The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - FREEMIUM： Brokenomics ｜ Best of 2025

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome to, welcome, welcome

00:00:22.120 to, welcome to, welcome, welcome to Brokonomics. Hello, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year to all

00:00:27.680 the Brokonomics viewers. Now, have you ever watched TV and the series will be quite good 0.98

00:00:35.680 and even a really good series will do this and at some point you're just given a filler

00:00:41.260 episode, an episode that serves no purpose apart from to save time and effort for the

00:00:47.380 writers. So I'm thinking of an episode like The Fly in Breaking Bad, which is, you know,

00:00:53.840 the only new bit of content they recorded that is Walter White chasing a fly down in

00:00:58.760 his lab thing. But then they did loads and loads of flashbacks to previous things that happened.

00:01:05.760 It was just pure filler. And I also saw this in Me and the Woman re-watched Stargate and

00:01:13.060 Stargate Atlantis recently. And like every season, they do that. They record a minimal amount

00:01:19.100 of content and then they just do a whole load of flashbacks. And it's really annoying and

00:01:23.660 it's really lazy. And I've always hated it. And I thought if ever, if ever I have a creative

00:01:30.420 endeavor, I am not going to do that shit. Well, anyway, I'm now doing that shit. And the reason 1.00

00:01:35.000 is, is because I am off for Christmas and the studios closed and I was busy and I didn't have

00:01:42.120 time to record an extra thing. So I'm just doing filler crap. But I'm going to try and make it good 0.68

00:01:49.400 for you by highlighting the very best stuff that I have done over the course of the last year and

00:01:56.520 maybe a little bit beyond it as well to find the really best stuff. And so we're going to play some

00:02:02.320 clips of the absolute highlights of Brokonomics. We're going to make it freemium so that all of you 0.98

00:02:08.460 can watch it. Because when I go through these, I'll tell you the view count, but they're the view

00:02:12.480 count of the master race, the people who actually Lotus Eater subscribers. Every so often, I get

00:02:18.280 people come up to me in the streets and say, oh, you're Dan, aren't you? And I love Brokonomics and

00:02:22.380 stuff like that. And then I'm thinking, oh, this is good. So I'm shaking their hand and patting them

00:02:27.780 on the back and then saying, oh, so how long have you been a subscriber? And they say, oh, no, I'm not a

00:02:32.500 subscriber. I just watch it on YouTube. And then I'm thinking, oh, you bastard. It's only £5 a month,

00:02:38.000 right? That is less, that is clearly less than you spend on stuff that will make you fat that you

00:02:46.660 don't need, just mouth pleasure that you have, not that kind, that you have. You could just buy one

00:02:54.340 less bloody coffee or milkshake or something and subscribe and then we can pay editors, right? It's

00:03:00.060 it's important. But anyway, some of you, some of you don't subscribe. And maybe if I give you a bit

00:03:08.180 of talking to you, you might find the Christmas cheer in you just to bloody subscribe on lotuseaters.com.

00:03:15.020 It's literally only £5 a month. You will not be, even if you're proper poor, you can afford that.

00:03:20.940 Anyway. Right. So let's get on with the episodes that we did. All of this is going to be possible

00:03:31.940 thanks to my main man, Thomas, the editor. He's really my co-partner in creating Brokernomics.

00:03:41.180 He does lots of good stuff and he's put this all together. And so what I've got here is a list of

00:03:45.340 things that you, the audience really liked. And then I've tagged a few on my own personal favorites

00:03:49.440 as well. And we talk about what was, what was, what was particularly great. Thomas did, did the

00:03:57.760 one that you should have seen perhaps last week, the one where I was having a conversation with

00:04:03.400 Santa. So he's bloody brilliant. I should give him a, this is his Christmas bonus, me, me giving him

00:04:09.580 some praise. And I went to him and said, I want to have an argument with myself. Can you make it

00:04:13.720 happen? He was like, yes, I can make that happen. So solid stuff. You'll see, you'll see his name

00:04:18.640 often gets attached to the top of episodes. So, so give him, but don't poach him. If, if you have,

00:04:24.940 if you need an editor, um, no, he, he's, he's no good for that. Leave him alone. I want him here.

00:04:31.280 Right. Anyway.

00:04:32.120 First episode that apparently you people quite liked, um, was, um, Brokonomics Economics with

00:04:45.580 Crayons for Socialists. Um, interesting, but that is one of the, that, that got 5,000 plus views.

00:04:54.840 It's really interesting to me that that episode did so well. And the reason that it did so well

00:05:00.360 is because that was probably my lowest effort video of the entire year. Basically I'd, I'd been

00:05:06.740 busy with a whole bunch of other content and some other business stuff that we're doing here in,

00:05:11.800 here in Lotus Eaters. And basically that week I was just run ragged. And I thought, what is the

00:05:17.620 lowest effort that I can put into a Brokonomics? And I thought, I know, I'll just, I'll just, 0.63

00:05:23.640 I'll just get a glossary of basic economic terms. And I'll just sit there and explain them.

00:05:29.400 Um, but really simplistically as if I'm talking to a socialist and you guys absolutely bloody loved

00:05:35.520 it. And this, and this is a, this is a weird thing, right? With content creators. They often

00:05:41.220 notice the more effort you put into something, the less the audience likes it. And the lower

00:05:46.120 effort you put in, the more they like it. But anyway, it's a bit weird. Um, watch this and then

00:05:51.120 I'll meet you on the other side. Um, next basic idea I want to explain the Laffer curve.

00:05:55.560 The basics of the Laffer curve is that there's a peak, a peak point in taxation. So a very basic

00:06:02.080 level chart, actually crayons would have been great for this. Um, imagine a chart that has

00:06:07.560 tax rate along the bottom, 0% to 100%. And imagine on the top part of the graph, it is amount of tax

00:06:16.720 collected. And the Laffer curve is basically it goes up and then down again. Reason. Um,

00:06:24.880 if your tax rate is 0%, then you will get zero tax revenues, obviously because you're not taxing

00:06:32.000 anything. But if you tax a hundred percent, then you will also get zero. And the reason is, is that

00:06:39.360 if you are going to be taxed a hundred percent, you know, everything you do is immediately taken

00:06:44.960 off you. Why would you bother doing anything at all? You wouldn't, you just wouldn't work. There's,

00:06:50.080 there's no, literally no point in working at all. And when the Laffer curve is shown in books,

00:06:56.560 it is often this smooth, um, hump, which might lead you to assume that the maximum point on the chart

00:07:06.000 is 50%. That's often how it's shown in books in practice. And we don't know what it is. Um,

00:07:14.880 because we don't yet have, um, enough real world examples. It would be great if we could set up,

00:07:20.960 you know, a second earth and, and try, you know, taxing everyone half as much on that and see what

00:07:26.800 happened. I think the productive output would soar on that second earth, maybe in time with enough

00:07:32.000 computation and AI, we better run models on this kind of stuff. But I suspect that the,

00:07:38.800 the revenue maximizing point on that curve, i.e. the one that raises the most amount of tax

00:07:45.360 is probably a tax rate in the, in somewhere around the 15% mark. Right. Anyway, hope you like that one.

