The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1108
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 43 minutes
Words per Minute
182.02623
Summary
Islander 3 is now available for purchase, and is the next step in the story that we are telling with this magazine. For this issue, we have collected piercing and esoteric essays from the finest right-wing minds on the theme of our civilizational winter. Each of our authors is an expert in bringing forth the most important hidden revelations from the lowest reaches of the soul, and it has all been beautifully rendered in a medievalist revivalist aesthetic. For the companion essay, I have commissioned a new translation of the ancient Anglo-Saxon poem The Wanderer, and have written a companion essay exploring how it is a reflection of our modern experience.
Transcript
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Islander issue 3 is now available to purchase from shop.notices.com and is the next step in
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the story that we are telling with this magazine. For this issue we have collected piercing and
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esoteric essays from the finest right-wing minds on the theme of our civilizational winter. Each
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of our authors is an expert in bringing forth the most important hidden revelations from the
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lowest reaches of the soul and it has all been beautifully rendered in a medievalist
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revivalist aesthetic. For this issue I commissioned a new translation of the ancient anglo-saxon poem
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The Wanderer and have written a companion essay exploring how it is a reflection of our modern
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experience. I personally feel that this is the most important thing I've ever written so I will be
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looking forward to your feedback on it. We have resolved our distribution issues with the magazine's
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being printed in advance of the orders so we can guarantee that you will receive your copy very
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soon after ordering it. You will also receive email updates so you can see exactly where it is.
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Hopefully issue 3 can provide you with the space and context to engage in deep reflection about the
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nature of our circumstances to discover hidden truths about yourself and find the resolve to make
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What? Ah, yes. Apologies, I was absolutely enraptured by my copy of Islander 3, which was
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which is very good. Bo, apparently we're live, so we have to...
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Yes, check out Island. Look, there we go. There's the page on the store. You can go and buy it from there.
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It's another really good addition. I appreciate we may have screwed up slightly on the delivery
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of the last one. However, those people have been well and truly sacked. They're gone and we're using
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different people and we're tracking every addition and whatever. It's all sorted. The sorting people
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have done the sorting. Anyway, yes, sorry. Back to the matter at hand. Welcome to podcast 1,108.
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I believe it is, on the 25th of February, Tuesday. Something like that.
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And what are we going to discuss? Oh, we're going to discuss who the next James Bond should be.
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We're going to discuss a new discovery of ancient Egypt, which I don't know anything about,
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so that would be interesting to learn about. And Fort Knox Gold. Is there any?
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Yes. Something very suspect is going on there. But, yes, without further ado, who should be
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the next James Bond? So Jeff Bezos, who kind of is a Bond villain. I mean, he's pretty close
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at this point, isn't he? I mean, he's got the sort of the attractive mistress who would probably,
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you know, jump into bed with Bond at the first opportunity.
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I don't know. I've lost track. I don't know. Maybe he's a right bloke, but whatever. Anyway,
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so Bezos, who is basically a Bond villain, has acquired...
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I've been accused of looking a little bit like a Bond villain from time to time.
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I don't know. I don't know what they're talking about, to be perfectly honest.
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Oh, fair enough. Yeah, yes. Do you think you'd be the main villain or one of the...
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Yeah, but you could be one of the counter henchmen who, like, try and assassinate Bonds and almost
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I'll take it. I'd like to be a reoccurring villain.
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I don't actually die at the end. I might come back in a later one.
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But Bezos, so he's finally acquired the full rights to Bond. I think...
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Don't get hung up on the details, because I don't know. I don't care, really. But it's something
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like Amazon bought MGM Studios, who had the back catalogue to the Bond. But the Broccoli
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I don't think they owned it. Don't they own the IP or whatever it is?
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Yeah. And, like, Eon Studios. And, basically, Bezos had to give them, like, an extra billion
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to stop blocking all the shit that he wanted to do with Bond.
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Because they've got notions. Like, being Amazon, obviously, they want a Bond-iverse.
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They're not going to open a Bond theme park, like the Star Wars theme park, are they?
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Well, maybe. I don't know what theme park that would be.
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But, yeah. So, you have to be a bit concerned about this, because, obviously, Amazon have
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There's Rings of Power, which wasn't really a thing before, but they've ruined that anyway,
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just to be on the safe side. And then, of course, you've got Disney, who ruined Star Wars.
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Star Wars was the most solid franchise out there. Ruined by Disney.
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And then Amazon, so who've got a track record of ruining things, has now got Bond. So we need
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to be a little bit concerned. Was it Daniel Craig?
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I mean, he started off quite good, didn't he? Casino Royale was a great movie.
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Yeah, it was a pretty good one, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It was quite good, I thought.
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There was that one scene where he gets tied to a chair with a bottom cut out, and then
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he has his bollocks destroyed by the main villain.
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Are there any indications that he did, in fact, have his manhood destroyed?
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Yes. Because look at where he is by the end movie. He's riding bitch on the back of
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The last two Bond films have been dumpster fires, right? They've been really, really bad.
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I remember the last one I saw. I'm not even sure if it was the last one that came out,
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but the last one I saw, I think it was that one.
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I mean, I might be remembering it wrong, but I'm pretty sure there's like a 45 minute section
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where he gets a diversity, equity, inclusion, sexism training when he goes back to MI5 because
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Yeah. I just remember it was really bad and woke, but that's the way everything is
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going. At least, though, maybe timing is lined up.
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Maybe the big delay in between the last movie and this one is all right, because in the
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meantime, Trump has won and therefore possibly we're past peak woke and therefore Bond won't
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Can you imagine if Kamala had won, who we would be getting as Bond?
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I don't even know what his name is. The effeminate queer that, um, hang on, I'm not supposed to
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say that, uh, uh, uh, man lover. I got, what is it?
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But, but anyway, that, so it's some effeminate, um, um, um, man who enjoys the company of
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men, um, would, would probably have ended up as the next Bond if, if Kamala had won.
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Problem is though, he's a, he is a man that's still, well, there's still beyond the power,
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isn't it? And he's not, I don't think he's physically disabled either. So, well, the,
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the, the top choice, and I've got, I've got a, I've got a midget.
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I've got a hand credit to, um, what's his name? Um, is it Andrew Lawrence? Um, the,
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the comedian, he's really good. We've had him in there a couple of times. He came up
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with a short list of, of potential bonds, and I've got to hand it to Shamima Begum.
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I mean, that, that would tick every box in the, in the woke era. He had some other
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I, I think he has a part in Rings of Power though. So, um, I could be wrong.
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Okay. Lenny Henry. We could get like 60, 70 year old Lenny Henry to do it. Couldn't we?
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Oh yeah. Well, he, well, he's in, he's in Rings of, no, Lord of the Rings thing or something.
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Lord of the Rings. Um, but, but, but yes. So, so thank goodness, um, that we have got a Trump win.
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Because otherwise, you know, we would have got a bad bond, almost certainly. But, but there's
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another problem that remains, which is, in this modern era, the fact remains is the bond
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And, and Bond is supposed to be this hero archetype, but there is nothing that you can do that's heroic
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or manly if you work for the British government in 2025.
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Well, according to the fifth commonists at least.
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Well, yeah, but what would, yeah, but you got to remember, he, he, he's like an MI6 agent.
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So he, he's, he's pushing the foreign policy of the British government. So Keir Starmer's government.
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So what could he possibly be doing that would, would be heroic?
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I mean, the, I mean, uh, you could have like gaslighting from Russia where he goes to Russia to,
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I was going to say the Ruskies are still the baddies, aren't they?
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So he would be blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline, wouldn't he? Or, and then blaming
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it on Russia. Or he would be blowing up a nuclear power station in Ukraine and then
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blaming it on Russia. Or he would be fixing an election in the US and then blaming it on Russia.
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What else would, would, would Bond do at the moment?
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the Foreign and Commonwealth Office are concerned? The Russians...
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So, so, so maybe Bond goes off to assassinate Trump again.
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He goes and hides in the, the bushes at Marlago Golf Course.
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Of course, waiting to take a shot at the Donald.
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Yeah. Either that or he goes off to China to assassinate a whistleblower who was about
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to announce that, um, Fauci was indeed paying them to do gain-of-function research.
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Yeah. You know, that can be Dr. Dr. No Myocarditis.
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Or, or, or this one, um, he goes to Ukraine to rescue a Ukrainian, um,
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transsexual media spokesman and then ends up bedding her.
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Yes. Or him or whatever. And then make some quip,
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But, but, but that's the problem, you see, is, is like,
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Bonds, these days, I don't see how they couldn't be,
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Which is why so many people are calling for Bond to be set in the 1960s.
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Because there is that thing in the Bond franchise where they don't really address the fact that
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James, Commander James Bond hasn't really aged or sometimes gets younger over the course of decades.
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I think there's one, one of the early Pierce Brosnan ones, where Q says something like,
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you're a, you're a relic, a dinosaur of the Cold War, but they essentially don't,
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That, that was the thing that I always liked about Bond. So, I remember when I was,
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because every so often the subject comes up of making Bond black.
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Right, and I had, I had a housemate at university who was really into his Bond.
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I mean, he was studying film and stuff like that, and he also happened to be black,
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and he was a massive James Bond fan. And I was fairly ambivalent at the time about making
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Bond black, and he was, he was dead set against it.
