of group think.

But there's another thing, which is the, the Abelene paradox. I don't know if you're familiar with it. It's basically the idea that people will often do things because they think other people want them done. And you combine that with mass panic, indoctrinating kids into being terrified, et cetera. And I also think human beings love a doomsday narrative. And a portion of the sort of side that I've been arguing on, which is this anti-works side, is like the barbarians at the gates. Now, I genuinely think that's true. I think

we are undermining the founding pillars of our civilization, but there is an appeal to that worldview. And if you look back, neither of us are old enough, but there is an appeal to that worldview. And if you look back, neither of us are old enough, but in the 1970s, the planet was cooling and everybody was terrified of global cooling. Terrified. Terrified of the population, bomb. Absolutely. Now we're terrified of the deep population.

It's what we love. We love to think. And I think there's a kind of like, we live in special times. Oh, like a mass solipses. Yeah, like look, look, you know, last 2000 years, you know, shit has happened and you know, you had Jesus, you know, World War II and whatever, but now is the real time when shit is happening, you know, and you know, maybe it is happening. Not on this issue, I don't think.

But yeah, the idea that we are living through a climate catastrophe seems highly suspect to me, highly suspect. But also somehow very sexy. Very sexy. No, that's not the sake the climate isn't changing, the climate is changing, but the question I think we're also ought to be asking is, is the climate changing a bad thing? Well, climate-related deaths have decreased by 50 times over the last 100 years. That's Alex Epstein's he been homeless.

Yes. We haven't had him on, but yes. Oh, dude, you guys are fucking loving, I'm sure. He's an interesting dude. Yeah. Climate-related deaths are decreased by 50 times. More people are killed by cold weather than hot weather. Yes.

Way, way, way more. And we know that because this is the thing about the idea of pursuing net zero is it makes energy more expensive. That's the method by which you achieve this to some extent. And tens of, you know, pensioners freeze to death every winter in this country. Now that doesn't seem like a good thing to me. I don't think making energy more expensive for poor elderly people and them freezing to death on their own and their homes in the winter. I don't think that's what, I don't think if we were setting

out to improve the world, that would be one of the ways that we'd do that. But because we're trade-off denialists because we refuse to understand that actions have consequences good and bad, we ignore that. And this hysteria, it's cult-like and it's I find a very strange, I find a very strange. Whatever you think about the climate issue in and of itself, our response to it is strange. People are just looking for a cause, right? And this is why COVID was so captivating on both sides because it gave us a righteous war to wage. And again, when you've got a multiplicity of ways

that you can go with your life, the manbox has been blown open. Nobody says that you should be this for masculinity. Maybe I don't even need to get into a relationship. I can just boss bitch or like, in sell my way through the next. However many decades of my life do all this sort of stuff. Ah, here's a single vector, a long witch I can move.

I'm no longer in an open field. I'm on a set of railway tracks. And yeah, you know, Peterson had the ordering chaos, like paradigm out there. It feels like there's a fucking hell of a lot of chaos and not a massive amount of order for people. And then the people that live in chaos land and prefer that look at the people in order land is tyrant. And the people in order land look at the people in chaos land as fucking vigilantes. And yeah, it's, it doesn't surprise me, man, you know, and this is where... high-rants and the people in order land, look at the people in chaos land as fucking vigilantes. And yeah, it's, it doesn't surprise me, man,

you know, and this is where I said to Eric, I wish that I'd got Eric to watch the Sam episode before he sat down with me because it was difficult for me to portray a three hour conversation in 20 seconds. But I don't think that those guys are too far apart. Like Eric's saying, we've lost faith in our institutions, but we can't get rid of them. Independent media is both advantageous and not going away, but we fucking, like outsource

our sense-making to them as well. How do we live in this new world? What does success look like in this regard? I thought it was fucking interesting. Look, I think we're living in a, this is a metaphor that is overused, but it's sort of the invention of the printing press kind of situation. I mean, that caused two centuries of religious war. So I think what the social media in particular in the Internet more broadly has done, it

is has broken our ability to make sense of the world, and we are all reaching for a way to do that. I think it's going to take some time and it's not going to be without consequence. And it's interesting because the argument about free speech is made very complicated by the existence of social media because there are people who say they're free speech absolutists. I've never called myself that because I don't believe anyone is a free speech absolutist. What's your conception on free speech?

