The Ricochet Podcast - The Fantastic Mr. Fox

Episode Date: March 5, 2021

This week, Steve Hayward sits in for Rob (just a scheduling issue, not a Big Trip) and we’ve got British free speech advocate Laurence Fox and our good and very smart friend Dr. Jay Bhattacharya back to give some advice and comment on the state’s emerging plans to re-open. Also, a recent survey has some surprising results and Steve and Peter defend a maligned movie. Music from this week’s show... Source

Stop smiling. What makes you think you're going to enjoy this? 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. And I've learned an important lesson.

I'm sorry for whatever pain I caused anyone. I never intended it. And I will be the better for this experience. 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 Peter Robinson and Stephen Hayward sitting in for Rob Long. Today we talk to actor, activist, politician Lawrence Fox from England and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya about COVID. So let's have ourselves a podcast. I can hear you.

Welcome, everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast. And if you're wondering which number it is, I'm looking at the rundown sheet here. It is number 5,334, which either means that we have an extra three in there, or we've been doing this an awful lot longer than it seems. I think it's probably 534, but I'm really looking forward to that 5,000th episode show we'll do somewhere. I think we're going to do that on Mars in Elon Musk's colony, or perhaps in his new city of, what is he calling it, Starburg? Heaven bless our own Tony Stark. Anyway, I'm James Lylek sitting here in Minneapolis right now.

Beautiful day, overcast, but warm. Warm, but not in the way that it is in California, where Stephen Hayward is, I believe. He is in one of his many places. He's got a pied-à-terre in every continent, as far as we can tell. And Peter Robinson, back from his vacation in the flinty outlands. Working vacation. I worked pretty hard. Pretty hard.

Of course you did. How's the book coming? Oh, you son of a... I know. People ask me the same thing. I have the exact same response. Stephen, tell us you're not working on a book. I am working on a book.

I'm six weeks past deadline. Oh, shut up. Yeah, so I have the same problem. Okay, good. All right, good. So we're all then working and we're all behind the curve. But that doesn't keep us from cluttering up our daily lives with the illusion of momentum. And one of the things you do, of course, is to fixate on contemporary issues

and become very spun up about them, which gives you a sense of purpose and direction, even though you'll remember none of it a year later and all of the energy will be wasted by the end of the week. Nevertheless, here we are. And the slate of things about which we are concerned this week is good.

It's bounteous. Matter of fact, Steve, you had a piece, I believe, at Powerline Blog. Was that where it was um what do people think right well so uh you know being a political scientist i'm a great consumer of survey research even though there's lots of flaws in it uh but harvard and harris poll people who i guess emerged and started some new outfit did a pretty extensive poll with like 150 questions of almost 2 000 registered voters and the results set uh had some real head turners given where we are with public opinion supposedly these days a couple that jumped out at me one was um let's see if i got the

question here um ah are you more concerned about the violence in American cities last summer, or are you more concerned about the events at the Capitol on January 6th? Violence in American cities came out on top with 55% saying that concerned the more, to 45% for the episode at the Capitol, which, you know, we're told was the, shaking the foundations of the regime and so forth. Do you think Antifa is a domestic terrorist group or not a domestic terrorist group? Remember, we were told by, I forget which senator, Dick Durbin, that Antifa is an idea. I think that could be. That's right. 71% say Antifa should be regarded as a terrorist group. A whole lot more questions. I'll just give you one more that jumped out at me.

And it was about Amazon banning books like Ryan Anderson's book, When Harry Became Sally. Great name. Do you think Amazon should ban this book and books like it or should not ban books and books like it? 39% said Amazon should remove the book. 61% said they should not. So, you know, a pretty solid majority that thinks this kind of censorship, which I guess is going to be one of our main topics today, has gotten out of hand. A lot of these are surprising. I mean, one of the questions was, do you think that the events at the Capitol are being used to suppress legitimate political movements? And 64% of the people said, yeah, they're using this as a pretext not being used to suppress

was 36 you get all this together peter would you say that they're actually somehow they uh in in drilling down they they tapped the silent majority and it geysered out and surprised them with what they found roughly yes roughly that's what i'd say i don't we don't Don't all three of us have to regard this poll as very heartening. It is out there in the hinterlands, the peasants who are tilling the soil and leading their lives and holding the country together are just refusing to be cowed by the Kremlin. But with the big, I mean, really it is, I'm reaching for some metaphor with Russian,

the old days, forget it. I'll drop that. I'll give you another one. I mean, I like it because it confirms my priors. But again, I always keep coming back to this of Winston and Julia

standing at the window looking at the washerwoman and singing that the proles are our hope. That's right. Looking at the people out there and saying, those are the ones who will be the hope right before the knock on the door that says you are the dead.

But yeah, I mean, it is heartening. And again, I'll ask Peter, I'll ask Stephen, you're the same question. Are you surprised?

I'm not because so much of what we're being told today is not an organic bubbling up. It's an imposition from the top down with a lot of people slavering to get the, the approval of their betters going along with it. But let's say we get 10 polls like this. Do you think they would affect a jot, a tittle, the direction the Democratic Party wants to move the country in? It certainly wouldn't affect. Here's what I think is happening. I've come to this conclusion a little bit reluctantly, and I'm still not sure of it, so you two tell me whether I'm right or wrong. Nancy Pelosi, what it comes to is this, they can't help themselves. Nancy Pelosi has decided to throw in with the left in her own

party. The progressives look at these numbers. They know, they know the country is not with them. They know that even with Trump at the top of the ticket, and I believe there's a consensus now among the pollsters that Trump in general, he does seem to have helped this or that senator, but in general, he ran behind House members and people lower down on the ticket. That is to say, he seems to have done some harm to the ticket, to the Republican ticket, rather than helped it. Even in spite of that, we picked up, we Republicans picked up seats in the House, reduced them. They've decided they're going to lose the House in two years, and they don't care. They're just going to ram through. They're about to lose. The country's against them,

and they don't care. They've locked down the Capitol. They've put up fencing. They've surrounded the Capitol with National Guard. It's not even a kind of exhilarating. It's grim ideological determination to ram through as much as they can right now, and they don't care about anything else. They're not even thinking. This is what is astonishing to me, and it's the one piece of it that I'm still not quite sure I understand. Nancy Pelosi has been a good pal since she was her father's daughter. Her father was mayor of Baltimore. she grew up in politics. She grew up walking precincts with her father. She knows the country is not with them. I don't quite understand. She's deserting her craft, her discipline, which is politics, counting votes, trying to move the

