TRIGGERnometry - Our Thoughts On Interviewing Dave Smith, Hasan Piker, Sam Harris and Ben Shapiro

Episode Date: November 17, 2025

Konstantin and Francis talk about their latest trip to America. | We use Ground News to escape the echo chamber and stay fully informed. Go to https://ground.news/triggernometry to save 40% on the Ground News unlimited access Vantage plan. Triggernometry is proudly independent. Thanks to the sponsors below for making that possible: - Protect your wealth with The Pure Gold Company. Get your free investor guide at https://pure-gold.co/trigger Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Substack! https://triggernometry.substack.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Shop Merch here - https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media: https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry: Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. 00:00 - Introduction 01:50 - The Dave Smith Interview 08:48 - The BBC/Trump Scandal Shows The Issue With Mainstream Media 16:03 - San Francisco Was Sobering 21:15 - Nick Fuentes And The Battle Of Ideas On The Right 27:26 - Americans And Sarcasm 29:42 - Charlie Kirk Showed That Meaning Comes From Connections To Other People 33:58 - Ben Shapiro And The Housing Discussion 38:16 - Lots Of People In Our Countries Want To Make Our Countries More Like The Countries They Came From 43:00 - We Love America Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Let's start off talking about Dave Smith. When was the last time you saw people who strongly disagree about political issues have that kind of conversation? We released the Ben Shapiro interview. One of these anonymous rage farmers clipped Ben out of context, completely misrepresent what he was saying, and try and make him out to be saying that's something that he was absolutely not saying. What these people tried to do to Ben is exactly what the mainstream means. what the mainstream media used to do to people that it hated. It's so much easier to pull something down, to break something,

than it is to build something up, to create something, to be of genuine worth. And if you look at woke people, they're absolutely miserable. The people who are going down the root of bitterness and resentment on the right, they will discover that it doesn't lead you anywhere. Who was your favorite guest and why? I always like guests that are going to piss everyone off. So for that reason, I'm going to say Sam Harris. of sneaking up on you. But when it does,

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All right, Francis, we are wrapping up our US trip. This is the 33rd interview that we're recording, the final one. Dana Wise just walked out of the studio. By the time people see this, it'll be a couple of days since. And kind of a lot has happened, and we've only released like five of the episodes that we've done. I know. It's been amazing. Look, firstly, what an amazing trip.

We have done four different cities, three different states, three different time zones. That's right. I don't even know what time it is. I mean, we all get up now anywhere between 4 and 5 o'clock in the morning, like Buddhist monks because our body clock's broken, but it's been an amazing... We don't spend our evenings like Buddhist monks. No, that is true. Buddhist monks don't eat takeaway pizza.

But anyway, it has been an amazing trip with some incredible guests. Look, let's start off talking about Dave Smith, who we recorded a matter of days ago. I mean, what a brilliant conversation and props to Dave for coming on the show number one. And number two, being an all-round good bloke. He was great. And actually, one of the things that I thought that happened is, when was the last time you saw people who strongly disagree about political issues have that kind of conversation on YouTube, on a podcast?

When was the last time you saw that? Two and a half, three hours, if you're a supporter of ours on Substack, where you got to see another extra half an hour, three hours of three people, two people, it doesn't really matter how you'd frame it, who disagree about a lot of things, having a genuine conversation the way you would do with your best mate in the pub. We don't see it anymore.

And that is the real, that is the beautiful thing about the conversation, but it's also, there's a sad element to it, which is we've lost that ability. And one of the things that made me really proud of being part of that conversation was that we kind of helped to monitor, a form of behavior, which I think we're in,

not that we're in danger of losing, but that has kind of been lost. Well, it's been lost. People don't do this anymore. So what you've got is, what we had was mainstream media, Kathy Newman style interviews. So what you're saying is, you're a terrible person. Here's a quote you said, represented out of context,

you're a terrible person. And we went from that to what was an exciting moment in New Media, YouTube Podcasting. where it's like, let's not try and misrepresent other people. Let's just have a conversation. But what that's morphed to is, let's just invite anybody on whatever their crazy views, however much you disagree with them or don't, because nobody knows, because you don't challenge them and you never debate the issues.

Or that's one option, which is what people like Tucker have been doing with people like Nick Fuentes and Darrell Cooper and all these other people who've got, in my opinion, and horrific and terrible and most importantly wrong ideas. And on the other hand, you've got like this fake conversation debate thing where you've just got two people going at each other and trying to win. And I've done some of those debates because that's how those shows are set up, right? But what I think, as you rightly say, we did is we modeled a different way. And I'm incredibly proud of it.