00:07:52.240 Um, what have we got next? We've got, um, Brokernomics debate, uh, sex, feminism, 1.00

00:07:58.560 and the death of civilization, uh, with, um, almost 6,000 views on that one. Uh, and, and that's

00:08:05.840 proper views, not YouTube views. If you add YouTube views, it goes well beyond that. Um,

00:08:10.640 and this is the, uh, Dutton, uh, Sula Kowalski Rainer debate. So that is when, um, so I had Dr.

00:08:17.520 um, Sula Kowalski on. She was absolutely brilliant. And she reframed feminism for me. 1.00

00:08:23.360 And when I heard the reframe, I just immediately got it. And what she was saying is that feminism 0.98

00:08:30.560 is an evolutionary strategy developed by women to try and prevent other women from having children. 1.00

00:08:39.120 Because if you can prevent other women from having children, that means that you raise 1.00

00:08:45.200 the prospects of your own offspring by virtue of the fact they're competing with fewer other

00:08:52.320 offspring. So the successful feminist is one who lives a traditional life and has children, 1.00

00:08:59.360 but convinces other women to basically stay working in a cubicle, um, get in debt, uh, hate men, 0.90

00:09:07.760 don't have children. And it works and it, and apparently it works for women, but it doesn't 1.00

00:09:12.320 work for men because for men, there's literally no point trying to stop other men from having men.

00:09:16.960 Because if you miss one here, just go around and have all the children. Whereas women, 1.00

00:09:21.760 because fertility is comes in such, um, longer chunks, um, you know, nine months, as opposed to,

00:09:30.320 I know, 45 minutes, maybe a bit less, maybe 10 minutes. Um, there is literally no point in trying

00:09:37.040 to gatekeep men in this way. So, so that's why it is a, a female fem that that's why feminism is a 1.00

00:09:42.560 female sabotage strategy. And so she explained it brilliantly. And then after that, um, loads of people 1.00

00:09:48.720 in the comments were like, Oh, you should get into debate with Ed Dutton. So I did. And his coauthor.

00:09:53.840 So anyway, uh, loads of you really liked this debate, but I think both of them side by side are

00:09:57.760 excellent. Uh, you should check them out. Anyway, let's, let's watch the highlights from that one.

00:10:02.400 I think you're right that it is, it is cyclical. Uh, that's, uh, that, that, that, that's sure.

00:10:07.680 But, but, but, but then the, the best explanation is that which explains the most. And I think that

00:10:14.080 just to say, Oh, well, it's, it's, it's a sexual competition mechanism. Um, I mean,

00:10:20.640 first of all, one of the things you said, I wrote down earlier, um, you, you talked about, uh, the,

00:10:26.080 the, the, the, the reproduction game changing and, uh, you know, nobody's children dying off

00:10:32.880 or something to that effect or fewer, fewer, less troubles have.

00:10:35.920 The child fertility goes down. Yeah.

00:10:38.880 I'm not sure that's quite right because what you see under conditions of

00:10:43.120 harsh Darwinian selection, for example, if you look at the research by Gregory Clark,

00:10:46.960 and the sun also rises, what has been shown in that and other research is that there was

00:10:51.360 substantial differential, um, completed fertility among different social classes.

00:10:58.880 Yeah. So the, the, the, the richer 50% of the society had about double

00:11:03.760 the complete fertility of the poor of 50%. And, and people knew this, people were aware of this. 0.93

00:11:09.680 I forget which, it was some book I've cited somewhere that was written in about 1670 about

00:11:14.000 demographics. And people were aware of this, that the, the, the children of the poor died off

00:11:20.960 and they didn't reproduce. And so it's a phrase that Ollie has coined in, in, in, in a sense,

00:11:25.280 our society was being self-genocided by its upper class, every generation. And the, the, the genes

00:11:32.240 of the upper, of the higher classes, the genes, therefore, of the more intelligent

00:11:36.480 were, were, were, were moving their way down every generation, which is why all of we English

00:11:41.040 people are descended from Edward the third, um, because that process was occurring. So I think the

00:11:47.680 most parsimonious explanation has to, has to take in, has to explain, has to bring into its purview,

00:11:54.960 the genetic explanations, which we have, sorry, the genetic changes, which are Congress with the

00:12:03.120 behavioural changes that we note in wokeness, which would predict that happening, um, and other changes.

00:12:10.720 It has, it has to explain the lot. And, um, your explanation is only explaining an element of it.

00:12:16.800 I think your, your, your explanation could be taken and be drawn under the purview of a,

00:12:20.320 of a larger explanation. Which aspects, which aspects of wokeness are you suggesting that I'm

00:12:25.200 not explaining? Because your explanation then, you sort of pointed out how it was always the case

00:12:30.400 that the, the wealthiest were having the, the most completed reproduction, right? And so the,

00:12:35.840 the less wealthy were not. And so what began happening when societies began getting wealthier,

00:12:42.960 that began to change, right? Once you, once you're in a society where it is,

00:12:49.680 so this is my argument. Once you're in a society where the differential wealth of the wealthiest is

00:12:55.040 no longer sufficient to guarantee differential reproductive success, the woken begin to change 0.99

00:13:00.880 their behaviour such that they maintain that differential reproductive success. And the way

00:13:06.400 they change their behaviour is to engage in manipulative reproductive suppression of the women 0.55

00:13:11.280 below them, because they can't rely on the lack of wealth and the poverty of those women to kill 1.00

00:13:16.240 those women's babies for them. And so what we see now that we are currently calling woke is just the 0.88

00:13:21.920 current manifestation of this female manipulative reproductive suppression by the wealthy women whose 1.00

00:13:27.280 wealth is no longer affording them the differential reproductive success that it used to. Which is

00:13:32.000 why this stuff emerges when societies get sufficiently wealthy that the poorest 50% are no longer just

00:13:38.480 having babies that die all the time. When you're not getting the pressure. Surely the, the, um,

00:13:46.320 under, under, in a context of, of harsh child, of harsh Darwinian selection and high child mortality,

00:13:52.480 um, if you're a wealthy woman, um, there is every possibility that your offspring will die off or 1.00

00:13:59.760 whatever. And so there would be a very strong pressure to be very competitive.

