The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - Nutrition, History and Politics

00:00:00.320 Hello and welcome to this very special interview where I am joined by Dr Cornish Dale.

00:00:06.800 Did you ever go by that? I used to. I haven't for a while. I've been

00:00:11.920 Roig Nationalist for four years, four plus years, keeping my academic qualifications

00:00:19.600 and my identity under wraps. But now it's out there and so yeah, you can call me anything,

00:00:25.520 but yeah, Dr Cornish Dale's fine, Charlie's fine.

00:00:28.480 I'd say your friends and family call you Charlie, I know.

00:00:30.560 They do, yeah.

00:00:31.600 Okay, yeah. You know you talked about it last time with Carl, but Mr Nick Lowell's outed you.

00:00:37.200 Yeah, I've had a piece done on me. It's a rite of passage almost. But one thing,

00:00:41.360 before we actually just talk about your work and history and all sorts of things,

00:00:45.120 I did notice when you talked to Carl, you said it felt actually like a bit of a load off,

00:00:49.280 actually. Yeah, it really did.

00:00:50.880 That was one of the things I, when I first sort of put my real face out there and started

00:00:54.880 using my real name on Twitter and everything. I felt, yeah, it felt liberating, if anything.

00:01:00.240 Yeah, it really did. I mean, so I, as I told Carl, I wasn't, I was expecting to be doxxed.

00:01:07.040 I mean, I knew that I was on Hope Not Hate's radar. I was in the State of Hate Report 2023.

00:01:13.040 But, and they said, you know, expect Roig Nationalist to lose his anonymity sometime soon.

00:01:20.160 They're really gunning for me. But when it came, I didn't know that it was going to come on the

00:01:24.800 particular Friday when it happened. And somebody just said to me in the group chat,

00:01:28.880 oh, sorry about the docks. Really? Okay.

00:01:32.640 But actually I didn't, I didn't feel any, I didn't feel worried. I didn't feel scared. I didn't feel,

00:01:39.200 I didn't feel anything other than actually just laugh. I just started laughing and then it was fine.

00:01:43.920 And it felt, it felt good. And I actually, I did realize that I had been carrying

00:01:50.160 a mental burden, probably for the last four years, really, that I didn't really understand

00:01:55.200 or feel that I was carrying. But then in that moment, once I'd shed it,

00:02:00.080 I could, I could, I could really feel that actually it was a liberating moment. And

00:02:05.600 ever since it's been fine, I haven't had any adverse effects, really.

00:02:08.560 Brilliant. I've had that. I've worked some really quite stressful jobs before. When I leave or get made

00:02:13.440 redundant or whatever, I suddenly realized, oh, there was a massive weight on my shoulders I didn't

00:02:17.200 even realize. And now I feel too stone light, I sort of think. Oh, so that's good. Yeah.

00:02:21.840 Because the people at home, they want you to be scared or that you're worried an anti-file mob

00:02:26.560 will turn up to your house. Not scary. Yeah, no, it's not going to happen. Even if it did,

00:02:30.880 it's not scary. No, exactly. I mean, these, these people are, yes, they want you to be scared.

00:02:35.760 They want you to deactivate your Twitter account straight away. They want you to panic. They want you

00:02:39.680 to, you know, to try and hide the fact that you've been docked, not to acknowledge it. But I just,

00:02:45.520 I accepted it in my own time because I wanted to, I mean, they published, they published as

00:02:49.520 embarrassing a picture as they could find, which is a picture of me 15 years ago, holding my

00:02:54.320 undergraduate dissertation when I won a national history prize, you know, looking a bit scholarly

00:02:59.040 and not like a, not like a right wing bodybuilder or whatever. But yeah, I just, it was in my own

00:03:06.240 time. I thought I can, I'll, I'll put a newer picture of myself out and I'll totally own it.

00:03:11.280 And I did, but yes, they want you to be afraid. They want you to think that Antifa are going to

00:03:15.920 turn up at your house and firebomb it or whatever. Um, it's probably not going to happen, but also

00:03:22.320 if these people do turn up, like you say, they're, they're pathetic. Yeah. I mean, they're not,

00:03:26.320 they're not worth being afraid of at all. Yeah. I'll just steam into them and bring it on.

00:03:31.520 Yeah. Um, so you mentioned that your undergrad day. So before we get stuck in, I'd like to ask you,

00:03:36.240 what did you do at undergrad and where? Uh, so I was at Exeter in the Southwest. Uh,

00:03:41.440 I did history. Just straight up what? Like modern history?

00:03:44.400 Just a straight up history. So I, I did a, I did quite a variety of subjects actually. I, I did, uh,

00:03:51.120 American history, modern American history, the gilded age. So from sort of the end of the civil war

00:03:56.080 to the early 20th century to, um, the dawn of progressivism, uh, Teddy Roosevelt, all that kind

00:04:02.480 of stuff. Uh, I did medieval history. Uh, so I started doing medieval history in my first year

00:04:09.680 as an undergrad. English medieval history. English and European. So I looked at the Carolingians,

00:04:15.440 the Ottonians, also the Anglo-Saxons, fall of the Roman empire, that kind of stuff.

00:04:20.240 And then from my second year onwards, I really focused on, um, I really focused on medieval history,

00:04:25.520 particularly Anglo-Saxon history. And I ended up in my third year doing my dissertation on, uh,

00:04:31.200 the reign of King Canute and Danish settlement after the reign of King Canute in England. Um,

00:04:37.680 which was interesting because, you know, um, England was conquered twice in the 11th century.

00:04:42.800 We know all about 1066. We know all about the, uh, economic and, uh, political and social effects

00:04:49.360 of demographic effects of, uh, the Norman conquest because we have the doomsday books.

00:04:55.280 But for 1016, when, uh, Canute conquered England, we don't have any,

00:05:00.000 any sort of master document like the doomsday book to tell us really anything about, in a direct

00:05:05.760 way about the kind of, um, social and political and demographic changes that took place. But there

00:05:11.120 is a certain amount of evidence that suggests that actually there was quite a thorough going chain

00:05:17.680 in England after the, uh, after Canute's conquest, maybe not quite as thorough going as the Norman

00:05:24.160 conquest. But there was, there was definitely Canute brought over his own people and he installed them

00:05:29.920 in positions of power. And one of them was a housecarl, a member of his elite, uh, military

00:05:35.280 retinue who he installed in Dorset, my native Dorset. And there's quite a lot of good evidence

00:05:40.960 for this figure called Ork and, uh, and his wife, Tolla. And, uh, so I wrote about them and I wrote

00:05:48.400 about them as a kind of case study of, um, the way that Canute extended his power in the localities

00:05:54.560 through settling Danish, his Danish followers after the conquest. So that was my, that was my

00:05:59.440 undergraduate dissertation. That did very well. Very interesting. Just on that, I've done more

00:06:02.800 than one bit of content about Emma of Normandy. I'm fascinated by the character of Emma of Normandy.

00:06:06.880 Yes. It's like the central figure that binds together a good couple of generations there.

00:06:11.840 And, uh, there's the encomium, isn't there? Her encomium. Yes. She's a fascinating doctor.

00:06:16.640 Um, well, there's a, there's a Norman, there is a Norman connection actually with this chap

00:06:20.960 Ork and Tolla. Um, and I think actually his wife possibly Tolla was Norman. Um, because, uh,

00:06:27.520 when they moved to this area in Dorset, the area around Abbotsbury in, in, uh, West Dorset, um,

00:06:34.560 then there's, uh, there's an association with the cult of St. Catherine and St. Catherine was,

00:06:38.960 uh, was, uh, I think there's a particular, um, center for the cult of St. Catherine in, uh,

00:06:44.240 Rouen as well in Normandy. So there's a suggestion that there's a kind of Norman connection there.

00:06:50.000 But yes, um, it's a very, very interesting period. I found it, I found it really fascinating. And,

00:06:55.360 uh, after, after, um, I was an undergrad, I actually went straight to Cambridge to Anglo-Saxon,

00:07:01.520 North and Celtic, and I left very quickly because it was, I found it so bizarre. It was, uh, it was a

00:07:06.720 strange, it was a strange department and I had a... What college was it out of interest? I always ask

00:07:10.880 what college was it. So I, so to begin with, so, uh, I was at Darwin College, which was a graduate

00:07:16.080 college. That was not a problem. Weird Euro trash types, um, uh, mainly sort of like molecular

00:07:24.160 biologists, not, not historians, not people in the humanities, not people I found particularly

00:07:30.240 compelling. But so I was at Anglo-Saxon, North and Celtic for a very short period of time. I left

00:07:34.400 and I went back to Cambridge the next year and started a, uh, a master's degree in anthropology

00:07:40.800 and social anthropology, uh, which I did. And then I started a PhD in social anthropology,

00:07:47.600 uh, at King's College and, uh, King's College, Cambridge? Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah. So I was,

00:07:52.720 so I was at, so I was at... Many Americans out there don't know that. It's very... It doesn't

00:07:55.280 get much more prestigious than King's College. Yeah. It was, uh, yeah, it was, uh, it's an interest.

00:07:58.960 I mean, that's Newton's college, isn't it? Uh, I think Newton went to King's College.

00:08:03.680 I think Newton might actually have been at Trinity. Oh, okay. Yeah, I think maybe you're

00:08:07.280 right, actually. I mean, King's, but King's is, but King's is amazing. Very, very good.

00:08:11.120 King's is right in the center of King's Parade. Huge, uh, Gothic cathedral, you know, one of,

00:08:16.960 uh, not Gothic cathedral, Gothic chapel. It's one of the finest... It looks like a cathedral.

00:08:20.800 Yeah. I mean, it's enormous. It's on a, on a stupendous scale paid for by Henry VI. Uh,

00:08:26.640 one of the finest examples of Gothic architecture in the British Isles and an endless source of,

00:08:32.640 of wonder for tourists and visitors. You know, they're constantly taking photographs,

00:08:36.720 constantly going in, et cetera. Um, so I, I went down the path of social anthropology. Uh,

00:08:41.600 I ended up writing about Buddhism and starting a PhD on Buddhism that I don't really want to do this

00:08:49.200 either. So I left that and, uh, but then a few years later, I went to Oxford and did a PhD in medieval

00:08:55.760 history. I wrote about the Reformation. Which college there? Uh, Lincoln.

00:08:59.760 Okay. Lincoln. So Lincoln's on Terl Street. It's one of the nice,

00:09:02.960 one of the really nice medieval colleges on, uh, Terl Street. And in fact,

00:09:06.880 what's interesting about Lincoln is that it was quite poor, uh, during the early modern period and

00:09:13.760 into the sort of modern period. So it didn't get upgraded in the way that a lot of medieval colleges

00:09:18.880 did. So somewhere like Balliol, then they built these absurd sort of Swiss, um,

00:09:23.680 Swiss towers on it in the 19th century. And the other, uh, medieval colleges like Exeter and Jesus

00:09:30.160 on Terl Street, then they had an extra level added, uh, later on. But, but Lincoln remained

00:09:35.920 in its basic medieval form, two stories. So it's, it's kind of like an untouched,

00:09:40.880 largely untouched medieval. Like a really small cloister thing in the middle. Yeah. Lovely. Yeah.

00:09:46.240 Two, uh, three cloisters, three cloisters or two cloisters and a garden, um, uh, early modern chapel.

00:09:52.320 So the chapel's a bit newer, but, um, really, really lovely, uh, medieval college. And I wrote

00:09:57.440 about the Reformation. I wrote about, uh, the Reformation in one English parish. That was very,

00:10:04.080 very, it was pretty niche. You know, it was, uh, one, one parish in Dorset, my native Dorset, um,

00:10:10.400 called Winborn Minster, which is near Bournemouth. Uh, it was an interesting parish for a variety

00:10:17.040 of reasons. The church there was a Royal church before the Reformation was owned by the King.

00:10:21.680 It was called a Royal Free College. Um, so it was, uh, it was a parish church, but it was also a college,

00:10:28.480 um, that had a clerical, uh, a clerical community there. But really what, what happened was the,

00:10:34.640 the King used the college as a source of patronage. So he would give positions to people in his household

00:10:39.840 there. So they just got money basically for doing nothing. So, uh, it was an interesting,

00:10:44.320 anyway, it was an interesting parish church. And what, and what I did was I studied

00:10:48.640 the kind of, uh, religion that the parishioners were doing before, during and after the Reformation

00:10:54.160 and, and, and looked at how things changed based on a local level, because you've got these big changes

00:10:59.360 that take place during the Reformation, of course. You've got Henry VIII's break with, uh,

00:11:04.800 uh, the Roman church over his, his small matter of his, um, marriage to Anne Boleyn, uh, to, sorry,

00:11:12.080 to Catherine of Aragon, and then, uh, remarriage to Anne Boleyn. Um, you've got these big changes

00:11:17.840 that take place, the dissolution of the monasteries, all this kind of stuff, but actually what happened

00:11:21.600 to ordinary people? How did ordinary people's religious lives change? And so that's what I investigated

00:11:27.520 basically. It was quite novelistic, uh, which is what I wanted it to be. I didn't want it to be

00:11:32.560 dry. You know, a lot of, a lot of academic history is, it's, you write a PhD, you're writing within a

00:11:39.120 very small niche. And, uh, certainly there's a tendency I think for, uh, dissertations even in

00:11:46.560 the humanities to be very dry. And I thought, look, I'm going to write something that's novelistic that

00:11:50.400 gets as close as possible to ordinary people's experience, ordinary people's, uh, the way that

00:11:57.680 ordinary people process these tremendous religious changes. And, uh, I think I did it. Uh, I think I

00:12:03.920 did it. And, uh, I finished my, my PhD in 2018, didn't want to be an academic and, uh, had to kind

00:12:11.040 of, uh, uh, ended up eventually landing on my feet and, uh, doing what I'm doing now being the,

00:12:17.440 being the right nationalist. Well, if we ever get you back,

00:12:21.600 I would love to chat to you about the reformation.

00:12:23.600 Mm. Yeah, we should. I'm fascinated by the character. We really should be talking about

00:12:27.360 ex-Benedictive, but just while we're doing this, I'm fascinated by the character of, uh,

00:12:31.360 uh, Archbishop Cranmer. Uh, I feel like he's, uh, it's still a bit armchair historian-ish, but

00:12:37.760 I'm fascinated by him as a central character in, in a lot of it. Um, of course he was burnt by, uh,

00:12:43.840 Mary. So, uh, the, the story goes on even long after his, his execution, but I'm fascinated by him.

00:12:50.160 And so anyway, yeah, I'd love to chat to someone who I love, I love picking the brain of people

00:12:54.320 who've got a wealth of knowledge and obviously you have on that. So, um, yeah, Cranmer's,

00:12:58.240 Cranmer's an interesting one because of course in Oxford, you, you walk through, uh, along Trinity

00:13:03.520 Street, central sort of street, and, uh, there's a cross on the floor and that's where Cranmer was burned.

00:13:09.280 Right. Outside the, outside the city boundaries, in a ditch. There's a monument obviously, but

00:13:17.040 there's actually a brick cross on the road, on the street, and that's where Cranmer was burned.

00:13:23.600 Horrible. I find his story much more interesting than Thomas Cromwell, for example. Well,

00:13:27.280 I find Thomas Cromwell fascinating, or lots of the people, lots of Henry's henchmen, but for some

00:13:33.600 reason I've been fascinated by Cranmer for quite a few years now. Um, uh, yeah. Okay. Um, all right,

00:13:40.320 well, so we should actually get stuck into the book. So first of all, I take it, um, that was the,

00:13:46.240 the title is a take on, um, the, the Benedict Option. Yes. By Rod Dreher. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

00:13:52.160 So it was, it was kind of, it was funny actually, because I, um, I had a, uh, a copy of the Benedict

00:13:59.040 Option. It was just kind of lurking on my floor. And I can remember I, I was, I think I was sat on

00:14:04.720 the loo actually, and I looked across and I saw the Benedict Option on the floor and I thought the

00:14:08.800 eighth Benedict Option. So I had the title for the book quite a long time before I had a book, before

00:14:14.480 I had an idea for the book that this eggs Benedict Option, and I had to come up with an, with an idea

00:14:19.600 for it. But eventually I did. And yeah, I wrote the book in 2022 and I think it's probably the most

00:14:26.160 substantial formulation of my ideas, uh, about diet and nutrition and the relationship with politics

00:14:35.280 and also, uh, the great reset, the future of food, but also topics actually quite, that are quite

00:14:42.320 surprising, like the agricultural revolution that took place in the, in the near East about 10 to 12,000

00:14:47.760 years ago. So I, you know, I set up an explicit comparison between what happened then with the

00:14:52.640 dawn of agriculture, the kind of untold story of the dawn of agriculture, because we have this sort

00:14:58.080 of triumphalist narrative about, uh, the dawn of agriculture, but actually things were, I think

00:15:02.880 things were quite different. So there's an explicit comparison between the agricultural revolution and

00:15:10.080 the great reset sort of plan for a, for a global plant-based diet for the future of food to save

00:15:15.680 the planet from climate change and also to feed an expanded global population of 10 billion people.