And the person deserves most of the credit for that is Dave. Because if Dave had come in here and acted like this was a debate where he was trying to win, we would have probably had no choice but to respond in kind. But because of the way that he carried himself, we could conduct ourselves the way we'd normally like to do. And I think that's what actually, that's what we need more of. We absolutely need more of it because this approach, the approach A and approach B, which you've just presented, it's ultimately a zero-sum game. You just don't get anywhere with it.

Okay, one person comes out and they're the victor and you go, well, great, but where does that actually lead us? It doesn't lead us anywhere because one of the things that we know about our civilization and why it's in crisis is because it's divided, is because we're looking at the people who disagree with us and failing to see the humanity. And you know, I've had messages and so of you, oh, Dave Smith says, I'm telling you right now. I like him. I thought he was a good bloke. He was a good bloke. Yeah, exactly. His crime in many people's eyes is that he's wrong.

But that's like when we were in our 20s, like that's what debates looked like. It was like two people coming together, having mutual respect, arguing the points and saying, this guy's wrong about everything. That's what it looked like. You know, Peter Hitchens debated Christopher Hitchens, two brothers, and they were debating in this way. That's how it used to be. And I just think the mainstream media forgot that that's how it's supposed to be, and then the new media forgot that that's how it's supposed to be.

And I hope that we collectively, people who do this for a living, not just me, you and Dave, but lots of people take this on as an opportunity to go, okay, well, this is a new phase now. We can do this now. We can have the actual disagreements and debates out in the air. And what happened was interesting because the day that we recorded the conversation with Dave, and we walked out of here feeling some sort of like reconnection with the good in humanity, basically, despite the disagreements that we explored.

That was the day that we released the Ben Shapiro interview, which we'd done a couple of days prior, which was a great conversation about Zoroam Darni, about his disagreements with Tucker, about his views on Nick Fuentes. And what happened with that interview is a perfect example of how the new media space is becoming deranged as well, because you had one of these anonymous rage farmers on Twitter, clip Ben out of context, completely misrepresent what he was saying, remove all the context of what he was saying, and try and make him out to be saying that's something

that he was absolutely not saying. And that, you know, that meme about which way Western man? That, to me, is the which way Western man thing. Are you going to engage with ideas that you don't like? or are you going to lie about the people who you don't like so that you can mobilize your tribe? And by the way, make money on Twitter from lying about somebody

and clipping them completely out of context. That's the choice that people now have and the vast, vast, vast majority of people are not taking the good choice in that situation. And that's a disappointing thing because the reality is that if we're going to get better as a society, everybody needs to play their part.

Everybody has responsibility, whether it's the people in front of the camera, whether it's the production crew, the social media people, but also the people at home in their own lives and when they're engaging in content. And the worrying thing to me is that people just, they don't care about the truth. And when you don't care about the truth, what happens is that the truth will ultimately die. And we need to be very, very, very careful as a society. Because if we want this to carry on, if we want Western civilization to carry on, to flourish, to thrive, then it's important that we have good faith discussions.

It's also very important that we realize what is truth. Because when you start celebrating things that are not true, when you start celebrating things that are falsehood, not only are you promoting them, you're effectively dementing people around you because people don't know what's true anymore. And when people don't know what's true anymore, that's when things start going very, very, very dark. Well, that was the worrying thing to me. And not least because what these people tried to do to Ben is exactly what the mainstream media used to do to people that it hated. And while we have been here in the US, there's been a gigantic scandal.

Tim Davy, the director of the BBC, had to resign. The CEO of News at the BBC had to resign. And the reason they had to resign is they did precisely what these people have done to Ben Shapiro. Right. And this is a point I made when I wrote an article and did a video about the debate between Douglas Murray and Dave Smith on Joe Rogan is we've got to a situation where everyone in the new media screams that the mainstream media has no standards while having none of their own. Right. And unless we self-imposed standards on ourselves and also, as you rightly say, unless people really really, realize that yes, the gatekeepers are gone, and yes, that's great in some ways. But the flip

side of that is, well, you as a consumer of information, as a consumer of content, you now have the ultimate responsibility as a gatekeeper to your own mind. You have to actually, and look, unfortunately, this is going to happen more and more and more with AI. You're going to have to go out and make sure that this thing that you are predisposed to believe is, you're going to is actually correct, is actually true, is actually the full context. Absolutely, because here's the thing. You have to take responsibility like you said. You get the politicians that you deserve.

