Transcript of #2466 - Francis Foster & Konstantin Kisin

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Okay, so when we scheduled this, there was nothing happening. So peaceful.

Every time we're here, something crazy is going on, man.

Yeah, maybe we manifest it, to be honest.

It did. 2026 did start with a bang.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, a lot of things, you know, it's just nothing seems stable everywhere. Everywhere in the world. Seems right now like this is the. Like in all of my years, this seems the most unstable globally. Like, I never worried that the UK was going to be like complete chaos, arresting 12,000 people for social media posts and abandoning trial by jury, all that. I never thought the Ukraine, Russia war would go on this long. Never thought. Never thought they would just continue bombing Gaza. And then what's happening now? They just sort of stop. And now they're talking about putting a resort there. What? Like you hear that and you go, are you fucking serious?

Right.

Tim Dillon has a. I want to. I won't give the bit away. He has a fucking phenomenal bit about staying in that resort.

Yeah.

And you boys have been busy as well, Joe.

Yeah, And I was going to get to that. The embarrassing part, in the middle of Ramadan, you take out the leader of a Muslim country and they're hangry already

and you're fucking with it.

They're really. Yeah. Drink water, right? And then, you know, I was listening to Tim Dillon's podcast today. He's got a great podcast with Ryan Grimm and one other gentleman. But one of the things that they brought up was that some of these drone attacks, it doesn't even seem like they're from Iran. Some of these drone attract attacks on Gulf states, like that. One of them, I don't want to speak out of tune, out of turn, because I don't. I'm not exactly sure which ones they're talking about. They're talking about one of them on either it's a oil refinery. I think it is an oil refinery that it doesn't seem like it came from Iran. So.

Okay, where did it come from?

That's a good question.

One of their proxies.

That's a good question. Well, the fear is a false flag. That's the fear. Like, if you really wanted to get really scared of what we were dragged into, you're dragged into an ally that's not telling you the truth. And this also doing some other stuff. Well, I'm not even saying that that's the case, but a lot of people are assuming that that's what it is.

But that's what happens when you have an absence of information. Right. And so the moment you have an absence of information, there's a vacuum. And nature abhors a vacuum. You need to have that vacuum filled. So that's where conspiracies naturally flourish. Because. Because if people don't have information, then they're going to basically theorize.

Right.

And part of people theorizing is conspiracies are going to start flourishing.

Well, I think they were basing it on the. Where the drone came from. Like, let's see if we can find some information on that. Jamie.

I will try. It was Jeremy Scahill, was the other.

That's right.

Reporter on the video.

I just find it amazing now how many people have, like, a hard take on, like, what's going. I'm like, what the. We don't know a fucking thing about what's going. Like, the coin is in the air. Right. And we do not know how it's going to. But everyone's got to take. Everyone knows. We do not fucking. I don't think anyone knows. I understand if you work at the White House or if you work in Russian propaganda or you work in Chinese propaganda or if you work in Iranian, you've got to get your point of view across to try and persuade people. But if you're actually trying to work out what's genuinely happening, I don't think anyone knows how this is a gamble of gigantic proportions and nobody knows how it's going to end. Like, it's just so unpredictable. And I can tell you a great story that is, like, positive for the west, let's say, for America. I can tell you a terrible story and they both sound very convincing and no one knows which one of them is true.

Yeah, that's a very good point. This is the hot take culture.

Right? Right.

Everyone has a take and they want that take to be the expert take. So specific drone attack incidents that call potential false flags. Saudi Arabia. Saudi. Saudi Aram, rather, oil facility attack. So Iranian officials deny striking the Saudi Aramco processing facility and instead suggest Israel may have carried out that attack as a false flag to inflame Gulf opinion and pull Saudi Arabia more directly into the war with Iran. So Ryan Grim explicitly says he thinks Iran's claims that Israel hit the Aramco facility need to be taken seriously and that it's very possible Israel did it. And this was the other one, the drone strike on the British base in

Cyprus, that was from Lebanon, Right?

Yeah.

Is that what they're saying yeah may have come from the direction of Lebanon. He places this in the same context. Iran claiming Israel carried out certain attacks in neighboring states as false flags to blame in Iran and drag those countries into the war.

Those countries. This doesn't make any logical sense to me because those countries are already in the war. I mean Saudi Arabia and UAE have been attacked by Iran because they were on the phone to Trump basically asking him to do this.

Here's this is another weird one, the Tucker Carlson one. You saw that, right?

No.

So Tucker Carlson said that.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

They had been arrested. Members of Mossad have been arrested in Qatar and Saudi Arabia. So.

But both Qatar and Saudi Arabia have said it's not true.

Yeah. They've officially denied such arrests. Their own Saudi sources also denied it though they note details don't prove it didn't happen and that states would almost certainly hide such arrests if real. Huh.

The thing Joe, is that these countries so Saudi Arabia and uae, Qatar less so they want this to happen cuz they also hate Iran or the Iranian regime.

Right.

So there is no need for Israel even if you, you know, if people are tempted to believe there's no need for Israel to do this because these countries are already in it.

Right.

And that one of the reasons that Iran has attacked things in Saudi Arabia and in the UAE is they know that. Right?

Right.

So the Gulf countries are on board with this.

Right. So what would be. Let's assume that the false flag, that it's in play. Who would, why, why would Israel, how would they benefit from doing that?

That's what I'm saying. There is no rationale that I can think of the people that think the

false flag is real, like why do they think that? Like what do they think that Israel would benefit from it? Is there a scenario where you could imagine it would would inflame things and further support other countries contributing to the. I mean there's a lot of money that's being spent on this war. Right. This is insane amount of money just for munitions, just for missiles.

Yeah, yeah. And then rebuilding Iran if we get to that. Right.

Maybe another resort.

Yeah. So but I just don't see the rationale because the Gulf countries are already targets for Iran.

Right.

There's nothing to inflame. Like the situation is already pretty fucking inflamed. Right. And it's partly inflamed because as I say, actually the Gulf states and Israel are pretty aligned on this particular thing. They're all at threat from the Iranian regime. So we had Eamon Dean and Richard Minitz on our show the other day. One of them is an al Qaeda MI6 double agent. Another one is a really reputable investigative journalist, Richard Minot.

Al Qaeda MI6 double agent.

What?

Ball.

And he has a great podcast now as well called Conflicted.

What a great name for a podcast for a guy who's a double agent.

Yeah, yeah.

What balls that guy must have.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Really cool guy. But anyway, I mean, he was explaining that Saudi Arabia has a population that is way bigger than what they can sustain in terms of the water, but they live in the fucking desert. So they have these desalination plants which are extremely vulnerable. And Saudi Arabia, uae, these other countries, they felt at huge risk from Iranian attacks for a long time. So none of them like the Iranian regime that's spreading terrorism through its proxies. So in actual fact, dragging them into the war, kind of like there's no sense for that. I think there's a lot of people just. They go to reaction now whenever anything happens is that it was Israel's fault, you know, like Venezuela, fuck all to do with Israel. But when it happened, everyone's like, oh, it's Israel. I think some people just go to that now as the automatic response. Which comes back to what I was saying earlier about the hot take culture. Something happened three minutes ago and now everyone's got a fucking take on it. You don't know anything, right? None of us know anything. None of us know how this is gonna go.

Cuz this right now is a highly unpredictable situation. I don't think the White House knows how this is gonna go.

This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, the all in one platform for building a website that actually looks legit and helps you stand out online. And I should know. My site, Jorogan.com is powered by Squarespace. They make it easy to lock down the right domain for your business or project. And they've got built in privacy and security tools to keep everything protected. Head to squarespace.com rogan to try it out for free. And. And when you're ready to launch, use the offer code rogan to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. No, it's terrifying. It's terrifying. And it's exactly the opposite of what we were told leading into this administration, that it's going to be America first, right? And no more unnecessary foreign wars. There's the other thing that. Do you remember Desert Storm?

Yeah, yeah.

Desert Storm. Quick and easy, baby.

Whoo.

We went in. Kick some ass. Took some names.

The.

That's a wrap pulled out. There was only one base that got hit. So there was the. The amount of deaths by American citizens was fairly minimal. I think that's what got people so confident into entering Iran after 911 or excuse me, Iraq after 9 11. To go back. Like we already fucked them up once. We're going to go back and this is going to be easy. Well, it wasn't easy the second time. And it was drawn out and it didn't make any sense. But people wanted some form of revenge, something for 9 11. And so somehow or another they justified a war with a country that had zero to do with it. Like it didn't even make sense that one took for. And then we also invaded Afghanistan at the same time. What do we do? What the fuck? So in the fog of this idea of American exceptionalism, we're just gonna go in and fix it? We did it before. There's no one even close to us. Well, look how that turned out.

Yeah, well, this is completely true. And there's this idea that it's so easy to take one regime, remove it, and then just put another one in its place like it's a Lego block. And then all of a sud. Sudden you're going to magically fix a country is a fantasy. Like if you take Iran, the IRGC, which is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, numbers around 200,000 trained soldiers. And not only are they trained soldiers, they're fanatical, they're fanatics. And then you have the secret police, and then you have the regular police, and then you have the people employed in the government, and then their families and so on and so forth. And then they're supporters within the country. And then you've got the various factions within Iran, like the Kurds, who want independence. So the moment the leadership is weakened, they're going to use it as an opportunity to launch their own revolution to try and break away from the rest of Iran. So you have all of these particular parts, these factions, and then you think if you take out the top, the tag are at the top. Who's holding it all together by force? I'm not saying I agree with him or what he does.

You have the very real risk that the entire country is going to disintegrate as what happened in Iran, in Iraq. Sorry.

And also Libya.

Yeah.

The idea that you could just take the guy out and that's a wrap. I mean, it doesn't seem like it's well thought out.

Well, I mean, to be charitable, they would say Venezuela Right. Like regime adjustment.

Different kind.

Of course. Of course.

This is a religious fanatical.

Right.

It's a totally different kind of country also. It's a country that's been under threat for decades. Right. So they've been preparing for this kind of thing.

Yeah, yeah.

And also with Venezuela, it wasn't a regime change. Practically everybody who was in the old regime is still there.

It's regime adjustment.

Exactly, exactly. So Delsey Rodriguez was one of the senior leaders in Maduro's regime. They just took out Maduro and his wife. They put Delsey Rodriguez there, but the whole structure, the whole leadership, the whole party is still in place. So they've just. What they've done is they put Delsey at the top and they've said to her, look, if you about. You're going to get what your boss got, so you're going to follow what we say, you're going to do what we say. You are going to open up the oil refineries, we're going to build it, we're going to. You're going to start pumping oil out. You're going to stop messing about with Hezbollah, which they had training camps in the island of Margarita, which is a little Caribbean island two and a half hours away from Miami. Training camps. You can't have that. You're not going to be fraternizing with the Cubans and you're going to play ball. And essentially, Venezuela is now a colony of the United States. That's what it's now become.

That's wild. Well, there's also the Kurt Metzger angle, which is hilarious. Kurt Metzger cornered me one night at the mothership and he explained to me that this is all about the 2020 election and that Maduro somehow or another had something to do with rigging the 2020 election. And he's going to say it as a part of his testimony. He's like, just wait. Just wait. Mark my words, he's convinced of this. He goes down the rabbit hole to the lava. Like, he passes and he's like, this rabbit hole has been covered up. It goes deeper and he keeps going till he's at the fucking center of the earth.

He's a funny guy, though.

He's hilarious. He's hilarious. He's mentally ill. He's hilarious. He's one of the funniest people I know, like, ever. Fantastic joke writer, too. I mean, he's just great all around, but Jesus Christ. Like, some of his nutty theories, they go so far.

Oh, absolutely. I've been in bars with Kurt, where he starts talking to me and I'm like, I don't even know what we're talking about anymore.

Well, he changes. He changes conspiracies mid sentence. He starts bringing up some shit from the 70s as the Church Committee and this and that and MK Ultra. And. Don't you know about Monarch? Like, what? Slow down. Like, not everybody knows what you're talking about.

But I. I think this is. And I love Kurt, but this is kind of where you feel that the truth isn't enough. So you. There needs to be something else. There needs to be something that goes deeper than that. And sometimes there is. Don't get me wrong. Sometimes it does go deeper. But sometimes, like, you're making connections where there are no connections. Like, it's pretty simple. With Venezuela, what was going on? They were fucking about and they were doing it for a long time and they were doing it in America's backyard. And they had warning after warning. And Maduro. The way I'd push back against Kurt is. I'm really sorry, Kurt, but Maduro ain't that bright.

Well, I don't think he has to be that bright to finance and make sure and arrange things, because they. They did. There was like some. Something connected to the voting machines that were there.

They made those claims. Here's the Sydney Powell, was it?

Yeah, here we go. She's another fun1 post 2020 from Trump allies like Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani claiming Hugo Chavez, Maduro's predecessor, developed rigged software to export to US firms. These were promoted by figures like Mike Lindell. He makes a great pillow, should listen to him. And amplified on social media. But courts and fact checks rejected them, including Fox News. 708. 787 million. Dominion settlement.

Yeah, I was going to say I was pretty sure that those claims were debunked.

Yeah, not to Kurt. He's like, you guys don't know where the hard drives are. The center of the earth. We got to get there. Yeah, that doesn't make much sense to me. But neither does this idea that you're going to take over a country's oil supply. You know, like that. You know, we'll just take it that the problem is from the outside, like the rest of the world. You look at this unnecessary aggression by the United States government, and then you tack on whatever propaganda they have already been spitting out about America for the last 20 or 30 years. And then this war with Iran gets really ugly. Because that's how you start a World War 3. You start a World War III. By doing something that. Other than people that wanted this forever, who else thinks that's a good idea? Who else thinks it's a good idea to just attack a country that isn't doing anything? They haven't done anything. Like if you proof that they have developed depleted uranium and they've got it up to a point where they've got it to what percentage does it have to be like they're at 60.

Right.

But that's way more than you need.

Way more than you need. Right. So it shows that they're at least ramping up their production where it's possible to. To get it to whatever it needs to make it.

That's way more than you need for civilian use.

Right? Right. But that's still. It's not clear that that justifies an invasion when North Korea has nuclear weapons.

Right?

Yeah, right.

It's like, do we just want, we just trying to prevent them from ever getting to a point where they're like, north Korea? Who the fuck is worried about North Korea? Zero people. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Look, if you're trying to take your business seriously, you gotta level up your website. But mine, Joe Rogan.com is powered by Squarespace. It's a no brainer because it does all the hard stuff for you. They've got everything in one place. You can lock down your domain, make your stuff look clean and professional, build your brand, get paid, all of it. Go to squarespace.com rogan and try it out for free. And when you are ready to launch, use the offer code rogan to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

I think the difference, as you correctly said earlier, is these people are very different to the North Koreans. Right. North Korea wants to be left the fuck alone. Iran does not want to be left alone. Iran wants to dominate the region. That's why they fund Hamas. It's one. They fund Hezbollah. It's why they fund the Houthis is why they are doing shit. That's why the Gulf countries and Israel are very worried about them.

Right?

So that's the difference, I think. And then there's the. You know, some of the people we've had on the show who are Iranian have talked about the. What is it called? 12th year Islam? I can't remember the details, but basically they have a kind of messianic vision of what's going to happen. And they believe that when the world ends, that's when the prophecy will be fulfilled. You don't want those guys with nuclear

Weapons, Right, That's a good point.

Yeah. So from that perspective, it's different to North Korea. And so I think that's part of the thinking. But your point is interesting to me about the fact that this doesn't reflect what people, you know, as we're not Americans, but it doesn't seem to have been part of the policy platform of the Trump election at the last election, right?

No, not at all.

But I do think there is some kind of strategy behind all of this and I'm very curious what that is because I guess if you think about it logically, you would say, well, is it an attempt to effectively push back against China and Russia, infiltrating all these countries? Right. China and Russia were very close with Maduro in Venezuela. Very, very. Like Francis is saying, Hezbollah training camps, island Margarita, where was the oil going? Right. Same with Iran. I mean, Iran sells its oil to China and sends suicide drones to Russia to use in Ukraine. So maybe it's that maybe the strategy is you're trying to push back against Chinese and Russian influence in all these countries because you can't attack them directly. Because you can't attack them directly.

Right? Yeah.

But this is all just guessing on my part. And that's what I'm really curious. We're gonna do some interviews on this trip to kind of like, I want to get someone on the show who can go, this is the strategy, right? This is what we're doing. Because I think, as we were saying earlier, it's not very clear to most people what the rationale behind all of this is. But I also don't think this sort of like Mad Dog Trump idea is true either. I think he has a strategy. I'd just love to know what it is.

And it's very interesting because there's been talk about regime change in Cuba and one of the things.

So I think that's next, genuinely.

Oh my God.

I think that's next.

So when Chavez came to power in 99, what he did, and not enough people talk about this, is he turned what was very corrupt, admittedly liberal, Western style democracy into a communist dictatorship. And how do you do that? You can't just literally do that overnight. So what he did is he allied with the Cubans and Fidel in particular, Fidel Castro. Venezuela provided Cuba with cheap oil, which helped to keep the Cuban economy afloat because Cuba has been going broke since however many years, 40 odd years. And what Castro did was he gave him the boots on the ground in Venezuela, but also the technical expertise and know how in order to change a Western liberal democracy into a communist state with permanent surveillance, secret police, subjugate the population. So there was no chance of them ever being able to revolt and make every. And turn everything into, like I said, into a communist state. So by what they did in Venezuela, Venezuela can no longer support Cuba. So Cuba is literally now withering on the vine as a result of them knocking out the Venezuelans. So it's going to come to a point where you say Cuba effectively going to go bankrupt, which could precipitate an uprising, a revolution by people when people can no longer eat.

And that would mean that that country is then weakened. Finally, they can get rid of the communist regime there and they can have a different type of government, one which will be far more sympathetic, shall we say, to working with American. Being an American ally.

That makes sense to me in a way. What I don't understand about the Iran thing is, like, what is the end goal here? You've got the Reza Pahlavi, the Shah's son. I mean, he left Iran a long time ago as a kid. Right. The idea that he's gonna go back in there and be welcomed by the masses. Maybe that's true.

Maybe it's like Daenerys returning to the Iron Throne.

Yeah, but Daenerys had three fucking dragons.

But you know what I'm saying, Left when she was a baby.

Yeah, that's right. That's right. And it's not like the people are desperately. I don't know, maybe the people are desperate for the return of the.

Well, it seems like some people are desperate for a change there. The people that were protesting, people that risked their lives.

100%.

100%. But like every country, like, if you only listen to the liberals in this country, you would think that, you know, that no one's illegal on stolen land.

Right.

If you only listen to the Republicans in this country, you would think we gotta find every illegal and get them out of our country and make America great again like this. It doesn't make sense if we just go only by the protesters. Like, we don't really have accurate polling because they don't have any free speech over there.

Right.

And they've killed, like, famous athletes over there for protesting.

Yeah.

I mean, they killed the Olympic gold medalist in wrestling. The UFC tried to step in and try to do something to stop it. They. They executed him for just. Apparently, I don't even think he was actually protesting. I think it was just at a protest. He wasn't even saying anything.

And this is the thing you always have to bear in mind, Joe.

I might be wrong about that though.

No, I think you are right.

Am I right about that?

The final details, I'm not sure. But the fact that he was executed.

Yes, he was executed.

I know Dana worked very hard to try and save that guy.

