Our Thoughts On Interviewing Dave Smith, Hasan Piker, Sam Harris and Ben Shapiro
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Summary
Francis and Julian are wrapping up their trip to the USA and talking about Dave Smith, the Ben Shapiro clip, and the lack of debate in the mainstream media these days. They also talk about how important it is to have a genuine conversation on the internet.
Transcript
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When was the last time you saw people who strongly disagree about political issues
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One of these anonymous rage farmers clipped Ben out of context,
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and try and make him out to be saying that's something that he was absolutely not saying.
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What these people tried to do to Ben is exactly what the mainstream media
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It's so much easier to pull something down, to break something,
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than it is to build something up, to create something, to be of genuine worth.
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And if you look at woke people, they're absolutely miserable.
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The people who are going down the route of bitterness and resentment on the right,
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they will discover that it doesn't lead you anywhere.
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I always like guests that are going to piss everyone off,
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so for that reason I'm going to say Sam Harris.
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All right, Francis, we are wrapping up our U.S. trip.
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This is the 33rd interview that we're recording, the final one.
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By the time people see this, it'll be a couple of days since.
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and we've only released like five of the episodes that we've done.
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We have done four different cities, three different states, three different time zones.
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I mean, we all get up now anywhere between four and five o'clock in the morning,
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like Buddhist monks, because our body clock's broken.
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We don't spend our evenings like Buddhist monks.
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But anyway, it has been an amazing trip with some incredible guests.
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Look, let's start off talking about Dave Smith, who we recorded a matter of days ago.
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And props to Dave for coming on the show, number one.
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And actually, one of the things that I thought that happened is,
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when was the last time you saw people who strongly disagree about political issues
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have that kind of conversation on YouTube, on a podcast?
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Two and a half, three hours, if you're a supporter of ours on Substack,
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where you got to see another extra half an hour.
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Three hours of three people, two people, it doesn't really matter how you frame it,
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having a genuine conversation the way you would do with your best mate in the pub.
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And that is the real, that is the beautiful thing about the conversation.
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But it's also, there's a sad element to it, which is we've lost that ability.
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And one of the things that made me really proud of being part of that conversation
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was that we kind of helped to model a form of behavior,
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which I think we're in, not that we're in danger of losing,
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So what you've got is, what we had was mainstream media, Kathy Newman style interviews.
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So what you're saying is, you're a terrible person.
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Here's a quote you said, represented out of context, you're a terrible person.
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And we went from that to what was an exciting moment in new media, YouTube podcasting,
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where it's like, let's not try and misrepresent other people.
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But what that's morphed to is, let's just invite anybody on, whatever their crazy views,
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however much you disagree with them, or don't, because nobody knows,
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because you don't challenge them and you never debate the issues.
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Or that's one option, which is, you know, what people like Tucker have been doing with people
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like Nick Fuentes and Daryl Cooper and all these other people who've got, in my opinion,
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horrific and terrible and most importantly, wrong ideas.
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And on the other hand, you've got like this fake conversation debate thing where you've
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just got two people going at each other and trying to win.
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And I've done some of those debates, because that's how those shows are set up, right?
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But what I think, as you rightly say, we did is we modeled a different way.
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And the person who deserves most of the credit for that is Dave.
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Because if Dave had come in here and acted like this was a debate where he was trying
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to win, we would have probably had no choice but to respond in kind.
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But because of the way that he carried himself, we could conduct ourselves the way we'd normally
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And I think that's what actually, that's what we need more of.
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Because this approach, the approach A and approach B, which you've just presented, is ultimately
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Okay, one person comes out and they're the victor.
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Because one of the things that we know about our civilization and why it's in crisis is
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It is because we're looking at the people who disagree with us and failing to see the
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And you know, I've had messages and so have you, oh, Dave Smith says, I'm telling you
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His crime in many people's eyes is that he's wrong.
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But that's like, when we were in our 20s, like that's what debates look like.
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It was like two people coming together, having mutual respect, arguing the points and saying
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You know, Peter Hitchens debated Christopher Hitchens, two brothers, and they were debating
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And I just think the mainstream media forgot that that's how it's supposed to be.
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And then the new media forgot how that's how it's supposed to be.
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And I hope that we collectively, people who do this for a living, not just me, you and
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Dave, but lots of people, take this on as an opportunity to go, okay, well, this is a
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We can have the actual disagreements and debates out in the air.
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And what happened was interesting because the day that we recorded the conversation with
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Dave and we walked out of here feeling some sort of like reconnection with the good in
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humanity, basically, despite the disagreements that we explored, that was the day that we
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released the Ben Shapiro interview, which we'd done a couple of days prior, which was a great
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conversation about Zoram Amdani, about his disagreements with Tucker, about his views on
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And what happened with that interview is a perfect example of how the new media space is becoming
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Because you had one of these anonymous rage farmers on Twitter clip Ben out of context,
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completely misrepresent what he was saying, remove all the context of what he was saying,
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and try and make him out to be saying that something that he was absolutely not saying.
