The Louis Theroux Podcast - S8 EP8: Gary Stevenson discusses his Mormon upbringing, sparring with Rory Stewart and why a wealth tax could save the economy

Episode Date: July 28, 2026

Louis is joined in the Spotify studio by author, YouTuber and inequality economist Gary Stevenson. Gary tells Louis about growing up in a Mormon family, his disagreement with Rory Stewart, and why he thinks a wealth tax could solve financial inequality.  Please note this episode was recorded before Gary announced he was stepping back from his YouTube channel.    Warnings: Strong language.     Links/Attachments:    Documentary: How to Get Filthy Rich with Gary Stevenson (2026) - Channel 4  https://www.channel4.com/programmes/how-to-get-filthy-rich-with-gary-stevenson     Book: The Trading Game, Gary Stevenson (2024)   https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/455809/the-trading-game-by-stevenson-gary/9781802062731    Podcast: The Rest is Politics: 144. Gary Stevenson: From Teenage Drug Dealer to Millionaire Trader (2025)  https://open.spotify.com/episode/5vfmQmoA9frvGh5aRQvZLi     Book: Politics on the Edge, Rory Stewart (2024)  https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/442034/politics-on-the-edge-by-stewart-rory/9781529922868     TV Show: That Mitchell and Webb Look (2006-2010) - Channel 4  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h242eDB84zY     Video: “I'm QUITTING!" Gary Stevenson vs Piers Morgan On Wealth, Economic Growth & Elon Musk (2026) - YouTube  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLmFZBB3Apw     Article: Gary Stevenson may have been Citi’s most profitable trader… in developed market foreign exchange (2026) - Financial Times  https://www.ft.com/content/5c48b680-daf6-40d2-9522-ad997eb07b63     Video: How COVID-19 MAKES the Rich Richer - Gary EXPLAINS the theory (2020)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiblHqbpXHs     Article: The Sunday Times Rich List (2026)  https://www.thetimes.com/sunday-times-rich-list     Play: Poet In Da Corner, Debris Stevenson (2018)  https://open.spotify.com/album/2QDC46EK9W1ndEyFbFkabH     Play: My Brother’s a Genius, Debris Stevenson (2026)  https://www.nyt.org.uk/get-tickets/my-brothers-a-genius-london       Credits:  Producer: Tom Fuller  Researcher: Beth Johnstone  Senior Assistant Producer: Maisie Williams  Audio Mixer: Tom Guest  Video Mixer: Alfie Butler  Production Manager: Francesca Bassett   Music: Miguel D’Oliveira   Series Producer: Millie Chu  Executive Producer: Arron Fellows       A Mindhouse Studios Production for Spotify   www.mindhouse.co.uk     Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Louis Theroux podcast. Joining me today is author, YouTuber and inequality economist Gary Stevenson. Gary started his YouTube channel Gary's economics in June 2020 after leaving a successful and lucrative career as a trader at Citibank in 2014. Since then, he's amassed 1.6 million followers, spreading his message that extreme wealth concentration is destroying the economy, wreaking havoc on society and sending a spinning into a dystopian future. Gary's prescription of a wealth tax on those with assets of over 10 million pounds

has become even more of a talking point in the wake of the release of his new documentary for Channel 4, How to Get Filthy Rich with Gary Stevenson, produced by my company. naturally enough when we recorded our conversation in July this year that was our starting point I should also say I wasn't just keen to talk to Gary because I was tangentially involved in his documentary it's also his status as a guru of where we find ourselves the economic landscape which as we all know the world's first trillionaire was newly minted just a few weeks ago Elon Musk but also his ability to grow a platform online as a digital influencer spreading his message and his story of kind of coming to wealth as a trader from a background of growing up

working class his dad was a postman and the way in which his extraordinary mathematical gift paved the way for him to make wealth for himself before the scales fell from his eyes we talk about all of this in the chat a quick warning this conversation contain strong language. All that and much, much more coming up. This episode is brought to you by Hulu on Disney Plus. Fans of the podcast will know I'm a big fan of television, especially TV that resonates with me emotionally, that brings out those feelings that are so essential to us as humans. This is especially true when it comes to a show like The Bear with its rather lovely, Jeremy Allen White, oh, with those blue eyes, damn him. And the, well, kitchen's a great location

anyway, isn't it? Everything's happening in a crucible of activity. But there's also themes of family, perfectionism, the toll that it takes on relationships, the sense of common enterprise that's at any moment at risk of being derailed by the jealousies and the feelings that we go through. And the satisfaction of people doing great work against the odds and even transcending the expectations that people put on them, you know. I don't want to do any spoilers, but in the bear you see characters working class guys disproving the low expectation or disproving the negativity that's put on them to do amazing things. Like it's a very relatable and primal storyline. It makes you think of Rocky, right? That feeling of someone actually out delivering, doing something amazing.

amazing and disproving all the doubters, which I've kind of done with my podcast. So those were the moments that got me. How about you? Make sure you check out a lifetime of great stories with Hulu on Disney Plus. Copyright 2026 Disney and its related entities 18 plus subscription required. How's life? Busy. Busy, stressful a couple of weeks.

Yeah, stressful a couple of weeks. The doc's just gone out. I really enjoyed it, found it interesting and insightful. I was surprised at maybe I shouldn't have been the level of pushback. Like some of the, not so much in the program, but in the afterlife, some of the reviews. Especially like the Guardian, you would think would be on side. Did you read that one? No, I never read them, but.

I mean, I'll put it out there just so people are educated on it. The Guardian gave it two stars and called it a faintly embarrassing waste of time. Yeah. Some others. I mean, financial times, three stars, you might expect that, some of the others. But what was your take on that? Yeah, the Guardian's a funny one. The Guardian called my book completely devoid of introspection,

which I think probably says more about the Guardian than the book. I'm interested in it, to be honest, because purely economically, these guys should be my allies. They're not the super rich, you know. But often they're not. I don't know, I think it's maybe something about class Some of the characterisations felt ad hominem and actually class-based exactly as you say

It's almost like this guy's annoying Yeah But the truth is, the truth is I think sometimes Sometimes I do intentionally annoy The middle class Sometimes in the way that I speak And maybe that's been a bit unwise

Go on How would you intentionally annoy them by the where you speak. Like, when I went on, rest is politics. You see me going I'm going to risk is politics.

Yeah, this is our sometimes studio down the hall. Yeah. Alistair Campbell and Rory Stewart, one ex sort of advisor, Tony Blair, one former Tory MP minister. Both sort of centrist.

