TRASHFUTURE - Blue Dawn: The Rise of Wellness Thatcher feat. Tristan Cross

Episode Date: January 21, 2020

If you live in a city (or use the internet at all), you've seen ads for supposedly high-quality mattresses like Casper or Eve. They don't make mattresses—they just market them—and they're losing money hand over fist. In this week's episode, Riley (@raaleh), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), Alice (@AliceAvizandum) and special guest Tristan Cross (@tristandross) discuss this extremely durable business model — and a close-read review of some of the bonkers new Tory MPs. You will love it. If you want access to our Patreon bonus episodes and powerful Discord server, sign up here: https://www.patreon.com/trashfuture *COME SEE MILO* If you want to catch Milo’s stand-up on tour, get tickets here: https://linktr.ee/miloontour

Alright, so I have this new plan where I think I've written this section, this cold open, on Matt Hancock to sound like a newscaster, and I think I might be able to do it. Commenting on the government's controversial rescue plan for embattled short-haul carrier Flybee, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said he believes the public can carry on flying as before despite the declared climate emergency. Asked if people should be flying less because of the climate catastrophe following the controversial bailout of Flybee, he replied simply, Nope. Nope.

Nope. There it is. There it is. Nope. Next question. Now, there is a bit you want to get into about Matt Hancock's theory of flight. We, the Health Secretary continued, should use technology to reduce carbon emissions. For instance, electric planes are a potential in the not-too-distrant future.

Distrant. Fuck! That's why the fuck I said, Distrant. I, too, want to live in the Distrant future. I was doing so well. Anyway, yeah, Matt Hancock is now being like, wait, electric planes. This is basically some Steven Pinker cloud ships shit. I mean, I legitimately think that huge dirgeables that operate on, I don't know, like fuel cells

are more likely than making planes electric. Yes, absolutely. There is one universe where this has happened, and it is the universe of Neon Genesis, Evangelion. The machines were charged by electricity, but one of the famous parts of the original episodes was that they could only operate for like 10 minutes before they had to like power up their power cables connected to them. So the planes will be tethered to Earth somehow. Yeah, so it would work, but they would have to take like 10 minute stops.

Or following each plane around, it is hooked by a power cable to a train. And also going the same speed. It's going the same speed as the plane. I would say that it's obvious. Evangelion had a very cavalier attitude towards destroying buildings, wholesale, and not really addressing the damage of that cause. And so I imagine that this is the same sort of universe. Because the whole city in that show was designed to be destroyed and rebuilt, right?

That was like the whole purpose of it. So in this Matt Hancock universe, like, I don't know, that city will exist, but it will like be like hull. Yeah, Matt Hancock's constituency designed to be rebuilt every 10 minutes. It's London 3, but it's sort of being destroyed by the angels and Evangelions. It's just repeatedly destroyed by the inane schemes of Matt Hancock and Liz Truss. However, broken buildings are more fun to do parkour over, so. Hello, welcome back to this free episode of Trash Future, that podcast you're listening to right now. I am in the basement here with Hussain, Nate on the boards.

Hello, Alice calling in from catastrophic apocalyptic Glasgow. Yes, that's right. Storm Brendan has like washed over us and now everything is under like 40 feet of water. 40 feet of water. And everyone's turning trans as a result. Of course, yes. But it's Storm Brendan is deluging Glasgow with water and saying, why do all these buildings not want me to let the let me wet all the people inside?

I think it's discrimination against a storm. Go Force 1984. And we also have joining us today, friend of the show, Tristan Cross. Tristan, how's it going? It's going all right. Thanks for having me. I love that that reconsider. I'm going to go I'm going to go early 2000s beer commercial,

but then I'm going to say just something very nice. Well, that's my my normal polite opening to people. Yeah, it's just a blogging kind of response I have. Well, personally, I think we could all drink a bit. I'm just we could all do to learn a little bit more from the state was app of parliament. However, great segue. We have a lot going on today. I want to talk about a little bit of a little bit of investment nonsense,

as I always love to do, because I've I've really I've gone deep on another S one filing. And I'm very excited to share that with you. And also, we've decided today we're going to meet our new overlords. We have some profiles of the interesting cast of characters of the new Tory MPs that have been elected in former Labour strongholds in the North and Midlands. And boy, I teased this on the stream on election night, the doom stream, where I said that I was excited to find out what all of the new foibles were.

There are so many foibles. They're they're all foibles. It's it's we just it's just a just a bunch of guys who've like never like never worn a suit that fits, all of whom have like that sort of strange bowl haircut, but in their forties. And they all all of them just have different kinds of business that should be illegal and like are exploiting just constantly like manifold different loopholes and labor laws.

One of them also seems to have a payday lender, so we'll get to that. Awesome. So but first let's I don't know if it's a payday lender. It sort of it seems to occupy the same space. We'll get there. However, first we have to talk about Casper, the one point one billion dollar loss making mattress podcast subsidizer. How is this?

How is this a company? It's just one ghost. Now, so this is a friendly ghost. They have building that brand. I'll never forget this. And I'm just going to say it now when you because I want people to look at this in the context of Casper's enormous marketing budget, which I know you'll get into despite their enormous marketing amounts of money.

They did a bus campaign in London and they didn't think to change the text or the copy to suit the pronunciation in Britain of the letter Z. So all of their the whole theme of the ad was like it's a breeze to catch some Z's except people in Britain would say Zeds. It's a bread. No sense. It's a it's a bread to catch some Zeds and it's just no, don't care. Just dropping money on TFL ads.

Yeah, look, it's the most rational system for allocation of resources. So you're about to alienate a potential revenue stream. Oh, no, we already reached out to them and they were like too busy kind of funding the Pod Save America empire. They were like, how many of you are called like Tommy? And we were like, no one and they they just like shut the door on us. Yeah, they were like, look, it's it's it's the John John, but none of none of whom have an H in the in the name.

Sadly, there was they were already fielding a call on hold from Ian Dunn trying to get it to finance. Oh, Casper mattresses would totally finance the Romaniacs can't wait for the Romaniacs gaming stream. That's going to be great. I worry about I feel like we joke about them. But I think at like this year, the Romaniacs will kind of transform into something like absolutely chaotic and no one like none of us are expecting.

Well, they were already Romaniacal, right? They they are they're at the limit of Romania. And I don't know where they go from here. Now that it can't happen, it's going to go to some weather underground shifted by this this condition. And I don't know what they can do. I feel like the only thing they can do at this point is either like put pivot to like full transphobia or like become even like just go like full

tanky. I mean, they could become the Rejoiniacs. Yeah. Or they could just become the Romaniacs. So back to Casper. This is from the overview of their S1 form, which just to remind everyone, that's like the big piece of paperwork you have to submit to the Securities and Exchange Commission in the States. If you want to become a publicly traded company. Sex what? To prove that you've had sex.

Yes. You're saying the sex one form, no, verguns on the Nasdaq, only chats. So we believe sleep is rapidly becoming the third pillar of wellness. And is poised to undergo the same massive nutrition transformation. The harsh sleep, drink water. Big beats by all the time. Yeah. Cristles. Cristles is one of them. I love it. Just getting that shirt from Human Traffic is eat, sleep, rave, repeat.

And it's like, look, we've been focusing too much on the rave element. We're moving that up. That's getting bumped to second. Sleep. That's moved to third. Yeah. Yeah. Eat, rave, sleep, sleep. So we believe sleep is rapidly becoming the third pillar of wellness and is poised to undergo the same massive transformation that fitness and nutrition have. You know, as I think as markets, but like I think that's a fundamental misunderstanding of like fitness,

which requires a lot of different varied equipment, nutrition, which requires a lot of different varied things. The way that capital has managed to like transform these things is just by fitting them into tubs. You just get a tub of like powder that gets you your fitness and you get a tub of powder that gets you your nutrition. So yeah, where is my sleep tub? My tub of sleep with the sleep tub.

Well, here's the thing, Alice, they do. I believe they are very close to making a fuck off. I will not fuck off. I'll instead say as the wellness equation increasingly evolves to include sleep. So so we've gone from like tech theory methodology to like Schrodinger's nap. Like fucking point was sleep not considered important. Because I was actually I would argue in like the tech kind of bubble that we're in. Like it wasn't actually that long ago where it was kind of there was that whole thing

of like you can survive on five hours of sleep, exercise can replace sleep. So why don't you sleep for two hours less and go for a run? Well, Thatcher did three hours and she really did anything, you know. And she was great. She was she was like suboptimal. She was like super productive. She took her like creatine. It was all good.