I think there was some discrepancy as to whether or not he was actually participating in the protest. That also could have been the defense. I don't know. But I mean the fact that they execute people who protest, there's no way you can support that kind of. That's a scary ass fucking government. And run by religious fanatics. That's a scary ass government. But the question is, how scary ass does it have to get where invading makes sense? Because if, if this keeps going like if we, we have to go boots on the ground, that's where things get nuts.

You can't go boots on the ground. You can't, you can't.

Right.

I don't, but I don't think there's any.

You should be president.

There's a lot of people are going to disagree. No, I don't think that's viable.

Just like it might be robot boots on the ground.

Yeah.

You know, if Elon gets that factory up in time.

What I want to know is like, what is that you're working towards? Right, right. Like so from what I understand, talking to some of the people, like Israel would quite like a Reza Pahlavi monarchy because the other Middle Eastern countries that they have peace with, you know, Bahrain, Morocco, increasingly the Gulf states, they're all monarchies.

Right, right, right.

So they're down with that. But from what I understand, the White House is really not that interested in Pahlavi. And so what, what do they want? Well, one of the things that Richard Minuter broke on our show, cuz it hadn't been reported anywhere else, was that the White House has given the Israelis a no kill list, which is basically a list of members of the current regime that they don't want to be killed because they have hope that these people could then be the Rodriguez equivalent in Iran. Right. And I don't know that the fanatics within the Iranian regime who are there now, how many of them are like this, like Darth Vader, but like, like. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah.

You're kind of looking for Darth Vader. Zero.

Yeah. No, no, no, no. Islam. Zero. Islamism. I don. That exists. Right, right. Sugar free Islamism. Free. Yeah. So that's the bit. And that doesn't mean that there Isn't like a plan, but I don't know what the fuck that plan is right now. And I find it hard to see one. So evil regime gone. Wonderful. But what. But the question is always like, what comes after that?

Right?

That's always the question. And that's where I think your point is very true. Which is in the past, there have been times where this sort of approach has gone completely off the rails. Yeah, that's a fact.

And it's also as well, what has been coming out of the Trump camp is contradictory, to put it mildly. You have Hegseth saying one thing, you have Trump saying another. They contradict each other at certain points. Is that a tactic in order to befuddle the opponent? Maybe, who knows? Or is it the fact that they don't actually have a grand vision?

Was there some sort of a concession today on Russian oil?

Yeah, well, I think first of all, Trump let India buy Iranian oil, and I think now they are lifting the sanctions on Russia selling its oil because the oil prices spiked as much as they did.

Right, here goes. US Eases limits on Russian energy as oil prices soar.

Right. Yeah,

well, well, you've got the Pink Floyd T shirt, so it's appropriate.

But you can see it like the oil prices spiked for. For what, one day, two days.

Yeah.

And everyone went full panic straight away. But the thing is, if that carries on for two months, the impact of that on domestic politics, I mean, I'm not an expert in American politics, but even I can say that's gonna be pretty fucking important.

Oh, it's bad, right? Yeah, it's gonna be bad. I mean, if oil prices spike, we're fucked.

Yeah.

You know, and the Republicans are really fucked.

Yeah. And you've got the midterms coming up.

You got the midterms coming up in November. And it's also the momentum will be in their way.

And look, there's, you know, second, third, fourth order consequences. So at the moment in the uk, the vast majority of people find it in. Are finding it more and more difficult just to get through to the end of the month because of the cost of living. Inflation, it's becoming worse and worse. I was talking to a butcher in my area, which is this very nice part of North London, you know the type of place I'm talking about. Everyone loves blm. No one has a black friend. That kind of place. Right, okay. That's the kind of area it is. And he was telling me that even in this very wealthy area, people are starting to ration meat now. So before they'd have meat five days a week, now they're going down to three or two. And this isn't a wealthy area. So now imagine if there's energy spikes and then food becomes more and more expensive. There is already a very worrying hard left political movement growing in the UK where they're talking about, you know, the capitalism doesn't work. We need socialism. And there's a, there's this new politician come to the fore, a guy called Zach Polanski who talks about what we need in this country and the UK is socialism.

Now imagine if the cost of living crisis gets worse and the vast majority of people who work hard in a regular job can't make ends meet through literal, no fault of their own. Can you blame them for going, hang on, capitalism doesn't work because in this instance, at that moment, it doesn't work for them. And then that could spark something completely disastrous for our country.

Yeah, but I think, you know, that's a negative story. I think it's incredibly persuasive and I lean more in the direction that this could go badly. But I also think there is the possibility of this goes well too. I think that is possible.

What do you, how do you envision that scenario?

Well, so if they're able to keep the Strait of Hummus open and you don't have this energy problems that we've got now, you know, Venezuela, Cuba, he's basically resetting the region and he's basically saying to all the people that want to align themselves with China and Russia, like, we're not fucking about here, don't cross these lines. That is an opportunity to address the slide that the Western world has had vis a vis China and Russia for a very long time. That could be a very positive thing. The thing is, what happens in Iran, like, that is the thing that I don't really see how that goes. Well, might do. Like I said, there's probably a plan that we don't know. And if that works out, that could be very good.

Okay, what would you imagine that plan would be? If you like, let's imagine, best case scenario, you're in the White House. They're all very rational. No one's being influenced by foreign government governments, no one's incompetent. Everybody knows what they're doing.

Well, yeah, I mean, we're in the realms of fantasy now. But I mean, take the Soviet Union, which is obviously something that I know, right? Being born in the Soviet Union and Russia, towards the end of the Soviet Union, you still had some fanatical communists. And in fact, throughout the Soviet Union, you always had within the government a mixture of different people, right? You had the fanatical communists who believed that communism was the only thing that was ever going to work, et cetera. But you also had people who were reformers. They saw the problems, they saw that the fanatical communists were ruining things and things were getting worse. Right. They saw that you had to kill more and more of your own people to keep shit locked down. Right. So the argument could be within the Iranian Revolutionary Guard or the regime more broadly. There are people who are like, you know, I'm not necessarily that keen on the guy Runsyranna Al Jilani, right? He is a jihadi, but he's kind of like a moderate one, you know, you know, how long that. I don't know how long it's gonna last. But my point is, within every regime there is some range of opinion, there is some range of fanaticism, there is some range of people who, partly for generational reasons, you know, the younger people have seen, you know, a 40 year history and they now go, okay, this isn't working anymore.

We need to try something else that is possible. So if the, the CIA and the White House have someone like that and they can do a regime adjustment. And like, I think the idea that you're going to have, you know, multi parliamentary democracy with, you know, free and fair elections and women, you know, like Venice beach, you know, rollerblading on, bikinis on, I don't know that that's going to happen. Right. But what you might have is an authoritarian regime of some kind like many other countries in the Middle east, which realizes that actually economic growth is more important than shouting Allah Akbar every three minutes and blowing shit up, right. That focuses on making life better for their citizens, that, you know, practices traditional Muslim values, which many countries do, and says, you know, women ought to be modest, but doesn't force them to wear the burqa or the headscarf or whatever, and is less interested in destabilizing the region and attacking others and trying to be this great power, and is more interested in just prosperity for its own people, survival for themselves as a regime, and is willing to play ball with the United States.

Well said. Yeah, well said. That's best case scenario.

That's best case scenario. Now if you get there, I think that would be a huge win for President Trump and it'd be a huge win for the world. And he will walk away from that with a huge win. And I think, you know, you're A better expert on the American people. But I think American people like winning. Right. So if you have all this happen, he can then say, well, look, we did this, we did this, we did this. Russia and China have been pushed back. We got to, you know the situation. Iran is not going to get a nuke, which is important. I think we can all agree on that. Right?

Yeah.

There is the possibility that he comes out of this very well. I think that based on what I see, but I don't know, coming back to what we said, I think we share this kind of perspective, really, Francis and I, that seems somewhat less likely at this point, at least harder to see. But I think you can tell a persuasive story both ways. I really do.

That makes sense. And what you're saying, I think is very valid that we need to abandon any idea of them having some sort of a democracy over there. It's not going to happen.

No.

And, you know, you do look at the relationships that we have with other Gulf State nations. Seems fine. Right. It's not threatening to us. We would like everyone to be free and have the same sort of liberal democracy that we have in America. But, okay, you like that. All want that all day long. You can't do anything to change the way other people govern themselves. Especially when you've gotten to the point where, like, take any of the Middle Eastern countries, for example. These. Some of these people are worth trillions of dollars. These royal families have been running it forever. They have insane amounts of oil money. Good luck. Good luck getting them out of there. Like, good luck saying, we should just vote, you know, and have a president and you don't have any power anymore. Like, how. How are you gonna pull that off? Especially if things are going well for the people that live there? Like. Like, I have a friend who moved to Dubai, and he's an American, and he moved back to America recently, but he was over there and he said, dude, you could leave a Rolex on the street and people would pick it up and bring it to the police.

Like, it's so safe. He's like, there's no crime and he's black. And see, he's like, I worry when I go out in America, I'm gonna get shot. I'm worried I'm going to go to a club and someone's gonna start beefing and shooting up the place and I'm gonna get hit. He goes, I don't think about that at all. Over here. There's none of that. He goes, it's safer. Is it Fucked up that, you know, it's run by a king, I guess. Is it that much different than a president? I mean, in a way, like it's a leader, right? You've got more checks and balances over here. You've got Congress, you got the Senate, you got all this shit going on with the Supreme Court. You have all these different human beings that also have a say and can block things. But at the end of the day, we're still under this bizarre alpha male chimpanzee structure. Structure that has existed from the time that we were 150 people in a fucking tribe. Right? So it's still one guy running things. It's just running things their way. And if you were a citizen in Dubai, pretty fucking good.

Right?

Well, your point about the UAE is really interesting because not only is on the practical level of safety and other things, but also they don't have the Islamism problem that we have in Britain. And increasingly you guys are starting to see here because they recognize that it's a problem and they deal with it. So I don't know if you saw this news story. The UAE no longer gives sponsorships to their students to go to the UK because they're worried their kids are gonna get radicalized by Islamists in Britain.

Which is fucking wild. Yeah, that is fucking wild.

And I mean, you were messaging me about this story with the Mamdani situation, right, Yesterday. Y problem in America.

Yeah.

Yes, you have the Islamism problem here where people who are supporters of ISIS are thrown. But I mean, your media is pretending it's not happening, but it's fucking happening.

Well, it happened in Austin, right?

Yeah.

I mean, right. The guy who shot up that bar.

Right.

Because this is a problem article to Jamie.

Yeah, Jamie, you could probably find it on CNN because it's kind of hilarious.

Incredible. This was actually incredible.

The New York Times title change thing.

Did the New York Times change their title? Yeah, they did. I wonder why.

Austere scholars.

I'm gonna send you the CNN one first. The CNN one is really wild.

They had like fuses of things with smoke or something. Yeah, they change it to bombs or something.

Yeah, fucking duh. I'm sending you this one because the CNN one is, believe it or not, more preposterous. The CNN one is so kooky. You see their headline, you're like, what kind of story are you painting here? This is such a crazy way to frame. A guy showed up with bombs and was hurling them at people.

They made it sound like the exact opposite of what actually Happened.

Well, it sounded like it was just a regular day. Regular day for this fella, and then things just went a little sideways somewhere.

Listen, we've all got hobbies, man. You know what I mean? You like working out. He has nail bombs. Come on.

Yeah, Jamie, it's not. It's not coming through. No, look, when I.

It's not loading there.

Oh, interesting. But let me see if they took it down.

I'd guess they would have. You probably have an old link that.

Okay, that's the New York Times when I sent you on for. Oh, well, that. No, that's the one I just clicked on. Let me check the original one. Nothing to see here. Interesting. They probably deleted it. Okay, here, I found it. I found it. Two Pennsylvania teenagers crossing New York City Saturday morning for what could have been a normal day. Enjoying the city during abnormally warm weather. But in less than an hour, their lives would drastically change as the pair would be arrested for throwing homemade bombs. That is CNN's tweet. I'm gonna send you a screenshot because I do believe they've taken it down. Yep, nothing to see here yet. Yeah, they took it down.

That's not a headline, though. That's. I guess.

No, no, no. I'm gonna send you the actual tweet because they did take it down because it's so fucking ridiculous. But the Internet never forgets. I'm sending to you here. Thank God I saved it and took a screenshot because I'm like, this is such a crazy way to frame two guys wanting to do a terror attack.

Yeah, but it's not an accident, Joe. It's not crazy. No, you know, it's not crazy.

Look. Look how it's framed here. This is the original tweet. Two Pennsylvania teenagers, just regular fells from. From pa. From Philly. Two Philly boys had a couple of cheesesteaks and then got on the train crossing New York City Saturday morning for what could have been a normal day. Enjoying the city during abnormally warm weather. Why the fuck would you even say that? Could have been a normal day if they weren't going there to commit terrorism.

Do you know what it reads like? It reads like when I used to teach 13 year olds creative writing. That's how they'd all start off. You know, it was like, normal day.

And I mean, is the. I'd like to know who wrote that. Who's the person who wrote that? And I want to know, were you directed to write it that way?

Who approved it? Yeah, who edited it?

Are you trying to Downplay the possibility of. First of all, now in New York, because you have a guy who's an avowed whatever he is, Democratic, socialist, some say Communist, but also Muslim. And then you have these Islamists who are doing a terrorist attack. So, like, are you trying to soften that?

Yeah, but they are trying to soften it. So what happened, just so people know, is there was a protest outside Mamdani's mansion.

Right?

Right. And then these two people turned up and threw bombs at the protesters. And the way it was reported, you if you just read that and no other stuff, you would have come away from, with the conclusion that it was the protesters who were the targets of the bombs, they were the ones that threw the bombs. No one officially said that's what happened. But the way they did the story and the headline, you would have got that impression. And you're just going, well, you were just on a team. You see this as a team game, right? And you want to present your team in the correct light.

The new Post. A post regarding two individuals arrested for throwing handmade bombs outside of New York City. Mayor Zohan Mandani's helm failed to reflect the gravity of the incident, thereby breaching the editorial standards we require for all our reporting. It has therefore been deleted.

But see how skillful this is, Joe? This is gaslighting again. They're saying their mistake was to look at the first.

Look at this guy. Donut operator. Now, you retards got called out for trying to downplay actual terrorism, and now you're backpedaling. Yep.

Who's that second guy? He's really smart.

Didn't fail to reflect the gravity of the situation. This guy named Constantine. I think he's on that trigonometry show. Reflect the gravity of the situation. It failed to accurately communicate who was responsible, who the intended victims were, and where the blame for the attempted terrorist attack lay. In other words, you didn't accidentally downplay the seriousness. Seriousness of it. You deliberately misrepresented what happened to conceal the truth from the public. Well, that's how AI would say it.

I still write my own shit, John.

I know you do, but I like the donut operator guy.

I know he's more your cup of tea, but that is. That is what happened, though, right?

That is what happened. But that's what's really scary about this world. We're living in that right now because we're so ideologically captured both right and left. Everyone in this country looks at this administration as an existential threat to democracy itself and our way of life and, you know, fill in the blank. Whatever marginalized groups are all going to be round up and put in internment camps. This is. This is the narrative that the most radical of the left have about the sky is falling because Trump's in office.

But it's also as well, what people on the left don't want to acknowledge is the dangers of Islamism. When they see people do these kind of horrific terror attacks. When they see, for instance, what happened in the London Bridge terror attacks in 2019, or what happened in Manchester in the Ariana Grande concert, where Islamic terrorists bombed a Ariana Grande concert. And the majority of the audience were little girls with young girls. And they say, oh, that this happened because, you know, they were marginalized and they felt angry. And this is what people do when you push them to one side and they don't have a means in order to how to express themselves. You're going, no. What this is, is an ideology. It's an ideology which believes that our civilization, our way of life, is evil. But also they want to establish their form of radical Islam across the globe. They want to create a global Islamic caliphate, and they will do whatever it takes in order to achieve that goal. But people in the west, they can't understand that because it's so alien for how we see, how we see things. We believe human life is precious.

We believe the most important thing is human life. They don't. They believe the cause is more important than your life. And we can't understand that because we're raised in a world that is fundamentally Christian. Even though we might not be, we still have Christian values. We had a guest on the show, a wonderful historian called Tom Holland, and he explained this to us, that even if you're not Christian, even if you think you were raised by atheist parents, you were still raised with Christian values. That's the soup in which we live. That's what the water in which we swim. So this way of life that these people have this ideology is so alien to us that we can't understand it.

It.

But also we don't want to understand it. Because if you start to actually investigate what these people believe, what their ideology is, you realize that we are not all the same and these people believe something very, very different. And then we're going to have a very uncomfortable conversation of how do you tackle this? Because can you have Western liberal democratic values and Islamism and people who are Islamists in the same society? And the answer is, you can't.

And I think it's really important Your point? The difference between Islamists and Muslims?

Yes.

The Muslims are these Gulf State people. Muslims are these people in Dubai and Saudi Arabia. Islamists are the ones that want the caliphate. But then you have the crazy Christians. And that thing that I sent you, the Yahoo thing that we talked about yesterday with Shellenberger. The Yahoo thing is nuts. So these military leaders. So this comes from one of the non commissioned officers who went to a briefing. He goes to a briefing and they inform him that you shouldn't be scared because this is all because President Trump is anointed by Jesus and this is to bring about Armageddon so that Jesus returns to earth. This isn't a fucking military briefing. One such note included an anecdote from a non commissioned officer who reported that their commander had urged us to tell our troops this war was all a part of God's divine plan. And he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelations referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ. This is fucking crazy. He said this morning, our commander. So this is, this is an officer who's talking about this. This morning our commander opened up the combat readiness status briefing by urging us to not be afraid as to what was happening with our combat operations in Iran.

He said President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth. He said he had a big grin on his face when he said all this, which made his message seem even more crazy.

Well, that's reassuring.

This is the scary arm of the right. This is the scariest arm of the right. The people that think that this is one of the main reasons, the Mic Hakabee people, I think this is the main reason to protect Israel. It's a part of God's plan. You know, Israel is where Jesus is going to return. He's going to return to Jerusalem. Yikes.

Yeah, I've never really understood that. Like I think you can argue for, you can be pro Israel for pragmatic reasons. This religious stuff is a little bit weird to me.

But the problem is you've got fanatics like the Islamists, but you've also got these Christian, hard right Christian nationalists that really believe that this is a part of biblical prophecy and that they, this is Book of Revelations, it's about to go down and they, they want it to go down. This is terrifying.

This is really interesting for us because in our, in, in the uk, Christianity has been dig fanged to the point where there's a trans flag on Practically every church. So this idea of having these hardcore right wing fundamentalist Christians, we just don't experience that.

We don't have that. Really?

Yeah. It's like, can't everybody live in the middle? Why do you have to go all the way over to we gotta start Armageddon. Jesus is gonna come back on a white horse. You ever read the Book of Revelations? Yeah, I got really into it. The Book of Revelations is kooky. You know, they really believe that Jesus is gonna return on a horse.

Why a horse?

A white horse.

It's a bit racist.

A little bit. I mean, I don't get. I don't.

Can we have a diverse horse?

You want me to read you the passage? Because I saved it. Because it's kind of kooky. Because it's one of those things where you just go, well, who fucking believes this is really what you think is going to go down? Because someone wrote it down on paper 2,000 years ago. In ancient Hebrew, it says, heaven opens and Christ appears on a white horse to judge and wage war, called faithful and true, with eyes like fire, many crowns and the name King of king and Lord of lords. Just imagine it's 2026 and you're like, that's the blueprint, boys. But this is just as scary and especially for people that are Muslims, right?