Yeah, yeah. And yeah, and you went on there and go on. And actually, one of the blurbs... He's on the front of my book, Rory Stewart is one of the front of the book. And I've read his book, Politics on the Edge, and I loved it. I thought it was so funny. It was like, he kept like, so he's a conservative minister in this like camera and government

and later whatever May. And he kept like seeing conservative MPs do these like really, really terrible things. And kept being like, oh my God, even in the Conservative Party, this kind of thing is happening. And then dealing with it by like walking across Scotland or something. did he mean? Just like people who sort of didn't really care about the future of the country. Self-serving, corruption. Yeah, perhaps, things like this. But I love the way that you've seen that Mitchell and Webb sketch with the Nazis, with the hats. Right, where they go, maybe we're the bad guys. Have you seen what's on our hats? Have you seen, there's a skull and crossbones

on that? Do you think maybe? And through the whole of Roy Stewart's book, what is so funny about is he never has that moment. He never has that, are we the bad guy's moment? He's constantly convinced that him and his group of people are the good guys that have been, and bad people have corrupted their, like, holy space. And I thought it was the funniest book I've read in ages. So when I went on racist politics, I was really looking forward. And I just thought, I just wanted to, like, get him going a little bit. I thought it would be funny. Did you? A little bit. Um, it's interesting, like, being in the spotlight and seeing the different reaction you get from different people. It's strange, though, to be honest. You've come, you've become,

you know, we can go into the backstory and, and it involves you, growing up working class, becoming a trade and making a lot of money and then stepping away, then you reinvented yourself, well, having gone through the academic track for a bit, as more or less a digital influencer on the subject of inequality economics and building a big platform. And now you're in, now you're having to run the gauntlet of podcast and media appearances, another one, which is strange in its own right, because that's, sometimes, you know, obviously you're building your profile, you're getting the message out, but you're also having to take part in these gotchas, right?

Yeah. In the end, it becomes what clip is going to go viral and negotiating a series of encounters, like, in these digital arenas. Yeah. Do you know what I'm talking about? Oh, I do. Well, because obviously, you know, we're talking at the back end of a sort of two, three-week press campaign I've been doing.

There was a Pierce Morgan one. Beers Morgan, yeah, very combative. Whether you would be willing to disclose actually how much money you're worth to the Yeah. It was five million. And then he said, okay, you said, if you do it, I'll do it. Yeah. And he said, all right, I'll agree.

And then you said, I'm worth give or take, five million. And then he refused to then follow up on the deal. Yeah. Which was quite shady. Honestly, you know, for the documentary, I didn't find out to really late notice when it was going to come out. And I was on holiday in New Zealand. I was doing a tour of Australian New Zealand. And they pulled me back early because they had docs coming in.

out. So I came back early from holiday in March. Doc might come out in April. Start the YouTube channel up in April, ready for the doctor to come out. And it kept getting delayed and delayed and delayed. Didn't come out until July. And obviously we got Kirsteimma leaving and Andy Burnham coming in. And like in the last few months, there's been like realistic prospect of me actually being able to influence government, right? So it's been like quite a tense campaign for me because I've been trying to do all this lobbying behind the scenes and like trying to make great YouTube videos to try and push the agenda. And then the dog, didn't come out to like four months into the season.

And it's been a rough four months of me like being in the press. And I was knackered even before the press campaign come out. And I remember sitting in, we went to News UK, Rupert Murdoch building, to do Piers Morgan. And Channel 4, PR lady was with me. She was like, how did you feel? And I said, I feel like you're sending me into the Lions den with two broken legs. Because I was knackered. Before the interview.

Yeah, because I knew, you know, I did Piers Morgan last year. And if I may say so myself, I think I kind of dance rings around them. But then you come back and that like did massive, like he was massive viral on the internet. So I knew when I come back, they're just going to be shooting for me basically. And I knew I was knackard going in. And the lady, the makeup lady was doing my makeup and she said, you know, what do you want to do? And I said, make me look knackard because I fucking am knackard. And it's kind of, I don't really have the energy to fire it.

But you just, you just think, well, I'm just going to fucking go in and tell the truth then. I'm going to tell the truth, which is fucking economy is going to collapse. It's going to keep collapsing. I'll be right. I've been writing this for a long time. If you want to stop it, I can help you stop it. If you want to make it like a stupid playground game, then that's kind of how it ended up. The most recent one is today in the FT.

Yeah, I haven't read it. I haven't even read the first one they did. I won't. It basically is a guy who's apparently done an article about you accusing you of exaggerating your credentials. Yeah. Gary Stevenson may have been city's most profitable trader in developed market foreign exchange. Okay. It's the headline.

Yeah. And then it says, my testy exchange outside of London. pub with the self-proclaimed currency trading legend. Okay. So they're kind of marking your homework on whether you were the most successful trader in the world or not. But he sort of saying, like, yeah, he was an excellent trader, but maybe not quite to the hyperbolic levels he describes himself as.

Yeah, the thing that's really unpleasant about this is, so obviously I've had like my big press campaign. I've been doing interviews. And one day last week, busy day press, went out with my mates to the hub to just let off some steam. And this guy comes up to me, I'm the guy that did the hip boost on you two years ago. And I was like, fucking, what I made? How did you feel about that?

I mean, what can you say? It is what it is. I think I've been pretty clear about what I was, which was Citibank's number one trader in 2011. This piece came out two years ago, and it feels like somebody fucking sniffing your underail on the fucking washing line, this guy. And then, like, you know, he calls up all my old mate. are, you know, and they're all telling me, you know, people, somebody called my Oxford University fucking supervisor, did Gary really graduate from Oxford?

And it obviously everybody messages me and it just like, you're doing your postgrad, right? Yeah, it just, honestly, it just feels, and then to have this guy come up and get right in my face, you're like, you try and have a drink with your mates in the pub, it's a bit disgusting, to be honest, you just feel like, can you just, like, fuck off? You know what I mean? I mean, obviously this guy thinks I'm a lot of. lie or whatever. And he will never be able to prove I'm a lie because I didn't fucking lie.

And I'll never be able to prove I wasn't because there's no fucking award for it. But he's going to get fucking clicks on his piece, isn't he? Maybe no one ever reads any of his other pieces. Well, I suppose to try and, in a friendly way, push back a tiny bit. What it says, you're in the public eye. In a way, they're paying you the compliment of paying attention, right? And when you reach a certain level of success, I've had it a couple of times over the years and you've got a message that discomforts

certain people then they will come after you and it doesn't mean it feels nice and actually it is weird if you've ever been door stepped by a journalist or approached or photographed when you weren't expecting to what felt like a private thing

it's surprisingly intrusive and feels like a violation and that doesn't bring out the best part of you is what I would like you can react angrily and you think who am I becoming I don't know if you experience that. It's a feeling of like, wow, you feel like, you're like, you know, you can react to a way you might not be proud of.