00:14:05.040 Okay. And the next up is, uh, Brokonomics conspiracies. Um, over 6,000 views on that one. Again,

00:14:12.000 proper views, not YouTube views, well beyond that on, on YouTube, of course. Um, uh, with Bo. Now,

00:14:18.720 now this is an interesting episode. This is, I thought this is something that I'd wanted to do

00:14:24.080 for a long time. I like talking about this stuff, but I thought, well, I can't really get away with

00:14:28.240 it. Can I? Because Brokonomics is not really supposed to be that. So, but eventually I just

00:14:33.360 couldn't contain myself anymore. And so I think on the previous episodes, I casually mentioned that,

00:14:38.480 oh, maybe I should do a, uh, a conspiracy episodes with, with, with Bo. And, um, you know,

00:14:45.520 tell me in the comments if you like that. And everybody was like, yes, do that. So that,

00:14:49.520 so that gave me the permission to, to do what I actually really wanted to do anyway,

00:14:53.760 which was, was to talk about conspiracies with Bo. And, um, glad I did. God knows what

00:14:58.720 it's got to do with Brokonomics. Uh, but it was a fun episode and you all liked it because it was

00:15:03.280 really popular. So, uh, let's check out a bit of that. Flat Earth comes out of not entirely,

00:15:08.400 but often it's sort of, um, it can be an early Christian thing. Oh, that's definitely what's

00:15:13.920 going on here. And the dinosaurs often, it's a creationist thing because if you read,

00:15:18.480 they don't want to accept that the earth is in fact billions of years old because,

00:15:22.160 because they go like 9,000 years or something, don't they? Some, yeah.

00:15:25.520 So therefore there can't be dinosaurs. So, so I can imagine if you're a Christian, 0.99

00:15:29.760 you have to get to this position. It's not all Christians. It's a particular type of creationist. 0.84

00:15:33.840 Yes. It's not all Christians, but at all. Yes. Um, you get, you get geologists that are Christians.

00:15:40.160 Yes. It's just a particular type of creationism. Yes.

00:15:43.760 Where they won't accept evolution. People that, uh, people that won't accept Darwin and the theory

00:15:49.760 of evolution, it's all wrapped up in that dinosaurs aren't real or that the geological record is,

00:15:55.600 is not what you've been led to believe it is. And once again, I put it for me, I put it in the same

00:16:01.440 category as Flat Earth is that you, you're just not accepting, you're failing to reason properly.

00:16:07.600 Yes. Geology is, is, is real. So the earth is billions of years old. And if you go down

00:16:13.600 to certain strata, it must be millions of years ago. And there you will find fossilized remains of

00:16:20.240 mega fauna and flora. So it's just, it's just a complete nonsense and cope that dinosaurs aren't

00:16:29.120 real. Yes. For me. I agree with you on that one. It's just, um, ongoing debates, Clinton body count.

00:16:35.440 That's not so much of a conspiracy. I mean, I think that Clintons have been killing people. What do you 0.62

00:16:39.360 think? Well, again, it's a matter of record that loads and loads of people that have been close to

00:16:46.400 them, loads have died in suspicious circumstances or committed suicide. Statistically aberrant.

00:16:51.760 Yeah. Yeah. Completely, completely aberrant. I think it's fair to say that's a matter of record.

00:16:57.200 Hmm. It's not like a conspiracy theory or one person claimed it and actually people have looked

00:17:02.560 into it and it's just not true. It is true. Yes. You get your average person will know a small

00:17:09.920 number of people that died, were murdered or committed suicide. Yes. Very small number. You

00:17:14.960 might know one or two or half a dozen your whole life. Maybe if it's over 10 or 20, that's weird. If it's

00:17:21.600 in the dozens and dozens and dozens, I mean, even someone that's a public figure, that's an ex-president or

00:17:26.720 whatever, an ex-senator. They will know more people than a normal person like you or I. So,

00:17:32.400 okay, they're okay. And all that sort of stuff. But still, still, the numbers are weirdly high.

00:17:40.480 Okay. Hope that was good. Next up, amongst the audience favorites, is Brokernomics 1.00

00:17:47.680 Geopolitical Flashpoint with Faraz Moudad. And so this was the second conversation that I had

00:17:55.280 with Faraz. The first one I thought was absolutely brilliant and that's on my list.

00:18:01.120 This has replaced that one because I put his one on my list. So this one has ended up going here.

00:18:08.800 So this was the second conversation. I think we've got the next one coming up again in a minute.

00:18:12.560 So this was a follow-up conversation. And you can see why, well, after the first one,

00:18:17.280 why I wanted to invite him back. And why after the second one, I had to go and have a word with Carl and

00:18:21.520 Alan was like, you've got to check this guy out. He is solid. We need to get this guy because he will

00:18:30.400 really flesh out what we're offering here at the Lotus Eaters because he can add something that,

00:18:35.760 you know, Carl, Bo and I tend to dip into geopolitics, but we're kind of tourists. I mean,

00:18:43.280 we can do a bit of it, but we, but, but Faraz, I mean, he just has absolute expertise on this and he's

00:18:50.240 super based. Really, really, there's always this competition. Well, Bo and Harry think it's a

00:18:56.080 competition, but there's this competition between, you know, me, Bo and Harry as to who's the most

00:19:00.320 based Lotus Eater. And, um, I, I mean, in fairness, Faraz, he just, he just effortlessly wins.

00:19:06.720 So he's a solid chap. Um, so, uh, yeah, what, what, watch this on the follow up at which point

00:19:13.280 it was obvious we had, we had to have him at Lotus Eaters. If the relationship between Russia

00:19:17.280 and China is strong, it's going to severely reduce one of the US's big trump cards, which is if,

00:19:23.040 if Russia is dealing with its, you know, regional wider orbit of people, and it's doing it through

00:19:28.800 US controlled shipping lanes, the US Navy has the ability to interdict those, which always gives

00:19:34.000 it that trump card in the pocket if it needs it. If the, if the relationship with Russia and

00:19:39.280 China continues to develop in the way it is, all of this stuff is going to be done by transcontinental

00:19:44.320 rail lines, which the US Navy has no hope of interdicting. Exactly. And it basically solidifies

00:19:50.480 that relationship. Yes. And I don't know how far along the path that relationship is, but I'd imagine

00:19:56.880 it's full steam at the moment. It's full steam. They, they're building new pipelines and expanding

00:20:01.760 existing pipelines. They're building more infrastructure. And essentially the policy

00:20:08.720 from Clinton through Bush, through Obama and Biden has given China its Lebensraum. They've given it the 0.68

00:20:16.800 sort of expanse and the natural resources that it needs to be a dominant power. The question is how

00:20:26.640 reversible is this? And if it isn't reversible, can the West be insulated from it? But is it even