You get the public intellectuals you deserve. You get the YouTubers you deserve. There's a reason Tucker is number one for conservative media. It's because more people consume it. So if you don't like that type of media, if you don't like that type of information, Give us money. Yeah, exactly.

You keep it going. Then you can't engage with it and you can't consume that content. Because if that content wasn't profitable, people wouldn't make it. Of course. And it really is that simple. It's that simple. And here's another thing. It's very easy in life to go around and point the fingers and go, you know what?

You should be doing that. And you should be doing that. And you shouldn't be saying that. And you shouldn't be lying. What about you? What about you? It's easy to point the finger at the BBC mainstream media, look, there are Nesta B, the files, so, ha, joke, joke.

Yeah, but what about you? Do you, are you rigorous with what you consume? Do you secretly enjoy watching Candice Hines come out with the latest demented conspiracy theory, which we all know to be complete nonsense? Are you sharing that? Are you talking? Because if you are, then you're kind of part of the problem, even though you don't want to admit it.

And the reality is, we all have our part of the problem. to play and no one's perfect. And part of the reason the mainstream media did those sneaky little tricks is because... They work. Exactly. And because maybe dig down, you secretly like that and you engaged with it. Yep, that's why, you know, the gatekeepers aren't coming back. And I think there's amazing things about that.

But ultimately, as consumers, it's the same with food, right? If you want to be healthy, you're going to have to be pretty careful. I mean, one of the episodes we recorded that hasn't come out yet, there's a conversation with Rhonda Patrick, Dr. Rondapartic about microplastics. And we've totally changed, like, we've basically, she basically ruined our lives. Mate, there's plastic everywhere. Yeah, she basically ruined our lives for, I think, very, very little actual gain. But we now changed our consumer behavior in terms of like we bought some metal mugs that we use,

stuff that my wife's been banging on me for about 10 years about. Speaking of Rhonda, we, of course, recorded that interview in L.A. We also recorded a conversation with Sam Harris in Woodrow. which we addressed the first time he was on the show. Indeed, we did. In great detail. He had a lot to say about President Trump, that people are, I think, gonna find challenging.

He had a lot to say about Joe Rogan, which we had a robust discussion about. And that was interesting. That was really, really interesting. We also sat down with Hassan Piker. Now, it was early on the trip, so we weren't able, I think, because we hadn't spent as much time communicating with him,

We did not go as hard at him as we did with Dave. And I wish in many ways, Hassan came after Dave, because I think we probably would have handled that in a more robust way. But still, we had an interesting conversation in which he basically sort of, he didn't say the words, I'm a communist, but he's currently in China celebrating being given Mao's little red book. And he did say in our interview, I don't have a problem being called a communist or something like that.

So that was pretty intense. And then, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear, we went to San Francisco, and we recorded a very, very good conversation with El McCabe, who runs one of the AI companies there. But we also had a little look around, and we talked to a bunch of people in the world of AI, and, you're walking around San Francisco, like a good third of the cars there don't have human drivers. And here in New York, we were walking home the other day, and there was a gigantic billboard from someone who I don't think has really thought this through,

which said, stop hiring humans. The age of the AI employee is here. And they may be right. And in fact, I suspect they are right. But I don't think people understand what's coming. Something we've learned doing this show is that people's thoughts about a given issue often depend on where they get their news.

That's why we use ground news to see how the same story is reported across the political spectrum. For example, take the story about Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson, signing an executive order creating so-called ice-free zones. Follow along at ground.news slash trigonometry. Using ground news straight away,

we can quickly see that the story is being covered by sources across the board, but with more coverage from outlets on the right. Scrolling down the page, ground news allows us to easily compare the headlines. We can see the Chicago Sun-Times, which is on the left, focused on the city's decision to declare municipal buildings ice-free. Meanwhile, The Hill, a centrist newspaper, simply stated that Chicago's mayor signs ICE-free

zone executive order. But the New York Post, on the right, went with White House blasts sick Chicago mayor for aiding illegal immigrant killers. Same news story, completely different takes. Ground News compiles these divergent perspectives in one place. Another feature we use heavily at trigonometry is the blind spot feed, which highlights where coverage is lopsided, lets you compare bias across the political spectrum, and shows what's being emphasized or ignored. If you care about getting to the truth by seeing things from all angles,

