The Ricochet Podcast - Shut Up When You’re Talking to Me

Episode Date: June 4, 2021

What can we say? We enjoy a good time on Ricochet, and today’s episode is no exception. After slogging through Fauci emails, the guys get to chat with London’s honorable firebrand, Laurence Fox. He goes over the silver lining of his lost bid for mayor, and his future as an actor-turned-outspoken-conservative. Then Rob and James muse over a piece in The Atlantic on America’s drinking problem... Source

I'm Peter Robinson. I have a dream this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. The point where it is now is totally consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human. With all due respect, that's a bunch of malarkey. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Democracy simply doesn't work. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long and Peter Robinson. I'm James Lalix. Today we go to London to talk to Lawrence Fox, the man who should have been mayor. So let's have ourselves a podcast. I can hear you! Welcome, everyone, to the Ricochet Podcast, number 547, the flagship podcast of Ricochet.com.

Why don't you join us? I mean, really, join Ricochet and become part of the most stimulating conversations and stimulating community on the web. Joined as ever by Rob Long and Peter Robinson. And Peter, you have some you're going to actually pull the seat ejection lever at some point here. Blast through the canopy and you're off to some fantastic academic experience. Not sure what it is. So at some point here, we're going to lose Peter.

But while we have him, Peter, you're here. Tell us what's primary in your mind this week. Are you 10 pages, 100 pages, 1,000 pages, 2,000 pages into the Fauci emails yet? Oh, yes, the Fauci emails. Well, I saw my friend, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Dr. Jay, yesterday, and he had been reading the Fauci emails. Throughout COVID, I just have been free-riding on Jay, but he's been reading the Fauci emails, and he made the point. We all sort of knew this, but he made the point that, yes, there are all kinds of interesting tidbits in the Fauci emails. He knew or should have known and should have investigated this that people who were in a position to think this through suspected from the get-go that this might be a man-made virus that it might have been a leak from a lab he should have investigated that immediately

but jay pointed out the man has been running the n what is it called n-i-a- NIAID for four decades. And that means that every researcher in epidemiology and immunology in the country has received his funding from Fauci. So it's not just that Fauci didn't respond. It's that the whole community or the whole national network of people in this field failed to respond because, again, of Fauci and because of money. They didn't want to risk displeasing Anthony Fauci, who is the source of so much funding in this country. That, I suppose we'd all sort of known that he's been at it for four decades and is still at it but that just clicked into place as an explanation for a lot well that anti-reflect anti-trump reflexive thinking which brings us to rob long hey rob oh i'm not gonna i'm that a. Rob didn't start it.

Rob didn't. I just pushed a big plate of red meat in front of you. No, but you have to admit. I mean, there are people like you who were opposed to Trump on reasons of personality and politics and the rest. James, I'm not talking about Trump. I'm not talking about Trump. And I'm not going to ask you to. OK, but do you.

But would you agree that there were people who took the position that they did because they had an automatic gainsaying of anything that the administration said? Well, I mean, we're talking about Fauci, so I'm going to answer to talk about Fauci. He sounds just exactly like a government bureaucrat who's been there for 40 years. I mean, if he was in the Department of Agriculture, I wouldn't expect anything different. There's only one institution, not I would say an institution, there's only one sector of, I think, the global, of the globe that has performed unbelievably well, and that is the big pharma.

Big pharma actually came through. Pharmaceutical companies actually did what they did in a remarkable amount of time. And they did it because of two things, financial incentive and regulatory, I guess, regulatory suspension or pullback or reduction. So you can simply look at that and say, okay, well, what if we did that for everybody? What if we gave people financial incentive to do something great, and we sort of lowered the regulatory burden

on them to do their business? You might actually end up getting great stuff. What's interesting to me about the Fousey emails and also just the entire apparatus of this part of the federal government is how huge it is. It's so enormous. And the people who are in it to performed exactly the way people are supposed to perform when they have one a single

buyer and a single master and a single um boss and big pharma had well in america it had it has 350 million customers. And that was the major incentive for them to succeed. And they did succeed. And it's just interesting to know that up until, I would say, I mean, I don't know when I'm going to date it, but I'll just say up until August of 2020, Big Pharma, those two words together in that order, was a slur, was an insult. It was a stand-in for the villainy. And it turns out that incompetence and foolishness and meretricious behavior took place in the regulatory functions and in government, all areas of government. And Big Pharma, I mean, who would you rather have managing the the next the next pandemic um the the the 100 executives uh collected from big pharma or any 100 federal

state or bureaucratic officers that's just that's simple to me to amend bill buckley, I would rather be governed by the 12 biggest pharmaceutical companies in America than by the NIAID or whatever the correct acronym is for Dr. Fauci's organization. But all of those organizations worked perfectly. They worked exactly as they were supposed to do. They performed precisely the way they were supposed to perform. And only one of them contributed and that was big pharma i mean yay big pharma but but you know we will go right back to bashing them in about six and a half months after this the pandemic is over we'll forget they'll be bad again even though they're the only ones who came through and why do you think that is is it because they don't

have the sclerotic weight of the institutions? Is it because the dollar sign is motivating them? Is it because the people that fill those organizations are sharper and more motivated, perhaps? Otherwise, they'd go into government? succeed they had a strange kind of thing which we've forgotten which is competitive pride they all wanted to succeed they all hated the fact that somebody else succeeded before they did which is standard human behavior right the guys at johnson johnson were absolutely thoroughly they were unbelievably angry at the factory in baltimore that messed up their um their um vaccines and also that up to other big pharma companies sort of got there first um all that stuff is what we harness that for great things and instead we'll be we haven't been harnessing that for a long time but it's one thing to sort of ignore that it's nothing to say no these these people were villains it wasn't as if they were we were we

didn't know how great the big pharma was we had actively on both sides of the aisle decided that they are bad that they need to be uh plundered or regulated or in some way um they're a stand-in for badness and i think i think big pharma are the heroes right big government is the failures and that's just that simple less big government more big pharma as i say it's a pretty pretty easy conclusion to draw well let's get to our guests because you know that peter has to hit the silk and speaking of hitting the silk nice you ever slept on silk sheets they're nice but you know what you don't need them i don't need them the reason i don't even think about it is because i've got bowl and branch sheets

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and all the other emblems of the office, that's how that went. But he remains in the fight nevertheless. We're happy to have him back. He's gearing up for another round and reminding Britons what they have lost and need to reclaim. You can follow him on Twitter, of course, at LazaFox, L-O-Z-Z-A-F-O-X. Welcome back to the podcast. We have to ask you about the tweet that you made the other day. There was a script that landed in your lap, which suggests that a return to the stage and the screen is in the cards. But first, we've got to talk about London. What is going on now in regards to COVID?