Give me the framework. Well, think about this. So Elon Musk says he's a free speech absolutist. He buys Twitter and then the moment people trigger his personal preferences, he shuts that particular form of conversation down, right, when it was about children or something like that, right? Suspreading something. It was, you say, I think you said about Alex Jones or whatever, right? Anyway, my point is X, Twitter, whatever, has a moderation policy because it has to.

It has to because the technology is so powerful. This is the, I'll give you both sides of the argument, right? But the argument for moderation as in content moderation is the, I'll give you both sides of the argument, right? But the argument for moderation as in content moderation is the technology is so powerful. If you can start an assault on the capital or an undermining of an election or whatever it is or a riot or a mass shooting or whatever. If you can start that from your phone, the technology is too powerful to be left on control. And I have a lot of sympathy with that argument. However, let's flip it the other way around. You live in the United States, now a country for which I have a tremendous regard and the history and the formation of the country is very interesting because it creates a country that is fundamentally very different to every other country that's existed before.

Do you get 1776 if there is Twitter and it's moderated? I don't think you do. Because who would allow a revolution to happen? You think King George would allow the spreading of misinformation? Right. So we are stuck in this place where on the one hand, yes, free speech is absolute and it's really super important. On the other hand, actually most people, it's very easy to be a free speech absolutist until you're in the hot sea, making the decision. And imagine you are in the hot sea and you've got the CIA, the FBI, the heads of government or whoever's your friends coming to you and going, if you don't do something, people are going to get killed and they are going

to get killed. And that's on your conscience. It's up to you, right? So it's a very, very difficult thing with the power of the technology that we have that has their ability to multiply information, narratives, opinions, whatever, in such to such an extent. So we have not worked out how to handle that at all. And everybody who says they have a solution to it, I'd love to see them be in the hot seat for a day. And then we'll see how absolute as they are about free speech or how pro censorship they are because there's a flip side to the coin,

which is you do moderation, you're going to get accused of bias from both sides. Right. So I don't have no envy for those people. Now I do think they've made a shit ton of mistakes. I'm just saying, I suspect I probably would have done too. Yeah. Sam had an interesting analogy where he was saying, if I spend five years building up the waking up social media platform and I want only Nazis to be allowed on it,

I should be allowed to only have Nazis on my social media platform or the inverse. I should be allowed to kick Nazis off. It's not my job to have people I don't want on my social media platform and this comes back to the like, was it the pipeline versus public service. I mean, there's a very strong counter argument to that argument, which is the one you've just made, which is once you've captured the entire market, you're a monopoly and we regularly monopolize for a reason, which is to be kicked off, to be kicked out of the local pub, but does not prevent you from going and having a drink and a pub to be kicked off Twitter, prevent you from communicating in that element of the public square. Has there been any, there's usually concerns around monopoly? Has there been any of that to do with online platform? Is this such a thing as too big of an online platform? Like, fucking Facebook and

TikTok and YouTube have got like, you know, large portions of the planet as users. So this is a new category in that regard. Absolutely. The banks got so big that they needed to be split up. So you take large things and make them into smaller things, right? But you can't. Not with this, because no one wants to be on the third best Twitter.

Nobody wants to use the third best Google. You do it. You split them off and then everyone just converges back on with your good luck. The monopoly is what makes a valuable. The fact that it's on there is what makes a valuable. That's why Elon Musk bought Twitter rather than building his own from scratch. Yeah. Because he has the money to build his own Twitter, but you just can't drag people over enough. So the monopoly is the point.

This is why it's such a trick thing. A new category of business. That's why it's the point. With sort of frictionless gravitation towards whichever thing you want to choose to use, people will always converge on the biggest, the best, the whatever one. Whereas, yeah, if Jim Shark gets two and a half billion users or customers, and they say, you need to split up into Jim and Shark, right? A Lloyds and TSP. It's not quite the same. You don't have,. Everyone's going to converge on this particular one.

There's interesting one of the analogies I used to use from my nightclub days. Twitter's kind of like this. In nightlife events, it's one of the only industries where the other users of the product are the primary value of the product itself. So if you ask one of your friends on your 20s, mate, how was last night? And they'll say, mate, it was amazing. So many girls in that club. You know, no, I asked you how your night was.