00:20:34.560 believable? Because let's, let's say I'm Putin and Wyckoff turns up and he, he convinces me that there

00:20:42.480 was a change of direction in the US and I believe him. I've still got to believe that at the next 0.95

00:20:48.480 election or possibly the one after that, it's going to flip back the other way. Yes. So why the hell

00:20:53.520 should I, even if I agree with Wyckoff, why, why would I go there? Yeah. And this is something

00:21:00.400 that Putin has mentioned repeatedly, that the Americans are not deal ready and that he meets

00:21:05.520 with these envoys, are not deal capable, sorry. And that he meets with these envoys and he meets

00:21:10.640 with these presidents and they keep changing and they all promise one thing, go back home and the men

00:21:17.600 in gray suits sit them down and tell them what it's really like and everything changes. And nothing

00:21:23.120 that was agreed between Putin and the American president actually happens. So Putin's side of

00:21:29.440 the story is that he cannot take the word of an American president. What might be different

00:21:37.040 is if there is a severe enough institutional purge in the United States and there is a change in dogma

00:21:46.000 in the establishment, which is a multi-year task. It's not about appointing a few cabinet secretaries

00:21:53.360 here and there. That might make America deal ready. But there's an argument, transformational change.

00:22:02.160 And there's an argument that it can only happen in the event of a massive shock that hits the American

00:22:08.880 system. Are we talking a civil war level shock or something? Either an internal conflict or an

00:22:17.200 external defeat. Okay. And the last, I believe, of the audience favorites, although actually the rest

00:22:24.720 of them were pretty highly roped by the audience as well, is the Imperium of Dan. Well, it was supposed

00:22:31.200 to be the Imperium of Dan. I told them, I told, I told the guy who does the, the loading it onto

00:22:36.800 the website. I said, I want this episode called the Imperium of Dan, because I thought that'd be

00:22:41.920 a clever pun. And he changed it to the Imperium of Man, which I suppose is more accurate. But anyway,

00:22:46.560 I was annoyed by that. And what did this get? This got well over 6,000 views on this one.

00:22:52.640 So this again is another Brokonomics episode. What the hell it's got to do with Brokonomics? I mean, 0.89

00:22:56.880 I kind of smudged in to fit with Brokonomics, but it was me and Samson, the, the, the producer guy

00:23:04.320 here who does the, the button stuff when we're doing the podcasts and some other bits. He's a big

00:23:09.840 Warhammer fan. So we had a, we had a chat about it and this was framed as a very high level

00:23:16.320 introduction to the theme to see if people liked it so that we could have an excuse to do it again.

00:23:22.720 And actually evidently looking at the numbers, we need to do this again. We, we need more content

00:23:27.760 on this. So, so I need to have a think about how I can again, shoehorn this in somehow to being

00:23:34.560 about Brokonomics. Um, but actually the way we frame it, I mean, there are economic systems.

00:23:39.520 There's a lot of economic systems going on in the Imperium. So it's a Warhammer stuff,

00:23:43.680 by the way, if you don't know, it's Warhammer stuff, which is like in the future and it's a bit

00:23:48.080 grim and dark and all that kind of stuff. Um, so anyway, yeah, uh, watch this, uh, quick highlight.

00:23:53.840 And if you want more of it, let me know because I need excuses to, to do this kind of stuff.

00:24:18.080 Hello and welcome to Brokonomics. Now on this episode, I'm going to be fixing the Imperium of 0.82

00:24:34.400 Man, which is a, uh, which is a big project. Uh, but in order to help me, uh, I've got,

00:24:39.360 I've got Samson. The emperor has called for me to assist him. You're most, I think you're one of

00:24:45.680 the emperor's most loyal servants at the moment. Exactly. Yes. I'm going to call this episode,

00:24:49.520 the Imperium of Dan. Yes. Yes. If you know about Warhammer, you'll, you'll find that incredibly

00:24:54.000 funny. Yes. Um, backwardness and chaos and barbarity and, and humanity looks proper done

00:24:59.760 at that point. Um, until we get the emergence of the god emperor and, and he basically, he comes up

00:25:07.280 and he says, um, no, enough of this. I'm going to, I'm going to put this place in order. And he begins

00:25:13.600 conquering the entire earth and he's very successful. He does that. And once he's finished

00:25:18.560 that, he's like, now I'm going to conquer everything else. Yep. He starts, uh, I believe the,

00:25:25.520 it's called the great crusade. Yes. Basically unites humanity on earth and then begins his,

00:25:31.600 well, soon to be called holy conquest across the stars to reunite this post utopian society.

00:25:38.880 Because he knows there's all these other human worlds out there. Yep. Now he, he's convinced

00:25:44.320 that because the massive space perverts screwed up once before, if humanity doesn't get its 0.97

00:25:50.080 shit together, something like that is, something like that is going to happen again. And the only 0.93

00:25:54.800 way to stop that is if humanity is united under him and then they exterminate everything that isn't

00:26:01.680 humanity, which, you know, give him credit, bold plan. Yeah. Fair enough. Yeah. It has its merits.

00:26:10.640 Yes. It has, it has its merits. So, so anyway, and now in order, and we're almost done with the

00:26:14.800 law bit and then we can get on with the actual problem with Impeel. Um, in order to conquer the 0.80

00:26:19.440 galaxy, it occurs to him that it might be useful to have an entire race of super soldiers built.

00:26:24.880 So he promptly goes off and builds them. So he builds himself 20, 20 generals. Uh, and, and these

00:26:30.880 are basically, you know, transhuman demigods. They're like 14 foot tall and they're multiple 0.94

00:26:36.320 hearts. Yes. Yeah. Multiple extra organs that, um, they keep inventing basically to make them

00:26:42.880 the most powerful soldiers the galaxy I've ever seen. Well, the primarchs, he calls his sons.

00:26:47.840 There's 20 of those. And, and these are absolute super human type beings. I mean, they're, they're

00:26:54.000 absolutely singular apart from him. Right. The next up one is, uh, the first conversation that I have

00:27:06.880 with Fraz. Um, um, Fraz just nailed it in this one. Uh, I, I didn't know what I was getting with him.

00:27:14.800 Um, but he, he came in and he just completely nailed it. And, um, I mean, it's, it is, it's just so

00:27:22.000 good. Oh, by the way, if you're not watching real politic, um, you really should, because he's got his

00:27:27.040 own show now on the Lotus Eaters and it's, um, quite superb. And, and he really gets under the skin

00:27:32.880 of things. And, and, and the other, the other cool thing about Fraz is because, because he's,

00:27:37.280 because he's Middle East and he gets a pass on certain questions so he can just go there. Um,

00:27:43.280 uh, which is kind of necessary for covering geopolitics fairly. So do, do check out the

00:27:49.440 work that, that, that he's been doing. Um, but yeah, here's some clips from the first conversation

00:27:54.480 we had that really cemented him as, uh, as a man to listen to. He's 60, but yes. Okay. Okay.