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And that, you know, that meme about which way, Western man, that to me is the which way,
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Are you going to engage with ideas that you don't like?
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Or are you going to lie about the people who you don't like so that you can mobilize your tribe?
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And by the way, make money on Twitter from lying about somebody and clipping them completely out
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And the vast, vast, vast majority of people are not taking the good choice in that situation.
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And that's a disappointing thing, because the reality is, is that if we're going to get better
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as a society, everybody needs to play their part.
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Everybody has responsibility, whether it's the people in front of the camera,
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whether it's the production crew, the social media people, but also the people at home
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in their own lives and when they're engaging in content.
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And the worrying thing to me is that people just, they don't care about the truth.
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And when you don't care about the truth, what happens is that the truth will ultimately die.
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And we need to be very, very, very careful as a society, because if we want this to carry on,
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if we want Western civilization to carry on, to flourish, to thrive, then it's important
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It's also very important that we realize what is truth, because when you start celebrating
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things that are not true, when you start celebrating things that are falsehood,
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not only are you promoting them, you're effectively dementing people around you,
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And when people don't know what's true anymore, that's when things start going very, very, very dark.
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And not least because what these people tried to do to Ben is exactly what the mainstream media
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And while we have been here in the U.S., there's been a gigantic scandal.
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Tim Davey, the director of the BBC, had to resign.
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And the reason they had to resign is they did precisely what these people have done to Ben Shapiro.
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And this is a point I made when I wrote an article and did a video about the debate
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between Douglas Murray and Dave Smith on Joe Rogan, is we've got to a situation where
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everyone in the new media screams that the mainstream media has no standards
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And unless we self-impose standards on ourselves, and also, as you rightly say,
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unless people realize that, yes, the gatekeepers are gone, and yes, that's great in some ways,
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but the flip side of that is, well, you as a consumer of information,
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as a consumer of content, you now have the ultimate responsibility as a gatekeeper to your own mind.
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You have to actually, and look, unfortunately, this is going to happen more and more and more
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with AI, you're going to have to go out and make sure that this thing that you are predisposed to
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believe is actually correct, is actually true, is actually the full context.
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Absolutely, because here's the thing. You have to take responsibility, like you said.
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You get the politicians that you deserve, you get the public intellectuals you deserve,
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you get the YouTubers you deserve. There's a reason Tucker is number one for conservative media.
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It's because more people consume it. So if you don't like that type of media,
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if you don't like that type of information, give us money. Yeah, exactly. You keep it going.
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Then you can't engage with it, and you can't consume that content. Because if that content
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wasn't profitable, people wouldn't make it. Of course. And it really is that simple.
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It's that simple. And here's another thing. It's very easy in life to go around and point the fingers
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and go, you know what? You should be doing that. And you should be doing that. And you shouldn't
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be saying that. And you shouldn't be lying. What about you? What about you? It's easy to point
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the finger at the BBC mainstream media. Look, they're a nest of pedophiles. Ha ha, joke, joke.
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Yeah, but what about you? Do you, are you rigorous with what you consume? Do you secretly enjoy
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watching Candace Owens come out with the latest demented conspiracy theory, which we all know to be
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complete nonsense? Are you sharing that? Are you talking? Because if you are, then you're kind of
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part of the problem, even though you don't want to admit it. And the reality is, we all have our
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part to play, and no one's perfect. And part of the reason the mainstream media did those sneaky
00:12:12.800
little tricks, it's because... They work. Exactly. And because maybe, deep down, you secretly like that,
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and you're engaged with it. Yep, that's why, you know, the gatekeepers aren't coming back, and I think
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there's amazing things about that. But ultimately, as consumers, it's the same with food, right? If you
00:12:32.240
want to be healthy, you're going to have to be pretty careful. I mean, one of the episodes we
00:12:35.740
recorded that hasn't come out yet is a conversation with Rhonda Patrick, Dr. Rhonda Patrick, about
00:12:39.860
microplastics. And we've totally changed, like, she basically ruined our lives.
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Mate, there's plastic everywhere. Yeah. She basically ruined our lives for, I think, very,
00:12:49.480
very little actual gain. But we now changed our consumer behavior in terms of, like, we bought some
00:12:54.600
metal mugs that we use, stuff that my wife's been banging on at me for about 10 years about.
00:13:00.480
Speaking of Rhonda, we, of course, recorded that interview in LA. We also recorded a conversation
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with Sam Harris, in which we addressed the first time he was on the show. Indeed, we did.
00:13:11.040
In great detail. He had a lot to say about President Trump that people are, I think, going to find
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challenging. He had a lot to say about Joe Rogan, which, you know, we had a robust discussion
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about. You know, and that was interesting. That was really, really interesting. We also
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sat down with Hassan Piker. Now, it was early in the trip, so we weren't able, I think, because
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we hadn't spent as much time communicating with him. We did not go as hard at him as we did with Dave.