Because it's sort of indistinct over here in the States. We have all these places that are opening up. And generally, we're getting to the point of feeling like a free America again. What is it like in London? And what is the lasting effects of the lockdown, Ben? Thank you for having me back on James lovely to see you again and the yeah London is very indecisive at the moment there's rumours that they're going to cancel their end of restrictions the end of the roadmap which

comes in on June 21st but we'll know that on the 14th of June and I think there was a march last weekend which had several hundred thousand people marching for their freedom, which wasn't reported at all in the media. And I think probably if they don't release restrictions on the 21st, there'll be over a million on the streets, and that won't be reported either, which then may turn into a riot. You never know, but people are really, really fed up in the UK uk how broad a coalition are those marchers i imagine you've got some people who just say it's all been a hoax it's all been a pandemic to hell with bill gates but how much of it is drawn from people who are just bloody well

tired of having been cooped up and restrained and restricted for a year or so well mostly actually it's people that don't want their children vaccinated is a huge number of them, don't want their children vaccinated. And another huge number of them want the truth about the spread of COVID. They want to know whether the spread was happening on the streets and in people's houses or whether it was happening in care homes and hospitals, which is what the evidence is starting to point towards. So the Brits, you know, as you know, unless they're really pushed up against the wall, tend to tolerate pretty much anything.

But I think most people in London and in the UK generally think, oh, well, we're getting back our freedoms on the 21st of June, so let's all just be jolly nice to each other until then. But I think what will happen is, should that date come and go, that the UK will rise up against against this government

lawrence 1.7 percent of the vote nine 1.9 1.9 i get it right you're so easy to provoke you're so easy to provoke me in this way so what did you achieve and what's next? What did I achieve? I achieved my, as my friend who I call Mr. Miyagi, who's my English advisor, as he said, he said, you have to have a political battle. It's very important for you to have a political battle. So I had a political battle. I now am able to sit opposite, you know,

the nastiest interviewer in the UK and answer some pretty difficult questions. And I feel confident in what my message is and what I stand for so essentially it's like acting you know you go through a rehearsal process and you you have good days and bad days and you think oh I'm so good at this part I'm wonderful and then next day you feel you're dreadful but at some point you have to go on stage in front of an audience and actually I saw it as a as a i see it as a huge success i know that other people were like someone said to me the other day commiserations and i went commiserations i was

really thrilled with it i thought i it was so wonderful today so um we got uh i was speaking to a conservative minister yesterday because i've got a big problem with what's going on with another constituency in the uk and she said i noticed you've got 130 big problem with what's going on with another constituency in the UK. And she said, I noticed that you've got 130,000 second votes. So they do notice. They notice that the Conservatives are behind me, even if they can't be for me publicly, they're for me privately. We should explain that this would be new to Americans. Under the voting system in London, you vote for your first choice and then there's an instant runoff that limits the eliminates everybody but the top two candidates

but you also cast your second choice you didn't get there on you were eliminated in the first round of course the point is that you were one point you were the first choice of 1.9% of the electorate. And although this sounds, I do mean this as a compliment. I really do mean this as a compliment. You were the second choice of quite a lot of people. Yeah. Okay. That's good.

But you have formed a political party. Okay. So here's what's going to be in the back of everybody's mind. If it's in the front of my mind, it's going to be in the back of a lot of people's good. So, but you have formed a political party. Okay, so here's what's going to be in the back of everybody's mind. If it's in the front of my mind, it's going to be in the back of a lot of people's mind. Lawrence had his fling. He got to bark back. He got to, he's had his moment. Now, for goodness sake, get on with your life or or some of the people will be wishing you'd

disappear from the public and get on with your life or at least from politics and go back to acting and some people your most fervent supporters will be slightly worried that that's exactly what you're going to do when they want you to remain committed so what's next for you i have spent the last 14 days without break on the phone to um a constituency in the united kingdom called batley and spend it's a very sort of tiny little place in the north of england where a teacher was thrown out of his school for showing a picture of the prophet muhammad peace be upon him, and then has had to go into hiding with his family and has been told that he's going to be murdered. And the two political parties are standing in a by-election in this place,

and neither the Conservatives or the Labour Party are discussing this issue, which is whereby we're bringing in a de facto blasphemy law and having small theocracies within the United Kingdom, which is totally unacceptable, in my view. I think it's completely wrong. So I've been trying to work out how I can bring this freedom of speech issue to the electorate without letting in the Labour Party. So I'm trying to work out, do I stand in this election? You personally or your party, a candidate for the reclaimed party? It would either be a candidate

or it would be me. But given the short period of time between now and the election, it would probably have to be me. You'd better explain for our audience, you'd better explain what a by-election is and give us the date of this election. So the election is the first of july so what

happened was um labor were losing in this seat they were beginning to lose so the labor candidate stood for the mayor of i think it was west yorkshire or whatever to get out before she was kicked out and then in this constituency this is what so utterly utterly makes me so angry and why i will not stop this actually uh this is a constituency where the labour mp several years ago was murdered by a local man uh who was a white nationalist and she was called joe cox and she was shot and killed by this man and labour have stood her sister as the candidate in this election. So essentially, the Labour Party are turning around to the British electorate and saying,

if you don't vote for us, then you're voting for your racist white supremacist bigot. You know, but this is also in an area where you have a huge problem with Muslim grooming gangs and you have a fear of anyone saying anything. So there's a this this constant constant conversation that's going on in the uk which is driving me insane about respect we have to respect your religion i'm like no i don't have to respect your religion any more than you have to respect mine but you do have to tolerate it well so this is what drives me mad yeah laurence i rob long wants rob knows a thing about show business and politics and he'll