country with you, but staying with the country. She's deserting that in favor of hard ideology. I don't see any other explanation. I don't see why she's doing it, but that's what's going on. They can't help themselves. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I think, by the way, for a bunch of technical reasons I won't get into, I think it's likely this poll understates the backlash of opinion against conventional liberalism now. That's, like I say, a long story for the classroom. But I do think, Peter, that what explains this is deep down in the soul of the progressives is this unshakable belief and unreflective belief that you'll recognize from the phrase, it's very popular, Obama used it a lot, about the side of history. And so they really think they must be the agents of progress and forcing progress along as they understand progress means egalitarianism

of a radical sort so uh you know when the people say we're not down for this where we don't agree with these things uh well i'm reminded that old line of i think it was burto brecht i don't quite remember how it goes but something like when the people are wrong we must elect another people that's right you know the people are just dumb they're as the president said the other day about Texas, the people are you to grab my collar and pull me back. But this weird paradox of being convinced that you stand on the side of history, but at the same time that it's your job to make history happen, where have we seen that before? That's communism. That's Marxismism it is every year zero society everybody who says that the old order can't be reformed it has to be scoured down the

earth has to be salted and then we have to build right a new one of the i mean it all goes back to those wonderful chaps in 1789 to the french revolution which is a more disastrous event perhaps for Western civilization than the Russian Revolution, because it had introduced the ideas of state totalitarianism and year zero and the rest of it. So, yeah, I mean, the world is not going to remake itself. It needs a nudge and a push and the rest of it, and they are completely... What's interesting is that the way it used to be, that these ideas that the Democrats wanted were still phrased and framed within standard American concepts. Now, and I'm not sure when this happened, but at the end

of the long march, somewhere between the 60s and the 80s, they got rid of the idea of phrasing these things because they didn't like America. The new left is all about these transnational institutions that float above the horrors of national borders and the rest of it. So at the fundamental heart of this is, this is why I get frustrated with people who say, why are you wasting so much time talking about Dr. Seuss or Mr. Potato or the rest of it? It's all of a piece. It's all of a piece of finding every single cultural institution you can and erasing it in order to replace it with the thing that they believe is better. That seems rather obvious, right?

I mean, we're not going to get into the Seuss thing now, I suppose. Well, I think, James, it's zearpotatics now, if we're going to do this right. Oh, that's a new name for Mr. Potato Head? Well, if the campus folks had any say, it'd be zeier, that's one of the, you know this, right? That's one of the terms, the gender neutral terms, and patatex, like latinx. You're right, replacing the any vowels, which may indicate a gender existence with an X. Right. Right.

I'm thinking just new Soviet potato would be better or something like that. Good Lord. Good Lord, indeed. All right. potato would be better or something like that good lord good lord indeed all right well you know we've got somebody coming on in a second who's going to talk about um exactly what's going on across the pond because this is not something that the devil's america itself but i want to ask you this one question before we go and it's so nice to be able to just seamlessly go into something without having rob interfere did i mention rob's? Did we find out where, did Rob go back to Africa? Was that it? Was the lure of Kilimanjaro, did it crook a finger and he went

right back? Yeah, it's like Burkina Faso this week or something, I'm guessing. I think so. I think so. Well, the point that I was going to make. Well, since he's not here to interrupt you, I will interrupt you. He's on his way to Mississippi for the Southern Foodways Alliance, which I've never quite understood, but that Rob takes very serious. As you know, he really takes his cooking seriously. And I'm only mentioning this because Mississippi is a happening state. They have a governor who is moving legislation to eliminate the income tax in Mississippi. I mean, Mississippi is happening. My dreams of moving to Miami or Austin, I may put those aside

and I may want to move to Jackson before this is all over. Somebody had to interrupt you. I did it. Go ahead. Atlantic Magazine will soon have a piece about Mississippi's experiment in human sacrifice and oligarchical stratification and the rest of it. I'm sure nothing but misery will befall them for that. But Rob with his Southern

food waste thing, I'm just waiting for somebody to find the means by which he is culturally appropriating and shut him down. And if you look at the whole Bon Appetit problem, if you look at there's so many issues that have come up on Instagram of people committing the wretched error of trying to cook the food of another culture. And there's always followed by all sorts of headbanging and apologies and the rest of it and rewriting of editors' notes because you can't do that. Everybody has to stay inside of their lane. And if you've been watching this and posting about it, you might think, I really don't want to say anything about this because who knows who's watching my internet traffic? Who knows if I'm going to get kicked off this site because I said something bad on that site?

Because a lot of people believe that social media and big tech are trying to curb your rights and curb your freedoms by attempting to deplatform speech with which they do not agree. Well, you could just deactivate your social media accounts, right? But that would just be giving into the left what they wanted in the first place. Watch out of here. So instead of letting big tech control your speech, why not revoke their supposed right to your data? Ah, that's why we here choose to protect our online data by using ExpressVPN. I ever wondered, you know, how these free-to-access social media companies make all their money.

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You tap one button on your phone or your computer and you are protected. It's finally time to say no to censorship and take back your online privacy with the VPN that we trust, expressvpn.com slash ricochet. By visiting that link, you will get an extra three whole months of ExpressVPN for free. Again, that's e-x-p-r-e-s-s-v-p-n.com slash ricochet. And I know you're writing all those letters down. You should go there. Expressvpn.com slash ricochet to protect your data today. And our thanks to ExpressVPN for sponsoring this, the Ricochet Podcast. And now we welcome to the podcast, Lawrence Fox, British actor and political activist, best known for playing the supporting role of D.S. James Hathaway in the British TV drama series Lewis from 2006 to 2015. In 2020, he founded the Reclaim Party with the aim to reclaim British values from British politicians who, Lawrence says, have lost touch with the people.

