TRASHFUTURE - Don’t Fact-Check My Vibe feat. Brian Reed and Hamza Syed

Episode Date: February 21, 2022

This week, Nate and Hussein speak with Brian Reed and Hamza Syed of the Trojan Horse Affair podcast, an investigation into a hoax letter in Birmingham in 2014 that–despite being known to be false–kicked off an intensification of surveillance and mistreatment of British Muslims. And everyone knew it was fake at the time! It is the official position of Trashfuture that you listen to the Trojan Horse Affair, which is available here: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/podcasts/trojan-horse-affair.html Also, this episode was recorded before the Observer decided to make up imaginary vibes-based critiques of the show (it was recorded last week). If you want access to our Patreon bonus episodes, early releases of free episodes, and powerful Discord server, sign up here: https://www.patreon.com/trashfuture *LIVE SHOW ALERT* We will be doing a live show in London on Wednesday, March 2. Get your tickets here! https://www.designmynight.com/london/whats-on/comedy/trashfuture-live-pre-election-christmas-spectacular *MILO ALERT* Milo has a bunch of live shows this month in both London and Prague. Check them out here: https://www.miloedwards.co.uk/live-show *WEB DESIGN ALERT* Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/ Trashfuture are: Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and Alice (@AliceAvizandum)

Hello, and welcome to Trash Future, the show that only lets Canadian people host it. I do want to say, on the outside, I may not be Riley Canadian, but I do have a Canadian passport and therefore I am claiming those rights. You might kind of wonder, why is Hussain speaking for this like on this episode? He rarely speaks on episodes at all. And the reason is that we have a very special episode today. We are talking about a recent podcast that came out produced by Cereal and the New York Times.

It is called The Trojan Horse Affair. You might have seen me tweeting about it a bunch, and I may have been mad online doing it. I am joined by Nate, who is fascinated with all things Britain. So I thought, yeah, I thought like you'd be a kind of good guy to like, I thought like, you know, your brain hasn't been broken enough learning British facts. So I thought, OK, well, why don't you like learn about bizarre local politics and how it's used and leveraged to harm minority groups?

But you also brought on some other figures from the Trojan Horse Affair. Yeah, we do have some guests as well. We actually do have the host of the podcast with us, and we're very lucky to have Humsasai and Brian Reed. Yeah, you may have heard Brian Reed on Estown and other like this American Life podcast. You may have only heard Humsasai on this podcast because it's the first time it's like his first major project. And it's a really, really good project, and we'll kind of get into that in a bit.

I'll kind of say like on the offset that the reason why I wanted to do this was because and the reason why this podcast kind of resonated with me was extremely personal, not just because I am like a practicing Muslim, but also because I was a mainstream media journalist during the time that like Trojan Horse was this big thing for people who don't know about this and we'll kind of get into the like the kind of details of the podcast itself. Trojan Horse refers to a letter that was passed on to Birmingham City Council. It alleged that an Islamist takeover plot was happening in some Birmingham primary schools and it was coordinated through emails and messenger chats.

And that this wasn't just a threat to the city, it was a threat to the entire country. And the letter was accepted to be fake fairly early on, but that didn't really matter. By the time it hit the news, it had sort of expanded into being this like huge thing and more proof that like this kind of covert Islamization was happening across the country. And it wasn't just radical al-Qaeda extremists, it was every Muslim, including and especially the ones who were educated and seemed to be integrated, but actually something secret was going on and that the government was sort of letting it happen. I won't go too much into like my experiences because this is not a therapy session, but

I will say that like there are kind of some bits that really personally resonated with me when I was listening to this podcast. But as mentioned, we do have Brian and Hamza on the show. I guess to start off with guys, for people who have not listened to this podcast at all, but I've just sort of seen me and other people kind of be tweeting erratically about it. What is it about? Why didn't you sort of tell us in like, well, in however much detail you want, what was taking place and what drew you guys to covering the story? Brian here. You explained it really well saying actually, I mean, and it actually sets up kind of the

premise of our show very easily, which was there was this letter that showed up that started this whole affair, the Trojan Horse Affair in Birmingham in late 2013 and then went public in 2014. And even though kind of everything you described happened as a result of the letter, there was this kind of massive national panic and all this policy changed and people lost their careers and schools were revamped and all this stuff happened as a result of this letter. Nobody ever looked into who wrote the letter or why. And the letter was largely acknowledged to be a fake, but still nobody looked into who wrote the letter or why. And I didn't know any of this. I'd never heard of this story before 2017 when I happened to be in Birmingham for an event

and Hamza, who lives in Birmingham, came up to me and told me about it and said, exactly that. Nobody ever figured out who wrote this letter. And he was about to start journals in school and wanted to look into that and was kind of asking for advice. And that's where the podcast starts is basically with us meeting and Hamza wanting to try to figure out who wrote the letter and us kind of, I was intrigued. And so we joined up to try and figure it out. Yeah. I guess I'd like to start off with, and we cover kind of covering this section a lot, but Hamza is like someone who kind of wasn't Birmingham and really kind of felt the effects in a very direct way of this letter. Yeah. I mean, I was wondering if you could start

like by telling us a bit about that and just like, I guess not, I don't want to use the term legacy, but kind of like the impact that this letter has had. It's like long after like lots of people who were sort of involved in that scandal and kind of made their names like in that scandal in like London and Westminster have kind of like had kind of, you know, either very even not talking about it anymore, or in some cases even justifying like the decisions that they made. So like for people who I guess aren't really aware of what life was like in Birmingham, especially during that time, why didn't you tell us what was happening there? I mean, the thing I can say about the Trojan horse in this letter is that,

and it speaks my own naivety to a certain extent, is that post 9-11, as you self-reflected on, you know, things were getting interesting. It's the generous way to put it for Muslims in Britain and elsewhere, you know. And there was a part of me that had tried to comfort myself for many years by telling myself that you have to do something for people to be focused on you, you know. As a Muslim, if you otherwise just, you know, a law-abiding citizen just kind of mind your own business, like they're not interested in you. They're interested in a specific type of person who in some sense is a threat and is actively involved in something. And that's what I kept telling myself for a while as, you know, we're going through the years and Muslims are

finding themselves more and more in the headlines and more and more of intrigue to people. The Trojan horse, by the time that happened in 2014, for me, it kind of signaled a tipping point where I was like recognizing that I think we're all in trouble. I think all of us are in trouble, you know. Here is a situation where four flimsy pages turn up. Nobody knows where they came from. It's riddled with factual errors that within minutes of googling, you can kind of identify. And instead of pausing to consider that, that had the power and the capacity to ruin a number of lives and, you know, a number of futures in terms of kids at these schools. And it caused this absolute chaos in Britain. And as I was living through it, it was just internalizing that there's no evidence