00:28:00.560 50, 60, they're 50, 60 grand, are they, these drones? Okay. A bit more expensive than I thought,

00:28:06.320 but an aircraft carrier, I don't know how many hundreds of millions that runs into.

00:28:11.200 So let's put all of this in context. First thing, the fact that the plane fell off meant that it

00:28:19.120 wasn't secured properly. And that's a training issue. In a crisis, somebody forgot to secure

00:28:25.520 the plane properly. Well, and also the fact the aircraft carrier was turning so sharply because

00:28:29.840 all the previous lines of defense. But they, yes. So that's the second issue. But the, in trainings for

00:28:36.320 maneuvers, you would train on this kind of sharp turn as part of your regular, uh, work in, in the Navy.

00:28:48.880 And you would, you were supposed to know what to put where and how to stabilize it. Yes.

00:28:56.000 The second part is that it penetrated all of this air defense and that the aircraft carrier did have to

00:29:01.120 maneuver in the first place. Now we don't know exactly what was penetrated and how much was

00:29:06.720 penetrated and how much of it was sort of, uh, just in case, or the air defense was fully penetrated.

00:29:16.000 The third part is that it's been two or three months of this bombardment

00:29:20.160 and Biden obviously had been doing it for, for a while longer. And yet this kind of capability

00:29:28.400 and anti-air capability with the Houthis still persists. So the American Navy is doing all of this

00:29:35.200 fighting and they haven't been able to contain the problem. The final point is that I had,

00:29:43.360 when this war started, I said, Yemen was going to be a huge problem because, um, the nature of the 0.77

00:29:52.240 terrain, the extent of weaponry that's available to the Houthi, the, um, cost of these missiles,

00:30:00.480 et cetera, et cetera. Then I saw what happened with Hezbollah and I thought, well, okay, 0.98

00:30:06.160 if the Americans can fight this way and have that kind of intelligence on Hezbollah's leadership,

00:30:14.240 then they might be able to turn it around and force the Yemenis to comply.

00:30:20.640 So far, we haven't seen that yet. Okay. When you say American intelligence on, on Hezbollah,

00:30:25.440 I mean, do you mean Israeli? Well, it's, it's the same thing. Right. Okay. But, but do the Israelis 0.99

00:30:31.520 have an interest in Yemen? Yes, because it's their shipping lanes that are being shut. It's, it's over

00:30:35.760 their shipping that this is happening. Um, but I don't think that they have anywhere near the same

00:30:42.960 collection capability against the, the, the, uh, the Houthi. The question is how much would they

00:30:50.640 have collected from the Iranians that would have translated into understanding of the Houthi?

00:30:58.160 Okay. Because the Israelis have penetrated the Iranians, as well as Hezbollah, as well as Hamas, 0.90

00:31:03.440 to be able to do the kinds of things that they're doing. Right. And now, um, some clips of, um,

00:31:10.320 episodes that don't fall neatly into, um, the audience top five. There, there's some of my

00:31:15.680 favorites. And actually some of these go back to 2024. So they don't even count in the remit that

00:31:20.320 I was given by my editor, but I just wanted to include them anyway. And actually this one did

00:31:24.480 extremely well. So this is, um, uh, Broconomics IQ, uh, 6,000 views, very solid episode.

00:31:31.360 And, um, it was when I interviewed Ed Dutton and Ed is brilliant. Um, flamboyantly eccentric and, um,

00:31:42.400 touches of genius interwoven into that as well. Quite a few touches of genius, actually. He's a very

00:31:47.600 smart guy. And we had a conversation about IQ. And again, it was, I like episodes where I thought

00:31:55.840 I knew what I was talking about. And then it's like, oh, bloody hell, there's all these angles

00:31:59.840 that I hadn't considered. And I end up thinking about them for quite a lot longer after having

00:32:06.240 recorded them because like, oh yeah, that was, yeah. You know what I mean? Right. Anyway, here's

00:32:10.880 the episode. Well, hello, hello, hello. Uh, welcome, uh, welcome to Broconomics. Uh, I am here today

00:32:16.480 with Edward Dutton. Hello. Uh, evolutionary psychologist. Uh, actually you tell me what

00:32:22.640 you are. Yeah, I suppose I'm an evolutionary psychologist. Yes. Professor Ed Dutton, uh,

00:32:28.400 a man who knows a thing or two about intelligence because, you know, I've got the seeking suspicion

00:32:32.960 that on Broconomics, we are always talking about broken systems, things going wrong. Quite possibly

00:32:39.120 there is a, a more fundamental cause to the ones that we've been discussing up till now.

00:32:43.840 The, the, the, whatever, the, the chavs, whatever you want to call them, you know, 0.81

00:32:46.640 the Dinos, this new word I've learned, they, um, they simply didn't exist in 1880.

00:32:52.720 Because they just wouldn't have made it.

00:32:55.120 We hadn't, IQ had not gone down that far. They, they, they didn't exist.

00:32:59.680 And the P and the people that are the sort of working class of today, as it were, the, whatever, 0.99

00:33:03.920 they're working in a shop, whatever that kind of, they would be on the streets in the workhouse dying.

00:33:09.120 In 1880, they'd be right at the bottom of society. 0.98

00:33:11.280 Because society was basically harder and you needed to be sharp to make your way through it.

00:33:15.280 Just that they were right at the bottom. So they were, they were the bottom. And now there's a new

00:33:19.360 further standard deviation that's coming at the bottom, uh, which is the underclass, which just

00:33:23.840 didn't, those kind of people just didn't exist. That's the opposite of what we used to have.

00:33:28.960 Up until about 1800, it was exactly the opposite. We were breeding for intelligence. And intelligence

00:33:34.000 was going up every generation. That is interesting. Now, another fundamental

00:33:38.480 question that I have before I start to get into a little bit more depth on this stuff is,

00:33:41.680 am I right? Am I right in any way when I think there are different types of high intelligence?

00:33:47.600 Because I'm pretty sure that I would have made a rubbish auditor because I'm rubbish at detail,

00:33:52.320 but I've made a pretty good investor because I'm good at seeing broad patterns and I don't mind,

00:33:57.040 in fact, I quite enjoy being contrarian. And I often meet people who are clearly high

00:34:02.000 intelligent, but they just seem to be intelligent to me in a different way.

00:34:05.040 So is it, are there different types of high intelligence or is it just how you apply yourself

00:34:12.160 over your life that gets you to that point? So first of all, with the intelligence pyramid

00:34:19.440 I mentioned earlier, there is a correlation of, I don't know what it is, 0.5 or whatever,

00:34:24.800 between spatial, on average, between spatial intelligence, mathematical intelligence,

00:34:28.720 and linguistic intelligence. Normally people that are good at one are good at all three.

