Pfizer admits they never tested the effectiveness of a new vaccine, and Joe Biden says someone should be in jail for just possessing marijuana. Plus, billionaire bunkers and nuclear war. Stay Free with Russell Brand and Friends on this week's episode of Stay Free: A Parcast Original. Stay Free! To find a list of our sponsors and show-related promo codes, go to gazprom.co.nz/OurAdvertisers And if you like what you hear, please HIT SUBSCRIBE and leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts and Podchaser. We'll be looking out for your comments and questions in the comments section below. Thank you so much for all your support, stay free, and stay tuned for more episodes like this one in the coming weeks. Stay free, stay safe, and Don't Get Lost in the Storm. Sincerely, R.I.P.E.S. - Russell Brand & Gareth R. R. Roy - Stay Free, A.K.A. - Cheers, Rachit Patel & Co-Hosts: . - . . . - R. I. ( ) - S. (R. (C) (R) (P) (A) (D) (C). (A). (C.) (P). - C) (S. (A.) (C), D. (D). . (D.) (R). (R.) (E) (E). (E.) (F). (F) (I) (F.) (I). (K) ( ) (A), (K). (I.) (R), D) (B). ( )(A) (B) (L). (P.) (K.) ( ) ) ) (S) (M) (V) ) (S). (C ) ( ) [A) ) )(C) & (A ) (P), ( )?) ( ) & ( ) ? ( ) . ) (B.) ) ) (F), & ) ? ( ))? (Q) (Q). ) & (F)? ? , ?) (V). (A)(A) & [C) ? (A)? ( ))
00:13:26.000Wherever you're from, wherever you believe in, you are welcome here.
00:13:31.000Wherever you stand on whatever spectrum, Political or ideological, this is a place for you.
00:13:37.000If you're in Rarotonga in the Cook Islands, it's 6am there and we know that you're there because we can see sometimes where people are watching this from.
00:13:57.000We saw a Pfizer exec under a degree of scrutiny, or at least questioning, admit that they never tested transmission efficacy with the Pfizer vaccine trials.
00:14:10.000I mean, isn't that the most extraordinary thing?
00:14:14.000After for a couple of years hearing that if you're an unvaccinated person that you are irresponsible, I believe Joe Biden, for example, said this Is a pandemic of the unvaccinated, right?
00:14:28.000We'll be checking in with that in a little moment.
00:14:31.000It's for me an extraordinary day where so many issues coalesce around this.
00:14:37.000The ability of the media to control a narrative, like for example, are you seeing anywhere on CNN, MSNBC, maybe on Fox?
00:14:46.000Let me know where you're seeing it because we don't tend to watch that stuff too much.
00:14:48.000On the BBC, In mainstream newspapers, are you seeing them saying, yeah, okay, hey, listen, we misrepresented the efficacy of vaccines?
00:14:57.000If you're not, you have to ask yourself why, because they were pretty keen to spend taxpayer money on advertising those campaigns.
00:15:06.000Stop the spread if you're... watch out for your... I mean, it was at a point where it was tantamount To kicking a grandmother into a ditch to not be vaccinated every hour on the hour.
00:15:19.000So we're going to be covering that in some depth.
00:15:21.000Also in our main story today, we're talking about billionaire bunkers.
00:15:25.000Are the billionaire class preparing for Armageddon?
00:15:29.000And is it possible that what most people consider to be crises, i.e.
00:15:32.000the economic crash, the pandemic and potentially even nuclear war, for an elite strata of society are actually opportunities?
00:15:56.000But let's get us started with a little bit A little bit of normal news and see if we can tell if these things are pointless distractions or whether or not they're just downright lies.
00:16:07.000Joining me in the studio as always is Gareth Roy.
00:16:20.000We've been talking for a while about Gareth is, as well as a great producer, able to bring together a variety of news stories, anti-establishment, anti-big business, anti-media stories and present them in a way that's not too hysterical and is usually underwritten by brilliant research.
00:16:37.000Gareth likes to Blast a lungful right down a French horn.
00:16:42.000Perhaps by the end of the show, if there's enough goodwill in the chat, we'll encourage Gareth to give the old, that curly golden little horn a blast.
00:18:12.000Oh, because you found a NATO mine there from 2015 and now it's just blown up, you automatically assume that because it'd give us an economic advantage that we're somehow behind it.
00:18:34.000So, at the same time of this, Nord Stream operators have said they were unable to inspect the damaged sections because of restrictions imposed by Danish and Swedish authorities.
00:18:42.000Nord Stream AG, operator of the older Nord Stream 1 pipeline, said they've been told by Danish authorities that receiving the necessary permits to carry out an inspection could take over 20 working days.
00:18:52.000When did Danish authorities start stepping up?
00:18:55.000Well, I guess what it is, is that that pipeline goes under a lot of people's, um, you know, areas.