This is his first appearance on the British podcast. We hope it's the first of many. Welcome, Lawrence Fox. And tell us, first value you'd like to reclaim would be? Thank you for having me. Freedom of speech, I think, would be the first value to reclaim, because when freedom of speech is under attack, democracy is under attack. And we don't seem to be that mad keen on protecting it or preserving it in the UK at the moment, which is a bit of a worry. There was a tweet that echoed around the world that I saw the other day. It was a sign put up by British police, and it said, to be offensive is an offense, which I don't know if that's exactly codified in British law. I don't know if that's in the Magna Carta, but the idea that simply to give that somebody finds what you said to be a braiding to their sensibilities as a

crime um seems to be endemic from what we hear about british reactions to people saying anything other than the most anodyne twaddle well fortunately the um it did go viral that uh particular tweet and then the police had to apologize for it because it is not an offense to be offensive currently but it might be very soon um with the hate crime legislation that they're trying to bring in scotland are bringing it in first making it illegal to um say hateful things within around your own dinner table so that children will be encouraged to report on their parents and the uk is and england is going to follow suit with hate crime legislation you've obviously got the equality act uh the american equality act going through congress as we speak which will supersede your

First Amendment, I imagine. So it's appalling that all these very intellectually fragile people are sat there panicking about what people say to each other. You don't have a right not to be offended. You know, you just don't, I'm afraid. It's common sense what keeps society together. Lawrence, very briefly, very briefly, because, well, frankly, because I know you've explained this 100 times, so you've got it down. But what's the story? You appeared on a television program, you said something that your peers, or at least the polite, the Belmond of London found offensive. it just briefly i want to get you from dashing young actor to founder of a political party i mean that's you you've stepped down in jobs i'm sorry to say i don't know and i want to know why i want to know why go ahead certainly haven't stepped down in jobs in terms of time um i went on a tv show i was promoting a song actually called the distance which i'd written which was about this surging side of political correctness and i was invited on song actually called The Distance, which I'd written, which was about this surging tide of political correctness.

And I was invited on a show called Question Time. And I went on Question Time and I had the temerity to suggest that Meghan Markle wasn't hounded out of the UK due to our huge systemic racism problem. She left the UK because she was an actor with an enormous ego and actors like to be at the center of everybody's attention so then an audience member who was invited to ask a question said to me um that i wasn't really entitled to an opinion on the on account of the fact that i was a white privileged male and i i said to her stop being racist and then my um the actors union in the uk equity the minority ethnic members committee of equity then called me to be denounced and that was my acting career gone so um i thought

well this is actually a problem and it needs to be dealt with and um i i didn't realize that what a landmine i'd i'd trod on but there the country, the UK, was split 50-50, I think. Well, actually, possibly more on my side. But the media and social media went after me and called me a racist and things for calling out somebody else's racism. So it was quite interesting. I didn't realize it. So you had a decision to make. This is the bit I want to try to understand. You had a decision to make. This is the bit I want to try to understand. You had a decision to make. You could either do what you're doing now, which is actually not only standing up to them, but founding a political party to embarrass the Tories, the Conservative Party, the great governing party of Britain, which is in government now with a majority of 80. Steve Hayward knows a great deal about British politics. I'm sure he'll come

to that. You found them inadequate. You founded your own party. That's the choice you've taken. The other choice would have been to issue some sort of groveling apology, get it all over with and go back to a very attractive life what why why are you doing this one one little groveling apology yes an embarrassment but it would have been over in a fortnight oh if only they love a groveling apology don't they you do a lovely groveling apology and then they hang you out to dry anyway you mustn't one mustn't apologise to these people um i mean i've been watching with sadness while this um host of the apprentice or no the bachelor in america has been desperately grovelling and saying i'm learning and it's just like some sort of maoist training camp that this man has been forced into you don't apologise to these people you give them both barrels in return because the values that you're protecting

and you're protecting for your family are far more important than their desire to control your thinking. So I had no choice. I had no choice. I didn't feel I had a choice. And they hate me for it because they see me as the ultimate betrayal,

a left-wing actor in their view, betraying them by standing up to the bullying mob. And I enjoy it, actually, now. I've become a bit Walter Rutherford Dux back with the whole thing. You come after me, I'll come after you in return. Steve? Yeah, so Lawrence says, Steve Hayward, also out in California, where for my sins I'm an inmate at UC Berkeley, and I like to fight surrounded is the way I put it. And I come across a lot of students, and we have to fight surrounded is the way I put it. And I come

across a lot of students, and we have a lot of survey data here that tracks very closely with your survey data, showing that free speech is not valued very much anymore. I hear students say, and you'll recognize the argument, that, well, the First Amendment, it was written 240 years ago by a bunch of dead white guys, most of whom owned slaves. Why should we record that any respect at all in these modern times? I'm sure you get the same argument in Britain that, you know, why should we pay attention to John Milton? He lived 4,000 years ago or whatever. And something you said in your Express article is these values need to be taught. And I think the fundamental problem is a breakdown in our whole educational

system from top to bottom in your country, in our country, in other countries. And until that's fixed, I mean, I'm all for putting pressure on the Tory party to stiffen their spine and maybe shame even some Labour Party liberals. But until somebody grasps that problem and really shakes up the educational world, I'm very pessimistic that things are going to get better. I share your pessimism. I mean, I would say it was quite interesting. I was speaking to someone today from Cornwall, and she was saying to me, it's a complete nightmare. We've already had our Black Lives Matter protests 200, 300 years ago while we were dealing with slavery because people refuse to eat sugar in corbel they don't put sugar in their tea and they don't drink

rum and that was their protest against the slave trade in the farthest flung part of the uk so the problem with these guys is they need to just read a history book at some point and as far as um dead white men and freedom of speech i don't see that there's any correlation between the two whatsoever freedom of speech is how you continue the ongoing conversation and suppressing freedom of speech is how you stop the conversation and you create conflict and it's just very simple to me and the vast majority of people don't use the the freedom that they have to express themselves in a negative way. But one of the unfortunate side effects is people would.

But more speech, more often, more out in the open is better. And as dear Ronald Reagan said, freedom is only one generation away from extinction. Yeah, I quite often say these days that we've made a wrong turn somewhere because people have read Orwell's 1984 and are using it as a how-to manual. Who could have expected such a circumstance? I'll just do one quick pedagogical thing. You know, from time to time over the years, I have tried to provoke students in the classroom by taking the argument that Athens was correct to have executed Socrates. And I'm usually trying to do by indirection to open their minds to some other deeper questions that are better done indirectly than directly. I'm afraid to do that now because I think too many of the students will say,

yeah, actually that probably was the correct thing to do. I mean, that's, that's how bad things seem to me. I think it, I think it's, it's worrying, but actually in the UK, I've got some friends now I'm of an age now where my, my friends' kids are becoming teenagers and the 16 15 16 year olds they have a they have a very different take on it they they look at that generation above them which we call it here the miserable millennials and they look they look up at them and they and they say i don't want to be that judgmental and actually we've got quite a heart we've got a sort of hardcore conservative vibe coming through in the 15, 16-year-old generation.

And actually, a few of my friends even are changing now and saying, look, I can't cope with this. They obviously never say anything because they love their acting careers. Lawrence, James has another question. I want to ask one, if I may, before James comes in. And then we have a surprise guest who's going to surprise you and you're going to surprise him. It's going to be a surprise all the way around. Political viability. All right.