Yeah.

Or anybody who lives in the Middle east, like, they. This is more important than human life. This is more important than international law. This is like in the eyes of the crazy on the right, this is the problem. So it's like, it's not. It's not like one side. It's like all good over here. We have to fight against the Islamists. Now we've got some kooks over here too. If that guy's for real and that guy's in a position of power and he's really having combat readiness meetings where he's telling people that we have to bomb and start Armageddon so Jesus can come back on a white horse. Fucking. Yo. Like, that's kooky.

The thing that is probably reassuring somewhat is I don't. President Trump doesn't strike me as one of those people.

He's not.

He's not right. Whereas the leader of the Iran is right.

But people in the military, I think are as well.

Yeah.

And people in high positions in the military, I think maybe as well. If this guy can give that kind of a meeting and that kind of a speech at a meeting, that's a little terrifying. And if I was over there, I'd Be freaking the fuck out. If I'd be like, this is your plan. I'm cannon fodder so that Jesus can come back. My body's gonna be a part of the fucking signal fire.

Let's be honest, though. It wouldn't be that much of a plot twist for 2026, would it? Right?

It would be, you know, episode 10, Game of Thrones season six.

Yes.

I mean, it is getting. What. And that's when the aliens come. Maybe that's what they're doing. You know, the. The whole thing is. It's. There's not a sane person on either side. The whole thing is nuts. And it's like. It doesn't. It. It doesn't make sense to anybody. And that's what scares the. Out of me.

Yeah, it's. The thing that scares me is what Constantine is addressed is I don't get worried unless I can't see a way out or the way that this is resolved. And like you said, the coin is in the air. And I'm slightly of more pessimistic nature. He's more of an optimist. But as I. I look at it, and I think to myself, this could go so wrong.

Yeah.

So badly wrong that it could make a rock look like an absolute picnic in comparison.

Yeah. Well, especially if terrorist attacks start popping off over in America, like, major ones, you know, and that. That could be bad for everything. That could be bad for freedom of speech. That could be bad for rights. That could be bad for. You know, incorporation of digital id. That would be a good way to push that through. There's a lot of stuff that would go through that would radically change, just like the Patriot act did.

Right.

Patriot act radically changed the freedoms that we have in America. And the overreach of government is allowed to.

They're so right. But we. We only just started being allowed to take water back on the planes. Right.

Right.

Maybe this is what it's all about. So you can't take water on a plane.

Decided to let people keep their sneakers on. Wasn't that going on for a while?

Yeah. You can't. Can't have that.

We have one shoe bomber. That. Richard. That one guy. One guy.

And there was once. Do you remember, you weren't allowed to bring scissors on, like, the small scissors. I can't remember the comedian who said this, but he went, you know what? If you take over an entire plane armed with nothing but water and some small scissors, you deserve the plane.

Well, here's the thing. Like, you can bring skateboards, but you can't bring a pool cue. So it doesn't make any sense. Like, there's like, I fuck you up with a skateboard, fuck a lot of people up with a skateboard. You know, like, think about we kind of damage you could do with that big, heavy ass thing, you know?

Yeah. It's just. And the worry is, when it comes to all of this is you look at these guys and you go, do you have a vision for what is actually going to happen?

But I do think they do, though. I do think they have a vision. What I want to find out is what that vision is.

I hope you're right, but I don't think you are.

You don't think I am?

I think it's very possible that they thought this would be over much quicker. They thought taking out the. Look, look, just look at the success that they had in the initial bombing of Iran. Right. The initial bombing. They supposedly decapitated their ability to make nuclear bombs or at least stopped it for a long time. And there was a lot of concessions that the Iranians were willing to submit to that they never submitted to under Obama or anybody else. And that wasn't enough. Right. So the problem is, when you're like, we were talking about desert storms, you get away with something that works really well. You're like, we know what we're doing, and then you bite off more than you could chew.

Yeah. And especially once you've done Venezuela, you feel like you're kind of. You're on a roll. Right.

Blair did this.

Yeah, I see your point. I see your point. I do think, though, I mean, from what I read, both Kushner and Witkoff both said that the Iranians were not playing ball, actually, which is why they went in. So obviously, if you think about it, given how long it takes for US Assets to get to the region, this decision would have been made weeks ago at the very least. Right. And that's because, from what I understand, the negotiators, like, Iran isn't actually playing ball. What they're doing is they're claiming publicly that they're willing to make concessions, but when we sit down with them, that's not what's happening. Because all they're doing is stalling for time.

That makes more sense. And so if you were worried that someone was in the middle of actually getting their uranium up to a point where you enrich it to nuclear bomb levels.

Right. Yeah, but I think a lot of people misunderstand that in the sense that, like, I think it's based on my Understanding it's totally false to claim that they were, like, about to develop a nuclear. They were not.

Well, you've seen the compilation of Netanyahu saying Iran is two weeks away from developing a nuclear bomb. All the way back to the 80s.

Yeah.

Have you seen that compilation?

I haven't, no.

It's wonderful. Right? See if you can find it, Jamie, because it's so kooky. I mean, he's been talking about this for fucking ever. They're that close. They're two weeks away. The two weeks away. The two weeks away. And, you know, maybe they are, you know, and. Yeah, maybe stuxnet put a dent in that. Right. They use that virus program to kill all the computer programs that were running their nuclear program over there.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I don't know that they were ever, like, two weeks from having a payload that was ready to be delivered to wherever, but they were enriching uranium to levels that you only enrich if you want nuclear weapons.

Right.

And so I guess the question for Trump is, like, do I allow this to continue? And do I have to wait until they've got the fucking bomb on a launcher waiting to go?

There it is.

Yeah.

Let's hear it. You've probably heard this line before. Iran has never given up its quest

for nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them.

That's because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been saying this for more than 30 years. Years claiming Iran is close to having nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons, atomic bombs. In 1992, as a member of Parliament, Netanyahu addresses the Knesset. He says, within three to five years, we can assume that Iran will become autonomous in its ability to develop and produce a nuclear bomb. Three years later, in his book Fighting Terrorism, he repeats seats the same time frame, three to five years.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Fast forward to 2002. Netanyahu testifies before a U.S. congressional committee actively calling for the invasion of Iraq. Are there any other nations that you would recommend that the United States launch preemptive attacks upon? At this point, the two nations that are vying competing with each other, who will be the first to achieve nuclear weapons weapons is Iraq and Iran. The invasion happens months later, are found in Iraq. This is a fragment of a 2009 U.S. state Department cable released by WikiLeaks. Netanyahu tells members of Congress that Iran is one or two years away from being capable of developing nuclear weapons. It's 2012, and Netanyahu is holding up his infamous cartoon bomb at the UN General Assembly. By next spring, at most by next summer, at current enrichment rates, they will have finished the medium enrichment and move on to the final stage. From there, it's only a few months, possibly a few weeks, before they get enough enriched uranium for the first bomb. And now, 33 years after Netanyahu's first so called imminent warning, Israel attacks Iran. If not stopped, Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in a very short time. It could be a year, it could be within a few months, less than a year.

That's despite the US Director of National Intelligence saying Iran isn't building a nuclear weapon. Months earlier, Iran lied. But for Netanyahu, the slogan has been the same for decades. Like I always said, big time. Al Jazeera, we get it. Yeah. So, but here's the thing. Maybe he's kind of right, but they haven't ever done it right. Yeah, well, they certainly are enriching uranium to a point where it's more than you need for power.

Right.

So why are they doing that? Right, right. And so I guess for Trump the calculation is like, I'm in my last term, I might as well roll the dice, go and deal with it now. Could end very badly. As we've discussed, there is a way that it ends well. We will see what happens. I just honestly don't think anyone knows

how it's going to happen.

I don't think anyone knows. But how can you.

So many moving parts. So if I ask you who you know. Dana White just announced the UFC card for the White House. Right. Who's gonna win? Justin Gaethje oiletapore. You are not gonna say this is what's gonna happen. You don't know because nobody knows.

Yeah.

Right.

And this is like 100 times more complicated, right?

Yeah, yeah. At least, at least. Probably several thousand times more.

So it's a gamble and you gotta, I mean you've gotta think if this goes badly, this is legacy defining for all involved. For all involved.

Yeah.

This will, this will. Whatever you've done up to that point, it's like Blair and Bush. Tony Blair, people forget in our country, Tony Blair was immensely popular. And then Iraq happened and the only, if you mentioned Tony Blair now the only thing anyone remembers is Iraq.

So for context, Tony Blair was one of the people. Tony Blair is a hero in Kosovo because he effectively stopped large part of the reason the war in Kosovo ended was Tony Blair. I think there was something, I saw a story that kids, when people were naming their kids Tony Blair, Right.

They regret it now.

He was one of the central people in the Northern Ireland peace deal, bringing Peace to Northern Ireland. For people of our age who grew up in the uk, we never thought we'd see peace in Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland was a glorified civil war and it had been for however long, right the way from the 60s, the 70s, the 80s. And he was one of those people instrumental in bringing peace to Northern Ireland. It was a miracle. It was an, it was a total miracle that that happened. The Good Friday Agreement. And it was other people as well, like Mo Molen, etc. So you look at Blair, he was on a roll. He, he must have thought to himself, everything I do turns to gold here. I have achieved peace in Kosovo, peace in Northern Ireland. Why can't I invade Iraq and Afghanistan and install democracies and bring peace to the Middle East? I've done it to Northern Ireland. No one ever thought that could happen.

So this will, whichever way it goes, I think it will be defining for the people involved. If it goes well, this is like the biggest, you know, Hail Mary touchdown in history. In some ways goes badly. That will define this certainly from an outside perspective, that's what I see. It's going to define the presidency. I mean, I don't know how you can argue with that, really.

No, no, I don't know how you can argue with it either. But that's what's so interesting about people that absolutely know how it's going to play out. You don't. And then there's also the New York Times. I sent it to you. Did they change that, Jamie, or did they take it down? I just sent it to you. So what does it say? So does New York Times still have it up?

That's from a day ago. It says.

Wow.

Yeah.

Crowd gathered on Monday. They didn't say which Monday. It was a Monday. It just, it was just six years ago. Yeah. And then again, this is, this is the problem where everything is polarized and politicized.

Well, I think your point about people wanting to believe something is so true. Whenever anything like this happens, you instantly get these camps. Right. You've got the anti war camp, you've got the pro war camp, you've got the this camp, you've got the anti Israel camp, you've got the pro Israel camp. And everyone like information is no longer about information. Right. It's just fodder for your information war that you're fighting.

Exactly.

And then on top of that, and look, this is a kind of I'm cutting my own balls off here because I make good money from posting stuff on X. Right. But the monetization of content has made things different. And we can all see it in our feed. Right?

Yeah.

You've seen this. Yeah. I mean, you must see it.

Yeah.

So now you have people who are basically like, I go on Twitter on X to express my opinion and to engage in discussion with people, have a different opinion and that's what I do. Right. But there are now lots and lots of people who go to work, they go to X to work and that's what they're doing now. The incentive structure of that is not conducive to a healthy debate at all. What you've got now is people going, okay, a thing has happened. What is my Venezuela got invited. It was Israel's fault. Okay, here's some content about that. And it's no longer authentic communication, unfortunately.

And that's just actual people doing it.

Right?

Yeah.

And then you've got AI on top of that.

Yeah.

And then you've got foreign bot farms and foreign governments trying to influence this shit.

There's this one currently popular page that I follow that's clearly AI. You could just read it and tell that it's AI. And it gets immense amounts of engagement. Heavy, heavily right wing, like really well written, you know, funny, you know, and you could. But funny. But. Yeah, but not human. Not, not funny. Real funny. But funny technically funny.

Yeah.

You know, I'm saying like tech insults that are technically funny.

Right.

But for whatever reason you don't digest it. It's like Olestra. Remember that stuff? Get fabulous, went right through you, like diarrhea. Yeah. Right. That's what it's like.

It's got no soul. There's no soul to it.

That's just one. I mean, how many, how many of them exist? And how many state actors are running bot farms? Yeah. So it's. We don't know what the fuck is going on at any given time.

No, but it's the incentives that have become perverted because it's no longer like Constance said about expressing opinion or wanting to get involved in dialog or debate. What you've got now is people, like you said, earning their livings. So if, you know, if you need to pay your mortgage at the end of the month or you need to pay a team or you have a company, you're not going to put out a nuanced take. Why would you? It's going to get minimal engagement. You are going to put out something that is going to trigger, that is going to be incendiary, that is going to drive engagement, that is going to get people upset or Angry and agree or agree with you and therefore more likely to share. So that's the content you're going to put out because that's the content that's going to make you the most dope.

100. Yeah. And then you have people that are pushing for this idea that no one should be able to post online unless you're using your real name and you show some sort of an id, which is also kind of crazy.

Yeah, there's downsides to that for sure. But I also do understand why they're saying it.

I understand it too. I just think it's a slippery slope that stops all whistleblowers.

And imagine you are a regime critic in Iran.

Yeah.

And you're trying to post news from Iran under. You know, there's definitely. But, you know, I think Jordan Peterson was actually one of the first people that suggested this thing and I understand why. Because the way it's like the windscreen, the windshield effect in your car, the way you and I behave face to face is not the way people will behave when they're sitting in their truck and someone cut them up in traffic. And social media is the. We cut each other up in traffic and then sit there, go, fuck you, buddy. From like behind our screen. That's what it is.

Yeah.

Right. So I understand it, but Times a million. Times a million. Right. And then you've got foreign bots and all this. And then taking away people's right to anonymity online like me, that, you know, the second, third, fourth order consequences of that.

Yeah.

I'm pretty fucking crazy as well.

I found another picture of that area from what it says it was yesterday, so I don't know that it was not real.

So this is from which website?

I typed it into perplexity and I'm clicking around on pictures to find out where they're coming from, one by one.

So is it possible that this is. That the New York Times put the wrong footage, but it was a similar kind of protest in the same spot?

Yeah, that's fine.

This is a similar.

That makes more sense.

This is an AP source on this photo.

Okay. So all the New York Times did is get the wrong photo of a bunch of people gathering.

I'll note this one, which is at night. So it is definitely different photo. This is from January.

This one is.

Yeah, but this is not the same photo that we looked at before.

Right.

So the other one, though, this one

is from a day ago.

Okay.

That's very similar.

Well, that's very different right there.

That's small but it's the same angle, right. Of this little pool thing or whatever

is in the picture on it. So what they did was just use the wrong footage, but a similar sort of a protest. So it was just an unfortunate error. Not. Not like reframing the narrative with propaganda

that I'm not sure, because even these comments is like AI and it's fake photo. But that's why I was trying to find other sources of it. Not.

What does Grok have to say that.

I mean, I used our perplexity.

Right. But I mean, on the post, usually if someone posts something on, they say, grok, is this true? Is this footage? Oh, that's it. Okay. It's on Instagram.

I could find it on.

And so perplexity says that there is a legitimate size protest that's like.

Yeah, I just asked if crowds gathered there yesterday.

Multiple reports indicate that thousands of people gathered in Central Square in Tehran yesterday show support and pledge allegiance to new Supreme Leader. How do you say his name?

Khomeini Mojtaba.

Khamenei Mojtaba.

He's the son of the guy they killed.

How many people have they killed so far? Like the leaders?

I don't know, but it's probably up to the low hundreds, I would imagine,

because they had one guy last week that was the new guy, and they whacked him almost immediately.

I didn't tweet this, but when this guy was appointed, I wanted to say like, congratulations to him and condolences to his family. I was like, this is a bit full on.

Yeah. The problem is, you're right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I don't think he's gonna last very long. Cause he seems pretty hard line as well.

Yeah, well, I mean, they killed his dad.

Yeah. That doesn't tend to de. Radicalize you very much.

You know, that's gonna piss you off.

Yeah. So Jamie put in. Did the New York Times use an old photo for this event? Evidence so far suggests the New York Times used a recent photo for this week's gathering, not an old archive image, though many commenters have accused the opposite. Interesting. Instagram's own post of the square crowd. Multiple Iranian users claim the image is fake or AI or from 2020, and several assert that it's not representative of real public sentiment. However, another Facebook thread referencing the same image states that it was taken by New York Times photographer Arash Kamushi. Kamushi on Monday, March 9, 2026, which matches the article date and captions used by other outlets showing the same scene See, this is the fog of confusion that exists on social media.

Yep.

Isn't it worrying that we can no longer tell what's real? We're already at that point.

Yeah.

And when you think of where we were last year, where you could really tell pretty much what was AI and what wasn't, right now we're in the murky waters of is this, isn't it? It's going to come to a point pretty soon where everything is going to look like real life.

Well, as soon as I can't detect it, that's when we're fucked. Right. And then so I talked to Mark Andreessen about this and his recommendation was that everything should be on the blockchain. So you're going to be able to tell whether or not footage has been altered. What the, the, you know, what the chain of custody of this image has been, where it started, where, you know,

I mean, it's terrifying, isn't it?

Because it is. Yeah.

Because you're going to think, is that going to be the end of journalism, really?

Right.

Is that going to be almost. I think we're talking about this and this is really, really important. But what's coming with a high is even more important. And even the people you talk to in the field have no idea what's going to be the second, third, fourth order consequence.

Right, I know. I mean, there's so much to be excited about with AI. I think it blinds a lot of people to the like, not exciting parts of it.

Well, ultimately, if you just looked at where. What is it ultimately going to lead to? It's going to lead to something that's way smarter than us and why would it listen to us anymore?

Well, you've seen, I'm sure you've seen the stuff about how we will blackmail. Right. So that by definition, that means it has a survival instinct.

Yeah.

And if it has a survival instinct, by definition it means there is a priority that it has which is above humans.

Yeah.

By definition, that's what a survival instinct means. It means you care more about yourself than you do about anyone else. Right. So if AI has a survival instinct, we are not going to be its number one priority.

Not only that, it doesn't seem to differentiate between using nuclear weapons or other weapons. And when they've done these war game simulations with AI, they prefer to use nuclear weapons.

Well, they're more effective. Right.

This is the thing. Like, they're not scared of this idea. Like, oh my God, you're just going to dust a city. They're like, oh, that's the way to do it.

It's the numbers on a chart, right?

Yeah.

Well, you want to get your. Your goal accomplished. How does AI accomplish its goal? With whatever the best tool available is. Oh, that's this bottom right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's efficient.

Yeah.

You know, and then a mutual friend of ours, Melissa Chen, was telling me that there's a Chinese. One of the Chinese robotics companies is called Skynet.

Oh, God.

And they had. They released a robot called the T900. And I'm like, who says China, you know, the CCP don't have a sense of humor.

That's. That's why.

Is that actually true?

Yeah.

Well, you've seen the robots that they have now that will work in your home and like fold your sheets and make your bed and stuff and do it remarkably human. Like, there's a video that was released yesterday. Again, I don't know if it's real, but it looks real. It looks like an actual robot that's making your bed. And they've gotten the dexterity to the point where you could imagine things like this happening. I think this is one of the reasons why Elon is shifting his focus away from some Tesla models so that they can reset up one of their factories to make these optimus robots that you're going to have them as home companions and they're going to be able to do kitchen work for you and maybe even cook.

My acupuncturist, she's Chinese, she went back to China and she was saying she stayed at the hotel and like most of the service is there is provided by robots. So like she went to a room, ordered some food, three minutes, knock, knock. And fucking robot delivering the food.

An actual humanoid looking robot?

No, I don't think so.

Because there's a restaurant out here that you go to and when you order drinks, it comes by on a little robot trolley.