come in in just a moment. But here's what, I don't know what the Tories have said to you, but here's what I'd say to you if I were a Tory. Look, all of a sudden under Boris Johnson, we the Conservative Party are puncturing the so-called, knocking down the so-called red wall. We're winning one Labour constituency after another in the North. Our numbers have been going up in this constituency that you name. We might be able to win it unless you step in

and muck it up and take votes away from the Tory candidate. Your anger is splendid. You're good at this game. You've already demonstrated all this in running for Mayor of London. But this is splendid. You're good at this game. You've already demonstrated all this in running for mayor of London. But this is serious. We could pick up a seat up there and you could muck it up. So I said to, this is what I said to a very senior conservative yesterday. I said,

can I ask your advice on Batley? And she said, don't stand. Please don't do it you won't win i said i know but i might stop you winning which would be bad and she said why do you want to do this and i said because i don't think the curriculum should be dictated by whoever can provide a credible death threat and your political party are not talking about this that's what i said so if they talked about it if they stood up and they said we utterly condemn this this the treatment of this teacher then i would go i'd walk away i spoke to the senior member of the i've spoken so many senior tories and i said all you have to do is say something about this teacher say one thing and i'll walk away but if you don't say anything someone has to stand for him someone has to stand by him. Otherwise, we are we are we are having de facto blasphemy laws brought into our country without any parliamentary scrutiny or anything.

And I'm sorry. You know, I'm I want to be the peaceful guy here. I'm not trying to be the guy that creates the conflict. Hey, Lawrence, it's Rob Long in New Orleans. Thanks for coming. I have two questions. Why aren't the Tories talking about this? It doesn't seem like it's that controversial in Britain. I mean, my idea of sort of the average British voter, I guess, is stuck back in Margaret Thatcher's time. But it doesn't seem terribly controversial to suggest that in the northern

parts of England, there should be no Sharia law, de facto or otherwise. Absolutely. You would have thought it was entirely logical. But when you speak to conservatives, who I do, who are actually also in the majority on the ones that I speak to are kind of like, thank God for you, Lawrence, someone's got to say it. But the thing is, they have an 80 seat majority. And if you mention anything cultural in the uk as you find out in america as well right that despicable speech by joe biden the other day you you know the minute you stoke cultural problems you you're you're you're going to lose some of your majority so they're just like well why bother and i'm just like well that's not how a country works you, everyone must have the right to be heard.

You know, it's really important. So basically, it's just being politically sort of simple. It's just like, why bother? I don't need to engage with a cultural issue in this country, so I won't do it. So you won't do it. So my other question is just to follow up on something that Peter said. What if you wake up tomorrow?

Just a thought experiment. And you're like, this is just ridiculous. That's not what I want to do. I want to be an actor. I want to go back to being an actor. Could you do that? But how tainted are you now in show business in Britain? Because I would say that the equivalent of the Lawrence Fox of the United States would have a hard time getting cast after saying such shockingly Islamophobic things such as we should not have Sharia law in a western democracy yeah no no i'm i'm not welcome um and that's fine as well because it works two ways doesn't it i i don't want to be welcome in a business that doesn't make unique and individual stories you know i showed my kids jaws last night for the first time because i thought right it's time for jaws i don't care what you say. And, you know, Jaws has got some of the worst CGI in the world and terrible sharks and all this stuff. And I said to the kids, I said, look, the most interesting thing here is because the shark was so rubbish, he had to make a story about how scared people were of a shark

that you don't see very much of. And that was, to me, what films were about. Now films are about, here, let me tell you what the story is about. Let me tell you the social justice angle of it and look how many different colored people we've got in it of all different sexual orientations so they're not really films anymore they're more sort of um adverts for social justice and i think i don't want to be part of it but i did get offered a film um which is quite interesting but it's fortunately in the true irony of show business it's a career-ending part well you may as well go out with a bang i mean why not so so i guess what my the the the under the subtext of my question is um i've heard from

american actors who have had this sort of similar problem many Many of them do not have the IMDB page that you do. You have a big, full IMDB page, and you click on it, and there's lots of stuff there. I've heard from a lot of actors who say, I can't get hired because I'm conservative, and should have clicked on their IMDB page, and there's nothing there anyway. It wasn't like they were burning down a house

before they came out in favor of something. And if you walk away from it which i think it seems like you're going to do um and you stand for this election just say you do and you you know maybe it's not uh uh maybe it's something even triply as dignified as a 1.9 percent of the vote well that's going to be over in a couple of months. What now? I mean, it seems to me that you seem to represent to Americans a very American-style politician, but not a British-style politician.

Is that because British politics are changing, or you're just a weirdo outlier who's shaking the rafters? I just think the Americans do have a much better political system than the UK does in a lot of ways. And I think I wake up every morning, by the way, and go, why on earth am I doing this? And I find it very, very painful on many, many levels because you're so misrepresented and all these things.

But at some point you turn around and you say, if nobody is going to say it, if nobody is going to say it, somebody has to say it. And if the net result of that is just being beaten up, punched in the face, at least I get to say to my children later on in life, I say, well, I stood up. You know, I did what I could. Sorry. And good luck, comrade. And, you know, you get to travel across the county border if you're lucky next month. Yeah, put on your mask and be quiet.

All right. So I know Jason's coming up. One more question about that. So is that a new style? I mean, don't you think it's a new style, British politician, somebody who's sort of advocating for cultural change, cultural policy up and down the country rather than you know a party uh apparatchik party leader a party governor prime minister i mean it doesn't just it just seems to me like there's a there's now a shortcut in britain well i want to pick up what

i'm trying to do and what my plan is is to and what's happening in this batley area so i'm finding the people that are very successful in local politics who happen to share the same view who always come fifth sixth seventh or last and i'm trying to go can i provide support infrastructure everything to help you raise your profile you know and i understand it's a huge long game but i do think we are in this period this phase that we're in isn't permanent so i do think there is a chance in a period of years that i could come out of this and people say oh you were one of the consistent ones actually we will reward you with a with a film role when we go back to making films about you know strong, strong men, strong women, interesting values that support culture, rather than

just making social justice hellholes that is what they make nowadays. I can't think of a single film I've seen that I want to be in. So, Lawrence, you may be doomed in whatever is the British equivalent of Hollywood. Is there a name for it? We have Hollywood, you have...