00:15:20.480 Those are the, the main aims sort of, uh, driving this, ostensibly driving this, um, the abandonment

00:15:27.680 of, of traditional animal products, meat and eggs. I did find it very interesting. Obviously I read it

00:15:32.400 for this interview. I find it very, very interesting. And there was, it was much deeper than I thought it

00:15:36.800 might be. I don't know why I didn't think there would be it because it touches on, correct me if I'm wrong,

00:15:41.440 but I feel like it touches on not just the relationship between food and power, but also

00:15:49.520 the whole of human history and even parts of sort of the human condition in some sorts of ways, you

00:15:54.240 know, how we, uh, you know, cause everyone, everyone's relationship, everyone has a relationship

00:15:58.720 with food, right? There's this old adage or tourism or whatever you might want to call it cliche even that

00:16:03.360 we are what we eat. I mean, quite literally every cell in your body is made up of the air you breathe,

00:16:08.240 things you drink and the things you eat. So in a sense, without being too hyperbolic,

00:16:13.440 it couldn't be more important really what we eat. And so to be kind of poisoning ourselves,

00:16:19.840 or being in a way forced down avenues where we don't have, don't seem to have many other options,

00:16:25.360 other toys now. Um, it's very, very important. So there's loads of places I'd like to start with

00:16:30.720 this. Perhaps we could go through it chronologically. So start in that ancient or prehistory time.

00:16:35.600 Yeah, a very good point, which I'd like to pick your brain about first, which is that, you know,

00:16:40.720 anatomically modern humans have been around for hundreds of thousands of years. At the least,

00:16:45.440 it's 200,000 years. Some say it's more like 600,000 years. Either way, it's hundreds and hundreds of

00:16:50.080 thousands of years. And it's only in the last 10, 12 at most thousand years that, that man has sort of

00:16:57.120 start cultivating brains and things. So as you said in the book, you know, 90% or 80% of our human time,

00:17:05.440 we haven't been eating bread, basically bread, flour and bread. And so we're not really in

00:17:11.040 evolutionary terms and evolutionary timescales. We're not really evolved to be eating loads and

00:17:17.120 loads of bread and grain and all sorts of things. Well, we have a, so we have a, um,

00:17:24.480 before the agricultural revolution, so before this big event in the near East, about 10,000 to 12,000

00:17:29.280 years ago, then we did consume wild grains. So there's evidence that we consumed wild grains.

00:17:34.480 So, you know, I mean, wheat is a grass, right? So there were wild forms of wheat. And there's evidence

00:17:39.920 from places like South Africa, from limestone caves, you know, they found evidence of de-hulling,

00:17:45.280 preparation of grains, dating back tens of thousands of years.

00:17:49.120 Would it be bread though? Would they be making flour to make bread?

00:17:51.920 Quite possibly. Yeah. But I, but I mean very primitive forms of bread, like flat breads,

00:17:56.800 you know, where you just, uh, whether or not they were fermenting the bread, uh,

00:18:01.680 Would they have had yeast in... Well, wild, wild yeast. So, I mean, I mean, that's how,

00:18:06.160 that's how you would make like an artisan sourdough today. You, you, you create a sourdough starter by

00:18:11.520 mixing flour and water and just exposing it to wild yeast floating around in the air.

00:18:16.000 Right. But, um, so there's a possibility that they were making bread as we might sort of recognize it,

00:18:21.840 or simple things like flat breads, but there was a season for it, uh, as there is a season for all

00:18:28.880 things, all foods. And so it's quite clear that our ancestors before the agricultural revolution

00:18:35.040 weren't consuming grains as a staple. They weren't having bread every day, you know? Um, uh, the vast

00:18:44.080 majority of the evidence suggests that actually our ancestors were consuming prodigious amounts of

00:18:48.240 animal products. And so if you go back even further than modern humans, there was a study

00:18:53.920 published by some Israeli scientists that showed that our slightly more distant ancestors for a

00:19:00.160 period of about two million years at nothing, almost nothing but meat. So they were hyper carnivores,

00:19:05.760 I think is the term that they use. And that's the reason why we are as we are. That's why we've evolved.

00:19:11.360 That's why we're not like chimpanzees and other eight. Um, you know, the, the, the consumption of

00:19:18.560 massive quantities of animal protein and fats and the superior nutrition provided by animal products

00:19:26.880 is an essential part of our evolution. Just on that point before we go on,

00:19:31.200 would you describe humans, anatomically modern humans as omnivorous though?

00:19:36.000 Oh yeah, sure. Yeah. Yeah. I, I would, I would be the first person to say, yes, we are omnivorous.

00:19:40.800 And, uh, if you look at, uh, so there's a big thing about paleolithic diets, right? The paleo diet

00:19:48.320 that people talk about, you know, I'm going to consume a paleo diet that's in line with what my ancestors

00:19:53.760 used to eat. But then the question is actually which ancestors, because, um, you know, humans,

00:20:02.960 there was no one paleo diet, let's say that. So, you know, humans in different areas at different

00:20:07.680 things. So there's evidence, for instance, that Neanderthals would dive for clams and scallops and,

00:20:15.360 uh, and other shellfish. So they found evidence from caves in Italy on the Ligurian coast, I think,

00:20:21.360 shows that Neanderthals were regularly diving to some depths, free diving, you know, uh, to collect shellfish.

00:20:29.200 So, you know, some paleolithic peoples were consuming shellfish, but in other areas, they

00:20:36.160 wouldn't be consuming shellfish. And in other areas, they might have had access to nuts. Uh,

00:20:42.160 and so they were consuming nuts. And so depending on where you look, you'll find evidence for the

00:20:48.080 consumption of different kinds of food. But broadly speaking, I mean, yes, we, our ancestors consumed,

00:20:55.040 uh, animal products, but they also consumed wild grains. They also consume fruits and berries. Uh,

00:21:01.440 they also consumed nuts, you know, so, so there's a, there's a kind of multitude of things that our

00:21:06.720 ancestors said, but one of the things they didn't eat, yes, they didn't rely as heavily as we do on

00:21:12.560 carbohydrates and in particular refined grains. Uh, they didn't consume as much sugar as we do.

00:21:18.400 And they also ate seasonally. That's something that's important as well. That's something that

00:21:22.080 you have to understand about the way that our ancestors used to eat that, you know, fruits were

00:21:27.040 only available at a certain period of the year. And so, yes, they might have consumed large quantities

00:21:32.640 of fruits when they were in season, but then there would actually probably have been a lot,

00:21:35.840 a long period of time where they didn't eat fruit. They might have eaten tubers maybe, you know,

00:21:40.400 from the ground, wild potatoes, things like that, um, wild parsnips, wild carrots, all that kind of stuff.

00:21:46.080 But actually they were eating seasonally and we don't eat seasonally today. So that's one significant

00:21:52.480 difference. We also eat far more carbohydrates and especially grains. Well, in general, right?

00:21:58.800 Well, I mean, I think, yeah, there's, there's a question about the quantity of food that our

00:22:04.240 ancestors said and whether we eat more than them or whether our problems with health today are as a

00:22:12.080 result of eating the wrong things. And I think it's, I mean, I think that we probably do.

00:22:17.840 The average fat person obviously does consume significantly in excess of what a normal person

00:22:24.560 would have consumed 500 years ago or a thousand years ago. I think there would have been many,

00:22:29.200 if any, I always think there wouldn't be, but maybe there would have been any obese or morbidly

00:22:34.480 obese hunter-gatherers a hundred thousand years ago. Would there have been one? Would that have been

00:22:39.280 possible? I don't, I mean, the general evidence suggests that hunter-gatherers were much more robust

00:22:45.360 than we were, bigger than us. So you look at the skeletal record. Yeah. And there's, there's the,

00:22:50.800 it's absolutely, it's, it's clear as day. I mean, if you look at a hunter-gatherer skull,

00:22:55.840 it's, it's huge by comparison. A human one, not in the end of it.

00:22:59.040 A human, a human hunter-gatherer. So there's a, there's evidence that actually

00:23:05.120 we've kind of been, we've been getting smaller for a long time and becoming less robust, less

00:23:09.600 sexually dimorphic. So there's, there's less difference between the two sexes. I mean, you know,

00:23:15.920 there was a period where humans, modern humans existed alongside megafauna, creatures like woolly,

00:23:23.680 woolly mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses, you know, I mean, the amount of, I think somebody did a

00:23:29.760 calculation actually of the number of calories in a, in a woolly mammoth. And it's, it's millions

00:23:35.200 and millions of calories. It's enough. It's enough to eat for a long time. And it's quite probable

00:23:41.120 actually that our ancestors were consuming massive quantities of food when they were, when they downed

00:23:47.200 things like megafauna, but I mean, they were also, they were consuming the right foods. They were active.

00:23:53.920 They weren't subject to the kind of, the kind of maladaptive influences that we're subject to as

00:24:00.800 well, like chronic stress, for example. We're constantly, we're surrounded by white light. We

00:24:07.200 don't sleep properly. Uh, we're, uh, we're exposed to, to environmental toxins, uh, in a way that our

00:24:15.360 ancestors simply weren't because we're talking about environment. We're talking about industrial

00:24:19.840 chemicals. We're talking about chemicals that have only been synthesized in the last century or so.

00:24:24.160 You know, we are unique in our exposure. Modern humans, uh, today are unique in our exposure to

00:24:29.680 chemicals like PFAS per and polyfluoroalkyl substances, phthalates and, uh, all these

00:24:37.440 chemicals. Or even cesium from nuclear tests and things. Yeah, quite. And the one thing I wanted to

00:24:41.200 ask you about, do you think this would play into, I, I always think it does, but maybe correct me if

00:24:44.880 I'm wrong. The idea that infant mortality would have been absolutely through the roof. And therefore,

00:24:50.640 if you made it to adulthood and we find, the archaeologists find an adult skull. Yeah. Well,

00:24:55.040 it's already preselected for an extremely strong individual anyway, because they just would not

00:25:00.000 have made it to adulthood otherwise. Yeah. There, there are a lot of interesting, um, misconceptions

00:25:06.320 about child mortality figures, you know, and the fact that people, a lot of people don't seem to

00:25:12.080 understand that, you know, the, the life expectancy, uh, of a group of, let's say, hunter gatherers was

00:25:19.760 40, but it was 40 because infant mortality was so high and that skews the, that skews the numbers,

00:25:28.000 right? So, um, a significant number of children died either during childbirth or, or soon after,

00:25:36.320 but actually, yes, if you got to adulthood, you were just as likely to live in your sixties or seventies

00:25:43.200 or eighties. I mean, it was also a more violent time. And there are plenty more ways to die,

00:25:48.960 I think, or some different ways to die in the past that have sort of been eliminated now,

00:25:54.000 violent deaths in particular, but, um, yes, I mean, obviously that has a selective, that has a selective

00:26:00.240 effect. And, um, uh, you go down a whole rabbit hole about, um, about what happens, you know, when you,

00:26:08.400 when you remove the selection pressure on human beings and what it does to society, what it does

00:26:13.760 to the, to the human organism itself. Um, but yes, I mean, infant mortality for the vast

00:26:21.520 span of human history, for the majority, you know, 99% human history has been massive. And so, yes,

00:26:27.760 it's been a clear selection factor, but actually if you could survive, then, um, it's likely that you

00:26:34.320 would, that you would live, you know, more or less as long and certainly probably more fruitful life

00:26:39.680 than the average person today. Right. I mean, yes, you can live to 101 in a, in a nursing home,

00:26:45.280 but would you, would you like to live to 101 in a nursing home or would you like to live to 81 and

00:26:50.080 and be a Chad hunter gatherer? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, infant mortality is even in Victoria,

00:26:56.400 even the early 20th century before penicillium thing. Yeah. But, um, because sometimes people say to me,

00:27:01.760 no one ever lived because I'm sort of classicist, really the ancient world. Yeah.

00:27:05.520 The Greco Roman cultures and things. They said people didn't, they didn't live much past their

00:27:09.600 thoughts. I said, no, there's loads of examples, but Aeschylus was supposed to be in his nineties.

00:27:13.200 Yeah. There's lots of examples of old people. It was rarer, but it's not like nobody lived to be

00:27:17.600 a grand old age. I did a great bit of content with one of our other presenters, Josh, once about

00:27:22.560 early humans. And he told me a story which I'd never heard of before, which was fascinating,

00:27:27.200 where they'd found the scar. I can't remember if it was a Neanderthal or maybe, I think it was

00:27:31.680 pre-human. Yeah. Um, a pre-human creature, like a million years older. And it had grown so old,

00:27:37.760 it had lost its teeth. And there was evidence that other people must have been chewing her food for

00:27:42.560 her and giving it to her a bit, you know, like a bird. Yeah. Um, but that was remarkable and touching

00:27:49.200 and, uh, just not what you would expect. But one other thing before we move on, you talked about,

00:27:53.600 um, we're just, we're exposed to all sorts of other things now. I wanted to touch on sugar,

00:27:59.120 because I'm not, I didn't talk a great deal about sugar in that. I feel like, um, other than a bit

00:28:05.120 of fructose in fruit. Yeah. Yeah. People in the pre-modern times, um, or even a few, few centuries

00:28:11.920 ago, the idea of having loads and loads of sugar in your diet, certainly like refined sugar, just would

00:28:17.920 not happen. No. And now loads of people get diabetes. They basically abused sugar. The other

00:28:25.120 day I was in a restaurant and some people next just got a dessert and it was like this giant

00:28:29.920 sundae thing, loads of whipped cream on it and a big lollipop stuck in the top. And it just,

00:28:34.720 I looked at it for a moment because I haven't got a particularly sweet tooth, you know,

00:28:37.360 he doesn't like a donut, but I haven't got a massively sweet tooth. But I looked at this thing and I was

00:28:41.760 like, that's absurd. Yeah. That's absolutely absurd. Our ancestors could not have dreamed of such a

00:28:48.960 thing. No. No. I mean, what do you think about sugar in our modern diet? Well, you're right that

00:28:54.240 our ancestors couldn't have even have begun to conceive of the, of the levels of sweetness that

00:29:00.240 we are subject to. And, you know, sweetness is a very, very powerful cue to the nutritional content

00:29:06.240 of something. And in particular to the fact that it contains, uh, fast energy basically, you know,

00:29:13.440 but our ancestors, I mean, yes, our ancestors would have had access to things like honey,

00:29:17.440 for example, at a cost, at a cost though, at a cost because, you know, you harvest a wild,

00:29:22.560 a wild beehive and that's a risk. You have to climb up, uh, up the side of a cliff to get it. And

00:29:28.400 when you're up there, there are bees stinging you. Um, so you don't get it all that often generally,

00:29:33.360 but you do get sweet things. You get honey, you get berries and fruits, but you have to remember

00:29:37.680 there that, um, you know, our modern varieties of fruit has been selectively bred for extreme

00:29:43.360 sweetness. Um, so I mean, a wild berry is not the same. A genuine wild berry of 10,000 years ago is

00:29:52.000 not the same as a, as a, uh, uh, selectively bred Loganberry that you buy at the supermarket or the

00:29:59.040 farm shop or grow yourself. Um, but yes, I mean, fundamentally it's like with the grains. I mean,

00:30:04.560 we, yeah, we don't have a history of consuming sugar in such quantities. And, uh, I mean, my, my broad,

00:30:12.240 my broad approach to nutrition, the history of nutrition is that we need to pay attention to how

00:30:17.520 our ancestors there. And because how our ancestors at back 200,000 years, and then even further shaped

00:30:25.040 who and what we are, we evolved under those conditions. Uh, we adapted to those conditions.