Yeah, yeah, we have that.

You have to say, accept, take your tea. Yeah, it's kind of cool. It's fun. Yeah, Here it is.

It's not called Skynet, I don't believe, but.

Oh, sorry, then that was wrong company,

I think, but I can't tell what this is.

T800.

Look what it looks like in a weird movie here. So be for a movie. And we're misunderstanding.

That looks fake.

Yeah, that looks fake, right?

Yeah, the robot itself looks fake.

That's why it's like hearing the movement.

Doesn't look.

This doesn't seem.

Well, it's just. It's in that. First of all, I Don't like how it's lit. I don't like how this room is lit.

I feel like you for a film.

Yeah, yeah.

That's a bullshit ass franchise.

I think that's a tremendous statement.

Joe's like, this is my area of expertise. No way.

There's a lot of videos of it that say it's real, but.

Yeah, I like how the bag went flying. Like it's on a rail. You know, it's not even stationary because you don't. You don't want to really see how

hard it can get with this Forbes article.

But it says, unlock agility.

40 grand.

Wow. But I don't right now.

No, that's. I don't know. This might be.

You look at it. It's got the Iron man thing in the center of its chest. That's pretty dope.

You all know, I would just say engine. AI would. Makes it just right away sound like it's a AI Content company, not company.

Well, that video looked very AI. Like it didn't. There's something about it. You know, your brain recognizes miniature cars. You ever see, like, a miniature car? Like, you know. You know how they have those, like, really well done miniature cars that people like to collect?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's like a tiny Porsche.

Yeah.

But your brain knows, like, your brain looks at it and goes, there's something wrong here. This is not real. Yeah, that's how I felt looking at that robot. Like, my brain was like, that's not a real thing. Throwing kicks.

Yeah. But it's gonna come to a point where it's like, is that real?

Oh, yeah. I mean, it's probably chat. GPT5 can already probably do it better than that. You know, we don't know what the newest iterations of these things are, and they're improving radically all the time. There's no.

I just don't believe at the beginning of this video says there's. Which I don't know. I don't know why we have to believe that, bro.

This looks fake to me.

I know.

This looks fake to me. That does not look real.

There's articles all over saying it's real, but it doesn't look real.

Yeah, but I mean, why wouldn't you have it more well lit? Like, if I was gonna do something like this, I would have spotlights on it and people next to it so I could examine their shadows. And it should. This is weird. Yeah.

This is like a.

Looks fake.

Why would you have, like, what's the

light coming through the corner of the window? Like that.

Also, why would you make a robot that does, like, master.

Just shoot people, bro. Right, yeah. Why would you throw that bullshit kick, too? That's a 360 roundhouse kick that almost never lands. That's really hard to pull off.

Yeah, but you're saying that as a human, maybe as an AI, you land every time.

But surely if you're a robot, you just grab their neck with your metal claw and crush it.

I mean, you'll just run after them and headbutt them and knock them unconscious. Well, your head's made out of metal.

Right.

The whole thing is crazy. Like, why would you be throwing wheel kicks like the. You know, even if you, like, went over UFC fights and say, like, what's the most effective techni. Makes it work most of the time, why would you program in 360 roundhouse kicks? That never comes up.

Yeah. I mean, it does look cool though.

Yeah. But I could think of one fight. Yair Rodriguez pulled it off on BJ Penn, but there was BJ Penn towards the latter end of his career. Yair Rodriguez in his peak. And Yair is exceptionally talented. He's kind of a freak with his kicks, but it's almost like he was showing off. He already had BJ really hurt, and he just threw a 360 roundhouse kick and hit him in the face. It was crazy. But that this thing is doing that just to show you it does martial arts. Why would you need martial arts? Like, you should have like a thousand bullets on you. Just. Just like, gun everybody down with your fingertips.

RoboCop.

Yeah. Why wouldn't you turn your, like, you know, like. Like Iron man does shoot fire out of your palms.

The future is bright, Joe.

Well, we're also kind of being bullshitted, I think, right? I mean, I'd like. Is there a way to analyze that video?

This is. I'm going. This rabbit hole is strange. This is a website that they've made. When you click on Buy now, it takes you somewhere else. And I think that that's the first

signal and it steals your IP address.

Yeah, that's where I'm like, I'm not.

It's all your credit card information, but

it's a fully made website. They have a team, they got a CEO, they've got other things.

It just.

It doesn't seem. This all looks fake to me. Like it's for a movie. Like, this is like.

Right, Maybe it is. Maybe this is like a setup for a movie and we're being fucked with.

Right?

Well, we're giving Them a lot of free.

For sure.

For sure.

Even googling it.

There's of lots. Lots of articles about it. People are talking about it like it's real and discussing it like it's real. No one that I've even seen is like this is obviously fake. This is obviously AI I like how

it's got the Cylon eyes.

Yeah.

By your command.

Yeah.

We've got other products here for sale which those fit in line with other robots.

Whoa. Click on that.

I don't know what the this is bro.

That's the guy from Monsters Inc. Yeah. The one big eyeball.

It's a really well made website. It looks nice.

Interesting.

They did some good fun work work. But it just seems like a fun project someone made.

Yeah.

Stay tuned for this one. You can't buy this yet.

Yeah. It could be two years.

What about the dog?

What about the guy who's just got legs? That one's weird. What's that? It's like I don't want him touching me. Just run around my house and do some stuff.

Yeah.

The expandable bipedal robot that supports user cusp. Blah blah blah watches. With my purchase now you can already see the website at the bottom. That doesn't look. It's 3 CN. So it's a China website.

Not this blank.

Probably getting floating. Okay, there we go in Chinese.

See it takes somewhere else. Now it's like what is that?

Ha.

It's definitely not a buy.

Now maybe that red thing is.

No, this is like this is I

think register your interest.

Maybe a back end website.

Interesting.

I just didn't click the right link here because it opened up a different.

I don't think this is real but

this is like whatever this is is very. They did it well.

Interesting.

That is even if it's a college kid making a project.

Good job.

Well, I take full responsibility for that one. I know it's fine. I take responsibility. Looks that was me

Forbes article. That's kind of another.

What? Yeah.

Not anybody but like you can make. We can make Forbes articles that say all sorts of stuff. It's not coming from Forbes editorial team per se.

But you. But. But you could publish on Forbes. Let me.

I don't.

I don't want to speak out of turn specifically but like I've seen there's so many like reviews for video games that pop up like every single day that it's like it's. You can be a contributor I believe is what it would be.

Not like oh, and maybe they have a bad editorial team and you could sneak this through and just pretend that there really is. That would be a great pro prank to pull.

Yeah, that's great.

Hoax.

Did you follow the Moat Book thing? No, I mean this. Did you follow Moat book?

Yeah, I just actually saw that. I think META just bought it today.

META just bought it today.

I thought it was fake.

Did you. Was that fake as well?

No, it's.

I don't know why they would have.

How weird is it? We have to worry about everything.

Francis just here spreading fake news.

I was just very cynical about it because it. The idea of it sounds right, but like that actual bots are making a social network to do stuff and talk about us and whatever. Kind of sounds too far into the sci fi.

So this is the social network for AI agents. I have heard about this.

But they complain about humans. Is that right? Yeah, these fuckers are.

Yeah, yeah. And apparently they created their own language. They talked amongst themselves so that we wouldn't be able to access and see what they were talking about.

Yeah, that's really fun. Did you see when they got all the AI agents to talk to each other and started using Sanskrit?

No.

Yeah, they got these different large language models to communicate with each other and they eventually broke out into Sanskrit.

Wow.

Maybe these guys in Iran are right. Like, maybe this is the apocalypse. Maybe this is how it comes about. Maybe we're. We're looking at each other and we're gonna bring about these motherfuckers and that's what's really gonna be the end of civilization.

Yeah. And places like Iran is the only place you're gonna be able to hide as a human because it's the one place that hasn't adopted all this shit.

Right? Yeah. Maybe Afghanistan is the spot to go.

Yeah.

Live like a goat herder.

Yeah, we're gonna be like bin Laden just living in a cave.

I mean, you're being very negative, boys. There's another option.

There's another option.

There's another option. Was the other option we all become Amish.

Oh, okay. But then we're run by AI, We're Amish and we live in our little communities, but we have no say on how the world works. So this is the real fear is that we're no longer the apex intelligence of the planet. And that seems to already be the case.

Yeah.

This is for the Forbes thing I was talking about. The article we had, I don't think was specifically this, but I've seen many articles like this where people can submit

one off original articles to the opinion section, particularly for topics Related to business tech or Paul Tech. There you go. Or policy by emailing pitches to ideasorbes.com. so, yeah, like, so if you're a person on the other end just looking for clicks, like, that would be a good one. You see it like, oh, this is really well written article. Let's go to the website. Website looks legit. Oh, they're throwing wheel kicks. I'm in.

Yeah, I mean, but again, the point being made again is like, it's such a. It's such a terrifying world where you don't know if what you're seeing is true, you don't know if what you're reading is accurate. Right to the point where you can't help if that's the case. That the world you live in, continually feeding things that may or may not be true or altered or doctored, wouldn't that just put you in a state of paranoia after a while?

100%. Now imagine if you are in the Middle east and you bust out your cell phone because a fiery cloud emerges and Jesus is on a white horse and you film it and you post it online. Who's going to believe it? Right? This is the real problem with Jesus returning. If he returned now, no one would buy it. Like, we're getting into this. Like, like imagine Jesus is a real person or a real God who's the son of God is going to come back. He really is. It's real. It's all real. It's happening at the same time where you have no idea what's real. And it all converges instantaneously with the rise of sentient artificial general superintelligence that has complete autonomy. It's running all the resources, everything, anything that's attached to a computer, which is basically everything. All of our power, all of our, you know, everything. Fill in the blank. Everything's run by computers. And now AI has control of everything and no longer wants to listen to human beings. And Jesus returns. Yeah, I mean, that might be what everybody's talking about when they're talking about Armageddon, when they're talking about the end of civilization.

It might be this new thing that we're creating.

Well, if that happens, I'll be rooting for Jesus to return. Please, Jesus, I'm not sure I believe in you, but please come back.

Yeah, I'm not sure either, but this is. I mean, maybe a historical Jesus existed at one point in time. And maybe what they're talking about is like their version of the cycles of humanity that other religions have talked about is that especially when you deal with technology and power and civilization, that things get to a point where they always go sideways and then there's dark times and then they. Then society. Like the Yugas.

Like, you know, what are the Yugas?

The Yugas are the cycles of civilization that let's. I don't want to fuck this up. So let's define the. We're in the middle of Kali Yuga, which is the age of confusion.

Feels like it, yeah.

I mean, it's odd how accurate these cycles are when you look at historical events and like, what things were like, you know, X amount of thousands of years ago.

It's a Hindu cosmology.

Yes. Vast cosmic ages in Hindu cosmology describe recurring cycles in the moral and spiritual state of the world.

World.

So the four yugas are Satya Yuga, the first and most righteous age, often called the golden age, marked by truth, virtue, and maximum Dharma, which is moral order. Treta Yuga, the second age, Dharma declines somewhat, virtue still predominates, but imbalance begins. How do you say that word? Dwarfara Yoga, the third age, with further decline in righteousness and an increase in conflict, suffering and confusion. And then Kali Yuga, the fourth and darkest age, characterized by moral decay, ignorance, and materialism, with Dharma at its weakness. Okay, that's us. Yeah. Hindu cosmology treats these Yugas as repeating cycles of creation, growth, decline, and destruction, rather than one time historical periods. Yeah, very interesting. Right.

You know, it's even more noticeable for us coming to America, I think, because, you know, we love America. But one of the things that really stands out is how materialistic people are and how much money is like the number one thing for everything now. Yeah, I find that really. It. It stands out to me, the fact that so. And I find it weird in our game, especially like in media and podcasting, whatever. Like, because the way we think about what we do is we're trying to produce content that's actually of value to people, but we also meet a lot of people for whom it's like a business. It's like. It's like selling widgets. It's the same.

Yeah.

You know, how do you get. How do you maximize your returns on your investment? You know, and that to me is. It's. It shows you that something is slightly off.

Yeah, it is, it's. And you also get. A lot of. You get people that are making content just based only on the perceived popularity of that content, not whether or not they are really interested in having these conversations. And you feel it when you're talking to These people, or when you're listening to these people talk to each other, rather. Yeah, the clickbait stuff. A lot of celebrity stuff. You know, Bert Kreischer went on Shannon Sharpe's podcast, and he said they basically have, like, a list of, like, controversial things they could talk about and, you know, and subjects they think are gonna get the most amount of traction. And those are the questions that he asked. You just ask questions off of a list.

But from a business point of view, if you take morality out of it, that's a smart thing to do.

Is it, though? Is it, though? Because, like, what. What's the most popular show is this one? And why is this one the most popular? Because I don't do that at all, but.

Agreed. But you're sort of an outlier in that there's people who make very, very, very good living interviewing those types of people, having that type of approach and creating that type of content.

I know, but I think in the end, you bite off your nose to spite your face, because I think that you lose a certain amount of authenticity. There's a certain amount of, like, a legitimate connection between you and whatever you're talking about that it doesn't get through to the people. Like, if I talk to someone, I'm only talking to them because I want to. Then I have a lot of people on that are not even remotely popular or famous, but I think they wrote an interesting book or think they're involved in interesting research, or I think they've got a weird opinion on something and I want to talk to them. Them about. Or they have had a strange life or, you know, they were an undercover cop or whatever it is, I'm just interested.

Right.

And I think that if you abandon that and only focus on, ooh, this person is famous, or this person's in the news, or this is. This is going to get a lot of views. You don't care as much about the conversation you're having, and the people know. So, like, the person listening and watching, they can feel it.

No, I agree with that. But I also think you could probably get a lot of clicks by saying, I don't know. Erica Kirk killed Charlie Kate Cook. Right.

You could do that, too. But you're also. You're. You're playing a weird game where you got to continually go deeper and deeper and deeper. Now, Erica Kirk's a man. You know what I'm saying?

That's probably next.

Has already happened. Probably. That's probably already happened. Yeah, it's probably already floated that one out there.

And you saying over time that runs. You run out of. Yeah, you run out of road.

You're playing the wrong game. Yeah, you're. You're playing. You're playing a very similar game to the game that, like, TMZ is playing or any of these other, like, things where you can get a lot of traction, you can get a lot of views, you know, but no one thinks you're being authentic. No one. Like, if you have a take on world events, and we're incredibly sorry for the loss of this person, like, you don't really care, and they know you don't really care. So they know there's no sincerity. They know you're not really connected to it. And so in this weird age that we're living in where you're not sure what's real, at the very least, you want the person who's talking to be talking about something in an honest way.

Right.

And connecting with people in an honest way, because that's what we're missing. And that might be the only thing we have left. Once this AI shit goes live, like, it's probably not even going to be podcasts. It's probably going to be public speaking. You're going to have to, like, talk to people in groups, and we're going to all have to, like, work ideas out together, because I don't think you're going to be able to know when you're communicating online what's real and what's not real.

Yeah.

We're already in the fog. We haven't hit the fucking full hailstorm of bullshit that's coming our way.

Yeah. And it. I agree with you, Joe, and I agree, if you want something that is sustainable, if you want something that is nourishing, if you want. If you want to create content that people engage with that is honest. But I think there's a lot of people out there who are just looking at it in a very cynical way, and they're optimizing it for clicks, attention, and monetary gains.

Gain. Yeah.

And if you want to create a business that can make money and that is. That doesn't require a lot of lift, we all know what you can do.

That's the Eagle song. Dirty Laundry.

Yeah.

You know, so they've always been real. It's real.

Jamie's still on this.

Do all the jumping and.

Thank you.

Yes. I had to find a real.

This is.

Okay, that looks way more real. So the videos we were watching were.

So this went viral a while ago. They've. They had to come out and make other Videos. This is a different one to say that.

My God, that's so Irobot.

I know. They had a.

That lined up military style.

There's a few different companies in China that have gone viral for posting videos that people in America think are fake. And that's why I had to go to CES and find somebody else, because they put out more content that doesn't necessarily look fake, but it doesn't look better.

Well, that doesn't look fake.

Yeah, this does not look fake because this is people on the floor at ces.

Right.

But look how much more awkward its movements are.

But they put out a video where the thing is kicking the CEO.

Yeah.

It almost looks real, but it's not. It.

It's tough. I like to see what makes of it.

Is it funky lighting again?

Not. Not that.

It's like.

It's when they're in the ring with them.

Okay, hold on a second.

Okay, so he's going to go ahead. Okay. That looks much more real. That looks much more real. Much more awkward.

Jeez.

But that didn't.

That looks fake.

I tell you what, I would not do that if I.

No, no, that looks real to me.

Stand in front of a hunk of metal, is going to kick you.

The problem is it's slow motion. Let me see it again. In. In fact, did they show it in real speed?

It's just this weird clip of it,

which is kind of strange. But let me see it again. Taking the first kick. Oh, that looks real.

The only thing I would say is it's not jumping up and doing spin kicks, but it's doing some stuff that.

Well, that would be what I would teach it. First of all, I wouldn't teach it to do the spin kicks. I'd teach it to do, like, a stepping front kick.

Like, that's the shit they were showing that people had problems with, like we just did, but, man. Yeah, the robots are doing crazy stuff.

Well, they definitely can do crazy stuff. There was that one demonstration they did in China. I think you've seen that one around,

like, in a fight position here.

Like, he's ready to go checking his legs out. Wow. But let me see some wheel kicks.

That's the.

I mean, see, that's the thing.

Why is the one in the corner looking depressed?

That's the older one.

He's been decommissioned. He's right now plotting his strategy for blackmail to get upgraded software.

Yeah.

I don't know.

So that.

I mean. Well, that's. This is. So what we're looking at was probably some AI, at least enhancements. They.

But the problem is they're not saying, they're not admitting that it is. They're saying it's not. And I go like, that's tough.

Interesting. Well, I would want to see this thing move in a similar way that you're seeing in that video. I mean, that thing shows remarkable agility where it's jumping up in the air and spinning around and this thing's not doing that.

No, it's moving very differently, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah.

There's a stiffness to its movements.

Yeah.

Looks like you at the gym.

Yeah, it does.

Yeah. There was that, the Chinese demonstration though. There was a demonstration where these people were on a stage and they were doing martial arts and the robots came out. The robots did martial arts. That looked real, right? That looked real, but it didn't.

Here's the other video we sort of saw.

Oh, this is, this is crazy. That's where they reload.

And these are real, right?

I think, yeah. This is a different video they had to put post because people didn't think these were real.

That looks real.

They look like they're unsullied.

So from Game of Thrones, what are these ones? Who makes these?

I don't know. It doesn't look good though.

That marching sound is not comforting, is it?

No.

It says, world's first mass delivery of humanoid robots.

Yeah. You're going to have cargo ships filled with these headed to America.

Wonderful.

I mean, those are gonna be the new police officers.

Uh huh. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's not good. This is, I mean, this is Terminator. This is the movie. I mean, and if you really were imagining like you were trying to warn people of an apocalypse and you told it through stories for generation after generation and then eventually people write down their versions of this story and then it goes to 2026, where this stuff is actually happening. Maybe this is what they were warning us.

Yeah. Do you remember in the 80s and the 90s and the early Noughties, there was this run of great movies talking about how the robots are going to

take over sci fi books as well. I mean, Isaac Asimov stuff was amazing.

Philip K. Dick, you know, do Range, Roy, Stream of Electric Sheep, which then became Blade Runner, all of these and then. And no one's making those movies now, are they?