00:19:02.000So lots of different countries are getting involved, but, um, yeah, Nord Stream AG are unable to inspect it at the moment, so it seems like we might never know.
00:19:12.000Go inside yourself right now and think, what do you think happened with that Nord Stream pipeline?
00:19:16.000Do you think it just legitimately blew up?
00:19:34.000A 2019 Pentagon-funded study from the RAND Corporation on how best to exploit Russia's economic, political and military vulnerabilities and anxieties.
00:19:43.000Don't know why you'd want to exploit those.
00:19:45.000It should be nice to people if they're anxious.
00:19:48.000...included a recommendation to reduce Russian natural gas exports and hinder pipeline expansions.
00:19:55.000The study noted that a first step would involve stopping Nord Stream 2 and that natural gas from the United States and Australia could provide a substitute.
00:20:10.000One thing I've learned while being alive on this planet is that you can trust big government in collusion with corporations.
00:20:19.000They never lie or manipulate and they don't plunder the world in pursuit of resources.
00:20:25.000That's just one of the things I've watched unfold over time.
00:20:30.000Elon Musk denies he spoke to Putin about Ukraine war.
00:20:34.000Tulsi Gabbard quits Democratic Party saying that it's an elitist cabal of warmongers.
00:20:39.000Let's have a look at Tulsi Gabbard saying just that.
00:20:43.000I can no longer remain in today's Democratic Party that's under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers who are driven by cowardly wokeness.
00:20:54.000Oh wow, that's a pretty harsh condemnation.
00:20:57.000It makes you wonder, what did she think she was joining when she joined the Democratic Party?
00:21:02.000Because they've been doing that for a while, haven't they, the old warmongering?
00:21:08.000Yeah, warmongering has always been sort of part and parcel of it, I suppose.
00:21:25.000Democrats eagerly lined up behind George W. Bush during the calls to invade Afghanistan
00:21:28.000and Iraq in the name of humanitarian intervention and liberating the women of Afghanistan who
00:21:34.000would spend the next two decades living in terror, burying family members and at times
00:21:39.000Even when Democrats, including Barack Obama, criticized the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq while running for office, they steadfastly voted to fund the wars to support our troops once elected.
00:21:48.000Now House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says an assault on Ukraine is an assault on democracy.
00:21:52.000The same argument Democrats clung to a half century ago while launching and expanding the disastrous war in Vietnam.
00:22:02.000At this point it's difficult to continue to believe that the Democratic Party is a party of peace.
00:22:09.000Even though you know that I'm not like a pro-Republican guy, what I believe in, and what I hope we can continue to discuss in this space, and obviously necessarily spaces beyond it, ...is the possibility of new systems of government where our opinions and views are reflected.
00:22:30.000The ability to control your own life as an individual, to live according to your own values, free from oppression, not living just as some kind of node dominated and controlled by centralized forces that you don't interact with.
00:22:42.000But that's, you know, that would be nice.
00:22:46.000King Charles III's coronation day is confirmed.
00:22:49.000What's amazing, if you're a British person, is I keep talking about like the... because we're all still sort of like, oh wow, the Queen's there.
00:23:07.000And they're sort of slowly realising it.
00:23:09.000This coronation, it's just going to be a very modest, low-key coronation.
00:23:14.000They're trying to make it like it's a coronation of the people.
00:23:17.000But it's very difficult to frame a king getting a golden hat put on his head as, like, something that's just, hey, I'm down with the people.
00:23:28.000Doing a little town hall or something like that.
00:23:31.000Yeah, this is just a low-key coronation, sort of like if you're getting married for the third or fourth time.
00:23:37.000At this point, you know, we're just doing it pretty casual.
00:23:39.000Yeah, so that coronation, pretty low-key.
00:23:43.000A man took magic mushrooms and then assaulted United Flight Attendants, so maybe not everyone who takes magic mushrooms is immediately introduced to a realm of limitless oneness, where separation becomes revealed to be an illusion.
00:23:59.000Where even your own ego starts to appear like a system that you've constructed in order to... just to hold yourself together.
00:26:43.000Yeah, the speed of science is not objectively something that you can just throw out there.
00:26:47.000Now, I think the thing that bothers me most about these revelations is the kind of information we were given at the start of the pandemic era.
00:26:57.000A number of people that really went out on a limb.
00:26:59.000Let's start with Joe Biden saying, this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated.
00:27:06.000You're sort of invited to forget that these things ever happened.
00:27:09.000What they want is for us to just put it behind us, that there was no rhetoric around it, that there was no persuasion, that there were no nudges.
00:27:17.000There was no BF Skinner style behavioralist, get it, get it, blame, shame.
00:27:35.000Misinformation, misinformation now because it plainly, or at least if it does prevent spread, that's just a coincidence because it wasn't tested.