00:30:31.200 Our bodies are suited to those conditions. Agriculture is a blip and, um, certainly the

00:30:37.120 consumption of, of massive quantities of sugar, hundreds of kilos, you know, a hundred kilos of

00:30:41.920 sugar a year. That's, uh, that's, that's something we haven't adapted to deal with yet. And I do think

00:30:48.960 it absolutely is a key part of not the only part of chronic disease. And I don't think that, um,

00:30:54.800 sugar should be fingered solely as it often is. People often try to say, you know, it's the sugar.

00:30:59.600 It's just all sugar is the problem. No, it's things like vegetable, toxic vegetable and seed oils. Um,

00:31:05.520 it's refined grains. It's, it's other things. Um, it's food additives, uh, and other exposures,

00:31:12.960 toxic exposures. But, um, I mean, one of the things that's interesting as well about sugar,

00:31:18.080 and this is certainly true in the U S is that sugar is smuggled into things as well. So people,

00:31:23.120 people don't really- Like beans or something. People don't, people don't understand that they,

00:31:29.200 they look at a product and they don't understand just how much sugar it contains. So in the U S,

00:31:34.560 um, uh, what gets smuggled, especially into processed food is high fructose corn syrup. So

00:31:43.200 there's a fantastic book called The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. It's, it's, uh,

00:31:48.160 was published about 20 years ago. It's one of, it's one of the most quietly radical books about

00:31:53.200 nutrition, actually. I think you could read really worth reading, but it's about why Americans

00:31:58.640 eat so much corn basically, because they do, they eat huge quantities of corn. Uh, and it's about the

00:32:05.360 subsidy system that's in place that subsidizes the overproduction of corn. That's a relic of the

00:32:11.280 first world war and an outgrowth of, of economic policies from the first world war. Um, and so

00:32:17.600 there's this mountain of corn and corn is being overproduced and it's being overproduced because

00:32:22.480 of subsidies and the corn has to go somewhere. So it goes into food, you know, manufacturers,

00:32:27.040 producers of corn are constantly finding new places to put corn. And what they did in the 1970s

00:32:32.560 was they created what was supposed to be a sugar substitute, high fructose corn syrup, right?

00:32:38.000 So you use an enzyme and you turn corn into a sugar syrup and it was marketed as a substitute.

00:32:45.840 They were going to replace table sugar in product, right? Well, actually what they did instead was

00:32:50.240 they just added it to product in addition to the sugar that was already in there. So instead of

00:32:55.360 Americans replacing their table sugar consumption with high fructose corn syrup, they just added high

00:33:00.720 fructose corn syrup to their diet. So they got like a double dose of sugar. So you go into an American

00:33:06.320 supermarket and you look, you pick some food off the shelf at random, it will have high fructose corn

00:33:10.960 syrup in it. A hot dog will have high fructose corn syrup in it. Uh, condiments will be, will be

00:33:16.400 stuffed with it. Um, it's, it's everywhere. So you talk about that in the book.

00:33:21.040 I, yeah, I do because it's because it's a, it's a good example of the really insane priorities of the

00:33:26.800 modern food system, especially in the U S I mean, it's most insane in the U S. Um, because you have,

00:33:32.800 among other things, like I say, like my pollen says, you have this system that incentivizes the

00:33:38.160 overproduction of commodities, especially corn that people don't actually want or need.

00:33:43.760 Right. People don't need all that corn, but the food system is, is, um, organized in such a way that

00:33:50.400 actually it's not about what it's not about suppliers, manufacturers giving people what they need.

00:33:55.520 It's about, it's about ordinary people. Yeah. It's about the money and it's about actually ordinary

00:34:01.040 people giving money to corporations, uh, because they've got so much of this product that they want

00:34:06.800 to sell. Um, the, the priorities, uh, uh, are basically asked back. So, um, but yes, I mean,

00:34:14.000 sure to go back to the main point sugar. Yeah. Sugar is a, we are consuming sugar in quantities.

00:34:19.040 We've never consumed it before. I mean, most people didn't have access to sugar until a few hundred years ago,

00:34:24.400 you know, until really until certainly European people, certainly until the creation of the

00:34:29.040 Atlantic slave trade and the plantations in the West Indies, um, and the, uh, the Americas. Um, so

00:34:36.240 ordinary people didn't even have access to sugar. I mean, there were things that they could use to

00:34:39.680 sweeten foods, but I mean, nobody was putting sugar in their drinks or making foods with sugar in them.

00:34:45.840 And sugar cane doesn't grow in Northern Europe. No, no. A couple of things, you said loads of things

00:34:50.880 there I could, uh, bounce off of and ask you more about, but one thing you mentioned that like berries,

00:34:56.080 for example, I once saw a program a few years ago and it was all about, um, Tudor food. Yeah.

00:35:02.400 And they showed you what strawberries were like in the Tudor era and they're, they're like tight,

00:35:06.160 they're like that big. Yeah. They look like a raspberry. Yeah.

00:35:09.280 Or perhaps even smaller. And now we've got massive fat. You just get ridiculous, like James

00:35:13.680 and the giant peach star, ridiculous strawberries now. Yeah. I think that's the same with all sorts of stuff.

00:35:17.600 I, one time I saw something about Roman era food and I was like, this is what a free range chicken

00:35:21.920 looked like. And it's like the straggiest little chicklet thing. That's a full grown clump, healthy

00:35:26.880 chicken. Yeah. It, it just looks like nothing compared to our monster chickens we have these

00:35:31.120 days, for example. Yeah. But one of the thing I wanted to touch on is we talked about people

00:35:35.200 were bigger in prehistory and all sorts of things and whether we're more unhealthy now and all that

00:35:39.760 sort of thing. One thing that springs to mind though, is that, well, one thing that springs to mind is in

00:35:46.080 world war one and well, and even more in world war two, when lots of Americans and Canadians came

00:35:51.280 over and were stationed in England before the big, big push into France, both times, um, British people

00:35:58.160 were surprised by how massive Americans and particularly even Canadians were, that they're just

00:36:03.680 much bigger and stronger and healthier than we are. Yes. Yeah. Well, there was, I mean, there was a,

00:36:08.800 so I talk about, um, this very interesting study actually, uh, in, in the eggs benedict doctrine

00:36:15.600 about, uh, what's called the mid-victorian diet. Do you remember that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

00:36:21.520 So, well, so I was just gonna say, so, um, I mean, we tend to think of the Victorians as being very

00:36:27.120 malnourished and, uh, that was the case for certain periods of time, but actually...

00:36:32.000 That's how much money you had though, didn't it? I mean, really. But I suppose, I mean,

00:36:34.880 I'm talking about like ordinary Victorians, you know, like the, the ban on the street kind of...

00:36:38.560 It's not starving. No. Yeah, yeah. But, but there was this sort of golden

00:36:43.440 period in the mid, mid-victorian age, middle of the century, 1860s, 1850s, 60s, 70s, when, um,

00:36:51.920 ordinary people had access to, because of rising prosperity, and they had access to, um, a really

00:36:58.720 abundant supply of high quality locally produced foods, meat, fish, uh, they were growing vegetables

00:37:06.720 in their gardens, fruit, et cetera. Um, and it actually looks, so this is study that was done on

00:37:15.120 the mid-victorian diet and the mid-victorians themselves, and it suggests that actually

00:37:20.240 that was probably the, the, the period of greatest public health in this country was actually the

00:37:25.680 mid-victorian period because people were eating high quality, certainly in the modern era, high

00:37:31.920 quality, uh, locally produced whole foods. Uh, and so, you know, they, they were healthy. They were

00:37:39.120 eating basically like an ancestral style diet. Right. And, um, that all changed though with the

00:37:44.400 development or with the introduction of industrially produced food stuff. And tinning,

00:37:48.880 tinning, yeah, tinning, canning, uh, the, uh, processing of, of wheat, so refined wheat goods,

00:37:56.800 sugar syrups, sugar more broadly, that kind of stuff. And what you actually saw in a very short

00:38:02.480 period of time was, um, the rapid spread of malnourishment and suddenly people were short,

00:38:11.680 were, were shrinking. I mean, quite literally shrinking. The British army had to introduce

00:38:15.600 new height requirements, had to lower its height requirements by I think three or four inches

00:38:21.040 because people were suddenly, people had shrunk within a generation because they changed their diets

00:38:26.320 to, uh, to these new industrial foodstuffs, to canned goods, refined wheat goods, et cetera. And it

00:38:34.160 had this dreadful effect. And, um, I mean, yes, I think, yeah, during World War II, then it was,

00:38:41.280 it was widely remarked on how strapping the American and Canadian soldiers were. And in part,

00:38:47.760 I think that was because so many of them were sort of, um, like meat and potatoes types from,

00:38:54.880 from, you know, the, the Midwest farmers, farmers, farmers, farmers, sons, you know, who was then they

00:39:00.800 were still eating locally produced whole foods rather than an industrial, an industrial diet. And of course,

00:39:07.840 Britain was suffering at that time from the effects of the effects of the war, the effects of shortages

00:39:15.520 and rationing, et cetera. But, um, but yes, I mean, I, they're, they're very definitely,

00:39:21.200 they're very definitely was a period I think where Britain's very healthy in the, in the Victorian

00:39:27.840 period. And then, uh, in a way that they hadn't been perhaps at the beginning of the industrial

00:39:32.320 revolution because you had lots of people moving to the cities and there was starvation conditions,

00:39:38.400 extreme poverty, but then there's rising prosperity. People have access to high quality

00:39:43.040 of food. And then you have the introduction of industrial foodstuffs. And in many respects,

00:39:49.200 that's the beginning of the process of, um, nutritional, uh, decline that, that we're,

00:39:56.320 that we're currently experiencing now, the beginning of corporate control of food supply.

00:40:01.040 And that's one of the most important factors I think actually in, in our current state,

00:40:06.800 in our current state of ill health is the fact that so much of the food supply now is in corporate

00:40:12.400 and, uh, the food supply is geared to maximize the profits of corporations rather than our health.

00:40:19.440 And we suffer greatly as a result. We're unhealthier than we've ever been. I mean,

00:40:25.120 we may very well be living longer. You may very, life expectancy may very well be the highest,

00:40:30.560 nearly the highest ever been, but actually that doesn't mean we're hell.

00:40:33.840 Right. Yeah. Well, just before we go on to sort of talk about the great reset and things like that,

00:40:39.760 I'd just like to touch one more time on, um, grains and the, the ancient world, uh, with sort of maybe the

00:40:47.520 first, the first civilizations in, in Mesopotamia. Yeah. Uh, like true sort of stratified city-state

00:40:54.400 sort of thing. Yeah. You know, the Sumerians and Ur and Europe and whatever, all that sort of thing.

00:40:59.920 When we, or Jericho or something, when we first, the archaeology seems to show, we first started,

00:41:05.440 you know, with domestic, domesticated grains, I think a fairly long time before that, but not on any sort of

00:41:11.440 scale. Yeah. Um, not where whole cities or whole towns would be eating bread a lot. I mean, I grew

00:41:19.680 up, I'm sure you did, or most of us did with the idea that you just eat bread every single day,

00:41:24.640 maybe multiple times every single day. You have toast for breakfast, you have sandwiches at lunchtime,

00:41:28.640 you have some bread or bread type product in the evening, just bread, bread, bread, bread, bread.

00:41:34.240 Um, yeah. And I mean, I think you've said, you just don't eat any grains anymore.

00:41:39.440 No, nothing. No, not, not really. No. I mean, I, I went through a short period recently of making,

00:41:45.040 uh, sourdough rye bread. Okay. But, um, I do, I do find that the grains just don't agree with me.

00:41:52.240 They don't, even when they're, even when they're homemade, even when it's organic.

00:41:55.360 Um, I just, uh, just don't like the way I feel after I eat them. However much I love rye,

00:42:01.280 I love rye bread, like homemade pumpernickel bread or something like that with some,

00:42:06.400 you know, I think it's got jam on it, butter. I mean, delicious.

00:42:09.280 I could eat it all day, but, uh, it doesn't make me feel good. Right.

00:42:13.600 An hour afterwards. So, so yeah, so I've, I've given up grains.

00:42:17.520 So what I wanted to ask you really is, what do you think about, what are your thoughts and feelings on?

00:42:21.760 Those sort of early, early human, uh, settlements and things.

00:42:26.640 Mm-hmm.

00:42:27.600 Why do you think it was then that they decided to start making flour and therefore bread

00:42:34.240 on a, this sort of, well, pre-industrial, but on an industrial scale.

00:42:38.960 Mm-hmm.

00:42:39.440 And then we stuck with that forever more.

00:42:41.440 Yeah.

00:42:42.000 What, what explains that?

00:42:43.520 It's, yeah, it's an interesting, it's a very interesting question,

00:42:47.520 why the agricultural revolution happened. And, uh, I mean, we have this,

00:42:52.400 I think I, I mentioned this a little bit earlier, we have this triumphalist narrative

00:42:55.680 about the agricultural revolution, because it very obviously did create civilization as we know it.

00:43:00.960 Um, uh, you know, large scale settlements, commerce, militaries, uh, expansion, um, literacy,

00:43:19.520 all this kind of stuff, um, civilization as we know it. Um, that's all as a result of the

00:43:26.000 agricultural revolution. So often when we look back at it, we, I think we like to say to ourselves,

00:43:30.240 well, it's obviously been a good thing. So that's why our ancestors chose to do it,

00:43:36.320 right? Because it was obviously, it was obviously a good thing, you know? And there are certain

00:43:42.000 obvious elements of the agricultural revolution that do look, that do look like they would be

00:43:48.640 attractive, like, for instance, the ability to produce a predictable food supply.

00:43:53.840 And a surplus of it. And a surplus, exactly. Yes. But, um, but if we, if we really look at the

00:44:03.200 skeletal record and if we look at the archaeological record and other evidence, it becomes very clear

00:44:08.480 that actually early humans, the early agriculturalists suffered terribly. They suffered

00:44:16.160 physically. Physically, yeah. And, and I would imagine mentally too. Um, uh, there's massive

00:44:23.120 evidence of malnourishment, stunting, of deformities, of susceptibility to disease, um, et cetera.

00:44:31.280 And, uh... You think that's from eating grains instead of just loads of red meat?

00:44:34.480 Yeah, basically. So, so... And raw eggs.

00:44:37.600 And raw eggs. Yeah, of course. Of course. Wherever you could find them, uh,

00:44:41.600 I think our ancestors would have eaten raw eggs. But, um, uh,

00:44:46.160 you know, our hunter-gatherer ancestors, pre-agricultural hunter-gatherer ancestors,

00:44:50.080 would have been moving around the, uh, landscaping groups of maybe 100, 150 max,

00:44:55.680 something like that, probably smaller, uh, following the migration of wild animals.

00:45:02.720 So, in the Middle East, that might have been following the migration of gazelles,

00:45:05.840 grand migrations across the Middle East and the Near East. Uh, they might have stayed in certain places.

00:45:13.360 There was a, there was a certain amount of sedentism. So, for instance, you know, you might, they,

00:45:17.840 they had kind of proto-settlements where they would like build huts and stuff and they might spend

00:45:23.040 some of the year there because that coincided with, say, a migration of gazelles or migratory birds

00:45:29.200 or because it was in a wetland area where there was, I mean, wetlands were areas of great abundance.

00:45:34.560 And that's why, in fact, the agricultural revolution happened in the Near East.

00:45:38.400 It happened in a massive wetland system between, uh, the rivers Tigris and Euphrates.

00:45:45.200 Um, because you have on hand, you have all different food webs, you've got birds, you've got

00:45:50.000 fish, you've got migratory mammals like gazelle, et cetera. Um, shellfish, you've got wild grains

00:45:56.240 there as well, and you can even plant grains, um, uh, when the flood waters proceed.