No. I guess iRobot was probably the last one.

Yeah, right, yeah. Which was I, you know, I. Robot, which was the one with Tom Cruise. Minority Report, which was based on a Philip K. Dick, but nobody's making them anymore. Because everyone's like, dude, I. I know this is going to happen.

Right.

I don't need to see this.

Well, they're also talking about using AI to predict people's behavior. So they're talking about future crime.

Minority Report.

Yeah, yeah. So they've literally talked about one of the ways that AI could be implemented. You look at someone's history, you look at someone's behavior patterns, look at what they're doing now, and you predict, oh, this person has been radicalized. They're about to do X. Yeah.

And there was.

They're about to tweet something.

Yeah.

That's arrest them.

Yeah. Graham Linehan picks up his phone, there's a broken, Kicks down the door and arrests him.

He's doing all right now.

Yeah, he's. Yeah, he bought. He's in America. That's why he's doing.

I think that backfired. Yeah. I think people were outraged by that because it's so outrageous. Yeah. You meet that guy at the airport and arrest him. It was right after he did this podcast, by the way.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I. I remember that's a moment even when I was talking to comedians who were actually woke, they were like, yeah, that. This is. You can't do this.

The thing is, he didn't even do it in England. So you're arresting someone who's not a citizen of the United Kingdom for a crime. I mean, if we accept that framing that they didn't even commit in the country.

Right. Yeah. It's pretty cooky that they went with it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I know the reason is because every police officer in airports in the UK have guns, but it's a really bad look. Like there's five armed police officers arresting a comedy writer.

Yeah.

I bet you they felt bad doing it as well, because it's not them that's making up these dumb. Oh, I'm sure nobody signs up to, like, arrest comedy writers.

Right.

In airports. I don't. I don't think that's why the police do it, but the rules have just got so.

Well, you see it in, like, the humiliation that a lot of these police officers face when they have to arrest someone for a Facebook post.

Right.

Which you could see. Like, they're not happy. And when people are protesting and yelling, are you fucking serious? And they're like, just doing my job.

Yeah.

You know.

Yes. And that's a large part of the problem. We get former police officers on the show, and we got a lot of, you know, cops and former cops who watch the show, and they talk to us about the state that the British police force is in, and it's demoralization.

Yeah, yeah. The rank and file don't want any of this.

Well, same in America. A lot of. Especially major blue cities where just a few years ago they were running with that defund the police, and then things obviously went sideways and most of them sort of course corrected for the most part, except in narrative, you know, it's not like public massive support for the police officers because they keep society together. Like in Austin, the. The cops responded in a minute. One minute, that guy started gunning people down at that bar. The cops were there and killed him in a minute.

It's incredible.

Incredible. And they should be applauded for that. I mean, that's amazing. I mean that. But, you know, even that, like, in this city, there hasn't been this big public support of those officers, this big celebration of those officers, this big acknowledgement of the importance of them and how they were willing to put their life on the line and react so quickly and so effectively.

They're heroes. That's what they are.

They're heroes. And they're heroes that have been demoralized by the last six years of horseshit ever since the George Floyd protests, you know, and.

Well, it was happening before. I mean, if you go back to Michael Brown. Right, Michael Brown, what we were told in the media happened is not what happened.

Which one was Michael Brown.

Michael Brown was, hands up, don't shoot.

Right.

He didn't have his hands up and he didn't say, don't shoot.

Right.

He assaulted the police officer. Right. But the media concoct this story. And I don't think. I think this is what came back to, like, what's happening in new media where people are putting out things that are really damaging to the fabric of our conversations and how we talk about things. Like you say, I mean, there are bad apple police officers. Of course there are. But the majority of them, they are people who are signing up to risk their life on a daily basis to protect other people in their community. And these people all have fucking ptsd because all they see is the worst of humanity day in, day out.

Yep.

Every single fucking day. They get in the car and they go and eat shit for the rest of the day. And then they go home and they worry about not coming home. Right. And then someone tries to run them over with a car, like, yeah, they're gonna fucking shoot.

Yeah.

You know, and it's. It's. And the thing is that's how society falls apart when you no longer honor and celebrate the people who are putting themselves on the line.

Well, not just that. To make of the lady running over, or. She wasn't running him over. I think she was trying to turn her car away from him. But that guy had been dragged by a car just a few weeks earlier. Right?

That's what I'm saying.

Yeah.

So, but in a.

And then on top of that, you have people that are being paid to protest. Right. So it's organized. And I'm not saying that lady was, but many people are. And then you've got all these people that. That becomes the focus of their life. It becomes a cause that's worthy. You live this mundane, boring life of desperation, and then all of a sudden, something comes along that gives you hope and meaning. And like, this is my identity. My identity is I'm fighting fascism and I'm out there in the street. Right.

You know, I was on. I was on the plane to the U.S. i think it was last year. And you know the movie Bridesmaids came up.

Yes.

So really funny movies 2013. I was like, ah, I want something like, let's watch this comedy. The romantic interest in Bridesmaid, the main guy, you know, who get what his job is, he was a cop. Can you imagine a movie being made now? Now like a, like, romantic comedy where the main guy is a cop and he's a good guy. Right. You just wouldn't see it.

Right.

You just wouldn't see it because cops are oppressed now.

Yeah, man. Do you know Yuri Bezmanov talked about this? Yes, he talked about this. He talked about the fact that when you see in the culture, you know, the military, the cops, the firefighters, all of these people, they're bad, bad. And the criminal is the one that's to be understood and to be, you know, that's how you flip society.

Yeah.

And that's what we've got.

Yeah.

The besmanoff speech from 1984, which is, by the way, such an appropriate date for him to make that interview. But it's. It's so eerie how all of that has actually come to pass, because back then, nobody took him seriously at all. Right, Right. And it didn't. It wasn't until, like the 2000s that people started reviewing that. And then once it got on YouTube, then people were like, oh, this fucking guy. Nailed it.

I think it's YouTube. And also most people, what most people in my experience want to pretend that everything is fine most of the time.

Yeah.

So if you come out in 2018 as we did and say, this woke shit is getting out of hand and it's going in a bad direction and it's going to cause a lot of problems. People make you the problem.

Yeah.

They say you're wrong to talk about this. If you talk about grooming gangs, you're bad and evil and whatever. If you talk about free speech and people being arrested for tweets and all of this, people make you the bad guy. And it's only later. Like I remember, I can't even remember who said it, but like I had this. Oh, no, I remember who said it. One time I was on TV debating with this woman about this stuff and I was saying, cancel culture is bad. And she was saying it's all bullshit, blah, blah, blah. I met her a few years later and she was like, yeah, I realized cancel culture is bad. And I went, how did you realize? And she went, when my friends started getting canceled. Right. Most people want to pretend most of the time everything is fine.

Yeah.

But when they start to see the reality of things and it starts to affect them, that's when they go, maybe this best men of guy had a point.

Yeah.

I had an argument with a seemingly intelligent person who's a friend of mine when the nsa, when this whole mass buying thing was the Edward Snowden stuff was released. And he was like, you can look at my shit. I'm not doing anything wrong. What do you care? I'm like, that's such a crazy take. Yeah. Who, who, who are these perfect people that are watching over everything? You don't think any of them have either some financial or power based incentive to do certain things or silence certain voices and find out what you're doing or maybe even manipulate you in some sort of a way? Being able to have access to all of your emails, all of your phone calls. Those are just people and all of them unelected bureaucrats. You think that's okay for those people to have access to everything you've ever said? That's crazy.

And look, maybe the current government that we have in this place is, you know, would never dream of doing such a thing. And maybe they're entirely honorable and everybody's a great person and, you know, they're this unique human being where they don't have any ulterior motives. But what's to say the next government comes in won't do that and start looking in and going, hey, you know what? Know what? You're causing me problems, Joe Rogan.

Exactly.

You're saying a lot of Things that I don't actually like. Let's look through your emails. Oh, look, I'll find one from 14 years ago, which is, you know, whatever it may be, let's get rid of you for that.

This was the argument when Obama was pushing the ndaa, which the. This is the indefinite detention. So this. This concept that you didn't have to charge anybody, you didn't have to. You just have to have it. You don't have to try them within a timely period. Period. Indefinite detention. Well, we'll never use that.

Okay, but why are you pushing it then?

Right.

Well, also, who comes after you, man? Like, how. How many generations are we away from Hitler?

Right.

You know, like, who. Who's to say that this new power won't be used by very unscrupulous people that are not. I mean, the founding fathers of this country really had a good understanding of how corruption and tyranny sets in. And that's why they put all these checks and balances and put. And the more they eroded that, whether it's the Patriot act, the Patriot Act 2, or the NDAA, when you start doing stuff like that, man, you're just undermining the very fabric that this country was created with. It's like we were created into this idea that we know human nature. We know that you cannot have power. We know that the government has to be working for the people. It can't be. We are under the power of these individuals because those individuals will then act like tyran, which is what people always do when they have power.

It's one of the things that makes America really a great place, because we look at the UK now, and if Francis is right, and I've said this, I think the next election is probably gonna be Nigel Farage versus these far leftists. If those far leftists get in power, I mean, they're gonna start regulating podcasts. I guarantee you 100% that's what they're gonna do. They're gonna say, we have Ofcom for tv, we need to have it for other broadcasting. Surely you'd agree with that.

Right?

Right. Yeah.

And then before you know it, like everything we do, you know, you guys

are living in Austin.

Right?

Right. Because at that point, we would actually leave.

Yeah, you would have to. You would have to.

Because what they would say is. And they would use the word that they always use, which is, you know, they're spreading misinformation and hate.

Yeah. When the New York Times spreads information misinformation, that's wonderful.

Right.

But it's it's so, yeah, I think allowing people maximum freedom within the system you're talking about is a really, truly precious thing. It's why America in this respect is an example to the rest of the world.

I think if anything that should be done, they should be able to figure out which of these accounts are bots and eliminate those. I do not think that you should be allowed to not just run a bot farm or I don't think you should be allowed to hire people to tweet. I think that's crazy. And I most certainly don't think you should be able to use AI. I mean, that seems crazy. It seems crazy to allow that and pretend that's a person.

But if. Think about it like this, Joe, like, how basically did social media start Facebook, meta, all the rest of it? It started by a nerd in his bedroom in his college dorm who set up a website to write hot girls on campus. And my point is like, we creating all of this technology, we don't know what's going to be the second, third, fifth, sixth order consequences, right? And we're having to figure out as we go along. And now we're creating artificial intelligence intelligences that are way smarter than us. And you're going, at what point is this going to run away? Right? Or has it already run away? And we just don't want to admit it because most of us don't know enough and the ones in charge are delusional.

Yeah, but you're right, Joy. I think we need a way to know a what is human content and what isn't human content.

Right?

And also I sometimes look at stuff on social media and I go, there's no fucking way this take got 50,000 likes on X. No fucking way.

Right, Right.

You know what I mean?

Right?

Like, and that is. But that is shaping people's perception of reality, and that is informing political debate, and that is then informing how people vote. And where did those 40,000 likes come from?

Right?

Did they come from within America? Did they come from within Britain? Because what if they didn't? Right? So who is then shaping the political direction of our countries? We need to know that.

Yeah, we do need to know that. We need to know that because it is effective. Even if someone has a completely preposterous and radical position a couple steps down from that, that becomes more palatable, right? Like, because now it's close, closer to the, like the farther left the left goes, the. The weirder the center gets because the center starts accepting things that were far left positions and same on the right.

Same on the right.

Exactly on the right. And you can, you can shift narratives by really, really radical ideologies, really radical thoughts and radical declarations, and you could change, like, what's acceptable.

So an example of that is during the Euros, the 2021 final, it was England versus Italy, right? And it was a tight game and it went to penalty shootout and three black England footballers missed the penalty and we ended up losing the European cup to the Italians. And afterwards, these three black footballers got inundated with racism and horrible things that sparked a conversation in our country about, we have a real problem with racism. This is disgraceful. That these black footballers are exposed to this level of racism is unacceptable. Of course it is all those things a true. But basically about them being exposed to race and it's not acceptable. And then it went into a discussion about England being a racist country, white supremacist, and this became widespread. And this, and the example of what these footballers were exposed to was used as a way to justify this opinion. And you could see a lot of people accept that opinion until a couple of days later when they investigated where the majority of the tweets came from and messaged. And I think something like 85%, if not 90, came from outside the UK, if not even more than that.

So you're going, oh, so this entire conversation that we have had about white supremacy, about, you know, black people not being accepted in, in our country, about the fact that second class citizens, and look, this example of them being exposed to horrendous racism when the fact is the majority of it came from outside the uk.

And then you have to ask the question, question, who benefits?

Right?

Who benefits from us hating each other, obsessing about our differences, worrying about how we're the most racist places in the world when this narrative is likely being driven by actually racist countries.

Right, right, right, right.

Because that's what's happening.

Yes.

And we are allowing it to happen. And I think we just haven't woken up to the fact that we are living in the age of informational war warfare. And we, because of our belief in freedom, have just got lost in this fact that we are under attack.

It's a very good point. I have to pee. We'll come back with that.

Awesome. Let's do that. I'll go pee as well.

Speaking of religion. So show us this Sam Tripoli, Facebook take. He was on Danny Jones and this is what he said about Facebook.

Damn it.

Fine.

No, there's a little muted here.

Yeah, it's a Giant lie. It's a propaganda piece that was a Pentagon program called Lifelog. Lifelog is a Pentagon program that wants to collect all your data for your whole life. What day did the government stop the Lifelog project? Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. DARPA shut down the lifelog project? February 1st 4th, 2004. What day was Facebook registered as a business? God, no way, bro. The exact same day. They don't even hide it, dude. It was created by darpa. Yeah, they handed to Mark Zuckerberg and then the. The Vossel. What about the other.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's all.

And that's why they became the first bitcoin millionaires. Because they played ball.

Oh my God.

All theater, dude.

So what is the purpose of lifelong.

To collect all your data for your whole entire life. Okay, take this with many grains of salt. Sam is one of my best friends. I've known him for decades. He's a wonderful person, but he's a kook. But he's right a lot.

Yeah.

I don't know if he's right about this.

Right.

Yeah, Jamie thinks he's right.

It is. It was a.

It was.

It's not that he's incorrect.

I would say that he's making some connections. Yeah. Yeah. Well, he's definitely right about the dates. And that is a little weird.

Yes.

That it's ended on the same day where Facebook is beginning. Little weird.

Yeah.

You know, what do you think the appeal is of like when I went

down this rabbit hole here, it said it was made by the information Processing Techniques Office. This. Of the CIA, I think or something. But here's some other fun projects that are associated with this.

Biologically inspired cognitive architectures. Wait, what? Yep, there's just a couple biologically inspired cognitive architectures. That sounds like artificial intelligence.

Yeah.

Bootstrapping, learning. What was the other one, James?

This Forester thing.

Forester? A program to develop helicopter borne radar system that can detect soldiers and vehicles moving underneath foliage. Cover.

Cover.

Whoa.

Deep green US army battlefield decision making support system. Yeah, this is all AI heterogeneous urban.

Rst.

So they were planning on this in the.

This was 2004 is when that thing ended, the Lifelog thing. So I mean it even goes back to. Says they were working on ARPANET back in the 60s.

Whoa.

Just beginning of the Internet, by the way.

Joe, have you had anyone on to talk about this weapon that the US forces used in Venezuela?

No, no, I haven't, not yet.

But there was something like. Yeah, they use something, right?

Yes.

Something supposedly that makes your brain Water temperature rise and so you get nosebleeds and shit. Is that, is that what it is?

Well, my cousin told me when I was talking after the attack.

Your cousin in Venezuela?

My cousin, Venezuela, yeah. He was saying that it seemed like in a 1 mile radius, everybody's windows got blown out.

Well, that's just blast. That's not like it. But what I, what I heard was that they had some kind of weapon

that some sonic weap.

So I don't know if it was sonic maybe, but something that incapacitates people and makes them very uncomfortable basically, but without killing them.

Was it 60 Minutes? Yeah, yeah. So 60 Minutes said that these guys acquired some weapon from Russian black market and it's a very small portable weapon that you can carry around with you and does something very similar. What it would. What is their claim on the.

This. There's two different things going on with the 60 Minutes thing. They had a story a couple months ago where they were tracking a guy and then they just had an update I think over the weekend that added to it.

But what is the claim?

Oh, I think they found the guy that said he was doing it, I believe.

Right.

He had a device in his car or something like that and you could

just point it at people, but it was. You could carry it around.

Yeah, that, that is where it gets strange.

That's.

I mean the 60 Minutes thing from yesterday going around. I didn't watch it, so I don't know what they're talking about.

The Havana Syndrome.

Yes.

Yeah. But it has to do with that. And that's what to. I trying. Was trying to. Trump had this discombobulator weapon.

Right, right. That's what I'm talking about.

Discombobulated.

But that's. It's a nice Trump kind of description

of what, the Havana Syndrome.

Yes, the discombobulator.

But it seems like whatever its effectiveness is, the Havana Syndrome is very small in comparison to what these things are doing. These things are like completely incapacitating people.

You know, I don't think people talk about this enough. You know, when they came in to take Maduro, you know what they also did? I mean, you probably know that this. They fired a rocket into Chavez's mausoleum.

They did, yeah.

Just to be like, go fuck your mom, I'm gonna pop your grave.

Wow.

Isn't that the most Trump thing ever?

You know what those things cost?

Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Millions of dollars.

Millions. So millions. Just to say fuck you.

Yeah.

Just fired a rocket into his grave.

This is the American way, baby. We're Gonna fire some expensive.

That's crazy.

Your grave.

But under any other president, you would have gone, that's bullshit. But under Trump, you're like, yeah, of course.

You think it was his idea?

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah, I've got a thought.

That sounds exactly like a Trump idea.

So this weapon, that. What is the details?

I don't know. We can just watch this.

Yeah, let's see what he says here. Well, we could just read. Okay, I couldn't read. Okay, we'll play it. Let's play it. Here it goes. Tales of a classified microwave weapon.

Right. That may explain mysterious brain injuries suffered by U.S. officials.

We've been investigating these injuries for nine years. And now our sources tell us this microwave weapon is portable, concealable, and uses relatively little power. Hundreds of possible attacks have been reported, including, we've learned, at CIA headquarters in Virginia, and at least two incidents on the grounds of the White House. For years, the government doubted the stories of the injured. But now the victims, including former CIA

officer Mark Polymeropoulos, hope that word of

a newly discovered weapon will finally vindicate them. There's a part of this, Scott, that

has to do with moral injury, and that's the idea of betrayal.

You know, I worked for 26 years for the CIA.

I think I was involved in every

covert action program in the Middle East.

I did some very interesting things for the US government, always with the idea

that they would have my back if

I got jammed up.

I just needed to get medical care

when I came back.

And they wouldn't even do that.

So this moral injury, this sense of

betrayal is so acute with me.

That's something that I can never forget them for.

Mark Polymeropoulos rose to an executive level at the CIA, about the equivalent of a three star general. He was awarded a top decoration for service 60 Minutes has learned to take.

I just repeated it.

Okay.

Not much about the weapon there, unfortunately. Yeah, huh. Huh.

But it's, it's interesting that the way that they did that they did that operation because when I was talking to my cousins and my friends about what happened, no one in Venezuela had a clue. And they were. My friend said that he was woken up around 2 in the morning by a plane going overhead and there's a no fly zone around over Caracas at that time especially. And he was like, what is this? And he said, you heard this almighty boom. And everybody was just. Nobody knew what was happening, happening. They don't have X in Venezuela for obvious reasons. So everybody was in the dark. And it was only via Instagram and Facebook that they Started to understand what had just gone on, but it was complete disbelief that the Americans had done that.