00:34:31.680 Now, and then you get this G factor that underpins it for that reason.

00:34:35.840 But there are variations. So you're going to get some people that are very, very linguistically

00:34:40.000 tilted, very, very high in linguistic intelligence or whatever, very good poets or writers or lawyers,

00:34:46.800 but they might be very poor spatial intelligence to the extent they can't drive a car.

00:34:50.560 Like A.J. Ayer was an example of that. Couldn't drive a car. Or Einstein used to just get lost.

00:34:56.400 And then you're getting other people, again, very good at maths, whatever,

00:35:03.040 but the tongue-tied physicist or whatever, not very linguistically intelligent. They're unusual,

00:35:08.000 but they exist. Or you might even get someone that has very high linguistic intelligence or whatever,

00:35:12.960 but he's in something lower down the pyramid of intelligence, as it were. Maybe he has very slow

00:35:17.120 reaction time, very slow processing speed. So these kinds of variations exist, and that's going to affect

00:35:23.600 how good you are at certain tasks. What you also get, it's called the cognitive integration effort

00:35:28.960 hypothesis, is that the more intelligent you are, the weaker is the positive manifold between the

00:35:37.920 different kinds of intelligence. So as you become, let's say you've got really high IQ, 145,

00:35:44.000 really, really high IQ, then you might be absolutely rubbish at some of the things that are at the base

00:35:50.720 of the pyramid that I mentioned earlier. The cognitive abilities that are specialised abilities,

00:35:57.120 are modules that are weakly associated with general intelligence.

00:36:00.720 Right, next up, I've got Brokonomics industrialising space. And yes, this was another standout talent.

00:36:06.960 This was, how did this happen? Oh, I know what it was. So me and Bo were arguing on the pod,

00:36:13.840 because Bo likes to do space segments every now and again. And he did one about living on Mars.

00:36:18.720 Mars. And my view is that we should colonise everywhere in the solar system apart from Mars.

00:36:24.480 I don't like Mars. And I then put up the case for why Venus is better. And for those of you who

00:36:31.840 know a little bit about space, you might be thinking, no, that's wrong. Venus is awful. No,

00:36:35.920 I'm right. Venus is better. And I explained it in that episode. And anyway, so there was a planetary

00:36:43.680 scientist who was watching that, who got in touch. How did he get in touch? Maybe a comment,

00:36:49.680 maybe an email, I can't remember now. But he got in touch to say, oh yeah, I'm a planetary scientist,

00:36:53.280 and I agree with you. And he made some other good points. So I thought, oh, he sounds like

00:36:59.280 an interesting person to talk to. So I got in touch, connected up on one of the messaging apps,

00:37:05.280 whatever one it was. And I was speaking to this guy and quickly realised, yeah, OK, he's got talent

00:37:13.040 for this. Let's get him on. So I did an episode with him. And again, because I was trying to shoehorn

00:37:18.640 it into the Brokonomics frame, I thought, let's make it about industrialising space. And it just

00:37:23.120 happened to work brilliantly. And it was such a farsighted episode. I mean, we literally go from

00:37:31.280 low Earth orbit industrialisation up to the colonisation of the local cluster. So I mean,

00:37:37.120 it's just superb. Anyway, audience love this one. And I've had him back a couple more times,

00:37:41.920 and we'll definitely have him back again. So yeah, watch the clip. And if you haven't,

00:37:46.240 for some reason, seen it, go and watch the whole thing. And I'm delighted to say that I have found

00:37:51.280 just the man, Grant Donahue, planetary scientist. Welcome to Brokonomics.

00:37:55.680 Thank you so much. I'm very happy to be here.

00:37:58.480 Good. Well, can you tell us about yourself? What is a planetary scientist?

00:38:02.560 So planetary science is a subfield of geology, which is an annoying term because geology specifically

00:38:08.400 refers to the Earth. But I was trained as a sedimentary petrologist. Professionally,

00:38:14.000 I've worked as both a petroleum and an environmental geologist. But more broadly,

00:38:21.040 it means that I study the evolution of systems. We don't tend to say geology in isolation because

00:38:30.000 we've discovered that there's an enormous amount of interaction between the lithosphere,

00:38:33.360 the hydrosphere and the atmosphere. But considering one without the others is simply not reasonable,

00:38:38.480 both on Earth and on other heavenly bodies.

00:38:40.640 Mm hmm. I see. OK, so you do you do Earth based geology as well. I mean, that that is probably

00:38:47.440 helpful because one of the things I was thinking leading into this is how do planetary scientists

00:38:52.320 get jobs? Because, you know, there can't be there can't be that much demand for it,

00:38:56.400 given that we're not actually in space yet. But if you can do the geology bit as well,

00:38:59.360 I guess that I guess you'll be going to be OK.

00:39:01.520 Yes. So there are a number of Ph.D. programs, positions in academia, NASA, for example,

00:39:08.640 who are looking into ISRU, a word I'm going to use a lot in situ resource utilization for whom

00:39:15.760 planetary scientists are of great interest. But that would be for someone who's who's

00:39:20.720 more specifically focused on that. I am a mere mortal and the allure of the petrochemical industry and

00:39:27.280 the greater opportunities there. They pay well. Yes. Got it. Right. But nevertheless,

00:39:33.600 we could we can dream that, you know, 20 years down the line, there'll be there'll be real demand

00:39:37.600 for the for the planetary side of your skill set. Yes. Getting getting to that point, where do you

00:39:43.440 think we're kind of going to go first in terms of making use of space industry? Because I know there is.

00:39:50.160 I mean, there's obviously quite a bit of space industry at the moment with the satellite systems

00:39:53.360 that we have going around. And I understand things are getting pushed in that direction more and

00:39:57.040 more. So, for example, because there's so much data basically up there in the lower Earth orbit,

00:40:02.800 firms are starting to realize that actually it's cheaper to send data centers up into

00:40:06.640 Earth orbit and process the data there than it is to sort of bounce it all backwards and forwards all

00:40:11.360 day. And once you start, you know, once you start pushing more and more the value chain up into orbit,

00:40:16.800 well, then you've got a growing industry and then it's a natural at some point to go beyond that.

00:40:20.560 So what do you think of the sort of key drivers that are going to take us to make this a proper industry?

00:40:26.000 Well, so studying, there's a wonderful expression in geology, which was by Charles Lyon, who's,

00:40:33.360 along with Hutton, considered the father of geologists. And he said, the present is the key

00:40:37.920 to the past. And so what we, I think a principle we can extrapolate from that is that if we want to

00:40:43.520 look at how we might expect the industrialization to play out of space, we might, it might be useful

00:40:49.280 to examine how industrialization played out or did not play out in the past.