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And his rationale was that the whole thing with Bond is it's supposed to, you're supposed to be
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able to suspend disbelief enough to believe that they're all the same guy. It's just a continuation.
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And something like making him black all of a sudden were just, it's just too much of,
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too jarring between, between the difference. And the other thing that Bond used to do is,
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is they used to be able to, they did kind of transition. So I think it was George Lazenby's Bond
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who got married, and then immediately his, his missus got shot. And then later Bonds would refer
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to him having been married once and stuff like that. So there was this kind of thing,
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but they were actually all the same guy. And that kind of worked up until Daniel Craig,
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because he got initiated as a 007, because before it was always, you join him when he's a 007,
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and you leave him when he's a 007. Daniel Craig, they initiated him as a 007 and then killed him off at the end.
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There was also one of the Daniel Craig ones where they gave him a bit of a backstory,
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talk about his parents, where he grew up in some Scottish area.
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I've not read the books. I've read Dr. No years ago when I was like 25. When I was in my 20s,
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I read Dr. No. That's the only one I've ever read.
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I think there was reference to him. So he's always been an orphan, but I think he came from Scottish
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minor nobility or something like that. And that got reference in like Skyfall or something like that.
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In the film franchises, like in the Roger Moore years, they never give you any of that,
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But they have now. Have you ever done any spying?
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I think possibly, no. Of course not, no. I've accidentally done spying twice.
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So, one time, because you know I like to go traveling and I go through a number of places.
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One time I went traveling and I was going through this hot country, and because I'm in all these
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like business networks and stuff, I had arranged to go to this firm, this financial firm that was
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looking to get into the UK market. And I kind of pitched up at this place and it was really hot.
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So I wanted to get inside and there's a security guard on the gate who doesn't really want to let
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me in. But it's hot and I'm getting annoyed. But I know I've got an appointment to see the boss. So
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at some point, I just clap him on the shoulder and say, look, it will be fine. I'm going in now.
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Speak to the boss. Anyway, I get there and I speak to the boss and make small talk because we'd
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exchanged emails before. It's like, okay, congratulations on your wedding in May.
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And he said, oh yeah, it was May, but it was the year before. It's like, oh, okay, fair enough.
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I've got that wrong. And I know you've got a daughter on the way and she's already two and
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stuff like that. Anyway, so I meet this guy, make some small talk, and then I'm going around the
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installation and I'm expecting to see loads of people doing finance stuff. And I start going
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around and it quite quickly becomes apparent that I've gone to the wrong building. And what they're
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doing is like national security adjacent stuff. And I really shouldn't be in there.
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So I just kind of made some excuses and then kind of left.
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But then you didn't come home and go straight to SIS and tell them what you saw.
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So it's not real intelligence gathering or anything.
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No, but we live in a world where if you like do train spotting in a foreign country,
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people are arrested for that. So I thought I definitely shouldn't have been
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seeing the things I've been seeing. So I just kind of made my excuses and
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Well, I've certainly never been involved with the intelligence services,
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but I've known a fair few people who have. I've known people that are
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in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, people that have been in military intelligence
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and all sorts of things. And I've spoken to them and off the books,
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they're usually reasonably candid about it, actually.
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Well, reasonably, not giving away state secrets or anything,
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but they just will tell you stuff, low level stuff. And quite often,
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it's people that are entirely off the books. They're not actually an intelligence officer.
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They're just a friend of the family or a friend and acquaintance.
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Oh, apparently that's how it works a lot of the time.
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Yeah. And they get you to do something that's actually quite innocuous.
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Like you go somewhere like Tajikistan and just take a few pictures of the airport.
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So you can imagine how low level stuff gets picked up on.
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Plus in the modern world, the old school 1960s James Bond type spying.
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I think it's actually really rare, quite rare. It's not, you don't,
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you're not going to get much doing intelligence gathering that way.
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It's all electronic now. You just get GCHQ or the...
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Just to tap into someone's phone or laptop and you're going to get far more info than
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Yes, playing back to that with them for free hours or something.
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It's probably going to be, what's her name? Rachel Zelga, isn't it?
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Ziegler. It's probably going to be her, isn't it?
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Ocular hypotellarism, when your eyes are too far apart, go back.
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Well, I would say it's quite, I'd say it's quite an acute case, quite an acute case really of it.
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Right. But she's, she, but she's already destroyed the Disney thing, the Snow White thing.
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So if you're trying to destroy a movie franchise, she would be ideal for it.
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And for some reason, she's in absolutely everything these days.
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Because she is now considered to be the example of beauty.
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As Cheney there in June, she's actually made to look less attractive than she is.
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There have been some, there have been some great Bond girls through the years.
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I like the French one, it might be on the next page.
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Yeah, most of them are absolutely beautiful. That's the whole point, isn't it?
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Yes. Oh, Golden Eyes was a great film, wasn't it?
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Yes. Made by the same director who's made Casino Royale.
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What's your favourite Bond movie, if you've got to pick one?
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Well, Boseline was actually really quite good at it.
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I mean, the correct answer is Goldfinger, but that is the, objectively the correct answer.
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No, I like Connery. For me, Connery is the best Bond.
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I like Dr. No from Russia We Love, Goldfinger, the earliest ones.
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But Brosnan, for me, is probably second favourite, and GoldenEye is probably the best one, as
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well as spending hundreds, maybe thousands of hours playing GoldenEye on the N64.
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I've got them here. We're a bit zoomed in. Can we zoom out a bit, because we've got them all.
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I don't really like the Roger Moore stuff. I mean, I like Roger Moore, but he just ranks
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lower. It's not that I don't like Roger Moore's Bond, but I just
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That was the first Bond I saw, and you tend to gravitate to whichever Bond you saw first.
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So for a long time, I did quite like Roger Moore, but I mean, he wasn't...
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Well, I mean, I think he had stopped making Bonds by the time that I was born.
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Yeah, yeah, but you just see it first, see it on TV.
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Yeah, no, I think I saw the Roger Moore ones first, and then I saw the Sean Connery ones.
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But yeah, Connery was... In fact, all of them were great. What did you think of Dalton?
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Well, Licence to Kill was one of the first Bonds I happened to see when I was a kid.
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I get, oh no, can that be right? I don't know. Anyway, I think Licence to Kill is not bad.
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A lot of people rate him quite low, but I think he's all right.
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In retrospect, I think he wasn't actually that bad.
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I mean, Ladies and Beasts almost doesn't count because he was only a one-time shot thing.
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I don't think there's any... I mean, again, I would rank more bottom, but he's still good.
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I think Dalton would have done better if he'd done it when he was 10 years older.
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Oh, I thought he was already like old and paunchy by the last ones.
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Oh, sorry, Dalton. Sorry, I thought we were talking about Roger Moore still.
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Whereas Roger Moore did get a bit old and heavy by the last ones, didn't he?
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You're not really believing that he's doing roundhouse kicks and stuff.
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Yes, and having 19-year-olds throw themselves at him.
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The point I was going to make was there's not really a weak link.
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It's not one that stands out where they were crap at Bond.
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No, until the last one decided to go a bit woke in the end.
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And yeah, he didn't write the screenplays, did he?
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I mean, he's got the sort of menace and presence and stuff,
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He's a bit too, you know, stout yeoman rather than cavalier.
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Well, he's supposed to be an officer and a gentleman.
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You don't think Hardy pulls off like a naval officer?
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In Band of Brothers, he was just an enlisted man, wasn't he?
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If it is going to be a black guy, they've talked about Idris Elba for ages.
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If you're going to make it a black guy, might as well just make it a woman.
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But that's actually what they did do in the last Bond, wasn't it? He was replaced by a black woman.
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Well, why black? Why not Bangladeshi? Why not Eskimo?
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But to be fair, if Anne Boleyn can be played by a black woman, surely Bond can.
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If you're going to pervert everything inside out, then sure, why not? Yeah, do it. Go for it.
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Oh, Latasha Lynch, that actually was the last James, the last 007.
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Cillian Murthy. I hate Cillian Murthy. I don't know why.
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I've, I've, he, he's, he's done nothing to earn it. He just irritates me.
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That guy, he looks like he could do it. I don't know who he is.
00:23:45.040
Yeah, I've seen him in stuff, I think. Um, yeah, maybe. What? Who?
00:23:51.360
I don't know who that is. Apparently he was in, he was in Gangs of London, which I think
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I watched, but I don't remember him at all. Oh, I remember him now.
00:24:00.240
But no. Um, Richard Madden, he was in Gangs of London as well, wasn't he?
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Uh, but, but no, he's just, with a Bond, they've either got it or they haven't.
00:24:10.880
Yeah, you've certainly got to have the, the just obvious charisma.
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You need the, you need the confidence, the charisma, the suave, the, you know, the.
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Wasn't it? Because he's sort of at a glance, suave.
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There you go. If you want, if you want somebody from the Asian subcontinent, you got, you got
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Dev Patel is being, is being listed as, as a somebody.
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He'd have to put on some weight, get some traps going on him.
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He's got, oh, he's got a skinny neck at the minute.
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He's a bit too skinny jeans at the moment, isn't he?