00:27:45.000I don't I never pass up the opportunity to see Brian Stelter making
00:28:31.000You all saw the famous Rachel Maddow clip.
00:28:34.000For me, this is bigger than the potential divisions in American politics and American media between apparently liberal people and apparently conservative people.
00:28:44.000I don't think we can fetishize that division anymore.
00:28:48.000I think we have to look at the evident alliance between corporations, the state, Global bodies that are able to make suggestions at scale that are then disseminated through media.
00:29:00.000This is like at the time of this when we had to be very very careful on YouTube for example we got a YouTube strike for like a pretty minor transgression that we sort of self-corrected but you weren't able to talk about this kind of stuff and we were saying then This shouldn't be something about condemnation.
00:29:16.000People have got different types of lives.
00:29:18.000People have different kinds of considerations.
00:29:20.000And one of them was, people might be really concerned about elderly relatives.
00:29:24.000People might be getting vaccinated because they're really concerned about elderly relatives, or not getting vaccinated because they've had terrible experiences with authority all their life.
00:29:33.000And it was really used as an opportunity to divide people.
00:29:35.000And something like COVID passports now, well, what was that about?
00:29:40.000What possible benefit is there To a COVID passport.
00:29:44.000Why are there travel restrictions placed on unvaccinated people when we cannot demonstrate that the vaccine stops the spread?
00:29:53.000Now all of those questions that were emerging at that time have a lot more legitimacy.
00:29:59.000Let me know in the comments, let me know in the chat what you think about it.
00:30:03.000What do you think about it now, Gareth?
00:30:06.000I mean, you know, when it comes to stopping the spread, I suppose the fact is, I mean, even the Guardian wrote here in October 21, people who are fully vaccinated against COVID yet catch the virus are just as infectious to others in their household as infected, unvaccinated people, research suggests.
00:30:20.000So, I guess, you know, we were never at a point where it did actually stop the spread.
00:30:25.000There is some evidence as to whether it reduces the spread or not, but I guess that's not the point.
00:30:29.000That's not what we were being told and that's not what so many decisions were apparently made on the basis of.
00:30:35.000How can you make any argument now that it was anything other than an opportunity to generate profit and an opportunity to introduce regulation?
00:30:44.000It's difficult to make any argument beyond that.
00:30:47.000Should we just have a little look at Don Lemon as well and his rigid certainty that they were doing the right thing and his attitude towards people that were hesitant or cynical about vaccination?
00:30:58.000I think we have to stop coddling people when it comes to this and the vaccine, saying, oh, you can't shame them.
00:31:27.000Your genitals are not the right shape!
00:31:29.000That can't be the position that the news takes on these kind of issues.
00:31:34.000All right, so we're going to look now in more depth at the relationship between elitism, the introduction of crisis, and the people that suffer the consequences of crises more Partially.
00:31:50.000Well, it's not necessarily fantastic if you don't want to die in an apocalypse in hideous pain, but billionaire bunkers is big business now.
00:31:58.000Just to remind you, before we look at this story about billionaire bunkers and a mental advertisement for them, I'll just remind you that billionaires added five trillion to their fortunes during the pandemic.
00:32:08.000The world's richest 10 people saw their collective wealth more than double, shooting up 1.3 Here's the news.
00:32:14.000a day and now billionaire bunkers are becoming more popular.
00:32:19.000What does it suggest? What's happening? Is it possible that even the
00:32:24.000most extreme crisis imaginable, nuclear Armageddon, could potentially be evaded
00:32:30.000by the world's most powerful interests? Here's the news. No, here's the
00:32:55.000Do you think that crises are being used to further impecuniate, if that's a word, poor people and enhance the lives of rich and powerful institutions and groups?
00:33:07.000Like the 2008 stock market crash was ultimately beneficial for the financial industry.
00:33:12.000The pandemic was ultimately beneficial for the most powerful people in the world.
00:33:16.000The richest people in the world Got richer, so for some institutions it wasn't a crisis at all.
00:33:23.000Is it conceivable that even nuclear Armageddon could be part of a crisis response solution mentality?
00:33:30.000Firstly, let's have a look at some of these bunkers that are available for Bill Gates and his billionaire buddies.
00:33:36.000I've got to tell you, they're actually fucking lovely.
00:33:39.000No one knows exactly what the future has in store.
00:33:43.000But one startup company says avoiding threats from any potential natural disasters, viruses, and wars doesn't have to come at the expense of your comfort.
00:33:53.000Yeah, why should I give up my comfort just because there's a virus and a nuclear war?
00:34:11.000I suppose what this makes me feel is that there are different strata of society.
00:34:21.000That's no surprise, we knew that already.
00:34:23.000Even anyone who lives modestly well is still doing better than someone in a homeless shelter or sleeping on the street, so I accept that there are different strata of society.