that's being dredged up. This conversation isn't developing further than just this scary letter that's turned up. And despite that, some very serious opposition forces are building, some very serious decisions are being made, laws are being changed. And, you know, I think for me, that's what the Trojan horse signified. It was internalizing that like we're all in trouble and staying quiet and letting this just happen and, you know, counting my blessings that hasn't happened to me. I don't think that's an option anymore, you know, because if that's all it takes to do that to these people just down the road from me, like surely we've all got internalized that like this could happen to any of us. All you have to do is walk down the street and for someone to point their

finger and make an allegation. And it turns out we're not in a space anymore where the allegation is then followed up on and verified and evidence gathered. It just seems to be that we've hit that place where an allegation is enough to ruin your life. And I think that's the experience of the Trojan horse that kind of stuck with me and remained with me beyond 2014, where it was just accepting that like this isn't not, we're all in this now. We're all targets now. I was going to jump in with a quick question for you, Hamza. I just recall this and this is maybe this detail won't go anywhere. But in the first episode, Brian, you described meeting Hamza and you describe having the conversation backstage and that you were in the company of a BBC journalist

or a British journalist. And when you Hamza brought up the story, it seemed as though Brian, you were interested, but the British journalist was sort of like, oh yeah, everybody knows about that. And I don't know if I read that correctly or if that reaction was dismissive, but that to me seems like a very telling anecdote. And even if it's not that detail, other examples of British journalists you encounter throughout the series, where you're doing legwork to find out details, but it seems that every turn people simply aren't interested in whether or not it's true. And that struck me because that seems very indicative of my experience of other issues in British media. And I'm wondering, A, is that how it transpired? And B, is that were there other

experiences you had throughout this investigation where you felt like it was just that sort of willing intentional law of silence? I think that, yeah, I mean, I think you're interpreting that meeting relatively correctly. I mean, I think that's a friend of mine. He's a good journalist. I think his reaction was kind of just like, yeah, this is an old story. There's kind of a consensus on this, like a reaction I've given in talking about stories many times over the years. That's an old story. It wasn't an old story to me. I'd never heard of the story as an American. But I think that was his reaction. But also this kind of consensus understanding of the Trojan horse has been built. I came to learn through this process through a ton of work,

ton of major investigations that I find are obfuscating truth rather than seeking clear answers, turning away from obvious questions towards other things that are kind of besides the point or also unevidenced. It's very murky when you actually look at the substance of a lot of what the government did, but it leads to a headline that something happened, basically, the sheer force and volume of the response leads to... It's like there's no smoke without fire kind of thing, basically. And I feel like that is kind of the general understanding of what happened here and what we were kind of encountering every step of the way. Yeah, I think that part sort of really resonated, especially as like working in British newsrooms

and stuff, where it's kind of like this combination of, to a degree, a lack of curiosity about stuff that doesn't matter to that type of London media class anyway. So you have this sort of fixation on politics and runners and writers and stuff, and that kind of gets unlimited or a lot of resources and time. And then for other issues that kind of happen outside of London, and particularly when it happens to minority groups, it warrants very little attention unless there's something kind of juicy or something that is considered by these editors to be juicy or insidious and stuff like that, which means that when it came to the Trojan horse stuff, and again, as someone who was an observer, but also someone working who had been working on a Trojan

horse stuff, but in the background, because crucially, this was something that was considered not to be worthy of an investigation unless there was something new and something that you should do in your own time. For a lot of that, the narrative had already been set, and it was the positions that I found were taken were either this is an old story or it was, oh, the letter didn't really matter because there were these instances and schools of misdemeanors and misbehaviors and so on. So ultimately, even if the findings weren't framed in the right way, the letter wasn't the story anymore. I think you guys mentioned that and the problems with that sort of analysis anyway. And then there's that third component too,

where it was like, well, the interest in it wasn't to do with local politics or it wasn't to do, as you said, the fact that anyone can sort of be the subject of what was effectively like a witch hunt. Anyone's reputation could be destroyed with very, very flimsy evidence. In this case, it was more, and again, within this context of this fixation on Islam and British Muslims and what their places and where they exist and lots of people very invested in the idea that certain Muslims deserve to be part of public society, but others don't and they should be chastised. This was a very convenient way of synthesising that together. And I just, I don't know, things that I remember are think tanks, I don't know,

like the now defunct Quilliam. So I guess I can sort of talk about them, but other groups as well, other groups as well, who for them, the kids, the children in the schools and administration, that didn't really matter. Ultimately, it was like, oh, no, this is further vindication that like it's not just like violent extremism that we should be worried about. It's also like this ideological extremism too, and that like also provides all these justifications for expanding prevent. You know, I thought, I felt that like it's impossible to like listen to that podcast and not kind of see this as a, as a precursor for the expansion of like the prevent duty. I think in like 2000 and 2016 or 17, but like quite shortly

there were some changes. I mean, it's directly cited. The Trojan Horse Fair is directly cited. Imagine that. It's called the Trojan Horse Affair. You took the name of this thing, whatever misdemeanours or whatever you found that you didn't like after the fact. You took this idea from a document that you knew was bogus and, you know, expanded government surveillance of minority communities off the back of it and directly cited it. Hamza, I'm interested in your reaction just because I feel like you had to play the role in this as both you were investigator, but also you had to kind of be the Britain explainer. And I constantly leaning on Hussain and my colleagues to explain stuff to me,

whether it's a single word or a way of thinking. And I'm interested like your experience throughout this, you know, as, as you kind of had to explain like, oh yeah, this is, this isn't out of the ordinary. It really is like this in Britain. I mean, I must say like I, to begin with, I was learning about Britain myself because I had functioned in a very specific way up to our point before I started like going into journalism school and kind of dealing with other facets of society. Like, you know, I lived in Birmingham, I used to went to medical school, I was supposed to be a doctor, then I kind of pivoted into comedy writing for a bit. But like I was living in this like very specific kind of way where I wasn't interacting with much of society or much

of the country. And so I couldn't speak to what Britain actually functioned like. I was a, I was a news consumer and I used to kind of absorb news a lot and recognize that there's something missing from the news that we would get in Britain. But I wasn't clear enough about why that was and kind of lived that way up to the point where I started the story and begun my journalism course, which obviously journalism then puts you in a place where you're having to deal with, with people who are working in different places and, you know, local government, national government, newspapers, etc. I was learning about Britain through this, through this investigation. And part of my rejection at the end of this process was because of what