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Subscribe now at Bloomberg.com. I found San Francisco as a place incredibly sober. Because people might be surprised to know this, but I'm not really up on the whole way, I think. It's not really something that I would call an area of experts. At all. I'm, you know, the close, the most I've delved into it is being on Joe's show, J.R.E, where he spoke to us about AI and afterwards, and that got me pretty worried. But then when we went for a dinner with some people from AI, some people from the AI world,

these were fairly high-level people in AI. There's a mix of perspective. There's a mix of perspective. As there is in any industry. As there is in any industry. But there is one extreme of perspectives, which I'm a mix of perspective, which I'm a mix of perspective, I found particularly concerning, if I'm being honest. Well, we had this discussion with O.

and McCabe in that interview, which is like, my big worry is not even people's desire to make money. It's a bunch of people on the spectrum who are super excited about playing with this cool toy, who I don't think have any understanding of the repercussions of the thing that they're playing with because they only see the upside. And the upside of AI is enormous. It could transform the way we do health. It could transform the way we defend ourselves.

It could transform the way we communicate. It could transform not having to have humans do dangerous, demeaning, boring, unfulfelling, repetitive jobs. But in the process, we are opening a Pandora's box. And this is the worrying thing, is that when you talk to people, if they're honest, and you go, what's coming down the line, if they're honest, they go, well, we think this might happen, but actually we don't know. And you're going, well, you, the person who's one of the forefront of this particular technological innovation movement, you don't know what's coming next? Well, they're like, well, we think we do, but there's going to be on stuff that we don't. No one knows

what's coming next. And that is, that's a very, it's concerning. I'm going to be honest to you, It's concerning. Look, man, truthfully, I've got to be honest, I don't think anyone actually knows whether there's going to be such a thing as a job 10 years from now. The world needs podcasts this, mate. I don't know if there's going to be podcasts 10 years from now. Now, you know, Joe and I disagreed about this when we were on his show, but, you know, let's be honest, like, as a podcast, we all have an incentive to believe that we are necessary.

But he said that 20 minutes after playing us AI music that's better than any human music I've ever heard. If we don't need human musicians, why do we need human podcasters? It doesn't make that much sense. No. Right. Now, I get it. You know, his argument is, well, you know, people like a perspective. I just, I think the vast majority of people have absolutely no idea what's coming. No. And the reality is maybe talking about it is kind of pointless because you can't stop it. No. I would push back on because I think what talking about it does is it helps people to understand. And if you helped to understand something, you can strategize against it more effective.

Understand what? Like you said it yourself, the people running the industry don't understand. But you will gain a greater understanding. The more you talk, the more you investigate, you will gain a greater level of understanding. Okay, Francis, we've gained a level of understanding, right? You know I have a three-year-old son. Which career do you think is going to exist by the time he's ready to go into the workplace? Based on your understanding.

I would say, if I would say, I would say things like restoration. Restoration? Like restoring old buildings. Okay. Plumbing. I would say from the people that I spoke to when I was in San Francisco and other people, privately, they were like, those are the types that are going to be electrician. Things that you're going to be working with your hands on.

Skilled manual labor. Skilled manual labor. All right. Well, everyone's got to become a plumber. What percentage of people are going to be doing those jobs, men? Well, this is it. And you're going to look at driving jobs? Right. Compare that to trucking. Yeah. Well, trucking in the United States employs around 80,000 people.

I think it's way more than that. Driving jobs as a whole employ over half a million. Right. And then you go, and those are going to be, those jobs are primarily done by men. They're primarily done by men of a certain age, younger men. What are we going to do with those men who don't have... access to that type of job because the last thing you want as a society is a group of young men who don't have a job are disenfranchised and feel angry. That's when things start getting

a bit funky politically. That's when it starts getting worrying because young men directionless and angry, that's how political movements start getting a bit more extreme, shall we just say. Well, of course, and you're seeing it already. You know, Nick Fuentes, who just people keep asking We've invited him on the show. He may come on at some point. We'll handle it in exactly the way that we handled Dave, you know, with a strong, robust challenge of ideas. You're seeing that there was a whole big blow-up with the Heritage Foundation.

There's basically a battle being fought on the American right over what it means to be on the right, whether basically neo-fascist ideas are welcome in the movement. It's kind of a worrying situation of itself. But I don't think it's as ideological as it is. is a frustrated group of young men who've been shot on the entire adult and teenage lives, told that they're the worst of everything.

And it's interesting because a friend of my message me and said, well, you guys keep talking about, men have had a bad deal. But I think back 30 or 40 years, boys in the education system, if they didn't sit still and didn't behave, they'd get beaten, right? They'd get physically punished.