00:34:31.000But at a time when it seems possible that we could radically revise the way we live, look at alternative systems where we empower communities differently, to double down on elitism, to double down on the idea that we should create a class of individuals that are free from the consequences of the way that society is sliding, seems to me to be distasteful.
00:34:53.000So, look, you can just literally seal yourself off from the world.
00:34:56.000Now, in a way, this is already happening.
00:34:58.000I have a much better lifestyle than a lot of people.
00:35:00.000which will say each bunker is air and gas tight.
00:35:03.000So you can just literally seal yourself off from the world.
00:35:07.000Now, in a way, this is already happening.
00:35:09.000I have a much better lifestyle than a lot of people.
00:35:52.000If you think, during the pandemic, I think one of the things that many people felt is that ordinary people were being forced to live by a lot of restrictive regulations.
00:36:00.000You can't leave your house, you must wear a mask, you must take certain medications.
00:36:03.000And I think there was a strong sense that that wasn't affecting everybody in the same way, that some people were travelling around privately, still going to gatherings.
00:36:56.000If you can tolerate and cope with Armageddon just because you've got a decent wine cellar, And live fully in times of tranquility and in times of unrest.
00:37:07.000He's actually literally having a cigar in there.
00:37:34.000You're 24-7 in your luxury prison staring at your family who you hate because they've got no morals.
00:37:41.000Beautifully appointed and entirely bespoke.
00:37:44.000What this feels like to me is that the most powerful interests in the world are willing to crash the planet knowing they would survive it.
00:37:51.000And if you think that sounds crazy, look at what they did to the economy.
00:37:53.000They crashed it knowing that they would be okay.
00:37:56.000Look at what happened in the pandemic.
00:37:58.000They locked down a whole planet knowing they would be okay.
00:38:00.000I'm not suggesting the lockdown wasn't a necessary measure or that the vaccines weren't ultimately helpful.
00:38:05.000I'm just suggesting that this is a A stratified society where people making the decisions do not suffer the consequences of the decisions that they're making.
00:38:13.000And now it's taken to a ridiculous extreme.
00:38:42.000It's like, these are what human beings have achieved.
00:38:45.000You can't, like, look at a Matisse or a Picasso knowing that all of the values that art is funded upon are a connection to something sublime and divine.
00:38:57.000Your private gallery keeps your collections in perfect condition.
00:39:02.000Freedom is the possession of those with courage to defend it.
00:39:04.000I don't think what Pericles meant by that is why don't we all bunker down and fuck society.
00:39:10.000I don't think classical Greece was founded on every man for himself.
00:39:14.000Let's hunker down, bunker down, let's create foundations that fund media and pharmaceutical companies and non-democratic global bodies that infiltrate and interrupt the democratic process.
00:39:26.000Democracy, I think, was quite important to the Greeks.
00:39:31.000Wondering if an opedem is in reach for you?
00:39:33.000Not really, because they're gonna cost fucking fortune, aren't they?
00:39:36.000Well, officials say if you have a net worth of more than 100 million dollars... Wait, is that sarcastic news?
00:39:49.000The world's richest 10 men saw their collective wealth more than double, shooting up by 1.3 billion a day.
00:39:54.000The ranks of the global ultra high net worth individuals swelled by 46,000 last year to a record 218,000 as the world's richest people benefited from almost an explosion of wealth during the recovery from the pandemic.
00:40:06.000It makes me wonder if events are being constructed in order to facilitate the capture of wealth.
00:40:13.000Whether that's something like a foreign war, That allows taxes of ordinary people to ultimately end up in the hands of private military contractors.
00:40:33.000But if a system benefits people up to the point where they can survive a nuclear apocalypse And it ultimately doesn't make any difference because they're at the precipice of an AI revolution where you don't need what would be referred to as a working class anymore, then what's the reason to not have a nuclear war?
00:40:49.000Usually when we ponder this apocalyptic breakdown, we evolve Sky in it, don't we?
00:40:52.000The robots realised they didn't need people no more and they might as well have a nuclear war.
00:40:56.000Well now it's like the billionaires have realised they don't need people anymore and they might as well have a nuclear war.
00:41:11.000The most powerful human instinct is meant to be to survive and love and I suppose that's a version of survival but sprinkling little bits of bunker-grown basil on your sunny-side up eggs while the rest of society is dying doesn't It doesn't seem like the optimum outcome for human life, does it?
00:42:56.000And it actually tears me apart a little bit, how addicted to comfort I am.
00:43:01.000But compromise and sacrifice are what we need to learn, not what we need to negate.
00:43:05.000It's their negation that has led us to this peripheral insanity, to this precipice of Armageddon.
00:43:14.000Their name of their company, Up-A-Dum, sounds like an idiot saying, sorry I blew up the world.
00:43:19.000Up-A-Dum, Up-A-Dum, I blew up your planet.
00:43:22.000Up-A-Dum, it's okay, because we can grow those plants under the ground now.