I learned about Britain. You know, not to sound too downtrodden or whatever, but it's true. It's like, so I wasn't in a place where I was turning to Brian and saying, yeah, this is what it's like here because I didn't know. I didn't know what it was like here. I mean, once in a while, like, you know, you'd be like, oh, that guy was like really mad. I'd be like, he's really mad. What do you mean? I know Brian struggles deeply with kind of interpreting British aggression. And he would think he's had a very cordial conversation and I would know the subtext was, I hate you too. So I was well versed in. So when we'd walk out the room, I would explain to him like that did not go well. And he'd think we had a brilliant interview, you know. But aside from

that, in terms of just like, yeah, just just the way the country functions was new to me too. And and frightening. And Brian, I'm wondering for you, like, there are a couple of lines in the narrative that in between the footage, where you talked about being surprised at the lack of curiosity or what you felt like is pretty over Islamophobia. And I feel like me and Hussein were unanimous that we were both like, yes, we're so glad he said that. And also like, God, I wish more people would notice this because just just before like Brian, you answer because like, because like, I think with British media as well. And like, you can kind of say, I didn't know if you guys like have looked at the reactions to some of like your podcast,

like I wouldn't blame me if you didn't because a lot of it is just like tedious. But it's like, it's this kind of mixture of like, oh, the NYT don't understand Britain, like we're so complicated. But also like, I think with like lots of British journalists, because it's such a small clique and one that is very like, you know, lot filled with people who like know each other and they're all kind of like, you know, they sort of like swift from either different media organizations, or they go from like government departments to media and like, you know, vice versa. It's this very sort of like close knit group where to really advance in your career in this country, you really have to like,

be not only entertain that entertain that click, but also to kind of know how to perform within it. You know, for a lot of it, you know, for a lot of it is very like, I think with like Trojan horse stuff, but I guess you can also apply it to things like, you know, prevent and everything as well. It's like, well, look, you know, like this kind of clique is sort of design, like figured out what the narrative is. We've sort of unanimously agreed on it. Anyone who's sort of challenging it is like a crank and like just like, needs to be dismissed or like chastised. You wouldn't be a member of the clique if you were asking this question. Everyone else knows not to ask it.

Right. And then if you do ask it, and especially if you get a platform for it, like they start to question like what your intentions are, or whether you have an agenda, as if like... As I saw online recently, the anti-British New York Times, as if people were accusing it. We were working on this for... By the way, we began working on this years before we were associated with the New York Times. I mean, what I was going to say is even people are even mad at like... British people are mad at the NYT, but it's even because of your podcast, or it's because of the Wordle thing. Yeah, I can't weigh in on Wordle. And you can't really tell which one is which.

Yeah, exactly. It's all... Yeah, we've gotten conflated with that at the moment, by sheer happenstance of timing. Yeah, I mean, honestly, I don't really have a lot of experience or connections with like British media circles. So like, you're kind of like enlightening me to it. From the outside, because you know, like I really hadn't spent a ton of time in the UK before this, and then I just started spending time with like this journalism student, like in his parents flat in Birmingham, which is not like an epicenter of British media, necessarily. So it did... Not yet at least. Exactly. So it seemed like there was some group thing going on from the outside. You know, like that's certainly what it looked like,

or like, I don't know what it was, like that was what I talked it up to. But I didn't really know, like I don't know those circles really, you know, like I've gone to the BBC before, I've like, you know, done a few workshops and like had some like meetings at the BBC in the past, like that's kind of the extent of my experience with British media circles. But I don't know, I found it, you know, there's this one, speaking of the BBC, the BBC did a three-part series while we were working on this podcast about the Trojan Horse Affair for a show called The Corrections. The whole premise of the show is let's correct stories that it seems like the press has gotten wrong, you know, like let's fix narratives that seem to have

been reported wrongly. Let's look back at them and do some correction. So they did that with the Trojan Horse Affair, this was an acknowledgement, you know, that there's some something went wrong in the telling and the reporting on the Trojan Horse Affair, you know, a three-part series, 20 minutes each episode, there's a whole episode called The Anonymous Letter where they talk about how the whole thing started within a letter coming in. But yet they never look into who wrote the letter at all, they never talk about it, they never explore it. It just baffles me, I don't understand why. Like I make snows, I don't understand, like I can't imagine it. And then so I mention all that in the show, but specifically there's this line

that the reporter says at one point where they say, there's lots of theories of who wrote the letter. This is like one of the only times they, to my memory, where they kind of like, kind of entertain that you might want to look into who wrote the letter or something, you know, they kind of like treat it as like this kind of like trivial mystery, like, oh, there's all these theories about who wrote the letter, none that are fit to print. And I mean, at first that seems like that's just kind of like a cop out in a way of just like, it just means like we're not reporting them out in a way that's fit to print. But it's also just not true. Like that's misleading to the audience, I feel I've always felt that little like dismissive line is misleading. For instance,

in the Clark report, the official report given to parliament, there's a couple lines where he acknowledges that the author of the letter had to have very specific information about this one dispute at this one primary school. Why is that not fit for the BBC to print? It's in the government report. Same with, you know, a judge's finding in this employment dispute at this at this primary school, Adderley, the judge says in the finding, and this was printed by the Guardian at the time to their credit, that the author of the letter, you know, after looking at the timing of disclosure of certain details had to have intimate knowledge of this specific dispute. So to tell your audience that there's a theory of who wrote the letter that's not fit to print, that's just wrong and

misleading to the audience. It really makes me upset, actually, because just like you're doing this three-part documentary about the letter and you're telling them that there's not even a theory you can talk about when it's in the government report, at least the starting point, without having to do any more work, you could read those lines. That's not fit to print. I don't get it. I don't get it. I mean, Hussain, you probably know more detail about this, but remember when there was the little girl who was placed in foster care in Tower Hamlets and it was like her family was basically, it was like her grandparents were going to be her carers, but all the British newspapers ran headlines saying that a Christian girl had been forced into