Nigel Farage founded a party, UKIP, to put pressure on the Tories to stand up for Brexit. It worked, by the way. Nigel Farage, totally different figure from Lawrence Fox. Older, more, you could call he's a man of Middle England, comfortable in a pub, talking about the Second World War, I suppose. And indeed, his great strength was in, his great appeal was to labor voters, to Tory, Tory, Tory working class, so to speak. He brought them in, scared the Tories into doing the right thing, I think is what we would all agree. You're a different matter altogether. I mean,

you're young, you're an actor, you're cool, you have tattoos. The last time we spoke, you were – exactly, exactly, the last time we spoke, you were smoking a little black cigarette. This is an entirely – yes, exactly. So, I know you have backers, you have – you're not going to run out of money. Have you got a viable political party and program? Or is this a lovely platform? It's marvelous to hear you talking back, but is it a viable political operation? I think it really is, because interestingly, Brexit, I think, will pale into insignificance compared to what's going to happen culturally as we head towards our own general election uh in the next couple of years you know you saw how destabilized america became leading up to the presidential election this year um and sorry the end of last

year and then we we'll have the same problem here because the these issues from lockdowns to freedom of speech to um to cultural heritage wokeness and extremism political extremism touches every single area so i think it's only going to get worse and actually i was with my backer recently and he turned around he said you don't really need to do anything because the enemy is coming to you and i thought that was wise but i still go to them anyway but and interestingly you know the minute i came out with our polling, saying that half the country were terrified to say what they thought, the government immediately said, right, well, we're bringing a free speech champion.

And I thought, wow, you've only thought about that for about five seconds. Because imagine what your free speech champion would be under a very authoritarian left-wing government. It would be your head censor in theatres and art. They are reacting to me. So I take it as a political victory. authoritarian left-wing government it would be your head censor in theaters and art it's they are reacting to me so i take it as a political victory but i would actually really i'm looking only it's not really about me it's about the idea and the idea is that we should be free to talk and discuss i'm just i i'm just happen to be the sort of lightning rod or the person that gets

punched in the face in my case repeatedly by the online mobs. When it comes to cultural heritage, talking about that and celebrating it requires cultural confidence. And so much of the modern left in Europe and elsewhere has this constant civilizational cringe where, at the very least, they're apologizing for colonialism for the rest of their life. And at the very worst, they actively hate the cultures into which they were born. Some societies seem to deal with a better France. You can, I mean, France may be sad about Algeria, but you can only push them so far before they start insisting on French values reassertion. In Britain, it seems to be a cultural cringe that has consumed the left in the culture for so long that if anybody starts talking about heritage and the importance of British culture and the accomplishments of

British culture, all of a sudden you're Oswald Mosley. Or is that changing? Are people getting tired of that and saying, no, there's absolutely nothing wrong with asserting the elements of national greatness that bind us all and should make us proud? I think they found that there's resistance in me. And then I think that that has created change within the organised political establishment. I mean, the Conservative Party in the UK are referred to by most people as the party that gets voted for most often party, rather than the Conservative Party, because they're an amoeba. They suck in ideas and they try just to make sure that they maintain power. That's all they want whereas actually we've reached such a political disalignment now that one has to go to to sort of stand firm in in in the

face of cultural heritage and i don't think i was i was i've ever been more upset than i you know sorry if i'm about to annoy you now than i was um in during the 2003 lead up to the war in Iraq. You know, I just felt we were being lied to relentlessly. And I feel that we are being lied to now. And I think there's a pushback. There is a pushback. I've got a big op-ed coming out this Sunday, really attacking our current London mayor

for the way that he has tried to build this capital city of ours in his own image, not in the image of the people that he's there to represent, but in his own image, in his own ideology. And I think the more you talk about it, the more room you take up going, this is enough, the more space you create for people to come in behind you and go, okay, it is enough. We've had enough. So there's a lot of support. That's what it seems to be from here. From here here it seems you have a mayor who believes that the apogee of his office would be accomplished by splashing uh a figure of the the gherkin building in london with the trans flag that that would that would say everything to the rest of the world and then

you have the other guys who believe that the essence of british manhood is to grab a norwald spear off a wall in a pub and take down some guy who's been stabbing people on the bridge. I mean, it's, it's, it's come to the American mind that the extremes are that great, that they're either completely dissipated by these pointless, by these pointless ideas and symbolic actions. And then there, but there's still a core people that you can count upon actually to assert a classic british values steven peter before we before i babble on into the uh into the ether forever here did you have another point steve hayward who's who's written uh steve is there we go now he's smoking he's oh you roll your own

little black cigarettes all right so this is i have a question for steve who's written a history of the reagan years steve are you suffering i'm gonna get my cigar i've got this this weird cognitive dissonance because the last conservative actors of whom i met i was ever aware were ronald reagan jimmy stewart and carrie grant and it's been a long time this i i, look, he can think, he can talk, he says all the right things. This man is astounding. Do you agree? Well, I do. But Lawrence, I mean, defend yourself, perhaps. Do I have it right? You don't necessarily identify as a conservative or a right-winger, I didn't just say.

Right? And by the way, I'm all for you. By the way, I'm all for sensible leftism. I had great leftist professors in college and in graduate school from whom I learned a lot. And it's very different now, I think. And so, look, I keep saying, Peter, to everyone else that, you know, we conservatives here in America, and it's probably true in Britain, we can't fix this problem ourselves. This problem originated on the left, and the left needs to fix it, if they will. So that's why I'm for Lawrence. I'm voting for you, if I was a citizen there, absolutely. I'm not left-wing. I think, as I look at myself, I'm right-wing. But my best friend in the world is an ardent socialist, so I can see the different points of view. and also some of

my best relationships with people that disagree with me entirely about everything so that's all i think that's a very conservative value actually is to turn around and go we're trying to maintain a conversation we're not trying to solve the conversation we're trying to create the space where the conversation can take place and it's demonized and it's become much more demonized i think it's very very sad and to call someone a conservative is now a smear uh you know it's almost like a dirty word and in england they've started to put in our newspapers the words freedom of speech in parentheses like it's an edgy idea are you serious in big national broadcasters yeah and you're just going that's this is not an edgy idea this is the thing that stops us killing each other guys that's what it is no we all want

to talk at once this is with most guests we just no we don't no all i was going to say is peter i i do i need to send you a map peter i can send you in five minutes from your office door on the stanford campus to show you the people who say the first amendment is part of the oppressive white patriarchy and a tool of right i mean it's it's everywhere oh no no no i you don't need to send me a map i'm here yes i know so can you one more question i'm trying to make sure that i establish sort of the the obvious points that we might otherwise overlook the obvious but important points. So obvious point is, you did not go to the Tory party, to the conservatives and say, look, find a constituency for me to stand in in the next election. I'll start fighting for you now.