But nevertheless, it's sort of what happens. I'm not trying to trivialize it or minimize it, but when you're at a certain level, that's what happens. And I guess what my takeaway is like it's interesting, not interesting. What I see is that it's very upsetting to you. Some people it bounces off, but you're not one of those people. No, it does upset me. It does upset me. It doesn't stop me from doing what I do.

But I mean, in the last few weeks, it does feel like it's kind of It's never really Happened to me in real life before I've never had someone This guy got right in my face in the pub, you know what? He said what? He said he thought I'm a liar He said he thought I'm a liar

He said, I'm a liar, I'm a journalist, I write for the Financial Times I wrote that piece on you Yeah, yeah, yeah And I think I said to him so he said he bumped into you Do you think that's true or do you have any reason to think he actually sought you out? Do you think it was his regular fuzer? No, I think it was. was a coincidence. So there was like a journalist thing going on there. And I was there to, like,

with a mate who happens to be a journalist. But, um, yeah, you come up to me and, um, obviously I was just like, well, you print lies about people every week or you make an exception for me. You know, obviously. You know, I don't engage, but if someone comes up to you in person, he's printed lies about you, you know, what are you going to do? You're going to say, well, what fuck you did? I mean, and to be honest, I probably should have just said, like, listen, no comment, no comment, no comment. because I should have known he was trying to do another piece. But, you know, I'm too busy in. Yeah, you gave him a spicy kind of opening,

like a spicy little mizonce for the beginning of the article. But there we are. I was struck as well. And, you know, obviously reading your book, I can see you're a sensitive person. I was struck in a recent video you did about Elon Musk, where towards the end you're having to do retakes because you seemed on the edge of basically,

breaking down? Yeah, I mean, it's, the thing is, the thing you've got to understand, Louie, I, like, started to really develop these ideas about the economy in 2011, right? I was a young man, 24 years old, and I came to the conclusion that this gets worse and worse and worse. And that was as a trader, so you put the bets on and as a trader, you're not really trained, you don't, it's not your job to think about what that means. wealth inequality specifically would be endlessly getting wider right yeah not income inequality

although maybe that as well but mainly well the accumulation of wealth yeah very rich which showed no sense of getting you know that that was a continuing in a self-feedback loop yeah but also poverty and the poverty would get worse and worse and then you know you come to that conclusion once and you put the bet on and you get paid a lot of money and then you do it the same thing next year. How do you make money out of the wealth gap increasing? I know this in your book, but you bet on interest rates staying very low? So back in 2011, 2012, we're just after the 2008 financial crisis. Back then, 2008 was a massive shock. And the way that economists and governments reacted was cut interest rates to zero, print a lot of money, quantitative easing, give out of money,

fiscal deficits. And this is like a textbook economic response. It's supposed to work. It's supposed to stimulate. And because the economists did what the economists are supposed to do, the traders, who are also economists, largely, predicted a recovery. And that recovery didn't happen in 2009. It didn't happen in 2010. By the beginning of 2011, I had become very skeptical about the recovery happening at all, but everybody still thought it was going to happen. And, you know, I studied massive economics at university for my undergrad. I could see the predictions were wrong. So I just wanted to understand why the predictions were wrong.

I spent a lot of time thinking about it, talking to people about it, researching into it. And I came to conclusion that I still believe, which is the reason why the economy is staying weak for the long term, why living standards continue to fall, is basically because wealth inequality is increasing, the super rich are getting rich and richer, the middle class is getting poorer,

governments are getting poorer, and that will worsen the compounding way. Sometimes I use the metaphor, we have an economy that has cancer and doctors that have not yet discovered cancer. That's basically what happens. And they're like, you keep getting sicker. We don't really know why.

We're not dealing with the underlying problem. So that's what I've been doing for a long time, right? And it's hard for me because I know what's going to happen. You know, that is my skill. My skill is correct prediction of the future. That is what I've made all my money on. You know, if you can go back and watch my first video on YouTube, June 2020. I did watch it.

I've correctly predicted cost of living crisis, inflation crisis, house prices going up, gold price going up, stock price going up, government deficit, austerity, all of these things correctly predicted. You know, this is what I'm good at. And I've got a very long track record of making good correct predictions. And when I look at the world right now, I'm very, very confident. That living standards are going to get much, much worse. And you should be upset.

And the problem I have is I can't tell myself comforting stories like, oh, it's just Gary's an idiot. You know what I mean? Because I've seen it be right every year. Just to make it really simple, it's not just that, I mean, there's a temptation to see the same. super wealthy as somewhat obscene just in their own right, like taking trips on rocket ships that cost tens of millions or, I don't know, whatever they happen to be up to, like these mega, mega billionaires, Elon Musk obviously, a trillionaire, allegedly. But your point is, you know, some might be tempted

to say, like, the rich being rich doesn't affect us as long as, you know, everyone's gone up a bit. Your point, if I understand it correctly, is that actually the rich being rich makes us poorer, Not relatively, but absolutely. Is that right? Yeah, so I think the problem you have is once the rich get incredibly rich, it's nobles. And that's just because of exponential growth and passive income. So, you know, if you take Elon Musk if he's worth a trillion, you know,

these guys, we interviewed one billion in the documentary, said he won't accept less than 12%. All right, let's say... Lassim Haider. You interview him at one Hyde Park, Lebanese-born businessman who says he's looking for 12 or 13, 13% return. Yeah, yes.

These guys... He's like, if you... I mean, you seem to... There's no animosity between you. It's a friendly enough encounter. He gives a lot of money to reform, I believe. I've heard so, yeah.

And he was a gentleman to me. You know, he made me a tea. Like, seriously, like, I've not got a bad word to say against him from our conversation. He was, like, perfectly respectful. But once you have these guys, like, billionaire's making 12%.

If you're billionaire making 12%, you're making $120 million quid the year. You know, imagine you're making $120 million. This is passive income. Doing nothing. Yeah. Imagine you make, if you were making

120 million quid a year, how much would you spend? I have no clue. Well, I mean, I would struggle to spend the one million. I wouldn't know how you would spend but let's say you spend

10 million a year somehow, right, live like the queen. You've got 110 million pounds left over. The only thing you can do is buy assets. You know, we don't live in rapidly growing economies

where there is massive, you know, massive amounts of growth investments you can make. You're buying assets, you're buying assets, you're buying assets. pushed up asset prices

and it squeezes other people out you know I mean this is this is the store the growth in the wealth of the super rich has happened exactly alongside the collapsing wealth of the working class and the collapsing wealth of the government these are two sides of the same coin

you know for a long time working class people like my dad who worked for the post office for 35 years could buy an own property that's no longer really silly possible for working class people who owns those properties now you know, who is on the other side of the mortgages. You know, I think if we see,

if we were seeing massive growth in the wealth of the super rich and also growth in the wealth of everybody else, then, you know, you might still have some cause to be concerned because you might worry about monopolisation of politics, monopolisation of power. But what we are seeing is massive growth in the wealth of the super rich at the exact same time as collapsing wealth of the working class, collapsing wealth of government,

and collapsing wealth of the middle class. Like, this should be like an enormous cause for concern. Like, it's very, very clear that what used to be owned by the working class is now owned by the super rich. What used to be owned by Western governments is now owned by the super rich. What I'm concerned about is not the rich in and of themselves. It is the collapse of the ability of everybody else to own wealth. You know, it's... So if you want to go into space, fine.