Sharia law in Tower Hamlets and like they wound up, if so, made them run a front page correction, but like even then it was really kind of obfuscated and there was like the recalls for a parliamentary inquiry into it. Like all this stuff was completely, it was effectively made up and then when you actually dug into the story, it turned out to be nothing. It was, it was, if I'm not mistaken, it was a girl who's, it was just a question about like whether or not her grandparents were the right carers for her. Like it was a judge's concern. It had nothing to do with any of this. They had made it up completely and yet you will still see that invoked as though it's factual, because correcting the record in this country, in my experience, and I'm not trying to disparage

all British journalists, but my experience has been that when a really salacious headline breaks, if there's a correction that completely refutes the story, it will appear on, you know, page 20 in very, very small font a few weeks or months later. Yeah. Or in the case of a telegraph, like it'll like, or it'll appear like, because it's, we're all like online now, like it'll like appear behind a paywall. Yeah. Which I think is very funny. Yeah. Yeah. And so listening to this in a way, you know, I think for us at least there was a combination of this. I was completely unfamiliar with this story. I didn't live in this country

when that happened, but it was fascinating to kind of hear how, how national it was, but also how parochial it was in some cases, that it seemed like it really hinged on a dispute in Birmingham City Schools and your visit to the retired couple's country house and the self-published Orwell tribute pastiche novel and all of that. It seemed so quintessentially like almost, yeah, parochial English, but also I felt like it was in a way kind of a validation. You may, I know you didn't intend it this way, but it was kind of a validation of a lot of the concerns that people and complaints people have had about the media in this country, because here you are, journalists, experienced in this field, you know what investigative journalism looks like,

and at every turn you're like, wow, these people clearly have this right in front of them and are choosing to ignore that. And it's like that to me is the defining experience of working in British media. What's it about? Yeah, I was going to say, why? Well, like you guys have more experience than either of us here. Like why do you think this has come to be the culture of British journalism? Because 51% of British journalists go to private school when only 7% of the public does, and there are a higher percentage of people in editorial staffs and columnist jobs who went to private school than the House of Lords. They all know each other and like, they're just, like Hussein said, they're drawn from the same group of people. You know, George Osborne leaves

being the chancellor after doing austerity and then takes a 650,000 pound a year position. What wasn't he the editor of the Evening Standard? Yeah, and then like David Cameron, sister-in-law got it and like... Yeah, you wouldn't be invited to the spectators' garden party if you broke ranks. That's a big thing too. And that may seem like reductive, and I'm not trying to sound reductive or make it glib, but I think that so often, like the best example I can give you, Brian, to answer your question is, look at all of these disclosures about the parties that Boris Johnson had that were supposedly breaking lockdown rules and the fact that prefacing every single one of these revelations were journalists, British, you know, lobby journalists saying,

oh yeah, I got this email or I heard about this or I saw photos in 2020 and I just never said anything and no one asked the question. Why not? Right. I mean, at least like in America, they sort of save it for like their books, so you can at least kind of save it like, okay, there's a commercial decision while you're like hiding stuff. In Britain, it's just kind of like, okay, so you want like an invite to visit weird summer... It would make the dinner party really awkward if I did that. Yeah, you just want to go to dinner parties and like, oh yeah, and there's like, you know, and if you dig like close enough and like, again, Hamza, I wouldn't blame you if like, once you did it, it's like, I just don't want to be part of this. I want to go back to like medicine

and stuff where you kind of find out in relation to like Boris Johnson and like just how connected he is in like British media. The fact that I think like the political editor of the spectator was married to his, like another BBC journalist who then became his like Boris Johnson's comms, like what you call like his comms leads, knew all about the parties, didn't say shit. Yeah, like it doesn't take that long to sort of kind of like put these connections together, but crucially, when you sort of make these connections, again, like you're sort of dismissed as a crank, you're dismissed as like someone who doesn't understand how the British media works. And this is like, you're kind of caught, I hate using this term, but you are like constantly

getting gaslit. And I think like the kind of like the stories about like Islam and Muslims, especially during like the mid 2010s, when it was very much like the fixation was like this kind of process of constantly getting gaslit, especially being a Muslim reporter who's sort of being told that like, oh yeah, all these things that like your community sources are telling you, actually they're lying to you, right? Or they're being deceptive or like, or whose side are you really on? Like there were kind of times and like, I don't want to like break my NDA in a very direct way, but there were times when like I had editors who were sort of implying that maybe I was like sympathetic to ISIS, right? And it's just like stuff you shrug off is like, okay, yeah, this is

just like him being like a dickhead and stuff. But like, I look back on that and I'm like, oh shit, like, yeah. But and I think when I was listening to a podcast, like I was kind of reliving some old memories and I was like, oh, this suddenly now all makes sense in this really weird way, right? Let me ask you like in terms of, to what extent do you think the British public are beginning to develop an awareness of just how, you know, undernourished they are in terms of the reporting that happens in Britain? And if they're not, what's it going to take? What's it going to take? Yeah, this is an interesting question because I think like we're at this very interesting time right now, especially with like anti-vax movements and everything, where I think for like lots of

British media people who were very comfortable in their positions in the past, who had these sort of like positions of status, again, like lots of invites to like the eyes wide shut parties that I'm sure like lots of magazines have, you know, suddenly now they kind of have to reckon with this idea that, oh, these like our core constituencies aren't really listening to us. And like, you know, the advent of Twitter means that they can like tell us how much they hate us in a very direct way. And like, you know, and I'm not like condoning that I'm not condoning like any of like, you know, any sort of like verbal harassment and everything. But I do think for a lot of British journalists, especially in like the past few years, they've really had to reckon with how much

influence they actually have or like how much techniques that were sort of used to just like marginalize communities that they didn't give a shit about before is now really affecting them because like their core readership, like also has complete contempt for like most of them, right? I don't know if that makes any sense. And I would say to respond really quickly. I've pointed this out on our show before, but out of curiosity, sometimes I look up, you know, regional local news or national news on the BBC as well as on British, I mean, obviously, if you look on the Daily Mail, the comments are cesspit. But if you look on the BBC, the sometimes they open the comments section, and you'll see that like the overwhelming majority

of reply, then there's a self selection involved of people replying who are British, who are reading this are basically talking about the BBC as the sort of woke communist in you know, Pravda. And if you know anything about the BBC and how the BBC covers things as you were talking about Brian, like even on that, you know, the corrections that like even if you're not saying movement conservative or the conservative party or like socially conservative, there's a conservatism in their approach to journalism, small C conservatism, call it that and and even with that and even with a lot of I mean like not to not to really really dig up old wounds. But in the 2019 general election in this country,

the BBC's sort of youth channel on Facebook ran stories basically discouraging young people from voting or registering to vote. They ran these Facebook stories that were basically like, does voting ever seem just blah? Like what are things you like to do besides voting and stuff like that? Like they carry the value. What is the possible value? Because because Marcus Rashford had come out. Who was it? Hussain? There was a footballer who had come out and said told people to register to vote. Stormzy had told people to register to vote. He was labor and there was a huge spike in youth voting registrations and I mean, like I said, it was it was more the the situation that we were in

the 2019 election. A lot of people in British media, you know, really, really kind of they there's this thing they call purta, which is problematic in its own right, but they call it purta basically to to not have commentary. Correct me from Ron Hussain. During a general election, they basically just report the news. Yeah, they have restrictions. They have a restriction on what they can report and it felt like labor came very close to ending in 2017 and they were the BBC was more or less hand in glove with the Tory party in 2019. That was my perception and you saw some of these things happening and the reason I bring this up is not because it I don't want to rehash the 2019 election, but I do think it fits into a larger picture here,