00:24:56.080
Oh, because they're actually, at some point, one of these mentioned slow horses,
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because they did actually make an MI6 series recently, which my mum really liked.
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And she said, oh, you've got to watch slow horses.
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And it's, and literally the whole thing is MI6 going after basically people like the Lotus Eaters.
00:25:18.880
And yeah, it's where the right wing skinheads are beheading people on camera.
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It's a, it's an obvious inversion, but that is what they, but they do spend 40% of their budget
00:25:31.120
and time and effort clamping down on the right wing who don't actually do anything in favor
00:25:36.160
of not spending that time on people who actually behead people.
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Jonathan Bailey, apparently he was in some sort of period drama in regard.
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I, I, I probably should have looked into who the hell these people are.
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And he spent his whole time basically pining for some girl.
00:26:00.880
And he hates the West and England and whiteness.
00:26:14.000
He's quite a good actor, but I don't think he's Bond.
00:26:17.520
Again, with Bond, you know Bond when you see it.
00:26:34.560
I watched Vikings, but I don't remember him, but I don't know.
00:26:42.400
But now again, he has, he, he, he's not got the touch of the officer about him.
00:26:49.840
If you are going to have a black Bond, it should be that guy.
00:26:59.680
I don't, I don't think it should be a black guy for the reasons previously discussed,
00:27:02.640
but if you are going to do a black guy, do, do this guy.
00:27:11.040
But he's done some other stuff where he's, he's, he's, he's been slightly swerved.
00:27:14.320
If you're going to have a black Bond, cornrows have got to be better than the, than the
00:27:25.520
Well, if you're going down that route, you might as well commit.
00:27:39.760
Because if we're talking about that sort of at a glance, suave charisma thing.
00:27:48.000
And he did that man from uncle thing, which is basically a Bond warmup.
00:27:54.720
There's loads of things I haven't seen in the last 10, 15 years.
00:27:58.960
I mean, whoever mocked that image up, it's just, it works, doesn't it?
00:28:02.480
But he's got to be, it's got to be Henry Cavill set in 1965.
00:28:08.240
Because I just don't believe that there's anything that a modern Bond could do that is in any
00:28:13.360
way heroic, apart from, well, I mean, what would they do?
00:28:23.440
I mean, that is what a modern Bond would be doing.
00:28:29.360
What if the storyline is, is actually that he infiltrates the Lotus Eaters?
00:28:33.360
I mean, that is, that is what modern MI6 agents would actually be spending their time doing.
00:28:37.680
Um, you know, maybe, and, and if they did make it set in modern day, rather than Bezos
00:28:45.440
being like the, the villain, they would basically cast a proxy for, for Elon, wouldn't they?
00:28:51.360
Try and stop him from delivering, like, Skylink, or was it Starlink, cheaper, affordable internet.
00:28:58.240
A mashup between Iron Man, Musk, and, and just a fictional multi-multi-billionaire baddie.
00:29:06.000
Maybe that's what, if, if they, okay, either do Cavill, set it in 1965 and make it based,
00:29:12.960
making proper Romanizer, all that kind of stuff, all the stuff that he's good at, or set it in
00:29:18.480
the modern day and the movie can be, and I'm, I want to call this one, um, uh, basically Bond gets an
00:29:27.360
email from Elon Musk asking him to list five things that he got done that week.
00:29:34.160
And, and, and he has to identify the one person in the government who actually is productive and
00:29:39.120
break into their office and read their emails. Or another one would be, uh, Bond has to infiltrate
00:29:45.520
Spectre only to discover that it's, that Spectre is actually just the US government and you can call
00:29:51.760
that one USA another day. Nice. Yeah. Nice. So anyway, um, that's our thoughts on Bond.
00:30:02.080
Henry Cavill, 1965. Forget all of that other nonsense. Make it post-Woke. Please don't ruin this
00:30:10.800
franchise like you ruined all the other ones. Please. Oh yeah. An Islander shill. Bye Islander.
00:30:19.920
And remember to, because Bondrew, Bond would. Yeah. Yeah. That's what, that's what he reads on the planes
00:30:31.520
Okay. Over to you. Well, there's a bunch of, uh, you've got a bunch of super chats. Oh, yes.
00:30:36.240
All right. Idris Elba. Oh, hang on. Idris Elba played Reed in Cyberpunk. He's actively pushing
00:30:46.800
for a movie based on the character. He wants his Bond. Um, oh, maybe you get it then. They go with
00:30:53.360
Henry because that's what the women want to watch and men can visualize themselves being Bond. Yeah,
00:30:58.320
but they may, I don't know if you ever watched the, was it the, um, the Witcher thing that Cavill did.
00:31:04.960
No, I'm aware of it. Yeah. By the second season, he's hardly in it. It becomes a girl boss thing.
00:31:10.480
Right. Because there's two women characters and they basically, the whole thing becomes
00:31:13.600
about them. And he's like a sideline in his own series. That's a classic thing. They've done that
00:31:17.920
with loads of TV and movie franchises where the first one is based and people love it. Yeah.
00:31:23.200
And then the sequels, they get in a woke writing team, woke producers and directors, and again,
00:31:29.200
just subvert it. Yeah. So many examples of that. However you rank Bonds, the best Q was John Cleese
00:31:35.680
and Rowan Atkinson for the next Bond. Rowan Atkinson hasn't actually been Q, is he?
00:31:42.080
Desmond Llewellyn is the best Q. The old guy. Yeah. Do pay attention 007. Yes.
00:31:50.880
That guy. John Cleese was all right, but. Yeah. Josh could do Q. You think?
00:31:55.360
Yeah. Um, Dan just stopped for a minute and, uh, drooled like a perv while scrolling Bond
00:32:03.920
girls. Uh, yes. Guilty as charged. What's the, what's the problem? Yes. Um, uh, Connor Smugmug
00:32:13.920
says, uh, when I said Islander three will be out before I get my number two, I was joking.
00:32:19.040
It was a meme. Hopefully I get them both at once. Yeah. Apparently the, the people that
00:32:23.200
we've sacked who deliver Islander two assure us that they are coming through, but they're
00:32:28.960
just, they're just rubbish. So anyway, they've been sacked. Um, Bob O'Bad says Dylan Mulvaney
00:32:35.280
is the spy who trans me. Oh yes. Bud light shaken, not stirred. Yes. Very good. Um, uh, the
00:32:42.240
engaged for you says the movie with a transgender soldier could be called Octobussy.
00:32:50.000
People are laughing. I don't, I don't get that. What's a bussy?
00:32:54.240
It's just a pussy. Is it? Yeah. A bussy. Oh yeah. It's just an American. Yeah. Is it,
00:32:59.920
is it like a, just a, just a weird bussy? Just a, I don't know actually. Okay. I've not encountered
00:33:05.040
that, that terminology. All right. Okay. Um, I want to see Bo holding a white long haired cat,
00:33:11.360
stroking it and looking evil. Yeah. Again, I, I, I think you're the counter spy, not the,
00:33:17.280
not the, not the boss in the layer. Like a 005. Yes. Like another 00 agent. Yes. Who's
00:33:22.880
turned bad. Who's Bond's nemesis. Yeah. Or yes. It's almost as good as Bond, but not quite.
00:33:29.280
And then there's a fist fight at the end where I lose. Yes. Okay. Yes. Got it. Um,
00:33:33.440
hedgehog's dilemma says Bo looks more like he should be in a Guy Ritchie film as a Cockney gangster,
00:33:38.160
henchman called Jimmy the fist. That's also right. And a bald eagle says Bo wants to become famous
00:33:44.160
like Jaws. The only Bond villain to show up in multiple films, not die and get a happy ending
00:33:49.280
with a woman he loves. Yes. Right. I'll take it. Yep. Very good.
00:33:56.960
All right. We're just going to go on to the next segment then. Um, so, uh, Samson,
00:34:02.880
have you got all my links? Is that the page? This is it. Okay. Yeah. Uh,
00:34:09.600
all right. So to begin the segment, uh, today Islander three comes out. Do you buy it? It's
00:34:16.000
brilliant. Loads of, loads of good people in actually, as always, loads of people you would
00:34:23.040
have heard of have written articles and the, uh, the aesthetic is really good. There's always
00:34:28.000
thank Rory for that. He's done tons and tons of work on it. So if you're interested, do consider buying that.
00:34:33.120
Okay. I'm going to talk a little, a little bit about Egypt now then, because there's been some
00:34:37.280
things that have been in the, the news that a new tomb has been discovered.
00:34:42.720
Well, they found Tutankhamun again. No, no, no. There's just parallels with
00:34:48.160
the Howard Carter 1922 Tutankhamun discovery. There's a few vague parallels with that.
00:34:56.080
Um, oh, to be fair, the headline just say of his dynasty.
00:34:58.880
Yeah. It's 18th dynasty. Okay. So, um, how, how far ago is that?
00:35:04.160
So we're talking like the 15th, 16th century, 15th century BC, 1490, 1480 odd BC.
00:35:14.480
Was that when they were relatively near the peak of their power?
00:35:17.440
Well, that's a good question. Um, depends how you measure it. It's the new kingdom.