We have... No, we don't have Hollywood. you have we have um no we don't know what do we have no no okay all right well whatever we we just we just have the we just we just have you know show business west of theater darling it would be about theater it's theater darling all right theater and so you're you're out with the darlings that's done But here's the theory on our side these days. We don't need them the way we used to. So,

we've got effectively television of all kinds sprouting up. We've got Ricochet, its own little venture. You have a voice. You have training. Cameras are cheap. What's your plan for using your skills?

Production is now cheap. What's your plan for using your skills to promote what you're so clearly passionate about now? Well, I just actually, I just got a phone call actually from my backer who said, why is all this money going out to the bank account? What's going on? And I, because I've just been buying all of the stuff. I fitted out our offices with a, with a small film set in it, you know,

not a film set, but a studio set. And I'm going to do some, I may do a little version of lawrence fox news you never know sort of a commentary or and and a discussion panel i'd quite like to do some devil's advocacy with people that don't agree with me and you know and stuff like that and and just i don't know it's really difficult they just offer offer a a different perspective than the one we're being given by our mainstream media in the uk because our mainstream media in the uk is literally like korean tv it's like we don't have you're

lucky you have fox news we just have cnn cnn cnn cnn ms mbc that's what we have in the uk so i think it would be good to do to follow down the mold of what the daily wire do a little bit you know you look at how amazing someone like Michael, who we spoke to the other day, you know, how he has just developed into this hilariously wonderful, astute commentator. Don't compliment Michael Knowles. We're talking about Michael Knowles,

and he really doesn't need the encouragement, Lawrence. He's a little arrogant. That's what I think I will do. And then also we have these reports and stuff that I commissioned last would that's what i think i will do and then um also we have these these reports and stuff that i commissioned last year that are coming out now and i just want to leave a little legacy like when you leave a film someone comes up to you and goes that was great i loved it in the same way i can get they go oh you did that and i was very grateful for it that's all i think it's a thank this starts no one's going to give you a pat on the back for the thing i'm

trying to do i think it's important also to bring back smoking when one does a newsreading performance. I know, I'm seeing it. You mentioned Jaws before, and I was just thinking the difficulty of making Jaws today. First of all, the Roy Scheider character would be traumatic to many people because he's a law enforcement officer who uses a firearm. The Richard Dreyfuss character would have to be gay.

And Robert Shaw's character would have to be played by Alfie Woodard. It would have to be a very strong, short, angry, flaring-eyes black woman. But then I thought, no, it'd be hard to sell that in China because Chinese people don't like to see black characters in movies. And it got me thinking again about how much we talk in America about our media and our culture being influenced by China, either directly or through the Confucius Institute, a little tentacular forays into our universities, or just because of reflexive cringe. We can't do that because, oh no, who's going to say, what would China say? And we can't say anything bad about the origin of the virus because that would be racist. Does the UK have the same sort of constellation of

China-related thoughts that dominate the media and the public discourse, or do you have some other country that we're not even thinking about? i think yeah the uk's china is europe right so it's the same thing you know they accept that obviously china is a lot worse but it's becoming more and more so isn't it you know that you viewing figures on mainstream uk tv shows are just falling off cliffs you know and you're going well how does this work as a financial model and you've someone there's an audience somewhere being picking it up you know what i mean it's um it's it's pretty dreadful but the the chinese influence on on our culture generally is just dreadful uh you know it's so antithetical to what we we're all about but you

know we're having this in the uk we've got this thing where they go no you can go on holiday but everyone has to be pcr tested so it's two thousand pounds on the on the price of your holiday so it's basically saying the rich people with their own lane that goes through you know moscow or st petersburg or beijing where they can drive their car really fast they can go on holiday but you little plebs you can't go anywhere you're not going anywhere and that's what we're getting in the uk it's and we're all sort of sitting there going okay yeah totally fine no no problem thank you yeah brilliant it's dreadful dreadful i think portugal is just put on the list right you couldn't go oh yeah we'll come back from portugal so but you can't even go you

can't even go to the to the to the beach for the summer well Well, I think that they will find that that will be met with a riot, actually. I think that's what will happen. Portugal was put on the amber list for no apparent reason. And our health secretary today is saying you vaccinate 12-year-old children. And I think the phrase he used was

we have robust evidence or something like that. And I was turning around used was, we have robust evidence or something like that. And I was turning around and said, you had robust evidence that there were WMDs in Iraq, and you also had robust evidence that the virus came out of a wet market in Wuhan. So whenever you say robust evidence, it makes me want to run a mile. Will Jen Psaki encircle back to where we began the show then talking about the rallies in london you said a lot of them were people who did not want to have their children vaccinated was that because they questioned the need because they're not a vector or they don't want the government's mandating another vaccine or they don't believe in the vaccines i just want to know generally what their approach to that is because we're having the vaccinate the young debate here now at least it when you have that debate it keeps covet and covet fear in the news in people's

minds it's like we're not done we've started when we vaccinated all the zygotes then maybe we can start to relax but not until so what is the major objection to vaccinating the young well you're vaccinating the young against a disease that will do them no harm. So if you vaccinate one child and that child in a million has an adverse reaction to the vaccination, of which this is not even in stage three, it hasn't even completed clinical trials. You know, there's lots of, 1,200 people have died from the vaccination in the UK already. If one child dies, that's a tragedy, isn't it? For a disease that's never going to kill them.

That's an absolute tragedy. And it's totally illogical as well. So I think people are just saying, mandatory vaccination no one is ever going to accept in this country unless they're bribed with their summer holidays. But to vaccinate children, it would be fascinating to see what happens in the family courts, for example, with divorced parents.