But actually, your super wealth does have an impact by kind of sucking up the assets that the rest of us would really like to have. have some access to. When I first started my YouTube, I was talking about the government deficit. At the time, it was 350 billion pounds. And I was kind of trying to figure out in my head, how can I, this is such an enormously big number. There's always this problem of how can I communicate to the public how big this number is. And I settled on this is more than three times the wealth of the world's richest man,

Jeff Bezos. So six years ago, 350 billion pounds was more than three times the wealth of the world's richest man. And just a couple of weeks ago, the world's richest man has gone through a truly So this is an incredible speed of growth. You know, we live in economies that are growing 1 to 2% a year. And yet Elon Musk's wealth is growing 40, 50% a year. You know, this is basically the medical definition of cancer.

You know, we are not growing at 50% a year, and billionaire wealth is growing 12% a year, 50% a year. It's just simple math. You cannot have a small group of society growing their wealth at 12, 20, 30% a year in economies that are growing 1% to 2% a year. and not expect them to relatively quickly own all of the assets in that economy. Do you, I was going to lead up to this, but let's just get this out of the way. So what do you think is going to happen? Because you seem, you know, as you say, you've got a track record of making predictions.

You seem to have limited hope of a major change of course by governments. So that leads to what? a kind of apocalyptic feudal society, immiseration, what do you actually think is going to happen? So I think you, we've got Andy Burnham in, just a couple of days in. I've heard you say in the person, well, Bernard will get in, he won't do enough,

then they'll bring in Farage, then he won't be able to fix it, right? Am I sketching it out? Yeah, I think here's the play because I see it. So the centre, which, you know, Labour is the centre. Even the Conservatives are kind of the centre. they're not really sold on the inequality stuff they're not serious about top level inequality

they're trying to sort of tinker the way out of it they'll make little changes here and there they won't be able to do anything big because the government wealth position is quite bad they can't raise a lot of money if they really want to raise a lot of money they'll have to tax a super rich which they're not really willing to do you've got to recognise that the status quo is not bad

the status quo is bad and aggressively worsening in an accelerating fashion that is what's happening to the wealth distribution which means if you don't do anything, you're aggressively worsening, which makes like Kirstarmer's job, you come in, I'm committed to not seriously changing anything, things will worsen. And it'll be the same situation for Burnham,

and they will continually fail on living standards. And then you know that that creates an interesting space for political ideas and economic ideas, because the public increasingly, like quite desperately want like some sort of significant, meaningful change on the economy. And the challenge and the mission for people like me, And I think that the thing which I need to think more about and the thing which I've broadly failed on is we need to convince the centre to give a little bit of ground on this.

We need to recognise that if they don't give us something on this, then they are opening the door to increasingly really serious extreme fascism. That is what will happen because until and unless they give us something on this, they will again and again and again fail on living standards. So I probably need to stop winding up Rory Stewart and figure out how to befriend him. According to some polling, 75% of the public support a wealth tax.

Gabriel Zuckman, a leading voice on economic inequality from French economist, has said very rich, the very rich have lower effective tax rates than the rest of the population. So in other words, the very rich are paying as it stands,

according to Gabriel Zuckman, less tax. Just to be really simple, what do you have, I've heard you mention a couple of ideas. Is your idea a two percent, a 2% annual tax on wealth above 10 million? Yeah, the current primary campaign here is 2% above 10 million.

You know, that exact design is not my design. That's a pre-existing campaign from Tax Justice UK and Patrottet Millionaires who work on this stuff. Gabriel Zuckman's plan is a 2% minimum tax on wealth of above 100 million euros, which I guess about £90 million. To be honest, like I'm quite quite... quite agnostic about the exact design. I think the most important thing is that it is not avoided at the top end. That's the most important thing.

You need to capture that. The real long-term problem is the very top end. Because they are growing incredibly quickly. Nothing is being done about it. They are able to use their media power, their financial power, their political power to block it from getting done. We need to get in there and get something so that we can start taxing these people. And if it's wealth above 10 or if it's wealth above 100, in the first instance, I don't really mind

because we need to start building the infrastructure to make sure that this works, to make sure that it's not avoided. And that work is not seriously being done by governments. The work is being left to people like Gabriel Zuckman, people like me, which is kind of absurd. Like, you know, this work should be being done by governments and by big teams of serious academics.

What I really want is governments and economists to start taking this seriously and to start a real serious conversation about what can be done to tax the very rich in a way that they can't avoid. Did you pay attention to the Sunday Times rich list when it came out in May? Not really, not this year. It's the 38th edition. Just a random fact, just for people at home. I mean, one of the striking details is, I think there's 350 people on the list.

In 2000, I guess their net worth was around 100 billion. This year was up to 741 billion. Top of the list. Do you know who was number one? This is UK only, obviously. I'm not trying to catch you out. It's not a got-johners. Who is it?

The Mittals or the Ambarnies or something like that. Interestingly, the Mittals are no longer listed. Maybe they've left. fled the coup, right? Which is kind of a pattern. Yeah. So it's the Hinduja family, listed at 38 billion, stayed at number one. Next down, David and Simon Rubin and family, 29.971 billion.

Number three, Sir Leonard Blavatnik, 26.852 billion, and so on. But the narrative, the spin that the Times put on, or the Sunday Times was, and this is the headline, billionaires are abandoning Britain. This is what it means. and they go on to say nearly a third 111 of the UK citizens who appear in the main list no longer live on the British mainland. And the suggestion is that the modest changes that Kirstama made to things like inheritance tax, non-dom status have scared them.

And now the super rich are turning their backs on Britain. And then there's a culture spin. Norwegian shipping baron John Frederickson closed his Chelsea offices moved to the United Arab Eremates declaring that the UK had gone to hell. That was a certain attempt. What do we make of that? I mean, I guess it's a familiar counterpoint

to one that you're probably used to hearing. So at the moment, we have a tax regime which taxes you largely based on residents. It means that we basically, to a broad degree, allow billionaires to choose where they pay their tax. I think it's important to recognize what a billionaire is and the ways in which a billionaire is different from somebody who maybe has a very well-paid job.