00:35:22.400
Right. So, I mean, different historians, there's peaks and troughs. Egyptian history is so long,
00:35:29.760
um, that there's peaks and troughs. Some would say that, um, parts of the new kingdom,
00:35:34.720
you could argue they had sort of golden ages there.
00:35:37.680
Yes. Um, I mean, by the time you get to Cleopatra and the Romans turn up, they're pretty weak
00:35:42.960
Yeah. They're not even Egyptians really. The Ptolemaic dynasty are Macedonians. They're not,
00:35:47.520
they're not even Egyptians. I mean, so I would say, this is just my personal take is that, um,
00:35:53.600
the pyramid builders represent the zenith. And that's really early on. They're like the third,
00:36:00.880
fourth dynasty. They're like, it's the old kingdom. It's really the pyramid.
00:36:04.080
How far back is that? Oh, you're talking 24th, 25th, 26th century BC. Okay. So I get a thousand
00:36:12.000
years before this. So again, quite a long time. Egyptian history is so long. Do you put any stock
00:36:18.560
into that idea that the Sphinx is even much, much older than that? I mean, like we're talking about
00:36:24.320
like another 5,000 years earlier. Probably not that much. Right. But maybe. Because that's
00:36:30.640
the Graham Hancock thing, isn't it? That he's got water erosion around it and all that kind of stuff.
00:36:34.720
Yeah. The, the, the area, the pit that the Sphinx is in. Yeah. Um, people said that the
00:36:40.160
water erosion on the sides of that suggests that it's, there's, it's from a much, much deeper
00:36:45.040
antiquity. I think it's at least fair to say that the Sphinx has been reworked a number of times
00:36:51.040
over the centuries, over the millennia. The, uh, the original, original thing.
00:36:56.000
You should have a dog face or something. Well, we don't, we don't know. The head doesn't seem to
00:37:00.160
be right, does it? The head seems too small for the rest of the body. Yes.
00:37:03.360
That's what a lot of people have said. Um, and most of the Sphinx is sort of natural bedrock.
00:37:10.080
So I think I wasn't going to talk about the Sphinx, but why not? Um, it seems like originally,
00:37:14.800
in the first instance, it was sort of a natural outcropping that probably vaguely looked like
00:37:20.960
a lion or, or something like that. A dog, a jackal or something.
00:37:25.600
And one day the Egyptians got bored and thought, why don't we actually make it look like a lion?
00:37:28.720
Yeah. And then at some later date, recarved the head into a pharaoh's head and various things.
00:37:35.200
I mean, it wasn't until the 18th or even 19th century, they dug it out of the sand.
00:37:40.400
Yeah. People did sketches and drawings of it in the 18th century, and it's only like the head
00:37:46.800
Um, but anyway. Anyway, um, so this new discovery, um, is, uh, what's, what's the pharaoh's name?
00:38:01.600
He's not that important one. His, his son was much more important.
00:38:06.800
Oh, don't worry if you don't remember the name, I would know him anyway.
00:38:18.240
Thutmose II. Now, Thutmose III was sort of an important one, sort of had a relatively long reign
00:38:23.280
and was sort of militarily successful. But this guy didn't rule for very long.
00:38:31.760
So, anyway, it was back in 2022, so a few years ago, when they first discovered his tomb.
00:38:38.320
And it's not even in the Valley of the Kings. It's a few miles away, like three miles away from the Valley of the Kings.
00:38:43.600
And there had been some sort of natural flooding and natural backfill.
00:38:48.880
Uh, but it had been either plundered by tomb robbers or just deliberately emptied and moved somewhere else in antiquity.
00:38:55.920
So, the parallels with Tutankhamun don't really hold because the headline about Tutankhamun is it had been unplundered when Howard Carter broke into it in 1922.
00:39:06.800
Famously, he looked through and saw the shining gold, and it was filled with golden artifacts and things. This wasn't.
00:39:19.440
Either robbed or they think now that possibly they'd made this tomb, they'd realized for whatever reason that it wasn't going to work or it was going to keep getting flooded naturally.
00:39:30.160
So, they sort of abandoned it, made him another, another chambered tomb complex and moved everything there.
00:39:39.040
Uh, because actually some of the links I was going to talk about much later were that in this, this got in the news about a week ago.
00:39:44.960
But in the last day or so, they're saying they found another portion to it.
00:39:54.120
Because they found his body or what they thought was his body, his mummy, back in the late 19th century,
00:40:02.600
They'd found a mummy, and the archaeologists thought that that was this Thutmose II.
00:40:12.080
Yeah, but if you, if you found a mummy, I mean, they're not in, they're not in the best nick, are they?
00:40:16.720
So, how, when you look at it, what makes you think, yeah, that, that's Thutmose II.
00:40:21.700
Well, it's the job of the archaeologists, isn't it?
00:40:23.540
That you find them, they'll usually have inscriptions, there might be hieroglyphs on the wall,
00:40:27.480
or they might have things actually on them, which suggest it's from this dynasty, or,
00:40:31.580
it might even just say, you might even find papyrus or, or hieroglyphs on the wall that
00:40:35.600
explicitly say, this is the tomb of da-da-da-da-da.
00:40:40.840
But sometimes it, you have to, you might get a tiny fragment of something.
00:40:44.580
In fact, that's why they think this one was either the tomb or the abandoned tomb of Thutmose II,
00:40:50.460
because they found relatively small artefacts, which say it was.
00:40:59.920
So what, what, what's interesting about this then?
00:41:03.840
Well, just that even this, as, as relatively empty as it was, is still very, very rare.
00:41:11.120
It's very, very rare for archaeologists to find, see, look, that's the, what they thought,
00:41:15.300
and some people still do think is the mummy of Thutmose II, yeah, it's still very rare
00:41:20.460
to find any sort of burial chambers that have been closed since antiquity.
00:41:27.220
So, although it wasn't full of golden things or a mummy, it's still worthy of note, still
00:41:34.220
Was there some, some common loot items in there?
00:41:39.640
And some things on the wall, some plaster on the ceiling, where it shows stars.
00:41:43.780
So, you know, it's almost certainly, well, it is a burial chamber of some type, but by
00:41:49.560
the 18th dynasty, you're, you're a long way off of, um, sort of giant, giant burial complexes
00:42:00.200
Because in the Valley of the Kings, there's some massive ones.
00:42:03.440
In fact, his wife stroke sister, his half sister stroke wife, Hapshitzit, she's got a giant
00:42:11.900
I would have put some Hapshitzit images of her, her thing.
00:42:19.500
Uh, it's still a relatively minor pharaoh in the scheme of things.
00:42:24.320
Um, here's just some, look, if you go back one, actually, go back one.
00:42:27.520
That's one of the things they found there, sort of basically saying that this is the utmost
00:42:42.480
So, far from being filled with golden things like Tutankhamun.
00:42:50.360
Do you think this is, I still hope that one day we'll find another Tutankhamun style thing
00:42:56.340
Can you work it out by process of elimination of, like, these are the ones that are counted
00:43:00.380
for, and look, here's a really rich important one.
00:43:07.320
Well, his sister, so, he was the king, and he got that little grotto.
00:43:13.580
Yeah, well, his sister, who, also wife, and she went on to rule in her own right as something
00:43:23.620
It's one of the most, it's like something out of a movie, isn't it?
00:43:30.960
You can tell that Thutmose was a very practical man, where his sister was like, no.
00:43:36.080
Well, with a lot of these things, if you didn't rule for a long time, because what usually
00:43:39.280
happened, when you died, they just stopped working on your, on the things they were going
00:43:44.880
So, if you only ruled for four years, they just haven't got time to build you something
00:43:50.580
Well, if you ruled for 40 years, they're working on it for 40 years, say.
00:43:57.020
You must have to start out with a plan in mind.
00:43:59.540
It's not like every year you put an extra year's worth of work in it and you end up with
00:44:04.860
I mean, you have to start out with that in mind.
00:44:10.700
One of the things I, because I'm obviously a history nerd.
00:44:13.160
I've, of course, been fascinated with Egyptian history ever since I was a child.
00:44:17.940
When I was a small child, I wanted to be an Egyptologist.
00:44:20.920
I still sort of had that dream when I'd started my undergrad.
00:44:25.980
When I started my undergrad, I still sort of was interested in that.
00:44:30.440
And one of the things I'm fascinated in is just the so-called pavement at Giza, where
00:44:43.240
You can't just start building a giant pyramid on sand.
00:44:47.680
Or even on any sort of ground, which isn't perfect for it.
00:44:52.480
Because there's all sorts of, there's a couple of different pyramids that are half slumped
00:44:56.120
It must have been a pitch to get a site that big flat and properly drainageed and...
00:45:01.060
So the ground that the Great Pyramid is built on, they call it the pavement.
00:45:05.600
That itself is a giant, giant engineering project with massive stones, giant, giant thing, just
00:45:28.600
You must presumably know who the big wigs were, like who the various kings were.
00:45:34.220
So are there any proper serious kings who are unaccounted for, and therefore we think
00:45:40.480
we might be able to find a big stash of loot and a nice tomb one day?
00:45:45.780
One thing to say about that is the king lists are sort of hotly debated by historians and
00:45:51.320
scholars, whether they're real or at what point does it descend into legend and they're
00:45:58.020
And also over the centuries or millennia, different political factions have come and gone, and
00:46:05.040
it seems almost certainly tried to distort what came before.