00:43:26.000Up-A-Dum, it's okay, I scrapped a Picasso from the ashes.
00:43:30.000And can shell out at least 10 million for a bunker.
00:43:34.000Why are the media telling this like it's a normal story about, look at this crazy little thing, rather than, okay, here's clear evidence that society is falling apart and the most powerful people in the world don't give a fuck about you.
00:43:48.000Because all the people you see on the news, whether it's from an influential perspective or a political perspective or a corporate perspective, They're the sort of people that will be in these bunkers.
00:44:00.000That's not the instinct or aspect of our nature we should be cultivating.
00:44:04.000The news should be saying, listen, we're in real trouble now.
00:44:07.000Those powerful people in the world are beginning to prepare for the day when viruses and ballistic missiles and environmental threat destroy the planet.
00:45:26.000That's where I go there to really express myself and if ever you hear sort of any unusual moans, groans, tapping sounds, that's the sound of me generating passion and you're not going to come in there.
00:45:36.000Unless you're going to come in there with those lips pursed.
00:45:39.000And a little bit of brass about yourself.
00:45:42.000We've got some new Stay Free AF members.
00:45:43.000Stay Free AF is our membership community where you can stay behind for additional Q&As and you get additional content.
00:45:49.000Like Wendy and Bert, they've joined up.
00:45:51.000Kim Lorraine Leach, Robert Winston, the biologist.
00:48:38.000Douglas Rushkoff in the interview says that they've got Navy SEALs protecting them and like they've inserted, they've working out ways to insert chips in them because like the Navy SEAL, hang on a fucking minute!
00:48:58.000I reckon we should get... I wanna get Jocko Willink on this show and cuddle him so hard.
00:49:02.000No, like, Jocko Willink, former Navy SEAL... Whenever you say that, it sounds like you wanna, like, set up a little fight.
00:49:06.000I wanna get Jocko Willink and Bill Gates and let him go for it!
00:49:10.000Because I like Jocko Willink, because he's got, like, such a squ... There's no way, when you're looking at Jocko Willink, that you could ever make the mistake of, I think I could have him in a fight.
00:49:19.000Like, you could never make that mistake.
00:49:21.000He looks like... Like, he looks like he could use his, sort of, chin to smash your face in.
00:49:26.000Like he could hurt your elbow with his chin.
00:49:33.000Firstly, I'll ask him about would the Navy Seals have the capacity to sabotage that Nord Stream pipeline and do you think it will be in line with American policy?
00:49:41.000The sort of thing he might not want to say, maybe.
00:50:09.000If you have a look at Jocko Willink you can see what what my fascination is based on that sort of like there's some pretty serious machismo coming out of the man he's also like a BJJ black belt and everything.
00:50:18.000Yeah let's get on the show because I'd like to talk to you about the old Nord Stream Pipeline.
00:50:22.000I'm thinking of some very silly innuendo right now around pipelines, which I don't know what I'm not going to do.
00:50:27.000It's sort of in case Jocko Willink eventually learns of it.
00:50:31.000I don't want him to have that reference of some dumb innuendo and stuff.
00:50:36.000Mate, did you want to say anything else about these bunkers before we show my interview with Douglas Rushkoff?
00:50:42.000I was looking into experiments that the US government did in the 60s.
00:50:46.000During the early days of the Cold War, governments, the military and universities conducted numerous experiments to see how long people could withstand being trapped underground together.
00:50:57.000In total, in the early 60s, about 7,000 people volunteered to be locked in spaces with groups ranging from the size of a family to more than 1,000 people as part of a US government's attempt to assess the psychological impact.
00:51:09.000I like the idea that you're trapped underground to see how long you can withstand it.
00:51:13.000That was a glorious day, glorious time for behaviouralism, all of that meal groom experience.
00:51:22.000And then like the experience where they dress up as prison officers and in about a day half the students are like, I hate those fucking screws man!
00:51:29.000That's for you to do maths class with him!
00:51:32.000Like, people, like, immediately are easily influenced.
00:51:34.000But when I used to do movies, like, the people that were dressed up as police, I used to think, hmm... Well, better watch what I say around him.
00:51:41.000Like, it's... That's, I suppose, the point of a uniform and these kind of signifiers.
00:51:50.000No, my kids go to one of them schools where they can basically do what they want, and like I'm even, like you know those kids, there's special schools, like where they can smoke and that.
00:52:13.000But what I've always told my children is never trust authority and always confront authority and always assume that a rule is a bad rule until you've seen that it's not.
00:52:23.000I can't imagine you were one for uniforms at school, yeah?
00:53:11.000The odd thing is it teaches us that, I think, of the ultimate futility of trying to live a life where you want to build a car that can escape from its own exhaust.
00:53:25.000You know, it's what the tech bro billionaires who are trying to build bunkers are really using what I started to call the insulation equation.