I didn't ask who were the other people that went to the event. You know, you don't say, why do I use an iPhone? I use an iPhone because David Beckham's got an iPhone. So I use an iPhone because of the camera, and the iPhone So I use an iPhone because the camera and the apps and the battery life and stuff like that But nightlife was very very interesting in that way which is why it was so mimetic the same reason why like I'll open this up to you internet Some industry secrets here sometimes nightclubs hold cues and sometimes they make the cues thinner than they need to be

So they look really long and then they take photo, because it looks like it was busy. And we did that. We did that all the time. We still do. It's fresh as week next week in Newcastle. It's exactly what every single nightclubs will do, but you have that same thing with regards to the social media as well. The other users of social media largely determine your experience on it, which is why, you know, rumble is this and truth, social is whatever, right? Is there a left leaning? Is there a left leaning? Well, they had one mastodon, didn't they? I don't know what happened to sex, which tells you quite a lot. Speaking of mastodon, I had a guy called Ben Lam

on the show, he's the CEO of this company called Colossal. He is using ancient genetic information to bring the woolly mammoth back to life. Within 20 years, we will have actual woolly mammoths walking on this planet. So they've found, in the Arctic, very good for preserving DNA, they found bones and all sorts of other stuff. Mammoth carcass remains. From that, they've taken, I think it's maybe 40 or 50, different because you don't get a full DNA sequence in any one of them. Then they've brought them all together,

used AI to fill in the little gaps. They're then going to implant a, whatever it's called stem cell, pluripotent stem cell, inside of the Asian elephant. So an Asian elephant will give birth to a woolly mammoth, and then after a sufficiently long amount of time, they'll get placed up north, and they can do all sorts of awesome stuff for helping to fertilize the Arctic, and he also wants to bring back the dodo bird. The interesting reason he wanted to bring back the dodo bird was the reason that the dodo bird

was killed off was because of unsustainable hunting practices. So you'd think that the mammoth has a real function, right? The dodo bird can people laugh at it for being this stupid pigeon that couldn't fly away. But maybe it was because of the introduction of a particular predator or whatever. It might have been like ecological imbalance that was done by Manmade. And his point is, mammoth does a thing. It's like the farmer of the Arctic. Dodo bird is like a symbolic representation of,

do you see all of the work that we had to fucking go to to bring this thing back to life? Be more careful when you introduce invasive species into different ecologies. I was like, fucking hell. I mean, he's super fired up about it. I found him really charming.

So I had a conversation with him the other day. I thought that was cool. So they're going to bring back prehistoric animals. I think I remember seeing a movie about that. I did say, you know, how far back can we go? Real problem. Bones and teeth don't hold much genetic information, which is a fucking massive shame. But we can do stuff like a Sabertooth Tigers, like particular types of Sabertooth

cats. I was asking him, what else did he want to bring back? There was this huge fucking sloth, this massive thing that was like the largest marsupial or so. They live like on an island, but there were no predators. I think so. Yeah, this gigantic fucking sloth. So there's like a laundry list of different ridiculous megafauna prehistoric animal, prehistoric, like deceased, it's called de-extinction, extinct animals that he wanted to bring back. I just thought, like, between that and preventative medicine and AI, what do you thought of an AI? How are you feeling? Are you a fucking scared that you're going to lose your job to GPT-6? I'm not scared I'm going to lose my job. No. It's going to make a very

significant impact on the world, but what that's going to end up looking like. I don't think anyone really knows. I think there's probably, there's a lot of fear porn about it, and maybe justified it, maybe. I don't have any profound thoughts about it. I think if you look at human history, people always use technology for basically the same things. Right.

Getting laid, killing each other, et cetera, right? So you'll produce amazing porn, you'll produce amazing weapons, you'll produce amazing everything, and then human beings are gonna do what they always do, I think, is the truth, right? Like I remember, I think it was Desmond Morris, I used to read a lot of his books,

I don't know if you're familiar with them, but it's one of the things you talked about, he said like when you dig up a clay tablet in Egypt from, you know, 4,000 years ago, you read it is basically the same shit that we talk about now. You know, my son doesn't call it doesn't write to me or doesn't visit me or whatever. It's, you know, human condition doesn't change. The tools we use to express it. I saw a report from an ancient stone tablet from I think Egypt or ancient Rome that was a justification for why this employee hadn't turned up to work.