00:46:11.600
You'll find some Egyptologists who say, no, we've got everything down, we know pretty
00:46:21.120
The reality is that we can't be certain about this or that.
00:46:24.920
So I'm personally probably more in that camp, a little bit sceptical about things.
00:46:32.800
But yeah, it's on my bucket list to go to Egypt.
00:46:35.180
I've travelled all over the place, but I've never been to Egypt, and it is now top of
00:46:42.380
And I'd want to go to the Valley of the Kings, the Valley of the Queens, and see things like
00:46:50.840
If we keep going through a few images, if you...
00:47:01.640
So the obvious thing is to go to the Giza Plateau in Cairo, just outside Cairo, and see
00:47:06.840
I'm fascinated by the Great Pyramid, but there's other things.
00:47:09.860
At Saqqara, there's the Serapium, where there's these giant enigmatic boxes.
00:47:24.200
Well, no, they have been opened, and they're empty.
00:47:28.700
Some say they were supposed to, at one point, hold sacrificial balls, the apis balls, but
00:47:36.240
There's certainly no real evidence that they ever held, like, the bodies of pharaohs or
00:47:40.720
And they're giant, and also, sort of, the precision engineering of them is sort of off
00:47:48.520
the scale, because that's super hard stone, a super hard type of stone, and they're not
00:47:54.620
really sure how that was done in ancient times with the tools that they were supposed to have
00:48:16.420
There's a great channel called History of Granite.
00:48:23.140
And these guys just put forward often, well, they just pose difficult questions.
00:48:32.000
But if you've got somebody to come around and do you an extension, or your kitchen, and
00:48:36.380
you could put a set square to any part of it, and it lined up like that, you'd be well
00:48:41.780
But to do it in ancient times in granite with hand tools, that is quite interesting.
00:48:51.900
And there's this couple of big temples in this bit that I passed through.
00:48:55.940
One was this big blingy temple, loads of gold and stuff like that.
00:49:01.220
And I thought, oh, yeah, this is reasonably impressive.
00:49:03.720
And then there was another temple that I went to that nobody ever goes to, and it was far
00:49:07.960
more impressive, because it was much more humble, but it was carved out of solid granite.
00:49:14.280
So a whole temple carved out of granite, like the inside and everything.
00:49:22.580
I went to Angkor Wat once in Cambodia, and there's two main temples there that everyone
00:49:31.220
And on the face of it, they're the most impressive.
00:49:33.900
But actually, in that area, there's loads, a dozen or more.
00:49:36.220
And I would advise if anyone, if you end up in Cambodia, and you visit Angkor Wat, make
00:49:47.940
So yeah, how granite was precision engineered, apparently, with diorite pounding stones is
00:49:59.860
And you can see the small area that it's been put into.
00:50:19.140
You'll find some fedora tippers in the comments always saying, oh, well, they just understand
00:50:23.380
And it may be true, but they just understood leverage really, really well, how to lever
00:50:28.500
and walk things along delicately, but still, still kind of beggars belief.
00:50:35.020
There's even one that was left abandoned in a hallway there that hadn't been finished
00:50:49.000
Also, the Valley Temple, sometimes known as the Asarion.
00:50:52.360
There's loads of things that I would like to see.
00:50:59.640
It kind of, it's on a scale even bigger than Stonehenge.
00:51:04.680
And the engineering is much more impressive and precise.
00:51:17.640
Again, there will be some people say it's not that difficult.
00:51:20.020
They had loads and loads of time and sort of endless energy.
00:51:24.080
But still, it's the precision, which is the wonder.
00:51:35.380
And they've got one picture where it shows the scale of it.
00:51:40.920
If you see on the left-hand side of it, that little niche that's being cut out of it and
00:51:48.900
But that gives you an idea, I think, of the scale of some of these things.
00:51:54.120
There's sort of endless things to see in Egypt.
00:51:56.960
One of the things I'm fascinated by is the so-called unfinished pyramid.
00:52:00.880
Just off the Giza Plateau, there's this basically just a big hole in the ground, which many people
00:52:06.160
say it was the beginnings of going to be a big pyramid.
00:52:12.240
But then the pharaoh died before they got anywhere near actually building the pyramid structure
00:52:18.540
Why didn't the next one just say, OK, carry on, but make it for me?
00:52:22.360
Not a bad question, but maybe it's to do with pride.
00:52:31.280
But you can see it's like a massive slope down.
00:52:33.740
I think that picture is actually taken from when they used it as a movie set.
00:52:36.560
You can't go there now these days, this particular site.
00:52:40.240
The Egyptian army said tourists just aren't allowed there, but they did a film there at
00:52:46.760
You can see where, because under the Great Pyramid, there's sort of a subterranean passage
00:52:58.600
The subterranean chamber in the Great Pyramid is one of the most fascinating things for me.
00:53:06.080
But it looks like this, maybe this was going to be something like that and they never actually
00:53:10.980
And down there, there's like this, at the bottom of it, there was this, again, this pavement,
00:53:18.960
This is back in the 19th century when Western archaeologists would just dig stuff up.
00:53:26.080
And under this, under the floor, they found this, a weird sort of bathtub type, oval bathtub
00:53:32.700
type thing, which again was empty with the lid on it.
00:53:37.180
You can see the lid there with the niches on the side, but it was empty.
00:53:40.280
So, yeah, again, just mystery piled upon mystery.
00:53:46.800
But if only they had a habit of labelling things, it would have been so helpful.
00:53:58.640
I mean, this place really has scale, even in the like, the ancillary bits.
00:54:07.860
And this is basically for just like a nation of river people, because like the whole Egyptian
00:54:14.380
thing was basically just five miles either side of the Nile River, 800 miles long, five
00:54:21.000
miles wide, just a bunch of river folk who made this stuff.
00:54:27.380
I mean, that particular one's cut into the bedrock.
00:54:29.720
People used to think, oh, they just had tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of
00:54:33.760
But now they think almost certainly, no, they were more like an artisan class or more like
00:54:38.320
a professional builder class that just worked in the off season.
00:54:42.380
When they weren't working the fields, they would be working for the pharaoh's building
00:54:48.320
But either way, it's a vast amount of human labour.
00:54:50.660
That in itself is quite impressive because you've got to have, you've got to produce such
00:54:54.540
a huge surplus from everything else that you're doing to support however many thousands of
00:55:00.960
artisans or whatever it was to do nothing but tinker away at granite all day long.
00:55:05.960
If nothing else, it infers quite a sophisticated society.
00:55:18.060
Not for a lack of engineering know-how or anything.
00:55:24.460
If we didn't have any modern diggers and stuff.
00:55:28.460
Do you think the UK government could organise something like that?
00:55:35.700
History knows love to discuss that exact question.
00:55:39.600
Like, look how long it takes to build a railway or something or a new bridge.
00:55:44.820
And then others will say, no, if there was a political will and the money was there,
00:55:51.240
We don't have the political will to do anything apart from destroy ourselves slowly.
00:55:54.580
If there was the political will and the investment, we would definitely be able to do stuff like this.
00:56:00.520
Well, yeah, but that's a bit like saying if aliens turned up.
00:56:04.380
Or look at something like the Burj Dubai, the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world.
00:56:07.800
Yeah, that's not a Western democracy though, is it?
00:56:12.540
Could the modern Egyptian government do stuff like this?
00:56:19.740
I think if Elon became king of Dubai, he might be to get it done.
00:56:25.180
I do like to think this is an insight into my psyche.
00:56:28.840
I do like to think if I had $200 billion, like Elon Musk, I might commission my own pyramid.
00:56:35.680
Yeah, so to be fair, if there was, say, a big solo event and we all got wiped out and the cockroaches formed a society like a million years later, the only things left would be things that you made out of stone.
00:56:49.800
So you might have a little bit of Mount Rushmore left and maybe the pyramids would still be a bit left.
00:56:53.800
If you want to build something at the last, do it in stone and do it at scale.
00:56:57.600
See, if I was a billionaire, I'd 100% be commissioning something massive out of stone.
00:57:02.260
And do it somewhere in the world where it's not going to fall down through earthquakes or get subsumed by the sea or anything like that.
00:57:10.000
No earthquakes, not humid, just dry and stable.
00:57:14.180
Yeah, either my own pyramid or a colossus, a giant statue in my own image.
00:57:20.660
Okay, just in low relief on the side of a cliff like Mount Rushmore style.
00:57:47.580
So I thought I'd had loads more images of other things as well.
00:57:53.800
But there are so many things to mention about Egypt I'd like to see.
00:57:56.140
There's a very small stone circle at Napta Playa, which Graham Hancock talks about, which is not that impressive compared to some of the grand building projects.
00:58:06.940
But it's really, it's older than the Old Kingdom.
00:58:14.480
There's the Step Pyramid, the Colossae of Memnon, the Red Pyramid, the Bent Pyramid, Menkare's Pyramid.
00:58:20.580
You know, there's the three big pyramids on the Giza Plateau.
00:58:25.720
I'm fascinated just by that alone, Menkare's Pyramid.
00:58:30.440
I've got to go to Egypt, saying I've got to get that done.
00:58:34.740
But okay, the point is there's been some new developments in Egypt.