which is that the BBC and British journalism in general has gone very, very hard to run cover for the Tories for the far right in British politics, whether it's, you know, the Tory party's policy on immigration and asylum seeking basically being indistinguishable from what the EDL was calling for in the early, you know, part of the 2010s or other other social things, especially when you think about the sort of absorption of the hardest sort of hard line on Brexit. This has happened and that's still not enough for the British right wing. They still despise the BBC and they want to privatise it as soon as possible and they're probably going to and, you know, we have a joke on this show that one of our co-workers, he bought a used car in

the part of Essex he's from. So like in Bishop Stortford or in Harlow and the guy selling the car was like, Hey, if you want, I'll link you up with my WhatsApp group where we share football memes. I got to warn you though, a lot of them are quite racialist and Hussein made the joke that he's like, yeah, British, what's driving British media isn't the headlines in the Daily Mail or the Express or the Telegraph or the, you know, the Times. It's that guy's WhatsApp group. Like it's expanded so far that it's almost irrelevant at this point. And so they keep trying to appeal to that right wing audience. And as Hussein said, they just have more and more contempt for it. It's hard. It was a shock to me how overwhelmingly right wing media in this country

was, but even more so, how much people were willing to just let stuff go, even when it was so obviously false. One thing, bring it slightly back to the podcast for a bit. It's also just about like bias, right? So like a charitable reading of the BBC stuff is like, you know, they have like, you know, this kind of obligation and they have to like, you know, not be biased and they have to represent both sides. I don't personally like believe that is like valid or useful as like, you know, especially when you're like thinking about investigative journalism, but like, you know, that's the argument that is sometimes made, but it's also like something that I was thinking about when I was listening to this podcast as well, because I think part of

like the reason why you guys got so far and like, you know, finding out these very basic questions, which again, it was like, for me, it was like, okay, this isn't like, you know, this isn't like this huge feat of investigative journalism that requires like, you know, loads of data scouring and like finding like a hidden obscure source and like, you know, I know you guys went to Australia, but like, you know, it's not that mysterious a country, right? Have you been there? I've been there and it is, it is, it is a wild place. And I feel like you guys got Western Australia racism experience. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But okay. All right. So maybe I take my back for a

normal reason. When you're at that Perth airport, you ask anybody what they're doing there. They're there to like track somebody down. They're going to like find a snake. They're, you know, poaching some animal, you know, at the bay, at the basic level, this is kind of like my thing. And I was just like, I was texting Nate while this season was like, yeah, they're just asking very basic questions that like no one else in this country is like journalists basically asked a guy. Yeah. They just didn't bother asking a guy about like this very basic stuff. And I think like, and you know, I think part of it is also just this kind of fear or this sort of like misunderstanding of like bias, right? But like when you are kind of doing an investigation

and you do have these questions and you also are presented with like this kind of objective reality. But yeah, like this fake letter did a lot of harm to like communities around the country. And that's like, you know, a starting point. Like the reason why this letter is important is because of like how much damage it did and like how that's still like lasting. You know, for me, I just kind of think that like the bias trap is like one of the potential reasons why you end up having like a BBC series, but doesn't really ask any questions. But Brian, like, and like comes there as well, I sort of wanted to just ask about like your thoughts on, you know, bias and this kind of fear of, you know, yeah, this sort of like fear of bias, this like notion of objectivity

and how you guys kind of conceived of it while you were doing this, yeah, while you were doing the show and what you kind of think about it now on reflection, especially because like part of the kind of criticism, which again, I think a lot of it isn't bad faith is like, you know, all these guys like clearly like had an agenda when they started or like, you know, they didn't approach it in the same way that like, you know, rugged British reporters did by asking their like home office source, what's going down and like writing back down instead. I mean, just to say this story is actually like kind of a, in terms of like political bias at least, like in the kind of traditional sense, it's a pretty equal opportunity, like it's a pretty

good story in that sense where like, there's equal opportunity to cannery across the political spectrum with this story. I mean, you've got a labor council where a lot of the, a lot of stuff was going down and we're a lot of like wildest and most like ridiculous decisions were made. Yeah. And then you've got, you know, a conservative national government that's making hay of what's happening. And so like, you know, in that sense bias, like actually, this is like a good story to kind of be like, I'm, I'm aiming everywhere. You know what I mean? That's how I bring balance, man. I destroy everybody. Yeah. Labor counselors being Islamophobic, I've never heard of this.

But I don't know, objectivity. I don't know, man. Just feel like these words, I don't know, each passing year, these words just lose all meaning. I don't even know what this means anymore. I don't know what objectivity means. I'm just like, listen, I just, I am trying to ask basic questions to learn the truth. You can call that what you want to call it. Why are you front noting these like kind of bizarre buzzwords before we've even started the process of investigating? Go and find out where this letter came from. Go and ask the questions you need to find out where this letter came from. Ask them in a way where you're going to get the truth. Like I've never thought about of just like, oh, well, I've just gone and talked to this person. So now

I must go seek out this other person to basically get a completely different opposing point just for the sake of it. Is that, is that getting me towards the truth? If yes, then I'll go speak to this person. If not, I don't know what the point of it is. You know, I've never understood this concept. I'm still very new to this industry. So I don't know. I have a lot of learning to do. Yeah. And I think this is like what makes it refreshing because I was like, because when I, when I was like working in mainstream media, I think I was very aware of like the kind of inner clique and how you kind of had to, like in Britain anyway, how you had to perform in a particular way to sort of get access. And again, like one of the things that, you know, we like

Nate and I talk about a lot on our show is just like, you know, and one of the kind of key defining features of like Britain, especially in like the upper echelons of society is very much about access, right? So like in relation to like political journalism in this country, so much of it is based on access and like having the sources that give you access and like that access is very difficult. Can I just jump in it? Just one thing to access. Like what is the point of that access? Right. Because you're going to get a source in government now. You're going to, you're going to behave so you can get the source in government. And what that source in government is going to give you is information that they want, that they want you to have, that they want you

to promote, right? What good is that information? If you focus- It's a bit of a spectator garden party. Yeah, sure. I mean, listen, I'm sure it's a beautiful garden, right? But that aside, that aside, I'm sure it is- You love eyes wide shut. Yeah, exactly. You guys are hanging out and talking and you can tell you about the very marked, yeah. Love that film.