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And, you know, I wish, in many ways, Hassan came after Dave, because I think we probably would
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have handled that in a more robust way. But still, we had an interesting conversation in
00:13:49.520
which he basically sort of, he didn't say the words, I'm a communist, but he's currently
00:13:54.040
in China celebrating being given Mao's little red book. And he did say in our interview, I
00:13:59.200
don't have a problem being called a communist or something like that. So that was pretty
00:14:03.480
intense. And then, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear, we went to San Francisco and we recorded a very,
00:14:09.860
very good conversation with Owen McCabe, who runs one of their companies there. But we also
00:14:15.400
had a little look around and we talked to a bunch of people in the world of AI. And you're walking
00:14:22.080
around San Francisco, like a good third of the cars there don't have human drivers. And here in New
00:14:28.740
York, we were walking home the other day and there was a gigantic billboard from someone who I don't
00:14:35.660
think has really thought this through, which said, stop hiring humans. The age of the AI employee is
00:14:42.240
here. And they may be right. And in fact, I suspect they are right. But I don't think people understand
00:14:49.420
what's coming. Something we've learned doing this show is that people's thoughts about a given issue
00:14:56.160
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00:17:01.180
I found San Francisco as a place incredibly sobering because people might be surprised to know this,
00:17:09.720
but I'm not really up on the whole AI, I think. It's not really something that I would call an area
00:17:14.600
of expertise at all. The most I've delved into it is being on Joe's show, JRE, where he spoke to us
00:17:23.120
about AI and afterwards, and that got me pretty worried. But then when we went for a dinner with
00:17:30.000
some people from AI, some people from the AI world, these were fairly high level people in AI.
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There's a mix of perspective. There's a mix of perspective. As there is in any industry. As there
00:17:41.920
is in any industry. But there is one extreme of perspectives, which I found particularly concerning,
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if I'm being honest. Well, we had this discussion with Owen McCabe in that interview, which is like,
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my big worry is not even people's desire to make money. It's a bunch of people on the spectrum who are
00:18:00.780
super excited about playing with this cool toy, who I don't think have any understanding of the
00:18:06.700
repercussions of the thing that they're playing with, because they only see the upside. And the upside of AI
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is enormous. It could transform the way we do health. It could transform the way we defend
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ourselves. It could transform the way we communicate. It could transform not having to have humans do
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dangerous, demeaning, boring, unfulfilling, repetitive jobs. But in the process, we are opening
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a Pandora's box. And this is the worrying thing is that when you talk to people, if they're honest,
00:18:44.120
and you go, what's coming down the line? If they're honest, they go, well, we think this might happen,
00:18:50.520
but actually we don't know. And you're going, well, you, the person who's one of the forefront of this
00:18:56.520
particular technological innovation movement, you don't know what's coming next? Well, they're like,
00:19:02.200
well, we think we do, but there's going to be on stuff that we don't. No one knows what's coming next.
00:19:06.440
And that is, that's a very, it's concerning. I'm going to be honest with you. It's concerning.
00:19:14.780
Look, man, truthfully, I've got to be honest. I don't think anyone actually knows whether there's
00:19:20.400
going to be such a thing as a job 10 years from now. The world needs podcasters, mate.
00:19:26.520
I don't know if there's going to be podcasts 10 years from now. Now, you know, Joe and I disagreed
00:19:31.040
about this when we were on his show, but, you know, let's be honest, like as a podcaster,
00:19:34.660
we all have an incentive to believe that we are necessary. But what, but, but he said that
00:19:39.500
20 minutes after playing us AI music, that's better than any human music I've ever heard.
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If we don't need human musicians, why do we need human podcasters? It doesn't make that much sense.
00:19:49.400
No. Right. Now I get it. You know, he's, his argument is, well, you know, people like a perspective.
00:19:54.880
I, I just, I think the vast majority of people have absolutely no idea what's coming.
00:20:05.400
And the reality is maybe talking about it is kind of pointless because you can't stop it.
00:20:11.920
No. I, I would push back on it because I think what talking about it does is it helps people to
00:20:19.740
understand. And if you helped to understand something, you can strategize against it more
00:20:25.680
effectively. Understand what? Like you said it yourself, the people running the industry don't
00:20:29.220
understand. But you will gain a greater understanding. The more you talk, the more you
00:20:35.340
investigate, you will gain a greater level of understanding. Okay, Francis, we've gained a
00:20:38.440
level of understanding, right? You know, I have a three-year-old son. Which career do
00:20:42.700
you think is going to exist by the time he's ready to go into the workplace? Based on your
00:20:47.180
understanding? I would say, if I would say, I would say things like restoration.
00:20:56.100
Okay. Plumbing. I would say from the people that I spoke to when I was in San Francisco and
00:21:03.660
other people privately, they were like, those are the types that are going to be electrician.
00:21:08.440
The things that you're going to be working with your hands. Skilled manual labour. Skilled manual labour.