00:46:01.040 Or the Nile Valley or the Indus Valley. Exactly. So, um, but yes, our ancestors,

00:46:07.120 our hunter-gatherer ancestors were eating a diversity of foods and they were eating

00:46:11.440 nutrient-dense animal foods in particular. But then with the transition to agriculture,

00:46:16.240 then you have a basically a grain-based diet that's more or less all they're eating grains.

00:46:20.240 And so when you look at the skeletal record and the other evidence, it actually doesn't look like

00:46:25.600 it was a favorable trade. It actually doesn't look like trading life as a roving hunter-gatherer or

00:46:31.680 eating, you know, from a wide variety of different food webs, uh, was actually worth it. And so

00:46:40.400 there's basically, the suggestion is instead actually what you need is you need to kind of

00:46:44.160 gun to the head theory. It's like actually the first agriculturalists were forced into it.

00:46:49.360 And how might that have happened? Well, one factor was probably climactic conditions. There's,

00:46:55.680 there's a suggestion, there's a clear suggestion that there was a significant, I think the lower

00:47:00.720 driest period, I forget. There was a significant period of cooling. The younger driest. Younger driest.

00:47:06.320 That's it. Yeah. Younger driest. And, uh, yes, there's a significant period of cooling, which probably

00:47:11.520 affected, um, uh, food webs in all sorts of different ways, plant and animal, and might have, you know,

00:47:18.720 made food more difficult to come by. Uh, but then it also looks like what you have is you have

00:47:27.200 conquest basically. Conquest driving the formation of these early, uh, agricultural, these early urban

00:47:36.480 settlements like Ur and Uruk. You probably have some kind of, uh, predatory elite coming in, capturing

00:47:42.400 people in war, slaves, and setting them to work as agriculturalists. I mean, it's a complicated

00:47:48.640 it's a complicated story that takes place over hundreds, thousands of years, even, but there's

00:47:54.160 very definite evidence that, um, that people were pushed, that it wasn't necessarily an obvious choice

00:48:01.520 to make. You know, it wasn't obvious like, you know, um, giving up having nothing to eat or having

00:48:07.520 something to eat. It wasn't that. Right. Right. And then there's a lot of evidence, a lot of evidence for

00:48:13.840 the use of unfree labor, uh, slaves, uh, that slaving was the principle, kind of the principle

00:48:21.760 focus actually of warfare in that period. They were slave raids more than anything else. It wasn't

00:48:26.160 about killing everyone. It was about capturing as many people as you could and putting them to work.

00:48:30.560 Um, so, I mean, I draw very heavily on the work of an anthropologist called James C. Scott.

00:48:35.440 And, um, uh, he wrote this fantastic book. Uh, he died recently. He wrote this fantastic book in 2017

00:48:43.440 called Against the Grain. Yeah. That's a, that's a revisionist, uh, a revisionist account of the

00:48:51.280 agricultural revolution of the transition from hunter gathering to his early settled, uh, urban civilized,

00:48:59.840 farming civilizations in the near East. And yeah, he, he puts at the forefront, uh, the kind of gun

00:49:05.600 to the head theory. And he also posits the, the, that there was a, what he calls the golden age of

00:49:11.120 barbarians where for a long period, a long period of time from the dawn of agriculture until about the

00:49:17.040 sort of 17th, 18th century in the modern era, AD, um, it was still possible to, um, to be a barbarian

00:49:26.720 and not be subject to a grain state and did not live in a grain state, not consume grains. Um, uh,

00:49:34.240 so, you know, if you didn't like being an agriculturalist, if you didn't like farming,

00:49:39.280 you could run away and you could live a different kind of life. And he talks about the fact that

00:49:43.600 actually a lot of, a lot of these early settlements in the Middle East, uh, in the Near East appear to

00:49:49.760 have collapsed and they probably collapsed in part because people left, um, you know, ran away. So the, the,

00:49:56.400 the states were always quite, these early cities like Ur and Ur were very fragile because the,

00:50:01.840 uh, I mean, among other things, they were constantly at war with each other, but also

00:50:04.960 there was a very high population turnover because of the spread of new infectious diseases,

00:50:09.440 which were created actually by the transition or became, became transmissible among humans

00:50:14.880 due to the agricultural revolution. Um, uh, so these states were fragile and conditions were awful

00:50:20.160 and people wanted to leave and they could, and they could go back to, to living a hunter-gatherer existence

00:50:25.600 if they could get away. And so, uh, Scott basically says, you know, actually for a long period of time,

00:50:31.360 there was this, this other place of freedom that you could go to, you know? So if you were a Chinese

00:50:37.920 peasant, you could run away to the steppe. And he, he makes the point that actually in the ancient world,

00:50:44.240 walls were just as often built to keep people in as to keep people out. And that's, he talks about the

00:50:50.400 Great Wall of China and says, you know, it wasn't just to keep nomads out. That was, that was to make sure that

00:50:54.800 Chinese peasants couldn't run off to the steppe and live as, live as, um, pastoralists or whatever. Um, uh,

00:51:03.120 and this, this long period continued into, into the modern era and that you have these sort of last

00:51:07.600 vestiges of this kind of golden age of barbarism with groups like the mountain men in the US, these

00:51:13.600 westerners who would go off into the wilds. They'd throw off the shackles and the trappings of, uh,

00:51:19.440 a Western lifestyle, the European lifestyle, and they would live like Baines Indians. They would live

00:51:24.880 like, like Indians in the forest. You know, they'd be hunter gatherers. They'd live on the buffalo.

00:51:29.680 They would eat an almost 100% buffalo diet when they could, elk, beaver tails, all that kind of stuff.

00:51:37.920 And Daniel Baines. Yeah, exactly. But I mean, for all intents and purposes, they had

00:51:43.120 gone native and they would often marry Indian women. And then, and then when, uh, you know,

00:51:49.360 conditions got bad and they were trapped in the winter, they would often eat their Indian wives,

00:51:53.440 these stories of, of cannibalism.

00:51:55.120 I sometimes get rickets and scurvy though.

00:51:57.520 Yeah. Um, yeah. Well, I mean, the thing, the thing about rickets and scurvy is that

00:52:02.560 you don't get them if you eat a proper nose to tail diet.

00:52:05.280 Meaning? As in, um, if you just eat lean meat, then you, you're, you'll probably get scurvy if you eat

00:52:13.360 it just for long enough, but actually they would eat things like the gallbladder, which contains

00:52:17.040 vitamin C and, uh, and other anti-scorbutics. Um, uh, so, you know, they would, they would eat

00:52:25.840 the whole animal basically. They would eat every part, especially the organs. They really prize the

00:52:29.520 organs. I mean, there's a fantastic article actually called the diet of the mountain men written in the

00:52:34.960 1960s. It's in the Huntington society quarterly or something. And it's about, it's just, uh, about the

00:52:42.960 diet of the mountain men, what they ate based on actual accounts from the time. And it talks about

00:52:49.120 how, you know, the mountain men would, um, eat buffalo intestines, raw and stuff and all this other

00:52:56.480 kind of stuff and testicles and brains. Um, if you just eat the flesh of pears and rabbits,

00:53:03.040 you will get deficiencies if you simply did that. Yes. Well, yeah, there's a specific condition that

00:53:09.920 you get, actually. I just got a specific name. If you just eat rabbit meat because rabbit meat is so

00:53:15.120 lean. Yeah. And you just get, I can't remember what it's called. It's a wasting disease. Very nasty,

00:53:20.560 actually. Um, but, and it has happened. I think there've been sort of big outbreaks of it, um,

00:53:28.160 in situations where people have been shipwrecked things or people have been exploring and, you

00:53:32.480 know, they've, they've landed on an island and only rabbits and it's done them terrible harm.

00:53:37.120 Um, it's very interesting what you said about walls that you immediately sprung to mind that

00:53:40.560 the Berlin wall was very much to keep people in. Um, um, yeah, but, um, no, it's very interesting

00:53:46.080 point. One last thing about sort of the ancient world of the ancient grain, this idea that, um, uh,

00:53:53.040 that it just didn't help us, but to play devil's advocate, so I don't disagree with anything you

00:53:57.440 said, but to play devil's advocate, um, the idea simply of a surplus though, would it not have been

00:54:04.400 the case that, um, and you're, I think you're absolutely right to say it's actually complicated.

00:54:07.920 We didn't just go from being hunter gatherers to settled and that's it because we still got

00:54:12.320 hunter gatherers, nomadic peoples today in the world, don't we? So, yeah. And I think that,

00:54:16.480 I think they think now archaeologists and things that it would have been gone up and down.

00:54:20.480 Now, if you look at places like Quebec, Kentucky and stuff, um, you'd be sort of semi-settled for

00:54:25.280 some of the year or some cultures would move away from being hunter gatherers to be settled and then

00:54:30.800 go back. So it was, so there were ups and downs on the graph, if you like. Do you agree that that

00:54:36.160 probably is what happened? Yes. Yeah. I think, yeah, I don't think that there was one single moment

00:54:39.920 where a switch went and suddenly, um, you know, suddenly people were, were totally settled.

00:54:46.160 And I mean, the thing to realize as well about the agricultural revolution is that it,

00:54:50.480 it was taking place principally to begin with in the Near East. It wasn't taking place anywhere else.

00:54:54.960 Yeah, right. Yeah. So it took- I mean, it's very specific, isn't it? It's Mesopotamia.

00:54:59.120 Yes. Yeah. So between- And maybe you could say the Nile Valley.

00:55:01.760 Yeah. Between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in an area that's called the Southern Alluvium.

00:55:06.240 Right. Yeah. Um, so that area much more resembled the sort of like,

00:55:12.080 something like the, the Mississippi Delta than it does now.

00:55:14.800 Yeah. So you've got, you've got this sort of, these wetlands with, um, raised areas above the,

00:55:22.880 the level of the water where you could have settlements and then you could farm down in the,

00:55:28.320 in the sort of, uh, course of the, of the river and the, in the, uh, floodplain, et cetera. Um,

00:55:33.920 but yes, it wasn't, uh, it wasn't, uh, and it wasn't an overnight change and it was a change that was,

00:55:40.000 it was a change that was reversed. And so, like I say, you have people going back to being hunter

00:55:45.120 gatherers from agriculturalists, either because, you know, the state collapsed through war or because

00:55:50.480 they just wanted to get away because it was so intolerable and awful being, you know, one of 50,000

00:55:56.240 people crammed into a city like Ur or Ur in the early days. Um, but nevertheless, farming spread and

00:56:06.880 the, the process of farming, uh, as a mode of production was consolidated and here we are today.

00:56:13.200 You know, we've, we have made the transition and we've cemented the transition.

00:56:16.880 If you look, I think in Jericho, there was a giant grain silo.

00:56:20.960 Yeah. I come back to this idea of, um, whether the, the payoff was worth it. It's a good argument

00:56:26.720 to be made. It wasn't worth it. Uh, but the idea of just simply, uh, scarcity versus certain

00:56:33.760 is that if you are a hunter gatherer for whatever reason, the herds that you follow fail or for some,

00:56:39.760 uh, climatic reason, the, uh, the seasonal grains that you follow or anything like that happens,

00:56:45.760 there's just mass starvation there. And so if you go look at something, somewhere like Jericho,

00:56:49.760 where there's giant grain silos, well, then at least we've avoided that. We can go a year,

00:56:55.120 maybe two, maybe more of not everyone dying of starvation. I mean, what do you think in their mind,

00:57:02.400 9,000 BC or 7,000 BC, they're thinking we've got to do it this way because we can just all die.

00:57:08.880 Yeah. I'm sure, I'm sure there's an element of it. I'm, I'm, it can't have escaped their notice

00:57:13.200 that actually this was a regular, um, way of providing a reliable, fairly reliable. I mean,

00:57:20.400 we shouldn't forget the crops fail as well. And that actually when you

00:57:26.960 paleolithic hunter gatherers weren't dependent on one single food source, but actually making yourself

00:57:32.080 dependent on one single food source, however reliable that might be is putting all your eggs

00:57:37.680 in one basket and inviting disaster and disaster did happen. Um, I mean, I think what you need to...

00:57:44.560 You've only really mitigated risk to an extent by... Yeah.

00:57:47.840 It's not like you're just safe and you're out of the woods and starvation will never happen again now.

00:57:51.840 It's not that, is it? No, it's absolutely not that. And I think also you have to understand that

00:57:57.280 hunter gatherer populations were much smaller and they were dispersed, you know, so a given area of land

00:58:05.680 would have a much smaller number of humans on it than, uh, of hunter gatherers on it than agriculturalists.

00:58:13.360 And so actually I think the effects of, let's say like a collapse of a collapse of some, um, uh,

00:58:22.080 the population of some prey species, for example, the effects would be, would be, would be mitigated

00:58:27.200 by the distribution, the thinner distribution of human beings in the landscape. Um, whereas what you get

00:58:33.680 is, uh, with these, with these grain, these grain civilizations is you get unheralded concentration

00:58:40.640 of people and yes, you can feed them, but then when there's a problem with the food supply,

00:58:45.200 you've got unheralded starvation. You know, if you've only got a hundred people,

00:58:49.360 a hundred people on a hundred acres or a thousand acres, then actually you'll probably find enough food

00:58:54.880 to feed them. If the main source disappears, uh, because there are other sources, but if you're

00:59:00.880 just relying on grains and the grains disappear, then, and you've got 50,000 people, then you're,

00:59:06.480 you've got, you've got a big problem, a much bigger problem, but yes, it did provide regularity. It did

00:59:11.760 provide, um, and, and I think also actually what we need to think about, or what we need to emphasize

00:59:18.000 when we talk about surpluses is that surpluses also serve other functions than feeding people, taxation,

00:59:25.040 right? I mean, surpluses allow taxation. Uh, you can't tax, uh, wild strawberries. You can't tax, uh,

00:59:35.200 wild foods because actually, and this is something that states have realized, you know, states realized

00:59:40.800 in dealing with nomadic people, that they can't tax them. First of all, you can't necessarily know where

00:59:46.880 they are. That's a problem. And then second of all, if you, if you want to get something out of them,

00:59:53.760 it's hard to know what they're going to have because, um, you know, they, they might have,

00:59:59.840 you come upon a group of, of hunter gatherers. You can't predict what kind of commodities they're

01:00:06.000 going to have. They might have gazelle. They might have fish. They might have some nuts. Um,

01:00:11.280 it's hard to make that kind of, uh, hard to make that into a sort of regular form of tribute,

01:00:15.360 which is what tax is. But if you have a, a grain population, uh, a grain based civilization,

01:00:22.400 you can say, you know, every year in harvest season, you're going to give us 10% of your

01:00:28.480 wheat crop and you can just impose that and you can expect it. Um, so there's money and power.

01:00:34.800 There's money and power and it allows forms, obviously it allows forms of social organization

01:00:39.840 that, uh, uh, hospitalism and, uh, hunter gathering lifestyles don't allow. No,

01:00:46.160 you can use a grain surplus to pay an army. You can use a grain surplus to pay a bureaucracy.

01:00:51.040 You can use a grain surplus to sustain an elite, uh, that's separate from the, from the, uh,

01:00:57.280 including a clerical elite, but separate from just an intellectual elite. Exactly.

01:01:01.280 All sorts of cultures can flourish. So, so it allows, it allows, it allows greater differentiation.

01:01:07.440 And I, and I suppose that probably wouldn't have escaped, uh, then if it's either that,

01:01:11.760 you know, you can fuel a much more powerful, um, you can, what you can fuel a state,

01:01:18.320 basically is what you can do. You can actually have a state.