It was a sick note that he'd written. And it's this fucking elaborate story about what happened and the wife and there was a catastrophe and all this stuff. And yeah, you do realize that human nature is pretty fucking resilient over a long enough period of time. But coming back, here's another thing I'll say about the free speech conversation, which is that we haven't made nearly an honest,

enough case about free speech, which is why we're having a stupid debate about it, because no one wants to say the truth, which is free speech, has consequences that are bad. But like, there are people who say a troteless horrific shit. There are people who will use the opportunity to be on a social platform to mobilize and do terrible things.

Now, there's a big conversation now about whether there's a lot of anti-semitism on X. And actually, there is. There is. I have to block more people than I used to have to block to on Twitter. But I am still in favor of that being allowed because I'd much rather these people were in the open and people could see what they are and they can have their conversation. Instead of going off into a kind of like a private placeways just them. And the arguments are never challenged.

So I think one of the things people don't say enough about free speeches, yes, it causes harm, but the harm's worth it. And we don't make that argument because it's too honest and, you know, complicated and unpleasant and whatever. But the other side of the argument is terrifying to me. I don't think I've told the story publicly, but last time I did question time, question time is this big discussion,

political discussion program here in the UK. Before they do their show, they do a warm up question that's not recorded and it's not released. So it's like a warm up. And the conversation at that time was Donald Trump had just been unbanned on Facebook. And they was asking whether that was okay. And they went to me first. And I was like, look, not that I'm his biggest fan, but I do think the former or sitting president of the United States should be able to speak in public.

Yeah, I do controversial as that is. And then they went around the table and whatever. And then they went to the labor woman who was there. Very nice woman. And she without batting an eyelid went, I think we should have the safest internet in the world. And I want to say for the North Korea, right? This is coming back to this point about trade-off denialism. Like, they think safety doesn't have a price. And the other argument is freedom doesn't have a price. And the truth is they both have a price. And what we're trying to find is the right point in the middle between those two. We want enough freedom and enough safety. And that line is somewhere in the middle. Because if you think about it, that's true of any issue. I can end murder outside of the prison system today.

I can stop murder. Wouldn't you, unrape? Do you want to stop murder and rape? Yes. Okay, let's lock up all men between the ages of 15 and 40 until the age out of it. You've ended murder. Right, but we don't do that. Why not?

Because there's a tradeoff between safety and freedom. And so it's the same of everything and it's the same with free speech. You mentioned Trump. What do you think happens in 2024? I'm not an expert on it, but it looks like they're going to try and put them in prison. And it also looks like he might win. It's that possible. Yeah. Can both things happen?

It's, can you be president from prison? Yeah. You can be president from prison. Yeah. Fuck off. You can't be president from prison. Look it up. You can be president from prison.

Oh my God. And you can run from prison more interestingly. I wonder, maybe, maybe if you are, I don't know, maybe you can't be president, you can definitely run from prison. Maybe you get elected and pardon yourself. Right. So you're okay. Let's say, let's say that there's no prison, what happens, presuming that everybody is a...

Right, but why would we presume that? I mean, I think it's pretty clear that that's what's going to happen. Okay. The path that they're on, it looks to me like they're going after them. We just sat at the sky Adams on the show and he said Trump needs to win to stay out of prison. That's what he thinks. And I also think that the other thing he said is like, he actually interestingly said that he thinks Trump started this because when he talked about Hillary and he said, I'm going

to lock you up, they're like, oh, you want to play? Let's fucking play. So I think they're going after him now and they want to put him in prison. And I think they will. But you also think that he, I think he'll, he'll win the nomination for the Republicans. Yeah. And then it's, I mean, who the fuck? Look at the last election. The fuck knows what's going to happen. But he can run from prison that much. I know. That's fucking insane. Vivek Ramaswani playing tennis with his top off whilst Trump's in prison as the Trump Ramaswani 2024 fucking thing. That looks like what it's going to be right.

He, I think that's what Vivek's going for. Yeah, he's angling for it for sure. Yeah. And who do you think gets nominated for the Democrats? Oh, it's got, it's going to be Biden, isn't it? I mean, they're not going to abandon him unless... What, he falls down to flight of stairs? Yeah.