Every city is probably going to have a botanical garden that I could take you to instead. You know what I mean? Now, if instead of, if instead of that access, if instead of that access, because here's one thing both Brian and I were shocked by in this process is, how broken the FOY law is and how broken just our right to access information through that pathway is. If that was reformed, why do I need you in this department in the home officer, DFE or the prime minister's office? Why do I need you? I don't need your filtered information. That access is rubbish to me. I would rather, as a reporter, be able to go get the actual foundational documents, the evidence and be able to tell you what the story is more accurately than

this access privilege kind of a pathway to journalism. And I feel like that's, if more reporters stop caring about access and sources and started worrying about ways that they can get the underlying material themselves, whether it's laws, whether it's petitioning, whether it's making the public aware of how little right we have to information in Britain, that is a much more worthwhile cause as a reporter than spending 15 years being nice because, you know, there's a guy in Downing Street leaking you something that they want you to report on anyway. Yeah. And it's invariably going to be like, you know, a number, a 10 Downing Street source says some soundbite that has no bearing on reality.

Well, like the access stuff was so kind of prevalent within when I was like covering like Muslim issues and stuff like that. Especially when it came to like stuff like Prevent, where when you try to kind of do FOIs and like, I worked with like a pretty decent lawyer, again, like, you know, off my own back to like try to get like information on the UK's like counterterrorism strategy. And like the vast majority of times, like, you know, they would like, well, in most cases, the Home Office would just never respond to you. But in the times when it did, because you sort of like sent enough letters, they would kind of just refuse that they would kind of refuse information broadly on like

national security grounds. So like lots of the stories about Prevent that have had come out during that time, including like the unit within the Home Office that was like coordinating the strategy and like, you know, paying lots of these sort of like pseudo NGOs to like make kind of de-radicalization content, that was sort of found through like sources, right? And it was found through like these very good Home News reporters who had just been on the beat for a very long time. So they were kind of had these points of access. But, you know, if you're someone who is just starting out and you're someone who like doesn't have a lot of contacts, but you like you're also someone who is very much like subject or like much more likely to be subject to this type of like

surveillance strategy, it's extremely difficult to figure out how it works and crucially like when you do ask, which is like, which like I did a couple of times to like government ministers and stuff, the way that they kind of look at you in this really suspicious way is like, why would you, why, why do you want to know that thing? Like, you know, what are you going to do? Specifically, who's saying, when you ask what? Well, from what I remember when I spoke to, I spoke to like then like a government like a junior minister and I was just kind of like, I was doing this like big or like trying to do this like investigation into how Prevent worked and just like the legacy of like this kind of, you know, strategy and everything.

And my, one of my big questions in the same way that Hamza's question was like, who wrote this letter? One of my big questions is like, well, who's designing Prevent? But yeah, like when I was speaking to a junior minister about this, like the way that they sort of talked to me and they were like, as if like in this really patronizing way, but one where it was kind of, you know, they felt that it was like a bit cute and twee, but I was asking about like this massive government surveillance program, but like no one knows like basically anything about. Yeah. And like what empirical foundation is any of this based on? Yeah, exactly. And that was like where the Trojan horse stuff like is really similar,

because it's like, okay, these are very basic questions and like no one's really asking them. And the people who do have access, and this is the other thing too, the people who do have access, right? The people who have like the kind of private numbers of ministers and stuff, they're not asking these questions. So like the only people who like, the people who are in positions where they can do stuff and where they can talk about these things, but are of like national importance because Hamza, as you mentioned, like it affects everyone in like these very kind of direct ways, they're like, to them, this is just not interesting. So it's like extremely frustrating to like work in this space. And again,

as Zen is very refreshing, but you guys like both spent the time and the energy to like not only kind of tell the story, but to also expose this huge fracture in like British media. And to jump in really quick before you respond, and I think you know that you've succeeded at least on the British front, because the wall of silence that has greeted you. Is that the marker of success? If you guys had screwed up, or if they thought it was non-threatening, they wouldn't have completely omerted this, but they did. How does that omertile work?

Well, I don't know. Did you read Peter Oborn's piece in Least Eye? There was a recent piece that Peter did where he was like, I listened to the podcast and I like phoned up all my contacts on my mobile phone with all these private numbers, and no one got back to me, including like his friend Michael Gove, who was like really good friends with him, like not that long ago, and I was like ghosting his cause, right? So the reporters from the Sunday Times, for the benefit of our listeners, a bunch of reporters for the Telegraph, Michael Gove, Clark, the guy who read the inquiry in the

first place, no one's responded. And we've seen, I've seen two responses that were one from just like a Daily Mail reporter and one from Nick Timothy himself who claims that he's going to pursue legal action because you guys got a bunch of stuff wrong, and it's just like I had some proximity to the subject of serial season two, and I presume you guys fact check, so I'm not really believing Nick Timothy. We did fact check. A lot of fact check. Shout out to Ben Phelan and Mark Acronily right now, a very difficult job. And that's the thing is that Nick Timothy will build those into anyone having this conversation who he thinks is significant enough to bully and be like, actually, I'm going to threaten

legal action for you, saying that I said this thing that's been in the Trojan Horse Affair, because actually they got it wrong, and that normally shuts down dialogue. So you're asking how the Omar Ta works. To be honest with you, it's what we just described, it's either stonewalling completely and responding to nothing, or it's threatening people with legal action under British libel law. There's a whole wonky road I could go down here of just like, you know, I think we're talking about right now is kind of cultural things and kind of, you know, the way like kind of just like the culture of British media works and stuff, but like, Homs is like smiling at me now.

Just be careful. Is this my opportunity? No, just be careful, but go for it. I could be careful. We can also edit this show, but like just over the years, like I've just whined so much to Homs, like I could not believe how different it is to do journalism in the UK from the US and how tangibly I would miss the protections of the First Amendment, like in a tangible, non-theoretical way, and the ways that I could see that not having it

makes, you know, your guy's job so much harder. Like it just like, yeah, I agree with you, Homs, so like, you know, like, you know, access can be dangerous, like I think, but I do think like having access is an important part of reporting as long as you, you know, guard against being captured by that access, basically, you know, but it needs to be paired with a much like more vigorous right to know, basically, like right at the post, no, they need to go together. And then like, you know, and it's like, I don't, I personally don't believe that the UK has an open court system from my experience, you know, like I was shocked at the amount of court records, like here, listen, it's not, I'm not like our FOIA law is broken,

we have like a whole Byzantine mess of state FOIA laws and federal laws, and you wait forever here too, you know, it may be hard to get court documents, like, you know, you may have to bug a clerk, but you're going to get them. The court documents are there and they're going to give them to you. And that is not a guarantee at all. There's a very good like home affairs reporter I know who at The Guardian, who's like, strategy of like finding court documents is, wait until they go to lunch and then take some pictures on your phone when they're not looking. I'm not even like joking around, like that's his strategy for getting like so many of his scoops, like just stay around in the court.