01:01:20.800 I don't know if you've ever seen, um, there's an old set of documentaries from the seventies

01:01:26.400 called the ascent of man. I've heard, I've heard of it, but I've not, there's one bit in that where

01:01:31.200 he follows just for the cameras, following around some nomads in, I think, central Asia,

01:01:35.920 maybe Siberia way. Yeah. And he was saying that these people, um, they cannot form any sort of real

01:01:42.800 culture in amongst their group for generations. They haven't had a single poet, for example,

01:01:48.720 because their life is so relentlessly difficult and dull. Yeah. And all that sort of thing. Um,

01:01:55.600 so, well, anyway, I was, I was only playing devil's advocate because I think you are, you're,

01:01:59.760 you are right. That grain diets just, uh, uh, not great. I mean, I guess we'll have to sort of

01:02:05.680 start moving on a bit now, unfortunately, because there's so many other things I'd like to talk to

01:02:09.360 you about. Um, one thing before we start talking about the modern world and, uh, Klaus Schwab and how

01:02:16.320 food chains, food supply can be weaponized and all that sort of thing. Um, I want to ask you a question,

01:02:22.240 which, um, uh, you know, I'm not trying to be, um, fatuous, but, um, the idea that certain

01:02:31.440 processed foods taste lovely, that that's an, an actual problem where you say to people,

01:02:39.360 you present them with the argument, um, the, you know, whole meat, raw eggs, just red meat,

01:02:45.040 you know, stop eating grains, stop eating seedles. And they're like, but personally, I, I love, uh,

01:02:50.720 uh, sort of a double sausage and egg McMuffin. Yeah. With lashings of ketchup. Yeah. I know it's

01:02:56.880 terrible for me. I know the sausage meat in that is stupid. Yeah. Right. And what God knows where

01:03:02.880 they get their eggs from really. And the fun thing is it's all horrible, but yeah, but it tastes lovely.

01:03:07.680 Now that is, uh, I mean, what do you say when people say stuff like that? And it's not someone

01:03:13.520 that they're not morbidly obese. They're not suffering from any, uh, you know, real health problems.

01:03:18.160 And they're like, no, I just love spam or something. I, I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I mean,

01:03:22.880 no, I, I love ice cream. I mean, okay. I make my ice cream, but I, I love ice cream. Uh, and I,

01:03:28.160 I certainly have a sweet tooth. I mean, I think, I think it's, it's perfectly possible for people

01:03:33.520 to eat junk and be, and be in pretty good shape and, uh, or even being in great shape. I mean,

01:03:38.320 you're young anyway. Yeah. And you, and you see, you know, I mean, you, what was it? Usain,

01:03:42.800 Usain Bolt, when he broke the 100 meters record in 2012 or whatever, he, he had a meal of,

01:03:47.840 he had a meal of chicken nuggets beforehand. I mean, yeah, it's, it's not that it's not,

01:03:54.080 some people can eat any processed food and it's fine. And, and the, the broader problem though,

01:04:01.360 is the quantity that we're eating and the fact that for instance, so there was a study that was

01:04:06.320 done not that long ago that showed two to five year olds in the UK now derive on average 61% of

01:04:13.200 their daily calories, ultra processed food. Uh, so close. It can't be good, can it?

01:04:19.200 No, it can't. It can't. And it's why, and it's why we are so unhealthy because we are. And the thing

01:04:25.520 about processed foods as well, being so, being so delicious is that they're engineered to be like

01:04:30.800 that. I mean, they, these companies that make processed foods, they have food scientists

01:04:36.080 who work to maximize the moorishness of these products. They call it hyper palatability. That's

01:04:44.160 the, that's the, um, technical, yeah, it's the technical term for what they're trying to do. They

01:04:49.280 maximize. They're good at it sometimes, aren't they? What they pay them millions of dollars and they

01:04:53.600 pay them a lot of money. And, and what hyper palatability is, is it's a, it's a kind of, um, it's

01:05:00.640 like the perfect mix of various different qualities in the food. So the, the saltiness,

01:05:07.280 the sweetness, the crunch, um, other aspects of the texture, et cetera, um, the mouth feel,

01:05:14.800 all these kinds of different things. They, they tweak the knobs until they get a product that is

01:05:19.040 perfect, that you just can't. It's cynical, isn't it? It's incredibly cynical. It's incredibly

01:05:23.760 cynical. These products are designed to be eaten, uh, in, to be overeaten basically. And I mean,

01:05:30.720 we, there are all sorts of studies that show, for instance, that people eat processed food 30%

01:05:37.120 faster than they eat other food. You're scoffing it down. Yeah. You just, well, it's,

01:05:42.720 you don't really even chew. I mean, you do chew processed foods. I do that. I inhale it. I can't help it.

01:05:47.920 Yeah. But you think of like, uh, you know, like a, like a tube of Pringle, you open, you open it,

01:05:53.200 you open it and then you look and it's gone. Uh, I mean, it, the food literally melts in your,

01:05:58.640 uh, a Pringle melts on your tongue, uh, and you, and you swallow it. You don't chew it. It's not like

01:06:04.480 a piece of steak that you have to chew. And, and that is how you are supposed to eat. You are supposed

01:06:09.760 to chew your food. I mean, chewing is pre-digestion. Chewing improves nutrient uptake,

01:06:15.440 improves digestibility. Um, and that's how you should eat is you should chew. It develops your

01:06:21.120 face. It develops your jaw. Uh, it opens your airways. Um, and it, and it also, um, improves

01:06:28.320 digestion, like I say, but these hyper palatable processed foods, and they are just designed to be,

01:06:35.200 just to be swallowed basically. Uh, have you got any guilty pleasures at once in the blue moon,

01:06:39.840 other than ice cream? Uh, do you love a Mars bar or something? I, I'm pretty disciplined about it.

01:06:48.240 I'm pretty disciplined about it, but I do, I do, yeah, I do like ice cream. I really like ice cream.

01:06:53.600 I make pistachio ice cream at home. And like, I just, I remember one of my, uh, a pistachio ice cream

01:06:59.120 is lovely. Yeah. Homemade. I'm sure it's absolutely delicious. Yeah. I remember one of my grandparents

01:07:03.200 once telling me after the war, when they still had rationing into the early fifties, I think,

01:07:07.680 and after the war, you'd like, you would be, some kids have never sort of had a banana before.

01:07:12.160 Yeah. Or chocolate was extremely rare. Yeah. I like, I do like chocolate.

01:07:15.280 And they would get a, a bit of chocolate, like a segment of, share a single bar of Cadbury's

01:07:20.080 between six kids or whatever. You get a single square of chocolate. You put it in your mouth and

01:07:24.240 you, you'd let it melt entirely away because it was such a luxury. Yeah. And I remember like the

01:07:29.840 other day I bought a Mars bar duo and I was, I just scoffed it down. I was barely chewing it.

01:07:34.240 But as I was finishing it, that popped into my mind. The idea that one little square of chocolate

01:07:38.720 would be so precious. Yeah. And rare. Yeah. That you would. It's hard to conceive. And now

01:07:43.040 I'm just literally, yeah, barely chewing a massive load of Mars bar. Like what world are we living

01:07:48.960 in? Yeah. Sometimes it does flash across my mind. And it's the, and it as well, I mean,

01:07:52.800 it's the, it's the density of the, of the calories. Well, that's another new thing as well. And we could,

01:07:59.600 we could, uh, we could go into this, we don't have to go into this, but like, you know, um,

01:08:05.760 our ancestors ate in a specific way, you know, like you wouldn't, you wouldn't get a massive load

01:08:11.040 of carbohydrates with a massive load of fat at the same time. Right. Right. But that's what you get

01:08:16.400 when you have a, when you have a Mars bar, right? You're getting, you're getting huge quantities of,

01:08:22.240 um, sugar and fat together in, in a package that you just wouldn't find in nature. There is, there

01:08:30.160 is something, there is something unnatural about particular food stuff. I'm not going to mince my

01:08:36.080 words. I do think that it is an unnatural form of nutrition. And that is part of the reason why

01:08:41.520 our bodies respond in the way that they do, why people are so fat, why people are so unhealthy,

01:08:46.160 why chronic diseases, inflammatory conditions, diabetes, et cetera, um, is because what we're doing

01:08:52.080 is we're, we're tricking our bodies. We're tricking our bodies and we're making them respond in ways

01:09:00.720 that were sensible in evolutionary terms, you know, like if consuming fructose, I think, uh,

01:09:07.520 so that's the principal sugar in fruit, uh, encourages fat deposition. The fructose fructose is,

01:09:15.440 is actually processed by the liver. The fructose isn't digested like, um, uh, like glucose.

01:09:22.080 So fructose has to go to the liver to be processed and, uh, it seems to encourage fat deposition.

01:09:27.600 Well, um, that might have been a sensible evolutionary mechanism in the stone age where,

01:09:34.800 you know, you find a, you find a bush laden with berries and you just, you eat all of the berries in

01:09:41.600 one go, you know, you eat as many berries as you can and then your body stores that energy as fat

01:09:47.440 because it's useful to have some fat in a situation, you know, in a, in a hunter gatherer situation,

01:09:52.480 because actually you don't know where food is coming from necessarily. And you might have to

01:09:57.600 rely on stored energy, but, um, pumping food full of, of fructose now and encouraging fat deposition

01:10:05.280 when it's totally unnecessary, uh, is, is obviously in evolutionary terms, you know, you're tricking the

01:10:11.280 body through this mechanism. And yes, it's delicious, but it's also destroying people's health.

01:10:16.800 And so I, I mean, I do think, I do think that a processed food is singled out now is increasingly

01:10:23.200 being singled out, but I actually think that that's right. I actually do think that, that we need to

01:10:27.920 understand and need to educate people about the fact that actually processed food is unlike virtually

01:10:33.200 any other form of food that we've ever eaten in our history. And that is why we are in the state.

01:10:38.560 I think unnatural is certainly right. I mean, sometimes I'd like to think like reasonably

01:10:44.320 healthy, but certainly not, I'm not sort of religious about it. I should be as I'm getting

01:10:48.080 older. In the past quite often, I'll be mid morning and I feel a tiny bit hungry,

01:10:53.840 just a little bit hungry. Yeah. Going to a shop and buy a big grab bag of salt and vinegar,

01:10:59.280 McCoy's a can of tango and like a lion bar or something. I just scoff all that down. I feel

01:11:06.400 all right now, but, but that's really, that's sort of mad, really. The amount of sugar,

01:11:11.920 salt, just, just way too much. Way, way, way too much. I'd be better just having an apple.

01:11:19.360 Should have just had an apple or something. Yeah. Or a different, or a different breakfast even.

01:11:26.000 Yeah. Or just a proper breakfast in the first place. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, just before we go on,

01:11:30.800 what is your sort of, uh, roughly an average breakfast for you? Uh, so my breakfast at the

01:11:37.440 moment, so I've been, I've been cutting a bit of weight. It was quite funny actually when I was,

01:11:40.800 was doxxed because I was doxxed at precisely the right time because before,

01:11:45.440 the year before I had been on like a mega bulk basically, I was doing powerlifting style workouts

01:11:52.080 and I was, I was 16 stone and I'd shaved my head. So I wasn't quite as presentable maybe.

01:12:00.080 16 stone though. I mean, you're about my height, maybe a touch taller. Yeah.

01:12:03.760 Were you, was that bulk though? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was about,

01:12:06.720 okay. Some of it, obviously fat because, you know, if you're, if you're a natty, you can't,

01:12:11.200 you can't really, you can't bulk in the same way that you can if you're on DEDs, on steroids,

01:12:16.800 you know, you can put on, you can put on a lot of lean mass without fat. Uh, but it's, it's harder,

01:12:22.080 I think when you're a natty, but yes, I was, I was much bigger and, um, uh, which was kind of funny.

01:12:27.760 So the doxx kind of came at the right time for me because I'd be not, I'd, I'd cut and I'd bring

01:12:33.280 some hair back and, and, you know, made myself look vaguely like a member of the human species again.

01:12:39.440 But, um, yes, I've been, I've been cutting weight for a while. So I'm, I'm on what's called the

01:12:45.120 Duranda steak and eggs diet, which he called the maximum definition diet. So it's basically just

01:12:49.840 steak and eggs, uh, or, or red meat and eggs. So you have, uh, one or two meals or even three meals

01:12:57.200 a day of, of steak and eggs. Um, and then every third day you top up your carbohydrates, you have a,

01:13:03.760 uh, kind of that, you replenish your muscle, your muscle guard.

01:13:07.200 Is it a potato thing? Uh, yeah. I mean, I tend to, so what do I have? I just tend to have fruit.

01:13:11.440 Okay. I just tend to have fruit, uh, honey, that kind of stuff, maybe some rice.

01:13:16.000 So not much green veg then?

01:13:17.280 Not really, no. I mean, so I'll have, so for breakfast, for instance, I will have, uh,

01:13:22.240 I'll have maybe six eggs raw or cooked. Sometimes I have them cooked with bacon, cooked in butter.

01:13:28.720 And then I have, um, I have something like for breakfast, I have something like a stew,

01:13:33.920 like, uh, uh, ox cheek stew. So I make, I've got an agar at home and I just chuck some ox cheeks in there.

01:13:41.440 In a, in a Le Creuset with some, you know, some veg and some, some water and some herbs.

01:13:45.920 And then the next day I've got a, I've got a nice, a nice stew, lots of collagen. Collagen

01:13:51.600 gelatin is good for you. Um, and that's something that people don't get enough of actually. It's

01:13:56.320 gelatin because we don't eat nose to tail. You know, that's the gooey stuff under, in skin and

01:14:02.320 ligaments and connective tissue. Um, yeah. So, I mean, that's basically my, that's basically my

01:14:07.920 breakfast is maybe something like bacon and eggs or just raw eggs and then, uh, a beefy

01:14:13.120 stew and then maybe a piece of grapefruit or something. All right. So a bit of fruit.

01:14:16.880 A bit of fruit. Yeah. I like fruit.

01:14:18.080 Maybe one thing while we're just talking straight up about food for the moment, um,

01:14:22.400 I've had it, uh, pumped into my brain and I find it hard to get rid of the idea

01:14:28.240 that you need green veg, fresh green veg. Now, a lot of what you say doesn't really talk about that very

01:14:34.560 often. Um, I mean, what are your opinions on that? I was, I've got it in my mind that you've got to

01:14:39.920 have at some time, not loads, don't have to have it all the time, certainly, but some, something like

01:14:44.800 broccoli or greens or runner beans or something. And if you don't have that, if you go months on

01:14:50.320 end or years on end with, without that, you'll get health problems. You'll have problems with your

01:14:54.240 hair, your nails and your skin. Yeah. I mean, that is, there are, there are lots of beneficial

01:15:00.720 compounds in fruits and vegetables and, uh, and a green vegetable, uh, in particular, but, um,

01:15:09.040 you don't have to eat. You don't have to eat. I don't have to subject myself to kale anymore.

01:15:13.680 No, you don't. And it's, it's, I find it hilarious that, that kale is, is supposedly a superfood,

01:15:20.000 but not liver. I mean, liver, for example, is the most, pretty much the most nutrient dense food

01:15:25.280 you could, you could imagine. I mean, it knocks kale into a cock hat and, um, but people are told to

01:15:32.560 eat kale. I mean, it's part of a broader, and I talk about this in the book, it's part of a broader,

01:15:38.160 um, campaign against animal foods taking place over the course of the 20th, certainly from the middle

01:15:45.040 of the 20th century and continues today, you know, telling people not to eat eggs, not to eat butter,

01:15:51.200 not to eat red meat, uh, because of the cholesterol principally. I mean, that was the, the cholesterol

01:15:56.320 on the saturated fat, that was the principal justification that will cause heart disease.

01:15:59.840 Well, that's all been debunked. I mean, it was, it was, it was bunk at the time, but, uh, it had the

01:16:05.760 backing of some powerful industry, uh, money, especially from the margarine industry, uh, and, um, and the

01:16:15.760 American Heart Association. And, uh, and that's had a, that's had a dreadful effect on, on human,

01:16:23.520 on human health. I mean, we were told, look, you give up animal foods, you stop eating bacon,

01:16:28.160 you stop eating sausages, don't use butter and heart disease rates are going to go down.