And in his case, it wouldn't even be a conspiracy. Who do you think the running mate, any idea? No, man. Look, let's be honest. Neither of us is an egg. Although you are now an adopted American, so you probably... An immigrant to that great nation. I know even less than you. Yeah. You know, the more An immigrant to that great nation, I know even less than you. Yeah.

You know, the more people listen to what I say, the less I try and talk about things I don't know enough about. I mean, that was a Douglas Murray thing. He was someone that asked him about two years ago, that asked him why he hadn't written many articles. He said, four, five columns a week. It's like 3,000, 4,000 words every week and then his books and then his speaking on top. Someone had asked him something along the lines of, why haven't you commented that much

on COVID? He says, I'm going to do something which is very rare in the modern world, just to not comment on something which I know nothing about. I thought, what a fucking beautiful and outlier philosophy to have. But this is, you know, I see this, I see this allure in myself and you know, I have to check myself and probably fail almost all the time at doing it. You, people start to listen to you about a thing or for a thing, and you go, well, why shouldn't I comment on the Ukraine? things, but thanks, man. But you are from the fucking region of the Ukraine and an immigrant to the UK, right? That's a lived experience. Yes, exactly. I know exactly what you mean. Your point is very, very, very valid. It happens

with comedians, incidentally, which is why comedians political opinions generally speak in us so demented, because you stand on stage all day making other people throw their head back and admire you, right, or be enthralled by you or whatever. And you're like, oh, maybe I do know something. Let me give you my opinion about Brexit. I'm like, no, no, just be the clown. Shut the fuck up. Now, that's why I don't do comedy,

actually, it's one of the reasons. I was more interested in making a point than I wasn't being artificially funny. You know what I mean? And I always sort of myself more as a satirist anyway, which was a different thing. But yeah, being in front of a microphone imputes you with a level of confidence that is very often inappropriate. Right. It's like permanently being on Oratorial Viagra. Yeah, if everyone's listening to me, I must be worth listening to that's that's what happens in your brain regardless of what it is that I'm talking about regardless of the format or the Yeah, I've got these these live shows coming up Towards the end of the year and November in November

That's awesome. Thank you. What's your advice for someone who have touring comic played fucking thousands of shows across your career? What do people who haven't put that time in on stage not know about how being on stage works? This is going to sound like a shit answer, but actually it's stage time is just like air miles on the clock. Like with pilots, you have to fly a certain number of miles. But, you know, I always think about, you know, whatever charisma, whatever else it is, is really about a comfort with yourself in front of other people.

If you're, and not everyone is equally charismatic naturally, but if you're comfortable with who you are, and you are able to do but if you're comfortable with who you are and you are able to do that while you're on stage on front of a camera or wherever, that's the magic ingredient. It's like my favorite quote is, the most important thing in show business is authenticity.

If you can fake that, you can do anything, right? Authenticity is the key ingredient, which is why I think you've been successful. I think it's why Joe's successful. I think it's why Francis and I have had the success we've had. It's, I almost feel I don't know if you feel this, but the longer we go, it's like the more layers of the undeniable we peel off to reveal more of who we truly are. Yeah, I would say so, because you become more comfortable with things that you masked over before.

Yes. There's, you know, uncertainty or, like, nerdiness, I suppose, like, unnecessary rabbit holes that you want to go down. And I've never had this before. Obviously, you had this and you may have had it before comedy. I don't know. But I never had a single pursuit that I got to go as narrow and deep on as I have on having conversations with people. And when you really, really start to fucking like drill down into, okay, what does, what does mastery begin to look like, which I'm not

at, but I can glimpse. I'm like, okay, what does that actually look like? What does that feel like? What does it look like to make rules and then break rules and then put them back in again and do things? I'm talking to some of the guys now. I want to start doing slightly more scripted bits as a part of maybe some of our ad reads, as a part of maybe some of the intros. And that's like, if you actually look at that,

that's a very inauthentic way of doing what is supposed to be an unbelievably authentic, relatable medium. We're taking the rules from, you know, like sitcom legacy media to try and apply that to this, but I actually think that that's breaking rules that have been made and the reason you can is because you've learned them unbelievably well, right? It's not knowing the rules, it's disregarding them purposefully. Yes. And I'm just excited by all of the different options and opportunities and ways that there's cool stuff to do. And it's fucking awesome to see what you guys are doing at Trigonometry.