Somebody who has a well-paid job gets paid for working. I was a banker, I was getting paid millions of dollars a year. I get paid to work. Billionaires get paid because they own assets. It's housing, buildings, natural resources, productive assets, skyscrapers, don't. other people's debts, they might own your mortgage, they might own your government debt. So these people are, in some ways, more mobile because they don't have a job.

They can live anywhere. But it's important to recognise that their money comes from you. It's not from their work. If I was to tax, you know, you on your work, you could feasibly do your work from Dubai. But if I was to tax a billionaire who owns $5 billion, 10 billion pounds in British property and they go to Dubai, their money is coming from the people who live in those British properties. If I own 5 billion pounds of British government debt, my money's coming from the British government. If I own 10 billion pounds of Chinese government debt, at the end of every year, China would come to me and say, can we have our tax please on the income you have made on your Chinese government debt?

And if I tried to say to them, oh, actually, I live in Britain, they would say, all right, well, you're not getting your money anymore. You know, it's as simple as that. I think we've created this game where we allow the wealthiest people in the world who, by the way, own everything in our country. to choose whether or not to pay tax in this country. China says if you own our country, you pay tax in our country. And then we said we can't tax them because they can leave. Well, China doesn't allow it. You know, if you create a tax system

which allows the people who own your country to choose whether or not to pay tax, then you can't tax them. We don't have to use that tax system. We could use a tax system which says, if you own significant amounts of British assets, you must pay tax in Britain. You know, and it's, I think the world tax debate has moved into like a kind of, if it wasn't so important, it would be almost funny.

Where somebody like me comes up and says, oh my God, there's a massive, massive problem in the area of the economy I'm an expert in. And if we don't take action, it's going to absolutely collapse the country into desperate, desperate poverty. And people turn around and say, oh, how do we fix it? And I say, oh, well, okay, I'm not a specific expert on that, but I'll go and I'll research it and I'll bring the world expert over. and we think we can do it like this and they say but that's quite hard isn't it let's not do it

you know what I mean it's like I've come up but there's a fucking hole in the bottom of the boat wealth is hemorrhaging out can you come and help us stop the hole and people say

oh but are you an expert in hole stopping maybe it's hard to stop holes if you don't stop this society will collapse we need to deal with this and it's so absurd this you know

well Gary hasn't got all the answers do I need to have all the answers what I'm telling you is if you do nothing society will collapse and I'm willing to work with Whoever wants to do, you know, when I interviewed Dan Needle for the documentary. He's like, Doug Niedle was a tax expert. Tax expert. And I said to him, and I gave him the needle.

He seemed to be needled by you. Not, you weren't trying to needle him. He called it populist clap trap. I mean, his politics are sort of centrist, are they? Or maybe even slightly left-leaning? I mean, he's definitely the country's most prominent anti-world tax campaigner. Is he? Oh, yeah.

Is that his main bag? I'm sure he does other things as well. And, you know, from what I've seen of his work, he's done perhaps some good things, like exposing some tax avoidance by some high profile figures. But as somebody who is in the wealth tax world, like he's definitely this country's most prominent anti-world tax campaigner. And it was frustrating for me because I'm an expert on economics and inequality. Daddy was not an economist.

And he's an expert on taxation. And, you know, I know a lot about taxation, but I'm probably not an ex-as, and as expert on taxation as him. And I say, look, you know, if we don't do anything, society will collapse. And he says, well, your specific policy proposal is not going to work. I said, please help me. help me. You are the man that we need. You are one of the countries most prominent tax experts. I'm not a tax expert to the degree you are. I am an inequality expert. I'm an economics expert.

I can guarantee you if we do nothing. There will be like horrific long-term consequences to our society. Help me design it. Help me design it. You said absolute populist clap trap and the people pushing this should be ashamed of themselves. He should be ashamed of themselves. Yeah. So he said. This episode is brought to you by Claude. I have Claude on my phone. It's an AI that helps out with projects. It gives me advice. I asked it for the best episodes of the Louis Theroux podcast. It came back very quickly, mentioning Adam Buxton, John Wilson, Marco Pierre White, all solid episodes. Nice to have Claude as a listener. Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop at good enough. It's the collaborator that actually understands your entire workflow and thinks with you,

whether you're debugging code at midnight. Not something I do very often. But, You might, or strategizing your next business move, I definitely do that. Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems that matter. Claude's been helpful for me. You know, sometimes you just need like a screen grab, like a metaphorical one, a sense of what the landscape looks like. What's the key part of the narrative? You know, Steve Coogan, what are the key episodes,

what are the parts of his story that I need to dig into, the landmarks on the journey, and it'll give you citations. You can click through to the relevant websites, magazine articles, stories, podcasts, and like that, in the blink of an eye, you have all the information at your fingertips. For problems worth solving, get started with Claude at clod.aI-S-Theroo. That's clod.a-I-T-H-E-R-U-X.

And check out Claude Pro, which includes all of the features mentioned in today's episode. I'd like to go back if that's all right. And, you know, you're known not just for your ideas, but for your origins. story and some of that's laid out in the book. There's almost a Harry Potter dimension. I overused that analogy, but never mind. And you're like, you've got wizarding powers in the form of your math's ability, born to a Muggle family, if you like. As you said, in Ilford, dad was a postal worker. Mum was a homemaker. And both of the Mormon, I was interested to read. Yeah, yeah. Did they meet in the church? They did, yes. They grew up in South London, met in the Mormon church.

were three of you. Is it, you've got an older brother? An older brother and a younger sister. A younger sister's quite a noted poet. She wrote a play. Well, musical, grind musical called Poet in the Corner. Your older brother, I've only got little kind of, you referred to him as quite an unusual character at times.

Yeah. And then I think somewhere in your sister said, like he used to build supercomputers. That might have been a... That's probably unintentional exaggeration. He's a computer programmer. He doesn't like me talking about him, so I can't talk about him too much. He doesn't like to be in the spotlight.

But you're all kind of, it's, the crumbs suggest that you're all remarkable in a way. And, you know, in this, I guess, small house in Ilford, kind of amazing to think about. But, you know, not at all well off, and it was difficult. You know, there wasn't a desk at home, so you're having to do your homework on the floor. How much can you say about all of that?

Do you mind talking about that a little bit? Yeah, I don't mind. I can't talk too much about my brother and sister because they don't like to be mentioned publicly too much. But yeah, I can speak about it, yeah, sure. What are we going to say? Well, there's suggestions that your parents were, again, your mum gets one mentioned.

I feel almost bad bringing it out because it's all slightly behind a veil slightly. But you talk at one point about your mum saying, Like we were never that close. Just a throw away on a remark. Was it difficult, emotionally difficult upbringing? Yeah, it was difficult. Like, you know, five people were crowded in a small house.