And I explained to her because I think the sexual dynamics here are important, that for a young man being hit is nowhere near as bad as being humiliated. And what the generation of young men coming up now have been through is their entire life, they've heard that their group, everyone else is great. If you're a black trans lesbian, you are on the pedestal and you are to be celebrated, right? If you are a young white man, you are literally a piece of shit. and you are at the bottom of the hierarchy

and you need to step aside. And by the way, it's important to say, it may well be true that, historically speaking, women have had a raw deal in society. I don't know if it's exactly true in the way that crazy feminists think it is. But I think there's some truth to that, historically speaking. But it was never the fault of 15-year-old Zumers.

They neither created that system nor benefited from it. They've grown up in the system where they've been the punching bag and the punchline. And this to me was one of the main reasons why we pushed back against wokeness, progressivism, whatever it is that you want to call that movement. Because for me, there was, even when they were talking about issues that I thought, actually, you've got a point. It was done in a spirit that I found profoundly, profoundly worrying,

because it was done with the air of somebody wanting revenge. And the problem is, as Gandhi said, an eye for an eye and the world will soon be blind. Because if you enact revenge on someone, particularly someone who doesn't deserve it, hasn't done anything wrong, and you've punished them, particularly men, once they grow up, you know what they're going to want? They're going to want revenge. And that's what you've got going on right now. Yeah. And it's like, all right, you've made me feel miserable. You've told me that I'm not worth anything.

You have demeaned me. You've smeared me. You've laughed at me. You've humiliated me. You know what, princess? It's time for it. for yours. And that's what's happened. And that's what we're seeing now. And that's why you are seeing, I think, on the left and right, you know, movements that are becoming bigger and bigger that

literally have zero constructive agenda whatsoever. There's no constructive agenda to them. I mean, if you think about this thing that's happening on the right, really, and, you know, this is a debate that's important to have is the people who are trying to push all these horrific ideas into the mainstream of the right. helping the Republicans who are currently in charge to deliver the things that the American electorate voted for. They are in fact making it easier for a Democrat to come in and to reopen the border as one of the many other things that will happen in reaction to this. So what you have is you simply have groups of people who now view pulling everything down and destroying

everything as the only thing worth doing. And there's many reasons for that. Number one, because you get a sheer visceral thrill out of destroying something. Everyone does. You're kicking a window. You get a little, you get a little bit of excitement. I've never done it, man. I'm middle class. But you know, you do something, you kick in a window, whatever,

you feel, you get a little bit of adrenaline, you get a little burst. But there's something more profound to it. It's so much easier to pull something down, to break something, to desecrate, to mock, than it is to build something up, to create something, to be of genuine worth in the world. Because when you build something, as you know, that we do, as many other people do,

or even people who go to work every day and they do a job to the best of their ability, it's hard. It's not glamorous. Even people going on, but you're on YouTube, 98.9% of this, there is not glamour to it. It is a grind like it, every other business. And it's hard, and you get up and you go, right, we've got to sort out of this out, we've got to do this. You've got to be on the phone to them.

We've got to go here. You've got to do... We're victims. Because that's what it needs. That's what it needs. But we talked about this in a conversation with Dana. We've been out this for seven and a half years and almost the entirety of that time. You spend, forgive me, for the metaphor, but I think it's exactly appropriate, eating shit.

Yeah. Hearing no, no, no, no. I mean, Dana himself, we've been trying to get him on on the show for like two years. And he's a busy guy. The fact that he came on now is like a testament both to his open. but also to our tenacity in trying to get them on. And every other interview we've done, it's been a process of every single guest almost

is a process of either you have to work really hard to get them on or you have to work really hard to get big enough that they want to come on themselves. So it's non-stop hard work. It's a lot easier to just complain. It's a lot easier to go on the internet, be in Sanjury and say, oh, we should do this, burn this, pull this down, get rid of it.

get rid of this. This person is bad. This person is wrong. This person is evil. And look, we've criticized a lot of people, but we're always coming at it from a constructive place. What we're trying to say is we're brilliant. We are.

We're brilliant. Thank you. By the way, spending more and more time in America, I start to realize that all these sarcastic jokes... They don't get it. I don't think a lot of them get it. So if you're American, we're not saying we're brilliant. No, what we're saying is we are brilliant,

but we're also British, so we pretend that we're not saying it. I remember there was one quite awkward moment, a few months ago when I was like, see, yeah, we're brilliant. And this guy went, yeah, you are. And I went, no, we're not. I mean, oh, God, no. And they just like that awkward Britishness thing came and it's kind of a, anyway.