00:53:35.000They want to know how much money and technology do I need to insulate myself from the reality I'm creating by using Money and technology in this way.
00:53:51.000So the real lesson is that, oh, instead of building a civilization or an empire in order to escape from the reality of nature and people and women and all the stuff they're afraid of, learn to join the others and have a much better time at it.
00:54:12.000Billionaires added five trillion to their collective fortunes during the pandemic.
00:54:17.000So the reality is that there is now a separate reality, a billionaire class.
00:54:23.000Already, while their bunkers may not be subterranean, the bunker mentality already exists.
00:54:51.000I mean, even even Jeff Bezos, you know, Bezos going up in Blue Origin and the ultimate example of white flight.
00:54:58.000You know, that's still not a reasonable escape strategy from any kind of disaster that would befall the planet.
00:55:07.000I, myself, have always been driven by a kind of scarcity model and a kind of fear mentality.
00:55:13.000But what I had to do is, right, if I can just do these things, I'll be alright!
00:55:18.000And I suppose, though, I suppose the difference is, is whether someone that's operating at my level, is that the, of course, it's contributing to a collective impact in a number of ways, environmentally, ideologically, politically, etc.
00:55:29.000But actually, if you're Jeff Bezos, or the people that are in the territory that they can actually afford these bunkers, it's almost making a verifiable, measurable impact.
00:55:41.000As you say, they're like, as a Uroboros component, they're devouring their own tail as they enter the bunker.
00:55:49.000It's like they're playing a mind game, but they have enough money for the mind game to actually seem like it's working, right?
00:55:58.000They could, in some ways, the evidence of climate change, or economic unrest, or electromagnetic pulse, or a nuclear war, those kinds of disasters help them justify their privatization of the world.
00:56:17.000Hoag670 goes, how will Amazon delivery find your bunker?
00:56:22.000How will your drone deliver your stuff?
00:56:23.000Pdon, just as border walls are simultaneously imprisoning citizens, these bunkers are just the rich digging their own graves.
00:56:31.000The brilliant British writer Robert McFarlane says that we only put things under the ground that we deeply cherish or that we're so ashamed of that we want to hide forever, like imagine a dead body.
00:56:41.000Or nuclear waste, but then also the sort of tombs of the revered buried with jewels and even their beloved pets and this sort of bunker idea.
00:56:51.000Do you know what I see it at from a psychological perspective?
00:56:55.000It's like an unwillingness to confront reality.
00:56:57.000It's like literally burying your head in the sand.
00:57:01.000If the system that you are a dominant contributor to is causing the destruction of the planet, Isn't it time now to look at how you could participate in new systems rather than, right, so I keep destroying it but then I can go over there and it's so mental.
00:57:17.000I used to think a lot when I'd see people sleeping rough, you know, homeless people, street sleepers, whatever, rough sleepers, whatever you want to call them, that The degree of comfort that I had then, like living in an apartment or whatever, was like, I'm able to remove myself from the reality of suffering.
00:57:33.000But like, once you are homeless, then suffering is on you.
00:57:36.000And I suppose that material wealth is about moving away reality to the point where you don't have to, you're not confronted with it at all.
00:57:51.000Because if it's not bunkering down into the ground, They're going into space, and if it's not that, then it's trying all kinds of techniques to live forever.
00:57:59.000So you know, you've got like these billionaires who are experimenting with using young people's blood and things like that.
00:58:05.000They are trying literally everything they can to live forever.
00:58:08.000And so many things are enshrined in myth, like vampirism, like the idea of vampires exists mythically perhaps.
00:58:15.000Perhaps to sort of safeguard against the idea that, oh, well, we can suck the lifeblood out of people that that's the only resource they have left.
00:58:23.000And even moving closer to the sun is mythically explored and understood.
00:58:29.000Elsewhere in the conversation, Douglas was saying about like a kind of disembodiment.
00:58:33.000And we're being invited now to inhabit the metaverse.
00:58:36.000We saw an amazing video of like Walmart now who are entering the healthcare space and now have a
00:58:41.000sort of a supermarket where you can shop online. But it's really horrible in their
00:58:46.000supermarket. You walk around with like the shop assistant don't have no legs and that and she's
00:58:50.000sort of floating around like Casper the friendly shop assistant. Would you like
00:59:09.000Why are we sort of synthesizing what is deeply already known?
00:59:13.000That there is a connection between us.
00:59:15.000The reason that I can't get drawn too much into hateful rhetoric, even though I obviously as a human being experience hate and judgment and all those kind of things, just realize that cannot be the solution.
00:59:26.000This cannot be about finding a group of people that don't have power and condemning them.
01:00:49.000I could see them they were brightly lit on rowing machines with their tops off
01:00:52.000and for them something... Hang on a minute. First of all you said... Why do you need context?
01:00:56.000You said the row club like everyone knows what you're talking about to start with. You know the row club.