I shared a small bedroom with my brother. My mum could be a little volatile, let's say. Very religious parents. Yeah, crowded house, we'll say. Yeah, it was difficult. But then my mum She was always very good to try and find What we were interested in

So I was interested in maths from like a very young age And she really took time to Encourage that But yeah it was it was a difficult out I was just crowded lots of Volume and emotion And lots of people in a tight space They must be proud of you

But I get the sense that they haven't Maybe Well maybe shown it as much as they might I only say that because I think a couple of times you said, well, you don't think your mum's read your book, for example. She said she has, my dad message me and said, mum's read it. And I said, what did she think of it? No, did she?

My dad said he'd read it. And I said, what did you think of it? And he said, too much swearing. Too much swearing. They're not big swearers, my parents. I'm pretty sure my mum said she has, my mom's quite severely dyslexic. So I think she might have maybe done the audio book.

But my parents are very religious. My mom is like, she doesn't like swearing. And there is a lot of swearing in the book. So she might have found it difficult. Yeah, I think they've always, it's been a funny one because I was very good in school and I always used to get like really, really good grades. And my parents sort of, I guess they got used to it. It's kind of what they expected from me.

So like, you know, I won a couple of math competitions in school. And it was always just like, you know, they just kind of rolled with it. I don't know if they were like intentionally trying to like keep my feet underground or whatever. But then so I got expelled from school for selling cannabis when I was just, and 16. Yeah. And that was quite a big thing. They weren't happy about it. But really, there was a lot of conflicts about religion because my parents are very religious Mormons. I stopped going to church at 15. They weren't very happy, especially my mum wasn't very happy. Yeah, it was, there's a concept in Mormonism of the straight and narrow path and the great and spacious building, which is the idea that the way of God is difficult. It's a very narrow path and you have to be very careful. And off to the side, there's a great and spacious building. And off to the side, there's a great and spacious building. in which presumably some kind of orgy, I think. And I think when I went off... Orgy?

I guess so. Don't quote me on that. It always sounded dead fun in the great and spacious building. And I think when I... You know, because I was very... I wanted to make money. I was very like directed on that. I stopped going to church.

I got expelled from school for selling drugs. You know, I got a job at Big Bank. And I think they, perhaps I sometimes thought that I was offering the great and spacious building rather than on the straight and narrow path. So, yeah, it's difficult. You know, I'm sure they are proud of the things that I've done and also things that my sister has done.

But I think, especially with my mum, I think it's a bit complicated by this. Like at the end of the day, it's sad to say it, but she thinks we're going to hell, you know what I mean? And that's like, you know. Yeah, so I think, and she obviously always wants us to come back to church, which is not on the cards.

So, yeah, I think there's a, you know, it's a complicated thing. Do your maths talent and certain things in your book made me think, I wonder if Gary might be autistic. Have you been asked that before? Yeah, people have suggested it. Obviously now in the last few years there's a lot more sort of discourse on this kind of thing. It's not something that was mentioned so much. But I don't know.

Nobody in my family has ever been good at maths as far as I know. So my maths ability was always quite weird in the sense that like, it always felt, so I won these competitions and I did incredibly. well in my undergrad degree and in particular math and abstract maths. And I've always had this weird relationship with it where the way it would work is I'd get a question and I'd look at the question. And I wouldn't immediately know the answer. But I wouldn't have to do any work.

I would just sit for maybe, depending on the difficulty of the question, 30 seconds, two minutes. And then the answer would kind of just be like passed forward. That's how it felt to me. In your head. Yeah. Without actually writing... Not always. I don't want to pretend it was always like that.

But it would often be like that. Like, they would just come to it. I would look at it, and it felt like the work was being done by somebody else in a weird way. And, you know, a lot of the, when I did my undergrad, if you do maths, you have to do a lot of proofs. And proofs were interesting for me because I had to start interrogating this, what felt to me almost like a different person in the back of my head, and say, tell me why. Because to do a proof, you need to show all your steps of reasoning. And I would say, don't just give me the answer. Build it back, build it back, build it back.

And I had to try to develop this skill of like not just, and it's always been like that for me. Like, the answer comes and I just know that it's right. You know, the thing is I've been with that guy for so long. He never fucking gets it wrong. You know what I mean? And my job is like trying to fucking translate. And a lot of the YouTube and a lot of the work that I do now

is like trying to like interrogate this guy and be like, can you make it clear for me so I can fucking make it clear for them. And I think one thing that's frustrated me, in the last press campaign. It's because I feel exhausted. When I get tired, like, I can't do that explanation. I can just be like, I know the answer. It's always right.

The predictions are always right. Can't you fucking see that it's always right? And I lose that ability to build it back. Like, the way I've seen my life, it's obvious to me. I've got some sort of gift. And I don't know why I have that gift. And I didn't really do anything to get it. But if I'm not going to protect my community, who is?

You know, it's my job, isn't it? Quite an emotional thing. Because I know where this is going to go, Louie. I know what happens next. And, you know, you and the people who listen and all the people I interviewed in the documentary and the guard and whatever can go and see, oh, Gary's a liar, Gary's an idiot.

I've been watching these predictions for 15 years and I've seen them be right year after year after year. And I went to university with the people calling me an idiot And I know they don't know what the fuck they're talking about And I know I've been poor And I know how this is going to affect the people on the street You know, so it's emotional, you know And it frustrates me

Because you know, you know, you get into you by people And you know they don't really know the people getting hurt by this You know, obviously I'm a rich person And I know it's not me But it's my friends and it's my family So it's, you know, poverty It frustrates me in these conversations poverty is like an abstract concept for these people poverty is a real thing it's hard you know it destroys

families you know what i mean it stops people from being able to have freedom and and and comfort and and joy and opportunity you know and it's it's real basically so yeah so it's upsetting it should be fucking upsetting shouldn't it you ask me there's a moment in the book where early on you get your first bonus that's one of those set piece moments and it's clearly has a big impact on you. Do you want to talk about that for a second? Yeah, so I started in 2008. I got hired by this guy in the book he's called Caleb and then he quits in 2009 and he was like my big sponsor and he says you can tell me, it can ask me any question you want and I said to him, all that I'd have been $200,000. So I would have been 22 and that's like for me $100,000.

You focused on making money at this point. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I still live at home with my parents. 100,000 pounds is like, oh my God, so big, that's my dream. And he said, oh, it's not possible and I was like going just just tell me he goes to make 100,000 pounds you'd have to make ten million dollars for the bank so I'm like okay I've got my plan make my ten million dollars get back to the desk head down put the plan on by the end of the year 12 million dollars and I go into the bonus room I've got a new boss and I'm expecting to get paid like something like 120 grand because I made 12 instead of 10 sitting in the room and the guy shows me this massive guy and the book is called chuck showing me this piece of paper and I'm looking for like something like

120 grand. And the number at the top is 395,000 pounds. And there's nothing on it. It's like 120. So I'm not quite confused. And I point to the top number, 395. Like, is it that? And he's just laughing. He's like, yeah, it is. And I remember like it was yesterday. I remember exactly what I said. I said, wow, that's a lot of money. And he was just laughing. And I took it. And looking back, The next thing I remember, I'm sitting on the trading floor next to, in the book, it's called Billy, this working class guy who kind of took care of me. I felt like I was going to start crying. And I was very confused because obviously, like, this should be great and I should be really happy.