Because usually parents get divorced because they disagree, right? So you could imagine that one parent would be pro-vaccination, the other parent wouldn't. I imagine the UK family courts are just going to be full of people arguing about whether their kids

should have a COVID vaccination. Well, they'll tell you, of course, that the young children will get it, they won't be symptomatic, and then they will promptly go to the nursing home and like a monkey in the first opening scenes of 28 days later will spit all the whole thing in a grandma's ma and she'll be gone and the rest of it she's vaccinated she's vaccinated yeah she's vaccinated yeah so it won't be a problem we know it's uh it's almost it's it's almost dinner time or are you one of those theater

people who has the you know the supper late late late in the in the west end somewhere i can't really say uh but we're coming on well we want to have you on after we want to have you on again and we hope the 21st does indeed see the opening of the country because I can't wait to go back. I want to go. When the country reopens, are you just done? Me? Yes, you. No.

When the country finally reopens, will you have lost the one truly animating issue that you possess? No, because I don't really care about lockdown. Lockdowns don't really bother me. It's not lockdown that bothers me. It was the lack of debate that bothered me. And it's the same way as this sort of moral supremacy that pervades our society, where people tell you they are right and you are wrong.

And, you know, we had this problem in the UK just now. So we're told, relentlessly, only trans actors will play trans actors. Only gay actors must play gay actors. Limb different actors must apologize to actors with less fingers than other things and then they'll cast them yeah that anne hathaway just apologized for one of those and then we've got anne boleyn an english queen uh henry the eighth one of his many wives who he decided to kill um she had six fingers right on her right hand and was white, but she's just been played by a black girl with five fingers on her right hand. So, you know, we're having this rubbed in our faces,

this total illogical cognitive dissonance of critical social justice rubbed in our faces. And it's wokery and it's religion. And lockdown means nothing. I'm standing up to a religion. And as my dad says to me, you can't fight God without God. It's easy for you to say. You're digital

typical, as the phrase will now be. Just about. Well, in America, this also means goodbye, but not forever. We hope to have you on again soon. Good luck. Yes, this is exciting. Go out. Do great works as Garrison Keillor used to say. And we'll see you again on the podcast.

Lawrence Fox, been a pleasure. Give our regards. Thank you, Lawrence. Best of luck. Love to see you guys. See you later. Bye-bye. Bye.

Lawrence mentioned the BBC shows that are dreadful. How do you know if they're dreadful? Well, you don't get them over here. Sure, there's Acorn TV you can watch. There's Netflix stuff. But what about the really bad stuff? Would you like to see it? Well, some people spoof their IP address. They go into a VPN

and they pretend they're in Britain. That's one of the great things you can have about a VPN. But there's other things that you need to know about. When you talk about VPNs, of course, you talk about ExpressVPN because it's the best. They want you to ask yourself a question. You ever browsed in incognito mode? Sure, yeah. but it's probably not as incognito as you think. Why would it be? I mean, incognito mode, like the Chrome browser itself, it's a Google product. Google has made its fortune by tracking your movements around online. There's even a $5 billion class action lawsuit against the company in California where it's accused of secretly collecting user data. Google's defense, quote, incognito does not mean invisible, end

quote. So, oh boy, how do you actually make yourself invisible as possible online? Well, you use ExpressVPN. That's how. Turns out, even in incognito mode, your online activity still gets tracked. Data brokers still get to buy and sell your data. One of those data points is your IP address. Now, data harvesters use your IP to uniquely identify you and your location. But with ExpressVPN, your connection gets rerouted through an encrypted server, and your IP address is masked. So every time you connect to ExpressVPN, you get a random IP address shared by many other ExpressVPN customers. That makes it harder for third parties to identify you or harvest your data. Best of all, ExpressVPN is

super easy to use. No matter what device you're on, a phone, a laptop, smart TV, all you have to do is tap one button for instant protection. So if you really want to go incognito and protect your privacy, secure yourself with a number one rated VPN. Visit expressvpn.com slash ricochet and get three extra months free that's e-x-p-r-e-s-s vpn.com slash ricochet go to expressvpn.com slash ricochet for three free extra months and we thank express vpn for sponsoring this the ricochet podcast and of course there's always a point after the guest after the spot it's time for the james lilac member post of the week most of the week is my uber hijacker by iwee and let me quote from the post yesterday we took an uber here in london i chose this as the post of the week to tie in with fox see how i did that i asked the driver where he was from he said he was iraqi we got to chatting because i'm always

interested in people i asked how long he'd been in the UK and he had a story to tell. As he put it, I got to London with a hijack. I wondered if I'd misheard. So I asked him to repeat himself and tell the story. He said we needed to leave Sudan. So why not? He and his friends hijacked a plane. The whole story can be found at Ricochet.com. And it's true. Apparently, there's even a Wikipedia entry to back it up their uber driver just happened to be a guy who would hijack the plane to get out of a bad part of the world and you have to admire that sort of uh enthusiasm and application and dedication even though it's a little bit it's such a 70s thing to do but it's a fascinating little tale

and i i dropped it in there because it shows that, Ricochet is full of people from all over the world who's got all kinds of interesting stories. B, the Uber driver is a new version of I was talking to my taxi driver, William Rasberg. This is a good one. Call him. He used to always famously talk to taxi drivers. And I've been in that position, too, where you're desperate for something to write about. You're in another city, and you use your taxi driver as an example, usually a cliche.