01:00:59.000And then you talking about men with their tops off. What's going on? God all right.
01:01:03.000I was walking down the river with my wife, just a couple of normal people living normal lives, and then I could see the road club, because it's by a river, and it's illuminated up by a bridge.
01:01:12.000And we could see them in there, and every so often you'd hear them sort of shout like people exercising do.
01:01:17.000Or something like that, you know, to get it more... That's it.
01:01:20.000And like, they had their tops off, and I was thinking, that to them, that's just their normal life.
01:01:25.000Come on, we know you were thinking four.
01:01:27.000It was quite far away, but I knew it would be four.
01:01:30.000Because there's a level of beauty, where even if you're a person of sort of declared heterosexual, such as myself, there's a level of sort of beauty where you think, well I don't really care what you are, I just like the shapes, let me poke that!
01:02:05.000I stood there like that, a single tear, a flaccid tear.
01:02:14.000I'm just saying that there are all sorts of avenues in reality to occupy did you not think when you was a kid that you'd like to be in a computer game where you could sort of do anything where it wasn't even restricted by the agenda of the game that you could just wander around and be in reality and experience it then you think this is reality like if you ever put a virtual reality helmet on you start to realize actually I I'm in a virtual reality helmet.
01:02:39.000There's more to be experienced than the limited senses will allow us.
01:02:43.000Not that the senses aren't wondrous, but it's a curated reality we live within.
01:02:47.000So if within that curated reality you live within a subset of moral values, particularly if they're sort of persecutory, if they include self-hatred or hatred of others, we have to transcend them.
01:05:03.000We've been talking about bunkers and how it's a sort of physicalisation of several things.
01:05:08.000Obviously a social bifurcation, the separation of an elite class, well someone in the chat said you shouldn't call them an elite class because they're parasites on ordinary working folk.
01:05:18.000It obviously demonstrates that economic inequality and I was thinking before that the submergence in the ground sort of demonstrates something.
01:05:25.000What else can we draw from this phenomena of the bunker?
01:05:30.000Yeah, I think historically a bunker, we can think of course, is very much linked to narratives of security.
01:05:41.000So, you know, when Hitler kind of accelerates the bunkerization of Europe in World War II, when he builds 25,000 bunkers, which kind of was called the Atlantic Wall, this gives rise to an idea of what's called Fortress Europe, where we kind of protect this kind of Terrain.
01:05:55.000Now, the question of the bunker symbolically is, what's being protected?
01:06:00.000What rights, what values, what ideas are being preserved?
01:06:03.000And there's an interesting piece by Paul Virilio.
01:06:06.000He wrote a brilliant book called Bunker Archaeology.
01:06:08.000And he says, you know, bunkers are built in response to a menacing outside, but they're always inhabited by madness and monsters.
01:06:15.000And I think it's a really interesting way of thinking about, you know, the madness of creating something.
01:06:19.000Because if you think about it, it's inherently nihilistic.
01:06:22.000It's about people who've really given up on the world, given up that we can resolve our problems.
01:06:28.000Oh, Brad, what you're telling me suggests that even the existence of these bunkers is an indication that they have declared that the world will soon become an unlivable space.
01:06:40.000Well, I think it's interesting if you look at who's planned to be inhabiting these bunkers.
01:06:44.000And if we talk about the elite class, it's largely the technocratic class.
01:06:47.000And we're living in an age of a technocracy today.
01:06:50.000And that technocracy, on the one hand, is encouraging us all to live this metaverse lifestyle.
01:06:55.000And they are the ones who will kind of not only live in the kind of, you know, the real world, but also they're the ones who'll survive this real world.
01:07:01.000What was also striking, I saw the video that you showed, is what is actually represented in terms of what's kept, you know, we know the great works of art, but what was striking was there's no animals in this.
01:07:16.000And obviously, we say there's, you know, the servants.
01:07:18.000Perhaps we won't need the servants, because AI will do all that kind of stuff, you know?
01:07:21.000And I think there's... It's actually revealing about the kind of future we're imagining.
01:07:25.000And if this is left as the only imagination left to us, you know...
01:07:29.000When Verilion says madness and monsters, Brad, do you think that that's sort of more relevant when you consider the image of mad Hitler in a bunker with his Reich crumbled around him?
01:07:40.000Or do you think that this monster and madness model can be applied to the kind of bunkers that we're discussing today?
01:08:00.000I mean, intellectually, psychologically, if you were to inhabit this bunker, aside from the fact, you know, whatever would be the very first bunker divorce or the very first bunker murder.
01:08:11.000I've really gone off you since we've been in this bunker!
01:08:15.000But I think in terms of, you know, the monstrous is really the world which follows.
01:08:18.000And I think the madness is the point that leads us to the brink of annihilation.