But just imagine that, like I had no idea again about what it's like for reporters in Britain to get access to information. I just like everyone else believed that there's a right to know and like, you know, we have subject access requests and we have freedom of information laws. And I just imagined that those stuff that worked and like, you know, it's a case of just you shake loose what you can through these laws. And I did not realize that these public hearings, public hearings, right, that you were allowed to sit there in a gallery and listen in on and yet we are not allowed to the transcript of these hearings. We're not allowed to get that information, you know, with the argument that the people who testified in a public hearing that was recorded

and reported on have a right to privacy. That's the that's and it's a legally upheld argument. That's so wild. Like over and over again. And you know, the number of kind of like, you know, anonymization of witnesses, redacted court opinions, which, you know, or decisions, which like aren't redacted with blocks, but just rewritten by a judge for the public. So it's like a revised, non-transparent decision in my view. Like that's just like, you might have that with like some national security or like FISA case here, but you're not going to like that's not standard practice in it, like, you know, a lower tier tribunal or something, but it does seem to be in the UK. It's wild. Like I've just been I've been blown away. Yeah, it's very it's

incredibly frustrating. Yeah, it's insidious. It's insidious. Like I like imagine what's going on in your courts. It's crazy. Yeah. And you're not you're not able to look back at these old cases and review them and see like the underlying material and like it's I can't even imagine what's happened that hasn't been found. I'll put it this way. I have tried to solicit as many opinions as I can from people whose opinions I respect about British politics in general, and they were all very, very happy to see your guys' program. They and they were very, very pleased and in some ways not surprised by it, but in other ways shocked by how British and also how opaque it was. But the thing that I heard the most often, which will probably come

as no surprise, I imagine you've heard this as much, you know, signals more than than this, is this could only be done by a foreign outlet. This could only be done by an outlet covering Britain from a distance because this is just these are questions that British journalists wouldn't cover and these are questions that British newsrooms wouldn't risk asking. And I don't know if maybe that's reductive. I'm perfectly willing that maybe I'm too harsh on this country. I haven't been able to get back to America in like three years. So there's an element of being fed up. But I agree with that statement. And I would love to know what you guys think, Brian, as having now been neck deep in this and Hamza having both grown up with it and also

now learned it from this project. I do think there's an element and I'm not like giving us any particular credit. I'm just saying like from where we were coming from, Hamza doing this for the first time and me doing this for the first time in Britain. Like we would just encounter like, nose or denials that we just wouldn't accept because they didn't make sense to us. And that when we would run them by someone who maybe was a little more experienced, like I wouldn't feel like they'd be like, yeah, that's how that's kind of how it's done. You know, like there'd be more of an acceptance of it. And I feel like there was that kind of

energy going on that we've each brought for different reasons. Like, you know, where it was just like, no, that like this is a court. I'm allowed to have these documents and like we'd bum rush the court and like the demand that they hand us the documents there, let us talk to somebody. Like, you know, like, like we just, I just couldn't accept that this was how things were done. It just didn't make sense to me. And I think Hamza was like, well, if Brian's saying this is how it's done, then I guess this must be how it's done. So I think that's kind of just like. And I mean, what was nice was because we were both, I guess, like ignorant to have things work and like, it just meant that we were, we were asking questions about everything.

So at one point in this investigation, if you remember this, there was like someone in like the entourage of an MP who made up a privilege, who just made up a privilege. Oh yeah, yeah, that was right. Yeah, that's right. We went to interview an MP and who'd, you know, written extensively about or like had been involved in a lot of the stuff having to do with the school, you know, Alan Rock is his constituency, a lot of stuff in like a lot of the schools, like he dealt with the different, you know, scenarios going on there. We reviewed documentation showing that. And his office kept saying like, he can't talk about individual constituents because of constituency privilege. And I was like, I'm gonna, you know, as if it's

like a real legal principle, right? Like, like, like, you know. Now, luckily both Brian and I've never heard of this before. I was like, I've never heard of that before in my life, but maybe it's a British thing. I called the solicitor that we'd hired to help us understand these things. Before the interview, I was like, hey, Martin, you know, constituency privilege, is that a thing? He's like, no, that's not a thing. Yeah, it only applies in certain Sharia no-go's. Yeah, exactly. That's what he let me know. Yeah. And so then we just sat down and I was like, yeah, your press person said like, you wouldn't be able to talk about individuals because of

constituency privilege. But that's not a thing. That's not a legal principle. And he admitted like, yeah, yeah, you made that up, basically. That's indicative of what was happening in this process, that because both of us were new, we just didn't take it for face value, which everything that was came to us, we had to question it because we were encountering it. How many pounds did I have to pay for that lawyer call? Just to learn that that wasn't a real thing. It was also just very funny how like, it didn't even require that much push back to like, get them to say stuff. And this is like, you know, you could kind of like, there's, the Charisma arguments is like, oh yeah, this is a very difficult story to do. No one wants to talk

and like, everyone's very stupid about it. But like, what I was very... And all that is true. All that is true. It was really hard and it does take a lot of resources. I will say that. But in some cases, it's like, in some cases, it's just like, you just got to ask the question and like, for a lot of the journalists who, again, like, relying on kind of like their inside sources, relying on like, you know, what the government ministers have to say, you know, relying basically on kind of like the broader narrative. And this, and this is the thing, I know that like, we're running sort of close time. So I don't want to like, keep you for like, much longer. But I keep getting back to this thing of like, you know,

the real kind of divide or like the thing that seems to sort of send to some of the critiques is that too much was kind of paid attention to in relation to the letter. When, you know, for them, like Trojan Horse wasn't really about the letter. It was about like, even though the letter was fake, all these other things were kind of valid and true. Like, we've been given a really useful reference point to that, like, here in the States in the last year, with the big lie. Like, I think I've been thinking about with like, the big lie. So there's a giant lie that somebody says, but that doesn't matter. We're going to take kind of the essence of that lie, you know, like, we're going to lie and say the

election was stolen. We're going to go around and find like, a bunch of little like instances that kind of like seem related to that, but we're just going to ignore this giant lie at the heart of it. Like, I don't, it doesn't make any sense to me. Like, the kind of most charitable reading is like, they accept the lesser isn't true, but they recognize that like, there were some kind of like instances of like misdemeanors that happened in these schools. Number one, like, you know, I feel like you could do that with like most British schools, like, you know, I think any school in any country, there's going to be some inconsistencies and things.

Yeah. But like British state schools are not particularly well run. They're like very undefunded for the most part. Like you can probably find those discrepancies in most, but what they've done is like, sort of taken these discrepancies or taken these types of like acts of behavior and kind of wrapped it into a narrative that already existed to begin with, right? Because like the whole kind of narrative of like secret Islamization was around like long before Trojan horse happened, right? This stuff was very, very evident and it was very, and it wasn't even just like confined to like message points, whatever.