00:58:40.000
Did you hear recently or a year or so ago, they did some sort of geophys or some sort of advanced techniques,
00:58:46.520
and they realised that there's some sort of void above the Grand Gallery in the Great Pyramid.
00:58:54.900
Well, there probably is a big chamber above the Grand Gallery in the Great Pyramid.
00:59:03.400
They don't seem particularly interested in finding out what's there.
00:59:17.600
Not radar, but something or other, which suggests there's a big void there.
00:59:30.020
But yeah, the Egyptian authorities of antiquities are very...
00:59:38.780
Why they're very, very conservative with this stuff.
00:59:44.280
Why the rest of the world don't pile tons of pressure on them constantly to get it done,
00:59:52.340
Or why underneath, for example, underneath the Giza Plateau,
00:59:54.860
it seems to be riddled with a maze, a labyrinth of underground tunnels and things,
01:00:02.540
And it's not really been explored, or not formally.
01:00:04.820
It's not really been properly explored or stuff.
01:00:12.780
Best archaeological departments from universities all around the world,
01:00:20.880
a suggestion of a hidden chamber behind something or other.
01:00:25.920
Maybe they're waiting for tiny AI-controlled robots or something.
01:00:31.620
The shafts or air vents that poke out from the Great Pyramids.
01:00:36.720
They put a little robot up there to find out what's up there.
01:00:44.760
which hasn't been completely explained or explored.
01:01:03.500
is the anxiety of waiting for either Scooby-Doo music
01:01:59.500
You almost certainly have to have Greek and Latin,
01:02:09.600
And then you've got to learn the pictology stuff.
01:02:44.720
because the Sphinx can't be older than the Quran says
01:03:03.820
Not every single modern Egyptian national is a Muslim,
01:03:50.460
I think the Egyptians may have reached that point
01:04:21.480
But she was in charge of the reporting mechanisms
01:04:26.200
and therefore has been described as a famous beauty
01:04:32.440
who got to record whether she was beautiful or not.
01:04:36.220
On her coins, she's depicted with quite a big nose,
01:04:52.440
She's not described as this, like, knockout beauty.
01:05:05.520
that she was, like, disgustingly ugly or repulsive.
01:05:30.540
You're a successful venture capitalist, investor.
01:05:34.260
I worked in asset management, asset servicing, commodities.
01:05:59.520
but do you get a little bit of physical gold, right?
01:06:24.280
Whereas an ounce of gold is like a couple of grand.
01:06:35.720
I do think that if there was a true global economic collapse
01:06:49.580
You want to swap a chicken and some bread with someone.
01:07:23.660
Well, because senators and congressmen keep saying,
01:07:28.320
And they're like, no, because it's a military base.
01:07:32.200
but we get shown around military bases all the time.
01:07:50.360
That is protected by its own little police force, isn't it?
01:07:57.780
Last time it was audited was in the early 50s under Eisenhower.
01:08:04.040
Well, they claim that they audited it every year,
01:08:19.400
The last time they did a public audit was like 1954 or something like that.
01:08:26.400
and apparently everything was tickety-boo at that point.
01:08:47.020
saying normal people aren't allowed to really own hardly any gold.
01:08:53.940
There was an exemption for like wedding rings and stuff like that.
01:08:59.160
but you weren't allowed to hold bullion, put it that way.
01:09:05.620
Anyway, so it was to do with the Depression and to do with...
01:09:13.580
It does feel like that's infringing your liberties, doesn't it?
01:09:16.620
Anyway, that was actually repealed by Jerry Ford, I believe,
01:09:30.200
And in fact, I think the higher watermark was like 1941,
01:09:37.320
America had said to loads of countries in the world,
01:09:42.080
look, Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini might conquer your country,
01:09:48.580
and why don't we hold your gold reserves for you in case that happens?
01:09:56.980
So that's basically my starting piece for Brokernomics.
01:10:03.320
which is partly as a function of they're the only people
01:10:05.200
that had a functional economy while everyone else was getting bombed,
01:10:07.860
and partly as a function of they were safekeeping for everybody else.
01:10:10.900
And basically they just didn't want to give it back.
01:10:13.680
And that's why we have a dollar-based system today.
01:10:18.280
where they had something like two-thirds of all the gold in the world was with them.
01:10:24.840
I mean, even to this day, like in, I can't remember the exact date,
01:10:31.220
Germany said, we want loads of bullion back that you've had for years,
01:10:43.700
So this is the problem with gold, about going back to a gold system.
01:10:52.980
Because the whole logic of gold is that you kind of need to centralize it.
01:10:56.460
Because if you don't, you know, you can just, you have to believe when somebody else tells you
01:11:03.820
they've got a certain amount of gold, you need to believe them.
01:11:05.880
So the Russians and the Chinese say we've got this amount of gold,
01:11:12.140
Or they need to let you come in and start drilling into their gold bars
01:11:18.460
So that's why gold was always concentrated, basically in two places,
01:11:25.640
And of course, we just don't have that level of trust anymore.
01:11:28.320
So you basically just can't go back to a gold standard.
01:11:34.240
But yeah, so FDR took them off the gold standard.
01:11:41.520
And they haven't gone back on the gold standard since then.
01:11:47.240
Fort Knox, there's sort of the Federal Bank building in New York.
01:11:55.060
50, 60% of all America's supposed bullion reserves are supposed to be at Fort Knox.
01:12:01.300
So after the 50s, when there was supposed to have been an audit there,
01:12:06.540
people were talking about it because the 70s were an economic,
01:12:10.020
time of economic upheaval with the oil crisis and all sorts of things.
01:12:13.560
So in 1974, there was sort of, by 1974, there was a big calling for,
01:12:19.720
to let people see that the bullion is still there.
01:12:22.720
In 1971, they'd come off the gold standard, basically,
01:12:25.280
because the American government, as it is inclined to do,
01:12:32.500
By 1974, things were going badly because they later shored up the dollar
01:12:38.060
by backing it to oil, basically, by doing a deal with the House of Saud
01:12:42.920
But in that interim period, it was highly suspect whether they actually had the gold.
01:12:48.380
And so I think they let a bunch of senators in then.
01:12:50.220
But it was just a PR stunt, an exercise in PR, as far as I can tell.
01:12:55.000
Anyway, just say, I wrote an article a while ago about Yellen's time bomb,
01:13:01.500
Basically, during the Biden years, they didn't do anything.
01:13:06.520
I had a very good conversation all about the history of money,
01:13:09.320
and in fact, quite a lot of talking about gold with godders.
01:13:16.180
A fair while ago now, six months ago or something.
01:13:21.560
We made some content about the history of bubbles.
01:13:26.300
Yeah, we were going to cover like 12 of them, and we did two or something.
01:13:33.140
We made another bit of content talking about the Wall Street crash
01:13:45.080
looking for the gold in Fort Knox, and it's gone.
01:13:48.480
But he said they're going to have a look at it.
01:13:53.320
Well, happening today, President Donald Trump said he wants to visit Fort Knox
01:13:59.200
The depository at Fort Knox has stored precious metals for the United States since 1937.
01:14:05.020
During a meeting with the French president sitting right next to him,
01:14:07.960
the president mentioned the possible audit again.
01:14:10.780
We're actually going to Fort Knox to see if the gold is there,
01:14:18.400
Treasury Secretary Scott Besson says there is an audit every year.
01:14:25.260
If you were to take all of the gold that's ever been mined,
01:14:28.100
it would only fill three Olympic-sized swimming pools.
01:14:31.440
I've heard it's only one Olympic-sized swimming pool.
01:14:42.020
You walk past some random jewelers in some nothing town,
01:14:46.380
and the shop front is filled with gold chains and stuff,
01:14:49.180
and you think, oh, there must be thousands, millions of tons of gold in the world.
01:15:14.200
Because we want to see if the gold is still there.
01:15:18.260
Wouldn't that be terrible if we open up this Fort Knox?
01:15:21.540
It's just solid granite that's five feet thick.
01:15:25.380
The front door, you need six musclemen to open it up.
01:15:31.280
Wouldn't that be terrible if we opened it up and there was no gold there?
01:15:36.500
So we're going to open those doors, we're going to take a look,
01:15:39.080
and if there's 27 tons of gold, we'll be very happy.
01:15:41.960
I don't know how the hell we're going to measure it, but that's okay.
01:15:44.980
We want to see lots of nice, beautiful, shiny gold in Fort Knox.
01:15:51.820
It's just remarkable that it's actually a real political issue.
01:16:01.240
It's a real question that needs answering one way out of it.
01:16:03.420
This is a great time to be in political commentary because basically America's had this massive regime shift and they don't believe anything that went before them.
01:16:17.160
I just think it's remarkable that it's even a question, really.
01:16:24.560
Well, just to quickly say about the 1974 thing.
01:16:28.020
When they went in there, they showed, yeah, there was a few senators and a few journalists,
01:16:35.980
like a dozen or two hand-picked members of the federal government and a few hand-picked journalists.
01:16:42.080
And they showed them into one vault and they showed them loads of apparently gold bars,
01:16:49.480
whether they could have been tungsten or something.
01:16:51.900
Some people said that, that maybe it's tungsten sprayed gold because tungsten is about as heavy as gold.