But what I know about what's coming that more people will find out at some point over the next however long is fucking amazing. I think that the UK needs a nice movement, a good conglomeration, headed by people who understand this industry that can be a platform for others who have amazing and interesting things to say, but don't yet have the platform that they deserve to be able to say them on. Well, this is what we've been working on for a long time, and I can't quite say exactly the people and who are going to be involved other than to say they're going to be fucking awesome.

But we want to use the platform that we've built to make it so the Trigonometries, the main show on that platform, but there will be other shows with other people and me and Francis, interspersed with other interesting funny, hilarious, clever commentators, etc. So rather than, you know, too trigonometry into his week and some raw shows and a bunch of, we've started doing a lot of scripted stuff ourselves, comedy, you know, I often record my substack pieces now and we put them out as videos. We had a couple of really viral ones, one I did about communism and fascism that you do want about Jordan Petersonry?

I did, yeah. Yeah. That one's done very well surprisingly. Yeah so but also we want to start thinking about how you know I'm thinking about us now as a media organization. That's my frame for what we're doing. Want to bring other people through help them make exciting content that fits with the values of what we do. There's going to be entertaining for our audience, there's going to be informative, and grow it over time into a real hub for awesome content. And that to me is super exciting. The next phase of this, because I think the media industry that we are in, the new media industry is going to change rapidly. And one of the things I see coming down the pipe quite quickly, actually, is consolidation.

This idea that you're going to give five quid a month to your favorite 70 creators, it's not going to happen. That meant alone will kill you. Right. So people are going to want to place. And obviously our politics are very different, but the model of the daily wire is, I mean, they've executed it incredibly well. I went to go and see them. I filmed on Brett Cooper's show four, five months ago, something like that. Yeah.

And, uh, dude, it's a, it's a machine workshop for creating content. Yeah. And over there's the merch team that all they do is make fucking tumblers and designs for t-shirts. Yeah. team, all they do is make fucking tumblers and designs for t-shirts. Here's an entire three by ten row of editors all working away, millions of meeting rooms, and here's an entire different building with everyone's studio in it. Here's a control center that allows us to edit anything at any time. I found this out, fucking, I'll check that this is okay to say, Shapiro has got some special fucking landline thing, some special type of connection that runs from where he is in Florida

to where the hub is in Nashville that allows them to cut his show live as if they were on site. Wow, I didn't know that. And I've been in that studio a couple of times now in Florida. Well, I've been to that one, but I've been to the pipeline where that shit ends up.

Yeah, yeah. I've been there too. It's impressive. It's very impressive what they're building. So he's an interesting thing for you. Two analogous stories that I'm sure that you've thought about before. The sort of slowed dilution or fucking explosion of the young Turks

and Crowder, daily why, that in a, you know, you're talking about congealing or bringing together, meanwhile, a lot of the groups and affiliations and organizations, you know, IDW largely disbanded. That was like a Lucifer. That wasn't an organization. Luciferiation of people, young Turks, you know, you say the wrong things slightly and downstream from that. Some people on the network don't agree with other things that you've said, you know, like fucking apparently Ben Shapiro was crowd as first ever lawyer or

some bullshit as well. And then, you know then they've split off and they big C conservative. And he turns out that he bought the URL only a couple of months after they spoke, but months before he announced that he'd recorded these phone calls and all this sort of bullshit. So I think that sometimes we're too quick to try and pattern match stuff. Yeah.

And it's like, all organizations devolve into, you know, fractured individual, like, groups or whatever. Or all, you know, power becomes centralized into one thing. It's like, maybe it's just flux. Maybe it's just tides. You know, maybe there's like ebbs and flows and stuff. Well, I think you're going to be able to continue to do what you do in whichever way you want to do it.