01:08:36.000And even the commodification of the apocalypse, the idea that this can be survived, somewhere in that commercial for Oppidum, it listed the potential reasons why you might want a bunker.
01:08:49.000It said something like, native unrest, and pandemics, and then I think it sort of said, like, war.
01:08:56.000The idea that that is, that those crises, that you wouldn't spend your energy and your resources in creating a planet that meaningfully addresses those crises rather than, well, like you said, it's nihilistic because it accepts the inevitability of that condition and then says, but we'll be alright!
01:09:15.000Because we're going to be down here with a work of art and no pets.
01:09:19.000Well, I think it's also interesting, you know, there's another great theorist on the apocalypse, a guy called Jacob Taubes said, at least the old apocalyptic narratives had an idea of a better world to come.
01:09:29.000You know, it's the only thing we can do is just commodify the apocalypse and commodify it in a way which becomes, as I say, ultimately nihilistic.
01:09:37.000That's what happens if you try to materialise everything.
01:09:39.000Like, I read an analysis of Christ once, saying that Christ was part of a tradition of apocalyptic preachers.
01:09:46.000When you look at it historically, where he was not the only evangelist at that time, saying, you best get your shit together, because in the hereafter, it's gonna go down!
01:09:58.000And like, obviously in that vision, We're moving towards a kind of moral singularity.
01:10:06.000We're moving to a place of true unity, a place of reckoning, where we're forced to confront that our value systems have been irrelevant, wayward, sinful, broken.
01:10:18.000But it's almost like we're trying to hedge the possibility of necessary morality.
01:10:24.000Yeah, but I think obviously there's... I agree with you completely and also... Because I actually hit a pulpit there because I'm so serious.
01:10:30.000But also there's that point about, you know, There's no philosophy without death, right?
01:10:38.000And what these bunkers seem to represent also is this inability to recognize the question of death in terms of, you know, what does the broad annihilation of the planet except for the top 2% actually mean, philosophically, in terms of what it means for humanity?
01:10:52.000You talked about the artwork, you know.
01:10:53.000What's the point of the artwork if it's not witnessed by the human?
01:10:56.000Witnessed by humanity in a shared collaborative experience.
01:10:59.000You know, I don't want to just sat there by myself looking at Guernica all day.
01:11:12.000Gareth said that the super-rich have kind of fetishized.
01:11:16.000You know, you said like there's the vampire thing, the bunker thing, the space thing.
01:11:20.000Yeah, they're either going to space or burrowing into the ground or injecting themselves with the blood of young people and all sorts of other methods to try and sustain their lives on this planet as it is at the moment.
01:11:31.000But they're trying to escape what we currently inhabit.
01:11:35.000Yeah, and escaping what it means to be human, right?
01:11:37.000To be human means to live amongst a messy collective of millions.
01:11:41.000And this is kind of, you know, you say that kind of shift to transhumanism, to put yourself into a computer consciousness or to kind of evacuate yourself into this.
01:11:50.000And maybe the pandemic represents a step in this, you know, the normalisation of bunker mentalities, getting us all to buy into the idea that it's OK to be in permanent lockdown.
01:11:59.000And then, of course, you might die and then as a few will survive.
01:12:02.000Because if you're saying, and you did say Brad because I heard you, that like without death there is no philosophy, if what the current modality, or the emergent modality, is the denial of death through wealth and affluence, whether it's through this sort of modern vampirism, space flight and sort of physical transcendence, or the sort of physical burying their head in the sand, That they're trying to extract this fundamental tool that we've always had, that has been foundational for civilization.
01:12:37.000Even if you think of... I wonder if you contemplate a philosophy that precedes civilization, folk philosophy, the philosophy that would accompany totemism.
01:12:45.000This is a kind of philosophy, isn't it?
01:12:47.000Or do you think it requires a degree of abstraction, that it only becomes philosophy once it's applied to the modes of civilization?
01:12:53.000Is it a type of philosophy to revere the animals that you hunt or the plants that you cultivate?
01:13:02.000The most beautiful philosophy we know is the ancestral.
01:13:05.000It connects, far predates European history and far predates, you know, we think of the artwork, the poetry, the narrative, the history, the unwritten stories which kind of accompany the history of the human condition.
01:13:16.000The other side of that, of course we think of the ancestral as kind of pre-civilization, all this kind of ideas.
01:13:21.000The other side of that is the apocalyptic where, you know, I'm reminded of Einstein's quote when he says, I don't know what the third world war will look like, I know the fourth world war will be fought with sticks and stones.
01:13:33.000And he's talking about this kind of utter devastation, which is the complete antithesis of the ancestral.
01:13:40.000The idea that actually there is a deeper connection that humans can have, which would always philosophical, even before philosophy is kind of invented by Europe.
01:14:15.000So today we were, of course, primarily interested in discussing and analyzing the revelations that Pfizer never even bothered to trial that drug when it comes to transmission.