I'd like to become an MP as a Tory. Let's get this sorted out, which for sure they would have been open to. I'm certain you have chosen to found your own political party. What's wrong with Boris Johnson and the conservative government? They're extremely left-wing, is the main problem with them. Boris Johnson's a trained classicist, and he can't even get his head around the fact that the National Health Service Trust in the south of England are trying to rename breastfeeding for children with chest feeding. And you would have thought as a classicist, you would have thought that would have offended your education. But he's a coward.

And I'm sorry, the Conservatives, I did speak to the Conservatives, actually. And I just thought, you know what, you don't have any values. The only thing, your only value is continuing the brand of calling yourself Conservatism. And unfortunately, because of the way the debate has been narrowed down so hugely, one side of the debate has been silenced. The centre, the fulcrum on which the political discourse takes place in England now is so over to the left and the conservatives are left of that so we've got a we've got a uh we've got a communist party and a socialist party in opposition to the communist party that's where we are at in the uk i see so my thing is to go i'm going to drag you mr conservative party back around being conservative so essentially i am ukip in a way and i am the brexit party i am going am going, you have to represent the values of the people that do not speak their minds,

who open me and who want to live a normal and happy life and raise their children and not be told they're racist and bigots just for the privilege. I would like to have somebody with true thespian skills read a Kiddie Poo Club ad because there's so many ways you can take it. You can take it, you can do it in dialect, you could do it comically, you could do it in the improvisational style of John Podhortz, which I believe is unduplicatable, or you could just read it straight like I'm about to do because it's a really good thing that you ought to know about. There's no need to gussied up with a lot of tricks. Kiddie Poo Club. Okay, working from home,

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off when you set up auto ship. That's kittypooclub.com. And don't forget to enter the promo code Ricochet on the way out. And we thank Kitty Poo Club for A, sponsoring the Ricochet podcast, and B, giving us the opportunity to say Kitty Poo Club. And now, surprisingly, we're going to add to the conversation somebody you might not have expected, but we always love to hear from him, Dr. J. Dr. J. Bhattacharya, professor of medicine at Stanford University, professor by courtesy of economics at Stanford, senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, and a senior fellow by courtesy at the Freeman Spurley Institute for International Studies.

Most importantly, he was recently named senior COVID correspondent for the Ricochet podcast, and he likes board games, which is really nerdy and dorky, and we love him for that. But I have to tell you here, we've been discussing freedom of expression, freedom of speech, all the rest of it, the constriction of the public dialogue. Which board game do you think will go first? I could ask you all about COVID because you are the guy who knows this stuff, but let's just get this out of the way. Which I think risk is the one that's going to be eliminated, simply because it's an imperialist, you know it celebrates imperialism in its worst form

how long does it last is the how long does it last is the question probably four or five rounds and then everything collapses and the money is where and the money is worthless there's a i thought i heard of a there's a socialist monopoly i don't know if you're all lose okay okay jay you got it the the punch lines have to come a little faster jay he's a physician he's a physician okay so yes in this in the social in the socialist socialist monopoly game eventually there are 17 go to jail car uh squares as opposed jay jay you're on with lawrence fox who has founded a party in Britain, and I am now taking the liberty of naming you his health advisor. Jay Bhattacharya, distinguished physician here at Stanford University, holds both an MD and a PhD in economics.

He's a professor of public health at the Stanford Medical School and has published dozens of peer-reviewed articles. Now, Jay, I'm going to read to you a couple of recent tweets by Lawrence Fox and his party, the Reclaim Party. They tweeted just yesterday, the Reclaim Party, end lockdown for good. And here's something that Lawrence Fox tweeted under his own name just yesterday. Every day this madness goes on, that is to say the lockdown, another livelihood is destroyed and another life crushed. All right. You, as I just said, are an eminent physician, and I give you the opportunity to explain to this actor why his tweets are not only mistaken, but dangerous. Jay?

He's 100% right. Every single poor person on the face of the earth has been harmed by this lockdown in discreet ways. They're immoral and should be ended immediately. I think with the vaccine, we have this opportunity to protect the vulnerable, the older population. We can use the vaccine to break the end epidemic, break the spell of the lockdown. The lockdowns have not actually protected the populations in the way that they've said. But you see, though, that the UK has adopted this draconian lockdown, and yet the disease is continuing to spread. People have died um we we didn't even california uh we've had this my kids are still not in school and somehow that's supposed to

protect the old people that but it hasn't um old people in california have died at very high rates um it's it's uh it's this illusion that we have that somehow if we do this lockdown we can protect the vulnerable but it's just not true. So I completely agree. I mean, Mr. Fox, I mean, there's nothing to complain about that tweet. I think I... Mr. Fox? No, no. He's Lawrence.

You're Dr. Bhattacharya. I barely just met him. We have to, like... Okay. You have to be a little formal. Now, here's another one. Here's another one that this actor has tweeted uh should and this is he's tweeting a reply to somebody who's suggesting that

we should have vaccination passports that you should be to get on an airplane to go about your job you should carry a document showing you've been vaccinated uh and so he writes, oh, and Biden and Harris got their vaccinations publicly. Lawrence Fox tweets, should everyone have a vaccination taken publicly, perhaps with photographic record? Now, to mock the idea of a vaccination passport is absurd. Is it not, doctor? A vaccination passport is also immoral. I mean, I think if we had a public health that people trusted,

and they would make some sense. Like, if you look at vaccine hesitancy in the U.S., it's the poor that are hesitant. It's minorities that are hesitant. If you put vaccine passports in place, it's a straight-up racist policy. And it under- Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. That's a- Not only is that very serious, to me, that's a completely new charge. Explain that. I haven't heard that before. Well, I mean, who's, who's, who distrust public health in the United States? It's, it's minorities. And with good reason. Um, like the, the, the lockdowns, which the public health authorities have embraced wholeheartedly have harmed minorities. If you look in California, for instance, it's, uh, the, the rate rate of mortality among Hispanics from COVID are three and a half times more than whites.