01:16:32.560 People are going to be healthier. Well, we were told that in the 1940s. Well,

01:16:36.640 the precise opposite happened, precise opposite. We're more unhealthy than ever. We're

01:16:42.240 unhealthier than ever. Uh, and we have, uh, we haven't totally abandoned animal foods,

01:16:47.920 but we've largely abandoned animal foods and we've abandoned things like butter and lard,

01:16:52.000 tallow and, uh, eggs. You know, people are terrified of egg yolk. It's insane when an egg is,

01:17:00.480 an egg is a perfect, it's a complete food. It contains a wealth of, of nutrients, micronutrients

01:17:07.280 and enzymes and vitamins and minerals. I mean, it's about as nutritious and as

01:17:11.920 perfect to natural food as you could find, but instead people are told, look, eat kale,

01:17:16.000 eat spinach, eat mung beans, uh, all that kind of stuff. And actually, um, it's, it's just wrong.

01:17:23.760 I mean, it is just wrong. I, I can't, I can't really say anything else other than that. It's wrong.

01:17:28.240 I'm not saying you shouldn't eat, uh, greens. You shouldn't eat fruits. I mean, there's,

01:17:32.080 there's abundant evidence, like I say, that our paleolithic ancestors ate in, in, in a, in a,

01:17:38.320 in a far wider, you know, from a far wider selection of food webs than we would even possibly today,

01:17:43.680 you know, they ate whatever was on offer and that included plants, um, of all sorts of different

01:17:49.280 varieties. So humans eat plants and humans have eaten plants for a very long time. Uh,

01:17:54.640 so I'm not saying you shouldn't, but the principal focus of your diet, I think, uh, should be nutrient

01:18:01.840 dense animal food. It should be going back to eating the, in a kind of nose to tail manner,

01:18:08.320 following the example of our diet. So what you're saying is we should live like the eggs.

01:18:15.440 Live like the eggs. No, um, I'm joking. Um, one, one thing though, I've got,

01:18:19.680 I would like you to set you up for. I'm playing devil's advocate here. Yeah.

01:18:23.200 But is the idea you get salmonella from raw eggs. Hmm. They do say that. Yeah,

01:18:28.000 they do say that. I mean, you're more, you're much more likely actually to get salmonella,

01:18:31.760 salmonella, I went Asian for a moment there. Sorry. Um, you're much more likely to get salmonella

01:18:38.400 from a prepackaged salad. Right. So that's something that you see now is you see people

01:18:44.160 getting salmonella from prepackaged salads and, and vegetables because in the U S particularly,

01:18:51.680 then you have migrant workers working in the fields in poor conditions, you know,

01:18:56.080 their work's basically to death and, uh, they go to the loo where they work. They don't wash their

01:19:02.160 hands. Uh, and so you get fecal contamination on, on salad leaves and, and other, um, plant products.

01:19:11.120 So actually if you look at the number of cases on a case by case basis, then actually you're much

01:19:16.560 more likely to get salmonella from a prepackaged salad. The other thing is, um,

01:19:23.360 it's about the quality of the egg. Okay. So I wouldn't recommend eating

01:19:30.480 the cheapest eggs you can buy raw because they're likely to have been produced in unsanitary conditions.

01:19:36.640 They will have been scrubbed as well. This is the other thing to get them clean because they

01:19:40.480 will have been covered in feces and feathers and all sorts of other horrible stuff. So they will have

01:19:44.960 been scrubbed. They come from chickens that themselves have been fed on crap.

01:19:49.040 Yeah, that themselves are. So the nutrition in general in, in, in an egg from a battery hen is

01:19:54.160 less because you are what, what you eat eats basically. And if chickens don't eat well,

01:20:00.000 then they produce inferior eggs. But these battery eggs have to be cleaned up,

01:20:05.600 have to be scrubbed within an inch of their lives. And what that does is that destroys,

01:20:09.920 there's a special coating on an egg. There's a special membrane that prevents

01:20:14.080 bad stuff for microbes from getting inside. And if you scrub an egg, it destroys the membrane and

01:20:21.360 bacteria can get inside the egg from outside. And so that's, that I think is one of the principal

01:20:27.920 causes of people getting salmonella if they consume raw eggs. Um, and in fact, actually in France,

01:20:33.920 it's illegal to sell eggs that have been scrubbed, clean them for human consumption. You're not allowed

01:20:41.280 to do that. That's illegal in France, but it's perfectly legal in the US. It's perfectly legal

01:20:45.360 here, I think too. Um, so what you want really is you want high quality eggs, uh, from, from high

01:20:53.200 welfare animals. Um, and then you're fine. I mean, I've, I've slunked, I've slunked, that's the technical

01:20:59.920 term. Uh, I've slunked raw eggs for four years and I've never had enough, including, you know,

01:21:07.360 quantities up to like 25, 30 a day at some point. So, uh, I've never had a, I've never had a bad

01:21:14.400 stomach. And, uh, I mean, it doesn't actually have any of the, the digestive effects you would

01:21:20.800 think. So people often say to me, Oh, don't you get wind? Isn't it awful smelling and all that kind

01:21:26.240 of stuff? Uh, and that isn't true. It isn't, it doesn't give you digestive issues either. Um,

01:21:32.640 in fact, if anything, I would say it calms your digestion. Um, and there are various

01:21:37.360 beneficial compounds within eggs that, uh, aid digestion. Um, uh, I mean, they're really,

01:21:43.120 they're one wonderful thing, I would say. Well, one more thing on eggs while we've got

01:21:47.200 the raw egg naturalist here. Um, I, uh, haven't been interested in, uh, trying to pack on any

01:21:54.640 lean mass for quite a few years, but in my late twenties, early thirties.

01:21:58.080 Yeah. I did. Yeah. And I had much,

01:22:00.240 much bigger shoulders and chest and arms back then. And I would eat, I would eat. Well,

01:22:05.120 at one point I was trying to see how many eggs I could eat. Yeah. For example, you know,

01:22:08.960 there's the cool hand loop thing. Yes. Can you eat 50 eggs? And there's people on the internet

01:22:13.680 like, uh, would eat a hundred eggs. Uh, I see a guy at LA beast once he ate, I think 50 eggs

01:22:20.400 and the shells. Yeah. It's ridiculous. People do ridiculous things, right? They do. I think

01:22:24.320 I've, I've, I've, I've had, uh, like a dozen egg omelette, a bunch, a whole bunch. I think I

01:22:29.040 was able to eat sort of, uh, 20 odd, maybe a quiet 20 odd eggs in one sitting. Have you,

01:22:35.280 you say that you, your tolerance for it. Can you just like drink 20, 30 eggs or something?

01:22:41.840 I'd say that the most I've ever drunk in one go, I think was 16. Um, but, but yes, I mean,

01:22:47.200 that's one of the things about consuming them raw as well. It's that it's actually very, very easy

01:22:51.280 to knock back a lot of eggs, much easier than it is to eat and cook. You know, 16 raw eggs, you can,

01:22:57.520 you can down 16 raw eggs quickly. With 16 hard boiled eggs. Yeah. That's much more difficult.

01:23:02.880 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Much more difficult. It occupies more space in your stomach. It takes longer,

01:23:07.760 takes longer for you to eat them. Um, the kind of satiety impulse kicks in quicker, much quicker

01:23:14.000 because you're taking your time. Um, so yes, I mean, that is one of the main reasons to do it raw

01:23:20.720 is so that you can get a massive infusion of, of eggs, of cholesterol, of protein, of all the

01:23:26.960 micronutrients and enzymes. One last silly thing before we move on to the power. Do you think you

01:23:33.760 could drink 50 raw eggs? Not in one gulp, obviously, but in one sitting? Yeah, I think

01:23:39.440 I could. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's that, there's that video, isn't there? I'm sure you, have you

01:23:42.560 seen that video? What one? It's the BBC video from the 1970s, like an old BBC reel about a man in a pub

01:23:51.280 who drinks raw eggs and they go to see him and he drinks 50 raw eggs. I haven't seen that yet.

01:23:56.480 I'll post it again. I'll post it again on my Twitter. I posted it a couple of times and said,

01:24:00.720 my ancestor because it's this, you know, this sort of, um, beardy kind of Northern

01:24:05.760 chap who's just has a party trick of drinking raw eggs and they make him drink 50 in one go.

01:24:12.240 It might even have been more than 50 actually, but it might have been, I think it was 60 in 60 seconds.

01:24:18.240 That's quick, isn't it? That's opening your gullet as well, isn't it? It's not just drinking,

01:24:21.440 it's that ability to, which I can't do. Okay, let's talk about power. I think,

01:24:30.800 the main thrust of your book, correct me if I'm wrong, or the main thing is about the nexus

01:24:38.720 between food or maybe food supplier and power, social control. Now, the thing that sprung to my

01:24:47.760 mind many times when I was reading it was a few years ago now, or when History Bro was a new channel,

01:24:55.120 I did a massive series on Mao and the Great Leap Forward, which resulted in a mass famine,

01:25:01.600 perhaps the worst famine ever, ever. And what they did is they used food as a weapon. So

01:25:10.880 massive areas of land were collectivized onto giant farms and you could only eat at the

01:25:19.040 collective kitchen. And if for whatever reason, the party took a disliking to you,

01:25:24.960 they didn't think you were doing enough work or you was actually dissident in any way,

01:25:27.680 you didn't get as much food at the canteen. And it's as simple as that. They controlled the food

01:25:37.280 supplier in the very, very direct sense of what you got to put in your own mouth. And so the food

01:25:42.400 supply is a weapon. Now, do you think that we are heading down with the WEF, or not just the WEF,

01:25:49.280 but in all sorts of senses, heading down a road where our food supply is going to be, or is already

01:25:56.320 beginning to be weaponized?

01:25:58.240 Yeah, I do. I mean, just as a slightly tangential point, I mean, I start the book with an extract

01:26:06.160 from Plato's Republic, where Plato has Socrates tell his companions, Glaucon and Adamantus,

01:26:15.120 that the ideal harmonious society would be one in which ordinary people are deprived of animal food.

01:26:22.480 It would be a vegetarian society. So for a very long time, social planners, philosophers have

01:26:30.000 understood that food is a weapon of social change, food is a weapon of social control. And it's quite

01:26:38.320 striking to see that. That's a part actually of Plato's Republic that doesn't get much comment,

01:26:42.320 or doesn't get as much comment maybe as it should. But I thought it would be a good way to start the

01:26:46.560 book, just to say, look, I mean, food and social, well, I say food and social control go together

01:26:51.680 like peas and carrots. This has been understood for a very long time, that if you want to change a

01:26:58.480 society, change the way people behave, change what they do, change their relationship with authority,

01:27:05.600 make sure that they're obedient, change their diet. And maybe give them a vegetarian diet

01:27:12.160 in particular, because a vegetarian diet isn't what we should be eating.

01:27:15.920 Or even the scarcity. I can make you hungry or even starve you.

01:27:19.760 Yes, of course.

01:27:20.320 And now you're going to do what I want. Just that, just a simple dynamic of that.

01:27:24.240 But we're moving, I think, towards a much more subtle form of coercion by control of food supply.

01:27:32.640 So, I mean, the food supply is in the hands of corporations to an unprecedented extent.

01:27:44.080 And that's one of the main trends, I think, in food over the last 100, 150 years.

01:27:52.720 It's the consolidation of food supply in the hands of corporations.

01:27:57.760 And it's been a disaster for human health since the beginning,

01:28:00.000 but it's getting much worse for these new processed foods.

01:28:03.120 And also, as the degree of corporate control increases and people's options become more and more limited.

01:28:16.560 The book is about the plan for a global plant-based diet, right?

01:28:20.480 So that's the main focus and that's where the comparison with the agricultural revolution comes in,

01:28:28.320 the transition to agriculture. Everything else is about whether plant-based diets are good for human

01:28:38.160 beings and what it actually would mean if we made the transition to a global plant-based diet,

01:28:44.400 as our lords and masters want us to. And this isn't a conspiracy. It's not a conspiracy theory that

01:28:52.160 governments, NGOs, the scientific and medical establishment, the media, celebrities and influencers

01:29:00.960 are all pushing plant-based diets. And you have much more

01:29:05.040 more elaborated visions of the future of plant-based diet, like the planetary health diet, for example,

01:29:12.320 which I discuss in the book, which is a deeply elaborated global diet, basically.

01:29:24.240 So this is what the diet for a model citizen or a normal citizen in 2050 is going to look like.

01:29:32.000 And it's a calorie and macronutrient breakdown of an average person's daily food intake,

01:29:40.800 and it's all coming from plant sources. This plant-based diet was created by the Eat Foundation,

01:29:48.560 which is a non-profit organization. It was founded by two Norwegian billionaires,

01:29:56.640 a billionaire couple called the Store Daylands, and it's basically the food wing of the World Economic

01:30:02.560 Forum. So they do all of the thinking about the future of food for the World Economic Forum,

01:30:09.920 or a large part of it anyway. And this planetary health diet was created by the Eat Foundation and

01:30:17.120 the Lancet, the medical journal, the prestigious medical journal. And it's the vision of what diet

01:30:28.720 it's going to be like in decades in order to save the planet from climate change and feed a population

01:30:33.920 of 10 billion people a healthy diet. In inverted commas.

01:30:38.800 Yeah, in inverted commas. Because you talk about the Eat Foundation in there,

01:30:41.920 a fair bit. But yeah, I've not really ever heard of them before. This Norwegian couple.

01:30:47.600 Yeah, the Store Daylands. Not really heard of them before.

01:30:50.080 Yeah, I hadn't really heard of them until I started digging into them.

01:30:57.040 There's this nexus of all of these different groups, governments, NGOs,

01:31:00.640 medical establishment, all pushing in the same direction, corporations, all pushing in the same

01:31:04.800 direction, which is towards the abandonment of traditional animal foods, meat, dairy, eggs, etc.,

01:31:13.600 in favour of a plant-based diet. And what that means, among other things, and I go into detail

01:31:21.200 about this in the book, is the further consolidation of corporate control of the food supply. Because in

01:31:28.080 order to feed a global population of 10 billion plant-based diet, you're going to need new genetically

01:31:34.240 modified high-yield forms of crops like wheat and soy, other plants, crops. You're going to need

01:31:49.200 these sort of novel proteins as well that they're talking about, like lab-grown meat, and farmed insects,

01:31:56.400 plant-based meat, and all this kind of stuff. And all of these different things can be owned with patterns.

01:32:01.120 So that's where the control comes in. And that's actually why corporations are totally on board with

01:32:09.120 this, including giant meat and dairy companies, companies that broke their teeth in meat and dairy,

01:32:18.880 that you would think would resist the move to a global plant-based diet with tooth and claw,

01:32:24.400 you know, that they would be fighting until the bitter end to prevent this kind of thing happening.

01:32:28.720 Well, they're not. Tyson Foods, which is an enormous mega-food player in the US, has rebranded itself

01:32:36.720 as the Protein Company. So they trademarked the Protein Company as their kind of slogan.

01:32:45.840 Rather than being a meat company or a dairy company, as they once were, they're a protein company,

01:32:50.720 they're a macronutrient company. Because what they're banking on is they're banking on a near future where

01:32:56.160 actually animal foods are scarce. It's unaffordable to eat meat, dairy and eggs on a regular basis.

01:33:08.960 So people are forced to consume these alternative proteins, plant-based meat, soy, etc.

01:33:15.840 So, I mean, these corporations are all in on this and they're reconfiguring their operations and

01:33:23.920 refocusing for a time when actually, you know, there won't really be a substantial choice.

01:33:29.680 You won't really, unless you have a lot of money, you won't really be able to eat animal products.

01:33:35.920 They're evil. There's a couple of things though. One, just sort of a broad, very, very broad point,

01:33:42.480 about power is that, you know, somebody like Putin certainly doesn't answer to the West.

01:33:49.520 No.

01:33:50.000 Someone like that Winnie the Pooh fella in Beijing.

01:33:53.760 He doesn't necessarily have to do what Tyson Foods wants him to do.

01:33:56.880 No.

01:33:58.320 So, I mean, that's just, you know, that's an interesting point.

01:34:02.240 Yes.

01:34:02.560 That it might just be foisted upon the West, perhaps first.

01:34:06.320 Yes. Oh yeah. I mean, I think it will be. I mean, I don't, I don't think,

01:34:09.440 also, I think it's, it's worth saying. I don't think that, um, how Schwab runs the world.