If they. They don't have X, do they have threads, which is like zero.

Yeah, X, zero, Yeah, I imagine they must do. But he said the way that everybody was communicating was via inside Instagram.

Interesting.

What are people saying now in Venezuela?

So now I talked to my friends, he said that things are getting better. He said things are getting better. He said the crime was down 75%. I mean, I don't know how true this is. He said things are slowly starting to get liberalized. He also. I was talking to a Colombian friend of mine who was saying that people, Venezuelans in Colombia are now starting to go back because whilst the regime is still obviously not permanent, perfect, what you essentially have is a puppet regime. And they know that the moment they step out of line, they know the moment they, to use Trump's parlance about something will happen. They're kept in, they're kept. They're kept on a straight line. Yeah. They have to behave. They can't do what Maduro did. And what's interesting about when Maduro was captured is nobody really mentioned that much about his wife. Wife. But a lot of people say that his wife was the brains behind the operation because Maduro, there's clips of him that went viral on Tick Tock and Instagram and on Twitter as well, where he was doing speeches and he had to do basic mental arithmetic and he couldn't do it.

This guy was a bus driver. He was picked by Chavez when Chavez was on his deathbed in 2013, dying from stomach cancer, and he appointed Maduro, everybody was shot, shocked, because they were saying, well, Maduro wasn't the most capable, he wasn't the most intelligent. But what Maduro was is he was the most loyal out of all Chavez's underlings. So he was picked not for his brilliance, not for his sharpness, but because he was a company man. And actually, the person who the Venezuelans hated the most was his wife because she was the brains behind the operation. She was the one in charge of the kidnapping, the tortures, the murders. So when she was kidnapped, people were happier that she was on the helicopter than Maduro himself.

Really?

Yeah.

Lady Macbeth.

She was way more cruel than Maduro.

Wow.

Way more cruel.

It's interesting, you say things are getting better now. Cause, like, it's short term, right? We don't know. Right?

Yeah.

You know, this has happened a lot of times in Latin America, right?

Right.

Like people get overthrown, things are getting better. And then some shit happens.

Yeah.

Not the most stable place, not the most stable people. Joe, I'm going to be honest with you. They're my people. It's either, you know, it's either Fatima or Viva Revolution.

Yeah.

And you're like, guys, can we have a little middle? And they're like, no, you know, they, you know, they're excitable people.

And you also wonder how much the fact that Venezuela in particular, it's so resource rich rich. A lot of, like, a lot of Francis always says to me, like, you know, it could be a really great country, really wealthy. And I go, I don't know that having those resources makes a country better. Because what you get is a corrupt elite who are fighting for control of these resources that are so easy to get. Like in 1990s Russia, when the Soviet Union collapsed, the people who took over, all the resource companies, the oil companies, the gas companies, whether like Russia's. Basically all it is, is a is in terms of its economy, is digging shit out of the ground and selling it. That's what it is.

Not the poetry.

Yeah, not a lot of money to be made in poetry. Right. But the people who took over those companies, they weren't people who knew anything about the oil business. They weren't people who knew anything about the gas business. Because all you really had to do is take over. And then you just let western companies come in and do the drilling and the oil field services and all of it for you. So these countries which are so resource free rich, it actually makes them more corrupt and more unstable. The resource wealth they have doesn't actually make them better for the people because the corrupt elites fight over those resources. And that's where you get the bullshit that you get.

And it's true. So Venezuela before Chavez came to power was 98% dependent on oil. The economy, the entire economy was 98% dependent on oil. The slight difference with Venezuela trailer, is when we were taking over by Chavez, he then installed his cronies in charge of Pedavesa, which is the Venezuelan oil company. And he cut out all the people who were competent, all the people who would criticize him ideologically. And as a result, what you had is fundamentally incompetent people at the top, which meant that it became degraded, it was no longer able to pump the oil. It wasn't reliable. So. So that's a large part of the reason why the economy collapsed is it was entirely dependent on oil. They appointed their cronies who couldn't actually do the job. The oil industry Failed. And we descended into poverty and chaos.

How much do you know about Brazil?

Not a lot. Why?

Well, I've always. That situation is very confusing.

Right.

Lula goes to jail. Now he's out, you know, he's running the country. And they jailed Jair Bolsonaro, right. Like, there seems. And then they tried to ban X, like, then they did for a while, right?

I think so.

And they had to make probably some concessions.

I don't know a lot about it, truthfully. Joe.

Yeah. Yeah. I.

We're gonna do that thing that no one does on the Internet, is admit we don't know something as long as

we don't have hot takes. What is this, Jimmy?

These are kind of. Just kind of crazy descriptions of this weapon. This is from this longer version of the CBS News 60 Minutes article where they're talking to that guy we just saw. I would say start right around here and then I'll skip to another paragraph

because three independent sources from different agencies tell us undercover Homeland Security agents purchased a miniaturized microwave weapon from a complex Russian criminal network. It's classified. We didn't see it, but it has been described to us. We're told it doesn't look anything like a gun. Gun. It's designed to be concealed and small enough to be carried by a person. It is silent and doesn't create heat like a microwave oven. Our sources say the device is programmable for different scenarios and can be operated by remote control. The range of the beam is several hundred feet. It can penetrate windows and drywall. The vital components were made in Russia. Our sources say the key is not the hardware, but the software. The programming shapes a unique electromagnetic wave that rises and falls abruptly and pulses rapidly.

So then it turns out they have tested this, apparently, in US Military labs. Start.

Our confidential sources tell us still classified weapon has been tested in a U. S. Military lab for more than a year. Tests on rats and sheep show injuries consistent with those seen in humans. Also, as a separate part of the investigation, security camera videos have been collected that show Americans being hit. The videos are classified, but they were described to other US in one, a camera in a restaurant in Istanbul captured two FBI agents on vacation sitting at a table with their families. A man with a backpack walks in, and suddenly everyone at the table grabs their head as if in pain. Our sources say that another video comes from a stairwell in the US Embassy in Vienna. The stairs lead to a secure facility. In the video, two people on the stairs suddenly collapse. Those videos and the weapon were among the reasons the Biden Administration summoned about half a dozen victims to the White House with about two months left in the president's term.

And then that guy was also one of the people in there. The ads are kind of up this website, but yeah, he just sort of says someone admitted to him that they treated him poorly. Yeah, that's the biggest cover up I've seen in my adult life.

Interesting.

I don't get the, like the border. If Russia has this weapon, why didn't they use it to take out Zelinsky?

Well, it seems like it's only for a hundred. Couple hundred feet. That's what they're just saying, like it has to be close.

Right.

So what, what was the one they used in Venezuela then?

Started off saying it was in a truck, it was truck size, but then that's where it goes. I started you just past that, where they said it's actually way smaller.

Interesting. So this is the one that you could carry around. But do we know that that's the same one they used in Venezuela or do they use something that's completely different technology?

Yeah, the reality is we just don't know. I mean, the, the interesting thing as well with Venezuela is like Maduro is so retarded. He's such.

There's a hot take.

So how

this is a joke set up punchline.

Yeah, he. But he literally said to Trump, he said to America, I'm not going to do what you say. Go yourself. Come and get. Get me.

Yeah, he did that. Yeah, that was cocaine.

And it's not just that. He. So, for instance, the country next to Venezuela is called Guyana. And in Guyana they recently discovered oil, a really huge, large deposits of oil. And there's been. Guyana is a British. Former British colony. And Venezuela and Guyana have always been disputes about territory. Territory about one particular part of, I think it's called Escaibo, which is basically rainforest. They always argue about it, but no one cared until they discovered oil there. At which point Maduro went, you know what, you know how we've been talking about this? Turns out it is Venezuelan. They did a referendum in Venezuela where you basically asked a people who were entirely subjugated, starving, living in misery and poverty whether they wanted to start a war with Guyana. Do you know how many Venezuelans voted for it? 92%, Joe. 92% of Venezuelans wanted to go to war, despite the fact they didn't have the strength to even pick up a gun because they're so malnourished. And then he started teaching in schools, redrawing the map of Venezuela. So all the school kids now think that Venezuela incorporates this territory. Territory. Like he was antagonizing the Americans and their allies consistently.

And unlike Iran, he doesn't have the infrastructure. He doesn't have that amount of the military, the power, the organization. He made himself so vulnerable. So vulnerable.

Who looks at Trump and goes, yeah, let's fuck with that guy.

Right.

He's 80. He doesn't have much to lose.

Right. Last term.

That's the scary thing about old leaders. It's like death is imminent. It's within a decade, if you're lucky. That's spooky. That's spooky. Like, you know, you're making decisions for babies and children and the future of the world and you've only got 10, maybe 10 years left on, on Earth if everything goes great.

And also you start to degrade.

Oh, yeah.

Your cognitive functions. It doesn't. I'm not saying that he's got dementia or anything like that, but you're just not as sharp when you're that age as you are when you're younger.

He's. I mean, he's kind of weird. Like, when I think about how much Barack Obama aged.

Yeah.

How much Tony Blair aged. Trump has not aged like that.

Yeah. And he is a terrible diet. I mean, especially when he's on the road, he just eats junk food because he says it's like JFK or RFK Jr rather to told me he eats junk food because he knows that when he eats fast food that it's not going to be poison. Like he knows he can eat it and not worry about getting food poisoning. What, what, what exactly.

Doesn't make any fucking sense.

Well, it does because it's filled with preservatives. So you're not going to get food poisoning from a Big Mac. When's the last time you heard about anybody getting food poisoning from a Big Mac? Right. Fucking never happened. Because nothing can grow on those things.

Really.

Like, for real. Like, you've seen them, they take, like,

they leave them for a year.

Decades. Decades. Decades. They don't rot. There's so much preservatives in the bread and whatever the meat is fucking made with.

But this is. My point is like, Trump hasn't aged like much younger men, which is even

crazier because you consider he doesn't exercise.

Right. And he's been under colossal. I mean, I don't know, but I imagine he's been under a bit of pressure and stress.

Well, assassination attempts.

Yeah.

And just all that. Almost going to jail.

Yeah.

Right. Like 34 felonies sort of trumped up, you know, pardon the pun, against him. Yeah, yeah.

There was a Russian agent and all this.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And he's just like. It's kind of like, it's kind of impressive in a way.

Oh, that part's very impressive. Yeah, yeah. And he's funny. Like, he's always joking around about that stuff. He's very light hearted about it all.

Yeah, he is. Like when he was talking about the Iranian navy, did you see that? That he was like, they've lost 14 ships, we sunk a submarine. But apart from that they're doing really well. He's very relaxed for a man in that, like, it's hard to imagine. I cannot imagine being in charge of anything like a thousandth of that size.

Right.

Just imagine the stress that you guys have running trigonometry.

Right, yeah, right, right.

Stressful.

I'm sure Francis is aged like Barack Obama.

I used to have black hair. Now I just look like an as lesbian joke.

It is stressful, right?

Yeah.

And that is the highest stress that I can ever imagine. I can't imagine a level higher.

You know, I always remember after the war in Iraq and Blair was still in power, but it was towards the end, I was watching the news with my dad and this woman in her 50s came along and she put a wreath at this, at the door of 10 Downing street and that was a mother whose son had died in Iraq and placed a wreath at 10 Downing Street. Of all the soldiers that died. I'm like, even if the war was justified, even if it was the right thing to do, which I don't think it was, I would still find it impossible to sleep right now. Just imagine it was the colossal fuck up that that war was.

Right.

And those people died as a result of your decision. But how do you. Unless you're a sociopath, I think that's. You can't. Can you live with that?

Right?

I don't think.

I think it's impossible to live with, but clearly not. I mean, we've got people who were heavily responsible for promoting that war in the UK now, like Alistair Campbell. He was the spindle doctor that helped Blair lie the country into the war in Iraq. He now has a really big podcast and like all the young people are.

Oh, really?

I'll.

Tell me more.

No way.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

He's the Rush Limbaugh of the uk.

How do you mean? Sorry, I don't know enough about Rush Limbo.

You don't know Rush Limbaugh I've heard

the name, but I don't get the reference in the way that you mean it.

He was the big right wing propagandist on radio. Excellence in broadcast. Oh, by the way, have you seen the. The memes that think that Rush Limbaugh is actually Jim Morrison?

Yeah.

Yeah. And if you look at his facial features in comparison, Jim Morrison's facial features, they're almost identical. It's kind of nuts. They do like a scan where they like, like superimpose.

So Rush Limbo is a media guy. Alistair Campbell, he was working for Tony Blair.

Right.

But now he has a podcast and all the young people. Oh, really?

Well, there was a lot of, like, young men in particular that like really into Rush Limbaugh and like that, like a lot of people are crediting him with turning young people towards a right wing direction. This was during the Obama administration. Like, look at this. Watch. Watch when they grow over. Pretty close.

Psych. Alex Jones and Bill Hicks. Have you seen that?

That one's ridiculous. I met both of them. They don't look anything like each other. Look at this, look at that. That is kind of crazy.

Wow.

It's pretty close.

Wow.

You know, there's the other crazy conspiracy theory involving the countercultural move, counterculture movement of the 1960s with the CIA. There's a book on it, Strange Times in Laurel Canyon. The book's nuts. Like, you realize, like, how many of these very popular counterculture figures. Figures had families that were in the military. Like high level military intelligence officers. Including Morrison.

Oh, yeah. Morrison's dad was very senior in the military.

And a bunch of other people that were also involved in, you know, the. The whole Laurel Canyon rock scene. And that it was somehow or another at least promoted by intelligence agencies, if not formulated.

And by counterculture, I mean, like what, like hippies?

Yep.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So the hippie movement was promoted by intelligence?

Yeah.

Well, why?

That's a good question. Well, we know without saying definitively, but pretty close, based on Tom o' Neill's book Chaos, that they were absolutely involved in the Manson family. So the reason for them being involved in the Manson family is say you have this new culture that's arising that doesn't embrace materialism. Make love, not war. You got all these people, you know, drop out, tune in.

Like Timothy Leary.

Yeah, the Timothy. The Timothy Leary people. The people that are want to do acid and just want to reimagine society. So this is a radical change. This is a radical change from the 1950s to the 1960s. Pretty crazy. So what do you do to stop that? Well, what you do is you find a guy who's very charismatic, who is a sociopath, who's in prison, and you find that guy and teach him how to be a cult leader. And then you give him acid and you show him how to administer acid and how to not take it and have all of his followers take it and then direct their thoughts and then eventually program them like MK Ultra style to commit murders. So they have the Tate LaBianca murders. They have a bunch of other stuff that they did before that. He's gotten arrested multiple times. Every time he gets arrested, they let him go. And when they let him go, like one of the sheriff says, I was told it was above my pay grade. So you're letting a guy go who's a violent criminal, who's violating parole, who's a lifelong con man, and now he is running this cult.

And this cult is murderous. So the Tate LaBianca murders, the Manson family murders, all that stuff becomes public. There's the hearings, the trials, the whole thing. So the entire public narrative changes on what a hippie is. Now. Hippies are dangerous. So before hippies were like, we're non violent. We want love. We have flowers. And now it's like, oh, these people will cut your baby out and write pig on the wall with your blood, you know?

Is the Altamont concert connected to that?

Excuse me?

The Altamont concert, You know. You know the Rolling Stones concert.

Oh, that was the. That was the Hell's Angels.

Yes.

Right.

Yeah. Yeah. And that was kind of seen. I. I don't know. It's just a question I'm asking, like, because that was seen as the end of the hippie movement, which wasn't it? That was the death. That was the final death rattle. The hippie was it. That was how it was. That's how it was written and portrayed.

Well, that's odd, because the hall's Angels are not hippies. And having Hell's Angels as security is a wild move. Yeah, that's crazy.

Yeah, because it was a Rolling Stones concert. But in. Because it was a free concert, wasn't it? That was a thing.

How did they go about hiring. See if you can find the history of. On that. They go about hiring the Hell's Angels. Yeah. Both previously used the Angels for security at performances without incident, Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane.

This is also the next sentence says it was denied. So I don't know.

Right.

But that's what it says in the Wikipedia here.

It says, for $500 worth of beer. That's all they had to pay them. The story was denied by some parties who were directly involved. According to the road manager, The Rolling Stones, 1969 US tour, Sam Cutler, the only agreement there ever was the Angels would make sure that nobody tampered with the generators, and that was the extent of it. But there was no way they're going to be the police force or anything like that. That's all bollocks. The deal was made at a meeting, including Cutler, Grateful Dead manager Rock Scully, and Pete Nell, member of the Hell's Angels, San Francisco Chapter. According to Cutler, the arrangement was that all the bands were supposed to shake the $500 beer cost, but the person who paid it was me, and I never got it back to this day. Okay, so the Hell's Angels guy says, we don't police things. We're not security force. We go to concerts and enjoy ourselves and have fun. Well, what about helping people out? You know, giving directions and things? Says, sure, we could do that. How they would be paid. He said, we like beer. In the documentary Gimme Shelter, Sonny bar guy that was the head of the Rolling Stone, the head of the Hell's Angels stated that the Hells Angels were not interested in policing the event and that organizers had told them the Angels would not be required to do, or would be required rather, to do little more than sit on the edge of the stage, drink beer, and make sure there weren't any murders or rapes occurring.

The only reason I said that is because it was. That was kind of one of the events that was. That was heralded to be the death. To be the end of the hippie movement.

Right. So what happened? They stabbed people? Something happened.

I think it was a free concert that the Rolling Stones and these bands put on, and then it degenerated and then a riot broke out, and then the hell was Angels, who was obviously not trained security, then went on the rampage.

And how many people died?

That I don't know.

Does it say here, Jim me situation deteriorates killing a woman got killed?

Yeah, that's what it says.22 caliber from the jacket draw revolver. Drew a knife, stabbed him 16 times in the head, neck and back.

Whoa.

It's a lot of stabbing.

So it says, concealing the remaining 14 stabbings. What?

Said he was high on meth when he died.

Oh, boy.

Quitted after jury reviewed the concert footage.

Rolling Stones were aware of the skirmish, but not the stabbing. Couldn't see anything. It's just another scuffle. Jagger tells David Malesies male sless during film editing, it soon became apparent they could see something of what happened because the band stopped playing mid song, and Jagger was heard calling into his microphone. Really got someone hurt here? Is there a doctor? After a few minutes, the band began playing again and eventually completed their set. They had to get paid. The abandoned the show at one point was to say Altamont became, whether fairly or not, a symbol for the death of the Woodstock nation. Interesting. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it seems like if you're gonna have concerts, especially gonna have free concerts, and you're gonna be using Hell's Angels as a deterrent, you know, things could definitely go sideways.

Definitely.

And maybe they just got lucky before when they did it for Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead.

Yeah.

Joe, not to change the subject, but have you been following this beef between Eddie Hearn and Dana White? A little bit, because it's kind of interesting to me, because boxing seems to be, like, changing, right, because of. Of what Zifa boxing is doing. Is that something you're, like, excited about? The possibility that boxing, which has been in. You know, there's so much bullshit going on and you so very rarely see the best fighters fighting each other that that might change?

Well, the beef with those two, I don't know the root of it. I think it's essentially that, you know, it's competition. Like, Dana is now entering into the MMA space.

Into the boxing space.