00:21:14.400
All right. Well, everyone's got to become a plumber. What percentage of people are going to be doing
00:21:20.980
those jobs, man? Well, this is it. And you're going to look at driving jobs? Right. Compare that to
00:21:25.540
trucking. Yeah. Well, trucking in the United States employs around 80,000 people. I think it's way more
00:21:32.000
than that. Driving jobs as a whole employ over half a million. Right. And then you go, and those are
00:21:37.820
going to be, those jobs are primarily done by men. They're primarily done by men of a certain age,
00:21:43.840
younger men. What are we going to do with those men who don't have access to that type of job?
00:21:49.380
Because the last thing you want as a society is a group of young men who don't have a job,
00:21:57.140
are disenfranchised, and feel angry. That's when things start getting a bit funky politically.
00:22:03.180
That's when it starts getting worrying, because young men directionless and angry, that's how
00:22:09.740
political movements start getting a bit more extreme, shall we just say.
00:22:13.360
Well, of course. And you're seeing it already. You know, Nick Fuentes, who just people keep
00:22:17.180
asking us. We've invited him on the show. He may come on at some point. We'll handle it in exactly
00:22:22.060
the way that we handled Dave, you know, with strong, robust challenge of ideas.
00:22:27.340
You're seeing that there was a whole big blow up with the Heritage Foundation. There's basically
00:22:33.720
a battle being fought on the American right over what it means to be on the right, whether
00:22:38.920
basically neo-fascist ideas are welcome in the movement. It's kind of a worrying situation of
00:22:44.940
itself. But I don't think it's as ideological as it is a frustrated group of young men who've
00:22:50.120
been shat on their entire adult and teenage lives, told that they're the worst of everything.
00:22:55.000
And it's interesting because a friend of mine messaged me and said, well, you guys keep talking
00:22:58.500
about, you know, men have had a bad deal. But I think back 30 or 40 years, boys in the education
00:23:05.320
system, if they didn't sit still and didn't behave, they'd get beaten, right? They'd get physically
00:23:11.340
punished. And I explained to her, because I think the sexual dynamics here are important, that for a
00:23:18.380
young man being hit is nowhere near as bad as being humiliated. And what the generation of young men
00:23:26.300
coming up now have been through is their entire life, they've heard that their group, everyone else
00:23:32.900
is great. If you're a black trans lesbian, you are on the pedestal and you are to be celebrated,
00:23:38.860
right? If you are a young white man, you are literally a piece of shit and you are at the
00:23:47.220
bottom of the hierarchy and you need to step aside. And by the way, it's important to say it's, it may
00:23:52.200
well be true that historically speaking, women have had a raw deal in society. I don't know if it's
00:23:57.780
exactly true in the way that, you know, crazy feminists think it is, but I think there's some truth to that,
00:24:02.160
historically speaking. But it was never the fault of 15 year old Zoomers. They neither created that
00:24:08.960
system nor benefited from it. They've grown up in the system where they've been the punching bag and
00:24:14.500
the punchline. And this to me was one of the main reasons why we push back against wokeness,
00:24:20.560
progressivism, whatever it is that you want to call that movement. Because for me, there was even
00:24:25.540
when they were talking about issues that I thought, actually, you've got a point. It was done
00:24:31.900
in a spirit that I found profoundly, profoundly worrying because it was done with the air of
00:24:38.520
somebody wanting revenge. And the problem is, as Gandhi said, an eye for an eye and the world will
00:24:44.560
soon be blind. Because if you enact revenge on someone, particularly someone who doesn't deserve
00:24:50.120
it, hasn't done anything wrong, and you punish them, particularly men, once they grow up, you know
00:24:58.140
what they're going to want? They're going to want revenge.
00:25:02.300
Yeah. And it's like, all right, you've made me feel miserable. You've told me that I'm not worth
00:25:07.700
anything. You have demeaned me. You've smeared me. You've laughed at me. You've humiliated me.
00:25:13.620
You know what, princess? It's time for yours. And that's what's happened. And that's what we're seeing
00:25:19.140
And that's why you are seeing, I think, on the left and right, you know, movements that are becoming
00:25:24.680
bigger and bigger that literally have zero constructive agenda whatsoever. There's no
00:25:30.020
constructive agenda to them. I mean, if you think about this thing that's happening on
00:25:34.480
the right, really, and, you know, this is a debate that's important to have, is the people
00:25:39.900
who are trying to push all these horrific ideas into the mainstream of the right, they
00:25:45.380
are not helping the Republicans who are currently in charge to deliver the things that the American
00:25:52.060
electorate voted for. They are, in fact, making it easier for a Democrat to come in and to
00:25:58.280
reopen the border as one of the many other things that will happen in reaction to this.
00:26:02.980
So what you have is you simply have groups of people who now view pulling everything down
00:26:08.520
and destroying everything as the only thing worth doing.
00:26:12.100
And there's many reasons for that. Number one, because you get a sheer visceral thrill out
00:26:16.660
of destroying something. Everyone does. You kick in a window. You get a little bit of excitement.
00:26:26.560
But, you know, you do something, you kick in a window, whatever, you feel, you get a little
00:26:30.160
bit of adrenaline, you get a little burst. But there's something more profound to it.