She was getting yoked. Well, that's such a cursed fucking bit. I mean, pretty patellar is basically like wellness thatcher. Not wrong. Yeah. Oh, man. Well, that's a new category of person. I will like even though it's a it's not a category of guy and as much as not a category of man, I'm lumping it into kinds of category of guy. A capital G guy is I feel like that's that's not a gendered thing.

You've you've discovered a new guy. Guy get. So as the wellness equation increasingly evolves to include sleep, the business of sleep is growing and evolving into what we call the sleep economy. This is a Markov chain of Frank Drake. Or I would say this sounds like something that you do put in like a sort of really hacky cyberpunk novel. Like yeah, there was the daily like there was the there was a day economy.

But but then Council Cowboys and Netjackers sold their services in the sleep economy, sort of like like the airport books version of like a William Gould or what's his name? I can't remember the name of the author who wrote William Gibson. Yeah, there it is. Yes, it's sort of like a competitor to Neuromancer, but it's just really badly written. We are helping to accelerate this transformation. Our mission is to get Joe.

There's some wordplay here. See if you catch it. Our mission is to awaken the potential of a well rested world. I got it because you did a big hand gesture. I didn't realize that you did like dumb marketing shit for an S1 filing. Like even when you're like talking to the SEC, you're like, we want to talk about vibes. Yes, absolutely. Because you're basically trying to tell them that you're a real company doing a real thing.

And also it's not just that you're giving that to the SEC. It's also the official prospectus that goes out to potential investors. This is we works force, isn't it? Ever since they invented like measuring vibes as an indicator of commercial success, everyone's just been vibing. It also like what our mission is to awaken the potential of a well rested world by doing what differently? I was just going to say, because I'm going to forget this.

If I don't say this right now, but Nick Clegg was actually the guy who like brought measuring vibes into the British government because one of his like big things when the coalition government first happened was that like he created like a small unit that was designed like him and Cameron created that was designed to like measure the five unit. Well, they wanted to measure happiness. They wanted to measure like how happy people were, but like there was basically no information about how they would do it.

But like they invested like a lot of money. I think they had like seconded people from like these like UCL research institute to measure happiness. And I don't think anything came out of the head was Calipers. But they like, I was just thinking about this now. Like he was the guy who brought in measuring vibes into, into government. I mean, outside of his perspective, but I don't really know if I would want to calibrate my vibe meter or my happiness meter on Britain as like, you know,

the standard measurement is not the best baseline model to go off of fucking Moscow. They send us shitty equipment. OK, so here's the here's the next next paragraph. It's going to give everyone listening a pry on disease. We have endeavored to build a brand that is genuine, trustworthy, and approachable, as well as fun and playful through our investment in a sophisticated and integrated marketing strategy, like how they forgot to localize their ads for UK buses or how their whole strategy just seems to be

giving a bunch of money to the Pod Save America, Johns or like the three soy face McElroy brothers. I'm very into you just call it. I know that actually are Johns, but I'm just into the idea of you calling things Johns like you're from Philadelphia. No, I was thinking more like the Pod Save America, Johns, like there's actually like a front for a prostitution business. It's a front for them buying, buying sex work.

I mean, OK, so never know. Allegedly, here's the bit that's going to give you a pry on disease. We engage customers across the entire consumer journey from our iconic public transit advertising campaigns, subliminal, liminal, subliminal to our nap mobiles. No, that's what that doesn't sound safe. It sounds like something you could kidnap to. I was going to say the exact exact thing.

It's like that that's like a cutesy way of I think it sounds pretty cool. I mean, I mean, in theory, the nap mobiles should work really well in the UK. Right. Yeah. If you if there's a way for me to move around while I'm asleep, which I presume this is what a nap mobile is just invented sleep. Yes. Well, like a screen is also one of those Ubers that runs on AI.

That's what is a nap mobile? Yeah, I mean, that's that would be at least a useful kind of nap mobile. But in this case, I actually have I have taken a little bit of of press coverage of what the nap mobile was like in London. I cycled up to a sleek wooden desk and talked to a nap concierge who was standing next to a silver hotel call bell. All the employees wearing Casper branded like clothing were scurrying around fluffing pillows and tidying sheets were sporting classic

starched PJ tops, the red piping. So it's like it's like Willy Wonka, but for going to bed in the middle of the day in like Canary Wharf. Wes Anderson. Yeah, it's like SoulCycle for sleep, if designed by Wes Anderson. What's the mobile aspect? It's like it's like a truck that goes around with some some mattresses in it that you're supposed to sleep on.

So it's not mobile while you're asleep. So it just OK. So when Casper does it, it's like when Casper does it, it's like entrepreneurship and innovative, but when I do it, it's getting arrested. This isn't mob stuff, right? It's a truck full of mattresses. Each pod was loaded with a full size mattress, crisp sheets and a wooden white color scheme that contours a slick spa or Scandinavian house.

Think of a miniature IKEA room on wheels. Every 10 minutes, staffers gently woke anyone who dozed off. Inventing sleeping in your car. But what? They also wake you up. Yeah. Inventing sleep deprivation. Yes, so it's Guantanamo condition. Isn't it? Yeah, if you nap, isn't it?

There's like the like if you fall asleep for like five minutes, you shouldn't be woken up. Isn't there like an amount of time that if you get woken up? I think there's a lot of conspiracy by big nap. Is it? No, there's a lot of like sleep myths. And I think that one was like debunked because like there's everyone's like sleep cycle is like inherently different. But from what I like remember, because I edited like something on this a while ago, like short periods of sleep are not good, right?

That's why Jack Dorsey has been like driven completely insane by living only on microsleeps. I'd love to basically, for health reasons, do the Ipcris file on myself. Just because they get woken up every 10 minutes. So you go to a motway. You go to like a big burger van full of mattresses. If someone else's car, you sleep in it for 10 minutes, go out your way to it and then they wake you up and you have to leave.

Correct. You get you get muscled out of the sleep RV by people dressed up in twee pajamas. There's also a wall mounted phone where you can listen to the people reading bedtime stories to you. Wasn't this one app? $1 billion, $1.1 billion dollars for some infantilizing nonsense. It's a crime van. It's a...

This is a pedophilia from what I'm just going to say. I just think there's got to be some kind of money laundering in here. Oh, no. Here's the thing, Nate, it is money laundering, but in a legal way, which I'll get into in a moment. In a boring way. Yeah, exactly. It is effectively money laundering, but it's completely legal. I want this to be an illegal money laundering thing.

It would be cooler. I want a guy in a bellhop outfit with like a roll of $100 bills, just like peeling them off. If they start, you get in the sleep mobile and then they just drive off while you're in it. It's like the fucking end of the long good Friday. Like the fucking IRA come out with a pistol. I just like the idea that someone lost an entire container ship full of mattresses

and no one's wise about it. So they're like, what are we going to do with these fucking mattresses? I don't know that makes sleep fans or some shit. This person is downstream of the upholstery thing from OYO. This is where it all ended up. I'm just thinking like, Alice, you had that, that, that really good thread about when you asked people to post up businesses that they thought were obvious fronts. I just love the idea that Casper is just like some, some like

like Mediterranean restaurants in South Kensington that got way out of hand. It's a clear money laundering front. Yes, it is very much the fish and chip shop that opened above a brothel to provide cover. And the brothel was not successful with the fish and chip place was. Since the release of our first product, the award-winning Casper mattress, we have expanded into pillow sheets, duvet, bedroom furniture, sleep accessories, sleep technology and sleep services.

So Alice, your top of sleep is probably not far behind. I want to think about the mattress awards. I want to think about what comedian they got to do the mattress awards. Oh, it was also Ricky Gervais and he said the same Epstein jokes. I don't want to disrupt the flow, Riley, but I was going to say, just for a really quick aside, this seems to be like a trend because living in New York, there was a thing like this, too. There's the quip electric toothbrush.

And you mentioned this to me the other day. And they're not good. They look, they look kind of sleekly designed, but they're actually a shit product. And all of their money is just spent on, on advertising. Like, you know, you walk into a subway car in New York and it's every single billboard in there, every single ad is just one company. It's just quip or it's Casper or whatever. And it's like, it's, it's crazy to me that the idea is like, we have

this award-winning product. I've never heard anybody be like, oh, I love my Casper mattress. Like for one, it's a fucking mattress. You know what you hear people say that you hear a soy face guys say that on like the Funko Pop review hour. That's true. This is the best mattress for your wife's boyfriend. I think you guys, you know, you're part of your podcast set.