01:17:13.380
And actually, assaying gold is quite hard work.
01:17:15.820
That's why I always stick to the coins, not the bars.
01:17:18.080
Because if you buy a bar and then you try and sell it,
01:17:20.740
they need to re-assay it every time to make sure it's not got tungsten inside.
01:17:25.820
The other thing is they've said that in the late 70s through to 1981,
01:17:31.600
they did audits, but they weren't released to the public.
01:17:37.960
like a truly independent body to go to Fort Knox and check.
01:17:49.200
But basically, there was this guy who sort of rocked up outside the gold place.
01:17:56.160
And he said, you guys need to be in the gold vault tomorrow at 3 p.m.
01:18:06.840
But for whatever reason, they were in the middle of the gold vault the next day at 3 p.m.
01:18:10.620
And basically, there's like a grate at the bottom of where they were holding the gold.
01:18:19.660
And he realized that you could just get into the gold vault from the sewage.
01:18:30.080
So he was just making them aware of it so that they could secure it.
01:18:33.680
But if he wanted to, he could have run off with like millions of pounds worth of gold.
01:18:40.200
It's like hacking into the NSA or NASA or something.
01:18:43.380
And then telling the government you've done it.
01:18:45.860
You say, look, I could have done some nefarious stuff.
01:18:50.720
I don't think if a sewage worker today found himself in the gold vault, he would do that.
01:18:55.600
But it'd be hard to find someone to sell bullion, like a big bar of bullion to, right?
01:19:05.320
You don't sell that behind the back of the pub, do you?
01:19:07.460
Another thing is in 2017, in Trump's first administration, there was a very, very, very limited audit, apparently.
01:19:15.680
But again, it wasn't the full-blown, let's look in all the vaults, count how much is there, if there's anything there,
01:19:21.240
and check the purity of it, check the serial numbers.
01:19:26.200
So that hasn't been done, some say, since the Eisenhower era, and some say since the Truman era, since 1947.
01:19:33.940
Either way, the Treasury, because it comes under the Treasury, not the Federal Reserve, it comes under the Treasury.
01:19:42.160
Either way, it seems like they've got something to hide.
01:19:46.080
Now, whether it's that it's not there anymore, or there's only a tiny fraction of it, or even possibly there's more gold.
01:19:53.680
It's possible that there's more gold than they thought was there, which is also an issue in a completely different sense.
01:20:00.940
Of course, it wouldn't mean the collapse of the American economy or the collapse of the dollar, but that's also bad.
01:20:07.300
So that was the theory that I was going to throw up, which is this one.
01:20:15.380
What if the problem isn't that the gold's not there?
01:20:22.240
Because basically, the story is, is that ever since World War II, America has been going around invading places.
01:20:29.100
And if you ever read accounts of the troops who actually did it, it's very obvious.
01:20:33.520
The first thing they do when they get into a country is not rush to the central bank and secure the paper money.
01:20:38.780
It's they rush to the gold and they secure the gold.
01:20:43.220
That's like every time you read accounts of what troops did, it's they hit the ground, beeline for the oil, the actual oil and the actual gold and secure them.
01:20:56.680
And this is like a famous photo from Iraq where they, you know, one of the gold deposits they sort of secured.
01:21:03.560
And the official story is, is that whenever the US does this, is they then give that money back to that country.
01:21:10.880
So in the case of Iraq, the story is, is that it was used to used for redevelopment efforts.
01:21:17.620
So it was, it was, it was spent on Iraq's behalf in order to fund development.
01:21:28.940
What if ever since World War II, America has just been invading places, stealing their gold and then sticking it in Fort Knox.
01:21:36.420
So the other possibility is, is that actually they've got far too much.
01:21:39.360
And that's the other reason why they don't want to get ordered.
01:21:42.800
Well, it seems like some of the massive gold holders in the world, like JP Morgan and HSBC, they're shipping over at the moment, shipping over tons of gold from London to New York and then maybe onto Kentucky.
01:21:59.100
It seems like something's going on at the moment.
01:22:04.100
That may just be, so JP Morgan and HSBC can make money because it's worth more if you sell it in New York.
01:22:09.060
So every central bank, apart from the British, are desperately buying gold and have been for the last few, basically since 2008.
01:22:16.720
They've all been buying gold as fast as they can, apart from the British, because of course we sold all our gold.
01:22:21.960
And also, I think it is politically good for a country to underplay how much gold they've got.
01:22:29.700
The amount of gold the Chinese say they've got and the amount of gold everyone thinks they've got.
01:22:34.360
We think they've got way more than they say they've got.
01:22:37.880
Deliberately saying they've got less than they have.
01:22:39.440
They might have 20,000, was it 20 tons or 20,000 tons, whatever it is.
01:22:43.520
But yeah, they might have, because they're supposed to have like 3,000 tons and they might have 20 because they're basically, if you look at Hong Kong, which is a major gold exchange, massive flows have been going through that for years and it's all going into China.
01:22:58.860
In fact, another thing a gold fund manager told me, and this was 20 years ago, is that gold, China is actually one of the world's largest producers of gold.
01:23:07.180
And you think of it being South Africa and Canada and Australia, but no, actually China is one of the biggest producers of gold.
01:23:13.840
Every single ounce that is mined, the government buys at full market rate and puts it in a vault somewhere.
01:23:20.620
So if you work all of that backwards, it's possible they've got 20,000 tons, which means they've got far more than the US.
01:23:29.120
Because what happens if one day there's another 2008 financial crisis where the dollar is really teetering on the edge and people are like,
01:23:38.700
And then China suddenly announces, yeah, we've got 20,000 tons of gold.
01:23:42.760
And from now on, the yuan is going to be backed 15% by gold.
01:23:47.480
That could be enough to tip the dollar over the edge and for China to basically take over as world hegemon at that point.
01:23:56.400
In other words, it's politically a sticky wicket for the United States if they've got significantly less or more than what they say to them.
01:24:03.740
Either they're much weaker than they were or they're much more corrupt than they said they were.
01:24:09.460
It's still way worse if they've got none or hardly any.
01:24:14.160
It's not great to have tons more than they thought.
01:24:16.400
Yeah, because they've basically been stealing from everybody for years.
01:24:19.100
Whether they've got 8,000, 8,500 tons in Fort Knox or what.
01:24:22.760
If they've got exactly what they're supposed to have, that's probably the best outcome.
01:24:25.760
Whether it's worth 250 billion or more like 425 billion, it needs to be audited, basically, in order for the trust, any sort of trust.
01:24:35.040
There's no good reason for them to not do it if they've got what they claim they've got.
01:24:39.680
So that's why it's odd it hasn't been done for 50 years plus.
01:24:42.280
The other question, just to ask, is does it matter?
01:24:47.360
Because I retweeted Elon about when he said, and it's gone, about the footlock.
01:24:52.100
And some people said, it's a reasonable thing to say.
01:24:54.760
I'm not saying, I think they're wrong, but it's not unreasonable to say it doesn't even matter because they haven't been on the gold standard since 1971.
01:25:02.460
And the dollar or American power is backed up by aircraft carriers and the U.S. Air Force.
01:25:09.600
But I think it still certainly still does matter, though.
01:25:14.320
When it all goes to shit, gold is what will count.
01:25:20.100
And it's just, OK, they're not on the gold standard.
01:25:23.180
OK, every paper dollar isn't backed up by gold.
01:25:26.000
But that doesn't mean that the U.S. economy, the house of cards is the U.S. economy, wouldn't still collapse.
01:25:34.380
That all confidence and trust in that system wouldn't collapse if Fort Knox was found to be.
01:25:40.740
Imagine if there was some huge cyber attack or a big Carrington event or something like that.
01:25:46.540
And, you know, the modern computer system went out for a couple of years.
01:25:51.380
The whole dollar system would collapse because the dollar is basically just a ledger of this bank owes that bank and that bank owes that bank.
01:25:58.340
And it's basically just a big ledger of who owes who.
01:26:15.120
And, you know, being an investor, whereas I worked in asset management and commodities trading, just the power of confidence that this house of cards is.
01:26:29.660
Well, all value, the value of everything and anything is to do with confidence.
01:26:36.360
And if it turns out you've been blagging it for 60 years.
01:26:38.560
Confidence would fall out of many different types of market, not just the forex and commodities trading, but all sorts of things.
01:26:58.120
A couple of comments then from the super chats.
01:27:05.980
The Puck has been coming up with some names for Bond films, which is slightly out of order,
01:28:13.640
I wonder if he came up with all those himself personally.
01:28:27.480
Funny, we didn't really talk about Bitcoin when we were doing that segment on gold.
01:28:34.280
If there's no gold in the fort, then the rest needs to be made, says Siglestone.
01:28:39.780
Habitification says a future gold collapse could happen due to space mining.
01:28:46.540
Hedgehog's Dilemma says Oliver Anthony is writing lyrics as we speak.
01:28:54.780
Plot twist, America's been singing Barrett's privateers in reverse.
01:29:00.140
Bet some people will soon wish they were in Sherbrooke.
01:29:09.740
It was a beautiful day to see Foraker, Hunter and McKinley.
01:29:26.520
See, we haven't really got anything like that in Britain.