00:26:34.060
But it's so much easier to pull something down, to break something, to desecrate, to mock than it
00:26:42.100
is to build something up, to create something, to be of genuine worth in the world. Because when
00:26:47.980
you build something, as you know that we do, as many other people do, or even people who go to work
00:26:53.120
every day and they do a job to the best of their ability, it's hard. It's not glamorous.
00:26:58.420
Even people going, oh, but you're on YouTube. 98.9% of this, there is not
00:27:03.980
glamour to it. It is a grind like every other business. And it's hard. And you get up and you
00:27:09.600
go, right, we've got to sort out this out. We've got to do this. You've got to be on the phone to
00:27:13.120
them. We've got to go here. You've got to do... Because that's...
00:27:17.280
Yeah. Because that's what it needs. That's what it needs.
00:27:20.280
But we talked about this in a conversation with Dana. Like, we've been at this for seven and a
00:27:23.780
half years and almost the entirety of that time. You spend, forgive me for the metaphor,
00:27:27.800
but I think it's exactly appropriate, eating shit.
00:27:30.060
Hearing no, no, no, no. I mean, Dana himself, we've been trying to get him on the show for
00:27:34.540
like two years. And he's a busy guy. The fact that he came on now is like a testament both
00:27:41.300
to his openness, but also to our tenacity and trying to get him on. And every other interview
00:27:45.600
we've done, it's been a process of every single guest almost is a process of either you have
00:27:52.240
to work really hard to get them on, or you have to work really hard to get big enough that
00:27:56.380
they want to come on themselves. So it's nonstop hard work. It's a lot easier to just complain.
00:28:02.860
It's a lot easier to go on the internet, be incendiary and say, oh, we should do this,
00:28:12.500
This person is bad. This person is wrong. This person is evil. And look,
00:28:15.720
we've criticized a lot of people, but we're always coming at it from a constructive place.
00:28:24.200
By the way, spending more and more time in America, I start to realize that all these
00:28:28.520
sarcastic jokes, I don't think a lot of them get it. So if you're American, we're not saying
00:28:33.360
we're brilliant. No, what we're saying is we are brilliant, but we're also British. So
00:28:39.140
I remember there was one quite awkward moment a few months ago when I was like, yeah, we're
00:28:44.020
brilliant. And this guy went, yeah, you are. And I went, no, we're not. I mean, oh God,
00:28:47.780
no. And they just like that awkward Britishness thing came in. It's kind of a, anyway, but
00:28:53.360
and what, the reason we approach a Dana interview the way we did, and I hope people get this,
00:29:01.020
is trying to send a positive message to young men to go, look, you can still achieve. There
00:29:08.380
are things that you can do if you strive, if you believe, if you have ambition, if you know
00:29:13.640
where you want to go, if you're prepared to work really hard, you can achieve something.
00:29:18.640
Don't go down the other path. Because while you may feel good at the time, it's like scratching
00:29:24.660
eczema. It may feel good at the time, but you're, it's only going to make you feel worse.
00:29:29.280
It's only going to inflame. And I don't think young men are going to particularly listen to
00:29:34.220
us if I'm honest, or even to Dana necessarily. But what they will find out as time goes on
00:29:38.740
is just like being woke wasn't fulfilling. And if you look at woke people, they're absolutely
00:29:45.100
miserable. The people who are going down the route of bitterness and resentment on the right,
00:29:51.400
they will discover that it doesn't lead you anywhere. It doesn't lead you to the place that
00:29:55.320
makes you happy. It doesn't like, look, look at some of the people who are at the top of this.
00:30:00.000
None of them have a family. None of them have kids. None of them have a partner. None of them have
00:30:04.920
the things that actually make life meaningful. I mean, before we started the conversation with
00:30:09.500
Dana, we talked about how kids are the best thing ever, right? And anyone who becomes a parent will
00:30:14.760
tell you. Now, look, kids don't make you happy in and of themselves. What kids tend to do, I saw a
00:30:19.880
great post from our former guest, Sarah Hader, who said, what kids do is they expand the range of
00:30:26.240
emotions you get to feel. So on the upside, you now have levels of happiness that were unattainable
00:30:32.800
previously. On the downside, you have levels of, you know, horror and fear and misery that also
00:30:39.320
weren't available to you potentially. But meaning comes from the connections you make with other
00:30:43.800
people, from having a family, from having friends. It doesn't come from being angry and sort of
00:30:51.720
attacking people that you don't agree with. It comes from building things. I mean, this is one of the
00:30:57.720
things I think that made Charlie Kirk such a special person in many people's eyes is he built
00:31:02.720
an institution that was actually affecting change in the world in the way that he believed it.
00:31:10.240
Whereas if all you're doing is tearing things down, you're going to very quickly find that it's an
00:31:14.440
incredibly shallow, miserable, and disappointing path to go down in your life.