And so who's who's who's who has is skeptical of these of these vaccines is minorities because they don't trust public health. But then public health has earned the distrust that they have. I don't trust them. So I think I'm very much in favor of the vaccine. I think the vaccine is a fantastic thing. I think if we had a public health authority where you could put trust in, they could deliver the message that it's a good idea. But, I mean, people really don't distrust them for good reasons. And there's also good medical reasons for some people not to have the vaccine. Like children, for instance, shouldn't have the vaccine that's not been tested on children. To my reading of the literature, I'm not satisfied that they're tested enough on pregnant

women. I mean, so I think there's a lot of legitimate reasons that public health, if we had, if people had trust in public health, could address, but we don't. Jay, can I, one more, actually, I have another couple of questions, then I'll fall silent and health if we had people had trust in public health could address but but we don't um jay could can i one more actually i have another couple of questions then i'll fall silent and let everybody else actually lawrence fox may have a question or two for his new health advisor uh jay badacharya so on this question though of the idea of a passport is in one way or another it's a kind of mild i think they believe it's mild intimidation or coercion to get the reluctant people to get their darn vaccinations. Question, between people who get vaccinations and those who've already had COVID, do we actually need

the entire population to get vaccinated in order to achieve herd immunity? And you know me well enough, Jay, to know that although I can use the words, I actually don't even understand the question I'm asking. Could you decock that one for us? Okay, so that's a complicated question. So first of all, just an observation. I think somewhere on the order of 40 to 50% of the American population, and that's, I think, same as in the UK, have been infected with COVID. This is based on a calculation I can go into in some, but basically, there are many times more people infected than cases. That we know from a vast literature, including some seroproblem studies that I've worked on. So if that's true, that means at least half the population is already immune because infection conveys long-lasting immunity.

So you don't need all of the population vaccinated to get herd immunity. You need the population that hasn't been infected to date. But I want to turn this and think about it from a public health point of view. What's the goal of the vaccination? The goal is to protect people who are actually at high risk of dying from disease. For people who are at low risk of dying from it or where the lockdowns are worse than the disease, like children is a good example. We close our schools. We're not protecting our children from the disease because the disease is actually

not all that dangerous to them. Fewer children have died from COVID this past year than they died from the flu, even though the flu disappeared in the fall. So we just harm children with the lockdown, right? So for them, the vaccine is not that useful. That's why we didn't test in children. So I think the right way to use the vaccine is protect the vulnerable. And then the rest of the population, you know, the disease actually has already spread pretty widely. In effect, these lockdowns are a version of let it rip, except it's let it rip among the poor, right? It's protected the Zoom class. Got it. Jay, I have one.

Here's my last one. And then maybe we'll let Lawrence Fox, whom you're now advising, ask a question or two if he'd care to. Looks like I'm advising you, Peter. Just FYI. I'm asking these questions. You know, you have to help a politician along.

And now he's become, he had a good life, and now he's given it up to become a politician. So here's another Lawrence Fox tweet, which is just from yesterday. Again, the government in Britain are saying, build back better. That seems to be their slogan for who knows what they're going to roll out as they end the lockdown. So here's what Mr. Fox tweets. Stop saying build back better. Like it's the next logical step on from stay at home. Build back freer. Build back freer. That's what we want to hear. And I put it to you, Dr. Bhattacharya, that they're both wrong. The slogan should be built back safer, shouldn't it? I think I'm closer to Lawrence than I am to you, Peter, on this one.

I don't know what safer means here, right? I mean, I think the lockdowns are this, it's the worst economic policy decision I've ever seen. I mean, I've been calling them trickle-down epidemiology. I mean, it's this absolutely devastating attack on the poor and the middle class. Letting people do their thing is good. I mean, the economy, you know, there's all kinds of issues we had before the lockdown. Do I trust the people that imposed the lockdown to build back better? I just don't. I have no idea how they're thinking about the economy.

I don't know what they mean by build back better. So, as best I can tell, it's, you know, trillions of dollars of spending on things that I don't think are particularly productive. So, yeah, so I don't know. I mean, I guess I'm cynical about politics, Peter, as you probably know. But what about Build Back Freer? What about Build Back Freer? That's just irresponsible. No, Lawrence, I mean, isn't Build Back safe? Isn't safetyism the problem here? Because, I mean, at the root of we can't take offense, nobody should be offended by anything, is the idea that safety has to suffuse absolutely every single human interaction but when life itself is inherently unsafe we we've lost and lovely to meet you jay hi um we we've lost the you know covid is a victim again of the debate you know

jay is influential in bringing about the great balance of decoration which made a huge mistake of suggesting that people had brains and that they could think for themselves, which was awful. But what happened was in the UK, and I think globally actually, was people just went, we're not going to listen to that part of the discussion. We're going to silence the discussion over this. And, you know, great preeminent epidemiologists and evidence-based medicine proper experts in this area were silenced.

And then what happened was the lockdown mongers and the control freaks got in charge of the situation. And whenever you put mankind in charge of imposing something over his fellow man, it tends to end really badly. So I think Build Back Freer is absolutely the way you want to do. You want to empower people to embrace their freedom and to protect it. And what the Great Bounty Declaration was suggesting would, you know, when we look back in history, that will be when they say we made the wrong turn there. And unfortunately, our children will be crawling around in the mud paying for it. But that's what what happened i think but underneath the idea of freedom is that the fear that people will use this freedom to do the wrong thing to build the wrong thing to say the wrong

thing that they have to be directed to the proper things and that freedom is only useful in as much as it guides us to the proper conclusions which is a you know a distrust of humanity and and a belief somehow that if you let people have their reigns, that instead of building the society in which you live, they will build something that is horrible, racist, xenophobic, sexist, and the rest of it. Anyway, Stephen, you had a question, believe me. Yeah, well, I've got a question for Jay and Lawrence both. And I'm going to call you Dr. Jay because it saves time and also reminds me of the other Dr. J of my youth, and you both can throw down slam dunks to beat everybody. Dr. J, I have been struck by, as this whole thing unfolded a

year ago, by how many of these public health directors I see on TV are not medical doctors. Most of them, or many of them, seem to have their degrees in public health administration, which means they're bureaucrats with health stamped on their diploma. Is this new? Has this been going on for a long time? And then the variation for you, Lawrence, is this the similar situation in Britain? Is the Britain public health system also dominated by non-medical experts, experts in bureaucracy and who are largely politicized? Let either one of you go first with that. So I think the problem is really the set of perspectives inside public health and decision-making is way too narrow. Frankly, I don't think it should just be public health people,

obviously, but also not just doctors. I think, as we've seen now from this past year, the decisions these public health folks make can affect every single human being in ways, you know, just devastating ways. Other perspectives need to be at the table when these decisions are made. In principle, our political leaders are supposed to represent us in that, right? But they've been cowed by these public health officials because of the fear of COVID. I'm trying to think of systematic ways to bring those

perspectives into, because this is a political process, ultimately. It's a political decision by governors, by presidents, by the prime ministers. So having a broader set of perspectives that can push back against essentially a very very scared set of people uh the public health folks uh with

who don't have any notion of opportunity costs any notion that there's more to life than than than infection control um that's going to be critically important because there are going to be future pandemics we can't let this happen again it's very interesting um because obviously the uk has a slightly different um healthcare model and um but it's now we're told relentlessly stay at home protect the nhs save lives and this is a very it's a sort of mantra that the government throw at us all the time but ultimately you're you're ending up in this very cognitively dissonant area where you're going hang on a minute isn't the nhs meant to protect us um you know and then if you say that people go racist bigot you know whatever and you're sort of like well sorry i'm very confused and um yeah the national health service here is the sacred cow it's almost the religion that we have to follow

in the united kingdom and i suppose i i have a feeling that the national health service should probably be the national accident and emergency service rather than the national health service so you know if you're literally bleeding out then go and they'll help you out and you know spend the money on on other stuff because the middle management is is terrible and you're forced i'm blocked by the national, for example, on Twitter and the people that go for the National Health Service just for pointing out a few things and they just attack and attack and attack. So they're unimpeachable.