But the reason we approached a Dana into the way we did, and I hope people get this, is trying to send a positive message to young men to go, look, you can still achieve. There are things that you can do if you strive. if you believe, if you have ambition, if you know where you want to go, if you're prepared to work really hard, you can achieve something. Don't go down the other path

because while it may feel good at the time, it's like scratching excema. It may feel good at the time, but it's only going to make you feel worse. It's only going to inflame. And I don't think young men I'm going to particularly listen to us, if I'm honest, or even to Dana necessarily,

but what they will find out as time goes on is just like being woke, wasn't fulfilling. And if you look at woke people, they're absolutely miserable. Mm-hmm. The people who are going down the root of bitterness and resentment on the right,

they will discover that it doesn't lead you anywhere. It doesn't lead you to the place that makes you happy. It doesn't like, look at some of the people who are at the top of this. None of them have a family. None of them have kids. None of them have a partner. None of them have the things that actually make life meaningful.

I mean, before we started the conversation with Dana, we talked about how kids are, the best thing ever, right? And anyone who becomes a parent will tell you. Now, look, kids don't make you happy in and of themselves. What kids tend to do, I saw a great post from our former guest, Sarah Hayder, who said, what kids do is they expand the range of emotions you get to feel. So on the upside, you now have levels of happiness that were unattainable previously. On the downside, you have levels of, you know, horror and fear and misery that also weren't available to you, potentially. But meaning comes from the connections you make with other people, from having a family,

from having friends. It doesn't come from being angry and sort of attacking people that you don't agree with. It comes from building things. I mean, this is one of the things I think that made Charlie Koch such a special person in many people's eyes is he built an institution that was actually affecting change in the world in the way that he believed in. Whereas if all you're doing is tearing things down, you're going to very quickly find that it's an incredibly shallow, miserable and disappointing path to go down in your life. Let me introduce you to the people I work with to protect my family

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because we say it all the time, but we can't carry on like this. If the people in your life, if the people who you follow are destructive, are angry and miserable, who are highly conspiratorial, they're not going to lead you to where you want to be. Because look, as somebody, everyone can have a drink who's taught kids,

I remember when people were saying to me, oh, some kids, you know, they don't want to learn, they don't want to do. No one wants to be a failure. There is no single person in life. It goes, you know what I want to do? I want to fail at everything. You know my dreams, which we've all got, I don't want to achieve them. I don't want to have money.

I don't want to have a nice house. I don't want to have a partner or a spouse that I love. That's not true. Everybody wants to succeed. And what's really important is that we actually realize that if you want to succeed, you need to have a positive message. You need to be inspired. You need to be inspirational to others.

That's the only way to achieve things. That's the only way to drive yourself forward. And by doing that, drive other people forward around you. And then if there's enough of a chain reaction being able to mobilize your town, then the city, then your district, your district, your state and then a country. But the other way, if we go down this other path, this will lead to a desperate, dark, broken place.

And we just can't have it. We can't have it because if nothing else, for yourselves and your family, do you want to live in that? I don't. I don't. Well, I mean, as part of the one of the problems, I think for the young people, young men in particular, who feel this frustration is they don't have a family and they don't have kids and they're not attached to anything

and they're just bitter and resentful. But it's just not a sustainable thing. It's not going to work for you if that's the place you. And so you're going to have to dig yourself out of that and realize that this isn't leading you anywhere that you actually deep down want to be. I mean, another thing that this is something we talked about with Ben in our conversation

that's happening is obviously there's a far left movement that's also happening. And, you know, one of the things you and I have been talking about for a long time and trying, by the way, to get people on the right to acknowledge is that affordability, particularly of housing, is a gigantic issue, and you can't skirt around that. Now, look, I think Ben made a fantastic point that has been badly misrepresented. He said, if you want to deal with affordability, you have to change the policies. But if the policies aren't going to change, you have to, in America, in American history,

actually the seeking of opportunity elsewhere is literally America. Yeah. Right. And look at the content creators in our space. Let's take a look. Go down the list. Joe Rogan moved from California to Austin. Why?