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Yeah. And I hope young men start to realize that because we say it all the time, but we can't
00:33:24.840
carry on like this. If the people in your life, if the people who you follow are destructive,
00:33:31.880
are angry and miserable, who are highly conspiratorial, they're not going to lead you to where you want to
00:33:37.400
be. Because as somebody, everyone can have a drink, who's taught kids. I remember when people were
00:33:43.000
saying to me, oh, some kids, you know, they don't want to learn, they don't want to do. No one wants
00:33:47.640
to be a failure. There is no single person in life who goes, you know what I want to do? I want to fail
00:33:52.920
at everything. Oh, you know, my dreams, which we've all got, I don't want to achieve them. I don't want
00:33:58.040
to have money. I don't want to have a nice house. I don't want to have a partner or a spouse that I
00:34:03.480
love. That's not true. Everybody wants to succeed. And what's really important is that we actually
00:34:10.440
realize that if you want to succeed, you need to have a positive message. You need to be inspired.
00:34:17.640
You need to be inspirational to others. That's the only way to achieve things. That's the only way to
00:34:23.160
drive yourself forward. And by doing that, drive other people forward around you. And then if
00:34:27.880
there's enough of a chain reaction, being able to mobilize your town, then the city, then your
00:34:33.080
district, your state, and then a country. But the other, the other way, if we go down this other path,
00:34:39.640
this will lead to a desperate, dark, broken place. And we just can't have it. We can't have it because
00:34:46.600
if nothing else for yourselves and your family, do you want to live in that? I don't. I don't.
00:34:53.400
Well, I mean, as part of the, one of the problems, I think for, for the young people who,
00:34:56.520
who, young men in particular, who feel this frustration is they don't have a family and
00:35:00.760
they don't have kids and they're not attached to anything. And they're just bitter and resentful,
00:35:05.160
but it just, it's just not a sustainable thing. It's not going to work for you if, if that's the place
00:35:12.760
you. And so you're going to have to, uh, dig yourself out of that, um, and realize that
00:35:18.200
this isn't leading you anywhere that you actually deep down want to be. Um, I mean, another thing
00:35:25.640
that we, you know, this is something we talked about with Ben in our conversation that's happening is
00:35:30.120
obviously there's a far left movement that's also happening. And, you know, one of the things you and
00:35:36.760
I've been talking about for a long time and trying, by the way, to get people on the right to
00:35:43.080
acknowledge is that affordability, particularly of housing is a gigantic issue and you can't skirt
00:35:50.520
around that. Now, look, I think Ben made a fantastic point that has been badly misrepresented. He said,
00:35:57.240
if you want to deal with affordability, you have to change the policies, but if the policies aren't
00:36:01.720
going to change, you have to, in America, in American history, actually the seeking of opportunity
00:36:08.520
elsewhere is literally America. Yeah. Right? And look at the content creators in our space. Uh,
00:36:16.440
let's take a look, go down the list. Joe Rogan moved from California to Austin. Why? Because he didn't
00:36:21.640
like what was happening in California. He didn't sit in his basement and wine, did he? Uh, Dave Rubin,
00:36:28.040
uh, Ben Shapiro, they've all moved, uh, lots and lots and lots of people. I mean, there's lots of
00:36:33.080
people in Austin who have moved to Austin. There's a lot, you know, other people are in Scottsdale,
00:36:37.720
Arizona. Like, uh, the reality is that the, the, if, if, if politicians feel that you are captive
00:36:45.640
in the city in which you live, they're not going to change anything. No. And no matter how many times
00:36:51.000
you elect, you know, far left socialist or communist or whatever who promise you free stuff, they're not
00:36:56.120
going to change anything. They're not going to make housing more affordable because the only way to
00:36:59.720
make housing more affordable is to build more housing. Like president Trump's come out with
00:37:03.400
this 50 year mortgage. Yeah. Okay. That's going to help some people buy a house that can't buy a house
00:37:07.880
now, but that's also going to massively inflate prices. And then a generation from now, or not a
00:37:13.160
generation, a few years from now, again, you're going to be in this position where fewer and fewer
00:37:17.000
people can buy a house because as we discussed with Dave, and this is where we really agreed is asset
00:37:22.120
inflation, uh, is making people who don't have assets incredibly, incredibly poor. And there's
00:37:28.840
graphs, uh, including in that recent video I did just showing this now. If people need to understand,
00:37:36.520
if this does not get addressed, you are going to have absolute chaos in politics because if young
00:37:44.040
people can't pair up, they can't settle down, they can't have kids, they're going to burn the whole
00:37:49.000
thing down. And we're starting to see that now. Yeah. We're starting to see that now.