But in this day and age, Uber driver stories are generally really good. But this one takes the cake. So, yes, did the guy end up in prison? He did. But did he end up driving around a Ricochet member who later imparted the story to us? That happened too. And that's one of the reasons that Ricochet is more than just people

banging pots and pans about politics. it's about all kinds of stuff arts politics culture life love liberty go there join why don't you uh you you saw the post as well rob i i what i i guess you're right i think this is emblematic of like you know i have struggled and i have failed ultimately at getting people to join ricochet we've said a whole bunch of different ways and i'm the wrong person to do it but um i guess what i would say is that one of the things that i love about it i i'm not maybe it's just recent politics whatever the political stuff also i'm not as interested in because we all get it everywhere um sometimes people can write really beautifully about things but what i mostly love about the shades that you get stories like

this those are great stories you would never have heard that story nobody ever tells stories of their life for their work or things that happen to them they just people just don't do it and i think it's it's bad and i think it's a bad trend and i think it's a good trend when somebody especially in ricochet because our people our members tend to be smart and thoughtful and funny and human when they when they write a story like that it's it has more impact than telling me what your opinion is on some on the politics of the day um and so i would encourage all ricochet members to do more of that but also people just join and you don't have to talk about politics we i personally as a reader much prefer hearing um

stories um stories and events that things that happen to you in your life because that is ultimately um what we remember i don't really remember your thoughts on um you know supreme court justices i remember everything i suspect your thoughts about everything yeah there are two two things come to mind one i last night about 12 30 or so i was on ricochet and I actually stopped everything that I was doing because somebody posted a video of this guy whose deal on YouTube is explaining why pop songs are awesome, what makes them great. He's a musician, a producer, guitarist himself, and he was breaking down a song that I know every single molecule of,

More Than a Feeling by Boston, right? Except it turns out I didn't know everything about it. He explained everything that was, and I'm 23 minutes of this guy breaking down this song that because you know it's from for me from high school all of a sudden i'm seeing in a complete and from that i go to another video of course where he's talking about peter frampton's do you feel like we do he's actually got bony old frampton they're talking about it so i'm ricochet sent me way off on this and this wonderful little journey that i enjoyed a great deal but the second point that Rob mentioned about stories, I get that. One of the reasons that I probably didn't make it on the David Letterman show when I was doing a book tour about 10, 20 years ago, is that I really, I've lived a very normal life and I don't have enough stories.

I mean, I don't have the, well, I was hanging off the bridge with my friends in high school when the barge came by below and I had to drop into the cold. I mean, I have no stories like that of misspent life, which is a problem. But on the other hand, at least if I was to sit down somehow in a dinner conversation, dropped at a table with 10 strangers, I could converse. Wouldn't have any problem with that. According to New Yorker readers, however, there's a huge amount of people who are really, really nervous about re-entry into the world.

The New Yorker had to write a piece, and I've done this every single issue, about how people have cave syndrome. And they really don't want to go. And they're nervous about going to the grocery store again. So ridiculous. It's absolutely preposterous.

I mean, A, those of us who have been going through the grocery store for this whole thing have no sympathy. B, the people who've been working at the grocery store have even less sympathy for these tender sensibilities. Well, I would also say two things about that. Because the truth is that we use the term lockdown, lockdown, lockdown a lot. Nothing was locked down. I mean, I went to my grocery store. They were open. The CVS was open. The pharmacy that I use, which is not a CVS, but it's the same thing, was open. So we actually do have...

The Duane Reads are awful now. It's been around since 1810. It's called Bigelow. It's right there on 6th Avenue. It's great. You walk into it and you think you're really walking into an old-fashioned pharmacy. It's fantastic. Big old mercury

glass everywhere. It's so great. They also have an app. They're not Luddites. They have an app. It just looks nice, but it's not like they they also have an app, right? So they're not Luddites. They have an app. It just looks nice, but it's not like they don't have an app. But all those people worked there, and they all took the precautions they were told to take, which includes masks and things, which is fine. And so we do know, we do know, are there greater rates of infection among people who worked at the grocery store or people who worked at the pharmacy? And the answer to that question, from all I can find, is no.

So that's sort of an interesting thing because it suggests that perhaps you could have gone about a little bit like normal life. Yes. But all right. So put that aside. I guess what I'd say about the storytelling, before I get to the young people, I just want to say the storytelling thing, everyone has a story.

You don't think it's exciting, and you think it's simple, but it's not. You never know what part of your story or your part of your life or what part of your thought or your experience is going to sort of just arrest somebody and bring them up short in a very good way so that's what i would say is like you don't have to it doesn't have to be an exciting story there are a million boring stories that are exploring to you that you have been telling yourself for years that are exciting to other

people so well i was pulled over the trace it was pulled over by the on the natchez trace highway by a state patrolman in mirrored sunglasses and full smoky in the bare gut um who wanted to know what was in the back of my van and i had to tell him seeds but that's another story so anyway so yeah that's right um so i would say like what i'm astonished by is how many people i've actually talked to some some some um mental health professionals i know about this how many young people are are terrified and remain terrified how how weirdly disproportionate it is at least in my experience that that young people who really should be terrified of nothing are have instead developed a kind of a um uh i don't know an affection for this sort of past year and a half of not doing anything and um i think that's kind of the

that should be worrying and worrying trend why is it that those young people want to retreat so much and there have been two competing theories one is that they they live in a world of apocalypse they've always been living in the world of apocalypse they've been they've been taught to be hysterical about the end times whether it's the climate change or whatever for years and so now that as far as they're concerned the end times came and they're thrilled because this is what they've been this is essentially what they were preparing for their whole lives the second thing which i thought was a little bit more interesting was that um we have not that there there's a self-respect and self-reliance deficit in that population and so when they're told you don't have to go out in the world you don't have

to be a person in the world you can be a at home, you can construct sort of a is we have raised feel, you know, like the old days when they would raise feel and they would kind of chop off their back legs and put them in a box and feed them so that the meat was very tender and white. Very, very cruel, but it was something that we did. And that's kind of what we've done to a lot of young people. So they're like 25, 26-year-olds who are terrified of this disease that will have zero effect on them, probably, mostly. I mean, overwhelmingly. And they're terrified of it because they are addicted to terror, and they are addicted to safety.