You know, you're in your, your basements just riffing about, uh, you know, politics and the world today. But if you go to the places I go, the kind of every man pub, we just chat mainly about Casper mattresses. We just, that's, that's what it's like in towns. Yeah, man. Jess, Jess Phillips says, are you London elites? Just want to sleep on your floor in your five bedroom house with no,

with no lounge. Well, we, in, we, in Wigan, me and Lisa Nandy will hold court for a good few hours about the amount of sleep we're about to get on our delicious Casper mattress. Is it even a particularly good looking mattress? Like how? Oh, Alice, we'll get into that. Okay. This isn't that without interrupting it.

Yes, indeed. Isn't there like a few other basically identikit Casper mattress companies as Eve, I feel like purple labs, purple labs. I feel like on the tube, most of like every other advert seems like it's from the same company, but it is different mattresses. But it's most of the mattresses are from the same manufacturers. Right. So they were all because none of these people, none of these companies

actually own any of the infrastructure, produce the mattresses. They just buy it from third parties. Usually the third parties on the same thing. Yeah. So this is sort of like the, all the canned tomatoes in America are the same from the same producer. They're just branded differently with different labels for mattresses. You're Simpson's reference.

It is the pipe that goes into three pipes, duff, duff, light, and duff zero. But so getting, I come to that in a bit, but sort of getting back on this as well. So they say we design and engineer our products in-house at Casper Labs. We employ a team of data-driven researchers. So the researchers themselves, they are data driven. Designers and engineers focused on building a better night's sleep through innovative products, such as our wave mattress with hyper-targeted support technology, don't know what that means, and revolutionary glow light,

which is designed to synchronize with the body's circadian rhythm. It was named one of Time Magazine's best inventions of 2019. Incredible. Wow. A night light and a... MIT Media Lab shit. Water beds? So basically this is where I get to everything in this prospectus is trying

to obfuscate one simple problem. People buy mattresses relatively infrequently, once a decade, if that. All the secondary shit they say in the previous paragraph. Only, and I read a bunch of analyst reports about this, only 16% of the people who buy a mattress from Casper ever go on to purchase a second product from Casper. And so like, if this company doesn't make a profit during their first round of selling people the one mattress they'll use for a decade, then what will happen once they saturate that market and can't sell them a second product

for what, 10 years? Oh, and by the way, in their first initial round of selling everyone the big ticket upfront item, they have lost a total of like $232 million. It's a mattress company. It's not a technology company that mattress companies have been profitable in the past. The funny thing is that like mattresses are literally a textbook example of a grudge purchase. It's so weird that they're advertising them in this kind of like friendly

source of way when everyone hates buying a mattress because it's expensive enough that you have to like not go for a cheaper thing for it, but you hate it. And you just end up feeling resentful and shitty about the whole process. So I have like a kind of anecdote because like, so you know, Casper used to have like its own magazine as well. Yeah, what was it called? So, and it went bust because of like layoffs and like, you know, lack of union morale. No, they only like ran for a few issues.

Winkle, that's what it was called. That's such a stupid name. But it was like, they wanted to do all these like feature, like features, like writing about like sleep, right? And like their first issues are really, really good. But I think it was just like, they kind of created this, they wanted to kind of create this brand around sleep without really like necessarily understanding it. And I think it kind of hits to this point about when people buy a mattress, like,

they're not buying it in the same way that they would buy like a razor blade, right? We're like, are you standing for companies that sell razor blades? I stand for no company except for the dick sucking factory. But no, like for all the problems of said razor blade company that may or may not run a magazine, like, you know, people buy razor blades like semi-regularly. They don't do that with mattresses, right? I don't think there's someone who says that like, you should buy a new mattress every six months. I don't think that people really do that.

No. Well, so here's how, here's how it says that. Right. I don't, I don't think that. Who says that other than the magazine you're going to be buying? I think the thing is that you're supposed to rotate the mattress every six months. That's fine. Damn, this mess, we're all my money's going to see.

Um, Tristan, you were going to say something. So I guess, yeah, you're on that kind of, you don't, I guess like a lot of advertising is. So you remember when you have to come to that begrudging purchase, like, oh, who is that one company I can trust? Oh, yeah, that brand, I recognize it. Even if it's a 10 year, but it's not like a car. It's not like a phone. No one's, I, yeah, I find the fact that heavy, like saturated so heavily on the

underground as if someone might on a whim be like, actually, I would quite like a new mattress. I'd like to catch some zeds. Yeah, I, it's a strange one that feels like I don't know, especially when most people are renting, like who, what landlords don't provide mattresses. I know some bad ones do is the answer, but that you would carry a mattress throughout like your 10 years of living in and out of London or wherever metropolitan center. I would throw that in, that in bringing the prospect of just living in New York is that most places don't provide furniture because of bed bugs being such a huge problem that

like sharing, getting an old mattress, like even I've lived in London for almost two years, but like it's frightening to me if I'm in a place where like, because of the prevalence of bed bugs in New York. So it's weird because obviously like there's, that's a market in America. That doesn't mean there's a market here for that. So the idea that you can just drop that here and you can sometimes be like, oh yes, lots of young people in London want to spend their disposable income on mattresses. First of all, no, they don't.

Secondly, like they can't really unless they import the bed bugs. So yeah, just every Casper mattress comes preloaded for the pound of bed bugs. I guess, yeah, this is, I was thinking, so one of the company, the ways that companies that have like, you sell a long-term product that you have to use for 10 years, you build in obsolescence. Yes, mattresses is very difficult. Yeah, they release every six months or so. Also, like here's the thing, right?

But all of the language in this prospectus is trying to obfuscate this one fact that you're bringing up. It's all trying to say, no, no, no. So they say, we believe that the way they do that is they have to invent a bunch of stupid nonsense that they just sort of make up. So they say, we believe that sleep consists of more than just the act of sleeping. OK. Hey, what if when you slept, actually, it was like a bunch of stuff also around that

and instead includes the entire set of human behaviors that span from bedtime to wake up and affect sleep quality. This is what we refer to as the sleep arc. Or the babies. The moral sleep of the universe is long, but it bends towards buying a new mattress. Do people still believe that if you put on like a learn German tape through the night that biosmosis that you will get German? I'm sure that Casper would be happy to sell you one.

I tried to do that once for a language exam and it did not help me in the exam, but it did give me some really weird dreams because you end up in like a period of like not quite being asleep and not quite being awake. So like hearing these sounds is kind of, but in like a particular type of like a level of volume, like really kind of fucks with like your kind of brain patterns during that time. So you wake up really fucked up and you still fail your exam. So this is back to the S1 overview. In the first five years, Casper experienced rapid growth.

We believe our consumer focus, innovative products, a mattress and a bunch of other shit no one buys and multi-channel go to market strategy. So fucking up your localization catastrophically in a major new market and then just giving the pods of America, John's a bunch of money. Differentiate is both from legacy competitors and new entrance. So Tristan, as you, as you mentioned, like sort of what's the, what's the market for this? Lots of people don't buy new mattresses. That's why the company this year alone lost $67 million on 312 million of revenue and

its revenue growth rate has fallen in half over the past year. And it has got 223 million of lifetime losses since it started in the sort of early teens. But it's also important to note, like I said earlier, that none of these expenses relate to the creation of mattresses by Casper because Casper's production and distribution is exclusively through third parties. So Casper is not so much a loss-making mattress company as a loss-making mattress marketing company. You were right.

It is a podcast subsidy. Well, this is, this is from Neil Saundersen, who's an analyst or a director, rather, at Global Data Retail. It's one of the reports I looked at. The company is, quote, deeply unprofitable because the way it has acquired customers has been through expensive marketing. It has made huge losses and there's no sign it can turn things around in the near future. Awesome.

But it's going to IPO. How much are Casper mattresses? They range from, I think, $329 for a single to just over 2,000 for their most expensive model. And are they selling them cheaper than a normal mattress company? No, they're a premium mattress. They're a premium mattress. So, yeah.

I'm struggling with it. That's 2,000 pounds on a mattress. Well, dollars, American. I mean, still like 1,500 pounds on a mattress. That's a lot. I feel like the kind of person, if you're at the point in your life where you have an unfurnished flat or you own a place and you have to furnish it, you probably have a lot of options and you aren't necessarily going to be swayed by a tube ad that makes it seem

like your life will be better if you buy this one mattress. It's just also, do they even have showrooms? Well, they did the weird thing where they were like, okay, we now have to get bricks in mortar stores. So it's like, wait, your innovative disruptive online only strategy that allowed you to cut out the middleman and go direct to consumers to pass some savings onto them for a quality product is now being augmented by that thing that you said that you hated and was the past and you didn't want to do anymore.