I'm interested in bringing people through who are very talented, but who basically what we had to do with trigonometry, and one of the reasons I haven't made there a few money, is that we have a big team as you do, but we've always had a big team because we wanted to create the foundation for what we're about to do. And so, Francis and I really don't make a lot of money from it because we're investing in the future. And what I want to do is we've kind of created a factory for making content. I want to bring people in who don't want to build their own factory, but who are very good as creators of making content. Yes, exactly. I mean, Carl Benjamin,

loads of visitors. He's done that. He's spanked it. Yeah, he's doing very well. They're playing a game of monopoly around the fucking, some like transport police bullshit somewhere in the country. And it's like they're slowly taking up, the transport people have got the corner office and I got all of the ones that I decide. Apparently one of the guys was telling me that he had some incident that occurred at the railway line, he had some sort had some incident that had occurred at the railway line

He had some sort of stalker that followed him at the railway line and because it happened at the Train station to transport police that pick up on it and he rang them and the guy rang him back And he could hear him through the wall. He said, mate, shall I just come through open the door and was talking to the guy that was dealing with his case That fucking hell that's interesting. But yeah, you know this it's cool, man. It's cool And it feels way more cool to see it happen from grassroots where you can watch episode one of some horse shit show. Thank you. With terrible lighting and fucking audios all over the place. And no one knows what they're doing. Ugly host. Ugly host. Yeah, that's a shit. And then you work to the stage where you're like,

holy fuck, like I can actually see the full trajectory of this entire thing laid out in front of me as opposed to like, oh fucking Rupert Murdock and is it part of the... Shade him, a shade face. Yeah, invested in a big $1. Nameless fucking like hooded figures drinking a dream of Krone dancing around a pentagram. Yeah, that's where we want to go. I understand. Dancing around a pentagram. Yeah, yeah, that's where we want to go. I understand. No, but closing closing the loop on all of that, I just think this is the next phase in terms of what we started with, which is let's stop whining about how we've been canceled. You know, I think it's it's been a thing of mine, which is like we keep saying, well, the main stream media isn't doing this. Then, well, let's fucking

do it. Like you're on main stream media. If you think that they're doing it wrong, let's fucking do it right. Let's do it. And let's see who wins. That's the thing for me is like, I love the competition. I love attempting to build new things, the creating, the challenge of that, working out, have to run a business with fucking immigrant mentality, man.

Man, to me, this is the most exciting thing. You know, we were talking with good friends of mine last night about how much money you need to be happy. And I was like, and somebody said that the statistics are $70,000 a year. And maybe it's in like $2009, but whatever. Beyond that point, it doesn't really make any difference. And I was like, well, for me, it does make a big difference. And then I thought, you know, what,

what if I made a million dollars a year, which is way more than I make now, but I wasn't having the experience of growing, working with my friends, all of that. And then I was like, actually, yeah, I don't think it is the money. It's the, it's the doing it. It's the creating, it's the building.

This is why of all the people that I love to watch, I love Dana White interviews. I was about to bring him back into why I just I cannot wait to interview him. You got him in America. We are working on it. So he's basically he's open to it, but it's just about finding the right time. As you can imagine, he's a busy guy. Yeah. I fucking love that guy. I love listening to that guy. I love the way he dealt with COVID.

I love everything about it. You see in that clip, it went super viral a couple of times where he says, bet against me, fucking bet against me. Tell me it's not gonna work. I love that shit. Every single time, man, like that energy. I'm the same. I really, really enjoy it.

And I think that it's missing. I think that there's not enough like conquerors in the world of personal development and business. There is from a performative level, but I don't look at Dana White and think that he's saying what he thinks sounds cool for people to hear. I think he's speaking his philosophy forward, which is one of, stand on this hill, come and have a swing.

Yes. Yes. And I've always been like incredibly competitive. I thrive on it. I love it. And one of the things, by the way, you've taught me, I will say this, is you were the first British podcaster who was in our space, who, when I've met, has been from a, who had a growth mindset, which is why I said when we first started, how unsurprised I am by the amazing success you're having, because you've always had that attitude, and it shows, and that's why you're successful, and that's why your friends with everyone in the industry, you know, I just, I think it's a natural concept, your success is not an accident is what I'm saying, at all. It's a natural consequence of the person that you are.