Addicted to a lack of terror, not the real thing. Yeah, exactly right no exactly because they would you know we did not have a dystopia we did not have an apocalypse we had a very mild version of it that they could play act and larp in but as far as the veal pen you're absolutely right what they did however was they put themselves in the veal pen before any of this happened they were preconditioned they had all of these digital online virtual structures that they inhabited that was very easy for that to take to just absorb the totality of what they were doing. There's another

big thing that has to do with the lockdown and people's inability to get out of it. And that mindset wise, and then has to do with alcohol. And we'll get to that in just a second. And speaking of which, you know, if you ever were somebody who was running a business and you had somebody who was hitting the bottle a little bit too hard, that's a big HR issue. You know, when it comes to running a business, HR issues can kill you, right? Wrongful termination suits, minimum wage requirements, labor requirements, HR manager salaries aren't cheap either. It takes a lot of money to handle these things, an average of $70,000 a year. Well, Bambi, spelled B-A-M-B-E-E, was created specifically for small businesses like

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No, let Bambi help. So get your free HR audit today. Go to Bambi.com slash Ricochet right now to schedule your free HR audit. That's Bambi.com slash Ricochet. Spelled B-A-M to the B-E-E dot com slash Ricochet. And we thank Bambi for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Last point here has to do with America's drinking problem. That can be defined in many ways. People are drinking too much or they're not able to get the really good stuff to drink as much as they'd like uh kate julian of the atlantic magazine writes on humanity's long-standing complicated relationship with alcohol complicated i guess explores the theory she did in this piece that alcohol may have been integral to civilization building and how it's

affected the land of individualism quote as to how alcohol assists with that process, Slingerland, one of the people just interviewed in the piece, focused mostly on its suppression of prefront and all the rest of it because we were just so full of dutch courage that uh we we didn't know about it so triggering it's it's uh and you're you're uh dutchaphobic um i just had the idea that some academic money was spent to research and its conclusion was that getting tipsy loosens you up that's kind of what that was that the the abstract kind of just to re-describe what we all feel when we have that second last line um yeah i you never know i mean look in in uh in good faith you say okay that's sort of interesting um it's interesting to know but it's hard to take it all in good faith. It always seems like what they're saying is we ought to do something.

We ought to do something about this. And then we're right back to having some of these blue-stocking arguments about prohibition. as I always say, like the country, the West, the entire, the continent was Americanized and turned into a country. But with a lot of Dutch courage, you know, there's a lot of whiskey involved. What was amazing about America was that we actually did pass prohibition. It was a constitutional amendment. It is astonishing. What do you think about it? Yeah. And that this happened, that we had a constitutional amendment. Now, I personally think the reason that amendment passed was because a few years before that we'd given women the vote.

And I think that's probably pretty clear. But I suspect that everything depends on whether you want to live in a free state or not a free state. I like my wines and i like my cocktails so anytime someone is telling me some sort of dire uh consequences of binge drinking or massive drinking or whatever it is i i sort of nod and say yes that's terrible but that's of course you could make that argument about any any of life's pleasures right i mean exactly the amount of um scoffing and prohibition that was built into the thing was astonishing if you go back and look at the newspaper cartoons, the comics of the day, it was sort of first they want to know how to do it but the fact that we swing back and forth in this is analogous to a situation um in russia which had

you know tremendous problem with vodka right so along comes this guy named smirnoff and smirnoff develops a good vodka that does not make you blind immediately and it's hence very popular and he infuses it with all kinds of various flavors and he invents modern advertising in russia he sends guys out to far-flung towns and has somebody walk into the local bar and ask for smirnoff vodka and when told that they don't have smirnoff vodka he leaves which made everybody the russian in the bar think wait a minute hold on this guy turned down vodka because it wasn't smirnoff What is this stuff? Because normally these guys are drinking white perfume. So they invent it and it becomes immensely popular. Well, the story of vodka is the story

of Russia in so many ways. And what happens is there's so much tax revenue coming off of vodka, it funds the government, completely funds the government, that they feel that there's a reformer like we had here who said, this is wrong. We are profiting from the drunkenness of the people. It would be better if the government itself nationalized all of the vodka and we made it and controlled it. So they did that. So then the government had it and made all of their money off of selling it until some reformer said, it is wrong for the government to be profiting off the sins of the people. And then they sold it all back to smear back and forth and back and forth and back and forth.

So, yeah, we have this generational. We still have states in this country, in North Carolina, Virginia, especially where the state controls all alcohol sales. I mean, I think maybe beer you can buy in the supermarkets. I'm not sure some states do, but you want to buy whiskey. You got to go to the ABC, the alcohol something something store and buy in the super i'm not sure some states but you want to buy whiskey you got to go to the abv abc the alcohol something something store and buy it from the state um uh that's kind of crazy i mean but i guess what i what i reject about this the the article is also this obsession on this sort of yeah you know it's like a it's like a red flag when anyone is writing in certainly places like the atlantic about other countries

we don't in america x and y and z the way they do in other countries you know it's probably um vaguely anti-american um but also probably inaccurate so one of the things that that the article suggests is that other countries don't have this kind of binge drinking problem which is utterly ludicrous to anyone who's ever been to. We had Lawrence Fox on to be in London on Friday afternoon at four o'clock or five o'clock or Finland or any of this or Holland or some parts in France. Or the idea that there are countries where they don't they do not drink. I mean, they do not have a binge drinking problem in saudi arabia but that that isn't really what she's arguing and the idea that there is one here well i could say i i saw i i'm in new orleans uh and i do see some binge drinking on on in the

french quarter uh especially on friday or saturday last saturday because the the last call had been lifted on friday so last call in new orleans which if you've ever been in new orleans you think last it should not be such a thing as last call but there was a last call thanks to covid around 11 and then one and then on last friday so a week ago they lifted it and so saturday was kind of uh pandemonium um the french would say, you know, a bordel, you know, quelle bordel, meaning like what a bordel, what a bordello, because it's a big mess and everybody's sort of like.

And then I think the other day, the next day was sort of back to normal, sort of, which is in New Orleans is still a little outrageous. But everybody kind of makes do with it. Everybody kind of figures it out. And so I suspect that like everything, everything that this, there's this

school marmish, tut-tut-tis-tisking quality, which I think we're going to now all be, there's going to be an explosion of it. In the same way there's an explosion of binge drinking when the last call is lifted. An explosion of it when people can't legitimately

be writing articles and wagging fingers about masks. They have all this energy and these muscles that have built up, this sort of nanny state muscles over the past year and a half, and they need to get it out. They need to get these impulses out. Well, they can't do it about sex. They can't be censorious about sex because that's judgmental, right?