00:37:53.560
And what's the one thing that I find particularly, uh, actually really frustrating. And I'm going to
00:37:59.640
be honest, it is the right, the right, the way they talk about this, where they talk about people
00:38:04.040
who voted for Zoran Mamdani and they're like, oh, they're stupid. They're ignorant. They're lazy,
00:38:08.920
whatever else. And it's like, hang on a second, hang on a second. You got upset when people on the
00:38:16.280
left said the same thing about Trump supporters. When Trump was addressing very real issues that
00:38:23.720
people from blue collar jobs, the left behind towns in the Rust Belt, we all know that we all
00:38:30.600
know the narratives when he was talking to them and you were angry when the left criticized and mocked
00:38:37.320
them. But now you're mocking people who are moving to the populist left. Can you not see that there's
00:38:43.800
actually more in common with both sides than you might want to pretend? I would quibble with your
00:38:50.120
analogy a little bit, although I think there's a lot of truth to it. But look, uh, President Trump
00:38:55.400
was going to close the border and did. Zoran Mamdani is not going to solve New York's problems.
00:39:01.000
I'm talking more about how people particularly talk about supporters. Yeah. Yeah. That's not helpful.
00:39:06.600
Of course it's not. But I do think there's a, there's a, uh, a qualitative difference between
00:39:11.960
these two things. And it's not because I'm pro Trump and anti-Mamdani, although, you know,
00:39:15.960
I, I'm no fan of Mandani, of course. Um, but yeah, I, no, I take your point. I mean, look,
00:39:21.320
demonizing millions of people for having a different voting preference to you is never smart
00:39:26.360
because you're not going to win any of them over. That said, I mean, look, there's a lot of,
00:39:30.200
there's a lot that's been written about Mamdani's election. One of the things that's been pointed out is
00:39:34.120
like Mamdani only did well with people who weren't born in America as a, on a group basis.
00:39:42.680
And that's another thing, which is, you know, there are, there do seem to be quite a lot of
00:39:46.280
people in all of our countries in the West who've come from other places. And instead of embracing the
00:39:51.000
things that made the West great, they seem to, for some reason, want to make our countries more like
00:39:58.760
the countries they've come from, which I think you and I who've either come or whose parents have
00:40:04.040
come from other places, just really struggled to understand. And one of the great interviews we
00:40:09.080
recorded on this trip was actually about your family's ancestry and country, which was Venezuela.
00:40:15.720
We had this great guy called Daniel DiMartino on the show. You absolutely smashed it, uh, talking
00:40:20.600
about Venezuela. Yeah. And to me, that was one of the highlights of the trip because look, I don't
00:40:26.280
mind jokes are jokes. Fine. But when you see a country perpetually used as a punchline and the,
00:40:35.000
but people never engage, they never actually talk about it, honestly. And I think it's really
00:40:40.760
important for people to actually understand what socialism genuinely means. What does it mean to have
00:40:46.440
a country that's socialist? What does it mean to have a country that it should actually be the
00:40:51.640
Dubai of South America? Because we're, we're richer than Dubai, but technically could be richer than
00:40:57.240
Saudi Arabia if we're run properly. But we have socialism. And as a result of that, everything
00:41:03.640
was decimated. The country was plunged into poverty. Nine million people left. Nine million people.
00:41:11.800
And it's one of the reasons I'm so proud of it was because of the way we handled the conversation,
00:41:16.040
because Daniel was magnificent in the way he put forward and explained what happened in Venezuela.
00:41:21.480
But also because it's, you know, we're so far away now from socialism in what many people experience
00:41:30.360
that to them, it's like they're rediscovering this new idea. Hey, you know what? Maybe the world can be
00:41:35.240
fairer. You know, there won't be poor people. We'll all be equal. And no, that's not how it works.
00:41:41.880
It's a magic trick. You get shown something and you think, isn't this brilliant? And then you get
00:41:47.560
the reveal at the end of it. And the reveal is there is no freedom. There's no free speech.
00:41:53.720
If you criticize the government, you're going to be in jail. And you know what? We're all going to be
00:41:57.880
plunged into desperate, miserable poverty. Sounds like Britain, mate.
00:42:02.840
Well, yeah. And, but that's the thing that we, they still have here in America, which is,
00:42:08.360
and it's why I loved our conversation with Dana. And it's why I love the coming here and having
00:42:13.720
conversations. It's because there is still optimism here. And that is so important and it's so
00:42:19.640
powerful. And I know it's what you love about being here. Of course, it's fantastic. And you know,
00:42:23.960
every time we come here, it's not just about having great conversations with fascinating people.
00:42:29.400
It's also, it changes us every time we're here. We become better as interviewers. We have better
00:42:34.120
conversations. Like the way we would have interviewed Hassan Piker if we interviewed him
00:42:41.160
after Dave Smith would have been very different. Yeah. And that's because Dave made us better as
00:42:45.960
interviewers. Yeah. You know, the, the things we engage with here makes us better as interviews.
00:42:51.640
I, I know these might seem like minor details to people, but for fans of the show, these probably
00:42:55.720
are interesting observations. Like Brandon Tatum, officer Tatum, when we had on, he spoke for 35 minutes
00:43:03.480
uninterrupted and answering our first questions. I dare you to find one interviewer on the internet
00:43:08.840
who would let somebody speak for 35 minutes and say nothing. And the reason we do that
00:43:14.360
is when we've learned that when you have someone who really has something, something to say,
00:43:20.040
a story to tell, you just get out of the way. And when you have someone who needs a little help,
00:43:25.560
or maybe just speaks in shorter sentences, or maybe, you know, you quite haven't quite found the way to get
00:43:30.360
in. Uh, then you, then, then you, then we've got to jump in and do our job in a different way.