It should be everything I ever wanted. And then I felt like I was going to start crying. And then Billy, it was a nice guy. He sort of come around the other side of me, so people couldn't see him. He's like, let's go outside, take a little sit down. There's a little patch of grass in Canada Square, the Central Square in Kinney Wharf. And I went and I sat on that little patch of grass. I remember the sun is sort of on the one side, which is not blocked by skyscrapers.

And I'd forgotten to bring like my coat or my gloves or anything, bonus days in January. And I was just sitting on the grass. And the first thing I thought about was my dad. My dad and my dad worked in Central London for the post office and, you know, like he'd wake up early and he'd be back late. My mum used to wake us up in the morning so he could try and see his train. His train used to go past the back of the house. And that's not just my dad. You think of everyone's dad.

I grew up in a very immigrant area. I went to school with a lot of like newly migrated, Pakistani families. A lot of them were very poor. And you just think of all the poverty and how hard our parents work. And then just suddenly one day someone gives you $395,000 basically. And it was really shocking. What it did was it made me feel like the poverty, was like a dance that we were made to do, you know, almost for their entertainment, you know.

And it makes you realise what I think is true, to be honest, which was it was never necessary. The poverty, we don't have, working people don't have to live in poverty. I'm not saying we can have a luxury for everyone. But, you know, we have created societies which have made that unnecessary. But then obviously the next thing you think is if I made $395,000, what did fucking Rupert make? And what did those dickheads on the next desk make? And then I think the way I put in the book was

something changed in me there on that patch of grass and my life changed and my career changed. And after that it wasn't a career anymore, it was bank robbery. And then after that, I think that started the period of my life which is categorised by obsession, basically. Obsession with being the best, obsession with being the best trader, obsession with making the money. And it started me on a lot.

track, which led me to make a lot of money, but really started me on a track towards a very bad path in terms of mental health and things like that. The mental health, we talked a bit about how it was partly maybe to do with realizing that we're on this, your

perception that we're on a kind of collision course, right, that the society, economy is going to get worse and worse. But maybe there's more than that. You feel like your self-care is not very good. Like you're not, you've got no furniture. This is even before you go to Japan, because you end up going to Japan for a break, but even before that, it feels like you're coming apart at the seams. Are you overworking?

Is it the sense that you're, you don't fit in, you know, at work? What was behind one? You know, weirdly, I think the trading floor is one of the places in my life where in a weird I felt like the most like I fit in in a strange way. I was, I became incredibly, so I was always very competitive as a kid. And I became really, I have this like, I have a, I have a, I have a I can get addicted to computer games. I've got a terrible fucking duolingo addiction. Oh my God. Do you?

Yeah. Are you on a streak at the moment? Something like 3,000 days. I speak seven languages now. Yeah. Stop there. Which seven? English, Japanese, Spanish, French,

Italian, Portuguese and a bit of German. You can't keep all those streaks going at the same time, can you? You only need to play one language to keep your streak up. Okay, I didn't know that. This is not an advert for duolingo, just to be clear. But anyway, look. I've got a 1,200-day streak. Oh, nice.

What language? French, Francie. Bonjour. Yeah. Nice. We can talk some French afterwards. We can do that afterwards. Yeah, we won't go down.

Yeah, but basically, I have a tendency if something really gets under my skin, just obsessed. Like once, there's a computer game called Gousader Kings too. Oh my God, I started playing it. I lost seven months of my life. I learned so much about medieval history. But I became, like, ruthlessly obsessed

with this game of trading. Obsessed, obsessed, obsessed. But the reason why I say I'll fit in is because that kind of obsession is common on the trading floor. A lot of people are obsessed with it in that way. So I kind of enjoyed it. But, you know, the amounts of money.

Very masculine. Yeah, oh, it's incredibly testosterone, a lot of competitiveness. There's a bit where you talk about Rupert and he says, Rupert's got a problem. And you know, what is it, Rupert? He says, like, if I meet someone and I think they're better than me, I hate them. He says, as soon as he meets someone,

he needs to know straight away whether they're better than him or whether they're worse than him. And if they're better than him, he hates them. And if they're worse than him, he despises them. And I think, you know, in a lot of ways I love competition. But there's definitely a dark side to it. There's this quote, ambition is a great man's madness. And I think...

I've heard you use that before. You say it wasn't Shakespeare, it was a contemporary of Shakespeare. Yeah, it might be something more recent. I should remember it because I always say it. But also, that first bonus was so much more than I'd been expecting. I was totally in shock. I didn't know who to speak to. There's something about it which is legitimately scary.

Because you realise in like, this guy's 23. What the fuck is... There's a whole world out there of people getting paid millions. What does that mean? It's scary. It's scary to people who've seen their parents struggle making 20 grand a year. It's scary to know that there's kids out there

getting paid 395 grand at 23 years old and to think what the other people are being... And it's just... Because I knew how it had affected me and I saw it affected her and then I remember going home with playing Pro Evolution with my mates. And this is post 2008, so a lot of my mates couldn't get jobs, just playing Pro Evolution, and oh, you know, what did you get? Did you get a bonus? Oh, got like two grand. Oh, I didn't get a bonus. And then like, what did you get, Gary? What did you get?

And I remember I was sitting there You know my mate's bedroom In his mum's house Playing Pro Evolution With you know My best mates from high school Thinking Do I tell them

Do I tell them You know Because part of me wants to tell him Because part of me is proud You know But part of me knows if you tell him It's going to change this This is never going to be

After you've told them It's never going to be the same As before you told it You know And I did tell them And I remember telling them And I remember the way like you kind of felt the fucking room dropped two degrees and nobody knew what to say, you know. And it's these are kind of amounts of money.

They're enormous. And it does a lot to wave that kind of money in front of the eyes of a poor man. You know what I mean? And it's, it was a lot. It was a lot for, you know, a young man from a poor background to have that amount of money dropped on his head at such a young age. And, you know, I wasn't that close to my face. family and like most young men, we weren't really talking about emotions and that. But you know, once you, I went to a grammar school and I was like one of the poorest kids

in the grammar school. And that's, you know, that's, me and my friends got used to that dynamic, which is Gary's the poor but smart kid. And then suddenly I was the richest kid that of all my, at 23, 24. You know, it changes the dynamic. And it creates suddenly like jealousy and envy in some degree, creeps into your, which I didn't even anticipated that because I'd never be, I'd always been the poor one. And then, you know, and then what happened was suddenly I went in a couple of years, I went from being on the trading floor, I was like the young smart up and comer who gets everybody's lunches.