00:40:52.880 And so in that regard, I would say that where we are in space right now is similar to where the

00:40:59.120 Romans were with the area pile, you know, the little thing that spun around, 0.93

00:41:03.200 in that we, the engineering and the technology is there, but because of a lack of resources or

00:41:09.760 contravening economic motives, you know, for the Romans, it was the fact that they had no real call

00:41:15.120 for labor-saving devices. Labor was the one thing they had no shortage of.

00:41:19.440 That did much to halt the advancement of that technology. There was no virtuous cycle that

00:41:26.480 led to reinvestment and reinvestment and reinvestment. But by contrast, when industrialization did kick

00:41:31.280 off in the United Kingdom and the Low Countries and eventually the rest of Europe, there were a

00:41:37.040 series of factors that drove it, most principally when it comes to geology, coal. England and Wales

00:41:43.440 have the most bountiful resources of anthracite in the world, more or less. High-quality coal that

00:41:49.120 burns incredibly cleanly, and it runs right to the surface. And so we, we've been extracting coal

00:41:55.760 since the 16th century. Railways actually predate the steam engine by 200 years, and a lot of people

00:42:00.160 made a lot of money mining coal around southern England. But the, one of the, the interesting things

00:42:06.560 that affected that was that in Rome and Britain, the main thing that limited mining was that you

00:42:13.200 would, you wouldn't exhaust the material seams, you'd reach the water table. And unlike many other

00:42:18.160 applications where alternative forms of power like wind or water were appropriate, if you want to pump

00:42:23.840 water out of a mine, you can't then stop those pumps. If the water gets back in, you rot the supports and

00:42:28.720 the whole thing falls in, it becomes unsafe. And so you need a form of power that is, that is portable,

00:42:33.760 you don't need to be attached to a river, and it needs to run constantly, it can't be periodic.

00:42:37.600 Right, next up, Brokeonomics Energy. Nearly 5,000 views on this one. It really should go easily

00:42:45.200 over 5,000. I think people just thought, oh, it's about steam engines and stuff all, and didn't,

00:42:50.880 didn't, didn't properly apply themselves to it. It was actually a bloody brilliant episode.

00:42:56.880 It was with, um, um, it was, it was with Alex Masters, who I, he was the guy that I had on, um,

00:43:04.000 you know, the, the election stream where I turned up to do the green screen in a green shirt without

00:43:09.680 really thinking about it and accidentally discovered the most amazing thing ever. Well, he, he was my

00:43:15.040 co-pilot on, on that, on the green screen stuff. He will, he wasn't wearing a green shirt because he

00:43:19.200 thought about it a bit more. And, um, anyway, so I, I had him in for Brokeonomics and we talked through

00:43:26.560 how Britain got industrialized in the first place. And honestly, it's, you, you might think,

00:43:34.400 oh, it is history. How interesting. It is fascinating. It is fascinating. And what it's

00:43:41.040 difficult to explain. So I'll just play the bloody clip and then you can see why it's so fascinating.

00:43:46.400 But again, it was one of those conversations that just rewrote my mental model of the past

00:43:51.920 and how we got here and why England industrialized and how it all fits together. And it was just,

00:43:58.640 for me, this is, this is probably one of my, my very, uh, most favorite episodes because it was,

00:44:04.000 it was so, you know, the wiring changed. Anyway, check it out.

00:44:09.040 Hello and welcome to Brokeonomics. Now in this episode, I thought I'd get into that whole net

00:44:13.680 zero business. And I thought the right person to do that with would be Alex Masters. Alex.

00:44:18.960 Hello. Good afternoon. Yes. Welcome to Brokeonomics. Now we may, we may know you as that steam guy,

00:44:26.480 uh, from, from Twitter and various other places. Tell us about yourself.

00:44:30.320 Yes. Well, it does turn out I'm actually a real person. Um, yes. So, um, I'm Alex, that steam guy.

00:44:36.560 Um, I am the chairman of an industrial history charity down in Devon called the Robey Trust.

00:44:43.440 Um, I potter about making sustainable fuels as part of that. Um, and generally just sort of making

00:44:50.800 myself a nuisance in the community driving rollers about. Um, but what I really, uh, am at heart is a

00:44:58.160 sort of a practical industrial historian sort of growing up on episodes of Fred Dibner and things like

00:45:03.200 that. Um, you know, so really trying to live that up. And it was the best of British when we were doing

00:45:08.880 steam things and stuff. England was fascinating because it's, we're at this weird like Goldilocks

00:45:16.320 country where everything is a bit of a pain, but it's not insurmountable. And because England was 0.57

00:45:23.200 quite densely populated, basically all the forests have been chopped down for charcoal making by about

00:45:29.040 the Norman conquest. There's no, there's no virgin woodland in England at all by the Tudor period.

00:45:35.680 And it's, it's one of the things the Tudors have real, real problems with is securing charcoal is,

00:45:42.480 is sources of charcoal. What we then did because that becomes a pain is Abraham Darby in 1709

00:45:52.080 realizes that you can smelt iron with Coke and all Coke is, is coal that's been, it's gone through

00:45:58.800 the charcoal process. So you've, you've expelled all the volatiles and the sulfur and all the rest of

00:46:03.120 it. So this is the set it on fire, bury it, bury it, and then dig it up later. Yes. Warm it up. Yes.

00:46:10.640 Um, well get it nice and hot and then yeah, Coke is a weird, it's, it's, it feels like pumice.

00:46:16.400 It's a very light, um, quite expansive sort of rock. Um, but you chuck that in with the limestone

00:46:25.520 and the iron ore and you can make... But it burns hotter than coal, does it?

00:46:29.120 Much hotter than coal. And it's the impurities as well. If you start adding things like sulfur

00:46:34.640 to iron, you'll make it very brittle. So it's unusable. Oh, and there's sulfur in coal. There's

00:46:39.840 a lot of sulfur in coal, which is what it smells of. Ah, so, so is, is Coke pretty much pure carbon?

00:46:44.960 Pretty much pure carbon. Yeah, you've, you've, you've driven off the volatiles as they say it is

00:46:49.920 and you're left with the sort of carbon matrix that holds them all in. And that's, that's what...

00:46:55.200 And when did we figure that out? 1709. Okay. So right at the beginning of the 18th century,

00:47:01.440 that's in... Isn't that just when the whole industrial revolution thing started to...

00:47:05.600 This is the industrial revolution because what he does there is you don't have to wait for a tree to grow

00:47:10.560 to, you know, you don't have to wait for a tree to grow, to chop it down, to turn it into charcoal, to do...