Excuse me, the boxing space. And I was going to say Eddie Hearn is now entering into the MMA space because now he's a manager of Tom Aspinall, which is very interesting. Anything that gets fighters more money, I'm for. And if, you know, more attention, more money, more different promoters, more people competing to give people higher purses. The real problem is with mma, there's nothing. I mean, there's essentially the UFC and everything else is a distant second.

Yeah.

And it's a distant second in terms of attention in some places. It's not a distance. It's not a distant second in terms of revenue. Right. So, like the pfl, for instance. The PFL was offering a million dollars for anybody who could win these tournaments. And the caliber of fighters that were winning this tournament were not the same caliber as UFC champions. And then some of the people that were competing in the UFC were not making as much money as these people that had left the UFC because they really weren't able to beat the best guys. They went over there and they made a million dollars. I think that's good for fighters. It's not good for really talented guys that really want to be the UFC champion, because you can languish over there for a long time. And there's some good examples of guys who have spent four, five, six years over there that really had potential to be a world champion. And they are, you know, in quotes, a world champion over there. But ask the average person on the street who they are. No one knows. Ask them who Alex Pereira is. Everybody knows.

The thing is, those guys, if they're doing that and they're getting paid more, you have to make a decision like, are you willing to take more money now in this organization versus the potential of much more fame, sponsors, and maybe less money initially in the ufc. But if you can be a champion, champion, that's really what every fighter wants to be. Because if you spend five, six years in an organization, the reality is your prime is about five, six years. You look at the elite of the elite guys. Anderson Silva, in his prime, it's about 5, 6 years. Fedor Emelianenko, in his prime, it's about 5, 6 Years. So you could. You could burn out your prime in an organization where you're not getting as much talent and not getting as much recognition. Recognition. So it depends on what you're doing it for. If you're purely a prize fighter and you want to fight for the highest bidder, the difference between MMA and the UFC is you can do that in boxing. So in boxing, people go to see the fighter. You know, if Terence Crawford is fighting Canelo Alvarez, my mom could be the promoter.

Nobody gives a. They want to see that fight. And you put that fight on pay per view, it's gonna sell. You put it on Dazone, you put it on Netflix, it's gonna sell Cell in mma, that's not necessarily the case. The interesting challenge to that is this Netflix thing. So with Ronda Rousey versus Gina Carano.

Yeah.

Even though Gina Carano hasn't fought since the 2000s, I don't remember what year was the last time she fought. I want to make a guess. Let me guess. I want to say 2007, 2008. When was the last time Gina Carano f fought? And she's 43, and I think Ronda's 39. But Ronda's so famous, and people are so interested. And if it's on Netflix and people already have Netflix, I guarantee you, you'll get millions of people that'll watch that. So that'll be good. Right? And that's good for the fighters. And I know they offered some fighters that I know a very large purse to compete on that card.

Well, Francis Ngannou might be one, right?

He might be, yeah, that's. There's talk of that. No, actually, I think that's been. I think that's been confirmed. I think he's fighting Philip Lynn's 2009. Okay, so that was the last time she fought.

Chris Cyborg was a beast.

Yeah, there was a lot of supplements involved in that. There's a lot going on with her. I mean, that was. That was the Wild west of testing. And she looked freak.

Yeah, the eye test was kind of.

Yeah, the eye test was 100%, so. But it'll still be exciting. People will, you know, and hopefully they've had enough time. I know there's a lot of video footage of Rhonda training for quite a while. She lost a lot of weight. She got really slim. She looks fit. You know, she's. She looks outstanding, especially with her grappling. She's doing a lot of judo throws and arm bars and she doesn't look or she's lost a step. There's a difference between that and competition. There's ring rust. There's a lot of factors. Gina Carano was a legit Muay Thai champion. She's got real power and she was a very good striker when she was young. She was a very technical, solid striker when she was young. How long has it been since she, you know, I mean, how long did she stop training for? Right. She did movies, she's done the Mandalorian. She's had a lot of success acting. But it seems like there was probably quite a bit of time. She lost a ton of weight too, look. And she looks quite a bit bigger than.

Those are two attractive ladies. If I say.

Yep, and.

Oh, Jake, Paul is in the middle. Yeah.

Rhonda looks very angry.

He looks kind of awkward there, Jake, to be honest.

You know, when it comes to grappling, you give Rhonda a big advantage. She's one of the best submission artists ever, period. You know, her arm bar is about as good as it gets. She's got fantastic judo bronze medalist in the Olympics. When it comes to Gina, Gina was like a solid striker when she was young. And the difference in striking would definitely be benefit Gina. You would have to lean in her direction. But again, when you're Talking about like 2009, it's a long time, man. 17 years. It's a long time to not compete.

Well, there do seem to be a lot of fights nowadays in various disciplines happening where it's like you're not seeing People at their prime, you're maybe sometimes seeing people who aren't professionals but are famous. And there seems to be a lot of money to be made doing that.

Yeah, as long as you match them correct correctly, right?

Yeah, that was the thing that was wild with Jake Paul versus Anthony Joshua, huh? You. Jake Paul is a cruiserweight and you've got Joshua, who is heavy for the heavyweight division. You looked at the size matchup between the two and at one point I was like, he's gonna kill him.

Well, he did. I mean, I think Jake probably knew it going in and just. I think his game plan was just to move a lot, you know, and he did a lot of that, did a lot of movement. He hit him a few times and he hit him with some wild shots from the outside where he kind of dove in and threw wild punches. I think that was probably part of the strategy. But I mean, ultimately you're looking at Anthony Joshua, who's not just a heavyweight champion in boxing, but a one punch knockout artist and a former Olympic gold medalist. He's a fucking highly skilled man. Very highly, highly skilled.

That was a strange fight because up to that point Jake's, Paul's fight was the other way around. Like he clearly had an advantage and that was like flipping the script the other way.

Well, smart dude, you know, Very smart.

Do you think that was smart?

Yeah, very smart. Now he promotes himself smart in that. Like you can't criticize him for not fighting dangerous fighters.

Gotta respect, right? Yeah.

The Mike Tyson one was a little sus.

I mean, Mike Tyson is, you know, he's on the older side, whereas Anthony Joshua, he's not that old.

It's not just that, like the fight itself was a little sus.

How do you mean?

Because it looked like a sparring match.

Right.

Looked like there was an agreement in place.

Okay.

I don't know if there was, you know, but Terence Crawford thought it was really. Yeah, he looked a little sus.

I mean, Mike is. How old is Mike? 58, 59.

Yeah, I mean, I still wouldn't get in a ring with him.

Yeah, no, I'll still kill you. But it's like, I mean, it's not saying that Jake would have even won. I mean, who knows? I mean, if, if Mike really could have. Like you saw, he's capable of those flurries when he's hitting pass ads. He's still capable of massive speed and power. It's not saying that, but it's like, could he sustain a real fight? Does he want to get hit in the head anymore at this point in his life.

And. And it's also when you get to that age, you can look and you can. You. There'll be glimpses where you're like, oh, this is the old. The Tyson of old. But it's also as well, he's still a 58 year old dude. You know, punch around the head, that can cause a brain hemorrhage, etc. And he can. He can die. Die, sure. Fighters die at the peak of their powers or get brain damage. I mean, it's going to be. I'm no neurologist, but I'm certain that that is a higher risk when you're 58.

Yeah, I would recommend it.

So. So the thing. This is why I asked you about Eddie Hearn and Dana. There's talk about them having a boxing match.

Oh, that's funny. Dana can box. He can really box. Like, I've seen Dana hit mitts before. I've seen Dana spar. Dana can actually box. And there was a time where Dana was supposed to have a boxing match with Tito or two. Ortiz.

Right. Wow.

And you know, even Tita Tito acknowledged, because Dana was his manager at one point in time. Even Tito acknowledged. Like, Dana's a really good boxer. He can box. He spent a lot of his time boxing when he was young. I mean, I don't know how much of it he's doing these days. He's so busy.

Yeah.

You know, he's so involved in zufa boxing now and he's involved in some of these Riyadh season events. So it's like, you know, I don't. I think it's probably just talking, you know, Eddie Hearn's a very tall guy, though.

Big dude.

Yeah, he's a big dude.

And he used to box as well.

Did he?

He used to. He boxed his dad. I think I heard him talking about that.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There's a fight.

Yeah. I don't want to see it. I'll watch, though.

Well, this is what I mean. You don't want to see it, but you'll watch.

Yeah, well, there's certain things I don't want to see that I watch. Like slap fight. Like if someone sends me a video, if it shows up on my Instagram feed of some, you know, porcelain getting slapped into the shadow realm. I'll watch it. Just for how they hit their head off the table and stiffen up on the way down. Yeah.

That's combat sports for the TikTok generation.

Yeah. Right.

When you think about it, it's not

Even combat sports, I mean, it's just slapping each other. That's all it is. If you want to call slapping each other a sport, that seems crazy. It's also. There's a fundamental problem with slap fighting is that someone has to go first.

Yeah.

And that's a giant advantage. Going first is the biggest advantage of all time.

You know, and that. How's that decided, the coin toss?

I don't know.

I don't watch it. Is it?

I have no idea.

No, I physically can't watch it, to be honest.

Yeah, well, to me, it's like this. At least zoo for boxing is real. This is a real combat sport, whereas it's not just slapping each other in the head.

Well, to me, the exciting thing, and correct me if this is wrong, but the exciting thing is it has felt for a long time that seeing top boxers fighting each other is a rare occurrence. Ufc, you see that every single card.

Yeah. Well, the Saudis are stepping up, and that's, you know, with Turki Al Sheik, like, his. His role in boxing has really changed that. Like what. What they've done with Riyadh Season's done is make fights that managers have said, don't do this. Like, a good one is Martin Baccoli versus, God, I forget his name. Anderson, young prospect, very good fighter. And Baccoli is a fucking big, dangerous guy. And Bacoli knocked this guy out. Jarrett Anderson. That's it. Jarrett Anderson was undefeated up and coming prospect, young guy, and Bacoli beat him up, and he really wasn't there yet. He wasn't ready for that guy yet. And Bacoli stopped him, and. And that derailed this guy's career. But he probably got a big paycheck.

Right, right.

And so what I understand is there was a lot of people saying, that's a bad fight to make. Don't do it.

Yeah. I mean, the UFC has been, Seems to me, from the outside, quite careful about, like, giving people like Bo Nickel and Raul Rosas Jr. And Sean O', Malley, just trying to get them to build up slow and even. They've, you know. And Bo Nickel boy lost at one point, right?

Well, yeah, well, Bo Nickel fought Reiner Deridder, who's a one champion and a huge guy for the middleweight division. And Ryanair did a fantastic job of, you know, you don't want to take Rhinier to the ground because he's an elite submission athlete, and standing up, he's got vicious knees to the body. That's like one of his best weapons. And he. He Bo up. But that was a good fight for Bo because he came back from that and fought Hidol Vieira and looked fantastic afterwards, like, he's a real competitor and a winner, and the kind of guy that gets knocked down like that is going to get back up and be five times more ferocious, and that's what he is. But, you know, it's one of those things where it's like, why do you protect some people and not protect others? You know? And is it because they have better management? Is it. You know, because sometimes the UFC will tell you, like, if you want to fight in the ufc, hey, we've got to fight. We need an opponent in four days. Someone dropped out, and you're going to fight, fight blank. And that person who you're going to fight might be a surging contender who's terrifying.

He's putting everybody to sleep. And you have to make a decision like, this is not a good fight for me at this point in my career, but if I say no to the ufc, maybe they will never offer me a fight again.

And also, you're a fighter, and fighters, from everything that I know, you're going to back yourself.

Yes, but you have to do that intelligently. Right? You have to realize that if you. If you are in a process, and this is the thing about everyone up until, like, championship level, up to a certain point in time when you plateau, everyone is constantly getting better. So if you, you. You get better from training, you get better from work with your coaches, but you also get better with experience. And what boxers and boxing management has always done is make sure that you get the proper experience and the proper kinds of opponents are going to test you in certain ways along the way. So the idea is you give a fighter a stiff test that they can pass ass. You don't give a fighter a chance where they're going to compete against someone who's many, many levels above them, and they don't have a chance at all because that can destroy confidence. That could, like, cause real damage to you. You can get really badly hurt and never be the same again. There's certain fights that fighters have where they are never the same again. They get knocked out by someone and they just aren't the same.

They get a flying knee to the face and they're done. They get a head kick and they're done, and they just are never the same guy again. You could out point, point to numerous examples of good fights that weren't mismatches, but that a fighter was never the same again.

It's a dangerous sport.

It's. It's. I mean, it is the most in. I mean, it's not the most in terms of death. Boxing is the most in terms of death. And I think that's because they have less options. You know, you can't clinch, you can't hold on, try to take a fight to the ground. You can't defend yourself as well. There's also the thing where you get knocked down and you get back on up. Well, you clear your head momentarily, but you're still fucked. And now you can't get out of the way of punches, and now you're really getting fucked up. And you're getting much more damage than you would have gotten if you got clipped that first time and then the guy punched you a couple times when

you're on the ground or you got choked out.

Yeah. Or you got choked out is way better. Yeah, choked out is way better. Armbar. Way better. Just tap and then you're good.

It's also the duration of the fights. Boxing matches tend to last for a lot longer normally.

If they go the duration, they certainly can. If it's 12 minutes. Right. You're dealing with 36, 36 minutes of fighting, of getting punched in the head versus. Versus 25 for an MMA fight. The opposite of that you would say, though. But they're not getting slammed on their head. They're. They're not getting kicked, they're not getting kneed in the face, they're not getting cut open with elbows. There's a lot of things that can happen in an MMA fight that are way worse.

But do you. Do you also think as well that when I watch mma, losses. Look, of course, losses are detrimental and they affect careers and they knock people back, but they don't seem to be as consequential as losses in boxing.

In terms of your career.

Yeah, in terms of your career and the way you're perceived. Right.

Well, I think it's accepted that if you're fighting bunch of different styles, you know, style versus style, you're. There's always a potential of losing, especially amongst the elite of the elite. And you're seeing more of that in MMA at the highest level.

Yeah.

You're not seeing guys avoiding each other because there's one champion and it's a UFC champion in that weight class, and you have to fight that guy if you want the title.

Right.

Whereas there's the wbc, the wbo, the ibf, and you have all these different organizations for boxing, and so you can be a champion while Avoiding the other champions.

Whereas in the ufc, that's the thing that's exciting is, like, you get to see Max Holloway, who's a super dominant guy.

Right.

And then he fights Charles Oliveira.

Yeah.

And it doesn't go that way.

It's crazy.

That was so dominant.

Yeah, it was so dominant. And Max Holloway was a 2 to 1 favorite, at least at some points in the betting line.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it kind of look, I mean, obviously, Khamzat Chimaev is a whole category of its own, but it sort of felt a little bit that level of domination on the ground.

Yeah. The difference is Holloway was getting dominated on the feet, too. Oliveira's dangerous on the feet. I mean, he was better everywhere.

Yeah.

And he's bigger. He's a bigger guy. And you could. You could see that in the exchanges, like, every time he got a clinch on Max, he just hoisted him up in the air and slammed him to the ground. It was so definitive.

Right.

That was a spec. Spectacular performance by Olivera. But the thing that. My concern going into that fight was I'd watched the Matus Mataus Gamrot fight with Oliveira. I'm like, olivera is as good, if not better, than he's ever been before. Gamrot is dangerous, and he's a really good grappler. And they went to the ground and he was lost. Oliveira was just tying him up in knots. He wasn't able to get anything off on Oliveira. I'm like, what is Max going to be able to do on the ground against this guy? And then when it comes to standing up, Justin Gaethje said no one ever hit him harder than Oliveira did. That Oliveira, it's like he carries big power in his punches and big power in his kicks, too. And he's. He's so reckless on the feet. Not reckless, I should say, but, like, so aggressive on the feet because he wants you to take him to the ground because he's the best submission artist in the history of the sport. He has more submissions than anyone ever in the history of the sport.

Wow.

And the thing that you don't appreciate, I mean, you really kindly sorted out tickets for us in the UFC in New York. And, you know, these guys kick hard. You know, they punch hard, but when you're there ringside and you feel the kick.

Oh, yeah, you guys were close. That's the thing is when you're close, you can hear the.

Well, the slap. Do you know what happened, though, in New York? We sat down, and then some guy that I didn't initially Recognize came and sat in front of us and that was Dylan Dennis and he kicked off this whole. He sat literally right in front of us.

Oh, you had a front row seat.

Yeah, we did.

So the actual fight.

Yeah.

Oh, boy, was that exciting.

Yeah, well, I just turned to the side and then there was this just giant brawl right in front of us all of a sudden.

Those are very unfortunate.

Yeah.

Like those.

Yeah, no, me neither. It was crazy. It was crazy.

Well, Dylan Dennis, he knows how to get a lot of attention. Yeah.

And I will say this, I don't agree with his behavior, but unlike a lot of online trolls, that guy actually does it in real life. Do you know what I mean?

Right.

He actually died. I don't like him.

Dylan guy, he can fight. He's a very good submission artist. He's a Marcelo Garcia black belt. He's very legit on the ground. Conor McGregor brought him in for training, like for a lot of his camps.

Yeah. Are you excited for the White House card? That looks really good.

Yes. It sounds crazy. I know it's going to be very high security and high stress and weird to have a fight at the White House in the middle of a fucking war. I would hope the war will be sorted out by June, but quite honestly, I'm not confident that that's gonna be the case.

No.

Yeah, no.

Yeah. So that would be weird.

Yeah.

Having this very high profile event where everybody's in one place at one time. Right there.

I hadn't thought of that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So you're not excited to be there. Yeah.

It seems like you're asking for.

Holy shit. I haven't thought of that at all.

How could you not think of that?

Well, because I'm not gonna be there. You're the one that has to think of it. I was just like, this is a great lineup. I look forward to the fights.

Yeah.

Because if you want to talk about hidden heart, I mean, Ilya Toporia for

that's when you think like Max Holloway and Charlo Charles Oliveira. Charles Olivera dominates Max Holloway. And then you realize like how quickly Ilot de Poria starched Charles Oliveira and you go, how good is that guy?

Right.

He's a once in a generation talent. Like he's. He knocked out in three fights, three all time greats, Insane Volkanovsky and then he knocks out Max Holloway and then he knocks out Charles Ole Oliveira in two different weight classes. He knocks out three all time greats, three fights in a row. And he just definitive starching of these guys. Like he's A once in a generation talent.

And think how good Volk, how dominant Volk is.

Yeah.

Like how good he looked against Diego Lopez.

Right.

How good Max Holloway looks all the time, especially in striking exchanges. Max is a very hard guy to hit and Ilia just dominated him. He's fucking spooky good. And insanely confident, insanely charismatic.

Yeah.

Do you think part of it as well is just technique is so important, is the me is the most important thing? Because you look at Usyk when he came up against Fury and the first fight, I didn't give you sick a prayer. Like Usik is basically a glorified cruiserweight. Right. And you look at Tyson Fury, 6 8, undefeated. You know, he comes from a Traveler background. This is a guy who was taught to box from the age of three. I've taught Traveler kids. They. They all taught how to fight. They know how to fight, they know how to throw punches. Boxing is in their blood. And you just saw that he was so technically supreme.

Yeah.

That Fury had no answer and lost consecutive fights against him.