When did Mel Phillips write Lundanistan, wasn't it? Or Arabia or whatever she called it? Like, wasn't that in 2004? That was in the early 2000s. Yeah. And they were like, and you know, when like the Iraq war, like when the war in Iraq and Afghanistan was happening, like there were so many of these types of like very public debates or conversations, whatever you want to call it, on like, you know, you know, dangerous Muslims within our midst and everything, like this stuff was very evident before. So what it seemed to be like was like, you know, the reason why I think so many of them are very happy to be like, yeah,

you know, the Trojan horse lesser wasn't true. And like, we're not really going to issue a correction because ultimately, like we found these things that sort of like can be wrapped up into an existing narrative. The vibes felt real. And crucially, you can't fact check a vibe, right? We've spoken about this show many times. You can't fact check a vibe. And I think this is, and again, it goes back to something that we say on this show a lot, which is like, British media is really about vibes and like how people are feeling at a time. And it's very interesting now that as like this podcast has come out and it's kind of like disproven so many of the foundations of the Trojan horse scandal. And you really have to

reckon with the fact that like, yeah, it ruined so many lives, but also like it ruined a community in a way that's like really, really permanent. Like the decision is not to sort of address that, it's just to ignore it entirely. I mean, that was also disappointing about the Perman City Council. Like thus far, the only statement I've heard them make in relation to this podcast was when the trailer came out. And before the podcast came out, there was some kind of council meeting we've seen a video of this where a question came up about the Trojan horse and Councillor Bridget Jones responded. And essentially, her kind of like line was that like, it's an old thing. It's an old thing. We've moved on, the cities moved on, we worked very hard to

move on from that episode. And like, nobody kind of wants this thing rehashed to a certain extent. I'm like, just a couple of miles down the road from you as a community that was destroyed by this, whose schools were destroyed by this after many, many decades of failure, they finally had opportunities to do better. And it was rubbled. And you're standing here saying, old news, we moved on, what does that even mean? What does moving on even mean from this episode? You know? And yeah, and as like Michael Gove sort of like, wrap this into this broader like national, like all his kind of like ideological narrative. You know, it wasn't just like Birmingham's like Muslims that were affected by it, it was like Muslim communities, like around the country.

Like I remember when Trojan horse like, like in 2014, when that like, when it all kind of emerged, I feel like with the impact of Trojan horses, so not, I mean, it still felt say in a way that I think is very evident in certain like conspiratorial groups that British media are now like pretending they're confused about once again. But the roots are very much there. And they're very like, you know, they're, yeah, they're very prevalent. And like, what's very frustrating, and I find very frustrating is the fact that like, British media are either kind of like lots of British media people who were involved in all this, either kind of like outright refuse that they were in any way responsible, or they just like, don't want to be introspective about it at all. Right.

So for them, it's like either, yeah, we've moved on beyond this, like, you know, like, you know, the past is the past, or they'll kind of be like, well, you know, we were right in a way. So like, you know, why are you bothering me? Leave us alone, Yanks. Yeah. Yeah. I want to drop something really fast. And then I know you guys need to go in this to really quick things. Number one, years ago, I was just doing freelance audio production, and I was recording a podcast with a think tank and a popular historian, who would never be on record saying this stuff on record, or in his books. But when the recording stopped, he basically went on this tirade about how Christianity in the West need to force a

reformation on Islamic gunpoint, or they're going to take over Europe and reinstate the jizzy attacks that was in place in Cordoba in like the 11th century. And I got the impression, now obviously, this is my own subjective impression that this guy was just, he was fixated on the idea that Islam is the enemy, but he would then go on BBC or any other program, any other panel show, you know, question time, et cetera, and be this sort of voice of educated reason and learning from history. And I realized very quickly, I'd only been in the country about three months at that point, like, ah, this is a very, very different vibe. And I wanted to say, though, with that in perspective, and seeing that, seeing that bleed into coverage and what is

reported and what is omitted, I just want to thank you guys. Maybe that's unprofessional of me, but this series has so many people that I know who have listened to this, who are both British or have followed British media like myself. This is, this series confirmed that we're not insane. I said, like, this is actually happening, talking to you guys is confirming that we're not insane. So I appreciate it's mutual. Mutual appreciation. I just want to ask you really quickly, like, before we sign off, have you been surprised by any of the reactions or lack of reactions? I'll do the lack of reaction part, because I've been through this process before, and I'm aware that when you put something out in the world, especially something like this that you worked

on for so long, that's trying to, like, do something a little different, like, there's a lot of unexpected and often delightful and weird reactions. I mean, you know, we've distilled some of the, like, bigger newsier revelations, you know, from our show, put them into, like, an email, had, like, our press person blast them around to British newsrooms. There's been a couple picked up by, like, The Guardian and stuff about, you know, what Gove knew, but other than that, like, nothing, like, I don't think there's been a single thing on the BBC, like, like, and then there's just Birmingham, like, there's, like, this council and this school that we've reported on extensively, and I can't see a single person who's asked a question to any of them,

you know, besides maybe Peter O'Born. Can I say something hopeful, though, in terms of the lack of reaction is that, like, who cares about British reporters and who cares about British authorities? I'm serious, I'm serious, like, who really cares? It's an Anglo action. Yeah, yeah, and if the amount of people who have heard this podcast, you know, around the world, and some of the absolutely cripplingly beautiful messages that, like, both Brian and I have been getting since it's come out, like, what more do you need than that, you know, and so, for me, like,

I'm getting a reaction from the people who this was intended for anyway, and anybody else who's interested or not, it really couldn't care less about them. Yeah, I think that's, like, a really good approach, not least because, like, I will endorse any message, which is, like, you just don't have to, like, respect any British authorities. I think that might be a good way to sign off. So, like, yeah, thank you so much, guys. We really appreciate it. Brian and Hamza, thank you so much, seriously.

Thank you. Thank you. It was really fun. Thank you, guys. You can listen to serial, you can listen to serial, like, on podcast apps, but you can listen to the Trojan Horse Affair on podcast apps as well and on the NY Times. It's very easy to find. Also, just, like, put it on Twitter and you can find it.

Nate, do I need to, like, do any plugs? No, just this is a free episode for the week. Just bear in mind that there is a Patreon. You can sign up for a second episode every week. It is $5 a month. And the regular cast will resume on Thursday with our bonus episode. But otherwise, thank you so very much, Brian and Hamza, for making time for this. And please, listeners out there, listen to the Trojan Horse Affair,

so you can understand why Hussein and I were yelling online so much for so many days in a row. That's right. Okay. And with that note, we're signing off. So have a good one. See you later. Thank you. Take care.