If you live in a society where the main institution, you're not allowed to criticise it, you're not allowed to criticise the Godhead. It's a religion, right? That's what we're living in. It's a religion of national health. And I think they're going to come out of this pretty badly because they're asking for a 12 and a half percent pay rise today having been offered a one and a half percent pay rise by the government

and the leader of the opposition kia starmer is going yeah let's give it to them and they're like how are you going to pay for it he's like doesn't matter let's give it to them and it's like people are losing their entire livelihoods like 100 pay reductions and the national health service um they're just out of touch with the people that's ultimately what's happened sorry for waffling dr j we know you have to go because you have lives to save covet to cure and the rest of it so so we send you off and we'll we'll discuss we'll have a special all board games edition of the ricochet podcast soon and we'll get you there and talk about things that you actually like, as opposed to the grim things we require you to say,

but thank you for joining us today. We'll see you again soon. And Lawrence, thank you. We know it's what it's six o'clock where you are at the moment. It's Jen. It's Jen o'clock, isn't it?

Yes, it was. And I know you have to go as well, which is a pity because I would love to talk to you about the British stage and the British theatrical community because I, myself personally, was in a play with Richard Curtis's mother-in-law, Jill Freud,

yes, in a Suffolk village hall about two years ago, which entitles me, I think, to be more peers, essentially, not in the British sense, but equals when it comes to that. Yeah, side by side with a 93-year-old. You're more successful than I am. Well, it was one performance only,

and it was quite something to work with a legend, but that's another podcast. Oh, really? So do you, in addition to keeping the, to starting the new party, I assume, though, that there's, you have to keep acting. I mean, you have to keep that part of your career going, or have you just consigned that to the margins for the while,

while you work on this initiative? Because that has to be tremendously frustrating not to be able to do your craft. Well, my agent gave me the hoof. So I got kicked out by my agent for having the wrong views. But also, I mean, there's a couple of good things that come from that. One is I turn on the TV and I often very struggle to see whether I want to be in any of this stuff that is on. It's sort of monochromatic cultural rubbish. And the other thing is I did just get offered a job, actually, an acting job. But I don't really have time at the moment. But I would quite like to do that.

I do love acting. Well, maybe we can get Rob Long back and get you cast in a movie with Gina Carano. Well, good for her, you know. And also, what a very peaceful and lovely woman she seemed to be. I watched her Sunday special with Ben Shapiro. And I thought, you know, this is an asset to someone on set. You don't want a set full of people going, don't say that, you can't say that, don't say that, that's not good.

No, I wouldn't act like that. Which is what, you know, you get from hard, you just want someone to walk on and be easy and breezy and peaceful and loving. That's what you want on set. It's a balance of both, isn't it, we need. But she's also capable of breaking your neck with her shins. She looks like she is, yeah. She is, and that's one of the reasons that we love her uh laurence it's

been a great pleasure and we'd love to have you on again and again to discuss this and any variety of other issues i know that peter robinson is going to want to talk to you he's got this immensely popular show that uh he's doing this little thing like it's maybe questionable he'll he'll replay the tape and then after enough times uh we've had you in the ricochet podcast we require the guests to do a reading so we will have you give your most shakespearean tones to a kiddie poop club cat commercial um which i think will be the apotheosis of your career political and theatrical that would that would be for me that that bucket list right there. Like Lord Sparks. Thank you so much for joining us. First of all, we hope our many podcasts. Good

luck. Give our regards to Blighty and thanks. See you guys. Thank you so much for having me. You know, reading about the lockdowns they had in England and talking to my friends there, the frustration is enormous. The fact that they couldn't have friends over to their garden. They have a large garden. They could have people sitting around. They could barely go and walk around. But you know, now that it's better in America and it's springtime coming here in Texas, yeehaw is opening up. Well, outdoor activities will be a thing that you'll get back to right and maybe working out outside. Well, that means it's time to get back to the grind, perhaps, with the new spring essentials from Mack Weldon. Yes, with body mapping technology and fabric mesh zones,

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And under the promo code ricochet, that's macweldon.com slash ricochet. Promo code ricochet for 20% off Mac Weldon. They're reinventing men's basics. And we thank Mac Weldon for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Well, before we go, gentlemen, this is a rare time when a post of mine actually spans two different podcasts. Apparently, I'm supposed to ask this here. It was on the glop and they had a great discussion about it where I asked somebody to defend a maligned movie. I didn't say, what's your guilty pleasure? Because I hate guilty pleasures. I don't have

guilty pleasures. I don't have guilty pleasures. I don't feel guilty about liking something for various reasons. And I think the reason that I wrote this post, I put it up about one o'clock in the morning was I really wanted to talk about the movie that I was watching, but I thought I'd be maligned for it. So I just said, nah, let everybody else tell me. What's the one thing that they like that probably might raise some other eyebrows, but all right, I'll shoot steve you go first defend a maligned movie i'm going to give peter

time to cast his mind back through the hundreds of movies that he's seen recently well i'm not sure if it's a maligned movie or not but every once in a while yeah no it has to be a maligned movie you can't say i i would like to dive to descend lawrence defend lawrence of arabia you know no i mean oh no of course all right i'll tell you the movie i like to defend is roadhouse you know the great patrick swayze uh sam elliott movie from the late 80s that's just a one long bar fight movie and i i say i'm not sure it's maligned but every once in a while i'll say something about on twitter that roadhouse is the greatest movie of the 1980s and people take me seriously and i've never checked the rotten tomatoes and all the rest of that I'm sure it

doesn't rank high on the list of any film reviewers of fine cinema but I think it's hilarious and by the way a little trivia point uh if you remember the movie Ben Gazzara's The Bad Guide he lives this big palatial French estate it turns out where that scene at the end was filmed as at the home of the Harris family that owns Harris Ranch, the great beef producers in California. And I only know that because I visited them once at their home. And on the 15th time I saw the rerun,

I saw the house and I said, wait a minute, I know that house. That's the Harris's house. And that's kind of cool. So we got Harris beef. We got the Harvard Harris poll at the top of this. Kamala Harris. This is your three Harris show. Peter defend a maligned movie. Correct me because this may not be quite what you have in mind by defend a maligned movie. I think you sort of mean defend a bad movie. No, no, not necessarily. Some, some movies.