01:29:35.800
Anyway, yeah, like the best we've got is like Snowden or Ben Nevis.
01:29:44.000
It's a bit more impressive than Ben Nevis, isn't it?
01:29:58.340
So, Stelian's Ford, I was trolling when I said that the Danish version of the toys was
01:30:09.940
It's called Venstre, which is the Danish word for Left.
01:30:15.000
But I guess that's sort of right from the Social Democrats.
01:30:20.580
Although, in spite of us being controlled by Social Democrats and Left, we have an immigration
01:30:26.060
law that's like a thousand times stronger than England.
01:30:39.180
At least they're going to get some cash for Greenland soon.
01:30:59.000
What was that thing that you put up against it?
01:31:01.040
It was like one of those lighters that's actually like a little blowtorch.
01:31:21.580
A whole egg with its shell on in the microwave.
01:31:28.140
No, we're slightly over time, but I think people need their money's worth, so let's read some
01:31:33.020
Hazer Bazaar says, didn't get Islander 1 or 2 as I'm not much of a reader, but Island 3
01:31:48.140
Josh the Jew Hendon Reform Candidate says, just ordered my Islander 3.
01:31:57.560
And then he's also said some other stuff, which has been edited out, and I don't know
01:32:04.740
On the next James Bond thing, Baron von Warhawk says, take your bets, boys, and who do you
01:32:15.080
Well, you could be the, that would, you fulfill your arc of being the henchman who goes after
01:32:35.660
Well, just for, just so that Lotus Eaters becomes more famous, it'd be great if there was
01:32:41.420
a character that was clearly a parody of Carl Benjamin.
01:32:46.780
Russian says, I grew up on Bosnan, Bosnan, and he happens to be my favourite.
01:32:52.460
As I type, Dan is saying this exactly, yeah, this is the one that you see first.
01:32:56.300
Golden Eye is among the best, it's among the best, in my opinion.
01:33:00.240
Again, I like the very earliest ones, but short of that.
01:33:05.100
Alex Ogle says, DEI Imonds, he's trying to do diamonds, ah, forever, DEI another day,
01:33:13.600
or as one wag put it, no, Mr. Bond, I expect you to DEI.
01:33:19.140
Come, come, Mr. Tubb, you enjoy making content just as much as I do.
01:33:23.380
Justin B says, the next Bond film will track him heroically taking down the far right and
01:33:29.740
If the only decent thing that a British Bond in this era could do is basically turn rogue
01:33:45.860
He goes to the Calais camps and starts kicking ass and taking names among the people smugglers.
01:33:53.360
Son of UCAB says they should make Zardana the next James Bond.
01:34:04.700
Kevin Fox says, it would be a boring film, just Bond sat in a grey windowless room scrolling
01:34:09.480
through other people's social media posts looking for herty words, then passing the details
01:34:18.360
The modern equivalent of Bond is not even scrolling through it.
01:34:20.940
It's just starting a program which does that for you.
01:34:29.640
Well, maybe that's why they need an Indian Bond, because he's actually leading a call
01:34:32.920
centre of thousands of them going through our social media posts, so it can be then
01:34:38.920
Some computer nerd in Cheltenham clicking search.
01:34:44.820
Sophie Liv says, I love that Bo made the perfect villain face, and second after when he
01:34:49.580
smiled, he actually looked like Santa Claus, super jolly and wholesome.
01:34:58.340
So if there ever is a call for a Bond villain and a Santa in the same room, like he's got
01:35:06.460
And Omar Waters says, it's not difficult at all to cast a good James Bond.
01:35:11.280
The difficulty is portraying a chauvinist on the silver screen that isn't appealing directly
01:35:21.160
It's just the feminist harridans who control everything these days that don't.
01:35:25.560
The old Bond, the Sean Connery, Roger Moore Bond, he'd slap a woman about all the time.
01:35:32.680
She's been a bit hysterical, so he just slaps her about or something.
01:35:39.700
And I like the, what was the Roger Moore one, where he sorts one of them out, and then
01:35:46.100
as soon as he's done, he pulls a gun on her and says, right, I want the information.
01:35:49.700
And she says, you're not going to shoot me after what we've just done.
01:35:52.280
And he says, well, I certainly wasn't going to shoot you before.
01:35:56.200
It's a classic bit of one of the Connery ones where he's dancing with a woman on a dance
01:36:00.800
floor, and you realise there's like an assassin right near, so he just spins her around,
01:36:11.940
You wouldn't get, the screenwriter just wouldn't do that now, would they?
01:36:23.960
I can't remember if it's, it might be, is it Doctor No?
01:36:33.020
She was pretending to be with him and on his side, but was actually a double agent, and
01:36:44.120
Do you want to read the Egypt ones, or shall I read them?
01:36:49.200
Jacob Connolly says, I forgot how good a combination Dan and Bo are together.
01:36:58.300
Canis says, Egypt kind of makes me sad to think that maybe the most ancient proper civilisation
01:37:03.780
we know of that lasted through the Bronze Age collapse and survived to the Middle Ages is
01:37:15.760
But they don't really do anything apart from just corruption.
01:37:19.460
If you look at the Yom Kippur War, the six-day war, Israel stomped a mud hole in their ass
01:37:26.540
Kevin Fox apparently made several trips to Lunuta Ha in Belize.
01:37:39.500
So, yes, there are other pyramids, and they're really big ones.
01:37:48.480
Where there's some giant pyramids, Moon, Pyramid of the Sun.
01:37:53.940
Alex Ptolemy makes the point that the direction of the Sphinx is very deliberately aligned
01:38:04.440
If you, the procession of the stars, if you move it back like 10,000, 12,000 years,
01:38:07.980
whatever, it's Leo, and it's looking up at, it's a lion, and it's looking up at Leo.
01:38:13.100
But some people say that's, not me, but some people say that's just not got anything to
01:38:21.420
At the very least, you can say that's remarkable and interesting.
01:38:24.460
One thing I didn't know until recently is apparently there was a, you know, we mentioned
01:38:29.000
the Carrington event a couple of times in the last segment, but there was a massive
01:38:37.500
Basically, a big solar event that would have been really devastating.
01:38:42.460
So, that would have, that could have restarted civilization if there was a civilization before.
01:38:46.600
Well, there's the Younger Dryas event where, again, Graham Hancock and others say that
01:38:51.220
more than one asteroid hit the Earth, sort of causing the equivalent of a nuclear winter
01:39:13.000
Gordon Brown was, and whoever the Norwegian version of Gordon Brown.
01:39:51.860
And the plot of that is he's trying to steal all the gold from the Federal Reserve Building
01:39:58.300
Now that I know that there's more than one Die Hard movie, should I actually watch any
01:40:02.640
Die Hard 1, 2, and 3 are good, and the rest are dog shit.
01:40:14.100
Die Hard 2 isn't as good, but it's still worth watching.
01:40:28.060
I was just doing other things, more interesting things in my childhood than watching bloody
01:40:36.340
Roman, has all of the US gold been sent to the moon?
01:40:50.100
If actually the Apollo site is just where they move the gold to.
01:40:55.160
David Fisher, for reference to gold quantities, 20,000 tons of gold is an Olympic pool size.
01:41:03.600
Ergo, China has half an Olympic swimming pool of gold.
01:41:12.140
So, basically, you need about 40,000, 50,000 tons of gold to fill an Olympic-sized swimming
01:41:19.800
And then the last one, Canis Familiar says, at Porch Fest, which I don't know what it
01:41:25.340
is, they issue gold backs, which are bills with one thousands of a troy ounce of gold
01:41:33.540
Not the very smallest amount you need, but definitely useful.
01:41:38.940
I don't, but I would like to own a few gold coins.
01:41:42.700
Actually, I'd like a fair few silver coins, actually.
01:41:45.820
Because of the worry about going back to a real barter system.
01:41:52.220
I tell you what splits the difference nicely, and we'll end on this.
01:41:55.060
If you want to get into gold, and you want to do it cheaply, and you want it for post-apocalypse
01:41:58.500
collapse, basically go to any porn shop in any part of the world and buy old wedding
01:42:06.800
You can buy a small amount of gold, and everybody kind of knows what that is.
01:42:10.100
So after the collapse, if you're trying to buy a chicken, you can hand them an old wedding
01:42:18.920
Apart, then you've got a big bag of things that dead people were recently wearing.
01:42:25.400
I'd want a score of chickens per wedding ring, though.
01:42:32.560
And if you're buying silver coins, just go to a dealer in Hatton Gardens or online.
01:42:37.440
Godfrey Bloom says that the markup or the VAT or something or other is not worth buying
01:42:43.860
I can't remember what it was, but he made a good argument why...
01:42:45.560
So gold coins is definitely the best option, but I wanted something for the post-collapse,
01:42:54.120
Also, if we have a vampire problem one day, you want a bit of silver, or possibly werewolves.
01:43:05.460
I mean, if it works for vampires as well, it might work for other things.
01:43:12.360
I don't think we can stretch this out any longer.
01:43:17.060
We're only 15 minutes over, so yeah, we'd better go now.
01:43:20.900
So, yes, Order, Islander, because that's what Bond would do.
01:43:26.320
The sensible, the sensible womanizing one, not the new gay one who had his balls removed, didn't we?