01:34:14.560 No, no. Yeah. You said that in the, because, because some people do, and that's how people

01:34:18.240 talk about him. They talk about him as a kind of Emperor Palpatine type figure and the World

01:34:23.040 Economic Forum as the shadow government. I don't think it's that at all. I don't think,

01:34:27.360 I don't think he's that either. It's a nexus of elite interests. Yeah.

01:34:32.080 Global elites don't go to Davos for no reason. They go there for a reason. They do. And, uh,

01:34:39.440 they broadcast their intentions and they broadcast, uh, their ideas and plans for the future. But,

01:34:47.040 um, I don't think that there's some shadowy organization running the world, but I do think,

01:34:51.120 nevertheless, there is very clearly in some form a plan, uh, to deprive people of animal, animal products,

01:35:01.200 and justify it in the name of saving the planet, in the name of saving the planet from climate change.

01:35:05.120 That leads me on to my next question then is why? Um, I mean, many people said, well,

01:35:11.200 it's to sort of make us physically weak, perhaps even feeble of mind and things. Uh, I mean, I,

01:35:17.760 I can buy that. I'm not entirely sure if I do, but certainly can or could buy that. Um,

01:35:23.120 what ultimately would be the purpose of making us all eat plant-based food? Is it just to,

01:35:28.080 well, I think certainly from the perspective, I think that corporations are all in on it.

01:35:33.920 Like I say, because it offers them, it offers them an even greater degree of control. They can

01:35:39.520 break more ownership envelopes. So, you know, you can, you can own cattle in a certain way,

01:35:47.120 but you, you can own, uh, you can own a lab grown steak down to the molecular level.

01:35:53.680 It offers them a, it offers them a level of control over the product.

01:35:58.080 that they just can't, they just can't get with, with traditional food stuff.

01:36:02.800 I do think that that's a... Why would they need that? Why would they want that necessarily?

01:36:05.360 Is it just... I think that that's just the inter... Megalomania?

01:36:08.080 I think it's just the internal logic of, of, of capitalism and commerce. I think it's just these,

01:36:14.880 these companies want to make more money. And so they're on board with, with, uh, schemes that allow,

01:36:22.000 that allow them to. Yeah, I don't, I mean, well, money is power and control of the food supply is,

01:36:29.040 is power. And actually we would do well to recognize that we would do well to recognize that actually

01:36:34.640 we are governed, not only by our government, but also by these corporations that control the food

01:36:39.360 supply. They determine, they determine our health and, uh, all sorts of other things besides, and, uh,

01:36:47.200 the course of our lives. And actually maybe if we realize that we might be more willing to do

01:36:51.760 something about it. But, um, yeah, I mean, I don't, I do think, and I say in the book, uh,

01:36:59.040 that being on a, on a plant-based diet, for example, as a man will make you less masculine.

01:37:04.720 It will, it will make you lower your testosterone levels. It will make you less rowdy. It will make

01:37:11.120 you less, it will make you easier. It will make you easier to control. And that's exactly why I

01:37:15.760 start the book with the Plato quote where he, or with the plate, the section from Plato where he

01:37:20.640 talks about the value of plant-based diets of a vegetarian diet as a form of social control.

01:37:26.880 He actually says it, it makes men less spirited. It makes men want less. It makes men less competitive,

01:37:33.840 in particular, that's one thing he says, you know, men who are on vegetarian diets don't want to go to

01:37:38.400 war with one another. They don't want to conquer land. They don't, uh, they're happy with their lot.

01:37:43.920 He actually says that, you know, these people will be content with their lot and fearful

01:37:48.160 if they're on a, if they're on a plant-based diet. So, I mean, I, yeah, I mean, I try to avoid

01:37:55.760 conspiracizing in the book and just stick to the facts and to the, and to the fact, the undisputable

01:38:02.000 fact, the indisputable fact that, um, this plant-based agenda exists and it is being advanced

01:38:08.560 by governments, NGOs, corporations, investors, establishments, scientists, et cetera. Um,

01:38:15.040 that's beyond doubt, you know, beyond doubt. If you go to your doctor today and say,

01:38:20.000 what diet should I eat? You know, I've been eating X, Y, Z. He'll say, you know, she will say,

01:38:26.240 you should be eating a plant-based diet. You should be, you know, reducing your consumption

01:38:30.880 of meat. You should be. And that's exactly what Robert Downey Jr. will tell you. That's exactly what

01:38:36.720 corporations will tell you. That's exactly what the medical establishment and newspapers will tell

01:38:40.800 you. And it's what the U.N. will tell you. And it's what activists like Greta Thunberg will tell you.

01:38:45.360 And it's what governments will tell you. And so, um,

01:38:48.480 And it's bunkum. Yeah, it is bunkum. Yeah, it is bunkum. It's bad, it's bad science. Um, uh,

01:38:55.920 and it's serving, it is serving an ideological and political agenda. And I think it's hard,

01:39:01.200 it's hard not to talk about climate change agenda and talk about control. I mean,

01:39:07.120 it's hard not to, not to, not to think that actually, you know, this isn't, this is just

01:39:14.080 about climate, you know, um, this is about other stuff as well, or even other stuff primarily.

01:39:20.400 I mean, obviously there are true believers, there are people who, but it's used in a very cynical way to,

01:39:26.160 um, to bolster power and, um, for a variety of other different reasons as well.

01:39:33.600 I appreciate you say you don't necessarily want to, and I don't want to force you.

01:39:37.760 Of course, you don't really want to talk about the conspiratorial side of things.

01:39:42.960 Um, but here at Lotus Eaters, we don't usually shy away from this sort of thing.

01:39:46.480 Dan doesn't think he landed on the moon, for example.

01:39:48.240 Uh, I've explicitly said, I think Alan Dulles at the CIA murdered JFK.

01:39:52.720 So, um, I mean, but I can't get away from the question of why though,

01:39:59.200 other than, okay, some corporations, uh, become more powerful and richer.

01:40:06.320 Um, but the idea of why you would, you know, really, why would you want people to be less

01:40:15.760 healthy? Why would, you know, I just can't get away from that nagging question.

01:40:21.280 You know, you had this, this dystopian future that you all live in a pod and you eat bugs

01:40:26.560 and you'll like it and all that sort of thing. Why though, why would they, why is that the

01:40:32.960 future vision that apparently has been dreamt up for us? To what end?

01:40:37.840 I mean, I suppose it depends on your view of government, whether you think the end of government

01:40:43.280 is for the benefit, the good of the people or not. And I mean, I'm increasingly convinced certainly

01:40:51.440 by the events of the last four years, the pandemic, that that isn't end of government at all.

01:40:55.600 And I think a lot, a lot of people are also convinced of that too.

01:40:58.560 I would agree with you, but, um, but yes, it's so-

01:41:00.800 The pod with the bugs, how does that, I don't necessarily see how those two-

01:41:04.960 Yeah. Yeah. I know. Uh, well, I mean, I don't think it, like I said, I don't think it,

01:41:09.280 I don't think it makes sense if, if, if you even cling to a vestige of the notion that, um,

01:41:16.000 governments actually want to do what's right for us and, and want, and want us to flourish in

01:41:21.360 particular. How is it in their interest that we end up

01:41:24.160 a childlike weaklings in a pod? How is it, how is that in anyone's interest?

01:41:28.720 Well, I mean, I think, certainly. Just because we're controlled?

01:41:31.680 I think so. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think that that's probably reason.

01:41:34.640 I think that's probably reason enough. Maybe.

01:41:36.960 Yeah. I mean, maybe.

01:41:39.280 Okay. Okay. So what can we do? Because time is much longer, unfortunately. Um, so last thing,

01:41:44.640 last big topic I'd love to talk about. Okay.

01:41:46.400 What necessarily can we do? You talk a lot about, uh, I think that the, the Dacha system in Russia.

01:41:52.080 Yes.

01:41:52.480 Or the idea that people, I mean, in Britain, it would be allotments.

01:41:56.000 The idea that you grow things in your own garden, your own yard.

01:42:00.560 One way or another, uh, you grow your own food or even, uh, raise your own livestock

01:42:07.120 and all sorts of things. That's what you talk about a fair bit in the book.

01:42:09.760 Yes.

01:42:10.800 So I'd love to let you talk all about that and pick your brain a bit about that.

01:42:14.080 Yeah, of course.

01:42:15.600 Also go ahead. What do you, what would you say? I mean, obviously if you live in the middle of a city

01:42:20.320 and you haven't got any money to be paying with, it's going to be very difficult for you.

01:42:25.040 Sure.

01:42:25.360 But beyond that, if you've got any sort of capacity to have an allotment or grow things

01:42:30.240 in your own garden or anything at all, or people that you know live somewhere that could.

01:42:34.960 Yeah.

01:42:35.200 I mean, what would you advise, what would you say to people?

01:42:37.840 So the, the eggs Benedict option of the title is, is my answer to, um, this, the plant-based agenda

01:42:45.520 and the, and the growth of corporate control over the food supply. So this is the sort of

01:42:50.400 pushback that I envisage and it's kind of twofold. So one part of it is reform of the industrial food

01:42:57.440 system and of the way that agriculture is practiced priorities of the agricultural system,

01:43:02.480 production of corn in the U S all that kind of stuff moves to regenerative, to, to use regenerative

01:43:08.400 methods in farming, give back the land, but that's on the sort of broader scale industrial system.

01:43:14.400 But then there's a kind of individual response or a smaller scale response, um, that I think is

01:43:22.480 potentially could potentially work. And I draw on the example of Russia, of Russian household gardening

01:43:28.960 system, which is, uh, basically a peasant form of agriculture. So in Russia, then the, the peasant

01:43:36.000 mode of agriculture has persisted for a thousand years. So, you know, you've still got people,

01:43:42.640 ordinary people producing significant quantities of food in their own gardens. Um, and that includes

01:43:49.920 people in the urban areas as well. So Russia is two thirds urban. Now Russia is an urban nation, right?

01:43:56.080 But people from the city still go out into the countryside at the weekends and during the week,

01:44:00.880 during the growing season and grow food for themselves and they keep chicken and all that

01:44:06.800 sort of stuff as well. So Russia is an example of a modern industrial nation where you have a modern

01:44:14.880 industrial food supply and also local small scale production of food by ordinary people as well.

01:44:21.920 Uh, and they produce, uh, I mean, I, I relied on a, on a dissertation, PhD dissertation,

01:44:29.600 about the Russian household gardening system for my account of, of the, of the practice and its

01:44:35.760 benefits. And, um, it was written sort of like 2008, I think, but this, the chap who wrote it goes into

01:44:41.920 great detail about the benefits of the system, about the outputs of the system as well. And he gives

01:44:47.920 these amazing statistics. It's something like 50% of Russia's agricultural output by value is produced

01:44:53.120 by people in their own gardens. Remarkable, isn't it?

01:44:55.520 Yeah, it's remarkable. I found that remarkable.

01:44:57.440 Yeah. And yeah, it's, and it's, and it's true. And, um, uh, so that, that shows that actually,

01:45:05.680 and, and they, they spend something like 17 hours a week in their gardens during the growing season,

01:45:10.960 which is four months in Russia, right? Which isn't inconsiderable, but it's not crazy though either,

01:45:15.600 is it? No, exactly. And I cite statistics that, that, that suggest that Americans spend 32 hours

01:45:21.360 a week in front of the television on average. So we've got the time, we've got the space too,

01:45:25.840 the area of, um, private lawns in the U S is greater than the area under cultivation by household

01:45:32.160 gardeners in Russia. So if you wanted to implement a system like that in the U S you could.

01:45:37.120 And then you've got, you know, these historical examples, the back to the land drives that took

01:45:41.040 place during world war two and world war one, where for victory, yeah, when I was reading it.

01:45:46.720 Yeah, exactly. So that kind of thing has been done before in the West. People have returned to the land

01:45:51.680 to produce food in, uh, service of a national, great national effort, the war,

01:45:58.080 world war one, world war two, et cetera. Um, uh, so, I mean, it's quite, I think it's quite optimistic.

01:46:05.200 It's definitely optimistic to suggest that people might start producing, you know, on a,

01:46:09.680 on a large scale food to feed themselves. But, um, I mean, it does work in Russia. It has worked in

01:46:17.760 Russia. And, um, I do think that we need to think differently about, about the way that food is

01:46:23.280 produced. And, um, because it's very clear that corporate control of the food supply has not been

01:46:29.040 to our benefit. And, uh, the alternative is not having corporations controlling the food supply to

01:46:37.360 the extent that they do well. Okay. Well, who's going to produce the food then? And maybe you could

01:46:41.680 just have a return to sort of small scale farming. But I think it's good to have, to have a food supply

01:46:48.400 that operates on different levels. Well, that's another part of my argument, but it's good to have

01:46:53.120 multiple systems in place so that, you know, if you have problems with one, then the other can pick

01:46:58.480 up the slack. And actually when the, uh, Soviet Union collapsed in 1990, then the industrial

01:47:05.600 food system collapsed as well. Industrial agricultural system really, really sort of, um, collapsed and

01:47:12.240 there wasn't mass starvation. There wasn't mass starvation. And that was because people were

01:47:17.040 producing their own food. And it's something, I mean, another statistic, something like 90% of all

01:47:22.000 potatoes consumed in Russia. Is that right? Yeah. And so, um, but it's also things like milk and eggs

01:47:29.520 and, uh, some meat and, you know, and honey and other things like that. So, um, it's a very,

01:47:36.480 very interesting system. And I think it's, uh, I mean, I'm trying to be provocative in the book. I was

01:47:41.440 trying to be provocative by comparing the great reset and the plant-based agenda to the agricultural

01:47:46.320 revolution. And I'm also trying to be provocative, uh, by saying, you know, maybe we should look to

01:47:51.360 Russia for some, for some ideas, especially, you know, in 2024 when Russia is not the most popular

01:47:57.920 nation on earth, but, uh, I don't mind them. No, I don't. I don't. If someone said you had to go and

01:48:04.160 live in DC, uh, Moscow or Beijing, I'd probably pick Moscow. Yeah. I'm perfectly honest. I don't care who

01:48:10.880 knows that. Um, but yeah, not that I'm pro Putin. When, if you say anything even remotely positive

01:48:15.920 about Russia, you're a, you're a stooge of the Kremlin. You must of course, uh, anyway,

01:48:19.920 I don't, I reject all that nonsense, but you think, I think people probably should,

01:48:23.040 more people should have a lot of them in Britain, in modern Britain or even, or even use their gardens.

01:48:28.000 I mean, you can grow, you can grow a surprisingly large amount of food, even in a modest garden and,

01:48:34.080 and the gardens that the, that these Russian household gardeners maintain are for the most part,

01:48:38.800 modest. They're not, they're not, it's not an acre garden. It's not even half an acre. I mean,

01:48:43.440 the average size is small. The average size is pretty small, but they, they work them in a very

01:48:47.920 productive manner using, using permaculture methods and time honored small scale, um, production methods

01:48:56.720 like, uh, companion planting, you know, where you plant different kinds of, um, plants together that

01:49:02.960 complement each other in, in various different ways. And that leads to a higher yield and you don't have

01:49:07.760 used pesticides and all that kind of stuff. So it's, it's organic as well. Uh, I mean,

01:49:13.600 it's just, yeah, I think it's a, I think it's an, it's an interesting, provocative example. It's been

01:49:18.240 quite well known in the permaculture and organic farming community for quite some time that Russian

01:49:23.360 household gardening is, uh, you know, it's a really quite a miraculous system and, and, you know,

01:49:30.160 could work more broadly maybe in the West to regain.

01:49:33.920 You've been doing a bit, haven't you, in your garden? I think I've heard you say something.

01:49:36.720 Yeah, I do. I do. Yeah. I grow, I grow stuff. I've got fruit trees. Um, uh,

01:49:42.400 And you just know it hasn't been pumped full of chemicals from day one.

01:49:45.120 Right. Yeah. Yeah.

01:49:46.080 But that's...

01:49:47.520 Yeah. And the taste, the taste is better. I mean, there's no comparison between a,

01:49:52.080 a properly ripened tomato that you've grown at home on the vine, ripened on the vine,

01:49:57.760 and a tomato that has been picked unripe and sprayed with ethylene gas in the back of a truck to ripen

01:50:04.320 on its way to the supermarket. I mean, there's no, there's no comparison.