So there are good movies. When Christopher Plummer died the other day, one obituary said that he'd been embarrassed all his professional career that he had appeared in The Sound of Music. And that indicates the temper of the time. We're supposed to turn up our noses at something. We're supposed to call The Sound of Music saccharine.

As a number of movies, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, that sort of thing. Mere sentimental treacle. And that's just not so. The Sound of Music has its romantic aspects. You could argue that bits of it are overdone, but it's got two things that are real. One, of course, is the story of the Second World War.

I can remember when that movie came out, my parents took me to the theater, to the movie theater, and people had dressed up to go see The Sound of Music. The movie in upstate New York, in our town in Vestal, New York, during the intermission, people came out and chatted with each other, and the men were wearing jackets and ties. And I now realize all these years later that almost all of those men had fought in the Second World War. They were vets. The story had resonance because they knew it was real. It was true. Something like that had happened. All right. I mean, of course, the Nazis did invade. There was a nonchalance, but the story of the von Trapp family was more or less in fundamental outline true. The other bit that it portrays is innocence. Innocence. The innocence of those

children. The innocence of Maria von Trapp, who is a nun, the innocence of the whole romance between her and the captain. And I suppose we live in a world that can't stand the thought that there is such a thing as innocence. But there is such a thing as innocence. And that film portrays it just beautifully. So there, I've defended it. That's lovely. And I agree with every single phoneme that you uttered. When I saw that movie as a kid, it was my introduction to Nazis.

Oh, really? I don't think I'd ever really encountered Nazis before they took me to the theater. And I see, and I don't know what they are, but I instinctively gleaned their essence. These were the bad guys. And these just weren't like bad guys, like you had in regular shows. These were the ultimate different kind of bad guys and these just weren't like bad guys like you had in regular shows these were the ultimate different kind of bad guys and i think it's when willie at the end turns nazi it's just it's a horrible moment that it could even consume somebody like this and i remember i remember just being entranced by it as well and at the end of it wondering well if that's all it takes to get escape the nazis just you just got to walk over the hill you can literally walk out of it well you know okay and i remember also a Mad Magazine parody where Christopher Plummer says,

I am in the Austrian Navy. I have been called away. And somebody says, isn't Austria a landlocked country? I've never quite squared that one yet, but I think it was a good point to make. It's a beautiful movie. You didn't watch Hogan's Heroes, James? That was my first introduction to Nazis as a kid. I came a little later, I think.

I'm not sure. You may be right. Yeah. He was an officer in the Austro-Hungarian Navy. The Empire did have a navy because it did have ports. Ah, there we are. Okay. So that's, yes.

There we are. Now, James, I've got a quick question for you if we've got time to squeeze it in. Did I read Twitter right a couple days ago that you are suffering through a home invasion by some heavily armed assault squirrels? Yes. We've had them for quite some time, but they've become unbearable. So I had to call in some experts to come in and figure out what to do about the squirrels. Because you can hear them scurrying about upstairs at night. It drives me crazy. For a while when I moved in- Is it a house or they're scurrying across the roof? No, inside in the attic. So, I mean, attic and through various various parts of the east it is a problem at

first when i moved in here 20 years ago i thought that the place was haunted and that i was hearing the knocking and the the ghostly steps of phantasms but they've come back and they're loud and they did they just they're all over the place so what happened was i got these guys up on ladders and what they did was put their hands into the apertures, which caused the squirrels to absolutely tweak out. It's, it was extra after the guys had put their hands in the squirrel holes, there was a commotion upstairs. It lasted two to three, four hours running around in panic. And now they're gone. Now I hear nothing. I'm about to pay $2,000 for somebody to come plug the holes and get up on the roof and make sure that they don't come back anymore. But yes,

yes. It's like squirrels are really cute when they're in stories and the rest of it, and they're adorable. But when they're inside of your wall, skittering around, you just want to biologically engineer a pathogen that will kill every single one of them. So yes, Stephen, you're quite correct. Well, gentlemen, I believe that's it. I don't know when I've enjoyed a show more, frankly. Stephen, you've been great. Peter's been fantastic. Rob isn't here. Rob isn't here, exactly. I thought you were going to leave that as a subtext, but no, he brings it right up and says it out loud. I've noticed, by the way, that Rob's segue interruption game is now spilling over to the Glop podcast, too.

So he's expanding his domain. Good, let them suffer. Let them suffer. Yeah. Let them suffer. Hey, folks, this podcast was brought to you. I've got one more thing to say, so don't go yet. But I've got to tell you, the podcast was brought to you by Mack Welton, by ExpressVPN, and by, of course, the famous Kitty Poo Club.

Support them for supporting us. And you can listen to the best of Ricochet on Radio America Network, hosted by some short guy who lives in Minnesota and has his dog barking in the background at the second. Check your local listings, as they say. And if you could go give us a review somewhere at any platform, but Apple Podcasts would be great. It helps more people discover us and discover Ricochet, which sends more people to Ricochet and we get more subscribers and we are guaranteed to be here through 2020 to 2024, 2026 and beyond. Thanks, Steven. It's been great.

Peter, as ever, we'll see you guys next week and we'll see all of you in the comments at Ricochet 4.0. Quiet birds. Are you sure the squirrels haven't come back? Next week, boys.

Dog goes roof. Cat goes meow. Next week, ow. But there's one sound that no one knows. What does the fox say? Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. What the fox say? Pow, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow. Pow, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow. Pow, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow. What the fucks they? Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. Hello, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. Hello, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.

What the fucks they? Hattie, hattie, hattie, ho. Hattie, hattie, hattie, ho. Hattie, hattie, hattie, ho. What the fucks they? Yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo. Ricochet. Join the conversation.

What the fucks they? Big blue eyes. pointy nose, chasing mice and digging holes. Tiny paws up the hill, suddenly you're standing still. Your fur is red, so beautiful, like an angel in disguise But if you meet a friendly horse, will you communicate by Morse, morse, morse How will you speak to that Horse, horse, horse What does the fox say? to that. What does the fox say?

The only thing we left out was starting a betting pool for when Rob Long starts interrupting himself on his other shows. What the fucksake What the fucksake