Because he didn't like what was happening in California. He didn't sit in his basement and wine, did he? Dave Rubin, Ben Shapiro. They've all moved. Lots and lots and lots of people. I mean, there's lots of people in Austin who have moved to Austin. There's other people who are in Scottsdale, Arizona. Like, the reality is that if politicians feel that you are captive in the city in which you live,

they're not going to change anything. And no matter how many times you elect, you know, far-left socialist or communist or whatever who promise you free stuff, they're not going to change anything. They're not going to make housing more affordable because the only way to make housing more affordable is to build more housing. Like President Trump's come out with this 50-year mortgage, yeah, okay, that's going to help some people buy a house that can't buy a house now, but that's also going to massively inflate prices.

And then a generation from now, or not a generation, a few years from now, again, you're going to be in this position where fewer and fewer people can buy a house. Because as we discussed with Dave, and this is where we really agreed, is asset inflation is making people who don't have assets incredibly, incredibly poor. And there's graphs, including in that recent video I did, just showing this. Now, people need to understand, if this does not get addressed, you're going to have absolute chaos in politics. Because if young people can't pair up, they can't settle down, they can't have kids,

they're going to burn the whole thing down. And we're starting to see that now. Yeah. We're starting to see that now. And one thing that I find particularly actually really frustrating, And I'm going to be honest, it's the right, the right, the way they talk about this, where they talk about people who voted for Zoraamandani, and they're like, oh, they're stupid, they're ignorant, they're lazy, whatever else.

And it's like, hang on a second, hang on a second. You got upset when people on the left said the same thing about Trump supporters. When Trump was addressing very real issues that people, blue-collar jobs, the left behind towns, in the Rust Belt, we all know the narratives when he was talking to them. And you were angry when the left criticized and mocked them.

But now you're mocking people who are moving toward the populist left. Can you not see that there's actually more in common with both sides than you might want to pretend? I would quibble with your analogy a little bit, although I think there's a lot of truth to it. But look, President Trump was going to close the border

and did. Laura Mamdani is not going to solve New York's problems. I'm talking more about how people particularly... Talk about supporters. Yeah, yeah, that's not helpful. Of course it's not. But I do think there's a qualitative difference between these two things. And it's not because I'm pro-Trump and anti-Mandani, although, you know, I'm no fan of Mandani, of course.

But yeah, no, I take your point. I mean, look, demonizing millions of people for having a different voting preference to you is never smart because you're not going to win any of them over. That's said, I mean, look, there's a lot of, there's a lot's been written about Mamadani's election. One of the things that's been pointed out is like, Mamdani only did well with people who weren't born in America. As a, on a group basis.

And that's another thing, which is, you know, there are, there do seem to be quite a lot of people in all of our countries in the West who've come from other places and instead of embracing the things that made the West great, they seem to, for some reason, want to make are countries more like the countries they've come from, which I think you and I, who've either come or whose parents have come from other places, just really struggled to understand. And one of the great interviews we're recorded on this trip was actually about your family's ancestry and country,

which was Venezuela. We had this great guy called Daniel Di Martino on the show. You absolutely smashed it talking about Venezuela. Yeah. And to me, that was one of the highlights of the trip, because, look, I don't mind. Jokes are jokes, fine. But when you see a country perpetually used as a punchline, and people never engage, they never actually talk about it honestly. And I think it's really important for people to actually understand what socialism genuinely means.

What does it mean to have a country that's socialist? What does it mean to have a country that should actually be the Dubai of South America? because we're richer than Dubai. We technically could be richer than Saudi Arabia if we're run properly. But we have socialism. And as a result of that, everything was decimated.

The country was plunged into poverty. Nine million people left. Nine million people. And one of the reasons I'm so proud of it was because of the way we handled the conversation because Daniel was magnificent in the way he put forward and explained what happened in Venezuela,

but also because it's, you know, we're so far away now from socialism in what many people experience that to them it's like they're rediscovering this new idea. Hey, you know what? Maybe the world can be fairer. You know, they won't be poor people. We'll all be equal. And no, that's not how it works. It's a magic trick. You get shown something and you think isn't this brilliant. And then you get the reveal at the end of it. And the reveal is there is there is no freedom, there's no free speech. If you criticize the government, you're going to be in jail, and you know what? We're all going to be plunged into desperate, miserable poverty. Sounds like Britain, mate.

Well, yeah. But that's the thing that they still have here in America, which is, and it's why I loved our conversation with Dana, and it's why I love coming here and having conversations, it's because there is still optimism here. And that is so important and it's so powerful. And I always what you love about being here. Of course, it's fantastic. And every time we come here, it's not just about having great conversations of fascinating people. It's also, it changes us every time we're here.