01:50:08.240 There's something, uh, um, raised or grown in Argentina or Brazil or something. And then it's

01:50:14.800 been flash frozen and put on a payment ship and that sort of thing. Someone in the office has got

01:50:20.160 an allotment and they've only had it for a year, but next year, I'm going to help absolutely help out

01:50:23.760 and hopefully benefit a bit from. Um, but yeah, I've got a bit of experience with it,

01:50:27.680 a little bit of experience. When I was growing up in my household, in our garden, we'd have

01:50:31.440 strawberries in summer, we'd run a beans and potatoes. One of my uncles has been madly into

01:50:37.680 it for years, always had at least two greenhouses and lots of his garden. And it's absolutely,

01:50:42.800 I think what's actually surprising, what I think probably most people who don't know anything about

01:50:46.400 it might not realize is that you don't need a fantastic amount of space. No, you really don't.

01:50:50.960 He'll have, I don't know, a couple of dozen square meters and he'll get tons, tons, literally tons.

01:51:00.720 He'll just get loads of food out of that. And it does, it might take actually years,

01:51:04.400 maybe even half a lifetime to know exactly what you're doing, exactly what to plant and when.

01:51:09.920 So it all complements each other and you make the best of the cycle and that will take a long,

01:51:14.400 long time sort of institutional experience to work all that out and be very good at that.

01:51:19.600 Nonetheless, you don't need, you don't need a whole field.

01:51:24.320 No, no, you absolutely don't. You don't need a farm.

01:51:26.800 Right, right.

01:51:27.840 You don't need a farm. So yeah, so that's the, that's the message I think of the,

01:51:31.840 of the Russian example is that, um, you know, actually you can, you can produce a lot of

01:51:37.520 really high quality food at home and it will be a benefit to your health.

01:51:41.520 Uh, it will be a benefit to your life. I mean, there's a pleasure to it as well.

01:51:44.480 Uh, and there are social benefits to it, you know, uh, sense of, I mean, certainly in these,

01:51:50.400 in these sort of Russian communities where they do it, then there is a sense of community because

01:51:53.760 people, uh, first of all, they use their household gardens, their, their plots for entertaining,

01:51:59.440 but they also exchange and barter goods and stuff.

01:52:03.200 And, um, because the worry is, don't you think the real, the honest to God,

01:52:08.720 proper down to earth, real life fit is that one day or over the course of a few weeks or months,

01:52:14.560 for whatever reason, uh, Tesco's and Sainsbury's and Asda and Audi stop.

01:52:21.840 You can't get food there anymore.

01:52:23.120 Mm. Yeah.

01:52:24.160 And then for millions of people, maybe the majority of people,

01:52:28.080 they're done once they're cans, anything they might have got in their cupboards,

01:52:31.440 anything they might have stockpiled, a few cans, once they're gone,

01:52:35.840 you then die of starvation on the floor of your home,

01:52:39.200 just like millions of Chinese people did during the great year forward.

01:52:42.720 Well, we saw, I mean, we saw, we saw intimations of that, um, during the pandemic,

01:52:47.520 of course, supply chain disruption.

01:52:49.600 Yeah.

01:52:50.000 Shortages.

01:52:50.960 I mean, it was, it was worse, I think, in the US than it was here.

01:52:55.760 Uh, and you know, you saw, I remember watching a, a news report about, uh,

01:53:01.440 the fact that significant numbers of Americans had taken up hunting again,

01:53:05.520 and were going out into the forest to, to get meat.

01:53:08.960 We can't do that in Britain.

01:53:09.920 No.

01:53:10.400 Not that many badgers.

01:53:12.400 Right?

01:53:12.880 No, exactly.

01:53:13.600 Um, squirrels.

01:53:14.960 But, um, but yeah, I mean, uh, we, we, I mean, if, if the book does anything,

01:53:22.320 I hope it raises people's awareness of food as a political issue,

01:53:26.880 that it's a genuine political issue and that it's not something that we should take for granted.

01:53:31.920 We shouldn't take this plenty for granted.

01:53:33.920 We shouldn't take our access to any type of food we desire for granted.

01:53:40.160 Uh, because personally, I don't, I think, you know, we're going to see a time in the near

01:53:44.960 future potentially where actually our freedom of choice is curtailed, um, severely and we've

01:53:52.000 been warned and we have a chance to do, do something about it.

01:53:55.760 And, uh, I mean, that's the other thing.

01:53:57.840 That's the other takeaway is that if we want to do anything about it, it was,

01:54:01.760 there's going to have to be some kind of political response, you know?

01:54:04.960 So Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, he banned lab grown meat in, in Florida recently.

01:54:12.000 And, uh, so you're not allowed to buy it.

01:54:15.680 You're not allowed, uh, you're not allowed to sell it.

01:54:17.280 You're not allowed to produce it.

01:54:18.080 You can go to jail if you do for 60 days.

01:54:20.560 Uh, and all the free marketeers were up in arms saying, oh, you know, you can't do this,

01:54:27.440 you know, let the product die on the, on its, on its merits within the market.

01:54:32.960 Um, but the problem is that the plant-based agenda,

01:54:36.640 It's not a fair market.

01:54:38.240 It's not, it's not a fair market.

01:54:39.760 It has a, it's a, it is a political, um, it's a political agenda.

01:54:45.280 It's not about consumer choice because people don't want to become vegan.

01:54:48.720 People don't want to become vegetarian.

01:54:50.240 We know that.

01:54:50.880 I mean, it's a, it's a, it's a small proportion of the population.

01:54:54.400 Like 3% of people in Europe think are vegan.

01:54:57.760 Whole of Europe, 3%, right?

01:55:00.240 Otherwise people don't buy plant-based meat.

01:55:02.640 People don't buy soy and, you know, um, uh, alternatives to meat.

01:55:08.160 They want meat.

01:55:09.360 So it's very, very clear that consumers don't buy the plant-based agenda,

01:55:14.320 but it's still happening.

01:55:15.440 And it's still going to happen because it has the backing of governments

01:55:18.720 and corporations and NGOs and the medical establishment and the media.

01:55:22.240 Um, so we can't buy our way out of it.

01:55:26.160 Just continuing to buy meat and eggs and dairy isn't going to, isn't going to prevent

01:55:33.520 carbon taxes on, uh, you know, on meat and other polluting products.

01:55:39.120 It's not going to, it's not going to stop governments.

01:55:41.200 It's not going to stop inflation.

01:55:42.800 It's not going to stop artificial scarcity.

01:55:44.720 It's not going to stop, um, all of them, the myriad different ways.

01:55:48.400 I think they're going to make it harder and harder for us and to the animal products we love.

01:55:53.200 It's not like necessarily one day you wake up over a period of, they're not going to,

01:55:57.360 they're not going to ban meat.

01:55:58.480 Right.

01:55:58.880 That's, that's what I would say.

01:55:59.680 They'll just make it insanely expensive.

01:56:01.280 Hmm.

01:56:01.840 Yeah.

01:56:02.320 Right.

01:56:02.640 Yeah.

01:56:02.960 And they can do that in a variety of ways.

01:56:04.800 They can, I mean, there was a, I talk about this in the book.

01:56:07.040 There was a, um, an article in the New York Times, New York Times.

01:56:11.680 Yeah.

01:56:11.760 I think it was a New York Times op-ed, uh,

01:56:14.000 in 2022, in the summer of 2022.

01:56:16.560 And it said that the headline was, you want to buy meat in this economy.

01:56:21.840 And, and the, the art, the article was about basically how inflation is great.

01:56:27.040 So, you know, inflation was really biting, really biting in the summer of 2022 pandemic.

01:56:33.120 And then you get this, uh, intellectual writing a piece saying, actually,

01:56:38.480 inflation is great because, uh, we want people to stop eating meat anyway,

01:56:42.800 because we've got to save the planet.

01:56:44.080 So let's lean into inflation.

01:56:45.920 You know, inflation drive.

01:56:47.120 Well, yeah.

01:56:48.480 Inflation will drive welcome dietary change, whether Americans want it or not.

01:56:52.560 And inflation should be encouraged.

01:56:54.320 Um, so yes, I mean, it's, it's not, it's not about what people really want.

01:57:00.320 It's about, um, it's about enforcing the agenda, you know, making the agenda come true.

01:57:06.480 And, um, you can do that with inflation.

01:57:09.040 You can do it with artificial scarcity.

01:57:10.560 You can buy up farmland and put it to alternative uses.

01:57:14.720 I mean, that's something that Bill Gates has done.

01:57:16.240 Bill Gates, I think, is the largest private land, uh, private, uh, owner of farmland in

01:57:21.040 the U S now.

01:57:22.000 And he's converted hundreds of thousands of acres from animal agriculture to growing

01:57:28.320 things like soy, I think.

01:57:29.600 And, you know, you can, you can take, you can take agricultural land out of the market

01:57:34.320 and just sell it for real estate.

01:57:36.320 Um, but what you do is you, you, you drive the price of animal products up and you make it

01:57:42.720 harder and harder for people to, to buy them.

01:57:45.040 And then one day you're going to the supermarket and you're not buying normal beef burgers.

01:57:50.320 You're buying plant-based burgers instead, because they're affordable and you want a burger,

01:57:55.600 even if it doesn't really taste like a burger.

01:57:59.600 It'll be a sad day indeed when I can't afford chorizo anyway.

01:58:02.560 I love chorizo.

01:58:03.280 Um, the worry, one of the worries is, um, you might have saw recently or not recently,

01:58:07.680 actually it was a while ago, but, um, they made it in Britain anyway,

01:58:11.440 illegal for you to, you're not supposed to, I think people still do use wood to fire your,

01:58:17.840 like an agar.

01:58:18.640 Yeah.

01:58:19.040 Or if you've just got an open fireplace, they don't really want you to, and they pass some

01:58:22.960 laws to try and stop it.

01:58:23.920 So the worry for me is that people start an allotment or they start growing in their garden.

01:58:28.560 Yeah.

01:58:28.800 And then the, the authoritarian commie government says you just pass on and say,

01:58:32.800 that's illegal.

01:58:33.360 Can't do that.

01:58:34.960 Um, I think I heard you say somewhere, one of your interviews saying that a farmer you knew

01:58:40.320 I'd spoken to said, everything I want to do is becoming illegal.

01:58:43.440 Oh, that's, so that's actually the, that's actually the title of, uh, a collection of

01:58:48.640 essays by Joel Salatin.

01:58:49.920 Right.

01:58:50.320 He's a famous regenerative farmer.

01:58:52.560 He's been on Joe Rogan.

01:58:53.600 Uh, so yeah, everything I want to do is illegal.

01:58:56.560 And it's, uh,

01:58:57.600 Be a farmer, self-sustaining person.

01:58:59.600 Yeah.

01:59:00.400 Well, yeah, it's a collection of essays about how every single thing he wants to do as a

01:59:05.200 small farmer, every, the sort of things you would expect a small farmer to be able to do things

01:59:09.680 like slaughtering his own chickens, selling raw milk, he just can't do.

01:59:14.480 Um, and you know, big, big, um, conglomerates can do these things.

01:59:20.640 Of course, you know, you want to, you want to slaughter chickens in your conglomerate,

01:59:24.240 you buy or build a slaughterhouse, right?

01:59:26.640 But the small farmer, he's hamstrung because he has to jump through all of these hoops.

01:59:32.560 Uh, he has to pay money, he has to abide by regulations that are just so punitive

01:59:38.080 and so stupid that actually it's not worth doing it.

01:59:42.480 And that's, that's why a lot of people get out of farming, small farmers, because it's not worth

01:59:47.680 doing it.

01:59:48.080 Yeah.

01:59:48.720 And yeah, it is a fear that, yes, you start, you're growing stuff at home.

01:59:53.120 You keep a small flock of chickens, let's say, for some eggs.

01:59:57.040 And then the government brings in some new regulation about bird flu.

02:00:00.160 For your own safety.

02:00:01.520 For your own safety.

02:00:02.720 And then, um, or bring, or orders a cull of, of birds.

02:00:07.760 And then, sorry, you're not, you've not got, you've not got any chickens and you've not

02:00:11.280 got any eggs anymore.

02:00:13.040 I suppose the last point I wanted to make, if you could, we'll finish on that, if that's

02:00:17.120 okay.

02:00:17.440 Of course.

02:00:17.920 I think that's how quickly time's gone.

02:00:19.840 Um, is that, I suppose, governments, um, have got a monopoly over violence in the form

02:00:25.920 of the police and the CPS and the jail system and ultimately the army and also governments

02:00:32.720 are long in hand-to-hand with corporations have got a monopoly, largely nearly, over the

02:00:38.240 food supply.

02:00:38.880 And both of those things are the bottom line things in terms of your life.

02:00:44.160 Yes.

02:00:45.360 Yeah.

02:00:45.920 Your life.

02:00:46.560 Yeah.

02:00:47.280 Um, and so, and, and so it is worth, I think it is definitely worth thinking about, uh, what

02:00:55.040 could or might happen if those food suppliers, whether deliberately or not, are, um, we're

02:01:00.880 denied of a surplus essentially.

02:01:02.480 I think you've, you've phrased it as, um, a manufactured scarcity.

02:01:07.280 Yeah.

02:01:07.840 I think you said that.

02:01:08.400 Artificial scarcity.

02:01:09.360 Artificial scarcity.

02:01:09.840 Yeah.

02:01:10.000 I think that was a very, very succinct phrase.

02:01:12.800 Uh, I, I, I will probably see that in our life frames.

02:01:16.720 I think, well, I mean, I would like to say, we've seen, we've already have intimations

02:01:20.560 of it with the COVID pandemic, but people, people have stuck their heads back in the sand.

02:01:26.240 I think people pretend, people pretend that it didn't even happen.

02:01:28.800 Yeah.

02:01:29.280 There's a denial about it.

02:01:30.240 It's amazing.

02:01:30.720 Do you think one last thing that's just popped into my mind?

02:01:32.480 Sure.

02:01:32.720 I've thought about it before, but it's just really popped into my mind.

02:01:35.440 The vision of allotments with chicken wire and razor wire around them.

02:01:41.040 Yeah.

02:01:41.360 Because they're suddenly the most important places in their eyes.

02:01:45.760 Yeah.

02:01:46.560 Like you need to guard your allotment because it's a matter of life and death.

02:01:50.560 Yeah.

02:01:51.040 Do you think that's something like that might be in our future?

02:01:54.400 A bit dystopian, but...

02:01:55.840 Well, I mean, I think, yes, I think if there's a, I think there's some kind of breakdown of,

02:02:00.720 society and then definitely, I mean, having access to, having access to these, to animal

02:02:07.280 foods in particular, to the kind of foods that people actually want to eat would, yes,

02:02:10.400 would definitely, would definitely require probably more than some razor wire to protect,

02:02:14.960 actually.

02:02:15.280 Someone in your community, rural community, I imagine has got a few dozen hens and you have

02:02:21.840 to club together and defend it round the clock.

02:02:24.480 Yeah.

02:02:26.880 Yeah.

02:02:27.120 Like the good old days, the bad old days.

02:02:28.720 Yeah.

02:02:29.200 Right.

02:02:31.120 Okay.

02:02:31.360 Well, Charles, thank you very much for your time.

02:02:32.880 I'll draw it to an end there.

02:02:34.480 I've already taken Mickey a little bit.

02:02:36.160 So thank you very, very much.

02:02:37.280 No, it was an absolute pleasure.

02:02:38.480 That time went by so quickly.

02:02:39.520 I had a hundred more things I could pick your brain about.

02:02:42.240 Maybe next time when you come in, you can talk about the Reformation.

02:02:44.400 I'd love that.

02:02:44.800 If you don't mind.

02:02:45.360 I would honestly love that.

02:02:46.800 Yeah.

02:02:47.360 So once again, thank you very much.

02:02:49.040 It was a pleasure.

02:02:49.840 Thank you.

02:02:50.480 I hope you out there have liked that.

02:02:51.760 So until next time, take care.

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - August 26, 2024

Nutrition, History and Politics ｜ Interview with Raw Egg Nationalist

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