That's the thing is if people were going to spend money on mattresses, typically they would go to a place where they could buy it, like all the crazy upselling notwithstanding. We will get into that as to how they get around that problem, because how they get around it is stupid. Oh, and this is the huge loss making thing. Okay, please, please. So, but carry on. You just go to a showroom and it's just an iPad with a website in it.

It's just an episode of Pod Save America. So, before we get into how some of the ways in which their business model is super fucked, I also want to go into how they're getting their investment, because Casper has tons of investment from traditional Sandhill Road venture capitalists, which is basically just a way of laundering Saudi oil money, but also a lot of celebrities. So in 2014, the company received $13 million of Series A funding, including investments from Ashton Kutcher, fashion designer Stephen Allen, and the investment group of the musical artist Noss.

Awesome. I mean, if I remember correctly, Bono owns like a shopping center in Slovakia for some reasons, I mean, we're things have happened. It's a series. I mean, like Jar rule, like, you know, by, by, by this, by this kind of, it's not as bad as Jar rule. No, it's not that. But Series B included participation from Toby McGuire and Leonardo DiCaprio, so half

the Pussy Posse. Scooter Braun, Justin Bieber's old manager, at Adam Levine from Maroon 5. That's a lot of like chain necklaces in one room. A lot of guys who are trying to like explain their tattoos to like the zoomer administrative assistant is not listening. Our Series B funding comes from like the only people who buy and wear those leather cuff bracelets. Oh, my God.

So basically, like the best way to see Casper is like a way for different celebrities to support the Democratic Party in America above normal fundraising limits by channeling their donations to Pod Save America through an elaborate mattress front company. It's a Pod Save America speak easy. That's incredible. And also, I think it's now time for me to explain a very boring concept from finance and this is going to go into the returns thing that will be very illustrative of why after 2012 in America, it is so legally easy for a mattress marketing company to make an IPO

exactly like a tech startup. It started with something called the Jobs Act, at least like Bernie called his the Stop Bezos Act. That was cool. But the Jobs Act, fuck off, which created a category of company called an emerging growth company. And basically, every company now is starting up as an emerging growth company. And this is to do with the way in which you file an IPO and you sell shares to private

investors before then in startup capital raising rounds and to retail investors after you make an IPO. So what is an emerging growth company? So they've taken this from Lexis. Under the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act, Jobs Act, which was passed in April 2012, a company qualifies as an EGC if at the time of its IPO, total gross annual revenues were less than $1 billion during its most recently completed fiscal year. So every company?

Yes. I know that sounds very boring, but it's incredibly important. EGC status affords an issuer to the ability to enjoy certain reduced disclosure requirements, including providing fewer years of audited financials and reduced compensation disclosure for top executives and reduced corporate governance requirements, particularly around internal controls on financial reporting and say on executive pay advisory votes. So it's basically, if you can class yourself as an emerging growth company, you don't have to tell any of your investors where much of your money is going and they have very little

oversight of how much you pay yourself. And almost everything is an emerging growth company. The criteria seems to be if it is a day ending in day when you incorporate. Yes. If you're going to be disruptive or innovative and you have this case that you're going to be a unicorn to go over a billion, there you go. This is the most fucking Obama administration policy I've ever heard of just the SEC, which is already a totally captured regulatory agency.

The idea that they can still impose a handful of things like auditing on you and you just show up in your turtleneck and say, I have a turtleneck, fuck off. I'm a tech company and so is my wife. We broke, Alice. Yeah, I don't understand. Well, here's the thing. In order to understand, this is half the equation. The other half is you remember when we talked about this, we say, look, the goal is to become

a monopolist and a lot of the time, if you become a monopoly, then you can do an IPO and make tons of money. Or if you fail to become a monopoly, you can do an IPO and then with these reduced disclosure requirements, flog off your dog shit stock onto pension funds and retail investors. So Ashton Kutcher gets to get out basically without losing much money, but then the nurses union, Len, basically subsidizes his losses. I'm sure this will work out fine. Absolutely no consequences for this in six to 12 months.

I was going to say, as we know, the music never stops. There are always enough chairs. Everybody should just keep buying the fucking 1928 model, Dusenbergs. Yeah, it's exactly. It all just goes up and so long as it keeps going up, it's fine. So this is where we get into the return policy thing. This is sort of the end, which is all of what Casper's financial statements indicate is that reach funds, returns and discounts cost the company $80 million.

So the product's bad. Well, it's that they have, because when you buy a mattress, how often do you take it back? How bad does that matter? I feel like you... Here's the fun part is that they basically have these terms where you can do that at no cost within a certain period. Oh, but then sure you would have to get another mattress. I had to hack my mattress and fucking void my warranty.

Well, considering that all the mattress companies are selling the same product, just the different marketing. But the one thing they have to do is because, again, I'm doing a little bit of boring economics here because I think it's necessary. Mattresses are what are called in economics a post-experience good. So there are pre-experience goods where you can know that this plane journey is going to take me from here to here in this following amount of time. And I can shop around between them effectively because I can say, well, this one's cheaper.

This one's more expensive, blah, blah, blah. This one's shorter hours for some reason, et cetera. A mattress is a... That's pre-experience. Post-experience means you can't really rate how much you're going to like it until you've actually had it. So for example, that's a mattress. I'd say it's comfortable.

If it fits my body, if it's sort of idiosyncratically, I like it. And so if you're selling a post-experience good, but through the internet, then you basically have to have an incredibly generous return policy or no one's going to want to buy it. And so all of these companies that are trying to disrupt mattress retail, for some reason, they're all doing it. I don't know why mattresses, but they're all doing it. They all have to have these return policies, which basically mean that enterprising customers can daisy-chain a bunch of them together and never have to pay for any mattress at all.

Finessing it. That's incredible. That is the energy that we want to see in 2020, is if we can't get like proletarian systems of like mutual aid, at least get a new mattress every six weeks. And so in effect, Casper mattresses could be seen as one of two things. Either a way for venture capitalist celebrities to subsidize the liberal podcast that they like, or a contest between consumers and venture capitalist celebrities to see who can scam who more and faster.

We're used to just hide cash between the mattresses, but now the mattress is through a wallet constantly rotating between providers. It is a mattress library. This is the GameStop thing. Remember the GameStop stuff? Yeah, the first bank of GameStop. Yeah, the guy that uses GameStop, basically, that you buy games that are in pre-release and then you can basically get refunds.

And if you go to the store, you can get your money back on a pre-release game that you've already got a credit for, and they have to give it to you in cash, or you can ask for it in cash. So whatever he needs cash, instead of going to the ATM, he just returns the game that he's pre-bought, and they have to give him cash. It's that, but for mattresses. Stealing sleep in a very literal sense. Tristan, any final comments before we carry on to meeting our new overlords?

I'm sitting here trying to walk it out. What's going on in the world? How long? What are the return limits, like 100 days? How many different companies are there? Dozens. How many podcasts are they sponsoring? They're sponsoring all the soy ones.

This thing looks a bit like a pyramid. I feel like they're detective in usual suspects, trying to smash in my coffee on the floor. Think about this, I don't know why they've done it, but I know they've done it. The fucking Kevin Spick, yeah. Kasper Soze, he like stops limping, but it's in the form of a memory foam mattress slowly returning to shape. So why mattresses, and why not any other product that you could... Personally, I think it's because Kasper mattresses just did this, had success, and then spawned

dozens of imitators. It's the same thing with why Uber. So I guess one more explanation of a concept in economics, which is consumer dumping on consumers, which is basically, it's not that pissed engine pub thing, it's a different thing, where I for one like the former. Can you explain the concept of the pissed engine pub? There was a pub that where there was a guy in London who was, he was using a urinal on a pub, and he was like, or actually I think it was somewhere not in London.

And he thought he saw an eyeball and freaked out, and he alerted staff, and it turned out someone had basically in the behind the building had knocked out part of the wall and had redone the pipe so they could just lie there and get pissed on. So this was a disruptive industry like... Well, I think the best way to understand consumer dumping is kind of like the pissed engine pub, where you see that the same thing happened with Uber. The same thing happened with Uber, where there's this one company that's very, very buzzy and very successful, even though they never made any money.