We become better as interviews. We have better conversations. Like the way we would have interviewed Hassan Piker if we interviewed him after Dave Smith, would have been very different. And that's because Dave made us better as interviews. Yeah. You know, the things we engage with here makes us. better as interviews.

These might seem like minor details to people, but for fans of the show, these probably are interesting observations. Like Brandon Tatum, Officer Tatum, when we had on, he spoke for 35 minutes, uninterrupted and answering our first questions. I dare you to find one interviewer on the internet who would let somebody speak for 35 minutes and say nothing.

And the reason we do that is when we've learned, that when you have someone who really has something, something to say, story to tell, you just get out of the way. And when you have someone who needs a little help, or maybe just speaks in shorter sentences, or maybe, you know, you haven't quite found the way to get in, then you, then we've got to jump in and do our job in a different way. And by the way, we're talking about all the serious stuff. We have some hilarious episodes recorded in this trip. I mean, we got, we had Christina P. James McCann, Jeff Dye, who was just absolutely incredible.

Greg Gutfield as well. They all smashed them. Those are. Those are. are really interesting but very funny conversations. And that's again, another thing. You know, it sounds like we're blowing smoke up our own arses here, but like we've got so much range in the types of, we can do funny, we can do serious, we can do educational. I mean, our conversation was Scott Galloway about masculinity. Our conversation with Nick Freitas about masculinity. Our conversation with James Sexton, the divorce lawyer, it's one of the most powerful things that we've ever experienced sitting across from somebody. because he is such a great speaker

and has so many interesting things to say, so balanced, but also was willing to go to places emotionally that very often people climb up. So, you know, being here is transformative, and every time we come here, it transforms it. That's why we love America. We do, we love America because the ambition, the talent, the talent here is incredible.

You just, there's some people who just walk in, like Daniel, who just come in and they smash it from beginning to end. and you go, you're not even 30. You're not even 30. I didn't like him for that reason. Too good, too young. You know, you're not even 30.

And the talent here is incredible. The conversations that you can have here. And you know what I think, and this is good, people are going to roll the eyes. But I do think part of it is the First Amendment. I think it's they have a culture of free speech. And when you have a culture of free speech, it automatically makes everything that little bit lighter

because you know that's the culture. So you can, it's like Dana said in our interview, in the UFC, you can go out and you can make a comment about politics and it can be as bad shit as you want, but it's the First Amendment. It's America. You're entitled to your opinion. I'm entitled not to like it, but that's life. Well, that is the attitude.

And one of the things we explored with a lot of people is the sort of proclivity for conspiracy. And we talked to a few comedians about that. You know, why are people so interested in that? I think that's probably the flip side. in the when every opinion is accepted people are going to come up with some pretty

wacky opinions. Yeah. And you know, it's an interesting place to be because of course right now that conspiratorialness on the right I think is a real threat to the right's electoral success. I just, I don't think

the American general public based on our conversations and the people that we speak to, I don't think they're into that. They might, watching somebody, but when it becomes the central thing of the political movement, you know, I just, I don't see that as a winning strategy, particularly when you're bringing in very toxic ideas that a lot of people in this country, thank God, still have a natural aversion to. Look, you've absolutely nailed it. And I think people in politics, and I think people in our

space and in the YouTubers, I think we all need to remember something. Look, we're all highly political people in this little space. And look, that's fine. And we're obsessed with politics, and that's what we do, and that's what we talk about. But there's something bigger at play here. And that's America and the West. And by that, I mean, the soccer mom taking her kids to practice. The dad getting up every day, going to do a job that he probably doesn't like, but he does it because he's got a family and then he comes back. The young people who want to get ahead with their lives and they just want an opportunity and a chance to succeed. The guy looking at the girl going, I want to marry her and one day be able to have kids. This is more important than people

online talking and be trying to be provocative. And we all need to remember that what we do bleeds out into society and we have a responsibility. You have a responsibility not to indulge in these conspiracy to theories, not to be extreme, because it affects people in a way that is incredibly profound. To those people, you may feel like you're just ranting to a camera. You're not. People are watching.

They're ingesting the stuff. And that's what concerns me, if I'm being honest. Well, we will see how it all plays out. Everyone has a small role to play in it. We are going to go to Trigopod.co.com. Where our fans are going to ask us questions, or rather we'll take their questions and ask them of each other. So head on over there now.

And if you're not already a subscriber, we do think you're morally inferior. Do you think you help keep each other honest and how much do you think the fact that you somewhat balance each other out has contributed to your success?