00:43:35.800
And by the way, we're talking about all the serious stuff. We have some hilarious episodes
00:43:40.920
recorded in this trip. I mean, we, we had Christina P, James McCann, Jeff Dye, who was just absolutely
00:43:47.000
incredible. Greg Gutfeld as well. They all smashed them. Those are really interesting, but very funny
00:43:51.960
conversations. Um, and that's again, another thing, you know, it sounds like we're blowing smoke up our
00:43:56.760
own asses here, but like we've got so much range and the types of, we can do funny, we can do serious,
00:44:03.320
we can do, uh, educational. I mean, we, our conversation with Scott Galloway about masculinity,
00:44:08.840
our conversation with Nick Freitas about masculinity, our conversation with James Sexton,
00:44:14.520
the divorce lawyer. It's one of the most powerful things that we've ever experienced sitting across
00:44:19.560
from somebody because he is such a great speaker and has so many interesting things to say, so balanced,
00:44:25.160
but also was willing to go to places emotionally that very often people climb up. So, you know,
00:44:31.000
being here is transformative. And every time we come here, it transforms. That's why we love America.
00:44:36.200
We do. We love America because the ambition, the talent, the talent here is incredible. You just,
00:44:43.800
there's some people who just walk in like Daniel, who just come in and they smash it from beginning to
00:44:49.800
end. And you go, you're not even 30. You're not even 30. I didn't like him for that reason.
00:44:56.760
Too good, too young. You know, you're not even 30. And the talent here is incredible. The conversations
00:45:03.880
that you can have here. And you know what I think, and this is good, people are going to roll their
00:45:07.640
eyes, but I do think, I think part of it is the first amendment. I think it's, they have a culture of
00:45:12.680
free speech. And when you have a culture of free speech, it automatically makes everything that
00:45:18.040
little bit lighter because you know, that's the culture. So you can, it's like Dana said in our
00:45:24.120
interview, in the UFC, you can go out and you can make a comment about politics and it can be as
00:45:30.040
bad shit as you want, but it's the first amendment. It's America. You're entitled to your opinion.
00:45:37.560
Well, that is the attitude. And one of the things we explored with a lot of people is the sort of
00:45:41.320
proclivity for conspiracy. And we talked to a few comedians about that. You know,
00:45:45.320
why do people so interested in that? I think that's probably the flip side in that when every
00:45:52.200
opinion is accepted, you know, people are going to come up with some pretty wacky opinions.
00:45:56.280
Um, and you know, it, it's an interesting place to be because of course, right now,
00:46:01.160
that conspiratorialness on the right, I think is a real threat to the right's electoral success.
00:46:08.520
I just, I don't think the American general public based on our conversations and the people that we
00:46:15.320
speak to, I don't think they're into that. They might enjoy watching somebody, but when it becomes
00:46:20.920
the central thing of the political movement, you know, uh, I just, I don't see that as a winning
00:46:27.240
strategy, particularly when you're bringing in very toxic ideas that a lot of people in this country,
00:46:32.680
thank God still have a natural aversion to. Look, you've absolutely nailed it. And I think
00:46:37.480
people in politics and I think people in our space and in the YouTubers, I think we all need
00:46:44.280
to remember something. Look, we're all highly political people in this little space. And look,
00:46:49.080
that's fine. And we're obsessed with politics and that's what we do. And that's what we talk about.
00:46:55.080
But there's something bigger at play here. And that's America and the West. And by that,
00:47:00.440
I mean the soccer mom taking her kids to practice. The dad getting up every day,
00:47:06.360
going to do a job that he probably doesn't like, but he does it because he's got a family and then
00:47:11.800
he comes back. The young people who want to get ahead with their lives and they just want an
00:47:17.320
opportunity and a chance to succeed. The guy looking at the girl going, I want to marry her and one day be
00:47:23.880
able to be able to have kids. This is more important than people online talking and be
00:47:31.160
trying to be provocative. And we all need to remember that what we do bleeds out into society
00:47:37.320
and we have a responsibility. You have a responsibility not to indulge in these conspiracy theories,
00:47:45.080
not to be extreme because it affects people in a way that is incredibly profound.
00:47:51.960
To those people, you may feel like you're just ranting to a camera. You're not. People are
00:47:56.040
watching. They're ingesting this stuff. And that's what concerns me, if I'm being honest.
00:48:02.040
Well, we will see how it all plays out. Everyone has a small role to play in it.
00:48:06.840
We are going to go to triggerpod.co.uk where our fans are going to ask us questions,
00:48:11.960
or rather we'll take their questions and ask them of each other. So head on over there now.
00:48:16.440
And if you're not already a subscriber, we do think you're morally inferior.
00:48:22.840
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00:48:26.680
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