And they have this one, the one model, which is GPS based rideshare, rideshare, they have also the labor market disruption, et cetera, et cetera. So how that works is that a bunch of venture capital money comes in and subsidizes journeys around London or whatever city you're in with Uber, so that they can out-compete public transport and traditional cab providers, which have a different cost structure to do with the capitalization required to get a medallion. So what then happens is that imitators come in, so when Uber's VCs decide they want to stop subsidizing and want to see a profit from having gained this market share, then Uber's

costs go up, but then other VCs see an opportunity to come in with a new subsidized rideshare program, Captain, ViaVan, whichever other ones, whatever, lift, and then those get subsidized. And so essentially, what's happening is that we want subsidized transport around cities. It's just that when it's done privately, it's done through consumer dumping rather than publicly, which will attempt to maximize the utility of the infrastructure to the people who are living in it. So what is different about... So I get the Uber one, because they've done GPS ridesharing, but the mattresses, what

new thing have they added other than you buy it on the internet? That's it, yes. And of all the products they could have done. Well, I think because mattresses were pinpointed as the highest cost consumer item. So the highest cost consumer item that you wouldn't ordinarily buy through finance... Just a fucking Faberge egg of a mattress? No, I think that's the point too, though, is that I think that there's a whole... The kind of pseudoscience behind selling a mattress and trying to create the impression

that the 400-pound mattress and the 600-pound mattress, which are probably materially identical, are something more valuable in it somehow. And so you have this idea that you're creating this holistic sleep science wellness shit to basically hawk a product that's identical to basically anything else. And the reason there are so many is that they're all imitating not even the actual success, just the hype of the original, which was Casper. And so the high price of the mattress in the first place is because probably not the cost of making the mattress, but the fact that you don't replace it very often.

Yes, correct. And so by offering it at this even more higher cost, you assume it's better because I'm stuck with it for 10 years, but then you aren't stuck with it because you're getting rid of it after 100. Look, the economy is good, all right? This is the economy rules. The efficiency of the market, all right? So I've done three boring concepts and economics explanations. I'm not going to do any more because I'd like to move us on to meeting our new overlords.

So as Alice said, yes, I did. We are fulfilling her promise of getting to meet some of our new friends who we can get to know over the next couple of years foibles, foibles, so many foibles. So these profiles I've cribbed from various ones to watch list. A couple of them are from the Guardians, most controversial Tory MPs. Some of them are from like the Telegraph or Spectator. Great new Tory MPs. Fucking Guardian article is that.

So I've been reading between the lines and the only reason that none of these people are said to be QAnon freaks is that we just don't know which of the 2019 Tory MP intake are QAnon freaks yet. Yes, journalists ask them about QAnon. One of them will be mark my fucking words. So we'll start with an appetizer because there's two categories. There's ones that are like kind of like displaying a lot of white nationalist leanings and others that are hilariously incompetent business people.

We're going to start, though, with one that's neither, which is the last Cameroonian Tory existence. You fucking laid this out so perfectly. This is Danny Kruger, the son of TV chef, Prue Leith Kruger is a former aide to Boris Johnson and one time speechwriter to David Cameron. Remember all those great David Cameron lines? Well, Alice. Well, Alice.

No, no, no, no, no. Kruger wrote Cameron's infamous hugger hoodie speech. That's infa, infa, I barely remember that. Like it was shit, but like. I was five into that one. Yes. Tristan, you want to tell, tell the listening public about the hugger hoodie program. Well, in fairness to the conservative government or they want the government,

then the opposition, the hugger hoodie thing was in response to, I think, new labors, absolutely dog shit, ASBO, the anti-social behavior order, which basically made it criminal to do lots of non-criminal things. It basically, it basically criminalized like a lot of like, especially young black men standing around. Absolutely. Outside. So it grouped in so like you could get an ASBO for arson and like,

soul and stealing theft and pedophilia. But you could also get one for spitting, rudeness, I think, begging. So they criminalized being rough sleeper and intimidation, which they use very they say, what was the, what would be the word? They used it broadly. They lived it broadly to basically mean anyone that had been codified as intimidating in a kind of deeply racist and often classist way. So people who wore hoodies would be seen as because they were wearing a hoodie

as intimidatory and then they were getting ASBO for that. So the hugger hoodie was in response in a rare, the conservatives being on the right, but I don't know. I'm about to say they were on the right side of history. But don't worry Tristan, I have some more quotes from Danny Krueger that will show that they were, they may have been like right in some small way, but fundamentally and substantially were crazily wrong. Sort of like Matt Hancock unintentionally revoking the ban on grime

performances in public venues. They want you to hug a hoodie, but only if that hoodie is legit supreme. So this is from a spectator article, this is from a spectator article. Danny Krueger wrote Justifying the Hugger Hoodie Speech in 2008. Quote, oh, and can we, can we get a little breaking news stinger when I signal for it? Thank you. Today's aristocracy, the elite who make the culture and policy. So no, like, just putting those together, saying that the policymakers and then

like what, rappers are the same people with the same responsibility, have a similar duty to the aristocracy of Georgia in London to provide charity and moral leadership. How, how, how well did George and aristocracy do at this? Well, they had, they had, they had uprightness. That's, that's, that's true. And a very, very little grime. I know that, that was summarizing the previous paragraph.

So that's in square brackets. Most obviously we need to change the way that people at the very bottom of society are paid, which is true. And then we're going to do the thing where he could have stopped writing there because he instead of stopping writing there, he goes on. Through the drug trade in the welfare state. Sorry, fucking Martin Amos. Every, every dog in Tower Hamlet's just looked up.

Between, between them, these things wreck the natural reward system, which without them would incentivize responsibility through simple economics. But the drug trade is simple economics and it does incentive. Now, can we please put the breaking news stinger in here? Middle-class students and professionals who buy drugs from young black men. I was one of them once. God forgive me. What, dude?

What? Okay. Very ordinary sentence to the right. Yeah. What's that? Cool. I got fucking off my face. Please forgive me, God.

It was so good. I, I, I used to buy drugs. I'm at MP now. So, whoopsie doodle. So whoopsie doodle, uh, we need to put their vaunted social conscience into practice and stop paying people to be criminals. And politically, we need to reform welfare to promote activity, not passivity. Fatherhood, not just fathering and local leadership, uh, not state provision of

everything. We have Douglas Ols calling this the pull up your pants act. Unconditional, unlimited welfare, smothers, ordinary responsibility. I love the idea of like you have to stop paying people to be criminals as it being like football. You know, if you're really a criminal, you just do it for the love of the game. You know, but also like when was the last time they had unconditional welfare in this country?

It was a long, long time. Never. Yeah. I mean, I know it was easy. You're at some point to get unemployment benefits, but like it's still never been easy. Also, like what the, what then this is why I always say, OK, well, you say that all these changes need to be made. But what's the policy you're advocating for?

Also, why are you jousting with this fantasy version of things? It's like the only true statement that I've gotten here is that if you, if you're white and you buy drugs when you're young, you can still be an MP if you're a Tory. So that's Danny Krueger who I'm sure, I'm sure that's going to come back to haunt him. Let's go and does with these Tory MPs. It often does. They often see consequences for the things they said in their previous life. Yeah. And that really ends a lot of echories.

Here's another Tory MP who I'm sure will face some consequences for stuff they've said. We're transitioning into the saying some awfully white nationalist stuff section of the second part of the program transitioning into that. Fuck, I forgot I can't use that word. Blair White. The MP for Link at Carl McCartney, the MP for Lincoln, apologized during the election campaign for sharing several posts from Tommy Robinson. OK, I bet they were just like normal every day posts from Tommy Robinson.

McCartney, Tommy Robinson was like, oh, hey, guys, what was the one song you used to play when you were 12 years old? 90s kids will remember this. Quote tweet with it with your best. What was your craziest job interview? Tommy Robinson, just like describe yourself with the last four images you have saved. That was kind of a thing wasn't not to interrupt. But did you say that he's saying that Britain first started out by doing like animal

rights? Yeah, yeah. And then once they had the Facebook false and they're like, by the way, to pour it all mussels. Yeah, they got like huge tractions because even though they were doing the deported Muslims thing, they found that they would get most of their followers and shares whenever they used to just post stuff about animal welfare and cruelty. So it'd be like, this dog is being beaten up by its owner, follow if you would follow if you would want to see them like hung from the Tower of London. And I've got to say that's a good social strategy, man.

Like, like they should learn from Casper mattresses. Yeah, other way around, Casper should do that. Something like beating a shit out of a dog on a Casper mattress. You need a soft mattress when you want to secure the future of white children. This is what's going to happen when the right wing griff kind of like slows down, right? Like at some point we're going to see Paul Golding somehow working for a mattress tech start. So McCartney, who was also the MP between 2010 and 2017, appeared to endorse a Robinson

comment which said the government had, quote, made it illegal to expose Asian grooming gangs. He also shared a letter from Robinson which claimed his murder by Islamic prison gang should spark a revolution. Oh yeah, two things that happened. Yeah, the letter read, I was always said I'd sacrifice my life tomorrow if it would end the Islamic takeover of our beautiful land. Carl McCartney apologized once he was elected and no further action was taken. Woopsie daisy.