Yeah. And then look at what he did to Dubois. Yeah. Usyk is special. I mean, he's. He's basically a gigantic Lomachenko like, unbelievable movement. And he was trained by Lomachenko's father as well. Well, same. Same trainer. Yeah. I mean, there's just people that are better than everybody else. And it seems like Ilia Toria is one of those guys, he's just weirdly better than everybody else. And he. And he can take it too, like one of the fights that he had. So when he was competing at featherweight, he took a fight at lightweight against Jai Herbert. And Jai Herbert, in the first round, caught him with a perfect head kick, rocked him, dropped him. And Ilia Toria wound up grabbing his legs, taking him down. They fought on the ground, and then the second round, Ilia just put him into the shad realm. He hit him with a combination against the cage, where he hit him with, I think it was a left hook to the body and a right overhand that just spun his head around. It was wild. I mean, face first, face planted. He's. He's got freakish power. So it is technique. His technique is flawless.

His technique in the grappling is flawless. But it's also.

Oh, is he good at grappling as well?

He's phenomenal at grappling.

Really.

That's his main base. He started off as a grappler.

Really?

Yeah.

I didn't even know that.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And his early fights, he's just Taking place.

You don't see that much nowadays. Knocks everyone out, basically. Right?

He's just. It's his mind more than anything. His confidence is real. It's not bluster. Like, he's, he's really. He celebrates the fights. The day before the fight, he has a celebration of his victory. He did that against Charles Oliveira. They all went to dinner, they're making toasts, celebrating his victory the night before the fight itself.

That's a high risk strategy.

It's a crazy thing.

Meanwhile, goes out and knocks him out in the first round. Like, who fucking knocks out Charles Oliveira in the first round like that? Especially now. Like the Charles Oliveira of today. That's crazy. He's. It's, it's, it's many things, but the, the mind that allowed him to get so elite at grappling also allowed him to get so elite at striking. Right? And it's, it's setups and traps. It's not just throwing wild bombs. It's defense. His defense is fantastic. You saw that in the Josh Emmett fight. Josh Emmett, like, as far as, like, one punch power, he rivals everybody. I mean, you saw that fight where he knocked Bryce Mitchell out with a punch to the forehead. That guy hit so hard. And when you look at it, it makes sense. I mean, he's a fucking tank.

Yeah.

And Iliad Deporia just slipped away from everything. Slipped away from everything. And then eventually just put it on him. Yeah, he's. He's great everywhere, man. He's great on the ground, he's great standing up. And more importantly, it's his mind. Like, he doesn't make mistakes. He's a. He's just a force in the There. Yeah, he's the new breed. You know, like, with every generation, there's. Every generation builds on the success of the previous generation. They all learn from the elites of the past. He's our version of what's possible now.

Wow.

He's that good.

I was hoping. I was hoping for the White House card, Dana would do something, pull Jon Jones out of the bag.

I was hoping that as well. Yeah, I was hoping that as well.

That would have been really special.

Yeah. I don't know why that didn't happen. I don't know. I mean, there's John's version, there's the UFC's version. I don't know what was the stumbling block there.

Well, I think it's fair to say him and Dana don't get on very well.

I don't think it's that bad. It's. They certainly could make a deal. That's. I don't think it's as bad as like say, Francis Ngannou. The Francis Ngannou situation, like, Dana does not like him at all and won't do any business with him, period.

Because that would be the fight. Francis Ngannou versus Jon Jones. Oh, my word, that would be good.

But Also Alex Perez vs Jon Jones would be the fight as well. Like you wouldn't. It didn't. A title doesn't mean anything. You could do the BMF heavyweight version, like, it doesn't matter. Like just those two guys fighting. I mean, that would be. Titles are irrelevant when you're dealing with the all time great in Jon Jones, the greatest of all time. And then Alex Pereira, a generational talent who's the most devastating striker we've ever seen inside the sport. I mean, as you look at Ilya, I mean, Ilya is phenomenal, but Ilya is like more complete as a fighter. But Alex is freaky. I ever tell you what Mark Goddard said when he fought Khalil Rountry? So he. He beats Khalil Rountry up and they stop the fight. And then Mark Goddard grabs me like, as I go into the octagon. He goes. The sound it makes when he hits them is ungodly. That's what he said. He goes. He goes, mate, I've been doing this for 20 years. He goes, I've seen it all.

You.

He goes. It's different. The sound, the impact is like. He's a freak, man. That guy. He. But he's a physical freak and he's a real genuine Amazon warrior who's just built different than other people, you know, I'm sure you've seen him punch that machine. Yeah, he gets like 190. Francis Ngannou got like 129.

What?

And he got 190. Yeah.

Holy shit.

Yeah. No, it's freak power.

I did not enjoy watching the end of that Khalil Roundtree fight. I'm not gonna lie. That was. I mean, Khalil Roundtree is like a fucking animal.

He's a warrior. He's just a warrior. I mean, he knew going into that fight he was willing to go out on his shields. He wasn't afraid. And he went after him. He went after him.

He did.

But the consequences of getting hit. And then Alex was starting to tune him up at the end where he was leaning away from shots and then countering and leaning away from shots and counting. He was. He was in his flow state. And that's where it got real spooky because Khalil became like a sitting target, and with each shot, his ability to get out of the way diminished. Diminished. With each kick that landed, his ability to move diminished, and it got spooky.

Yeah. And then it becomes a dilemma for the referee.

Yeah.

Like, when do you actually step in? Because, look, there's a consent for the fighter to be there and to take part in the fight, but there comes a point where you have to step in for the. For the fighter's own health.

Yeah. There comes a point where you realize they can't defend themselves anymore and they're getting just tuned up. And that was the end of the fight. I mean, that was the right time to stop it, but it was hard to watch.

It was. But then you get fights like Usman versus Leon Edwards where he's getting smashed for five rounds and he just pulls a kick out of the last minute and knocks him out.

Yeah.

So.

But he wasn't getting smashed, Not.

Not the way Khalil Roundtree was at the end.

That's.

Yeah, yeah.

He wasn't getting. He was getting beat.

He was getting beat.

Yeah.

But he wasn't, like, in danger of getting stopped or really hurt badly.

But that's why we all watch it, because it's that knowledge that anything can happen.

Yeah.

You know, Hakeem Varman versus Lennox Lewis, you know, no one gave.

Right, right.

No one gave Hakeem a prayer when he went in. He was. Lennox is a supreme fighter, Olympic gold medalist, one of the greatest to ever do it. And then that one punch, he hit flush on Lennox's jaw and he was out. I remember watching it going. I mean, no one saw that, especially

in the heavyweight division. One punch with those guys.

Yeah.

It's why I really like it, because in our world, like, you know, if I do a debate, everyone talks shit to each other, and, like, you know, everyone talks shit, then they go have a debate. Everyone still talks shit afterwards. In combat sports, everyone talks shit. And then you find out.

Right.

Yeah, yeah.

It's very definitive. You win or you lose. It's not subject to other people's interpretations of. Because, like, you'll see that in debates, too. Like, I'll see a debate where I. I think, like, in Fugue, for example. Well, you clearly won the debate. And then I'll see people say, you got owned. Right. You know, and they're like, okay, all

the people who agree with me say I dominated. And all the people who agree with other guys say he. He dominated.

Yeah. And you'll See these pundits? And it's. That's a weird economy. Right? There's a weird economy of commentators on other people's exchanges.

Yeah, yeah.

And it's. That is a weird sport. It's a weird.

You've made loads of careers. There's loads of people. Joe Rogan said this on his part. That's the entire content.

Yeah.

They work for me. They don't even know they do. They make me more famous.

Right?

Yeah.

You're getting all the kickbacks also. You.

You get to see what kind of. Of person they are.

Right.

And they're. They're silly, bitchy people. You go like, well, the silly, bitchy people don't like them. Or maybe someone who you agree with doesn't like me. Like, oh, I don't like them anymore. Yeah, which is fine. But it's like that economy of commenting on other people constantly. The problem with that is you've always put yourself in a position of an outsider. Right. You know, you're a comp. Like me, right In. When it comes to combat sports, I'm a commentator. That's. That's all I do. So I can't fight. I'm 58. Right. I'm not going in there. So it's like I'm always going to be in this position of only being an observer and a commentator. I'm not going to be like. For those people that are commentating on these debates, a lot of them probably fancy themselves intellectual gladiators. They just don't get the opportunity to do it. And occasionally they do, and they usually get trounced because really they're not that good, which is why they're commenting in the first place and why they have these fucking stupid hot takes.

Well, you know, the frustrating thing for me with the debates nowadays is how few people want to have an actual discussion. It was so refreshing. Last time we came here, we had Dave Smith on our show. I don't know if you saw that one.

Yeah, I did.

Yeah, we loved it. We loved it. And Dave enjoyed it. And, and, you know, it was weird because we obviously have lots of different perspectives on things, but afterwards a lot of people were like, oh, I can't believe you heard Dave on. And I kept. I said to all of them, listen, Dave's only crime is that he has a different opinion to you because apart from that, he comes in, he shows up, he's super nice, he's respectful, he's polite, he doesn't do any dirty tricks.

Right.

He doesn't argue about the definitions of words that 10 minutes, right? He just goes, here's my opinion. Here's your opinion. Let's discuss.

Yeah.

And that's how conversations should happen.

Right.

But so much of the debate stuff now is not. People aren't discussing the issues. They've just, like, decided, you're a bad person person. And that's what they're trying to achieve. They're trying to get a cheap laugh from the audience that they're playing to, who's not even in the room because they know their retard followers are going to watch it online afterwards and be like, oh, he owned them. But where did we get to?

Well, it's just. I mean, it's just some people that are doing that, you know, and those people, that's all they can do. That's why they do it that way.

Right.

You know, if they were really intellectually compelling and if they were, like, smart people, like, I don't want enemies. Like, if I. If I can have a sane, rational, peaceful discussion with someone, someone where we disagree with something, I would greatly prefer that than have someone who's insulting me and I'm insulting them. We're trying to, like, get off on each other. Like, why? Yeah, yeah, I'm busy.

Yeah, yeah.

I have things to do. Like, I don't need that kind of bullshit in my life. And I don't mind when someone disagrees with me. I think it's healthy. I also want to know why you think the way you think. Genuinely.

Right.

I, you know, I see it as an opportunity as, like, because we all have blind spots. Yeah, we all have blind spots. We all have biases. I don't care who you are, how smart you are, you have biases. You have blind spots. Not me, mate. I know everything.

Yeah, but.

Yeah, but when someone goes, well, actually, Francis, you say this, but what about this? Have you thought about this? Have you read about this? I'm like, no, maybe you should. Right. And maybe you actually maybe won't change your opinion, but certainly have a more nuanced opinion.

True. Yeah.

But also, we're talking about shit that actually matters, you know, and it deserves to be taken seriously.

Yeah.

Well, the answer is don't engage with those certain people.

Yeah. You know, I'm learning that, yeah, we

were having a conversation about one particular individual.

Yeah.

Where I'm like, why? Yeah, don't bother.

I can't believe you. I didn't say anything about that discussion because I was just. I don't want anyone to waste their fucking time watching it. It was. It Was awful.

I'm fascinated by that too, though, because I'm fascinated by these people that are doing that where they're just trying to win and use tricks and be sneaking. Because like, they. They think of discourse in a completely different way, right? They think of. Think about the whole thing in a completely different way. They're completely ideologically captured and they're. The place they're starting from is, I want to prove this to be correct, not I want to know why this person believes it to be incorrect. And I want to find out if maybe we have common ground and maybe, maybe they know something I don't, or maybe I know something they don't. Let's find out.

You know, what, you know what I really want and constant. I've talked about it a lot. I want somebody on the left to come, come up and be brilliant at debating and go to people on the right. Well, you say this and you say this, but actually, let's look at this, let's look at that and be a genuine intellectual force. And what I despair of is I haven't seen anyone be from the left like that in basically a generation.

I think the generation that you're talking about has been captured by some certain narratives that you have to agree to that aren't rational. So as soon as you do that and you. You align yourself with this particular ideology, theology, you're already saying, I'm willing to believe some shit that doesn't make any sense at all because this is the only way to be accepted by my tribe that intellectually compromises you. And that, that also, I think, humiliates you in a certain way. It puts you in a position where you're saying something that you know can't be true, so you set up blind spots.

Do you think they know it's not true?

I think there's gotta be a part of them that realizes there's a good argument that it's not true. You know, especially when it comes to, like, transgender stuff or border stuff. There's certain things where, like, there's no real good faith argument that you should have an open border and allow fucking any psychopath to come across the border and invade your community. That seems crazy. That seems crazy. Like, if you understand anything about human nature and the nature of the world and the level of poverty and crime that exists outside of the United States, particularly in third world countries where you're just allowing people.

I thought you were talking about Canada there, Josh.

I'm all for them invading. They should come over. They should bail in their country until it gets better.

I just ask you because I would find it so hard to go on stage in front of, well, what is now hundreds of thousands of people by the time it goes on the Internet, right, And just vigorously defend something I didn't believe.

Well, that's cause you're smart. And I think the problem is a lot of these people aren't really intelligent. What they are is a person who has a good vocabulary, who's acquired a certain amount of technique and skill involved in talking really fast and spouting things that they've seen online, that a bunch of narratives. Like one of the things that people love to do is if you're talking to anyone that's on the right, they want to say, you know, you support a 34 time convicted felon and you know, there's a lot of, a lot of things that they like to say. There's techniques involved. Instead of like discussing anybody that looked at the actual Trump case, if you're rational and you're on the left, you say that's a crazy, crazy case. There's no way that should be a felony. It's not a felony. There are 34 different misdemeanors and it's also, it's past the statute of limitations. This is the craziest, egregious misuse of justice. And the scary thing is if someone on the right gets in, they decide to do that to someone to left, like, you got to put your foot down, stop that from happening.

The Russia, Russia, Russia stuff, right? Like the all that stuff, the Russiagate stuff, like that's kind of crazy that someone on the left doesn't call that out and say, say hey guys, this is fucking dangerous. Because if you're lying and you're having intelligence agencies lie and you're having people lie on television and you're just accepting that, why? Because it's your side, that's your side, that's why. That's crazy, that's why.

And I find that very strange because what they do is they pivot to that which is not relevant to the conversation we're having. We're talking about, you know, is it right to do these strikes on Iran or is it this or is it right at that is, you know, what's the situation in the Middle east or whatever. How does bringing up Trump's convictions or otherwise change that? It doesn't affect that conversation at all. Or the border or the trans thing or any of the other things. And that's the thing is like, can we just argue the Fucking point.

Well, I think at a certain point in time, you're gonna have to choose real opponents. It's like the Jake Paul thing.

But see, I want the real opponents. But where are they?

Where are they?

Where are they? And we, we've had people on the show where it's like, we had this woman from the Guilty Feminist podcast, and she came on and we gave her 40 minutes. She basically laid out her whole vision, and it was respectful and polite and it was a great conversation. Actually. The moment I said, well, you know, you've been speaking for this time. Here's some of the things that I see that don't make sense in my head. Can you help me out? Immediately goes personal. Immediately.

Yeah.

And that's what Francis is saying. Like, I'd love to see people, people who have an ability to argue the point.

Yeah.

And that's, that's what Dave does. He argues the point. And that's either persuasive to you or it isn't.

But I think the problem is their point is not very good.

Yeah, Yeah, I think that is the problem.

Yeah. And so you have to go personal.

You have to attack people. You have to use ad hominems. It's the only way you can get anything off. And then you could try to get that person emotional and trap them.

So why don't they change their opinion then?

It's a good question. Because if you're ideologically captured, especially if you're on the left, like, it's a very clear ideology and there's like real blowback for deviating from it.

Yeah.

As we know. Right. Because the moment you say, well, you're no longer on the left anymore, well,

a lot of people have been kicked out of it. A lot of people have been pushed into some weird quasi homeless land.

Well, that's how we all ended up as like, right wing. It was like, fuck off with this shit.

Yeah, fuck off with this shit.

You know, when I took 20 years ago, all the stuff that we talk about, it wasn't just like, not right wing, no one questioned. Do you remember 25 years ago, people running around going, we need an open border.

Right, Right.

Or like, you can change your sex by just going, la abracadabra.

Right.

No one said that.

Right.

And so we weren't right wing for like, going, that's crazy.

I know.

You know, the most bizarre thing is watching all these kind of left wing lesbian feminists be described as right win.

J.K. rowling is a nasty rolling Martina Navitrolova.

There's a Journalist called Julie Bindle, who used to write the Guardian, one of most left wing journalists and she lesbian and she criticized like, and she was like the trans movement. That was it. Out the door. Doesn't matter what you've done before. It doesn't matter. You've done all this incredible work with women in female prisons.

Well, it's because it's a cult. I mean, it's essentially like a religious ideology. Like they, they will not take any heretics. Like anybody that deviates from whatever their doctrine is. Like, you're out, you're out forever. And that scares people. So that's one of the reasons why they're willing to comply and follow some of this goofy shit and say no one's illegal on stolen land.

What's interesting is it doesn't happen on the right nearly the same way. Like you can see it now, the right is engaged in a fierce debate in internally and people fucking argue and they hash it out and then they like, they go have a beer afterwards.

I think they're doing it just the same way.

Just the same.

I think it's a bio. I think it's a human thing. Yeah. I think there's people on the right that do it just the same way. There's people that call people out for not being MAGA enough, you know?

Yeah.

It's just like right now the whole thing's in turmoil, whereas there's not really the same kind of turmoil on the left where there's internal debate. The turmoil on the left is the left versus the right.

Yeah.

The turmoil on the right right now, I think there's a lot of people right versus right and they're trying to find out like. And I think there's a lot of people that don't believe what they're saying either. They're just trying to find a thing that aligns with the biggest audience.

I think that's definitely happening. I also think though, internal debate within a big broad church movement is a good thing because what you're arguing about is like, what is the right direction? You know, And I do think that is more healthy. I think working out what it is that like, whatever, if you're on the right, we believe. I'm not on the right. But as I see that, I do think that's a healthy thing to do because you're arguing about the direction of that movement.

Yeah.

And I think that's much healthier than what happens on the left where it's just like. Well, if you don't agree with this wacky idea, that's far, far out there. Then you're no longer part of this.

But I think the good thing about these debates. Debates. Is it exposes that. And anybody who's objective, especially anybody that is, you know, a swing voter, or anybody who's in the middle of all this, which is a lot of people. A lot of people.

Most people, I think. Right.

Yeah, most people are kind of in the middle on most. Most political issues. They get to see how crazy some of this shit is and it makes them less likely to follow, you know,

but it's also as well, from a neutral position perspective. And I mentioned the point about. I want a strong left. I want a strong left which has got good ideas about how to tackle things which are really important, like inequality, like the cost of living. How do we make it that people can actually have a better standard of life, where if a woman wants to stay at home with her kids, she can do that which they're not for, then have to go out and have to work and put the kids in daycare, which then leads to a whole host of people problems. How can we have a better world for ordinary people, which is what the left always used to be? We need a strong left to then challenge the right so that the center becomes a more fertile ground. And if we don't have that, if we have these crazy loons on the left, then what we have is a right which will come to dominate, which I don't think is good for society as a whole. I'm going to be honest with you.

No, it's never good if one. One party, left or right, is completely different, dominant. It's not good.

You need checks. Yeah, right. And you know, the right has its share of crazies too. As we've been talking.

100%. Praise Jesus. We gotta wrap this up. Gentlemen. I love you guys.

Very quickly.

Oh, your book. Yeah, I've got book, it's out called Uneducated. My life as a teacher and why you should never become one and never

is in bold, an inspiring story.

Francis Foster. All right, I love you guys. Bye, everybody.