00:47:17.200 What you do is you mine basically an infinite amount of fuel.

00:47:22.240 You put it in a coking oven. Got it.

00:47:24.400 You can have as much as you want whenever you want and you can make...

00:47:28.000 And so what, what happens there is he's now got a competitive advantage over everybody else.

00:47:31.520 Okay. Last episode for this little roundup and then you can get back to your,

00:47:37.840 whatever it is you're doing. This probably goes out slightly after Christmas. So you're just kind

00:47:43.440 of floating around, waiting to go back to work, having to find reasons to talk to your in-laws,

00:47:48.720 stuff like that. Anyway, so last one before you can get back to all that. Brokonomics house prices.

00:47:54.720 Now I'm definitely breaking the rule of favourite episodes of 2025 here, because this is from 2023.

00:48:00.480 It was actually one of the earliest episodes that I did. And it was with a guy,

00:48:05.600 Peter Laurie, who is a very knowledgeable man in finance, who reached out very early on in my

00:48:12.960 Brokonomics journey and said, I love the stuff you're doing. And we ended up having a couple of

00:48:17.040 chats and it was really solid. But he's also got a housing company and him and his partner came on

00:48:23.760 and they talked about the realities of trying to build houses in this country. Because for most of

00:48:31.120 you, I would imagine house prices are a bit bloody annoying that they're high, they're really high,

00:48:37.840 they keep going up and they're expanding faster than your wages. So it's tempting to take a shot at

00:48:44.720 housing developers. It's like, why are you making it so sodding expensive? When they explain the steps that

00:48:51.360 they are forced to go through in order to build a bloody house, you could easily understand why

00:48:57.840 houses are so sodding expensive. And again, it was one of those episodes that is necessary to watch to

00:49:03.520 understand why we're in such a systematic bloody mess in this country. I mean, there's one bit,

00:49:09.520 I don't know if it's in the clip because Thomas basically did all of this for me, but there was

00:49:13.920 one bit that we explained before they can build a house, they need to send people down there at night

00:49:19.040 to stand in the plot with a ticker tracker thing and count how many bats fly overhead. And that is

00:49:26.800 just one of hundreds of bits of bullshit that they need to comply with before they can build a bloody 1.00

00:49:33.840 house. It's one of those things, whenever you think Britain is screwed up, when you really drill 1.00

00:49:43.040 into the detail and speak to people who know stuff, you realise it is considerably more screwed up than 0.97

00:49:48.720 you thought it was. Anyway, here's a clip. Hello and welcome to Brokernomics. Now in this episode,

00:49:53.440 we're going to be answering the questions to why house prices are so high. And to address this question,

00:49:58.320 I've got back Peter Lorre, friend of the show. Good to have you back. Thanks so much to seeing you

00:50:03.440 again. But also Ian Lush. Thank you very much for coming on, Ian. Now, you've flagged this on

00:50:09.440 previous Brokernomics. You've got a sort of a thing into a property developers.

00:50:14.160 Yeah, these three of us run a small niche house builder, if you like. I suspect housing supply

00:50:21.200 is going to drop because of some of the factors we talk about here. And this is why I said to you,

00:50:27.600 when we started, I want to talk about the banking industry as well. I think we're going to produce,

00:50:32.000 we're never going to get to the 300,000. And actually, it's entirely possible that this

00:50:36.320 year we don't produce the same, we'll be lower than we produced last year. Because every data

00:50:42.240 point you've given me so far shows that supply just goes down and demand just goes up. So the lines are

00:50:49.120 heading away from each other quite fast. And we've seen, what really worries me is every recession you

00:50:55.760 have. You see a drop in the number of house builders. That's also been clear for me.

00:50:59.440 It's clear to me we're in recession now.

00:51:00.960 Yes. So Ian, he just painted a fairly pessimistic picture from supply and demand. Help us get into

00:51:09.600 the knitting gritty. Give us a basic overview of the process of actually building your house.

00:51:14.720 Okay. So you start by trying to identify a possible site that you could develop,

00:51:21.680 which in our experience is mostly brownfield. So existing urban land, if you like.

00:51:31.440 So having identified something that you think might be suitable for development,

00:51:35.120 you've then got to negotiate with the owner in order to strike a deal to be able to buy that.

00:51:40.160 And that's after you've checked that it's within the urban boundary. Therefore, it's likely to be

00:51:45.600 developable. If it's outside the urban boundary, there's every chance that you wouldn't be able

00:51:50.160 to develop it in the first place. So you've gone through a bit of thinking and a bit of process

00:51:56.560 and some negotiation and if you've had to do search to make sure there's not pipes or electric cables.

00:52:01.120 A whole raft of research to make sure that lots of different factors aren't going to be an immovable

00:52:11.120 problem. They can fall into lots of different categories from ecology to categorization of land to

00:52:22.080 where it is to drainage, a whole raft of things that could be an absolute brick wall that stops you

00:52:29.360 ever developing it. And this is something I'd throw in here as well, sorry to interrupt.

00:52:33.680 No, go for it. There's still a certain amount of EU legislation which makes a lot of developable land

00:52:39.600 undevelopable. I'm referring to SSSI here. If you are within a certain distance of a,

00:52:45.760 I'm going to get it wrong now. Site of special scientific interest. You can't develop.

00:52:49.760 So if you're within 400 meters of the boundary of a SSSI categorized piece of land, you can't

00:52:57.200 build. You won't get residential permission. How often does that come up?

00:53:02.160 A lot. It's all over the country. You go off and have a look at possible housing

00:53:07.120 sites all the time. One of the first things we check is how close is it to the nearest SSSI?

00:53:12.880 Oh, so they're all over the place. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And they're lots of different sizes as well,

00:53:17.840 because the definition is all about how valuable is the site scientifically.

00:53:22.240 So how often do you, I'm trying to, I'm trying to think through the ratio of how often somebody

00:53:27.440 gets in touch and say, I've got a bit of land I might be interested in selling. Do you actually

00:53:31.680 make an offer? You could, for example, send out 200 letters across an area, a county, and you might

00:53:42.080 get two or three replies. If you're lucky, you might get one piece of land that becomes a deal.

00:53:48.400 But that might take a year to get there. Okay. Well, with the process you've described,

00:53:54.560 it sounds like it would take at least a year. Well, in terms of negotiating and figuring out

00:53:59.200 whether it's developable. Right. Well, I hope you enjoyed all of those. If you haven't seen all

00:54:04.240 of those episodes, then go and watch them because they're really good. In fact, just, in fact,

00:54:08.480 while you're off, until you get back to work, just rewatch the entire back catalogue of Brokernomics.

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The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - December 30, 2025

FREEMIUM： Brokenomics ｜ Best of 2025

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