Woopsie doodle. Beans. He had another one. This keeps happening. It's a great reason. I don't know about. Lee Anderson, who we've actually talked about before because he's the guy that like planted the fake doorknock responder to talk about how he wanted to make minor criminals or bad

tenants or bad employees or whatever, wear a pink fuzzy tutu and basically do David Clark shit. He wanted people to live in work camps basically. He's a homeless. People are like council tenants should be made to live in work camps. Yeah. So the Guardian. I don't think he even gave them like, it wasn't even going to be a camp, it was just

like some. Where even is he MP for now? Is it what's the constituency? Ashfield. Oh, so the Guardian, though, this is this is not sort of white. This is not Lee Anderson is not in the white nationalist section. He's just in the idiot section. It's just like your dad unintentionally becoming fascist.

No, no, yes. Or intentionally. Yes. This is a your dad thing. He was warned about his conduct by the Tories after posting a comment in Facebook in July 2018 showing a photo of him staring at the chest of a female canvasser in a vest top captioning the photo with out with some great knockers tonight in Skegby. Roy Chubby Brown.

He's a commandant. Became an MP. Why? Why is fascism being led by the twin demons of like Tommy Robinson and Sid fucking James? I mean, if fascism in Britain was always going to be Benny Hill fascism, that's just that's what it's become. Yeah, it's basically he's like he is his politics were made by the sun, but specifically

page three. That's where we are. So little captions in and yeah, where it would always be like, oh, someone's left the superglue out when someone's touching stuff. I used to walk in print. OK, that used to be the funniest caption where someone's holding like a wall. They're posing against the wall. The caption right would say someone's left the superglue out.

So it's like they're glued to the wall or one hub category. Yeah. Steps sister glued to wall dressed as Navi. So I'm going to go back. I'm going to get back into the white dressed as an Irish railway worker. So I just think that that's so great where it's just like it's just uncle sexuality or it's just like just like the it's the it's the kind of sexual expression of just an uncle who gets a little too drunk at a family gathering.

It makes everyone come to understand the reference. I thought you're saying dressed as a character from Avatar or something. That's why that was what I was going to go back into the white nationalist section or what makes white nationalist statement section. Sally Ann Hart, who's the new Tory MP for the marginal seat of Hastings. Plus you Sabrina. Melissa Joan Hart. Yeah. So it shared a video with an image implying that George Soros controls

the European Union and then liked it tropes and then liked like a Nazi slogan on Facebook Facebook and then liked a comment left underneath the video that said I'm right. A Nazi slogan tropes. I don't know if that's a trope. No, we're just everything is just a trope now. Like we want the tropes. We've reduced everything down to that level and it's staying there.

This is one of the tropes of being fascist. Yeah. Liking things like if you are possibly unintentional anti-Semitic trope of being an anti-Semites. The Conservative Party has launched an inquiry into the post, which was then later expanded after Hart endorsed a blog post by an anti-Islam activist claiming Muslim organizations are trying to brainwash young Americans. Pam Geller. I don't know.

Probably. I assure you. And then at an election, Hustings said that people with learning disabilities should be paid less than a minimum wage because they don't understand money. Oh, yeah, I remember that. Yeah. All those things that we thought were like going to sink these candidates

and then they won. Yeah. She said her comments have been taken out of context, but apologized for causing offense. So I'm sorry that when I was all over that Nazi shit on Facebook that you got offended for doing tropes. Yeah. So these are the these are the really miserable ones.

I want to go on to the more fun ones now. They're like just just like wild people who have just done some like Wild West business shit. Aaron Bell, a TV game show fanatic who won Krypton Factor in 2009 and then was part of the team that won only connect. He read he read PPE at Oxford and is passionate about urban regeneration and cracking down an antisocial behavior. What the fuck is a Krypton factor?

The Krypton factor. Never heard of it. The what? Right. It was just a game show. I find it like quite distressing that if you've ever had to spend time watching the kind of daytime game show kind of stuff and you kind of you get invested in these people doing well, you know, as kind of vicarious.

Well, you're not doing well often if you're sat home and get you want someone else to succeed in the world. Yeah, you get very pointless or whatever. Yeah, you're like, I hope this guy gets a nut. He wants to take his mom on holiday or he wants to buy that thing. And if he just does it, I can experience that victory through. But actually, those people might be going on to being the very people who are imposing sanctions on you in a later life.

They win with their money from only connect or wherever it is. And the Krypton factor. In fact, Tristan, he won 25,000 pounds on Deal or No Deal, which then allowed him to put a deposit down in a house. So that must have been what like 20 years ago when that would have been a deposit on a house. So you're basically watching the origin story of the people who are in a few years down the line are going to come and fuck you.

Game shows are a real problem. However, having my home office application rejected by Arthur Chu. So here's the thing, here's the thing. This is not the funny bit about this guy. The funny bit about this guy is that he's made his career working for Bet365, but then set up a financial technology firm, which employs more than 40 people in the constituency. And here's the thing.

This is an article from the Telegraph of the Spectator. So they don't say what the financial technology firm is. However, this is Trash Future. And I always do a little bit more research than they do. I found out what the financial technology firm is. Are we ready to hear about it? Oh, yeah. Yes.

The firm was called Divide by and they offer 0% interest. Consumer Purchase Financing. Oh, good. Or a loan shark. Yeah. Or a loan shark. I guess I feel like everyone who's sort of involved in like online gambling has a side hustle that is a loan shark.

Like that's the only thing that sort of makes sense. The only thing that's surprising me is that this isn't dumber. Like I'm surprised that it is actual online gambling and not like Counter-Strike skins gambling. No, no, so just to be clear, Bet365 was his job and then he helped set up Divide by. These are two separate entities. And so Divide by, basically it allows you to finance the purchase of anything.

But usually it's used for like couches or whatever. It's essentially a higher purchase platform so you can do higher purchase without going to a higher purchase company. A higher purchase is of course one of the most evil, destructive and unsustainable forms of credit ever. Yeah, you get your stuff repossessed. Yeah. So what was the game show he won?

He won Deal or No Deal. He also was on the team that reached the final of University Challenge and Crypton Factor and also only connect. That's improbable. That's got to be, someone's got to look into this. And with that money, he set up a payday loans company. With that money, he bought himself a house and then he helped set up basically what appears to be a higher purchase firm.

And I've read some of the reviews of them. One review goes, they only know how to pressurize and harass people. Another review goes, I've made nearly 89 phone calls to divide by to amend my payment from $139.99 to $99.99 as the initial item was out of stock. Unfortunately, it's been nearly five months and the issue hasn't resolved as of yet. So it seems like they're also deeply incompetent. And that's like part of it, which is you just

you basically get people into these agreements and then you administer them poorly. And then he created 40 loan shark jobs in his constituency. All right, you need to respect the entrepreneurial. Oh, Lord, I like that. It's just if people win that Chris Tarrant bit on like who wants millionaire where it's just like, what are you going to use the money for? And they always say something heartwarming. If people were just kind of upfront, I want to subjugate people.

I want to use the money to basically perpetrate misery on a great deal of people watching this at home. And then later life, I'm going to parlay my success into becoming an MP who's going to perpetrate these kind of cycles even further. I feel like that would add a bit more jeopardy to kind of. You may not realize it, but by giving me this prize, you've invested a great deal in conditionous. This will pay dividends in the future.

You have you have begun a process that will that will end with some nonsense in parliament. Because that's a bit unlike the chase. You never want the chasers to win because you're like, oh, come on, the quiz people don't need to beat this little guy. They're the person from home. If it was like Paul, the beast against someone who really wants Aaron Bell. Yeah, you've got to vet these people better. We need pre-crime, but for game show participation.

Yes, there needs to be like a little thing that comes out like that tells you what fucking evil shit they're about to do. So I'm going to go on to the next one. Stuart Anderson, a former soldier and new MP for Wolverhampton, Southwest. Five years ago, he received an illegal dividend from a security firm he founded called Anubis Associates, a hotel, which is a white hotel, which went into an administration of 271,000 pounds in back taxes. The firm, which was supposed to train security guards, was wound up,

but then it was noted that Anderson had given himself 54,000 pounds in unlawful dividends on the basis of future profits, which were never taken. He later repaid only 2,000, which was ruled lawful by the courts on the ground that paying any more might bankrupt Stuart Anderson. Fun fact, if you have ever been bankrupt... You're rich, this country's plush. Well, yes, but also if you've ever been bankrupt, you can't be an MP. So, yeah, that worked out well for him.