So they may do it about this. You mentioned before the state beverage. We have municipal liquor stores here, which is just odd. You grow up with it. You expect that it's unusual, but when you think about it, it's really strange. So people always say that the prohibition of drugs today is equal to the prohibition of alcohol before in the sense that both were prohibitions. Yes, drugs and alcohol are not the same. You can't look at a wide variety of methamphetamines and crystal meth and crack cocaine and compare that to the raft of whiskeys that you can get from Scotland, right? There's just two different things. Nobody sips a fine methamphetamine for half an hour. Well, perhaps I should.

This is different, of course, from the whole microdosing and the rest of this. I know it's your Bellowick. When it comes to prohibition. So let's say then that the state says, all right, it's going to be Liberty Island. Everything is over. You take whatever you like and suffer the consequences. There's going to have to be zoning of this. I know that my neighborhood would never permit a drug store to go into this. All the moms would be on Nextdoor Tangletown and screaming on Facebook, we're not having a meth store in our neighborhood. So it would end up being in the same marginalized places of the people who are most affected by having zombies roam around their neighborhoods,

which means that the whole, the end of this argument is it was nonsense to suggest that the CIA invented crack and gave it to black neighborhoods that was nonsense but what the government should do is install crack 7-elevens in poor neighborhoods right so right conspiracy theory was nonsense but what the legalized but it's a great idea is what they seem to say so you tell me then in attempting to say that we don't have a systemically racist system of government and society that somehow we end up putting these narcotic palaces into the neighborhoods that can at least afford the uh the fallout from them i mean that strikes me as nobody's ever explained to me how that app works but i'm sure that the re if we got guys from reason they could they could spell it all out well no i mean the drug legalization um arguments are pretty good and

pretty solid i don't know where i come up on them i haven't really decided they but they're pretty good uh i just i suspect the problem but they put a dispensary they called them down in california in my old neighborhood in venice beach was one of the earliest dispensaries and the hell as far as i can tell the videos of venice peak yeah it has gone to hell but i mean one of the problems the neighbor the neighbors had with it was that they theoretically agreed with the idea of a dispensary and they theoretically idea agreed with the idea of a dispensary in their neighborhood they didn't like what it actually was which was clearly a place where they were selling drugs that were uh uh had been illegal for a while and was mostly an all-cash business and and the the people who ran the dispensary felt they needed to have armed

guards in front and in back and so the whole and i had my cameras everywhere and so the whole on this little street the whole like atmosphere suddenly changed when you have armed guards who are sort of staring at you in a surly way on the sidewalk in front of the store um that sort of morphed into sort of the so there's one that they basically are trying to make them look like the apple store um and i think that's a little bit more successful and i have a friend who's investing in these things now and saying oh no there's ways to do it i personally i can't really. I enjoy my cocktails, especially in a city like New Orleans, where they were invented. So I'm not really going to cast any aspersions on people for what they want to do to relax. My advice to them is to sort of not let any of those things take over their lives. But then,

you know, people seem to get obsessed about a million different things. And I, the people in my life I have known who I think drink too much are less irritating to me personally than people I know in my life who are vegan. So, um, you know, you pick your, you pick your addiction.

Well, as the phrase goes, the man takes the drink, the drink takes a drink, the drink takes a man, and then it's off to waffle house. Uh, folks,

we want to thank you very much for listening to this podcast, which was brought to you by Baldwin Branch, by ExpressVPN and Bambi. Join all of these today. Join us. Support them for supporting us. It's a mutual admiration and providing society here. Listen to the best of Ricochet, which is a radio show, compilation clips of the best of our audio network, hosted

by yours truly on the Radio America Network. Check your local listings, as they like to say. And if you could go to Apple Podcasts and leave a five-star review, there will be a choir of angels that will descend on your house and sing hosanna yes to you in perpetuity you might want to join ricochet too tell the story exactly because you know it's a constantly evolving product and one of the things we love is when new people come on board and say you know what'd be great this? This would be great. You know what I hate? I hate this. And I mean, it is member, you know, we listen, right? I mean, not that I've looked at the chat for this particular podcast yet, but anyway, right, Rob?

I agree. I agree. We're listening. We want to hear the story. Okay. Would that be a good slogan? Ricochet. We're listening.

Maybe not. No. Shut up. Shutchet, we're listening. Maybe not. No, shut up. Shut up, we're listening. Shut up, we explain. With that old joke, I forget what it's called. Hey, you shut up when you're talking to me. And there is the phrase that E.J. Hill will probably go off and illustrate. Shut up when you're talking to me illustrate shut up when you're talking to me

shut up when you talk to me that's what it is shut up when you talk to me now I'm shutting up and Robby's shutting up we're all going away and we'll be listening to you at the comments at Ricochet4.net next week. Next week. ¶¶ ¶ Winding your way down to Baker Street

¶ Lighting your head and dead on your feet Well, another crazy day You drink the night away and forget about everything This city desert makes you feel so cold It's got so many people but it's got no soul And it's taking you so people but it's got no soul and it's taking you so long to find out you were wrong when you

thought it held everything you used to think that it was so easy you used to say that it was so easy but you're trying you're trying, you're trying now. Another year and then you'd be happy.

Just one more year and then you'd be happy. But you're crying, you're crying now. Ricochet. Join the conversation. Way down the street there's a lad in his place He opens the door, he's got that look on his face And he asks you where you've been You tell him who you've seen and you talk about anything He's got this dream about buying some land He's gonna give up the booze and the one night stands

and then he'll settle down in some quiet little town and forget about everything. But you know he'll always keep moving. You know he's never gonna stop

moving. Cause he's rolling. He's the rolling stone. When you wake up, it's a new morning. The sun is shining, it's a new morning. You're going, You're going home Now, of course, there's always a point after the guest, after the spot. It's time for... Oh, James, I'm sorry.

Go wake up James again. Doc Severinsen nodding with his chin on his sternum. Is the man dead? At this point, it usually comes up. I'm baffled. Oh, did it not go through? I'm sorry. Nothing happened.

Okay. Literally nothing happened. I'm sorry. I didn't change the settings on this thing. You want to do it again? I'll do it again if you want. No, no. This is real.

We don't fix it. I'm sorry. I didn't change the settings. Here, here, here. Everyone gets to hear how the sausage is made, squealing included.