Within a couple of years, I was the top trader on the floor. You know, and then that affected those relationships. And suddenly there's envy there as well. You know what I mean? And, yeah, it was just a lot. It was a big rollercoaster, but it was also scary getting those amounts of money. I think when you're a poor, when you come from poor background, and suddenly you get $2 million dropped on your head.

There's something terrifying about that because you're scared that, what do I do with it? I didn't know about investing, you know. But, you know, it was a lot. It was a lot for, you know, a young man from a poor background to have that amount of money dropped on his head at such a young age. And, you know, I wasn't that close to my family. And like most young men, we weren't really talking about emotions.

But, you know, once you... I went to a grammar school and I was like one of the poorest kids in the grammar school. And that's, you know, that's, me and my friends got used to that dynamic, which is Gary's the poor but smart kid. And then suddenly I was the richest kid out of all my, at 23, 24. You know, it changes the dynamic. And it creates suddenly, like, jealousy and envy in some degree, creeps into your, which I didn't even anticipated that because I'd never be, I'd always been the poor one.

And then what happened was suddenly I went in a couple of years, I went from being on the trading floor. I was like the young smart up and comer who gets everybody's lunches. within a couple of years, I was the top trader on the floor. You know, and then that affected those relationships. And suddenly there's envy there as well. You know what I mean? And, yeah, it was just a lot.

It was a big rollercoaster, but it was also scary getting those amounts of money. I think when you're a poor, when you come from poor background, and suddenly you get $2 million dropped on your head, there's something terrifying about that because you're scared that, what do I do with it? I don't know about investing, you know. When people must come up to you boys, young men saying, okay, inequality, yeah, okay, whatever.

But how do I make a ton of money as a trader? How can I do what you did, Gary? And what do you tell them? It's sad when I hear that. And like, I totally understand it because, you know, it's easy for me to come here and say, let's save society. Now I'm a rich man. You know, I mean, I've made my reputation.

I've made my money. I've made my financial security. If I wasn't a rich man, I probably would be trying to make money. I mean, the first thing to say is, if people won't like me for saying this, it's incredibly difficult to make money as a trader. It's incredibly dangerous.

There's been a massive increase in young people, predominantly young men, doing things like day trading online. Most people lose money. Some people lose a lot of money. It can be addictive. It can be incredibly dangerous. There's a lot of bad information online.

I would advise against it. I don't think it's a safe thing for people to be doing. So this is this saying, we used to say, on the trading floor, which I think is a poker saying. If you don't know who the idiot is at the poker table, it's you. You heard this one? No, I like that.

That rings a bell. It seems very true. Like, you've got to bear in mind, I started working as a professional trader when I was 21 years old. And I'm working 100 out weeks. I'm getting in 7 in the morning. I'm working late. And I'm able to play for a long time, not with my money.

You know, I'm able to sit alongside some real experts on it. and I'm doing this obsessively, obsessively, day after day after day, in a room full of people, a room full of 200 people doing it obsessively day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day for. And, you know, not all professional traders who work for a bank like Citibank are good at it,

but the good ones will start to take bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger bets and they will in some ways dominate the markets. And if you are sitting at home in your kitchen and you've watched a YouTube video, you have to bear in mind, you're competing against me. You know what I mean? And like, not to be like disrespectful, but, you know, if you came to me, Louie today

and said, hey, Gary, I've got Yusain Bolt on next week. Do you think he'll teach me how to win the Olympic 100 meters? I'm not saying I'm Yusain Bolt, but the truth is, I did this professionally 100 hour weeks for seven years. And I was, and I studied before that, you know, economics. So I just think, if you think, you can consistently beat people who've been doing it professionally

in a very intense way for years and years and years and years and years you'd better have a really fucking good reason why you know you've done your job for many many years right and you're very very esteemed for it you know and if I said to you know Louis can you teach me to be a good

documentary and you probably could but am I going to become as good as you you know you started much younger than me you know I mean you're you know probably the most famous you know it's you and David Attenborough in this country you know what I'm saying, right? I like that. You know, so, like, I think it's just you need to recognise

it's gambling and the gains are monopolised by a small minority at the top. And if somebody's teaching you, why the fuck are they teaching you if they're good? You know what I'm saying? Why would they teach you? If they were that good, they'd be just fucking doing it, wouldn't they? You know, like, so, yeah, it's,

but I understand the sentiment, I understand the mentality. And what I really think about is how can we take, what makes me sad about it is that same motivation that, you know, it's primarily young men that motivates them, I want to go out and make money, I want to go out and make money. How can we redirect that into I want to go out and fix these fucking societal problems

so that my kids don't have to live in the kind of poverty that I'm living in? You know, can we redirect that into something that's actually building? Not like, oh, I'm going to compete with the traders because you're not going to win that. You know, let's fix the fucking problems. Nice. Feels like that was a good place to end. Yeah, sure.

Don't you? I mean, I can really open the door, didn't you? She opened the door. That's always a hint, isn't it? Yeah. Thanks, Gary. That was really good. That's all right. And welcome back.

A big thanks to Gary, his documentary. How to Get Filthy Rich with Gary Stevenson is available to stream on Channel 4 in the UK. Mindhouse produced it. That's my company. That's my disclosure. So, a few small footnotes. Deborah Stevenson, Gary's sister. who goes by Debris, D-E-B-R-I-S-Stevenson,

and whose poet in the corner, I think we mentioned. Her new play last year was called My Brothers a Genius. I think it's fictionalized, but it sounds from reading a synopsis that it might be based on life experiences, maybe even to do with her relationship with Gary. It's about a woman who's,

or a girl who's growing up and her brother is a math's whiz. What else to talk about? Well, I think for me, I felt a bit like part of the problem, but maybe part of the solution. Inasmuch as I was another digital arena, Gary had to pass through to spread his message, suffering the indignity of me inflicting questions upon him. And I thought Gary bore with that with patience

and was a very open and accommodating guest. And I'm used to hearing him in spiky confrontations, and it was nice to see Gary bring, kind of speaking from the heart in a way that felt a little bit less stressed. But you can see that the emotions are close to the surface. Gary feels very deeply about the work that he does. That's it for this week, apart from the credits.

The producer was Millie Choo. The assistant producer was Beth Johnston. The production manager was Francesca Bassett, The music in this series was by Miguel Di Olivera. The executive producer was Aaron Fellows. This is a Mindhouse Studios production for Spotify.