Super lame, niche, recursive joke, but you could say this is the first time that HMRC was hollering about the Anubis. Like three people are going to get that, but God damn it, I will aim for it. At the time of the election, he also ran another startup called eTravel Safety, which actually received half a million pounds from the EU through a regional development fund. We don't know how much of this money he subsequently paid to himself in dividends. Yeah, it's just weird that as soon as he got elected, Wolverhampton South

started to see construction of a giant pyramid using a system of Corvay labor. So, I thought that was very funny. Again, just like real sort of dodgy builder energy. Yeah, but also, I like the whole tip thing. I like the idea that this guy's campaign literature was like vote for Stuart Anderson and he will propel the chariot of the Sun God Ra across the sky every day. I want to go with the last one, though, and I saved the last one, that this is the best for last, Jamie Wallace.

So, Jamie Wallace is reported to have resigned as a director of a firm called Quickie Divorce. Yes, yes. That's like pure, that's pure like Tory Home County's energy, right? Well, it's that's not pure Tory Home County's energy. It's pure new intake Tory MP from the Midlands energy. We are just like the Instagram Tory is the new kind of Tory, and it's going to take shape over time. Yeah, like the American version of this would be like boat dealership scams.

Yeah, absolutely. We have it's everything here is more dismal. And so now it's going to be like Quickie Divorce. There's like more to this as well, from what I remember. Oh, oh, there is Hussein. So he resigned within days of winning Bridgend, but his name is still listed by companies. House is having a controlling interest in more than 75 percent of the firm.

Why does this keep happening? Why between this and Donald Trump? Why is the defining thing of our era insane grift as winning things they never expected to and finding that it's scruce amount of their own beautifully perpetrated scams? I don't know. It's probably maybe that's the. And why did they all get maybe the tea thing and why do they all get away with this?

It's a DMT thing, for sure. We're all we've all died a while ago. We're sharing a dream. Yeah. So one of the recommended resources listed on cleanbreakco.uk, a website run by Quickie Divorce Limited, was to Sugar Daddy Introduction. Now it said that Sugar Daddy was a trusted introduction service that can, quote, introduce you to your very own Sugar Daddy and solve your

money worries. OK, so the address was very funny. It has ceased trading. Oh, God, I'm sorry, Alice. So despite the wreck, no, this is also reported by BuzzFeed. Wallace told BuzzFeed News that he had nothing to do with the Sugar Daddy site. However, however, the site was run by a company controlled by a former director of Quickie Divorce Limited.

So he's still like seven degrees of separation or whatever. Less than that. He is one of the daddies on the website. He's he's he's aware of who the daddies are. He's the sugar supplier. Yes, it's like, yes, Mars may need moms, but Earth needs daddies. Specifically the Midlands. Can I have to bring this back up again when Ollie's on next?

South Wales. Fucking up UK geography. It's a very unique climate in Bridgend where you can have the best kind of luck. The Bridgend Sugar Daddy is a curse to die there. Like that's up there. We've had a wellness stature, but Bridgend Sugar Daddy is. God, there's so many new types of guy coming out of like the two genders. Yeah.

We are absolutely going to find so many types of new guy. I can't quite envision the Bridgend Sugar Daddy, but I know what the Bridgend Sugar Daddy drives. Yeah, I was going to say that it's an old Audi, right? Yes, yes, yes. Got it. I fucking got it in one. Absolutely. It's an old Audi. And this Bridgend Sugar Daddy, he always wears a blazer, but he's quite fat

and wears a very loud colored striped shirt. Three buttons undone. Yes, he doesn't want to make the like the jump to it like a double breasted jacket, but no, he probably should. Oh, my goodness. This guy, I can see it so clearly in my mind as though it is I'm getting a vision from Anubis. I think it's like the one fancy restaurant in like the area,

which is like where people go on quote unquote posh dates, but he has like the VIP room. It's one of the front businesses that we talked about earlier, the obvious front. I mean, I think all restaurants are front businesses anyway, but I would kind of say like based on kind of my sort of primal knowledge of like small towns, there's always like one like unique restaurant. Geno's like. Or no, it's called it's usually depending on what era it's from.

It will be called something like unique, but it'll be you and I with a line over at pay and it'll be like a gastropub. Basically, it'll be a glorified gastropub, but like you'll have like a special section where like if a guy is trying to make up, make up like with their wife because their wife caught their porn hub history, like he'll take her there. And that's where I think the funny thing is in my hometown in Carmel, Indiana, we have one of those literally in the former Carnegie library, like the library creole closed down and this guy bought it and turned it into a

gastropub. And we were talking about two different kinds of restaurant. I'm talking about a sleek restaurant that's very, that has very low lighting and like all very black and shiny and glossy. You're talking about somewhere like the botanist and you're right. The bridge end sugar daddy loves the botanist. For my every restaurant is a front. That's that's my that's my take. My knowledge of South Wales.

Grown up there, boredom bread. The the big restaurants would always be these carveries that are on the side of like the flyover, not always you leave town. Yep. Tristan Tristan just embarrassed us with the obvious correct answer. He's taking he's taking an 18 year old like aesthetic student, like aesthetician beauty student to the carverie. Absolutely. Love a harvest of sugar daddy.

But yeah, you were saying before there's so many of these MPs that basically become MP by mistake. Yeah, I just kind of did it for like to like show how many votes they took off later pop and not win. Yeah, to like run it close and be able to brag about it. And then accidentally one who was the one that took Laura Pidcock seat, who his wife, I think, burst into tears. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, because they were like they found out they had to move to Durham.

And that was never a reaction. Yeah, you have to go buy the dungarees, man. Yeah, that's one to the real head. So back to Wallace. So basically, in a statement, Wallace said that sugar daddy dot net. So it was net as well. Was registered in 2004 and ceased operations in 2012 and was owned and operated by a company named S.D. Billing Service Limited.

And then he says something very specific. I have never had a financial interest nor been a director of S.D. Billing Services. S.D. Billing Services was dissolved in February last year and his director was the guy called Adrian Hill, who is also a director of Quickie Divorce. OK, there it is. So it's just it's just friends. It's just a bunch of guys who are friends.

Coincidences. They just love their friends who like identify as limited companies. Bridget is is the third gender. Bridget and sugar daddies and the like various car keys and bowl friends. I feel like what's really interesting about this is just like the kind of when we think when we kind of think about like revital like we all these kind of like, you know, this whole this whole idea of like everyone being a business owner and this is the Northern powerhouse.

Right. I feel like I've kind of like lost in my words, but I think you've kind of got it. Alice, which is what what they really want is for loads of kind of Quickie Divorce Services to open up as limited companies in in the North. Yes. And that's what all of these are like small businesses that are going to get like entrepreneurial tax relief and like tie down like like a couple of shops somewhere, maybe and like help prop up a dead high street until six months later,

the economy implodes or six months later, they get like a visit from Pod Save America asking like whether they'd be interested in sponsoring another podcast. So to close this out, because we've been going for a while, I have the actual text from SugarDaddy.net. So it's very funny to me that TLD is.net. SugarDaddy.biz. We can introduce SugarDaddy.gov now. SugarDaddy.mil.

That's SugarDaddy.gov is what if it is now. We can introduce you to your very own SugarDaddy. One if he promised everyone a SugarDaddy, like promised they want a SugarDaddy or a SugarBaby. We can introduce you to your very own SugarDaddy and solve your money worries. Whether you're a boy, girl, straight or gay, there's a SugarDaddy for you. Well, it's inclusive, at least. Yeah.

All our SugarDaddies are rigorously vetted. You're a gay girl and there's a SugarDaddy for you. Yeah. Oh, cool. I guess. What's that? No, SugarDaddy. I mean, this is the one thing I'm also this is the one thing I'm willing to concede to them, which is that SugarDaddy is another type of guy which is not gendered.

That's true. Yes. So all our SugarDaddies are rigorously vetted to verify their suitability. Trust me, I would have to get my fucking disclosure to be a SugarDaddy. My DBS to like sending in your bank statements. If you passport, if you provide the companionship they require, they promise to provide the support you need. Are you a student, a single parent or just short of money? Thousands of wealthy executives, international

businessmen and diplomats are eager to sponsor you through these difficult times. I'm just thinking about all the rich fucking consular officers in Bridgeport. I was just saying, I don't know a lot about South Wales, but I get the impression that there's not a lot of roving executives and diplomats. There's a few ambassadors. So what is like the the foreign secretary just signing up to him? No, Bridge and SugarDaddy is an ambassador in the sense that he like will provide you with an edible arrangement

for Ferrero Rocher, but. Oh, my God. Wealthy executives, international businessmen and diplomats. That reminds me of like the carbon fiber fidget spinner that justified itself as existing because like even even international CEOs use fidget spinner. The international and international businessmen is doing so much work. These are all the people who are interviewed in like those newspaper articles about flybeam going bankrupt.