And Dana Wines buys me in the way that I'm inspired by your success as well, because it's just like, this is a guy who got his friends together, they bought this thing to $2 million or whatever it was. At some point, there were 30 something million in the hole and they just kept going until they crushed it. And there's a lot of other things that they do very well. I think as a, if you just switch on the, the fights on the Saturday night, you wouldn't

see, but they, they make it entertainment. They make reality TV shows out of the content. They, the, the way they present the fights is like very well organized and it's beautifully sharp. I think about this way. Think about what, if you watch boxing now, how fucking pedestrian, unnecessarily ceremonial it seems. Fucking guy carries out a mace and dots his cap and fucking a list of 50 people who donated money to this thing. We are here in the presence of the bird, a bird, a bird, we're just

by the Nevada state and the list of this, you a bird, a bird, we do, by the Nevada state and the this, the this, the this, you're like, no, fucking just tell me to fight. Yeah. Show me the fight. Give me the tail of the tape. Get me amped up. Let them punch each other. And also, what they've done incredibly well is with boxing, no one gives a shit about anyone on the undercard or the card. They just care about the headline fight. You have seen the headline fight may very often isn't the best fight that actually happens on the night. There will be the best fighters on the night but it won't be the best fight.

So you fight if the night will I would guess only maybe 30% of the time go to the main card. Yeah and it's just they and therefore they are building up other talent. This is what we're talking about with what we're doing. They're building up talent who are not the headline fighters but you are seeing them from an early start and you follow them and you'll all this person is getting better and they're building up talent who are not the headline fighters, but you are seeing them from an early start and you follow them and you'll, oh, this person is getting better and they're fighting this guy and whatever. So just from a business perspective, I am so inspired by that attitude. I think it's, I love it.

And I think we're probably going down very different paths in that you've gone to America where that attitude is prevalent. I'd love to take it every time I go to America, I come away buzzing,. I'd love to take it. Every time I go to America, I come away buzzing, but I'd love to bring more of that shit here. That's how I see our future. So next to the opposite Stephen Bartlett yesterday and said if I could gift the UK anything, it would be enthusiasm. Yeah. You know, there's just so much enthusiasm in America. And it is fucking, there's also stuff that's super shit at. And I wish I could take some of Britain to America as well I went to a layman I

Spend three days in LA sort of in the kind of like entertainment world you know doing Bill Mar and stuff around that That is a different fucking world my friend also. Oh, it's a different fucking world, my friend. How so? Oh, it's, I'm not a religious person, not yet anyway. But when I was there, I was like, I can see why people need religion. This place needs God. If fucking does, I'm serious, man. Like the way people think about other people, like if all you have is your success,

if your value derives from your status and success, whoa, that gets dark quickly. Whoa, that gets dark quickly. I think disposable objects everywhere. Oh man, it's fucking the way people see each other. There's no humanity there, it's just like you're an object for what I'm trying to get to. And that was eye opening to me.

I made it in Hollywood make sense to me now. The movies they put out make sense to me now that I've been there. A lot of it makes sense in a way that I'd never realized. See, I never realized how powerful Hollywood is at shaping our idea of what reality is, because the movies, like we we in the in Britain, we think we understand America, right? Because we watch their content. That's why.

But that's not the reality of America at all. And the more you travel around America, the more you are confronted by that fact. You know, the more time I spend in the US, it makes, it makes me more right wing in the American conception of like states' rights, because I'm going, I had a flight from Salt Lake City to LA, and you get on the plane in Salt Lake City, and you arrive in LA, which is not that far, and you go, these are different fucking, these are just different countries, these are different fucking, these are just different countries, these are different worlds, different religion, different people, different way of thinking, different philosophy, different culture, different everything, and the values are completely different. America is an incredible place.

I'm really enthused by it, and there's also trade-offs to some other way that people are there as well. So it's actually, you know, we talked about masculinity and femininity, and I think I actually know what people mean when they talk about toxic masculinity and toxic femininity, which is, you need both. You want to be thinking about it as raising both bars at the same time. If you want to be a good leader, for example, right, you need to be strong and you need to be able to say the thing that people don't want to hear and make yourself say the thing that you don't want to say because you don't want to upset people. And on that hand, you're

synod empathy and compassion too. Like, you want to be raising both up. And I see that in the same way as culturally, I want to take the best of the US stuff and the best of the British stuff and meld it together into something really exciting. Truck here, Constantin Kissen, ladies and gentlemen, where should people go? They want to keep up today with stuff? The best place to find on my work is Trigonometry, of course, on YouTube and the podcast,

and I've right on Substack, which has got really blown up at the moment. I'm excited about that as well. And Twitter, you know, at Constantin Kissen everywhere. Hell yeah, Constantin, I appreciate you. I appreciate you, my brother.