They're like, yeah, I have to fly to like Rotterdam once a week for some reason. I go from Leicester to Bridgend. Yeah, exactly. The boss and I and the SugarDaddy too. Yeah, I work at the business factory and I fly there every week. I mean, this was this is the thing. This copy was clearly written by someone who's just who's just like, all right,

what's a rich thing? What percentage of real actual jobs do you think exist as like convoluted jokes and pranks, because I feel like that's all of these people's jobs? So total discretion and anonymity is guaranteed. SugarDaddy has been a trusted introduction service for over 10 years. Our service is not illegal. It might not involved in human trafficking. Landing page is raising a lot of questions that answer my landing page.

Interested in improving your financial position, start securing your financial future now by completing a short, easy to use, non intrusive questionnaire and will provide you with a choice of prospective SugarDaddy's no money, no commitment. It's it's actually the pluralist sugar's daddy. Oh, man, it's just that this well, that's welcome to our new overlords. That's the entrepreneurial spirit that's going to rescue Britain. Well, welcome to 21st century Britain.

It's open for business. It's going to be everyone's going to have a SugarDaddy and a sugar baby. And all those people identify as limited companies and they'll all also run their own SugarDaddy services that will pivot to mattress consumption. Everyone will sort of like develop a magazine that comes out of that. When you want to have illicit trists somewhere after you have your carvery date, you want to have a comfortable mattress in a netmobile. I cannot fucking wait for the ladies love sleeping on a very comfortable mattress

for a very short period of time. The deal with the EU, the new trade deal, is going to get held up for 15 years because it turns out that the only thing that we still trade in this country is dogging accessories. It's just dogging accessories and various kind of like like things that are a lot like payday lending, but not legally payday lending. Yeah. And just Tommy Robinson letters.

And there we go. Any politician who says we're better than this is lying. Yes. Like the notion of being someone that adjacent to some SugarDaddies who may or may not be diplomatically and then they go into government as a as a Tory MP. Well, of course, you could you could rebrand the state, the welfare state, as a sort of elaborate SugarDaddy scheme. And then maybe rich people would be a lot more comfortable.

You know, if the idea they would be financially dominated somehow by by welfare claimants. Listen, we are cancelled, though, because, you know, if you operate a SugarDaddy website, you are a sex worker. And that means we cannot criticize you. Oh, my goodness. Man, that's this is this is this has been a tough episode to do. It's I'm feeling I'm feeling real bleak after this one, folks.

Do you remember the the picture that came out? My favorite of the things that we thought we're going to sink Tory candidates before the election of Richard Drax, which fucking Bond villain ass name. Great name. Great name. I'd vote just for the name. Yeah. Having his like branded Land Rover Defender, of course, parked across two disabled parking spaces. Yes. Yes, I remember this.

Yes. Yeah, and he won. So yeah, that's here's the here's the thing. Look, right? This is I'll end this on a slightly serious note. We say why do these people keep getting charlatans keep getting swept into power? It's because they've spent the last what, 30 years creating a reactionary social movement among people who don't understand the difference between a post and an advertisement, right? Like that's why.

Because and there was an announcement in today that like the journalists have met with all the new MPs and they're all very ambitious for how much infrastructure spending Boris Johnson is going to do in their constituencies and how I don't think our constituencies will return another Tory if you don't spunk a bunch of money on roads in the Midlands or South Wales or whatever. And it's like, no, a massive social movement has swept these people into power and they have a massive social movement that continues to exist. The parties of the center left on the last 30 years specifically discouraged

social movements from existing to support them at all. And so we've tried to rebuild one in what? Four years, four years. And it hasn't worked so we're owned and we should not try that anymore. We should just go back to being the party that tries to like perpetuate itself. Yes, exactly. Well, also the focus on individuals like that, the hubris of Change UK thinking or the defectives that people care about, Mike Gape's or

Chucker, we care about people. People don't know that they're MP. Yeah, it's a sugar daddy daddy. Sorry, please carry on. Like no one gives a shit about like they they don't care that, you know, Chucker Munn is this guy who may or may not be involved in any kind of nefarious activity around the Shredham area, but they do care about like just being like I'm going to take X next to the conservative pie and by the pie

product is you end up with like the fucking coughing major in government. Yeah. How many of these people's constituents know their MP's name? Oh, none. Absolutely none. Except the one who except all the constituents who like really hate that guy who like does all the higher purchase shit. Yeah, you have to be like detested in your area.

Even though they just tick next to the sea. And like I bet here and here's one more one more thing, right? None of these people individually, none of them matter. None of this matters. None of these scandals will mean anything. We're making fun of them because it's fun. But this is politically meaning. This is not a material analysis.

No, exactly. Well, no, because I mean like if you try to win on the idea like aren't these hypocrites bad hypocrites like everyone knows they're hypocrites. That's the thing like I don't know. I just I have maybe a darker view on it because so many people tried to play this argument that in the US, for example, that this all of the norms violations are somehow going to add up to people choosing to not elect Donald Trump. And I don't even think Donald Trump is going to lose reelection because people

love Donald Trump is inspires this belief that he's just has superhuman powers. And it when it becomes that level of belief when you have that social movement, even if it's just like lead poisoned people on Facebook, they'll still vote Republican or conservative no matter what. Do you think that in his day, Hitler was as big a dipshit and obvious dipshit as Trump was, and in 50 years, we're going to get documentaries about the dark charisma of Donald Trump. He just like a bunch of like ancient people being like to try to justify their

own participation and genocide being like, I don't know, when we saw him, it was like he just his oratory. He just held us all wrapped. Well, people do already do this about like Tony Blair. I feel like this idea that he was like this like insane. He was a laughable dipshit. Yeah, he was just a technocrat guy that got made fun of every day on every listen. You know, it's it's very, you know.

Oh, man. Well, yeah, I miss that guy. He gets cast as as Britain's Obama as this like once in a generation charismatic politician, all because like he just didn't he didn't get owned repeatedly in the right wing press because he did all the stuff they wanted. Yeah. So, OK, fine. Anyway, but that's just a sort of a little a little note to note that like it's

not like we're discovering stuff that's going to make a political difference. It doesn't matter that one guy is no point in you listening to any of the the last half an hour. Yeah, if you can go back in time and un-listen to. But listen to this in your sleep, like you're learning another language. Yeah, exactly. And also I must cut us off now because we are we've gone very long again. So it only falls to me to say, Tristan, thank you very much for coming out today. Thank you for inviting me.

And where can people find you online? Should they require a good person to follow on Twitter or? Tristan, dross, follow, RT, keep going. Like, share and subscribe. And also for all of your for all of your for all of your freelancing, writing, design and other consultancy needs, you should speak to Tristan, because unlike all the businesses we talked about today, he actually does something.

He can he can like do some really amazing stuff to a mattress as well. Yeah, I do whatever. I'm a hard guy. You're a sugar daddy. Yeah, yeah, I can be sugar daddy. I can I can do whatever. Just get in touch. Yeah.

Anyway, also our our theme tune is by Jinsang. It's called Here We Go. You can check that out early. Check that out often on Spotify. Also, check Milo who's not here right now. Check his the link in our show notes for his tour dates, which are upcoming, because there are some and we're getting closer and closer towards our own live show in Bristol for Bristol, transformed.

Yes, we are going back to Bristol, transformed. We will be there, formed. We will do it again. Merchant Ventures Redux. Date will be firmed up later, but it is in early March. We will be we will be going to Bristol, transformed, formed, formed, and we will be praying to the head, head, hair and toenails of Edward Colston.

Yikes. It's a deep cut. Look out for game stream announcements coming soon. Games will happen. Yes, we're going to play games. Anyway, also, this is a free episode. So if you don't want us to have to get a bunch of like Ashton Kutcher's money through Casper, do make sure to sign up on the Patreon.

Five bucks a month. I want us to play on the stream. I want us to play like original Halo against the Romaniacs. OK, yes, that also is fun. We will do that at some point. Have like a tournament to see who wins the left. All right, I'm going to say goodbye, everybody. Bye, everybody.

Yep, bye.